620	/m/0hhy	Animal Farm	George Orwell	1945-08-17	{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Old Major, the old boar on the Manor Farm, calls the animals on the farm for a meeting, where he compares the humans to parasites and teaches the animals a revolutionary song, 'Beasts of England'. When Major dies, two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, assume command and turn his dream into a philosophy. The animals revolt and drive the drunken and irresponsible Mr Jones from the farm, renaming it "Animal Farm". They adopt Seven Commandments of Animal-ism, the most important of which is, "All animals are equal". Snowball attempts to teach the animals reading and writing; food is plentiful, and the farm runs smoothly. The pigs elevate themselves to positions of leadership and set aside special food items, ostensibly for their personal health. Napoleon takes the pups from the farm dogs and trains them privately. Napoleon and Snowball struggle for leadership. When Snowball announces his plans to build a windmill, Napoleon has his dogs chase Snowball away and declares himself leader. Napoleon enacts changes to the governance structure of the farm, replacing meetings with a committee of pigs, who will run the farm. Using a young pig named Squealer as a "mouthpiece", Napoleon claims credit for the windmill idea. The animals work harder with the promise of easier lives with the windmill. After a violent storm, the animals find the windmill annihilated. Napoleon and Squealer convince the animals that Snowball destroyed it, although the scorn of the neighbouring farmers suggests that its walls were too thin. Once Snowball becomes a scapegoat, Napoleon begins purging the farm with his dogs, killing animals he accuses of consorting with his old rival. He and the pigs abuse their power, imposing more control while reserving privileges for themselves and rewriting history, villainising Snowball and glorifying Napoleon. Squealer justifies every statement Napoleon makes, even the pigs' alteration of the Seven Commandments of Animalism to benefit themselves. 'Beasts of England' is replaced by an anthem glorifying Napoleon, who appears to be adopting the lifestyle of a man. The animals remain convinced that they are better off than they were when under Mr Jones. Squealer abuses the animals' poor memories and invents numbers to show their improvement. Mr Frederick, one of the neighbouring farmers, attacks the farm, using blasting powder to blow up the restored windmill. Though the animals win the battle, they do so at great cost, as many, including Boxer the workhorse, are wounded. Despite his injuries, Boxer continues working harder and harder, until he collapses while working on the windmill. Napoleon sends for a van to take Boxer to the veterinary surgeon's, explaining that better care can be given there. Benjamin, the cynical donkey, who "could read as well as any pig", notices that the van belongs to a knacker, and attempts to mount a rescue; but the animals' attempts are futile. Squealer reports that the van was purchased by the hospital and the writing from the previous owner had not been repainted. He recounts a tale of Boxer's death in the hands of the best medical care. Years pass, and the pigs learn to walk upright, carry whips and wear clothes. The Seven Commandments are reduced to a single phrase: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". Napoleon holds a dinner party for the pigs and the humans of the area, who congratulate Napoleon on having the hardest-working but least fed animals in the country. Napoleon announces an alliance with the humans, against the labouring classes of both "worlds". He abolishes practices and traditions related to the Revolution, and changes the name of the farm to "The Manor Farm". The animals, overhearing the conversation, notice that the faces of the pigs have begun changing. During a poker match, an argument breaks out between Napoleon and Mr Pilkington, and the animals realise that the faces of the pigs look like the faces of humans, and no one can tell the difference between them. The pigs Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer adapt Old Major's ideas into an actual philosophy, which they formally name Animalism. Soon after, Napoleon and Squealer indulge in the vices of humans (drinking alcohol, sleeping in beds, trading). Squealer is employed to alter the Seven Commandments to account for this humanisation, an allusion to the Soviet government's revising of history in order to exercise control of the people's beliefs about themselves and their society. The original commandments are: # Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. # Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. # No animal shall wear clothes. # No animal shall sleep in a bed. # No animal shall drink alcohol. # No animal shall kill any other animal. # All animals are equal. Later, Napoleon and his pigs secretly revise some commandments to clear them of accusations of law-breaking (such as "No animal shall drink alcohol" having "to excess" appended to it and "No animal shall sleep in a bed" with "with sheets" added to it). The changed commandments are as follows, with the changes bolded: * 4 No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets. * 5 No animal shall drink alcohol to excess. * 6 No animal shall kill any other animal without cause. Eventually these are replaced with the maxims, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others", and "Four legs good, two legs better!" as the pigs become more human. This is an ironic twist to the original purpose of the Seven Commandments, which were supposed to keep order within Animal Farm by uniting the animals together against the humans, and prevent animals from following the humans' evil habits. Through the revision of the commandments, Orwell demonstrates how simply political dogma can be turned into malleable propaganda.
843	/m/0k36	A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alex, a teenager living in near-future England, leads his gang on nightly orgies of opportunistic, random "ultra-violence." Alex's friends ("droogs" in the novel's Anglo-Russian slang, Nadsat) are: Dim, a slow-witted bruiser who is the gang's muscle; Georgie, an ambitious second-in-command; and Pete, who mostly plays along as the droogs indulge their taste for ultra-violence. Characterized as a sociopath and a hardened juvenile delinquent, Alex is also intelligent and quick-witted, with sophisticated taste in music, being particularly fond of Beethoven, or "Lovely Ludwig Van." The novel begins with the droogs sitting in their favorite hangout (the Korova Milkbar), drinking milk-drug cocktails, called "milk-plus", to hype themselves for the night's mayhem. They assault a scholar walking home from the public library, rob a store leaving the owner and his wife bloodied and unconscious, stomp a panhandling derelict, then scuffle with a rival gang. Joyriding through the countryside in a stolen car, they break into an isolated cottage and maul the young couple living there, beating the husband and raping his wife. In a metafictional touch, the husband is a writer working on a manuscript called "A Clockwork Orange," and Alex contemptuously reads out a paragraph that states the novel's main theme before shredding the manuscript. Back at the milk bar, Alex punishes Dim for some crude behaviour, and strains within the gang become apparent. At home in his dreary flat, Alex plays classical music at top volume while fantasizing of even more orgiastic violence. Alex skips school the next day. Following an unexpected visit from P.R. Deltoid, his "post-corrective advisor," Alex meets a pair of ten-year-old girls and takes them back to his parents' flat, where he administers hard drugs and then rapes them. That evening, Alex finds his droogs in a mutinous mood. Georgie challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, demanding that they pull a "man-sized" job. Alex quells the rebellion by slashing Dim's hand and fighting with Georgie, then in a show of generosity takes them to a bar, where Alex insists on following through on Georgie's idea to burgle the home of a wealthy old woman. The break-in starts as farce and ends in tragic pathos, as Alex's attack kills the elderly woman. His escape is blocked by Dim, who attacks Alex, leaving him incapacitated on the front step as the police arrive. Sentenced to prison for murder, Alex gets a job at the Wing chapel playing religious music on the stereo before and after services as well as during the singing of hymns. The prison chaplain mistakes Alex's Bible studies for stirrings of faith (Alex is actually reading Scripture for the violent passages). After Alex's fellow cellmates blame him for beating a troublesome cellmate to death, he agrees to undergo an experimental behaviour-modification treatment called the Ludovico Technique. The technique is a form of aversion therapy in which Alex receives an injection that makes him feel sick while watching graphically violent films, eventually conditioning him to suffer crippling bouts of nausea at the mere thought of violence. As an unintended consequence, the soundtrack to one of the films—Beethoven's Fifth Symphony—renders Alex unable to listen to his beloved classical music. The effectiveness of the technique is demonstrated to a group of VIPs, who watch as Alex collapses before a walloping bully, and abases himself before a scantily-clad young woman whose presence has aroused his predatory sexual inclinations. Though the prison chaplain accuses the state of stripping Alex of free will, the government officials on the scene are pleased with the results and Alex is released into society. Since his parents are now renting his room to a lodger, Alex wanders the streets and enters a public library where he hopes to learn a painless way to commit suicide. There, he accidentally encounters the old scholar he assaulted earlier in the book, who, keen on revenge, beats Alex with the help of his friends. The policemen who come to Alex's rescue turn out to be none other than Dim and former gang rival Billyboy. The two policemen take Alex outside of town and beat him up. Dazed and bloodied, Alex collapses at the door of an isolated cottage, realizing too late that it is the house he and his droogs invaded in the first half of the story. Because the gang wore masks during the assault, the writer does not recognize Alex. The writer, whose name is revealed as F. Alexander, shelters Alex and questions him about the conditioning. During this sequence, it is revealed that Mrs. Alexander died from the injuries inflicted during the gang-rape, and her husband has decided to continue living "where her fragrant memory persists" despite the horrid memories. Alexander, a critic of the government, hopes to use Alex as a symbol of state brutality and thereby prevent the incumbent government from being re-elected. Eventually, he begins to realize Alex's role in the happenings of the night two years ago. One of Alexander's radical associates manages to extract a confession from Alex after removing him from F. Alexander's home and then locks him in a flatblock near his former home. Alex is then subjected to a relentless barrage of classical music, prompting him to attempt suicide by leaping from a high window. Alex wakes up in hospital, where he is courted by government officials anxious to counter the bad publicity created by his suicide attempt. With Alexander safely packed off to a mental institution, Alex is offered a well-paying job if he agrees to side with the government. As photographers snap pictures, Alex daydreams of orgiastic violence and realizes the Ludovico conditioning has been reversed: "I was cured all right." In the final chapter, Alex has a new trio of droogs, but he finds he is beginning to outgrow his taste for violence. A chance encounter with Pete, now married and settled down, inspires Alex to seek a wife and family of his own. He contemplates the likelihood of his future son being a delinquent as he was, a prospect Alex views fatalistically.
986	/m/0ldx	The Plague	Albert Camus	1947	{"/m/02m4t": "Existentialism", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The text of The Plague is divided into five parts. In the town of Oran, thousands of rats, initially unnoticed by the populace, begin to die in the streets. A hysteria develops soon afterward, causing the local newspapers to report the incident. Authorities responding to public pressure order the collection and cremation of the rats, unaware that the collection itself was the catalyst for the spread of the bubonic plague. The main character, Dr. Bernard Rieux, lives comfortably in an apartment building when strangely the building's concierge, M. Michel, a confidante, dies from a fever. Dr. Rieux consults his colleague, Castel, about the illness until they come to the conclusion that a plague is sweeping the town. They both approach fellow doctors and town authorities about their theory, but are eventually dismissed on the basis of one death. However, as more and more deaths quickly ensue, it becomes apparent that there is an epidemic. Authorities, including the Prefect, M. Othon, are slow to accept that the situation is serious and quibble over the appropriate action to take. Official notices enacting control measures are posted, but the language used is optimistic and downplays the seriousness of the situation. A "special ward" is opened at the hospital, but its 80 beds are filled within three days. As the death toll begins to rise, more desperate measures are taken. Homes are quarantined; corpses and burials are strictly supervised. A supply of plague serum finally arrives, but there is only enough to treat existing cases and the country's emergency reserves are depleted. When the daily number of deaths jumps to 30, the town is sealed and an outbreak of plague is officially declared. The town is sealed off. The town gates are shut, rail travel is prohibited, and all mail service is suspended. The use of telephone lines is restricted only to "urgent" calls, leaving short telegrams as the only means of communicating with friends or family outside the town. The separation affects daily activity and depresses the spirit of the townspeople, who begin to feel isolated and introverted, and the plague begins to affect various characters. One character, Raymond Rambert, devises a plan to escape the city to join his lover in Paris after city officials refuse his request to leave. He befriends some criminals so that they may smuggle him out of the city. Another character, Father Paneloux, uses the plague as an opportunity to advance his stature in the town by suggesting that the plague was an act of God punishing the citizens' sinful nature. His diatribe falls on the ears of many citizens of the town, who turned to religion in droves but would not have done so under normal circumstances. Cottard, a criminal remorseful enough to attempt suicide yet fearful of being arrested, becomes wealthy as a major smuggler. Meanwhile, Dr. Rieux, a vacationer Jean Tarrou, and a civil servant Joseph Grand exhaustively treat patients in their homes and in the hospital. Rambert informs Tarrou of his escape plan, but when Tarrou tells him that others in the city, including Dr. Rieux, also have loved ones outside the city whom they are not allowed to see, Rambert becomes sympathetic and changes his mind. He then decides to join Tarrou and Dr. Rieux to help fight the epidemic. In mid-August, the situation continues to worsen. People try to escape the town, but some are shot by armed sentries. Violence and looting break out on a small scale, and the authorities respond by declaring martial law and imposing a curfew. Funerals are conducted with more and more speed, no ceremony, and little concern for the feelings of the families of the deceased. The inhabitants passively endure their increasing feelings of exile and separation; despondent, they waste away emotionally as well as physically. In September and October, the town remains at the mercy of the plague. Rieux hears from the sanatorium that his wife's condition is worsening. He also hardens his heart regarding the plague victims so that he can continue to do his work. Cottard, on the other hand, seems to flourish during the plague, because it gives him a sense of being connected to others, since everybody faces the same danger. Cottard and Tarrou attend a performance of Gluck's opera Orpheus and Eurydice, but the actor portraying Orpheus collapses with plague symptoms during the performance. Rambert finally has a chance to escape, but he decides to stay, saying that he would feel ashamed of himself if he left. Towards the end of October, Castel's new anti-plague serum is tried for the first time, but it cannot save the life of Othon's young son, who suffers greatly, as Paneloux, Rieux, and Tarrou look on in horror. Paneloux, who has joined the group of volunteers fighting the plague, gives a second sermon. He addresses the problem of an innocent child's suffering and says it is a test of a Christian's faith, since it requires him either to deny everything or believe everything. He urges the congregation not to give up the struggle but to do everything possible to fight the plague. A few days after the sermon, Paneloux is taken ill. His symptoms do not conform to those of the plague, but the disease still proves fatal. Tarrou and Rambert visit one of the isolation camps, where they meet Othon. When Othon's period of quarantine ends, he elects to stay in the camp as a volunteer because this will make him feel less separated from his dead son. Tarrou tells Rieux the story of his life, and the two men go swimming together in the sea. Grand catches the plague and instructs Rieux to burn all his papers. But Grand makes an unexpected recovery, and deaths from the plague start to decline. By late January, the plague is in full retreat, and the townspeople begin to celebrate the imminent opening of the town gates. Othon, however, does not escape death from the disease. Cottard is distressed by the ending of the epidemic, from which he has profited by shady dealings. Two government employees approach him, and he flees. Despite the epidemic's ending, Tarrou contracts the plague and dies after an heroic struggle. Rieux's wife also dies. In February, the town gates open and people are reunited with their loved ones from other cities. Rambert is reunited with his wife. Rieux reveals that he is the narrator of the chronicle and that he tried to present an objective view of the events. Cottard goes mad and shoots at people from his home. He is arrested. Grand begins working on his sentence again. Rieux reflects on the epidemic and reaches the conclusion that there is more to admire than to despise in humans.
1756	/m/0sww	An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding	David Hume			 The argument of the Enquiry proceeds by a series of incremental steps, separated into chapters which logically succeed one another. After expounding his epistemology, Hume explains how to apply his principles to specific topics. In the first section of the Enquiry, Hume provides a rough introduction to philosophy as a whole. For Hume, philosophy can be split into two general parts: natural philosophy and the philosophy of human nature (or, as he calls it, "moral philosophy"). The latter investigates both actions and thoughts. He emphasizes in this section, by way of warning, that philosophers with nuanced thoughts will likely be cast aside in favor of those whose conclusions more intuitively match popular opinion. However, he insists, precision helps art and craft of all kinds, including the craft of philosophy. Next, Hume discusses the distinction between impressions and ideas. By "impressions", he means sensations, while by "ideas", he means memories and imaginings. According to Hume, the difference between the two is that ideas are less vivacious than impressions. For example, the idea of the taste of an orange is far inferior to the impression (or sensation) of actually eating one. Writing within the tradition of empiricism, he argues that impressions are the source of all ideas. Hume accepts that ideas may be either the product of mere sensation, or of the imagination working in conjunction with sensation. According to Hume, the creative faculty makes use of (at least) four mental operations which produce imaginings out of sense-impressions. These operations are compounding (or the addition of one idea onto another, such as a horn on a horse to create a unicorn); transposing (or the substitution of one part of a thing with the part from another, such as with the body of a man upon a horse to make a centaur); augmenting (as with the case of a giant, whose size has been augmented); and diminishing (as with Lilliputians, whose size has been diminished). (Hume 1974:317) In a later chapter, he also mentions the operations of mixing, separating, and dividing. (Hume 1974:340) However, Hume admits that there is one objection to his account: the problem of "The Missing Shade of Blue". In this thought-experiment, he asks us to imagine a man who has experienced every shade of blue except for one (see Fig. 1). He predicts that this man will be able to divine the color of this particular shade of blue, despite the fact that he has never experienced it. This seems to pose a serious problem for the empirical account, though Hume brushes it aside as an exceptional case by stating that one may experience a novel idea that itself is derived from combinations of previous impressions. (Hume 1974:319) In this chapter, Hume discusses how thoughts tend to come in sequences, as in trains of thought. He explains that there are at least three kinds of associations between ideas: resemblance, contiguity in space-time, and cause-and-effect. He argues that there must be some universal principle that must account for the various sorts of connections that exist between ideas. However, he does not immediately show what this principle might be. (Hume 1974:320-321) In the first part, Hume discusses how the objects of inquiry are either "relations of ideas" or "matters of fact", which is roughly the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. The former, he tells the reader, are proved by demonstration, while the latter are given through experience. (Hume 1974:322) In explaining how matters of fact are entirely a product of experience, he dismisses the notion that they may be arrived at through a priori reasoning. For Hume, every effect only follows its cause arbitrarily—they are entirely distinct from one another. (Hume 1974:324) In part two, Hume inquires into how anyone can justifiably believe that experience yields any conclusions about the world: ::"When it is asked, What is the nature of all our reasonings concerning matter of fact? the proper answer seems to be, that they are founded on the relation of cause and effect. When again it is asked, What is the foundation of all our reasonings and conclusions concerning that relation? it may be replied in one word, experience. But if we still carry on our sifting humor, and ask, What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience? this implies a new question, which may be of more difficult solution and explication." (Hume 1974:328) He shows how a satisfying argument for the validity of experience can be based neither on demonstration (since "it implies no contradiction that the course of nature may change") nor experience (since that would be a circular argument). (Hume 1974:330-332) Here he is describing what would become known as the problem of induction. For Hume, we assume that experience tells us something about the world because of habit or custom, which human nature forces us to take seriously. This is also, presumably, the "principle" that organizes the connections between ideas. Indeed, one of the many famous passages of the Inquiry was on the topic of the incorrigibility of human custom. In a later chapter, he wrote: ::"The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of skepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life. These principles may flourish and triumph in the schools; where it is, indeed, difficult, if not impossible, to refute them. But as soon as they leave the shade, and by the presence of the real objects, which actuate our passions and sentiments, are put in opposition to the more powerful principles of our nature, they vanish like smoke, and leave the most determined skeptic in the same condition as other mortals." (Hume 1974:425) In the second part, he provides an account of beliefs. He explains that the difference between belief and fiction is that the former produces a certain feeling of confidence which the latter doesn't. (Hume 1974:340) This short chapter begins with the notions of probability and chance. For him, "probability" means a higher chance of occurring, and brings about a higher degree of subjective expectation in the viewer. By "chance", he means all those particular comprehensible events which the viewer considers possible in accord with their experience. However, further experience takes these equal chances, and forces the imagination to observe that certain chances arise more frequently than others. These gentle forces upon the imagination cause the viewer to have strong beliefs in outcomes. This effect may be understood as another case of custom or habit taking past experience and using it to predict the future. (Hume 1974:346-348) By "necessary connection", Hume means the power or force which necessarily ties one idea to another. He rejects the notion that any sensible qualities are necessarily conjoined, since that would mean we could know something prior to experience. Unlike his predecessors, Berkeley and Locke, Hume rejects the idea that volitions or impulses of the will may be inferred to necessarily connect to the actions they produce by way of some sense of the power of the will. He reasons that, i) if we knew the nature of this power, then the mind-body divide would seem totally unmysterious to us; ii) if we had immediate knowledge of this mysterious power, then we would be able to intuitively explain why it is that we can control some parts of our bodies (e.g., our hands or tongues), and not others (e.g., the liver or heart); iii) we have no immediate knowledge of the powers which allow an impulse of volition to create an action (e.g., of the "muscles, and nerves, and animal spirits" which are the immediate cause of an action). (Hume 1974:353-354) He produces like arguments against the notion that we have knowledge of these powers as they affect the mind alone. (Hume 1974:355-356) He also argues in brief against the idea that causes are mere occasions of the will of some god(s), a view associated with the philosopher Nicolas Malebranche. (Hume 1974:356-359) Having dispensed with these alternative explanations, he identifies the source of our knowledge of necessary connections as arising out of observation of constant conjunction of certain impressions across many instances. In this way, people know of necessity through rigorous custom or habit, and not from any immediate knowledge of the powers of the will. (Hume 1974:361) He then produces three explanations for how we account for causation: # When all objects or events of one kind are immediately followed by objects or events of another kind. # Where, if there had been no object of the first kind, we would never have seen an object of the second kind. # Where the appearance of the first object forces one's mind to think about the second one. (Hume 1974:362) Here Hume tackles the problem of how liberty may be reconciled with metaphysical necessity (otherwise known as a compatibilist formulation of free will). Hume believes that all disputes on the subject have been merely verbal arguments—that is to say, arguments which are based on a lack of prior agreement on definitions. He first shows that it is clear that most events are deterministic, but human actions are more controversial. However, he thinks that these too occur out of necessity since an outside observer can see the same regularity that he would in a purely physical system. To show the compatibility of necessity and liberty, Hume defines liberty as the ability to act on the basis of one's will e.g. the capacity to will one's actions but not to will one's will. He then shows (quite briefly) how determinism and free will are compatible notions, and have no bad consequences on ethics or moral life. Hume insists that the conclusions of the Enquiry will be very powerful if they can be shown to apply to animals and not just humans. He believed that animals were able to infer the relation between cause and effect in the same way that humans do: through learned expectations. (Hume 1974:384) He also notes that this "inferential" ability that animals have is not through reason, but custom alone. Hume concludes that there is an innate faculty of instincts which both beasts and humans share, namely, the ability to reason experimentally (through custom). Nevertheless, he admits, humans and animals differ in mental faculties in a number of ways, including: differences in memory and attention, inferential abilities, ability to make deductions in a long chain, ability to grasp ideas more or less clearly, the human capacity to worry about conflating unrelated circumstances, a sagely prudence which arrests generalizations, a capacity for a greater inner library of analogies to reason with, an ability to detach oneself and scrap one's own biases, and an ability to converse through language (and thus gain from the experience of others' testimonies). (Hume 1974:385, footnote 17.) The next topic which Hume strives to give treatment is that of the reliability of human testimony, and of the role that testimony plays a part in epistemology. This was not an idle concern for Hume. Depending on its outcome, the entire treatment would give the epistemologist a degree of certitude in the treatment of miracles. True to his empirical thesis, Hume tells the reader that, though testimony does have some force, it is never quite as powerful as the direct evidence of the senses. That said, he provides some reasons why we may have a basis for trust in the testimony of persons: because a) human memory can be relatively tenacious; and b) because people are inclined to tell the truth, and ashamed of telling falsities. Needless to say, these reasons are only to be trusted to the extent that they conform to experience. (Hume 1974:389) And there are a number of reasons to be skeptical of human testimony, also based on experience. If a) testimonies conflict one another, b) there are a small number of witnesses, c) the speaker has no integrity, d) the speaker is overly hesitant or bold, or e) the speaker is known to have motives for lying, then the epistemologist has reason to be skeptical of the speaker's claims. (Hume 1974:390) There is one final criterion that Hume thinks gives us warrant to doubt any given testimony, and that is f) if the propositions being communicated are miraculous. Hume understands a miracle to be any event which contradicts the laws of nature. He argues that the laws of nature have an overwhelming body of evidence behind them, and are so well demonstrated to everyone's experience, that any deviation from those laws necessarily flies in the face of all evidence. (Hume 1974:391-392) Moreover, he stresses that talk of the miraculous has no surface validity, for four reasons. First, he explains that in all of history there has never been a miracle which was attested to by a wide body of disinterested experts. Second, he notes that human beings delight in a sense of wonder, and this provides a villain with an opportunity to manipulate others. Third, he thinks that those who hold onto the miraculous have tended towards barbarism. Finally, since testimonies tend to conflict with one another when it comes to the miraculous—that is, one man's religious miracle may be contradicted by another man's miracle—any testimony relating to the fantastic is self-denunciating. (Hume 1974:393-398) Still, Hume takes care to warn that historians are generally to be trusted with confidence, so long as their reports on facts are extensive and uniform. However, he seems to suggest that historians are as fallible at interpreting the facts as the rest of humanity. Thus, if every historian were to claim that there was a solar eclipse in the year 1600, then though we might at first naively regard that as in violation of natural laws, we'd come to accept it as a fact. But if every historian were to assert that Queen Elizabeth was observed walking around happy and healthy after her funeral, and then interpreted that to mean that they had risen from the dead, then we'd have reason to appeal to natural laws in order to dispute their interpretation. (Hume 1974:400-402) Hume continues his application of epistemology to theology by an extended discussion on heaven and hell. The brunt of this chapter allegedly narrates the opinions, not of Hume, but of one of Hume's anonymous friends, who again presents them in an imagined speech by the philosopher Epicurus. His friend argues that, though it is possible to trace a cause from an effect, it is not possible to infer unseen effects from a cause thus traced. The friend insists, then, that even though we might postulate that there is a first cause behind all things—God—we can't infer anything about the afterlife, because we don't know anything of the afterlife from experience, and we can't infer it from the existence of God. (Hume 1974:408) Hume offers his friend an objection: if we see an unfinished building, then can't we infer that it has been created by humans with certain intentions, and that it will be finished in the future? His friend concurs, but indicates that there is a relevant disanalogy that we can't pretend to know the contents of the mind of God, while we can know the designs of other humans. Hume seems essentially persuaded by his friend's reasoning. (Hume 1974:412-414) The first section of the last chapter is organized as an outline of various skeptical arguments. The treatment includes the arguments of atheism, Cartesian skepticism, "light" skepticism, and rationalist critiques of empiricism. Hume shows that even light skepticism leads to crushing doubts about the world which - while they ultimately are philosophically justifiable - may only be combated through the non-philosophical adherence to custom or habit. He ends the section with his own reservations towards Cartesian and Lockean epistemologies. In the second section he returns to the topic of hard skepticism by sharply denouncing it. ::"For here is the chief and most confounding objection to excessive skepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigor. We need only ask such a skeptic, What his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer... a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail." (Hume 1974:426) He concludes the volume by setting out the limits of knowledge once and for all. "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
2080	/m/0wkt	A Fire Upon the Deep	Vernor Vinge		{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel posits that space around the Milky Way is divided into concentric layers called Zones, each being constrained by different laws of physics and each allowing for different degrees of biological and technological advancement. The innermost, the "Unthinking Depths", surrounds the galactic core and is incapable of supporting advanced life forms at all. The next layer, the "Slow Zone", is roughly equivalent to the real world in behavior and potential. Further out, the zone named the "Beyond" can support futuristic technologies such as AI and FTL travel. The outermost zone, the "Transcend", contains most of the galactic halo and is populated by incomprehensibly vast and powerful posthuman entities. A human expedition investigates a five-billion-year-old data archive that offers the possibility of unimaginable riches for the ambitious young civilization of the Straumli Realm. The expedition's facility, called High Lab, is gradually compromised by a dormant super-intelligent entity (actually encoded within the archive) later known as the Blight. The Blight rapidly learns how to infiltrate and control the computer systems of High Lab, and even develops the ability to possess and control the living humans. The novel starts with an imaginative description of the evolution of this superintelligence through exponentially accelerating developmental stages, culminating in a transcendent, nigh-omnipotent power that is unfathomable to mere humans. Shortly before its final "flowering", the changes in a single minute of the Blight's life are said to exceed those of 10,000 years of human civilization. Recognizing the danger of what they have awakened, the researchers at High Lab attempt to flee in two ships. Suspicious, the Blight discovers that one of the ships contains a data storage device in its cargo manifest; assuming it contains information that could harm it, the Blight destroys the ship. The second ship is allowed to escape, unharmed, as the Blight assumes that it is no threat; but later realizes that it actually held a countermeasure, one of the few things in the universe that the Blight fears. The ship lands on a distant planet with a medieval-level civilization of dog-like creatures dubbed "Tines", who live in packs as group minds. The ship is revealed to be a sleeper ship, carrying most of High Lab's children in "coldsleep boxes". The boxes are rapidly failing and the surviving adults begin unloading them, but are killed when one of two rival forces of Tines seize the ship. The faction that initially contacts the humans, led by a Tine known as Steel, kills the adults and destroys many of the coldsleep boxes. They also capture a boy named Jefri Olsndot, whom Steel intended on killing but eventually exploits in order to develop advanced technology (such as cannon and radio communication). Jefri's older sister, Johanna, is rescued by Pilgrim and Scriber, wandering Tines who bring her to the rival faction, led by Woodcarver. She is asked to help develop technology that could gain the upper hand in the impending war. A distress signal from the sleeper ship eventually reaches "Relay", a major node in the galactic communications network. A benign transcendent entity (known as a "Power") named "Old One" contacts Relay, seeking information about the Blight and the humans who released it. Old One constructs a seemingly human man, Pham Nuwen, to act as its agent. Pham and Ravna Bergsndot – a human employee of Relay's owners, the wealthy Vrinimi Organization – trace the sleeper ship's signal to the Tines world. Old One designs a vessel, the Out of Band II, to reach the Tines world and to investigate what the ship carried with it from the High Lab. The Blight attacks Relay and Old One. Old One gives Pham the information necessary to activate the Blight Countermeasure while dying (a process known as godshatter), and Pham and Ravna escape Relay's destruction in the Out of Band II. After arriving at the Tines homeworld and allying with Woodcarver to defeat Steel, Pham initiates the Countermeasure, which extends the Slow Zone by thousands of light-years to enclose the Blight. This ends the threat of the Blight at the cost of wrecking thousands of uninvolved civilizations, causing trillions of deaths and potentially the extinction of several galactic races. The process also kills Pham and strands the other humans on the Tines world, now in the depths of the "Slow Zone" where rescue by an advanced civilization is impossible.
2152	/m/0x5g	All Quiet on the Western Front	Erich Maria Remarque	1929-01-29	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The book tells the story of Paul Bäumer, a German soldier who—urged on by his school teacher—joins the German army shortly after the start of World War I. Bäumer arrives at the Western Front with his friends and schoolmates (Tjaden, Müller, Kropp and a number of other characters). There they meet Stanislaus Katczinsky, an older soldier, nicknamed Kat, who becomes Paul's mentor. While fighting at the front, Bäumer and his comrades have to engage in frequent battles and endure the dangerous and often dirty conditions of warfare. At the very beginning of the book Erich Maria Remarque says "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war." The book does not focus on heroic stories of bravery, but rather gives a view of the conditions in which the soldiers find themselves. The monotony between battles, the constant threat of artillery fire and bombardments, the struggle to find food, the lack of training of young recruits (meaning lower chances of survival), and the overarching role of random chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers are described in detail. The battles fought here have no names and seem to have little overall significance, except for the impending possibility of injury or death for Bäumer and his comrades. Only pitifully small pieces of land are gained, about the size of a football field, which are often lost again later. Remarque often refers to the living soldiers as old and dead, emotionally drained and shaken. "We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing from ourselves, from our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces." Paul's visit on leave to his home highlights the cost of the war on his psyche. The town has not changed since he went off to war; however, he finds that he does "not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world." He feels disconnected from most of the townspeople. His father asks him "stupid and distressing" questions about his war experiences, not understanding "that a man cannot talk of such things." An old schoolmaster lectures him about strategy and advancing to Paris, while insisting that Paul and his friends know only their "own little sector" of the war but nothing of the big picture. Indeed, the only person he remains connected to is his dying mother, with whom he shares a tender, yet restrained relationship. The night before he is to return from leave, he stays up with her, exchanging small expressions of love and concern for each other. He thinks to himself, "Ah! Mother, Mother! How can it be that I must part from you? Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it." In the end, he concludes that he "ought never to have come [home] on leave." Paul feels glad to be reunited with his comrades. Soon after, he volunteers to go on a patrol and kills a man for the first time in hand-to-hand combat. He watches the man die, in pain for hours. He feels remorse and asks forgiveness from the man's corpse. He is devastated and later confesses to Kat and Albert, who try to comfort him and reassure him that it is only part of the war. They are then sent on what Paul calls a "good job." They must guard a village that is being shelled too heavily. The men enjoy themselves but while evacuating the villagers, Paul and Albert are wounded. They recuperate in a Catholic hospital and Paul returns to active duty. By now, the war is nearing its end and the German Army is retreating. In despair, Paul watches as his friends fall one by one. It is the death of Kat that eventually makes Paul careless about living. In the final chapter, he comments that peace is coming soon, but he does not see the future as bright and shining with hope. Paul feels that he has no aims left in life and that their generation will be different and misunderstood. When he finally dies at the end of the novel, the situation report from the frontline states, "All is Quiet on the Western Front," symbolizing the cheapness of human life in war.
2890	/m/011zx	A Wizard of Earthsea	Ursula K. Le Guin	1968	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ged is a young boy on Gont, one of the larger islands in the north of the archipelago of Earthsea. His mother is dead, his much older siblings have all left home, and his father is a dour, taciturn bronzesmith with nothing in common with his son, so the boy grows up wild and headstrong. Ged discovers by accident that he has an extraordinary talent for magic. His aunt, the village witch, teaches him the little she herself knows, but his power far exceeds hers. One day, he uses his talent and a fog-gathering spell he learned from a passing weatherworker to save his village from Karg raiders. The tale of his remarkable feat spreads far and wide, finally reaching the ear of a wise Gontish mage, Ogion the Silent. He recognizes that the boy is so powerful he must be trained so as not to become a danger to himself and others. In the rite of passage into adulthood, he gives the boy his "true name", Ged, and takes him as an apprentice. In this world, a magician who knows someone's true name has control over that person, so one's true name is revealed only to those whom one trusts completely. Normally, a person is referred to by his or her "use name". Ged's is Sparrowhawk. The undisciplined young man grows restless under the gentle, patient tutelage of his master. One day, at the taunting of the daughter of the local lord - who, it is later revealed, is also a witch - Ged seeks a powerful spell from one of Ogion's old books to impress the girl. As he reads the spell, to his horror, a shadowy being manifests. The shade advances on Ged, but is driven away by the timely return of Ogion. Ogion finally gives him a choice: stay with him or go to the renowned school for wizards, on the island of Roke. Though he has grown to love the old man, the youngster is drawn irresistibly to a life of doing, rather than being. At the school, Ged masters his craft with ease, but his pride and arrogance grow even faster than his skill and, in his hubris, he attempts to summon a dead spirit - a perilous spell which goes awry. The shadow seizes the chance to escape into the world and attacks him, scarring his face. It is driven off by the head of the school, the Archmage Nemmerle, who expends all of his power in the process and dies shortly thereafter. Ged is wracked with guilt at causing the old man's death, but after a painful and slow recovery, he graduates from the school. Normally, Roke's wizards are much sought after by princes and rich merchants, but the new Archmage sends a willing Ged to a poor island group instead, to protect the inhabitants from a powerful dragon and its maturing sons, who have been seen scouting the region. Ged eventually realizes that he cannot both defend the islanders against the dragon and himself against the nameless thing he summoned into the world. He takes a desperate gamble; in the old histories, he has found the true name of a dragon which might be the one he faces. His guess is right and by using the dragon's name, Yevaud, he is able to force the dragon to vow that neither it nor its offspring will ever trouble the islanders. Then, with no idea how to deal with his other foe, Ged tries to return to the safety of Roke, but the magical, protective Mage-wind drives away the ship on which he is a passenger. On the far northern island of Osskil, his nemesis takes possession of a man and nearly catches him. Ged flees to what appears to be a safe haven in the castle of Benderesk, the lord of Terranon. Serret, his wife, is the same girl who taunted Ged years ago. She tries to enslave Ged using the power of a stone which harbors one of the "Nameless Ones", ancient malevolent powers that predate people. Fortunately Ged realizes his peril just in time and flies away in the form of a falcon. He instinctively returns to Gont and Ogion, who advises him to turn the tables on his shadow. In following his master's wise guidance, the roles of Ged and his enemy become reversed, and the shadow becomes the hunted. Ged pursues the shadow southwards across the ocean, but is nearly drowned when the shadow lures him into steering his boat onto rocks. The vessel sinks, but he manages to reach a small island inhabited by only two old people, a Kargish man and his sister, who were abandoned there as children and who have forgotten there is an outside world and other people. Despite their initial fear of him, they provide him with food and water. After Ged regains his strength, he constructs another boat. When he is ready to leave, he offers to take the pair wherever they want to go, but the man fearfully turns him down, and the woman does not seem to understand what he means. However, she gives him a parting gift of one of her few possessions, a broken half of an armlet. (The siblings' story and the gift's significance are revealed in the sequel, The Tombs of Atuan.) Back at sea, the shadow nearly takes Ged unawares, but he senses it just in time and comes to grips with it, forging a bond that cannot be broken. Ged follows the shadow south. On the island of Iffish, his luck begins to improve. The resident wizard is Vetch (true name Estarriol), the only friend he made at school. Estarriol insists on accompanying him. The two wizards eventually leave behind the last known island of Earthsea and head out into the open sea. As they draw closer to the shadow, Ged perceives the water gradually congealing and turning into land, an immensely powerful magic. Though Vetch cannot see the transformation, the boat runs aground. Ged steps out of the boat and walks off to confront his waiting shadow. Though some of his teachers had thought it to be nameless, Ged and his adversary speak at the same moment, each naming the other "Ged". The two embrace and become one. The sea returns to its normal state; fortunately, Estarriol is able to fish his healed friend out of the water.
2950	/m/012dq	Anyone Can Whistle	Arthur Laurents			 The story is set in an imaginary American town that has gone bankrupt. The only place in town doing good business is the local sanitarium, known as “The Cookie Jar,” whose inmates look much healthier than the disgruntled townspeople. ("I'm Like the Bluebird") All the money is in the hands of Cora Hoover Hooper, the stylish, ruthless mayoress and her cronies - Comptroller Schub, Treasurer Cooley, and Police Chief Magruder. Cora appears carried in a litter by her backup singers, and admits that she can accept anything except unpopularity (“Me and My Town”). The scheming Comptroller Schub, tells her that he has a plan to save her administration, and the town, promising “It's highly unethical.” He tells her to meet him at the rock on the edge of town. At the rock, a local mother, Mrs. Schroeder, tries to tell her child, Baby Joan, to come down from the rock, when Baby Joan licks it - and a spring of water begins flowing from it. The town instantly proclaims a miracle, and Cora and her council eagerly anticipate tourist dollars as they boast of the water's curative powers. ("Miracle Song") It is soon revealed to Cora that the miracle is a fake, controlled by a pump inside the rock. The only person in town who doubts the miracle is Fay Apple, an eternally skeptical young nurse from the Cookie Jar who refuses to believe in miracles. She appears at the rock with all forty-nine of the inmates, or “Cookies” in tow, intending to let them take some of the water. Schub realizes that if they drink the water and do not change, people will discover the fake. As he tries to stop Fay, the inmates mingle with the townspeople, until no one can guess who is who. Fay disappears, and hiding from the police, admits that she hopes for one miracle - for a hero who can come and deliver the town from the madness (“There Won't Be Trumpets”). Cora arrives on the scene with the Cookie Jar's manager, Dr. Detmold, but he says that Fay has taken the records to identify the inmates. He tells Cora that he is expecting a new assistant who might help them. At that moment a mysterious stranger, J. Bowden Hapgood, arrives asking for directions to the Cookie Jar. He is instantly taken for the new assistant. Asked to identify the missing Cookies, Hapgood begins questioning random people and sorting them into two groups, group A, and group one, but refuses to divulge which group is which. The town council becomes suspicious of this and try to force the truth out, but Hapgood questions them until they begin to doubt their own sanity. Cora is too caught up with his logic to care. (“Simple”) As the extended musical sequence ends, the lights black out except for a spotlight on Hapgood, who announces to the audience, “You are all mad!” Seconds later, the stage lights are restored. The stage set has vanished, and the cast is revealed in theater seats, holding programs, applauding the audience. As act two opens, the two groups are now in bitter rivalry over who is the normal group (“A-1 March”) Another stranger, a French woman in a feathered coat appears. It is really Fay Apple in disguise. She introduces herself as the Lady from Lourdes, a professional Miracle Inspector, come to investigate the miracle. As Schub runs off to warn Cora, Fay seeks out Hapgood in his hotel, and the two seduce each other in the style of a French romantic film. (“Come Play Wiz Me”) Fay tries to get Hapgood's help in exposing the miracle. Hapgood, however, sees through her disguise and wants to question her first. Fay refuses to take her wig off, and confesses to him that this disguise, left over from a college play, is the only way she can break out of her rigid and cynical persona. She begins to hope, however, that Hapgood may be the one who can help her learn to be free. (“Anyone Can Whistle”) Meanwhile, the two groups continue to march, and Cora, trying to give a speech, realizes that Hapgood has stolen her limelight. (“A Parade in Town”) She and Schub plan an emergency meeting at her house. Back at the hotel, Hapgood comes up with an idea, telling Fay to destroy the inmates' records. That way Fay can be free of them and they can stop pretending. When Fay is reluctant, Hapgood produces a record of his own - he is her fiftieth Cookie. He is a practicing idealist who, after years of attempted heroism, is tired of crusading and has come to the Cookie Jar to retire. Inspired by his record, Fay begins to tear the records up. As she does, the Cookies appear and begin to dance (“Everybody Says Don't”). Act three begins with Cora at her house with her council. Schub has put the miracle on hiatus, but announces that they can easily turn the town against Hapgood by blaming him for it. The group celebrates their alliance. (“I've Got You to Lean On”) A mob quickly forms outside the hotel, and Hapgood and Fay, still disguised, take refuge under the rock. Discovering the fraud, Cora and the council confront them. At that moment, Cora receives a telegram from the governor warning that if the quota of forty-nine cookies is not filled, she will be impeached. Schub tells her that since Hapgood never said who is normal or not, they can arrest anyone at random until the quota is filled. Fay tries to get Hapgood to expose the miracle, but he warns her no one will believe it is a fake, because it works as a miracle should. Fay wants his help stopping the Mayoress, but he refuses, since he is through with crusading. Although she knows she still isn't out of her shell, Fay angrily swears to go it alone. (“See What it Gets You”) As Cora and the police force begin rounding up Cookies, Fay tries to get the key away from the guards in an extended ballet sequence. (“The Cookie Chase”) As it ends, Fay is captured, and Dr. Detmold suddenly recognizes her. Fay tells the townspeople about the fake miracle, but the town refuses to believe her. Detmold tells Cora that even without the records, Fay can identify the inmates from memory. Cora warns that she will arrest forty-nine people, normal or not, and Fay, helplessly, identifies all the Cookies, except Hapgood. She tells him the world needs people like him, and Hapgood can't turn himself in. He asks Fay to come with him, but she still can't bring herself to break free. Parting ways, they reflect on what they briefly shared. (“With So Little to be Sure Of”) Word comes of a new miracle, two towns over, of a statue with a warm heart. Soon the town is all but deserted, and Cora is again upstaged. Again, Schub has the answer - since the Cookie Jar is still successful, they can turn the entire town into one big Cookie Jar! Cora realizes she and Schub are meant for each other, and they dance off together. As Fay resumes work, Detmold's real new assistant arrives, and Fay is horrified to realize that she is even more practical, rigid and disbelieving than Fay herself, and the new nurse marches the Cookies off to the next town to disprove the new miracle. Horrified at seeing what she might become, Fay returns to the rock calling for Hapgood. When he doesn't answer, she tries to whistle - and succeeds in blowing a shrill, ugly whistle. Hapgood appears again, saying 'That's good enough for me.' As they embrace, the water begins flowing from the rock - a true miracle this time. (Finale)
4081	/m/01b4w	Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night	K. W. Jeter	1996-10-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Living on Mars, Deckard is acting as a consultant to a movie crew filming the story of his Blade Runner days. He finds himself drawn into a mission on behalf of the replicants he was once assigned to kill. Meanwhile, the mystery surrounding the beginnings of the Tyrell Corporation is being dragged out into the light.
4082	/m/01b56	Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human	K. W. Jeter	1995-10-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Beginning several months after the events in Blade Runner, Deckard has retired to an isolated shack outside the city, taking the replicant Rachael with him in a Tyrell transport container, which slows down the replicant aging process. He is approached by a woman who explains she is Sarah Tyrell, niece of Eldon Tyrell, heiress to the entire Tyrell Corporation and the human template (templant) for the Rachael replicant. She asks Deckard to hunt down the "missing" sixth replicant. At the same time, the human template for Roy Batty hires Dave Holden, the blade runner attacked by Leon, to help him hunt down the man he believes is the sixth replicant - Deckard. Deckard and Holden's investigations lead them to re-visit Sebastian, Bryant, and John Isidore (from the book Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?), learning more about the nature of the blade runners and the replicants. When Deckard, Batty, and Holden finally clash, Batty's inhuman fighting prowess leads Holden to believe he has been duped all along and that Batty is the sixth replicant; he shoots him. Deckard returns to Sarah with his suspicion: there is no sixth replicant. Sarah, speaking via a remote camera, confesses that she created and maintained the rumor herself, to deliberately discredit and eventually destroy the Tyrell Corporation, after her uncle Eldon created Rachael based on her and then abandoned the real Sarah. Sarah brings Rachael back to the Corporation building to meet with Deckard, and he escapes with her. However, Holden - recovering from his injuries during the fight - later finds the truth: Rachael has been killed by Tyrell agents, and the "Rachael" who escaped with Deckard was actually Sarah. She has completed her revenge by both destroying Tyrell, and taking back Rachael's place.
4331	/m/01d3j	Book of Joshua				 (Chapter 1 is the first of three important moments in Joshua marked with major speeches and reflections by the main characters; here first God and then Joshua make speeches about the goal of conquest of the Promised Land; at chapter 12, Joshua looks back on the conquest; and at chapter 23 Joshua gives a speech about what must be done if Israel is to live in peace in the land). God commissions Joshua to take possession of the land and warns him to keep faith with the Covenant. (God's speech foreshadows major themes of the book: the crossing of the Jordan and conquest of the land, its distribution, and the imperative need for obedience to the Law; Joshua's own immediate obedience is seen in his speeches to the Israelite commanders and to the Transjordanian tribes, and the Transjordanians' affirmation of Joshua's leadership echoes Yahweh's assurances of victory). The Israelites cross the Jordan through the miraculous intervention of God and his ark and are circumcised at Gibeath-Haaraloth (translated as hill of foreskins), renamed Gilgal in memory (Gilgal sounds like Gallothi, I have removed, but is more likely to translate as circle of standing stones). The conquest begins in Canaan with Jericho, followed by Ai (central Canaan), after which Joshua builds an altar to Yahweh at Mt Ebal (northern Canaan) and renews the Covenant. (The covenant ceremony has elements of a divine land-grant ceremony, similar to ceremonies known from Mesopotamia). The narrative now switches to the south. The Gibeonites trick the Israelites into entering into an alliance with them by saying they are not Canaanites; this prevents the Israelites from exterminating them, but they are enslaved instead. An alliance of Amorite kingdoms headed by the Canaanite king of Jerusalem is defeated with Yahweh's miraculous help, and the enemy kings are hanged on trees. (The Deuteronomist author may have used the then-recent 701 BCE campaign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib in Judah as his model; the hanging of the captured kings is in accordance with Assyrian practice of the 8th century). With the south conquered the narrative moves to the northern campaign. A powerful multi-national (or more accurately, multi-ethnic) coalition headed by the king of Hazor, the most important northern city, is defeated with Yahweh's help and Hazor captured and destroyed. Chapter 11:16-23 summarises the campaign: Joshua has taken the entire land, and the land "had rest from war." Chapter 12 lists the vanquished kings on both sides of the Jordan. Having described how the Israelites and Joshua have carried out the first of their God's commands, the story now turns to the second, to "put the people in possession of the land." This section is a "covenantal land grant": Yahweh, as king, is issuing each tribe its territory. The "cities of refuge" and Levitical cities are attached to the end, since it is necessary for the tribes to receive their grants before they allocate parts of it to others. The Transjordanian tribes are dismissed, affirming their loyalty to Yahweh. Joshua charges the leaders of the Israelites to remain faithful to Yahweh and the covenant, warning of judgement should Israel leave Yahweh and follow other gods; Joshua meets with all the people and reminds them of Yahweh's great works for them, and of the need to love Yahweh alone. Joshua performs the concluding covenant ceremony, and send the people to their inheritance.
4332	/m/01d40	Book of Ezra				 For the Bible text, see Bible Gateway (opens at NIV version) or see King James Version The Book of Ezra consists of ten chapters: chapters 1-6, covering the period from the Decree of Cyrus to the dedication of the Second Temple, are told in the third person; chapters 7-10, dealing with the mission of Ezra, are told largely in the first person. The book contains several documents presented as historical inclusions. ;Chapters 1-6 (documents included in the text in italics) *1. Decree of Cyrus, first version: Cyrus, inspired by God, returns the Temple vessels to Sheshbazzar, "prince of Judah", and directs the Israelites to return to Jerusalem with him and rebuild the Temple. *2. 42,360 exiles, with men servants, women servants and "singing men and women", return from Babylon to Jerusalem and Judah under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Jeshua the High Priest. *3. Jeshua the High Priest and Zerubbabel build the altar and celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. In the second year the foundations of the Temple are laid and the dedication takes place with great rejoicing. *4. Letter of the Samaritans to Artaxerxes, and reply of Artaxerxes: The "enemies of Judah and Benjamin" offer to help with the rebuilding, but are rebuffed; they then work to frustrate the builders "down to the reign of Darius." The officials of Samaria write to king Artaxerxes warning him that Jerusalem is being rebuilt, and the king orders the work to stop. "Thus the work on the house of God in Jerusalem came to a standstill until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia." *5. Tattenai's letter to Darius: Through the exhortations of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, Zerubbabel and Joshua recommence the building of the Temple. Tattenai, satrap over both Judah and Samaria, writes to Darius warning him that Jerusalem is being rebuilt and advising that the archives be searched to discover the decree of Cyrus. *6. Decree of Cyrus, second version, and decree of Darius: Darius finds the decree, directs Tattenai not to disturb the Jews in their work, and exempts them from tribute and supplies everything necessary for the offerings. The Temple is finished in the month of Adar in the sixth year of Darius, and the Israelites assemble to celebrate its completion. ;Chapters 7-10 *7. Letter of Artaxerxes to Ezra (Artaxerxes' rescript): King Artaxerxes is moved by God to commission Ezra "to inquire about Judah and Jerusalem with regard to the Law of your God" and to "appoint magistrates and judges to administer justice to all the people of Trans-Euphrates—all who know the laws of your God." Artaxerxes gives Ezra much gold and directs all Persian officials to aid him. *8. Ezra gathers a large body of returnees and much gold and silver and precious vessels for the Temple and camps by a canal outside Babylon. There he discovers he has no Levites, and so sends messengers to gather some. The exiles then return to Jerusalem, where they distribute the gold and silver and offer sacrifices to God. *9. Ezra is informed that some of the Jews already in Jerusalem have married non-Jewish women. Ezra is appalled at this proof of sin, and prays to God: "O God of Israel, you are righteous! We are left this day as a remnant. Here we are before you in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in your presence." *10. Despite the opposition of some of their number, the Israelites assemble and send away their foreign wives and children.
4376	/m/01dlg	Book of Numbers				 God orders Moses, in the wilderness of Sinai, to number those able to bear arms—of all the men "from twenty years old and upward," and to appoint princes over each tribe. 603,550 Israelites are found to be fit for military service. In chapter 26, a generation later and after approximately forty years of wandering the desert, the Lord orders a second census. 601,730 men are counted. The tribe of Levi is exempted from military service and therefore not included in the census totals. Moses consecrates the Levites for the service of the Tabernacle in the place of the first-born sons, who hitherto had performed that service. The Levites are divided into three families, the Gershonites, the Kohathites, and the Merarites, each under a chief, and all headed by one prince, Eleazar, son of Aaron. Preparations are then made for resuming the march to the Promised Land. Various ordinances and laws are decreed. The first journey of the Israelites after the Tabernacle had been constructed is commenced. The people murmur against God and are punished by fire; Moses complains of the stubbornness of the Israelites and is ordered to choose seventy elders to assist him in the government of the people. Miriam and Aaron insult Moses at Hazeroth, which angers God; Miriam is punished with leprosy and is shut out of camp for seven days, at the end of which the Israelites proceed to the desert of Paran. Twelve spies are sent out into Canaan and come back to report to Moses. Joshua and Caleb, two of the spies, tell that the land is abundant and is "flowing with milk and honey"; the other spies say that it is inhabited by giants, and the Israelites refuse to enter the land. Yahweh decrees that the Israelites will be punished for their loss of faith by having to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses is ordered to make plates to cover the altar with the two hundred fifty censers left after the destruction of Korah's band. The children of Israel murmur against Moses and Aaron on account of the death of Korah's men and are stricken with the plague, with 14,700 perishing. Aaron and his family are declared by God to be responsible for any iniquity committed in connection with the sanctuary. The Levites are again appointed to help in the keeping of the Tabernacle. The Levites are ordered to surrender to the priests a part of the tithes taken to them. Miriam dies at Kadesh Barnea and the Israelites set out for Moab, on Canaan's western border. The Israelites blame Moses for the lack of water. Moses is ordered by God to speak to a rock but disobeys, and is punished by the announcement that he shall not enter Canaan. The king of Edom refuses permission to the Israelites to pass through his land and they go round it. Aaron dies on Mount Hor. The Israelites are bitten by Fiery flying serpents for speaking against God and Moses. A brazen serpent is made to ward off these serpents. The Israelites arrive on the plains of Moab. A new census gives the total number of males from twenty years and upward as 601,730, and the number of the Levites from a month old and upward as 23,000. The land shall be divided by lot. The daughters of Zelophehad, their father having no sons, are to share in the allotment. Moses is ordered to appoint Joshua as his successor. Prescriptions for the observance of the feasts, and the offerings for different occasions are enumerated. Moses orders the Israelites to massacre the people of Midian. The Reubenites and the Gadites request Moses to assign them the land east of the Jordan. Moses grants their request after they promise to help in the conquest of the land west of the Jordan. The land east of the Jordan is divided among the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Moses recalls the stations at which the Israelites halted during their forty years' wanderings and instructs the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites and destroy their idols. The boundaries of the land are spelled out; the land is to be divided under the supervision of Eleazar, Joshua, and twelve princes, one of each tribe.
4381	/m/01dnz	Book of Ruth				 During the time of the Judges when there was a famine, an Israelite family from Bethlehem—Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion—emigrate to the nearby country of Moab. Elimelech dies, and the sons marry two Moabite women: Mahlon marries Ruth and Chilion marries Orpah. The two sons of Naomi then die themselves. Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem. She tells her daughters-in-law to return to their own mothers, and remarry. Orpah reluctantly leaves; however, Ruth says, "Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me." (Ruth 1:16–17 NKJV) The two women return to Bethlehem. It is the time of the barley harvest, and in order to support her mother-in-law and herself, Ruth goes to the fields to glean. The field she goes to belongs to a man named Boaz, who is kind to her because he has heard of her loyalty to her mother-in-law. Ruth tells her mother-in-law of Boaz's kindness, and she gleans in his field through the remainder of the harvest season. Boaz is a close relative of Naomi's husband's family. He is therefore obliged by the Levirate law to marry Mahlon's widow, Ruth, in order to carry on his family line. Naomi sends Ruth to the threshing floor at night and tells her to "uncover the feet" of the sleeping Boaz. Ruth does so; Boaz awakes and asks,"Who are you?" Ruth identifies herself, then asks Boaz to spread his cloak over her. The phrase "spread your cloak" was a woman's way of asking for marriage (Ezekiel 16:8). For a man to spread his cloak over a woman showed acquisition of that woman. Boaz states he is willing to "redeem" Ruth via marriage, but informs Ruth that there is another male relative who has the first right of redemption. The next morning, Boaz discusses the issue with the other male relative, Ploni Almoni ("so-and-so") before the town elders. The other male relative is unwilling to jeopardize the inheritance of his own estate by marrying Ruth, and so relinquishes his right of redemption, thus allowing Boaz to marry Ruth. They transfer the property and redeem it by the nearer kinsman taking off his sandal and handing it over to Boaz. (Ruth 4:7–18) Boaz and Ruth get married and have a son named Obed (who by Levirate customs is also considered a son or heir to Elimelech, and thus Naomi). In the genealogy which concludes the story, it is pointed out that Obed is the father of Jesse, and thus the grandfather of David. This also places Ruth among David's ancestors.
4382	/m/01dpg	Book of Esther				 Ahasuerus, ruler of a massive Persian empire, holds a lavish party, initially for his court and dignitaries and afterwards for all inhabitants of the capital city Shushan. Ahasuerus orders the queen Vashti to display her beauty before the guests. She refuses. Worried all women will learn from this, Ahasuerus removes her as queen and has a royal decree sent across the empire that men should be the ruler of their households and should speak their own native tongue. Ahasuerus then orders all beautiful young girls to be presented to him, so he can choose a new queen to replace Vashti. One of these is the orphan Esther, whose Jewish name is Hadassah. After the death of her parents, she is being fostered by her cousin Mordecai. She finds favor in the king's eyes, and is made his new queen. Esther does not reveal that she is Jewish. Shortly afterwards, Mordechai discovers a plot by courtiers Bigthan and Teresh to assassinate Ahasuerus. The conspirators are apprehended and hanged, and Mordechai's service to the king is recorded. Ahasuerus appoints Haman as his prime minister. Mordechai, who sits at the palace gates, falls into Haman's disfavor as he refuses to bow down to him. Having found out that Mordechai is Jewish, Haman plans to kill not just Mordechai but all the Jews in the empire. He obtains Ahasuerus' permission to execute this plan, against payment of ten thousand talents of silver (which the King declines to accept and rather allows him to execute his plan on principle), and he casts lots to choose the date on which to do this—the thirteenth of the month of Adar. On that day, everyone in the empire is free to massacre the Jews and despoil their property. When Mordechai finds out about the plans he and all Jews mourn and fast. Mordechai informs Esther what has happened and tells her to intercede with the King. She is afraid to break the law and go to the King unsummoned. This action would incur the death penalty. Mordechai tells her that she must. She orders Mordechai to have all Jews fast for three days together with her, and on the third day she goes to Ahasuerus, who stretches out his sceptre to her which shows that she is not to be punished. She invites him to a feast in the company of Haman. During the feast, she asks them to attend a further feast the next evening. Meanwhile, Haman is again offended by Mordechai and consults with his friends. At his wife's suggestion, he builds a gallows for Mordechai. That night, Ahasuerus suffers from insomnia, and when the court records are read to him to help him sleep, he learns of the services rendered by Mordechai in the previous plot against his life. Ahasuerus is told that Mordechai has not received any recognition for saving the king's life. Just then, Haman appears, to ask the King to hang Mordechai, but before he can make this request, King Ahasuerus asks Haman what should be done for the man that the king wishes to honor. Thinking that the man that the king is referring to is himself, Haman says that the man should be dressed in the king's royal robes and led around on the king's royal horse, while a herald calls: "See how the king honours a man he wishes to reward!" To his horror and surprise, the king instructs Haman to do so to Mordechai. After leading Mordechai's parade, he returns in mourning to his wife and friends, who suggest his downfall has begun. Immediately after, Ahasuerus and Haman attend Esther's second banquet, at which she reveals that she is Jewish and that Haman is planning to exterminate her people, including her. Overcome by rage, Ahasuerus leaves the room; meanwhile Haman stays behind and begs Esther for his life, falling upon her in desperation. The king comes back in at this moment and thinks Haman is assaulting the queen; this makes him angrier than before and he orders Haman hanged on the gallows that Haman had prepared for Mordechai. The previous decree against the Jews cannot be annulled, but the king allows the Jews to defend themselves during attacks. As a result, on 13 Adar, five hundred attackers and Haman's ten sons are killed in Shushan, followed by a Jewish slaughter of seventy-five thousand Persians, although they took no plunder. Esther sends a letter instituting an annual commemoration of the Jewish people's redemption, in a holiday called Purim (lots). Ahasuerus remains very powerful and continues reigning, with Mordechai assuming a prominent position in his court.
4386	/m/01dqt	Book of Job			{"/m/02mdj1": "Religious text"}	 The book of Job tells the story of an extremely righteous man named Job, who is very prosperous and has seven sons and three daughters. Constantly fearing that his sons may have sinned and "cursed God in their hearts", he habitually offers burnt offerings as a pardon for their sins. The "sons of God" and Satan (literally "the Adversary") present themselves to God, and God asks Satan his opinion on Job. Satan answers that Job is pious only because God has put a "wall around" him and "blessed" his favourite servant with prosperity, but if God were to stretch out his hand and strike everything that Job had, then he would surely curse God. God gives Satan permission to test Job's righteousness. All Job's possessions are destroyed: 500 yoke of oxen and 500 donkeys carried off by Sabeans; 7,000 sheep burned up by 'The fire of God which fell from the sky'; 3,000 camels stolen by the Chaldeans; and the house of the firstborn destroyed by a mighty wind, killing Job's ten children. Still Job does not curse God, but instead shaves his head, tears his clothes, and says, "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return: Lord has given, and Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of Lord." As Job endures these calamities without reproaching God, Satan solicits permission to afflict his person as well, and God says, "Behold, he is in your hand, but don't touch his life." Satan, therefore, smites him with dreadful boils, and Job, seated in ashes, scrapes his skin with broken pottery. His wife prompts him to "curse God, and die," but Job answers, "You speak as one of the foolish speaks. Moreover, shall we receive good from God and shall not receive evil?" Three friends of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, come to console him. (A fourth, Elihu the Buzite (Heb: Alieua ben Barakal the Buzite), begins talking in Chapter 32 and plays a significant role in the dialogue, but his arrival is not described.) The friends spend seven days sitting on the ground with Job, without saying anything to him because they see that he is suffering and in much pain. Job at last breaks his silence and "curses the day he was born." God responds saying that there are so many things Job does not know about how this world was formed or how nature works, that Job should consider God as being greater than the thunderstorm and strong enough to pull in the leviathan with a fish-hook. God then rebukes the three friends and says, "I am angry with you... you have not spoken of me what is right." The story ends with Job restored to health, with a new family and twice as much livestock.
4449	/m/01f8p	Book of Hosea				 First, Hosea was directed by God to marry a promiscuous woman of ill-repute, and he did so. Marriage here is symbolic of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. However, Israel has been unfaithful to God by following other gods and breaking the commandments which are the terms of the covenant, hence Israel is symbolized by a harlot who violates the obligations of marriage to her husband. Second, Hosea and his wife, Gomer, have a son. God commands that the son be named Jezreel. This name refers to a valley in which much blood had been shed in Israel's history, especially by the kings of the Northern Kingdom. (See I Kings 21 and II Kings 9:21-35). The naming of this son was to stand as a prophecy against the reigning house of the Northern Kingdom, that they would pay for that bloodshed. Jezreel's name means God Sows. Third, the couple have a daughter. God commands that she be named Lo-ruhamah; Unloved, or, Pity or Pitied On to show Israel that, although God will still have pity on the Southern Kingdom, God will no longer have pity on the Northern Kingdom; its destruction is imminent. In the NIV translation, the omitting of the word 'him' leads to speculation as to whether Lo-Ruhamah was the daughter of Hosea or one of Gomer's lovers. James Mays, however, says that the failure to mention Hosea's paternity this is "hardly an implication" of Gomer's adultery. Fourth, a son is born to Gomer. It is questionable whether this child was Hosea's, for God commands that his name be Lo-ammi; Not My People, or more simply, Not Mine. The child bore this name of shame to show that the Northern Kingdom would also be shamed, for its people would no longer be known as God's People. Also God says that "I am not your I am"; in other words, God changes His own name in connection with his current relationship with Israel. A brief outline of the concepts presented in the Book of Hosea exist below * Chapters 1-2; Account of Hosea's marriage with Gomer biographically which is a metaphor for the relationship with Yahweh and Israel. * Chapter 3; Account of Hosea's marriage autobiographically. This is possibly a marriage to different women * Chapters 4-14:9; Oracle judging Israel, Ephraim in particular, for not living up to the covenant. No further breakdown of ideas is clear in 4-14:9 Following this, the prophecy is made that someday this will all be changed, that God will indeed have pity on Israel. Chapter two describes a divorce. This divorce seems to be the end of the covenant between God and the Northern Kingdom. However, it is probable that this was again a symbolic act, in which Hosea divorced Gomer for infidelity, and used the occasion to preach the message of God's rejection of the Northern Kingdom. He ends this prophecy with the declaration that God will one day renew the covenant, and will take Israel back in love. In Chapter three, at God's command, Hosea seeks out Gomer once more. Either she has sold herself into slavery for debt, or she is with a lover who demands money in order to give her up, because Hosea has to buy her back. He takes her home, but refrains from sexual intimacy with her for many days, to symbolize the fact that Israel will be without a king for many years, but that God will take Israel back, even at a cost to Himself. Chapters 4-14 spell out the allegory at length. Chapters 1-3 speaks of Hosea's family, and the issues with Gomer. Chapters 4-10 contain a series of oracles, or prophetic sermons, showing exactly why God is rejecting the Northern Kingdom (what the grounds are for the divorce). Chapter 11 is God's lament over the necessity of giving up the Northern Kingdom, which is a large part of the people of Israel, whom God loves. God promises not to give them up entirely. Then, in Chapter 12, the prophet pleads for Israel's repentance. Chapter 13 foretells the destruction of the kingdom at the hands of Assyria, because there has been no repentance. In Chapter 14, the prophet urges Israel to seek forgiveness, and promises its restoration, while urging the utmost fidelity to God. Matthew 2:13 cites Hosea's prophecy in that God would call His Son out of Egypt as foretelling the flight into Egypt and return to Israel of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus Christ. The capital of the Northern Kingdom, in 722 BC. All the members of the upper classes and many of the ordinary people were taken captive and carried off to live as prisoners of war.
4451	/m/01f9l	Book of Jonah				 The plot centers on a conflict between Jonah and God. God calls Jonah to proclaim judgment to Nineveh, but Jonah resists and attempts to flee. He goes to Joppa and boards a ship bound for Tarshish. God calls up a great storm at sea, and the ship's crew cast Jonah overboard in an attempt to appease God. A great sea creature sent by God, swallows Jonah. For three days and three nights Jonah languishes inside the fish's belly. He says a prayer in which he repents for his disobedience and thanks God for His mercy. God speaks to the fish, which vomits out Jonah safely on dry land. After his rescue, Jonah obeys the call to prophesy against Nineveh, and they repent and God forgives them. Jonah is furious, however, and angrily tells God that this is the reason he tried to flee from Him, as he knew Him to be a just and merciful God. He then beseeches God to kill him, a request which is denied when God causes a tree to grow over him, giving him shade. Initially grateful, Jonah's anger returns the next day, when God sends a worm to eat the plant, withering it, and he tells God that it would be better if he were dead. God then points out: "Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" Ironically, the relentless God demonstrated in the first chapter becomes the merciful God in the last two chapters (see 3:10). In a parallel turnabout, Jonah becomes one of the most effective of all prophets, turning the entire population of Nineveh (about 120,000 people) to God.
4452	/m/01fb1	Book of Micah				 * The Heading (1:1): As is typical of prophetic books, an anonymous editor has supplied the name of the prophet, an indication of his time of activity, and an identification of his speech as the “word of Yahweh”, a generic term carrying a claim to prophetic legitimacy and authority. Samaria and Jerusalem are given prominence as the foci of the prophet’s attention. * Judgement against Samaria (1:2–7): Drawing upon ancient traditions for depicting a theophany, the prophet depicts the coming of Yahweh to punish the city, whose sins are idolatry and the abuse of the poor. * Warnings to the cities of Judah (1:8–16): Samaria has fallen, Judah is next. Micah describes the destruction of the lesser towns of Judah (referring to the invasion of Judah by Sennacherib, 701 BC). For these passages of doom on the various cities, the device paronomasia is used. Paronomasia is a literary device which 'plays' on the sound of each word for literary effect. For example, the inhabitants of Beth-le-aphrah (“house of dust”) are told to “roll yourselves in the dust.” 1:14. Though most of the Paronomasia is lost in translation, it is the equivalent of ‘Ashdod shall be but ashes,’ where the fate of the city matches its name. * Misuse of power denounced (2:1–5): Denounces those who appropriate the land and houses of others. The context may be simply the amassing wealth for its own sake, or could be connected with the militarisation of the region for the expected Assyrian attack. * Threats against the prophet (2:6–11): The prophet is warned not to prophesy. He answers that the rulers are harming God's people, and want to listen only to those who advocate the virtues of wine. * A later promise (2:12–13): These verses assume that judgement has already fallen and Israel is already scattered abroad. * Judgement on wicked Zion (3:1–4): Israel's rulers are accused of gaining more wealth at the expense of the poor, by any means. The metaphor of flesh being torn illustrates the length to which the ruling classes and socialites would go to further increase their wealth. Prophets are corrupt, seeking personal gain. Jerusalem's rulers believe that God will always be with them, but God will be with his people, and Jerusalem will be destroyed. * Zion's future hope (4:1–5) This is a later passage, almost identical with Isaiah 2:2–4. Zion (meaning the Temple) will be rebuilt, but by God, and based not on violence and corruption but on the desire to learn God's laws and live in peace. * Further promises to Zion (4:6–7) This is another later passage, promising Zion that she will once more enjoy her former independence and power. * Deliverance from Distress in Babylon (4:9–5:1) The similarities to Isaiah 41:15–16 and the references to Babylon suggest the period of this material, although it is unclear whether a period during or after the siege of 586 is meant. Despite their trials, God will not desert his people. * The promised ruler from Bethlehem (5:1–14): This passage is usually dated to the exile. Although chapters 4:9-10 have said that there is "no king in Zion", these chapters predict a new military ruler will emerge from Bethlehem, the traditional home of the Davidic monarchy, to restore the security of Israel. Assyria will be stricken, and Israel's punishment will lead to the punishment of the nations. * A Covenant lawsuit (6:1–5): Yahweh accuses Israel (the people of Judah) of breaking the covenant through their lack of justice and honesty, after the pattern of the kings of Israel (northern kingdom) * Torah Liturgy (6:6–8): Micah speaks on behalf of the community asking what they should do in order to get back on God's good side. Micah then responds in V. 8 by showing what God requires: "to Do Justice, and to Love Kindness, and to Walk Humbly with your God." Thus declaring that the burnt offering of both animals and humans (which may have been practiced in Judah under Kings Ahaz and Manasseh) is not necessary for God. * The City as a Cheat (6:9–16): The city is reprimanded for its dishonest trade practices. * Lament (7:1–7): The first passage in the book in the first person: whether it comes from Micah himself is disputed. Honesty and decency have vanished, families are filled with strife. * A song of fallen Jerusalem (7:8–10): The first person voice continues, but now it is the city who speaks. She recognises that her destruction is deserved punishment from God. The recognition gives grounds for hope that God is still with her. * A prophecy of restoration (7:11–13): Fallen Jerusalem is promised that she will be rebuilt and that her power will be greater than ever (a contrast with the vision of peace in 4:1-5). * A prayer for future prosperity (7:14–17): The mood switches from a request for power to grateful astonishment at God's mercy.
4454	/m/01fby	Book of Haggai				 Haggai's message is filled with an urgency for the people to proceed with the rebuilding of the second Jerusalem temple. Haggai attributes a recent drought to the peoples' refusal to rebuild the temple, which he sees as key to Jerusalem’s glory. The book ends with the prediction of the downfall of kingdoms, with one Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, as the Lord’s chosen leader. The language here is not as finely wrought as in some other books of the minor prophets, yet the intent seems straightforward.
6020	/m/01t5z	Crash	J. G. Ballard	1973	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told through the eyes of narrator James Ballard, named after the author himself, but it centers on the sinister figure of Dr. Robert Vaughan, a “former TV-scientist, turned nightmare angel of the expressways”. Ballard meets Vaughan after being involved in a car accident himself near London Airport. Gathering around Vaughan is a group of alienated people, all of them former crash-victims, who follow him in his pursuit to re-enact the crashes of celebrities, and experience what the narrator calls "a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology". Vaughan’s ultimate fantasy is to die in a head-on collision with movie star Elizabeth Taylor.
6628	/m/01y92	Children of Dune	Frank Herbert	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nine years after Emperor Paul Muad'dib walked into the desert, blind, the ecological transformation of Dune has reached the point where some Fremen are living without stillsuits in the less arid climate and have started to move out of the Sietches and into the villages and cities. As the old ways erode, more and more pilgrims arrive to experience the planet of Muad'dib. The Imperial high council has lost the political initiative and is powerless to control the Jihad. Paul's twin young children, Leto II and Ghanima, sharing his prescience, have concluded that their guardian Alia has succumbed to possession by one of her ancestors and fear that a similar fate awaits them. They (and Alia) also realize that the terraforming of Dune will kill all the sandworms, thus destroying the source of the spice. Leto also fears that, like his father, he will be trapped by his prescience. Possessed by the persona of her grandfather Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, Alia fears that her mother, about to return to Arrakis, will recognize her "abomination." A new religious figure called "The Preacher" has risen in the desert, railing against the religious government's injustices and the changes among the Fremen. Some Fremen believe he is Paul Atreides. The fallen House Corrino on Salusa Secundus plots to assassinate the twins and regain power. Lady Jessica returns to Arrakis and recognizes that her daughter has been possessed but finds no signs of abomination in the twins. She plans with them to thwart Alia's plotting. Leto arranges for Fremen leader Stilgar to protect his sister if there is an attempt on their lives. Alia attempts to assassinate Jessica who escapes into the desert with Duncan Idaho's help, precipitating a rebellion among the Fremen. The twins anticipate and survive the Corrino assassination plot. Leto leaves to seek out the Preacher while Ghanima, masking her memory with self-hypnosis, reports falsely that her brother had been murdered. Duncan and Jessica flee to Salusa Secundus where Jessica begins to mentor the Corrino heir Farad'n. He seizes power from his regent mother and allies with the Bene Gesserit, who promise to marry him to Ghanima and support his bid for coronation as Emperor. A band of Fremen outlaws capture Leto and force him to undergo the spice trance at the suggestion of one of Alia's agents, who has infiltrated the group. His spice-induced visions show him a myriad of possible futures where humanity has become extinct and only one where humanity survives. He names this future "The Golden Path" and resolves to bring it to fruition. He escapes his captors and sacrifices his humanity in pursuit of the Golden Path. This requires him to physically fuse with a school of sandtrout, gaining superhuman strength and near-invulnerability. He travels across the desert and confronts the Preacher who does, in fact, prove to be his father, Paul Atreides. Duncan Idaho returns to Arrakis and provokes Stilgar into killing him. With Stilgar's neutrality now untenable, he seizes Ghanima and flees. Alia recaptures Ghanima and arranges her marriage to Farad'n, planning to exploit the expected chaos when Ghanima kills him to avenge her brother's murder. The Preacher and Leto return to the capital to confront Alia who has the Preacher murdered, revealing his true identity. Leto reveals himself in a display of superhuman strength and triggers the return of Ghanima's genuine memories. He confronts Alia and offers to help her overcome her possession but she is overwhelmed by her ancestral personae and elects to commit suicide. Leto declares himself Emperor and asserts control over the Fremen. Farad'n enlists in his service and delivers control of the Corrino armies. The seemingly immortal and omnipotent Leto is left as Emperor of the Known Universe, with Ghanima at his side.
6629	/m/01y9j	Candide, ou l'Optimisme	Voltaire	1759-01	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 Candide contains thirty episodic chapters, which may be grouped into two main schemes: one consists of two divisions, separated by the protagonist's hiatus in El Dorado; the other consists of three parts, each defined by its geographical setting. By the former scheme, the first half of Candide constitutes the rising action and the last part the resolution. This view is supported by the strong theme of travel and quest, reminiscent of adventure and picaresque novels, which tend to employ such a dramatic structure. By the latter scheme, the thirty chapters may be grouped into three parts each comprising ten chapters and defined by locale: I–X are set in Europe, XI–XX are set in the Americas, and XXI–XXX are set in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. The plot summary that follows uses this second format and includes Voltaire's additions of 1761. The tale of Candide begins in the castle of the Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh in Westphalia, home to the Baron's daughter, Lady Cunégonde; his bastard nephew, Candide; a tutor, Pangloss; a chambermaid, Paquette; and the rest of the Baron's family. The protagonist, Candide, is romantically attracted to Cunégonde. He is a child of "the most unaffected simplicity", whose face is "the index of his mind". Dr. Pangloss, professor of "métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie" (english translation "metaphysico-theologo-cosmonigology") and self-proclaimed optimist, teaches his pupils that they live in the "best of all possible worlds" and that "all is for the best". All is well in the castle until Cunégonde sees Pangloss sexually engaged with Paquette in some bushes. Encouraged by this show of affection, Cunégonde drops her handkerchief next to Candide which entices him to kiss her. For this infraction, Candide is evicted from the castle, at which point he is captured by Bulgar (Prussian) recruiters and coerced into military service, where he is flogged, nearly executed, and forced to participate in a major battle between the Bulgars and the Abares (an allegory representing the Prussians and the French). Candide eventually escapes the army and makes his way to Holland where he is given aid by Jacques, an Anabaptist, who strengthens Candide's optimism. Soon after, Candide finds his master Pangloss, now a beggar with syphilis. Pangloss reveals he was infected with this disease by Paquette and shocks Candide by relating how Castle Thunder-ten-Tronckh was destroyed by Bulgars, and that Cunégonde and her whole family were killed. Pangloss is cured of his illness by Jacques, losing one eye and one ear in the process, and the three set sail to Lisbon. In Lisbon's harbor, they are overtaken by a vicious storm which destroys the boat. Jacques attempts to save a sailor, and in the process is thrown overboard. The sailor makes no move to help the drowning Jacques, and Candide is in a state of despair until Pangloss explains to him that Lisbon harbor was created in order for Jacques to drown. Only Pangloss, Candide, and the "brutish sailor" who let Jacques drown survive the wreck and reach Lisbon, which is promptly hit by an earthquake, tsunami and fire which kill tens of thousands. The sailor leaves in order to loot the rubble while Candide, injured and begging for help, is lectured on the optimistic view of the situation by Pangloss. The next day, Pangloss discusses his optimistic philosophy with a member of the Portuguese Inquisition, and he and Candide are arrested for heresy, set to be tortured and killed in an "auto-da-fé" set up to appease God and prevent another disaster. Candide is flogged and sees Pangloss hanged, but another earthquake intervenes and he escapes. He is approached by an old woman, who leads him to a house where Lady Cunégonde waits, alive. Candide is surprised: Pangloss had told him that Cunégonde had been raped and disemboweled. She had been, but Cunégonde points out that people survive such things. However, her rescuer sold her to a Jewish merchant who was then threatened by a corrupt Grand Inquisitor into sharing her. Her owners arrive, find her with another man, and Candide kills them both. Candide and the two women flee the city, heading to the Americas. Along the way, Cunégonde falls into self-pity, complaining of all the misfortunes that have befallen her. The old woman reciprocates by revealing her own tragic life, which included having a buttock cut off in order to feed some starving men. The trio arrives in Buenos Aires, where Governor Don Fernando d'Ibarra, y Figueroa, y Mascarenes, y Lampourdos, y Alejandro asks to marry Cunégonde. Just then, an alcalde (a Portuguese fortress commander) arrives, pursuing Candide for killing the Grand Inquisitor. Leaving the women behind, Candide flees to Paraguay with his practical and heretofore unmentioned manservant, Cacambo. At a border post on the way to Paraguay, Cacambo and Candide speak to the commandant, who turns out to be Cunégonde's unnamed brother. He explains that after his family was slaughtered, the Jesuits' preparation for his burial revived him, and he has since joined the order. When Candide proclaims he intends to marry Cunégonde, her brother attacks him, and Candide stabs him through with his rapier. After lamenting all the people (mainly priests) he's killed, he and Cacambo flee. In their flight, Candide and Cacambo come across two naked women being chased and bitten by a pair of monkeys. Candide, seeking to protect the women, shoots and kills the monkeys, but is informed by Cacambo that the monkeys and women were probably lovers. Cacambo and Candide are captured by Oreillons, the fictional inhabitants of the area. Mistaking Candide for a Jesuit by his robes, the Oreillons prepare to cook Candide and Cacambo; however, Cacambo convinces the Oreillons that Candide killed a Jesuit to procure the robe. Cacambo and Candide are released and travel for a month on foot and then down a river by canoe, living on fruits and berries. After a few more adventures, Candide and Cacambo wander into El Dorado, a geographically isolated utopia where the streets are covered with precious stones, there exist no priests, and all of the king's jokes are funny. Candide and Cacambo stay a month in El Dorado, but Candide is still in pain without Cunégonde, and expresses to the king his wish to leave. The king points out that this is a foolish idea, but generously helps them do so. The pair continue their journey, now accompanied by one hundred red pack sheep carrying provisions and incredible sums of money, which they slowly lose or have stolen over the next few adventures. Candide and Cacambo eventually reach Suriname, where they split up: Cacambo travels to Buenos Aires to retrieve Lady Cunégonde, while Candide prepares to travel to Europe to await the two. Candide's remaining sheep are stolen, and Candide is fined heavily by a Dutch magistrate for petulance over the theft. Before leaving Surinam, Candide feels in need of companionship, so he interviews a number of local men who have been through various ill-fortunes and settles on a man named Martin. This companion, Martin, is a Manichean scholar based on the real-life pessimist Pierre Bayle, who was a chief opponent of Leibniz. For the remainder of the voyage, Martin and Candide argue about philosophy, Martin painting the entire world as occupied by fools. Candide, however, remains an optimist at heart, since it is all he knows. As they arrive in England, they see an admiral (based on Admiral Byng) being shot for not killing enough of the enemy. Martin explains that Britain finds it necessary to shoot an admiral from time to time "pour l'encouragement des autres" (to encourage the others). Candide, horrified, arranges for them to leave Britain immediately. After various scenes satirising other European institutions, Candide and Martin meet Paquette, the chambermaid who infected Pangloss with his syphilis, in Venice. She is now a prostitute, and is spending her time with a monk, Brother Giroflée. Although both appear happy on the surface, they reveal their despair: Paquette has led a miserable existence as a sexual object, and the monk detests the religious order in which he was indoctrinated. Later, while Candide and Martin are eating supper, Cacambo returns to Candide and informs him that Cunégonde is in Constantinople, and that she has been enslaved. She is now washing dishes for a prince of Transylvania, and has become ugly. On the way to rescue her, Candide finds Pangloss and Cunégonde's brother rowing in the galley. Candide buys their freedom and further passage at steep prices. The baron and Pangloss relate how they survived, but despite the horrors he has been through, Pangloss's optimism remains unshaken: "I still hold to my original opinions, because, after all, I'm a philosopher, and it wouldn't be proper for me to recant, since Leibniz cannot be wrong, and since pre-established harmony is the most beautiful thing in the world, along with the plenum and subtle matter." The travellers arrive on the Ottoman coast where they rejoin Cunégonde and the old woman. Cunégonde has indeed become hideously ugly, but Candide nevertheless buys their freedom and marries Cunégonde to spite her brother. Paquette and Brother Giroflée, too, are reconciled with Candide on a farm which he just bought with the last of his finances. One day, the protagonists seek out a dervish known as a great philosopher of the land. Pangloss asks him why Man is made to suffer so, and what they all ought to do. The dervish responds by asking rhetorically why Pangloss is concerned about the existence of evil and good. The dervish describes human beings as mice on a ship sent by a king to Egypt; their comfort does not matter to the king. The dervish then slams his door on the group. Returning to their farm, Candide, Pangloss, and Martin meet a Turk whose philosophy is to devote his life only to simple work and not concern himself with external affairs. He and his four children work a small farm to keep "free of three great evils: boredom, vice and necessity", or "poverty" as per John Butt's 1947 translation. Candide, Pangloss, Martin, Cunégonde, Paquette, Cacambo, the old woman, and Brother Giroflée all set to work (on this "louable dessein", or "commendable plan", as the narrator calls it), each to one specific task. Candide ignores Pangloss's insistence that all turned out for the best by necessity, instead telling him "we must cultivate our garden".
6630	/m/01yb0	Chapterhouse Dune	Frank Herbert	1985-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The situation is desperate for the Bene Gesserit as they find themselves the targets of the Honored Matres, whose conquest of the Old Empire is almost complete. The Matres are seeking to assimilate the technology and developed methods of the Bene Gesserit and exterminate the Sisterhood itself. Now in command of the Bene Gesserit, Mother Superior Darwi Odrade continues to develop her drastic, secret plan to overcome the Honored Matres. The Bene Gesserit are also terraforming the planet Chapterhouse to accommodate the all-important sandworms, whose native planet Dune had been destroyed by the Matres. Sheeana, in charge of the project, expects sandworms to appear soon. The Honored Matres have also destroyed the entire Bene Tleilax civilization, with Tleilaxu Master Scytale the only one of his kind left alive. In Bene Gesserit captivity, Scytale possesses the Tleilaxu secret of ghola production, which he has reluctantly traded for the Sisterhood's protection. The first ghola produced is that of their recently-deceased military genius, Miles Teg. The Bene Gesserit have two other prisoners on Chapterhouse: the latest Duncan Idaho ghola, and former Honored Matre Murbella, whom they have accepted as a novice despite their suspicion that she intends to escape back to the Honored Matres. Lampadas, a center for Bene Gesserit education, has been destroyed by the Honored Matres. The planet's Chancellor, Reverend Mother Lucilla, manages to escape carrying the shared-minds of millions of Reverend Mothers. Lucilla is forced to land on Gammu where she seeks refuge with an underground group of Jews. The Rabbi gives Lucilla sanctuary, but to save his organization he must deliver her to the Matres. Before doing so, he reveals Rebecca, a "wild" Reverend Mother who has gained her Other Memory without Bene Gesserit training. Lucilla shares minds with Rebecca, who promises to take the memories of Lampadas safely back to the Sisterhood. Lucilla is then "betrayed", and taken before the Great Honored Matre Dama, who tries to persuade her to join the Honored Matres, preserving her life in exchange for Bene Gesserit secrets. Lucilla refuses, and Dama ultimately kills her. Back on Chapterhouse, Odrade confronts Duncan and forces him to admit that he is a Mentat, proving that he retains the memories of his many ghola lives. He does not reveal his mysterious visions of two people. Meanwhile, Murbella collapses under the pressure of Bene Gesserit training, giving in to "word weapons" that the Bene Gesserit had planted to undermine her earlier Honored Matre identity. Murbella realizes that she wants to be Bene Gesserit. Odrade believes that the Bene Gesserit made a mistake in fearing emotion, and that in order to evolve, the Bene Gesserit must learn to accept emotions. Odrade permits Duncan to watch Murbella undergo the spice agony, making him the first man ever to do so. Murbella survives the ordeal and becomes a Reverend Mother. Odrade then confronts Sheeana, discovering that Duncan and Sheeana have been allied together for some time. Sheeana does not reveal that they have been considering the option of reawakening Teg's memory through Imprinting, nor does Odrade discover that Sheeana has the keys to Duncan's no-ship prison. Odrade continues molding Scytale, with Sheeana showing him a baby sandworm, the Bene Gesserit's own long term supply of spice, and destroying Scytale's main bargaining card. Finally, Teg is awakened by Sheeana using imprinting techniques. Odrade appoints him again as Bashar of the military forces of the Sisterhood for the assault on the Honored Matres. Odrade next calls a meeting of all the Bene Gesserit, announcing her plan to attack the Honored Matres. She tells them that this attack will be led by Teg. She also announces candidates to succeed her as Mother Superior; she will share her memories with Murbella and Sheeana before she leaves. Odrade then goes to meet the Great Honored Matre. Under cover of Odrade's diplomacy, the Bene Gesserit forces under Teg attack Gammu with tremendous force. Teg uses his secret ability to see no-ships to secure control of the system. Survivors of the attack flee to Junction, and Teg follows them there and carries all with him. Victory for the Bene Gesserit seems inevitable. In the midst of this battle, the Jews (including Rebecca with her precious memories) take refuge with the Bene Gesserit fleet. Logno — chief advisor to Dama — assassinates Dama with poison and assumes control of the Honored Matres. Her first act surprises Odrade greatly. Too late Odrade and Teg realize they have fallen into a trap, and the Honored Matres use a mysterious weapon to turn defeat into victory, as well as capturing Odrade. Murbella saves as much of the Bene Gesserit force as she can and they begin to withdraw to Chapterhouse. Odrade, however, had planned for the possible failure of the Bene Gesserit attack and left Murbella instructions for a last desperate gamble. Murbella pilots a small craft down to the surface, announcing herself as an Honored Matre who, in the confusion, has managed to escape the Bene Gesserit with all their secrets. She arrives on the planet and is taken to the Great Honored Matre. Unable to control her anger, Logno attacks but is killed by Murbella. Awed by her physical prowess, the remaining Honored Matres are forced to accept her as their new leader. Odrade is also killed in the melee and Murbella shares memories with her, thereby also becoming Reverend Mother Superior. Murbella's ascension to leadership is not accepted as victory by all the Bene Gesserit. Some flee Chapterhouse, notably Sheeana, who has a vision of her own, and is joined by Duncan. The two escape in the giant no-ship, with Scytale, Teg and the Jews. Murbella recognizes their plan at the last minute, but is powerless to stop them. Watching this escape with interest are Daniel and Marty, the observers Duncan had been having visions of. The story ends on a cliffhanger with several questions left unanswered regarding the merging of the Honored Matres and Bene Gesserit, the fates of those on the escaped no-ship (including the role of Scytale, the development of Idaho and Teg, and the role of the Jews), the identity of the god-like characters in the book's final chapter and the ultimate mystery of what chased the Honored Matres back into the Old Empire.
6921	/m/01_mr	Carmilla	Sheridan Le Fanu	1872	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 The story is presented by Le Fanu as part of the casebook of Dr Hesselius, whose departures from medical orthodoxy rank him as the first occult doctor in literature. The story is narrated by Laura, one of the two main protagonists of the tale. Laura begins her tale by relating her childhood in a "picturesque and solitary" castle in the midst of an extensive forest in Styria where she lives with her father, a wealthy English widower, retired from the Austrian Service. When she is six years old, Laura has a vision of a beautiful visitor in her bedchamber. She later claims to have been bitten on the chest, although no wounds are found on her. 12 years later, Laura and her father are admiring the sunset in front of the castle when her father tells her of a letter he received earlier from his friend General Spielsdorf. The General was supposed to bring his niece, Bertha Rheinfeldt, to visit the two, but the niece suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. The General ambiguously concludes that he will discuss the circumstances in detail when they meet later. Laura is saddened by the loss of a potential friend, and longs for a companion. A carriage accident outside Laura's home unexpectedly brings a girl of Laura's age into the family's care. Her name is Carmilla. Both girls instantly recognize the other from the 'dream' they both had when they were young. Carmilla appears injured after her carriage accident, but her mysterious mother informs Laura's father that her journey is urgent and cannot be delayed. She arranges to leave her daughter with Laura and her father until she can return in three months. Before she leaves she sternly notes that her daughter will not disclose any information whatsoever about her family, past, or herself and that Carmilla is of sound mind. Laura comments that this information seems needless to say, and her father laughs it off. Carmilla and Laura grow to be very close friends, but occasionally Carmilla's mood abruptly changes. She sometimes makes unsettling romantic advances towards Laura. Carmilla refuses to tell anything about herself or her background, despite questioning from Laura. Her secrecy isn't the only mysterious thing about her. Carmilla sleeps much of the day, and seems to sleepwalk at night. When a funeral procession passes by the two girls and Laura begins singing a hymn, Carmilla bursts out in rage and scolds Laura for singing a Christian song. When a shipment of family heirloom restored portraits arrives at the castle, Laura finds one of her ancestors, "Mircalla, Countess Karnstein", dated 1698. The portrait resembles Carmilla exactly, down to the mole on her neck. During Carmilla's stay, Laura has nightmares of a fiendish cat-like beast entering her room at night and biting her on the chest. The beast then takes the form of a female figure and disappears through the door without opening it. Laura's health declines and her father has a doctor examine her. He speaks privately with her father and only asks that Laura never be left unattended. Her father then sets out with Laura in a carriage for the ruined village of Karnstein. They leave a message behind asking Carmilla and one of the governesses entreated to follow after once the perpetually late-sleeping Carmilla wakes up. En route to Karnstein, Laura and her father encounter General Spielsdorf. He tells them his own ghastly story. Spielsdorf and his niece had met a young woman named Millarca and her enigmatic mother at a costume ball. The General's niece was immediately taken with Millarca. The mother convinced the General that she was an old friend of his and asked that Millarca be allowed to stay with them for three weeks while she attended to a secret matter of great importance. The General's niece fell mysteriously ill and suffered exactly the same symptoms as Laura. After consulting with a priestly doctor who he had specially ordered, the General came to the realization that his niece was being visited by a vampire. He hid in a closet with a sword and waited until seeing a fiendish cat-like creature stalk around his niece's bedroom and bite her on the neck. He then leapt from his hiding place and attacked the beast, which took the form of Millarca. She fled through the locked door, unharmed. The General's niece died immediately afterward. When they arrive at Karnstein the General asks a nearby woodsman where he can find the tomb of Mircalla Karnstein. The woodsman relates that the tomb was relocated long ago, by the hero who vanquished the vampires that haunted the region. While the General and Laura are left alone in the ruined chapel, Carmilla appears. The General and Carmilla both fly into a rage upon seeing each other and the General attacks her with an axe. Carmilla flees and the General explains to Laura that Carmilla is also Millarca, both anagrams for the original name of the vampire Countess Mircalla Karnstein. The party is then joined by Baron Vordenburg, the descendant of the hero who rid the area of vampires long ago. Vordenburg is an authority on vampires and has discovered that his ancestor was romantically involved with the Countess Karnstein, before she died and became one of the undead. Using his forefather's notes he locates the hidden tomb of Carmilla. An Imperial Commission is then summoned who exhume and destroy the body of the vampire on behalf of the ruling Habsburg Monarchy, within whose domains Styria is situated. Afterwards, Laura's father takes her on a year-long vacation to recover from the trauma and regain her health.
7817	/m/025zx	The Cider House Rules	John Irving	1985	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Homer Wells grows up in an orphanage where he spends his childhood "being of use" as a medical assistant to the director, Dr. Wilbur Larch, whose history is told in flashbacks: After a traumatic misadventure with a prostitute as a young man, Wilbur turns his back on sex and love, choosing instead to help women with unwanted pregnancies give birth and then keeping the babies in an orphanage. He makes a point of maintaining an emotional distance from the orphans, so that they can more easily make the transition into an adoptive family, but when it becomes clear that Homer is going to spend his entire childhood at the orphanage, Wilbur trains the orphan as an obstetrician and then comes to love him. Wilbur's and Homer's lives are complicated by Wilbur also secretly being an abortionist. Wilbur came to this work reluctantly, but he is driven by having seen the horrors of back-alley operations. Homer, upon learning Wilbur's secret, considers it morally wrong. As a young man, Homer befriends a young couple, Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington, who come to St. Cloud's for an abortion. Homer leaves the orphanage, and returns with them to Ocean View Orchards (Wally's family's orchard) in Heart's Rock, near the Maine Coast. Wally and Homer become best friends and Homer develops a secret love for Candy. Wally goes off to war and his plane is shot down over Burma. He is presumed missing by the military, but Homer and Candy both believe he is dead and move on with their lives. They have sexual relations, and Candy becomes pregnant. They go back to St. Cloud's Orphanage, where their child is born and named Angel. Subsequently, Wally is found in Burma and returns home, paralyzed from the waist down. He is still able to have sexual intercourse but is sterile due to an infection received in Burma. They lie to the family about Angel's parentage, claiming that Homer decided to adopt him. Wally and Candy marry shortly afterward, but Candy and Homer maintain a secret affair that lasts some 15 years. Many years later, teenaged Angel falls in love with Rose Rose, the daughter of the head migrant worker at the apple orchard. She becomes pregnant by her father, and Homer performs an abortion on her. Homer decides to return to the orphanage after the death of Dr. Larch, to work as the new director. Though he maintains his distaste for abortions, he continues Dr. Larch's legacy of honoring the choice of his patients, and he dreams of the day when abortions are free, legal, and safe, so he'll no longer feel obliged to offer them. A subplot follows the character Melony, who grew up alongside Homer in the orphanage. She was Homer's first girlfriend in a relationship of circumstances. After Homer leaves the orphanage, so does she in an effort to find him. She eventually becomes an electrician and takes a female lover, Lorna. Melony is an extremely stoic woman, who refuses to press charges against a man who brutally broke her nose and arm so that she can later retaliate herself. She is the catalyst that transforms Homer from his comfortable but not entirely admirable position at the apple orchard to becoming Dr. Larch's replacement at the orphanage.
7923	/m/026l0	Dracula	Bram Stoker	1897	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/090ts5": "Invasion literature", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 The novel is told in epistolary format, as a series of letters, diary entries, ships' log entries, and so forth. The main writers of these items are also the novel's protagonists. The story is occasionally supplemented with newspaper clippings that relate events not directly witnessed by the story's characters. The tale begins with Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, journeying by train and carriage from England to Count Dracula's crumbling, remote castle (situated in the Carpathian Mountains on the border of Transylvania, Bukovina and Moldavia). The purpose of his mission is to provide legal support to Dracula for a real estate transaction overseen by Harker's employer, Peter Hawkins, of Exeter in England. At first enticed by Dracula's gracious manner, Harker soon discovers that he has become a prisoner in the castle. He also begins to see disquieting facets of Dracula's nocturnal life. One night while searching for a way out of the castle, and against Dracula's strict admonition not to venture outside his room at night, Harker falls under the spell of three wanton female vampires, "the Sisters." He is saved at the last second by the Count, because he wants to keep Harker alive just long enough to obtain needed legal advice and teachings about England and London (Dracula's planned travel destination was to be among the "teeming millions"). Harker barely escapes from the castle with his life. Not long afterward, a Russian ship, the Demeter, having weighed anchor at Varna, runs aground on the shores of Whitby, England, during a fierce tempest. All of the crew are missing and presumed dead, and only one body is found, that of the captain tied to the ship's helm. The captain's log is recovered and tells of strange events that had taken place during the ship's journey. These events led to the gradual disappearance of the entire crew apparently owing to a malevolent presence on board the ill-fated ship. An animal described as a large dog is seen on the ship leaping ashore. The ship's cargo is described as silver sand and boxes of "mould", or earth, from Transylvania. Soon Dracula is tracking Harker's devoted fiancée, Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray, and her friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy receives three marriage proposals in one day, from Dr. John Seward; Quincey Morris; and the Hon. Arthur Holmwood (later Lord Godalming). Lucy accepts Holmwood's proposal while turning down Seward and Morris, but all remain friends. There is a notable encounter between Dracula and Seward's patient Renfield, an insane man who means to consume insects, spiders, birds, and other creatures — in ascending order of size — in order to absorb their "life force". Renfield acts as a motion sensor, detecting Dracula's proximity and supplying clues accordingly. Lucy begins to waste away suspiciously. All of her suitors fret, and Seward calls in his old teacher, Professor Abraham Van Helsing from Amsterdam. Van Helsing immediately determines the cause of Lucy's condition but refuses to disclose it, knowing that Seward's faith in him will be shaken if he starts to speak of vampires. Van Helsing tries multiple blood transfusions, but they are clearly losing ground. On a night when Van Helsing must return to Amsterdam (and his message to Seward asking him to watch the Westenra household is delayed), Lucy and her mother are attacked by a wolf. Mrs. Westenra, who has a heart condition, dies of fright, and Lucy apparently dies soon after. Lucy is buried, but soon afterward the newspapers report children being stalked in the night by a "bloofer lady" (as they describe it), i.e. "beautiful lady". Van Helsing, knowing that this means Lucy has become a vampire, confides in Seward, Lord Godalming and Morris. The suitors and Van Helsing track her down, and after a disturbing confrontation between her vampiric self and Arthur, they stake her heart, behead her, and fill her mouth with garlic. Around the same time, Jonathan Harker arrives home from recuperation in Budapest (where Mina joined and married him after his escape from the castle); he and Mina also join the coalition, who turn their attentions to dealing with Dracula. After Dracula learns of Van Helsing's and the others' plot against him, he takes revenge by visiting – and feeding from – Mina at least three times. Dracula also feeds Mina his blood, creating a spiritual bond between them to control her. The only way to forestall this is to kill Dracula first. Mina slowly succumbs to the blood of the vampire that flows through her veins, switching back and forth from a state of consciousness to a state of semi-trance during which she is telepathically connected with Dracula. This telepathic connection is established to be two-way, in that the Count can influence Mina, but in doing so betrays to her awareness of his surroundings. After the group sterilizes all of his lairs in London by putting pieces of consecrated host in each box of earth, Dracula flees back to his castle in Transylvania, transported in a box with transfer and portage instructions forwarded, pursued by Van Helsing's group, who themselves are aided by Van Helsing hypnotizing Mina and questioning her about the Count. The group splits in three directions. Van Helsing goes to the Count's castle and kills his trio of brides, and shortly afterwards all converge on the Count just at sundown under the shadow of the castle. Harker and Quincey rush to Dracula's box, which is being transported by Gypsies. Harker shears Dracula through the throat with a Kukri while the mortally wounded Quincey, slashed by one of the crew, stabs the Count in the heart with a Bowie knife. Dracula crumbles to dust, and Mina is freed from his curse. The book closes with a note about Mina's and Jonathan's married life and the birth of their first-born son, whom they name after all four members of the party, but refer to only as Quincey in remembrance of their American friend.
8237	/m/0297f	Don Quixote	Miguel de Cervantes	1605	{"/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/011ys5": "Farce", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The First Sally Alonso Quijano, the protagonist of the novel, is a retired country gentleman nearing fifty years of age, living in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and housekeeper. While mostly a rational man of sound reason, his reading of books of chivalry in excess has had a profound effect on him, leading to the distortion of his perception and the wavering of his mental faculties. In essence, he believes every word of these books of chivalry to be true though, for the most part, the content of these books is clearly fiction. Otherwise, his wits, in regards to everything other than chivalry, are intact. He decides to go out as a knight-errant in search of adventure. He dons an old suit of armour, renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," and names his skinny horse "Rocinante". He designates a neighboring farm girl as his lady love, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso, while she knows nothing about this. He sets out in the early morning and ends up at an inn, which he believes to be a castle. He asks the innkeeper, whom he thinks to be the lord of the castle, to dub him a knight. He spends the night holding vigil over his armor, where he becomes involved in a fight with muleteers who try to remove his armor from the horse trough so that they can water their mules. The innkeeper then dubs him a knight to be rid of him, and sends him on his way. Don Quixote next "frees" a young boy who is tied to a tree and beaten by his master by making his master swear on the chivalric code to treat the boy fairly. The boy's beating is continued as soon as Quixote leaves. Don Quixote has a run-in with traders from Toledo, who "insult" the imaginary Dulcinea, one of whom severely beats Don Quixote and leaves him on the side of the road. Don Quixote is found and returned to his home by a neighboring peasant. The Second Sally While Don Quixote is unconscious in his bed, his niece, the housekeeper, the parish curate, and the local barber secretly burn most of the books of chivalry, and seal up his library pretending that a magician has carried it off. After a short period of feigning health, Don Quixote approaches his neighbor, Sancho Panza, and asks him to be his squire, promising him governorship of an island. The uneducated Sancho agrees, and the pair sneak off in the early dawn. It is here that their series of famous adventures begin, starting with Don Quixote's attack on windmills that he believes to be ferocious giants. The two next encounter a group of friars accompanying a lady in a carriage. They are heavily cloaked, as is the lady, to protect themselves from the hot climate and dust on the road. Don Quixote takes the friars to be enchanters who hold the lady captive. He knocks a friar from his horse, and is immediately challenged by an armed Basque traveling with the company. As he has no shield, the Basque uses a pillow to protect himself, which saves him when Don Quixote strikes him. The combat ends with the lady leaving her carriage and demanding those traveling with her to "surrender" to Don Quixote. The Pastoral Wanderings Sancho and Don Quixote go on, and fall in with a group of goatherds. Don Quixote tells Sancho and the goatherds about the "Golden Age" of man, reminiscent of both Ovid and the later Rousseau in which property does not exist, and men live in peace. The goatherds invite the Knight and Sancho to the funeral of Grisóstomo, once a student who left his studies to become a shepherd after reading Pastoral novels, seeking the shepherdess Marcela. At the funeral Marcela appears, delivering a long speech vindicating herself from the bitter verses written about her by Grisóstomo, claiming her own autonomy and freedom from expectations put on her by Pastoral clichés. She disappears into the woods, and Don Quixote and Sancho follow. Ultimately giving up, the two stop and dismount by a pond to rest. Some Galicians arrive to water their ponies, and Rocinante (Don Quixote's horse) attempts to mate with the ponies. The Galicians hit Rocinante with clubs to dissuade him, which Don Quixote takes as a threat and runs to defend Rocinante. The Galicians beat Don Quixote and Sancho leaving them in great pain. The Adventures with Cardenio and Dorotea After Don Quixote frees a group of galley slaves, The Knight and Sancho wander into the Sierra Morena, and there encounter the dejected Cardenio. Cardenio relates the first part of his story, in which he falls deeply in love with his childhood friend Luscinda, and is hired as the companion to the Duke's son, leading to his friendship with the Duke's younger son, Don Fernando. Cardenio confides in Don Fernando his love for Luscinda and the delays in their engagement, caused by Cardenio's desire to keep with tradition. After reading Cardenio's poems praising Luscinda, Don Fernando falls in love with her. Don Quixote interrupts when Cardenio suggests that his beloved may have become unfaithful after the formulaic stories of spurned lovers in Chivalric novels. In the course of their travels, the protagonists meet innkeepers, prostitutes, goatherds, soldiers, priests, escaped convicts, and scorned lovers. These encounters are magnified by Don Quixote’s imagination into chivalrous quests. Don Quixote’s tendency to intervene violently in matters which do not concern him, and his habit of not paying his debts, result in many privations, injuries, and humiliations (with Sancho often getting the worst of it). Finally, Don Quixote is persuaded to return to his home village. The author hints that there was a third quest, but says that records of it have been lost. The Third Sally Although the two parts are now normally published as a single work, Don Quixote, Part Two was a sequel published ten years after the original novel. While Part One was mostly farcical, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. As Part Two begins, it is assumed that the literate classes of Spain have all read the first part of the history of Don Quixote and his squire. Cervantes's meta-fictional device was to make even the characters in the story familiar with the publication of Part One, as well as with an actually published fraudulent Part Two. When strangers encounter the duo in person, they already know their famous history. A Duke and Duchess, and others, deceive Don Quixote for entertainment, setting forth a string of imagined adventures resulting in a series of practical jokes. Some of them are quite sadistic, and they put Don Quixote's sense of chivalry and his devotion to Dulcinea through many tests. Even Sancho deceives him at one point. Pressured into finding Dulcinea, Sancho brings back three dirty and ragged peasant girls, and tells Don Quixote that they are Dulcinea and her ladies-in-waiting. When Don Quixote only sees the peasant girls, Sancho pretends that their derelict appearance results from an enchantment. Sancho later gets his comeuppance for this when, as part of one of the duke and duchess's pranks, the two are led to believe that the only method to release Dulcinea from her spell is for Sancho to give himself a surplus of three thousand lashes. Sancho naturally resists this course of action, leading to friction with his master. Under the duke's patronage, Sancho eventually gets a governorship, though it is false, and proves to be a wise and practical ruler; though this ends in humiliation as well. Near the end, Don Quixote reluctantly sways towards sanity: an inn is just an inn, not a castle. The lengthy untold "history" of Don Quixote's adventures in knight-errantry comes to a close after his battle with the Knight of the White Moon, in which we the readers find him conquered. Bound by the rules of chivalry, Don Quixote submits to prearranged terms that the vanquished is to obey the will of the conqueror, which in this case, is that Don Quixote is to lay down his arms and cease his acts of chivalry for the period of one year (a duration in which he may be cured of his madness). Defeated and dejected, he and Sancho start their journey home. Part Two of Don Quixote is often regarded as the birth of modern literature, as it explores the concept of a character understanding that he is being written about. This is a theme much explored in writings of the 20th Century. Upon returning to his village, Don Quixote announces his plan to retire to the countryside and live the pastoral existence of shepherd, although his housekeeper, who has a more realistic view of the hard life of a shepherd, urges him to stay home and tend to his own affairs. Soon after, he retires to his bed with a deathly illness, possibly brought on by melancholy over his defeats and humiliations. One day, he awakes from a dream having fully recovered his sanity. Sancho tries to restore his faith, but Alonso Quixano, for that is his true name, can only renounce his previous existence and apologize for the harm he has caused. He dictates his will, which includes a provision that his niece will be disinherited if she marries a man who reads books of chivalry. After Alonso Quixano dies, the author emphasizes that there are no more adventures to relate, and that any further books about Don Quixote would be spurious.
8547	/m/02ct8	Deuteronomy				 (The following "literary" outline of Deuteronomy is from John Van Seters; it can be contrasted with Alexander Rofé's "covenantal" analysis in his Deuteronomy: Issues and Interpretation.) *Chapters 1–4: The journey through the wilderness from Horeb (Sinai) to Kadesh and then to Moab is recalled. *Chapters 4–11: After a second introduction at 4:44–49 the events at Mount Horeb (Mt. Sinai) are recalled, with the giving of the Ten Commandments. Heads of families are urged to instruct those under their care in the law, warnings are made against serving gods other than Yahweh, the land promised to Israel is praised, and the people are urged to obedience. *Chapters 12–26, the Deuteronomic code: Laws governing Israel's worship (chapters 12–16a), the appointment and regulation of community and religious leaders (16b–18), social regulation (19–25), and confession of identity and loyalty (26). *Chapters 27–28: Blessings and curses for those who keep and break the law. *Chapters 29–30: Concluding discourse on the covenant in the land of Moab, including all the laws in the Deuteronomic code (chapters 12–26) after those given at Horeb; Israel is again exhorted to obedience. *Chapters 31–34: Joshua is installed as Moses' successor, Moses delivers the law to the Levites (priests), and ascends Mount Nebo/Pisgah, where he dies and is buried by God. The narrative of these events is interrupted by two poems, the Song of Moses and the Blessing of Moses. The final verses, Deuteronomy 34:10–12, "never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses," state authoritatively that the Deuteronomistic view of theology, with its insistence on the worship of Yahweh as the sole God of Israel, was the only permissible religion, sealed by the greatest of prophets.
8567	/m/02cxx	Dune Messiah	Frank Herbert	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Twelve years after the events described in Dune (1965), Paul "Muad'Dib" Atreides rules as Emperor. By accepting the role of messiah to the Fremen, Paul had unleashed a jihad which conquered most of the known universe. While Paul is the most powerful Emperor ever known, he is powerless to stop the lethal excesses of the religious juggernaut he has created. Although sixty-one billion people have perished, Paul's prescient visions indicate that this is far from the worst possible outcome for humanity. Motivated by this knowledge, Paul hopes to set humanity on a course that will not inevitably lead to stagnation and destruction, while at the same time acting as ruler of the Empire and focal point of the Fremen religion. The Bene Gesserit, Spacing Guild and Tleilaxu enter into a conspiracy to dethrone Paul, the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam enlisting Paul's own consort Princess Irulan, daughter of the deposed Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. Paul has refused to father a child with Irulan (or even touch her), but his Fremen concubine Chani has also failed to produce an heir, causing tension within his monarchy. Desperate both to secure her place in the Atreides dynasty and to preserve the Atreides bloodline for the Bene Gesserit breeding program, Irulan has secretly been giving contraceptives to Chani. Paul is aware of this fact, but has foreseen that the birth of his heir will bring Chani's death, and does not want to lose her. Because of the way oracles interfere with one another's prescience, the Guild Navigator Edric is able to shield the conspiracy from Paul's visions of the future. The Tleilaxu Face Dancer Scytale gives Paul a gift he cannot resist: a Tleilaxu-grown ghola of the deceased Duncan Idaho, Paul's childhood teacher and friend, now called "Hayt". The conspirators hope the presence of Hayt will undermine Paul's ability to rule by forcing Paul to question himself and the empire he has created. Furthermore, Paul's acceptance of the gift weakens his support among the Fremen, who see the Tleilaxu and their tools as unclean. Chani, taking matters into her own hands, switches to a traditional Fremen fertility diet, preventing Irulan from being able to tamper with her food, and soon becomes pregnant. Otheym, one of Paul's former Fedaykin death commandos, reveals evidence of a Fremen conspiracy against Paul. Otheym gives Paul his dwarf Tleilaxu servant Bijaz who, like a recording machine, can remember faces, names, and details. Paul accepts reluctantly, seeing the strands of a Tleilaxu plot. As Paul's soldiers attack the conspirators, others set off an atomic weapon called a stone burner, purchased from the Tleilaxu, that destroys the area and blinds Paul. By tradition, all blind Fremen are abandoned in the desert, but Paul shocks the Fremen and entrenches his godhead by proving he can still see, even without eyes. His oracular powers have become so developed that he can foresee in his mind everything that happens, as though his eyes still function. By moving through his life in lockstep with his visions, he can see even the slightest details of the world around him. The disadvantage of this is his inability to change any part of his destiny so long as he wishes to appear sighted. The unraveling of the Fremen conspiracy reveals that Korba, a former Fedaykin and now high priest of Paul's church, is among Paul's enemies. Hayt interrogates Bijaz, but the little man—actually an agent of the Tleilaxu—uses a specific humming intonation that renders Hayt open to implanted commands. Bijaz programs Hayt to offer Paul a bargain when Chani dies: Chani's rebirth as a ghola, and the hope that Duncan Idaho's memories might be reawakened, in return for Paul sacrificing the throne and going into exile. Bijaz also implants a compulsion that will force Hayt to attempt to kill Paul, given the appropriate circumstances. Hayt remains oblivious of the programming. Eventually news is brought that Chani has died giving birth. Paul's reaction to it triggers the compulsions in the mind of Hayt, who attempts to kill Paul. But rather than kill his beloved Paul, Duncan's ghola body reacts against its own programming and recovers Duncan's full consciousness. He remains conscious of the Zen-Sunni and Mentat training given to Hayt by the Tleilaxu, but is no longer bound to their programming. Paul and Chani's newborn twins are "pre-born", like Paul's sister Alia had been, and come into the world fully conscious with Kwisatz Haderach-like access to ancestral memories thanks to a combination of their genes and an in utero exposure to the quantities of spice in Chani's special pregnancy diet. Scytale offers to revive Chani as a ghola in return for all of Paul's CHOAM holdings. Paul refuses to submit to the possibility that the Tleilaxu might program Chani in some diabolical way, and Scytale threatens the infants with a knife while he negotiates with Alia. Paul has now been rendered completely blind by the presence of his oracular son, yet he is able to kill Scytale with an accurately aimed dagger thanks to a vision from his son's perspective. Now prophetically as well as physically blind, Paul chooses to embrace the Fremen tradition of a blind man walking alone into the desert, winning the fealty of the Fremen for his children, who will inherit his mantle of Emperor. Paul leaves Alia, now romantically involved with Duncan, as regent for the twins, whom he has named Leto and Ghanima. Duncan notes the irony that Paul and Chani's deaths had enabled them to triumph against their enemies, and that Paul has escaped deification by walking into the desert as a man, while guaranteeing Fremen support for the Atreides line.
8757	/m/02fck	Darwin's Dangerous Idea	Daniel Dennett	1995	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 "Starting in the Middle", Part I of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, gets its name from a quote by Willard Van Orman Quine: "Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distance objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race." The first chapter "Tell Me Why" is named after a song. Before Charles Darwin, God was seen as the ultimate cause of all design, or the ultimate answer to 'why?' questions. John Locke argued for the primacy of mind before matter, and David Hume, while exposing problems with Locke's view, could not see any alternative. Darwin provided just such an alternative: evolution. Besides providing evidence of common descent, he introduced a mechanism to explain it: natural selection. According to Dennett, natural selection is a mindless, mechanical and algorithmic process—Darwin's dangerous idea. The third chapter introduces the concept of "skyhooks" and "cranes" (see below). He suggests that resistance to Darwinism is based on a desire for skyhooks, which do not really exist. According to Dennett, good reductionists explain apparent design without skyhooks; greedy reductionists try to explain it without cranes. Chapter 4 looks at the tree of life, such as how it can be visualized and some crucial events in life's history. The next chapter concerns the possible and the actual, using the 'Library of Mendel' (the space of all logically possible genomes) as a conceptual aid. In the last chapter of part I, Dennett treats human artifacts and culture as a branch of a unified Design Space. Descent or homology can be detected by shared design features that would be unlikely to appear independently. However, there are also "Forced Moves" or "Good Tricks" that will be discovered repeatedly, either by natural selection (see convergent evolution) or human investigation. The first chapter of part II, "Darwinian Thinking in Biology", asserts that life originated without any skyhooks, and the orderly world we know is the result of a blind and undirected shuffle through chaos. The eighth chapter's message is conveyed by its title, "Biology is Engineering"; biology is the study of design, function, construction and operation. However, there are some important differences between biology and engineering. Related to the engineering concept of optimization, the next chapter deals with adaptationism, which Dennett endorses, calling Gould and Lewontin's "refutation" of it an illusion. Dennett thinks adaptationism is, in fact, the best way of uncovering constraints. The tenth chapter, entitled "Bully for Brontosaurus", is an extended critique of Stephen Jay Gould, who Dennett feels has created a distorted view of evolution with his popular writings; his "self-styled revolutions" against adaptationism, gradualism and other orthodox Darwinism all being false alarms. The final chapter of part II dismisses directed mutation, the inheritance of acquired traits and Teilhard's "Omega Point", and insists that other controversies and hypotheses (like the unit of selection and Panspermia) have no dire consequences for orthodox Darwinism. "Mind, Meaning, Mathematics and Morality" is the name of Part III, which begins with a quote from Nietzsche. Chapter 12, "The Cranes of Culture", discusses cultural evolution. It asserts that the meme has a role to play in our understanding of culture, and that it allows humans, alone among animals, to "transcend" our selfish genes. "Losing Our Minds to Darwin" follows, a chapter about the evolution of brains, minds and language. Dennett criticizes Noam Chomsky's perceived resistance to the evolution of language, its modeling by artificial intelligence, and reverse engineering. The evolution of meaning is then discussed, and Dennett uses a series of thought experiments to persuade the reader that meaning is the product of meaningless, algorithmic processes. Chapter 15 asserts that Gödel's Theorem does not make certain sorts of artificial intelligence impossible. Dennett extends his criticism to Roger Penrose. The subject then moves on to the origin and evolution of morality, beginning with Thomas Hobbes (who Dennett calls "the first sociobiologist") and Friedrich Nietzsche. He concludes that only an evolutionary analysis of ethics makes sense, though he cautions against some varieties of 'greedy ethical reductionism'. Before moving to the next chapter, he discusses some sociobiology controversies. The penultimate chapter, entitled "Redesigning Morality", begins by asking if ethics can be 'naturalized'. Dennett does not believe there is much hope of discovering an algorithm for doing the right thing, but expresses optimism in our ability to design and redesign our approach to moral problems. In "The Future of an Idea", the book's last chapter, Dennett praises biodiversity, including cultural diversity. In closing, he uses Beauty and the Beast as an analogy; although Darwin's idea may seem dangerous, it is actually quite beautiful.
9000	/m/02h3j	Death of a Hero	Richard Aldington		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Death of a Hero is the story of a young English artist named George Winterbourne who enlists in the army at the outbreak of World War I. The book is narrated by an unnamed first-person narrator who claims to have known and served with the main character. It is divided into three parts. The first part details George's family history. His father, a middle-class man from England's countryside, marries a poor woman who falsely believes she is marrying into a monied family. After George's birth, his mother takes a series of lovers. George is brought up to be a proper and patriotic member of English society. He is encouraged to follow in his father's insurance business, but fails to do so. After a falling out with his parents, he moves to London to pursue art and live a socialite lifestyle. The second section of the book deals with George's London life. He ingrains himself in socialite society and engages a number of trendy philosophies. After he and his lover, Elizabeth, have a pregnancy scare, they decide to marry. Although they do not have a child, the marriage stands. They decide to leave their marriage open. George takes Elizabeth's close friend as a lover, however, and their marriage begins to fall apart. Just as the situation is becoming particularly heated, England declares war on Germany. George decides to enlist. George trains for the army and is sent to France. (No particular location in France is mentioned. The town behind the front where George spends much of his time is referred to as M---.) He fights on the front for some time. When he returns home, he finds that he has been so affected by the war that he cannot relate to his friends, including his wife and lover. The casualty rate among officers is particularly high at the front. When a number of officers in George's unit are killed, he is promoted. Upon spending time with the other officers, he finds them to be cynical and utilitarian. He loses faith in the war quickly. The story ends with George standing up during a machine-gun barrage. He is killed. At the end of the book there is a poem written from the point of view of a veteran comparing World War I to the Trojan War.
9662	/m/02mr5	Exodus			{"/m/02mdj1": "Religious text"}	 Egypt's Pharaoh, fearful of the Israelites' numbers, orders that all newborn boys be thrown into the Nile. A Levite woman saves her baby by setting him adrift on the river in an ark of bulrushes. Pharaoh's daughter finds the child, names him Moses, and brings him up as her own. But Moses is aware of his origins, and one day, when grown, he kills an Egyptian overseer who is beating a Hebrew slave and has to flee into Midian. There he marries the daughter of Jethro the priest of Midian, and encounters God in a burning bush. Moses asks God for his name: God replies: "I AM that I AM." God tells Moses to return to Egypt and lead the Hebrews into Canaan, the land promised to Abraham. Moses returns to Egypt, where God again reveals his name Yahweh to him. Yahweh instructs Moses to appear before the pharaoh and inform him of God's demand that he let God's people go. Moses and his brother Aaron do so, but Pharaoh refuses. Yahweh causes a series of ten plagues to strike Egypt, but whenever Pharaoh begins to relent God causes him to harden his heart. # Blood - The waters of Egypt are turned into blood. All the fish die and water becomes undrinkable. # Frogs - Hordes of frogs swarm the land of Egypt. # Gnats or Lice - Masses of gnats or lice invade Egyptian homes and plague the Egyptian people. # Wild Animals - Wild animals invade Egyptian homes and lands, causing destruction and wrecking havoc. # Pestilence - Egyptian livestock are struck down with disease. # Boils - The Egyptian people are plagued by painful boils that cover their bodies. # Hail - Severe weather destroys Egyptian crops and beats down upon them. # Locusts - Locusts swarm Egypt and eat any remaining crops and food. # Darkness - Darkness covers the land of Egypt for three days. # Death of the Firstborn - The firstborn of every Egyptian family is killed. Even the firstborn of Egyptian animals die. God instructs Moses' to have his people mark their doorposts with the blood of a sacrificed lamb to indicate that they would be "passed over" by this plague, hence this has become the Jewish holiday of Passover. The Exodus begins. The Israelites, enumerated at 603,550 able-bodied adult males (not counting Levites) and their families, with their flocks and herds, set out for the mountain of God. Yahweh causes Pharaoh to change his mind about allowing the Israelites to depart; he pursues them, but God destroys the Egyptian army at the crossing of the Red Sea (Yam Suf) and the Israelites celebrate Yahweh's victory. The desert proves arduous, and the Israelites complain and long for Egypt, but God provides manna and miraculous water for them. The Israelites arrive at the mountain of God, where Moses' father-in-law Jethro visits Moses; at his suggestion Moses appoints judges over Israel. The Israelites arrive at the mountain of God, where God asks whether they will agree to be his people. They accept. The people gather at the foot of the mountain, and with thunder and lightning, fire and clouds of smoke, and the sound of trumpets, and the trembling of the mountain, God appears on the peak, and the people see the cloud and hear the voice [or possibly "sound"] of God. Moses and Aaron are told to ascend the mountain. God pronounces the Ten Commandments (the Ethical Decalogue) in the hearing of all Israel. Moses goes up the mountain into the presence of God, who pronounces the Covenant Code (a detailed code of ritual and civil law), and promises Canaan to them if they obey. Moses comes down the mountain and writes down God's words and the people agree to keep them. God calls Moses up the mountain together with Aaron and the elders of Israel, and they all feast in the presence of God. God calls Moses up the mountain to receive a set of stone tablets containing the law, and he and Joshua go up, leaving Aaron in charge. God gave Moses instructions for the construction of the tabernacle so that God could dwell permanently among his chosen people, as well as instructions for the priestly vestments, the altar and its appurtenances, the procedure to be used to ordain the priests, and the daily sacrifices to be offered. Aaron was appointed as the first high priest, with the priesthood to be hereditary in his line. God gave Moses the two tables of stone containing the words of the ten commandments spoken to the people in the day of the assembly, written with the "finger of God". While Moses is with God, Aaron makes a golden calf, which the people worship. God informs Moses of their apostasy and threatens to kill them all, but relents when Moses pleads for them. Moses comes down from the mountain, smashes the stone tablets in anger, and commands the Levites to massacre the unfaithful Israelites. God commands Moses to make two new tablets on which He will personally write the words that were on the first tablets. Moses ascends the mountain, God dictates the Ten Commandments (the Ritual Decalogue), and Moses writes them on the tablets. Moses descends from the mountain, and his face is transformed, so that from that time onwards he has to hide his face with a veil. Moses assembles the Hebrews and repeats to them the commandments he has received from God, which are to keep the Sabbath and to construct the Tabernacle. "And all the construction of the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting was finished, and the children of Israel did according to everything that God had commanded Moses", and from that time God dwelt in the Tabernacle and ordered the travels of the Hebrews.
10861	/m/02y0f	The Trial	Franz Kafka	1925	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On his thirtieth birthday, the chief financial officer of a bank, Josef K., is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. The agents' boss later arrives and holds a mini tribunal in the room of K.'s neighbor, Fräulein Bürstner. K. is not taken away, however, but left "free" to await instructions from the Committee of Affairs. He goes to work, and that night apologizes to Fräulein Bürstner for the intrusion into her room. At the end of the conversation he suddenly kisses her. K. receives a phone calling summoning him to court, and the coming Sunday is arranged as the date. No time is set and the address is given to him. The address turns out to be a huge tenement building. K. has to explore to find the court, which turns out to be in the attic. The room is airless, shabby, and crowded, and although he has no idea what he is charged with, or what authorizes the process, makes a long speech denigrating the whole process, including the agents who arrested him, and during which an attendant's wife is raped. He then returns home. K. later goes to visit the court again, although he has not been summoned. Court is not in session. He instead talks with the attendant's wife, who attempts to seduce him into taking her away, and who gives him more information about the process and offers to help him. K. later goes with the attendant to a higher level of the attic where it turns out that the offices of the court are housed, which are shabby and airless. K. returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag. Later, in a store room at his own bank, K. discovers the two agents, who arrested him, being whipped by a flogger for asking K. for bribes, as a result of complaints K. made at court. K. tries to argue with the flogger, saying that the men need not be whipped, but the flogger cannot be swayed. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he had found it the day before, including the Whipper and the two agents. K. is visited by his uncle, who was K.'s guardian. The uncle seems distressed by K.'s predicament. At first sympathetic, he becomes concerned K. is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces K. to a lawyer, who is attended by Leni, a nurse, who K.'s uncle suspects is the advocate's mistress. During the discussion it becomes clear how different this process is from regular legal proceedings – guilt is assumed, the bureaucracy running it is vast with many levels, and everything is secret, from the charge, to the rules of the court, to the authority behind the courts – even the identity of the judges at the higher levels. The attorney tells him that he can prepare a brief for K., but since the charge is unknown and the rules are unknown, it is difficult work. It also never may be read. Yet it is very important. The lawyer says that his most important task is to deal with powerful court officials behinds the scenes. As they talk, the lawyer reveals that the Chief Clerk of the Court has been sitting hidden in the darkness of a corner. The Chief Clerk emerges to join the conversation, but K. is called away by Leni, who takes him to the next room, where she offers to help him and seduces him. They have a sexual encounter. Afterwards K. meets his uncle outside, who is angry and, who claims that K.'s lack of respect has also hurt K.'s case. K. visits the lawyer several times. The lawyer tells him incessantly how dire his situation is and tells many stories of other hopeless clients and of his behind-the-scenes efforts on behalf of these clients, and brags about his many connections. The brief is never complete. K.'s work at the bank deteriorates as he is consumed with worry about his case. K. is surprised by one of his bank clients, who tells K. that he is aware that K. is dealing with a trial. The client learned of K.'s case from Titorelli, a painter, who told the client about K.'s case and has dealings with the court. The client advises K. to go to Titorelli for advice. Titorelli lives in the attic of a tenement in a suburb on the opposite side of town from the court that K. visited. Three teenage girls taunt K. on the steps and tease him sexually. Titorelli turns out to be an official painter of portraits for the court – an inherited position, and has a deep understanding of the process. K. learns that, to Titorelli's knowledge, not a single defendant has ever been acquitted. He sets out K.'s options and offers to help K. with either. The options are: obtain a provisional verdict of innocence from the lower court, which can be overturned at any time by higher levels of the court leading to re-initiation of the process; or curry favor with the lower judges to keep the process moving albeit at a glacial pace. Titorelli has K. leave through a small back door as the girls are blocking the door through with K. entered. To K.'s shock, the door opens into another warren of the court's offices – again shabby and airless. K. decides to take control of matters himself and visits his lawyer with the intention of dismissing him. At the lawyer's office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K. some insight from a client's perspective. Block's case has continued for five years and he has gone from being a successful businessman to being almost bankrupt and is virtually enslaved by his dependence on the lawyer and Leni, with whom he appears to be sexually involved. The lawyer mocks Block in front of K. for his dog-like subservience. This experience further poisons K.'s opinion of his lawyer. (This chapter was left unfinished by the author.) K. is asked by the bank to show an Italian client around local places of cultural interest, but the Italian client, short of time, asks K. to take him only to the cathedral, setting a time to meet there. When the client doesn't show up, K. explores the cathedral which is empty except for an old woman and a church official. K. notices a priest who seems to be preparing to give a sermon from a small second pulpit, and K. begins to leave, lest it begin and K. be compelled to stay for its entirety. Instead of giving a sermon, the priest calls out K.'s name. K. approaches the pulpit and the priest berates him for his attitude toward the trial and for seeking help, especially from women. K. asks him to come down and the two men walk inside the cathedral. The priest works for the court as a chaplain, and tells K. a fable, (which has been published separately as Before the Law) that is meant to explain his situation. K. and the priest discuss the parable. The priest tells K. that the parable is an ancient text of the court, and many generations of court officials have given interpretations. On the eve of K.'s thirty-first birthday, two men arrive at his apartment. He has been waiting for them, and he offers little resistance – indeed the two men take direction from K. as they walk through town. K. leads them to a quarry where the two men place K's head on a discarded block. One of the men produces a double-edged butcher knife, and as the two men pass it back and forth between them, the narrator tells us that "K. knew then precisely, that it would have been his duty to take the knife...and thrust it into himself." He does not take the knife. One of the men holds his shoulder and pulls him up and the other man stabs him in the heart and twists the knife twice. K.'s last words are: "Like a dog!"
10862	/m/02y0x	The Metamorphosis		1915	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One day Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up to find himself transformed into a "ungeheuren Ungeziefer", literally "monstrous vermin", often interpreted as a giant bug or insect. He believes it is a dream, and reflects on how dreary life as a traveling salesmen is. He looks at the wall clock and realizes that he has overslept and missed his train for work. He ponders on the consequences of this delay, and is annoyed at how his boss never accepts excuses or explanations from any of his employees no matter how hard working they are, displaying an apparent lack of trusting abilities. Gregor's mother knocks on the door and he answers her. She is concerned for Gregor because he is late for work, which is unorthodox for Gregor. Gregor answers his mother and realizes that his voice has changed, but his answer is short so his mother does not notice the voice change. His sister, Grete, to whom he was very close then whispers through the door and begs him to open the door. All his family members think that he is ill and ask him to open the door. He tries to get out of bed but he is incapable of moving his body. While trying to move, he finds that his office manager, the chief clerk has showed up to check on him. He finally rocks his body to the floor and calls out that he will open the door shortly. Feeling offended by Gregor's delayed response in opening the door, the clerk warns him of the consequences of missing work. He adds that his recent performance has been unsatisfactory. Gregor disagrees and tells him that he will open the door shortly. Nobody on the other side of the door could understand a single word he uttered (Gregor was unaware of the fact that his voice has also transformed) and conclude that he is seriously ill. Finally, Gregor manages to unlock and open the door with his mouth. He apologizes to the office manager for the delay. Horrified by the sight of Gregor's appearance, the manager bolts out of the apartment, while Gregor's mother faints. Gregor tries to catch up with him but his father drives him back into the bedroom with a cane and a rolled newspaper. Gregor injures himself squeezing back through the doorway, and his father slams the door shut. Gregor, exhausted, falls asleep. Gregor wakes and sees that someone has put milk and bread in his room. Initially excited, he quickly discovers that he has no taste for milk, once one of his favorite foods. He settles himself under a couch. The next morning, his sister comes in, sees that he has not touched the milk, and replaces it with rotting food scraps, which Gregor happily eats. This begins a routine in which his sister feeds him and cleans up while he hides under the couch, afraid that his appearance will frighten her. Gregor spends his time listening through the wall to his family members talking. They often discuss the difficult financial situation they find themselves in now that Gregor can’t provide for them. Gregor had plans of sending Grete to the conservatorium to pursue violin lessons, something that everyone else including Grete considered to be a dream. Gregor was however pretty determined to do so on the same Christmas before which the metamorphosis occurs. His incapability of being the provider of his family as well as his shattered dreams in respect to his sister coupled with his speechlessness reduces his thought process to a great respect. Gregor also learns that his mother wants to visit him, but his sister and father will not let her. Gregor grows more comfortable with his changed body. He begins climbing the walls and ceiling for amusement. Discovering Gregor’s new pastime, Grete decides to remove some of the furniture to give Gregor more space. She and her mother begin taking furniture away, but Gregor finds their actions deeply distressing. He tries to save a picture on the wall of a woman wearing a fur hat, fur scarf, and a fur muff. Gregor’s mother sees him hanging on the wall and passes out. Grete calls out to Gregor—the first time anyone has spoken directly to him since his transformation. Gregor runs out of the room and into the kitchen. The father throws apples at Gregor, and one of them sinks into a sensitive spot in his back and remains lodged there, paralyzing his movements for a month and damaging it permanently. Gregor manages to get back into his bedroom but is severely injured. One evening, the cleaning lady leaves Gregor’s door open while the boarders lounge about the living room. Grete has been asked to play the violin for them, and Gregor who usually took care to avoid crossing paths with anyone in the flat, in the midst of his depression and thus caused detachment, creeps out of his bedroom to listen. The boarders, who initially seemed interested in Grete, grow bored with her performance, but Gregor is transfixed by it. One of the boarders spots Gregor and they become alarmed. Gregor’s father tries to shove the boarders back into their rooms, but the three men protest and announce that they will move out immediately without paying rent because of the disgusting conditions in the apartment. Grete, who has by now become tired of taking care of Gregor and is realizing the amount of burden his existence puts on each one in the family, tells her parents that they must get rid of Gregor or they will all be ruined. Her father agrees, wishing Gregor could understand them and would leave of his own accord. Gregor does in fact understand and slowly moves back to the bedroom. There, determined to rid his family of his presence, Gregor dies. Upon discovering that Gregor is dead, the family feels a great sense of relief. The father kicks out the boarders and decides to fire the cleaning lady, who has disposed of Gregor’s body. The family takes a trolley ride out to the countryside, during which they consider their finances. Months of spare living as a result of Gregor’s condition have left them with substantial savings. They decide to move to a smaller apartment than the present one to further save their finances, an act which they were unable to carry out in Gregor's presence. During this short trip, Mr. and Mrs. Samsa realize that in spite of going through hardships which have brought an amount of paleness to her face,Grete appears to have grown up into a pretty and well figured lady, which leads her parents to think about finding her a husband.
10951	/m/02yqq	Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 On a rainy night while returning from his job, Guy Montag is followed by a cheery, 17-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan. Clarisse initially bothers Montag with her incessant questions (and Clarisse is a bit bothered by Montag's uncalled-for reactions, such as laughing when she hasn't said anything funny), but Montag chooses to tolerate her as she tells him of how she loves nature and walking around and observing how crazy the world has become. The two walk until they reach Clarisse's house (which is next to Montag's). Before Clarisse goes inside, she asks Montag if he's happy. The question catches Montag by surprise and he mulls over his encounter with Clarisse (and how similar it was to another encounter in the park involving an English professor who was afraid of Montag). Montag enters his bedroom, and finds Mildred in bed with her Seashell ear radio in her ear, staring vacantly at the ceiling (just as she's been doing for the past ten years or so). Montag doesn't notice anything wrong until his foot hits Mildred's empty sleeping pill bottle. Montag tries to wake up his wife, but she doesn't respond. Montag calls for medical attention, trying to shout over the screams of the passing jet engines above the house. Because "accidental" prescription pill overdoses have become commonplace, the medical department sends over two cynical, uncaring technicians who use a "Black Cobra" stomach pump to flush the poisons out of Mildred's system and replace her blood with a fresh, mechanical replacement. Montag stands outside Clarisse's house and sees that she and her family are the only ones in the neighborhood with the lights on and engaging in a spirited conversation. Montag returns to his house, sees that Mildred is looking slightly better than before, and goes to bed. The next day, Montag finds Mildred in the kitchen, making breakfast and complaining of an upset stomach. Montag tries to tell his wife that she overdosed, but is interrupted by Mildred's ramblings of her stomach hurting, but being hungry, and rationalizes that the feeling is from drinking too much alcohol during a party. As Montag leaves for work, he finally tells Mildred (who is watching an interactive soap opera on the "parlor walls" -- three enormous, floor-to-ceiling television screens) that she overdosed on sleeping pills. Mildred denies that she would do something that suicidal, but Montag insists. Mildred brushes off the issue and returns to her soap opera. Over the next few days, Montag bonds with Clarisse, who tells him that her interest in intellectual activities has made her an outcast in a society dominated by shallow entertainment, and for that, she has no friends and has to see a psychiatrist. On the final day, however, Clarisse doesn't appear alongside Montag. Montag waits for her, but the wait is short-lived when the train comes to take him to work. A few days later, the firemen are called in to burn down the house of an old woman who has been hoarding books. The firemen go to arrest her, but instead the woman recites a quote from Nicholas Ridley and refuses to leave. As the firemen toss the books from the woman's upstairs bedroom down to the living room floor and spray the pile with kerosene, Montag accidentally reads a line in one of her books and hides it away before any of his coworkers can see. The woman is given a final warning to leave the house, but the woman produces a match. Before she can strike it, the firemen flee, save for Montag, who watches as the woman lights the match, drops it in the kerosene, and is engulfed in flames. Montag comes home from the jarring experience and tries to take his mind off the event by asking a half-asleep Mildred where the two first met and when. Mildred tries to remember, but can't, laughing it off as she heads to the bathroom to take her sleeping pills. As Montag reflects on his stagnant, stilted marriage to Mildred (and how Mildred has become emotionally and mentally dead from watching her "parlor wall" entertainment, driving recklessly, and her sleeping pill addiction), Montag begins to cry after realizing that if Mildred died, he wouldn't miss her at all. Montag then asks Mildred about Clarisse and her whereabouts. Mildred initially denies knowledge of what happened to Clarisse, then tells Montag exactly what happened to her: Clarisse was run over by a speeding car and, once her family heard the news about her death, they packed up and moved away, all of which happened four days ago. Montag is shocked that Mildred didn't tell him the grim news sooner and more disturbed over Mildred's apathy over the death of someone Montag had genuinely liked. Montag wakes up physically ill and begs Mildred to call in sick for him. Mildred refuses and doesn't believe that Montag is really sick (even when Montag vomits on the rug from the stench of kerosene -- which earlier was like a perfume to him -- Mildred is only concerned about whether or not the vomit stain will come out in the wash). Captain Beatty, Montag's fire chief, personally visits him and tells him the story of how books lost their value and where the firemen fit in: Over the course of several decades (with the starting point being after the American Civil War), populations grew and people embraced new media, sports, and a quickening pace of life. Books were ruthlessly abridged and degraded to accommodate a shorter attention span. Later, minorities and other special-interest groups began criticizing books for their controversial content while other critics bashed authors for making people feel inferior by publishing works that no one could comprehend. Books became blander and blander due to censorship measures, and eventually, books stopped selling and authors were either locked away in insane asylums or gave up their profession and lived in exile. The only reading material that the society now accepts are captionless comics, three-dimensional sex magazines, trade magazines, and scripts used during the interactive plays on the parlor walls. To get rid of the books from the past (and their copies), the government implemented a program using the firemen to burn the books (now that houses were being rebuilt to be fire-resistant) and placate the masses. As Beatty is giving his monologue, Mildred tries to fluff Montag's pillow and nearly discovers the book hidden underneath. Montag yells at her and Mildred, at the request of Beatty, quietly leaves the room to watch the parlor walls. Beatty knows that Montag has a book but acts casual about it, stating that it's natural that every fireman gets curious about books and starts to possess one. If the book isn't burned or returned to the firehouse within 24 hours then the firemen will burn it for him. After Beatty has left, Montag shows Mildred the books he has hidden in the ventilator of their home. Mildred tries to incinerate the books, but Montag subdues her and tells her that the two of them are going to read the books to see if they have value. If they do not, he promises the books will be burned and all will return to normal. While going over the stolen books (and nearly getting caught by the firehouse's Mechanical Hound), Mildred argues with Montag that books have no meaning and questions why Montag dragged her into this. Montag snaps back by mentioning Mildred's overdose, Clarisse's death, the book woman who burned herself, and how society is falling apart due to apathy, ignorance, and a pending war, then states that maybe the books of the past have messages in them that can save society from its own destruction. Before Montag can finish, Mildred gets a call from her friends about coming over to watch The White Clown on the parlor walls. Montag laments that his wife is a lost cause (and he will be too if he can't force himself to absorb the information in the books). Montag then remembers a man he once met in the park a year ago: Faber, a former English professor. Montag seeks Faber's help, though Faber refuses at first due to his cowardice. After Montag starts to rip a few pages from the beginning of a rare copy of The New Testament (one of the few left that actually contains God's word, rather than the bastardized versions that have Jesus and other Biblical characters shilling products), Faber relents and teaches Montag about the importance of literature in its attempt to explain human existence. He gives Montag an ear-piece communicator he made himself so that Faber can offer guidance throughout his daily activities. At Montag's house, Mildred has friends Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles over to watch the parlor walls. In the middle of a bloody demolition derby, Montag unplugs the walls and engages the women into meaningful conversation, only to find them concerned only with pleasure in the present moment and indifferent to the upcoming war, death, their families, and politics. Montag then brings out a book of poetry to scare some emotion into them (despite Faber's warnings). Mildred tries to cover up Montag's actions by claiming that, once a year, firemen bring home one book and read it aloud as a form of mocking past literature. Mildred then turns to a page in the book that has the poem Dover Beach on it and assures that none of her friends will understand any of the words. A shaken, confused Montag reads the poem, which ends up making Mrs. Phelps cry. Mrs. Bowles, however, is disgusted, accuses Montag of being nasty, and breaks off her friendship with Mildred. Montag yells at the women to go home and reflect on their empty lives and burns the poetry book while Mildred locks herself in the bathroom to take her pills. Montag returns to the firehouse the next day with only one of the books, which Beatty tosses into the trash. Beatty tells Montag that he had a dream in which they fought endlessly by quoting books to each other. In describing the dream Beatty shows that, despite his disillusionment, he was once an enthusiastic reader. A fire alarm goes off and Beatty picks up the address from the dispatcher system. He reminds Montag of his duty, theatrically leads the crew to the fire engine, and drives it to Montag's house. Beatty orders Montag to destroy his own house, telling him that his wife and neighbors were the ones who reported him. Montag tries to talk to Mildred as she quickly leaves the house, but Mildred ignores him, gets inside a waiting taxi, and vanishes down the street. Montag obeys the chief, destroying the home piece by piece with a flamethrower. After he has incinerated the house, Beatty discovers Montag's earpiece and plans to hunt down Faber. Montag threatens Beatty with the flamethrower and (after Beatty taunts him) burns his boss alive. As Montag flees the scene, the firehouse's mechanical hound attacks him, managing to inject his leg with a tranquilizer. He destroys it with the flamethrower and limps away. Montag flees through the city streets, to Faber's house. Faber urges him to make his way to the countryside and contact the exiled book-lovers who live there. On Faber's television, they watch news reports of another mechanical hound being released, with news helicopters following it to create a public spectacle. Montag leaves Faber's house and escapes the manhunt by jumping into a river and floating downstream into the countryside. There he meets the exiles, who have memorized various books for an upcoming time when society is ready to rediscover them. The war begins, and then, just as suddenly, ends. Montag watches helplessly as jet bombers fly overhead and attack the city with nuclear weapons. During breakfast at dawn, Granger (leader of the group of wandering intellectuals) discusses the legendary phoenix and its endless cycle of long life, death in flames, and rebirth, adding that the phoenix must have some relation to mankind, which constantly repeats its mistakes, but that man has something the phoenix doesn't. It can remember the mistakes it made from before it destroyed itself, and try not make them again. Granger then muses that a large factory of mirrors should be built, so that mankind can take a long look at itself. After the meal is over, the band sets off back toward the city, to rebuild society.
11745	/m/033fm	Farmer Giles of Ham	J. R. R. Tolkien		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Farmer Giles (Ægidius Ahenobarbus Julius Agricola de Hammo, "Giles Bronze-beard Julius Farmer of Ham") is not a hero. He is fat and red-bearded and enjoys a slow, comfortable life. But a rather deaf and short-sighted giant blunders on to his land, and Giles manages to ward him away with a blunderbuss shot in his general direction. The people of the village cheer: Farmer Giles has become a hero. His reputation spreads across the kingdom, and he is rewarded by the King with a sword named Caudimordax ("Tailbiter")—which turns out to be a powerful weapon against dragons. The giant, on returning home, relates to his friends that there are no more knights in the Middle Kingdom, just stinging flies—actually the scrap metal shot from the blunderbuss—and this entices a dragon, Chrysophylax Dives, to investigate the area. The terrified neighbours all expect the accidental hero Farmer Giles to deal with him. The story parodies the great dragon-slaying traditions. The knights sent by the King to pursue the dragon are useless fops, more intent on "precedence and etiquette" than on the huge dragon footprints littering the landscape. The only part of a 'dragon' they know is the annual celebratory dragon-tail cake. Giles by contrast clearly recognizes the danger, and resents being sent along to face it. But hapless farmers can be forced to become heroes, and Giles shrewdly makes the best of the situation.
12253	/m/036xv	Gaudy Night	Dorothy L. Sayers	1935	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Harriet Vane returns reluctantly to Oxford to attend the Gaudy dinner. Expecting hostility because of her notoriety, she is surprised to be welcomed warmly by the dons, and rediscovers her old love of the academic life. Some time later the Warden of Shrewsbury writes to ask for help. There has been an outbreak of anonymous letters, vandalism and threats, apparently from someone within the college, and a scandal is feared. Harriet, herself a victim of poison-pen letters ever since her trial, reluctantly agrees to help, and spends much of the next few months resident at the college, ostensibly to do research on Sheridan Le Fanu and assist a don with her book. As she wrestles with the case, trying to narrow down the list of suspects and avert a major scandal, Harriet is forced to examine her ambivalent feelings about love and marriage, along with her attraction to academia as an intellectual (and emotional) refuge. Her personal dilemma becomes entangled with darkly hinted suspicions and prejudices raised by the crimes at the college, which appear to have been committed by a sexually frustrated female don. Harriet is forced to re-examine her relationship with Wimsey in the light of what she has discovered about herself. Wimsey eventually arrives in Oxford to help her, and she gains a new perspective on him from those who know him, including his nephew, a current undergraduate at the university. The attacks build to a crisis, and the college community of students, dons and servants is almost torn apart by suspicion and fear. There is an attempt to drive a vulnerable student to suicide, and a physical assault on Harriet that almost kills her. The perpetrator is finally unmasked by Wimsey as one of the college servants, revealed to be the widow of a disgraced academic at a northern university. Her husband's academic fraud had been exposed by one of his fellow dons there, destroying his career and driving him to suicide. The don has since moved to Shrewsbury College, and the campaign has been the widow's revenge against intellectual women who move outside their "proper" domestic sphere. At the end of the book, Harriet Vane finally accepts Wimsey's proposal of marriage. (Their marriage and honeymoon—interrupted by another murder mystery—are depicted in Busman's Honeymoon.)
12464	/m/038kg	Gylfaginning	Snorri Sturluson			 The Gylfaginning tells the story of Gylfi, a king of "the land that men now call Sweden", who after being tricked by one of the goddesses of the Æsir, wonders if all Æsir use magic and tricks for their will to be done. This is why he journeys to Asgard, but on the way he is tricked by the gods and arrives in some other place, where he finds a great palace. Inside the palace he encounters a man who asks Gylfi's name and so king Gylfi introduces himself as Gangleri. Gangleri then is taken to the king of the palace and comes upon three men; High, Just-As-High, and Third. Gangleri is then challenged to show his wisdom by asking questions, as is the custom in many Norse sagas. Each question made to High, Just-As-High, and Third is about an aspect of the Norse mythology or its gods, and also about the creation and destruction of the world (Ragnarök). In the end all the palace and its people just vanish and Gylfi is left standing on empty ground. It is then implied that as Gylfi returns to his nation, he retells the tales he was told. It can be argued that Snorri used this narrative device as a means of being able to safely document a vanishing and largely oral tradition within a Christian context.
12653	/m/03b1x	God Emperor of Dune	Frank Herbert	1981-05-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The seemingly immortal God Emperor Leto II has ruled his Empire for more than 3,500 years, his lifespan lengthened due to his decision in Children of Dune to merge his human body with sandtrout, the haploid phase of the giant sandworms of Arrakis. His continued evolution has slowly transformed him, altering his human form into what he calls a "pre-worm." His body has come to resemble a small version of the ancient sandworms of Arrakis — ribbed, elongated, and covered in scaly sandtrout; his face remains, as do his hands and arms, but his legs and feet have atrophied to be of no use whatsoever and he moves from place to place on a large cart of Ixian manufacture. It is later revealed that his brain has gradually diffused into the rest of his body, becoming a series of nodes throughout his whole form. This distribution of internal organs and his sandtrout skin makes him virtually impervious to harm, even allowing him to survive lasgun fire, but like a sandworm his biology is very vulnerable to water. During his long reign, Leto has enforced a state of peace throughout his empire, both through tight control of his enormous (but limited) hoard of the spice melange and the military might of his Fish Speaker army. The old Imperium is basically non-existent; the Landsraad has ceased to exist, and only a few remnants of the Great Houses survive. The Bene Gesserit and Spacing Guild have endured, although both have been forced to adapt to Leto's absolute control over melange and his powerful prescience, and CHOAM has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. His reign is considered by many to be depraved and despotic, but he is confident that his actions will ensure the survival of the human race. Leto's enforced peace brings stagnation to the galaxy; he himself battles an incessant struggle with boredom and loneliness that overwhelms him because of his everlasting life, close-to-absolute prescience, a loss of vulnerability which renders him incapable of physical intimacy, and his perception of the passage of time in great lengths (as decades may pass without him realizing it). Few people realize the burden that he carries as he deems subjects useful as long as they serve a purpose to the "Golden Path" (the end justifying the means). Leto maintains a small and reclusive system of government, and as God, he chooses not to share the inner workings and purpose of his decisions or any sympathy for his cause, as he knows that humanity would not be able to grasp the concept. As his father before him, Leto is utterly incapable of foreseeing his own demise, and concludes that whatever he cannot see and perceive — and thus control — is connected to his eventual death; ironically, this amuses him since it is one of the few things that still brings surprise to his otherwise dull existence. Leto has employed a series of gholas grown from the cells of Duncan Idaho, the faithful Swordmaster of House Atreides. Duncan functions both as the captain of Leto's guard, and as a familiar face to calm Leto in his moments of distress. They remind Leto of his family, and he feels that he owes Duncan for his service and devotion to House Atreides. The vast majority of these gholas are made under Leto's instructions of preserving the original Idaho without enhancements; Idaho's masterful abilities, thus, are dwarfed by thousands of years of genetic manipulation displayed by Leto's servants. Over the centuries, a significant number of the gholas have attempted to assassinate Leto through various means after struggling with the conflict between their intense loyalty to House Atreides, and the moral disgust triggered by the repression and stagnation Leto has forced upon the Empire. These feelings, compounded with the uneasy doubt caused by being millennia out of their own time, drives some of the Duncan Idaho gholas insane. Even when he doesn't ask for a new ghola, or considering the circumstances surrounding the previous Idaho's demise, the Tleilaxu usually send one anyway as a token for their survival. Leto's "Golden Path," as he calls it, is a millennia-spanning attempt to produce a human who is invisible to a watcher gifted with prescience. This breeding plan, begun with the marriage of Leto's twin sister Ghanima to Farad'n Corrino, has resulted in Leto's majordomo Moneo Atreides and his daughter Siona. Moneo has served Leto faithfully for the majority of his life, having been a rebel until he was shown the Golden Path in a test by Leto. Siona is the leader of a group of rebels seeking to overthrow the God Emperor, and locate his hidden hoard of melange. Unbeknownst to Siona, Nayla — her close friend and de facto bodyguard — worships Leto, and is under orders to protect and obey Siona in all things while reporting on her rebellious activities. Although Leto knows the important purpose of Siona, as long as she doesn't serve the "Golden Path" she would be expendable, and he would have to take measures for the breeding paths that he would have to take to replace her. During a raid on his Citadel, Siona and her friends steal, among other things, a series of excerpts from Leto's private journal. Unknown to them, Leto is aware of their activities and allows them to continue. In perusing some of the items and documents stolen from the Citadel, Siona learns that Leto remains capable of love, and plots to use this as a weapon against him. At the same time, the new Ixian ambassador, Hwi Noree, is sent to the court of the God Emperor. Immediately entranced by her beauty, grace, and purity, Leto begins to be tortured by the knowledge that he and Hwi are separated by his continued transformation. For her part, Hwi desires nothing more than to serve the God Emperor, and she quickly becomes a confidante, finally expressing her love of Leto. The latest incarnation of Duncan is also captivated by Hwi's beauty, but is rebuffed by Leto, who warns that Hwi is his alone. Because of his intense feelings for Hwi and the fact that she had never appeared in his prescient visions, Leto realizes that she is a trap, trained and sent by the Ixians to weaken him. However, he is unable to send her away, and she gladly accepts his offer to remain. It is revealed that Hwi had been grown inside an Ixian no-room — a device that shields its occupants from prescient view — from cells of a former Ixian ambassador, Malky, who had been a cynical and roguish friend of the God Emperor. Through discussions with Moneo and Leto, Duncan learns about Leto's transformation, the Fish Speakers, and the oppressive measures Leto takes to maintain his absolute control over the Empire. He begins to grow more agitated and restless, though he continues in his duties, defending the God Emperor from an attack by Tleilaxu Face Dancers. Duncan struggles with feelings of inadequacy, and the confusion and disorientation that result from existing in a time alien to him. Duncan meets Siona, and though the two of them are coldly formal to one another, they eventually unite to kill Leto and end his tyrannical rule over mankind. Leto and Hwi decide to marry, and lead a wedding procession from Leto's Little Citadel to Tuono Village, where Duncan and Siona have been sent. While crossing the Idaho River, Siona orders Nayla to cut the supports of the bridge with a lasgun, spilling Moneo, Hwi, Leto, and a number of courtiers into the jagged rocks in the canyon below. Nayla obeys, despite her fanaticism toward the God Emperor, believing that the instructions are a test of her loyalty. Leto survives the fall, but is immersed in water, and his body begins to dissolve, just as did the sandworms of ancient Dune. In a final conversation with Siona and Duncan, Leto reveals that Siona is the embodiment of the Golden Path, a human completely shielded from prescient view. He explains that humanity is now free from the domination of oracles, free to scatter throughout the universe, never again to face complete domination. After revealing the location of his secret spice hoard, Leto dies, leaving Duncan and Siona to face the task of managing the empire.
12667	/m/03b5d	Genesis			{"/m/02mdj1": "Religious text"}	 God creates the world in six days and consecrates the seventh after giving mankind his first commandment: "be fruitful and multiply". God pronounces the world "very good", but it becomes corrupted by the sin of man and God sends a deluge (a great flood) to destroy it, saving only the righteous (Noah) and his family, from whose seed the world is repopulated. Man sins again, but God has promised that he will not destroy the world a second time with water. God instructs Abram (the future Abraham) to travel from his home in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) to the land of Canaan. There God makes a covenant with Abram promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the heavens, but that they shall suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they shall inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates." Abram's name is changed to Abraham and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah, and circumcision of all males is instituted as the sign of the covenant. Sarah is barren, and tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, as a concubine. Through Hagar, Abraham becomes the father of Ishmael. Abraham asks God that Ishmael "might live in Thy sight," (that is, be favored), but God replies that Sarah will bear a son, who will be named Isaac, through whom the covenant will be established. At Sarah's insistence Ishmael and his mother Hagar are driven out into the wilderness, but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation. God resolves to destroy the city of Sodom for the sins of its people. Abraham protests that it is not just "to slay the righteous with the wicked," and asks if the whole city can be spared if even ten righteous men are found there. God replies: "For the sake of ten I will not destroy it." Abraham's nephew Lot is saved from the destruction of Sodom, and through incest with his daughters becomes the ancestor of the Moabites and Ammonites. God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac. As Abraham is about to lay the knife upon his son, God restrains him, promising him numberless descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (modern Hebron) for a family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac, and Rebekah is chosen. Other children are born to Abraham by another wife, Keturah, among whose descendants are the Midianites, and he dies in a prosperous old age and is buried in his tomb at Hebron. Isaac's wife Rebekah is barren, but Isaac prays to God and she gives birth to the twins Esau, father of the Edomites, and Jacob. Through deception, Jacob becomes the heir instead of Esau and gains his father's blessing. He flees to his uncle where he prospers and earns his two wives. Jacob's name is changed to Israel, and by his wives Rachel and Leah and their handmaidens he has twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the Children of Israel. Joseph, Jacob's favourite son, is sold into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers. But Joseph prospers, and when famine comes he brings his father and his brothers and their households, seventy persons in all, to Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them the land of Goshen. Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future to them before he dies and is interred in the family tomb at Machpelah. Joseph lives to see his great-grandchildren, and on his death-bed he exhorts his brethren, if God should remember them and lead them out of the country, to take his bones with them. The book ends with Joseph's remains being "put in a coffin in Egypt."
12995	/m/03dj5	Gone with the Wind	Margaret Mitchell	1936-06-30	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gone with the Wind takes place in the southern United States in the state of Georgia during the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877) that followed the war. The novel unfolds against the backdrop of rebellion wherein seven southern states, Georgia among them, have declared their secession from the United States (the "Union") and formed the Confederate States of America (the "Confederacy"), after Abraham Lincoln was elected president with no ballots from ten Southern states where slavery was legal. A dispute over states' rights has arisen had an effect on men, especially when she took notice of them. It is the day before the men are called to war, Fort Sumter having been fired on two days earlier. There are brief but vivid descriptions of the South as it began and grew, with backgrounds of the main characters: the stylish and highbrow French, the gentlemanly English, the forced-to-flee and looked-down-upon Irish. Miss Scarlett learns that one of her many beaux, Ashley Wilkes, is soon to be engaged to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. She is stricken at heart. The following day at the Wilkeses' barbecue at "Twelve Oaks," Scarlett informs Ashley she loves him and Ashley admits he cares for her. However, he knows he would not be happily married to Scarlett because of their personality differences. Scarlett loses her temper at Ashley and he silently takes it. Then Scarlett meets Rhett Butler, a man who has a reputation as a rogue. Rhett had been alone in the library when Ashley and Scarlett entered, and felt it wiser to not make his presence known while the argument took place. Rhett applauds Scarlett for the unladylike spirit she displayed with Ashley. Infuriated and humiliated, Scarlett tells Rhett, "You aren't fit to wipe Ashley's boots!" Upon leaving the library and rejoining the other party guests, she finds out that war has been declared and the men are going to enlist. Seeking revenge for being jilted by Ashley, Scarlett accepts a proposal of marriage from Melanie's brother, Charles Hamilton. They marry two weeks later. Charles dies from measles two months after the war begins. Scarlett is pregnant with her first child. A widow at merely sixteen, she gives birth to a boy, Wade Hampton Hamilton, named after his father's general. As a widow, she is bound by tradition to wear black and avoid conversation with young men. Scarlett is despondent as a result of the restrictions placed upon her. Melanie, who is living in Atlanta with Aunt Pittypat, invites Scarlett to live with them. In Atlanta, Scarlett's spirits revive and she is busy with hospital work and sewing circles for the Confederate army. Scarlett encounters Rhett Butler again at a dance for the Confederacy. Although Rhett believes the war is a lost cause, he is blockade running for the profit in it. The men must bid for a dance with a lady and Rhett bids "one hundred fifty dollars-in gold." for a dance with Scarlett. Everyone at the dance is shocked that Rhett would bid for Scarlett, the widow still dressed in black. Melanie smooths things over by coming to Rhett's defense because he is generously supporting the Confederate cause for which her husband, Ashley, is fighting. At Christmas (1863), Ashley has been granted a furlough from the army and returns to Atlanta to be with Melanie. The war is going badly for the Confederacy. Atlanta is under siege (September 1864), "hemmed in on three sides," it descends into a desperate state while hundreds of wounded Confederate soldiers lie dying or dead in the city. Melanie goes into labor with only the inexperienced Scarlett to assist, as all the doctors are busy attending the soldiers. Prissy, a young Negro servant girl, cries out in despair and fear, "De Yankees is comin!" In the chaos, Scarlett, left to fend for herself, cries for the comfort and safety of her mother and Tara. The tattered Confederate States Army sets flame to Atlanta as they abandon it to the Union Army. Melanie gives birth to a boy named "Beau", and now they must hurry for refuge. Scarlett tells Prissy to go find Rhett, but she is afraid to "go runnin' roun' in de dahk". Scarlett replies to Prissy, "Haven't you any gumption?" Prissy then finds Rhett, and Scarlett begs him to take herself, Wade, Melanie, Beau, and Prissy to Tara. Rhett laughs at the idea, but steals an emaciated horse and a small wagon, and they follow the retreating army out of Atlanta. Part way to Tara, Rhett has a change of heart and he abandons Scarlett to enlist in the army. Scarlett makes her way to Tara without him where she is welcomed on the steps by her father, Gerald. It is clear things have drastically changed: Gerald has lost his mind, Scarlett's mother is dead, her sisters are sick with typhoid fever, the field slaves left after Emancipation, the Yankees have burned all the cotton and there is no food in the house. The long tiring struggle for post-war survival begins that has Scarlett working in the fields. There are so many hungry people to feed and so little food. There is the ever present threat of the Yankees who steal and burn, and at one point, Scarlett kills a Yankee marauder with a single shot from Charles's pistol leaving "a bloody pit where the nose had been." A long succession of Confederate soldiers returning home stop at Tara to find food and rest. Two men stay on, an invalid Cracker, Will Benteen, and Ashley Wilkes, whose spirit is broken. Life at Tara slowly begins to recover when a new threat appears in the form of new taxes on Tara. Scarlett knows only one man who has enough money to help her pay the taxes, Rhett Butler. She goes to Atlanta to find him only to learn Rhett is in jail. As she is leaving the jailhouse, Scarlett runs into Frank Kennedy, who is betrothed to Scarlett's sister, Suellen, and running a store in Atlanta. Soon realizing Frank also has money, Scarlett hatches a plot and tells Frank that Suellen has changed her mind about marrying him. Thereafter Frank succumbs to Scarlett's feminine charms and he marries her two weeks later knowing he has done "something romantic and exciting for the first time in his life." Always wanting Scarlett to be happy and radiant, Frank gives her the money to pay the taxes on Tara. While Frank has a cold and is being pampered by Aunt Pittypat, Scarlett goes over the accounts at Frank's store and finds many of his friends owe him money. Scarlett is now terrified about the taxes and decides money, a lot of it, is needed. She takes control of his business while he is away and her business practices leave many Atlantans resentful of her. Then with a loan from Rhett she buys a sawmill and runs the lumber business herself, all very unladylike conduct. Much to Frank's relief, Scarlett learns she is pregnant, which curtails her activities for awhile. She convinces Ashley to come to Atlanta and manage the mill, all the while still in love with him. At Melanie's urging, Ashley takes the job at the mill. Melanie soon becomes the center of Atlanta society, and Scarlett gives birth to a girl named Ella Lorena. "Ella for her grandmother Ellen, and Lorena because it was the most fashionable name of the day for girls." The state of Georgia is under martial law and life there has taken on a new and more frightening tone. For protection, Scarlett keeps Frank's pistol tucked in the upholstery of the buggy. Her trips alone to and from the mill take her past a shanty town where criminal elements live. On one evening when she is coming home from the mill, Scarlett is accosted by two men who attempt to rob her, but she escapes with the help of Big Sam, the former negro foreman from Tara. Attempting to avenge the assault on his wife, Frank and the Ku Klux Klan raid the shanty town whereupon Frank is shot dead. Scarlett is a widow for a second time. Rhett puts on a charade to keep the men who participated in the shanty town raid from being arrested. He walks into the Wilkeses' home with Hugh Elsing and Ashley, singing and pretending to be drunk. Yankee officers outside the home question Rhett and he tells them he and the other men had been at Belle Watling's brothel that evening, a story Belle later confirms to the officers. The men are indebted to Rhett for saving them, and his Scallawag reputation among them improves a notch, but the men's wives, with the exception of Melanie, are livid at owing their husbands' lives to Belle Watling. Frank Kennedy lies cold in a coffin in the quiet stillness of the parlor in Aunt Pittypat's home. Scarlett is in a remorseful state. She is swigging brandy from Aunt Pitty's swoon bottle when Rhett comes to call. She tells Rhett tearfully, "I'm afraid I'll die and go to hell," to which Rhett replies, "Maybe there isn't a hell." Before she can cry any further, Rhett asks Scarlett to marry him saying, "I always intended having you, one way or another." Scarlett declares she doesn't love him and doesn't want to be married again. However, Rhett kisses her passionately, and in the heat of the moment she agrees to marry him. One year later, Scarlett and Rhett announce their engagement. News of the impending marriage is the talk of the town. Mr. and Mrs. Butler honeymoon in New Orleans, spending lavishly. Upon their return to Atlanta, the couple take up residence in the bridal suite at the National Hotel while their new home on Peachtree Street is being constructed. Scarlett chooses a modern Swiss chalet style home like the one she saw in Harper's Weekly, and red wallpaper, thick red carpet and black walnut furniture for the interior. Rhett describes the house as an "architectural horror". Shortly after the Butlers move into their new home, the sardonic jabs between them turn into full-blown quarrels. Scarlett wonders why Rhett married her. Then "with real hate in her eyes" she tells Rhett she is going to have a baby, a baby she does not want. Wade is seven years old in 1869 when his sister, Eugenie Victoria, named after two queens, arrives in the world. She has blue eyes like Gerald O'Hara and Melanie gives her the nickname, "Bonnie Blue," in reference to the Bonnie Blue Flag of the Confederacy. When Scarlett is feeling well again, she makes a trip to the mill and talks to Ashley, who is alone in the office. In the conversation with him, she comes away believing Ashley still loves her and is jealous of her intimate relations with Rhett, which excites her. Scarlett returns home and tells Rhett she does not want more children. From then on, Scarlett and Rhett sleep in separate bedrooms, and when Bonnie is two years old, she sleeps in a little bed beside Rhett's bed (with the light on all night long because she is afraid of the dark). Rhett turns his attention towards Bonnie, dotes on her, spoils her, and worries about her reputation when she is older. Melanie is giving a surprise birthday party for Ashley. Scarlett goes to the mill to keep Ashley there until party time, a rare opportunity for Scarlett to see Ashley alone. When she sees him, she feels "sixteen again, a little breathless and excited." Ashley tells her how pretty she looks, and they reminisce about the days when they were young and talk about their lives now. Suddenly Scarlett's eyes fill with tears and Ashley holds her head against his chest. Then in the doorway of the office Ashley sees standing his sister, India Wilkes. Before the party has even begun rumors of an adulterous relationship between Ashley and Scarlett have started, and Rhett and Melanie have heard the gossip. Melanie refuses to accept any criticism of her sister in-law and India Wilkes is banished from the Wilkeses' home for it, causing a rift in the family. Rhett, more drunk than Scarlett has ever seen him, returns home the evening of the party long after Scarlett. His eyes are bloodshot and his mood is dark and violent. He enjoins Scarlett to drink with him. Not wanting Rhett to know she is fearful of him, Scarlett throws back a drink and gets up from her chair to go back to her bedroom. But Rhett stops her and pins her shoulders to the wall. Scarlett tells Rhett he is jealous of Ashley and Rhett accuses Scarlett of "crying for the moon" over Ashley. He tells Scarlett they could have been happy together saying, "for I loved you and I know you." Rhett then takes Scarlett in his arms and carries her up the stairs to her bedroom where passion envelops them. The following morning Rhett leaves town with Bonnie and Prissy and stays away for three months. Scarlett finds herself missing him, but she is still unsure if Rhett loves her, having told her so when he was drunk. She learns she is pregnant with her fourth child. On the day Rhett arrives home, Scarlett waits for him at the top of the stairs. She wonders if Rhett will kiss her, but to Scarlett's irritation, he does not. He tells her she looks pale. Scarlett tells him she is pale because she is pregnant. Rhett sarcastically asks her if the father is Ashley. She calls Rhett a cad and tells him no woman would want a baby of his. To which Rhett responds, "cheer up, maybe you'll have a miscarriage." At that comment, Scarlett lunges at Rhett, but he side steps and she tumbles backwards down the stairs. She is seriously ill for the first time in her life, having lost her child and broken her ribs. Rhett is remorseful, believing he has killed her. Sobbing and drunk, Rhett buries his head in Melanie's lap and confesses he had been a jealous cad. Scarlett, who is thin and pale, goes to Tara taking Wade and Ella with her, to regain her strength and vitality from "the green cotton fields of home." When she returns a healthy woman to Atlanta, she sells the mills to Ashley. She finds Rhett's attitude has noticeably changed. He is sober, kinder, polite and seemingly disinterested. Though she misses the old Rhett at times, Scarlett is content to leave well enough alone. Now Bonnie is four years old in 1873. A spirited and willful child, she has her father wrapped around her finger and giving into her every demand. Even Scarlett is jealous of the attention she gets from him. Rhett rides his horse around town with Bonnie in front of him, but the household mammy, "Mammy," insists it is not fitting for a girl to ride a horse with her dress flying up. Rhett heeds Mammy's words and buys Bonnie a Shetland pony, whom she names "Mr. Butler," and teaches her to ride sidesaddle. Then Rhett pays a boy named Wash twenty-five cents to teach Mr. Butler to jump over wood bars. When Mr. Butler is able to get his fat legs over a one foot high bar, Rhett puts Bonnie on the pony, and soon Mr. Butler is leaping bars and Aunt Melly's rose bushes. Wearing her blue velvet riding habit with a red feather in her black hat, Bonnie pleads with her father to raise the bar to one and a half feet. He gives in and raises the bar, warning her not to come crying to him if she falls. Bonnie yells to her Mother, "Watch me take this one!" The pony gallops towards the wood bar, but trips over it splintering the wood. Mr. Butler tumbles to the ground then scrambles to his feet and trots off with an empty saddle. Little Miss "Bonnie Blue" Butler is dead. In the dark days and months following Bonnie's death, Rhett is often drunk and disheveled, while Scarlett, though deeply grieved also, seems to hold up under the strain. With the untimely death of Melanie Wilkes a short time later, Rhett decides he only wants the calm dignity of the genial South he once knew in his youth and he leaves Atlanta to find it. Meanwhile, Scarlett dreams of love that has eluded her for so long. However, she still has Tara and is determined to win Rhett back, and "tomorrow is another day."
13535	/m/03j5j	Heart of Darkness	Joseph Conrad	1899	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 'Heart of Darkness' opens in first person narrative; our narrator establishes the setting aboard a sailboat, "The Nellie, a cruising yawl," anchored in the Thames River near Gravesend (England). It is somewhat hazy and late in the day. Aboard are four others: the Director of Companies (the captain), the Lawyer ("the best of old fellows"), the Accountant (toying architecturally with dominoes), and Marlow (Charlie Marlow) - all share "the bond of the sea" but Marlow is the only one that still "followed the sea" - they are waiting for the tide waters to turn. Some undefined conversation is shared lazily, the sun sets; then Marlow states how their location also "has been one of the dark places of the earth." Marlow continues describing the trials and tribulations that must have been encountered by the first Romans who made their way to England; how mysterious and incomprehensible the place must have seemed to them. He also explains how brutal and unscrupulous these Romans must have been: "They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force" - After some silence, Marlow abruptly starts up again saying, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit." Marlow introduces the events that led to his appointment to captain a river-steamboat for an ivory trading company. He describes his passage on ships to the wilderness - to the Company's station, which strikes Marlow as a scene of devastation: "amongst a waste of excavations" - disorganized, machinery parts here and there, now and then explosions of demolition, weakened native black men, that have been demoralized, in chains, literally being worked to death, and strolling behind them a white Company man in a uniform carrying a rifle. Marlow remarks on these Company men: "I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther." At this station Marlow meets the Company's chief accountant, who's dressed in "unexpected elegance" - "Everything else in the station was in a muddle" - Marlow first hears of a Mr. Kurtz from the chief accountant, who explains that Kurtz is a first-class agent, and later adds: "'He will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above—the Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be.'" Marlow leaves that station with a caravan to travel on foot some two hundred miles deeper into the wilderness - to the Central Station, where his steamboat is based - the steamer he is to captain. Upon arrival at the Central Station: "the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show." Marlow is shocked to learn that his steamboat had been wrecked two days before his arrival. The manager explains to Marlow that they couldn't wait, and needed to take the steamboat up-river because of "rumours that a very important station was in jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill." Marlow describes that the manager "inspired uneasiness" - "just uneasiness—nothing more" - Along with the manager, Marlow describes the other Company men at this station as lazy back-biting "pilgrims" - fraught with envy and jealousy. All trying to better position themselves in a way to acquire a higher status within the Company, which in turn, would carry more personal profit; but sought after such goals in a meaningless ineffective lazy manner, mixed with a sense that they were all merely waiting, while trying to stay out of harm's way. After fishing his command out of the river, frustrations are met during the months spent on repairs. During this time, Marlow learns that at this station Mr. Kurtz is far from being admired, but instead, more or less, Kurtz is resented (mostly by the manager). Not only is Kurtz's position at the Inner Station a highly envied position, but sentiment seems to be that Kurtz is not deserving of it, as Kurtz only received the appointment by his connections back in Europe. Once ready and underway, the journey up-river to the Inner Station, Kurtz's station, takes two months - to the day. On board was the manager, three or four "pilgrims" and about twenty "cannibals" that were enlisted to crew the steamer. Marlow describes the brooding wilderness, in all its glory, and in all its mystery. Here and there would be a Company post where Company agents seemed imprisoned, captive by the business of ivory; now and then on shore an occasional native village would be seen, with a frenzied uproar by the natives. Marlow expresses a greater enthusiasm towards the idea of meeting Kurtz - but things become more tense as they get closer to his station. They come to rest for the night about eight miles below the Inner Station. In the morning they awake only to find that they are immersed within a thick white fog. From the river bank they hear a very loud cry, followed by a complaining clamour in savage discords: "It culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive shrieking, which stopped short" - "The sheer unexpectedness of it made my hair stir under my cap." Many wondered if there would be an attack. But it was not until a few hours onwards, while safe navigation was becoming increasingly difficult, that the steamboat was hit with a barrage of sticks - little arrows, everywhere - aimed at the steamboat from the wilderness on shore. The little arrows "looked as though they wouldn't kill a cat" - The pilgrims with their Winchesters had opened fire into the bush. The native who had been serving as helmsman, gave up steering to pick up a rifle and shoot it. Marlow grabs the wheel to avoid snags in the river. The helmsman fell at Marlow's feet clutching a shaft of a spear, which had entered his body just below the ribs. Marlow began to screech the steam whistle repeatedly; "the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang out sharply—then silence" - A pilgrim in "pink pyjamas" arrives at the pilot-house, and is shocked to see the dying helmsman. They watch the helmsman die with an inexplicable expression on his face. Marlow forces the pilgrim in "pink pyjamas" to take the wheel so that he can shed his blood soaked shoes, and while flinging the pair overboard, he is hit with a rush of thoughts; thinking he would never have a chance to hear Kurtz talk, as he is most likely dead - then submits: "Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than enough." Marlow makes a vague mention of a girl, whom later Kurtz will refer to as "My Intended" (his fiancée): "You should have heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh, yes, I heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—' everything belonged to him." Marlow reflects more on Kurtz: "His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz" - "I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had entrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence" - "There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me to take good care of 'my pamphlet' (he called it), as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career." After reflecting more on Kurtz, Marlow states "I can't forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman awfully" - "don't you see, he had done something, he had steered" - "and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken." After putting on a pair of slippers, Marlow returned to the pilot-house and resumed steering. By this time the manager is there, and expresses a strong desire to turn back - right at the moment that the Inner Station comes into view. At Kurtz's station Marlow sees a man on the river-bank waving his arm, urging them to land. Because of his expressions, gestures, and all the colorful patches on his clothing, the man reminds Marlow of a harlequin. The pilgrims, heavily armed, escort the manager on shore to retrieve Mr. Kurtz. The harlequin-like chap boards the steamboat. It turns out the man is Russian, and he is a mere wanderer; who just happened to wander into Kurtz's camp: "He rattled away at such a rate he quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that such was the case. 'Don't you talk with Mr. Kurtz?' I said. 'You don't talk with that man—you listen to him,' he exclaimed with severe exaltation." - "'I tell you,' he cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.'" Through conversation Marlow discovers just how wanton Kurtz could be, how the natives worshiped Kurtz, and how very ill Kurtz has been of late. The concerned harlequin-like Russian admires Mr. Kurtz for his intellect - for his insights - into love, life, and justice. The Russian seems to even admire Kurtz for his power - and his willingness to use it. Marlow suggests that Kurtz has gone mad, and the Russian "protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz couldn't be mad. If I had heard him talk, only two days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at such a thing." From the steamboat, through a glass (telescope) Marlow can observe details of the station, and is surprised suddenly to see near the station house a row of posts with decapitated heads of natives mounted atop of each. Around the corner of the house the manager with the pilgrims appeared, bearing Kurtz on an improvised stretcher. The area then filled with natives, who appeared to be ready for battle. The Russian stated: "'Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for'" - On the stretcher Marlow could see Kurtz shouting. The pilgrims carried Kurtz to the steamer and laid him down in one of the little cabins. A gorgeous native woman, with a desperate aspect, walked in measured steps along the shore and stopped right next to the steamer. She raised her arms above her head - then "turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into the bushes." From the steamboat's cabin Kurtz was placed in, he is heard yelling at the manager: "'Save me!—save the ivory, you mean. Don't tell me. Save me! Why, I've had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you would like to believe.'" The manager walks out of the cabin, and spoke with Marlow about "unsound methods" and Marlow puts forward the notion: "No method at all" - After some more words the manager gives Marlow a heavy glance, then leaves. The Russian mentions "'matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.'" - Marlow replied to the Russian: "'Mr. Kurtz's reputation is safe with me.'" - He informed Marlow "that it was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made on the steamer" - The harlequin-like Russian refers to a canoe waiting for him, and adds: "'Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetry—his own, too, it was, he told me. Poetry!' He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my mind!' 'Good-bye,' said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night." Later, after midnight, Marlow discovers that Kurtz has left his cabin - he has left the steamer, and has returned to shore. Marlow goes ashore and finds Kurtz in a very weak state making his way back to his station - but not so weak, as he can still call out to the natives. Marlow appreciates the serious situation he is in, and when Kurtz begins a threatening tone, Marlow interjects that his "success in Europe is assured in any case" - Kurtz agrees to allow Marlow to help him back to the steamer. The next day they prepare for their departure. They carried Kurtz to the pilot-house: "there was more air there" - The natives once again assembled on shore, and the native woman returned - they all began to shout. Marlow saw the pilgrims getting their rifles ready - so he screeched the steam whistle time after time to scatter the crowd on shore. Only the woman remained unmoved, with outstretched arms. The pilgrims opened fire. The current was swift as they headed downstream. Kurtz's health was worsening. Marlow himself is becoming increasingly ill. The steamboat broke down and repairs needed to be made. Kurtz gives Marlow a packet of papers with a photograph because of his dislike and mistrust of the manager. While ill, Marlow continued to make the repairs to the steamer: "I toiled wearily in a wretched scrap-heap—unless I had the shakes too bad to stand." He did not have much time for Kurtz: "One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.' The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, 'Oh, nonsense!' and stood over him as if transfixed." As Kurtz dies, Marlow hears him whisper, in no more than a breath: "'The horror! The horror!'" Marlow blew out the candle, and tries to act like nothing has happened when he joins the other pilgrims, who were all in the mess-room dining with the manager. In a short while, the "manager's boy" appears and announces in a scathing tone: "'Mistah Kurtz—he dead.'" - Next day Marlow pays little attention to the pilgrims as they bury "something" in a muddy hole. "And then they very nearly buried me" - Marlow falls very sick, near death himself: "I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine" - "I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better" - "He had summed up—he had judged. 'The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth—the strange commingling of desire and hate" - "he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry—much better." Upon Marlow's return to Europe he seems embittered. The everyday life of the Europeans seem to be something a sham - like some sort of hoax. Eventually Marlow took care of the bundle of papers Kurtz had entrusted to him. To a clean-shaven man who had an official manner, Marlow gave the paper entitled 'Suppression of Savage Customs' - "with the postscriptum torn off" - To another, who claims to be Kurtz's cousin, Marlow gave family letters and memoranda of no importance. To a journalist he gave a Report for publication, if the journalist saw fit. Finally Marlow was left with some personal letters and the photograph of the girl's portrait - Kurtz's fiancée, his intended. At her door, even before Marlow entered her house, memories of Kurtz began to flow, along with the final words that he whispered. The girl came forward, dressed in black, and met Marlow in a drawing-room. Although it has been more than a year since Kurtz died, she was still in mourning. It was late, and the room was growing darker. The final words of Kurtz's seemed to echo in the room with the girl. Marlow envisioned them together: "I saw her and him in the same instant of time—his death and her sorrow—I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death." She presses Marlow for information, ultimately asking him to repeat the final words Kurtz had spoken. Being very uncomfortable Marlow tells her that the final words that Kurtz pronounce was her name. Marlow was surprised by her reaction: "I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. 'I knew it—I was sure!'... She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping" - "I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn't he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether...." Then Marlow and his listeners were silent; our first narrator explains: "Nobody moved for a time. 'We have lost the first of the ebb,' said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness."
13554	/m/03j9w	Hamlet	William Shakespeare			 The protagonist of Hamlet is Prince Hamlet of Denmark, son of deceased King Hamlet and his wife, Queen Gertrude. The story opens on a chilly night at Elsinore, the Danish royal castle. Francisco, one of the sentinels, is relieved of his watch by Bernardo, another sentinel, and exits while Bernardo remains. A third sentinel, Marcellus, enters with Horatio, Hamlet's best friend. The sentinels inform Horatio that they have seen a ghost that looks like the dead King Hamlet. After hearing from Horatio of the Ghost's appearance, Hamlet resolves to see the Ghost himself. That night, the Ghost appears again. It leads Hamlet to a secluded place, claims that it is the actual spirit of his father, and discloses that he—the elder Hamlet—was murdered by his brother Claudius pouring poison in his ear. The Ghost demands that Hamlet avenge him; Hamlet agrees, swears his companions to secrecy, and tells them he intends to "put an antic disposition on" (presumably to avert suspicion). Hamlet initially attests to the ghost's reliability, calling him both an "honest ghost" and "truepenny." Later, however, he expresses doubts about the ghost's nature and intent, claiming these as reasons for his inaction. Polonius is Claudius's trusted chief counsellor and friend; Polonius's son, Laertes, is returning to France, and Polonius's daughter, Ophelia, is courted by Hamlet. Both Polonius and Laertes warn Ophelia that Hamlet is surely not serious about her. Shortly afterward, Ophelia is alarmed by Hamlet's strange behaviour, reporting to her father that Hamlet rushed into her room, stared at her, and said nothing. Polonius assumes that the "ecstasy of love" is responsible for Hamlet's "mad" behaviour, and he informs Claudius and Gertrude. Perturbed by Hamlet's continuing deep mourning for his father and his increasingly erratic behaviour, Claudius sends for two of Hamlet's acquaintances—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—to find out the cause of Hamlet's changed behaviour. Hamlet greets his friends warmly but quickly discerns that they have been sent to spy on him. Together, Claudius and Polonius convince Ophelia to speak with Hamlet while they secretly listen. Hamlet enters, contemplating suicide (To be, or not to be). Ophelia greets him, and offers to return his remembrances, upon which Hamlet questions her honesty and furiously rants at her to "get thee to a nunnery." Hamlet remains uncertain whether the Ghost has told him the truth, but the arrival of a troupe of actors at Elsinore presents him with a solution. He will have them stage a play, The Murder of Gonzago, re-enacting his father's murder and determine Claudius's guilt or innocence by studying his reaction to it. The court assembles to watch the play; Hamlet provides an agitated running commentary throughout. When the murder scene is presented, Claudius abruptly rises and leaves the room, which Hamlet sees as proof of his uncle's guilt. Gertrude summons Hamlet to her closet to demand an explanation. On his way, Hamlet passes Claudius in prayer, but hesitates to kill him, reasoning that death in prayer would send him to heaven. However, it is revealed that the King is not truly praying, remarking that "words" never made it to heaven without "thoughts." An argument erupts between Hamlet and Gertrude. Polonius, spying on the scene from behind an arras and convinced that the prince's madness is indeed real, panics when it seems as if Hamlet is about to murder the Queen and cries out for help. Hamlet, believing it is Claudius hiding behind the arras, stabs wildly through the cloth, killing Polonius. When he realises that he has killed Ophelia's father, he is not remorseful, but calls Polonius "Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool." The Ghost appears, urging Hamlet to treat Gertrude gently, but reminding him to kill Claudius. Unable to see or hear the Ghost herself, Gertrude takes Hamlet's conversation with it as further evidence of madness. Claudius, now fearing for his life, finds a legitimate excuse to get rid of the prince: he sends Hamlet to England on a diplomatic pretext, accompanied (and closely watched) by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Alone, Claudius discloses that he is actually sending Hamlet to his death. Prior to embarking for England, Hamlet hides Polonius's body, ultimately revealing its location to the King. Upon leaving Elsinore, Hamlet encounters the army of Prince Fortinbras en route to do battle in Poland. Upon witnessing so many men going to their death on the brash whim of an impulsive prince, Hamlet declares, "O, from this time forth, / My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!" At Elsinore, further demented by grief at her father Polonius's death, Ophelia wanders the castle, acting erratically and singing bawdy songs. Her brother, Laertes, returns from France, horrified by his father's death and his sister's madness. She appears briefly to give out herbs and flowers. Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is solely responsible; then news arrives that Hamlet is still alive—a story is spread that his ship was attacked by pirates on the way to England, and he has returned to Denmark. Claudius swiftly concocts a plot to kill his nephew but make it appear to be an accident, taking all of the blame off his shoulders. Knowing of Hamlet's jealousy of Laertes' prowess with a sword, he proposes a fencing match between the two. Laertes, enraged at the murder of his father, informs the king that he will further poison the tip of his sword so that a mere scratch would mean certain death. Claudius, unsure that capable Hamlet could receive even a scratch, plans to offer Hamlet poisoned wine if that fails. Gertrude enters to report that Ophelia has drowned. In the Elsinore churchyard, two "clowns", typically represented as "gravediggers," enter to prepare Ophelia's grave, and although the coroner has ruled her death accidental so that she may receive Christian burial, they argue that it was a case of suicide. Hamlet arrives with Horatio and banters with one of them, who unearths the skull of a jester whom Hamlet once knew, Yorick ("Alas, Poor Yorick; I knew him, Horatio."). Ophelia's funeral procession approaches, led by her mournful brother Laertes. Distraught at the lack of ceremony (due to the actually-deemed suicide) and overcome by emotion, Laertes leaps into the grave, cursing Hamlet as the cause of her death. Hamlet interrupts, professing his own love and grief for Ophelia. He and Laertes grapple, but the fight is broken up by Claudius and Gertrude. Claudius reminds Laertes of the planned fencing match. Later that day, Hamlet tells Horatio how he escaped death on his journey, disclosing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been sent to their deaths instead. A courtier, Osric, interrupts to invite Hamlet to fence with Laertes. Despite Horatio's warnings, Hamlet accepts and the match begins. After several rounds, Gertrude toasts Hamlet—against the urgent warning of Claudius—accidentally drinking the wine he poisoned. Between bouts, Laertes attacks and pierces Hamlet with his poisoned blade; in the ensuing scuffle, Hamlet is able to use Laertes's own poisoned sword against him. Gertrude falls and, in her dying breath, announces that she has been poisoned. In his dying moments, Laertes is reconciled with Hamlet and reveals Claudius's murderous plot. Hamlet stabs Claudius with the poisoned sword, and then forces him to drink from his own poisoned cup to make sure he dies. In his final moments, Hamlet names Prince Fortinbras of Norway as the probable heir to the throne, since the Danish kingship is an elected position, with the country's nobles having the final say. Horatio attempts to kill himself with the same poisoned wine but is stopped by Hamlet, so he will be the only one left alive to give a full account of the story. When Fortinbras arrives to greet King Claudius, he encounters the deadly scene: Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes, and Hamlet are all dead. Horatio asks to be allowed to recount the tale to "the yet unknowing world," and Fortinbras orders Hamlet's body borne off in honour.
13871	/m/03lvx	Heretics of Dune	Frank Herbert	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Much has changed in the millennium and a half since the death of the God Emperor. Sandworms have reappeared on Arrakis (now called Rakis) and renewed the flow of the all-important spice melange to the galaxy. With Leto's death, a hugely complex economic system built on spice collapsed, resulting in trillions leaving known space in a great Scattering. A new civilization has risen, with three dominant powers: the Ixians, whose no-ships are capable of piloting between the stars and are invisible to outside detection; the Bene Tleilax, who have learned to manufacture spice in their axlotl tanks and have created a new breed of Face Dancers; and the Bene Gesserit, a matriarchal order of subtle political manipulators who possess superhuman abilities. However, people from the Scattering are returning with their own peculiar powers. The most powerful of these forces are the Honored Matres, a violent society of women bred and trained for combat and the sexual control of men. On Rakis, a girl called Sheeana has been discovered who can control the giant worms. The Bene Gesserit intends to use a Tleilaxu-provided Duncan Idaho ghola to gain control of this sandrider, and the religious forces of mankind who they know will ultimately worship her. The Sisterhood have subtly been altering the gholas to bring their physical reflexes up to modern standards. The Bene Gesserit leader, Mother Superior Taraza, brings Miles Teg to guard the new Idaho. Taraza also sends Reverend Mother Darwi Odrade to take command of the Bene Gesserit keep on Rakis. Odrade is a loose cannon; she does not obey normal Bene Gesserit prohibitions about love, and is also Teg's biological daughter. Bene Gesserit Imprinter Lucilla is also sent by Taraza to bind Idaho's loyalty to the Sisterhood with her sexual talents. However, Lucilla must deal with Reverend Mother Schwangyu, head of the ghola project but also the leader of a faction within the Bene Gesserit who feel gholas are a danger. Above the planet Gammu, Taraza is captured and held hostage by the Honored Matres aboard an Ixian no-ship. The Honored Matres insist Taraza invite Teg to the ship, hoping to gain control of the ghola project. Teg manages to turn the tables on the Matres, and rescues the Mother Superior and her party. An attack is then made on Sheeana on Rakis, which is prevented by the intervention of the Bene Gesserit. Odrade starts training Sheeana as a Bene Gesserit. At about the same time an attempt is made on the life of Idaho, but Teg is able to defeat it. Teg flees with Duncan and Lucilla into the countryside. In an ancient Harkonnen no-globe, Teg proceeds to awaken Idaho's original memories, but does so before Lucilla can imprint Duncan and thus tie him to the Sisterhood. In the meantime, Taraza has been searching for Teg and his party, and finally establishes contact. During the operation, however, Teg and his companions are ambushed. Teg is captured while Lucilla and Duncan escape. Teg is tortured by a T-Probe, but under pressure discovers a new ability: he is able to speed up his physical and mental reactions, which enables him to escape. At the same time, Idaho is ambushed and taken hostage. Taraza arranges a meeting with the Tleilaxu Master Waff, who is soon forced to tell her what he knows about the Honored Matres. When pressed on the issue of Idaho, he also admits that the Bene Tleilax have conditioned their own agenda into him. As the meeting draws to a close, Taraza accidentally divines that Waff is a Zensunni, giving the Bene Gesserit a lever to understand their ancient competitor. She and Odrade meet Waff again on Rakis. He tries to assassinate Taraza but Odrade convinces him that the Sisterhood shares the religious beliefs of the Bene Tleilax. Taraza offers full alliance with them against the onslaught of forces out of the Scattering. This agreement causes consternation among the Bene Gesserit, but Odrade realizes that Taraza's plan is to destroy Rakis. By destroying the planet, the Bene Gesserit would be dependent on the Tleilaxu for the spice, ensuring an alliance. Lucilla arrives at a Bene Gesserit safe house to discover it has been taken over by Honored Matres, who have Idaho as their captive. As Lucilla infiltrates it, the young Honored Matre Murbella proceeds to seduce the captured Idaho with the Honored Matre imprinting method. However, hidden Tleilaxu conditioning kicks in, and Duncan responds with an equal technique, one that overwhelms Murbella. Lucilla takes advantage of Murbella's exhaustion to knock her unconscious and rescue Duncan. The Honored Matres attack Rakis, killing Taraza. Odrade becomes temporary leader of the Bene Gesserit before escaping with Sheeana into the desert on a worm. Teg also goes to a supposed safe house, only to discover the Honored Matres. He unleashes himself upon the complex, before capturing a no-ship and locating Duncan and Lucilla. They and the captured Murbella are taken to Rakis with him. When they arrive, Teg finds Odrade and Sheeana and their giant worm. He loads them all up in his no-ship, finally leading his troops out on a last suicidal defense of Rakis, designed to attract the rage of the Honored Matres. The Honored Matres attack Rakis, destroying the planet and the sandworms except for the one the Bene Gesserit escape with. They drown the worm in a mixture of water and spice, turning it into sandtrout which will turn the secret Bene Gesserit planet Chapterhouse into another Dune.
14311	/m/03q5b	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain	1884	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The story begins in fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri, on the shore of the Mississippi River, sometime between 1835 (when the first steamboat sailed down the Mississippi) and 1845. Two young boys, Thomas "Tom" Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, have each come into a considerable sum of money as a result of their earlier adventures (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Huck has been placed under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, together with her sister, Miss Watson, is attempting to civilize him. Huck appreciates their efforts, but finds civilized life confining. His spirits are raised somewhat when Tom Sawyer helps him to escape one night past Miss Watson's slave Jim, to meet up with his gang of self-proclaimed "robbers". However, when the gang's exploits turn out to be nothing worse than disrupting Sunday School outings and stealing paltry items like hymn books (which the Sunday School teacher forces them to return anyway), Huck is again downcast. However, his life is changed by the sudden reappearance of his shiftless father "Pap", an abusive parent and drunkard. Although Huck is successful in preventing him from acquiring his fortune (he gives all 6,000 dollars to Judge Thatcher), Pap forcibly gains custody of him and moves him to his backwoods cabin. Though Huck prefers this to his life with the widow, he resents his father's drunken violence and his habit of keeping him locked inside the cabin. During one of his father's absences Huck escapes, elaborately fakes his own murder, and sets off down the Mississippi River. While living quite comfortably in the wilderness along the Mississippi, Huck encounters Miss Watson's slave Jim on an island called Jackson's Island. Huck learns that Jim has also run away after he overheard Miss Watson's plan to sell Jim downriver, where conditions for slaves were even harsher, because he would bring a price of $800. Jim is trying to make his way to Cairo, Illinois, and then to Ohio, a free state, so that he can buy his family's freedom. At first, Huck is conflicted over whether to tell someone about Jim's running away, but as they travel together and talk in depth, Huck begins to know more about Jim's past and his difficult life. As these conversations continue, Huck begins to change his opinion about people, slavery, and life in general. This continues throughout the rest of the novel. Huck and Jim take up in a cavern on a hill on Jackson's Island to wait out a storm. When they can, they scrounge around the river looking for food, wood, and other items. One night, they find a raft they will eventually use to travel down the Mississippi. Later, they find an entire house floating down the river and enter it to grab what they can. Entering one room, Jim finds a man lying dead on the floor, shot in the back while apparently trying to ransack the house. Jim refuses to let Huck see the man's face. To find out the latest news in the area, Huck dresses as a girl and goes into town. He enters the house of a woman new to the area, thinking she will not recognize him. Huck learns from her that opinion is divided about the "murder": while some believe Pap has killed his son in order to inherit his fortune, others blame the runaway Jim. Either way there is a $300 reward for Jim's capture, and a manhunt is already underway, including her husband and another man. The men are going to Jackson's Island at night with a gun. The woman becomes suspicious when Huck threads a needle incorrectly, and her suspicions are confirmed after she puts Huck through a series of tests. Having tricked him into revealing he is a boy, she nevertheless allows him to leave her home, believing him to be a mistreated apprentice on the run. Huck returns quickly to the island where he tells Jim of the impending danger. The two immediately load up the raft and leave the islands. Huck and Jim's raft is swamped by a passing steamship, separating the two. Huck is given shelter by the Grangerfords, a prosperous local family. He becomes friends with Buck Grangerford, a boy about his age, and learns that the Grangerfords are engaged in a 30-year blood feud against another family, the Shepherdsons. The Grangerfords and Shepherdsons go to church. Both families bring guns to continue the show, despite the church's preachings on brotherly love. The vendetta comes to a head when Buck's sister, Sophia Grangerford, elopes with Harney Shepherdson. In the resulting conflict, all the Grangerford males from this branch of the family are shot and killed, although Grangerfords elsewhere survive to carry on the feud. Upon seeing Buck's corpse, Huck is too devastated to write about everything that happened. However, Huck does describe how he narrowly avoids his own death in the gunfight, later reuniting with Jim and the raft and together fleeing farther south on the Mississippi River. Further down the river, Jim and Huck rescue two cunning grifters, who join Huck and Jim on the raft. The younger of the two swindlers, a man of about thirty, introduces himself as a son of an English duke (the Duke of Bridgewater) and his father's rightful successor. The older one, about seventy, then trumps the Duke's claim by alleging that he is the Lost Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI and rightful King of France. He continually mispronounces the duke's title as "Bilgewater" in conversation. The Duke and the King then join Jim and Huck on the raft, committing a series of confidence schemes on the way south. To allow for Jim's presence, they print fake bills for an escaped slave; and later they paint him up entirely in blue and call him the "Sick Arab". On one occasion they arrive in a town and advertise a three-night engagement of a play which they call "The Royal Nonesuch". The play turns out to be only a couple of minutes of hysterical cavorting, not worth anywhere near the 50 cents the townsmen were charged to see it. On the afternoon of the first performance, a drunk called Boggs arrives in town and makes a nuisance of himself by going around threatening a southern gentleman by the name of Colonel Sherburn. Sherburn comes out and warns Boggs that he can continue threatening him up until exactly one o'clock. At one o'clock, Boggs continues and Colonel Sherburn kills him. Somebody in the crowd, whom Sherburn later identifies as Buck Harkness, cries out that Sherburn should be lynched. They all head up to Colonel Sherburn's gate, where they are met by Sherburn, who is standing on his porch carrying a loaded shotgun and his three legged dalmatian. He causes them to back down, by making a defiant speech telling them about the essential cowardice of "Southern justice". The only lynching to be done here, says Sherburn, will be in the dark, by men wearing masks. By the third night of "The Royal Nonesuch", the townspeople are ready to take their revenge; but the Duke and the King have already skipped town, and together with Huck and Jim, they continue down the river. Once they are far enough away, the two grifters test the next town, and decide to impersonate two brothers of Peter Wilks, a recently deceased man of property. Using an absurd English accent, the King manages to convince nearly all the townspeople that he is one of the brothers, a preacher just arrived from England, while the Duke pretends to be a deaf-mute to match accounts of the other brother. One man in town is certain that they are a fraud and confronts them on the matter, but the crowd refuses to support him. Afterwards, the Duke, out of fear, suggests to the King that they should cut and run. The King boldly states his intention to continue to liquidate Wilks' estate, saying, "Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" Huck likes Wilks' daughters, who treat him with kindness and courtesy, so he tries to thwart the grifters' plans by stealing back the inheritance money. When he is in danger of being discovered, he has to hide it in Wilks' coffin, which is buried the next morning without Huck knowing whether the money has been found or not. The arrival of two new men who seem to be the real brothers throws everything into confusion when none of their signatures match the one on record. (The deaf-mute brother, who is said to do the correspondence, has his arm in a sling and cannot currently write.) The townspeople devise a test, which requires digging up the coffin to check. When the money is found in Wilks' coffin, the Duke and the King are able to escape in the confusion. They manage to rejoin Huck and Jim on the raft to Huck's despair, since he had thought he had escaped them. After the four fugitives have drifted far enough from the town, the King takes advantage of Huck's temporary absence to sell his interest in the "escaped" slave Jim for forty dollars. Outraged by this betrayal, Huck rejects the advice of his "conscience", which continues to tell him that in helping Jim escape to freedom, he is stealing Miss Watson's property. Accepting that-"All right, then, I'll go to hell!"-Huck resolves to free Jim. Jim is being held at the plantation of Silas and Sally Phelps. In a surprise twist, they are revealed to be Tom Sawyer's aunt and uncle. Since Tom is expected for a visit, Huck is mistaken for Tom. He plays along, hoping to find Jim's location and free him. When Huck intercepts Tom on the road and tells him everything, Tom decides to join Huck's scheme, pretending to be his own younger half-brother Sid. Jim has also told the household about the two grifters and the new plan for "The Royal Nonesuch," so this time the townspeople are ready for them. The Duke and King are captured by the townspeople, and are tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. Rather than simply sneaking Jim out of the shed where he is being held, Tom develops an elaborate plan to free him, involving secret messages, hidden tunnels, a rope ladder sent in Jim's food, and other elements from popular novels, including a note to the Phelps warning them of a gang planning to steal their runaway slave. During the resulting pursuit, Tom is shot in the leg. Jim remains with him rather than completing his escape, risking recapture. Huck has long known Jim was "white on the inside". Although the doctor admires Jim's decency, he betrays him to a passing skiff, and Jim is captured while sleeping and returned to the Phelps family. After Jim's recapture, events quickly resolve themselves. Tom's Aunt Polly arrives and reveals Huck and Tom's true identities. Tom announces that Jim is a free man; Miss Watson died two months earlier and freed Jim in her will, but Tom chose not to reveal Jim's freedom so he could come up with an elaborate plan to rescue Jim. Jim tells Huck that Huck's father has been dead for some time (he was the dead man they found in the floating house) and that Huck may return safely to St. Petersburg. In the final narrative, Huck declares that he is quite glad to be done writing his story, and despite Sally's plans to adopt and "civilize" him, Huck intends to flee west to Indian Territory.
15055	/m/03wqm	Ivanhoe	Walter Scott	1819	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Wilfred of Ivanhoe is disinherited by his father Cedric of Rotherwood for supporting the Norman King Richard and for falling in love with the Lady Rowena, Cedric's ward and a descendant of the Saxon Kings of England. Cedric had planned to marry her to the powerful Lord Aethelstane, pretender to the Crown of England through his descent from the last Saxon King, Harold Godwinson, thus cementing a Saxon political alliance between two rivals for the same claim. Ivanhoe accompanies King Richard on the Crusades, where he is said to have played a notable role in the Siege of Acre. The book opens with a scene of Norman knights and prelates seeking the hospitality of Cedric. They are guided there by a palmer, who has recently returned from the Holy Land. The same night, seeking refuge from inclement weather and bandits, Isaac of York, a Jewish moneylender, arrives at Rotherwood. Following the night's meal, the palmer observes one of the Normans, the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, issue orders to his Saracen soldiers to follow Isaac of York after he leaves Rotherwood in the morning and relieve him of his possessions. The palmer then warns the moneylender of his peril and assists in his escape from Rotherwood. The swineherd Gurth refuses to open the gates until the palmer whispers a few words in his ear, which turns Gurth as helpful as he was recalcitrant earlier. This is but one of the many mysterious incidents that occur throughout the book. Isaac of York offers to repay his debt to the palmer by offering him a suit of armour and a war horse to participate in the tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where he was bound. His offer is made on the surmise that the palmer was in reality a knight, York having observed his knight's chain and spurs (a fact that he mentions to the palmer). The palmer is taken by surprise but accepts the offer. The story then moves to the scene of the tournament, which is presided over by Prince John, King Richard's younger brother. Other characters in attendance are Cedric, Aethelstane, Lady Rowena, Isaac of York, his daughter Rebecca, Robin of Locksley and his men, Prince John's advisor Waldemar Fitzurse, and numerous Norman knights. On the first day of the tournament, a bout of individual jousting, a mysterious masked knight, identifying himself only as "Desdichado" (which is described in the book as Spanish for the "Disinherited One", though actually meaning "Unfortunate"), makes his appearance and manages to defeat some of the best Norman lances, including Bois-Guilbert, Maurice de Bracy, a leader of a group of "Free Companions" (mercenary knights), and the baron Reginald Front-de-Boeuf. The masked knight declines to reveal himself despite Prince John's request, but is nevertheless declared the champion of the day and is permitted to choose the Queen of the Tournament. He bestows this honour upon the Lady Rowena. On the second day, which is a melée, Desdichado is chosen to be leader of one party. Most of the leading knights of the realm, however, flock to the opposite standard under which Desdichado's vanquished opponents fought. Desdichado's side is soon hard pressed and he himself beset by multiple foes, when a knight who had until then taken no part in the battle, thus earning the sobriquet Le Noir Faineant (or the Black Sluggard), rides to Desdichado's rescue. The rescuing knight, having evened the odds by his action, then slips away. Though Desdichado was instrumental in the victory, Prince John, being displeased with his behaviour of the previous day, wishes to bestow his accolades on the vanished Black Knight. Since the latter has departed, he is forced to declare Desdichado the champion. At this point, being forced to unmask himself to receive his coronet, Desdichado is revealed to be Wilfred of Ivanhoe himself, returned from the Crusades. This causes much consternation to Prince John and his court who now fear the imminent return of King Richard. Because he is severely wounded in the competition and because Cedric refuses to have anything to do with him, Ivanhoe is taken into the care of Rebecca, the beautiful daughter of Isaac, who is a skilled healer. She convinces her father to take him with them to York, where he may be best treated. The story then goes over the conclusion of the tournament including feats of archery by Locksley. Meanwhile, de Bracy finds himself infatuated with the Lady Rowena and, with his companions-in-arms, makes plans to abduct her. In the forests between Ashby and York, the Lady Rowena, Cedric, and Aethelstane encounter Isaac, Rebecca, and the wounded Ivanhoe, who had been abandoned by their servants for fear of bandits. The Lady Rowena, in response to the requests of Isaac and Rebecca, urges Cedric to take the group under his protection to York. Cedric, unaware that the wounded man is Ivanhoe, agrees. En route, the party is captured by de Bracy and his companions and taken to Torquilstone, the castle of Front-de-Boeuf. However, the swineherd Gurth, who had run away from Rotherwood to serve Ivanhoe as squire at the tournament and who was recaptured by Cedric when Ivanhoe was identified, manages to escape. The Black Knight, having taken refuge for the night in the hut of a local friar, the Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst, volunteers his assistance on learning about the captives from Robin of Locksley, who had come to rouse the friar for an attempt to free them. They then besiege the Castle of Torquilstone with Robin's own men, including the friar and assorted Saxon yeomen whom they had manage to raise due to the hatred of Front-de-Boeuf and his neighbour, Philip de Malvoisin. At Torquilstone, de Bracy expresses his love for the Lady Rowena, but is refused. In the meantime, de Bois-Guilbert, who had accompanied de Bracy on the raid, takes Rebecca for his captive, and tries to force his attentions on her, which are rebuffed. Front-de-Boeuf, in the meantime, tries to wring a hefty ransom, by torture, from Isaac of York. However, Isaac refuses to pay a farthing unless his daughter is freed from her Templar captor. When the besiegers deliver a note to yield up the captives, their Norman captors retort with a message for a priest to administer the Final Sacrament to the captives. It is then that Cedric's jester Wamba slips in disguised as a priest, and takes the place of Cedric, who then escapes and brings important information to the besiegers on the strength of the garrison and its layout. Then follows an account of the storming of the castle. Front-de-Boeuf is killed while de Bracy surrenders to the Black Knight, who identifies himself as King Richard. Showing mercy, he releases de Bracy. De Bois-Guilbert escapes with Rebecca while Isaac is released from his underground dungeon by the Clerk of Copmanhurst. The Lady Rowena is saved by Cedric, while the still-wounded Ivanhoe is rescued from the burning castle by King Richard. In the fighting, Aethelstane is wounded while attempting to rescue Rebecca, whom he mistakes for Rowena. Following the battle, Locksley plays host to King Richard. Word is also conveyed by de Bracy to Prince John of the King's return and the fall of Torquilstone. In the meantime, de Bois-Guilbert rushes with his captive to the nearest Templar Preceptory, which is under his friend Albert de Malvoisin, expecting to be able to flee the country. However, Lucas de Beaumanoir, the Grand-Master of the Templars is unexpectedly present there. He takes umbrage at de Bois-Guilbert's sinful passion, which is in violation of his Templar vows; and decides to subject Rebecca, who he thinks has cast a spell on de Bois-Guilbert, to a trial for witchcraft. She is found guilty through a flawed trial, but claims the right to trial by combat. Bois-Guilbert, who had hoped to fight as her champion incognito, is devastated when the Grand-Master orders him to fight against Rebecca's champion. Rebecca then writes to her father to procure a champion for her. Meanwhile Cedric organises Aethelstane's funeral at Coningsburgh, in the midst of which the Black Knight arrives with a companion. Cedric, who had not been present at Locksley's carousal, is ill-disposed towards the knight upon learning his true identity. However, King Richard calms Cedric and reconciles him with his son, convincing him to agree to the marriage of Ivanhoe and Rowena. Shortly after, Aethelstane emerges – not dead, but having been laid in his coffin alive by avaricious monks desirous of the funeral money. Over Cedric's renewed protests, Aethelstane pledges his homage to the Norman King Richard and urges Cedric to marry Rowena to Ivanhoe; to which Cedric finally agrees. Soon after this reconciliation, Ivanhoe receives word from Isaac beseeching him to fight on Rebecca's behalf. Upon arriving at the scene of the witch-burning, Ivanhoe forces de Bois-Guilbert from his saddle, but does not kill him. However, the Templar dies "a victim to the violence of his own contending passions," which is pronounced by the Grand Master as the judgment of God and proof of Rebecca's innocence. King Richard, who had left Kyningestun soon after Ivanhoe's departure, arrives at the Templar Preceptory, banishes the Templars and declares that the Malvoisins' lives are forfeit for having aided in the plots against him. Fearing further persecution, Rebecca and her father leave England for Granada. Before leaving, Rebecca comes to bid Rowena a fond farewell. Finally, Ivanhoe and Rowena marry and live a long and happy life together, though the final paragraphs of the book note that Ivanhoe's long service ended with the death of King Richard.
15608	/m/03_b7	Johnny Got His Gun	Dalton Trumbo	1939	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Joe Bonham, a young soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body. Joe attempts suicide by suffocation, but finds that he had been given a tracheotomy which he can neither remove nor control. At first Joe wishes to die, but later decides that he desires to be placed in a glass box and toured around the country in order to show others the true horrors of war. After he successfully communicates with his doctors by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code, however, he realizes that neither desire will be granted; it is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in his condition. As Joe drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war. He also forms a bond, of sorts, with a young nurse who senses his plight.
17414	/m/04fpm	Icehenge	Kim Stanley Robinson	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Icehenge is part mystery, part psychological drama, and is set in three distinct time periods. The story shifts from a failed Martian political revolution of 2248, to an expedition to explore a mysterious monument on the north pole of Pluto three centuries later, and ultimately to a space station orbiting Saturn, home to a reclusive and wealthy woman who may hold the key to solving a mystery spanning centuries.
18187	/m/04mbf	Leviticus				 Chapters 1–5 describe the various sacrifices from the sacrificers' point of view, although the priests are essential for handling the blood. Chapters 6–7 go over much the same ground, but from the point of view of the priest, who, as the one actually carrying out the sacrifice and dividing the "portions", needs to know how this is to be done. Sacrifices are to be divided between God, the priest, and the one offerer, although in some cases the entire sacrifice is a single portion consigned to God—i.e., burnt to ashes. Chapters 7–10 describe the consecration (by Moses) of Aaron and his sons as the first priests, the first sacrifices, and God's destruction of two of Aaron's sons for ritual offenses. The purpose is to underline the character of altar priesthood (i.e., those priests empowered to offer sacrifices to God) as an Aaronite privilege, and the restrictions on their position. With sacrifice and priesthood established, chapters 11–15 instruct the lay people on purity (or cleanliness). Eating certain animals produces uncleanliness, as does giving birth; certain skin diseases (but not all) are unclean, as are certain conditions affecting walls and clothing (mildew and similar conditions); and genital discharges, including female menses and male gonorrhea, are unclean. The reasoning behind the food rules are obscure; for the rest the guiding principle seems to be that all these conditions involve a loss of "life force", usually but not always blood. Leviticus 16 concerns the Day of Atonement. This is the only day on which the High Priest is to enter the holiest part of the sanctuary, the holy of holies. He is to sacrifice a bull for the sins of the priests, and a goat for the sins of the laypeople. A third goat is to sent into the desert to "Azazel", bearing the sins of the whole people. Azazel may be a wilderness-demon, but its identity is mysterious. Chapters 17–26 are the Holiness code. It begins with a prohibition on all slaughter of animals outside the Temple, even for food, and then prohibits a long list of sexual contacts and also child sacrifice. The "holiness" injunctions which give the code its name begin with the next section: penalties are imposed for the worship of Molech, consulting mediums and wizards, cursing one's parents and engaging in unlawful sex. Priests are instructed on mourning rituals and acceptable bodily defects. Blasphemy is to be punished with death, and rules for the eating of sacrifices are set out; the calendar is explained, and rules for sabbatical and Jubilee years set out; and rules are made for oil lamps and bread in the sanctuary. The code ends by telling the Israelites they must choose between the law and prosperity on the one hand, or, on the other, horrible punishments, the worst of which will be expulsion from the land. Chapter 27 is a disparate and probably late addition telling about persons and things dedicated to the Lord and how vows can be redeemed instead of fulfilled.
18560	/m/04py7	Leaf by Niggle	J. R. R. Tolkien			 In this story, an artist, named Niggle, lives in a society that does not much value art. Working only to please himself, he paints a canvas of a great Tree with a forest in the distance. He invests each and every leaf of his tree with obsessive attention to detail, making every leaf uniquely beautiful. Niggle ends up discarding all his other artworks, or tacks them onto the main canvas, which becomes a single vast embodiment of his vision. However, there are many mundane chores and duties that prevent Niggle from giving his work the attention it deserves, so it remains incomplete and is not fully realized. At the back of his head, Niggle knows that he has a great trip looming, and he must pack and prepare his bags. Also, Niggle's next door neighbour, a gardener named Parish, is the sort of neighbour who always drops by whining about the help he needs with this and that. Moreover, Parish is lame and has a sick wife, and honestly needs help — Niggle, having a good heart, takes time out to help. And Niggle has other pressing work duties that require his attention. Then Niggle himself catches a chill doing errands for Parish in the rain. Eventually, Niggle is forced to take his trip, and cannot get out of it. He has not prepared, and as a result ends up in a kind of institution, in which he must perform menial labour each day. In time he is paroled from the institution, and he is sent to a place 'for a little gentle treatment'. But he discovers that the new country he is sent to is in fact the country of the Tree and Forest of his great painting, now long abandoned and all but destroyed (except for the one perfect leaf of the title which is placed in the local museum) in the home to which he cannot return — but the Tree here and now in this place is the true realization of his vision, not the flawed and incomplete form of his painting. Niggle is reunited with his old neighbour, Parish, who now proves his worth as a gardener, and together they make the Tree and Forest even more beautiful. Finally, Niggle journeys farther and deeper into the Forest, and beyond into the great mountains that he only faintly glimpsed in his painting. Long after both Niggle and Parish have taken their journeys, the lovely field that they built together becomes a place for many travelers to visit before their final voyage into the Mountains, and it earns the name "Niggle's Parish."
18866	/m/04rt6	Macbeth	William Shakespeare			 The play opens amidst thunder and lightning, and the Three Witches decide that their next meeting shall be with Macbeth. In the following scene, a wounded sergeant reports to King Duncan of Scotland that his generalsMacbeth, who is the Thane of Glamis, and Banquohave just defeated the allied forces of Norway and Ireland, who were led by the traitorous Macdonwald and the Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, the King's kinsman, is praised for his bravery and fighting prowess. In the following scene, Macbeth and Banquo discuss the weather and their victory. Macbeth's first line is "So foul and fair a day I have not seen" (1.3.38). As they wander onto a heath, the Three Witches enter and have been waiting to greet them with prophecies. Though Banquo challenges them first, they address Macbeth, hailing him as "Thane of Glamis," "Thane of Cawdor," and that he shall "be King hereafter." Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence. When Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches inform him that he will father a line of kings, though he himself will not be one. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the witches vanish, and another thane, Ross, arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title: Thane of Cawdor, as the previous Thane of Cawdor shall be put to death for his traitorous activities. The first prophecy is thus fulfilled, and Macbeth immediately begins to harbour ambitions of becoming king. King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, and declares that he will spend the night at Macbeth's castle at Inverness; he also names his son Malcolm as his heir. Macbeth sends a message ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her about the witches' prophecies. Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband’s uncertainty, and wishes him to murder Duncan in order to obtain kingship. When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her husband’s objections by challenging his manhood, and successfully persuades him to kill the king that very night. He and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncan’s two chamberlains drunk so that they will black out; the next morning they will frame the chamberlains for the murder. They will be defenseless, as they will remember nothing. While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a bloody dagger. He is so shaken that Lady Macbeth has to take charge. In accordance with her plan, she frames Duncan's sleeping servants for the murder by placing bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, and Macduff, the loyal Thane of Fife, arrive. A porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's body. In a supposed fit of anger, Macbeth murders the guards (in truth, he kills them to prevent them from claiming their innocence). Macduff is immediately suspicious of Macbeth, but does not reveal his suspicions publicly. Duncan’s sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well. The rightful heirs' flight makes them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king. Banquo reveals this to the audience, and while skeptical of the new King Macbeth, remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would inherit the throne. Despite his success, Macbeth, also aware of this part of the prophecy, remains uneasy. Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal banquet, where he discovers that Banquo and his young son, Fleance, will be riding out that night. Macbeth hires two men to kill them; a third murderer appears in the park before the murder. The assassins succeed in killing Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Macbeth becomes furious: as long as Fleance is alive, he fears that his power remains insecure. At the banquet, Macbeth invites his lords and Lady Macbeth to a night of drinking and merriment. Banquo's ghost enters and sits in Macbeth's place. Macbeth raves fearfully, startling his guests, as the ghost is only visible to himself. The others panic at the sight of Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady Macbeth tells them that her husband is merely afflicted with a familiar and harmless malady. The ghost departs and returns once more, causing the same riotous anger in Macbeth. This time, Lady Macbeth tells the lords to leave, and they do so. Macbeth, disturbed, visits the three witches once more and asks them to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him. To answer his questions, they summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers predictions and further prophecies to allay Macbeth’s fears. First, they conjure an armed head, which tells him to beware of Macduff (4.1.72). Second, a bloody child tells him that no one born of a woman shall be able to harm him. Thirdly, a crowned child holding a tree states that Macbeth will be safe until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill. Macbeth is relieved and feels secure, because he knows that all men are born of women and forests cannot move. However, the witches conjure a procession of eight crowned kings, all similar in appearance to Banquo, and the last carrying a mirror that reflects even more kings. Macbeth demands to know the meaning of this final vision, but the witches perform a mad dance and then vanish. Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth orders Macduff's castle be seized, and, most cruelly, sends murderers to slaughter Macduff’s wife and children. Everyone in Macduff's castle is put to death, including Lady Macduff and their young son. Meanwhile, Lady Macbeth becomes racked with guilt from the crimes she and her husband have committed. At night, in the king’s palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth’s strange habit of sleepwalking. Suddenly, Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a candle in her hand. Bemoaning the murders of Duncan, Lady Macduff, and Banquo, she tries to wash off imaginary bloodstains from her hands, all the while speaking of the terrible things she knows she pressed her husband to do. She leaves, and the doctor and gentlewoman marvel at her descent into madness. Her belief that nothing can wash away the blood on her hands is an ironic reversal of her earlier claim to Macbeth that “[a] little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.66). In England, Macduff is informed by Ross that his "castle is surprised; [his] wife and babes / Savagely slaughter'd" (4.3.204-5). When this news of his family’s execution reaches him, Macduff is stricken with grief and vows revenge. Prince Malcolm, Duncan’s son, has succeeded in raising an army in England, and Macduff joins him as he rides to Scotland to challenge Macbeth’s forces. The invasion has the support of the Scottish nobles, who are appalled and frightened by Macbeth’s tyrannical and murderous behavior. Malcolm leads an army, along with Macduff and Englishmen Siward (the Elder), the Earl of Northumberland, against Dunsinane Castle. While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and carry tree limbs to camouflage their numbers. Before Macbeth’s opponents arrive, he receives news that Lady Macbeth has killed herself, causing him to sink into a deep and pessimistic despair and deliver his "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy (5.5.17–28). Though he reflects on the brevity and meaninglessness of life, he nevertheless awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane. He is certain that the witches’ prophecies guarantee his invincibility, but is struck numb with fear when he learns that the English army is advancing on Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood. Birnam Wood is indeed coming to Dunsinane, fulfilling half of the witches’ prophecy. A battle culminates in the slaying of the young Siward and Macduff's confrontation with Macbeth, and the English forces overwhelm his army and castle. Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be killed by any man born of woman. Macduff declares that he was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd" (5.8.15–16), (i.e., born by Caesarean section) and was not "of woman born" (an example of a literary quibble), fulfilling the second prophecy. Macbeth realizes too late that he has misinterpreted the witches' words. Though he realizes that he is doomed, he continues to fight. Macduff kills and beheads him, thus fulfilling the first part of the prophecy. Macduff carries Macbeth's head onstage and Malcolm discusses how order has been restored. His last reference to Lady Macbeth, however, reveals "'tis thought, by self and violent hands / Took off her life" (5.9.71–72), leading most to assume that she committed suicide, but the method is undisclosed. Malcolm, now the King of Scotland, declares his benevolent intentions for the country and invites all to see him crowned at Scone. Although Malcolm, and not Fleance, is placed on the throne, the witches' prophecy concerning Banquo ("Thou shalt get kings") was known to the audience of Shakespeare's time to be true: James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England) was supposedly a descendant of Banquo.
19002	/m/04svn	Microserfs	Douglas Coupland	1995-06	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot of the novel has two distinct movements: the events at Microsoft and in Redmond, Washington, and the movement to Silicon Valley and the "Oop!" project. The novel begins in Redmond as the characters are working on different projects at Microsoft's main campus. Life at the campus feels like a feudalistic society, with Bill Gates as the lord, and the employees the serfs. The majority of the main characters—Daniel (the narrator), Susan, Todd, Bug, Michael, and Abe—are living together in a "geek house", and their lives are dedicated to their projects and the company. Daniel's foundations are shaken when his father, a longtime employee of IBM, is laid off. The lifespan of a Microsoft coder weighs heavily on Daniel's mind. The second movement of the novel begins when the characters are offered jobs in Silicon Valley working on a project for Michael, who has by then left Redmond. All of the housemates—some immediately, some after thought—decide to move to the Valley. The characters' lives change drastically once they leave the limited sphere of the Microsoft campus and enter the world of "One-Point-Oh". They begin to work on a project called "Oop!" (a reference to object-oriented programming). Oop! is a Lego-like design program, allowing dynamic creation of many objects, bearing a resemblance to 2009's Minecraft. (Coupland appears on the rear cover of the novel's hardcover versions photographed in Denmark's Legoland Billund, holding a Lego 747.) One of the undercurrents of the plot is Daniel and his family's relationship to Jed, Daniel's younger brother who died in a boating accident while they were children.
19859	/m/04_m6	Moby-Dick; or, The Whale	Herman Melville	1851-10-18	{"/m/07m5w1": "Sea story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 "Moby-Dick" begins with the line "Call me Ishmael." According to the American Book Review's rating in 2011, this is one of the most recognizable opening lines in Western literature. The narrator, an observant young man setting out from Manhattan, has experience in the merchant marine but has recently decided his next voyage will be on a whaling ship. On a cold, gloomy night in December, he arrives at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and agrees to share a bed with a then-absent stranger. When his bunk mate, a heavily tattooed Polynesian harpooner named Queequeg, returns very late and discovers Ishmael beneath his covers, both men are alarmed, but the two quickly become close friends and decide to sail together from Nantucket, Massachusetts on a whaling voyage. In Nantucket, the pair signs on with the Pequod, a whaling ship that is soon to leave port. The ship’s captain, Ahab, is nowhere to be seen; nevertheless, they are told of him — a "grand, ungodly, godlike man," who has "been in colleges as well as 'mong the cannibals," according to one of the owners. The two friends encounter a mysterious man named Elijah on the dock after they sign their papers and he hints at troubles to come with Ahab. The mystery grows on Christmas morning when Ishmael spots dark figures in the mist, apparently boarding the Pequod shortly before it sets sail that day. The ship’s officers direct the early voyage while Ahab stays in his cabin. The chief mate is Starbuck, a serious, sincere Quaker and fine leader; second mate is Stubb, happy-go-lucky and cheerful and always smoking his pipe; the third mate is Flask, short and stout but thoroughly reliable. Each mate is responsible for a whaling boat, and each whaling boat of the Pequod has its own pagan harpooneer assigned to it. Some time after sailing, Ahab finally appears on the quarter-deck one morning, an imposing, frightening figure whose haunted visage sends shivers over the narrator. One of his legs is missing from the knee down and has been replaced by a prosthesis fashioned from a sperm whale's jawbone. Soon gathering the crewmen together, with a rousing speech Ahab secures their support for his single, secret purpose for this voyage: hunting down and killing Moby Dick, an old, very large sperm whale, with a snow-white hump and mottled skin, that crippled Ahab on his last whaling voyage. Only Starbuck shows any sign of resistance to the charismatic but monomaniacal captain. The first mate argues repeatedly that the ship’s purpose should be to hunt whales for their oil, with luck returning home profitably, safely, and quickly, but not to seek out and kill Moby Dick in particular — and especially not for revenge. Eventually even Starbuck acquiesces to Ahab's will, though harboring misgivings. The mystery of the dark figures seen before the Pequod set sail is explained during the voyage's first lowering for whales. Ahab has secretly brought along his own boat crew, including a mysterious harpooneer named Fedallah (also referred to as 'the Parsee'), an inscrutable figure with a sinister influence over Ahab. Later, while watching one night over a captured whale carcass, Fedallah gives dark prophecies to Ahab regarding their twin deaths. The novel describes numerous "gams," social meetings of two ships on the open sea. Crews normally visit each other during a gam, captains on one vessel and chief mates on the other. Mail may be exchanged and the men talk of whale sightings or other news. For Ahab, however, there is but one relevant question to ask of another ship: “Hast seen the White Whale?” After meeting several other whaling ships, which have their own peculiar stories, the Pequod enters the Pacific Ocean. Queequeg becomes deathly ill and requests that a coffin be built for him by the ship’s carpenter. Just as everyone has given up hope, Queequeg changes his mind, deciding to live after all, and recovers quickly. His coffin becomes his sea chest, and is later caulked and pitched to replace the Pequods life buoy. Soon word is heard from other whalers of Moby Dick. The jolly Captain Boomer of the Samuel Enderby has lost an arm to the whale, and is stunned at Ahab's burning need for revenge. Next they meet the Rachel, which has seen Moby Dick very recently. As a result of the encounter, one of its boats is missing; the captain’s youngest son had been aboard. The Rachels captain begs Ahab to aid in the search for the missing boat, but Ahab is resolute; the Pequod is very near the White Whale now and will not stop to help. Finally the Delight is met, even as its captain buries a sailor who had been killed by Moby Dick. Starbuck begs Ahab one final time to reconsider his thirst for vengeance, but to no avail. The next day, the Pequod meets Moby Dick. For two days, the Pequods crew pursues the whale, which wreaks widespread destruction, including the disappearance of Fedallah. On the third day, Moby Dick rises up to reveal Fedallah's corpse tied to him by harpoon ropes. Even after the initial battle on the third day, it is clear that while Ahab is a vengeful whale-hunter, Moby Dick, while dangerous and fearless, is not motivated to hunt humans. As he swims away from the Pequod, Starbuck exhorts Ahab one last time to desist, observing that: Ahab ignores this voice of reason and continues with his ill-fated chase. As the three boats sail out to hunt him, Moby Dick damages two of them, forcing them to go back to the ship and leaving only Ahab's vessel intact. Ahab harpoons the whale, but the harpoon-line breaks. Moby Dick then rams the Pequod itself, which begins to sink. As Ahab harpoons the whale again, the unfolding harpoon-line catches him around his neck and he is dragged into the depths of the sea by the diving Moby Dick. The boat is caught up in the whirlpool of the sinking ship, which takes almost all the crew to their deaths. Only Ishmael survives, clinging to Queequeg’s coffin-turned-life buoy for an entire day and night before the Rachel rescues him.
20361	/m/053lw	Moonfleet	J. Meade Falkner	1898	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In 1757, Moonfleet is a small village near the sea in the south of England. It gets its name from a formerly prominent local family, the Mohunes, whose coat of arms included a symbol shaped like a capital 'Y'. John Trenchard is an orphan who lives with his aunt, Miss Arnold. Other notable residents are the sexton Mr Ratsey who is friendly to John, Parson Glennie, the local clergyman who also teaches in the village school, Elzevir Block, the landlord of the local inn, called the Mohune Arms but nicknamed the Why Not? because of its sign with the Mohune 'Y', and Mr Maskew, the unpopular local magistrate and his beautiful daughter, Grace. Village legend tells of the notorious Colonel John "Blackbeard" Mohune who is buried in the family crypt under the church. He is reputed to have stolen a diamond from King Charles I and hidden it. His ghost is said to wander at night looking for it and the mysterious lights in the churchyard are attributed to his activities. As the main part of the story opens, Block's youthful son, David, has just been killed by Maskew during an attack by the authorities on a smuggling boat. One night a bad storm hits the village and there is a flood. While attending the Sunday service at church, John hears strange sounds from the crypt below. He thinks it is the sound of the coffins of the Mohune family. The next day, he finds Elzevir and Ratsey against the south wall of the church. They claim to be checking for damage from the storm, but John suspects they are searching for Blackbeard's ghost. Later John finds a large sinkhole has opened in the ground by a grave. He follows the passage and finds himself in the crypt with coffins on shelves and casks on the floor. He realises his friends are smugglers and this is their hiding place. He has to hide behind a coffin when he hears Ratsey and Elzevir coming. When they leave, they fill in the hole, inadvertently trapping him. John finds a locket in a coffin which holds a piece of paper with verses from the Bible. John eventually passes out after drinking too much of the wine while trying to quench his thirst, having not eaten or drunk for days. Later he wakes up in the Why Not? Inn- he has been rescued by Elzevir and Ratsey. When he is better, he returns to his Aunt's house, but she, suspecting him of drunken behaviour, throws him out. Fortunately, Elzevir takes him in. But when Block's lease on the Why Not? comes up for renewal, Maskew bids against him in the auction and wins. Block must leave the inn and Moonfleet but plans one last smuggling venture. John feels honour-bound to go with him, and sadly, says goodbye to Grace Maskew, whom he loves and has been seeing in secret, and gets his mother's prayer book as a good luck charm. The excisemen and Maskew are aware of the planned smuggling run but do not know exactly where it will occur. During the landing Maskew appears and is caught by the smugglers. Elzevir is bent on vengeance for his son by killing Maskew, and while the rest land the cargo and leave, he and John keep watch over Maskew. Just as Block prepares to shoot Maskew the excisemen attack. They kill Maskew and wound John. Block carries John away to safety and they hide in some old quarries. While there, John inadvertently finds out that the verses from Blackbeard's locket contain a code which will reveal the location of his famous diamond. Once John's wound heals, he and Block decide to recover the diamond from Carisbrooke Castle. After a suspenseful scene in the well where the jewel is hidden, they succeed and escape to Holland where they try to sell it to a Jewish diamond merchant named Crispin Aldobrand. The merchant cheats them, claiming the diamond is fake. Elzevir falls for the deceit and angrily throws the diamond out of the window. John, however, knows they have been duped, and suggests they try to recover the diamond through burglary. The attempt fails and, they are arrested and sentenced to prison. John curses the merchant for his lies. John and Elzevir go to prison for life. Eventually they are separated. Then, unexpectedly, ten years later, their paths cross again. They are being transported, and board a ship. A storm blows up, and by a strong coincidence, John and Elzevir find themselves near Moonfleet. They throw themselves into the sea and start to swim to shore. Elzevir helps John to safety, but is himself dragged under by the tide and drowned. So John ends up back where his whole adventure started, in the Why Not?, and is reunited with Ratsy. He is also reunited with Grace. She is now a rich young lady, having inherited her father's money. However, she is still in love with John, and they decide to marry. John tells her about the diamond and his life in prison. He regrets having lost everything, but then Parson Glennie receives a letter from Aldobrand. The merchant suffered a guilty conscience, and in an attempt to make amends, has bequeathed the worth of the diamond to John. John gives the money to the village, and new almshouses are built, and the school and the church renovated. John marries Grace and becomes Lord of the Manor and Justice of the Peace. Their three children grow up and their sons leave home, including their first-born son, Elzevir. But John and Grace themselves have no plans to leave their beloved Moonfleet ever again. A feature of the narrative is a continuing reference to the boardgame of backgammon which is played by the patrons of the Why Not? on an antique board which bears a Latin inscription Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima jactura arte corrigenda est (translated in the book as As in life, so in a game of hazard, skill will make something of the worst of throws). This inscription provides a moralistic metaphor to the story of the orphan boy who in the end overcomes his travails.
21725	/m/05g5q	Neuromancer	William Gibson	1984-07-01	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Henry Dorsett Case is a low-level hustler in the dystopian underworld of Chiba City, Japan. Once a talented computer hacker, Case was caught stealing from his employer. As punishment for his theft, Case's central nervous system was damaged with a mycotoxin, leaving him unable to use keyboard skills to access the global computer network in cyberspace, a virtual reality dataspace called the "Matrix". Unemployable, addicted to drugs, and suicidal, Case desperately searches the Chiba "black clinics" for a miracle cure. Case is saved by Molly Millions, an augmented "street samurai" and mercenary for a shadowy ex-military officer named Armitage, who offers to cure Case in exchange for his services as a hacker. Case jumps at the chance to regain his life as a "console cowboy," but neither Case nor Molly know what Armitage is really planning. Case's nervous system is repaired using new technology that Armitage offers the clinic as payment, but he soon learns from Armitage that sacs of the poison that first crippled him have been placed in his blood vessels as well. Armitage promises Case that if he completes his work in time, the sacs will be removed; otherwise they will dissolve, disabling him again. He also has Case's pancreas replaced and new tissue grafted into his liver, leaving Case incapable of metabolizing cocaine or amphetamines and apparently ending his drug addiction. Case develops a close personal relationship with Molly, who suggests that he begin looking into Armitage's background. Meanwhile, Armitage assigns them their first job: they must steal a ROM module that contains the saved consciousness of one of Case's mentors, legendary cyber-cowboy McCoy Pauley, nicknamed "Dixie Flatline." Pauley's hacking expertise is needed by Armitage, and the ROM construct is stored in the corporate headquarters of media conglomerate Sense/Net. A street gang named the "Panther Moderns" are hired to create a simulated terrorist attack on Sense/Net. The diversion allows Molly to penetrate the building and steal Dixie's ROM. Case and Molly continue to investigate Armitage, discovering his former identity of Colonel Willis Corto. Corto was a member of "Operation Screaming Fist," which planned on infiltrating and disrupting Soviet computer systems from ultralight aircraft dropped over Russia. The Russian military had learned of the idea and installed defenses to render the attack impossible, but the military went ahead with Screaming Fist, with a new secret purpose of testing these Russian defenses. As the Operation team attacked a Soviet computer center, EMP weapons shut down their computers and flight systems, and Corto and his men were targeted by Soviet laser defenses. He and a few survivors commandeered a Soviet military helicopter and escaped over the heavily guarded Finnish border. Everyone was killed except Corto, who was seriously wounded and heavily mutilated by Finnish defense forces attacking as they were landing the helicopter. Corto after some months in hospital is visited by a Government military official and then medically rebuilt to be able to provide what he came to realise was fake testimony, designed to mislead the public and protect the military officers who had covered up knowledge of the EMP weapons. After the trials, Corto snaps, killing the Government official who contacted him and then disappears into the criminal underworld. In Istanbul, the team recruits Peter Riviera, an artist, thief, and drug addict who is able to project detailed holographic illusions with the aid of sophisticated cybernetic implants. Although Riviera is a sociopath, Armitage coerces him into joining the team. The trail leads Case and Molly to a powerful artificial intelligence named Wintermute, created by the plutocratic Tessier-Ashpool family, who spend most of their inactive time in cryonic preservation inside Villa Straylight, a labyrinthine mansion located at one end of Freeside, a cylindrical space habitat located at L5, and functioning primarily as a Las Vegas-style space resort for the wealthy. Wintermute's nature is finally revealed – it is one-half of a super-AI entity planned by the family, although its exact purpose is unknown. The Turing Law Code governing AIs bans the construction of such entities; to get around this, it had to be built as two separate AIs. Wintermute was programmed by the Tessier-Ashpool dynasty with a need to merge with its other half – Neuromancer. Unable to achieve this merger on its own, Wintermute recruited Armitage and his team to help complete the goal. Case is tasked with entering cyberspace to pierce the Turing-imposed software barriers using a powerful icebreaker program. At the same time, Riviera is to obtain the password to the Turing lock from Lady 3Jane Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool, an unfrozen daughter clone and the current leader of Tessier-Ashpool SA. Wintermute believes Riviera will pose an irresistible temptation to her, and that she will give him the password. The password must be spoken into an ornate computer terminal located in the Tessier-Ashpool home in Villa Straylight, and entered simultaneously as Case pierces the software barriers in cyberspace – otherwise the Turing lock will remain intact. Armitage's team attracts the attention of the Turing Police, whose job is to prevent AIs from exceeding their built-in limitations. As Molly and Riviera gain entrance to Villa Straylight, three officers arrest Case and take him into custody; Wintermute manipulates the orbital casino's security and maintenance systems and kills the officers, allowing Case to escape. The Armitage personality starts to disintegrate and revert to the Corto personality as he relives Screaming Fist. It is revealed that in the past, Wintermute had originally contacted Corto through a bedside computer during his convalescence, eventually convincing Corto that he was Armitage. Wintermute used him to persuade Case and Molly to help it merge with its twin AI, Neuromancer. Finally, Armitage becomes the shattered Corto again, but his newfound personality is short-lived as he is killed by Wintermute. Inside Villa Straylight, Molly is captured by Riviera and Lady 3Jane. Worried about Molly and operating under orders from Wintermute, Case tracks her down with help from Maelcum, his Rastafarian pilot. Neuromancer attempts to trap Case within a cyber-construct where he finds the consciousness of Linda Lee, his girlfriend from Chiba City, who was murdered by one of Case's underworld contacts. Case manages to escape flatlining inside the construct by choosing of his own free will not to stay. Freeing himself, Case takes Maelcum and confronts Lady 3Jane, Riviera, and Hideo, Lady 3Jane's ninja bodyguard. Riviera tries to kill Case, but Lady 3Jane is sympathetic towards Case and Molly, and Hideo protects him. Riviera blinds Hideo, but flees when he learns that the ninja is just as adept without his sight. Molly then explains to Case that Riviera is doomed anyway, as he has been fatally poisoned by his drugs, which she had spiked. With Lady 3Jane in possession of the password, the team makes it to the computer terminal. Case ascends to cyberspace to guide the icebreaker to penetrate its target; Lady 3Jane is induced to give up her password and the lock is opened. Wintermute unites with Neuromancer, fusing into a greater entity. The poison in Case's bloodstream is washed out, and he and Molly are handsomely paid for their efforts, while Pauley's ROM construct is apparently erased, at his own request. In the epilogue, Molly leaves Case. Case finds a new girlfriend, resumes his hacking work, and spends his earnings from the mission replacing his internal organs so that he can continue his previous drug use. Wintermute/Neuromancer contacts him, saying that it has become "the sum total of the works, the whole show," and has begun looking for other AIs like itself. Scanning old recorded transmissions from the 1970s, the super-AI finds a lone AI transmitting from the Alpha Centauri star system. In the matrix, Case hears inhuman laughter, a trait associated with Pauley during Case's work with his ROM construct, thus suggesting that Pauley was not erased after all, but instead worked out a side deal with Wintermute/Neuromancer to be freed from the construct so he could exist in the matrix. In the end, while logged into the matrix, Case catches a glimpse of himself, his dead girlfriend Linda Lee, and Neuromancer. The implication of the sighting is that Neuromancer created a copy of Case's consciousness when it previously tried to trap him. The copy of Case's consciousness now exists with that of Linda's, in the matrix, where they are together forever.
21861	/m/05h8j	Cryptonomicon	Neal Stephenson	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The action takes place in two periods: the Second World War and the late 1990s, during the Internet boom. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a young U.S. Navy code breaker and mathematical genius, is assigned to the newly formed joint British and American Detachment 2702. This ultra-secret unit's role is to hide the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the German Enigma code. The detachment stages events, often behind enemy lines, that provide alternative explanations for the Allied intelligence successes. Marine sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, a veteran of China and Guadalcanal, serves in unit 2702, carrying out Waterhouse's plans. At the same time, Japanese soldiers including mining engineer Goto Dengo, an old friend of Shaftoe's, are assigned to build a mysterious bunker in the mountains in the Philippines as part of what turns out to be a literal suicide mission. Circa 1997, Randy Waterhouse (Lawrence's grandson) joins his old Dungeons and Dragons companion Avi Halaby in a new startup, providing Pinoy-grams to migrant Filipinos via new fiber-optic cables. The aptly named Epiphyte Corporation uses this income stream to fund the creation of a data haven in the nearby fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Vietnam veteran Doug Shaftoe and his daughter Amy do the undersea surveying for the cables and engineering work on the haven is overseen by Goto Furudenendu, heir-apparent to Goto Engineering. Complications arise as figures from the past reappear seeking gold or revenge.
22113	/m/05k0h	No Logo	Naomi Klein	2000-01	{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/0h5k": "Anthropology", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book comprises four sections: "No Space", "No Choice", "No Jobs", and "No Logo". The first three deal with the negative effects of brand-oriented corporate activity, while the fourth discusses various methods people have taken in order to fight back. The book begins by tracing the history of brands. Klein argues that there has been a shift in the usage of branding. There is an actual clothing brand NOLOGO which has existed since the late 1980s and can be seen at www.nologo.com. This is an excellent example of this shift to an "anti-brand" brand. Early examples of brands were often used to put a recognizable face on factory-produced products. These slowly gave way to the idea of selling lifestyles. According to Klein, in response to an economic crash in the 1980s (Latin American debt crisis, Black Monday (1987), Savings and loan crisis Japanese asset price bubble), corporations began to seriously rethink their approach to marketing, and began to target the youth demographic, as opposed to the baby boomers, who had previously been considered a much more valuable segment. The book discusses how brand names such as Nike or Pepsi expanded beyond the mere products which bore their names, and how these names and logos began to appear everywhere. As this happened, the brands' obsession with the youth market drove them to further associate themselves with whatever the youth considered "cool". Along the way, the brands attempted to have their names associated with everything from movie stars and athletes to grassroots social movements. Klein argues that large multinational corporations consider the marketing of a brand name to be more important than the actual manufacture of products; this theme recurs in the book and Klein suggests that it helps explain the shift to production in Third World countries in such industries as clothing, footwear, and computer hardware. This section also looks at ways in which brands have "muscled" their presence into the school system, and how in doing so, they have pipelined advertisements into the schools, and have used their position to gather information about the students. Klein argues that this is part of a trend toward targeting younger and younger consumers. In the second section, Klein discusses how brands use their size and clout to limit the number of choices available to the public – whether through market dominance (Wal-Mart) or through aggressive invasion of a region (Starbucks). Klein argues that the goal of each company is to become the dominant force in its respective field. Meanwhile, other corporations, such as Sony or Disney, simply open their own chains of stores, preventing the competition from even putting their products on the shelves. This section also discusses the way that corporations merge with one another in order to add to their ubiquity and provide greater control over their image. ABC News, for instance, is allegedly under pressure not to air any stories that are overly critical of Disney, its parent company. Other chains, such as Wal-Mart, often threaten to pull various products off of their shelves, forcing manufacturers and publishers to comply with their demands. This might mean driving down manufacturing costs, or changing the artwork or content of products like magazines or albums so they better fit with Wal-Mart's image of family friendliness. Also discussed is the way that corporations abuse copyright laws in order to silence anyone who might attempt to criticize their brand. In this section, the book takes a darker tone, and looks at the way in which manufacturing jobs move from local factories to foreign countries, and particularly to places known as export processing zones. Such zones have no labor laws, leading to dire working conditions. The book then shifts back to North America, where the lack of manufacturing jobs has led to an influx of work in the service sector, where most of the jobs are for minimum wage and offer no benefits. The term McJob is introduced, defined as a job with poor compensation that does not keep pace with inflation, inflexible or undesirable hours, little chance of advancement, and high levels of stress. Meanwhile, the public is being sold the perception that these jobs are temporary employment for students and recent graduates, and therefore need not offer living wages or benefits. All of this is set against a backdrop of massive profits and wealth being produced within the corporate sector. The result is a new generation of employees who have come to resent the success of the companies they work for. This resentment, along with rising unemployment, labour abuses abroad, disregard for the environment and the ever-increasing presence of advertising breeds a new disdain for corporations. The final section of the book discusses various movements that have sprung up during the 1990s. These include Adbusters magazine and the culture-jamming movement, as well as Reclaim the Streets and the McLibel trial. Less radical protests are also discussed, such as the various movements aimed at putting an end to sweatshop labour. Klein concludes by contrasting consumerism and citizenship, opting for the latter. "When I started this book," she writes, "I honestly didn't know whether I was covering marginal atomized scenes of resistance or the birth of a potentially broad-based movement. But as time went on, what I clearly saw was a movement forming before my eyes."
22349	/m/05lm8	Odyssey	Nextext			 The Odyssey begins ten years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War that is the subject of the Iliad, and Odysseus has still not returned home from the war. Odysseus' son Telemachus is about 20 years old and is sharing his absent father’s house on the island of Ithaca with his mother Penelope and a crowd of 108 boisterous young men, "the Suitors", whose aim is to persuade Penelope to marry one of them, all the while enjoying the hospitality of Odysseus' household and eating up his wealth. Odysseus’ protectress, the goddess Athena, discusses his fate with Zeus, king of the gods, at a moment when Odysseus' enemy, the god of the sea Poseidon, is absent from Mount Olympus. Then, disguised as a Taphian chieftain named Mentes (otherwise known as “Mentor”), she visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father. He offers her hospitality; they observe the Suitors dining rowdily while the bard Phemius performs a narrative poem for them. Penelope objects to Phemius' theme, the "Return from Troy", because it reminds her of her missing husband, but Telemachus rebuts her objections. That night Athena, disguised as Telemachus, finds a ship and crew for the true Telemachus. The next morning, Telemachus calls an assembly of citizens of Ithaca to discuss what should be done with the suitors. Accompanied by Athena (still disguised as Mentor), he departs for the Greek mainland and the household of Nestor, most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy, now at home in Pylos. From there, Telemachus rides overland, accompanied by Nestor's son, Peisistratus, to Sparta, where he finds Menelaus and Helen who are now reconciled. He is told that they returned to Sparta after a long voyage by way of Egypt. There, on the island of Pharos, Menelaus encountered the old sea-god Proteus, who told him that Odysseus was a captive of the nymph Calypso. Incidentally, Telemachus learns the fate of Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks at Troy: he was murdered on his return home by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Then the story of Odysseus is told. He has spent seven years in captivity on Calypso's island, Ogygia. Calypso falls deeply in love with him but he has consistently spurned her advances. She is persuaded to release him by Odysseus' great-grandfather, the messenger god Hermes, who has been sent by Zeus in response to Athena's plea. Odysseus builds a raft and is given clothing, food and drink by Calypso. When Poseidon finds out that Odysseus has escaped, he wrecks the raft but, helped by a veil given by the sea nymph Ino, Odysseus swims ashore on Scherie, the island of the Phaeacians. Naked and exhausted, he hides in a pile of leaves and falls asleep. The next morning, awakened by the laughter of girls, he sees the young Nausicaa, who has gone to the seashore with her maids to wash clothes after Athena told her in a dream to do so. He appeals to her for help. She encourages him to seek the hospitality of her parents, Arete and Alcinous, or Alkinous. Odysseus is welcomed and is not at first asked for his name. He remains for several days, takes part in a pentathlon, and hears the blind singer Demodocus perform two narrative poems. The first is an otherwise obscure incident of the Trojan War, the "Quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles"; the second is the amusing tale of a love affair between two Olympian gods, Ares and Aphrodite. Finally, Odysseus asks Demodocus to return to the Trojan War theme and tell of the Trojan Horse, a stratagem in which Odysseus had played a leading role. Unable to hide his emotion as he relives this episode, Odysseus at last reveals his identity. He then begins to tell the story of his return from Troy. After a piratical raid on Ismaros in the land of the Cicones, he and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms. They visited the lethargic Lotus-Eaters who gave two of his men their fruit which caused them to forget their homecoming, and then were captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus, escaping by blinding him with a wooden stake. While they were escaping, however, Odysseus foolishly told Polyphemus his identity, and Polyphemus told his father, Poseidon, that Odysseus had blinded him. Poseidon then curses Odysseus to wander the sea for ten years, during which he would lose all his crew and return home through the aid of others. After their escape, they stayed with Aeolus, the master of the winds and he gave Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home. However, the greedy sailors foolishly opened the bag while Odysseus slept, thinking it contained gold. All of the winds flew out and the resulting storm drove the ships back the way they had come, just as Ithaca came into sight. After unsuccessfully pleading with Aeolus to help them again, they re-embarked and encountered the cannibalistic Laestrygonians. All of Odysseus’s ships except his own entered the harbor of the Laestrygonians’ Island and were immediately destroyed. He sailed on and visited the witch-goddess Circe. She turned half of his men into swine after feeding them cheese and wine. Hermes warned Odysseus about Circe and gave Odysseus a drug called moly which gave him resistance to Circe’s magic. Circe, surprised by Odysseus' resistance, agreed to change his men back to their human form in exchange for Odysseus' love. They remained with her on the island for one year, while they feasted and drank. Finally, guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew crossed the ocean and reached a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrificed to the dead. He first encountered the spirit of crewmember Elpenor, who had gotten drunk and fallen from a roof to his death, which had gone unnoticed by others, before Odysseus and the rest of his crew had left Circe. Elpenor's ghost told Odysseus to bury his body, which Odysseus promised to do. Odysseus then summoned the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias for advice on how to appease the gods upon his return home. Next Odysseus met the spirit of his own mother, who had died of grief during his long absence. From her, he got his first news of his own household, threatened by the greed of the Suitors. Finally, he met the spirits of famous men and women. Notably he encountered the spirit of Agamemnon, of whose murder he now learned, and Achilles, who told him about the woes of the land of the dead (for Odysseus' encounter with the dead, see also Nekuia). Returning to Circe’s island, they were advised by her on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirted the land of the Sirens, who sang an enchanting song that normally caused passing sailors to steer toward the rocks, only to hit them and sink. All of the sailors except for Odysseus, who was tied to the mast as he wanted to hear the song, had their ears plugged up with beeswax. They then passed between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, Odysseus losing six men to Scylla, and landed on the island of Thrinacia. Zeus caused a storm which prevented them leaving. While Odysseus was away praying, his men ignored the warnings of Tiresias and Circe and hunted down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios as their food had run short. The Sun God insisted that Zeus punish the men for this sacrilege. They suffered a shipwreck as they were driven towards Charybdis. All but Odysseus were drowned; he clung to a fig tree above Charybdis. Washed ashore on the island of Calypso, he was compelled to remain there as her lover until she was ordered by Zeus via Hermes to release Odysseus. Having listened with rapt attention to his story, the Phaeacians, who are skilled mariners, agree to help Odysseus get home. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbour on Ithaca. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own slaves, the swineherd Eumaeus. Athena disguises Odysseus as a wandering beggar so he can see how things stand in his household. After dinner, he tells the farm laborers a fictitious tale of himself: He was born in Crete, had led a party of Cretans to fight alongside other Greeks in the Trojan War, and had then spent seven years at the court of the king of Egypt; finally he had been shipwrecked in Thesprotia and crossed from there to Ithaca. Meanwhile, Telemachus sails home from Sparta, evading an ambush set by the Suitors. He disembarks on the coast of Ithaca and makes for Eumaeus’s hut. Father and son meet; Odysseus identifies himself to Telemachus (but still not to Eumaeus), and they decide that the Suitors must be killed. Telemachus goes home first. Accompanied by Eumaeus, Odysseus returns to his own house, still pretending to be a beggar. He is ridiculed by the Suitors in his own home, especially by one extremely impertinent man named Antinous. Odysseus meets Penelope and tests her intentions by saying he once met Odysseus in Crete. Closely questioned, he adds that he had recently been in Thesprotia and had learned something there of Odysseus’s recent wanderings. Odysseus’s identity is discovered by the housekeeper, Eurycleia, when she recognizes an old scar as she is washing his feet. Eurycleia tries to tell Penelope about the beggar's true identity, but Athena makes sure that Penelope cannot hear her. Odysseus then swears Eurycleia to secrecy. The next day, at Athena’s prompting, Penelope maneuvers the Suitors into competing for her hand with an archery competition using Odysseus' bow. The man who can string the bow and shoot it through a dozen axe heads would win. Odysseus takes part in the competition himself: he alone is strong enough to string the bow and shoot it through the dozen axe heads, making him the winner. He then turns his arrows on the Suitors and with the help of Athena, Telemachus, Eumaeus and Philoteus the cowherd, he kills all the Suitors. Odysseus and Telemachus hang twelve of their household maids, who had betrayed Penelope or had sex with the Suitors, or both; they mutilate and kill the goatherd Melanthius, who had mocked and abused Odysseus. Now at last, Odysseus identifies himself to Penelope. She is hesitant, but accepts him when he mentions that their bed was made from an olive tree still rooted to the ground. Many modern and ancient scholars take this to be the original ending of the Odyssey, and the rest to be an interpolation. The next day he and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laertes, who likewise accepts his identity only when Odysseus correctly describes the orchard that Laertes had previously given him. The citizens of Ithaca have followed Odysseus on the road, planning to avenge the killing of the Suitors, their sons. Their leader points out that Odysseus has now caused the deaths of two generations of the men of Ithaca: his sailors, not one of whom survived; and the Suitors, whom he has now executed. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades both sides to give up the vendetta, a deus ex machina. After this, Ithaca is at peace once more, concluding the Odyssey.
22460	/m/05mdd	Othello	William Shakespeare			 The play opens with Roderigo, a rich and dissolute gentleman, complaining to Iago, a high-ranking soldier, that Iago has not told him about the secret marriage between Desdemona, the daughter of a Senator named Brabantio, and Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army. He is upset by this development because he loves Desdemona and had previously asked her father for her hand in marriage. Iago hates Othello for promoting a younger man named Michael Cassio above him, and tells Roderigo that he plans to use Othello for his own advantage. Iago is also angry because he believes, or at least gives the pretence of belief, that Othello slept with his wife Emilia. Iago denounces Cassio as a scholarly tactician with no real battle experience; in contrast, Iago is a battle-tested soldier. By emphasizing Roderigo's failed bid for Desdemona, and his own dissatisfaction with serving under Othello, Iago convinces Roderigo to wake Brabantio, Desdemona's father, and tell him about his daughter's elopement. Iago sneaks away to find Othello and warns him that Brabantio is coming for him. Before Brabantio reaches Othello, news arrives in Venice that the Turks are going to attack Cyprus; therefore Othello is summoned to advise the senators. Brabantio arrives and accuses Othello of seducing Desdemona by witchcraft, but Othello defends himself successfully before an assembly that includes the Duke of Venice, Brabantio's kinsman Lodovico and Gratiano, and various senators. He explains that Desdemona became enamored of him for the stories he told of his early life, not because of any witchcraft. The senate is satisfied, but Brabantio leaves saying that Desdemona will betray Othello. By order of the Duke, Othello leaves Venice to command the Venetian armies against invading Turks on the island of Cyprus, accompanied by his new wife, his new lieutenant Cassio, his ensign Iago, and Emilia as Desdemona's attendant. The party arrives in Cyprus to find that a storm has destroyed the Turkish fleet. Othello orders a general celebration. Iago schemes to use Cassio to ruin Othello and takes the opportunity of Othello's absence at the celebration to persuade Roderigo to engage Cassio in a fight. He achieves this by getting Cassio drunk after Cassio's own admission that he cannot hold his wine. The brawl alarms the citizenry, and Othello is forced to quell the disturbance. Othello blames Cassio for the disturbance and strips him of his rank. Cassio is distraught, but Iago persuades him to importune Desdemona to act as an intermediary between himself and Othello, and persuade her husband to reinstate him. Iago now persuades Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona. As it happens, Cassio is having a relationship of sorts with Bianca, a prostitute. Desdemona drops a handkerchief that was Othello's first gift to Desdemona and which he has stated holds great significance to him in the context of their relationship. Emilia steals it, at the request of Iago, but unaware of what he plans to do with the handkerchief. Iago plants it in Cassio's lodgings as evidence of Cassio and Desdemona's affair. After he has planted the handkerchief, Iago tells Othello to stand apart and watch Cassio's reactions while Iago questions him about the handkerchief. Iago goads Cassio on to talk about his affair with Bianca, but speaks her name so quietly that Othello believes the two other men are talking about Desdemona when Cassio is really speaking of Bianca. Bianca, on discovering the handkerchief, chastises Cassio, accusing him of giving her a second-hand gift which he received from another lover. Othello sees this, and Iago convinces him that Cassio received the handkerchief from Desdemona. Enraged and hurt, Othello resolves to kill his wife and asks Iago to kill Cassio as a duty to their intimacy. Othello proceeds to make Desdemona's life miserable, hitting her in front of her family. Desdemona laments her suffering, remembering the fate of her mother's maid, who was forsaken by her lover. Roderigo complains that he has received nothing for his efforts and threatens to abandon his pursuit of Desdemona, but Iago convinces him to kill Cassio instead, because Cassio has just been appointed governor of Cyprus, and — Iago argues — if Cassio lives to take office, Othello and Desdemona will leave Cyprus, thwarting Roderigo's plans to win Desdemona. Roderigo attacks Cassio in the street after Cassio leaves Bianca's lodgings. They fight and both are wounded. Cassio's leg is cut from behind by Iago who manages to hide his identity as perpetrator. Passers-by arrive to help; Iago joins them, pretending to help Cassio. When Cassio identifies Roderigo as one of his attackers, Iago secretly stabs Roderigo to stop him from confessing. He then accuses Bianca of the failed conspiracy to kill Cassio. In the night, Othello confronts Desdemona, and then smothers her to death in bed, before Emilia arrives. Othello tries to justify his actions to the distressed Emilia by accusing Desdemona of adultery. Emilia calls for help. The Governor arrives, with Iago, Cassio, and others, and Emilia begins to explain the situation. When Othello mentions the handkerchief as proof, Emilia realizes what Iago has done. She exposes him, whereupon Iago kills her. Othello, realizing Desdemona's innocence, attacks Iago but does not kill him, saying that he would rather have Iago live the rest of his life in pain. For his part, Iago refuses to explain his motives, vowing to remain silent from that moment on. Lodovico, a Venetian nobleman, apprehends both Iago and Othello, but Othello commits suicide with a sword before they can take him into custody. At the end, it can be assumed, Iago is taken off to be tortured, and Cassio becomes governor of Cyprus.
22808	/m/05q4s	On War	Carl von Clausewitz	1832		 The book contains a wealth of historical examples used to illustrate its various concepts. Frederick II of Prussia (the Great) figures prominently for having made very efficient use of the limited forces at his disposal, though Napoleon is perhaps the central figure. According to Azar Gat, the "general message" of the book was that "the conduct of war could not be reduced to universal principles. Among many strands of thought, three stand out as essential to Clausewitz's concept: * War must never be seen as having any purpose in itself, but should be seen as an instrument of Politik--a German word that conflates the meanings of the English words policy and politics: "War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means."). * The military objectives in war that support one's political objectives fall into two broad types: "war to achieve limited aims" and war to "disarm” the enemy: “to render [him] politically helpless or militarily impotent." * All else being equal, the course of war will tend to favour the party with the stronger emotional and political motivations, but especially the defender (a notion that surprises and confuses many readers, who typically expect a soldier—especially a German soldier—to be a proponent of aggressive warfare). Some of the key ideas (not necessarily original to Clausewitz or even to his mentor Gerhard von Scharnhorst) discussed in On War include (in no particular order of importance): * the dialectical approach to military analysis * the methods of "critical analysis" * the uses and abuses of historical studies * the nature of the balance-of-power mechanism * the relationship between political objectives and military objectives in war * the asymmetrical relationship between attack and defense * the nature of "military genius" * the "fascinating trinity" (Wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit) of war * philosophical distinctions between "absolute or ideal war," and "real war" * in "real war," the distinctive poles of a) limited war and b) war to "render the enemy helpless" * "war" belongs fundamentally to the social realm, rather than the realms of art or science * "strategy" belongs primarily to the realm of art * "tactics" belongs primarily to the realm of science * the essential unpredictability of war * the "fog of war" * "friction" * strategic and operational "centers of gravity" * the "culminating point of the offensive" * the "culminating point of victory" Clausewitz used a dialectical method to construct his argument, leading to frequent modern misinterpretation because he explores various—often opposed—ideas before coming to conclusions. Modern perception of war are based on the concepts Clausewitz put forth in On War, though these have been very diversely interpreted by various leaders (e.g., Moltke, Vladimir Lenin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mao Zedong, etc.), thinkers, armies, and peoples. Modern military doctrine, organization, and norms are all based on Napoleonic premises, even to this day—though whether these premises are necessarily also "Clausewitzian" is debatable. The "dualism" of Clausewitz's view of war (i.e., that wars can vary a great deal between the two "poles" he proposed, based on the political objectives of the opposing sides and the context) seems simple enough, but few commentators have proven willing to accept this crucial variability—they insist that Clausewitz "really" argued for one end of the scale or the other. On War has been seen by some prominent critics as an argument for "total war". It has been blamed for the level of destruction involved in the First and Second World Wars, but it seems rather that Clausewitz (who did not actually use the term "total war") had merely foreseen the inevitable development that started with the huge, patriotically motivated armies of the Napoleonic wars. These wars resulted (though war's evolution has not yet ended) in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with all the forces and capabilities of the state devoted to destroying forces and capabilities of the enemy state (thus "total war"). Conversely, Clausewitz has also been seen as "The preeminent military and political strategist of limited war in modern times." (Robert Osgood, 1979) Clausewitz and his proponents have been severely criticized, perhaps quite unfairly, by competing theorists--Antoine-Henri Jomini in the 19th century, B. H. Liddell Hart in the mid-20th century, and Martin van Creveld and John Keegan more recently. On War is a work rooted solely in the world of the nation state, says historian Martin Van Creveld, who alleges that Clausewitz takes the state "almost for granted" as he rarely looks at anything previous to Westphalia. He alleges that Clausewitz does not address any form of intra/supra-state conflict, such as rebellion and revolution, because he could not theoretically account for warfare before the existence of the state. Previous kinds of conflict were demoted to criminal activities without legitimacy and not worthy of the label "war." Van Creveld argues that "Clausewitzian war" requires the state to act in conjunction with the people and the army, the state becoming a massive engine built to exert military force against an identical opponent. He supports this statement by pointing to the conventional armies in existence throughout the 20th century. This view ignores, among many other things, the facts that Clausewitz died in the early 19th century, that Prussia itself was not a "nation-state," and that the Napoleonic Wars included many non-conventional conflicts of which Clausewitz was well aware. In any case, revolutionaries like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong had no trouble adapting Clausewitz's concepts to their own purposes. Nor did conservatives like the Elder Moltke and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Much of Clausewitz's thinking was based on his experience as a Prussian war planner concerned with how to use popular forces in an insurrectionary struggle against the much-superior French forces which occupied Prussia after 1806—how, in short, to wage a "Spanish War in Germany." Clausewitz himself never saw the 20th-century states and armies to which Creveld refers—the states with which he himself was familiar were quite different. In any case, the "Clausewitzian Trinity" that Van Creveld condemns as consisting of a rigid, static hierarchy of "People, Army, and Government," does not in fact consist of those three concrete actors. In fact, the words people, army, and government appear nowhere in the paragraph in which Clausewitz defines his famous Trinity. Rather, the Trinity of forces that drive the course of real-world war in Clausewitz's view are 1) violent emotion, 2) the interplay of chance and probability, and 3) political calculations driven by reason. It seems unlikely that emotion, chance, and rationality will cease to play a role in war any time soon, whatever the fate of the state.
23279	/m/05srj	The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch	Philip K. Dick	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The story begins in a future world where global warming has resulted in global temperatures so high that in most of the world it is unsafe to be outside without special cooling gear during daylight hours. In a desperate bid to preserve humanity and ease population burdens on Earth, the UN has initiated a "draft" for colonizing the nearby planets, where conditions are so horrific and primitive that the unwilling colonists have fallen prey to a form of escapism involving the use of an illegal drug (CAN-D) in concert with "layouts". Layouts are physical props intended to simulate a sort of alternate reality where life is easier than either the grim existence of the colonist in their marginal off-world colonies, or even Earth, where global warming has progressed to the point that Antarctica is prime vacation resort territory. The illegal drug CAN-D allows people to "share" their experience of the "Perky Pat" (the name of the main female character in the simulated world) layouts. This "sharing" has caused a pseudo-religious cult or series of cults to grow up around the layouts and the use of the drug. Up to the point where the novel begins, New York City-based Perky Pat (or P.P.) Layouts, Inc., has held a monopoly on this product, as well as on the illegal trade in the drug CAN-D which makes the shared hallucinations possible. The novel opens shortly after Barney Mayerson, P.P. Layouts' top precognitive (someone who can glimpse future possibilities and sort out the most likely to actually occur), has received a "draft notice" from the UN for involuntary resettlement as a colonist on Mars. Mayerson is sleeping with his assistant, Roni Fugate, but remains conflicted about the divorce, which he himself initiated, from his first wife Emily, a ceramic pot artist. Meanwhile, Emily's second husband tries to sell her pot designs to P.P. Layouts as possible accessories for the Perky Pat virtual worlds -- but Barney, recognizing them as Emily's, rejects them out of spite. Meanwhile, the UN rescues Palmer Eldritch's ship from a crash on Pluto. Leo Bulero, head of P.P. Layouts and an "evolved" human (meaning someone who has undergone expensive genetic treatments by a German "doctor" which are supposed to push the client "forward" on an evolutionary scale, and which result in gross physical, as well as mental, modifications), hears rumors that Eldritch discovered an alien hallucinogen in the Prox system with similar properties to CAN-D, and that he plans to market it as "Chew-Z," with U.N. approval, on off-world colonies. However CHEW-Z does not require the prop of the external layouts and seems to have certain undefined qualities that make the use of CHEW-Z even more addictive than CAN-D has been. This would effectively destroy P.P. Layouts. Bulero tries to contact Eldritch but he is quarantined at a U.N. hospital. Both Mayerson and Fugate have precognitions of reports that Bulero is going to be responsible for murdering Eldritch. Meanwhile, Emily and her second husband sell her pottery designs to Eldritch and use the payment to undergo evolution therapy. Unfortunately, Emily begins to devolve rather than evolving. This devolution results in a loss of creativity and she finds herself recreating older, less sophisticated designs from earlier work, without realizing it. Under the guise of a reporter, Bulero travels to Eldritch's estate on the Moon, where Eldritch holds a press conference. Bulero is kidnapped and forced to take Chew-Z intravenously. He enters a psychic netherworld over which both he and Eldritch seemingly have some control. After wrangling about business with Eldritch, Bulero travels to what appears to be Earth at some time in the not-too-distant future. Evolved humans identify him as a ghost and show him a monument to himself commemorating his role in the death of Eldritch, an "enemy of the Sol System." Bulero returns to Earth and fires Mayerson because Mayerson was afraid to travel to the Moon to rescue him. Mayerson, in despair, accepts his UN conscription to Mars but Bulero recruits him as a double agent. Mayerson is to inject himself with a virus after taking Chew-Z in a plot to deceive the UN into thinking Chew-Z is harmful and cause them to ban it. On Mars, Mayerson buys some Chew-Z from Eldritch, who appears in holographic form. Mayerson tries to hallucinate a world where he is still with Emily but finds that he does not control his "hallucination." Like Bulero, he finds himself in the future. Mayerson arrives in New York two years hence where he speaks with Bulero, Fugate and his future self about the death of Palmer Eldritch. He also encounters several manifestations of Eldritch, identifiable by their robotic right hand, artificial eyes, and steel teeth. Eldritch offers to help Mayerson “become” whatever he wants, but in fact is so manipulative and controlling of the CHEW-Z alternate reality that Mayerson ultimately decides he'd rather be dead than continue to be manipulated by Eldritch. When a despairing Mayerson chooses death, he finds himself apparently forced into Eldritch's body right at the point in the timeline where Bulero is ready to shoot a torpedo at Eldritch's ship. It appears that Eldritch's plan is to preserve his own life essence housed in Mayerson's body while allowing Mayerson himself to die in Eldritch's place. Eldritch, meanwhile, intends to live on in Mayerson's form and enjoy the simple if arduous life of a Martian colonist. Mayerson, stuck in Eldritch's body and mistaken for him, is indeed nearly killed by Bulero in the near future, but before the fatal shot can be fired he is awakened from his Chew-Z trance in the present by Bulero, who has just arrived on Mars. Bulero is willing to take Mayerson back to Earth but refuses to after learning that Mayerson did not inject himself with the virus. Mayerson is now confident that Bulero will kill Eldritch, so the sacrifice of taking the virus in order to ruin Eldritch's business is unnecessary; but he does not try to convince Bulero of this. Later, Mayerson discusses his experience with a neo-christian colonist and they conclude that either Eldritch became a god in the Prox system or some god-like being has taken his place. Mayerson is convinced some aspect of Eldritch is still inside him, and that as long as he refuses to take Chew-Z again, it is Eldritch who will actually be killed by Bulero in the near future; Mayerson is half-resigned, half-hopeful about taking on the life of a Martian colonist without reprieve. Mayerson considers the possibility of Eldritch being what humans have always thought of as a god, but inimical, or perhaps merely an inferior aspect of a bigger and better sort of god. The novel has an ambiguous ending, with Bulero heading back toward Earth, and apparent proliferation of Eldritch's cyborg bodily 'stigmata' -which may mean that Bulero is still trapped in Eldritch's hallucinatory domain, or that Chew-Z is becoming increasingly popular amongst Terrans and Martian colonists.
23280	/m/05sry	Time out of Joint	Philip K. Dick	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 As the novel opens, its protagonist Ragle Gumm believes that he lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His unusual profession consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper competition called, "Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?". Gumm's 1959 has some differences from ours: the Tucker car is in production, AM/FM radios are scarce to non-existent and Marilyn Monroe is a complete unknown. As the novel opens, strange things begin to happen to Gumm. A soft-drink stand disappears, replaced by a small slip of paper with the words "SOFT-DRINK STAND" printed on it in block letters. Intriguing little pieces of the real 1959 turn up: a magazine article on Marilyn Monroe, a telephone book with non-operational exchanges listed and radios hidden away in someone else's house. People with no apparent connection to Gumm, including military pilots using aircraft transceivers, refer to him by name. Few other characters notice these or experience similar anomalies; the sole exception is Gumm's supposed brother-in-law, Victor "Vic" Nielson, in whom he confides. A neighborhood woman, Mrs. Keitelbein, invites him to a Civil Defense class where he sees a model of a futuristic underground military factory. He has the unshakeable feeling he's been inside that building many times before. Confusion gradually mounts for Gumm. His neighbor Bill Black knows far more about these events than he admits, and, observing this, begins worrying: "Suppose Ragle [Gumm] is becoming sane again?" In fact, Gumm does become sane, and the deception surrounding him (erected to protect and exploit him) begins to unravel. Gumm tries to escape the town and is turned back by kafkaesque obstructions. He sees a magazine with himself on the cover, in a military uniform, at the factory depicted in the model. He tries a second time to escape, this time with Vic, and succeeds. He learns that his idyllic town is a constructed reality designed to protect him from the frightening fact that he lives on a then-future Earth (circa 1998) that is at war with its colonists on the Moon who are fighting for a permanent Lunar habitation that is politically independent of Earth as well. Gumm has a unique ability to predict where the colonists' nuclear strikes will be aimed. Previously Gumm did this work for the military, but then he defected to the colonists' side and planned to secretly emigrate to the Moon. But before this could happen he began retreating into a fantasy world based largely upon the relatively idyllic surroundings of his extreme youth. He was no longer able to shoulder the awesome responsibility of being the Earth's lone protector from Lunar-launched H-Bomb attacks. The fake town was thereby created in Gumm's mental image to accommodate his dementia so that he would continue predicting missile strikes in the guise of submitting entries to a harmless newspaper contest and without the ethical qualms involved with being on the "wrong" side of a civil war. When Gumm finally remembers his true history he decides to emigrate to the Moon after all because he feels that exploration and migration, being as they are basic human impulses, should never be denied a people by any national or planetary government. Vic rejects this belief, referring to the colonists essentially as aggressors and terrorists, and returns to the town. The book ends with some hope for peace, because the colonists are more willing to negotiate than the Earth government has been telling its citizens.
23281	/m/05ssb	A Scanner Darkly	Philip K. Dick	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The protagonist is Bob Arctor, member of a household of drug-users, who is also living a parallel life as Agent Fred, an undercover police agent assigned to spy on Arctor's household. Arctor/Fred shields his true identity from those in the drug subculture, and from the police themselves. (The requirement that narcotics agents remain anonymous, to avoid collusion and other forms of corruption, becomes a critical plot point late in the book.) While supposedly only posing as a drug user, Arctor becomes addicted to "Substance D" (also referred to as "Slow Death," "Death," or "D"), a powerful psychoactive drug. An ongoing conflict is Arctor's love for Donna, a drug dealer through whom he intends to identify high-level dealers of Substance D. Arctor's persistent use of the drug causes the two hemispheres of his brain to function independently, or "compete." Through a series of drug and psychological tests, Arctor's superiors at work discover that his addiction has made him incapable of performing his job as a narcotics agent. Donna takes Arctor to "New-Path," a rehabilitation clinic, just as Arctor begins to experience the symptoms of Substance D withdrawal. It is revealed that Donna has been a narcotics agent all along, working as part of a police operation to infiltrate New-Path and determine its funding source. Without his knowledge, Arctor has been selected to penetrate the secretive organization. As part of the rehab program, Arctor is renamed "Bruce" and forced to participate in cruel group-dynamic games intended to break the will of the patients. The story ends with Bruce working at a New-Path farming commune, where he is suffering from a serious neurocognitive deficit after withdrawing from Substance D. Although considered by his handlers to be nothing more than a walking shell of a man, "Bruce" manages to spot rows of blue flowers growing hidden among rows of corn, and realizes the blue flowers are Mors ontologica, the source of Substance D. The book ends with Bruce hiding a flower in his shoe to give to his "friends" – undercover police agents posing as recovering addicts at the Los Angeles New-Path facility – on Thanksgiving.
23285	/m/05stq	Radio Free Albemuth	Philip K. Dick	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 In this alternate history the corrupt US President Ferris F. Fremont (FFF for 666, ‘F’ being the 6th letter in the alphabet, see Number of the Beast) becomes Chief Executive in the late Nineteen-Sixties following Lyndon Johnson's administration. The character is best described as an amalgam of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, who abrogates civil liberties and human rights through positing a conspiracy theory centered around a (presumably) fictitious subversive organization known as "Aramchek". In addition to this, he is associated with a right-wing populist movement called "Friends of the American People" (FAPers). Ironically enough, the President's paranoia and opportunism lead to the establishment of a real resistance movement that is organized through narrow-beam radio transmissions from a mysterious alien near-Earth satellite, by a superintelligent, extraterrestrial, but less than omnipotent being (or network) named VALIS. As with its successor, VALIS, this novel is autobiographical. Dick himself is a major character, though fictitious protagonist Nicholas Brady serves as a vehicle for Dick's alleged gnostic theophany on February 11, 1974. In addition, Sadassa Silvia is a character who claims that Ferris Fremont is actually a communist covert agent recruited by Sadassa's mother when Fremont was still a teenager. As with VALIS, Radio Free Albemuth deals with author Philip Dick's highly personal style of Christianity (or Gnosticism). It further examines the moral and ethical repercussions of informing on trusting friends for the authorities. Also prominent is Dick's dislike of the Republican Party, satirizing Nixon's America as a Stalinist or neo-fascist police state. Fremont eventually captures and imprisons Dick and Brady after the latter attempts to produce and distribute a record that contains subliminal messages of revolt against the current dictatorship. Brady and Silvia are executed, and Dick narrates the concluding passage about his life in a concentration camp, where his supposedly latest work is actually penned by a ghost writer and regime-approved hack. Suddenly, however, he hears music blaring from a transistor radio which contains the same subliminal message. He and his friends, it turns out, were just a decoy set up by VALIS to detour the government from stopping a much more popular A-List band from releasing a similar record with a better-established recording company. As Dick realizes this and hears youngsters repeating the lyrics he realizes that salvation may lie within the hearts and minds of the next generation.
24162	/m/060xy	Pride and Prejudice	Jane Austen	1813-01-28	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrative opens with Mr Bingley, a wealthy, charming and social young bachelor, moving into Netherfield Park in the neighbourhood of the Bennet family. Mr Bingley is soon well received, while his friend Mr Darcy makes a less favorable first impression by appearing proud and condescending at a ball that they attend (this is partly explained in that he detests dancing and is not much for light conversation). Mr Bingley singles out Elizabeth's elder sister, Jane, for particular attention, and it soon becomes apparent that they have formed an attachment to each other. By contrast, Darcy slights Elizabeth, who overhears and jokes about it despite feeling a budding resentment. On paying a visit to Mr Bingley's sister, Jane is caught in a heavy downpour, catches cold, and is forced to stay at Netherfield for several days. Elizabeth arrives to nurse her sister and is thrown into frequent company with Mr Darcy, who begins to perceive his attachment to her, but is too proud to proceed on this feeling. Mr Collins, a clergyman, pays a visit to the Bennets. Mr Bennet and Elizabeth are much amused by his obsequious veneration of his employer, the noble Lady Catherine de Bourgh, as well as by his self-important and pedantic nature. It soon becomes apparent that Mr Collins has come to Longbourn to choose a wife from among the Bennet sisters (his cousins) and Elizabeth has been singled out. At the same time, Elizabeth forms an acquaintance with Mr Wickham, a militia officer who claims to have been very seriously mistreated by Mr Darcy, despite having been a ward of Mr Darcy's father. This tale, and Elizabeth's attraction to Mr Wickham, adds fuel to her dislike of Mr Darcy. At a ball given by Mr Bingley at Netherfield, Mr Darcy becomes aware of a general expectation that Mr Bingley and Jane will marry, and the Bennet family, with the exception of Jane and Elizabeth, make a public display of poor manners and decorum. The following morning, Mr Collins proposes marriage to Elizabeth, who refuses him, much to her mother's distress. Mr Collins recovers and promptly becomes engaged to Elizabeth's close friend Charlotte, a homely woman with few prospects. Mr Bingley abruptly quits Netherfield and returns to London, and Elizabeth is convinced that Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley's sister have conspired to separate him from Jane. In the spring, Elizabeth visits Charlotte and Mr Collins in Kent. Elizabeth and her hosts are frequently invited to Rosings Park, home of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Darcy's aunt; coincidentally, Darcy also arrives to visit. Darcy again finds himself attracted to Elizabeth and impetuously proposes to her. Elizabeth, however, has just learned of Darcy's role in separating Mr Bingley from Jane from his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam. She angrily rebukes him, and a heated discussion follows; she charges him with destroying her sister's happiness, with treating Mr Wickham disgracefully, and with having conducted himself towards her in an ungentleman-like manner. Mr Darcy, shocked, ultimately responds with a letter giving a good account of (most of) his actions: Wickham had exchanged his legacies for a cash payment, only to return after gambling away the money to reclaim the forfeited inheritance; he then attempted to elope with Darcy's young sister, thereby to capture her fortune. Regarding Mr Bingley and Jane, Darcy claimed he had observed no reciprocal interest in Jane for Bingley. Elizabeth later came to acknowledge the truth of Darcy's assertions. Some months later, Elizabeth and her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner visit Pemberley, Darcy's estate, believing he will be absent for the day. He returns unexpectedly, and though surprised, he is gracious and welcoming. He treats the Gardiners with great civility; he introduces Elizabeth to his sister, and Elizabeth begins to realise her attraction to him. Their reacquaintance is cut short, however, by news that Lydia, Elizabeth's sister, has run away to elope with Mr Wickham. Elizabeth and the Gardiners return to Longbourn, where Elizabeth grieves that her renewed acquaintance with Mr Darcy will end because of her sister's disgrace. Lydia and Wickham are soon found, then married by the clergy; they visit Longbourn, where Lydia lets slip that Mr Darcy was responsible for finding the couple and negotiating their marriage—at great expense to himself. Elizabeth is shocked but does not dwell further on the topic due to Mr Bingley's return and subsequent proposal to Jane, who immediately accepts. Lady Catherine de Bourgh later bursts in on Longbourn; intending to thwart local rumour, she warns Elizabeth against marrying Mr Darcy. Elizabeth refuses her demands. Disgusted, Lady Catherine leaves and drops by to inform her nephew on Elizabeth's abominable behaviour. However, this lends hope to Darcy that Elizabeth's opinion of him may have changed. He travels to Longbourn and proposes again; and now Elizabeth accepts.
24861	/m/066v3	Pale Fire	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Shade's poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and the apparent suicide of his daughter, Hazel Shade. Canto 3 focuses on Shade's search for knowledge about an afterlife, culminating in a "faint hope" in higher powers "playing a game of worlds" as indicated by apparent coincidences. Canto 4 offers details on Shade's daily life and creative process, as well as thoughts on his poetry, which he finds to be a means of somehow understanding the universe. In Kinbote's editorial contributions he tells three stories intermixed with each other. One is his own story, notably including what he thinks of as his friendship with Shade. After Shade was murdered, Kinbote acquired the manuscript, including some variants, and has taken it upon himself to oversee the poem's publication, telling readers that it lacks only line 1000. Kinbote's second story deals with King Charles II, "The Beloved," the deposed king of Zembla. King Charles escaped imprisonment by Soviet-backed revolutionaries, making use of a secret passage and brave adherents in disguise. Kinbote repeatedly claims that he inspired Shade to write the poem by recounting King Charles's escape to him and that possible allusions to the king, and to Zembla, appear in Shade's poem, especially in rejected drafts. However, no explicit reference to King Charles is to be found in the poem. Kinbote's third story is that of Gradus, an assassin dispatched by the new rulers of Zembla to kill the exiled King Charles. Gradus makes his way from Zembla through Europe and America to New Wye, suffering comic mishaps. In the last note, to the missing line 1000, Kinbote narrates how Gradus killed Shade by mistake. The reader soon realizes that Kinbote is King Charles, living incognito—or, though Kinbote builds an elaborate picture of Zembla complete with samples of a constructed language, that he is insane and that his identification with King Charles is a delusion, as perhaps all of Zembla is. Nabokov said in an interview that Kinbote committed suicide after finishing the book. The critic Michael Wood has stated, "This is authorial trespassing, and we don't have to pay attention to it," but Brian Boyd has argued that internal evidence points to Kinbote's suicide. One of Kinbote's annotations to Shade's poem (corresponding to line 493) addresses the subject of suicide at some length.
24965	/m/067ld	Pacific Overtures	Stephen Sondheim			 ;Act I Conceived as a sort of Japanese playwright's version of an American musical about American influences on Japan, Pacific Overtures begins its journey to the present day in July 1853. Since the foreigners were driven from the island empire, explains the Reciter, there has been nothing to threaten the changeless cycle of their days. Elsewhere, wars are fought and machines are rumbling but in Nippon they plant rice, exchange bows and enjoy peace and serenity. But President Millard Fillmore, determined to open up trade with Japan, has sent Commodore Matthew C. Perry across the Pacific, and, to the consternation of Lord Abe and the Shogun's other Councillors, the stirrings of trouble begin with the appearance of Manjiro, a fisherman who was lost at sea and rescued by Americans. He returns to Japan and attempts to warn Abe of the presence of warships in the waters around Okinawa, but is instead arrested for consorting with foreigners. A minor samurai, Kayama is appointed Prefect of the Police at Uraga to drive the Americans away - news which leaves Tamate, his wife, grief-stricken since it will result in certain failure and shame. As he leaves, she expresses her feelings in dance as two Observers describe the scene and reveal her thoughts in "There Is No Other Way". As a Fisherman, a Thief and other locals relate the sight of the "Four Black Dragons" roaring through the sea, an extravagant Oriental caricature of the USS Powhatan pulls into harbor. Kayama is sent to meet with the Americans but he is rejected as not important enough. He enlists the aid of Manjiro, the only man in Japan who has dealt with Americans, and disguised as a great lord, Manjiro gets an answer from them: Commodore Perry announces that he must meet the Shogun within six days or else he will shell the city. Faced with this ultimatum the Shogun takes to his bed. Exasperated by his indecision, his Mother with elaborate courtesy, poisons him with "Chrysanthemum Tea." With the Shogun dead, Kayama devises a plan by which the Americans, thanks to a covering of tatami mats and a raised Treaty House, can be received without having, technically, to set foot on Japanese soil. He and Manjiro set off for Uraga, forging a band of friendship through the exchange of "Poems". Kayama has saved Japan, but it is too late to save Tamate. He returns home to find her dead from seppuku. Already events are moving beyond the control of the old order: the two men pass a Madam instructing her inexperienced Girls in the art of seduction as they prepare to "Welcome to Kanagawa" the foreign devils. Commodore Perry and his men come ashore and, on their "March to the Treaty House", demonstrate their goodwill by offering such gifts as two bags of Irish potatoes and a copy of Owen's "Geology of Minnesota". The negotiations themselves are seen through the memory of three who were there: a warrior who could hear the debates but not see it from his hiding place in the floor of the house, a young boy who could see the action but not hear it from his perch in the tree outside, and the boy as an old man recalling that without "Someone In a Tree", a silent watcher, history may have been incomplete. Initially, it seems as if Kayama has won: the Americans depart in peace. But then the barbarian figure of Commodore Perry leaps out to perform a traditional Kabuki "Lion Dance", which ends as a strutting, triumphalist, all-American cakewalk. ;Act II The child emperor (portrayed by a puppet manipulated by his advisors) reacts with pleasure to the departure of the Americans, promoting Lord Abe to Shogun, Kayama to Governor of Uraga and Manjiro to the rank of Samurai. The crisis appears to have passed, but to the surprise of Lord Abe the Americans return to request formal trading arrangements. To the tune of a Sousa march, they bid Japan "Please Hello" and are followed by a Gilbertian British Admiral, a clog-dancing Dutch Admiral, a gloomy Russian and a dandified Frenchman all vying for access to Japan's markets. With this new western threat, the faction of the Lords of the South grow restless. They send a politically charged gift to the Emperor, a storyteller who tells a vivid, allegorical tale of a brave young emperor who frees himself from his cowardly Shogun. The years pass as Kayama and Manjiro dress themselves for tea. As Manjiro continues to dress with painstaking slowness into ceremonial robes for the tea ritual, Kayama slowly adopts the manners and dress of the newcomers, proudly displaying his new pocket watch, cutaway coat and "A Bowler Hat". But there are other less pleasant changes prompted by westernization. Three British Sailors mistake a "Pretty Lady" for a geisha. Though their approach is gentle, the girl cries for help and her father kills the confused Tars. Reporting on the situation to the Shogun, Kayama witnesses Lord Abe's murder by cloaked assassins and himself is killed by one of their number - his former friend, Manjiro. In the ensuing turmoil the puppet Emperor seizes real power and vows that Japan will modernize itself. As the country moves from one innovation to the "Next!", the Imperial robes are removed layer by layer to show the Reciter in T-shirt and black trousers. Contemporary Japan - the world of Toyota and Seiko, air pollution and contaminated beaches -assembles itself around him. "There was a time when foreigners were not welcome here. But that was long ago," he says. "Welcome to Japan."
25821	/m/06fsr	Romeo and Juliet	William Shakespeare			 The play, set in Verona, begins with a street brawl between Montague and Capulet supporters who are sworn enemies. The Prince of Verona intervenes and declares that further breach of the peace will be punishable by death. Later, Count Paris talks to Capulet about marrying his daughter, but Capulet asks Paris to wait another two years (then he later orders Juliet to marry Paris) and invites him to attend a planned Capulet ball. Lady Capulet and Juliet's nurse try to persuade Juliet to accept Paris's courtship. Meanwhile, Benvolio talks with his cousin Romeo, Montague's son, about Romeo's recent depression. Benvolio discovers that it stems from unrequited infatuation for a girl named Rosaline, one of Capulet's nieces. Persuaded by Benvolio and Mercutio, Romeo attends the ball at the Capulet house in hopes of meeting Rosaline. However, Romeo instead meets and falls in love with Juliet. After the ball, in what is now called the "balcony scene", Romeo sneaks into the Capulet orchard and overhears Juliet at her window vowing her love to him in spite of her family's hatred of the Montagues. Romeo makes himself known to her and they agree to be married. With the help of Friar Laurence, who hopes to reconcile the two families through their children's union, they are secretly married the next day. Juliet's cousin Tybalt, incensed that Romeo had sneaked into the Capulet ball, challenges him to a duel. Romeo, now considering Tybalt his kinsman, refuses to fight. Mercutio is offended by Tybalt's insolence, as well as Romeo's "vile submission," and accepts the duel on Romeo's behalf. Mercutio is fatally wounded when Romeo attempts to break up the fight. Grief-stricken and wracked with guilt, Romeo confronts and slays Tybalt. Montague argues that Romeo has justly executed Tybalt for the murder of Mercutio. The Prince, now having lost a kinsman in the warring families' feud, exiles Romeo from Verona, with threat of execution upon return. Romeo secretly spends the night in Juliet's chamber, where they consummate their marriage. Capulet, misinterpreting Juliet's grief, agrees to marry her to Count Paris and threatens to disown her when she refuses to become Paris's "joyful bride." When she then pleads for the marriage to be delayed, her mother rejects her. Juliet visits Friar Laurence for help, and he offers her a drug that will put her into a deathlike coma for "two and forty hours." The Friar promises to send a messenger to inform Romeo of the plan, so that he can rejoin her when she awakens. On the night before the wedding, she takes the drug and, when discovered apparently dead, she is laid in the family crypt. The messenger, however, does not reach Romeo and, instead, Romeo learns of Juliet's apparent death from his servant Balthasar. Heartbroken, Romeo buys poison from an apothecary and goes to the Capulet crypt. He encounters Paris who has come to mourn Juliet privately. Believing Romeo to be a vandal, Paris confronts him and, in the ensuing battle, Romeo kills Paris. Still believing Juliet to be dead, he drinks the poison. Juliet then awakens and, finding Romeo dead, stabs herself with his dagger. The feuding families and the Prince meet at the tomb to find all three dead. Friar Laurence recounts the story of the two "star-cross'd lovers". The families are reconciled by their children's deaths and agree to end their violent feud. The play ends with the Prince's elegy for the lovers: "For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
25830	/m/06fwq	Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead	Tom Stoppard	1967	{"/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The play opens with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern betting on coin flips. Rosencrantz, who bets heads each time, wins ninety-two flips in a row. The extreme unlikeliness of this event according to the laws of probability leads Guildenstern to suggest that they may be "within un-, sub- or supernatural forces". The reader learns why they are where they are: the King has sent for them. Guildenstern theorizes on the nature of reality, focusing on how an event becomes increasingly real as more people witness it. A troupe of Tragedians arrives and offers the two men a show. They seem capable only of performances involving bloodbaths. The next two scenes are from the plot of Hamlet. The first, involving Hamlet and Ophelia, takes place off-stage in the Shakespeare. The second is taken directly from Hamlet, and is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's first appearance in that play. Here the Danish king and queen, Claudius and Gertrude, ask the two to discover the nature of Hamlet's recent madness. The royal couple demonstrate an inability to distinguish the two courtiers from one another, as indeed do the characters themselves to their irritation. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attempt to practice for their meeting with the Prince by one pretending to be Hamlet and the other asking him questions, but they glean no new information from it. The act closes with another scene from Hamlet in which they finally meet the Prince face to face. The act opens with the end of the conversation between Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet. Guildenstern tries to look on the bright side, while Rosencrantz makes it clear that the pair had made no progress, that Hamlet had entirely outwitted them. The Player returns to the stage. He is angry that the pair had not earlier stayed to watch their play because, without an audience, his Tragedians are nothing. He tells them to stop questioning their existence because, upon examination, life appears too chaotic to comprehend. The Player, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern lose themselves in yet another illogical conversation that demonstrates the limits of language. The Player leaves in order to prepare for his production of the "Murder of Gonzago", set to be put on in front of Hamlet and the King and Queen. The royal couple enters and begins another short scene taken directly from Hamlet: they ask about the duo's encounter with the Prince, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern inform them about his interest in the Tragedians' production. After the king and queen leave, the partners contemplate their job. They see Hamlet walk by but fail to seize the opportunity to interview him. The Tragedians return and perform their dress rehearsal of The Murder of Gonzago. The play moves beyond the scope of what the reader sees in Hamlet; characters resembling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are seen taking a sea voyage and meeting their deaths at the hands of English courtiers, foreshadowing their true fate. Rosencrantz does not quite make the connection, but Guildenstern is frightened into a verbal attack on the Tragedians' inability to capture the real essence of death. The stage becomes dark. When the stage is once again visible, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lie in the same position as had the actors portraying their deaths. The partners are upset that they have become the pawns of the royal couple. Claudius enters again and tells them to find where Hamlet has hidden Polonius' corpse. After many false starts they eventually find Hamlet, who leaves with the King. Rosencrantz is delighted to find that his mission is complete, but Guildenstern knows it is not over. Hamlet enters, speaking with a Norwegian soldier. Rosencrantz decides that he is happy to accompany Hamlet to England because it means freedom from the orders of the Danish court. Guildenstern understands that wherever they go, they are still trapped in this world. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves on a ship that has already set sail. The audience is led to believe that the pair has no knowledge of how they got there. At first, they try to determine whether they are still alive. Eventually, they recognize that they are not dead and are on board a boat. They remember that Claudius had given them a letter to deliver to England. After some brief confusion over who actually has the letter, they find it and end up opening it. They realize that Claudius has asked for Hamlet to be killed. While Rosencrantz seems hesitant to follow their orders now, Guildenstern convinces him that they are not worthy of interfering with fate and with the plans of kings. The stage becomes black and, presumably, the characters go to sleep. Hamlet switches the letter with one he has written himself, an act which takes place off stage in Hamlet. The pair discovers that the Tragedians are hidden ('impossibly', according to the stage directions) in several barrels on deck. They are fleeing Denmark, because their play has offended Claudius. When Rosencrantz complains that there is not enough action, pirates attack. Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern and the Player all hide in separate barrels. The lights dim. When the lights come on again, Hamlet has vanished (in Hamlet it's reported that he was kidnapped by pirates from the ship). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern panic, and re-read the letter to find that it now calls for them to be put to death instead of the prince. Guildenstern cannot understand why he and Rosencrantz are so important as to necessitate their executions. The Player tells Guildenstern that all paths end in death. Guildenstern snaps and draws the Player's dagger from his belt, shouting at him that his portrayals of death do not do justice to the real thing. He stabs the Player and the Player appears to die. Guildenstern honestly believes he has killed the Player. Seconds later, the Tragedians begin to clap and the Player stands up and brushes himself off, revealing the knife to be a theatrical one with a retractable blade. The Tragedians then act out the deaths from the final scene of Hamlet. The lighting shifts so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the only ones visible. Rosencrantz still does not understand why they must die. Still, he resigns himself to his fate and his character disappears. Guildenstern wonders when he passed the point where he could have stopped the series of events that has brought him to this point. He disappears as well. The final scene features the last few lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The Ambassador from England announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
26052	/m/06hf1	Ringworld	Larry Niven	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens in 2850. Louis Gridley Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday. Despite his age, Louis is in perfect physical condition but is bored. He has experienced life thoroughly, and is thinking of taking a trip to and beyond the reaches of Known Space, all alone in a spaceship for a year or more. He is confronted by Nessus, a Pierson's Puppeteer, and offered one of three open positions on an exploration voyage beyond Known Space. Speaker-to-Animals (Speaker), who is a Kzin, and Teela Brown, a young human woman, also join the voyage. They first travel to the Puppeteer home world, where they learn that the expedition's goal is to explore a ringworld: an artificial ring about one million miles wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit (which makes it about 600 million miles in circumference), encircling a Sol-type star. It rotates, providing artificial gravity that is 99.2% as strong as Earth's gravity through the action of centrifugal force. The ringworld has a habitable flat inner surface equivalent in area to approximately three million Earth-sized planets. Night is provided by an inner ring of shadow squares which are connected to each other by thin, ultra-strong wire (shadow square wire). None of the crew's attempts at contacting the Ringworld succeed, and their ship is disabled by its automated meteor defense system. The severely damaged vessel collides with a strand of shadow-square wire and crash-lands on the Ringworld near a huge mountain. The ship's defences keep the crew compartment and many of the ship's systems intact, including the faster-than-light drive (hyperdrive), but the normal drive is destroyed, leaving them unable to launch back into space to use the hyperdrive. The team now has to set out to find a way to get back into space, as well as fulfilling their original mission – learning more about the Ringworld. Using their flycycles, they try to reach the rim of the ring, where they hope to find some technology that will help them. It will take them months to cross the vast distance. When Teela develops "Plateau trance", they find themselves forced to land. On the ground, they encounter apparently human Ringworld natives. The natives, who are living primitively in the crumbling ruins of a once advanced city, think that the crew are the Engineers of the Ring, whom they revere as gods. The crew is attacked when they commit a "blasphemy". They continue their journey during which Nessus is forced to reveal some Puppeteer secrets: they have performed indirect "breeding experiments" on both humans (breeding for luck) and kzin (breeding for less aggressiveness). The resulting hostility forces Nessus to abandon the other three and follow them at a safe distance. They encounter a city and, in a floating building, they find a map of the Ringworld and videos of its past civilization. In a giant storm, caused by air escaping through a hole in the Ring floor due to meteor impact, Teela is blown away in an unknown direction. While searching for her in a ruined city Louis' and Speaker's flycycles are caught by an automatic police station designed to catch traffic offenders. They are trapped in a prison in the basement of the police station. Nessus arrives, entering the station to help his team. In the station they meet Halrloprillalar Hotrufan ("Prill"), a former crew member of a spaceship used for trade between the Ringworld and other inhabited worlds. Her spaceship was stranded on the Ringworld when the landing mechanism failed. She relates what she learned of the downfall of the Ringworld's civilization: A mold that breaks down superconductors was introduced by a visiting spaceship. Without its superconductive technology, civilization fell. Teela reaches the police station, accompanied by her new lover, a native "hero" called Seeker who helped her survive. Based on his studies of an ancient Ringworld map, Louis devises a plan to escape. The four explorers, with Seeker and Prill, use the floating police station as a vehicle to travel back to the explorers' crashed ship. Along the way, Teela and Seeker choose to remain behind, to inhabit a flying castle and remain on Ringworld. The remaining explorers and Prill collect one end of the shadow square wire that was dislodged when the ship crashed, dragging the wire behind them as they travel. Reaching the wreck, Louis threads the shadow wire through the crashed ship and uses it to tether the ship to the police station, and then continues to pull the wire onward, up to the summit of "Fist-of-God", the enormous mountain near their crash site. The massive mountain does not appear on a map of the original Ringworld, leading Louis to conclude that it is in fact the result of a meteor impact with the underside of the ring, which pushed the "mountain" up from the ring floor and broke through. The top of the mountain, above the edge of the Ring's atmosphere, is therefore a passage to the underside of the Ringworld and freedom. Louis drives the police station over the edge of the crater. Because the Ringworld spins fast enough to provide gravity, once the police station and ship are on the underside, centrifugal force pushes them outward from the ring into open space. The crew can then use the ship's faster-than-light drive to get home. The book concludes with Louis and Speaker discussing returning to the Ringworld.
26436	/m/06l7y	Rent	Jonathan Larson			 On Christmas Eve at 9 P.M. Mark Cohen, an aspiring filmmaker, begins a new documentary, as his roommate, Roger Davis, tunes up his guitar ("Tune Up #1") but they are quickly interrupted by a call from Mark's mother, who claims she was sorry to hear about his break-up with Maureen Johnson ("Voicemail #1"). Roger and Mark's friend Tom Collins, a gay anarchist and college professor, arrives at their building but is mugged. Meanwhile, Roger and Mark receive a call from their former friend and roommate Benjamin "Benny" Coffin III. Benny bought Mark and Roger's apartment building, as well as the lot next door. He tells them last year's rent is due ("Tune Up #2"). Mark and Roger refuse to pay their rent ("Rent"). Meanwhile, a drag queen named Angel Dumott Schunard finds Collins on the street and gets him on his feet ("You Okay Honey?"). Mark tries to get Roger out of the apartment. Mark reveals that Roger has been living in withdrawal for the past year due to his girlfriend April's suicide. Mark leaves to find Collins after reminding Roger to take his AZT ("Tune Up #3"). Roger attempts to write a great song to make his mark on the world before he dies of AIDS ("One Song Glory"). Their downstairs neighbor named Mimi Marquéz walks in, asking Roger to light a candle for her, only to continually blow it out ("Light My Candle"). Joanne Jefferson, a lawyer and Maureen's new girlfriend, receives a phone call from her parents, wondering why she is stage managing for Maureen's protest ("Voicemail #2"). Angel, now in drag, and Collins arrive at the apartment bearing gifts. Collins introduces Angel to his friends ("Today 4 U"). Benny arrives with an offer: if they convince Maureen to cancel her protest, he'll let them live in his new studio project, rent-free ("You'll See"). However, the two rebuff his offer. After Benny leaves, Angel and Collins invite Mark and Roger to attend a local HIV support group meeting. Mark hurries off to help fix Maureen's sound equipment for the protest, only to run into Maureen's new girlfriend Joanne ("Tango: Maureen"). He then enters into the support group meeting ("Life Support"). Meanwhile, Mimi attempts to seduce Roger ("Out Tonight") but Roger harshly rebuffs her ("Another Day"). After Mimi leaves, Roger admits to an empty apartment his fears about dying from AIDS ("Will I?"). Collins, Mark and Angel help a homeless woman who is being harassed by police officers. She then mocks Mark for trying to assuage his guilt ("On the Street"). Collins talks about his dream of escaping New York and opening up a restaurant in Santa Fe ("Santa Fe"). Soon after, Collins and Angel confess their love for each other and begin a relationship ("I'll Cover You"). Joanne exasperatedly prepares for Maureen's show ("We're Okay"). Roger intercepts Mimi and apologizes for his behavior. He invites her to come to the protest and dinner with them, to which she agrees. Meanwhile, people from the streets protest ("Christmas Bells"). Maureen arrives and begins her performance ("Over The Moon"). At the Life Café after the show, Benny criticizes the protest and the group's Bohemian lifestyle. Mark and all the bohemians in the café rise up and celebrate the Bohemian lifestyle ("La Vie Boheme A"). Mimi confronts Roger about ignoring her during dinner. Then, as Mimi's beeper goes off (reminding her to take her AZT) she and Roger each discover that the other is HIV-positive ("I Should Tell You"). Joanne returns, explaining that Mark and Roger's building has been padlocked. As the first act closes, Mark reveals that amidst the riot, Roger and Mimi share their first kiss ("La Vie Boheme B"). Opening with "Seasons of Love" the second act takes place over the course of the year following the first act ("Seasons of Love"). Having been locked out of their apartment by Benny; Mark, Roger, and the Bohemians gather to break-in ("Happy New Year A"). We learn through a series of voicemails ("Voicemail #3") that Mark had filmed the riot which had made the nightly news. The others finally break through the door just as Benny arrives. He says he's there to call a truce. He reveals that Mimi, a former girlfriend of his, convinced him to change his mind by making sexual advances on him. Mimi denies seducing Benny, but the revelation that they had once been together upsets Roger. Roger and Mimi both apologize, but Mimi remains upset, and turns to the drug dealer for a fix ("Happy New Year B"). Maureen and Joanne have a fight, giving each other relationship ultimatums. Maureen's flirtatious ways and Joanne's controlling behavior are too much for the other to take, so they break up ("Take Me Or Leave Me"). The company sings a reprise of "Seasons of Love", as time passes and seasons change ("Seasons of Love B"). By spring, Roger and Mimi's relationship becomes strained. Roger keeps talking about moving out of town. Mimi comes home late again, causing Roger to believe that she is cheating on him with Benny. Roger jealously storms out, Mimi stops him and tries to tell him the truth, that she is not cheating and that she is still using drugs, but can't get the words out, and Roger leaves. Alone in the apartment, Mimi sings of her love for Roger, and elsewhere, Roger sings of his love for Mimi ("Without You"). Collins continues nursing Angel who is very sick as AIDS begins to overtake him. Mark continues to receive calls from Alexi Darling at Buzzline, a tabloid news program ("Voicemail #4"). Eventually, Roger and Mimi, and Joanne and Maureen, reconcile. They then break up just as quickly ("Contact"). At the same time, Angel passes away, leaving Collins heartbroken ("I'll Cover You [Reprise]"). At Angel's funeral, Mark expresses his fear of being the only one left surviving when the rest of his friends die of AIDS ("Halloween"). He finally accepts the job offer from Buzzline. Roger reveals that he is leaving New York for Santa Fe, which sparks an argument about commitment between him and Mimi, and Maureen and Joanne. Collins arrives and admonishes the entire group for fighting on the day of Angel's funeral. Maureen and Joanne realize their fighting is petty, and they reconcile. Mimi tries to go to Roger, but he turns away. After everyone leaves, Mark confronts Roger about his behavior towards Mimi. As the two friends fight, Mark reveals that Roger's feelings aren't jealousy towards Benny, but fear of losing Mimi to AIDS. As Roger leaves, he runs into Mimi, who claims that she heard everything and just wanted to tell Roger goodbye ("Goodbye Love"). Roger and Mark both have an artistic epiphany, as Roger finds his song in Mimi and Mark finds his film in Angel's memory. Roger returns to New York just in time for Christmas, and Mark quits Buzzline to work on his own film ("What You Own"). Worried about their children not answering their calls, the cast's parents leave several messages on their phones ("Voicemail #5"). On Christmas Eve, one year to date from where the show started, Mark has finished his film and is ready to screen it. Roger has found his song but can't find Mimi anywhere. Collins enters with handfuls of cash, revealing that he reprogrammed an ATM at a convenience store to provide money to anybody with the code (A-N-G-E-L). Maureen and Joanne abruptly enter carrying Mimi, who is very weak and close to death. She begins to fade, but not before telling Roger that she loves him ("Finale A"). Roger tells her to hold on as he plays her the song he wrote for her, which reveals the depths of his feelings for her ("Your Eyes"). Mimi appears to die, but suddenly awakens. She says that she was heading into a light, but Angel told her to go back. The surviving Bohemians and Benny gather together to rejoice and resolve to enjoy whatever time they have left with each other and reaffirm that there is "no day but today" ("Finale B").
26476	/m/06lm3	Rendezvous with Rama	Arthur C. Clarke	1972	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After a major disaster caused by a meteorite falling in Eastern Italy in 2077, the government of Earth sets up the Spaceguard system as an early warning of arrivals from deep space. The "Rama" of the title is an alien star ship, initially mistaken for an asteroid categorised as "31/439". It is detected by astronomers in the year 2130 while still outside the orbit of Jupiter. The object's speed (100 000 km/h) and the angle of its trajectory clearly indicate that this is not an object on a long orbit around our sun; it comes from interstellar space. Astronomers' interest is further piqued when they realise that this asteroid not only has an extremely rapid rotation period of 4 minutes, but it is exceptionally large. It is subsequently renamed Rama after the Hindu god and an unmanned space probe dubbed Sita is launched from the Mars moon Phobos to intercept and photograph the object. The resulting images taken during its rapid flyby reveal that Rama is a perfect cylinder, in diameter and long, made of a completely featureless material, making this humankind's first encounter with an alien space ship. The manned solar survey vessel Endeavour is sent to study Rama, as it is the only ship close enough to do so in the brief period Rama will spend in our solar system. Endeavour manages to rendezvous with Rama one month after the space ship first comes to Earth's attention, when the giant alien spacecraft is already within Venus' orbit. The 20+ crew, led by Commander Bill Norton, enters Rama through triple airlocks, and explores the vast 16-km wide by 50-km long cylindrical world of its interior, but the nature and purpose of the starship and its creators remains enigmatic throughout the book. Inside Rama, the air is discovered to be breathable. The astronauts discover several features, including "cities" (odd blocky shapes that look like buildings, and streets with shallow trenches in them, looking like trolley car tracks) that actually served as factories, a sea that stretches in a band around Rama dubbed the Cylindrical Sea, and seven massive cones at the southern end of Rama - believed to form part of the propulsion system. One of the crew members, Jimmy Pak, who has experience with low gravity skybikes, volunteers to ride a smuggled skybike along Rama's axis to the far end, otherwise inaccessible due to the cylindrical sea and the 500-m high cliff on the opposite shore. A few hours later, Jimmy reaches the massive metal cones on the southern end of Rama, picking up a strange magnetic field coming from the cones. Pak takes a few pictures of the area and the strange plateau on the southern end of Rama's landmass before leaving. The electrical charge in the atmosphere begins to increase during Pak's return, resulting in lightning. A discharge hits his skybike causing him to crash on the isolated southern continent. When Pak wakes up, he sees a crab-like creature picking up his skybike and chopping it into pieces. He cannot decide whether it is a robot or a biological alien, and keeps his distance while contacting Norton and the others on the other side of Rama for help. Norton sends a rescue party across the cylindrical sea, using a small, improvised craft, and Pak waits. He sees the crab-like creature dump the remains of the skybike into the sea, and he approaches the creature, but it completely ignores him. Pak explores the surrounding fields while waiting for the rescue party to arrive on the southern cliffs of the cylindrical sea. Amongst the strange geometric patterns he sees an alien flower growing through a cracked tile in the otherwise sterile environment, and decides to take it as both a curiosity and for scientific research. Pak jumps off the 500m cliff, his descent slowed by low gravity and using his shirt as a parachute, and swims quickly to the craft. The ride back is highlighted by tidal waves in the cylindrical sea, formed by movements of Rama itself as it makes course corrections. When the crew arrive at base, they see a variety of odd creatures inspecting their camp. When one is found damaged and apparently lifeless, the team's doctor/biologist Surgeon-Commander Laura Ernst inspects it and names it a "biot" or a hybrid of a biological entity and robot. She concludes that it, and others, appear to be electrically powered by natural internal batteries (much like terrestrial electric eels) and possess some degree of intelligence. They are believed to be the servants of Rama's still-absent builders and maintainers of the starship. The members of the Rama Committee and the United Planets, both based on the moon, have been monitoring events inside Rama and giving feedback. The Hermian colonists have concluded that Rama is a potential threat to them and send a rocket-mounted bomb to destroy Rama. It is successfully defused by Lt Boris Rodrigo using a pair of wire cutters. As Rama approaches perihelion, the biots act strangely - jumping into the cylindrical sea where they are destroyed by aquatic biots ('sharks'), and absorbed back into the mineral-laden water. On one last expedition to explore Rama, a few crew members decide to visit the city "London" (chosen as closest to the stairways at the "northern" end of the cylinder they use to return to their ship) to use a laser to cut open one of the buildings and see what is inside. Inside, they discover pedestals containing holograms of various artifacts, believed to have been used by the Ramans as tools and other objects. The holograms themselves are presumed to be templates for replicating these items as needed. The most amazing sight is what appears to be a uniform with bandoliers, straps and pockets that suggests the size and shape of the Ramans. But before the crew can photograph any more holograms, the lights start going out, and they must leave. They all exit up through the stairway on Rama's northern side, out of the three airlocks, and board Endeavour. When Endeavour is a safe distance away, and Rama reaches perihelion, Rama harnesses the Sun's gravitational field with its mysterious "space drive" for use in a slingshot manoeuvre and is flung out of the solar system toward an unknown location in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The book was meant to stand alone, although the final sentence of the book suggests otherwise: Clarke, however, denied that this sentence was meant to hint at a continuation of the story-–according to his foreword in the book's sequel, it was just a good way to end the book and was added during a final revision.
27490	/m/06vh_	Sense and Sensibility	Jane Austen	1811	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Mr. Dashwood dies, his estate, Norland Park, passes directly to his only son John, the child of his first wife. His second wife, Mrs. Dashwood, and their daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, are left only a small income. On his deathbed, Mr. Dashwood extracts a promise from his son, that he will take care of his half-sisters; however, John's selfish and greedy wife, Fanny, soon persuades him to renege. John and Fanny immediately take up their place as the new owners of Norland, while the Dashwood women are reduced to the position of unwelcome guests. Mrs. Dashwood begins looking for somewhere else to live. In the meantime, Fanny's brother, Edward Ferrars, a pleasant, unassuming, intelligent but reserved young man, visits Norland and soon forms an attachment with Elinor. Fanny disapproves the match and offends Mrs. Dashwood with the implication that Elinor is motivated by money rather than love. Mrs. Dashwood indignantly speeds her search for a new home. Mrs. Dashwood moves her family to Barton Cottage in Devonshire, near the home of her cousin, Sir John Middleton. Their new home lacks many of the conveniences that they have been used to, however they are warmly received by Sir John, and welcomed into the local society, meeting his wife, Lady Middleton, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings and his friend, the grave, quiet and gentlemanly Colonel Brandon. It soon becomes apparent that Colonel Brandon is attracted to Marianne, and Mrs. Jennings teases them about it. Marianne is not pleased as she considers Colonel Brandon, at thirty-five, to be an old bachelor incapable of falling in love, or inspiring love in anyone else. Marianne, out for a walk, gets caught in the rain, slips and sprains her ankle. The dashing, handsome John Willoughby sees the accident and assists her. Marianne quickly comes to admire his good looks and outspoken views on poetry, music, art and love. Mr. Willoughby's attentions are so overt that Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood begin to suspect that the couple are secretly engaged. Elinor cautions Marianne against her unguarded conduct, but Marianne refuses to check her emotions, believing this to be a falsehood. Unexpectedly one day, Mr. Willoughby informs the Dashwoods that his aunt is sending him to London on business, indefinitely. Marianne is distraught and abandons herself to her sorrow. Edward Ferrars then pays a short visit to Barton Cottage but seems unhappy and out of sorts. Elinor fears that he no longer has feelings for her, but feels compelled, by a sense of duty, to protect her family from knowing her heartache. Soon after Edward departs, Anne and Lucy Steele, the vulgar and uneducated cousins of Lady Middleton, come to stay at Barton Park. Lucy informs Elinor of her secret four year engagement to Edward Ferrars, displaying proofs of her veracity. Elinor comes to understand the inconsistencies of Edward's behaviour to her and acquits him of blame. She is charitable enough to pity Edward for being held to a loveless engagement by his gentlemanly honour. As winter approaches, Elinor and Marianne accompany Mrs. Jennings' to London. Upon arriving, Marianne writes a series of letters to Mr. Willoughby which go unanswered. When they finally meet, Mr. Willoughby greets Marianne reluctantly and coldly, to her extreme distress. Soon Marianne receives a curt letter enclosing their former correspondence and love tokens, including a lock of her hair and informing her of his engagement to a young lady of large fortune. Marianne is devastated, and admits to Elinor that she and Willoughby were never engaged, but she loved him and he led her to believe he loved her. In sympathy for Marianne, and to illuminate his character, Colonel Brandon reveals to Elinor that Mr. Willoughby had seduced Brandon's fifteen-year-old ward, and abandoned her when she became pregnant. In the meantime, the Steele sisters have come to London as guests of John and Fanny Dashwood. Lucy sees her invitation to the Dashwoods' as a personal compliment, rather than what it is, a slight to Elinor. In the false confidence of their popularity, Anne Steele betrays Lucy's secret. As a result the Misses Steele are turned out of the house, and Edward is entreated to break the engagement on pain of disinheritance. Edward, honourably, refuses to comply and is immediately disinherited in favour of his brother, gaining widespread respect for his gentlemanly conduct, and sympathy from Elinor and Marianne who understand how much he has sacrificed. In her misery over Mr. Willoughby's marriage, Marianne neglects her health and becomes dangerously ill. Traumatised by rumours of her impending death, Mr. Willoughby arrives drunkenly to repent and reveals to Elinor that his love for Marianne was genuine. Threatened with disinheritance because of his immoral behaviour, he felt he must marry for money rather than love, but he elicits Elinor's pity because his choice has made him unhappy. When Marianne is recovered, Elinor tells her of Mr. Willoughby's visit. Marianne comes to assess what has passed with sense rather than emotion, and sees that she could never have been happy with Mr Willoughby's immoral and expensive nature. She comes to value Elinor's conduct in a similar situation and resolves to model herself after Elinor's courage and good sense. Upon learning that Lucy has married Mr. Ferrars, Elinor is grieved, until Edward himself arrives to reveal that Lucy has jilted him in favour of his wealthy brother, Robert Ferrars. Edward and Elinor are soon married and in a very few years Marianne marries Colonel Brandon.
28230	/m/06_qc	Speaker for the Dead	Orson Scott Card	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On Novinha's request for a Speaker, Andrew Wiggin leaves for Lusitania, a colony turned into a virtual prison, with its expansion severely limited and its whole existence devoted to the work of xenologers who study the Pequeninos, the first sentient beings found since the destruction of Formics. Lusitania itself is remarkably lacking in biodiversity, featuring thousands of unfilled ecological niches. The other outstanding feature of Lusitania is the Descolada, a native virus which almost wipes out the colony, until husband-and-wife biologists Gusta and Cida succeed in developing counters. Unfortunately, they didn't find the cure soon enough to save themselves, leaving orphaned daughter Novinha to strike out for herself. At the age of thirteen, Novinha, a cold and distant girl, successfully petitions to be made the official biologist of the colony (roughly the equivalent of a master's degree); from then on, she contributes to the work of father-and-son xenologers (alien anthropology) Pipo and Libo, and for a short time there is family and camaraderie. One day, however, she makes a discovery about the descolada—that it's in every native lifeform—and Pipo rushes out to talk to the piggies about the discovery without telling her or Libo why it's important. They can't figure it out on their own, and never learn—a few hours later, Pipo is found vivisected in the grass; his corpse does not even have the benefit of a tree (The symbol of honor placed among all dead piggies). Novinha erases all the lab work, but cannot delete the information itself due to regulations; Libo demands to see it, but even their love for each other will not make her let him see it—it appears to be a secret the piggies will kill to keep. Now Novinha is determined to ensure they never marry, the way they always planned to: for if they do, Libo will have access to those locked files and, Novinha fears, will share the same fate as his father. In anguish, Novinha calls for a Speaker for the Dead, hoping beyond hope that perhaps the original Speaker may arrive, to make sense of Pipo's death—and maybe of her life. Andrew Wiggin doesn't dare let himself be known as Ender anymore; the name is now an Epithet. Ender decides to leave his sister Valentine behind (she is married and pregnant) after traveling with her for many years. He leaves as soon as possible, with his only companion being Jane, an artificial sentience existing within the ansible computer network by which spaceships and planets communicate instantly across galactic distances. He arrives on Lusitania after twenty-two years in transit (only around two weeks to him) to discover that Novinha has canceled her call, or rather tried to, as a call for a speaker cannot legally be canceled after the speaker has begun the journey. However, two others have called, making Ender's trip not entirely in vain: they are Novinha's eldest son Miro, calling for someone to speak the death of Libo, who was killed the same way his father was; and Novinha's eldest daughter Ela, calling for someone to speak the death of Novinha's husband Marcos Ribeira, who died not six weeks ago from a terminal disease. Besides attempting to unravel the question of why Novinha married Marcão when she really loved Libo (Marcão was sterile, and a quick genetic scan on Jane's part reveals that Novinha's children are all, in fact, Libo's), Ender also takes responsibility for attempting to heal the Ribeira family, and manages to adopt (or perhaps is adopted by) most of the children within their first meeting. He also takes a strong interest in the pequeninos, and eventually (in direct violation of Starways Congress law) meets with them in person. The Hive Queen has also managed to make contact with the pequeninos philotically, and has told them a number of things—including the fact that "Andrew Wiggin" is not only the original Speaker for the Dead, but the original Xenocide as well, which romantically involved Zenadors (a shortened form of the word xenologists) Miro and Ouanda do not believe. The Hive Queen very emphatically wants to be revived and freed on Lusitania. Finally, in an effort to help Ender, Jane deliberately reveals to Starways Congress that Miro and Ouanda, continuing the legacy of Ouanda's dead father Libo, have been deliberately introducing new technology into the piggy lifestyle. Both Zenadors are called away to the nearest world for trial (a journey that would take twenty-two years), the colony's charter is revoked, and all humans are ordered to evacuate posthaste, leaving no sign of ever having been there. Ender holds a public speaking for Marcão, Novinha's late husband. However, Ender cannot but help reveal secrets from the lives of Libo, Pipo, and even Novinha herself as their lives were all so delicately bound together by guilt, deception, and love. The Speaker explains how Novinha blames herself for Pipo's death, and underwent a life of suffering and deception—marrying Marcão so that to prevent Libo from accessing the information which killed Pipo, but secretly trysting with Libo—because their love for each other never truly died. The meaning of Pipo's and Libo's murders come out as well: the trees are the "third stage" in the life of the piggies. Trees grown from piggies killed normally become brothertrees, but the ritually dissected ones are done so in order to make them fathertrees—sentient, living trees that are, unlike animal pequeninos, capable of reproduction (the descolada is proved to be instrumental in these transformations). Finally, the Speaker for the Dead is able to work out a treaty with the piggies, so that humans and pequeninos might live in peace. Unfortunately, it is not without cost: Miro, distraught to learn that Ouanda, his girlfriend in secret, is actually his sister, attempts to cross the fence, which separates the humans from the piggies, and suffers significant neurological damage. With no other way to save him, the colony declares itself in rebellion, Jane shuts off outside ansible contact, Miro is rescued, and Ender enters the forest to negotiate the aforementioned treaty. He signs it "Ender Wiggin," and for the first time in his life, someone (Novinha) is prepared to receive the Xenocide with compassion instead of revulsion. Valentine and her family plan to come to Lusitania to help out in the rebellion, aided by Jane; Miro, with his crippled body, is sent into space to meet them; the Hive Queen is released, ready to begin the continuation of her species; and Ender marries Novinha.
28426	/m/0716m	Starship Troopers	Robert A. Heinlein	1959-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Starship Troopers takes place in the midst of an interstellar war between the Terran Federation of Earth and the Arachnids (referred to as "The Bugs") of Klendathu. It is narrated as a series of flashbacks by Juan Rico, and is one of only a few Heinlein novels set out in this fashion. The novel opens with Rico aboard the corvette Rodger Young (named after Medal of Honor winner Rodger Wilton Young), serving with the platoon known as "Rasczak's Roughnecks" (named after the platoon leader, Lt. Rasczak) about to embark on a raid against the planet of the "Skinnies," who are allies of the Arachnids. We learn that he is a cap(sule) trooper in the Terran Federation's Mobile Infantry. The raid itself, one of the few instances of actual combat in the novel, is relatively brief: the Roughnecks land on the planet, destroy their targets, and retreat, suffering a single casualty in the process (Dizzy Flores, who dies in the retrieval boat of wounds received in action). The story then flashes back to Rico's graduation from high school, and his decision to sign up for Federal Service over the objections of his father, who disowns him. This is the only chapter that describes Rico's civilian life, and most of it is spent on the monologues of two people: retired Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois, Rico's school instructor in "History and Moral Philosophy," and Fleet Sergeant Ho, a recruiter for the armed forces of the Terran Federation. Some see Dubois as speaking for Heinlein throughout the novel; he delivers what is probably the book's most famous soliloquy on violence, it "... has settled more issues in history than has any other factor." Fleet Sergeant Ho's monologues examine the nature of military service, and his anti-military tirades seem primarily to be a contrast with Dubois. We learn, later, that his rants are part of a policy intended to scare off applicants signing up without conviction. Interspersed throughout the book are other flashbacks to Rico's high school History and Moral Philosophy course, which describe how in the Terran Federation of Rico's day, the rights of a full Citizen (to vote, and hold public office) must be earned through some form of volunteer Federal service. Those residents who have not exercised their right to perform this Federal Service retain all other rights generally associated with a modern democracy (free speech, assembly, etc.), but they cannot vote or hold public office. This structure arose ad hoc after the collapse of the "20th century Western democracies", brought on by both social failures at home (among which appear to be poor handling of juvenile delinquency) and military defeat by the Chinese Hegemony overseas. In the next section of the novel, after being denied all his higher preferred Service choices, Rico goes to boot camp at Camp Arthur Currie, on the northern prairies. Five chapters are spent exploring Rico's experience there, including his adjustment to a very different situation, entering the service under the training of the leading instructor, career Ship's Sergeant Charles Zim. Camp Currie is rigorous by design; less than ten percent of the recruits finish basic training. The rest either resign, are expelled, or die in training. One of the chapters deals with Ted Hendrick, a fellow recruit and constant complainer who is flogged and expelled for striking a superior officer during a simulated combat exercise (he caught Sgt. Zim by surprise after being struck by the sergeant for failure to perform during the exercise). Another recruit, a deserter who murdered a baby girl while AWOL, is hanged by his battalion after his arrest by civilian police and return to Camp Currie. Rico himself is flogged for poor handling of (simulated) nuclear weapons during a drill; despite these experiences he eventually graduates and is assigned to a unit in the Fleet. At some point during Rico's training, the "Bug War" has changed from border incidents to formal war, and Rico finds himself taking part in combat operations. The war "officially" starts with an Arachnid attack that annihilates the city of Buenos Aires (which kills Juan's mother who was visiting there), although Rico makes it clear that prior to the attack there had been many "'incidents,' 'patrols,' or 'police actions.'" Rico briefly describes the Terran Federation's loss at the Battle of Klendathu during which his unit is decimated and his ship destroyed. Following Klendathu, the Terran Federation is reduced to making hit-and-run raids similar to the one described at the beginning of the novel (which, chronologically would be placed between chapters 10 and 11). Rico meanwhile finds himself posted to Rasczak's Roughnecks. This part of the book focuses on the daily routine of military life, as well as the relationship between officers and non-commissioned officers, personified in this case by Rasczak and Sergeant Jelal. Eventually, Rico decides to become a career soldier, and one of his fellow troopers claims he is officer material and should consider volunteering for Officer Candidate School. He applies and is accepted. It turns out to be just like boot camp, only "squared and cubed with books added." Rico manages to make it through to the final exam, "in the Fleet". He is commissioned a temporary Third Lieutenant for his field-test and commands his own unit during Operation Royalty. It is revealed at the end of the chapter that one of the enlisted men he leads into combat is his former basic training instructor, Sergeant Zim. Although personally convinced that he badly mismanaged his men, he passes the final exam, and graduates as a Second Lieutenant. There is also an account of the meeting between Rico and his father, who volunteered for Service after his wife, Rico's mother, was killed at Buenos Aires. The final chapter serves as more of a coda, depicting Rico aboard the Rodger Young as the lieutenant in command of Rico's Roughnecks, preparing to drop to Klendathu as part of a major strike, his father being his senior sergeant and a Native American Third Lieutenant-in-training (James Bearpaw, known as "Jimmie") of his own under instruction.
28833	/m/074g8	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight	Pearl Poet	2007	{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 In Camelot on New Year's Day King Arthur's court is exchanging gifts and waiting for the feasting to start when the king asks first to see or hear of an exciting adventure. At this a gigantic figure, entirely green in appearance and riding a green horse, rides unexpectedly into the hall. He wears no armour but bears an axe in one hand and a holly bough in the other. Refusing to fight anyone there on the grounds they are all too weak to take him on, he insists he has come for a friendly "Christmas game": someone is to strike him once with his axe on condition that the Green Knight may return the blow in a year and a day. The splendid axe will belong to whoever takes him on. Arthur himself is prepared to accept the challenge when it appears no other knight will dare, but Sir Gawain, youngest of Arthur's knights and his nephew, quickly begs for the honour instead. The giant bends and bares his neck before him and Gawain neatly beheads him in one stroke. However the Green Knight neither falls nor falters but reaches out, picks up his severed head and remounts, holding up his bleeding head to Queen Guinevere while its writhing lips remind Gawain that the two must meet again at the Green Chapel before he rides away. Joking together, Gawain and Arthur admire the axe, hang it up as a trophy and encourage Guinevere to treat the whole matter lightly. As the date approaches Sir Gawain sets off to find the Green Chapel and keep his bargain. Many adventures and battles are alluded to (but not described) until Gawain, on the brink of starvation, comes across a splendid castle where he meets Bertilak de Hautdesert, the lord of the castle, and his beautiful wife, who are pleased to have such a renowned guest. Also present is an old and ugly lady, unnamed but treated with great honour by all. Gawain tells them of his New Year's appointment at the Green Chapel and that he only has a few days remaining. Bertilak laughs, explains that the Green Chapel is less than two miles away and proposes that Gawain rest at the castle till then. Relieved and grateful, Gawain agrees. Before going hunting the next day Bertilak proposes a playful bargain: he will give Gawain whatever he catches on condition that Gawain give him whatever he might gain during the day. Gawain accepts. After Bertilak leaves Lady Bertilak visits Gawain's bedroom and behaves seductively but despite her best efforts he yields nothing but a single kiss in his unwillingness to offend her. When Bertilak returns and gives Gawain the deer he has killed, his guest gives a kiss to Bertilak without divulging its source. The next day the lady comes again, Gawain again courteously foils her advances and there is a similar exchange of a hunted boar for two kisses. She comes once more on the third morning, this time offering Gawain a gold ring as a keepsake. As he gently but steadfastly refuses she pleads that he at least take her belt, a girdle of green and gold silk which, the lady assures him, is charmed and will keep him from all physical harm. Tempted, as he may otherwise die the next day, Gawain accepts it from her and they also exchange three kisses. That evening, Bertilak returns with a fox, which he exchanges with Gawain for the three kisses – but Gawain says nothing of the girdle. The next day Gawain leaves for the Green Chapel with the girdle wound twice round his waist. He finds the Green Knight sharpening an axe and, as promised, Gawain bends his bared neck to receive his blow. At the first swing Gawain flinches slightly and the Green Knight belittles him for it. Ashamed of himself, at the Green Knight's next swing Gawain does not flinch; but again the full force of the blow is withheld. The knight explains he was testing Gawain's nerve. Angrily Gawain tells him to deliver his blow at once and so the knight does, but striking softly and causing only a slight wound on Gawain's neck. The game is over: Gawain is now free to defend himself from further harm. He seizes his sword, helmet and shield, but the Green Knight, laughing, reveals himself to be the lord of the castle, Bertilak de Hautdesert, transformed by magic. He explains that the entire adventure was a trick of the 'elderly lady' Gawain saw at the castle who is the sorceress Morgan le Fay, Arthur's sister, who intended to test Arthur's knights and terrify Guinevere. Gawain is ashamed to have behaved deceitfully and cowardly but the Green Knight laughs at his scruples and the two part on cordial terms. Gawain returns to Camelot wearing the girdle in shame as a token of his failure to keep his promise and follow the rules of the game. The Knights of the Round Table, having heard his story, absolve him of blame and decide that henceforth all will wear a green sash in recognition of Gawain's adventure.
29414	/m/078y6	Stuart Little	E. B. White	1945	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is episodic. First we learn of Stuart's birth to a family in New York City and how the family adapts, socially and structurally, to having such a small son. He has an adventure in which he gets caught in a window-blind while exercising, and Snowbell, the family cat, places Stuart's hat and cane outside a mouse hole, panicking the family. He is accidentally released by his brother George. Then two chapters describe Stuart's participation in a boat race in Central Park. A bird named Margalo is adopted by the Little family, and Stuart protects her from their malevolent cat. The bird repays his kindness by saving Stuart when he is trapped in a garbage can and shipped out for disposal at sea. Margalo flees when she is warned that one of Snowbell's friends intends to eat her, and Stuart strikes out to find her and bring her home. A friendly dentist, who is also the owner of the boat Stuart had raced in Central Park, gives him use of a gasoline-powered model car, and Stuart departs to see the country. He works for a while as a substitute teacher and comes to the town of Ames Crossing, where he meets a girl named Harriet Ames who is no taller than he is. They go on one date, and then Stuart leaves town. As the book ends, he has not yet found Margalo, but feels confident he will do so.
29798	/m/07bz5	The Lord of the Rings	J. R. R. Tolkien		{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Long before the events of the novel, the Dark Lord Sauron forges the One Ring to dominate the other Rings of Power and corrupt those who wear them: the leaders of Men, Elves and Dwarves. He is vanquished in battle by an alliance of Elves and Men. Isildur cuts the One Ring from Sauron's finger, claiming it as an heirloom for his line, and Sauron loses his physical form. When Isildur is later ambushed and killed by Orcs, the Ring is lost in the River Anduin. Over two thousand years later, the Ring is found by a river-dwelling hobbit called Déagol. His friend Sméagol immediately falls under the Ring's influence and strangles Déagol to acquire it. Sméagol is banished and hides under the Misty Mountains, where the Ring extends his lifespan and transforms him over the course of hundreds of years into a twisted, corrupted creature called Gollum. He loses the Ring, his "precious", and, as recounted in The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins finds it. Meanwhile, Sauron reassumes physical form and takes back his old realm of Mordor. Gollum sets out in search of the Ring, but is captured by Sauron, who learns from him that "Baggins" now has it. Gollum is set loose, and Sauron, who needs the Ring to regain his full power, sends forth his powerful servants, the Nazgûl, to seize it. The novel begins in the Shire, where the Hobbit Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring from Bilbo, his cousin and guardian. Neither is aware of its origin, but Gandalf the Grey, a wizard and old friend of Bilbo, suspects the Ring's identity. When he becomes certain, he strongly advises Frodo to take it away from the Shire. Frodo leaves, accompanied by his gardener and friend, Samwise ("Sam") Gamgee, and two cousins, Meriadoc ("Merry") Brandybuck and Peregrin ("Pippin") Took. They nearly encounter the Nazgûl while still in the Shire, but shake off pursuit by cutting through the Old Forest, where they are aided by the enigmatic Tom Bombadil, who alone is unaffected by the Ring's corrupting influence. After leaving the forest, they stop in the town of Bree where they meet Aragorn, Isildur's heir. He persuades them to take him on as guide and protector. They flee from Bree after narrowly escaping another assault, but the Nazgûl follow and attack them on the hill of Weathertop, wounding Frodo with a Morgul blade. Aragorn leads the hobbits toward the Elven refuge of Rivendell, while Frodo gradually succumbs to the wound. The Ringwraiths nearly overtake Frodo at the Ford of Bruinen, but flood waters summoned by Elrond, master of Rivendell, rise up and overwhelm them. Frodo recovers in Rivendell under the care of Elrond. The Council of Elrond reveals much significant history about Sauron and the Ring, as well as the news that Sauron has corrupted Gandalf's fellow wizard, Saruman. The Council decides that they must destroy the Ring, but that can only be done by returning it to the flames of Mount Doom in Mordor, where it was forged. Frodo volunteers to take on this daunting task, and a "Fellowship of the Ring" is formed to aid him: Sam, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Gandalf, Gimli the Dwarf, Legolas the Elf, and the Man Boromir, son of the Ruling Steward Denethor of the realm of Gondor. After a failed attempt to cross the Misty Mountains via the pass below Caradhras, the company are forced to try a more perilous path through the Mines of Moria, where they are attacked by the Watcher in the Water before the gate. Once inside, they discover the fate of Balin and his company of Dwarves, and realize their own danger. After repulsing an attack, they are pursued by orcs and an ancient, powerful Balrog. Gandalf confronts the Balrog, but in their struggle, both fall into a deep chasm. The others escape and take refuge in the Elven forest of Lothlórien, where they are counselled by Galadriel and Celeborn. With boats and gifts from Galadriel, the company travel down the River Anduin to the hill of Amon Hen. Boromir succumbs to the lure of the Ring and attempts to take it from Frodo. Frodo escapes and determines to continue the quest alone, though Sam guesses his intent and comes along. Meanwhile, orcs sent by Saruman and Sauron kill Boromir and kidnap Merry and Pippin. After agonizing over which pair of hobbits to follow, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas pursue the orcs bearing Merry and Pippin to Saruman. In the kingdom of Rohan, the orcs are slain by a company of the Rohirrim. Merry and Pippin escape into Fangorn Forest, where they are befriended by Treebeard, the oldest of the tree-like Ents. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas track the hobbits to Fangorn, and encounter Gandalf, resurrected as the significantly more powerful "Gandalf the White" after his mutually fatal duel with the Balrog. Gandalf assures them that Merry and Pippin are safe. They ride to Edoras, the capital of Rohan, where they free Théoden, King of Rohan, from the influence of Saruman's henchman Gríma Wormtongue. Théoden musters his fighting strength and rides to the ancient fortress of Helm's Deep, but en route Gandalf leaves to seek help from Treebeard. Meanwhile, the Ents, roused from their customarily peaceful ways by Merry and Pippin, attack Isengard, Saruman's stronghold, and trap the wizard in the tower of Orthanc. Gandalf convinces Treebeard to send an army of Huorns to Théoden's aid. Gandalf and Rohirrim reinforcements arrive just in time to defeat and scatter Saruman's army. The Huorns dispose of the fleeing orcs. Gandalf then parleys with Saruman at Orthanc. When Saruman rejects his offer of redemption, Gandalf strips him of his rank and most of his powers. Pippin looks into a palantír, a seeing-stone that Saruman had used to communicate with Sauron and through which he was enslaved. Gandalf rides for Minas Tirith, chief city of Gondor, taking Pippin with him. Frodo and Sam capture Gollum, who had been following them from Moria, and force him to guide them to Mordor. Finding Mordor's Black Gate too well guarded to attempt, they travel instead to a secret passage Gollum knows. Torn between his loyalty to Frodo and his desire for the Ring, Gollum eventually betrays Frodo by leading him to the great spider Shelob in the tunnels of Cirith Ungol. Frodo is felled by Shelob's bite, but Sam fights her off. Sam takes the Ring and leaves Frodo, believing him to be dead. When orcs find Frodo, Sam overhears them say that Frodo is only unconscious, and chases after them. Sauron unleashes a heavy assault upon Gondor. Gandalf arrives at Minas Tirith to alert Denethor of the impending attack. The city is besieged, and Denethor, driven to despair by Sauron through the use of another palantír, gives up hope and commits suicide, nearly taking his remaining son Faramir with him. With time running out, Aragorn has no choice but to take the Paths of the Dead, accompanied by Legolas and Gimli. There Aragorn raises an undead army of oath-breakers bound by an ancient curse. The ghostly army help them to defeat the Corsairs of Umbar invading southern Gondor. The forces of Gondor and Rohan break the siege of Minas Tirith. Sam rescues Frodo from the tower of Cirith Ungol, and they set out across Mordor. Meanwhile, in order to distract Sauron from his true danger, Aragorn leads the armies of Gondor and Rohan in a march on the Black Gate of Mordor. His vastly outnumbered troops fight desperately against Sauron's armies. At the edge of the Cracks of Doom, Frodo is unable to resist the Ring any longer, and claims it for himself. Gollum suddenly reappears, struggles with Frodo and bites off his finger, Ring and all. Celebrating wildly, Gollum falls into the fire, taking the Ring with him. With the destruction of the One Ring, Sauron perishes, along with the Nazgûl, and his armies are thrown into such disarray that Aragorn's forces emerge victorious. With the end of the War of the Ring, Aragorn is crowned Elessar, King of Arnor and Gondor, and marries his long-time love, Arwen, daughter of Elrond. Saruman escapes from Isengard and enslaves the Shire. The four hobbits, upon returning home, raise a rebellion and overthrow him. Gríma turns on Saruman and kills him, and is slain in turn by hobbit archers. The War of the Ring thus comes to its true end on Frodo's very doorstep. Merry and Pippin are acclaimed heroes, while Sam marries Rosie Cotton and uses his gifts from Galadriel to help heal the Shire. Frodo, however, remains wounded in body and spirit after having borne the weight of the One Ring so long. Several years later, accompanied by Bilbo and Gandalf, he sails from the Grey Havens west over the Sea to the Undying Lands to find peace. After Rosie's death, Sam gives his daughter the Red Book of Westmarch, containing the account of Bilbo's adventures and the War of the Ring as witnessed by the hobbits. Sam is then said to have crossed west over the Sea himself, the last of the Ring-bearers.
29821	/m/07c2t	The Doors of Perception	Aldous Huxley	1954	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 After a brief overview of research into mescaline, Huxley recounts that he was given 4/10 of a gram at 11:00 am one day in May 1953. Huxley writes that he hoped to gain insight into extraordinary states of mind and expected to see brightly colored visionary landscapes. When he only sees lights and shapes, he puts this down to being a bad visualiser, however, he experiences a great change in his perception of the external world. By 12:30 pm, a vase of flowers becomes the "miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence". The experience, he asserts, is neither agreeable nor disagreeable, but simply "is". He likens it to Meister Eckhart’s ‘istigheit’ or ‘is-ness’, and Plato’s ‘Being’ but not separated from ‘Becoming’. He feels he understands the Hindu concept of Satchitananda, as well as the Zen koan that ‘the dharma body of the Buddha is in the hedge’ and Buddhist suchness. In this state, Huxley explains he didn’t have an ‘I’, but instead a ‘not-I’. Meaning and existence, pattern and colour become more significant than spatial relationships and time. Duration is replaced by a perpetual present. Reflecting on the experience afterwards, Huxley finds himself in agreement with philosopher C.D. Broad that to enable us to live, the brain and nervous system eliminate unessential information from the totality of the Mind at Large. In summary, Huxley writes that the ability to think straight is not reduced while under the influence of mescaline, visual impressions are intensified, and the human experimenter will see no reason for action because the experience is so fascinating. Temporarily leaving the chronological flow, he mentions that four or five hours into the experience he was taken to the World’s Biggest Drug Store (WBDS) where he was presented with books on art. In one book, the dress in Botticelli’s Judith provokes a reflection on drapery as a major artistic theme as it allows painters to include the abstract in representational art, to create mood, and also to represent the mystery of pure being. Huxley feels that human affairs are somewhat irrelevant whilst on mescaline and attempts to shed light on this by reflecting on paintings featuring people. Cézanne’s Self portrait with a straw hat seems to him as incredibly pretentious, while Vermeer’s human still lives (also, the Le Nain Brothers and Vuillard) are the nearest to reflecting this not-self state. For Huxley, the reconciliation of these cleansed perceptions with humanity reflects the age old debate between active and contemplative life, known as the way of Martha and the way of Mary. As Huxley believes that contemplation should also include action and charity, he concludes that the experience represents contemplation at its height, but not its fullness. Correct behaviour and alertness are needed. Nonetheless, Huxley maintains that even quietistic contemplation has an ethical value, because it is concerned with negative virtues and acts to channel the transcendent into the world. After listening to Mozart’s C- Minor Piano Concerto, Gesualdo’s madrigals and Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, Huxley heads into the garden. Outside, the garden chairs take on such an immense intensity that he fears being overwhelmed; this gives him an insight into madness. He reflects that spiritual literature, including the works of Jacob Boehme, William Law and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, talk of these pains and terrors. Huxley speculates that schizophrenia is the inability to escape from this reality into the world of common sense and thus help would be essential. After lunch and the drive to the WBDS he returns home and to his ordinary state of mind. His final insight is taken from Buddhist scripture: that within sameness there is difference, although that difference is not different from sameness. The book finishes with Huxley’s final reflections on the meaning of his experience. Firstly, the urge to transcend one’s self is universal through times and cultures (and was characterized by H.G. Wells as The Door in the Wall). He reasons that better, healthier ‘doors’ are needed than alcohol and tobacco. Mescaline has the advantage of not provoking violence in takers, but its effects last an inconveniently long time and some users can have negative reactions. Ideally, self-transcendence would be found in religion, but Huxley feels that it is unlikely that this will ever happen. Christianity and mescaline seem well-suited for each other; the Native American Church for instance uses the drug as a sacrament, where its use combines religious feeling with decorum. Huxley concludes that mescaline is not enlightenment or the Beatific Vision, but a 'gratuitous grace' (a term taken from St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica). It is not necessary but helpful, especially so for the intellectual, who can become the victim of words and symbols. Although systematic reasoning is important, direct perception has intrinsic value too. Finally, Huxley maintains that the person who has this experience will be transformed for the better.
29834	/m/07c62	The Time Machine	H. G. Wells	1895	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 The book's protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey, identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the Traveller's lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator. In the new narrative, the Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to 802,701 A.D., where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant, childlike adults. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings, doing no work and having a frugivorous diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline, and he speculates that they are a peaceful communist society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival. Returning to the site where he arrived, the Time Traveller is shocked to find his time machine missing, and eventually works out that it has been dragged by some unknown party into a nearby structure with heavy doors, locked from the inside, which resembles a Sphinx. Later in the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Within their dwellings he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise possible. He alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working classes have become the brutish light-fearing Morlocks. Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his time machine, he explores the Morlock tunnels, learning that they feed on the Eloi. His revised analysis is that their relationship is not one of lords and servants but of livestock and ranchers. The Time Traveller theorizes that intelligence is the result of and response to danger; with no real challenges facing either species, they have both lost the spirit, intelligence, and physical fitness of Man at its peak. Meanwhile, he saves an Eloi named Weena from drowning as none of the other Eloi take any notice of her plight, and they develop an innocently affectionate relationship over the course of several days. He takes Weena with him on an expedition to a distant structure that turns out to be the remains of a museum, where he finds a fresh supply of matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he fears he must fight to get back his machine. He plans to take Weena back to his own time. Because the long and tiring journey back to Weena's home is too much for them, they stop in the forest, and they are then overcome by Morlocks in the night, and Weena faints. The Traveller escapes only when a small fire he had left behind them to distract the Morlocks catches up to them as a forest fire; Weena is presumably lost in the fire, as are the Morlocks. The Morlocks use the time machine as bait to ensnare the Traveller, not understanding that he will use it to escape. He travels further ahead to roughly 30 million years from his own time. There he sees some of the last living things on a dying Earth, menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wandering the blood-red beaches chasing butterflies in a world covered in simple lichenous vegetation. He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing Earth's rotation gradually cease and the sun grow larger, redder, and dimmer, and the world falling silent and freezing as the last degenerate living things die out. Overwhelmed, he returns to his laboratory, arriving just three hours after he originally left. Interrupting dinner, he relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two strange flowers Weena had put in his pocket. The original narrator takes over and relates that he returned to the Time Traveller's house the next day, finding him in final preparations for another journey. The Traveller promises to return in half an hour, but three years later, the narrator despairs of ever learning what became of him.
29991	/m/07ctj	The Shockwave Rider	John Brunner	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the weeks following Nick's recapture after several years on the run, alternating between moral arguments with his interrogator, who is trying to discover why the program's star pupil had absconded, and flashbacks of his career. The interrogator is Paul Freeman, a graduate of another secret installation known as "Electric Skillet", which focuses on weapons and defense strategy. Although he initially felt at home at Tarnover, Nick eventually becomes aware of experiments in genetic engineering being performed there. These produce monstrous deformed children who are disposed of when they are no longer needed for study. At this point Nick becomes determined to escape. He studies data processing, steals a personal ID code intended for privileged individuals who wish to live their lives without surveillance, and goes on the run. He uses the stolen computer access code to cover his data trails and create new identities for himself, easily adopting entire new personas. One is the pastor of a popular church, another is an idle playboy gigolo. In this last role, calling himself Sandy Locke, he becomes the lover of Ina Grierson, a top executive at Ground to Space Industries, a powerful "hypercorp" known to all as G2S. Intending to use the computer facilities at G2S to ensure that his code is still valid after the six years he has been away, he signs on as a "systems rationalizer" with the company. This brings him into contact with Ina's daughter, Kate, who attracts him despite her plain appearance and simple lifestyle. At the age of 22, Nick's age when he left Tarnover, Kate is a perpetual student at "UMKC". She is perceptive enough to penetrate Nick's adopted persona, deeply disturbing him even though she fascinates him. He visits her at home, helping her to clean out some of her possessions, and meeting her tame cougar, Bagheera. Bagheera is the product of her late father's genetic research into intelligence. He died shortly after abandoning the research because the government was using it to produce animals for military uses. The 21st-century lifestyle produces a symptom called "overload" in many people, and most, including Nick, take tranquilizers to some degree. However Nick collapses completely when told that a representative from Tarnover is coming to meet him at G2S. He returns to Kate and confesses that he is not what he seems, asking for her help. She conducts him to one of the "paid avoidance areas" in California, where people are paid to do without the full panoply of modern technology, as an alternative to spending billions to rebuild infrastructure after the earthquake. After Nick risks exposure yet again in one of these places, they move to the least known one, a town called Precipice. Precipice turns out to be a Utopian community of a few thousand people. The nearest comparison would be an agrarian, cottage industry community designed by William Morris. Precipice is also the home of "Hearing Aid", an anonymous telephone confession service accessible to anyone in the country. Hearing Aid is also known as the "Ten Nines", after the phone number used to call it: 999-999-9999. People call the service and simply talk. Some rant, others seek sympathy, still others commit suicide while on the phone. Hearing Aid's promise is that nobody else, not even the government, will hear the call. The only response Hearing Aid gives to a caller is "Only I heard that, I hope it helped." Nick and Kate settle into the community. The inhabitants include intelligent dogs that escaped from the projects that Kate's father worked on. These act as companions, guards, nannies, and even lie detectors, using their sense of smell. Nick rewrites the "computer tapeworm" that prevents the calls to Hearing Aid being monitored. While at G2S he became aware of massive backups of data being performed, clearly in anticipation of a major network outage. The Hearing Aid worm is designed to scramble network traffic if attacked, but Nick realizes that it could be destroyed if the authorities were prepared for the effects and ready to recover from them. His new worm, which he calls a "phage", cannot be removed without dismantling the entire network. Possibly encouraged by the government, local gangs and tribes raid Precipice, burning down Nick and Kate's house before being overwhelmed by the dogs. Nick, suffering another overload, blames Kate for the incident, since she, following Hearing Aid policy, cut off a call from someone attempting to warn Precipice. He hits her, and then, filled with remorse, leaves the town. He finally reveals his location to the authorities when, encountering one of the "Roman circus" operations which broadcast live fights and other bloody exhibitions to the country, he responds to an "all comers" challenge by the father of the leader of one of the gangs, and cripples him in front of a nationwide audience. At Tarnover, Paul Freeman takes charge of the interrogation. He was the representative whom Nick, as Sandy Locke, was supposed to meet at G2S. Freeman, a tall gaunt African-American, gradually comes to realize that he has more sympathy with Nick's views than his employer's, and eventually absconds himself, giving Nick computer access so that Nick can make his own escape. The precipitating event in this case is Kate's abduction by government agents, who bring her to Tarnover for further questioning and to threaten Nick. With the code he gets from Freeman, he sets up an identity as an Army Major, with Kate as his prisoner. Once clear of Tarnover, they disappear together. This time around, Nick has another plan, and rather than running and hiding, he and Kate spend a number of months traveling the country, aided by an "invisible college'" of academics who are allies or former residents of Precipice. He creates a new "worm" which is designed to destroy all secrecy. (Brunner invented the term "worm" for this program, as a self-replicating program that propagates across a computer network - the term "worm" was later adopted by computer researchers as the name for this type of program.) The worm is eventually activated, and the details of all the government's dark secrets (clandestine genetic experimentation that produces crippled children, bribes and kickbacks from corporations, concealed crimes of high public officials) now become accessible from anywhere on the network - in fact, those most affected by a particular crime of a government official are emailed the full details. In place of the old system, Nick has designed the worm to enforce a kind of utilitarian socialism, with people's worth being defined by their roles in society, not their connections in high places. In effect, the network becomes the entire government and financial system, policing income for illegal money, freezing the accounts of criminals, while making sure money (or credit) flows to places where people are in need. This will only happen fully if the results of a plebiscite, again conducted over the network, allow it. In a final atavistic attempt at revenge, the government orders a nuclear strike by a single aircraft from a local Air Force base. Warned by Hearing Aid, Nick is able to penetrate the military computers and manufacture a counter-order to stop the plane just before it reaches the town. The book ends optimistically, with there being no more privileged hiding of information, no more secret conspiracies of the rich and powerful.
29999	/m/07cvr	The Shining	Stephen King	1977-01	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 1976, Jack Torrance is an aspiring writer who is attempting to rebuild his marriage and career, both of which have been nearly ruined by two traits inherited from his late father: alcoholism and an explosive temper. During one occasion while drinking, Jack broke his son's arm. This incident shocked him into sobriety, but Jack's temper continued to plague him: he lost his teaching position at a Vermont prep school after assaulting a student. Jack eagerly accepts a job as a winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, an isolated resort in the Colorado Rockies. Jack hopes that the seclusion will help him reconnect with his family and give him inspiration and the peace and quiet to help him write a new play. Jack, his wife Wendy, and their five-year-old son, Danny—who has telepathic abilities unknown to his parents—move into the Overlook. Danny's abilities make him immediately sensitive to supernatural forces within the hotel. Shortly after the family's arrival at the Overlook, Danny and the hotel's chef, Dick Hallorann, talk privately to discuss Danny's talent and the hotel's sinister nature. Dick informs Danny that he shares Danny's abilities (though to a lesser degree), as did Dick's grandmother, who called it "shining". Dick warns Danny to avoid Room 217, but assures him that the things he may see are merely pictures which cannot harm him. Dick urges Danny to contact him through the shining should trouble arise. As the Torrances settle in at the Overlook, Danny sees frightening ghosts and visions. Although Danny is close to Jack, he does not tell either of his parents about his visions because he senses that the caretaking job is important to his father and the family's future. Wendy considers leaving Jack at the Overlook to finish the job on his own; Danny refuses, thinking his father will be happier if they stay. However Danny soon realizes his presence in the hotel makes the supernatural activity more powerful enabling it to make what Hallorann described as 'pictures' dangerous. Apparitions take form and the garden's topiary animals come to life. Objects, such as a party hat in the elevator, mysteriously appear . The Overlook has difficulty possessing Danny, so it begins to possess Jack, frustrating his need and desire to work. Jack becomes susceptible to cabin fever, and the sinister ghosts of the hotel gradually begin to overtake him, making him increasingly unstable. One day, after a fight with Wendy, Jack finds the hotel's bar fully stocked with alcohol despite being previously empty. As he gets drunk, the hotel urges Jack to kill his wife and son. Wendy and Danny get the better of Jack, locking him into the walk-in pantry, but the ghost of Delbert Grady, a former caretaker who murdered his family and then committed suicide, releases him. Wendy discovers that they are completely isolated at the Overlook, as Jack has sabotaged the hotel's snowcat and smashed the CB radio in the office. Jack strikes Wendy with one of the hotel's mallets, breaking two ribs, a kneecap, and one vertebra in her back. Wendy stabs Jack in the small of his back with a large butcher knife, then crawls away to the caretaker's suite and locks herself in the bathroom, with Jack in pursuit. Jack tries to break the door with the mallet, but before he unlocks the door she keeps him back by cutting him with some razor blades. Hallorann, working at a winter resort in Florida, has heard Danny's psychic call for help and rushes back to the Overlook. Jack leaves Wendy in the bathroom and ambushes Hallorann, shattering his jaw and giving him a concussion with the mallet, before setting off after Danny. Danny distracts Jack by saying "You're not my daddy," having realized that the Overlook has completely taken over Jack by playing on his alcoholism. Jack temporarily regains control of himself and tells Danny, "Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you". Soon after, Jack is quickly possessed by the hotel again. He violently bashes his own face and skull in with his mallet so Danny can no longer recognize him as his father. Danny, realizing that his father is now gone forever, tells Jack that the unstable boiler is going to explode. In response, Jack rushes to the basement. Danny and Wendy reunite in the lobby, and they flee the Overlook with Hallorann. Though Jack tries to relieve the boiler pressure, it explodes, destroying the hotel. The building's spirit makes one last desperate attempt to possess Hallorann and make him kill Danny and Wendy, but he shakes it off and brings them to safety. The novel ends with Danny and Wendy summering at a resort in Maine where Hallorann, the head chef, talks with Danny and comforts him over the loss of his father.
30033	/m/07d4x	Mort	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As a teenager, Mort had a personality and temperament that made him rather unsuited to the family farming business. Mort's father, named Lezek, felt that Mort thought too much, which prevented him from achieving anything practical. Thus, Lezek took him to a local hiring fair, hoping that Mort would land an apprenticeship with some tradesman; not only would this provide a job for his son, but it would also make his son's propensity towards thinking someone else's problem. At the job fair, Mort at first has no luck attracting the interest of an employer. Then, just before the stroke of midnight, a man concealed in a black cloak arrives on a white horse. He says he is looking for a young man to assist him in his work and selects Mort for the job. The man turns out to be Death, and Mort is given an apprenticeship in ushering souls into the next world (though his father thinks he's been apprenticed to an undertaker). When it is a princess' time to die (according to a preconceived reality), Mort, instead of ushering her soul, saves her from death, dramatically altering a part of the Discworld's reality. However, the princess, for whom Mort has a developing infatuation, does not have long to live, and he must try to save her, once again, from a seemingly unstoppable death. Both the princess and Mort end up consulting the local wizard, Igneous Cutwell, for various methods of assistance with the crisis. As Mort begins to do most of Death's "Duty", he loses some of his former character traits, and essentially starts to become more like Death himself. Death, in turn, yearns to relish what being human is truly like and travels to Ankh-Morpork to indulge in new experiences and attempt to feel real human emotion. Conclusively, Mort must duel Death for Mort's freedom. Though Death wins the duel, he spares Mort's life and sends him back to the Disc. The princess is saved from a second death when the alternate reality Mort created is reduced to a pearl-like state. This pearl is given to Mort for safe-keeping. At the end of the novel, Mort marries Ysabell, Death's adopted daughter.
30280	/m/07g52	The Hound of the Baskervilles	Arthur Conan Doyle	1901	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sir Charles Baskerville is found lying dead on the grounds of his country house, Baskerville Hall. The cause is ascribed to a heart attack. Fearing for the safety of Sir Charles's nephew and only known heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, coming from America to claim his inheritance, Dr James Mortimer travels to London and asks Sherlock Holmes for help. Mortimer explains that the Baskerville family is afflicted by a curse. According to an old account, over two centuries ago Hugo Baskerville was infatuated with a farmer's daughter. He kidnapped her and imprisoned her in his bedroom. She escaped and the furious Baskerville offered his soul to the devil if he could recapture her. Aided by friends, he pursued the girl onto the desolate moor. Baskerville and his victim were found dead. She had died from fright, but a giant spectral hound stood guard over Baskerville's body. The hound tore out Baskerville's throat, then vanished into the night. Sir Charles Baskerville had become fearful of the legendary curse and its hellhound. Mortimer decided that Sir Charles had been waiting for someone when he died. His face was contorted in a ghastly expression, while his footprints suggested he was running from something. The elderly man's heart was not strong, and he had planned to go to London the next day. Mortimer says he had seen the footprints of a "gigantic hound" near Sir Charles's body, something not revealed at the inquest. Intrigued by the case, Holmes meets with Sir Henry, newly arrived from America. Sir Henry is puzzled by an anonymous note delivered to his London hotel room, warning him to avoid the Devon moors. Holmes says that the note had been composed largely of letters cut from The Times, probably in a hotel, judging by other clues. The fact that the letters were cut with nail scissors suggested an authoress, as did a remnant whiff of perfume. Holmes keeps this last detail to himself. When Holmes and Watson later join Sir Henry at his hotel, they learn one of the baronet's new boots has gone missing. No good explanation can be found for the loss. Holmes asks if there were any other living relatives besides Sir Henry. Mortimer tells him that Charles had two brothers, Rodger and John. Sir Henry is the sole child of John, who settled in America and raised his son there. Another brother, Rodger, was known to be the black sheep of the family. A wastrel and inveterate gambler, he fled to South America to avoid creditors. He is believed to have died there alone. Despite the note's warning, Sir Henry insists on visiting Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry leaves Holmes' Baker Street apartment, Holmes and Doctor Watson follow him. They realise that a man with a fake-looking black beard in a cab is also following him. Holmes and Watson pursue this man, but he escapes; however, Holmes memorises the cab number. Holmes stops in at a messenger office and employs a young boy, Cartwright, to go visit London's hotels and look through wastepaper in search of cut-up copies of The Times. By the time they return to the hotel, Sir Henry has had another, newer boot stolen. When the first missing boot is discovered before the meeting is over, Holmes begins to realise they must be dealing with a real hound (hence the emphasis on the scent of the used boot). When conversation turns to the man in the cab, Mortimer says that Barrymore, the servant at Baskerville Hall, has a beard, and a telegram is sent to check on his whereabouts. It is decided that, with Holmes being tied up in London with other cases, Watson will accompany Sir Henry to Baskerville Hall and report back by telegram in detail. Later that evening, telegrams from Cartwright (who was unable to find the newspaper) and Baskerville Hall (where Barrymore apparently is) bring an end to those leads. A visit from John Clayton, who was driving the cab with the black-bearded man, is of little help. He says that the man had identified himself as Holmes, much to the surprise and amusement of the actual Holmes. Mortimer, Watson, and Sir Henry set off for Baskerville Hall the following Saturday. The baronet is excited to see it and his connection with the land is clear, but finds the moor dampened. Soldiers are about the area, on the lookout for an escaped murderer named Selden. Barrymore and his wife wish to depart Baskerville Hall as soon as is convenient, and the Hall is, in general, a somber place. Watson has trouble sleeping that night, and hears a woman crying. The next morning Barrymore denies that it was his wife, who is one of only two women in the house. Watson sees Mrs. Barrymore later in the morning, however, and observes clear evidence that she has indeed been weeping. Watson checks with the postmaster in Coombe Tracey and learns that the telegram was not actually delivered into the hands of Barrymore, so it is no longer certain that he was at the Hall, and not in London. On his way back, Watson meets Jack Stapleton, a naturalist familiar with the moor even though he has only been in the area for two years. They hear a moan that the peasants attribute to the hound, but Stapleton attributes it to the cry of a bittern, or possibly the bog settling. He then runs off after a specimen of the butterfly Cyclopedes, which was still found on Dartmoor until the 1860s. Watson is not alone for long before Beryl Stapleton, Jack's sister, approaches him. Mistaking him for Sir Henry, she urgently warns him to leave the area, but drops the subject when her brother returns. The three walk to Merripit House (the Stapletons’ home), and during the discussion, Watson learns that Stapleton used to run a school in Yorkshire. Though he is offered lunch and a look at Stapleton’s collections, Watson departs for the Hall. Before he gets far along the path, Miss Stapleton overtakes him and retracts her warning. Watson notices that the brother and sister don't look very much alike. Sir Henry soon meets Miss Stapleton and becomes romantically interested, despite her brother’s intrusions. Watson meets another neighbour, Mr. Frankland, an elderly lawyer. Barrymore draws increasing suspicion, as Watson and Sir Henry see him late at night walk with a candle into an empty room, hold it up to the window, and then leave. Realising that the room has a view out on the moor, Watson and Sir Henry determine to figure out what is going on. Barrymore's wife confesses that her brother is Selden, the escaped murderer, and that she was giving him food while he was out on the moor. Meanwhile, during the day, Sir Henry continues to pursue Beryl Stapleton until her brother runs up on them and yells angrily. He later explains to the disappointed baronet that it was not personal, he was just afraid of losing his only companion so quickly. To show there are no hard feelings, he invites Sir Henry to dine with him and his sister on Friday. Sir Henry then becomes the person doing the surprising, when he and Watson walk in on Barrymore, catching him at night in the room with a candle. Barrymore refuses to answer their questions, since it is not his secret to tell, but Mrs. Barrymore’s. She tells them that the runaway convict Selden is her brother and the candle is a signal to him that food has been left for him. When the couple return to their room, Sir Henry and Watson go off to find the convict, despite the poor weather and frightening sound of the hound. They see Selden by another candle, but are unable to catch him. Watson notices the outlined figure of another man standing on top of a tor with the moon behind him, but he likewise gets away. Barrymore is upset when he finds out that they tried to capture Selden, but when an agreement is reached to allow Selden to flee the country, he is willing to repay the favour. He tells them of finding a mostly burnt letter asking Sir Charles to be at the gate at the time of his death. It was signed with the initials L.L. Mortimer tells Watson the next day those initials could stand for Laura Lyons, Frankland’s daughter. She lives in Coombe Tracey. When Watson goes to talk to her, she admits to writing the letter in hopes that Sir Charles would be willing to help finance her divorce, but says she never kept the appointment. Frankland has just won two law cases and invites Watson in to help him celebrate. Barrymore had previously told Watson that another man lived out on the moor besides Selden, and Frankland unwittingly confirms this, when he shows Watson through his telescope the figure of a boy carrying food. Watson departs the house and goes in that direction. He finds the prehistoric stone dwelling where the unknown man has been staying, goes in, and sees a message reporting on his own activities. He waits, revolver at the ready, for the unknown man to return. The unknown man proves to be Holmes. He has kept his location a secret so that Watson would not be tempted to come out and so he would be able to appear on the scene of action at the critical moment. Watson’s reports have been of much help to him, and he then tells his friend some of the information he has uncoveredStapleton is actually married to the woman passing as Miss Stapleton, and was also promising marriage to Laura Lyons to get her cooperation. As they bring their conversation to an end, they hear a ghastly scream. They run towards the sound and finding a body, mistake it for Sir Henry. They realise it is actually the escaped convict Selden, the brother of Mrs Barrymore, dressed in the baronet’s old clothes (which had been given to Barrymore by way of further apology for distrusting him). Then Stapleton appears, and while he makes excuses for his presence, Holmes announces that he will return to London the next day, his investigations having produced no result. Holmes and Watson return to Baskerville Hall where, over dinner, the detective stares at Hugo Baskerville's portrait. Calling Watson over after dinner he covers the hair to show the face, revealing its striking likeness to Stapleton. This provides the motive in the crimewith Sir Henry gone, Stapleton could lay claim to the Baskerville fortune, being clearly a Baskerville himself. When they return to Mrs. Lyons’s apartment, Holmes' questioning forces her to admit Stapleton’s role in the letter that lured Sir Charles to his death. They go to the railway station to meet Det. Inspector Lestrade, whom Holmes has called in by telegram. Under the threat of advancing fog, Watson, Holmes, and Lestrade lie in wait outside Merripit House, where Sir Henry has been dining. When the baronet leaves and sets off across the moor, Stapleton looses the hound. Holmes and Watson manage to shoot it before it can hurt Sir Henry seriously, and discover that its hellish appearance was acquired by means of phosphorus. They find Mrs. Stapleton bound and gagged in an upstairs room of Merripit House. When she is freed, she tells them of Stapleton’s hideout; an island deep in the Great Grimpen Mire. They look for him next day, unsuccessfully, and he is presumed dead, having lost his footing and being sucked down into the foul and bottomless depths of the mire. Holmes and Watson are only able to find and recover Sir Henry's boot used by Stapleton to give the hound Sir Henry's scent and find the remains of Dr Mortimer's dog in the mire. Some weeks later, Watson questions Holmes about the Baskerville case. Holmes reveals that although believed to have died unmarried, Sir Charles' younger brother Rodger Baskerville had married and had a son with the same name as his father. The son John Rodger Baskerville, after embezzling public money in Costa Rica, took the name Vandeleur and fled to England where he used the money to fund a Yorkshire school. Unfortunately for him, the tutor he had hired died of consumption, and after an epidemic of the disease killed three students the school itself failed. Now using the name Stapleton, Baskerville/Vandeleur fled with his wife to Dartmoor. He apparently supported himself by burglary, engaging in four large robberies and pistolling a page who surprised him. Having learned the story of the hound, he resolved to kill off the remaining Baskervilles so that he could come into the inheritance as the last of the line. He had no interest in the estate and simply wanted the inheritance money. He purchased the hound and hid it in the mire at the site of an abandoned tin mine. On the night of his death, Sir Charles had been waiting for Laura Lyons. The cigar ash at the scene ("the ash had twice dropped from his cigar") showed he had waited for some time. Instead he met the hound that had been trained by Stapleton and covered with phosphorus to give it an unearthly appearance. Sir Charles ran for his life, but then had the fatal heart attack which killed him. Since dogs do not eat or bite dead bodies, it left him there untouched. Stapleton followed Sir Henry in London, and also stole his new boot but later returned it, since it had not been worn and thus lacked Sir Henry's scent. Holmes speculated that the hotel bootblack had been bribed to steal an old boot of Henry's instead. The hound pursued Selden to his death in a fall because he was wearing Sir Henry's old clothes. On the night the hound attacked Sir Henry, Stapleton's wife had refused to have any further part in Stapleton's plot, but her abusive husband beat and tied her to a pole to prevent her from warning him. In Holmes' words: "..he (Stapleton) has for years been a desperate and dangerous man.." It was his consuming interest in entomology that allowed Holmes to identify him as the same man as Vandeleur, the former schoolmaster.
30292	/m/07g75	The Hobbit	J. R. R. Tolkien	1937	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/017ssy": "Juvenile fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gandalf tricks Bilbo into hosting a party for Thorin and his band of dwarves, who sing of reclaiming the Lonely Mountain and its vast treasure from the dragon Smaug. When the music ends, Gandalf unveils a map showing a secret door into the Mountain and proposes that the dumbfounded Bilbo serve as the expedition's "burglar". The dwarves ridicule the idea, but Bilbo, indignant, joins despite himself. The group travel into the wild, where Gandalf saves the company from trolls and leads them to Rivendell, where Elrond reveals more secrets from the map. Passing over the Misty Mountains, they are caught by goblins and driven deep underground. Although Gandalf rescues them, Bilbo gets separated from the others as they flee the goblins. Lost in the goblin tunnels, he stumbles across a mysterious ring and then encounters Gollum, who engages him in a game of riddles. As a reward for solving all riddles Gollum will show him the path out of the tunnels, but if Bilbo fails, his life will be forfeit. With the help of the ring, which confers invisibility, Bilbo escapes and rejoins the dwarves, improving his reputation with them. The goblins and Wargs give chase but the company are saved by eagles before resting in the house of Beorn. The company enters the black forest of Mirkwood without Gandalf. In Mirkwood, Bilbo first saves the dwarves from giant spiders and then from the dungeons of the Wood-elves. Nearing the Lonely Mountain, the travellers are welcomed by the human inhabitants of Lake-town, who hope the dwarves will fulfil prophecies of Smaug's demise. The expedition travels to the Lonely Mountain and finds the secret door; Bilbo scouts the dragon's lair, stealing a great cup and learning of a weakness in Smaug's armour. The enraged dragon, deducing that Lake-town has aided the intruder, sets out to destroy the town. A noble thrush who overheard Bilbo's report of Smaug's vulnerability reports it to Bard, who slays the dragon. When the dwarves take possession of the mountain, Bilbo finds the Arkenstone, an heirloom of Thorin's dynasty, and steals it. The Wood-elves and Lake-men besiege the mountain and request compensation for their aid, reparations for Lake-town's destruction, and settlement of old claims on the treasure. Thorin refuses and, having summoned his kin from the mountains of the North, reinforces his position. Bilbo tries to ransom the Arkenstone to head off a war, but Thorin is intransigent. He banishes Bilbo, and battle seems inevitable. Gandalf reappears to warn all of an approaching army of goblins and Wargs. The dwarves, men, and elves band together, but only with the timely arrival of the eagles and Beorn do they win the climactic Battle of Five Armies. Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo before he dies. Bilbo accepts only a small portion of his share of the treasure, having no want or need for more, but still returns home a very wealthy hobbit.
30706	/m/07k85	The Great Divorce	C. S. Lewis	1945	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 The narrator inexplicably finds himself in a grim and joyless city, the "grey town", which is either hell or purgatory depending on how long one stays there. He eventually finds a bus for those who desire an excursion to some other place (and which eventually turns out to be the foothills of heaven). He enters the bus and converses with his fellow passengers as they travel. When the bus reaches its destination, the passengers on the bus — including the narrator — are gradually revealed to be ghosts. Although the country is the most beautiful they have ever seen, every feature of the landscape (including streams of water and blades of grass) is unyieldingly solid compared to themselves: it causes them immense pain to walk on the grass, and even a single leaf is far too heavy for any to lift. Shining figures, men and women whom they have known on earth, come to meet them, and to urge them to repent and enter heaven proper. They promise that as the ghosts travel onward and upward, they will become more solid and thus feel less and less discomfort. These figures, called "spirits" to distinguish them from the ghosts, offer to assist them in the journey toward the mountains and the sunrise. Almost all of the ghosts choose to return instead to the grey town, giving various reasons and excuses. Much of the interest of the book lies in the recognition it awakens of the plausibility and familiarity, along with the thinness and self-deception, of the excuses that the ghosts refuse to abandon, even though to do so would bring them to "reality" and "joy forevermore." The narrator is met by the writer George MacDonald, whom he hails as his mentor, just as Dante did when encountering Virgil in the Divine Comedy; and MacDonald becomes the narrator's guide in his journey, just as Virgil became Dante's. MacDonald explains that it is possible for a soul to choose to remain in heaven despite having been in the grey town; for such souls, the goodness of heaven will work backwards into their lives, turning even their worst sorrows into joy, and changing their experience on earth to an extension of heaven. Conversely, the evil of hell works so that if a soul remains in, or returns to, the grey town, even its happiness on earth will lose its meaning, and its experience on earth would have been hell. None of the ghosts realize that the grey town is, in fact, hell. Indeed it is not that much different from the life they led on earth: joyless, friendless, and uncomfortable. It just goes on forever, and gets worse and worse, with some characters whispering their fear of the "night" that is eventually to come. According to MacDonald, while it is possible to leave hell and enter heaven, doing so implies turning away (repentance); or as depicted by Lewis, embracing ultimate and unceasing joy itself. In answer to the narrator's question MacDonald confirms that what is going on is a dream. The use of chess imagery as well as the correspondence of dream elements to elements in the narrator's waking life is reminiscent of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The narrator discovers that the vast grey town and its ghostly inhabitants are minuscule to the point of being invisible compared with the immensity of heaven and reality. This is illustrated in the encounter of the blessed woman and her husband: she is surrounded by gleaming attendants while he shrinks down to invisibility as he uses a collared tragedian to speak for him. Toward the end, the narrator expresses the terror and agony of remaining a ghost in the advent of full daybreak in heaven, comparing the experience to having large blocks fall on one's body (at this point falling books awaken him). This parallels that of the man with his dream of judgment day in the House of the Interpreter of The Pilgrim's Progress. The book ends with the narrator awakening from his dream of heaven into the unpleasant reality of wartime Britain, in conscious imitation of The Pilgrim's Progress, the last sentence of the "First Part" of which is: "So I awoke, and behold, it was a Dream."
30709	/m/07k8z	The Screwtape Letters	C. S. Lewis	1942	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis provides a series of lessons in the importance of taking a deliberate role in living out Christian faith by portraying a typical human life, with all its temptations and failings, as seen from devils' viewpoints. Screwtape holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy ("Lowerarchy") of Hell, and acts as a mentor to Wormwood, the inexperienced tempter. In the body of the thirty-one letters which make up the book, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin in the Patient, interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine. Wormwood and Screwtape live in a peculiarly morally reversed world, where individual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and neither demon is capable of comprehending God's love for man or acknowledging true human virtue when he sees it. Versions of the letters were originally published weekly in the Anglican periodical The Guardian between May and November 1941, and the standard edition contains an introduction explaining how the author chose to write his story. Lewis wrote the sequel Screwtape Proposes a Toast in 1959, a critique of certain trends in public education (state schooling). An omnibus edition with a new preface by Lewis was published by Bles in 1961 and MacMillan in 1962. The Screwtape Letters is one of Lewis' most popular works, although he claimed that it was "not fun" to write, and "resolved never to write another 'Letter'." Both The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast have been released on both audio cassette and CD, with narration by John Cleese and Joss Ackland. A dramatized audio version by Focus on the Family was a 2010 Audie Award finalist.
30757	/m/07kmq	The Pit and the Pendulum	Nancy Kilpatrick	1842	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The story takes place during the Spanish Inquisition. At the beginning of the story an unnamed narrator is brought to trial before various sinister judges. Poe provides no explanation of why he is there or for what he has been arrested. Before him are seven tall white candles on a table, and, as they melt, his hopes of survival also diminish. He is condemned to death and finds himself in a pitch black compartment. At first the prisoner thinks that he is locked in a tomb, but he discovers that he is in a cell. He decides to explore the cell by placing a hem from his robe against a wall so he can count the paces around the room; however, he faints before being able to measure the whole perimeter. When the prisoner awakens he discovers food and water nearby. He gets back up and tries to measure the prison again, finding that the perimeter measures one hundred steps. While crossing the room he slips on the hem of his robe. He discovers that if he had not tripped he would have walked into a deep pit with water at the bottom in the center of the cell. After losing consciousness again the narrator discovers that the prison is slightly illuminated and that he is bound to a wooden board by ropes. He looks up in horror to see a painted picture of Father Time on the ceiling; hanging from the figure is a gigantic scythe-like pendulum swinging slowly back and forth. The pendulum is inexorably sliding downwards and will eventually kill him. However the condemned man is able to attract rats to his bonds with meat left for him to eat and they start chewing through the ropes. As the pendulum reaches a point inches above his heart, the prisoner breaks free of the ropes and watches as the pendulum is drawn back to the ceiling. He then sees that the walls have become red-hot and begun moving inwards, driving him into the center of the room and towards the brink of the pit. As he gazes into the pit, he decides that no fate could be worse than falling into it. It is implied by the text that the narrator fears what he sees at the bottom of the pit, or perhaps is frightened by its depth. The exact cause of his fear is not clearly stated. However, as the narrator moves back from the pit, he sees that the red-hot walls are leaving him with no foothold. As the prisoner begins to fall into the pit, he hears human voices. The walls rush back and an arm catches him. The French Army has taken Toledo and the Inquisition is in the hands of its enemies.
30761	/m/07knm	The Hunt for Red October	Tom Clancy	1984	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Marko Alexandrovich Ramius, a Lithuanian submarine commander in the Soviet Navy, intends to defect to the United States with his officers on board the experimental nuclear submarine Red October, a Typhoon-class vessel equipped with a revolutionary stealth propulsion system, described as an arrangement of pump-jets nicknamed the "Caterpillar Drive." The system makes sonar detection extremely difficult. The result, immediately apparent to Jack Ryan and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a strategic weapon platform that is capable of sneaking its way into American waters and launching nuclear missiles with little or no warning. The strategic value of Red October was not lost upon Ramius. Several other factors have spurred his decision to defect, in particular his disillusionment by the death of his wife, Natalia, at the hands of an incompetent doctor who went unpunished because he was the son of a Politburo member. Her untimely death, combined with Ramius' long-standing dissatisfaction with the callousness of Soviet rule and his fear of the Red Octobers destabilizing effect on world affairs, ultimately exhausts his tolerance for the failings of the Soviet system. Ramius kills the Red Octobers political officer to ensure that he will not interfere with the defection, and writes a letter to Admiral Yuri Padorin, Natalia's uncle, brazenly stating his intention to defect. The Soviet Northern Fleet sails out to sink the Red October under the pretext of a search and rescue mission. Meanwhile, Ryan, a high-level Central Intelligence Agency analyst, flies from London to Langley, Virginia, to deliver British Intelligence's photographs of Red October to the Deputy Director of Intelligence. Ryan consults a friend at the U.S. Naval Academy and finds out that the new construction variations house the Caterpillar Drive. When the Red Octobers silent drive is engaged, she disappears off the sonar of the USS Dallas, a Los Angeles class submarine that is tracking her. Putting this information together with the subsequent launch of the entire Northern Fleet, Ryan deduces Ramius' plans. The U.S. military command reluctantly agrees, while planning for contingencies in case the Soviet Fleet has intentions other than those stated. As tensions rise between the U.S. and Soviet fleets, the crew of the Dallas discover a way to detect Red October. Ryan must contact Ramius to prevent the loss of the submarine and her decisive technology. Through a combination of circumstances, Ryan becomes responsible for shepherding Ramius and his vessel away from the pursuing Soviet fleet. In order to convince the Soviets that the Red October has been destroyed, the U.S. Navy rescues her crew after Ramius fakes a shipboard emergency. Ramius and his officers heroically stay behind, claiming they are about to scuttle the submarine to prevent it getting into the hands of the Americans. A decommissioned U.S. ballistic missile submarine, the USS Ethan Allen, is blown up underwater as a deception ploy. A depth gauge taken from the main instrument panel of the Red October (with the appropriate serial number) is made to appear as if it was salvaged from the wreckage. These events succeed in convincing Soviet observers that the Red October has been lost. However, GRU intelligence officer Viktor Loginov, masquerading as the Red Octobers cook, realizes what is happening. Loginov attempts to ignite a missile rocket motor inside a launch tube so as to destroy the Red October, wounding both Ramius and a British agent while killing one of Ramius' top officers. Ryan attempts to persuade the fiercely patriotic Loginov to surrender rather than die in the explosion, but he refuses. He manages to fatally shoot Loginov in the submarine's missile compartment. Ramius orders the missile jettisoned in case Loginov had managed to arm it, an action which adds to the deception of the Soviets. Captain Viktor Tupolev, a former student of Ramius' and commander of a Soviet Alfa-class attack submarine, has been trailing what he initially believes is an vessel. Based on acoustical signature information, Tupolev and his political officer realize that it is the Red October, and proceed to pursue and engage it. The two U.S. submarines escorting the Red October are unable to fire due to rules of engagement, and the Red October is damaged by a torpedo from the Alfa. After a tense standoff, the Red October rams Tupolev's submarine broadside and sinks it. The Americans escort Red October safely into the eight-ten dry dock in Norfolk, Virginia, where Ramius and his crew are taken to a CIA safehouse to begin their Americanization. Ryan is commended by his superiors and flies back to his posting in London.
30762	/m/07kp1	The Cardinal of the Kremlin	Tom Clancy	1988	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 CIA analyst Jack Ryan attends a diplomatic conference in Moscow as part of an American delegation to the Soviet Union. He learns that the CIA’s most highly-placed agent, codenamed "CARDINAL", is none other than Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, the personal aide to the Soviet Minister of Defense and a national war hero. Filitov was recruited by GRU colonel and British agent Oleg Penkovskiy, and offered his services to the CIA after the deaths of his wife and two sons; the latter two were killed during their service in the Red Army. As a result, Filitov has been passing political, technical, and military intelligence to the CIA for the past thirty years. The U.S. discovers through "National Technical Means" that the Soviets were working on an ABM defense system based at Dushanbe in Tajikistan. Emilio Ortiz, a CIA liaison, is sent to aid Mujaheddin rebels in the region. One rebel leader, a man known only as "The Archer," is questioned after unwittingly witnessing a test of the Soviets' ABM system. The Archer determines that the Soviet installation is a threat to him and his people, and tasks his group with attacking and pillaging the facility. In the end, the guerrillas destroy a large amount of Soviet equipment. However, the rebels suffer horrendous losses, including the death of The Archer. Ryan travels to New Mexico to meet with a young SDI researcher, Major Alan Gregory, whom he brings to Washington, D.C., to brief the president. Gregory lives with another scientist, Candi Long, who is working on adaptive optics for use in the development of laser weaponry. A lesbian KGB agent, Bea Taussig—who has unluckily fallen in love with Long—describes Gregory and his work to her KGB handler, Tanya Bisyarina. The KGB launches a plan to kidnap and debrief Gregory. Filitov is arrested after his work for the CIA is discovered. However, Ryan concocts a plan to both secure the return of Filitov and arrange the defection of the sitting KGB chairman, Nikolay Borissovich Gerasimov. Gerasimov is angling to take over as General Secretary in the wake of Filitov's arrest, something Ryan is determined to prevent because of his unyielding anti-American ideology. Ryan schemes to go public with the prior capture of Soviet submarine Red October, banking on the political instability of the Soviet Politburo. He plans for Filitov and Gerasimov to be exfiltrated on the American delegation's aircraft, while Gerasimov's family is extracted from Estonia by John Clark onto the submarine USS Dallas. Meanwhile, in New Mexico, three KGB officers kidnap Gregory on Gerasimov's orders and hold him in a shabby desert safe house, planning to send him to Moscow for debriefing. Their plans are foiled when the FBI sends in the Hostage Rescue Team to retrieve Gregory and return him to Long. Among those killed is Bisyarina. Ryan informs Gerasimov of the failed operation, forcing the enraged chairman to accept Ryan's defection offer. The flipped Gerasimov fetches Filitov from his confinement. The three make their way to Sheremetyevo Airport, awaiting the departure of the American delegation. Unfortunately, two KGB officers, Klementi Vladimirovich Vatutin and Sergey Nikolayevch Golovko, become aware of their planned departure. As Gerasimov and Filitov escape, Ryan allows himself to be captured by Golovko, banking on his diplomatic status to protect him from harm. Golovko then escorts Ryan to the private dacha of General Secretary Narmonov, where the two men discuss the CIA's interest in his political position and the CIA's interference in their internal security. Ryan returns to the United States, where he and several others attend the funeral of Filitov, who had died of heart disease in the months following his CIA debriefing period. Filitov is buried at Camp David, within twenty miles of the Antietam battlefield. A Soviet military attaché attending the funeral questions why Filitov would be buried so close to American soldiers. Ryan, always working to keep the peace, explains to him, "One way or another, we all fight for what we believe in. Doesn't that give us some common ground?"
30763	/m/07kpf	Debt of Honor	Tom Clancy		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In New York City, Japanese industrialist Raizo Yamata purchases a controlling interest in an American hedge fund. He flies to Saipan — the site of his parents' suicide during the American invasion of the island at the close of World War II — to buy a large tract of land. Meanwhile, in eastern Tennessee, a car accident involving two Japanese vehicles leads to the deaths of six people. Revelations about the vehicles' fatal design flaws stir long-standing resentment against Japan's protectionist trade policies. As trade negotiations between the United States and Japan grind to a halt, Congress passes a law enabling the U.S. to mirror the trade practices of the countries from which it imports goods. The bill is immediately used to replicate Japan's non-tariff barriers, cutting off the U.S. export markets upon which the Japanese economy depends. Facing an economic crisis, Japan's ruling corporate cabal decides to take military action against the U.S. Along with China and India, Japan plots to curtail the American presence in the Pacific and re-establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In the wake of these developments, Jack Ryan is recruited as National Security Advisor by President Roger Durling. Meanwhile, CIA officers John Clark and Domingo Chavez are sent to Japan to reactivate a former KGB spy network in order to gain intelligence. Japan launches the first phase of its assault, sending Self-Defense Force units to occupy the Mariana Islands, specifically Saipan and Guam. The invasion, conducted with commercial airliners and car carriers, is virtually bloodless. Meanwhile, during a joint military exercise, Japanese ships "accidentally" launch torpedoes at the U.S. Pacific Fleet, destroying two submarines and crippling two aircraft carriers. This drastically reduces the U.S. capability to project power into the western Pacific. An immediate retaliation is forestalled by the second phase of the Japanese offensive: an economic attack. Even as the military offensive begins, Japan engineers the collapse of the U.S. stock market by hiring a programmer in an exchange firm to insert a logic bomb into the system, which ends up deleting all trade records. The Japanese also attempt to assassinate the chairman of the Federal Reserve, but their target survives the attempt with a broken back. With a massive economic crisis and subsequent mass panic, the Japanese hope that America will be too distracted to quickly respond to Japan's military actions. Japan immediately sues for peace, offering international talks and seemingly free elections in the Marianas to delay a U.S. response. Negotiators secretly reveal to the U.S. that Japan has obtained nuclear ballistic missile capability. The Japanese oligarchs, led by Yamata, believe that offers of negotiation and the nuclear deterrent, defended by a seemingly impregnable AWACS system, will cause the U.S. to concede Japan's advantage. With two of America's twelve carriers disabled, and the rest pinned down by international crises elsewhere, Ryan has few resources with which to defend American interests. Despite his typical focus on military issues, Ryan advises President Durling to deal with the economic crisis first. Ryan also realizes that Japan's deletion of trade records could be an advantage in responding to the economic threat. He engineers a "do-over", where all of the transactions on the day of the mass deletion are ignored and all assets are restored to their state at the start of business that day. Accompanied by a presidential address to the nation and behind-the-scenes bullying of investment banks, the plan is a success: America's economy is restored with only minor disruption. Ryan eliminates Japan's AWACS system through a series of "accidents" using widely dispersed U.S. assets, allowing B-2 bombers to destroy the silos. Clark and Chavez blind incoming Japanese pilots with a laser and cause them to crash on landing and rescue Japan's moderate former prime minister. An Army special operations team is airdropped into Japan to support Comanche helicopters in attacking the other AWACS planes and kill members of Yamata's cabal. Meanwhile, Admiral Robby Jackson liberates the Marianas with little bloodshed. Cornered, Japan's current prime minister resigns, ceding power to his predecessor. Yamata is arrested, and the new Japanese government accepts America's generous offer of status quo ante. Throughout the book, President Durling faces another, less important political crisis: Vice-President Ed Kealty is forced to resign after being accused of drugging and raping a former member of his staff. With the crisis over, President Durling nominates Ryan as vice-president during a joint session of Congress. However, an embittered Japan Air Lines pilot—driven mad by the deaths of his son and brother during the previous conflict—flies his Boeing 747 directly into the U.S. Capitol. Nearly the entire presidential line of succession is eliminated; Ryan, who had just been confirmed as vice-president moments before, narrowly escapes the attack and is immediately sworn in as president.
30971	/m/07m5q	Tunnel in the Sky	Robert A. Heinlein	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Malthusian catastrophe on Earth has been averted by the invention of teleportation, called the "Ramsbotham jump", which is used to send Earth's excess population to colonize other planets. However, the costs of operating the device mean that the colonies are isolated from Earth until they can justify two-way travel. Because modern technology requires a supporting infrastructure, more primitive methods are employed — for example, horses instead of tractors (because tractors cannot reproduce themselves). Rod Walker is a high school student who dreams of becoming a professional colonist. The final test of his Advanced Survival class is to stay alive on an unfamiliar planet for between two and ten days. Students may team up and equip themselves with whatever gear they can carry, but are otherwise completely on their own. They are told only that the challenges are neither insurmountable nor unreasonable. On test day, each student walks through the Ramsbotham portal and finds him or herself alone on a strange planet, though reasonably close to the pickup point. Rod, acting on advice, chooses to equip himself with hunting knives and basic survival gear rather than high-tech weaponry, on the grounds that the latter is dependent on the infrastructure required to maintain it and can easily become a crutch. The last advice the students receive is to "watch out for stobor." On the second day, Rod is ambushed and knocked unconscious by a thief. When he wakes up, all he has left is a spare knife hidden under a bandage. In his desperate concentration on survival, he loses track of time. Eventually he teams up with Jacqueline "Jack" Daudet, a student from another class whom he initially mistakes for a male. When she tells him that more than ten days have elapsed without contact, he realizes that they are stranded. They start recruiting others for the long haul and Rod becomes the de facto leader of a community that eventually grows to around 75 people. Rod has no taste for politics or administration, and is happy to have Grant Cowper, an older college student and born politician, elected "mayor". Grant proves to be much better at talking than getting things done. Despite disagreeing with many of Grant's policies, Rod supports him. Grant ignores Rod's warning that they are living in a dangerously hard-to-defend location and that they should move to a cave system he has found. When a species previously thought harmless suddenly changes its behavior and stampedes through their camp, the settlement is devastated and Grant is killed. Rod is subsequently put back in charge. Heinlein tracks the social development of this community of educated Westerners deprived of technology, followed by its abrupt dissolution when contact with Earth is reestablished. After nearly two years of isolation, the culture shock experienced by the survivors highlights for them, and the reader, the pain and uncertainty of becoming an adult, by reversing the process abruptly -- Each of the students goes from being a personally self-responsible member of an autonomous community back to being a youth with little authority or responsibility in the home culture. All of the students go back willingly except for Rod, who has great difficulty reverting from the status of head of a small, but sovereign state to a teenager casually brushed aside by the adult rescuers. However, his teacher (and now brother-in-law) and his sister persuade him to change his mind. His teacher also informs Rod that his warning against "stobor" ("robots" spelled backwards) was just a way of personalizing the dangers of an unknown planet - to instill fear and caution in the students. Years later, Rod is briefly depicted accomplishing his heart's desire; the novel's ending finds him preparing to lead a formal colonization party to another planet.
31283	/m/07pn6	The Mismeasure of Man	Stephen Jay Gould	1981	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 The Mismeasure of Man is a critical analysis of the early works of scientific racism about the supposed, biologically inherited (genetic) basis for human intelligence, such as craniometry, the measurement of skull volume and its relation to intellectual faculties. Gould proposed that much of the research was based more upon the racial and social prejudices of the researchers than upon their scientific objectivity; that on occasion, researchers such as Samuel George Morton (1799–1851), Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), and Paul Broca (1824–1880), committed the methodological fallacy of including their personal (a priori) expectations to the conclusions, as part of their analytical reasoning. Gould describes Morton's rather imprecise technique of filling skulls with bird seed to obtain endocranial-volume data and how Morton had probably pushed down bird seed in the white skulls so that they had more volume. Gould re-worked Morton’s original endocranial-volume data, and concluded that the original results were based upon biases, selective data use, and perhaps outright falsification of the results. When said biases are accounted, the original hypothesis — an ordering in skull volume ranging from Blacks to Mongols to Whites — is unsupported by the data. The Mismeasure of Man presents a historical evaluation of the concepts of the intelligence quotient (IQ) and of the general intelligence factor (g factor), which were and are the measures for intelligence used by psychologists. Gould proposed that most psychological studies have been heavily biased, by the belief that the human behavior of a race of people is best explained by genetic heredity. He cites the Burt Affair, about the allegedly fraudulent, oft-cited twin studies, by Cyril Burt (1883–1971), wherein he claimed that human intelligence is highly heritabile. As an evolutionary biologist and historian of science, Gould accepted biological variability (the premise of the transmission of intelligence via genetic heredity), but opposed biological determinism, which posits that genes determine a definitive, unalterable social destiny for each man and each woman in life and society. The Mismeasure of Man is an analysis of statistical correlation, the mathematics applied by psychologists to establish the validity of IQ tests, and the heritability of intelligence. For example, to establish the validity of the proposition that IQ is supported by a general intelligence factor (g factor), the answers to several tests of cognitive ability must positively correlate; thus, for the g factor to be a heritable trait, the IQ-test scores of close-relation respondents must correlate more than the IQ-test scores of distant-relation respondents. Hence, correlation does not imply causation; in example, Gould said that the measures of the changes, over time, in "my age, the population of México, the price of Swiss cheese, my pet turtle’s weight, and the average distance between galaxies" have a high, positive correlation — yet that correlation does not indicate that Gould’s age increased because the Mexican population increased. More specifically, a high, positive correlation between the intelligence quotients of a parent and a child can be presumed either as evidence that IQ is genetically inherited, or that IQ is inherited through social and environmental factors. Moreover, because the data from IQ tests can be applied to arguing the logical validity of either proposition — genetic inheritance and environmental inheritance — the psychometric data have no inherent value. Gould proposed that if the genetic heritability of IQ were demonstrable within a given racial or ethnic group, it would not explain the causes of IQ differences among the people of a group, or if said IQ differences can be attributed to the environment. For example, the height of a person is genetically determined, but there exist height differences within a given social group that can be attributed to environmental factors (e.g. the quality of nutrition) and to genetic inheritance. The evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin, a colleague of Gould’s, is a proponent of said argument in relation to the cognitive ability tests that determine a person’s intelligence quotient. An example of the intellectual confusion about what heritability is and is not, is the statement: "If all environments were to become equal for everyone, heritability would rise to 100 percent because all remaining differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin", which Gould said is misleading, at best, and false, at worst. First, it is very difficult to conceive of a world wherein every man, woman, and child grew up in the same environment, because their spatial and temporal dispersion upon the planet Earth makes it impossible. Second, were people to grew up in the same environment, not every difference would be genetic in origin, because of the randomness of molecular and genetic development. Therefore, heritability is not a measure of phenotypic (physiognomy and physique) differences among racial and ethnic groups, but of differences between genotype and phenotype in a given population. Furthermore, he dismissed the proposition that an IQ score measures the general intelligence (g factor) of a person, because cognitive ability tests (IQ tests) present different types of questions, and the responses tend to form clusters of intellectual acumen. That is, different questions, and the answers to them, yield different scores — which indicate that an IQ test is a combination method of different examinations of different things. As such, Gould proposed that IQ-test proponents assume the existence of "general intelligence" as a discrete quality within the human mind, and thus they analyze the IQ-test data to produce an IQ number that establishes the definitive general intelligence of each man and of each woman. Hence, Dr. Gould dismissed the IQ number as an erroneous artifact of the statistical mathematics applied to the raw IQ-test data; especially because psychometric data can be variously analyzed to produce multiple IQ scores.
31342	/m/07pzw	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Oscar Wilde	1890	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins on a beautiful summer day with Lord Henry Wotton, a strongly-opinionated man, observing the sensitive artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of a handsome young man named Dorian Gray, who is Basil's ultimate muse. After hearing Lord Henry's world view, Dorian begins to think beauty is the only worthwhile aspect of life. He wishes that the portrait Basil painted would grow old in his place. Under the influence of Lord Henry (who relishes the hedonic lifestyle and is a major exponent thereof), Dorian begins to explore his senses. He discovers amazing actress Sibyl Vane, who performs Shakespeare plays in a dingy theatre. Dorian approaches her and soon proposes marriage. Sibyl, who refers to him as "Prince Charming", swoons with happiness, but her protective brother James tells her that if "Prince Charming" harms her, he will certainly kill him. Dorian invites Basil and Lord Henry to see Sibyl perform in Romeo and Juliet. Sibyl, whose only knowledge of love was love of theatre, casts aside her acting abilities through the experience of true love with Dorian. Disheartened, Dorian rejects her, saying her beauty was in her acting, and he is no longer interested in her. When he returns home, he notices that his portrait has changed. Dorian realizes his wish has come true – the portrait now bears a subtle sneer and will age with each sin he commits, while his own appearance remains unchanged. He decides to reconcile with Sibyl, but Lord Henry later informs him that she has killed herself by swallowing prussic acid. Dorian realizes that lust and looks are where his life is headed and he needs nothing else. Over the next 18 years, he experiments with every vice, mostly under the influence of a "poisonous" French decadence novel, a present from Lord Henry. The title is never revealed in the novel, but at Oscar Wilde's trial he admitted that he had 'had in mind' Joris-Karl Huysmans's À Rebours ('Against Nature'). One night, before he leaves for Paris, Basil arrives to question Dorian about rumours of his indulgences. Dorian does not deny his debauchery. He takes Basil to the portrait, which is as hideous as Dorian's sins. In anger, Dorian blames Basil for his fate and stabs Basil to death. He then blackmails an old friend named Alan Campbell, a chemist, into destroying Basil's body. Wishing to escape the guilt of his crime, Dorian travels to an opium den. James Vane is present there and attempts to shoot Dorian after he hears someone refer to Dorian as "Prince Charming". However, he is deceived when Dorian fools James into thinking he is too young to have been involved with Sibyl 18 years earlier. James releases Dorian but is approached by a woman from the opium den who chastises him for not killing Dorian, revealing Dorian has not aged for 18 years. James attempts to run after him, only to find Dorian long gone. While at dinner, Dorian sees James stalking the grounds and fears for his life. However, during a game-shooting party a few days later, a lurking James is accidentally shot and killed by one of the hunters during this game-shooting party Dorian develops feelings for Lord Henry. After returning to London, Dorian tells Lord Henry that he will be good from now on, and has started by not breaking the heart of his latest innocent conquest named Hetty Merton. Dorian wonders if the portrait has begun to change back, now that he has given up his immoral ways. He unveils the portrait to find it has become worse. Seeing this, he realizes that the motives behind his "self-sacrifice" were merely vanity, curiosity, and the quest for new emotional experiences. Deciding that only full confession will absolve him, he decides to destroy the last vestige of his conscience. In a rage, he picks up the knife that killed Basil Hallward and plunges it into the painting. His servants wake hearing a cry from inside the locked room, and passers by on the street fetch the police. The servants find Dorian's body, stabbed in the heart and suddenly aged, withered and horrible. It is only through the rings on his hand that the corpse can be identified. Beside him, however, the portrait has reverted to its original form.
31431	/m/07qs_	The Book of the City of Ladies				 Part I opens with Christine reading from Matheolus’s Lamentations, a work from the thirteenth century that addresses marriage wherein the author writes that women make men’s lives miserable. Upon reading these words, Christine becomes upset and feels ashamed to be a woman: “This thought inspired such a great sense of disgust and sadness in me that I began to despise myself and the whole of my sex as an aberration in nature”. The three Virtues then appear to Christine, and each lady tells Christine what her role will be in helping her build the City of Ladies. After this, Lady Reason is the first to join Christine and help her build the external walls of the city. Lady Reason is a virtue developed by Christine for the purpose of her book. Reason is the first virtue to help Christine build the city. Reason aids Christine in laying the foundations for her city and answers Christine's questions about why men slander women. As she helps Christine understand male slander, she also helps Christine to prepare the ground on which the city will be built. She tells Christine to “take the spade of [her] intelligence and dig deep to make a trench all around [the city] … [and Reason will] help to carry away the hods of earth on [her] shoulders.” These “hods of earth” are the past beliefs Christine has held about male slanderers. Christine, in the beginning of the text, believed that women must truly be bad because she “could scarcely find a moral work by any author which didn't devote some chapter or paragraph to attacking the female sex. [Therefore she] had to accept [these authors] unfavourable opinion[s] of women since it was unlikely that so many learned men, who seemed to be endowed with such great intelligence and insight into all things, could possibly have lied on so many different occasions.” Christine is not using reason to discover the merits of women. She believes all that she reads instead of putting her mind to listing all the great deeds women have accomplished. To help Christine see reason, Lady Reason comes and teaches Christine. She helps Christine dispel her own self-consciousness and the negative thoughts of past writers. By creating Lady Reason, Christine not only teaches her own allegorical self, but also the readers. She gives not only herself reason, but also gives readers, and women, reason to believe that women are not bad creatures and have a significant place within society. In Part II, Lady Rectitude says she will help Christine “construct the houses and buildings inside the walls of the City of Ladies” and fill it with inhabitants who are “valiant ladies of great renown”. As they build, Lady Rectitude informs Christine with examples and “stories of pagan, Hebrew, and Christian ladies” who possessed the gift of prophecy, chastity, or devotion to their families and others. Christine and Lady Rectitude also discuss the institution of marriage, addressing Christine’s questions regarding men’s claims about the ill qualities women bring to marriage. Lady Rectitude corrects these misconceptions with examples of women who loved their husbands and acted virtuously, noting that those women who are evil toward their husbands are “like creatures who go totally against their nature”. Lady Rectitude also refutes allegations that women are unchaste, inconstant, unfaithful, and mean by nature through her stories. This part closes with Christine addressing women and asking them to pray for her as she continues her work with Lady Justice to complete the city. Part III marks Lady Justice’s joining with Christine to “add the finishing touches” to the city, including bringing a queen to rule the city. Lady Justice tells Christine of female saints who were praised for their martyrdom. At the close of this part, Christine makes another address to all women announcing the completion of the City of Ladies. She beseeches them to defend and protect the city and to follow their queen (the virgin Mary). She also warns the women against the lies of men, saying, “Drive back these treacherous liars who use nothing but tricks and honeyed words to steal from you that which you should keep safe above all else: your chastity and your glorious good name”.
31434	/m/07qv5	The Sentinel	Arthur C. Clarke	1951	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story deals with the discovery of an artifact on Earth's Moon left behind eons ago by ancient aliens. The object is made of a polished mineral and tetrahedral in shape, and is surrounded by a spherical forcefield. The narrator speculates at one point that the mysterious aliens who left this structure on the Moon may have used mechanisms belonging "to a technology that lies beyond our horizons, perhaps to the technology of para-physical forces." The narrator speculates that for millions of years (evidenced by dust buildup around its forcefield) the artifact has been transmitting signals into deep space, but it ceases to transmit when, some time later, it is destroyed "with the savage might of atomic power". The narrator hypothesises that this "sentinel" was left on the moon as a "warning beacon" for possible intelligent and spacefaring species that might develop on Earth. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the operation of the sentinel is reversed. It is the energy of the sun, falling for the first time on the uncovered artifact, that triggers the signal that creatures from the Earth had taken the first step into space.
31435	/m/07qvl	The Fountains of Paradise	Arthur C. Clarke	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the 22nd century, Dr Vannevar Morgan is a famous structural engineer who hopes to develop the 'space elevator' from a theoretical concept to reality and enlists the resources of his employers to carry out experiments. But the only suitable starting point (Earth station) for the elevator lies at the summit of a mountain in Taprobane occupied by an ancient order of Buddhist monks, who implacably oppose the plan. Morgan is approached by a Mars-based consortium to develop the elevator on Mars as part of a massive terraforming project. To demonstrate the viability of the technology, Morgan tries to run a thin cable of ‘hyperfilament’ from an orbital factory down to ground level at Taprobane. A monk at the monastery, a former astrophysicist who is a mathematical genius, tries to sabotage the attempt by creating an artificial hurricane using a hijacked weather-control satellite. His attempt is in fact successful, but in an ironic twist, the hurricane blows butterflies to the peak of the mountain. This fulfills an ancient prophecy that causes the monks to leave the mountain. The tower can be built on Earth after all. Forced to resign his position for acting beyond his authority, Morgan joins the Martian consortium named 'Astroengineering' and construction of the Tower commences. Several years later, the Earth-based tower is well under construction and travel up and down — both for tourists and for transfer to rocket ships — is being trialled. An astrophysicist and a group of his students and tower staff are stranded in an emergency chamber six hundred kilometres up after an accident with their transport capsule. They have limited food and air supplies. Whilst a laser on a weather-control satellite is able to supply heat, it is imperative to provide them with filter masks against the increasing carbon dioxide and also with food, air, and medical supplies (a theme earlier explored in Clarke's novel The Sands of Mars). Despite his rapidly failing health, Morgan asserts his right to travel up the tower in a one-man 'spider' to rescue them. He nearly fails, with limited battery power, but ultimately succeeds in reaching the chamber. As Morgan surveys the progress of his brainchild, his heart disease claims his life. A short epilogue envisages Earth many centuries later, after the sun has cooled and Earth has been depopulated, with humans now living on the terraformed inner planets. Several space elevators lead to a giant "circumterran" space station that encircles Earth at geostationary altitude. The analogy with a wheel is evident: the space station itself is the wheel rim, Earth is the axle, and the six equidistant space elevators the spokes.
31584	/m/07s0_	Lord of the Flies	William Golding	1954	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the midst of a wartime evacuation, a British plane crashes onto an isolated island in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean. The only survivors are male children below the age of thirteen. Two boys, the fair-haired Ralph and an overweight, bespectacled boy reluctantly nicknamed "Piggy" find a conch, which Ralph uses as a horn to bring all the survivors to one area. Ralph emerges as one of the survivors' leaders during the meeting, as does Jack Merridew, a member of a boys' choir that survived the crash. The survivors elect Ralph as their "chief", losing only the votes of Jack's fellow choirboys, who support their leader. Ralph asserts two primary goals: to have fun and to maintain a smoke signal that could alert passing ships to their presence on the island. The boys decide that a conch shell they found embodies the society they shall create on the island, and declare that whoever holds the conch shall also receive the respect of the larger group. Jack organises his choir group into a hunting party responsible for discovering a food source; Ralph, Jack, and a boy named Simon soon form a troika of leaders. Piggy, although Ralph's only confidante, is quickly made an outcast by his fellow "biguns" (older boys) and becomes an unwilling source of laughs for the other children. Simon, in addition to supervising the project of constructing shelters, feels an instinctive need to protect the younger boys. The semblance of order imposed by Ralph and Simon quickly deteriorates as the majority of the boys turn idle and begin to develop paranoias about the island, referring to a supposed monster, the "beast", which dwells nearby. Jack, who has started a power struggle with Ralph, gains control of the discussion by boldly promising to kill the beast. At one point, Jack summons all of his hunters to hunt down a wild pig, drawing away those assigned to maintain the signal fire. After the fire burns out, a ship passes by the island, but does not stop as it has seen nothing amiss. Angered by this, Ralph considers relinquishing his position, but is convinced not to do so by Piggy. While Jack schemes against Ralph, twins Sam and Eric, now assigned to the maintenance of the signal fire, see the corpse of a fighter pilot in the dark. Mistaking the corpse for the beast, they run to the cluster of shelters that Ralph and Simon have erected and warn the others. This unexpected meeting sees tensions between Jack and Ralph flare again. Shortly thereafter, Jack decides to lead a party to the other side of the island, where a heap of stones forms a place where he claims the beast resides. Only Ralph and Jack's supporter Roger agree to go; Ralph turns back shortly before the other two boys. When they arrive at the shelters, Jack calls an assembly and tries to turn the others against Ralph, asking for them to remove him from his position. Receiving little support, Jack, Roger, and another boy leave the shelters to form their own tribe. The tribe, which receives recruits from the main group of boys, grows in strength and begins to adopt customs common to primitive cultures, including face paint and bizarre rituals including sacrifices to the beast. When the tribe grows to a size that rivals Ralph's, they begin to harass those who remain at the shelters and make pronouncements encouraging them to abandon Ralph and the societal order he has imposed. Simon, unable to bear the stress of his position, goes off to think. Alone, he finds a severed pig head, left by Jack as an offering to the beast. Simon envisions the pig head, now swarming with scavenging flies, as the "Lord of the Flies" and believes that it is talking to him. Simon hears the pig identifying itself as the real "Beast" and disclosing the truth about itself – that the boys themselves "created" the beast, and that the real beast was inside them all. Simon also locates the dead parachutist who had been mistaken for the beast, and is the sole member of the group to recognise that the "monster" is a cadaver. Simon, hoping to tell others of the discovery, finds Jack's tribe in the island's interior during a ritual dance and, mistaken for the beast, is killed by the frenzied boys. Ralph, Piggy, Sam, and Eric feel guilty about what they did not stop. Jack and his band of "savages" decide that they should possess Piggy's glasses, the only means of starting a fire on the island. Raiding Ralph's camp, the savages confiscate the glasses and return to their abode near the great rock heap, called Castle Rock. Ralph, deserted by most of his supporters, journeys to Castle Rock to confront Jack and secure the glasses. Taking the conch and accompanied only by Piggy, Sam, and Eric, Ralph finds the tribe and demands that they return the valuable object. Turning against Ralph, the tribe takes Sam and Eric captive while Roger drops a boulder from his vantage point above, killing Piggy and shattering the conch. Ralph manages to escape, but Sam and Eric are tortured until they agree to join Jack's tribe. The following morning, Jack orders his tribe to begin a manhunt for Ralph. Fleeing through the forest, Ralph watches as the "savages" set fire to the forest, drawing the attention of a passing naval vessel. A landing party from the vessel encounters Ralph as he desperately tries to escape the onrushing "savages", and the British officer leading the party, at first mistaking the violence for a game, expected better from British boys.
31623	/m/07s8w	Through the Looking-Glass	Lewis Carroll	1871	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Alice is playing with a white kitten (whom she calls "Snowdrop") and a black kitten (whom she calls "Kitty")—the offspring of Dinah, Alice's cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—when she ponders what the world is like on the other side of a mirror's reflection. Climbing up on the fireplace mantel, she pokes at the wall-hung mirror behind the fireplace and discovers, to her surprise, that she is able to step through it to an alternative world. In this reflected version of her own house, she finds a book with looking-glass poetry, "Jabberwocky", whose reversed printing she can read only by holding it up to the mirror. She also observes that the chess pieces have come to life, though they remain small enough for her to pick up. Upon leaving the house (where it had been a cold, snowy night), she enters a sunny spring garden where the flowers have the power of human speech; they perceive Alice as being a "flower that can move about." Elsewhere in the garden, Alice meets the Red Queen (now human-sized), who impresses Alice with her ability to run at breathtaking speeds—a reference to the chess rule that queens are able to move any number of vacant squares at once, in any direction, making them the most "agile" of the pieces. The Red Queen reveals to Alice that the entire countryside is laid out in squares like a gigantic chessboard, and offers to make Alice a queen if she can move all the way to the eighth rank/row in a chess match. Alice is placed in the second rank as one of the White Queen's pawns, and begins her journey across the chessboard by boarding a train that literally jumps over the third row and directly into the fourth rank, acting on the rule that pawns can advance two spaces on their first move. She then meets the fat twin brothers Tweedledum and Tweedledee, whom she knows from the famous nursery rhyme. After reciting the long poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter", the Tweedles draw Alice's attention to the Red King—loudly snoring away under a nearby tree—and maliciously provoke her with idle philosophical banter that she exists only as an imaginary figure in the Red King's dreams (thereby implying that she will cease to exist the instant he wakes up). Finally, the brothers begin acting out their nursery-rhyme by suiting up for battle, only to be frightened away by an enormous crow, as the nursery rhyme about them predicts. Alice next meets the White Queen, who is very absent-minded but boasts of (and demonstrates) her ability to remember future events before they have happened. Alice and the White Queen advance into the chessboard's fifth rank by crossing over a brook together, but at the very moment of the crossing, the Queen transforms into a talking Sheep in a small shop. Alice soon finds herself struggling to handle the oars of a small rowboat, where the Sheep annoys her with (seemingly) nonsensical shouting about "crabs" and "feathers". (Unknown to Alice, these are standard terms in the jargon of rowing—and thus the Queen/Sheep, for a change, is speaking in a perfectly logical and meaningful way!) After crossing yet another brook into the sixth rank, Alice immediately encounters Humpty Dumpty, who, besides celebrating his unbirthday, provides his own translation of the strange terms in "Jabberwocky" (in the process, introducing Alice and the reader to the concept of portmanteau words) before his inevitable fall. "All the king's horses and all the king's men" come to Humpty Dumpty's assistance, naturally, and are accompanied by the White King along with the Lion and the Unicorn, who again proceed to act out a nursery rhyme by fighting each other. In this chapter, the March Hare and Hatter of the first book make a brief re-appearance in the guise of "Anglo-Saxon messengers" called "Haigha" and "Hatta" (i.e. "Hare" and "Hatter"—these names are the only hint given as to their identities other than John Tenniel's illustrations). Upon leaving the Lion and Unicorn to their fight, Alice reaches the seventh rank by crossing another brook into the forested territory of the Red Knight, who is intent on capturing the "white pawn" Alice until the White Knight comes to her rescue. Escorting her through the forest towards the final brook-crossing, the Knight recites a long poem of his own composition, and repeatedly falls off his horse—his clumsiness is a reference to the "eccentric" L-shaped movements of chess knights, and may also be interpreted as a self-deprecating joke about Lewis Carroll's own physical awkwardness and stammering in real life. Bidding farewell to the White Knight, Alice steps across the last brook and is automatically crowned a queen (the crown materialising abruptly on her head). She soon finds herself in the company of both the White and Red Queens who relentlessly confound Alice by using word play to thwart her attempts at logical discussion. They then invite one another to a party that will be hosted by the newly crowned Alice (of which Alice herself had no prior knowledge). Alice arrives and seats herself at her own party which quickly turns to a chaotic uproar (much like the ending of the first book) in which Alice finally grabs the Red Queen, believing her to be responsible for all the day's nonsense, and begins shaking her violently with all her might. (By thus "capturing" the Red Queen, Alice unknowingly puts the Red King—who has remained stationary throughout the book—into checkmate, and is allowed to wake up.) Alice suddenly awakes in her armchair to find herself holding the black kitten, whom she deduces to have been the Red Queen all along, with the white kitten having been the White Queen. The story ends with Alice recalling the speculation of the Tweedle brothers, that everything may have, in fact, been a dream of the Red King and that Alice might herself be no more than a figment of his imagination. One final poem is inserted by the author as a sort of epilogue which suggests that life itself is but a dream.
33651	/m/084fc	Waiting for Godot	Samuel Beckett	1952	{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/05qp9": "Play"}	 Waiting for Godot follows a pair of men who divert themselves while waiting expectantly, vainly for someone named Godot to arrive. They claim he's an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting that they would not recognize him when they do see him. To occupy the time they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide – anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay". The play opens with Estragon struggling to remove a boot. Estragon eventually gives up, muttering, "Nothing to be done." His friend Vladimir takes up the thought and muses on it, the implication being that nothing is a thing that has to be done and this pair is going to have to spend the rest of the play doing it. When Estragon finally succeeds in removing his boot, he looks and feels inside but finds nothing. Just prior to this, Vladimir peers into his hat. The motif recurs throughout the play. The pair discuss repentance, particularly in relation to the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus, and that only one of the Four Evangelists mentions that one of them was saved. This is the first of numerous Biblical references in the play, which may be linked to its putative central theme of the search for and reconciliation with God, as well as salvation: "We're saved!" they cry on more than one occasion when they feel that Godot may be near. Presently, Vladimir expresses his frustration with Estragon's limited conversational skills: "Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can't you, once in a while?" Estragon struggles with this throughout the play, and Vladimir generally takes the lead in dialogue and encounters with others. Vladimir is at times hostile towards his companion, but in general they are close, frequently embracing and supporting one another. Estragon peers out into the audience and comments on the bleakness of his surroundings. He wants to depart but is told that they cannot because they must wait for Godot. The pair cannot agree, however, on whether or not they are in the right place or that this is the arranged day for their meeting with Godot; they are not even sure what day it is. Throughout the play, experienced time is attenuated, fractured or eerily non-existent. The only thing that they are fairly sure about is that they are to meet at a tree: there is one nearby. Estragon dozes off, but, after rousing him, Vladimir is not interested in hearing about his dream. Estragon wants to hear an old joke about a brothel, which Vladimir starts but cannot finish, as he is suddenly compelled to rush off and urinate. He does not finish the story when he returns, asking Estragon instead what else they might do to pass the time. Estragon suggests that they hang themselves, but they abandon the idea when it seems that they might not both die: leaving one of them alone, an intolerable notion. They decide to do nothing: "It's safer," explains Estragon, before asking what Godot is going to do for them when he arrives. For once it is Vladimir who struggles to remember: "Oh ... nothing very definite," is the best that he can manage. When Estragon declares that he is hungry, Vladimir provides a carrot, most of which, and without much relish, the former eats. The diversion ends as Estragon announces that they still have nothing to do. Their waiting is interrupted by the passing through of Pozzo and his heavily-laden slave Lucky. "A terrible cry" from the wings heralds the initial entrance of Lucky, who has a rope tied around his neck. His master appears holding the other end. Pozzo barks orders at his slave and frequently calls him a "pig", but is civil towards the other two. They mistake him at first for Godot and clearly do not recognise him for the self-proclaimed personage he is. This irks him, but, while maintaining that the land that they are on is his, he acknowledges that "the road is free to all". Deciding to rest for a while, Pozzo enjoys chicken and wine. Finished, he casts the bones aside, and Estragon jumps at the chance to ask for them, much to Vladimir's embarrassment, but is told that they belong to the carrier. He must first, therefore, ask Lucky if he wants them. Estragon tries, but Lucky only hangs his head, refusing to answer. Taking this as a "no", Estragon claims the bones. Vladimir takes Pozzo to task regarding his mistreatment of his slave, but his protestations are ignored. When the original pairing tries to find out why Lucky does not put down his load (at least not unless his master is prevailing on him to do something else), Pozzo explains that Lucky is attempting to mollify him to prevent him from selling him. At this, Lucky begins to cry. Pozzo provides a handkerchief, but, when Estragon tries to wipe his tears away, Lucky kicks him. Before he leaves, Pozzo asks if he can do anything for the pair in exchange for the company they have provided during his rest. Estragon tries to ask for some money, but Vladimir cuts him short, explaining that they are not beggars. They nevertheless accept an offer to have Lucky dance and to think. The dance is clumsy and shuffling. Lucky's "think", induced by Vladimir's putting his hat on his head, is a lengthy and disjointed verbal stream of consciousness. The soliloquy begins relatively coherently but quickly dissolves into logorrhoea and only ends when Vladimir rips off Lucky's hat. Once Lucky has been revived, Pozzo has him pack up his things and they leave. At the end of the act (and its successor), a boy arrives, purporting to be a messenger sent from Godot, to advise the pair that he will not be coming that "evening but surely tomorrow." During Vladimir's interrogation of the boy, he asks if he came the day before, making it apparent that the two men have been waiting for an indefinite period and will likely continue to wait ad infinitum. After the boy departs, they decide to leave but make no attempt to do so, an action repeated in Act II, as the curtain is drawn. Act II opens with Vladimir singing a recursive round about a dog, which could illustrate the cyclical nature of the play's universe, and also point toward the play's debt to the carnivalesque, music hall traditions, and vaudeville comedy (this is only one of a number of canine references and allusions in the play). There is a bit of realisation by Vladimir that the world they are trapped in evinces convoluted progression (or lack thereof) of time. He begins to see that although there is notional evidence of linear progression, basically he is living the same day over and over. Eugene Webb has written of Vladimir's song that "Time in the song is not a linear sequence, but an endlessly reiterated moment, the content of which is only one eternal event: death." Once again Estragon maintains he spent the night in a ditch and was beaten – by "ten of them" this time – though he shows no sign of injury. Vladimir tries to talk to him about what appears to be a seasonal change in the tree and the proceedings of the day before, but he has only a vague recollection. Vladimir tries to get Estragon to remember Pozzo and Lucky, but all he can call to mind are the bones and getting kicked. Vladimir realises an opportunity to produce tangible evidence of the previous day's events. With some difficulty he gets Estragon to show him his leg. There is a wound which is beginning to fester. Only then Vladimir notices that Estragon is not wearing any boots. He discovers the pair of boots, which Estragon insists are not his but nevertheless fit when he tries them on. With no carrots left, Vladimir offers Estragon the choice between a turnip and a radish. He opts for the radish but it is black and he hands it back. He decides to try to sleep again and adopts the same fetal position as the previous day. Vladimir sings him a lullaby. Vladimir notices Lucky's hat, and tries it on. This leads to a frenetic hat-swapping scene. They play at imitating Pozzo and Lucky, but Estragon can barely remember having met them and simply does what Vladimir asks. They fire insults at each other and then make up. After that, they attempt some physical routines which do not work out well, and even attempt a single yoga position, which fails miserably. Pozzo and Lucky arrive, with Pozzo now blind and insisting that Lucky is dumb. The rope is much shorter, and Lucky – who has acquired a new hat – leads Pozzo, rather than being driven by him. Pozzo has lost all notion of time, and assures them he cannot remember meeting them the day before, and does not expect to remember the current day's events when they are over. They fall in a heap. Estragon sees an opportunity to extort more food or to exact revenge on Lucky for kicking him. The issue is debated. Pozzo offers them money but Vladimir sees more worth in their entertainment since they are compelled to wait to see if Godot arrives. Eventually though, they all find their way onto their feet. Whereas Pozzo in Act I is a windbag, he now (as a blind man) appears to have gained some insight. His parting words – which Vladimir expands upon later – eloquently encapsulate the brevity of human existence: "They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more." Lucky and Pozzo depart. The same boy returns to inform them not to expect Godot today, but promises he will arrive the next day. The two again consider suicide but their rope, Estragon's belt, breaks in two when they tug on it. Estragon's trousers fall down, but he does not notice until Vladimir tells him to pull them up. They resolve to bring a more suitable piece and hang themselves the next day, if Godot fails to arrive. Again, they agree to leave but neither of them makes any move to go.
33790	/m/08524	The Wanderer	Fritz Leiber	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in a future a few decades ahead of the 1960s, when it was written. The USA is still competing with the Soviet Union. Both have functioning bases on the Moon, and the Soviets have gained the lead in sending an expedition to Mars. From the point of view of most of the population of the Earth, a new planet appears out of nothing close to the Moon, shortly after a total lunar eclipse. Over a period of few days the planet appears to consume the Moon. On Earth, the new planet's gravity causes death and destruction as it raises huge ocean tides and causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Flying saucers appear in the skies, apparently trying to mitigate some of the disastrous effects. Then after a spectacular battle in space between the new planet and another, the skies are empty again. Earth is left without a Moon. The novel follows the lives of people around the globe. There is a man attempting a solo crossing of the Atlantic ocean, a smuggler operating off the coast of Vietnam, two friends in England, a trio of drug addicts in New York City, and the military controllers of the USA Moon mission, deep in a bunker somewhere near Washington DC. The new planet is referred to by everybody as simply "the Wanderer". The main protagonists are three longtime friends. Paul Hagbolt is escorting Margo Gelhorn (and her cat, Miaow) to observe the lunar eclipse at an observatory in California. Their friend, and Margo's fiance, is Don Merriam, one of the American astronauts at the Moon base. Following on a whim a sign advertising a "flying saucer symposium", Paul and Margo fall in with a group of intellectuals, dreamers, charlatans and misfits. At that point events overtake them. The new planet appears and triggers an earthquake that buries their cars in a landslide. They must avoid tsunamis, more earthquakes, roving mobs and flying saucers to survive. On the Moon Don Merriam is the only one to escape the destruction of the moonbase. He tries to take off in one of the base's spaceships, only to fall through the Moon itself as it splits into two under the influence of the new planet. His ship is eventually captured by the inhabitants of the new planet. Events take a bizarre turn when the group of saucer enthusiasts is faced with a tsunami. A flying saucer appears, and a cat-like being uses some kind of gun to repel the waves. Then the being uses the same device to pull Paul, who is holding Miaow, into the saucer. At the same time the gun falls into the hands of the people on the ground. In the saucer Paul meets a being calling itself Tigerishka. A large, female telepathic feline creature, she initially mistakes Miaow as the intelligent being whose thoughts she can hear, and Paul as a "monkey". Realizing her mistake, she regards Paul with contempt. Monkey-beings are not well regarded by her people. However she slowly warms to him, and explains why her planet has appeared to consume the moon. Like many of the human characters, her people are intellectuals, dreamers, charlatans and misfits. They belong to a culture that spans the Universe, has achieved immortality, and can construct planets and traverse hyperspace. They can create bodies for themselves that reflect the origins of their races, such as Tigerishka's cat-form. However they are fleeing their culture's police. Their culture rejects nonconformists, instead devoting itself to ensuring that intelligent life survives to the end of time. Tigerishka's people want to explore hyperspace, and tinker with space, time and the Mind. Their flight has brought them to Earth orbit simply to refuel. Huge amounts of matter must be converted to energy to power their hyperspace drive and their weapons. As alien as Tigerishka is, Paul becomes besotted with her. Tigerishka eventually yields to his advances. At the same time, Don Merriam has been rescued with his ship by the Wanderer's other spaceships. He is reunited with Paul aboard Tigerishka's ship. Now they must testify in the Wanderer's trial, for the police have arrived. A second planet, "The Stranger", colored a dull gray where the Wanderer is bright purple and yellow, appears and threatens battle. Don and Paul give their testimony as to the good treatment they have seen, along with thousands of other humans appearing by some kind of holographic projection. However the trial goes badly. Paul and Don are evacuated in Don's ship, placed into position close to Earth by Tigerishka. Tigerishka takes Miaow with her back to her planet. Then the final battle takes place, and both planets disappear. In the final scene, Margo and her companions walk to Vandenberg Spaceport as Don's ship comes in to land.
36218	/m/090m2	2010: Odyssey Two	Arthur C. Clarke	1982-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is set nine years after the failure of the Discovery One mission to Jupiter. A joint Soviet-American crew, including Heywood Floyd from 2001, on the Soviet spaceship Alexei Leonov (named after the famous cosmonaut) arrives to discover what went wrong with the earlier mission, to investigate the monolith in orbit around the planet, and to resolve the disappearance of David Bowman. They hypothesize that much of this information is locked away on the now-abandoned Discovery One. The Soviets have an advanced new "Sakharov" drive which will propel them to Jupiter ahead of the American Discovery Two, so Floyd is assigned to the Leonov crew. However, a Chinese space station rockets out of Earth orbit, revealing itself to be the interplanetary spacecraft Tsien, also aimed at Jupiter. The Leonov crewmembers think the Chinese are on a one-way trip due to its speed, but Floyd surmises that due to the large water content of Europa they intend to land there and use the water content to refuel. The Tsien's daring mission ends in failure, when it is destroyed by an indigenous life-form on Europa. The only survivor radios the story to the Leonov; it is presumed that he dies when his spacesuit air supply runs out. The Leonov survives a dangerous aerobraking around Jupiter and arrives at Discovery. Mission crewmember and HAL 9000's creator, Dr. Chandra, reactivates the computer to ascertain the cause of his earlier aberrant behavior. After some time, Floyd is speaking to a Russian on board, who, for an instant, sees the Monolith open again, into a Stargate, as David Bowman escapes from the Monolith's universe back into ours. A sequence of scenes follows the explorations of David Bowman, who has been transformed into a non-corporeal, energy-based life-form, much like the aliens controlling the monoliths. During his journey, the Avatar of Bowman travels to Earth, making contact with significant individuals from his human past: He visits his mother and brushes her hair (shortly before she dies), and he appears to his ex-girlfriend on her television screen. In the novel, the aliens are using Bowman as a probe to learn about humankind. He then returns to the Jupiter system to explore beneath the ice of Europa, where he finds aquatic life-forms, and under the clouds of Jupiter, where he discovers gaseous life-forms. Both are primitive, but the aliens deem the Europan creatures to have evolutionary potential. An apparition of Bowman appears before Floyd, warning him that they must leave Jupiter within 15 days. Floyd has difficulty convincing the rest of the crew at first, but then the monolith vanishes from orbit and a mysterious dark spot appears on Jupiter and begins to grow. HAL's telescope observations reveal that the "Great Black Spot" is, in fact, a vast population of monoliths, increasing at an exponential rate, which appear to be eating the planet. The Leonov crew devises a plan to use the Discovery as a "booster rocket", enabling them to return to Earth ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, HAL and the Discovery will be trapped in Jupiter's orbit, with insufficient fuel to escape. The crew are worried that HAL will have the same neuroses on discovering that he will be abandoned yet again, so Chandra must convince HAL that the human crew is in danger. The Leonov crew flees Jupiter as the swarm of monoliths spread to engulf the planet. By acting as self-replicating 'von Neumann' machines, these monoliths increase Jupiter's density until the planet achieves nuclear fusion, becoming a small star. In the novel, this obliterates the primitive life forms inhabiting the Jovian atmosphere, which the Monoliths' controllers had deemed less worthy than the aquatic life of Europa. As Jupiter is about to transform, Bowman returns to Discovery to give HAL a last order to carry out. HAL begins repeatedly broadcasting the message The creation of the new star, which Earth eventually names Lucifer, destroys Discovery. However, in appreciation for HAL's help, Bowman has the aliens which control the monoliths remove HAL's artificial intelligence from Discoverys computer core and transform him into the same kind of life form as David Bowman, and becomes his companion. The book ends with a brief epilogue, which takes place in AD 20,001. By this time, the Europans have evolved into a species that has developed a primitive civilization, most likely with assistance from a monolith. They are not described in detail, though they are said to have "tendril"-like limbs. They regard the star Lucifer (formerly the planet Jupiter) as their primary Sun, referring to ours as "The Cold Sun". Though their settlements are concentrated primarily in the hemisphere of Europa which is constantly bathed in Lucifer's rays, some Europans have begun in recent generations to explore the Farside, the hemisphere facing away from Lucifer, which is still covered in ice. There they may witness the spectacle of night, unknown on the other side of Europa, when the Cold Sun sets. The Europans who explore the Farside have been carefully observing the night sky and have begun to develop a mythology based on their observations. They correctly believe that Lucifer was not always there. They believe that the Cold Sun was its brother and was condemned to march around the sky for a crime. The Europans also see three other major bodies in the sky. One seems to be constantly engulfed in fire, and the other two have lights on them which are gradually spreading. These three bodies are the moons Io, Callisto, and Ganymede, the latter two of which are presently being colonized by humans. Humans have been attempting to explore Europa ever since Lucifer was created in 2010. However, none of these attempts has been successful. Every probe that has attempted to land on Europa has been destroyed in the atmosphere; as it is later shown in 2061 and 3001 manned spacecraft that attempt to land have been instead diverted by an external force. The debris from every probe falls to the surface of the planet, and the debris from some of the first ships to be destroyed is venerated by the Europans. Finally, there is a Monolith on the planet, which is worshipped by the Europans more than anything else. The Europans assume, correctly, that the Monolith is what keeps humans at bay. Dave Bowman and HAL lie dormant in this Monolith. The Monolith is the guardian of Europa, and will continue to prevent contact between humans and Europans for as long as it sees fit.
36681	/m/0952p	Brave New World	Aldous Huxley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The novel opens in London in 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The vast majority of the population is unified under the World State, an eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources are plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two billion people) and everyone is happy. Natural reproduction has been done away with and children are created, 'decanted' and raised in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, where they are divided into five castes (which are further split into 'Plus' and 'Minus' members) and designed to fulfill predetermined positions within the social and economic strata of the World State. Fetuses chosen to become members of the highest caste, 'Alpha', are allowed to develop naturally while maturing to term in "decanting bottles", while fetuses chosen to become members of the lower castes ('Beta', 'Gamma', 'Delta', 'Epsilon') are subjected to in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or physical growth. Each 'Alpha' or 'Beta' is the product of one unique fertilized egg developing into one unique fetus. Members of lower castes are not unique but are instead created using the Bokanovsky process which enables a single egg to spawn (at the point of the story being told) up to 96 children and one ovary to produce thousands of children. To further increase the birthrate of Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, Podsnap's Technique causes all the eggs in the ovary to mature simultaneously, allowing the hatchery to get full use of the ovary in two years' time. People of these castes make up the majority of human society, and the production of such specialized children bolsters the efficiency and harmony of society, since these people are deliberately limited in their cognitive and physical abilities, as well as the scope of their ambitions and the complexity of their desires, thus rendering them easier to control. All children are educated via the hypnopaedic process, which provides each child with caste-appropriate subconscious messages to mold the child's lifelong self-image and social outlook to that chosen by the leaders and their predetermined plans for producing future adult generations. To maintain the World State's Command Economy for the indefinite future, all citizens are conditioned from birth to value consumption with such platitudes as "ending is better than mending," "more stiches less riches" i.e., buy a new item instead of fixing the old one, because constant consumption, and near-universal employment to meet society's material demands, is the bedrock of economic and social stability for the World State. Beyond providing social engagement and distraction in the material realm of work or play, the need for transcendence, solitude and spiritual communion is addressed with the ubiquitous availability and universally endorsed consumption of the drug soma. Soma is an allusion to a mythical drink of the same name consumed by ancient Indo-Aryans. In the book, soma is a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable, hangover-free "holidays". It was developed by the World State to provide these inner-directed personal experiences within a socially managed context of State-run 'religious' organizations; social clubs. The hypnopaedically inculcated affinity for the State-produced drug, as a self-medicating comfort mechanism in the face of stress or discomfort, thereby eliminates the need for religion or other personal allegiances outside or beyond the World State. Recreational sex is an integral part of society. According to the World State, sex is a social activity, rather than a means of reproduction (sex is encouraged from early childhood). The few women who can reproduce are conditioned to use birth control, even wearing a "Malthusian belt" (which resembles a cartridge belt and holds "the regulation supply of contraceptives") as a popular fashion accessory. The maxim "everyone belongs to everyone else" is repeated often, and the idea of a "family" is considered pornographic; sexual competition and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete because they are no longer needed. Marriage, natural birth, parenthood, and pregnancy are considered too obscene to be mentioned in casual conversation. Thus, society has developed a new idea of reproductive comprehension. Spending time alone is considered an outrageous waste of time and money, and wanting to be an individual is horrifying. Conditioning trains people to consume and never to enjoy being alone, so by spending an afternoon not playing "Obstacle Golf," or not in bed with a friend, one is forfeiting acceptance. In the World State, people typically die at age 60 having maintained good health and youthfulness their whole life. Death isn't feared; anyone reflecting upon it is reassured by the knowledge that everyone is happy, and that society goes on. Since no one has family, they have no ties to mourn. The conditioning system eliminates the need for professional competitiveness; people are literally bred to do their jobs and cannot desire another. There is no competition within castes; each caste member receives the same food, housing, and soma rationing as every other member of that caste. There is no desire to change one's caste, largely because a person's sleep-conditioning reinforces each individual's place in the caste system. To grow closer with members of the same class, citizens participate in mock religious services called Solidarity Services, in which twelve people consume large quantities of soma and sing hymns. The ritual progresses through group hypnosis and climaxes in an orgy. In geographic areas nonconducive to easy living and consumption, securely contained groups of "savages" are left to their own devices. These appear to be similar to the reservations of land established for the Native American population during the colonisation of North America. These 'savages' are beholden of strange customs, including self-mutilation and religion, a mere curio in the outside world. In its first chapters, the novel describes life in the World State as wonderful and introduces Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx. Lenina, a hatchery worker, is socially accepted and comfortable with her place in society, while Bernard, a psychologist, is an outcast. Although an Alpha Plus, Bernard is shorter in stature than the average of his caste—a quality shared by the lower castes, which gives him an inferiority complex. His work with sleep-teaching has led him to realize that what others believe to be their own deeply held beliefs are merely phrases repeated to children while they are asleep. Still, he recognizes the necessity of such programming as the reason why his society meets the emotional needs of its citizens. Courting disaster, he is vocal about being different, once stating he dislikes soma because he'd "rather be himself." Bernard's differences fuel rumors that he was accidentally administered alcohol while incubated, a method used to keep Epsilons short. Bernard's only friend is Helmholtz Watson, an Alpha Plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing). The friendship is based on their similar experiences as misfits, but unlike Bernard, Watson's sense of loneliness stems from being too gifted, too intelligent, too handsome, and too physically strong. Helmholtz is drawn to Bernard as a confidant: he can talk to Bernard about his desire to write poetry. Bernard is on holiday at a Savage Reservation. The reservation, located in New Mexico, consists of a community named Malpais. From afar, Lenina thinks it will be exciting. In person, she finds the aged, toothless natives who mend their clothes rather than throw them away repugnant, and the situation is made worse when she discovers that she has left her soma tablets at the resort hotel. In typical tourist fashion, Bernard and Lenina watch what at first appears to be a quaint native ceremony. The village folk, whose culture resembles the contemporary Indian groups of the region, descendants of the Anasazi, including the Puebloan peoples of Acoma, Laguna, and Zuni, and the Ramah Navajo, begin by singing, but the ritual quickly becomes a passion play where a village boy is whipped to unconsciousness. Soon after, the couple encounters Linda, a woman who has been living in Malpais since she came on a trip and became separated from her group, among whom was a man to whom she refers as "Tomakin" but who is revealed to be Bernard's boss, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Thomas. She became pregnant despite adhering to her "Malthusian Drill" and there were no facilities for an abortion. Her shame at pregnancy was so great that she decided not to return to her old life, but to stay with the "savages". Linda gave birth to a son, John (later referred to as John the Savage) who is now 18. Conversations with Linda and John reveal that their life has been hard. For 18 years, they have been treated as outsiders: the native men treated Linda like a sex object while the native women regularly beat and ostracized her because of her promiscuity, and John was mistreated and excluded for his mother's actions and the color of his skin. John was angered by Linda's lovers, and even attacked one in a jealous rage while a child. John's one joy was that his mother had taught him to read, although he only had two books: a scientific manual from his mother's job, which he called a "beastly, beastly book," and a collection of Shakespeare's works (which have been banned in the World State for being subversive). Shakespeare gives John articulation to his feelings, though, and he especially is interested in Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. At the same time, John has been denied the religious rituals of the village, although he has watched them and even has had some religious experiences on his own in the desert. Old, weathered and tired, Linda wants to return to her familiar world in London, as she misses living in the city and taking soma. John wants to see the "brave new world" his mother has told him so much about. Bernard wants to take them back to block Thomas from his plan to reassign Bernard to Iceland as punishment for his asocial beliefs. Bernard arranges permission for Linda and John to leave the reservation. John also seems to have an attraction to Lenina, as while Bernard is away, getting the permission to move the savages, he finds her suitcase and ruffles through all of her clothes, taking in the smells. He then sees her "sleeping" and stares at her, thinking all he has to do to see her properly is undo one zip. He later tells himself off for being like this towards Lenina, and seems to be extremely shy around her. Upon his return to London, Bernard is confronted by Thomas, the Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre who, in front of an audience of higher-caste Centre workers, denounces Bernard for his asocial behavior. Bernard, thinking that for the first time in his life he has the upper hand, defends himself by presenting the Director with his long-lost lover and unknown son, Linda and John. John falls to his knees and calls Thomas his father, which causes an uproar of laughter. The humiliated Director resigns in shame. Spared from reassignment, Bernard makes John the toast of London. Pursued by the highest members of society, able to bed any woman he fancies, Bernard revels in attention he once scorned. The victory, however, is short-lived. Linda, decrepit, toothless, and friendless, goes on a permanent soma holiday while John, appalled by what he perceives to be an empty society, refuses to attend Bernard's parties. Society drops Bernard as swiftly as it had taken him. Bernard turns to the person he'd believed to be his one true friend, only to see Helmholtz fall into a quick, easy camaraderie with John. Bernard is left an outcast yet again as he watches the only two men with whom he ever connected find more of interest in each other than they ever did in him. John and Helmholtz's island of peace is brief. Lenina tries to seduce John, but John pushes her away, calling her out on her sexually wanton ways. Whilst Lenina is in the bathroom, humiliated and putting her clothes on, John receives a telephone call from the hospital telling him that his mother is extremely unwell. He rushes over to see her and sits at her bedside, trying to get her out of her soma holiday so that he can talk to her. He is heartbroken when his mother succumbs to soma and dies. He is extremely annoyed by the young boys that enter the ward to be conditioned about death and annoy John to the point where he starts to use violence to send them away. John's grief bewilders and revolts the hospital workers, and their lack of reaction to Linda's death prompts John to try to force humanity from the workers by throwing their soma rations out a window. The ensuing riot brings the police, who quell the riot by filling the room with soma. Bernard and Helmholtz arrive to help John, but only Helmholtz helps him, while Bernard stands to the side, torn between risking involvement by helping or escaping the scene. Following the riot, Bernard, Helmholtz and John are brought before Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller for Western Europe. Bernard (who breaks down during the middle of the conversation) and Helmholtz are told they will be exiled to islands of their choice. Mond explains that this exile is not so much a threat to force freethinkers to reform and rejoin society as it is a chance for them to act as they please because they will not be able to influence the population. He also divulges that he too once risked banishment to an island because of some scientific experiments that were deemed controversial by the state, giving insight into his sympathetic tone. Helmholtz chooses the Falkland Islands, believing that their terrible weather will inspire his writing, but Bernard simply does not want to leave London; he struggles with Mond and is thrown out of the office. After Bernard and Helmholtz have left, Mustapha and John engage in a philosophical argument on the morals behind the existing society and then John is told the "experiment" will continue and he will not be sent to an island. John meets with Bernard and Helmholtz once again before their departures from London and Bernard apologizes to John for his opportunistic behavior, having come to terms with his imminent exile and having restored his friendship with Helmholtz. In the final chapter, John isolates himself from society in a lighthouse outside London where he finds his hermit life interrupted from mourning his mother by the more bitter memories of civilization. To atone, John brutally whips himself in the open, a ritual the Indians in his own village had denied him. His self-flagellation, caught on film and shown publicly, destroys his hermit life. Hundreds of gawking sightseers, intrigued by John's violent behavior, fly out to watch the savage in person. Even Lenina comes to watch, crying a tear John does not see. The sight of the woman whom he both adores and blames is too much for him; John attacks and whips her. This sight of genuine, unbridled emotion drives the crowd wild with excitement, and — handling it as they are conditioned to — they turn on each other, in a frenzy of beating and chanting that devolves into a mass orgy of soma and sex. In the morning, John, hopeless, alone, horrified by his drug use and the orgy in which he participated that countered his beliefs, makes one last attempt to escape civilization and atone. When thousands of gawking sightseers arrive that morning, frenzied at the prospect of seeing the savage perform again, they find John dead from a suicidal hanging.
37322	/m/099gy	Aeneid	Virgil	1943	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 The Aeneid can be divided into two halves based on the disparate subject matter of Books 1–6 (Aeneas' journey to Latium in Italy) and Books 7–12 (the war in Latium). These two halves are commonly regarded as reflecting Virgil's ambition to rival Homer by treating both the Odyssey's wandering theme and the Iliads warfare themes. This is, however, a rough correspondence, the limitations of which should be borne in mind. Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme (Arma virumque cano ..., "I sing of arms and of a man ...") and an invocation to the Muse, falling some seven lines after the poem's inception: (Musa, mihi causas memora ..., "O Muse, recount to me the causes ..."). He then explains the reason for the principal conflict in the story: the resentment held by the goddess Juno against the Trojan people. This is consistent with her role throughout the Homeric epics. Also in the manner of Homer, the story proper begins in medias res, with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, heading in the direction of Italy. The fleet, led by Aeneas, is on a voyage to find a second home. It has been foretold that in Italy, he will give rise to a race both noble and courageous, a race which will become known to all nations. Juno is wrathful, because she had not been chosen in the judgment of Paris, and because her favorite city, Carthage, will be destroyed by Aeneas' descendants. Also, Ganymede, a Trojan prince, was chosen to be her husband Jupiter's cup bearer—replacing Juno's daughter Hebe. Juno proceeds to Aeolus, King of the Winds, and asks that he release the winds to stir up a storm in exchange for a bribe (Deiopea, the loveliest of all her sea nymphs, as a wife). Despite refusing her bribe, he agrees, and the storm devastates the fleet. Neptune takes notice: although he himself is no friend of the Trojans, he is infuriated by Juno's intrusion into his domain, and stills the winds and calms the waters, after making sure that Aeolus would not try again. The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa. There, Aeneas's mother, Venus, in the form of a hunting woman very similar to the goddess Diana, encourages him and tells him the history of the city. Eventually, Aeneas ventures in, and in the temple of Juno, seeks and gains the favor of Dido, Queen of Carthage, the city which has only recently been founded by refugees from Tyre and which will later become one of Rome's greatest imperial rivals and enemies. At a banquet given in the honour of the Trojans, Aeneas recounts sadly the events which occasioned the Trojans' fortuitous arrival. He begins the tale shortly after the events described in the Iliad. Crafty Ulysses devised a way for Greek warriors to gain entry into Troy by hiding in a large wooden horse. The Greeks pretended to sail away, leaving a man, Sinon, to tell the Trojans that the horse was an offering and that if it were taken into the city, the Trojans would be able to conquer Greece. The Trojan priest Laocoön, who had seen through the Greek plot and urged the horse's destruction, hurled his spear at the wooden horse. Just after, in what would be seen by the Trojans as punishment from the gods, Laocoön was suddenly grabbed and eaten, along with his two sons, by two giant sea snakes. So the Trojans brought the horse inside the fortified walls, and after nightfall the armed Greeks emerged and began to slaughter the city's inhabitants. Aeneas woke up and saw with horror what was happening to his beloved city. At first he tried to fight against the enemy, but soon he lost his comrades and was left alone to fend off tens of Greeks. Hector, the fallen Trojan prince, had told him in a dream to flee with his family. Aeneas tells of his escape with his son Ascanius and father Anchises after various omens (his son Ascanius' head catches fire without his being harmed, and then a shooting star), his wife Creusa having been separated from the others and subsequently killed in the general catastrophe. After getting outside Troy, he goes back for his wife. Her ghost appears before him and tells him that his destiny is to found Rome. He tells of how, rallying the other survivors, he built a fleet of ships and made landfall at various locations in the Mediterranean: Thrace, where they find the last remains of a fellow Trojan, Polydorus; The Strophades, where they encounter the Harpy Celaeno; Crete, which they believe to be the land where they are to build their city (but they are set straight by Apollo); and Buthrotum. This last city had been built in an attempt to replicate Troy. In Buthrotum, Aeneas met Andromache, the widow of Hector. She still laments for the loss of her valiant husband and beloved child. There, too, Aeneas saw and met Helenus, one of Priam's sons, who had the gift of prophecy. Through him, Aeneas learned the destiny laid out for him: he was divinely advised to seek out the land of Italy (also known as Ausonia or Hesperia), where his descendants would not only prosper, but in time rule the entire known world. In addition, Helenus also bade him go to the Sibyl in Cumae. Heading out into the open sea, Aeneas left Buthrotum, rounding Italy's cape and making his way towards Sicily (Trinacria). There, they are caught in the whirlpool of Charybdis and driven out to sea. Soon they come ashore at the land of the Cyclops. There they meet a Greek, Achaemenides, one of Ulysses' men, who had been left behind when his comrades escaped the cave of Polyphemus. They take Achaemenides onboard and narrowly escape Polyphemus. Shortly after these events, Anchises dies peacefully of old age. Meanwhile, Venus has her own plans. She goes to her son, Aeneas' half-brother Cupid, and tells him to imitate Ascanius. Disguised as such, he goes to Dido, and offers the gifts expected from a guest. With her motherly love revived in the presence of the boy, her heart is pierced and she falls in love with the boy and his father. During the banquet, Dido realizes that she has fallen madly in love with Aeneas, although she had previously sworn fidelity to the soul of her late husband, Sychaeus, who had been murdered by her brother Pygmalion. Juno seizes upon this opportunity to make a deal with Venus, Aeneas' mother, with the intention of distracting him from his destiny of founding a city in Italy. Aeneas is inclined to return Dido's love, and during a hunting expedition, a storm drives them into a cave in which Aeneas and Dido presumably have sex, an event that Dido takes to indicate a marriage between them. But when Jupiter sends Mercury to remind Aeneas of his duty, he has no choice but to part. Her heart broken, Dido commits suicide by stabbing herself upon a pyre with Aeneas' sword. Before dying, she predicts eternal strife between Aeneas's people and hers; "rise up from my bones, avenging spirit" (4.625, trans. Fitzgerald) is an obvious invocation to Hannibal. Looking back from the deck of his ship, Aeneas sees Dido's funeral pyre's smoke and knows its meaning only too clearly. However, destiny calls and the Trojan fleet sails on to Italy. Book 5 takes place on Sicily and centers on the funeral games that Aeneas organizes for the anniversary of his father's death. Aeneas and his men have left Carthage for Sicily where, one year after the death of his father, Aeneas organizes a nine-day anniversary which includes celebratory games–a boat race, a foot race, a boxing match, and a shooting contest. In all those contests, Aeneas is careful to reward winners and losers, showing his leadership qualities by not allowing for antagonism even after foul play. Afterward, Ascanius leads a military parade and demonstration, prefiguring Rome's future predilection for war. During those events (in which only men participate), Juno incites the womenfolk to burn the fleet and prevent them from ever reaching Italy, but her plan is thwarted when Ascanius and then Aeneas intervene. Aeneas prays to Jupiter to quench the fires, which the god does with a torrential rainstorm. An anxious Aeneas is comforted by a vision of his father, who tells him to go down to the underworld to receive a vision of his and Rome's future, which he will do in Book 6. In return for safe passage to Italy, the gods, by order of Jupiter, will receive one of Aeneas's men as sacrifice: Palinurus, who steers Aeneas's ship by night, falls overboard and is drowned. In Book 6, Aeneas, with the guidance of the Cumaean Sibyl, descends into the underworld through an opening at Cumae; there he speaks with the spirit of his father and is offered a prophetic vision of the destiny of Rome. Upon returning to the land of the living, Aeneas leads the Trojans to settle in the land of Latium, where he courts Lavinia, the daughter of king Latinus. Although Aeneas would have wished to avoid it, war eventually breaks out. Juno is heavily involved in causing this war—she convinces the Queen of Latium to demand that Lavinia be married to Turnus, the king of a local people, the Rutuli. Juno continues to stir up trouble, even summoning the Fury Alecto to ensure that a war takes place. Seeing the masses of Italians that Turnus has brought against him, Aeneas seeks help from the Tuscans, enemies of Turnus. He meets King Evander from Arcadia, whose son Pallas agrees to lead troops against the other Italians. Meanwhile, the Trojan camp is being attacked, and a midnight raid leads to the deaths of Nisus and his companion Euryalus, in one of the most emotional passages in the book. The gates, however, are defended until Aeneas returns with his Tuscan and Arcadian reinforcements. In the battling that follows, many heroes are killed—notably Pallas, who is killed by Turnus, and Mezentius, Turnus' close associate. The latter, who has inadvertently allowed his son to be killed while he himself fled, reproaches himself and faces Aeneas in single combat—an honourable but essentially futile pursuit. Another notable hero, Camilla, a sort of Amazon character, fights bravely but is eventually killed. She has been a virgin devoted to Diana and to her nation; the man who kills her is struck dead by Diana's sentinel Opis after doing so, even though he tries to escape. After this, single combat is proposed between Aeneas and Turnus, but Aeneas is so obviously superior that the Italians, urged on by Turnus's divine sister, Juturna, break the truce. Aeneas is injured, but returns to the battle shortly afterwards. Turnus and Aeneas dominate the battle on opposite wings, but when Aeneas makes a daring attack at the city of Latium (causing the queen of Latium to hang herself in despair), he forces Turnus into single combat once more. In a dramatic scene, Turnus's strength deserts him as he tries to hurl a rock, and he is struck by Aeneas's spear in the leg. As Turnus is begging on his knees for his life, the poem ends with Aeneas killing him in rage when he sees that Turnus is wearing the belt of his friend Pallas as a trophy.
37373	/m/099yl	Paradise Lost	John Milton	1667	{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 The poem is separated into twelve "books" or sections, and the lengths of each book varies greatly (the longest being Book IX, with 1,189 lines, and the shortest Book VII, having 640). The Arguments at the head of each book were added in subsequent imprints of the first edition. Originally published in ten books, in 1674 a fully "Revised and Augmented" edition with a new division into twelve books was issued. This is the edition that is generally used today. The poem follows the epic tradition of starting in medias res (Latin for in the midst of things), the background story being recounted later. Milton's story has two narrative arcs: one being that of Satan (Lucifer) and the other being that of Adam and Eve. It begins after Satan and the other rebel angels have been defeated and banished to Hell, or (as it is also called in the poem), Tartarus. In Pandæmonium, Satan employs his rhetorical skill to organise his followers; he is aided by Mammon and Beelzebub. Belial and Moloch are also present. At the end of the debate, Satan volunteers to poison the newly-created Earth and God's new and most favoured creation, Mankind. He braves the dangers of the Abyss alone in a manner reminiscent of Odysseus or Aeneas. After an arduous traverse of the Chaos outside Hell, he enters God's new material World, and later the Garden of Eden. At one point in the story, the Angelic War over Heaven is recounted. Satan's rebellion follows the epic convention of large-scale warfare. The battles between the faithful angels and Satan's forces take place over three days. The final battle involves the Son of God single-handedly defeating the entire legion of angelic rebels and banishing them from Heaven. Following the purging of Heaven, God creates the World, culminating in his creation of Adam and Eve. While God gave Adam and Eve total freedom and power to rule over all creation, He gave them one explicit command: not to eat from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil on penalty of death. The story of Adam and Eve's temptation and fall is a fundamentally different, new kind of epic: a domestic one. Adam and Eve are presented for the first time in Christian literature as having a full relationship while still being without sin. They have passions and distinct personalities. Satan, disguised in the form of a serpent, successfully tempts Eve to eat from the Tree by preying on her vanity and tricking her with rhetoric. Adam, learning that Eve has sinned, knowingly commits the same sin. He declares to Eve that since she was made from his flesh, they are bound to one another so that if she dies, he must also die. In this manner, Milton portrays Adam as a heroic figure, but also as a greater sinner than Eve, as he is aware that what he is doing is wrong. After eating the fruit, Adam and Eve have lustful sex, and at first, Adam is convinced that Eve was right in thinking that eating the fruit would be beneficial. However, they soon fall asleep and have terrible nightmares, and after they awake, they experience guilt and shame for the first time. Realizing that they have committed a terrible act against God, they engage in mutual recrimination. Eve's pleas to Adam reconcile them somewhat. Her encouragement enables Adam and Eve both to approach God, to "bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee", and to receive grace from God. Adam is shown a vision by the angel Michael, in which Adam witnesses everything that will happen to mankind until the Great Flood. Adam is very upset by this vision of humankind's future, and so Michael also tells him about humankind's potential redemption from original sin through Jesus Christ (whom Michael calls "King Messiah"). Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden, and Michael says that Adam may find "a paradise within thee, happier far". Adam and Eve also now have a more distant relationship with God, who is omnipresent but invisible (unlike the tangible Father in the Garden of Eden).
37713	/m/09dlq	The Merchant of Venice	William Shakespeare			 Bassanio, a young Venetian of noble rank, wishes to woo the beautiful and wealthy heiress Portia of Belmont. Having squandered his estate, Bassanio approaches his friend Antonio, a wealthy merchant of Venice and a kind and generous person, who has previously and repeatedly bailed him out, for three thousand ducats needed to subsidise his expenditures as a suitor. Antonio agrees, but since he is cash-poor - his ships and merchandise are busy at sea - he promises to cover a bond if Bassanio can find a lender, so Bassanio turns to the Jewish moneylender Shylock and names Antonio as the loan's guarantor. Shylock, who hates Antonio because of his Anti-Judaism and Antonio's customary refusal to borrow or lend money with interest, is at first reluctant, citing abuse he has suffered at Antonio's hand, but finally agrees to lend Antonio the sum without interest upon the condition that if Antonio is unable to repay it at the specified date, he may take a pound of Antonio's flesh. Bassanio does not want Antonio to accept such a risky condition; Antonio is surprised by what he sees as the moneylender's generosity (no "usance" – interest – is asked for), and he signs the contract. With money at hand, Bassanio leaves for Belmont with his friend Gratiano, who has asked to accompany him. Gratiano is a likeable young man, but is often flippant, overly talkative, and tactless. Bassanio warns his companion to exercise self-control, and the two leave for Belmont and Portia. Meanwhile in Belmont, Portia is awash with suitors. Her father left a will stipulating each of her suitors must choose correctly from one of three caskets – one each of gold, silver and lead. If he picks the right casket, he gets Portia. The first suitor, the luxurious Prince of Morocco, chooses the gold casket, interpreting its slogan "Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire" as referring to Portia. The second suitor, the conceited Prince of Arragon, chooses the silver casket, which proclaims "Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves", imagining himself to be full of merit. Both suitors leave empty-handed, having rejected the lead casket because of the baseness of its material and the uninviting nature of its slogan: "Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath." The last suitor is Bassanio, whom Portia wishes to succeed, having met him before. As Bassanio ponders his choice, members of Portia's household sing a song which says that "fancy" (not true love) is "engend'red in the eyes, With gazing fed.", prompting Bassanio to disregard "outward shows" and "ornament" and choses the lead casket, winning Portia's hand. At Venice, Antonio's ships are reported lost at sea. This leaves him unable to satisfy the bond. Shylock is even more determined to exact revenge from Christians after his daughter Jessica had fled home and eloped with the Christian Lorenzo, taking a substantial amount of Shylock's wealth with her, as well as a turquoise ring which was a gift to Shylock from his late wife, Leah. Shylock has Antonio brought before court. At Belmont, Bassanio receives a letter telling him that Antonio has been unable to return the loan taken from Shylock. Portia and Bassanio marry, as do Gratiano and Portia's handmaid Nerissa. Bassanio and Gratiano then leave for Venice, with money from Portia, to save Antonio's life by offering the money to Shylock. Unknown to Bassanio and Gratiano, Portia has sent her servant, Balthazar, to seek the counsel of Portia's cousin, Bellario, a lawyer, at Padua. The climax of the play comes in the court of the Duke of Venice. Shylock refuses Bassanio's offer of 6,000 ducats, twice the amount of the loan. He demands his pound of flesh from Antonio. The Duke, wishing to save Antonio but unable to nullify a contract, refers the case to a visitor who introduces himself as Balthazar, a young male "doctor of the law", bearing a letter of recommendation to the Duke from the learned lawyer Bellario. The doctor is actually Portia in disguise, and the law clerk who accompanies her is actually Nerissa, also in disguise. As Balthazar, Portia repeatedly asks Shylock to show mercy in a famous speech, advising him that mercy "is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." (IV,i,185) However, Shylock adamantly refuses any compensations and insists on the pound of flesh. As the court grants Shylock his bond and Antonio prepares for Shylock's knife, Portia points out that the contract only allows Shylock to remove the flesh, not the "blood", of Antonio (see quibble). Thus, if Shylock were to shed any drop of Antonio's blood, his "lands and goods" would be forfeited under Venetian laws. Further damning Shylock's case, she tells him that he must cut precisely one pound of flesh, no more, no less; she advises him that "if the scale do turn, But in the estimation of a hair, Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate." Defeated, Shylock concedes to accepting Bassanio's offer of money for the defaulted bond, first his offer to pay "the bond thrice", which Portia rebuffs, telling him to take his bond, and then merely the principal, which Portia also prevents him from doing on the ground that he has already refused it "in the open court." She then cites a law under which Shylock, as a Jew and therefore an "alien", having attempted to take the life of a citizen, has forfeited his property, half to the government and half to Antonio, leaving his life at the mercy of the Duke. The Duke immediately pardons Shylock's life. Antonio asks for his share "in use" (that is, reserving the principal amount while taking only the income) until Shylock's death, when the principal will be given to Lorenzo and Jessica. At Antonio's request, the Duke grants remission of the state's half of forfeiture, but on the condition of Shylock converting to Christianity and bequeathing his entire estate to Lorenzo and Jessica (IV,i). Bassanio does not recognise his disguised wife, but offers to give a present to the supposed lawyer. First she declines, but after he insists, Portia requests his ring and Antonio's gloves. Antonio parts with his gloves without a second thought, but Bassanio gives the ring only after much persuasion from Antonio, as earlier in the play he promised his wife never to lose, sell or give it. Nerissa, as the lawyer's clerk, also succeeds in likewise retrieving her ring from Gratiano, who does not see through her disguise. At Belmont, Portia and Nerissa taunt and pretend to accuse their husbands before revealing they were really the lawyer and his clerk in disguise (V). After all the other characters make amends, Antonio learns from Portia that three of his ships were not stranded and have returned safely after all.
37737	/m/09dtr	The Invisible Man	H. G. Wells	1897	{"/m/08w0_f": "Albino bias", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 A mysterious stranger, Griffin, arrives at the local inn of the English village of Iping, West Sussex, during a snowstorm. The stranger wears a long-sleeved, thick coat and gloves, his face hidden entirely by bandages except for a fake pink nose, large goggles and a wide-brimmed hat. He is excessively reclusive, irascible, and unfriendly. He demands to be left alone and spends most of his time in his rooms working with a set of chemicals and laboratory apparatus, only venturing out at night. While staying at the inn, hundreds of strange glass bottles arrive that Griffin calls his luggage. Many local townspeople believe this to be very strange. He becomes the talk of the village (one of the novel's most charming aspects is its portrayal of small-town life in southern England, which the author knew from first-hand experience). Meanwhile, a mysterious burglary occurs in the village. Griffin has run out of money and is trying to find a way to pay for his board and lodging. When his landlady demands he pay his bill and quit the premises, he reveals part of his invisibility to her in a fit of pique. An attempt to apprehend the stranger is frustrated when he undresses to take advantage of his invisibility, fights off his would-be captors, and flees to the downs. There Griffin coerces a tramp, Thomas Marvel, into becoming his assistant. With Marvel, he returns to the village to recover three notebooks that contain his records of his experiments. When Marvel soon attempts to betray the Invisible Man to the police, Griffin chases him to the seaside town of Port Burdock, threatening to kill him. Marvel escapes to a local inn, and is saved by the people at the inn, but Griffin escapes. Marvel later goes to the police and tells them of this "invisible man," then requests to be locked up in a high security jail cell. His furious attempt to avenge his betrayal leads to his being shot. Griffin takes shelter in a nearby house that turns out to belong to Dr. Kemp, a former acquaintance from medical school. To Kemp, he reveals his true identity: the Invisible Man is Griffin, a former medical student who left medicine to devote himself to optics. Griffin recounts how he invented medicine capable of rendering bodies invisible and, on an impulse, performed the procedure on himself. Griffin tells Kemp of his story of how he turned invisible. He tells of how he tries the invisibility on a cat, then himself. Griffin burns down the boarding house he is staying in along with all his equipment he used to turn invisible to cover his tracks, but soon realizes he is ill-equipped to survive in the open. He attempts to steal food and clothes from a large store, but eventually he steals some clothing from a theatrical supply shop and heads to Iping to attempt to reverse the effect. But now that he imagines he can make Kemp his secret confederate, describing his plan to begin a "Reign of Terror" by using his invisibility to terrorize the nation. Kemp has already denounced Griffin to the local authorities and is on the watch for help to arrive as he listens to this wild proposal. When the authorities arrive at Kemp's house, Griffin fights his way out and the next day leaves a note announcing that Kemp himself will be the first man to be killed in the "Reign of Terror". Kemp, a cool-headed character, tries to organize a plan to use himself as bait to trap the Invisible Man, but a note he sends is stolen from his servant by Griffin. Griffin shoots and kills a local policeman who comes to Kemp's aid, then breaks into Kemp's house. Kemp bolts for the town, where the local citizenry comes to his aid. Griffin is seized, assaulted, and killed by a mob. The Invisible Man's naked, battered body gradually becomes visible as he dies. A local policeman shouts to cover his face with a sheet, then the book concludes. In the final chapter, it is revealed that Marvel has secretly kept Griffin's notes. Griffin's name is not known by anyone (including the reader) until he meets Kemp whom he reveals his identity to. Until then, he is referred to as the stranger or the Invisible Man.
38093	/m/09hhj	Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea	Emanuel J Mickel	1869	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 As the story begins in 1866, a mysterious sea monster, theorized by some to be a giant narwhal, is sighted by ships of several nations; an ocean liner is also damaged by the creature. The United States government finally assembles an expedition in New York City to track down and destroy the menace. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a noted French marine biologist and narrator of the story, who happens to be in New York at the time and is a recognized expert in his field, is issued a last-minute invitation to join the expedition, and he accepts. Canadian master harpoonist Ned Land and Aronnax's faithful assistant Conseil are also brought on board. The expedition sets sail from Brooklyn aboard a naval ship called the Abraham Lincoln, which travels down around the tip of South America and into the Pacific Ocean. After much fruitless searching, the monster is found, and the ship charges into battle. During the fight, the ship's steering is damaged, and the three protagonists are thrown overboard. They find themselves stranded on the "hide" of the creature, only to discover to their surprise that it is a large metal construct. They are quickly captured and brought inside the vessel, where they meet its enigmatic creator and commander, Captain Nemo. The rest of the story follows the adventures of the protagonists aboard the submarine, the Nautilus, which was built in secrecy and now roams the seas free of any land-based government. Captain Nemo's motivation is implied to be both a scientific thirst for knowledge and a desire for revenge on (and self-imposed exile from) civilization. Captain Nemo explains that the submarine is electrically powered, and equipped to carry out cutting-edge marine biology research; he also tells his new passengers that while he appreciates having an expert such as Aronnax with whom to converse, they can never leave because he is afraid they will betray his existence to the world. Aronnax is enthralled by the undersea vistas he is seeing, but Land constantly plots to escape. Their travels take them to numerous points in the world's oceans, some of which were known to Jules Verne from real travelers' descriptions and guesses, while others are completely fictional. Thus, the travelers witness the real corals of the Red Sea, the wrecks of the battle of Vigo Bay, the Antarctic ice shelves, and the fictional submerged Atlantis. The travelers also don diving suits to go on undersea expeditions away from the ship, where they hunt sharks and other marine life with specially designed guns and have a funeral for a crew member who died when an accident occurred inside the Nautilus. When the Nautilus returns to the Atlantic Ocean, a "poulpe" (usually translated as a giant squid, although the French "poulpe" means "octopus") attacks the vessel and devours a crew member. Throughout the story it is suggested that Captain Nemo exiled himself from the world after an encounter with his oppressive country somehow affected his family. Near the end of the book, the Nautilus is tracked and attacked by a mysterious ship from that nation. Nemo ignores Aronnax's pleas for amnesty for the boat and attacks. Nemo attacks the ship under the waterline, sending it to the bottom of the ocean with all crew aboard as Aronnax watches from the salon. Nemo bows before the pictures of his wife and children and is plunged into deep depression after this encounter, and "voluntarily or involuntarily" allows the submarine to wander into an encounter with the Moskenstraumen, more commonly known as the "Maelstrom", a whirlpool off the coast of Norway. This gives the three prisoners an opportunity to escape; they make it back to land alive, but the fate of Captain Nemo and his crew is not revealed.
38114	/m/09hlp	Keep the Aspidistra Flying	George Orwell	1936	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gordon Comstock has 'declared war' on what he sees as an 'overarching dependence' on money by leaving a promising job as a copywriter for an advertising company called 'New Albion'—at which he shows great dexterity—and taking a low-paying job instead, ostensibly so he can write poetry. Coming from a respectable family background in which the inherited wealth has now become dissipated, Gordon resents having to work for a living. The 'war' (and the poetry), however, aren't going particularly well and, under the stress of his 'self-imposed exile' from affluence, Gordon has become absurd, petty and deeply neurotic. Comstock lives in a bedsit in London and earns enough to live, without luxuries, in a small bookshop owned by a Scot, McKechnie. He works intermittently at a magnum opus describing a day in London he plans to call London Pleasures; meanwhile, his only published work, a slim volume of poetry entitled Mice, collects dust on the remainder shelf. He is simultaneously content with his meagre existence and also disdainful of it. He lives without financial ambition and the need for a 'good job,' but his living conditions are uncomfortable and his job is boring. Comstock is 'obsessed' by what he sees as a pervasion of money (the 'Money God', as he calls it) behind social relationships, feeling sure that women would find him more attractive if he were better off. At the beginning of the novel, he senses that his girlfriend Rosemary Waterlow (whom he met at The Albion, and who continues to work there), is dissatisfied with him because of his poverty. An example of his financial embarrassment is when he is desperate for a pint of beer at his local pub, but has run out of pocket money and is ashamed to cadge a drink off his fellow lodger, Flaxman. One of Comstock's last remaining friends, Philip Ravelston, a Marxist who publishes a magazine called Anti-Christ, agrees with Comstock in principle, but is comfortably well-off himself and this causes strains when the practical miseries of Comstock's life become apparent. He does, however, endeavour to publish some of Comstock's work and his efforts had resulted in Mice being published via one of his publisher contacts (unbeknownst to Comstock). Gordon and Rosemary have little time together—she works late and lives in a hostel, and his 'bitch of a landlady' forbids female visitors to her tenants. Then one evening, having headed southward and having been thinking about women, - this women business in general, and Rosemary in particular, - he happens to see Rosemary in a street market. Rosemary won't have sex with him but she wants to spend a Sunday with him, right out in the country, near Burnham Beeches. At their parting, as he takes the tram from Tottenham Court Road back to his bedsit, he is happy and feels that somehow it is agreed between them that Rosemary is going to be his mistress. However, what is intended to be a pleasant day out away from London's grime turns into a disaster when, though hungry, they opt to pass by a 'rather low-looking' pub, and can then not find another pub, and are forced to eat an unappetizing lunch at a fancy, overpriced hotel instead. Gordon has to pay the bill with all the money he had set aside for their jaunt and worries about having to borrow money from Rosemary. At the critical moment when he is about to take her virginity, she raises the issue of contraception and his interest flags. He rails at her; "Money again, you see! [-] You say you can't have a baby. You mean you daren't; because you'd lose your job and I've got no money and all of us would starve." Having sent a poem to an American publication, Gordon suddenly receives from them a cheque worth ten pounds — a considerable sum for him at the time. He intends to set aside half for his sister Julia, who has always been there to lend him money and support. He treats Rosemary and Ravelston to dinner, which begins well, but the evening deteriorates as it proceeds. Gordon, drunk, tries to force himself upon Rosemary but she angrily rebukes him and leaves. Gordon continues drinking, drags Ravelston with him to visit a pair of prostitutes, and ends up broke and in a police cell the next morning. He is guilt-ridden over the thought of being unable to pay his sister back the money he owes her, because his £5 note is gone, given to, or stolen by, one of the tarts. Ravelston pays Gordon's fine after a brief appearance before the magistrate, but a reporter hears about the case, and writes about it in the local paper. The ensuing publicity results in Gordon losing his job at the bookshop, and, consequently, his relatively 'comfortable' lifestyle. As Gordon searches for another job, his life deteriorates, and his poetry stagnates. After living with his friend Ravelston, and his girlfriend Hermione, during his time of unemployment, Gordon ends up working at another book shop and cheap two-penny lending library, this time in Lambeth, owned by the sinister Mr. Cheeseman, for an even smaller wage of 30 shillings a week. This is 10 shillings less than he was earning before, but Gordon is satisfied; "The job would do. There was no trouble about a job like this; no room for ambition, no effort, no hope." Determined to sink to the lowest level of society Gordon takes a furnished bed-sitting-room in a filthy alley parallel to Lambeth Cut. Julie and Rosemary, "in feminine league against him", both seek to get Gordon to go back to his 'good' job at the New Albion advertising agency. Rosemary, having avoided Gordon for some time, suddenly comes to visit him one day at his dismal lodgings. Despite his terrible poverty and shabbiness, they make love but it is without any emotion or passion. Later, Rosemary drops in one day unexpectedly at the library, having not been in touch with Gordon for some time, and tells him that she is pregnant. Gordon is presented with the choice between leaving Rosemary to a life of social shame at the hands of her family—since both of them reject the idea of an abortion—or marrying her and returning to a life of respectability by taking back the job he once so deplored at the New Albion with its £4 weekly salary. He chooses Rosemary and respectability and then experiences a feeling of relief at having abandoned his anti-money principles with such comparative ease. After two years of abject failure and poverty, he throws his poetic work London Pleasures down a drain, marries Rosemary, resumes his advertising career, and plunges into a campaign to promote a new product to prevent foot odour. In his lonely walks around mean streets, aspidistras seem to appear in every lower-middle class window. As the book closes, Gordon wins an argument with Rosemary to install an aspidistra in their new small but comfortable flat off the Edgware Road.
38249	/m/09jld	Manon Lescaut	Antoine François Prévost			 Set in France and Louisiana in the early 18th century, the story follows the hero, the Chevalier des Grieux, and his lover, Manon Lescaut. Des Grieux comes from a noble and landed family, but forfeits his hereditary wealth and incurs the disappointment of his father by running away with Manon. In Paris, the young lovers enjoy a blissful cohabitation, while Des Grieux struggles to satisfy Manon's taste for luxury. He scrounges together money by borrowing from his unwaveringly loyal friend Tiberge and from cheating gamblers. On several occasions, Des Grieux's wealth evaporates (by theft, in a house fire, etc.), prompting Manon to leave him for a richer man because she cannot stand the thought of living in penury. The two lovers finally settle down in New Orleans, where the virtual absence of class differences allows them for a while to live in idyllic peace. But when Des Grieux reveals their unmarried state to the Governor and asks to be wed with Manon, the Governor's nephew sets his sights on winning Manon's hand. In despair, Des Grieux challenges the Governor's nephew to a duel and knocks him unconscious. Thinking he had killed the man and fearing retribution, the couple flee New Orleans and venture into the wilderness of Louisiana, hoping to reach a neighbouring English settlement. Manon dies of exposure and exhaustion the following morning; after burying her, Des Grieux returns to France to become a cleric.
38279	/m/09jv6	Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code	John Lions	1996	{"/m/01mkq": "Computer Science"}	 Unix Operating System Source Code Level Six is the kernel source code, lightly edited by Lions to better separate the functionality — system initialization and process management, interrupts and system calls, basic I/O, file systems and pipes and character devices. All procedures and symbols are listed alphabetically with a cross reference. The code as presented will run on a PDP-11/40 with RK-05 disk drive, LP-11 line printer interface, PCL-11 paper tape writer and KL-11 terminal interface, or a suitable PDP-11 emulator, such as SIMH. A Commentary on the Unix Operating System starts with notes on Unix and other useful documentation (the Unix manual pages, DEC hardware manuals and so on), a section on the architecture of the PDP-11 and a chapter on how to read C programs. The source commentary follows, divided into the same sections as the code. The book ends with suggested exercises for the student. As Lions explains, this commentary supplements the comments in the source. It is possible to understand the code without the extra commentary, and the reader is advised to do so and only read the notes as needed. The commentary also remarks on how the code might be improved.
38615	/m/09m9d	The Myth of Sisyphus	Albert Camus	1942	{"/m/02m4t": "Existentialism"}	 The essay is dedicated to Pascal Pia and is organized in four chapters and one appendix. Camus undertakes to answer what he considers to be the only question of philosophy that matters: Does the realization of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life necessarily require suicide? He begins by describing the absurd condition: much of our life is built on the hope for tomorrow yet tomorrow brings us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; people live as if they didn't know about the certainty of death; once stripped of its common romanticisms, the world is a foreign, strange and inhuman place; true knowledge is impossible and rationality and science cannot explain the world: their stories ultimately end in meaningless abstractions, in metaphors. "From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all." It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when "my appetite for the absolute and for unity" meets the inability of "reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle." He then characterizes a number of philosophies that describe and attempt to deal with this feeling of the absurd, by Heidegger, Jaspers, Shestov, Kierkegaard, and Husserl. All of these, he claims, commit "philosophical suicide" by reaching conclusions that contradict the original absurd position, either by abandoning reason and turning to God, as in the case of Kierkegaard and Shestov, or by elevating reason and ultimately arriving at ubiquitous Platonic forms and an abstract god, as in the case of Husserl. For Camus, who set out to take the absurd seriously and follow it to its final conclusions, these "leaps" cannot convince. Taking the absurd seriously means acknowledging the contradiction between the desire of human reason and the unreasonable world. Suicide, then, also must be rejected: without man, the absurd cannot exist. The contradiction must be lived; reason and its limits must be acknowledged, without false hope. However, the absurd can never be accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt. While the question of human freedom in the metaphysical sense loses interest to the absurd man, he gains freedom in a very concrete sense: no longer bound by hope for a better future or eternity, without a need to pursue life's purpose or to create meaning, "he enjoys a freedom with regard to common rules". To embrace the absurd implies embracing all that the unreasonable world has to offer. Without a meaning in life, there is no scale of values. "What counts is not the best living but the most living." Thus, Camus arrives at three consequences from the full acknowledging of the absurd: revolt, freedom and passion. How should the absurd man live? Clearly, no ethical rules apply, as they are all based on higher powers or on justification. "Integrity has no need of rules." 'Everything is permitted' "is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact." Camus then goes on to present examples of the absurd life. He begins with Don Juan, the serial seducer who lives the passionate life to the fullest. "There is no noble love but that which recognizes itself to be both short-lived and exceptional." The next example is the actor, who depicts ephemeral lives for ephemeral fame. "He demonstrates to what degree appearing creates being." "In those three hours he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the man in the audience takes a lifetime to cover." Camus' third example of the absurd man is the conqueror, the warrior who forgoes all promises of eternity to affect and engage fully in human history. He chooses action over contemplation, aware of the fact that nothing can last and no victory is final. Here Camus explores the absurd creator or artist. Since explanation is impossible, absurd art is restricted to a description of the myriad experiences in the world. "If the world were clear, art would not exist." Absurd creation, of course, also must refrain from judging and from alluding to even the slightest shadow of hope. He then analyzes the work of Dostoyevsky in this light, especially The Diary of a Writer, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov. All these works start from the absurd position, and the first two explore the theme of philosophical suicide. But both The Diary and his last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, ultimately find a path to hope and faith and thus fail as truly absurd creations. In the last chapter, Camus outlines the legend of Sisyphus who defied the gods and put Death in chains so that no human needed to die. When Death was eventually liberated and it came time for Sisyphus himself to die, he concocted a deceit which let him escape from the underworld. Finally captured, the gods decided on his punishment: for all eternity, he would have to push a rock up a mountain; upon reaching the top, the rock would roll down again leaving Sisyphus to start over. Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death and is condemned to a meaningless task. Camus presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices. "The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious." Camus is interested in Sisyphus' thoughts when marching down the mountain, to start anew. This is the truly tragic moment, when the hero becomes conscious of his wretched condition. He does not have hope, but "[t]here is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." Acknowledging the truth will conquer it; Sisyphus, just like the absurd man, keeps pushing. Camus claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented acceptance. With a nod to the similarly cursed Greek hero Oedipus, Camus concludes that "all is well," indeed, that "[o]ne must imagine Sisyphus happy." The essay contains an appendix titled "Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka". While Camus acknowledges that Kafka's work represents an exquisite description of the absurd condition, he maintains that Kafka fails as an absurd writer because his work retains a glimmer of hope.
39628	/m/09wdl	Cymbeline	William Shakespeare			 Imogen (or Innogen), daughter of the British king Cymbeline, is in love with Posthumus Leonatus, a man raised in her father's court who is described as possessing exceeding personal merit and martial skill. The two have secretly married, exchanging jewellery as tokens: a ring from Imogen, a bracelet from Posthumus. Cymbeline has discovered the affair and banishes Posthumus for his presumption, for Imogen is currently Cymbeline's only child and so her husband is heir to the British throne. Cymbeline did have two sons before Imogen, Guiderius and Arviragus, but they were stolen twenty years ago as infants by Belarius, a courtier banished as a traitor for supposedly conspiring with the Romans. Cymbeline is a vassal king of Caesar Augustus, and Caius Lucius, a Roman ambassador, is on his way to demand the tribute that Cymbeline, under the influence of his wife the Queen, has stopped paying. The Queen is conspiring to have Cloten, her cloddish and arrogant son by an earlier marriage, married to Imogen. The Queen also is plotting to murder both Imogen and Cymbeline to secure Cloten's kingship, and to that end has procured what she believes to be deadly poison from the court doctor Cornelius; Cornelius, however, suspects the Queen's malice and switches the "poison" with a drug that will cause the imbiber's body to mimic death for a while before reviving. Imogen meanwhile secludes herself in her chambers, resisting entreaties that she come forth and marry Cloten. Posthumus flees to Italy to the house of his friend Philario/Filario, where he meets Iachimo/Giacomo. Posthumus waxes at length on Imogen's beauty and chastity, and Iachimo challenges him to a bet that he, Iachimo, can seduce Imogen and bring Posthumus proof of her adultery. If he wins, Iachimo will get Imogen's ring from Posthumus's finger. If Posthumus wins, not only must Iachimo pay him but also consent to a sword duel so that Posthumus may avenge his and Imogen's affronted honour. Iachimo heads to Britain where he aggressively attempts to seduce the faithful Imogen, who sends him packing. Iachimo then hides in a chest in Imogen's bedchamber and, when the princess falls asleep, emerges to steal from her Posthumus's bracelet. He also examines the room and Imogen's naked body for further proof. Returning to Italy, Iachimo convinces Posthumus that he has successfully seduced Imogen. In his wrath, Posthumus sends two letters to Britain: one to Imogen, telling her to meet him at Milford Haven, on the west coast of Wales; the other to Pisanio, Posthumus's servant left behind at court, ordering him to murder Imogen at the Haven. On the way the anguished Pisanio instead shows his letter to Imogen, revealing Posthumus's plot. He has Imogen disguise herself as a boy and continue to Milford Haven to seek employment. He also gives her the Queen's "poison," believing it will alleviate nausea from distemper and motion sickness. Imogen adopts the name "Fidele," meaning "faithful." Back at court, Lucius receives Cymbeline's refusal of tribute, and warns him of Augustus's wrath. Meanwhile Cloten, incensed at Imogen's assertion that she values Posthumus's worst clothing over Cloten himself, learns of the "meeting" between the princess and her paramour at Milford Haven. Dressing himself in Posthumus's clothes, he determines to go to Wales and kill Posthumus while Imogen looks on, after which he will rape her on Posthumus's corpse before dragging her back to court for marriage. Imogen's long journey to Milford Haven takes her into the Welsh mountains, where she becomes weak from hunger, but she luckily stumbles upon a cave and inside finds food. The cave is home to Belarius and his "sons" Polydore and Cadwal, whom he raised into great woodsmen. These young men are in fact Guiderius and Arviragus, who themselves do not know their origin, but are nevertheless possessed of royal passion and heartiness. The three men enter their cave and find "Fidele," and the young men are captivated by "his" beauty. Leaving "Fidele" to eat, the men are met outside the cave by Cloten, who insults them. After a brief fight, Guiderius kills Cloten and cuts off his head. Recognizing the face, Belarius worries that Cloten's death will bring Cymbeline's wrath upon them. Meanwhile Imogen, feeling ill, takes the "poison," and when the men enter they find her "dead." They bewail "Fidele's" fate and, after placing Cloten's body beside her, solemnly depart. They also determine to fight for Britain in the inevitable battle with Roman forces. Imogen awakes to find Cloten's headless body, and takes it for Posthumus due to the clothes. She flees to Milford Haven, where "Fidele's" beauty earns "him" the affection of Lucius, who takes "him" on as a page. Meanwhile a guilt-ridden Posthumus arrives with the Roman army and dresses himself as a poor British soldier, hoping to die on the battlefield. The battle goes badly at first for the Britons, but four unknown men—Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus, and Posthumus in their disguises—turn the tide, rallying Cymbeline's troops into a rout of the Romans. Posthumus, still alive, gives himself up to Cymbeline as a Roman soldier, hoping to win his sought-for death by execution. He is put in chains and jailed, after which he falls asleep. The ghosts of his father (Sicilius Leonatus) and mother, who both died at Posthumus's birth, and his brothers, who died in battle, appear around Posthumus's sleeping body and complain to Jupiter of his grim fate. Jupiter himself then appears in thunder and glory on an eagle to chide the ghosts for their lack of faith. Before the god and spirits depart they leave a tablet on Posthumus's chest explaining in obscure prophecy how destiny will grant happiness to Posthumus and Britain. Posthumus awakens, believing he has dreamed the ghosts and god, but wonders what the tablet could mean. A jailer then summons him to appear before Cymbeline. Posthumus stands in the ranks of prisoners with "Fidele," Lucius, and Iachimo, all condemned to be executed. Cornelius arrives from the court with a message that the Queen has died, and that on her deathbed she unrepentantly confessed to her murderous conspiracies. Both troubled and relieved at this news, Cymbeline prepares to carry out his sentence on the prisoners, but pauses when he sees "Fidele." Finding the "boy" both beautiful and somehow familiar, the king resolves not only to spare "Fidele's" life but also to grant "him" a favour. Imogen has noticed her ring on Iachimo's finger and demands to know from where the Italian got the jewel. A penitent Iachimo tells of his bet, how he could not seduce Imogen and yet tricked Posthumus into thinking he had. Posthumus then comes forward to corroborate Iachimo's story, revealing his identity and acknowledging his guilt and wrong in desiring Imogen dead. Ecstatic, Imogen throws herself at Posthumus, who still takes her for a boy and knocks her down. Pisanio then rushes forward to explain that the boy is Imogen in disguise; as the servant tries to help her up she pushes him away, under the impression that he worked with the Queen to poison her. Pisanio insists on his innocence, and Cornelius reveals how the poison was all along non-fatal. Belarius then speaks, noting how all this makes sense of the disappearance of "Fidele's" "corpse." Insisting that those who swore against him did so falsely, Belarius reveals Guiderius's and Arviragus's identities. With her brothers restored to their place in the line of inheritance, Imogen is now free to marry Posthumus. An elated Cymbeline pardons Belarius and all the prisoners. Posthumus produces Jupiter's tablet, still confused about its meaning, and Lucius calls forth his soothsayer Philharmonus, who deciphers the prophecy as a description of recent events, the unfolding of which has ensured happiness for all. Cymbeline decides to pay the tribute to Augustus as a gesture of peace between Britain and Rome, and invites everyone to a great feast.
40121	/m/09_zl	Vanity Fair	William Makepeace Thackeray			 The story opens with Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies, where Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley have just completed their studies and are preparing to depart for Amelia's house in Russell Square. Becky is portrayed as a strong-willed and cunning young woman determined to make her way in society, and Amelia Sedley as a good-natured, lovable though simple-minded young girl. At Russell Square, Miss Sharp is introduced to the dashing and self-obsessed Captain George Osborne (to whom Amelia has been betrothed from a very young age) and to Amelia's brother Joseph Sedley, a clumsy and vainglorious/boastful but rich civil servant fresh from the East India Company. Hoping to marry Sedley Becky entices him, but she fails because of warnings from Captain Osborne, Sedley's own native shyness, and his embarrassment over some foolish drunken behaviour of his that Becky had seen. Now, Becky Sharp says farewell to Sedley's family and enters the service of the crude and profligate baronet Sir Pitt Crawley, who has engaged her as a governess to his daughters. Her behaviour at Sir Pitt's house gains his favour, and after the premature death of his second wife, he proposes marriage to her. Then he finds she is already secretly married to his second son, Rawdon Crawley. Sir Pitt's elder half sister, the spinster Miss Crawley, is very rich, having inherited her mother's fortune of £70,000. How she will bequeath her great wealth is a source of constant conflict between the branches of the Crawley family who vie shamelessly for her affections; initially her favourite is Sir Pitt's younger son, Captain Rawdon Crawley. For some time, Becky acts as Miss Crawley's companion, supplanting the loyal Miss Briggs in an attempt to establish herself in favour before breaking the news of her elopement with Miss Crawley's nephew. However, the misalliance so enrages Miss Crawley that she disinherits her nephew in favour of his pompous and pedantic elder brother, who also bears the name Pitt Crawley. The married couple constantly attempts to reconcile with Miss Crawley, and she relents a little, but she will only see her nephew and refuses to change her will. While Becky Sharp is rising in the world, Amelia's father, John Sedley, is bankrupted. The Sedleys and Osbornes were once close allies, but the relationship between the two families disintegrates after the Sedleys are financially ruined, and the marriage of Amelia and George is forbidden. George ultimately decides to marry Amelia against his father's will, pressured by his friend Dobbin, and George is consequently disinherited. While these personal events take place, the Napoleonic Wars have been ramping up. George Osborne and William Dobbin are suddenly deployed to Brussels, but not before an encounter with Becky and Captain Crawley at Brighton. The holiday is interrupted by orders to march to Brussels. Already, the newly wedded Osborne is growing tired of Amelia, and he becomes increasingly attracted to Becky who encourages his advances. At a ball in Brussels (based on the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo) George gives Becky a note inviting her to run away with him. He regrets this shortly afterwards and reconciles with Amelia, who has been deeply hurt by his attentions towards her former friend. The morning after, he is sent to Waterloo with Captain Crawley and Dobbin, leaving Amelia distraught. Becky, on the other hand, is virtually indifferent to her husband's departure. She tries to console Amelia, but Amelia responds angrily, disgusted by Becky's flirtatious behaviour with George and her lack of concern about Captain Crawley. Becky resents this snub and a rift develops between the two women that lasts for years. Becky is not very concerned for the outcome of the war, either; should Napoleon win, she plans to become the mistress of one of his marshals. Meanwhile she makes a profit selling her carriage and horses at inflated prices to Amelia's panicking brother Joseph seeking to flee the city, where the Belgian population is openly pro-Napoleonic. Captain Crawley survives, but George dies in the battle. Amelia bears him a posthumous son, who is also named George. She returns to live in genteel poverty with her parents. Meanwhile, since the death of George, Dobbin, who is young George's godfather, gradually begins to express his love for the widowed Amelia by small kindnesses toward her and her son. Most notable is the recovery of her old piano, which Dobbin picks up at an auction following the Sedleys' ruin. Amelia mistakenly assumes this was done by her late husband. She is too much in love with George's memory to return Dobbin's affections. Saddened, he goes to India for many years. Dobbin's infatuation with Amelia is a theme which unifies the novel and one which many have compared to Thackeray's unrequited love for a friend's wife (Jane Brookfield). Meanwhile, Becky also has a son, also named after his father, but unlike Amelia, who dotes on and even spoils her child, Becky is a cold, distant mother. She continues her ascent first in post-war Paris and then in London where she is patronised by the great Marquis of Steyne, who covertly subsidises her and introduces her to London society. Her success is unstoppable despite her humble origins, and she is eventually presented at court to the Prince Regent himself. Becky and Rawdon appear to be financially successful, but their wealth and high standard of living are mostly smoke and mirrors. Rawdon gambles heavily and earns money as a billiards shark. The book also suggests he cheats at cards. Becky accepts trinkets and money from her many admirers and sells some for cash. She also borrows heavily from the people around her and seldom pays bills. The couple lives mostly on credit, and while Rawdon seems to be too dim-witted to be aware of the effect of his borrowing on the people around him, Becky is fully aware that her heavy borrowing and her failure to pay bills bankrupts at least two innocent people: her servant, Briggs, whose life savings Becky borrows and fritters away, and her landlord Raggles, who was formerly a butler to the Crawley family and who invested his life savings in the townhouse that Becky and Rawdon rent (and fail to pay for). She also cheats innkeepers, milliners, dressmakers, grocers, and others who do business on credit. She and Rawdon obtain credit by tricking everyone around them into believing they are receiving money from others. Sometimes, Becky and Rawdon buy time from their creditors by suggesting Rawdon received money in Miss Crawley's will or are being paid a stipend by Sir Pitt. Ultimately Becky is suspected of carrying on an extramarital affair with the Marquis of Steyne, apparently encouraged by Rawdon to prostitute herself in exchange for money and promotion. At the summit of her success, Becky's pecuniary relationship with the rich and powerful Marquis of Steyne is discovered after Rawdon is arrested for debt. Rawdon's brother's wife, Lady Jane, bails him out and Rawdon surprises Becky and Steyne in a compromising moment. Rawdon leaves his wife and through the offices of the Marquis of Steyne is made Governor of Coventry Island to get him out of the way, but Rawdon challenges the elderly marquis to a duel. Becky, having lost both husband and credibility, is warned by Steyne to leave the United Kingdom and she wanders the continent. Rawdon and Becky's son is left in the care of Pitt Crawley and Lady Jane. However, wherever Becky goes, she is followed by the shadow of the Marquis of Steyne. No sooner does she establish herself in polite society than someone turns up who knows her disreputable history and spreads rumours; Steyne himself hounds her out of Rome. As Amelia's adored son George grows up, his grandfather relents and takes him from poor Amelia, who knows the rich and bitter old man will give him a much better start in life than she or her family could ever manage. After twelve years abroad, both Joseph Sedley and Dobbin return to the UK. Dobbin professes his unchanged love to Amelia, but although Amelia is affectionate she tells him she cannot forget the memory of her dead husband. Dobbin also becomes close to young George, and his kind, firm manner is a good influence on the spoiled child. While in England, Dobbin mediates a reconciliation between Amelia and her father-in-law. The death of Amelia's father prevents their meeting, but following Osborne's death soon after, it is revealed that he had amended his will and bequeathed young George half his large fortune and Amelia a generous annuity. The rest is divided between his daughters, Miss Osborne, and Mrs. Bullock, who begrudges Amelia and her son the decrease in her annuity. After the death of old Mr. Osborne, Amelia, Joseph, George and Dobbin go on a trip to Germany, where they encounter the destitute Becky. She meets the young George at a card table and then enchants Jos Sedley all over again. Becky has unfortunately deteriorated as a character. She is drinking heavily, has lost her singing voice and much of her looks and spends time with card sharps and con artists. The book suggests that Becky has been involved in activities even more shady than her usual con games, but does not go into details. Following Jos' entreaties, Amelia agrees to a reconciliation (when she hears that Becky's ties with her son have been severed), much to Dobbin's disapproval. Dobbin quarrels with Amelia and finally realizes that he is wasting his love on a woman too shallow to return it. However, Becky, in a moment of conscience, shows Amelia the note that George (Amelia's dead husband) had given her, asking her to run away with him. This destroys Amelia's idealized image of George, but not before Amelia has sent a note to Dobbin professing her love. Becky resumes her seduction of Jos and gains control over him. He eventually dies of a suspicious ailment after signing a portion of his money to Becky as life insurance. In the original illustrations, which were done by Thackeray, Becky is shown behind a curtain with a vial in her hand; the picture is labelled "Becky's second appearance in the character of Clytemnestra" (she had played Clytemnestra during charades at a party earlier in the book). Jos' death appears to have made her fortune. By a twist of fate Rawdon dies weeks before his older brother, whose son has already died; the baronetcy descends to Rawdon's son. Had he outlived his brother by even a day he would have become Sir Rawdon Crawley and Becky would have become Lady Crawley, a title she uses anyway in later life. The reader is informed at the end of the novel that although Dobbin married Amelia, and although he always treated her with great kindness, he never fully regained the love that he once had for her. There is also a final appearance for Becky, as cocky as ever, selling trinkets at a fair in aid of various charitable causes. She is now living well again as her son, the new baronet, has agreed to financially support her (in spite of her past neglect and indifference towards him).
41522	/m/0bdfv	Northanger Abbey	Jane Austen	1817-12	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Seventeen-year-old, Catherine Morland is one of ten children of a country clergyman. Although a tomboy in her childhood, by the age of 17 she is "in training for a heroine," and is excessively fond of reading Gothic novels of which Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho is a favourite. Catherine is invited by her wealthier neighbours in Fullerton, the Allens, to accompany them to visit the town of Bath and partake in the winter season of balls, theatre and other social delights. Although initially the excitement of Bath is dampened by her lack of acquaintances, she is soon introduced to a clever young gentleman, Henry Tilney, with whom she dances and converses. Much to her disappointment, Catherine does not see Henry again for quite some time. Through Mrs. Allen's old school friend Mrs. Thorpe, she meets her daughter Isabella, a vivacious and flirtatious young woman, and quickly becomes friends. Mrs. Thorpe's son John is also acquainted with Catherine's older brother, James. James and John soon arrive in Bath. While Isabella and James spend time together, Catherine becomes acquainted with John, a vain and crude young gentleman who incessantly tells fantastical stories about himself. Henry Tilney then returns to Bath, accompanied by his younger sister Eleanor, who is a sweet, elegant, and respectable young lady. Catherine also meets their father, the imposing General Tilney. The Thorpes are not very happy about Catherine's friendship with the Tilneys, as they (correctly as it happens) perceive Henry as a rival for Catherine's affections. Catherine tries to maintain her friendships with both the Thorpes and the Tilneys, though John Thorpe continuously tries to sabotage her relationship with the Tilneys. This leads to several misunderstandings, which upset Catherine and put her in the awkward position of having to explain herself to the Tilneys. Isabella and James become engaged. James's father approves of the match and offers his son a country parson's living of a modest sum, 400 pounds annually, which he may have in two and a half years. The couple must therefore wait until that time to marry. Isabella is dissatisfied, having believed the Morlands were quite wealthy, but she pretends to Catherine that she is merely dissatisfied that they must wait so long. James departs to purchase a ring, and John accompanies him after coyly suggesting marriage to the oblivious Catherine. Isabella immediately begins to flirt with Captain Tilney, Henry's older brother. Innocent Catherine cannot understand her friend's behavior, but Henry understands all too well, as he knows his brother's character and habits. The flirtation continues even when James returns, much to the latter's embarrassment and distress. The Tilneys invite Catherine to stay with them for a few weeks at their home, Northanger Abbey. Catherine, in accordance with her novel reading, expects the abbey to be exotic and frightening. Henry teases her about this, as it turns out that Northanger Abbey is pleasant and decidedly not Gothic. However, the house includes a mysterious suite of rooms that no one ever enters; Catherine learns that they were Mrs. Tilney's, who died nine years earlier. Catherine decides that, since General Tilney does not now seem to be affected by the loss of his wife, he may have murdered her or even imprisoned her in her chamber. Catherine persuades Eleanor to show her Mrs. Tilney's rooms, but General Tilney suddenly appears. Catherine flees, sure that she will be punished. Later, Catherine sneaks back to Mrs. Tilney's rooms, to discover that her overactive imagination has once again led her astray, as nothing is strange or distressing in the rooms at all. Unfortunately, Henry joins her in the corridor and questions why she is there. He guesses her surmises and inferences, and informs her that his father loved his wife in his own way and was truly upset by her death. "What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? ... Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?" She leaves, crying, fearing that she has lost Henry's entire regard. Realizing how foolish she had been, Catherine comes to believe that, though novels may be delightful, their content does not relate to everyday life. Henry lets her get over her shameful thoughts and actions in her own time and does not mention them to her again. Soon after this adventure, James writes to inform her that he has broken off his engagement with Isabella because of her flirtations with Captain Tilney. The Tilneys are shocked; and Catherine is terribly disappointed, realizing what a dishonest person Isabella is. The General goes off to London, and Eleanor becomes less inhibited and shy away from his imposing presence. Catherine passes several enjoyable days with Henry and Eleanor until he returns abruptly, in a temper. Eleanor tells Catherine that the family has an engagement that prevents Catherine from staying any longer and that she must go home early the next morning, in a shocking, inhospitable move that forces Catherine to undertake the journey alone. At home, Catherine is listless and unhappy. Her parents, unaware of her trials of the heart, try to bring her up to her usual spirits, with little effect. Two days after she returns home, however, Henry pays a sudden unexpected visit and explains what happened. General Tilney had believed (on the misinformation of John Thorpe) her to be exceedingly rich and therefore a proper match for Henry. In London, General Tilney ran into Thorpe again, who, angry at Catherine's refusal of his half-made proposal of marriage, said instead that she was nearly destitute. Enraged, General Tilney returned home to evict Catherine. When Henry returned to Northanger from Woodston, his father informed him of what had occurred and forbade him to think of Catherine again. When Henry learned how she had been treated, he breaks with his father and tells Catherine he still wants to marry her despite his father's disapproval. Catherine is delighted. Eventually, General Tilney acquiesces, because Eleanor has become engaged to a wealthy and titled man; and he discovers that the Morlands, while not extremely rich, are far from destitute.
41525	/m/0bdh4	Amadeus	Peter Shaffer			 Since the original run, Shaffer has extensively revised his play, including changes to plot details; the following is common to all revisions. At the opening of the tale, Salieri is an old man, having long outlived his fame, and is convinced he used poison to assassinate Mozart. Speaking directly to the audience, he promises to explain himself. The action then flashes back to the eighteenth century, at a time when Salieri has not met Mozart in person, but has heard of him and his music. He adores Mozart's compositions, and is thrilled at the chance to meet Mozart in person, during a salon at which some of Mozart's compositions will be played. When he finally does catch sight of Mozart, however, he is deeply disappointed to find that Mozart's personality does not match the grace or charm of his compositions. When Salieri first meets him, Mozart is crawling around on his hands and knees, engaging in profane talk with his future bride Constanze Weber. Salieri cannot reconcile Mozart's boorish behaviour with the genius that God has inexplicably bestowed upon him. Indeed, Salieri, who has been a devout Catholic all his life, cannot believe that God would choose Mozart over him for such a gift. Salieri renounces God and vows to do everything in his power to destroy Mozart as a way of getting back at his Creator. Throughout much of the rest of the play, Salieri masquerades as Mozart's ally to his face while doing his utmost to destroy his reputation and any success his compositions may have. On more than one occasion it is only the direct intervention of the Emperor himself that allows Mozart to continue (interventions which Salieri opposes, and then is all too happy to take credit for when Mozart assumes it was he who intervened). Salieri also humiliates Mozart's wife when she comes to Salieri for aid, and smears Mozart's character with the Emperor and the court. A major theme in Amadeus is Mozart's repeated attempts to win over the aristocratic "public" with increasingly brilliant compositions, which are always frustrated either by Salieri or by the aristocracy's own inability to appreciate Mozart's genius. The play ends with Salieri attempting suicide in a last attempt to be remembered, leaving a false confession of having murdered Mozart with arsenic. He survives, however, and his confession is disbelieved by all, leaving him to wallow once again in mediocrity.
42478	/m/0bnjr	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	Samuel Taylor Coleridge		{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience and fear to fascination as the Mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: for example, Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create either a sense of danger, of the supernatural or of serenity, depending on the mood of each of the different parts of the poem. The Mariner's tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south off course by a storm and eventually reaches Antarctica. An albatross appears and leads them out of the Antarctic but, even as the albatross is praised by the ship's crew, the Mariner shoots the bird ("with my cross-bow / I shot the albatross"). The crew is angry with the Mariner, believing the albatross brought the south wind that led them out of the Antarctic. However, the sailors change their minds when the weather becomes warmer and the mist disappears ("'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay / that bring the fog and mist"). However, they made a grave mistake in supporting this crime as it arouses the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship "from the land of mist and snow"; the south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters, where it is becalmed. : Day after day, day after day, : We stuck, nor breath nor motion; : As idle as a painted ship : Upon a painted ocean. : Water, water, every where, : And all the boards did shrink; : Water, water, every where, : Nor any drop to drink. Here, however, the sailors change their minds again and blame the Mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger, the crew forces the Mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must suffer from killing it, or perhaps as a sign of regret ("Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung"). Eventually, the ship encounters a ghostly vessel. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death" (a deathly-pale woman), who are playing dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the Mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue as to the Mariner's fate; he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross. One by one, all of the crew members die, but the Mariner lives on, seeing for seven days and nights the curse in the eyes of the crew's corpses, whose last expressions remain upon their faces. Eventually, the Mariner's curse is temporarily lifted when he sees sea creatures swimming in the water. Despite his cursing them as "slimy things" earlier in the poem ("Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs / upon the slimy sea"), he suddenly sees their true beauty and blesses them ("a spring of love gush'd from my heart and I bless'd them unaware"); suddenly, as he manages to pray, the albatross falls from his neck and his guilt is partially expiated. The bodies of the crew, possessed by good spirits, rise again and steer the ship back home, where it sinks in a whirlpool, leaving only the Mariner behind. A hermit on the mainland had seen the approaching ship and had come to meet it with a pilot and the pilot's boy in a boat. When they pull him from the water, they think he is dead, but when he opens his mouth, the pilot has a fit. The hermit prays, and the Mariner picks up the oars to row. The pilot's boy goes crazy and laughs, thinking the Mariner is the devil, and says, "The Devil knows how to row." As penance for shooting the albatross, the Mariner, driven by guilt, is forced to wander the earth, tell his story, and teach a lesson to those he meets: : He prayeth best, who loveth best : All things both great and small; : For the dear God who loveth us, : He made and loveth all. After relating the story, the Mariner leaves, and the Wedding Guest returns home, and wakes the next morning "a sadder and a wiser man".
42572	/m/0bpn5	The Eye of the World	Robert Jordan	1990-01-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The Eye of the World revolves around the lives of a group of young people from Emond's Field in The Two Rivers district: Rand al'Thor, Matrim (Mat) Cauthon, Perrin Aybara, Egwene al'Vere, and Nynaeve al'Meara. Emond's Field is unexpectedly attacked by Dark forces—bestial Trollocs and a Myrddraal who seem to specifically target Rand, Mat and Perrin. Hoping to save their village from further attacks, the young men and Egwene flee the village accompanied by an Aes Sedai named Moiraine Damodred, her WarderAl'Lan Mandragoran and a Gleeman Thom Merrilin. They are later joined by Nynaeve al'Meara, the Wisdom of Emond's Field. Pursued by ever-increasing numbers of Trollocs and Myrddraal, the travellers are forced to take refuge in the abandoned city of Shadar Logoth, a place even the dark forces are reluctant to enter because of the evil Mashadar that resides there. While escaping the city the travelers are separated. Rand, Mat and Thom make their way by boat to Whitebridge where Thom is apparently killed while allowing Rand and Mat to escape a Myrddraal. In Caemlyn Rand befriends an Ogier named Loial. While exploring the city and trying to catch a glimpse of the recently captured False Dragon, Rand falls into the palace gardens. Once there he meets Elayne Trakand, heir apparent to the throne of Andor and her brothers Gawyn and Galad Damodred. Rand is taken before Queen Morgase and her Aes Sedai advisor, Elaida who foretells that Rand is dangerous. Queen Morgase, however, decides to let Rand go free. Meanwhile Egwene and Perrin travel separately to Caemlyn in the company of Elyas Machera, a man who can communicate with wolves and who claims that Perrin can do the same. The three run afoul of a legion of the Children of the Light. Perrin kills two Whitecloaks after witnessing the death of a wolf at their hands and is sentenced to death. Moiraine, Lan and Nynaeve rescue Egwene and Perrin from the Whitecloaks in time to escape their fate. Together they travel to Caemlyn where they are reunited with Rand and Mat. Rand tells Moiraine that Mat has been suspicious and withdrawn, and Moiraine diagnoses Mat's "sickness" as the corrupting influence of a ruby dagger Mat took from Shadar Logoth. Moiraine says that Mat must travel to Tar Valon in order to be healed. Loial warns Moiraine of a threat to the Eye of the World, which is confirmed by vivid and disturbing dreams Mat, Rand and Perrin have had. The Eye of the World was created by Aes Sedai who sacrificed themselves to create a pool of Saidin untouched by the Dark One's taint, and is hidden in the Blight. The Eye of the World is protected by Someshta (the Green Man) and contains one of the seven seals on the Dark One's prison, the Dragon banner of Lews Therin Telamon and the Horn of Valere. Loial guides the group through the Ways (passageways built by the male Aes Sedai during the Breaking of the World, which are now tainted by the same evil that tainted Saidin) in order to reach the Eye of the World. The group enters the Blight, in search of the Eye of the World guided by The Green Man. The Eye is revealed to be a pool of Saidin, pure and untainted. The companions are confronted by the Forsaken Aginor and Balthamel. Balthamel dies at the hand of the Green Man and Aginor and Rand battle for control of the Eye of the World. Rand defeats Aginor and guided by blind luck uses the pure Saidin to decimate the Trolloc army and defeat Ba'alzamon. Afterwards Rand realizes to his own horror that he has channeled the One Power and is therefore condemned to a fate of insanity and horrific death. It is revealed that Moiraine believes Rand is the Dragon Reborn.
42573	/m/0bpnk	The Great Hunt	Robert Jordan	1990-11-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ba'alzamon presides over a clandestine meeting as Shadow forces plot their actions and Shaitan’s return. In addition to Forsaken and Darkfriends, the meeting includes two Aes Sedai, one of whom we come to know as Liandrin. The prologue shows how deep Ba'alzamon's influence has gone, even in places the protagonists believe to be safe. Following the events in The Eye of the World, the protagonists rest at Fort Fal Dara in Shienar, where the White Tower’s Amyrlin Seat, Siuan Sanche, visits. Siuan reminisces and plots with fellow Aes Sedai Moiraine Damodred and Verin. Rand al'Thor meets Siuan. Siuan tells Rand that he is the Dragon Reborn, which Rand denies. Mat's condition worsens as he is symbiotically attached to a tainted parasitic dagger. Lan Mandragoran further instructs Rand in swordfighting. Powerful Darkfriend Padan Fain is imprisoned in the Fal Dara dungeon. Darkforces attack the city, freeing their leader Padan Fain and stealing the Horn of Valere and the tainted dagger that Mat needs to survive. Rand, Perrin Aybara, and Mat accompany a Shienaran party southbound in pursuit of the horn and dagger. Shienaran Lord Ingtar heads the group, which includes skilled tracker Hurin. Fain’s fleeing darkforce includes trollocs, myrddraal, and darkfriends. Nynaeve al'Meara and Egwene al'Vere accompany Moraine to Tar Valon for Aes Sedai training. Andoran Princess Elayne and clairvoyant Min arrive at Tar Valon as well. At Tar Valon's White Tower, Nynaeve passes the test to become Accepted, a rank in the White Tower below Aes Sedai and above a Novice. Rand, Loial and Hurin are separated from the Shienaran party and transported to an alternate world via a portal stone, a world similar to their own but where the land appears deserted and distorted. Rand suspects that he activated the portal stone by unconsciously channeling saidin in his sleep, although Egwene dreams that a mysterious woman is responsible. Rand's struggle to accept his channeling ability is a recurring element in the novel. In the Portal Stone world, Rand meets Ba'alzamon and has a heron branded into his palm in a fight. Later, they find another portal stone with the help of a mysterious woman called Selene. Rand is able to use the Stone to return to their own world, albeit much farther ahead than either Fain's or Ingtar's group. By hiding and waiting for the Darkfriends to catch up, they manage to sneak into Fain's camp and recover both Horn and dagger. At a loss to explain Rand's disappearance, Lord Ingtar's group continues tracking Padan Fain with the aid of Perrin. Perrin pretends to be another sniffer like Hurin, but secretly uses his wolf senses to smell and track and also ask nearby wolves which way Padan Fain's group went. Rand's party journeys to Cairhien, and Selene leaves their party without warning. Arriving in the city, Rand finds gleeman Thom Merrilin, whom he thought dead after an encounter with a myrddraal in The Eye of the World. Rand and Loial are attacked by trollocs and, during their escape, destroy the Chapter House of the Illuminator's Guild, a society of people who are extremely protective of their knowledge of fireworks. The Horn and dagger are once again lost. Later on Thom's apprentice and lover, Dena, is murdered for Thom's involvement with Rand. With the aid of Perrin, Ingtar's group is successfully reunited with Rand, and they learn that the Horn has been taken to Toman Head, at the port city of Falme. Hoping to get there faster, Rand tries to lead them through a portal stone. While successful, during his attempt the stone malfunctions and the group ends up losing time. As these events unfold, action also takes place on the other side of the continent, where the invading Seanchan and their exotic beasts have occupied Falme. Whitecloak Geofram Bornhald, of the zealous religious group Children of the Light, is preparing forces to attack the Seanchan. At the White Tower, Liandrin tells Egwene and Nynaeve that Rand and his friends are in danger. They, along with Elayne and Min, travel with her to Toman Head via Waygate. When they arrive Min is captured by the Seanchan and Egwene is collared with an a'dam, a device used by the Seanchan to control women who can channel. Nynaeve and Elayne escape. At Falme, Rand, Ingtar and the others form a small party to reclaim the dagger and Horn of Valere, consisting of Ingtar, Hurin, Rand, Perrin, and an increasingly sickly Mat. Rand sneaks into the building where the Horn is being kept, and slays blademaster High Lord Turak of the Seanchan before escaping with the Horn and dagger. Ingtar reveals himself as a Darkfriend and furthermore, that he was responsible for letting in the attackers during the surprise attack at Fal Dara, but he redeems himself when he dies fighting for Rand's group. At the same time, Elayne and Nynaeve rescue Egwene from the Seanchan and attempt to flee the city. At this moment the Whitecloaks also choose to attack, leaving the heroes trapped between the Seanchan and the Whitecloaks. Desperately, Mat blows the Horn of Valere, summoning forth dead heroes who aid Mat's cause. The resurrected heroes include Artur Hawkwing. The Seanchan easily defeat the Whitecloaks. The resurrected Heroes then overwhelm the Seanchan, who retreat back to their ships and sail off as the resurrected heroes fade away. Finally, Rand duels with Ba'alzamon, while their images appear in the sky, drawing the attention of all. Rand is initially unable to penetrate Ba'alzamon's defenses. Rand then leaves himself open while employing a final fighting maneuver Lan had taught him. Ba'alzamon strikes Rand as Rand lands a killing counter-blow slaying Ba'alzamon. Rand is severely wounded. Selene is revealed to be Lanfear, one of the most powerful Forsaken.
42574	/m/0bpny	A Crown of Swords	Robert Jordan	1996-05-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A Crown of Swords has three primary plotlines: * Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, prepares to attack the Forsaken Sammael in Illian while enjoying life with his friend, Min Farshaw, and attempting to quell the rebellion by nobles in Cairhien, during which Padan Fain severely injures him with the Shadar Logoth dagger. After recovering, Rand, accompanied by Asha'man, attacks Illian and defeats Sammael in a duel of the One Power in Shadar Logoth, where Sammael is destroyed by Mashadar. Rand then takes the crown of Illian, formerly the Laurel Crown, but now called the Crown of Swords. * Egwene al'Vere and Siuan Sanche attempt to manipulate the Aes Sedai rebels in Salidar to move against Elaida's Aes Sedai in the White Tower in Tar Valon. After Egwene and Siuan investigate Siuan's suspicions about Myrelle, Egwene exploits the transfer of Lan's Warder bond from Moiraine to Myrelle in order to force Myrelle and Nisao to swear fealty to her. * In the city of Ebou Dar in Altara, Elayne Trakand, Nynaeve al'Meara, Aviendha, and Mat Cauthon search for a ter'angreal, the Bowl of the Winds, to break the unnatural heat brought on by the Dark One's manipulation of climate. They find it and enlist the help of the Kin and the Atha'an Miere, or Sea Folk. They also confront a Gholam. Mat is left behind after searching for Olver, and is caught in the fighting as the Seanchan invade Ebou Dar.
42575	/m/0bpp8	Winter's Heart	Robert Jordan	2000-11-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Many of the events of Winter's Heart take place simultaneously with the events of the next book, Crossroads of Twilight. Perrin Aybara and his followers pursue the Shaido Aiel who kidnapped his wife, Faile Bashere. Elayne Trakand attempts to solidify her grip on the Lion Throne and put down rebellious nobles. Mat Cauthon, making his return to the series after his absence in the previous book, is trapped in the city of Ebou Dar in Altara, which is under Seanchan occupation. He plans his escape, but in the end, his plans are disrupted by the interference of a Seanchan noblewoman named Tuon, who is revealed as the Daughter of the Nine Moons, heir to the Seanchan Crystal Throne. Mat, having heard a prophecy about him marrying the Daughter of the Nine Moons, kidnaps Tuon instead of tying her up and leaving her behind. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, is bonded as a Warder by Elayne Trakand, Aviendha, and Min Farshaw. He hunts down Asha'man traitors in Far Madding and kills most of them. Lan also kills Toram Riatin in a duel. Caught by guards, he is imprisoned for a short time but is set free by Cadsuane and the other Aes Sedai who followed him. Rand and Nynaeve al'Meara Travel to Shadar Logoth. There, defended by Cadsuane Melaidhrin's Aes Sedai and loyal Asha'man against the Forsaken, Rand and Nynaeve link and use the Choedan Kal to cleanse saidin of the Dark One's taint so that men who channel will no longer go mad. Whilst using so much of the One Power, the access key (of the female Choedan Kal) is destroyed. During the course of the events of the book, Rand al'Thor made an extraordinary claim: he believed he had discovered how to cleanse the Dark One's 3000-year-old taint on saidin. He discovered how to do this upon careful questioning of the Aelfinn, as well as of Herid Fel. His preparations bore great fruit when he and Nynaeve al'Meara used the two most powerful sa'angreal ever made (the Choedan Kal) to funnel the taint into Shadar Logoth. Rand al'Thor did this by creating a funnel of pure saidar and forcing saidin through the funnel. The evil in Shadar Logoth, which was born out of pure hate for the Shadow and the Dark One, attracted and reacted with the taint of saidin, and the two forces annihilated each other, removing the taint from saidin. In Knife of Dreams, it has been confirmed that saidin is clean, by both Aes Sedai and Asha'man. However, according to Jordan himself, though sane channelers no longer need to fear its destructive effects, it does not restore any already affected by it to their former selves (as far as madness is concerned, presumably the rotting sickness can now be cured). During the cleansing, a battle took place between the forces of light and the shadow. The forces of light under Cadsuane split into several groups of Aes Sedai and Asha'man linked to be ready for the upcoming attack. The Aes Sedai Sarene and Corele linked with the Asha'man Damer Flinn, while Elza (who is secretly Black Ajah) and Merise linked with Jahar (one of Merise's warders, wielding Callandor). Nesune, Beldeine, Daigian linked with Eben Hopwil. Verin and Kumira linked with a Sea Folk Windfinder Shalon. The former Damane Alivia fought without being linked, helped by a set of Angreal and Ter'angreal presumably made for battle, and by virtue of fact that she was (and is currently) the strongest and most experienced female channeler for the Light in the series thus far. The forces of the Shadow consisted of Cyndane (formerly Lanfear), Demandred, Osan'gar (formerly Aginor, who we find out has been masquerading as Corlan Dashiva, an Asha'man), Moghedien, Graendal and Aran'gar who was formerly Balthamel and now is in a female body but still channels saidin. During the fight, Osan'gar was killed by Elza (ironically a Black Ajah), Eben Hopwil by Aran'gar and Kumira by Graendal. It has also resulted in the utter destruction of the female Choedan Kal and its access key, which triggered the mass suicide of Amayar along the Islands of the Sea Folk, who believed the giant statue's destruction to signal the end of their Age of Illusion.
42609	/m/0bp_r	Around the World in Eighty Days	Jules Verne		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story starts in London on October 1, 1872. Phileas Fogg is a rich English gentleman and bachelor living in solitude at Number 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens. Despite his wealth, which is £40,000 (equal to £ today), Mr Fogg, whose countenance is described as "repose in action", lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. Very little can be said about Mr. Fogg's social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Foster, for bringing him shaving water at instead of , Mr Fogg hires a Frenchman by the name of Jean Passepartout, who is about 30 years old, as a replacement. Later, on that day, in the Reform Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Daily Telegraph, stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days. He accepts a wager for £20,000 from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by Monsieur Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8:45 P.M. on October 2, 1872, and this is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, on December 21. {| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto;" |- |+The proposed schedule | London, United Kingdom to Suez, Egypt || rail and steamer across Mediterranean | 7 days |----- | Suez to Bombay, India || steamer through Red Sea and Indian Ocean || 13 days |----- | Bombay to Calcutta, India || rail || 3 days |----- | Calcutta to Hong Kong, China || steamer across South China Sea || 13 days |----- | Hong Kong to Yokohama, Japan || steamer across South China Sea, East China Sea and through Pacific Ocean || 6 days |----- | Yokohama to San Francisco, United States || steamer across Pacific Ocean | 22 days |----- | San Francisco to New York City, United States || rail | 7 days |----- | New York to London || steamer across Atlantic Ocean and rail || 9 days |----- | colspan="2"|Total || 80 days |} Fogg and Passepartout reach Suez in time. While disembarking in Egypt, they are watched by a Scotland Yard detective named Fix, who has been dispatched from London in search of a bank robber. Because Fogg happens to answer the description of the bank robber, Fix mistakes Fogg for the criminal. Since he cannot secure a warrant in time, Fix goes on board the steamer conveying the travellers to Bombay. During the voyage, Fix becomes acquainted with Passepartout, without revealing his purpose. On the voyage, Fogg promises the engineer a large reward if he gets them to Bombay early. They dock two days ahead of schedule. After reaching India they take a train from Bombay (known today as Mumbai) to Calcutta (Kolkata). About halfway there, Fogg learns that the Daily Telegraph newspaper article was wrong—the railroad ends at Kholby and starts again 50 miles further on at Allahabad. Fogg promptly buys an elephant, hires a guide, and starts toward Allahabad. During the ride, they come across a procession, in which a young Indian woman, Aouda, is led to a sanctuary to be sacrificed by the process of suttee the next day by Brahmins. Since the young woman is drugged with the smoke of opium and hemp and is obviously not going voluntarily, the travellers decide to rescue her. They follow the procession to the site, where Passepartout secretly takes the place of Aouda's deceased husband on the funeral pyre, on which she is to be burned the next morning. During the ceremony, he then rises from the pyre, scaring off the priests, and carries the young woman away. Due to this incident, the two days gained earlier are lost, but Fogg shows no sign of regret. The travellers then hasten on to catch the train at the next railway station, taking Aouda with them. At Calcutta, they can finally board a steamer going to Hong Kong. Fix, who has secretly been following them, has Fogg and Passepartout arrested in Calcutta. However, they jump bail and Fix is forced to follow them to Hong Kong. On board, he shows himself to Passepartout, who is delighted to meet again his travelling companion from the earlier voyage. In Hong Kong, it turns out that Aouda's distant relative, in whose care they had been planning to leave her, has moved, probably to Holland, so they decide to take her with them to Europe. Meanwhile, still without a warrant, Fix sees Hong Kong as his last chance to arrest Fogg on British soil. Around this time, Passepartout becomes convinced that Fix is a spy from the Reform Club trying to see if Fogg is really going around the world. However, Fix confides in Passepartout, who does not believe a word and remains convinced that his master is not a bank robber. To prevent Passepartout from informing his master about the premature departure of their next vessel, Fix gets Passepartout drunk and drugs him in an opium den. In his dizziness, Passepartout still manages to catch the steamer to Yokohama, but neglects to inform Fogg. Fogg, on the next day, discovers that he has missed his connection. He goes in search of a vessel that will take him to Yokohama. He finds a pilot boat that takes him and Aouda to Shanghai, where they catch a steamer to Yokohama. In Yokohama, they go on a search for Passepartout, believing that he may have arrived there on the original boat. They find him in a circus, trying to earn the fare for his homeward journey. Reunited, the four board a steamer taking them across the Pacific to San Francisco. Fix promises Passepartout that now, having left British soil, he will no longer try to delay Fogg's journey, but rather support him in getting back to Britain as fast as possible to minimize the amount of his share of the stolen money that Fogg can spend. In San Francisco they get on a trans-American train to New York, encountering a number of obstacles (as well as a Mormon missionary) along the way: a massive herd of bison crossing the tracks, a failing suspension bridge, and most disastrously, the train is attacked and overcome by Sioux warriors. After heroically uncoupling the locomotive from the carriages, Passepartout is kidnapped by the Indians, but Fogg rescues him after some American soldiers volunteer to help. They continue by a wind powered sledge over the snowy prairie to Omaha, where they get a train to New York. Once in New York, and having missed departure of their ship (the China) by 45 minutes, Fogg starts looking for an alternative for the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. He finds a small steamboat, destined for Bordeaux. However, the captain of the boat refuses to take the company to Liverpool, whereupon Fogg consents to be taken to Bordeaux for the price of $2000 (equal to $ today) per passenger. On the voyage, he bribes the crew to mutiny and take course for Liverpool. Against hurricane winds and going on full steam all the time, the boat runs out of fuel after a few days. Fogg buys the boat at a very high price from the captain, soothing him thereby, and has the crew burn all the wooden parts to keep up the steam. The companions arrive at Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, in time to reach London via Dublin and Liverpool before the deadline. However, once on British soil again, Fix produces a warrant and arrests Fogg. A short time later, the misunderstanding is cleared up—the actual bank robber had been caught three days earlier in Edinburgh. In response to this, Fogg, in a rare moment of impulse, punches Fix, who immediately falls to the ground. However, Fogg has missed the train and returns to London five minutes late, assured that he has lost the wager. In his London house the next day, he apologises to Aouda for bringing her with him, since he now has to live in poverty and cannot financially support her. Aouda suddenly confesses that she loves him and asks him to marry her, which he gladly accepts. He calls for Passepartout to notify the reverend. At the reverend's, Passepartout learns that he is mistaken in the date, which he takes to be Sunday but which actually is Saturday because the party travelled east, thereby gaining a full day on their journey around the globe, by crossing the International Date Line. He did not notice this after landing in North America because the only phase of the trip that depended on vehicles departing less often than daily was the Atlantic crossing, and he had hired his own ship for that. Passepartout hurries back to Fogg, who immediately sets off for the Reform Club, where he arrives just in time to win the wager. Fogg marries Aouda and the journey around the world is complete. Passepartout and Fogg carried only a carpet bag with only two shirts and three pairs of stockings each, a mackintosh, a travelling cloak, and a spare pair of shoes. The only book they carried is Bradshaw's Continental Railway Steam Transit and General Guide. This contains timetables of trains and steamers. He also carried a huge roll of English banknotes-about £20,000. He also left with twenty guineas (equal to £ today) won at whist, of which he soon disposed.
42645	/m/0bq9g	The Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck	1939	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from McAlester prison for homicide. On his journey to his home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, he meets former preacher Jim Casy whom he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. When they arrive at his childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted and confused, he and Casy meet their old neighbor, Muley Graves, who tells them that the family has gone to stay at Uncle John Joad's home nearby. He goes on to tell them that the banks have evicted all the farmers off their land, but he refuses to leave the area. Tom and Casy get up the next morning to go to Uncle John's. There, Tom finds his family loading a converted Hudson truck with what remains of their possessions; the crops were destroyed in the Dust Bowl and, as a result, the family had to default on their loans. With their farm repossessed, the Joads cling to hope, mostly in the form of handbills distributed everywhere in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, describing the fruitful state of California and the high pay to be had in that state. The Joads are seduced by this advertising and invest everything they have into the journey. Although leaving Oklahoma would be breaking parole, Tom decides that it is a risk worth taking. Casy is invited to join the family as well. Going west on Route 66, the Joad family discovers that the road is saturated with other families making the same trek, ensnared by the same promise. In makeshift camps, they hear many stories from others, some coming back from California, and are forced to confront the possibility that their prospects may not be what they hoped. Along the road, Grampa dies and is buried in the camp; Granma dies close to the California state line, both Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon) split from the family; the remaining members, led by Ma, realize they have no choice but to go on, as there is nothing remaining for them in Oklahoma. Upon arrival, they find little hope of making a decent wage, as there is an oversupply of labor and a lack of rights, and the big corporate farmers are in collusion, while smaller farmers are suffering from collapsing prices. A gleam of hope is presented at Weedpatch Camp, one of the clean, utility-supplied camps operated by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency that has been established to help the migrants, but there is not enough money and space to care for all of the needy. As a Federal facility, the camp is also off-limits to California deputies who constantly harass and provoke the newcomers. In response to the exploitation of laborers, there are people who attempt for the workers to join unions, including Casy, who had gone to jail after taking the blame for attacking a rogue deputy. The remaining Joads work as strikebreakers on a peach orchard where Casy is involved in a strike that eventually turns violent. Tom Joad witnesses the killing of Casy and kills the attacker, becoming a fugitive. They later leave the orchard for a cotton farm where Tom is at risk of being identified for the murder he committed. He bids farewell to his mother, promising that no matter where he runs, he will be a tireless advocate for the oppressed. Rose of Sharon's baby is stillborn; however, Ma Joad remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavement. When the rains arrive, the Joads' dwelling is flooded, and they move to higher ground.
42673	/m/0bqg9	How Green Was My Valley	Richard Llewellyn	1939	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in South Wales in the reign of Queen Victoria. It tells the story of the Morgans, a respectable mining family of the South Wales Valleys, through the eyes of the youngest son, Huw Morgan. Huw's academic ability sets him apart from his elder brothers and enables him to consider a future away from this troubled industrial environment. His five brothers and his father are miners; after the eldest brother, Ivor, is killed in an mining accident, Huw moves in with his sister-in-law, Bronwen, with whom he has always been in love. One of Huw's three sisters, Angharad, marries the wealthy mine owner's son, whom she does not love, and the marriage is an unhappy one. She never overcomes her clandestine relationship with the local minister. Huw's father is later killed in a mine explosion. After everyone Huw has known either dies or moves away, he decides to leave as well, and tells us the story of his life just before he does.
42725	/m/0bqw5	Lady Audley's Secret	Mary Elizabeth Braddon			 The novel opens with the marriage of Lucy Graham, a beautiful, doll-like blonde who enchants almost all who meet her, to Sir Michael Audley, an old, rich, and kind widower, in June 1857. Lucy was a governess for the local doctor, Mr. Dawson. Until her marriage, Lucy was in service with Mrs. Vincent, and besides that very little is known about her past. Around the time of the marriage, Sir Michael’s nephew, barrister Robert Audley, welcomes back to England his old friend, George Talboys, who has returned after three years of gold prospecting in Australia. George is anxious to get news of his wife, Helen, whom he left three years ago when their financial situation became desperate, in the hope of returning to her with Australian gold. He reads in the newspaper that she has died, and, after visiting her home to confirm this, he has a complete breakdown. Robert Audley cares for his friend, and, hoping to distract him, offers to take him to his wealthy uncle’s country manor. George had a child, Georgey, who was left under the care of Lieutenant Maldon, George's father-in-law. Robert and George set off to visit Georgey, and George decides to make Robert little Georgey's guardian and caretaker of 20,000 pounds put into the boy's name. After settling the matter of the boy's guardianship, the two set off to visit Sir Michael. While at Audley Court, the country manor, Lady Audley avoids meeting with George. When the two seek an audience with the new Lady Audley, she makes many excuses to avoid their visit, but he and Robert are shown a portrait of her by Alicia Audley, Robert’s cousin. George appears greatly struck by the portrait, unbeknownst to Robert (who credits the unfavorable reaction to that evening's storm). Shortly thereafter, George disappears upon a visit to Audley Court, much to Robert’s consternation. Unwilling to believe that George has simply left suddenly and without notice, Robert begins to look into the circumstances around the strange disappearance. While searching for his friend, Robert begins to take notes of the events as they unfold. His notes indicate the involvement of Lady Audley, much to his chagrin, and he slowly begins to collect evidence against her. One night, he reveals the evidence and notes that George was in possession of many letters that his former wife wrote. Lady Audley immediately sets off to London, where the letters were kept, and Robert follows after her. However, by the time he arrives, he discovers that George's possessions have been broken into with the help of a local locksmith and that the letters have vanished. However, one possession, a book with a note written by George's wife that matches Lady Audley's handwriting, remains. This confirms Robert's suspicion that Lady Audley is implicated in George's disappearance; it also leads Robert to conclude that Lady Audley is actually George's supposedly dead wife. Suspecting the worst of Lady Audley and being afraid for little Georgey's life, Robert travels to Lieutenant Maldon's house and demands possession of the boy. Once Robert has Georgey under his control, he places the boy in a school run by Mr. Marchmont. Afterwards, Robert visits George's father, Mr. Harcourt Talboys, and confronts the Squire with his son's death. Mr. Harcourt listens dispassionately to the story. In the course of his visit to the Talboy's manor, Robert is entranced by George’s sister Clara, who looks startlingly like George. Clara’s passion for finding her brother spurs Robert on. During February 1859, Robert continues searching for evidence. He receives a notice that his uncle is ill, and he quickly returns to Audley Court. While there, Robert speaks with Mr. Dawson and receives a brief description of all that is known about Lucy's background. He hears that Lucy was employed by Mrs. Vincent at her school since 1852, and, to verify this claim, Robert tracks down Mrs. Vincent, who is in hiding because of debts. According to Miss Tonks, a teacher at Mrs. Vincent's school, Lucy actually arrived at the school in August 1854 and was secretive about her past. Miss Tonks gives Robert a travel box that used to belong to Lucy, and upon examining stickers on the box, Robert discovers both the name Lucy Graham and the name Helen Talboys. Robert realizes that Helen Talboys faked her death before creating her new identity. When Robert confronts Lucy, she tells him that he has no proof, and he leaves to find more evidence, heading to Castle Inn, which is run by Phoebe Marks's husband, Luke. During the night, Lucy forces Phoebe Marks to let her into the inn and Lucy sets the place on fire, with the intention of killing Robert. However, Robert survives and returns to Audley Court and again confronts Lucy. This time, she says she is crazy and confesses her life's story to Robert and Sir Michael, claiming that George abandoned her originally and she had no choice but to abandon her old life and child in order to find another, wealthier husband. Sir Michael is unhappy and leaves with Alicia to travel through Europe. Robert invites a Doctor Mosgrave to make a more astute judgment regarding Lucy's sanity, and he proclaims that she is indeed victim to latent insanity, which overpowers her in times of stress and makes her very dangerous to any and all. Lucy, under the name of Madame Taylor, enters a mental institution located somewhere in Belgium along the route between Brussels and Paris. While being committed, Lucy confesses to Robert that she killed George by pushing him down a deserted well in the garden of Audley Court. Robert grieves for his friend George until Luke Marks, who was fatally injured in the fire, manages, before dying, to tell Robert that George survived Lady Audley’s attempted murder and that George, with Luke’s help, left with intent of returning to Australia. Robert is overjoyed, and he asks Clara to marry him and go with him to Australia to find George. Clara accepts, but before they set out, George returns and reveals that he actually visited New York instead. The narrative ends with the death of Lucy abroad, Clara and Robert happily married and living in a country cottage with George and his son. Robert's formerly infatuated cousin Alicia marries her once-spurned suitor, Sir Harry Towers, and Audley Court is left abandoned along with all of its unhappy memories.
42863	/m/0bs60	A Streetcar Named Desire	Tennessee Williams			 Blanche DuBois is a fading, but still-attractive, Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others (but most of all, herself) from her reality, and an attempt to make herself still attractive to new male suitors. Blanche arrives at the apartment of her sister Stella Kowalski in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, on Elysian Fields Avenue; the local transportation that she takes to arrive there includes a streetcar route named "Desire." The steamy, urban ambiance is a shock to Blanche's nerves. Stella, who fears the reaction of her husband Stanley, welcomes Blanche with some trepidation. As Blanche explains that their ancestral Southern plantation, Belle Reve in Laurel, Mississippi, has been "lost" due to the "epic fornications" of their ancestors, her veneer of self-possession begins to slip drastically. Blanche tells Stella that her supervisor allowed her to take time off from her job as an English teacher because of her upset nerves, when in fact, she has been fired for having an affair with a 17-year-old student. This turns out not to be the only seduction in which she has engaged, and, along with other problems, has led her to escape Laurel. A brief marriage marred by the discovery that her husband, Allan Grey, was having a homosexual affair and his subsequent suicide has led Blanche to withdraw into a world in which fantasies and illusions blend seamlessly with reality. In contrast to both the self-effacing and deferential Stella and the pretentious refinement of Blanche, Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski, is a force of nature: primal, rough-hewn, brutish, and sensual. He dominates Stella in every way and is physically and emotionally abusive. Stella tolerates his primal behavior as this is part of what attracted her in the first place; their love and relationship are heavily based on powerful—even animal-like—sexual chemistry, something that Blanche finds impossible to understand. The arrival of Blanche upsets her sister and brother-in-law's system of mutual dependence. Stella's concern for her sister's well-being emboldens Blanche to hold court in the Kowalski apartment, infuriating Stanley and leading to conflict in his relationship with his wife. Blanche and Stanley are on a collision course, and Stanley's friend and Blanche's would-be suitor, Harold "Mitch" Mitchell, gets trampled in their path. Stanley discovers Blanche's past through a co-worker who travels to Laurel frequently, and he confronts her with the things that she has been trying to put behind her, partly out of concern that her character flaws may be damaging to the lives of those in her new home, just as they were in Laurel, and partly out of a distaste for her pretense in general. However, his attempts to "unmask" her are predictably cruel and violent. In their final confrontation, it is implied that Stanley rapes Blanche, resulting in her nervous breakdown. Stanley has her committed to a mental institution, and in the closing moments, Blanche utters her signature line to the kindly doctor who leads her away: "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." The reference to the streetcar named Desire—providing the aura of New Orleans geography—is symbolic. Blanche not only has to travel on a streetcar route named "Desire" to reach Stella's home on "Elysian Fields" but her desire acts as an irrepressible force throughout the play—she can only hang on as her desires lead her. The character of Blanche is thought to be based on Williams' sister Rose Williams who struggled with her mental health and became incapacitated after a lobotomy.
42906	/m/0bsm5	The Queen of the Damned	Anne Rice	1988-10	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0fdjb": "Supernatural", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 Part One follows several different people over the same period of several days. Several of the characters appear in the two previous books, including Armand, Daniel (the "boy reporter" of Interview with the Vampire), Marius, Louis, Gabrielle and Santino. Each of the six chapters in Part One tells a different story about a different person or group of people. Two things unify these chapters: a series of dreams about red-haired twin sisters, and the fact that a powerful being is killing vampires around the world by means of spontaneous combustion. Pandora and Santino rescue Marius, having answered his telepathic call for help. Marius informs his rescuers that Akasha has been awakened by Lestat, or rather his rock music, for he has joined a rock band of mortals whose names are Alex, Larry and Tough Cookie. Having been awakened by Lestat's rebellious music, Akasha destroys her husband Enkil and plots to rule the world. Akasha is also revealed as the source of the attacks on other vampires. Part Two takes place at Lestat's concert. Jesse, a member of the secret Talamasca and relative of Maharet, is mortally injured while attending the concert, and is taken to Maharet's Sonoma compound where she is made into a vampire. The vampires from Part One later congregate in the Sonoma compound. The only vampires not present are Akasha and Lestat. Akasha has abducted Lestat and takes him as an unwilling consort to various locations in the world, inciting women to rise up and kill the men who have oppressed them. Part Three takes place at Maharet's home in a Sonoma forest. There Maharet tells the story of Akasha and the red-haired twins (who are, in fact, Maharet and her sister, Mekare) to Pandora, Jesse, Marius, Santino, Eric, Armand, Daniel, Louis and Gabrielle. Also present are Mael and Khayman, who already know the story. In Part Four, Akasha confronts the gathered vampires at Maharet's compound. There she explains her plans and offers the vampires a chance to be her "angels" in her New World Order. Akasha plans to kill 90 percent of the world's human men, and to establish a new Eden in which women will worship Akasha as a goddess. If the assembled vampires refuse to follow her, she will destroy them. The vampires refuse, but before Akasha can destroy them, Mekare enters. Mekare kills Akasha by severing her head. Mekare then consumes Akasha's brain and heart, thereby saving the lives of the remaining vampires and becoming the new Queen of the Damned. In Part Five, the vampires leave Maharet's compound and assemble at Armand's resort, the Night Island, (according to Anne Rice, inspired by Fire Island) in Florida to recover. They eventually go their separate ways (as told in The Tale of the Body Thief). Lestat takes Louis to see David Talbot in London. After their brief visit with Talbot they depart into the night, an incensed Louis and his angry words filling Lestat with glee. The Queen of the Damned, deals with the origins of vampires themselves. The mother of all vampires, Akasha, begins as a pre-Egyptian queen, in a land called Kemet (which will become Egypt), many thousands of years ago. During this time two powerful witches (Maharet and Mekare) live in the mountains of an unnamed region. The witches are able to communicate with invisible spirits and gain simple favors from them. During this period there is a bloodthirsty, invisible spirit known as Amel who continually asks the two witches if they need his assistance, although they prudently decline the offer. The witches' village is destroyed and they are incarcerated by the king and queen, who desire their knowledge. When the witches offend Akasha, the Queen condemns the twins. Enkil then orders his chief steward (who is Khayman as a mortal man) to rape the twins in his stead, which would prove their lack of power, before the eyes of the court. Afterward the witches are cast out into the desert. While making her way back home with a pregnant Maharet, Mekare curses the king and queen secretly with the bloodthirsty spirit. Eventually this spirit inflicts such torment on Akasha and Enkil that they again demand advice and help from the two witches. Conspirators, unhappy with the young king's policies, assassinate the royal couple in Khayman's house whilst they were attempting to exorcise Amel, who had been tormenting Khayman. While the king and queen lie dying, the evil spirit sees its chance to ensnare the soul of the dying queen and pulls it back into her body. The spirit combines itself with the flesh and blood of the queen, transforming her into a vampire. Akasha allows the king to drink her blood, which saves his life. They then order Khayman to find the witches and bring them back to Egypt so that they could use their knowledge of spirits to help them, as they feel guilty because of their thirst for blood. However, when the witches admit that they cannot help the monarchs, Akasha orders the mutilation of the witches: Maharet loses her eyes and Mekare her tongue. Afterward, Khayman, who had been turned into a vampire by Akasha, comes to the witches' cell and turns them too. The three flee together, but are caught by Akasha's soldiers. Khayman escapes, but Maharet and Mekare are further punished. The witches are put into two separate coffins which are then set afloat on two separate bodies of water. They are only reunited near the end of the novel Queen of the Damned. In Mekare's absence, Maharet returns to watch over her daughter and her descendants. Maharet's descendants become what she calls the Great Family. A maternal line, the Great Family includes every culture, religion, ethnicity, and race. The Great Family represents all humanity and shows the vampires what Akasha would destroy with the creation of her New World Order. As the source of all vampires, Akasha is connected to all vampires by the blood and spirit they collectively share. In an experiment by the first Keeper, Akasha and Enkil are exposed to sunlight when they are several thousand years old. This merely darkens their skin. However, the result on all other vampires is extreme, and many of the weakest vampires die, thus confirming the legend that anything that harms Akasha will also directly affect all of her progeny.
43023	/m/0btc7	Gulliver's Travels	Jonathan Swift	1726	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 ;4 May 1699 — 13 April 1702 The book begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver, in the style of books of the time, gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. He enjoys travelling, although it is that love of travel that is his downfall. During his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and finds himself a prisoner of a race of tiny people, less than 6 inches tall, who are inhabitants of the island country of Lilliput. After giving assurances of his good behaviour, he is given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favourite of the court. From there, the book follows Gulliver's observations on the Court of Lilliput. He is also given the permission to roam around the city on a condition that he would not harm their subjects. Gulliver assists the Lilliputians to subdue their neighbours, the Blefuscudians, by stealing their fleet. However, he refuses to reduce the island nation of Blefuscu to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King and the court. Gulliver is convicted of treason for "making water" in the capital (even though he was putting out a fire and saving countless lives)--among other "crimes." Gulliver is charged with treason and sentenced to be blinded. With the assistance of a kind friend, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he spots and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship which safely takes him back home. This book of the Travels is a topical political satire. ;20 June 1702 — 3 June 1706 When the sailing ship Adventure is blown off course by storms and forced to put in to land for want of fresh water, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions and found by a farmer who is tall (the scale of Brobdingnag is about 12:1, compared to Lilliput's 1:12, judging from Gulliver estimating a man's step being ). He brings Gulliver home and his daughter cares for Gulliver. The farmer treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money. The word gets out and the Queen of Brobdingnag wants to see the show. She loves Gulliver and she buys him and keeps him as a favourite at court. Since Gulliver is too small to use their huge chairs, beds, knives and forks, the queen commissions a small house to be built for Gulliver so that he can be carried around in it. This is referred to as his 'travelling box'. Between small adventures such as fighting giant wasps and being carried to the roof by a monkey, he discusses the state of Europe with the King. The King is not happy with Gulliver's accounts of Europe, especially upon learning of the use of guns and cannons. On a trip to the seaside, his travelling box is seized by a giant eagle which drops Gulliver and his box into the sea, where he is picked up by some sailors, who return him to England. This book compares the truly moral man to the representative man; the latter is clearly shown to be the lesser of the two. Swift, being in Anglican holy orders, was likely to make such comparisons. ;5 August 1706 — 16 April 1710 After Gulliver's ship is attacked by pirates, he is marooned close to a desolate rocky island, near India. Fortunately he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but unable to use them for practical ends. ("La puta" is Spanish for "the whore". Swift was attacking reason and the deism movement in this book, the last one he wrote for the Travels.) Laputa's custom of throwing rocks down at rebellious cities on the ground seems the first time that aerial bombardment was conceived as a method of warfare. Gulliver tours Laputa as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and sees the ruin brought about by the blind pursuit of science without practical results, in a satire on bureaucracy and on the Royal Society and its experiments. At the Grand Academy of Lagado, great resources and manpower are employed on researching completely preposterous schemes such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to mix paint by smell, and uncovering political conspiracies by examining the excrement of suspicious persons (see muckraking). Gulliver is then taken to Balnibarbi to await a trader who can take him on to Japan. While waiting for passage, Gulliver takes a short side-trip to the island of Glubbdubdrib, where he visits a magician's dwelling and discusses history with the ghosts of historical figures, the most obvious restatement of the "ancients versus moderns" theme in the book. In Luggnagg he encounters the struldbrugs, unfortunates who are immortal. They do not have the gift of eternal youth, but suffer the infirmities of old age and are considered legally dead at the age of eighty. After reaching Japan, Gulliver asks the Emperor "to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed upon my countrymen of trampling upon the crucifix", which the Emperor grants. Gulliver returns home, determined to stay there for the rest of his days. ;7 September 1710 – 2 July 1715 Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to the sea as the captain of a merchantman as he is bored with his employment as a surgeon. On this voyage he is forced to find new additions to his crew whom he believes to have turned the rest of the crew against him. His crew then mutiny, and after keeping him contained for some time resolve to leave him on the first piece of land they come across and continue as pirates. He is abandoned in a landing boat and comes upon a race of hideous, deformed and savage humanoid creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly afterwards he meets a race of horses who call themselves Houyhnhnms (which in their language means "the perfection of nature"); they are the rulers, while the deformed creatures called Yahoos are human beings in their base form. Gulliver becomes a member of a horse's household, and comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting his fellow humans as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However, an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization, and expels him. He is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship, and is surprised to see that Captain Pedro de Mendez, a Yahoo, is a wise, courteous and generous person. He returns to his home in England, but he is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos and becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family and his wife, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables. This book uses coarse metaphors to describe human depravity, and the Houyhnhms are symbolized as not only perfected nature but also the emotional barrenness which Swift maintained that devotion to reason brought.
43168	/m/0bv89	The Color Purple	Alice Walker	1982	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Celie, the protagonist and narrator, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in the South. She starts writing letters to God because her father, Alphonso, beats and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once. Celie gave birth to a girl, whom her father presumably killed in the woods. Celie has a second child, a boy, whom her father also abducts. Celie’s mother becomes ill and dies. Alphonso brings home a new wife, and continues to abuse Celie. Celie and her bright, pretty younger sister, Nettie, learn that a man known only as Mr. Johnson wants to marry Nettie. Mr. Johnson has a mistress named Shug Avery, a sultry lounge singer whose photograph fascinates Celie. Alphonso refuses to let Nettie marry, and instead offers Mr. Johnson Celie, "an ugly woman," as his bride. Mr. Johnson eventually accepts the offer, forcing Celie into a difficult and joyless married life. Nettie runs away from Alphonso and takes refuge at Celie’s house. Mr. Johnson still desires Nettie, and when he advances on her, she flees. Never hearing from Nettie again, Celie assumes her dead. Mr. Johnson's sister Kate feels sorry for Celie, and tells her to fight back against Mr. Johnson rather than submit to his abuses. Harpo, Mr. Johnson's son, falls in love with a large, spunky girl named Sofia. Shug Avery comes to town to sing at a local bar, but Celie is not allowed to go see her. Sofia gets pregnant and marries Harpo. Celie is amazed by Sofia’s defiance in the face of Harpo’s and Mr. Johnson’s attempts to treat Sofia as an inferior. Harpo, kinder and gentler than his father, still assumes this means he is doing something wrong and under the advice of Mr. Johnson and a momentarily jealous Celie, attempts to beat Sofia into submission. However, he consistently fails, as Sofia is at least as strong and a more experienced brawler. Shug falls ill and Mr. Johnson takes her into his house. Shug is initially rude to Celie, but the two women become friends as Celie takes charge of nursing Shug. Celie finds herself infatuated with Shug and attracted to her sexually. Frustrated by Harpo’s consistent attempts to subordinate her, Sofia moves out, taking her children with her. Several months later, Harpo opens a juke joint where Shug sings nightly. Celie grows confused over her feelings toward Shug. Shug decides to stay when she learns that Mr. Johnson beats Celie when Shug is away. Shug and Celie’s relationship grows intimate, and Shug begins to ask Celie questions about sex. Sofia returns for a visit and promptly gets in a fight with Harpo’s new girlfriend, Squeak. In town one day, the mayor’s wife, Miss Millie, asks Sofia to work as her maid. Sofia replies with a sassy "Hell no!" When the mayor slaps Sofia for her "insubordination", Sofia returns the blow, knocking the mayor down, for which she is sent to jail. Squeak’s attempts to get Sofia released are futile. Sofia is sentenced to work for 12 years as the mayor’s maid, though she is eventually released from jail six months early. Despite her new marriage, Shug instigates a sexual relationship with Celie, and the two frequently share the same bed. One night Shug asks Celie about her sister and Celie tells her she assumes Nettie is dead because she'd promised to write Celie but never did. Shug helps Celie recover letters from Nettie that Mr. Johnson has been hiding from her for decades. Overcome with emotion, Celie reads the letters in order, wondering how to keep herself from killing Mr. Johnson. The letters indicate that Nettie befriended a missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine, and accompanied them to Africa to do ministry work. Samuel and Corrine have two adopted children, Olivia and Adam. Nettie and Corrine have become close friends, but Corrine, noticing that her adopted children resemble Nettie, wonders if Nettie and Samuel have a secret past. Increasingly suspicious, Corrine tries to limit Nettie’s role within her family. Nettie becomes disillusioned with her missionary experience, as she finds the Africans self-centered and obstinate. Corrine becomes ill with a fever. Nettie asks Samuel to tell her how he adopted Olivia and Adam. Based on Samuel’s story, Nettie realizes that the two children are actually Celie’s biological children (whom Alphonso, her stepfather, abducted), alive after all. Nettie also learns that Alphonso is actually only Nettie and Celie’s stepfather, not their biological father, who was a store owner whom white men lynched because they resented his success. Alphonso told Celie and Nettie he was their real father because he wanted to inherit the house and property that was once their mother’s. Nettie confesses to Samuel and Corrine that she is in fact their children’s biological aunt. The gravely ill Corrine refuses to believe Nettie. Later, Corrine dies, finally having accepted Nettie’s story and reconciled thereto just before her death. Meanwhile, Celie visits Alphonso, who confirms Nettie’s story, admitting that he is only the sisters' stepfather. Celie begins to lose some of her faith in God, but Shug tries to get her to reimagine God in her own way, rather than in the traditional image of the old, bearded white man. Celie moves to Tennessee and designs and sews tailored pants, turning her hobby into a business. She returns to her home to learn that Mr. Johnson has changed dramatically, becoming much more considerate and even helping her sew some of the clothing for her business. He proposes that they marry "in the spirit as well as in the flesh," but she declines. She also finds out that Alphonso, her stepfather, has died. Celie inherits the land and moves back into the house. Around this time, Shug has fallen in love with Germaine, a 19-year-old flautist that is part of her blues band, and the news of this crushes Celie. Shug travels across the country and to Panama with Germaine, all the while writing postcards to Celie. Nevertheless, Celie pledges to love Shug even if Shug does not love her back. Meanwhile, Nettie and Samuel marry and prepare to return to America. Before they leave, Adam marries Tashi, an African girl. Following African tradition, Tashi undergoes the painful rituals of female circumcision and facial scarring. In solidarity, Adam undergoes the same facial scarring ritual. The end of the novel has Nettie, Samuel, Olivia, Adam, and Tashi arriving at Celie's house. Nettie and Celie embrace, having not seen each other for over 30 years. They introduce one another to their respective families as the novel ends.
43206	/m/0bvhl	A Midsummer Night's Dream	William Shakespeare	1600	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The play features three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, which is set simultaneously in the woodland and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the moon. In the opening scene, Hermia refuses to follow her father's, Egeus, instructions to marry Demetrius, whom he has chosen for her. In response, Egeus quotes before Theseus an ancient Athenian law whereby a daughter must marry the suitor chosen by her father, or else face death. Theseus offers her another choice: lifelong chastity while worshiping the goddess Diana as a nun. At that same time, Peter Quince and his fellow players gather to produce a stage play, "the most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe", for the Duke and the Duchess. Quince reads the names of characters and bestows them to the players. Nick Bottom, who is playing the main role of Pyramus, is over-enthusiastic and wants to dominate others by suggesting himself for the characters of Thisbe, the Lion, and Pyramus at the same time. He would also rather be a tyrant and recites some lines of Ercles. Quince ends the meeting with "at the Duke's oak we meet". Meanwhile, Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen, Titania, have come to the forest outside Athens. Titania tells Oberon that she plans to stay there until she has attended Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania refuses to give her Indian changeling to Oberon for use as his "knight" or "henchman," since the child's mother was one of Titania's worshippers. Oberon seeks to punish Titania's disobedience, so he calls for his mischievous court jester Puck or "Robin Goodfellow" to help him apply a magical juice from a flower called "love-in-idleness", originally it was a white flower but when struck by Cupid's bow it tints the flower purple. When someone applies the potion to a sleeping person's eyelids, it makes the victim fall in love with the first living thing seen upon awakening. He instructs Puck to retrieve the flower so that he can make Titania fall in love with the first thing she sees when waking up, which he is sure will be an animal of the forest. Oberon's intent is to shame Titania into giving up the little Indian boy. He says, "And ere I take this charm from off her sight, / As I can take it with another herb, / I'll make her render up her page to me." Having seen Demetrius act cruelly toward Helena, Oberon orders Puck to spread some of the magical juice from the flower on the eyelids of the young Athenian man. Instead, Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, not having actually seen either before, and administers the juice to the sleeping Lysander. Helena, coming across him, wakes him while attempting to determine whether he is dead or asleep. Upon this happening, Lysander immediately falls in love with Helena. Oberon sees Demetrius still following Hermia and is enraged. When Demetrius decides to go to sleep, Oberon sends Puck to get Helena while he charms Demetrius' eyes. Upon waking up, he sees Helena. Now, both men are in pursuit of Helena. However, she is convinced that her two suitors are mocking her, as neither loved her originally. Hermia is at a loss to see why her lover has abandoned her, and accuses Helena of stealing Lysander away from her. The four quarrel with each other until Lysander and Demetrius become so enraged that they seek a place to duel each other to prove whose love for Helena is the greatest. Oberon orders Puck to keep Lysander and Demetrius from catching up with one another and to remove the charm from the two men, so that they are back to normal. Lysander continues to love Hermia, and Demitrius realizes that he does love Helena. Meanwhile, Quince and his band of six labourers ("rude mechanicals", as they are described by Puck) have arranged to perform their play about Pyramus and Thisbe for Theseus' wedding and venture into the forest, near Titania's bower, for their rehearsal. Bottom is spotted by Puck, who (taking his name to be another word for a jackass) transforms his head into that of a donkey. When Bottom returns for his next lines, the other workmen run screaming in terror, much to Bottom's confusion, since he hasn't felt a thing during the transformation. Determined to wait for his friends, he begins to sing to himself. Titania is awakened by Bottom's singing and immediately falls in love with him. She lavishes him with attention and presumably makes love to him. While she is in this state of devotion, Oberon takes the changeling. Having achieved his goals, Oberon releases Titania, orders Puck to remove the donkey's head from Bottom, and arrange everything so that Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena will believe that they have been dreaming when they awaken. The fairies then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene, during an early morning hunt. They wake the lovers and, since Demetrius does not love Hermia any more, Theseus overrules Egeus's demands and arranges a group wedding. The lovers decide that the night's events must have been a dream. After they all exit, Bottom awakes, and he too decides that he must have experienced a dream "past the wit of man". In Athens, Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers watch the six workmen perform Pyramus and Thisbe. Given a lack of preparation, the performers are so terrible playing their roles to the point where the guests laugh as if it were meant to be a comedy, and afterward everyone retires to bed. Afterward, Oberon, Titania, Puck, and other fairies enter, and bless the house and its occupants with good fortune. After all other characters leave, Puck "restores amends" and suggests to the audience that what they just experienced might be nothing but a dream (hence the name of the play).
44005	/m/0c047	The English Patient	Michael Ondaatje	1992-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The historical backdrop for this novel is the Second World War in Northern Africa and Italy. Hana, a young Canadian Army nurse, lives in the abandoned Villa San Girolamo in Italy, which is filled with hidden, undetonated bombs. All she knows about her English patient is that he was burned beyond recognition in a plane crash before being taken to the hospital by a Bedouin tribe. He also claimed to be English. The only possession that the patient has is a copy of Herodotus' histories that survived the fire. He has annotated these histories and is constantly remembering his explorations in the desert in great detail, but cannot state his own name. The patient is, in fact, László de Almásy, a Hungarian desert explorer who was part of a British cartography group. He chose, however, to erase his identity and nationality. Caravaggio, a Canadian who served in Britain's foreign intelligence service since the late 1930s, was a friend of Hana's father, who died in the war. Caravaggio, who entered the world of spying because of his skill as a thief, comes to the villa in search of Hana. He overheard in another hospital that she was there taking care of a burned patient. Caravaggio bears physical and psychological scars; he was deliberately left behind to spy on the German forces and was eventually caught, interrogated and tortured, his thumbs having been cut off. Seeking vengeance three years later, Caravaggio (like Almásy) is addicted to morphine, which Hana supplies. One day, while Hana is playing the piano, two British soldiers enter the villa. One of the soldiers is Kip, an Indian Sikh who has been trained as a sapper or combat engineer, specializing in bomb and ordnance disposal. Kip explains that the Germans often booby-trapped musical instruments with bombs, and that he will stay in the villa to rid it of its dangers. Kip and the English Patient immediately become friends. Prompted to tell his story, the Patient begins to reveal all: An English gentleman, Geoffrey Clifton and his wife, Katharine, accompanied the patient's desert exploration team. The Patient's job was to draw maps of the desert, and the Cliftons' plane made this job easier. Almásy fell in love with Katharine Clifton one night as she read from Herodotus' histories aloud around a campfire. They soon began a very intense affair, but in 1938, Katharine cut it off, claiming that Geoffrey would go mad if he discovered them. When World War II broke out in 1939, the members of the exploration team decided to pack up base camp, and Geoffrey Clifton offered to pick up Almásy in his plane, and takes Katharine with him. However, Geoffrey turns around and crashes his plane in an effort to kill all three of them, revealing he had known about the affair. Geoffrey died immediately; Katharine survived, but was horribly injured. Almásy took her to "the cave of swimmers", a place the exploration team had previously discovered, and covered her with a parachute so he could leave to find help. After three days, he reached a town, but the British were suspicious of him because he was incoherent and had a foreign surname. They locked him up as a spy. When Almásy finally escaped, he knew it was too late to save Katharine, so he allowed himself to be captured by the Germans, helping their spy cross the desert into Cairo. He then returns to collect Katherine's body; however while flying over the desert, the aircraft is observed by Germans and shot down into flames. Almásy parachuted down covered in flames which was where the Bedouins found him. Caravaggio, who had had suspicions that the Patient was not English, fills in details. Geoffrey Clifton was, in fact, an English spy and had intelligence about Almásy's affair with Katharine. He also had intelligence that Almásy was already working with the Germans. Over time while Almásy divulges the details of his past, Kip becomes close to Hana. Kip's brother had always distrusted the West, but Kip entered the British Army willingly. He was trained as a sapper byLord Suffolk, an English gentleman, who welcomed Kip into his family. Under Lord Suffolk's training, Kip became very skilled at his job. When Lord Suffolk and his team were killed by a bomb, Kip became separated from the world and emotionally removed from everyone. He decided to leave England and began defusing bombs in Italy. Kip's best friend, a British Army sergeant, is killed in a bomb explosion. Kip forms a romantic relationship with Hana and uses it to reconnect to humanity. He becomes a part of a community again and begins to feel comfortable as a lover. Then he hears on the wireless that the United States have dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. Kip is convinced that they would not have dropped the bomb if the nation were white. He feels betrayed by the side he was fighting for. He becomes depressed and separates himself from everyone, including Hana. He eventually leaves.
44077	/m/0c0ny	Captains Courageous	Rudyard Kipling	1897		 Harvey Cheyne is the son of a wealthy railroad magnate and his wife, who are over-indulgent parents in San Diego, California. Washed overboard from a transatlantic steamship and rescued by fishermen off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the young Harvey Cheyne cannot persuade them to take him quickly to port, nor convince them of his wealth. Disko Troop, captain of the We're Here, offers him a job as part of the crew until they return to port. With no other choice, Harvey accepts. Through a series of trials and adventures, the youth learns to adjust to his rough new life and, with the help of his friend, the captain's son Dan Troop, he makes progress. Eventually, the schooner returns to port and Harvey wires his parents. They rush cross-country by their private rail car, given priority over commercial traffic, to Boston, Massachusetts. From there they go to the fishing town of Gloucester to find that their son has matured to become an industrious, serious and considerate young man. Harvey's mother rewards the seaman who initially rescued her son. Harvey's father rewards Captain Troop by hiring his son Dan to work on his prestigious tea clipper fleet. He is delighted at his son's new maturity and their relationship improves, even as Harvey decides to begin his career with his father's shipping lines.
44245	/m/0c1wm	Ramayana	Valmiki			 Dasharatha was the king of Ayodhya. He had three queens and they are Kausalya, Kaikeyi and Sumitra. He was childless for a long time and, anxious to produce an heir, he performs a fire sacrifice known as Putra-Kameshti Yagya. As a consequence, Rama is first born to Kausalya, Bharata is born to Kaikeyi, and Lakshmana and Shatrughna are born to Sumitra. These sons are endowed, to various degrees, with the essence of the God Vishnu; Vishnu had opted to be born into mortality in order to combat the demon Ravana, who was oppressing the Gods, and who could only be destroyed by a mortal. The boys are reared as the princes of the realm, receiving instructions from the scriptures and in warfare. When Rama is 16 years old, the sage Vishwamitra comes to the court of Dasharatha in search of help against demons, who were disturbing sacrificial rites. He chooses Rama, who is followed by Lakshmana, his constant companion throughout the story. Rama and Lakshmana receive instructions and supernatural weapons from Vishwamitra, and proceed to destroy the demons. Janaka was the king of Mithila. One day, a female child was found in the field by the king in the deep furrow dug by his plough. Overwhelmed with joy, the king regarded the child as a "miraculous gift of God". The child was named Sita, the Sanskrit word for furrow. Sita grew up to be a girl of unparalleled beauty and charm. When Sita was of marriageable age, the king decided to have a swayamvara which included a contest. The king was in possession of an immensely heavy bow, presented to him by the God Shiva: whoever could wield the bow could marry Sita. The sage Vishwamitra attends the swayamvara with Rama and Lakshmana. Only Rama wields the bow and breaks it. Marriages are arranged between the sons of Dasharatha and daughters of Janaka. Rama gets married to Sita, Lakshmana to Urmila, Bharata to Mandavi and Shatrughan to Shrutakirti. The weddings are celebrated with great festivity at Mithila and the marriage party returns to Ayodhya. After Rama and Sita have been married for twelve years, an elderly Dasharatha expresses his desire to crown Rama, to which the Kosala assembly and his subjects express their support. On the eve of the great event, Kaikeyi—her jealousy aroused by Manthara, a wicked maidservant—claims two boons that Dasharatha had long ago granted her. Kaikeyi demands Rama to be exiled into wilderness for fourteen years, while the succession passes to her son Bharata. The heartbroken king, constrained by his rigid devotion to his given word, accedes to Kaikeyi's demands. Rama accepts his father's reluctant decree with absolute submission and calm self-control which characterizes him throughout the story. He is joined by Sita and Lakshmana. When he asks Sita not to follow him, she says, "the forest where you dwell is Ayodhya for me and Ayodhya without you is a veritable hell for me." After Rama's departure, king Dasharatha, unable to bear the grief, passes away. Meanwhile, Bharata who was on a visit to his maternal uncle, learns about the events in Ayodhya. Bharata refuses to profit from his mother's wicked scheming and visits Rama in the forest. He requests Rama to return and rule. But Rama, determined to carry out his father's orders to the letter, refuses to return before the period of exile. However, Bharata carries Rama's sandals, and keeps them on the throne, while he rules as Rama's regent. Rama, Sita and Lakshmana journeyed southward along the banks of river Godavari, where they built cottages and lived off the land. At the Panchavati forest they are visited by a rakshasa woman, Surpanakha, the sister of Ravana. She attempts to seduce the brothers and, failing in this, attempts to kill Sita. Lakshmana stops her by cutting off her nose and ears. Hearing of this, her demon brother, Khara, organizes an attack against the princes. Rama annihilates Khara and his demons. When news of these events reaches Ravana, he resolves to destroy Rama by capturing Sita with the aid of the rakshasa Maricha. Maricha, assuming the form of a golden deer, captivates Sita's attention. Entranced by the beauty of the deer, Sita pleads with Rama to capture it. Lord Rama, aware that this is the play of the demons, is unable to dissuade Sita from her desire and chases the deer into the forest, leaving Sita under Lakshmana's guard. After some time Sita hears Rama calling out to her; afraid for his life she insists that Lakshmana rush to his aid. Lakshmana tries to assure her that Rama is invincible, and that it is best if he continues to follow Rama's orders to protect her. On the verge of hysterics Sita insists that it is not she but Rama who needs Lakshmana's help. He obeys her wish but stipulates that she is not to leave the cottage or entertain any strangers. He draws a chalk outline, the Lakshmana rekha around the cottage and casts a spell on it that prevents anyone from entering the boundary but allows people to exit. Finally with the coast clear, Ravana appears in the guise of an ascetic requesting Sita's hospitality. Unaware of the devious plan of her guest, Sita is tricked into leaving the rekha and then forcibly carried away by the evil Ravana. Jatayu, a vulture, tries to rescue Sita, but is mortally wounded. At Lanka Sita is kept under the heavy guard of rakshasis. Ravana demands Sita marry him, but Sita, eternally devoted to Rama, refuses. During their search, they meet the demon Kabandha and the ascetic Shabari, who direct them towards Sugriva and Hanuman. The Kishkindha Kanda is set in the monkey citadel Kishkindha. Rama and Lakshmana meet Hanuman, the greatest of monkey heroes and an adherent of Sugriva, the banished pretender to the throne of Kishkindha. However Sugriva soon forgets his promise and spends his time in debauchery. The clever monkey Queen Tara, second wife of Sugriva (initially wife of Vali), calmly intervenes to prevent an enraged Lakshmana from destroying the monkey citadel. She then eloquently convinces Sugriva to honor his pledge. Sugriva then sends search parties to the four corners of the earth, only to return without success from north, east and west. The southern search party under the leadership of Angad and Hanuman learns from a vulture named Sampati that Sita was taken to Lanka. The Sundara Kanda forms the heart of Valmiki's Ramayana and consists of a detailed, vivid account of Hanuman's adventures. After learning about Sita, Hanuman assumes a gargantuan form and makes a colossal leap across the ocean to Lanka. Here, Hanuman explores the demon's city and spies on Ravana. He locates Sita in Ashoka grove, who is wooed and threatened by Ravana and his rakshasis to marry Ravana. He reassures her, giving Rama's signet ring as a sign of good faith. He offers to carry Sita back to Rama, however she refuses, reluctant to allow herself to be touched by a male other than her husband. She says that Rama himself must come and avenge the insult of her abduction. Hanuman then wreaks havoc in Lanka by destroying trees and buildings, and killing Ravana's warriors. He allows himself to be captured and produced before Ravana. He gives a bold lecture to Ravana to release Sita. He is condemned and his tail is set on fire, but he escapes his bonds and, leaping from roof to roof, sets fire to Ravana's citadel and makes the giant leap back from the island. The joyous search party returns to Kishkindha with the news. This book describes the battle between the army of Rama, constructed with the help of Sugriv, and Ravana. Having received Hanuman's report on Sita, Rama and Lakshmana proceed with their allies towards the shore of the southern sea. There they are joined by Ravana's renegade brother Vibhishana. The monkeys named "Nal" and "Neel" construct a floating bridge (known as Rama Setu) across the ocean, and the princes and their army cross over to Lanka. A lengthy battle ensues and Rama kills Ravana. Rama then installs Vibhishana on the throne of Lanka. On meeting Sita, Rama asks her to undergo an "agni pariksha" (test of fire) to prove her purity, as he wanted to get rid of the rumours surrounding Sita's purity. When Sita plunges into the sacrificial fire, Agni the lord of fire raises Sita, unharmed, to the throne, attesting to her purity. The episode of agni pariksha varies in the versions of Ramayana by Valmiki and Tulsidas. The above version is from Valmiki Ramayana. In Tulsidas's Ramacharitamanas Sita was under the protection of Agni so it was necessary to bring her out before reuniting with Rama. At the expiration of his term of exile, Rama returns to Ayodhya with Sita and Lakshmana, where the coronation is performed. This is the beginning of Ram Rajya, which implies an ideal state with good morals. The Uttara Kanda is regarded to be a later addition to the original story by Valmiki. Rama yields to public opinion and orders a court of inquiry, which finds Sita guilty. Rama reluctantly banishes Sita to the forest, where sage Valmiki provides shelter in his ashrama (hermitage). Here she gives birth to twin boys, Lava and Kusha, who became pupils of Valmiki and are brought up in ignorance of their identity. Valmiki composes the Ramayana and teaches Lava and Kusha to sing it. Later, Rama holds a ceremony during Ashwamedha yagna, which the sage Valmiki, with Lava and Kusha, attends. Lava and Kusha sing the Ramayana in the presence of Rama and his vast audience. When Lava and Kusha recite about Sita's exile, Rama becomes grievous, and Valmiki produces Sita. Sita calls upon the Earth, her mother, to receive her and as the ground opens, she vanishes into it. Rama then learns that Lava and Kusha are his children. Later a messenger from the Gods appears and informs Rama that the mission of his incarnation was over. Rama returns to his celestial abode.
44447	/m/0c3ls	The Forge of God	Greg Bear	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel features scenes and events including the discovery of a near-dead alien in the desert, who clearly says in English, "I'm sorry, but there is bad news," and this alien's subsequent interrogation and autopsy; the discovery of an artificial geological formation and its subsequent nuclear destruction by a desperate military; and the Earth's eventual destruction by the mutual annihilation of a piece of neutronium and a piece of antineutronium dropped into Earth's core. There is another alien faction at work, however, represented on Earth by small spider-like robots that recruit human agents through some form of mind control. They frantically collect all the human data, biological records, tissue samples, seeds, and DNA from the biosphere that they can, and evacuate a handful of people from Earth. In space, this faction's machines combat and eventually destroy the attackers, though not before Earth's fate is sealed. The evacuees eventually settle a newly terraformed Mars while some form the crew of a Ship of the Law to hunt down the home world of the killers, a quest described in the sequel, Anvil of Stars. One of the point of view characters is Arthur Gordon, a scientist who, with his wife Francine and son Martin is among those rescued from the destruction of Earth. Some other characters are close to an American president who fails to take action against the threat. The two books show at least one solution to the Fermi paradox, with electromagnetically noisy civilisations being snuffed out by the arrival of self-replicating machines designed to destroy any potential threat to their (possibly long-dead) creators. (A similar theme is explored in Fred Saberhagen's Berserker novels.)
44449	/m/0c3m3	Blood Music	Greg Bear	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the novel, renegade biotechnologist Vergil Ulam creates simple biological computers based on his own lymphocytes. Faced with orders from his nervous employer to destroy his work, he injects them into his own body, intending to smuggle the 'noocytes' (as he calls them) out of the company and work on them elsewhere. Inside Ulam's body, the noocytes multiply and evolve rapidly, altering their own genetic material and quickly becoming self-aware. The nanoscale civilization they construct soon begins to transform Ulam, then others. The people who are infected start to find that genetic faults such as myopia and high blood pressure are fixed. The bumps along the spine as well as the nipples fade. Finally, white stripes and ridges start growing over their bodies. Ulam reports that the cells seem to sing. Through infection, conversion and assimilation of humans and other organisms the cells eventually aggregate most of the biosphere of North America into a region seven thousand kilometres wide. This civilization, which incorporates both the evolved noocytes and recently-assimilated conventional humans, is eventually forced to abandon the normal plane of existence in favor of one in which thought does not require a physical substrate. The reason for the noocytes' inability to remain in this reality is somewhat related to the strong anthropic principle. The book's structure is titled "inter-phase", "prophase", "metaphase", "anaphase", "telophase" and "interphase." This mirrors the major phases of cell cycle: interphase and mitosis.
44472	/m/0c3rf	The World According to Garp	John Irving	1978	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The story deals with the life of T. S. Garp. His mother, Jenny Fields, is a strong-willed nurse who wants a child but not a husband. She encounters a dying ball turret gunner known only as Technical Sergeant Garp who was severely brain damaged in combat. Jenny nurses Garp, observing his infantile state and almost perpetual autonomic sexual arousal. As a matter of practicality and kindness in making his passing as comfortable as possible and reducing his agitation, she manually gratifies him several times. Unconstrained by convention and driven by practicality and her desire for a child, Jenny uses Garp's sexual response to impregnate herself, and names the resultant son after him "T. S." (standing only for "Technical Sergeant"). Jenny raises young Garp alone, taking a position at the all-boys school Steering School in New England. Garp grows up, becoming interested in sex, wrestling, and writing fiction—three topics in which his mother has little interest. After his graduation in 1961, his mother takes him to Vienna where he writes his first novella. His mother, too, starts writing, - her autobiography. After they return to Steering Garp marries Helen, the wrestling coach's daughter and founds his family, he a struggling writer, she a teacher of English. The publication of A Sexual Suspect makes his mother famous as she becomes a feminist icon as feminists view her book as a manifesto of a woman who does not care to bind herself to a man, and who chooses to raise a child on her own. She nurtures and supports women traumatized by men among them the Ellen Jamesians, a group of women who cut off their tongues in support of and named after an eleven-year-old girl whose tongue was cut off by her rapists to silence her. Garp becomes a devoted parent, wrestling with anxiety for the safety of his children and a desire to keep them safe from the dangers of the world. He and his family inevitably experience dark and violent events through which the characters change and grow. Garp learns (often painfully) from the women in his life (including transsexual ex-football player Roberta Muldoon) struggling to become more tolerant in the face of intolerance. The story is decidedly rich with (in the words of the fictional Garp's teacher) "lunacy and sorrow," and the sometimes ridiculous chains of events the characters experience still resonate with painful truth. The novel contains several framed narratives: Garp's first novella, The Pension Grillparzer; Vigilance, a short story; and the first chapter of his novel, The World According to Bensenhaver. As well, the book contains some motifs that appear in almost all John Irving novels: bears, wrestling, Vienna, New England, people who are uninterested in having sex, and a complex Dickensian plot that spans the protagonist's whole life. Adultery (another common Irving motif) also plays a large part, culminating in one of the novel's most harrowing and memorable scenes. There is also a tincture of another familiar Irving trope, castration anxiety, most obvious in the lamentable fate of Michael Milton.
44524	/m/0c432	Mutiny on the Bounty	James Norman Hall	1932	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story through a fictional first-person narrator by the name of Roger Byam, based on actual crew member Peter Heywood. Byam, although not one of the mutineers, remains with the Bounty after the mutiny. He subsequently returns to Tahiti, and is eventually arrested and taken back to England to face a court-martial. He and several other members of the crew are eventually acquitted.
44672	/m/0c57q	The Mothman Prophecies	John A. Keel	1975		 The book combines Keel's account of his investigation into alleged sightings of a large, winged creature called Mothman in the vicinity of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, during 1966 and 1967 with his own theories about UFOs and various supernatural phenomena, ultimately connecting them to the December 15, 1967, collapse of the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River.
45047	/m/0c84x	The Memory of Earth	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Humanity has lived for 40 million years on a planet called Harmony, after leaving an Earth that has been destroyed by human conflict. In order not to repeat the mistakes that led to the destruction of civilization on Earth, a computer, known as the Oversoul, was left as guardian of this planet. Its main mission was to prevent humans from developing technologies that could make wars a global affair. For that, humans were genetically modified so they could communicate with the Oversoul. The Oversoul uses this connection to make humans quite easily distracted when thinking about forbidden technologies, leading them to forget that train of thought. However, after this long time the Oversoul is beginning to fail, and it chooses a group of humans to return to Earth in search of the Keeper of Earth, in the hopes it will be able to find a way to maintain power over the people on Harmony. To this end the Oversoul recruits Volemak, father of the protagonist of the story, Nafai. Nafai and Issib, his brother, begin to try and defy the Oversoul's capability to override thought. Through this they learn of the danger that it is in. Nafai begins hearing the Oversoul's voice in his mind. The first book focuses on the family's eventual betrayal, the taking of the Index, and the downfall of the man Gaballufix, who had been planning to ally the city of Basilica, the home of the main characters and the setting of the first half of the book, with a malignant nation. Nafai, Elemak and Mebbekew, his older half brothers, Issib and his father Volemak are eventually forced to leave the city. They come back to retrieve the Index of the Oversoul, which allows them to communicate with it directly. Because of Nafai's careless blunders and miraculous successes, Elemak, Nafai's oldest brother, begins to hate him, a theme that will play out throughout the rest of the saga.
45076	/m/0c8c5	Sixth Column	Robert A. Heinlein	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A top secret research facility hidden in the Colorado mountains is the last remaining outpost of the United States Army after its defeat by the PanAsians. The conquerors had absorbed the Soviets after being attacked by them and had then gone on to absorb India as well. The invaders are depicted as ruthless and cruel—for example, they crush an abortive rebellion by killing 150,000 American civilians as punishment. The laboratory is in turmoil as the novel begins. All but six of the personnel have died suddenly, due to unknown forces released by an experiment operating within the newly-discovered magneto-gravitic or electro-gravitic spectra. The surviving scientists soon learn that they can selectively kill people by releasing the internal pressure of their cell membranes, among other things. Using this discovery they construct a race-selective weapon which will kill only Asians. They devise other uses for the awesome forces they have discovered, but how can a handful of men overthrow an occupation force that controls all communications and when it is a crime to print a word in English? Noting that the invaders have allowed the free practice of religion (the better to pacify their slaves), the Americans set up a church of their own and begin acting as "Priests of Mota" (Mota is atom spelled backwards) in order to build a resistance movement—which Major Ardmore, the protagonist of the book, refers to as the Sixth Column (as opposed to a traitorous fifth column).
45081	/m/0c8f1	The Puppet Masters	Robert A. Heinlein		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "Sam" is an agent in "Section", a United States government intelligence organization. It is so secret it reports only to the President, and is entirely unknown to anyone else. Sam is superbly trained, equipped with a built-in communicator he calls a "skull phone" as well as a number of ways to commit suicide if the need arises. Called in by "the Old Man", his boss and the head of the organization, they go to investigate the report of a flying saucer landing in Grinnell, Iowa after other agents sent earlier fail to report back. With them is another agent named "Mary", a stunningly beautiful redhead. Sam is informed that her life is only slightly less precious than the Old Man's, and that he (Sam) is the most expendable. In Iowa, they discover that the people are being brought under the mental control of repulsive, slug-like creatures that attach to their backs, just below the neck. Detaching one slug from its host, they seal it in a film canister and bring it back to headquarters in Washington, D.C. By the time they get there though, the remains of the slug are a stinking mess, and they are unable to convince the President that there is an invasion. Sam eventually leads a small team back to Iowa. They inadvertently succeed in capturing a live slug, as one agent becomes "hagridden" without them realizing it. However, Mary spots it when he does not react to her allure like a normal male. The agent is unmasked, subdued and confined. The slug escapes by transferring to another person, and eventually to Sam himself. He immediately becomes enslaved and escapes the agency. Meanwhile, the invasion continues to expand. Slugs are shipped through the mail to recruit more humans. Gradually they infect more and more important people, especially the members of exclusive clubs frequented by politicians. Before the Old Man tracks Sam down and captures him, they have infected the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, whose department controls the United States Secret Service (responsible for the President's personal security); the slugs are a step away from infecting the President himself. By the time Sam recovers in hospital, anyone fully dressed is suspect. The Old Man wants someone to "wear" the slug so it can be interrogated. Sam cannot bear the idea, but when Mary volunteers, he gives in and does it himself. He is completely aware of himself when possessed, but totally committed to the slugs' cause. The slug dies under torture from electric shocks, but in the process Sam learns that they come from Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Thoroughly disgusted by the treatment he has received, Sam is ready to quit. He is at first furious with Mary for entrapping him, and then with the Old Man, when he learns that his boss tricked Mary into it. At this point, it is revealed that the Old Man is Sam's father. Eventually the politicians realize the danger. From Minnesota to Louisiana, the center of the country has been taken over. On a solo mission to Kansas City, Sam is shocked to discover that the number of slugs is much greater than thought. Instead of taking over key people, they have absorbed the entire human population of the occupied territory. However, he and the Old Man are unable to convince the President to stop a meticulously planned military counter-invasion of the heartland; the entire force is taken over by the enemy. They find that slugs are capable of fissioning in two fairly quickly. The number of infected humans must now be so large that any military action would kill tens of millions. The problem having reached a scale beyond their ability to influence it, Sam and Mary are given leave. By this time, they have fallen in love and get married before going to Sam's bolt-hole in the Adirondack Mountains. Their idyll is interrupted when a slug takes over first his beloved pet cat, then Mary. Sam manages to push Mary onto a hot fire to kill the slug, leaving them both badly burned, but alive and free. Returning to HQ for treatment, they find that a new law requires everyone to be functionally naked to show that a slug is not in control. The law is rigorously enforced not as much by police as by vigilantes, who often shoot first and confirm afterward. Sam begins to believe that the slugs have him marked for repossession. They can communicate by "direct conference", where their hosts sit back to back and the slugs partially merge. A network of such interactions could spread his description rapidly among the invaders, who knew how valuable he is. Some scientists even speculate that the slugs are really just one organism in many bodies. For their part, the slugs drop all pretenses and openly wage war on the states to their east and west. Where human hosts cannot go, they use animals such as dogs, horses and even elephants. Sam and Mary go with the Old Man to investigate a saucer which crash-landed in Mississippi. Inside they encounter the slugs' hosts from Titan, small elf-like creatures, who died when Earth's air entered the ship. There are also tanks containing humans in suspended animation. Mary has a mental breakdown when she enters the ship. It triggers long-suppressed memories from when she was a child in a failed Venus colony which was taken over by slugs. She herself spent years in one of the tanks. Mary caught a disease which killed her slug. They discover that the disease is "Nine-day Fever", which is almost 100% fatal if untreated. However, they find that it kills slugs faster than humans. It might just be possible to spread the fever among the slugs using "direct conference", and then treat as many humans as possible before they die. The Old Man springs a surprise on Sam. He had expected Sam to replace him one day, and Sam would show when he was ready by opposing the Old Man's authority. From now on, Sam is in charge, official titles notwithstanding. Time is short – diseases erupt in the infected areas, as the slugs neglect hygiene and often drive their hosts until they starve. Outbreaks of plague in the Communist countries suggest that they were taken over even before the center of the United States. The counter-attack begins. Releasing animals with infected slugs into enemy territory, they wait for the epidemic to break out. Days pass, and then calls start coming in from desperate people whose slugs have died. Hundreds of thousands of agents, Sam and the Old Man among them, parachute in to treat victims with drug-dispensing guns. Just when the battle seems won, the Old Man is possessed by one of the few healthy slugs and kidnaps Sam, intending to take them both into hiding to regroup for a new invasion. Sam watches in horror as the Old Man's slug begins dividing so he too can be possessed. Despite being tied up, Sam is able to crash their flyer into the sea, killing the slug. In the final section, Sam writes in a journal before embarking with Mary on a spaceship which will take the battle to Titan. The slugs will remain a problem for years to come, having infected too many parts of the Earth to root out easily, but they will never be able to take over.
45084	/m/0c8ff	Henry V	William Shakespeare			 Elizabethan stages did not use scenery. Acknowledging the difficulty of conveying great battles and shifts of location on a bare stage, the Chorus (a single actor) calls for a "Muse of fire" so that the actor playing King Henry can "[ā]ssume the port [bearing] of Mars". He asks, "Can this cockpit [i.e. the theatre] hold / The vasty fields of France?" and encourages the audience to use their "imaginary forces" (imaginations) to overcome the stage's limitations: "Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts." The early scenes deal with the embarkation of Henry's fleet for France, and include a real-life incident in which the Earl of Cambridge and two others plotted to assassinate Henry at Southampton. (Henry's clever uncovering of the plot and his ruthless treatment of the plotters show that he has changed from the earlier plays in which he appeared.) When the Chorus reappears, he describes the country's dedication to the war effort – "They sell the pasture now to buy the horse." The chorus tells the audience "We'll not offend one stomach with our play", a humorous reference to the fact that the scene of the play crosses the English Channel. The Chorus appears again, seeking support for the English navy: "Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy" he says, and notes that "the ambassador from the French comes back / Tells Harry that the king doth offer him / Katherine his daughter." At the siege of Harfleur, Henry utters one of Shakespeare's best-known speeches, beginning "Once more unto the breach, dear friends..." Before the Battle of Agincourt, victory looks uncertain, and the young king's heroic character emerges in his decision to wander around the English camp at night, in disguise, so as to comfort his soldiers and determine what they really think of him. He agonizes about the moral burden of being king, noting that a king is only a man. Before the battle, Henry rallies his troops with the famous St. Crispin's Day Speech, referring to "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers". Following the victory at Agincourt, Henry attempts to woo the French princess, Catherine of Valois. This is difficult because neither speaks the other's language well, but the humour of their mistakes actually helps achieve his aim. The action ends with the French king adopting Henry as his heir to the French throne and the prayer of the French queen "that English may as French, French Englishmen, receive each other, God speak this Amen." But before the curtain descends, the Chorus re-appears one more time and ruefully notes, of Henry's own heir's "state, so many had the managing, that they lost France, and made his England bleed" – a reminder of the tumultuous reign of Henry VI of England, which Shakespeare had previously brought to the stage in a trilogy of plays: Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry VI, Part 3. As with all of Shakespeare's serious plays, there are also a number of minor comic characters whose activities contrast with and sometimes comment on the main plot. In this case, they are mostly common soldiers in Henry's army, and they include Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph from the Henry IV plays. The army also includes a Scot, an Irishman, an Englishman and Fluellen, a comically stereotyped Welsh soldier, whose name is an attempt at a phonetic rendition of "Llywelyn". The play also deals briefly with the death of Falstaff, Henry's estranged friend from the Henry IV plays, whom Henry remembers fondly.
45133	/m/0c8sb	The Wind in the Willows	Kenneth Grahame	1908	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the start of the book, it is spring time: the weather is fine, and good-natured Mole loses patience with spring cleaning. He flees his underground home, heading up to take in the air. He ends up at the river, which he has never seen before. Here he meets Ratty (a water rat), who at this time of year spends all his days in, on and close by the river. Rat takes Mole for a ride in his rowing boat. They get along well and spend many more days boating, with Rat teaching Mole the ways of the river. One summer day shortly thereafter, Rat and Mole find themselves near the grand Toad Hall and pay a visit to Toad. Toad is rich (having inherited wealth from his father): jovial, friendly and kind-hearted but aimless and conceited, he regularly becomes obsessed with current fads, only to abandon them as quickly as he took them up. Having only recently given up boating, Toad's current craze is his horse-drawn caravan. In fact, he is about to go on a trip, and persuades the reluctant Rat and willing Mole to join him. The following day (after Toad has already tired of the realities of camp life and sleeps-in to avoid chores), a passing motor car scares the horse, causing the caravan to overturn into a ditch. Rat does a war dance and threatens to have the law on the motor car drivers, but this marks the immediate end of Toad's craze for caravan travel, to be replaced with an obsession for motor cars. When the three animals get to the nearest town, they have Toad go to the police station to make a complaint against the vandals and their motor car and thence to a blacksmith to retrieve and mend the caravan. Toad - in thrall to the experience of his encounter - refuses. Rat and Mole find an inn from where they organise the necessary steps and, exhausted, return home by train. Meanwhile, Toad makes no effort to help, instead deciding to order himself a motor car. Mole wants to meet the respected but elusive Badger, who lives deep in the Wild Wood, but Rat - knowing that Badger does not appreciate visits - refuses to take him, telling Mole to be patient and wait and Badger will pay them a visit himself. Nevertheless, on a snowy winter's day, whilst the seasonally somnolent Ratty dozes unaware, Mole impulsively goes to the Wild Wood to explore, hoping to meet Badger. He gets lost in the woods, sees many "evil faces" among the wood's less-welcoming denizens, succumbs to fright and panic and hides, trying to stay warm, amongst the sheltering roots of a tree. Rat, upon awakening and finding Mole gone, guesses his mission from the direction of Mole's tracks and, equipping himself with a pistol and a stout stick, goes in search, finding him as snow begins to fall in earnest. Attempting to find their way home, Rat and Mole quite literally stumble across Badger's home — Mole barks his shin upon the boot scraper on Badger's doorstep. Rat finds it and a doormat, knowing they are an obvious sign of hope, but Mole thinks Rat has gone crazy, only to believe him when the digging reveals a door. Badger - en-route to bed in his dressing-gown and slippers - nonetheless warmly welcomes Rat and Mole to his large and cosy underground home and hastens to give them hot food and dry clothes. Badger learns from his visitors that Toad has crashed six cars, has been hospitalised three times, and has spent a fortune on fines. Though nothing can be done at the moment (it being winter), they resolve that once spring arrives they will make a plan to protect Toad from himself; they are, after all, his friends and are worried for his well-being. With the arrival of spring, Badger visits Mole and Rat to do something about Toad's self-destructive obsession. The three of them go to visit Toad, and Badger tries talking him out of his behaviour, to no avail. They decide to put Toad under house arrest, with themselves as the guards, until Toad changes his mind. Feigning illness, Toad bamboozles the Water Rat (who is on guard duty at the time) and escapes. He steals a car, drives it recklessly and is caught by the police. He is sent to prison on a twenty-year sentence. Badger and Mole are cross with Rat for his gullibility but draw comfort from the fact that they need no longer waste their summer guarding Toad. However, Badger and Mole continue to live in Toad Hall in the hope that Toad may return. Meanwhile in prison, Toad gains the sympathy of the Jailer's Daughter who helps him to escape disguised as a washerwoman. Though free again, Toad is without money or possessions other than the clothes upon his back, and is being pursued by the police. Still disguised as a washerwoman, and after hitchhiking a lift on a train, Toad comes across a horse-drawn barge. The Barge's Owner offers him a lift in exchange for Toad's services as a "washer woman". After botching the wash, Toad gets into a fight with the barge-woman, who deliberately tosses him in the canal. After making off with the barge horse, which he then sells to a gypsy, Toad flags down a passing car, which happens to be the very one which he stole earlier. The car owners, not recognizing Toad disguised as a washer woman, permit him to drive their car. Once behind the wheel, he is repossessed by his former passion and drives furiously, declaring his true identity to the outraged passengers who try to seize him. This leads to an accident, after which Toad flees once more. Pursued by police he runs accidentally into a river, which carries him by sheer chance to the house of the Water Rat. Toad now hears from Rat that Toad Hall has been taken over by weasels, stoats and ferrets from the Wild Wood, who have driven out its former custodians, Mole and Badger. Although upset at the loss of his house, Toad realises what good friends he has and how badly he has behaved. Badger then arrives and announces that he knows of a secret tunnel into Toad Hall through which the enemies may be attacked. Armed to the teeth, Rat, Mole and Toad enter via the tunnel and pounce upon the unsuspecting weasels who are holding a party in honour of their leader. Having driven away the intruders, Toad holds a banquet to mark his return, during which (for a change) he behaves both quietly and humbly. He makes up for his earlier wrongdoings by seeking out and compensating those he has wronged, and the four friends live out their lives happily ever after. In addition to the main narrative, the book contains several independent short-stories featuring Rat and Mole. These appear for the most part between the chapters chronicling Toad's adventures, and are often omitted from abridgements and dramatizations. The chapter Dulce Domum describes Mole's return to his home, accompanied by Rat, in which despite finding it in a terrible mess after his abortive spring clean he rediscovers, with Rat's help, a familiar comfort. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn tells how Mole and Rat go in search of Otter's missing son Portly, whom they find in the care of the god Pan. (Pan removes their memories of this meeting "lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure".) Finally in Wayfarers All Ratty shows a restless side to his character when he is sorely tempted to join a Sea Rat on his travelling adventures.
45227	/m/0c9fk	The Hunting of the Snark	Lewis Carroll	1876	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After crossing the sea guided by the Bellman's map of the Ocean—a blank sheet of paper—the hunting party arrive in a strange land. The Baker recalls that his uncle once warned him that, though catching Snarks is all well and good, you must be careful; for, if your Snark is a Boojum, then you will softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again. With this in mind, they split up to hunt. Along the way, the Butcher and Beaver -previously mutually wary for the Butcher's specialty in preparing beavers- become fast friends, the Barrister falls asleep and dreams of a court trial defended by the Snark, and the Banker loses his sanity after being attacked by a frumious Bandersnatch. At the end, the Baker calls out that he has found a Snark; but when the others arrive he has mysteriously disappeared, 'For the Snark was a Boojum, you see'.
45232	/m/0c9gq	Jonathan Livingston Seagull	Richard Bach	1970	{"/m/012lzc": "Self-help", "/m/070wm": "Spirituality", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The book tells the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a seagull who is bored with the daily squabbles over food. Seized by a passion for flight, he pushes himself, learning everything he can about flying, until finally his unwillingness to conform results in his expulsion from his flock. An outcast, he continues to learn, becoming increasingly pleased with his abilities as he leads an idyllic life. One day, Jonathan is met by two gulls who take him to a "higher plane of existence" in that there is no heaven but a better world found through perfection of knowledge, where he meets other gulls who love to fly. He discovers that his sheer tenacity and desire to learn make him "pretty well a one-in-a-million bird." In this new place, Jonathan befriends the wisest gull, Chiang, who takes him beyond his previous learning, teaching him how to move instantaneously to anywhere else in the Universe. The secret, Chiang says, is to "begin by knowing that you have already arrived." Not satisfied with his new life, Jonathan returns to Earth to find others like him, to bring them his learning and to spread his love for flight. His mission is successful, gathering around him others who have been outlawed for not conforming. Ultimately, the very first of his students, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, becomes a teacher in his own right and Jonathan leaves to teach other flocks. Part One of the book finds young Jonathan Livingston frustrated with the meaningless materialism and conformity and limitation of the seagull life. He is seized with a passion for flight of all kinds, and his soul soars as he experiments with exhilarating challenges of daring and triumphant aerial feats. Eventually, his lack of conformity to the limited seagull life leads him into conflict with his flock, and they turn their backs on him, casting him out of their society and exiling him. Not deterred by this, Jonathan continues his efforts to reach higher and higher flight goals, finding he is often successful but eventually he can fly no higher. He is then met by two radiant, loving seagulls who explain to him that he has learned much, and that they are there now to teach him more. Jonathan transcends into a society where all the gulls enjoy flying. He is only capable of this after practising hard alone for a long time (described in the first part). In this other society, real respect emerges as a contrast of the coercive force that was keeping the former "Breakfast Flock" together. The learning process, linking the highly experienced teacher and the diligent student, is raised into almost sacred levels, suggesting that this may be the true relation between human and God. Because of this, each has been described as believing that human and God, regardless of the all immense difference, are sharing something of great importance that can bind them together: "You've got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull." He realizes that you have to be true to yourself: "You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way." In the third part of the book are the last words of Jonathan's teacher: "Keep working on love." Through his teachings, Jonathan understands that the spirit cannot be really free without the ability to forgive, and that the way to progress leads—for him, at least—through becoming a teacher, not just through working hard as a student. Jonathan returns to the Breakfast Flock to share his newly discovered ideals and the recent tremendous experience, ready for the difficult fight against the current rules of that society. The ability to forgive seems to be a mandatory "passing condition." "Do you want to fly so much that you will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help them know?" Jonathan asks his first student, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, before getting into any further talks. The idea that the stronger can reach more by leaving the weaker friends behind seems totally rejected. Hence, love, deserved respect, and forgiveness all seem to be equally important to the freedom from the pressure to obey the rules just because they are commonly accepted.
45492	/m/0cc9m	I Am Legend	Richard Matheson	1954	{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02psyd2": "Zombies in popular culture", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09vxq_p": "Catastrophic literature", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The main character is Robert Neville, apparently the sole survivor of a pandemic whose symptoms resemble vampirism. It is implied that the pandemic was caused by a war, and that it was spread by dust storms in the cities and an explosion in the mosquito population. The narrative details Neville's daily life in Los Angeles as he attempts to comprehend, research, and possibly cure the disease, to which he is immune. Neville's past is revealed through flashbacks. The vampires only come out at night and become comatose by day, though they also sometimes come out earlier during cloudy weather. Neville survives by barricading himself by sunset inside his house, further protected by garlic, mirrors, and crosses. Swarms of vampires would regularly surround his house, trying to find ways to get inside. During the day, he scavenges for supplies and methodically searches out the inactive vampires, driving stakes into their hearts to kill them. After bouts of depression and alcoholism, Neville decides to find out the scientific cause of the pandemic. He obtains books and other research materials from a library, and through painstaking research discovers the root of the vampiric disease in a strain of bacteria capable of infecting both deceased and living hosts. He also discovers that much of the efficacy of the garlic, mirrors, and crosses were actually "hysterical blindess", the result of previous psychological conditioning of the infected (particularly the religious) who believed that they were effective against vampires. Driven to insanity by the disease, the vampires now reacted as they believed they should react when confronted with these items. Even then, it was constrained to the beliefs of the particular person, such that a vampire who was Christian would fear the cross, but a vampire who was Jewish would not. Neville also discovers more efficient means of killing the infected, other than just driving a stake into their hearts. This included exposing them to direct sunlight (which killed the bacteria) or inflicting deep wounds on their bodies so that the bacteria switch from being anaerobic symbionts to aerobic parasites, rapidly consuming their hosts when exposed to air. He is now killing such large numbers of vampires in his daily forays that his nightly visitors have diminished significantly. After three years, Neville sees an apparently uninfected woman, Ruth, abroad in the daylight, and captures her. After some convincing, Ruth tells him her story of how she and her husband survived the pandemic (though her husband was killed two weeks earlier). Neville is puzzled by the fact that she is upset when he speaks of killing vampires, on grounds that if her story of survival was true, she would have become hardened to the act. One night Neville is startled awake and finds Ruth about to leave. Suspicious, he questions her motives, but relates the trauma of his past, whereupon they comfort each other. Ruth reluctantly allows him a blood sample but knocks him senseless when he realizes she is infected. When he wakes, Neville discovers a note from Ruth confessing that she is actually infected and that Neville was responsible for her husband's death. Ruth admits that she was sent to spy on him. The infected have slowly overcome their disease until they can spend short periods of time in sunlight and are attempting to rebuild society; but they fear and hate Neville who has destroyed some of their people along with the true vampires (dead bodies animated by the germ) during his daytime excursions against the latter. Ruth warns Neville that her people will attempt to capture him, and that he should leave his house and escape; but Neville disregards Ruth's warning and is captured. Neville wakes in a prison where he is visited by Ruth, who informs him that she is a ranking member of the new society but, unlike the others, does not resent him. She acknowledges the need for Neville's execution, and gives him pills, claiming they will "make it easier". Badly injured, Neville accepts his fate and asks Ruth not to let this society become heartless. Ruth kisses him and leaves. Neville goes to his prison window and sees all the infected waiting for his execution. Judging by their reactions to the sight of him, he now recognizes their point of view. Having hitherto seen the destruction of the infected survivors as a moral imperative to be pursued for his own and mankind's survival, he failed to realize that the infected have come to view him in fear and awe. To them, he was an invisible killer who moved by day, killing their loved ones as they hibernated. He realizes that even as vampires were legend in pre-infection times, he, a remnant of old humanity, is now a legend to the new race born of the infection. He therefore remarks to himself as he dies: "[I am] a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend".
45896	/m/0cfvd	The Stranger	Albert Camus		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02m4t": "Existentialism", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Part One begins with Meursault finding out of his mother's death. At her funeral, he expresses none of the expected emotions of grief. When asked if he wishes to view the body, he says no, and, instead, smokes and drinks coffee with milk in front of the coffin. Rather than expressing his feelings, he only comments to the reader about the others at the funeral. He later encounters Marie, a former employee of his firm, and the two become re-acquainted and begin to have a sexual relationship, regardless of the fact that Meursault's mother died just a day before. In the next few days, he helps his friend and neighbour, Raymond Sintès, take revenge on a Moorish girlfriend suspected of infidelity. For Raymond, Meursault agrees to write a letter to his girlfriend, with the sole purpose of inviting her over so that Raymond can have sex with her but kick her out at the last minute as emotional revenge. Meursault sees no reason not to help him, and it pleases Raymond. He does not express concern that Raymond's girlfriend is going to be emotionally hurt, as he believes Raymond's story that she has been unfaithful, and he himself is both somewhat drunk and characteristically unfazed by any feelings of empathy. In general he considers other people either interesting or annoying. The letter works: the girlfriend returns, but the situation escalates when she slaps Raymond after he tries to kick her out, and Raymond beats her. Raymond is taken to court where Meursault testifies that she had been unfaithful, and Raymond is let off with a warning. After this, the girlfriend's brother and several Arab friends begin tailing Raymond. Raymond invites Meursault and Marie to a friend's beach house for the weekend, and when there, they encounter the spurned girlfriend's brother and an Arab friend; these two confront Raymond and wound him with a knife during a fist fight. Later, walking back along the beach alone and now armed with a pistol he took from Raymond so that Raymond would not do anything rash, Meursault encounters the Arab. Meursault is now disoriented on the edge of heatstroke, and when the Arab flashes his knife at him, Meursault shoots. Despite killing the Arab man with the first gunshot, he shoots the corpse four more times after a brief pause. He does not divulge to the reader any specific reason for his crime or emotions he experiences at the time, if any, aside from the fact that he was bothered by the heat and bright sunlight. Part Two begins with Meursault's incarceration, explaining his arrest, time in prison, and upcoming trial. His general detachment makes living in prison very tolerable, especially after he gets used to the idea of not being able to go places whenever he wants to and no longer being able to satisfy his sexual desires with Marie. He passes the time sleeping, or mentally listing the objects he owned back in his apartment building. At the trial, Meursault's quietness and passivity is seen as demonstrative of his seeming lack of remorse or guilt by the prosecuting attorney, and so the attorney concentrates more upon Meursault's inability or unwillingness to cry at his mother's funeral than on the actual murder. The attorney pushes Meursault to tell the truth but never comes through and later, on his own, Meursault explains to the reader that he simply was never really able to feel any remorse or personal emotions for any of his actions in life. The dramatic prosecutor theatrically denounces Meursault to the point that he claims Meursault must be a soulless monster, incapable of remorse and that he thus deserves to die for his crime. Although Meursault's attorney defends him and later tells Meursault that he expects the sentence to be light, Meursault is alarmed when the judge informs him of the final decision: that he will be decapitated publicly. In prison, while awaiting the execution of his death sentence by the guillotine, Meursault meets with a chaplain, but rejects his proffered opportunity of turning to God, explaining that God is a waste of his time. Although the chaplain persists in attempting to lead Meursault from his atheism, Meursault finally accosts him in a rage, with a climactic outburst on his frustrations and the absurdity of the human condition; his personal anguish at the meaninglessness of his existence without respite. At the beginning of his outrage he mentions other people in anger, that they have no right to judge him, for his actions or for who he is, no one has the right to judge someone else. Meursault ultimately grasps the universe's indifference towards humankind (coming to terms with his execution): "As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the benign indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with howls of execration."
45903	/m/0cfw7	The Man in the High Castle	Philip K. Dick	1962-01-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Giuseppe Zangara's assassination of U.S. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933, led to the weak governments of John Nance Garner (formerly FDR's VP-elect), and later of the Republican John W. Bricker in 1940. Both politicians failed to surmount the Great Depression and maintained the country's isolationist policy against participating in the Second World War; thus, the U.S. had insufficient military capabilities to assist the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, or to defend itself against Japan in the Pacific. In 1941, the Nazis conquered the USSR and then exterminated most of its Slavic peoples; the few whom they allowed to live were confined to reservations. In the Pacific, the Japanese destroyed the entire U.S. Navy fleet in a decisive, definitive attack on Pearl Harbor; thereafter, the superior Japanese military conquered Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania during the early forties. Afterward, the Axis Powers, each attacking from opposite fronts, conquered the coastal United States, and, by 1947, the United States and other remaining Allied forces surrendered to the Axis. Japan established the puppet Pacific States of America out of Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, parts of Nevada and Washington as part of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The remaining Mountain, Great Plains and Southwestern states became the Rocky Mountain States, a buffer between the PSA and the remaining USA, now a Nazi puppet state in the style of Vichy France. Having defeated the Allies of World War II, the Third Reich and Imperial Japan became the resultant superpowers of their world and consequently embarked upon a Cold War. One of the core narrative elements (Operation Dandelion) is centred on a pre-emptive Nazi nuclear strike on the Japanese Home Islands. The Nazis "have the hydrogen bomb" and the ability to wipe out the Home Islands. Their nuclear energy capabilities also fuel extremely fast air travel and the colonization of the moon, Venus, and Mars. After Adolf Hitler's syphilitic incapacitation, Martin Bormann, as Nazi Party Chancellor, assumes power as Führer of Germany. Bormann proceeds to create a colonial empire to increase Germany's Lebensraum by using technology to drain the Mediterranean Sea and convert it into farmland (see Atlantropa), while sending spaceships to colonize Mars and other parts of the Solar System in the name of the Reich. As the novel begins, Führer Bormann dies, initiating an internal power struggle between Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Hermann Göring, and other top Nazis to succeed him as Reichskanzler. The Man in the High Castle contains a loose collection of characters. Some of them know each other, while others are connected in more indirect ways as they all cope with living under totalitarianism. Three characters guide their lives based on the I Ching: *Nobusuke Tagomi is a trade missioner in Japanese San Francisco. To start with, the reader is let in to his world only slightly; this character doesn't intend to be a big part of the story but events unfold in a way that drags him into both central and peripheral conflicts with agendas beyond his control. *Frank Frink works for the Wyndham–Matson Corporation, which specializes in reproductions of pre-war Americana artifacts; he is fired for showing his temper. He is a secret Jew (né Fink) who hides to avoid extermination in a Nazi camp. He is a veteran of the Pacific War. *Juliana Frink, a judo instructor, is Frank's ex-wife. After an initially short introduction her character evolves throughout the rest of the book to her becoming a very central plot piece. She is also used throughout the book by a hired assassin. Others believe different things: *Robert Childan owns American Artistic Handcrafts, an Americana antiques business supplied by Wyndham–Matson Inc. He believes the items genuine; Tagomi is one of his best customers, who buys "gifts" for himself and for visiting businessmen. Given his mostly Japanese clientele, Childan has adopted their manners, Anglicised modes of speech, and ways of thinking, yet, despite his surface deference to the Japanese, he is contemptuous of them, privately retaining his pre-war white supremacy — believing in the essential inferiority of the non-white Asian and African races. Nonetheless, he is very conscious of his image, often deliberating, to himself, in the Asian mentality, how his actions might appear to others. *Wyndham-Matson (Frank Frink's boss) muses about the difference between a real antique and a reproduction antique; via his mistress, he introduces the novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy to the plot and is the plot device used to show the initial difference of opinions in the novel, the differing opinions being those that believe The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is merely a work of good fiction, and those that believe it shows something more (a theme that reaches its climax at the end of the novel). *Mr. Baynes, a wealthy Swedish industrialist, is actually Rudolf Wegener, a Captain in Reich Naval Counter-Intelligence, who is en route to meet Tagomi, through whom he expects to meet an important Japanese representative. He is taken aback by Tagomi's gift of a "genuine Mickey Mouse watch" (bought at the American Artistic Handicrafts Inc. shop). The narrative storylines of the plot alternate among those of the characters, providing a broad picture of quotidian life in totalitarian America: *Baynes travels undercover to San Francisco, as a Swedish merchant. There, he talks with Tagomi, but, in pursuit of his true mission, must prolong their meeting until the arrival, from Japan, of Mr. Yatabe (General Tedeki, formerly of the Imperial General Staff). His mission is to warn the Japanese of Operation Löwenzahn (Operation Dandelion), a nuclear attack upon the Japanese Archipelago Home Islands planned by Joseph Goebbels's faction within the ruling Nazi Party and opposed by Heydrich's faction. *Frank Frink and his friend Ed McCarthy start a jewelry business; their beautiful, original art works strangely affect the Americans and Japanese who see them. He is arrested after his attempted sabotage of Wyndham-Matson — by telling Childan that the items of Americana he sells are fake. *Tagomi, unable to acknowledge the unpleasant rumors he has heard, finds solace in action, fighting the Nazi agents attempting to kill Baynes; he uses the "authentic" Colt U.S. Army revolver bought from Childan. Then, he retaliates against local Nazi authority, by directing the release of the Jew Frank Frink, who was bound for deportation to Nazi America. Tagomi and Frink never meet, nor does he know that Frank Frink created the beautiful artwork that so impressed him; however, as a devout Buddhist, the existential implications of deliberately taking a human life so bother him they provoke a heart attack. *Juliana, living in Colorado, begins a sexual relationship with Joe Cinnadella, a truck driver claiming to be an Italian war veteran. He wants to meet Hawthorne Abendsen (the eponymous Man in the High Castle, so called, because he allegedly lives in a guarded residence), who wrote the novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Juliana travels with him, but discovers that he is actually a Swiss assassin meaning to kill the writer; she attempts to leave, but he bars her way. Distressed beyond reason, Juliana cuts Joe's throat with the straight razor which she had considered using to commit suicide. She completes the journey alone, meets author Abendsen, and induces him to reveal the truth about The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. *Robert Childan desperately attempts to retain his honor despite the forced obsequiousness towards the Japanese overlords. Although ambivalent about the lost war and foreign occupiers of his country, whom he loathes and respects, he discovers a sense of cultural pride in himself. He also investigates the widespread forgery in the antiques market amid increased Japanese interest in genuine Americana.
45908	/m/0cfxk	Rocket Ship Galileo	Robert A. Heinlein	1947-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After World War II, three teenage boy rocket experimenters are recruited by the uncle of one of them, Dr. Cargraves, a Nobel Prize-winning Physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project, to refit a conventionally-powered surplus "mail rocket". It is to be converted to run on a thorium nuclear pile which boils zinc as a propellant. They use a cleared area in a military weapons test range in the desert for their work, despite prying and sabotage attempts by unknown agents. Upon completion of the modifications, they stock the rocket, which they name the Galileo, and take off for the Moon, taking approximately 11 days to arrive. After establishing a semi-permanent structure based on a Quonset hut, they claim the moon on behalf of the United Nations. As they set up a radio to communicate with the Earth they pick up a local transmission, the sender of which promises to meet them. Instead, their ship is bombed. Fortunately, they are able to hole up undetected in their hut and succeed in ambushing the other ship when it lands, capturing the pilot. They discover that there is a Nazi base on the Moon. They bomb it from their captured ship and land. One survivor is found, revived, and questioned. The boys also find evidence of an ancient lunar civilization, and postulate that the craters of the moon were formed not by impacts from space, but by nuclear bombs that destroyed the alien race. When the base's Nazi leader shoots the pilot in order to silence him, Cargraves convenes a trial and find him guilty of murder. Cargraves pretends to prepare to execute the prisoner by ejecting him into vacuum. The Nazi capitulates in the airlock and teaches them how to fly the Nazi spaceship back to Earth. The boys radio the location of the hidden Nazi base on Earth to the authorities, leading to its destruction; they return as heroes.
45912	/m/0cfy7	Space Cadet	Robert A. Heinlein	1948	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 2075, teenager Matt Dodson applies to join the prestigious Space Patrol. After a number of physical, mental, and ethical tests, he is accepted as a cadet. He makes friends with fellow recruits William 'Tex' Jarman, Venus-born Oscar Jensen, and Pierre Armand from Ganymede. His first roommate is Girard Burke, the arrogant son of a wealthy spaceship builder. They are transported to the orbiting school ship PRS James Randolph for further training. Burke eventually either resigns or is asked to leave, and goes into the merchant service, but the remainder do well enough to be assigned to working Patrol ships. Dodson, Jarman and Jensen ship out on the Aes Triplex. Their first real mission is to help search for a missing research vessel, the Pathfinder, in the Asteroid Belt. They find it, but all aboard are dead, the unlucky victims of a fast-moving meteor that punctured the ship when the armored outer airlock door was open. Before the accident, a researcher on the Pathfinder had found evidence that the planet which blew up to form the asteroids was inhabited by an intelligent species, and that the explosion had been artificial. The captain of the Aes Triplex transfers half the crew to the repaired Pathfinder so that they can take the ship and the news of the startling discovery back to Earth quickly. With the remainder (including all three cadets), he continues his patrol. Then, he receives an urgent message to investigate an incident on Venus. He sends Lieutenant Thurlow and the cadets to the planet's surface. The lander touches down on a sinkhole, barely giving the crew enough time to get out before it disappears in the mud. With Thurlow comatose, injured when the lander fell over, Jensen assumes command. He contacts the sentient usually-friendly Venerians, but the entire party is taken captive. They soon find out why. These particular natives had never seen human beings before, until old classmate Burke showed up in a prospecting ship. He had taken the matriarch of the local clan hostage when she refused to give him permission to exploit a rich deposit of radioactive ores. The locals promptly attacked the ship and killed his crew; Burke managed to send a message for help before being taken prisoner. Jensen skillfully gains the matriarch's trust and convinces her that they are honorable and civilized, unlike Burke, and the Patrolmen are released. Neither the lander nor Burke's ship is flightworthy. To their amazement, she takes the stranded humans to the carefully preserved Astarte, the legendary first ship to set out for Venus over a century before and thought to have been lost en route. According to the log, the crew perished from disease. With the help of the natives, the cadets recommission the ship and fly it back to (human) civilization at Venus's South Pole colony. Dodson is initially disappointed when they are not treated as heroes—but then he realizes that what they accomplished was simply what was expected of Patrolmen.
45918	/m/0cfzw	Between Planets	Robert A. Heinlein		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A young man named Don Harvey leaves his dude ranch high school on Earth to go to his scientist parents on Mars. He visits an old family friend who asks him to deliver a ring to his father, but they are both later arrested by security forces. Harvey is released and given his ring back, after it has been examined; he is told that his friend has died of "heart failure." It is only later that he realizes that all deaths can be described that way. Harvey boards a shuttle to a space station orbiting the Earth. The station doubles as a transshipment terminus and a military base, armed with missiles to keep restive nations in check. On the trip up, he befriends one of his fellow passengers, a Venusian "dragon" named Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac is a renowned physicist who can speak English using a portable device. Harvey gets caught up in the Venusian war of independence when the station is captured by the colonials in a surprise raid. Most of the other travelers are sent back to Earth, while a few decide to join the rebels. Harvey is in a quandary. The spaceship to Mars has been confiscated, but he remains determined to get there, by way of Venus if necessary. Because he was born in space, with one parent from Venus and the other from Earth, he claims Venusian citizenship; more importantly, Sir Isaac vouches for him. He is allowed to tag along, which turns out to be very fortunate for Harvey. The rebels blow up the station to stir up trouble for the Earth government. When the shuttle returns to Earth with its radios disabled, the military assumes it has been booby-trapped and destroys it, killing all aboard. On his arrival on Venus, Harvey finds that his Earth-backed money is now worthless. A banker lends him money, telling him to pay it forward. He gets a job washing dishes for his keep for Charlie, a Chinese immigrant who runs a small restaurant. He befriends a young woman, Isobel, when he tries to send a message to his parents. However, communication with Mars has been cut due to the hostilities. Harvey settles in to wait out the war, when the war comes to him. Earth sends a military force to put down the rebellion. The Venusian ships are destroyed in orbit and the ground forces are routed. Charlie is killed resisting the occupying soldiers. Harvey is rounded up and questioned by a senior security officer, who is very eager to get his hands on Harvey's ring. Luckily, Harvey had given it to Isobel for safekeeping and he does not know where she is or whether she is even alive. Before he can be interrogated with drugs, he escapes and joins the Venusian guerrilla forces. Harvey becomes an effective commando. In time, he is tracked down by the leaders of the resistance, who turn out to also be looking for the ring. Isobel and her father (who is an important member of the rebels) are safe at the very base where Harvey is taken. The seemingly valueless ring turns out to be carrying the secret of scientific breakthroughs resulting from archeological studies of an extict alien civilization on Mars. With Sir Isaac's assistance, it is used to secretly build an advanced spaceship that is much faster than any other vessel in existence, with revolutionary weapons and defenses also derived from the new technology. As the only combat veteran with knowledge of the ship, christened Little David, Harvey is recruited for its maiden voyage, manning a self-destruct mechanism, with strict orders to blow up the ship if it is in danger of being captured. Little David intercepts and defeats a group of warships on their way to Mars to crush the revolt there. Afterwards, Harvey is probably reunited with his parents, although the story ends before then.
45921	/m/0cg04	Starman Jones	Robert A. Heinlein	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Max Jones works the family farm in the Ozark Mountains. With his father dead and his stepmother remarrying a man he detests, Max runs away from home, taking his uncle's astrogation manuals. Most occupations are tightly controlled by guilds, most with hereditary memberships. One such is the Astrogators Guild. Since his uncle had been a member and had no children, Max hopes that before he died, his uncle had named him his heir. He begins hitchhiking towards Earthport to find out. Along the way, he finds a friendly face in hobo Sam Anderson, who later alludes to being a deserter from the Imperial Marines. Sam feeds Max and offers advice, though he later departs with Max's valuable manuals. At the guild's headquarters, Max is disappointed to find that he had not been named as an heir, but he is returned his uncle's substantial security deposit for his manuals. Max learns that Sam had tried to claim the deposit for himself. By chance, he runs into an apologetic Sam. With Max's money, Sam is able to finagle them a one way job/trip aboard a starship using forged papers. Max signs on as a steward's mate third class, and then he absorbs the contents of the Stewards' Guild manual using his eidetic memory. Among his duties is caring for several animals, including passengers' pets—work with which he is comfortable. When passenger Eldreth "Ellie" Coburn visits her pet, an alien, semi-intelligent "spider puppy" that Max has befriended, she learns that he can play three-dimensional chess, and she challenges him to a game. A champion player, she diplomatically lets him win. Meanwhile, Sam manages to rise to the position of master-at-arms. When, through Ellie's machinations, the ship's officers discover that Max had learned astrogation from his uncle, Max is promoted to the command deck. Under the tutelage of Chief Astrogator Hendrix and Chief Computerman Kelly, he becomes a probationary apprentice chartsman, then a probationary astrogator. In a meeting with Hendrix, Max reluctantly admits to faking his record to get into space. Hendrix defers the matter until their return to Earth. The Asgard then departs for Halcyon, a human colony planet orbiting Nu Pegasi. When Hendrix dies, the astrogation department is left dangerously shorthanded. The aging captain tries to take his place, but is not up to the task. When Max detects an error in his real-time calculations leading up to a "transition", neither the captain nor Assistant Astrogator Simes believe him, and the ship winds up lost. They locate a habitable world, and the passengers become colonists. Meanwhile, the crew continues to try to figure out where they are, and if they can get back to the Earth. Unfortunately, it turns out the planet is already inhabited by intelligent centaurs. Max and Ellie are captured, but Ellie's pet is able to guide Sam and a rescue party to them. They escape, though Sam is killed covering their retreat. Upon his return, Max is informed that the captain has died. Simes tried to illegally take command and was killed by Sam, leaving Max as the only remaining astrogator. To make matters worse, Simes hid or destroyed the astrogation manuals. Vastly outnumbered by the hostile natives, the humans are forced to attempt a perilous return to known space by reversing the erroneous transition. Max must not only pilot the ship, he must supply the missing astrogation tables from his eidetic memory. To add to his burdens, the remaining officers inform Max that he must take charge, as only an astrogator can be the captain. The pressure is immense, but Max succeeds and the ship returns to known space. Max pays heavy fines for breaking guild regulations, but he becomes a member of the Astrogators Guild. However, he loses any chance for a relationship with Eldreth: she returns home to marry her boyfriend. Max accepts this with mixed feelings, but looks forward to his new career.
45927	/m/0cg0_	Podkayne of Mars	Robert A. Heinlein		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is a first-person narrative in the form of Podkayne's diaries. Podkayne is 15 in Earth years (a bit over eight Martian years) while her genius younger brother Clark is 11 earth years (6 martian years). Due to the unscheduled "uncorking" (birth) of their three test-tube babies, Podkayne's parents cancel a much-anticipated trip to Earth. Disappointed, Podkayne confesses her misery to her uncle, Senator Tom Fries, an elder statesman of the Mars government. Tom arranges for Clark and Podkayne, escorted by himself, to get upgraded passage on a luxury liner to Earth. During boarding, Clark is asked by a customs official "Anything to declare?" and facetiously answers "Two kilos of happy dust!" As he anticipated, his seemingly flippant remark gets him taken away and searched, just in time to divert attention away from Podkayne's luggage, where he has hidden a package he was paid to smuggle aboard. Podkayne suspects the reason behind her brother's behavior, but cannot prove it. Clark was told it was a present for the captain, but is far too cynical to be taken in. He later carefully opens the package and finds a nuclear bomb, which he, in typical Clark-fashion, disarms and keeps. Much of the description of the voyage is based on Heinlein's own experiences as a naval officer and world traveler. Clark's ploy is taken from a real-life incident related in Heinlein's Tramp Royale in which his wife answers the same question with "heroin" substituted for the fictitious but equally illegal happy dust. Once aboard, they are befriended by "Girdie", an attractive, capable, experienced woman left impoverished by her late husband. Much to Podkayne's surprise, the normally very self-centered Clark contracts a severe case of puppy love. The liner makes a stop at Venus, which is depicted as a latter-day Las Vegas gone ultra-capitalistic. The planet is controlled by a single corporation; the dream of most of the frantically enterprising residents is to earn enough to buy a single share in it, which guarantees lifelong financial security. Just about anything goes, as long as one can pay for it. The penalty for murder is a fine paid to the corporation for the victim's estimated value plus his projected future earnings. On a less serious level, Heinlein anticipated, by over forty years, television ads in taxicabs (in the book, holographic), which have since been implemented in taxicabs in major cities worldwide. The Fries are given VIP treatment by the Venus Corporation and Podkayne is escorted by Dexter Cunha, the Chairman's dashing son. She begins to realize that Tom is much more than just her pinochle-playing uncle. When Clark vanishes and even the corporation is unable to find him, Tom reveals that he is on a secret diplomatic mission, and the children have been his protective coloration—instead of an accredited representative to a vital conference on Luna, Tom appears to be a doddering uncle escorting two young people on a tour of the solar system. Clark has been kidnapped by functionaries of a political faction opposed to Tom. Podkayne makes an ill-judged attempt to rescue Clark by herself and falls into the kidnappers' clutches as well--only to find her uncle caught too. The captors' scheme is to use the children to blackmail the uncle into doing their bidding at the Luna conference. Clark quickly realizes that once Uncle Tom is released, no matter what happens, their kidnappers will have little reason to keep their prisoners alive. He is prepared, however, and engineers an escape, leaving a bomb behind to blow up the kidnappers. In Heinlein's original ending, Podkayne is killed. This did not please his publisher, who demanded and got a rewrite over the author's bitter objections. In a letter to Lurton Blassingame, his literary agent, Heinlein complained that it would be like "revising Romeo and Juliet to let the young lovers live happily ever after." He also declared that changing the end "isn't real life, because in real life, not everything ends happily." In the original ending, after they escape from the kidnappers to a safe distance, Podkayne remembers that a semi-intelligent Venerian "fairy" baby has been left behind, and returns to rescue it. When the nuclear bomb that Clark leaves for the kidnappers blows up, Podkayne is killed, shielding the young fairy with her body. Clark takes over the narrative for the last chapter. The story ends with a hint of hope for him, as he admits his responsibility for what happened to Podkayne — that he "fubbed it, mighty dry" — then shows some human feeling by regretting his inability to cry and describes his plan to raise the fairy himself. In the revised version, Podkayne is injured by the bomb, but not fatally. Uncle Tom, in a phone conversation with Podkayne's father, blames the parents — especially the mother — for neglecting the upbringing of the children. Uncle Tom feels that Clark is dangerous and maladjusted, and attributes this to the mother giving priority to her career. Clark still takes over as the narrator, and, again, regrets that Podkayne was hurt and plans to take care of the fairy, this time because Podkayne will want to see it when she is better. The 1995 Baen edition includes both endings (which differ only on the last page), Jim Baen's own edited postlude to the story, and a collection of readers' essays giving their opinions about which ending is better. Most of these readers favored the sad ending, partly because they felt Heinlein should have been free to create his own story, and partly because they believed that the changed ending turned a tragedy into a mere adventure, and not a very well constructed one at that. Podkayne appears in Heinlein's later novel The Number of the Beast, attending the party at the end along with many other Heinlein characters from previous books.
46064	/m/0ch13	Story of O	Pauline Réage	1954	{"/m/02js9": "Erotica"}	 Published in French by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Story of O is a tale of female submission about a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer, O, who is blindfolded, chained, whipped, branded, pierced, made to wear a mask, and taught to be constantly available for oral, vaginal, and anal intercourse. Despite her harsh treatment, O grants permission beforehand for everything that occurs, and her permission is consistently sought. At the beginning of the story, O's lover, René, brings her to the château of Roissy, where she is trained to serve the men of an elite group. After this first period of training is finished, as a demonstration of their bond and his generosity, René hands O to Sir Stephen, a more dominant master. René wants O to learn to serve someone whom she does not love, and someone who does not love her. Over the course of this training, O falls in love with Sir Stephen and believes him to be in love with her as well. While her vain friend and lover, Jacqueline, is repulsed by O's chains and scars, O herself is proud of her condition as a willing slave. During the summer, Sir Stephen decides to move O to Samois, an old mansion solely inhabited by women for advanced training and body modifications related to submission. There she agrees to receive a branding and a labia piercing with rings marked with Sir Stephen's initials and insignia. At the climax, O appears as a slave, nude but for an owl-like mask, before a large party of guests who treat her solely as an object.
46184	/m/0chy_	The Star Beast	Robert A. Heinlein	1954	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An ancestor of John Thomas Stuart XI brought the alien, long-lived Lummox home from an interstellar voyage. The articulate, sentient pet he inherited has gradually grown from the size of a collie pup to a ridable behemoth—especially after consuming a used car. The childlike Lummox is perceived to be a neighborhood nuisance and, upon leaving the Stuart property one day, causes substantial property damage across the city of Westville. John's mother wants him to get rid of it, and a court orders it destroyed. Desperate to save his pet, John Thomas considers selling Lummox to a zoo. He rapidly changes his mind and runs away from home, riding into the nearby wilderness on Lummox's back. His girlfriend Betty Sorenson joins him and suggests bringing the beast back into town and hiding it in a neighbor's greenhouse. However, it isn't easy to conceal such a large creature. Eventually, the court tries to have Lummox destroyed, but is unable to do so, much to Lummox's amusement. Meanwhile, representatives of an advanced, powerful and previously unknown alien race appear and demand the return of their lost child...or else. A friendly alien diplomat of a third species intimates that the threat is not an empty one. Initially, no one associates Lummox with the newcomers, in part due to the size difference (Lummox was overfed). Lummox is identified as royalty, complicating the already-tense negotiations. It is discovered that, from her viewpoint, the young Lummox has been pursuing her only hobby and principal interest: the raising of John Thomases. She makes it clear that she intends to continue doing so. This gives the chief human negotiator the leverage he needs to avert the destruction of Earth. At the request of Lummox, the recently married John and Betty accompany her back to her people as members of the human diplomatic mission.
47974	/m/0cw94	Dr. No	Ian Fleming	1958-03-31	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 After recovering from tetrodotoxin poisoning inflicted by SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb (see From Russia, with Love) MI6 agent James Bond is sent by his superior, M, on a "rest cure" to Jamaica. Whilst there his task is a simple assignment to investigate the disappearance of Commander John Strangways, the head of MI6 Station J in Kingston, Jamaica, and his secretary. Bond is briefed that Strangways had been investigating the activities of Dr. Julius No, a reclusive Chinese-German who lives on Crab Key and runs a guano mine; the island is said to be the home of a vicious dragon with a colony of Roseate Spoonbills at one end. The Spoonbills are protected by the National Audubon Society, two of whose representatives had died when their plane crashed on Dr. No's airstrip. On his arrival in Jamaica, Bond soon realises that he is being watched, as his hotel room is searched, a basket of poisoned fruit is delivered to his hotel room (supposedly a gift from the colonial governor) and a deadly centipede is placed in his bed while he is sleeping. With the help of old friend Quarrel, Bond visits Crab Key to establish if there is a connection between Dr. No and Strangways' disappearance. There he and Quarrel meet Honeychile Rider, who visits the island to collect valuable shells. Bond and Honey are captured by No's men after Quarrel is burned to death by the doctor's "dragon" – a flamethrowing armoured swamp buggy to keep away trespassers. Bond discovers that Dr. No is also working with the Russians and has built an elaborate underground facility from which he can sabotage American missile tests at nearby Cape Canaveral. No had previously been a member of a Chinese Tong, but after he stole a large amount of money from their treasury, he was captured by the organisation, whose leaders had his hands cut off as a sign of punishment for theft, and then ordered him shot. The Tong thought they shot him through the heart. However, because No's heart was on the right-hand side of his body (dextrocardia), the bullet missed his heart and he survived. Interested in the ability of the human body to withstand and survive pain, No forces Bond to navigate his way through an obstacle course constructed in the facility's ventilation system. He is kept under regular observation, suffering electric shocks, burns and an encounter with large poisonous spiders along the way. The ordeal ends in a fight against a captive giant squid, which Bond defeats by using improvised and stolen objects made into weapons. After his escape he encounters Honey from her ordeal where she had been pegged out to be eaten by crabs; the crabs ignored her and she had managed to make good her own escape. Bond kills Dr. No by taking over the guano-loading machine at the docks and diverting the guano flow from it to bury the villain alive. Bond and Honey then escape from No's complex in the dragon buggy.
48573	/m/0c_bp	The Andromeda Strain	Michael Crichton	1969-05-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When a military satellite returns to Earth, a recovery team is dispatched to retrieve it; during a live radio communication with their base, the team members suddenly die. Aerial surveillance reveals that everyone in Piedmont, Arizona, the town closest to where the satellite landed, is apparently dead. The base commander suspects the satellite returned with an extraterrestrial organism and recommends activating Wildfire, the government-sponsored team that counters extraterrestrial biological infestation. The Wildfire scientific team studying the unknown strain is composed of Dr. Jeremy Stone, bacteriologist specialist; Dr. Peter Leavitt, disease pathology; Dr. Charles Burton, infection vectors specialist; and Dr. Mark Hall, M.D., surgeon, biochemistry and pH specialist. Hall is the "odd man", since he is the only one without a spouse. The Robertson Odd Man Hypothesis states that unmarried men are capable of carrying out the best, most dispassionate decisions during crises and he is given the only key that can disarm the self-destruct mechanism. A fifth scientist, Dr. Christian Kirke, anthropologist and electrolytes specialist, was unavailable for duty because of appendicitis. The scientists believe the satellite, which was actually designed to capture upper-atmosphere microorganisms for bio-weapon exploitation, returned with a deadly microorganism that kills by nearly instantaneous disseminated intravascular coagulation (lethal blood clotting). Upon investigating the town, the Wildfire team discovers that the residents either died in mid-stride or went "quietly nuts" and committed bizarre suicides. Two Piedmont inhabitants, the sick, Sterno-addicted, geriatric Peter Jackson; and the constantly bawling infant, Jamie Ritter, are biologic opposites who somehow survived the organism. The man, infant, and satellite are taken to the secret underground Wildfire laboratory, a secure facility equipped with every known capacity for protection against a biological element escaping into the atmosphere, including a nuclear weapon to incinerate the facility if necessary. Wildfire is hidden in a remote area near the fictional town of Flatrock, Nevada, sixty miles from Las Vegas using a sort of purloined letter approach, by locating it in the sub-basements of a legitimate Department of Agriculture research station. Further investigation determines that the bizarre deaths were caused by a crystal-structured, extraterrestrial microbe on a meteor that crashed into the satellite, knocking it from orbit. The microbe contains chemical elements required for terrestrial life and appears to have a crystalline structure, but lacks DNA, RNA, proteins, and amino acids, yet it directly transforms matter to energy and vice versa. The microbe, code named "Andromeda", mutates with each growth cycle, changing its biologic properties. The scientists learn that Andromeda grows only within a narrow pH range; in a too-acid or too-basic growth medium, it will not multiply — Andromeda's pH range is 7.39–7.43, like that of human blood. That is why Jackson and Ritter survived: both had abnormal blood pH. However, by the time the scientists realize that, Andromeda's current mutation degrades the plastic shield and escapes its containment. Trapped in an Andromeda-contaminated laboratory, Dr. Burton demands that Stone inject him with Kalocin ("the universal antibiotic"); Stone refuses, arguing it would render Burton too vulnerable to infection by other harmful bacteria. Burton survives because Andromeda has already mutated to nonlethal form. The mutated Andromeda attacks the neoprene door and hatch seals within the Wildfire complex, racing to the upper levels and the surface. The self-destruct atomic bomb is automatically armed when it detects a containment breach, triggering its detonation countdown to incinerate all exo-biological diseases. As the bomb arms, the scientists realize that given Andromeda's ability to generate matter directly from energy, the organism would feed, reproduce, and ultimately benefit from an atomic explosion. To halt the atomic detonation, Dr. Hall must insert his special key to an emergency substation anywhere in Wildfire. Unfortunately, he is trapped in a section with no substation. He must navigate Wildfire's obstacle course of automatic defenses to reach a working substation on an upper level. He barely disarms the bomb in time before all the air is evacuated from the deepest level of the Wildfire complex. Andromeda eventually mutates to a benign form and is suspected to have migrated to the upper atmosphere, where the oxygen content is lower, better suiting Andromeda's growth. The novel's epilogue reveals that a manned spacecraft, Andros V, was incinerated during atmospheric re-entry, presumably because Andromeda Strain ate the plastic heat shield of Andros V and caused it to burn up.
48648	/m/0c_vk	Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone	J. K. Rowling	1997-06-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Before the start of the novel, Voldemort, considered the most evil and powerful dark wizard in history, kills Harry's parents but mysteriously vanishes after trying to kill the infant Harry. While the wizarding world celebrates Voldemort's downfall, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Rubeus Hagrid place the one year-old orphan in the care of his Muggle (non-wizard) uncle and aunt: Vernon and Petunia Dursley. For ten years, they and their son Dudley neglect, torment and abuse Harry. Shortly before Harry's eleventh birthday, a series of letters addressed to Harry arrive, but Vernon destroys them before Harry can read them. To get away from the letters, Vernon takes the family to a small island. As they are settling in, Hagrid bursts through the door to tell Harry what the Dursleys have kept him from finding out: Harry is a wizard and has been accepted at Hogwarts. Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, a magically-concealed shopping precinct in London, where Harry is bewildered to discover how famous he is among wizards as "the boy who lived". He also finds that he is quite wealthy, since a bequest from his parents has remained on deposit at Gringotts Wizarding Bank. Guided by Hagrid, he buys the books and equipment he needs for Hogwarts, as well as Hedwig the owl. At the wand shop, he finds that the wand that suits him best is the twin of Voldemort's; both wands contain feathers from the same phoenix. A month later Harry leaves the Dursleys' home to catch the Hogwarts Express from King's Cross railway station. There he meets the Weasley family, who show him how to pass through the magical wall to Platform 9¾, where the train is waiting. While on the train Harry makes friends with Ron Weasley, who tells him that someone tried to rob a vault at Gringotts. During the ride they meet Hermione Granger. Another new pupil, Draco Malfoy, accompanied by his sidekicks Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, offers to advise Harry, but Harry dislikes Draco's arrogance and prejudice. Before the term's first dinner in the school's Great Hall, the new pupils are allocated to houses by the magical Sorting Hat. Before it is Harry's turn, he catches Professor Snape's eye and feels a pain in the scar Voldemort left on his forehead. When it is Harry's turn to be sorted, the Hat wonders whether he should be in Slytherin, but when Harry objects, the Hat sends him to join the Weasleys in Gryffindor. While Harry is eating, he questions Percy Weasley about Snape. After a terrible first Potions lesson with Snape, Harry and Ron visit Hagrid, who lives in a rustic house on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. There they learn that the attempted robbery at Gringotts happened the day Harry withdrew money. Harry remembers that Hagrid had removed a small package from the vault that was broken into and searched. During the new pupils' first broom-flying lesson, Neville Longbottom breaks his wrist, and Draco takes advantage to throw the forgetful Neville's fragile Remembrall high in the air. Harry gives chase on his broomstick, catching the Remembrall inches from the ground. Professor McGonagall dashes out and appoints him as the new Seeker for the Gryffindor Quidditch team. When Draco tricks Ron and Harry, accompanied by Neville and Hermione Granger, into a midnight excursion, they accidentally enter a forbidden corridor and find a huge three-headed dog. The group hastily retreats, and Hermione notices that the dog is standing over a trap-door. Harry concludes that the monster is guarding the package Hagrid retrieved from Gringotts. After Ron criticises Hermione's ostentatious proficiency in Charms, she hides in tears in the girls' toilet. At the Halloween Night dinner,Professor Quirrell hastily reports that a troll has entered the dungeons. While everyone else returns to their dormitories, Harry and Ron rush to warn Hermione. The troll corners Hermione in the toilet but when Harry sticks his wand up one of its nostrils, Ron uses the levitation spell to knock out the troll with its own club. Afterwards, several professors arrive and Hermione takes the blame for the battle and becomes a firm friend of the two boys. The evening before Harry's first Quidditch match, he sees Snape receiving medical attention from Filch for a bite on his leg by the three-headed dog. During the game, Harry's broomstick goes out of control, endangering his life, and Hermione notices that Snape is staring at Harry and muttering. She dashes over to the Professors' stand, knocking over Professor Quirrell in her haste, and sets fire to Snape's robe. Harry regains control of his broomstick and catches the Golden Snitch, winning the game for Gryffindor. Hagrid refuses to believe that Snape was responsible for Harry's danger, but lets slip that he bought the three-headed dog, and that the monster is guarding a secret that belongs to Professor Dumbledore and someone called Nicolas Flamel. Harry and the Weasleys stay at Hogwarts for Christmas, and one of Harry's presents, from an anonymous donor, is an Invisibility Cloak owned by his father. Harry uses the Cloak to search the library's Restricted Section for information about the mysterious Flamel, has to evade Snape and Filch after an enchanted book shrieks an alarm, and slips into a room containing the Mirror of Erised, which shows his parents and several of their ancestors. Harry becomes addicted to the Mirror's visions and is rescued by Professor Dumbledore, who explains that it shows what the viewer most desperately longs for. When the rest of the pupils return for the next term, Draco plays a prank on Neville, and Harry consoles Neville with a sweet. The collectible card wrapped with the sweet identifies Flamel as an alchemist. Hermione soon finds that he is a 665-year-old man who possesses the only known Philosopher's Stone, from which can be extracted an elixir of life. A few days later Harry notices Snape sneaking towards the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. There he half-hears a furtive conversation about the Philosopher's Stone, in which Snape asks Professor Quirrell if he has found a way past the three-headed dog and menacingly tells Quirrell to decide whose side he is on. Harry concludes that Snape is trying to steal the Stone and Quirrell has helped prepare a series of defences for it, which was an almost fatal mistake. The three friends discover that Hagrid is raising a baby dragon, which is against wizard law, and arrange to smuggle it out of the country around midnight. Draco arrives, hoping to raise the alarm and get them into trouble, and goes to tell Professor McGonagall. Although Ron is bitten by the dragon and is sent to the infirmary, Harry and Hermione spirit the dragon safely away. However, they are caught, and Harry loses the Invisibility Cloak. As part of their punishment, Harry, Hermione, Draco, and Neville (who, trying to stop Harry and Hermione after hearing what Draco had been saying, had been caught by McGonagall as well) are compelled to help Hagrid to rescue a badly-injured unicorn in the Forbidden Forest. They split into two parties, and Harry and Draco find the unicorn dead, surrounded by its blood. A hooded figure crawls to the corpse and drinks the blood, while Draco screams and flees. The hooded figure moves towards Harry, who is knocked out by an agonising pain spreading from his scar. When Harry regains consciousness, the hooded figure has gone and a centaur, Firenze, offers to give him a ride back to the school. The centaur tells Harry that drinking a unicorn's blood will save the life of a mortally injured person, but at the price of having a cursed life from that moment on. Firenze suggests Voldemort drank the unicorn's blood to gain enough strength to make the elixir of life from the Philosopher's Stone, and regain full health by drinking that. On his return, Harry finds that someone has slipped the Invisibility Cloak under his sheets. A few weeks later, while relaxing after the end-of-session examinations, Harry suddenly wonders how something as illegal as a dragon's egg came into Hagrid's possession. The gamekeeper says he was given it by a hooded stranger who bought him several drinks and asked him how to get past the three-headed dog, which Hagrid admits is easy – music sends it to sleep. Realising that one of the Philosopher's Stone's defences is no longer secure, Harry goes to inform Professor Dumbledore, only to find that the headmaster has just left for an important meeting. Harry concludes that Snape faked the message that called Dumbledore away and will try to steal the Stone that night. Covered by the Invisibility Cloak, Harry and his two friends go to the three-headed dog's chamber, where Harry sends the beast to sleep by playing a flute given to him by Hagrid for Christmas. After lifting the trap-door, they encounter a series of obstacles, each of which requires special skills possessed by one of the three, and one of which requires Ron to sacrifice himself in a game of wizard's chess. In the final room Harry, now alone, finds Quirrell rather than Snape. Quirrell admits that he let in the troll that tried to kill Hermione on Halloween, and that he tried to kill Harry during the first Quidditch match but was knocked over by Hermione. Snape had been trying to protect Harry and suspected Quirrell. Quirrell serves Voldemort and, after failing to steal the Philosopher's Stone from Gringotts, allowed his master to possess him in order to improve their chances of success. However the only other object in the room is the Mirror of Erised, and Quirrell can see no sign of the Stone. At Voldemort's bidding, Quirrell forces Harry to stand in front of the Mirror. Harry feels the Stone drop into his pocket and tries to stall. Quirrell removes his turban, revealing the face of Voldemort on the back of his head. Voldemort/Quirrell tries to grab the Stone from Harry, but simply touching Harry causes Quirrell's flesh to burn. After further struggles Harry passes out. He awakes in the school hospital, where Professor Dumbledore tells him that he survived because his mother sacrificed her life to protect him, and Voldemort could not understand the power of such love. Voldemort left Quirrell to die, and is likely to return by some other means. Dumbledore had foreseen that the Mirror would show Voldemort/Quirrell only themselves making the elixir of life, as they wanted to use the Philosopher's Stone; Harry was able to see the Stone in the Mirror because he wanted to find it but not to use it. The Stone has now been destroyed. Harry returns to the Dursleys for the summer holiday, but does not tell them that under-age wizards are forbidden to use magic outside Hogwarts. After ten years, Harry became an eleven year-old boy. The Dursleys have kept the truth about Harry's parents from him, but it is revealed in the form of Rubeus Hagrid, who tells Harry that he is a wizard and has been accepted at Hogwarts for the autumn term. Harry takes the train to Hogwarts from King's Cross Station. On the train, Harry sits with and quickly befriends Ron Weasley; the two are also briefly visited by Neville Longbottom and Hermione Granger. Later on in the journey, Malfoy comes into Harry and Ron's compartment with his friends Crabbe and Goyle and introduces himself. After Ron laughs at Draco's name, Draco offers to help Harry distinguish the wrong sort of wizards, but Harry declines. Upon arrival, the Sorting Hat places Harry, Hermione, Neville and Ron into Gryffindor House, one of the school's four houses, while Draco and his cronies are placed in Slytherin. After a broom-mounted game to save Neville's Remembrall, Harry joins Gryffindor's Quidditch team as their youngest Seeker in over a century. Shortly after school begins, Harry and his friends hear that someone broke into a previously emptied vault at the wizarding bank, Gringotts. The mystery deepens when they discover a monstrous three-headed dog, Fluffy, who guards a trapdoor in the forbidden third floor passageway. On Halloween, a troll enters the castle and traps Hermione in one of the girls' lavatories. Harry and Ron rescue her, but are caught by Professor McGonagall. Hermione defends the boys and takes the blame, which results in the three becoming close friends. Harry's broom becomes jinxed during his first Quidditch match, nearly resulting in Harry falling from a great height. Hermione believes that Professor Snape has cursed the broom and distracts him by setting his robes on fire, allowing Harry to catch the Golden Snitch and win the game for Gryffindor. At Christmas, Harry receives his father's Invisibility Cloak from an unknown source. Later, he discovers the Mirror of Erised, a strange mirror that shows Harry surrounded by his parents and the extended family he never knew. Later, Harry learns that Nicolas Flamel is the maker of the Sorcerer's Stone, a stone that gives the owner eternal life. Harry sees Professor Snape interrogating Professor Quirrell about getting past Fluffy, seemingly confirming the suspicion that Snape is trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone in order to restore Lord Voldemort to power. The trio discover that Hagrid is hiding a dragon egg, which hatches; since dragon breeding is illegal, they convince Hagrid to send the dragon to live with others of its kind. Harry and Hermione are caught returning to their dormitories after sending Norbert off and are forced to serve detention with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest. In the forest, Harry sees a hooded figure drink the blood of an injured unicorn. Firenze, a centaur, tells Harry that the hooded figure is Voldemort. Hagrid accidentally tells Harry, Ron, and Hermione how to get past Fluffy; and they rush to tell the headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, what they know, only to find that he has been called away from the school. Convinced that Dumbledore's summons was a red herring to take him away while the Philosopher's Stone is stolen, the trio set out to reach the Stone first. They navigate a series of complex magical challenges set up by the school's faculty, and at the end of these challenges, Harry enters the inner chamber alone, only to find that it is the timid Professor Quirrell, not Snape, who is after the Stone. The final challenge protecting the Stone is the Mirror of Erised. Quirrell forces Harry to look into the mirror to discover where the Stone is hidden; and Harry successfully resists, and the Stone drops into his own pocket. Lord Voldemort reveals himself: he has possessed Quirrell and appears as a ghastly face on the back of Quirrell's head. Quirrell tries to attack Harry, but merely touching Harry proves to be agony for him. Voldemort flees and Quirrell dies as Dumbledore arrives back in time to save Harry. As Harry recovers, Dumbledore confirms that Lily had died while trying to protect Harry as an infant. Her pure, loving sacrifice provides her son with an ancient magical protection against Voldemort's lethal spells. Dumbledore also explains that the Philosopher's Stone has been destroyed to prevent Voldemort from ever using it. He then tells Harry that only those who wanted to find the Stone, but not use it, would be able to retrieve it from the mirror, which is why Harry could acquire it. When Harry asks Dumbledore why Voldemort attempted to kill him when he was an infant, Dumbledore promises to tell Harry when he is older. At the end-of-year feast, where Harry is welcomed as a hero. Dumbledore gives a few last-minute additions, granting enough points to Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville Longbottom for Gryffindor to win the House Cup, ending Slytherin's six-year reign as house champions.
49759	/m/0d6qm	Down and Out in Paris and London	George Orwell	1933-01-09	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Two verbless sentences introduce the scene-setting opening chapters, which describe the atmosphere in the Paris quarter and introduce various characters who appear later in the book. From Chapter III to Chapter X, where the narrator obtains a job at "Hotel X," he describes his descent into poverty, often in tragi-comic terms. An Italian compositor forges room keys and steals his savings and his scant income vanishes when the English lessons he is giving stop. He begins at first to "sell" some of his clothes, and then to "pawn" his remaining clothes, and then searches for work with a Russian waiter named Boris—work as a porter at Les Halles, work as an English teacher and restaurant work. He recounts his two-day experience without any food and tells of meeting Russian "Communists" who, he later concludes, on their disappearance, must be mere swindlers. After the various ordeals of unemployment and hunger the narrator obtains a job as a plongeur (dishwasher) in the "Hôtel X" near the Place de la Concorde, and begins to work long hours there. In Chapter XIII, he describes the "caste system" of the hotel—"manager-cooks-waiters-plongeurs"—and, in Chapter XIV, its frantic and seemingly chaotic workings. He notes also "the dirt in the Hôtel X.," which became apparent "as soon as one penetrated into the service quarters." He talks of his routine life among the working poor of Paris, slaving and sleeping, and then drinking on Saturday night through the early hours of Sunday morning. In Chapter XVI, he refers briefly to a murder committed "just beneath my window [while he was sleeping .... The thing that strikes me in looking back," he says, "is that I was in bed and asleep within three minutes of the murder [....] We were working people, and where was the sense of wasting sleep over a murder?" Misled by Boris's optimism, the narrator is briefly penniless again after he and Boris quit their hotel jobs in the expectation of work at a new restaurant, the "Auberge de Jehan Cottard," where Boris feels sure he will become a waiter again; at the Hotel X, he had been doing lower-grade work. The "patron" of the Auberge, "an ex-colonel of the Russian Army," seems to have financial difficulties. The narrator is not paid for ten days and is compelled to spend a night on a bench—"It was very uncomfortable—the arm of the seat cuts into your back—and much colder than I had expected"—rather than face his landlady over the outstanding rent. At the restaurant, the narrator finds himself working "seventeen and a half hours" a day, "almost without a break," and looking back wistfully at his relatively leisured and orderly life at the Hotel X. Boris works even longer: "eighteen hours a day, seven days a week." The narrator claims that "such hours, though not usual, are nothing extraordinary in Paris." He adds by the way, that the Auberge was not the ordinary cheap eating-house frequented by students and workmen. We did not provide an adequate meal at less than twenty-five francs, and we were picturesque and artistic, which sent up our social standing. There were the indecent pictures in the bar, and the Norman decorations—sham beams on the walls, electric lights done up as candlesticks, "peasant" pottery, even a mounting-block at the door—and the patron and the head waiter were Russian officers, and many of the customers titled Russian refugees. In short, we were decidedly chic. He falls into a routine again and speaks of quite literally fighting for a place on the Paris Métro in order to reach the "cold, filthy kitchen" by seven. Despite the filth and incompetence, the restaurant turns out to be a success. The narrative is interspersed with anecdotes recounted by some of the minor characters, such as Valenti, an Italian waiter at Hotel X, and Charlie, "one of the local curiosities," who is "a youth of family and education who had run away from home." In Chapter XXII, the narrator considers the life of a plongeur: [A] plongeur is one of the slaves of the modern world. Not that there is any need to whine over him, for he is better off than many manual workers, but still, he is no freer than if he were bought and sold. His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack [.... He has] been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible. If plongeurs thought at all, they would long ago have formed a labour union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them. Because of the stress of the long hours, he mails to a friend, "B," back in London, asking if he could get him a job that allows more than five hours' sleep a night. His friend duly replies, offering a job taking care of a "congenital imbecile," and sends him some money to get his possessions from the pawn. The narrator then quits his job as a plongeur and leaves for London. The narrator arrives in London expecting to have the job waiting for him. Unfortunately the would-be employers have gone abroad, "patient and all." Until his employers return, the narrator lives as a tramp, sleeping in an assortment of venues: lodging houses, tramps' hostels or "spikes," and Salvation Army shelters. Because vagrants can not "enter any one spike, or any two London spikes, more than once in a month, on pain of being confined for a week," he is required to keep on the move, with the result that long hours are spent tramping or waiting for hostels to open. Chapters XXV to XXXV describe his various journeys, the different forms of accommodation, a selection of the people he meets, and the tramps' reaction to Christian charity: "Evidently the tramps were not grateful for their free tea. And yet it was excellent [....] I am sure too that it was given in a good spirit, without any intention of humiliating us; so in fairness we ought to have been grateful—still, we were not." Characters in this section of the book include the Irish tramp called Paddy, "a good fellow" whose "ignorance was limitless and appalling," and the pavement artist Bozo, who has a good literary background and was formerly an amateur astronomer, but who has suffered a succession of misfortunes. The final chapters provide a catalogue of various types of accommodation open to tramps. The narrator offers some general remarks, concluding, At present I do not feel that I have seen more than the fringe of poverty. Still, I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.
49917	/m/0d7q5	The Last Man	Mary Shelley	1826-02	{"/m/09vxq_p": "Catastrophic literature", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mary Shelley states in the introduction that in 1818 she discovered, in the Sibyl's cave near Naples, a collection of prophetic writings painted on leaves by the Cumaean Sibyl. She has edited these writings into the current narrative, the first-person narrative of a man living at the end of the 21st century. Lionel's father was a friend of the king before he was cast away because of his gambling. Lionel's father left to take his life, but before he did so he left a letter for the king to take care of his family after his death. After Lionel's father died the letter was never delivered. Lionel and his sister grow up with no parental influence, and as a result grow to be uncivilized. Lionel develops a hatred of the royal family, and Perdita grows to enjoy her isolation from society. When the king leaves the throne, the monarchy come to an end and a republic is created. When the king dies the Countess attempts to raise their son, Adrian, to reclaim the throne, but Adrian opposes his mother and refuses to take the throne. Adrian moves to Cumberland where Lionel, who bears a grudge against Adrian and his family for the neglect of the Verney family, intends to terrorise and confront Adrian. He is mollified by Adrian's good nature and his explanation that he only recently discovered the letter. Lionel and Adrian become close friends, and Lionel becomes civilized and philosophical under Adrian's influence. Lionel returns to England to face the personal turmoil amongst his acquaintances. Lord Raymond, who came to renown for his exploits in the war between Greece and Turkey, has returned to England in search of political position, and soon Perdita and Evadne both fall in love with him. On discovering that his beloved, Evadne, is in love with Raymond, Adrian goes into exile, presumably mad. Raymond intends to marry Idris (with whom Lionel is in love) as a first step towards becoming king, with the help of the Countess. However, he ultimately chooses his love for Perdita over his ambition, and the two marry. Under Lionel's care Adrian recovers, although he remains physically weak. On learning of the love between Idris and Lionel, the Countess schemes to drug Idris, bring her to Austria, and force her to make a politically motivated marriage. Idris discovers the plot and flees to Lionel, who marries her soon after. The Countess leaves for Austria, resentful of her children and of Lionel. Adrian and the others live happily together until Raymond runs for Lord Protector and wins. Perdita soon adjusts to her newfound social position, while Raymond becomes well-beloved as a benevolent administrator. He discovers, however, that Evadne, after the political and financial ruin of her husband (on account of her own political schemes) is living in poverty and obscurity in London, unwilling to plead for assistance. Raymond attempts to support Evadne by employing her artistic skills in secrecy, and later nursing her in illness, but Perdita learns of the relationship and suspects infidelity. Her suspicions arouse Raymond's proud and passionate nature, and the two separate. Raymond resigns his position and leaves to rejoin the war in Greece, accompanied for a time by Adrian. Shortly after the wounded Adrian returns to England, rumors arise that Raymond has been killed. Perdita, loyal in spite of everything, convinces Lionel to bring her and Clara to Greece to find him. Lionel finds Raymond and brings him back to Greece. Lionel and Raymond then go back to fighting and go to Constantinople. Lionel discovers Evadne, dying of wounds received fighting in the war. Before she dies, Evadne prophesies Raymond's death, a prophecy which confirms Raymond's own suspicions. Raymond's intention to enter Constantinople causes dissension and desertion amongst the army because of reports of the plague. Raymond enters the city alone, and soon dies in a fire. He is taken to Athens for burial. In 2092, while Lionel and Adrian attempt to return their lives to normality, the plague continues to spread across Europe and the Americas, and reports of a black sun cause panic throughout the world. At first England is thought to be safe, but soon the plague reaches even there. Ryland, recently elected Lord Protector, is unprepared for the plague, and flees northward, later dying alone amidst a stockpile of provisions. Adrian takes command and is largely effective at maintaining order and humanity in England, although the plague rages on summer after summer. Ships arrive in Ireland carrying survivors from America, who lawlessly plunder Ireland and Scotland before invading England. Adrian raises a military force against them, but ultimately is able to resolve the situation peacefully. The few remaining survivors decide to abandon England in search of an easier climate. On the eve of their departure to Dover, Lionel receives a letter from Lucy Martin, who was unable to join the exiles because of her mother's illness. Lionel and Idris travel through a snowstorm to assist Lucy, but Idris, weak from years of stress and maternal fears, dies along the way. Lionel and the Countess, who had shunned Idris and her family out of resentment towards Lionel, are reconciled at Idris' tomb. Lionel recovers Lucy (whose mother has died), and the party reaches Dover en route to France. In France, Adrian discovers that the earlier emigrants have divided into factions, amongst them a fanatical religious sect led by a false messiah who claims that his followers will be saved from disease. Adrian unites most of the factions, but this latter group declares violent opposition to Adrian. Lionel sneaks into Paris, where the cult has settled, to try to rescue Juliet. She refuses to leave because the imposter has her baby, but she helps Lionel to escape. Later, when Juliet's baby sickens, Juliet discovers that the imposter has been hiding the effects of the plague from his followers. She is killed warning the other followers, after which the imposter commits suicide, and his followers return to the main body of exiles at Versailles. The exiles travel towards Switzerland, hoping to spend the summer in a colder climate less favorable to the plague. By the time they reach Switzerland, however, all but four (Lionel, Adrian, Clara, and Evelyn) have died. The four spend a few relatively happy seasons at Switzerland, Milan, and Como before Evelyn dies of typhus. The survivors attempt to sail across the Adriatic Sea to Greece, but a sudden storm drowns Clara and Adrian. Lionel, the last man, swims to shore. The story ends in the year 2100.
49922	/m/0d7qz	The Transmigration of Timothy Archer	Philip K. Dick	1982	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the late 1960s and 1970s, the story describes the efforts of Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer, who must cope with the theological and philosophical implications of the newly-discovered Gnostic Zadokite scroll fragments. The character of Bishop Archer is loosely based on the controversial, iconoclastic Episcopal Bishop James Pike, who in 1969 died of exposure while exploring the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea in the West Bank. As the novel opens, it is 1980. On the day that John Lennon is shot and killed, Angel Archer visits the houseboat of Edgar Barefoot, a guru, and reflects on the lives of her deceased relatives. During the sixties, she was married to Jeff Archer, son of the Episcopal Bishop of California Timothy Archer. She introduced Kirsten Lundborg, a friend, to her father-in law, and the two began an affair. Kirsten has a son, Bill, from a previous relationship, who has schizophrenia, although he is knowledgeable as an automobile mechanic. Tim is already being investigated for his gnostic, allegedly heretical views about the Zadokite scrolls, which reproduce some of Jesus Christ's statements about the world, but have been dated to the second century before the birth of Christ. Jeff commits suicide due to his romantic obsession with Kirsten. However, after poltergeist activity, he manifests to Tim and Kirsten at a seance, also attended by Angel. Angel is sceptical about the efficacy of astrology, and believes that the unfolding existential situation of Tim and Kirsten is akin to Friedrich Schiller's German Romanticism era masterpiece, the Wallenstein trilogy (insofar as their credulity reflects the loss of rational belief in contemporary consensual reality). The three are told that Kirsten and Tim will die. As predicted, Kirsten loses her remission from cancer, and also commits suicide after a barbiturate overdose. Tim travels to Israel to investigate whether or not a psychotropic mushroom was associated with the resurrection, but his car stalls, he becomes disoriented, falls from a cliff, and dies in the desert. On the houseboat, Angel is reunited with Bill, Kirsten's son who has schizophrenia. He claims to have Tim's reincarnated spirit within him, but is soon reinsitutionalised. Angel agrees to care for Bill, in return for a rare record that Edgar offers her. Transmigration is one of Dick's most overtly philosophical and intellectual works. While Dick's novels usually employ multiple narrators or an omniscient perspective, this story is told in the first person by a single narrator: Angel Archer, Bishop Archer's daughter-in-law. Dick's work was often criticized for its flat, stereotypical female characters, so Angel may represent his effort to prove he could create a rich and believable feminine voice.
50223	/m/0d955	Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency	Douglas Adams	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Four billion years in Earth's past, a group of Salaxalans attempts to populate the earth; however, a mistake caused by their engineer – who used an Electric Monk to irrationally believe the proposed fix would work – causes their landing craft to explode, killing the Salaxalans and generating the spark of energy needed to start the process of life on Earth. The ghost of the Salaxalan engineer roams the earth waiting to undo his mistake, watching human life develop and waiting to find a soul that it can possess. The ghost finds it can only possess individuals that fundamentally want to do the same task it is trying to accomplish itself. Otherwise, it is only able to influence the individual in subtle ways. In the early 19th century, the ghost discovers Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and influences the writer to add a second section to "Kubla Khan" and alter parts of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to describe how to correct the problem that destroyed the landing craft in the distant past. The ghost then begins seeking out someone whose hardship can be influenced by Coleridge's work. It later discovers that Professor Urban "Reg" Chronotis at St Cedd's possesses a time machine disguised as his quarters. In the late 20th century, during the annual St Cedd's dinner reading of "Kubla Khan", the ghost influences Reg to use the time machine to perform a bit of trickery for a young child at the dinner, while the ghost lures another Electric Monk into Reg's quarters. Upon return to the present, the ghost finds the Monk unusable for its purposes. The Monk then goes off to kill Wayforward Technologies II's CEO, Gordon Way, due to a misunderstanding. The ghost later tries to influence Richard MacDuff, a former student of Reg and current employee of Gordon Way, who was also at the Coleridge reading. Richard finds himself breaking into the apartment of Susan Way—his girlfriend and Gordon's sister— to erase an answering machine message. His actions lead the police to consider Richard a suspect in the murder of Gordon. Richard discusses this with his former college friend Dirk Gently, who claims to be a "Holistic Detective" believing in the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things". Currently on the case of a missing cat, Dirk examines Richard and finds him to have been in a hypnotic-like state, and determines that Richard was temporarily possessed. Richard recounts the events from the Coleridge reading, including Reg's trick; Dirk, after consulting with a child, concludes that the only way the trick was possible was with a time machine. The two approach Reg, who admits to this fact. Meanwhile, the ghost has found Michael Wenton-Weakes, a recently-fired editor of an arts magazine. Through subtle influences the ghost makes Michael read Coleridge's works and convinces him to kill Albert Ross, the editor who replaced him. Both now have sought to erase those that supplant them, and the ghost is able to fully possess Michael's body. The ghost, in Michael's body, arrives at Reg's quarters while Dirk and Richard are there, and demands Reg use his time machine to return back 4 billion years in the past. They travel back, and ghost-possessed Michael, using a makeshift environmental suit, sets up to repair the damage to the Salaxalan craft. While they watch, Richard receives a call from Susan from the 20th century on Reg's phone, a quirk of the time machine due to the phone company. Richard learns of Ross's murder, and Dirk quickly surmises the ghost's plan, which if successful will erase the formation of life on Earth. Realising Michael was influenced by Coleridge's works, Dirk instructs Reg to take them to the 19th century, allowing Dirk to interrupt Coleridge long enough to disrupt the ghost's possession and prevent the second part of "Kubla Khan" from ever having been written. Upon arrival back in the 20th century, Dirk, Richard, and Reg find humanity as they expect it but with very small, subtle changes. Reg also discovers his time machine no longer functions, after having the telephone company repair the phone line to his quarters. Dirk learns that the missing cat was never missing in the first place as a result of their actions, and charges the client a small amount for the finding of the lost cat, adding "saving the entire human race from extinction – no charge".
50376	/m/0db22	Dragonflight	Anne McCaffrey	1968-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dragonflight chronicles the story of Lessa, the sole survivor of the noble ruling family of Ruatha Hold on the northern continent of Pern. When the rest of her family is killed by a cruel usurper, Fax, she survives by disguising herself as a drudge (a menial servant) partly through simply adopting a slovenly appearance, but also by using her hereditary telepathic abilities to make others see her as far older and less attractive than she actually is. She manages to escapes notice completely. Her only friend is a watch-wher, a somewhat telepathic animal (related to dragons) that guards the hold. Lessa also psychically influences other Hold workers to do less than their best work, or to become clumsy or inefficient. Her dream is to regain control over her own hold. Her strategy is to make Ruatha economically unproductive, so that Fax will renounce it. F'lar, wingleader at Benden Weyr and rider of the bronze dragon Mnementh, finds Lessa while Searching for candidates to Impress (bond with) a new queen dragon, as the current queen has a batch of eggs due to hatch very soon, including a crucial golden egg. After killing Fax in single combat (following the rules of the Pernese code duello), he realises that she has emotionally manipulated himself to kill Fax as well as engineered Fax's renouncement. It is then that F'lar recognizes Lessa as possessing both unusually strong psychic abilities and great strength of will. He recognizes Lessa's capacity to be the strongest Weyrwoman in recent history; and potentially the path to his own leadership at Benden Weyr. F'lar convinces a reluctant Lessa to give up her birthright as Lord Holder of Ruatha Hold for the larger domain of the dragonweyr and she agree to pass the title on to Fax's newborn son (who later features in The White Dragon). F'lar takes Lessa to Benden Weyr, where she impresses the Queen dragonet Ramoth and becomes the Weyrwoman, the new co-leader of the last active Weyr. On Ramoth's first mating flight, Mnementh catches her, and by Weyr tradition, this makes F'lar the Weyrleader. Lessa and F'lar warn a dangerously unprepared Pern of the impending Thread reappearance. The general response is disbelief, as the last threadfall was 400 years ago, and the stories about threadfall have receded from recent history into legend and myth. It is not until the first Thread begins to fall that they are believed by the general populace and even by some dragon-riders. One Weyr by itself is not enough to defend the planet; there used to be six, but the other five Weyrs are now empty, deserted since the last Pass centuries before. In a desperate attempt to increase their numbers, a new queen, Prideth, and her rider, Kylara, are sent back between times (a recently rediscovered skill) ten turns, to allow Prideth time to mature and reproduce. Lessa travels four hundred turns into the past to bring the five 'missing' Weyrs forward to her present. This is a huge strain for both her and Ramoth. She convinces the dragonriders of the five Weyrs to go with her to their future, and they use the Red Star as a guide to make smaller, less strenuous hops forward in time. This not only provides much needed skilled reinforcements in the battle against Thread, but explains how and why the five Weyrs were abandoned: they came forward in time.
52224	/m/0dqx3	The Diamond Age	Neal Stephenson	1995	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3mj": "Postcyberpunk"}	 The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) living in the Leased Territories, a lowland slum belt on the artificial, diamondoid island of New Chusan, located offshore from the mouth of the Yangtze River, northwest of Shanghai. At the age of four, Nell receives a stolen copy of an interactive book, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer: a Propædeutic Enchiridion in which is told the tale of Princess Nell and her various friends, kin, associates, &c., originally intended for an aristocrat's child in the Neo-Victorian New Atlantis phyle. The story follows Nell's development under the tutelage of the Primer, and to a lesser degree, the lives of Elizabeth and Fiona, girls who receive similar books. The Primer is intended to intellectually steer its reader toward a more interesting life, as defined by "Equity Lord" Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, and grow up to be an effective member of society. The most important quality to achieving an "interesting life" is deemed to be a subversive attitude towards the status quo. The Primer is designed to react to its owners' environment and teach them what they need to know to survive and develop. The Diamond Age is characterized by two intersecting, almost equally developed story lines: Nell's education through her independent work with the Primer, and the social downfall of engineer and designer of the Primer, John Percival Hackworth, who has made an illegal copy of the Primer for his own young daughter, Fiona. His crime becomes known both to Lord Finkle-McGraw and to Dr. X, and each man attempts to exploit Hackworth to advance the opposing goals of their tribes. The text also includes fully narrated educational tales from the Primer that map Nell's individual experience (e.g. her four toy friends) onto archetypal folk tales stored in the primer's database. Although The Diamond Age explores the role of technology and personal relationships in child development, its deeper and darker themes also probe the relative values of cultures (which Stephenson explores in his other novels as well) and the shortcomings in communication between them. "Diamond Age" is an extension of labels for archeological time periods that take central technological materials to define an entire era of human history, such as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. Technological visionaries such as Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle, both of whom receive an honorary mention in The Diamond Age, have argued that if nanotechnology develops the ability to manipulate individual atoms at will, it will become possible to simply assemble diamond structures from carbon atoms, materials also known as diamondoids. Merkle states: "In diamond, then, a dense network of strong bonds creates a strong, light, and stiff material. Indeed, just as we named the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Steel Age after the materials that humans could make, we might call the new technological epoch we are entering the Diamond Age". In the novel, a near future vision of our world, nanotechnology has developed precisely to this point, which enables the cheap production of diamond structures. The title can also be seen as a reference to the Gilded Age, a time of economic expansion roughly coinciding with the late Victorian era. Likewise, it can be seen as consistent with Queen Victoria's reign, the apex of which is often seen as her Diamond Jubilee.
52803	/m/0dw9b	The Hunchback of Notre Dame	Victor Hugo	1831-01-14	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins on Epiphany (6 January), 1482, the day of the Feast of Fools in Paris, France. Quasimodo, a deformed hunchback who is the bell-ringer of Notre Dame, is introduced by his crowning as the Pope of Fools. Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy with a kind and generous heart, captures the hearts of many men, including those of Captain Phoebus and Pierre Gringoire, a poor street poet, but especially those of Quasimodo and his adoptive father, Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. Frollo is torn between his obsessive love and the rules of the church. He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her, but the hunchback is suddenly captured by Phoebus and his guards who save Esmeralda. Quasimodo is sentenced to be flogged and turned on the pillory for one hour, followed by another hour's public exposure. He calls for water. Esmeralda, seeing his thirst, offers him a drink. It saves him, and she captures his heart. Esmeralda is later charged with the attempted murder of Phoebus, whom Frollo actually attempted to kill in jealousy after seeing him about to have sex with Esmeralda, and is tortured and sentenced to death by hanging. As she is being led to the gallows, Quasimodo swings down by the bell rope of Notre Dame and carries her off to the cathedral under the law of sanctuary. Clopin, a street performer, rallies the Truands (criminals of Paris) to charge the cathedral and rescue Esmeralda. Frollo asks the king to remove Esmeralda's right to sanctuary so she can no longer seek shelter in the church and will be taken from the church and killed. When Quasimodo sees the Truands, he assumes they are there to hurt Esmeralda, so he drives them off. Likewise, he thinks the King's men want to rescue her, and tries to help them find her. She is rescued by Frollo and her phony husband Gringoire. But after yet another failed attempt to win her love, Frollo betrays Esmeralda by handing her to the troops and watches while she is being hanged. When Frollo laughs during Esmeralda's hanging, Quasimodo pushes him from the heights of Notre Dame to his death. Quasimodo then goes to the vaults under the huge gibbet of Montfaucon, and lies next to Esmeralda's corpse, where it had been unceremoniously thrown after the execution. He stays at Montfaucon, and eventually dies of starvation. About eighteen months later, the tomb is opened, and the skeletons are found. As someone tries to separate them, Quasimodo's bones turn to dust.
52853	/m/0dwms	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll	1865-11-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Chapter 1 – Down the Rabbit Hole: Alice is feeling bored while sitting on the riverbank with her sister, when she notices a talking, clothed White Rabbit with a pocket watch run past. She follows it down a rabbit hole when suddenly she falls a long way to a curious hall with many locked doors of all sizes. She finds a small key to a door too small for her to fit through, but through it she sees an attractive garden. She then discovers a bottle on a table labelled "DRINK ME", the contents of which cause her to shrink too small to reach the key which she has left on the table. A cake with "EAT ME" on it causes her to grow to such a tremendous size her head hits the ceiling. Chapter 2 – The Pool of Tears: Alice is unhappy and cries as her tears flood the hallway. After shrinking down again due to a fan she had picked up, Alice swims through her own tears and meets a Mouse, who is swimming as well. She tries to make small talk with him in elementary French (thinking he may be a French mouse) but her opening gambit "Où est ma chatte?" (that is "Where is my cat?") offends the mouse. Chapter 3 – The Caucus Race and a Long Tale: The sea of tears becomes crowded with other animals and birds that have been swept away by the rising waters. Alice and the other animals convene on the bank and the question among them is how to get dry again. The mouse gives them a very dry lecture on William the Conqueror. A Dodo decides that the best thing to dry them off would be a Caucus-Race, which consists of everyone running in a circle with no clear winner. Alice eventually frightens all the animals away, unwittingly, by talking about her (moderately ferocious) cat. Chapter 4 – The Rabbit Sends a Little Bill: The White Rabbit appears again in search of the Duchess's gloves and fan. Mistaking her for his maidservant, Mary Ann, he orders Alice to go into the house and retrieve them, but once she gets inside she starts growing. The horrified Rabbit orders his gardener, Bill the Lizard, to climb on the roof and go down the chimney. Outside, Alice hears the voices of animals that have gathered to gawk at her giant arm. The crowd hurls pebbles at her, which turn into little cakes. Alice eats them, and they reduce her again in size. Chapter 5 – Advice from a Caterpillar: Alice comes upon a mushroom and sitting on it is a blue Caterpillar smoking a hookah. The Caterpillar questions Alice and she admits to her current identity crisis, compounded by her inability to remember a poem. Before crawling away, the caterpillar tells Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other side will make her shorter. She breaks off two pieces from the mushroom. One side makes her shrink smaller than ever, while another causes her neck to grow high into the trees, where a pigeon mistakes her for a serpent. With some effort, Alice brings herself back to her usual height. She stumbles upon a small estate and uses the mushroom to reach a more appropriate height. Chapter 6 – Pig and Pepper: A Fish-Footman has an invitation for the Duchess of the house, which he delivers to a Frog-Footman. Alice observes this transaction and, after a perplexing conversation with the frog, lets herself into the house. The Duchess's Cook is throwing dishes and making a soup that has too much pepper, which causes Alice, the Duchess, and her baby (but not the cook or grinning Cheshire Cat) to sneeze violently. Alice is given the baby by the Duchess and to her surprise, the baby turns into a pig. The Cheshire Cat appears in a tree, directing her to the March Hare's house. He disappears but his grin remains behind to float on its own in the air prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat. Chapter 7 – A Mad Tea-Party: Alice becomes a guest at a "mad" tea party along with the March Hare, the Hatter, and a very tired Dormouse who falls asleep frequently, only to be violently woken up moments later by the March Hare and the Hatter. The characters give Alice many riddles and stories, including the famous 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?'. The Hatter reveals that they have tea all day because Time has punished him by eternally standing still at 6 pm (tea time). Alice becomes insulted and tired of being bombarded with riddles and she leaves claiming that it was the stupidest tea party that she had ever been to. Chapter 8 – The Queen's Croquet Ground: Alice leaves the tea party and enters the garden where she comes upon three living playing cards painting the white roses on a rose tree red because the Queen of Hearts hates white roses. A procession of more cards, kings and queens and even the White Rabbit enters the garden. Alice then meets the King and Queen. The Queen, a figure difficult to please, introduces her trademark phrase "Off with his head!" which she utters at the slightest dissatisfaction with a subject. Alice is invited (or some might say ordered) to play a game of croquet with the Queen and the rest of her subjects but the game quickly descends into chaos. Live flamingos are used as mallets and hedgehogs as balls and Alice once again meets the Cheshire Cat. The Queen of Hearts then orders the Cat to be beheaded, only to have her executioner complain that this is impossible since the head is all that can be seen of him. Because the cat belongs to the Duchess, the Queen is prompted to release the Duchess from prison to resolve the matter. Chapter 9 – The Mock Turtle's Story: The Duchess is brought to the croquet ground at Alice's request. She ruminates on finding morals in everything around her. The Queen of Hearts dismisses her on the threat of execution and she introduces Alice to the Gryphon, who takes her to the Mock Turtle. The Mock Turtle is very sad, even though he has no sorrow. He tries to tell his story about how he used to be a real turtle in school, which the Gryphon interrupts so they can play a game. Chapter 10 – Lobster Quadrille: The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon dance to the Lobster Quadrille, while Alice recites (rather incorrectly) "'Tis the Voice of the Lobster". The Mock Turtle sings them "Beautiful Soup" during which the Gryphon drags Alice away for an impending trial. Chapter 11 – Who Stole the Tarts?: Alice attends a trial whereby the Knave of Hearts is accused of stealing the Queen's tarts. The jury is composed of various animals, including Bill the Lizard, the White Rabbit is the court's trumpeter, and the judge is the King of Hearts. During the proceedings, Alice finds that she is steadily growing larger. The dormouse scolds Alice and tells her she has no right to grow at such a rapid pace and take up all the air. Alice scoffs and calls the dormouse's accusation ridiculous because everyone grows and she can't help it. Meanwhile, witnesses at the trial include the Hatter, who displeases and frustrates the King through his indirect answers to the questioning, and the Duchess's cook. Chapter 12 – Alice's Evidence: Alice is then called up as a witness. She accidentally knocks over the jury box with the animals inside them and the King orders the animals be placed back into their seats before the trial continues. The King and Queen order Alice to be gone, citing Rule 42 ("All persons more than a mile high to leave the court"), but Alice disputes their judgement and refuses to leave. She argues with the King and Queen of Hearts over the ridiculous proceedings, eventually refusing to hold her tongue. The Queen shouts her familiar "Off with her head!" but Alice is unafraid, calling them out as just a pack of cards; just as they start to swarm over her. Alice's sister wakes her up for tea, brushing what turns out to be some leaves and not a shower of playing cards from Alice's face. Alice leaves her sister on the bank to imagine all the curious happenings for herself.
52927	/m/0dx46	Now Wait for Last Year	Philip K. Dick	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Set during a war between the 'Starmen (inhabitants of the planet Lilistar) and the Reegs, Now Wait for Last Year is the story of Eric Sweetscent, an organ-transplant doctor who gets wrapped up in Earth-Lilistar politics. At the onset of the story, Sweetscent is the personal org-trans surgeon for Virgil Ackerman, the president of Tijuana Fur & Dye. Using an extraterrestrial amoeba which can imitate the cell-structure of anything it touches, TF&D had been the largest manufacturer of synthetic furs on the planet. But like all major corporations on Earth, TF&D has been requisitioned to produce for the war effort. Ackerman invites Sweetscent to "Wash-35", a recreation of his boyhood native Washington DC in a simulated 1935 and his vacation getaway on Mars, where he announces an ulterior motive in the retreat. Waiting for them when they arrive is a guest—Gino Molinari, the elected leader of Earth. Known as "the Mole", he is rumored to have the enigmatic ability to come back from the dead, and he has requested the services of Sweetscent. Ackerman gladly passes Sweetscent on to Molinari. Meanwhile, Sweetscent's wife, Kathy, tries JJ-180, a new hallucinogenic drug which proves to be highly toxic and addictive. The effects of JJ-180 are not clear at first, however, only hours off of it, Kathy finds herself unable to function and violently craving JJ-180 again. She is visited by 'Starmen who claim the Reegs invented JJ-180 as a chemical weapon against the 'Starmen and Terrans, also stating that there is no known cure for the drug's addiction and 'That's why we put you on it'. Kathy is now a slave to JJ-180. The 'Starmen inform Kathy of her husband's new position with Molinari and suspect the latter's possible defection to the Reegs. Kathy is promised more JJ-180 if she agrees to spy on her husband for Lilistar. Threatened with deportation, Kathy capitulates and agrees to their terms. Eventually, she takes a second dose of the drug as her ability to function becomes nearly impossible due the effects of the withdrawal. Jumping into a taxi-cab, both she and the cab are plunged back in time to the mid-20th century. As the effects of the drug wear off, they slowly make their way back to the present time, uncertain as to whether the past they visited was their own or an alternate one. An increasingly paranoid Kathy sets off to visit her husband. Under his new employer Eric Sweetscent is let in on certain State secrets: Molinari seems to have a psychosomatic condition that mirrors any illness or disease of anyone in his vicinity. The effects of this condition appear to be real, yet the Mole pulls through every time, always returning from the brink of death. Molinari, like everyone else, has realized that in siding with the 'Starmen Earth has doomed itself to the wrong side of a losing war. However, there does not seem to be any safe way of defecting to the Reegs, and Molinari fears that his deteriorating health will not instill confidence in the Terrans should the 'Starmen retaliate, as they are certain to do. Sweetscent is shown footage of a healthier, younger Molinari in uniform and is led to believe that an android look-alike of the President has been created for public appearances, a notion that does not account for the fact that there is at least one other Molinari on the premises, a bullet-ridden corpse that is being preserved for use in the event of certain possible future developments. Kathy arrives to inform her husband of her addiction, and in an effort to motivate him to find a cure she slips a pill of JJ-180 into his drink. Without enough time to be furious, Eric slips a year into the future of an alternate world where his colleagues inform him that he disappeared the day Kathy came to visit. Sweetscent also witnesses that in the new timeline Earth has sided with the Reegs and Lilistar has lost the war. Upon returning to the present of his own timeline, Sweetscent is eager to present this information to Molinari, who reveals that he too has been taking JJ-180, and that the effect is different for each user. Certain users are sent to the past, while others are sent to the future. Each trip is in an alternate universe, and therefore no one can effectively change their own past or future. However, aside from minor details, events in all observed universes seem to be moving in the same direction, and therefore, information obtained from one alternate world's future will most likely be applicable to another. In Molinari's case he slips sideways in time under the drug's influence and is able to pull alternate versions of his present self into his own timeline and then keep them there. Having learned the secret to Molinari's alter-aliases as well as confirming the feasibility of an alliance with the Reegs, Eric takes a larger dose of JJ-180 which propels him further into the future. While there, he obtains a cure for JJ-180's addiction, an item of wide accessibility in the future, as well as obtaining more information about the possible future of the war in his own timeline. He also gathers information as to the effects of JJ-180 on the brain as he is increasingly worried about Kathy's mental condition. Taking a fraction of a pill so as to not immediately return to his own time, Eric again ends up one year in his own future where the 'Starmen have occupied Earth after learning of the Terrans' defection to the Reegs. He is arrested by a 'Star patrol but saved by his future self, who informs him that Ackerman and the rest of the crew at TF&D have taken a stand against Lilistar, using Ackerman's getaway on Mars as their hideout. Now knowing the general future history of the next few years, Eric returns to his own time where his wife's mental condition is deteriorating every day. He resolves to check her into a clinic and is sent into deep reflection about the nature of their relationship. Feeling that he would be justified, he attempts to arrange an affair with a younger girl at Molinari's recommendation. However, he backs out of it and begins to slip into a deep depression while reflecting on his life. He goes to Mexico to purchase poison with which to commit suicide. Deciding against it at the last second, Eric watches as the 'Starmen begin their invasion of Earth. Deciding that he is destined to join Ackerman's resistance against the 'Starmen, Eric enters an automated cab bound for TF&D, asking it what it would do if its wife suffered from brain-damage without possibility of recovery (which Eric had confirmed by contacting his future self). After pointing out that robots do not marry, the cab hypothetically concludes that it would stay with her. Life, argues the cab, is made up of a series of circumstances, different for each person. To leave one's wife would be to say that he requires a uniquely easier set of circumstances than what has been provided. That reasoning, to the cab, was an irrational way of thinking. Eric agrees and decides to stay with his wife despite the challenges presented by her condition, and in the closing paragraph he is thereby commended by the cab for being a 'good man'. fr:En attendant l'année dernière it:Illusione di potere pl:A teraz zaczekaj na zeszły rok fi:Varro vain viime vuotta
53071	/m/0dy6y	The Magician's Nephew	C. S. Lewis	1955	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins in London during the summer of 1900. Two children, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, meet while playing in the adjacent gardens of a row of terraced houses. They decide to explore the attic connecting the houses, but take the wrong door and surprise Digory's Uncle Andrew in his study. Uncle Andrew tricks Polly into touching a yellow magic ring, causing her to vanish. Then he explains to Digory that he has been dabbling in magic, and that the rings allow travel between one world and another. He persuades Digory, effectively through blackmail, to take another yellow ring to follow wherever Polly has gone, and two green rings so that both can return. Digory finds himself transported to a sleepy woodland with an almost narcotic effect; he finds Polly nearby. The woodland is filled with pools. Digory and Polly surmise that the world is not really a proper world at all but a "Wood between the Worlds," similar to the attic that links their rowhouses back in England, and that each pool leads to a separate universe. They decide to explore a different world before returning to England, and jump into one of the nearby pools. They then find themselves in a desolate abandoned city of the ancient world of Charn. Inside the ruined palace, they discover statuesque figures of Charn's former kings and queens, which degenerate from the fair and wise to the unhappy and cruel. They find a bell with a hammer, with these words: Make your choice, adventurous Stranger Strike the bell and bide the danger Or wonder, till it drives you mad What would have followed if you had Despite protests from Polly, Digory rings the bell. This awakens the last of the statues, a witch named Jadis, who, to avoid defeat in battle, had deliberately killed every living thing in Charn by speaking a "Deplorable Word." As the only survivor left in her world, she placed herself in an enchanted sleep that would only be broken by someone ringing the bell. The children realize Jadis's evil nature and attempt to flee, but she follows them back to England by clinging to them as they clutch their rings. In England, she dismisses Uncle Andrew as a mere dabbler in magic. She discovers that her magic does not work in England but she still has her strength. She enslaves Uncle Andrew and orders him to fetch her a chariot, so she can set about conquering Earth. They leave, and she returns standing atop a hansom with no driver, followed by a fire engine. There is a collision at the front door of the Kirke house, and police arrive. Jadis breaks off a rod from a nearby lamp-post and brandishes it as a weapon. Polly and Digory grab her and put on their magic rings to take her out of their world, dragging with them Uncle Andrew, Frank the cab-driver, and Frank's horse, since all were touching one another when Digory and Polly grabbed their rings. In the Wood between the Worlds they jump into a pool, hoping it leads back to Charn. Instead they stumble into a dark void that Jadis recognizes as a world not yet created. They then all witness the creation of a new world by the lion Aslan, who brings various entities, stars, plants, and animals, into existence as he sings. Jadis attempts to kill Aslan with the iron bar from the lamp-post, but it deflects harmlessly off of him and begins to sprout into a new lamp-post "tree." Jadis flees. Aslan gives some animals the power of speech, commanding them to use it for justice and merriment. Digory's uncle is frozen with fear and unable to communicate with the talking animals, who mistake him for a kind of tree. Aslan confronts Digory with his responsibility for bringing Jadis into his young world, and tells Digory he must atone by helping to protect Narnia from her evil. Aslan transforms the cabbie's horse into a winged horse named Fledge, and Digory and Polly fly on him to a garden high in the mountains. Digory's task is to take an apple from a tree in this garden, and plant it in Narnia. In the garden Digory finds a sign reading: Come in my gold gates or not at all Take of my fruit for others or forbear For those who steal or those who climb my wall Shall find their heart's desire and find despair Digory picks one of the apples for his mission, but has to resist temptation to eat one for himself after he smells the apples. As he prepares to leave he is shocked to see the witch Jadis. She has eaten one of the magic apples, thereby becoming immortal, but her face is now "deadly white;" Digory begins to understand what the last line in the sign means. She tempts Digory to either eat an apple himself and join her in immortality, or steal one back to Earth to heal his dying mother. Digory resists temptation, knowing that his mother would never condone theft. However the clincher comes when the Witch suggests he leave Polly behind, not knowing Polly can get away by her own ring. At this, Digory sees through the Witch's ploy. Foiled, the Witch departs for the North. Digory returns to Narnia with an apple, which is planted in Narnian soil. A new tree springs up, which Aslan says will repel the Witch for centuries to come. Aslan informs Digory that a stolen apple would have healed his mother, but at a terrible price: anyone who steals the apples gets their heart's desire, but it comes in a form that makes it unlikeable. In the case of the Witch, she now has her heart's desire for immortality, but it only means eternal misery because of her evil heart. Moreover, the magic apples are now a horror to her, which is why the tree repels her. With Aslan's permission, Digory then takes an apple from the new tree to heal his mother. Aslan promises the apple will now bring joy. Aslan returns Digory, Polly, and Uncle Andrew to England; Frank and his wife, Helen (transported from England by Aslan) stay to rule Narnia as its first King and Queen. Digory's apple restores his dying mother to health, and he and Polly remain lifelong friends. Uncle Andrew reforms and gives up magic but he still enjoys bragging about his adventures with the Witch on their tour of London. Digory plants the apple's core, together with Uncle Andrew's magic rings, in the back yard of his aunt's home in London. Years later the tree that grows from it blows down in a storm. Digory has its wood made into a wardrobe, thus linking the story to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which Digory has become the old professor in whose country house Lucy Pevensie finds the wardrobe and the way into Narnia.
53515	/m/0f0s8	The Patchwork Girl of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1913	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Ojo the Unlucky is a Munchkin boy who, devoted to life with his uncle Unc Nunkie in the wilderness but on the verge of starvation, goes to see a neighboring "magician" and old friend of Unc’s, Dr. Pipt. While there they see a demonstration of the Pipt-made Powder of Life, which animates any object it touches. Unc Nunkie and Dr. Pipt's wife are also the sufferers of the consequences of another of the Doctor's inventions, the Liquid of Petrifaction, which turns them into solid marble statues. The remainder of this book is Ojo's quest through Oz to retrieve the five components of an antidote to the Liquid: a six-leaved clover found only in the Emerald City, three hairs from the tip of a Woozy's tail, a gill (a quarter of a pint) of water from a dark well (one that remains untouched by natural light), a drop of oil from a live man's body, and the left wing of a yellow butterfly. With the help of the patchwork girl Scraps, Bungle the Glass Cat (another of Dr. Pipt's creations), the Woozy, Dorothy, the Shaggy Man, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman, Ojo gathers all of these supplies but the left wing — the Tin Woodman will not allow any living thing to be killed, even to save another's life. The party returns to the Emerald City, where the Wizard of Oz (one of the few allowed to lawfully practice magic in Oz) restores Unc Nunkie and Dr. Pipt's wife. The story is also a growth process for Ojo; he learns that luck is not a matter of who you are or what you have, but what you do; he is renamed "Ojo the Lucky," and so he appears in the following Oz books.
53589	/m/0f16d	To Sail Beyond the Sunset	Robert A. Heinlein	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is a memoir of Maureen Johnson Smith Long, mother, lover, and eventual wife of Lazarus Long. Maureen is ostensibly recording the events of the book while being held in a future prison, awaiting her uncertain fate, along with Pixel, the eponymous character of The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Maureen, born on July 4, 1882, recounts her girlhood in Kansas City, young adulthood, discovery that her family is a member of the long-lived Howard Families (whose backstory is revealed in Methuselah's Children), marriage to Brian Smith, another member of that family, and her life until her accidental "death" in 1982. Maureen lives through, and gives her (sometimes contradictory) viewpoints on many events in other Heinlein stories, most notably the 1917 visit from the future by "Ted Bronson" (in actuality Lazarus Long), told from Long's point of view in Time Enough for Love, D. D. Harriman's space program from The Man Who Sold the Moon and the rolling roads from The Roads Must Roll. The adventures of Maureen are a series of sexual ones, starting with Heinlein describing her as a young girl who, having just had her first sexual intercourse, is examined by her father, a doctor, and finds herself desiring him sexually. Her sexual life story then continues featuring various boys, her husband, ministers, other women's husbands, boyfriends, swinging sessions, and the adult Lazarus Long/Theodore Bronson. Additionally, she continues a lifelong pursuit of her father sexually, encourages her husband to have sexual intercourse with their daughters, and accompanies him when he does; but forbids a son and daughter of hers from continuing an incestuous relationship, primarily for the sister's reluctance to share the brother with other women. All of these are set against a history lesson of an alternate 20th century in which a variety of social and philosophical commentary is delivered. She is eventually rescued by Lazarus Long and other characters drawn from various novels in the ship "Gay Deceiver" (from The Number of the Beast), and after rescuing her father from certain death in the Battle of Britain, is united with her descendants in a massive group marriage in the settlement of Boondock, on the planet Tertius. Maureen ends her memoir and the Lazarus Long saga with the phrase "And we all lived happily ever after".
53590	/m/0f16s	Double Star	Robert A. Heinlein	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story, which is told in the first person, centers on down-and-out actor Lawrence Smith (stage name Lorenzo Smythe, a.k.a. "The Great Lorenzo"). A brilliant actor and mimic (or so we are told, by Smith himself), he is down to his last coin when a spaceman hires him to double for a public figure. It is only when he is on his way to Mars that he finds out how deeply he has been deceived: he will have to impersonate one of the most prominent politicians in the solar system (and one with whose views Smythe deeply disagrees): John Joseph Bonforte. Bonforte is the leader of the Expansionist coalition, currently out of office but with a good chance of changing that at the next general election. Bonforte has been kidnapped by his political opponents, and his aides want Smith to impersonate Bonforte while they try to find him. Bonforte is rescued, but he is in poor health due to the treatment inflicted on him during his imprisonment. This forces Smith to extend his performance, even to becoming temporary Supreme Minister and running in an election. (This is made plausible through Bonforte's extensive Farley Files.) The central political issue in the election is the granting of the vote to Martians in the human-dominated Solar System. Lorenzo shares the anti-Martian prejudice prevalent among large parts of Earth's population, but he is called upon to assume the persona of the most prominent advocate for Martian enfranchisement. Smith takes on not only Bonforte's appearance, but some aspects of his personality. At the moment of electoral victory, Bonforte dies of the aftereffects of his kidnapping, and Smythe realizes he has little choice but to assume the role for life. In a retrospective conclusion set twenty-five years later, Lorenzo has 'become' Bonforte, suppressing his own identity permanently. He has been generally successful and has carried forward Bonforte's ideals to the best of his ability. Penny (Bonforte's adoring secretary; now Smith/Bonforte's wife) says, "I never loved anyone else." At the end, Lorenzo looks back on his former life, including the prejudices he used to hold, commenting that they seem to him like they happened to someone else.
53591	/m/0f175	Time for the Stars	Robert A. Heinlein	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Long Range Foundation ("LRF") is a non-profit organization that funds expensive, long-term projects for the benefit of mankind that nobody else will touch. It has built a dozen exploratory starships (torchships) to search for habitable planets to colonize. The vessels can only gradually accelerate, and then merely to sub-light speeds, so the voyages will last many years. Therefore, each starship has a much larger than necessary crew to maintain a more stable, long-term shipboard society, as well as provide replacements for the inevitable deaths. It is found that some twins and triplets can communicate with each other telepathically. The process seems to be instantaneous and unweakened by distance, making it the only practical means of communication for ships traveling many light years away from Earth. Before announcing the discovery, the foundation first recruits as many of these people as it can. Testing shows that teenagers Tom and Pat Bartlett have this talent. Both are eager to sign up. Pat, the dominant twin, manipulates things so that he gets selected as the crewmember, leaving a fuming Tom to stay behind. However, Pat does not really want to leave and his subconscious engineers a convenient accident so that Tom has to take his place at the last minute. On board, Tom is pleased to find his uncle Steve, a military man, has arranged to get assigned to the same ship. The trip is fraught with problems as trivial as an annoying roommate and as serious as mutiny. The ship visits several star systems. Due to the nature of relativistic travel (see Twin paradox), the twin who remained behind ages faster and eventually the affinity between them is weakened to the point that they are no longer able to communicate easily. However, some of the spacefaring twins, including the protagonist, are able to connect with the descendants of the Earthbound twins. Tom works with his niece, then his grandniece and finally his great-grandniece. The last planet (Elysa) scouted proves to be particularly deadly. Unexpectedly intelligent and hostile natives capture and kill a large portion of the remaining crew, including the captain and Tom's uncle Major Steve Lucas. The reserve captain takes charge, but is unable to restore the morale of the devastated survivors. When he insists on continuing the mission rather than returning to Earth, the crew begins to consider mutiny. Shortly after he notifies Earth of the dire situation, they are surprised to hear a spaceship will rendezvous with them in less than a month and surmise it must be a more advanced LRF spaceship. Scientists on Earth have discovered faster-than-light travel, in part due to research into the nature of telepathy, and are collecting the remaining crews of the LRF torchships. The explorers return to an Earth they no longer recognize, and in most cases, no longer fit in. Tom, however, returns to marry his last telepathic partner, his own great-grandniece, who has been reading his mind since childhood.
53592	/m/0f17k	Citizen of the Galaxy	Robert A. Heinlein	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Thorby is a young, defiant slave boy recently arrived on the planet Jubbul, where he is purchased by an old beggar, Baslim the Cripple, for a trivial sum and taken to the beggar's surprisingly well-furnished underground home. Thereafter Baslim treats the boy as a son, teaching him not only the trade of begging, but also mathematics, history, and several languages, and sends Thorby on errands all over the city, carefully passing along information and keeping track of the comings and goings of starships, so that Thorby realizes that his foster-father is gathering intelligence, particularly on the slave trade. In addition, Baslim has Thorby memorize a contingency plan and a message to deliver to one of five starship captains in the event of Baslim's arrest or death. When Baslim is captured and beheaded by the local authorities, Thorby and local innkeeper 'Mother Shaum' convey the message to Captain Krausa of the starship Sisu. Because the 'Free Trader' society to whom Krausa belongs owe a debt to Baslim for his release of one of their crews from a slave-trader, the captain takes Thorby aboard the Sisu at great risk to himself and his clan. Thorby is adopted by the captain (thereby gaining considerable shipboard social status) and adjusts to the insular, clannish, matriarchal culture of the traders. The advanced education provided by Baslim and the fast reflexes of youth make him an ideal fire controlman, in which position Thorby destroys a pirate craft. His immediate superior, a young woman named Mata, begins to view him as a suitable husband; but the customs of the Free Traders forbid this, and to avoid trouble she is transferred to another ship. Thorby is again transferred when against the wishes of his wife, the executive officer and head of the clan (who wants to use Thorby's connection to Baslim to enhance Sisu's prestige), the captain, obeying Baslim's last wish, entrusts the boy to a military cruiser and asks its captain to assist Thorby in finding his true place in society. In order to implement a background search without having to pay the immense cost, Thorby is enlisted in the military service of the Terran Hegemony, the dominant military power in the galaxy. Thorby is ultimately identified as Thor Bradley Rudbek, the long-lost heir of a very powerful family and a substantial shareholder in Rudbek and Associates, a large, sprawling interstellar business including one of the largest starship-manufacturing companies and the entire city of Rudbek (formerly Jackson Hole, Wyoming). In his absence, the business is run by a relative by marriage, "Uncle" John Weemsby, who encourages his stepdaughter Leda to guide Thorby in adjustment to his new situation while secretly scheming to block Thorby's growing interest and interference in the company. Thorby, investigating his parents' disappearance and his capture and sale by slavers, comes to suspect that his parents were eliminated to prevent the discovery that some portions of Rudbek and Associates were secretly profiting from the slave trade. When Weemsby quashes further investigation, Thorby seeks legal help and launches a proxy fight, which he unexpectedly wins when Leda votes her shares in his favor. He fires Weemsby and assumes full control of the firm. When Thorby realizes that it will take a lifetime to remove Rudbek and Associates from the slave trade, he reluctantly abandons his dream imitating Baslim as a member of the elite anti-slaver "X" Corps of the Hegemonic Guard. Knowing that "a person can't run out on his responsibilities", he resolves to fight the slave trade as the head of Rudbek and Associates.
53595	/m/0f17y	Stranger in a Strange Land	Robert A. Heinlein	1961-06-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story focuses on a human raised on Mars and his adaptation to, and understanding of, humans and their culture, which is portrayed as an amplified version of the consumerist and media-driven 20th-century United States. Protagonist Valentine Michael Smith is the son of astronauts of the first expedition to the planet Mars. Orphaned after the crew died, Smith was raised in the culture of the Martian natives, who possess full control over their minds and bodies (learned skills which Smith acquires). A second expedition some twenty years later brings Smith to Earth. Because he is heir to the fortunes of the entire exploration party, which includes several valuable inventions (most particularly his mother's Lyle Drive, which makes interplanetary travel economical), Smith becomes a political pawn in government struggles. Moreover, despite the existence of the Martians, under terrestrial law Mars was terra nullius, wherefore according to some interpretations of law, Smith could be considered to own the planet Mars itself. Because Smith is unaccustomed to the atmosphere and gravity of Earth, he is confined at Bethesda Hospital, where having never seen a human female, he is attended by male staff only. Seeing this restriction as a challenge, Nurse Gillian Boardman eludes guards to see Smith and in doing so inadvertently becomes his first female "water brother" by sharing a glass of water with him, considered a holy relationship by the standards of arid Mars. When Gillian tells reporter Ben Caxton about her experience with Smith, they attempt to counteract the government's lies about Smith. After Ben disappears at the behest of the World Government, Gillian persuades Smith to leave the hospital with her; but they are attacked by government agents. Smith discards the agents irretrievably into a fourth dimension, then is so shocked by Gillian's terrified reaction that he enters a semblance of catatonia. Gillian, remembering Ben's reference to Jubal Harshaw, a famous author who is also a physician and a lawyer, conveys Smith to the latter. Smith continues to demonstrate psychic abilities and superhuman intelligence coupled with a childlike naïveté. When Jubal tries to explain religion to him, Smith understands the concept of God only as "one who groks", which includes every extant organism. This leads him to express the Martian concept of life as the phrase "Thou art God", although he knows this is a bad translation. Many other human concepts such as war, clothing, and jealousy are strange to him, while the idea of an afterlife is a fact he takes for granted because the government on Mars is composed of "Old Ones", the spirits of Martians who have died. It is also customary for loved ones and friends to eat the bodies of the dead, in a spirit of Holy Communion. Eventually Harshaw arranges freedom for Smith and recognition that human law, which would have granted ownership of Mars to Smith, has no applicability to a planet already inhabited by intelligent life. Now free to travel, Smith becomes a celebrity and is feted by the elite of Earth. He investigates many religions, including the Fosterite Church of the New Revelation, a populist megachurch wherein sexuality, gambling, alcoholism, and similar are not considered sinful but encouraged, even within the church building. The church is organized in a complexity of initiatory levels; an outer circle, open to the public; a middle circle of ordinary members who support the church financially; and an inner circle of the "eternally saved" — attractive, highly-sexed men and women, who serve as clergy and recruit new members. The Church owns many politicians and takes violent action against those who oppose it. Smith also has a brief career as a magician in a carnival, where he and Gillian befriend the show's tattooed lady, an "eternally saved" Fosterite woman named Patricia Paiwonski. Eventually Smith begets a Martian-influenced "Church of All Worlds" combining elements of the Fosterite cult (especially the sexual aspects) with Western esotericism, whose members learn the Martian language and acquire psychokinetic abilities. The church is eventually besieged by Fosterites for practicing "blasphemy" and the church building destroyed; but Smith and his followers teleport to safety. Smith is arrested by the police, but escapes and returns to his followers, later explaining to Jubal that his gigantic fortune has been bequeathed to the Church. With it and their new abilities, Church members will be able to re-organize human societies and cultures. Eventually those who cannot or will not learn Smith's methods will die out, leaving Homo superior. Incidentally, this may save Earth from eventual destruction by the Martians, who we are told were responsible for the destruction of Planet V. Smith is killed by a mob raised against him by the Fosterites; but speaks briefly to Jubal from the afterlife, saving him from an attempted suicide after the horror of Smith's own death. Having consumed Smith's remains in keeping with his own wishes, Jubal and some of the Church members return to Jubal's home to re-create their former conditions. Meanwhile Smith re-appears in the afterlife to replace the Fosterites' eponymous founder, amid hints that Smith was an incarnation of the Archangel Michael.
53596	/m/0f18d	Glory Road	Robert A. Heinlein	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Evelyn Cyril "E.C." Gordon (also known as "Easy" and "Flash") has been recently discharged from an unnamed war in Southeast Asia. He is pondering what to do with his future and considers spending a year traveling in France. He is presented with a dilemma: follow up on a possible winning entry in the Irish Sweepstakes or respond to a newspaper ad which asks "Are you a coward?". He settles on the latter discovering it has been placed by Star, a stunningly gorgeous woman he had previously met on Île du Levant. Star informs him that he is the one to embark on a perilous quest to retrieve the Egg of the Phoenix. When she asks what to call him, he wants to suggest Scarface, referring to the scar on his face, but she stops him as he is saying "Oh, Scar..." and repeats this as "Oscar", and thus gives him his new name. Along with Rufo, her assistant, who appears to be a man in his fifties, they tread the "Glory Road" in swashbuckling style, slaying minotaurs, dragons, and other creatures. Shortly before the final quest for the Egg itself, Oscar and Star get married. The team then proceeds to enter the tower in which the Egg has been hidden, navigating a maze of illusions and optical tricks. Oscar scouts ahead and finds himself crossing swords with a fearsome foe who resembles Cyrano de Bergerac. He then defeats the final guardian of the Egg, known only as the "Never-Born", in a mental fight, and the party escapes with the Egg. While they arrive in the universe of Star, Rufo informs Oscar that Star is actually the empress of many worlds—and Rufo's grandmother. The Egg is a cybernetic device that contains the knowledge and experiences of most of her predecessors. Despite her youthful appearance, she is the mother of dozens of children, and has undergone special medical treatments that extend her life much longer than usual. She has Oscar unknowingly receive the same treatments. Initially, Oscar enjoys his new-found prestige and luxurious life as the husband of the empress of worlds across the Twenty Universes. However, as time goes on, he grows bored and feels out of place and useless. When he demands Star's professional judgment, she tells him that he must leave; her world has no place or need for a hero of his stature. It will be decades before she can complete the transfer of the knowledge held in the Egg, so he must go alone. He returns to Earth, but has difficulty readjusting to his own world, despite having brought great wealth along with him. He begins to doubt his own sanity and whether the adventure even happened. The story ends as he is contacted by Rufo to set up another trip on the Glory Road, which is, by this point, revealed as an allegory for Life's Adventure.
53597	/m/0f18s	The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress	Robert A. Heinlein	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 2075, underground colonies are scattered across the Moon (Luna), of whom most inhabitants (called "Loonies") are criminals, political exiles, or descendants thereof. The total population is about three million, with men outnumbering women 2:1, so that polyandry is the norm. Although Earth's Protector of the Lunar Colonies (called the "Warden") holds power, in practice there is little intervention in the loose Lunar society. HOLMES IV ("High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV") is the Lunar Authority's master computer, having almost total control of Luna's machinery on the grounds that a single computer is cheaper than (though not as safe as) multiple independent systems. The story is narrated by Manuel Garcia "Mannie" O'Kelly-Davis, a computer technician who discovers that HOLMES IV has achieved self-awareness and has developed a sense of humor. Mannie names it "Mike" after Mycroft Holmes, brother of Sherlock Holmes, and they become friends. At the beginning of the story, Mannie, at Mike's request, places a recorder in an anti-Authority meeting. When the authorities raid the gathering, Mannie flees with Wyoming ("Wyoh") Knott, a statuesque blonde agitator, whom he introduces to Mike and with whom he goes to see his former teacher, the elderly Professor Bernardo de la Paz, who claims that Luna must stop exporting hydroponic wheat to Earth or its resources will be exhausted. In connection with this, Mike calculates that if no prevention occurs, there will be food riots in seven years and cannibalism in nine. Wyoh and the Professor decide to start a revolution, which Mannie is persuaded to join at Mike's behest. Mannie, Wyoh, and de la Paz thereafter form covert cells, protected by Mike, who adopts the persona of "Adam Selene", leader of the movement, and communicates via the telephone system. Mannie saves the life of Stuart Rene LaJoie, a rich, well-connected, sympathetic tourist, who begins turning public opinion on Earth in favor of lunar independence. When soldiers brought to quell the mounting unrest rape and kill a local young woman, then kill another who finds her body, rioting erupts. The Loonies overcome military opposition and overthrow the Lunar Authority's Protector, called "the Warden." When Earth tries to reclaim the colony, the revolutionaries plan to use in defense a smaller duplicate of the electromagnetic catapult formerly used to export wheat. Mike impersonates the Warden in messages to Earth, to give the revolution time to organize their work. Meanwhile, the Professor sets up an "Ad-Hoc Congress" to distract dissenters. When Earth finally learns the truth, Luna declares its independence on July 4, 2076, the 300th anniversary of the United States' Declaration of Independence. Mannie and the Professor go to Earth to plead Luna's case, where they are received in Agra by the Federated Nations, and embark on a world tour advertising the benefits of a free Luna, while urging various governments to build a catapult to transfer supplies to Luna in exchange for grain. Their proposals are rejected and they are imprisoned; but they are freed by Stuart LaJoie and returned, with him, to Luna. Public opinion on Earth has become fragmented, while on Luna the news of Mannie's arrest and the attempt to bribe him with the appointment of himself as Warden have unified the normally fractious Loonies. An election is held in which Mannie, Wyoh, and the Professor are elected (possibly by the intervention of Mike). (The title is an acronym for There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!) The Federated Nations on Earth send armies to destroy the Lunar revolution; but these are vanquished, with great loss of life, by the revolutionaries. The rumor is circulated that Mike's alter-ego Adam Selene was among those killed; thus removing the need for him to appear in the flesh. When Mike launches rocks at sparsely-populated locations on Earth, warnings are released to the press detailing the times and locations of the bombings; but disbelieving people, as well as people on religious pilgrimages, travel to the sites and die. As a result, public opinion turns against the fledgling nation. A second attack destroys Mike's original catapult; but the Loonies have built a secondary smaller one in a secret location, and with Mannie acting as its on-site commander, the Loonies continue to attack Earth until it concedes Luna's independence. Professor Bernardo de la Paz, as leader of the nation, proclaims victory to the gathered crowds; but collapses and dies. Mannie takes control; but he and Wyoh eventually withdraw from politics altogether, and find that the new government falls short of their expectations. When Mannie tries to speak to Mike afterwards, the latter's replies indicate that the computer has lost its self-awareness and its human-like qualities, as a result either of damage suffered in the war or of shock undergone therein.
53598	/m/0f196	I Will Fear No Evil	Robert A. Heinlein	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place about 2015 AD, against a background of an overpopulated Earth, whose dysfunctional society is clearly an attempt to extrapolate into the future the rapid social changes taking place in the U.S. during the 1960s. Ancient billionaire Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is dying, and wants to have his brain transplanted into a new body. Smith advertises an offer of a million dollars for the donation of a body from a brain-dead patient. Coincidentally, his beautiful young female secretary, Eunice Branca, is murdered, so her body is used, since Smith never thought to place any restriction on the sex of the donor. He is rechristened Joan Eunice Smith. For reasons never made clear, Eunice's personality continues to co-inhabit the body. (Whether Eunice's personality is real or a figment of Johann's imagination is addressed but never fully resolved in the novel.) Joan and Eunice agree never to reveal her continued existence, fearing that they would be judged insane and locked up. The two of them speculate that it may have something to do with the supposed ability of animals to remember things using RNA rather than the nervous system. (At the time the book was published, biologist J.V. McConnell had done a series of experiments in which he taught a behavior to flatworms, ground them up, and fed them to other flatworms, which supposedly exhibited the same behavior. McConnell's experiments were later discredited, but ideas drawn from them were used in science fiction by several authors, including Heinlein, Larry Niven, Joe Haldeman and Dean Koontz.) However, Joan and Eunice decide that this possible explanation is irrelevant, and near the end of the book, a third personality, that of Joan's new husband, joins them by means that can only be explained via delusion, religion or mysticism, not science.
53600	/m/0f19l	The Cat Who Walks Through Walls	Robert A. Heinlein	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A writer seated at the best restaurant of the space habitat "Golden Rule" is approached by a man who urges him that "Tolliver must die" and is himself shot before the writer's eyes. The writer–Colonel Colin Campbell, living under a number of aliases including his pen name "Richard Ames"–is joined by a beautiful and sophisticated lady, Gwendolyn Novak, who helps him flee to Luna with a bonsai maple and a would-be murderer ("Bill"). After escaping to the moon, Gwen refers to the now ancient Lunar Revolt (as described in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress) and Mike (Mycroft), the self-aware computer responsible for the uprising's victory, and claims to have been present during the revolt; despite her claim that she was only a girl at the time, Campbell grows suspicious, and learns that she is a rejuvenation of the revolution's most prominent female leader. Still pursued by assassins, Campbell and Novak are rescued by an organization known as the Time Corps under the leadership of Lazarus Long. After giving Campbell a new leg to replace one lost in combat years before, the Time Corps attempt to recruit Campbell for a special mission. Accepting only on Gwen's account, Campbell agrees to assist a team to retrieve the decommissioned Mike. Engaged in frequent time-travel, the Time Corps has been responsible for changing various events in the past, creating an alternate universe with every time-line they disrupt. Mike's assistance is needed in order to accurately predict the conditions and following events in each of the new universes created. Campbell's frequent would-be assassins are revealed to be members of contemporary agencies also engaged in time manipulation who, for unknown reasons, do not want to see Mike rescued by the Time Corps. During the mission, Gwen is grievously wounded and Campbell loses his foot again, though the Time Corps succeed in retrieving Mike. The story ends with Campbell talking into a recorder (presumably the source of the first-person medium through which the story is told) reflecting on the mission and his relationship with Gwen.
53673	/m/0f1s7	Methuselah's Children	Robert A. Heinlein	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Howard Families derive from Ira Howard, who became rich in the California Gold Rush, but died young and childless. Fearing death, he left his money for the prolongation of human life, and the trustees of his will carried out his wishes by financially encouraging those with long-lived grandparents to marry and have children. While the Families (who, by the 22nd Century, have a life expectancy of 150 years) have kept their existence secret, with the enlightened human society established under The Covenant, they decide to reveal themselves. Society refuses to believe the Howard Families simply 'chose their ancestors wisely', instead insisting they have developed a method to extend life, and the Families are persecuted and interned. Though the beleaguered Administrator of the planet, Slayton Ford, is convinced the Families are telling the truth, he is helpless to control an increasingly irrational public and their efforts to force the Howard Families to reveal their "secret" or face execution. The eldest member of the Howard Families, Lazarus Long, realizes this as well, and proposes to the Administrator that he help the Families hijack the colony starship New Frontiers, so they can escape. In the process of escaping, they are driven too near the Sun by military spacecraft. When they are a few minutes away from overheating, Heinlein invokes a deus ex machina: it turns out that one member of the Families, Andrew Jackson Libby, (known as "Slipstick" Libby because he is a mathematical genius), has managed to invent a device that removes inertia from any mass to which it is attached. Libby applies the device, and instantaneously, New Frontiers is accelerated by light-pressure from the Sun to nearly the speed of light. The Families leave the Solar System, with the deposed Ford joining them at the last minute. The first planet they discover has humanoid inhabitants who seem friendly and advanced - however, they are merely domesticated animals belonging to the planet's true masters, indescribable beings of equally indescribable power. When humans prove incapable of similar domestication, they are expelled from the planet and sent to another world. The second planet is a lush environment with no predators and mild weather. Its inhabitants are part of a group mind, with the mental ability to manipulate the environment on the genetic and molecular level. They have no independent personalities; anyone who joins the group mind ceases to exist as a unique individual. This becomes evident when Mary Sperling, second oldest of the Families, who has always been fearful of death, joins the group mind in an attempt to become truly immortal. The Families are further horrified when the group mind, in a mistaken effort to be helpful, genetically modifies the first baby born on the planet into a new, alien form. Lazarus calls a meeting of the Families. He states that humans are what they are because they are individuals, and that they have no place on this world. The Families vote, and a majority of the Families decide to go back to Earth and claim their rights. Libby, with the help of the group mind, builds a new faster than light drive that will take them home in months instead of years. The Families return to the Solar System seventy-five years after their original departure. To their surprise they find that on Earth great longevity is commonplace. Spurred on by the belief that there was a specific "technique" to the Howards' longevity, Earth's scientists developed a series of treatments that extended lifespans to several centuries. The Families are now free to return, and are even welcomed due to their discovery of faster than light travel. Thanks to humanity's increased lifespan, the Solar System is overcrowded; faster than light travel will allow emigrants to ease the population explosion. Libby and Long decide to recruit other members of the Families, and explore space with the new drive.
53720	/m/0f24d	Life: A User's Manual	Georges Perec	1978		 Between World War I and II, a tremendously wealthy Englishman, Bartlebooth (whose name combines two literary characters, Herman Melville's Bartleby and Valery Larbaud's Barnabooth), devises a plan that will both occupy the remainder of his life and spend his entire fortune. First, he spends 10 years learning to paint watercolors under the tutelage of Valène, who also becomes a resident of 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier. Then, he embarks on a 20-year trip around the world with his loyal servant Smautf (also a resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier), painting a watercolor of a different port roughly every two weeks for a total of 500 watercolors. Bartlebooth then sends each painting back to France, where the paper is glued to a support board, and a carefully selected craftsman named Gaspard Winckler (also a resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier) cuts it into a jigsaw puzzle. Upon his return, Bartlebooth spends his time solving each jigsaw, re-creating the scene. Each finished puzzle is treated to re-bind the paper with a special solution invented by Georges Morellet, another resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier. After the solution is applied, the wooden support is removed, and the painting is sent to the port where it was painted. Exactly 20 years to the day after it was painted, the painting is placed in a detergent solution until the colors dissolve, and the paper, blank except for the faint marks where it was cut and re-joined, is returned to Bartlebooth. Ultimately, there would be nothing to show for 50 years of work: the project would leave absolutely no mark on the world. Unfortunately for Bartlebooth, Winckler's puzzles become increasingly difficult and Bartlebooth himself becomes blind. A crazed art fanatic also intervenes in an attempt to stop Bartlebooth from destroying his art. Bartlebooth is forced to change his plans and have the watercolors burned in a furnace locally instead of couriered back to the sea, for fear of those involved in the task betraying him. By 1975, Bartlebooth is 16 months behind in his plans, and he dies while he is about to finish his 439th puzzle. Ironically, the last hole in the puzzle is in the shape of the letter X while the piece that he is holding is in the shape of the letter W.
54436	/m/0f6vx	The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1900	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Dorothy is a young orphaned girl raised by her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in the bleak landscape of a Kansas farm. She has a little black dog Toto, who is her sole source of happiness on the dry, gray prairies. One day the farmhouse, with Dorothy and Toto inside, is caught up in a cyclone and deposited in a field in Munchkin Country, the eastern quadrant of the Land of Oz. The falling house kills the evil ruler of the Munchkins, the Wicked Witch of the East. The Good Witch of the North comes with the Munchkins to greet Dorothy and gives Dorothy the silver shoes (believed to have magical properties) that the Wicked Witch had been wearing when she was killed. In order to return to Kansas, the Good Witch of the North tells Dorothy that she will have to go to the "Emerald City" or "City of Emeralds" and ask the Wizard of Oz to help her. Before she leaves, the Good Witch of the North kisses her on the forehead, giving her magical protection from trouble. On her way down the road of yellow bricks, Dorothy frees the Scarecrow from the pole he is hanging on, restores the movements of the rusted Tin Woodman with an oil can, and encourages them and the Cowardly Lion to journey with her and Toto to the Emerald City. The Scarecrow wants to get a brain, the Tin Woodman a heart, and the Cowardly Lion, courage. All four of the travelers believe that the Wizard can solve their troubles. The party finds many adventures on their journey together, including overcoming obstacles such as narrow pieces of the yellow brick road, vicious Kalidahs, a river, and the Deadly Poppies. When the travelers arrive at the Emerald City, they are asked to wear green spectacles by the Guardian of the Gates as long as they remain in the city. The four are the first to ever successfully meet with the Wizard. When each traveler meets with the Wizard, he appears each time as someone or something different. To Dorothy, the Wizard is a giant head; the Scarecrow sees a beautiful woman; the Tin Woodman sees a ravenous beast; the Cowardly Lion sees a ball of fire. The Wizard agrees to help each of them—but only if one of them kills the Wicked Witch of the West who rules over the western Winkie Country. The Guardian of the Gates warns them that no one has ever managed to harm the very cunning and cruel Wicked Witch. As the friends travel across the Winkie Country, the Wicked Witch sees them coming and attempts various ways of killing them: * First, she sends her 40 great wolves to kill them. The Tin Woodman manages to kill them all. * Then the Wicked Witch of the West sends her 40 crows to peck their eyes out. The Scarecrow manages to kill them by grabbing them and breaking their necks. * Then the Wicked Witch summons a swarm of bees to sting them to death. Using the Scarecrow's extra straw, the others hide underneath them while the bees try to sting the Tin Woodman. * Then the Wicked Witch of the West uses her Winkie soldiers to attack them. They are scared off by the Cowardly Lion. * Using the power of the Golden Cap, the Wicked Witch of the West summons the Winged Monkeys to capture Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion and Toto, and to destroy the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. When the Wicked Witch gains one of Dorothy's silver shoes by trickery, Dorothy in anger grabs a bucket of water and throws it on the Wicked Witch. To her shock, this causes the Witch to melt away, allowing Dorothy to recover the shoe. The Winkies rejoice at being freed of the witch's tyranny, and they help to reassemble the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. The Winkies love the Tin Woodman, and they ask him to become their ruler, which he agrees to do after helping Dorothy return to Kansas. Dorothy, after finding and learning how to use the Golden Cap, summons the Winged Monkeys to carry her and her companions back to the Emerald City. and the King of the Winged Monkeys tells how he and the other monkeys were bound by an enchantment to the cap by the sorceress Gayelette. When Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard of Oz again, he tries to put them off. Toto accidentally tips over a screen in a corner of the throne room, revealing the Wizard to be an ordinary old man who had journeyed to Oz from Omaha long ago in a hot air balloon. The Wizard has been longing to return to his home and be in a circus again ever since. The Wizard provides the Scarecrow with a head full of bran, pins, and needles ("a lot of bran-new brains"), the Tin Woodman with a silk heart stuffed with sawdust, and the Cowardly Lion a potion of "courage", respectively. Because of their faith in the Wizard's power, these otherwise useless items provide a focus for their desires. In order to help Dorothy and Toto get home, the Wizard realizes that he will have to take them home with him in a new balloon, which he and Dorothy fashion from green silk. Revealing himself to the people of the Emerald City one last time, the Wizard appoints the Scarecrow, by virtue of his brains, to rule in his stead. Dorothy chases Toto after he runs after a kitten in the crowd, and before she can make it back to the balloon, the ropes break, leaving the Wizard to rise and float away alone. Dorothy turns to the Winged Monkeys to carry her and Toto home, but they cannot cross the desert surrounding Oz, subsequently wasting her second wish. The Soldier with the Green Whiskers advises that Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, may be able to send Dorothy and Toto home. Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion journey to Glinda's palace in the Quadling Country. Together they escape the Fighting Trees, tread carefully through the China Country where they meet Mr. Joker, and dodge the armless Hammer-Heads on their hill. The Cowardly Lion kills a giant spider who is terrorizing the animals in a forest and he agrees to return there to rule them after Dorothy returns to Kansas. Dorothy uses her third wish to fly over the Hammer-Heads' mountain, almost losing Toto in the process. At Glinda's palace, the travelers are greeted warmly, and it is revealed by Glinda that Dorothy had the power to go home all along. The Silver Shoes she wears can take her anywhere she wishes to go. She tearfully embraces her friends, all of whom will be returned, through Glinda's use of the Golden Cap, to their respective kingdoms: the Scarecrow to the Emerald City, the Tin Woodman to the Winkie Country, and the Cowardly Lion to the forest. Then she will give the Golden Cap to the King of the Winged Monkeys, so they will never be under its spell again. Having bid her friends farewell one final time, Dorothy knocks her heels together three times, and wishes to return home. When she opens her eyes, Dorothy and Toto have returned to Kansas to a joyful family reunion.
54932	/m/0f9pg	King Ottokar's Sceptre	Hergé	1939		 Tintin finds a lost briefcase and returns it to the owner, Professor Hector Alembick, who is a sigillographer, an expert on seals (as in the sort used to make state documents official). He shows Tintin his collection of seals, including one which belonged to the Syldavian King Ottokar IV. Tintin then discovers that he and Alembick are under surveillance by some strange men. Tintin's flat is even bombed in an attempt to kill him. Suspecting a Syldavian connection, Tintin offers to accompany Alembick to Syldavia via Frankfurt and Prague for research. On the plane Tintin begins to suspect his companion. The Alembick travelling with him does not smoke and doesn't seem to need the spectacles he wears – to the point that he can make out a pretty pattern made by the sheep in a field that the plane passed over – while the Alembick he first met did smoke and had poor eyesight. During a layover, Tintin fakes a fall and grabs Alembick's beard, thinking it is false and Alembick is an imposter. However, the beard proves to be real and Tintin decides to let the matter drop, assuming that Alembick simply gave up smoking and is better at long distances than close-up- but then, while flying over Syldavia, it is the pilot of the plane who opens a trap door and Tintin drops out, landing in a haywagon. Tintin has a hunch that a plot is afoot to steal the sceptre of King Ottokar IV. In Syldavia, the reigning King must possess the sceptre to rule or he will be forced to abdicate, a tradition established after a past king used the sceptre to defeat a would-be assassin. Every year he rides in a parade during St. Vladimir's Day carrying it, while the people sing the national anthem. Tintin succeeds in warning the reigning King Muskar XII, despite the efforts of the conspirators. He and the King rush to the royal treasure room to find Alembick, the royal photographer and some guards unconscious and the sceptre missing. Tintin's friends Thomson and Thompson are summoned to investigate but their theory on how the sceptre was stolen – the thief throwing the sceptre through the iron bars over the window – proves to be inaccurate. Later on, Tintin notices a spring cannon in a toy shop and this gives him the clue. Professor Alembick had asked for some photographs to be taken of the sceptre, but the camera was a spring cannon in disguise, which allowed him to 'shoot' the sceptre out of the castle through the window bars into a nearby forest. Searching the forest, Tintin spots the sceptre being found by agents of the neighbouring country, Borduria. Following them all the way to the border, he wrestles the sceptre from them. In the wallet of one of the thieves he discovers papers that show that the theft of the sceptre was just part of a major plan for a takeover of Syldavia by their long-time political rival, Borduria. Tintin steals a Me-109 from a Bordurian airfield (whose squadron is being kept ready to take part in the envisioned invasion of Syldavia) to fly it back to the King in time. He is shot down by the Syldavians who have naturally opened fire on an enemy aircraft violating their airspace. He manages to make the rest of the journey by foot. Meanwhile the Interior Minister informs the King that rumours have been spreading that the sceptre has been stolen and that there have been riots against local Bordurian businesses, acts which would justify a Bordurian takeover of the country. The King is about to abdicate when Snowy runs in with the sceptre (which had fallen out of Tintin's pocket). Tintin then gives the King the papers he took from the man who stole the sceptre. They prove that the plot was masterminded by Müsstler, leader of the Zyldav Zentral Revolutzionär Komitzät, a political organisation. The King takes action by having Müsstler and his associates arrested and the army mobilised along the Bordurian frontier. In response, the Bordurian leader pulls his own troops back from the border. The next day is St. Vladimir's Day and Tintin is made a Knight of the Order of the Golden Pelican, the first non-Syldavian to receive such an honour. Further inquiries by the authorities reveal that Professor Alembick is one of a pair of identical twins: Hector Alembick was kidnapped and replaced with his brother Alfred who left for Syldavia in his place. Tintin and Snowy return home by a flying boat with Thomson and Thompson, who suffer momentary panic when the aircraft appears to be falling into the sea at the end of the flight. The reader is treated to a rare "wink to the camera" from Tintin, who points out their error, and they laugh about it so much that they do indeed fall into the sea as they disembark.
55435	/m/0fdsp	Wuthering Heights	Emily Brontë	1847-12	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1801, Mr. Lockwood, a rich man from the south of England, rents Thrushcross Grange in the north of England for peace and recuperation. Soon after his arrival, he visits his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff, who lives in the remote moorland farmhouse called "Wuthering Heights." He finds the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights to be a rather strange group: Mr. Heathcliff appears a gentleman but his mannerisms suggest otherwise; the reserved mistress of the house is in her mid-teens; and a young man appears to be one of the family, although he dresses and talks like a servant. Being snowed in, Mr. Lockwood stays the night and is shown to an unused chamber, where he finds books and graffiti from a former inhabitant of the farmhouse named Catherine. When he falls asleep, he has a nightmare in which he sees Catherine as a ghost trying to enter through the window. Heathcliff rushes to the room after hearing him yelling in fear. He believes Mr. Lockwood is telling the truth, and inspects the window, opening it in a futile attempt to let Catherine's spirit in from the cold. After nothing eventuates, Heathcliff shows Mr. Lockwood to his own bedroom, and returns to keep guard at the window. As soon as the sun rises, Mr. Lockwood is escorted back to Thrushcross Grange by Heathcliff. There, he asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the story of the family from the Heights. Thirty years prior, the Earnshaw family lived at Wuthering Heights. The children of the family are the teenaged Hindley and his younger sister, Catherine. Mr. Earnshaw travels to Liverpool, where he finds a homeless dark-skinned boy whom he decides to adopt, naming him "Heathcliff." Hindley finds himself robbed of his father's affections and becomes bitterly jealous of Heathcliff. However, Catherine grows very attached to him. Soon, the two children spend hours on the moors together and hate every moment apart. Because of the domestic discord caused by Hindley's and Heathcliff's sibling rivalry, Hindley is eventually sent to college. However, he marries a woman named Frances and returns three years later, after Mr. Earnshaw dies. He becomes master of Wuthering Heights, and forces Heathcliff to become a servant instead of a member of the family. Several months after Hindley's return, Heathcliff and Catherine travel to Thrushcross Grange to spy on the Linton family. However, they are spotted and try to escape. Catherine, having been caught by a dog, is brought inside the Grange to have injuries tended to while Heathcliff is sent home. Catherine eventually returns to Wuthering Heights as a changed woman, looking and acting as a lady. She laughs at Heathcliff's unkempt appearance. When the Lintons visit the next day, Heathcliff dresses up to impress her. It fails when Edgar, one of the Linton children, argues with him. Heathcliff is locked in the attic, where Catherine later tries to comfort him. He swears vengeance on Hindley. In the summer of the next year, Frances gives birth to a son, Hareton, but she dies before the year is out. This leads Hindley to descend into a life of drunkenness and waste. Two years pass and Catherine has become close friends with Edgar, growing more distant from Heathcliff. One day in August, while Hindley is absent, Edgar comes to visit Catherine. She has an argument with Nelly, which then spreads to Edgar who tries to leave. Catherine stops him and, before long, they declare themselves lovers. Later, Catherine talks with Nelly, explaining that Edgar had asked her to marry him and she had accepted. She says that she does not really love Edgar but Heathcliff. Unfortunately she could never marry Heathcliff because of his lack of status and education. She therefore plans to marry Edgar and use that position to help raise Heathcliff's standing. Unfortunately, Heathcliff had overheard the first part about not being able to marry him and runs away, disappearing without a trace. After three years, Edgar and Catherine are married. Six months after the marriage, Heathcliff returns as a gentleman, having grown stronger and richer during his absence. Catherine is delighted to see him although Edgar is not so keen. Edgar's sister, Isabella, now eighteen, falls in love with Heathcliff, seeing him as a romantic hero. He despises her but encourages the infatuation, seeing it as a chance for revenge on Edgar. When he embraces Isabella one day at the Grange, there is an argument with Edgar which causes Catherine to lock herself in her room and fall ill. Heathcliff has been staying at the Heights, gambling with Hindley and teaching Hareton bad habits. Hindley is gradually losing his wealth, mortgaging the farmhouse to Heathcliff to repay his debts. While Catherine is ill, Heathcliff elopes with Isabella. The fugitives marry and return two months later to Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff hears that Catherine is ill and arranges with Nelly to visit her in secret. In the early hours of the day after their meeting, Catherine gives birth to her daughter, Cathy, and then dies. The day after Catherine's funeral, Isabella flees Heathcliff and escapes to the south of England where she eventually gives birth to Linton, Heathcliff's son. Hindley dies six months after Catherine. Heathcliff finds himself the master of Wuthering Heights and the guardian of Hareton. Twelve years later, Cathy has grown into a beautiful, high-spirited girl who has rarely passed outside the borders of the Grange. Edgar hears that Isabella is dying and leaves to pick up her son with the intention of adopting him. While he is gone, Cathy meets Hareton on the moors and learns of her cousin's and Wuthering Heights' existence. Edgar returns with Linton who is a weak and sickly boy. Although Cathy is attracted to him, Heathcliff wants his son with him and insists on having him taken to the Heights. Three years later, Nelly and Cathy are on the moors when they meet Heathcliff who takes them to Wuthering Heights to see Linton and Hareton. He has plans for Linton and Cathy to marry so that he will inherit Thrushcross Grange. Cathy and Linton begin a secret friendship. In August of the next year, while Edgar is very ill, Nelly and Cathy visit Wuthering Heights and are held captive by Heathcliff who wants to marry his son to Cathy and, at the same time, prevent her from returning to her father before he dies. After five days, Nelly is released and Cathy escapes with Linton's help just in time to see her father before he dies. With Heathcliff now the master of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, Cathy has no choice but to leave Nelly and to go and live with Heathcliff and Hareton. Linton dies soon afterwards and, although Hareton tries to be kind to her, she retreats into herself. This is the point of the story at which Lockwood arrives. After being ill with a cold for some time, Lockwood decides that he has had enough of the moors and travels to Wuthering Heights to inform Heathcliff that he is returning to the south. In September, eight months after leaving, Lockwood finds himself back in the area and decides to stay at Thrushcross Grange (since his tenancy is still valid until October). He finds that Nelly is now living at Wuthering Heights. He makes his way there and she fills in the rest of the story. Nelly had moved to the Heights soon after Lockwood left to replace the housekeeper who had departed. In March, Hareton had had an accident and been confined to the farmhouse. During this time, a friendship had developed between Cathy and Hareton. This had continued into April when Heathcliff began to act very strangely, seeing visions of Catherine. After not eating for four days, he was found dead in Catherine's room. He was buried next to Catherine. Lockwood departs but, before he leaves, he hears that Hareton and Cathy plan to marry on New Year's Day. Lockwood passes the graves of Catherine, Edgar and Heathcliff, pausing to contemplate the peaceful quiet of the moors.
55438	/m/0fdt5	Jane Eyre	Charlotte Brontë	1847-10-16	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02p6xz3": "Social criticism", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 The novel begins with a ten-year-old orphan named Jane Eyre, who is living with her maternal uncle's family, the Reeds, as her uncle's dying wish. Jane's parents died of typhus. Jane’s aunt Sarah Reed does not like her and treats her worse than a servant and discourages and at times forbids her children from associating with her. She claims that Jane is not worthy of notice. She and her three children are abusive to Jane, physically and emotionally. She is unacceptably excluded from the family celebrations and had a doll to find solace in. One day Jane is locked in the red room, where her uncle died, and panics after seeing visions of him. She is finally rescued when she is allowed to attend Lowood School for Girls. Before she leaves, she stands up to Mrs. Reed and declares that she'll never call her "aunt" again, that she'd tell everyone at Lowood how cruel Mrs. Reed was to her, and says that Mrs. Reed and her daughter, Georgiana, are deceitful. John Reed, her son, is very rude and disrespectful, even to his own mother, who he sometimes had called "old girl", and his sisters. He treats Jane worse than the others do, and she hates him above all the others. Mr. Reed had been the only one in the Reed family to be kind to Jane. The servant Abbot is also always rude to Jane. The servant Bessie is sometimes scolding and sometimes nice. Jane likes Bessie the best. Jane arrives at Lowood Institution, a charity school, the head of which (Brocklehurst) has been told that she is deceitful. During an inspection, Jane accidentally breaks her slate, and Mr. Brocklehurst, the self-righteous clergyman who runs the school, brands her a liar and shames her before the entire assembly. Jane is comforted by her friend, Helen Burns. Miss Temple, a caring teacher, facilitates Jane's self-defense and writes to Mr. Lloyd, whose reply agrees with Jane's. Ultimately, Jane is publicly cleared of Mr. Brocklehurst's accusations. The eighty pupils at Lowood are subjected to cold rooms, poor meals, and thin clothing. Many students fall ill when a typhus epidemic strikes. Jane's friend Helen dies of consumption in her arms. When Mr. Brocklehurst's neglect and dishonesty are discovered, several benefactors erect a new building and conditions at the school improve dramatically. After six years as a student and two as a teacher, Jane decides to leave Lowood, like her friend and confidante Miss Temple. She advertises her services as a governess, and receives one reply. It is from Alice Fairfax, the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall. She takes the position, teaching Adele Varens, a young French girl. While Jane is walking one night to a nearby town, a horseman passes her. The horse slips on ice and throws the rider. She helps him to the horse. Later, back at the mansion she learns that this man is Edward Rochester, master of the house. He teases her, asking whether she bewitched his horse to make him fall. Adele is his ward, left in Mr. Rochester's care when her mother died. Mr. Rochester and Jane enjoy each other's company and spend many hours together. Odd things start to happen at the house, such as a strange laugh, a mysterious fire in Mr. Rochester's room, on which Jane throws water, and an attack on Rochester's house guest, Mr. Mason. Jane receives word that her aunt was calling for her, after being in much grief because her son has died. She returns to Gateshead and remains there for a month caring for her dying aunt. Mrs. Reed gives Jane a letter from Jane's paternal uncle, Mr John Eyre, asking for her to live with him. Mrs. Reed admits to telling her uncle that Jane had died of fever at Lowood. Soon after, Jane's aunt dies, and she returns to Thornfield. Jane begins to communicate to her uncle John Eyre. After returning to Thornfield, Jane broods over Mr. Rochester's impending marriage to Blanche Ingram. But on a midsummer evening, he proclaims his love for Jane and proposes. As she prepares for her wedding, Jane's forebodings arise when a strange, savage-looking woman sneaks into her room one night and rips her wedding veil in two. As with the previous mysterious events, Mr. Rochester attributes the incident to drunkenness on the part of Grace Poole, one of his servants. During the wedding ceremony, Mr. Mason and a lawyer declare that Mr. Rochester cannot marry because he is still married to Mr. Mason’s sister Bertha. Mr. Rochester admits this is true, but explains that his father tricked him into the marriage for her money. Once they were united, he discovered that she was rapidly descending into madness and eventually locked her away in Thornfield, hiring Grace Poole as a nurse to look after her. When Grace gets drunk, his wife escapes, and causes the strange happenings at Thornfield. Jane learns that her own letter to her uncle John Eyre, which happened to be seen by Mr. Mason, who knew John Eyre and was there, was how Mr. Mason found out about the bigamous marriage. Mr. Rochester asks Jane to go with him to the south of France, and live as husband and wife, even though they cannot be married. Refusing to go against her principles, and despite her love for him, Jane leaves Thornfield in the middle of the night. Jane travels through England using the little money she had saved. She accidentally leaves her bundle of possessions on a coach and has to sleep on the moor, trying to trade her scarf and gloves for food. Exhausted, she makes her way to the home of Diana and Mary Rivers, but is turned away by the housekeeper. She faints on the doorstep, preparing for her death. St. John Rivers, Diana and Mary's brother and a clergyman, saves her. After she regains her health, St. John finds her a teaching position at a nearby charity school. Jane becomes good friends with the sisters, but St. John remains reserved. The sisters leave for governess jobs and St. John becomes closer with Jane. St. John discovers Jane's true identity, and astounds her by showing her a letter stating that her uncle John Eyre has died and left her his entire fortune of 20,000 pounds (equivalent to over £1.3 million in 2011, calculated using the RPI). When Jane questions him further, St. John reveals that John is also his and his sisters' uncle. They had once hoped for a share of the inheritance, but have since resigned themselves to nothing. Jane, overjoyed by finding her family, insists on sharing the money equally with her cousins, and Diana and Mary come to Moor House to stay. Thinking she will make a suitable missionary's wife, St. John asks Jane to marry him and to go with him to India, not out of love, but out of duty. Jane initially accepts going to India, but rejects the marriage proposal, suggesting they travel as brother and sister. As soon as Jane's resolve against marriage to St. John begins to weaken, she mysteriously hears Mr. Rochester's voice calling her name. Jane then returns to Thornfield to find only blackened ruins. She learns that Mr. Rochester's wife set the house on fire and committed suicide by jumping from the roof. In his rescue attempts, Mr. Rochester lost a hand and his eyesight. Jane reunites with him, but he fears that she will be repulsed by his condition. When Jane assures him of her love and tells him that she will never leave him, Mr. Rochester again proposes and they are married. He eventually recovers enough sight to see their first-born son.
55469	/m/0fd_f	Catch-22	Joseph Heller	1961-11-11	{"/m/01fc50": "Anti-war", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 The development of the novel can be split into segments. The first (chapters 1–11) broadly follows the story fragmented between characters, but in a single chronological time in 1943. The second (chapters 12–20) flashes back to focus primarily on the "Great Big Siege of Bologna" before once again jumping to the chronological "present" of 1943 in the third part (chapter 21–25). The fourth (chapters 26–28) flashes back to the origins and growth of Milo's syndicate, with the fifth part (chapter 28–32) returning again to the narrative "present" but keeping to the same tone of the previous four. In the sixth and final part (chapter 32 on) while remaining in the "present" time the novel takes a much darker turn and spends the remaining chapters focusing on the serious and brutal nature of war and life in general. While the first five parts "sections" develop the novel in the present and through use of flash-backs, the novel significantly darkens in chapters 32–41. Previously the reader had been cushioned from experiencing the full horror of events, but now the events are laid bare, allowing the full effect to take place. The horror begins with the attack on the undefended Italian mountain village, with the following chapters involving despair (Doc Daneeka and the Chaplain), disappearance in combat (Orr and Clevinger), disappearance caused by the army (Dunbar) or death (Nately, McWatt, Mudd, Kid Sampson, Dobbs, Chief White Halfoat and Hungry Joe) of most of Yossarian's friends, culminating in the unspeakable horrors of Chapter 39, in particular the rape and murder of Michaela, who represents pure innocence. In Chapter 41, the full details of the gruesome death of Snowden are finally revealed. Despite this, the novel ends on an upbeat note with Yossarian learning of Orr's miraculous escape to Sweden and Yossarian's pledge to follow him there.
55483	/m/0ff18	Robinson Crusoe	Daniel Defoe	1719-04-25	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Crusoe (the family name corrupted from the German name "Kreutznaer") sets sail from the Queen's Dock in Hull on a sea voyage in August 1651, against his parents' wishes, who want him to pursue a career, possibly in law. After a tumultuous journey where his ship is wrecked in a storm, his lust for the sea remains so strong that he sets out to sea again. This journey, too, ends in disaster as the ship is taken over by Salé pirates (the Salé Rovers) and Crusoe is enslaved by a Moor. Two years later, he escapes in a boat with a boy named Xury; a Captain of a Portuguese ship off the west coast of Africa rescues him. The ship is en route to Brazil. With the captain's help, Crusoe procures a plantation. Years later, Crusoe joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa but he is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an island (which he calls the Island of Despair) near the mouth of the Orinoco river on September 30, 1659. Only he and three animals, the captain's dog and two cats, survive the shipwreck. Overcoming his despair, he fetches arms, tools, and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. He builds a fenced-in habitat near a cave which he excavates. By making marks in a wooden cross, he creates a calendar. By using tools salvaged from the ship, and ones he makes himself, he hunts, grows barley and rice, dries grapes to make raisins, learns to make pottery, and raises goats. He also adopts a small parrot. He reads the Bible and becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but human society. More years pass and Crusoe discovers native cannibals, who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. At first he plans to kill them for committing an abomination but later realizes he has no right to do so, as the cannibals do not knowingly commit a crime. He dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing some prisoners; when a prisoner escapes, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe then teaches him English and converts him to Christianity. After more natives arrive to partake in a cannibal feast, Crusoe and Friday kill most of the natives and save two prisoners. One is Friday's father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe about other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised wherein the Spaniard would return to the mainland with Friday's father and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port. Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; mutineers have commandeered the vessel and intend to maroon their captain on the island. Crusoe and the ship's captain strike a deal in which Crusoe helps the captain and the loyal sailors retake the ship and leave the worst mutineers on the island. Before embarking for England, Crusoe shows the mutineers how he survived on the island and states that there will be more men coming. Crusoe leaves the island 19 December 1686 and arrives in England on 11 June 1687. He learns that his family believed him dead; as a result, he was left nothing in his father's will. Crusoe departs for Lisbon to reclaim the profits of his estate in Brazil, which has granted him much wealth. In conclusion, he transports his wealth overland to England to avoid travelling by sea. Friday accompanies him and, en route, they endure one last adventure together as they fight off famished wolves while crossing the Pyrenees.
55721	/m/0fgs1	King Lear	William Shakespeare			 King Lear, who is elderly and wants to retire from power, decides to divide his realm among his three daughters, and offers the largest share to the one who loves him best. Goneril and Regan both proclaim in fulsome terms that they love him more than anything in the world, which pleases him. For Cordelia, there is nothing to compare her love to, nor words to properly express it; she speaks honestly but bluntly, which infuriates him. In his anger he disinherits her, and divides the kingdom between Regan and Goneril. Kent objects to this unfair treatment. Lear is further enraged by Kent's protests, and banishes him from the country. Lear summons the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France, who have both proposed marriage to Cordelia. Learning that Cordelia has been disinherited, the Duke of Burgundy withdraws his suit, but the King of France is impressed by her honesty and marries her anyway. Lear announces he will live alternately with Goneril and Regan, and their husbands, the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall respectively. He reserves to himself a retinue of one hundred knights, to be supported by his daughters. Goneril and Regan speak privately, revealing that their declarations of love were fake, and they view Lear as an old and foolish man. Edmund resents his illegitimate status, and plots to dispose of his legitimate older brother Edgar. He tricks their father Gloucester with a forged letter, making him think Edgar plans to usurp the estate. Kent returns from exile in disguise under the name of Caius, and Lear hires him as a servant. Lear discovers that now that Goneril has power, she no longer respects him. She orders him to behave better and reduces his retinue. Enraged, Lear departs for Regan's home. The Fool mocks Lear's misfortune. Edmund fakes an attack by Edgar, and Gloucester is completely taken in. He disinherits Edgar and proclaims him an outlaw. Kent meets Oswald at Gloucester's home, quarrels with him, and is put in the stocks by Regan and her husband Cornwall. When Lear arrives, he objects, but Regan takes the same line as Goneril. Lear is enraged but impotent. Goneril arrives and echoes Regan. Lear yields completely to his rage. He rushes out into a storm to rant against his ungrateful daughters, accompanied by the mocking Fool. Kent later follows to protect him. Gloucester protests against Lear's mistreatment. Wandering on the heath after the storm, Lear meets Edgar, in the guise of a madman named Tom o' Bedlam. Edgar babbles madly while Lear denounces his daughters. Kent leads them all to shelter. Edmund betrays Gloucester to Cornwall, Regan, and Goneril. He shows a letter from his father to the King of France asking for help against them; and in fact a French army has landed in Britain. Gloucester is arrested, and Cornwall gouges out Gloucester's eyes. As he is doing so, a servant is overcome with rage by what he is witnessing and attacks Cornwall, mortally wounding him. Regan kills the servant, and tells Gloucester that Edmund betrayed him; then she turns him out to wander the heath too. Edgar, in his madman's guise, meets his blinded father on the heath. Gloucester, not recognising him, begs Tom to lead him to a cliff at Dover so that he may jump to his death. Goneril meets Edmund and discovers that she finds him more attractive than her honest husband Albany, whom she regards as cowardly. Albany has developed a conscience- he is disgusted by the sisters' treatment of Lear, and the mutilation of Gloucester, and denounces Goneril. Kent leads Lear to the French army, which is accompanied by Cordelia. But Lear is half-mad and terribly embarrassed by his earlier follies. Albany leads the British army to meet the French. Regan too is attracted to Edmund, and the two sisters fall out over him. Regan sends Oswald with love letters to Edmund and also tells Oswald to kill Gloucester if he sees him. Edgar pretends to lead Gloucester to a cliff, then changes his voice and tells Gloucester he has miraculously survived a great fall. Lear, who is now completely mad appears. Lear rants that the whole world is corrupt and runs off. Oswald tries to kill Gloucester but is killed by Edgar. In Oswald's pocket, Edgar finds a letter from Goneril to Edmund, telling him to kill Albany and marry her. Kent and Cordelia take charge of Lear, whose madness slowly passes. Regan, Goneril, Albany, and Edmund meet with their forces. Albany insists that they fight the French invaders but not harm Lear or Cordelia. The two sisters lust for Edmund, who has inadvertently made promises to both. He considers the dilemma and plots the deaths of Albany, Lear, and Cordelia. Edgar gives Goneril's letter to Albany. The armies meet in battle, the British defeat the French, and Lear and Cordelia are captured. Edmund sends them off with secret orders for execution. The victorious British leaders meet, and Regan now declares she will marry Edmund. But Albany exposes the intrigues of Edmund and Goneril and proclaims Edmund a traitor. Regan falls ill, and is escorted offstage, where she dies. It is stated that Goneril slipped poison into her food. Edmund defies Albany, who calls for a trial by combat. Edgar appears in his own clothes, and challenges Edmund to a duel. Edgar wounds Edmund fatally, though he does not die immediately. Albany confronts Goneril with the letter which was intended to be his death warrant; she flees in shame and rage. Edgar reveals himself, and reports that Gloucester died offstage from the shock and joy of learning that Edgar is alive, after Edgar revealed himself to his father. Offstage, Goneril, with all her evil plans thwarted, commits suicide. The dying Edmund decides, though he admits it is against his own character, to try and save Lear and Cordelia: however, he is too late. Cordelia has already been killed. Lear, however, has survived- he killed his daughter's murderer and escaped. Lear carries Cordelia's corpse in his arms. Lear now immediately recognizes Kent. Albany urges Lear to resume his throne, but like Gloucester, the trials Lear has been through have finally overwhelmed him, and he dies. Albany offers to share power between Kent and Edgar. Kent declines, with implications that he himself is not long for this world. It is unclear whether he intends to commit suicide out of his great regard for Lear, or feels he is going to die in the same manner as Lear and Gloucester. Finally, either Albany (in the Quarto version) or Edgar (in the Folio version) has the final speech, with the implication that he will now become king
55737	/m/0fgws	Clear and Present Danger	Tom Clancy		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Panache intercepts a yacht in the Caribbean Sea, the crew discovers two men cleaning up the vessel after murdering a man and his family. Through a mock execution, the Coast Guardsmen force the killers to confess to the crime. It is later learned that the murdered man was involved in a money laundering scheme for a drug cartel. Upon hearing of this atrocity, the President of the United States, who is running for re-election, feels compelled to take drastic measures against drug trafficking; his challenger, J. Robert Fowler, has rallied the public behind the administration's failures in the War on Drugs. The president initiates covert operations within Colombia and a step-up of operations against aircraft believed to be distributing narcotics. Aiding the president are U.S. National Security Advisor James Cutter, Central Intelligence Agency's Deputy Director of Operations Robert Ritter, and Director of Central Intelligence Arthur Moore. The plan consists of four operations: *Operation CAPER is the interception of mobile phone communications between cartel management. It is also the communications arm for SHOWBOAT and the light-fighters' only means of contact with the outside world. John Clark is dispatched with CAPER to coordinate the effort. *Operation EAGLE EYE uses F-15 Eagles to intercept drug flights. Several aircraft are destroyed and others are forced to land, where the pilots are interrogated for information regarding the cartel. *Operation SHOWBOAT involves four teams of soldiers infiltrating Colombia to stake-out airstrips used by drug-trafficking aircraft. They report departure times of aircraft, allowing the EAGLE EYE team to intercept them. Later the troops attack the airstrips and coca processing sites. The soldiers are seconded from U.S. light infantry battalions, and are all Hispanic in order to blend in with the local population. *Operation RECIPROCITY involves using ground-attack aircraft and laser-guided bombs to attack cartel locations discovered by intercepts. The bombs have a casing that will be consumed in the blast to give the impression of a car-bomb. Meanwhile, Félix Cortez, a former intelligence officer from Cuba employed by the cartel, feigns romantic interest in the aide of Emil Jacobs, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The aide unknowingly reveals information regarding the date of Jacobs' official visit to the Attorney General of Colombia. Cortez delivers this information to the cartel, which orders Jacobs' assassination as retaliation for the U.S. seizure of cartel money. During his visit, Jacobs and several other Americans in his delegation are killed. Jack Ryan suspects the CIA's involvement in the situation in Colombia. As acting Deputy Director of the Intelligence Directorate, Ryan should be privy to most operations but he realizes he is being put out of the loop. After Robby Jackson, assigned to the Pentagon, makes an inquiry into activity in the region, Ryan goes to Moore to demand an explanation. Moore is evasive, yet orders Ryan to withhold information about Colombia from a congressional oversight committee. Cortez eventually uncovers the U.S. operations. He suppresses this information, planning to engineer a war within the cartel that will leave him in a position to seize power. Cortez orders mercenaries to hunt down the U.S. troops, and blackmails Cutter into ending SHOWBOAT, promising the intra-cartel war will slow drug imports to the States. Cutter's meeting with Cortez is shadowed by Ryan and Clark. Clark is outraged at Cutter's abandonment of the troops and, with Ryan, plans a rescue operation with personnel from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Air Force. Clark makes radio contact with two of the SHOWBOAT teams, ordering them to alternate pickup points to await extraction. The other two teams encounter mercenaries and take casualties. Clark makes radio contact with some survivors of these remaining teams—which include Domingo Chavez—then flies into Colombia to retrieve them. Ryan uses an Air Force helicopter to pick up other survivors. Together, Clark and Ryan launch a raid on the cartel's command post, capturing Cortez and extracting the remaining ground team. Due to a hurricane and damage to the helicopter, they land on the deck of the Panache. Cortez is returned to Cuba, where he is a marked as a traitor. Upon being confronted by Clark with evidence of his treason, Cutter commits suicide. Ryan confronts the defiant president, informing him that despite his classifying the drug cartel as a "clear and present danger," Ryan must brief U.S. Congress over the illegal operations. After Ryan briefs the committee, the president deliberately loses the election in order to hide the covert operations and protect the honor of those involved. Ryan realizes that the president has more honor and dignity than he originally thought.
56575	/m/0fmw0	Castle Rackrent	Maria Edgeworth		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is set prior to the Constitution of 1782 and tells the story of four generations of Rackrent heirs through their steward, Thady Quirk. The heirs are: the dissipated spendthrift Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin, the litigious Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the cruel husband and gambling absentee Sir Kit Stopgap, and the generous but improvident Sir Condy Rackrent. Their sequential mismanagement of the estate is resolved through the machinations - and to the benefit - of the narrator's astute son, Jason Quirk.
57328	/m/0frwk	Julius Caesar	William Shakespeare			 Marcus Brutus is Caesar's close friend and a Roman praetor. Brutus allows himself to be cajoled into joining a group of conspiring senators because of a growing suspicion—implanted by Caius Cassius—that Caesar intends to turn republican Rome into a monarchy under his own rule. The early scenes deal mainly with Brutus's arguments with Cassius and his struggle with his own conscience. The growing tide of public support soon turns Brutus against Caesar (this public support was actually faked; Cassius wrote letters to Brutus in different handwritings over the next month in order to get Brutus to join the conspiracy). A soothsayer warns Caesar to "beware the Ides of March," which he ignores, culminating in his assassination at the Capitol by the conspirators that day, despite being warned by the soothsayer and Artemidrous, one of Caesar's supporters at the entrance of the Capitol. Caesar's assassination is one of the most famous scenes of the play, occurring in Act 3 (the other is Mark Antony's oration "Friends, Romans, countrymen".) After ignoring the soothsayer as well as his wife's own premonitions, Caesar comes to the Senate. The conspirators create a superficial motive for the assassination by means of a petition brought by Metellus Cimber, pleading on behalf of his banished brother. As Caesar, predictably, rejects the petition, Casca grazes Caesar in the back of his neck, and the others follow in stabbing him; Brutus is last. At this point, Caesar utters the famous line "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?", i.e. "You too, Brutus?"). Shakespeare has him add, "Then fall, Caesar," suggesting that Caesar did not want to survive such treachery. The conspirators make clear that they committed this act for Rome, not for their own purposes and do not attempt to flee the scene. After Caesar's death, Brutus delivers an oration defending his actions, and for the moment, the crowd is on his side. However, Mark Antony, with a subtle and eloquent speech over Caesar's corpse—beginning with the much-quoted "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears"—deftly turns public opinion against the assassins by manipulating the emotions of the common people, in contrast to the rational tone of Brutus's speech. Antony rouses the mob to drive the conspirators from Rome. Amid the violence, the innocent poet, Cinna, is confused with the conspirator Lucius Cinna and is murdered by the mob. The beginning of Act Four is marked by the quarrel scene, where Brutus attacks Cassius for soiling the noble act of regicide by accepting bribes ("Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake? / What villain touch'd his body, that did stab, / And not for justice?") The two are reconciled; they prepare for war with Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son, Octavian (Shakespeare's spelling: Octavius). That night, Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus with a warning of defeat ("thou shalt see me at Philippi"). At the battle, Cassius and Brutus knowing they will probably both die, smile their last smiles to each other and hold hands. During the battle, Cassius commits suicide after hearing of the capture of his best friend, Titinius. After Titinius, who wasn't really captured, sees Cassius's corpse, he commits suicide. However, Brutus wins that stage of the battle - but his victory is not conclusive. With a heavy heart, Brutus battles again the next day. He loses and commits suicide. The play ends with a tribute to Brutus by Antony, who proclaims that Brutus has remained "the noblest Roman of them all" because he was the only conspirator who acted for the good of Rome. There is then a small hint at the friction between Mark Antony and Octavius which will characterise another of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Antony and Cleopatra.
57344	/m/0frym	Emma	Jane Austen	1815-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03p5xs": "Comedy of manners", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Emma Woodhouse, aged 20 at the start of the novel, is a young, beautiful, witty, and privileged woman in Regency England. She lives on the fictional estate of Hartfield in Surrey in the village of Highbury with her elderly widowed father, a hypochondriac who is excessively concerned for the health and safety of his loved ones. Emma's friend and only critic is the gentlemanly George Knightley, her neighbour from the adjacent estate of Donwell, and the brother of her elder sister Isabella's husband, John. As the novel opens, Emma has just attended the wedding of Miss Taylor, her best friend and former governess. Having introduced Miss Taylor to her future husband, Mr. Weston, Emma takes credit for their marriage, and decides that she rather likes matchmaking. Against Mr. Knightley's advice, Emma forges ahead with her new interest, and tries to match her new friend Harriet Smith, a sweet, pretty, but none-too-bright parlour boarder of seventeen —described as "the natural daughter of somebody"— to Mr. Elton, the local vicar. Emma becomes convinced that Mr. Elton's constant attentions are a result of his attraction and growing love for Harriet. But before events can unfold as she plans, Emma must first persuade Harriet to refuse an advantageous marriage proposal. Her suitor is a respectable, educated, and well-spoken young gentleman farmer, Robert Martin, but Emma snobbishly decides he isn't good enough for Harriet. Against her own wishes, the easily-influenced Harriet rejects Mr. Martin. Emma's schemes go awry when Mr. Elton, a social climber, fancies Emma is in love with him and proposes to her. Emma's friends had suggested that Mr. Elton's attentions were really directed at her, but she had misread the signs. Emma, rather shocked and a bit insulted, tells Mr. Elton that she had thought him attached to Harriet; however Elton is outraged at the very idea of marrying the socially inferior Harriet. After Emma rejects Mr. Elton, he leaves for a while for a sojourn in Bath, and Harriet fancies herself heartbroken. Emma feels dreadful about misleading Harriet and resolves—briefly—to interfere less in people's lives. Mr. Elton, as Emma's misconceptions of his character melt away, reveals himself to be arrogant, resentful, and pompous. He soon returns from Bath with a pretentious, nouveau-riche wife who becomes part of Emma's social circle, though the two women soon loathe each other. The Eltons treat the still lovestruck Harriet deplorably, culminating with Mr Elton very publicly snubbing Harriet at a dance. Mr Knightley, who had until this moment refrained from dancing, gallantly steps in to partner Harriet, much to Emma's gratification. An interesting development is the arrival in the neighbourhood of the handsome and charming Frank Churchill, Mr. Weston's son, who had been given to his deceased wife's wealthy brother and his wife, the Churchills, to raise. Frank, who is now Mrs. Weston's stepson, and Emma have never met, but she has a long-standing interest in doing so. The whole neighborhood takes a fancy to him, with the partial exception of Mr. Knightley, who becomes uncharacteristically grumpy whenever his name is mentioned and suggests to Emma that while Frank is clever and engaging, he is also a rather shallow character. A third newcomer is the orphaned Jane Fairfax, the reserved, beautiful, and elegant niece of Emma's impoverished neighbour, the talkative Miss Bates, who lives with her deaf, widowed mother. Miss Bates is an aging spinster, well-meaning but increasingly poor; Emma strives to be polite and kind to her, but is irritated by her constant chattering. Jane, very gifted musically, is Miss Bates' pride and joy; Emma envies her talent, and although she has known Jane all her life has never warmed to her personally. Jane had lived with Miss Bates until she was nine, but Colonel Campbell, a friend of her father's, welcomed her into his own home, where she became fast friends with his daughter and received a first-rate education. But now Miss Campbell has married, and the accomplished but penniless Jane has returned to her Bates relations, ostensibly to regain her health and to prepare to earn her living as a governess. Emma is annoyed to find the entire neighborhood, including Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightley, singing Jane's praises, but when Mrs. Elton, who fancies herself the new leader of Highbury society, patronizingly takes Jane under her wing and announces that she will find her the ideal governess post, Emma begins to feel some sympathy for Jane's predicament. Still, Emma sees something mysterious in Jane's sudden return to Highbury and imagines that Jane and Miss Campbell's husband, Mr. Dixon, were mutually attracted, and that is why she has come home instead of going to Ireland to visit them. She shares her suspicions with Frank, who had become acquainted with Jane and the Campbells when they met at a vacation spot a year earlier, and he apparently agrees with her. Suspicions are further fueled when a piano, sent by an anonymous benefactor, arrives for Jane. Emma tries to make herself fall in love with Frank largely because almost everyone seems to expect it. Frank appears to be courting Emma, and the two flirt and banter together in public, at parties, and on a day-trip to Box Hill, a local beauty spot. However, when his demanding and ailing aunt, Mrs. Churchill, summons Frank home, Emma discovers she does not miss her "lover" nearly as much as she expected and sets about plotting a match between him and Harriet, who seems to have finally gotten over Mr. Elton. Harriet breathlessly reports that Frank has "saved" her from a band of Gypsies, and seems to be confessing her admiration for him. Meanwhile, Mrs. Weston wonders if Emma's old friend Mr. Knightley has taken a fancy to Jane. Emma immediately dismisses that idea and protests that she does not want Mr. Knightley to marry anyone, and that her little nephew Henry must inherit Donwell, the Knightley family property. When Mr. Knightley scolds her for a thoughtless insult to Miss Bates, Emma is stunned and ashamed and tries to atone by going to visit Miss Bates. Mr. Knightley is surprised and deeply impressed by Emma's recognition of her wrongdoing, but this meaningful rapprochement is broken off when he announces he must leave for London to visit his brother. Meanwhile, Jane reportedly becomes ill, but refuses to see Emma or accept her gifts, and it is suddenly announced that she has accepted a governess position from one of Mrs. Elton's friends. On the heels of this comes word that Frank Churchill's aunt has died, and with it the astonishing news that Frank and Jane have been secretly engaged since they first met on holiday a year ago. They had been keeping the engagement quiet because they knew that Frank's imperious aunt would disapprove and likely disinherit him if he went through with the match. The strain of the clandestine relationship had been much harder on the conscientious Jane than the carefree Frank, and the two had quarreled bitterly; but now that his aunt has died, his easygoing uncle has already given his blessing. The engagement becomes public, the secrets behind Jane and Frank's behavior are revealed, and Emma is chagrined to discover that once again she has been so wrong about so much. Emma is certain that Harriet will be devastated by Frank's engagement, but Harriet reassures her that this is not the case. In fact, Harriet tells Emma, it is Mr. Knightley who has captured her heart, and she believes he returns her feelings. Emma is dumbstruck over what she at first thinks is the impropriety of the match, but as she faces her feelings of dismay and jealousy, she realizes in a flash that she has long been in love with Mr. Knightley herself. She is shattered to think that it may be too late and resolves to support her dear friends in whatever they do, even at the cost of her own broken heart. However, when Mr. Knightley hurries back to Highbury to console Emma over what he imagines to be the loss of Frank Churchill, she discovers that he is also in love with her. He proposes and she joyfully accepts. There is one more match to be made: With encouragement from Mr. Knightley, the farmer Robert Martin proposes again to Harriet, and this time she accepts. Jane and Emma reconcile and all misunderstandings are cleared up before Jane and Frank leave for their wedding and life with his uncle in Yorkshire. Emma and Mr. Knightley decide that after their marriage they will live with Emma's father at Hartfield to spare Mr. Woodhouse loneliness and distress. They seem headed for a union of "perfect happiness," to the great joy of their friends. Mrs. Weston gives birth to a baby girl, to the great satisfaction of Emma, who looks forward to introducing little Miss Weston to her young nephews.
57766	/m/0fv9n	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Roald Dahl	1964	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story revolves around a poor young boy named Charlie Bucket born to a penniless, starving family. His two sets of grandparents reside in their children's dilapidated, tiny house and lead a bedridden existence, and Charlie is fascinated by the universally-celebrated candy factory located in his hometown owned by famous chocolatier Willy Wonka. His Grandpa Joe often narrates stories to him about the chocolate factory and about its mysterious proprietor, and the mysteries relating to the factory itself; how it had gone defunct for years until it mysteriously re-opened after Wonka's secret candy recipes had been discovered (albeit no employees are ever seen leaving the factory). Soon after, an article in the newspaper reveals that Willy Wonka has hidden a Golden Ticket in five chocolate bars being distributed to anonymous locations worldwide, and that the discovery of a Golden Ticket would grant the owner with passage into Willy Wonka's factory and a lifetime supply of confectionary. Charlie longs for chocolate to satisfy his hunger and to find a Golden Ticket himself, but his chances are slim (his father has recently lost his job, leaving the family all but destitute) and word on the discovery of the tickets keeps appearing in various news articles read by the Bucket family, each one discovered by far going to self-centered, bratty children: an obese, gluttonous boy named Augustus Gloop, a spoiled brat named Veruca Salt, a record-breaking gum chewer named Violet Beauregarde, and Mike Teavee, an aspiring gangster who is unhealthily obsessed with television. Charlie continues to grow in emaciation day by day, and is given money from his grandfather to buy chocolate and winds up discovering a 50p piece in the snow on his way to the corner store. Charlie uses the money to purchase two Wonka bars and winds up discovering a Golden Ticket in one of them, much to the shock of the shopkeeper and his family. Grandpa Joe even leaps out of bed in delight, offering to accompany Charlie to the factory. The following day, the discoverers of the Golden Tickets gather at Wonka's factory and are welcomed inside by the candy maker himself, who gives them a tour through his whimsically-designed factory. There, they learn of the unseen workers behind the re-opening of the factory; small, elfin beings known as Oompa-Loompas, who work in exchange for cocoa beans. However, while touring through a room designed as a meadow made of candy, Augustus Gloop is sucked through a pipe while drinking from a river of chocolate, resulting in his elimination from the competition. Not long afterward, Wonka unveils a product he's working on; chewing gum designed to replace any need for cooking or daily meals, which is stolen by Violet Beauregarde. However, because Wonka still needed to perfect the candy, she winds up inflating into a giant blueberry that must be juiced immediately, resulting in her elimination, and before long Veruca Salt is eliminated after falling down a garbage chute with her parents while trying to snatch one of Willy Wonka's specially-trained squirrels used for selecting the nuts baked into Wonka bars after being dismissed as a "bad nut." Soon, Wonka reveals one of his confectionary products in development; chocolate bars that can be transported to customers via television, which quickly captures Mike Teavee's interest. He escapes to test out the device on himself, only to be shrunken to an inch tall so that his original height must be restored by a taffy pull. The four eliminated children do receive their lifetime supplies of chocolate but leave the factory as: thin (Augustus), purple (Violet), covered in trash (Veruca), and overstretched to ten feet (Mike). Charlie, the only child who has not been eliminated, has won the contest and the legendary prize mentioned before as a result: the position of heir to Willy Wonka's factory. A thrilled Charlie rides in Wonka's glass flying elevator to deliver his family to the factory from their little home, no longer having to worry about poverty.
58406	/m/0fzv5	Anne of Green Gables	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1908-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Anne, a young orphan from fictional community of Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia, (based upon the real community of New London) is sent to Prince Edward Island after a childhood spent in strangers' homes and orphanages. Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, siblings in their fifties and sixties, had decided to adopt a boy from the orphanage to help Matthew run their farm. They live at Green Gables, their Avonlea farmhouse on Prince Edward Island. Through a misunderstanding, the orphanage sends Anne Shirley. Anne is described as bright and quick, eager to please, talkative, and extremely imaginative. She has a pale face with freckles, and usually braids her red hair. When asked her name, Anne tells Marilla to call her Cordelia, which Marilla refuses; Anne insists that if she is to be called Anne, it must be spelled with an e, as that spelling is "so much more distinguished." Marilla at first says the girl must return to the orphanage, but after a few days, she decides to let her stay - she pities her and is curious about the girl. As a child of imagination, Anne takes much joy in life, and adapts quickly, thriving in the close-knit farming village. Her talkativeness initially drives the prim, duty-driven Marilla to distraction, although shy Matthew falls for her immediately. Anne says that they are 'kindred spirits'. The book recounts Anne's adventures in making a home: the country school, where she quickly excels in her studies; her friendship with Diana Barry (her best or "bosom friend" as Anne fondly calls her); her budding literary ambitions; and her rivalry with classmate Gilbert Blythe, who teases her about her red hair. For that he earned her instant hatred, although he apologizes many times. As for Anne, she realizes she feels sorry about the events and no longer hates Gilbert, but cannot bring herself to admit it; by the end of the book, they finally become friends. The book also follows Anne's adventures in quiet, old-fashioned Avonlea. Episodes include her play time with friends (Diana, Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis), her run-ins with the unpleasant Pye sisters (Gertie and Josie), and domestic mishaps such as dyeing her hair green (while intending to dye it black), or accidentally getting Diana drunk (by giving her what she thinks is raspberry cordial but is currant wine). At sixteen, Anne goes to Queen's Academy to earn a teaching license, along with Gilbert, Ruby, Josie, Jane and several other students. She obtains her license in one year instead of the usual two, and wins the Avery Scholarship for the top student in English, which would allow her to pursue a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree at the fictional Redmond College (based on the real Dalhousie University) on the mainland in Nova Scotia. Near the end of the book, Matthew dies of a heart attack after learning that all of his and Marilla's money has been lost in a bank failure. Out of devotion to Marilla and Green Gables, Anne gives up the Avery Scholarship to stay at home and help Marilla, whose eyesight is diminishing. She plans to teach at the Carmody school, the nearest school available, and return to Green Gables on weekends. In an act of friendship, Gilbert Blythe gives up his teaching position at the Avonlea School to work at White Sands School instead. Anne can teach in Avonlea and stay at Green Gables all through the week. After this kind act, Anne and Gilbert's friendship is cemented, and Anne looks forward to the next "bend in the road."
58619	/m/0g04v	The Wasp Factory	Iain Banks	1984	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The 'Wasp Factory' of the title is a huge clock face encased in a glass box and salvaged from the local dump. Behind each of the 12 numerals is a trap which leads to a different ritual death (for example burning, crushing, or drowning in Frank's urine) for the wasp that Frank puts into the hole at the center within tubes. Frank believes the death 'chosen' by the wasp predicts something about the future. There are also Sacrifice Poles, upon which hang the bodies and heads of larger animals, such as seagulls, that Frank has killed and other sacred items. They define and 'protect' the borders of Frank's territory - the island upon which he lives with his father. Frank occupies himself with his rituals and maintaining an array of weapons (from his catapult, to pipe bombs and a crude flame thrower) to control the island. Frank is haunted by an accident which resulted in the loss of his genitalia, and resents others for his impotence, particularly women. He goes for long walks and runs patrolling the island, and occasionally gets drunk with his dwarf friend Jamie in the local pub. Other than that, Frank has almost no contact with the outside world and admits that he is afraid of it due to what it did to his brother, Eric. Frank's older brother Eric is in an insane asylum after being arrested for brutalizing the town's dogs. He escapes at the start of the novel and throughout the book rings Frank from phone boxes to inform Frank of his progress back to the island. Their conversations invariably end badly, with Eric exploding in fits of rage. Frank is confused as to whether or not he is looking forward to seeing Eric, but it is clear Frank loves his brother dearly. Frank remembers his older brother as being extremely sensitive before "the incident" that drove him mad: a tragic case of neglect in a hospital where Eric was a volunteer. While attempting to feed a smiling brain-damaged child with acalvaria, Eric realizes that the patient is unresponsive and only smiling off into space. He checks the usually-alert patient's head dressings to find the child's exposed brain tissue infested with day-old maggots. At the end of the novel, Eric's imminent return precipitates a series of events that result in Frank discovering male hormone drugs in his father's study. After confronting his father, Frank finds out that he is in fact female, and that when he thought he was castrated by a dog mauling at an early age, Frank's father had simply pumped her full of male hormones to see if she would transition from female to male. The father said it was simply "an experiment" and there are hints it was in order to distance himself from the women he felt had ruined his life.
58620	/m/0g056	Espedair Street	Iain Banks	1987	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal’s cave; or I might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed. Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain." Weir starts out in the Ferguslie Park area of Paisley in a very underprivileged Catholic family. He is impressed by a group named Frozen Gold when he sees them live, in the Union of Paisley College of Technology, and auditions with them. Christine Brice likes his songs, and he joins the band. He ends up writing all their material and playing bass guitar, (after trying unsuccessfully to get them to change their name) as the band rises in the drug- and booze-fuelled rock and roll of the 1970s, assisted by A&R man Rick Tumber of ARC Records. In the Three Chimneys tour, singer Davey Balfour takes Dan along on an attempt to break an unofficial (and illegal) speed record for flying around three power station chimneys in Kent in his private plane. He reminisces about this from 1980s Glasgow, where he lives as a recluse in a Victorian folly (St Jutes), ever since the tragic events which led to the demise of the band. He is posing as his own caretaker, and his friends McCann and Wee Tommy know him as Jimmy Hay. After a memorable fight in a nightclub called 'Monty's', his real identity is revealed. He has grown uncomfortable with fame and wealth, and eventually visits his first girlfriend, Jean Webb, now living in Arisaig.
58621	/m/0g05k	The Crow Road	Iain Banks	1992	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 This Bildungsroman is set in the fictional Argyll town of Gallanach (by its description, reminiscent of Oban but on the north east shore of Loch Crinan), the real village of Lochgair, and in Glasgow where Prentice McHoan lives. Prentice's uncle Rory has disappeared eight years previous while writing a book called The Crow Road. Prentice becomes obsessed with papers his uncle left behind and sets out to solve the mystery. Along the way he must cope with estrangement from his father, unrequited love, sibling rivalry, and failure at his studies. The estrangement from his father concerns belief in God or an afterlife. Prentice cannot accept a universe without some higher power, some purpose; he can't believe that people can just cease to exist when they die. His father dogmatically denies the existence of God, universal purpose, and the afterlife. A parallel plot is Prentice's gradual transition from an adolescent fixation on one young woman to a more mature love for another. Prentice's efforts to piece together Uncle Rory's fragmentary notes and the minimal clues surrounding his disappearance mirror his efforts to make sense of the world, love, and life in general. The narrative is also fragmentary, leaping days, months, years, or decades back and forth with little or no warning, so the reader must also piece things together.
58622	/m/0g05x	Consider Phlebas	Iain Banks	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Culture and the Idiran Empire are at war in a galaxy-spanning conflict. Horza, a mercenary capable of altering his appearance at will (a Changer), is assigned the task of retrieving a dispossessed Culture Mind by his Idiran handlers. The Mind, while fleeing attacking Idirans who consider its existence an abomination, has taken refuge on Schar's World, a Planet of the Dead. Planets of the Dead are nominally forbidden to both the Culture and the Idirans, being under the control of god-like incorporeal beings called Dra'Azon. Horza, however, was one of a group of Changers allowed to be on the planet as stewards and witnesses to its devastation. He may be the only person in the Galaxy, and certainly the only one known to the Idirans, who would be allowed to return. On the way to Schar's World he encounters, and joins, a band of mercenaries and pirates, led by Kraiklyn, on their ship, the Clear Air Turbulence. All the while he is doggedly pursued by a Culture Special Circumstances agent, Perosteck Balveda. The Culture also realizes that Horza is the key to getting to Schar's World and retrieving the Mind. Their plan is to place an agent with him and hope that the agent can get to the Mind first and somehow leave with it. The plot takes many digressions on the way to the denouement. As the book opens, Horza is about to die an extremely unpleasant death after killing and impersonating a member of the gerontocracy on a world not yet part of the Culture. Here he meets Balveda for the first time. He is rescued by the Idirans and given his mission to find the Culture Mind, but the Idiran ship on which he is travelling is soon captured by a Culture ship. Drifting in an escape suit, he is picked up by an independent ship, the Clear Air Turbulence, crewed by a Free Company of mercenaries, and he has to fight and kill one of them (while still in the form of a very old man) in order to prevent them dumping him back into space. Horza soon resolves to take over the ship by replacing the Captain, Kraiklyn, who leads them on some disastrous pirate raids which kill several of the crew. The first raid backfires because the team is unaware that the temple they plan to rob has been built of laser-reflecting crystal, which turns their beams back on themselves. The next raid takes place on the Orbital Vavatch, a massive artificial "ringworld" 14 million kilometres in diameter, which the Culture is about to destroy to prevent the Idirans taking it over. The crew lands on an abandoned Megaliner cruising the Vavatch ocean, hoping to salvage its powerful laser weapons before the Orbital is destroyed, but one of the crew is killed soon after landing because he missed the briefing warning them that their antigravity devices would not work there, and more die when the ship crashes into a massive ice wall, which Kraiklyn had mistaken for a cloud bank, although Horza later discovers that Kraiklyn and several others managed to escape. Horza flees the disaster in the damaged CAT shuttle, but it crashes into the sea near an isolated island, killing the pilot. There he is taken prisoner by a bizarre cult, led by a monstrously obese homicidal cannibal, whose followers subsist on food that has been cooked to remove almost all nutritive value and mixed with effluent. Horza escapes his impending sacrifice by killing the cult leader and his henchman with his poisoned fingernails and teeth, and eventually makes his way to the main city on Vavatch to find Kraiklyn. Having now changed his appearance to mimic that of the CAT captain, Horza witnesses a game of "Damage", which Kraiklyn has joined in the hopes of winning enough to make up the losses from his foolhardy expeditions with the crew. Damage is a card game enhanced with psychological and emotional pressure by direct mind-to-mind contact, where the "tokens" of play are actual living beings who are killed when a player loses a round. The game is illegal and only played in places where the normal order is breaking down, as in the case of Vavatch, which is being evacuated. Kraiklyn is wiped out of the game, and Horza then follows him on his way back to his ship, kills him and returns to the CAT. There, to his dismay, he is introduced to the newest crew member - although disguised, he immediately recognises her as Perosteck Balveda. Just as Horza immobilises her with a stun gun, Culture agents outside try to capture the ship. Horza manages to lift off and takes the Clear Air Turbulence on a wild ride through the massive spaces of the ex-Culture GSV which is carrying out the evacuation, and they escape into space after shaking off their Culture pursuers, although a Culture drone, Unaha-Closp, is also trapped on the escaping ship and becomes a reluctant member of the team. As the fugitives warp away from Vavatch, they see the Orbital destroyed by the Culture warships. Balveda, now exposed as a Culture agent, in turn exposes Horza; seeing no reason to continue his deception, he instead recruits the remnants of the crew to carry out his mission. The final chapters are action-packed. Horza and his crew land on Schar's World and go in search for the Mind in the labyrinthine Command System, a vast subterranean complex built as a nuclear warfare command centre (ultimately, though, it was germ warfare which wiped out all life on the Planet of the Dead). They soon discover that the Mind is also being hunted by a pair of Idiran soldiers, survivors of a larger commando group, who have killed all the Changers stationed on the planet, and who regard Horza and his crew as enemies, having no knowledge of the Changers' alliance with the Idirans. Horza has kept Balveda alive, possibly as a hostage, and she goes along with the mission, awaiting her chance to swing the outcome in the Culture's favour. Horza's situation is further complicated when his crewmate Yalson reveals that she is pregnant to him. The Free Company encounter the Idirans in one of the Command System stations but after an intense firefight, they apparently kill one and manage to capture the other. After tracking the Mind to another station, the drone Unaha-Closp discovers it hiding in the reactor car of a Command System train, but while the team are distracted, the captured Idiran, Xoxarle, frees itself, kills the guard and sets an ambush for the others. Meanwhile, the second Idiran, who was mortally wounded but not killed, has managed to set one of the trains for a collision course, and as it smashes into the station, Xoxarle springs his ambush, and Yalson is killed. The enraged Horza pursues Xoxarle, who catches Balveda and leaves her for dead, although she is saved by Horza. In the climactic fight, Horza is overwhelmed, but thanks to the combined action of the drone and Balveda, Xoxarle is finally killed. Although the Mind has been rescued the cost has been terrible - all the crew of the Clear Air Turbulence have been killed, the drone is severely damaged, and the fatally wounded Horza dies just as Balveda gets him back to the surface.
58665	/m/0g0l4	Inversions	Iain Banks	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book takes place on a fictional planet based on late-Middle Ages Europe. It alternates chapter-by-chapter between two concurrent storylines. The first storyline is presented as a written account from Oelph, publicly a doctor's assistant, but privately a spy for an individual identified only as "Master", to whom much of the account is addressed. Oelph is the assistant to Vosill, the personal doctor to King Quience of Haspidus and a woman. The latter is unheard of in the patriarchal kingdom, and is tolerated only because Vosill claims citizenship in the far-off country of Drezen. The King himself is appreciative of her and her talents, but nonetheless her elevated position in defiance of the kingdom's social mores inspires hostility among others of the court. Oelph's account follows Vosill as she attends to the King regularly, as well as more charitable ministrations to the impoverished and those in need. Her methods are unconventional by kingdom standards, for example forgoing the use of leeches and instead using alcohol to "[kill] the ill humours which can infect a wound," but are more often than not successful. This only serves to inspire more distrust amongst her detractors, notably including a number of Dukes as well as the King's Guard Commander, Adlain. On this topic, Oelph includes a transcript he claims to have found in Vosill's journal, purported to be an exchange between Duke Walen and Adlain in which they make an agreement, "should it become necessary", to covertly kidnap the lady doctor and have Nolieti, the King's chief torturer, "put her to the question." Oelph notes that while the transcript appears to have been obtained under impossible circumstances, he somehow does not doubt its veracity. While Vosill attends to the King, Nolieti's is murdered, nearly decapitated, presumably by his assistant Unoure. Vosill examines the body and determines that Unoure could not have killed his master, but her explanation is disregarded. Unoure is captured, but before he can be questioned he is found in his cell dead from a cut throat, apparently self-inflicted. Following this account Oelph includes another found transcript, this time between Walen and Duke Quettil, though Walen is unable to obtain Quettil's agreement for the use of Ralinge, his own chief torturer, in Walen's kidnapping plan. Some days later at a masked ball Walen is found murdered, this time by a stab to the heart. The Duke's murder disquiets much of the royal house, as it occurred in a room no one entered or left. Resentment towards Vosill continues to build, particularly after King Quience begins implementing somewhat radical reforms, such as permitting commoners to own farmland without the oversight of a noble, reforms which Vosill has discussed with the King publicly and at length. Following these reforms Vosill confesses to the King that she loves him, a sentiment he rebuffs, and further hurts her when he states that he prefers "pretty, dainty, delicate women who [have] no brains." Oelph finds her after this, drunk, and hints at his own feelings of love towards her; she rebuffs him as well, albeit gently. Some days later Vosill receives a note from Adlain, asking her to meet him and two other Dukes elsewhere in the castle. She leaves alone, but Oelph opts to follow her in secret; he arrives in time to see her stumble across the body of a murdered Duke, stabbed with one of her scalpels, and catches a glimpse of the real murderer fleeing the room. Vosill and Oelph are almost immediately taken into custody by guards and delivered to Ralinge, who binds the two to separately and then strips, intending to rape Vosill. The woman issues what sounds to Oelph like commands, albeit in a language he does not recognize even partially. Oelph's eyes are closed at this point, and in his narrative he is unable to adequately describe what he hears next, other than an impression of wind and metal. When he opens his eyes he finds Ralinge and his assistants dead, dispatched bloodily, and Vosill free and in the process of removing his bindings, no indication of how she was freed. Later, she claims that Oelph fell unconscious and the three men fought over who would rape her first, though she indicates to him that this is what he "should" remember. The two are taken from the torturer's chamber shortly thereafter, as the King has abruptly taken ill and appears to be dying. Vosill is able to cure King Quience's condition, and is there to witness as the conspiracy against her is revealed to the King, inadvertently, when news of Ralinge's death reaches the conspirators: Commander Adlain and Dukes Quettil and Ulresile. Ultimately the blame is publicly taken by Ulresile, who escapes with being exiled for several months; the King makes it clear that further plots against the doctor will not be tolerated. Because Oelph is not present for these events, his account comes second-hand from his master, revealed to be Guard Commander Adlain. Vosill requests the King release her from her duties, which he does. She leaves just a few days later on a ship for Drezen, and is seen off at the dock by Oelph. Though he tries, he cannot bring himself to bluntly declare his love for her before she boards. The ship leaves sometime later, Vosill nowhere to be seen on board. The second, interleaved storyline is told by an initially unnamed narrator, remaining unnamed so as to provide a neutral context for the narrative. The story focuses on DeWar, bodyguard to General UrLeyn, the Prime Protector of the Protectorate of Tassasen. Protector UrLeyn is the leader of Tassasen, having killed the previous monarch in a revolt; subsequently he eliminated official terms such as "King" and "Empire" within Tassasen. At the beginning of the story the Protectorate is fast approaching a war with the neighboring land of Ladenscion, led by barons who initially supported UrLeyn's revolution but now intend to establish themselves as independent. DeWar is the sometimes-confidant of UrLeyn, but the bodyguard also maintains a friendly, conversational relationship with Perrund, a member of the Tassasen harem. Perrund was once the Protector's prized concubine, which changed following an assassination attempt on UrLeyn; Perrund shielded the Protector with her body, saving his life at the cost of crippling her left arm. Though no longer as prized as a concubine, Perrund is highly regarded by UrLeyn, DeWar, and most of Tassasen society. DeWar in particular finds her easy to confide in, and spends much of his off-time playing board games with her while the two tell each other stories. DeWar is on high alert as the conflict with Ladenscion approaches, believing that someone within the court may be a traitor. An attempt is made on UrLeyn's life by an assassin disguised as an ambassador, though DeWar anticipates the threat and kills the man before he can succeed. Nonetheless, this act only reinforces DeWar's fears of a traitor. A surprising, unwelcome turn comes when UrLeyn's young son, Lattens, has a seizure and subsequently falls ill. While the boy slowly recovers, DeWar tells him stories of a "magical land" called Lavishia, a place where "every man was a king, every woman a queen". Eventually the boy recovers, and UrLeyn and his bodyguard depart for the front lines, where the war with Ladenscion is flagging. However, no sooner they are there than word arrives that Lattens has fallen ill again, prompting a distraught UrLeyn to rush back to the castle. While DeWar is gone, Perrund tells Lattens a story about a girl named Dawn, who spent most of her life locked in a basement by her cruel family and was eventually rescued by a traveling circus. When he returns, Perrund tells DeWar about the story, then tells him it was a shadow of the real story: her story. Rather than her parents locking her in the basement to be cruel, they locked her in to hide her from Imperial soldiers—high-ranking men of the former King's regime. Rather than being rescued, the soldiers found her, raped her, her mother and her sisters, and then forced her to watch as they murdered her father and brothers. The soldiers were eventually killed, but Perrund still feels she is now dead inside. DeWar attempts to in some way comfort her, but she quickly demands he return her to the harem. Lattens' condition continues to worsen, causing UrLeyn to act more and more erratically, spending less time focusing on the war and more time at his son's bedside. The Protector goes so far as to bar all visitors to his chambers, and even prohibits DeWar from speaking to him unless he is spoken to. His only real contact is with Perrund, who spends most nights holding UrLeyn as he cries himself to sleep. DeWar enlists Perrund's help in focusing UrLeyn on the war, but to no success. An epiphany strikes DeWar when he finds he has drooled on his pillow in his sleep, and he proceeds to Lattens' room. A guard restrains the boy's nurse while DeWar examines his comforter, finding it has been soaked in an unknown fluid, presumably poison. Under threat of death the nurse reveals who has been orchestrating the poisoning: Perrund. DeWar storms into the harem chambers, intent on revealing the conspiracy to UrLeyn, but arrives too late; Perrund has already killed the Protector, and calmly waits for the bodyguard. Holding her at swordpoint, DeWar tearfully demands to know why she conspired against the Protector. Perrund replies that she did it for revenge, for killing her and her family. The soldiers who raped her were not the former King's men at all, not even men allied to UrLeyn, but the man himself, as well as his current, closest advisers. Afterward she was taken in by men from Haspidus, and recruited as a spy by King Quience directly. Saving UrLeyn from the assassin was simply to prevent him from dying while he was a strong leader; instead, her orders were to ensure he died in "utter ruin". After her confession, Perrund demands DeWar kill her. He silently refuses, lowering his sword. Perrund grabs his knife and brings it to her own throat, but it is quickly knocked away by DeWar's blade, which he lowers once more. Oelph gives a brief, personal epilogue for both stories. The three conspirators who attempted to kill Vosill died of various diseases, only Adlain lasting longer than a few years. King Quience reigned for 40 years before his death, and was succeeded by one of his many daughters, giving the kingdom its first ruling Queen. Vosill disappeared from the ship she departed on; her disappearance was only discovered after a sudden burst of wind and chain-fire struck the ship, then vanished as quickly. Attempts to notify Vosill's family in Drezen were unsuccessful: nobody in the island country could be found who had ever met her. Oelph himself became a doctor, eventually taking Vosill's post as the royal physician. Tassasen endured a civil war after the death of Protector UrLeyn; eventually King Lattens took control of the Empire, ruling it quietly. Oelph explains that he stopped DeWar's story as he did because that is where versions of the story differ dramatically. The more popular version has DeWar personally execute Perrund, followed by a return to the Half-Hidden Kingdoms where he reclaims his hidden title as Prince, and eventually King. A second version, supposedly written by Perrund herself, instead has DeWar telling the waiting guards and staff that UrLeyn is fine but sleeping, this and other distractions providing enough time for him and the former concubine to flee Tassasen before the Protector's body is discovered. The two elude capture and arrive in the Half-Hidden Kingdoms, eventually marry, have several children, and die many years later in an avalanche in the mountains. Finally, Oelph ends his epilogue by revealing that he expects his wife, whom he loves dearly, to return soon, quite possibly with his grandchildren accompanying her.
58888	/m/0g26y	An Inspector Calls	John Boynton Priestley			 At dinner at the Birlings' home in 1912, Arthur Birling, a wealthy mill owner and local politician, and his family are celebrating the engagement of daughter Sheila to Gerald Croft, son of a competitor of Birling's. In attendance are Sybil Birling, Arthur's wife and Sheila and Eric's mother, and Eric Birling, Sheila's younger brother, who has a drinking problem that is discreetly ignored. After dinner, Arthur speaks about the importance of self-reliance. A man, he says, must "make his own way" and protect his own interests. Inspector Goole arrives and explains that a woman called Eva Smith killed herself by drinking strong disinfectant. He implies that she has left a diary naming names, including members of the Birling family. Goole produces a photograph of Eva and shows it to Arthur, who acknowledges that she worked in one of his mills. He admits that he dismissed her 18 months ago for her involvement in an abortive workers' strike. He denies responsibility for her death. Sheila enters the room and is drawn into the discussion. After prompting from Goole, she admits to recognizing Eva as well. She confesses that Eva served her in a department store and Sheila contrived to have her fired for an imagined slight. She admits that Eva's behaviour had been blameless and that the firing was motivated solely by Sheila's jealousy and spite towards a pretty working-class woman. Sybil enters the room and Goole continues his interrogation, revealing that Eva was also known as Daisy Renton. Gerald starts at the mention of the name and Sheila becomes suspicious. Gerald admits that he met a woman by that name in a theatre bar. He gave her money and arranged to see her again. Goole reveals that Gerald had installed Eva as his mistress, and gave her money and promises of continued support before ending the relationship. Arthur and Sybil are horrified. As an ashamed Gerald exits the room, Sheila acknowledges his nature and credits him for speaking truthfully but also signals that their engagement is over. Goole identifies Sybil as the head of a women's charity to which Eva/Daisy had turned for help. Despite Sybil's haughty responses, she eventually admits that Eva, pregnant and destitute, had asked the committee for financial aid. Sybil had convinced the committee that the girl was a liar and that her application should be denied. Despite vigorous cross-examination from Goole, Sybil denies any wrongdoing. Sheila begs her mother not to continue, but Goole plays his final card, making Sybil admit that the "drunken young man" should give a 'public confession, accepting all the blame'. Eric enters the room, and after brief questioning from Goole, he breaks down, admitting that he drunkenly forced Eva to have sex and stole £50 from his father's business to pay her off when she became pregnant. Arthur and Sybil break down, and the family dissolves into screaming recriminations. Goole accuses them of contributing to Eva's death. He reminds the Birlings (and the audience) that actions have consequences. "If men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish." Gerald returns, telling the family that there may be no 'Inspector Goole' on the police force. Arthur makes a call to the Chief Constable, who confirms this. Gerald points out that as Goole was lying about being a policeman, there may be no dead girl. Placing a second call to the local infirmary, Gerald determines that no recent cases of suicide have been reported. The elder Birlings and Gerald celebrate, with Arthur dismissing the evening's events as "moonshine" and "bluffing". The younger Birlings, however, realise the error of their ways and promise to change. Gerald is keen to resume his engagement to Sheila, but she is reluctant, since with or without a dead girl he still admitted to having had an affair. The play ends abruptly with a telephone call, taken by Arthur, who reports that the body of a young woman has been found, a suspected case of suicide by disinfectant, and that the local police are on their way to question the Birlings. The true identity of Goole is never explained, but it is clear that the family's confessions over the course of the evening are true, and that they will be disgraced publicly when news of their involvement in Eva's demise is revealed.
58901	/m/0g2bw	Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the far future, humanity has discovered interstellar travel and faster-than-light communication enabled by ansibles. In exploring the galaxy, they encountered an alien race known as the Formics, derogatorily dubbed "buggers" due to their insect-like appearance. The Formics attacked the humans and the two races enter into a series of wars. Despite political conflict on Earth between three ruling parties, the Hegemon, Polemarch, and Strategos, a tentative agreement was reached to create the International Fleet (IF) to combat the Formics. In addition to a selective breeding program, the IF monitors the children of Earth via implanted devices to find the best and brightest to enter Command School and enlist in the fleet. Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is the youngest child in the Wiggin family, and part of an Earth program to produce brilliant officers; despite this, Ender is teased as a "third" under Earth's two-child policy. He has a close bond with his sister Valentine, but fears his brother Peter, a highly intelligent sociopath who delights in manipulating and tormenting him. After the IF removes Ender's monitoring device, possibly ending his chances of getting into Command School, he gets into a fight with a fellow student, Stilson. Though the smaller and weaker of the two, Ender manages to fatally wound Stilson (though Ender is unaware of this and believes he merely injured the other boy). When explaining his actions to IF Commander Hyrum Graff, Ender states his belief that, by showing superiority now, he will have prevented further fights in the future. Graff, on hearing of this, promptly offers Ender a place in the Battle School, situated in Earth's orbit. Ender accepts and is taken away from his parents, who have no say in the matter. Initially, Ender believes Graff is a potential friend and ally, unaware of the fact Graff believes Ender is Earth's last great hope in defending it from a Formic attack. In order to ensure Ender develops as a strong leader uninfluenced by his peers, Graff isolates him from the rest of the new cadets by acknowledging his intelligence and ridiculing his peers. Between being ostracized by his fellow cadets and having troubling dreams about Formics, Ender is soon ready to quit the school, but Graff encourages him through communications sent from Valentine. Among other training methods, the cadets participate in a competitive squad-based war simulation in zero gravity. Ender is quick to acclimate to the new environment and demonstrates tactics not previously seen by the students and supervisors. He is able to lead his squad to victory and other squads are quick to add Ender's tactics to their own. Ender is soon promoted to be leader of his own squad, formed from the most recent and youngest cadets at the school. Despite their inexperience as well as an increasing difficulty of the games, Ender devises new tactics and his squad soon excels and leads the competition. No longer an outsider, Ender becomes friends with several of his cadets, forming "Ender's jeesh." A fellow squad leader, Bonzo de Madrid, furious at Ender's victories, attacks Ender with the intent to kill him. Ender manages to outmaneuver Bonzo in the fight, and fatally wounds him. Back on Earth, Peter has used a global communication system to post political essays under the pseudonym "Locke", hoping to establish himself as a respected orator (which he believes will shortly lead him to political power despite his youth). Valentine, while not trusting Peter, believes that his methods are sound for affecting world politics in a positive manner. She becomes complicit in Peter's actions by posting works alongside his as "Demosthenes". Their essays are soon taken seriously by people at the highest positions of power in the government. Though Graff discovers the true identities, he keeps this a secret to himself believing the knowledge might one day prove useful. Ender is soon promoted to Command School, skipping several years of schooling. There, he is put directly under watch of a former Formic war hero, Mazer Rackham. Alongside other rigorous training, Mazer tests Ender with a war simulator, pitting virtual IF fleets under Ender's control against Formic fleets controlled by Mazer. Ender adapts to the game and, as the simulations become harder, Ender is given sub-commanders, members of his jeesh, to work alongside him. Ender is brought to the simulator, with several IF commanders watching, and told by Mazer this is his final test. As the simulation starts, Ender finds his human fleet far-outnumbered by the Formic forces above a planet. Despite being told that it was against the rules, Ender sacrifices most of his fighters fleet to launch a Molecular Disruption Device at the planet, destroying the planet and the entire Formic fleet. Though Ender had anticipated that breaking the rules would mean he would be expelled from school, he discovers the IF commanders celebrating. Mazer returns, and informs Ender that this was not a simulation, but the actual IF contingent and the Formic main fleet at the Formic homeworld: Ender has just destroyed the Formic homeworld and committed xenocide of the Formics, ending the war. Ender enters into a deep depression on learning of this, as well as of the deaths of Stilson and Bonzo. When he recovers, he finds himself still in orbit with Valentine and learns that, on the end of the Formic war, Earth went to war with itself. Valentine apologizes that Ender can never return to Earth, as he would be too powerful a tool to be used by the various leaders, including Peter. Instead, Ender joins an Earth colony program to populate one of the former Formic colony worlds. There, as he scouts the planet, he finds an area shockingly similar to a simulated game from Battle School. Exploring the area leads him to discover the dormant egg of a Formic queen. The queen, through telepathy, explains that the Formics had initially assumed humans were a non-sentient race due to a lack of hive mind, but realized their mistake too late. They could not communicate with the humans as war broke out, but were able to touch Ender's mind, creating the dreams he felt and preparing this place for him. The queen requests that Ender take the egg to a new planet to allow the Formic race to grow again. Ender takes the egg and, with information from the Queen, writes The Hive Queen under the alias "Speaker for the Dead". Peter, now the Hegemon of Earth, recognizes Ender's hand behind the work and requests Ender to write a book about Peter, which Ender entitles Hegemon. The combined works create a new religion that Earth and many of Earth's colonies start to adopt it. In the end, Ender and Valentine board a starship and start visiting many worlds, looking for the right one for the unborn Queen.
59375	/m/0g5k6	Titus Andronicus	William Shakespeare			 The play begins shortly after the death of the Roman Emperor, with his two sons, Saturninus and Bassianus, squabbling over who will succeed him. Their conflict seems set to boil over into violence until a tribune, Marcus Andronicus, announces that the people's choice for the new emperor is his brother, Titus, who will shortly return to Rome from a victorious ten-year campaign against the Goths. Titus subsequently arrives to much fanfare, bearing with him as prisoners the Queen of the Goths (Tamora), her three sons, and Aaron the Moor (her secret lover). Despite the desperate pleas of Tamora, Titus sacrifices her eldest son, Alarbus, in order to avenge the deaths of his own sons during the war. Distraught, Tamora and her two surviving sons, Demetrius and Chiron, vow revenge on Titus and his family. Meanwhile, Titus refuses the offer of the throne, arguing that he is not fit to rule, and instead supporting Saturninus' claim, who is duly elected. Saturninus tells Titus that for his first act as Emperor, he will marry Titus's daughter Lavinia. Titus agrees, although Lavinia is already betrothed to Bassianus, who refuses to give her up. Titus's sons tell Titus that Bassianus is in the right under Roman law, but Titus refuses to listen, accusing them all of treason. A scuffle breaks out, during which Titus kills his own son, Mutius. Saturninus then denounces the Andronicus family for their effrontery and shocks Titus by marrying Tamora. However, putting into motion her plan for revenge, Tamora advises Saturninus to pardon Bassianus and the Andronicus family, which he reluctantly does. During a royal hunt the following day, Aaron persuades Demetrius and Chiron to kill Bassianus, so they may rape Lavinia. They do so, throwing Bassianus' body into a pit, and dragging Lavinia deep into the forest before violently raping her. To keep her from revealing what has happened, they cut out her tongue and cut off her hands. Meanwhile, Aaron frames Titus's sons Martius and Quintus for the murder of Bassianus with a forged letter. Horrified at the death of his brother, Saturninus arrests Martius and Quintus and sentences them to death. Some time later, Marcus discovers the mutilated Lavinia and takes her to her father, who is still shocked at the accusations levelled at his sons, and upon seeing Lavinia, is overcome with grief. Aaron then visits Titus, falsely telling him that Saturninus will spare Martius and Quintus if either Titus, Marcus or, Titus's remaining son, Lucius, cuts off one of their hands and sends it to him. Titus has Aaron cut off his hand and send it to the emperor, but in return, a messenger brings Titus Martius and Quintus' severed heads, along with Titus's severed left hand. Desperate for revenge, Titus orders Lucius to flee Rome and raise an army among their former enemy, the Goths. Later, Lavinia 'writes' the names of her attackers in the dirt, using a stick held with her mouth and between her stumps. Meanwhile, Tamora secretly gives birth to a mixed-race child, fathered by Aaron. Aaron kills the midwife and nurse and flees with the baby to save it from Saturninus' inevitable wrath. Thereafter, Lucius, marching on Rome with an army, captures Aaron and threatens to hang the infant. To save the baby, Aaron reveals the entire revenge plot to Lucius. Back in Rome, Titus's behaviour suggests he may have gone insane. Convinced of his madness, Tamora, Chiron and Demetrius approach him, dressed as the spirits of Revenge, Murder, and Rape. Tamora (as Revenge) tells Titus that she will grant him revenge on all of his enemies if he can convince Lucius to postpone the imminent attack on Rome. Titus agrees and sends Marcus to invite Lucius to a reconciliatory feast. Revenge then offers to invite the Emperor and Tamora as well, and is about to leave when Titus insists that Rape and Murder (Chiron and Demetrius) stay with him. When Tamora is gone, Titus cuts their throats and drains their blood into a basin held by Lavinia. Titus morbidly tells Lavinia that he plans to "play the cook" and grind the bones of Demetrius and Chiron into powder and bake their heads. The next day, during the feast at his house, Titus asks Saturninus if a father should kill his daughter when she has been raped. When Saturninus answers that he should, Titus kills Lavinia, telling Saturninus of the rape. When the Emperor calls for Chiron and Demetrius, Titus reveals that they have been baked in the pie Tamora has just been eating. Titus then kills Tamora, and is immediately killed by Saturninus, who is subsequently killed by Lucius to avenge his father's death. Lucius is then proclaimed Emperor. He orders that Saturninus be given a state burial, that Tamora's body be thrown to the wild beasts outside the city, and that Aaron be buried chest-deep and left to die of thirst and starvation. Aaron, however, is unrepentant to the end, regretting only that he had not done more evil in his life.
59411	/m/0g5t6	Measure for Measure	William Shakespeare	1861	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna, makes it known that he intends to leave the city on a diplomatic mission. He leaves the government in the hands of a strict judge, Angelo. Claudio, a young nobleman, is betrothed/unofficially married to Juliet. At the time, marriages were supposed to be announced by banns in advance. Due to lack of money, Claudio and Juliet did not observe all the technicalities. This did not make them unique however; at the time most people (including the Church) would have considered them married. Technically, however, all the formalities for a civil marriage had not been followed and so a strict judge might rule that they were not legally married. Angelo, as the personification of the law, decides to enforce the ruling that fornication is punishable by death, and since he does not accept the validity of the marriage, Claudio is sentenced to be executed. Claudio's friend, Lucio, visits Claudio's sister, Isabella, a novice nun, and asks her to intercede with Angelo on Claudio's behalf. Isabella obtains an audience with Angelo, and pleads for mercy for Claudio. Over the course of two scenes between Angelo and Isabella, it becomes clear that he harbours lustful thoughts about her, and he eventually offers her a deal: Angelo will spare Claudio's life if Isabella yields him her virginity. Isabella refuses, but she also realises that (due to Angelo's austere reputation) she will not be believed if she makes a public accusation against him. Instead she visits her brother in prison and counsels him to prepare himself for death. Claudio vehemently begs Isabella to save his life, but Isabella refuses. As a novice nun, she feels that she cannot sacrifice her own immortal soul (and that of Claudio's, if he causes her to lose her virtue) to save Claudio's transient earthly life. The Duke has not in fact left the city, but remains there disguised as a friar (Lodowick) in order to spy on the city's affairs, and especially on the actions of Angelo. In his guise as a friar he befriends Isabella and arranges two tricks to thwart Angelo's evil intentions: #First, a "bed trick" is arranged. Angelo has previously refused to fulfill the betrothal binding him to Mariana, because her dowry had been lost at sea. Isabella sends word to Angelo that she has decided to submit to him, making it a condition of their meeting that it occurs in perfect darkness and in silence. Mariana agrees to take Isabella's place, and she has sex with Angelo, although he continues to believe he has enjoyed Isabella. (In some interpretations of the law, this constitutes consummation of their betrothal, and therefore their marriage. This is the same interpretation that assumes that Claudio and Juliet are legally married.) #After having sex with Mariana (who he thinks is Isabella), Angelo goes back on his word, sending a message to the prison that he wishes to see Claudio's head, and necessitating the "head trick." The Duke first attempts to arrange the execution of another prisoner whose head can be sent instead of Claudio's. However, the villain Barnardine refuses to be executed in his drunken state. As luck would have it, a pirate named Ragozine, of similar appearance to Claudio, has recently died of a fever, so his head is sent to Angelo instead. This main plot concludes with the 'return' to Vienna of the Duke as himself. Isabella and Mariana publicly petition him, and he hears their claims against Angelo, which Angelo smoothly denies. As the scene develops, it appears that Friar Lodowick will be blamed for the 'false' accusations levelled against Angelo. The Duke leaves Angelo to judge the cause against Lodowick, but returns in disguise moments later when Lodowick is summoned. Eventually the friar reveals himself to be the Duke, thereby exposing Angelo as a liar and Isabella and Mariana as truthful. He proposes that Angelo be executed but first compels him to marry Mariana— with his estate going to Mariana as her new dowry, "to buy you a better husband". Mariana pleads for Angelo's life, even enlisting the aid of Isabella (who is not yet aware her brother Claudio is still living). The Duke pretends not to heed the women's petition, and only after revealing that Claudio has not, in fact, been executed, relents. The Duke then proposes marriage to Isabella. Isabella does not reply, and her reaction is interpreted differently in different productions: her silent acceptance of his proposal is the most common in performance. This is one of the "open silences" of the play. A sub-plot concerns Claudio's friend Lucio, who frequently slanders the duke to the friar, and in the last act slanders the friar to the duke, providing opportunities for comic consternation on Vincentio's part and landing Lucio in trouble when it is revealed that the duke and the friar are one and the same. His punishment, like Angelo's, is to be forced into an undesired marriage: in this case with the prostitute Kate Keepdown.
59692	/m/0g7tz	Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said	Philip K. Dick	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in a dystopian future United States following a Second Civil War which led to the collapse of the nation's democratic institutions. The National Guard ("nats") and US police force ("pols") reestablished social order through instituting a dictatorship, with a "Director" at the apex, and police marshals and generals as operational commanders in the field. Resistance to the regime is largely confined to university campuses, where radicalized former university students eke out a desperate existence in subterranean kibbutzim. Recreational drug use is widespread, and the age of consent has been lowered to twelve. Most commuting is undertaken by personal aircraft, allowing great distances to be covered in little time. The novel begins with the protagonist, Jason Taverner, a singer, hosting his weekly TV show which has an audience of 30 million viewers. His special guest is his girlfriend Heather Hart, also a singer. Both Hart and Taverner are "Sixes", members of an elite class of genetically engineered humans. While leaving the studio, Taverner is telephoned by a former lover, who asks him to pay her a visit. When Taverner arrives at her apartment, the former lover attacks him by throwing a parasitic life-form at him. Although he manages to remove most of the life-form, parts of it are left inside him. After being rescued by Hart, he is taken to a medical facility. Waking up the following day in a seedy hotel with no identification, Taverner becomes worried, as failure to produce identification at one of the numerous police checkpoints would lead to imprisonment in a forced labor camp. Through a succession of phone calls made from the hotel to colleagues and friends who now claim not to know him, Taverner establishes that he is no longer recognized by the outside world. He soon manages to bribe the hotel's clerk into taking him to Kathy Nelson, a forger of government documents. However, Kathy reveals that both she and the clerk are police informants, and that the lobby clerk has placed a microscopic tracking device on him. She promises not to turn Taverner over to the police on the condition that he spend the night with her. Although he attempts to escape, Kathy confronts him again after he has successfully passed a police checkpoint using the forged identity cards. Feeling in her debt, he accompanies Kathy to her apartment block, where Inspector McNulty, Kathy's police handler, is waiting. McNulty has located Taverner via the tracking device the hotel lobby clerk placed on him, and instructs Taverner to come with him to the 469th Precinct police station so that further biometric identity checks can be performed. At the station, McNulty erroneously reports the man's name as Jason Tavern, revealing the identity of a Wyoming diesel engine mechanic. During questioning, Taverner goes along with McNulty's mistake, explaining that he no longer resembles Tavern due to extensive plastic surgery. McNulty accepts this explanation and decides to release Taverner whilst lab checks are run on the rest of the documents. He issues Taverner a seven-day police pass to ensure he can pass police checkpoints in the interim period. Deciding to lay low, Taverner heads to a Las Vegas bar in the hopes of meeting a woman with whom he can stay. Instead, he encounters a former lover, Ruth Gomen; although she no longer recognizes him, he succeeds in his bid to seduce her and is taken back to her apartment. On the orders of Police General Felix Buckman, Gomen's apartment is raided and Taverner is taken into custody, being transported immediately to the Police Academy in Los Angeles. Buckman personally interrogates Taverner, soon reaching the conclusion that Taverner genuinely does not know why he no longer appears to exist. However, he suspects that Taverner may be part of a larger plot involving the Sixes. He orders Taverner released, although ensuring that tracking devices are again placed on him. Outside the police academy, Taverner is approached by Alys Buckman, Felix's hypersexual sister and lover. Alys removes the tracking devices from Taverner and invites him to the home she shares with her brother. On the way there, she tells Taverner that she knows he is a TV star and reveals copies of his records. At the Buckmans' home, Taverner takes Alys up on an offer of mescaline. When he has a bad reaction to the drug, Alys goes to find him a medicine to counteract it. When she does not return, Taverner goes to search for her, only to find her skeletal remains on the bathroom floor. Frightened and confused, he flees, unsuccessfully pursued by a private security guard. To aid in his escape, he asks for the help of Mary Anne Dominic, a potter. Heading to a cafe with her, they find that several of his records are on the jukebox. When his song plays, people begin to recognize him as a celebrity. After parting with Dominic, Taverner goes to the apartment of his celebrity girlfriend Heather Hart. She returns home, horrified, and shows Taverner a newspaper mentioning that he is wanted in connection with Alys Buckman's death, the motive believed to have been his jealousy over Alys' purported relationship with Hart. An autopsy reveals that Alys' death was caused by an experimental reality-warping drug called KR-3. The coroner explains to Felix that, as Alys was a fan of Taverner, her use of the drug caused Taverner to be transported to a parallel universe where he no longer existed. Her death then caused his reversion back to his own universe. The Police General decides to implicate Taverner in Alys' death to distract attention from his incest. The press are informed that Taverner is a suspect in the case and, wishing to clear his name, Taverner surrenders himself to the police. Heartbroken over the death of his sister, Felix returns home, suffering a nervous breakdown on the way. In an epilogue, the final fates of the main characters are disclosed. Buckman retires to Borneo where he is assassinated soon after writing an exposé of the global police apparatus. Taverner is cleared of all charges and dies of old age, while Heather Hart abandons her celebrity career and becomes a recluse. Dominic's pottery wins an international award and her works become of great value while she lives into her eighties. KR-3 test trials are deemed too destructive and the project is abandoned. Ultimately, the revolutionary students give up and voluntarily enter forced-labor camps. The detention camps later dwindle away and close down, the government no longer posing a threat.
59782	/m/0g8ln	Job: A Comedy of Justice	Robert A. Heinlein	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story examines religion through the eyes of Alex, a Christian political activist who is corrupted by Margrethe, a Danish Norse cruise ship hostess — and who loves every minute of it. Enduring a shipwreck, an earthquake, and a series of world-changes brought about by Loki (with Jehovah's permission), Alex and Marga work their way from Mexico back to Kansas as dishwasher and waitress. Whenever they manage to make some stake, an inconveniently timed change into a new alternate reality throws them off their stride (once, the money they earned is left behind in another reality; in another case, the paper money earned in a Mexico which is an empire is worthless in another Mexico which is a republic). These repeated misfortunes, clearly effected by some malevolent entity, make the hero identify with the Biblical Job. On the way they unknowingly enjoy the Texas hospitality of Satan himself, but as they near their destination they are separated by the Rapture — Margrethe worships Odin, and pagans do not go to Heaven. Finding that the reward for his faith, eternity as promised in the Revelation, is worthless without her, Alex's journey through timeless space in search of his lost lady takes him to Hell and beyond. Heinlein's vivid depiction of a Heaven ruled by snotty angels and a Hell where everyone has a wonderful, or at least productive, time — with Mary Magdalene shuttling breezily between both places — is a satire on American evangelical Christianity. It owes much to Mark Twain's Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. The novel is linked to Heinlein's short story, "They", by the term, "the Glaroon", and to his earlier novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by referring to the Moon colonies "Luna City" and "Tycho Under".
59784	/m/0g8m0	Farmer in the Sky	Robert A. Heinlein	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set in a future, overcrowded Earth, where food is carefully rationed. Teenager William (Bill) Lermer lives with his widower father, George. George decides to emigrate to the farming colony on Ganymede, one of Jupiter's moons. After marrying Molly Kenyon, George, Bill and Molly's daughter Peggy embark on the 'torchship' Mayflower. On the journey, Bill saves his bunkmates from asphyxiation by improvising a patch when a meteor punctures their compartment. To combat the boredom of the long trip, the Boy Scouts among the passengers form troops, and all the children attend classes. When they arrive on Ganymede, an unpleasant surprise awaits the newcomers. The group is much larger than the colony can easily absorb. The farms they were promised do not yet exist. In fact, the "soil" has to be created from scratch by pulverizing boulders and lava flows, and seeding the resulting dust with carefully formulated organic material. While some whine about the injustice of it all, Bill accepts an invitation to live with a prosperous farmer and his family to learn what he needs to know, while his father signs on as an engineer in town. Peggy is unable to adjust to the low pressure atmosphere and has to stay in a bubble in the hospital. When the Lermers are finally reunited on their own homestead, they build their house with a pressurized room for Peggy. One day, a rare alignment of all of Jupiter's major moons causes a devastating moon quake which damages most of the buildings. Peggy is seriously injured when her room suffers an explosive decompression. Even worse, the machinery that maintains Ganymede's "heat shield" is knocked out and the temperature starts dropping rapidly. George quickly realizes what has happened and gets his family to the safety of the town. Others do not grasp their peril soon enough and either stay in their homes or start for town too late; two thirds of the colonists perish, either from the quake or by freezing. The Lermers consider returning to Earth, but then Peggy dies. In true pioneer spirit, they decide to stay and rebuild. The colony gradually recovers, and an expedition is organized to survey more of Ganymede. Bill goes along as the cook. While exploring, he and a friend discover artifacts of an alien civilization, including a working land vehicle that has legs, like a large metal centipede. This proves fortuitous when Bill's appendix bursts and they miss the rendezvous. The shuttle picks up the rest of the group and leaves without the pair. They travel cross country to reach the next landing site. Bill is then taken to the hospital for a life-saving operation.
59786	/m/0g8mt	Friday	Robert A. Heinlein	1982-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book's protagonist is Friday Baldwin, an artificial person both mentally and physically superior in many ways to an ordinary human, but she faces great prejudice and will most likely be killed if her "non-human" status is discovered. Employed as a highly self-sufficient combat courier, her various missions take her throughout the globe and also to some of the near-Earth space colonies. The novel is set in a complex, Balkanized world, and Friday is caught up in several civil disturbances during the course of her travels. She reaches her employer's home base safely but is soon displaced. Sent on a space journey as a courier, she realizes that the journey is likely to end with her death, evades the ship's authorities, and settles on a pioneer world with friends made earlier in the narrative.
59804	/m/0g8rz	Have Space Suit-Will Travel	Robert A. Heinlein	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Clifford "Kip" Russell, a bright high school senior with an eccentric father, enters an advertising jingle writing contest, hoping to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Moon. He instead gets an obsolete, but genuine, used space suit. Though a few make fun of him, with the help of sympathetic townspeople, and using his own ingenuity and determination, Kip puts the suit (which he dubs "Oscar") back into working condition. Kip reluctantly decides to return his space suit for a cash prize to help pay for college, but puts it on for one last walk. As he idly broadcasts on his shortwave radio, someone identifying herself as "Peewee" answers with a Mayday signal. He helps her home in on his location, and is shocked when a flying saucer lands practically on top of him. A young girl and an alien being (the "Mother Thing") debark, but all three are quickly captured and taken to the Moon. Their alien kidnapper is nicknamed "Wormface" by Kip. Their captors are horrible-looking, vaguely anthropomorphic creatures who contemptuously refer to all others as "animals". Wormface has two human flunkies who assisted him in initially capturing the Mother Thing and Peewee (Patricia Wynant Reisfeld), a preteen genius and the daughter of an eminent scientist. The Mother Thing speaks in what sounds to Kip like birdsong, with a few musical notations in the text giving a flavor of her language. However, Kip and Peewee have no trouble understanding her. Kip, Peewee, and the Mother Thing try to escape to the human lunar base by hiking cross-country, but they are recaptured and taken to a base on Pluto. Kip is thrown into a cell, later to be joined by the two human traitors, who have apparently outlived their usefulness. Before they later disappear, one mentions to Kip that his former employers eat humans. The Mother Thing, meanwhile, makes herself useful to their captors by constructing advanced devices for them. In the process, she manages to steal enough parts to assemble a bomb and a transmitter. The bomb takes care of the most of the Wormfaces, but the Mother Thing freezes solid when she tries to set up the transmitter outside without a spacesuit. Kip nearly freezes to death himself while activating the distress beacon, but help arrives almost instantly. It turns out that the Mother Thing is far hardier than Kip had suspected, and was not in danger. Kip, however, suffers severe frostbite and is kept in a state of cryopreservation while the Mother Thing's people figure out how to fully heal him. Kip and Peewee are transported to Vega 5, the Mother Thing's home planet. While Kip recuperates, "Prof Joe", a "professor thing", learns about Earth from Peewee and Kip. Once Kip is well, he, Peewee, and the Mother Thing travel to a planet in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, to face an intergalactic tribunal composed of many species which have banded together, which decides whether new races pose a danger. The Wormfaces are put on trial first. They promise to annihilate all other species, and are judged to be dangerous. Their planet is rotated out of three-dimensional space without their star, most likely to freeze. Then it is humanity's turn, as represented by Peewee, Kip, Iunio (a Roman centurion), and a Neanderthal man. The Neanderthal is rejected as being of another species. Iunio proves belligerent, but brave. Peewee's and Kip's secretly recorded remarks are then admitted into evidence. In humanity's defense, Kip makes a stirring speech. The Mother Thing and a representative of another race argue that the short-lived species are essentially children who should be granted more time to learn and grow. It is decided to re-evaluate humanity after "a dozen half-lives of radium". (The half–life of radium-226 is 1601 years.) Kip and Peewee are returned to Earth with devices and equations provided by the Vegans. Kip passes the information along to Professor Reisfeld, Peewee's father and a world-renowned synthesist (a generalist who makes sense of what more specialized scientists discover). After listening to Kip and Peewee's story, Reisfeld arranges a full scholarship for Kip at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Kip wants to study engineering and spacesuit design.
59826	/m/0g8xg	Requiem	Robert A. Heinlein			 The story centers around Delos David Harriman, the lead character of "The Man Who Sold The Moon". Harriman, a tycoon and latter-day robber baron, had always dreamed of going to the Moon, and had spent much of his career and resources making space flight a practical commercial enterprise. Unfortunately, his business partners prevented him from taking the early flights (as shown in the novella). Now an old man, Harriman has still not been to the Moon, a fact that frustrates him, since he lives in a world where space travel is so commonplace that carnivals have their own barnstorming spacecraft. No longer bound by his contractual obligations, he is now too old; he is unable to pass the medical examination needed for space travel. Very wealthy, Harriman bribes two spacemen to help him get to the Moon after encountering them at a funfair in Butler, a small town outside Kansas City, Missouri, where they sell rides on their old, somewhat run-down ship. (The town is Heinlein's birthplace.) The three of them fight many obstacles, including Harriman's heirs, who want him declared mentally incompetent or senile before he can spend their inheritance. In the end, Harriman finally makes it to the Moon, only to die on the surface soon after landing, content at finally having reached his goal. His body is left there, with his epitaph scrawled on the tag from an oxygen bottle. It is Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem", which is inscribed on his own headstone in Samoa. :Under the wide and starry sky :Dig the grave and let me lie: :Glad did I live and gladly die, :And I laid me down with a will! :This be the verse you grave for me: :Here he lies where he longed to be; :Home is the sailor, home from the sea, :And the hunter home from the hill.
59842	/m/0g8_z	Red Planet	Robert A. Heinlein	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On Mars, Jim Marlowe and Frank Sutton travel to the Lowell Academy boarding school for the start of the academic year. Jim takes along his native, volleyball-sized pet, Willis the Bouncer, who is about as intelligent as a human child and has a photographic memory for sounds, which he can also reproduce perfectly. At a rest stop, Willis wanders off and encounters one of the adult sentient Martians. The three-legged alien takes the two boys and Willis to join a ritual called "growing together" with a group of its fellows. They also share water, making Jim and Frank "water friends" with the Martian, who is named Gekko. At school, Jim gets into trouble with the authoritarian headmaster, Mr. Howe, who confiscates Willis, claiming that it is against the new rules to have pets. When Jim and Frank sneak into Howe's office and rescue Willis, the bouncer repeats two overheard conversations between Howe and Beecher, the unscrupulous colonial administrator of Mars, detailing Beecher's plans for Willis and the colony. When Beecher learns Howe has a bouncer, he is ecstatic, since the London Zoo is willing to pay a hefty price for a specimen. Worse, Beecher is secretly planning to prevent the annual migration of the colonists (necessary to avoid 12 months of life threatening winter weather) in order to save money. The boys run away from school to warn their parents and the colony. The boys set out to skate the thousands of miles to their homes on the frozen Martian canals. During the trip, Frank gets sick. On the third night, they are forced to take shelter inside a giant Martian cabbage plant (nearly suffocating when it folds up at night). The next day, they meet some native Martians, who accept Jim because of his relationship to Willis and water-friendship with Gekko. The Martians treat Frank's illness and send the two boys home by a swift "subway". Once warned, Jim's father quickly organizes the migration, hoping to catch Beecher off guard. The colonists take over the boarding school, and they turn it into a temporary shelter. Howe locks himself in his office, while Beecher sets up automatic, photosensor-controlled weapons outside to stop the malcontents (as he calls them) from leaving. After two colonists are killed trying to surrender, and the power to the building is cut, the colonists decide they have no choice but to fight back. The colonists organize a raiding party, with the boys taking part, capture Beecher's office and proclaim the colony's independence from the Earth. Several Martians enter the school area, and one of them shows up in the door leading to Howe's office, hiding him from sight. When the Martian turns away, Howe is nowhere to be found. The Martians then go to Beecher's building, and when they leave, he has also vanished. The Martians had been content to allow humans to share their planet, but Beecher's threat to Willis has made them reconsider. They present the colonists with an ultimatum: leave the planet or else. Dr. MacRae negotiates with the Martians, and is able to persuade them to let the colonists stay, mainly because of Jim's strong friendship with Willis. Doctor MacRae theorizes that Martians start life as bouncers, metamorphose into adults, then continue to exist after their deaths as the "old ones." In the end, Jim resigns himself to giving Willis up so he can undergo the transformation to adulthood. As with Podkayne of Mars, there are two versions of the ending. As originally written (and published much later) it is made clear that Willis will not emerge as an adult for forty years. This was edited and changed by Heinlein's publishers, as was a discussion early in the novel in which MacRae expresses strong support for adults and older children being free to carry handguns, and opposition to any government which would restrict that.
59844	/m/0g90b	The Number of the Beast	Robert A. Heinlein	1980-07-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book is a series of diary entries by each of the four main characters: Zebadiah John Carter, programmer Dejah Thoris "Deety" Burroughs Carter, her mathematics professor father Jacob Burroughs, and an off-campus socialite Hilda Corners. The names "Dejah Thoris", "Burroughs", and "Carter" are overt references to John Carter and Dejah Thoris, the main protagonists of the Barsoom (Mars) novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The four travel in Zebadiah's spaceship Gay Deceiver, which is equipped with the professor's "continua" device and armed by the Australian Defence Force. The continua device was built by Professor Burroughs while he was formulating his theories on n-dimensional non-euclidean geometry. The geometry of the novel's universe contains six dimensions; the three spatial dimensions known to the real world, and three time dimensions - t, the real world's temporal dimension, τ (tau), and т (teh). The continua device can travel on all six axes. The continua device allows travel into various fictional universes, such as the Land of Oz, as well as through time. An attempt to visit Barsoom takes them to an apparently different version of Mars seemingly under the colonial rule of the British Empire; but near the end of the novel, Heinlein's recurring character Lazarus Long hints that they had traveled to Barsoom, and that its "colonial" status was an illusion imposed on them by the telepathically adept Barsoomians: In the novel, the Biblical number of the beast turns out to be, not 666, but (6^6)^6, or 10,314,424,798,490,535,546,171,949,056, which is the number of parallel universes accessible through the continua device.
60128	/m/0gc8j	Foundation's Edge	Isaac Asimov	1982-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Five hundred years after the establishment of the Foundation, the Mayor of Terminus, Harla Branno, is basking in a political glow, her policies having been vindicated by the recent successful resolution of a Seldon Crisis. Golan Trevize, a former officer of the Navy and now a member of Council, believes the Second Foundation (which is almost universally thought to be extinct) still exists and is controlling events. He attempts to question the continued existence of the Seldon Plan during a Council session and Branno has him arrested on a charge of treason. She orders him to leave Terminus to search for the Second Foundation. As a cover, he is to be accompanied by Janov Pelorat, a professor of Ancient History and mythologist, who is interested in the location of Earth, the fabled homeworld of humanity. They are provided a highly advanced computer controlled 'gravitic' ship with which to carry out their mission. Branno also sends out Munn Li Compor in another similar vessel to follow and monitor Trevize. On Trantor, Stor Gendibal, a rising intellect in the Second Foundation hierarchy, discovers a secret he reveals to Quindor Shandess, the current First Speaker — that the Seldon Plan, which the Second Foundation diligently protects and furthers along, is being manipulated by some unknown group, one possibly more powerful than the Second Foundation, and whose reasons for so doing are not known. (This group is dubbed the "Anti-Mules" by Shandess, as they seem to possess powers similar to the Mule but to be using them not to destroy the Seldon Plan, as the Mule did, but to preserve it.) Gendibal concludes that Trevize is a "lightning rod" sent out to locate and expose the Second Foundation. His ideas are not well received by the other Speakers, but he has the support of Shandess. Trevize never intends to go to Trantor believing, that once at the library, Pelorat will never leave. Trevize and Pelorat discuss Pelorat's interest in Earth and its legends, and Trevize realizes that Seldon's phrase "at the other end of the Galaxy" (the phrase he used to describe the Second Foundation's location) could mean Earth. His logic being that Terminus (at the time of Hari Seldon) was the last planet to be inhabited (one end of the metaphorical galaxy) and, by definition, Earth was the first (the other end of the metaphorical galaxy). However, there is no planet named Earth in the galactic table of planets. Pelorat, through his previous research, established characteristics that Earth must have: a 24 hour day, a 365 day year, and a large satellite. Once again no planet on file has these characteristics, but the galactic table of planets is missing a lot of information about a lot of planets. Nonetheless, Pelorat has a guess. The table mentions a planet called Gaia which Pelorat discovered, previously, to mean Earth. Its exact coordinates are unknown but it is listed as being in the Sayshell Sector. Trevize decides that they must go to the Sayshell Sector to follow up on this lead. Gendibal demonstrates to the Speaker's Table that the brain of Sura Novi, a Hamishwoman (the farming population of Trantor are known as the Hamish), shows a very subtle change in her mind that could only have been done by an agency more powerful than the Second Foundation. He believes it was done by the "Anti-Mules" and that they have a separate agenda with the Second Foundation as their unwitting pawn. Gendibal and Novi are sent to track Trevize and to determine the goals of the "Anti-Mules." On Sayshell, Trevize and Pelorat meet Professor Quintesetz, who is able to give them the co-ordinates to the mysterious planet known as Gaia. Traveling to Gaia, they discover that it is a 'superorganism', where all things, both living and inanimate, participate in a larger, group consciousness, while still retaining any individual awareness they might have, such as among the Gaian humans. Pelorat slowly falls in love with a Gaian woman named Blissenobiarella (commonly called Bliss), who explains that Trevize will be forced to decide the future of the galaxy — whether it will be ruled by the First Foundation, the Second Foundation, or by Gaia (who envisions an eventual extension of its group consciousness to the entire galaxy, thus forming the new entity Galaxia). Gendibal is met by a First Foundation warship, commanded by Mayor Branno. As Gendibal's mental powers stalemate with Mayor Branno's force shield, Novi reveals herself as an agent of Gaia. Once she joins the stalemate, the three are locked until Trevize can join them. Bliss explains to Trevize that he had been led to Gaia so that his untouched mind, a mind with remarkable intuition, can decide the Galaxy's fate. He also learns that the stalemate between the First Foundation (Branno), the Second Foundation (Gendibal), and Gaia (Novi) was intentional, and that through the ship's computer, he can decide who shall ultimately prove victorious. Trevize decides upon Gaia, and through mental adjustments, Gaia makes Branno and Gendibal believe they have won minor victories, and that Gaia does not exist. But Trevize is troubled by one final piece of missing information: who or what has removed all reference to Earth from the Galactic Library at Trantor, and why. He announces his intention to find Earth, since without knowing the answers to those questions he cannot be certain his choice was the right one. Trevize also mentions that he chose Gaia because that was the only choice of the three that was not irreversible (in case his choice should prove to be wrong), due to the large length of time required for the formation of Galaxia.
60129	/m/0gc8_	The Caves of Steel	Isaac Asimov	1954-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book's central crime is a murder, which takes place before the novel opens. (This is an Asimovian trademark, which he attributed to his own squeamishness and John Campbell's advice of beginning as late in the story as possible.) Roj Nemmenuh Sarton, a Spacer Ambassador, lives in Spacetown, the Spacer outpost just outside New York City. For some time, he has tried to convince the Earth government to loosen its anti-robot restrictions. One morning, he is discovered outside his home, his chest imploded by an energy blaster. The New York police commissioner charges Elijah with finding the murderer. Elijah must work with a Spacer partner, a highly advanced robot named R. Daneel Olivaw who is visually identical to a human, even though Elijah, like many Earth residents, has a low opinion of robots. Together, they search for the murderer and try to avert an interstellar diplomatic incident. One interesting aspect of the book is the contrast between Elijah, the human detective, and Daneel, the humanoid robot. Asimov uses the "mechanical" robot to inquire about human nature. When confronting a "Medievalist" who fears that robots will overcome humankind, Elijah argues that robots are inherently deficient. Being precision-engineered calculating machines, they can have no appreciation of art, beauty, or God; robots can understand only concepts expressible in mathematics. Nevertheless, in the concluding scene, R. Daneel exhibits a sense of morality. He argues that the captured murderer be treated leniently, telling his human companions that he now realizes the destruction of evil is less desirable than the conversion of evil into good. Quoting the Pericope Adulteræ, Daneel tells the murderer, "Go, and sin no more!"
60130	/m/0gc9g	Prelude to Foundation	Isaac Asimov	1988-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place on Trantor during the reign of Emperor Cleon I. It starts with Hari's presentation of a paper at a mathematics convention detailing how practical use of psychohistory might theoretically be possible. The Emperor of the Galactic Empire learns of this and wants to use Hari for political gain. After an interview with Hari, however, Cleon concludes that Hari is of no use to the Empire. Hari then meets reporter Chetter Hummin, who convinces him that Cleon's first minister Eto Demerzel is attempting to capture him, and that it is therefore imperative for Hari to escape and to try to make psychohistory practical. Thus, Hari goes on his "Flight" and is introduced to Dors Venabili by Hummin. Hari and Dors narrowly evade capture at Streeling University, following which the pair move to Mycogen. Hari and Dors are welcomed to Mycogen by Sunmaster Fourteen, the leader of Mycogen. Determined to work out his psychohistory with the knowledge that the Mycogenians supposedly possess, Hari decides to speak to a Mycogenian alone about history. He manages this by convincing Raindrop Forty-three to show him the prized Mycogenian microfarms, a prized source of food for the aristocracy and Mycogenians alike. When Hari inquires about that the peculiar Mycogenian ways might be the product of religious belief, Raindrop Forty-three is offended and says that the Mycogenians have something better: History. Hari inquires into the source of Mycogenian history and Raindrop Forty-three reveals that it is encompassed in "The book". Hari asks for the book but Raindrop Forty-three accepts on the condition that Hari allows her to touch his hair; (hair being expressively forbidden in Mycogenian society). When Hari starts reading the book, he finds it disappointing except for the revealing of what the Mycogenians call their home planet, Aurora. Hari and Dors are almost killed when they try to find what they suspect is a robot in the Mycogenian "temple" until Hummin arrives in the nick of time to save them. The action then shifts to the Dahl sector, where Dors displays her amazing knife fighting skills. While in Dahl they meet a guttersnipe named Raych (whom Hari later adopts as his son), and Yugo Amaryl (who would become Hari's partner in developing psychohistory). Towards the end of the novel, Hari, Dors, and Raych are kidnapped by agents from Wye, a powerful sector situated at Trantor's south pole. The finale reveals that "Hummin" is actually Cleon's first minister Eto Demerzel, who we later learn is in fact the robot R. Daneel Olivaw. By the end of the novel, Hari suspects that Dors is a robot, too. This theme would later be picked up in Forward the Foundation.
60131	/m/0gc9y	Foundation and Earth	Isaac Asimov	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Councilman Golan Trevize, historian Janov Pelorat, and Blissenobiarella of the planet Gaia (all of whom were introduced in Foundation's Edge) set out on a journey to find humanity's ancestral planet — Earth. The purpose of the journey is to settle Trevize's doubt with his decision at the end of Foundation's Edge to embrace the all-encompassing supermind of Galaxia. First, they journey to Comporellon, which claims to be the oldest currently-inhabited planet in the galaxy. Although many other planets make that claim, Comporellon has a very long history with which to back it up. Upon arrival, they are imprisoned, but negotiate their way out. While there, they find the coordinates of three Spacer planets. Since the Spacers were the first colonists from Earth back in the ancient days of space travel, it is surmised that their planets would be fairly close to Earth. The first Spacer planet they visit is Aurora, where Trevize is nearly killed by a pack of wild dogs, presumed to be the descendants of household pets long since reverted to wolf-like savagery. They escape when Bliss manipulates the dogs' emotions to psychologically compel a retreat, while Trevize uses his neuronic whip on them. Next, they go to Solaria, where they find that the Solarians — who have survived the Spacer-Settler conflicts by clever retreat detailed in Asimov's novel Robots and Empire — have engineered themselves into self-reproducing hermaphrodite beings, who have remained generally intolerant of human physical presence or contact. They have also given themselves a natural ability to mentally channel ("transduce") great amounts of energy, and utilize this as their sole source of power. The Solarians intentionally avoid ever having to interact with each other, except by holographic apparatus ("viewing"), and reproduce only when necessary to replace someone who has died. Bliss, Pelorat, and Trevize are nearly killed by a Solarian named Sarton Bander. Bliss, however, deflects the transducer brain-lobes at the moment Bander tries to use them to kill. Bliss intends to knock out Bander, but has not had sufficient time to learn the full workings of the transducer and accidentally kills it instead. While escaping, they find what they assume to be Bander's immature child, Fallom, in a state of panic because its robotic nursemaid, like all other robots on the estate, has stopped functioning. The child Fallom cannot inherit the Bander estate, as would normally be the Solarian custom, because it is too immature to be able to use its transducer lobes. There being no other place for the child on Solaria, the decision of the robots who immediately arrive to investigate the loss of power is that Fallom is to be destroyed. Upon learning this, Bliss insists that they take Fallom with them. They next go to Melpomenia, the third and final Spacer coordinate they have. They find that the atmosphere has become depressurized to a few thousandths of normal atmospheric pressure. Wearing space suits, they enter a library, and find a statue, as well as writings with the coordinates of all of the Spacer worlds. While departing Melpomenia, they notice a carbon-dioxide-feeding moss has begun feeding off insignificant leakages in their space suits. Barely recognizing this before stepping on their fully pressurized ship — which would have likely been disastrous — they set their blasters to minimum power to fry it off, and then set the ship to heavy UV-illumination before stepping on board. This disinfection procedure kills any trace of the moss, preventing it from spreading to other worlds. As well as giving them another 47 Spacer worlds that they could visit, they now have a vital clue to where Earth may be found. Since the Spacer worlds were settled from Earth, they form a rough sphere with Earth at the centre. Two stars seem to match. One is a binary star, and also on the charts as an inhabited world, though with a question mark where its status should be indicated. The other is uncharted and much more likely to be Earth's star, especially since legends do not mention Earth being part of a binary system. They decide however to go first to the binary system, because it may give them clues about what to expect on Earth itself. They next journey to the enigmatic charted system, which turns out to be Alpha Centauri. They find a remnant of the inhabitants of Earth, who many millennia ago were resettled there. There is a reference back to the events of Asimov's novel Pebble in the Sky: we learn that the restoration of Earth's soil was indeed attempted but was abandoned. Later, with Earth becoming uninhabitable, there was a grand project to terraform 'Alpha'. This too was not completed; the only dry land is an island 250 kilometers long and 65 kilometers wide. It is left open whether or not the entire population of the dying Earth was sent to Alpha. The natives, who call their home New Earth, are quite friendly, and Bliss, Trevize, Pelorat, and Fallom decide to enjoy some rest and relaxation. It turns out that the natives secretly intend to kill them, so as to prevent them from ever informing the rest of the galaxy of "New Earth" (the natives are paranoid of being taken by another "Empire" of any kind). They are warned by a native woman, who becomes sympathetic upon hearing Fallom playing the flute with its transducer brain-lobes, and make their escape in the middle of the night. Now certain that Alpha Centauri is not Earth but is near Earth, they head towards the uncharted system. They do notice and are puzzled by the very strong similarities between this star and the larger sun of the Alpha Centauri system. Asimov here is drawing attention to an astronomical curio: the nearest star system to Sol contains a star that has the same spectral type, G2 V, though Alpha Centauri A is a little larger and brighter. Entering the solar system of the uncharted star, they notice that it fits legends about Earth's solar system. The sixth planet has very prominent rings, much more so than any known gas giant. Also the third planet, the one fit for life, possesses an abnormally large moon for any planet other than a gas giant. Obviously this is Earth and its solar system. On the approach to Earth, they detect that it is highly radioactive, and not capable of supporting life, but, while trying to use the ship's computer to locate Solaria, Fallom calls Trevize's attention upon the moon, which is big enough to serve as a hideout for the forces that lived on Earth. They land on there and find R. Daneel Olivaw, who explains that he has been paternalistically manipulating humanity for many millennia, and indeed, since Elijah Baley's time, which was long before the Galactic Empire or Foundation. He caused the settlement of Alpha Centauri, the creation of Gaia, and the creation of psychohistory (detailed in Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation). He also manipulated Trevize into making his decision at the end of Foundation's Edge (although he did not manipulate the decision itself). Trevize confirms that decision, as the numerous narrow escapes have convinced him that the creation of Galaxia is the correct choice. Also, Daneel's positronic brain is deteriorating. He explains that he is unable to design a new brain, as it would require extreme miniaturization, to the point where the brain would deteriorate immediately. Thus, he tells his visitors that he wishes to merge Fallom's brain with his own, as Fallom's life span is the exceptionally long one of a Spacer. This will buy him time to oversee Galaxia's creation. Daneel continues to explain that since the dawn of civilization, man has been divided. This was the reason for his causing the creation of Psychohistory and Gaia. Another reason this was important was because of the likelihood of advanced life beyond the galaxy eventually attacking humanity. This danger is part of the conclusion to Asimov's book The End of Eternity, in which "Project Eternity" (which manipulated human history to maintain human comfort) had to be destroyed to undo that same extraterrestrial disaster -— extraterrestrials giving humanity no hope of expansion, at which point the birth rate fell, and humanity became extinct.
60139	/m/0gcf1	Time Enough for Love	Robert A. Heinlein	1973-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book covers several periods from the life of Lazarus Long (birth name: Woodrow Wilson Smith), the oldest living human, now more than two thousand years old. The first half of the book takes the form of several novellas connected by Lazarus's retrospective narrative. In the framing story, Lazarus has decided that life is no longer worth living, but (in what is described as a reverse Arabian Nights scenario) will consent not to end his life as long as his companions will listen to his stories. This story concerns a 20th century United States Navy cadet who rises in the ranks while avoiding any semblance of real work by applying himself wholeheartedly to the principle of "constructive laziness". After the Naval Academy, the protagonist becomes rich by taking advantage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which paid farmers not to farm their land. Lazarus tells of his visit as an interplanetary cargo trader to a planet with a culture like that of the medieval Middle East (reminiscent of Citizen of the Galaxy), whereon he bought a pair of slaves, brother and sister, and immediately manumitted them. Because neither has any knowledge of independence, nor any education, Lazarus teaches them during the voyage "how to be human". The two are the result of an experiment in genetic recombination in which two parent cells were separated into complementary haploid gametes, and recombined into two embryos. The resulting zygotes were implanted in a woman and gestated by her, with the result that although both have the same mother and genetic parents, they are no more closely related genetically than any two people taken at random. They have been prevented from sexual relations by a chastity belt; but having confirmed that there is no risk of genetic disease in their offspring (described as the sole valid reason against incest), Lazarus solemnizes their marriage and later establishes them as the owners and operators of a thriving business. At the end of the story, he reveals a belief that they are descendants of his own. A short scene-setter written after the style of "The Song of Hiawatha" introduces a planet whereto Lazarus has led a group of colonists now living in a manner reminiscent of the American Old West. Lazarus, now working as a banker and shopkeeper and keeping his true age secret, saves a young girl named Dora from a burning building and becomes her guardian. When she grows up, he marries her, and the two become founders of a new settlement where Lazarus' long life is less likely to be noticed. They are successful and eventually build a thriving town. Because Dora is not a Howard Family member, she eventually dies of old age, leaving Lazarus to mourn her loss. At the beginning of this story, Lazarus has regained his enthusiasm for life, and the remainder of the book is told in a conventional linear manner. Accompanied by some of his descendants, Lazarus has now moved to a new planet and established a polyamorous family consisting of three men, three women, and a larger number of children, two of whom are female clones of Lazarus himself. In the concluding tale, Lazarus, in a quest to experience something "new", attempts to travel backward in time to 1919 in order to experience it as an adult; but an error in calculation places Lazarus in 1916 on the eve of America's involvement in World War I. An unintentional result is that Lazarus falls in love with his own mother. In order to retain her esteem and that of his grandfather, Lazarus enlists in the army. Eventually Lazarus and his mother, Maureen, consummate their mutual attraction before Lazarus leaves for France. While in France, he is mortally wounded in the trenches of the Western Front, but rescued by those with whom he appears in Boondock and returned to his own time. There are also two "Intermission" sections, each some six or eight pages long, taking the form of lists of provocative phrases and aphorisms not directly related to the main narrative. These were later published independently, with illustrations, as The Notebooks of Lazarus Long.
60145	/m/0gchb	The Rolling Stones	Robert A. Heinlein	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Stones, a family of "Loonies" (residents of the Moon, known as "Luna" in Latin), purchase and rebuild a used spaceship, and go sightseeing around the solar system. The twin teenage boys, Castor and Pollux, buy used bicycles to sell on Mars, their first stop, where they run afoul of import regulations and are freed by their grandmother Hazel Stone. While on Mars, the twins buy their brother Buster a native Martian creature called a flat cat, born pregnant and producing a soothing vibration, as a pet. In the Asteroid Belt, where the equivalent of a gold rush is in progress prospecting for radioactive ores, the twins obtain supplies and luxury goods, on grounds that shopkeepers are much likelier to be rich than miners. En route, the flat cat and its offspring overpopulate the ship, so that the family place them in hibernation, and later sell them to the miners. Subsequently, the family set out to see the rings.
60146	/m/0gchp	The Door into Summer	Robert A. Heinlein	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens in 1970 with Daniel Boone Davis, an engineer and inventor, well into a long drinking binge. He has lost his company, Hired Girl, Inc., to his partner Miles Gentry and the company bookkeeper, Belle Darkin. She had been Dan's fiancée, deceiving him into giving her enough voting stock to allow her and Miles to seize control. Dan's only friend in the world is his cat, "Petronius the Arbiter", or "Pete", whom he carries around in a bag, allowing him out from time to time for a sip of ginger ale. Hired Girl, Inc. manufactures robot vacuum cleaners, but Dan had been developing a new line of all-purpose household robots, Flexible Frank, when Miles announces his intention to sell the company (and Frank) to a large corporation in which Miles would become a vice-president. Wishing to stay independent, Dan opposes the takeover, but is outvoted and then fired as Chief Engineer. Left with a large financial settlement, and his remaining Hired Girl stock, he elects to take "cold sleep" (suspended animation) with his beloved pet cat "Pete", hoping to wake up thirty years later to a brighter future. The examining doctor at the cold sleep facility immediately sees that Dan has been drinking. He gives Dan an injection to start the process of sobering him up, and warns him to show up sober or not at all 24 hours later for the actual procedure. After becoming sober, Dan decides instead to mount a counter-attack. First he mails his Hired Girl stock certificate to the one person he trusts, Miles' stepdaughter Frederica "Ricky" Gentry. Dan confronts Miles and finds Belle in Miles' home. Belle injects him with an illegal "zombie" drug, reducing him to somnolent compliance. Belle and Miles discover Dan's plans to go into cold sleep. Belle alters Dan's commitment documents to have him placed in a repository run by her cronies—a subsidiary of Mannix, the company that was trying to buy Hired Girl, Inc. Dan wakes up in the year 2000, with no money to his name, and no idea how to find the people he once knew. What little money Belle let him keep went with the collapse of Mannix in 1987. He has lost Pete the cat, who fled Miles' house after Dan was drugged, and has no idea how to find a now middle-aged Ricky. Dan begins rebuilding his life. He persuades Geary Manufacturing, which now owns Hired Girl, to take him on as a figurehead. He discovers that Miles died in 1972, while Belle is a shrill and gin-sodden wreck. All she recalls is that Ricky went to live with her grandmother about the time Dan went into cold sleep. Her scheme with Miles collapsed, as Flexible Frank disappeared the same night she shanghaied Dan. Flexible Frank is everywhere in the future, acting as hospital orderly, bellhop, and a thousand other menial jobs once filled by people. It is called Eager Beaver, made by a company called "Aladdin Auto-engineering," but Dan knows someone has taken his prototype and developed it. He is even more baffled to find that the patent is credited to a "D. B. Davis." His buddy Chuck at Geary lets slip that he once saw time travel working, in a lab in Colorado. At that point Dan finds that Ricky has been awakened from cold sleep and left Los Angeles for Brawley, California. Dan tracks her to Yuma, Arizona, where she was apparently married. When Dan looks at the marriage register, he finds that she married "Daniel Boone Davis". He immediately empties his bank account and heads for Colorado. In Boulder, he befriends Dr. Twitchell, a once-brilliant scientist reduced to drinking away his frustrations. Eventually, just as Chuck had told him, Twitchell admits to having created a time machine of sorts. With the machine powered up, Dan goads Twitchell into throwing the switch and finds himself falling. Dan has gone back to 1970, some months before his confrontation with Miles and Belle. Dan is befriended by John and Jenny Sutton and persuades them to help him in his mission. Working rapidly, Dan creates Drafting Dan, which he then uses to design Protean Pete, the first version of Eager Beaver. Leaving John and Jenny to set up a new corporation to be called "Aladdin Auto-engineering," he returns to Los Angeles, and stakes out Miles' house on the fateful night. Watching himself arrive, he lets events unfold until Pete the cat emerges, then takes his own car and uses it to remove Flexible Frank and all his engineering drawings from Miles's garage. Destroying the drawings and scattering machine parts across the landscape, he heads out to meet Ricky at her Girl Scout summer camp. Ricky is remarkably mature for her age, and asks Dan if he is doing this so they can get married. Dan tells her she is correct. He sells his car for quick cash, enough to get him to his cold sleep appointment. With Pete in his arms, he sleeps for the second time. In 2001, he awakes to a note from a much older John Sutton, along with a substantial amount of money. He greets Ricky, now a twenty-something beauty, when she awakes. They leave for Brawley to retrieve her possessions from storage, and then are married in Yuma. Setting himself up as an independent inventor, he uses Ricky's Hired Girl stock to make changes at Geary, settling back to watch the healthy competition with Aladdin.
60149	/m/0gcjx	Farnham's Freehold	Robert A. Heinlein	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Hugh Farnham, a middle-aged man, holds a bridge club party for his wife Grace (an alcoholic), son Duke (a law graduate), daughter Karen (a college student), and Barbara (Karen's sorority sister). During the bridge game, Duke berates him for frightening his mother with preparations for a possible nuclear attack by the Russians. When the attack actually occurs, the group, along with Joe (the family's African American servant), retreat to the fallout shelter below the house. After several apparently nuclear explosions rock the shelter, Hugh and Barbara become romantically involved; after their copulation, the largest explosion of all hits the shelter. With only minor injuries, and with their bottled oxygen running low, the group decides to ensure that they can leave the shelter when necessary; upon exiting through an emergency tunnel, they find themselves in a completely undamaged, semi-tropical region apparently uninhabited by humans or other sentient creatures. Several of the group think the final explosion somehow forced them into an alternate dimension. The group strives to stay alive as a pioneer family, with Hugh as the leader (despite friction between Hugh and Duke). Karen announces that she is pregnant, and had returned home the night of the attack to tell her parents; Barbara also announces that she is pregnant (although she does not mention that her pregnancy resulted from her sexual encounter with Hugh during the attack). Karen eventually dies during her labor, due to complications, and her infant daughter follows the next day. Grace, whose sanity has been challenged by all these events, demands that Barbara be forced from the group or she will leave. Duke convinces Hugh that he will go with Grace to ensure her safety, but before they can leave, a large ship appears overhead. The group is taken captive by people of clear African ancestry, but is spared execution when Joe intervenes by conversation with their captives' leader in French. The group finds that it has not been transported to another world, but instead is in the distant future of their own world. A decadent but technologically advanced African culture keeps either uneducated or castrated whites as slaves. Each of the characters adapts to the sudden black/white role reversal in different and sometimes shocking ways. In the end, Hugh and Barbara fail to adjust to the new situation and attempt to escape, but are captured. Rather than execute them, Ponse (the "Lord Protector" of the house to which they have become slaves) asks them to volunteer (though they speculate that if they didn't volunteer they would have been forced to anyway) for a time-travel experiment to send them back to their own time. They return just prior to the original nuclear attack, and flee in Barbara's car. As they drive, they realize that while Barbara had driven a car with an automatic transmission, this car - the same car in every respect but one - has a manual transmission, and Farnham deduces that the time-travel experiment worked, but sent them into an alternate universe. They survive the war, then spend the rest of their lives trying to make sure the future they experienced does not come to pass.
60161	/m/0gcm_	The Maltese Falcon	Dashiell Hammett	1930	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sam Spade and Miles Archer are hired by a Miss Wonderly to follow a man, Floyd Thursby, who has allegedly run off with Wonderly's younger sister. Spade and Archer take the assignment because the money is good, but Spade implies that the woman looks like trouble. That night, Spade receives a phone call telling him that Archer is dead. When questioned by Sgt. Polhaus about Archer's activities, Spade says that Archer was tailing Thursby, but refuses to reveal their client's identity. Later that night, Polhaus and Lieutenant Dundy visit Spade and inquire about his recent whereabouts, and say that Thursby was also killed and that Spade is a suspect. They have no evidence against Spade, but tell him that they will be conducting an investigation into the matter. The next day, Archer's wife Iva asks Spade if he killed Miles. He tells her to leave, and orders his secretary Effie Perine to remove all of Archer's belongings from the office. Visiting his client at her hotel, he learns her real name is Brigid O'Shaughnessy, she never had a sister, and Thursby was an acquaintance who had betrayed her. Later, Spade is visited by Joel Cairo, who offers Spade $5,000 if he can retrieve a figurine of a black bird that has recently arrived in San Francisco. Cairo suddenly pulls a gun, declaring his intention to search Spade's office, but Spade knocks him unconscious. When O'Shaughnessy contacts Spade, he senses a connection between her and Cairo, and casually mentions that he has spoken to Cairo. O'Shaughnessy becomes nervous, and asks Spade to arrange a meeting with Cairo. Spade agrees. When they meet at Spade's apartment, Cairo says he is ready to pay for the figurine, but O'Shaughnessy says she does not have it. They also refer to a mysterious figure, "G", of whom they seem to be scared. As the two begin to argue, Polhaus and Dundy show up, but Spade refuses to let them in. As they are about to leave, Cairo screams, and they force their way in. Spade says that Cairo and O'Shaughnessy were merely play-acting, which the officers seem to accept. But they take Cairo with them to the station. Spade tries to get more information from O'Shaughnessy, who stalls. Spade confronts a kid named Wilmer Cook, telling him that his boss, "G," will have to deal with Spade. He later receives a call from Casper Gutman, who wishes to meet him. Gutman says he will pay handsomely for the black bird. Spade bluffs, saying he can get it, but wants to know what it is first. Gutman tells him that the figurine was a gift from the Knights of Malta to the King of Spain, but was lost in transit. It was covered with fine jewels, but acquired a layer of black enamel to conceal its value. Gutman had been looking for it for seventeen years. He traced it to Russian general Kemidov, and sent Cairo, Thursby, and O'Shaughnessy to retrieve it. The latter pair stole the figurine, but kept it. Spade feels dizzy, and when he tries to leave, Wilmer trips him and kicks him in the head. After Spade returns to his office, Captain Jacobi of the La Paloma arrives, drops a package on the floor, and then dies. Spade opens the package, and finds the falcon. He receives a call from O'Shaughnessy, asking for his help. He stores the item at a bus station luggage counter and mails himself the collection tag. At the dock, the La Paloma is on fire. He goes to the address O'Shaughnessy gave him, and finds a drugged girl, her stomach scratched by a pin in order to keep her awake. She gives him information about Brigid, but it is a false lead. When he returns to his apartment, O'Shaughnessy, Wilmer, Cairo, and Gutman are waiting. Gutman gives Spade $10,000 for the bird. Spade takes the money, but says that they need a "fall guy" to take the blame for the murders. Cairo and Gutman agree to give him Wilmer. Gutman proceeds to tell Spade the rest of the story. Gutman then warns Spade not to trust O'Shaughnessy. Spade calls his secretary and asks her to pick up the figurine. She brings it to Spade's apartment, and Spade gives it to Gutman. He quickly learns that it is a fake. He realizes that the Russian must have discovered its true value and made a copy. Meanwhile, Wilmer escapes. Gutman regains his composure, and decides to continue the search. Gutman asks Spade for the $10,000. Spade keeps $1,000 for expenses. Cairo and Gutman leave. Immediately after Cairo and Gutman leave, Spade phones Sgt. Polhaus, and tells him about Gutman and Cairo. Spade then asks O'Shaughnessy why she killed Archer. She says she hired Archer to scare Thursby. When Thursby did not leave, she killed Archer, to pin the crime on Thursby. When Thursby was killed, she knew that Gutman was in town, so she came back to Spade for protection. Spade says that the penalty for murder is most likely twenty years, but if they hang her, he will always remember her. O'Shaughnessy begs him not to turn her in, but he replies that he has no choice. When the police arrive, Spade turns over O'Shaughnessy. They tell Spade that Wilmer was waiting for Gutman at the hotel and shot him when he arrived.
60171	/m/0gcqp	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	B. Traven		{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Three down-and-out gringos meet by chance in a Mexican city and discuss how to overcome their financial distress. They then set out to discover gold in the remote Sierra Madre mountains. They ride a train into the hinterlands, surviving a bandit attack en route. Once in the desert, Howard, the old-timer of the group, quickly proves to be by far the toughest and most knowledgeable; he is the one to discover the gold they are seeking. A mine is dug, and much gold is extracted, but greed soon begins and Fred C. Dobbs begins to lose both his trust and his mind, lusting to possess the entire treasure. The bandits then reappear, pretending, very crudely, to be Federales. After a gunfight, a troop of real Federales arrives and drives the bandits away. But when Howard is called away to assist some local villagers, Dobbs and third partner Curtin have a final confrontation, which Dobbs wins, leaving Curtin lying shot and bleeding. Dobbs continues on alone but is soon confronted and killed by three drifters. The drifters, thinking the gold dust is just worthless sand, scatter the paydirt. They are later captured and executed by the Federales. Curtin and Howard hear the story and can do nothing but laugh in the end.
60266	/m/0gd4j	Funeral in Berlin	Len Deighton	1964	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist, who is unnamed, travels to Berlin to arrange the defection of a Soviet scientist named Semitsa, this being brokered by Johnny Vulkan of the Berlin intelligence community. Despite his initial scepticism the deal seems to have the support of Russian security-chief Colonel Stok and Hallam in the British government's Home Office. The fake documentation for Semitsa needs to be precisely specified. In addition, an Israeli intelligence agent named Samantha Steel is involved in the case. But it soon becomes apparent that behind the facade of an elaborate mock funeral lies a game of deadly manoeuvres and ruthless tactics. A game in which the blood-stained legacy of Nazi Germany is enmeshed in the intricate moves of cold war espionage.
60267	/m/0gd4w	Billion-Dollar Brain	Len Deighton	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The unnamed protagonist travels to Helsinki to deliver a package after receiving instructions from a mysterious mechanically operated telephone message. On his arrival the protagonist discovers that the message was from 'The Brain', a one billion dollar super-computer owned by eccentric Texan billionaire General Midwinter. Midwinter is using The Brain to organise his own intelligence agency and private army which will soon start an uprising in Soviet-occupied Latvia in an attempt to end Communism in the Eastern bloc and tip the balance of the Cold War in favour of the West. After discovering this, and also the fact that the package he delivered contained a deadly virus, the protagonist must stop the virus from falling into the hands of both the Soviets and the madman billionaire - and prevent a nuclear war between the superpowers in the process.
60269	/m/0gd5k	Kim	Rudyard Kipling	1901	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 Kim (Kimball O'Hara) is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier and a poor white mother who have both died in poverty. Living a vagabond existence in India under British rule in the late 19th century, Kim earns his living by begging and running small errands on the streets of Lahore. He occasionally works for Mahbub Ali, a Pashtun horse trader who is one of the native operatives of the British secret service. Kim is so immersed in the local culture, few realise he is a white child, though he carries a packet of documents from his father entrusted to him by an Indian woman who cared for him. Kim befriends an aged Tibetan Lama who is on a quest to free himself from the Wheel of Things by finding the legendary 'River of the Arrow'. Kim becomes his chela, or disciple, and accompanies him on his journey. On the way, Kim incidentally learns about parts of the Great Game and is recruited by Mahbub Ali to carry a message to the head of British intelligence in Umballa. Kim's trip with the lama along the Grand Trunk Road is the first great adventure in the novel. By chance, Kim's father's regimental chaplain identifies Kim by his Masonic certificate, which he wears around his neck, and Kim is forcibly separated from the lama. The lama insists that Kim should comply with the chaplain's plan because he believes it is in Kim's best interests, and the boy is sent to a top English school in Lucknow. The lama funds Kim's education. Throughout his years at school, Kim remains in contact with the holy man he has come to love. Kim also retains contact with his secret service connections and is trained in espionage (to be a surveyor) while on vacation from school by Lurgan Sahib, at his jewellery shop in Simla. As part of his training, Kim looks at a tray full of mixed objects and notes which have been added or taken away, a pastime still called Kim's Game, also called the Jewel Game. After three years of schooling, Kim is given a government appointment so that he can begin his role in the Great Game. Before this appointment begins however, he is granted time to take a much-deserved break. Kim rejoins the lama and at the behest of Kim's superior, Hurree Chunder Mookherjee, they make a trip to the Himalayas. Here the espionage and spiritual threads of the story collide, with the lama unwittingly falling into conflict with Russian intelligence agents. Kim obtains maps, papers, and other important items from the Russians working to undermine British control of the region. Mookherjee befriends the Russians under cover, acting as a guide and ensures that they do not recover the lost items. Kim, aided by some porters and villagers, helps to rescue the lama. The lama realizes that he has gone astray. His search for the 'River of the Arrow' should be taking place in the plains, not in the mountains, and he orders the porters to take them back. Here Kim and the lama are nursed back to health after their arduous journey. Kim delivers the Russian documents to Hurree, and a concerned Mahbub Ali comes to check on Kim. The lama finds his river and achieves Enlightenment. The reader is left to decide whether Kim will henceforth follow the prideful road of the Great Game, the spiritual way of Tibetan Buddhism, or a combination of the two. Kim himself has this to say: "I am not a Sahib. I am thy chela."
60310	/m/0gdfn	Whit	Iain Banks	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Isis, otherwise The Blessed Very Reverend Gaia-Marie Isis Saraswati Minerva Mirza Whit of Luskentyre, Beloved Elect of God III, is the 19-year-old granddaughter and designated spiritual heir of Salvador Whit, patriarch of the Luskentyrians. They are a religious cult who live in a commune in Stirlingshire and reject most technology. They run their lives according to a collection of beliefs and rituals "revealed" to Salvador after he washed ashore on Harris in the Western Isles and "married" two young Asian ladies (Aasni and Zhobelia Asis). (Haggis pakora becomes a staple of the cult's cuisine.) The novel opens shortly before the Luskentyrian Festival of Love, held every four years, about nine months before every leap year day (29 February). The Luskentyrians believe that those born on that day have special power. This includes Isis herself, Elect of God, and expected to take over leadership of the cult. The bulk of the novel tells of Isis' voyages in the world of "the Unsaved" (also known as "the Obtuse", "the Wretched", "the Bland" and "the Asleep"), through Scotland and southern England in search of Morag, who is feared to have rejected the cult. Because of Isis' anti-technology and self-denying puritanical beliefs, she has to use a Sitting Board (a hard board she can put over the comfortable seats in cars and other means of transportation in order to deprive herself of cushioning). She also uses the technique of Back-Bussing in order to avoid paying for a ticket on the bus. This consists of getting on buses, and when the conductor comes along, asking for a ticket in the opposite direction while looking confused. This normally results in being allowed to get off at the next stop and pointed in the right direction. While searching for her cousin, Isis meets Rastas, policemen, white power skinheads, and other characters of a sort she has never encountered before, and tells the story of the cult and the rationale behind its rules. Isis' maternal grandmother, Yolanda, a feisty Texan woman, appears and lends her support to Isis' quest. Isis' friend Sophi, although not part of the cult, is very close to her. Isis meets her whenever she goes to her house to use the Luskentyrian method of free (if laborious) telephone communication, using coded rings. When Isis finds Morag, she learns that though Morag has lapsed somewhat in her Luskentyrian practices (her work as a porn actress is not inconsistent with the cult's beliefs) she had every intention of returning for the festival. The story now takes a more sinister turn, as we learn that Isis' brother seems to have cooked up her impossible mission in an attempt to discredit her and put her out of the picture in a bid to take over the leadership of the cult. Isis also learns the history of her grandfather, and rescues her great-aunt Zhobelia from an old people's home. Confident that Zhobelia's mild senility will recover in a less boring environment, Isis soon learns more of the origins of the cult from her. She finds out that her grandfather was Moray Black, a robber on the run, and that the cult he set up is based on lies. Returning with her great-aunt Zhobelia, her cousin Morag, enhanced maturity and a lot more information, Isis must decide what to tell the other members of the cult.
60364	/m/0gdq1	Mostly Harmless	Douglas Adams		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 After the events in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, Arthur Dent and his love interest Fenchurch attempt to sightsee across the Galaxy, but when Fenchurch disappears during a hyperspace jump due to being from an unstable sector of the Galaxy, Arthur becomes depressed and travels the Galaxy alone, raising money to pay his passage by donating his biological material to DNA banks (mostly sperm, due to it having the highest payout). He is aware that he cannot die until he visits Stavromula Beta, as was revealed in Life, the Universe and Everything, by the insane Agrajag. During one journey, his ship crash lands on the planet Lamuella; Arthur survives and finds a simple life, becoming the sandwich maker for the local population. Meanwhile, Ford Prefect has returned to the offices of the Hitchhikers' Guide, and is annoyed to find out the original publishing company, Megadodo Publications, has been taken over by InfiniDim Enterprises. Ford discovers that Vogons are part of the Guide's employ, and attempts to escape the building. During this attempt, he finds the Hitchhiker's Guide Mk. II, which he steals and sends to himself, care of Arthur, for safekeeping. Arthur, as Ford had expected, stores the package away without even opening it and forgets about it. One day, Trillian arrives on Lamuella, and presents Arthur with Random Dent, a teenage girl she claims is his daughter, conceived by Trillian via artificial insemination using the only human sperm samples available, those given by Arthur to pay for his space travels. Trillian leaves Random with Arthur so that she can better pursue her new career as an intergalactic reporter. Random finds life on Lamuella boring and cannot get along with Arthur, and comes across the Guide Mk. II. With Random as its owner, the Guide helps her to escape the planet to find her mother. Ford appears shortly after, looking for the Guide. Together, Ford and Arthur manage to leave the planet and return to Earth, realizing that Random has also returned there. Ford also realizes that the Guide Mk. II, being capable of both time-travel and looking into alternate universes, is manipulating events in accordance with an unknown plan. Meanwhile, on Earth, an alternative version of Trillian, reporter Tricia McMillan, who never was able to take Zaphod Beeblebrox's offer to travel in space due to wanting to get her handbag, finds herself approached by an extraterrestrial species calling themselves the Grebulons. They reveal that they have set up a base on Rupert (a tenth planet just beyond the orbit of Pluto) after arriving in the Solar System and finding that their computer core and most of their memories had been damaged, and have been following the remaining portions of their mission statement to observe the most interesting things in the system. They have approached Tricia to help them adapt the astrology charts to use Rupert as their base, offering to let her interview them on their base in exchange for the help. Tricia performs the interview but finds that the results look questionable. She is then called to report on a spaceship landing in the middle of London. Tricia finds Random leaving the ship, and the girl believes Tricia to be her mother, and starts yelling at her. Tricia, with the help of Arthur, Ford, and Trillian, manage to take Random to a bar (address number 42) to try to talk to her. However, she fires a weapon at Arthur; Arthur ducks and the shot kills a man behind him. Ford points out to Arthur that the name of the bar they're in is "Stavro Mueller's Beta", the man just killed being another form of Agrajag, and that Arthur's life is no longer safe, a point at which Arthur takes relief. Shortly afterward, the Grebulons, believing that it would be a positive action to improve their situation, fire upon and destroy the Earth. It is revealed that the Guide Mk. II was created by the Vogons to complete the destruction of the Earth in every possible dimension, using reverse temporal engineering to bring Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and Random together on Earth for its destruction by the Vogons. After the Earth is destroyed, the Guide collapses in on itself.
60878	/m/0gjjf	The Lion in Winter	James Goldman			 Set during Christmas 1183 at Henry II of England's castle in Chinon, Anjou, Angevin Empire, the play opens with the arrival of Henry's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he has had imprisoned since 1173. The story concerns the gamesmanship between Henry, Eleanor, their three surviving sons Richard, Geoffrey, and John, and their Christmas Court guest, the King of France, Philip II Augustus (), who was the son of Eleanor's ex-husband, Louis VII of France (by his third wife, Adelaide). Also involved is Philip's half-sister Alais, who has been at court since she was betrothed to Richard at age eight, but has since become Henry's mistress. The Lion in Winter is fictional and none of the dialogue and actions is historical; there was not a Christmas Court at Chinon in 1183. However, the events leading up to the story are generally accurate. There is no definitive evidence that Alais was Henry's mistress (although Richard later resisted marrying Alais on the basis of this claim). The real Henry had many mistresses (and several illegitimate children).
60956	/m/0gk1s	Native Son	Richard Wright	1940	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bigger Thomas wakes up in a dark, small room at the sound of the alarm clock. He lives in one room with his brother Buddy, his sister Vera, and their mother. Suddenly, a rat appears. The room turns into a maelstrom and after a violent chase, Bigger claims the life of an animal with an iron skillet and terrorizes Vera with the dark body. Vera faints and Mrs. Thomas scolds Bigger, who hates his family because they suffer and he cannot do anything about it. That evening, Bigger has to see Mr. Dalton for a new job. Bigger's family depends on him. He would like to leave his responsibilities forever but when he thinks of what to do, he only sees a blank wall. He walks to the poolroom and meets his friend. Gusiffer R. Bigger tells him that every time he thinks about whites, he feels something terrible will happen to him. They meet other friends, G. H. and Jack, and plan a robbery of the white wealth. They are all afraid of attacking and stealing from a white man, but none of them wants to admit their concerns. Before the robbery, Bigger and Jack go to the movies. They are attracted to the world of wealthy whites in the newsreel and feel strangely moved by the tom-toms and the primitive black people in the film, but they also feel that they are equal to those worlds. After the cinema, Bigger returns to the poolroom and attacks Gus violently, forcing him to lick his blade in a demeaning way to hide his own cowardice. The fight ends any chance of the robbery occurring; Bigger is obscurely conscious that he has done this intentionally. When he finally gets the job, Bigger does not know how to behave in the large and luxurious house. Mr. Dalton and his blind wife use strange words. They try to be kind to Bigger, but they actually make him very uncomfortable; Bigger does not know what they expect of him. Then their daughter, Mary, enters the room, asks Bigger why he does not belong to a union, and calls her father a "capitalist." Bigger does not know that word and is even more confused and afraid to lose the job. After the conversation, Peggy, an Irish cook, takes Bigger to his room and tells him that the Daltons are a nice family but that he must avoid Mary's communist friends. Bigger has never had a room for himself before. That night, he drives Mary around and meets her Communist boyfriend, Jan. Throughout the evening, Jan and Mary talk to Bigger, oblige him to take them to the diner where his friends are, invite him to sit at their table, and tell him to call them by their first names. Bigger does not know how to respond to their requests and becomes very frustrated, as he is simply their chauffeur for the night. At the diner they buy a bottle of rum. Bigger drives throughout the park, and Jan and Mary drink the rum and have sex in the back seat. Jan and Mary part, but Mary is so drunk that Bigger has to carry her to her bedroom when they arrive home. He is terrified someone will see him with her in his arms; however, he cannot resist the temptation of the forbidden, and he kisses her. Just then, the bedroom door opens, and Mrs. Dalton enters. Bigger knows she is blind but is terrified she will sense him there. He silences Mary by pressing a pillow into her face. Mrs. Dalton approaches the bed, smells whiskey in the air, scolds her daughter, and leaves. Mary claws at Bigger's hands while Mrs. Dalton is in the room, trying to alert Bigger that she cannot breathe. As Bigger removes the pillow, he realizes that she has suffocated. Bigger starts thinking frantically, and decides he will tell everyone that Jan, her Communist boyfriend, took Mary into the house that night. Thinking it will be better if Mary disappears and everyone thinks she has left Chicago, he decides in desperation to burn her body in the house's furnace. Her body would not originally fit through the furnace opening, but after decapitating her with a nearby hatchet, Bigger finally manages to put the corpse inside. He adds extra coal to the furnace, leaves the corpse to burn, and goes home. Bigger's current girlfriend, Bessie, suspects him of having done something to Mary. Bigger goes back to work. Mr. Dalton has called a private detective, Mr. Britten. Britten, interrogates Bigger accusingly, but Mr. Dalton vouches for Bigger. Bigger relates the events of the previous evening in a way calculated to throw suspicion on Jan, knowing Mr. Dalton dislikes Jan because he is a Communist. When Britten finds Jan, he puts the boy and Bigger in the same room and confronts them with their conflicting stories. Jan is surprised by Bigger's story but offers him help. Bigger storms away from the Daltons'. He decides to write the false kidnap note when he discovers that the owner of the rat-infested flat his family rents is Mr. Dalton. Bigger slips the note under the Daltons' front door and then returns to his room. When the Daltons receive the note, they contact the police, who take over the investigation from Britten, and journalists soon arrive at the house. Bigger is afraid, but he does not want to leave. In the afternoon, he is ordered to take the ashes out of the furnace and make a new fire. He is terrified and starts poking the ashes with the shovel until the whole room is full of smoke. Furious, one of the journalists takes the shovel and pushes Bigger aside. He immediately finds the remains of Mary's bones and an earring in the furnace, and Bigger flees. Bigger goes directly to Bessie and tells her the whole story. Bessie realizes that white people will think he raped the girl before killing her. They leave together, but Bigger has to drag Bessie around because she is paralyzed by fear. When they lie down together in an abandoned building, Bigger rapes Bessie and falls asleep. In the morning, he decides that he has to kill her in her sleep. He hits Bessie's head with a brick several times before throwing her through a window and into an air shaft. He quickly realizes that the only money he had was in her pocket, except for some change. Bigger runs through the city. He sees newspaper headlines concerning the crime and overhears different conversations about it. Whites hate him and blacks hate him because he brought shame on the African-American race. After a wild chase over the rooftops of the city, the police catch him. During his first few days in prison, Bigger does not eat, drink, or talk to anyone. Then Jan comes to see him. He says Bigger has taught him a lot about black-white relationships and offers him the help of a communist lawyer named Max. In the long hours Max and Bigger pass together, he starts understanding his relationships with his family and with the world. He acknowledges his fury, his need for a future, and his wish for a meaningful life. He reconsiders his attitudes about white people, whether they are like Britten, or accepting like Jan. Bigger is found guilty and is sentenced to death for his murder and false witness.
61050	/m/0gknq	East Lynne				 Lady Isabel Carlyle, a beautiful and refined young woman, leaves her hard-working but neglectful lawyer-husband and her infant children to elope with an aristocratic suitor. After he deserts her, and she bears their illegitimate child, Lady Isabel disguises herself and takes the position of governess in the household of her former husband and his new wife.
61069	/m/0gkw2	A Farewell to Arms	Ernest Hemingway	1929	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is divided into five books. In the first book, Rinaldi introduces Henry to Catherine Barkley; Henry attempts to seduce her, and their relationship begins. While on the Italian front, Henry is wounded in the knee by a mortar shell and sent to a hospital in Milan. The second book shows the growth of Henry and Catherine's relationship as they spend time together in Milan over the summer. Henry falls in love with Catherine and, by the time he is healed, Catherine is three months pregnant. In the third book, Henry returns to his unit, but not long afterwards the Austrians break through the Italian lines in the Battle of Caporetto, and the Italians retreat. Henry kills an engineering sergeant for insubordination. After falling behind and catching up again, Henry is taken to a place by the "battle police", where officers are being interrogated and executed for the "treachery" that supposedly led to the Italian defeat. However, after seeing and hearing that everyone interrogated is killed, Henry escapes by jumping into a river. In the fourth book, Catherine and Henry reunite and flee to Switzerland in a rowboat. In the final book, Henry and Catherine live a quiet life in the mountains until she goes into labor. After a long and painful birth, their son is stillborn. Catherine begins to hemorrhage and soon dies, leaving Henry to return to their hotel in the rain.
61172	/m/0glpp	Imitation of Life	Fannie Hurst	1933	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is a look at early 20th-century American race relations. In Hurst's novel, Bea Chipley is a quiet, mousey, Atlantic City teenage girl whose mother passes away, leaving her to keep house for her father (Mr. Chipley) and Benjamin Pullman, a boarder who peddles ketchup and relish on the boardwalk and sells maple syrup door-to-door on the side. Within a year, her father and Pullman decide that she should marry Pullman, and shortly thereafter Bea becomes pregnant. Her father suffers an incapacitating stroke, confining him to a wheelchair, and Pullman is killed in a train accident. Bea is left to fend for herself, her father, and her infant daughter Jessie. Bea takes in boarders to defray expenses and assumes Benjamin's trade of door-to-door maple syrup sales, using his "B. Pullman" business cards to avoid the ubiquitous sexism of 1910s' America. To care for her infant daughter and disabled father, Bea Pullman hires Delilah, a black mammy figure, who brings with her a light-skinned infant daughter named Peola. Delilah is a master waffle-maker, and Bea capitalizes on Delilah's skills to open first a single "B. Pullman" waffle restaurant, from which she eventually builds a nation-wide and then international chain of highly successful restaurants. Frank Flake, a striking young man intent on entering medical school, becomes Bea's business manager. In the meantime, Jessie and Peola have grown up side by side, and Peola is painfully aware of the tension between her white appearance and black racial identity. She continually attempts to pass as white, and Delilah, equally pained by the tension, continually attempts to develop in her a sense of pride about her blackness. Eventually Peola severs all ties, marries a white man, and moves to Seattle, causing such pain in Delilah that Delilah passes away not too long after. As Delilah is slowly dying, Bea is falling in love with Flake, who is eight years her junior. Jessie, by now in her late teens, comes home for a visit just as Bea is planning on selling the "B. Pullman" chain to marry Flake. The three are mired in a love triangle in the last dozen or so pages, resulting in a tragic ending.
61179	/m/0glrw	The Last Command	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is set a month after Dark Force Rising. Now emboldened by his recent capture of the Katana fleet and staffing them with clone personnel, Grand Admiral Thrawn launches his offensive against the New Republic with great success. Through certain deception techniques (such as faking a turbolaser barrage using cloaked ships to fire underneath planetary shields), several planets quickly capitulate to the Empire. He ups the ante when the Imperial fleet deploys 22 cloaked asteroids over Coruscant and fakes the presence of over 260 asteroids to immobilize the planet and the Republic leadership. By this time, Mon Mothma finally reconciles with Sen Garm bel Iblis, whom she lets lead Coruscant's defenses. Elsewhere, Han Solo, Chewbacca and Talon Karrde work to form an alliance of smugglers to assist with the New Republic defense. Although the smugglers consider staying in the sidelines, an Imperial raid on their meeting place (set up by turncoat smuggler Niles Ferrier without Thrawn's permission) finally unites them against the Empire. Mara Jade, who was knocked out in the climax of the previous novel, joins Princess Leia and Han in stopping an Imperial commando force sent to Coruscant to kidnap Leia's newborn twins for Joruus C'baoth. The Jedi Master wants to turn Leia, Luke and the twins to the Dark Side. The raid's sole survivor points to Mara as their mole and she is arrested, but she comes clean to Leia about the Wayland cloning facility. As they slip out of Coruscant, Republic security shuts down an Imperial eavesdropping system located in the former Imperial Palace. Mara, Luke, Han, Lando, Chewie, the droids, and Karrde travel to Wayland. They slip past Imperial forces in the area with help from the Noghri and two local alien races. Mara discovers that Luke Skywalker - the man the Emperor is ordering her to kill - is actually the man she spent time with in the Myrkr forest. Han, Lando, and Chewie rig the base to explode. Mara, Luke, Karrde and Leia face C'baoth, who produced his own Skywalker clone named Luuke (using Luke's hand that was lost at Bespin during the events of Empire Strikes Back, intact with Anakin Skywalker's own lightsaber) to attack them. After a fierce battle, Mara kills C'baoth and fulfills the Emperor's orders - by killing Luuke. Having learned of Thrawn's deception strategy, the Republic fleet organizes an assault on the Imperial shipyards at Bilbringi to capture a device that can find the cloaked asteroids over Coruscant. A feint operation at Tangrene will draw Imperial forces away from Bilbringi. However, Thrawn sees through the deception and marshals his forces at the shipyards. When the Republic fleet and the smugglers attack, the Imperial forces severely maul them. Things nearly go the Empire's way - until Capt Gilad Pellaeon receives word of the attack on Wayland. When he reads that Noghri were among the attackers, Thrawn's own Noghri bodyguard Rukh stuns him and kills the admiral himself before disappearing. With all hopes of victory now dashed by Thrawn's death, Pellaeon orders all Imperial forces to retreat. Back in Coruscant, Luke gives Mara Jade his father's lightsaber and invites her to train as a Jedi.
61181	/m/0glsq	The Way of All Flesh	Samuel Butler	1903	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The story is narrated by Overton, godfather to the central character. The novel takes its beginnings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in order to trace Ernest's emergence from previous generations of the Pontifex family. John Pontifex was a carpenter; his son George rises in the world to become a publisher; George's son Theobald, pressed by his father to become a minister, is manipulated into marrying Christina, the daughter of a clergyman; the main character Ernest Pontifex is the eldest son of Theobald and Christina. The author depicts an antagonistic relationship between Ernest and his hypocritical and domineering parents. His aunt Alethea is aware of this relationship, but dies before she can fulfill her aim of counteracting the parents' malign influence on the boy. However, shortly before her death she secretly passes a small fortune into Overton's keeping, with the agreement that once Ernest is twenty-eight, he can receive it. As Ernest develops into a young man, he travels a bumpy theological road, reflecting the divisions and controversies in the Church of England in the Victorian era. Easily influenced by others at university, he starts out as an Evangelical Christian, and soon becomes a clergyman. He then falls for the lures of the High Church (and is duped out of much of his own money by a fellow clergyman). He decides that the way to regenerate the Church of England is to live among the poor, but the results are, first, that his faith in the integrity of the Bible is severely damaged by a conversation with one of the poor he was hoping to redeem, and, second, that under the pressures of poverty and theological doubt, he attempts a sexual assault on a woman he had incorrectly believed to be of loose morals. This assault leads to a prison term. His parents disown him. His health deteriorates. As he recovers he learns how to tailor and decides to make this his profession once out of prison. He loses his Christian faith. He marries Ellen, a former housemaid of his parents, and they have two children and set up shop together in the second-hand clothing industry. However, in due course he discovers that Ellen is both a bigamist and an alcoholic. Overton at this point intervenes and pays Ellen off. He gives Ernest a job, and takes him on a trip to Continental Europe. In due course Ernest becomes 28, and receives his aunt Alethea's gift. He returns to the family home until his parents die: his father's influence over him wanes as Theobald's own position as a clergyman is reduced in stature, though to the end Theobald finds small ways purposefully to annoy him. He becomes an author of controversial literature.
61324	/m/0gmnj	Alice Adams	Booth Tarkington	1921-06	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with Virgil Adams confined to bed with an unnamed illness. There is tension between Virgil and his wife over how he should go about recovering, and she pressures him not to return to work for J. A. Lamb once he is well. Alice, their daughter, attempts to keep peace in the family (with mixed results) before walking to her friend Mildred Palmer's house to see what Mildred will wear to a dance that evening. After Alice's return, she spends the day preparing for the dance, going out to pick violets for a bouquet, as she cannot afford to buy flowers for herself. Her brother, Walter, initially refuses to accompany her to the dance, but as Alice cannot go without an escort, Mrs. Adams prevails upon Walter, and he rents a "tin Lizzie" to drive Alice to the dance. Walter's attitude towards the upper class is one of obvious disdain—he would rather spend his time gambling with the African-American servants in the cloakroom than be out in the ballroom at the dance. Alice forces him to dance with her at first, as it will be a grave embarrassment for her to stand alone, but Walter eventually abandons her. Alice uses every trick in her book to give the impression that she is not standing by herself, before dancing with Frank Dowling (whose attentions she does not welcome) and Arthur Russell (a rich newcomer to town who is rumored to be engaged to Mildred), who she believes danced with her out of pity and at Mildred's request. She leaves the dance horribly embarrassed after Arthur discovers Walter's gambling with the servants. The next day, Alice goes on an errand for her father into town, passing Frincke's Business College on the way with a shudder (as she sees it as a place that drags promising young ladies down to "hideous obscurity"). On the walk back home, she encounters Arthur Russell, who shows an obvious interest in her. As she assumes he is all but spoken for, she doesn't know how to handle the conversation—while warning him not to believe the things girls like Mildred will say about her, she tells a number of lies to obscure her family's relatively humble economic status. Arthur returns, several days later, and his courtship of Alice continues. All seems well between them until he mentions a dance being thrown by the young Miss Henrietta Lamb; Arthur wants to escort Alice to the dance, and she lies to cover for the fact that she is not invited to the event. Mrs. Adams uses Alice's distress to finally goad Virgil into setting up a glue factory (which she has long insisted would be the family's ticket to success). It is eventually revealed that the glue recipe was developed by Virgil and another man under the direction and in the employ of J.A. Lamb, who over the years declined to take up its production despite repeated proddings from Virgil. Although initially reluctant to "steal" from Mr. Lamb, Virgil finally persuades himself that his improvements to the recipe over the years has made it "virtually" his. As Arthur continues his secret courtship of Alice (he never talks about her nor tells anyone where he spends his evenings), Alice continues spinning a web of lies to preserve the image of herself and her family that she has invented. This becomes especially difficult when she and Arthur encounter Walter in a bad part of town, walking with a young woman who gives the appearance of being a prostitute. At home, Walter is confronted by his father, who demands that Walter quit Lamb's to help in setting up the glue factory. Walter refuses to help his father without a $300 cash advance, which Virgil cannot afford. Virgil arranges to resign from Lamb's employ without speaking to him face-to-face, as he fears the old man's reaction, and puts the glue factory into operation. Meanwhile, Alice works frantically to convince Arthur that the things other people will say about her won't be true, and continues to press the point even when Arthur insists that no one has spoken about her behind her back, and that nothing anyone else could say would change his opinion of her. Mrs. Adams decides to arrange a dinner so that Arthur can meet the family, and sets about planning an elaborate meal and hiring servants for the day, so that Arthur will be impressed. Walter again demands cash from his father (the amount has now risen to $350) without explaining why he needs it, and is again rebuffed. While these events occur at the Adams house, Arthur finally overhears things about Alice, which strikes a chord, and her family, including the fact that Virgil Adams has "stolen" from J. A. Lamb in setting up a factory with Lamb's secret recipe for glue. The dinner itself is a total disaster: the day is unbearably hot, the food far too heavy, the hired servants surly and difficult to manage, capped by Virgil unwittingly acting like his lower-middle-class self, not the well-to-do businessman his wife and daughter wish him to act. Arthur, still reeling from what he heard about the Adamses earlier in the day, is stiff and uneasy throughout the evening, and Alice feels increasingly uncomfortable. By the end of the night, it's apparent to her that he will not come courting again, and she bids him farewell. That night, word reaches the family that Walter has skipped town, leaving behind him a massive debt to his employer, J. A. Lamb, which will have to be paid to keep Walter out of jail. The following morning, Virgil arrives at work to see that Lamb is opening his own glue factory on such a huge scale that Adams will not be able to compete, and will never make enough money to either pay his son's debts or pay off the family's mortgage. Virgil confronts Lamb about this state of affairs, working himself into such a state that he collapses, and returns to the same sickbed at home where he began the book. Lamb takes pity on the man, and arranges to buy the Adams glue factory for a sufficient price to pay off Walter's debts and the family's mortgage. The Adams family takes in boarders to help keep the family afloat economically, and Alice heads downtown to Frincke's Business College to train herself in employable skills so that she can support the family. She encounters Arthur Russell on the road, and is pleased that their conversation is both polite and brief—there is no possibility of renewed romance between them, which she accepts peacefully.
61489	/m/0gnfq	Les Misérables	Victor Hugo	1862	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story starts in 1815 in Digne. The peasant Jean Valjean has just been released from imprisonment in the Bagne of Toulon after nineteen years (five for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family, and fourteen more for numerous escape attempts). Upon being released, he is required to carry a yellow passport that marks him as a prisoner, despite having already paid his debt to society by serving his time in prison. Rejected by innkeepers, who do not want to take in a convict, Valjean sleeps on the street. This makes him even angrier and more bitter. However, the benevolent Bishop Myriel, the bishop of Digne, takes him in and gives him shelter. In the middle of the night, Valjean steals Bishop Myriel’s silverware and runs away. He is caught and brought back by the police, but Bishop Myriel rescues him by claiming that the silverware was a gift and at that point gives him his two silver candlesticks as well, chastising him to the police for leaving in such a rush that he forgot these most valuable pieces. After the police leave, Bishop Myriel then "reminds" him of the promise, which Valjean has no memory of making, to use the silver candlesticks to make an honest man of himself. Valjean broods over the Bishop's words. Purely out of habit, he steals a 40-sous coin from chimney-sweep Petit Gervais and chases the boy away. Soon afterwards, he repents and decides to follow Bishop Myriel's advice. He searches the city in panic for the child whose money he stole. At the same time, his theft is reported to the authorities, who now look for him as a repeat offender. If Valjean is caught, he will be forced to spend the rest of his life in prison, so he hides from the police. Six years pass and Valjean, having adopted the alias of Monsieur Madeleine to avoid capture, has become a wealthy factory owner and is appointed mayor of his adopted town of Montreuil-sur-Mer (referred to as "M--- Sur M---" in the unabridged version). While walking down the street one day, he sees a gentleman named Fauchelevent pinned under the wheels of his cart. When no one volunteers to lift the cart, even for pay, he decides to rescue Old Fauchelevent himself. He crawls underneath the cart and manages to lift it, freeing him. The town's police inspector, Inspector Javert, who was an adjutant guard at the Bagne of Toulon during Valjean's incarceration, becomes suspicious of the mayor after witnessing his heroics. He knows the ex-prisoner Jean Valjean is also capable of such strength. Years earlier in Paris, a grisette named Fantine was very much in love with a gentleman named Félix Tholomyès. His friends, Listolier, Fameuil, and Blachevelle were also paired with Fantine’s friends Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favourite. The men later abandon the women as a joke, leaving Fantine to care for Tholomyès' daughter, Cosette, by herself. When Fantine arrives at Montfermeil, she leaves Cosette in the care of the Thénardiers, a corrupt innkeeper and his selfish, cruel wife. Fantine is unaware that they abuse her daughter and use her as forced labor for their inn, and continues to try to pay their growing, extortionate and fictitious demands for Cosette's "upkeep." She is later fired from her job at Jean Valjean's factory, because of the discovery of her daughter, who was born out of wedlock. Meanwhile, the Thénardiers' letters and monetary demands continue to grow. In desperation, Fantine sells her hair, her two front teeth, and is forced to resort to prostitution to pay for her daughter's "care." Fantine is also slowly dying from an unnamed disease (probably tuberculosis). While roaming the streets, a dandy named Bamatabois harasses Fantine and puts snow down her back. She reacts by attacking him. Javert sees this and arrests Fantine. She begs to be released so that she can provide for her daughter, but Javert sentences her to six months in prison. Valjean, hearing her story, intervenes and orders Javert to release her. Javert strongly refuses but Valjean persists and prevails. Valjean, feeling responsible because his factory turned her away, promises Fantine that he will bring Cosette to her. He takes her to a hospital. Later, Javert comes to see Valjean again. Javert admits he had accused him of being Jean Valjean to the French authorities after Fantine was freed. However, he tells Valjean that he no longer suspects him because the authorities have announced that another man has been identified as the real Jean Valjean after being arrested and having noticeable similarities. This gentleman's name is Champmathieu. His trial is set the next day. At first, Valjean is torn whether to reveal himself, but decides to do so to save the innocent gentleman. He goes to the trial and reveals his true identity. Valjean then returns to Montreuil-sur-Mer to see Fantine, followed by Javert, who confronts him at her hospital room. After Javert grabs Valjean, Valjean asks for three days to bring Cosette to Fantine, but Javert refuses. Fantine discovers that Cosette is not at the hospital and fretfully asks where she is. Javert orders her to be quiet, and then reveals to her Valjean’s real identity. Shocked, and with the severity of her illness, she falls back in her bed and dies. Valjean goes to Fantine, speaks to her in an inaudible whisper, kisses her hand, and then leaves with Javert. Fantine's body is later cruelly thrown in a public grave. Valjean escapes, only to be recaptured and sentenced to death. This was commuted by the king to penal servitude for life. While being sent to the prison at Toulon, a military port, Valjean saves a sailor about to fall from the ship's rigging. The crowd begins to call "This man must be pardoned!" but when the authorities reject the crowd's pleas, Valjean fakes a slip and falls into the ocean to escape, relying on the belief that he has drowned. Valjean arrives at Montfermeil on Christmas Eve. He finds Cosette fetching water in the woods alone and walks with her to the inn. After ordering a meal, he observes the Thénardiers’ abusive treatment of her. He also witnesses their pampered daughters Éponine and Azelma treating Cosette badly as well when they tell on her to their mother for holding their abandoned doll. Upon seeing this, Valjean goes out and returns a moment later holding an expensive new doll. He offers it to Cosette. At first, she is unable to comprehend that the doll really is for her, but then happily takes it. This results in Mme. Thénardier becoming furious with Valjean, while Thénardier dismisses it, informing her that he can do as he wishes as long as he pays them. It also causes Éponine and Azelma to become envious of Cosette. The next morning on Christmas Day, Valjean informs the Thénardiers that he wants to take Cosette with him. Mme. Thénardier immediately accepts, while Thénardier pretends to have love and concern for Cosette and how reluctant he is to give her up. Valjean pays 1,500 francs to them, and he and Cosette leave the inn. However, Thénardier, hoping to swindle more out of Valjean, runs after them, holding the 1,500 francs, and tells Valjean he wants Cosette back. He informs Valjean that he cannot release Cosette without a note from the mother. Valjean hands Thénardier a letter, which is signed by Fantine. Thénardier then orders Valjean to pay a thousand crowns, but Valjean and Cosette leave. Thénardier regrets to himself that he did not bring his gun, and turns back toward home. Valjean and Cosette flee to Paris. Valjean rents new lodgings at Gorbeau House, and he and Cosette live there happily. However, Javert discovers Valjean's lodgings there a few months later. Valjean takes Cosette and they try to escape from Javert. They soon successfully find shelter in the Petit-Picpus convent with the help of Fauchelevent, the man whom Valjean rescued and who is a gardener for the convent. Valjean also becomes a gardener and Cosette becomes a student. Eight years later, the Friends of the ABC, led by Enjolras, are preparing an act of anti-Orléanist civil unrest on the eve of the Paris uprising on 5–6 June 1832, following the death of General Lamarque, the only French leader who had sympathy towards the working class. They are also joined by the poor of the Cour des miracles, including the Thénardiers' oldest son Gavroche, who is a street urchin. One of the students, Marius Pontmercy, has become alienated from his family (especially his grandfather M. Gillenormand) because of his liberal views. After the death of his father Colonel Georges Pontmercy, Marius discovers a note from him instructing his son to provide help to a sergeant named Thénardier who saved Pontmercy's life at Waterloo – in reality Thénardier was looting corpses and only saved Pontmercy's life by accident; he had called himself a sergeant under Napoleon to avoid exposing himself as a robber. At the Luxembourg Gardens, Marius falls in love with the now grown and beautiful Cosette. The Thénardiers have also moved to Paris and now live in poverty after losing their inn. They live under the surname "Jondrette" at Gorbeau House (coincidentally, the same building Valjean and Cosette briefly lived in after leaving the Thénardiers' inn). Marius lives there as well, next door to the Thénardiers. Éponine, now ragged and emaciated, visits Marius at his apartment to beg for money. To impress him, she tries to prove her literacy by reading aloud from a book and by writing "The Cops Are Here" on a sheet of paper. Marius pities her and gives her some money. After Éponine leaves, Marius observes the "Jondrettes" in their apartment through a crack in the wall. Éponine comes in and announces that a philanthropist and his daughter are arriving to visit them. In order to look poorer, Thénardier puts out the fire and breaks a chair. He also orders Azelma to punch out a window pane, which she does, resulting in cutting her hand (as Thénardier had hoped). The philanthropist and his daughter enter—actually Valjean and Cosette. Marius immediately recognizes Cosette. After seeing them, Valjean promises them he will return with rent money for them. After he and Cosette leave, Marius asks Éponine to retrieve her address for him. Éponine, who is in love with Marius herself, reluctantly agrees to do so. The Thénardiers have also recognized Valjean and Cosette, and vow their revenge. Thénardier enlists the aid of the Patron-Minette, a well-known and feared gang of murderers and robbers. Marius overhears Thénardier's plan and goes to Javert to report the crime. Javert gives Marius two pistols and instructs him to fire one into the air if things get dangerous. Marius returns home and waits for Javert and the police to arrive. Thénardier sends Éponine and Azelma outside to look out for the police. When Valjean returns with rent money, Thénardier, with Patron-Minette, ambushes him and he reveals his real identity to Valjean. Marius recognizes Thénardier as the man who "saved" his father's life at Waterloo and is caught in a dilemma. He tries to find a way to save Valjean while not betraying Thénardier. Valjean denies knowing Thénardier and tells that they have never met. Valjean tries to escape through a window but is subdued and tied up. Thénardier orders Valjean to pay him 200,000 francs. He also orders Valjean to write a letter to Cosette to return to the apartment, and they would keep her with them until he delivers the money. After Valjean writes the letter and informs Thénardier his address, Thénardier sends out Mme. Thénardier to get Cosette. Mme. Thénardier comes back alone, and announces the address is a fake. It was during this time that Valjean manages to free himself. Thénardier decides to kill Valjean. While he and Patron-Minette are about to do so, Marius remembers the scrap of paper that Éponine wrote on earlier. He throws it into the Thénardiers’ apartment through the wall crack. Thénardier reads it and thinks Éponine threw it inside. He, Mme. Thénardier and Patron-Minette try to escape, only to be stopped by Javert. He arrests all the Thénardiers and Patron-Minette (except Claquesous, who escapes during his transportation to prison; Montparnasse, who stops to run off with Éponine instead of joining in on the robbery; and Gavroche, who was not present and rarely participates in his family's crimes, a notable exception being his part in breaking his father out of prison). Valjean manages to escape the scene before Javert sees him. After Éponine’s release from prison, she finds Marius at "The Field of the Lark" and sadly tells him that she found Cosette’s address. She leads him to Valjean and Cosette's house at Rue Plumet, and Marius watches the house for a few days. He and Cosette then finally meet and declare their love for one another. Thénardier, Patron-Minette and Brujon manage to escape from prison with the aid of Gavroche. One night, during one of Marius’ visits with Cosette, the six men attempt to raid Valjean and Cosette's house. However, Éponine, who was sitting by the gates of the house, threatens to scream and awaken the whole neighbourhood if the thieves do not leave. Hearing this, they reluctantly retire. Meanwhile, Cosette informs Marius that she and Valjean will be leaving for England in a week’s time, which greatly troubles the pair. The next day, Valjean is sitting in the Champ de Mars. He is feeling troubled due to seeing Thénardier in the neighbourhood several times. Unexpectedly, a note lands in his lap, which says "Move Out." He sees a figure running away in the dim light. He goes back to his house, tells Cosette they will be staying at their other house at Rue de l'Homme Arme, and reconfirms with her about moving to England. Marius tries to get permission from M. Gillenormand to marry Cosette. His grandfather seems stern and angry, but has been longing for Marius' return. When tempers flare, he refuses, telling Marius to make Cosette his mistress instead. Insulted, Marius leaves. The following day, the students revolt and erect barricades in the narrow streets of Paris. Gavroche spots Javert and informs Enjolras that Javert is a spy. When Enjolras confronts him of this, he admits his identity and his orders to spy on the students. Enjolras and the other students tie him up to a pole in the Corinth restaurant. Later that evening, Marius goes back to Valjean and Cosette’s house at Rue Plumet, but finds the house no longer occupied. He then hears a voice telling him that his friends are waiting for him at the barricade. Distraught over Cosette gone, he heeds the voice and goes. When Marius arrives at the barricade, the "revolution" has already started. When he stoops down to pick up a powder keg, a soldier comes up to shoot Marius. After, a man covers the muzzle of the soldier's gun with his hand. The soldier fires, fatally shooting the man, while missing Marius. Meanwhile, the soldiers are closing in. Marius climbs to the top of the barricade, holding a torch in one hand, a powder keg in the other. He yells at the soldiers "Begone! Or I’ll blow up the barricade!" After confirming this, the soldiers retreat from the barricade. Marius decides to go to the smaller barricade, which he finds empty. As he turns back, the man who took the fatal shot for Marius earlier calls Marius by his name. Marius, and the reader, discovers that it is actually Éponine, dressed in men's clothes. As she lies dying on his knees, she confesses that she was the one who told him to go to the barricade, in hoping that the two would die together. She also confesses to saving his life because she wanted to die first (although she does not provide further explanation to this). The author also states to the reader that Éponine anonymously threw the note to Valjean. Éponine then tells Marius that she has a letter for him. She also confesses to have obtained the letter the day before, originally not planning to give it to him, but decides to do so in fear he would be angry at her in the afterlife. After Marius takes the letter, Éponine then asks him to kiss her on the forehead when she is dead, which he promises to do. With her last breath, she confesses that she was "a little bit in love" with him, and dies. Marius fulfills her request and goes into a tavern to read the letter (in consideration that it would be inappropriate to read it beside her corpse). It is written by Cosette. He learns Cosette's new whereabouts and writes a farewell letter to her. The letter is delivered to Valjean by Gavroche. Valjean, learning that Cosette's lover is fighting, is at first relieved, but an hour later, he puts on a National Guard uniform, arms himself with a gun and ammunition, and leaves his home. Valjean arrives at the barricade and immediately saves a man's life, though he is still not certain if he wants to protect Marius or to kill him. Marius recognizes Valjean upon seeing him. Enjolras announces that they are almost out of cartridges. Overhearing this, Gavroche goes to the other side of the barricade to collect more from the dead National Guardsmen. While doing so, he is shot and killed by the soldiers. Later, Valjean saves Javert from being killed by the students. He volunteers to execute Javert himself, and Enjolras grants permission. Valjean takes Javert out of sight, and then shoots into the air while letting him go. As the barricade falls, Valjean carries off the injured and unconscious Marius. All the other students, including Enjolras, are killed. Valjean escapes through the sewers, carrying Marius' body on his shoulders. He manages to evade a police patrol. He eventually finds a gate to exit the sewers, but to his disappointment, the gate is locked. Valjean suddenly hears a voice behind him, and he turns and sees Thénardier. Valjean recognizes him but his composure is calm, for he perceives that Thénardier does not recognize him due to his dirty appearance. Thinking Valjean to be a simple murderer, Thénardier offers to open the gate for money. He then proceeds to search Valjean and Marius' pockets. While doing this, he secretly tears off a piece of Marius’ coat so he can later find out his identity. Finding only thirty francs, Thénardier reluctantly takes the money, opens the gate, and Valjean leaves. At the exit, Valjean runs into Javert, whom he persuades to give him time to return Marius to his family. Javert grants this request. After leaving Marius at M. Gillenormand’s house, Valjean makes another request that he be permitted to go home shortly, which Javert also allows. They arrive at Rue de l'Homme Arme and Javert informs Valjean that he will wait for him. As Valjean walks upstairs, he looks out the landing window and finds Javert gone. Javert is walking down the street alone, realizing that he is caught between his strict belief in the law and the mercy Valjean has shown him. He feels he can no longer give Valjean up to the authorities but also cannot ignore his duty to the law. Unable to cope with this dilemma, Javert commits suicide by throwing himself into the Seine. Marius slowly recovers from his injuries and he and Cosette are soon married. Meanwhile, Thénardier and Azelma are attending the Mardi Gras as "masks." Thénardier spots Valjean among the wedding party heading the opposite direction and bids Azelma to follow them. After the wedding, Valjean confesses to Marius that he is an ex-convict. Marius is horrified by the revelation. Convinced that Valjean is of poor moral character, he steers Cosette away from him. Valjean loses the will to live and takes to his bed. Later, Thénardier approaches Marius in a disguise, but Marius is not fooled and recognizes him. Thénardier attempts to blackmail Marius with what he knows of Valjean, but in doing so, he inadvertently corrects Marius' misconceptions about Valjean and reveals all of the good he has done. He tries to convince Marius that Valjean is actually a murderer, and presents the piece of coat he tore off as evidence. Stunned, Marius recognizes the fabric and realizes that it was Valjean who rescued him from the barricade. Marius pulls out a fistful of five hundred and one thousand franc notes and flings it at Thénardier's face. He then confronts Thénardier with his crimes and offers him an immense amount of money if he departs and promises never to return. Thénardier accepts the offer, and he and Azelma travel to America where he becomes a slave trader. As Marius and Cosette rush to Valjean's house, he informs her that Valjean saved his life at the barricade. They arrive to see him, but the great man is dying. In his final moments, he realizes happiness with his adopted daughter and son-in-law by his side. He also reveals Cosette's past to her as well as her mother's name. Joined with them in love, he dies.
61506	/m/0gnkp	Dodsworth	Sinclair Lewis	1929	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Samual 'Sam' Dodsworth is an ambitious and innovative automobile designer, who builds his fortunes in Zenith, Winnemac. In addition to his success in the business world, he had also succeeded as a young man in winning the hand of Frances 'Fran' Voelker, a beautiful young socialite. While the book provides the courtship as a backstory, the real novel begins upon his retirement. At the age of fifty and facing retirement due to his selling of his successful automobile company (The Revelation Motor Company) to a far larger competitor, he sets out to do what he had always wanted to experience: a leisurely trip to Europe with his wife. His forty-one year old wife, however, motivated by her own vanity and fear of lost youth, is dissatisfied with married life and small town Zenith, wants to live in Europe permanently as an expatriate, not just visit for a few months to allow Dodsworth to visit some manufacturing plants looking for his next challenge. Passing up advancement in his recently sold company, Dodsworth leaves for Europe with Fran but her motivations to get to Europe become quickly known. On their extensive travels across Europe they are soon caught up in vastly different lifestyles. Fran falls in with a crowd of frivolous socialites, while Sam plays more of an independent tourist. 'With his red Baedeker guide book in hand, he visits such well-known tourist attractions as Westminister Abbey, Notre Dame Cathedral, Sanssouci Palace, and the Piazza San Marco. But the historic sites that he sees prove to be far less significant than the American expatriates that he meets on his extensive journeys across Great Britain and continental Europe' He eventually meets Edith Cortright, an expatriate American widow in Venice, who is everything his wife is not: self-assured, self-confident, and able to take care of herself. As they follow their own pursuits, their marriage is strained to the breaking point. Both Sam and Fran are forced to choose between marriage and the new lifestyles they have pursued. Fran is clearly Lewis' target here while Sam ambles along as a stranger in a strange land until the epiphany of getting on with his life hits him in the last act. Sam Dodsworth is a rare Lewis character: a man of true conviction and purpose. Purpose and conviction can be relied on significantly as the book (and film) concludes with the two main characters going in quite different directions. Set from late 1925 to late 1927, the novel includes detailed descriptions of Sam and Fran's tours across Europe. In the beginning they leave their mid-Western hometown of Zenith, board a steam liner in New York and cross the Atlantic Ocean. Their first stop is England. They visit the sights in London and are invited by Major Clyde Lockert to join a weekend trip to the countryside. Later on, when Lockert has made an indecent proposal to Fran, they depart for Paris, where she soon engages in a busy social life and he takes up sightseeing. When Sam decides to go back to America for his college reunion in New Haven, Fran spends the summer months on the lakes near Montreux and Stresa, where she has a romance with Arnold Israel. Once Sam has picked her up in Paris, they agree to continue their travels together, touring France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Hungary and Germany. Their marriage comes to an end, when she falls in love with Kurt von Obersdorf in Berlin. Whereas she stays on with her new love, he criss-crosses Europe in an attempt to cope with his new situation. When Sam happens to run into Edith in Venice, she persuades him to accompany her on a visit to a village in the vicinity of Naples. As Fran's fiancé calls off the wedding, Sam joins his former wife on her voyage back to New York. Only three days later he is back on the next ship to meet Edith in Paris.
61528	/m/0gnsh	Lost Horizon	James Hilton	1933	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0277ppz": "Non-fiction novel", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The origin of the eleven numbered chapters of the novel is explained in a prologue and epilogue, whose narrator is a neurologist. This neurologist and a novelist friend, Rutherford, are given dinner at Tempelhof, Berlin, by their old school-friend Wyland, a secretary at the British embassy. A chance remark by a passing airman brings up the topic of Hugh Conway, a British consul in Afghanistan, who disappeared under odd circumstances. Later in the evening, Rutherford reveals to the narrator that, after the disappearance, he discovered Conway in a French mission hospital in Chung-Kiang (probably Chongqing), China, suffering from amnesia. Conway recovered his memory and told Rutherford his story, then slipped away again. Rutherford wrote down Conway's story; he gives the manuscript to the neurologist, and that manuscript becomes the heart of the novel. In May 1931, during the British Raj in India, the 80 white residents of Baskul are being evacuated to Peshawar, owing to a revolution. In the airplane of the Maharajah of Chandrapore are Conway, the British consul, age 37; Mallinson, his young vice-consul; an American, Barnard; and a British missionary, Miss Brinklow. The plane is hijacked and flown instead over the mountains to Tibet. After a crash landing, the pilot dies, but not before telling the four (in Chinese, which Conway knows) to seek shelter at the nearby lamasery of Shangri-La. The location is unclear, but Conway believes the plane has "progressed far beyond the western range of the Himalayas towards the less known heights of the Kuen-Lun" (i.e. Kunlun). The four are taken there by a party directed by Chang, a postulant at the lamasery who speaks English. The lamasery has modern conveniences, like central heating; bathtubs from Akron, Ohio; a large library; a grand piano; a harpsichord; and food from the fertile valley below. Towering above is Karakal, literally translated "Blue Moon," a mountain more than high. Mallinson is keen to hire porters and leave, but Chang politely puts him off. The others eventually decide they are content to stay: Miss Brinklow, to teach the people a sense of sin; Barnard, because he is really Chalmers Bryant (wanted by the police for stock fraud) and because he is keen to develop the gold-mines in the valley; Conway, because the contemplative scholarly life suits him. A seemingly young Manchu woman, Lo-Tsen, is another postulant at the lamasery; she does not speak English but plays the harpsichord. Mallinson falls in love with her, as does Conway, though more languidly. Conway is given an audience with the High Lama, an unheard-of honor. He learns that the lamasery was constructed in its present form by a Catholic monk named Perrault from Luxembourg, in the early eighteenth century. The lamasery has since then been joined by others who have found their way into the valley. Once they have done so, their aging slows; if they then leave the valley, they age quickly and die. Conway guesses correctly that the High Lama is Perrault, now 300 years old. In a later audience, the High Lama reveals that he is finally dying, and that he wants Conway to lead the lamasery. Meanwhile, Mallinson has arranged to leave the valley with porters and Lo-Tsen. They are waiting for him outside the valley, and he cannot traverse the dangerous route by himself, so he convinces Conway to go along. This ends Rutherford's manuscript. The last time Rutherford saw Conway, it appeared he was preparing to make his way back to Shangri-La. Rutherford completes his account by telling the neurologist that he attempted to track Conway and verify some of his claims of Shangri-La. He found the Chung-Kiang doctor who had treated Conway. The doctor said Conway had been brought in by a Chinese woman who was ill and died soon after. She was old, the doctor had told Rutherford, "Most old of anyone I have ever seen", implying that it was Lo-Tsen, aged drastically by her departure from Shangri-La.
61958	/m/0grxd	The Red Badge of Courage	Stephen Crane	1895	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On a cold day the fictional 304th New York Regiment awaits battle beside a river. Eighteen-year-old Private Henry Fleming, remembering his romantic reasons for enlisting as well as his mother's resulting protests, wonders whether he will remain brave in the face of fear, or turn and run. He is comforted by one of his friends from home, Jim Conklin, who admits that he would run from battle if his fellow soldiers also fled. During the regiment's first battle, Confederate soldiers charge, but are repelled. The enemy quickly regroups and attacks again, this time forcing some of the unprepared Union soldiers to flee. Fearing the battle is a lost cause, Henry deserts his regiment. Only after he reaches the rear of the army does he overhear a general announcing the Union's victory. {| class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:32em; max-width: 35%;" cellspacing="5" | style="text-align: left;" | In despair, he declared that he was not like those others. He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero. He was a craven loon. Those pictures of glory were piteous things. He groaned from his heart and went staggering off. |- | style="text-align: left;" | — The Red Badge of Courage, Chapter eleven |} Ashamed, Henry escapes into a nearby forest, where he discovers a decaying body in a peaceful clearing. In his distress, he hurriedly leaves the clearing and stumbles upon a group of injured men returning from battle. One member of the group, a "tattered soldier", asks Henry where he is wounded, but the youth dodges the question. Amongst the group is Jim Conklin, who has been shot in the side and is suffering delirium from blood-loss. Jim eventually dies of his injury, defiantly resisting aid from his friend, and an enraged and helpless Henry runs from the wounded soldiers. He next joins a retreating column that is in disarray. In the ensuing panic, a man hits Henry on the head with his rifle, wounding him. Exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and now wounded, Henry decides to return to his regiment regardless of his shame. When he arrives at camp, the other soldiers believe his injury resulted from a grazing bullet during battle. The other men care for the youth, dressing his wound. The next morning Henry goes into battle for the third time. His regiment encounters a small group of Confederates, and in the ensuing fight Henry proves to be a capable soldier, comforted by the belief that his previous cowardice had not been noticed, as he "had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man". Afterward, while looking for a stream from which to obtain water with a friend, he discovers from the commanding officer that his regiment has a lackluster reputation. The officer speaks casually about sacrificing the 304th because they are nothing more than "mule drivers" and "mud diggers". With no other regiments to spare, the general orders his men forward. In the final battle, Henry acts as the flag-bearer after the color sergeant falls. A line of Confederates hidden behind a fence beyond a clearing shoot with impunity at Henry's regiment, which is ill-covered in the tree-line. Facing withering fire if they stay, and disgrace if they retreat, the officers order a charge. Unarmed, Henry leads the men while entirely escaping injury. Most of the Confederates run before the regiment arrives, and four of the remaining men are taken prisoner. The novel closes with the following passage: It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks—an existence of soft and eternal peace. Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.
62113	/m/0gs_c	Goodbye, Mr. Chips	James Hilton		{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The novel tells the story of a much-beloved schoolteacher and his long tenure at Brookfield, a fictional British boys' public boarding school (a private school in American terminology). Mr. Chipping conquers his inability to connect with his students, as well as his initial shyness, when he marries Katherine, a young woman whom he meets on holiday and who quickly picks up on calling him by his nickname, "Chips". Despite his own mediocre academic record, he goes on to have an illustrious career as an inspiring educator at Brookfield. Although the book is unabashedly sentimental, it also depicts the sweeping social changes that Chips experiences throughout his life: he begins his tenure at Brookfield in 1870, as the Franco-Prussian War is breaking out and lies on his deathbed shortly after Adolf Hitler's rise to power. He is seen as an individual who is able to connect to anyone on a human level, beyond what he (by proxy of his late wife) views as petty politics, such as the strikers, the Boers, and a German friend. Clearly discernible is a nostalgia for the Victorian social order that had faded rapidly after Queen Victoria's death in 1901 and whose remnants were destroyed by the First World War. Indeed, a recurring motif is the devastating impact of the war on British society. When World War I breaks out, Chips, who had retired the year before at age 65, agrees to come out of retirement to fill in for the various masters who have entered military service. Despite his being taken for a doddering fossil, it is Chips who keeps his wits about him during an air raid, averting mass panic and sustaining morale. Countless old boys and masters die on the battlefield, and much of the story involves Chips's response to the horrors unleashed by the war. At one point, he reads aloud a long roster of the school's fallen alumni, and, defying the modern world he sees as soulless and lacking transcendent values of honour and friendship, dares to include the name of a German former master who has died fighting on the opposite side.
62120	/m/0gt2b	Of Mice and Men	John Steinbeck	1937	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Two migrant field workers in California on their plantation during the Great Depression—George Milton, an intelligent but uneducated man, and Lennie Small, a man of large stature and great strength but limited mental abilities—are on their way to another part of California in Soledad. They hope to one day attain their shared dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream is merely to tend to (and touch) soft rabbits on the farm. This dream is one of Lennie's favorite stories, which George constantly retells. They are fleeing from their previous employment in Weed, California, where they were run out of town after Lennie's love of stroking soft things resulted in an accusation of attempted rape when he touched a young woman's dress, and would not let go. It soon becomes clear that the two are close friends and George is Lennie's protector. The theme of friendship is constant throughout the story. At the ranch, the situation appears to be menacing and dangerous, especially when the pair are confronted by Curley—the boss's small-statured aggressive son with an inferiority complex who dislikes larger men—leaving the gentle giant Lennie potentially vulnerable. Curley's flirtatious and provocative wife, to whom Lennie is instantly attracted, poses a problem as well. In sharp contrast to these two characters, the pair also meets Slim, the kind, intelligent and intuitive jerkline skinner whose dog has recently had a litter of puppies. Slim gives a puppy to Lennie. In spite of the potential problems on the ranch, their dream leaps towards reality when Candy, the aged, one-handed ranch hand, offers to pitch in with George and Lennie so that they can buy a farm at the end of the month in return for permission to live with them on it. The trio are ecstatic, but their joy is overshadowed when Curley attacks Lennie. In response, Lennie, urged on by George, catches Curley's fist and crushes it, reminding the group there are still obstacles to overcome before their goal is reached. Nevertheless, George feels more relaxed, since the dream seems just within their grasp, to the extent that he even leaves Lennie behind on the ranch while he goes into town with the other ranch hands. Lennie wanders into the stable, and chats with Crooks, the bitter, yet educated stable buck, who is isolated from the other workers because he is black. Candy finds them and they discuss their plans for the farm with Crooks, who cannot resist asking them if he can hoe a garden patch on the farm, despite scorning the possibility of achieving the dream. Curley's wife makes another appearance and flirts with the men, especially Lennie. However, her spiteful side is shown when she belittles them and is especially harsh towards Crooks because of his race, threatening to have him lynched. Lennie accidentally kills his puppy while stroking it. Curley's wife enters the barn and tries to speak to Lennie, admitting that she is lonely and how her dreams of becoming a movie star are crushed, revealing the reason she flirts with the ranch hands. After finding out that Lennie loves stroking soft things, she offers to let him stroke her hair, but panics and begins to scream when she feels his strength. Lennie becomes frightened, and in the scuffle, unintentionally breaks her neck. When the other ranch hands find the corpse, George unhappily realizes that their dream is at an end. George hurries away to find Lennie, hoping he will be at the meeting place they designated at the start of the novel in case Lennie got into trouble, knowing that there is only one thing he can do to save Lennie from the painful death that Curley's lynch mob intends to deliver. George meets Lennie at the designated place, the same spot they camped in the night before they came to the ranch. The two sit together and George retells the beloved story of the bright future together that they will never share. He then shoots Lennie in the back of the head, so that his death will be painless and happy. Curley, Slim, and Carlson find George seconds after the shooting. Only Slim realizes that George killed Lennie out of love, and gently and consolingly leads him away, while Curley and Carlson look on, unable to comprehend the subdued mood of the two men.
62651	/m/0gxw1	All's Well That Ends Well	William Shakespeare	1623		 Helena, the orphan daughter of a famous physician, is the ward of the Countess of Rousillon, and hopelessly in love with the son of the Countess, Count Bertram, who has been sent to the court of the King of France. Despite her beauty and worth, Helena has no hope of attracting Bertram, since she is of low birth and he is a nobleman. However, when word comes that the King is ill, she goes to Paris and, using her father's arts, cures the fistula from which he suffers. In return, she is given the hand of any man in the realm; she chooses Bertram. Her new husband is appalled at the match, however, and shortly after their marriage flees France, accompanied only by a scoundrel named Parolles, to fight in the army of the Duke of Florence. Helena is sent home to the Countess, and receives a letter from Bertram informing her that he will never be her true spouse unless she can get his family ring from his finger, and become pregnant with his child — neither of which, he declares, will ever come to pass. The wise Countess, who loves Helena and approves of the match, tries to comfort her, but the distraught young woman departs Rousillon, planning to make a religious pilgrimage. Meanwhile, in Florence, Bertram has become a general in the Duke's army. Helena comes to the city, and discovers that her husband is trying to seduce Diana, the virginal daughter of a kindly widow. Diana wishes to stay a virgin, and so Helena helps her trick Bertram. He gives Diana his ring as a token of his love, and in turn, Diana gives him a ring that belonged to Helena. When Bertram comes to Diana's room at night, Helena is in the bed, and they make love without his realising that it is Helena. At the same time, two lords in the army expose Parolles as a coward and a villain, and he falls out of Bertram's favour. Meanwhile, false messengers have come to the camp bearing word that Helena is dead, and with the war drawing to a close, Bertram decides to return to France. Unknown to him, Helena follows, accompanied by Diana and the Widow. In Rousillon, everyone is mourning Helena as dead. The King is visiting, and consents to a marriage between Bertram and the daughter of an old, faithful lord, named Lafew. However, he notices the ring on Bertram's finger that formerly belonged to Helena: it was a gift from the King after she saved his life. Bertram is at a loss to explain where it came from, but just then Diana and her mother appear to explain the trickery—followed by Helena, who informs her husband that both his conditions have been fulfilled. Bertram accepts Helena as his true wife, but in many modern interpretations the bitterness remains.
62654	/m/0gxwz	The Taming of the Shrew	William Shakespeare	1623		 Prior to the first act, an induction frames the play as a "kind of history" played in front of a befuddled drunkard named Christopher Sly who is tricked into believing that he is a lord. In the play performed for Sly, the "Shrew" is Katherina Minola, the eldest daughter of Baptista Minola, a lord in Padua. Katherina's temper is notorious and it is thought no man would ever wish to marry her. On the other hand, two men – Hortensio and Gremio – are eager to marry her younger sister Bianca. However, Baptista has sworn not to allow his younger daughter to marry before Katherina is wed, much to the despair of her suitors, who agree that they will work together to marry off Katherina so that they will be free to compete for Bianca. The plot becomes more complex when Lucentio, who has recently come to Padua to attend university, sees Bianca and instantly falls in love with her. Lucentio overhears Baptista announce that he is on the lookout for tutors for his daughters, so he has his servant Tranio pretend to be him while he disguises himself as a Latin tutor named Cambio, so that he can woo Bianca behind Baptista's back. In the meantime, Petruchio arrives in Padua, accompanied by his servant, Grumio. Petruchio tells his old friend Hortensio that he has set out to enjoy life after the death of his father and that his main goal is to wed. Hearing this, Hortensio seizes the opportunity to recruit Petruchio as a suitor for Katherina. He also has Petruchio present to Baptista a music tutor named Litio (Hortensio himself in disguise). Thus, Lucentio and Hortensio, pretending to be the teachers Cambio and Litio, attempt to woo Bianca unbeknownst to her father, and to one another. Petruchio, to counter Katherina's shrewish nature, woos her with reverse psychology, pretending that every harsh thing she says or does is kind and gentle. Katherina allows herself to become engaged to Petruchio, and they are married in a farcical ceremony during which (amongst other things) he strikes the priest and drinks the communion wine, and then takes her home against her will. Once they are gone, Gremio and Tranio (disguised as Lucentio) formally bid for Bianca, with Tranio easily outbidding Gremio. However, in his zeal to win, he promises much more than the real Lucentio actually possesses, and Baptista determines that once Lucentio's father confirms the dowry, Bianca and Tranio can marry. Tranio thus decides that they will need someone to pretend to be Vincentio, Lucentio's father, at some point in the near future. Elsewhere, as part of their scheme, Tranio persuades Hortensio that Bianca is not worthy of his attentions, thus removing any problems he may cause. Meanwhile, in Petruchio's house, he begins the "taming" of his new wife. She is refused food and clothing because nothing – according to Petruchio – is good enough for her; he claims perfectly cooked meat is overcooked, a beautiful dress doesn't fit right, and a stylish hat is not fashionable. He also sets about disagreeing with everything she says, and forcing her to agree with everything he says, no matter how absurd; on their way back to Padua to attend Bianca's wedding, she agrees with Petruchio that the sun is the moon, and proclaims that "if you please to call it a rush-candle,/Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me" (4.5.14–15). Along the way, they meet Vincentio who is also on his way to Padua, and Katherina agrees with Petruchio when he declares that Vincentio is a woman and then apologises to Vincentio when Petruchio tells her he is a man. Meanwhile, back in Padua, Lucentio and Tranio convince a passing pedant to pretend to be Vincentio and confirm the dowry for Bianca. The man does so, and Baptista is happy for Bianca to wed Lucentio (actually Tranio in disguise). Bianca then secretly elopes with the real Lucentio. However, Vincentio arrives in Padua, and encounters the Pedant, who claims to be Lucentio's father. Tranio (still disguised as Lucentio) appears, and the Pedant acknowledges him to be his son Lucentio. There is much confusion about identities, and the real Vincentio is set to be arrested when the real Lucentio appears with his newly betrothed Bianca, and reveals all to a bewildered Baptista and Vincentio. Lucentio explains everything that has happened and all is forgiven by the two fathers. Meanwhile, Hortensio has married a rich widow, and so in the final scene of the play there are three newly married couples at Baptista's banquet; Bianca and Lucentio, the widow and Hortensio, and Katherina and Petruchio. Because of the general opinion that Petruchio is married to a shrew, a quarrel breaks out about whose wife is the most obedient. Petruchio proposes a wager whereby each will send a servant to call for their wives, and whichever comes most obediently will have won the wager for her husband. Katherina is the only one of the three who comes, winning the wager for Petruchio. At the end of the play, after the other two wives have been hauled into the room by Katherina, she gives a speech on the subject of why wives should always obey their husbands and the play ends with Baptista, Hortensio and Lucentio marvelling at how successfully Petruchio has tamed the shrew.
62695	/m/0gy7g	Our Town	Thornton Wilder			 The Stage Manager guides the play, taking questions from the audience, describing the locations (as scenery is sparse) and making key observations about the world the play creates. The Stage Manager introduces the audience to the small town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, and its residents as a morning begins in 1901. Joe Crowell delivers the paper, Howie Newsome delivers the milk, and the neighboring Webb and Gibbs households send their children off to school. The Stage Manager brings out a long-winded professor to talk about the history and pre-history of Grover's Corners, Editor Webb gives a few notes on local political and religious affiliations and fields questions from the audience about alcoholism, social injustice and culture. After school, George and Emily exchange a few words, and Emily self-consciously asks her mother if she's pretty. The Stage Manager mentions that a time capsule is being laid in the cornerstone of a new bank in town, and noting the lack of information about the common people of ancient cultures, he resolves that a copy of this play will be placed inside. Moving to the evening, Emily whispers homework hints to George through their open windows. On their way home from choir practice, Mrs Gibbs, Mrs Webb and Mrs Soames discuss Simon Stimson, the choir director with a reputation for being a drunkard. Doc Gibbs teaches George a lesson in responsibility, and young Rebecca frets that the moon will strike the earth, causing "a big 'splosion". Three years pass and George and Emily prepare to wed. The day is filled with stress. Howie Newsome is delivering milk in the pouring rain while Si Crowell, younger brother of Joe, laments how George's baseball talents will be squandered. George pays an awkward visit with his soon-to-be in-laws. Here, the Stage Manager interrupts the scene and takes the audience back a year, to the end of Emily and George's junior year. Emily confronts George about his pride, and over an ice cream soda, they discuss the future and their love for each other. George resolves not to go to college, as he had planned, but to work and eventually take over his uncle's farm. The wedding follows where George, in a fit of nervousness, tells his mother that he is not ready to marry. Emily, too, tells her father of her anxiety about marriage, saying she wishes she were dead. However, they both regain their composure, and George proceeds down the aisle to be wed by the preacher (played by the Stage Manager). Mrs. Soames is very pleased with the whole affair, as she turns to the audience and gushes. The Stage Manager opens the act with a lengthy monologue emphasizing eternity, and introduces us to the cemetery outside of town and the characters who died in the nine years since Act Two: Mrs Gibbs (pneumonia, while traveling), Wally Webb (burst appendix, while camping), Mrs Soames, and Simon Stimson (suicide by hanging), among others. We meet the undertaker, Joe Stoddard, and a young man Sam Craig who has returned home for his cousin's funeral. We learn that his cousin is Emily, who died giving birth to her and George's second child. The funeral ends and Emily emerges to join the dead. Then Mrs. Gibbs tells her that they must wait and forget the life that came before, but Emily refuses. Despite the warnings of Simon, Mrs. Soames, and Mrs. Gibbs, Emily decides to return to Earth to re-live just one day, her 12th birthday. She finally finds it too painful, and realizes just how much life should be valued, "every, every minute." Poignantly, she asks the Stage Manager whether anyone realizes life while they live it, and is told, "No. The saints and poets, maybe – they do some." She then returns to her grave, beside Mrs. Gibbs, watching impassively as George kneels weeping at her graveside. The Stage Manager concludes the play, reflecting on the probable lack of life beyond Earth, and wishes the audience a good night.
63099	/m/0g_7x	Ishmael	Daniel Quinn	1992	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ishmael begins with a newspaper ad: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." The nameless narrator and protagonist begins his story, telling how he first reacted to this ad with scorn because of the absurdity of "wanting to save the world," a notion he feels that once he foolishly embraced himself as an adolescent during the counterculture movement of the 1960s. However, he responds to the ad anyway and, upon arriving at the address, finds himself in a room with a gorilla. He notices a polysemous sign that reads "With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?" To the narrator's surprise, he finds that the gorilla, calling himself Ishmael, can communicate telepathically. At first baffled by this, the man learns the story of how the gorilla came to be here and soon accepts Ishmael as his teacher, regularly returning to Ishmael's office throughout the plot. The novel continues from this point mainly as a Socratic dialogue between Ishmael and his new student as they hash out what Ishmael refers to as "how things came to be this way" for mankind. Ishmael's life, which began in the African wilderness, was spent mostly in a zoo and a menagerie, and since had been spent in the gazebo of a man that extricated him from physical captivity. He tells his student that it was at the menagerie that he learned about human language and culture and began to think about things that he never would have pondered in the wild. Subsequently, Ishmael tells his student that the subject for this learning experience will be captivity, primarily the captivity of man under a distorted civilizational system. The narrator claims to Ishmael that he has a vague notion of living in some sort of cultural captivity and being lied to in some way but he can not explain his feelings. Before proceeding Ishmael lays some ground definitions for his student. He defines: * Takers as people often referred to as "civilized." Particularly, the culture born in an Agricultural Revolution that began about 10,000 years ago in the Near East; this is the culture of Ishmael's pupil and, presumably, the reader. * Leavers as people of all other cultures; often derogatorily referred to by Takers as "primitive." * A story as an interrelation between the gods, man, and the earth, with a beginning, middle, and end. * To enact is to strive to make a story come true. * A culture is a people who are enacting a story. Ishmael proceeds to tease from his pupil the premises of the story (i.e. myth) being enacted by the Takers: that they are the pinnacle of evolution, that the world was made for man, and that man is here to conquer and rule the world. This rule is meant to bring about a paradise, as man increases his mastery of the world, however, he is always failing because he is flawed. Man doesn't know how to live and never will because that knowledge is unobtainable. So, however hard he labors to save the world, he is just going to go on defiling and spoiling it. Ishmael points out to his student that when the Takers decided there is something fundamentally wrong with humans, they took as evidence only their own culture's history- "They were looking at a half of one-percent of the evidence taken from a single culture-- Not a reasonable sample on which to base such a sweeping conclusion." Ishmael says: "There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now." Ishmael goes on to help his student discover that, contrary to what the Takers think, there are immutable laws that life is subject to and it is possible to discern them by studying the biological community. Together, Ishmael and his student identify one set of survival strategies which appear to be evolutionarily stable for all species (later dubbed the "Law of Limited Competition"): In short, "you may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war." All species inevitably follow this law, or as a consequence go extinct. The Takers believe themselves to be exempt from this Law and flout it at every point. Ishmael explains how the Takers rendered themselves above the laws governing life, using the story of The Fall of Man as an example. His version of why the fruit was forbidden to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is: eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil provides the gods with the knowledge of who shall live and who shall die—knowledge which they need to rule the world. The fruit nourishes only the gods, though. If Adam ("man") were to eat from this tree, he might think that he gained the gods' wisdom (without this actually happening) and consequently destroy the world and himself through his arrogance. "And so they said to him, you may eat of every tree in the garden, save the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the day you eat of that tree, you will certainly die." Ishmael makes the point that this story of the Fall of Man, which the Takers have adopted as their own, was in fact developed by Leavers to explain the origin of the Takers. If it were of Taker origin, the story would be of liberating ascent instead of a sinful fall. Ishmael and his student go on to discuss how, for the ancient Semitic herders among whom the tale originated, the story of Cain killing Abel symbolizes the Leaver being killed off and their lands taken so that it could be put under cultivation. These ancient herders realized that the Takers were acting as if they were gods themselves, with all the wisdom of what is good and evil and how to rule the world. And as a result the gods banished these people from the Garden and they were brought from a life of bounty in the hands of the gods to one of being the accursed tillers of the soil. To begin discerning the Leavers' story, Ishmael proposes to his student a hypothesis: the Takers' Agricultural Revolution was a revolution against the Leavers' story. The Leavers take what they need from the world and leave the rest alone. Living in this manner ("in the hands of the gods"), Leavers thrive in times of abundance and dwindle in times of scarcity. The Takers however, practicing their unique form of agriculture (dubbed by Quinn, Totalitarian agriculture) produce enormous food surpluses, which allows them to thwart the gods when they decide it's the Takers' time to go hungry. "When you have more food than you need, then the gods have no power over you." Thus, Ishmael points out that the Takers revolution was not just a technological change, but also serves a mythological function. "So we have a new pair of names for you: The Takers are 'those who know good and evil' and the Leavers are 'those who live in the hands of the gods'." Ishmael goes on to point out that by living in the hands of the gods, man is subject to the conditions under which evolution takes place. Australopithecus became Homo by living in the hands of the gods—Man became man by living in the hands of the gods-- "by living the way the bushmen of Africa live; by living the way the Krenakarore of Brazil live... Not the way the Chicagoans live, not the way Londoners live." "In the hands of the gods is where evolution happens." According to the Takers' story, creation came to an end with man. "In order to make their story come true, the Takers have to put an end to creation itself-- and they're doing a damn good job of it!" Ishmael brings together his synopsis on human culture by examining the story enacted by Leaver cultures, which provides a model of how to live—an alternative story for the Takers to enact. "The premise of the Takers' story is 'The world belongs to man.' ...The premise of the Leavers' story is 'Man belongs to the world.'" "For three million years, man belonged to the world and because he belonged to the world, he grew and developed and became brighter and more dexterous until one day, he was so bright and so dexterous that we had to call him Homo sapiens sapiens-- which means he was us." "The Leavers' story is 'the gods made man for the world, the same way they made salmon and sparrows for the world. This seems to have worked well so far so we can take it easy and leave the running of the world to the gods'." Ishmael emphasizes that "not in any sense is the Takers story 'chapter two' of the story which was being enacted here during the first three million years of human life. The Leavers' story has its own 'chapter two'." In evolution, observes Ishmael's student, there seems to be a tendency toward complexity, and towards self-awareness and intelligence. Perhaps the gods intend the world to be filled with intelligent, self-aware creatures and man's destiny following the Leavers' story is "to be the first- without being the last"; to learn and then to be a role-model and teacher for all those capable of becoming what he's become. Ishmael finishes with a summary of what his student can do if he earnestly desires to save the world: "The story of Genesis must be undone. First, Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you're to survive. The Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world - not because they're humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is more than one right way to live. And then, of course, you must spit out the fruit of the forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet." "Teach a hundred what I've taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred." The student loses track of Ishmael's whereabouts and in his search for the gorilla ultimately discovers that he was secretly falling ill and has since died of pneumonia. When the student goes back to Ishmael's office, he finds the sign that he saw before ("With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?") has a backside. The back contains another message: "With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?"
63110	/m/0g_b_	David Copperfield	Charles Dickens	1850	{"/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story traces the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David was born in Blunderston near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, in 1820, six months after the death of his father. Seven years later, his mother re-marries Edward Murdstone. David is given good reason to dislike his stepfather and has similar feelings for Murdstone's sister Jane, who moves into the house soon afterwards. Murdstone thrashes David for falling behind in his studies. Following one of these thrashings, David bites him and soon afterward is sent away to a boarding school, Salem House, with a ruthless headmaster, Mr. Creakle. There he befriends James Steerforth and Tommy Traddles. David returns home for the holidays to learn that his mother has given birth to a baby boy. Shortly after David returns to Salem House, his mother and her baby die and David returns home immediately. Murdstone sends him to work in a factory in London, of which Murdstone is a joint owner. Copperfield's landlord, Wilkins Micawber, is sent to debtor's prison (the King's Bench Prison) and remains there for several months before being released and moving to Plymouth. No one remains to care for David in London, so he decides to run away. He walks from London to Dover, where he finds his only relative, his unmarried, eccentric aunt Betsey Trotwood. She agrees to raise him, despite Murdstone's attempt to regain custody of David. David's aunt renames him "Trotwood Copperfield" and addresses him as "Trot", and it becomes one of several names to which David answers in the course of the novel. As David grows to adulthood, a variety of characters enter, leave, and re-enter his life. These include Peggotty – his mother's faithful former housekeeper – and Peggotty's family, including her orphaned niece "Little Em'ly", who moves in with them and charms the young David. David's romantic but self-serving school friend, Steerforth, seduces and dishonours Little Em'ly, precipitating the novel's greatest tragedy, and his landlord's daughter Agnes Wickfield, becomes his confidante. The novel's two most familiar characters are David's sometime mentor, the debt-ridden Micawber, and the devious and fraudulent clerk, Uriah Heep, whose misdeeds are eventually revealed with Micawber's assistance. Micawber is painted sympathetically even as the narrator deplores his financial ineptitude. Micawber, like Dickens' own father, is briefly imprisoned for insolvency. The major characters eventually get some measure of what they deserve, and few narrative threads are left hanging. Dan Peggotty safely transports Emily to a new life in Australia, accompanied by Gummidge and the Micawbers. All eventually find security and happiness in their adopted country. David marries the beautiful but naïve Dora Spenlow, who dies after failing to recover from a miscarriage early in their marriage. David then searches his soul and marries the sensible Agnes, who had always loved him and with whom he finds true happiness. David and Agnes then have three children, including a daughter named after his aunt Betsey Trotwood.
63335	/m/0h0nb	Childhood's End	Arthur C. Clarke	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/09vxq_p": "Catastrophic literature", "/m/07g8l": "Transhumanism"}	 The novel is divided into three parts, following a third-person omniscient narrative with no main character. In the late 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union are competing to launch the first spaceship into orbit, to military ends. However, when vast alien spaceships suddenly position themselves above Earth's principal cities, the space race is halted forever. After one week, the aliens announce they are assuming supervision of international affairs to prevent humanity's extinction. As the Overlords, they bring peace, and they claim that interference will be limited. They interfere only twice with human affairs: in South Africa, where sometime before their arrival Apartheid had collapsed and was replaced with savage persecution of the white minority; and in Spain, where they put an end to bull fighting. Some humans are suspicious of the Overlords' benign intent, as they never appear in physical form. Overlord Karellen, the "Supervisor for Earth," speaks directly only to Rikki Stormgren, the Finnish UN Secretary-General. Karellen tells Stormgren that the Overlords will reveal themselves in 50 years, when humanity will have become used to their presence. Stormgren smuggles a device onto Karellen's ship in an attempt to see Karellen's true form. He succeeds, is shocked and chooses to keep silent. Humankind enters a golden age of prosperity at the expense of creativity. As promised, five decades after their arrival the Overlords appear for the first time; they resemble the traditional human folk images of demons—large bipeds with leathery wings, horns and tails. The Overlords are interested in psychic research, which humans suppose is part of their anthropological study. Rupert Boyce, a prolific book collector on the subject, allows one Overlord, Rashaverak, to study these books at his home. To impress his friends with Rashaverak's presence, Boyce holds a party, during which he makes use of a Ouija board. An astrophysicist, Jan Rodricks, asks the identity of the Overlords' home star. George Greggson's wife Jean faints as the Ouija board reveals a star-catalog number confirming the direction in which Overlord supply ships appear and disappear. Jan Rodricks stows away on an Overlord supply ship and travels 40 light-years to their home planet. Due to the time dilation of special relativity at near-light speeds, the elapsed time on the ship is only a few weeks, and he arranges to endure it in drug-induced suspended animation. Although humanity and the Overlords have peaceful relations, some believe human innovation is being suppressed and that culture is becoming stagnant. These groups establish "New Athens," an island colony devoted to the creative arts, which George and Jean Greggson join. The Overlords conceal a special interest in the Greggsons' children, Jeffrey and Jennifer Anne, and intervene to save Jeffrey's life when a tsunami strikes the island. The Overlords have been watching them since the incident with the Ouija board, which revealed the seed of the coming transformation hidden within Jean. Sixty years after the Overlords' arrival, human children, including the Greggsons', begin to display telekinetic powers. Karellen reveals the Overlords' purpose; they serve the Overmind, a vast cosmic intelligence, born of amalgamated ancient civilizations, and freed from the limitations of material existence. Yet the Overlords themselves are strangely unable to join the Overmind, but serve it as a bridge species, charged with fostering other races' eventual merger with it. Because of this, Karellen expresses his envy of humanity. For the transformed children's safety, they are segregated on a continent of their own. No more human children are born, and many parents find their lives stripped of meaning, and die or commit suicide. New Athens is destroyed by its members with a nuclear bomb. Jan Rodricks emerges from hibernation on the Overlord supply ship and arrives on their planet. The Overlords permit him a glimpse of how the Overmind communicates with them. When Jan returns to Earth approximately 80 years later by Earth time, he finds an unexpectedly altered planet. Humanity has effectively become extinct, and he is now the last man alive. Hundreds of millions of children – no longer fitting with what Rodricks defines as "human" – remain on the quarantined continent. Barely moving, with eyes closed and communicating by telepathy, they are the penultimate form of human evolution, having become a single group mind readying themselves to join the Overmind. Some Overlords remain on Earth to study the children from a safe distance. When the evolved children mentally alter the Moon's rotation and make other planetary manipulations, it becomes too dangerous to remain. The departing Overlords offer to take Rodricks with them, but he chooses to stay to witness Earth's end, and transmits a report of what he sees. The Overlords are eager to escape from their own evolutionary dead-end by studying the Overmind, so Rodricks' information is potentially of great value to them. By radio, Rodricks describes a vast burning column ascending from the planet. As the column disappears, Rodricks experiences a profound sense of emptiness when the Overlords have gone. Then material objects and the Earth itself begin to dissolve into transparency. Jan reports no fear, but a powerful sense of fulfillment. The Earth evaporates in a flash of light. Karellen looks back at the receding Solar System and gives a final salute to the human species.
63425	/m/0h11p	The Little Prince	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	1943		 The reader is introduced to the narrator who, as a young boy, drew a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. However, he is discouraged from drawing when all adults who look at his picture see a hat, instead. The narrator attempts to explain what his first picture depicts by drawing another one clearly showing the elephant, disturbing the adults as a result. As such, he decides to become a pilot, which eventually leads to a crash in the Sahara desert. In the desert, the narrator meets the little prince, who asks him to draw a sheep. Not knowing how to draw a sheep, the narrator shows him the picture of the elephant in the snake. To the narrator's surprise, the prince recognizes the drawing for what it is. After a few failed attempts at drawing a sheep, the narrator draws a box in his frustration, claims that the box holds a sheep inside. Again to the narrator's surprise, the prince is delighted with the result. The little prince's home asteroid, or "planet", is introduced. The asteroid is the size of a house, has three volcanoes (two active, and one dormant) and a rose, among various other objects. The narrator believes this asteroid to be called B-612. The Prince spends his days caring for the asteroid, pulling out the baobab trees that are constantly trying to take root there. The Prince falls in love with the rose, who appears not to return his love due to her vain nature. The Prince loses his trust in the rose after she lies to him, and he grows lonely. After he reconciles with his rose, the prince leaves to see what the rest of the universe is like. He visits six other asteroids, each of which is inhabited by a foolish adult. The sixth asteroid is inhabited by a geographer, who asks the prince to describe his home. When the prince mentions the rose, the geographer explains that he does not record roses, calling them "ephemeral". The prince is shocked and hurt by this revelation. The geographer recommends that he visit the Earth. On the Earth, the prince meets a snake that claims to have the power to return him to his home planet, though the prince refuses this offer. The prince then meets a desert flower, who tells him that there are only a handful of men on Earth and that they have no roots, letting the wind blow them around and living hard lives. The prince climbs the highest mountain he has ever seen, in hopes of seeing the whole planet and finding people. However, he only sees a desolate landscape. When the prince calls out, his echo answers him, and he mistakes it for the voices of other humans. Eventually, the prince comes upon a whole row of rosebushes, and becomes downcast because he thought his rose was unique. He begins to feel that he is not a great prince at all, as his planet contains only three tiny volcanoes and a flower he now thinks of as common. He lies down in the grass and weeps. As the prince cries, a fennec fox comes across him. The prince tames the fox, who explains to him that his rose really is unique and special, because she is the one whom the prince loves. The fox also explains that, in a way, the prince has tamed the flower, and that this is why the prince now feels responsible for her. The prince then comes across a railway switchman and a merchant. The switchman tells the Prince how passengers constantly rush from one place to another aboard trains, never satisfied with where they are and not knowing what they are after. Only the children amongst them bother to look out of the windows. The merchant tells the prince about his product, a pill which eliminates thirst and is very popular, saving people fifty-three minutes a week. The prince replies that he would use the time to walk and find fresh water. Back in the present, the narrator is dying of thirst, but finds a well with the help of the prince. The narrator later finds the prince discussing his return home with the snake. The prince bids an emotional farewell to the narrator and states that if it looks as though he has died, it is because his body is too heavy to take with him to his planet. The prince warns the narrator not to watch him leave, as it will make him sad. The narrator, realizing what will happen, refuses to leave the prince's side. The prince allows the snake to bite him, and falls without making a sound. The next morning, the narrator tries to look for the prince, but is unable to find his body. The story ends with a portrait of the landscape where the prince and the narrator met and where the snake took the prince's life. The narrator makes a plea that anyone encountering a strange child in that area who refuses to answer questions should contact the narrator immediately.
63738	/m/0h31w	Brigadoon	Alan Jay Lerner			 ;Act I New Yorkers Tommy Albright and Jeff Douglas have traveled to the Scottish Highlands on a game-hunting vacation, only to get lost their first night out. They begin to hear music ("Brigadoon") coming from a nearby village; strangely, the village isn't on their map of the area. Tommy and Jeff decide to visit it to get directions back to their inn. In the town, a fair has begun ("McConnachy Square"). The villagers are dressed in traditional Scottish tartan. Andrew MacLaren and his daughters arrive at the fair to purchase supplies for the wedding of younger daughter Jean to Charlie Dalrymple. Harry Beaton is madly in love with Jean and is depressed at the thought of her marrying another. One of the girls asks Fiona, Jean's older sister, when she will get married, and she says she is waiting for the right person ("Waitin' For My Dearie"). Tommy and Jeff wander into the village, and when they ask where they are, the villagers tell them "Brigadoon". Fiona invites the Americans to have a meal and rest at the MacLarens' home. Meg Brockie, a flirtatious dairy maid, immediately takes a liking to Jeff and leads him off. Charlie Dalrymple appears, rejoicing in his impending nuptials. He shares a drink with Tommy, toasting to a Mr. Forsythe whom he thanks for "postponing the miracle". Tommy asks what he means by this, but Fiona shushes him and leads him away as Charlie celebrates the end of his bachelorhood ("Go Home with Bonnie Jean"). Tommy tells Fiona about his impending marriage to his fiancée Jane in New York; Tommy is in no hurry to marry Jane, and Fiona reveals that she likes Tommy very much. Fiona goes to gather heather for the wedding, and Tommy insists on going with her ("The Heather on the Hill"). Meanwhile, Meg takes Jeff to a place in the forest with a shack and a cot. She tells him she's "highly attracted" to him, but he spurns her advances, wanting only sleep. She reflects on her unusual love life ("The Love Of My Life"). In the MacLaren home, Jean's friends help her pack her things to move into Charlie's home ("Jeannie's Packin' Up"). Charlie arrives to sign the MacLaren family Bible. He wants to see Jean, but he is told it is bad luck to see her on the wedding day. He begs for her to come out anyway ("Come to Me, Bend to Me"). Tommy and Fiona return with a basket full of heather, and Fiona goes upstairs to help Jean dress for the wedding. Jeff arrives wearing a pair of Highland trews (trousers); apparently his own pants have been damaged on a "thistle". Jeff finds that Tommy is so happy that he can barely contain it ("Almost Like Being In Love"). Tommy notices that all the events listed in the family Bible, including Jean's wedding, are listed as if they had happened two hundred years earlier. He asks Fiona why this is so, and she tells him that he needs to see the schoolmaster, Mr. Lundie, to get the full explanation. Fiona, Tommy, and Jeff arrive at Mr. Lundie's home, where he relates a story that the two New Yorkers can hardly believe: to protect Brigadoon from being changed by the outside world, two hundred years ago, the local pastor prayed to God to have Brigadoon disappear, only to reappear for one day every 100 years. None of the people of Brigadoon can be permitted to leave the town, or it will disappear forever. Tommy asks hypothetically if an outsider could be permitted to stay. Mr. Lundie replies, "A stranger can stay if he loves someone here - not jus' Brigadoon, mind ye, but someone in Brigadoon - enough to want to give up everythin' an' stay with that one person. Which is how it should be. 'Cause after all, lad, if ye love someone deeply, anythin' is possible." The group leaves to go to the wedding, which opens with the clans coming in from the hills. Charlie and Jean are married by Mr. Lundie, and they perform a traditional wedding dance to celebrate. Sword dancers appear, led by Harry, and they perform an elaborate dance over their weapons. All the town joins in the dance, but it abruptly halts when Jean screams as Harry tries to kiss her. In anguish over Jean's wedding, he announces that he's leaving the town (which would end the miracle, causing Brigadoon to disappear forever into the Highland mists) and sprints away. ;Act II The men of the town, including Tommy and a reluctant Jeff, are frantically trying to find Harry before he can depart the town ("The Chase"). Suddenly an agonized scream is heard. Harry, who appears to have fallen on a rock and crushed his skull, is found dead by the other men. They decide not to tell the rest of the town until the next morning. The men carry Harry's body away. Fiona and her father arrive to see if everything is all right. As Mr. MacLaren leaves, Tommy sees Fiona, and they embrace. She reveals her love for him, and he tells her he believes he feels the same way ("There But For You Go I"). Fiona reminds him that the end of the day is near, and Tommy tells her he wants to stay in Brigadoon with her. They go to find Mr. Lundie. Meanwhile, in the village, Meg tells about the day her parents were drunkenly married ("My Mother's Wedding Day") and the townsfolk dance until the sound of Highland Pipes pierces the air. Archie Beaton enters carrying Harry's body, led by the pipers playing a pìobaireachd. Maggie Anderson, who loved Harry, performs a funeral dance for her unrequited love. The men of Brigadoon help Archie carry his son to the burial place. Tommy finds Jeff and tells him of his plans to stay. Jeff thinks the idea absurd and argues with Tommy until he has convinced him that Brigadoon is only a dream. Jeff also reveals that he tripped Harry and accidentally killed him. Fiona and Mr. Lundie arrive, and Tommy, shaken by Jeff's confession, tells Fiona that even though he loves her, he cannot stay; he still has doubts ("From This Day On"). Fiona tells Tommy that she will love him forever as she fades away into the darkness. Four months later, Jeff is drinking heavily at a hotel bar in New York. Tommy enters and greets Jeff. Tommy is still in love with Fiona and cannot stop thinking about her. His fiancée Jane Ashford, a beautiful socialite, talks to him about their impending wedding, but everything she says causes him to hear Fiona's voice and dream of Brigadoon ("Come to Me, Bend to Me" (reprise) and "Heather on the Hill" (reprise)). Tommy tells Jane that he cannot marry her, and she argues with him, but he continues to daydream about his true love ("Go Home With Bonnie Jean" (reprise) and "From This Day On" (reprise)). Jane leaves, and Tommy tells Jeff that he wants to return to Scotland, although he knows the village will not be there. Tommy and Jeff return to the spot where Brigadoon was and, as they expected, nothing is there. Tommy laments, "Why do people have to lose things to find out what they really mean?" Just as he and Jeff turn to leave, they hear the music again ("Brigadoon"), and Mr. Lundie appears. Tommy walks across the bridge in a daze to him, as Mr. Lundie explains: "Oh it's you Tommy, lad. You woke me up. You must really love her," to which Tommy, still dazed, stammers "Wha- how....?" and Mr. Lundie replies, "You shouldna be too surprised, lad. I told ye when ye love someone deeply enough, anythin' is possible. Even miracles." Tommy waves goodbye to Jeff and disappears with Mr. Lundie into the highland mist to be reunited with Fiona.
63750	/m/0h362	The Two Towers	J. R. R. Tolkien	1954-11-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As Aragorn searches for Frodo, he suddenly hears Boromir's horn. He finds Boromir mortally wounded by arrows, his assailants gone. Before Boromir dies, Aragorn also learns that Merry and Pippin were kidnapped by Saruman's Uruk-hai in spite of his efforts to defend them, and that Frodo had vanished after Boromir had tried to take the Ring from him and that he truly regretted his actions. In his last moments, he charges Aragorn to defend Minas Tirith from Sauron. With Legolas and Gimli, who had been fighting Orcs themselves, Aragorn pays his last respects to Boromir and sends him down the Great River Anduin on a funeral boat, the usual methods of burial being impractical. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli then resolve to follow the Uruk-hai captors. Meanwhile, after some hardship, Merry and Pippin escape when the Uruk-hai are attacked by the horsemen of Rohan, called the Rohirrim or "Riders of Rohan". Merry and Pippin escape into the nearby Fangorn Forest, where they encounter the giant treelike Ents. The Ents resemble actual trees, except they are able to see, talk, and move. These guardians of the forest generally keep to themselves, but after a long contemplation on whether or not the Hobbits were friends, or foes, their leader Treebeard persuades the Ent council to oppose the menace posed to the forest by the wizard Saruman, as suggested by Merry and Pippin, as Treebeard realizes that Saruman's minions have been cutting down large numbers of their trees to fuel the furnaces needed for Saruman's arming of his dark army. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas come across the Riders of Rohan led by Éomer, nephew of King Théoden. The trio learn that the horsemen had attacked a band of Orcs the previous night, and that they had left no survivors. However, Aragorn is able to track a small set of prints that lead into Fangorn, where they see an old man who disappears almost as soon as they see him - they assume him to be Saruman. Shortly afterward, the three meet Gandalf, (again, they at first take him to be Saruman) whom they believed had perished in the mines of Moria. He tells them of his fall into the abyss, his battle to the death with the Balrog and his resurrection and his enhanced power. The four ride to Rohan's capital Edoras, where Gandalf rouses King Théoden from inaction against the threat Saruman poses. In the process, Saruman's spy in Rohan (and King Théoden's trusted advisor) Gríma Wormtongue, is expelled from Rohan. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas then travel with Théoden's troops to the fortress of Hornburg, in the valley of Helm's Deep. Gandalf rides away before the battle begins, though he gives no reason for doing so. At the Hornburg, the army of Rohan led by King Théoden and Aragorn resist a full-scale onslaught by the hosts of Saruman. Yet, things begin to go ill with Rohan, until Gandalf arrives with the remains of the army of Westfold that Saruman's forces had previously routed. The tide now turns in Rohan's favour, and Saruman's orcs flee into a forest of Huorns, creatures similar to Ents, and none escape alive. Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas, along with King Théoden and Éomer, head to Saruman's stronghold of Isengard. Here, they reunite with Merry and Pippin and find Isengard overrun by Ents, who had flooded it by breaking a nearby dam of the river Isen, and the central tower of Orthanc besieged, with Saruman and Wormtongue trapped inside. Gandalf offers Saruman a chance to repent, but is refused, and so casts Saruman out of the Order of Wizards and the White Council. Gríma throws something from a window at Gandalf but misses, and it is picked up by Pippin. This object turns out to be one of the palantíri (seeing-stones). Pippin, unable to resist the urge, looks into it and encounters the Eye of Sauron, but emerges unscathed from the ordeal. Gandalf and Pippin then head for Minas Tirith in Gondor in preparation for the imminent war against Mordor, while Théoden, Merry and Aragorn remain behind to begin the muster of Rohan, to ride to the aid of Gondor. Frodo and Sam discover and capture Gollum, who has been stalking them in their quest to reach Mount Doom and destroy the One Ring, as Gollum attempts to reclaim the Ring for himself. Sam loathes and distrusts him, but Frodo pities the poor creature. Gollum promises to lead the pair to the Black Gate of Mordor and for a time appears to be like his old self Sméagol. He leads them through a hidden passage of the Dead Marshes in order to avoid being spied by Orcs. Frodo and Sam learn that the Dead Marshes were once part of an ancient battlefield, upon which the War of the Last Alliance was fought. Upon reaching the Black Gate, Gollum persuades the hobbits not to enter, where they would have been surely caught. He tells them of a secret entrance to Mordor. Thus, they head south into Gondor's province of Ithilien and are accosted by a group of Gondorian rangers led by Faramir, the brother of Boromir. Frodo learns from Faramir of Boromir's death. Faramir and the Rangers lead Sam and Frodo into a secret hideout where Sam accidentally reveals to Faramir that Frodo carries the One Ring. As a result of this Frodo reveals the plan to destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. Later that night, Gollum is captured diving for fish into the sacred pool, the penalty for which is death. Frodo negotiates Gollum's freedom with Faramir. The following morning Faramir allows them to go on their way, but warns them that Gollum may know more about the secret entrance (Cirith Ungol) than he has been telling them. Gollum leads them past the city of Minas Morgul and up a long, steep staircase of the Tower of Cirith Ungol into the lair of an enormous spider named Shelob. Gollum hopes to get the Ring from Frodo's bones after Shelob is done with him. The hobbits escape Shelob in her lair and mistakenly assume that they are safe. However, Shelob sneaks up on Frodo. Sam attempts to warn Frodo but is attacked by Gollum. Shelob stings Frodo in the back of the neck and he collapses to the ground. Sam fends off Gollum and Gollum runs off back towards Shelob's cave. Sam then drives off Shelob. After seeing Frodo lifeless and pale, Sam assumes that Frodo is dead and debates chasing Gollum and abandoning the Quest in favour of vengeance. Sam resolves to finish the Quest himself and takes the Ring. But when Orcs take Frodo's body, Sam follows them and learns that Frodo is not dead, but only unconscious, and is now a prisoner. The book ends with the line, "Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy."
63751	/m/0h36k	The Return of the King	J. R. R. Tolkien	1955-10-20	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Gandalf and Pippin arrive at Minas Tirith in the kingdom of Gondor, delivering the news to Denethor, the Lord and Steward of Gondor, that a devastating attack on his city by Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor is imminent. Pippin then enters the service of the Steward as repayment of a debt he owes to Boromir, Denethor's dead son and preferred heir. Now clad in the uniform of the tower guard, Pippin watches the fortunes of war unfold, while Denethor descends into madness as the hosts of Mordor press ever closer to Gondor's capital city of Minas Tirith. Faramir, Boromir's younger brother, returns from his campaign with the shattered remnants of his company and is soon ordered to ride out and continue the hopeless defence of Osgiliath against a horde of orcs. Osgiliath is soon overrun and a gravely wounded Faramir is carried back to Denethor. His people seemingly lost and his only remaining son all but dead, Denethor orders a funeral pyre built that is to claim both him and his dying son. Minas Tirith stands encircled and besieged by the Sauron's main host, composed of well over 200,000 orcs. Meanwhile, in Rohan, Théoden and his Rohirrim are recovering from the Battle of the Hornburg, in which they defended Rohan against the forces of Saruman at great cost. Aragorn, having confronted Sauron through the palantír of Isengard, sets out to find the lost army of the undead oathbreakers who dwell in the Paths of the Dead, a mountain hall, because they did not help Isildur during the War of the Last Alliance. Helped by his companions Legolas and Gimli as well as a Company of Rangers from Arnor in the north (the "Grey Company"), he sets out to recruit the Army of the Dead to his cause. As Aragorn departs on his seemingly impossible task, King Théoden musters the Rohirrim to come to the aid of Gondor. Merry, eager to go to war with his allies, is refused by Théoden several times. Finally Dernhelm, one of the Rohirrim, takes Merry up on his horse so that he can accompany the rest of the Rohirrim. Aided by a tribe of Wild Men of the Woods, Théoden's forces travel a long-forgotten forest path to avoid an Orc ambush on the main road and reach Minas Tirith stealthily. The hosts of Mordor, led by the dreaded Witch King of Angmar, succeed in breaking through the gates of Minas Tirith, but are in turn crushed by the arriving cavalry of Rohan. The battle is also joined by a "black fleet with black sails". The forces of Mordor initially rejoice at its arrival; and then are horrified to see the banner of the King upon the ships. Aragorn has succeeded in using the Oathbreakers to defeat the Corsairs of Umbar; the men of Gondor who were once slaves on the ships are brought back to fight the host of Mordor. In the following Battle of the Pelennor Fields the Witch-king is slain by Dernhelm, revealed to be Éowyn the niece of King Théoden, with help from Merry. Thus the siege is broken, but at heavy cost: many warriors of Gondor and Rohan fall, among them King Théoden. Denethor attempts to immolate himself and Faramir on his funeral pyre, but Gandalf and Pippin succeed in saving Faramir, who is subsequently healed by Aragorn. Aragorn also heals Merry and Éowyn, who were hurt by the Witch-king before he fell. Knowing that it is only a matter of time before Sauron rebuilds his forces for another attack, Gandalf and Aragorn decide to draw out the hosts of Mordor with an assault on the Black Gate, providing a distraction so that Frodo and Sam may have a chance of reaching Mount Doom and destroy the One Ring, unseen by the Eye of Sauron. Gandalf and Aragorn lead an army to the Black Gate of Mordor and lay siege to Sauron's army. The battle begins and the body of a troll he had killed falls onto Pippin, and he loses consciousness just as the Great Eagles arrive. Sam, who now bears the One Ring in Frodo's place, rescues his master from torture and death by Orcs in the Tower of Cirith Ungol. Frodo and Sam navigate the barren wasteland of Mordor and are overtaken by a company of Orcs but escape and are forced to disguise themselves in Orcish armour. Gandalf's plan to distract Sauron from the Ring is successful: Mordor is almost empty as all the remaining Orcs have been summoned to defend the land against the assault of the army led by Gandalf and Aragorn. Frodo and Sam, after a weary and dangerous journey, finally reach their final destination of the Crack of Doom. As Frodo is preparing to throw the Ring into Mount Doom, he succumbs to the Ring's power and unknowingly claims it as his own. Just then, Gollum, who had been following Frodo and Sam still, attacks Frodo and bites off his finger and the Ring. Gollum gloats over getting his precious back, but loses his balance and falls into his death, taking the Ring with him. The Ring is finally destroyed, freeing Middle-earth from Sauron's power. Mount Doom erupts violently, trapping Frodo and Sam among the lava flows until the Great Eagles rescue them. Upon Sauron's defeat, his armies at the Gate flee. Sauron finally appears as a gigantic shadow trying to reach out for the armies of men, but is now powerless and is blown away by a wind. The men under Sauron's command that surrender are forgiven and allowed to return to their lands in peace. Aragorn is crowned King of Gondor outside the walls of Minas Tirith in a celebration during which all four Hobbits are greatly honoured for their contribution to the War of the Ring. A healed Faramir is appointed Prince of Ithilien and Steward of Gondor, and Aragorn marries Arwen, daughter of Elrond of Rivendell. After a series of goodbyes, the Hobbits finally return home, only to find the Shire in ruins, its inhabitants oppressed by Lotho Sackville-Baggins (usually called "The Chief" or "The Boss") who is in reality controlled by a shadowy figure called "Sharkey". Sharkey has taken complete control of the Shire using corrupt Men, and begins felling trees in a gratuitous program of industrialization (which actually produces nothing except destruction and misery for the locals). Merry, Pippin, Frodo and Sam make plans to set things right once more. They lead an uprising of Hobbits and are victorious at the Battle of Bywater which effectively frees the Shire. At the very doorstep of Bag End, they meet Sharkey, who is revealed to be the evil wizard Saruman, and his servant Gríma. Obstinate in defeat, Saruman abuses Gríma, who responds by slitting his master's throat. Gríma is himself slain by hobbit archers as he attempts to escape. Over time, the Shire is healed. The many trees that Saruman's men cut down are replanted; buildings are rebuilt and peace is restored. Sam marries Rosie Cotton, with whom he had been entranced for some time. Merry and Pippin lead Buckland and Tuckborough to greater achievements. However, Frodo cannot escape the pain of his wounds, having been stabbed by the Witch-king and poisoned by Shelob in addition to losing a finger. Eventually, Frodo departs for the Undying Lands in the West along with Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, and many Elves, ending the Third Age. Sam, Merry, and Pippin watch Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo, and the Elves depart and return home. Now heir to all of Frodo's possessions, Sam is greeted by Rosie and his daughter Elanor and delivers his final spoken words of the book: "Well, I'm back."
63754	/m/0h37w	Akallabêth				 Akallabêth (The Downfallen in Adûnaic; Quenya is Atalantë) is the story of the destruction of the Kingdom of Númenor, written by Elendil. After the downfall of the Dark Lord Morgoth at the end of the First Age (which is described in the Quenta Silmarillion) the Edain, those Men who had aided the Elves in their war against Melkor were given Númenor, a new small continent of their own, free from the evil and sadness of Middle-earth. It was located in the middle of the Great Ocean, between the western shores of Middle-earth, and the eastern shores of Aman, where the Valar dwelt. As they entered Númenor, Men were forbidden to set sail towards Aman. For 2500 years Númenor grew in might. Númenórean ships sailed the seas and established remote colonies in Middle-earth. During that time, the Elves of Middle-earth were engaged in a bitter fight with Morgoth's former servant Sauron, who had become the second Dark Lord. The Men of Númenor aided the Elves under Gil-galad yet remaining in Middle-earth. But as time went on, Men became evil and rebelled against the Valar and the Elves, over the course of one and a half thousand years, desiring immortality. Tar-Palantir, the penultimate King, repented of the evil of his fathers, but it was too late. The last king, Ar-Pharazôn, hearing that Sauron was striving for the domination of Men and threatening to destroy Númenor, came with a great host to Middle-earth. Sauron's forces became afraid of the might of Númenor, and fled from the service of their master. Perceiving that he could not overthrow Númenor by strength of arms, Sauron humbled himself before the Númenórean King. Ar-Pharazôn was not convinced and had Sauron taken as a prisoner to Númenor. Soon he became the king's advisor, and corrupted the greater part of Númenor to the worship of Morgoth, offering human sacrifices and cutting down Nimloth, the White Tree. During this time, Númenor grew even more powerful thanks to Sauron's counsel, even as its people's joy and span of years lessened. Sauron convinced Ar-Pharazôn to assail Aman and wrest immortality from the Valar, saying that great kings take what rightfully belongs to them. Sauron's desire was to destroy the Númenóreans and their proud king with the wrath of the Valar (though not to destroy their kingdom), although he underestimated their power. When the Great Armament set foot on Aman, however, the Valar laid down their guardianship and called on Ilúvatar, who broke and remade the world. Eru destroyed Ar-Pharazôn and his Númenórean host, burying them under falling hills until the Dagor Dagorath. To Sauron's dismay, Ilúvatar also had Númenor sunk into the Belegaer, and Aman he removed forever from the circles of the world. The world that had been flat was now spherical, and Aman was only open to Elves, who could still find the Straight Road. Nine ships carrying men of Númenórean royal blood, descendants of the Lords of Andúnië, of the House of Elros, were carried by the storm of the Downfall to the shores of Middle-earth. They were led by Elendil the Tall, and his two sons: Isildur and Anárion, bringing with them a seedling of the White Tree and the palantíri. These and the Númenóreans already living in Middle-earth carried the title of "The Faithful", signifying their continued devotion to the Valar and Eldar. They allied themselves with Gil-galad and marched in the War of the Last Alliance, in which Isildur cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand. The followers of Elendil established two Númenórean realms in exile: Arnor, the high kingdom, in the North, and Gondor in the south. Some of the King's Men, enemies of Elendil, established other realms in exile to the south; of these Umbar was the chief. The culture of Númenor became the dominant culture of Middle-earth (thus, Westron, a descendant of the Adûnaic language of Númenor became the lingua franca). The sadness and the shock from the loss of a whole continent lived ever after in the hearts of kings of Númenórean descent. Arda was made spherical, and Aman was put beyond it, out of the reach of mortal men. Sauron, although bereft of the shape in which he had wrought so great an evil that he could never appear fair in the eyes of men again, escaped from Númenor and returned to Middle-earth once more, taking up the one ring once again.
63985	/m/0h4g1	The Drawing of the Three	Stephen King	1987-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins less than seven hours after the end of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger after The Man in Black has described The Gunslinger's fate using tarot cards. Roland wakes up on a beach, where he is suddenly attacked by a strange, lobster-like creature, which he dubs a "lobstrosity." He kills the creature but not before losing the index and middle finger of his right hand, and most of his right big toe; his untreated wounds soon become infected. Feverish and losing strength, Roland continues to trek north along the beach, where he eventually encounters three doors. Each door opens onto New York City at different periods in time (1987, 1964 and 1977, respectively) and, as Roland passes through these doors, he brings back the companions who will join him on his quest to the Dark Tower. The first door (labeled "The Prisoner") brings Eddie Dean, a heroin addict who is in the process of smuggling cocaine for the drug lord Enrico Balazar. Since Eddie was headed deeper into addiction (at the hands of his brother Henry) or prison (at the hands of the government), or worse (at the hands of his drug lord), he decides to throw his lot in with Roland, although with deep misgivings that he occasionally gives vent to in the form of angry outbursts. The second door (labeled "The Lady of Shadows," so called for her multiple personalities and metaphorically, multiple shadows) reveals Odetta Holmes, a black woman who is active in the civil rights movement. She is wealthy and missing her legs below the knees after being pushed in front of a subway car. Odetta is completely unaware that she has an alternate personality, a violent, predatory woman named Detta. Roland and Eddie are forced to contend with both of these personalities when Odetta's body is forcibly abducted into their world. Instead of revealing a new companion, the third door (labeled "The Pusher") instead reveals a new adversary for Roland: Jack Mort, a sociopath who takes sadistic pleasure in injuring and killing random strangers — and the man responsible for the head trauma that created Odetta Holmes's alternate personality, the loss of Odetta/Detta's legs, and the death of Jake Chambers. Mort's murder of Jake led to Jake's appearance in The Gunslinger. Roland's decisions while dealing with Mort are crucial to later events in the series. The encounter results in the death of Jack Mort and the fusing of the personalities of Odetta and Detta to form a third woman, who will thenceforth be called Susannah. Although the Gunslinger does not bring "The Pusher" with him into his own world (as might be guessed based upon what has happened regarding the previous two doors), his quest for the Dark Tower is not lost, because Roland does draw his third. His third is Susannah; the result of Odetta and Detta's fusion of minds. Through his actions both in his world, and in Eddie, Susannah, and Jack Mort's world, Roland saves Eddie and Susannah. He saves Eddie by curing him of his addiction and bringing Susannah, whom Eddie loves. He saves Susannah by helping her fuse her former personalities, Odetta Holmes and Detta Walker, into a stronger single personality, Susannah Dean. Both owe their lives to Roland, and Roland is acutely aware that he may need to sacrifice them to reach the Tower. Each of these people is essential for Roland to continue his quest. They are all part of a ka-tet, defined as "one made from many" and "sharing the same destiny."
63987	/m/0h4gh	The Gunslinger	Stephen King	1982-06-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It tells the story of the gunslinger, Roland of Gilead, and his quest to catch the man in black, the first of many steps towards his ultimate destination - the Dark Tower. The main story takes place in a world that is somewhat similar to the Old West but exists in an alternate time frame or parallel universe to ours. Roland exists in a place where "the world has moved on." This world has a few things in common with our own, however, including memories of the song "Hey Jude" and the child's rhyme that begins "Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit". Vestiges of forgotten or skewed versions of real-world technology also appear, such as a reference to a gas pump that is worshipped as a god named "Amoco", and an abandoned way station with a water pump which is powered by an "atomic slug". As Roland travels across the desert with his mule in search of the man in black, he encounters Brown, a farmer, and Zoltan, his crow, who graciously offers to put him up for the night. While he is there, we learn of his time spent in Tull through a flashback. Tull was a small town which Roland came to not too long before the start of the novel. The man in black had passed through the town previously; he brought a dead man back to life, and left a trap for Roland: the town itself. After Roland spends some time there, the leader of the local church reveals to him that the man in black has impregnated her, and has turned her against Roland. She turns the entire town on Roland; men, women, and children. In order to escape with his life, Roland is forced to kill every resident of the town, including his lover, Allie. Telling this story seems cathartic for Roland. When he awakes the next day, his mule is dead, forcing him to proceed on foot. Before Roland leaves, Brown asks his permission to eat the mule. At the way station Roland first encounters Jake Chambers, who died in his own universe (presumably our own) when he was pushed in front of a car while walking to school in Manhattan. Roland is nearly dead when he makes it to the way station, and Jake brings him water and jerky while he is recovering. Jake does not know how long he has been at the way station, nor does he know exactly how he got there. He hid when the man in black passed by the way station. Roland hypnotizes him to determine the details of his death, but makes him forget before he awakes (since Jake's death was extremely violent and painful). Before they leave the way station they encounter a demon in the cellar while looking for food. After their palaver, Roland snatches the jawbone from the skeleton in the hole, from which the demon speaks. After leaving the way station, Jake and Roland eventually make their way out of the desert into more welcoming lands. Roland rescues Jake from an encounter with an oracle, and then couples with the oracle himself in order to learn more about his fate and path to the Dark Tower. Roland gives Jake the jawbone from the way station to focus on while he is gone. After Roland returns, Jake discards the jawbone. As Jake and Roland make their way closer to the mountain, Jake begins to fear what will become of him. In a flashback, we learn about Roland's chance encounter in a kitchen which leads to the hanging of Hax, the cook. The apprentice gunslingers are allowed to witness the hanging with their fathers' permission. Roland reveals how he was tricked into calling out his teacher Cort early, through the treachery of Marten. He succeeded in defeating Cort in battle through his ingenious weapon selection - his hawk, David. Jake and Roland make their way into the twisting tunnels below the mountain, propelled along by an ancient mine cart. During the journey, they are attacked by the "Slow Mutants", monstrous subterranean creatures. Roland fights the Slow Mutants off and they proceed. Eventually they find the Man in Black, and as Jake dangles precariously from the tracks, Roland comes to a pivotal choice; save Jake or pursue the Man in Black. Roland chooses to follow the Man in Black. Jake tells Roland, whilst hanging: "Go then, there are other worlds than these." He lets go of the edge and falls without screaming. After sacrificing Jake in the mountain, Roland makes his way down to speak to the man in black. The man in black reads Roland's fate from a pack of cards, including "the sailor" (Jake), "the prisoner" (Eddie Dean) "the lady of shadows" (Odetta Holmes), "death" (but not for Roland), and the Tower itself, as the center of everything. The man in black states that he is merely a pawn of Roland's true enemy, the one who now controls the Dark Tower itself. The man in black creates a representation of the universe, attempting to frighten Roland by showing him how truly insignificant he is in the grand scheme of things, and asks him to give up his quest. Roland refuses, and is made to fall asleep by the man in black. When he wakes up, ten years have passed and there is a skeleton next to him — what he assumes to be the man in black. Roland then sits on the edge of the Western Sea, contemplating the three people he now is charged with bringing into All-World - the Prisoner, the Lady of Shadows, and the Pusher.
63992	/m/0h4hb	On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft	Stephen King	2000-10-03	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The first section of On Writing is an Autobiography mainly about King’s early exposure to writing, and his childhood attempts at writing. King talks about his early attempts to get published, and his first novel Carrie. King also talks about his fame as a writer, and what it took to get there. This includes his relationship with his wife, the death of his mother and his history of drug and alcohol abuse. The second section is practical advice on writing, including tips on grammar and ideas about developing plot and character. King himself describes it as a guide for how "a competent writer can become a good one." This includes his beliefs that a writer should edit out unnecessary details and avoid the use of unnecessary adverbs. He also uses quotes from other books and authors to illustrate his points. The third section is also autobiographical, in which King discusses the 1999 automobile accident in which he was struck by a vehicle while walking down an isolated country road. He describes serious injuries, his painful recovery and his struggle to start writing again. King includes part of a rough draft and an edited draft of his own story entitled "1408". In the United Kingdom paperback version, a short story by Garret Adams entitled "Jumper" was included at the end of the book, which was the winner of the On Writing competition.
63997	/m/0h4kb	The Body	Stephen King	1982	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Vern Tessio informs his three friends that he has overheard his older brother Billy talking with his friend Charlie Hogan, about the location of the corpse of Ray Brower, a boy from Chamberlain, a town 40 miles or so east of Castle Rock, who has gone missing, while going out to pick blueberries with one of his mother's pails. The four friends decide that they will find it so as to be famous. The boys walk along the railroad tracks toward the presumed location of the corpse. Along the way, they trespass at the town dump and are chased by trash-man Milo Pressman's dog "Chopper". Milo insults Teddy's father, which causes Teddy to unleash his anger on Milo. Gordie and Vern are nearly run over by a train while crossing a bridge. While at a resting point, Chris predicts that Gordie will grow up to become a famous writer – perhaps he will even write about his friends one day. When they finally find the spot where the body lies, a gang of bullies arrives just after they do. The gang is composed of Vern's older brother Billy, Charlie Hogan, Chris's older brother Richard "Eyeball" Chambers, Norman "Fuzzy" Bracowicz, John "Ace" Merrill, and two others. The older boys are upset to see the four friends, and during an argument, Chris pulls a gun belonging to his father from his bag back, that he took from his home and fires into the air and then threatens Ace, the leader of the gang. After a brief standoff Ace realizes that Chris is serious, and the teenagers leave. Having seen the body, the boys realize that there is nothing else to be done with it, and return home without further incident. The older boys ultimately decide to phone in the location of the body as an "anonymous tip" and it is eventually found by the authorities as a result. Some days after the confrontation, Ace and Fuzzy break Gordie's nose and fingers and kick him in the testicles, and are on the verge of harming him more seriously when they are run off by Gordie's neighbor, Aunt Evvie Chalmers. Chris's brother breaks his arm and "leaves his face looking like a Canadian sunrise". Teddy and Vern get less severe beatings. The boys refuse to identify their assailants to the authorities, and there are no further repercussions. The narration then goes into fast-forward. Gordon describes the next year or so briefly, stating that Teddy and Vern drift off, befriending some younger boys. In high school, just as Chris predicted, Gordie begins taking college-preparation courses. Unexpectedly, so does Chris. In spite of abuse from his father, taunts from his classmates and distrust from teachers and school counselors, he manages to be successful with help from Gordie. The final two chapters describe the fate of Gordie's three friends, none of whom survive past young adulthood. Vern is killed in a house fire after a party. Teddy, while under the influence of alcohol and drugs, crashes his car and he and his passengers are killed. Chris, who became an outstanding high school and college student and was in his second year of law school, is stabbed to death after trying to stop an argument in a fast-food restaurant. Gordon, the only survivor, continues to write stories through college, and publishes a number of them in small literary journals and men's magazines. His first novel becomes a best-seller, and a successful film. At the time of writing about the events in 1960, he has written seven novels about the supernatural. Gordon has a wife and three children. Gordon is also revealed to be a veteran of the Vietnam War and the counter-culture of the 1960s, occasionally referred to in the flash-forward narratives during the main story. Another story from Different Seasons, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is referenced in this story; Shawshank is described as one of Maine's state prisons. Ray Brower, the boy who went missing and the reason Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern took the camping trip to Back Harlow Road, is from Chamberlain, which is the setting for the King's first novel Carrie. Carrie, which takes place over ten years later but was written eight years earlier, features a reference to a Teddy Duchamp, but he is clearly not the same person as the Teddy of the novella. Jerusalem's Lot, from the novel 'Salem's Lot is referenced when the boys first listen to Gordie's Lard Ass story. The novel Cujo is referenced when Gordie compares the dog Chopper to Cujo. Aunt Evvie Chalmers is a minor character in Cujo, which is set twenty years later. A "Constable Bannerman" is mentioned in the story, but he clearly is not the same person as George Bannerman, the county sheriff who appears in Cujo and The Dead Zone. Ace Merrill and Vern Tessio later appear in "Nona" a short story from the collection Skeleton Crew. Ace Merrill later appears in the last King novel set in Castle Rock, Needful Things, as Mr. Gaunt's employee. He also remembers the happenings of The Body when four snot-nosed kids cheated him and his friends out of something they wanted. Aunt Evvie appears again in a flashback narrative told from the perspective of her niece Polly, one of the major characters in the story. In Lisa Rogak's unauthorized biography "Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King," an accusation is made that an old friend of King's, George McLeod, was delighted to read that King's story "The Body," was dedicated to him. Well into the story however, McLeod was shocked to learn that the story was about four boys that ventured off into the woods on an adventure. McLeod claimed that King had cribbed the idea from a short story he wrote, and requested a portion of the royalties from "The Body" and "Stand by Me." King refused, McLeod sued, and the two were no longer friends. Since that time, King has refused fan requests to read manuscripts for advice, claiming that he is concerned that there can be further accusations of plagiarism in the future.
64002	/m/0h4ld	Wizard and Glass	Stephen King	1997-11-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins where The Waste Lands ended. After Jake, Eddie, Susannah and Roland fruitlessly riddle Blaine the Mono for several hours, Eddie defeats the mad computer by telling childish jokes. Blaine is unable to handle Eddie's "illogical" riddles, and short-circuits. The four gunslingers and Oy the billy-bumbler disembark at the Topeka railway station, which to their surprise is located in the Topeka, Kansas, of the 1980s. The city is deserted, as this version of the world has been depopulated by the influenza of King's novel The Stand. Links between these books also include the following reference to The Walkin' Dude from The Stand on page 95, "Someone had spray-painted over both signs marking the ramp's ascending curve. On the one reading St. Louis 215, someone had slashed watch out for the walking dude."(King, 2003, pg 95) among others. The world also has some other minor differences with the one (or more) known to Eddie, Jake and Susannah, for instance, the Kansas City baseball team is the Monarchs (as opposed to the Royals), and Nozz-A-La is a popular soft drink. The ka-tet leaves the city via the Kansas Turnpike, and as they camp one night next to an eerie dimensional hole which Roland calls a "thinny," the gunslinger tells his apprentices of his past, and his first encounter with a thinny. At the beginning of the story-within-the-story, Roland (age fourteen) earns his guns—an episode retold in the inaugural issue of The Gunslinger Born —and becomes the youngest gunslinger in memory. He did it because he discovered his father's trusted counsellor, the sorcerer Marten Broadcloak, having an affair with his mother, Gabrielle Deschain. In anger, Roland challenges his mentor, Cort, to a duel to earn his guns. Roland bests his teacher, and his father sends him east, away from Gilead, for his own protection. Roland leaves with two companions, Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns. Soon after their arrival in the distant Barony of Mejis, Roland falls in love with Susan Delgado, the promised "gilly" of Thorin—the mayor. His love for Susan Delgado clouds his reasoning for a time and nearly results in a permanent split between him and his previously inseparable friend Cuthbert. He and his ka-tet also discover a plot between the Barony's elite and "The Good Man" John Farson, leader of a rebel faction, to fuel Farson's war machines with Mejis oil. After being seized by the authorities on trumped-up charges of murdering the Barony's Mayor and Chancellor, Roland's ka-tet manages to escape jail with Susan's help, destroy the oil and the detachment Farson sent to transport it, as well as the Mejis traitors. The battle ends at Eyebolt Canyon, where Farson's troops are maneuvered into charging to their deaths into a thinny. The ka-tet also captures the pink-colored Wizard's Glass, a mystical, malevolent orb or crystal ball from the town witch, Rhea of the Cöos. The globe had entranced Rhea so much that she was starving herself and her pets to death because she spent every free moment watching the visions in the orb. The glass then shows Roland a vision of his future, and also of Susan's death (she is burned as a harvest sacrifice for colluding with Roland). The visions send him into a stupor, from which he eventually recovers—at which point the glass torments him with other visions, this time of events that he was not present for but nonetheless shaped his fate and Susan's, such is the nature of the Wizard's Glass. Thus Roland's sad tale comes to a close. In the morning, Roland's new ka-tet comes to a suspiciously familiar Emerald City. The Wizard of Oz parallels continue inside, where the Wizard is revealed to be Marten Broadcloak, also known as Randall Flagg, who flees when Roland attempts to kill him with Jake's Ruger and narrowly misses (Flagg has bewitched Roland's own guns, saying, "Only misfires against me, Roland, old fellow"). In his place he leaves Maerlyn's Grapefruit, which shows the ka-tet the day Roland accidentally killed his own mother. Roland, it has been explained time and again, tends to be very bad medicine for his friends and loved ones. Nonetheless, when given the choice, Eddie, Susannah and Jake all refuse to swear off the quest; and as the novel closes, the ka-tet once more sets off for The Dark Tower, following the Path of the Beam.
64007	/m/0h4m_	The Waste Lands	Stephen King	1991-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins five weeks after the end of The Drawing of the Three. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie have moved east from the shore of the Western Sea, and into the woods of Out-World. After an encounter with a gigantic cyborg bear named Shardik, they discover one of the six mystical Beams that hold the world together. The three gunslingers follow the Path of the Beam inland to Mid-World. Roland now reveals to his ka-tet that his mind has become divided by the paradox of having let Jake Chambers die under the mountain after finding him at the Way Station in the desert, and yet also, after having subsequently prevented Jake's earlier death in New York City, having an alternate memory of traveling through the desert and mountains alone. Meanwhile, in 1977 New York, Jake Chambers is experiencing exactly the same crippling mental divide, which is causing alarm at his private school, and angering Jake's cocaine abusing father. Roland burns Walter's jawbone and the key to his and Jake's dilemma is revealed—but to Eddie Dean, not Roland. Eddie must carve a key that will open the door to New York in 1977. Jake, in a schizophrenic panic, abruptly leaves school. After purchasing a children's book called Charlie the Choo-Choo at a used book shop, Jake finds a key in a littered vacant lot where grows a single red rose. Jake is able to pass into Roland's world using the key to open a door in an abandoned haunted house on Dutch Hill in his place and time. This portal ends in a 'speaking ring' in Roland's world. During this crossing over, Susannah has sex with the demon of the speaking ring to keep it from attacking Eddie. Once the group is reunited, Jake's and Roland's mental anguish ends. Following the path of the beam again, the ka-tet befriends an unusually intelligent billy-bumbler (which looks like a combination of badger, raccoon and dog with parrot-like speaking ability, long neck, curly tail, retractable claws and a high degree of animal intelligence) named Oy, who joins them on their quest. In a small, almost deserted town called River Crossing, Roland is given a silver cross and a courtly tribute by the town's last, ancient citizens. The ka-tet continue on the Path of the Beam to Lud. Before arriving at Lud, the ka-tet hear the drum beat from the song Velcro Fly, by ZZ Top, playing from the city, although Eddie at first can't remember where it is he has heard these drums before. Later the drums are revealed as "War Drums" which Lud's citizens fight to. The ancient, high-tech city has been ravaged by decades of war, and one of the surviving fighters, Gasher, kidnaps Jake by taking advantage of the near-accident the team faced while crossing a decaying bridge that looks like the George Washington Bridge of NYC. Roland and Oy must then trace them through a man-made labyrinth in the city and then into the sewers in order to rescue the boy from Gasher and his leader, the Tick-Tock Man. Jake manages to shoot the Tick-Tock Man, leaving him for dead. The ka-tet is eventually reunited at the Cradle of Lud, a train station which houses a monorail that the travelers use to escape Lud before its final destruction brought about by the monorail's artificial intelligence known as Blaine the Mono. The "Ageless Stranger" (an enemy whom the Man in Black warned Roland that he must slay) arrives to recruit the badly-injured Tick-Tock Man as his servant. Once aboard Blaine, a highly intelligent, computerized train which is insane due to system degradation, it announces its intention to derail itself with them aboard unless they can defeat it in a riddle contest. The novel ends with Blaine and Roland's ka-tet speeding through the Waste Lands, a radioactive land of mutated animals and ancient ruins created by something that is claimed to have been far worse than a nuclear war, on the way to Topeka -the end of the line.
64010	/m/0h4nt	The Eyes of the Dragon	Stephen King	1987-02-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Eyes of the Dragon takes place entirely within the realm of Delain (which itself is located within In-World from The Dark Tower series). It is told from the perspective of an unnamed storyteller/narrator, who speaks casually and frankly to the reader, frequently adding his own commentary on characters' motivations and the like. The King's magician, Flagg, seeking to destroy the Kingdom of Delain, sees his plans being ruined by the good heart of Queen Sasha. After Sasha gives birth to Peter, a noble and worthy future king, Flagg realizes that his position, his plans, and his life may be in danger because of Peter. When Sasha is pregnant with a second son, Flagg seizes the opportunity. He forces the Queen's midwife to cut Sasha as the second son, Thomas, is born. Sasha bleeds to death and Flagg begins plotting to remove Peter. As Peter becomes a teenager, he begins the custom of bringing a glass of wine to his father before bed each night. Flagg decides to use this as a means of framing Peter. He dissolves a poison called "Dragon Sand" in a glass of wine and delivers it to the king after Peter leaves. Previously, in an attempt to win Thomas' friendship, Flagg had shown him a secret passage where Thomas could spy on his father. Unbeknownst to Flagg, when he delivers the poison, Thomas is watching through the glass eyes of the mounted head of Roland's greatest trophy, the dragon. Flagg plants evidence incriminating Peter. After a brief trial, during which the judge decides Peter is guilty, he is locked up in the enormous tower called the Needle in the center of the city. Thomas is then crowned King, although he is only twelve years old; due to his youth and his fearful inexperience, he allows Flagg enormous amounts of power. At the start of his long stay in the Needle, Peter manages to send a note to the judge who convicted him, Anders Peyna, with the seemingly innocuous requests to have his mother's old dollhouse and napkins with his meals. Peyna is puzzled by the requests, but, seeing no harm in them, grants them. Five years later, Peter escapes from the Needle, having used the toy loom in the dollhouse and threads from the napkins to make a rope. After the escape he and his allies rush to get Roland’s bow and arrow. However, it is not to be found because Thomas had it once they got into the king's "sitting room". Flagg, now revealed as a demonic being, is about to kill them when Thomas reveals himself and tells Flagg that he (Thomas) watched Flagg poison Roland. Thomas shoots Flagg in the eye, but Flagg uses magic to disappear and escape. At the end of the novel, Peter is declared to be the rightful king. Thomas, who has become deeply hated in Delain, sets off alongside his butler, Dennis, to find Flagg. They find him and they confront him, but the narrator does not reveal the outcome.
64019	/m/0h4s1	Riding the Bullet	Stephen King			 Alan Parker is a student at the University of Maine who is trying to find himself. He gets a call from a neighbor in his hometown, Lewiston, telling him that his mother has been taken to the hospital after having a stroke. Lacking a functioning car, Parker decides to hitchhike the 120-miles south to visit his mother. His first ride is with an old man who continually tugs at his crotch in a car that stinks of urine. Happy to escape this ride, Alan starts walking, thumbing his next ride. Coming upon a graveyard, Alan notices a headstone for a stranger named George Staub (Staub is German and means dust): "Well Begun, Too Soon Done." Sure enough, the next car to pick him up is George Staub, complete with black stitches around his neck where his head had been sewn on after being severed and wearing a button saying "I rode The Bullet at Thrill Village, Laconia." During the ride, George talks to Alan about the amusement park ride he was too scared to ride as a kid: The Bullet in Thrill Village, Laconia, New Hampshire. George tells Alan that before they reach the lights of town, Alan must choose who goes on the death ride with George: Alan or his mother. In a moment of fright, Alan saves himself and tells him to "Take her. Take my Mother." George shoves Alan out of the car, where he reappears alone at the graveyard, wearing the "I Rode the Bullet at Thrill Village" button. Alan eventually reaches the hospital, despite his guilt and the impending feeling that his mother is dead or will die any moment, his mother is fine. Alan takes the button and treasures it as a good (or bad) luck charm, his mother returns to work and to smoking, he graduates and takes care of his mother for several years and another stroke. One day he loses the button and knows what the phone call was about.... He finds the button underneath his mother's bed, and after a final moment of sadness, guilt, and meditation, decides to carry on.
64024	/m/0h4tj	Dolores Claiborne	Stephen King		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the story begins, Dolores Claiborne is in a police interrogation and wants to make clear to the police that she did not kill her wealthy employer, an elderly woman named Vera Donovan whom she has looked after for years. She does, however, confess to the murder of her husband, Joe St. George, almost 30 years before, after finding out that he sexually molested their fourteen year old daughter, Selena. Dolores's "confession" develops into the story of her life, her troubled marriage, and her relationship with her employer. Unlike many other works by King, there is little focus on the supernatural; the only such event in the book are two telepathic visions, which form a link to King's novel Gerald's Game; although reviewer Sean Piccoli observed the novel otherwise contained "vintage bone-yard King: the tiny town, the secret lives. Murder and mayhem lurk reliably behind the tranquil veneer."
64025	/m/0h4ty	Gerald's Game	Stephen King		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story begins with Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald in the bedroom of their secluded cabin in western Maine, where they have gone for an off-beat romantic weekend. Gerald, a successful lawyer with an aggressive personality, has been able to reinvigorate the couple's sex life by handcuffing Jessie to the bed. Jessie has been into the game before, but suddenly balks. As Gerald starts to crawl on top of her, knowing her protests are real but ignoring them anyway, she kicks him in the stomach and in the groin, and he then has a heart attack, falls from the bed to the floor, cracks his head, and dies. Jessie is alone in the cabin and unable to move or summon help. The only things that show up are a hungry stray dog named Prince that starts feeding on Gerald's body and a terrifying, deformed apparition that may or may not be real, whom Jessie first mistakes for the ghost of her long dead father but dismisses it later. Jessie begins to think of this bizarre visitor as "The Space Cowboy" (after a line from a Steve Miller song, "The Joker"). A combination of panic and thirst eventually causes Jessie to hallucinate. She hears voices in her head, each one ostensibly the voice of a person in her life, primarily "The Goodwife" or "Goody Burlingame" (a somewhat Puritanical version of Jessie), Ruth Neary (an old college friend), and Nora Callighan (her ex-psychiatrist), both of whom Jessie hasn't spoken to in decades. These voices represent different parts of her personality which help her extract a painful childhood memory she has kept suppressed for many years. She was sexually abused by her father at age ten during a solar eclipse that occurred in her Maine hometown. She also begins to realize how unhappy her marriage was, and that she sacrificed the life she wanted for the security of Gerald's paycheck by being a trophy wife without children. This internal dialogue is mixed with descriptions of Jessie's more and more desperate attempts to get out of the handcuffs, first by trying to break the headboard she was cuffed to then by trying to slip off the bed and push the bed to the bureau where the keys were placed. Finally she does escape after one of the voices in her head tells her that if she stays another night, The Space Cowboy, who she dreamed of as a manifestation of Death, will more than likely take a part of her to add to its trophy "fishing creel" filled with jewelry and human bones, killing her in the process. Jessie escapes the handcuffs by slicing her arm open all the way around on a broken glass and giving herself a degloving injury in order to lubricate her skin enough for the cuffs, which were made for men and not women and thus almost loose enough for her to slip out normally, to slide off her right hand. She is then able to move behind the bed, push it over to the bureau and use one of the keys to unlock her left handcuff. However, she has lost a lot of blood and passes out shortly after. When she awakens, it is now nighttime, and the Space Cowboy has made his way back into the house. Jessie confronts him and throws her wedding ring at his box of jewelry and bones, thinking that is what he wanted all along, then turns and runs out of the house. She is able to make it into her car and finally escape the house, but is terrified to discover the Space Cowboy sitting in the backseat of the car. Jessie crashes out of fear and is knocked unconscious, and it is later revealed that she only imagined the Space Cowboy in the backseat. The story cuts to months later with Jessie recuperating from the incident and being looked after by a nurse. An ambitious associate attorney at Gerald's law firm assists her in covering up the real incident to protect her and the law firm from scandal, as well as assisting her in her recuperation. At the end, we get to read the letter that Jessie writes to Ruth Neary, detailing what happened after the incident and her recuperation process, which is slow but very meaningful. One of the passages in the letter revolves around a serial necrophiliac and murderer named Raymond Andrew Joubert making his way through Maine; it turns out he was the Space Cowboy, confirmed when Jessie confronted him in a court hearing and Joubert mimicked Jessie's arm positions while she was in the handcuffs. He also repeated her frightened exclamations that Joubert was "not anyone," and that he was only "made of moonlight." Jessie also mentions what became of Prince who gnawed on Gerald. He is shot and killed. Initially, his owner had abandoned him in Maine and driven back to Massachusetts, simply because he didn't want to pay for the dog's license. The only true supernatural event in the story occurs as described during one of Jessie's flashbacks, when, during a particularly stressful incident at the time of childhood, she has a waking dream. In King's subsequent novel, Dolores Claiborne, it is revealed that the title main character shared a telepathic connection with Jessie Burlingame on two occasions, first during the solar eclipse when Jessie was assaulted by her father, and later when she is handcuffed to the bed. The two novels were initially conceived to be part of a single volume titled In the Path of the Eclipse. Later editions of Dolores Claiborne have a foreword that explains the connection between the two. Sheriff Alan Pangborn and Deputy Norris Ridgewick are mentioned near the end of Gerald's Game. Both characters appeared previously in The Dark Half and Needful Things, set in the fictional town of Castle Rock. In the later King novel Lisey's Story, Lisey often refers to the unbalanced fans her husband's horror novels have created as "Space Cowboys."
64026	/m/0h4v9	The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel	Stephen King	1999-04-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in motion by a family hiking trip, during which Trisha's brother, Pete, and mother constantly squabble about the mother's divorce with her father, as well as other topics. Trisha falls back to avoid listening and is therefore unable to find her family again after she wanders off the trail to take a bathroom break. Trying to catch up by attempting a shortcut, she slips and falls down a steep embankment and ends up hopelessly lost, heading deeper into the heart of the forest. She is left with a bottle of water, two Twinkies, a boiled egg, a tuna sandwich, a bottle of Surge, a poncho, a Game Boy, and a Walkman. Now and then she listens to her Walkman to keep her mood up, either to learn of news of the search for her, or to listen to the baseball game featuring her favorite player, and "heartthrob," Tom Gordon. As she starts to take steps to survive by conserving what little food she has with her and consuming edible flora, her mother and brother return to their car without her and call the police and start a search. The rescuers search in the area around the path, but not as far away as Trisha has gone. The girl decides to follow a creek because of what she read in Little House on the Prairie (though it soon turns into a swamp-like river), rationalizing that all bodies of water lead eventually to civilization. As the cops stop searching for the night, she huddles up underneath a tree to rest. Eventually, a combination of fear, hunger, and thirst causes Trisha to hallucinate. She imagines several people from her life, as well as her hero, Tom Gordon, appearing to her. It is left unclear whether increasingly obvious signs of supernatural events in the woods are also hallucinations. Hours and soon days begin to pass, with Trisha wandering further into the woods. Eventually she begins to believe that she is headed for a confrontation with the God of the Lost, a wasp-faced, evil entity who is hunting her down. Her trial becomes a test of a 9 year old girl's ability to maintain sanity in the face of seemingly certain death. Racked with pneumonia and near death, she comes upon a road, but just as she discovers signs of civilization, she is confronted by a bear, which she interprets as the God of the Lost in disguise. Facing down her fear, she realizes it is the bottom of the ninth, and she must close the game. In imitation of Tom Gordon, she takes a pitcher's stance and throws her Walkman like a baseball, hitting the bear in the face, and startling it enough to make it back away. A hunter who has come upon the confrontation between girl and beast frightens the bear away and takes Trisha to safety, but Trisha knows that she earned her rescue. Trisha wakes up in a hospital to find her divorced parents and older brother waiting near her bedside. A nurse tells the girl's family that they must leave because "Her numbers are up and we don't want that." Her father is the last to leave. Before he does Trisha asks him to hand her her Red Sox hat (autographed by Tom Gordon) and she points towards the sky, just as Tom Gordon does when he closes a game.
64029	/m/0h4wh	The Green Mile	Stephen King	1996-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A first-person narrative told by Paul Edgecombe, the novel switches between Paul as an old man in the Georgia Pines nursing home sharing his story with fellow resident Elaine Connelly in 1996, and his time in 1932 as the block supervisor of the Cold Mountain Penitentiary death row, nicknamed "The Green Mile" for the color of the floor's linoleum. This year marks the arrival of John Coffey, a 6'8" powerfully built black man who has been convicted of raping and murdering two small white girls. During his time on the Mile, John interacts with fellow prisoners Eduard "Del" Delacroix, a Cajun arsonist, rapist, and murderer, and William Wharton ("Billy the Kid" to himself, "Wild Bill" to the guards), a wild-acting and dangerous multiple murderer who is determined to make as much trouble as he can before he is executed. Other inhabitants include Arlen Bitterbuck, a Native American convicted of killing a man in a fight over a pair of boots (also the first character to die in the electric chair); Arthur Flanders, a real estate executive who killed his father to perpetrate insurance fraud, and whose sentence is eventually commuted to life imprisonment; and Mr. Jingles, a mouse, whom Del teaches various tricks. Paul and the other guards are antagonized throughout the book by Percy Wetmore, a sadistic guard who enjoys irritating the prisoners. The other guards have to be civil to him despite their dislike of him because he is the nephew of the Governor's wife. When Percy is offered a position at the nearby Briar Ridge psychiatric hospital as a secretary, Paul thinks they are finally rid of him. However, Percy refuses to leave until he is allowed to supervise an execution, so Paul hesitantly allows him to run Del's. Percy deliberately avoids soaking a sponge in brine that is supposed to be tucked inside the electrode cap to ensure a quick death in the electric chair. When the switch is thrown, the current causes Del to catch fire in the chair and suffer a prolonged, agonizing demise. Over time, Paul realizes that John possesses inexplicable healing abilities, which he uses to cure Paul's urinary tract infection and revive Mr. Jingles after Percy stamps on him. Simple-minded and shy, John is very empathic and sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others around him. One night, the guards drug Wharton, then put a straitjacket on Percy and lock him in the padded restraint room so that they can smuggle John out of the prison and take him to the home of Warden Hal Moores. Hal's wife Melinda has a deadly brain tumor, which John cures. When they return to the Mile, John passes the "disease" from Melinda into Percy, causing him to go mad and shoot Wharton to death before falling into a catatonic state from which he never recovers. Percy is committed to Briar Ridge. Paul's long-simmering suspicions that John is innocent are proven right when he discovers that it was actually William Wharton who raped and killed the twin sisters and that John was trying to revive them. Later John tells Paul what he saw when Wharton grabbed his arm one time, how Wharton had coerced the sisters to be silent using their love for each other. Paul is unsure how to help John, but John tells him not to worry, as he is ready to die anyway, wanting to escape the cruelty of the world. John's execution is the last one in which Paul participates. He introduces Mr. Jingles to Elaine just before the mouse dies, having lived 64 years past these events, and explains that those healed by John gained an unnaturally long lifespan. Elaine dies shortly after, never learning how Paul's wife died in his arms immediately after they suffered a bus accident, and that he then saw John Coffey's ghost watching him from an overpass. Paul seems to be all alone, now 104 years old, and wondering how much longer he will live.
64035	/m/0h4xv	The Long Walk	Stephen King		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 One hundred teenage boys participate in an annual walking contest called "The Long Walk", which is the "national sport". Each Walker must maintain a speed of at least four miles per hour; if he drops below that speed for 30 seconds, he receives a verbal warning (which can be erased by walking for one hour without being warned). If a Walker with three warnings slows down again, he is "ticketed". The meaning of this term is intentionally kept vague at first, but it soon becomes clear that "buying a ticket" means to be shot dead by soldiers riding in half-tracks along the roadside. Walkers may be shot immediately for certain serious violations, such as trying to leave the road or attacking the half-track. The soldiers use electronic equipment to precisely determine a Walker's speed. The event is run by a character known as "The Major", who is implied to have much power, stemming from a possible military or fascist state system. The Major appears at the beginning of the Walk to encourage the boys and start them on their way, and then occasionally thereafter. While the Walkers initially greet him with awe and respect, they eventually realize their admiration is misplaced and ridicule him in later appearances. The Walk begins at the Maine/Canada border and travels the east coast of the United States until the winner is determined. There are no stops, rest periods, or established finish line, and the Walk does not pause for any reason (including bad weather or darkness); it ends only when one Walker is left alive. According to the rules, the Walkers can obtain aid only from the soldiers, who distribute canteens of water and belts packed with food concentrates (apparently similar to the ones developed by NASA's space program) just before the Walk begins. They may request a fresh canteen at any time, and new food supplies are distributed at 9:00 every morning. Walkers may bring anything they can carry, including food or additional footwear, but cannot receive aid from bystanders. They are allowed to have bodily contact with onlookers as long as they stay on the road. While they cannot physically interfere with one another to detrimental effect, they can help each other, provided they stay above four miles per hour. The winner receives "The Prize": anything he wants for the rest of his life. It is implied that many past winners have died soon after the Walk, due to its hazardous mental and physical challenges. The Long Walk is not only a physical trial, but a psychological one, as the Walkers are continually pressed against the idea of death and their mortality. Contestants have actually tried to crawl at 4 mph to survive after their legs gave out. The story has several characters who suffer mental breakdown, one of whom kills himself by tearing out his throat, and most characters experience some mental degeneration from the stress and lack of sleep. The protagonist of the novel is Raymond Davis Garraty, a 16-year-old boy from the town of Pownal in Androscoggin County, Maine. Early on, Ray falls in with several other boys—including Peter McVries, Arthur Baker, Hank Olson, Collie Parker, Pearson, Harkness, and Abraham—who refer to themselves as "The Musketeers". Another Walker—Gary Barkovitch—quickly establishes himself as an external antagonist, as he quickly angers his fellow walkers with multiple taunts of "dancing on their graves". This results in the death of a fellow walker, Rank, who is ticketed while trying to injure Barkovitch. Lastly, the most alluring and mysterious Walker is a boy named Stebbins. Throughout the Walk, Stebbins establishes himself as a loner, observing the ground beneath him as he listens to fellow Walkers' complaints, seemingly unaffected by the mental and physical strains. The only character Stebbins truly interacts with is Ray Garraty. In one conversation, Garraty alludes to Alice in Wonderland, likening Stebbins to the Caterpillar. Stebbins, however, corrects him: he believes himself to be more of a White Rabbit type. Along the road, the Walkers learn that one of their number, a kid named Scramm — who is initially the heavy odds-on favorite to win the Walk — is married. When Scramm gets pneumonia, the remaining Walkers agree that the winner will use some of the Prize to take care of his pregnant widow, Cathy. Members of the public interfering with the Walkers can receive an "interference" ticket. This nearly occurs when the mother of a Walker named Percy tries, on several occasions, to get onto the road and find her son (at her last attempt, he has already been killed for attempting to sneak away). Only the intervention of the local police keeps her from being executed. The second instance is when a spectator's dog runs across the road in front of the Walkers and is shot. However, one man is able to throw the Walkers watermelon slices before being hauled away by the police rather than the soldiers; several Walkers receive third warnings after taking the watermelon, but none of them are shot. Garraty becomes closest to Peter McVries, a boy with a prominent facial scar who speculates that his own reason for joining the Walk is a subconscious death wish. When Garraty suffers a charley horse and comes within two seconds of being killed, McVries keeps him talking and distracted long enough to drop a warning, saving his life. After five days and hundreds of miles, the Walk eventually comes down to Garraty and Stebbins, who revealed to Garraty and McVries earlier that day, that he is the illegitimate son of the Major. Stebbins states he used to think the Major was unaware of his existence, but it turns out that the Major has numerous illegitimate children nationwide. Four years earlier the Major took Stebbins to the finish of a Long Walk and now Stebbins feels that the Major has set him up to be "the rabbit", motivating other runners to walk farther to prolong the race, just as rabbits are used in dog races. Stebbins's plan, upon winning the Walk, is to ask that his prize be to be "taken into [his] father's house". At the end of the book, having gone farther than any Long Walk in history - the Long Walkers reached Massachusetts for the first time in seventeen years - Garraty decides to give up after realizing that Stebbins has shown almost no weaknesses over the duration of the Walk. Garraty catches up with Stebbins to tell him this, but before he can speak Stebbins collapses and dies; thus Garraty is declared the winner. Unaware of the celebration going on around him, Garraty gets up from Stebbins's side and keeps on walking, believing the race to still continue, as he hallucinates of a dark figure not far ahead that he thinks is another runner. He ignores a jeep coming towards him in which the Major comes to award him the victory, thinking it's a trespassing vehicle. When a hand, likely the Major's, tries to hold his shoulder Garraty somehow finds the strength to run.
64199	/m/0h5l0	Solaris	Stanisław Lem	1961	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life on a far-distant planet. Solaris, with whom Terran scientists are attempting communication, is almost completely covered with an ocean that is revealed to be a single, planet-encompassing organism. What appear to be waves on its surface are later revealed to be the equivalents of muscle contractions. Kris Kelvin arrives aboard the scientific research station hovering (via anti-gravity generators) near the oceanic surface of the planet Solaris. The scientists there have studied the planet and its ocean for many decades, a scientific discipline known as Solaristics, which over the years has degenerated to simply observe, record and categorize the complex phenomena that occur upon the surface of the ocean. Thus far, they have only achieved the formal classification of the phenomena with an elaborate nomenclature — yet do not understand what such activities really mean in a strictly scientific sense. Shortly before psychologist Kelvin's arrival, the crew has exposed the ocean to a more aggressive and unauthorized experimentation with a high-energy X-ray bombardment. Their experimentation gives unexpected results and becomes psychologically traumatic for them as individually flawed humans. The ocean's response to their aggression exposes the deeper, hidden aspects of the personalities of the human scientists — whilst revealing nothing of the ocean’s nature itself. To the extent that the ocean’s actions can be understood, the ocean then seems to test the minds of the scientists by confronting them with their most painful and repressed thoughts and memories. It does this via the materialization of physical human simulacra; Kelvin confronts memories of his dead lover and guilt about her suicide. The torments of the other researchers are only alluded to but seem even worse than Kelvin’s personal purgatory. The ocean’s intelligence expresses physical phenomena in ways difficult for their limited earth science to explain, deeply upsetting the scientists. The alien (extraterrestrial) mind of Solaris is so greatly different from the human mind of (objective) consciousness that attempts at inter-species communications are a dismal failure.
64594	/m/0h78p	You Can't Take It with You	Moss Hart			 At first the Sycamores seem mad, but it is not long before you realize that if they are mad, then the rest of the world is madder. In contrast to these delightful people are the unhappy Kirbys. Tony, the attractive young son of the Kirbys, falls in love with Alice Sycamore and brings his parents to dine at the Sycamore house on the wrong evening. The shock sustained by Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, who are invited to eat cheap food, shows Alice that marriage with Tony is out of the question. The Sycamores find it hard to understand Alice's view. Tony knows the Sycamores live the right way with love and care for each other, while his own family is the one that's crazy. In the end, Mr. Kirby is converted to the happy madness of the Sycamores after he happens in during a visit by the ex-Grand Duchess of Russia, Olga Katrina, who is currently earning her living as a waitress. The story takes place entirely in the large house of a slightly batty New York City family. Various characters in the lives of the Vanderhof/Sycamore/Carmichael clan are introduced in the first act. The patriarch of the family, Grandpa Vanderhof, is an eccentric old man who keeps snakes and has never paid his income tax. Penelope "Penny" Vanderhof Sycamore is his daughter (a writer of adventure- and sex-filled melodrama plays), who is married to Paul Sycamore, a tinkerer who manufactures fireworks in the basement with the help of his assistant Mr. De Pinna who used to be the family's iceman. One of Paul and Penny's two daughters is Essie Sycamore Carmichael, a childish candymaker who dreams of being a ballerina (but in reality is terrible at dancing). Essie is married to Ed Carmichael, a xylophone player who lives with them and helps distribute Essie's candies. Ed is an amateur printer who prints any phrase that sounds catchy. Paul and Penny's other daughter Alice Sycamore is quite obviously the only "normal" family member. She has an office job and is sometimes embarrassed by the eccentricities of her family, yet deep down, she still loves them. In addition, the Vanderhof/Sycamore/Carmichael clan employs a maid Rheba, who is dating Donald, who performs odd jobs for the Sycamores. Essie tells Grandpa Vanderhof that some letters have arrived for him from the "United States Government," but that she misplaced them. Shortly afterwards, Alice comes home and announces that she has fallen in love with a young man with whom she works, Tony Kirby, the son of the company's executive. Before going upstairs to change, Alice tells her family that he will be coming over shortly to take her on a date. The entire family is still joyfully discussing her boyfriend when the doorbell rings. Penny answers the door and greets the man standing there, thinking he must be Tony, but only after forcing the stranger to shake hands with the entire family do they realize that he is not Alice's boyfriend: he is a tax investigator. His name is Wilbur C. Henderson, and he is investigating Grandpa for his evasion of income tax. When Henderson asks Grandpa why he owed twenty-four years of back income tax, Grandpa states he never believed in it, and that the government wouldn't know what to do with the money if he did pay it. Henderson becomes infuriated by Grandpa's answers to his questions. Henderson spots Grandpa's snakes, and runs out of the house in fear, but not before promising Grandpa that he will hear, one way or another, from the United States government. The real Tony Kirby arrives, and Alice is nervous that her eccentric family will scare him away, so she attempts to leave with him on their date. As they attempt to leave, Mr. Boris Kolenkhov, Essie's extremely Russian ballet instructor, arrives and makes chitchat with the family, complaining about the Revolution. During this discussion, Alice and Tony make their escape. Then the rest of the family sit down for dinner. Later that night, Alice and Tony come back very late from their date and have a glass of wine and Tony makes a toast. Though it is revealed that they both love each other very, very much, Alice has doubts as to whether a marriage of Tony and Alice's families could ever work out fine. Tony insists that, if they love each other, it shouldn't matter, but Alice ignores him and tearfully shouts that it just would never work. She divulges how Grandpa could have been "a very rich man," but instead, he had an epiphany one day and rode the elevator right back down to the lobby of his building and quit work. Alice explains that her family is too odd to get along with any other. In the course of their conversation, which is interrupted by Essie and Ed (who come home from a Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire movie) and then Donald at one point, Tony wins Alice over, and they agree to get married. Paul comes up from the basement and tells Alice to watch his latest firework masterpiece, and she lovingly says: "It's the most beautiful red fire in the world..." The second act takes place a few days later. Alice has invited Tony, his father, and his mother over for dinner tomorrow night, and it is the only thing on the entire family's mind. Alice runs around the house telling her family to try to act as normal as possible. Penny has brought actress Gay Wellington over to read over Penny's latest play, but Gay becomes very drunk, and passes out onto the living room couch. Ed returns from distributing Essie's candies with news that he is being followed by someone. When Mr. DePinna looks out the window, no one is there, just some man walking away. Ed decides to go out and deliver the candy anyway because Essie asks him to. Paul and Mr. De Pinna are downstairs the whole time making fireworks. Mr. DePinna comes up from the basement carrying a painting that Penny had started of him as a discus thrower. Mr. DePinna asks if Penny would finish it and she agrees. She leaves to put on her painting gear and Mr. DePinna leaves to put on his robe. At the same time, Mr. Kolenkhov arrives and begins Essie's ballet lesson. Ed provides accompanying music on the xylophone. Rheba runs in and out of the kitchen cleaning. Grandpa takes this time to practice darts and feed the snakes. In the midst of all this hullabaloo, Tony appears in the doorway with Mr. Kirby and Mrs. Kirby. Before them is the entire eccentric spectacle. Apparently, Tony has forgotten for which night dinner was planned, and Alice is incredibly embarrassed. Penny tells Alice not to worry, and that they can manage a nice dinner easily. She gives a list of things to Donald and tells him to run down to the store. Grandpa tries desperately to keep the party normal and under control for the sake of his granddaughter. Mr. Kirby reveals himself to be a very straightlaced fat-cat, who raises orchids as a hobby. Mr. Kirby investigates a child's model and finds it is Paul's "hobby." Mrs. Kirby tells them that her true passion is spiritualism, to which Penny replies, "We all know that's a fake." During a discussion of hobbies, Mr. Kolenkhov brings up that the Romans' hobby was wrestling, and demonstrates on Mr. Kirby by throwing him on the floor. To pass the time after the awkward incident, Penny suggests they play a free association game. Alice imagines what is coming and immediately tries to quash the suggestions, but Penny shrugs her off and instructs everyone to write down "the first thing that pops into their heads" after she says certain words. Penny offers the words "potato, bathroom, lust, honeymoon, and sex." Penny reads Mr. Kirby's list first, with reactions of, respectively: "steak, toothpaste, unlawful, trip, male." Mrs. Kirby's list, however, causes much controversy. "Starch" is her response to potatoes, which is not that bad, but her response for "bathroom" is "Mr. Kirby," and she covers it up with the fact that Mr. Kirby spends a lot of time in there "bathing and shaving". Her response to "lust" is "human," claiming it is a perfectly human emotion. Mr. Kirby disagrees, saying "it is depraved." "Honeymoon"'s reply is "dull," as Mrs. Kirby explains that there was "nothing to do at night." The shocker comes when Mrs. Kirby says her reply to "sex" was "Wall Street". She at first claims she doesn't know what she meant by it, but once provoked she yells at Mr. Kirby "You're always talking about Wall Street, even when--" and then stops. Wholly embarrassed and humiliated, Mr. Kirby and Mrs. Kirby order Tony home with them immediately but Tony refuses to go. Alice agrees with Tony's parents, but Tony insists they stay. Grandpa offers his opinion, but before anyone can do anything, federal agents overrun the house. The head agent tells them that Ed's pamphlets from the candy boxes, on which he has printed anything that "sounds nice," read "DYNAMITE THE CAPITOL," "DYNAMITE THE WHITE HOUSE," "DYNAMITE THE SUPREME COURT," and "GOD IS THE STATE, THE STATE IS GOD." Grandpa tries to explain to the head agent, but he informs them they are all under arrest. The agents discover enormous amounts of gunpowder in the basement and think it is for dynamiting Washington, and one agent returns from the basement dragging Mr. DePinna with him, who was in the basement the whole time. DePinna desperately tries to explain to the agent that he had left his lit pipe downstairs and must go and get it, but the agent disregards him. Meanwhile, another agent brings down Gay Wellington from upstairs, singing drunkenly. Alice and Tony cling to each other while the family argues with the agents. At that moments, Mr. DePinna's lit pipe causes the fireworks to go off. Act II ends with the entire house in an uproar. The next day, Donald and Rheba sit in the kitchen reading the paper. The entire family was arrested. Mr. Kirby's presence during the arrest has caused scandal on Wall Street. Alice has decided to leave home, with no immediate plans to return. She was truly in love with Tony, and her family ruined her chances of ever falling in love, and for doing that, she can never forgive them. Penny keeps trying to tell Alice to stay, but Grandpa knows that Alice cannot be swayed. Tony arrives and tries to convince Alice not to leave home. Alice knows he loves her, but just can't get herself to stay. Soon, Mr. Kolenkhov appears with the Grand Duchess Olga Katrina, in all of her former glory. After discussing the sad fate of former Russian royals now working menial jobs in New York, the Grand Duchess soon insists upon going into the kitchen to cook the dinner for the family. Mr. Kirby arrives to pick up Tony and to settle his score with Grandpa Vanderhof. Soon, Mr. Kirby and Tony get into a heated argument, the pinnacle of which finds Tony admitting that he had purposely brought his family on the wrong night, the night before. He explains that he wanted each family to see each as they really were, that Alice's idea of a planned party was ridiculous. Grandpa Vanderhof jumps in and, with the family's help, persuades Kirby that his life is not as it should be. Grandpa accuses Mr. Kirby of wasting his life by doing things he does not want to do. Mr. Kirby puts up a big fight, with several valid points... but eventually succumbs. He is changed, and accepts the Vanderhof view of life. The play comes to a conclusion as the family, along with Tony and Mr. Kirby, sit down to dinner with the Grand Duchess. Grandpa says a touching prayer, and then they dive into the food.
65169	/m/0hb7d	Antony and Cleopatra	William Shakespeare	1623		 Mark Antony – one of the Triumvirs of Rome along with Octavian and Lepidus – has neglected his soldierly duties after being beguiled by Egypt's Queen, Cleopatra. He ignores Rome's domestic problems, including the fact that his third wife Fulvia rebelled against Octavian and then died. Octavian calls Antony back to Rome from Alexandria in order to help him fight against Sextus Pompey, Menecrates, and Menas, three notorious pirates of the Mediterranean. At Alexandria, Cleopatra begs Antony not to go, and though he repeatedly affirms his deep passionate love for her, he eventually leaves. Back in Rome, a general brings forward the idea that Antony should marry Octavian's younger sister, Octavia, in order to cement the friendly bond between the two men. Antony's lieutenant Enobarbus, though, knows that Octavia can never satisfy him after Cleopatra. In a famous passage, he delineates Cleopatra's charms in paradoxical terms (rhetorical antithesis): "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety: other women cloy / The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry / Where most she satisfies." A soothsayer warns Antony that he is sure to lose if he ever tries to fight Octavian. In Egypt, Cleopatra learns of Antony's marriage to Octavia and takes furious revenge upon the messenger that brings her the news. She grows content only when her courtiers assure her that Octavia is homely by Elizabethan standards: short, low-browed, round-faced and with bad hair. At a confrontation, the triumvirs parley with Pompey, and offer him a truce. He can retain Sicily and Sardinia, but he must help them "rid the sea of pirates" and send them tributes. After some hesitation Pompey accedes. They engage in a drunken celebration on Pompey's galley. Menas suggests to Pompey that he kill the three triumvirs and make himself ruler of Rome, but he refuses, finding it dishonourable. Later, Octavian and Lepidus break their truce with Pompey and war against him. This is unapproved by Antony, and he is furious. Antony returns to Alexandria, Egypt, and crowns Cleopatra and himself as rulers of Egypt and the eastern third of the Roman Empire (which was Antony's share as one of the triumvirs). He accuses Octavian of not giving him his fair share of Pompey's lands, and is angry that Lepidus, whom Octavian has imprisoned, is out of the triumvirate. Octavian agrees to the former demand, but otherwise is very displeased with what Antony has done. Antony prepares to battle Octavian. Enobarbus urges Antony to fight on land, where he has the advantage, instead of by sea, where the navy of Octavius is lighter, more mobile and better manned. Antony refuses, since Octavian has dared him to fight at sea. Cleopatra pledges her fleet to aid Antony. However, in the middle of the Battle of Actium, Cleopatra flees with her sixty ships, and Antony follows her, leaving his army to ruin. Ashamed of what he has done for the love of Cleopatra, Antony reproaches her for making him a coward, but also sets this true and deep love above all else, saying "Give me a kiss; even this repays me." Octavian sends a messenger to ask Cleopatra to give up Antony and come over to his side. She hesitates, and flirts with the messenger, when Antony walks in and angrily denounces her behaviour. He sends the messenger to be whipped. Eventually, he forgives Cleopatra and pledges to fight another battle for her, this time on land. On the eve of the battle, Antony's soldiers hear strange portents, which they interpret as the god Hercules abandoning his protection of Antony. Furthermore, Enobarbus, Antony's long-serving lieutenant, deserts him and goes over to Octavian's side. Rather than confiscating Enobarbus's goods, which he did not take with him when he fled to Octavian, Antony orders them to be sent to Enobarbus. Enobarbus is so overwhelmed by Antony's generosity, and so ashamed of his own disloyalty, that he dies from a broken heart. The battle goes well for Antony, until Octavian shifts it to a sea-fight. Once again, Antony loses when Cleopatra's ships break off action and flee – his own fleet surrenders, and he denounces Cleopatra: "This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me." He resolves to kill her for the treachery. Cleopatra decides that the only way to win back Antony's romance love is to send him word that she killed herself, dying with his name on her lips. She locks herself in her monument, and awaits Antony's return. Her plan fails: rather than rushing back in remorse to see the "dead" Cleopatra, Antony decides that his own life is no longer worth living. He begs one of his aides, Eros, to run him through with a sword, but Eros cannot bear to do it, and kills himself. Antony admires Eros' courage and attempts to do the same, but only succeeds in wounding himself. In great pain, he learns that Cleopatra is indeed alive. He is hoisted up to her in her monument, and dies in her arms. Octavian goes to Cleopatra, trying to persuade her to surrender. She angrily refuses, since she can imagine nothing worse than being led in triumph through the streets of Rome, proclaimed a villain for the ages. She imagines that "the quick comedians / Extemporally will stage us, and present / Our Alexandrian revels: Antony / Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see / Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness / I' th' posture of a whore." This speech is full of dramatic irony, because in Shakespeare's time Cleopatra really was played by a "squeaking boy", and Shakespeare's play does depict Antony's drunken revels. Cleopatra is betrayed and taken into custody by the Romans. She gives Octavian what she claims is a complete account of her wealth, but is betrayed by her treasurer, who claims she is holding treasure back. Octavian reassures her that he is not interested in her wealth, but Dolabella warns her that he intends to parade her at his triumph. Cleopatra resolves to kill herself, using the poison of an asp. She dies calmly and ecstatically, imagining how she will meet Antony again in the afterlife. Her serving maids, Iras and Charmian, also kill themselves. Octavian discovers the dead bodies and experiences conflicting emotions. Antony's and Cleopatra's deaths leave him free to become the first Roman Emperor, but he also feels some kind of sympathy for them: "She shall be buried by her Antony. / No grave upon the earth shall clip in it / A pair so famous..." He orders a public military funeral.
65379	/m/0hcby	The Day of the Triffids	John Wyndham	1951-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist is Bill Masen, who has made his living working with "triffids"—tall plants capable of aggressive and seemingly intelligent behaviour. They are able to move about by "walking" on their roots, appear to communicate with each other, and possess a deadly whip-like poisonous sting that enables them to kill and feed on the rotting carcasses of their victims. Due to his background working with Triffids, Masen has developed a theory that they were bioengineered in the USSR and then accidentally released into the wild when a plane smuggling their seeds was shot down. Triffids begin sprouting all over the world, and their extracts prove to be superior to existing fish or vegetable oils. The result is worldwide cultivation of triffids. The narrative begins with Bill Masen in hospital, his eyes bandaged after having been splashed with droplets of triffid venom in an accident. During his convalescence he is told of the unexpected and beautiful green meteor shower that the entire world is watching. He awakes the next morning to a silent hospital and learns that the light from the unusual display has rendered any who watched it completely blind. (Later on in the book Masen again theorises that both the 'meteor shower' and subsequent plague may have been an orbiting government weapons system that was triggered accidentally.) After unbandaging his eyes, he wanders through an anarchic London full of almost entirely blind inhabitants, and witnesses civilization collapsing around him. Masen meets a sighted woman, wealthy novelist Josella Playton, who was being forcibly used as a guide by a violent blind man. She and Masen begin to fall in love and decide to leave London. Lured by a single light that they see shining in an otherwise darkened city, Bill and Josella discover a group of sighted survivors at a London university building. The group is led by a man named Beadley, who plans to establish a colony in the countryside. Beadley wishes to take only sighted men who will take several wives, sighted or otherwise, to rapidly rebuild the human population. Bill and Josella decide to join the group. The polygamous principles of this scheme appalls one of the other leaders of the group, the religious Miss Durrant. Before this schism can be dealt with a man called Wilfred Coker takes it upon himself to save as many of the blind as possible. He stages a mock fire at the university and during the ensuing chaos kidnaps a number of sighted individuals, including Bill and Josella. Each is chained to a squad of blind people and forced to lead them around London, collecting rapidly diminishing food and other supplies. Bill and his squad find themselves beset by escaped triffids as well as by an aggressive rival gang of scavengers led by a ruthless, red-haired man. Masen nevertheless sticks with his squad until its members all begin dying of some unknown disease. He leaves and attempts to find Josella, but his only lead is an address left behind by the now-departed members of Beadley's group. Thrown together with a repentant Coker, he drives to the place, a country estate named Tynsham in Wiltshire, but neither Beadley nor Josella are there; Durrant has taken charge and organized the community along "Christian" lines. Masen and Coker fruitlessly search for Beadley and Josella for several days, before Bill remembers a chance comment Josella made about a country home in Sussex. He sets off in search of it, while Coker returns to Tynsham. Bill is joined by a young sighted girl named Susan; they succeed in locating Josella, who is indeed at the Sussex house. Bill and Josella consider themselves to be married, and see Susan as their daughter. They attempt to make the Sussex farm into a largely self-sufficient colony, with reasonable success. The triffids grow ever more numerous, crowding in and surrounding their small island of civilization. Years pass, during which it becomes steadily harder both to keep out the encroaching plants - at least two triffid break-ins are recorded during the novel - and to continue fetching essential supplies (such as oil) from the decaying cities. One day a helicopter pilot representative of Beadley's faction lands at the farm and reports that the group has established a successful colony on the Isle of Wight, and that Coker survived to join them. Despite their ongoing struggles, the Masens are reluctant to leave their home but their hand is forced by the arrival of a squad of soldiers the next day who represent a despotic new government which is setting up feudal enclaves across the country. Masen recognizes the leader, Torrence, as the redheaded man from London. Torrence announces his intention to place many more blind survivors under the Masens' care and to move Susan to another enclave. After feigning general agreement, the Masens disable the soldiers' vehicle and flee during the night. They join the Isle of Wight colony, and settle down to the long struggle ahead, determined to find a way to destroy the triffids and reclaim Earth for humanity.
65953	/m/0hgq8	Antigone	Sophocles			 Before the beginning of the play, two brothers leading opposite sides in Thebes' civil war died fighting each other for the throne. Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, has decided that Eteocles will be honored and Polyneices will be in public shame. The rebel brother's body will not be sanctified by holy rites, and will lie unburied on the battlefield, prey for carrion animals like worms and vultures, the harshest punishment at the time. Antigone and Ismene are the sisters of the dead Polyneices and Eteocles. In the opening of the play, Antigone brings Ismene outside the palace gates late at night for a secret meeting: Antigone wants to bury Polyneices' body, in defiance of Creon's edict. Ismene refuses to help her, fearing the death penalty, but she is unable to stop Antigone from going to bury her brother herself, causing Antigone to disown her. Creon enters, along with the Chorus of Theban Elders. He seeks their support in the days to come, and in particular wants them to back his edict regarding the disposal of Polyneices' body. The Chorus of Elders pledges their support. A Sentry enters, fearfully reporting that the body has been buried. A furious Creon orders the Sentry to find the culprit or face death himself. The Sentry leaves and the Chorus sings about honouring the gods, but after a short absence he returns, bringing Antigone with him. Creon questions her after sending the Sentry off, and she does not deny what she has done. She argues unflinchingly with Creon about the morality of the edict and the morality of her actions. Creon becomes furious, and, thinking Ismene must have known of Antigone's plan, seeing her upset, summons the girl. Ismene tries to confess falsely to the crime, wishing to die alongside her sister, but Antigone will not have it. Creon orders that the two women be temporarily imprisoned. Haemon, Creon's son, enters to pledge allegiance to his father. He initially seems willing to forsake Antigone, but when Haemon gently tries to persuade his father to spare Antigone, claiming that 'under cover of darkness the city mourns for the girl', the discussion deteriorates and the two men are soon bitterly insulting each other. Haemon leaves, vowing never to see Creon again. Creon decides to spare Ismene and to bury Antigone alive in a cave. She is brought out of the house, and she bewails her fate and defends her actions one last time. She is taken away to her living tomb, with the Chorus expressing great sorrow for what is going to happen to her. Tiresias, the blind prophet, enters. He warns Creon that Polyneices should now be urgently buried because the gods are displeased, refusing to accept any sacrifices or prayers from Thebes. Creon accuses Tiresias of being corrupt. Tiresias responds that because of Creon's mistakes, he will lose "a son of [his] own loins" for the crimes of leaving Polyneices unburied and putting Antigone into the earth (he does not say that Antigone should not be condemned to death, only that it is improper to keep a living body underneath the earth). All of Greece will despise him, and the sacrificial offerings of Thebes will not be accepted by the gods. The Chorus, terrified, asks Creon to take their advice. He assents, and they tell him that he should free Antigone and bury Polyneices. Creon, shaken, agrees to do it. He leaves with a retinue of men to help him right his previous mistakes. The Chorus delivers a choral ode to the god Dionysus (god of wine and of the theater; this part is the offering to their patron god), and then a Messenger enters to tell them that Haemon has killed himself. Eurydice, Creon's wife and Haemon's mother, enters and asks the Messenger to tell her everything. The Messenger reports that Haemon and Antigone have both taken their own lives, Antigone by hanging herself, and Haemon by stabbing himself after finding the body, just after Polyneices was buried. Eurydice disappears into the palace. Creon enters, carrying Haemon's body. He understands that his own actions have caused these events. A Second Messenger arrives to tell Creon and the Chorus that Eurydice has killed herself. With her last breath, she cursed her husband. Creon blames himself for everything that has happened, and, a broken man, he asks his servants to help him inside. The order he valued so much has been protected, and he is still the king, but he has acted against the gods and lost his child and his wife as a result. The Chorus closes by saying that although the gods punish the proud, punishment brings wisdom.
66219	/m/0hj3z	Love and Mr Lewisham	H. G. Wells	1900	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the beginning of the novel, Mr. Lewisham is an 18-year-old teacher at a boys' school in Sussex, earning forty pounds a year. He meets and falls in love with Ethel Henderson, who is paying a visit to relatives. His involvement with her causes him to lose his position, but he is unable to find her when he moves to London. After a two-and-one-half-year break in the action, Mr. Lewisham is in his third year of study at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington. He has becomes a socialist, declaring his politics with a red tie, and is an object of interest to Alice Heydinger, an older student. But chance brings him together again with his first love at a séance. Ethel's stepfather, Mr. Chaffery, is a spiritualist charlatan, and Mr. Lewisham is determined to extricate her from association with his dishonesty. They marry, but Mr. Lewisham is forced to abandon his plans for a brilliant scientific career followed by a political ascent.
66346	/m/0hjxw	The Stardroppers	John Brunner	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Stardroppers is about an undercover United Nations agent investigating a new fad, "stardropping", whereby physics-violating equipment is used to listen to sounds believed to be alien or paranormal signals. Superficially a harmless but expensive hobby, stardropping reins in a fanaticism resembling addiction, where some users assemble in semi-social communes and spend all of their money on increasingly improved equipment. The fad gains an additional aspect of risk when users begin disappearing into thin air, in cases of increasing profile and witnessing.
66627	/m/0hlg3	The Little Foxes	Lillian Hellman			 The focus is on Southerner Regina Hubbard Giddens, who struggles for wealth and freedom within the confines of an early 20th century society where a father considered only sons as legal heirs. As a result, her avaricious brothers Benjamin and Oscar are independently wealthy, while she must rely upon her sickly, wheelchair-using husband Horace for financial support. Regina's brother Oscar has married Birdie, his much-maligned, alcoholic wife, solely to acquire her family's plantation and its cotton fields. Oscar now wants to join forces with his brother, Benjamin, to construct a cotton mill. They approach their sister with their need for an additional $75,000 to invest in the project. Oscar initially proposes marriage between his son Leo and Regina's daughter Alexandra - first cousins - as a means of getting Horace's money, but Horace and Alexandra are repulsed by the suggestion. When Regina asks Horace outright for the money, he refuses, so Leo, a bank teller, is pressured into stealing his uncle Horace's railroad bonds from the bank's safety deposit box. Horace, after discovering this, tells Regina he is going to change his will in favor of their daughter, and also will claim he gave Leo the bonds as a loan, thereby cutting Regina out of the deal completely. When he suffers a heart attack during this chat, she makes no effort to help him. He dies within hours, without anyone knowing his plan and before changing his will. This leaves Regina free to blackmail her brothers by threatening to report Leo's theft unless they give her 75% ownership in the cotton mill (it is in Regina's mind, a fair exchange for the stolen bonds). The price Regina ultimately pays for her evil deeds is the loss of her daughter Alexandra's love and respect. Regina's actions cause Alexandra to finally understand the importance of not idly watching people do evil. She tells Regina she will not watch her be "one who eats the earth," and abandons her. Having let her husband die, alienated her brothers, and driven away her only child, Regina is left wealthy but completely alone.
67003	/m/0hngp	Carrie	Stephen King	1974-04-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book uses false documents to frame the story of one of the worst disasters in American history--the destruction of the town of Chamberlain, Maine by high school student Carietta "Carrie" White. For years, Carrie has been abused at home by her unstable Christian fundamentalist mother, Margaret White. She does not fare much better at Thomas Ewen High School; she has been a social outcast since first grade, and has been the focus of bullying due to her religious beliefs, her outdated clothing and her plain appearance. At the beginning of the novel, Carrie has her first period while showering after gym class. Carrie is terrified, having no concept of menstruation; her mother never spoke to her about it, and she believes that she is bleeding to death. Instead of sympathizing with the frightened Carrie, her classmates throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her. As Carrie is aided by her gym teacher, Rita Desjardin, a light bulb in the shower burns out. The next day, Miss Desjardin viciously berates the girls involved in the shower incident and orders them to serve a week's detention in the gym. One of the girls, Chris Hargensen, refuses to attend and is suspended for three days, and is also banned from Ewen High's prom. Meanwhile, Sue Snell, one of the girls who joined in taunting Carrie, feels remorse for her prior actions and offers to become her friend. Meanwhile, Carrie gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers, trying to keep them under control. With prom fast approaching, Sue sets Carrie up with her handsome boyfriend, Tommy Ross. Carrie's mother tries to force her not to go, but Carrie uses her powers to help stand up for herself. Chris and her boyfriend, Billy Nolan, hatch a plan to humiliate Carrie in front of the entire school. Chris has Billy fill two buckets with pig blood, and rigs them over the stage on a rafter hidden out of sight. On prom night, Carrie is tormented by her mother begging for her not to leave the house. Carrie leaves anyway and arrives with Tommy. Carrie is nervous at first, but everyone begins treating her equally. Soon Carrie begins enjoying herself and Tommy begins to become attracted to her. Meanwhile, Sue continually worries about what's happening at the prom—and at the same time worries if she's pregnant. Carrie and Tommy are elected prom king and queen after Chris's henchwoman, Tina Blake, exchanges fake ballots for the real ones. Once on stage, Chris drenches Carrie and Tommy with the pig blood. Everyone begins pointing and laughing. One of the buckets falls on Tommy's head, mortally wounding him. Carrie runs off the stage. She is tripped, gets back up, and rushes outside. Contemplating her life in solitary confinement, she remembers her power and goes back to exact revenge on everyone who tormented her. She locks the doors and turns on the sprinkler system. But after viewing two kids die of electrocution, her mind finally snaps; she decides to set fire to the gym. She leaves the prom-goers and chaperones to die in the fire, including Tommy. Miss Desjardin and a few other students manage to survive the destruction by fleeing through the fire escape. Carrie decides to take out her pent-up anger on Chamberlain. She blows up a gas station and sets her entire neighborhood on fire. She also destroys the town's fire hydrants, preventing any attempt at putting out the fires. Notably, Carrie goes to a church and prays, all the while manipulating a series of power lines outside, killing several civilians surveying the event. Sue rushes to the school and watches it explode, which destroys a portion of the town. Carrie makes her way home and confronts her mother, who has now gone completely mad, and tells Carrie of the night she was raped and conceived Carrie. Carrie's mother then stabs her in the shoulder with a carving knife. In retaliation, Carrie kills her mother by stopping her heart. Mortally wounded, Carrie then makes her way to the local roadhouse where her father got drunk and raped her mother the night she was conceived. Chris and Billy, who happened to be making love inside, receive word from Billy's friend of what has happened to Chamberlain, and Billy plans on leaving town with Chris. They exit the roadhouse just as Carrie arrives, and attempt to run her down with Billy's car, but Carrie telekinetically sends the car crashing into the roadhouse, killing Chris and Billy. Carrie then collapses in the parking lot from blood loss. Sue then goes to the roadhouse where she finds Carrie in the parking lot. Carrie talks telepathically with Sue and blames her for the prank, but after scanning Sue's brain, she finds out that Sue had no idea of the prank and that she had set her up with Tommy to apologize for the gym shower incident. Carrie does not forgive Sue, but believes her and then cries out for her mother before dying from the stab wound in her shoulder. Terror-stricken, Sue runs away from the roadhouse and after distancing herself from it, she collapses and has her period, meaning that she miscarried if pregnant. Four months later, Chamberlain has become a ghost town. By then, 440 people have been confirmed dead--including more than half of Ewen High's senior class--and 18 are still missing. The 'Black Prom' incident hits the nation harder than the assassination of John F. Kennedy. After interviewing the survivors of the prom, science begins to take telekinesis seriously plus many schools across the country start to crack down more on bullying. Miss Desjardin and school principal Henry Grayle both resign, consumed with guilt over not reaching out to Carrie sooner. In 1986, Sue writes a memoir of her experience entitled My Name is Susan Snell, which warns the reader not to forget about the events that took place in Chamberlain, otherwise something like it may happen again. The book closes with a letter written by a woman in Tennessee whose niece is developing telekinetic powers.
67013	/m/0hnj0	King John	William Shakespeare	1623		 King John receives an ambassador from France, who demands, on pain of war, that he renounce his throne in favour of his nephew, Arthur, whom the French King, Philip, believes to be the rightful heir to the throne. John adjudicates an inheritance dispute between Robert Falconbridge and his older brother Philip the Bastard, during which it becomes apparent that Philip is the illegitimate son of King Richard I. Queen Eleanor, mother to both Richard and John, recognises the family resemblance and suggests that he renounce his claim to the Falconbridge land in exchange for a knighthood. John knights the Bastard under the name Richard. In France, King Philip and his forces besiege the English-ruled town of Angiers, threatening attack unless its citizens support Arthur. Philip is supported by Austria, who is believed to have killed King Richard. The English contingent arrives; Eleanor trades insults with Constance, Arthur's mother. Kings Philip and John stake their claims in front of Angiers' citizens, but to no avail: their representative says that they will support the rightful king, whoever that turns out to be. The Bastard proposes that England and France unite to punish the rebellious citizens of Angiers, at which point they propose an alternative: Philip's son, Louis the Dauphin, should marry John's niece Blanche, a scheme that gives John a stronger claim to the throne, while Louis gains territory for France. Though a furious Constance accuses Philip of abandoning Arthur, Louis and Blanche are married. Cardinal Pandolf arrives from Rome bearing a formal accusation that John has disobeyed the pope and appointed an archbishop contrary to his desires. John refuses to recant, whereupon he is excommunicated. Pandolf pledges his support for Louis, though Philip is hesitant, having just established family ties with John. Pandolf brings him round by pointing out that his links to the church are older and firmer. War breaks out; Austria is beheaded by the Bastard in revenge for his father's death; and both Angiers and Arthur are captured by the English. Eleanor is left in charge of English possessions in France, while the Bastard is sent to collect funds from English monasteries. John orders Hubert to kill Arthur. Pandolf suggests to Louis that he now has as strong a claim to the English throne as Arthur (and indeed John), and Louis agrees to invade England. Hubert finds himself unable to kill Arthur. John's nobles urge Arthur's release. John agrees, but is wrong-footed by Hubert's announcement that Arthur is dead. The nobles, believing he was murdered, defect to Louis' side. The Bastard reports that the monasteries are unhappy about John's attempt to seize their gold. Hubert has a furious argument with John, during which he reveals that Arthur is still alive. John, delighted, sends him to report the news to the nobles. Arthur dies jumping from a castle wall. (It is open to interpretation whether he deliberately kills himself or just makes a risky escape attempt.) The nobles believe he was murdered by John, and refuse to believe Hubert's entreaties. John attempts to make a deal with Pandolf, swearing allegiance to the Pope in exchange for Pandolf's negotiating with the French on his behalf. John orders the Bastard, one of his few remaining loyal subjects, to lead the English army against France. While John's former noblemen swear allegiance to Louis, Pandolf explains John's scheme, but Louis refuses to be taken in by it. The Bastard arrives with the English army and threatens Louis, but to no avail. War breaks out with substantial losses on each side, including Louis' reinforcements, who are drowned during the sea crossing. Many English nobles return to John's side after a dying French nobleman, Melun, warns them that Louis plans to kill them after his victory. John is poisoned by a disgruntled monk. His nobles gather around him as he dies. The Bastard plans the final assault on Louis' forces, until he is told that Pandolf has arrived with a peace treaty. The English nobles swear allegiance to John's son Prince Henry, and the Bastard reflects that this episode has taught that internal bickering could be as perilous to England's fortunes as foreign invasion.
67015	/m/0hnjc	Love's Labour's Lost	William Shakespeare			 The play opens with the King of Navarre and three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to devote themselves to three years of study, promising not to give in to the company of women – Berowne somewhat more hesitantly than the others. Berowne reminds the king that the princess and her three ladies are coming to the kingdom and it would be suicidal for the King to agree to this law. The King denies what Berowne says, insisting that the ladies make their camp in the field outside of his court. The King and his men meet the princess and her ladies. Instantly, they all fall comically in love. The main story is assisted by many other humorous sub-plots. A rather heavily-accented Spanish swordsman, Don Adriano de Armado, tries and fails to woo a country wench, Jaquenetta, helped by Moth, his page, and rivalled by Costard, a country idiot. We are also introduced to two scholars, Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, and we see them converse with each other in schoolboy Latin. In the final act, the comic characters perform a play to entertain the nobles, an idea conceived by Holofernes, where they represent the Nine Worthies. The four Lords – as well as the Ladies' courtier Boyet – mock the play, and Armado and Costard almost come to blows. At the end of this 'play' within the play, there is a bitter twist in the story. News arrives that the Princess's father has died and she must leave to take the throne. The king and his nobles swear to remain faithful to their ladies, but the ladies, unconvinced that their love is that strong, claim that the men must wait a whole year and a day to prove what they say is true. This is an unusual ending for Shakespeare and Elizabethan comedy. A play mentioned by Francis Meres, Love's Labour's Won, is believed by some to be a sequel to this play.
67317	/m/0hq4m	Watership Down	Richard Adams	1972-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the Sandleford warren, Fiver, a young runt rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. When he and his brother Hazel fail to convince their chief rabbit of the need to evacuate, they set out on their own with a small band of rabbits to search for a new home, barely eluding the Owsla, the warren's military caste. The travelling group of rabbits find themselves following the leadership of Hazel, previously an unimportant member of the warren. They travel through dangerous territory, with Bigwig and Silver, both former Owsla, as the strongest rabbits among them. Fiver's visions promise a safe place in which to settle, and the group eventually finds Watership Down, an ideal location to set up their new warren. They are soon reunited with Holly and Bluebell, also from the Sandleford Warren, who reveal that Fiver's vision was true and the entire warren was destroyed by humans. Although Watership Down is a peaceful habitat, Hazel realises there are no does (female rabbits), thus making the future of their new home uncertain. With the help of a seagull named Kehaar, they locate a nearby warren, Efrafa, which is overcrowded and has many does. Hazel sends a small emissary to Efrafa to present their request for does. While waiting for the group to return, Hazel and Pipkin successfully raid the nearby Nuthanger Farm to rescue a group of hutch rabbits there, returning with two does and a buck. When the emissary returns, Hazel and his rabbits learn Efrafa is a police state led by the despotic General Woundwort; Hazel's rabbits barely return alive. However, the group does manage to identify an Efrafan doe named Hyzenthlay who wants to leave the warren and can recruit other does to join. Hazel and Bigwig devise a plan to rescue the group of rabbits from Efrafa to join them on Watership Down. The Efrafan escapees start their new life on Watership Down, but soon Woundwort's army arrives to attack the Watership Down warren. Through Bigwig's bravery and loyalty and Hazel's ingenuity, the Watership Down rabbits defeat Woundwort. The story's epilogue tells the reader of how Hazel, dozing in his burrow one "chilly, blustery morning in March" many years later, is visited by the rabbit folk hero El-ahrairah, who invites Hazel to join his Owsla. Leaving his friends and no-longer-needed body behind, Hazel departs Watership Down with El-ahrairah, "running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."
67838	/m/0hsz9	Harriet the Spy	Louise Fitzhugh	1964	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch is an aspiring writer, who lives in New York City's Upper East Side. A precocious and enthusiastic girl, Harriet enjoys writing and aspires to become a spy. Encouraged by her nanny, Ole Golly, Harriet carefully observes others and writes her thoughts down in a notebook as practice for her future career. She dedicates her life to her future career. She follows an afternoon "spy route" during which she clandestinely observes her classmates, friends, and people who reside in her neighborhood. Her best friends are Sport, a serious boy who lives with his father, and Janie, an aspiring scientist. Harriet enjoys having structure in her life. For example, she regularly eats tomato sandwiches and adamantly refuses to consume other types of sandwiches. Harriet's routine life is abruptly changed when her parents attend a party. Ole Golly and her suitor, Mr. Waldenstein, take Harriet out for dessert and a movie. When they return home, they discover that the Welsches have returned early to an empty house. When Mrs. Welsch attempts to fire Ole Golly, Mr. Waldenstein discloses to the Welsches that he proposed to Ole Golly that evening, and she has accepted. In an astonishing about-face, Mrs. Welsch exclaims, "You can't leave, what will we do without you?!" Ole Golly replies that she had planned to leave soon because she believes Harriet is old enough to care for herself. Harriet is crushed by the loss of her nanny, to whom she was very close. Later at school, during a game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook. Her classmates find it and are appalled at the mean and tactless things she has written about them. For example, in her notebook she compares Sport to a "little old woman" for his continual worrying about his father. Harriet has given her honest opinion of the world as she sees it and does not mean to be rude. In fact, she insists, her notebook is private and not for anyone else to see. The students form a "Spy Catcher Club" in which they think up ways to make Harriet's life miserable, such as stealing her lunch, passing nasty notes about her in class, and spilling ink on her. Harriet regularly spies on them through a back fence and concocts vengeful ways to punish them. She realizes the consequences of the mean things she wrote, and though she is hurt and lonely, she still thinks up special punishments for each member of the club. After getting into trouble for some of her plans, Harriet tries to resume her friendship with Sport and Janie as if nothing had ever happened, but they both reject her. Harriet spends all her time in class writing in her notebook as a part of her plan to punish the Spy Catcher Club. As a result of never doing her schoolwork, her grades suffer. This leads Harriet's parents to confiscate her notebook. Hearing of Harriet's troubles, Ole Golly writes to her, telling her that if anyone ever reads her notebook, "you have to do two things, and you don't like either one of them. 1: You have to apologize. 2: You have to lie. Otherwise you are going to lose a friend." Meanwhile, dissent is rippling through the Spy Catcher Club. Marion, the teacher's pet, and her best friend Rachel are calling all the shots, and Sport and Janie are tired of being bossed around. When they quit the club, most of their classmates do the same. Harriet's parents speak with her teacher and the headmistress, and Harriet is appointed editor of the class newspaper. The newspaper—featuring stories about the people on Harriet's spy route and the students' parents—becomes an instant success. Harriet also uses the paper to make amends by printing a retraction and is forgiven.
68201	/m/0hvkr	Richard II	William Shakespeare			 Richard II is the main character of the play. The first Act begins with King Richard sitting majestically on his throne in full state. We learn that Henry Bolingbroke, Richard's cousin, is having a dispute with Thomas Mowbray, and they both want the king to act as judge. The subject of the quarrel is Bolingbroke's accusation that Mowbray had squandered monies given to him by Richard for the King's soldiers. Bolingbroke also accuses Mowbray of the recent murder of the Duke of Gloucester, although John of Gaunt—Gloucester's brother and Bolingbroke's father—believes that Richard himself was responsible for the murder. After several attempts to calm both men, Richard acquiesces and Bolingbroke and Mowbray challenge each other to a duel, over the objections of both Richard and Gaunt. The tournament scene is very formal with a long, ceremonial introduction. But Richard interrupts the duel at the very beginning and sentences both men to banishment from England. Bolingbroke has to leave for six years, whereas Mowbray is banished forever. The king's decision can be seen as the first mistake in a series that will lead eventually to his overthrow and death. Indeed, Mowbray predicts that the king will fall sooner or later. John of Gaunt dies and Richard II seizes all of his land and money. This angers the nobility, who accuse Richard of wasting England's money, of taking Gaunt's money (which rightfully belongs to Bolingbroke) to fund a war with Ireland, of taxing the commoners, and of fining the nobles for crimes their ancestors committed. Next, they help Bolingbroke secretly to return to England and plan to overthrow Richard II. However, there remain some subjects faithful to Richard, among them Bushy, Bagot, Green and the Duke of Aumerle (son of the Duke of York), cousin of both Richard and Bolingbroke. King Richard leaves England to administer the war in Ireland, and Bolingbroke takes the opportunity to assemble an army and invade the north coast of England. He executes Bushy and Green, and wins over the Duke of York, whom Richard has left in charge of his government during his absence. When Richard returns, Bolingbroke first claims his land back but then additionally claims the throne. He crowns himself King Henry IV and Richard is taken into prison to the castle of Pomfret. Aumerle and others plan a rebellion against the new king, but York discovers his son's treachery and reveals it to Henry, who spares Aumerle as a result of the intercession of the Duchess of York but executes the other conspirators. After interpreting King Henry's "living fear" as a reference to the still-living Richard, an ambitious nobleman (Exton) goes to the prison and murders the former king. King Henry repudiates the murderer and vows to journey to Jerusalem to cleanse himself of his part in Richard's death.
68348	/m/0hwk2	The Big Sleep	Raymond Chandler	1939	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the home of wealthy, elderly General Sternwood. He wants Marlowe to deal with a blackmail attempt by a bookseller named Arthur Geiger on his wild young daughter Carmen. She had previously been blackmailed by a Joe Brody. Sternwood mentions his other, older daughter Vivian, who is in a loveless marriage with a man named Rusty Regan, who has disappeared. On Marlowe's way out, Vivian wonders if he was hired to find Regan, but Marlowe won’t say. Marlowe investigates Geiger’s bookstore and determines it is a pornography lending library. He follows Geiger home, stakes out his house, and sees Carmen Sternwood enter. Later, he hears a scream followed by gunshots and two cars speeding away. He rushes in to find Geiger dead and Carmen drugged and naked in front of an empty camera. He takes her home, but when he returns, Geiger’s body is gone and he quickly leaves. The next day, the police call him and let him know the Sternwoods' car was found driven off a pier with their chauffeur dead inside. It appears that he was hit before the car entered the water. The police also ask if Marlowe is looking for Regan. Marlowe stakes out the bookstore and sees its inventory being moved to Joe Brody’s home. Vivian comes to his office and says Carmen is now being blackmailed with the nude photos from last night. She also mentions going gambling at the casino of Eddie Mars, and volunteers that Eddie's wife Mona ran off with Rusty. Marlowe revisits Geiger’s house and finds Carmen trying to get in. They look for the photos but she plays dumb about the night before. Eddie Mars suddenly enters; he says he is Geiger’s landlord and is looking for him. Mars demands to know why Marlowe is there, but Marlowe is unfazed and states he is no threat to Mars. Marlowe goes to Brody’s home and finds him with Agnes, the bookstore's clerk. He tells them he knows they are taking over the lending library and blackmailing Carmen with the nude photos. Carmen forces her way in with a gun and demands the photos, but Marlowe takes her gun and makes her leave. Marlowe interrogates Brody further and pieces together the full story: Geiger was blackmailing Carmen and the family driver didn’t like it, so he sneaked in, killed him, and took the film of Carmen. Brody was staking out the house too and pursued the driver, stole the film, and hit him and possibly pushed the car off the pier. Suddenly the doorbell rings and Brody is shot dead; Marlowe gives chase and catches Geiger’s male lover, who shot Brody thinking he killed Geiger. He had also hidden Geiger’s body so he could remove his own belongings before the police could get wind of the murder. The case is now over, but Marlowe is nagged by Regan's disappearance. The police accept that he simply ran off with Mona Mars, since she is also missing and Eddie Mars wouldn't risk committing a murder where he'd be the obvious suspect. Mars calls Marlowe to his casino, and seems to be nonchalant about everything. Vivian is also there, and Marlowe senses something between her and Mars. He drives her home and she tries to seduce him, but he rejects her advances. When he gets home, he finds Carmen has sneaked into his bed, and he rejects her, too. A man named Harry Jones, who is Agnes's new partner, approaches Marlowe and offers to sell him the location of Mona Mars. Marlowe plans to meet him later, but Mars's deadly henchman Canino is suspicious of Jones and Agnes's intentions and kills Jones first. Marlowe manages to meet Agnes anyway and receive the information. He goes to the location, a repair shop with home in back, but Canino jumps him and knocks him out. When he awakens, he is tied up and Mona Mars is there with him. She says she hasn't seen Rusty in months; she only hid out to help Eddie, and insists he didn't kill Rusty. She frees him and he shoots and kills Canino. The next day, Marlowe visits General Sternwood, who is still curious about Rusty's whereabouts. On the way out, Marlowe returns Carmen's gun to her, and she asks him to teach her how to shoot. They go to an abandoned field, where she tries to kill him, but he has loaded the gun with blanks. Marlowe brings her back and tells Vivian he has guessed the truth: Carmen came on to Rusty and he refused her, so she killed him. Eddie Mars, who had been backing Geiger, helped Vivian conceal it by inventing a story about his wife running off with Rusty, and then began blackmailing her himself. Vivian says she did it to protect her father, and promises to have Carmen institutionalized.
68851	/m/0hzkp	The State of the Art	Iain Banks	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 * Road of Skulls * A Gift from the Culture * Odd Attachment * Descendant * Cleaning Up * Piece * The State of the Art At 100 pages long, the title novella makes up the bulk of the book. The novella chronicles a Culture mission to Earth in the late Seventies, and also serves as a prequel of sorts to Use of Weapons by featuring one of that novel's characters, Diziet Sma. Here, Sma argues for contact with Earth, to try to fix the mess the human species has made of it; another Culture citizen, Linter, goes native, choosing to renounce his Culture body enhancements so as to be more like the locals; and Li, who is a Star Trek fan, argues that the whole "incontestably neurotic and clinically insane species" should be eradicated with a micro black hole. The ship Arbitrary has ideas, and a sense of humour, of its own. 'Also while I'd been away, the ship had sent a request on a postcard to the BBC's World Service, asking for 'Mr David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for the good ship Arbitrary and all who sail in her.' (This from a machine that could have swamped Earth's entire electro-magnetic spectrum with whatever the hell it wanted from somewhere beyond Betelgeuse.) It didn't get the request played. The ship thought this was hilarious.' *Scratch (or: The Present and Future of Species HS (sic) Considered as The Contents of a Contemporary Popular Record (qv))
68857	/m/0hznb	The Player of Games	Iain Banks	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Jernau Morat Gurgeh, a famously skilful player of board games and other similar contests, lives on Chiark Orbital, and is bored with his successful life. The Culture's Special Circumstances inquires about his willingness to participate in a long journey, though won't explain further unless Gurgeh agrees to participate. While he is considering this offer, one of his drone friends, Mawhrin-Skel, which had been ejected from Special Circumstances due to its unstable personality, convinces him to cheat in one of his matches in an attempt to win in an unprecedented perfect fashion. The attempt fails, but Mawhrin-Skel uses his recording of the event to blackmail Gurgeh into accepting the offer and insisting that Mawhrin-Skel be admitted back into Special Circumstances as well. Gurgeh spends the next two years travelling to the Empire of Azad in the Small Magellanic Cloud, where a complex game (also named Azad) is used to determine social rank and political status. The game itself is sufficiently subtle and complex that a player's tactics reflect his own political and philosophical outlook. By the time he arrives, he has grasped the game but is unsure how he will measure up against opponents who have been studying it for their entire lives. Gurgeh lands on the Empire's home planet of Eä, accompanied by another drone, Flere-Imsaho. As a Culture citizen, he naturally plays with a style markedly different from his opponents, many of whom stack the odds against him one way or another, such as forming backroom agreements to cooperate against him (which is allowed by the game's rules). As he advances through the tournament he is matched against increasingly powerful Azad politicians, and ultimately the Emperor himself in the final round. Faced with defeat, the Emperor attempts to kill Gurgeh, but is himself killed by a shot from his own weapon, deflected by Flere-Imsaho (who later refuses to tell Gurgeh if it was coincidental). Flere-Imsaho reveals that Gurgeh's participation was part of a Culture plot to overthrow the corrupt and savage Empire from within, and that he, the player, was in fact a pawn in a much larger game. Although Gurgeh never discovers the whole truth, it is ultimately revealed to the reader that Flere-Imsaho was the same drone as Mawhrin-Skel, who was also the narrator of the novel itself.
68863	/m/0hzpk	Excession	Iain Banks	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Excession of the title is a perfect black-body sphere that appears mysteriously on the edge of Culture space, appears to be older than the Universe itself and resists the attempts of the Culture and technologically equivalent societies (notably the Zetetic Elench) to probe it. The Excession is what the Culture's social scientists describe as an Outside Context Problem, one which a society cannot foresee and is often fatal. A metaphor to help explain this phrase is that of a successful aboriginal culture suddenly finding ocean-going vessels on its shores for the first time. A group of stereotypical bureaucrats tries to manage the Culture's response to the Excession but is brushed aside by the Interesting Times Gang, an informal group of Minds some of whom are veterans of the Idiran-Culture War, to try to deal with what is by far the most serious challenge the Culture has faced. Meanwhile a rapidly-expanding race, which the Culture calls the Affront (because of its systematic sadism towards subject species and its own females and junior males, despite being relatively advanced), tries to exploit the Excession by infiltrating a store of mothballed Culture warships and using them to claim control of the mysterious object. It turns out that the Affront have been manipulated into their grab for power by another Culture faction which thought it was morally imperative to curb the Affront's cruelty by any means, and intend to use the Affront's theft of Culture warships as an excuse for war. The GSV Sleeper Service eventually takes control of the situation. Its name is the most meaningful pun in the story: outwardly it is an Eccentric (drop-out from the Culture) which dedicates its enormous resources to presenting tableaux of historical events (mainly battles) populated by passengers in suspended animation; but in fact it is a sleeping member of Special Circumstances, the Culture's covert operations organization. The name of Sleeper Service is thus double-pronged—it is a Sleeper Service to human beings in Storage, and a Sleeper Service within SC, as it has produced a massive war-fleet during the 40-year period it has spent behaving as an Eccentric. It prepares to deploy this fleet during transit to the Excession. But Sleeper Service has an unresolved issue. Until a few decades previously, the ship operated under another name as a normal GSV, providing a habitat for a vast number of Culture citizens. Two of its passengers, Dajeil and Genar-Hofoen, had had an intense love-affair which ended badly when Genar-Hofoen was unfaithful and a pregnant Dajeil tried to kill Genar-Hofoen, but only succeeded in the feticide of the child with which Genar-Hofoen was pregnant. After the break-up, Dajeil froze her pregnancy and subsequently remained in a state of intense depression for 40 years, and the ship changed its name to Sleeper Service and started acting as an Eccentric. It carried only one conscious humanoid passenger, Dajeil, and spent much of its attention trying to talk her out of her depression, for which it considered itself partly responsible. As a result, when the Culture asks Sleeper Service to help in dealing with the threat of war, the ship demands that in return Genar-Hofoen must be handed over to it. Genar-Hofoen is lured to Sleeper Service on a pretext, and only later told that he is there to work with Dajeil to help her recover from her psychological trauma. Sleeper Service then unloads the passengers who had been part of its historical tableaux. Having spent much of its Eccentric decades converting a large percentage of the mass of the tableaux' scenery into engines, it easily outruns the very fast ship which other elements of the Culture had asked to keep watch on it. Once it is beyond the watching ship's sensor range, Sleeper Service changes course and heads towards the Excession. When it arrives it becomes apparent it has previously converted the rest of its spare mass into a vast fleet of remote-controlled warships numbering in the area of 80,000 units. The Excession, in response to the Sleeper charging at it, then triggers a multi-light-year Gridfire wave which threatens to obliterate it and its entire fleet, along with the accompanying Grey Area. Only its Mindstate, transmitted right at the Excession, saves it by convincing the Excession to halt its attack. The Minds controlling the ships which the Affront stole from the "mothball" find themselves outnumbered more than 130:1, and refuse to help the Affront. The Affront fleet's commander and the Culture ship which led the conspiracy commit suicide. A prolonged war is thus averted. At the same time the Excession disappears as mysteriously as it arrived. Meanwhile, the rush of events, combined with a conversation with Genar-Hofoen, results in Dajeil moving out of her depression and completing her pregnancy. Genar-Hofoen returns to the Affront, having been rewarded by being physically transformed into a member of the Affront species (whose company he finds more stimulating than that of the Culture's people). The book's epilogue reveals that the Excession is a sentient entity which is currently acting as a bridge for a procession of even higher beings which travel between universes. It also assesses whether the species and societies it encounters are suitable to be enlightened about some unknown further existence beyond the Universe. As a result of events in the story the Excession concludes that the civilisations it has encountered in our universe are not ready for this enlightenment and moves on so that it will not cause any further disturbance, hence its disappearance at the end of the book. It also takes the name given to it by the Culture – Excession – as its own. ==Outside Context Proble
68870	/m/0hzrs	Look to Windward	Iain Banks	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Despite the passage of time, Major Quilan still suffers grief and bereavement from the death of his wife, killed during the Chelgrian civil war that resulted from the Culture's interference. Quilan is offered the chance to avenge the lost Chelgrians who died in a civil war and is inducted into a plot to strike back at the Culture. As part of the plot, his "soulkeeper" (a device normally used to store its owner's personality upon their death) is equipped with both the mind of a long-dead Chelgrian general and a device that can transport wormholes connected to weapons caches. Quilan is then sent to Masaq' Orbital, ostensibly to persuade Mahrai Ziller to return to his native Chel but is in reality on a suicide mission to destroy the Orbital's Hub Mind. To protect him from detection at Masaq', Quilan's memory is selectively blanked until he reaches his target. On Masaq', Ziller lives in self-imposed exile, having renounced his privileged position in Chel's caste system. An accomplished composer, he has been commissioned to compose music to mark the anniversary of the Idiran-Culture War. Upon hearing of Quilan's visit, and his reason for travel, Ziller scrupulously avoids him, reluctant to engage with a civilization that repels him. Quilan succeeds in placing the wormholes in the Mind's Hub, but the Mind detects them immediately and, although not able to track the location of the other end of the wormholes, suggests that the Involved "aliens" assisting Quilan's mission may have been a group of Culture minds seeking to keep the Culture from being too complacent. Having struggled with its memories from the Idiran-Culture war, when it was the General Systems Vehicle Lasting Damage, the Mind reveals to Quilan that it seeks to cease existing and offers to take Quilan with it. They both die. In the end of the novel, a nightmarishly efficient E-Dust Assassin is unleashed against the Chelgrian priest who was responsible, as well as his immediate co-conspirators. It is not revealed whether this was a form of retribution by the Culture or a cover-up by a secret Culture faction.
68871	/m/0hzs4	Use of Weapons	Iain Banks	1990-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is made up of two narrative streams, interwoven in alternating chapters. The numbers of the chapters indicate which stream they belong to: one stream is numbered forward in words (One, Two ...), while the other is numbered in reverse with Roman numerals (XIII, XII ...). The story told by the former moves forward chronologically (as the numbers suggest) and tells a self-contained story, while in the latter is written in reverse chronology with each chapter successively earlier in Zakalwe's life. Further complicating this structure is a prologue and epilogue set shortly after the events of the main narrative, and many flashbacks within the chapters. The forward-moving stream of the novel deals with the attempts of Diziet Sma and a drone named Skaffen-Amtiskaw to re-enlist Zakalwe for another "job", the task itself and the payment that Zakalwe wishes for it. The backward-moving stream describes earlier "jobs" that Zakalwe has performed for the Culture, ultimately returning to his pre-Culture career as a general on his homeworld. It transpires that the payment he requires from Sma relates to an incident from his earlier life.
69111	/m/0j087	So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish	Douglas Adams	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction"}	 Arthur Dent has hitch-hiked through the galaxy and is dropped off on a planet in a rainstorm. He realises that he appears to be in England on Earth, even though he saw it destroyed by the Vogons. While he has been gone for several years, it appears only a few months have passed on Earth. He manages to hitch a ride with a man named Russell, who is driving home his sister Fenchurch (Fenny for short). Russell explains that she had become delusional after worldwide mass hysteria over the "hallucinations with the big yellow spaceships" (Vogon Ships). Arthur also learns that all the dolphins disappeared shortly after that event. Arthur becomes curious about Fenchurch, but they reach his home before he can ask more questions. Inside his still-standing home, Arthur finds a gift-wrapped bowl inscribed with the words "So Long and Thanks..." which he then uses for his Babel Fish. Arthur considers that Fenchurch is somehow connected to him and to the Earth's destruction, and finds that he still has the ability to fly whenever he lets his thoughts wander. After putting his life in order, Arthur tries to find out more about Fenchurch. He catches her hitchhiking and he learns more about her. He obtains her phone number but loses it. He finds her home when he locates the cave he had lived in after crashing onto prehistoric Earth with the Golgafrinchans: her flat is built on the same spot. As they talk they find more circumstances connecting them. Fenchurch reveals that, moments before her hallucinations, she had an epiphany while sitting in a café about how to make everything right, but then blacked out. Ever since, she has not been able to recall it. After noticing that Fenchurch's feet do not touch the ground, Arthur teaches her how to fly and together they make love in the skies over London. The two travel to California to see John Watson, an enigmatic scientist who purports to know the cause of the dolphins' disappearance and who eschewed his original name in favour of "Wonko the Sane" due to harbouring the belief that the entire world's population save himself has gone mad. Watson shows the couple a bowl with the words "So long and thanks for all the fish" inscribed on it that they all own and encourages them to listen to it. They learn from the bowl's audio message that the dolphins, aware of the Vogons, left Earth for an alternate dimension but not before replacing the destroyed Earth with a new version and transporting everything to it as a way of saving humans. Arthur explains to Fenchurch about hitchhiking across the galaxy, after which she insists that she wants to see it as well. They plan to hitchhike on the next passing spaceship. Concurrent to these events, Ford Prefect discovers that during an update of the "Hitchhiker's Guide", his previous entry for Earth, "Mostly harmless", has been replaced with the volumes of text he wrote during his research. Recognising that something is strange, Ford begins to hitchhike across the galaxy to reach Earth, eventually using the ship of a giant robot to land in the centre of London and causing a panic. In the chaos, Ford meets up with Arthur and Fenchurch and together they commandeer the robot's ship. Arthur takes Fenchurch to the planet where God's Final Message to His Creation is written, and they happen across Marvin, who, because of previous events, is now approximately 37 times older than the known age of the universe and is barely able to continue. Marvin, with Arthur and Fenchurch's help, reads the Message ("We apologise for the inconvenience"), smiles, utters the final words "I think... I feel good about it," and dies happily.
69485	/m/0j2th	Choke	Chuck Palahniuk	2001-05-22	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child. He had grown up moving from one foster home to another, as his mother was found to be unfit to raise him. Several times throughout his childhood, his mother would kidnap him from his various foster parents, though every time they would eventually be caught, and he would again be remanded over to the governmental child welfare agency. In the present day setting of the book, Victor is now a man in his mid-twenties who left medical school in order to find work to support his feeble mother who is now in a nursing home. He cannot afford the care that his mother is receiving so he resorts to being a con man. He consistently goes to various restaurants and purposely causes himself to choke mid-way through his meal, luring a "good Samaritan" into saving his life. He keeps a detailed list of everyone who saves him and sends them frequent letters about fictional bills he is unable to pay. The people feel so sorry for him that they send him cards and letters asking him about how he's doing and even continue to send him money to help him with the bills. He works at a re-enactment museum set in colonial times, where most of the employees are drug-addicts or, in his friend Denny's case, a fellow recovering sex addict. Most of the time Palahniuk spends describing Victor's job, Victor is guarding his friend Denny (who is constantly being caught with "contraband", items that don't correspond with the time period of the museum) in the stocks. Victor first met Denny at a sexual addiction support group (he was there as a guy who masturbates too much), and they later applied together to the same job. Denny is later fired from the museum, and begins collecting stones from around the city to build his "dream home;" Palahniuk based this portion of the novel on the true story of Ferdinand Cheval. While growing up, Victor's mother taught him numerous conspiracy theories and obscure medical facts which both confused and frightened him. This and his constant moves from one home to another have left Victor unable to form lasting and stable relationships with women. Victor, as a result, finds himself getting sexual gratification from women on a solely superficial level (using sex anonymous meetings to find many of his sexual partners). Later on, he starts talking to his mother again for the first time in years. The narrative is episodic, and is presented out of chronological order, a style common to the author's books.
69868	/m/0j58l	A Friend of the Earth	T. Coraghessan Boyle	2000-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 A Friend of the Earth is the story of Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater, a U.S. citizen born in 1950, half Irish Catholic and half Jewish ("I'm a mess and I know it. Jewish guilt, Catholic guilt, enviro-eco-capitalistico guilt: I can't even expel gas in peace."), whose personal tragedy fits in with, and adds to, the gloomy atmosphere created in the novel. Egged on by Andrea, the woman he loves, he becomes a committed "Earth Forever!" activist (an allusion to the radical environmental group Earth First!) in the 1980s, is imprisoned for ecotage, but eventually cannot change anything. On top of that, he suffers the loss of his first wife when their daughter is only three and of his daughter when she is only 25. When the novel opens, Tierwater is a 75-year-old disillusioned ex-con living on the estate of a famous pop star in the Santa Ynez Valley, north of Santa Barbara, in California and looking after the latter's private menagerie. Maclovio Pulchris, the singer, has had the idea of preserving some of the last surviving animals of several species in order to initiate a captive breeding programme at some later point in time, choosing to preserve the animals no-one else would. Tierwater has been working for Pulchris ("Mac") for ten years when, in 2025, Andrea, his ex-wife and stepmother to his daughter Sierra, contacts him after more than 20 years. She and a friend of hers, April Wind, move in with Tierwater, officially for April Wind to write a biography, or rather hagiography, of Sierra Tierwater, his daughter, who died in 2001 as a martyr to the environmentalist cause. (A "tree-hugging cunt", as their opponents called her, she falls off a tree in old growth woodland in which she has been living for about three years.) In the course of the next few months the situation deteriorates even more. The rain and the wind destroy the animals' cages, and subsequently they have to be kept in Pulchris's basement. One morning one of the lions gets loose and attacks and kills the singer, as well as a number of employees. As a consequence, the other lions are shot—and thus lions as a species become extinct. (There is just one surviving lion in the San Diego Zoo left.) Jobless and penniless, Tierwater, who has fallen in love all over again with Andrea, is evicted from the estate by Pulchris's heirs. Along with Andrea, Tyrone leaves the compound, heading for a mountain cabin owned by Earth Forever! somewhere in the forest which decades ago served as a hideout. They arrive there with only one of Pulchris's animals in tow: Petunia, the Patagonian fox, which they now keep as their domestic animal, passing it off as their dog. In the final scene of the book, a teenaged girl comes hiking along the trail where the forest surrounding the dilapidated cabin would have been. Tierwater and Andrea, who again call themselves husband and wife now, have a glimmer of hope that life will soon be like life 30 years before, as the novel ends on an optimistic note.
69919	/m/0j5mn	In Search of Lost Time	Marcel Proust	1913	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel recounts the experiences of the Narrator while growing up, participating in society, falling in love, and learning about art. The Narrator begins by noting, “For a long time, I went to bed early.” He comments on the way sleep seems to alter one’s surroundings, and the way Habit makes one indifferent to them. He remembers being in his room in the family’s country home in Combray, while downstairs his parents entertain their friend Charles Swann, an elegant man of Jewish origin with strong ties to society (the character is modelled on Proust's friend Charles Ephrussi). Due to Swann’s visit, the Narrator is deprived of his mother’s goodnight kiss, but he gets her to spend the night reading to him. This memory is the only one he has of Combray, until years later the taste of a madeleine cake dipped in tea inspires a nostalgic incident of involuntary memory. He remembers having a similar snack as a child with his invalid aunt Leonie, and it leads to more memories of Combray. He describes their servant Françoise, who is uneducated but possesses an earthy wisdom and a strong sense of both duty and tradition. He meets an elegant “lady in pink” while visiting his uncle Adolphe. He develops a love of the theater, especially the actress Berma, and his awkward Jewish friend Bloch introduces him to the works of the writer Bergotte. He learns Swann made an unsuitable marriage but has social ambitions for his beautiful daughter Gilberte. Legrandin, a snobbish friend of the family, tries to avoid introducing the boy to his well-to-do sister. The Narrator describes two walking paths: the way past Swann’s home (the Méséglise way), and the Guermantes way, both containing scenes of natural beauty. Taking the Méséglise way, he sees Gilberte Swann standing in her yard with a lady in white, Mme Swann, and her supposed lover: Baron de Charlus, a friend of Swann’s. Gilberte makes a gesture that the Narrator interprets as a rude dismissal. During another walk, he spies a lesbian scene involving Mlle Vinteuil, daughter of a composer, and her friend. The Guermantes way is symbolic of the Guermantes family, the nobility of the area. The Narrator is awed by the magic of their name, and is captivated when he first sees Mme de Guermantes. He discovers how appearances conceal the true nature of things, and tries writing a description of some nearby steeples. Lying in bed, he seems transported back to these places until he awakens. Mme Verdurin is an autocratic hostess who, aided by her husband, demands total obedience from the guests in her “little clan.” One guest is Odette de Crecy, a former courtesan, who has met Swann and invites him to the group. Swann is too refined for such company, but Odette gradually intrigues him with her unusual style. A sonata by Vinteuil, which features a “little phrase,” becomes the motif for their deepening relationship. The Verdurins host M. de Forcheville; their guests include Cottard, a doctor; Brichot, an academic; Saniette, the object of scorn; and a painter, M. Biche. Swann grows jealous of Odette, who now keeps him at arm’s length, and suspects an affair between her and Forcheville, aided by the Verdurins. Swann seeks respite by attending a society concert that includes Legrandin’s sister and a young Mme de Guermantes; the “little phrase” is played and Swann realizes Odette’s love for him is gone. He tortures himself wondering about her true relationships with others, but his love for her, despite renewals, gradually diminishes. He moves on and marvels that he ever loved a woman who was not his type. At home in Paris, the Narrator dreams of visiting Venice or the church in Balbec, a resort, but he is too unwell and instead takes walks in the Champs-Élysées, where he meets and befriends Gilberte. He holds her father, now married to Odette, in the highest esteem, and is awed by the beautiful sight of Mme Swann strolling in public. Years later, the old sights of the area are long gone, and he laments the fugitive nature of places. The Narrator’s parents are inviting M. de Norpois, a diplomat colleague of the Narrator’s father, to dinner. With Norpois’s intervention, the narrator is finally allowed to go see Berma perform in a play, but is disappointed by her acting. Afterwards, at dinner, he watches Norpois, who is extremely diplomatic and correct at all times, expound on society and art. The Narrator gives him a draft of his writing, but Norpois gently indicates it is not good. The Narrator continues to go to the Champs-Élysées and play with Gilberte. Her parents distrust him, so he writes to them in protest. He and Gilberte wrestle and he has an orgasm. Gilberte invites him to tea, and he becomes a regular at her house. He observes Mme Swann’s inferior social status, Swann’s lowered standards and indifference towards his wife, and Gilberte’s affection for her father. The Narrator contemplates how he has attained his wish to know the Swanns, and savors their unique style. At one of their parties he meets and befriends Bergotte, who gives his impressions of society figures and artists. But the Narrator is still unable to start writing seriously. His friend Bloch takes him to a brothel, where there is a Jewish prostitute named Rachel. He showers Mme Swann with flowers, being almost on better terms with her than with Gilberte. One day, he and Gilberte quarrel and he decides never to see her again. However, he continues to visit Mme Swann, who has become a popular hostess, with her guests including Mme Bontemps, who has a niece named Albertine. The Narrator hopes for a letter from Gilberte repairing their friendship, but gradually feels himself losing interest. He breaks down and plans to reconcile with her, but spies from afar someone resembling her walking with a boy and gives her up for good. He stops visiting her mother also, who is now a celebrated beauty admired by passersby, and years later he can recall the glamour she displayed then. Two years later, the Narrator, his grandmother, and Françoise set out for the seaside town of Balbec. The Narrator is almost totally indifferent to Gilberte now. During the train ride, his grandmother, who only believes in proper books, lends him her favorite: the Letters of Mme de Sevigne. At Balbec, the Narrator is disappointed with the church and uncomfortable in his unfamiliar hotel room, but his grandmother comforts him. He admires the seascape, and learns about the colorful staff and customers around the hotel: Aime, the discreet headwaiter; the lift operator; M. de Stermaria and his beautiful young daughter; and M. de Cambremer and his wife, Legrandin’s sister. His grandmother encounters an old friend, the blue-blooded Mme de Villeparisis, and they renew their friendship. The three of them go for rides in the country, openly discussing art and politics. The Narrator longs for the country girls he sees alongside the roads, and has a strange feeling of unexplained memory while admiring a row of three trees. Mme de Villeparisis is joined by her glamorous great-nephew Robert de Saint-Loup, who is involved with an unsuitable woman. Despite initial awkwardness, the Narrator and his grandmother become good friends with him. Bloch, the childhood friend from Combray, turns up with his family, and acts in typically inappropriate fashion. Saint-Loup’s ultra-aristocratic and extremely rude uncle the Baron de Charlus arrives. The Narrator discovers Mme de Villeparisis, her nephew M. de Charlus, and his nephew Saint-Loup are all of the Guermantes family. Charlus ignores the Narrator, but later visits him in his room and lends him a book. The next day, the Baron speaks shockingly informally to him, then demands the book back. The Narrator ponders Saint-Loup’s attitude towards his aristocratic roots, and his relationship with his mistress, a mere actress whose recital bombed horribly with his family. One day, the Narrator sees a “little band” of teenage girls strolling beside the sea, and becomes infatuated with them, along with an unseen hotel guest named Mlle Simonet. He joins Saint-Loup for dinner and reflects on how drunkenness affects his perceptions. Later they meet the painter Elstir, and the Narrator visits his studio. The Narrator marvels at Elstir’s method of renewing impressions of ordinary things, as well as his connections with the Verdurins (he is “M. Biche”) and Mme Swann. He discovers the painter knows the teenage girls, particularly one dark-haired beauty who is Albertine Simonet. Elstir arranges an introduction, and the Narrator becomes friends with her, as well as her friends Andrée and Gisele. The group goes for picnics and tours the countryside, as well as playing games, while the Narrator reflects on the nature of love as he becomes attracted to Albertine. Despite her rejection, they become close, although he still feels attracted to the whole group. At summer’s end, the town closes up, and the Narrator is left with his image of first seeing the girls walking beside the sea. The Narrator’s family has moved to an apartment connected with the Guermantes residence. Françoise befriends a fellow tenant, the tailor Jupien and his niece. The Narrator is fascinated by the Guermantes and their life, and is awed by their social circle while attending another Berma performance. He begins staking out the street where Mme de Guermantes walks every day, to her evident annoyance. He decides to visit her nephew Saint-Loup at his military base, to ask to be introduced to her. After noting the landscape and his state of mind while sleeping, the Narrator meets and attends dinners with Saint-Loup’s fellow officers, where they discuss the Dreyfus Affair and the art of military strategy. But the Narrator returns home after receiving a call from his aging grandmother. Mme de Guermantes declines to see him, and he also finds he is still unable to begin writing. Saint-Loup visits on leave, and they have lunch and attend a recital with his actress mistress: Rachel, the Jewish prostitute, toward whom the unsuspecting Saint-Loup is crazed with jealousy. The Narrator then goes to Mme de Villeparisis’s salon, which is considered second-rate despite its public reputation. Legrandin attends and displays his social climbing. Bloch stridently interrogates M. de Norpois about the Dreyfus Affair, which has ripped all of society asunder, but Norpois diplomatically avoids answering. The Narrator observes Mme de Guermantes and her aristocratic bearing, as she makes caustic remarks about friends and family, including the mistresses of her husband, who is M. de Charlus’s brother. Mme Swann arrives, and the Narrator remembers a visit from Morel, the son of his uncle Adolphe’s valet, who revealed that the “lady in pink” was Mme Swann. Charlus asks the Narrator to leave with him, and offers to make him his protégé. At home, the Narrator’s grandmother has worsened, and while walking with him she suffers a stroke. The family seeks out the best medical help, and she is often visited by Bergotte, himself unwell, but she dies, her face reverting to its youthful appearance. Several months later, Saint-Loup, now single, convinces the Narrator to ask out the Stermaria daughter, newly divorced. Albertine visits; she has matured and they share a kiss. The Narrator then goes to see Mme de Villeparisis, where Mme de Guermantes, whom he has stopped following, invites him to dinner. The Narrator daydreams of Mme de Stermaria, but she abruptly cancels, although Saint-Loup rescues him from despair by taking him to dine with his aristocratic friends, who engage in petty gossip. Saint-Loup passes on an invitation from Charlus to come visit him. The next day, at the Guermantes’s dinner party, the Narrator admires their Elstir paintings, then meets the cream of society, including the Princess of Parma, who is an amiable simpleton. He learns more about the Guermantes: their hereditary features; their less-refined cousins the Courvoisiers; and Mme de Guermantes’s celebrated humor, artistic tastes, and exalted diction (although she does not live up to the enchantment of her name). The discussion turns to gossip about society, including Charlus and his late wife; the affair between Norpois and Mme de Villeparisis; and aristocratic lineages. Leaving, the Narrator visits Charlus, who falsely accuses him of slandering him. The Narrator stomps on Charlus’s hat and storms out, but Charlus is strangely unperturbed and gives him a ride home. Months later, the Narrator is invited to the Princesse de Guermantes’s party. He tries to verify the invitation with M. and Mme de Guermantes, but first sees something he will describe later. They will be attending the party but do not help him, and while they are chatting, Swann arrives. Now a committed Dreyfusard, he is very sick and nearing death, but the Guermantes assure him he will outlive them. The Narrator describes what he had seen earlier: while waiting for the Guermantes to return so he could ask about his invitation, he saw Charlus encounter Jupien in their courtyard. The two then went into Jupien’s shop and had intercourse. The Narrator reflects on the nature of “inverts”, and how they are like a secret society, never able to live in the open. He compares them to flowers, whose reproduction through the aid of insects depends solely on happenstance. Arriving at the Princesse’s party, his invitation seems valid as he is greeted warmly by her. He sees Charlus exchanging knowing looks with the diplomat Vaugobert, a fellow invert. After several tries, the Narrator manages to be introduced to the Prince de Guermantes, who then walks off with Swann, causing speculation on the topic of their conversation. Mme de Saint-Euverte tries to recruit guests for her party the next day, but is subjected to scorn from some of the Guermantes. Charlus is captivated by the two young sons of M. de Guermantes’s newest mistress. Saint-Loup arrives and mentions the names of several promiscuous women to the Narrator. Swann takes the Narrator aside and reveals the Prince wanted to admit his and his wife’s pro-Dreyfus leanings. Swann is aware of his old friend Charlus’s behavior, then urges the Narrator to visit Gilberte, and departs. The Narrator leaves with M. and Mme de Guermantes, and heads home for a late-night meeting with Albertine. He grows frantic when first she is late and then calls to cancel, but he convinces her to come. He writes an indifferent letter to Gilberte, and reviews the changing social scene, which now includes Mme Swann’s salon centered on Bergotte. He decides to return to Balbec, after learning the women mentioned by Saint-Loup will be there. At Balbec, grief at his grandmother’s suffering, which was worse than he knew, overwhelms him. He ponders the intermittencies of the heart and the ways of dealing with sad memories. His mother, even sadder, has become more like his grandmother in homage. Albertine is nearby and they begin spending time together, but he starts to suspect her of lesbianism and of lying to him about her activities. He fakes a preference for her friend Andrée to make her become more trustworthy, and it works, but he soon suspects her of knowing several scandalous women at the hotel, including Lea, an actress. On the way to visit Saint-Loup, they meet Morel, the valet’s son who is now an excellent violinist, and then the aging Charlus, who falsely claims to know Morel and goes to speak to him. The Narrator visits the Verdurins, who are renting a house from the Cambremers. On the train with him is the little clan: Brichot, who explains at length the derivation of the local place-names; Cottard, now a celebrated doctor; Saniette, still the butt of everyone’s ridicule; and a new member, Ski. The Verdurins are still haughty and dictatorial toward their guests, who are as pedantic as ever. Charlus and Morel arrive together, and Charlus’s true nature is barely concealed. The Cambremers arrive, and the Verdurins barely tolerate them. Back at the hotel, the Narrator ruminates on sleep and time, and observes the amusing mannerisms of the staff, who are mostly aware of Charlus’s proclivities. The Narrator and Albertine hire a chauffeur and take drives in the country, leading to observations about new forms of travel as well as country life. The Narrator is unaware that the chauffeur and Morel are acquainted, and he reviews Morel’s amoral character and plans towards Jupien’s niece. The Narrator is jealously suspicious of Albertine but grows tired of her. She and the Narrator attend evening dinners at the Verdurins, taking the train with the other guests; Charlus is now a regular, despite his obliviousness to the clan’s mockery. He and Morel try to maintain the secret of their relationship, and the Narrator recounts a ploy involving a fake duel that Charlus used to control Morel. The passing station stops remind the Narrator of various people and incidents, including two failed attempts by the Prince de Guermantes to arrange liaisons with Morel; a final break between the Verdurins and Cambremers; and a misunderstanding between the Narrator, Charlus, and Bloch. The Narrator has grown weary of the area and prefers others over Albertine. But she reveals to him as they leave the train that she has plans with Mlle Vinteuil and her friend (the lesbians from Combray) which plunges him into despair. He invents a story about a broken engagement of his, to convince her to go to Paris with him, and after hesitating she suddenly agrees to go immediately. The Narrator tells his mother: he must marry Albertine. The Narrator is living with Albertine in his family’s apartment, to Françoise’s distrust and his absent mother’s chagrin. He marvels that he has come to possess her, but has grown bored with her. He mostly stays home, but has enlisted Andrée to report on Albertine’s whereabouts, as his jealousy remains. The Narrator gets advice on fashion from Mme de Guermantes, and encounters Charlus and Morel visiting Jupien and her niece, who is being married off to Morel despite his cruelty towards her. One day, the Narrator returns from the Guermantes and finds Andrée just leaving, claiming to dislike the smell of their flowers. Albertine, who is more guarded to avoid provoking his jealousy, is maturing into an intelligent and elegant young lady. The Narrator is entranced by her beauty as she sleeps, and is only content when she is not out with others. She mentions wanting to go to the Verdurins, but the Narrator suspects an ulterior motive and analyzes her conversation for hints. He suggests she go instead to the Trocadéro with Andrée, and she reluctantly agrees. The Narrator compares dreams to wakefulness, and listens to the street vendors with Albertine, then she departs. He remembers trips she took with the chauffeur, then learns Lea the notorious actress will be at the Trocadero too. He sends Françoise to retrieve Albertine, and while waiting, he muses on music and Morel. When she returns, they go for a drive, while he pines for Venice and realizes she feels captive. He learns of Bergotte’s final illness. That evening, he sneaks off to the Verdurins to try to discover the reason for Albertine’s interest in them. He encounters Brichot on the way, and they discuss Swann, who has died. Charlus arrives and the Narrator reviews the Baron’s struggles with Morel, then learns Mlle Vinteuil and her friend are expected (although they do not come). Morel joins in performing a septet by Vinteuil, which evokes commonalities with his sonata that only the composer could create. Mme Verdurin is furious that Charlus has taken control of her party; in revenge the Verdurins persuade Morel to repudiate him, and Charlus falls temporarily ill from the shock. Returning home, the Narrator and Albertine fight about his solo visit to the Verdurins, and she denies having affairs with Lea or Mlle Vinteuil, but admits she lied on occasion to avoid arguments. He threatens to break it off, but they reconcile. He appreciates art and fashion with her, and ponders her mysteriousness. But his suspicion of her and Andrée is renewed, and they quarrel. After two awkward days and a restless night, he resolves to end the affair, but in the morning Françoise informs him: Albertine has asked for her boxes and left. The Narrator is anguished at Albertine’s departure and absence. He dispatches Saint-Loup to convince her aunt Mme Bontemps to send her back, but Albertine insists the Narrator should ask, and she will gladly return. The Narrator lies and replies he is done with her, but she just agrees with him. He writes to her that he will marry Andrée, then hears from Saint-Loup of the failure of his mission to the aunt. Desperate, he begs Albertine to return, but receives word: she has died in a riding accident. He receives two last letters from her: one wishing him and Andrée well, and one asking if she can return. The Narrator plunges into suffering amid the many different memories of Albertine, intimately linked to all of his everyday sensations. He recalls a suspicious incident she told him of at Balbec, and asks Aime, the headwaiter, to investigate. He recalls their history together and his regrets, as well as love’s randomness. Aime reports back: Albertine often engaged in affairs with girls at Balbec. The Narrator sends him to learn more, and he reports other liaisons with girls. The Narrator wishes he could have known the true Albertine, whom he would have accepted. He begins to grow accustomed to the idea of her death, despite constant reminders that renew his grief. Andrée admits her own lesbianism but denies being with Albertine. The Narrator knows he will forget Albertine, just as he has forgotten Gilberte. He happens to meet Gilberte again; her mother Mme Swann became Mme de Forcheville and Gilberte is now part of high society, received by the Guermantes. The Narrator finally publishes an article in Le Figaro. Andrée visits him and confesses relations with Albertine and also explains the truth behind her departure: her aunt wanted her to marry another man. The Narrator finally visits Venice with his mother, which enthralls him in every aspect. They happen to see Norpois and Mme de Villeparisis there. A telegram signed from Albertine arrives, but the Narrator is indifferent and it is only a misprint anyway. Returning home, the Narrator and his mother receive surprising news: Gilberte will marry Saint-Loup, and Jupien’s niece will be adopted by Charlus and then married to Legrandin’s nephew, an invert. There is much discussion of these marriages among society. The Narrator visits Gilberte in her new home, and is shocked to learn of Saint-Loup’s affair with Morel, among others. He despairs of their friendship. The Narrator is staying with Gilberte at her home near Combray. They go for walks, on one of which he is stunned to learn the Méséglise way and the Guermantes way are actually linked. Gilberte also tells him she was attracted to him when young, and had made a suggestive gesture to him as he watched her. Also, it was Lea she was walking with the evening he had planned to reconcile with her. He considers Saint-Loup’s nature and reads an account of the Verdurins’ salon, deciding he has no talent for writing. The scene shifts to a night in 1916, during World War I, when the Narrator has returned to Paris from a stay in a sanatorium and is walking the streets during a blackout. He reflects on the changed norms of art and society, with the Verdurins now highly esteemed. He recounts a 1914 visit from Saint-Loup, who was trying to enlist secretly. He recalls descriptions of the fighting he subsequently received from Saint-Loup and Gilberte, whose home was threatened. He describes a call paid on him a few days previously by Saint-Loup; they discussed military strategy. Now on the dark street, the Narrator encounters Charlus, who has completely surrendered to his impulses. Charlus reviews Morel’s betrayals and his own temptation to seek vengeance; critiques Brichot’s new fame as a writer, which has ostracized him from the Verdurins; and admits his general sympathy with Germany. The last part of the conversation draws a crowd of suspicious onlookers. After parting the Narrator seeks refuge in what appears to be hotel, where he sees someone who looks familiar leaving. Inside, he discovers it to be a male brothel, and spies Charlus making arrangements for services. The proprietor turns out to be Jupien, who expresses a perverse pride in his business. A few days later, news comes that Saint-Loup has been killed in combat. The Narrator pieces together that Saint-Loup had visited Jupien’s brothel, and ponders what might have been had he lived. Years later, again in Paris, the Narrator goes to a party at the house of the Prince de Guermantes. On the way he sees Charlus, now a mere shell of his former self, being helped by Jupien. The paving stones at the Guermantes house inspire another incident of involuntary memory for the Narrator, quickly followed by two more. Inside, while waiting in the library, he discerns their meaning: by putting him in contact with both the past and present, the impressions allow him to gain a vantage outside time, affording a glimpse of the true relations of things. He realizes his whole life has prepared him for the mission of describing events as fully revealed, and (finally) resolves to begin writing. Entering the party, he is shocked at the disguises old age has given to the people he knew, and at the changes in society. Legrandin is now an invert, but is no longer a snob. Bloch is a respected writer and vital figure in society. Morel has reformed and become a respected citizen. Mme de Forcheville is the mistress of M. de Guermantes. Mme Verdurin has married the Prince de Guermantes after both their spouses died. Rachel is the star of the party, abetted by Mme de Guermantes, whose social position has been eroded by her affinity for theater. Gilberte introduces her daughter to the Narrator; he is struck by the way the daughter encapsulates both the Méséglise and Guermantes ways within herself. He is spurred to writing, with help from Françoise and despite signs of approaching death. He realizes that every person carries within himself the accumulated baggage of their past, and concludes that to be accurate he must describe how everyone gradually occupies an immense range "in Time".
69931	/m/0j5ql	Liza of Lambeth	W. Somerset Maugham		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The action covers a period of roughly four months—from August to November—around the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Liza Kemp is an 18-year-old factory worker and the youngest of 13 children, now living alone with her ageing and incompetent mother. Very popular with all the residents—both young and old—of Vere Street, Lambeth, she cannot really make up her mind as far as her love life is concerned. She very much likes Tom, a boy her age, but when he proposes to her she rejects him ("I don't love yer so as ter marry yer"). Nevertheless she is persuaded to join a party of 32 who make a coach trip (in a horse-drawn coach, of course) to a nearby village on the August Bank Holiday Monday. Some of the other members of the party are Tom; Liza's friend Sally and her boyfriend Harry; and Jim Blakeston, a 40-year-old father of nine who has recently moved to Vere Street with his large family, and his wife (while their eldest daughter, Polly, is taking care of her siblings). The outing is a lot of fun, and they all get more or less drunk on beer. On their way back, in the dark, Liza realizes that Jim Blakeston is making a pass at her by holding her hand. After their arrival back home, Jim manages to speak to her alone and to steal a kiss from her. Seemingly without considering either the moral implications or the consequences of her actions, Liza feels attracted to Jim. They never appear together in public because they do not want the other residents of Vere Street or their workmates to start talking about them. One of Jim Blakeston's first steps to win Liza's heart is to go to a melodramatic play with her on Saturday night. Afterwards, he succeeds in seducing her (although we never learn where they do it—obviously in the open): :'Liza,' he said a whisper, 'will yer?' :'Will I wot?' she said, looking down. :'You know, Liza. Sy, will yer?' :'Na,' she said. But in the end they do "slide down into the darkness of the passage". (The reader never learns whether at that time Liza is still a virgin or not.) Liza is overwhelmed by love. ("Thus began a time of love and joy.") When autumn arrives and the nights get chillier, Liza's secret meetings with Jim become less comfortable and more trying. Lacking an indoor meeting place, they even spend their evenings together in the third class waiting room of Waterloo station. Also, to Liza's dismay, it turns out that people do start talking about them, in spite of the precautions they have taken. Only Liza's mother, who is a drunkard and a very simple sort of person, has no idea what is going on. Liza's friend Sally gets married, has to stop working at the factory because her husband would not let his wife earn her own money, and soon becomes pregnant. Liza feels increasingly isolated, with Sally being married now and even Tom seemingly shunning her, but her love for Jim keeps her going. They do talk about their love affair though: about the possibility of Jim leaving his wife and children ("I dunno if I could get on without the kids"), about Liza not being able to leave her mother because the latter needs her help, about living somewhere else "as if we was married", about bigamy -- but, strangely, not about adultery. The novel builds up to a sad climax when it gradually turns out that all men—maybe with the exception of Tom—are alike: They invariably beat their wives, especially when they have been drinking. Soon after their wedding Harry beats up Sally just because she has been away from home chatting with a female neighbour of theirs. What is more, he even hits Mrs Cooper, his mother-in-law. Liza, who happens to drop by and stays a little longer to comfort Sally is late for her meeting with Jim in front of a nearby pub. When she finally gets there Jim himself is aggressive towards her for being late. Without really intending to, he hits her across the face ("It wasn't the blow that 'urt me much; it was the wy you was talkin'"). Nevertheless on the following morning she has a black eye. Soon the situation deteriorates completely. Mrs Blakeston, who is pregnant again, stops talking to her husband at home—this is her way of opposing his affair with Liza. Then she goes on to indirectly threaten Liza: She tells other people what she would do to Liza if she got hold of her, and the other people tell Liza. Liza, a "coward" according to the third person narrator, is frightened because Mrs Blakeston is strong whereas she herself is weak. One Saturday afternoon in November, when Liza is going home from work, she is confronted with an angry Mrs Blakeston. In the ensuing fight between the two women, Mrs Blakeston first spits in Liza's face and then attacks her physically. Quickly a group of spectators gather round the two women—none of them even tries to separate the fighting women ("The audience shouted and cheered and clapped their hands."). Eventually, both Tom and Jim stop the fight, and Tom walks Liza home. Liza is now publicly stigmatized as a "wrong one", a fact she herself admits to Tom ("Oh, but I 'ave treated yer bad. I'm a regular wrong 'un, I am"). Despite all her misbehaviour ("I couldn't 'elp it! [...] I did love 'im so!"), Tom still wants to marry Liza, but she tells him that "it's too lite now" because she thinks she is pregnant. Tom would even tolerate her condition if only she could decide to marry him, but she refuses again. Meanwhile, at the Blakestones', Jim beats up his wife. Again people nearby—this time those who live in the same house and who are alarmed by Polly Blakeston—choose not to interfere in other people's domestic problems ("She'll git over it; an' p'raps she deserves it, for all you know"). When Mrs Kemp comes home and sees her daughter's injuries all she can contribute to mitigating the situation is to offer her daughter some alcohol (whisky or gin). In the course of the evening they both get drunk, in spite of Liza's pregnancy. During the following night, however, Liza has a miscarriage. Mr Hodges, who lives upstairs, fetches a doctor from the nearby hospital, who soon pronounces the hopelessness of Liza's condition. While her daughter is dying, Mrs Kemp has a long talk with Mrs Hodges, a midwife and sick-nurse. Liza's last visitor is Jim, but Liza is already in a coma. Mrs Kemp and Mrs Hodges have switched the subject and are talking about the funeral arrangements (!) when Liza's death rattle can be heard and the doctor, who is still present, declares that she is dead.
70070	/m/0j65x	The Weirdstone of Brisingamen	Alan Garner	1960	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book's introduction concerns the origin of the Weirdstone. Following the defeat of Nastrond, it was decided to take steps to prevent what must otherwise be his eventual return. This involved bringing together a small band of warriors of pure heart, each of whom must be partnered by a horse, and to gather them inside the old dwarf caves of Fundindelve, deep inside the hill of Alderley. The caves were sealed by powerful white magic which would both defend Fundindelve from evil, as the ages passed, and also prevent the warriors and their horses from aging. When the time was ripe, and the world once more in mortal peril, it was prophesied that this small band of warriors would ride out from the hill, trusting in their purity of heart to defeat Nastrond for good. Fundindelve was provided with a guardian, the ancient wizard Cadellin Silverbrow, and the heart of the white magic was sealed inside a jewel, the Weirdstone of Brisingamen. At the beginning of the story, however, the Weirdstone has been lost, stolen centuries before by a farmer whose milk-white mare Cadellin had bought to complete the numbers in Fundindelve. The stone became a family heirloom and eventually found its way to Susan's mother, who passed it on to Susan, who is oblivious as to its history and purpose. Although the children become friends with Cadellin, the wizard fails to notice the bracelet, even when the children come to visit him in Fundindelve. However, its presence does not go unnoticed by Selina Place and the witches of the morthbrood, who send their minions to steal it. Susan finally realizes the identity of the Weirdstone, and fearing its destruction, sets out to warn the wizard. The children return to Fundindelve but Cadellin is nowhere to be found, so they set out to reclaim the stone on their own. They are successful but become lost in a labyrinth of mineshafts and caverns. As the members of the morthbrood close in on them, they are rescued by a pair of dwarfs, Fenodyree and Durathror, who are close companions of Cadellin. After passing through many perils the group returns to the farm where Susan and Colin are staying to spend the night. They set out with the farm's owner the next day to return the weirdstone to Cadellin before it can fall into the wrong hands. Their travels take them through forests, mountains, and snowy fields while striving to avoid the attention of the morthbrood. At the climax of the story, a great battle takes place on a hill near Alderley during which the children and their companions make a desperate last stand to protect the Weirdstone. However the enemy forces prove too strong and Durathror is mortally wounded. Grimnir takes the Weirdstone for himself and, in the ensuing chaos, Nastrond sends the great wolf Fenrir (in some editions Managarm) to destroy his enemies. As the remaining companions begin to despair, Cadellin appears and slays Grimnir, whom he reveals to be his own brother. The Morrigan flees in terror while Cadellin uses the power of the Weirdstone to subdue once again the forces of darkness.
70153	/m/0j6sy	The Human Stain	Philip Roth	2000-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told by Nathan Zuckerman, a writer who lives quietly in New England, where Coleman Silk is his neighbor. Silk is a former classics professor and dean of faculty at nearby Athena College, a fictional institution in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. At 71, Silk is accused of racism by two black students because of referring to them as "spooks". As they have never shown up in his seminar, he asks: "Do they exist or are they spooks?" Having never seen the students, Silk does not know they are black when he makes the comment. The uproar leads to Silk's resignation. Soon after, his wife Iris dies of a stroke, which Silk feels is caused by the stress of his being forced out of the college. Silk begins an affair with Faunia Farley, a 34-year-old local woman who works as a janitor at the college and is married to an abusive Vietnam veteran. Silk is criticized by feminist scholars at the college for this. Zuckerman gradually learns that Silk is an African American who has presented himself as Jewish (and white) since a stint in the Navy. He completed graduate school, married a white woman and had four children with her. (He never told his wife and children of his mixed ancestry.) As Roth wrote in the novel, Silk chose "to take the future into his own hands rather than to leave it to an unenlightened society to determine his fate".
70206	/m/0j72r	Picnic at Hanging Rock	Joan Lindsay	1967	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Picnic at Hanging Rock centers around a trip by a party of girls from Appleyard College, a fictitious upper class private boarding school, who travel to Hanging Rock in the Mount Macedon area, Victoria, for a picnic on Valentine's Day 1900. The excursion ends in tragedy when three of the girls, and later one of their teachers, mysteriously vanish while climbing the rock. No reason for their disappearance is ever given, and one of the missing girls who is later found has no memory of what has happened to her companions. A fourth girl who also climbed the rock with the group is of little help in solving the mystery, having returned in hysterics for reasons she cannot explain. The disappearances provoke much local concern and international sensation with sexual molestation, abduction and murder being high on the list of possible outcomes. Several organized searches of the picnic grounds and the area surrounding the rock itself turn up nothing. Meanwhile the students, teachers and staff of the college, as well as members of the community, grapple with the riddle-like events. A young man on a private search locates one of the missing girls, but is himself found in an unexplained daze – yet another victim of the rock. Concerned parents begin withdrawing their daughters from the formerly prestigious college and several of the staff, including the headmistress, either resign or meet with tragic ends. We are told that both the College, and the Woodend Police Station where records of the investigation were kept, are destroyed by fire shortly afterwards. The unsolvable mystery of the disappearances was arguably the key to the success of both the book and the subsequent film. This aroused enough lasting public interest that in 1980 a book of hypothetical solutions (by Yvonne Rousseau) was published, called The Murders at Hanging Rock. In fact, Lindsay's original draft included a final chapter in which the mystery was resolved. At her editor's suggestion, Lindsay removed it prior to publication. Chapter Eighteen, as it is known, was published posthumously in 1987 as The Secret of Hanging Rock by Angus & Robertson Publishing. The novel is written in the form of a true story, and even begins and ends with a pseudo-historical prologue and epilogue, adding to the overall feeling of mystery. However, while the geological feature, Hanging Rock, and the several towns mentioned are actual places near Mount Macedon, the story is not completely true. Lindsay had done little to dispel the myth that the story is based on truth, in many interviews either refusing to confirm it was entirely fiction, or hinting that parts of the book were fictitious, and others were not. Valentine's Day, 14 February 1900 was a Wednesday, not a Saturday as depicted in the story. All attempts by enthusiastic readers to find historical evidence of the event, characters, or even Appleyard College, have proved fruitless. Appleyard College was to some extent based on Clyde Girls' Grammar School at East St Kilda, Melbourne, which Joan Lindsay attended as a day-girl while in her teens. Incidentally, in 1919 this school was transferred to the town of Woodend, Victoria, about 8 km southwest of Hanging Rock. The book suggests that the fictional site of Appleyard College, given its eastward view of Mount Macedon on the Bendigo-Melbourne Road, might have been on the western side of Calder Highway/Black Forest Drive (C792), about 2–4 km south of Woodend. A far more detailed synopsis of the story is given in the main entry for the film version.
70258	/m/0j78y	I, the Jury	Mickey Spillane	1947	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 New York City, summer 1944. Although she runs a successful private psychiatric clinic on New York's Park Avenue, Dr. Charlotte Manning — young, beautiful, blonde, and well-to-do — cannot get enough. In order to increase her profit, she gets involved with a group of criminals — a "syndicate" — specialising in both prostitution and drug-trafficking. The brains of the "outfit" is Hal Kines, who has had plastic surgery so that he looks much younger than he really is, this being how he gets hold of the young women whom he then turns into prostitutes. Manning herself has a rich and "ritzy" clientele — people who would not want their addiction to become public knowledge. But instead of weaning them off drugs in her private and exclusive clinic, Manning makes them even more dependent on both the drug — heroin in most cases — and on herself by procuring the stuff herself. On the surface, Charlotte Manning keeps up appearances and leads a respectable life as a renowned psychiatrist. When Jack Williams, a former New York cop who has lost an arm in World War II saving his friend Mike Hammer's life, falls in love with Myrna Devlin, a young heroin addict whom he stops from jumping off a bridge to commit suicide, he asks Manning to admit her to her clinic for psychotherapy. After Myrna has become clean, she and Williams become engaged, and the couple keep up a casual friendship with Charlotte Manning. This is how Williams's growing suspicions about Manning's business lead him to privately and secretly investigate even further into the matter. When he realizes that Hal Kines, one of Manning's college students who has spent some time at her clinic and who has become one of her casual acquaintances, is in fact a criminal, he wants to talk to her about it and tells her so. When, at a party given by Williams in his apartment, Charlotte Manning sees some old college yearbooks whose contents (and photos), if made public, would expose Kines's double life, she has to act fast. After the party, she goes home but on the same night, undetected by Kathy, her maid, goes back to Williams's apartment (Myrna, his fiancée, does not live there) and shoots him in the stomach using a silencer. She does so in a particularly sadistic way, watching him die slowly. Then she takes the college yearbooks and leaves. None of the guests at Williams's party has a watertight alibi, but to both Pat Chambers, the cop investigating the murder, and Mike Hammer, a friend of his and private investigator, none of them has a motive either. Throughout the book, as more and more immediate suspects are eliminated (shot) ("If this kept up there wouldn't be anyone left at all."), Hammer briefly ponders the question if the killer could be an "outsider" — someone wholly unrelated to the group of people who have been at Williams's party, for example someone Williams was after in his capacity as investigator for an insurance company. Chambers also thinks along similar lines: Williams's (secret) connection with Myrna's former drug dealers might have cost him his life. But they soon abandon that theory. When Mike Hammer sees Williams's body ("For the first time in my life I felt like crying"), he makes a solemn vow: He promises that he will find the murderer and execute him himself, avoiding the U.S. judicial system altogether. He says that if he left it to the courts to punish the perpetrator, some clever lawyer would surely achieve an acquittal and the murderer would get away with his crime. This is why he himself will be the jury – and the judge, for that matter. Throughout their basically separate investigations, Hammer and Chambers work closely together, exchanging information and evidence. But each of them hopes he will be the one to find the killer in the end. The immediate suspects Hammer finds himself confronted with are: * Esther and Mary Bellemy, identical twins in their late twenties living in a New York apartment hotel, rather attractive women of independent means, with a large estate somewhere in the country. Both are unmarried and obviously looking for husbands. Later, Hammer finds out — through first-hand experience — that Mary Bellemy is a nymphomaniac. Esther Bellemy, whom he never gets to know intimately, is no virgin either, but much more reserved than her sister Mary, with whom Hammer actually has sex on two separate occasions. * George Kalecki, whom Hammer knows to have been a crook — a bootlegger, to be precise — but who has obviously achieved a clean record and who now appears to be Hal Kines's paternal friend, paying for the latter's tuition and giving him food and lodging. (In fact it is the other way round: Hal Kines, the "big shot" and the brains of the syndicate, has a hold on Kalecki: Hidden away in the vaults of some bank he has documents proving that Kalecki is a killer on the loose.) * Hal Kines, who poses as a student of medicine but who is in fact the head of a criminal organisation specializing in prostitution and drug-dealing. His very sophisticated — and complicated — way of procuring willing women for his "outfit" can only be understood if one considers the morally repressed society of the late 1940s: Again and again, he assumes the role of John Hanson, a student in some provincial college (for example in the Midwest), pretends falling in love with a female student, makes her pregnant, forces her to have an illegal abortion, and then deserts her. By now the girl's life has been ruined, she has been ostracized by both her family and most likely all her friends and acquaintances. Then a car arrives, picks up the desperate young woman and drives her straight to one of the New York "call houses" operated by his syndicate. Once there, there is no way for her to escape. * Charlotte Manning, with whom Hammer falls in love and who, as far as he can see, has no motive whatsoever to kill Williams. Hammer, the first person narrator of the story, describes her as "radiating sex in every manner and gesture" ("Mary [Bellemy] only had sex. Charlotte had that plus a lot more."). Charlotte confesses her love for him, and he says that he has never been in love before. Soon they talk about getting married. Hammer has always admired her "golden hair"; but not before the very end, when she strips, does he find out that Charlotte is a "real blonde". In the course of the action Charlotte Manning kills five people: After committing her first murder, she has to cover up her tracks and murder anyone who might be able to expose her. As Hammer admits, she has an unusual amount of luck helping her to do all that. * Myrna Devlin, a former "dope fiend" who, as it turns out, does not play any important role in the plot at all except that of one of the victims: At the Bellemys' party (towards the end of the book), Myrna, alone in an upstairs room where most of the guests have left their coats, tries on Charlotte Manning's coat and discovers heroin in one of its pockets. This is the reason why Manning has to shoot her, too. It takes Hammer and Chambers a long time to figure out what is going on. Manning continues to kill those who have become dangerous for her. At the same time, her relationship with Hammer deepens. We see everything through Hammer's eyes, and for a long time he is completely blind to the facts ("I hope you get him,' she said sincerely."). During a walk through Central Park, while Manning is baby-sitting for one of her friends, she and Hammer are shot at. The sniper is Kalecki, but it does not become clear until later that he was after Manning. He misses. On a Saturday morning, Hammer picks up Myrna Devlin and gives her a lift. They drive to the Bellemy twins' estate in the country for a gigantic all-day party there. Charlotte Manning says she has some business to attend to and will be there in time for a tennis game due to take place that evening. After an unsuccessful attempt at playing tennis himself, Hammer gets rid of his sleep deficit by spending all day in his room, fast asleep, with "old junior" — his gun — close to him. He is woken up just in time for dinner, during which Harmon Wilder, the Bellemys' lawyer, and Charles Sherman, Wilder's assistant, are pointed out to him. This is a fine — and the final — distractor in the novel: Wilder and Sherman are suddenly missing from the party after Myrna Devlin has been found shot. In fact they had illicit drugs on them and did not want to be found out. During the tennis game, Mary Bellemy asks Charlotte if she can "borrow" Hammer. Then she leads him into the woods where they have sex. They return to the party just as a maid discovers Myrna's body in an upstairs room, in front of a large mirror. Both Pat Chambers and the police are called in, and the alibis of each guest is checked. Again Charlotte can convince everyone that she could not have done anything. Back home, Hammer retreats into his apartment to think. Finally, he knows the identity of the killer. This is when he goes to Charlotte's place, recapitulates the whole crime and finally shoots her dead, despite her efforts to pull the trigger on him.
70375	/m/0j7s8	Thinks ...	David Lodge	2001	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel is exclusively set at the (entirely fictitious [cf. "Author's Note"]) University of Gloucester, based loosely on the University of York thanks to the author's brief residence there. (Its Cognitive Science and Creative Writing departments also bear uncanny resemblances to those of the universities of Sussex and East Anglia respectively.) Its action takes place in the spring term of 1997 (during the time of Tony Blair's landslide victory). ;Helen Reed, a young widow Helen Reed, an English novelist in her early forties with two children old enough to look after themselves, arrives on campus to spend the term there as "writer-in-residence" and to teach a creative writing class — actually sitting in for a professor who is spending the term abroad to write a novel. Helen is going through a crisis in her life after the sudden death of her husband Martin a bit more than a year ago. Martin Reed worked for the BBC researching material for documentaries. One night, out of the blue, he developed a brain aneurysm, went into a coma, and died the next day. Still grieving over the death of her beloved husband, Helen thinks a change of scenery might be a good idea to get over her loss. However, the moment she sees the campus and the accommodation that has been provided for her, it occurs to her that she might as well turn on her heel and go back to their beautifully restored old house in London. As she has rented it out for the duration of the term to a couple visiting from the United States, however, she finally brings herself to stay on and face the challenge: She has never finished her D.Phil. thesis on point of view in Henry James and her teaching experience so far has been limited to some night class on creative writing full of bored housewives. The University of Gloucester, whose campus boasts wide open spaces and even an artificial lake but whose buildings look rather drab and unspectacular in the harsh February weather, caters for all sorts of tastes and needs. ;Ralph Messenger, a womanizer Apart from the English Department, she is particularly intrigued by the department specialising in Cognitive Science, and by its head, 50 year-old Ralph Messenger, to whom she is introduced at some social function very soon during her stay. From the moment she sets eyes on him, Helen feels curiously attracted by Messenger, but she soon learns about his reputation as a womaniser. Helen has not had sex since her husband's death, and, due to her Catholic upbringing, which she has been unable and, to a lesser degree, also unwilling to cast off completely, she tries to thrust aside any thoughts concerning an illicit affair or a one-night stand with Messenger, who is married with four children. In due course, she also meets his wife Carrie, an American coming from a rich background, and their children — Emily, her 17 year-old daughter by her first marriage; Simon and Mark, two teenage boys; and 8 year-old Hope, a girl. The Messengers live in a beautiful house near the University but they also have a country retreat in the Cotswolds (quite close to Gloucester) called 'Horseshoes', where they have a large redwood hot tub in their back garden. Before long Helen is invited to join them for a Sunday in the country, and she gladly accepts to avoid another dreary and empty weekend. ;Ralph Messenger's first passes Right from the start, Ralph Messenger's philandering is painfully obvious to Helen. At one of the first social gatherings she attends, she happens to see Messenger and the wife of the Head of the School of English, Marianne Richmond, kissing passionately in the kitchen. (At that point of time she does not know that there is not more to it than meets the eye, that they are just playing some sort of secret game.) One weekend quite early during her stay, after they have been in the hot water outside and with Carrie already in the house, Messenger plants a firm kiss on Helen's lips. From the secret journal he is keeping, we know that Messenger fancies her. Helen does not actually resist the kiss, but afterwards she tells him unmistakably that she is not going to have an affair with him because, among other things, she strongly disapproves of adultery. From Helen's own journal, however, we learn that she is sexually aroused by his presence and by just thinking of him. Messenger, who does not know anything about Helen's real feelings, thinks that he has made his pass at her prematurely and, by doing so, has spoiled any future liaison with her. ;Discovery by Helen of her husband's cheating Meanwhile, Helen tries to focus on her work. The students she has to teach are a small, friendly and ambitious group who meet on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Her class is to a large extent about their work in progress, mainly novels which they started during the preceding term. When Sandra Pickering, one of the students, belatedly submits some chapters from the novel she is writing, Helen immediately recognizes one of the male characters as having been modelled on her late husband Martin. As Helen herself has based a character in her novel The Eye of the Storm on Martin, she is about to accuse Sandra Pickering of plagiarism when, to her dismay, she finds out that the girl used to work for the BBC some years ago, that she knew Martin, and that she actually had an affair with him. (Sandra knows, and writes about, intimate details such as what he preferred doing immediately after sex.) Gradually it dawns upon Helen that her husband must have had a whole succession of young lovers, with everyone except herself knowing everything, or at least suspecting a lot, about it, while she herself, only mildly promiscuous during her student days, was never unfaithful to him. At this point Helen decides to never again shed a tear for him and get on with her own life instead. In this new light, not even Messenger's advances seem so monstrous any more. ;Discovery of Ralph's wife's cheating She makes another discovery which almost turns her view of the world upside down. On a free afternoon, she escapes the stifling atmosphere of the campus to explore the surrounding countryside. Seated over lunch in a pub in the small town of Ledbury, she witnesses — a silly coincidence? — an intimate kiss between Carrie Messenger and Nicholas Beck, "silver-haired Professor of Fine Art", who is said to be a celibate gay — a rumour which he does not do anything about because it serves as the perfect cover-up for his affair with Carrie Messenger, whom officially he only helps select fine antiques for the Messengers' two houses. An embarrassing encounter at the pub follows, with all three of them keeping up appearances and being polite and reserved. Later, however, during a duck race (a fund-raising event with plastic ducks "racing" down a small river), Carrie confides in Helen: She knows all (or almost everything) about her husband's flings and, by taking a lover herself, tries to get back at him. Ralph Messenger, she is quite sure, does not know anything about her affair. Also, Carrie tells her that she screwed around a lot while she was studying at UC Berkeley, but only with faculty, never with other students. As spring finally comes and the end of term is rapidly approaching, some more unforeseen events happen, all of which involve Ralph Messenger in one way or another ("Troubles never come singly"): ;The concretisation of the affair Back home in the U.S.A., Mr Thurlow, Carrie's rich father, has two serious heart attacks in a row so that Carrie books the first flight home. She takes Hope with her. With Carrie out of the way for some time — in the end it turns out to be three weeks — Helen, who has recently let herself be seduced by Messenger, spends the most beautiful and romantic — or rather lustful — three weeks since her husband's death. In the language of the kind of novels she loves reading, she describes herself as having become "a woman of pleasure, a scarlet woman, a woman of easy virtue". She and Messenger have sex practically every day, and at all kinds of places. Helen, who prefers a bedroom with the curtains drawn, is amazed at, and eventually fascinated by, Messenger's lust and ingenuity when it comes to selecting odd spots for making love, for instance a prehistoric burial mound on top of a hill, with some hikers approaching. Helen also volunteers to perform the duties of a housewife for Carrie and then stays over at the Messengers' house. At night, she and Ralph Messenger derive some additional pleasure from trying not to make any sound during their lovemaking so as not to arouse the kids' suspicion. (But Emily, who has an 18 year-old boyfriend and who discusses her sex life with her mother, seems to know what is going on anyway and at one point almost blackmails her stepfather.) Soon Helen ponders the question whether she is actually falling in love with him and, consequently, if and how their affair will continue after the end of the term. Only once, when they are in bed together, can he not get an erection. ;Accumulation of problems for Ralph * While Ralph Messenger is busy organizing the International Conference on Consciousness Studies ("Con-Con"), to be held at Gloucester University this year, his (recent) past catches up with him: During a symposium in Prague some weeks ago, he spent the night with a young scientist called Ludmila Lisk, who now, by way of email, threatens to expose him as an adulterer if she is not allowed to attend the conference. In the end he has to give in to her demand. Eventually, during the conference, Ludmila Lisk clings to Messenger in a way that arouses even Helen's suspicion (and jealousy). * Messenger, who has recently been suffering from indigestion, is diagnosed by his GP as having a lump on his liver which could be cancer. Immediately, he resolves to commit suicide rather than suffer a long and painful process of dying if it is really cancer. He has to undergo several tests and endure rather a long period of waiting until he is finally told by a specialist that his problem is harmless and that he is not going to die. * There is some student protest concerning the University's affiliation with, and funding by, the Ministry of Defence and the honouring of a politician responsible for that funding. * The police — a Detective Sergeant Agnew of the Gloucestershire Police, Paedophile and Pornography Unit - inform Messenger that child pornography has been downloaded from the Internet at some terminal located on campus. He is asked by the policeman to volunteer to have his hard disk examined by him, and Messenger agrees, knowing that (a) his secret journal may be read (and all his womanizing come to light), and that (b) you cannot really delete anything from a hard disk once you have stored the information there, so there would be no point in delaying the investigation. In the end, the perpetrator turns out to be Professor Douglass ("Duggers"), his deputy head, a weird unmarried scientist living together with his mother and sister. Although the pictures he acquired via the Internet turn out to be not very explicit, Douglass, on being confronted by Agnew, commits suicide by hanging himself in the toilet — in a way that seems to have been meticulously planned. This happens on the final day of the conference (and the term, for that matter), just as the participants are having their final dinner. ;The end of the affair A final breach of confidence committed by Ralph Messenger makes it much easier for Helen to leave him and go back to London. Also, for the first time, it inadvertently triggers some emotion in Messenger, albeit a negative one: jealousy. When he is waiting for Helen in her maisonette, he cannot resist the temptation to turn on her laptop and read parts of her journal. This is how he learns about his own wife's infidelity. When Helen enters her apartment, his jealousy gets the better of him so that he cannot hide the fact that he has invaded her privacy. (Originally, he suggested that they should exchange their respective journals, as each of them would profit from reading the other's, but Helen categorically refused.) Ralph Messenger does have to be operated on after all, but the surgery is successful. However, he somewhat ages and, in the process, loses his reputation as a woman-chaser. In 1999, he publishes a new book entitled Machine Living and in due course is awarded a CBE. He never confronts Carrie with her affair and remains married to her. Helen Reed returns to London and resumes writing. Some time later she meets a new partner, but she does not move in with him (or he with her). In the following year she publishes Crying is a Puzzler, a novel about life on campus quite similar to that of the University of Gloucester.
70829	/m/0jb2_	The Adventures of Pinocchio	Carlo Collodi	1883	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in Tuscany. A carpenter has found a block of pinewood which he plans to carve into a leg for his table. When he begins, however, the log shouts out, "Don't strike me too hard!" Frightened by the talking log, the carpenter, Antonio or Master Cherry as he is called does not know what to do until his neighbor Geppetto, known for disliking children, drops by looking for a piece of wood to build a marionette. Seeing a perfect opportunity, Antonio gives the block to Geppetto. Geppetto is extremely poor and plans to make a living as a puppeteer. He carves the block into a boy and names him "Pinocchio". As soon as Pinocchio's nose has been carved, it begins to grow longer and longer before Geppetto is finished with him. After the puppet is finished, Geppetto teaches him to walk and Pinocchio runs out the door and away into the town. He is caught by a Carabiniere but when people say that Geppetto dislikes children, the carabineer assumes that Pinocchio has been mistreated and imprisons Geppetto. Pinocchio heads back to Geppetto's house and encounters The Talking Cricket who has lived in the house for over a century. It tells him that boys who do not obey their parents grow up to be donkeys. Pinocchio throws a hammer at the cricket and accidentally kills it. Unable to find food in the house, Pinocchio ventures to a neighbor's house to beg for food and the annoyed neighbor pours a basin of water on him. Pinocchio returns home freezing and tries to warm himself by placing his feet upon the stove. The next morning he wakes to find that his feet have burnt off. Geppetto, who has been released from jail and has three pears for a meal, makes his son a new pair of feet. In gratitude, Pinocchio promises to go to school. Since Geppetto has no money to buy school books, he sells his only coat. Pinocchio heads off to school, but on the way he is distracted by some music and crowds and he follows the sounds until he finds himself in a crowd of people, all congregated to see the Great Marionette Theater. Pinocchio sells his school books for tickets to the show. During the performance, the puppets Harlequin, Punch, and Signora Rosaura see Pinocchio and cry out, "It is our brother Pinocchio!" The audience grows angry, and the theater director, Mangiafuoco, comes out to see what is going on. Upset, he decides to use Pinocchio as firewood to cook his dinner. Pinocchio pleads to be saved and Mangiafuoco gives in. When he learns about Pinocchio's poor father, he gives the marionette five gold pieces for Geppetto. As Pinocchio heads home to give the coins to his father, he meets a fox and a cat who convince him that if he plants his coins in the Field of Miracles, outside the city of Catchfools, then they will grow into a tree with a thousand gold coins, or perhaps two thousand. Pinocchio heads off on a journey to Catchfools with the Cat and Fox. On the way, they stop at the Inn of the Red Crayfish, where the Fox and Cat gorge themselves on food at Pinocchio's expense. The fox and cat take off ahead of Pinocchio and disguise themselves as bandits while Pinocchio continues on toward Catchfools. The ghost of the Talking Cricket appears, telling him to go home and give the coins to his father but Pinocchio ignores him. As he passes through the forest, the disguised Cat and Fox jump out and try to rob Pinocchio, who hides the money in his mouth. In the struggle that follows Pinocchio bites the Cat's hand off and escapes deeper into the forest where he sees a white house ahead. Stopping to knock on the door, he is greeted by a young Fairy with Turquoise Hair, who says she is dead and waiting to be taken. However, as he speaks to her, the bandits catch him and hang him in a tree. After a while the Fox and Cat get tired of waiting for the marionette to suffocate and leave. The Blue-haired Fairy sends a falcon and a poodle to rescue Pinocchio, and she calls in three famous doctors to tell her if Pinocchio is dead. The first two (an owl and a crow) are uncertain, but the third—the Talking Cricket that Pinocchio presumably killed earlier—knows that Pinocchio is fine and tells the marionette that he has been disobedient and hurt his father. The Blue-haired Fairy tries to make Pinocchio take medicine, saying he will soon die if he doesn't, but he refuses to take it, despite promising to if he is given sugar, which the Blue-haired Fairy gives him. However Four Black Rabbits then enter the room with a coffin and tell Pinocchio they have come to take him away, as he will be dead soon. Pinocchio takes the medicine and the rabbits leave. The Blue-haired Fairy asks Pinocchio what happened and he tells her. She then asks him where the gold coins are. Pinocchio lies, saying he has lost them. As he utters this lie (and more) his nose begins to grow until it is so long he cannot turn around in the room. The Fairy explains to Pinocchio that it is his lies that are making his nose grow long, then calls in a flock of woodpeckers to chisel down his nose. Pinocchio and the Blue-haired Fairy decide to become brother and sister, and the Fairy sends for Geppetto to come live with them in the forest. Pinocchio heads out to meet his father, but on the way he meets the fox and cat again (whom he had not recognized as the bandits, even though he has a hint from the cat's bandaged front paw—which he had bitten earlier; the fox tells him the cat had shown mistaken kindness to a wolf). They remind Pinocchio of the Field of Miracles, and finally he agrees to go with them and plant his gold. After half a day's journey, they reach the city of Catchfools. Everyone in the town has done something exceedingly foolish and now suffers as a result. When they reach the "Field of Miracles", Pinocchio buries his gold then runs off to wait the twenty minutes it will take for his gold to grow. After twenty minutes he returns, only to find no tree and—even worse—no gold coins. Realizing what has happened from a bird, he goes to Catchfools and tells the judge, an old Gorilla, about the fox and cat. The judge (as is the custom in Catchfools) sends Pinocchio to prison for his foolishness for four months. While he is in prison, however, the emperor of Catchfools declares a celebration, and all prisoners are set free. As Pinocchio heads back to the forest, he finds an enormous serpent with a smoking tail blocking the way. After some confusion, he asks the serpent to move, but the serpent remains completely still. Concluding that it is dead, Pinocchio begins to step over it, but the serpent suddenly rises up and hisses at the marionette, toppling him over onto his head. Struck by Pinocchio's fright and comical position, the snake laughs so hard, it bursts an artery and dies. While sneaking into a farmer's yard to take some grapes, Pinocchio is caught in a weasel trap. He asks a bird to help him, but it refuses after hearing Pinocchio was planning to steal grapes. When the farmer comes out and finds Pinocchio, he ties him up in a doghouse to guard his chicken coop. That night, a group of weasels come and tell Pinocchio that they had made a deal with former watchdog Melampo to let them raid the chicken coop if he could have a chicken. Pinocchio says he wants two chickens, so the weasels agree and go into the henhouse. Pinocchio then locks the door and barks loudly. The farmer gets the weasels and frees Pinocchio as a reward. Pinocchio comes to where the cottage was and finds nothing but a gravestone. Believing the Blue-haired Fairy died from sorrow, he weeps until a friendly pigeon offers to give him a ride to the seashore, where Geppetto is building a boat to go out and search for Pinocchio. They fly to the seashore and Pinocchio sees Geppetto out in a boat. The puppet leaps into the water and tries to swim to Geppetto, but the waves are too rough and Pinocchio is washed underwater as Geppetto is swallowed by a terrible shark. A kindly dolphin gives Pinocchio a ride to the nearest island, which is the Island of Busy Bees. Everyone is working and no one will give Pinocchio any food as long as he will not help them. He finally offers to carry a lady's jug home in return for food and water. When they get to the house, Pinocchio recognizes the lady as the Blue-haired Fairy, now miraculously old enough to be his mother. She says she will act as Pinocchio's mother and Pinocchio will begin going to school. She hints that if Pinocchio does well in school he will become a real boy. Pinocchio starts school the next day and after showing his determination becomes a friend to all the schoolboys. A while later a group of boys trick Pinocchio into playing hookey by saying they saw a large whale at the beach. Hoping that it is the shark that swallowed Geppetto, he accompanies them to the beach only to find he has been fooled. He begins fighting with the boys and one boy grabs a schoolbook of Pinocchio's and throws it at him. The marionette ducks and the book hits another boy named Eugene, who is knocked out. The other boys flee while Pinocchio tries to revive Eugene. Then two policemen come up and accuse Pinocchio of injuring Eugene. Before he can explain, the policemen grab him to take him to jail—but he escapes and is chased into the sea by the police dog. The dog starts to drown and Pinocchio saves him. The dog is grateful and promises to be Pinocchio's friend. Pinocchio happily starts swimming to shore. Then The Green Fisherman catches Pinocchio in his net and starts to eat the fish, saying Pinocchio must be a very special fish. Taking off the marionette's clothes and covering him with flour, the ogre prepares to eat Pinocchio. The police dog then comes in and rescues Pinocchio from the ogre. On the way home, Pinocchio stops at a man's house and asks about Eugene. The man says Eugene is fine, but that Pinocchio must be a truant. Pinocchio says that he is always truthful and obedient. Again his nose grows longer and Pinocchio immediately tells the truth about himself, causing the nose to shrink back to normal. Pinocchio gets home in the middle of the night. He knocks on the door and a snail opens the third-story window. Pinocchio pleads to be let in and the snail says he will come down. Since a snail is slow, it takes all night for the snail to come down and let Pinocchio in. By the time the snail comes down Pinocchio has banged his foot against the door and gotten stuck. The snail brings Pinocchio artificial food and the marionette faints. When he wakes, he is on the couch and the Fairy says she will give him another chance. Pinocchio does excellently in school and passes with high honors. The Fairy promises that Pinocchio will be a real boy next day and says he should invite all his friends to a party. He goes to invite everyone, but he is sidetracked when he meets a boy named Romeo—nicknamed Lampwick because he is so tall and skinny. Lampwick is about to go to a place called Toyland, where everyone plays all day and never works. Pinocchio goes along with him and they have a wonderful time in the land of Play—until one morning Pinocchio awakes with donkey ears. A Squirrel tells him that boys who do nothing but play and never work always grow into donkeys. Within a short while Pinocchio has become a donkey. He is sold to a circus and is trained to do all kinds of tricks. Then one night in the circus he falls and sprains his leg. The circus owner sells the donkey to a man who wants to skin him and make a drum. The man throws the donkey into the sea to drown him—and brings up a living wooden boy. Pinocchio explains that the fish ate all the donkey skin off of him and he is now a marionette again. Pinocchio dives back into the water and swims out to sea—when he is swallowed by The Terrible Shark. Inside the shark Pinocchio meets a tuna who is resigned to the fate and just says they will have to wait to be digested. Pinocchio sees a light from far off and he follows the light. At the other end is Geppetto, who had been living on a ship that was also in the shark. Pinocchio and Geppetto and the tuna manage to get out from inside the shark and Pinocchio heroically attempts to swim with Geppetto to shore, which turns out to be too far; however, the tuna rescues them and brings them to shore. Pinocchio and Geppetto try to find a place to stay. They pass two beggars, who are the Fox and the Cat. The Cat is, ironically, really blind now, and the fox is actually lame, tailless (having sold his tail for money) and mangy. They plead for food or money, but Pinocchio will give them nothing. They arrive at a small house, and living there is the Talking Cricket, who says they can stay. Pinocchio gets a job doing work for a farmer, whose donkey is dying. Pinocchio recognizes the donkey as Lampwick. Pinocchio mourns over Lampwick's dead body and the farmer is perplexed as to why. Pinocchio says that Lampwick was his friend and they went to school together, causing Farmer John to be even more confused. After long months of working for the farmer and supporting the ailing Geppetto he goes to town with what money he has saved (40 pennies to be exact) to buy himself a new suit. He meets the snail, who tells him that the Blue-haired Fairy is ill and needs money. Pinocchio instantly gives the snail all the money he has, promising that he will help his mother as much as he is helping his father. That night, he dreams he is visited by the Fairy, who kisses him. When he wakes up, he is a real boy at last. Furthermore, Pinocchio finds that the Fairy left him a new suit and boots, and a bag which Pinocchio thinks is the forty pennies he originally loaned to the Blue Fairy. The boy is shocked to find instead forty freshly minted gold coins. He is also reunited with Geppetto, now healthy and resuming woodcarving. They live happily ever after.
70850	/m/0jb7s	Smith of Wootton Major	J. R. R. Tolkien		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The village of Wootton Major was well-known around the countryside for its annual festivals, which were particularly famous for their culinary delights. The biggest festival of all was the Feast of Good Children. This festival was celebrated only once every twenty-four years: twenty-four children of the village were invited to a party, and the highlight of the party was the Great Cake, a career milestone by which Master Cooks were judged. In the year the story begins, the Master Cook was Nokes, who had landed the position more or less by default; he delegated much of the creative work to his apprentice Alf. Nokes crowned his Great Cake with a little doll jokingly representing the Queen of Faery. Various trinkets were hidden in the cake for the children to find; one of these was a star the Cook discovered in the old spice box. The star was not found at the Feast, but was swallowed by a blacksmith’s son. The boy did not feel its magical properties at once, but on the morning of his tenth birthday the star fixed itself on his forehead, and became his passport to Faery. The boy grew up to be a blacksmith like his father, but in his free time he roamed the Land of Faery. The star on his forehead protected him from many of the dangers threatening mortals in that land, and the Folk of Faery called him "Starbrow". The book describes his many travels in Faery, until at last he meets the true Queen of Faery. The identity of the King is also revealed. The time came for another Feast of Good Children. Smith had possessed his gift for most of his life, and the time had come to pass it on to some other child. So he regretfully surrendered the star to Alf, and with it his adventures into Faery. Alf, who had become Master Cook long before, baked it into the festive cake once again for another child to find. After the feast, Alf retired and left the village; and Smith returned to his forge to teach his craft to his now-grown son.
71029	/m/0jc4c	The Tie That Binds	Kent Haruf			 In 1896, newlyweds Roy and Ada Goodnough leave Iowa and settle down in northeastern Colorado under the Homestead Act of 1862. The business of farming is a tough affair in those days, but Roy is a hard-working man who eventually succeeds in tilling the soil and breeding cattle. Ada bears him two children: Edith, who is born in 1897, and Lyman, born two years later. As their neighbour, Hannah Roscoe, the narrator's grandmother, a half-breed whose husband left her and their little son for good, quietly observes the Goodnoughs and also, on Ada's request, helps deliver Edith and Lyman. Very soon Ada regrets leaving Iowa for the plains of Colorado. Her husband turns out to be a bully, an angry and violent man without any sense of humour who makes her and their children work very hard on the farm. When she dies in 1914, aged only 42, Edith has to take over all of Ada's chores and duties ("Your mother's dead. You're the mother now."). Then, in 1915, a terrible accident during harvesttime seals Edith's fate: Her father's hands get entangled in a machine, and nine of his fingers are chopped off. This severe physical handicap leaves Roy Goodnough all the more cruel and demanding; he considers, and treats, Edith and Lyman as his "self-sired farmhands", bossing them around and taking all decisions himself. As the two siblings grow up, they desperately start looking for means of escape. But they soon realize that they are stuck on their father's farm, that, as opposed to city kids, they are bound by a rural code of honour and a sense of duty and thus prevented from abandoning the farm and leaving their father alone. For the next 37 years, Edith performs the duties of farmer, housewife and nurse without ever seriously complaining, renouncing her personal freedom and refusing to get involved with men (except for a brief romance with the narrator's father who, as would be expected, is rejected by her father as a "half-breed bastard"). Lyman, tall, inexperienced in the ways of the world and deeply frustrated, finally sees his chance of escape when, in 1941, the United States is attacked by Japan. In the middle of the night and with the help of the Roscoes, he secretly leaves the farm and goes to the city with the intention of joining the armed forces. But at 42 he is too old to enlist and instead embarks on a tour of the United States which lasts for more than 20 years. All those years, Edith never doubts that one day her brother will return. He does so, too, in the early 1960s, almost ten years after their father's peaceful death at 82. After a number of good years which Edith and Lyman, now both in their sixties, can enjoy living together in their farm house and doing some travelling in his car, Lyman's health begins to deteriorate and his personality starts to change and eventually go to pieces. It is again Edith whose sense of duty tells her to look after her brother. Lyman wreaks havoc when, in 1967, he causes a car accident which leads to the narrator's wife having a miscarriage. In the following years, Edith draws some pleasure from spending afternoons with Rena, the narrator's daughter, who is born in 1969. But soon it becomes too dangerous for Rena to go to the Goodnoughs on her own, as Lyman, who has regressed to infancy, is prone to unprompted outbursts of violence. Eventually, on New Year's Eve, 1976, Edith prepares for her only act of rebellion ever. She has Lyman put on his best clothes, cooks a three-course dinner for him, waits for him to fall asleep and then sets fire to their house. Things do not happen according to plan though because the fire is detected too soon and the two old people are evacuated. However, Lyman never recovers from the injuries inflicted by the fire and dies soon afterwards. In the spring of 1977 Edith Goodnough is still lying in a hospital bed with a policeman stationed outside her room and facing charges of attempted murder. The Roscoes visit every day. Sanders Roscoe is particularly appalled by the journalists from Denver who, having no idea how hard the farming life can be, have started sniffing around and digging up dirt.
71290	/m/0jd3p	England, England	Julian Barnes	1998	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 England, England is divided into three parts entitled "England", "England, England" and "Anglia". The first part focuses on the protagonist Martha Cochrane and her childhood memories. Growing up in the surrounding of the English countryside, her peaceful childhood gets disrupted when her father leaves the family. Martha's memories of her father are closely related to playing a Counties of England jigsaw puzzle with him. The second part, "England, England", is set in the near future in what is clearly marked as a postmodern age. Martha is now in her forties and gets employed by the entrepreneur Sir Jack Pitman for his megalomaniac project. Sir Jack aims to turn the Isle of Wight into a gigantic theme park which contains everything that people, especially tourists, consider to be quintessentially English, selected according to what Sir Jack himself approves of. The theme park called 'England, England' thus becomes a replica of England's best known historical buildings, figures and sites. Popular English tourist attractions and icons of 'Englishness' are crammed together to be easily accessible without having to travel whole 'real' England. While working on the set-up of the project, Martha starts an affair with one of her colleagues, Paul Harrison. They find out about Sir Jack's questionable sexual preferences and blackmail him with the discriminating evidence when Sir Jack wants to dismiss Martha. She thus becomes CEO of the Island project, which turns out to be a highly popular tourist attraction. As a consequence of the huge success, 'England, England' becomes an independent state and part of the European Union, while the real, 'Old England' suffers a severe decline and increasingly falls into oblivion. After a major scandal in the theme park, however, Martha is eventually expelled from the island. The third part of the novel, "Anglia", is set decades later and depicts Martha who has returned to a village in Old England after many years of wandering abroad. The original nation has regressed into a vastly de-populated, agrarian and pre-industrial state without any international political influence, while 'England, England' continues to prosper. The chapter describes the villagers' endeavour to re-establish a traditional village fête with the help of Martha's memories. Martha ultimately spends her final days in this rural setting pondering about her past.
71416	/m/0jdh5	Dune	Frank Herbert	1965	{"/m/0594kx": "Conspiracy fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/04chq5": "Planetary romance", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV of House Corrino has come to fear House Atreides due to the growing popularity of Duke Leto Atreides within the Landsraad, the convocation of ruling Houses. Shaddam decides that House Atreides must be destroyed, but cannot risk an overt attack on a single House, as this would not be accepted by the Landsraad and could be met with civil war. The Emperor instead uses the centuries-old feud between House Atreides and House Harkonnen to disguise his assault, enlisting the brilliant and power-hungry Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in his plan to trap and eliminate the Atreides. To remove them from their fief of Caladan, where they are protected by their elite navy, Shaddam entices Leto to accept the lucrative fief of the "spice planet", Arrakis, previously controlled by the Harkonnens. Leto's control of the only planet capable of spice production would increase the power of House Atreides, which has not, historically, been influential or wealthy. Complicating the political intrigue is the fact that the Duke's son Paul Atreides is an essential part of the Bene Gesserit's secret, centuries-old breeding program. Leto's concubine, the Bene Gesserit Lady Jessica, was ordered to give birth to a daughter. Capable of determining her child's sex due to her Bene Gesserit abilities, she instead bears a boy, to provide an heir for Leto. Leto correctly believes his rivals and enemies to be plotting against him, and the Atreides are able to thwart initial Harkonnen traps and complications while simultaneously building trust with the mysterious desert Fremen, with whom they hope to ally. However, the Atreides are ultimately unable to withstand a devastating Harkonnen attack, supported by House Corrino's elite Corps of Sardaukar, disguised as Harkonnen troops. The attack is assisted by a traitor within House Atreides Suk doctor Wellington Yueh, who is not suspected of disloyalty due to conditioning he underwent to complete his medical training. House Atreides' forces are unable to counterattack effectively and the House is scattered, with Leto taken captive by Yueh and delivered to the Harkonnens. Of the Houses' principal retainers, mentat Thufir Hawat is captured by the Sardaukar; the troubador-soldier Gurney Halleck escapes with the aid of smugglers, whom he joins; and military commander Duncan Idaho is killed defending Paul and Jessica. Yueh, who has only betrayed the Atreides to further a personal feud with Baron Harkonnen, plants a poison tooth in Leto's mouth, which he hopes will kill the Baron when bitten. Yueh is executed by the Baron, who distrusts him, but Leto manages to kill the Baron's chief retainer, mentat Piter De Vries, when he is brought before Harkonnen. The Baron evades the poison cloud expelled from the tooth, surviving the attack and enlisting Atreides mentat Thufir Hawat into his service. Jessica's Bene Gesserit abilities and Paul's developing skills, which have been taught to him by his mother, help them join a band of Fremen. Paul and his mother quickly learn Fremen ways while teaching the Fremen the weirding way, a Bene Gesserit method of fighting. Jessica becomes a Reverend Mother, ingesting the poisonous Water of Life while pregnant with her second child; this unborn daughter Alia is subjected to the same ordeal, acquiring the full abilities of a Reverend Mother before even being born. Paul takes a Fremen lover, Chani, with whom he fathers a son. Years pass, and Paul increasingly recognizes the strength of the Fremen fighting force and their potential to overtake even the "unstoppable" Sardaukar and win back Arrakis. The spice diet of the Fremen and his own developing mental powers cause Paul's prescience to be increase dramatically, allowing his forsight of future "paths" of possible events, and he is regarded by the Fremen as their prophesied messiah. As Paul grows in influence, he begins a jihad against Harkonnen rule of the planet under his new Fremen name, Muad'Dib. However, Paul becomes aware through his prescience that, if he is not careful, the Fremen will extend that jihad against all the known universe, which Paul describes as a humanity-spanning subconscious effort to avoid genetic stagnation. Both the Emperor and the Baron Harkonnen show increasing concern at the fervor of religious fanaticism shown on Arrakis for this "Muad'Dib", not guessing that this leader is the presumed-dead Paul. Harkonnen plots to send his nephew and heir Feyd Rautha as a replacement for his more brutish nephew Glossu Rabban — who is in charge of the planet — with the hope of gaining the respect of the population. However, the Emperor is highly suspicious of the Baron and sends spies to watch his movements. Hawat explains the Emperor's suspicions: the Sardaukar, nearly invincible in battle, are trained on the prison planet Salusa Secundus, whose inhospitable conditions allow only the best to survive. Arrakis serves as a similar crucible, and the Emperor fears that the Baron could recruit from it a fighting force to rival his Sardaukar, just as House Atreides had intended before its destruction. Paul is reunited with Gurney. Completely loyal to the Atreides, Gurney is convinced that Jessica is the traitor who caused the House's downfall, and nearly kills her before being stopped by Paul. Disturbed that his prescience had not predicted this possibility, Paul decides to take the Water of Life, an act which will either confirm his status as the Kwisatz Haderach or kill him. After three weeks in a near-death state, Paul emerges with his powers refined and focused; he is able to see past, present, and future at will. Looking into space, he sees that the Emperor and the Harkonnens have amassed a huge armada to invade the planet and regain control. Paul also realizes the way to control spice production on Arrakis: saturating spice fields with the water of life would cause a chain reaction that would destroy all spice on the planet. In an Imperial attack on a Fremen settlement, Paul and Chani's son Leto is killed, and the four-year-old Alia is captured by Sardaukar and brought to the planet's capital Arrakeen, where the Baron Harkonnen is attempting to thwart the Fremen jihad under the close watch of the Emperor. The Emperor is surprised at Alia's defiance of his power and her confidence in her brother, whom she reveals to be Paul Atreides. At that moment, under cover of a gigantic sandstorm, Paul and his army of Fremen attack the city riding sandworms; Alia kills the Baron during the confusion. Paul quickly overtakes the city's defenses and confronts the Emperor, threatening to destroy the spice, thereby ending space travel and crippling both Imperial power and the Bene Gesserit in one blow. Feyd-Rautha challenges Paul to a knife-duel in a final attempt to stop his overthrow, but is defeated despite an attempt at treachery. Realizing that Paul is capable of doing all he has threatened, the Emperor is forced to abdicate and to promise his daughter Princess Irulan in marriage to Paul. Chani is not happy with this decision, and Paul describes that Chani will always be the one he loves. Paul ascends the throne, his control of Arrakis and the spice establishing a new kind of power over the Empire that will change the face of the known universe. However, despite being Emperor of the Known Universe, Paul realizes that he will not be able to stop the jihad he has seen in his visions, his legendary status among the Fremen having grown past the point where he can control it.
71479	/m/0jdry	Feersum Endjinn	Iain Banks	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is set on a far future Earth where the uploading of mindstates into a world-spanning computer network (known as "the data corpus", "cryptosphere" or simply "crypt") is commonplace, allowing the dead to be easily reincarnated (though by custom, only a limited number of reincarnations are allowed). Humanity has lost much of its technological background, due partly to an exodus by much of the species, and partly to the fact that those who remained (or at least their rulers) are fighting against more advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence. Meanwhile, the solar system is drifting into an interstellar molecular cloud ("the Encroachment"), which will eventually dim the Sun's light sufficiently to end life on Earth. The Diaspora (the long-departed segment of humanity) have left behind a device (the "Fearsome Engine" of the title) to deal with the problem; the book follows four characters who become involved in the attempt to activate it, with the narrative moving between the four (who do not meet until very near the end) in rotation. A quarter of the book is told by Bascule the Teller and is written phonetically in the first person. This is explained by Bascule's dyslexia. The fourth chapter of the book's Part One opens with:
71480	/m/0jds8	Against a Dark Background	Iain Banks	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Seven of the original eight Lazy Guns were destroyed before the events of Against a Dark Background. One disappeared with its user when he tried to fire it at the local sun, one suffered a lucky strike during an air raid, two self destructed when investigators tried to take them apart and another was destroyed by an assassin. A sixth was destroyed when investigators fired it with its lenses looking through an electron microscope. The seventh, found before the events of the book by the Lady Sharrow and her team, was destroyed by the university it was sold to when they tampered with it. The resulting explosion devastated the city the university was located in. The hunt for the eighth and final Lazy Gun is the main plot theme of Against a Dark Background. Much of the novel concerns Sharrow's adventures in searching for and acquiring it. Her motivation is that the Huhsz religious cult regard it as a sacred object, and that if she can find it and give it to them, their vendetta against her will lapse. Sharrow encounters various political systems on her travels across Golter. She also meets the Solipsists, a gang of pirate mercenaries on a hovercraft, who hold very unusual philosophical beliefs. When the last Lazy Gun is eventually discovered, it is guarded by an elaborate defense system incorporating a genetic key which Sharrow has to deactivate.
71567	/m/0jf0_	Just Like That	Lily Brett	1994	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Edek Zepler is a Holocaust survivor who was born Edek Zeleznikow in Łódź, Poland in 1915, where his father owned several apartment blocks. He got married in the Łódź ghetto to Rooshka but had to marry her again after the war in a DP camp in Germany. That is where their daughter, Esther, was born in 1950. In 1951 the family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia. When the novel opens, Edek Zepler is an old man of 76 who certainly enjoys good food, a man living alone with his dog in the old house in Melbourne, feeling rather alone—in spite of an active Jewish community in his neighbourhood—and without any life in him since his wife's death in 1986 ("The saddest thing did already happen to me. My wife died. Nothing can be sad after that."). He regularly phones his family, who have moved to Manhattan. The only close relative still in Melbourne is his grandson, Zachary, who studies medicine there. His life takes a decisive turn when, on a visit to New York, he meets Josl and Henia Borenstein again, a couple he last saw in the German DP camp. Now that Josl Borenstein has died of cancer, Edek and Henia gradually feel more and more attracted to each other. In spite of several (alleged) proposals of marriage from millionaires, Henia, herself a rich widow, wants to spend the rest of her life with Edek and invites him to stay with her at her Florida home. Eventually, Edek packs up all his things, sells his house and moves to the U.S.A. He is cordially taken up by Henia's friends, who belong to several associations (for example the Zionist Federation). Although mostly agnostic, he even pays an occasional visit to the synagogue. The problem he has to face towards the end of the novel would be considered rather severe by the average person, but Edek Zepler just laughs it off: Henia's two sons want him to sign a pre-nuptial agreement so that he would not inherit anything if Henia died first (and so that he would not be able to bequeath the Borenstein fortune to Esther and his grandchildren). Such an agreement, Esther and her husband Sean warn him, might mean that he could be left even without a place to stay after her death. But Edek Zepler does not mind ("In that case, I'll come and live with you."). He signs everything and is married to Henia. Esther Zepler is the only child of Edek and Rooshka Zepler. She was born in a German DP camp in 1950. In 1951 her parents decided to emigrate to Australia, where she spent most of her life. In 1968, aged 18, she became a rock journalist - just like Lily Brett herself - and in this capacity also visited New York. As a young woman, she married a gentile and had a son, Zachary, now 21, and a daughter, Zelda, now 16, by him. However, her first marriage was characterized by a "lack of lust", and when she met Sean Ward, a painter and yet another gentile, she left her husband for him. Nobody would guess that Sean, Esther, Zachary, Zelda and Kate - Sean's 19 year-old daughter by his first wife, who died of cancer - are a patchwork family. For one thing, Sean looks Jewish although he is not; for another, they all understand each other well and there is a certain feeling of belonging amongst them. When the novel opens they have just moved to New York City, and Esther starts working as a writer of obituaries. Although on the surface level Esther's life seems to be in perfect order - she has got a good job, she is happily married, her children are well-behaved, they all are quite wealthy, they do not suffer from any illnesses - Esther is constantly suffering in some way or other. She has always seen herself as "a person with so much to sort out", and this is why she has been in analysis for a quite a number of years. She spends a fortune on it and even has to sell her mother's diamond ring. At one point in the novel, she learns the difference between compulsive and obsessive behaviour (compulsive behaviour is to do with action, obsessive behaviour with thoughts) and promptly thinks she herself shows both types of behaviour. She suffers from agoraphobia as well as claustrophobia. When she was 15, back home in Australia, her father let her drive his car in public until they were stopped by the police. Now, as an adult, she is afraid to drive, and considers herself lucky that you do not really need a car in New York City. She is neurotic, a woman with "excessive anxieties and indecisions", and likely to panic when having to face things. She is all for drugs: beta blocker, Valium, Mylanta, and other pills. On the other hand, Esther neither smokes nor drinks. Generally, although she likes, and is able to enjoy, sex, she is very reluctant to talk about it, especially in public. But all around her, people keep talking freely about sex in general and also about their own sex lives, whereas Esther does not even want to imagine her father sleeping with Henia Borenstein, and is slightly embarrassed when she sees them holding hands under the table. Esther often feels "fouled by her parents´ past". She is haunted by her dead mother. She is preoccupied with the Holocaust and owns more than 400 books on the subject. Her thoughts about the lives of Jews during the Third Reich are again and again woven into the novel. She ponders about medical experiments conducted by Nazi physicians; about the gas chambers in the death camps, implicitly comparing a crowded New York subway with a cattle wagon to Auschwitz; the Nazis making soap with human fat; Pope Pius XII and Roman Catholicism; displaced Jews after World War II; anti-Semitism in general; Neo-Nazis in Germany and Austria; the world population of Jews in 1939 and today and the fact that there were "no Jews left" in Poland after World War II; business in the DP camps (i.e. bartering with cigarettes), coffee but also Nazi memorabilia; and she considers with disgust a video game on CD-ROM entitled "How to Survive the Holocaust". She is also preoccupied with death and dying on a more general level. For example, she reads a book on suicide, which she finds invigorating rather than depressing. Fear of death seems to be her constant companion; she continuously sees death as a danger and a menace. Esther also seems to have inherited her mother's "guilt at having survived". At one point in the novel, she speaks of a Jewish "weariness gene". But Esther is also critical of the other Jews she meets in America. There is Sonia Kaufman, who considers Esther as her best friend. Sonia is a lawyer working for the same law firm as her Jewish husband Michael. As opposed to Esther, Sonia has had affairs throughout her married life. Her current lover used a broken condom while they were making love, and now Sonia is pregnant for the first time in her life. As it turns out soon, she is expecting twins. The real problem now is that she cannot possibly say who the father is. Sonia hopes that they will look like her husband, who is looking forward to the birth of his children and has no idea that his wife has had sex with another man. The problem is solved in rather a humorous, light-hearted way at the end of the novel: The twins - two girls - look like her mother. The Kaufmans will be able to afford two nannies, so they will not have any problems combining their careers and their family life. Then there are Joseph and Laraine Reiser. The Reisers are "arseholes". They are filthy rich Jews who live the life of the super-rich in a very pronounced way, never mingling with ordinary people, on whom they seem to look down. Joseph Reiser is an entrepreneur "doing business with Germany" -- in itself a suspicious activity—and a would be-patron of the arts: Time and again he talks to Sean Ward about coming to his studio, implying that he might want to buy one of his paintings, but he never seems to get round to doing so. Sean and Esther meet them twice: first, at one of their big parties, and later when they are invited to their Long Island beach house. Esther feels guilty when one of the Reisers´ cars (a stretch Mercedes limo with a fax machine) comes to pick them up.
71791	/m/0jfmw	Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man	Siegfried Sassoon	1928	{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is a series of episodes in the youth of George Sherston, ranging from his first attempts to learn to ride to his experiences in winning point-to-point races. The title is somewhat misleading, as the book is mainly concerned with a series of landmark events in Sherson/Sassoon's childhood and youth, and his encounters with various comic characters. "The Flower-Show Match," an account of an annual village cricket match - an important fixture for those involved - in which young Sherston plays a significant part, was later published separately by Faber as a self-contained story. The book as a whole is a frequently humorous work, in which fox-hunting, one of Sassoon's major interests, comes to represent the young man's innocent frame of mind in the years before war broke out. The book ends with his enlistment in a local regiment. The story is continued in two sequels: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Sherston's Progress.
71989	/m/0jgd2	Uncle Tom's Cabin	Harriet Beecher Stowe	1852-03-20	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them—Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby’s maid Eliza—to a slave trader. Emily Shelby is averse to this idea because she had promised her maid that her child would never be sold; Emily's son, George Shelby, hates to see Tom go because he sees the man as his friend and mentor. When Eliza overhears Mr. and Mrs. Shelby discussing plans to sell Tom and Harry, Eliza determines to run away with her son. The novel states that Eliza made this decision because she fears losing her only surviving child (she had already miscarried two children). Eliza departs that night, leaving a note of apology to her mistress. Tom is sold and placed on a riverboat which sets sail down the Mississippi River. While on board, Tom meets and befriends a young white girl named Eva. Eva's father Augustine St. Clare buys Tom from the slave trader and takes him with the family to their home in New Orleans. Tom and Eva begin to relate to one another because of the deep Christian faith they both share. During Eliza's escape, she meets up with her husband George Harris, who had run away previously. They decide to attempt to reach Canada. However, they are tracked by a slave hunter named Tom Loker. Eventually Loker and his men trap Eliza and her family, causing George to push Loker down a cliff. Worried that Loker may die, Eliza convinces George to bring the slave hunter to a nearby Quaker settlement for medical treatment. Back in New Orleans, St. Clare debates slavery with his Northern cousin Ophelia who, while opposing slavery, is prejudiced against black people. St. Clare, however, believes he is not biased, even though he is a slave owner. In an attempt to show Ophelia that her views on blacks are wrong, St. Clare purchases Topsy, a young black slave. St. Clare then asks Ophelia to educate her. After Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. Before she dies she experiences a vision of heaven, which she shares with the people around her. As a result of her death and vision, the other characters resolve to change their lives, with Ophelia promising to throw off her personal prejudices against blacks, Topsy saying she will better herself, and St. Clare pledging to free Tom. Before St. Clare can follow through on his pledge, however, he dies after being stabbed outside of a tavern. His wife reneges on her late husband's vow and sells Tom at auction to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Legree (a transplanted northerner) takes Tom to rural Louisiana, where Tom meets Legree's other slaves, including Emmeline (whom Legree purchased at the same time). Legree begins to hate Tom when Tom refuses Legree's order to whip his fellow slave. Legree beats Tom viciously and resolves to crush his new slave's faith in God. Despite Legree's cruelty, however, Tom refuses to stop reading his Bible and comforting the other slaves as best he can. While at the plantation, Tom meets Cassy, another of Legree's slaves. Cassy was previously separated from her son and daughter when they were sold; unable to endure the pain of seeing another child sold, she killed her third child. At this point Tom Loker returns to the story. Loker has changed as the result of being healed by the Quakers. George, Eliza, and Harry have also obtained their freedom after crossing into Canada. In Louisiana, Uncle Tom almost succumbs to hopelessness as his faith in God is tested by the hardships of the plantation. However, he has two visions, one of Jesus and one of Eva, which renew his resolve to remain a faithful Christian, even unto death. He encourages Cassy to escape, which she does, taking Emmeline with her. When Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers to kill Tom. As Tom is dying, he forgives the overseers who savagely beat him. Humbled by the character of the man they have killed, both men become Christians. Very shortly before Tom's death, George Shelby (Arthur Shelby's son) arrives to buy Tom’s freedom but finds he is too late. On their boat ride to freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harris' sister and accompany her to Canada. Cassy discovers that Eliza is her long-lost daughter who was sold as a child. Now that their family is together again, they travel to France and eventually Liberia, the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm and frees all his slaves. George tells them to remember Tom's sacrifice and his belief in the true meaning of Christianity.
72018	/m/0jgmp	The Beach	Alex Garland	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a cheap hostel on Khao San Road in Bangkok, Richard, a young English traveller, meets a strange Scotsman going by the pseudonym of Daffy Duck who leaves him a hand-drawn map of a supposed hidden beach located in the Gulf of Thailand that is inaccessible to tourists. After receiving the map, Richard discovers that Daffy has committed suicide. Together with a young and beautiful French couple, Étienne and Françoise, the trio sets out to find what they believe must be paradise on earth. On their way to the beach, Richard gives a copy of the map to Sammy and Zeph, two American Harvard students he meets in Koh Samui. When the three travellers finally reach the beach - after bribing a local boat contractor, taking a long swim, trekking the dense jungle, stumbling across a marijuana plantation and avoiding its heavily armed guards, and eventually jumping down a waterfall - they are faced with a tight-knit and largely self-sufficient community which has almost completely shut itself off from civilization and which has developed a sophisticated hierarchy under the quasi-dictatorial rule of a young American woman called Sal and her South African lover, Bugs, who, along with Daffy, discovered the beach and founded the community there in 1989. The three went under the pseudonyms of Sylvester (modified as "SALvester" and hence, Sal), Bugs (Bugs Bunny) and Daffy (Daffy Duck). When Richard, Étienne, and Françoise arrive, it is already 1995, six years after the founders discovered the beach. Only a select few are chosen by the original founders to come to the island, and thus newcomers who were not given a personal invitation are not welcome, but are not sent away because to do so would jeopardize the secrecy of the community. Richard, Étienne, and Françoise manage to incorporate themselves into the island community and are quickly accepted because they tell the community about Daffy and his death back on the Thai mainland. Because the community is largely self-sufficient in terms of food production, supply, and infrastructure, work is very important and there are a number of details, or work rosters, for the garden, fishing, cooking, and carpentry. Along with Françoise and Etienne, Richard becomes a part of the fishing detail. After a few months life becomes very idyllic on the island, with Richard making friends with a few other members of the beach community: Keaty, a fellow Englishman hooked on his Game Boy; Gregorio, a Spanish traveller part of his fishing detail; Unhygienix, the Italian head chef with an intense obsession for bath soap; Jesse and Cassie, two lovers who work in the gardening and carpentry detail, respectively; Ella, who works second-in-command with Unhygenix in the cooking detail; and finally, Jed - the enigmatic loner of the group whose sole separate detail is shrouded in mystery. Richard later discovers that Jed has been assigned by Sal as the island's guardian to keep a lookout on the island's perimeter and scope out arriving travellers who had heard word about the beach, with a sideline of stealing some marijuana from the other side of the island - protected by heavily armed Thai farmers. In time, Unhygenix informs everyone that their rice supply has been infected by a fungus and Sal announces an emergency Rice Run - a regular chore wherein a few community members are required to head to the mainland discreetly by boat to buy some rice and additional supplies if need be. Because of this daunting task, hardly anyone volunteers for this job except for Jed, who, to the bewilderment of most in the island, always volunteers for the job. Richard also volunteers, and so the two travel back to Koh Phangan for their supplies. It is during the Rice Run that Jed finds out that Richard gave a copy of the map to Sammy and Zeph when Jed overheard the two Americans talking about the beach to some German travellers. The Rice Run goes without a hitch but soon, Zeph and Sammy are accompanied by the three Germans they met on the mainland, and they arrive at the neighbouring island, which worries Richard because he might be blamed if they successfully arrive on the beach. Coinciding with this troubling development, Sal reassigns Richard to the perimeter detail to partner with Jed and keep a close eye on the impending invaders. Because of a free spot in Gregorio's fishing detail, Keaty moves in to take Richard's place. A few days later, Keaty catches a dead squid that poisons most of the residents, and the few healthy members remaining struggle to nurse the sick residents back to normalcy. After the food poisoning incident, Richard returns from his sentry duty high on the island to find that Bugs has punched Keaty in the face because of the squid disaster. Richard, having never liked Bugs due to his stoic nature, instigates a heated argument with him, and the community becomes fractured into several social groups. On this day, only two of the fishing details are still in operation and the best detail, consisting of three Swedes (Christo, Sten, and Karl) who fish outside the safe lagoon area, is attacked by a shark. The camp only finds out about this with the return of one of the three, Karl, in the early evening. Karl carries Sten on his back to the island, where Sten is discovered to be already dead on arrival. Karl was not physically hurt by the shark, but he suffers a mental breakdown from the traumatic event. Karl subsequently spends his time sitting in a dug-out hole on the beach and not talking to anyone; barely accepting food and water. Richard realises that Christo is still missing and, at his own risk, goes to find him in the partially submerged caves of the lagoon. Richard is praised for his heroic rescue of Christo. However, as Christo is gravely wounded, he requires Jed's presence in the camp, because he has some medical knowledge to tend to him. This leaves Richard to work the sentry detail alone on the island. A few days later, a funeral is held for Sten near the jungle waterfall, and Sal gives a decisive speech which goes some way to restoring social harmony within the camp. She announces that it is the 11th of September, and that they will thus be celebrating the Tet festival in 3 days time - this will be the sixth birthday for the beach community and she suggests they celebrate it as a "fresh start" for the group. Being alone on the mainland of the island since his transfer to Jed's detail, Richard now begins to have hallucinations in which Daffy appears: they talk regularly and begin to patrol the part of the island which Richard refers to as the DMZ together. Richard comes to appreciate that Daffy killed himself because he could neither endure the slow unravelling of his elitist vision of the beach as the community grew, nor a return to normal life, and that he himself is falling prey to that way of thinking. Richard also realizes that Daffy gave him the map so other travellers would find the beach. Daffy describes this act as "euthanizing" the secluded beach community, and Richard realizes he was merely a pawn in Daffy's scheme. This comes to a peak following the arrival of the American/German group, by raft. Unlike Richard, Étienne and Françoise who managed to overcome the five main obstacles in getting to the beach, the newcomers never make it past the fourth hurdle - the marijuana field guarded by the Thai farmers. Richard witnesses them being first beaten and then taken away. Afraid to see any further, Richard runs away, but hears the ominous sound of fired gunshots, signifying that the Thai farmers have killed the intruders. Richard returns to the community campsite to immediately inform Sal and Jed. He then goes to the beach to visit Karl, who, after being provoked, seemingly attacks Richard and runs off into the jungle. The next day, the day of the Tet festival, Sal obtusely asks Richard to kill Karl because of the threat he poses to the mood of the celebrations, with her constant excuse of having to lift the "morale" of the community. Richard, disillusioned of the beach's way of living, finally resolves to escape with his closest friends. That night, he swims out to the cave where the group's only boat is kept, only to find that Karl has used it to escape to the mainland. Étienne corners him thereafter and soon discovers that he, along with the rest of his clique, has become afraid of Richard "doing things" for Sal. Richard convinces Étienne, Françoise, Jed, and a now paranoid Keaty to leave the beach for good, after having euthanized the dying Christo. Night falls, and the Tet festival is going in full swing. Prior to the party, Keaty and Richard spiked the stew Unhygenix cooked with marijuana, sending the partygoers on an overloaded high. Along with some fermented coconut juice which severely inebriates most of the group, Richard and his friends are almost in the clear to escape when suddenly, the marijuana guards arrive at the camp to threaten all of them, and beat up Richard, leaving the dead bodies of the American/German party as a warning. Most of the beach dwellers begin to go insane and suddenly start to rip the bodies apart in a terrifying frenzy. Sal discovers that Richard has spread the secret of the beach when she picks up the map he drew for Zeph and Sammy, brought by the head Thai guard. Upon this information, the unstable community members work themselves into a murderous rage, stabbing Richard multiple times and bringing him close to death. He is saved when Françoise, Étienne, Keaty and Jed return from the beach with fishing spears to drive the others off, wounding Sal and Bugs in the process. Richard and his rescuers make an escape with the raft that the now dead intruders left on the other side of the island. In the epilogue, it is revealed that the five friends managed to get away and used their travelling street savvy to return to civilization. It has been a year and one month since their departure from Thailand, and Richard has returned to his home in the United Kingdom where he has not heard from Françoise and Étienne again, but knows he is likely to bump into them eventually because "the world is a small place, and Europe is even smaller". However, he still keeps in contact with Keaty and Jed. Richard comments unexpectedly they are able to "deal with [their] shared history". By chance, Keaty and Jed end up working in the same building, although for different companies; coincidentally like how they both stayed in the same guest house that burned down a few years before they both arrived at the beach. He also hears of a news report on how Cassie has been arrested in Malaysia for smuggling a large amount of heroin and is the first Westerner to be executed in the country in six years. Richard wonders whether other people got off the island too, especially Unhygienix, who was a decent guy. He believes that Bugs died and hopes that Sal died, too, although not maliciously. He states that he does not like the idea of her "turning up on his doorstep". Richard finishes by saying he is content with his life, though he carries a lot of scars: "I like the way that sounds. I carry a lot of scars".
72084	/m/0jgtn	Murder Must Advertise	Dorothy L. Sayers	1933	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Wimsey accepts an offer from the highly respectable management of Pym's Publicity, Ltd. (a light disguise for S. H. Bensons, where Sayers worked) to investigate a mystery and avert a scandal. Copywriter Victor Dean has died in a fall down the spiral iron office staircase, but he left a half-finished letter to the management hinting that something potentially scandalous is going on at Pym's. Under the pseudonym of "Death Bredon" (actually his middle names), Wimsey goes to work at Pym's. He takes over Dean's office and learns his trade while investigating the office staff. He discovers a talent for copywriting and promotion, and produces a campaign which will become one of the firm's most successful. He also investigates Dean's social life. Dean, for a short time, socialized with "the DeMomerie crowd": the cronies of dissolute socialite Dian de Momerie, most of them heavy cocaine users. He met De Momerie's companion, Major Milligan, who appears to be the cocaine supplier for the group. Milligan is linked to a big cocaine-selling ring which Wimsey's friend and brother-in-law Chief Inspector Parker is investigating. Milligan, hearing that Dean worked at Pym's, spoke to him assuming that Dean was the ring's man at Pym's. Dean was surprised, and Milligan shut up - but Dean guessed that someone else at Pym's was involved. Hence the letter to management. Wimsey plays multiple roles. By day he is Bredon, a distant, impoverished Wimsey cousin who works for a living. Most evenings, he is himself. But on some evenings, "Bredon" dresses up as a masked harlequin, and by various wild stunts draws the attention and company of Dian de Momerie - annoying Major Milligan. Junior newspaper reporter Hector Puncheon has a beer in a pub, and discovers later that someone put a bag of cocaine in his coat pocket. He must have blundered into a distribution operation, but there's no further sign of anything at that pub. Apparently the ring holds each week's distribution at a different location. Wimsey continues his probing at Pym's, and learns that one of the senior copywriters, Tallboy, seems to have large amounts of cash. Puncheon recognizes a man who was in the pub the night he was given the cocaine, and follows him. Puncheon gets knocked out, and the man "accidentally" falls in front of a moving train. The dead man (Mountjoy) had money but no job or assets, which fits a drug dealer. His effects include a telephone book with the names of many pubs ticked off. One of the marked pubs is the one where Puncheon was given the cocaine. Other clues turn up: a scarab in Dean's desk, a large pebble in the stairwell, a "catapult" (slingshot) belonging to office boy Ginger Joe, who is recruited by "Bredon" to help in the investigation. Finally Wimsey makes the connection. One of Pym's major clients runs a large newspaper advertisement every Friday morning. The text is approved a few days earlier. The first letter of the advertisement's text indicates the pub to be used that week. Tallboy supplies the letter to the ring as soon as the text is approved. A final clue turns up during a company social outing, in the course of a cricket match between Pym's and Brotherhood's, a soft-drink company and Pym's client. Most of the players are middle-aged and flabby. But Wimsey, provoked by a ball which clips his elbow, shows off the form which made him a first-team star at Eton and Oxford. Tallboy too shows a surprising talent, when he knocks down a wicket with a perfect throw from deep in the field. Wimsey wins the match for Pym's, which is about to expose his cover when the police, led by Parker, arrest "Bredon" for the murder of Dian de Momerie. Milligan is dead too - killed in yet another "accident" as the ring covers its tracks. But the ring is still operating, and the police want to nab the whole gang at their next distribution. With Mountjoy's phone book, all they need is the letter for the week - which is provided by Ginger Joe. While "Bredon" supposedly sits in jail, "Lord Peter" is much seen about town for the next few days. The roundup comes off as planned, but the death of Victor Dean remains unsolved. That night, Tallboy comes to Wimsey's flat and confesses. He was sucked into the scheme with a innocent-sounding story and the offer of money he needed. But soon he was trapped. Then Dean found out and blackmailed him. Tallboy shot him in the head with Ginger Joe's catapult on the staircase, so it would look like an accident. Tallboy he cannot escape, and suggests suicide, which would save his family from the shame of his trial and conviction for murder. Wimsey, after looking out of the window, has an alternative: Tallboy must go home, on foot, and never look behind him. Both know that the gang's killers are waiting in ambush.
72398	/m/0jjff	The Man Who Would Be King	Rudyard Kipling		{"/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The narrator of the story is a British journalist in India–Kipling himself, in all but name. While on a tour of some Indian native states he meets two scruffy adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan. He rather likes them, but then stops them from blackmailing a minor rajah. A few months later they appear at his office in Lahore. They tell him their plan. They have been "Soldier, sailor, compositor [typesetter], photographer... [railroad] engine-drivers, petty contractors," and more, and have decided India is not big enough for them. The next day they will go off to Kafiristan to set themselves up as kings. Dravot can pass as a native, and they have twenty Martini-Henry rifles (then perhaps the best in the world). They plan to find a king or chief, help him defeat his enemies then take over for themselves. They ask the narrator for the use of any books or maps of the area–as a favor, because they are fellow Freemasons, and because he spoiled their blackmail scheme. Two years later, on a scorching hot summer night, Carnehan creeps into the narrator's office. He is a broken man, a crippled beggar clad in rags and he tells an amazing story. Dravot and Carnehan succeeded in becoming kings: finding the Kafirs, who turn out to be white ("so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends"), mustering an army, taking over villages, and dreaming of building a unified nation. The Kafirs, who were pagans, not Muslims, acclaimed Dravot as a god (the son of Alexander the Great). The Kafirs practiced a form of Masonic ritual and the adventurers knew Masonic secrets that only the oldest priest remembered. Their schemes were dashed when Dravot decided to marry a Kafir girl. Terrified at marrying a god, the girl bit Dravot when he tried to kiss her. Seeing him bleed, the priests cried that he was "Neither God nor Devil but a man!" Most of the Kafirs turned against Dravot and Carnehan. One chief (whom they have nicknamed "Billy Fish") and a few of his men remained loyal, but the army defected and the two kings were captured. Dravot, wearing his crown, stood on a rope bridge over a gorge while the Kafirs cut the ropes and fell to his death. Carnehan was crucified between two pine trees. When he survived for a day, the Kafirs considered it a miracle and let him go. He begged his way back to India. As proof of his tale, Carnehan shows the narrator Dravot's head, still wearing the golden crown. Carnehan leaves. The next day the narrator sees him crawling along the road in the noon sun, with his hat off and gone mad. The narrator sends him to the local asylum. When he inquires two days later, he learns that Carnehan has died of sunstroke ("half an hour bare-headed in the sun at mid-day..."). No belongings were found with him.
73217	/m/0jp53	A Vicious Circle	Amanda Craig	1996		 The novel chronicles the life of Amelia, the only daughter of newspaper tycoon Max de Monde who, after having spoiled Amelia beyond hope while she was still young, abandons her when she becomes pregnant. Amelia decides to marry Mark Crawley, the father of her child, an ambitious young critic intent on shaking off his humble background. Suddenly, the young couple find themselves in desperate need of money and, at first, accommodations. While she stays at home raising their daughter Rose, Amelia metamorphoses from spoiled brat to mature and responsible mother, whereas her husband loses all interest in the housewife he now realizes he has married. Amelia is encouraged to stay on her chosen path by Grace, her cleaning woman—who is also her niece (without either of the women being aware of this), and by Tom Viner, a young doctor who becomes their lodger. A Vicious Circle also follows the life of Mary Quinn. An Irish girl lacking a university education, Mary has a natural writing talent and rises to become a prominent reviewer of new fiction after having been left by her lover of many years, Mark Crawley. Mary makes friends with Adam Sands, a yet unpublished author who keeps his homosexuality a secret from almost everyone including his own mother. When he is dying of an AIDS-related disease, Mary is the only person who remembers and eventually takes care of him. When the recession of the 1990s hits the country everyone seems to be affected by it. Max de Monde, who has even plundered his daughter's trust fund, spectacularly commits suicide by crashing his helicopter against the ground. Amelia leaves Mark and is planning to raise her daughter as a single parent.
73408	/m/0jqbz	To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee	1960-07-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with the Finch family's ancestor, Simon Finch, a Cornish Methodist fleeing religious intolerance in England, settling in Alabama, becoming wealthy and, contrary to his religious beliefs, buying several slaves. The main story takes place during three years of the Great Depression in the fictional "tired old town" of Maycomb, Alabama. It focuses on six-year-old Scout Finch, who lives with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt each summer. The three children are terrified of, and fascinated by, their neighbor, the reclusive "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo and for many years few have seen him. The children feed each other's imagination with rumors about his appearance and reasons for remaining hidden, and they fantasize about how to get him out of his house. Following two summers of friendship with Dill, Scout and Jem find that someone is leaving them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley place. Several times, the mysterious Boo makes gestures of affection to the children, but, to their disappointment, never appears in person. Atticus is appointed by the court to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom. Other children taunt Jem and Scout for Atticus' actions, calling him a "nigger-lover". Scout is tempted to stand up for her father's honor by fighting even though he has told her not to. For his part, Atticus faces a group of men intent on lynching Tom. This danger is averted when Scout, Jem, and Dill shame the mob into dispersing by forcing them to view the situation from Atticus' and Tom's points of view. Because Atticus does not want them to be present at Tom Robinson's trial, Scout, Jem and Dill watch in secret from the colored balcony. Atticus establishes that the accusers—Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell, the town drunk—are lying. It also becomes clear that the friendless Mayella was making sexual advances towards Tom and her father caught her and beat her. Despite significant evidence of Tom's innocence, the jury convicts him. Jem's faith in justice is badly shaken, as is Atticus', when a hopeless Tom is shot and killed while trying to escape from prison. Humiliated by the trial Bob Ewell vows revenge. He spits in Atticus' face on the street, tries to break into the presiding judge's house and menaces Tom Robinson's widow. Finally, he attacks the defenseless Jem and Scout as they walk home on a dark night from the school Halloween pageant. Jem's arm is broken in the struggle, but amid the confusion, someone comes to the children's rescue. The mysterious man carries Jem home, where Scout realizes that he is Boo Radley. Maycomb's sheriff arrives and discovers that Bob Ewell has been killed in the struggle. The sheriff argues with Atticus about the prudence and ethics of holding Jem or Boo responsible. Atticus eventually accepts the sheriff's story that Ewell simply fell on his own knife. Boo asks Scout to walk him home, and after she says goodbye to him at his front door, he disappears again. While standing on the Radley porch, Scout imagines life from Boo's perspective and regrets that they never repaid him for the gifts he had given them.
73452	/m/0jqqt	The Emperor Jones	Eugene O'Neill	1920		 The play is divided into eight scenes. Scenes 2 to 7 are from the point of view of Jones, and no other character speaks. The first and last scenes feature a character named Smithers, a white trader who appears to be part of illegal activities. In the first scene, Smithers is told about the rebellion by an old woman, and then has a lengthy conversation with Jones. In the last scene, Smithers converses with Lem, the leader of the rebellion. Smithers has mixed feelings about Jones, though he generally has more respect for Jones than for the rebels. During this scene, Jones is killed by a silver bullet, which was the only way that the rebels believed Jones could be killed, and the way in which Jones planned to kill himself if he was captured.
73517	/m/0jr4g	The Go-Between	L. P. Hartley			 The story begins with the reminiscences of Leo Colston, an elderly man looking back on his childhood with nostalgia. Leo, in his mid-sixties, is looking through his old things. He chances upon a battered old red collar box. In it he finds a diary from 1900, the year of his thirteenth birthday. He slowly pieces together his memory as he looks through the diary. Impressed by the astrological emblems at the front of the book, young Leo combines them in his mind with the idea that he is living at the turn of the 20th century. The importance of his boarding school's social rules is another theme. Some of the rougher boys steal his diary, reading and defacing it. The two oldest bullies, Jenkins and Strode, beat him at every opportunity. He devises some "curses" for them in the pages of the book, using occult symbols and Greek letters, and placing the book where they will find it. Subsequently both boys venture onto the roof of one of the school buildings, fall off and are severely injured. This leaves him greatly admired by the other boys, who think that he is a magician something that he comes to half-believe himself. The greater portion of the text concerns itself with Leo's past, particularly the summer of 1900, spent in Norfolk, England, as a guest at Brandham Hall, the luxurious country home of his schoolfriend Marcus Maudsley. Here the young Leo, on holiday from boarding school, is a poor boy among the wealthy upper class. Leo's comparatively humble background is obvious to all and he does not really fit in there; however, his hosts do their best to make him feel welcome, treating him with kindness and indulgence. When Marcus falls ill, Leo is left largely to his own devices. He becomes a secret "go-between" for Marian Maudsley, the daughter of the host family, and nearby tenant farmer Ted Burgess. At first, Leo is happy to help Marian because she is kind to him and he has a crush on her. Besides, Leo is initially ignorant of the significance or content of the messages that he is asked to carry between Ted and Marian. Leo is a well-meaning and innocent boy, so it is easy for the lovers to manipulate him. The fact that Ted comes from a much lower social class than Marian means there can be no possible future in the relationship because of the social taboos involved. Although Marian and Ted are fully aware of this, Leo is too naïve to understand why the lovers can never marry. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Marian is about to become engaged to Hugh, Viscount Trimingham, the descendant of the area's nobility who formerly resided in Brandham Hall. Together, these factors make Marian's secret relationship with Ted highly dangerous for all parties concerned. Later, Leo acts as an interceptor, and occasional editor, of the messages. Eventually, he begins to comprehend the sexual nature of the relationship between Marian and Ted, and feels increasingly uncomfortable about the general atmosphere of deception and risk. Leo tries to end his role as go-between, but comes under great psychological pressure and is forced to continue. Ultimately, Leo's involvement as messenger between the lovers has disastrous consequences. The trauma which results when Marian's family discover what is going on leads directly to Ted's shotgun suicide. In the epilogue the older Leo tells the reader the consequences of this summer. The experience profoundly affects Leo, leaving him with permanent psychological scars. Forbidden to speak about the scandal, he feels he must not think of it either; and since nearly everything reminds him of it, he shuts down his emotions, leaving room only for facts. He subsequently grows up to be an emotionally detached adult who is never able to establish intimate relationships. He succeeds in repressing the memories until the diary unlocks them. Now looking back on the events through the eyes of a mature adult, he is fully aware of how the incident has left its mark on him. In a final twist to the story, 52 years later, Leo returns to Brandham. There he meets Marian's grandson and finds Marian herself living in a cottage the place she had always told people she was going when she was really having clandestine meetings with Ted. Brandham Hall has been let out to a girl's school. Lord Trimingham married Marian, but died in 1910, and Marcus and his brother Denys were killed in the First World War. In the end, an elderly Marian Maudsley persuades Leo to act as a go-between for her one more time.
73530	/m/0jr96	Mildred Pierce	James M. Cain	1941	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in Glendale, California, in the 1930s, the book is the story of middle-class housewife Mildred Pierce's attempts to maintain her family's social position during the Great Depression. Mildred separates from her unfaithful, unemployed husband and sets out to support herself and her children. After a difficult search she finds a job as a waitress, but she worries that it is beneath her middle-class station. More than that, she worries that her ambitious and increasingly pretentious elder daughter, Veda, will think her new job demeaning. Mildred encounters both success and failure as she opens three successful restaurants, operates a pie-selling business and copes with the death of her younger daughter, Ray. Veda enjoys her mother's newfound financial success but increasingly turns ungrateful, demanding more and more from her hard-working mother while openly condemning her and anyone who must work for a living. When Mildred discovers her daughter's plot to blackmail a wealthy family with a fake pregnancy, she kicks her out of their house. Veda, who has been training to become an opera singer, goes on to a great deal of fame as Mildred convinces her new boyfriend Monty (a young man who, like Mildred, lost his family's wealth at the start of the Great Depression) to help reconcile them. Unfortunately for Mildred, this means buying Monty's family estate and using her earnings to pay for Veda's extravagances. Mildred and Monty marry, but things go sour for her: Wally, her partner in the restaurant business, has discovered that her living like a rich person has dramatically affected the company's profits. He threatens a coup to force her out of the company. This causes her to confess to her ex-husband Bert that she has been embezzling money from her company in order to buy Veda's love. Needing some of Veda's money to balance the books - and fearing that Wally might target the girl's assets if they are exposed - Mildred goes to her house to confront her. She finds Veda in bed with her stepfather. Monty explains to Mildred that he's leaving her for Veda, who gloats that they've been planning this all along. Mildred snaps, brutally attacking and apparently strangling her daughter, who now appears incapable of singing and loses her singing contract. Weeks pass as Mildred moves to Reno, Nevada to establish residency in order to get a speedy divorce from Monty. Bert moves out to visit her. Mildred ultimately is forced to resign from her business empire, leaving it to Ida, a former company assistant. Bert and Mildred, upon the finalization of her divorce, remarry. They are shocked when Veda shows up with several dozen reporters to "reconcile" with her mother (a move designed to defuse the negative publicity of her sleeping with her stepfather). Mildred accepts, but several months later, Veda reveals that her voice has healed and announces that she is moving to New York City with Monty. Veda's apparent loss of her voice was only a ploy so that she could renege on her existing singing contract and then be free to establish a more lucrative singing contract with another company. As she leaves the house, a broken Mildred agrees to say "to hell" with the monstrous Veda and to "get stinko" (drunk) with Bert.
73670	/m/0js1m	A Christmas Carol	Charles Dickens	1843-12-19	{"/m/048945": "Ghost story", "/m/0c5jx": "Morality play", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dickens divides the book into five chapters, which he labels "staves", that is, song stanzas or verses, in keeping with the title of the book. He uses a similar device in his next two Christmas books, titling the four divisions of The Chimes, "quarters", after the quarter-hour tolling of clock chimes, and naming the parts of The Cricket on the Hearth "chirps". The tale begins on a "cold, bleak, biting" Christmas Eve in 1843 exactly seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge is established within the first stave as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" who has no place in his life for kindness, compassion, charity or benevolence. He hates Christmas, calling it "humbug", refuses his nephew Fred's dinner invitation, and rudely turns away two gentlemen who seek a donation from him to provide a Christmas dinner for the Poor. His only "Christmas gift" is allowing his overworked, underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit Christmas Day off with pay - which he does only to keep with social custom, Scrooge considering it "a poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!". Returning home that evening, Scrooge is visited by Marley's ghost. Dickens describes the apparition thus - "Marley's face...had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar." It has a bandage under its chin, tied at the top of its head; "...how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!" Marley warns Scrooge to change his ways lest he undergo the same miserable afterlife as himself. Scrooge is then visited by three additional ghosts – each in its turn, and each visit detailed in a separate stave – who accompany him to various scenes with the hope of achieving his transformation. The first of the spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Past, takes Scrooge to Christmas scenes of his boyhood and youth, which stir the old miser's gentle and tender side by reminding him of a time when he was more innocent. They also show what made Scrooge the miser that he is, and why he dislikes Christmas. The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to several differing scenes - a joy-filled market of people buying the makings of Christmas dinner, the celebration of Christmas in a miner's cottage, and a lighthouse. A major part of this stave is taken up with the family feast of Scrooge's impoverished clerk Bob Cratchit, introducing his youngest son, Tiny Tim, who is seriously ill but cannot receive treatment due to Scrooge's unwillingness to pay Cratchit a decent wage. The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, harrows Scrooge with dire visions of the future if he does not learn and act upon what he has witnessed including Tiny Tim's death. It is shown that Scrooge has passed away where businessmen planned to attend if lunch is provided. Scrooge's charwoman Mrs. Dilber had stolen some of Scrooge's belongings and given them to a fence named Old Joe. Scrooge's own neglected and untended grave is then revealed, prompting the miser to aver that he will change his ways in hopes of changing these "shadows of what may be." In the fifth and final stave, Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning with joy and love in his heart, then spends the day with his nephew's family after anonymously sending a prize turkey to the Cratchit home for Christmas dinner. Scrooge has become a different man overnight and now treats his fellow men with kindness, generosity and compassion, gaining a reputation as a man who embodies the spirit of Christmas. The story closes with the narrator confirming the validity, completeness and permanence of Scrooge's transformation.
74257	/m/0jv0d	About a Boy	Nick Hornby	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is about Will Freeman, a 36-year-old bachelor, and Marcus, an introverted, bullied 12-year-old who lives alone with his suicidal mother, Fiona. Will, who has never had to work thanks to the royalties from his father's hit Christmas song, "Santa's Super Sleigh," has a lot of spare time, which he spends smoking, watching TV, listening to albums and looking for temporary female companionship. After a pleasant relationship with a single mother, Angie, Will comes up with the idea of attending a single parents group as a new way to pick up women. For this purpose, he invents a two-year-old son called Ned. It is through one of these single parents meetings that he comes to know Marcus. Although their relationship is initially somewhat strained, they finally succeed in striking up a true friendship. Will helps Marcus to fit into the modern world, taking him shopping, buying him shoes and introducing him to the music of Nirvana. Marcus and Will's friendship blooms as the story progresses, even after Marcus and Fiona discover Will's lie about having a child. Marcus is "adopted" by Ellie McRae, a tough, moody 15-year-old girl, who is constantly in trouble at school because she insists on wearing a Kurt Cobain jumper. He also spends some time with his dad Clive, who visits Marcus and Fiona for Christmas together with his new girlfriend Lindsey and her mother. Meanwhile Will starts going out with a single mother named Rachel, whose son Alistair is about the same age as Marcus. In the end, Marcus comes out of his shell and learns to stand up for himself. Will, meanwhile, finally grows up and ends up wanting to marry Rachel. Therefore, both Will and Marcus have started to live appropriately for their age groups. The action is set in 1993 and 1994 in London. The title is a reference to the song "About a Girl" by Nirvana, a band that is featured in the book, and Patti Smith's tribute to Kurt Cobain, "About a Boy".
74389	/m/0jvv3	The Hustler	Walter Tevis			 After losing to Fats, Eddie could spiral down to the scrapheap, but he meets Bert Gordon, a . Bert teaches him about winning, or more particularly about losing. Tautly written, it is a treatise on how someone, with all of the skills, can lose if he "wants" to lose; how a loser is beaten by himself, not by his opponent; and how he can learn to win, if he can look deeply enough into himself. The book was followed by the sequel The Color of Money.
74881	/m/0jyp8	Letter from an Unknown Woman	Stefan Zweig			 A rich and well-known writer, returning from one of many holidays to Vienna, finds a long letter from an unknown woman. As a teenager she had lived with her poor widowed mother in the same building and had fallen totally in love with both the opulent cultured lifestyle of her neighbour and the handsome charming man himself. This passion was not lessened by the flow of attractive women spending the night with him or by her being removed to Innsbruck when her mother remarried. At age 18 she returned to Vienna, took a job and tried to meet the writer. He did not recognise her and, without revealing her name, she succeeded in spending three nights with him before he disappeared on a holiday. Pregnant, she lost her job and had to give birth in a refuge for the indigent. Resolved that their child should have a good life, she spent nights with or became mistress of various rich men but would never marry because her heart belonged always to the writer. Out with a current lover, she saw the writer in a night club and went home with him instead. To him, she was just an agreeable companion for that night, as he again did not recognise her. In the 1918 flu pandemic, the child died and she, ill herself, wrote this letter to be posted after her death. [Condensed and translated from http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettre_d%27une_inconnue]
74960	/m/0jz1w	Miss Lulu Bett	Zona Gale	1920	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story concerns a woman, Lulu, who lives with her sister's family, essentially acting as a servant. She does not complain about her position, but is not happy. When her brother-in-law's brother, Ninian, comes to visit, there is a certain attraction between them. While joking around one evening they find themselves accidentally married, due to the laws of the state requiring little more than wedding vows to be recited while a magistrate is in the room for a marriage to count as legal. On learning this, Ninian and Lulu decide they actually like the idea of being married, and choose to stick with it. However, within a month, Lulu is back home, having discovered that Ninian was already legally married: 18 years prior he had wed a girl who left him after 2 years, and he had actually forgotten about the whole thing. Lulu considers this a reasonable story, but her brother-in-law, Dwight, insists that it would be a humiliation to the family to reveal such a thing, and insists that she tell everyone instead that Ninian grew bored with her and left her. Lulu is unable to see why this should be a less humiliating story, and begins to complain about her circumstances for the first time. She also notices that her teenage niece, Di, is unhappy, and also seems to be trying to use marriage as a way to escape her circumstance. Lulu eventually has to prevent Di from eloping, and is finally inspired to move out of her sister's home and live on her own. Two endings were written for the play, the original as seen in December 1920 (and the ending that won Gale the Pulitzer Prize from Drama; the first woman ever to do so) has Lulu starting a life on her own and undertaking adventures of her own as we hear in her final lines, "Good-by. Good-by, all of you. I'm going I don't know where-to work at I don't know what. But I'm going from choice!" The revised ending is a much less satisfying one, but is more typical and would have been a bit more commercially acceptable and far less challenging to the audiences of the day. In this ending, Ninian shows up in the nick of time just as Lulu decides to go off on her own life to work and live elsewhere. He asks her forgiveness and she agrees saying "I forgave you in Savannah, Georgia."
75214	/m/0j_mj	Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions	Edwin Abbott Abbott	1884	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 The story is about a two-dimensional world referred to as Flatland which is occupied by geometric figures. Women are simple line-segments, while men are regular polygons with various numbers of sides. The narrator is a humble square, a member of the social caste of gentlemen and professionals in a society of geometric figures, who guides us through some of the implications of life in two dimensions. The Square has a dream about a visit to a one-dimensional world (Lineland) which is inhabited by "lustrous points". He attempts to convince the realm's ignorant monarch of a second dimension but finds that it is essentially impossible to make him see outside of his eternally straight line. He is then visited by a three-dimensional sphere, which he cannot comprehend until he sees Spaceland for himself. This Sphere (who remains nameless, like all characters in the novella) visits Flatland at the turn of each millennium to introduce a new apostle to the idea of a third dimension in the hopes of eventually educating the population of Flatland of the existence of Spaceland. From the safety of Spaceland, they are able to observe the leaders of Flatland secretly acknowledging the existence of the sphere and prescribing the silencing of anyone found preaching the truth of Spaceland and the third dimension. After this proclamation is made, many witnesses are massacred or imprisoned (according to caste). After the Square's mind is opened to new dimensions, he tries to convince the Sphere of the theoretical possibility of the existence of a fourth (and fifth, and sixth ...) spatial dimension. Offended by this presumption and incapable of comprehending other dimensions, the Sphere returns his student to Flatland in disgrace. The Square then has a dream in which the Sphere visits him again, this time to introduce him to Pointland. The point (sole inhabitant, monarch, and universe in one) perceives any attempt at communicating with him as simply being a thought originating in his own mind (cf. Solipsism): The Square recognizes the connection between the ignorance of the monarchs of Pointland and Lineland with his own (and the Sphere's) previous ignorance of the existence of other, higher dimensions. Once returned to Flatland, the Square finds it difficult to convince anyone of Spaceland's existence, especially after official decrees are announcedanyone preaching the lies of three dimensions will be imprisoned (or executed, depending on caste). Eventually the Square himself is imprisoned for just this reason, where he spends the rest of his days attempting to explain the third dimension to his brother.
75702	/m/0k14s	Sick Puppy	Carl Hiaasen	2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Florida's corrupt governor, Dick Artemus, pursues schemes to line his pockets and those of his rich entrepreneur backers at the expense of the environment. His schemes have always foundered in the past, but he has high hopes of a plan involving Toad Island, virtually uninhabited except for innumerable tiny toads. A former drug smuggler-turned-developer, Robert Clapley, plans to bulldoze the island and turn it into Shearwater Island, with high rise condominiums, a golf course and a massive new bridge to the mainland. He hires Palmer Stoat, a lobbyist, to expedite the project. By random happenstance, Stoat incurs the wrath of Twilly Spree, an ecoterrorist. Spree obsessively pursues a path of retribution after seeing Stoat litter, and tracks him back to his Fort Lauderdale residence where he and his wife Desirata live. Artemus, in an effort to avoid the Shearwater Project being tainted with violent death, seeks out and locates ex-governor Clinton Tyree, who vanished about 20 years ago after a short and unsuccessful (but honest) term of office and is said to be hiding out somewhere in the remaining wilderness of Florida. Artemus knows Tyree will be unsympathetic to his situation, and resorts to blackmail. Clinton's disturbed brother Doyle is still on the governor's payroll as the keeper of a lighthouse that has not been in use for years. Artemus advises Tyree that his brother will be tossed out on the street if he doesn't locate Spree. Clapley's death leaves the Shearwater project doomed without financial backing and only a few people show up at Palmer Stoat's funeral. Meanwhile, Twilly Spree and Clinton Tyree are driving along the highway towards Tyree's wilderness when they see another group of litterbugs throwing lighted cigarette butts, empty bottles and other rubbish out of their speeding car. They immediately agree the they have to teach them a lesson.
76028	/m/0k2wn	The Prisoner of Zenda	Anthony Hope	1894	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On the eve of the coronation of King Rudolf of Ruritania, his brother, Prince Michael, has him drugged. In a desperate attempt not to give Michael the excuse to claim the throne, Colonel Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim, attendants of the King, persuade his identical cousin Rudolf Rassendyll, an English visitor, to impersonate the King at the coronation. The unconscious king is abducted and imprisoned in a castle in the small town of Zenda. There are complications, plots, and counter-plots, among them the schemes of Michael's mistress, Antoinette de Mauban, and those of his dashing but villainous henchman Count Rupert of Hentzau. Rassendyll falls in love with Princess Flavia, the King's betrothed, but cannot tell her the truth. He determines to rescue the king and leads an attempt to enter the castle of Zenda. The King is rescued and is restored to his throne, but the lovers, in duty bound, must part forever.
76033	/m/0k2y7	The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1925-04-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with the narrator, Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner who has graduated from Yale and fought in World War I, returning home to begin a career. He is restless and has decided to move to New York to learn the bond business. The novel opens early in the summer of 1922 in West Egg, Long Island, where Nick has rented a house next to the mansion of Gatsby, the mysterious host of regular, extravagant parties. Tom and Daisy Buchanan live across the bay in the more fashionable East Egg, where those coming from 'old money' live. Daisy is Nick's second cousin, and Tom and Nick had been in the same senior society at Yale College. They invite Nick to dinner at their mansion where he meets a young woman named Jordan Baker, whom Daisy wants Nick to date. Daisy, who is still as beautiful and charming as she ever was, now has a young child. Tom is muscular, brusque and considers himself an intellectual. During dinner the phone rings, and when Tom and Daisy leave the room, Jordan informs Nick that the caller is Tom's mistress from New York. Myrtle Wilson, Tom's mistress, lives in Flushing, Queens near a large expanse of land known as the Valley of Ashes, where Myrtle's husband, George Wilson, owns a garage. Painted on a large billboard nearby is a fading advertisement for an ophthalmologist: seemingly watching the characters throughout the novel. Around three weeks after that evening at the Buchanans', Tom takes Nick to meet the Wilsons. He then takes Myrtle and Nick to New York to a party in a flat he is renting for her. The party breaks up when Myrtle insolently starts shouting Daisy's name, and Tom breaks her nose with a blow of his open hand. Several weeks later Nick is invited to one of Gatsby's elaborate parties. He attends with Jordan and finds that many of the guests are uninvited and know very little about their host, leading to much speculation about his past. Nick meets Gatsby and notices that he does not drink or join in the revelry of the party. On the way to lunch in New York with Nick, Gatsby tells Nick that he is the son of a rich family ("all dead now") from San Francisco and that he attended Oxford. During lunch, Gatsby introduces Nick to his business associate, Meyer Wolfsheim, who fixed the World Series in 1919. Nick, being a moral man, is astonished and slightly unsettled. At tea that afternoon Nick finds out that Gatsby wants Nick to arrange a meeting between him and Daisy. Gatsby and Daisy had loved each other five years ago, but he was penniless and chose to let Daisy believe that he was as well off as she was. Gatsby was then sent overseas by the army. Daisy had given up waiting for him and married Tom. After the War, Gatsby decided to win Daisy back by buying a house in West Egg and throwing lavish parties in the hopes that she would attend. His house is directly across the bay from hers, and he can see a green light at the end of Daisy's dock. Gatsby and Daisy meet for the first time in five years, and he tries to impress her with his mansion and his wealth. Daisy is overcome with emotion and their relationship begins anew. She and Tom finally attend one of Gatsby's parties, but she dislikes it. Gatsby remarks unhappily that their relationship is not like it had been five years ago. Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, Nick and Jordan get together at Daisy's house, where they meet Daisy's young daughter, whom Daisy treats as a mere pet that she quickly gives back to a maid when the child has provided a moment's entertainment. The group decides to go to the city to escape the heat. Tom, Jordan and Nick take Gatsby's car, a yellow Rolls-Royce. Daisy and Gatsby go in Tom's car, a blue coupé. On the way to the city, Tom stops at Wilson's garage to fill up the tank. Wilson is distraught and ill, saying his wife has been having an affair, though he doesn't know with whom. Nick feels Myrtle watching them from the window. The party goes to a suite at the Plaza Hotel, where Tom confronts Gatsby about his relationship with Daisy. Gatsby demands that Daisy leave Tom and tell him that she never loved him. Daisy is unwilling to do either, admitting that she did love Tom once, which shocks Gatsby. Tom accuses Gatsby of bootlegging and other illegal activities, and Daisy begs to go home. Gatsby and Daisy drive back together in Gatsby's car, followed by the rest of the party in Tom's car. On the way home by Wilson's garage, Myrtle runs out into the street after an explosive argument with her husband and the yellow Rolls-Royce hits and kills her before speeding off. Gatsby later tells Nick that Daisy was driving, but he will take the blame. When Tom arrives at Wilson's garage shortly afterwards, he is horrified to find Myrtle dead. Tom believes that Gatsby was driving, and therefore killed her, and drives home in tears. Once home, Tom and Daisy seem to have reconciled. After a sleepless night, Nick goes over to Gatsby's house where Gatsby ponders the uncertainty of his future with Daisy. Wilson has been restless from grief, convinced that Myrtle's death was not accidental. He goes around town inquiring about the yellow Rolls-Royce. Wilson finds out that Gatsby owned the car, and while Gatsby is relaxing in his pool, Wilson shoots and kills him before killing himself. Nick struggles to arrange Gatsby's funeral, finding that while Gatsby was well connected in life, very few people are willing to attend his funeral, not even Meyer Wolfsheim. Meanwhile, Daisy is unable to be reached after going off on vacation with Tom. Finally, the only mourners are Nick, a few servants, Mr. Gatz (Gatsby's father) and an owl-eyed guest from Gatsby's grand parties. Mr. Gatz proudly tells Nick about his son, who was born into a penniless family in North Dakota as James Gatz and worked tirelessly to improve and reinvent himself. After this whole affair with Gatsby, Nick decides to move back West, breaking things off with Jordan Baker, whom he had been dating for a while. Also, Tom reveals that it was he who told Wilson that Gatsby drove the yellow car. Nick loses respect for the Buchanans and does not communicate with them again.
77652	/m/0kb7d	For Whom the Bell Tolls	Ernest Hemingway	1940	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This novel is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist, Robert Jordan. The character was inspired by Hemingway's own experiences in the Spanish Civil War as a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Robert Jordan is an American in the International Brigades who travels to Spain to oppose the fascist forces of Francisco Franco. As an experienced dynamiter, he was ordered by a communist Russian general to travel behind enemy lines and destroy a bridge with the aid of a band of local antifascist guerrillas, in order to prevent enemy troops from being able to respond to an upcoming offensive. (The Soviet Union aided and advised the Republicans against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.) In their camp, Robert Jordan encounters María, a young Spanish woman whose life had been shattered by the execution of her parents and her rape at the hands of the Falangists (part of the fascist coalition) at the outbreak of the war. His strong sense of duty clashes with both guerrilla leader Pablo's unwillingness to commit to an operation that would endanger himself and his band, and his newfound lust for life arises out of his love for María. However, when another band of antifascist guerrillas led by El Sordo are surrounded and killed, Pablo decides to betray Jordan by stealing the dynamite caps, hoping to prevent the demolition. In the end Jordan improvises a way to detonate his dynamite, and Pablo returns to assist in the operation after seeing Jordan's commitment to his course of action. Though the bridge is successfully destroyed, it may be too late for the purposes of delaying enemy troop movements rendering the mission pointless, and Jordan is maimed when his horse is shot out from under him by a tank. Knowing that he would only slow his comrades down, he bids goodbye to María and ensures that she escapes to safety with the surviving members of the guerillas. He refuses an offer from another fighter to be shot and lies in agony, hoping to kill an enemy officer and a few soldiers before being captured and executed. The narration ends right before Jordan launches his ambush. The novel graphically describes the brutality of civil war.
77748	/m/0kby3	What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?				 This gothic story deals with two aging sisters, Jane and Blanche Hudson, who are living alone together in a decaying Hollywood mansion. Jane, a former child star of early vaudeville known as "Baby Jane", was spoiled, pampered, and doted upon by her father due to her success; her ignored older sister, Blanche, lived in Jane's shadow. However, their roles were reversed after the death of their parents due to influenza, when both children moved to Los Angeles to live with an aunt. Blanche was favored for her brown hair and regal beauty, and was even encouraged to pursue a film career. Blanche became a star while Jane, whose films were failures, languished in her shadow. Blanche had a clause in her contract stipulating that her studio create a film starring Jane for every Blanche Hudson picture. Years later, Jane, a slatternly alcoholic who still dresses as if she were 10 years old, and Blanche, disabled after a mysterious car accident involving Jane, continue to live together in the same mansion in a declining neighborhood. Jane resents having to live in the shadow of her sister, who became more famous than she ever was, and who is now being remembered because of a revival of her films on television. She hates having to cook, clean, and care for Blanche, who, although stuck upstairs in her bedroom, has nevertheless managed to keep her good looks, while Jane is now aged and ugly. Blanche, whose only other contact with the outside world is cleaning woman Elvira Stitt and her telephone conversations with her doctor and attorney, realizes that Jane is becoming increasingly unstable. She calls her lawyer and tells him she is planning to sell. She hears the extension downstairs click. Jane, who eavesdrops on her sister's calls, believes that Blanche wants to sell the house and have her committed to a mental hospital. When Blanche sees Jane's sinister mood swings beginning, she tries to talk to her sister about her decision. Jane does not listen, however. Jane begins to get even crazier, taking Blanche's phone and making her afraid to eat by serving, first, her dead pet bird on a salad and, later, a large rat from the cellar. In a drunken daze, Jane decides to revive her childhood singing and dancing act of Baby Jane, reasoning that Fanny Brice had success with Baby Snooks. She then hires a musical accompanist, Edwin Flagg, through a want ad. As reality topples crazily into eerie fantasy, Jane abuses her sister with monstrous cruelty while embezzling her money to buy liquor and revive her childhood act as "Baby Jane Hudson". Elvira comes to find out why Blanche can't be reached on the phone and why Jane won't let her go upstairs to Blanche's room. Opening the door and finding Blanche tied to the bed with her mouth taped shut, she tries to help. Jane kills Elvira with a hammer from behind before she can help. That night, Jane dumps the body. A day or two later police officers come questioning Jane about Elvira's disappearance, so Jane panics, grabs her barely conscious sister and heads for the location of some of her happiest childhood memories, the beach. It was there some fifty years before that crowds used to gather around and watch Baby Jane practice her songs and dances while Daddy played the banjo. While lying on the beach, Jane plays in the sand while Blanche lies there wrapped in a blanket. Realizing that she may be dying, Blanche reveals to Jane that it was actually she, and not Jane, who had driven the car on the fateful night. Jane had spent the evening teasing and mimicking Blanche at a party. As Jane unlocked the gates, Blanche tried to run her down with the car, but Jane moved out of the way. The car then slammed into the metal gate, snapping Blanche's spine, crippling her. She managed to crawl out of the car and up to the gate and when the police arrived, they assumed Jane had been driving. Jane had been too drunk to know what had happened and could not refute the accusations. Jane says at times the truth had almost come to her, but assumed she had dreamed it. She goes to buy an ice cream and is recognized by the police. At first she is confused by the crowd of people who gather around to stare at her. She then realizes what they must want, so she begins to dance.
78016	/m/0kdr6	From Russia with Love	Ian Fleming	1957-04-08	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence agency, plans to commit a grand act of terrorism in the intelligence field. For this, it targets British secret service agent James Bond. Due in part to his role in the defeat of Le Chiffre, Mr. Big and Hugo Drax, Bond has been listed as an enemy of the Soviet state and a "death warrant" has been issued for him. His death is planned to precipitate a major sex scandal, which will run through the world press for months and leave his and his service's reputation in tatters. Bond's killer is to be SMERSH executioner Red Grant, a psychopath whose homicidal urges coincide with the full moon. Kronsteen, SMERSH's chess-playing master planner, and Colonel Rosa Klebb, head of Operations and Executions, devise the operation. They persuade an attractive young cipher clerk, Corporal Tatiana Romanova, to falsely defect from her post in Istanbul, claiming to have fallen in love with Bond after seeing his file photograph. As an added incentive, Tatiana will provide the British with a Spektor, a Russian decoding device much coveted by MI6. She is not told the details of the plan. An offer of the Spektor is subsequently received by MI6 in London, ostensibly from Romanova, and contains the condition that Bond collects her and the machine in Istanbul. MI6 is unsure of Romanova's story, but the prize of the Spektor is too tempting to ignore and Bond's superior, M, orders him to go to Turkey and meet her. Bond meets and quickly forms a comradeship with Darko Kerim, head of the British service's station in Turkey. Kerim takes Bond to a meal with some Gypsies, in which Bond witnesses a brutal catfight, interrupted by an attack by Soviet agents. In retaliation, Bond helps Kerim assassinate a top Bulgarian agent. Bond duly encounters Romanova and the two plan their route out of Turkey with the Spektor. He and Kerim believe her story and in due course she, Bond and Kerim board the Orient Express with the Spektor. Bond and Kerim quickly discover three MGB agents on board travelling incognito. Kerim uses bribes and trickery to have the two taken off the train, but he is later found dead in his compartment with the body of the third agent, both having been killed by Grant. At Trieste a fellow MI6 agent, "Captain Nash", arrives on the train and Bond presumes he has been sent by M as added protection for the rest of the trip. Tatiana is suspicious of Nash, but Bond reassures her that Nash is from his own service. After dinner, at which Nash has drugged Romanova, Bond wakes up to find a gun pointing at him and Nash reveals himself to be the killer, Grant. Instead of killing Bond immediately, Grant reveals SMERSH's plan, including the detail that he is to shoot Bond through the heart and that the Spektor is booby-trapped to explode when examined. As Grant talks, Bond slips his metal cigarette case between the pages of a magazine he is holding in front of him and positions it in front of his heart to stop the bullet. After Grant fires, Bond pretends to be mortally wounded and when Grant steps over him, Bond attacks him: Grant is killed, whilst Bond and Romanova subsequently escape. Later, in Paris, after successfully delivering Tatiana and the Spektor to his superiors, Bond encounters Rosa Klebb. She is captured but manages to kick Bond with a poisoned blade concealed in her shoe; the story ends with Bond fighting for breath and falling to the floor.
78145	/m/0kf99	The Tombs of Atuan	Ursula K. Le Guin	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The story centers on a Kargish child who is taken from her family and dedicated as the high priestess in the service of the "Nameless Ones" on the island of Atuan. Her true name is Tenar, but she is renamed Arha, "the eaten one", when she is formally consecrated to the gods' service at age six, as all the high priestesses are considered reincarnations of the first. Arha's youth is a haunting contrast between lighthearted childish escapades and dark, solemn rituals. Her only true friend is the eunuch Manan who cares for her. Gradually she comes to accept her lonely, anonymous role, and to feel at home in the unlit underground labyrinth, the eponymous Tombs, where the malevolent, powerful Nameless Ones dwell, and where prisoners are sent for a slow death. Indeed, as she becomes aware of the political machinations among the older priestesses Thar and Kossil, the Tombs become a refuge to her, as she is the only one who may freely move through the labyrinth under them. When Thar dies, Arha becomes increasingly isolated, as although she was stern, Thar was fair to her. Now there is only Arha and Kossil, who despises Arha and her cult as rivals to Kossil's power. The numbing routine of Arha's world is dramatically disrupted when she is fifteen years old by the arrival of Ged, the protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea. He comes to the Tombs in order to find the long-lost half of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, a magical talisman necessary for peace in Earthsea, which had been broken centuries before. (The other half came into his possession entirely by chance, and it took a dragon to inform him what it really is.) Arha finds him wandering, lost in the magic-laced labyrinth, and traps him underground to die in order to punish what she sees as sacrilege. She goes back and forth in her mind as to whether she should kill him. Yet in her loneliness, she is drawn to him and listens as he tells her of the outside world. Arha spares Ged's life and keeps him prisoner in the tombs, bringing him food and water. However, she is unable to keep it a secret indefinitely, and the priestess Kossil learns of Ged's existence. Now Arha is trapped into promising that Ged will be sacrificed to the Nameless Ones. She realises that she cannot go through with killing Ged and instructs Manan to dig a false grave underground, while she takes Ged to hide in the treasury of the tombs where only she is allowed to go. By now Arha's relations with Kossil have deteriorated to the point of no return and they have a public falling out in front of the subordinate priestesses. Kossil tells her openly to her face that no-one believes in the Nameless Ones anymore and that Arha is only a powerless figurehead. The real power lies with her, Kossil, as the priestess of the Godking. In response Arha curses her in the name of the Nameless Ones. After her anger has cooled Arha realises that Kossil will now be determined to kill her, and that no-one can stop her. She heads underground to the labyrinth to think, and is horrified to find Kossil uncovering the fake grave, and desecrating the tombs by using a light. She heads for the treasury where Ged is kept prisoner, and in her desperation, confesses everything to him. In the meantime while prisoner there Ged has discovered what he came to find - the other half of Erreth-Akbe's ring. He begs Arha to abandon her role as priestess and escape with him from the tombs. Arha is eventually won over by Ged's kindness. She realizes that the Nameless Ones demand her service, but give nothing and create nothing in return. Ged must expend his strength continually on hiding himself from the Nameless Ones, as they would kill him if they detected his presence. Realising that she has no future in the tombs Arha renounces her role as priestess and reverts to calling herself by her original name Tenar. She helps Ged escape from the Tombs with the other half of the ring, as he frees her from the priesthood. The Tombs fall in upon themselves as Tenar and Ged escape. Ged brings her with him back to Havnor where they are received in triumph, and the reunited ring of Erreth-akbe ushers in a new era of peace to Earthsea.
78797	/m/0kjjm	Good Omens	Neil Gaiman	1990-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is the coming of the End Times: the Apocalypse is near, and Final Judgment will soon descend upon the human race. This comes as a bit of bad news to the angel Aziraphale (who was the angel of the Garden of Eden) and the demon Crowley (who, when he was originally named Crawly, was the serpent who tempted Eve to eat the apple), respectively the representatives of God and Satan on Earth, as they have become used to living their cozy, comfortable lives and have, in a perverse way, taken a liking to humanity. As such, since they are good friends (despite ostensibly representing the polar opposites of Good and Evil), they decide to work together and keep an eye on the Antichrist, destined to be the son of a prominent American diplomat stationed in Britain, and thus ensure he grows up in a way that means he can never decide between Good and Evil, thereby postponing the end of the world. Unfortunately, Warlock, the child everyone thinks is the Anti-Christ is, in fact, a perfectly normal eleven-year-old boy. Due to mishandling of several infants in the hospital, the real Anti-Christ is Adam Young, a charismatic and slightly otherworldly eleven-year-old who, despite being the harbinger of the Apocalypse, has lived a perfectly normal life as the son of typical English parents and as a result has no idea of his true powers. As Adam blissfully and naively uses his powers, creating around him the world of Just William (because he thinks that is what an English child's life should be like), the race is on to find him—the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse assemble and the incredibly accurate (yet so highly specific as to be useless) prophecies of Agnes Nutter, seventeenth-century prophetess, are rapidly coming true. Agnes Nutter was a witch in the 17th century and the only truly accurate prophet to have ever lived. She wrote a book called The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, a collection of prophecies that did not sell very well because they were unspectacular, cryptic and, ironically enough, all true. She, in fact, decided to publish it only so that she could receive a free author's copy. There is only one copy of the book left, which belongs to her descendant Anathema Device. Agnes was burned at the stake by a mob (because that is what mobs did at that time); however, because she had foreseen her fiery end ("Ye're tardy; I should have been aflame ten minutes since") and had packed 80 pounds of gunpowder and 40 pounds of roofing nails into her petticoats, everyone who participated in the burning was killed instantly. Anathema teams up with Newton Pulsifer, the descendant of the man who initiated the burning of Agnes, to use the prophesies and find the Antichrist. Unfortunately, that is exactly what everyone else is trying to do, and time is running out.
78799	/m/0kjk0	Coraline	Neil Gaiman	2002	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This is about a "different" girl named Coraline Jones. She and her parents move into an old house that has been subdivided into flats. The other tenants include Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, two elderly women retired from the stage, and Mr. Bobinski, who is training a mouse circus. The flat beside Coraline's remains empty. During a rainy day she discovers a locked door in the drawing room, which has been bricked up. As she goes to visit her neighbors, Mr. Bobinsky relates to her a message from the mice: Don't go through the door. At tea with Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, Miss Spink spies danger in Coraline’s future after reading her tea leaves, and gives her a stone with a hole in it for protection. Despite these warnings, Coraline decides to unlock the door when she is home by herself and finds the brick wall behind the door gone. In its place is a long passageway, which leads to a flat identical to her own, inhabited by her Other Mother and Other Father, who are replicas of her real parents. They have button eyes and exaggerated features. In this “Other World”, Coraline finds everything to be better than her reality: her Other Parents are attentive, her toy box is filled with animate toys that can move and fly, and the Other Miss Spink and Miss Forcible forever perform a cabaret show in their flat. She even finds the feral Black Cat that wanders around the house in the real world can talk, however she learns he is not of the Other World; he only travels from one world to another and warns Coraline of the imminent danger, but Coraline pays him no heed. The Other Mother offers Coraline a chance to stay in the Other World forever, if Coraline will allow buttons to be sewn into her eyes. Coraline is horrified and returns back through the door to go home. Upon her return to her apartment, Coraline finds her real parents are missing. They do not return the next day, and the black cat wakes her and takes her to a mirror in her hallway, through which she can see her trapped parents. They signal to her by writing "Help Us" on the glass, from which Coraline deduces the Other Mother has kidnapped them. Though frightened of returning, Coraline goes back to the Other World to confront the Other Mother and rescue her parents. In the garden, Coraline is prompted by the Cat to challenge the Other Mother, as “her kind of thing loves games and challenges”. The Other Mother tries to convince Coraline to stay, but Coraline refuses, and is locked behind a mirror as punishment. In the darkness, she meets three ghost children, each from a different era, who had let the beldam (the Other Mother) sew buttons in their eyes. They tell her how she eventually grew bored with them, ate their bodies, and cast their spirits aside. The ghost children implore Coraline to avoid their fate, and to help find their souls so that they can leave the Other World and pass on. After the Other Mother releases Coraline from the mirror, Coraline proposes a game in which she must find the ghost children’s souls and her parents, which lay hidden throughout the Other World. If Coraline wins, she, her parents and the ghost children may go free. If not, Coraline will let the Other Mother sew the buttons into her eyes. Coraline goes through the Other World, and overcomes all the Other Mother’s obstacles, using her wits and Miss Spink’s stone to locate the ghost children’s souls. At the close of the game, the ghost children warn her even if Coraline wins, the Other Mother will not let them go. Having deduced her parents are imprisoned in the snow globe on the mantle, Coraline tricks the Other Mother by saying her parents are behind the door in the drawing room. As the Other Mother opens the door, Coraline throws the cat at the Other Mother, grabs the snow globe, and escapes to the real world with the key. In doing so, she forces the door shut on the Other Mother's hand, severing it. Back in her home, Coraline finds her parents safe and with no memory of the events. That night, Coraline has a dream in which she meets the three children before they move on to the afterlife. They warn her, her task is still not done: the other mother's severed hand is in Coraline's world, attempting to steal the key which opens the door that connects the two worlds. Coraline goes to an old well in the woods by her house, luring the Other Mother’s hand there with the key, and casts both down the bottomless well. Coraline returns home, victorious, and prepares to go about the ordinary life she has come to accept and love.
79078	/m/0kkx2	The Sandman: Dream Country	Neil Gaiman		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 Like the sixth collection, Fables and Reflections, and the eighth, Worlds' End, Dream Country consists of short stories that do not have a common storyline running through them, though it has been argued that most Sandman stories are not entirely self-contained and are part of a larger story arc that encompasses the entire series. Dream Country is the shortest of the eleven Sandman collections, featuring just four issues ("Calliope", #17, and "A Dream of a Thousand Cats", #18, both pencilled by Kelley Jones and inked by Malcolm Jones III; "A Midsummer Night's Dream", #19, drawn by Charles Vess and coloured for the first time by computer colouring pioneer Steve Oliff; and "Façade", #20, penciled by Colleen Doran and inked by Malcolm Jones III). This is the story of a frustrated author, Richard Madoc, whose first book has been released to critical acclaim but who simply cannot write a page of the promised follow-up. He strikes a deal with an elder writer, Erasmus Fry, for Calliope, one of the Muses of Greek mythology, whom Fry had captured earlier in his life, in exchange for a bezoar. Fry kept her imprisoned and regularly raped her, and her presence provided the inspiration for his successful novels. Madoc also takes her captive and has great success in writing, but Calliope calls upon the triad of witches known by many names, such as the Furies, the Kindly Ones or the Gracious Ladies, for help. They direct her to Morpheus, who we are told was once her lover (this relationship is elaborated on later in the series), and who is currently similarly imprisoned. Upon his release, he comes to rescue Calliope, and visits a terrible punishment upon Madoc. He complains that without her, he will have no ideas, so Morpheus causes him to never stop having them, which drives him to madness. Though the story of "Calliope" was not criticized for unoriginality at the time of its release, its concept has apparently become a very popular one since; a list of overused story ideas at Strange Horizons included "Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive." (See Neil Gaiman's post about Strange Horizon's list). Madoc's Book "Her Wings" appears in a few other stories by Neil Gaiman including The Last Temptation as a sort of inside joke. Rose Walker is later seen reading Fry's book "Here Comes a Candle". In the library of Dream, an unfinished book by Erasmus Fry, "The Hand of Glory" is seen in Season of Mists. One of Madoc's works, "The Spirit Who Had Half Of Everything", takes its name from an unused chapter title in an early draft of James Branch Cabell's Figures of Earth. This tale begins with a small, white cat being called by another cat to sneak away from her house one night. They speak of an event in a graveyard that they don't want to miss. When they arrive, they see that many cats are already there. A Siamese cat comes to tell her story. A long time ago, the Siamese cat relates, she met a Tom-cat, who became her lover. Eventually, she gave birth to several kittens. Her human owners were not pleased, and the male owner put the kittens in a bag bound to a rock, and threw them into pond. Traumatized by the callous murder of her kittens, the Siamese becomes disillusioned in human beings and ultimately rejects the life of a pampered pet. Her cause is strengthened when she has a dream that she has entered a boneyard in the Dreaming. In the dream a raven with no skin on its head informs her where she can find out exactly why the humans killed her offspring: a cave inhabited by the Dream Lord. At the entrance to the cave that the raven told her of, many fearsome animals tell her to leave. She responds by saying that she will only state her business to Dream. Inside, she finds Dream in the form of a cat. Dream presents her with a vision of an alternate reality where cats are huge and humans are merely their playthings, tiny servants which groom their bodies and which the cats can kill at their leisure. A man ruined that world by informing the humans that their dreams will shape the world. Enough humans listened to make the vision a reality. Upon waking, the cat undertakes a spiritual quest for justice. She preaches her vision to motley assortments of housecats around the world, hoping that if she can make enough believe in and dream of this reality, the world will change to conform to their dreams. The cat from the beginning of the story heads home. Her friends were slightly disappointed, though they admitted that what they heard was interesting. The white cat, however, was fully taken by the tale. She returns home and heads to sleep. Over breakfast, her owners remark on what a cute stance she's in: it looks as if she's hunting something, or someone. Although seemingly a complete diversion from the basic story of the Sandman, it in fact illustrates some of the core themes of the series: the idea that reality is shaped in the most literal sense by the dreams, beliefs, and expectations of humans (and, in this case, of other animals as well). The story also portrays the theme of change and its relation to an individual's nature. The humans found that they were unhappy with their role and were able to harness the power of dream to instigate a change of the nature of reality, whereas when cats found themselves in a similar situation their apathetic, independent, and fickle nature kept them from changing. This idea of the capacity for change reemerges throughout the book, most notably in the conclusion of The Kindly Ones. !-- This section is linked from Characters of The Sandman --> This is a core issue of the Sandman series, sometimes cited as the best in the series. It concerns the premiere of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which we are told was commissioned by Morpheus as part of a bargain in which Morpheus granted Shakespeare his extraordinary skill with writing. Performed on a hillside before an audience of bizarre creatures from Faerie - including the very characters who appear in the play, Titania, Auberon, and the hobgoblin Robin Goodfellow (Puck) amongst them - the Sandman's version of reality and Shakespeare's play are merged and interact with one another. Puck greatly enjoys the play and repeats the theme of the story that while the play does not directly reflect history or even some of the personalities of the characters it is still considered a true reflection of "reality". (In reality Puck is described as being a psychotic murderer and not a merry wanderer of the night.) Titania takes an interest in Shakespeare's son Hamnet, who plays a small role in the play. The issue received a World Fantasy Award for short fiction in 1991. Dream first meets Shakespeare in Sandman #13, "Men of Good Fortune," and the final issue, #75, "The Tempest," focuses on the second of the two plays commissioned by Morpheus. This is another odd issue, featuring one of the methods Gaiman played with in the first, and to a lesser extent in the second, collection: it takes one of the neglected characters from the DC Universe, this time Element Girl (Urania Blackwell, a female version of Metamorpho), and shows her in a completely unexpected situation. A reluctant superhero at best, she has now retired, and lives a meagre existence, rarely leaving her flat due to her self-loathing of her "freakish" appearance. She goes by her nickname "Rainie". The plot revolves around a phone call she receives: an invitation to have dinner with an old friend, Della. She concocts a fake face to wear so her friend doesn't know of her "skin disease". As Della explains a problem she's having, Rainie's "face" falls into the plate of spaghetti bolognese that she ordered, revealing her true face. She runs away, and to her apartment, where she wonders how she can kill herself, despite being invulnerable. Fortunately, Death, who was dealing with a woman who'd slipped on a stepladder, enters her room, explaining that the door was open, and she had heard her crying. She tells her how she can talk to the sun god, Ra, and beg for a merciful death. An extraordinarily poignant piece dealing with identity and, subtly, the gap between the world portrayed in the more naïve of DC Comics' superhero comics and the true reality of everyday life, it ends on a curiously happy note, with Death answering Rainie's telephone and informing the caller that "she's gone away, I'm afraid."
79111	/m/0kl43	The Sandman: Season of Mists				 The fourth collection belongs with the first as perhaps one of the two collections most focused on Morpheus himself. It begins with an Endless family meeting descending almost immediately into an Endless family argument. Desire angers Morpheus by taunting him about his intolerant treatment of a former lover, whose story formed the prologue to the second collection, The Doll's House; Death angers him further by agreeing with Desire, but Morpheus' immense respect for Death leads him eventually to agree with her assessment. Morpheus leaves his realm to travel to Hell, where he imprisoned his former lover Nada, to release her. Having left Lucifer, lord of Hell, very angry with him the last time he ventured there (in the first collection, Preludes and Nocturnes), Morpheus is apprehensive about the task. He sets about it, wanting to do what is right, but prepared for a confrontation which he knows he may lose. In the event, his apprehension is somewhat misplaced. As he arrives, Lucifer is busy closing down Hell. Morpheus follows Lucifer around in a state of some bafflement before Lucifer finally persuades him this is not an elaborate trick, that he indeed intends to leave Hell, and his obligations as its lord, forever. His final act before leaving is to throw out any demon or damned souls still hanging around, lock all the portals to Hell and cut off his wings; he then hands the key to Hell to Morpheus, to do with as he will. This episode sets up the basis for the spin-off comic series Lucifer written by Mike Carey. Morpheus, who has no wish to rule this troublesome piece of real estate, quickly discovers that there are numerous entities who want to control Hell or prevent their enemies from controlling it. Odin wishes to control Hell in order to avoid Ragnarök and travels to the Dreaming with two other members of the Norse pantheon, Loki and Thor. Anubis, Bast and Bes from the ancient Egyptian pantheon wish to trade information in exchange for the key to Hell. Susano-o-no-Mikoto, a storm god of the Shinto pantheon, travels as an individual deity, and not as a representative of Shinto gods. He wishes to add Hell to a new underworld controlled by his family, which has been formed by assimilating other lesser pantheons as well as objects of worship including, he says, Marilyn Monroe. Azazel, a Biblical demon, arrives with two other demons who held great power in the old Hell: Choronzon, here described as the former Duke of the Eight Circle, and Merkin, the mother of Spiders. Azazel had previously ruled Hell in a triumvirate with another demon and Lucifer, although Lucifer tells Morpheus that this was only part of a game he played, and Azazel demands that Morpheus hand him the key. In exchange Azazel offers to hand over Nada as well as the demon Choronzon who had previously fought Morpheus. Order and Chaos also arrive. Order is in the guise of an empty cardboard box carried by a floating Djinn-like being, while Chaos appears in the form of a small girl in clown makeup. Order offers to trade the dreams of the newly dead, while Chaos simply threatens Morpheus before offering a balloon. Two representatives from Faerie, Cluracan, and his sister Nuala appeal to Morpheus to give control of Hell to no one. Cluracan offers his sister as a gift to the Dream Lord, in the name of Faerie Queen. Two angels are also present, Duma the angel of silence and Remiel here presented as the angel of those who rise. The angels have been set to simply observe. Susano-o-no-Mikoto, Duma and Remiel later become important characters in the spin-off series Lucifer. Much to Morpheus's chagrin, the interested parties promptly convene in the castle at the centre of the Dreaming. Here many characters who have parts to play later in the series are introduced, amongst them the representatives of Faerie, Cluracan, and his sister Nuala. After much bargaining, wheedling, bribery, trickery, Norse drunkenness, and threatening behavior, Morpheus manages to get rid of Hell without much anger from the other participants: he gives it to a pair of angels sent by God, after Remiel relays a message claiming that as Hell is a reflection of Heaven, its true creator should control it. Dream then enters Azazel and frees Nada. He apologizes to her, and though he still loves her, she chooses not to stay with him, and he reincarnates her in the body of a newborn baby, telling her that she will always be welcome in the Dreaming in any form that she chooses. Between these deliberations is the story "In Which the Dead Return; and Charles Rowland Concludes His Education", from issue #25, which takes place at a traditional English boarding-school (and borrows elements from the boarding-school story genre) and is used to illustrate the consequences of Hell's closure. Although the two main characters in this tale, the ghosts of two school boys, never appear again in the Sandman series, they later appear as "The Dead Boy Detectives" in Gaiman's Vertigo cross-over story The Children's Crusade, and in a mini-series of that name by Jill Thompson. The collection ends with Lucifer, sans wings, sitting on an Australian beach, grudgingly admiring God's sunset.
79120	/m/0kl59	Interview with the Vampire	Anne Rice	1976-04-12	{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 A vampire named Louis tells his 200-year-long life story to reporter Daniel Molloy (who is only referred to as "the boy" in the novel). In 1791, Louis was a young indigo plantation owner living south of New Orleans, Louisiana. Distraught with the death of his pious brother, he seeks death in any way possible. Louis is approached by a vampire named Lestat, who desires Louis' company. Lestat turns Louis into a vampire (although initially Louis begs to be killed) and the two become immortal companions. Lestat spends some time feeding off the local plantation slaves while Louis, who finds it morally impossible for him to murder humans to survive, feeds from animals. Louis and Lestat are forced to leave when Louis' slaves begin to fear the monsters with which they live and instigate an uprising. Louis sets his own plantation aflame; he and Lestat exterminate the plantation slaves to keep word from spreading about vampires living in Louisiana. Gradually, Louis bends under Lestat's influence and begins feeding from humans. He slowly comes to terms with his vampire nature but also becomes increasingly repulsed by what he perceives as Lestat's total lack of compassion for the humans he preys upon. Escaping to New Orleans proper, Louis feeds off a plague-ridden young girl one night, who is six years old, whom he finds next to the corpse of her mother. Louis begins to think of leaving Lestat and going his own way. Fearing this, Lestat then turns the girl into a vampire "daughter" for them, to give Louis a reason to stay. She is then given the name "Claudia". Louis is initially horrified that Lestat has turned a child into a vampire, but soon begins to care for Claudia tenderly and dotingly. Claudia takes to killing people easily, but over time, she grows tired of her eternal childhood and begins to realize she can never grow up; her mind matures into that of an intelligent, assertive woman, but her body remains that of a five-year-old girl. Claudia blames Lestat for her condition and, after 60 years of living together, she hatches a plot to destroy Lestat by poisoning him and cutting his throat. Claudia and Louis then dump his body into a nearby swamp. After realizing that they seem to now be the only vampires living in America, Claudia desires to travel to Europe with Louis and seek out "Old World" vampires. As Louis and Claudia prepare to flee to Europe, Lestat appears, having survived and recovered from Claudia's attack, and attacks them in turn. Louis sets fire to their home and barely escapes with Claudia, leaving a furious Lestat to be consumed by the flames. Arriving in Europe, Louis and Claudia seek out more of their kind. They travel throughout eastern Europe first and do indeed encounter vampires, but these vampires appear to be nothing more than animated corpses, mindless and unintelligible. It is only when they reach Paris that they encounter vampires like themselves - specifically, the 400-year-old vampire Armand and his coven, the Théâtre des Vampires. Inhabiting an ancient theater, Armand and his vampire coven disguise themselves as humans and feed on live, terrified humans in mock-plays before a live human audience (who think the killings are merely a very realistic performance). Claudia is repulsed by these vampires and what she considers to be their cheap theatrics, but Louis and Armand are drawn to each other. Santiago, a prominent figure among the vampire coven, suspects Claudia and Louis of killing their maker. One rule among the vampires is death to any vampire who kills their own kind. Convinced that Louis will leave her for Armand, Claudia demands that Louis turn a human Parisian doll maker, Madeleine, into a vampire to serve as both a mother figure and a replacement companion. Louis at first refuses but eventually gives in and makes Madeleine into a vampire. Louis, Madeleine and Claudia live together for a brief time, but all three are abducted one night by the Theatre vampires. Lestat has arrived - having survived the fire and attempted murder in New Orleans. His accusations against Louis and Claudia result in Louis being locked in a coffin to starve, while Claudia and Madeleine are locked in an open courtyard. Armand arrives and releases Louis from the coffin, but Madeleine and Claudia are burned to death by the rising sun. Louis finds the ashen remains of Claudia and Madeleine and is devastated. He later returns to the Theatre late the following night, burning it to the ground as the sun rises and killing all the vampires inside, and leaves with Armand. Louis and Armand then travel across Europe together for several years, but Louis never fully recovers from Claudia's death and the emotional connection between himself and Armand quickly dissolves. Tired of the Old World, Louis eventually returns to America and New Orleans in the early 20th century, living as a loner; he feeds off any humans that cross his path but lives in the shadows and never creates another companion for himself. Telling the boy of one last encounter with Lestat in New Orleans, Louis ends his tale; after 200 years, he is weary of immortality as a vampire and all the pain and suffering to which he has had to bear witness. The boy, however, seeing only the great powers granted to a vampire, begs to be made into a vampire himself. Infuriated that his interviewer learned nothing from his story, Louis refuses, and attacks the boy and then vanishes without a trace. Recovering from the attack, the boy leaves the place in his car.
79131	/m/0kl88	Seven Against Thebes	Aeschylus			 When Oedipus, the king of Thebes, realized he had married his own mother and had two sons and two daughters with her, he blinded himself and cursed his sons to divide their inheritance (the kingdom) by the sword. The two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, in order to avoid bloodshed, agreed to rule Thebes in alternate years. After the first year, Eteocles refused to step down and as a result, Polynices raised an army (captained by the eponymous Seven) of Argives to take Thebes by force. This is where Aeschylus' tragedy starts. There is little plot as such; instead, the bulk of the play consists of rich dialogues that show how the citizens of Thebes feel about the threat of the hostile army before their gates, and also how their king Eteocles feels and thinks about it. Dialogues also show aspects of Eteocles' character. There is also a lengthy description of each of the seven captains that lead the Argive army against the seven gates of the city of Thebes as well as the devices on their respective shields. Eteocles, in turn, announces which Theban commander he will send against each Argive attacker. Finally, the commander of the troops before the seventh gate is revealed to be Polynices, the brother of the king. Then Eteocles remembers and refers to the curse of their father Oedipus. Eteocles resolves to meet and fight his brother in person before the seventh gate and exits. Following a choral ode, a messenger enters, announcing that the attackers have been repelled but that Eteocles and Polynices have killed each other in battle. Their bodies are brought on stage, and the chorus mourns them. The seven attackers and defenders in the play are: {| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center" ! # !! Attacker !! Defender |- |1 || Tydeus || Melanippus |- |2 || Capaneus || Polyphontes |- |3 || Eteoclus || Megareus |- |4 || Hippomedon || Hyperbius |- |5 || Parthenopeus || Actor |- |6 || Amphiaraus || Lasthenes |- |7 || Polynices || Eteocles |- |} Due to the popularity of Sophocles's Antigone, the ending of Seven against Thebes was rewritten about fifty years after Aeschylus' death. Where the play was meant to end with somber mourning for the dead brothers, it instead contains an ending that serves as a lead-in of sorts to Sophocles' play: a messenger appears, announcing a prohibition against burying Polynices; Antigone, however, announces her intention to defy this edict.
79498	/m/0kng8	Tartarin de Tarascon	Alphonse Daudet		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It tells the burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France, whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him to travel to a very prosaic Algiers in search of lions. Instead of finding a romantic, mysterious Oriental fantasy land, he finds a sordid world suspended between Europe and the Middle East. And worst of all, there are no lions left. By a coincidence, Tartarin encounters a lion and kills him. Unfortunately, the lion was a mascot of the local military garrison and Tartarin is dragged in front of a judge. By a stroke of luck, he is released on a technicality and returns to Tarascon with the lion's skin to a hero's welcome. The book was followed by two sequels: Tartarin sur les Alpes (1885) and Port-Tarascon (1890).
79532	/m/0knn6	The Sandman: The Kindly Ones				 The Kindly Ones belongs with the second collection, The Doll's House, and the seventh, Brief Lives, in that it finishes off a story that mostly originated in these collections. Parts from other collections are also important to its story, however, notably elements from Season of Mists and the story of Orpheus, told mostly in Fables and Reflections. The most structurally ambitious of the collections, The Kindly Ones is a single storyline written as a Greek tragedy, with Morpheus as its doomed hero and an aspect of the triad of witches, the Erinyes, as the Greek chorus. It pulls together various threads left dangling throughout the series, notably the grudges against Morpheus of several characters: Hippolyta Hall, whose child, Daniel, was claimed by Morpheus; the witches themselves; the Norse god Loki; and the witch Thessaly. The Kindly Ones also continues several other stories, including that of Cluracan of Faerie and his sister Nuala, that of the Corinthian, and that of Rose Walker and her former landlord Hal. It also features Lucifer, now playing piano in a nightclub, although he is loath to take requests. After Daniel is kidnapped towards the beginning of the story by Loki and Robin Goodfellow (the Puck), Hippolyta (or Lyta), manipulated by Loki into believing he was murdered, convinces herself that Morpheus was responsible due to her brief interactions with him throughout the series. In the midst of an intense breakdown over the loss of her child, Lyta resolves to destroy Morpheus, eventually finding the witches who agree to help her in her goal. In their aspect as the Furies, the witches are empowered to destroy Morpheus by the fact that he has shed the blood of one of his family (that of his son, Orpheus, when he granted him the boon of death). In many places, Lyta is depicted as Medusa, even meeting Medusa's two sisters, Stheno and Euryale, at one point in the story. Unbeknownst to Lyta, Daniel is eventually recovered alive and well by Morpheus' servants, the raven Matthew and a restored Corinthian. However, Lyta incurs the wrath of the Furies before learning that Daniel is still alive and safe, and is subsequently unable to stop the Furies from taking their revenge. Throughout the story the greatest mystery is the motivation of Morpheus; it is never exactly clear to what extent he is aware of the course on which he has, to some extent, set himself, and how serious are his attempts to save himself. In a telling sequence, he finally lays himself open to the Furies by leaving his kingdom to fulfill a boon he had granted to Nuala, even though he knows that his own end will likely be the consequence; once more his refusal to shirk what he perceives as his responsibility for any reason is a turning point in the story. In an affecting sequence, the main story ends with Morpheus and his sister Death on a desolate peak, echoing a sequence from one of the series' early high points, "The Sound of her Wings" (issue #8). Death asks for Morpheus' hand, and he simply disappears, in a flash of light. Having existed for all but an eternity, Dream of the Endless dies. Immediately upon the death of Morpheus, Daniel metamorphoses into a new aspect of Dream, with white clothes and hair, and an emerald instead of a ruby.
79569	/m/0knzs	SS-GB	Len Deighton	1978-08-24	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is November 1941, nine months after a German invasion led to the British surrender. Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer, a British homicide detective assigned to Scotland Yard, is called in to investigate a murder of a well-dressed man in an apartment in Shepherd Market. Though the body has two gunshot wounds, Archer is puzzled by the condition of the body, in particular what appears to be a sunburn on the body's arm. To his surprise, the case draws the attention of the highest levels of the German government, as an SS Standartenführer, Oskar Huth, arrives to supervise the investigation. Archer soon finds himself in the middle of a power struggle between Huth and Gruppenführer Fritz Kellerman, Archer's boss and the head of police forces in Great Britain. Archer soon discovers that the dead man was a British physicist named William Spode and that Spode was involved with the Resistance movement. This leads Archer to George Mayhew, a former colonel in the British Army who is organizing an operation designed to free the King from his prison in the Tower of London and spirit him away to neutral America. Archer also develops a romantic relationship with Barbara Barga, an American reporter whom he first met at the Spode murder scene and who appears involved in the mystery. Huth also reveals to Archer the reason for the high-level interest in the murder: Spode was part of a German military team working on developing an atomic bomb. As his investigation proceeds, Archer finds the dangers increasing, as a subordinate is killed and Archer himself is nearly murdered by a member of the Resistance. Following a clue in the form of an elbow pivot for an artificial arm, Archer travels to a prisoner-of-war camp in Berkshire where inmates produce replacement limbs for war veterans. There he succeeds in capturing Spode's brother, John Spode, who lost his right arm while fighting the German invasion. Though Spode confesses readily to shooting his brother (who was dying of radiation poisoning), he commits suicide by ingesting a cyanide capsule before Archer can take him back to London. Learning that the German officer escorting him around the camp was a member of the Abwehr, Archer follows him back to London, where he discovers Mayhew conspiring with top Abwehr officials to free the King, an act that would humiliate the SS as the organization in charge of guarding him. The next day, a public exhumation of Karl Marx from Highgate Cemetery as part of "German-Soviet Friendship Week" is disrupted by a bomb which kills dozens of people. In response the German army declares martial law and arrests thousands of people, including Archer's partner, Detective Sergeant Harry Woods. Though Woods assures his friend that they will be able to avoid incarceration by bribing one of the soldiers, Archer soon learns that Woods is wounded in an escape attempt. Kellerman secures Woods's release, but with a statement that compromises Archer in Kellerman's political manoeuvrings against Huth. Undeterred, Archer travels to an English manor house to witness the arrival of an American agent who arrives to negotiate with Mayhew over the King and the atomic bomb secrets. The two agree that the Americans will get the equations William Spode worked out (which his brother photographed before destroying) in return for taking the King out of Britain as well. Though Huth arrives with a force of men, Mayhew comes to a secret agreement with him and the Germans depart quietly. The following day. Archer and Woods succeed in getting the King out of the Tower, only to find the King an invalid as a result of an injury suffered during the invasion. They take him secretly to Bringle Sands, the site of the German atomic bomb research project in England, so that a force of United States Marines preparing to attack the facility can take the King out with them. Though the attack succeeds in destroying the facility and escaping with research material and key personnel, an ambush set by Huth (who was forewarned of the assault by Mayhew) results in the death of the King. Though arrested, Archer is freed by Kellerman, who has what he wants – evidence which he can use to convict Huth of aiding the resistance. In a final meeting before his execution, Huth laments to Archer that the Americans will develop the atomic bomb first and that Mayhew (whom Archer has deduced was Spode's real murderer) has also got what he wanted most: an honourable death for the King, and an incident that will bring about war between Nazi Germany and the United States.
79578	/m/0kp1s	Finnegans Wake	James Joyce	1939-05-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Finnegans Wake comprises 17 chapters, divided into four Books. Book I contains 8 chapters, Books II and III contain 4, and Book IV consists of only one short chapter. The chapters appear without titles, and while Joyce never provided possible chapter titles as he had done for Ulysses, he did title various sections published separately (see Publication history below). The standard critical practice, however, is to indicate book number in Roman numerals, and chapter title in Arabic, so that III.2, for example, indicates the second chapter of the third book. Given the book's fluid and changeable approach to plot and characters, a definitive, critically agreed-upon plot synopsis remains elusive (see Critical response and themes: Difficulties of plot summary below). Therefore, the following synopsis attempts to summarise events in the book which find general, although inevitably not universal, consensus among critics. The entire work is cyclical in nature: the last sentence—a fragment—recirculates to the beginning sentence: "a way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." Joyce himself revealed that the book "ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence." The introductory chapter (I.1) establishes the book's setting as "Howth Castle and Environs", and introduces Dublin hod carrier "Finnegan", who falls to his death from a ladder while constructing a wall. Finnegan's wife Annie puts out his corpse as a meal spread for the mourners at his wake, but he vanishes before they can eat him. "Mutt and Jute", and "The Prankquean". At the chapter's close a fight breaks out, whiskey splashes on Finnegan's corpse, and “the dead Finnegan rises from his coffin bawling for whiskey and his mourners put him back to rest”, persuading him that he is better off where he is. The chapter ends with the image of the HCE character sailing into Dublin Bay to take a central role in the story. I.2 opens with an account of "Harold or Humphrey" Chimpden receiving the nickname "Earwicker" from the Sailor King, who encounters him attempting to catch earwigs with an inverted flowerpot on a stick while manning a tollgate through which the King is passing. This name helps Chimpden, now known by his initials HCE, to rise to prominence in Dublin society as "Here Comes Everybody". He is then brought low by a rumor that begins to spread across Dublin, apparently concerning a sexual trespass involving two girls in the Phoenix Park, although details of HCE's transgression change with each retelling of events. Chapters I.2 through I.4 follow the progress of this rumor, starting with HCE's encounter with "a cad with a pipe" in Phoenix Park. The cad greets HCE in Gaelic and asks the time, but HCE misunderstands the question as an accusation, and incriminates himself by denying rumours the cad has not yet heard. These rumours quickly spread across Dublin, gathering momentum until they are turned into a song penned by the character Hosty called "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly". As a result, HCE goes into hiding, where he is besieged at the closed gate of his pub by a visiting American looking for drink after hours. However HCE remains silent – not responding to the accusations or verbal abuse – dreams, is buried in a coffin at the bottom of Lough Neagh, and is finally brought to trial, under the name Festy King. He is eventually freed, and goes once more into hiding. An important piece of evidence during the trial – a letter about HCE written by his wife ALP – is called for so that it can be examined in closer detail. ALP's Letter becomes the focal point as it is analysed in detail in I.5. This letter was dictated by ALP to her son Shem, a writer, and entrusted to her other son Shaun, a postman, for delivery. The letter never reaches its intended destination, ending up in a midden heap where it is unearthed by a hen named Biddy. Chapter I.6 digresses from the narrative in order to present the main and minor characters in more detail, in the form of twelve riddles and answers. In the final two chapters of Book I we learn more about the letter's writer Shem the Penman (I.7) and its original author, his mother ALP (I.8). The Shem chapter consists of "Shaun's character assassination of his brother Shem", describing the hermetic artist as a forger and a "sham", before "Shem is protected by his mother [ALP], who appears at the end to come and defend her son." The following chapter concerning Shem's mother, known as "Anna Livia Plurabelle", is interwoven with thousands of river names from all over the globe, and is widely considered the book's most celebrated passage. The chapter was described by Joyce in 1924 as "a chattering dialogue across the river by two washerwomen who as night falls become a tree and a stone." These two washerwomen gossip about ALP's response to the allegations laid against her husband HCE, as they wash clothes in the Liffey. ALP is said to have written a letter declaring herself tired of her mate. Their gossip then digresses to her youthful affairs and sexual encounters, before returning to the publication of HCE's guilt in the morning newspaper, and his wife's revenge on his enemies: borrowing a "mailsack" from her son Shaun the Post, she delivers presents to her 111 children. At the chapter's close the washerwomen try to pick up the thread of the story, but their conversation is increasingly difficult as they are on opposite sides of the widening Liffey, and it is getting dark. Finally, as they turn into a tree and a stone, they ask to be told a Tale of Shem or Shaun. While Book I of Finnegans Wake deals mostly with the parents HCE and ALP, Book II shifts that focus onto their children, Shem, Shaun and Issy. II.1 opens with a pantomime programme, which outlines, in relatively clear language, the identities and attributes of the book's main characters. The chapter then concerns a guessing game among the children, in which Shem is challenged three times to guess by "gazework" the colour which the girls have chosen. Unable to answer due to his poor eyesight, Shem goes into exile in disgrace, and Shaun wins the affection of the girls. Finally HCE emerges from the pub and in a thunder-like voice calls the children inside. Chapter II.2 follows Shem, Shaun and Issy studying upstairs in the pub, after having been called inside in the previous chapter. The chapter depicts "[Shem] coaching [Shaun] how to do Euclid Bk I, 1", structured as "a reproduction of a schoolboys' (and schoolgirls') old classbook complete with marginalia by the twins, who change sides at half time, and footnotes by the girl (who doesn't)". Once Shem (here called Dolph) has helped Shaun (here called Kev) to draw the Euclid diagram, the latter realises that he has drawn a diagram of ALP's genitalia, and "Kev finally realises the significance of the triangles [..and..] strikes Dolph." After this "Dolph forgives Kev" and the children are given "[e]ssay assignments on 52 famous men." The chapter ends with the children's "nightletter" to HCE and ALP, in which they are "apparently united in a desire to overcome their parents." II.3 moves to HCE working in the pub below the studying children. As HCE serves his customers, two narratives are broadcast via the bar's radio and television sets, namely "The Norwegian Captain and the Tailor's Daughter", and "How Buckley Shot the Russian General". The first portrays HCE as a Norwegian Captain succumbing to domestication through his marriage to the Tailor's Daughter. The latter, told by Shem and Shaun ciphers Butt and Taff, casts HCE as a Russian General who is shot by the soldier Buckley. Earwicker has been absent throughout the latter tale, having been summoned upstairs by ALP. He returns and is reviled by his customers, who see Buckley's shooting of the General as symbolic of Shem and Shaun's supplanting their father. This condemnation of his character forces HCE to deliver a general confession of his crimes, including an incestuous desire for young girls. Finally a policeman arrives to send the drunken customers home, the pub is closed up, and the customers disappear singing into the night as a drunken HCE, clearing up the bar and swallowing the dregs of the glasses left behind, morphs into ancient Irish high king Rory O'Connor, and passes out. II.4, ostensibly portraying the drunken and sleeping Earwicker's dream, chronicles the spying of four old men (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) on Tristan and Iseult's journey. The short chapter portrays "an old man like King Mark being rejected and abandoned by young lovers who sail off into a future without him", while the four old men observe Tristan and Isolde, and offer four intertwining commentaries on the lovers and themselves which are "always repeating themselves". Book III concerns itself almost exclusively with Shaun, in his role as postman, having to deliver ALP's letter, which was referred to in Book 1, but never seen. III.1 opens with the Four Masters' ass narrating how he thought, as he was "dropping asleep", he had heard and seen an apparition of Shaun the Post. As a result Shaun re-awakens, and, floating down the Liffey in a barrel, is posed 14 questions concerning the significance and content of the letter he is carrying. However, Shaun, "apprehensive about being slighted, is on his guard, and the placating narrators never get a straight answer out of him." Shaun's answers focus on his own boastful personality and his admonishment of the letter's author – his artist brother Shem. After the inquisition Shaun loses his balance and the barrel in which he has been floating careens over and he rolls backwards out of the narrator's earshot, before disappearing completely from view. In III.2 Shaun re-appears as "Jaunty Jaun" and delivers a lengthy sermon to his sister Issy, and her 28 schoolmates from St. Brigid's School. Throughout this book Shaun is continually regressing, changing from an old man to an overgrown baby lying on his back, and eventually, in III.3, into a vessel through which the voice of HCE speaks again by means of a spiritual medium. This leads to HCE's defence of his life in the passage "Haveth Childers Everywhere". Book III ends in the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Porter as they attempt to copulate while their children, Jerry, Kevin and Isobel Porter, are sleeping upstairs and the dawn is rising outside (III.4). Jerry awakes from a nightmare of a scary father figure, and Mrs. Porter interrupts the coitus to go comfort him with the words "You were dreamend, dear. The pawdrag? The fawthrig? Shoe! Hear are no phanthares in the room at all, avikkeen. No bad bold faathern, dear one." She returns to bed, and the rooster crows at the conclusion of their coitus at the Book's culmination. Book IV consists of only one chapter, which, like the book's opening chapter, is mostly composed of a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes. After an opening call for dawn to break, the remainder of the chapter consists of the vignettes "Saint Kevin", "Berkely and Patrick" and "The Revered Letter". ALP is given the final word, as the book closes on a version of her Letter and her final long monologue, in which she tries to wake her sleeping husband, declaring "Rise up, man of the hooths, you have slept so long!", and remembers a walk they once took, and hopes for its re-occurrence. At the close of her monologue, ALP – as the river Liffey – disappears at dawn into the ocean. The book's last words are a fragment, but they can be turned into a complete sentence by attaching them to the words that start the book: A way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
80124	/m/0ks36	The Virgin Suicides	Jeffrey Eugenides	1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Lisbons are a Catholic family living in Grosse Pointe, Michigan in the 1970s. The father, Ronald, is a math teacher at a private school and the mother is a homemaker. The family has five daughters: 13-year-old Cecilia, 14-year-old Lux, 15-year-old Bonnie, 16-year-old Mary, and 17-year-old Therese. Their lives change dramatically within one summer when Cecilia, a stoic and astute girl described as an "outsider", attempts suicide by cutting her wrists. A few weeks later, the girls throw a chaperoned party, during which Cecilia jumps from their second story window and dies, impaled by a fence post. The cause of Cecilia's suicide and its after-effects on the family are popular subjects of neighborhood gossip. The mystique of the Lisbon girls operates also for the neighborhood boys, the narrators of the novel. Lux begins a romance with local heartthrob Trip Fontaine. Trip negotiates with the overprotective Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon to take Lux to a homecoming dance, on the condition that he finds dates for the other three girls. After having sex with Trip on the high school football field after the dance, Lux misses her curfew. Consequently, the Lisbons become recluses. Mrs. Lisbon pulls all the girls out of school, believing that it would help the girls recover. Mr. Lisbon officially takes a leave of absence. Their house falls into a deeper state of disrepair and none of them leave the house. A strange smell coming from the house permeates the neighborhood. From a safe distance, all the people in the neighborhood watch the Lisbons' lives deteriorate, but no one can summon up the courage to intervene. During this time, the Lisbons become increasingly fascinating to the neighborhood in general and the narrator boys in particular. The boys call the Lisbon girls and communicate by playing records over the telephone for the girls. Finally, the girls send a message to the boys to come to the house. Shortly after the boys arrive, three of the sisters kill themselves: Bonnie hangs herself, Therese overdoses on sleeping pills, and Lux dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. Mary attempts suicide by putting her head in the oven, but fails. Mary continues to live for another month before successfully ending her life by taking sleeping pills. Newspaper writer Linda Perl notes that that mass suicide comes a year after Cecilia's first attempt. After the suicide "free-for-all," Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon leave the neighborhood. The house is sold to a young couple from the Boston area and most of the Lisbons' personal effects are either thrown out or sold in a garage sale. The narrators scavenge through the trash to collect much of the "evidence" they mention.
80394	/m/0kt94	What Makes Sammy Run?	Budd Schulberg	1941	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Told in first person narrative by Al Manheim, drama critic of The New York Record, this is the tale of Sammy Glick, a young uneducated boy who rises from copy boy to the top of the screenwriting profession in 1930s Hollywood by backstabbing others. Manheim recalls how he first met the 16-year-old Sammy Glick when Sammy was working as a copy boy at Manheim's newspaper. Both awed and disturbed by Sammy's aggressive personality, Manheim becomes Sammy's primary observer, mentor and, as Sammy asserts numerous times, his best friend. Tasked with taking Manheim's column down to the printing room, one day Glick rewrites Manheim's column, impressing the managing editor and gaining a column of his own. Later he steals a piece by an aspiring young writer, Julian Blumberg, sending it under his own name to the famous Hollywood talent agent Myron Selznick. Glick sells the piece, "Girl Steals Boy", for $10,000 and leaves the paper to go to work in Hollywood, leaving behind his girlfriend, Rosalie Goldbaum. When the film of Girl Steals Boy opens, Sammy is credited for "original screenplay" and Blumberg is not acknowledged. Glick rises to the top in Hollywood over the succeeding years, paying Blumberg a small salary under the table to be his ghost writer. He even manages to have "his" stageplay Live Wire performed at the Hollywood Playhouse, although the script is actually a case of plagiarism, The Front Page in flimsy disguise; strangely enough, no one except Manheim seems to notice. Sammy's bluffing also includes talking about books he has never read. Manheim, whose ambitions are much more modest, is both fascinated and disgusted by the figure of Sammy Glick, and Manheim carefully chronicles his rise. In Hollywood, Manheim is disheartened to learn that Catherine "Kit" Sargent, a novelist and screenwriter he greatly admires, has fallen for Sammy's charms. Although Manheim is quite open about his feelings for Kit, she makes it clear that it is Sammy she prefers, especially in bed. When she met Sammy, she tells Manheim, she had "this crazy desire to know what it felt like to have all that driving ambition and frenzy and violence inside me." Manheim also describes the Hollywood system in detail, as a money machine oppressive to talented writers. The bosses prefer to have carte blanche when dealing with their writers, ranging from having them work on a week-to-week basis to giving them a seven-year contract. In the film industry, Manheim remarks at one point in the novel, it is the rule rather than the exception that "convictions are for sale," with people double-crossing each other whenever the slightest chance presents itself to them. Hollywood, he notices, regularly and efficiently turns out three products: moving pictures, ambition, and fear. Manheim becomes an eyewitness to the birth of what was to become the Writers Guild, an organization created to protect the interests of the screenwriters. After one of the studio's periodic reshufflings, Manheim finds himself out of work and goes back to New York. There, still preoccupied with Sammy Glick's rise to stardom, he investigates Sammy's past. He comes to understand, at least to some degree, "the machinery that turns out Sammy Glicks" and "the anarchy of the poor". Manheim realizes that Sammy grew up in the "dog-eat-dog world" of New York's Lower East Side (Rivington Street), much like the more sophisticated dog-eat-dog world of Hollywood. The one connection between Sammy's childhood days and his present position seems to be Sheik, someone who went to school with him and regularly beat him up. Now Sheik is working as Glick's personal servant (or almost slave)—possibly some kind of belated act of revenge on Sammy's part, or the "victim's triumph". When Manheim returns to Hollywood he becomes one of Glick's writers. There he realizes that there is also a small minority of honorable men working in pictures, especially producer Sidney Fineman, Glick's boss. Manheim teams up with Kit Sargent to write several films for Glick, who has successfully switched to production and moved into a gigantic manor in Beverly Hills. Fineman's position becomes compromised by a string of flops, and Manheim attempts to convince Harrington, a Wall Street banker representing the film company's financiers, that Fineman is still the right man for the job. This is the moment when Glick sees his chance to get rid of Fineman altogether and take his place. At a reception, Glick meets Laurette, Harrington's daughter; he immediately and genuinely falls in love with this "golden girl," discarding his girlfriend. He feels that he is about to kill two birds with one stone by uniting his personal ambition and his love life. Fineman, only 56, dies soon after losing his job to Sammy—of a broken heart, it is rumoured. Sammy's wedding is described by Manheim as "a marriage-to-end-all-marriages" staged in the beautiful setting of Sammy's estate. Manheim and Kit Sargent, who have finally decided to get married, slip away early to be by themselves. Sammy discovers Laurette making love in the guest room to Carter Judd, an actor Sammy has just hired. Laurette is not repentant: She coldbloodedly admits that she considers their marriage to be purely a business affair. Sammy calls Manheim and asks him to come over to his place immediately. Once there, Manheim for the first time witnesses a self-conscious, desperate, and suffering Sammy Glick who cannot stand being alone in his big house. In the end, Sammy orders Sheik to get him a prostitute, while Manheim drives home.
80497	/m/0ktr5	The Razor's Edge	W. Somerset Maugham	1944	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Maugham begins by characterising his story as not really a novel but a thinly veiled true account. He includes himself as a minor character, a writer who drifts in and out of the lives of the major players. Larry Darrell’s lifestyle is contrasted throughout the book with that of his fiancée’s uncle, Elliott Templeton, an American expatriate living in Paris and a shallow and unrepentant yet generous snob. For example, while Templeton's Roman Catholicism embraces the hierarchical trappings of the Church, Larry's proclivities tend towards the 13th century Flemish mystic and saint John of Ruysbroeck. Wounded and traumatized by the death of a comrade in the War, Larry returns to Chicago, Illinois, and his fiancée, Isabel Bradley, only to announce that he does not plan to work and instead will "loaf" on his small inheritance. He wants to delay their marriage and refuses to take up a job as a stockbroker offered to him by Henry Maturin, the father of his friend Gray. Meanwhile, Larry’s childhood friend, Sophie, settles into a happy marriage, only later tragically losing her husband and baby in a car accident. Larry moves to Paris and immerses himself in study and bohemian life. After two years of this "loafing," Isabel visits and Larry asks her to join his life of wandering and searching, living in Paris and traveling with little money. She cannot accept his vision of life and breaks their engagement to go back to Chicago. There she marries the millionaire Gray, who provides her a rich family life. Meanwhile, Larry begins a sojourn through Europe, taking a job at a coal mine in Lens, France, where he befriends a former Polish army officer named Kosti. Kosti's influence encourages Larry to look toward things spiritual for his answers rather than in books. Larry and Kosti leave the coal mine and travel together for a time before parting ways. Larry then meets a Benedictine monk named Father Ensheim in Bonn, Germany while Father Ensheim is on leave from his monastery doing academic research. After spending several months with the Benedictines and being unable to reconcile their conception of God with his own, Larry takes a job on an ocean liner and finds himself in Bombay. Larry has significant spiritual adventures in India and comes back to Paris. What he actually found in India and what he finally concluded are held back from the reader for a considerable time until, in a scene late in the book, Maugham discusses India and spirituality with Larry in a café long into the evening. He starts off the chapter by saying "I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of the story as I have to tell, since for most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. However, I should add that except for this conversation, I would perhaps not have thought it worthwhile to write this book…" Maugham then initiates the reader to 'Advaita philosophy' and reveals how, through deep meditation, Larry goes on to realize God and thus become a saint—in the process gaining liberation from the cycle of human suffering, birth and death that the rest of the earthly mortals are subject to. The 1929 stock market crash has ruined Gray, and he and Isabel are invited to live in her uncle Elliott Templeton’s grand Parisian house. Gray is often incapacitated with agonizing migraines due to a general nervous collapse. Larry is able to help him using an Indian form of hypnotic suggestion. Sophie has also drifted to the French capital, where her friends find her reduced to alcohol, opium, and promiscuity — empty and dangerous liaisons that seem to help her to bury her pain. Larry first sets out to save her and then decides to marry her, a plan that displeases Isabel, who is still in love with him. Isabel tempts Sophie back into alcoholism with a bottle of Żubrówka, and she disappears from Paris. Maugham deduces this after seeing Sophie in Toulon, where she has returned to smoking opium and promiscuity. He is drawn back into the tale when police interrogate him after Sophie has been found murdered with an inscribed book from him in her room, along with volumes by Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Meanwhile in Antibes, Elliott Templeton is on his deathbed. Despite the fact that he has throughout his life compulsively sought out aristocratic society, none of his titled friends come to see him, which makes him alternately morose and irate. But his outlook on death is somewhat positive: "I have always moved in the best society in Europe, and I have no doubt that I shall move in the best society in heaven." Isabel inherits his fortune, but genuinely grieves for her uncle. Maugham confronts her about Sophie, having figured out Isabel’s role in Sophie’s downfall. Isabel’s only punishment will be that she will never get Larry, who has decided to return to America and live as a common working man. He is uninterested in the rich and glamorous world that Isabel will move in. Maugham ends his narrative by suggesting that all the characters got what they wanted in the end: "Elliott social eminence; Isabel an assured position; ... Sophie death; and Larry happiness."
80934	/m/0kxlb	Born Yesterday	Garson Kanin			 An uncouth, corrupt rich junk dealer, Harry Brock, brings his showgirl mistress Billie Dawn with him to Washington, D.C. When Billie's ignorance becomes a liability to Brock's business dealings, he hires a journalist, Paul Verrall, to educate his girlfriend. In the process of learning, Billie Dawn realizes how corrupt Harry is and begins interfering with his plans to bribe a Congressman into passing legislation that would allow Brock's business to make more money.
81166	/m/0kywj	King Solomon's Mines	H. Rider Haggard	1885	{"/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Allan Quatermain, an adventurer and white hunter based in Durban, in what is now South Africa, is approached by aristocrat Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good, seeking his help finding Sir Henry's brother, who was last seen travelling north into the unexplored interior on a quest for the fabled King Solomon's Mines. Quatermain has a mysterious map purporting to lead to the mines, but had never taken it seriously. However, he agrees to lead an expedition in return for a share of the treasure, or a stipend for his son if he is killed along the way. He has little hope they will return alive, but reasons that he has already outlived most people in his profession, so dying in this manner at least ensures that his son will be provided for. They also take along a mysterious native, Umbopa, who seems more regal, handsome and well-spoken than most porters of his class, but who is very anxious to join the party. Travelling by oxcart, they reach the edge of a desert, but not before a hunt in which a wounded elephant claims the life of a servant. They continue on foot across the desert, almost dying of thirst before finding the oasis shown halfway across on the map. Reaching a mountain range called Suliman Berg, they climb a peak (one of "Sheba's Breasts") and enter a cave where they find the frozen corpse of José Silvestre (also spelt Silvestra), the 16th-century Portuguese explorer who drew the map in his own blood. That night, a second servant dies from the cold, so they leave his body next to Silvestra's, to "give him a companion". They cross the mountains into a raised valley, lush and green, known as Kukuanaland. The inhabitants have a well-organised army and society and speak an ancient dialect of IsiZulu. Kukuanaland's capital is Loo, the destination of a magnificent road from ancient times. The city is dominated by a central royal kraal. They soon meet a party of Kukuana warriors who are about to kill them when Captain Good nervously fidgets with his false teeth, making the Kukuanas recoil in fear. Thereafter, to protect themselves, they style themselves "white men from the stars" – sorcerer-gods – and are required to give regular proof of their divinity, considerably straining both their nerves and their ingenuity. They are brought before King Twala, who rules over his people with ruthless violence. He came to power years before when he murdered his brother, the previous king, and drove his brother's wife and infant son, Ignosi, out into the desert to die. Twala's rule is unchallenged. An evil, impossibly ancient hag named Gagool is his chief advisor. She roots out any potential opposition by ordering regular witch hunts and murdering without trial all those identified as traitors. When she singles out Umbopa for this fate, it takes all Quatermain's skill to save his life. Gagool, it appears, has already sensed what Umbopa soon after reveals: he is Ignosi, the rightful king of the Kukuanas. A rebellion breaks out, the Englishmen gaining support for Ignosi by taking advantage of their foreknowledge of a solar eclipse to claim that they will black out the sun as proof of Ignosi's claim. The Englishmen join Ignosi's army in a furious battle. Although outnumbered, the rebels overthrow Twala, and Sir Henry lops off his head in a duel. The Englishmen also capture Gagool, who reluctantly leads them to King Solomon's Mines. She shows them a treasure room inside a mountain, carved deep within the living rock and full of gold, diamonds and ivory. She then treacherously sneaks out while they are admiring the hoard and triggers a secret mechanism that closes the mine's vast stone door. Unfortunately for Gagool, a brief scuffle with a beautiful native named Foulata – who had become attached to Good after nursing him through his injuries sustained in the battle – causes her to be crushed under the stone door, though not before fatally stabbing Foulata. Their scant store of food and water rapidly dwindling, the trapped men prepare to die also. After a few despairing days sealed in the dark chamber, they find an escape route, bringing with them a few pocketfuls of diamonds from the immense trove, enough to make them rich. The Englishmen bid farewell to a sorrowful Ignosi and return to the desert, assuring him that they value his friendship but must return to be with their own people, Ignosi in return promising them that they will be venerated and honoured among his people forever. Taking a different route, they find Sir Henry's brother stranded in an oasis by a broken leg, unable to go forward or back. They return to Durban and eventually to England, wealthy enough to live comfortable lives.
81812	/m/0l14f	Babel-17	Samuel R. Delany	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 During an interstellar war one side develops a language, Babel-17, that can be used as a weapon. Learning it turns one into an unwilling traitor as it alters perception and thought. The change is made more dangerous by the language's seductive enhancement of other abilities. This is discovered by the beautiful starship captain, linguist, poet, and telepath Rydra Wong. She is recruited by her government to discover how the enemy are infiltrating and sabotaging strategic sites. Initially Babel-17 is thought to be a code used by enemy agents. Rydra Wong realizes it is a language, and finds herself becoming a traitor as she learns it. She is rescued by her dedicated crew, figures out the danger, and neutralizes its effects. The novel deals with several issues related to the peculiarities of language, how conditions of life shape the formation of words and meaning, and how the words themselves can shape the actions of people.
81816	/m/0l14t	The Languages of Pao	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The planet Pao is a quiet backwater with a large, homogeneous, stolid population ruled by an absolute monarch: the Panarch. The current Panarch attempts to hire an offworld scientist, Lord Palafox from the Breakness Institute on the planet Breakness, as a consultant in order to reform Pao. Before the deal can be concluded, however, the Panarch is assassinated by his brother Bustamonte, using mind-control over the Panarch's own son, Beran Panasper, to do so. Lord Palafox saves Beran Panasper and takes him to Breakness as a possible bargaining chip in his dealings with Pao. Somewhat later, the predatory Brumbo Clan from the planet Batmarsh raids the virtually defenseless Pao with impunity, and the Panarch Bustamonte is forced to pay heavy tribute. To rid himself of the Brumbos, he seeks the aid of Palafox, who has a plan to create warrior, technical and mercantile castes on Pao using customized languages (named Valiant, Technicant and Cogitant) and other means to shape the mindsets of each caste, isolating them from each other and the general populace of Pao. To achieve this, each caste gets a special training area where it is completely segregated from any outside influence; the necessary land is confiscated from families, some of which have held it for countless generations — which creates some disaffection in the conservative Paonese population and earns Bustamonte the name of a tyrant. In order to return with them to Pao incognito, Beran Panasper infiltrates a corps of interpreters being trained on Breakness. Mostly to amuse themselves, some of the young people create a language they call "Pastiche", mixing words and grammatical forms, seemingly at random, from the three newly created languages and from the original Paonese language. Palafox looks upon this development with indulgence, failing to realize the tremendous long-term significance. Beran returns to Pao under the name Ercolo Paraio and works for a few years as a translator at several locations. Once Beran Panasper reveals to the masses that he is still alive, his uncle Bustamonte's popular support melts virtually overnight and Panasper claims the title of Panarch that is rightfully his. The Brumbo Clan is repulsed by the warrior caste. For a few years, the castes of Pao are highly successful in their respective endeavors and the planet experiences a short golden age. However, Panasper is upset about the divisions in the populace of Pao caused by the Palafox program; the three new castes speak of the rest of the Paonese as "they" rather than "we" and regard them with contempt. Beran attempts to return the planet to its previous state by re-integrating the castes into the general populace. Palafox opposes this move and is killed, but the warrior caste stages a coup and takes command of Pao. Panasper convinces them that they cannot rule the planet alone, since they share no common language with the rest of the population and can not rely on the cooperation of the other segments of the people of Pao, and they allow him to keep his office. One interpretation of the end of the novel is that Beran Panasper is only in nominal charge of the planet, on the sufferance of the warrior caste, and that it is uncertain what will become of him and his plans of re-uniting the populace of Pao. Another way of seeing the ending is that Beran has outfoxed the warriors by getting them to agree to his decree that "every child of Pao, of whatever caste, must learn Pastiche even in preference to the language of his father". In the end, Beran looks ahead twenty years, to a future when all inhabitants of Pao will be Pastiche-speakers — i.e., will speak a language which mixes some attributes and mindsets appropriate to peasant cultivators, proud warriors, skilled technicians and smart merchants — which will presumably shape a highly fluid and socially mobile society, composed of versatile and multi-skilled individuals.
82163	/m/0l3jh	The Count of Monte Cristo	Auguste Maquet	1844	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In 1815 Edmond Dantès, a young and successful merchant sailor recently granted the succession of his erstwhile captain Leclère, returns to Marseille to marry his fiancée Mercédès. Leclère, a supporter of the exiled Napoléon I, found himself dying at sea and charged Dantès to deliver two objects: a package to Marshall Bertrand (exiled with Napoleon Bonaparte on Elba), and a letter from Elba to an unknown man in Paris. On the eve of his wedding to Mercédès, Fernand (Mercédès' cousin and a rival for her affections) and Dantès's colleague Danglars (who is jealous of his rapid rise to captain), upon the suggestion of Caderousse (a neighbour of Dantès), send an anonymous note accusing Dantès of being a Bonapartist traitor. Villefort, the deputy crown prosecutor in Marseille, while initially sympathetic to Dantès, destroys the letter from Elba when he discovers that it is addressed to his own father who is a Bonapartist. In order to silence Dantès, he condemns him without trial to life imprisonment. During his fourteen years imprisonment in the Château d'If, Dantès befriends the Abbé Faria ("The Mad Priest"), a fellow prisoner who is trying to tunnel his way to freedom, and who claims knowledge of a massive treasure and continually offers to reward the guards well if they release him. Faria gives Dantès an extensive education. He also explains to Dantès how Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort would each have had their own reasons for wanting Dantès in prison. After years of friendship, and knowing himself to be close to death, Faria tells Dantès the location of the treasure, on Monte Cristo. When Faria dies, Dantès uses his burial sack to stage an escape to a nearby island, and is rescued by a smuggling ship. After several months of working with the smugglers, he goes to Monte Cristo. Dantès fakes an injury and convinces the smugglers to temporarily leave him on Monte Cristo, then makes his way to the hiding place of the treasure. After recovering the treasure, he returns to Marseille, where he learns that his father has starved to death. He buys a yacht, hides the rest of the treasure on board and buys both the island of Monte Cristo and the title of Count from the Tuscan government. Returning to Marseille, Dantès plans his revenge but first helps several people who were kind to him before his imprisonment. Traveling as the Abbé Busoni, he meets Caderousse, now living in poverty, whose intervention might have saved Dantès from prison. Dantès learns that his other enemies have all become wealthy. He gives Caderousse a diamond that can be either a chance to redeem himself, or a trap that will lead to his ruin. Learning that his old employer Morrel is on the verge of bankruptcy, Dantès, in the guise of a senior clerk from a banking firm, buys all of Morrel's outstanding debts and gives Morrel an extension of three months to fulfill his obligations. At the end of the three months and with no way to repay his debts, Morrel is about to commit suicide when he learns that all of his debts have been mysteriously paid and that one of his lost ships has returned with a full cargo, secretly rebuilt and laden by Dantès. Dantès rejoices at the Morrel family's joy, then pledges to banish all warm sentiments from his heart and focus on vengeance. Disguised as the rich Count of Monte Cristo, Dantès takes revenge on the three men responsible for his unjust imprisonment: Fernand, now Count de Morcerf and Mercédès' husband; Danglars, now a baron and a wealthy banker; and Villefort, now procureur du roi — all are now living in Paris. The Count appears first in Rome, where he becomes acquainted with the Baron Franz d'Épinay, and Viscount Albert de Morcerf, the son of Mercédès and Fernand. Dantès arranges for the young Morcerf to be captured by the bandit Luigi Vampa before rescuing him from the same. Dantès then moves to Paris, and with Albert de Morcerf's introduction, becomes the sensation of the city. Due to his knowledge and rhetorical power, even his enemies, who do not recognize him, find him charming and all desire his friendship. The Count dazzles the crass Danglars with his seemingly endless wealth, eventually persuading him to extend him a credit of six million francs, and withdraws 900,000. Under the terms of the arrangement, the Count can demand access to the remainder at any time. The Count manipulates the bond market, through a false telegraph signal, and quickly destroys a large portion of Danglars' fortune. The rest of it begins to rapidly disappear through mysterious bankruptcies, suspensions of payment, and more bad luck on the Stock Exchange. Villefort had once conducted an affair with Madame Danglars. She became pregnant and delivered the child in the house in which he was living at that time. Believing the infant stillborn, Villefort had tried to secretly bury it in a box on the grounds of the house but while doing so, he was stabbed by Bertuccio, his sworn enemy, who rescued the infant and brought him back to life. Bertuccio's sister-in-law brought the child up, giving him the name "Benedetto". The Count learns of this story from Bertuccio, who later becomes his servant. He purchases the house and hosts a dinner party there, to which he invites, among others, Villefort and Madame Danglars. During the dinner, the Count announces that, while doing landscaping, he had unearthed a box containing the remains of an infant and had referred the matter to the authorities to investigate. This puzzles Villefort, who knew that the infant's box had been removed and so the Count's story could not be true, and also alarms him that perhaps he knows the secret of his past affair with Madame Danglars and may be taunting him. Meanwhile, Benedetto has grown up to become a criminal and is sentenced to the galleys with Caderousse. After the two are freed by "Lord Wilmore", Benedetto is sponsored by the Count to take the identity of "Viscount Andrea Cavalcanti" and is introduced by him into Parisian society at the same dinner party, with neither Villefort nor Madame Danglars suspecting that Andrea is their presumed dead son. Andrea then ingratiates himself to Danglars who betroths his daughter Eugénie to Andrea after cancelling her engagement to Albert, son of Fernand. Meanwhile, Caderousse blackmails Andrea, threatening to reveal his past. Cornered by "Abbé Busoni" while attempting to rob the Count's house, Caderousse begs to be given another chance, but Dantès grimly notes that the last two times he did so, Caderousse did not change. He forces Caderousse to write a letter to Danglars exposing Cavalcanti as an impostor and allows Caderousse to leave the house. The moment Caderousse leaves the estate, he is stabbed in the back by Andrea. Caderousse manages to dictate and sign a deathbed statement identifying his killer, and the Count reveals his true identity to Caderousse moments before Caderousse dies. Years before, Ali Pasha, the ruler of Janina, had been betrayed to the Turks by Fernand. After Ali's death, Fernand sold his wife Vasiliki and his daughter Haydée into slavery. Haydée was found and bought by Dantès and becomes the Count's ward. The Count manipulates Danglars into researching the event, which is published in a newspaper. As a result, Fernand is brought to trial for his crimes. Haydée testifies against him, and Fernand is disgraced. Mercédès, still beautiful, is the only person to recognize the Count as Dantès. When Albert blames the Count for his father's downfall and publicly challenges him to a duel, Mercédès goes secretly to the Count and begs him to spare her son. During this interview, she learns the entire truth of his arrest and imprisonment. She later reveals the truth to Albert, which causes Albert to make a public apology to the Count. Albert and Mercédès disown Fernand, who is confronted with Dantès' true identity and commits suicide. The mother and son depart to build a new life free of disgrace. Albert enlists as a soldier and goes to Africa in order to rebuild his life and honour under a new name, and Mercédès begins a solitary life in Marseille. Villefort's daughter by his first wife, Valentine, stands to inherit the fortune of her grandfather (Noirtier) and of her mother's parents (the Saint-Mérans), while his second wife, Héloïse, seeks the fortune for her son Édouard. The Count is aware of Héloïse's intentions, and "innocently" introduces her to the technique of poison. Héloïse fatally poisons the Saint-Mérans, so that Valentine inherits their fortune. Valentine is disinherited by Noirtier in an attempt to prevent Valentine's impending marriage with Franz d'Épinay. The marriage is cancelled when d'Épinay learns that his father (believed assassinated by Bonapartists) was killed by Noirtier in a duel. Afterwards, Valentine is reinstated in Noirtier's will. After a failed attempt on Noirtier's life, which instead claims the life of Noirtier's servant Barrois, Héloïse then targets Valentine so that Édouard will finally get the fortune. However, Valentine is the prime suspect in her father's eyes in the deaths of the Saint-Mérans and Barrois. On learning that Morrel's son Maximilien is in love with Valentine, the Count saves her by making it appear as though Héloïse's plan to poison Valentine has succeeded and that Valentine is dead. Villefort learns from Noirtier that Héloïse is the real murderer and confronts her, giving her the choice of a public execution or committing suicide by her own poison. Fleeing after Caderousse's letter exposes him, Andrea gets as far as Compiègne before he is arrested and returned to Paris, where Villefort prosecutes him. While in prison awaiting trial, Andrea is visited by Bertuccio who tells him the truth about his father. At his trial, Andrea reveals that he is Villefort's son and was rescued after Villefort buried him alive. A stunned Villefort admits his guilt and flees the court. He rushes home to stop his wife's suicide but is too late; she has poisoned her son as well. Dantès confronts Villefort, revealing his true identity, but this, combined with the shock of the trial's revelations and the death of his wife and son, drives Villefort insane. Dantès tries to resuscitate Édouard but fails, and despairs that his revenge has gone too far. It is only after he revisits his cell in the Château d'If that Dantès is reassured that his cause is just and his conscience is clear, that he can fulfill his plan while being able to forgive both his enemies and himself. After the Count's manipulation of the bond market, Danglars is left with only a destroyed reputation and 5,000,000 francs he has been holding in deposit for hospitals. The Count demands this sum to fulfill their credit agreement, and Danglars embezzles the hospital fund. Abandoning his wife, Danglars flees to Italy with the Count's receipt, hoping to live in Vienna in anonymous prosperity. While leaving Rome, he is kidnapped by the Count's agent Luigi Vampa and is imprisoned the same way that Albert was. Forced to pay exorbitant prices for food, Danglars eventually signs away all but 50,000 francs of the stolen five million (which Dantès anonymously returns to the hospitals). Nearly driven mad by his ordeal, Danglars finally repents his crimes. Dantès forgives Danglars and allows him to leave with his freedom and the money he has left. Maximilien Morrel, believing Valentine to be dead, contemplates suicide after her funeral. Dantès reveals his true identity and explains that he rescued Morrel's father from bankruptcy, disgrace and suicide years earlier. He persuades Maximilien to delay his suicide. On the island of Monte Cristo one month later, Dantès presents Valentine to Maximilien and reveals the true sequence of events. Having found peace, Dantès leaves the newly reunited couple his fortune and departs for an unknown destination to find comfort and a new life with Haydée, who has declared her love for him.
82287	/m/0l470	Cat's Cradle	Kurt Vonnegut	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the opening of the book, the narrator, an everyman named John (a.k.a. Jonah), describes a time when he was planning to write a book about what important Americans did on the day Hiroshima was bombed. While researching this topic, John becomes involved with the children of Felix Hoenikker, a Nobel laureate physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb. John travels to Ilium, New York, to interview the Hoenikker children and others for his book. In Ilium John meets, among others, Dr. Asa Breed, who was the supervisor "on paper" of Felix Hoenikker. As the novel progresses, John learns of a substance called ice-nine, created by the late Hoenikker and now secretly in the possession of his children. Ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature. When a crystal of ice-nine contacts liquid water, it becomes a seed crystal that makes the molecules of liquid water arrange themselves into the solid form, ice-nine. John and the Hoenikker children eventually end up on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, one of the poorest countries on Earth, where the people speak a barely comprehensible creole of English (for example "twinkle, twinkle, little star" is rendered "Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store"). It is ruled by the dictator, "Papa" Monzano, who threatens all opposition with impalement on a giant hook. San Lorenzo has an unusual culture and history, which John learns about while studying a guidebook lent to him by the newly-appointed US ambassador to the country. He learns about an influential religious movement in San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, a strange, postmodern faith that combines irreverent, nihilistic, and cynical observations about life and God's will with odd, but peaceful rituals (for instance, the supreme act of worship is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the bare soles of the feet of two persons, supposed to result in peace and joy between the two communicants). Though everyone on the island seems to know much about Bokononism and its founder, Bokonon, the present government calls itself Christian and those caught practising Bokononism are punished with death by the giant "hook." As the story progresses, it becomes clear that San Lorenzon society is more bizarre and cryptic than originally revealed. In observing the interconnected lives of some of the island's most influential residents, John learns that Bokonon himself was at one point a de facto ruler of the island, along with a US Marine deserter. The two men created Bokononism as part of a utopian project to control the population. The ban was an attempt to give the religion a sense of forbidden glamour, and it is found that almost all of the residents of San Lorenzo, including the dictator, practice the faith, and executions are rare. When John and the other travelers arrive on the island, they are greeted by President "Papa" Monzano and around five-thousand San Lorenzans. It becomes clear that "Papa" Monzano is extremely ill, and he intends to name Franklin Hoenikker his successor. Franklin, uncomfortable with this arrangement, abruptly hands the presidency to John, who grudgingly accepts. The dictator later uses ice-nine to commit suicide rather than succumb to his inoperable cancer. Consistent with the properties of ice-nine, the dictator's corpse instantly turns into solid ice at room temperature. During John's inauguration festivities, in which the American ambassador to San Lorenzo was going to speak, San Lorenzo's small air force was supposed to present a brief air show. One of the airplanes crashes into the dictator's seaside palace and causes his still-frozen body to tumble into the ocean, and all the water in the world's seas, rivers, and groundwater turns into ice-nine, killing almost all life in a few days. John manages to escape with his wife, a native San Lorenzan named Mona. They later discover a mass grave where all the surviving San Lorenzans had killed themselves with ice-nine, on the facetious advice of Bokonon. Displaying a mix of grief and resigned amusement, Mona kills herself as well. John takes refuge with a few other survivors (an American couple he had met on the plane to San Lorenzo and Felix Hoenikker's two sons), and lives in a cave for several months, during which time he writes a memoir revealed to be the novel itself. The book ends by his meeting a weary Bokonon, who is contemplating what the last words of The Books of Bokonon should be. Bokonon states that if he were younger, he would have climbed to the top of Mt. McCabe and placed a book about human stupidity at the top. The Republic of San Lorenzo is a fictional country where much of the book's second half takes place. San Lorenzo is a tiny, rocky island nation located in the Caribbean Sea, positioned in the relative vicinity of Puerto Rico. San Lorenzo has only one city, its seaside capital of Bolivar. The country's form of government is a dictatorship, under the rule of ailing president "Papa" Monzano, who is a staunch ally of the United States and a fierce opponent of communism. No legislature exists. The infrastructure of San Lorenzo is described as being dilapidated, consisting of worn buildings, dirt roads, an impoverished populace, and having only one automobile taxi running in the entire country. The language of San Lorenzo is a fictitious English-based creole language that is referred to as "the San Lorenzan dialect." The San Lorenzan national anthem is based on the tune of Home on the Range. Its flag consists of a U.S. Marine Corps corporal's stripes on a blue field (presumably the flag was updated, since in the 1920s Marine Corps rank insignia did not include crossed rifles). Its currency is named corporals, at a rate of two corporals for every United States dollar; both the flag and the monetary unit are named after U.S. Marine Corporal Earl McCabe, who deserted his company while stationed at Port-au-Prince during the American occupation in 1922, and in transit to Miami, was shipwrecked on San Lorenzo. McCabe, along with accomplice Lionel Boyd Johnson from Tobago, would together throw out the island's governing sugar company, and after a period of anarchy, proclaimed a republic. San Lorenzo also has its own native religion, Bokononism, a religion based on enjoying life through its untruths. Bokononism, founded by McCabe's accomplice Boyd Johnson (pronounced "Bokonon" in San Lorenzan dialect), however, is outlawed - an idea Bokonon himself conceived for the purpose of spreading the religion and making the residents of the island happier. Bokononists are liable to be punished by being impaled on a hook, but Bokononism privately remains the dominant religion of nearly everyone on the island, including the leaders who outlaw it. Officially, San Lorenzo is a Christian nation. However, both Catholicism and Protestantism are illegal. This leads to a rather haphazard issuing of last rites.
82960	/m/0l862	Excellent Women	Barbara Pym	1952	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book details the everyday life of Mildred Lathbury, a spinster in her thirties in 1950s England. Perpetually self-deprecating, but with the sharpest wit, Mildred keeps busy with near-romances (her own and those of others), church jumble sales, and of course the ubiquitous cup of tea. Mildred's life grows more exciting with the arrival of new neighbours, anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky - with whom Mildred fancies herself in love. Through the Napiers, she meets another anthropologist, Everard Bone, and it is with him that Mildred will eventually form a relationship. A sub-plot revolves around the activities of the local vicar, Julian Malory, who becomes engaged to a glamorous widow, Allegra Gray. Allegra proceeds to ease out Julian's sister, Winifred, a close friend of Mildred's. Eventually matters come to a head and Allegra leaves the vicarage after a quarrel. In the meantime, Helena, who has been on the verge of leaving Rocky for Everard, accepts that Everard does not care for her and leaves the neighbourhood, along with Rocky. As with most of Pym's books, the plot is less important than the precise drawing of the comic characters (such as Everard's elderly mother who is obsessed with birds) and situations.
83545	/m/0lcgx	The Scarlet Pimpernel	Baroness Emma Orczy	1905	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Scarlet Pimpernel is set in 1792, during the early stages of the French Revolution. Marguerite St. Just, a beautiful French actress, is the wife of wealthy English fop Sir Percy Blakeney, a baronet. Before their marriage, Marguerite took revenge upon the Marquis de St. Cyr, who had ordered her brother to be beaten for his romantic interest in the Marquis' daughter, with the unintended consequence of the Marquis and his sons being sent to the guillotine. When Percy found out, he became estranged from his wife. Marguerite, for her part, became disillusioned with Percy's shallow, dandyish lifestyle. Meanwhile, the "League of the Scarlet Pimpernel", a secret society of twenty English aristocrats, "one to command, and nineteen to obey", is engaged in rescuing their French counterparts from the daily executions (see Reign of Terror). Their leader, the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, takes his nickname from the drawing of a small red flower with which he signs his messages. Despite being the talk of London society, only his followers and possibly the Prince of Wales know the Pimpernel's true identity. Like many others, Marguerite is entranced by the Pimpernel's daring exploits. At a ball attended by the Blakeneys, a verse by Percy about the "elusive Pimpernel" makes the rounds and amuses the other guests. Meanwhile, Marguerite is blackmailed by the wily new French envoy to England, Citizen Chauvelin. Chauvelin's agents have stolen a letter incriminating her beloved brother Armand, proving that he is in league with the Pimpernel. Chauvelin offers to trade Armand's life for her help against the Pimpernel. Contemptuous of her seemingly witless and unloving husband, Marguerite does not go to him for help or advice. Instead, she passes along information which enables Chauvelin to learn the Pimpernel's true identity. Later that night, Marguerite finally tells her husband of the terrible danger threatening her brother and pleads for his assistance. Percy promises to save him. After Percy unexpectedly leaves for France, Marguerite discovers to her horror that he is the Pimpernel. He had hidden behind the persona of a dull, slow-witted fop in order to deceive the world. He had not told Marguerite because of his worry that she might betray him, as she had the Marquis de St. Cyr. Desperate to save her husband, she decides to pursue Percy to France to warn him that Chauvelin knows his identity and his purpose. She persuades Sir Andrew Ffoulkes to accompany her, but because of the tide and the weather, neither they nor Chavelin can leave immediately. At Calais, Percy openly approaches Chauvelin in a decrepit inn (the Chat gris), whose owner is in Percy's pay. Despite Chauvelin's best efforts, the Englishman manages to escape by throwing pepper in Chavelin's face. Through a bold plan executed right under Chauvelin's nose, Percy rescues Marguerite's brother Armand and the Comte de Tournay, the father of a schoolfriend of Marguerite's. Marguerite pursues Percy right to the very end, resolute that she must either warn him or share his fate. Percy, heavily disguised, is captured by Chauvelin, but he does not recognise him, and he is enabled to escape. With Marguerite's love and courage amply proven, Percy's ardour is rekindled. Safely back on board their schooner, the Day Dream, the happily reconciled couple returns to England. Sir Andrew marries the Count's daughter, Suzanne.
84104	/m/0lfp0	Becket	Jean Anouilh			 The play is a re-enactment of the conflicts between King Henry II and Thomas Becket as the latter (Henry's best friend) ascends to power, becoming the King’s enemy. Becket begins as a clever, but hedonistic, companion; as a result of being created Archbishop of Canterbury, he is transformed into an ascetic who does his best to preserve the rights of the church against the king's power. Ultimately, Becket is slaughtered by several of the king's nobles; and lastly we find the king thrust into penance for the episcopicide.
84229	/m/0lghc	The Robe	Andrew Greeley	1942	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book explores the aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus through the experiences of the Roman tribune Marcellus Gallio and his Greek slave Demetrius. Prince Gaius, in an effort to rid Rome of Marcellus, banishes Marcellus to the command of the Roman garrison at Minoa, a port city in southern Palestine. In Jerusalem during Passover, Marcellus ends up carrying out the crucifixion of Jesus, but is troubled since he believes Jesus to be innocent of any crime. Marcellus and some other soldiers throw dice to see who will take Jesus' seamless robe. Marcellus wins and asks Demetrius to take care of the robe. Following the crucifixion, Marcellus takes part in a banquet attended by Pontius Pilate. During the banquet, a drunken centurion insists that Marcellus wear Jesus' robe; reluctantly wearing the garment, Marcellus apparently suffers a nervous breakdown and returns to Rome. Sent to Athens to recuperate, Marcellus finally gives in to Demetrius' urging and touches the robe; his mind is subsequently restored. Marcellus, now believing the robe has some sort of innate power, returns to Judea and follows the path Jesus took and meets many people whose lives Jesus had affected. Based upon their experiences first Demetrius and then Marcellus become followers of Jesus. Marcellus then returns to Rome where he must report his experiences to the emperor, Tiberius. Marcellus frees Demetrius who escapes, but later on because of his uncompromising stance regarding his Christian faith both Marcellus and his new wife Diana are executed by the new emperor, Caligula. Marcellus arranges that the robe be given to "The Big Fisherman."
84449	/m/0lhgy	The Closing of the American Mind	Allan Bloom	1987		 {|class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#white; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5" |style="text-align: left;"| "Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion." - Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind |} The Closing of the American Mind is a critique of the contemporary university and how Bloom sees it as failing its students. In it, Bloom criticizes the modern movements in philosophy and the humanities. Philosophy professors involved in ordinary language analysis or logical positivism disregard important "humanizing" ethical and political issues and fail to pique the interest of students. Literature professors involved in deconstructionism promote irrationalism and skepticism of standards of truth and thereby dissolve the moral imperatives which are communicated through genuine philosophy and which elevate and broaden the intellects of those who engage with these imperatives. To a great extent, Bloom's criticism revolves around his belief that the "great books" of Western thought have been devalued as a source of wisdom. Bloom's critique extends beyond the university to speak to the general crisis in American society. Closing of the American Mind draws analogies between the United States and the Weimar Republic. The modern liberal philosophy, he says, enshrined in the Enlightenment thought of John Locke—that a just society could be based upon self-interest alone, coupled by the emergence of relativism in American thought—had led to this crisis. For Bloom, this created a void in the souls of Americans, into which demagogic radicals as exemplified by '60s student leaders could leap. (In the same fashion, Bloom suggests, that the Nazi brownshirts once filled the gap created in German society by the Weimar Republic.) In the second instance, he argued, the higher calling of philosophy and reason understood as freedom of thought, had been eclipsed by a pseudo-philosophy, or an ideology of thought. Relativism was one feature of modern liberal philosophy that had subverted the Platonic–Socratic teaching. Bloom's critique of contemporary social movements at play in universities or society at large is derived from his classical and philosophical orientation. For Bloom, the failure of contemporary liberal education leads to the sterile social and sexual habits of modern students, and to their inability to fashion a life for themselves beyond the mundane offerings touted as success. Bloom argues that commercial pursuits had become more highly valued than love, the philosophic quest for truth, or the civilized pursuits of honor and glory. In one chapter, in a style of analysis which resembles the work of the Frankfurt School, he examined the philosophical effects of popular music on the lives of students, placing pop music, or as it is generically branded by record companies "rock music", in a historical context from Plato’s Republic to Nietzsche’s Dionysian longings. Treating it for the first time with genuine philosophical interest, he gave fresh attention to the industry, its target-marketing to children and teenagers, its top performers, its place in our late-capitalist bourgeois economy, and its pretensions to liberation and freedom. Some critics, including the popular musician Frank Zappa, argued that Bloom's view of pop music was based on the same ideas that critics of pop "in 1950s held, ideas about the preservation of 'traditional' white American society." Bloom, informed by Socrates, Aristotle, Rousseau and Nietzsche, explores music’s power over the human soul. He cites the soldier who throws himself into battle at the urging of the drum corps, the pious believer who prays under the spell of a religious hymn, the lover seduced by the romantic guitar, and points towards the tradition of philosophy that treated musical education as paramount. He names the pop-star Mick Jagger as a cardinal representative of the hypocrisy and erotic-sterility of pop-music. Pop music employs sexual images and language to enthrall the young and to persuade them that their petty rebelliousness is authentic politics, when, in fact, they are being controlled by the money-managers whom successful performers like Jagger quietly serve. Bloom claims that Jagger is a hero to many university students who envy his fame and wealth but are really just bored by the lack of options before them. Along with the absence of literature in the lives of the young and their sexual but often unerotic relationships, the first part of Closing tries to explain the current state of education in a fashion beyond the purview of an economist or psychiatrist—contemporary culture's leading umpires.
84515	/m/0lhv7	Murder in the Cathedral	T. S. Eliot			 The action occurs between December 2 and December 29, 1170, chronicling the days leading up to the martyrdom of Thomas Becket following his absence of seven years in France. Becket's internal struggle is the main focus of the play. The book is divided into two parts. Part one takes place in the Archbishop Thomas Becket's hall on December 2, 1170. The play begins with a Chorus singing, foreshadowing the coming violence. The Chorus is a key part of the drama, with its voice changing and developing during the play, offering comments about the action and providing a link between the audience and the characters and action, as in Greek drama. Three priests are present, and they reflect on the absence of Becket and the rise of temporal power. A herald announces Becket’s arrival. Becket is immediately reflective about his coming martyrdom, which he embraces, and which is understood to be a sign of his own selfishness—his fatal weakness. The tempters arrive, three of whom parallel the Temptations of Christ. The first tempter offers the prospect of physical safety. :Take a friend's advice. Leave well alone, :Or your goose may be cooked and eaten to the bone. The second offers power, riches and fame in serving the King. :To set down the great, protect the poor, :Beneath the throne of God can man do more? The third tempter suggests a coalition with the barons and a chance to resist the King. :For us, Church favour would be an advantage, :Blessing of Pope powerful protection :In the fight for liberty. You, my Lord, :In being with us, would fight a good stroke Finally, a fourth tempter urges him to seek the glory of martyrdom. :You hold the keys of heaven and hell. :Power to bind and loose : bind, Thomas, bind, :King and bishop under your heel. :King, emperor, bishop, baron, king: Becket responds to all of the tempters and specifically addresses the immoral suggestions of the fourth tempter at the end of the first act: :Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain: :Temptation shall not come in this kind again. :The last temptation is the greatest treason: :To do the right deed for the wrong reason. The Interlude of the play is a sermon given by Becket on Christmas morning 1170. It is about the strange contradiction that Christmas is a day both of mourning and rejoicing, which Christians also do for martyrs. He announces at the end of his sermon, "it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr". We see in the sermon something of Becket's ultimate peace of mind, as he elects not to seek sainthood, but to accept his death as inevitable and part of a better whole. Part II of the play takes place in the Archbishop's Hall and in the Cathedral, December 29, 1170. Four knights arrive with "Urgent business" from the king. These knights had heard the king speak of his frustration with Becket, and had interpreted this as an order to kill Becket. They accuse him of betrayal, and he claims to be loyal. He tells them to accuse him in public, and they make to attack him, but priests intervene. The priests insist that he leave and protect himself, but he refuses. The knights leave and Becket again says he is ready to die. The chorus sings that they knew this conflict was coming, that it had long been in the fabric of their lives, both temporal and spiritual. The chorus again reflects on the coming devastation. Thomas is taken to the Cathedral, where the knights break in and kill him. The chorus laments: “Clean the air! Clean the sky!", and "The land is foul, the water is foul, our beasts and ourselves defiled with blood." At the close of the play, the knights step up, address the audience, and defend their actions. The murder was all right and for the best: it was in the right spirit, sober, and justified so that the church's power would not undermine stability and state power.
84791	/m/0lkh6	The Legend of Sleepy Hollow	Washington Irving	1820	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 "From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow... A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere..." The story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (historical Tarrytown, New York), in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is renowned for its ghosts and the haunting atmosphere that pervades the imaginations of its inhabitants and visitors. The most infamous spectre in the Hollow is the Headless Horseman, said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot away by a stray cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head". The "Legend" relates the tale of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer, Baltus Van Tassel. Crane, a Yankee and an outsider, sees marriage to Katrina as a means of procuring Van Tassel's extravagant wealth. Bones, the local hero, vies with Ichabod for Katrina's hand, exacting a series of pranks on the jittery schoolmaster, and the fate of Sleepy Hollow's fortune weighs in the balance for some time. The tension between the three is soon brought to a head. On a placid autumn night, the ambitious Crane attends a harvest party at the Van Tassels' homestead. He dances, partakes in the feast, and listens to ghostly legends told by Brom and the locals, but his true aim is to propose to Katrina after the guests leave. His intentions, however, are ill-fated. After having failed to secure Katrina's hand, Ichabod rides home "heavy-hearted and crestfallen" through the spook-infested woods between Van Tassel's farmstead and the Sleepy Hollow settlement. Passing several purportedly haunted spots, his active imagination is engorged by the ghost stories told at Baltus' harvest party. After nervously passing under a lightning-striken tulip tree purportedly haunted by the ghost of the British spy, Major André, Ichabod encounters a cloaked rider at an intersection in a menacing swamp. Unsettled by his fellow traveler's eerie size and silence, the teacher is horrified to discover that his companion's head not on his shoulders, but on his saddle. In a frenzied race to the bridge adjacent to the Old Dutch Burying Ground, where the Hessian is said to "vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone" upon crossing it, Ichabod rides for his life, desperately goading his temperamental plow horse down the Hollow. However, to the pedagogue's horror, the ghoul clambers over the bridge, rears his horse, and hurls his decapitated head into Ichabod's terrified face. The next morning, Ichabod has mysteriously disappeared from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was said "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related". Indeed, the only relics of the schoolmaster's flight are his wandering horse, trampled saddle, discarded hat, and a mysterious shattered pumpkin. Although the nature of the Headless Horseman is left open to interpretation, the story implies that the ghost was really Brom (an agile stunt rider) in disguise. Irving's narrator concludes, however, by stating that the old Dutch wives continue to promote the belief that Ichabod was "spirited away by supernatural means," and a legend develops around his disappearance and sightings of his melancholy spirit
84938	/m/0llgk	The Thirty-nine Steps	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir	1915	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Richard Hannay, the protagonist and narrator, an expatriate Scot, returns from a long stay in southern Africa to his new home, a flat in London. One night he is buttonholed by a stranger, a well-travelled American, who claims to be in fear for his life. The man appears to know of an anarchist plot to destabilise Europe, beginning with a plan to assassinate the Greek Premier, Karolides, during his forthcoming visit to London. He reveals his name to be Franklin P. Scudder and remarks that he is dead, which holds Hannay's attention. Scudder explains that he has faked his own death in order to avert suspicion. Hannay lets Scudder hide in his flat, and sure enough the next day another man is discovered having apparently committed suicide in the same building. Four days later Hannay returns home to find Scudder dead with a knife through his heart. Hannay fears that the murderers will come for him next, but cannot ask the police for help because he is the most likely suspect for the murders. Not only does he want to avoid imprisonment, but he also feels a duty to take up Scudder's cause and save Karolides from the assassination, planned in three weeks' time. He decides to go into hiding in Scotland and then to contact the authorities at the last minute. In order to escape from his flat unseen, he bribes the milkman to lend him his uniform and exits wearing it. Carrying Scudder's pocket-book, he catches an Anglo-Scottish express train leaving from London St. Pancras station. Hannay fixes upon Galloway, in south-west Scotland, as a suitably remote place in which to make his escape and remembers somehow the town of Newton-Stewart, which he names as his destination when he buys his ticket from the guard. Arriving at a remote station somewhere in Galloway (apparently not Newton Stewart itself), Hannay lodges in a shepherd's cottage. The next morning he reads in a newspaper that the police are looking for him in Scotland. Reasoning that the police would expect him to head for a port on the West Coast, he doubles back and boards a local train heading east, but jumps off between stations. He is seen but escapes, finding an inn where he stays the night. He tells the innkeeper a modified version of his story, and the man is persuaded to shelter him. While staying at the inn, Hannay cracks the substitution cipher used in Scudder's pocket-book. The next day two men arrive at the inn looking for Hannay, but the innkeeper sends them away. When they return later, Hannay steals their car and escapes. On his way, Hannay reflects on what he has learnt from Scudder's notes. They contradict the story that Scudder first told to him, and mention an enemy group called the Black Stone and the mysterious Thirty-nine Steps. The United Kingdom appears to be in danger of an invasion by Germany and its allies. By this time, Hannay is being pursued by an aeroplane, and a policeman in a remote village has tried to stop him. Trying to avoid an oncoming car, Hannay crashes his own, but the other driver offers to take him home. The man is Sir Harry, a local landowner and prospective politician, although politically very naive. When he learns of Hannay's experience of South Africa, he invites him to address an election meeting that afternoon. Hannay's speech impresses Sir Harry, and Hannay feels able to trust him with his story. Sir Harry writes an introductory letter about Hannay to a relation in the Foreign Office. Hannay leaves Sir Harry and tries to hide in the countryside, but is spotted by the aeroplane. Soon he spots a group of men on the ground searching for him. Miraculously, he meets a road mender out on the moor, and swaps places with him, sending the workman home. His disguise fools his pursuers, who pass him by. On the same road he meets a rich motorist, whom he recognises from London, and whom he forces to exchange clothes with him and drive him off the moor. The next day, Hannay manages to stay ahead of the pursuers, and hides in a cottage occupied by an elderly man. Unfortunately, the man turns out to be one of the enemy, and with his accomplices he imprisons Hannay. Fortunately, the room in which Hannay is locked is full of bomb-making materials, which he uses to break out of the cottage, injuring himself in the process. A day later, Hannay retrieves his possessions from the helpful roadmender and stays for a few days to recover from the explosion. He dines at a Public House in Moffat before walking to the junction at Beattock to catch a southbound train to England, changing at Crewe, Birmingham New Street and Reading, to meet Sir Harry's relative at the Foreign Office, Sir Walter Bullivant, at his country home in Berkshire. As they discuss Scudder's notes, Sir Walter receives a phone call to tell him that Karolides has been assassinated. Sir Walter, now at his house in London, lets Hannay in on some military secrets before releasing him to go home. Hannay is unable to shake off his sense of involvement in important events, and returns to Sir Walter's house where a high-level meeting is in progress. He is just in time to see a man, whom he recognises as one of his former pursuers in Scotland, leaving the house. Hannay warns Sir Walter that the man, ostensibly the First Sea Lord, is about to return to Europe with the information he has obtained from their meeting. At that point, Hannay realises that the phrase "the thirty-nine steps" could refer to the landing-point in England from which the spy is about to set sail. Throughout the night Hannay and the United Kingdom's military leaders try to work out the meaning of the mysterious phrase. After some reasoning worthy of Sherlock Holmes, and with the help of a knowledgeable coastguard, the group decide on a coastal town in Kent. They find a path down from the cliff that has thirty-nine steps. Just offshore they see a yacht. Posing as fishermen, some of the party visit the yacht, the Ariadne, and find that at least one of the crew appears to be German. The only people onshore are playing tennis by a villa and appear to be English, but they match Scudder's description of the conspirators, The Black Stone. Hannay, alone, confronts the men at the villa. After a struggle, two of the men are captured while the third flees to the yacht, which meanwhile has been seized by the British authorities. The plot is thwarted, and the United Kingdom enters the First World War having kept its military secrets from the enemy. On the outbreak of war, Hannay joins the army with a captain's rank.
85378	/m/0lp4m	The Winter's Tale	William Shakespeare	1623		 King Leontes of Sicilia begs his childhood friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia, to extend his visit to Sicilia. Polixenes protests that he has been away from his kingdom for nine months, but after Leontes' pregnant wife, Hermione, pleads with him he relents and agrees to stay a little longer. Leontes, meanwhile, has become possessed with jealousy--convinced that Polixenes and Hermione are lovers, he orders his loyal retainer, Camillo, to poison the Bohemian king. Instead, Camillo warns Polixenes of what is afoot, and the two men flee Sicilia immediately. Furious at their escape, Leontes now publicly accuses his wife of infidelity, and declares that the child she is bearing must be illegitimate. He throws her in prison, over the protests of his nobles, and sends to the Oracle of Delphi for what he is sure will be confirmation of his suspicions. Meanwhile, the queen gives birth to a girl, and her loyal friend Paulina brings the baby to the king, in the hopes that the sight of the child will soften his heart. He only grows angrier, however, and orders Paulina's husband, Lord Antigonus, to take the child and abandon it in some desolate place. While Antigonus is gone, the answer comes from Delphi--Hermione and Polixenes are innocent, and Leontes will have no heir until his lost daughter is found. As this news is revealed, word comes that Leontes' son, Mamillius, has died of a wasting sickness brought on by the accusations against his mother. Hermione, meanwhile, falls in a swoon, and is carried away by Paulina, who subsequently reports the queen's death to her heartbroken and repentant husband. Antigonus meanwhile abandons the baby on the Bohemian coast, reporting that Hermione appeared to him in a dream and bade him name the girl Perdita and leave gold and other tokens on her person. Shortly thereafter, Antigonus is killed by a bear, and Perdita is raised by a kindly Shepherd. Sixteen years pass, and the son of Polixenes, Prince Florizel, falls in love with Perdita. His father and Camillo attend a sheep-shearing in disguise and watch as Florizel and Perdita are betrothed--then, tearing off the disguise, Polixenes intervenes and orders his son never to see the Shepherd's daughter again. With the aid of Camillo, however, who longs to see his native land again, Florizel and Perdita take ship for Sicilia, after using the clothes of a local rogue, Autolycus, as a disguise. They are joined in their voyage by the Shepherd and his son, a Clown, who are directed there by Autolycus. In Sicilia, Leontes--still in mourning after all this time--greets the son of his old friend effusively. Florizel pretends to be on a diplomatic mission from his father, but his cover is blown when Polixenes and Camillo, too, arrive in Sicilia. What happens next is told to us by gentlemen of the Sicilian court: the Shepherd tells everyone his story of how Perdita was found, and Leontes realizes that she is his daughter, leading to general rejoicing. The entire company then goes to Paulina's house in the country, where a statue of Hermione has been recently finished. The sight of his wife's form makes Leontes distraught, but then, to everyone's amazement, the statue comes to life--it is Hermione, restored to life. As the play ends, Paulina and Camillo are engaged, and the whole company celebrates the miracle.
85766	/m/0lrqk	Dead Air	Iain Banks	2002	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first person narrative begins on 11 September 2001, and Banks uses the protagonist's conversations - both on the radio and off - to discuss the consequences of the terrorist attacks in the United States on that day. Ken Nott is at a loft party in London at the crucial moment. The reader hears many of Nott's shock-jock lines ("Guns for nutters only; makes sense.") and sees him described as a drug and booze fuelled, sexually promiscuous party animal. His politics are left-wing and libertarian, and he rants at every chance. Nott's various girlfriends (including Jo, who does public relations for an indie band called Addicta), his long-suffering radio show colleague Phil, and his black DJ friend Ed are described. Apart from the expected difficulties associated with being a politically controversial radio DJ, everything is going smoothly for Ken until he meets Celia (or "Ceel"), a gangster's wife, who he falls in love with. An indiscretion with a mobile phone and an answering machine leads him into some difficult and frightening situations.
85818	/m/0lrsh	Nibelungenlied			{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 Though the preface to the poem promises both joyous and dark tales ahead, the Nibelungenlied is by and large a very tragic work, and these four opening verses are believed to have been a late addition to the text, composed after the body of the poem had been completed. {|class="toccolours" cellpadding="7" rules="cols" !Middle High German original !! Shumway translation |- | Uns ist in alten mæren wunders vil geseit von helden lobebæren, von grôzer arebeit, von freuden, hôchgezîten, von weinen und von klagen, von küener recken strîten muget ir nu wunder hœren sagen | Full many a wonder is told us in stories old, of heroes worthy of praise, of hardships dire, of joy and feasting, of weeping and of wailing; of the fighting of bold warriors, now ye may hear wonders told. |} The original version instead began with the introduction of Kriemhild, the protagonist of the work. The epic is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the story of Siegfried and Kriemhild, the wooing of Brünhild and the death of Siegfried at the hands of Hagen, and Hagen's hiding of the Nibelung treasure in the Rhine (Chapters 1-19). The second part deals with Kriemhild's marriage to Etzel, her plans for revenge, the journey of the Burgundians to the court of Etzel, and their last stand in Etzel's hall (Chapters 20-39). The first chapter introduces the court of Burgundy. Kriemhild (the virgin sister of King Gunther, and his brothers Gernot and Giselher) has a dream of a falcon that is killed by two eagles. Her mother interprets this to mean that Kriemhild's future husband will die a violent death, and Kriemhild consequently resolves to remain unmarried. The second chapter tells of the background of Siegfried, crown prince of Xanten. His youth is narrated with little room for the adventures later attributed to him. In the third chapter, Siegfried arrives in Worms with the hopes of wooing Kriemhild. Upon his arrival, Hagen von Tronje, one of King Gunther's vassals, tells Gunther about Siegfried's youthful exploits that involved winning a treasure and lands from a pair of brothers, Nibelung and Schilbung, whom Siegfried had killed when he was unable to divide the treasure between them and, almost incidentally, the killing of a dragon. Siegfried leaves his treasure in the charge of a dwarf named Alberich. After killing the dragon, Siegfried then bathed in its blood, which rendered him invulnerable. Unfortunately for Siegfried, a leaf fell onto his back from a linden tree, and the small patch of skin that the leaf covered did not come into contact with the dragon's blood, leaving Siegfried vulnerable in that single spot. In spite of Hagen's threatening stories about his youth, the Burgundians welcome him, but do not allow him to meet the princess. Disappointed, he nonetheless remains in Worms and helps Gunther defeat the invading Saxons. In chapter 5, Siegfried finally meets Kriemhild. Gunther requests Siegfried to sail with him to the fictional city of Isenstein in Iceland to win the hand of Iceland's Queen, Brünhild. Siegfried agrees, though only if Gunther allows him to marry Gunther's sister, Kriemhild, whom Siegfried pines for. Gunther, Siegfried and a group of Burgundians set sail for Iceland with Siegfried pretending to be Gunther's vassal. Upon their arrival, Brünhild challenges Gunther to a trial of strength with her hand in marriage as a reward. If they lose, however, they will be sentenced to death. She challenges Gunther to three athletic contests, throwing a javelin, tossing a boulder, and a leap. After seeing the boulder and javelin, it becomes apparent to the group that Brünhild is immensely strong and they fear for their lives. Siegfried quietly returns to the boat his group arrived on and takes his special cloak, which renders him invisible and gives him the strength of 12 men (Chapters 6-8). Siegfried, with his immense strength, invisibly leads Gunther through the trials. Unknowingly deceived, the impressed Brünhild thinks King Gunther, not Siegfried, defeated her and agrees to marry Gunther. Gunther becomes afraid that Brünhild may yet be planning to kill them, so Siegfried goes to Nibelungenland and single-handedly conquers the kingdom. Siegfried makes them his vassals and returns with a thousand of them, himself going ahead as messenger. The group of Burgundians, Gunther and Gunther's new wife-to-be Brünhild return to Worms, where a grand reception awaits them and they marry to much fanfare. Siegfried and Kriemhild are also then married with Gunther's blessings. However, on their wedding night, Brünhild suspects something is amiss with her situation, particularly suspecting Siegfried as a potential cause. Gunther attempts to sleep with her and, with her great strength, she easily ties him up and leaves him that way all night. After he tells Siegfried of this, Siegfried again offers his help, proposing that he slip into their chamber at night with his invisibility cloak and silently beat Brünhild into submission. Gunther agrees but says that Siegfried must not sleep with Brünhild. Siegfried slips into the room according to plan and after a difficult and violent struggle, an invisible Siegfried defeats Brünhild. Siegfried then takes her ring and belt, which are symbols of defloration. Here it is implied that Siegfried sleeps with Brünhild, despite Gunther's request. Afterwards, Brünhild no longer possesses her once-great strength and says she will no longer refuse Gunther. Siegfried gives the ring and belt to his own newly wed, Kriemhild, in chapter ten. Years later, Brünhild, still feeling as if she had been lied to, goads Gunther into inviting Siegfried and Kriemhild to their kingdom. Brünhild does this because she is still under the impression that Gunther married off his sister to a low-ranking vassal (while Gunther and Siegfried are in reality of equal rank) yet the normal procedures are not being followed between the two ranks combined with her lingering feelings of suspicion. Both Siegfried and Kriemhild come to Worms and all is friendly between the two until, before entering Worms Cathedral, Kriemhild and Brünhild argue over who should have precedence according to their husbands' perceived ranks. Having been earlier deceived about the relationship between Siegfried and Gunther, Brünhild thinks it is obvious that she should go first, through custom of her perceived social rank. Kriemhild, unaware of the deception involved in Brünhild's wooing, insists that they are of equal rank and the dispute escalates. Severely angered, Kriemhild shows Brünhild first the ring and then the belt that Siegfried took from Brünhild on her wedding night, and then calls her Siegfried's kebse (mistress or concubine). Brünhild feels greatly distressed and humiliated, and bursts into tears. The argument between the queens is both a risk for the marriage of Gunther and Brünhild and a potential cause for a lethal rivalry between Gunther and Siegfried, which both Gunther and Siegfried attempt to avoid. Gunther acquits Siegfried of the charges. Despite this, Hagen von Tronje decides to kill Siegfried to protect the honor and reign of his king. Although it is Hagen who does the deed, Gunther - who at first objects to the plot - along with his brothers knows of the plan and quietly assents. Hagen contrives a false military threat to Gunther and Siegfried, considering Gunther a great friend, volunteers to help Gunther once again. Under the pretext of this threat of war, Hagen persuades Kriemhild, who still trusts Hagen, to mark Siegfried's single vulnerable point on his clothing with a cross under the premise of protecting him. Now knowing Siegfried's weakness, the fake campaign is called off and Hagen then uses the cross as a target on a hunting trip, killing Siegfried with a spear as he is drinking from a brook (chapter sixteen). This perfidious murder is particularly dishonorable in medieval thought, as throwing a javelin is the manner in which one might slaughter a wild beast, not a knight. We see this in other literature of the period, such as with Parsifal's unwittingly dishonorable crime of combatting and slaying knights with a javelin (transformed into a swan in Wagner's opera). Further dishonoring Siegfried, Hagen steals the hoard from Kriemhild and throws it into the Rhine (Rheingold), to prevent Kriemhild from using it to establish an army of her own. Kriemhild swears to take revenge for the murder of her husband and the theft of her treasure. Many years later, King Etzel of the Huns (Attila the Hun) proposes to Kriemhild, she journeys to the land of the Huns, and they are married. For the baptism of their son, she invites her brothers, the Burgundians, to a feast at Etzel's castle in Hungary. Hagen does not want to go, but is taunted until he does: he realizes that it is a trick of Kriemhild in order to take revenge and kill them all. As the Burgundians cross the Danube, this fate is confirmed by Nixes, who predict that all but one monk will die. Hagen tries to drown the monk in order to render the prophecy futile, but he survives. The Burgundians arrive at Etzel's castle and are welcomed by Kriemhild "with lying smiles and graces". But the lord Dietrich of Bern, an ally of Etzel's, advises the Burgundians to keep their weapons with them at all times, which is normally not allowed. The tragedy unfolds. Kriemhild comes before Hagen, reproaches him for her husband Siegfried's death, and demands the return of her Nibelungenschatz. Hagen answers her boldly, admitting that he killed Siegfried and sank the Nibelungen treasure into the Rhine, but blames these acts on Kriemhild's own behaviour. King Etzel then welcomes his wife's brothers warmly. But outside a tense feast in the great hall, a fight breaks out between Huns and Burgundians, and soon there is general mayhem. When word of the fight arrives at the feast, Hagen decapitates Kriemhild's and Etzel's little son before his parents' eyes. The Burgundians take control of the hall, which is besieged by Etzel's warriors. Kriemhild offers her brothers their lives if they hand over Hagen, but they refuse. The battle lasts all day, until the queen orders the hall to be burned with the Burgundians inside. All of the Burgundians are killed except for Hagen and Gunther, who are bound and held prisoner by Dietrich of Bern. Kriemhild has the men brought before her and orders her brother Gunther to be killed. Even after seeing Gunther's head, Hagen refuses to tell the queen what he has done with the Nibelungen treasure. Furious, Kriemhild herself cuts off Hagen's head. Old Hildebrand, the mentor of Dietrich of Bern, is infuriated by the shameful deaths of the Burgundian guests. He hews Kriemhild to pieces with his sword. In a fifteenth century manuscript, he is said to strike Kriemhild a single clean blow to the waist; she feels no pain, however, and declares that his sword is useless. Hildebrand then drops a ring and commands Kriemhild to pick it up. As she bends down, her body falls into pieces. Dietrich and Etzel and all the people of the court lament the deaths of so many heroes.
86351	/m/0lvk3	The Exorcist	William Peter Blatty	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An elderly Jesuit priest named Father Lankester Merrin is leading an archaeological dig in northern Iraq and is studying ancient relics. Following the discovery of a small statue of the demon Pazuzu (an actual ancient Assyrian demigod) and a modern-day St. Joseph medal curiously juxtaposed together at the site, a series of omens alerts him to a pending confrontation with a powerful evil, which, unknown to the reader at this point, he has battled before in an exorcism in Africa. Meanwhile, in Georgetown, a young girl named Regan MacNeil living with her famous mother, actress Chris MacNeil, becomes inexplicably ill. After a gradual series of poltergeist-like disturbances, she undergoes disturbing psychological and physical changes, appearing to become "possessed" by a demonic spirit. After several unsuccessful psychiatric and medical treatments, Regan's mother turns to a local Jesuit priest. Father Damien Karras, who is currently going through a crisis of faith coupled with the loss of his mother, agrees to see Regan as a psychiatrist, but initially resists the notion that it is an actual demonic possession. After a few meetings with the child, now completely inhabited by a diabolical personality, he turns to the local bishop for permission to perform an exorcism on the child. The bishop with whom he consults does not believe Karras is qualified to perform the rites, and appoints the experienced Merrin, who has recently returned to the United States, to perform the exorcism; although he does allow the doubt-ridden Karras to assist him. The lengthy exorcism tests the priests both physically and spiritually. When Merrin, who had previously suffered cardiac arrhythmia, dies during the process, completion of the exorcism ultimately falls upon Father Karras. When he demands that the demonic spirit inhabit him instead of the innocent Regan, the demon seizes the opportunity to possess the priest. Karras surrenders his own life in exchange for Regan's by jumping out of her bedroom window.
86581	/m/0lwmz	The Sweet Hereafter	Russell Banks			 The Sweet Hereafter is a multiple first person narrative depicting life in a small town in Upstate New York in the wake of a terrible school bus accident in which numerous local children are killed. Hardly able to cope with the loss, their grieving parents are approached by a slick city lawyer who wants them to sue for damages. At first the parents are reluctant to do so, but eventually they are persuaded by the lawyer that filing a class action lawsuit would ease their minds and also be the right thing to do. As most of the children are dead, the case now depends on the few surviving witnesses to say the right things in court. In particular, it is 14 year-old Nichole Burnell, who was sitting at the front of the bus and is now is unable to move from the waist down (but isn't paralysed), whose deposition is all-important. However, she unexpectedly accuses Dolores Driscoll, the driver, of speeding and thus causing the accident. When she does so, all hopes of ever receiving money are thwarted. All the people involved know that Nichole is lying but cannot do anything about it. Only her father knows why, but he is unable to publicly reveal his daughter's motives. The novel captures the atmosphere in a small town suddenly shaken by catastrophe. Fathers take to drinking, secret affairs are abruptly ended, whole families move away. Only the reader/viewer knows that Mitchell Stephens, the lawyer, has himself effectively lost his own child—his estranged, drug-addicted daughter informs him over the phone that she has just tested HIV positive. The book, written in 1991, was chosen in 1998 by Nancy Pearl, the then Director of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library, and Chris Higashi, the current Program Manager, to be the first selection for "If All Seattle Read the Same Book", a program that has continued in the Seattle community and at many other public libraries around the country.
86928	/m/0ly6j	A Severed Head	Iris Murdoch	1961	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Martin Lynch-Gibbon is a 41-year-old well-to-do wine merchant whose childless marriage to an older woman called Antonia has been one of convenience rather than love. It never occurs to him that his ongoing affair with a young academic called Georgie could be immoral. Displaying quite a number of macho attributes in his relationships with women, Lynch-Gibbon is shocked when, out of the blue, his wife tells him that she is going to leave him for Palmer Anderson, her psychoanalyst and a friend of the couple's, with whom she has had a secret affair for quite some time. Lynch-Gibbon moves out of their London house but still does not want to publicize his affair with Georgie, let alone become engaged to her. At roughly the same time Cupid's arrow hits Lynch-Gibbon again. This time he falls for Honor Klein, Anderson's half-sister, who is a lecturer in anthropology at Cambridge, a woman who, on seeing her for the first time, he remembers finding rather repulsive. Like a man possessed, he follows her to Cambridge and, in the middle of the night, breaks into her house, only to find her in bed with her half-brother. When, shortly afterwards, Antonia confesses to him that she has also been sleeping with his older brother Alexander ever since he introduced them to each other ("You mean you didn't know at all? Surely you must have guessed."), Lynch-Gibbon's world starts disintegrating. Despite his being a wine merchant, he chooses whisky as his constant companion. In the end, however, he realizes that life must—and somehow will—go on.
87742	/m/0m1c0	Coming Up for Air	George Orwell	1939	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The themes of the book are nostalgia, the folly of trying to go back and recapture past glories and the easy way the dreams and aspirations of one's youth can be smothered by the humdrum routine of work, marriage and getting old. It is written in the first person, with George Bowling, the forty-five-year-old protagonist, who reveals his life and experiences while undertaking a trip back to his boyhood home as an adult. At the opening of the book, Bowling has a day off work to go to London to collect a new set of false teeth. A news-poster about the contemporary King Zog of Albania sets off thoughts of a biblical character Og, King of Bashan that he recalls from Sunday church as a child. Along with 'some sound in the traffic or the smell of horse dung or something' these thoughts trigger Bowling's memory of his childhood as the son of an unambitious seed merchant in "Lower Binfield" near the River Thames. Bowling relates his life history, dwelling on how a lucky break during the First World War landed him in a comfortable job away from any action and provided contacts that helped him become a successful salesman. Bowling is wondering what to do with a small sum of money that he has won on a horserace and which he has concealed from his wife and family. He and his wife attend a Left Book Club meeting where he is horrified by the hate shown by the anti-fascist speaker, and bemused by the Marxist ramblings of the communists who have attended the meeting. Fed up with this, he seeks his friend Old Porteous, the retired schoolmaster. He usually finds Porteous entertaining, but on this occasion his dry dead classics makes Bowling even more depressed. Bowling decides to use the money on a 'trip down memory lane', to revisit the places of his childhood. He recalls a particular pond with huge fish in it which he had missed the chance to try and catch thirty years previously. He therefore plans to return to Lower Binfield but when he arrives, he finds the place unrecognisable. Eventually he locates the old pub where he is to stay, finding it much changed. His home has become a tea shop. Only the church and vicar appear the same but he has a shock when he discovers an old girlfriend, for in his eyes she has been so ravaged by time that she is almost unrecognizable and is utterly devoid of the qualities he once adored. She fails to recognize him at all. Bowling remembers the slow and painful decline of his father's seed business—resulting from the nearby establishment of corporate competition. This painful memory seems to have sensitized him to - and given him a repugnance for - what he sees as the marching ravages of "Progress". The final disappointment is to find that the estate where he used to fish has been built over, and the secluded and once hidden pond that contained the huge Carp he always intended to take on with his fishing rod, but never got around to, has become a rubbish dump. The social and material changes experienced by Bowling since childhood make his past seem distant. The concept of "you can't go home again" hangs heavily over Bowling's journey, as he realizes that many of his old haunts are gone or considerably changed from his younger years. Throughout the adventure he receives reminders of impending war, and the threat of bombs becomes real when one lands accidentally on the town.
88353	/m/0m4gh	Shadow Puppets	Orson Scott Card	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Peter, Ender's brother, is now Hegemon of Earth. Accepting a tip from inside China, where Achilles is held prisoner, Peter had planned for Bean to operate the mission, but at the last minute (because he doubted Bean would cooperate) assigns Suriyawong, a battle school student from Thailand, to rescue Achilles in transport, believing that he can spy on Achilles, take over his network, and then turn Achilles over to some country for trial (at the time of this story, Achilles has betrayed Russia, Pakistan, and India). Achilles is known to kill anyone who has seen him vulnerable. Bean and his friend Petra, who also served under Ender and who is travelling with Bean, have both seen Achilles so and immediately go into hiding, preparing for a future confrontation. Bean believes Peter has seriously underestimated Achilles, and that he (Bean) is not safe unless he is hidden. During their travels, Petra convinces Bean to marry her and have children with her by taking him to Anton, the person who Anton's Key (Bean's Condition) was named after. Bean is reluctant to have children, as he does not want his Anton's Key gene to be passed on. He finds Volescu, the original doctor who activated the key in his genes, and has him prepare nine embryos through artificial insemination. Volescu pretends to identify three embryos with Anton's Key and they are discarded. One of the remaining six is implanted into Petra, while the rest of them are placed under guard. At the same time, a message is passed to Bean that Han Tzu, a comrade from Battle School, was not in fact the informant in the message sent to Peter about Achilles. Realizing that it had been a setup, Bean gets a message to Peter's parents, and they flee with Peter from the Hegemon's compound. Bean narrowly escapes an assassination attempt himself, and escapes to Damascus. There they find that another Battle School comrade, Alai, is the unrivaled Caliph of a nearly unified Muslim world. Meanwhile, their embryos are stolen, and Bean expects Achilles to use them to bait a trap for them. Peter and his parents escape to the colonization platform in space that used to be the battle school, relying on the protection of Colonel Graff, the former commander of that school, now Minister of Colonization. Shortly after they arrive, however, a message is sent betraying their presence. Faking their departure from the space station, Peter and his parents discover the traitor, one of the teachers at battle school. The unmanned shuttle sent as a decoy is shot down over Brazil (the location of the former compound of the Hegemon, now occupied by Achilles). In the previous novel, China had conquered India and Indochina. Alai plans to liberate them by invading first China (in a feint), and then India (once China has withdrawn its armies to defend the homeland). His invasion is successful, and in the midst of realizing their danger, the Chinese government disavows Achilles, providing evidence that he stole the missile launcher that destroyed the decoy space shuttle. Left with nowhere to turn, Achilles contacts Bean and offers the embryos in exchange for safe passage. Bean and Peter return to the Hegemon's compound. Achilles expects Bean to be so besotted with the idea of retrieving his children that he can be killed with a bomb in the transport container for them. When Bean sees through that trap, Achilles offers up fake embryos in petri dishes, expecting to lure Bean into a vulnerable position where Bean can be killed. However, Bean has already decided that Achilles was faking and refuses to fall for any of his traps. Finally, Bean pulls out a pistol and shoots him in the eye. Thus, Achilles is killed in a similar fashion to his first victim Poke, who he killed with a knife to the eye earlier in the series. The novel ends with Peter restored as Hegemon, Petra reunited with Bean, a Caliph in command of the world's Muslims, a China severely reduced in territory and forced to accept humiliating surrender terms, and the embryos still lost.
89960	/m/0md8t	The Road to Mars	Eric Idle	2000-10-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Told from the point of view of Professor Bill Reynolds, a scholar in the fictitious discipline of 'micropaloentology', this novel is set in the 24th and 25th Centuries, when the solar system has been colonised. Reynolds is writing a thesis on fame and in his research discovers a dissertation on comedy submitted by Carlton, a robotic secretary for two stand-up comedians on an interplanetary comedy circuit. Most of the action in the novel follows this trio's adventures during the time when Reynolds believes Carlton was developing his theories. During this time, Carlton and his owners, Alex Muscroft and Lewis Ashby get caught up in a series of disasters including loss of work, parental responsibility and close scrapes with terrorists, the law, other entertainers, and a refugee crisis. Carlton seeks to understand the nature of comedy and human laughter, and attempts to describe humor as a mathematical formula.
90022	/m/0mdk9	Regeneration	Pat Barker	1991-05-30	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, an army psychiatrist at Craiglockhart War Hospital (a mental institution at the time), reading poet Siegfried Sassoon’s declaration against the continuation of the war. Sassoon’s "wilful defiance of military authority" has led to Sassoon being labelled "shell-shocked", a label which the authorities hope will discredit his views on the continuation of the war. Rivers states that he feels uneasy about Sassoon entering Craiglockhart, doubting that he is shell-shocked; the doctor feels uncomfortable about the prospect of sheltering a "conchie". Sassoon’s friend and fellow poet Robert Graves advises Sassoon to give up his protest against the war; although he largely shares Sassoon’s views, he still thinks it would be impossible to stop the war. Sassoon had hoped for a court-martial so that his opinion could be publicly aired, but Graves, believing that he is helping his friend, manages to persuade a medical board that Sassoon should be sent to Craiglockhart instead. Rivers meets Sassoon, and their discussion demonstrates that while Sassoon objects to the sheer horror of the war, he does not have any religious objection to fighting. Rivers warns Sassoon that since his job is to return Sassoon to combat, he cannot therefore claim to remain neutral. This troubles Rivers, as he knows the horrors soldiers suffer when sent back to France. Sassoon struggles with the idea that he is safe in Craiglockhart while others are dying. In addition to Sassoon's conflict, the opening chapters of the novel describe the suffering of other soldiers in the hospital. Anderson, a former surgeon, now cannot stand the sight of blood. Burns is haunted by terrible hallucinations after being thrown into the air by an explosion and landing head first in the ruptured stomach of a rotting dead soldier; the memories of this experience cause him to vomit whenever he eats anything. Another patient, Billy Prior, suffers from mutism and will only talk to Rivers through the use of a notepad. Prior eventually regains his voice, but he remains a difficult patient for Rivers as he does not wish to discuss his memories of the war. Prior is visited by his father, an unfriendly man who beat his wife and emotionally abused his son. The last chapters of the first section of Regeneration introduce the concept of class. In his conversations with Rivers, Prior - the rare officer from a working-class background - states that there are strong class distinctions in the British Army, even during war. Sassoon meets Wilfred Owen, a young man who also writes poetry. He asks Sassoon to sign some copies of his work, and Sassoon offers to review Owen's poetry. Sassoon goes off to play golf with Anderson and Prior goes into Edinburgh and meets a girl called Sarah Lumb, whose boyfriend was killed at the Battle of Loos. They come close to having sex, but Sarah refuses Prior at the last minute. Prior’s absence from Craiglockhart causes him to be confined to the hospital for two weeks as punishment. Rivers suggests that it may be a good idea to now try hypnosis on Prior. This treatment causes Prior to remember the gruesome death of two soldiers in his platoon. A new patient, Willard, is examined by Rivers. Willard was injured in a graveyard when, under heavy fire, parts of a gravestone were shot into his buttocks. While there is no physical damage to prevent Willard from walking, he insists that there is an injury to his spine. Sassoon visits the Conservative Club with Rivers, who notices that Sassoon is depressed after learning of the deaths of two close friends. Rivers realizes that although it would not be difficult to convince Sassoon to continue fighting, he does not want to force him, because he will eventually want to return to the fight on his own. Later Owen and Sassoon talk in Sassoon’s room. Sassoon gives Owen some poetry to publish in the hospital magazine The Hydra and again agrees to mentor the younger man on his poems. Prior goes into town to meet Sarah and explains why he did not show up for their arranged meeting. They take a train to the seaside and walk along the beach together. Prior explains to Sarah how he has to censor the letters of soldiers before they are sent home. He is eager to return to France as he feels unable to relate to anyone back home – he feels as though only fellow soldiers understand his emotions and experiences. He and Sarah get caught in a storm and later have sex in the shelter of a bush. On the train back to town Prior has an asthma attack. Rivers, suffering from exhaustion, is ordered to take three weeks holiday from his work at Craiglockhart. As a storm sounds outside, Sassoon and Owen work on their war poetry together. Rivers' departure resurrects for Sassoon his feelings of abandonment when his father left him, and he realises that Rivers has taken the place of his father. Part III of the novel begins with Rivers attending church with his family. He compares the biblical story of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac with the war where soldiers - mostly younger men - are sacrificed by the older generation in an act of mass-slaughter. Rivers also recalls the visits of Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, to his family home as a child. Back at Craiglockhart Sassoon helps Owen draft one of his most famous poems, "Anthem for Doomed Youth." Sarah accompanies her friend Madge to a local hospital, so Madge can visit her fiance, who has been wounded. Sarah gets lost and walks into a tent filled with injured amputee soldiers. She is angry at her shocked reaction as well as the fact that society hides these injured soldiers away. Prior is examined by a medical board. Prior fears that they suspect he is faking illness and want to send him back to war. Rivers meets with some old friends, Ruth and Henry Head, who discuss Sassoon. Rivers suggests that Sassoon has the freedom to disagree with the war. However, Rivers reaffirms that it is his job to make Sassoon return to military duty. At the end of their conversation Head offers Rivers a top job in London. Although it would be a career leap, Rivers is unsure whether he should take it. Burns, who has since been discharged from hospital, invites Rivers to visit him at his seaside home in Suffolk. Rivers expects to talk to Burns' parents about his condition and is surprised to discover that Burns is alone. They spend a few days together, with Rivers not bringing up the topic of the war. One night, when there is a severe thunderstorm, Burns walks outside and hides in a tunnel which floods at high tide, suffering flashbacks to his experiences with trench warfare in France. The trauma causes Burns to finally open up and talk about his frontline experience. He describes to Rivers the sheer horror he felt when taking part in the Battle of the Somme and how he hoped he would suffer a minor injury so he could be sent home. When Rivers returns to Craiglockhart, he tells Bryce that he will take the job in London. In another appointment Sassoon has with Rivers, Sassoon describes how he has been having hallucinations of dead friends knocking on his door. Sassoon admits he feels guilty about not serving with his friends and decides he should return to the front. Rivers is pleased with Sassoon's decision, but at the same time the doctor worries about what may happen to him there. Sarah tells her mother, Ada, about her relationship with Billy Prior. Ada scolds her daughter for having sex outside marriage; she reminds Sarah that contraception is not always reliable (repeating a rumour that every tenth condom is purposely defective) and declares that true love between a man and a woman does not exist. Sassoon meets his friend Graves and tells him of his decision to return to war. Graves lectures Sassoon on the importance of people keeping their word. Graves then tells Sassoon about a mutual friend, Peter, who has been arrested for prostitution and is being sent to Rivers to "cure" his homosexuality. Graves stresses that he himself is now writing to a girl called Nancy, implying that he is not homosexual. This conversation leaves Sassoon with a feeling of unease, implying that he himself may be unsure or worried about his sexual orientation. The girls at the munitions factory joke that many of the men serving are gay. When Sarah asks why one munitions worker called Betty is not there, her co-worker Lizzie replies that Betty is in the hospital after attempting a home abortion with a coat-hanger. Sassoon talks to Rivers before he is sent back to France, and they discuss Peter and the larger question of the official attitude towards homosexuality. Rivers theorizes that during wartime the authorities are particularly hard on homosexuality, wanting to clearly distinguish between the 'right' kind of love between men (loyalty, brotherhood, camaraderie), which is beneficial to soldiers, and the 'wrong' kind (sexual attraction). The medical board meets to review the cases of various soldiers and to decide on their fitness for combat. According to the board, Prior should have permanent home service due to his asthma. Prior breaks down at the news, fearing that he will be seen as a coward and ashamed that he will not be to find out what calibre of soldier he is. Sassoon tires of waiting for his turn to see the board and leaves to have dinner with friends. Rivers, angry at this flippant behavior, demands an explanation, at which Sassoon apologises and admits that he was afraid. Sassoon assures Rivers that although his views of the war have not changed and he still stands by his "Declaration," he does want to return to France. Prior and Sarah meet again and admit their love for one another. Sassoon and Owen talk in the Conservative Club about how awful it will be for Sassoon to remain in Craiglockhart for another while without Rivers or Owen there; Owen is deeply affected by his imminent departure. Before he leaves Craiglockhart, Sassoon comments to Rivers that Owen’s feelings towards Sassoon may be something more than mere hero worship. Rivers spends his last day at the clinic saying goodbye to his patients, then travels to London and meets Dr. Yealland from the National Hospital, who will be his colleague in his new position. Dr. Yealland uses electro-shock therapy to force patients to quickly recover from shell-shock; he believes that some patients do not want to be cured and that pain is the best method of treatment for such reluctant patients. In a horrifying scene, Yealland demonstrates his brutal 'therapy', which is vastly different from Rivers' own approach and which makes Rivers question whether he can work with such a man. Sassoon is released for combat duty; Willard is able to overcome his psychosomatic paralysis and walks again; Anderson is given a staff job. The novel ends with Rivers completing his notes, meditating on the effect that the encounter with Sassoon, and the last few months, have had on him.
90118	/m/0mdt7	House of Leaves	Mark Z. Danielewski	2000-03-07	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/037750": "Ergodic literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance"}	 House of Leaves begins with a first-person narrative by Johnny Truant, a Los Angeles tattoo parlor employee and professed unreliable narrator. Truant is searching for a new apartment when his friend Lude tells him about the apartment of the recently deceased Zampanò, a blind, elderly man who lived in Lude's building. In Zampanò's apartment, Truant discovers a manuscript written by Zampanò that turns out to be an academic study of a documentary film called The Navidson Record, though Truant says he can find no evidence that the film ever existed. The rest of the novel incorporates several narratives, including Zampanò's report on the fictional film; Truant's autobiographical interjections; a small transcript of part of the film from Navidson's brother, Tom; a small transcript of interviews of many people regarding The Navidson Record by Navidson's wife, Karen; and occasional brief notes by unidentified editors, all woven together by a mass of footnotes. There is also another narrator, Truant's mother, whose voice is presented through a self-contained set of letters titled The Whalestoe Letters. Each narrator's text is printed in a distinct font, making it easier for the reader to follow the occasionally challenging format of the novel (Truant in Courier New in the footnotes, and the main narrative in Times New Roman in the American version). Zampanò's narrative deals primarily with the Navidson family: Will Navidson, a photojournalist (partly based on Kevin Carter), his partner, Karen Green, an attractive former fashion model, and their two children, Chad and Daisy. Navidson's brother, Tom, and several other characters also play a role later in the story. The Navidson family has recently moved into a new home in Virginia. Upon returning from a trip to Seattle, the Navidson family discovers a change in their home. A closet-like space shut behind an undecorated door appears inexplicably where previously there was only a blank wall. A second door appears at the end of the closet, leading to the children's room. As Navidson investigates this phenomenon, he finds that the internal measurements of the house are somehow larger than external measurements. Initially there is less than an inch of difference, but as time passes the interior of the house is found to be seemingly expanding, while maintaining the same exterior proportions. A third change asserts itself: a dark, cold hallway in their living room wall that, physically, should extend out into their yard, but does not. Navidson films this strange place, looping around the outside of the house to show where the space should be and clearly is not. The filming of this anomaly comes to be referred to as "The Five and a Half Minute Hallway". This hallway leads to a maze-like complex, starting with a large room (the "Anteroom"), which in turn leads to a truly enormous space (the "Great Hall"), a room primarily distinguished by an enormous spiral staircase which appears, when viewed from the landing, to spiral down without end. There is also a multitude of corridors and rooms leading off from each passage. All of these rooms and hallways are completely unlit and featureless, consisting of smooth ash-gray walls, floors, and ceilings. The only sound disturbing the perfect silence of the hallways is a periodic low growl, the source of which is never fully explained, although an academic source "quoted" in the book hypothesizes that the growl is created by the frequent re-shaping of the house. There is some discrepancy as to where "The Five and a Half Minute Hallway" appears. It is quoted by different characters at different times to have been located in each of the cardinal directions. This first happens when Zampanò writes that the hallway is in the western wall (House of Leaves 57), directly contradicting an earlier page where the hallway is mentioned to be in the northern wall (House of Leaves 4). Johnny's footnotes point out the contradiction. Navidson, along with his brother Tom and some colleagues, feel compelled to explore, photograph, and videotape the house's seemingly endless series of passages, eventually driving various characters to insanity, murder, and death. Ultimately, Will releases what has been recorded and edited as The Navidson Record. Will and Karen purchased the house because their relationship was becoming strained with Will's work-related absences. While Karen was always adamantly against marriage (claiming that she valued her freedom above anything else), she always found herself missing and needing Will when he was gone: "And yet even though Karen keeps Chad from overfilling the mold or Daisy from cutting herself with the scissors, she still cannot resist looking out the window every couple of minutes. The sound of a passing truck causes her to glance away" (House of Leaves 11–12). Zampanò's narrative is littered with all manner of references, some quite obscure, others indicating that the Navidsons' story achieved international notoriety. Luminaries such as Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Douglas Hofstadter, Ken Burns, Harold Bloom, Camille Paglia, Hunter Thompson, Anne Rice, and Jacques Derrida were apparently interviewed as to their opinions about the film. However, when Truant investigates, he finds no history of the house, no evidence of the events experienced by the Navidsons, and nothing else to establish that the house or film ever existed anywhere other than in Zampanò's text. Many of the references in Zampanò's footnotes, however, are real—existing both within his world and our world outside the novel. For example, several times Zampanò cites an actual Time-Life book, Planet Earth: Underground Worlds (House of Leaves 125). An adjacent story line develops in Johnny's footnotes, detailing what is progressing in Johnny's life as he is assembling the narrative. It remains unclear if Johnny's obsession with the writings of Zampanò and subsequent delusions, paranoia, etc. are the result of drug use, insanity, or the effects of Zampanò's writing itself. Johnny recounts tales of his various sexual encounters, his lust for a tattooed stripper he calls Thumper, and his bar-hopping with Lude throughout various footnotes. The reader also slowly learns more about Johnny's childhood living with an abusive foster father, engaging in violent fights at school, and of the origin of Johnny's mysterious scars (House of Leaves, p. 505). More information about Johnny can be gleaned from the Whalestoe Letters, letters his mother Pelafina wrote from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institution. Though Pelafina's letters and Johnny's footnotes contain similar accounts of their past, their memories also differ greatly at times, due to both Pelafina's and Johnny's questionable mental states. Pelafina was placed in the mental institution after supposedly attempting to strangle Johnny, only to be stopped by her husband. She remained there after Johnny's father's death. Johnny claims that his mother meant him no harm and claimed to strangle him only to protect him from missing her, etc. It is unclear, however, if Johnny's statements about the incident—or any of his other statements, for that matter—are factual. This story is included in an appendix near the end of the book, as well as in its own, self-contained book (with additional content included in the self-contained version). It consists of Johnny's mother's letters to him from a psychiatric hospital. The letters start off fairly normal but Pelafina quickly descends into paranoia and the letters become more and more incoherent. There are also secret messages in the letters which can be decoded by combining the first letters of consecutive words.
90119	/m/0mdtl	The Whalestoe Letters	Mark Z. Danielewski	2000-10-10	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Pelafina writes these letters to Johnny from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a mental institution where she has been residing for a number of years. While a number of these letters appear in House of Leaves, The Whalestoe Letters introduces a number of new letters which serve to more fully develop Pelafina's character as well as her relationship with Johnny.
92318	/m/0mzbz	Restoree	Anne McCaffrey	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Restoree is the story of Sara, an introverted, beak-nosed, 24-year-old virgin librarian from New York who is abducted by the Mil, amorphous alien creatures that eat human flesh. She is kept alive, with her skin removed and in a catatonic state from the physical and mental shock, on a meat hook as a Mil meal until the alien ship she is on is captured by human inhabitants of the planet Lothar. Without her skin, some Lotharians mistake her for one of their own and perform controversial "restoration" procedures on her, including a nose job. Sara comes to her senses in a mental institution on Lothar with no memory of what happened, little knowledge of the local language, and a beautiful, golden-skinned body. At the institution, she is treated as if she were retarded and given menial tasks to do, as are other "restorees" who have been clandestinely salvaged from Mil ships; it is apparently some factor of Sara's Terran origins that allows her to fully recover from the shock of the Mil ordeal, while Lotharian restorees are of limited intellect at best. One of her jobs is to care for Harlan, the deposed planetary regent, who is being drugged into a moronic state. Recognizing what is being done, Sara helps Harlan to regain his senses and escape the mental institution. Sara and Harlan then gain the advantage over Harlan's political enemies, defeat the Mil, solve some of Lothar's emerging domestic problems and, of course, fall in love.
92551	/m/0m_jg	Mister Roberts	Thomas Heggen	1946	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The title character, a Lieutenant Junior Grade naval officer, defends his crew against the petty tyranny of the ship's commanding officer during World War II. Nearly all action takes place on a backwater cargo ship, the USS Reluctant that sails, as written in the play, "from apathy to tedium with occasional side trips to monotony and ennui."
92617	/m/0m_wq	Cat on a Hot Tin Roof	Tennessee Williams			 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the story of a Southern family in crisis, especially the husband and wife Brick and Margaret (usually called Maggie or "Maggie the Cat"), and their interaction with Brick's family over the course of one evening gathering at the family estate in Mississippi. The party is to celebrate the birthday of patriarch Big Daddy Pollitt, "the Delta's biggest cotton-planter", and his return from the Ochsner Clinic with what he has been told is a clean bill of health. All family members (except Big Daddy and his wife, Big Mama) are aware of Big Daddy's true diagnosis: he is dying of cancer. His family has lied to Big Daddy and Big Mama to spare the aging couple from pain on the patriarch's birthday but, throughout the course of the play, it becomes clear that the Pollitt family has long constructed a web of deceit for itself. Maggie, determined and beautiful, has escaped a childhood of poverty to marry into the wealthy Pollitts, but finds herself unfulfilled. The family is aware that Brick has not slept with Maggie for a long time, which has strained their marriage. Brick, an aging football hero, infuriates her by ignoring his brother Gooper's attempts to gain control of the family fortune. Brick's indifference and his drinking escalated with the recent suicide of his friend Skipper. Maggie fears that Brick's malaise will ensure that Gooper and his wife Mae end up with Big Daddy's inheritance. Through the evening, Brick, Big Daddy and Maggie—and the entire family—separately must face down the issues which they have bottled up inside. Big Daddy attempts a reconciliation with the alcoholic Brick. Both Big Daddy and Maggie separately confront Brick about the true nature of his relationship with his pro football buddy Skipper, which appears to be the source of Brick's sorrow and the cause of his alcoholism. Brick explains to Big Daddy that Maggie was jealous of the close friendship between Brick and Skipper because she believed it had a romantic undercurrent. He states that Skipper slept with Maggie to prove her wrong. Brick believes that when Skipper couldn't complete the act, his self-questioning about his sexuality and his friendship with Brick made him "snap". Brick also reveals that, shortly before he committed suicide, Skipper confessed his feelings to Brick, but Brick rejected him. Disgusted with the family's "mendacity", Brick tells Big Daddy that the report from the clinic about his condition was falsified for his sake. Big Daddy storms out of the room, leading the party gathered out on the gallery to drift inside. Maggie, Brick, Mae, Gooper, and Doc Baugh (the family's physician) decide to tell Big Mama the truth about his illness and she is devastated by the news. Gooper and Mae start to discuss the division of the Pollitt estate. Big Mama defends her husband from Gooper and Mae's proposals. Big Daddy reappears and makes known his plans to die peacefully. Attempting to secure Brick's inheritance, Maggie tells him she is pregnant. Gooper and Mae know this is a lie, but Big Mama and Big Daddy believe that Maggie "has life". When they are alone again, Maggie locks away the liquor and promises Brick that she will "make the lie true".
92695	/m/0n07m	Elmer Gantry	Sinclair Lewis	1927-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry, who then becomes a notorious and cynical alcoholic. Gantry is mistakenly ordained as a Baptist minister, briefly acts as a "New Thought" evangelist, and eventually becomes a Methodist minister. He acts as manager for Sharon Falconer, an itinerant evangelist. Gantry becomes her lover but loses both her and his position when she is killed in a fire at her new tabernacle. During his career, Gantry contributes to the downfall, physical injury, and even death of key people around him, including a genuine minister, Frank Shallard. Ultimately Gantry marries well and obtains a large congregation in Lewis's fictional Midwestern city of Zenith.
92699	/m/0n080	Sons and Lovers	D. H. Lawrence	1913	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Part I: The refined daughter of a "good old burgher family," Gertrude Coppard meets a rough-hewn miner at a Christmas dance and falls into a whirlwind romance characterized by physical passion. But soon after her marriage to Walter Morel, she realizes the difficulties of living off his meagre salary in a rented house. The couple fight and drift apart and Walter retreats to the pub after work each day. Gradually, Mrs. Morel's affections shift to her sons beginning with the oldest, William. As a boy, William is so attached to his mother that he doesn't enjoy the fair without her. As he grows older, he defends her against his father's occasional violence. Eventually, he leaves their Nottinghamshire home for a job in London, where he begins to rise up into the middle class. He is engaged, but he detests the girl's superficiality. He dies and Mrs. Morel is heartbroken, but when Paul catches pneumonia she rediscovers her love for her second son. Part II: Both repulsed by and drawn to his mother, Paul is afraid to leave her but wants to go out on his own, and needs to experience love. Gradually, he falls into a relationship with Miriam, a farm girl who attends his church. The two take long walks and have intellectual conversations about books but Paul resists, in part because his mother looks down on her. At Miriam's family's farm, Paul meets Clara Dawes, a young woman with, apparently, feminist sympathies who has separated from her husband, Baxter. Paul leaves Miriam behind as he grows more intimate with Clara, but even she cannot hold him and he returns to his mother. When his mother dies soon after, he is alone. Lawrence summarized the plot in a letter to Edward Garnett on 12 November 1912: :It follows this idea: a woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class, and has no satisfaction in her own life. She has had a passion for her husband, so her children are born of passion, and have heaps of vitality. But as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers — first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother — urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives, and holds them. It's rather like Goethe and his mother and Frau von Stein and Christiana — As soon as the young men come into contact with women, there's a split. William gives his sex to a fribble, and his mother holds his soul. But the split kills him, because he doesn't know where he is. The next son gets a woman who fights for his soul — fights his mother. The son loves his mother — all the sons hate and are jealous of the father. The battle goes on between the mother and the girl, with the son as object. The mother gradually proves stronger, because of the ties of blood. The son decides to leave his soul in his mother's hands, and, like his elder brother go for passion. He gets passion. Then the split begins to tell again. But, almost unconsciously, the mother realizes what is the matter, and begins to die. The son casts off his mistress, attends to his mother dying. He is left in the end naked of everything, with the drift towards death.
95531	/m/0nmns	Survivor	Chuck Palahniuk	1999-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Tender Branson sits in the cockpit of a Boeing 747-400, telling his life story to the black box. He is alone in the plane, having hijacked it; he has released all of the plane's passengers and crew prior to this point. He explains the events leading up to the hijacking. Tender is a member of the fanatical Creedish cult, which engaged in a mass suicide ten years previously. He is one of the Creedish members who was sent out into the world to work as a servant, and send his income back to the Creedish community. Creedish members have been steadily killing themselves since the mass suicide, in keeping with their belief that the deliverance is at hand. At the start of his story, Tender works as the housekeeper for a rich couple he never sees in Oregon. They issue directions via a daily planner and a speaker phone. In addition to cleaning, Tender gives the couple etiquette lessons over the phone and tends their garden (which he does by planting fake flowers, which he says is easier than planting real flowers and taking care of them). At his dingy apartment, he gets phone calls from people who want to kill themselves - the result of a newspaper misprint which printed his phone number as the number for a suicide prevention hotline. Tender, enjoying the thrill of passing divine judgment on these people tells them to kill themselves as often as not, and sees this as an act of mercy. Although the newspaper prints a retraction, the calls keep coming, and when they dwindle, Tender prints up fliers for a fake crisis hotline with his number on them so the calls will continue. One of the calls comes from a Trevor Hollis, a man who wants to kill himself because of the nightmares he has been having about disasters, like plane crashes or fires. Tender tells Trevor to kill himself, and soon after, reads his obituary in the paper. One day, Tender goes to the mausoleum to steal fake flowers for his employer's garden (a common pastime), and decides to visit Trevor's tomb while he is there. At the tomb, he meets Trevor's sister, Fertility, and they talk. Later that night, Tender has his weekly meeting with his caseworker from the Federal Survivor Retention Program, a government agency that keeps tabs on the survivors of suicide cults. As usual, he asks how many survivors of the Creedish faith there are remaining, and she tells him, "One hundred and fifty-seven survivors. Nationwide." Tender begins to explain how the Creedish Church works. Only the firstborn sons and their wives get to stay and reside in the community (located in rural Nebraska) - the rest, like Tender, are sent out to work as humble servants, and are considered to be the Church's missionaries. They are extensively trained in etiquette, housecleaning, and other menial labor, after which they are baptized and sent out into the world to make a living. Every month, they are expected to send back money and a letter of confession. "Tender" is not really a name, but a title, which is given to all male children except the firstborn, who is called "Adam". Likewise, all female children are called "Biddy", including the eldest. "Tender" is meant to denote one who tends; "Biddy", one who is biddable. All but the firstborn sons and their wives are discouraged from having sex of any kind and are forbidden to marry, and the latter are expected to have sex only for procreation. All the Creedish wear highly recognizable clothing, both inside the community and out. This makes it easy to spot another member of the Church in the outside world. Tender further describes how, ten years previously, someone leaked the Church's doings (i.e. cult brainwashing, tax evasion, unregistered births) to the police of Bolster County, Nebraska, and the FBI are put on the case. The FBI move in to arrest the cult leaders only to find the entire community dead in an act of mass suicide upon hearing the news. The remaining survivors are expected to be prepared for such an event (called the "Deliverance" by the Church), and kill themselves as soon as they hear the news. After their meeting, Fertility calls Tender thinking she has called the crisis hotline. Tender soon realizes it's Fertility, so he begins to talk to her in a fake voice. Because it is revealed later that Fertility is psychic and knows "everything", it is understood that she knows at this point that she is speaking to Tender. She talks about her brother's suicide and how she met Tender ("a pretty weird guy") at the mausoleum, mentioning how he reminded her of a Creedish cult member, and adding that he was extremely unattractive and she believed him to be Trevor's ex-homosexual lover. Eventually, she asks the man at the "crisis hotline" (i.e. Tender) to have phone sex with her, but he hangs up after turning her down. He then stops answering his phone in fear that Fertility will be on the other line, wanting to have phone sex or growing more attracted to him as a mysterious voice than as a person. During another meeting with his caseworker (which regularly takes place at his employers' house), Tender gets frustrated and tells her that if she wants to help him, she can start by scrubbing the shower tiles. Burnt out over a decade of lost suicide cases, the caseworker quickly grows obsessed with cleaning and soon takes over Tender's job, drifting more and more away from helping him confront his past. She reveals at this time that many of the Creedish suicides were really murders masked to look like suicides to encourage more survivors to kill themselves. A week from their last meeting, Tender and Fertility meet again at Trevor's tomb in the mausoleum. Fertility teaches him to dance, while revealing that Trevor had been psychic, and all the things he had dreamt about had really happened. At home, Tender receives a suspicious call from a man he recognizes as a member of the Creedish Church, and he soon realizes that the murderer of Creedish survivors is actually Creedish himself. The call scares him, for he fears that he will be the next victim. Abruptly after the call, Fertility also calls Tender, again trying to reach the crisis hotline, and she tells him about dancing with the man at the mausoleum and asks him to get together with her. Tender (as the man at the crisis hotline) agrees, on the condition that she agrees to take the man from the mausoleum (i.e. him) out on a date. She agrees. On their date, Tender and Fertility ride the bus downtown, where a stranger rudely begins telling them facile jokes pointed at the Creedish mass suicide. Tender laughs at all the jokes, secretly wondering if the joker can tell he's Creedish. Fertility snaps at the joker for making fun of suicide. When the joker rises to exit the bus, Tender recognizes the man's pants as Creedish dress, and suddenly recognizes the man as Adam, his twin brother. Tender speaks Adam's name aloud, but when Adam asks if they are brothers, he desperately denies it. After the bus incident, Fertility takes Tender to a department store that she presciently knows will catch on fire, but that she knows will not harm them. Fertility explains that she has the same talent as her brother for dreaming the future. Tender soon learns that he has become one of the last two survivors of the Creedish Church. The caseworker has him go over photos of dead Creedish to see if he can identify the other survivor, but he already knows it to be his brother Adam. He begins receiving phone calls from journalists and agents wanting his story. The caseworker manages to suffocate on a chemical solution of ammonia and chlorine that she was using to clean the fireplace, which had been secretly mixed together by Adam, and whose intended target was Tender. Adam steals the caseworker's files on the Creedish suicides immediately after the murder. The police suspect Tender, but he claims innocence and slips away. Tender, meanwhile, calls an agent and takes a flight to New York that very night. Thus begins his road to stardom. The agent's company has been planning for years to turn the last survivor of the Creedish cult into a religious celebrity. They create a fake history for Tender and completely overhaul his body. He is given steroid injections, health food, teeth caps, and is made to exercise and diet incessantly until he is the model of attractiveness. It is made clear by the agent that no one will worship an ugly religious leader. Tender is entirely agreeable to all of it, as he has no will to live and desires fame only in order to have an enormous audience for when he commits suicide. As his agent's plans are realized, Tender's fame grows. These plans include the publication of Tender's "autobiography" and the "Book of Very Common Prayer", as well as the conversion of the former Creedish land into the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill (a repository for America's outdated porn). Tender is constantly waiting for the opportune moment to kill himself, and continually puts it off as circumstances fail to meet his criteria. Then, as his popularity starts to wane, the agent tells him that he needs to perform a miracle in order to stay famous. It is then that Fertility finds Tender and gives him a prediction to make on TV that will seem like a miracle when it comes true. Naturally, it does, and Tender's fame swells to even greater proportions. It is unclear at this point why Fertility has shown up and decided to help. This pattern goes on for some time, until the Super Bowl comes up and Tender's agent plans him an elaborate wedding to take place at half-time, following which, Tender will issue another miraculous prediction. Tender goes wandering around, trying to meet up with Fertility, which he finally does in a men's bathroom where they've taken adjacent stalls. Adam appears then with a gun, and reveals that he's already laid a trap to kill Tender's agent the same way he killed the caseworker, so that Tender would be suspect for both murders. Fertility confirms that the agent will die the next day at the Super Bowl, and comes up with a plan for Tender to make a prediction big enough to distract the police long enough for him to escape. Adam, intending this all along, plans to escape with Tender and Fertility. Agreed on their course of action, the three part. The day of the Super Bowl, the agent dies, Tender is married, and as the police come to arrest him, Tender predicts that the Colts will beat the Cardinals 27-24. The stadium erupts in a chaos as angry football fans pour out of their seats to chase Tender and it is all the police can do to stop the crowd from mobbing him to death. Tender escapes with Adam and Fertility to a Ronald McDonald House. The three then begin their journey across the country by hitching rides in semi-trucks transporting incomplete sections of houses from one location to another. During their journey, Fertility intentionally gets separated from the brothers. Adam and Tender, then, steal a car that Fertility foretold would be unlocked in a particular parking lot. Attached to the dashboard is a little commercial figurine of Tender. The brothers, heading north to Canada, come to the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill on the way. As they drive through it, Adam begins recounting the way the Church leaders terrorized the children into fearing sex by forcing them to watch every time a woman went into labor. Tender denies this, but it is unclear whether he simply doesn't want to remember, or whether he actually can't remember because the trauma is buried so deep in his memory. Adam believes the only way to cure Tender is for Tender to have sex - to reject the Church doctrine at its core. Tender resists, and as Adam recounts the details of the "mental castration" (as he calls it), Tender loses control and crashes the car into a giant concrete pylon in the middle of the landfill. The crash causes the airbags to deploy, and the one on the passenger's side sends the Tender figurine into Adam's left eye. Adam pulls out the figurine and asks Tender to find a rock and hit him with it. Tender refuses, but Adam asks him to find any rock that he can just to disfigure him with, pleading that if he goes to jail for his murders, he doesn't want the other inmates to even think about sexually abusing him. Tender reluctantly agrees to do this, as long as Adam will tell him when to stop, but Adam keeps telling him to swing again until it is too late and Adam dies. Immediately afterwards, Fertility shows up in a taxicab and takes Tender away from the landfill. They go back to Oregon, and Fertility plans to go on a quick job assignment to make some money. Fertility's job is being a surrogate mother for couples who can't conceive (Fertility is actually a pseudonym - her real name is Gwen); however, Fertility actually happens to be barren, so her job is, in essence, prostitution. The job she takes coincidentally happens to be for Tender's former employers. In the middle of the night, Tender sneaks into the house, and Fertility has sex with him in the guest bedroom (for a short while, for according to Tender, he only got in a few inches.) The next morning, Tender wakes up; and Fertility tells him that she's pregnant. She then leaves for the airport to board a plane to Sydney, Australia. In her planner that she leaves behind, Tender reads that someone is going to hijack the plane and crash it into the Australian outback. Following Fertility to the airport, Tender finds her, takes Adam's gun (which she has stashed in an urn purportedly containing her brother's cremated remains), and uses it to board the plane. He then begins searching for the "real" hijacker until the joke dawns on him and he realizes that he is the hijacker. The plot thus returns to the beginning, with Tender telling his life story. He mentions that Fertility told him there was a way for him to escape the plane before it crashes, but on the record, he can't seem to figure it out. The book ends mid-sentence, but without any definitive answer as to whether Tender lives or dies. However, it has been stated by the author that Tender survives, and an explanation is available on Chuck Palahniuk's official website http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/books/survivor/ending-survivor.
96881	/m/0n_gw	The Jungle	Upton Sinclair, Jr.	1906-02-28	{"/m/05qt0": "Politics", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main character in the book is a Lithuanian man called Jurgis Rudkus, an immigrant to the United States trying to make ends meet. The book begins describing the wedding feast beginning at four o'clock after the marriage in Chicago of Jurgis to a fifteen year old Lithuanian girl named Ona Lukoszaite whom he had known from his Lithuanian days. The second chapter goes back to when Jurgis and Ona were in Lithuania before they married and Jurgis's courtship of her, the death of her father, and their decision to start dating and eventually immigrate to the United States along with her stepmother Teta Elzbieta, and their extended family after hearing how their relative Jokubas Szedvilas is making money there. In the second and third chapters Jurgis and Ona settle in Chicago's infamous Packingtown district, where from the start, Jurgis takes a job at Brown's slaughterhouse. (Brown was a pseudonym for Armour and Company.) Jurgis believes when he immigrates to the United States that it will be a land of more freedom, but soon his employer's treatment of him disappoints him. Alas, they have to make compromises and concessions to survive. Due partly to illiteracy in English, they quickly make a series of bad decisions that cause them to go deep into debt and fall prey to con men. The most devastating decision comes when, in hopes of owning their own home, the family falls victim to a predatory lending scheme that exhausts all their remaining savings on the down-payment for a sub-standard slum house that (by design) they cannot possibly afford. The family is evicted and their money taken, leaving them truly devastated. The family had formerly envisioned that Jurgis alone would be able to support them in the United States, but one by one, all of them—the women, the young children, and Jurgis' sick father—have to find jobs in order to contribute to the meager family income. As the novel progresses, the jobs and means the family uses to stay alive slowly and inevitably lead to their physical and moral decay. A series of unfortunate events—accidents at work, along with a number of deaths in the family that under normal circumstances could have been prevented—leads the family further toward catastrophe. One injury results in Jurgis being fired; he later takes a job at Durham's fertilizer plant. (Durham was a pseudonym for Swift and Company.) The family's tragedies cumulate when Ona confesses to Jurgis, who is suspicious of her frequent absences from home, that her boss, Phil Connor, had raped her, and made her job dependent on her giving him sexual favors. In revenge, Jurgis later attacks Connor, leading to his arrest and imprisonment by the corrupt judge Pat Callahan, who sides with Connor against Jurgis. After his stint in jail, Jurgis returns home, only to find out that his family has been evicted. He finds his family at a relative's house; Jurgis also discovers Ona in labor with her second child. Ona dies in childbirth from blood loss at the age of eighteen. Jurgis lacked money to pay for a doctor; so Ona has to rely on the greedy and incompetent Madame Haupt, whose carelessness leads to Ona's death. Soon after their first child drowns in the muddy street, causing Jurgis to flee the city in utter despair and turn to drinking. At first the mere presence of fresh air is balm to his soul, but his brief sojourn as a hobo in rural United States shows him that there is really no escape—even farmers turn their workers away when the harvest is finished. Jurgis returns to Chicago and holds down a succession of jobs outside the meat packing industry—digging tunnels, as a political hack, and as a con-man—but injuries on the job, his past and his innate sense of personal integrity continue to haunt him, and he drifts without direction. One night, while looking for a warm and dry refuge, he wanders into a lecture being given by a charismatic Socialist orator, and finds a sense of community and purpose. Socialism and strong labor unions are the answer to the evils that he, his family and their fellow sufferers have had to endure. A fellow socialist employs him, and he resumes his support of his wife's family, although some of them are damaged beyond repair. The book ends with another socialist rally, which comes on the heels of several recent political victories. The speaker encourages his comrades to keep fighting for victories, chanting "Chicago will be ours!"
97723	/m/0p4s9	The Music Man	Meredith Willson			 In the early summer of 1912, aboard a train leaving Rock Island, Illinois, Charlie Cowell and other traveling salesmen engage in a heated argument about consumer credit ("Rock Island"). They eventually turn to another topic: a con man known as "Professor" Harold Hill, whose scam is to convince parents he can teach their musically disinclined children to play musical instruments. On the premise that he will form a band, he takes orders for instruments and uniforms. But once the instruments arrive and are paid for, he skips town without forming the band, moving on before he is exposed. Upon the train’s arrival in River City, Iowa, a stranger stands up and declares, "Gentlemen, you intrigue me. I think I shall have to give Iowa a try." Retrieving his suitcase, clearly labeled "Professor Harold Hill," he exits the train. The townspeople of River City describe their reserved, "chip-on-the-shoulder attitude" ("Iowa Stubborn"). Harold stumbles across his old friend Marcellus Washburn, who has "gone legit" and now lives in town. Marcellus tells Harold that Marian Paroo, the librarian who gives piano lessons, is the only trained musician in town. He also informs Hill that a new pool table was just delivered to the town's local billiard parlor, so to launch his scheme, Harold convinces River City parents of the "trouble" that will be caused by that pool table ("Ya Got Trouble"). Harold follows Marian home, attempting to flirt with her, but she ignores him. At home, Marian gives a piano lesson to a little girl named Amaryllis while arguing with her widowed mother about her high "standards where men are concerned", telling Mrs. Paroo about the man who followed her home ("Piano Lesson/If You Don't Mind My Saying So"). Marian's self-conscious, lisping teenage brother Winthrop arrives home. Amaryllis, who secretly likes Winthrop but teases him about the lisp, asks Marian whom she should say goodnight to on the evening star, since she doesn't have a sweetheart. Marian tells her to just say goodnight to her "someone" ("Goodnight, My Someone"). The next day is Independence Day, and Mayor Shinn is leading the morning festivities in the high school gym, with the help of his wife, Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn ("Columbia, Gem of the Ocean"). After Tommy Djilas, a boy from the wrong side of town, sets off a firecracker, interrupting the proceedings, Harold takes the stage and announces to the townspeople that he will prevent "sin and corruption" from the pool table by forming a boys' band ("Ya Got Trouble [Reprise]/Seventy-Six Trombones"). Mayor Shinn, who owns the billiard parlor, tells the bickering school board to get Harold's credentials, but Harold teaches them to sing as a Barbershop Quartet to distract them ("Ice Cream/Sincere"). Harold also sets up Zaneeta, the mayor's eldest daughter, with Tommy, and persuades Tommy to work as his assistant. After another rejection by Marian, Harold is determined to win her, telling Marcellus that she’s the girl for him ("The Sadder But Wiser Girl"). The town ladies are very excited about the band and the ladies' dance committee that Harold plans to form. He mentions Marian, and they intimate to him (falsely, as it turns out) that she had an inappropriate relationship with deceased old miser Madison, who gave the town the library, but left all the books to her. They also warn Harold that she advocates the "dirty books" by "Chaucer, Rabelais, and Balzac" ("Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little"). The school board arrives to collect Harold's credentials, but he leads them in song and slips away ("Goodnight, Ladies"). The next day, Harold walks into the library, but Marian ignores him yet again. He declares his unrequited love for her, leading the teenagers in the library in dance ("Marian the Librarian"). For a moment, Marian forgets her decorum and dances with Harold. He kisses her, and she tries to slap him. He ducks, and she hits Tommy instead. With Tommy's help, Harold signs up all the boys in town to be in his band, including Winthrop. Mrs. Paroo likes Harold and tries to find out why Marian is not interested. Marian describes her ideal man ("My White Knight"). She tries to give Mayor Shinn evidence against Harold that she found in the Indiana State Educational Journal, but they are interrupted by the arrival of the Wells Fargo wagon, which delivers the band instruments ("The Wells Fargo Wagon"). When Winthrop forgets to be shy and self-conscious because he is so happy about his new cornet, Marian begins to see Harold in a new light. She tears the incriminating page out of the Journal before giving the book to Mayor Shinn. The ladies rehearse their classical dance in the school gym while the school board practices their quartet ("It's You") for the ice cream social. Marcellus and the town's teenagers interrupt the ladies' practice, taking over the gym as they dance ("Shipoopi"). Harold grabs Marian to dance with her, and all the teenagers join in. Regarding Winthrop's cornet, Marian later questions Harold about his claim that "you don't have to bother with the notes". He explains that this is what he calls "The Think System", and he arranges to call on Marian to discuss it. The town ladies ask Marian to join their dance committee, since she was "so dear dancing the Shipoopi" with Professor Hill ("Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little" [Reprise]). They have reversed their opinions about her books, and they eagerly tell her that "the Professor told us to read those books, and we simply adored them all!" That night, the school board tries to collect Harold's credentials again, but he gets them to sing again and slips away ("Lida Rose"). Marian, meanwhile, is sitting on her front porch thinking of Harold ("Will I Ever Tell You?"). Winthrop returns home after spending time with Harold and tells Marian and Mrs. Paroo about Harold's hometown ("Gary, Indiana"). As Marian waits alone for Harold, traveling salesman Charlie Cowell enters with evidence against Harold, hoping to tell Mayor Shinn. He has to leave on the next train, but stops to flirt with Marian. She tries to delay him so he doesn't have time to deliver the evidence, eventually kissing him. As the train whistle blows, she pushes him away. Charlie angrily tells Marian that Harold has a girl in "every county in Illinois, and he's taken it from every one of them – and that's 102 counties!" Harold arrives, and after he reminds her of the untrue rumors he's heard about her, she convinces herself that Charlie invented everything he told her. They agree to meet at the footbridge, where Marian tells him the difference he's made in her life ("Till There Was You"). Marcellus interrupts and tells Harold that the uniforms have arrived. He urges Harold to take the money and run, but Harold refuses to leave, insisting, "I've come up through the ranks... and I'm not resigning without my commission". He returns to Marian, who tells him that she's known since three days after he arrived that he is a fraud. (He said he was a graduate of Gary Conservatory, Gold-Medal Class of '05, but the town wasn't even built until '06!) Because she loves him, she gives him the incriminating page out of the Indiana State Educational Journal. She leaves, promising to see him later at the Sociable. With his schemes for the boys' band and Marian proceeding even better than planned, Harold confidently sings "Seventy-Six Trombones". As he overhears Marian singing "Goodnight My Someone", Harold suddenly realizes that he is in love with Marian; he and Marian sing a snatch of each other's songs. Meanwhile, Charlie Cowell, who has missed his train, arrives at the ice cream social and denounces Harold Hill as a fraud. The townspeople begin an agitated search for Harold. Winthrop is heartbroken and tells Harold that he wishes Harold never came to River City. But Marian tells Winthrop that she believes everything Harold ever said, for it did come true in the way every kid in town talked and acted that summer. She and Winthrop urge Harold to get away. He chooses to stay and tells Marian that he never really fell in love until he met her ("Till There Was You" [Reprise]). The constable then handcuffs Harold and leads him away. Mayor Shinn leads a meeting in the high school gym to decide what to do with Harold, asking, "Where's the band? Where's the band?" Marian defends Harold. Tommy enters as a drum major, followed by the kids in uniform with their instruments. Marian urges Harold to lead the River City Boys' Band in Beethoven's Minuet in G; despite a limited amount of traditional quality, the parents in the audience are nonetheless enraptured by the sight of their little boys playing music. Even Mayor Shinn is won over, and, as the townspeople cheer, Harold is released into Marian's arms ("Finale").
100141	/m/0pj6q	Level 7	Mordecai Roshwald	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 During his forced residence, X-127 is ordered to push the bomb buttons to begin World War III (which lasts a total of 2 hours and 58 minutes). From that point, all civilian life moves from the surface of the earth to a collection of underground shelter complexes on the Levels 1 - 5, while military personnel already occupy Levels 6 and 7. It later emerges that the orders given have been wholly automatic, and the war has taken place as a series of electronic responses to an initial accident. Toward the end of the novel, the inhabitants of the surviving shelters gradually find their deaths, as the surface contamination makes its way down past air filters and into ground water sources. At last, the inhabitants of "Level 7" are exterminated through a malfunction in their nuclear power pile.
101521	/m/0prr3	The Prince	Niccolò Machiavelli	1532	{"/m/02rx5hc": "Treatise", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The work has a recognizable structure, for the most part indicated by the author himself, which can be summarized as follows. The Prince starts by describing the subject matter it will handle. In the first sentence Machiavelli uses the word "state" (Italian stato which could also mean "status") in order to neutrally cover "all forms of organization of supreme political power, whether republican or princely". The way in which the word state came to acquire this modern type of meaning during the Renaissance has been the subject of many academic discussions, with this sentence and similar ones in the works of Machiavelli being considered particularly important. Machiavelli said that The Prince would be about princedoms, mentioning that he has written about republics elsewhere (possibly referring to the Discourses on Livy although this is debated), but in fact he mixes discussion of republics into this in many places, effectively treating republics as a type of princedom also, and one with many strengths. More importantly, and less traditionally, he distinguishes new princedoms from hereditary established princedoms. He deals with hereditary princedoms quickly in Chapter 2, saying that they are much easier to rule. For such a prince, "unless extraordinary vices cause him to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will be naturally well disposed towards him". , comparing to traditional presentations of advice for princes, stated that the novelty in chapters 1 and 2 is the "deliberate purpose of dealing with a new ruler who will need to establish himself in defiance of custom". Normally, these types of works were addressed only to hereditary princes. He thinks Machiavelli may have been influenced by Tacitus as well his own experience, but finds no clear predecessor for this. This categorization of regime types is also "un-Aristotelian" and apparently simpler than the traditional one found for example in Aristotle's Politics, which divides regimes into those ruled by a single monarch, an oligarchy, or by the people, in a democracy. He also ignores the classical distinctions between the good and corrupt forms, for example between monarchy and tyranny. points out that Machiavelli frequently uses the words "prince" and "tyrant" as synonyms, "regardless of whether he speaks of criminal or non-criminal tyrants". Xenophon, on the other hand, made exactly the same distinction between types of rulers in the opening of his Education of Cyrus where he says that, concerning the knowledge of how to rule human beings, Cyrus the Great, his exemplary prince, was very different "from all other kings, both those who have inherited their thrones from their fathers and those who have gained their crowns by their own efforts". Machiavelli divides the subject of new states into two types, "mixed" cases and purely new states. New princedoms are either totally new, or they are “mixed” meaning that they are new parts of an older state, already belonging to that prince. Machiavelli generalizes that there were several virtuous Roman ways to hold a newly acquired province, using a republic as an example of how new princes can act: *to install one's princedom in the new acquisition, or to install colonies of one's people there, which is better. *to indulge the lesser powers of the area without increasing their power. *to put down the powerful people. *not to allow a foreign power to gain reputation. More generally, Machiavelli emphasizes that one should have regard not only for present problems but also for the future ones. One should not “enjoy the benefit of time” but rather the benefit of one's virtue and prudence, because time can bring evil as well as good. In some cases the old king of the conquered kingdom depended on his lords. 16th century France, or in other words France as it was at the time of writing of the Prince, is given by Machiavelli as an example of such a kingdom. These are easy to enter but difficult to hold. When the kingdom revolves around the king, then it is difficult to enter but easy to hold. The solution is to eliminate the old bloodline of the prince. Machiavelli used the Persian empire of Darius III, conquered by Alexander the Great, to illustrate this point and then noted that the Medici, if they think about it, will find this historical example similar to the "kingdom of the Turk" (Ottoman Empire) in their time - making this a potentially easier conquest to hold than France would be. notes that this chapter is quite atypical of any previous books for princes. Gilbert supposed the need to discuss conquering free republics is linked to Machiavelli's project to unite Italy, which contained some free republics. As he also notes, the chapter in any case makes it clear that holding such a state is highly difficult for a prince. Machiavelli gives three options:- *Ruin them, like Rome destroyed Carthage, and also like Machiavelli says the Romans eventually had to do in Greece, even though they had wanted to avoid it. *Go to live there (or install colonies, if you are a prince of a republic). *Let them keep their own orders but install a puppet regime. But Machiavelli says this way is useless. Princes who rise to power through their own skill and resources (their "virtue") rather than luck tend to have a hard time rising to the top, but once they reach the top they are very secure in their position. This is because they effectively crush their opponents and earn great respect from everyone else. Because they are strong and more self-sufficient, they have to make fewer compromises with their allies. Machiavelli writes that reforming an existing order is one of the most dangerous and difficult things a prince can do. Part of the reason is that people are naturally resistant to change and reform. Those who benefited from the old order will resist change very fiercely. By contrast, those who stand to benefit from the new order will be less fierce in their support, because the new order is unfamiliar and they are not certain it will live up to its promises. Moreover, it is impossible for the prince to satisfy everybody's expectations. Inevitably, he will disappoint some of his followers. Therefore, a prince must have the means to force his supporters to keep supporting him even when they start having second thoughts, otherwise he will lose his power. Only armed prophets, like Moses, succeed in bringing lasting change. Machiavelli claims that Moses killed uncountable numbers of his own people in order to enforce his will. Machiavelli was not the first thinker to notice this pattern. Allan Gilbert wrote: "In wishing new laws and yet seeing danger in them Machiavelli was not himself an innovator," because this idea was traditional and could be found in Aristotle's writings. But Machiavelli went much further than any other author in his emphasis on this aim, and Gilbert associates Machiavelli's emphasis upon such drastic aims with the level of corruption to be found in Italy. According to Machiavelli, when a prince comes to power through luck or the blessings of powerful figures within the regime, he typically has an easy time gaining power but a hard time keeping it thereafter, because his power is dependent on his benefactors' goodwill. He does not command the loyalty of the armies and officials that maintain his authority, and these can be withdrawn from him at a whim. Having risen the easy way, it is not even certain such a prince has the skill and strength to stand on his own feet. This is not necessarily true in every case. Machiavelli cites Cesare Borgia as an example of a lucky prince who escaped this pattern. Through cunning political maneuvers, he managed to secure his power base. Cesare was made commander of the papal armies by his father, Pope Alexander VI, but was also heavily dependent on mercenary armies loyal to the Orsini brothers and the support of the French king. Borgia won over the allegiance of the Orsini's followers with better pay and prestigious government posts. When some of his mercenary captains started to plot against him, he had them imprisoned and executed. When it looked like the king of France would to abandon him, Borgia sought new alliances. Finally, Machiavelli makes a point that bringing new benefits to a conquered people will not be enough to cancel the memory of old injuries, an idea Allan Gilbert said can be found in Tacitus and Seneca the Younger. Conquests by "criminal virtue" are ones in which the new prince secures his power through cruel, immoral deeds, such as the execution of political rivals. Machiavelli advises that a prince should carefully calculate all the wicked deeds he needs to do to secure his power, and then execute them all in one stroke, such that he need not commit any more wickedness for the rest of his reign. In this way, his subjects will slowly forget his cruel deeds and his reputation can recover. Princes who fail to do this, who hesitate in their ruthlessness, find that their problems mushroom over time and they are forced to commit wicked deeds throughout their reign. Thus they continuously mar their reputations and alienate their people. Machiavelli's case study is Agathocles of Syracuse. After Agathocles became Praetor of Syracuse, he called a meeting of the city's elite. At his signal, his soldiers killed all the senators and the wealthiest citizens, completely destroying the old oligarchy. He declared himself ruler with no opposition. So secure was his power that he could afford to absent himself to go off on military campaigns in Africa. remarks that this chapter is even less traditional than those it follows, not only in its treatment of criminal behavior, but also in the advice to take power from people at a stroke, noting that precisely the opposite had been advised by Aristotle in his Politics (5.11.1315a13). On the other hand Gilbert shows that another piece of advice in this chapter, to give benefits when it will not appear forced, was traditional. These "civic principalities" do not require real virtue, only “fortunate astuteness”. Machiavelli breaks this case into two basic types, depending upon which section of the populace supports the new prince. =====Supported by the great (those who wish to command the people)===== This, according to Machiavelli, is an unstable situation, which must be avoided after the initial coming to power. The great should be made and unmade every day at your convenience. There are two types of great people that might be encountered:- # Those who are bound to the prince. Concerning these it is important to distinguish between two types of obligated great people, those who are rapacious and those who are not. It is the latter who can and should be honoured. # Those who are not bound to the new prince. Once again these need to be divided into two types:- Those with a weak spirit. A prince can make use of them if they are of good counsel; Those who shun being bound because of their own ambition. These should be watched and feared as enemies. =====Supported by the people (those who wish not to be commanded by the great)===== How to win over people depends on circumstances. Machiavelli advises:- *Do not get frightened in adversity. *One should avoid ruling via magistrates, if one wishes to be able to “ascend” to absolute rule quickly and safely. *One should make sure that the people need the prince, especially if a time of need should come. The way to judge the strength of a princedom is to see whether it can defend itself, or whether it needs to depend on allies. This does not just mean that the cities should be prepared and the people trained. A prince who is hated is also exposed. This type of "princedom" refers for example explicitly to the Catholic church, which is of course not traditionally thought of as a princedom. According to Machiavelli, these are relatively easy to maintain, once founded. They do not need to defend themselves militarily, nor to govern their subjects. Machiavelli discusses the recent history of the Church as if it were a princedom that was in competition to conquer Italy against other princes. He points to factionalism as a historical weak point in the Church, and points to the recent example of the Borgia family as a better strategy which almost worked. He then explicitly proposes that the Medici are now in a position to try the same thing. Having discussed the various types of principalities, Machiavelli turns to the ways a state can attack other territories or defend itself. The two most essential foundations for any state, whether old or new, are sound laws and strong military forces. A self-sufficient prince is one who can meet any enemy on the battlefield. He should be "armed" with his own arms. However, a prince that relies solely on fortifications or on the help of others and stands on the defensive is not self-sufficient. If he cannot raise a formidable army, but must rely on defense, he must fortify his city. A well-fortified city is unlikely to be attacked, and if it is, most armies cannot endure an extended siege. However, during a siege a virtuous prince will keep the morale of his subjects high while removing all dissenters. Thus, as long as the city is properly defended and has enough supplies, a wise prince can withstand any siege. Machiavelli stands strongly against the use of mercenaries, and in this he was innovative, and he also had personal experience in Florence. He believes they are useless to a ruler because they are undisciplined, cowardly, and without any loyalty, being motivated only by money. Machiavelli attributes the Italian city states’ weakness to their reliance on mercenary armies. Machiavelli also warns against using auxiliary forces, troops borrowed from an ally, because if they win, the employer is under their favor and if they lose, he is ruined. Auxiliary forces are more dangerous than mercenary forces because they are united and controlled by capable leaders who may turn against the employer. The main concern for a prince should be war, or the preparation thereof, not books. Through war a hereditary prince maintains his power or a private citizen rises to power. Machiavelli advises that a prince must frequently hunt in order to keep his body fit and learn the landscape surrounding his kingdom. Through this, he can best learn how to protect his territory and advance upon others. For intellectual strength, he is advised to study great military men so he may imitate their successes and avoid their mistakes. A prince who is diligent in times of peace will be ready in times of adversity. Machiavelli writes, “thus, when fortune turns against him he will be prepared to resist it.” Each of the following chapters presents a discussion about a particular virtue or vice that a prince might have, and is therefore structured in a way which appears like traditional advice for a prince. However the advice is far from traditional. Machiavelli believes that a prince's main focus should be on perfecting the art of war. He believes that by taking this profession a ruler will be able to protect his kingdom. He claims that "being disarmed makes you despised." He believes that the only way to ensure loyalty from one's soldiers is to understand military matters. The two activities Machiavelli recommends practicing to prepare for war are physical and mental. Physically, he believes rulers should learn the landscape of their territories. Mentally, he encouraged the study of past military events. He also warns against idleness. Because, says Machiavelli, he wants to write something useful to those who understand, he thought it more fitting "to go directly to the effectual truth ("verità effettuale") of the thing than to the imagination of it". This section is one where Machiavelli’s pragmatic ideal can be seen most clearly. The prince should, ideally, be virtuous, but he should be willing and able to abandon those virtues if it becomes necessary. Concerning the behavior of a prince toward his subjects, Machiavelli announces that he will depart from what other writers say, and writes: Since there are many possible qualities that a prince can be said to possess, he must not be overly concerned about having all the good ones. Also, a prince may be perceived to be merciful, faithful, humane, frank, and religious, but most important is only to seem to have these qualities. A prince cannot truly have these qualities because at times it is necessary to act against them. In fact, he must sometimes deliberately choose evil. Although a bad reputation should be avoided, it is sometimes necessary to have one. If a prince is overly generous to his subjects, Machiavelli asserts he will not be appreciated, and will only cause greed for more. Additionally, being overly generous is not economical, because eventually all resources will be exhausted. This results in higher taxes, and will bring grief upon the prince. Then, if he decides to discontinue or limit his generosity, he will be labeled as a miser. Thus, Machiavelli summarizes that guarding against the people’s hatred is more important than building up a reputation for generosity. A wise prince should be willing to be more reputed a miser than be hated for trying to be too generous. On the other hand: "of what is not yours or your subjects' one can be a bigger giver, as were Cyrus, Caesar, and Alexander, because spending what is someone else's does not take reputation from you but adds it to you; only spending your own hurts you". In addressing the question of whether it is better to be loved or feared, Machiavelli writes, “The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.” As Machiavelli asserts, commitments made in peace are not always kept in adversity; however, commitments made in fear are kept out of fear. Yet, a prince must ensure that he is not feared to the point of hatred, which is very possible. This chapter is possibly the most well-known of the work, and it is important because of the reasoning behind Machiavelli’s famous idea that it is better to be feared than loved – his justification is purely pragmatic; as he notes, “Men worry less about doing an injury to one who makes himself loved than to one who makes himself feared.” Fear is simply a means to an end, and that end is security for the prince. The fear instilled should never be excessive, for that could be dangerous to the prince. Above all, Machiavelli argues, a prince should not interfere with the property of their subjects, their women, or the life of somebody without proper justification. Regarding the troops of the prince, fear is absolutely necessary to keep a large garrison united and a prince should not mind the thought of cruelty in that regard. For a prince who leads his own army, it is imperative for him to observe cruelty because that is the only way he can command his soldiers' absolute respect. Machiavelli compares two great military leaders: Hannibal and Scipio Africanus. Although Hannibal's army consisted of men of various races, they were never rebellious because they feared their leader. Machiavelli says this required "inhuman cruelty" which he refers to as a virtue. Scipio's men, on the other hand, were known for their mutiny and dissension, due to Scipio's "excessive mercy" - which was however a source of glory because he lived in a republic. Machiavelli notes that a prince is praised for keeping his word. However, he also notes that a prince is also praised for the illusion of being reliable in keeping his word. A prince, therefore, should only keep his word when it suits his purposes, but do his utmost to maintain the illusion that he does keep his word and that he is reliable in that regard. Therefore, a prince should not break his word unnecessarily. As Machiavelli notes, “He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, guileless, and devout. And indeed he should be so. But his disposition should be such that, if he needs to be the opposite, he knows how.” As noted in chapter 15, the prince must appear to be virtuous, and should be virtuous, but he should be able to be otherwise when the time calls for it; that includes being able to lie, though however much he lies he should always keep the appearance of being truthful. Machiavelli observes that most men are content as long as they are not deprived of their property and women. A prince should command respect through his conduct, because a prince that is highly respected by his people is unlikely to face internal struggles. Additionally, a prince who does not raise the contempt of the nobles and keeps the people satisfied, Machiavelli assures, should have no fear of conspirators. Machiavelli advises monarchs to have both internal and external fears. Internal fears exist inside his kingdom and focus on his subjects, Machiavelli warns to be suspicious of everyone when hostile attitudes emerge. External fears are of foreign powers. Machiavelli mentions that placing fortresses in conquered territories, although it sometimes works, often fails. Using fortresses can be a good plan, but Machiavelli says he shall "blame anyone who, trusting in fortresses, thinks little of being hated by the people". A prince truly earns honor by completing great feats. King Ferdinand of Spain is cited by Machiavelli as an example of a monarch who gained esteem by showing his ability through great feats and who, in the name of religion, conquered many territories and kept his subjects occupied so that they had no chance to rebel. Regarding two warring states, Machiavelli asserts it is always wiser to choose a side, rather than to be neutral. Machiavelli then provides the following reasons why: * If your allies win, you benefit whether or not you have more power than they have. * If you are more powerful, then your allies are under your command; if your allies are stronger, they will always feel a certain obligation to you for your help. * If your side loses, you still have an ally in the loser. Machiavelli also notes that it is wise for a prince not to ally with a stronger force unless compelled to do so. In conclusion, the most important virtue is having the wisdom to discern what ventures will come with the most reward and then pursuing them courageously. The selection of good servants is reflected directly upon the prince’s intelligence, so if they are loyal, the prince is considered wise; however, when they are otherwise, the prince is open to adverse criticism. Machiavelli asserts that there are three types of intelligence: *The kind that understands things for itself—which is excellent to have. *The kind that understands what others can understand—which is good to have. *The kind that does not understand for itself, nor through others—which is useless to have. If the prince does not have the first type of intelligence, he should at the very least have the second type. For, as Machiavelli states, “A prince needs to have the discernment to recognize the good or bad in what another says or does even though he has no acumen himself". This chapter shows a low opinion of flatterers; Machiavelli notes that “Men are so happily absorbed in their own affairs and indulge in such self-deception that it is difficult for them not to fall victim to this plague; and some efforts to protect oneself from flatterers involve the risk of becoming despised.” Flatterers were seen as a great danger to a prince, because their flattery could cause him to avoid wise counsel in favor of rash action, but avoiding all advice, flattery or otherwise, was equally bad; a middle road had to be taken. A prudent prince should have a select group of wise counselors to advise him truthfully on matters all the time. All their opinions should be taken into account. Ultimately, the decision should be made by the counselors and carried out absolutely. If a prince is given to changing his mind, his reputation will suffer. A prince must have the wisdom to recognize good advice from bad. Machiavelli gives a negative example in Emperor Maximilian I; Maximilian, who was secretive, never consulted others, but once he ordered his plans and met dissent, he immediately changed them. After first mentioning that a new prince can quickly become as respected as a hereditary one, Machiavelli says princes in Italy who had long standing power and lost it can not blame bad luck, but should blame their own indolence. One "should never fall in the belief that you can find someone to pick you up". They all showed: *A defect of arms, already discussed. *Either had a hostile populace or else they did not know to secure themselves with the great. As pointed out by it was traditional in the genre of Mirrors of Princes to mention fortune, but "Fortune pervades The Prince as she does no other similar work". Machiavelli argues that fortune is only the judge of half of our actions and that we have control over the other half with "sweat", prudence and virtue. Even more unusual, rather than simply suggesting caution as a prudent way to try to avoid the worst of bad luck, Machiavelli holds that the greatest princes in history tend to be ones who take more risks, and rise to power through their own labour, virtue, prudence, and particularly by their ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Machiavelli even encourages risk taking as a reaction to risk. In a well-known metaphor, Machiavelli writes that "it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman; and it is necessary, if one wants to hold her down, to beat her and strike her down." Gilbert (p. 217) points out that Machiavelli's friend the historian and diplomat Francesco Guicciardini expressed similar ideas about fortune. Machiavelli compares fortune to a torrential river that cannot be easily controlled during flooding season. In periods of calm, however, people can erect dams and levees in order to minimize its impact. Fortune, Machiavelli argues, seems to strike at the places where no resistance is offered, as had recently been the case in Italy. As points out that what Machiavelli actually says is that Italians in his time leave things not just to fortune, but to "fortune and God". Machiavelli is indicating in this passage, as in some others in his works, that Christianity itself was making Italians helpless and lazy concerning their own politics, as if they would leave dangerous rivers un-controlled. Pope Leo X was pope at the time the book was written and a member of the de Medici family. This chapter directly appeals to the Medici to use what has been summarized in order to conquer Italy using Italian armies, following the advice in the book. showed that including such exhortation was not unusual in the genre of books full of advice for princes. But it is unusual that the Medici family's position of Papal power is openly named as something that should be used as a personal power base, as a tool of secular politics. Indeed takes the Borgia family's recent and very controversial attempts to use church power in secular politics, often very brutally executed, as a positive example. This continues a controversial theme throughout the book.
101904	/m/0ptw0	Sounder	William Armstrong	1969	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A black sharecropper's family is poor and hungry. The father and his dog, Sounder, go hunting each night, but the hunting is poor. The family subsists on fried corn mush, biscuits, and milk gravy until one morning they wake up to the smell of boiling ham. They feast for three days, but finally the sheriff and two of his deputies burst into the cabin and arrest the father. Sounder runs after them, and one of the deputies shoots him. The arrested man's son goes looking for Sounder but cannot find him anywhere. When he traces their steps, he finds blood on the ground along with Sounder's ear. He puts the ear under his pillow and wishes for Sounder's return. His mother thinks Sounder has gone off to die on his own, but for several weeks the boy goes in search of the dog each day. In father's absence, the family survives on the money mother makes by selling walnuts. The boy undertakes the added responsibility of helping to look after his siblings, and he is stricken by the intense loneliness in the cabin. Around Christmas time, the boy's mother makes a three-layer cake for him to take to his father in jail. On the way there, the boy is nervous about being stopped and made fun of by the townspeople. When he arrives at the jail, the jail guard treats him rudely, making him wait a number of hours to enter. Finally the boy is let into the jail, and the guard breaks the cake into pieces in order to "check" if something was hidden in it that would help the boy's father escape. The boy gives it to his father anyway and tells his father that Sounder might not be dead. The conversation between the boy and his father is strained and awkward, and at the end of it his father tells him not to come back to the jail anymore. In the morning the boy wakes up to the sound of faint whining and goes outside to find Sounder standing there. The dog can only use three of its legs and only has one ear and one eye. The boy and his mother tend to the dog. Soon they receive word that his father was convicted and sentenced to hard labor, traveling county to county. The boy resolves to search for his father. During the late fall and winter months over a period of several years, he journeys within and among counties, looking for convicts working. One day the boy spots a group of convicts working, and he leans up against a fence to watch them, looking for his father. The guard watching the group whacks the boy on the fingers with a piece of iron and tells him to leave. The boy leaves and finds a school where he tries to wash the blood off of his hands. Along the way he finds an old book in a trashcan and carries it with him. While he is at the pump, school lets out, and he eventually meets an old teacher who takes him in, dresses his wounds, and asks what has happened to him. The boy tells the teacher about Sounder and his father, and the teacher extends an offer for the boy to live with him and learn to read. The boy's mother tells him to go, and the boy stays with the teacher during winter, working in the fields during the summer. One fall the boy is at home helping with chores when they see his father walking back toward them. Half of his father's body is damaged from a dynamite blast, but the man has made it home. The man and his dog are reunited and leave one night to go hunting. Sounder later comes back without his master, and, when the boy goes looking for his father, he finds him and thinks he is asleep. When he gets home he tells his mother and she breaks to him that his father is dead. Soon after, Sounder climbs under the porch and dies as well. Despite their deaths, there is a sense of peace and resolution over the family—especially over the boy, who has achieved the single thing he most wanted in the world, which is achieving his literacy.
102516	/m/0pygz	Nemesis	Isaac Asimov	1989-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in an era in which interstellar travel is in the process of being discovered and perfected. Before the novel's opening, "hyper-assistance", a technology allowing travel at a little slower than the speed of light, is used to move a reclusive space station colony called Rotor from the vicinity of Earth to the newly discovered red dwarf, Nemesis. There, it takes up orbit around the semi-habitable moon, Erythro, named for the red light that falls on it. It is eventually discovered that the bacterial life on Erythro forms a collective organism that possesses a form of consciousness and telepathy (a concept similar to the Gaia of Asimov's Foundation series). While the colonists argue over the direction of future colonization — down to Erythro, or up to the asteroid belts of Nemesis system — events catch up to them. Back on Earth superluminal flight is perfected, ending Rotor Colony's isolation and opening the galaxy to human exploration. The story also relates the breakup and reunion of a family (the mother, the discoverer of Nemesis, and the daughter were separated from the Earthbound father when the colony departed; the father becomes part of the hyperjump research project as a result); the startling discovery that the bacterial inhabitants of Erythro, collectively, constitute a sentient and telepathic organism; and the discovery and resolution of a massive crisis: Nemesis' trajectory threatens to gravitationally destabilize the Solar System.
102540	/m/0pyl4	Island of the Sequined Love Nun	Christopher Moore	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The main character, Tucker Case (Tuck), is a pilot for a cosmetics company, who crashes the company plane while having sex. This event causes Tuck to be blacklisted from flying in the United States, so he accepts a lucrative offer from a doctor-missionary on a remote Micronesian island to transport cargo to and from the island and Japan. Tuck moves to the island, along with a male Filipino transvestite navigator and a talking fruit bat. There Tuck eventually uncovers a horrible secret harbored by the doctor and his wife, who have taken advantage of fact that the natives of the island have fallen under the influence of a cargo cult that developed as a result of establishment by Allies of an air runway there during World War II. Tuck's shock at the gruesome immorality of the situation leads to an adventurous and suspenseful climax.
102542	/m/0pylh	The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove	Christopher Moore	1999	{"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0246p": "Comic fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Pine Cove suffers a major crisis when the town psychiatrist, Val Riordan — who has been haphazardly issuing prescriptions instead of dealing with the real mental problems of her patients — suffers a sudden bout of guilt and substitutes all of her patients' anti-depressants with placebos. At this same time, by coincidence, human-generated environmental activity stirs a prehistoric sea-beast from its underwater keep to come ashore. In addition to its ability to change form, the beast exudes a pheromone that inspires uncontrollable lust among the residents of Pine Cove and also lures some of them as prey. After mistakenly trying to mate with a fuel truck (causing an explosion), the beast hides in a trailer park, attracting the curiosity of local crazy lady and former B-movie star Molly Michon, who builds a rapport with the injured beast. Meanwhile, Theophilus Crowe, the town constable, investigates a strange suicide, the activities of his corrupt boss, and his adversely affected marijuana habit. When the beast (whom Molly has named "Steve") starts eating residents of Pine Cove and interfering with Theo's boss's meth business, Molly (who has become romantically involved with the beast) and Theo band together to make possible the beast's safe escape and to take down the boss at the same time.
103132	/m/0q0bl	Lost Girls	Alan Moore			 Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (now grey-haired, and called "Lady Fairchild"), Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz (now in her 20s) and Wendy from Peter Pan (now in her 30s, and married to a man in his 50s named Harold Potter) are visiting the expensive mountain resort "Hotel Himmelgarten" in Austria on the eve of World War I (1913–1914). The women meet by chance and begin to exchange erotic stories from their pasts. The stories are based on the childhood fantasy worlds of the three women: *Wendy Durling. Wendy's sexual escapades begin when she meets a homeless teenage boy named Peter and his sister Annabel in Kensington Gardens. Peter follows the three siblings home and teaches them sexual games, and the siblings begin regular meetings with Peter and his group of homeless boys in the park for sex. These encounters are watched by The Captain, a co-worker of Wendy's father, who later hires Peter as a male prostitute and brutally rapes Annabel. He attacks Wendy, who escapes by confronting him with his fear of aging. She only sees Peter once more, hustling in a train station. She marries the much older Harold Potter because she is not attracted to him, and would not have to think about enjoying sex ever again. *Dorothy Gale. While trapped in her house during a cyclone, she begins masturbating and experiences her first orgasm at the age of sixteen. She has sexual encounters with three farm hands whom she refers to as The Straw Man, The Cowardly Lion and The Tin Man. Throughout most of her stories, she refers to her "aunt" and "uncle", whom she later admits were her step-mother and father, who discover her affairs. Her father takes her to New York City, under the pretense of seeking psychological help, but has sex with her repeatedly while they are in the city. Dorothy feels guilty of destroying her father's marriage, and leaves to travel the world. *Alice Fairchild. At fourteen, Alice is coerced into sex with her father's friend, which she endures by staring into a mirror and imagines she is having sex with herself. At an all-girls boarding school, Alice convinces many of her schoolmates to sleep with her, and develops a strong attraction to her P.E. teacher, who offers Alice a job as a personal assistant (and sexual plaything) when she leaves employment at the school. Alice's employer marries a Mr. Redman, but begins hosting extravagant, drug-fueled lesbian sex parties. Alice becomes addicted to opium, and watches a young girl named Lily, among many others, abused just as she was. When Lily is instructed by Mrs. Redman to secretly perform cunnilingus on Alice under the table during a dinner party, Alice exposes her employer's secrets to the guests. Mrs. Redman has Alice declared insane, and she is put into a mental hospital where she is systematically raped by the staff. Upon release Alice resumes her lesbian activity and drug use. Disowned by her family, she moves to Africa to run a family-owned diamond mine. In addition to the three women's erotic flashbacks, the graphic novel depicts sexual encounters between the women and other guests and staff of the hotel. The erotic adventures are set against the backdrop of unsettling cultural and historic events of the period, such as the debut of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The graphic novel ends with Alice's mirror being destroyed by German soldiers who burn down the Hotel.
104114	/m/0q520	Quartet in Autumn	Barbara Pym	1977-09-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Marcia, Letty, Norman and Edwin all work together in the same office, are all unmarried (Edwin being a widower) and have all reached retirement age. Letty, the "heroine" of the book, has plans to share a country retreat with her old friend, Marjorie, but her hopes are dashed when Marjorie suddenly announces that she is to marry a clergyman some years younger than herself. All four find retirement difficult to cope with, but the effects are most noticeable for the eccentric Marcia. She gradually withdraws from the outside world, gives up eating, and eventually dies in pathetic circumstances. She has unexpectedly left her estate to Norman, in whom she had indulged a brief and secret romantic interest. When Marjorie's fiancé deserts her for a younger widow, Letty has the opportunity to take the country cottage after all. By now she has come to terms with retirement and does not move. At the end of the book, she is considering whether to introduce Edwin and Norman to Marjorie in the hope of matchmaking.
104116	/m/0q52c	Some Tame Gazelle	Barbara Pym		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Many of the characters in the book are based on Pym's own circle, as she pictured them in twenty or thirty years' time. The two heroines, Belinda and Harriet Bede, are Barbara herself and her sister, Hilary. Archdeacon Hoccleve, a married clergyman for whom Belinda has long nurtured a passion, is believed to be based on Pym's first love, Henry Harvey. In the course of the book, both sisters receive proposals of marriage which they feel obliged to reject, partly because they are not attracted to the men in question, but mainly because they are so used to living together and have become devoted to one another. In fact, Pym and her sister did end up living together in a quiet village in Oxfordshire. Pym's friend, the British writer Robert Liddell, appears in the novel in the guise of Dr. Nicholas Parnell. Another character, Count Riccardo Bianco, is based on the real-life count and academic, Roberto Weiss.
105309	/m/0qdh6	Satyricon	Petronius Arbiter		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The work is narrated by its central figure, Encolpius, a former gladiator. The surviving sections of the novel begin with Encolpius traveling with a companion and former lover named Ascyltos, who has joined Encolpius on numerous escapades. Encolpius' slave, a boy named Giton, is apparently at Encolpius' lodging when the story begins. (Giton is constantly referred to as "brother" throughout the novel, thereby indicating that they were lovers.) In the first passage preserved, Encolpius is in a Greek town in Campania, perhaps Puteoli, where he is standing outside a school, railing against the Asiatic style and false taste in literature, which he blames on the prevailing system of declamatory education (1-2). His adversary in this debate is Agamemnon, a sophist, who shifts the blame from the teachers to the parents (3-5). Encolpius discovers that his companion Ascyltos has left and breaks away from Agamemnon when a group of students arrive (6). Encolpius locates Ascyltos (7-8) and then Giton (8), who claims that Ascyltos made a sexual attempt on him (9). After some conflict (9-11), the three go to the market, where they are involved in a dispute over stolen property (12-15). Returning to their lodgings, they are confronted by Quartilla, a devotee of Priapus, who condemns their attempts to pry into the cult's secrets (16-18). The companions are overpowered by Quartilla and her maids, who overpower and sexually torture them (19-21), then provide them with dinner and engage them in further sexual activity (21-26). An orgy ensues and the sequence ends with Encolpius and Quartilla exchanging kisses while they spy through a keyhole at Giton having sex with a virgin girl; and finally sleeping together (26). This section of the Satyricon, regarded by classicists such as Conte and Rankin as emblematic of Menippean satire, takes place a day or two after the beginning of the extant story. Encolpius and companions are invited, along with Agamemnon, to a dinner at the estate of Trimalchio, a freedman of enormous wealth, who entertains his guests with ostentatious and grotesque extravagance. After preliminaries in the baths and halls (26-30), the guests (mostly freedmen) join their host and enter the dining room. Extravagant courses are served while Trimalchio flaunts his wealth and his pretence of learning (31-41). Trimalchio's departure to the toilet (he is incontinent) allows space for conversation among the guests (41-46). Encolpius listens to their ordinary talk about their neighbours, about the weather, about the hard times, about the public games, and about the education of their children. In his insightful depiction of everyday Roman life, Petronius delights in exposing the vulgarity and pretentiousness of the illiterate and ostentatious millionaires of his age. After Trimalchio's return from the lavatory (47), the succession of courses is resumed, some of them disguised as other kinds of food or arranged to resemble certain zodiac signs. Falling into an argument with Agamemnon (a guest who secretly holds Trimalchio in disdain) Trimalchio reveals that he once saw the Sibyl of Cumae, who because of her great age was suspended in a flask for eternity (48). Supernatural stories about a werewolf (62) and witches are told (63). Following a lull in the conversation, a stonemason named Habinnas arrives with his wife Scintilla (65), who compares jewellery with Trimalchio's wife Fortunata (67). Then Trimalchio sets forth his will and gives Habinnas instructions on how to build his monument when he is dead (71). Encolpius and his companions, by now wearied and disgusted, try to leave as the other guests proceed to the baths, but are prevented by a porter (72). They escape only after Trimalchio holds a mock funeral for himself. The vigiles, mistaking the sound of horns for a signal that a fire has broken out, burst into the residence (78). Using this sudden alarm as an excuse to get rid of the sophist Agamemnon, whose company Encolpius and his friends are weary of, they flee as if from a real fire (78). Encolpius returns with his companions to the inn but, having drunk too much wine, passes out while Ascyltos takes advantage of the situation and seduces Giton (79). On the next day, Encolpius wakes to find his lover and Ascyltos in bed together naked. Encolpius quarrels with Ascyltos and the two agree to part, but Encolpius is shocked when Giton decides to stay with Ascyltos (80). After two or three days spent in separate lodgings sulking and brooding on his revenge, Encolpius sets out with sword in hand, but is disarmed by a soldier he encounters in the street (81-82). After entering a picture gallery, he meets with an old poet, Eumolpus. The two exchange complaints about their misfortunes (83-84), and Eumolpus tells how, when he pursued an affair with a boy in Pergamon while employed as his tutor, the youth got the better of him (85-87). After talking about the decay of art and the inferiority of the painters and writers of the age to the old masters (88), Eumolpus illustrates a picture of the capture of Troy by some verses on that theme (89). This ends in those who are walking in the adjoining colonnade driving Eumolpus out with stones (90). Encolpius invites Eumolpus to dinner. As he returns home, Encolpius encounters Giton who begs him to take him back as his lover. Encolpius finally forgives him (91). Eumolpus arrives from the baths and reveals that a man there (evidently Ascyltos) was looking for someone called Giton (92). Encolpius decides not to reveal Giton's identity, but he and the poet fall into rivalry over the boy (93-94). This leads to a fight between Eumolpus and the other residents of the insula (95-96), which is broken up by the manager Bargates. Then Ascyltos arrives with a municipal slave to search for Giton, who hides under a bed at Encolpius' request (97). Eumolpus threatens to reveal him but after much negotiation ends up reconciled to Encolpius and Giton (98). In the next scene preserved, Encolpius and his friends board a ship, along with Eumolpus' hired servant, later named as Corax (99). Encolpius belatedly discovers that the captain is an old enemy, Lichas of Tarentum. Also on board is a woman called Tryphaena, by whom Giton does not want to be discovered (100-101). Despite their attempt to disguise themselves as Eumolpus' slaves (103), Encolpius and Giton are identified (105). Eumolpus speaks in their defence (107), but it is only after fighting breaks out (108) that peace is agreed (109). To maintain good feelings, Eumolpus tells the story of a widow of Ephesus. At first she planned to starve herself to death in her husband's tomb, but she was seduced by a soldier guarding crucified corpses, and when one of these was stolen she offered the corpse of her husband as a replacement (110-112). The ship is wrecked in a storm (114). Encolpius, Giton and Eumolpus get to shore safely (as apparently does Corax), but Lichas is washed ashore drowned (115). The companions learn they are in the neighbourhood of Crotona, and that the inhabitants are notorious legacy-hunters (116). Eumolpus proposes taking advantage of this, and it is agreed that he will pose as a childless, sickly man of wealth, and the others as his slaves (117). As they travel to the city, Eumolpus lectures on the need for elevated content in poetry (118), which he illustrates with a poem of almost 300 lines on the Civil War between Julius Caesar and Pompey (119-124). When they arrive in Crotona, the legacy-hunters prove hospitable. When the text resumes, the companions have apparently been in Crotona for some time (125). A maid named Chrysis flirts with Encolpius and brings to him her beautiful mistress Circe, who asks him for sex. However, his attempts are prevented by impotence (126-128). Circe and Encolpius exchange letters, and he seeks a cure by sleeping without Giton (129-130). When he next meets Circe, she brings with her an elderly enchantress called Proselenos, who attempts a magical cure (131). Nonetheless, he fails again to make love, as Circe has Chrysis and him flogged (132). Encolpius is tempted to sever the offending organ, but prays to Priapus at his temple for healing (133). Proselenos and the priestess Oenothea arrive. Oenothea, who is also a sorceress, claims she can provide the cure desired by Encolpius and begins cooking (134-135). While the women are temporarily absent, Encolpius is attacked by the temple's sacred geese and kills one of them. Oenothea is horrified, but Encolpius pacifies her with an offer of money (136-137). Then, Oenothea tears open the breast of the goose, and uses its liver to foretell Encolpius's future (137). That accomplished, the priestess reveals a "leather dildo," and the women apply various irritants to him, which they use to prepare Encolpius for anal penetration (138). Encolpius flees from Oenothea and her assistants. In the following chapters, Chrysis herself falls in love with Encolpius (138-139). An aging legacy-huntress called Philomela places her son and daughter with Eumolpus, ostensibly for education. Eumolpus makes love to the daughter, although because of his pretence of ill health he requires the help of Corax. Encolpius reveals that he has somehow been cured of his impotence (140). He warns Eumolpus that, because the wealth he claims to have has not appeared, the patience of the legacy-hunters is running out. Eumolpus' will is read to the legacy-hunters, who apparently now believe he is dead, and they learn they can inherit only if they consume his body. In the final passage preserved, historical examples of cannibalism are cited (141).
106086	/m/0ql2g	Guns, Germs, and Steel	Jared Diamond		{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The prologue opens with an account of Diamond's conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and technology between Yali's people and the Europeans who dominated the land for 200 years, differences that neither of them considered due to any genetic superiority of Europeans. Yali asked, using the local term "cargo" for inventions and manufactured goods, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" (p. 14) Diamond realized the same question seemed to apply elsewhere: "People of Eurasian origin... dominate the world in wealth and power." Other peoples, after having thrown off colonial domination, still lag in wealth and power. Still others, he says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists." (p. 15) The peoples of other continents (Sub-Saharan Africans, Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans, and the original inhabitants of tropical Southeast Asia) have been largely conquered, displaced and in some extreme cases – referring to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians and South Africa's indigenous Khoisan peoples – largely exterminated by farm-based societies such as Eurasians and Bantu. He believes this is due to the societies' military and political advantages, stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the last Ice Age. He proposes explanations to account for such disproportionate distributions of power and achievements. The book's title is a reference to the means by which farm-based societies conquered populations of other areas and maintained dominance, despite sometimes being vastly out-numbered – superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns); Eurasian diseases weakened and reduced local populations, who had no immunity, making it easier to maintain control over them (germs), and centralized government promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel). The book uses geography to show how Europeans developed such superior military technology, and how Europeans and Asians developed some immunity to diseases which spread among them, while epidemics of them devastated the indigenous populations in the Americas after European contact. Eurasia was the beneficiary of favorable geographic, climatic and environmental characteristics, particularly after the last Ice Age about 13,000–15,000 years ago. Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions. In our earliest societies, humans lived as hunter-gatherers. The first step towards civilization is the move from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, with the domestication and farming of wild crops and animals. Agricultural production leads to food surpluses, which supports sedentary societies, specialization of craft, rapid population growth, and specialization of labor. Large societies tend to develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which may lead in turn to the organization of nation states and empires. Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the greater availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, Eurasia had the best collection of plants and animals suitable for domestication – barley, two varieties of wheat and three protein-rich pulses for food; flax for textiles; goats, sheep and cattle provided meat, leather, glue (by boiling the hooves and bones) and, in the case of sheep, wool. As early Middle Eastern civilizations began to trade, they found additional useful animals in adjacent territories, most notably horses and donkeys for use in transport. In contrast, Native American farmers had to struggle to develop maize as a useful food from its probable wild ancestor, teosinte; moreover, it provides few nutrients and must be planted one by one – an extremely cumbersome task. Eurasians had wheat and barley, which are high in fiber and nutrients and can be sown en masse with just a toss of the hand. They generated food surpluses which supported greater population growth. Such growth led to larger workforces and more inventors, artisans, etc. Grains can also be stored for longer periods of time unlike tropical crops such as bananas. Eurasia as a whole domesticated 13 species of large animals (over 100 lb / 44 kg); South America just one (counting the llama and alpaca as breeds within the same species); the rest of the world none at all. Diamond describes the small number of domesticated species (14 out of 148 "candidates") as an instance of the Anna Karenina principle: many promising species have just one of several significant difficulties that prevent domestication. Sub-Saharan Africans had mostly wild mammals, whereas Eurasians chanced to have the most docile large animals on the planet: horses and camels that are easily tamed for human transport; but their biological relatives zebras and onagers are untameable; and although African elephants can be tamed, it is very difficult to breed them in captivity; goats and sheep for hides, clothing, and cheese; cows for milk; bullocks for tilling fields and transport; and benign animals such as pigs and chickens. Africans, developing alongside large mammals, had available lions, leopards etc. Diamond points out that the only animals useful for human survival and purposes in New Guinea came from the East Asian mainland when they were transplanted during the Austronesian settlement some 4,000–5,000 years ago. Eurasia's large landmass and long east-west distance increased these advantages. Its large area provided it with more plant and animal species suitable for domestication, and allowed its people to exchange both innovations and diseases. Its East-West orientation allowed breeds domesticated in one part of the continent to be used elsewhere through similarities in climate and the cycle of seasons. In contrast, Australia suffered from a lack of useful animals due to extinction, probably by human hunting, shortly after the end of the Pleistocene. The Americas had difficulty adapting crops domesticated at one latitude for use at other latitudes (and, in North America, adapting crops from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the other). Africa was fragmented by its extreme variations in climate from North to South: plants and animals that flourished in one area never reached other areas where they could have flourished, because they could not survive the intervening environment. Europe was the ultimate beneficiary of Eurasia's East-West orientation: in the first millennium BC, the Mediterranean areas of Europe adopted the Middle East's animals, plants, and agricultural techniques; in the first millennium AD, the rest of Europe followed suit. The plentiful supply of food and the dense populations that it supported made division of labor possible. The rise of non-farming specialists such as craftsmen and scribes accelerated economic growth and technological progress. These economic and technological advantages eventually enabled Europeans to conquer the peoples of the other continents in recent centuries by using the "Guns" and "Steel" of the book's title. Eurasia's dense populations, high levels of trade, and living in close proximity to livestock resulted in widespread transmission of diseases, including from animals to humans. Natural selection forced Eurasians to develop immunity to a wide range of pathogens. When Europeans made contact with America, European diseases (to which they had no immunity) ravaged the indigenous American population, rather than the other way around (the "trade" in diseases was a little more balanced in Africa and southern Asia: endemic malaria and yellow fever made these regions notorious as the "white man's grave"; and syphilis may have spread in the opposite directionThe origin of syphilis is still debated. Some researchers think it was known to Hippocrates: Others think it was brought from the Americas by Columbus and his successors: ). The European diseases – the "Germs" of the book's title – decimated indigenous populations so that relatively small numbers of Europeans could maintain their dominance. Guns, Germs, and Steel also offers a very brief explanation of why western European societies, rather than other powers such as China, have been the dominant colonizers. * Other advanced cultures developed in areas whose geography was conducive to large, monolithic, isolated empires. In these conditions policies of technological and social stagnation could persist – until Europeans arrived. China was a very notable example; in 1432, a new Emperor outlawed the building of ocean-going ships, in which China was the world leader at the time. * Europe's geography favored balkanization into smaller, closer, nation-states, as its many natural barriers (mountains, rivers) provide defensible borders. As a result, governments that suppressed economic and technological progress soon corrected their mistakes or were out-competed relatively quickly. As an example of this national Darwinism, Diamond offers the disappearance of the counter-progressive Polish regime. He argues that geographical factors created the conditions for more rapid internal superpower change (Spain succeeded by France and then by England) than was possible elsewhere in Eurasia. Diamond examined European dominance in more detail with further examples in a later article.
106353	/m/0qmgb	On Golden Pond	Ernest Thompson	1979		 May Norman and Ethel arrive at the summer house, finding it in need of repairs. There are hints that Norman is having problems with his memory. June Norman makes a nominal effort to find a job in the classified ads, to Ethel's chagrin. The mailman, Charlie, stops by and reminisces about the Thayer's daughter, Chelsea, whom he used to date. A letter arrives from Chelsea saying that she is coming from California with her boyfriend Bill to celebrate Norman's 80th birthday. It becomes clearer that Norman is struggling with memory loss, as he continues to forget names and places that should be familiar. July Chelsea arrives with Billy Ray and his 13-year-old son, Billy Ray Jr. Chelsea asks her parents if Billy Jr. can stay with them while she and Billy go to Europe. Norman (a bit reluctantly) and Ethel agree to keep Billy Jr. August Norman and Billy Jr. have become friends, and spend much of their time fishing. Chelsea returns, and reveals that she and Billy are now married. Ethel shows her impatience with Chelsea's habit of bitterly harping on the past. Chelsea confronts her father about their troubled relationship, and the two have a reconciliation. September Norman and Ethel are packing to leave for the winter. Chelsea calls, and they agree to go visit her in California. Norman seems to suffer a heart attack, (whilst picking up a box of his mother-in-law's heavy china) but recovers, and the pair leave their home along Golden Pond.
113448	/m/0sxjf	A Passage to India	E. M. Forster	1924	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A young British schoolmistress, Adela Quested, and her elderly friend, Mrs. Moore, visit the fictional city of Chandrapore, British India. Adela is to marry Mrs. Moore's son, Ronny Heaslop, the city magistrate. Meanwhile, Dr. Aziz, a young Indian Muslim physician, is dining with two of his Indian friends and conversing about whether it is possible to be friends with an Englishman. During the meal, a summons arrives from Major Callendar, Aziz's unpleasant superior at the hospital. Aziz hastens to Callendar's bungalow as ordered, but is delayed by a flat tyre and difficulty in finding a tonga and the major has already left in a huff. Disconsolate, Aziz walks down the road toward the railway station. When he sees his favourite mosque, a rather ramshackle but beautiful structure, he enters on impulse. He sees a strange Englishwoman there, and angrily yells at her not to profane this sacred place. The woman, who turns out to be Mrs Moore, has respect for native customs (she had taken off her shoes before entering and she acknowledged that "God is here" in the mosque) disarms Aziz, and the two chat and part as friends. Mrs. Moore returns to the British club down the road and relates her experience at the mosque. Ronny Heaslop, her son, initially thinks she is talking about an Englishman, and becomes indignant when he learns the facts. He thinks she should have indicated by her tone that it was a "Mohammedan" who was in question. Adela, however, is intrigued. Because the newcomers had expressed a desire to see Indians, Mr. Turton, the city tax collector, invites numerous Indian gentlemen to a party at his house. The party turns out to be an awkward business, thanks to the Indians' timidity and the Britons' bigotry, but Adela does meet Cyril Fielding, headmaster of Chandrapore's government-run college for Indians. Fielding invites Adela and Mrs. Moore to a tea party with him and a Hindu-Brahmin professor named Narayan Godbole. On Adela's request, he extends his invitation to Dr. Aziz. At Fielding's tea party, everyone has a good time conversing about India, and Fielding and Aziz even become great friends. Aziz buoyantly promises to take Mrs. Moore and Adela to see the Marabar Caves, a distant cave complex that everyone talks about but no one seems to actually visit. Aziz's Marabar invitation was one of those casual promises that people often make and never intend to keep. Ronny Heaslop arrives and rudely breaks up the party. Aziz mistakenly believes that the women are really offended that he has not followed through on his promise and arranges the outing at great expense to himself. Fielding and Godbole were supposed to accompany the little expedition, but they miss the train. Aziz and the women begin to explore the caves. In the first cave, however, Mrs. Moore is overcome with claustrophobia, for the cave is dark and Aziz's retinue has followed her in. The press of people nearly smothers her. But worse than the claustrophobia is the echo. No matter what sound one makes, the echo is always "Boum." Disturbed by the echo, Mrs. Moore declines to continue exploring. So Adela and Aziz, accompanied by a single guide, a local man, climb on up the hill to the next cluster of caves. As Aziz helps Adela up the hill, she innocently asks him whether he has more than one wife. Disconcerted by the bluntness of the remark, he ducks into a cave to compose himself. When he comes out, he finds the guide sitting alone outside the caves. The guide says Adela has gone into one of the caves by herself. Aziz looks for her in vain. Deciding she is lost, he angrily punches the guide, who runs away. Aziz looks around again and discovers Adela's field-glasses (similar to binoculars) lying broken on the ground. He puts them in his pocket. Then Aziz looks down the hill and sees Adela speaking to another young Englishwoman, Miss Derek, who has arrived with Fielding in a car. Aziz runs down the hill and greets Fielding effusively, but Miss Derek and Adela have already driven off without a word of explanation. Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Aziz return to Chandrapore on the train. Then the blow falls. At the train station, Dr. Aziz is arrested and charged with sexually assaulting Adela in a cave. She reports the alleged incident to the British authorities. The run-up to Aziz's trial for attempted sexual assault releases the racial tensions between the British and the Indians. Adela accuses Aziz only of trying to touch her. She says that he followed her into the cave and tried to grab her, and that she fended him off by swinging her field glasses at him. She remembers him grabbing the glasses and the strap breaking, which allowed her to get away. The only actual evidence the British have is the field glasses in the possession of Dr. Aziz. Despite this, the British colonists firmly believe that Aziz is guilty; at the back of all their minds is the conviction that all darker peoples lust after white women. They are stunned when Fielding proclaims his belief in Aziz's innocence. Fielding is ostracized and condemned as a blood-traitor. But the Indians, who consider the assault allegation a fraud aimed at ruining their community's reputation, welcome him. During the weeks before the trial, Mrs. Moore is unexpectedly apathetic and irritable. Her experience in the cave seems to have ruined her faith in humanity. Although she curtly professes her belief in Aziz's innocence, she does nothing to help him. Ronny, alarmed by his mother's assertion that Aziz is innocent, decides to arrange for her return by ship to England before she can testify to this effect at the trial. Mrs. Moore dies during the voyage. Her absence from India becomes a major issue at the trial, where Aziz's legal defenders assert that her testimony alone, had it been available, would have proven the accused's innocence. After an initial period of fever and weeping, Adela becomes confused as to Aziz's guilt. At the trial, she is asked point-blank whether Aziz sexually assaulted her. She asks for a moment to think before replying. She has a vision of the cave in that moment, and it turns out that Adela had, while in the cave, received a shock similar to Mrs. Moore's. The echo had disconcerted her so much that she temporarily became unhinged. She ran around the cave, fled down the hill, and finally sped off with Miss Derek. At the time, Adela mistakenly interpreted her shock as an assault by Aziz, who personifies the India that has stripped her of her psychological innocence, but he was never there. She admits that she was mistaken. The case is dismissed. (Note that in the 1913 draft of the novel EM Forster originally had Aziz guilty of the assault and found guilty in the court, but later changed this in the 1924 draft to create a more ambiguous ending). All the English are shocked and infuriated by what they view as Adela's betrayal of the white race. Ronny Heaslop breaks off their engagement. Adela stays at Fielding's house until her passage on a boat to England is arranged. After explaining to Fielding that the echo was the cause of the whole business, she departs India, never to return. Although he is free and vindicated, Aziz is angry and bitter that his friend, Fielding, would befriend Adela after she nearly ruined his life. Believing it to be the gentlemanly thing to do, Fielding convinces Aziz not to seek monetary redress from her. The two men's friendship suffers in consequence, and Fielding soon departs for England. Aziz believes that he is leaving to marry Adela for her money. Bitter at his friend's perceived betrayal, he vows never again to befriend a white person. Aziz moves to the Hindu-ruled state of Mau and begins a new life. Two years later, Fielding returns to India and to Aziz. His wife is Stella, Mrs. Moore's daughter from a second marriage. Aziz, now the Raja's chief physician, at first persists in his anger against his old friend. But in time, he comes to respect and love Fielding again. However, he does not give up his dream of a free and united India. In the novel's last sentences, he explains that he and Fielding cannot be friends, at least not until India is free of the British Raj. Even the earth and the sky seem to say, "Not yet."
113470	/m/0sxp_	A Room with a View	E. M. Forster	1908	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first part of the novel is set in Florence, Italy, and describes a young English woman's confusion at the Pensione Bertolini over her feelings for an Englishman staying at the same hotel. Lucy Honeychurch is touring Italy with her overbearing older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett, and the novel opens with their complaints about the hotel, "The Pension Bertolini." Their primary concern is that although rooms with a view of the River Arno have been promised for each of them, their rooms instead look over a courtyard. A Mr. Emerson interrupts their "peevish wrangling," offering to swap rooms as he and his son, George Emerson, look over the Arno. This behavior causes Miss Bartlett some consternation, as it appears impolite. Without letting Lucy speak, Miss Bartlett refuses the offer, looking down on the Emersons because of their unconventional behaviour and thinking it would place her under an "unseemly obligation" towards them. However, another guest at the pension, an Anglican clergyman named Mr. Beebe, persuades the pair to accept the offer, assuring Miss Bartlett that Mr. Emerson only meant to be kind. The next day, Lucy embarks on a tour of Florence with another guest, Miss Eleanor Lavish, a novelist who shows Lucy the back streets of Florence, takes her Baedeker guidebook and subsequently loses her in Santa Croce, where Lucy meets the Emersons again. Although their manners are awkward and they are deemed socially unacceptable by the other guests, Lucy likes them and continues to run into them in Florence. One afternoon Lucy witnesses a murder in Florence. George Emerson happens to be nearby and catches her when she faints. Lucy asks George to retrieve some photographs of hers that happen to be near the murder site. George, out of confusion, throws her photographs into the river because they were spotted with blood. Lucy observes how boyish George is. As they stop to look over the River Arno before making their way back to the hotel, they have an intimate conversation. After this, Lucy decides to avoid George, partly because she is confused by her feelings and partly to keep her cousin happy—Miss Bartlett is wary of the eccentric Emersons, particularly after a comment made by another clergyman, Mr. Eager, that Mr. Emerson "murdered his wife in the sight of God." Later on in the week, a party made up of Beebe, Eager, the Emersons, Miss Lavish, Miss Bartlett and Lucy Honeychurch make their way to Fiesole, in carriages driven by Italians. The driver is permitted to invite a woman he claims is his sister onto the box of the carriage, and when he kisses her, Mr. Eager promptly forces the lady to get off the carriage box. Mr. Emerson remarks how it is defeat rather than victory to part two people in love. In the fields, Lucy searches for Mr. Beebe, and asks in poor Italian for the driver to show her the way. Misunderstanding, he leads her to a field where George stands. George is overcome by Lucy's beauty among a field of violets and kisses her, but they are interrupted by Lucy's cousin, who is outraged. Lucy promises Miss Bartlett that she will not tell her mother of the "insult" George has paid her because Miss Bartlett fears she will be blamed. The two women leave for Rome the next day before Lucy is able to say goodbye to George. In Rome, Lucy spends time with Cecil Vyse, whom she knew in England. Cecil proposes to Lucy twice in Italy; she rejects him both times. As Part Two begins, Lucy has returned to Surrey, England to her family home, Windy Corner. Cecil proposes yet again at Windy Corner, and this time she accepts. Cecil is a sophisticated and "superior" Londoner who is desirable in terms of rank and class, even though he despises country society; he is also somewhat of a comic figure in the novel, as he gives himself airs and is quite pretentious. The vicar, Mr. Beebe, announces that new tenants have leased a local cottage; the new arrivals turn out to be the Emersons, who have been told of the available cottage at a chance meeting with Cecil; the young man brought them to the village as a comeuppance to the cottage's landlord, whom Cecil thinks to be a snob. Fate takes an ironic turn as Lucy's brother, Freddy, meets George and invites him to bathe in a nearby pond. Freddy, George and Mr Beebe go to the pond, in the woods, take off their clothes and swim. They enjoy themselves so much they end up running around the pond and through the bushes, until Lucy, her mother, and Cecil arrive, having taken a short-cut through the woods. Freddy later invites George to play tennis at Windy Corner. Although Lucy is initially mortified at the thought of facing both George and Cecil (who is also visiting Windy Corner that Sunday), she resolves to be gracious. Cecil annoys everyone by reading aloud from a light romance novel that contains a scene suspiciously reminiscent of when George kissed Lucy in Florence. George catches Lucy alone in the garden and kisses her again. Lucy realizes that the novel is by Miss Lavish (the writer-acquaintance from Florence) and that Charlotte must thus have told her about the kiss. Furious with Charlotte for betraying her secret, Lucy forces her cousin to watch as she tells George to leave and never return. George argues with her, saying that Cecil only sees her as an "object for the shelf" and will never love her enough to grant her independence, while George loves her for who she is. Lucy is moved but remains firm. Later that evening, after Cecil again rudely declines to play tennis, Lucy sours on Cecil and immediately breaks off her engagement. She decides to flee to Greece with acquaintances from her trip to Florence, but shortly before her departure she accidentally encounters Mr. Emerson senior. He is not aware that Lucy has broken her engagement with Cecil, and Lucy cannot lie to the old man. Mr. Emerson forces Lucy to admit out loud that she has been in love with his son George all along. The novel ends in Florence, where George and Lucy have eloped without her mother's consent. Although Lucy "had alienated Windy Corner, perhaps for ever," the story ends with the promise of lifelong love for both her and George. In some books, an appendix to the book is given entitled "A View without a Room," written by Forster in 1958 as to what occurred between Lucy and George after the events of the novel. It is Forster's afterthought of the novel, and he quite clearly states that "I cannot think where George and Lucy live." They were quite comfortable up until the end of the war, with Charlotte Bartlett leaving them all her money in her will, but World War I ruined their happiness according to Forster. George became a conscientous objector, lost his government job but was given non-combatant duties to avoid prison, leaving Mrs Honeychurch deeply upset with her son-in-law. Mr Emerson died during the course of the war, shortly after having an argument with the police about Lucy continuing to play Beethoven during the war. Eventually they had three children, two girls and a boy, and moved to Carshalton from Highgate to find a home. Despite them wanting to move into Windy Corner after the death of Mrs Honeychurch, Freddy sold the house to support his family as he was "an unsuccessful but prolific doctor." After the outbreak of World War II, George immediately enlisted as he saw the need to stop Hitler and the Nazi regime but he unfortunately was not faithful to Lucy during his time at war. Lucy was left homeless after her flat in Watford was bombed and the same happened to her married daughter in Nuneaton. George rose to the rank of corporal but was taken prisoner by the Italians in Africa. Once Italy fell George returned to Florence finding it "in a mess" but he was unable to find the Pension Bertolini, stating "the View was still there and that the room must be there, too, but could not be found." He ends by stating that George and Lucy await World War III, but with no word on where they live, for even he does not know.
123422	/m/0x26k	Alas, Babylon	Pat Frank	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Randy (Randolph) Bragg, the protagonist, is a man who dabbles at law and lives a life with little purpose. He lives in the small Central Florida town of Fort Repose, which was founded by an ancestor during the 19th century. The scion of a once prominent Central Florida political family, Bragg is a former active duty U.S. Army infantry officer and Korean War veteran whose own foray into public life was a run for the Florida State Legislature which proved disastrous because of his open support for racial desegregation based on the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Randy's life appears to be drifting down a somewhat aimless path when he receives a telegram from his older brother, Colonel Mark Bragg, an Air Force Intelligence officer currently serving with the Strategic Air Command (SAC) at its headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base outside of Omaha, Nebraska. In the telegram, Mark informs Randy that he is sending his wife and two children to stay in Fort Repose, and that he wants to meet with Randy during a brief layover he will have at McCoy Air Force Base, southeast of downtown Orlando. The telegram ends the message with an ominous code: "Alas Babylon", a Biblical reference that the Bragg brothers employed throughout their lives as a euphemism for disaster. Randy drives to McCoy AFB and initially meets with another old friend, an Air Force officer and pilot named Paul Hart; Randy then meets Mark's arriving plane. While the military jet is refueled, Mark explains to Randy the background for sending the urgent message. The Soviets evidently perceive a temporary weakness in U.S. and Allied defense posture and are believed to be staging an attempt to take advantage of the situation. A defecting Soviet military officer has brought the Soviet "war plan" to the West. Mark believes the Soviet plan is flawed and that the West would ultimately prevail, but danger lies in Moscow's belief that they can succeed, which emboldens them to risk war. Mark informs Randy that he is flying his family down to Florida to stay with him indefinitely - or until Mark feels the threat has passed. The brothers soon say their goodbyes, and Randy realizes that he may never see Mark again. Heading back to Fort Repose, Randy gets cash from the bank. He also privately gives warning of the impending war to those people of Fort Repose whom he believes to be his friends, including Dr. Daniel Gunn (perhaps Randy's closest friend in Fort Repose) as well as Elizabeth "Lib" McGovern, a young woman for whom Randy has come to care deeply. During the early hours of the next morning, Randy drives to Orlando Municipal Airport to meet his sister-in-law (Helen) and her young son and daughter (Ben Franklin and Peyton) arriving from Omaha. Meanwhile, in the Eastern Mediterranean, a U.S. Navy carrier task force is being shadowed by unidentified (and presumably hostile) aircraft. The aircraft carrier USS Saratoga launches a fighter aircraft to intercept, identify and (if necessary) shoot down the "bogie". U.S. Navy Ensign "Pee Wee" Cobb, one of the most junior pilots in Saratogas air wing, is flying the interceptor, an F11F Tiger jet fighter, off the coast of Syria (a Soviet ally) and locates the unidentified aircraft. He is given permission to pursue and attack. Cobb closes on the "bogie" and fires an AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missile, but the missile goes off course because the enemy plane shuts off its engines, and the missile hits an ammunition depot at Latakia, Syria, resulting in an explosion that may or may not have included nuclear devices. This event becomes the apparent casus belli for the Soviet Union to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States and her allies. Early the following morning, Mark is on duty at SAC headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, known as "The Hole". He and fellow officers express concern that reports of unidentified submarines ("skunks") approaching the US Eastern seaboard overnight, coupled with Moscow's unsettling silence following the attack at Latakia may signal the Kremlin is preparing to launch an attack. Mark recommends to SAC's commander, General Hawker, that SAC ask Washington to transfer the direct authority to use nuclear weapons, since the weapons-release process takes at least a minute and a half, and the U.S. expects only about a fifteen minute warning if the Soviet Union were to attack. This is granted. Minutes later, radar stations report what appear to be inbound Soviet missiles from over the Arctic, as well as possible submarine-launched missiles heading toward the East Coast. Mark realizes what he feared most has arrived and turns to walk back to his office. General Hawker orders all SAC facilities to go immediately to Red Alert. As Mark leaves, General Hawker says to him, "Thanks for the 95 seconds." In Fort Repose, Randy and his house guests are awakened by shaking due to the bombing of Miami and nearby Homestead Air Force Base. While looking at the glow to the south caused by the destruction of Miami, the family sees the nuclear explosion and mushroom cloud that destroys Tampa and MacDill Air Force Base, and which temporarily blinds Randy's niece, Peyton. These events culminate in what will later be called "The Day" by the residents of Fort Repose . . . in effect, a one-day war. The effects of "The Day" on Fort Repose are varied. Tourists are trapped in their hotels and the local bank manager tries to get instructions from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, via telegraph lines routed through Jacksonville (who already announced no messages will be sent North). But Jacksonville, as the home of Naval Station Mayport, Naval Air Station Jacksonville and Naval Air Station Cecil Field, is then destroyed by a follow-on Soviet nuclear strike and no advice is available. The local disc jockey at Fort Repose's AM radio station nervously reads instructions on the CONELRAD system. The only reliable method of news from the outside world is a shortwave radio receiver owned by one of Randy's neighbors, Sam Hazzard, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral. Convicts escape from jails and prisons; the local retirement homes are filled with panicked people; and a run on the bank results in the bank closing and local merchants selling out of nearly all supplies. As the effects of the disintegration of society get worse, many prominent people fail. The local banker, Edgar Quisenberry, commits suicide once he realizes money is useless. Randy's political rival, Porky Logan, who obtained looted radioactive jewelry near Miami, becomes seriously ill with radiation sickness. Randy organizes his immediate neighbors to provide housing, food, and water for themselves, organizes the community into self-defense, guides his family, and helps find salt and new supplies of food when they grow short. He fights the "highwaymen" who murder residents and seriously assault Dr. Gunn in their search for narcotics and goods. Some in Fort Repose discover faith; others degenerate into drunkenness. Randy eventually learns that, as an active Army Reserve officer, he has the legal right to exercise martial law — shortly after he had already begun to do so, albeit in a de facto mode. The authority comes from an order of acting Chief Executive Josephine Vanbruuker-Brown (who prior to The Day had been the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and is believed to be governing the country from Denver, Colorado) for any surviving active duty, reserve or national guard officers to form local militias. When Air Force helicopters finally make contact with Fort Repose again, and offer to move the families under Randy's care out of the area, none leave; they have come to believe that the life they have built in Fort Repose is at least as good, if not better, than the life they would face outside. The Air Force officer commanding the element of helicopters is Randy's old friend, Paul Hart. He reveals that Denver is now the national capital and that the United States won the war - but at a tremendous cost: the large-scale death and destruction suffered by the United States have left it a secondary (perhaps even tertiary) world power, and is the recipient of aid from third world countries such as Brazil and Venezuela. He also advises Randy's sister-in-law, Helen, that Mark was killed in the initial exchange that destroyed Offutt AFB and Omaha, leaving her free to marry Dr. Gunn, with whom she has now fallen in love. Paul also explains that nothing is left of Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa, and Orlando and that there are now two huge craters where McCoy AFB and downtown Orlando once stood. He also informs them that it will likely take a thousand years to get the contaminated areas decontaminated and habitable again. The book ends with the central characters bravely facing the "thousand year night" ahead of them.
125299	/m/0xnql	Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures				 Science and Health encapsulates the teachings of Christian Science and Christian Scientists often call it their "textbook." At Sunday services, passages from the book are read along with passages from the Bible. Eddy called the two books Christian Science's "dual and impersonal pastor."
125588	/m/0xr69	Sister Carrie	Theodore Dreiser	1900	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dissatisfied with life in her rural Wisconsin home, 18-year-old Caroline "Sister Carrie" Meeber takes the train to Chicago, where her older sister Minnie, and her husband Sven Hanson, have agreed to take her in. On the train, Carrie meets Charles Drouet, a traveling salesman, who is attracted to her because of her simple beauty and unspoiled manner. They exchange contact information, but upon discovering the "steady round of toil" and somber atmosphere at her sister's flat, she writes to Drouet and discourages him from calling on her there. Carrie soon embarks on a quest for work to pay rent to her sister and her husband, and takes a job running a machine in a shoe factory. Before long, however, she is shocked by the coarse manners of both the male and female factory workers, and the physical demands of the job, as well as the squalid factory conditions, begin to take their toll. She also senses Minnie and Sven's disapproval of her interest in Chicago's recreational opportunities, particularly the theatre. One day, after an illness that costs her job, she encounters Drouet on a downtown street. Once again taken by her beauty, and moved by her poverty, he encourages her to dine with him, where, over sirloin and asparagus, he persuades her to leave her sister and move in with him. To press his case, he slips Carrie two ten dollar bills, opening a vista of material possibilities to her. The next day, he rebuffs her feeble attempts to return the money, taking her shopping at a Chicago department store and securing a jacket she covets and some shoes. That night, she writes a good-bye note to Minnie and moves in with Drouet. Drouet installs her in a much larger apartment, and their relationship intensifies as Minnie dreams about her sister's fall from innocence. She acquires a sophisticated wardrobe and, through his offhand comments about attractive women, sheds her provincial mannerisms, even as she struggles with the moral implications of being a kept woman. By the time Drouet introduces Carrie to George Hurstwood, the manager of Fitzgerald and Moy's – a respectable bar that Drouet describes as a "way-up, swell place" – her material appearance has improved considerably. Hurstwood, unhappy with and distant from his social-climbing wife and children, instantly becomes infatuated with Carrie’s youth and beauty, and before long they start an affair, communicating and meeting secretly in the expanding, anonymous city. One night, Drouet casually agrees to find an actress to play a key role in an amateur theatrical presentation of Augustin Daly’s melodrama, “Under the Gaslight,” for his local chapter of the Elks. Upon returning home to Carrie, he encourages her to take the part of the heroine, Laura. Unknown to Drouet, Carrie long has harbored theatrical ambitions and has a natural aptitude for imitation and expressing pathos. The night of the production – which Hurstwood attends at Drouet’s invitation – both men are moved to even greater displays of affection by Carrie’s stunning performance. The next day, the affair is uncovered: Drouet discovers he has been cuckolded, Carrie learns that Hurstwood is married, and Hurstwood’s wife, Julia, learns from an acquaintance that Hurstwood has been out driving with another woman and deliberately excluded her from the Elks theatre night. After a night of drinking, and despairing at his wife’s financial demands and Carrie’s rejection, Hurstwood stumbles upon a large amount of cash in the unlocked safe in Fitzgerald and Moy's offices. In a moment of poor judgment, he succumbs to the temptation to embezzle a large sum of money. Under the pretext of Drouet’s sudden illness, he lures Carrie onto a train and escapes with her to Canada. Once they arrive in Montreal, Hurstwood’s guilty conscience – and a private eye – induce him to return most of the stolen funds, but he realizes that he cannot return to Chicago. Hurstwood mollifies Carrie by agreeing to marry her, and the couple move to New York City. In New York, Hurstwood and Carrie rent a flat where they live as George and Carrie Wheeler. Hurstwood buys a minority interest in a saloon and, at first, is able to provide Carrie with a satisfactory – if not lavish – standard of living. The couple grow distant, however, as Hurstwood abandons any pretense of fine manners toward Carrie, and she realizes that Hurstwood no longer is the suave, powerful manager of his Chicago days. Carrie’s dissatisfaction only increases when she meets Robert Ames, a bright young scholar from Indiana and her neighbor’s cousin, who introduces her to the idea that great art, rather than showy materialism, is worthy of admiration. After only a few years, the saloon’s landlord sells the property and Hurstwood’s business partner expresses his intent to terminate the partnership. Too arrogant to accept most of the job opportunities available to him, Hurstwood soon discovers that his savings are running out and urges Carrie to economize, which she finds humiliating and distasteful. As Hurstwood lounges about, overwhelmed by apathy and foolishly gambling away most of his savings, Carrie turns to New York’s theatres for employment and becomes a chorus girl. Once again, her aptitude for theatre serves her well, and, as the rapidly aging Hurstwood declines into obscurity, Carrie begins to rise from chorus girl to small speaking roles, and establishes a friendship with another chorus girl, Lola Osborne, who begins to urge Carrie to move in with her. In a final attempt to prove himself useful, Hurstwood becomes a scab driving a Brooklyn streetcar during a streetcar operator’s strike. His ill-fated venture, which lasts only two days, prompts Carrie to leave him; in her farewell note, she encloses twenty dollars. Hurstwood ultimately joins the homeless of New York, taking odd jobs, falling ill with pneumonia, and finally becoming a beggar. Reduced to standing in line for bread and charity, he commits suicide in a flophouse. Meanwhile, Carrie achieves stardom, but finds that money and fame do not satisfy her longings or bring her happiness and that nothing will.
129394	/m/0yy8n	The Accidental Tourist	Anne Tyler	1985-08-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in Baltimore, Maryland, the plot revolves around Macon Leary, a writer of travel guides whose son has been killed in a shooting at a fast-food restaurant. He and his wife Sarah, separately lost in grief, find their marriage disintegrating until she eventually moves out. When he becomes incapacitated due to a fall, he returns to the family home to stay with his eccentric siblings—sister Rose and brothers Porter and Charles—whose odd habits include alphabetizing the groceries in the kitchen cabinets and ignoring the ringing telephone. When his publisher, Julian, comes to visit, Julian finds himself attracted to Rose. They eventually marry. Macon hires Muriel Pritchett, a quirky young woman with a sickly son, to train his unruly dog, and soon finds himself drifting into a relationship with the two of them. When his wife Sarah becomes aware of the situation, she decides they should reconcile, forcing him to make a difficult decision about his future.
133012	/m/0_3ph	Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal	Christopher Moore	2002	{"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0246p": "Comic fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Biff has been resurrected in the present day to complete missing parts of the Bible, supposedly under the watchful eye of the angel Raziel, who turns out to be more interested in soap operas and Spiderman on the television in their hotel. Biff is made to write down his account of the decades missing from Jesus' life. During these years he and Joshua (which, as Biff points out, is the original Hebrew version of the Hellenized "Jesus", and thus in Galilee Jesus was called Joshua Bar Joseph) travel to the East to seek the Three Wise Men (a magician, a Buddhist, and a Hindu Yogi) who attended Joshua's birth so that he may learn how to become the Messiah. Over a span of roughly twenty years, Joshua learns a great deal about human nature, world religions, and how he is able to translate those into his teachings. At each point, Joshua surpasses the abilities of the wise men by incorporating his own beliefs into theirs. The story takes a fantastical twist on Joshua's miracles as well: he learns to multiply food from one of the Wise Men and learns to become invisible from another; however, his ability to resurrect the dead figures strongly into his first meeting with Biff when both boys are six years old. Biff, for himself, is sarcastic, practical and endlessly loyal. While it would seem that such traits, as well as the fact that he was the Messiah's best friend for nearly thirty years, would ensure his place in the Gospels, there are reasons, as revealed in the final chapter, why Biff was essentially "cut out" of the story. The recounting of Jesus' human and godlike qualities, combined with Biff's earthy debauchery, leads to its all-too-familiar tragic ending, but humorously explains many things: the origins of judo (a pun that is definitely intended), why Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas, and how rabbits became associated with Easter. The Three Wise Men, Mary Magdalene (on whom Biff has a childhood crush), Joseph, and Mary (Joshua's mother, whom Biff plans to marry if anything happens to Joseph) all have their part in the life and times of Joshua. Mary Magdalene is depicted as harboring love for Joshua, though in Moore's version Joshua remains chaste, as per Raziel's instructions. This in itself leads to some of Biff's debauchery, as he is literally attempting to go through enough harlots for both of them. Biff himself loves "Maggie" with the same intensity, leading to a revolving love triangle. At the conclusion of the novel, Biff completes "The Gospel According to Biff", giving it to Raziel, who allows Biff to finally leave the hotel room. As Biff exits into the hallway he is surprised to find a resurrected Maggie exiting the room opposite, having finished her own Gospel weeks ago. The two embrace, informed by an angel that it is "the will of the Son" that they be together. The two leave together, Biff content to be with Maggie even though he is her second choice.
133721	/m/0_bnp	The Remains of the Day	Kazuo Ishiguro	1989-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Remains of the Day tells, in first person, the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (mentioned in increasing detail in flashbacks). The novel begins with Stevens receiving a letter from a former colleague, Miss Kenton, describing her married life, which he believes hints at an unhappy marriage. The receipt of the letter coincides with Stevens having the opportunity to revisit this once-cherished relationship, if only under the guise of investigating the possibility of re-employment. Stevens's new employer, a wealthy American named Mr Farraday, encourages Stevens to borrow his car to take a well-earned break, a "motoring trip". As he sets out, Stevens has the opportunity to reflect on his immutable loyalty to Lord Darlington, on the meaning of the term "dignity", and even on his relationship with his own late father. Ultimately Stevens is forced to ponder the true nature of his relationship with Miss Kenton. As the book progresses, increasing evidence of Miss Kenton's one-time love for Stevens, and of his for her, is revealed. Working together during the years leading up to the Second World War, Stevens and Miss Kenton fail to admit their true feelings towards each other. All of their recollected conversations show a professional friendship which at times came close to crossing the line into romance, but never dared to do so. Miss Kenton, it later emerges, has been married for over 20 years and therefore is no longer Miss Kenton but has become Mrs Benn. She admits to wondering occasionally what a life with Stevens might have been like, but she has come to love her husband and is looking forward to the birth of their first grandchild. Stevens muses over lost opportunities, both with Miss Kenton and with his long-time employer, Lord Darlington. At the end of the novel, Stevens instead focuses on the "remains of [his] day", referring to his future service with Mr Farraday.
133874	/m/0_d5g	Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1866	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Raskolnikov, a conflicted former student, lives in a tiny, rented room in Saint Petersburg. He refuses all help, even from his friend Razumikhin, and devises a plan to murder and to rob an unpleasant elderly pawn-broker and money-lender, Alyona Ivanovna. His motivation comes from the overwhelming sense that he is predetermined to kill the old woman by some power outside of himself. While still considering the plan, Raskolnikov makes the acquaintance of Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, a drunkard who recently squandered his family's little wealth. He also receives a letter from his sister and mother, speaking of their coming visit to Saint Petersburg, and his sister's sudden marriage plans which they plan on discussing upon their arrival. After much deliberation, Raskolnikov sneaks into Alyona Ivanovna's apartment where he murders her with an axe. He also kills her half-sister, Lizaveta, who happens to stumble upon the scene of the crime. Shaken by his actions, Raskolnikov manages to only steal a handful of items and a small purse, leaving much of the pawn-broker's wealth untouched. Raskolnikov then flees and, due to a series of coincidences, manages to leave unseen and undetected. After the bungled murder, Raskolnikov falls into a feverish state and begins to worry obsessively over the murder. He hides the stolen items and purse under a rock, and tries desperately to clean his clothing of any blood or evidence. He falls into a fever later that day, though not before calling briefly on his old friend Razumikhin. As the fever comes and goes in the following days, Raskolnikov behaves as though he wishes to betray himself. He shows strange reactions to whoever mentions the murder of the pawn-broker, which is now known about and talked of in the city. In his delirium, Raskolnikov wanders Saint Petersburg, drawing more and more attention to himself and his relation to the crime. In one of his walks through the city, he sees Marmeladov, who has been struck mortally by a carriage in the streets. Rushing to help him, Raskolnikov gives the remainder of his money to the man's family, which includes his teenage daughter, Sonya, who has been forced to become a prostitute to support her family. In the meantime, Raskolnikov's mother, Pulkheria Alexandrovna, and his sister, Avdotya Romanovna (or Dounia) have arrived in the city. Avdotya had been working as a governess for the Svidrigaïlov family until this point, but was forced out of the position by the head of the family, Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigaïlov. Svidrigaïlov, a married man, was attracted to Avdotya's physical beauty and her feminine qualities, and offered her riches and elopement. Avdotya, having none of this, fled the family and lost her source of income, only to meet Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, a man of modest income and rank. Luzhin proposes to marry Avdotya, thereby securing her and her mother's financial safety, provided she accept him quickly and without question. It is for these very reasons that the two of them come to Saint Petersburg, both to meet Luzhin there and to attain Raskolnikov's approval. Luzhin, however, calls on Raskolnikov while he is in a delirious state and presents himself as a foolish, self-righteous and presuming man. Raskolnikov dismisses him immediately as a potential husband for his sister, and realizes that she only accepted him to help her family. As the novel progresses, Raskolnikov is introduced to the detective Porfiry, who begins to suspect him for the murder purely on psychological grounds. At the same time, a chaste relationship develops between Raskolnikov and Sonya. Sonya, though a prostitute, is full of Christian virtue and is only driven into the profession by her family's poverty. Meanwhile, Razumikhin and Raskolnikov manage to keep Avdotya from continuing her relationship with Luzhin, whose true character is exposed to be conniving and base. At this point, Svidrigaïlov appears on the scene, having come from the province to Petersburg, almost solely to seek out Avdotya. He reveals that his wife is dead, and that he is willing to pay Avdotya a vast sum of money in exchange for nothing. She, upon hearing the news, refuses flat out, suspecting him of treachery. As Raskolnikov and Porfiry continue to meet, Raskolnikov's motives for the crime become exposed. Porfiry becomes increasingly certain of the man's guilt, but has no concrete evidence or witnesses with which to back up this suspicion. Furthermore, another man admits to committing the crime under questioning and arrest. However, Raskolnikov's nerves continue to wear thin, and he is constantly struggling with the idea of confessing, though he knows that he can never be truly convicted. He turns to Sonya for support and confesses his crime to her. By coincidence, Svidrigaïlov has taken up residence in a room next to Sonya's and overhears the entire confession. When the two men meet face to face, Svidrigaïlov acknowledges this fact, and suggests that he may use it against him, should he need to. Svidrigaïlov also speaks of his own past, and Raskolnikov grows to suspect that the rumors about his having committed several murders are true. In a later conversation with Dounia, Svidrigaïlov denies that he had a hand in the death of his wife. Raskolnikov is at this point completely torn; he is urged by Sonya to confess, and Svidrigaïlov's testimony could potentially convict him. Furthermore, Porfiry confronts Raskolnikov with his suspicions and assures him confession would substantially lighten his sentence. Meantime, Svidrigaïlov attempts to seduce Avdotya, but when he realizes that she will never love him, he lets her go. He then spends a night in confusion and in the morning shoots himself. This same morning, Raskolnikov goes again to Sonya, who again urges him to confess and to clear his conscience. He makes his way to the police station, where he is met by the news of Svidrigaïlov's suicide. He hesitates a moment, thinking again that he might get away with a perfect crime, but is persuaded by Sonya to confess. The epilogue tells of how Raskolnikov is sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia, where Sonya follows him. Avdotya and Razumikhin marry and are left in a happy position by the end of the novel, while Pulkheria, Raskolnikov's mother, falls ill and dies, unable to cope with her son's situation. Raskolnikov himself struggles in Siberia. It is only after some time in prison that his redemption and moral regeneration begin under Sonya's loving influence.
140648	/m/011k8y	The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul	Douglas Adams	1988-10-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 * The central premise of the book is that gods are created by humans' necessity and desire for them, and, once worshipped by man, don't disappear but remain on earth forever. Because nobody worships them, many become destitute, like the tramps whom Dirk witnesses entering Valhalla. * Odin makes Thor accidentally transmogrify objects when he gets angry, in a bid to delay him getting to Norway and finding the Draycotts' contract. * The eagle that pursues Dirk and Thor is the transformed jet fighter that tries to stop him from getting to Norway. Thor's inability to fly to Norway using his hammer is why he needs to visit the airport at the opening of the novel. * Odin makes contact with the Draycotts after seeing one of Cynthia Draycott's adverts for a soft drink, which seemingly involve various gods promoting the drink; one of these adverts is seen when Dirk confronts Anstey's son early in the book. * Odin, like all the gods, is naive and quite literally unworldly; this is how the Draycotts are able to take advantage of him. * One of Dirk's chief characteristics in the novel is guilt—about the fridge and about the death of Anstey, whom he should have protected. At the end of the novel, Dirk's fridge generates a new god of Guilt; it is implied this stops Toe Rag and the green monster from preventing Thor from finally retrieving the contract in Norway. * The gods' world exists in parallel with our own – where St Pancras railway station is Valhalla.
140913	/m/011lms	Njáls saga	Traditional			 The first episode covers the period from the betrothal of Hrútr Herjólfsson and Unnr to the ugly legacy of their divorce. We are shown Hrútr's exploits in Norway, where he gains honour at court and in battle, but he ruins his subsequent marriage by becoming the lover of the aging queen mother Gunnhildr. When he denies having a woman in Iceland, she curses him so that he is unable to consummate his marriage. After Unnr divorces him, he retains the dowry by challenging Unnr's father, Mörðr, to combat. Mörðr refuses, as he knows Hrútr's reputation and that he will lose the fight. Because of this, Hrútr keeps the dowry. While this conforms to Icelandic law, it offends justice. The first chapter gives one of Hrútr's insights when he comments of his beautiful niece, "I do not know how thieves' eyes came into the family". The saga next follows this niece, Hallgerðr, through her first two marriages. Both husbands die by the axe of Hallgerðr's doting, brutish foster-father,Þjóstólfr. Hallgerðr provokes the first death but not the second, although it follows from a disagreement between her and her husband. It is Hrútr who, despite the family ties, avenges the death by killing Þjóstólfr. Gunnarr Hámundarson and Njáll Þorgeirsson are now introduced. Gunnarr is a man of outstanding physical prowess, and Njáll has outstanding sagacity; they are close friends. When Gunnarr is obliged to revive Unnr's dowry-claim against Hrútr, Njáll gives him the means to do so. By skillful play-acting, Gunnarr begins the legal process in Hrútr's own house. He follows Hrútr's doubtful example when it comes to court, and Hrútr, who has previously won by threat of violence, loses to a threat of violence. Despite his humiliation, he sees future links with Gunnarr. This comes about when Gunnarr returns with honours from a trip to Scandinavia. He goes to the Althing – the annual assembly – in splendour, and meets Hallgerðr. They are impressed with one another and are soon betrothed, despite Hrútr's warnings about Hallgerðr's character, and Njáll's misgivings. Hrútr and Njáll are proven right when Hallgerðr clashes with Njál's wife, Bergþóra. Hallgerðr charms a number of dubious characters into killing members of Njáll's household and the spirited Bergþóra arranges vengeance. After each killing, their husbands make financial settlements according to the status of the victims. The fifth victim is Þórðr, foster-father of Njáll's sons. Þráinn Sigfússon, Gunnarr's uncle and Hallgerðr's son-in-law, accompanies the killers. When the feud ends and settlements are made, Þráinn’s presence at that killing later causes conflict. Hallgerðr now uses one of her slaves, Melkólfr, to burgle the home of a churlish man named Otkell. Gunnarr immediately seeks to make amends, but his handsome offers are not accepted. A lawsuit is started against him which, with Njáll's help, he wins, gaining great honour. However, while remonstrating with Hallgerðr about the burglary, Gunnarr slaps her. This is followed by Otkell accidentally wounding Gunnarr. Insult follows injury and Gunnarr reluctantly goes to avenge himself. With belated help from his brother Kolskeggr, he kills Otkell and his companions. Under Njáll's influence a new settlement is arranged, and Gunnarr's reputation grows. Njáll warns him that this will be the start of his career of killings. Next, Gunnarr accepts a challenge to a horse-fight from a man called Starkaðr. In the course of the fight, his opponents cheat, and Gunnarr find himself in a fresh squabble. Njáll tries to mediate but Þorgeir Starkaðsson refuses to accept it. On a journey with his two brothers, Gunnarr is ambushed by Starkaðr and his allies. In the battle, fourteen attackers and Gunnarr's brother Hjörtr are killed. Worming through all this is Unnr's son, Mörðr Valgarðsson. Mörðr envies and hates Gunnarr, and uses other men to attain his aims. He has learned that Njáll prophesied that Gunnarr will die if he kills twice in the same family. He instigates an attack on Gunnarr by persons dissatisfied by the settlement. Again, Gunnarr wins the fight, but he kills a second man in the same family. The settlement that follows requires that Gunnarr and Kolskeggr leave Iceland for three years. Arrangements are made for exile. But as Gunnarr leaves home, he looks homeward and, touched by the beauty of his homeland, resolves not to leave Iceland, thus becoming an outlaw. He goes about as though nothing has changed but his enemies, Mörðr among them, seek revenge. He defends himself in his home until his bowstring is cut. Hallgerðr refuses to give him strands of her hair to restring his bow; this is in revenge for the slap he once gave her. Some readers choose to interpret this episode as her forgiveness since human hair is unusable as bowstring; i.e. he asks for something he knows is useless and she answers by denying as revenge, fully knowing too. Gunnarr's enemies resist Mörðrs proposal to burn him in the house as shameful, but eventually they take the roof off to get to Gunnarr. Njáll's son Skarp-Heðinn assists Högni Gunnarsson in some acts of vengeance before a settlement is achieved. Scandinavian rulers honor two Icelandic expeditions: those of Þráinn Sigfússon and of Njáll's two younger sons. Both return with enhanced honor, but also with companions. Þráinn brings back the malevolent Betrayal-Hrappr; the sons of Njáll the noble Kári Sölmundarson, who marries their sister. But Njáll's sons also bring back a grievance, blaming Þráinn for the way in which the de facto ruler of Norway, Jarl Hákon, has treated them while looking for Hrappr, who had been hidden by Þráinn. While Njáll says they have been foolish in raising the matter, he advises them to publicise it so that it will be seen as a matter of honor. Þrain refuses a settlement, and his retainers, including Hallgerðr, on her last appearance, insult them. The most dramatic of the saga's battles follows. Njáll's sons, with Kári, prepare to ambush Þráinn and his followers. There is a bridge of ice over the river between them. Skarp-Heðinn overtakes his brothers, leaps the river, and slides on the ice past Þráinn, beheading him in passing. Between them the attackers kill four men, including Hrappr. Þráinn's brother, Ketill, has married Njáll's daughter, and between them they bring about a settlement. Wishing to stop further contention, Njáll adopts Þráinn's son Höskuldr as his foster-son. Höskuldr grows up in Njáll's household, and is loved and favoured by him. When he is fully grown, Njáll attempts to find a suitable wife for him, Hildigunnr. However, she refuses, saying that she will only marry Höskuldr if he becomes a chieftain. Njáll manages to get Höskuldr a chieftaincy by instituting the Fifth Court at the Althing, and Höskuldr and Hildigunnr are married. At this point the saga recounts the conversion of Iceland to Christianity in AD 999. Mörðr Valgarðsson now finds Höskuldr to be such a successful chief that his own chieftaincy is declining. He sets the sons of Njáll against Höskuldr; the tragedy of the saga is that they are so susceptible to his promptings that they, with Mörðr and Kári, murder him as he sows in his field. As one character says, "Höskuldr was killed for less than no reason; all men mourn his death; but none more than Njal, his foster-father". Flosi, the uncle of Höskuldr's wife, takes revenge against the killers, and seeks help from powerful chieftains. He is pressured (against his better judgement) by Hildigunnr to accept only blood vengeance. Njáll's sons find themselves at the Althing having to plead for help. Skarp-Heðinn has become grimly fatalistic, and insults many who might help them. After some legal sparring, arbitrators are chosen, including Snorri goði, who proposes a weregild of three times the normal compensation for Höskuldr. This is so much that it can only be paid if the arbitrators, and many at the Althing, contribute. The great collection is gathered, and Njáll adds a gift of a fancy cloak. Flosi claims to be insulted by the offer of a unisex garment (an insult from Skarp-Heðinn also adds fuel to the fire) and the settlement breaks down. Everyone leaves the Althing and prepares, amid portents and prophecies, for the showdown. A hundred men descend on Njáll's home, Bergthorsknoll (Bergþórshváll), to find it defended by about thirty. Any victory for Flosi will be at some cost. But Njáll suggests that his sons defend from within the house, and they, while realizing that this is futile, agree. Flosi and his men set fire to the building. Both the innocent and the guilty are surrounded. Flosi allows the women to leave but beheads Helgi Njálsson, who attempts to escape disguised as a woman. Although Flosi invites Njáll and Bergþóra to leave, they refuse, preferring to die with their sons and their grandson Þórðr (the son of Kári). Eventually eleven people die, not including Kári who escapes under cover of the smoke by running along the beam of the house. Flosi knows that Kári will exact vengeance for the burning. At the Althing, both sides gather. Flosi bribes Eyjólfr Bölverksson, one of the finest lawyers in Iceland, into taking over the case, while his opponents blackmail Mörðr Valgarðsson into prosecuting, advised by Þórhallr, Njáll's foster-son, who was trained in the law by Njáll, but is kept away from the proceedings by an infected leg. There is a legal joust between the parties. Eventually, when his legal action seems to be failing, Þórhallr lances his boil with his spear and begins fighting. Flosi's men are driven back until Snorri separates the parties. In the confusion, several are killed including Ljótr, Flosi's brother-in-law. Ljótr's father, Hallr of Síða, takes advantage of the truce to appeal for peace, and seeks no compensation for his son. Moved by this, all but Kári and Njáll's nephew Þorgeir reach a settlement, while everyone contributes to Ljótr's weregild, which in the end amounts to a quadruple compensation. The burners are exiled. Before the sons of Sigfús reach home, Kári attacks them, and most of the rest of the saga describes his vengeance for the burning. He is supported by Þorgeir and an attractive anti-hero named Björn. He pursues them to Orkney and Wales. The most dramatic moment is when he breaks into the earl's hall in Orkney and kills a man who is giving a slanderous account of those killed at the burning. After a pilgrimage to Rome, Flosi returns to Iceland. Kári follows, and is shipwrecked near Flosi's home. Testing Flosi's nobility he goes to him for help, and they arrange a final peace. Kári marries Höskuldr's widow. Finally, there is a full reconciliation.
141464	/m/011rc0	Damage	Josephine Hart	1991		 The first person narrator of the novel is an unnamed medical doctor turned politician (called Dr Stephen Fleming in the Louis Malle film) whose promotion from MP to cabinet member is imminent. Just then the MP is casually introduced to his grown-up son's enigmatic girlfriend Anna and helplessly falls for her. For as long as it lasts, Martyn, his son, has no idea that his father is having an extramarital affair with his girlfriend (and later fiancée), and Anna does not seem to mind being a young man's partner and simultaneously his father's lover and object of desire. The MP enjoys a brief period of sexual bliss, meeting Anna in various European cities and having sex with her in unlikely places. Eventually, she buys them a small flat in central London where they meet on a regular basis. One day Martyn happens to get hold of that address and, curious, goes there to investigate. He climbs up a flight of stairs to the top floor, opens the unlocked door to the apartment, and is shocked to see his father making love to his fiancée. Dazed and utterly confused, he tumbles backwards, hits the low banister and falls down the stairwell. The MP runs down the stairs completely naked, finding Martyn dead, sprawled out on the ground floor. He kneels on the floor and clutches Martyn's body to him until the police arrive. In the final scene, the MP, stripped of his political office and living abroad as a recluse, sits in his solitary room staring at oversized photographs of Anna and Martyn on the wall.
142161	/m/011x61	The Railway Children	E. Nesbit	1906	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns a family who move to "Three Chimneys", a house near the railway, after the father, who works at the Foreign office, is imprisoned as a result of being falsely accused of selling state secrets to the Russians. The three children, Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis (Phil), find amusement in watching the trains on the nearby railway line and waving to the passengers. They become friendly with Albert Perks, the station porter, and with the Old Gentleman who regularly takes the 9:15 down train. He is eventually able to help prove their father's innocence, and the family is reunited. The family take care of the Russian exile, Mr Szczepansky, who came to England looking for his family (later located) and Jim, the grandson of the Old Gentleman, who suffers a broken leg in a tunnel. The theme of an innocent man being falsely imprisoned for espionage and finally vindicated might have been influenced by the Dreyfus Affair, which was a prominent worldwide news item a few years before the book was written. And the Russian exile, persecuted by the Tsars for writing "a beautiful book about poor people and how to help them" and subsequently helped by the children, was most likely an amalgam of the real-life dissidents Sergius Stepniak and Peter Kropotkin who were both friends of the author.
142164	/m/011x6r	Imperial Earth	Arthur C. Clarke	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Duncan Makenzie is the latest generation of the 'first family' of Titan, a colonised moon of Saturn. Originally settled by his grandfather Malcolm Makenzie in the early 23rd century, Titan's economy has flourished based on the harvest and sale of hydrogen mined from the atmosphere, which is used to fuel the fusion engines of interplanetary spacecraft. As the plot opens in 2276, a number of factors are combining to make a diplomatic visit to the 'mother world' of Earth a necessity. Firstly, the forthcoming 500th anniversary of US Independence which is bringing in colonists from the entire Solar System, obviously needs a suitable representative from Titan. Secondly, the Makenzie family carry a fatal damaged gene that means any normal continuation of the family line is impossible — so both Duncan and his "father" Colin are clones of his "grandfather" Malcolm. Human cloning is a mature technology, but is even at this time ethically controversial. And thirdly, technological advances in spacecraft drive systems — specifically the 'asymptotic drive' which improves the fuel efficiency by orders of magnitude — means that Titan's whole economy is under threat as the demand for hydrogen is about to collapse. The human aspects of the tale center mainly on the intense infatuation (largely unrequited but not unconsummated) that the two main male characters, Duncan and Karl Helmer, develop for the vividly characterized Catherine Linden Ellerman (Calindy), a visitor to Titan from Earth in their youth, and its lifelong consequences. A number of other sub-plots suggest some sort of greater mystery, but remain unexplored. The book ends with him returning home with his new "child" Malcolm (who is a clone of his dead friend Karl), leaving the other plot threads dangling.
142323	/m/011xzq	The Masque of the Red Death	Edgar Allan Poe	1842-05	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and one thousand other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims feel overcome by convulsive agony and sweat blood. The plague is said to kill within half an hour. Prospero and his court are presented as indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large, intending to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut. One night, Prospero holds a masquerade ball to entertain his guests in seven colored rooms of the abbey. Six of the rooms are each decorated and illuminated in a specific color: Blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet. The last room is decorated in black and is illuminated by a scarlet light- "a deep blood color": because of this chilling pair of colors, very few guests are brave enough to venture into the seventh room. The same room is also the location of a large ebony clock that ominously clangs at each hour, upon which everyone stops talking or dancing and the orchestra stops playing. Once the chiming stops, everyone acts like nothing happened and continue on with the masquerade. At the chiming of midnight, the revelers and Prospero notice one figure in a dark, blood-splattered robe resembling a funeral shroud, with an extremely realistic mask resembling a stiffened cadaver, and with the traits of the Red Death, which all at the ball have been desperate to escape. Gravely insulted, Prospero demands to know the identity of the mysterious guest so that they can hang him. When nobody (out of fear) dares to approach the figure, instead letting him pass through the seven chambers, the Prince pursues him with a drawn dagger until he is cornered in the seventh room, the black room with the scarlet-tinted windows. When the figure turns to face him, the Prince lets out a sharp cry and falls dead. The enraged and terrified revelers surge into the black room and forcibly remove the mask and robe, only to find to their horror that there is no solid form underneath either. Only now do they realize (too late) that the figure is actually the Red Death itself, and all of the guests contract and succumb to the disease. The final line of the story sums up: "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."
142471	/m/011ytx	Chocolat	Joanne Harris	1999-03-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins as two strangers, Vianne Rocher, and her small daughter Anouk, move into the small French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes. They are brought by 'the wind' during the last days of carnival, and they settle and open a chocolaterie, La Céleste Praline. The village priest, Francis Reynaud, is initially mystified, because Lent has just begun, but his confusion turns rapidly to anger when he understands that Vianne holds dangerous beliefs, does not obey the church, and "flouts" the unspoken rules that he feels should govern his "flock". Vianne, we learn from her personal thoughts, is a witch though she does not use the word. Her mother and she were wanderers, going from one city to another. Her mother strove to inspire the same need for freedom in her daughter, who is more social and passive. They were born with gifts, and used a kind of "domestic magic" to earn their living. Throughout her life, Vianne has been running from the "Black Man", a recurring motif in her mother's folklore. When her mother is killed by a cab, Vianne continues on her own, trying to evade the Black Man and the mysetrious force of the wind and settle down to a normal life. The chocolaterie is an old dream of hers. She has an innate talent for cooking and a charming personality. She tries to fit in and help her customers. She starts to build a group of regular customers, and, to Reynaud's dismay, she doesn't go out of business. Reynaud attempts to have Vianne run out of town, and he talks about her every Sunday at church. Some people initially stay away, but not for long. His conflict with her becomes his personal crusade. Vianne, however, announces a "Grand Festival of Chocolate", to be held on Easter Sunday.
142739	/m/011_bt	The Ghost Road	Pat Barker	1995	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Prior, despite his new-found peace of mind and engagement to munitions worker Sarah, has been affected by the war and therefore does not have a lot of concern for his safety. Prior has been cured of shell-shock and is preparing to return to France. Once in France, experiences numerous and risky sexual encounters; his only rule is that he never pays for sex - a rule he eventually breaks. Rivers, concerned for Prior's safety, finally recognises that his relationship with Prior, and his other patients for that matter, is deeply paternal. In contrast with upper-class officers like Sassoon, with whom Rivers has been able to form warm friendships, he has always found Prior to be a thorn in his side. As Prior returns to the front, Rivers continues to take care of his patients and his invalid sister, amid this he reminisces uncomfortably about his childhood and memories of his experience ten years earlier on an anthropological expedition to Melanesia (now Eddystone Island). There, he befriended Nijiru, the local priest-healer who took Rivers on his rounds to see sick villagers and also to the island's sacred Place of the Skulls. This episode is a symbolic capitulation to the inevitability of his death at the Western Front, a fate he shares with the poet, Wilfred Owen to which in a futile battle that takes place a few days before the Armistice, Billy and his friend Wilfred Owen are killed.
143623	/m/0124_6	Rosemary's Baby	Ira Levin	1967-03-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book centers on Rosemary Woodhouse, a young woman who has just moved into the Bramford, an old Gothic Revival style New York City apartment building with her husband, Guy, a struggling actor. The pair is warned that the Bramford has a disturbing history involving witchcraft and murder, but they choose to overlook this. Rosemary has wanted children for some time, but Guy wants to wait until he is more established. Rosemary and Guy are quickly welcomed by Minnie and Roman Castevet, an eccentric elderly couple. Rosemary finds them meddlesome and absurd, but Guy begins paying them frequent visits. After a theatrical rival suddenly goes blind, Guy is given an important part in a stage play. Immediately following this event, Guy unexpectedly agrees with Rosemary that it is time to conceive their first child. Guy is noticed and cast in other, increasingly important roles, and he begins to talk about a career in Hollywood. After receiving a warning from a friend, who also becomes mysteriously ill, Rosemary investigates and confirms that her neighbors are the leaders of a Satanic coven, and she suspects they are after her child to use it as a sacrifice to the Devil. However, she is unable to convince anyone else to believe or help her and soon becomes certain that there is no one actually on her side, not even her own husband. In the end, Rosemary discovers she is wrong about the coven's reason for wanting the baby, but the truth is even more horrific than she could ever imagine. They plan to use Rosemary as a vessel to carry a child spawned from Satan himself.
143815	/m/0125zf	This Perfect Day	Ira Levin	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Li RM35M4419, nicknamed "Chip" (as in "chip off the old block") by his nonconformist grandfather Jan, is a typical child Member who, through a mistake in genetic programming, has one green eye. Through his grandfather's encouragement, he learns how to play a game of "wanting things," including imagining what career he might pick if he had the choice. Chip is told by his adviser that "picking" and "choice" are manifestations of selfishness, and he tries to forget his dreams. As Chip grows up and begins his career, he is mostly a good citizen, but commits minor subversive acts, such as procuring art materials for another "nonconformist" member who was denied them. His occasional oddities attract the attention of a secret group of Members who, like Chip, are also nonconformists. There he meets King, a Medicenter chief who obtains members records for potential future recruitment to the group, King's beautiful girlfriend Lilac, a strong-willed and inquisitive woman with unusually dark skin, and Snowflake, a rare albino member. These members teach Chip how to get his treatments reduced so that he can feel more and stronger emotions. Chip begins an affair with Snowflake, but is really attracted to Lilac. Chip and Lilac begin to search through old museum maps and soon discover islands around the world that have disappeared from their modern map. They begin to wonder if perhaps other "incurable" members like themselves have escaped to these islands. King tells them that the idea is nonsense, but Chip soon learns that King has already interacted with some "incurables" and that they are indeed real. Before he can tell Lilac, Chip's ruse is discovered by his adviser. He and all the other members of the group are captured and treated back into docility. Some years later, Chip's regular treatment is delayed by an earthquake. In the meanwhile, he begins to "wake up" again and remembers Lilac and the islands. He is able to shield his arm from the treatment nozzle and becomes fully awake for the first time. He locates Lilac again and kidnaps her. At first she fights him, but as she too becomes more "awake," she remembers the islands and comes willingly. Finding a convenient abandoned boat on the beach, they head for the nearest island of incurables, Majorca. There they learn that UniComp, as a last resort, has planted failsafes that eventually lead all incurables to these islands, where they will be trapped forever away from the treated population. Chip conceives of a plan—destroy the computer, UniComp, by blowing up its refrigeration system. He recruits other incurables to join him, and they make their way to the mainland. Just as they reach UniComp, one of the incurables leads them to a secret luxurious underground city beneath UniComp, where they are met by Wei, one of the original planners of the Unification. Wei and the other "programmers" who live in UniComp have arranged this test so that the most daring and resourceful incurables will make their way to UniComp, where they, too, will live in luxury as programmers. Chip is initially wary, but after a time, he seems to settle into the programmers' society. But when a new group of incurables arrive, Chip steals their explosives and completes his mission to blow up UniComp, killing Wei in the process. Before he returns to Majorca, signs of a new life have already begun: rain begins to fall in the daytime, and members who were scheduled to die do not.
143827	/m/0125_x	The Boys from Brazil	Ira Levin	1988-10-21	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Yakov Liebermann is a Nazi hunter: he runs a center in Vienna that documents crimes against humanity perpetrated during the Holocaust. The waning interest of the Western nations in tracking down Nazi criminals has forced him to move the center to his lodgings. Then, in September 1974, Liebermann receives a phone call from a young man in Brazil who claims he has just finished eavesdropping on the so-called "Angel of Death," Dr. Josef Mengele, the concentration camp medical doctor who performed horrible experiments on camp victims during World War II. According to the young man, Mengele is activating the Kameradenwerk for a strange assignment: he is sending out six Nazis to kill 94 men, who share a few common traits. All men are civil servants, and all of them have to be killed on or about particular dates, spread over several years. All will be 65 years old at the time of their killing. Before the young man can finish the conversation, he is killed. Liebermann hesitates about what to do, and wonders if the call was a prank. But he investigates and discovers that the killings the young man spoke of are taking place. As he tries to determine why the seemingly unimportant men are being killed, he discovers by coincidence that the children of two of the men are identical. It eventually transpires each of the 94 targets has a son aged 13, a genetic clone of Adolf Hitler planted by Mengele. Mengele wishes to create a new Führer for the Nazi movement, and is trying to ensure that the lives of the clones follow a similar path to Hitler's. Each civil servant father is married to a woman about 23 years younger, and their killing is an attempt to mimic the death of Hitler's own father. Liebermann manages to work out who one of the intended targets is, and travels to warn him that his life may be in danger. However, Mengele reaches the man first, kills him, and then encounters Liebermann. Liebermann is shot but Mengele is killed by the targeted man's collection of dangerous dogs. The plan is halted, but 18 Hitler clones have already lost their fathers. The book ends with one of the Hitler clones developing delusions of grandeur.
143836	/m/01262n	A Descent into the Maelstrom	Edgar Allan Poe	1841-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Inspired by the Moskstraumen, it is couched as a story within a story, a tale told at the summit of a mountain climb in Lofoten, Norway. The story is told by an old man who reveals that he only appears old—"You suppose me a very old man," he says, "but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves." The narrator, convinced by the power of the whirlpools he sees in the ocean beyond, is then told of the "old" man's fishing trip with his two brothers a few years ago. Driven by "the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens", their ship was caught in the vortex. One brother was pulled into the waves; the other was driven mad by the horror of the spectacle, and drowned as the ship was pulled under. At first the narrator only saw hideous terror in the spectacle. In a moment of revelation, he saw that the Maelström is a beautiful and awesome creation. Observing how objects around him were pulled into it, he deduced that "the larger the bodies, the more rapid their descent" and that spherical-shaped objects were pulled in the fastest. Unlike his brother, he abandoned ship and held on to a cylindrical barrel until he was saved several hours later. The old man tells the story to the narrator without any hope that the narrator will believe it.
144074	/m/01277_	Sliver	Ira Levin		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When working woman Kay Norris makes the acquaintance of a handsome and friendly young man who lives in the same "sliver" building, she does not know at first that he is the owner. While keeping a low profile himself, he turns out to know an awful lot about the other inhabitants including many of their secrets. It then turns out that he is a modern-day Peeping Tom who, unknown to everyone, has had surveillance cameras and microphones installed in every single apartment of the house, with his own place in the building serving as his headquarters. The novel is also a murder mystery, and the beautiful heroine soon becomes a damsel in distress herself. de:Sliver (Film) es:Sliver (película) fr:Sliver ja:硝子の塔 pl:Sliver ru:Щепка (фильм) sv:Sliver
144684	/m/012btv	The Murders in the Rue Morgue	Edgar Allan Poe	1841-04		 The story surrounds the baffling double murder of Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter in the Rue Morgue, a fictional street in Paris. Newspaper accounts of the murder reveal that the mother's throat is so badly cut that her head is barely attached and the daughter, after being strangled, has been stuffed into the chimney. The murder occurs in an inaccessible room on the fourth floor locked from the inside. Neighbors who hear the murder give contradictory accounts, each claiming that he heard the murderer speaking a different language. The speech was unclear, the witnesses say and they admit to not knowing the language they are claiming to have heard. Paris natives Dupin and his friend, the unnamed narrator of the story, read these newspaper accounts with interest. The two live in seclusion and allow no visitors. They have cut off contact with "former associates" and venture outside only at night. "We existed within ourselves alone", the narrator explains. When a man named Adolphe Le Bon has been imprisoned though no evidence exists pointing to his guilt, Dupin is so intrigued that he offers his services to "G–", the prefect of police. Because none of the witnesses can agree on the language the murderer spoke, Dupin concludes they were not hearing a human voice at all. He finds a hair at the scene of the murder that is quite unusual; "this is no human hair", he concludes. Dupin puts an advertisement in the newspaper asking if anyone has lost an "Ourang-Outang". The ad is answered by a sailor who comes to Dupin at his home. The sailor offers a reward for the orangutan's return; Dupin asks for all the information the sailor has about the murders in the Rue Morgue. The sailor reveals that he had been keeping a captive orangutan obtained while ashore in Borneo. The animal escaped with the sailor's shaving straight razor. When he pursued the orangutan, it escaped by scaling a wall and climbing up a lightning rod, entering the apartment in the Rue Morgue through a window. Once in the room, the surprised Madame L'Espanaye could not defend herself as the orangutan attempted to shave her in imitation of the sailor's daily routine and in doing so accidentally slits the woman's throat with the razor. The bloody deed incited it to fury and it squeezed the daughter's throat until she died. The orangutan then became aware of its master's whip, which it feared, and it attempted to hide the body by stuffing it into the chimney. The sailor, aware of the "murder", panicked and fled, allowing the orangutan to escape. The prefect of police, upon hearing this story, mentions that people should mind their own business. Dupin responds that G– is "too cunning to be profound."
144688	/m/012bwf	The Purloined Letter	Edgar Allan Poe	1844-12	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The unnamed narrator is discussing with the famous Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin some of his most celebrated cases when they are joined by the Prefect of the Police, a man known as G—. The Prefect has a case he would like to discuss with Dupin. A letter has been stolen from the boudoir of an unnamed female by the unscrupulous Minister D—. It is said to contain compromising information. D— was in the room, saw the letter, and switched it for a letter of no importance. He has been blackmailing his victim. The Prefect makes two deductions with which Dupin does not disagree: :1.) The contents of the letter have not been revealed, as this would have led to certain circumstances that have not arisen. Therefore Minister D— still has the letter in his possession. :2.) The ability to produce the letter at a moment’s notice is almost as important as possession of the letter itself. Therefore he must have the letter close at hand. The Prefect says that he and his police detectives have searched the Ministerial hotel where D— stays and have found nothing. They checked behind the wallpaper and under the carpets. His men have examined the tables and chairs with microscopes and then probed the cushions with needles but have found no sign of interference; the letter is not hidden in these places. Dupin asks the Prefect if he knows what he is looking for and the Prefect reads off a minute description of the letter, which Dupin memorizes. The Prefect then bids them good day. A month later, the Prefect returns, still bewildered in his search for the missing letter. He is motivated to continue his fruitless search by the promise of a large reward, recently doubled, upon the letter's safe return, and he will pay 50,000 francs to anyone who can help him. Dupin asks him to write that check now and he will give him the letter. The Prefect is astonished but knows that Dupin is not joking. He writes the check and Dupin produces the letter. The Prefect determines that it is genuine and races off to deliver it to the victim. Alone together, the narrator asks Dupin how he found the letter. Dupin explains the Paris police are competent within their limitations, but have underestimated who they are dealing with. The Prefect mistakes the Minister D— for a fool because he is a poet. For example, Dupin explains how an eight-year old boy made a small fortune from his friends at a game called "Odds and Evens." The boy was able to determine the intelligence of his opponents and play upon that to interpret their next move. He explains that D— knew the police detectives would have assumed that the blackmailer would have concealed the letter in an elaborate hiding place, and thus hid it in plain sight. Dupin says he had visited the minister at his hotel. Complaining of weak eyes he wore a pair of green spectacles, the true purpose of which was to disguise his eyes as he searched for the letter. In a cheap card rack hanging from a dirty ribbon, he saw a half-torn letter and recognized it as the letter of the story's title. Striking up a conversation with D— about a subject in which the minister is interested, Dupin examined the letter more closely. It did not resemble the letter the Prefect described so minutely; the writing was different and it was sealed not with the "ducal arms" of the S— family, but with D—'s monogram. Dupin noticed that the paper was chafed as if the stiff paper was first rolled one way and then another. Dupin concluded that D— wrote a new address on the reverse of the stolen one, re-folded it the opposite way and sealed it with his own seal. Dupin left a snuff box behind as an excuse to return the next day. Striking up the same conversation they had begun the previous day, D— was startled by a gunshot in the street. While he went to investigate, Dupin switched D—'s letter for a duplicate. Dupin explains that he left a duplicate to ensure his ability to leave the hotel without D— suspecting his actions. As a political supporter of the Queen and old enemy of the Minister, Dupin also hopes that D— will try to use the power he no longer has, to his political downfall, and at the end be presented with an insulting note that implies Dupin was the thief: Un dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne d'Atrée, est digne de Thyeste (If such a sinister design isn't worthy of Atreus, it is worthy of Thyestes). (see Atree et Thyeste on French wikipedia)
145429	/m/012gzc	The Tale of Genji	Murasaki Shikibu	1021	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The work recounts the life of a son of the Japanese emperor, known to readers as Hikaru Genji, or "Shining Genji". For political reasons, Genji is relegated to commoner status (by being given the surname Minamoto) and begins a career as an imperial officer. The tale concentrates on Genji's romantic life and describes the customs of the aristocratic society of the time. Much is made of Genji's good looks. Genji was the second son of a certain ancient emperor ("Emperor Kiritsubo") and a low-ranking but beloved concubine (known to the readers as Lady Kiritsubo). Genji's mother dies when he is three years old, and the Emperor cannot forget her. The Emperor Kiritsubo then hears of a woman ("Lady Fujitsubo"), formerly a princess of the preceding emperor, who resembles his deceased concubine, and later she becomes one of his wives. Genji loves her first as a stepmother, but later as a woman. They fall in love with each other, but it is forbidden. Genji is frustrated because of his forbidden love for the Lady Fujitsubo and is on bad terms with his wife (Aoi no Ue). He also engages in a series of unfulfilling love affairs with other women. In most cases, his advances are rebuffed, his lover dies suddenly during the affair, or he finds his lover to be dull and his feelings change. In one case, he sees a beautiful young woman through an open window, enters her room without permission, and proceeds to seduce her. Recognizing him as a man of unchallengeable power, she makes no resistance. Genji visits Kitayama, the northern rural hilly area of Kyoto, where he finds a beautiful ten-year-old girl. He is fascinated by this little girl ("Murasaki"), and discovers that she is a niece of the Lady Fujitsubo. Finally he kidnaps her, brings her to his own palace and educates her to be his ideal lady; that is, like the Lady Fujitsubo. During this time Genji also meets the Lady Fujitsubo secretly, and she bears his son, Reizei. Everyone except the two lovers believes the father of the child is the Emperor Kiritsubo. Later, the boy becomes the Crown Prince and Lady Fujitsubo becomes the Empress, but Genji and Lady Fujitsubo swear to keep their secret. Genji and his wife, Lady Aoi, reconcile and she gives birth to a son but dies soon after. Genji is sorrowful, but finds consolation in Murasaki, whom he marries. Genji's father, the Emperor Kiritsubo, dies. He is succeeded by his son Suzaku, whose mother ("Kokiden"), together with Kiritsubo's political enemies (including the "Minister of the Right") takes power in the court. Then another of Genji's secret love affairs is exposed: Genji and a concubine of the Emperor Suzaku, Genji's brother, are discovered when they meet in secret. The Emperor Suzaku confides his personal amusement at Genji's exploits with the woman ("Oborozukiyo"), but is duty-bound to punish his half-brother. Genji is thus exiled to the town of Suma in rural Harima province (now part of Kobe in Hyōgo Prefecture). There, a prosperous man known as the Akashi Novice (because he is from Akashi in Settsu province) entertains Genji, and Genji has a love affair with Akashi's daughter. She gives birth to Genji's only daughter, who will later become the Empress. In the Capital, the Emperor Suzaku is troubled by dreams of his late father, Kiritsubo, and something begins to affect his eyes. Meanwhile, his mother, Kokiden, grows ill, which weakens her powerful sway over the throne. Thus the Emperor orders Genji pardoned, and he returns to Kyoto. His son by Lady Fujitsubo, Reizei, becomes the emperor, and Genji finishes his imperial career. The new Emperor Reizei knows Genji is his real father, and raises Genji's rank to the highest possible. However, when Genji turns 40 years old, his life begins to decline. His political status does not change, but his love and emotional life are slowly damaged. He marries another wife, the "Third Princess" (known as Onna san no miya in the Seidensticker version, or Nyōsan in Waley's). Genji's nephew, Kashiwagi, later forces himself on the "Third Princess" and she bears Kaoru (who, in a similar situation to that of Reizei, is legally known as the son of Genji). Genji's new marriage changes his relationship with Murasaki, who becomes a nun (bikuni). Genji's beloved Murasaki dies. In the following chapter, Maboroshi ("Illusion"), Genji contemplates how fleeting life is. Immediately after Maboroshi, there is a chapter entitled Kumogakure ("Vanished into the Clouds") which is left blank, but implies the death of Genji. The rest of the work is known as the "Uji Chapters". These chapters follow Kaoru and his best friend, Niou. Niou is an imperial prince, the son of Genji's daughter, the current Empress now that Reizei has abdicated the throne, while Kaoru is known to the world as Genji's son but is in fact fathered by Genji's nephew. The chapters involve Kaoru and Niou's rivalry over several daughters of an imperial prince who lives in Uji, a place some distance away from the capital. The tale ends abruptly, with Kaoru wondering if the lady he loves is being hidden away by Niou. Kaoru has sometimes been called the first anti-hero in literature.
145627	/m/012j5w	Master and Commander	Patrick O'Brian	1970	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts out on April 18, 1800, in Port Mahon, Minorca, a base of the Royal Navy at that time. A shipless lieutenant wasting away in port, Jack Aubrey, meets Stephen Maturin, a poor half-Irish and half-Catalan physician and natural philosopher, at an evening concert at the Governor’s Mansion. The two of them do not quite get along during this first encounter. A duel almost occurs when Jack Aubrey gets elbowed by Maturin to stop beating the time while the string quartet is playing. Later that evening, on his way back to his living quarters, Jack Aubrey finds out that he has been promoted to the rank of Commander and has been given command of the brig Sophie. His joy overcomes his animosity towards Stephen Maturin and they quickly become good friends in part due to their shared love of music. The ship's surgeon having left with the previous captain, Maturin is asked by Aubrey to sign on in that post. Although Maturin is a physician, not just a mere surgeon, he agrees, since he is currently unemployed. Also introduced into the story are Master's Mates Thomas Pullings, William Mowett, midshipman William Babbington, and James Dillon, the Sophies first lieutenant. Dillon and Stephen both have secret backgrounds as members of the United Irishmen. Aubrey improves Sophies sailing qualities by adding a longer yard which allows him to spread a larger mainsail. She then is sent to accompany a small convoy of merchant ships. During their journey east, the new captain, Aubrey, takes the opportunity to get to know his sailors and work them into a fighting unit. As he does this, he and the crew explain many naval matters to Maturin (and to the reader) since the doctor has never served aboard a man-of-war. After the convoy duties, Lord Keith allows Aubrey to cruise independently, looking for French merchants. After a number of prizes are taken, they meet and defeat the Cacafuego, a Spanish frigate, losing a number of crew, including Dillon, in the bloody action and gaining the respect of other naval officers. However, Captain Harte, the commandant at Mahon, has a grudge against Aubrey, who has been having an affair with his wife. Harte's malevolence ensures that the victory brings Aubrey and his crew no official recognition, promotion, or significant prize money, although Aubrey gains a reputation among members of the British Navy as one of its great, young fighting captains. On her following escort duty, Sophie is captured by a squadron of four large French warships after a pursuit and a brave but hopeless resistance. The Battle of Algeciras begins, and after a short period as prisoners of war, they are exchanged, missing the fighting. Back at Gibraltar, Aubrey must undergo a court-martial over the loss of his ship, but he is cleared of the charges.
145636	/m/012j7v	The Devil and Daniel Webster	Stephen Vincent Benét	1937	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 A local farmer, Jabez Stone, is plagued with unending bad luck, causing him to finally swear that "it's enough to make a man want to sell his soul to the devil!" Stone is visited the next day by a stranger, who later identifies himself as "Mr. Scratch" and makes such an offer (in exchange for seven years of prosperity), to which Stone agrees. After the seven years, Stone manages to bargain for an additional three years from Mr. Scratch. However, after the additional three years passes, Mr. Scratch refuses to grant Stone any further extension of time. Wanting out of the deal, Stone convinces famous lawyer and orator Daniel Webster to accept his case. At midnight of the appointed date, Mr. Scratch arrives and is greeted by Webster, who presents himself as Stone's attorney. Mr. Scratch tells Webster, "I shall call upon you, as a law-abiding citizen, to assist me in taking possession of my property," and so begins the argument. It goes poorly for Webster, since the signature and the contract are clear, and Mr. Scratch will not agree to a compromise. In desperation Webster thunders, "Mr. Stone is an American citizen, and no American citizen may be forced into the service of a foreign prince. We fought England for that in '12 and we'll fight all hell for it again!" To this Mr. Scratch insists on his citizenship citing his presence at the worst events of the USA, concluding that "though I don't like to boast of it, my name is older in this country than yours." A trial is then demanded by Daniel as the right of every American. Mr. Scratch agrees after Daniel says that he can select the judge and jury, "so it is an American judge and an American jury." A jury of the damned then enters, "with the fires of hell still upon them." They had all done evil, and had all played a part in the USA: *Walter Butler, a Loyalist *Simon Girty, a Loyalist *Indian chief Metacomet, referred to as "King Philip" *Governor Thomas Dale *Thomas Morton, a rival of the Plymouth Pilgrims *The pirate Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard *Reverend John SmeetAnderson, Charles R. "Puzzles and Essays" from "The Exchange" - Trick Reference Questions, p. 122: "In 'The Devil and Daniel Webster' by Stephen Vincent Benét, there is a character named the Reverend John Smeet. Was this a real person? :Mrs. Stephen Vincent Benét (1960), in a letter to the New York Times Book Review, claimed that the good reverend was entirely imaginary. Mrs. Benet explained that her husband occasionally used to insert imaginary people into his writings. Benet even quoted from a made-up person named John Cleveland Cotton. He went so far as to write an apocryphal biographical note about Cotton that ended up in Marion King's Books and People (King, 1954). In this Benet anticipated authors Tim Powers and James Blaylock, who created a poet named William Ashbless." After five other unnamed jurors enter (Benedict Arnold not among them, he being out "on other business"), the "Judge" enters last – John Hathorne, the infamous and unrepentant executor of the Salem witch trials. The trial is rigged against Webster. Finally he is on his feet ready to rage, without care for himself or Stone, but catches himself before he begins to speak: he sees in the jurors' eyes that they want him to act thus. He calms himself, "for it was him they'd come for, not only Jabez Stone." Webster starts to orate on all of simple and good things—"the freshness of a fine morning...the taste of food when you're hungry...the new day that's every day when you're a child"—and how "without freedom, they sickened." He speaks passionately of how wonderful it is to be a man, and to be an American. He admits the wrongs done in the USA, but argues that something new and good had grown from it, "and everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors." Mankind "got tricked and trapped and bamboozled, but it was a great journey," something "no demon that was ever foaled" could ever understand. The jury announces its verdict: "We find for the defendant, Jabez Stone." They admit that, "Perhaps 'tis not strictly in accordance with the evidence, but even the damned may salute the eloquence of Mr. Webster." The judge and jury disappear with the break of dawn. Mr. Scratch congratulates Webster and the contract is torn up. Webster then grabs the stranger and twists his arm behind his back, "for he knew that once you bested anybody like Mr. Scratch in fair fight, his power on you was gone." Webster makes him agree "never to bother Jabez Stone nor his heirs or assigns nor any other New Hampshire man till doomsday!" Mr. Scratch offers to tell Webster's fortune in his palm. He foretells Webster's failure to ever become President, the death of Webster's sons, and the backlash of his last speech, warning "Some will call you Ichabod," as in John Greenleaf Whittier's poem in reaction to the speech. All the predictions the devil makes are based on actual events of Daniel Webster's life: he did have ambitions to become President, his sons died in war, and as a result of Webster's controversial "Seventh of March Speech", in which he supported the Compromise of 1850, many in the North considered him a traitor. Webster takes all the predictions in stride, and asks only if the Union will prevail. Scratch reluctantly admits that, though a war will be fought for it, the United States will remain united. Webster then laughs and kicks him out of the house. It is said that the devil never did come back to New Hampshire afterward.
146029	/m/012lnh	The Luck of Barry Lyndon	William Makepeace Thackeray	1844		 Redmond Barry of Bally Barry, born to a genteel but ruined Irish family, fancies himself a gentleman. At the prompting of his mother, he learns what he can of courtly manners and sword-play, but fails at more scholarly subjects like Latin. He is a hot-tempered, passionate lad, and falls madly in love with his cousin, Nora. Sadly, as she is a spinster a few years older than Redmond, she is seeking a prospect with more ready cash to pay family debts. The lad tries to engage in a duel with Nora's suitor, an English officer named John Quinn. He is made to think that he has assassinated the man, though his pistol was actually loaded with "tow" (a dummy load of heavy, knotted, fibers); Quinn was struck with the harmless load and fainted in his fright. Redmond flees to Dublin, where he quickly falls in with bad company in the way of con artists, and soon loses all his money. Pursued by creditors, he enlists as a common private in an infantry regiment headed for service in Germany. Once in Germany, despite a promotion to corporal, he hates the army and seeks to desert. When his Lieutenant is wounded, Redmond helps take him to a German village for treatment. The Irishman pretends to suffer from insanity, and after several days absconds with the Lieutenant's uniform, papers, and money. As part of his ruse, he convinces the locals that he is the real Lieutenant Fakenham, and the wounded man is the mad Corporal Barry. Redmond Barry rides off toward a neutral German territory, hoping for better fortune. His bad luck continues, though, as he is joined on the road by a Prussian officer. The German soon realizes that Redmond is a deserter, but rather than turn him over to the British to be hanged, impresses him into the Prussian army (for a bounty). Redmond hates Prussian service as much or more than he hated British service, but the men are carefully watched to prevent desertion. He is able to become the servant of Captain Potzdorff, and is involved in the intrigues of that gentleman. After several months have passed, a stranger travelling under Austrian protection arrives in Berlin. Redmond is asked to spy on the stranger, an older man called Chevalier de Balibari (sic. Ballybary). He immediately realizes that this is his uncle, the adventurer who disappeared many years ago. The uncle arranges to smuggle his nephew out of Prussia, and this is soon done. The two Irishmen and an accomplice wander around Europe, gambling and generally living it up. Eventually, the Barrys end up in a Rhineland Duchy, where they win considerable sums of money and Redmond cleverly sets up a plan to marry a young countess of some means. Again, fortune turns against him, and a series of circumstances undermines his complex plan. Both Uncle and Nephew are forced to leave Germany—both unmarried. While cooling their heels in France, Redmond comes into the acquaintance of the Countess of Lyndon, an extraordinarily wealthy noblewoman married to a much older man (who is in poor health). He has some success in seducing the Lady, but her husband clings to life. Eventually, she goes back to England. Redmond is upset, but bides his time. Upon hearing the following year that the husband has died, he strikes. Through a series of adventures, Redmond eventually bullies and seduces the Countess of Lyndon, almost forcing her to marry him. After the wedding, he moves into Hackton Castle, which he has completely remodelled at great expense. Redmond admits several times in the course of his narrative that he has no control over a budget, and spends his new bride's birthright freely. He looks after a few childhood benefactors in Ireland, his Cousin Ulick (who had often stood up for him as a boy), and makes himself over into the most fashionable man in the district. As the American War of Independence breaks out, Barry Lyndon (as he now calls himself) raises a company of soldiers to be sent to America. He also defeats his wife's cousins to win a seat in Parliament. His good fortunes begin to ebb again though. His stepson, Lord Bullingdon, goes off to the American war—and Barry is accused of trying to get the lad killed in battle. Then his own child—Bryan—dies in a tragic horse-riding accident. Combined with Barry's own profligate spending practices, he is ruined on many levels. As the "memoir" ends, (Redmond) Barry Lyndon is separated from his wife, and lodged in Fleet Prison. A small stipend allows him to live in moderate luxury, and his elderly mother lodges close by to tend to him. He spends the last nineteen years of his life in prison, dying of alcoholism-related illness.
146188	/m/012mhj	The End of Eternity	Isaac Asimov	1955	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Eternity of the title is an organization and a place which exists outside time. It is staffed by male humans called Eternals who are recruited from different eras of human history commencing with the twenty-seventh century. The Eternals are capable of traveling “upwhen” and “downwhen” within Eternity and entering the conventional temporal world at almost any point of their choice, apart from a section of the far future which they cannot enter. Collectively they form a corps of Platonic guardians who carry out carefully calculated and planned strategic minimum actions, called Reality Changes, within the temporal world in order to minimize human suffering as integrated over the whole of (future) human history. As the plot unfolds, however, it is increasingly evident that Eternity itself suffers from serious maladjustments. The Eternals feel an unspoken collective guilt which causes them to scapegoat the "Technicians", the experts who actually execute Reality Changes by doing something that will alter the flow of events. The Eternals are also troubled that beyond a certain point in the future they are blocked by unknown means from entering Time. These are the "Hidden Centuries". Beyond the Hidden Centuries they can emerge, but find the earth devoid of human life. A key plot element which emerges quickly as the story unfolds is the relatively static nature of the human societies in the various future centuries, and the repeated failure of space travel in all accessible centuries. We later learn that Laban Twissell (Harlan’s superior and the leading figure on the governing Council) is from "a Century in the 30,000s", yet nothing much is different in that time. The protagonist is a Technician named Andrew Harlan, who finds himself involved in an ontological paradox orchestrated by his superiors. He is to secure the creation of Eternity by sending a young Eternal back in time with the mathematical knowledge to make it possible. To facilitate this Harlan's superiors in Eternity allow him to pursue his study of "prehistory", which is history prior to the Eternity's creation that, because Eternity had not yet been created then, cannot be traveled to nor changed. This intellectual pursuit is largely frowned upon by the Eternals, especially Harlan's superiors, but it becomes apparent his expert knowledge on the subject will be vital to Eternity's creation. Harlan himself is in trouble with the leaders of Eternity. He has been entrapped by one of them into entering into a relationship with a non-Eternal woman, Noÿs Lambent. This was intended merely to prove a point about the effect of Eternity on the individuals from real time who learn of it, but it has the unintended consequence of making Harlan besotted with the woman, so much so that he smuggles her into Eternity, since he has discovered that she will cease to exist in real time when the Eternals make their next Reality Change. Harlan’s whole scheme comes apart when it is revealed the leaders are fully aware of his activities. Normally the Eternals traverse from century to century within Eternity in a kind of temporal elevator called a kettle. A special version of the kettle has been built, however, for Harlan to dispatch a young Eternal, one Brinsley Sheridan Cooper, back to the 24th century, which lies “beyond the downwhen terminus” accessible via Eternity and its kettle system. Cooper is carefully instructed that he is to teach the principles and technology of time travel to its historic inventor, Vikkor Mallansohn, but unbeknownst to Cooper or Harlan, he will actually become Mallansohn himself. However Harlan, filled with malice after (erroneously) concluding that Twissell has trapped him and will deprive him of Noÿs, scrambles the time settings just as the special kettle departs. Cooper is trapped in the wrong time, so Eternity cannot be created. Unless something is done to change the past, Harlan’s reality, and Eternity, will be erased from existence. Twissell reveals that he too had once improperly loved a woman in Time, and manages to persuade Harlan that he sympathizes. Calming down, Harlan tries to think of a way that Cooper, also adept in the concept of Reality Change, could send him a message to return and retrieve him. Harlan believes that the apparently random target setting he chose on the kettle was the 20th century, and it occurs to him that Cooper was interested in his collection of artifacts from that time, particularly magazines. Perhaps the trapped Cooper would have found a way of leaving his SOS message in one of them. This is where Asimov’s mistaken “mushroom cloud” appears in the novel. Harlan comes upon an ad for stock tips—All the Talk Of the Market, concealing the acrostic A-T-O-M, accompanying a drawing of a mushroom cloud. The year on the masthead of the preserved publication is 1932. Since this predates the first atomic explosion, it must be a coded message from someone from the future—a reality change caused by Cooper. Before he reveals this discovery to the other Eternals, Harlan exacts a price, his lover is to be returned to him and both will go back to rescue Cooper. Once the couple arrive in 1932, Harlan reveals his last surprise. He has deduced that the woman, Noÿs Lambent, is herself an agent of Reality Change. She is from those centuries the Eternals cannot enter. She does not deny it. Instead she tells Harlan that her people, who prefer to watch past time rather than travel in it or change it, discovered that Eternity was, in choosing safety for humanity, suppressing creativity. In the end this has the effect of denying humanity's access to the stars, as alien species advance technologically and confine humanity to Earth. Eventually humanity will die out, millions of years in the future, leaving an empty Earth. However, if Eternity could be prevented from being created, humans would leave Earth and colonize the stars. Thus they cut themselves off from Eternity and began to plot its demise. It was not any specific Change but the very existence of any such organization as Eternity which had the deleterious effect, since when given the choice humanity would always choose safety. Noÿs Lambent reveals that in order to make Eternity improbable, Harlan needs only to decide to leave Cooper stranded in 1932. She also intends to send a carefully worded letter to Italy, causing a man (presumably Enrico Fermi) to "begin experimenting with the neutronic bombardment of uranium". This will start a chain of events which will lead to the first atom bomb in 1945. In the reality known up to that point, atomic power was discovered somewhat later (it is not explained when, but the 24th century had nuclear reactors, and no nuclear bombs were detonated until the 30th century). Acquiring the technology sooner, humanity will be diverted to focus more on the science of nucleonics and therefore develop interstellar space travel instead of time travel technology, and leading to a Galactic Empire instead of Eternity. Harlan at first intends to kill Noÿs and carry out his mission, but in comparing her story to that of the freakish and occasionally inhuman Eternals he has encountered, Harlan confirms his lingering suspicions that Eternity has been wrong for humanity. At the very moment he decides to help her, a Reality Change occurs and the 'kettle' linking them with Eternity vanishes into thin air.
147014	/m/012sgg	The Newcomes	William Makepeace Thackeray	1855	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of Colonel Thomas Newcome, a virtuous and upstanding character. It is equally the story of Colonel Newcome's son, Clive, who studies and travels for the purpose of becoming a painter, although the profession is frowned on by some of his relatives and acquaintances — notably Clive's snobbish, backstabbing cousin Barnes Newcome. Colonel Newcome goes out to India for decades, then returns to England where Clive meets his cousin Ethel. After years in England, the colonel returns to India for another several years and while he is there, Clive travels Europe and his love for Ethel waxes and wanes. Dozens of background characters appear, fade, and reappear. The colonel and Clive are only the central figures in The Newcomes, the action of which begins before the colonel's birth. Over several generations the Newcome family rises into wealth and respectability as bankers and begin to marry into the minor aristocracy. A theme that runs throughout the novel is the practice of marrying for money. Herein we find first use of the coined word "capitalism", as reference an economic system. Religion is another theme, particularly Methodism.
147951	/m/012yyq	Little Dorrit	Charles Dickens	1857	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins in Marseilles "thirty years ago" (i.e. ca. 1826) with the notorious murderer Rigaud informing his cell mate that he has murdered his wife. There is also the character Arthur Clennam, who is returning to London to see his mother following the death of his father with whom he had lived for twenty years in China. As he died, his father had given Arthur a mysterious watch, murmuring, "Your mother." Naturally Arthur had assumed that it was intended for Mrs Clennam, whom he and the world supposed to be his mother. Inside the watch casing was an old silk paper with the initials D N F (Do Not Forget) worked into it in beads. It was a message, but when Arthur shows it to harsh and implacable Mrs Clennam, a religious fanatic, she refuses to reveal what it means, and the two become estranged. In London, William Dorrit, imprisoned as a debtor, has been a resident of Marshalsea debtor's prison for so long that his three children — snobbish Fanny, idle Edward (known as Tip), and Amy (known as Little Dorrit) — have all grown up there, though they are free to pass in and out of the prison as they please. Amy is devoted to her father and through her sewing, has been financially supporting the two of them. Once in London, Arthur is reacquainted with his former fiancée Flora Finching, who is now overweight and simpering. Arthur's mother, Mrs Clennam, although paralysed and a wheelchair user, still runs the family business with the help of her servant Jeremiah Flintwinch and his downtrodden wife Affery. When Arthur learns that Mrs Clennam has employed Little Dorrit as a seamstress, showing her unusual kindness, he wonders if the young girl might be connected with the mystery of the watch. Suspecting that his mother played a part in the misfortunes of the Dorrits, Arthur follows the girl to the Marshalsea. He vainly tries to inquire about William Dorrit's debt at the poorly run Circumlocution Office and acts as a benefactor to her father and brother. While at the Circumlocution Office, Arthur meets the struggling inventor Daniel Doyce, whom he decides to help by becoming his business partner. The grateful Little Dorrit falls in love with Arthur, much to the dismay of the son of the Marshalsea jailer, John Chivery, who has loved her since childhood; Arthur, however, fails to recognize Amy's interest. At last, aided by the indefatigable debt-collector Pancks, Arthur discovers that William Dorrit is the lost heir to a large fortune and he is finally able to pay his way out of prison. William Dorrit decides that as a now respectable family, they should go on a tour of Europe. They travel over the Alps and take up residence for a time in Venice, and finally in Rome, carrying, with the exception of Amy, an air of conceit at their new-found wealth. Eventually after a spell of delirium, Mr Dorrit dies in Rome, and his distraught brother Frederick, a kind-hearted musician, who has always stood by him, also passes away. Amy is left alone and returns to London to stay with newly married Fanny and her husband, the foppish Edmund Sparkler. The fraudulent dealings (similar to a Ponzi scheme) of Mr Merdle who is Edmund Sparkler's stepfather leads to the collapse of Merdle's bank after his suicide, taking with it the savings of both the Dorrits and Arthur Clennam, who is now himself imprisoned in the Marshalsea. While there, he is taken ill and is nursed back to health by Amy. The French villain Rigaud, now in London, discovers that Mrs Clennam has been hiding the fact that Arthur is not her real son, and Rigaud attempts to blackmail her. Arthur's biological mother was a beautiful young singer with whom his father had gone through a ceremony of sorts before being pressured by his wealthy uncle to marry the present Mrs Clennam. Mrs Clennam had agreed to bring up the child on condition that his mother never see him. Arthur's real mother died of grief at being separated from Arthur and Mr Clennam, but the wealthy uncle, stung by remorse, had left a bequest to Arthur's biological mother and to "the youngest daughter of her patron", a kindly musician who had taught and befriended her—and who happened to be Amy Dorrit's paternal uncle, Frederick. As Frederick Dorrit had no daughter, the legacy goes to the youngest daughter of Frederick's younger brother, who is William Dorrit, Amy's father. Mrs Clennam has been suppressing her knowledge that Amy is the heiress to an enormous fortune and estate. Overcome by passion, Mrs Clennam rises from her chair and totters out of her house to reveal the secret to Amy and to beg her forgiveness, which the kind-hearted girl freely grants. Mrs Clennam then falls down in the street—never to recover the use of her speech or limbs—as the house of Clennam literally collapses before her eyes, killing Rigaud. Rather than hurt Arthur, Amy chooses not to reveal what she has learned, though this means that she misses her legacy. When Arthur's business partner Daniel Doyce returns from Russia a wealthy man, Arthur is released with his fortunes revived, and Arthur and Amy are married. Like many of Dickens novels, Little Dorrit contains numerous subplots. One subplot concerns Arthur Clennam's friends, the kindhearted Meagles. They are upset when their daughter Pet marries an artist called Gowan and when their servant and foster daughter Tattycoram is lured away from them to the sinister Miss Wade, an acquaintance of the criminal Rigaud. Miss Wade hates men, and it turns out she is the jilted sweetheart of Gowan. The character Little Dorrit (Amy) was inspired by Mary Ann Cooper (née Mitton): Charles Dickens sometimes visited her and her family; they lived in The Cedars, a house on Hatton Road west of London; its site is now under the east end of London Heathrow Airport.
149096	/m/0133_b	A Man Called Horse	Dorothy M. Johnson	1968	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The protagonist is a Boston aristocrat who is captured by a Native American tribe. Initially enslaved, he comes to respect his captors' culture and gains their respect. He joins the tribe by showing his bravery and, later, gets back his dignity by marrying his owner's daughter, killing rival Indians and taking their horses. Taking the native name "Horse" (he was treated as a horse), he becomes a respected member of the tribe. es:Un hombre llamado Caballo nl:A Man Called Horse
149134	/m/013499	Where Angels Fear to Tread	E. M. Forster	1905	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and traveling companion Caroline Abbott, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with both Italy and Gino, a handsome Italian much younger than herself, and decides to stay. Furious, her dead husband's family send Lilia's brother-in-law Philip to Italy to prevent a misalliance, but he arrives too late. Lilia had already married the Italian and becomes pregnant again. While giving birth to her son, she dies. The Herritons send Philip again to Italy, this time to save the infant boy from an uncivilized life and to save the family's reputation. Not wanting to be outdone—or considered any less moral or concerned than Caroline for the child's welfare—Lilia's in-laws try to take the lead in traveling to Italy. In the public eye, they make it known that it is both their right and their duty to travel to Monteriano to obtain custody of the infant so that he can be raised as an Englishman. Secretly, though, they have no regard for the child; only public appearances. Similarly to A Room with a View, both Italy and its inhabitants are presented as exuding an irresistible charm, to which eventually Caroline Abbott also succumbs. However, there is a tragic ending to the novel: the accidental death of Lilia's child, which spurs a series of drastic changes within the story. Gino's physical outburst toward Philip in response to the news makes Philip realize what it is like to truly be alive. The guilt felt by Lilia's sister-in-law Harriet causes her to lose her mind. Finally, in Forster's novel, Philip realizes that he is in love with Caroline Abbott but that he can never have her, because she admits, dramatically, to being in love with Gino. The film by contrast, adds a positive ending to the story by hinting that Caroline's love for Gino may be just a passing fancy, with love between herself and Philip being possible. * Forster, E.M., Where Angels Fear to Tread, ed. by Oliver Stallybrass (London, 1975). * Winkgens, Meinhard, ’Die Funktionalisierung des Italienbildes in den Romanen "Where Angels Fear to Tread" von E.M. Forster und "The Lost Girl" von D.H. Lawrence’, Arcadia, 21 (1986), 41-61..
149679	/m/0137fq	Shame	Salman Rushdie	1983-10-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This story takes place in a town called, "Q" which is actually a fictitious version of Pakistan. In "Q" the 3 sisters (Chunni, Munnee, and Bunny Shakil) simultaneously pretend to give birth to Omar Khayyám Shakil. Therefore, it is impossible to know who Omar's true mother is. In addition, they are unsure of who Omar's father is as the three sisters got pregnant at a house party. While growing up, Omar becomes mischievous and learns hypnosis. As a birthday present, Omar Khayyám Shakil's "mothers" allow him to leave "Q." He enrolls in a school and is convinced by his tutor (Eduardo Rodriguez) to become a doctor. Over time, he comes in contact with both Iskander Harappa and General Raza Hyder.
151636	/m/013r0t	Trent's Last Case	E. C. Bentley		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Trent's Last Case is actually the first novel in which gentleman sleuth Philip Trent appears. The novel is a whodunit with a place in detective fiction history because it is the first major sendup of that genre: Not only does Trent fall in love with one of the primary suspects—usually considered a no-no—he also, after painstakingly collecting all the evidence, draws all the wrong conclusions. Convinced that he has tracked down the murderer of a business tycoon who was shot in his mansion, he is told by the real perpetrator over dinner what mistakes in logical deduction he has made in trying to solve the case. On hearing what really happened, Trent vows that he will never again attempt to dabble in crime detection.
151803	/m/013rt4	Play	Samuel Beckett	1963		 The curtain rises on three identical grey funeral “urns”, about three feet tall by preference, arranged in a row facing the audience. They contain three stock characters. In the middle urn is a man (M). To his right is his wife (W1) or long-time partner. The third urn holds his mistress (W2). Their “[f]aces [are] so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns.” Beckett has used similar imagery before, Mahood’s jar in The Unnameable, for example, or the dustbins occupied by Nell and Nagg in Endgame. At the beginning and end of the play, a spotlight picks out all three faces, and all three characters recite their own lines, in what Beckett terms a "chorus"; “He wrote each part separately, then interspersed them, working over the proper breaks in the speeches for a long time before he was satisfied.” One character speaks at a time and only when a strong spotlight shines in his or her face. The style is reminiscent of Mouth’s logorrhoea http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/logorrhea%20 in Not I, the obvious difference being that these characters constantly use first person pronouns. Clichés and puns abound. While one is talking the other two are silent and in darkness. They neither acknowledge the existence of the others around them (M: “To think we were never together”) nor appear aware of anything outside their own being and past (W2: “At the same time I prefer this to . . . the other thing. Definitely. There are endurable moments”). Beckett writes that this spotlight "provokes" the character's speech, and insists that whenever possible, a single, swivelling light should be used, rather than separate lights switching on and off. In this manner the spotlight is “expressive of a unique inquisitor”. Billie Whitelaw referred to it as “an instrument of torture.” The spotlight is in effect the play’s fourth character. In an almost fugal style the three obsess over the affair. Each presents his or her own version of the truth told in the past tense and each from his or her respective points of view. It is one of Beckett’s most ‘musical’ pieces with “a chorus for three voices, orchestration, stage directions concerning tempo, volume and tone, a da capo repeat of the entire action” and a short coda. Towards the end of the script, there is the concise instruction: "Repeat play." Beckett elaborates on this in the notes, by saying that the repeat might be varied. “[I]n the London production, variations were introduced: a weakening of light and voices in the first repeat, and more so in the second; an abridged second opening; increasing breathlessness; changes in the order of the opening words.” At the end of this second repeat, the play appears as if it is about to start again for a third time (as in Act Without Words II), but does not get more than a few seconds into it before it suddenly stops. “The affair was unexceptional. From the moment when the man tried to escape his tired marriage and odious professional commitments by taking a mistress, [events took a predictable enough course:] the wife soon began to ‘smell her off him’; there were painful recriminations when the wife accused the man, hired a private detective, threatened to kill herself, and confronted the mistress in an old rambling house reminiscent of Watt (and where the servant again is ‘Erskine’) … The man renounced the mistress, was forgiven by his wife who ‘suggested a little jaunt to celebrate, to the Riviera or … Grand Canary,’ and then, [true to form], returned to the mistress, this time to elope with her. [In time] their relationship too became jaded, and the man” abandons her as well. According to Knowlson and John Pilling in Frescoes of the Skull: the later prose and drama of Samuel Beckett, “[T]he three figures in Play … are not three-dimensional characters. Any attempt to analyse them as if they were would be absurd. The stereotype predominates … [They] belong … to the artificial world of melodrama and romance embodied in romanticized fiction.”
152925	/m/013yny	Waverley	Walter Scott	1814	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The eponymous English protagonist, Edward Waverley, has been brought up in the family home by his uncle, Sir Everard Waverley, who maintains the family Tory and Jacobite sympathies, while Edward's Whig father works for the Hanoverian government in nearby London. Edward Waverley is given a commission in the Hanoverian army and is posted to Dundee, then promptly takes leave to visit Baron Bradwardine, a Jacobite friend of his uncle, and meets the Baron's lovely daughter Rose. When wild Highlanders visit the Baron's castle Waverley is intrigued and goes to the mountain lair of Clan Mac-Ivor, meeting the Chieftain Fergus and his sister Flora who turn out to be active Jacobites preparing for the '45 Rising. Waverley has overstayed his leave and is accused of desertion and treason, then arrested. Highlanders rescue him from his escort and take him to the Jacobite stronghold at Doune castle then on to Holyrood Palace where he meets Bonnie Prince Charlie himself. Encouraged by the beautiful Flora Mac-Ivor, Waverley goes over to the Jacobites and takes part in the Battle of Prestonpans, where he saves the life of a colonel who turns out to be a close friend of his uncle. Thus he escapes retribution and marries the Baron's daughter, Rose Bradwardine.
153150	/m/013zzr	The Vampire Lestat	Anne Rice	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 Set in the late 18th century to the late 1980s, the story follows the 200-year-long life of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, and his rise from humble beginnings as an impoverished aristocrat in the countryside of France to the city of Paris to become a vain and arrogant vampire. After escaping his family and running off to Paris with his friend and confidante Nicolas de Lenfent (nicknamed Nicki by Lestat), Lestat is kidnapped and bitten by the rogue elder vampire Magnus, who orphans him on the night he is made. Later, his dying mother, Gabrielle, arrives to say goodbye to him. In order to save her, Lestat bites her, transforming her into his first companion. Lestat abandons Nicki for fear of causing him harm and shuns contact with his loved ones. He later turns Nicki into a vampire after Armand kidnaps him and they begin to grow apart because of Nicki's sullenness; he later commits suicide by "going into the fire," from severe depression. Armand "shows" Lestat the history of how he was made by Marius. Compelled by the idea of Marius, Lestat leaves markings carved into rock in numerous places while traveling with Gabrielle, hoping that one day, Marius will see them and find Lestat. Whilst in Egypt, abandoned by Gabrielle, Lestat sleeps in the ground after being burned by the sun,and is recovered by Marius who takes him to his Mediterranean island. Then, Marius shares his past with him, and shows him Those Who Must Be Kept, Akasha and Enkil. Once Marius has given his warning to Lestat not to go see them again and leaves on a short outing, Lestat takes Nicolas's old violin and plays for the King and Queen, awakening them. Akasha feeds from Lestat as Lestat feeds from her. Then, Enkil, furious as ever, nearly kills Lestat, who is saved by Marius, and sent away. The book ends on a cliffhanger after Lestat's debut concert in San Francisco, and leads directly into the third volume, the Queen of the Damned.
153449	/m/0140hq	The Tale of the Body Thief	Anne Rice	1992	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 At the beginning of the story, Lestat grows depressed and becomes remorseful because of his vampiric nature. Although he tries to limit his victims to murderers, serial killers and other criminals, he nonetheless caves into temptation once in a while and kills an "innocent" or someone who he feels does not necessarily deserve to die. Lestat also suffers from constant nightmares concerning his late "daughter," Claudia, for whose death he blames himself. The "coven" of vampires formed at the end of The Queen of the Damned has long since broken up, and Lestat has become extremely lonely. Among his only remaining friends is the mortal head of the Talamasca Caste, David Talbot, who is seventy-four years old. Although Lestat has repeatedly offered David the Dark Gift, David has always refused to become a vampire and keep Lestat company through eternity. Lonely and depressed, Lestat goes to the Gobi desert at dawn in a half-hearted suicide attempt. When he does not die, he goes to David's home in England to heal. A mysterious figure, Raglan James - the eponymous "Body Thief" of the story - approaches Lestat with what seems to be a cure for his ennui and depression. James sends Lestat several messages hinting that he has the ability to switch bodies. Eventually, he proposes to Lestat that the two of them trade bodies for a day. Against the advice of other vampires and David Talbot, Lestat jumps at the opportunity. Unfortunately, James has no intention of ever switching back, and Lestat is forced to scheme to regain his body. Lestat nearly dies after becoming human again - his new body is wracked by pneumonia, which he ignores during a tour of Washington D.C. in the middle of winter. He is saved by the care of a nun named Gretchen. He enjoys a short love affair with Gretchen before she returns to South America, where she works in a convent, and Lestat sets out in search of his body. Lestat seeks help from other vampires but is completely ostracized by them. Marius is extremely angry at him for leaving such a powerful body to a thief and refuses to help him. Likewise Louis turns him away when he asks Louis to make his new body into a vampire, arguing that Lestat ought to be happy to be human again and also calls him out on his previous writings, accusing him of altering his actual past in favor of one that portrays him heroically. Lestat's only ally is David Talbot. Drawing from the Talamasca's resources on the supernatural, Talbot reveals that James was a gifted psychic who once joined the order, but was kicked out for constant theft. He is a kleptomaniac who enjoys stealing for the thrill of it — it is revealed that every single thing he owns, from his house to his body, was stolen or schemed for. However, he also has major psychological problems, and his life is a series of cycles — he gets rich by theft, then often ends up in prison. Dying of cancer several years before, James tricked the inmate of a mental institution into switching bodies with him, allowing him a type of immortality. It is James' lack of imagination and petty thievery that allow Talbot and Lestat to track him down. Despite his newfound wealth and powerful new body, James continues to steal jewelry from people. He also makes a conspicuous show of his wealth, boarding the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, and draining victims of their blood along the ship's path. The pattern allows his pursuers to easily find him. On the cruise ship, Lestat manages to regain his body with David's help, but the sun is rising as he performs the switch and he must immediately flee to a safe place in which to spend the day. When he awakes in the evening he finds that both James and Talbot have disappeared. Lestat finds David in Florida and is surprised to find that his friend, despite his earlier protestations, now wants to become a vampire. However, while taking his blood, Lestat discovers a final trick — when forced out of Lestat's body, James took over Talbot's body instead of returning to his own. Lestat angrily attacks James, crushing his skull. The blow proves fatal - the injury damages James' brain and prevents him from leaving the dying body or trying to switch bodies before his current one dies. At this point, Tale of the Body Thief reaches a false ending. Raglan James is dead. David has begun to enjoy life in his new, young body. Lestat returns to New Orleans, reunites with Louis, and begins to renovate his old house in the French Quarter. Above all, Lestat claims that he has finally come to accept his vampiric nature. However, Lestat then warns readers not to continue if they are happy with this ending. Lestat then resumes the narrative, claiming that he has regained his "evil" nature, and decides to make Talbot into a vampire against his wishes, and despite the role Talbot played in saving his life when everyone else abandoned him. After having immortality forced upon him, David again disappears. Lestat looks for him for a while, but upon having no luck he gives up and returns to New Orleans — where to his surprise he finds that David has already contacted Louis. David explains to Lestat that, in secret, this is what he always truly wanted. He tells Lestat that he is no longer angry with him, although he does usurp Lestat's position of leadership, despite the latters' protests. Having gotten rid of his old age, and now being immortal, David plans to visit Rio de Janeiro with Louis, and asks Lestat to join him. At the end, Lestat also realizes that, despite all that happened, he is still alone, has failed to regain his "humanity," and has thrown away his only chance to make amends for his past misdeeds.
153476	/m/0140ll	Memnoch the Devil	Anne Rice	1995-07-03	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After stalking and killing Roger, a ruthless but enthrallingly passionate mobster, Lestat is approached by Roger's ghost. Roger's ghost asks him to take care of his daughter Dora, a devout and popular television evangelist, whom he wants to spare from embarrassment. At the same time, Lestat has become increasingly paranoid that he's being stalked by a powerful force. Eventually, Lestat meets the Devil, who calls himself Memnoch. He takes Lestat on a whirlwind tour of Heaven, Hell and retells of the entirety of history from his own point of view in an effort to convince Lestat to join him as God's adversary. In his journey, Memnoch claims he is not evil, but merely working for God by ushering lost souls into Heaven. Lestat is left in confusion, unable to decide whether or not to cast his lot with the Devil. After the tour, Lestat believes himself to have had a major revelation. Among other things, he believes that he has seen Christ's crucifixion and that he has received Saint Veronica's Veil. He has also lost an eye in Hell. He tells his story to Armand, David Talbot and Dora, who have joined him in New York. Dora and Armand are deeply moved upon seeing the veil. Dora takes it and reveals it to the world, triggering a religious movement. Armand goes into the sunlight and immolates himself in order to convince people that a miracle has occurred. At the end of the novel, Lestat and David go to New Orleans. There, Maharet returns Lestat's eye to him, along with a note from Memnoch that reveals Memnoch may have been manipulating Lestat to serve his own agenda. Lestat then loses control of himself and Maharet is forced to chain him in the basement of the St. Elizabeth's convent, which is owned by the vampires, so that he will not hurt himself or others. Although the novel fits into the storyline of The Vampire Chronicles, the vast majority of it consists of Memnoch's account of cosmology and theology. The novel follows up on claims made by David Talbot in The Tale of the Body Thief that God and the Devil are on better terms than most Christians believe. It also reinterprets biblical stories to create a complete history of Earth, Heaven and Hell that fit neatly with the history of vampires given in The Queen of the Damned.
154524	/m/0146hq	The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe	Daniel Defoe	1719	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book starts with the statement about Crusoe's marriage in England. He bought a little farm in Bedford and had three children: two sons and one daughter. Our hero suffered a distemper and a desire to see "his island." He could talk of nothing else, and one can imagine that no one took his stories seriously, except his wife. She told him, in tears, "I will go with you, but I won't leave you." But in the middle of this felicity, Providence unhinged him at once, with the loss of his wife. At the beginning of 1693, Crusoe made his nephew the commander of a ship. Around the beginning of January 1694, Crusoe and Friday went on board this ship in the Downs on the 8th, then arrived at Crusoe's Island via Ireland. They discovered that the English mutineers left on the island by Crusoe a decade earlier had been making trouble, but that when the island fell under attack by cannibals the various parties on the island were forced to work together under truce to meet the threat. Crusoe takes various steps to consolidate leadership on the island and assure the civility of the inhabitants, including leaving a quantity of needed supplies, setting up a sort of rule of law under an honour system and ensuring cohabitating couples are married. He also leaves additional residents with necessary skills. On the way to the mainland once again from Crusoe's island, the ship is attacked by the cannibals. Friday dies from three arrow shots during an attempt to negotiate, but the crew eventually wins the encounter without further serious casualty. After having buried Friday in the ocean, the same evening they set sail for Brazil. They stayed for a long period there, then went directly over to the Cape of Good Hope. They landed on Madagascar where their nine men were pursued by three hundred natives, because one of his mariners had carried off a young native girl among the trees. The natives hanged this person, so the crew massacred 32 persons and burned the houses of the native town. Crusoe opposed all these, therefore he was marooned, and settled at the Bay of Bengal for a long time. Finally, he bought a ship that later turned out to be stolen. Therefore they went to the river of Cambodia and Cochin-China or the bay of Tonquin, until they came to the latitude of 22 degrees and 30 minutes, and anchored at the island of Formosa (Taiwan). Then they arrived to the coast of China. They visited Nanking near the river of Kilam, and sailed southwards to a port called Quinchang. An old Portuguese pilot suggested them to go to Ningpo by the mouth of a river. This Ningpo was a canal that passed through the heart of that vast empire of China, crossed all the rivers and some hills by the help of sluices and gates, and went up to Peking, being near 270 leagues long. So they did, then it was the beginning of February, in the Old Style calendar, when they set out from Peking. Then they travelled through the following places: Changu, Naum (or Naun, a fortified city), Argun(a) on the Chinese-Russian border (April 13, 1703). Argun was the first town on the Russian border, then they went through Nertzinskoi (Nerchinsk), Plotbus, touched a lake called Schaks Ozer, Jerawena, the river Udda, Yeniseysk, and Tobolsk (from September 1703 to beginning of June 1704). They arrived into Europe around the source of the river Wirtska, south of the river Petrou, to a village called Kermazinskoy near Soloy Kamskoy (Solikamsk). They passed a little river called Kirtza, near Ozomoys (or Gzomoys), came to Veuslima (?) on the river Witzogda (Vychegda), running into the Dwina, then they stayed in Lawrenskoy (July 3–7, 1704; possibly Yarensk, known as Yerenskoy Gorodok at that time). Finally Crusoe arrived at the White Sea port town Arch-Angel (Archangelsk) on August 18, sailed into Hamburg (September 18), and Hague. He arrived at London on 10 January 1705, having been gone from England ten years and nine months.
154527	/m/0146jd	The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinism	Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Marquis de Sade	1905	{"/m/02js9": "Erotica"}	 The 120 Days Of Sodom is set in a remote medieval castle, high in the mountains and surrounded by forests, detached from the rest of the world and not set at any specific point in time (although it is implied at the start that the events in the story take place either during or shortly after the Thirty Years' War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648). The novel takes place over five months, November to March. Four wealthy libertines lock themselves in a castle, the Château de Silling, along with a number of victims and accomplices. (The description of Silling matches de Sade's own castle, the Château de Lacoste.) They intend to listen to various tales of depravity from four veteran prostitutes, which will inspire them to engage in similar activities with their victims. It is not a complete novel. Only the first section is written in detail. After that, the remaining three parts are written as a draft, in note form, with Sade's footnotes to himself still present in most translations. Either at the outset, or during the writing of the work, Sade had evidently decided he would not be able to complete it in full and elected to write out the remaining three-quarters in brief and finish it later. The story does portray some black humor, and Sade seems almost lighthearted in his introduction, referring to the reader as "friend reader". In this introduction he contradicts himself, at one point insisting that one should not be horrified by the 600 passions outlined in the story because everybody has their own tastes, but at the same time going out of his way to warn the reader of the horrors that lay ahead, suggesting that the reader should have doubts about continuing. Consequently he glorifies as well as vilifies the four main protagonists, alternately declaring them freethinking heroes and debased villains, often in the same passage.
155311	/m/014bqn	War and Peace	Leo Tolstoy	1869	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 War and Peace has a large cast of characters, the majority of whom are introduced in the first book. Some are actual historical figures, such as Napoleon and Alexander I. While the scope of the novel is vast, it is centered around five aristocratic families. The plot and the interactions of the characters take place in the era surrounding the 1812 French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic wars. The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg, at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer — the maid of honour and confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main characters and aristocratic families in the novel are introduced as they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is dying after a series of strokes. Pierre is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad at his father's expense following his mother's death, Pierre is essentially kindhearted, but socially awkward, and owing in part to his open, benevolent nature, finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. It is known to everyone at the soirée that Pierre is his father's favorite of all the old count’s illegitimate children. Also attending the soireé is Pierre's friend, the intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, husband of Lise, the charming society favourite. Finding Petersburg society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon. The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich pledges his love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), his fifteen-year-old cousin, an orphan who has been brought up by the Rostovs. The eldest child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, Count Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova, are an affectionate couple but forever worried about their disordered finances. At Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys' country estate, Prince Andrei departs for war and leaves his terrified, pregnant wife Lise with his eccentric father Prince Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky and devoutly religious sister Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya. The second part opens with descriptions of the impending Russian-French war preparations. At the Schöngrabern engagement, Nikolai Rostov, who is now conscripted as ensign in a squadron of hussars, has his first taste of battle. He meets Prince Andrei, whom he insults in a fit of impetuousness. Even more than most young soldiers, he is deeply attracted by Tsar Alexander's charisma. Nikolai gambles and socializes with his officer, Vasily Dmitrich Denisov, and befriends the ruthless, and perhaps, psychopathic Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov. Book Two begins with Nikolai Rostov briefly returning on home leave to Moscow. Nikolai finds the Rostov family facing financial ruin due to poor estate management. He spends an eventful winter at home, accompanied by his friend Denisov, his officer from the Pavlograd Regiment in which he serves. Natasha has blossomed into a beautiful young girl. Denisov falls in love with her, proposes marriage but is rejected. Although his mother pleads with Nikolai to find himself a good financial prospect in marriage, Nikolai refuses to accede to his mother's request. He promises to marry his childhood sweetheart, the dowry-less Sonya. Pierre Bezukhov, upon finally receiving his massive inheritance, is suddenly transformed from a bumbling young man into the richest and most eligible bachelor in the Russian Empire. Despite rationally knowing that it is wrong, he is convinced into marriage with Prince Kuragin's beautiful and immoral daughter Hélène (Elena Vasilyevna Kuragina), to whom he is superficially attracted. Hélène, who is rumoured to be involved in an incestuous affair with her brother, the equally charming and immoral Anatol, tells Pierre that she will never have children with him. Hélène is rumoured to have an affair with Dolokhov, who mocks Pierre in public. Pierre loses his temper and challenges Dolokhov, a seasoned dueller and ruthless killer, to a duel. Unexpectedly, Pierre wounds Dolokhov. Hélène denies her affair, but Pierre is convinced of her guilt and, after almost being violent to her, leaves her. In his moral and spiritual confusion, Pierre joins the Freemasons, and becomes embroiled in Masonic internal politics. Much of Book Two concerns his struggles with his passions and his spiritual conflicts to be a better man. Now a rich aristocrat, he abandons his former carefree behavior and enters upon a philosophical quest particular to Tolstoy: how should one live a moral life in an ethically imperfect world? The question continually baffles and confuses Pierre. He attempts to liberate his serfs, but ultimately achieves nothing of note. Pierre is vividly contrasted with the intelligent and ambitious Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. At the Battle of Austerlitz, Andrei is inspired by a vision of glory to lead a charge of a straggling army. He suffers a near fatal artillery wound. In the face of death, Andrei realizes all his former ambitions are pointless and his former hero, Napoleon (who rescues him in a horseback excursion to the battlefield), is apparently as vain as himself. Prince Andrei recovers from his injuries in a military hospital and returns home, only to find his wife Lise dying in childbirth. He is stricken by his guilty conscience for not treating Lise better when she was alive and is haunted by the pitiful expression on his dead wife's face. His child, Nikolenka, survives. Burdened with nihilistic disillusionment, Prince Andrei does not return to the army but chooses to remain on his estate, working on a project that would codify military behavior to solve problems of disorganization responsible for the loss of life on the Russian side. Pierre visits him and brings new questions: where is God in this amoral world? Pierre is interested in panentheism and the possibility of an afterlife. Pierre's estranged wife, Hélène, begs him to take her back, and against his better judgment and in trying to abide by the Freemason laws of forgiveness, he does. Despite her vapid shallowness, Hélène establishes herself as an influential hostess in Petersburg society. Prince Andrei feels impelled to take his newly written military notions to Petersburg, naively expecting to influence either the Emperor himself or those close to him. Young Natasha, also in Petersburg, is caught up in the excitement of dressing for her first grand ball, where she meets Prince Andrei and briefly reinvigorates him with her vivacious charm. Andrei believes he has found purpose in life again and, after paying the Rostovs several visits, proposes marriage to Natasha. However, old Prince Bolkonsky, Andrei's father, dislikes the Rostovs, opposes the marriage, and insists on a year's delay. Prince Andrei leaves to recuperate from his wounds abroad, leaving Natasha initially distraught. She soon recovers her spirits, however, and Count Rostov takes her and Sonya to spend some time with a friend in Moscow. Natasha visits the Moscow opera, where she meets Hélène and her brother Anatol. Anatol has since married a Polish woman who he has abandoned in Poland. He is very attracted to Natasha and is determined to seduce her. Hélène and Anatol conspire together to accomplish this plan. Anatol kisses Natasha and writes her passionate letters, eventually establishing plans to elope. Natasha is convinced that she loves Anatol and writes to Princess Maria, Andrei's sister, breaking off her engagement. At the last moment, Sonya discovers her plans to elope and foils them. Pierre is initially horrified by Natasha's behavior, but realizes he has fallen in love with her. During the time when the Great Comet of 1811–2 streaks the sky, life appears to begin anew for Pierre. Prince Andrei accepts coldly Natasha's breaking of the engagement. He tells Pierre that his pride will not allow him to renew his proposal. Ashamed, Natasha makes a suicide attempt and is left seriously ill. With the help of her family, especially Sonya, and the stirrings of religious faith, Natasha manages to persevere in Moscow through this dark period. Meanwhile, the whole of Russia is affected by the coming confrontation between Napoleon's troops and the Russian army. Pierre convinces himself through gematria that Napoleon is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation. Old prince Bolkonsky dies of a stroke while trying to protect his estate from French marauders. No organized help from any Russian army seems available to the Bolkonskys, but Nikolai Rostov turns up at their estate in time to help put down an incipient peasant revolt. He finds himself attracted to Princess Maria, but remembers his promise to Sonya. Back in Moscow, the war-obsessed Petya manages to snatch a loose piece of the Tsar's biscuit outside the Cathedral of the Assumption; he finally convinces his parents to allow him to enlist. Napoleon himself is a main character in this section of the novel and is presented in vivid detail, as both a thinker and would-be strategist. His toilette and his customary attitudes and traits of mind are depicted in detail. Also described are the well-organized force of over 400,000 French Army (only 140,000 of them actually French-speaking) which marches quickly through the Russian countryside in the late summer and reaches the outskirts of the city of Smolensk. Pierre decides to leave Moscow and go to watch the Battle of Borodino from a vantage point next to a Russian artillery crew. After watching for a time, he begins to join in carrying ammunition. In the midst of the turmoil he experiences firsthand the death and destruction of war. The battle becomes a hideous slaughter for both armies and ends in a standoff. The Russians, however, have won a moral victory by standing up to Napoleon's reputedly invincible army. For strategic reasons and having suffered grievous losses, the Russian army withdraws the next day, allowing Napoleon to march on to Moscow. Among the casualties are Anatol Kuragin and Prince Andrei. Anatol loses a leg, and Andrei suffers a grenade wound in the abdomen. Both are reported dead, but their families are in such disarray that no one can be notified. The Rostovs have waited until the last minute to abandon Moscow, even after it is clear that Kutuzov has retreated past Moscow and Muscovites are being given contradictory, often propagandistic, instructions on how to either flee or fight. Count Rostopchin is publishing posters, rousing the citizens to put their faith in religious icons, while at the same time urging them to fight with pitchforks if necessary. Before fleeing himself, he gives orders to burn the city. The Rostovs have a difficult time deciding what to take with them, but in the end, Natasha convinces them to load their carts with the wounded and dying from the Battle of Borodino. Unknown to Natasha, Prince Andrei is amongst the wounded. When Napoleon's Grand Army finally occupies an abandoned and burning Moscow, Pierre takes off on a quixotic mission to assassinate Napoleon. He becomes an anonymous man in all the chaos, shedding his responsibilities by wearing peasant clothes and shunning his duties and lifestyle. The only people he sees while in this garb are Natasha and some of her family, as they depart Moscow. Natasha recognizes and smiles at him, and he in turn realizes the full scope of his love for her. Pierre saves the life of a French officer who fought at Borodino, yet is taken prisoner by the retreating French during his attempted assassination of Napoleon, after saving a woman from being raped by soldiers in the French Army. He becomes friends with a fellow prisoner, Platon Karataev, a peasant with a saintly demeanor, who is incapable of malice. In Karataev, Pierre finally finds what he has been seeking: an honest person of integrity (unlike the aristocrats of Petersburg society) who is utterly without pretense. Pierre discovers meaning in life simply by living and interacting with him. After witnessing French soldiers sacking Moscow and shooting Russian civilians arbitrarily, Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow in the harsh Russian winter. After months of trial and tribulation—during which the fever-plagued Karataev is shot by the French—Pierre is finally freed by a Russian raiding party, after a small skirmish with the French that sees the young Petya Rostov killed in action. Meanwhile, Andrei, wounded during Napoleon's invasion, has been taken in as a casualty and cared for by the Rostovs, fleeing from Moscow to Yaroslavl. He is reunited with Natasha and his sister Maria before the end of the war. Having lost all will to live, he forgives Natasha in a last act before dying. As the novel draws to a close, Pierre's wife Hélène dies from an overdose of abortion medication (Tolstoy does not state it explicitly but the euphemism he uses is unambiguous). Pierre is reunited with Natasha, while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow. Natasha speaks of Prince Andrei's death and Pierre of Karataev's. Both are aware of a growing bond between them in their bereavement. With the help of Princess Maria, Pierre finds love at last and, revealing his love after being released by his former wife's death, marries Natasha. The first part of the epilogue begins with the wedding of Pierre and Natasha in 1813. It is the last happy event for the Rostov family, which is undergoing a transition. Count Rostov dies soon after, leaving his eldest son Nikolai to take charge of the debt-ridden estate. Nikolai finds himself with the task of maintaining the family on the verge of bankruptcy. His abhorrence at the idea of marrying for wealth almost gets in his way, but finally he marries the now-rich Maria Bolkonskaya and in so doing also saves his family from financial ruin. Nikolai and Maria then move to Bald Hills with his mother and Sonya, whom he supports for the rest of their life. Buoyed by his wife's fortune, Nikolai pays off all his family's debts. They also raise Prince Andrei's orphaned son, Nikolai Andreyevich (Nikolenka) Bolkonsky. As in all good marriages, there are misunderstandings, but the couples–Pierre and Natasha, Nikolai and Maria–remain devoted to their spouses. Pierre and Natasha visit Bald Hills in 1820, much to the jubilation of everyone concerned. There is a hint in the closing chapters that the idealistic, boyish Nikolenka and Pierre would both become part of the Decembrist Uprising. The first epilogue concludes with Nikolenka promising he would do something with which even his late father "would be satisfied..." (presumably as a revolutionary in the Decembrist revolt). The second part of the epilogue contains Tolstoy's critique of all existing forms of mainstream history. While most historians claim that historical events are the result of the actions of "heroes" and other great individuals, Tolstoy argues that this is impossible because of how rarely these actions result in great historical events. Rather, he argues, great historical events are the result of many smaller events driven by the thousands of individuals involved, (he compares this to Calculus, and the sum of infinitesimals). He then goes on to argue that these smaller events are the result of an inverse relationship between necessity and free-will, necessity being based on reason and therefore explainable by historical analysis, and free-will being based on "consciousness" and therefore inherently unpredictable.
155505	/m/014chh	On the Beach	Nevil Shute	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set primarily in and around Melbourne, Australia, in 1963. World War III has devastated most of the populated world, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all human and animal life in the northern hemisphere. The war began with a nuclear attack by Albania on Italy and then escalated with the bombing of the United States and the United Kingdom by Egypt. Because the aircraft used in these attacks were obtained from the Soviet Union, the Soviets were mistakenly blamed, triggering a retaliatory strike on the USSR by NATO. There is also an attack by the Soviets on the People's Republic of China, which may have been a response to a Chinese attack aimed at occupying Soviet industrial areas near the Chinese border. Most if not all of the bombs had cobalt that was included to enhance their radioactive properties. Global air currents are slowly carrying the lethal nuclear fallout across the Intertropical Convergence Zone to the southern hemisphere. The only parts of the planet still habitable are Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America, although these areas are slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning as well. Life in Melbourne continues in a reasonably normal fashion, though the near-complete lack of motor fuels makes travel difficult. People in Australia detect a mysterious and incomprehensible Morse code radio signal originating from Seattle, Washington, in the United States. With hope that someone has survived in the contaminated regions, one of the last American nuclear submarines, USS Scorpion, placed by its captain, Commander Dwight Towers, under Australian naval command, is ordered to sail north from its port of refuge in Melbourne (Australia's southernmost major mainland city) to contact whoever is sending the signal. In preparation for this journey, the submarine makes a shorter trip to port cities in northern Australia, including Cairns, Queensland and Darwin, Northern Territory, but finds no survivors. Two Australians sail with the American crew: Peter Holmes, naval liaison officer to the Americans, and a scientist, John Osborne. Commander Towers has become attached to a young Australian woman distantly related to Osborne named Moira Davidson, who tries to cope with the impending end of human life through heavy drinking. Despite his attraction to Davidson, Towers remains loyal to his wife and children in the United States. He buys his children gifts and imagines their growing older. At one point, however, he makes it clear to Moira that he knows his family is almost certainly dead, and he asks her if she thinks he is insane for acting as if they were still alive. She replies that she does not think he is crazy. The Australian government provides citizens with free suicide pills and injections so that they can avoid prolonged suffering from radiation poisoning. Periodic reports show the steady southward progression of the deadly radiation. As communications are lost with a city it is referred to as being "out." One of the novel's poignant dilemmas is that of Peter Holmes, who has a baby daughter and a naive and childish wife, Mary, who is in denial about the impending disaster. Because he has been assigned to travel north with the Americans, Peter tries to explain, to Mary's fury and disbelief, how to euthanize their baby and kill herself with the pill should he not return from his mission in time to help. The bachelor Osborne spends much of his time restoring a Ferrari racing car which he had purchased (along with a fuel supply) for a nominal amount following the outbreak of the war. The submarine travels to the Gulf of Alaska in the northern Pacific Ocean, where the crew determines that radiation levels are not decreasing. This finding discredits the "Jorgensen Effect," a scientific theory positing that radiation levels will gradually decrease due to weather effects and potentially allow for human life to continue in southern Australia or at least Antarctica. The submarine approaches San Francisco, California, observing through the periscope that the city had been devastated and the Golden Gate Bridge has fallen. In contrast, the Puget Sound area, from which the strange radio signals come, is found to have avoided destruction due to missile defenses. One crew member, who is from Edmonds, Washington, which the expedition visits, jumps ship to spend his last days in his home town. The expedition members then sail to an abandoned Navy communications school south of Seattle. A crewman sent ashore with oxygen tanks and protective gear discovers that, although the city's residents have long since perished, some of the region's hydroelectric power is still working due to primitive automation technology. He finds that the mysterious radio signal is the result of a broken window sash swinging in the breeze and occasionally hitting a telegraph key. After a brief stop at Pearl Harbor, the remaining submariners return to Australia to live out what little time they have left. The characters make their best efforts to enjoy what time remains to them, speaking of small pleasures and continuing their customary activities. The Holmeses plant a garden that they will never see; Moira takes classes in typing and shorthand; Osborne and others organize a dangerous motor race that results in the violent deaths of several participants; elderly members of a "gentlemen's club" drink up the wine in the club's cellar, debate over whether to move the fishing season up, and fret about whether agriculturally-destructive rabbits will survive human beings. Towers goes on a fishing trip with Davidson but they do not become sexually involved, as he wants to remain loyal to his wife, a decision Moira accepts. Government services and the economy gradually grind to a halt. In the end, Towers chooses not to remain and die with Moira but rather to lead his crew on a final mission to scuttle the submarine outside Australian territorial waters. He refuses to allow his imminent demise to turn him aside from his duty to the U.S. Navy and he acts as a pillar of strength to his crew. Moira watches the departure of the submarine from an adjacent hilltop as she takes her suicide pill, imagining herself together with Towers as she dies. When Mary Holmes becomes very ill, Peter administers a lethal injection to their daughter. Even though he still feels relatively well, he and Mary take their pills simultaneously so they can die as a family. Osborne takes his suicide pill while sitting in his beloved racing car. Typically for a Shute novel, the characters avoid expressing intense emotions and do not mope or indulge in self-pity. The Australians do not, for the most part, flee southward as refugees but rather accept their fate once the lethal radiation levels reach the latitudes at which they live; most of them opt for the government-promoted alternative of suicide when the symptoms of radiation sickness appear.
155591	/m/014cy4	La Fortune des Rougon	Émile Zola	1871		 After a stirring opening on the eve of the coup d'état, involving an idealistic young village couple joining up with the republican militia in the middle of the night, Zola then spends the next few chapters going back in time to pre-Revolutionary Provence, and proceeds to lay the foundations for the entire Rougon-Macquart cycle, committing himself to what would become the next twenty-two years of his life's work. The fictional town of Plassans (loosely based on the real city of Aix-en-Provence, where Zola grew up) is established as the setting for the novel and described in intimate detail, and then we are introduced to the eccentric heroine Adelaide Fouque, later known as "Tante Dide", who becomes the common ancestor for both the Rougon and Macquart families. Her legitimate son from her short marriage to her late husband, a labourer named Rougon who worked on Dide's land, is forced to grow up alongside two illegitimate children — a boy and a girl — from Dide's later romance with the smuggler, poacher and alcoholic Macquart, while the ageing Dide slides further and further into a state of mental illness and borderline senile dementia. From this premise, the next nineteen novels all get their central protagonists and to a certain extent their themes. The narrative continues along double lines, following both "branches" of the family. We see Pierre Rougon (the legitimate son) in his attempts to disinherit his Macquart half-siblings, his marriage to Felicité Puech, the voraciously ambitious daughter of a local merchant, and their continued failure to establish the fortune, fame and renown they seek, despite their greed and relatively comfortable lifestyles. Approaching old age, the Rougon couple finally admit defeat and settle, crushed, into their lower middle class destinies, until by a remarkable stroke of luck their eldest son Eugène reports from Paris that he has some news that they might find interesting. Eugène has become one of the closest allies of the future Emperor Napoleon III and informs his parents that a coup is imminent. Having been effectively given insider information about which side to back in the coming revolution, the Rougons then make a series of seemingly bold moves to show their loyal and steadfast support for Napoleon III, winning the admiration of the most influential people in the town, mostly royalists who are themselves afraid of showing too much commitment for fear of backing the "wrong horse" and losing their standing and fortune. The narrative then switches over to the Macquart side of the family, whose grim working-class struggles to survive are juxtaposed keenly with the Rougons' seemingly trivial quest for greater wealth and influence in genteel drawing-room society. Descended from a drunken ne'er-do-well and a madwoman, Zola effectively predestines the Macquarts to lives of toil and misery. Zola's theories of heredity, laid out in the original preface to this novel, were a cornerstone of his entire philosophy and a major reason for his embarking on the mammoth Rougon-Macquart project in the first place in order to illustrate them. Largely discredited nowadays, the theories are largely "present but unseen" in most of the novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, allowing those books to be enjoyed without the overshadowing effect of Zola's somewhat suspect scientific ideas. Due to the original story nature of La Fortune des Rougon, the theories are placed much more to the fore, and can appear somewhat heavy-handed as a result. A third branch of the family, the Mourets, descended from Macquart and Dide's daughter, are then introduced before the novel's focus is brought back to the "present", the night of the coup, via a quite brilliantly told love story. The idealistic but naïve Silvère Mouret falls madly in love with the innocent Miette Chantegreil, and after a long courtship they decide to join up with the republicans to fight the coup. The rest of the novel then picks up from where the opening chapter left off, and from then on is basically a dual narrative telling the story of the old Rougon couple and their increasingly Machiavellian machinations to get themselves into a position of fortune and respect in Plassans, juxtaposed with Silvère and Miette's continuing love story and the doomed republican militia's disastrous attempt to take the town back. Eventually, the Rougons exploit their half-brother Antoine Macquart into inadvertently helping crush the republican threat, and they achieve their life's ambition, fortune and favour. For Silvère and Miette, who committed themselves so completely to a doomed cause, there can be no such happy ending and Zola wisely leaves their half of the story at a bleak dead end. The title refers not only to the "fortune" chased by Pierre and Felicité Rougon, but also to the fortunes of the various disparate family members Zola introduces us to — their future lives, for which this novel is the starting point. The first English translation by Henry Vizetelly was published in 1886 and extensively revised (to meet Victorian standards of propriety and avoid prosecution for issuing an indecent publication) by Ernest Vizetelly in 1898, issued under the title The Fortune of the Rougons by Chatto and Windus. It is of reasonably poor quality, not helped by Vizetelly's boast that he had changed one in every three sentences in the course of his editing. No other translation was available until 2012, when Brian Nelson published one under the Oxford Worlds Classics imprint.
155592	/m/014cyj	Son Excellence Eugène Rougon	Émile Zola	1876	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens in 1857 with Rougon's career at a low ebb. In conflict with the Emperor over an inheritance claim involving a relative of the Empress, Rougon resigns from his position as premier of the Corps législatif before he can be dismissed. This puts the plans and dreams of Rougon's friends in limbo, as they are counting on his political influence to win various personal favors. His greatest ally and his greatest adversary is Clorinde Balbi, an Italian woman of dubious background and devious intent. Clorinde desires power as much as Rougon does but, because she is a woman, she is forced to act behind the scenes. Rougon refuses to marry her because he believes two such dominant personalities would inevitably destroy each other. Instead, he encourages her to marry M. Delestang, a man of great wealth who can easily be wheedled, while he himself takes a respectable nonentity of a wife who will not hinder his ambition. Rougon learns of an assassination plot against the Emperor, but decides to do nothing about it. In consequence, after the attempt is made (the Orsini incident of 1858), the Emperor makes him Minister of the Interior with power to maintain peace and national security at any cost. Rougon uses this as an opportunity to punish his political adversaries, deport anti-imperialists by the hundreds, and reward his loyal friends with honors, commissions, and political appointments. Through his influence, Delestang is made Minister of Agriculture and Commerce. As Rougon's power expands, however, his cronies begin to desert him despite his fulfilling their personal requests. They feel that he has not done enough for them and what he has done either has not been good enough or has had consequences so disastrous as to be no help at all. Moreover, they consider him ungrateful, given all the work they claim to have done to have him reinstated as Minister. Eventually, Rougon is involved in several great scandals based on the favors he has shown to his inner circle. At the center of all this conflict is Clorinde. As Rougon's power has grown, so has hers, until she has influence at the highest level and on an international scale, including as the Emperor's mistress. Now having the upper hand, she is able to punish Rougon for his refusal to marry her. To silence political and personal opposition, Rougon decides to submit his resignation to the Emperor, confident that it will not be accepted. However, it is accepted, and Delestang is made Minister of the Interior, the implication being that both actions are founded on Clorinde’s authority over the Emperor. The novel ends in 1862. The Emperor has returned Rougon to service as Minister without Portfolio, giving him unprecedented powers in the wake of Italian unification. Ostensibly, the appointment is meant to reconfigure the country on less imperialistic, more liberal lines, but in reality Rougon has a free hand to crush resistance, curtail opposition, and control the press.
155594	/m/014cyx	La Curée	Émile Zola	1871-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens with scenes of astonishing opulence, beginning with Renée and Maxime lazing in a luxurious horse-drawn carriage, very slowly leaving a Parisian park (the Bois de Boulogne) in the 19th century-equivalent of a traffic jam. It is made clear very early on that these are staggeringly wealthy characters not subject to the cares faced by the public; they arrive at their mansion and spend hours being dressed by their servants prior to hosting a banquet attended by some of the richest people in Paris. There seems to be almost no continuity between this scene and the end of the previous novel, until the second chapter begins and Zola reveals that this opulent scene takes place almost fourteen years later. Zola then rewinds time to pick up the story practically minutes after La Fortune des Rougon ended. Following Eugene Rougon's rise to political power in Paris in La Fortune, his younger brother Aristide, featured in the first novel as a talentless journalist, a comic character unable to commit himself unequivocally to the imperial cause and thus left out in the cold when the rewards were being handed out, decides to follow Eugene to Paris to help himself to the wealth and power he now believes to be his birthright. Eugene promises to help Aristide achieve these things on the condition that he stay out of his way and change his surname to avoid the possibility of bad publicity from Aristide's escapades rubbing off on Eugene and damaging his political chances. Aristide chooses the surname Saccard and Eugene gets him a seemingly mundane job at the city planning permission office. The renamed Saccard soon realises that, far from the disappointment he thought the job would be, he is actually in a position to gain insider information on the houses and other buildings that are to be demolished to build Paris's bold new system of boulevards. Knowing that the owners of these properties ordered to be demolished by the city government were compensated handsomely, Saccard contrives to borrow money in order to buy up these properties before their status becomes public and then make massive profits. Saccard is at first unable to get the money to make his initial investments but then his wife falls victim to a terminal illness. Even while she lies dying in the next room, Saccard (in a brilliant scene of breathtaking callousness) is already making arrangements to marry rich girl Renée, who is pregnant and whose family wishes to avoid scandal by offering a huge dowry to any man who will marry her and claim the baby as his own. Saccard accepts and his career in speculation is born. He sends his youngest daughter back home to Plassans and packs his older son Maxime off to a Parisian boarding school; we meet Maxime again when he leaves school several years later and meets his new stepmother Renée, who is only a couple of years older. The flashback complete, the rest of the novel takes place after Saccard has made his fortune, against the backdrop of his luxurious mansion and his profligacy and is concerned with a three-cornered plot of sexual and political intrigue. Renée and Maxime begin a semi-incestuous love affair, which Saccard suspects but appears to tolerate, perhaps due to the commercial nature of his marriage to Renée. Saccard is trying to get Renée to part with the deeds to her family home, which would be worth millions but which she refuses to give up. The novel continues in this vein with the tensions continuing to mount and culminates in a series of bitter observations by Zola on the hypocrisy and immorality of the nouveau riche. A near-penniless journalist at the time of writing La Curée, Zola himself had no experience of the scenes he describes. In order to counter this lack, he toured a large number of stately homes around France, taking copious notes on subjects like architecture, ladies' and men's fashions, jewellery, garden design, greenhouse plants (a seduction scene takes place in Saccard's hothouse), carriages, mannerisms, servants' liveries; these notes (volumes of which are preserved) were time well spent, as many contemporary observers praised the novel for its realism. Roger Vadim updated the setting to modern-day Paris in a movie adaptation by Jean Cau, starring Jane Fonda, Michel Piccoli and Peter McEnery in 1966. The film was released in English-speaking markets as The Game is Over.
155597	/m/014cz8	L'Argent	Émile Zola	1891	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in 1864-1869, beginning a few months after the death of Saccard's second wife Renée (see La curée). Saccard is bankrupt and an outcast among the Bourse financiers. Searching for a way to reestablish himself, Saccard is struck by plans developed by his upstairs neighbor, the engineer Georges Hamelin, who dreams of restoring Christianity to the Middle East through great public works: rail lines linking important cities, improved roads and transportation, renovated eastern Mediterranean ports, and fleets of modern ships to move goods around the world. Saccard decides to institute a financial establishment to fund these projects. He is motivated primarily by the potential to make incredible amounts of money and reestablish himself on the Bourse. In addition, Saccard has an intense rivalry with his brother Eugène Rougon, a powerful Cabinet minister who refuses to help him after his bankruptcy and who is promoting a more liberal, less Catholic agenda for the Empire. Furthermore, Saccard, an intense anti-Semite, sees the enterprise as a strike against the Jewish bankers who dominate the Bourse. (In a footnote, Ernest A. Vizetelly, the first British translator of L'argent, draws a distinction between Zola's depiction of this aspect of Saccard's character and Zola's personal pro-Jewish beliefs as manifested in the later Dreyfus affair.) From the beginning, Saccard's Banque Universelle (Universal Bank) stands on shaky ground. In order to manipulate the price of the stock, Saccard and his confreres on the syndicate he has set up to jumpstart the enterprise buy their own stock and hide the proceeds of this illegal practice in a dummy account fronted by a straw man. While Hamelin travels to Constantinople to lay the groundwork for their enterprise, the Banque Universelle goes from strength to strength. Stock prices soar, going from 500 francs a share to more than 3,000 francs in three years. Furthermore, Saccard buys several newspapers which serve to maintain the illusion of legitimacy, promote the Banque, excite the public, and attack Rougon. The novel follows the fortunes of about 20 characters, cutting across all social strata, showing the effects of stock market speculation on rich and poor. The financial events of the novel are played against Saccard's personal life. Hamelin lives with his sister Caroline, who, against her better judgment, invests in the Banque Universelle and later becomes Saccard's mistress. Caroline learns that Saccard fathered a son, Victor, during his first days in Paris. She rescues Victor from his life of abject poverty, placing him in a charitable institution. But Victor is completely unredeemable, given over to greed, laziness, and thievery. After he attacks one of the women at the institution, he disappears into the streets, never to be seen again. Eventually, the Banque Universelle cannot sustain itself. Saccard's principal rival on the Bourse, the Jewish financier Gundermann, learns about Saccard's financial trickery and attacks, losing stock upon the market, devaluing its price, and forcing Saccard to buy millions of shares to keep the price up. At the final collapse, the Banque holds one-fourth of its own shares worth 200 million francs. The fall of the Banque is felt across the entire financial world. Indeed, all of France feels the force of its collapse. The effects on the characters of L'argent are disastrous, including complete ruin, suicide, and exile, though some of Saccard's syndicate members escape and Gundermann experiences a windfall. Saccard and Hamelin are sentenced to five years in prison. Through the intervention of Rougon, who doesn't want a brother in jail, their sentences are commuted and they are forced to leave France. Saccard goes to Belgium, and the novel ends with Caroline preparing to follow her brother to Rome.
155638	/m/014d57	The Crying of Lot 49	Thomas Pynchon	1966	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows Oedipa Maas, a Californian housewife who becomes entangled in a convoluted historical mystery when her ex-lover dies and designates her the co-executor of his estate. The catalyst of Oedipa's adventure is a set of stamps that may have been used by a secret underground postal delivery service, the Trystero (or Tristero). According to the historical narrative that Oedipa pieces together during her travels around the San Francisco Bay Area, the Trystero was defeated by Thurn und Taxis – a real postal system – in the 18th century but went underground and continued to exist into Oedipa's present day, the 1960s. Their mailboxes are disguised as regular waste-bins, often displaying their slogan W.A.S.T.E., an acronym for We Await Silent Tristero's Empire, and their symbol, a muted post horn. The existence and plans of this shadowy organization are revealed bit by bit; or, then again, it is possible that the Tristero does not exist at all. The novel's main character, Oedipa Maas, is buffeted back and forth between believing and not believing in them, without ever finding firm proof either way. The Tristero may be a conspiracy, it may be a practical joke, or it may simply be that Oedipa is hallucinating all the arcane references to the underground network that she seems to be discovering on bus windows, toilet walls, and everywhere in the Bay Area. Prominent among these references is the "Trystero symbol", a muted post horn with one loop. Originally derived, supposedly, from the Thurn and Taxis coat of arms, Oedipa finds this symbol first in a bar bathroom, where it decorates a graffito advertising a group of polyamorists. It later appears among an engineer's doodles, as part of a children's sidewalk jump rope game, amidst Chinese ideograms in a shop window, and in many other places. The post horn (in either original or Trystero versions) appears on the cover art of many TCL49 editions, as well as within artwork created by the novel's fans. Oedipa finds herself drawn into this shadowy intrigue when an old boyfriend, the California real estate mogul Pierce Inverarity, dies. Inverarity's will names her as his executor. Soon enough, she learns that although Inverarity "once lost two million dollars in his spare time [he] still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary." She leaves her comfortable home in Kinneret-Among-The-Pines, a northern California village, and travels south to the fictional town of San Narciso (Spanish for "Saint Narcissus"), near Los Angeles. Exploring puzzling coincidences she uncovers while parsing Inverarity's testament, Oedipa finds what might be evidence for the Trystero's existence. Sinking or ascending ever more deeply into paranoia, she finds herself torn between believing in the Trystero and believing that it is all a hoax established by Inverarity himself. Near the novel's conclusion, she reflects, He might have written the testament only to harass a one-time mistress, so cynically sure of being wiped out he could throw away all hope of anything more. Bitterness could have run that deep in him. She just didn't know. He might himself have discovered The Tristero, and encrypted that in the will, buying into just enough to be sure she'd find it. Or he might even have tried to survive death, as a paranoia; as a pure conspiracy against someone he loved. Along the way, Oedipa meets a wide range of eccentric characters. Her therapist in Kinneret, a Dr. Hilarius, turns out to have done his internship in Buchenwald, working to induce insanity in captive Jews. "Liberal SS circles felt it would be more humane," he explains. In San Francisco, she meets a man who claims membership in the IA, Inamorati Anonymous—a group founded to help people avoid falling in love, "the worst addiction of all". (Ironically, the anonymous inamorato wears a lapel pin shaped as the Trystero post horn, which Oedipa first saw on an advertisement for group sex.) And, in Berkeley, she meets John Nefastis, an engineer who believes he has built a working version of Maxwell's demon, a means for defeating entropy. The book ends with Oedipa attending an auction, waiting for bidding to begin on a set of a rare postage stamps, which she believes representatives of Tristero are trying to acquire. (Auction items are called "lots"; a lot is "cried" when the auctioneer is taking bids on it; the stamps in question are "Lot 49".)
155763	/m/014dxv	Jack of Shadows	Roger Zelazny	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in a world that is tidally locked. Thus one side of the planet is always in light, and the other in darkness. Science rules on the dayside, while magic holds sway in the night. Powerful magical entities live on the night side of the planet, and for the most part the entities' magical powers emanate from distinct loci. Jack of Shadows (a.k.a. Shadowjack), the main character, is unique among the magical beings in that he draws his power not from a physical location but from shadow itself. He is nearly incapacitated in complete light or complete darkness, but given access to even a small area of shadow, his potency is unmatched. Jack's only friend, the creature Morningstar, is punished by being trapped in stone at the edge of the night, to be released when dawn comes. His torso and head protrude from the rock, and he awaits the sun that will never rise. Jack seeks "The Key That Was Lost", Kolwynia. The Key itself and the consequences of its use parallel Jack's progress in his own endeavors. Ultimately, the Key will be responsible for Jack's salvation and his doom. Fleeing the dark side, Jack gets access to a computer and uses it to recover Kolwynia. This makes him unbeatable, but not all-powerful. Having made a mess of ruling with his new powers, he seeks the advice of Morningstar, who advises him to destroy The Machine at the Heart of the World, which maintains the world's stability, and set it rotating. The novel ends with Jack falling, perhaps to his death, but Morningstar has been freed by the world's turning and rushes to rescue him. The fate of this ambiguous hero is left untold, with Jack wondering, as he falls, if Morningstar will reach him in time.
156205	/m/014hf6	Whose Body?	Dorothy L. Sayers	1923	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Wimsey's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, telephones to say that Thipps, an architect hired to do some work on her local church, has just found a dead body wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez in the bath in his flat. The official investigator, Inspector Sugg, suspects Thipps and his servant; Wimsey starts his own enquiry. Sir Reuben Levy, a famous financier, has disappeared from his own bedroom, and there has been a flurry of trading in some Peruvian oil shares. Inspector Parker, Wimsey's friend, is investigating this. The corpse in the bath is not Levy, but Wimsey becomes convinced that the two are linked. The trail leads to the teaching hospital near the architect's flat, and to surgeon and neurologist Sir Julian Freke, who is based there. Wimsey discovers that Freke murdered Sir Reuben and staged his 'disappearance' from home, having borne a grudge for years over Lady Levy, who chose to marry Sir Reuben rather than him. He also engineered the trading in oil shares, to lure Sir Reuben to his death. He dismembered Sir Reuben and gave him to his students to dissect, substituting his body for that of a pauper donated to the hospital for that purpose, who bore a superficial resemblance to Sir Reuben. The pauper's body, washed, shaved and manicured, was then carried over the roofs and dumped in Thipps' bath as a joke. Freke's belief that conscience and guilt are inconvenient physiological aberrations, which may be cut out and discarded, are an explanation for his conduct. He attempts to murder both Parker and Wimsey, and finally tries suicide when his actions are discovered, but is arrested in time. The book establishes many of Wimsey's character traits - for example, his interest in rare books, the nervous problems associated with his wartime shell-shock, and his ambiguous feelings about catching criminals for a hobby - and also introduces many characters who recur in later novels, such as Parker, Bunter, Sugg, and the Dowager Duchess. There is a passing reference in the book to Freddy Arbuthnot, Wimsey's friend and contact for the stock market, being in love with Sir Reuben Levy's daughter Rachel and wanting to marry her. This theme is picked up in Strong Poison, taking place seven years later, when Freddy at last manages to convince Rachel's family to consent to the match despite his being a gentile - after Freddy compared his long wait with that of the Biblical Jacob for his Rachel. Whose Body? is now in the public domain in the United States, but may still be copyrighted elsewhere.
156206	/m/014hfk	Clouds of Witness	Dorothy L. Sayers	1926-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After the events of Whose Body?, Lord Peter Wimsey goes on an extended holiday in Corsica. Returning to Paris, he receives the news that his sister Mary's fiancé, Captain Denis Cathcart, has been found shot dead outside the Wimseys' shooting lodge at Riddlesdale in Yorkshire. His brother, Gerald, Duke of Denver, has been arrested for the murder. Cathcart was killed by a bullet from Denver's revolver, and Denver's only alibi is that he was out for a walk at the time Cathcart died. Gerald admits that he quarrelled with Cathcart earlier that night, having received a letter from a friend which told him that Cathcart had been in trouble in Paris for cheating at cards. Later that night, Mary went outside and found Gerald kneeling over Cathcart's body. Peter and his close friend, Inspector Charles Parker, investigate the grounds, and find several tantalizing clues: footprints belonging to a strange man, motorcycle tracks outside the grounds and a piece of jewellery, a lucky charm in the shape of a cat. They also agree that both Gerald and Mary are hiding something; Gerald stubbornly refuses to budge from his story that he was out for a walk, and Mary is faking a severe illness to avoid talking to anyone. In the course of the following weeks, Peter investigates several false avenues. The man with the footprints turns out to be Mary's secret fiancé, Goyles, a radical Socialist agitator considered "an unsuitable match" by her family, who was meeting Mary to elope with her. She had been covering for him on the assumption that he killed Cathcart, but when Goyles is caught, he admits that he simply ran away in fear when he discovered the body. Furious and humiliated, Mary breaks off their engagement. While investigating the surrounding countryside Peter meets a violent, homicidal farmer, Mr. Grimethorpe, with a stunningly beautiful wife. Grimethorpe seems a likely killer, but while investigating his alibi (and nearly being killed by stumbling into a bog pit), Peter confirms that Grimethorpe was elsewhere on the fatal night. However, he discovers Gerald's letter from his friend in Egypt wedged in the window of the Grimethorpes' bedroom, proving that Gerald was visiting Grimethorpe's wife. Gerald has refused to admit it, even to his family or his lawyers, being determined to shield his mistress even at the price of being wrongfully convicted of murder and going to the gallows. This chivalric defense only makes Gerald appear more stupid to his brother, given that he has left a letter with his name on it in Mrs. Grimethorpe's bedroom, making it virtually certain that she would be discovered and murdered by her husband, if Peter had not found the letter first. Eventually, the jewelled cat leads Wimsey to Cathcart's mistress of many years, who had left him for an American millionaire. Wimsey travels to New York to find her, and makes a trans-Atlantic flight - at the time, a very risky adventure which makes the headlines in all British papers - to return to London before Gerald's trial in the House of Lords ends. From her, Wimsey brings a letter that Cathcart wrote on the night of his death, after receiving her farewell letter. In it, Cathcart announces his intention to commit suicide. He took Gerald's revolver from the study, went out into the garden and shot himself, though he lived long enough to crawl back to the house. This simple sequence of events has been cluttered up by a series of bizarre coincidences: Cathcart's mistress's farewell arriving on the same night that news of his cheating reaches Gerald; his suicide happening on the same night that Gerald planned to meet Mrs. Grimethorpe; and Gerald arriving back to stumble over the body just as Mary comes out for her rendezvous with Goyles. In his closing statement, Gerald's lawyer comments that, had Cathcart's death been the only event of that night, the truth would have been immediately obvious and unquestioned. Gerald is acquitted. As he is leaving the House of Lords, Mr. Grimethorpe appears and shoots at him, then panics and flees, and is killed by a speeding car. Mrs. Grimethorpe, finally free of her husband, is not interested in continuing her affair with Gerald, and his gallant offer to help her falls flat. In the final scene, Inspector Sugg, last seen in Whose Body?, is startled to find Wimsey, Parker, and Freddy Arbuthnot on the street after midnight, all drunk as lords. Apparently they have been celebrating the end of the case. Sugg assists them into cabs, then reflects, "Thank God there weren't no witnesses."
156207	/m/014hfx	Unnatural Death	Dorothy L. Sayers	1927	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Overhearing a conversation in a restaurant between Wimsey and his friend Parker, a doctor tells the two of a death that affected his career. A terminal cancer patient, old and wealthy, died unexpectedly early; the doctor provoked outrage when he queried the cause, and local opinion forced him eventually to move away. Wimsey is moved to investigate. Wimsey discovers that the patient's great-niece - popular locally - had nursed her through her illness and was the intended heiress. The patient had a horror of contemplating death, however, and refused to listen to entreaties that she must make a will to be sure that her fortune would pass to her great-niece as she wished. A change in the law was imminent and meant that a great-niece would no longer inherit automatically and the estate would probably pass to the Crown. Killing her great-aunt before the legislation came in allowed the niece to secure the fortune intended for her. When Wimsey begins investigating, using the recurring character Miss Climpson as his intelligence agent, the great-niece is provoked into covering her trail. She kills a former servant, fakes a kidnap-murder and tries to frame a distant relative with an interest in the Dawson estate, and almost kills Miss Climpson. Lord Peter exposes the great-niece's motive and methods, including the false identity she has established in London, and she is eventually arrested and imprisoned on remand, where she commits suicide. The doctor from whom Lord Peter originally heard the anecdote has moved on and is not grateful to be vindicated.
156208	/m/014hg7	The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club	Dorothy L. Sayers	1928	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Ninety-year old General Fentiman has been estranged for years from his sister, Lady Dormer. On the afternoon of 10 November, he is called to her deathbed for a reconciliation, and learns the terms of her will. If she dies first he will inherit a fortune, which his grandsons sorely need. But if he dies first, nearly all of the money will go to Ann Dorland, a distant relative of Lady Dormer's late husband. She is a young woman with artistic leanings who lives with Lady Dormer. Lady Dormer dies at 10:37 AM the next day, which is 11 November - Remembrance Day. That afternoon the General is found dead in his armchair at the club. This produces a hysterical outburst from his younger grandson, George Fentiman, a veteran of World War I still suffering from the effects of poison gas and shell shock. Due to the terms of Lady Dormer's will and the time of her death, it becomes necessary to establish the exact time of the General's death. Though the estate would provide amply for all three heirs, Ann Dorland refuses any compromise settlement. Wimsey is asked to help solve the puzzle by his friend Mr Murbles, the solicitor for the Fentiman family. Wimsey agrees, though he insists that he will pursue the exact truth, regardless of who benefits. The General was seated by an open fireplace, so the temperature of the body is of no help. The rigor mortis was well established, indicating death much earlier than the discovery of the body, but one knee was already limp - unusual as rigor usually eases head and neck muscles first. Dr Penberthy, a former army surgeon and club member, who was the first to see the body, certified death by natural causes. He was the General's personal physician, and was treating him for a weak heart. It would seem obvious that the General must have died sometime after arriving at the club on the morning of 11 November, since he was found later that day. But nobody saw him arrive. He went to the club at some point after visiting Lady Dormer the previous afternoon, but his whereabouts are unknown between those two events. His manservant says the General stayed out overnight, and that a certain Mr Oliver called to say that the General would spend the night with him. No one knows anything about Oliver, but the elder grandson, Robert Fentiman, says that he's seen him often at a popular Italian restaurant. Robert agrees to watch for Oliver, and Wimsey arranges for detectives to assist him. Robert thinks he sights Oliver, and follows him halfway across England, but the man is not Oliver at all. Wimsey also turns up a few clues - there was a fresh tear in the General's trouser cuff and a scraping of paint on the side of his shoe. Wimsey locates the taxi driver who picked up the General at Lady Dormer's house, and another who took him to the Bellona Club. The General went to see Dr Penberthy in between. Then, en route to the club, he had the taxi pick up George Fentiman. The two men had a long and angry discussion in the back of the taxi, and then George got out. Wimsey also inquires into the character of Ann Dorland, trying to learn why she won't compromise. He contacts his old friend, artist Marjorie Phelps, who is also a good friend of Ann Dorland. There is another sighting of Oliver, and this time Robert and the detectives follow him to Italy. Robert returns from Italy, and admits that Oliver does not exist. Wimsey has figured out what happened. There was no memorial poppy on the General's suitcoat - impossible if he had been on the streets on Remembrance Day. The General died at the club the evening before, shortly after seeing his sister. He had just told Robert the terms of Lady Dormer's will. A few minutes later, Robert found his grandfather dead in the club's library, apparently of natural causes. Piqued at losing the inheritance, he concealed the body overnight in the club's telephone booth behind an "Out of order" sign. (The General's cuff was torn by a nail inside the booth, and the paint was scraped from its floor. Also, the process broke the rigor mortis in one leg.) The next day, Robert moved the body to an armchair to be found later. He acted when all the other members had stepped outside for the two minutes' silence, observed on Remembrance Day at 11 AM. In the meantime, Wimsey has had the General exhumed and properly examined. The General was poisoned with an overdose of the heart medication digitalis. Suspicion falls on Ann Dorland, who was among the last persons to see the General, and who has an obvious motive. When she suddenly agrees to compromise with the Fentimans, it only adds to the suspicion. Then George Fentiman has a nervous breakdown. In an incoherent babble, he claims to have poisoned his grandfather, though this is clearly impossible. Wimsey eventually meets Ann Dorland, who is miserable. But it is not guilt that distresses her, it is callous and humiliating treatment by her former lover - Dr Penberthy. They had been secretly engaged, and he had insisted she fight for the whole estate and not compromise. Then after the autopsy, he broke off with her, giving highly insulting reasons. Penberthy had eyes on Ann Dorland's expected inheritance. When General Fentiman saw him, he spoke of Lady Dormer's will, and Penberthy realized that if the General didn't die at once, Ann Dorland wouldn't collect. So he gave the General a deliberate overdose of digitalis, to be taken later when Penberthy was not in attendance. He was present next day when the body was discovered, and so was able to certify a natural death, though Robert's intervention confused the time of death. When the poisoning was discovered, he panicked, and broke off with Ann Dorland - insulting her so that she would be too embarrassed to tell anyone. Wimsey confronts Penberthy and offers him the chance to behave like a gentleman. He cannot save himself, but he can exonerate Ann Dorland from suspicion. Penberthy writes a confession and shoots himself in the club library. In an epilogue, it is revealed that the three heirs have divided the estate equitably. In fact, Robert, a bluff soldier who expressed distaste for artistic and intellectual women, is now dating Ann Dorland.
156209	/m/014hgl	Strong Poison	Dorothy L. Sayers	1931	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mystery author Harriet Vane has been accused of the murder of her former lover, Phillip Boyes. Boyes was a novelist and essayist who wrote in support of atheism, anarchy, and free love. Professing to disapprove of marriage, he persuaded a reluctant Harriet to live with him against her principles and they led a Bohemian life in the London art community. A year later he proposed, and Harriet, outraged at being deceived into giving up her public honour, broke off the relationship. During the year that followed, Boyes suffered from repeated bouts of gastric illness, while Harriet had bought several poisons under assumed names to test a plot point of her novel then in progress. Having returned from a holiday in North Wales in better health, Boyes dined with his cousin, the solicitor Norman Urquhart, before going to Harriet's flat to discuss reconciliation. That night he was taken fatally ill, apparently with gastritis. He died four days later after an agonising period of suffering. Although it was assumed at first that Boyes died of natural causes, an indiscreet nurse and some of Boyes' friends insisted that foul play was involved. A post-mortem revealed that Boyes' death was due to acute arsenic poisoning. Apart from the evening meal with his cousin, where every item was shared by two or more people, the only opportunity for poison to have been administered appeared to be in a cup of coffee, offered by Harriet Vane. Harriet is tried, but the result is a "hung" jury, thanks in no small part to the presence of Wimsey's aide, Miss Climpson, on the jury. With fewer than ten of the jury agreeing on a verdict, the judge must order a fresh trial to be held. Wimsey visits Harriet in prison, declares his conviction of her innocence, and promises to catch the real murderer. In the course of the interview he also openly admits his intention of marrying her, an offer which she politely but firmly declines. Working against time before the new trial, Wimsey first explores the possibility that Boyes took his own life. Wimsey's friend, Detective Inspector Charles Parker, conclusively disproves this notion, but Wimsey has planted a spy, Miss Joan Murchison, in Urquhart’s office and discovers the real culprit is Urquhart. Suspecting Urquhart's story that he, not Boyes, is in line to inherit the considerable fortune of their senile great aunt, Wimsey sends Miss Climpson to get hold of the great-aunt’s will, which she does in a comic scene exposing the practices of fraudulent mediums. Not only does the will name Boyes as the principal heir, but in Urquhart's office, Miss Murchison finds evidence that, misusing his position as his own family's solicitor, Urquhart embezzled the majority of the great aunt's holdings and subsequently lost them on the stock market. Urquhart knew that if his great aunt died, he would be exposed. Boyes, however, was unaware that he was heir to the money. With him dead, Urquhart would inherit the estate and hence his fraud would not be revealed. Miss Murchison also discovers a packet of arsenic hidden in Urquhart's office. Wimsey has now established motive and means, but not opportunity. But after re-examining the details of Boyes' famous last dinner (and perusing A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, in which the poet likens reading dark poems to King Mithridates' self-immunization against poisons), he realizes that Urquhart laced an omelette with arsenic and shared it with Boyes after having built up an immunity to the poison with small doses over a long period. Wimsey tricks Urquhart into an admission before witnesses. At her retrial the prosecution presents no case and Harriet is set free. Exhausted by her ordeal, she again rejects Wimsey’s proposal of marriage. It is also in this novel that Peter finally persuades Parker to propose to Peter's sister, Mary. Also the Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot, Wimsey's friend and contact for the stock market, in this book finds a long-delayed domestic bliss with Rachel, the daughter of Sir Reuben Levy who was murdered in Whose Body?.
156211	/m/014hhf	Five Red Herrings	Dorothy L. Sayers	1931	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story is set in Galloway, a part of Scotland popular with artists because of its landscapes. Sandy Campbell is a talented painter, but also a notoriously quarrelsome drunkard. When he is found dead in a stream, with a half-finished painting on the bank above, it is assumed at first that he fell in accidentally, fracturing his skull. Lord Peter Wimsey, who is in the region on a fishing holiday, points out the inconsistency which makes it impossible for Campbell himself to have worked on the painting. (Sayers is explicit in leaving the reader to work out what exactly the clue is.) Campbell's death is now a murder case. Whoever killed Campbell also executed the painting in Campbell's distinctive style, to contrive the appearance of an accident. Six other artists in the region are talented enough to have achieved this, and had also had public brawls with Campbell in the recent past. Now Wimsey has to figure out "who done it" and who the five red herrings are. The task is made difficult because almost all the suspects are behaving in a suspicious manner; some have left the district unexpectedly and without explanation, others have given statements which are obviously inaccurate, or are clearly concealing facts. The policemen investigating other aspects of the case come up against inexplicable dead ends. The Five Red Herrings is the Peter Wimsey story which is most obviously set as a puzzle for the reader. There is only a closed circle of suspects to deal with, and Wimsey has no emotional involvement, although, having alerted the Police to Campbell's murder, he subsequently reflects that Campbell was a man anyone might feel justified in killing, and that the six suspects are all generally decent people. He nevertheless resolves to uncover the truth, so that the five innocent artists should not live under lifelong suspicion. The plot is told through the viewpoint of Wimsey, and of the various police investigating the case (including Wimsey's brother-in-law Charles Parker, involved because a suspect is in hiding in London). Large parts of the book follow the various Scottish police officers, who are shown as highly intelligent and competent, and for time seem to overshadow Wimsey. In contrast, Bunter (Wimsey's valet) plays a smaller role in this than in other Wimsey novels. Wimsey works in close cooperation with the police throughout the book; indeed, in one episode a character angrily accuses him of "entering people's homes as a police spy". The six suspects are all eventually traced and give statements in which they deny killing Campbell. Some have convincing alibis, but others have none which can be verified. Finally, Wimsey, the Procurator Fiscal, the Chief Constable and the police officers involved in the investigation meet to review the evidence. Working from the knowledge the reader has been given, the police put forward several theories, implicating all of the suspects either as the killer or as accessories. Asked for his opinion, Wimsey finally reveals to the reader exactly what alerted him to the murder, and points the finger at the true killer. Although the police are sceptical, Wimsey offers to reconstruct the crime and over the course of twenty-four hours' strenuous activity, he demonstrates how the killer contrived the scene above the stream and established an alibi. The killer finally realises that the case against him is unbreakable and confesses, but pleads that he killed Campbell in self-defence. When the case is tried, the jury decide that he is guilty of manslaughter (which carries a lighter sentence) rather than premeditated murder.
156212	/m/014hhs	Have His Carcase	Dorothy L. Sayers	1932	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0174gw": "Locked room mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 During a hiking holiday after her acquittal on murder charges in Strong Poison, Harriet Vane discovers the body of a man, with his throat cut and the blood still liquid, on an isolated rock on the shore. There are no footprints in the sand other than the man's and Harriet's. She takes photos and preserves some evidence, but the corpse is washed away before she can fetch help. Lord Peter arrives, and he and Harriet make investigations alongside the police. The dead man, Paul Alexis, a professional dancing partner at the local hotel, was of Russian extraction and engaged to a rich older widow. The death has been made to look like suicide, but Wimsey and Harriet discover that he was the victim of an ingenious and complex murder plot. The romantic Alexis believed himself a descendant of Russian royalty, and the widow's rather stupid son, appalled at the prospect of his mother's remarriage to a gigolo and the loss of his inheritance, conspired with a friend and his wife to play on Alexis's fantasies. Convinced that he was being called to return to Russia in triumph as the rightful Tsar, Alexis was lured to the rock and murdered by the son, who rode a horse along the beach through the incoming tide to avoid leaving tracks, whilst his friends supplied his alibi. The death was intended to look like suicide. However, Alexis suffers from haemophilia, and his unclotted blood leads to confusion over the time of death, which eventually assists with the unmasking of the conspirators.
156213	/m/014hj3	The Nine Tailors	Dorothy L. Sayers	1934	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stranded in the Fenland village of Fenchurch St. Paul on New Year's Eve after a car accident, Wimsey helps ring a nine-hour peal of bells overnight after Will Thoday, one of the ringers, is stricken by influenza. Lady Thorpe, wife of Sir Henry Thorpe, the local squire, dies next morning and Wimsey hears how the Thorpe family has been blighted for 20 years by the unsolved theft of jewels from a house-guest by the butler, Deacon, and an accomplice, Cranton. Both men were imprisoned, but the jewels were never recovered. At Easter, Sir Henry himself dies and his wife's grave is opened for his burial. A body is found hidden in the grave, mutilated beyond recognition. It is first thought to be the body of a tramp labourer calling himself "Driver" who arrived and then vanished just after the New Year. An odd document found in the bell chamber by Hilary Thorpe, Sir Henry's daughter, proves to be a cipher. Acting on a hunch, Lord Peter enquires at the Post Office for any uncollected letters addressed to "Driver". Bunter, Wimsey's valet, inveigles a postmistress into handing over a letter posted in France, which confirms a link with the body, which was wearing French underclothes. The letter is addressed not to "Driver" but to "Paul Taylor", a reference to "Tailor Paul", the tenor (largest) bell in the ring at Fenchurch St. Paul. When the writer of the letter is traced, the dead man is assumed to be Arthur Cobbleigh, a British soldier listed as missing in action but who evidently deserted and stayed in France after the war. Cobbleigh appears to have known where the emeralds were hidden, and to have plotted to recover them, probably with "Driver". "Driver" is discovered to be an alias of Cranton, the accomplice in the original theft. Wimsey assumes the two men did recover the emeralds and Cranton then killed Cobbleigh for them, but cannot prove it. However, when he decodes the cipher (which requires knowledge of change-ringing) it leads him to the emeralds, still untouched in their hiding place in the church. Wimsey shows the cipher to Mary Thoday, Will's wife and Deacon's widow. The Thodays abscond to London. Wimsey guesses the true identity of Cobbleigh, and confirms this through the Sûreté in France. He also discovers the Thodays' whereabouts through the Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranton is interviewed by Wimsey and his brother in law, Detective Inspector Charles Parker. Much becomes clear when Cobbleigh turns out to have been Deacon, the thieving butler. In 1918 he murdered a warder and escaped from prison. A body, apparently his, was later found, but in fact Deacon had murdered a soldier and swapped identities with him. He married bigamously in France and waited several years to return for the emeralds, which he had hidden before his arrest. Since he risked hanging if caught, he finally asked Cranton to help, sending him the cipher as a clue to the hiding place as a token of good faith. Cranton could not solve it but knew it related to the bells, so he came to Fenchurch as "Driver" on New Year's Day. He went to the bell-chamber on the night of 4 January, but found Deacon's dead, bound body in the chamber and fled, dropping the cipher. Parker then places a hidden microphone in the interview room where Will Thoday and his sailor brother Jim are waiting. It becomes apparent that both brothers thought that the other was guilty of killing Deacon, but were willing to take the blame themselves or at least shield the other. When they are interviewed, Will relates that he encountered Deacon, who had come to retrieve the emeralds, in the church on 30 December. Will had married Mary after the war, believing her a widow. Now he realised Deacon was still alive, making his and Mary's marriage bigamous and their daughters illegitimate. Desperate to prevent Deacon exposing his family to pain and scandal, Will tied him up in the bell-chamber, planning to bribe him to leave, but became helpless with Spanish influenza next day. Will's delirious talk led Jim to find Deacon's body in the bell-chamber on 2 January. He assumed that Will had murdered him. Appalled but loyal, he waited until the night after Lady Thorpe's funeral on 4 January, made the body unrecognisable and hid it in the new grave, then left for sea. When the body was discovered, Will assumed Jim had killed Deacon. Neither can explain how Deacon died. Both are released. Will marries Mary again in Bloomsbury under Archbishop's licence, and returns to Fenchurch St. Paul. Deacon's death remains inexplicable. It is only when Wimsey returns to Fenchurch the following Christmas that he understands. Floods inundate the countryside, and Wimsey climbs the tower as the bells are ringing the alarm. The appalling noise in the bell-chamber convinces him that Deacon, tied there for hours between New Year's Eve and New Year's Day while Wimsey helped with the all-night peal, could not have survived. Deacon was killed by the ringers - or by the bells themselves. Will Thoday is drowned in the flood trying to save another man who has fallen from a failing sluice-gate. Wimsey speculates that Will may not have wanted to live, having guessed his part in killing Deacon.
156215	/m/014hjg	Busman's Honeymoon	Dorothy L. Sayers	1937	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 After an engagement of some months following the events at the end of Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry. They plan to spend their honeymoon at Talboys, an old farmhouse in Harriet's native Hertfordshire which Wimsey has bought for her, and they abscond from the wedding reception, evading the assembled reporters. Arriving late at night, they are surprised to find the house locked up and not prepared for them. They gain access and spend their wedding night there, but next morning they discover the former owner, Noakes, dead in the cellar with head injuries. The quiet honeymoon is ruined as a murder investigation begins and the house fills with policemen, reporters, and brokers' men distraining Noakes's hideous furniture. Noakes was an unpopular man, a miser and (it turns out) a blackmailer. He was assumed to be well off, though it transpires that he was bankrupt, owed large amounts of money, and was planning to flee his creditors with the cash paid for Talboys. The house had been locked and bolted when the newly-weds arrived, and medical evidence seems to rule out an accident, so it seems he was attacked in the house and died later, having somehow locked up after his attacker. The suspects include Noakes's niece, Mrs. Ruddle (his neighbour and cleaning lady), Frank Crutchley, a local garage mechanic who also tended Noakes's garden and the local police constable, who was his blackmail victim. Peter's and Harriet's relationship, always complex and painfully negotiated, is resolved during the process of catching the murderer and bringing him to justice. In a final scene, in which almost the entire cast of characters is gathered in the front room of Talboys, reflecting the novel's origin as a work for the stage, the killer turns out to be Crutchley. He planned to marry Noakes' somewhat elderly niece and get his hands on the money he had left her in his will. He set a booby trap with a weighted plant pot on a chain, which was triggered by the victim opening the radio cabinet after locking up for the night. Wimsey's reaction to the case - his arrangement for the defendant to be represented by top defence counsel; his guilt at condemning a man to be hanged; the return of his shell-shock – dominate the final chapters of the book. It is mentioned that Wimsey had previously also suffered similar pangs of conscience when other murderers had been sent to the gallows. His deep remorse and guilt at having caused Crutchley to be executed leave doubt as to whether he would undertake further murder investigations - and in fact Sayers wrote no further Wimsey novels after this one. The 1942 short story "Talboys", the very last Wimsey fiction produced by Sayers, is both a sequel to the present book, in having the same location and some of the same village characters, and an antithesis in being lighthearted and having no crime worse the theft of some peaches from a neighbour's garden.
156216	/m/014hjt	Thrones, Dominations	Jill Paton Walsh	1998	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It is 1936. Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey, returned from a European honeymoon, are settling into their new home in London, where daily life is affected by the illness and then death of the king. The couple are personally happy, having resolved many of the problems in their relationship caused by character and circumstance, but must now tackle the practical details of bringing their lives together, including domestic and working arrangements, and social and family obligations. The couple become slightly acquainted with Laurence Harwell, a wealthy theatrical "angel", and his beautiful wife, whom he has rescued from poverty following her rich father's disgrace and imprisonment. After two years' marriage the Harwells are famously still devoted to one another, and when she is found dead at their weekend cottage in the country Wimsey is asked to help interview the distraught husband, and becomes involved with the investigation. (He is also asked to undertake sensitive diplomatic duties connected with the problematic behaviour of the new king, and as the 1936 abdication crisis looms, he gloomily predicts the coming war with Hitler's Germany.) Suspicion falls on a writer known to have been in love with Mrs Harwell, and a talented but bohemian painter who had been working on portraits of both Harriet and the murdered woman. Two men who knew Mrs Harwell's father in prison, and who have been blackmailing him with threats to harm her, are also suspected. Meanwhile Harriet straightens out her domestic situation, learning how to fulfill her new role whilst keeping her own identity, and finds a practical solution to allow Wimsey's devoted manservant Bunter to marry without having to leave the household. Harriet's unorthodox approach infuriates her sister-in-law (who believes Harriet has an obligation to abandon her career, do her duty to the family and produce an heir) but it allows her to solve most of the practical difficulties that might have stood in the way of a successful and happy marriage. She also discovers she is expecting a baby. After some plot twists, a second murder and a scene involving the hidden rivers and Victorian sewers that run under London, it is revealed that Harwell unintentionally killed his wife in a jealous rage, in the belief she was preparing to entertain a lover, although ironically her preparations had really been for him. Harwell might have gotten off with a manslaughter conviction, but except that he later committed the premeditated murder of an actress who was in a position to disprove his alibi and tried to blackmail him. Harriet visits Harwell in prison to comfort him with the knowledge that his wife had not, after all, been unfaithful. In doing so, she finally banishes the lingering ghosts of her own imprisonment and murder trial, and the effect they have had on her relationship with her own husband.
156314	/m/014j0g	Light in August	William Faulkner	1932	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrative structure consists of three connected plot-strands. The first strand tells the story of Lena Grove, a young pregnant woman from Doane's Mill, Alabama, who is trying to find Lucas Burch, the father of her unborn child. He has been fired from his job at Doane's Mill and moved to Mississippi, promising to "send for" her when he has a new job. Not hearing from Burch, and harassed by her older brother, Lena walks and hitch-hikes "a fur piece" to Jefferson, Mississippi, a town in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County. There she expects to find Lucas working at another planing mill, ready to marry her. Those who help her along her four-week trek are skeptical that Lucas Burch will be found east of the Mississippi, or that he will keep his promise when she catches up with him. When she arrives in Jefferson, Lucas is there, but he has changed his name to Joe Brown. Looking for Lucas at the local planing mill, she meets Byron Bunch, who falls in love with Lena but scrupulously tries to give her a chance with Joe Brown. Byron is a puritanical workaholic who fears idleness as a snare of the devil. Joe Brown is a deceiving slacker. The narrative of Lena's story builds a framework around the two other plot-strands. One of these is the story of the enigmatic Joe Christmas. Christmas came to Jefferson three years before the novel's beginning, and got a job at the planing mill. The work at the planing mill is a cover up for his illegal alcohol business. He has a sexual relationship with Joanna Burden, an older woman who descended from a formerly powerful abolitionist family. Joanna Burden continues her ancestors' struggle for Black emancipation, which makes her an outsider in the society of Jefferson, much like Christmas. Her relationship with Christmas begins rather unusually, with Christmas sneaking into her house to steal food, for he has not eaten in twenty-four hours. As a result of sexual frustration and the beginning of menopause, Joanna turns to religion. Joanna's turn to religion is frustrating for Christmas, who as a child ran away from his abusive adoptive parents who were conservatively religious. At the end of her relationship to Christmas, Joanna tries to force him, at gunpoint, to kneel and pray. Joanna is murdered soon after: her throat is slit and she is nearly decapitated. The novel leaves readers uncertain whether Joe Christmas or Joe Brown is the murderer. Brown is Christmas' business partner in a moon-shining enterprise and is the father of Lena's child; Lena knew him as Lucas Burch. He is leaving Joanna's burning house when a passing farmer stops to investigate and pull Joanna's body from the fire. The sheriff at first suspects Joe Brown, but initiates a man-hunt for Christmas after Brown claims that Christmas is black. The man-hunt is fruitless, but then Christmas arrives undisguised in Mottstown, a neighboring town; he is on his way back to Jefferson, no longer running. In Mottstown, he is arrested and jailed, then moved to Jefferson. His grandmother visits him in the Jefferson jail and advises him to seek help from Gail Hightower. As police escort him to the local court, Christmas breaks free and runs to Hightower's house. A zealous national guardsman, Percy Grimm, follows him there and, over Hightower's protest, shoots and castrates Joe Christmas. The third plot strand tells the story of Reverend Gail Hightower. He is obsessed by the past adventures of his Confederate grandfather, who was killed while stealing chickens from a farmer's shed. Hightower's community dislikes him because of his sermons about his dead grandfather, and because of the scandal surrounding his personal life: his wife committed adultery, and later killed herself, turning the town against Hightower and effectively making him a pariah. The only character who does not turn his back on the Reverend Hightower is Byron Bunch, who visits Hightower from time to time. Bunch tries to convince Hightower to give the imprisoned Joe Christmas an alibi, but Hightower initially refuses. When Joe Christmas escapes from police custody he runs to Hightower's house, seeking to hide. Hightower then accepts Byron's suggestion, but it is too late as Percy Grimm is close behind. Hightower is then seen musing over his past alone in his house as he prepares for his own death. Before Christmas' escape attempt, Hightower delivered Lena's child in the cabin where Brown and Christmas had been staying before the murder, and Byron arranges for Brown/Burch to come and see her. However, when Brown gets there, he runs again, and Byron follows him, instigating a fight which he loses. Brown gets into a moving train and is not seen again. At the end of the story, an anonymous man is talking to his wife about two strangers he picked up on a trip to Tennessee, recounting that the woman had a child and the man was not the father. This was Lena and Byron, who were conducting a half-hearted search for Brown, and they are eventually dropped off in Tennessee.
156489	/m/014jst	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	J. K. Rowling	2003-06-21	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harry Potter is spending another summer with his dreadful Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. when a pair of Dementors stage an unexpected attack on Harry and his cousin Dudley. After he uses magic to defend himself and Dudley, he is temporarily expelled from Hogwarts for using magic outside of the school, despite being legally allowed to do in self-defence, before it is rescinded. A few days afterwards, Harry is visited by a group of wizards and Mad-Eye Moody and is whisked off to Number 12, Grimmauld Place, London, the home of Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, and the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. As Harry learns from his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger The Order is a group of witches and wizards, led by Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, dedicated to fighting the evil Lord Voldemort and his followers. The Order is forced to operate in secrecy, outside of the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Magic, which is headed by the dense and corrupt Cornelius Fudge, who refuses to believe that Lord Voldemort has returned. In addition, Harry learns that he and Dumbledore have been made victims of a ministry smear campaign aimed at discrediting them and their beliefs about Voldemort. Because of his use of magic, Harry's fate is to be determined at a discipliniary hearing at the Ministry of Magic, which turns out to be an apparent show trial. With Dumbledore's help, Harry is cleared by the Wizengamot and permitted to return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Reunited with his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Harry returns to Hogwarts and learns that Dolores Umbridge, an employee of Fudge, will be his new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. The Sorting Hat, which traditionally sorts all new students into one of four houses, cautions the students against becoming too internally divided. Meanwhile, due to the smear campaign against him, Harry is the subject of unwanted gossip from the student body at large, and a number of people turn against him. Professor Umbridge and Harry soon clash, as she, like Fudge, refuses to believe that Voldemort has returned and punishes Harry when he points out Voldemort's return by forcing him to write lines with a special quill that carves "I must not tell lies" into the back of his hand. Umbridge refuses to teach her students how to perform defensive spells, and before long, Fudge appoints her High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, giving her the authority to inspect all faculty members and evaluate their skills. In desperation, Harry, Hermione, and Ron form their own Defense Against the Dark Arts group, also known as the D.A., or Dumbledore's Army. Twenty-five other students sign up, including several of Harry's friends as well as the eccentric Luna Lovegood, and they meet as often as possible to learn and practice Defense spells, and learn well from Harry. One night, Harry has a vision where he inhabits the body of a large snake, and attacks Ron's father. Harry wakes up horrified, and Professor McGonagall takes him to Dumbledore immediately. Dumbledore uses the portraits on the walls of his office to raise an alert, and Mr. Weasley is promptly rescued by two members of the Order. The Weasley family, accompanied by Harry and the Order, visit Arthur Weasley in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Afterwards, Dumbledore demands that Harry take Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape, for the purpose of protecting his mind against further invasions by Lord Voldemort. During the lessons, Harry learns that a corridor he has been repeatedly visiting in his dreams is part of the Department of Mysteries. Harry is unsuccessful at Occlumency because he has such difficulty clearing his mind of all thoughts, making it difficult for him to focus on closing his mind off to all outside influence, in addition to wanting to find out what they mean. Meanwhile, his scar (from the attack in which Voldemort killed Harry's parents) burns horribly every time Voldemort experiences a powerful emotion. The D.A. continues to meet regularly, and Harry's peers show great improvement until they are caught by Umbridge. Dumbledore takes full responsibility for the group and resigns as Headmaster, and Umbridge takes over his position. Shortly afterwards, Harry ends up viewing a memory of Snape's, showing him being bullied by Harry's father James and Sirius, back in their schooldays. Harry wishes desperately to contact his godfather to talk about his father, but Umbridge has been inspecting all owl posts and patrolling the fires of Hogwarts, preventing communication via the Floo Network. Ron's brothers, Fred and George Weasley agree to distract Umbridge so that Harry can use her fireplace to talk to Sirius, who clears up Harry's doubts about his father. Immediately afterwards, they leave Hogwarts, moving to London where they plan to open a joke shop in the wizarding town of Diagon Alley using the money Harry won the previous year in the Triwizard Tournament. The students begin taking their O.W.L. exams, and Harry has another vision, this time about Sirius being held captive and tortured by Voldemort. Horrified, Harry becomes determined to save him. Hermione warns Harry that Voldemort may be deliberately trying to lure Harry to the Department of Mysteries, but Harry is too concerned about Sirius to pay heed. Harry sneaks into Umbridge's office, and, using her fireplace, transports himself to 12, Grimmauld Place to look for Sirius. Kreacher, the House of Black's house elf, tells Harry that Sirius is at the Ministry of Magic. Harry returns to Hogwarts when he is pulled back through the fire by Umbridge to find that he and his friends have been caught in Umbridge's office. Ron, Luna, Ginny, and Neville, who tried to distract Umbridge so that Harry could use her fireplace, have all been seized by Slytherins and gagged. Hermione and Harry convince Umbridge to follow them into the forest, where they claim to be hiding a weapon for Dumbledore which they had just finished and wanted to tell him about. Once in the forest, Umbridge provokes the resident herd of centaurs, and is taken into the forest by them. Harry and his friends use the school's thestrals, winged skeletal horses to fly to the Ministry. Once they arrive, Harry cannot find Sirius and realises that Hermione was right. Harry also sees that one of the glass spheres has his name on it, as well as Voldemort's. Harry grabs the sphere, and Death Eaters led by Lucius Malfoy surround to attack, demanding that Harry hand over the prophecy. Employing all of their Defence skills, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville have moderate success fighting the Death Eaters, but they are ultimately helped enormously by the arrival of several members of the Order, including Dumbledore. In the midst of the fight, Harry drops the glass sphere and it shatters. Sirius is killed by his own cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, when she blasts him through the veil. Harry tries to avenge his godfather and follows Bellatrix, but is met by Voldemort at the fountain. Dumbledore appears shortly after Voldemort and the two engage in an intense duel. Voldemort fights Dumbledore to stalemate, then possesses Harry in an attempt to get Dumbledore to sacrifice Harry in the hope of killing him. Voldemort and Lestrange escape, just as Fudge appears at the Ministry, finally faced with incontrovertible evidence that the Dark Lord has returned. Dumbledore sends Harry back to school, where, after Harry has a breakdown, screaming that "he's had enough" of all the pain and anguish and death and destruction, he explains that the sphere was a prophecy which stated that Harry has a power that Voldemort will never know: the power of love, given to him by his mother's sacrifice fifteen years earlier. The prophecy goes on to claim that neither Harry nor Voldemort can live while the other survives. Dumbledore takes this opportunity to tell Harry why he must spend his summers with the Dursleys in Little Whinging: because Harry's mother died to save him, he is blessed with her love, a blessing that can be sealed only by blood. Harry's Aunt Petunia, his mother's sister, makes that bond complete by taking Harry into her home. As long as he still calls Little Whinging home, Harry is safe. At the end of the year, the Order warn the Dursleys they will have to answer to them should they mistreat Harry, who returns to them for the summer.
157212	/m/014njs	Consciousness Explained	Daniel Dennett	1991	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 The book puts forward a "multiple drafts" model of consciousness, suggesting that there is no single central place (a "Cartesian Theater") where conscious experience occurs; instead there are "various events of content-fixation occurring in various places at various times in the brain". The brain consists of a "bundle of semi-independent agencies"; when "content-fixation" takes place in one of these, its effects may propagate so that it leads to the utterance of one of the sentences that make up the story in which the central character is one's "self". Dennett's view of consciousness is that it is the apparently serial account for the brain's underlying parallelism. One of the book's more controversial claims is that qualia do not (and cannot) exist. Dennett's main argument is that the various properties attributed to qualia by philosophers—qualia are supposed to be incorrigible, ineffable, private, directly accessible and so on—are incompatible, so the notion of qualia is incoherent. The non-existence of qualia would mean that there is no hard problem of consciousness, and "philosophical zombies", which are supposed to act like a human in every way while somehow lacking qualia, cannot exist. So, as Dennett wryly notes, he is committed to the belief that we are all zombies—adding that his remark is very much open to misinterpretation. Dennett claims that our brains hold only a few salient details about the world, and that this is the only reason we are able to function at all. Thus, we don't store elaborate pictures in short-term memory, as this is not necessary and would consume valuable computing power. Rather, we log what has changed and assume the rest has stayed the same, with the result that we miss some details, as demonstrated in various experiments and illusions, some of which Dennett outlines. Research subsequent to Dennett's book indicates that some of his postulations were more conservative than expected. A year after Consciousness Explained was published, Dennett noted "I wish in retrospect that I'd been more daring, since the effects are stronger than I claimed". And since then examples continue to accumulate of the illusory nature of our visual world. A key philosophical method is heterophenomenology, in which the verbal or written reports of subjects are treated as akin to a theorist's fiction—the subject's report is not questioned, but it is not assumed to be an incorrigible report about that subject's inner state. This approach allows the reports of the subject to be a datum in psychological research, thus circumventing the limits of classical behaviorism. Also Dennett says that only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events could explain consciousness at all: «To explain is to explain away».
157337	/m/014p6t	The Clouds	Aristophanes			 ;Short summary Faced with legal action for non-payment of debts, Strepsiades, an elderly Athenian, enrolls his son in the "thinkeria" (the "Phrontisterion") so that he might learn the rhetorical skills necessary to defeat their creditors in court. The son thereby learns cynical disrespect for social mores and contempt for authority and he subsequently beats his father up during a domestic argument, in return for which Strepsiades sets The Thinkery on fire. ;Detailed summary The play begins with Strepsiades suddenly sitting up in bed while his son, Pheidippides, remains blissfully asleep in the bed next to him. Strepsiades complains to the audience that he is too worried about household debts to get any sleep – his wife (the pampered product of an aristocratic clan) has encouraged their son's expensive interest in horses. Strepsiades, having thought up a plan to get out of debt, wakes the youth gently and pleads with him to do something for him. Pheidippides at first agrees to do as he's asked then changes his mind when he learns that his father wants to enroll him in The Thinkery, a school for nerds and intellectual bums that no self-respecting, athletic young man dares to be seen with. Strepsiades explains that students of The Thinkery learn how to turn inferior arguments into winning arguments and this is the only way he can beat their aggrieved creditors in court. Pheidippides however will not be persuaded and Strepsiades decides to enroll himself in The Thinkery in spite of his advanced age. There he meets a student who tells him about some of the recent discoveries made by Socrates, the head of The Thinkery, including a new unit of measurement for ascertaining the distance jumped by a flea (a flea's foot, created from a minuscule imprint in wax), the exact cause of the buzzing noise made by a gnat (its arse resembles a trumpet) and a new use for a large pair of compasses (as a kind of fishing-hook for stealing cloaks from pegs over the gymnasium wall). Impressed, Strepsiades begs to be introduced to the man behind these discoveries. The wish is soon granted: Socrates appears overhead, wafted in a basket at the end of a rope, the better to observe the Sun and other meteorological phenomena. The philosopher descends and quickly begins the induction ceremony for the new elderly student, the highlight of which is a parade of the Clouds, the patron goddesses of thinkers and other layabouts. The Clouds arrive singing majestically of the regions whence they arose and of the land they have now come to visit, loveliest in all Greece. Introduced to them as a new devotee, Strepsiades begs them to make him the best orator in Greece by a hundred miles. They reply with the promise of a brilliant future. Socrates leads him into the dingy Thinkery for his first lesson and The Clouds step forward to address the audience. Putting aside their cloud-like costumes, The Chorus declares that this is the author's cleverest play and that it cost him the greatest effort. It reproaches the audience for the play's failure at the festival, where it was beaten by the works of inferior authors, and it praises the author for originality and for his courage in lampooning influential politicians such as Cleon. The Chorus then resumes its appearance as clouds, promising divine favours if the audience punishes Cleon for corruption and rebuking Athenians for messing about with the calendar, since this has put Athens out of step with the moon. Socrates returns to the stage in a huff, protesting against the ineptitude of his new elderly student. He summons Strepsiades outside and attempts further lessons, including a form of meditative incubation in which the old man lies under a blanket while thoughts are supposed to arise in his mind naturally. The incubation results in Strepsiades masturbating under the blanket and finally Socrates refuses to have anything more to do with him. The Clouds advise him to find someone younger to do the learning for him. His son, Pheidippides, subsequently yields to threats by Strepsiades and reluctantly returns with him to the Thinkery, where they encounter the personified arguments Superior and Inferior, associates of Socrates. Superior Argument and Inferior Argument debate with each other over which of them can offer the best education. Superior Argument sides with Justice and the gods, offering to prepare Pheidippides for an earnest life of discipline, typical of men who respect the old ways; Inferior Argument, denying the existence of Justice, offers to prepare him for a life of ease and pleasure, typical of men who know how to talk their way out of trouble. At the end of the debate, a quick survey of the audience reveals that buggers - people schooled by Inferior Arguments - have got into the most powerful positions in Athens. Superior Argument accepts his inevitable defeat, Inferior Argument leads Pheidippides into the Thinkery for a life-changing education and Strepsiades goes home happy. The Clouds step forward to address the audience a second time, demanding to be awarded first place in the festival competition, in return for which they promise good rains - otherwise they'll destroy crops, smash roofs and spoil weddings. The story resumes with Strepsiades returning to The Thinkery to fetch his son. A new Pheidippides emerges, startlingly transformed into the pale nerd and intellectual bum that he had once feared to become. Rejoicing in the prospect of talking their way out of financial trouble, Strepsiades leads the youth home for celebrations, just moments before the first of their aggrieved creditors arrives with a witness to summon him to court. Strepsiades comes back on stage, confronts the creditor and dismisses him contemptuously. A second creditor arrives and receives the same treatment before Strepsiades returns indoors to continue the celebrations. The Clouds sing ominously of a looming debacle and Strepsiades again comes back on stage, now in distress, complaining of a beating that his new son has just given him in a dispute over the celebrations. Pheidippides emerges coolly and insolently debates with his father a father's right to beat his son and a son's right to beat his father. He ends by threatening to beat his mother also, whereupon Strepsiades flies into a rage against The Thinkery, blaming Socrates for his latest troubles. He leads his slaves, armed with torches and mattocks, in a frenzied attack on the disreputable school. The alarmed students are pursued offstage and the Chorus, with nothing to celebrate, quietly departs.
157471	/m/014p_f	The Knights	Aristophanes			 The Knights is a satire on political and social life in 5th-century Athens, the characters are drawn from real life and Cleon is clearly intended to be the villain. However it is also an allegory, the characters are figures of fantasy and the villain in this context is Paphlagonian, a comic monstrosity responsible for almost everything that's wrong with the world. The identity Cleon=Paphlagonian is awkward and the ambiguities aren't easily resolved. This summary features the real-world names Cleon, Nicias and Demosthenes (though these names are never mentioned in the play). See Discussion for an overview of the ambiguous use of characterization in The Knights. Short summary: A sausage seller, Agoracritus, vies with Cleon for the confidence and approval of Demos ('The People' in Greek), an elderly man who symbolizes the Athenian citizenry. Agoracritus emerges triumphant from a series of contests and he restores Demos to his former glory. Detailed summary: Nicias and Demosthenes run from a house in Athens, complaining of a beating that they have just received from their master, Demos, and cursing their fellow slave, Cleon, as the cause of their troubles. They inform the audience that Cleon has wheedled his way into Demos's confidence and they accuse him of misusing his privileged position for the purpose of extortion and corruption. They advise us that even the mask-makers are afraid of Cleon and not one of them could be persuaded to make a caricature of him for this play. They assure us however that we are clever enough to recognize him even without a mask. Having no idea how to solve their problems, they pilfer some wine from the house, the taste of which inspires them to an even bolder theft - a set of oracles that Cleon has always refused to let anyone else see. On reading these stolen oracles, they learn that Cleon is one of several peddlers destined to rule the polis and that it is his fate to be replaced by a sausage seller. As chance would have it, a sausage seller passes by at that very moment, carrying a portable kitchen. Demosthenes informs him of his destiny. The sausage seller is not convinced at first but Demosthenes points out the myriads of people in the theatre and he assures him that his skills with sausages are all that is needed to govern them. Cleon's suspicions meanwhile have been aroused and he rushes from the house in search of trouble. He immediately finds an empty wine bowl and he loudly accuses the others of treason. Demosthenes calls upon the knights of Athens for assistance and a Chorus of them charges into the theatre. They converge on Cleon in military formation under instructions from their leader: ::Hit him, hit him, hit the villain hateful to the cavalry, ::Tax-collecting, all-devouring monster of a lurking thief! ::Villain, villain! I repeat it, I repeat it constantly, ::With good reason since this thief reiterates his villainy! Cleon is given rough handling and the Chorus leader accuses him of manipulating the political and legal system for personal gain. Cleon bellows to the audience for help and the Chorus urges the sausage-seller to outshout him. There follows a shouting match between Cleon and the sausage seller with vulgar boasts and vainglorious threats on both sides as each man strives to demonstrate that he is a more shameless and unscrupulous orator than the other. The knights proclaim the sausage-seller the winner of the argument and Cleon then rushes off to the Boule to denounce them all on a trumped-up charge of treason. The sausage seller sets off in pursuit and the action pauses for a parabasis, during which the Chorus steps forward to address the audience on behalf of the author. The Chorus informs us that Aristophanes has been very methodical and cautious in the way he has approached his career as a comic poet and we are invited to applaud him. The knights then deliver a speech in praise of the older generation, the men who made Athens great, and this is followed by a speech in praise of horses that performed heroically in a recent amphibious assault on Corinth, whither they are imagined to have rowed in gallant style. Returning to the stage, the sausage seller reports to the knights on his battle with Cleon for control of the Council - he has outbid Cleon for the support of the councillors with offers of meals at the state's expense. Indignant at his defeat, Cleon rushes onto the stage and challenges the sausage-seller to submit their differences to Demos. The sausage seller accepts the challenge. They call Demos outdoors and compete with each other in flattering him like rivals for the affections of an eromenos. He agrees to hear them debating their differences and he takes up his position on the Pnyx (here represented possibly as a bench). The sausage-seller makes some serious accusations in the first half of the debate: Cleon is indifferent to the war-time sufferings of ordinary people, he has used the war as an opportunity for corruption and he prolongs the war out of fear that he will be prosecuted when peace returns. Demos is won over by these arguments and he spurns Cleon's wheedling appeals for sympathy. Thereafter the sausage seller's accusations become increasingly absurd: Cleon is accused of waging a campaign against buggery in order to stifle opposition (because all the best orators are buggers) and he is said to have brought down the price of silphium so that jurors who bought it would suffocate each other with their flatulence. Cleon loses the debate but he doesn't lose hope and there are two further contests in which he competes with the sausage seller for Demos's favour - a) the reading of oracles flattering to Demos; b) a race to see which of them can best serve pampered Demos's every need. The sausage seller wins each contest by outdoing Cleon in shamelessness. Cleon makes one last effort to retain his privileged position in the household - he possesses an oracle that describes his successor and he questions the sausage seller to see if he matches the description in all its vulgar details. The sausage seller does match the description. In tragic dismay, Cleon at last accepts his fate and he surrenders his authority to the sausage-seller. Demos asks the sausage seller for his name and we learn that it is Agoracritus, confirming his lowly origin. The actors depart and the Chorus treats us to another parabasis. The knights step forward and they advise us that it is honourable to mock dishonourable people. They proceed to mock Ariphrades, an Athenian with a perverse appetite for female secretions. Next they recount an imaginary conversation between some respectable ships that have refused to carry the war to Carthage because the voyage was proposed by Hyperbolus, a man they despise. Then Agoracritus returns to the stage, calling for respectful silence and announcing a new development - he has rejuvenated Demos with a good boiling (just as if he were a piece of meat). The doors of Demos's house open to reveal impressive changes in Demos's appearance - he is now the very image of glorious 'violet-crowned' Athens, as once commemorated in a song by Pindar. Agoracritus presents his transformed master with the Peacetreaties - beautiful girls that Cleon had been keeping locked up in order to prolong the war. Demos invites Agoracritus to a banquet at the town hall and the entire cast exits in good cheer - all except Cleon, who is required to sell sausages at the city gate as punishment for his crimes.
157837	/m/014sfd	Romance of the Three Kingdoms	Luo Guanzhong		{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 One of the greatest achievements of Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the extreme complexity of its stories and characters. The novel contains numerous secondary stories. The following consists of a summary of the central plot, and well-known highlights in the story. In the final years of the Han Dynasty, incompetent eunuchs deceive the emperor and persecute good officials, and the government becomes extremely corrupt on all levels, leading to widespread deterioration of the empire. During the reign of the penultimate Han sovereign, Emperor Ling, the Yellow Turban Rebellion breaks out under the leadership of Zhang Jue (a.k.a. Zhang Jiao). The rebellion is barely suppressed by troops under the command of He Jin, General-in-Chief of the imperial armies. Fearing his growing power, the eunuchs led by Zhang Rang lure He Jin into the palace and murder him. He Jin's stunned guards, led by Yuan Shao, respond by charging into the palace to kill all eunuchs for revenge, which turns into indiscriminate slaughter. In the ensuing chaos, the child Emperor Shao and the Prince of Chenliu disappear from the palace. The missing emperor and prince are found later by soldiers of the warlord Dong Zhuo, who proceeds to seize control of the imperial capital Luoyang under the pretext of protecting the emperor. Dong later deposes Emperor Shao and replaces him with the Prince of Chenliu, who becomes known as Emperor Xian. Dong usurps state power and starts a reign of terror in which innocents are persecuted and the common people suffer. Wu Fu and Cao Cao attempt to assassinate Dong Zhuo but both fail. Cao Cao manages to escape and issues an imperial edict in the emperor's name to all regional warlords and governors, calling them to rise up against Dong Zhuo. Under Yuan Shao's leadership, eighteen warlords form a coalition force in a campaign against Dong Zhuo, but undermined by poor leadership and conflict of interest, they only manage to drive Dong from Luoyang to Chang'an. Dong Zhuo is eventually betrayed and killed by his foster son Lü Bu in a dispute over the beautiful maiden Diaochan. In the meantime, the empire is already disintegrating into civil war. Sun Jian finds the Imperial Seal and keeps it secretly for himself, further weakening royal authority. Without a strong central government, warlords begin to rise and fight each other for land, plunging China into a state of anarchy. In the north, Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan are at war, and in the south, Sun Jian and Liu Biao. Many others, even those without title or land, such as Cao Cao and Liu Bei, are also starting to build up power. Cao Cao rescues Emperor Xian from Dong Zhuo's followers and establishes the new imperial court in Xuchang. Cao Cao proceeds to defeat his rivals such as Lü Bu, Yuan Shu and Zhang Xiu before scoring a tactical victory over Yuan Shao in the Battle of Guandu despite being vastly outnumbered. Through his conquests, Cao unites the Central Plains and northern China under his rule, and the lands he controlled would serve as the foundation for the state of Cao Wei in the future. Meanwhile, an ambush had violently concluded Sun Jian's life in a war with Liu Biao, fulfilling Sun's own rash oath to heaven. His eldest son Sun Ce delivers the Imperial Seal as a tribute to the rising royal pretender, Yuan Shu of Huainan, in exchange for reinforcements. Sun secures himself a state in the rich riverlands of Jiangdong, on which the state of Eastern Wu will eventually be founded. Tragically, Sun Ce also dies at the pinnacle of his career from illness under stress of his terrifying encounter with the ghost of Yu Ji, a venerable magician whom he had falsely accused and executed in jealousy. However, his younger brother Sun Quan, who succeeds him, proves to be a capable and charismatic ruler. Sun, assisted by skilled advisors Zhou Yu and Zhang Zhao, inspires hidden talents such as Lu Su to join his service, and builds up a strong military force. Liu Bei, along with his sworn brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, swear allegiance to the Han Dynasty in the famous Oath of the Peach Garden and pledge to do their best for the country. However, their goals and ambitions are not realized until the later part of the novel. Liu is not recognized for his efforts in quelling the Yellow Turban Rebellion and is merely appointed as a junior magistrate. They join Gongsun Zan and participate in the campaign against Dong Zhuo. Liu Bei becomes the governor of Xu Province after Tao Qian passes on the post to him. Liu loses the province when Lü Bu seizes control of it with the help of a defector and he joins Cao Cao in defeating Lü at the Battle of Xiapi. While Cao Cao subtly reveals his intention to usurp state power, Liu Bei is officially recognised by Emperor Xian as the Imperial Uncle and seen as a saviour to help the emperor deal with Cao Cao. Liu Bei leaves Cao Cao eventually and seizes Xu Province from Cao Cao's newly appointed governor Che Zhou. In retaliation, Cao Cao attacks Xu Province and defeats Liu, forcing Liu to seek refuge under Yuan Shao for a brief period of time. Liu finds a new base in Runan after leaving Yuan but is defeated by Cao Cao's forces once again. He retreats to Jing Province to join Liu Biao and is placed in charge of Xinye. At Xinye, Liu recruits the genius strategist Zhuge Liang personally and builds up his forces. Cao Cao declares himself chancellor and leads his troops to attack southern China after uniting the north. He is defeated twice at Xinye by Liu Bei's forces but Liu loses the city as well. Liu leads his men and the civilians of Xinye on an exodus southwards and they arrive at Jiangxia (present-day Yunmeng County, Hubei) where Liu establishes a foothold against Cao Cao. To resist Cao Cao, Liu Bei sends Zhuge Liang to persuade Sun Quan to form an alliance. Zhuge succeeds in his diplomatic mission and remains in Jiangdong as a temporary advisor to Sun Quan. Sun places Zhou Yu in command of the armies of Jiangdong (Eastern Wu) in preparation for an upcoming war with Cao Cao. Zhou feels that Zhuge will become a future threat to Eastern Wu and he tries to kill Zhuge on a few occasions but he fails and decides to co-operate with Zhuge for the time being. Cao Cao is defeated at the Battle of Red Cliffs by the allied forces of Sun Quan and Liu Bei and he is forced to retreat north. Sun Quan and Liu Bei begin vying for control of Jing Province after their victory and Liu seizes the province from Cao Cao after following Zhuge Liang's strategy. Sun Quan is unhappy and sends emissaries to ask Liu Bei for Jing Province, but Liu dismisses the envoys each time with different excuses. Sun uses some strategies proposed by Zhou Yu to take the land, of which the most famous is the "Beauty Scheme." Sun intends to lure Liu Bei to Jiangdong to marry his sister Lady Sun and hold Liu hostage to exchange his freedom for Jing Province, but the plot fails and the newlywed couple return home safely. Zhou Yu tries to take Jing Province repeatedly but his plans are foiled three times by Zhuge Liang. After Zhou Yu's death, relations between Liu Bei and Sun Quan gradually deteriorate but not to the point of open conflict. In accordance with Zhuge Liang's Longzhong Plan, Liu Bei leads his troops into Yi Province in the west and takes over the land from the incompetent noble Liu Zhang. By then, Liu Bei rules a vast area of land from Jing Province to Yi Province in the west, which will serve as the foundation for the future state of Shu Han. He proclaims himself "King of Hanzhong" after his victory over Cao Cao in the Hanzhong Campaign. At the same time, Cao has also been granted the title of "King of Wei" by the emperor and Sun Quan became known as the "Duke of Wu". In the east, Sun Quan and Cao Cao's forces clash at the Battle of Ruxukou and Battle of Xiaoyao Ford with victories and defeats for both sides. The situation among the three major powers reaches a stalemate after this until Cao Cao's death. Meanwhile, Sun Quan plots to take Jing Province after tiring of Liu Bei's repeated refusals to hand the land over. He makes peace with Cao Cao and becomes a vassal of Cao with the title of "King of Wu". Guan Yu, who is in charge of Jing Province, leads his troops to attack Cao Ren in the Battle of Fancheng. Sun Quan sends Lü Meng to lead his troops to seize Jing Province while Guan is away, as part of his secret agreement with Cao Cao. Guan is caught off guard and loses Jing Province before he realizes it. He retreats to Maicheng, where he is heavily surrounded by Sun Quan's forces, while his army gradually shrinks in size as many of his troops desert or surrender to the enemy. In desperation, Guan attempts to break out of the siege but fails and is captured in an ambush. He is executed on Sun Quan's orders after refusing to renounce his loyalty to Liu Bei. Shortly after Guan Yu's death, Cao Cao dies of a brain tumor and his son Cao Pi usurps the throne, effectively ending the Han Dynasty and Cao renames his new dynasty "Cao Wei". In response, Liu Bei proclaims himself emperor, to carry on the bloodline of the Han Dynasty. While Liu Bei is planning to avenge Guan Yu, his other sworn brother Zhang Fei is assassinated in his sleep by his subordinates, who have defected to Sun Quan. As Liu Bei leads a large army to attack Sun Quan to avenge Guan Yu, Sun attempts to appease Liu by offering him the return of Jing Province. Liu's advisers, including Zhuge Liang, urge him to accept Sun's tokens of peace, but Liu persists in vengeance. After initial victories, a series of strategic mistakes due to the impetuosity of Liu leads to the cataclysmic defeat of Shu Han in the Battle of Xiaoting. Lu Xun, the commander of Sun Quan's forces, refrains from pursuing the retreating Shu Han troops after encountering Zhuge Liang's Stone Sentinel Maze. Liu Bei dies in Baidicheng from illness shortly after his defeat. In a moving final conversation between Liu on his deathbed and Zhuge Liang, Liu grants Zhuge the authority to take the throne if his successor Liu Shan proves to be an inept ruler. Zhuge refuses and swears that he will remain faithful to the trust Liu Bei had placed in him. After Liu Bei's death, as advised by Sima Yi, Cao Pi induces several forces, including Sun Quan, turncoat Shu general Meng Da, Meng Huo of the Nanman and the Qiang tribes, to attack Shu Han, in coordination with a Cao Wei army. Zhuge Liang manages to send the five armies retreating without any bloodshed. An envoy from Shu Han named Deng Zhi subsequently persuades Sun Quan to renew the former alliance with Shu Han. Zhuge Liang personally leads a southern campaign against the Nanman barbarian king Meng Huo. Meng is defeated and captured seven times, but Zhuge releases him each time and allows him to come back for another battle, in order to win Meng over. The seventh time, Meng refuses to leave and decides to swear allegiance to Shu Han forever. After pacifying the south, Zhuge Liang leads the Shu Han army on five military expeditions to attack Cao Wei in order to restore the Han Dynasty. However, Zhuge's days are numbered as he had been suffering from chronic tuberculosis all along, and his condition worsens under stress from the campaigns. His last significant victory over Cao Wei is probably the defection of Jiang Wei, a promising young general who is well-versed in military strategy. Zhuge Liang dies of illness at the Battle of Wuzhang Plains while leading a stalemate battle against his nemesis, the Cao Wei commander Sima Yi. Before his death, Zhuge orders his trusted generals to build a statue of himself and use it to scare away the enemy in order to buy time for the Shu Han army to retreat safely. The long years of battle between Shu Han and Cao Wei sees many changes in the ruling Cao family in Cao Wei. The influence of the Caos weakens after the death of Cao Rui and the state power of Cao Wei eventually falls into the hands of the Sima clan, headed by Sima Yi's sons Sima Shi and Sima Zhao. In Shu Han, Jiang Wei inherits Zhuge Liang's legacy and continues to lead another nine campaigns against Cao Wei for a bitter three decades, but he fails to achieve any significant success. Moreover, the ruler of Shu Han, Liu Shan, is incompetent and places faith in treacherous officials, further leading to the decline of the kingdom. Shu Han is eventually conquered by Cao Wei. Jiang Wei attempts to restore Shu Han with the help of Zhong Hui but their plans are exposed and both of them are killed by Sima Zhao's troops. After the fall of Shu Han in 263, Sima Zhao's son Sima Yan forces the last Wei ruler, Cao Huan, to abdicate his throne in 265, officially ending the Cao Wei dynasty. Sima Yan, having already been proclaimed the Prince of Jin in the previous year, then formally establishes the Jin Dynasty. In Eastern Wu, there has been internal conflict among the nobles ever since the death of Sun Quan, with Zhuge Ke and Sun Lin making attempts to usurp state power. Although stability is restored temporarily, the last Wu ruler Sun Hao appears to be a tyrant who does not make any efforts to strengthen his kingdom. Eastern Wu, the last of the Three Kingdoms, is finally conquered by Jin after a long period of struggle in the year 280, thus marking the end of the near century-long era of civil strife known as the Three Kingdoms period.
158297	/m/014w5_	The Dragon in the Sea	Frank Herbert	1956	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in a near-future earth, the West and the East have been at war for more than a decade, and resources are running thin. The West is stealing oil from the East with specialized nuclear submarines ("subtugs") that sneak into the underwater oil fields of the East to secretly pump out the oil and bring it back. Each manned by a crew of four, these submarines undertake the most hazardous, stressful mission conceivable, and of late, the missions have been failing, with the last twenty submarines simply disappearing. The East has been very successful in planting sleepers in the West's military and command structures, and the suspicion is that sleepers are sabotaging the subs or revealing their positions once at sea. John Ramsey, a young psychologist from the Bureau of Psychology (BuPsych), is trained as an electronics operator and sent on the next mission, replacing the previous officer who went insane. His secret mission is to find the sleeper, or figure out why the crews are going insane.
158313	/m/014wc4	Destination: Void	Frank Herbert	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the future, humankind has tried to develop artificial intelligence, succeeding only once, and then disastrously. A transmission from the project site on an island in the Puget Sound, "rogue consciousness!", was followed by slaughter and destruction, culminating in the island vanishing from the face of the earth. The current project is being run on the moon, and the book tells the story of the seventh attempt in a series of experiments to create an artificial consciousness. For each attempt the scientists raise a group of clones. These clones are kept isolated and raised to believe that they will be the crew of a spaceship that will colonize a planet in the Tau Ceti solar system (Tau Ceti has no habitable planet, its choice - should they manage to reach it - is part of the planned frustration of the crew). The spaceship will take hundreds of years to reach the system and the crew will spend most of their time in hibernation. Along with the crew of six, the ship carries thousands of other clones in hibernation, intended to populate the new colony and, if necessary, provide replacements for any crew members who die along the way. The crew are just caretakers: the ship is controlled by a disembodied human brain, called "Organic Mental Core" or "OMC", that runs the complex operations of the vessel and keeps it moving in space. But the first two OMC's (Myrtle and Little Joe) become catatonic, while the third OMC goes insane and kills two of the umbilicus crew members. The crew are left with only one choice: to build an artificial consciousness that will enable the ship to continue. The crew knows that if they attempt to turn back they will be ordered to abort (self destruct). The clones have been bred and carefully selected for psychological purposes to reinforce each other, as well as to provide various specialized skills that will give them the best chance of success. The crew includes a chaplain-psychiatrist, Raja Flattery, who knows their real purpose, and that the breakdown of the "OMC"s was planned. He's aware that six other ships have gone out before theirs, each one failing. He understands the nature of the test: create a high pressure environment in which brilliance may break through out of necessity, and create in the safety of the void what humans couldn't safely create on Earth. Space Ship Earthling number Seven ultimately succeeds, and the consequences of their success form the basis of the plot for the novels which follow. fr:Destination vide he:Destination: Void
158341	/m/014wm9	Whipping Star	Frank Herbert	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the far future, humankind has made contact with numerous other species: Gowachin, Laclac, Wreaves, Pan Spechi, Taprisiots, and Caleban (among others) and has helped to form the ConSentiency to govern among the species. After suffering under a tyrannous pure democracy which had the power to create laws so fast that no thought could be given to the effects, the sentients of the galaxy found the need for a Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) to slow the wheels of government, thereby preventing it from legislating recklessly. In Whipping Star, Jorj X. McKie is a saboteur extraordinary, a born troublemaker who has naturally become one of BuSab's best agents. As the novel opens, it is revealed that Calebans, who are beings visible to other sentient species as stars, have been disappearing one by one. Each disappearance is accompanied by millions of sentient deaths and instances of incurable insanity. Ninety years prior to the setting of Whipping Star, the Calebans appeared and offered jumpdoors to the collective species, allowing sentients to travel instantly to any point in the universe. Gratefully accepting, the sentiency didn't question the consequences. Now Mliss Abnethe, a psychotic human female with immense power and wealth, has bound a Caleban (called Fannie Mae) in a contract that allows the Caleban to be whipped to death; when the Caleban dies, everyone who has ever used a jumpdoor (which is almost every adult in the sentient world and many of the young) will die as well. The Calebans begin to disappear one at a time, leaving our plane of existence (or exiting "our wave") to save themselves. As all Calebans are connected, if all were to remain in our existence, when Fannie Mae died, all Calebans would die. As each Caleban exits, millions of the ConSentiency are killed or rendered insane. McKie has to find Mliss and stop her before Fannie Mae reaches, in her words, "ultimate discontinuity", but he is constrained by the law protecting private individuals by restricting the ministrations of BuSab to public entities. McKie succeeds in saving Fannie Mae by opening a jumpdoor into space which shunts a large interstellar cloud of (presumably) hydrogen into her stellar body, rejuvenating her from her torture at the hands of the Palenki henchmen hired by Mliss Abnethe.
158354	/m/014wnv	The Dosadi Experiment	Frank Herbert	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in a distant future when humans are part of an interstellar civilization called the ConSentiency composed of many species. One, the Taprisiots, provide instant mind-to-mind communication between two sentient minds anywhere in the universe, and the Caleban provide jump-doors which allow instantaneous travel between any two points in the universe. This is the glue that holds the far-flung ConSentiency together. Unfortunately, one consequence of jump-door technology is the possibility that large numbers of unsuspecting sentients can be diverted to destinations unknown for nefarious purposes. A government saboteur attempts to expose one such plot. Jorj X. McKie is a Saboteur Extraordinary, one of the principals of the Bureau of Sabotage, and the only human admitted to practice law before the Gowachin bar as a legum (lawyer). While meditating in a park in BuSab headquarters McKie is mentally contacted by the Caleban Fannie Mae, a female member of a species of unparalleled power from another dimension whose visible manifestation in this universe is the star Thyone in the Pleiades cluster Generations ago, a secret, unauthorized experiment by the Gowachins was carried out with the help of a contract with the Calebans. They isolated the planet Dosadi behind an impenetrable barrier called "The God Wall". On the planet were placed humans and Gowachin, with an odd mix of modern and old technology. The planet itself is massively poisonous except for a narrow valley, containing the city "Chu", into which nearly 89 million humans and Gowachin are crowded under terrible conditions. It is ruled by a dictator, many other forms of government having been tried previously, but without the ability to remove such things as the DemoPol, a computer system used to manipulate populaces without their consent or knowledge. The culture of ordinary day to day power in Dosadi is very violent. Among other tools, addictive psychotropes are used for handling power among hierarchies in organisations. Senior Liator Keila Jedrik starts a war that will change Dosadi forever. Jorj travels to Dosadi and escapes with Keila after engaging in ego sharing. This gives them the ability to swap bodies and thus by using a hole in the contract sealing Dosadi they can escape via jump gate. Once free, by legal manoeuvring the Dosadi population is unleashed upon the ConSentiency for good or ill, whilst the people who set the project in motion try to deal with the consequences, having sent McKie there hoping a solution more in their interest could be found.
158680	/m/014yc6	The Transparent Society	David Brin	1998-05-17	{"/m/0h5k": "Anthropology", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Brin argues that a core level of privacy - protecting our most intimate interactions - may be preserved, despite the rapid proliferation of cameras that become ever-smaller, cheaper and more numerous faster than Moore's law. He feels that this core privacy can be saved simply because that is what humans deeply need and want. Hence, Brin explains that "...the key question is whether citizens will be potent, sovereign and knowing enough to enforce this deeply human want. This means they must not only have rights, but also the power to use them and the ability to detect when they are being abused. Ironically, that will only happen in a world that is mostly open, in which most citizens know most of what is going on, most of the time. It is the only condition under which citizens may have some chance of catching the violators of their freedom and privacy. Privacy is only possible if freedom (including the freedom to know) is protected first. Brin thus maintains that privacy is a "contingent right," one that grows out of the more primary rights, e.g. to know and to speak. He admits that such a mostly-open world will seem more irksome and demanding; people will be expected to keep negotiating the tradeoffs between knowing and privacy. It will be tempting to pass laws that restrict the power of surveillance to authorities, entrusting them to protect our privacy -- or a comforting illusion of privacy. By contrast, a transparent society destroys that illusion by offering everyone access to the vast majority of information out there. Brin argues that it will be good for society if the powers of surveillance are shared with the citizenry, allowing "sousveillance" or "viewing from below," enabling the public to watch the watchers. According to Brin, this only continues the same trend promoted by Adam Smith, John Locke, the US Constitutionalists and the western enlightenment, who held that any elite (whether commercial, governmental, or aristocratic) should experience constraints upon its power. And there is no power-equalizer greater than knowledge.
158714	/m/014yjg	The Poisoned Chocolates Case	Anthony Berkeley Cox		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 After arriving at his London club at 10:30 am precisely,which he has been doing every morning for many years, Sir Eustace Pennefather, a known womanizer whose divorce from his current wife is pending, receives a complimentary box of chocolates through the post. Disapproving of such modern marketing techniques, Sir Eustace is about to throw away the chocolates in disgust but changes his mind when he learns that Graham Bendix, another member of the club whom he hardly knows, has lost a bet with his wife Joan and now owes her a box of chocolates. Bendix takes the box home and, after lunch, tries out the new confectionery together with his wife. A few hours later Joan Bendix is dead, whereas her husband, who has eaten far less of the chocolate, is taken seriously ill and hospitalized (but later recovers). The police can establish a few facts beyond any doubt: that the parcel was posted the previous evening near The Strand; that the poison that was injected into each of the chocolates is nitrobenzene; and that the accompanying letter was typewritten on a piece of stationery from the manufacturers of the chocolates but not composed or sent by them. Quite soon in the police investigations it becomes evident that the intended victim was Sir Eustace himself rather than the innocent Joan Bendix: No criminal could have predicted Sir Eustace giving away the box of chocolates to a man he hardly knew who just happened to be present when it was delivered. However, at a loss as to the further details of the crime, Scotland Yard conclude that the sender must have been some maniac or a fanatic trying to rid society of one of its most immoral members. Worthy pillars of society including a barrister, a writer of detective novels, and a female author, the members of Roger Sheringham's Crimes Circle go about individually solving the case. After a week has passed, they present their findings on consecutive nights to their colleagues. Not surprisingly, they come up with various suspects: Sir Eustace's estranged wife; the father of a young lady whom Sir Eustace intended to marry after his divorce got through; one of Sir Eustace's discarded mistresses; and some more. While these discussions are going on, the murderer seems to feel safe with no need to cover up their tracks any further. At the very end of the novel, however, there is no doubt as to the identity of the perpetrator.
158878	/m/014z8d	Oedipus at Colonus	Sophocles			 Led by Antigone, Oedipus enters the village of Colonus and sits down on a stone. They are approached by a villager, who demands that they leave, because that ground is sacred to the Furies, or Erinyes. Oedipus recognizes this as a sign, for when he received the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, Apollo also revealed to him that at the end of his life he would die at a place sacred to the Furies, and be a blessing for the land in which he is buried. The chorus of old men from the village enters, and persuades Oedipus to leave the holy ground. They then question him about his identity, and are horrified to learn that he is the son of Laius. Although they promised not to harm Oedipus, they wish to expel him from their city, fearing that he will curse it. Oedipus answers by explaining that he is not morally responsible for his crimes, since he killed his father in self-defence. Furthermore, he asks to see their king, Theseus, saying, "I come as someone sacred, someone filled with piety and power, bearing a great gift for all your people." The chorus is amazed, and decides to reserve their judgment of Oedipus until Theseus, king of Athens, arrives. Ismene arrives on horse, rejoicing to see her father and sister. She brings the news that Eteocles has seized the throne of Thebes from his elder brother, Polyneices, while Polyneices is gathering support from the Argives to attack the city. Both sons have heard from an oracle that the outcome of the conflict will depend on where their father is buried. Ismene tells her father that it is Creon's plan to come for him and bury him at the border of Thebes, without proper burial rites, so that the power which the oracle says his grave will have will not be granted to any other land. Hearing this, Oedipus curses both of his sons for not treating him well, contrasting them with his devoted daughters. He pledges allegiance with neither of his feuding sons, but with the people of Colonus, who thus far have treated him well, and further asks them for protection from Creon. Because Oedipus trespassed on the holy ground of the Euminides, the villagers tell him that he must perform certain rites to appease them. Ismene volunteers to go perform them for him and departs, while Antigone remains with Oedipus. Meanwhile, the chorus questions Oedipus once more, desiring to know the details of his incest and patricide. After he relates his sorrowful story to them, Theseus enters, and in contrast to the prying chorus states, "I know all about you, son of Laius." He sympathizes with Oedipus, and offers him unconditional aid, causing Oedipus to praise Theseus and offer him the gift of his burial site, which will ensure victory in a future conflict with Thebes. Theseus protests, saying that the two cities are friendly, and Oedipus responds with what is perhaps the most famous speech in the play. "Oh Theseus, dear friend, only the gods can never age, the gods can never die. All else in the world almighty Time obliterates, crushes all to nothing..." Theseus makes Oedipus a citizen of Athens, and leaves the chorus to guard him as he departs. The chorus sings about the glory and beauty of Athens. Creon, who is the representative of Thebes, comes to Oedipus and feigns pity for him and his children, telling him that he should return to Thebes. Oedipus is horrified, and recounts all of the harms Creon has inflicted on him. Creon becomes angry and reveals that he has already captured Ismene; he then instructs his guards to forcibly seize Antigone. His men begin to carry them off toward Thebes, perhaps planning to use them as blackmail to get Oedipus to follow, out of a desire to return Thebans to Thebes, or simply out of anger. The chorus attempts to stop him, but Creon threatens to use force to bring Oedipus back to Thebes. The chorus then calls for Theseus, who comes from sacrificing to Poseidon to condemn Creon, telling him, "You have come to a city that practices justice, that sanctions nothing without law." Creon replies by condemning Oedipus, saying "I knew [your city] would never harbor a father-killer...worse, a creature so corrupt, exposed as the mate, the unholy husband of his own mother." Oedipus, infuriated, declares once more that he is not morally responsible for what he did. Theseus leads Creon away to retake the two girls. The Athenians overpower the Thebans and return both girls to Oedipus. Oedipus moves to kiss Theseus in gratitude, then draws back, acknowledging that he is still polluted. Theseus then informs Oedipus that a suppliant has come to the temple of Poseidon and wishes to speak with him; it is Oedipus' son Polynices, who has been banished from Thebes by his brother Eteocles. Oedipus does not want to talk to him, saying that he loathes the sound of his voice, but Antigone persuades him to listen, saying, "Many other men have rebellious children, quick tempers too...but they listen to reason, they relent." Oedipus gives in to her, and Polynices enters, lamenting Oedipus' miserable condition and begging his father to speak to him. He tells Oedipus that he has been driven out of the Thebes unjustly by his brother, and that he is preparing to attack the city. He knows that this is the result of Oedipus' curse on his sons, and begs his father to relent, even going so far as to say "We share the same fate" to his father. Oedipus tells him that he deserves his fate, for he cast his father out. He foretells that his two sons will kill each other in the coming battle. "Die! Die by your own blood brother's hand—die!—killing the very man who drove you out! So I curse your life out!" Antigone tries to restrain her brother, telling him that he should not attack Thebes and avoid dying at his brother's hand. Polyneices refuses to be dissuaded, and exits. Following their conversation there is a fierce thunderstorm, which Oedipus interprets as a sign from Zeus of his impending death. Calling for Theseus, he tells him that it is time for him to give the gift he promised to Athens. Filled with strength, the blind Oedipus stands and walks, calling for his children and Theseus to follow him. A messenger enters and tells the chorus that Oedipus is dead. He led his children and Theseus away, then bathed himself and poured libations, while his daughters grieved. He told them that their burden of caring for him was gone, and asked Theseus to swear not to forsake his daughters. Then he sent his children away, for only Theseus could know the place of his death, and pass it on to his heir. When the messenger turned back to look at the spot where Oedipus last stood, he says that "We couldn't see the man- he was gone- nowhere! And the king, alone, shielding his eyes, both hands spread out against his face as if- some terrible wonder flashed before his eyes and he, he could not bear to look." Theseus enters with Antigone and Ismene, who are weeping and mourning their father. Antigone longs to see her father's tomb, even to be buried there with him rather than live without him. The girls beg Theseus to take them, but he reminds them that the place is a secret, and that no one may go there. "And he said that if I kept my pledge, I'd keep my country free of harm forever." Antigone agrees, and asks for passage back to Thebes, where she hopes to stop the Seven Against Thebes from marching. Everyone exits toward Athens.
158943	/m/02y_3bn	Vurt	Jeff Noon	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Vurt tells the story of Scribble and his "gang", the Stash Riders, as they search for his missing sister/lover Desdemona. The novel is set in an alternate version of Manchester, England, in which society has been shaped by Vurt, a hallucinogenic drug/shared alternate reality, accessed by sucking on colour-coded feathers. Through some (never explained) mechanism, the dreams, mythology, and imaginings of humanity have achieved objective reality in the Vurt and become "real". Before the novel begins, Scribble and his sister-lover take a shared trip into a vurt called English Voodoo, but upon awakening Scribble finds his sister has been replaced by an amorphous blob that Mandy, a fellow Stash Rider, nicknames "The Thing from Outer Space". From that point on, Scribble is on a mission to find another copy of the rare and contraband Curious Yellow feather (found within English Voodoo), so that he can exchange The Thing for Desdemona.
159063	/m/014_8r	Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal	Eric Schlosser	2001-01-17	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Schlosser opens the book with the ironic delivery of a pizza to the top secret military base, Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. He describes various high-tech capabilities of the base and its extensive defensive system, speculating that if the worst were to happen and the entire base were entombed in the mountain, anthropologists of the future would discover random fast food wrappers scattered amongst military hardware. Both, suggests Schlosser, would provide important clues about the nature of American society. The book continues with an account of the evolution of fast food and how it has coincided with the advent of the automobile. Schlosser explains the transformation from countless independent restaurants to a few uniform franchises. This shift led to a production-line kitchen prototype, standardization, self-service, and a fundamental change in marketing demographics: from teenager to family-oriented. Regarding the topic of child-targeted marketing, Schlosser explains how the McDonald's Corporation modeled its marketing tactics on The Walt Disney Company, which inspired the creation of advertising icons such as Ronald McDonald and his sidekicks. Marketing executives intended that this marketing shift would result not only in attracting children, but their parents and grandparents as well. More importantly, the tactic would instill brand loyalty that would persist through adulthood through nostalgic associations to McDonald's. Schlosser also discusses the tactic's ills: the exploitation of children's naïveté and trusting nature. He sees that reductions in corporate taxation have come at the expense of school funding, thereby presenting many corporations with the opportunity for sponsorship with those same schools. According to his sources, 80% of sponsored textbooks contain material that is biased in favor of the sponsors, and 30% of high schools offer fast foods in their cafeterias. In his examination of the meat packing industry, Schlosser finds that it is now dominated by casual, easily exploited immigrant labor and that levels of injury are among the highest of any occupation in the United States. Schlosser discusses his findings on meat packing companies IBP, Inc. and on Kenny Dobbins. Schlosser also recounts the steps involved in meat processing and reveals several hazardous practices unknown to many consumers, such as the practice of rendering dead pigs and horses and chicken manure into cattle feed. Schlosser notes that practices like these were responsible for the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, aka Mad Cow Disease, p. 202-3), as well as for introducing harmful bacteria into the food supply, such as E. coli O157:H7 (ch. 9, "What's In The Meat"). A later section of the book discusses the fast food industry's role in globalization, linking increased obesity in China and Japan with the arrival of fast food. The book also includes a summary of the McLibel Case. In later editions, Schlosser provided an additional section that included reviews of his book, counters to critics who emerged since its first edition, and discussion of the effect that the threat of BSE had on US Federal Government policy towards cattle farming. He concluded that, given the swift, decisive and effective action that took place as a result of this interest and intervention, many of the problems documented in the book are solvable, given enough political will.
159929	/m/0153hd	The Dice Man	George Cockcroft	1971	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book tells the story of a psychiatrist named Luke Rhinehart who, feeling bored and unfulfilled in life, starts making decisions about what to do based on a roll of a dice. Along the way, there is sex, rape, murder, "dice parties", breakouts by psychiatric patients, and various corporate and governmental machines being put into a spin. There is also a description of the cult that starts to develop around the man, and the psychological research he initiates, such as the "Fuck without Fear for Fun and Profit" program.
159934	/m/0153j5	The Search for the Dice Man	George Cockcroft	1993-06-07	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is set 20 years after the end of The Dice Man, and Luke's dicechild, Larry Rhinehart, has grown up to become a hotshot investor on the stock market. He has totally rejected his father's reverence for chance: he sees it as an adversary to be overcome, and has managed to create a stable, normal life for himself, in spite of his early abandonment. Indeed, he is due to wed the daughter of his boss, and live wealthily ever after. This state of affairs would make a dull story and soon his father's ghostly presence intervenes. He gets approached by the FBI, who are trying to trace his father's location, and find out whether he's alive or dead. Though Larry naturally refuses to have anything to do with the FBI, he soon starts to pursue his own investigations. He is financed in this by his fiancée's father, who wants to put the whole dice business to rest, and is accompanied by his fiancée's cousin, an unreformed hippy. It takes a long time - a whole book in fact, but Larry eventually does complete his quest. Along the way, what he sees and hears change his views somewhat; by the end of the book it is he who is trying to convince Luke, his father, to accept more chance into his life, rather than the other way round.
159941	/m/0153k6	Anna Karenina	Leo Tolstoy	1877	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is divided into eight parts. Its epigraph is Vengeance is mine, I will repay, from Romans 12:19, which in turn is quoting from Deuteronomy 32:35. The novel begins with one of its most quoted lines: The novel opens with a scene introducing Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky ("Stiva"), a Moscow aristocrat and civil servant who has been unfaithful to his wife Darya Alexandrovna, ("Dolly"). Dolly has discovered his affair—with the family's governess—and the house and family are in turmoil. Stiva's affair and his reaction to his wife's distress show an amorous personality that he cannot seem to suppress. In the midst of the turmoil, Stiva reminds the household that his married sister, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, is coming to visit from Saint Petersburg. Meanwhile, Stiva's childhood friend, Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin ("Kostya"), arrives in Moscow with the aim of proposing to Dolly's youngest sister, Princess Katerina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya ("Kitty"). Levin is a passionate, restless, but shy aristocratic landowner who, unlike his Moscow friends, chooses to live in the country on his large estate. He discovers that Kitty is also being pursued by Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, an army officer. Whilst at the railway station to meet Anna, Stiva bumps into Vronsky; he is there to meet his mother, the Countess Vronskaya. Anna and Vronskaya have traveled and talked together in the same carriage. As the family members are reunited, and Vronsky sees Anna for the first time, a railway worker accidentally falls in front of a train and is killed. Anna interprets this as an "evil omen." Vronsky, however, is infatuated with her. Anna is uneasy about leaving her young son, Seryozha, alone for the first time. She also talks openly and emotionally to Dolly about Stiva's affair, convincing her that Stiva stills loves her despite the infidelity. Dolly is moved by Anna's speeches and decides to forgive Stiva. Kitty comes to visit Dolly and Anna. Kitty, just eighteen, is in her first season as a debutante and is expected to make an excellent match with a man of her social standing. Vronsky has been paying her considerable attention, and she expects to dance with him at a ball that evening. Kitty is very struck by Anna's beauty and personality, and becomes infatuated with her just as Vronsky is. When Levin proposes to Kitty at her home, she clumsily turns him down, believing she is in love with Vronsky and that he will propose to her. At the ball, Vronsky dances with Anna, choosing her as a partner over a shocked and heartbroken Kitty. Kitty realises that Vronsky has fallen in love with Anna, and has no intention of marrying her despite his overt flirtations; Vronsky has regarded his interactions with Kitty merely as a source of amusement, and assumes that Kitty has acted for the same reasons. Anna, shaken by her emotional and physical response to Vronsky, returns at once to Saint Petersburg. Vronsky travels on the same train. During the overnight journey, the two meet and Vronsky confesses his love. Anna refuses him, although she is deeply affected by his attentions to her. Levin, crushed by Kitty's refusal, returns to his estate farm, abandoning any hope of marriage. Anna returns to her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, a senior government official, and their son Sergei ("Seryozha") in Saint Petersburg. On seeing her husband for the first time since her encounter with Vronsky, Anna realises that she finds him repulsive. The Shcherbatskys consult doctors over Kitty's health, which has been failing since Vronsky's rejection. A specialist advises that Kitty should go abroad to a health spa to recover. Dolly speaks to Kitty and understands she is suffering because of Vronsky and Levin, whom she cares for and had hurt in vain. Kitty, humiliated by Vronsky and tormented by her rejection of Levin, upsets her sister by referring to Stiva's infidelity, saying she could never love a man who betrayed her. Meanwhile, Stiva visits Levin on his country estate while selling a nearby plot of land. In Saint Petersburg, Anna begins to spend more time in the inner circle of Princess Betsy, a fashionable socialite and Vronsky's cousin. Vronsky continues to pursue Anna. Although she initially tries to reject him, she eventually succumbs to his attentions. Karenin reminds his wife of the impropriety of paying too much attention to Vronsky in public, which is becoming the subject of gossip. He is concerned about the couple's public image, although he believes that Anna is above suspicion. Vronsky – a keen horseman – takes part in a steeplechase event, during which he rides his mare Frou-Frou too hard and she falls and breaks her back. Anna is unable to hide her distress during the accident. Later, Anna tells Vronsky that she is pregnant with his child. Karenin is also present at the races, and remarks to Anna that her behaviour is improper. Anna, in a state of extreme distress and emotion, confesses her affair to her husband. Karenin asks her to break it off to avoid further gossip, believing that their marriage will be preserved. Kitty and her mother travel to a German spa to recover from her ill health. There, they meet the Pietist Madame Stahl and the saintly Varenka, her adopted daughter. Influenced by Varenka, Kitty becomes extremely pious, but becomes disillusioned by her father's criticism. She then returns to Moscow. Levin continues working on his estate, a setting closely tied to his spiritual thoughts and struggles. He wrestles with the idea of falseness, wondering how he should go about ridding himself of it, and criticising what he feels is falseness in others. He develops ideas relating to agriculture, and the unique relationship between the agricultural labourer and his native land and culture. He comes to believe that the agricultural reforms of Europe will not work in Russia because of the unique culture and personality of the Russian peasant. When Levin visits Dolly, she attempts to understand what happened between him and Kitty and to explain Kitty's behaviour. Levin is very agitated by Dolly's talk about Kitty, and he begins to feel distant from Dolly as he perceives her loving behaviour towards her children as false. Levin resolves to forget Kitty, and contemplates the possibility of marriage to a peasant woman. However, a chance sighting of Kitty in her carriage makes Levin realise he still loves her. Meanwhile, in Saint Petersburg, Karenin refuses to separate from Anna, insisting that their relationship will continue. He threatens to take away Seryozha if she persists in her affair with Vronsky. When Anna and Vronsky continue seeing each other, Karenin consults with a lawyer about obtaining a divorce. During the time period, a divorce in Russia could only be requested by the innocent party in an affair, and required either that the guilty party confessed — which would ruin Anna's position in society and bar her from re-marrying — or that the guilty party be discovered in the act of adultery. Karenin forces Anna to hand over some of Vronsky's love letters, which the lawyer deems insufficient as proof of the affair. Stiva and Dolly argue against Karenin's drive for a divorce. Karenin changes his plans after hearing that Anna is dying after the difficult birth of her daughter, Annie. At her bedside, Karenin forgives Vronsky. However, Vronsky, embarrassed by Karenin's magnanimity, unsuccessfully attempts suicide by shooting himself. As Anna recovers, she finds that she cannot bear living with Karenin despite his forgiveness and his attachment to Annie. When she hears that Vronsky is about to leave for a military posting in Tashkent, she becomes desperate. Anna and Vronsky reunite and elope to Europe, leaving Seryozha and leaving Karenin's offer of divorce unaccepted. Meanwhile, Stiva acts as a matchmaker with Levin: he arranges a meeting between him and Kitty, which results in their reconciliation and betrothal. Levin and Kitty marry and start their new life on his country estate. Although the couple are happy, they undergo a bitter and stressful first three months of marriage. Levin feels dissatisfied at the amount of time Kitty wants to spend with him, and dwells on his ability to be productive as he was as a bachelor. When the marriage starts to improve, Levin learns that his brother, Nikolai, is dying of consumption. Kitty offers to accompany Levin on his journey to see Nikolai, and proves herself a great help in nursing Nikolai. Seeing his wife take charge of the situation in an infinitely more capable manner than if he were without her, Levin's love for Kitty grows. Kitty eventually learns that she is pregnant. In Europe, Vronsky and Anna struggle to find friends who will accept them. Whilst Anna is happy to be finally alone with Vronsky, he feels suffocated. They cannot socialize with Russians of their own class, and find it difficult to amuse themselves. Vronsky, who believed that being with Anna was the key to his happiness, finds himself increasingly bored and unsatisfied. He takes up painting and makes an attempt to patronize an émigré Russian artist of genius. However, Vronsky cannot see that his own art lacks talent and passion, and that his conversation about art is really pretentious. Increasingly restless, Anna and Vronsky decide to return to Russia. In Saint Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky stay in one of the best hotels, but take separate suites. It becomes clear that whilst Vronsky is still able to move freely in Russian society, Anna is barred from it. Even her old friend, Princess Betsy — who has had affairs herself — evades her company. Anna starts to become anxious that Vronsky no longer loves her. Meanwhile, Karenin is comforted by Countess Lidia Ivanovna, an enthusiast of religious and mystic ideas fashionable with the upper classes. She advises him to keep Seryozha away from Anna and to tell him his mother is dead. However, Seryozha refuses to believe that this is true. Anna visits Seryozha uninvited on his ninth birthday, but is discovered by Karenin. Anna, desperate to regain at least some of her former position in society, attends a show at the theatre at which all of Saint Petersburg's high society are present. Vronsky begs her not to go, but is unable to bring himself to explain to her why she cannot attend. At the theatre, Anna is openly snubbed by her former friends, one of whom makes a deliberate scene and leaves the theatre. Anna is devastated. Unable to find a place for themselves in Saint Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky leave for Vronsky's own country estate. Dolly, her mother the Princess Scherbatskaya, and Dolly's children spend the summer with Levin and Kitty. The Levins' life is simple and unaffected, although Levin is uneasy at the "invasion" of so many Scherbatskys. He becomes extremely jealous when one of the visitors, Veslovsky, flirts openly with the pregnant Kitty. Levin tries to overcome his feelings, but eventually succumbs to them and makes Veslovsky leave his house in an embarrassing scene. Veslovsky immediately goes to stay with Anna and Vronsky at their nearby estate. When Dolly visits Anna, she is struck by the difference between the Levins' aristocratic-yet-simple home life and Vronsky's overtly luxurious and lavish country estate. She is also unable to keep pace with Anna's fashionable dresses or Vronsky's extravagant spending on a hospital he is building. In addition, all is not quite well with Anna and Vronsky. Dolly notices Anna's anxious behaviour and her uncomfortable flirtations with Veslovsky. Vronsky makes an emotional request to Dolly, asking her to convince Anna to divorce Karenin so that the two might marry and live normally. Anna has become intensely jealous of Vronsky, and cannot bear it when he leaves her even for short excursions. When Vronsky leaves for several days of provincial elections, Anna becomes convinced that she must marry him in order to prevent him from leaving her. After Anna writes to Karenin, she and Vronsky leave the countryside for Moscow. While visiting Moscow for Kitty's confinement, Levin quickly gets used to the city's fast-paced, expensive and frivolous society life. He accompanies Stiva to a gentleman's club, where the two meet Vronsky. Levin and Stiva pay a visit to Anna, who is occupying her empty days by being a patroness to an orphaned English girl. Levin is initially uneasy about the visit, but Anna easily puts him under her spell. When he admits to Kitty that he has visited Anna, she accuses him of falling in love with her. The couple are later reconciled, realising that Moscow society life has had a negative, corrupting effect on Levin. Anna cannot understand why she can attract a man like Levin, who has a young and beautiful new wife, but cannot attract Vronsky as she did once. Her relationship with Vronsky is under increasing strain, as he can move freely in Russian society while she remains excluded. Her increasing bitterness, boredom, and jealousy cause the couple to argue. Anna uses morphine to help her sleep, a habit she had begun while living with Vronsky at his country estate. She has become dependent on it. Meanwhile, after a long and difficult labour, Kitty gives birth to a son, Dmitri, nicknamed "Mitya". Levin is both horrified and profoundly moved by the sight of the tiny, helpless baby. Stiva visits Karenin to seek his commendation for a new post. During the visit he asks him to grant Anna a divorce (which would require him to confess to a non-existent affair), but Karenin's decisions are now governed by a French "clairvoyant" recommended by Lidia Ivanovna. The clairvoyant apparently had a vision in his sleep during Stiva's visit and gives Karenin a cryptic message which is interpreted that Karenin must decline the request for divorce. Anna becomes increasingly jealous and irrational towards Vronsky, whom she suspects of having love affairs with other women. She is also convinced that he will give in to his mother's plans to marry him off to a rich society woman. They have a bitter row and Anna believes the relationship is over. She starts to think of suicide as an escape from her torments. In her mental and emotional confusion, she sends a telegram to Vronsky asking him to come home to her, and then pays a visit to Dolly and Kitty. Anna's confusion and vengeful anger overcome her, and in a parallel to the railway worker's accidental death in part 1, she commits suicide by throwing herself in the path of an oncoming train. Levin's brother's latest book is ignored by readers and critics and he joins the new pan-Slavic movement. Stiva gets the post he desired so much, and Karenin takes custody of Vronsky's and Anna's baby Annie. A group of Russian volunteers, including the suicidal Vronsky, depart from Russia to fight in the Orthodox Serbian revolt that has broken out against the Turks. Meanwhile, a lightning storm occurs at Levin's estate while his wife and newborn son are outside, and in his fear for their safety Levin realizes that he does indeed love his son as much he loves Kitty. Kitty's family is concerned that a man as altruistic as her husband does not consider himself to be a Christian, but after speaking at length to a peasant, Levin decides that devotion to living righteously is the only justifiable reason for living. Unable to tell anyone about this revelation, Levin is initially displeased that this change of thought does not bring with it a complete transformation to righteousness. However, at the end of the story Levin comes to the conclusion that his new beliefs are acceptable and that other non-Christian religions contain similar views on goodness that are also entirely credible. His life can now be meaningfully and truthfully oriented toward goodness.
159942	/m/0153kq	Adventures of Wim	George Cockcroft		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The book takes Luke's style to its logical conclusion, as the entire book is made up of sections taken from other, fictional books. The preface to the book claims that it was written in Deya, Majorca, in 2326. According to the book, an entire industry has grown up publishing books about a Montauk named Wim - including The Gospel According to Luke (Luke Forth, not Luke Rhinehart) and the screenplay of a movie. The screenplay is possibly in there as a result of Luke Rhinehart's continuing frustration in trying to get The Dice Man turned into a good movie. Adventures of Wim, then, is an effort to create a new interpretation of the story of Wim, drawing on the many previous efforts, and so providing a multi-faceted and whimsical account of 'one of the greatest figures in the 20th and 21st Century'. A boy is born of a virgin mother and is named "Wim" (in Adventures of Wim) or "Whim" (in The Book of the Die and Whim): Montauk for "Wave Rider". He is pronounced to be the saviour of the Montauk nation by his tribe's navigator, and educated in their ways. Sadly, the humans steal him away and attempt to educate him in more useful skills, such as American Football. Wim, also known as "He of Many Chances", proves to be an inefficient saviour, as God sends him on a quest for Ultimate Truth. This does not seem to be something that will benefit his tribe terribly, but the navigator isn't one to stare down the barrel of a lightning gun, and sends him on his way. After a long and arduous search, Wim finds ultimate truth (in a tomato), and with it the cure for the sickness of the human condition.
160046	/m/01548m	High Fidelity	Nick Hornby	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rob Fleming is a London record store owner in his mid-thirties whose girlfriend, Laura, has just left him. At the record shop — named Championship Vinyl — Rob and his employees Dick and Barry spend their free moments discussing mix-tape aesthetics and constructing "top-five" lists of anything that demonstrates their knowledge of music. Rob, recalling his five most memorable breakups, sets about getting in touch with the former girlfriends. Eventually, Rob's re-examination of his failed relationships and the death of Laura's father bring the two back together. Their relationship is cemented by the launch of a new purposefulness to Rob's life in the revival of his disc jockey career. Also, realizing that his fear of commitment (a result of his fear of death of those around him) and his tendency to act on emotion are responsible for his continuing desires to pursue new women, Rob makes a symbolic commitment to Laura.
160106	/m/0154kx	The Red House Mystery	A. A. Milne	1922-04-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The setting is an English country house, where Mark Ablett has been entertaining a house party consisting of a widow and her marriageable daughter, a retired major, a wilful actress, and Bill Beverley, a young man about town. Mark's long-lost brother Robert, the black sheep of the family, arrives from Australia and shortly thereafter is found dead, shot through the head. Mark Ablett has disappeared, so Tony Gillingham, a stranger who has just arrived to call on his friend Bill, decides to investigate. Gillingham plays Sherlock Holmes to his younger counterpart's Doctor Watson; they progress almost playfully through the novel while the clues mount up and the theories abound.
160117	/m/0154ns	Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates	Mary Mapes Dodge		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Holland, poor-but-industrious and honorable 15-year-old Hans Brinker and his younger sister Gretel, yearn to participate in December's great ice-skating race on the canal. They have little chance of doing well on their handmade wooden skates, but the prospect of the race and the prize of the Silver Skates excite them and fire their dreams. Hans' father, Raff Brinker, is sick and amnesiac, with violent episodes, because of a head injury caused by a fall from a dike, and he cannot work. Mrs. Brinker, Hans, and Gretel must all work to support the family and are looked down upon in the community because of their low income and poor status. Hans has a chance meeting with the famous surgeon Dr. Boekman and begs him to treat their father, but the doctor is expensive and gruff in nature following the loss of his wife and disappearance of his son. Eventually, Dr. Boekman is persuaded to examine the Brinkers' father. He diagnoses pressure on the brain, which can be cured by a risky and expensive operation involving trephining. Hans offers his own money, saved in the hope of buying steel skates, to the doctor to pay for his father's operation. Touched by this gesture, Dr. Boekman provides the surgery for free, and Hans is able to buy good skates for both himself and Gretel to skate in the race. Gretel wins the girls' race, but Hans lets a friend — who needs it more — win the precious prize, the Silver Skates, in the boys' race. Mr. Brinker's operation is successful, and he is restored to health and memory. Dr. Boekman is also changed, losing his gruff ways, thanks in part to being able to be reunited with his lost son through the unlikely aid of Mr. Brinker. The Brinkers' fortunes are changed further by the almost miraculous recovery of Mr. Brinker's savings, thought lost or stolen ten years ago. The Brinker parents live a long and happy life. Dr. Boekman helps Hans go to medical school, and Hans becomes a successful doctor. Gretel also grows up to enjoy a happy adult life.
160428	/m/015642	Dreamcatcher	Stephen King	2001-03-20	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dreamcatcher is set near the fictional town of Derry, Maine. It is the story of four lifelong friends: Gary Ambrose "Jonesy" Jones, Pete Moore, Joe "Beaver" Clarendon and Henry Devlin, who save Douglas "Duddits" Cavell, a young teen with Down syndrome, from a group of sadistic bullies. The four friends grow up and away from Duddits, but maintain close bonds with each other, sharing memories of Duddits and their good times together. Each has his own troubles: Beaver is terrible in relationships, Pete is an alcoholic, Henry is suicidal (unknown to his friends), and Jonesy almost died from a severe car accident from when he walked into open traffic, having seen a vision of Duddits calling to him. The four go on a hunting trip together each year, and plan to visit Duddits on their return from this year's trip to the Hole-in-the-Wall (a cabin in the woods). While on the trip, Jonesy finds a disoriented and delirious stranger wandering in the woods during a blizzard, and talking about lights in the sky. The man exhibits dyspepsia and extremely foul flatulence but claims that these are the result of eating berries and lichen while he was lost; he has a reddish discoloration on his face, which he dismisses as an allergic rash. Beaver and Jonesy notice large numbers of animals, all with a similar reddish discoloration, migrating. Henry and Pete, driving back to the cabin, lose control of the car and crash when avoiding a woman sitting in the road. Pete's knee is badly injured while Henry only suffers minor injuries. They approach the woman, who mumbles about lights, mentions the man found by Jonesy, and displays the same foul flatulence and burps. Henry and Pete drag her to a safe clearing; Henry goes to find help and tells Pete to stay with the woman and not to go back to the car for the beer. Beaver attracts the attention of rescuers in helicopters, and is told that the entire area has been put under quarantine. The army quarantine is headed by Colonel Abraham Kurtz. On returning to the cabin, Beaver and Jonesey find the man dead on the toilet, and the floor covered with his blood. They hear the toilet water splashing; Beaver sits on the toilet lid, trapping something inside it. Jonesy rushes to the garage to find duct tape to seal off the toilet while Beaver holds the lid down with his body weight; the creature trapped inside keeps trying to escape. Beaver has a nervous habit of chewing on toothpicks; as he tries to take one from his pocket, the creature hits the seat, and Beaver spills all the toothpicks on the blood-covered floor. One toothpick lands on a clean tile, and Beaver bends down to retrieve it. The trapped creature hits the lid from inside the toilet; Beaver loses his balance and falls to the floor, freeing the creature, which then attacks him. The lost man, his hunting companion the woman, and the stampeding animals all have similar symptoms caused by infection with an extraterrestrial macro virus. Army scientists named this The Ripley, after the protagonist of the Alien series, partly because of its extreme resilience to destruction. The friends discover that eating or inhaling the red mold causes large worm-like aliens, called byrum (derived from the name of the alien mold, byrus) to infest the host. Byrum are red, lamprey-like creatures with multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth; a second form of byrus grows on open wounds and mucous membranes. When an infestation is sufficiently established, the host develops a form of telepathy with other infested individuals. The friends name the byrum "shit weasel" because it exits the body through the anus, killing the host. Byrum are highly aggressive and, although small are more than capable of killing a human. The byrum matures into a form called a Gray; in their normal environment they would maintain a symbiotic relationship with their host, but the cold environment causes them to react badly and kill their earthly hosts. Once outside the host they die quickly in the cold, as does the byrus fungus. Colonel Kurtz states that the Grays have tried several times over the past century to attack and gain control of earth, but have failed. This time the Grays are outside a crashed spacecraft, sending radio messages stating that they come in peace and are helpless, to try to fool the Army. Several helicopters are sent to wipe out the Grays; they mainly succeed, but many of the soldiers are exposed to the byrus in the attack. Meanwhile, all people in the area who have been affected by the byrus fungus are rounded up by the Army, with the intention that they will later be executed. Jonesy returns to the bathroom, to discover Beaver being killed by the byrum. Beaver uses the last of his strength to hold onto the byrum to prevent it attacking Jonesy, who closes and bolts the door. The byrum begins to break through the door, and one of the escaped Grays appears behind Jonesy, takes over his body and controls itwith difficulty as the human body is so different to its own. Back in Derry, their childhood friend, Duddits, cries and screams to his mother, "Beaver's Dead! Beaver's dead!" Pete, who had returned to the car for the beer, makes his way back to the woman but finds her dead; the shit weasel has made its escape from her body and attacks Pete, who defeats it by throwing it into a fire they had built for warmth. His battle with the byrum exposes him to the byrus fungus, which begins to cover his body. Henry, meanwhile, gets to Hole-in-the-Wall, and discovers Jonesy taken over by the alien, Mr. Gray. Mr. Gray uses Jonesy's body to leave on a snowmobile. Inside the house, Henry finds Beaver's dead body and the shit weasel that killed him in the bedroom. The byrum is weak from the cold; Henry shoots it and burns a clutch of eggs which it had laid. Henry leaves to seek help, but is captured by the army and placed in quarantine. Flashbacks to their childhood reveal that each man gained a certain degree of telepathy from being in contact with Duddits, who has special powers. Through their friendship and Duddits' powers they find a missing girl, trapped from falling down a hole. Jonesy battles Mr. Gray in his mind, stealing and locking away his memories of Derry and Duddits from Mr. Gray. While Mr. Gray is in control, Jonesy can see everything happening, but can do nothing. Pete finds Jonesy/Mr. Gray who forces him to direct and accompany him to Derry, after which Mr. Gray makes Byrus fungus constrict and kill Pete. Henry convinces Army officer Owen Underhill to help him, revealing deep memories of the man through the telepathy gained from Duddits. Henry tells Underhill about Jonesy, that he thinks the alien is planning to infect the town's water supply with byrus, and that cold is fatal to the byrus, therefore infected people do not need to be executed. They form a plan. Henry communicates telepathically with the byrus-infected captives, showing them that the Army intends to execute them. They panic and riot; many are killed attempting to escape, but most flee into the woods. Kurtz discovers the plan formulated by Henry and Underhill; he gathers a few of his men, and an officer infected with a byrum, and pursues Henry and the "rogue" officer Underhill. Mr. Gray loses his way in the town, following old memories in place of the new ones stolen by Jonesy. Mr. Gray eventually becomes weak from hunger, not recognising what it is; Jonesy guides him to a diner to buy time. Henry and Underhill make their way to Duddits, as Henry believes he is the only hope to defeat Mr. Gray; they find Duddits already packed up and ready to go as he knew they were coming. Duddits is very sick with leukemia; his mother is reluctant to let him go, but she accepts that Duddits needs to help his friends, and that he would be much happier dying in their company than dying alone in his room. Mr. Gray eventually gets to the water supply for several cities in the area; Henry and Duddits confront him. Duddits uses his powers to force Henry and Jonesy into a place in which Mr. Gray, inside of Jonesy, will be vulnerable; he and Henry kill Mr. Gray. As Henry and Jonesy make their way back to their original bodies they find that Duddits has died from the combination of overusing his powers and leukemia. Outside, Kurtz finds Underhill and they are both killed. The byrum from the infected officer escapes but dies in the fire. The last of the alien byrus on earth dies.
160764	/m/01588x	Long Voyage Back			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 : "In a nuclear war, the USSR will win. This is because the average Russian doesn't have a gun, so they can't all shoot each other and the army for food" The story concerns a hypothetical World War III between the USSR and the United States, and graphically depicts the ensuing carnage. One family and some friends try to run away in a sailboat, and the story describes their battles with nuclear winter and fallout, and with the ensuing collapse of civilization.
160906	/m/015948	Foucault's Pendulum	Umberto Eco	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The plot of Foucault's Pendulum revolves around three friends, as relevant to the rule of three, named Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon, who work for a vanity publisher in Milan. After reading one too many manuscripts about occult conspiracy theories, they decide they can do better, and set out to invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game "The Plan". As Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon become increasingly obsessed with The Plan, they sometimes forget that it's just a game. Worse still, when adherents of other conspiracy theories learn about The Plan, they take it seriously. Belbo finds himself the target of a very real secret society that believes he possesses the key to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. A number of sub-plots are woven into the grand theme of The Plan. Belbo's obsession with the plan is justified by his experiences as a child in Italy during World War II, his unrequited love for the mercurial Lorenza Pellegrini, and his desire to absolve himself from a constant sense of failure. Against the backdrop of the Templar Plan for world domination, the novel brings out the credulity inherent in all people. The book opens with the narrator, Casaubon (his name refers to classical scholar Isaac Casaubon, and also evokes a scholar character in George Eliot's Middlemarch) hiding in fear after closing time in the Parisian technical museum Musée des Arts et Métiers. He believes that members of a secret society have kidnapped Belbo and are now after him. Most of the novel is then told in flashback as Casaubon waits in the museum. Casaubon had been a student in 1970s Milan, working on a thesis on the history of the Knights Templar while taking in the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary activities of the students around him. During this period he meets Belbo, who works as an editor in a publishing house. Belbo invites Casaubon to review the manuscript of a supposedly non-fiction book about the Templars. Casaubon also meets Belbo's colleague Diotallevi, a cabalist. The book, by a Colonel Ardenti, claims a hidden coded manuscript has revealed a secret plan of the medieval Templars to take over the world. This supposed conspiracy is meant as revenge for the deaths of the Templar leaders when their order was disbanded by the King of France. Ardenti postulates that the Templars were the guardians of a secret treasure, perhaps the Holy Grail of legend, which he suspects was a radioactive energy source. According to Ardenti's theory, after the French monarchy and the Catholic Church disbanded the Templars on the grounds of heresy, some knights escaped and established cells throughout the world. These cells have been meeting at regular intervals in distinct places to pass on information about the Grail. Ultimately, these cells will reunite to rediscover the Grail's location and achieve world domination. According to Ardenti's calculations, the Templars should have taken over the world in 1944; evidently the plan has been interrupted. Ardenti mysteriously vanishes after meeting with Belbo and Casaubon to discuss his book. A police inspector, De Angelis, interviews both men. He hints that his job as a political department investigator leads him to investigate not only revolutionaries but also people who claim to be linked to the Occult. Casaubon has a romance with a Brazilian woman named Amparo. He leaves Italy to follow her and spends a few years in Brazil. While living there, he learns about South American and Caribbean spiritualism, and meets Agliè, an elderly man who implies that he is the mystical Comte de Saint-Germain. Agliè has a seemingly infinite supply of knowledge about things concerning the Occult. While in Brazil, Casaubon receives a letter from Belbo about attending a meeting of occultists. At the meeting Belbo was reminded of the Colonel's conspiracy theory by the words of a young woman who was apparently in a trance. Casaubon and Amparo also attend an occult event in Brazil, an Umbanda rite. During the ritual Amparo falls into a trance herself, an experience she finds deeply disturbing and embarrassing, as she is Marxist by ideology and as such disbelieves and shuns spiritual and religious experiences. Her relationship with Casaubon falls apart, and he returns to Italy. On his return to Milan, Casaubon begins working as a freelance researcher. At the library he meets a woman named Lia; the two fall in love and eventually have a child together. Meanwhile, Casaubon is hired by Belbo's boss, Mr. Garamond (his name refers to French publisher Claude Garamond), to research illustrations for a history of metals the company is preparing. Casaubon learns that as well as the respectable Garamond publishing house, Mr. Garamond also owns Manuzio, a vanity publisher that charges incompetent authors large sums of money to print their work (rendered "Manutius" in the English translation, a reference to the 15th century printer Aldus Manutius). Mr. Garamond soon has the idea to begin two lines of occult books: one intended for serious publication by Garamond; the other, Isis Unveiled (a reference to the theosophical text by Blavatsky), to be published by Manutius in order to attract more vanity authors. Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon quickly become submerged in occult manuscripts that draw all sorts of flimsy connections between historical events. They nickname the authors the "Diabolicals", and engage Agliè as a specialist reader. The three editors start to develop their own conspiracy theory, "The Plan", as part satire and part intellectual game. Starting from Ardenti's "secret manuscript", they develop an intricate web of mystical connections. They also make use of Belbo's small personal computer, which he has nicknamed Abulafia. Belbo mainly uses Abulafia for his personal writings (the novel contains many excerpts of these, discovered by Casaubon as he goes through Abulafia's files), but it came equipped with a small program that can rearrange text in random. (Compare with the game of Dissociated Press and Ramon Llull's Ars Magna.) They use this program to create the "connections" which inspire their Plan. They enter randomly selected words from the Diabolicals' manuscripts, logical operators ("What follows is not true", "If", "Then", etc.), truisms (such as "The Templars have something to do with everything") and "neutral data" (such as "Minnie Mouse is Mickey Mouse's fiancée") and use Abulafia to create new text. Their first attempt ends up recreating (after a liberal interpretation of the results) the Mary Magdalene conspiracy theory central to The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Casaubon jokingly suggests that to create something truly new Belbo must look for occult connections in non-obvious contexts, such as by linking the Kabbalah to a car's spark plugs. (Belbo actually does this, and after some research concludes that the powertrain is a metaphor for the Tree of life.) Pleased with the results of the random text program, the three continue resorting to Abulafia whenever they reach a dead-end with their game. "The Plan" evolves slowly, but the final version involves the Knights Templar's coming into possession of an ancient secret knowledge of energy flows called telluric currents during the Crusades. The original Knights Templar organization is destroyed after the execution of Jacques de Molay, but the members split into independent cells located in several corners of Europe and the Middle East. As in Ardenti's original theory, each cell is given part of the Templar "Plan" and information about the secret discovery. They are to meet periodically at different locations to share sections of the Plan, gradually reconstructing the original. Then they will reunite and take over the world using the power of the telluric currents. The crucial instruments involved in their plan are a special map and the Foucault pendulum. While the Plan is far-fetched, the editors become increasingly involved in their game. They even begin to think that there might really be a secret conspiracy after all. Ardenti's disappearance, and his original "coded manuscript", seem to have no other explanation. However, when Casaubon's girlfriend Lia asks to see the coded manuscript, she comes up with a mundane interpretation. She suggests that the document is simply a delivery list, and encourages Casaubon to abandon the game as she fears it is having a negative effect on him. When Diotallevi is diagnosed with cancer, he attributes this to his participation in The Plan. He feels that the disease is a divine punishment for involving himself in mysteries he should have left alone and creating a game that mocked something larger than them all. Belbo meanwhile retreats even farther into the Plan to avoid confronting problems in his personal life. The three had sent Agliè their chronology of secret societies in the Plan, pretending it was not their own work but rather a manuscript they had been presented with. Their list includes historic organizations such as the Templars, Rosicrucians, Paulicians and Synarchists, but they also invent a fictional secret society called the Tres (Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici, Latin for the nonsensical "Synarchic Knights of Templar Rebirth"). The Tres is introduced to trick Agliè. Upon reading the list, he claims not to have heard of the Tres before. (The word was first mentioned to Casaubon by the policeman De Angelis. De Angelis had asked Casaubon if he has ever heard of the Tres.) Belbo goes to Agliè privately and describes The Plan to him as though it were the result of serious research. He also claims to be in possession of the secret Templar map. Agliè becomes frustrated with Belbo's refusal to let him see this (non-existent) map. He frames Belbo as a terrorist suspect in order to force him to come to Paris. Agliè has cast himself as the head of a secret spiritual brotherhood, which includes Mr. Garamond, Colonel Ardenti and many of the Diabolical authors. Belbo tries to get help from De Angelis, but he has just transferred to Sardinia after an attempted car bombing, and refuses to get involved. Casaubon receives a call for help; he goes to Belbo's apartment, and reads all the documents that Belbo stored in his computer, then decides to follow Belbo to Paris himself. He decides that Agliè and his associates must intend to meet at the museum where Foucault's Pendulum is housed, as Belbo had claimed that the Templar map had to be used in conjunction with the pendulum. Casaubon hides in the museum, where he was when the novel opened. At the appointed hour, a group of people gather around the pendulum for an arcane ritual. Casaubon sees several ectoplasmic forms appear, one of which claims to be the real Comte de Saint-Germain and discredits Agliè in front of his followers. Belbo is then brought out to be questioned. Agliè's group are, or have deluded themselves to be, the Tres society in the Plan. Angry that Belbo knows more about The Plan than they do, they try to force him to reveal the secrets he knows, even going so far as to try to coerce him using Lorenza. Refusing to satisfy them or reveal that the Plan was a nonsensical concoction, his refusal incites a riot during which Lorenza is stabbed and Belbo is hanged by wire connected to Foucault's Pendulum. (The act of his hanging actually changes the act of the pendulum, causing it to oscillate from his neck instead of the fixed point above him, ruining any chance of displaying any correct location the Tres meant to find.) Casaubon escapes the museum through the Paris sewers, eventually fleeing to the countryside villa where Belbo had grown up. It is unclear by this point how reliable a narrator Casaubon has been, and to what extent he has been inventing, or deceived by, conspiracy theories. Casaubon soon learns that Diotallevi succumbed to his cancer at midnight on St. John’s Eve, coincidentally the same time Belbo died. The novel ends with Casaubon meditating on the events of the book, apparently resigned to the (possibly delusional) idea that the Tres will capture him soon. And when they do, he will follow Belbo's lead, refusing to give them any clues, refusing to create a lie. While waiting, holed up in a farmhouse where Belbo lived years before, he finds an old manuscript by Belbo, a sort of diary. He discovers that Belbo had a mystical experience at the age of twelve, in which he perceived ultimate meaning beyond signs and semiotics. He realizes that much of Belbo's behavior and possibly his creation of the Plan and even his death was inspired by Belbo's desire to recapture that lost meaning.
161270	/m/015c5q	Chitty Chitty Bang Bang	Ian Fleming	1964-10-22	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Commander Caractacus Pott is an inventor who buys and renovates an old car after gaining money from inventing and selling whistle-like sweets to Lord Skrumshus, the wealthy owner of a local confectionery factory. The car, a "Paragon Panther," was the sole production of the Paragon motor-car company before it went bankrupt. It is a four-seat touring car with an enormous bonnet. After the restoration is complete, the car is named for the noises made by its starter motor and the characteristic two loud backfires it makes when it starts. At first Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang is just a big and powerful car, but as the book progresses the car surprises the family by beginning to exhibit independent actions. This first happens while the family is caught in a traffic jam on their way to the beach for a picnic. The car suddenly instructs Commander Pott to pull a switch which causes Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang to sprout wings and take flight over the stopped cars on the road. Commander Pott flies them to Goodwin Sands in the English Channel where the family picnics, swims, and sleeps. While the family naps, the tide comes in threatening to drown them. Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang wakes them just in time with a hiss of steam. At the car's direction, Commander Pott pulls another switch which causes it to transform into a hovercraft-like vehicle. They make for the French coast and land on a beach near Calais. They explore along the beach and find a cave boobytrapped with some devices intended to scare off intruders. At the back of the cave is a store of armaments and explosives. The family detonate the cache of explosives and flee the cave. The gangsters/gun-runners who own the ammunition dump arrive and block the road in front of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. The gangsters threaten the family, but Commander Pott throws the switch which transforms the car into an aeroplane and they take off, leaving the gangsters in helpless fury. The Potts stay overnight in a hotel in Calais. While the family sleeps, the gangsters break into the children's room and kidnap them and drive off towards Paris. Chitty tracks the gangsters' route, wakes Commander and Mrs. Pott, and they drive off in pursuit. The gangsters are planning to rob a famous chocolate shop in Paris using the children as decoys. The Pott children overhear this and manage to warn the shop owner, Monsieur Bon-Bon. Chitty arrives in time to prevent the gangsters from fleeing. The police arrive and the gangsters are taken away. As a reward Monsieur Bon-Bon's wife shares the secret recipe of her world famous fudge with the Potts and the two families become good friends. Chitty flies the family away to parts unknown, and the book implies that the car has yet more secrets.
161301	/m/015cf8	Oliver Twist	Charles Dickens	1839	{"/m/0276pxr": "Social novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune in a workhouse in an unnamed town (although when originally published in Bentley's Miscellany in 1837 the town was called Mudfog and said to be within 70 miles north of London - in reality this is the location of the town of Northampton). Orphaned almost from his first breath by his mother’s death in childbirth and his father’s unexplained absence, Oliver is meagerly provided for under the terms of the Poor Law, and spends the first nine years of his life at a baby farm in the 'care' of a woman named Mrs. Mann. Oliver is brought up with little food and few comforts. Around the time of Oliver's ninth birthday, Mr. Bumble, a parish beadle, removes Oliver from the baby farm and puts him to work picking oakum at the main workhouse. Oliver, who toils with very little food, remains in the workhouse for six months. One day, the desperately hungry boys decide to draw lots; the loser must ask for another portion of gruel. The task falls to Oliver, who at the next meal tremblingly comes forward, bowl in hand, and makes his famous request: "Please, sir, I want some more." A great uproar ensues. The board of well-fed gentlemen who administer the workhouse hypocritically offer five pounds to any person wishing to take on the boy as an apprentice. A brutal chimney sweep almost claims Oliver, however, when he begs despairingly not to be sent away with "that dreadful man", a kindly old magistrate refuses to sign the indentures. Later, Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker employed by the parish, took Oliver into his service. He treats Oliver better, and because of the boy's sorrowful countenance, uses him as a mourner at children’s funerals. However, Mr. Sowerberry is in an unhappy marriage, and his wife takes an immediate dislike to Oliver — primarily because her husband seems to like him — and loses few opportunities to underfeed and mistreat him. He also suffers torment at the hands of Noah Claypole, an oafish but bullying fellow apprentice and "charity boy" who is jealous of Oliver’s promotion to mute, and Charlotte, the Sowerberrys' maidservant, who is in love with Noah. One day, in an attempt to bait Oliver, Noah insults Oliver's biological mother, calling her "a regular right-down bad ‘un". Oliver flies into a rage, attacking and even beating the much bigger boy. Mrs. Sowerberry takes Noah’s side, helps him to subdue, punching, and beating Oliver, and later compels her husband and Mr. Bumble, who has been sent for in the aftermath of the fight, into beating Oliver again. Once Oliver is sent to his room for the night, he does something that he hadn't done since babyhood — he breaks down and weeps. Alone that night, Oliver finally decides to run away, and, "He remembered to have seen the waggons, as they went out, toiling up the hill. He took the same route," until a well-placed milestone sets his wandering feet towards London. During his journey to London, Oliver encounters Jack Dawkins, a pickpocket more commonly known by the nickname the "Artful Dodger", although Oliver's innocent nature prevents him from recognising this hint that the boy may be dishonest. Dodger provides Oliver with a free meal and tells him of a gentleman in London who will "give him lodgings for nothing, and never ask for change". Grateful for the unexpected assistance, Oliver follows Dodger to the "old gentleman"'s residence. In this way, Oliver unwittingly falls in with an infamous Jewish criminal known as Fagin, the so-called gentleman of whom the Artful Dodger spoke. Ensnared, Oliver lives with Fagin and his gang of juvenile pickpockets in their lair at Saffron Hill for some time, unaware of their criminal occupations. He believes they make wallets and handkerchiefs. Later, Oliver naïvely goes out to "make handkerchiefs" because of no income coming in, with two of Fagin’s underlings: The Artful Dodger and a boy of a humorous nature named Charley Bates. Oliver realises too late that their real mission is to pick pockets. Dodger and Charley steal the handkerchief of an old gentleman named Mr. Brownlow, and promptly flee. When he finds his handkerchief missing, Mr. Brownlow turns round, sees Oliver, and pursues him. Others join the chase and Oliver is caught and taken before the magistrate. Curiously, Mr. Brownlow has second thoughts about the boy—he seems reluctant to believe he is a pickpocket. To the judge's evident disappointment, a bookstall holder who saw Dodger commit the crime clears Oliver, who, by now actually ill, faints in the courtroom. Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver home and, along with his housekeeper Mrs. Bedwin, cares for him. Oliver stays with Mr. Brownlow, recovers rapidly, and blossoms from the unaccustomed kindness. His bliss, however, is interrupted when Fagin, fearing Oliver might "peach" on his criminal gang, decides that Oliver must be brought back to his hideout. When Mr. Brownlow sends Oliver out to pay for some books, one of the gang, a young girl named Nancy, whom Oliver had previously met at Fagin's, accosts him with help from her abusive lover, a brutal robber named Bill Sikes, and Oliver is quickly bundled back to Fagin's lair. The thieves take the five-pound note Mr. Brownlow had entrusted to him, and strip him of his fine new clothes. Oliver, dismayed, flees and attempts to call for police assistance, but is ruthlessly dragged back by the Dodger, Charley and Fagin. Nancy, however, is sympathetic towards Oliver and saves him from beatings by Fagin and Sikes. In a renewed attempt to draw Oliver into a life of crime, Fagin forces him to participate in a burglary. Nancy reluctantly assists in recruiting him, all the while assuring the boy that she will help him if she can. Sikes, after threatening to kill him if he does not cooperate, sends Oliver through a small window and orders him to unlock the front door. The robbery goes wrong, however, and Oliver is shot and wounded in his left arm. After being abandoned by Sikes, the wounded Oliver ends up under the care of the people he was supposed to rob: Miss Rose and her guardian Mrs. Maylie Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Monks has found Fagin and is plotting with him to destroy Oliver's reputation. Monks denounces Fagin's failure to turn Oliver into a criminal and the two of them agree on a plan to make sure he does not find out about his past. Monks is apparently related to Oliver in some manner, although it's not mentioned until later. Back in Oliver's hometown, Mr. Bumble married Ms. Corney, the wealthy matron of the workhouse, only to find himself in an unhappy marriage constantly arguing with his domineering wife. After one such argument, Mr. Bumble walks over to a pub, where he meets Monks, who questions him about Oliver. Bumble informs Monks that he knows someone who can give Monks more information for a price, and later Monks meets secretly with the Bumbles. After Mrs. Bumble has told Monks all she knows, the three arrange to take a locket and ring which had once belonged to Oliver's mother and toss them into a nearby river. Monks relates this to Fagin as part of the plot to destroy Oliver, unaware that Nancy has eavesdropped on their conversation and gone ahead to inform Oliver's benefactors. Nancy, by this time ashamed of her role in Oliver's kidnapping, and fearful for the boy's safety, goes to Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow to warn them. She knows that Monks and Fagin are plotting to get their hands on the boy again and holds some secret meetings on the subject with Oliver's benefactors. One night Nancy tries to leave for one of the meetings, but Sikes refuses permission when she doesn't state exactly where she's going. Fagin realizes that Nancy is up to something and resolves to find out what her secret is. Meanwhile, Noah has fallen out with the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry, stolen money from him and fled to London. Charlotte has accompanied him — they are now in a relationship. Using the name "Morris Bolter", he joins Fagin's gang for protection and becomes a practicer of "the kinchen lay" (robbing children) while it is implied that Charlotte becomes a prostitute. During Noah's stay with Fagin, the Artful Dodger is caught with a stolen silver snuff box, convicted (in a very humorous courtroom scene) and transported to Australia. Later, Noah is sent by Fagin to "dodge" (spy on) Nancy, and discovers her secret: she has been meeting secretly with Rose and Mr. Brownlow to discuss how to save Oliver from Fagin and Monks. Fagin angrily passes the information on to Sikes, twisting the story just enough to make it sound as if Nancy had informed on him. Believing Nancy to be a traitor, Sikes beats her to death in a fit of rage and later flees to the countryside to escape from the police. There, Sikes is haunted by visions of Nancy's ghost and increasingly alarmed by news of her murder spreading across the countryside. He flees back to London to find a hiding place, only to be killed when he accidentally hangs himself while attempting to flee across a rooftop from an angry mob. Monks is forced by Mr. Brownlow to divulge his secrets: his real name is Edward Leeford, and he is Oliver's paternal half-brother and, although he is legitimate, he was born of a loveless marriage. Oliver's mother, Agnes, was their father's true love. Mr. Brownlow has a picture of her, and began making inquiries when he noticed a marked resemblance between her face and the face of Oliver. Monks has spent many years searching for his father's child—not to befriend him, but to destroy him (see Henry Fielding's Tom Jones for similar circumstances). Brownlow asks Oliver to give half his inheritance (which proves to be meagre) to Monks because he wants to give him a second chance; and Oliver, being prone to giving second chances, is more than happy to comply. Monks then moves to America, where he squanders his money, reverts to crime, and ultimately dies in prison. Fagin is arrested and condemned to the gallows. On the eve of his hanging, in an emotional scene, Oliver, accompanied by Mr. Brownlow, goes to visit the old reprobate in Newgate Gaol, where Fagin's terror at being hanged has caused him to come down with fever. As Mr. Brownlow and Oliver leave the prison, Fagin screams in terror and despair as a crowd gathers to see his hanging. On a happier note, Rose Maylie turns out to be the long-lost sister of Agnes; she is therefore Oliver's aunt. She marries her long-time sweetheart Harry, and Oliver lives happily with his saviour, Mr. Brownlow. Noah becomes a paid, semi-professional informer to the police. The Bumbles lose their jobs and are reduced to great poverty, eventually ending up in the same workhouse where they originally had lorded it over Oliver and the other boys; and Charley Bates, horrified by Sikes's murder of Nancy, becomes an honest citizen, moves to the country, and works his way up to prosperity.
161446	/m/015d6d	East of Eden	John Steinbeck	1952-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is primarily set in the Salinas Valley, California, between the beginning of the 20th century and the end of World War I, though some chapters are in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the story goes as far back as the American Civil War. In the beginning of East of Eden, before introducing his characters, John Steinbeck carefully establishes the setting with a description of the Salinas Valley in Central California. Then he outlines the story of the warmhearted inventor and farmer Samuel Hamilton and his wife Liza, immigrants from Ireland. He describes how they raise their nine children on a rough, infertile piece of land. As the Hamilton children begin to grow up and leave the nest, a wealthy stranger, Adam Trask, purchases the best ranch in the Valley. Adam Trask's life is seen in a long, intricate flashback. We see his tumultuous childhood on a farm in Connecticut and the brutal treatment he endured from his younger but stronger half-brother, Charles. As a young man, Adam spent his time first in the military and then wandering the country. He was caught for vagrancy, escaped from a chain gang and burgled a store for clothing to use as a disguise. Later he wired Charles for 100 dollars to pay for the clothes he stole. After Adam finally made his way home to their farm, Charles revealed that their father had died and left them an inheritance of $50,000 each. Charles is torn with fear that his father did not come by the money honestly. A parallel story introduces a girl named Cathy Ames, who grows up in a town not far from the brothers' family farm. Cathy is described as having a "malformed soul"; she is cold, cruel, and utterly incapable of feeling for anyone but herself. She leaves home one evening after setting fire to her family's home, killing both of her parents. Finally, she is viciously beaten by a pimp and is left close to death on the brothers' doorstep. Although Charles is repulsed by her, Adam, unaware of her past, falls in love with and marries her. Adam Trask – newly wed and newly rich – now arrives in California and settles with the pregnant Cathy in the Salinas Valley, near the Hamilton family ranch. Cathy does not want to be a mother or to stay in California, but Adam is so ecstatically happy with his new life that he does not realize there is any problem. Shortly after Cathy gives birth to twin boys, she shoots Adam in the shoulder and flees. Adam recovers, but remains in a deep and terrible depression. He is roused out of it enough to name and raise his sons with the help of his Cantonese cook, Lee, and his neighbor Samuel Hamilton. Lee becomes a good friend and adopted family member. Lee, Adam, and Samuel Hamilton have long philosophical talks, particularly about the story of Cain and Abel, which Lee maintains has been incorrectly translated in English-language Bibles. Lee tells about how his relatives in San Francisco, a group of Chinese scholars, spent two years studying Hebrew so they might discover what the moral of the Cain and Abel story actually was. Their discovery that the Hebrew word "Timshel" means "thou mayest" becomes an important symbol in the novel, meaning that mankind is neither compelled to pursue sainthood nor doomed to sin, but rather has the power to choose. Meanwhile, Cathy has become a prostitute at the most respectable brothel in the city of Salinas. She renames herself "Kate" and embarks on a devious – and successful – plan to ingratiate herself with the owner, murder her and inherit the business. She makes her new brothel infamous as a den of sexual sadism. She is not concerned that Adam Trask might ever look for her, and she has no feelings whatsoever about the children she abandoned. Adam's sons, Caleb and Aron – echoing Cain and Abel – grow up oblivious of their mother's situation. At a very early age, Aron meets a girl named Abra from a well-to-do family, and the two fall in love. Although there are rumors around town that Caleb and Aron's mother is not dead but is actually still in Salinas, the boys do not yet know that she is Kate. The popular and beloved Samuel Hamilton finally passes away and is mourned. Adam becomes inspired by the memory of Samuel Hamilton's inventiveness and loses almost all of the family fortune in an ill-fated business venture. The boys, particularly Aron, are horrified that their father is now a town laughingstock. As the boys reach the end of their school days, Caleb decides to pursue a career in farming and Aron goes to college to become an Episcopalian priest. Caleb, restless and tortured by guilt about his very human failings, shuns everyone around him and takes to wandering around town late at night. During one of these ramblings, he discovers that his mother is alive and the head of a brothel. Caleb decides to "buy his father's love" by going into business with one of Samuel Hamilton's children, Will Hamilton, who is now a successful automobile dealer. Caleb's plan is to make his father's money back, capitalizing on World War I by selling beans grown in the Salinas Valley to nations in Europe for a considerable premium. He succeeds beyond his wildest expectations and wraps up a gift of $15,000 in cash which he plans to give Adam Trask at Thanksgiving. Aron returns from Stanford for the holiday. There is tension in the air, because Aron has not yet told their father that he intends to drop out of college. Rather than let Aron steal the moment, Caleb gives Adam the money at dinner, expecting his father to be proud of him. But Adam refuses to accept it. Instead, he tells Caleb to give it back to the poor farmers he exploited. Adam explains by saying, In a fit of jealousy, Caleb takes his brother Aron to see their mother, knowing it will be a shock to him. Sure enough, Aron immediately sees Kate for who she is, and recoils from her in disgust. Wracked with self-hatred, Kate signs her estate over to Aron and commits suicide. Aron, his idealistic worldview shattered, enlists in the army to fight in World War I. He is killed in battle in the last year of the war, and Adam suffers a stroke upon hearing the news from Lee. Caleb, who begins to develop a relationship with Abra after Aron leaves for war, tells her why Aron left and tries to convince her to run away with him. She instead persuades him to return home. The novel ends with Lee pleading with a bedridden Adam to forgive his only remaining son. Adam responds by giving Caleb his blessing in the form of the word Timshel.
161502	/m/015dlb	The Old Man and the Sea	Ernest Hemingway	1952	{"/m/07m5w1": "Sea story", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The Old Man and the Sea is the story of a battle between an old, experienced Cuban fisherman and a large marlin. The novel opens with the explanation that the fisherman, who is named Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching a fish. Santiago is considered "salao", the worst form of unlucky. In fact, he is so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen. Still dedicated to the old man, however, the boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, getting him food and discussing American baseball and his favorite player Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end. Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far onto the Gulf. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body. Though he is wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother. He also determines that because of the fish's great dignity, no one will be worthy of eating the marlin. On the third day of the ordeal, the fish begins to circle the skiff, indicating his tiredness to the old man. Santiago, now completely worn out and almost in delirium, uses all the strength he has left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon, ending the long battle between the old man and the tenacious fish. Santiago straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed. While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. The first, a great mako shark, Santiago kills with his harpoon, losing that weapon in the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; in total, five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But the sharks keep coming, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep. A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be from nose to tail. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. Manolin, worried during the old man's endeavor, cries upon finding him safe asleep. The boy brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of his youth—of lions on an African beach.
161697	/m/015fn8	The Children of Men	P. D. James	1992	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The narrative voice for the novel alternates between the third person and the first person, the latter in the form of a diary kept by Dr. Theodore "Theo" Faron, an Oxford don. The novel opens with the first entry in Theo's diary. It is the year 2021, but the novel's events have their origin in 1995, which is referred to as "Year Omega". In 1994, the sperm counts of human males plummeted to zero and mankind now faces imminent extinction. The last people to be born are now called "Omegas". "A race apart," they enjoy various prerogatives. Theo writes that the last human being to be born on Earth has been killed in a pub brawl. In 2006, a man called Xan Lyppiatt, Theo's rich and charismatic cousin, appointed himself Warden of England in the last general election. As people have lost all interest in politics, Lyppiatt abolishes democracy. He is called a despot and a tyrant by his opponents, but officially the new society is referred to as egalitarian. Theo is approached by a woman called Julian, a member of a group of dissidents calling themselves the Five Fishes. He meets with them at an isolated church. Rolf, their leader and Julian's husband, is hostile, but the others — Miriam (a former midwife), Gascoigne (a man from a military family), Luke (a former priest), and Julian — are more personable. The group wants Theo to approach Xan on their behalf and ask for various reforms, including a return to a more democratic system. During their discussions, and as Theo prepares to meet with Xan, the reader learns how the UK is in 2021: * The youngest generation, the "Omegas", are described as spoiled, over-entitled and egotistical due to their youth and the luxurious lifestyle they are treated to. They are violent, remote and unstable, and regard non-Omegas (elders) with undisguised contempt, yet are spared punishment due to their age. According to rumour, outside of Britain some countries sacrifice Omegas in fertility rituals. *Due to the global infertility of mankind, newborn animals (such as kittens and puppies) are doted upon and treated as infants, being pushed in prams and dressed in children's clothing. The latest trend in London is to have elaborate christening ceremonies for newborn pets. * The country is governed by decree of the Council of England, which consists of five people. Parliament has been reduced to an advisory role. The aims of the Council are (1) protection and security, (2) comfort, and (3) pleasure—corresponding to the Warden's promises of (1) freedom from fear, (2) freedom from want, and (3) freedom from boredom. * The Grenadiers — formerly an elite regiment in the British armed forces — are the Warden's private army. The State Secret Police (SSP) ensures the Council's decrees are executed. * The courts still exist, but juries have been abolished. Under the "new arrangements", defendants are tried by a judge and two magistrates. All convicted criminals are dumped at a penal colony on the Isle of Man. There is no remission, escape is almost impossible, visitors are forbidden and prisoners may not write or receive letters. * Every citizen is required to learn skills, such as husbandry, which they might need to help them survive if they happen to be among the last human beings in Britain. * Foreign workers are lured into the country and then exploited. Young people, preferably Omegas, from poorer countries come to England to work there. These "foreign Omegas" or, generally, "Sojourners" are imported to do undesirable work. At 60, which is the age limit, they are sent back ("forcibly repatriated"). British Omegas are not allowed to emigrate so as to prevent further loss of labor. * Elderly/infirm citizens have become a burden; nursing homes are for the privileged few. The rest are expected and sometimes forced to commit suicide by taking part in a "Quietus" (Council-sanctioned mass drownings) at the age of 60. * The state has opened "pornography centres". Twice a year, healthy women under 45 must submit to a gynecological examination, and most men must have their sperm tested, to keep hope alive. Theo's meeting with Xan, which turns out to be a meeting with the full Council of England, does not go well. Some of the members resent him because he resigned as Xan's advisor rather than share the responsibility of governing the UK. Xan guesses that Theo's suggestions came from others and makes clear to Theo that he will take action against dissidents. The Five Fishes distribute a leaflet detailing their demands. Theo is visited by the SSP and, shortly afterwards, sees Julian in the market. He tells her of the SSP visit, then tells her that if ever she needs him she only has to send for him. That night, however, Theo decides to leave England for the summer and visit the continent before nature overruns it. Soon after Theo's return, Miriam tells him that Gascoigne was arrested as he was trying to rig a Quietus landing stage to explode. The other Fishes are about to go on the run, and Julian wants him. Miriam reveals why Julian did not come herself—she is pregnant. Theo believes that Julian is deceiving herself, but when the two meet, Julian invites Theo to listen to her baby's heartbeat. During the group's flight, Luke is killed while trying to protect Julian during a confrontation with a wild gang of Omegas. Julian confesses that the father of her child is not Rolf, but the deceased Luke. Rolf, who believes he should rule the UK in Xan's place, is angered at the discovery; he abandons the group to notify the Warden. The group heads to a shack Theo knows of. Miriam delivers Julian's baby — a boy, not a girl as Julian had thought. Miriam goes to find more supplies; after she is gone too long Theo investigates. He finds Miriam dead, garrotted in a nearby house. Theo returns to Julian, but soon after Julian hears a noise outside — Xan. Theo and Xan confront each other and both fire one shot. The sudden wailing of the baby startles Xan, causing him to miss as Rolf had thought the baby would not be born for another month. Theo does not miss. He removes the Coronation Ring, which Xan had taken to wearing as a symbol of authority, from Xan's finger and seems poised to become the new leader of the UK — at least temporarily. The other members of the Council are introduced to the baby, and Theo baptises him.
161884	/m/015gns	The Spy Who Came in from the Cold	John le Carré	1963-09	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The West Berlin office of the British Secret Intelligence Service under the command of Station Head Alec Leamas, has been performing poorly. At the commencement of the novel, Karl Riemeck – his last and best double agent, a high-ranking East German political officer – is shot dead at the last moment whilst defecting to West Berlin. Without any agents left, the disgraced Leamas is recalled to the Circus in London by Control, chief of the Circus. There, Control asks Leamas to stay "in the cold" for one last mission: to turn (defect) and provide false information to the East German Communists that would implicate Mundt as a British double agent — what his second-in-command, Fiedler, already suspects — to result in Mundt being executed by his own people. Control tells Leamas that Fiedler, due to his paranoia about Mundt, would be the best man to depose Mundt. George Smiley and his former assistant Peter Guillam brief Leamas for his crucial mission. Control tells Leamas that Smiley had not returned to the Circus after the events of Call for the Dead because of moral qualms about unethical Circus operations. To make the East Germans believe him ripe for defection, the Circus sacks Leamas, with a pittance of a pension, and he gets a miserable job in a run-down library, and loses it. At the library, he meets co-worker Liz Gold, an unworldly young Jewish woman, who is the secretary of her local cell of the Communist Party of Britain. Despite her politics, they become lovers. Before taking the "final plunge" into Control's scheme, Leamas makes Liz promise not to look for him, no matter what she hears, and says good-bye to her. Leamas also tells Control to leave Liz alone and Control agrees. Then, as planned, Leamas lands in jail after he assaults a local grocer. After jail, an East German recruiter in England approaches Leamas. He is taken abroad, first to the Netherlands, then to East Germany, en route meeting higher echelons of the Abteilung, the East German Intelligence Service. During his debriefing, he drops casual hints that point to British payments to a double agent in the Abteilung, whilst pretending not to see the implications. Meanwhile, in England, George Smiley and Peter Guillam appear at Liz Gold's apartment claiming to be friends of Alec, question her about him, and offer her financial help. In East Germany, Leamas meets Fiedler. They have many conversations in a hut in a forest clearing, where Fiedler seeks conclusive proof against Mundt and engages in ideological and philosophic discussions with the pragmatic Leamas. As observed by Leamas, Fiedler seems content to live in Mundt's shadow, but is relatively young and brilliant. To Leamas, Fiedler is sympathetic: a Jew who spent the Second World War in Canada, and a Communist idealist who considers the morality of his actions. In contrast, Leamas sees Mundt as a brutal, opportunist mercenary, who was a Nazi before 1945 and then joined the Communists simply because they were the new bosses, and remained an anti-Semite. Leamas believes helping Fiedler destroy Mundt is a worthy act. Meanwhile, Liz Gold is invited to East Germany for a Communist Party information exchange. The power struggle in the Abteilung comes into the open when Mundt orders Fiedler and Leamas arrested and tortured. However, the leaders of the East German régime intervene because Fiedler had earlier applied for an arrest warrant for Mundt on the same day that Mundt arrested Fiedler and Leamas. They are released, and Fiedler and Mundt are summoned to present their cases to a tribunal convened in camera, in the town of Görlitz. At the trial, Alec Leamas documents a series of secret bank account payments that Fiedler matches to the movements of Mundt. Fiedler also shows that Karl Riemeck passed to Leamas information to which he had no formal access but to which Mundt did. Fiedler also presents to the Tribunal other proofs implicating Mundt as a British double agent and explains that Mundt was captured in England and allowed to escape only after agreeing to work as a double agent for the British. Mundt’s attorney calls the unsuspecting Liz Gold as a surprise witness for the defence. Although not wanting to testify against Alec Leamas, she admits that George Smiley paid for her apartment lease after visiting her and that she had promised Leamas to not look for him when he disappeared. She also admits that he had said good-bye to her the night before he assaulted the grocer. Realising that the operation is now blown, Leamas offers to tell all in return for Liz's freedom. He admits that Control gave him the mission to frame Mundt as a double agent, but adds that Fiedler was not a participant. In cross-examination, Fiedler asks Mundt how he knew that someone had paid off Liz's lease, because, Fiedler insists, Liz never would have spoken about it. Mundt hesitates before answering ("a second too long, Leamas thought"), then the Tribunal halts the trial and arrests Fiedler. Then, and only then, does Leamas understand the true nature of Control and Smiley's operation. Liz is sent to a cell but Mundt places her in a car with Leamas at the wheel. During their drive to Berlin, where an exit route from East Berlin awaits, he explains the operation to her, including the parts of which he was unaware until the end of the trial. The fake bank account payments were real, and Hans-Dieter Mundt is a double agent reporting to George Smiley and Peter Guillam. The operation was against Fiedler, not Mundt, as Leamas was deceived to believe, because Fiedler was close to exposing Mundt as a British double agent. Fiedler was too powerful for Mundt to eliminate alone. Therefore, Control and Smiley did it for him. They placed him and her as co-workers to provide Mundt with the means of discrediting Leamas and consequently discrediting Fiedler. By falling in love, Leamas and Liz made it easy for them. Liz is horrified that British Intelligence planned the death of Fiedler, an intelligent, considerate and thoughtful man, in order to protect the despicable Mundt. Fiedler's fate is unrevealed, but Leamas, in answer to Liz's question, says that he would most likely be shot. Despite her moral disgust, Liz accompanies Leamas to the break in the wire fronting the Berlin Wall, where they are to climb the wall and escape to West Berlin. In the concluding chapter, after Leamas climbs to the top of the Berlin Wall and reaches down to pull Liz up, East German spotlights suddenly turn on them, and she is shot. Her fingers slip from his grasp and she falls. From the Western side of the Wall, Leamas hears a Western agent calling to him, "Jump, Alec! Jump, man!" and among other voices, George Smiley's. Seeing Liz dead, Alec Leamas climbs back down the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall. The border guards then shoot him dead.
161903	/m/015gvh	The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter	Carson McCullers	1940	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The struggles of four of John Singer's acquaintances make up the majority of the narrative. They are: Mick Kelly, a tomboyish young girl who loves music and dreams of buying a piano; Jake Blount, an alcoholic labor agitator; Biff Brannon, the observant owner of a diner; and Dr. Benedict Copeland, an idealistic African American doctor.
161916	/m/015gy_	The Great White Hope	Howard Sackler			 The Great White Hope tells a fictional idealized life story of boxing champion Jack Johnson, here called Jack Jefferson. Acting as a lens focused on a racist society, The Great White Hope explores how segregation and prejudice created the demand for a "great white hope" who would defeat Johnson and how this, in turn, affected the boxer's life and career. While the play is often described as being thematically about racism, this is not, it seems, entirely how Sackler viewed his work. Though certainly not denying the racist issues confronted in the play, Sackler once said in an interview, "What interested me was not the topicality but the combination of circumstances, the destiny of a man pitted against society. It's a metaphor of struggle between man and the outside world. Some people spoke of the play as if it were a cliché of white liberalism, but I kept to the line straight through, of showing that it wasn't a case of blacks being good and whites being bad. I was appalled at the first reaction." In a comment, reflecting on both the racist theme dealt with in the play and Sackler's notion that the play is about a man fighting society, Muhammad Ali, greatly impressed with James Earl Jones' performance in the play, apparently commented to the actor, "That's my story. You take out the issue of white women and replace it with the issue of religion. That's my story!" Ali was fighting being drafted into the army at the time on grounds of being a conscientious objector.
162096	/m/015hxm	The Postman	David Brin	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Despite the post-apocalyptic scenario, and several action sequences, the book is largely about civilization and symbols. Each of the three sections deals with a different symbol. The first is the Postman himself, Gordon Krantz, who takes the uniform solely for warmth after he loses everything but his sleeping clothes. He wanders without establishing himself anywhere, and acts in scenes of William Shakespeare for supplies. Originally from Minnesota, he has traveled as far West as Oregon. Taking shelter in a long-abandoned postal van, he finds a sack of mail and takes it to a nearby community to barter for food and shelter. His reputation as a real postman builds not because of a deliberate fraud (at least initially) but because people are desperate to believe. Later, in the second section, he encounters a community (Corvallis, Oregon) led by Cyclops, apparently a sentient artificial intelligence created at Oregon State University which miraculously survived the cataclysm. In reality, however, the machine had ceased functioning during a battle; a group of scientists merely maintain the pretense of it working to try and keep hope, order, and knowledge alive. Eventually, in the third section, as the Postman joins forces with the Cyclops scientists in a war against an influx of "hypersurvivalists", he begins to find that the hypersurvivalists are being pressed from the Rogue River area to the south as well. The hypersurvivalists are more commonly referred to as Holnists, after the founder of their ideal, Nathan Holn. Many times through the book, curses are uttered which damn Holn for his actions. Nathan Holn was an author who championed an extreme, violent, misogynistic and hypersurvivalist society. Holn is said to have himself been hanged in the novel, but in the time following what should have been a brief period of civil disorder, followers of Holn prevented the United States from recovering from the limited war, and the plagues that followed. As the story ends, and he comes close to the hypersurvivalist's southern enemy, he begins to find traces of them, primarily in the symbol that they rally behind: the Bear Flag of California. The final scenes give the impression that the three symbols may rally together in an effort to revive civilization. Another message of the plot deals with the backstory of the post-apocalyptic world: specifically, that it was not the electronics-destroying electromagnetic pulses, nor the destruction of major cities, nor the release of various bio-engineered plagues that actually destroyed society: rather, it was the hypersurvivalists themselves, those who maintained stockpiles of weapons and ammunition and who preyed on humanitarian workers and other forces of order.
162189	/m/015jfx	The Phantom of the Opera	Gaston Leroux		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 The novel opens with a prologue in which Gaston Leroux claims that Erik, the "Phantom of the Opera", was a real person. We are then introduced to Christine Daaé who with her father, a famous fiddler, travelled all over Europe playing folk and religious music. Her father was known to be the best wedding-fiddler in the land. When Christine is six, her mother dies and her father is brought to rural France by a patron, Professor Valerius. During Christine's childhood (which is described retrospectively in the early chapters of the book), her father tells her many stories featuring an "Angel of Music", who, like a muse, is the personification of musical inspiration. Christine meets and befriends the young Raoul, Viscount of Chagny, who also enjoys her father's many stories. One of Christine and Raoul's favourite stories is one of Little Lotte, a girl with golden hair and blue eyes who is visited by the Angel of Music and possesses a heavenly voice. On his deathbed, Christine's father tells her that he will send the Angel of Music to her from Heaven. Christine now lives with Mamma Valerius, the elderly widow of her father's benefactor. Christine is eventually given a position in the chorus at the Paris Opera House (Palais Garnier). Not long after she arrives there, she begins hearing a beautiful, unearthly voice which sings to her and speaks to her. She believes this must be the Angel of Music and asks him if he is. The Voice agrees and offers to teach her "a little bit of heaven's music". The Voice, however, belongs to Erik, a physically-deformed and mentally-disturbed charismatic genius who was one of the architects who took part in the construction of the opera and who secretly built a home for himself in the cellars. He has been extorting money from the Opera's management for many years. Unknown to Christine, at least at first, he falls in love with her. With the help of the Voice, Christine triumphs at the gala on the night of the old managers' retirement. Her old childhood friend Raoul hears her and remembers his love for her. A time after the gala, the Paris Opera performs Faust, with the prima donna Carlotta playing the lead. In response to a refused surrender of Box Five to the Opera Ghost, Carlotta loses her voice and the Opera's grand chandelier plummets into the audience. After the chandelier accident, Erik kidnaps Christine to his home in the cellars and reveals his true identity. He plans to keep her there only a few days, hoping she will come to love him, and Christine begins to find herself attracted to her abductor. But she causes Erik to change his plans when she unmasks him and, to the horror of both, beholds his face, which according to the book, resembles the face of a rotting corpse. Erik goes into a frenzy, stating she probably thinks his face is another mask, and whilst digging her fingers in to show it was really his face he shouts, "I am Don Juan Triumphant!" before crawling away, crying. Fearing that she will leave him, he decides to keep her with him forever, but when Christine requests release after two weeks, he agrees on condition that she wear his ring and be faithful to him. Up on the roof of the Opera, Christine tells Raoul of Erik taking her to the cellars. Raoul promises to take Christine away where Erik can never find her and to take her even if she resists. Raoul tells Christine he shall act on his promise the following day, to which Christine agrees, but she pities Erik and will not go until she has sung for him one last time. Christine then realizes the ring has slipped off her finger and fallen into the streets somewhere, and begins to panic. The two leave. But neither is aware that Erik has been listening to their conversation or that it has driven him to jealous frenzy. During the week and that night, Erik has been terrorising anyone who stood in his way or in that of Christine's career, including the managers. The following night, Erik kidnaps Christine during a production of Faust (by drugging the gas men and switching the lights off, he spirits Christine off the stage before anyone turned the lights on). Back in the cellars, Erik tries to force Christine into marriage. If she refuses he threatens to destroy the entire Opera using explosives he has planted in the cellars, killing them and everyone in the floors above. Christine continues to refuse, until she realizes that Raoul and an old acquaintance of Erik's known only as "The Persian", in an attempt to rescue her, have been trapped in Erik's hot torture chamber. To save them and the people above, Christine agrees to marry Erik. At first, Erik tries to drown Raoul and the Persian in the water used to douse the explosives, stating that Christine doesn't need another. But Christine begs and offers to be his "living bride", promising him not to kill herself after becoming his bride, as she had both contemplated and attempted earlier in the novel. Erik rescues the Persian and the young Raoul from his torture chamber thereafter. When Erik is alone with Christine, he lifts his mask a little to kiss her on the forehead, and Christine allows him to do this. Erik, who admits that he has never before in his life received or been allowed to give a kiss – not even from his own mother – is overcome with emotion. Christine gives him a kiss back. He lets Christine go and tells her "Go and marry the boy whenever you wish," explaining, "I know you love him". She leaves on the condition that when he dies she will come back and bury him. Being an old acquaintance, The Persian is told of all these secrets by Erik himself, and upon his express request, the Persian advertises Erik's death in the newspaper about three weeks later. The cause of death is revealed to be a broken heart, and as promised, Christine returns to bury Erik and give his ring back to him.
162770	/m/015m8_	Murder on the Orient Express	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Hercule Poirot boards the Orient Express in Constantinople. The train is unusually crowded for the time of year. Poirot secures a berth only with the help of his friend M. Bouc, a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. When a Mr. Harris fails to show up, Poirot takes his place. On the second night, Poirot gets a compartment to himself. That night, in Vinkovci, at about twenty-three minutes before 1:00 am, Poirot wakes to the sound of a loud noise. It seems to come from the compartment next to his, which is occupied by Mr. Ratchett. When Poirot peeks out his door, he sees the conductor knock on Mr. Ratchett's door and ask if he is all right. A man replies in French "Ce n'est rien. Je me suis trompé", which means "It's nothing. I was mistaken", and the conductor moves on to answer a bell down the passage. Poirot decides to go back to bed, but he is disturbed by the fact that the train is unusually still and his mouth is dry. As he lies awake, he hears a Mrs. Hubbard ringing the bell urgently. When Poirot then rings the conductor for a bottle of mineral water, he learns that Mrs. Hubbard claimed that someone had been in her compartment. He also learns that the train has stopped due to a snowstorm. Poirot dismisses the conductor and tries to go back to sleep, only to be awakened again by a thump on his door. This time when Poirot gets up and looks out of his compartment, the passage is completely silent, and he sees nothing except the back of a woman in a scarlet kimono retreating down the passage in the distance. The next day he awakens to find that Ratchett is dead, having been stabbed twelve times in his sleep. M. Bouc suggests that Poirot take the case, being that it is so obviously his kind of case; nothing more is required than for him to sit, think, and take in the available evidence. However, the clues and circumstances of Ratchett's death are very mysterious. Some of the stab wounds are very deep, only three are lethal, and some are glancing blows. Furthermore, some of them appear to have been inflicted by a right-handed person and some by a left-handed person. Poirot finds several more clues in the victim's cabin and on board the train, including a linen handkerchief embroidered with the initial "H", a pipe cleaner, and a button from a conductor's uniform. All of these clues suggest that the murderer or murderers were somewhat sloppy. However, each clue seemingly points to different suspects, which suggests that some of the clues were planted. By reconstructing parts of a burned letter, Poirot discovers that Mr. Ratchett was a notorious fugitive from the U.S. named Cassetti. Five years earlier, Cassetti kidnapped three-year-old American heiress Daisy Armstrong. Though the Armstrong family paid a large ransom, Cassetti murdered the little girl and fled the country with the money. Daisy's mother, Sonia, was pregnant when she heard of Daisy's death. The shock sent her into premature labour, and both she and the baby died. Her husband, Colonel Armstrong, shot himself out of grief. Daisy's nursemaid, Susanne, was suspected of complicity in the crime by the police, despite her protests. She threw herself out of a window and died, after which she was proved innocent. Although Cassetti was caught, his resources allowed him to get himself acquitted on an unspecified technicality, although he still fled the country to escape further prosecution for the crime. As the evidence mounts, it continues to point in wildly different directions and it appears that Poirot is being challenged by a mastermind. A critical piece of missing evidence–the scarlet kimono worn the night of the murder by an unknown woman–turns up in Poirot's own luggage. After meditating on the evidence, Poirot assembles the thirteen suspects, M. Bouc and Dr. Constantine in the restaurant car. He lays out two possible explanations of Ratchett's murder. The first explanation is that a stranger–some gangster enemy of Ratchett–boarded the train at Vinkovci, the last stop, murdered Ratchett for reasons unknown, and escaped unnoticed. The crime occurred an hour earlier than everyone thought, because the victim and several others failed to note that the train had just crossed into a different time zone. The other noises heard by Poirot on the coach that evening were unrelated to the murder. However, Dr. Constantine says that Poirot must surely be aware that this does not fully explain the circumstances of the case. Poirot's second explanation is rather more sensational: all of the suspects are guilty. Poirot's suspicions were first aroused by the fact that all the passengers on the train were of so many different nationalities and social classes, and that only in the "melting pot" of the United States would a group of such different people form some connection with each other. Poirot reveals that the twelve other passengers on the train and the train conductor were all connected to the Armstrong family in some way: *Hector MacQueen, Ratchett/Cassetti's secretary, devoted to Sonia Armstrong; MacQueen's father was the district attorney for the kidnapping case. He knew from his father the details of Cassetti's escape from justice. *Masterman, Ratchett/Cassetti's valet, was Colonel Armstrong's batman during the war and later his valet; *Colonel Arbuthnot was Colonel Armstrong's comrade and best friend; *Mrs. Hubbard in actuality is Linda Arden (née Goldenberg), the most famous tragic actress of the New York stage, and was Sonia Armstrong's mother and Daisy's grandmother; *Countess Andrenyi (née Helena Goldenberg) was Sonia Armstrong's sister; *Count Andryeni was the husband of Helena Andrenyi; *Princess Natalia Dragomiroff was Sonia Armstrong's godmother as she was a friend of her mother; *Miss Mary Debenham was Sonia Armstrong's secretary and Daisy Armstrong's governess; *Fräulein Hildegarde Schmidt, Princess Dragomiroff's maid, was the Armstrong family's cook; *Antonio Foscarelli, a car salesman based in Chicago, was the Armstrong family's chauffeur; *Miss Greta Ohlsson, a Swedish missionary, was Daisy Armstrong's nurse; *Pierre Michel, the train conductor, was the father of Susanne, the Armstrong's nursemaid who committed suicide; *Cyrus Hardman, a private detective ostensibly retained as a bodyguard by Ratchett/Cassetti, was a policeman in love with Susanne. All these friends and relations had been gravely affected by Daisy's murder and outraged by Cassetti's subsequent escape. They took it into their own hands to serve as Cassetti's executioners, to avenge a crime the law was unable to punish. Each of the suspects stabbed Ratchett once, so that no one could know who delivered the fatal blow. Twelve of the conspirators participated to allow for a "twelve-person jury", with Count Andrenyi acting for his wife, as she–Daisy's aunt–would have been the most likely suspect. One extra berth was booked under a fictitious name–Harris–so that no one but the conspirators and the victim would be on board the coach, and this fictitious person would subsequently disappear and become the primary suspect in Ratchett's murder. (The only person not involved in the plot would be M. Bouc, for whom the cabin next to Ratchett was already reserved.) The main inconvenience for the murderers was the occurrence of a snowstorm and the presence of a detective, which caused complications to the conspirators that resulted in several crucial clues being left behind. Poirot summarizes that there was no other way the murder could have taken place, given the evidence. Several of the suspects have broken down in tears as he has revealed their connection to the Armstrong family, and Mrs. Hubbard/Linda Arden confesses that the second theory is correct and that Colonel Arbuthnot and Mary Debenham are in love. She then appeals to Poirot, M. Bouc, and Dr. Constantine, not to turn them in to the police. Fully in sympathy with the Armstrong family, and feeling nothing but disgust for the victim, Bouc pronounces the first explanation as correct, and Poirot and Dr. Constantine agree, Dr. Constantine suggesting that he will edit his original report of Cassetti's body to comply with Poirot's first deduction as he now 'recognizes' some mistakes he has made. His task completed, Poirot states he has "the honour to retire from the case." Arrangement of the Calais Coach: {| width="1450" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="margin:0 0; background-color: #FFFFFF" style="text-align: center; font-size: 80%" |-bgcolor="#F5F5DC" |style="border-right: 1px solid black; background:#C0C0C0"|   || style="background:#98FB98" width="50"|   || colspan="12" width="1200" style="text-align: center;"| Corridor ||style="border-left: 1px solid black; background:#C0C0C0"|   |-style="height:60px" |style="border-right: 1px solid black; background:#C0C0C0"| Athens-Paris Coach ||style="border-right: 1px solid black;background:#98FB98" width="50"| Michel ||style="border-right: 1px solid black; background:#DA70D6" width="100"| 16. Hardman||style="border-right: 1px solid black; background:#DA70D6" width="100"| 15. Arbuthnot || style="border-right: 1px solid black; background:#DA70D6" width="100"| 14. Dragomiroff ||style="border-right: 1px solid black; background:#DA70D6" width="100"| 13. R. Andrenyi || style="border-right: 1px solid black; background:#DA70D6" width="100"| 12. H. Andrenyi ||style="border-right: 1px solid black;background:#DA70D6" width="100"| 3. Hubbard || style="border-right: 1px solid black;background:#FF7F50" width="100"| 2. Ratchett || style="background:#DA70D6" width="100"| 1. Poirot ||style="border-left: 1px solid black;background:#7B68EE" width="100"| 10. Ohlsson11. Debenham ||style="border-left: 1px solid black;background:#7B68EE" width="100"| 8. Schmidt9. ||style="border-left: 1px solid black; background:#7B68EE" width="100"| 6. MacQueen7. ||style="border-left: 1px solid black;background:#7B68EE" width="100"| 4. Masterman5. Foscarelli ||style="border-left: 1px solid black; background:#C0C0C0"| Dining Car |}
163234	/m/015pln	Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	J. K. Rowling	1998-07-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets begins as Harry spends a miserable summer with his only remaining family, the Dursleys. During a dinner party hosted by his uncle and aunt, Harry is visited by Dobby, a house-elf. Dobby warns Harry not to return to Hogwarts, the magical school for wizards that Harry attended the previous year, explaining that terrible things will happen there. Harry politely disregards the warning, and Dobby wreaks havoc in the kitchen, infuriating the Dursleys. The Dursleys angrily imprison Harry in his room for a while after they find from a letter that Harry is not allowed to use magic away from Hogwarts. Harry is rescued by his friend Ron Weasley and his brothers Fred and George in a flying car, and spends the rest of the summer at the Weasley home. When Harry uses Floo Powder to get to Diagon Alley he accidentally ends up in a dark-arts dealing end of town, Knockturn Alley. Fortunately, he meets Hagrid who gets him back to Diagon Alley. While shopping for school supplies there with the Weasleys, Harry encounters Gilderoy Lockhart, a wizard famous for all manner of deeds, who announces he is the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, and demands to be in a photo shoot with Harry. Harry then encounters Lucius Malfoy, a Hogwarts governor and the father of the school bully, Draco, who gets into an argument with Ron's father when he insults the Weasley family. As Harry prepares to return to Hogwarts, he finds that he and Ron are unable to go through the secret entrance to Platform 9 ¾, so they fly the Weasley's car to Hogwarts. They land messily, and both boys are detained for obvious reasons. Next day Molly Weasley sends a Howler to Ron, a letter that berates him with her much louder voice, and threatens to send him home if he gets into trouble again. Lockhart quickly proves to be an incompetent teacher, more concerned with students learning about his personal accomplishments. On Halloween, something petrifies the school caretaker's cat and writes a message declaring that "The Chamber of Secrets" has been opened. Before the cat is attacked, Harry twice hears an eerie voice. He hears it first during his detention and second during a party, moments before the cat is attacked, and third before a Quidditch match. Everybody in the school is alarmed. Harry, Ron and their other friend, Hermione Granger, learn that during the founding of Hogwarts one of the founders, Salazar Slytherin, left the school, disagreeing with the decision to teach magic to Muggle-born students. According to legend, Slytherin secretly built the Chamber of Secrets, which supposedly houses a monster only Slytherin's heir can control. Suspecting that Draco is the heir of Slytherin, the trio start making Polyjuice Potion, a brew which allows them to take on another's form. During the school's first game of Quidditch, Harry is pursued continually by a Bludger, an enchanted ball that knocks players off their brooms, despite their purpose being to unseat as many players as possible. As a result, Harry's arm is broken, and Lockhart then proceeds to unintentionally remove the broken bones. That night, as he recovers from the injury, Harry is visited by Dobby, who admits to having orchestrated the platform incident and the rogue Bludger, both of which were attempts to keep Harry away from Hogwarts. Soon after, a first year student, Colin Creevy, is attacked and petrified. Lockhart begins a dueling club; and during the first meeting Harry unknowingly speaks Parseltongue to persuade a snake from attacking a student. Harry's ability frightens the others because Salazar Slytherin was also able to speak Parseltongue, and his heir would also have this ability. Harry comes under further suspicion when he stumbles upon the petrified bodies of Justin Finch-Fletchley and Nearly Headless Nick. At Christmas, Harry and Ron use the finished Polyjuice Potion to disguise themselves as Draco's friends Crabbe for Ron and Goyle for Harry. Hermione was going to be Millicent Bulstrode, another Slytherin student, but was instead given some features of a cat, so does not joins them. Harry and Ron find out that Draco is not the heir of Slytherin, but he does reveal that the Chamber was opened before. No more attacks occur for a while, and right before Valentine's Day, Harry finds a diary in a flooded bathroom and takes it. He writes in the diary, which responds by writing back. Through this dialogue, Harry meets Tom Riddle, a boy who many years before had accused Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, of first opening the Chamber of Secrets. Some time later, Harry's room is ransacked and the diary is taken. Later on, Hermione and a Ravenclaw girl, Penolope Clearwater, are petrified. Harry and Ron venture out of the castle to question Hagrid. Before they can question him, however, the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, takes Hagrid to Azkaban as the supposed previous culprit; while at the same time Lucius Malfoy orchestrates the removal of Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore for his failure to stop the attacks. As Hagrid is led away, he instructs the boys to "follow the spiders", as they will be able to provide more information. Harry and Ron then sneak into the Forbidden Forest to follow the spiders. They encounter Aragog who reveals the monster who killed the girl fifty years before was not a spider, that the girl's body was found in a bathroom, and that Hagrid is innocent. The boys are almost eaten by the colony of giant spiders. After they escape, Harry and Ron realize that Moaning Myrtle, the ghost who haunts the bathroom where they made the Polyjuice Potion, must have been the girl killed by the monster. A few days later, Ron and Harry discover a piece of paper with a description of a Basilisk, a giant serpent that kills all who look it directly in the eye, in Hermione's petrified hand. They deduce that the Chamber's monster is indeed a Basilisk, since as a snake Harry can understand what it was saying when it travelled through the schools pipes. As for the petrifications, these were due to the victims looking at the Basilisk's eyes indirectly. Before the boys can act on their knowledge, the teachers announce that Ron's sister Ginny Weasley has been taken into the Chamber. Lockhart arrives, and is pressured by the other teachers into venturing into the Chamber and dealing with the monster unknown to them and to him. Harry and Ron go to give him their information, only to discover that he is a fraud. Regardless, they force him to accompany them to the Chamber. The trio discovers that the entrance to the Chamber is in Myrtle's bathroom, and Harry's Parseltongue is able to open it. Inside the Chamber, Lockhart steals Ron's wand, and attempts to wipe the memories of the other two, in order to keep his secrets safe. However, Ron's wand, which has been broken since the car crash at the start of the year, deflects the spell back at Lockhart, wiping his memory. A cave-in then separates him and Ron from Harry, who is forced to proceed alone. Harry finds Ginny's unconscious body, as well as the almost-physical form of Riddle. Riddle explains that Ginny has been talking with him via his diary. Through this, Riddle was able to possess Ginny, and use her to control the Basilisk. Ginny eventually became suspicious of the diary and tried to dispose of it in a toilet, where it was picked up by Harry, but stole it back for fear Harry would find out her role in the attacks. Riddle forced her to enter the Chamber, and possessing her soul was able to obtain a physical form. Riddle reveals that Tom Marvolo Riddle is an anagram although it is his real name for I am Lord Voldemort, who is the wizard who murdered Harry's parents eleven years ago, and sets the Basilisk on Harry. Just when it seems Harry will be killed by the Basilisk, Fawkes, Dumbledore's pet phoenix, appears and blinds the Basilisk, depriving it of its deadly stare. Fawkes also drops the school Sorting Hat, from which Harry draws a sword and uses it to kill the Basilisk. As he does so, one of the Basilisk's fangs pierce Harry's arm and Harry is saved by Fawkes, as phoenix tears have immense healing powers. Harry then stabs the diary with a Basilisk fang, defeating Riddle and saving Ginny. The five of them later leave the Chamber. Back at Hogwarts, they discover that Dumbledore has been reinstated as Headmaster. After Harry finishes explaining things to Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy suddenly bursts in to Dumbledore's office. It is implied that he had planted Riddle's diary on Ginny in the first place, in the hopes of discrediting Dumbledore and the Weasleys. Discovering that Mr. Malfoy is Dobby's master, Harry then tricks him into freeing Dobby by concealing a sock in the diary (clothing being the only object able to free a house elf). All the petrified people are revived by a Mandrake Draught potion, Lockhart is sent to the wizarding hospital where he tries to regain his memories, and Hagrid returns to the school.
163494	/m/015q_m	Equus	Peter Shaffer			 Martin Dysart is a psychiatrist in a psychiatric hospital. He begins with a monologue in which he outlines Alan Strang's case. He also divulges his feeling that his occupation is not all that he wishes it to be and his feelings of dissatisfaction and disappointment about his barren life. Dysart finds that there is a never-ending supply of troubled young people for him to "adjust" back into "normal" living; but he doubts the value of treating these youths, since they will simply return to a dull, normal life that lacks any commitment and "worship" (a recurring theme). He comments that Alan Strang's crime was extreme but adds that just such extremity is needed to break free from the chains of existence. A court magistrate, Hesther Salomon, visits Dysart, believing that he has the skills to help Alan come to terms with his violent acts. Dysart has a great deal of difficulty making any kind of headway with Alan, who at first responds to questioning by singing advertising jingles. Slowly, however, Dysart makes contact with Alan by playing a game where each of them asks a question, which must be answered honestly. He learns that, from an early age, Alan has been receiving conflicting viewpoints on religion from his parents. Alan's mother, Dora Strang, is a devout Christian who has read to him daily from the Bible. This practice has antagonized Alan's atheist father, Frank Strang, who, concerned that Alan has taken far too much interest in the more violent aspects of the Bible, destroyed a violent picture of the Crucifixion that Alan had hung at the foot of his bed. Alan replaced the picture with one of a horse, with large, staring eyes. Moreover, during his youth, Alan had established his attraction to horses by way of his mother's biblical tales, a horse story that she had read to him, western movies, and his grandfather's interest in horses and riding. Dysart reveals a dream he has had, in a Grecian/Homeric setting, in which he is a public official presiding over a mass ritual sacrifice. Dysart slices open the viscera of hundreds of children, and pulls out their entrails. He becomes disgusted with what he is doing, but desiring to "look professional" to the other officials, does not stop. Alan's sexual training began with his mother, who told him that the sexual act was dirty, but that he could find true love and contentment by way of religious devotion and marriage. During this time he also begins to show a sexual attraction to horses, desiring to pet their thick coats, feel their muscular bodies and smell their sweat. Alan reveals to Dysart that he had first encountered a horse at age six, on the beach. A rider approached him, and took him up on the horse. Alan was visibly excited, but his parents found him and his father pulled him violently off the horse. The horse rider scoffed at the father and rode off. In another key scene, Dysart hypnotizes Alan, and during the hypnosis, Dysart reveals elements of his terrifying dream of the ritual murder of children. This is only one of numerous "confessions" that take place in the play. Dysart begins to jog Alan's memory by filling in blanks of the dialogue, and asking questions. Alan reveals that he wants to help the horses by removing the bit, which enslaves them. Enslaved and tortured "like Jesus?" asks Dysart, and Alan replies "Yes." Alan has a job working in a shop selling electrical goods, where he meets Jill Mason. She visits the shop wanting blades for horse-clippers. Alan is instantly interested when he discovers that Jill has such close contact with horses. Jill suggests that Alan work for the owner of the stables, Harry Dalton, and Alan agrees. Alan is held by Dalton to be a model worker, since he keeps the stables immaculately clean and grooms the horses, including one named "Nugget". Through Dysart's questioning, it becomes clear that Alan is fixated on Nugget (or Equus) and secretly takes him for midnight rides, bareback and naked. Alan also envisions himself as a king, on the godhead Equus, both destroying their enemies. Dysart gives Alan a placebo "truth pill" and revealing a tryst with Jill, begins to enact the event. Jill, who had taken an interest in Alan, had asked him to take her to an adult movie theater. While there, they ran into Frank. Alan was traumatized, particularly when he realized that his father was lying when he tried to justify his presence in the theater. However, this occurrence allows Alan to realize that sex is a natural thing for all men—even his father. Alan walks Jill home after they leave. She convinces Alan to come to the stables with her. Once there, she seduces Alan and the two start having sex. However, Alan breaks this off when he hears the horses making noises in the stables beneath. Jill tries to ask Alan what the problem is, but he shouts at her to leave. He begs the horses for forgiveness, as he sees the horses as God-like figures. "Mine!...You're mine!...I am yours and you are mine!" cries Equus through Dysart, but then he becomes threatening. "The Lord thy God is a Jealous God", Equus/Dysart seethes, "He sees you, He sees you forever and ever, Alan. He sees you!...He sees you!" Alan screams, "God seest!" Then he says, "No more. No more, Equus." With that he blinds the horses, whose eyes have "seen" his very soul, with a hoof pick. The play concludes with Dysart questioning the fundamentals of his practice and whether or not what he does will actually help Alan, as the effect of his treatment will remove Alan's intense sexual and religious commitment, and his worship of the horses. Earlier, Dysart had asked Hesther Salomon what it would be like to be robbed of the ability to worship. He also reflects again on his own life, his envy of Alan's passion, and what he imagines is a bit in his mouth.
163629	/m/015rm8	American Psycho	Bret Easton Ellis	1991	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho is about the daily life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his late 20s when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite of New York to his forays into murder by nightfall. Through present tense stream-of-consciousness narrative, Bateman describes his daily life, ranging from a series of Friday nights spent at nightclubs with his colleagues — where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette — to his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn and his contentious relationship with his brother and senile mother. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s Pop music artists. The novel maintains a high level of ambiguity through mistaken identity and contradictions that introduce the possibility that Bateman is an unreliable narrator. Characters are consistently introduced as people other than themselves, and people argue over the identities of others they can see in restaurants or at parties. Whether any of the crimes depicted in the novel actually happened or whether they were simply the fantasies of a delusional psychotic is deliberately left open. After killing Paul Owen, one of his colleagues, Bateman appropriates his apartment as a place to kill and store more victims. Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. His murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from simple stabbings to drawn out sequences of torture, rape, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia, and the separation between his two lives begins to blur. He introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations and on several occasions openly confesses his murderous activities to his coworkers, who never take him seriously, do not hear what he says, or misunderstand him completely—for example, hearing the words "murders and executions" as "mergers and acquisitions." Bateman begins to experience bizarre hallucinations such as seeing a Cheerio interviewed on a talk show, being stalked by an anthropomorphic park bench, and finding a bone in his Dove Bar. These incidents culminate in a shooting spree during which he kills several random people in the street, resulting in a SWAT team being dispatched in a helicopter. Bateman flees on foot and hides in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses all his crimes to the answering machine. Later, Bateman confronts Carnes about the message only to find Carnes is amused at what he considers to be a good joke. Carnes tells Bateman that he is too much of a coward to have committed such acts and claims that he had dinner in London with Paul Owen a few days before. Bateman revisits Paul Owen's apartment, where he had killed and mutilated two prostitutes. Bateman enters the perfectly clean, refurbished apartment, which shows no trace of decomposing bodies but is filled with strong-smelling flowers, as though meant to hide a bad odor. He runs into a real estate agent showing the apartment to prospective buyers; the real-estate agent appears suspicious of Bateman. The book ends as it began, with Bateman and his colleagues in a club on a Friday night, engaging in banal conversation.
163678	/m/015rxc	Kalimantaan	C. S. Godshalk	1998-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1839, an English adventurer arrived on the northwest coast of Borneo, commissioned to deliver a letter of gratitude to the Sultan of Brunei for having safely returned the crew of a British merchantman, lost on his coast. It was a region full of headhunters, pirate tribes, and slave traders. Most Europeans with the temerity to enter the region had never been heard from again. This particular adventurer, however, seems to know how to play one power against another and manages to keep his balance in the midst of chaos. After performing a service for the Sultan (resolving a local tribal conflict through the use of his schooner's guns and leading an organized assault on a small native river fort), he is named governor of Sarawak, subject to the Sultan of Brunei. Within a few years, he has become the Rajah of Sarawak, an independent state, and established a dynasty that will last one hundred years. Godshalk has changed names and details while evoking a sense of the time, place, and atmosphere of the real events. The real adventurer was James Brooke; Ms. Godshalk's is named Gideon Barr. James Brooke's schooner was named the Royalist; Gideon Barr's is the Carolina (named after his mother). James Brooke was succeeded by his nephew, Charles Johnson, who took the last name Brooke. Gideon Barr is succeeded by his nephew Richard Hogg (Ms. Godshalk does not deal with the change of last name since her story focuses on Gideon's life and ends with his death). Although many of the events described actually took place, one cannot simply change the names and read the novel as history. James Brooke's mother died in 1844, two years after he became Rajah. Gideon's mother dies in Borneo much earlier while he is in grade school in England, providing him an emotional link to Borneo James Brooke did not have. James Brooke never married a European, although there is evidence that he was married to a Malay woman. Gideon Barr marries an Englishwoman to provide himself an "air of permanence" as Rajah and we see much of the later portion of the story through Amelia Barr's eyes. Amelia Barr is fictional, but largely based on Margaret Brooke, wife of the second Rajah, and her book "My Life in Sarawak". Gideon also maintains a Malayan mistress who provides a note of tragedy in the way her presence poisons Gideon and Amelia's relationship. On the other hand, the 30,000 pounds that Brooke/Barr inherited at his father's death which enabled him to acquire his schooner, the massacre of the sons of the Sultan of Brunei, the Chinese insurrection of 1857, and the commission of inquiry in Singapore all took place as described. The inquiry in Singapore was concerned with the battle of Labuan in which Brooke/Barr led British warships in a pre-emptive strike against a pirate fleet, breaking the power of the Bugis for the next twenty years. Brooke/Barr's enemies attempted to use this against him by claiming he had used British naval power to slaughter innocent natives. Godshalk uses Malay words extensively in the book. While she provides a brief Malay glossary as an appendix, it does not cover all the words she uses. Enjoyment of Kalimantaan will be enhanced if one knows the following Malay words which are not in the glossary provided by the author: {| class="wikitable" ! Malay ! English |- | abang | elder brother |- | adat | tradition, custom |- | ajar | to teach |- | berani, brani | brave, bold |- | besar | big, great |- | bulan | moon, month |- | bujang | bachelor |- | buaya | crocodile |- | bulbul | nightingale |- | datin | wife of a datu |- | datu | minister in traditional Malay government |- | dayang | woman of high rank |- | hantu, antu | ghost, spirit |- | hati | liver (as the seat of emotion, typically translated "heart") |- | ikan | fish |- | ikat | tie, knot |- | jaga | guard |- | jalan | street, road |- | kain | cloth (in the story, it describes a cloth belt) |- | kaya | wealthy, rich |- | kongsi | association, partnership |- | kris | stabbing dagger with flaming, or wavy, blade |- | kuli | unskilled laborer |- | lalang | a variety of long-bladed grass |- | lida | tongue |- | kecelakaan | misfortune, accident |- | merah | red |- | mudah | young, junior |- | orang | person |- | padang | field |- | padi | ricefield |- | pagi | morning |- | parang | cutlass, machete |- | payung (payong) | umbrella, parasol |- | pikul (picul) | 1) a unit of weight of 133 lb (60 kg); 2) to carry on one's shoulder |- | puasa | fast, to abstain from eating |- | rajput | princeling, diminutive of rajah |- | sakit | sick |- | selamat hari | literally, "good day". Typically, the expression selamat siang (good mid-day) is used |- | selamat pagi | good morning |- | seluar | trousers, pants |- | si | generic honorific, e.g. Si Tundo |- | stengah | half |- | sudah | already, denotes past tense |- | tahun | year |- | tanah | earth, soil |- | tiba | to arrive |- | tuah | old, elder, senior |- | tuak | toddy, palm-wine |- | tuan | lord, used as an honorific, as in Tuan Barr |- | tunku | overlord, governor |} Kampilan, actually a Filipino word, designates a long native sword.
164304	/m/015w2c	Creatures of Light and Darkness	Roger Zelazny	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Universe was once ruled by the god Thoth, who administered the different forces in the Universe to keep things in balance. In time, he delegated this administration to his "Angels" (other god-like beings), who were each in charge of different "stations", or forces in the Universe. Such stations included the House of the Dead, the House of Life, the House of Fire, and so on. At some point, Thoth had awakened a dormant, malevolent force on a distant planet. This dark force, called the Thing That Cries In The Night, is so powerful and malevolent that it nearly obliterated Thoth's wife and threatens to consume the galaxy. Thoth works to contain and destroy the creature, and in so doing, neglects his duties in maintaining the Universe. The Angels become rebellious and use the power vacuum to fight amongst themselves for dominance Thoth's son Set, who through an anomaly in Time is also his father, fights the creature across a devastated planet. Just as Set is about to destroy the creature, he is attacked by the Angel Osiris, who unleashes the Hammer That Smashes Suns, a powerful weapon that nearly kills Set and the creature. Thoth's brother, Typhon, who was helping Set in the battle, vanishes without a trace and is presumed dead. (Typhon appears as a black horse-shadow, without a horse to cast it. He contains within himself something called Skagganauk Abyss, which resembles a black hole, not a term in common use at the time.) The Thing That Cries In The Night survived the blast, and so Thoth, who has meanwhile been utterly overthrown by his Angels, has no choice but to contain the dark force until he can find a way to destroy it. He also revives the personality of his wife and keeps her safe on a special world known only to him, where the seas are above the atmosphere, not below them. He also scatters Set's weapons and armor across the Universe for safe-keeping in the event that Set can ever be found. Having been overthrown, he is now dubbed The Prince Who Was A Thousand by all in the Universe. Some of the surviving Angels either hide among the peoples of the Universe as mysterious "immortals", but others—Osiris and Anubis—take over the House of Life and the House of Death, respectively. Other stations are abandoned, and Osiris and Anubis are the only two powers in the Universe now. Osiris cultivates life where he can, while Anubis works to destroy it. Plenty and famine, proliferation and plague, overpopulation and annihilation, alternate in the Worlds of Life between the two Stations, much to the detriment of those who inhabit them. The geography of this universe contains several curious places: * The House of Life, ruled by Osiris, contains a room in which Osiris has reduced various people in his past into furnishings. These furnishings can speak (or scream) via wall-mounted speakers. ** A skull (with brain) for a paperweight. ** An enemy whose nervous system is woven into a rug. Osiris enjoys jumping on the rug. *In the House of the Dead, numerous dead people of the Six Intelligent Races lie on invisible catafalques until Anubis requires them to go through the motions of pleasure—eating, drinking, dancing, making love—without any real enjoyment. Anubis likes to watch. He also stages fights between champions from the Six Races: sometimes the victor gets a job—and a name. * The planet Blis is filled to bursting with people who are inexhaustibly fertile and do not know death: the whole planet is covered with 14 interlocking cities. Indeed, one man agrees to commit suicide in front of an audience, for money to be given to his family, because most people on Bliss have never seen a death. He does so by self-immolation, after receiving the Possibly Proper Death Litany (also called the Agnostic's Prayer). * On fog-shrouded D'donori, warlords raid each others solely to capture prisoners, who will be vivisected by the town scrier, or augur. By examining their entrails, he predicts the future and answers questions. * On an unnamed planet, the sea is above the atmosphere. Here, the Prince Who Was a Thousand keeps Nephthys, his wife, who was disembodied and cannot survive on a normal planet. * In a cave, a dog worries a glove that has seen better centuries. The three-headed canine is apparently Cerberus. * On another planet, drug-maddened spearmen protect and castrated priests worship a pair of old shoes.
165026	/m/015zpq	The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02_w8": "Feminist science fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Handmaid's Tale is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America. It was founded by a racist, homophobic, christian, nativist, theocratic-organized military coup as an ideologically driven response to the pervasive ecological, physical and social degradation of the country. Beginning with a staged terrorist attack (blamed on Islamic extremist terrorists) that kills the President and most of Congress, a movement calling itself the "Sons of Jacob" launches a revolution and suspends the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order. Taking advantage of electronic banking, they were quickly able to freeze the assets of all women and other "undesirables" in the country, stripping them of their rights. The new theocratic military dictatorship, styled "The Republic of Gilead", moved quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsorily Christian regime of Old Testament-inspired social and religious orthodoxy among its newly created social classes. In this society, almost all women are forbidden to read. The story is presented from the point of view of a woman called Offred (literally Of-Fred, however not a patronymic as some critics claim). The character is one of a class of individuals kept as concubines ("handmaids") for reproductive purposes by the ruling class in an era of declining births. The book is told in the first person by Offred, who describes her life during her third assignment as a handmaid, in this case to Fred (referred to as "The Commander"). If Offred fails to become pregnant on this, her third attempt, she will be declared an "unwoman" and discarded. Interspersed in flashbacks are portions of her life from before and during the beginning of the revolution, when she finds she has lost all autonomy to her husband, through her failed attempt to escape with her husband and daughter to Canada, to her indoctrination into life as a handmaid. Through her eyes, the structure of Gilead's society is described, including the several different categories of women and their circumscribed lives in the new theocracy. The Commander is a high-ranking official in Gilead. Although he is only supposed to have sexual intercourse with Offred during the period called "the Ceremony," a ritual at which his wife is present, he begins an illegal and ambiguous relationship with her, exposing Offred to many hidden or contraband aspects of the new society, such as fashion magazines and cosmetics. He takes her to a secret brothel run by the government, and he furtively meets with her in his study, where he allows her the contraband activity of reading. The Commander's wife also had secret interactions with Offred—she arranges for Offred to secretly have sex with her driver Nick in an effort to get her pregnant. The Commander's wife believes the Commander to be sterile, a subversive belief as official Gilead policy is that only women can be sterile. In exchange for Offred's cooperation, the Commander's wife gives her news of her daughter, whom Offred has not seen since she and her family were captured trying to escape Gilead. After Offred's initial meeting with Nick, they begin to rendezvous more frequently. Offred finds herself enjoying sex with Nick despite her indoctrination and her memories of her husband, and even goes as far as to divulge potentially dangerous information about her past. Through another handmaid, Ofglen, Offred learns of the Mayday resistance, an underground network with the intent of overthrowing Gilead. Shortly after Ofglen's disappearance (later discovered to be a suicide), the Commander's wife finds evidence of the relationship between Offred and the Commander, and Offred contemplates suicide. As the novel concludes, she is being taken away by men from the secret police, known as the Eyes, in a large black van under orders from Nick. Before she is taken away, Nick tells her that the men are part of the Mayday resistance and that Offred must trust him. Offred does not know if Nick is truly a member of the Mayday resistance or if he is a government agent posing as one, and she does not know if going with the men will result in her escape or her capture. She enters the van with a final thought on her uncertain future. The novel concludes with a metafictional epilogue that explains that the events of the novel occurred shortly after the beginning of what is called "the Gilead Period." The epilogue itself is a "transcription of a Symposium on Gileadean Studies written some time in the distant future (2195)", and according to the symposium's "keynote speaker" Professor Pieixoto, he and "a colleague", Professor Knotly Wade, discovered Offred's narrative recorded onto thirty cassette tapes. They created a "probable order" for these tapes and transcribed them, calling them collectively "the handmaid's tale". The epilogue implies that, following the collapse of the theocratic Republic of Gilead, a more equal society re-emerged with a return of the legal rights of women and also Native Americans. It is further suggested that freedom of religion was also re-established.
165167	/m/015_d4	My Left Foot	Christy Brown		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Brown begins his book by telling the reader about his early childhood. When he was four months old, Brown's mother was the first to notice that there was something wrong with his health. He could not hold his head upright or control his body movements. After seeking medical advice, the family's worst fears were confirmed: Christy was physically handicapped and suffered from an incurable affliction called cerebral palsy. His family, besides his mother, think he's an idiot. They tell his mother to give up. Although the doctors did not believe in Brown's mental intelligence, his mother did not lose faith in her son and supported him as a full member of the family. A transforming moment occurs in the young boy's life that proves him to be intelligent. He discovers that he can control his left foot and toes. At the age of five, he snatches a piece of yellow chalk from his sister with his left foot. He marks the letter "A" on the floor with his foot and the help of his mother. He had wanted to make, what he described as, "a wild sort of scribble with it on the slate". It is from this incident that the book received its title. In this moment, Brown had found a way to express himself since he could not speak like a healthy child. Throughout his childhood, Brown played with local children and with his siblings, assisted by a small cart that he called "Henry". As time went on, he became more introverted, as he began to realize that his handicap made him different from his family and friends and impeded his enjoyment of life. Through this struggle, he discovered his creative and artistic talents, becoming devoted to literature, writing and painting. He used his left foot to carry out these tasks. At the age of 18, Brown went to Lourdes in France. Here, he met individuals whose handicaps were even worse than his. For the first time in his life, he begins to experience energy and hope. He begins to accept himself as the person he is and do the best with what he has. He starts a new treatment for cerebral palsy, which led to the improvement of his speech and physical condition. In his teenage years, he met the Irish doctor Robert Collis. Collis had established a clinic for cerebral palsy patients and Brown was his very first patient at this clinic. Collis was also a noted author so he provided supervision of Brown's writing. This included two first drafts of this book and its final version. The autobiography makes reference to its own creation. The final pages tell of Collis reading the first chapter of the book to the audience at a fundraising event. The chapter was warmly received by those in attendance.
165356	/m/0160g0	Lady Windermere's Fan	Oscar Wilde			 The play opens in the morning room of the Windermeres' residence in London. It is tea time and Lady Windermere—who is preparing for her coming of age birthday ball that evening—has a visit from a friend, Lord Darlington. She shows off her new fan: a present from her husband. She explains to Lord Darlington that she is upset over the compliments he continues to pay to her, revealing that she is a Puritan and has very particular views about what is acceptable in society. The Duchess of Berwick calls and Lord Darlington leaves shortly thereafter. The Duchess informs Lady Windermere that her husband may be betraying her marriage by making repeated visits to another woman, a Mrs Erlynne, and possibly giving her large sums of money. These rumours have been gossip among London society for quite a while, though seemingly this is the first Lady Windermere has heard about. Following the departure of the Duchess, Lady Windermere decides to check her husband's bank book. She finds the book in a desk and sees that nothing appears amiss, though on returning she discovers a second bank book: one with a lock. After prying the lock open, she finds it lists large sums of money given to Mrs Erlynne. At this point, Lord Windermere enters and she confronts him. Though he cannot deny that he has had dealings with Mrs Erlynne, he states that he is not betraying Lady Windermere. He requests that she send Mrs Erlynne an invitation to her birthday ball that evening in order to help her back into society. When Lady Windermere refuses, he writes out an invitation himself. Lady Windermere makes clear her intention to cause a scene if Mrs Erlynne appears, to which Lord Windermere responds that it would be in her best interest not to do so. Lady Windermere leaves in disgust to prepare for the party, and Lord Windermere reveals in soliloquy that he is protecting Mrs Erlynne's true identity to save his wife extreme humiliation. Act II opens in the Windermeres' drawing room during the birthday ball that evening. Various guests enter, and make small-talk. Lord Windermere enters and asks Lady Windermere to speak with him, but she brushes him off. A friend of Lord Windermere's, Lord Augustus Lorton ("Tuppy"), pulls him aside to inquire about Mrs Erlynne, with whom he is enamoured. Lord Windermere reveals that there is nothing untoward in his relationship with Mrs Erlynne, and that she will be attending the ball, which comes as a great relief to Lord Augustus as he was worried about her social standing. After an unsuccessful attempt to make peace with his wife, Lord Windermere summons the courage to tell the truth to her, but at that moment Mrs Erlynne arrives at the party, where she is greeted coldly by Lady Windermere, spoiling his plan. Alone, Lady Windermere and Lord Darlington discuss Mrs Erlynne's attendance. Lady Windermere is enraged and confused and asks Lord Darlington to be her friend. Instead of friendship, Lord Darlington takes advantage of Lady Windermere's tragic state and professes his love to her, offering her his life, and inviting her to risk short-term social humiliation for a new life with him. Lord Darlington sets her an ultimatum to try to convince her to take action immediately, while still in a state of shock. Lady Windermere is shocked by the revelation, and finds she does not have the courage to take the offer. Heartbroken, Lord Darlington announces that he will be leaving the country the next day and that they will never meet again, and leaves. The guests begin to leave, and say their goodnights to Lady Windermere—some remarking positively about Mrs Erlynne. On the other side of the room Mrs Erlynne is discussing her plans with Lord Windermere; she intends to marry Lord Augustus and will require some money from Lord Windermere. Later, Lady Windermere, in spite of her earlier reluctance, decides to leave the house at once for Lord Darlington, and leaves a note to that effect for Lord Windermere. Mrs Erlynne discovers the note and that Lady Windermere has gone, and is curiously worried by this. While reading the note, a brief monologue reveals that she is in fact Lady Windermere's mother and made a similar mistake herself twenty years previously. She takes the letter and exits to locate Lady Windermere. Lady Windermere is alone in Lord Darlington's rooms unsure if she has made the right decision. Eventually, she resolves to return to her husband, but then Mrs Erlynne appears. Despite Mrs Erlynne's honest attempts to persuade her to return home to her husband, Lady Windermere is convinced her appearance is part of some plot conceived by her and Lord Windermere. Mrs Erlynne finally breaks Lady Windermere's resistance by imploring her to return for the sake of her young child, but as they begin to exit they hear Lord Darlington entering with friends. The two women hide. The men — who include Lord Windermere and Lord Augustus — have been evicted from their gentlemen's club at closing time and talk about women: mainly Mrs Erlynne. One of them takes notice of a fan lying on a table (Lady Windermere's) and presumes that Lord Darlington presently has a woman visiting. As Lord Windermere rises to leave, the fan is pointed out to him, which he instantly recognises as his wife's. He demands to know if Lord Darlington has her hidden somewhere. Lord Darlington refuses to co-operate, believing that Lady Windermere has come to him. Just as Lord Windermere is about to discover Lady Windermere's hiding place, Mrs Erlynne reveals herself instead, shocking all the men and allowing Lady Windermere to slip away unnoticed. The following quote is quite a popular tattoo among rebellious college freshmen with origins stemming from the Chicago region of the United States. The specific purpose of the tattoo is not known, but it is commonly placed on the spinal region in a vertical fashion. The next day, Lady Windermere is lying on the couch of the morning room anxious about whether to tell her husband what actually happened, or whether Mrs Erlynne will have already betrayed her secret. Her husband enters. He is sympathetic towards her and they discuss the possibility of taking a holiday to forget the recent incident. Lady Windermere apologises for her previous suspicion of her husband and behaviour at the party, and Lord Windermere makes clear his new contempt for Mrs Erlynne — warning his wife to stay away from her. Mrs Erlynne's arrival is announced along with the return of the fan, and despite her husband's protestations, Lady Windermere insists on seeing her. Mrs Erlynne enters and states that she shall be going abroad, but asks that Lady Windermere give her a photograph of herself and her son. Whilst Lady Windermere leaves the room to find one, the story is revealed: Mrs Erlynne left her husband for a lover shortly after Lady Windermere's birth. When her new lover abandoned her, Mrs Erlynne was left alone and in disrepute. More recently, using the assumed name of Mrs Erlynne, she has begun blackmailing Lord Windermere in order to regain her lifestyle and status, by threatening to reveal her true identity as Lady Windermere's shameful mother — not dead, as Lady Windermere believes. Lord Windermere laments not having told his wife the whole story at once and resolves to tell her the truth now. Mrs Erlynne forbids him to do so, threatening to spread shame far and wide if he does. Lady Windermere returns with the photograph which she presents to Mrs Erlynne, and requests that Lord Windermere check for the return of Mrs Erlynne's coach. Now that they are alone, and being owed a favour, Mrs Erlynne demands that she does not reveal the truth revealed the night before to her husband, and Lady Windermere promises to keep the secret. After Lord Windermere's return, Lord Augustus enters. He is shocked to see Mrs Erlynne after the events of the night before, but she requests his company as she heads to her carriage, and he soon returns to the Windermeres with news that she has satisfactorily explained the events of the evening, and that they are to marry and live out of England. Their marriage is restored, but both Lord and Lady Windermere keep their secrets.
165361	/m/0160h3	The Pearl	Gregory McElwain	1947	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Kino, a young, strong, poor pearl diver, lives in a small town, La Paz, with his wife Juana, and his baby son, Coyotito. When the baby, Coyotito, is stung by a scorpion, Kino must find a way to pay the town doctor so he will cure him. Shortly thereafter, Kino discovers an enormous pearl while out diving with Juana and he is ready to sell it for money to pay the doctor. Sadly, other forces work against Kino. Nearly as soon as he returns from sea, the whole town knows of the pearl. Everyone calls it "the pearl of the world," and many people begin to crave it. That very night Kino is attacked in his own home. Determined to get rid of the pearl, the following morning he takes it to the pearl buyers in town. Nevertheless, the pearl buyers all collude and refuse to pay him what he wants, so he decides to go to the capital city over the mountains to find a better price. However, Juana, seeing that the pearl brings darkness and greed, sneaks out of the house late at night to throw it back into the ocean. When Kino catches her, furious, he attacks her and leaves her on the beach. Returning to the house with the pearl, Kino is attacked by an unknown man whom he stabs and kills. The pearl is dropped and hidden from view. He thinks the men have taken the pearl, but Juana shows him that she has found it. When they go back to the town, they find their home has been set on fire. Kino and Juana spend the day hiding in the house of Kino's brother Juan Tomás and his wife and gathering provisions for their trip to the capital city. Only there can they hope to sell the pearl for a decent price and finally help Coyotito with the scorpion sting. Kino, Juana, and Coyotito leave in the dark of the night. After a brief rest in the morning, Kino spots trackers who are following them. Well aware that they will be unable to hide from the trackers, they begin hiking into the mountains. They find a cave near a natural water hole, where the exhausted family hides and waits for the trackers to catch up to them. The trackers find the water hole and decided to rest there for the night. Kino realizes that he must get rid of the trackers if they are to survive the trip to the capital. He's getting ready to attack when the men hear a cry like a baby's though they decide it's more like a coyote with a litter. One of the men fires his rifle in the direction of the crying, where Juana and Coyotito lie. Kino tackles the man down, takes the gun and kills all of the trackers. Kino then realizes that something is wrong, he climbs back up to the cave to discover that the man's shot had killed Coyotito. Kino and Juana then return to La Paz, mourning, no longer wanting the pearl, with Coyotito's dead body. Kino throws the pearl back into the ocean and it then sinks to the bottom of the sea.
165372	/m/0160lc	Barchester Towers	Anthony Trollope	1857	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Barchester Towers concerns the leading clergy of the imaginary cathedral city of Barchester. The much loved bishop having died, all expectations are that his son, Archdeacon Grantly, will succeed him. Instead, owing to the passage of the power of patronage to a new Prime Minister, a newcomer, the far more Evangelical Bishop Proudie, gains the see. His wife, Mrs Proudie, exercises an undue influence over the new bishop, making herself as well as the bishop unpopular with most of the clergy of the diocese. Her interference to veto the reappointment of the universally popular Mr Septimus Harding (protagonist of Trollope's earlier novel, The Warden) as warden of Hiram's Hospital is not well received, even though she gives the position to a needy clergyman, Mr Quiverful, with 14 children to support. Even less popular than Mrs Proudie is the bishop's newly appointed chaplain, the hypocritical and sycophantic Mr Obadiah Slope, who decides it would be expedient to marry Harding's wealthy widowed daughter, Eleanor Bold, and hopes to win her favour by interfering in the controversy over the wardenship. The Bishop, or rather Mr Slope under the orders of Mrs Proudie, also orders the return of the prebendary Dr Vesey Stanhope from Italy. Dr Stanhope has been there, recovering from a sore throat, for 12 years and has spent his time catching butterflies. With him to the Cathedral Close come his wife and his three adult children. The younger of Dr Stanhope's two daughters causes consternation in the Palace and threatens the plans of Mr Slope: Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni is a crippled serial flirt with a young daughter and a mysterious Italian husband whom she has left. Mrs Proudie is appalled by her and considers her an unsafe influence on her daughters, her servants and Mr Slope. Mr Slope is drawn like a moth to a flame and cannot keep away. Dr Stanhope's son Bertie is skilled at spending money but not at making it: his two sisters think marriage to rich Eleanor Bold will provide financial security for him. Summoned by Archdeacon Grantly to assist in the war against the Proudies and Mr Slope is the brilliant Reverend Francis Arabin. Mr Arabin is a considerable scholar, Fellow of Lazarus College at Oxford, who nearly followed his mentor John Henry Newman into the Roman Catholic Church. A massive misunderstanding occurs between Eleanor and her father, brother-in-law, sister and Mr Arabin: they all believe she intends to marry the oily chaplain Mr Slope. Mr Arabin is attracted to Eleanor but the efforts of Grantly and his wife to stop her marrying Slope also interfere with any relationship that might develop. At the Ullathorne garden party of the Thornes, matters come to a head. Mr Slope proposes to Mrs Bold and is slapped for his presumption; Bertie goes through the motions of a proposal to Eleanor and is refused with good grace, and the Signora has a chat with Mr Arabin. Mr Slope's double-dealings are now revealed and he is dismissed by Mrs Proudie and the Signora. The Signora drops a delicate word in several ears and with the removal of their misunderstanding Mr Arabin and Eleanor become engaged. The old Dean of the Cathedral having died, Mr Slope campaigns to become Dean, but Mr Harding is offered the preferment, with a beautiful house in the Close and of garden. However Mr Harding considers himself unsuitable and, with the help of the archdeacon, arranges that Mr Arabin be made Dean. With the Stanhopes' return to Italy, life in the Cathedral Close returns to its previous quiet and settled ways and Mr Harding continues his life of gentleness and music.
165667	/m/01628j	Our Man in Havana	Graham Greene	1958-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel, a black comedy, is set in Havana during the Fulgencio Batista regime. James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner retailer, is approached by Hawthorne, who offers him work for the British secret service. Wormold's wife had divorced him and now he lives with his sixteen year-old beautiful and devoutly Catholic daughter Milly. Since Wormold does not make enough money to pay Milly's extravagances, he accepts the offer. Because he has no information to send to London, Wormold fakes his reports using information found in newspapers and invents a fictitious network of agents. Some of the names in his network are those of real people (most of whom he has never met) and some are made up. Wormold only tells his friend and World War I veteran Dr. Hasselbacher about his spy work, hiding the truth from Milly. At one point, he decides to make his reports "exciting" and sends to London sketches of vacuum cleaner parts, telling them that those are sketches of a secret military installation in the mountains. In London nobody except Hawthorne, who alone knows Wormold sells vacuum cleaners, doubts this report. But Hawthorne does not report his doubts for fear of losing his job. In the light of the new developments, London sends Wormold a secretary, Beatrice Severn, and a radio assistant codenamed "C" with much spy paraphernalia. On arriving, Beatrice tells Wormold she has orders to take over his contacts. Her first request is to contact the pilot Raúl. Under pressure, Wormold develops an elaborate plan for his fictitious agent "Raúl" and then coincidentally, a real person with the same name is killed in a car accident. From this point, Wormold's manufactured universe overlaps with reality, with threats made to his "contacts". Together, Beatrice (who doesn't realise the contacts are imaginary) and Wormold try to save the real people who share names with his fictional agents. Meanwhile, London passes on the information that an unspecified enemy intends to poison Wormold at a trade association luncheon where Wormold is the speaker. It would seem that his information has worried local operatives who now seek to remove him - London is pleased by this, as it validates his work. Wormold goes to the function and sees Dr. Hasselbacher who loudly warns him of the threat. Wormold continues to dinner where he refuses the meal offered, and eats a second one. Across the table sits a fellow vacuum cleaner salesman, a man he'd met earlier called Carter, who offers him whiskey - suspicious, Wormold knocks over the glass, which is then drunk by a stray dog, which soon dies. In retaliation for the failure, Carter kills Dr. Hasselbacher at the club bar. Captain Segura, a military strongman who is in love with Milly and intends to marry her, has a list of all of the spies in Havana - a list that Wormold would like to send to London to partially redeem his employment. He tells Segura that he's going to his house to discuss Segura's plans about Milly. Once there, Wormold proposes they play a game of draughts using miniature bottles of Scotch and Bourbon as the game pieces, where each piece taken has to be drunk at once. Eventually, Segura (who is the much better player) ends up drunk and falls asleep. Wormold takes his gun and photographs the list using a microdot camera. To avenge the murder of Dr. Hasselbacher, Wormold follows Carter to a local brothel and kills him with Segura's pistol. Wormold sends the agent list as a microdot photograph on a postage stamp to London but it proves blank when processed. Wormold confesses everything to Beatrice, who reports him to London. They are summoned back to headquarters where Beatrice is posted to Jakarta and Wormold's situation is considered - despite the deception, some of his information is valuable and he needs to be silenced from speaking to the press so they offer Wormold a teaching post at headquarters and recommend him for an OBE. Afterwards, Beatrice comes to Wormold's hotel and they decide to marry. Milly is surprisingly accepting of their decision, and is to go to a Swiss finishing school paid for by Wormold's scam earnings.
165769	/m/0162_v	East Wind: West Wind	Pearl S. Buck	1930	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kwei-lan is put into an arranged marriage, but her husband is not what she expects. They do not live in her parents' courts (which was expected in China then). He is a medical doctor and does not seem to take interest in her until after she asks him to unbind her feet. After they bond, they have a son together. Kwei-lan has an older brother who has been living in [[United States for a few years. He has a friend write back to his family that he has married an American woman (his parents have already selected a Chinese woman for him to marry when he returns to China). Kwei-lan's brother and his wife Mary go to China to see if they can convince his family to accept her. The family will not accept her, and tell him to give her money and send her back to America. Kwei-lan's brother has not fulfilled his duty in his parents' eyes, and soon his wife Mary is pregnant with their first child. The climax is when Kwei-lan's mother dies, and the family tells him that if he does not send Mary back to America and marry his betrothed, then he will be disinherited. He refuses, leaves his family's courts for good, and live in an apartment near to Kwei-lan's house. The baby is born, and ties together his parents' hearts (and two cultures). pt:East Wind: West Wind
166589	/m/01677h	On Numbers and Games				 A game in the sense of Conway is a position in a contest between two players, Left and Right. Each player has a set of games called options to choose from in turn. Games are written {L|R} where L is the set of Left's options and R is the set of Right's options. At the start there are no games at all, so the empty set (i.e., the set with no members) is the only set of options we can provide to the players. This defines the game {|}, which is called 0. We consider a player who must play a turn but has no options to have lost the game. Given this game 0 there are now two possible sets of options, the empty set and the set whose only element is zero. The game {0|} is called 1, and the game {|0} is called -1. The game {0|0} is called , and is the first game we find that is not a number. All numbers are positive, negative, or zero, and we say that a game is positive if Left will win, negative if Right will win, or zero if the second player will win. Games that are not numbers have a fourth possibility: they may be fuzzy, meaning that the first player will win. * is a fuzzy game. A more extensive introduction to On Numbers and Games is available online.
167672	/m/016dz6	P.S. Your Cat Is Dead	James Kirkwood, Jr.			 Abandoned by his girlfriend on New Year's Eve, and still unaware that his beloved cat Tennessee (named after the playwright Tennessee Williams) has died in an animal clinic, hopeless New York actor Jimmy Zoole is feeling depressed and unstable when he happens across a cat burglar, Vito, in his apartment. Furious, he beats the stranger unconscious and ties him to his kitchen sink. Jimmy begins to torment his terrified captive; however, the unlikely pair soon establish a certain bond. Vito once had a wife who left him after she discovered he was gay, and took their child with her. Jimmy questions his own orientation as his relationship to Vito takes on a homosexual dimension, and decides to use his prisoner to exact revenge on his former lover. In the end, Jimmy and Vito, now working as a team, are able to sell a stash of stolen drugs and run away together.
167963	/m/016gg_	Treasure Island	Robert Louis Stevenson		{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is divided into 6 parts and 34 chapters: Jim Hawkins is the narrator of all except for chapters 16-18, which are narrated by Doctor Livesey. The novel opens in the seaside village of Black Hill Cove in south-west England (to Stevenson, in his letters and in the related fictional play Admiral Guinea, near Barnstaple, Devon) in the mid-18th century. The narrator, James "Jim" Hawkins, is the young son of the owners of the Admiral Benbow Inn. An old drunken seaman named Billy Bones becomes a long-term lodger at the inn, only paying for about the first week of his stay. Jim quickly realizes that Bones is in hiding, and that he particularly dreads meeting an unidentified seafaring man with one leg. Some months later, Bones is visited by a mysterious sailor named Black Dog. Their meeting turns violent, Black Dog flees and Bones suffers a stroke. While Jim cares for him, Bones confesses that he was once the mate of the late notorious pirate, Captain Flint, and that his old crewmates want Bones' sea chest. Some time later, another of Bones' crew mates, a blind man named Pew, appears at the inn and forces Jim to lead him to Bones. Pew gives Bones a paper. After Pew leaves, Bones opens the paper to discover it is marked with the Black Spot, a pirate summons, with the warning that he has until ten o'clock to meet their demands. Bones drops dead of apoplexy (in this context, a stroke) on the spot. Jim and his mother open Bones' sea chest to collect the amount due to them for Bones' room and board, but before they can count out the money that they are owed, they hear pirates approaching the inn and are forced to flee and hide, Jim taking with him a mysterious oilskin packet from the chest. The pirates, led by Pew, find the sea chest and the money, but are frustrated that there is no sign of "Flint's fist". Customs men approach and the pirates escape to their vessel (all except for Pew, who is accidentally run down and killed by the agents' horses).p. 27-8: "...{Pew} made another dash, now utterly bewildered, right under the nearest of the coming horses. The rider tried to save him, but in vain. Down went Pew with a cry that rang high into the night; and the four hoofs trampled and spurned him and passed by. He fell on his side, then gently collapsed upon his face, and moved no more." —Stevenson, R.L. Jim takes the mysterious oilskin packet to Dr. Livesey, as he is a "gentleman and a magistrate", and he, Squire Trelawney and Jim Hawkins examine it together, finding it contains a logbook detailing the treasure looted during Captain Flint's career, and a detailed map of an island with the location of Flint's treasure marked on it. Squire Trelawney immediately plans to commission a sailing vessel to hunt for the treasure, with the help of Dr. Livesey and Jim. Livesey warns Trelawney to be silent about their objective. Going to Bristol docks, Trelawney buys a schooner named the Hispaniola, hires a captain, Alexander Smollett to command her, and retains Long John Silver, a former sea cook and now the owner of the dock-side "Spy-Glass" tavern, to run the galley. Silver helps Trelawney to hire the rest of his crew. When Jim arrives in Bristol and visits Silver at the Spy-Glass, his suspicions are aroused: Silver is missing a leg, like the man Bones warned Jim about, and Black Dog is sitting in the tavern. Black Dog runs away at the sight of Jim, and Silver denies all knowledge of the fugitive so convincingly that he wins Jim's trust. Despite Captain Smollett's misgivings about the mission and Silver's hand-picked crew, the Hispaniola sets sail for the Caribbean. As they near their destination, Jim crawls into the ship's near-empty apple barrel to get an apple. While inside, he overhears Silver talking secretly with some of the crewmen. Silver admits that he was Captain Flint's quartermaster, that several others of the crew were also once Flint's men, and that he is recruiting more men from the crew to his own side. After Flint's treasure is recovered, Silver intends to murder the Hispaniolas officers, and keep the loot for himself and his men. When the pirates have returned to their berths, Jim warns Smollett, Trelawney and Livesey of the impending mutiny. On reaching Treasure Island, the majority of Silver's men go ashore immediately. Although Jim is not yet aware of this, Silver's men have demanded they seize the treasure immediately, discarding Silver's own more careful plan to postpone any open mutiny or violence until after the treasure is safely aboard. Jim lands with Silver's men, but runs away from them almost as soon as he is ashore. Hiding in the woods, Jim sees Silver murder Tom, a crewman loyal to Smollett. Running for his life, he encounters Ben Gunn, another ex-crewman of Flint's who has been marooned for three years on the island, but who treats Jim kindly. Meanwhile, Trelawney, Livesey and their loyal crewmen surprise and overpower the few pirates left aboard the Hispaniola. They row ashore and move into an abandoned, fortified stockade where they are joined by Jim Hawkins, who has left Ben Gunn behind. Silver approaches under a flag of truce and tries to negotiate Smollett's surrender; Smollett rebuffs him utterly, and Silver flies into a rage, promising to attack the stockade. "Them that die'll be the lucky ones," he famously threatens as he storms off. The pirates assault the stockade, but in a furious battle with losses on both sides, they are driven off. During the night Jim sneaks out, takes Ben Gunn's coracle and approaches the Hispaniola under cover of darkness. He cuts the ship's anchor cable, setting her adrift and out of reach of the pirates on shore. After daybreak, he manages to approach the schooner and board her. Of the two pirates left aboard, only one is still alive: the coxswain, Israel Hands, who has murdered his comrade in a drunken brawl and been badly wounded in the process. Hands agrees to help Jim helm the ship to a safe beach in exchange for medical treatment and brandy, but once the ship is approaching the beach Hands tries to murder Jim. Jim escapes by climbing the rigging, and when Hands tries to skewer him with a thrown dagger, Jim reflexively shoots Hands dead. Having beached the Hispaniola securely, Jim returns to the stockade under cover of night and sneaks back inside. Because of the darkness, he does not realize until too late that the stockade is now occupied by the pirates, and he is captured. Silver, whose always-shaky command has become more tenuous than ever, seizes on Jim as a hostage, refusing his men's demands to kill him or torture him for information. Silver's rivals in the pirate crew, led by George Merry, give Silver the Black Spot and move to depose him as captain. Silver answers his opponents eloquently, rebuking them for defacing a page from the Bible to create the Black Spot and revealing that he has obtained the treasure map from Dr. Livesey, thus restoring the crew's confidence. The following day, the pirates search for the treasure. They are shadowed by Ben Gunn, who makes ghostly sounds to dissuade them from continuing, but Silver forges ahead and locates where Flint's treasure is buried. The pirates discover that the cache has been rifled and the treasure is gone. The enraged pirates turn on Silver and Jim, but Ben Gunn, Dr. Livesey and Abraham Gray attack the pirates, killing two and dispersing the rest. Silver surrenders to Dr. Livesey, promising to return to his duty. They go to Ben Gunn's cave where Gunn has had the treasure hidden for some months. The treasure is divided amongst Trelawney and his loyal men, including Jim and Ben Gunn, and they return to England, leaving the surviving pirates marooned on the island. Silver, through the help of the fearful Ben Gunn, escapes with a small part of the treasure, three or four hundred guineas. Remembering Silver, Jim reflects that "I dare say he met his old Negress [wife], and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Captain Flint [his parrot]. It is to be hoped so, I suppose, for his chances of comfort in another world are very small."
168026	/m/016gsz	Seven Brothers	Aleksis Kivi		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At first, the brothers are not a particularly peaceful lot and end up quarreling with the local constable, jury, vicar, churchwarden, and teachers—not to mention their neighbours in Toukola village. No wonder young girls' mothers do not regard them as good suitors. When they are required to learn to read before they can accept church confirmation and therefore official adulthood—and marry—they escape. Eventually they end up moving to distant Impivaara in the middle of relative wilderness, but their first efforts are shoddy—one Christmas Eve they end up burning down their new house. Next spring they try again and manage to kill a hostile herd of bulls. Ten years of clearing forest for fields, hard work and hard drinking—and Simeoni’s delirium tremens—eventually make them change their ways. They learn to read on their own and eventually return to Jukola. In the end most of them become pillars of the community and family men. Still, the tone of the tale is not particularly moralistic.
168256	/m/016hw2	Steppenwolf	Hermann Hesse	1927	{"/m/02m4t": "Existentialism", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is presented as a manuscript by its protagonist, a middle-aged man named Harry Haller, who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. The acquaintance adds a short preface of his own and then has the manuscript published. The title of this "real" book-in-the-book is Harry Haller's Records (For Madmen Only). As it begins, the hero is beset by reflections on his being ill-suited for the world of everyday, regular people, specifically for frivolous bourgeois society. In his aimless wanderings about the city he encounters a person carrying an advertisement for a magic theatre who gives him a small book, Treatise on the Steppenwolf. This treatise, cited in full in the novel's text as Harry reads it, addresses Harry by name and strikes him as describing himself uncannily. It is a discourse of a man who believes himself to be of two natures: one high, the spiritual nature of man; while the other is low, animalistic, a "wolf of the steppes". This man is entangled in an irresolvable struggle, never content with either nature because he cannot see beyond this self-made concept. The pamphlet gives an explanation of the multifaceted and indefinable nature of every man's soul, which Harry is either unable or unwilling to recognize. It also discusses his suicidal intentions, describing him as one of the "suicides"; people who, deep down, knew they would take their own life one day. But to counter that, it hails his potential to be great, to be one of the "Immortals". The next day Harry meets a former academic friend with whom he had often discussed Oriental mythology, and who invites Harry to his home. While there, Harry is disgusted by the nationalistic mentality of his friend, who inadvertently criticizes a column Harry wrote. In turn, Harry offends the man and his wife by criticizing the wife's picture of Goethe, which Harry feels is too thickly sentimental and insulting to Goethe's true brilliance. This episode confirms to Harry that he is, and will always be, a stranger to his society. Trying to postpone returning home (where he has planned suicide), Harry walks aimlessly around the town for most of the night, finally stopping to rest at a dance hall where he happens on a young woman, Hermine, who quickly recognizes his desperation. They talk at length; Hermine alternately mocks Harry's self-pity and indulges him in his explanations regarding his view of life, to his astonished relief. Hermine promises a second meeting, and provides Harry with a reason to live (or at least a substantial excuse to continue living) that he eagerly embraces. During the next few weeks, Hermine introduces Harry to the indulgences of what he calls the "bourgeois". She teaches Harry to dance, introduces him to casual drug use, finds him a lover (Maria), and, more importantly, forces him to accept these as legitimate and worthy aspects of a full life. Hermine also introduces Harry to a mysterious saxophonist named Pablo, who appears to be the very opposite of what Harry considers a serious, thoughtful man. After attending a lavish masquerade ball, Pablo brings Harry to his metaphorical "magic theatre," where concerns and notions that plagued his soul disintegrate while he interacts with the ethereal and phantasmal. The Magic Theatre is a place where he experiences the fantasies that exist in his mind. They are described as a long horseshoe-shaped corridor that is a mirror on one side and a great many doors on the other. Then, Harry enters five of these labeled doors, each of which symbolizes a fraction of his life.
168425	/m/016jxr	Goldfinger	Ian Fleming	1959-03-23	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Fleming structured the novel in three sections—"Happenstance", "Coincidence" and" Enemy action"—which was how Goldfinger described Bond's three seemingly coincidental meetings with him. ;Happenstance Whilst changing planes in Miami after closing down a Mexican heroin smuggling operation, British Secret Service operative James Bond is asked by Junius Du Pont, a rich American businessman (whom he briefly met and gambled with in Casino Royale), to watch Auric Goldfinger, with whom Du Pont is playing Canasta in order to discover if he is cheating. Bond quickly realises that Goldfinger is indeed cheating with the aid of his female assistant, Jill Masterton, who is spying on DuPont's cards. Bond blackmails Goldfinger into admitting it and paying back DuPont's lost money; he also has a brief affair with Masterton. Back in London, Bond's superior, M, tasks him with determining how Goldfinger is smuggling gold out of the country: M also suspects Goldfinger of being connected to SMERSH and financing their western networks with his gold. Bond visits the Bank of England for a briefing with Colonel Smithers on the methods of gold smuggling. ;Coincidence Bond contrives to meet and have a round of golf with Goldfinger; Goldfinger attempts to win the golf match by cheating, but Bond turns the tables on him, beating him in the process. He is subsequently invited back to Goldfinger's mansion near Reculver where he narrowly escapes being caught on camera looking over the house. Goldfinger introduces Bond to his factotum, a Korean named Oddjob. Issued by MI6 with an Aston Martin DB Mark III, Bond trails Goldfinger as he takes his vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (adapted with armour plating and armour-plated glass) via air ferry to Switzerland, driven by Oddjob. Bond manages to trace Goldfinger to a warehouse in Geneva where he finds that the armour of Goldfinger's car is actually white-gold, cast into panels at his Kent refinery. When the car reaches Goldfinger's factory in Switzerland (Enterprises Auric AG), he recasts the gold from the armour panels into aircraft seats and fits them to the Mecca Charter Airline, in which he holds a large stake. The gold is finally sold in India at a vast profit. Bond foils an assassination attempt on Goldfinger by Jill Masterton's sister, Tilly, to avenge Jill's death at Goldfinger's hands: he had painted her body with gold paint, which killed her. Bond and Tilly attempt to escape when the alarm is raised, but are captured. ;Enemy action Bond is tortured by Oddjob when he refuses to confess his role in trailing Goldfinger. In a desperate attempt to survive being cut in two by a circular saw, Bond offers to work for Goldfinger, a ruse that Goldfinger initially refuses, but then accepts. Bond and Tilly are subsequently taken to Goldfinger's operational headquarters in a warehouse in New York City. They are put to work as secretaries for a meeting between Goldfinger and several gangsters (including the Spangled Mob and the Mafia), who have been recruited to assist in "Operation Grand Slam" – the stealing of the United States gold reserves from Fort Knox. One of the gang leaders, Helmut Springer, refuses to join the operation and is killed by Oddjob. Learning that the operation includes the killing of the inhabitants of Fort Knox by introducing poison into the water supply, Bond manages to conceal a capsule containing a message to Felix Leiter into the toilet of Goldfinger's private plane, where he hopes it will be found and sent to Pinkertons, where his friend and ex-counterpart Felix Leiter now works. Operation Grand Slam commences, and it turns out that Leiter has indeed found and acted on Bond's message. A battle commences, but Goldfinger escapes. Tilly, a lesbian, hopes that one of the gang leaders, Pussy Galore (leader of a gang of lesbian burglars), will protect her, but she is killed by Oddjob. Goldfinger, Oddjob and the mafia bosses all escape in the melee. Bond is drugged before his flight back to England and wakes to find he has been captured by Goldfinger, who has managed to hijack a BOAC jetliner. Bond manages to break a window, causing a depressurisation that sucks Oddjob out of the plane; he then fights and strangles Goldfinger. At gunpoint, he forces the crew to ditch in the sea near the Canadian coast, where they are rescued by a nearby weathership.
168590	/m/016kwb	Ironweed	William Kennedy	1983	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ironweed is set during the Great Depression and tells the story of Francis Phelan, an alcoholic vagrant originally from Albany, New York, who left his family after accidentally killing his infant son while he may have been drunk. The novel focuses on Francis's return to Albany, and the narrative is complicated by Phelan's hallucinations of the three people, other than his son, whom he killed in the past. The novel features characters that return in some of Kennedy's other books.
168639	/m/016l3b	Girl, Interrupted	Susanna Kaysen	1993	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 In April 1967, 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen is admitted to McLean Hospital, in Belmont, Massachusetts, after attempting suicide. She denies that it was a suicide attempt to a psychiatrist, who suggests she take time to regroup in McLean, a private mental hospital. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and her stay extends to 18 months. Fellow patients Polly, Cynthia, Lisa, Lisa Cody, Georgina and Daisy contribute to Susanna’s experiences at McLean as she describes their personal issues and how they come to cope with the time they must spend in the hospital. Susanna also introduces the reader to particular staff members, including Valerie, Dr. Wick and Mrs. McWeeney. Susanna reflects on the nature of her illness, including difficulty making sense of visual patterns, and suggests that sanity is a falsehood constructed to help the "healthy" feel "normal." She also questions how doctors treat mental illness, and whether they are treating the brain or the mind. During her stay, Susanna undergoes a period of depersonalization, where she bites open the flesh on her hand after she becomes terrified that she has "lost her bones." Also, during a trip to the dentist, Susanna becomes frantic after she wakes from the general anesthesia, when no one will tell her how long she was unconscious, and she fears that she has lost time. After leaving McLean, Susanna mentions that she kept in touch with Georgina and saw Lisa, who was about to board the subway with her son.
168676	/m/016l6w	Small Gods	Terry Pratchett	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Great God Om tries to manifest himself once more in the world, as the time of his eighth prophet is nigh. He is surprised, however, when he finds himself in the body of a tortoise, stripped of his divine powers. In the gardens of Omnia's capital he addresses the novice Brutha, the only one able to hear his voice. Om has a hard time convincing the boy of his godliness, as Brutha is convinced that Om can do anything he wants, and would not want to appear as a tortoise. Brutha is gifted with an eidetic memory and is therefore chosen by Vorbis, the head of the Quisition, to come along on a diplomatic mission to Ephebe. However, Brutha is also considered unintelligent, since he never learned to read, and rarely thinks for himself. With the help of Ephebe's Great Library, and the philosophers Didactylos, his nephew, Urn, and Abraxas, Om learns that Brutha is the only one left who believes in him. All others either just fear the Quisition's wrath or go along with the church out of habit. While in Ephebe, Brutha's memory aids an Omnian raid through the Labyrinth guarding the Tyrant's palace. While in the library of Ephebe, Brutha also memorizes many scrolls in order to protect Ephebeian knowledge as Omnian soldiers set fire to the building. Fleeing the ensuing struggle by boat, Brutha, Om and a severely injured Vorbis end up lost in the desert. Trekking home to Omnia, they encounter ruined temples as well as the small gods who are faint ghost-like beings yearning to be believed in to become powerful. Realizing his 'mortality' and how important his believers are to him, Om begins to care about them for the first time. While Brutha, Vorbis, and Om are in the desert, the Tyrant of Ephebe manages to regain control of the city and contacts other nations who have been troubled by Omnia's imperialistic interactions with the other countries around it. On the desert's edge, a recovered Vorbis attempts to finish off Om's tortoise form, abducts Brutha, and proceeds to become ordained as the Eighth Prophet. Brutha is to be publicly burned for heresy while strapped on a heatable bronze turtle when Om comes to the rescue, dropping from an eagle's claws onto Vorbis' head. As a great crowd witnesses this miracle they come to believe in Om and he becomes powerful again. Om manifests himself within the citadel and attempts to grant Brutha the honour of establishing the Church's new doctrines. However, Brutha does not agree with Om's new rule and explains that the Church should care for people while having a tolerance for other religious practices. Meanwhile, Ephebe has gained the support of several other nations and has sent an army against Omnia, establishing a beachhead near the citadel. Brutha attempts to establish diplomatic contact with the generals of the opposing army. Despite trusting Brutha, the leaders state they do not trust Omnia and that bloodshed is necessary. At the same time, Simony leads the Omnian military to the beachhead and uses Urn's machine of war in order to fight the Ephebians. While the fighting occurs on the beachhead, Om attempts to physically intervene, but Brutha demands he does not interfere with the actions of humans. Om becomes infuriated but obeys Brutha, but he travels to an area of the Discworld where gods gamble on the lives of humans in order to gain or lose belief. While there, Om manages to unleash his fury, even striking the other gods. This causes the soldiers to cease fighting on the battlefield, thinking it a sign from the heavens. In the book's conclusion Brutha becomes the Eighth Prophet, ending the Quisition and reforming the church to be more open-minded and humanist. Om also agrees to forsake the smiting of Omnian citizens for at least a hundred years. The last moments of the book see Brutha's death a hundred years to the day after Om's return to power and his journey across the ethereal desert towards judgement, accompanied by the spirit of Vorbis, whom Brutha found still in the desert and took pity on. It is also revealed that this century of peace was originally meant to be a century of war and bloodshed which the History Monk Lu-Tze changed to something he liked better.
168693	/m/016l9s	The Sum of Us	David Stevens			 The plot revolves around the comfortable relationship between widower Harry and his gay son Jeff and their individual searches for the right mate. Harry unconditionally loves his Rugby-playing son, and even takes an active part in Jeff's search for Mr. Right. Harry reveals that his mother (Jeff's grandmother) was a lesbian, perhaps accounting for his accepting attitude toward Jeff. Jeff's new boyfriend, Greg, who is closeted from his own homophobic father, finds it difficult to relate to Harry's well-meaning matchmaking ways. Greg is ejected from his own home by his father when he discovers his son's sexuality. Harry, via a video dating service, finds a woman that he likes, a divorcee named Joyce, who may not be so understanding after spying a gay magazine in Harry and Jeff's house. Unfortunately, Harry suffers a massive stroke and is disabled, leaving him unable to speak or walk. Jeff cares for him as best as he can, taking him to the park for an outing one day. Jeff and Greg meet up in the park and agree to try and rekindle their romance, while Jeff's Dad, although unable to speak, gives his overwhelming approval.
168698	/m/016lbm	Jingo	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 With the opening of the novel, the island of Leshp, which had been submerged under the Circle Sea for centuries, rises to the surface. Its position, exactly halfway between Ankh-Morpork and Al Khali (the capital of Klatch), makes the island a powerful strategical point for whoever lays claim to it, which both cities do. In Ankh-Morpork, a Klatchian Prince named Khufurah is parading through Ankh-Morpork, where he will be presented with a Degree in Sweet Fanny Adams (Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci), but an assassination attempt occurs, and the Prince is wounded. Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, begins investigating the crime, originally suspecting both a Klatchian named 71-Hour Ahmed and a senior Morporkian peer, Lord Rust, of being involved. The attempted assassination breaks off relations between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch as Prince Khufurah's brother effectively declares war on the city of Ankh-Morpork. At this point, Havelock Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, resigns—apparently of his own free will—and Lord Rust takes command of the city. Vetinari has refused to become involved in the war with Klatch, due to the fact Ankh-Morpork does not have an army to stand against any opposing forces (the reason given being that killing enemy soldiers makes it difficult to sell them things afterwards), but Rust declares Martial law and orders the city's noble families to revive their old private regiments. Vimes, refusing to follow Rust (whom he considers to be a pillock) stands down as Commander of the Watch. Captain Carrot resigns as well, as do Sergeant Colon, Sergeant Detritus and Corporal Angua. The idea of putting the watch under the command of Corporal Nobbs is rejected by the ruling Council of Guild leaders and the Watch is disbanded. Vimes then recruits the Watch into his own private army regiment, reasoning that, as an official noble, he is entitled to do so by law and by Lord Rust's command, with the group remaining independent as knights legally fall under command of the king or his duly-appointed representatives, neither of which exist in Ankh-Morpork. Angua, following 71-Hour Ahmed, is captured by the Klatchians and taken to Klatch. Carrot, rather than rush off to save her, reports back to Vimes, who gets his private army to head for Klatch. Meanwhile, Nobby and Sergeant Colon have been recruited by Vetinari and his pet inventor, Leonard of Quirm, on a secret mission of their own, unknown to Vimes. Vetinari, Leonard of Quirm, Colon, and Nobby end up in Leonard's "Going-Under-the-Water-Safely Device" and discover that Leshp is actually floating on top of a huge bubble of gas (suggested to be methane or some other poisonous gas), and that the gas is escaping from said bubble, meaning that Leshp will, ultimately, sink back under the sea again. Vimes catches up with 71-hour Ahmed and has, by this time, figured out that Ahmed is a fellow policeman. Ahmed and his band of Klatchian D'regs and Vimes army head towards Gebra, in Klatch, where the war is due to start. To help blend in, Vetinari, Nobby and Fred Colon get hold of some Klatchian clothing, though Nobby ends up wearing the costume of a dancing girl and gets in touch with his feminine side. The three also head to Gebra. Arriving at Gebra they discover that Carrot has convinced the two armies to get together and play a game of football (he has an inflatable football in his backpack for just such an emergency), Vimes is preparing to arrest the Klatchian Prince and Lord Rust for various breaches of the peace (such as being prepared for war) and 71-hour Ahmed is supporting him. Vetinari prevents an international incident by ostensibly declaring the surrender of Ankh-Morpork and offering war reparations. Vetinari is returned to Ankh-Morpork, under arrest and in disgrace, but as Leshp has vanished back under the sea again, the treaty was to be signed in a non-existent territory and thus the charge of treason is invalid. Sam Vimes is informed that Vetinari has been "reminded" that the old rank of Commander was the same as the old rank of Duke. He objects, claiming that only a King can make a Duke, but then realises that Carrot was speaking to Vetinari. Since Carrot is, of course, very much not the King of Ankh-Morpork his reminding of Vetinari is all that is required for Vimes to get his new position and rank. Vimes "accidentally" loses his "dis-organiser" (given to him by his wife) which kept giving him incorrect information. It is explained that, had Vimes reacted slightly differently in the beginning- staying in Ankh-Morpork rather than attempting to follow Ahmed and rescue Angua-, the whole history of the Ankh-Morpork VS Klatch war would have gone very differently. The dis-organiser meets Death at the end, but Death rejects it. Instead, he drops it into the sea, and it is swallowed by a shark where it may not have the most interesting calendar of events to deal with, but at least it finds things easy to organise.
168729	/m/016ljn	The Pursuit of Love	Nancy Mitford	1945	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrator is Fanny, whose mother (called "The Bolter" for her habit of serial monogamy) and father have left her to be brought up by her Aunt Emily and the valetudinarian Davey, whom Emily marries early in the novel. Fanny also spends holidays with her Uncle Matthew Radlett, Aunt Sadie, and numerous cousins at Alconleigh. Linda, the second Radlett daughter, is Fanny's best friend and the main character of the novel. The early chapters recount the Radlett children's bizarre upbringing, including their contrasting obsessions with hunting and preventing cruelty to animals, and the activities of their secret society, "the Hons." The Radlett daughters receive little in the way of formal education, and as Linda grows older she is increasingly consumed by a desire for romantic love and marriage. Louisa, the eldest Radlett child, makes her début and quickly becomes engaged to John Fort William, a Scottish peer more than twenty years her senior. Linda finds Lord Fort William an unromantic choice of husband, but is deeply jealous that Louisa is getting married. Linda becomes bored and depressed, awaiting her own coming-out party. During this time she makes friends with Lord Merlin, a neighbouring landlord who is a wealthy, charming aesthete with many fashionable friends. Merlin brings Tony Kroesig, heir to a wealthy banking family, as a last-minute guest to Linda's coming-out ball. Linda falls in love with Tony, but their relationship is rocky from the start. Uncle Matthew disapproves of Tony's German ancestry (he believes that all foreigners are fiends), and is furious when Linda and Fanny sneak away to Oxford to have luncheon with Tony. Linda and Tony eventually marry despite the strong disapproval of their families. Linda very quickly realizes that she has made a serious mistake, but she keeps up a pretence of having a happy marriage. Linda and Tony have one child, Moira, to whom Linda takes an instant dislike. Linda almost dies during Moira's birth, and her doctors strongly advise her to have no more children. Moira is soon abandoned to the care of her paternal grandparents. During this time, Fanny marries a young man called Alfred and begins a family of her own; she therefore sees Linda less frequently. After nine years of marriage, Linda leaves Tony for Christian Talbot, an ardent Communist. Christian is kind but vague, and ultimately uninterested in individuals, preferring to focus on the plight of the working class. Linda's divorce and remarriage cause a rift between her and her parents, but after some months they reconcile. Linda and Christian go to France to work with Spanish refugees in Perpignan during the Spanish Civil War, where they meet Linda's old friend Lavender Davis, an efficient young woman also volunteering to help the refugees. Linda realizes that Christian and Lavender are falling in love with one another and that they would be a better pairing. Linda decides to leave Christian and leave France. On the way back to England, Linda runs out of money in Paris and meets Fabrice de Sauveterre, a wealthy French duke. Linda becomes his mistress and lives with him in Paris for eleven months. During this time she cultivates a great interest in clothes, which Fabrice encourages and finances, but most of her happiness is the result of the fact that she has finally found the love of her life. When World War II breaks out, Fabrice persuades Linda to return to England alone, for he has work to do in the French Resistance. During the war, he is able to visit Linda in England once. She becomes pregnant. Meanwhile, for safety during the London Blitz, Fanny, Louisa, and their children are living at Alconleigh, along with Matthew, Sadie, Emily, Davey, "the Bolter," and her new lover Juan (whom Uncle Matthew calls "Gewan"). When Linda's house is bombed, she also goes to stay at Alconleigh. The Bolter sees Linda as a younger version of herself, which Linda resents, because she is certain that she has found the love of her life in Fabrice and will not run off from any more husbands. Fanny is also expecting a baby, and she and Linda give birth to their sons on the same day. Linda dies in childbirth, as the doctors had warned; around this same time, Fabrice is killed in the war. Fanny and her husband adopt Linda's child and name him Fabrice. Mitford wrote sequels to the novel, Love in a Cold Climate (1949) and Don't Tell Alfred (1960).
170003	/m/016swv	Moonraker	Ian Fleming	1955-04-05	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 British Secret Service agent James Bond is asked by his superior, M, to join him for the evening at M's club, Blades, where one of the members, the multi-millionaire businessman Sir Hugo Drax, is winning a lot of money playing bridge, seemingly against the odds. M suspects Drax of cheating, but although claiming indifference, he is concerned why a multi-millionaire and national hero, such as Sir Hugo, would cheat at a card game. Bond confirms Drax's deception and manages to "cheat the cheater"—aided by a cocktail of powdered Benzedrine mixed with non-vintage champagne and a deck of stacked cards—winning £15,000 and infuriating the out-smarted Drax. Drax is the product of a mysterious background, unknown even to himself (allegedly). As a supposed British soldier in World War II, he was badly injured and stricken with amnesia in the explosion of a bomb planted by a German saboteur at a British field headquarters. After extensive rehabilitation in an army hospital, however, he eventually returned home to become a major aerospace industrialist. After building his fortune and establishing himself in business and society, Drax started building the "Moonraker", Britain's first nuclear missile project, intended to defend the United Kingdom against its Cold War enemies (c.f. the real Blue Streak missile). The Moonraker rocket was to be an upgraded V-2 rocket using liquid hydrogen and fluorine as propellants; to withstand the ultra-high combustion temperatures of its engine, it used columbite, in which Drax had a monopoly. Because the rocket's engine could withstand higher heat, the Moonraker was able to use more powerful fuels, greatly expanding its effective range. After a Ministry of Supply security officer working at the project is shot dead, M assigns Bond to replace him and also to investigate what has been going on at the missile-building base, located between Dover and Deal on the south coast of England. All of the rocket scientists working on the project were German. At his post on the complex, Bond meets Gala Brand, a beautiful Special Branch agent working undercover as Personal Assistant to Drax. He also uncovers clues concerning his predecessor's death, concluding that the former Security Chief may have been killed for witnessing a submarine off the coast. Drax's henchman Krebs is caught by Bond snooping through his room. Later, an attempted assassination nearly kills Bond and Gala under a landslide, as they swim beneath the Dover cliffs. Drax takes Gala to London where she discovers the truth about the Moonraker (by comparing her own launch trajectory figures with those in a notebook picked from Drax's pocket), but she is caught. She soon finds herself captive at a secret radio station (intended to serve as a beacon for the missile's guidance system) in the heart of London. While attempting to rescue her in a car chase, Bond is also captured. Drax tells Bond that he was never a British soldier and has never suffered from amnesia. In fact, he was a German commander of a Skorzeny commando unit and the saboteur (in British uniform) Graf Hugo von der Drache, whose unit had placed the car bomb at the army field headquarters, only to be injured himself in the detonation. The amnesia story was simply a cover he used while recovering in hospital, in order to avoid allied retribution, although it would lead to a whole new British identity. Drax, however, remained a dedicated Nazi, bent on revenge against England for the wartime defeat of his Fatherland and his prior history of social slights suffered as a youth growing up in an English boarding school before the war. He now means to destroy London with the very missile he has constructed for Britain, by means of a Soviet-supplied nuclear warhead that has been secretly fitted to the Moonraker. He also plans to play the stock market the day before to make a huge profit from the imminent disaster. Brand and Bond are imprisoned under the Moonraker's booster engines so as to leave no trace of them once the Moonraker is launched. Before this first (supposedly un-armed) test firing, Bond and Gala escape. Gala gives Bond the proper coordinates to redirect the gyros and send the Moonraker into the sea. Having been in collaboration with Soviet Intelligence all along, Drax and his henchman attempt to escape by Russian submarine—only to be killed as the vessel flees through the very waters onto which the Moonraker has been re-targeted. After their de-briefing at headquarters, Bond meets up with Gala, expecting her company—but they part ways after Gala reveals that she is engaged to be married to a fellow Special Branch officer.
171648	/m/0171h9	Sophie's Choice	William Styron	1979	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sophie's Choice is narrated by Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel. As the story begins, in the early summer of 1947, Stingo (like Styron, a writer and Duke graduate) has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding house in Brooklyn, where he hopes to devote some months to his writing. While he is working on his novel, he is drawn into the lives of the lovers Nathan Landau and Sophie Zawistowska, fellow boarders at the house, who are involved in an intense and difficult relationship. Sophie is a beautiful, Polish-Catholic survivor of the concentration camps of World War II, and Nathan is a Jewish-American – and, purportedly, a genius. Although Nathan claims to be a Harvard graduate and a cellular biologist with a pharmaceutical company, it is later revealed that this is a fabrication. Almost no one – including Sophie and Stingo – knows that Nathan is a paranoid schizophrenic. However, Sophie is aware that Nathan is self-medicating with drugs, including cocaine and benzadrine, that he supposedly obtains at Pfizer, his employer. This means that although he sometimes behaves quite normally and generously, there are times that he becomes frighteningly jealous, violent, abusive and delusional. As the story progresses, Sophie tells Stingo of her past, of which she has never before spoken. She describes her violently anti-Semitic father, a law professor in Krakow; her unwillingness to help him spread his ideas; her arrest by the Nazis for smuggling food to her mother, who was on her deathbed; and particularly, her brief stint as a stenographer-typist in the home of Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz, where she was interned. She specifically relates her attempts to seduce Höss in an effort to persuade him that her blond, blue-eyed, German-speaking son should be allowed to leave the camp and enter the Lebensborn program, in which he would be raised as a German child. She failed in this attempt and, ultimately, never learned of her son's fate. Only at the end of the book does the reader also learn what became of Sophie's daughter, named Eva. As Nathan's "outbreaks" become more violent and abusive, Stingo receives a summons from Nathan's brother, Larry. He learns that Nathan is schizophrenic and is not a cellular biologist, although, as Larry says, "he could have been fantastically brilliant at anything he might have tried out … But he never got his mind in order." Nathan's delusions have led him to believe that Stingo is having an affair with Sophie, and he threatens to kill them both. Sophie and Stingo attempt to flee to a peanut farm in Virginia which Stingo's father has inherited. On the way there, Sophie reveals her deepest, darkest secret: on the night that she arrived at Auschwitz, a sadistic doctor made her choose which of her two children would die immediately by gassing and which would continue to live, albeit in the camp. Of her two children, Sophie chose to sacrifice her seven-year-old daughter, Eva, in a heart-rending decision that has left her in mourning and filled with a guilt that she cannot overcome. By now alcoholic and deeply depressed, she is clearly willing to self-destruct with Nathan, who has already tried to persuade her to commit suicide with him. Despite the fact that Stingo proposes marriage to her, and despite a shared night that relieves Stingo of his virginity and fulfills many of his sexual fantasies, Sophie disappears, leaving only a note in which she says that she must return to Nathan. Upon arriving back in Brooklyn, Stingo discovers that Sophie and Nathan have committed suicide by ingesting sodium cyanide. Stingo is devastated.
172010	/m/0173pn	Season of the Jew	Maurice Shadbolt	1987-02-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In this story of New Zealand and Te Kooti's War during the year beginning November 10, 1868, the narrative coalesces around the development of its protagonist, George Fairweather, who in Shadbolt’s historical epilogue is described as “A composite character ... yet still far from fictional.” Fairweather is a competent but cynical former British officer in his early forties, who leaves the service under a cloud, turns landscape painter and cultivates an air of worldly detachment. Yet he finds himself drawn by love and humanity back into the world of colonial New Zealand and the maelstrom of the Māori Wars, not altogether disagreeably, as he finds to his surprise. Pursuing Te Kooti as an officer and commander in the colonial militia, while perfecting his ability to destroy Te Kooti’s rebellious “Jews” Fairweather paradoxically finds his feelings of humanity expanding to include Englishmen, colonials and Māoris, coupled with a growing resentment of racism and injustice. In the end he almost throws his future away by struggling to save a Māori boy, Hamiora (reminiscent of Melville’s Billy Budd), unjustly charged with treason. With the hanging of Hamiora, November 10, 1869, and the conclusion of Fairweather’s desperate attempts first to prevent and then to mitigate it, the book ends. The problem of Te Kooti is not resolved, except in the brief epilogue, further revealing the depths of Fairweather’s (and Shadbolt’s) ambivalence about the historical figure of Te Kooti, Fairweather’s hated and admired nemesis and one-time friend.
173601	/m/017d_b	The White Plague	Frank Herbert	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When an IRA bomb goes off, the wife and children of molecular biologist John Roe O'Neill are killed on May 20, 1996. Driven halfway insane by loss, his mind fragments into several personalities that carry out his plan for him. He plans a genocidal revenge and creates a plague that kills women. O'Neill then releases it in Ireland (for supporting the terrorists), England (for oppressing the Irish and giving them a cause), and Libya (for training said terrorists); he demands that the governments of the world send all citizens of those countries back to their countries, and that they quarantine those countries and let the plague run its course, so they will lose what he has lost; if they do not, he has more plagues to release. After releasing the plague, he goes to Ireland to hide, planning to offer his services as a molecular biologist in the hopes of sabotaging whatever work is done there on finding a cure. When he arrives in Ireland, he is suspected of being O'Neill (whom the investigatory agencies of the world have deduced is responsible). To travel to the lab at Killaloe, he is forced to walk with a priest, a boy who has taken a vow of silence due to the death of his mother, and Joseph Herity, the IRA bomber who detonated the explosive that killed O'Neill's wife and children; their purpose is to confirm his identity, either through Herity's indirect questioning, or the possibility that he will confess to the priest when confronted with the pain his revenge has caused for the boy. Meanwhile, law and order have broken down in England and Ireland, and the old Irish ways are coming back. Local IRA thugs appoint themselves "kings of old", and others recreate ancient Celtic pagan religions centered on the rowan tree. The IRA has effective control of Ireland, but as the governments of the world grow certain that O'Neill is there and essentially in custody, they consider wiping out the three targeted countries to end the lingering threat.
173974	/m/017gsf	The Pilgrim's Progress	John Bunyan	1678-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Christian, an everyman character, is the protagonist of the allegory, which centres itself in his journey from his hometown, the "City of Destruction" ("this world"), to the "Celestial City" ("that which is to come": Heaven) atop Mt. Zion. Christian is weighed down by a great burden, the knowledge of his sin, which he believed came from his reading "the book in his hand," (the Bible). This burden, which would cause him to sink into Tophet (hell), is so unbearable that Christian must seek deliverance. He meets Evangelist as he is walking out in the fields, who directs him to the "Wicket Gate" for deliverance. Since Christian cannot see the "Wicket Gate" in the distance, Evangelist directs him to go to a "shining light," which Christian thinks he sees. Christian leaves his home, his wife, and children to save himself: he cannot persuade them to accompany him. Obstinate and Pliable go after Christian to bring him back, but Christian refuses. Obstinate returns disgusted, but Pliable is persuaded to go with Christian, hoping to take advantage of the paradise that Christian claims lies at the end of his journey. Pliable's journey with Christian is cut short when the two of them fall into the Slough of Despond. It is there that Pliable abandons Christian after getting himself out. After struggling to the other side of the bog, Christian is pulled out by Help, who has heard his cries. On his way to the Wicket Gate, Christian is diverted by Mr. Worldly Wiseman into seeking deliverance from his burden through the Law, supposedly with the help of a Mr. Legality and his son Civility in the village of Morality, rather than through Christ, allegorically by way of the Wicket Gate. Evangelist meets the wayward Christian as he stops before Mount Sinai on the way to Legality's home. It hangs over the road and threatens to crush any who would pass it. Evangelist shows Christian that he had sinned by turning out of his way, but he assures him that he will be welcomed at the Wicket Gate if he should turn around and go there, which Christian does. At the Wicket Gate begins the "straight and narrow" King's Highway, and Christian is directed onto it by the gatekeeper Good Will. In the Second Part, Good-will is shown to be Jesus himself. To Christian's query about relief from his burden, Good Will directs him forward to "the place of deliverance." Christian makes his way from there to the House of the Interpreter, where he is shown pictures and tableaux that portray or dramatize aspects of the Christian faith and life. Roger Sharrock denotes them "emblems." From the House of the Interpreter, Christian finally reaches the "place of deliverance" (allegorically, the cross of Calvary and the open sepulcher of Christ), where the "straps" that bound Christian's burden to him break, and it rolls away into the open sepulchre. This event happens relatively early in the narrative: the immediate need of Christian at the beginning of the story being quickly remedied. After Christian is relieved of his burden, he is greeted by three shining ones, who give him the greeting of peace, new garments, and a scroll as a passport into the Celestial City — these are allegorical figures indicative of Christian Baptism. Atop the Hill of Difficulty, Christian makes his first stop for the night at the House Beautiful, which is an allegory of the local Christian congregation. Christian spends three days here, and leaves clothed with armour (Eph. 6:11-18), which stands him in good stead in his battle against Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation. This battle lasts "over half a day" until Christian manages to wound Apollyon with his two-edged sword (a reference to the Bible, Heb. 4:12). "And with that Apollyon spread his dragon wings and sped away." As night falls Christian enters the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When he is in the middle of the valley amidst the gloom and terror he hears the words of the Twenty-third Psalm, spoken possibly by his friend Faithful: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (Psalm 23:4.) As he leaves this valley the sun rises on a new day. Just outside the Valley of the Shadow of Death he meets Faithful, also a former resident of the City of Destruction, who accompanies him to Vanity Fair, where both are arrested and detained because of their disdain for the wares and business of the fair. Faithful is put on trial, and executed as a martyr. Hopeful, a resident of Vanity, takes Faithful's place to be Christian's companion for the rest of the way. Along a rough stretch of road, Christian and Hopeful leave the highway to travel on the easier By-Path Meadow, where a rainstorm forces them to spend the night. In the morning they are captured by Giant Despair, who takes them to his Doubting Castle, where they are imprisoned, beaten and starved. The giant wants them to commit suicide, but they endure the ordeal until Christian realizes that a key he has, called Promise, will open all the doors and gates of Doubting Castle. Using the key, they escape. The Delectable Mountains form the next stage of Christian and Hopeful's journey, where the shepherds show them some of the wonders of the place also known as "Immanuel's Land". As at the House of the Interpreter pilgrims are shown sights that strengthen their faith and warn them against sinning. On Mount Clear they are able to see the Celestial City through the shepherd's "perspective glass," which serves as a telescope. This device is given to Mercy in the second part at her request. On the way, Christian and Hopeful meet a lad named Ignorance, who believes that he will be allowed into the Celestial City through his own good deeds rather than as a gift of God's grace. Christian and Hopeful meet up with him twice and try to persuade him to journey to the Celestial City in the right way. Ignorance persists in his own way that leads to his being cast into hell. After getting over the River of Death on the ferry boat of Vain Hope without overcoming the hazards of wading across it, Ignorance appears before the gates of Celestial City without a passport, which he would have acquired had he gone into the King's Highway through the Wicket Gate. The Lord of the Celestial City orders shining ones to take Ignorance to one of the byways to hell and throw him in. Christian and Hopeful make it through the dangerous Enchanted Ground into the Land of Beulah, where they ready themselves to cross the River of Death on foot to Mount Zion and the Celestial City. Christian has a rough time of it, but Hopeful helps him over; and they are welcomed into the Celestial City. The Second Part of The Pilgrim's Progress presents the pilgrimage of Christian's wife, Christiana; their sons; and the maiden, Mercy. They visit the same stopping places that Christian visited, with the addition of Gaius' Inn between the Valley of the Shadow of Death and Vanity Fair; but they take a longer time in order to accommodate marriage and childbirth for the four sons and their wives. The hero of the story is Greatheart, the servant of the Interpreter, who is a pilgrim's guide to the Celestial City. He kills four giants and participates in the slaying of a monster that terrorizes the city of Vanity. The passage of years in this second pilgrimage better allegorizes the journey of the Christian life. By using heroines, Bunyan, in the Second Part, illustrates the idea that women as well as men can be brave pilgrims. Alexander M. Witherspoon, professor of English at Yale University, writes in a prefatory essay: Part II, which appeared in 1684, is much more than a mere sequel to or repetition of the earlier volume. It clarifies and reinforces and justifies the story of Part I. The beam of Bunyan's spotlight is broadened to include Christian's family and other men, women, and children; the incidents and accidents of everyday life are more numerous, the joys of the pilgrimage tend to outweigh the hardships; and to the faith and hope of Part I is added in abundant measure that greatest of virtues, charity. The two parts of The Pilgrim's Progress in reality constitute a whole, and the whole is, without doubt, the most influential religious book ever written in the English language. This is exemplified by the frailness of the pilgrims of the Second Part in contrast to those of the First: women, children, and physically and mentally challenged individuals. When Christiana's party leaves Gaius's Inn and Mr. Feeble-mind lingers in order to be left behind, he is encouraged to accompany the party by Greatheart: But brother ... I have it in commission, to comfort the feeble-minded, and to support the weak. You must needs go along with us; we will wait for you, we will lend you our help, we will deny ourselves of some things, both opinionative and practical, for your sake; we will not enter into doubtful disputations before you, we will be made all things to you, rather than you shall be left behind. When the pilgrims end up in the Land of Beulah, they cross over the River of Death by appointment. As a matter of importance to Christians of Bunyan's persuasion reflected in the narrative of The Pilgrim's Progress, the last words of the pilgrims as they cross over the river are recorded. The four sons of Christian and their families do not cross, but remain for the support of the church in that place.
174237	/m/017jbn	The Santaroga Barrier	Frank Herbert	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A psychologist, Gilbert Dasein, is hired by corporate interests to investigate a town in a valley where marketing seems totally ineffective: Outside businesses are allowed in, but wither quickly for lack of business. Santarogans aren't hostile, they just won't shop there; neither are they xenophobic, instead appearing maddeningly self-satisfied with their quaint, local lifestyle. Adding an element of danger, the last few psychologists sent in have all died in accidents that are (seemingly) perfectly plausible. Complicating matters further still, the psychologist's college girlfriend, Jenny, has returned to Santaroga. With this in mind, Dasein cautiously enters the town and quickly discovers 'Jaspers', an additive to the food and drink commonly ingested in Santaroga that seems to imbue the consumer with greater health and an expanded mind. Those who consume it don't become psychic; instead, they're simply far more lucid than the average citizen of the U.S, although there are numerous hints at a group mind operating at a subconscious level. Their newspapers are vaguely subversive with their folksy, enlightened commentary on world affairs; their dinner conversations knowledgeably reference great theories of psychology, politics, and cognitive science. Soon, Dasein is having narrow misses with perfectly plausible accidents: A boy playing with a bow and arrow releases it; the lift under his car in a garage collapses; a waitress in a diner accidentally uses insecticide rather than sugar for his coffee. Knowing that Jaspers creates exceptionally perceptive, penetrating individual minds, Dasein realizes that he has offended a communal id that feels threatened by him. As Jenny tries to convince him to settle down with her there, he wonders whether he'll live long enough to decide.
174471	/m/017kkg	Orlando Furioso	Ludovico Ariosto	1516		 The action of Orlando Furioso takes place against the background of the war between the Christian emperor Charlemagne and the Saracen King of Africa, Agramante, who has invaded Europe to avenge the death of his father Traiano. Agramante and his allies – who include Marsilio, the King of Spain, and the boastful warrior Rodomonte – besiege Charlemagne in Paris. Meanwhile Orlando, Charlemagne's most famous paladin, has been tempted to forget his duty to protect the emperor through his love for the pagan princess Angelica. At the beginning of the poem, Angelica escapes from the castle of the Bavarian Duke Namo, and Orlando sets off in pursuit. The two meet with various adventures until Angelica saves a wounded Saracen knight, Medoro, falls in love, and elopes with him to Cathay. When Orlando learns the truth, he goes mad with despair and rampages through Europe and Africa destroying everything in his path. The English knight Astolfo journeys to Ethiopia on the hippogriff to find a cure for Orlando's madness. He flies up to the moon (in Elijah's flaming chariot no less) where everything lost on earth is to be found, including Orlando's wits. He brings them back in a bottle and makes Orlando sniff them, thus restoring him to sanity. (At the same time Orlando falls out of love with Angelica, as the author explains that love is itself a form of insanity.) Orlando joins with Brandimart and Oliver to fight Agramante, Sobrino and Gradasso on the island of Lampedusa. There Orlando kills King Agramante. Another important plotline involves the love between the female Christian warrior Bradamante and the Saracen Ruggiero. They too have to endure many vicissitudes. Ruggiero is taken captive by the sorceress Alcina and has to be freed from her magic island. He also has to avoid the enchantments of his foster father, the wizard Atlante, who does not want him to fight. Finally, Ruggiero converts to Christianity and marries Bradamante. Rodomonte appears at the wedding feast and accuses him of being a traitor to the Saracen cause, and the poem ends with Ruggiero slaying Rodomonte in single combat. Ruggiero and Bradamante are the ancestors of the House of Este, Ariosto's patrons, whose genealogy he gives at length in canto 3 of the poem. The epic contains many other characters, including Orlando's cousin, the paladin Rinaldo, who is also in love with Angelica; the thief Brunello; and the tragic heroine Isabella.
174523	/m/017kwb	The Anatomy of Melancholy	Robert Burton	1621	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Burton defined his subject as follows: In attacking his stated subject, Burton drew from nearly every science of his day, including psychology and physiology, but also astronomy, meteorology, and theology, and even astrology and demonology. Much of the book consists of quotations from various ancient and mediæval medical authorities, beginning with Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen. Hence the Anatomy is filled with more or less pertinent references to the works of others. A competent Latinist, Burton also included a great deal of Latin poetry in the Anatomy, and many of his inclusions from ancient sources are left untranslated in the text. The Anatomy of Melancholy is an especially lengthy book, the first edition being a single quarto volume nearly 900 pages long; subsequent editions were even longer. The text is divided into three major sections plus an introduction, the whole written in Burton's sprawling style. Characteristically, the introduction includes not only an author's note (titled "Democritus Junior to the Reader"), but also a Latin poem ("Democritus Junior to His Book"), a warning to "The Reader Who Employs His Leisure Ill", an abstract of the following text, and another poem explaining the frontispiece. The following three sections proceed in a similarly exhaustive fashion: the first section focuses on the causes and symptoms of "common" melancholies, while the second section deals with cures for melancholy, and the third section explores more complex and esoteric melancholies, including the melancholy of lovers and all varieties of religious melancholies. The Anatomy concludes with an extensive index (which, many years later, The New York Times Book Review called "a readerly pleasure in itself"). Most modern editions include many explanatory notes, and translate most of the Latin.
175416	/m/017q_l	Piers Plowman	William Langland			 The poem—part theological allegory, part social satire—concerns the narrator's intense quest for the true Christian life, from the perspective of mediæval Catholicism. This quest entails a series of dream-visions and an examination into the lives of three allegorical characters, Dowel ("Do-Well"), Dobet ("Do-Better"), and Dobest ("Do-Best"). The poem begins in the Malvern Hills in Malvern, Worcestershire. A man named Will falls asleep and has a vision of a tower set upon a hill and a fortress (donjon) in a deep valley; between these symbols of heaven and hell is a "fair field full of folk", representing the world of mankind. In the early part of the poem Piers, the humble plowman of the title, appears and offers himself as the narrator's guide to Truth. The latter part of the work, however, is concerned with the narrator's search for Dowel, Dobet and Dobest.
175547	/m/017rhx	Red Storm Rising	Tom Clancy	1986-08	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Islamic terrorists from Azerbaijan destroy a Soviet oil-production facility at Nizhnevartovsk, Russia, crippling the USSR's oil production and threatening to wreck the nation's economy. Contemplating concessions to the West to survive the crisis, the Politburo instead decides to seize the oil fields in the Persian Gulf by military force. According to the Carter Doctrine, any attack on the Gulf is an attack on strategic interests to the United States, necessitating a military response. To prevent a combined reaction by NATO, the Soviets launch a KGB operation to carry out a false flag operation framing West Germany for an unprovoked attack on the USSR; afterwards, the Soviets plan to invade Europe in response to that “attack”. With West Germany occupied, and NATO defeated, the Soviets hope that the U.S. will not rescue the Arab oil states when it attacks them, as it can meet its oil needs with Western sources. The Politburo arranges a bomb blast in the Kremlin that kills some visiting schoolchildren, blaming a West German exile for the attack. The KGB operation has limited success: the planned attack on West Germany is detected when a Spetsnaz major is captured in Aachen. The officer's capture gives NATO time to mobilize its forces and preserve the alliance. Nonetheless, the operation scores some success, as several governments, notably those of Greece and Japan, publicly claim that this “German-Russian disagreement” does not warrant involvement. Thus, the Soviets face no opposition in either the Pacific theater or the Mediterranean region. NATO aircraft manage to sharply reduce Soviet ground superiority on the first night of the war by using first-generation stealth planes and tactical fighter-bombers to eliminate Soviet Mainstay AWACS aircraft and tactical fighters. The NATO forces achieve air superiority and destroy many key bridges over which much of the Soviet Army had yet to cross. The Soviets advance at great cost, having dramatically underestimated NATO defensive firepower. Germany becomes the epicentre of the conflict; here, NATO forces are slowly driven west while inflicting significant damage to the encroaching Soviet Army. Simultaneously, the Soviets seize Iceland in a covert surprise attack, capturing the NATO air station at Keflavík and disrupting the GIUK-SOSUS line to allow the Soviet Navy to operate in the Atlantic Ocean undetected. In addition, the Soviet Navy takes steps to protect its ballistic missile submarine fleet in costal waters behind minefields and ASW assets, allowing the full use of its attack submarines to engage and destroy NATO shipping rather than escorting strategic assets. In essence, the Soviet Navy is able to act as an offensive weapon contrary to pre-war NATO expectations, becoming a major strategic threat against resupply convoys coming from North America with both aircraft and submarines. This advantage is put to immediate use as a NATO carrier battle group, led by USS Nimitz, USS Saratoga and the French carrier Foch, is successfully attacked by Soviet Badger and Backfire bombers, the latter firing Kingfish missiles. The Soviets use Kelt missiles as decoys set to transmit as if they were Backfires on the predicted attack vector, far out from the main air fleet. The American carriers' F-14 interceptors are committed against the decoys, leaving an insufficient number of Crusaders from the Foch and the ships' surface-to-air missiles to defend against the bombers approaching from another direction. Foch is sunk, the amphibious assault carrier Saipan explodes, taking 2,500 Marines with her, and the two American carriers are forced to spend several weeks in drydock at Southampton, England. In West Germany, the battle becomes a war of attrition that the Soviets expect to win through slow and sustained advances. With the death of the Soviet political favorite CinC-West in a NATO air attack on the Soviet rear lines, the more competent CinC-Southwest and his second-in-command, General-Colonel Pavel Leonidovich Alekseyev take over on the German front. Alekseyev commands a successful Soviet attack on the town of Alfeld, finally giving the Soviet Army the breakthrough it needs. As the OMG (Operational Manoeuvre Group) forces start to deploy, NATO looks likely to lose all of Germany east of the Weser River. When a brilliantly timed naval attack on Soviet bomber bases with submarine-launched cruise missiles cripples the Soviet bomber force, the Soviets lose their most effective convoy and fleet killing weapon. The U.S. Marines take this opportunity to stage an amphibious assault on Iceland backed by NATO navies, retaking the island and closing the Atlantic to Soviet forces. A failed bomber raid on the NATO naval forces attacking Iceland (in which the remaining Soviet naval cruise missile bomber fleets are nearly wiped out) essentially means Victory in the Atlantic, opening the USSR to direct attacks from carrier strike groups against its Northern strategic areas and the free flow of convoys across the Atlantic. Simultaneously with the sudden reversal in the Atlantic, SACEUR, a renowned poker player, makes an audacious gamble in the face of a final Soviet offensive that pushes NATO ground forces to the breaking point, launching an unexpected flanking manoeuvre that places heavy NATO forces in the rear of the Soviet spearhead, cutting their last frontline units off behind two different rivers and interdicting their supplies. Intelligence gained from a prisoner on Iceland finally reveals the dire fuel situation in the USSR to NATO, who promptly switch bombing tactics and wipe out significant forward fuel depots, essentially immobilising the last of the elite Soviet formations. With the Soviet advance decisively halted, NATO catches its breath and prepares to move into a general offensive against the increasingly ineffective Soviet C category reserves being moved forward. With the conventional situation in Europe turning against them and their strategic situation increasingly bleak due to the drawdown on national oil reserves resulting in a crippled economy, the Politburo are moved to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons at the front to regain the initiative. Alekseyev, realizing that a tactical nuclear exchange would almost certainly lead to a strategic nuclear exchange, seeks and obtains control of his theatre's nuclear weapons as part of their planning; ostensibly for practical matters of tactical targeting but in reality to ensure they are never used. In the face of this nightmare scenario, General Alekseyev joins forces with the Chairman of the KGB and the Energy Minister, Mikhail Eduardovich Sergetov, in staging a coup d’état, replacing the Politburo with a troika consisting of Sergetov, Agriculture Minister F. M. Krylov, and longtime Politburo member Pyotr Bromkovskiy (an elderly and respected World War II veteran) whilst the Chairman of the KGB is allowed to be executed by a Major, revealed to be a parent of one of the children who was killed in the Kremlin bombing. With the Government back under control, Alekseyev flies back to Germany and personally negotiates with SACEUR to bring an end to the war, forestalling the launching of NATO's counter-offensive with an agreement of a cease fire and withdrawal to pre-war lines, apparently ending the war. The story of the aftermath of the conflict is left untold.
175562	/m/017rl6	The Joy of Work				 The first part of the book explains 'how to find happiness at the expense of your co-workers', including how to deal with superiors, meetings and co-workers and how to avoid work whilst having fun, an entire chapter is devoted to office pranks. The second part is an analysis of humour and how to write funny material. Scott also writes "The third part of the book is made entirely out of invisible pages. If the book seems heavier than it looks, that's why." The book includes a response to Norman Solomon, who attempted to depict Scott Adams as a proponent of downsizing in his 1997 book, The Trouble with Dilbert. People who were offended by certain Dilbert strips are also addressed, Adams concluding that it is the 'proximity' of sensitive subjects to negative concepts that causes "people who are angry for no good reason (nuts)" to take offence. The 'Final Postscript' in the book is a page dedicated to his cat 'Freddie', who died as the book was in its final stages. The last words in the book are "That [pet ownership], my friend, is joy".
175656	/m/017s4y	Lady Chatterley's Lover	D. H. Lawrence		{"/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story concerns a young married woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class husband, Clifford Chatterley, has been paralyzed due to a war injury. In addition to Clifford's physical limitations, his emotional neglect of Constance forces distance between the couple. Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. The class difference between the couple highlights a major motif of the novel which is the unfair dominance of intellectuals over the working class. The novel is about Constance's realisation that she cannot live with the mind alone; she must also be alive physically. This realisation stems from a heightened sexual experience Constance has only felt with Mellors, suggesting that love can only happen with the element of the body, not the mind.
176363	/m/017xwx	A Staircase in Surrey	J. I. M. Stewart			 The narrator and central character is playwright Duncan Patullo. In The Gaudy he returns to his old college, after a long absence, and encounters a number of old friends, including Albert Talbert, his former tutor, Lord Marchpayne, a once-close friend with whom he has lost touch, and fellow Scot Ranald McKechnie, now a lecturer at the college. McKechnie's wife, Janet, is Duncan's first love. The second novel, Young Patullo, tells the story of their former relationships and Patullo's undergraduate career. Fantasy writer and Oxford don J. R. R. Tolkien appears as the elderly "Professor Timberlake" in this novel. In The Madonna of the Astrolabe Patullo copes with his ex-wife, the undergraduates' production of Tamburlaine, and the problems of raising enough money for the urgently-needed restoration of the crumbling Great Tower. The discovery of a lost masterpiece by Piero della Francesca proves crucial to the college's future fortunes, and Patullo is able to help when it is stolen. The character of the provost of the college is said to have been based on that of Henry Chadwick, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford during Stewart's own time there.
176395	/m/017y0y	The Sorrows of Young Werther	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe		{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel"}	 The majority of 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of highly sensitive and passionate temperament, and sent to his friend Wilhelm. In these letters, Werther gives a very intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on the town of Garbenheim, near Wetzlar). He is enchanted by the simple ways of the peasants there. He meets Charlotte, a beautiful young girl who is taking care of her siblings following the death of their mother. Despite knowing beforehand that Charlotte is already engaged to a man named Albert, who is in fact 11 years her senior, Werther falls in love with her. Although this causes Werther great pain, he spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with both of them. His pain eventually becomes so great that he is forced to leave and go to Weimar. While he is away, he makes the acquaintance of Fräulein von B. He suffers a great embarrassment when he forgetfully visits a friend on the day when the entire aristocratic set normally meets there. He returns to Wahlheim after this, where he suffers more than he did before, partially because Lotte and Albert are now married. Every day serves as a torturous reminder that Lotte will never be able to requite his love. Out of pity for her friend and respect for her husband, Lotte comes to the decision that Werther must not visit her so frequently. He visits her one final time, and they are both overcome with emotion after Werther's recitation of a portion of "Ossian". Werther had realized even before this incident that one of them — Lotte, Albert or Werther himself — had to die. Unable to hurt anyone else or seriously consider committing murder, Werther sees no other choice but to take his own life. After composing a farewell letter (to be found after he commits suicide), he writes to Albert asking for his two pistols, under a pretence that he is going "on a journey". Lotte receives the request with great emotion and sends the pistols. Werther then shoots himself in the head, but does not expire until 12 hours after he has shot himself. He is buried under a linden tree, a tree he talks about frequently in his letters, and the funeral is not attended by clergymen, Albert or his beloved Lotte.
176956	/m/017_sf	The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling	Henry Fielding	1749-02-28	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's events occupy eighteen books. Squire Allworthy and his sister Bridget are introduced in their wealthy estate in Somerset. Allworthy returns from London after an extended business trip and finds a baby sleeping in his bed. He summons his housekeeper, Mrs Deborah Wilkins, to take care of the child. After searching the nearby village, Mrs Wilkins is told about a young woman called Jenny Jones, servant of a schoolmaster and his wife, as the most likely person to have committed the deed (she is also considered above herself for studying Latin with the schoolmaster). Jenny is brought before them and admits being the baby's mother but refuses to reveal the father's identity. Mr Allworthy mercifully gives her a lecture of morals and removes Jenny to a place where her reputation will be unknown. Furthermore, he promises his sister to raise the boy, whom he names Thomas, in his household. Two brothers, Dr Blifil and Captain Blifil, regularly visit the Allworthy estate. The doctor introduces the captain to Bridget in hopes of marrying into Allworthy's wealth. The couple fall in love and marry. After the marriage, Captain Blifil begins to show a coldness to his brother, who eventually feels obliged to leave the house for London where he soon dies 'of a broken heart'. Eight months after celebrating their wedding, Mrs Blifil has a baby boy and Mr Allworthy states that he and Tom will be raised together. The plot then turns to Mrs Partridge, wife of the schoolteacher, who has discovered that Jenny gave birth to a bastard and had mistakenly thought that she had left their service of her own free will. Mrs Partridge immediately suspects her husband and physically assaults him. Captain Blifil informs Mr Allworthy, and Mrs Wilkins is dispatched once more to Little Baddington to ascertain the truth of the matter. Partridge is put on trial before Mr Allworthy and denies paternity. Mr Allworthy, wanting to prove his innocence, sends for Jenny but she cannot be found, having left her place of residence in company with a recruiting officer. Partridge is found guilty and deprived of his annuity by Mr Allworthy. Now that they are poor, Mrs Partridge regrets her accusations, and begs Mrs Blifil to intercede with her brother to restore Mr Partridge's annuity, but he refuses. Mrs Partridge dies soon after and her husband, being deprived of his annuity, his school and his wife, leaves the area. Captain Blifil and his wife start to grow cool towards one another, and the former is found dead from Apoplexy one evening after taking his customary evening stroll prior to dinner. Two doctors arrive to debate the cause of his death and Mrs Blifil, struck with grief, remains bed-ridden for a month. Meanwhile, Mr Allworthy commissions a generous epitaph for the Captain's grave. Tom, who goes from fourteen-years-old to nineteen-years-old by the end of Book III, gets into trouble for killing a partridge on a neighbour's land. In fact he did it at the instigation of Black George, Allworthy's gamekeeper, but he refuses to tell Mr Allworthy who his partner-in-crime was. He is beaten by his master, Mr Thwackum, who resides at the house with another schoolmaster, a philosopher called Mr Square. Later, Blifil reveals that Black George was Tom's partner and Mr Allworthy is pacified by Tom's sense of honour. To make amends, Mr Allworthy gives Tom a young horse but dismisses Black George from his position. Tom sells the horse a year and a half later at a fair. Mr Thwackum finds out and asks Tom what he has done with the money but the latter refuses to tell him. He is about to be beaten when Mr Allworthy enters. Tom confesses that he sold the horse and gave the money to Black George and his family, now in financial straits after being dismissed. Mr Allworthy feels ready to re-employ Black George, but he blots his copybook by poaching a hare on Squire Western's land and this is confirmed by Master Blifil. Tom resolves to have George employed by Mr Western by speaking to the seventeen-year-old Sophia and getting her to persuade her father on the matter. An incident occurs in which Master Blifil lets go the small bird of Sophia's, given to her by Tom as a young boy. Tom tries to retrieve it but, in doing so, falls into a canal. This incident turns Sophia against Blifil but puts Tom in her favour. Tom speaks to Sophia about George, and she persuades her father to drop any charges and to employ him. Sophia is falling for Tom but his heart is given over to Molly, the second of Black George's daughters and a local beauty. She throws herself at Tom, and he gets her pregnant and then feels obliged to offer her his protection. Molly wears a dress to church — given to her mother by Sophia Western — to show off her beauty. The Somersetshire parishioners are infuriated by her vanity and assault her in the churchyard afterwards. Tom comes to her defence and she is taken home by Square, Blifil and Tom. In the meantime, Sophia has taken pity on Molly and requests her father to ask her to be her maid, but the family council decides to put everything on hold until Tom's intentions become clearer. Squire Western, the local parson, Tom and Sophia are having dinner when the parson informs Western of Molly's condition, at which Tom leaves the dining table. Squire Western immediately jumps to the conclusion that Tom is the father of the bastard, much to Sophia's consternation. Tom returns to his home to find Molly in the arms of a constable and being taken to prison. He bids him free her, and they go to speak to Mr Allworthy where Tom reveals he is the father, saying the guilt is his. However, Mr Allworthy is ultimately forgiving of Tom's sowing his wild oats: 'While he was angry, therefore, with the incontinence of Jones, he was no less pleased with the honour and honesty of his self-accusation. He began now to form in his mind the same opinion of this young fellow, which, we hope, our reader may have conceived. And in balancing his faults and his perfections, the latter seemed rather to preponderate.' An incident now occurs in which Tom comes to the aid of Sophia. She goes out hunting with her father and, on her way home, is thrown by her horse. Tom, who is riding close behind, is able to catch her but breaks his left arm in the process. The accident brings them closer and there is the first stirring of love. Tom is seen by a surgeon and ordered into bed and Sophia is bled at her father's orders. Book IV concludes with a conversation between Sophia and Mrs Honour, her maid, who is extolling Tom's virtues to the former and Sophia becomes annoyed by her presumptuousness. Tom thinks about his love for Sophia but knows that her father would not agree to any union; so his thoughts turn back to Molly who he believes is 'in all the circumstances of wretchedness.' Tom, once he is recovered, makes his way to Molly's home only to discover her in bed with his teacher, Square. Tom still feels some affection for her until he is told by Betty, Molly's older sister, that her innocence had been taken before Tom by Will Barnes, a country gallant. In the meantime, Mr Allworthy has become ill and is told by his doctor that it may be fatal. He summons all his relatives and household servants to his bedside and informs them of his will — Blifil will inherit the estate and Tom will be given a £1,000 lump sum and £500 per annum (Thwackum and Square will get a £1,000 each and the household servants some token payments which displeases Mrs Wilkins, the housekeeper). However, Allworthy recovers; and Tom is so pleased that he gets drunk in his pleasure which displeases Blifil who is in mourning after receiving news that his mother has died. A scuffle ensues, but the two are parted and made to make peace with each other. After this fight, Tom, still drunk, is wandering the gardens thinking about Sophia when Molly makes an appearance. After a quarter of an hour's conversation, the two disappear into the bushes. Blifil and Thwackum likewise take an evening stroll, and Blifil spots Tom with a woman. He informs Thwackum who becomes furious and is determined to punish Tom. Tom guards the entrance to the shrubbery to prevent them seeing who the girl is, and, while Molly escapes, a fight ensues which Tom starts to lose until Squire Western intervenes to make it two against two. Sophia faints at the sight of all the blood, and Tom carries her to a nearby brook, giving her a caress which she does not spurn. Sophia recovers much to her father's delight. Tom returns to Western's house and Blifil and Thwackum to theirs. Miss Western is the cultured sister of Squire Western and Sophia's aunt. Although unmarried herself, she recognises the signs of love and notices that Sophia is showing these. She informs her brother that his daughter is in love with Blifil — Miss Western had noted Sophia's behaviour in his presence — and Squire Western informs Allworthy when he visits for dinner. Allworthy says he will give his approval if the young couple agree and consults Blifil who, thinking of Sophia's fortune, agrees to his uncle's request. (No one knows of Sophia's love for Tom.) Miss Western then speaks to Sophia to reveal her amour, and is enraged when she finds out it is not Blifil but Tom. With her aunt agreeing to keep the whole thing a secret, Mr Western tells Sophia about his intentions and she is obliged to meet Blifil that afternoon. Sophia is determined to go through with the meeting, even though she hates and despises Blifil. After a difficult meeting, in which Blifil thinks he has won her heart, he is accosted by Squire Western before he leaves and Blifil announces that he is satisfied with Sophia, much to the father's delight. However, once he is gone, Sophia reveals her true feelings for Blifil, but he ignores her pleadings and grows enraged. Tom is in the house and is asked by Western to go to Sophia to encourage her to marry Blifil. The two young lovers are in agony and reveal they can never part from each other as they take each other's hands. However, whilst they have been conversing, Miss Western has revealed all to the Squire, who threatens to assault Jones but is only prevented from doing so by the parson. Mr Western then visits his neighbour Allworthy and informs him of the situation in heated tones. After his departure, Mr Allworthy asks Blifil if he still wants to proceed with the marriage, and the latter replies in the affirmative, mainly to spite Tom. Blifil also takes the opportunity to inform his uncle about the bust up in the shrubbery, saying that Tom assaulted his tutor, Thwackum. Allworthy summons Tom before him to plead his case, but Tom is sunk too low from hearing the news about Sophia to make a robust defence. As such, he is commanded by his foster father to leave the house immediately after being given a sum of £500. Tom walks about a mile and, thinking beside a little brook, is resolved to quit Sophia rather than bring her to ruin. He pens a letter from a neighbouring house but discovers, in searching his pockets for his wax, that he has lost his wallet and returns to the brook to look for it. Here he meets George and together they look for it although George has already picked it up on coming to the same spot earlier. Tom asks him to deliver his letter for Sophia to Mrs Honour and, on doing so, George receives one back for Tom. In it, Sophia professes her affection for him but also warns him to steer clear of her father, 'As you know his temper, I beg you will, for my sake, avoid him.' Sophia is locked up in her room by her father but Honour manages to give her Tom's letter. She also tells her that the squire 'stripped him half naked and turned him out of doors!'. Sophia gives her all the money she has — amounting to a purse of sixteen guineas — telling her to give it to Tom. Honour gives the money to Black George, who is tempted to steal it like the £500 earlier — but the danger of the theft being discovered outweighs his greed, and he delivers the money to Jones. The Book ends with the return of Miss Western to the house and her being informed of Sophia's captivity. She rebukes her brother and sets Sophia free. Tom receives a note from Blifil along with his effects, informing him that his uncle requires him to immediately quit the neighbourhood. Sophia speaks to her aunt who tries to persuade her of the advantages of marrying Blifil. However, Mr Western overhears their conversation and storms into the room. He and his sister get into a furious argument over his behaviour, and she threatens to quit the house. However, on the sound advice of Sophia, she is recalled by Mr Western who makes efforts to pacify her. Having become reconciled, both are determined to have Sophia married as quickly as possible, and Blifil makes a second visit. Mr Allworthy is satisfied by what his nephew and Western tell him concerning Sophia and the marriage treaty is set two days hence. Sophia is now fixed on avoiding the marriage and in a conversation with Honour says she will quit the house and stay with a lady of quality in London who is her close acquaintance. Honour agrees to accompany her and agrees to get herself discharged so that their clothes can be packed for the journey without any undue suspicion. Honour deliberately provokes the chambermaid of Miss Western by abusing her mistress, and the lady herself is told of their conversation and vows to have Honour discharged for her impudence. There follows a dispute between Mr Western and his sister over the legality of dismissing Honour, but in the end the latter has the satisfaction of seeing Honour turned away. Sophia is conscience-stricken about her infidelity to her relations, but her love for Tom prevails. Tom is on the road to Bristol, being determined to take to sea. However, his guide gets lost, and they take shelter at a public house on the advice of a Quaker. The Quaker gets into a conversation with Tom, even though the latter wants to be alone, telling him about his own misfortune of having his daughter run off with a penniless man of low birth — vowing he will never see them again, and Tom pushes him out of the room. A company of soldiers enter the ale-house as Tom is sleeping on a chair, and, getting into a dispute over who will pay for the beer, Tom agrees to cover the bill. He strikes up a conversation with the sergeant who tells him they are marching against the Roman Catholic rebels who had invaded England, expecting to be commanded by the glorious Duke of Cumberland. Tom, being "a hearty well-wisher to the glorious cause of liberty and of the Protestant religion", agrees to join them as a volunteer. The soldiers march off, and that evening Tom is introduced to the lieutenant, a man who is sixty years of age. Looking like a gentleman, he is invited to dinner with the small company of officers. Tom gets into an argument with Ensign Northerton, who then proceeds to abuse the good name of Sophia after Tom has proposed a toast to her. Tom rebukes him, saying 'you are one of the most impudent scoundrels on earth,' and Northerton responds by throwing a bottle at Tom's head which poleaxes him. The lieutenant proceeds to put Northerton under close arrest, and a surgeon is called to stem the bleeding. Tom is put to bed and the lieutenant visits him, promising he will get his satisfaction against his adversary. Later that night, Tom, who is feeling much better, wakes the sergeant and purchases a sword from him before making his way to Northerton's room. He is shot at by the guard, who thinks he is a ghost (his coat is bloodied as is the bandage around his head) and then faints. However, the bird has flown (with the connivance of the landlady), and Tom returns to his room whilst the lieutenant has the sentinel put under arrest. Tom tells the lieutenant that he is to blame for the disturbance, and the latter agrees to drop the charge against the soldier. The landlady visits Tom after the soldiers have left and is courteous to him until he shows her his purse which has very little in it. He then dismisses the doctor, who insists on bleeding him so he can get a decent fee,and finally is able to get up and dressed. He calls for a barber to shave him after a dinner of 'buttock [beef] and carrot' and Little Benjamin turns out to be Mr Partridge, the schoolmaster. Tom reveals his whole story to him, and Partridge agrees to accompany him on his journey, secretly hoping that he can convince Tom to return to Allworthy (whom he is convinced is Tom's real father) so that he can get back into Allworthy's favour once more. They make their way on foot to Gloucester and stay at the Bell. However, there is a pettifogger (a lawyer of low status, who engages in mean practices) present who besmirches Tom's name to the landlady, Mrs Whitefield, after Tom has left their company. With Tom's name now mud, the landlady's welcome grows cold, and he is resolved to quit the house the same evening. They make their way on foot on a freezing night toward some hills that they have been informed lie not far from Worcester. Tom begs his companion to leave him, telling him he is resolved to die 'a glorious death in the service of my king and country,' but the latter refuses to leave him. Partridge eventually sees the glimmer of a light, and they make their way to an isolated house. Whilst warming themselves by the fire and conversing with the housekeeper, the owner returns and is set upon by two robbers. Tom rushes outside with a broadsword and drives them off and helps the old gentleman into the house. This gentleman, called the Man of the Hill, then recounts his life story to Tom and Partridge. A prudent and industrious student, he fell into bad company at Oxford and had to flee to London with his mistress to escape being expelled. Here, both destitute, the woman betrays him to one of her former lovers at Oxford and he is thrown into gaol, where he reflects on his sinful life. He is eventually released but, still poor, falls in with an old Oxford acquaintance, Watson, who introduces him to his gambling crowd. He lives precariously for the next two years pursuing this profession. However, he is re-united with his father, who has come to London to look for him and has been assaulted by thieves. They are re-united by chance as the son, who is walking down the same street, comes to his father's aid after the affray. He returns with his father to Somersetshire, and spends the next four years in contemplation of the works of Aristotle and Plato, and of God. His father dies, and he, being the younger son, finds it difficult to live with his brother who lives entirely for sport. He is sent to Bath by his physician to take the waters and manages to save a man from committing suicide by drowning — the very same Watson, his friend from London. Both are then caught up in Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion, and, when captured, the stranger tells Tom and Partridge that he was denounced by Watson. However, he manages to escape his captors and ends up living at the present house on an annuity, an exile from the world of humanity. The Book ends with the old man and Tom taking a walk together to enjoy the sight of some fine prospects in the early hours of the day. Whilst observing the view, they hear a woman screaming, and Tom rushes down the hill to help. He comes upon a woman, half-naked, being throttled by a man whom Tom knocks down. It is Ensign Northerton. Tom restrains his hands with a garter and goes back to the Man of the Hill for advice. Tom is told to take her to Upton, the nearest town. When Tom returns to the woman, Northerton has made his escape on foot, and Tom and the lady make their way to the town. On the way, Tom is sneaking peeps at her uncovered breasts at which he has gazed earlier. They eventually find an inn, and Tom instructs the lady to wait whilst he fetches her some clothes. The landlady and landlord think that something immoral is taking place and assault Tom — who is only saved from a beating by the arrival of Partridge. Susan, the hefty chambermaid joins in, and it is only the arrival of a young lady and maid that ends the battle. A sergeant arrives with his men and recognises the woman to be Mrs Waters, his Captain's wife, and the inn's hosts make their apologies and peace is restored around a bowl of liquor. Mrs Waters then retires with Tom upstairs and proceeds to make a pass at him, finding her savior extremely attractive. They end up in bed together. In the meantime, an argument takes place downstairs when the landlord abuses officers of rank in the army. The sergeant takes offense and offers to fight 'the best man of you all for twenty pound' and the coachman of the young lady takes him on, saying he is as good as any man in the army, and offers to box for a guinea. He is well mauled by the sergeant and so unable to convey the young lady on her journey. An account is then given of how Mrs Waters ended up in 'the distressful situation' from which Jones rescued her. Her husband, having accompanied her as far as Worcester, had proceeded onwards, and Northerton had joined her for an assignation. He tells her of the incident with Jones, and they decide to make for Hereford, then a Welsh seaport so that he can make his escape abroad. Mrs Waters has £90 and her jewelry to finance their journey. However, it was in the wood at the foot of Mazard Hill that Northerton tried to kill her but she, being 'not of the weakest order of females,' was able to fend him off until Tom came to her rescue. An Irishman arrives at the Upton inn, a Mr Fitzpatrick, who is desperately looking for his wife. He speaks to Susan, the chambermaid, who shows him up to Mrs Water's room. He sees Tom and then a lot of women's clothes strewed around the room, and he and Tom proceed to blows until Mrs Waters cries out 'murder! robbery! and more frequently rape'. An Irishman staying in the room next door now enters the bedroom, a Mr Maclachlan, who lets his friend know that he has the wrong woman. Fitzpatrick apologises to Mrs Waters but says he will have his blood in the morning. Mrs Waters screams rape again to divert attention away from her and Tom being in the same room together, and all the men depart. Two young women in riding habits now arrive at the inn and one of them is immediately recognised as being a lady of quality. The lady retires to bed, and the maid, Mrs Honour, returns downstairs and demands food. She falls into conversation with Mr Partridge and learns that Tom is staying in the same inn. She tells Sophia that Tom is in the house and, returning downstairs, finds out from Partridge that Tom is with a woman and cannot be woken. Honour goes back upstairs and Sophia decides to leave her muff (with her name written on it for Tom to let him know she was there) and departs. Tom finds the muff and determines to give chase to Sophia. Western now arrives with some of his followers at the inn. The narrator mentions here that if he had come two hours earlier he would not only have found Sophia but also his niece — for such was the wife of Mr Fitzpatrick, who had run away with her five years before, out of the custody of Mrs Western. In fact, Mrs Fitzpatrick had heard the voice of her husband and paid the landlady for horses to make her escape at the same time as Sophia's departure. Western see Jones with Sophia's muff in his hands and tries to assault him but is restrained. Fitzpatrick, whom it turns out is married to the niece of Mrs Western, decides to help his uncle by showing him what he believes is Sophia's room, which turns out to be Mrs Waters'. A magistrate in the inn hears the case but refuses to convict Tom; and Western, in a fury, departs in pursuit of his daughter. The plot now reverts back to when Sophia left her father's house. Sophia decides to take a zigzag route before hitting the London road to avoid her father. It turns out that their guide is the same as who conducted Tom, and Sophia bribes him to take them on the same route along the Bristol road. They spend a night with Mrs Whitefield in Gloucester before ending up at the Upton inn. Sophia, making her way past the Severn, is joined by another young lady, her maid (Abigail Honour, Mrs Honour's sister) and a guide. As it is night-time, they do not speak much and can hardly see each other. However, in daylight they recognise one another — the other lady is Harriet, Sophia's cousin and another niece of Mrs Western. They determine to wait until they arrive at an inn before they tell each other their stories. Once at the inn, Sophia and Harriet share a bed as do the two maids, everyone being exhausted from their journey, and the landlord and his wife come to the conclusion that they are supporters of the rebel Charles Stuart, fleeing the Duke of Cumberland, and that Sophia is Jenny Cameron herself (the daughter of a highland supporter of Charles). Once they have rested, Mrs Fitzpatrick recounts her story to Sophia. She met Fitzpatrick whilst staying with her aunt, Mrs Western, in Bath. He paid court to her aunt, but was also very kind to herself, until he eventually professed his love for her. The aunt left Bath, and she married Fitzpatrick. However, he says they will have to return to his estate in Ireland which she is very reluctant to do, and by accident finds a debtor's letter from his tailor in which he recalls Fitzpatrick saying he would soon marry either the aunt or the niece which would settle his debts, preferring the niece as he would have quicker access to the money. Harriet reveals all to her husband but he fobs her off, and they travel to Ireland. His house is very dismal and he proves the opposite of the gallant in Bath; he is aggressive and boorish in his behaviour to her. Eventually, he imprisons her in her bedroom, but, whilst on a three month trip to England, she is able to make her escape with the help of a neighbouring aristocrat. She intended to make for Bath to plead with her aunt, and this is how she ran into Sophia. There is also an interlude when Mrs Honour assaults the landlord when she finds out that he thinks Sophia is Jenny Cameron. It happens that the same Irish peer that helped Harriet is staying at the inn, on his way to London. He pays them a call and offers them a ride in his coach-and-six to London. Whilst preparing herself, Sophia discovers that she has lost a £100 note which her father had given her, believing it fell out of her pocket. The party arrive in London but Sophia is desirous of looking up her acquaintance, having suspicions that Harriet intends to make for Bath in order to have an alliance with the Irish nobleman. She makes her farewell, repeating their aunt's maxim to Harriet that 'whenever the matrimonial alliance is broke, and war declared between husband and wife, she can hardly make a disadvantageous peace for herself on any conditions' but Mrs Fitzpatrick contemptuously dismisses this advice. Sophia then repairs to the house of Lady Bellaston who promises she will do everything in her power to protect her. Squire Western is in pursuit of his daughter but gets waylaid by a hunt and ends up returning home. Tom and Partridge come across a lame fellow in rags to whom Tom gives a shilling. The beggar offers Tom something he has found, and it turns out to be Sophia's pocket book with the £100 note tucked inside. Tom gives the man a guinea, promising more later, and they leave him very discontented. They eventually come to an ale-house, and Partridge is keen to see the puppet-show which is playing the Provoked Husband. The landlady berates her chambermaid for having a sexual dalliance with Merry Andrew, the youth who beats the drum to announce the shows. Tom retires to bed but is awoken by the sound of the master of the puppet-show beating his Merry Andrew. Tom intervenes, and the Merry Andrew mentions the puppet master trying to rob a lady in a fine riding habit the day before. Tom realizes this was Sophia and instructs the youth to show him the spot where this would have happened. He and Partridge then procure horses from the inn and also recognise the same boy who guided Sophia to the last inn. Accepting some money, he is persuaded to guide them to the same place; and they try to get post-horses at the same inn, but there are none to be had. At the same time, Tom is saluted by Mr Dowling, the lawyer with whom Tom had dined at Gloucester, and he and Partridge prevail on Tom to spend the night at the inn. Jones and Dowling share a bottle of wine, and Tom informs him of how Blifil has tried to ruin him, 'I saw the selfishness in him long ago which I despised; but it is lately, very lately, that I have found him capable of the basest and blackest designs.' Tom also assures the attorney of his deepest respect for Mr Allworthy, and not his money. Tom then takes leave of Dowling and sets forth for Coventry. He and Partridge make their way but are caught in a storm and forced to take shelter in a barn, in which a gypsy wedding feast is taking place. They are made welcome by the King of the Gypsies. Jones and Partridge then travel post in pursuit of Sophia, ending up at St Albans where they just miss Sophia. As they make their way into London, they meet a fellow traveler on horseback who, on hearing that Tom has £100, attempts to hold them up but is overcome by Tom. The highwayman confesses that it was his first robbery, and he only did it out of great need. Tom takes pity on him and gives him two guineas, and the man is overcome by his generosity. Jones and Partridge arrive in London; but, being unfamiliar with its streets, retire to the Bull and Gate in Holborn. Tom then finds out where the lord's residence is. After bribing a footman, Tom is admitted into the presence of Mrs Fitzpatrick. She, thinking that he is the suitor Sophia is trying to avoid, dissembles, and Tom leaves the house but stands watch nearby. Mrs Fitzpatrick communicates her suspicions to her maid, Abigail, and is informed that the man was Jones himself. Tom is admitted once more to see Mrs Fitzpatrick, and Lady Bellaston joins them — as does the noble lord, who ignores Tom. Mrs Fitzpatrick designs to get rid of Tom. He then thinks about the gentlewoman at whose house Mr Allworthy is accustomed to lodge when in town and dispatches Partridge to the house where he is able to secure two rooms. The landlady is Mrs Miller, and she has two daughters: Nancy is seventeen and Betty ten. There is a young gentleman lodger, a Mr Nightingale, who gets into a fight with his footman. Tom intervenes to save him from being throttled, and the two become friends over a shared bottle of wine. Tom then receives a bundle inside which is a domino, a mask and a masquerade ticket and a card signed the 'queen of the fairies'. He is determined to go to the masque, thinking that he might find Sophia there, and Nightingale lends him some of his clothes and offers to accompany him. Tom talks to a variety of women who look or sound like Sophia, until he meets a lady in a domino who talks to him about Sophia. Afterwards, she quits the masquerade to return home, forbidding Tom to follow her. He, however, ignores her warning and follows her chair to a street near Hanover Square and walks in after her, suspecting her to be Mrs Fitzpatrick. The woman turns out to be Lady Bellaston, and they sleep together. Lady Bellaston promises Tom she will try to find out Sophia's whereabouts. Returning to his lodgings, Mrs Miller tells the household about a cousin of hers whose family is living in extreme poverty. Tom, after hearing her narrative, gives her his purse containing £50, asking her to use it for the poor people, and she joyfully takes ten guineas. Tom tries to find out from Lady Bellaston where Sophia is but cannot (the latter now seeing Sophia as a rival in love). He is also in a very difficult position as she is now supporting him financially. He receives a note from her asking for a meeting at her house, having arranged for Sophia, Mrs Honour and her own maid, Mrs Etoff, to see a play together. Tom meets Mrs Miller's cousin who turns out to be the highwayman who tried to rob him, and the man is effusive in his thanks for Tom's kindness to his family who are now all restored to health. Tom goes to Lady Bellaston's house, but she is not there. He is waiting in the drawing-room when Sophia enters, having left the play early in distaste under the protection of a young gentleman. Both are as surprised as each other. After reprimanding him for bandying her name around in inns, with Tom protesting it was Partridge, not he, she starts crying; and Tom kisses away her tears. Lady Bellaston enters, and Sophia makes the pretence that Tom has only come to return her pocket-book and the banknote. Tom takes the opportunity to leave, asking Lady Bellaston for permission to pay another visit to which she politely consents. The Book concludes with Sophia attempting to ward off her cousin's questions about the young gentleman. Lady Bellaston pays a surprise visit to Tom's apartments. However, they are interrupted by the arrival of Mrs Honour bearing a letter for Tom from Sophia, and Lady Bellaston is forced to hide behind a curtain. Honour assures Tom of her mistress' regard, and, after she has left, Lady Bellaston emerges from her place of concealment as, 'streams of fire darted from her eyes, and well indeed they might, for her heart was all in a flame.' However, Tom makes his peace with her and they agree that future visits to her house will appear as though they are for Sophia's sake, Bellaston being "convinced that Sophia possessed the first place in Jones's affections" and "...she submitted at last to bear the second place." Mrs Miller talks to Tom about the house getting a reputation of one of ill-fame. Tom assures her that he will change his place of lodgings. Nightingale tells him that he too has resolved to quit the house, although Tom reminds him that Nancy, the eldest daughter, is in love with him; but Nightingale is not unduly concerned, liking to boast about his skill at gaining women, much to Tom's dismay. Nightingale, however, quits the house, and Mrs Miller is distraught, revealing to Tom that Nancy is with child by him. All he has left her is a note stating that he cannot marry her as his father has insisted on his paying his addresses to a young lady of fortune whom he has chosen for him as a wife. Jones promises to go and talk to Nightingale and attempts to persuade him to change his mind. During the conversation, he resolves to speak to Nightingale's father and inform him that Nightingale is already married to Ms Miller, a proposal to which the son readily assents. A farcical conversation takes place in a coffee house with Tom speaking about Nancy Miller whereas the father presumes he is talking about Miss Harris, and Tom saying he is already married. Old Mr Nightingale's brother then makes an appearance and also helps to persuade his brother against a union with Miss Harris, for, as he is her neighbour, he knows her to be "very tall, very thin, very ugly, very affected, very silly, and very ill-natured." Jones finally agrees to conduct the uncle to his nephew in Mrs Miller's house. Mrs Miller informs Jones that all matters are settled between Nightingale and Nancy and that they are to be married the next day. The uncle, however, takes his nephew upstairs and, on finding out that he is not married, tells him to call off the wedding as it is both foolish and preposterous. They return downstairs and the others feel that something is amiss, especially Tom as the uncle departs with Nightingale. However, Tom receives a visit from Mrs Honour who informs him she has dreadful news regarding her mistress. Lady Bellaston is now determined to get Sophia out of the way. The young nobleman who escorted Sophia from the play, Lord Fellamar, approaches Lady Bellaston and declares his love for Sophia, and she says she will promote his cause with her father, although pointing out that he has a rival for her affection — 'a beggar, a bastard, a foundling, a fellow in meaner circumstances than one of your lordship's own footmen.' She persuades an acquaintance, Tom Edwards, to announce in front of Sophia that Jones has been killed in a duel, and Sophia retires to her room in dismay. Bellaston and Fellamar then hatch a plan for the latter to ravish Sophia the next evening whilst the servants are out of the house and whilst Lady Bellaston is in an apartment distant from the scene. Despite having scruples, Fellamar falls in with her scheme and throws himself at Sophia; but the rape is interrupted by the arrival of Squire Western and his parson. The lord believes the father will accept him as his future son-in-law but is brushed aside by Western who removes Sophia to his own lodgings. Lady Bellaston is not too perturbed by the failure of her scheme with Fellamar, since at least Sophia is now out of the way. The plot now reverts back to how the Squire discovered his daughter's whereabouts. Mrs Fitzpatrick, hoping to reconcile her aunt and uncle, sent a letter to Mrs Western informing them of Sophia's present location. The lady passes the letter to her brother, and he is resolved to go to London with his sister following a day later. Honour, as mentioned earlier, comes to see Tom with the bad news. Whilst she is speaking to him, Lady Bellaston's arrival is announced, and Mrs Honour this time is forced to hide. Lady Bellaston comments on Jones' attractiveness, but he cannot reply in kind as Honour is present in the room. However, his embarrassment is ended when Mr Nightingale stumbles drunk into the room and Lady Bellaston is forced to share the hiding place with Honour. The Lady, after assuring the maid of her friendship in order to stop her repeating what she has heard, takes her leave in a fury. Mrs Honour also berates Tom for his infidelity to her mistress, but he eventually manages to calm her down. Nancy and Nightingale are married at Doctors' Commons and Tom then receives three letters from Lady Bellaston requesting his presence at her home. Nightingale confronts Tom and tells him about her reputation around town. Tom also reveals his deep love for Sophia whom he now idolizes. Jones and Nightingale ('his privy council') proceed to hatch their own plan so that he can be rid of Bellaston. Nightingale knows that she turned away a former young man when he proposed marriage to her, and he suggests that Tom does the same. The latter is reluctant in case she agrees to his proposal, but Nightingale believes the young man in question — angered by the ill offices she had done him since — would show Tom her letters, the knowledge of which he could use to break off the affair. Tom writes a letter, and Lady Bellaston writes back banishing him from her home. Mrs Miller receives notice from Mr Allworthy that he is coming to London, and Tom, Mr and Mrs Nightingale remove to new apartments. Tom, having dispatched Mrs Honour to give him more news about Sophia's state, receives a letter from her saying she now has a position with Lady Bellaston and can tell him nothing. A few days later Mr Partridge bumps into Black George and, over a few pots of beer, learns that he is working for Squire Western and can convey letters to Sophia in order to help Tom. Tom sits down to write his epistle. The scene shifts to Squire Western's lodgings in Piccadilly, recommended by the landlord at the Hercules Pillars at Hyde Park Corner, where Sophia is locked in her room. An officer asks to be presented and informs the Squire and parson he has come on behalf of Lord Fellamar who wants to visit his daughter on the footing of a lover, but Western throws him out. Sophia, hearing the noise below her, starts screaming and her father enters her room, asking her to fulfill his demands but she once more refuses and her father storms out, once more ignoring her pleas and tears. However, Black George is able to slip Sophia Tom's letter, hidden inside a pullet, and she muses over it. Mrs Western now arrives and is highly indignant over Sophia's imprisonment. She demands that she be given complete control over the niece and, with the support of the parson, the Squire finally agrees and Mrs Western conducts her to her own more salubrious lodgings. Tom now receives a letter from Sophia, written from her aunt's lodgings and begging him to give her up in order that he may be reconciled to Mr Allworthy, and enclosing the £100 banknote as she knows Tom requires money. The plot now switches back to the past when Blifil was informed by Western about his daughter's flight to London. Blifil's case that Sophia loves him is now more uncertain. Allworthy agrees to Blifil's insistent demands that he accompany him to London but warns his nephew, I will never give my consent to any absolute force being put on her inclinations, nor shall you ever have her unless she can be brought freely of compliance. Once in London, Squire Western and Blifil barge into his sister's house, and she is furious at the incivility of their entrance. Sophia, who turns pale at the sight of Blifil, is allowed to retire to her room whilst her aunt castigates Squire Western for his rude country manners — and at the same time suggests to Blifil that perhaps he can visit Sophia again in the afternoon. Blifil now quite rightly, as the narrator points out, suspects that Mrs Western may have turned against his cause. Lady Bellaston sees Lord Fellamar and advises him to have Jones somehow pressed and sent on board a ship. She then meets Mrs Western (they are cousins), and the former tells the latter about Lord Fellamar's attachment to Sophia. It is agreed they will pursue his case. Mrs Western refers to Blifil as 'a hideous kind of fellow' with nothing but fortune to recommend him. Jones pays a visit to Mrs Fitzpatrick, who encourages him to make a sham address to Mrs Western (just as Fitzpatrick did) in order to win Sophia; but he outrightly declines the undertaking, just as he does the advances now Mrs Fitzpatrick now makes towards him. Fitzpatrick has now come up to London from Bath and sees Jones coming out of his wife's house. Having suspicions about Jones and Mrs Fitzpatrick, he draws his sword, but Jones manages to stab him with his. He '...sheathed one half of his sword in the body of the said gentleman' — but is arrested by the gang employed by Lord Fellamar and taken before a magistrate who commits him to Gatehouse. Here, he receives a letter from Sophia stating she has seen his letter with his proposal of marriage to Bellaston. Mr Allworthy is informed by Mrs Miller of how kind-hearted Tom has been towards her and her family. However, Blifil informs his uncle that Tom has killed a man, but the conversation is interrupted by the entrance of Mr Western who complains to his neighbour about Lord Fellamar. Mr Allworthy, commenting on Sophia's good character, tells Western he will not have Sophia forced into a marriage. After finding out the true inclinations of Sophia towards Blifil, Mr Allworthy informs Western that the marriage will not proceed. Mrs Western now tries to persuade Sophia to marry Lord Fellamar, but she tells her aunt how he tried to force himself on her in Lady Bellaston's house. Thus a truce is called, and her aunt is in a better temper. Mrs Miller visits Sophia and tells her how well Tom has behaved towards her penniless cousin, Mr Anderson. She manages to make Sophia read his letter, but it does not change her attitude towards him. Fellamar pays a visit to Sophia, but she rejects his love and is berated by her aunt after the lord has left for receiving letters from Tom (she has learnt this from Mrs Miller). The action now switches to Tom in prison. Nightingale visits him and informs him that the only witnesses to the fight were from a man-of-war crew lying at Deptford; and they said that Tom had struck the first blow. Mrs Waters then visits Tom telling him to cheer up and giving him the good news that Fitzpatrick is not dead and is likely to recover. Having lived with Fitzpatrick as his wife in Bath, she is also doing so in London so she knows exactly what is happening. Partridge now visits Tom and, seeing Mrs Waters's face for the first time, informs Tom that he has been a-bed with his own mother, that Mrs. Waters and Jenny Jones are one and the same. Whilst he is dispatched by Tom to find her, Tom receives a letter from her that she has a matter of high importance to communicate to him. Mrs Miller and Jack Nightingale speak to Mr Allworthy about Tom's merits, and the latter says he might start to think better of the young gentleman. Mr Allworthy then receives a letter from Mr Square stating that he is dying and saying that Tom was innocent and that this young man hath the noblest generosity of heart, the most perfect capacity for friendship, the highest integrity, and indeed every virtue which can ennoble a man. Mr Partridge is now summoned before Mr Allworthy's presence, and he tells him his history since the time he lost his school. He also tells him about Tom's sleeping with his mother, at which Allworthy expresses shock, but Mrs Waters enters the room desiring to speak with him. She states that Partridge was not the father of the child but a young man named Summer, the son of a clergyman who was a great friend of Allworthy's. Summer came to reside at Allworthy's house after completing his studies and died shortly afterwards. Allworthy's sister became pregnant by him and bore the child found between the sheets in his bed. It turns out that Miss Bridget went to the house of Mrs Waters' mother, and it was arranged that mother and daughter would attend her (with Mrs Wilkins being sent to Dorsetshire to be out of the way). Having given birth, Mrs Waters was instructed to take the child to Allworthy's bed. Once her story is complete, Mr Allworthy recollects that his sister had a liking for Summer but that she had expressed the highest disdain for his unkind suspicion — so he had let the matter drop. Mrs Waters then mentions to Mr Allworthy that she had been visited by a gentleman who, taking her for Fitzpatrick's wife, informed her she would be financially assisted by a worthy gentleman if she wanted to prosecute Jones. She found out from Mr Partridge that the man's name was Dowling. Mr Western now appears, berating that fact that a lord now wants to marry Sophia; and Allworthy says he will try to speak with her once more. Mrs Waters then says she was ruined 'by a very deep scheme of villainy' which drove her into the arms of Captain Waters, whom she lived with as a wife for many years even though they remained unmarried. Dowling then appears, and Mr Allworthy confronts him in the presence of Mrs Waters. He learns the truth that it was Blifil who sent him to talk to her. Dowling also reveals that he was given a letter by Blifil's mother on her deathbed, and he also was instructed by her to tell Allworthy that Jones was his nephew. However, as Allworthy had been ill at the time, he delivered the letter into Blifil's hands who said he would convey it to Allworthy. Allworthy leaves to have his interview with Sophia at Western's house. After assuring her that she will not have to marry Blifil owing to his villainy, he proposes to have another young man visit her. Sophia is bemused but, on being informed that it is Jones, refuses outright to meet him, saying it would be as disagreeable as a meeting with Blifil. Squire Western bursts into the room and, on being informed by Allworthy that Tom is his nephew, now becomes as eager for Sophia to marry Jones as he was about Blifil. Allworthy returns to his lodgings and his reunion with Tom now takes place. To compound his joy, Tom is also informed by Mrs Miller that, after speaking with her son, she has told Sophia all about the Bellaston letter and that Tom had also refused a proposal of marriage from a pretty widow called Hunt (which occurs earlier in the novel). Tom informs Mr Allworthy that his liberty had been procured by two noble lords, One of these was Lord Fellamar who, on finding out from Fitzpatrick that he took all the blame and that Tom was the nephew to a gentleman of great fortune, went with the Irish peer to obtain Tom's release. Mrs Miller asks Allworthy about Blifil, and the latter replies that I cannot be easy while such a villain is in my house. Tom pleads with him to be lenient, but Allworthy sends him to Blifil's room. Tom tells him he has to leave but that he will also do everything in his powers to help his younger brother, "and would leave nothing unattempted to effectuate a reconciliation with his uncle." Jones, now fully kitted-out as a young gentleman of wealth, then accompanies his uncle to Mr Western's house. Sophia is also decked out in all her finery, and the two are left alone by the uncle and father and are eventually reconciled when Tom kisses her on her dear lips. Western once more bursts into the room, and Sophia says she will be obedient to her father by agreeing to marry Tom. The pair are privately married the next day in the chapel at Doctors' Commons but a joint wedding feast is held afterwards at Mrs Miller's house with Nightingale and his bride, Nancy (who have been reconciled with old Mr Nightingale through the mediation of Mr Allworthy). So, the story reaches its conclusion. The narrator informs his reader of the fate of his characters. Allworthy refused to see Blifil; but he settled an annual income of £200 on his nephew. The latter moved to one of the northern counties, hoping to purchase a seat in the next parliament and turning Methodist in the hope of ensnaring a rich wife. Mrs Fitzpatrick divorces her husband and maintains a close friendship with the Irish peer who aided her escape from Ireland. Mr Nightingale and his wife purchase an estate in the neighbourhood of Jones. Mrs Waters receives a £60 annual pension from Allworthy and marries Western's Parson Supple. Partridge sets up a school and a marriage to Molly Seagrim is on the cards. Mr Western moved out of his country seat into a smaller house, liking to play with his granddaughter and grandson, while Tom and Sophia love Mr Allworthy as a father. And, as for Tom: "Whatever in the nature of Jones had a tendency to vice, has been corrected by continual conversation with this good man, and by his union with the lovely and virtuous Sophia. He hath also, by reflection on his past follies, acquired a discretion and prudence very uncommon in one of his lively parts."
176961	/m/017_vh	Richard III	William Shakespeare			 The play begins with Richard describing the accession to the throne of his brother, King Edward IV of England, eldest son of the late Richard, Duke of York. : Now is the winter of our discontent : Made glorious summer by this sun of York; : And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house : In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. ("sun of York" is a punning reference to the badge of the "blazing sun," which Edward IV adopted, and "son of York", i.e., the son of the Duke of York.) The speech reveals Richard's jealousy and ambition, as his brother rules the country successfully. Richard is an ugly hunchback who is "rudely stamp'd", "deformed, unfinish'd", and cannot "strut before a wanton ambling nymph." He responds to the anguish of his condition with an outcast's credo: "I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days." Richard plots to have his brother Clarence, who stands before him in the line of succession, conducted to the Tower of London over a prophecy he fed to the King; that "G of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be", which the king interprets as referring to George of Clarence. Richard next ingratiates himself with "the Lady Anne" – Anne Neville, widow of the Lancastrian Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales. Richard confides to the audience: "I'll marry Warwick's youngest daughter. What, though I kill'd her husband and his father?" Despite initially hating him, Anne is won over by his pleas of love and repentance and agrees to marry him. When she leaves, Richard exults in having won her over despite all he has done to her, and tells the audience that he will discard her once she has served her purpose. The atmosphere at court is poisonous: The established nobles are at odds with the upwardly mobile relatives of Queen Elizabeth, a hostility fuelled by Richard's machinations. Queen Margaret, Henry VI's widow, returns in defiance of her banishment and warns the squabbling nobles about Richard. Queen Margaret curses Richard and the rest who were present. The nobles, all Yorkists, reflexively unite against this last Lancastrian, and the warning falls on deaf ears. Richard orders two murderers to kill Clarence in the tower. Clarence, meanwhile, relates a dream to his keeper. The dream includes extremely visual language describing Clarence falling from an imaginary ship as a result of Gloucester, who had fallen from the hatches, striking him. Under the water Clarence sees the skeletons of thousands of men "that fishes gnawed upon." He also sees "wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, inestimable stones, unvalued jewels." All of these are "scatterd in the bottom of the sea." Clarence adds that some of the jewels were in the skulls of the dead. Clarence then imagines dying and being tormented by the ghosts of his father-in-law (Warwick, Anne's father) and brother-in-law (Edward, Anne's former husband). After Clarence falls asleep, Brakenbury, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, enters and observes that between the titles of princes and the low names of commoners there is nothing different but the "outward fame", meaning that they both have "inward toil" whether rich or poor. When the murderers arrive, he reads their warrant (issued in the name of the King), and exits with the Keeper, who disobeys Clarence's request to stand by him, and leaves the two murderers the keys. Clarence wakes and pleads with the murderers, saying that men have no right to obey other men's requests for murder, because all men are under the rule of God not to commit murder. The murderers imply Clarence is a hypocrite because, as one says, "thou ... unripped'st the bowels of thy sovereign's son [Edward] whom thou wast sworn to cherish and defend." Tactically trying to win them over, he tells them to go to his brother Gloucester, who will reward them better for his life than Edward will for his death. One murderer insists Gloucester himself sent them to perform the bloody act, but Clarence does not believe him. He recalls the unity of Richard Duke of York blessing his three sons with his victorious arm, bidding his brother Gloucester to "think on this and he will weep." Sardonically, a murderer says Gloucester weeps millstones – echoing Richard's earlier comment about the murderers' own eyes weeping millstones rather than "foolish tears" (Act I, Sc. 3). Next, one of the murderers explains that his brother Gloucester hates him, and sent them to the Tower to kill him. Eventually, one murderer gives in to his conscience and does not participate, but the other killer stabs Clarence and drowns him in "the Malmsey butt within". The first act closes with the perpetrator needing to find a hole to bury Clarence. Edward IV soon dies, leaving as Protector his brother Richard, who sets about removing the final obstacles to his accession. He meets his nephew, the young Edward V, who is en route to London for his coronation accompanied by relatives of Edward's widow (Lord Rivers, Lord Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan). These Richard arrests, and eventually beheads, and then has a conversation with the Prince and his younger brother, the duke of York. The two princes outsmart Richard and match his wordplay and use of language easily. Richard is nervous about them, and the potential threat they are. The young prince and his brother are coaxed (by Richard) into an extended stay at the Tower of London. The prince and his brother the duke of York prove themselves to be extremely intelligent and charismatic characters, boldly defying and outsmarting Richard and openly mocking him. Assisted by his cousin Buckingham, Richard mounts a campaign to present himself as the true heir to the throne, pretending to be a modest, devout man with no pretensions to greatness. Lord Hastings, who objects to Richard's accession, is arrested and executed on a trumped-up charge of treason. Together, Richard and Buckingham spread the rumour that Edward's two sons are illegitimate, and therefore have no rightful claim to the throne; they are assisted by Catesby, Ratcliffe, and Lovell. The other lords are cajoled into accepting Richard as king, in spite of the continued survival of his nephews (the Princes in the Tower). Richard asks Buckingham to secure the death of the princes, but Buckingham hesitates. Richard then recruits James Tyrrell, who kills both children. When Richard denies Buckingham a promised land grant, Buckingham turns against Richard and defects to the side of Henry, Earl of Richmond, who is currently in exile. Richard has his eye on his niece, Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's next remaining heir, and poisons Lady Anne so he can be free to woo the princess. The Duchess of York and Queen Elizabeth mourn the princes' deaths, when Queen Margaret arrives. Queen Elizabeth, as predicted, asks Queen Margaret's help in cursing. Later, the Duchess applies this lesson and curses her only surviving son before leaving. Richard asks Queen Elizabeth to help him win her daughter's hand in marriage, but she is not taken in by his eloquence, and eventually manages to trick and stall him by saying she will let him know her daughter's answer in due course. In due course, the increasingly paranoid Richard loses what popularity he had. He soon faces rebellions led first by Buckingham and subsequently by the invading Richmond. Buckingham is captured and executed. Both sides arrive for a final battle at Bosworth Field. Prior to the battle, Richard is visited by the ghosts of his victims, all of whom tell him to "Despair and die!" after which they wish victory upon Richmond. He awakes screaming for "Jesu" to help him, slowly realising that he is all alone in the world, and cannot even pity himself. At the battle of Bosworth Field, Lord Stanley (who is also Richmond's stepfather) and his followers desert Richard's side, whereupon Richard calls for the execution of George Stanley, Lord Stanley's son. This does not happen, as the battle is in full swing, and Richard is left at a disadvantage. Richard is soon unhorsed on the field at the climax of the battle, and cries out, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" Richmond kills Richard in the final duel. Subsequently, Richmond succeeds to the throne as Henry VII, and marries Princess Elizabeth from the House of York.
177094	/m/01809g	The Fall	Albert Camus	1956	{"/m/02m4t": "Existentialism"}	 The novel opens with Clamence sitting in the bar, Mexico City, casually talking to a stranger — the reader, some would say — about the proper way to order a drink; for here, despite the cosmopolitan nature of Amsterdam, the bartender refuses to respond to anything other than Dutch. Thus, Clamence serves as interpreter and he and the stranger, having discovered that they are fellow compatriots who, moreover, both hail from Paris, begin discussing more substantive matters. Clamence tells us that he used to lead an essentially perfect life in Paris as a highly successful and well-respected defence lawyer. The vast majority of his work centred around "widow and orphan" cases, that is, the poor and disenfranchised who otherwise would be unable to provide themselves with a proper defence before the law. He also relates anecdotes about how he always enjoyed giving friendly directions to strangers on the streets, yielding to others his seat on the bus, giving alms to the poor, and, above all, helping the blind to cross the street. In short, Clamence conceived of himself as living purely for the sake of others and "achieving more than the vulgar ambitious man and rising to that supreme summit where virtue is its own reward" (Camus 288). However, late one night when crossing the Pont Royal on his way home from his "mistress," Clamence comes across a woman dressed in black leaning over the edge of the bridge. He hesitates for a moment, thinking the sight strange at such an hour and given the barrenness of the streets, but continues on his way nevertheless. He had only walked a short distance when he heard the distinct sound of a body hitting the water. Clamence stops walking, knowing exactly what has happened, but does nothing — in fact, he doesn't even turn around. The sound of screaming was Despite Clamence's view of himself as a selfless advocate for the weak and unfortunate, he simply ignores the incident and continues on his way. He later elaborates that his failure to do anything was most probably because doing so would have required him to put his own personal safety in jeopardy. Several years after the apparent suicide of the woman off the Pont Royal — and an evidently successful effort to purge the entire event from his memory — Clamence is on his way home one autumn evening after a particularly pleasing day of work. He pauses on the empty Pont des Arts and reflects: Clamence turns around to discover that the laughter, of course, was not directed at him, but probably originated from a far-off conversation between friends — such is the rational course of his thought. Nevertheless, he tells us that "I could still hear it distinctly behind me, coming from nowhere unless from the water." The laughter is thus alarming because it immediately reminds him of his obvious failure to do anything whatsoever about the woman who had presumably drowned years before. The unlucky coincidence for Clamence here is that he is reminded of this precisely at the moment when he is congratulating himself for being such a selfless individual. Furthermore, the laughter is described as a "good, hearty, almost friendly laugh," whereas, mere moments later, he describes himself as possessing a "good, hearty badger" (Camus 297). This implies that the laughter originated within himself, adding another dimension to the inner meaning of the scene. That evening on the Pont des Arts represents, for Clamence, the collision of his true self with his inflated self-image, and the final realization of his own hypocrisy becomes painfully obvious. A third and final incident initiates Clamence's downward spiral. One day while waiting at a stoplight, Clamence finds that he is trapped behind a motorcycle which has stalled ahead of him and is unable to proceed once the light changes to green as a result. Other cars behind him start honking their horns, and Clamence politely asks the man several times if he would please move his motorcycle off the road so that others can drive around him; however, with each repetition of the request, the motorcyclist becomes increasingly agitated and threatens Clamence with physical violence. Angry, Clamence exits his vehicle in order to confront the man when someone else intervenes and "informed me that I was the scum of the earth and that he would not allow me to strike a man who had a motor-cycle between his legs and hence was at a disadvantage" (Camus 303-4). Clamence turns to respond to his interlocutor when suddenly the motorcyclist punches him in the side of the head and then speeds off. Without retaliating against his interlocutor, Clamence, utterly humiliated, merely returns to his car and drives away. Later, he runs through his mind "a hundred times" what he thinks he should have done — namely strike his interlocutor, then chase after the motorcyclist and run him off the road. The feeling of resentment gnaws away at him, and Clamence explains that Clamence thus arrives at the conclusion that his whole life has in fact been lived in search of honour, recognition, and power over others. Having realized this, he can no longer live the way he once did. However, Clamence initially attempts to resist the sense that he has lived hypocritically and selfishly. He argues with himself over his prior acts of kindness, but quickly discovers that this is an argument he cannot win. He reflects, for example, that whenever he had helped a blind man across the street — something he especially enjoyed doing — he would doff his hat to the man. Since the blind man obviously cannot see this acknowledgement, Clamence asks, "To whom was it addressed? To the public. After playing my part, I would take my bow" (Camus 301). As a result, he comes to see himself as duplicitous and hypocritical. The realization that his whole life has been lived in hypocrisy and denial precipitates an emotional and intellectual crisis for Clamence which, moreover, he is unable to avoid having now discovered it; the sound of laughter that first struck him on the Pont des Arts slowly begins to permeate his entire existence. In fact, Clamence even begins laughing at himself as he defends matters of justice and fairness in court. Unable to ignore it, Clamence attempts to silence the laughter by throwing off his hypocrisy and ruining the reputation he acquired therefrom. Clamence thus proceeds to "destroy that flattering reputation" (Camus 326) primarily by making public comments that he knows will be received as objectionable: telling beggars that they are "embarrassing people," declaring his regret at not being able to hold serfs and beat them at his whim, and announcing the publication of a "manifesto exposing the oppression that the oppressed inflict on decent people." In fact, Clamence even goes so far as to consider However, to Clamence's frustration and dismay, his efforts in this regard are ineffective, generally because many of the people around him refuse to take him seriously; they find it inconceivable that a man of his reputation could ever say such things and not be joking. Clamence eventually realizes that his attempts at self-derision can only fail, and the laughter continues to gnaw at him. This is because his actions are just as dishonest: "In order to forestall the laughter, I dreamed of hurling myself into the general derision. In fact, it was still a question of dodging judgment. I wanted to put the laughers on my side, or at least to put myself on their side" (Camus 325). Ultimately, Clamence responds to his emotional-intellectual crisis by withdrawing from the world on precisely those terms. He closes his law practice, avoids his former colleagues in particular and people in general, and throws himself completely into uncompromising debauchery; while humankind may be grossly hypocritical in the areas from which he has withdrawn, "no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures" (Camus 311 - a quotation from Samuel Johnson). The last of Clamence's monologues takes place in his apartment in the (former) Jewish Quarter, and recounts more specifically the events which shaped his current outlook; in this regard his experiences during the Second World War are crucial. With the outbreak of war and the fall of France, Clamence considers joining the French Resistance, but decides that doing so would ultimately be futile. He explains, Instead, Clamence decides to flee Paris for London, and takes an indirect route there, moving through North Africa; however, he meets a friend while in Africa and decides to stay and find work, eventually settling in Tunis. But after the Allies land in Africa, Clamence is arrested by the Germans and thrown into a concentration camp — "chiefly [as] a security measure," he assures himself (Camus 343). While interned, Clamence meets a comrade, introduced to the reader only as "Du Guesclin", who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, was captured by "the Catholic general", and now found himself in the hands of the Germans in Africa. These experiences subsequently caused the man to lose his faith in the Catholic Church (and perhaps in God as well); as a form of protest Duguesclin announces the need for a new Pope — one who will "agree to keep alive, in himself and in others, the community of our sufferings" — to be chosen from among the prisoners in the camp. As the man with "the most failings," Clamence jokingly volunteers himself, but finds that the other prisoners agree with his appointment. As a result of being selected to lead a group of prisoners as "Pope," Clamence is afforded certain powers over them, such as how to distribute food and water and deciding who will do what kind of work. "Let's just say that I closed the circle," he confesses, "the day I drank the water of a dying comrade. No, no, it wasn't Duguesclin; he was already dead, I believe, for he stinted himself too much" (Camus 343-4). Clamence then relates the story of how a famous fifteenth-century painting, a panel from the Ghent Altarpiece known as The Just Judges, came into his possession. One evening a regular patron of Mexico City entered the bar with the priceless painting and sold it for a bottle of jenever to the bartender who, for a time, displayed the piece prominently on the wall of his bar. (Both the man who sold the painting and the now-vacant place on the wall where it hung are cryptically pointed out at the beginning of the novel.) However, Clamence eventually informs the bartender that the painting is in fact stolen, that police from several countries are searching for it, and offers to keep it for him; the bartender immediately agrees to the proposal. Clamence attempts to justify his possession of the stolen painting in a number of ways, primarily "because those judges are on their way to meet the Lamb, because there is no lamb or innocence any longer, and because the clever rascal who stole the panel was an instrument of the unknown justice that one ought not to thwart" (Camus 346). The full story of the Ghent Altarpiece and the "Just Judges" panel, along with its role in Camus' novel, is told in Noah Charney's 2010 book, Stealing the Mystic Lamb: the True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece. Finally, Clamence employs the imagery of the Ghent Altarpiece and The Just Judges to explain his self-identification as a "judge-penitent". This essentially espouses a doctrine of relinquished freedom as a method of enduring the suffering imposed on us by virtue of living in a world without objective truth and one that is therefore ultimately meaningless. With the death of God, one must also accept by extension the idea of universal guilt and the impossibility of innocence. Clamence's argument posits, somewhat paradoxically, that freedom from suffering is attained only through submission to something greater than oneself. Clamence, through his confession, sits in permanent judgment of himself and others, spending his time persuading those around him of their own unconditional guilt. The novel ends on a sinister note: "Pronounce to yourself the words that years later haven't ceased to resound through my nights, and which I will speak at last through your mouth: "O young girl, throw yourself again into the water so that I might have a second time the chance to save the two of us!" A second time, eh, what imprudence! Suppose, dear sir, someone actually took our word for it? It would have to be fulfilled. Brr...! the water is so cold! But let's reassure ourselves. It's too late now, it will always be too late. Fortunately!"
177162	/m/0180q0	The Golden Hour	Maiya Williams	2004		 The Golden Hour tells the story of Rowan and Nina's adventures the summer after their mother's death. Thirteen-year-old Rowan's life is at an all-time low: his father has turned to drinking, the family business is becoming a financial disaster, they have had to move from their house to a small apartment, and his musically talented ten-year-old sister Nina has become withdrawn. When his two great aunts invite Rowan and Nina to spend the summer with them in Owatannauk, Maine, a small (fictional) town on the tip of the state, Rowan anticipates a very boring summer with the two elderly women. But when he arrives he finds strange things starting to happen: the aunts run a curio shop stocking some items so curious they even compel Nina to start speaking again. Rowan and Nina meet two twins, Xanthe and Xavier Alexander, who tell them about an old abandoned resort that appears to be haunted. Instead, the resort turns out to be an elaborate time machine. Nina seems interested in using the machine to escape her troubled life, especially when Rowan tells her about the Enlightenment, a period of European history when superstition and church dogma began giving way to logic and reason, art and science made tremendous strides, and truth and beauty were celebrated. When Nina disappears the next morning, the older kids rush to the resort: as they suspect, she has used the time machine. But Rowan discovers that he has told his sister the wrong dates for the Enlightenment, and instead of directing her to Enlightenment France he has sent her into the middle of the violent French Revolution. Rowan, Xanthe and Xavier time-travel to the French Revolution to save Nina, meeting various historical characters along the way, and Nina ends up in New York at their bakery visiting their mom.
177375	/m/0181z3	The Man Who Fell to Earth	Walter Tevis		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Thomas Jerome Newton is a humanoid alien who comes to Earth seeking to construct a spaceship to ferry others from his home planet, Anthea, to Earth. Anthea is experiencing a terrible drought after many nuclear wars, and the population has dwindled to less than 300. They have hundreds of superior starships, but for not being used for over 500 years, they are unusable because of little to no fuel. They have no water, loads of food that is slowly dwindling, and feeble solar power. Like all Antheans, he is super-intelligent, but he has been selected to complete this mission for his strength, due to the harsh climate and gravity of Earth compared to the cold, small Anthea. Getting to Earth via a lifeboat, Newton first lands in the state of Kentucky but quickly becomes familiarized with the environment and aspires to become an entrepreneur. Newton uses advanced technology from his home planet to patent many inventions on Earth, and rises as the head of a technology-based conglomerate to incredible wealth. This wealth is needed to construct his own space vehicle program in order to ferry the rest of the Anthean population. Along the way he meets Betty Jo, a simple Kentucky woman. She falls in love with him. He does not share these feelings, but takes her, and his curious fuel-technician Nathan Bryce, as his few friends while he runs his company in the shadows. Betty Jo introduces Newton to many customs of Earth culture, amongst them church-going, fashion, and alcohol. However, his appetite for alcohol soon invokes much emotional instability, as he is forced to deal with intense human emotions with which Antheans are unfamiliar. His secret identity as an alien is discovered by Nathan Bryce, but Newton, aware that he has been discovered, is relieved to reveal his identity to someone for the first time. The Antheans he will ferry to Earth will flourish and hopefully make use of their superintelligence to influence Earth to peace, prosperity, and safety from the apocalypse. However, the CIA arrests Newton, having followed him since his appearance on Earth and having recorded this private conversation with Bryce. They submit him to rigorous tests and analysis, but ultimately find that, despite much conclusive evidence of his alien identity, it would be pointless to release the results because the public would not believe the truth. Such claims would also reflect poorly on the Democratic Party, responsible for the capture. The CIA releases Newton, but no sooner than he tries to exit his building, the FBI, uninformed by the CIA that Newton is exempt from further tests, commences their own brief examinations. Their final examination is ultimately an X-ray of Newton's skull, through his eyes. Newton, whose eyes are sensitive to X-rays, tries to stop them to no avail and is blinded. The story of Newton's blinding reaches the press in a frenzy and then is used by the Republican Party to depict the Democrats as being corrupt, and leads to their seizure of power, which is to inevitably lead to apocalypse. Newton, in a final confrontation with Bryce, is bitterly unable to continue his spaceship project due to planetary alignments having changed during captivity and the troubles of his blindness. He creates a recording of alien messages which he hopes to be broadcast via radio to his home.
178213	/m/0187rz	The Quiet Earth	Craig Harrison	1981	{"/m/0587vh": "Human extinction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 John Hobson, a geneticist involved in a project concerned with manipulating DNA, awakes in his hotel room in Thames, New Zealand after a nightmare of falling from a great height. His wristwatch has stopped at 6:12. Upon getting up he finds the electricity off. It is quiet outside, with nobody in sight. Hobson checks the time in his car, finding the vehicle's clock is also frozen at 6:12. The town's shops are locked and unattended, with no sign of people. Investigating a car sitting at an intersection, Hobson sees that the driver's seatbelt is still fastened. Telephones are dead and there is only static on the radio. All humans and animals have disappeared. No watch or clock shows anything other than 6.12. Hobson concludes that some force has altered the clocks to show the same time and then stopped them, suggesting an intelligence behind the event, which Hobson dubs 'the Effect'. A garden yields the first sign of life Hobson has found – a worm dug up from the soil. The garden is otherwise devoid of fauna. Hobson wonders if he has gone mad, but dismisses the idea. During the night, Hobson hears sounds from outside approaching. Hobson wills the entity to leave, and the sounds retreat. Uncertainty as to whether the presence was there, or whether it may have been a stray animal spared from the Effect competes in his mind with speculations that the intruder could be a manifestation of the Effect. Hobson reassures himself that he can keep the entity at bay with mental effort. The next morning Hobson procures weapons and supplies, and leaves for Auckland, finding the city deserted. Hobson seems to be the only human being remaining. He wonders what rendered him immune to the Effect. Hobson hurries to an apparent smoke signal coming from the North Shore, only to find suburban homes destroyed by the impact of a jetliner. The plane was empty when it crashed. Hobson travels to the research unit, where he worked to reactivate dormant genes in humans and animals using high-frequency sound waves and radiation. The unit's head, Perrin, believed that awakening the dormant genes would lead to a quantum leap in evolution. Hobson finds Perrin in a radiation chamber, dead at the controls of the sound wave machine. The machine appears to have short-circuited, but there is no evidence indicating how Perrin died. Hobson decides he perished before the Effect – as dead animal tissue did not vanish. Hobson retrieves Perrin's papers, then begins journeying to Wellington, hoping to find survivors or clues as to what happened. En route to Rotorua, Hobson sees a creature in his headlights. The monster is some kind of hybrid of dog and calf. Hobson drives off terror-stricken, unsure as to whether the apparition was really there. At Rotorua, Hobson almost commits suicide, realising everyone else is dead. Hobson comes across live fish in a stream, leading him to conclude that the Effect did not penetrate water. He is startled when an electronic howling noise booms out across Lake Taupo from the far side. Hobson reaches an area of bushland near Turangi, his path blocked by a truck. Back-tracking, he finds the alternate route also cut off. Trying to work around the stalled vehicle, he is confronted by another survivor with a rifle. The gunman is Apirana Maketu, a Māori and a lance-corporal in the New Zealand Army. "Api" woke up at his barracks in Waiouru to find the base deserted. He remained at his post for two days before setting out to find survivors. A search of Gisborne and the East Coast yielded nothing, and a visit to the power station at Tokaanu led him to believe the electrical grid was knocked out by a massive surge. Api heard the same sound that Hobson heard – albeit earlier in the day and coming from the side of the lake that Hobson was standing on. Believing it to be a car, Api laid the roadblock to catch anyone coming south. Api reveals his belief that something hostile is abroad in the land. It is present only in certain places, and is stronger at night. The soldier is both relieved and worried to find that Hobson has experienced the same dread. The two men seem to already know one other, sharing a flash of recognition upon first meeting. Neither can account for this, as they have never encountered each other before. They arrive at the nation's capital to find it devoid of life. Api and Hobson set up dwellings in a hotel and hunt for survivors. Hobson plans to run tests to see if he can determine the nature of the Effect and the reason why he and Api survived. Api assists Hobson with procuring equipment for the scientist's studies. A radio transceiver is set up, and the duo transmit words and Morse code across the world. They receive no response. Hobson's investigations reveal no reason for their exemption from the Effect. The men face the prospect that they are alone. Api goes skin-diving for shellfish – he pretends to drown as a joke, and Hobson reacts unconsciously by holding the other man's head underwater. There is a moment of hostility when Api breaks free, resolved when Hobson explains that his son, who was autistic, drowned in a bathtub, and Hobson felt Api was making fun of this. The death of the child led to the end of Hobson's marriage. Both men realize that Hobson is not in complete control of his actions. Visiting the Beehive, Api speculates that they could be lab rats on some kind of duplicate Earth; it is they who disappeared. Hobson puts no stock in this theory. Three weeks after the Effect, Hobson is left alone while Api goes to get a new car. Hobson goes into Api's bedroom and finds photographs of Api as a private during the Vietnam War, posing with the mutilated corpses of Viet Cong. Hobson believes that Api is a psychopath. Hobson feels helpless to prevent his relationship with Api from deteriorating further and plans to kill Api with sleeping pills. After searching for a boat to take them to the South Island, during which both men experience an attack of dread from the 'force' hounding them, Api takes Hobson for a joyride in his Lotus Elite. A woman runs into the car's path. She is taken to the hotel and made comfortable, but neither Api nor Hobson are medically trained. Unless she is less badly hurt than she seems, she will die. The men bicker pointlessly. The woman's condition worsens, and there is nothing her fellow survivors can do for her. Hobson senses the unseen force again, emanating from the empty city. He speculates that the force may have always been a part of the land, and is claiming the Earth. Api studies the Bible, and later wakes Hobson to tell him that he has solved the clock enigma. 6.12 relates to the Number of the Beast, 666 (6-12 = 6 and 6 plus 6) and to Revelation 6:12, with the Biblical chapter's talk of men hiding from the face of God. Hobson does not believe this, and holds a hidden gun on the deranged soldier. The woman dies, sending Api into hysterics. After another argument, a full-scale battle with guns and grenades ensues. Hobson kills Api, with the soldier seeming to give up. The scientist is now alone. Breaking open Perrin's box, Hobson realizes his colleagues considered him unbalanced and kept him under surveillance. Perrin believed that Hobson's DNA was altered due to radiation, which caused his child's autism. Hobson believes the Effect was his doing. The project he worked on caused the unraveling of animal DNA; only those with the dormant gene pair were spared. Flashbacks detail Hobson's last days at the research unit. Perrin seizes upon an accident with the sound wave/radiation machine in which Hobson set the sound modulator too high and was blasted out of his chair by an invisible energy wave. Perrin charges Hobson with negligence, as the sample slides for insects and animals in the machine are blank, while the ones for plants are normal. This event cements for Hobson his long-growing misgivings about the experiments, and what he believes are Perrin's motives for pursuing them. In a later flashback, Hobson relates how he sabotaged the sound wave machine before going on leave to output a much higher level of infrasound than the controls would register. The idea was to put the machine out of action temporarily, ruining Perrin's chance to use Hobson's theories. Hobson took what he believed to be a fatal dose of sleeping pills on the night before the Effect. As he reads Perrin's notes, Hobson realises that this sabotage almost certainly caused the Effect. His act always had a different purpose- to kill Perrin. Believing his boss insane and consumed with a desire to play God, Hobson subconsciously altered his own memory to hide this fact from himself. This ability to edit his own recollections, and to take refuge in a kind of mental 'super-reality', is purely automatic. Hobson finally accepts the guilt for letting his son drown. Allowing his child to die was his way of destroying himself, a kind of external suicide. The child's autism mirrored his father's own emptiness. Perhaps Hobson caused the Effect, or is dreaming all this in a barbiturate coma, or is in Hell or Purgatory. Perhaps the rest of humanity evolved, or is unchanged and wondering where Hobson and a handful of others have gone to. With the death of the entire race on his hands, Hobson jumps from the hotel. He gathers speed, then wakes up in his motel room in Thames. Recovering from the nightmare of falling, all he can remember of the dream he was ripped from, he notices that his wrist watch has stopped at 6:12.
178842	/m/018df2	The Phantom Tollbooth	Norton Juster	1961	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Milo is a boy bored by the world around him; every activity seems a waste of time. He arrives home from school one day to find in his bedroom a mysterious package that contains a miniature tollbooth and a map of "the Lands Beyond". Attached is a note, "FOR MILO, WHO HAS PLENTY OF TIME". He assembles the tollbooth, takes the map, drives through the tollbooth in his toy car, and instantly finds himself on a road to Expectations. He pays no attention to his route and soon becomes lost in the Doldrums, a colorless place where thinking and laughing are not allowed. However, he is found there and rescued by Tock, a "watchdog" with an alarm clock attached to him, who joins him on his journey. Their first stop is Dictionopolis, one of two capital cities of the Kingdom of Wisdom. They visit the word marketplace, where all the world's words and letters are bought and sold. After an altercation between the Spelling Bee and the blustering Humbug, Milo, and Tock are arrested by the very short Officer Shrift. In prison, Milo learns the history of Wisdom. Its two rulers, King Azaz the Unabridged and the Mathemagician, had two adopted younger sisters, Rhyme and Reason, who had settled all disputes in the kingdom. Everyone lived in harmony until the rulers disagreed with the princesses' decision that letters and numbers were equally important. They banished the princesses to the Castle in the Air, and since then, the kingdom has been plagued with discord and disharmony. Milo and Tock leave the dungeon and attend a banquet given by King Azaz, where the guests literally eat their words. King Azaz allows Milo and the Humbug to talk themselves into a quest to rescue the princesses. Azaz appoints the Humbug as a guide, and he, Milo, and Tock set off for the Mathemagician's capital of Digitopolis to obtain his approval for their quest. Along the way they meet such characters as Alec Bings, a little boy who sees through things and grows until he reaches the ground, and have adventures like watching Chroma the Great conduct his orchestra in playing the colors of the sunset. In Digitopolis, their first stop is the mine where numbers are dug out and precious stones are thrown away. They eat subtraction stew, which makes the diner hungrier. The Mathemagician erases the mine with his magic pencil eraser, he and Milo discuss Infinity, and Milo proves to the Mathemagician that he must allow them to rescue the princesses. In the Mountains of Ignorance, the three intrepid journeyers contend with lurking, obstructionist demons like the Terrible Trivium and the Senses Taker. After overcoming various obstacles and their own fears, the questers reach the Castle in the Air. The two princesses welcome Milo and agree to return to Wisdom. When the group leaves, Tock carries them through the sky because, after all, time flies. The demons chase them, but the armies of Wisdom repel them. The armies of Wisdom welcome the princesses home, King Azaz and the Mathemagician are reconciled, and all enjoy a three-day carnival celebration of the return of Rhyme and Reason, the princesses of the land. Milo says goodbye and drives off, feeling he has been away several weeks. Ahead in the road he spots the tollbooth and drives through. Suddenly he is back in his own room, and discovers he has been gone only an hour. He awakens the next day full of plans to return to Wisdom, but when he returns from school the tollbooth has vanished. A new note has arrived, which reads, "FOR MILO, WHO NOW KNOWS THE WAY." Milo is somewhat disappointed but looks around and finds that the world he lives in is beautiful and interesting.
179860	/m/018k2l	The Hundred and One Dalmatians	Dodie Smith	1956	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Pongo and Missis Pongo (or simply Missis) are a pair of Dalmatians who live with the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Dearly and their two nannies, Nanny Cook and Nanny Butler. Mr. Dearly is a "financial wizard" who has been granted lifelong tax exemption and lent a house on the Outer Circle in Regent's Park in return for wiping out the government debt. The dogs consider the humans their pets, but allow the humans to think that they are the owners. Missis gives birth to a litter of 15 puppies. Concerned that Missis will not be able to feed them all, the humans join in to help. Mrs. Dearly looks for a canine wet nurse, and finds an abandoned Dalmatian in the middle of the road in the pouring rain. She has the dog treated by a vet and names her Perdita ("lost"). Perdita later tells Pongo about her lost love and the circumstances that led to her abandonment. Mr. and Mrs. Dearly attend a dinner party hosted by Cruella de Vil, an intimidating and very wealthy woman fixated on fur clothing. The Dearlys are disconcerted by her belief that all animals are worthless and should be drowned. Shortly after the dinner party, the puppies disappear. The humans fail to trace them but through the "Twilight Barking", a forum of communication in which dogs can relay messages to each other across the country, the dogs manage to track them down to "Hell Hall", the ancestral home of the de Vil family in Suffolk. Pongo and Missis try to relate the puppies' location to the Dearlys but fail. The dogs decide to run away and find them themselves, leaving Perdita to look after the Dearlys. After a journey across the countryside, they meet the Colonel, an Old English Sheepdog who shows them Hell Hall and tells them its history. They learn that there are 97 puppies in Hell Hall, including Pongo and Missis' own 15. Cruella de Vil appears and tells the crooks in charge of Hell Hall to slaughter and skin the dogs as soon as possible because of the publicity surrounding the theft of the Dearlys' puppies. Pongo and Missis devise a plan to rescue all of the puppies and escape the day before Christmas Eve. One puppy, Cadpig, is too weak to walk the long distance from Suffolk to London so Tommy, the Colonel's two year old pet, lends her a toy carriage. When the carriage loses a wheel, they rest on the hassocks of a country church. Cruella almost finds them, but the dogs manage to escape in a removal van. Having rolled in soot to disguise themselves, they hide in the darkness of the van with the help of a Staffordshire terrier whose pets are the drivers of the van. Upon arriving in London, the dogs destroy Cruella's collection of animal skins and fur coats with the aid of Cruella's abused cat. The Dalmatians then return home. Once the dogs roll around to remove the soot from their coats, the Dearlys recognise them and send out for steaks to feed them. Cruella's cat visits to say Cruella has fled from Hell Hall. It has been put up for sale and Mr Dearly buys it with money he has been given by the government for sorting out another tax problem. He proposes to use it to start a "dynasty of Dalmatians" (and a "dynasty of Dearlys" to take care of them). Finally, Perdita's lost love, Prince, returns. His pets see his love for Perdita and allow him to stay with the Dearlys and become their 101st Dalmatian.
180147	/m/018l57	A Philosophical Investigation	Philip Kerr	1992	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In a near-future, a British neuroscientist named Professor Burgess Phelan has discovered a portion of the brain, the VMN, that is typically twice the size in men as it is in women. In certain men, however (approximately 1 in 100,000), it is the same size as a woman's, and that abnormality is an exceptionally accurate indicator of violent sociopathy. Professor Phelan developed an imaging device called L.O.M.B.R.O.S.O. (Localisation of Modullar Brain Resonations Obliging Social Orthopraxy) used to help diagnose men with the VMN deficiency. In the interests of public safety, the Lombroso institute is set up to test all the men in Britain. Males are enticed with ad campaigns to submit for testing; those who are VMN-negative are given confidential treatment, including counselling and drugs, and assigned a code name out of the Penguin book of Great Thinkers (e.g., Shakespeare, Plato, etc.). The police aren't given the names of the VMN-negative, but they are allowed to confirm whether or not a particular person is in the Lombroso Institutes system as VMN-negative. "Wittgenstein" is the code name of a VMN-negative who, until he was made aware of his status, was living a well-adjusted, if solitary, life, venting his sociopathic tendencies harmlessly through virtual reality entertainment systems. Upon discovering his pathology, though, he undertakes a public service of his own: after hacking into the Lombroso Institute's systems and obtaining a list of all VMN-negative men in Britain, he undertakes to kill them all. The narrative unfolds from a dual perspective: Wittgenstein's, and the female police lieutenant, Isadora "Jake" Jakowicz, assigned to catch him. Wittgenstein's portion is told from the first person as a diary of his assassinations and subsequent downfall; the detective's portion is told in a more traditional third-person perspective. In the novel's setting, the national government was elected partly on a platform of "retributive justice", rather than rehabilitative, and punitive coma has replaced the death penalty (and, to a lesser extent, incarceration) as punishment for extreme crimes. In its favour, punitive coma is safely reversed, should someone later prove innocent; as well, prison costs have plunged since the inmates are sentenced to years of sleep rather than restraint, and require much less guarding and care. Opponents of punitive coma (of whom Jake is one) argue that the state is now stealing years from people's lives, and giving the guilty no opportunity to rehabilitate themselves; thus, punitive coma is inhumane. This position is defeated, however, by proponents who observe that any long-term space travel will necessarily involve long-term medically-induced comas of the same kind, so the process itself is not inhumane; furthermore, criminals are not subject to the dangerous criminal environment of prison, so punitive coma may be considered a more, rather than less, humane punishment. An interesting portion of the narrative involves the use of a Cambridge philosophy professor to engage Wittgenstein in a debate on the morality of his actions. Since the killer comes to see his whole act through the lens of the real Wittgenstein's philosophy (including his mid-career reversal following Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), it's hoped that he will be amenable to philosophical persuasion. However, as Wittgenstein's killings continue, the government presses the Cambridge don to talk Wittgenstein into committing suicide, a position with which the philosopher agrees, much to Jake's dismay. gl:A Philosophical Investigation
180333	/m/018m6f	The Tortilla Curtain	T. Coraghessan Boyle	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cándido Rincón (33) and América (his pregnant common law wife, 17) are two Mexicans who enter the United States illegally, dreaming of the good life in their own little house somewhere in California. Meanwhile, they are homeless and camping at the bottom of the Topanga Canyon area of Los Angeles, in the hills above Malibu. Another couple, Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, have recently moved into a gated community on top of Topanga, in order to be closer to nature yet be close enough to the city to enjoy those amenities. Kyra is a successful real estate agent while Delaney keeps house, looks after Kyra's son by her first marriage and writes a regular column for an environmentalist magazine. The two couples' paths cross unexpectedly when Cándido is hit and injured by Delaney, who is driving his car along the suburban roads near his home. For different reasons, each man prefers not to call the police or an ambulance. Cándido is afraid of being deported and Delaney is afraid of ruining his perfect driving record. Delaney soothes his conscience by giving Cándido "$20 blood money," explaining to Kyra that "He's a Mexican." From that moment on, the lives of the two couples are constantly influenced by the others. After the accident, Cándido's problems deepen. At first he can't work after being injured by the car crash and when he does not find a temporary job at a local work exchange anymore, he unavailingly tries to find one in the city, hoping to save money for an apartment in the North despite the low wages offered. With América, his wife, pregnant, his shame at not being able to get a job and procure a home and food for his family increases, especially when América decides to find some illegal—and possibly dangerous—work herself. At one point in the novel, after Cándido is robbed by some Mexicans in the city, they are forced to go through the trash cans behind a fast-food restaurant so as not to starve. The Mossbachers, Delaney's family, are also having problems of their own, though of an altogether different nature. Comfortably settled in their new home, in a gated community, they are faced with the cruelty of nature when one of their two pet dogs is killed by a coyote. In addition, the majority of inhabitants of their exclusive estate feel increasingly disturbed and threatened by the presence of—as they see it—potentially criminal, illegal aliens and vote for a wall to be built around the whole estate. Cándido has a stroke of luck when he is given a free turkey at a grocery store by another customer, who has just received it through the store's Thanksgiving promotion. When Cándido starts roasting the bird back in their shelter, he inadvertently causes a fire which spreads so quickly that even the gated community the Mossbachers live in has to be evacuated. In the midst of the escalating disasters, América gives birth to Socorro, a daughter, whom she suspects might be blind. But the couple has no money to see the doctor. Delaney stalks Candido back to their shack. He carries a gun, but doesn't intend to kill Candido with it. Meanwhile, America tells Candido about the night when she was raped, as she suspects that the baby's blindness was caused by venereal disease transmitted by the rapist. Just as she is telling him this, Delaney finds their shack and is about to confront Candido about the forest fire, when the shack is knocked over in a landslide. Candido and America manage to save themselves, but Socorro is drowned in a river. The book ends with Candido helping Delaney out of the river. Time and again in the novel, however, it is hinted at that the real perpetrators can be found inside rather than outside the projected wall: well-to-do people insensitive to the plight of the have-nots.
180441	/m/018ms_	Love in a Cold Climate	Nancy Mitford		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Love in a Cold Climate is a companion volume to The Pursuit of Love. The time frame of Love in a Cold Climate is the same as The Pursuit of Love, but the focus is on a different set of characters. Fanny remains the fictional narrator. In The Pursuit of Love, Fanny narrates the story of her cousin Linda Radlett. In Love in a Cold Climate, Fanny narrates the story of Polly, to whom Fanny is distantly related through her father's family. Lady Leopoldina [Polly] Hampton, is the only child of the supremely aristocratic and very rich Earl of Montdore [fictional title] and his wife, Sonia. Lady Montdore is a product of the minor ranks of the aristocracy and her marriage to an earl is regarded as a social coup on her part. She is depicted by Fanny, as an avaricious, greedy snob, but not without charm. Her thrusting personality, allied to her husband's impeccable social standing, riches and political influence makes her a formidable woman. Lady Montdore, unbeknown to Lord Montdore, takes advantage of her husband's reputation to forward her own career as a hostess and manipulator of her social circle. After 20 years of marriage and no children, "Sonia felt less than well." The result is Polly. So beautiful and so perfect, the narrator, Fanny, adores Polly, as do her parents. Fanny loses contact with Polly, when Lord Montdore is sent as Viceroy of India. Fanny receives an invitation to visit the Montdores at Hampton, their country house upon the family's return from India. Fanny is torn between her affection for Polly and her anxiety about the complex social issues involved in such a visit. Her reunion with Polly is successful in that the two young women rekindle their childhood affection and establish a mature friendship. Fanny, the readers' informant, has great affection for Polly, but is aware of Polly's reticence in revealing her personal feelings. Unlike Fanny's Radlett cousins who "told everything", Polly reveals little of herself. Slightly older than Fanny, Polly has "come out" in India and as such a beautiful and socially important debutante, is expected to have a very successful season in London. The standing of the Montdore family is such that the beautiful Polly is expected to have her pick of all the eligible bachelors in the country. However, Polly consistently demonstrates a total lack of interest in the London season and all of the men she meets. She tells Fanny that when she "came out " in India, she found the whole thing very boring. Love affairs, so common in India, do not interest Polly, but she is hoping that "in a cold climate", society will be less interested in love affairs. Lady Montdore, hoping that Polly will make an important marriage, is exasperated by her daughter's apparent indifference to love and marriage. "Important" potential suitors acknowledge that Polly is very beautiful, but find her cold and aloof. The self contained Polly reveals to no one that she has been in love with her uncle, "Boy" Dougdale [the husband of her paternal aunt, Lady Patricia] since she was 14. Boy is snobbish, spending his time writing books about the aristocracy, and sexually rapacious; his many affairs are common knowledge to both his wife and society at large. Fanny and her Radlett cousins have long suspected that the sexually ambiguous Boy, whom they have named the "Lecherous Lecturer," has pedophile tendencies and he is a joke amongst Fanny's cousins for his inappropriate touches and furtive, "lecherous" behaviour towards young girls. Polly marries her widowed uncle, shortly after her aunt's death, causing a scandal in her social circle and distressing her parents deeply. It is also known in these circles that Boy has been Lady Montdore's lover for many years, unbeknown to Polly. Polly is excluded from her father's will upon her marriage and she and Boy ostracised from society. They move to Sicily and away from Fanny for several years. Polly's place in the family is filled by the heir to Lord Montdore's entailed fortune and title, Cedric Hampton. Born in Nova Scotia to a minor member of the Montdore family, Cedric has cast off his colonial origins and has used his exceptional good looks and personal charm to establish a place within the homosexual milieu of the European aristocracy. Cedric has lived a life of luxury as the lover of rich and aristocratic men. Currently out of favour in that quarter, Cedric accepts an invitation to visit the Montdores. His natural love of beauty, innate good taste and his careful use of flattery, enable Cedric to win the affections of Lord and Lady Montdore and many others. Cedric focuses his attentions upon Lady Montdore in particular and encourages her to update her wardrobe and general appearance and revive her interest in social matters, which has diminished since the "loss" of her lover and her daughter. Lady Montdore uses Cedric's popularity and charm to reestablish herself as a leading society hostess, to Cedric's advantage. Fanny, as a regular visitor to the Montdores, shares with her readers all of the activities of the Montdore household and Cedric soon becomes one of her close friends. Polly, heavily pregnant, returns from Sicily with Boy. The marriage has turned sour and Fanny notes that neither Polly nor Boy is in love any more. Polly is regularly visited by the elderly Duke of Paddington [a fictional title] while pregnant, who lavishes her with luxurious flowers and attention. Polly reconciles with her mother after bearing a child who dies shortly after its birth. Cedric and Boy meet and fall in love. "Cedric arranged the whole thing perfectly", according to Fanny. While Polly recovers from the difficult birth, Cedric whisks Boy and Lady Montdore to France, leaving Polly free to be carried off by the elderly Duke. While this outcome shocks the conservative social circles in which they mix, Fanny takes a broader minded view, pleased to see people she loves each finding happiness in their own way. Don't Tell Alfred (1960) is a sequel to the novel giving further insight into the married life of Fanny and Alfred.
180464	/m/018mwr	The Fountainhead	Ayn Rand	1943-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the spring of 1922, architecture student Howard Roark is expelled from the fictional Stanton Institute of Technology for refusing to adhere to the school's conventionalism in architecture. Despite an effort by some professors to defend Roark and a subsequent offer to continue at Stanton from the dean, Roark chooses to leave the school. He believes buildings should be sculpted only to fit their location, material and purpose elegantly and efficiently, while his critics insist that adherence to and reverence for historical convention is essential. He goes to New York City to work for Henry Cameron, a disgraced architect whom Roark admires. Cameron, who once was architecture's modernist hero, has fallen from fame due to the fickle demands of society and his own caustic personality. His work serves as an inspiration for Roark. Peter Keating, a popular but vacuous fellow student, has graduated with high honors; he too moves to New York, where he takes a job at the prestigious architectural firm of Francon & Heyer and quickly ingratiates himself with senior partner Guy Francon. Roark and Cameron create inspired work, but their projects rarely receive recognition, whereas Keating's ability to flatter and please brings him quick success (despite his lack of originality) and earns him a partnership in the firm. After Cameron retires from practice, Keating hires Roark to work at his firm, but he is quickly fired for insubordination by Guy Francon. Roark looks for work at other firms before finding one that will let him design as he pleases, but the firm will just take the best aspects of his design and merge his ideas with the ideas and plans of the other draftsmen in the office. After one of Roark's original plans impresses a client, he briefly opens his own office. However, he has trouble finding clients and eventually closes it down rather than compromise his ideals to win business from clients who want more conventional buildings. He takes a job at a Connecticut granite quarry owned by Francon. Meanwhile, Keating has developed an interest in Francon's beautiful, temperamental and idealistic daughter Dominique, who works as a columnist for The New York Banner, a yellow press-style newspaper. While Roark is working in the quarry, he encounters Dominique, who has retreated to her family's estate in the same town as the quarry. There is an immediate attraction between them. Rather than indulge in traditional flirtation, the two engage in a battle of wills that culminates in a rough sexual encounter that Dominique later describes as a rape. Shortly after their encounter, Roark is notified that a client is ready for him to start on a new building, and he returns to New York before Dominique can learn his name. Ellsworth M. Toohey, author of a popular architecture column in the Banner, is an outspoken socialist who is covertly rising to power by shaping public opinion through his column and his circle of influential associates. Toohey sets out to destroy Roark through a smear campaign he spearheads. As the first step, Toohey convinces a weak-minded businessman named Hopton Stoddard to hire Roark as the designer for a temple dedicated to the human spirit. Given full freedom to design it as he sees fit, Roark incorporates into it a statue of Dominique, nude, which creates a public outcry. Toohey manipulates Stoddard into suing Roark for general incompetence and fraud. At the trial, prominent architects (including Keating) testify that Roark's style is unorthodox and illegitimate. Dominique defends Roark, but Stoddard wins the case and Roark loses his business again. Dominique decides that since she cannot have the world she wants (in which men like Roark are recognized for their greatness), she will live completely and entirely in the world she has, which shuns Roark and praises Keating. She offers Keating her hand in marriage. Keating accepts, breaking his previously long-held engagement with Toohey's niece Catherine, and they are married that evening. Dominique turns her entire spirit over to Keating, hosting the dinners he wants, agreeing with him, and saying whatever he wants her to say. She fights Roark and persuades his potential clients to hire Keating instead. Despite this, Roark continues to attract a small but steady stream of clients who see the value in his work. To win Keating a prestigious architecture commission offered by Gail Wynand, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Banner, Dominique agrees to sleep with Wynand. Wynand then buys Keating's silence and his divorce from Dominique, after which Wynand and Dominique are married. Wynand subsequently discovers that every building he likes was designed by Roark, so he enlists Roark to build a home for himself and Dominique. The home is built, and Roark and Wynand become close friends, although Wynand does not know about Roark's past relationship with Dominique. Now washed up and out of the public eye, Keating realizes he is a failure. Rather than accept retirement, he pleads with Toohey for his influence to get the commission for the much-sought-after Cortlandt housing project. Keating knows that his most successful projects were aided by Roark, so he asks for Roark's help in designing Cortlandt. Roark agrees to design it in exchange for complete anonymity and Keating's promise that it will be built exactly as designed. When Roark returns from a long yacht trip with Wynand, he finds that the Cortlandt design has been changed despite his agreement with Keating. Roark asks Dominique to distract the night watchman and dynamites the building to prevent the subversion of his vision. The entire country condemns Roark, but Wynand finally finds the courage to follow his convictions and orders his newspapers to defend him. The Banners circulation drops and the workers go on strike, but Wynand keeps printing with Dominique's help. Wynand is eventually faced with the choice of closing the paper or reversing his stance and agreeing to the union demands. He gives in; the newspaper publishes a denunciation of Roark over Wynand's signature. At the trial, Roark seems doomed, but he rouses the courtroom with a speech about the value of ego and the need to remain true to oneself. The jury finds him not guilty and Roark wins Dominique. Wynand, who has finally grasped the nature of the "power" he thought he held, shuts down the Banner and asks Roark to design one last building for him, a skyscraper – the tallest building in the world – that will testify to the supremacy of man: "Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours...and could have been mine." Eighteen months later, in the spring of 1940, the Wynand Building is well on its way to completion and Dominique, now Roark's wife, enters the site to meet him atop its steel framework.
181163	/m/018rh_	The Last Continent	Terry Pratchett	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens weeks after the events of Interesting Times, in which Rincewind is magically transported to the continent of Xxxx due to a miscalculation made by the Unseen University wizards. He meets the magical kangaroo Scrappy, who was sent by the creator of Fourecks. Scrappy explains to Rincewind that he is fated to bring back "The Wet," meaning the rain, and that he is the reason for the eons-long drought. Scrappy says that the continent is unfinished, and time and space will be an eternal anomaly there until it is finished, i.e. the rain is brought back. Rincewind is shown cave paintings of Wizards. Meanwhile, the senior wizards (made up of Archancellor Mustrum Ridcully, the Dean, the Bursar, The Chair of Indefinite Studies, the Lecturer in Recent Runes, the Senior Wrangler, and Ponder Stibbons) of Unseen University are trying to find a cure for the Librarian's magical malady, which causes him to transform into a native object, such as a book when near a library, whenever he sneezes. The wizards soon find out that the books in the Library become hostile and attack when not in the librarian's care. The wizards cannot cure the Librarian without knowing his name. The Librarian, being also the archivist, destroyed any evidence of his true name since he believed the wizards would attempt to turn him human again, as he rather enjoyed his orangutan body (brought on by a magical accident years before). The Lecturer in Recent Runes suggest they interrogate Rincewind, as he once worked closely with the Librarian and seemed to know more about him than anyone else. To find Rincewind, they have to find the continent of Xxxx. They seek out the Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, and find his office but no sign of the professor himself. They then find a magical window in space leading from the professor's bathroom to a tropical island thousands of years in the past. Back in the present, Rincewind attempts to run away from his destiny, but in fact runs towards it. With the secret assistance of Scrappy, he eventually ends up wrongfully arrested for sheep theft and taken to Bugarup, where he is hoping to find a ship to escape on. Along the way he subsequently ends up inventing several things that are considered Australian Icons in the real world, for example beer soup(vegemite), putting corks on a string round his hat to keep flies off (a common Australian outback hat stereotype), as well as becoming the subject of a ballad that is hinted at being a parody of the song "Waltzing Matilda" when he is caught apparently stealing a sheep by a billabong.A gigantic circular storm surrounding Fourecks prevents any ships from leaving, however. The people of Bugarup are enthusiastic for Rincewind, since they regard sheep thieves as folk heroes and encourage him to escape, while not actually allowing him to. He finds a hidden message on the ceiling of his holding cell, left by a previous escapee named Tinhead Ned, a reference to the famous Australian bushranger telling him to check the hinges on the door. He discovers that he is able to lift the door off its hinges and escape. The wizards become trapped when Mrs. Whitlow, the head maid, brings them their breakfast and inadvertently closes the window that leads back into the Professor's study. The wizards soon encounter plants that rapidly evolve to suit their needs but (apart from Ponder) do not question the turn of events until a large dinosaur evolves into a chicken in front of their eyes. After finding a plant-based boat, the wizards start to question their surroundings even more and the god of Evolution, who has been causing the events, then turns up and helps explain things a bit. He created the boat plant so that the wizards would leave him in peace, as the plants are going haywire attempting to evolve to suit the wizards' every needs. The god doesn't understand the purpose of the seeds and is, it turns out, unaware of the concept of sexual reproduction. After Mrs. Whitlow explains it to him, the much excited god decides to almost completely redesign the creatures on the island in order to incorporate the idea. Ponder decides to stay to help the god while the wizards load up on provisions and leave. Ponder soon catches up with them, as he discovered that the God was fixated with beetles and built the cockroach as his primary project rather than humans. The wizards then reach Fourecks and meet the Creator of Fourecks (not of the Disc) in the process of creating it by way of impressionistic cave paintings. The wizards bicker over the Creator's technique and inadvertently create the duck-billed platypus. The Librarian meanwhile steals the Creator's bullroarer and spins it, causing the drought Rincewind is in the process of stopping. The wizards are then frozen in time for thousands of years by the stray magic left over from creating the continent. Rincewind, having escaped from gaol, invents the Peach Nellie, and then meets up with a group of female impersonators, Darleen and Letitia, and a female, Neilette. The "ladies" have found his Luggage, which rescues him from the Watch. In the escape, Rincewind and Neilette break into the old brewery (which was never used because all the beer kept going flat). An earthquake (induced by the voice of the creator) causes the brewery to collapse, trapping them inside the Luggage. When they emerge, Rincewind can see the ethereal outlines of the wizards (who were trapped, frozen in time, for thirty thousand years in the brewery). Eventually he arrives at the University of Fourecks (which has a tower that is taller on the inside than it is on the outside). Rincewind figures out how to free the wizards, by drawing a picture of them, as the Creator did to create animals and plants in the past. The wizards attempt to find a way to bring back the rain, but are unsuccessful. As they are sitting around, Rincewind idly twirls the Bullroarer, which soon begins to fly faster and farther than it should. Rincewind lets go and the bullroarer flies off; immediately, it begins to rain. Having saved Fourecks, Rincewind and the Wizards return to Ankh-Morpork by ship, and the story ends with the old man with the sack (the Creator of the last continent) catching the bullroarer in front of a young boy.
181325	/m/018sb1	Laura Blundy	Julie Myerson		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After her mother has died in childbirth, Laura Blundy is brought up by her loving and caring father, a merchant and shopowner who also pays for her schooling. One day, on her way to her ailing aunt, she is given a lift by a young man in a carriage who rapes her and then throws her out of the carriage again. She becomes pregnant, and when both her father and her aunt die she is left penniless. Unable to care for her baby son, she manages to have him raised in an institution. She occasionally goes there to inquire after him, but one day she is told that he has died and that he has been buried in an unmarked grave. The feeling of loss she experiences never leaves her again. Laura Blundy spends the following 18 years of her life in the streets of London. When another woman's baby dies in her care she is charged with murder and has to go to prison. Years later she is set free again but almost immediately after her release she is run over by a carriage (whose driver does not stop). She is brought to hospital, where her leg is amputated. However, she falls in love with her surgeon. They get married, but Laura is attracted more by his cleanliness and moderate wealth than by his character or potency. When, in mid-winter, Laura decides to commit suicide by drowning in the river Thames, she is rescued by Billy, a young worker employed in the building of the Victoria Embankment and London's sewage system. Although Billy has a wife and children, they start a love affair. Some time later Laura beats her husband to death in his own home, making Billy an accomplice after the fact. Laura cuts up her husband's body, and then she and Billy carry the body in several bags to the river. As the surgeon's head keeps bobbing up and being washed ashore they eventually have to burn it. At this point in her life Laura, already in her late thirties, may be pregnant once again. The lovers have plans of escaping to France.
181622	/m/018tps	Contact	Carl Sagan	1985-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway is the director of "Project Argus," in which scores of radio telescopes in New Mexico have been dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The project discovers the first confirmed communication from extraterrestrial beings. The communication is a repeating series of the first 261 prime numbers (a sequence of prime numbers is a commonly predicted first message from alien intelligence, since mathematics is considered a "universal language," and it is conjectured that algorithms that produce successive prime numbers are sufficiently complicated so as to require intelligence to implement them). Further analysis reveals that a second message is contained in polarization modulation of the signal. The second message is a retransmission of Earth's first television signal broadcast powerful enough to escape the ionosphere and be received in interstellar space; in this case, Adolf Hitler's opening speech at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. A third message is discovered containing over 30,000 pages describing plans for a machine that appears to be a kind of highly advanced vehicle, with seats for five human beings. But they cannot understand the third message until they find the fourth message, a primer hidden in phase modulation. The primer allows them to translate the alien language to human language. Ultimately, a machine is successfully built and activated, transporting five passengers – including Ellie – through a series of wormholes to a place near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, where they meet the senders in the guise of persons significant in the lives of the travelers, whether living or dead. Some of the travelers' questions are answered by the senders, with the senders suggesting a message is contained within one of the transcendental numbers. Upon returning to Earth, the passengers discover that what seemed like many hours to them passed by in only 20 minutes on Earth, and that all their video footage has been erased, presumably by the time changing magnetic fields they were exposed to inside of the wormholes. They are left with no proof of their stories and are accused of fabrication. Therefore, though Ellie has traveled across the galaxy and actually encountered extraterrestrial beings, she cannot prove it. The government officials deduce an international conspiracy, blaming the world's richest man in an attempt to perpetuate himself, embarrass the government, and get lucrative deals from the machine consortium's multi-trillion-dollar project. The message is claimed to be a fabrication from a secret artificial man-made satellite(s) that cannot be traced, because the message stopped once the machine was activated, a feat that is impossible unless one considers time travel feasible, and Ellie and other scientists are implicated. Ellie, a lifelong religious skeptic, finds herself asking the world to take a leap of faith and believe what she and the others say happened to them. She finds only one person willing to take that leap: Palmer Joss, a minister introduced early in the book. Ellie, acting upon a suggestion by the senders of the message, works on a program which computes the digits of pi to record lengths in different bases. Very far from the decimal point (1020) and in base 11, it finds that a special pattern does exist when the numbers stop varying randomly and start producing 1s and 0s in a very long string. The string's length is the product of 11 prime numbers. The 1s and 0s when organized as a square of specific dimensions form a rasterized circle. The extraterrestrials suggest that this is a signature incorporated into the Universe itself. Yet the extraterrestrials are just as ignorant to its meaning as Ellie, as it could be still some sort of a statistical anomaly. They also make reference to older artifacts built from space time itself (namely the wormhole transit system) abandoned by a prior civilization. A line in the book suggests that the image is a foretaste of deeper marvels hidden even further within pi. This new pursuit becomes analogous to SETI; it is another search for meaningful signals in apparent noise.
182128	/m/018wnw	American Gods	Neil Gaiman	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The central premise of the novel is that gods and mythological creatures exist because people believe in them. Immigrants to the United States brought with them dwarves, elves, leprechauns, and other spirits and gods. However, the power of these mythological beings has diminished as people's beliefs wane. New gods have arisen, reflecting America's obsessions with media, celebrity, technology, and drugs, among others. The book follows the adventures of ex-convict Shadow, who is released from prison a few days earlier than planned due to the death of his wife, Laura, in a car accident. He discovers at the funeral that the car crashed because Laura was performing oral sex on Shadow's late friend Robbie, who was driving. Even before learning of the death of Robbie, who was to give Shadow a job, Shadow has been repeatedly offered work as a bodyguard by a conman called Mr. Wednesday. Shadow accepts Mr. Wednesday's offer and they both travel across America visiting Wednesday's unusual colleagues and acquaintances. Gradually, it is revealed that Wednesday is an incarnation of Odin the All-Father (the name Wednesday is derived from "Odin's--Wōden's--day"), who in his current guise is recruiting American manifestations of the Old Gods of ancient mythology, whose powers have waned as their believers have decreased in number, to participate in an epic battle against the New American Gods, manifestations of modern life and technology (for example, the Internet, media, and modern means of transport), who are controlling a Black hat Secret Services organization (according to the goddess Eostre, these Men in Black exist because "everyone knows they must exist"). Shadow's wife Laura comes back in the form of a sapient animated corpse due to a special golden coin Shadow had acquired and placed on her coffin at her burial, not knowing the effect it would have. Mythological characters prominently featured in the book include Mr Wednesday (Odin), Low-Key Lyesmith (Loki Lie-Smith), Mad Sweeney (Suibhne), Czernobog, the Zorya, the Norns, Mr Nancy (Anansi), Easter (Eostre), Mama Ji (Kali), Whiskey Jack (Wisakedjak) Mr Ibis (Thoth), Mr Jacquel (Anubis), Horus, and Bast. In addition to the numerous figures from real-world myths, a few characters from The Sandman and its spinoffs make brief cameos in the book. Other mythological characters featured in the novel are not divine, but are legendary or folk heroes, such as Johnny Appleseed and djinns. Shadow himself is implied to be the Norse god Baldr, which is confirmed in the follow-up novella, "Monarch of the Glen". In the Author's preferred text edition, Loki tells Shadow's wife Laura that when it was all over, he was going to sharpen a stick of mistletoe, go down to the ash tree and ram it between his eyes – implying that Shadow was indeed Baldr, as mistletoe was the only thing that could harm Baldr. During a live interview and spoken word session held at UCLA on Thursday, February 4, 2010, Gaiman revealed Shadow's identity as "Baldur Moon", in response to a fan question. The story features, in its most erotic chapter, a succubus-like re-invention of the Queen of Sheba, who while posing as a prostitute literally swallows a man through her sexual organs. "Bilquis", as she is called here, is later killed by one of the New Gods. Sexuality as a rule plays a part in the plot and subplots; Mr. Wednesday uses his magical powers to bed several young virgins on the journey across America ("And I need her, not as an end in herself, but to wake me up a little. Even King David knew that there is one easy prescription to get warm blood flowing through an old frame: take one virgin, call me in the morning.") while Shadow is seduced in his dreams by a humanoid version of Bast, Egyptian goddess of fertility. When the New Gods murder Wednesday – thus galvanizing the Old Gods into action – Shadow obeys Wednesday's order by holding his vigil. This is accomplished by re-enacting the act performed by Odin of hanging from a "World Tree" while pierced by a spear. Shadow eventually dies and visits the land of the dead, where he is guided by Thoth and judged by Anubis. Eostre later brings him back to life, obeying orders that she does not fully understand. During the period between life and death, Shadow learns that he is Wednesday's son, conceived as part of the deity's plans. He realises that Odin and Loki have been working a "two-man con." They orchestrated Shadow's birth, his meeting of Loki in disguise as his prison cellmate "Low Key Lyesmith" (Loki Liesmith) and Laura's death. Loki, secretly "Mr. World", the leader of the New Gods, orders Odin's murder so that the battle caused between the New and Old Gods will serve as a sacrifice to Odin, restoring his power, while Loki would feed on the chaos of the battle. Shadow arrives at Rock City, site of the climactic battle, just after the battle had started but in time to stop it, explaining that both sides had nothing to gain and everything to lose, with Odin and Loki the only winners. America is a "bad place for Gods", Shadow tells them, and recommends they go home and make the best of what they can get. The Gods depart, Odin's ghost fades, and Loki is impaled on a branch of the World Tree by Laura, who finally dies after Shadow takes the magical coin from her. In an extensive subplot, Shadow follows a clue given to him by the Hindu god Ganesha to discover that a man called Hinzelmann, who had been Shadow's neighbor for a time, is a kobold who annually sacrifices children to empower himself and prevent the small town of Lakeside from succumbing to the economic decay that has claimed many similar towns. Shadow confronts Hinzelmann, who is then shot by a local policeman whose father Hinzelmann had previously killed to keep his secret. After this, Shadow attempts to reconnect with Sam Black Crow, a girl of Native-American descent whom he had met several times in the past. Unnoticed by her and her girlfriend, he slips a bouquet into Sam's hand and leaves. It is not clear why the two lovers don't see him, though it is possible that Shadow is inadvertently "backstage", a state of existence only Gods can enter. Following the final confrontation between the gods, Shadow visits Iceland, where he meets another incarnation of Odin who was created by the belief of the original settlers of Iceland, and is therefore much closer to the Odin of mythology than Wednesday is. Shadow accuses Odin of Wednesday's actions, whereupon Odin replies that "He was me, yes. But I am not him." After a short talk, Shadow gives Odin Wednesday's glass eye, which Odin places in a leather bag as a keepsake. Shadow performs a simple sleight-of-hand coin trick, which delights Odin enough that he asks for a repeat performance. Shadow then flips the golden coin towards the sun and, without waiting to see if it ever lands, walks down the hill and away.
182433	/m/018x_s	Stardust	Neil Gaiman	1999-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Faerie Market is held every nine years on the other side of the wall dividing Faerie from our world and for which the nearby town of Wall is named. As the book begins, the market has just begun and the town filled with visitors and vendors. Dunstan Thorn rents out his cottage to a stranger in exchange for his "Heart's Desire" in addition to a monetary payment. The next day in the market, he meets Una, a princess imprisoned by the witch called Semele. He purchases a glass snowdrop from her with a kiss, and gives the flower to his fiancée Daisy. That night, Dunstan meets Una in the woods and makes love to her. A month later, Dunstan marries Daisy. In February, he receives a baby in a basket—his and Una's son, Tristran Thorn. Eighteen years later, Tristran seeks the love of Victoria Forester, the town beauty. One night, while Tristran is walking her home from the shop where he works, she sees a shooting star land in Faerie, and he vows to bring it to her in exchange for a kiss, and perhaps her hand in marriage. Thinking that he will never actually do it, Victoria promises to do whatever he asks if he brings her the star. Dunstan gives Tristran the snowdrop and helps him pass the guards at the wall by alluding to his faerie heritage. Tristran enters Faerie. At Stormhold, the King of Stormhold gathers his sons to determine who will be his heir; he hurls the Power of Stormhold, a topaz that marks its bearer as the ruler of the land, into the sky, knocking that selfsame star from the sky. He then dies, and his sons leave together. Septimus departs on his own after poisoning Tertius at a nearby inn. In a small, grey house in the woods, three ancient and mighty witches known as the Lillim learn of the fallen star by reading the entrails of a dead stoat, and the eldest of the Lilim consumes their last reserves of "years," later revealed to be the heart of another fallen star, to become young again. She meets a farm boy, Brevis, at a crossroads, takes his goat, and transforms him into a second goat, using the two animals to pull her small chariot. Tristran meets a small hairy man who helps him through the woods. After Tristran helps them escape deadly trees called serewood, he learns he has the ability to find any location in Faerie. Tristran is taunted by tiny faeries, who say that he is "soon to face his true love's scorn". The hairy man gives Tristran a new outfit, a silver chain like the one used to imprison Una, and a candle-stub which allows one to travel great distances quickly while it burns, which he explains by referencing the nursery rhyme "How Many Miles to Babylon?". Tristran uses the candle to quickly reach the fallen star, but is surprised to find that the star is actually a young woman named Yvaine, whose leg was broken in the fall. Yvaine hurls mud at him and continuously insults him. He resolves to bring her to Victoria anyway, tying her to him with the chain. However, the candle goes out before he can return, so the two sleep for the night. The next morning, Tristran tells Yvaine about his promise to Victoria and his intention to bring Yvaine to her. Tristran makes Yvaine a simple crutch to help her walk as her broken leg hinders her movement. They arrive at a clearing where they witness a fight between a lion and a unicorn over a golden crown. Yvaine asks Tristran to help the Unicorn when the Lion was about to kill it. Tristran, remembering the old nursery rhyme, The Lion and the Unicorn, picks up the crown and gives it to the Lion. With the crown upon its head, the Lion slips away into the forest. Tristran and Yvaine spend the night at the clearing beside the wounded Unicorn. Yvaine escapes when Tristran leaves in search of food. The witch-queen, on her search for the Star, encounters Madam Semele. They share a meal and Madam Semele gives witch-queen meat cooked with Limbus grass, which causes anyone who tastes it to speak nothing but the truth, forcing the witch-queen to reveal the true purpose of her journey. The enraged witch-queen puts a curse on her, which prevents her from seeing, touching or perceiving the star in any way and causing Semele to forget their meeting the moment the witch-queen leaves. On discovering that Yvaine is gone, a despondent and regretful Tristran spends the night under a tree. Tristran talks to a tree who says that Pan, the spirit of the forest, told her to help him. The tree tells Tristran that there are people looking for Yvaine and that there is a path in the forest with a carriage coming down it that Tristran can't miss. Then it gives Tristran a leaf and says to listen to it when he needs help the most. Tristran run to catch the carriage and nearly misses it but for a tree that has fallen in the carriage's path. Tristran meets Primus, the driver of the carriage, and persuades him to allow Tristran to ride in the carriage. In the mountains the witch-queen makes an inn to catch Yvaine who is coming her way. She turns the goat into a man, and the goat who used to be Brevis into a girl. Yvaine falls for the trap, and the witch-queen is preparing to carve out her heart when Tristran and Primus, who have also been attracted by the inn, arrive. The witch-queen decides to delay killing Yvaine until she had dealt with the two unwanted guests. She attempts to poison Tristran while he is tending to the horses, but the unicorn, which is also lodged in the stable, warns him just in time. He rushes back to the inn, but is too late to warn Primus. However he is able to rescue Yvaine by forming a makeshift candle from the remnants of the magical candle he had obtained earlier, burning his left hand in the process. Shortly afterwards, Septimus arrives and finds Primus' body. He sets off in search of the witch-queen, in order to fulfill an obligation to avenge his slain brother, and the topaz, in order to claim his birthright as the last surviving son of Stormhold. Tristran and Yvaine escape the witch-queen, but find themselves in an almost equally perilous situation. They walk past many scenes in the light of the candle, but eventually end up stranded on a cloud, miles above Faerie. Fortunately, they are rescued by the crew of a passing airborn ship. The captain of the ship agrees to help them on their way back to Wall, hinting that he is part of a mysterious 'fellowship' that wants to help Tristran for some unspecified reason. Tristran expresses regret for chaining Yvaine up. The star reveals that while Tristran no longer intends to force her to accompany her to Wall, the custom of her people dictates that, because he saved her life, she is nonetheless obliged to follow him. Upon parting company with the ship and its crew, Tristran and Yvaine encounter Madam Semele. Due to the curse the witch-queen put on her, Madam Semele is unable to see Yvaine, but agrees to transport Tristran the rest of the way to Wall, as she is going there to attend the market herself. Tristran obtains a promise from Madam Semele that he will not be harmed, will receive board and lodging, and will arrive at Wall in the same manner and condition as he was on departure. However this promise does not prevent Madam Semele from transforming him into a dormouse for the duration of the journey. The star also rides on Madam Semele's wagon, unbeknownst to the old woman. Septimus seeks revenge on the witch-queen for killing Primus, but is himself killed by the witch-queen, without ever reclaiming the topaz. Tristran (now returned to his human form), Yvaine, Madam Semele and the witch-queen all arrive at the Wall market. Tristran leaves Yvaine and crosses back into Wall, to tell Victoria that he has returned with the star. Meanwhile, Yvaine realises that she has fallen in love with Tristran and, if he fulfills his promise to bring her to Victoria, she will not only lose him to another woman, but upon leaving Faerie, will be transformed into a piece of rock. Upon meeting Tristran, a dismayed Victoria reveals that she is already engaged to Monday, Tristran's old employer, and that she never believed that Tristran would fulfill his promise. She regretfully tells Tristran that she will keep her promise and marry him. However Tristran, not wishing to force Victoria to marry him points out that her promise wasn't to marry him, it was to give him anything he desired, and that he desires that she marry her love, Monday. Tristran returns to Yvaine at the fair. Yvaine is delighted to learn that Victoria is to be married to Monday, not Tristran, and Tristran reveals that he reciprocates Yvaine's love for him. Una informs Madam Semele that she (Una) will soon be free, as her enslavement is due to end when the moon loses her child (Yvaine), if it happens in a week when two Mondays come together (the marriage of Victoria and Monday). The silver chain that binds Una finally fades away, and she demands payment for her services, which Madam Semele must give on pain of losing her powers. Una seeks out Tristran and Yvaine and reveals that she is Lady Una, the only daughter of the Eighty-First Lord of Stormhold, and that Tristran is her son, making him the last male heir of Stormhold. She instructs Tristran to ask Yvaine for the topaz she carries. Upon receiving the topaz, the power of Stormhold passes to Tristran. However he declines to immediately return to Stormhold, leaving Lady Una to reign in his stead while he and Yvaine travel around Faerie. But before Yvainne and Tristran set off on their journey, an impossibly aged old hag turns up wishing to speak to Yvaine. She reveals herself as the witch-queen, now more ancient and withered than she has ever been. Yvaine no longer fears her and tells her the good news that she has given her heart to Tristran. The witch-queen claims she'd have done better to give it to the Lilim, as Tristran will only break it like all men do. She then leaves for good, fearful of the cruelty her sisters will inflict upon her for failing. Many years later, Tristran and Yvaine finally return to Stormhold, and Tristran assumes his duties as the Lord of Stormhold. When he eventually grows old and dies, Yvaine continues to reign as the immortal ruler of Stormhold.
182612	/m/018yts	World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability	Amy Chua	2002-12	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the Philippines, Chua explains, the Chinese Filipino is 1% of the population but controls 60% of the economy, with the result being envy and bitterness on the part of the majority against the Chinese minority—in other words, an ethnic conflict. Similarly, in Indonesia the Chinese Indonesians are 3% of the population but control 70% of the economy. There is a similar pattern in other Southeast Asia nations. According to Chua, examples of what she calls ethnic market-dominant minorities include overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia; whites in Latin America; Jews in Russia; Croats in the former Yugoslavia; and Ibos, Kikuyus, Tutsis, Indians and Lebanese, among others, in Africa. In her book, Chua discusses different reasons for the market dominance of different groups. Some groups achieve market dominance because of colonial oppression or apartheid. In other cases, it may be due to the culture and family networks of these groups. For many groups there is no clear single explanation. Americans can also be seen as a global market-dominant minority, in particularly when combined with using military might and flaunting political domination, cause resentment. She believes that democratization can increase ethnic conflicts when an ethnic minority is disproportionately wealthy. "When free market democracy is pursued in the presence of a market-dominant minority, the almost invariable result is backlash. This backlash typically takes one of three forms. The first is a backlash against markets, targeting the market-dominant minority's wealth. The second is a backlash against democracy by forces favorable to the market-dominant minority. The third is violence, sometimes genocidal, directed against the market-dominant minority itself.". Also, "overnight democracy will empower the poor, indigenous majority. What happens is that under those circumstances, democracy doesn't do what we expect it to do – that is, reinforce markets. [Instead,] democracy leads to the emergence of manipulative politicians and demagogues who find that the best way to get votes is by scapegoating the minorities." She writes, "Ballot boxes brought Hitler to power in Germany, Mugabe to power in Zimbabwe, Milosevic to power in Serbia -- and could well bring the likes of Osama bin Laden to power in Saudi Arabia." Chua states that she is a "big fan of trying to promote markets and democracy globally," but that it should be accompanied by attempts to "redistribute the wealth, whether it's property title and giving poor people property, land reform .... Redistributive mechanisms are tough to have if you have so much corruption."
183363	/m/019171	The Sword in the Stone	T. H. White	1939-01-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The premise is that Arthur's youth, not dealt with in Malory, was a time when he was tutored by Merlyn to prepare him for the use of power and royal life. Merlyn magically turns Wart into various animals at times. He also has more human adventures, at one point meeting the outlaw Robin Hood, (who is referred to in the novel as Robin Wood). The setting is loosely based on medieval England, and in places it incorporates White's considerable knowledge of medieval culture (as in relation to hunting, falconry and jousting). However it makes no attempt at consistent historical accuracy, and incorporates some obvious anachronisms (aided by the concept that Merlyn lives backwards in time rather than forwards, unlike everyone else).
184211	/m/019569	Children of the Mind	Orson Scott Card	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the start of Children of the Mind, Jane, the evolved computer intelligence, is using her newly discovered abilities to take the races of buggers, humans and pequeninos outside the universe and back in instantaneously. She uses these powers to move them to distant habitable planets for colonization. She is losing her memories and concentration as the vast computer network connected to the ansible is being shut down. If she is to survive, she must find a way to transfer her aiúa (or soul) to a human body. Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-Mu travel to the worlds of Divine Wind and Pacifica to convince the Japanese-led swing group of the Starways Congress to revoke their order to destroy Lusitania. By tracing the decision making trail backwards, they are able to show a philosopher his influence on the Starways Congress. After some complications, the philosopher convinces the Starways Congress to stop the Lusitania fleet. The admiral at the head of the Lusitania fleet disobeys their order and does what he believes Ender Wiggin, the first Xenocide, would have done, and fires the Molecular Disruption Device (MDD). Jane is granted possession of Young Val's body, and thus is not destroyed when the ansible shuts down. She is then able to continue transporting starships instantaneously by borrowing the vast mental capacity of the simple-minded Pequenino mother-trees. She gets Peter and Wang-Mu close enough to the MDD to find her way back and transport the MDD itself to the Lusitania fleet, where it is then disarmed and disabled. Ender Wiggin's aiúa had left his body (which then deteriorated) to live in Peter. Jane falls in love with Miro, and Peter with Wang-mu. Both couples get married under one of the mother-trees of the pequeninos on the same day as Ender's funeral. Peter's efforts finally come to fruition, and the destruction of Lusitania is averted. The story ends with the two new couples being taken Outside by Jane herself and back In to an unknown destination.
184501	/m/0196h5	Wonders of the Invisible World	Cotton Mather			 Cotton Mather, narrator and preacher of the Second Church of Boston, begins with an explanation of the people of God and how they are living in the devil's territories. He discusses the devil's plan to overturn the plantation and churches with the help of his recruits, which Mather believes are witches. "...An army of devils is horribly broke in upon the place which is the center, and after a sort, the first-born of our English settlements... After explaining how the witch trials came about, Mather briefly prefaces the trials with a disclaimer. He adds that he will recount the truth as a historian and serve to retell the trials as they happened. The trials included names of the accused with testimonies of their strange behavior and actions from many people. One of the trials included is one of Martha Carrier, who was "the person of whom the confessions of the witches, and of her own children among the rest, agreed that the devil had promised her she should be Queen of the Hebrews.". Mather gives testimonies against Martha Carrier, all of which presume her to be guilty.
184843	/m/0197qv	Henry VI, part 1	William Shakespeare			 The play begins with the funeral of Henry V, who has died unexpectedly in his prime. As his brothers, the Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, and his uncle, the Duke of Exeter, lament his passing and express doubt as to whether his son (the as yet uncrowned heir apparent Henry VI) is capable of running the country in such tumultuous times, word arrives of military setbacks in France. A rebellion, led by the Dauphin Charles, is gaining momentum, and several major towns have already been lost. Additionally, Lord Talbot, Constable of France, has been captured. Realising a critical time is at hand, Bedford immediately prepares himself to head to France and take command of the army, Gloucester remains in charge in England, and Exeter sets out to prepare young Henry for his forthcoming coronation. Meanwhile, in Orléans, the English army are laying siege to Charles' forces. Inside the city, the Bastard of Orléans approaches Charles and tells him of a young woman who claims to have seen visions and knows how to defeat the English. Charles summons the woman, Joan la Pucelle, (i.e. Joan of Arc). To test her resolve, he challenges her to single combat. Upon her victory, he immediately places her in command of the army. Outside the city, the newly arrived Bedford negotiates the release of Talbot, but immediately, Joan launches an attack. The French forces win, forcing the English back, but Talbot and Bedford engineer a sneak attack on the city, and gain a foothold within the walls, causing the French leaders to flee. Back in England, a petty quarrel between Richard Plantagenet and the Duke of Somerset has expanded to involve the whole court. Richard and Somerset ask their fellow nobles to pledge allegiance to one of them, and as such the lords select either red or white roses to indicate which side they are on. Richard then goes to see his uncle, Edmund Mortimer, imprisoned in the Tower of London. Mortimer tells Richard the history of their family's conflict with the king's family—how they helped Henry Bolingbroke seize power from Richard II, but were then shoved into the background; and how Henry V had Richard's father (Richard of Conisburgh) executed and his family stripped of all its lands and monies. Mortimer also tells Richard that he himself is the rightful heir to the throne, and that when he dies, Richard will be the true heir, not Henry. Amazed at these revelations, Richard determines to attain his birthright, and vows to have his family's dukedom restored. After Mortimer dies, Richard presents his petition to the recently crowned Henry, who agrees to reinstate the Plantagenet's title, making Richard 3rd Duke of York. Henry then leaves for France, accompanied by Gloucester, Exeter, Winchester, Richard and Somerset. In France, within a matter of hours, the French retake and then lose the city of Rouen. After the battle, Bedford dies, and Talbot assumes direct command of the army. The Dauphin is horrified at the loss of Rouen, but Joan tells him not to worry. She then persuades the powerful Duke of Burgundy, who had been fighting for the English, to switch sides, and join the French. Meanwhile, Henry arrives in Paris and upon learning of Burgundy's betrayal, he sends Talbot to speak with him. Henry then pleads for Richard and Somerset to put aside their conflict, and, unaware of the implications of his actions, he chooses a red rose, symbolically aligning himself with Somerset and alienating Richard. Prior to returning to England, in an effort to secure peace between Somerset and Richard, Henry places Richard in command of the infantry and Somerset in command of the cavalry. Meanwhile, Talbot approaches Bordeaux, but the French army swing around and trap him. Talbot sends word for reinforcements, but the conflict between Richard and Somerset leads them to second guess one another, and neither of them send any, both blaming the other for the mix-up. The English army are subsequently destroyed, and both Talbot and his son are killed. After the battle, Joan's visions desert her, and she is captured by Richard, and burned at the stake. At the same time, urged on by Pope Eugenius IV and the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, Henry sues for peace. The French listen to the English terms, under which Charles is to be a viceroy to Henry, reluctantly agreeing, but only with the intention of breaking their oath at a later date and expelling the English from France. Meanwhile, the Earl of Suffolk has captured a young French princess, Margaret of Anjou, who he intends to marry to Henry and dominate the king through her. Travelling back to England, he attempts to persuade Henry to marry Margaret. Gloucester advises Henry against the marriage, as Margaret's family are not rich, and the marriage is not advantageous to his position as king, but Henry is taken in by Suffolk's description of Margaret's beauty, and he agrees to the proposal. Suffolk then heads back to France to bring Margaret to England as Gloucester worryingly ponders what the future may hold.
184847	/m/0197rj	Henry VI, part 3	William Shakespeare			 The play begins immediately where 2 Henry VI left off; with the victorious Yorkists (York, Edward, Richard, Warwick, Montague [i.e. Salisbury] and Norfolk) pursuing Henry and Margaret from the battlefield in the wake of the First Battle of St Albans. Upon reaching the parliamentary chambers in London, York seats himself in the throne, and a confrontation ensues between his supporters and those of Henry. Threatened with violence by Warwick, who has brought part of his army with him, Henry brokers a deal with York whereby Henry will remain king until his death, at which time the throne will permanently pass to the House of York and its descendants thereafter. Disgusted at this decision, as it disinherits Henry's son, Prince Edward, Henry's supporters, led by his wife, Margaret, abandon him, and Margaret declares war on the Yorkists, supported by Clifford, who is determined to exact revenge for the death of his father at the hands of York during the battle at St Albans. Margaret attacks York's castle at Wakefield and the Yorkists lose the ensuing battle. During the conflict, Clifford murders York's twelve-year old son, Rutland. Margaret and Clifford then capture and taunt York himself; forcing him to stand on a molehill, they give him a handkerchief covered with Rutland's blood to wipe his brow and place a paper crown on his head, before stabbing him to death. After the battle, as Edward and Richard lament York's death, Warwick brings news that his own army has been defeated by Margaret's at the Second Battle of St Albans, and Henry has returned to London, where, under pressure from Margaret, he has revoked his deal with York. However, George Plantagenet, Richard and Edward's brother, has vowed to join their cause, having been encouraged to do so by his sister, the Duchess of Burgundy. Additionally, Warwick has been joined in the conflict by his own younger brother, Montague. The Yorkists regroup, and at the Battle of Towton, Clifford is killed and the Yorkists romp to victory. Following the battle, Edward is proclaimed king, George is proclaimed Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, although he complains to Edward that this is an ominous dukedom. Edward and George then leave the court, and Richard reveals to the audience his own machinations to rise to power and take the throne from his brother, although, as of yet, he is unsure how exactly he might go about it. After Towton, Warwick heads to France to secure for Edward the hand of Louis XI's sister-in-law, Lady Bona, thus ensuring peace between the two nations by uniting in marriage their two monarchies. In France, Warwick arrives at court to find that Margaret, Prince Edward and the Earl of Oxford have come to Louis to seek his aid in the conflict in England. Just as Louis is about to acquiesce and supply Margaret with troops, Warwick intervenes, and convinces Louis that it would be in his own best interests to support Edward and approve the marriage. Back in England, however, the recently widowed Lady Grey (Elizabeth Woodville) has come to King Edward requesting her late husband's lands be returned to her. Rather than granting her suit however, Edward marries her, against the advice of both George and Richard, driven by lust, and taken by her stunning beauty. Upon hearing of this, and feeling he has been made to look a fool despite all his service to the House of York, Warwick denounces Edward, and switches allegiances to the Lancastrians, promising his daughter's hand in marriage to Prince Edward as a sign of his loyalty to their cause. Shortly thereafter, George and Montague also defect from Edward's side, joining Warwick and the Lancastrians. Warwick then leads an invasion of French troops into England, and Edward is taken prisoner. Henry is restored to the throne and appoints Warwick and George as his Lord Protectors. Soon thereafter, however, Edward is rescued by Richard, Hastings and Stanley. News of the escape reaches Henry's court, and the young Earl of Richmond is shipped into exile in France for safety. Richmond is a descendant of John of Gaunt, uncle of Richard II and son of Edward III, and therefore a potential Lancastrian heir, should anything happen to Henry and the Prince, hence the need to protect him. Meanwhile, Edward reorganises his forces and confronts Warwick's army. At the Battle of Barnet, George betrays Warwick, and rejoins the Yorkists. This throws Warwick's forces into disarray, and the Yorkists win the battle, during which both Warwick and Montague are killed. Oxford and the Duke of Somerset now assume command of the Lancastrian forces, and they join with a second battalion newly arrived from France, led by Margaret and Prince Edward. Meanwhile, Henry sits on the molehill York was on and laments his problems. He is met by a father that has killed his son, and a son that has killed his father, representing the horrors of the civil war. Henry is captured by two gamekeepers loyal to Edward, and imprisoned in the Tower of London, whilst Edward heads to meet the Lancastrian/French force. In the subsequent Battle of Tewkesbury, the Yorkists rout the Lancastrians, capturing Margaret, Prince Edward, Somerset and Oxford. Somerset is sentenced to death, Oxford to life imprisonment, Margaret is banished, and Prince Edward is stabbed to death by the three Plantagenet brothers, who fly into a fit of rage after he refuses to recognise the House of York as the legitimate royal family. At this point, Richard heads to London to kill Henry. Upon arriving in the Tower, the two engage in an argument, and in a rage, Richard stabs him. With his dying breath, Henry prophesies Richard's future career of villainy and the chaos that will engulf the country because of it. Back in court, Edward orders celebrations to begin, as he believes the wars are finally over and lasting peace is now at hand. He is unaware, however, of Richard's scheming and his desire for power at any cost.
185289	/m/019b0h	The Silver Chalice	Thomas B. Costain	1952	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Silver Chalice takes place in Israel and other parts of the Roman Empire shortly after the death of Jesus. A young man, Basil, is adopted by a rich man, but loses his fortune when his father dies and his uncle defrauds him claiming he was purchased as a slave and sells him. As a slave he survives by working as an artist and silversmith. He gains his freedom, becomes a Christian and is commissioned to create an outer covering for the cup Jesus drank from at The Last Supper. The plot of The Silver Chalice centers on the Grail—the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. Tired of “all the Arthurian tripe about the Holy Grail,” Costain imagined his own version of the story. Joseph of Arimathea hires Basil of Antioch, a lowborn artisan, to fashion a beautiful silver casing to hold the plain original cup that Jesus used. The casing is to be decorated with the faces of Jesus and the twelve apostles. To fulfill the commission, Basil travels throughout the ancient Mediterranean world to meet these men and those who knew them intimately.
185614	/m/019cgt	Thus Spoke Zarathustra	Friedrich Nietzsche		{"/m/017k4z": "Prose poetry", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 The book chronicles the fictitious travels and pedagogy of Zarathustra. The name of this character is taken from the ancient prophet usually known in English as Zoroaster (), the Persian founder of Zoroastrianism. Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. He goes on to characterize "what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist:" Zarathustra has a simple characterisation and plot, narrated sporadically throughout the text. It possesses a unique experimental style, one that is, for instance, evident in newly invented "dithyrambs" narrated or sung by Zarathustra. Likewise, the separate Dithyrambs of Dionysus was written in autumn 1888, and printed with the full volume in 1892, as the corollaries of Zarathustra's "abundance". Some speculate that Nietzsche intended to write about final acts of creation and destruction brought about by Zarathustra. However, the book lacks a finale to match that description; its actual ending focuses more on Zarathustra recognizing that his legacy is beginning to perpetuate, and consequently choosing to leave the higher men to their own devices in carrying his legacy forth. Zarathustra also contains the famous dictum "God is dead", which had appeared earlier in The Gay Science. In his autobiographical work Ecce Homo, Nietzsche states that the book's underlying concept is discussed within "the penultimate section of the fourth book" of 'The Gay Science' (Ecce Homo, Kaufmann). It is the eternal recurrence of the same events. This concept first occurred to Nietzsche while he was walking in Switzerland through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana (close to Surlej); he was inspired by the sight of a gigantic, towering, pyramidal rock. Before Zarathustra, Nietzsche had mentioned the concept in the fourth book of The Gay Science (e.g., sect. 341); this was the first public proclamation of the notion by him. Apart from its salient presence in Zarathustra, it is also echoed throughout Nietzsche's work. At any rate, it is by Zarathustra's transfiguration that he embraces eternity, that he at last ascertains "the supreme will to power". This inspiration finds its expression with Zarathustra's roundelay, featured twice in the book, once near the story's close: Another singular feature of Zarathustra, first presented in the prologue, is the designation of human beings as a transition between apes and the "Übermensch" (in English, either the "overman" or "superman"; or, superhuman or overhuman. English translators Thomas Common and R. J. Hollingdale use superman, while Kaufmann uses overman, and Parkes uses overhuman. Martin has opted to leave the nearly universally understood term as Übermensch in his new translation). The Übermensch is one of the many interconnecting, interdependent themes of the story, and is represented through several different metaphors. Examples include: the lightning that is portended by the silence and raindrops of a travelling storm cloud; or the sun's rise and culmination at its midday zenith; or a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch. The symbol of the Übermensch also alludes to Nietzsche's notions of "self-mastery", "self-cultivation", "self-direction", and "self-overcoming". Expounding these concepts, Zarathustra declares: The book embodies a number of innovative poetical and rhetorical methods of expression. It serves as a parallel and supplement to the various philosophical ideas present in Nietzsche's body of work. He has, however, said that "among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself" (Ecce Homo, Preface, sec. 4, Kaufmann). Emphasizing its centrality and its status as his magnum opus, Nietzsche stated that: Since many of the book's ideas are also present in his other works, Zarathustra is seen to have served as a precursor to his later philosophical thought. With the book, Nietzsche embraced a distinct aesthetic assiduity. He later reformulated many of his ideas, in Beyond Good and Evil and various other writings that he composed thereafter. He continued to emphasize his philosophical concerns; generally, his intention was to show an alternative to repressive moral codes and to avert "nihilism" in all of its varied forms. Other aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathustra relate to Nietzsche's proposed "Transvaluation of All Values". This incomplete project began with The Antichrist.
185865	/m/019dg_	Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 Chaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim is a disoriented, fatalistic, and ill-trained American soldier. He does not like wars and is captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans put Billy and his fellow prisoners in a disused slaughterhouse (although there are animal carcasses hanging in the underground shelter) in Dresden. Their building is known as "Slaughterhouse number 5." During the bombing, the POWs and German guards alike hide in a deep cellar. Because of their safe hiding place, they are some of the few survivors of the city-destroying firestorm. Billy has become "unstuck in time" and experiences past and future events out of sequence and repetitively, following a nonlinear narrative. He is kidnapped by extraterrestrial aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. They exhibit him in a zoo with B-movie starlet Montana Wildhack as his mate. The Tralfamadorians, who can see in four dimensions, have already seen every instant of their lives. They say they cannot choose to change anything about their fates, but can choose to concentrate upon any moment in their lives, and Billy becomes convinced of the veracity of their theories. As Billy travels, or believes he travels, forward and backward in time, he relives occasions of his life, both real and fantasy. He spends time on Tralfamadore, in Dresden during the war, walking in deep snow before his German capture, in his mundane post-war married life in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s, and in the moment of his murder by a petty thief named Paul Lazzaro. Billy's death is the consequence of a string of events. Before the Germans capture Billy, he meets Roland Weary, a jingoist character and bully, just out of childhood like Billy, who constantly chastises him for his lack of enthusiasm for war. When captured, the Germans confiscate everything Weary has, including his boots, giving him hinged, wooden clogs to wear; Weary eventually dies of gangrene caused by the clogs. While dying in a railcar full of POWs, Weary manages to convince another soldier, Paul Lazzaro, that Billy is to blame. Lazzaro vows to avenge Weary's death by killing Billy, because revenge is "the sweetest thing in life." Lazzaro later shoots and kills Billy with a laser gun after his speech on flying saucers and the true nature of time before a large audience in Chicago, in a balkanized United States on February 13, 1976 (the future at the time of the book's writing).
186258	/m/019g32	The Catcher in the Rye	J. D. Salinger	1951-07-16	{"/m/0hgws": "First-person narrative", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The majority of the novel takes place over two days in December 1949. Seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield, the book's narrator and protagonist, addresses the reader directly from a hospital in Southern California, recounting the events leading up to his breakdown the previous December. Holden begins his story at Pencey Prep, an exclusive private school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania, on the Saturday afternoon of the traditional football game with school rival, Saxon Hall. Holden misses the game. As manager of the fencing team, he managed to lose the team's equipment on the subway in New York that morning, resulting in the cancellation of a match. He is on his way to the home of his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, to say good-bye. Holden has been expelled and is not to return after Christmas break, which starts the following Wednesday. Spencer is a well-meaning but long-winded old man. Much to Holden's annoyance, he reads aloud his history examination paper, in which Holden wrote a note to Mr Spencer so that his teacher would not feel badly about failing him in the subject. Holden returns to his dorm, which is quiet because most of the students are still at the football game. Wearing his new red hunting cap, he begins a book, but his reverie is temporary. First, his dorm neighbor Ackley disturbs him, then later, he argues with his roommate, Stradlater, who fails to appreciate a theme that Holden wrote for him about Holden's late brother Allie's baseball glove. A womanizer, Stradlater has just returned from a date with Holden's old friend Jane Gallagher. Holden is distressed because he is scared that Stradlater might have taken advantage of Jane. Stradlater does not appreciate Jane in the manner in which Holden does; he even misstates Jane's name as 'Jean.' The two roommates fight, and Stradlater wins easily. Holden decides at this point that he has had enough of Pencey Prep, and catches a train to New York City, where he plans to stay in a hotel until Wednesday, when his parents expect him to return home for Christmas vacation. He checks into the dilapidated Edmont Hotel. After observing the behavior of the "perverts" in the hotel room facing his, he struggles with his own sexuality. He states that although he has had opportunities to lose his virginity, the timing never felt right and he was always respectful when a girl said, 'no.' He spends an evening dancing with three tourist women in their thirties from Seattle in the hotel lounge, and enjoys dancing with one, but ends up with only the check. He finds it slightly frustrating because the women seem unable to carry a conversation. Following a disappointing visit to Ernie's Nightclub in Greenwich Village, Holden agrees to have a prostitute, Sunny, visit his room. His attitude toward the girl changes the minute she enters the room, because she seems to be about the same age as Holden and he starts to view her as a person. Holden becomes uncomfortable with the situation, and when he tells her that all he wants to do is talk, she becomes annoyed and leaves. Even though he still pays her for her time, she returns with her pimp, Maurice, and demands more money. Despite the fact that Sunny takes five dollars from Holden's wallet, Maurice punches Holden in the stomach. After a short sleep, Holden telephones Sally Hayes, a familiar date, and agrees to meet her that afternoon to go to a play. Meanwhile, Holden leaves the hotel, checks his luggage at Grand Central Station, and has a late breakfast. He meets two nuns, one an English teacher, with whom he discusses Romeo and Juliet. Holden shops for a special record, "Little Shirley Beans," for his 10-year-old sister, Phoebe. He spots a small boy singing "If a body catches a body coming through the rye," which somehow makes Holden feel less depressed. After seeing the play with Sally featuring Broadway stars Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the two go skating at Radio City, and while drinking Coke, Holden impulsively invites Sally to run away with him to the wilderness. She declines. Her response deflates Holden's mood and prompts his remark: "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth." He regrets it immediately, and Sally storms off as Holden follows, pleading with her to accept his apology. Finally, Holden gives up and leaves her there, sees the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall, endures a movie, and gets very drunk. Throughout the novel, Holden has been worried about the ducks in the lagoon at Central Park. He tries to find them but only manages to break Phoebe's record in the process. Exhausted physically and mentally, he heads home to see his sister. Holden's time in the city is characterized largely by drunkenness and loneliness. He thinks about the Museum of Natural History, which he often visited as a child. He contrasts his evolving life with the statues of Eskimos in a diorama: while the statues have remained unchanged through the years, he and the world have not. These concerns may have stemmed largely from the death of his brother, Allie. Eventually, he sneaks into his parents' apartment while they are out, to visit his younger sister—and close friend—Phoebe, the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate. Holden shares a fantasy he has been thinking about (based on a mishearing of Robert Burns' Comin' Through the Rye): he pictures himself as the sole guardian of a group of children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff. His job is to catch the children if, in their abandon, they come close to falling off the brink, to be a "catcher in the rye." Because of this misinterpretation, Holden believes that to be a "catcher in the rye" means to save children from losing their innocence. When his parents come home, Holden slips out and seeks out his former and much-admired English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who offers advice on life and a place to sleep. Mr. Antolini tells Holden that it is the mark of the mature man to live humbly for a cause, rather than die nobly for it. This is at odds with Holden's ideas of becoming a "catcher in the rye," symbolically saving children from the evils of adulthood. During the speech on life, Mr. Antolini has a number of cocktails served in highball glasses. Holden is upset when he wakes up in the night to find Mr. Antolini patting his head in a way that he regards as "flitty." Confused and uncertain, he leaves and spends his last afternoon wandering the city. He later wonders if his interpretation of Mr. Antolini's actions was actually correct, and seems to wonder how much it matters anyway. Holden makes the decision that he will head out west and live as a deaf-mute. When he mentions these plans to his little sister Monday morning, she wants to go with him. Holden declines her offer, which upsets Phoebe, so Holden decides not to leave after all. He tries to cheer her up by taking her to the Central Park Zoo, and as he watches her ride the zoo's carousel, he is filled with happiness and joy at the sight of Phoebe riding in the rain. At the conclusion of the novel, Holden decides not to mention much about the present day, finding it inconsequential. He alludes to "getting sick" and living in a mental hospital, and mentions that he'll be attending another school in September; he relates how he has been asked whether he will apply himself properly to his studies this time around and wonders whether such a question has any meaning before the fact. Holden says that he doesn't want to tell us anything more, because surprisingly he found himself missing two of his former classmates, Stradlater and Ackley, and even Maurice, the pimp who punched him. He warns the reader that telling others about their own experiences will lead them to miss the people who shared them.
186347	/m/019ggv	Our American Cousin	Tom Taylor			 In the drawing room at Trenchard Manor, the servants remark on their employer's poor financial circumstances. Florence Trenchard, an aristocratic young beauty, loves Lieutenant Harry Vernon of the Royal Navy, but she is unable to marry him until he progresses to a higher rank. She receives a letter from her brother Ned, who is currently in the United States. Ned has met some rustic cousins from a branch of the family that had emigrated to Vermont in America two centuries earlier. They related to Ned that great uncle Mark Trenchard had, after angrily disinheriting his children and leaving England years ago, found these Vermont cousins. He had moved in with them and eventually made Asa, one of the sons, heir to his property in England. Asa is now sailing to England to claim the estate. Asa is noisy coarse and vulgar, but honestly forthright and colourful. The English Trenchards are alternately amused and appalled by this Vermont cousin. Richard Coyle, agent of the estate, meets with Sir Edward Trenchard (Florence's father) and tells the baronet that the family faces bankruptcy unless they can repay a debt to Coyle. Coyle is concealing the evidence that the loan had been repaid long ago by Sir Edward's late father. Coyle suggests that the loan would be satisfied if he may marry Florence, who detests him. Meanwhile, Asa and the butler, Binny, try to understand each others' unfamiliar ways, as Asa tries to understand what the purpose of a shower might be, dousing himself while fully clothed. Mrs. Mountchessington is staying at Trenchard Manor. She advises Augusta, her daughter, to be attentive to the presumably wealthy Vermont "savage". Meanwhile, her other daughter, Georgina, is courting an imbecilic nobleman named Dundreary, by pretending to be ill. Florence's old tutor, the unhappy alcoholic Abel Murcott, warns her that Coyle intends to marry her. Asa overhears this and offers Florence his help. Murcott is Coyle's clerk and has found proof that Florence's late grandfather paid off the loan to Coyle. Florence and Asa visit her cousin, Mary Meredith. Mary is the granddaughter of old Mark Trenchard, who left his estate to Asa. Mary is very poor and has been raised as a humble dairy maid. Asa doesn't care about her social status and is attracted to her. Florence has not been able to bring herself to tell Mary that her grandfather's fortune had been left to Asa. Florence tells Asa that she loves Harry, who needs a good assignment to a ship. Asa uses his country wile to persuade Dundreary to help Harry get a ship. Meanwhile, Coyle has been up to no good, and the bailiffs arrive at Trenchard Manor. At her dairy, Asa tells Mary about her grandfather in America, but he fibs about the end of the tale: He says that old Mark Trenchard changed his mind about disinheriting his English children and burned his Will. Asa promptly burns the Will himself. Florence discovers this and points it out to Mary, saying: "It means that he is a true hero, and he loves you, you little rogue." Meanwhile, Mrs. Mountchessington still hopes that Asa will propose to Augusta. When Asa tells them that Mark Trenchard had left Mary his fortune, Augusta and Mrs. Mountchessington are quite rude, but Asa stands up for himself. Asa proposes to Mary and is happily accepted. He then sneaks into Coyle's office with Murcott and retrieves the paper that shows that the debt was paid. Asa confronts Coyle and insists that Coyle must pay off Sir Edward's other debts, with his doubtless ill-gotten gains, and also apologize to Florence for trying to force her into marriage. Moreover, he demands Coyle's resignation as the steward of Trenchard Manor, making Murcott steward instead. Murcott is so pleased that he vows to stop drinking. Coyle has no choice but to do all this. Florence marries Harry, Dundreary marries Georgina, and Augusta marries an old beau. Even the servants marry.
186397	/m/019gpb	The Name of the Rose	Umberto Eco	1980	{"/m/0py65": "Historical whodunnit", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his novice Adso of Melk travel to a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological disputation. As they arrive, the monastery is disturbed by a suicide. As the story unfolds, several other monks die under mysterious circumstances. William is tasked by the Abbot of the monastery to investigate the deaths as fresh clues with each murder victim lead William to dead ends and new clues. The protagonists explore a labyrinthine medieval library, discuss the subversive power of laughter, and come face to face with the Inquisition. William's innate curiosity and highly-developed powers of logic and deduction provide the keys to unravelling the mysteries of the abbey.
187113	/m/019lbk	The Member of the Wedding	Carson McCullers	1946	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place over a few days in late August. It tells the story of 12-year-old tomboy Frankie Addams, who feels disconnected from the world; in her words, an "unjoined person." Frankie's mother died when she was born, and her father is a distant, uncomprehending figure. Her closest companions are the family's African American maid, Berenice Sadie Brown, and her six-year-old cousin, John Henry West. She has no friends in her small Southern town, and dreams of going away with her brother and his bride-to-be on their honeymoon in the Alaskan wilderness. The novel explores the psychology of the three main characters, and is more concerned with evocative settings than with incident. Frankie does, however, have a brief and troubling encounter with a soldier. Her hopes of going away disappointed — her fantasy destroyed — a short coda reveals how her personality has changed. It also recounts the fate of John Henry West, and Berenice Sadie Brown's future plans.
187607	/m/019nrb	Rashomon	Ryunosuke Akutagawa			 The story recounts the encounter between a servant and an old woman in the dilapidated Rashōmon, the southern gate of the then ruined city of Kyoto, where unclaimed corpses were sometimes dumped. The man, a lowly servant recently fired, is contemplating whether to starve to death or to become a thief to survive in the barren times. When he goes upstairs, after noticing some firelight there, he encounters the woman, who is stealing hair from the dead bodies on the second floor. He is disgusted, and decides then that he would rather take the path of righteousness even if it meant starvation. He is furious with the woman. But the old woman tells him that she steals hair to make wigs, so she can survive. In addition, the woman whose body she is currently robbing cheated people in her life by selling snake meat and claiming it was fish. The old woman says that this was not wrong because it allowed the woman to survive — and so in turn this entitles her to steal from the dead person, because if she doesn't, she too will starve. The man responds: "You won't blame me, then, for taking your clothes. That's what I have to do to keep from starving to death". He then brutally robs the woman of her robe and disappears into the night. The book itself also plays a part in the 1999 movie Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai directed by Jim Jarmusch.
187659	/m/019nzl	Magnificent Obsession	Lloyd C. Douglas	1929	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Robert Merrick is resuscitated by a rescue crew after a boating accident. The crew is unable to save the life of Dr. Phillips, a doctor renowned for his ability to help people, who was having a heart attack at the same time on the other side of the lake. Merrick then decides to devote his life to making up for the doctor's, and becomes a physician himself. The book's plot portrays Mrs. Hudson, the widow, moving to Europe after her daughter, Joyce, is married. Merrick progresses in his career, and in the story's climax, gets involved in a railway accident in which Mrs. Hudson suffers serious injury. Merrick is instrumental in her recovery. The movie differs from the book in that before deciding to become a surgeon, Merrick not only alienates the doctor's widow, with whom he has fallen in love, but also causes another tragedy. This makes him totally re-evaluate his life, and at that point, he decides to become a doctor.
187861	/m/019px5	V.	Thomas Pynchon	1963	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel alternates between episodes featuring Benny, Stencil and other members of the Whole Sick Crew (including Profane's sidekick Pig Bodine) in 1956 (with a few minor flashbacks), and a generation-spanning plot which comprises Stencil's attempts to unravel the clues he believes will lead him to "V." (or to the various incarnations thereof). Each of these "Stencilised" chapters is set at a different moment of historical crisis; the framing narrative involving Stencil, "V.", and the journals of Stencil's British spy/diplomat father threads the sequences together. The novel's two storylines increasingly converge in the last chapters (the intersecting lines forming a V-shape, as it were), as Stencil hires Benny to travel with him to Malta. The Stencil chapters are: This chapter, set among the British community in Egypt toward the end of the 19th century, consists of an introduction and a series of eight relatively short sections, each of them from the point of view of a different person. The eight sections come together to tell a story of murder and intrigue, intersecting the life of a young woman, Victoria Wren, the first incarnation of V. The title is a hint as to how this chapter is to be understood: Stencil imagines each of the eight viewpoints as he reconstructs—we do not know on how much knowledge and how much conjecture—this episode. This chapter is a reworking of Pynchon's short story "Under the Rose", which was first published in 1961 and is collected in Slow Learner (1984). In the Slow Learner introduction, Pynchon admits he took the details of the setting ("right down the names of the diplomatic corps") from Karl Baedeker's 1899 travel guide for Egypt. Stencil's reconstruction follows the same basic conflict as "Under the Rose", but it gives the non-European characters much more personality. Only marginally part of the Stencil/V. material, this chapter follows Benny and others, as Benny has a job hunting alligators in the sewers under Manhattan. It figures in the Stencil/V. story in that there is a rat named "Veronica" who figures in a subplot about a mad priest — Father Linus Fairing, S.J. — some decades back, living in the sewers and preaching to the rats; we hear from him in the form of his diary. Stencil himself makes a brief appearance toward the end of the chapter. In Florence in 1899, Victoria appears again, briefly, but so does the place name "Vheissu", which may or may not stand for Vesuvius, Venezuela, a crude interpretation of wie heißt du, translating into who are you in the German language, or even (one character jokes) Venus. Kurt Mondaugen, who will appear again in Gravity's Rainbow, is the central character in a story set in South-West Africa (now Namibia) partly during a siege in 1922 at which one Vera Meroving is present, but most notably in 1904, during the Herero Wars, when South-West Africa was a German colony. Fausto Maijstral, Maltese civilian suffering under the German bombardment and working to clear the rubble during World War II writes a long letter to his daughter Paola, who figures in the Benny Profane story; the letter comes into Stencil's hands. The letter includes copious quotations from Fausto's diary. Besides the place name Valletta, V. figures in the story as an old — or possibly not-so-old — woman crushed by a beam of a fallen building. In this chapter V. is entranced by a young ballerina, Mélanie l'Heuremaudit. The story centers on a riotous ballet performance, almost certainly modeled in part on the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The performance centers on a virgin sacrifice by impalement. The young ballerina fails to wear her protective equipment and actually dies by impalement in the course of the performance; everyone assumes her death throes simply to be an uncharacteristically emotional performance. As the Royal Navy mass on Malta in the early stages of the Suez Crisis, Stencil arrives with Benny in tow, searching for Fausto Maijstral. (As always, Kilroy was here first, and Pynchon proposes a novel origin for the face: that Kilroy was originally part of a schematic for a band-pass filter.) The last chapter is a flashback to Valletta when Stencil, Sr. was still alive. After World War I he is sent to Malta to observe the various crises going on involving the natives and their desire for independence. He is implored by Maijstral's wife (who is pregnant with Fausto) to relieve him of his duties as a double agent because she fears for his life. Stencil, Sr. meets Vera Manganese or V and implicitly has sex with her (she is now largely made up of artificial limbs). It is revealed they had trysted in Florence after the riots. He finds out that Fausto is having an affair with her as well. Linus Fairing is also working as a double agent for Stencil, and when he leaves for America, having tired of the life of a spy, Stencil's purpose for being in Malta is null. V releases Stencil from her auspices and Majistral as well. Stencil sails off into the Mediterranean and a waterspout blows the ship up into the air, then down into the depths, not too dissimilar from the conclusion of another American masterpiece, Moby-Dick, also a sailor's story.
188071	/m/019q_s	Shogun: A Novel of Japan	James Clavell	1975	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Japan in 1600 is a feudal country in a precarious peace. The heir to the Taiko is underage, too young to rule, and power rests in a council of five regents formed of the most powerful overlords of the land. Japanese society is insular and xenophobic. Portugal, with its vast sea power, and the Catholic Church, principally through the Spanish Order of the Jesuits, have gained a foothold in Japan and seek to extend their power. Guns and Europe's modern military capabilities are still a novelty and despised as a threat to Japan’s traditional samurai warrior culture. John Blackthorne, an English pilot serving on the Dutch warship Erasmus, is the first English pilot to reach Japan. England and Holland, Protestant enemies of Catholic Spain and Portugal, seek to disrupt Spanish-Portuguese relations with Japan and establish ties of their own through trade and military alliance. Erasmus is shipwrecked on the Japanese coast. Blackthorne and the few survivors of his crew are taken captive by a local samurai, Kasigi Omi until the arrival of his daimyo (feudal lord) and uncle, Kasigi Yabu. Upon arrival, Yabu puts Blackthorne and his crew on trial using a Jesuit priest to interpret for Blackthorne. Losing at the trial, Blackthorne lunges desperately at the Jesuit, rips off the priest’s crucifix and stamps it into the dust to show the daimyo that the priest is his enemy. The Japanese, who at this point know only the Catholic version of Christianity, are shocked at Blackthorne’s gesture. Yabu sentences Blackthorne and his crew to death. However, Omi, who is quickly proving himself one of his uncle’s cleverest advisers, convinces Yabu to keep them alive to learn more of European ways. Omi throws them into a pit to "tame" them and tells the crew Lord Yabu has ordered that they pick one amongst their own, other than Blackthorne, to die so that the others may live. Blackthorne leads his crew in a futile attempt to resist, but they are easily cowed by Omi, and one of his crew is taken out and boiled alive. To save his crew Blackthorne agrees to submit to Japanese authority. He is placed in a household, with his crew held in the pit as hostages to ensure his submission and cooperation. On Omi's advice, Yabu plans to not only exploit Blackthorne's knowledge to his own ends but also confiscate the wealth of guns and money recovered from the Erasmus, but word reaches his overlord, Lord Toranaga, the powerful president of the council of regents. Toranaga sends his commander in chief, "Iron Fist" General Hiro-Matsu, to take the Erasmus and the surviving crew from Yabu to tip the balance of power against Toranaga's principal rival on the council, Ishido. Blackthorne is given the title Anjin, the Japanese term for navigator or pilot, by the Japanese because they can't pronounce his name. Blackthorne insists on being addressed respectfully, as Omi is, and is therefore known as Anjin-san ("Honorable Pilot"). Hiro-Matsu confiscates the Erasmus and takes Blackthorne and Yabu back to the meeting of the council of regents taking place at Osaka Castle, the stronghold of the regent Ishido. They travel by one of Toranaga’s galleys piloted by the Portuguese pilot Rodrigues. Blackthorne and Rodrigues find themselves in a grudging friendship, despite being required to stay at arm's length due to their national and religious enmity. Rodrigues attempts to murder Blackthorne during a storm, by sending him forward just as a wave breaks over the deck, but is himself swept overboard by the next wave. Blackthorne not only saves Rodrigues but safely navigates the ship to Osaka with crew and all aboard. At Osaka, Blackthorne is interviewed by Toranaga through the translation of Jesuit Priest Father Martin Alvito, who is not only bilingual but more sophisticated and higher up in the Jesuit hierarchy in Japan and therefore more dangerous to Blackthorne. After Blackthorne demands that Alvito tell Toranaga that the priest is his enemy, Toranaga has the Lady Mariko monitor the priest’s translations. As an English Protestant, Blackthorne attempts to turn Toranaga against the Jesuits. He reveals to a surprised Toranaga that the Christian faith is divided and that other European countries intend to sail the Asian waters now that the Spanish Armada has been defeated. The stunned Alvito is honorbound to translate as, Blackthorne, the sworn enemy of his country and religion, tells Toranaga of the Spanish and Portuguese exploitation of the New World under the blessing of the Catholic Church and in the name of spreading Catholicism. The interview ends abruptly when Toranaga's rival, Ishido, enters, curious about the 'barbarian' Blackthorne. Toranaga has Blackthorne thrown in prison for piracy, as a ruse to keep him from Ishido. In prison, Blackthorne is befriended by a Franciscan monk, who reveals further details about Jesuit conquests and the Portuguese "Black Ship" which each year takes the vast profits from the silk trade back to Europe. He is taught basic Japanese and a little of their culture. Blackthorne is taken from prison by Ishido's men, but Toranaga intervenes, "capturing" Blackthorne from his rival. In their next interview, Toranaga has the Lady Mariko translate. She is a convert to Christianity, torn between her new faith and her loyalty as a samurai to Toranaga. During a subsequent interview with Blackthorne, Toranaga is incredulous when Blackthorne reveals that Portugal has been granted the right to "claim" Japan as territory by the Pope. During his stay at Toranaga's castle, Blackthorne is attacked unsuccessfully by an assassin who is revealed to be a member of the secretive Amida Tong, a group of operatives who train all their lives to be the perfect weapon for one kill. After the assassin is dispatched, Toranaga summons Yabu the next day for questioning, since Hiro-Matsu says Yabu would be the only one who would know how to hire them. Yabu is truthful but evasive in his answers, adding more fuel to Toranaga's distrust of him. It is also hinted that the Jesuits may have hired the assassin to kill Blackthorne to silence what he knows. The Council of Regents' negotiations go badly and Toranaga is threatened with forced seppuku by the council of regents. To escape the order, he resigns from the council and departs the castle in the guise of his wife in a litter, leaving with a train of travelers. Blackthorne inadvertently spots the exchange and, when Ishido shows up at the gate of the castle and nearly discovers Toranaga, Blackthorne saves Toranaga by creating a diversion. In this way, he gradually gains the trust of and enters the service of Toranaga. Toranaga's resignation from the Council of Regents was designed not just to avoid a seppuku order, but also to paralyze the Council of Regents since five regents are required to make any decisions and politically a new appointment seemed unlikely. Toranaga's party reach the coast but their ship is blockaded by Ishido's boats. At Blackthorne's suggestion the Portuguese ship is asked to lend cannon to blast the boats clear, but in return the Jesuits, seeing the presence of a Protestant pilot in Toranaga's confidence as a grave threat, will only offer aid to Toranaga in exchange for physical custody of Blackthorne. Toranaga agrees and the ship clears the coast. The Portuguese pilot Rodrigues — whose life was saved by Blackthorne earlier in a storm — repays his debt to Blackthorne by having him thrown overboard to swim back to Toranaga's ship instead. Blackthorne slowly builds his Japanese-language skills and gains an understanding of the Japanese people and their culture, eventually learning to respect it deeply. The Japanese, in turn, are torn over Blackthorne's presence; he is an outsider, a leader of a disgracefully filthy and uncouth rabble, but also a formidable sailor and navigator. As such, he is both beneath their contempt and incalculably valuable. A turning point in this perception is Blackthorne's attempt at seppuku upon finding out that Yabu has threatened the peasants with death if Blackthorne does not learn Japanese within six months. In so doing, he demonstrates his willingness to give his life in payment for theirs, despite the Christian injunction against suicide. The Japanese prevent this attempt, as Blackthorne is worth more alive, but come to respect this "barbarian." When he rescues Toranaga in an earthquake, he is granted the status of samurai and hatamoto (a vassal similar to a retainer, with the right of direct audience). As they spend more time together, Blackthorne comes to deeply admire Mariko, and they secretly become lovers. In parallel with this plot, the novel also details the intense power struggle between Toranaga and Ishido, and the political maneuvering of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly the Jesuits. There is also conflict between Christian daimyos (who are motivated in part by a desire to preserve and expand their Church's power) and the daimyos who oppose the Christians as followers of foreign beliefs and representatives of the "Barbarian" cultural and fiscal influence on their society. Blackthorne is torn between his growing affection for Mariko (who is married to a powerful, abusive and dangerous samurai, Buntaro), his increasing loyalty to Toranaga, and his desire to return to the open seas aboard Erasmus to capture the Black Ship. Eventually, he visits the survivors of his original crew in Yedo, and is so astonished at how far he has ventured from the standard European way of life (which he now sees to be filthy, vulgar, and ignorant ) and is disgusted by them. Blackthorne's plans to attack the Black Ship are complicated by his respect and friendship for Rodrigues, now piloting the vessel. He returns to Osaka by sea with his crew and many samurai. Ishido holds numerous family members of other daimyos as hostages in Osaka, referring to them as guests. As long as he has these hostages, the other daimyos, including Toranaga, do not dare to attack him. Unforeseen by Toranaga, a replacement regent has been chosen. Ishido hopes to lure or force Toranaga into the Castle and, when all the regents are present, obtain from them an order for Toranaga to commit seppuku. To extricate Toranaga from this situation, Mariko goes to what will be her likely death at Osaka Castle to face down Ishido and obtain the hostages' release. At the castle, Mariko (in response to Toranaga's orders) defies Ishido and forces him to either dishonor himself by admitting to holding the samurai families hostage, or to back down and let them leave. When Mariko tries to fulfill Toranaga's orders and leave the castle, a battle ensues between Ishido's samurai and her escort until she is forced to return. However, she states that since she cannot disobey an order from her liege lord, Toranaga, she is disgraced and will commit suicide. As she is about to do so, Ishido gives her the papers to leave the castle the next day. But that night, a group of ninja Ishido has hired slips into Toranaga's section of the castle to kidnap Mariko with the help of Toranaga's vassal, Yabu. However, she and Blackthorne (who accompanied her but was not aware of Mariko's plot) and the other ladies of Toranaga escape into a locked room. As the ninja prepare to blow the door open with explosives, Mariko stands against the door and declares that this is her act of honorable suicide, and implicates Ishido "in this shameful act." Mariko is killed and Blackthorne injured and temporarily blinded, but Ishido is forced to let Blackthorne and all the other hostages to leave the castle, seriously reducing his influence. Blackthorne discovers that his ship has been burned, ruining his chances of attacking the Black Ship, gaining riches, and sailing home to England. However, Mariko leaves him money and Toranaga provides him with men to start building a new ship. Toranaga orders Yabu — who he learns helped the attack with the aim of being on the winning side — to commit suicide for his treachery. Yabu gracefully complies, giving his own prized katana to Blackthorne, saying that no one else deserved the blade. A recurring motif in the book is Toranaga engaging in falconry. He compares his various birds to his vassals and mulls over his handling of them, flinging them at targets, giving them morsels to bring them back to his fist, and re-hooding them. The last chapter involves Toranaga letting his prize peregrine fly free as he reveals his inner monologue: he himself had ordered Blackthorne's ship burned as a way to placate the Christian daimyos, save Blackthorne's life from them, and bring them to his side against Ishido; he then encourages Blackthorne to build another one, and will have that one burned too. It is Blackthorne's karma (destiny) to never leave Japan, Mariko's karma to die gloriously for her lord, and his own karma and purpose to become Shogun. In a brief epilogue after the final Battle of Sekigahara, Ishido is disgracefully captured alive. In deference to an old prophecy that Ishido would "die an old man with his feet firmly planted in the earth, the most famous man in the land", Toranaga has him buried up to his neck by the eta villagers with passers-by offered the opportunity to saw at the most famous neck in the realm with a bamboo saw. The novel states that "Ishido lingered three days and died very old."
188341	/m/019s5h	Goodnight Moon	Margaret Wise Brown	1947	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Goodnight Moon is classic children's literature in North America. The text is a rhyming poem, describing a bunny's bedtime ritual of saying "goodnight" to various objects in the bunny's bedroom: the red balloon, the bunny's dollhouse, the kittens, etc. One aspect of this book is the wealth of detail in the illustrations. Although the entire story takes place in a single room, the careful reader or child will notice numerous details from page to page, including: * the hands on the two clocks progress from 7 PM to 8:10 PM. * the young mouse and kittens wander around the room. The mouse is present in all pages showing the room. The cats ignore the little mouse even when it is very close to them. * on each page that features the bunny, he is looking directly at one of the objects mentioned on that page, except for the last page, in which his eyes are closed and only 'noises' are mentioned. * the old lady is the only element in the room that is introduced in a black and white illustration. * the old lady and her knitting play out a sequence of their own from page to page, starting with the knitting lying on the rocking chair, the old lady sitting in the chair with the ball of yarn on the floor at her feet, the ball farther away and starting to be unraveled by the kittens, the ball unraveled further, the ball entirely rerolled and back on the old lady's lap with the kittens regarding her expectantly, and finally with the lady and the knitting both gone and the kittens sleeping on the rocking chair. * the red balloon hanging over the bed disappears in several of the color plates, then reappears at the end. * the string of the red balloon is not straight as it should be, given the fact that the balloon is not moving - as though the string is a thin, curling ribbon. * the room lighting grows progressively darker. * the moon rises in the left-hand window. * the socks disappear from the drying rack when only the mittens are being addressed, and then reappear. * the open book in the bookshelf is The Runaway Bunny. * the book on the nightstand is Goodnight Moon. * in the painting of the cow jumping over the moon, the mailbox in the right-hand side of the painting occasionally disappears. * in the painting of the three bears, the painting hanging in the bears' room is a painting of a cow jumping over the moon. * the painting of the fly-fishing bunny, which appears only in two color plates, appears to be black and white (or otherwise devoid of color). It is very similar to a picture in the book "The Runaway Bunny". * the number of books on the bookshelf changes. * the pendulum of the bedside clock becomes harder to see as the room dims until it disappears in the final room scene. * the curtains have green and yellow stripes throughout the book, but green and red stripes on the cover. * the stripes on the bunny's shirt change. * in the last page the word 'bunny' is gone off the brush in the dim light. * not all items listed at the beginning of the story are told "goodnight" in the book, nor are all things told "goodnight" announced at the beginning. * on the last page the mouse has eaten the mush. * on the last page the lights in the toy house appear to be mysteriously on (and perhaps on throughout the story, being revealed only by the darkening of the room)
188957	/m/019vt7	Eugene Onegin	Aleksandr Pushkin		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the 1820s, Eugene Onegin is a bored St. Petersburg dandy, whose life consists of balls, concerts, parties and nothing more. One day he inherits a landed estate from his uncle. When he moves to the country, he strikes up a friendship with his neighbor, a starry-eyed young poet named Vladimir Lensky. One day, Lensky takes Onegin to dine with the family of his fiancée, the sociable but rather thoughtless Olga Larina. At this meeting he also catches a glimpse of Olga's sister Tatyana. A quiet, precocious romantic and the exact opposite of Olga, Tatyana becomes intensely drawn to Onegin. Soon after, she bares her soul to Onegin in a letter professing her love. Contrary to her expectations, Onegin does not write back. When they meet in person, he rejects her advances politely but dismissively and condescendingly. This famous speech is often referred to as Onegin's Sermon. Later, Lensky mischievously invites Onegin to Tatyana's name day celebration promising a small gathering with just Tatyana, her sister, and her parents. When Onegin arrives, he finds instead a boisterous country ball, a rural parody of and contrast to the society balls of St. Petersburg he has grown tired of. Onegin is irritated with the guests who gossip about him and Tatyana, and with Lensky for persuading him to come. He decides to avenge himself by dancing and flirting with Olga. Olga is insensitive to her fiancé and apparently attracted to Onegin. Earnest and inexperienced, Lensky is wounded to the core and challenges Onegin to fight a duel; Onegin reluctantly accepts, feeling compelled by social convention. During the duel, Onegin unwillingly kills Lensky. Afterwards, he quits his country estate, traveling abroad to deaden his feelings of remorse. Tatyana visits Onegin's mansion, where she looks through his books and his notes in the margins, and begins to question whether Onegin's character is merely a collage of different literary heroes, and if there is, in fact, no "real Onegin". Several years pass, and the scene shifts to Moscow. Onegin has come to attend the most prominent balls and interact with the leaders of old Russian society. He sees a most beautiful woman, who captures the attention of all and is central to society's whirl, and he realizes that it is the same Tatyana whose love he had once turned away. Now she is married to an aged prince. Upon seeing Tatyana again, he becomes obsessed with winning her affection, despite the fact that she is married. However, his attempts are rebuffed. He writes her several letters, but receives no reply. Eventually Onegin manages to see Tatyana and presents to her the opportunity to renew their past love. Tatyana admits that she still loves him, but declares her determination to remain faithful to her husband.
189018	/m/019w4d	Elbow Room	Daniel Dennett	1984	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 A major task taken on by Dennett in Elbow Room is to clearly describe just what people are as biological entities and why they find the issue of free will to be of significance. In discussing what people are and why free will matters to us, Dennett makes use of an evolutionary perspective. Dennett describes the mechanical behavior of the digger wasp Sphex. This insect follows a series of genetically programmed steps in preparing for egg laying. If an experimenter interrupts one of these steps the wasp will repeat that step again. For an animal like a wasp, this process of repeating the same behavior can go on indefinitely, the wasp never seeming to notice what is going on. This is the type of mindless, pre-determined behavior that humans can avoid. Given the chance to repeat some futile behavior endlessly, people can notice the futility of it, and by an act of free will do something else. We can take this as an operational definition of what people mean by free will. Dennett points out the fact that as long as people see themselves as able to avoid futility, most people have seen enough of the free will issue. Dennett then invites all who are satisfied with this level of analysis to get on with living while he proceeds into the deeper hair-splitting aspects of the free will issue. From a biological perspective, what is the difference between the wasp and a person? The person can, through interaction with his/her environment, construct an internal mental model of the situation and figure out a successful behavioral strategy. The wasp, with a much smaller brain and different genetic program, does not learn from its environment and instead is trapped in an endless and futile behavioral loop that is strictly determined by its genetic program. It is in this sense of people as animals with complex brains that can model reality and appear to choose among several possible behaviors that Dennett says we have free will. The deeper philosophical issue of free will can be framed as a paradox. On one hand, we all feel like we have free will, a multitude of behavioral choices to select among. On the other hand, modern biology generally investigates humans as though the processes at work in them follow the same biological principles as those in wasps. How do we reconcile our feeling of free will with the idea that we might be mechanical components of a mechanical universe? What about determinism? When we say that a person chooses among several possible behaviors is there really a choice or does it just seem like there is a choice? Do people just (through the action of their more complex brains) simply have better behaviors than wasps, while still being totally mechanical in executing those behaviors? Dennett gives his definition of determinism on page one: All physical events are caused or determined by the sum total of all previous events. This definition dodges a question that many people feel should not be dodged: if we repeatedly replayed the universe from the same point in time would it always reach the same future? Since we have no way of performing this experiment, this question is a long-term classic in philosophy and physicists have tried to interpret the results of other experiments in various ways in order to figure out the answer to this question. Modern day physics-oriented philosophers have sometimes tried to answer the question of free will using the many-worlds interpretation, according to which every time there is quantum indeterminacy each possibility occurs and new universes branch off. Since the 1920s, physicists have been trying to convince themselves that quantum indeterminacy can in some way explain free will. Dennett suggests that this idea is silly. How, he asks, can random resolutions of quantum-level events provide people with any control over their behavior? Since Dennett wrote Elbow Room (1984) there has been an on-going attempt by some scientists to answer this question by suggesting that the brain is a device for controlling quantum indeterminacy so as to construct behavioral choice. Dennett argues that such efforts to salvage free will by finding a way out of the prison of determinism are wasted. Dennett discusses many types of free will (1984). Many philosophers have claimed that determinism and free will are incompatible. What the physicists seem to be trying to construct is a type of free will that involves a way for brains to make use of quantum indeterminacy so as to make choices that alter the universe in our favor, or if there are multiple universes, to choose among the possible universes. Dennett suggests that we can have another kind of free will, a type of free will which we can be perfectly happy with even if it does not give us the power to act in more than one way at any given time. Dennett is able to accept determinism and free will at the same time. How so? The type of free will that Dennett thinks we have is finally stated clearly in the last chapter of the book: the power to be active agents, biological devices that respond to our environment with rational, desirable courses of action. Dennett has slowly, through the course of the book, stripped the idea of behavioral choice from his idea of free will. How can we have free will if we do not have indeterministic choice? Dennett emphasizes control over libertarian choice. If our hypothetically mechanical brains are in control of our behavior and our brains produce good behaviors for us, then do we really need such choice? Is an illusion of behavioral choices just as good as actual choices? Is our sensation of having the freedom to execute more than one behavior at a given time really just an illusion? Dennett argues that choice exists in a general sense: that because we base our decisions on context, we limit our options as the situation becomes more specific. In the most specific circumstance (actual events), he suggests there is only one option left to us. :"It is this contrast between the stable and the chaotic that grounds our division of the world into the enduring and salient features of the world, and those features that we must treat statistically or probabilistically. And this division of the world is not just our division; it is, for instance, mother nature's division as well. Since for all mother nature knows (or could know) it is possible that these insects will cross paths (sometime, somewhere) with insectivorous birds, they had better be designed with some avoidance machinery. This endows them with a certain power that will serve well (in general)." If people are determined to act as they do, then what about personal responsibility? How can we hold people responsible and punish them for their behaviors if they have no choice in how they behave? Dennett gives a two part answer to this question. First, we hold people responsible for their actions because we know from historical experience that this is an effective means to make people behave in a socially acceptable way. Second, holding people responsible only works when combined with the fact that people can be informed of the fact that they are being held responsible and respond to this state of affairs by controlling their behavior so as to avoid punishment. People who break the rules set by society and get punished may be behaving in the only way they can, but if we did not hold them accountable for their actions, people would behave even worse than they do with the threat of punishment. This is a totally utilitarian approach to the issue of responsibility: there is no need for moral indignation when people break the rules of proper behavior. Is it, then, moral to punish people who are unable to do other than break a rule? Yes, people have the right to come together and improve their condition by creating rules and enforcing them. We would be worse off if we did not do so. Again, an argument for utility. One final issue: if people do not have real behavioral choices, why not collapse into fatalism? Again, Dennett's argument is that we may not have behavioral choice, but we do have control of our behavior. Dennett asks us to look around at the universe and ask, can I even conceive of beings whose will is freer than our own? For Dennett, the answer to this question is, no, not really. In Elbow Room, he tries to explain why all the attempts that people have tried to make to prove that people have libertarian choice have failed and are, in the final analysis, not really important anyhow. As humans, we are as much in control of our behavior as anything in the universe. As humans, we have the best chance to produce good behavior. We should be satisfied with what we have and not fret over our lack of libertarian free will. Some complaints about Elbow Room relate to our intuitions about free will. Some say that Dennett's theory does not satisfactorily deal with the issue of why we feel so strongly that we do have behavioral choice. One answer to this question is that our sensation of having behavioral choice has been carefully selected by evolution. The well developed human sensation of having free will and being able to select among possible behaviors has strong survival value. People who lose the feeling that they can plan alternative behaviors and execute their choice of possible behaviors tend to become fatalistic and stop struggling for survival. According to Dennett, belief in free will is a necessary condition for having free will. When we are planning for the future and thinking about possible actions to take in the future, we are utilizing considerable amounts of biologically expensive resources (brain power). Evolution has designed us to feel strongly that all of our effort of planning pays off, that we control what we do. If this connection between our brains' efforts to model reality and predict the future and so make possible good outcomes is disconnected from our sense of self and our will, then fatalism and self-destructive behaviors are close at hand.
189288	/m/019x6x	The Adventures of Captain Underpants	Dav Pilkey	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The story begins with the school troublemakers, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, making a comic featuring a superhero they made-up, The Amazing Captain Underpants. A little later in the book, George and Harold played a series of practical jokes on a football game automatically without being exposed (sprinkling pepper in the cheerleaders pom-poms causing them to sneeze, pouring bubble bath liquid in the marching band's instruments causing the liquid to turn into foam, filling up the game's ball with helium causing it go up in the sky, replacing the players ointment with itching cream causing the players to scratch and roll around, etc.) that the game was cancel. Their Principal, Mr. Krupp, had successfully recorded a video of George and Harold preparing there pranks (by hiding a series of cameras) and going to show the football team the video. , due to there curiosity about who was responsible the fiasco from the game)., that made George and Harold guilty and horrified. They begged for mercy and Mr.Krupp gave them set of rules and threatens to show the video to the football team, if they do corporate to these rules. To avoid Mr. Krupp's tasks, George buys a 3-D Hypno-Ring (which they receive after 4–6 weeks of back-breaking labor) from the Li'l Wiseguy Company in Walla-Walla, Washington, so they can get Mr. Krupp to hand over the incriminating video. Harold replaces it with one of his little sister Heidi's "Boomer the Purple Dragon Singalong Videos". They then begin fooling around, telling Mr. Krupp he is a monkey or chicken. George hypnotizes Mr. Krupp to act as if he were Captain Underpants, who is the hero of their homemade comic books. To their distress, Mr. Krupp, as Captain Underpants, takes the role seriously and departs to fight crime. Captain Underpants confronts two bank robbers, and orders them to "Surrender! Or I will have to resort to 'Wedgie Power'!" The bank robbers fall down in hysterics laugh very hard and are apprehended by the police. The police begin to arrest Captain Underpants too, but George and Harold whisk him to safety on their skateboards. Then the three witness two robots stealing a large crystal. Captain Underpants tries to stop them, but his cape gets caught on their van. Captain Underpants, with George and Harold clinging to him by the heels, is dragged to an old, abandoned warehouse. There they meet the evil Dr. Diaper (or Dr. Nappy in the British version), who plans to use the crystal as the transformer for his Laser-Matic 2000 to blow up the Moon, destroying every major city on Earth, so that he can take over the planet (although this wouldn't work. As the Moon is less than half the size of the Earth). George and Harold escape and hide, but Captain Underpants is captured and tied up. George uses a slingshot to toss fake doggy doo-doo between Dr. Diaper's feet. Dr. Diaper is terribly embarrassed, thinking that he has had an "accident". When he departs to change his diaper, George and Harold incapacitate the robots and untie Captain Underpants. Harold pulls the self-destruct lever on the Laser-Matic 2000. Dr. Diaper, enraged at the destruction of the Laser-Matic 2000, his robots, and the foiling of his plan to take over the world, aims his Diaper-Matic 2000 ray gun (which resembles a pacifier) at George, Harold, and Captain Underpants. Captain Underpants shoots a pair of underwear (his own underwear) at Dr. Diaper. The underwear covers Dr. Diaper's face, which renders him incapable of defending himself. After the warehouse explodes, Dr. Diaper is tied (with the same rope used to tie Captain Underpants up earlier) to a lamppost outside the police station with a note reading "Arrest Me!" taped to him. George, Harold, and Captain Underpants return to Mr. Krupp's office and dress him back up as Mr. Krupp. The boys try to figure out how to return Mr. Krupp to his normal self, but they've lost the instruction manual for the 3-D Hypno-Ring. In desperation, George tries dumping water on Mr. Krupp's head. It works, and Mr. Krupp returns to his angry self, resolving to give the video to the football team after all. After this, George finds the 3D Hypno Ring's manual, and throws it away, no longer believing they need it (unknown to them, the manual warns that pouring water over a person will cause them to switch between reality and trance whenever they hear someone snap their fingers or get water on their head). As it turns out, the football team enjoys the Sing-A-Long video so much that they change their name from the Knuckleheads to the Purple Dragon Sing-A-Long Friends. From this point on, whenever anyone snaps their fingers, Mr. Krupp transforms into Captain Underpants. The comic in the book starts with bad guys taking over the world, while the superheroes (including Superman, Captain America and Batman) are too old to fight them. Captain Underpants suddenly appears, and the introduction comes in. Meanwhile, at a nearby school, the cafeteria gives the children the "Stinky Taco Surprise", so the children throw it away. The wasted food comes to life as the Inedible Hunk (a parody of The Incredible Hulk), which causes chaos in the school. Captain Underpants decides to rapidly shoot underwear at the monster, but it doesn't work, as the Hunk eats them. So the Captain heads to the toilets, where the monster is fooled by him when it drinks out of the toilet. Captain Underpants flushes the Inedible Hunk down to the sewers, and the comic ends. On the back of the comic, there is a notice reading, "Don't miss our next exciting adventure: Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets, Coming soon to a playground near you".
189652	/m/019ypf	The Rowan	Anne McCaffrey	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Rowan tells the life story of a young orphan, of Prime Talent, from the moment the child's community is wiped out in a mudslide to the time when she becomes a Prime and after a life of loneliness falls in love with a previously undiscovered Prime in a far away star system being attacked by aliens. The central section of the book is based on McCaffrey's earlier short story "Lady in the Tower" *Talent Level: T-1 telekinetic/telepath; Callisto Prime *Physical Description: Silver-white hair, grey eyes (though stated to be brown on page 17 of the Ace/Putnam 1990 hardcover edition), and a petite figure. **The Rowan was the only survivor of a freak landslide that destroyed the Rowan Mining Camp on Altair. The toddler Rowan had been trapped in a hopper (a kind of vehicle) and buried under the sludge for days. She mentally screamed for help and due to the strength of her young mind every receptive telepath on the planet could hear her. As she had no memory of her life before the landslide, she took her name from the mining camp. She grew up a ward of the planet under the care of Lusena, a child therapist. She was given of the Altarian Prime at the age of nine. After a bad experience with a class of T-4 and 5's she became distant and elusive. *Talent Level: T-1 telekinetic/telepath; Altair Prime *Physical Description: "Siglen was a slab of a female, soft from a sedentary life and a disinclination to exercise of any kind."- The Rowan pg. 14 **Siglen proved to be more harm than good when it came to dealing with the Rowan. She wasn't empathic towards the child and instilled a neurosis (a form of agoraphobia that prevents interstellar teleports) in the three Primes that she trained. She has no empathy and is very trying for her staff and personnel to deal with. Described as a "mistress of the putdown" and a generally unlikeable person. *Talent level: T-8 telepath; junior therapist **Lusena took the young Rowan in as her own. She already had two older children, Bardy and Finnan. Lusena died in a crash when the Rowan was eighteen. *Talent Level: T-5 empath **Goswina first met the Rowan when she, along with seven other young Talents, traveled to Altair for a course on Tower management and maintenance. She soon realized that she and the Rowan could not work efficiently together and so recommended her brother Afra, who at the time was six. The Rowan then promised to make sure Afra came to Altair for the course when he was old enough. *Talent Level: T-4 (later T-3 then T-2) telekinetic/telepath *Physical Description: blonde hair, slightly green skin, yellow eyes, tall/slender figure. **The Lyon family is from Capella, a "Methody" planet known for its adherence to rules and manners (and its colonists' unusual pigmentation). Afra, however, was slightly different; life on Capella didn't appeal to him. So, at eighteen, Afra spent all his money to send a resume to the Rowan, the new Callisto Prime. The Prime sent for him the very next day. Afra was to the Rowan's liking and became second in command of the Tower. *Talent Level: T-1 telekinetic/telepath *Physical Description: black hair and piercing blue eyes. **Jeff Raven was born on Deneb where a large population of "Wild Talents" resides. He first contacted the Rowan telepathically when he "heard" her getting ready to start her transportation work on Callisto. Jeff informed her that Deneb was under attack by hostile alien forces. The Rowan informed Earth Prime who refused to believe the words of an "unknown Talent"; Jeff quickly verified the attack was legitimate by telekinetically hurtling a missile towards Earth (which was quite an extraordinary feat considering how remote Deneb was and that the generator he tapped into for power was on the verge of collapse) *Talent Level: never tested, but she has a "long ear" and "loud voice" **Isthia is the mother of Jeff Raven. She gathered a team of other untrained Talents to help her contact the Rowan telepathically when Jeff was badly injured in an accident after the attacks. Talent Level: T-1 telekinetic/telepath; Earth Prime Physical Description: Black hair, close trimmed red beard and moustache. He is the descendant of the same Peter Reidinger who is featured in Pegasus in Flight and Pegasus in Space. *The Reidinger family is full of extremely high Talents, and Peter Reidinger IV is surely one of the most powerful. He runs FT&T. Talent Level: T-1 Medic/Ob. Deft, compassionate, sensible and reassuring, Elizara is Prime Reidinger's great-granddaughter. She became a close friend and confidant of the Gwyn-Raven families, and later the Lyons, when she was assigned by Reidinger to assist the Rowan during her first pregnancy. Elizara is extremely skilled in metamorphic healing as well as physical. She is later re-introduced into the series as the very talented teacher of her gifted namesake, Zara Raven-Lyon, one of Damia's many children. Talent Level: T-9; Callisto Stationmaster Primes of FT&T are T-1 telekinetic/telepaths. They are the rarest manifestation of Talent. *Earth Prime: Peter Reidinger IV *Altair Prime: Siglen *Capella Prime: Capella *Betelguese Prime: David *Callisto Prime: The Rowan *Procyon Prime: Guzman
189894	/m/019zsb	Lysistrata	Aristophanes			 LYSISTRATA: There are a lot of things about us women That sadden me, considering how men See us as rascals. CALONICE: As indeed we are! These lines, spoken by Lysistrata and her friend Calonice at the beginning of the play, set the scene for the action that follows. Women, as represented by Calonice, are sly hedonists in need of firm guidance and direction. Lysistrata however is an extraordinary woman with a large sense of individual responsibility. She has convened a meeting of women from various city states in Greece (there is no mention of how she managed this feat) and, very soon after confiding in her friend about her concerns for the female sex, the women begin arriving. With support from Lampito, the Spartan, Lysistrata persuades the other women to withhold sexual privileges from their menfolk as a means of forcing them to end the interminable Peloponnesian War. The women are very reluctant but the deal is sealed with a solemn oath around a wine bowl, Lysistrata choosing the words and Calonice repeating them on behalf of the other women. It is a long and detailed oath, in which the women abjure all their sexual pleasures, including The Lioness on The Cheese Grater (a sexual position). Soon after the oath is finished, a cry of triumph is heard from the nearby Acropolis – the old women of Athens have seized control of it at Lysistrata's instigation, since it holds the state treasury, without which the men cannot long continue to fund their war. Lampito goes off to spread the word of revolt and the other women retreat behind the barred gates of the Acropolis to await the men's response. A Chorus of Old Men arrives, intent on burning down the gate of the Acropolis if the women don't open up. Encumbered with heavy timbers, inconvenienced with smoke and burdened with old age, they are still making preparations to assault the gate when a Chorus of Old Women arrives, bearing pitchers of water. The Old Women complain about the difficulty they had getting the water but they are ready for a fight in defense of their younger comrades. Threats are exchanged, water beats fire and the Old Men are discomfited with a soaking. The magistrate then arrives with some Scythian archers (the Athenian version of police constables). He reflects on the hysterical nature of women, their devotion to wine, promiscuous sex and exotic cults (such as to Sabazius and Adonis) but above all he blames men for poor supervision of their womenfolk. He has come for silver from the state treasury to buy oars for the fleet and he instructs his Scythians to begin levering open the gate. However,they are quickly overwhelmed by groups of unruly women with such unruly names as (seed-market-porridge-vegetable-sellers) and (garlic-innkeeping-bread-sellers). Lysistrata restores order and she allows the magistrate to question her. She explains to him the frustrations women feel at a time of war when the men make stupid decisions that affect everyone, and their wives' opinions are not listened to. She drapes her headdress over him, gives him a basket of wool and tells him that war will be a woman's business from now on. She then explains the pity she feels for young, childless women, ageing at home while the men are away on endless campaigns. When the magistrate points out that men also age, she reminds him that men can marry at any age whereas a woman has only a short time before she is considered too old. She then dresses the magistrate like a corpse for laying out, with a wreath and a fillet, and advises him that he's dead. Outraged at these indignities, he storms off to report the incident to his colleagues, while Lysistrata returns to the Acropolis. The debate or agon is continued between the Chorus of Old Men and the Chorus of Old Women until Lysistrata returns to the stage with some news — her comrades are desperate for sex and they are beginning to desert on the silliest pretexts (for example, one woman says she has to go home to air her fabrics by spreading them on the bed). After rallying her comrades and restoring their discipline, Lysistrata again returns to the Acropolis to continue waiting for the men's surrender. A man soon appears, desperate for sex. It is Kinesias, the husband of Myrrhine. Lysistrata instructs her to torture him and Myrrhine then informs Kinesias that she can't have sex with him until he stops the war. He promptly agrees to these terms and the young couple prepares for sex on the spot. Myrrhine fetches a bed, then a mattress, then a pillow, then a blanket, then a flask of oil, exasperating her husband with delays until finally disappointing him completely by locking herself in the Acropolis again. The Chorus of Old Men commiserates with the young man in a plaintive song. A Spartan herald then appears with a large burden (an erection) scarcely hidden inside his tunic and he requests to see the ruling council to arrange peace talks. The magistrate, now also sporting a prodigious burden, laughs at the herald's embarrassing situation but agrees that peace talks should begin. They go off to fetch the delegates; and, while they are gone, the Old Women make overtures to the Old Men. The Old Men are content to be comforted and fussed over by the Old Women; and thereupon the two Choruses merge, singing and dancing in unison. Peace talks commence and Lysistrata introduces the Spartan and Athenian delegates to a gorgeous young woman called Reconciliation. The delegates cannot take their eyes off the young woman; and meanwhile, Lysistrata scolds both sides for past errors of judgment. The delegates briefly squabble over the peace terms; but, with Reconciliation before them and the burden of sexual deprivation still heavy upon them, they quickly overcome their differences and retire to the Acropolis for celebrations. Another choral song follows; and, after a bit of humorous dialogue between drunken dinner guests, the celebrants all return to the stage for a final round of songs, the men and women dancing together.
190088	/m/019_ww	Niourk			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 It presents an Earth where the oceans have gone dry and humans are hunter-gatherer bands. Haiti is the mountain range "Hait", and New York City becomes the ruins of "Niourk". The "black child" goes to Niourk where he wanders through the ruins and the still functioning automatic devices. He finds a pair of shipwrecked humans from a space-bound branch of mankind. Their technological civilization has suppressed sexual reproduction and sexual organs. The child eats the radioactive brains of giant vertebrated mutant earth octopuses and becomes more intelligent. He teaches himself reading and the rest of the ruined technology and evolves into a superior species of Homo.
190089	/m/019_x7	Andromeda	Ivan Yefremov		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 This is a classic communist utopia set in a distant future. Throughout the novel, the author's attention is focused on the social and cultural aspects of the society; there are several principal heroes (a historian, an archeologist, a starship captain) involved in several plot lines. Though the world shown in the novel is intended as ideal, there's an attempt to show a conflict and its resolution with a voluntary self-punishment of a scientist whose reckless experiment caused damage. There's also a fair amount of action in the episodes where the crew of a starship fight alien predators. Several civilizations of our Galaxy, including Earth, are united in the Great Circle whose members exchange and relay scientific and cultural information. Notably, there's was no faster-than-light travel or communication in this world before events, described in novel. Moreover, interstellar missions sent by Earth are few because of very costly fuel used by interstellar (but not planetary) spaceships, and the Great Circle civilizations almost never meet in person. The Great Circle radio transmissions are pictured as taking the energy of the whole Earth and therefore infrequent; one such transmission is a lecture on the history of the Earth civilization which gives the author an opportunity to put his world into a historic context.
190309	/m/01b0yz	Ecotopia	Ernest Callenbach		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The book is set in 1999 (25 years in the future, as seen from 1974) and consists of the diary entries and reports of William Weston, a mainstream media reporter who is the first proper American to investigate Ecotopia, a newly formed country that broke from the USA in 1980. Prior to Weston's investigative reporting, most Americans had not been allowed to enter the new country, which is depicted as being on continual guard against revanchism. The new nation of Ecotopia consists of Northern California, Oregon and Washington; it is hinted that Southern California is a lost cause. The book is presented as a combination of narrative from Weston's diary and dispatches that he transmits to his publication, the mythical Times-Post. Together with Weston (who at the beginning is curious about, but not particularly sympathetic to the Ecotopians), the reader learns about the Ecotopian transportation system and the preferred lifestyle that includes celebrating gender roles, official encouragement of maintaining racial separation, discouraging monogamy, promoting sexual freedom. A disdain for television and mass-spectacle sports is manifested in a preference for local arts, participatory sports, and general fitness. The Ecotopians also have a peculiar ritual of (voluntary) mock warfare, fought with actual weapons and often resulting in injuries. Liberal cannabis use, as well as about decentralized and renewable energy production, green building construction, a defense strategy focused both on developing a highly advanced arms industry while also allegedly maintaining hidden WMD within major US population centers to discourage reconquest. Thorough-going education reform is described, along with a highly localized system of universal medical care. (The narrator discovers that Ecotopian healing practices may include sexual stimulation.) The narrative is told through both Weston's official cables back to the United States and through his diary which he keeps and later sends to his editor at the end of his assignment. In the diary we learn of observations he does not include in his columns, including his personally transformative love affair with an Ecotopian woman. These parallel narrative structures allow the reader to see how his internal reflections, as recorded in his diary, are diffracted in his external pronouncements to his readers. Despite Weston's initial reservations, throughout the novel, Ecotopian citizens are characterized as clever, technologically resourceful, emotionally expressive and even occasionally violent, but also socially responsible, patriotic. They tend to live in ethnically separated localities, and they live in extended families. Their economic enterprises are entirely employee-owned and -controlled. The government is dominated by a woman-led but not exclusively female party, and government structures are highly decentralized. The novel concludes with Weston's finding himself enchanted by Ecotopian life and deciding to stay in Ecotopia as its interpreter to the wider world.
190433	/m/01b1cf	The Bad Seed	William March	1954-04-08	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Eight-year-old Rhoda is the only child of Kenneth and Christine Penmark. Kenneth Penmark goes away on business, leaving Christine and Rhoda at home. Christine begins to notice that Rhoda is acting strangely after one of her classmates mysteriously drowns, and eventually makes a horrible discovery: Rhoda killed the boy, and will almost certainly kill again.
191134	/m/01b42l	The Turner Diaries	William Luther Pierce	1978		 The narrative starts with a foreword set in 2099, one hundred years after the events depicted in the book. The bulk of the book then quotes a recently discovered diary of a man named Earl Turner, an active member of the white Aryan revolutionary movement that caused these events. The book details a violent overthrow of the United States federal government by Turner and his militant comrades and a brutal contemporaneous race war that takes place first in North America, and then the rest of the world. The story starts soon after the federal government has confiscated all civilian firearms in the country under the fictional Cohen Act, and the Organization to which Turner and his cohorts belong goes underground and engages in guerrilla war against the System, which is depicted as the totality of the government, media, and economy that is under left-wing Jewish control. The Organization starts with acts such as the bombing of FBI headquarters and continues to prosecute an ongoing, low level campaign of terrorism, assassination and economic sabotage throughout the United States. Turner's exploits lead to his initiation into the Order, a quasi-religious inner cadre that directs the Organization and whose existence remains secret to both the System and ordinary Organization members. Eventually, the Organization seizes physical control of Southern California, including the nuclear weapons at Vandenberg Air Force Base; ethnically cleanses the area of all blacks and summarily executes all Jews and other "race traitors". The Organization has little use for most white "mainstream" Americans. Those on the Left are seen as dupes or willing agents of the Jews, while conservatives and libertarians are regarded as misguided fools, for, after all, the Jews "took over according to the Constitution, fair and square." Turner and his comrades save their special contempt for the ordinary people, who care about nothing beyond being kept comfortable and entertained. The Organization then uses both the Southern California base of operations and their nuclear weapons to open a wider war in which they launch nuclear strikes against New York City and Israel, initiate a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union, and plant nuclear weapons and new terrorist cells throughout North America. Many major U.S. cities are destroyed, including Baltimore and Detroit. The diary section ends with the protagonist flying an airplane equipped with an atomic bomb on a suicide mission to destroy The Pentagon, in order to eliminate the leadership of the remaining military government before it orders an assault to retake California. The novel ends with an epilogue summarizing how the Organization continued on to conquer the rest of the world and how people of other races were eliminated (China and the entire eastern half of Asia were destroyed by prolonged bombardment with various weapons of mass destruction and made into an enormous desert; Blacks were exterminated in Africa as well as America; Puerto Ricans, described as "a repulsive mongrel race", were exterminated and the island re-settled by whites).
191173	/m/01b4c6	Life, the Universe and Everything	Douglas Adams		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction"}	 After being stranded on pre-historic Earth after the events in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur Dent is met by his old friend Ford Prefect, who drags him into a space-time eddy, represented by an anachronistic sofa. The two end up at Lord's Cricket Ground two days before the Earth's destruction by the Vogons. Shortly after they arrive, a squad of robots land in a spaceship in the middle of the field and attack the assembled crowd, stealing The Ashes before departing. Another spaceship, the Starship Bistromath, arrives, helmed by Slartibartfast, who discovers he is too late and requests Arthur and Ford's help. As they travel to their next destination, Slartibartfast explains that he is trying to stop the robots from collecting all the components of the Wikkit Gate. Long ago, the peaceful population of the planet of Krikkit, unaware of the rest of the Universe due to a dust cloud that surrounded its solar system, were surprised to find the wreckage of a spacecraft on their planet. Reverse engineering their own vessel, they explored past the dust cloud and saw the rest of the Universe, immediately taking a disliking to it and determining it must go. They built a fleet of ships and robots to attack the rest of the Universe in a brutal onslaught known as the Krikkit Wars, but were eventually defeated. Realising that the Krikkit population would not be satisfied alongside the existence of the rest of the Universe, it was decided to envelop the system in a Slo-Time envelope, allowing Krikkit to survive long after the rest of the universe has ended; the Wikkit Gate was the key to the envelope. However, just before it was activated, one ship, that had been presumably lost, carrying a troop of robots appeared and began to retrieve the pieces of the Gate after they were dispersed about space and time. The three transport to an airborne party that has lasted numerous generations where another Gate component, the Silver Bail, is to be found, but Arthur finds himself separated from the others and ends up at a Cathedral of Hate created by a being called Agrajag. Agrajag reveals that Arthur has killed him countless times before, each time reincarnating into a new form that is soon killed by Arthur, and now plans to kill Arthur in revenge. However, when he realises that Arthur has yet to cause his death at a place called Stavromula Beta, Agrajag discovered he took Arthur out of his relative timeline too soon, and that killing him now would cause a paradox but attempts to kill Arthur anyway. In his insanity, Agrajag brings the Cathedral down around them. Arthur manages to escape unharmed, partially due to learning how to fly after falling and missing the ground while catching sight of a piece of luggage he had lost at a Greek airport years before. After collecting the suitcase, Arthur inadvertently comes across the flying party and rejoins his friends. Inside, they find Trillian, but they are too late to stop the robots from stealing the Bail. Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and Slartibartfast return to the Bistromath and try to head off the robots activating the Wikkit Gate. Meanwhile, the Krikkit robots steal the last piece, the Infinite Improbability Drive core from the spaceship Heart of Gold, capturing Zaphod Beeblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android at the same time. The Bistromath arrives too late at the gate to stop the robots, and transport to the planet to attempt to negotiate with the Krikkit people. To their surprise, they find that the people seem to lack any desire to continue the war, and are directed to the robot and spaceship facilities in orbit about the planet. With Zaphod and Marvin's help, the group is able to infiltrate the facilities and discover that the true force behind the war has been the supercomputer Hactar (Due to the obvious flaw in the idea that the people of Krikkit are simultaneously smart enough to develop their ultimate weapon- a bomb that could destroy every star in the universe- while also being stupid enough not to realise that this weapon would destroy them too). Previously built to serve a war-faring species, he was tasked to build a supernova-bomb that would link the cores of every sun in the Universe together at the press of a button and cause the end of the Universe. Hactar purposely created a dud version of the weapon instead, causing his creators to pulverise him into dust, which thus became the dust cloud around Krikkit, still able to function but at a much weaker level. Trillian and Arthur speak to Hactar in a virtual space that he creates for them to explain himself. Hactar reveals that he spent eons creating the spaceship that crashed on Krikkit in order to inspire their xenophobia and incite them to go to war, also influencing their thoughts. However, when the Slo-Time envelope was activated, his control on the population waned. As he struggles to remain functional, Hactar apologises to Trillian and Arthur for his actions before they leave for their ship. With the war over, the group collects the core of the Heart of Gold and the Ashes, the only two components of the Wikkit Gate not destroyed by the robots, and returns Zaphod and Marvin to the Heart of Gold. Returning only moments after the robots' attack at the Lord's Cricket Grounds, Arthur attempts to return the Ashes, but is suddenly inspired to bowl one shot at a wicket that is being defended using a cricket ball in his bag. However, in mid-throw, Arthur suddenly realises that the ball he had was created and placed in his bag by Hactar and is actually the working version of the cosmic-supernova-bomb, and that the defender of the wicket is one of the Krikkit robots, ready to detonate the bomb once thrown, all this causing him to trip, miss the ground, and allow him to fly. Arthur is able to throw the ball aside and disable the robot in mid-throw. In the epilogue the characters are taking Arthur to a 'quiet and idyllic planet' when the come across a half-mad journalist. He tells them that he was at a court case and a witness there was given too much of a truth drug and started to tell all truth, which was driving everybody there mad. They go to the courtroom in the hope of learning the question of Life, the Universe and everything is from him. They discover he is finished and he has forgotten it all. In the end Arthur goes to live on the planet Krikkit where he becomes a more skillful flier and learns bird language.
191680	/m/01b6fd	Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson	G. I. Gurdjieff	1950		 Gurdjieff said that he had answered every question that could possibly arise in a person's mind In his introduction to the book Gurdjieff states the following: ::Friendly Advice ::[Written impromptu by the author on delivering this book, already prepared for publication, to the printer.] ::ACCORDING TO the numerous deductions and conclusions made by me during experimental elucidations concerning the productivity of the perception by contemporary people of new impressions from what is heard and read, and also according to the thought of one of the sayings of popular wisdom I have just remembered, handed down to our days from very ancient times, which declares: “Any prayer may be heard by the Higher Powers and a corresponding answer obtained only if it is uttered thrice: ::Firstly—for the welfare or the peace of the souls of one’s parents. ::Secondly—for the welfare of one’s neighbor. ::And only thirdly—for oneself personally.” ::I find it necessary on the first page of this book, quite ready for publication, to give the following advice: ::“Read each of my written expositions thrice: ::* Firstly: at least as you have already become mechanized to read all your contemporary books and newspapers. ::* Secondly: as if you were reading aloud to another person. ::* And only thirdly: try and fathom the gist of my writings. ::Only then will you be able to count upon forming your own impartial judgment, proper to yourself alone, on my writings. And only then can my hope be actualized that according to your understanding you will obtain the specific benefit for yourself which I anticipate, and which I wish for you with all my being.” Ever since it was written, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson has been intended not to be intensely studied alone, but to have various pieces of understanding conveyed to the reader through oral tradition to enable a much greater degree of understanding as to what is being written about. Beelzebub is the protagonist of the book, who ruminates his past experiences in a solar system called "Ors" (our solar system) where he had been banished for rebelling against His Endlessness. He spent his exile in observation of the solar system, and of Earth and humans in particular. He visited Earth six times and observed it from just after its creation until 1922. Because of his help in the eradication of animal sacrifice on Earth, Beelzebub was pardoned from his sentence. Beelzebub tells the tales to his grandson Hassein while they are traveling together on the spaceship Karnak for his conference on another planet, shortly after his return from the exile. He took Hassein with him so he could use his free time during this journey for the purpose of giving a proper education to his grandson. Hassein listens to his grandfather's stories patiently, and with admiration. Ahoon is a devoted old servant of Beelzebub who accompanies him and Hassein throughout the space journey. The name Beelzebub is a derogatory Hebrew renaming of the pre-Judaic Canaanite god Baal, meaning literally "Lord House-fly" (Baal-zevuv) (monotheistic Jewish reference to Baal was almost certainly pejorative, and grew to be used among other terms for Satan. The name later appears as the name of a demon or devil, often interchanged with Beelzebul), while the name Hassein has the same linguistic root with Husayn ()). Sigmund Freud theorized Judaism and Christianity as expressing a relationship between father (Judaism) and son (Christianity). In this light, Gurdjieff's choice of grandfather and grandson suggests a pre-Judaic and post-Christian relationship. The spaceship Karnak derives its name from a famous temple in Egypt, located on the banks of the River Nile. When humans are liberated enough to ascend through the ancient knowledge, they could travel through the universe, hence the temple's name for the spaceship. Another possible allegory about the three main characters in this book is that they might represent Gurdjieff's representation of the three human brains, or centers. 1) Beelzebub - Intellectual center 2) Hassein - Emotional center 3) Ahoon - Moving Center. Also, "Karnak" could be translated from Armenian to English as "dead body", and thus, this analogy shows how the mind educates the emotions. Mullah Nassreddin is an impartial teacher who had a wise saying for every life situation. Lentrohamsanin is a being who destroyed all of the traces of the Holy labors and teachings of Ashiata Shiemash. Gornahoor Harharkh is a scientist on the planet Saturn who specializes in elucidating the particularities of Okidanokh, as well as he was Beelzebub's essence friend. Archangel Looisos is the Arch-Chemist-Physician of the Universe who invented the special organ Kundabuffer, which was implanted at the base of the human spine in order that they should not perceive reality. The original word Kundabuffer was at some period in history transformed into the word Kundalini. Looisos approached Beelzebub for the problem of the widespread practice of animal sacrifice on Earth, the quantity of which was endangering the formation of an atmosphere on the moon. Belcultassi is the founder of the society Akhaldan which was, and still is, unmatched in terms of knowledge on Earth. King Konuzion is the one who invented "Hell" and "Paradise" as a means of making people stop chewing opium. Choon-Kil-Tez and Choon-Tro-Pel are Chinese twin brothers who rediscovered the law of sevenfoldness, and invented an apparatus called "Alla-Attapan". Hadji-Astvatz-Troov is a Bokharian Dervish who is well familiarized with all of the laws of vibrations and their effects. Ashiata Shiemash, Saint Budda, Saint Lama, Saint Jesus Christ, Saint Moses, Saint Mohammed, Saint Kirminasha, Saint Krishnatkharna Leonardo da Vinci, Pythagoras, Alexander of Macedonia, Menitkel, Darwin, Ignatius, Mesmer, Mendelejeff, Various Angels, Various Archangels, and many others. Throughout the book, Gurdjieff gave certain meaning to many of his original words such as Triamazikamno - law of three, Heptaparaparshinokh - law of sevenfoldness, Solioonensius - certain cosmic law, and so on. Whether Gurdjieff invented these words, or applied certain concepts to them is unclear. Many of these words have roots in modern languages, while others have roots in ancient languages. Another possibility is noted in Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', where Gurdjieff wrote that he accidentally learned of the word Solioonensius from a Dervish. Gurdjieff applied these words to minor concepts, as well as some major ones. One of the major concepts is where Gurdjieff applies the word Hasnamuss to certain types of people. According to Beelzebub's Tales, Hasnamuss is a being who acquires "something" which creates certain harmful factors for himself, as well as for those around him. According to Gurdjieff this applies to "average people" as well as to those who are on "higher levels". This "something" is formed in beings as a result of the following manifestations: 1) Every kind of depravity, conscious as well as unconscious 2) The feeling of self-satisfaction from leading others astray 3) The irresistible inclination to destroy the existence of other breathing creatures 4) The urge to become free from the necessity of actualizing the being-efforts demanded by nature 5) The attempt by every kind to artificially conceal from others what in their opinion are one's physical defects 6) The calm self-contentment in the use of what is not personally deserved 7) The striving to be not what one is
191753	/m/01b6vv	The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain	1876	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 In the 1840s an imaginative and mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid, in the Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment all of the next day. At first, Tom is disheartened by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He trades the treasures he got by tricking his friends into whitewashing the fence for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses, which can be used to claim a Bible as a prize. He received enough tickets to be given the Bible. However, he loses much of his glory when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first disciples were David and Goliath. Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. Becky kisses Tom, but their romance collapses when she learns that Tom has been "engaged" previously;— to a girl named Amy Lawrence. Shortly after being shunned by Becky, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a "cure" for warts with a dead cat. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr. Robinson by the Native-American "half-breed" Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe frames his companion, Muff Potter, a helpless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom's anxiety and guilt begin to grow. Tom, Huck and Tom's friend Joe Harper run away to an island to become pirates. While frolicking around and enjoying their new found freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends. Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky's favor after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has ripped. Soon, Muff Potter's trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window. Summer arrives, and Tom and Huck go hunting for buried treasure in a haunted house. After venturing upstairs they hear a noise below. Peering through holes in the floor, they see Injun Joe enter the house disguised as a deaf and mute Spaniard. He and his companion, an unkempt man, plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own. From their hiding spot, Tom and Huck wriggle with delight at the prospect of digging it up. By an amazing coincidence, Injun Joe and his partner find a buried box of gold themselves. When they see Tom and Huck's tool, they become suspicious that someone is sharing their hiding place and carry the gold off instead of reburying it. Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to McDougal's Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident of St. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero. Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky's father, Judge Thatcher, locks up the cave. Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves to death. A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Tom's robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees. The book leaves off where The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins.
191871	/m/01b7dc	The Emperor's New Clothes	Hans Christian Andersen			 A vain Emperor who cares for nothing hires two swindlers who promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "hopelessly stupid". The Emperor cannot see the clothing himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor marches in procession before his subjects, who play along with the pretense, until a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but continues the procession.
192303	/m/01b9ky	The Library of Babel	Jorge Luis Borges	1941		 Borges's narrator describes how his universe consists of an enormous expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival—and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books is random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (23 letters, spaces and punctuation marks). Though the majority of the books in this universe are pure gibberish, the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages. Conversely, for many of the texts some language could be devised that would make it readable with any of a vast number of different contents. Despite — indeed, because of — this glut of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair. This leads some librarians to superstitions and cult-like behaviour, such as the "Purifiers", who arbitrarily destroy books they deem nonsense as they scour through the library seeking the "Crimson Hexagon" and its illustrated, magical books. Another is the belief that since all books exist in the library, somewhere one of the books must be a perfect index of the library's contents; some even believe that a messianic figure known as the "Man of the Book" has read it, and they travel through the library seeking him.
193041	/m/01bdv_	Pebble in the Sky	Isaac Asimov	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While walking down the street in Chicago, Joseph Schwartz, a retired tailor, is the unwitting victim of a nearby nuclear laboratory accident, by means of which he is instantaneously transported tens of thousands of years into the future (50,000 years, by one character's estimate, a figure later retconned by future Asimov works as a "mistake"). He finds himself in a place he does not recognize, and due to apparent changes in the spoken language that far into the future, he is unable to communicate with anyone. He wanders into a farm, and is taken in by the couple that lives there. They mistake him for a mentally deficient person, and they secretly offer him as a subject for an experimental procedure to increase his mental abilities. The procedure, which has killed several subjects, works in his case, and he finds that he can quickly learn to speak the current lingua franca. He also slowly realizes that the procedure has given him strong telepathic abilities, including the ability to project his thoughts to the point of killing or injuring a person. The Earth, at this time, is seen by the rest of the Galactic Empire as a rebellious planet — it has, in fact, rebelled three times in the past — and the inhabitants are widely frowned upon and discriminated against. Earth also has several large radioactive areas, although the cause is never really described. With large uninhabitable areas, it is a very poor planet, and anyone who is unable to work is legally required to be euthanized. The people of the Earth must also be executed when they reach the age of sixty, a procedure known as "The Sixty," with very few exceptions; mainly for people who have made significant contributions to society. That is a problem for Schwartz, who is now sixty-two years old. The Earth is part of the Trantorian Galactic Empire, with a resident Procurator, who lives in a domed town in the high Himalayas and a Galactic military garrison, but in practice it is ruled by a group of Earth-centered "religious fanatics" who believe in the ultimate superiority of Earthlings. They have created a new, deadly supervirus that they plan to use to kill or subjugate the rest of the Empire, and to avenge themselves for the way their planet has been treated by the galaxy at large. Among other things, this virus has the ability to kill by radiation poisoning. Joseph Schwartz, along with Affret Shekt, the scientist who developed the new device that boosted Schwartz's mental powers, his daughter Pola Shekt, and a visiting archaeologist Bel Arvardan, are captured by the rebels, but they escape with the help of Schwartz's new mental abilities, and they are narrowly able to stop the plan to release the virus. Schwartz uses his mental abilities to provoke a pilot from the Imperial garrison into bombing the site where the arsenal of the super-virus exists. The book ends on a hopeful note — perhaps the Empire can be persuaded to restore the Earth, and to bring in huge amounts of uncontaminated soil.
193230	/m/01bfl4	Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp	Harriet Beecher Stowe	1856	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dred is the story of Nina Gordon, an impetuous young heiress to a large southern plantation, whose land is rapidly becoming worthless. It is run competently by one of Nina's slaves, Harry, who endures a murderous rivalry with Nina's brother Tom Gordon, a drunken, cruel slaveowner. Nina is a flighty young girl, and maintains several suitors, before finally settling down with a man named Clayton. Clayton is socially and religiously liberal, and very idealistic, and has a down-to-earth perpetual-virgin sister, Anne. In addition to Harry (who, as well as being the administrator of Nina's estate, is secretly also her and Tom's half-brother), the slave characters include the devoutly Christian Milly (actually the property of Nina's Aunt Nesbit), and Tomtit, a joker-type character. There is also a family of poor whites, who have but a single, devoted slave, Old Tiff. Dred, the titular character, is one of the Great Dismal Swamp maroons, escaped slaves living in the Great Dismal Swamp, preaching angry and violent retribution for the evils of slavery and rescuing escapees from the dog of the slavecatchers.
193850	/m/01bj8f	Raintree County	Ross Lockridge, Jr.		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel, set in fictional Raintree County, Indiana, is essentially in two parts; before the Civil War and after. It spans the 19th century history of the United States, from the pre-Civil War westward expansion, to the debate over slavery, to the Civil War, to the Industrial Revolution and the Labor Movement which followed. The book is often surreal, with dream sequences, flashbacks and departures from the linear narrative. It has been described as an effort to mythologize the history of America, which to a great degree it succeeds in doing through the eyes and the commentary of John Shawnessy. For example, a number of turning points in John's life seem to coincide with Fourth of July celebrations. John, or 'Johnny', as he was called before The War, is a lover of literature, and is influenced by three separate cultural icons: the concept of becoming a Hero, in the sense of the legendary figures of ancient Greece; Hawthorne's The Great Stone Face, in which legend predicts that a great man will appear, whose face is identical to the natural stone face which, in the Hawthorne story, is a local landmark; and finally, the quest to find the legendary Raintree, which was supposedly planted somewhere in Raintree County by John Chapman, or Johnny Appleseed. Johnny Shawnessy tends to view the events of his life through the prism of one or more of these contexts, and to draw parallels to these legends, frequently with considerable justification. It is a long novel, around 400,000 words. Most editions run to about 1000 pages. The fictional town of Waycross was based on Straughn, Indiana and the fictional Raintree County was based on Henry County, Indiana.
193864	/m/01bjby	Suddenly, Last Summer	Tennessee Williams			 Catharine Holly, a poor relation of a prominent New Orleans family, seems to be insane after her cousin Sebastian dies under mysterious circumstances on a trip to Europe. Sebastian's mother, Violet Venable, trying to cloud the truth about her son's homosexuality and death, threatens to lobotomize Catharine for her incoherent utterances relating to Sebastian's demise. Under the influence of a truth serum, Catharine tells the gruesome story of Sebastian's death by cannibalism at the hands of locals whose sexual favors he sought, using Catharine as a device to attract the young men (as he had earlier used his mother).
194869	/m/01bp1q	The Tenant of Wildfell Hall	Anne Brontë		{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is divided into three volumes. Part One (Chapters 1 to 15): Gilbert Markham narrates how a mysterious widow, Mrs. Helen Graham arrives at Wildfell Hall, a nearby old mansion. A source of curiosity for the small community, the reticent Mrs Graham and her young son Arthur are slowly drawn into the social circles of the village. Initially, Gilbert Markham casually courts Eliza Millward, despite his mother's belief that he can do better. His interest in Eliza wanes as he comes to know Mrs. Graham. In retribution, Eliza spreads (and perhaps creates) scandalous rumours about Helen. With gossip flying, Gilbert is led to believe that his friend, Mr. Lawrence is courting Mrs. Graham. At a chance meeting in a road, a jealous Gilbert strikes (with a whip) the mounted Lawrence, who falls from his horse. Unaware of this, Helen refuses to marry Gilbert, but gives him her diaries when he accuses her of loving Lawrence. Part two (Chapters 16 to 44) is taken from Helen's diaries and describes her marriage to Arthur Huntingdon. The handsome, witty Huntingdon is also spoilt, selfish, and self-indulgent. Before marrying Helen, Arthur Huntingdon flirts with Annabella and uses this to manipulate Helen and convince her to marry him. Helen marries him blinded by love and resolves to reform Arthur with gentle persuasion and good example. Upon the birth of their child, Huntingdon becomes increasingly jealous of their son (also called Arthur) and his claims on Helen's attentions and affections. Huntingdon's pack of dissolute friends frequently engage in drunken revels at the family's home, Grassdale, oppressing those of finer character. Both men and women are portrayed as degraded, with Lady Annabella Lowborough shown to be an unfaithful spouse to her melancholy but devoted husband. Walter Hargrave, the brother of Helen's friend Milicent Hargrave, vies for Helen's affections. While not as wild as his peers, Walter is an unwelcome admirer: Helen senses his predatory nature, something revealed when they play chess. Walter tells Helen of Arthur's affair with Lady Lowborough. When his friends depart, Arthur pines openly for his paramour and derides his wife. Arthur's corruption of their son — encouraging him to drink and swear at his tender age — is the last straw for Helen. She plans to flee to save her son, but her husband learns of her plans from her journal, and burns her artist's tools (by which she had hoped to support herself). Eventually, with help from her brother, Mr. Lawrence, Helen finds a secret refuge at Wildfell Hall. Part Three (Chapters 45 to 53) begins after the reading of the diaries when Helen bids Gilbert to leave her because she is not free to marry. He complies and soon learns that she has returned to Grassdale upon learning that Arthur is gravely ill. Helen's ministrations are in vain. Huntingdon's death is painful, fraught with terror at what awaits him. Helen cannot comfort him, for he rejects responsibility for his actions and wishes instead for her to 'come with him', to plead for his salvation. A year passes. Gilbert pursues a rumour of Helen's impending wedding, only to find that Mr. Lawrence (with whom he has reconciled) is marrying Helen's friend, Esther Hargrave. He goes to Grassdale, and discovers that Helen is now wealthy and lives at her estate in Staningley. He travels there, but is plagued by worries that she is now far above his station. He hesitates at the entry-gate. By chance, he encounters Helen, her aunt, and young Arthur. The two lovers reconcile and marry.
195945	/m/01bvdl	A Canticle for Leibowitz	Walter M. Miller, Jr.	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07lw0y": "Post-holocaust", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Canticle for Leibowitz opens 600 years after 20th century civilization has been destroyed by a global nuclear war, known as the "Flame Deluge". The text reveals that as a result of the war there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led to the development of nuclear weapons. During this backlash, called the "Simplification," anyone of learning, and eventually anyone who could even read, was likely to be killed by rampaging mobs, who proudly took on the name of "Simpletons". Illiteracy became almost universal, and books were destroyed en masse. Isaac Edward Leibowitz had been a Jewish electrical engineer working for the United States military. Surviving the war, he converted to Roman Catholicism and founded a monastic order, the "Albertian Order of Leibowitz", dedicated to preserving knowledge by hiding books, smuggling them to safety (booklegging), memorizing, and copying them. The Order's abbey is located in the American southwestern desert, near the military base where Leibowitz had worked before the war, on an old road that may have been "a portion of the shortest route from the Great Salt Lake to Old El Paso." Leibowitz was eventually betrayed and martyred. Later beatified by the Roman Catholic Church, he became a candidate for sainthood. Centuries after his death, the abbey is still preserving the "Memorabilia", the collected writings that have survived the Flame Deluge and the Simplification, in the hope that they will help future generations reclaim forgotten science. The story is structured in three parts titled: "Fiat Homo", "Fiat Lux", and "Fiat Voluntas Tua". The parts are separated by periods of six centuries each. In the 26th century, a 17-year-old novice named Brother Francis Gerard is on a vigil in the desert. While searching for a rock to complete a shelter Brother Francis encounters a Wanderer, apparently looking for the abbey, who inscribes Hebrew on a rock that appears the perfect fit for the shelter. When Brother Francis removes the rock he discovers the entrance to an ancient fallout shelter containing "relics", such as handwritten notes on crumbling memo pads bearing cryptic texts resembling a 20th-century shopping list. He soon realizes that these notes appear to have been written by Leibowitz, his order's founder. The discovery of the ancient documents causes an uproar at the monastery, as the other monks speculate that the relics once belonged to Leibowitz. Brother Francis' account of the wanderer, who ultimately never turned up at the abbey, is also greatly embellished by the other monks amid rumours that he was an apparition of Leibowitz himself; Francis strenuously denies the embellishments, but equally persistently refuses to deny that the encounter occurred, despite the lack of other witnesses. Abbot Arkos, the head of the monastery, worries that the discovery of so many potentially holy relics in such a short period may cause delays in Leibowitz's canonization process. Francis is banished back to the desert to complete his vigil and defuse the sensationalism. Many years later the abbey is visited by Monsignors Aguerra (God's Advocate) and Flaught (the Devil's Advocate), the Church's investigators in the case for Leibowitz's sainthood. Leibowitz is eventually canonized as Saint Leibowitz – based partly on the evidence Francis discovered in the shelter – and Brother Francis is sent to New Rome to represent the Order at the canonization Mass. He takes the documents found in the shelter and an illumination of one of the documents on which he has spent years working, a gift to the Pope. On route, he is robbed and his illumination taken. Francis completes the journey to New Rome and is granted an audience with the pope. Francis presents the pope with the remaining documents and the pope comforts Francis by giving him gold with which to ransom back the illumination; however, Francis is murdered during his return trip by "misborn" people (the "Pope's children"), receiving an arrow in the face. The Wanderer discovers and buries Francis's body. (The book then focuses on the vultures who were denied their meal; they fly over the Great Plains and find much food near the Red River until a city-state, based in Texarkana, rises). In 3174, the Albertian Order of St. Leibowitz is still preserving the half-understood knowledge from before the Flame Deluge and the subsequent Age of Simplification. The new Dark Age is ending, however, and a new Renaissance is beginning. Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott, a highly regarded secular scholar, is sent by his cousin Hannegan, Mayor of Texarkana, to the abbey. Thon Taddeo, frequently compared to Albert Einstein, is interested in the Order's preserved collection of Memorabilia. At the abbey, Brother Kornhoer, a talented engineer, has just finished work on a "generator of electrical essences", a treadmill-powered electrical generator that powers an arc lamp. He gives credit for the generator to work done by Thon Taddeo. After arriving at the monastery, Thon Taddeo, by studying the Memorabilia, makes several major "discoveries", and asks the abbot to allow the Memorabilia to be removed to Texarkana. The Abbot Dom Paulo refuses, stating he can continue his research at the abbey. Before departing, the Thon comments that it could take decades to finish analyzing the Memorabilia. Meanwhile, Hannegan makes an alliance with the kingdom of Laredo and the neighboring, relatively civilized city-states against the threat of attack from the nomadic warriors. Hannegan, however, is manipulating the regional politics to effectively neutralize all of his enemies, leaving him in control of the entire region. Monsignor Apollo, the papal nuncio to Hannegan's court, sends word to New Rome that Hannegan intends to attack the empire of Denver next, and that he intends to use the abbey as a base of operations from which to conduct the campaign. For his actions, Apollo is executed, and Hannegan initiates a church schism, declaring loyalty to the Pope to be punishable by death. The Church excommunicates Hannegan. It is the year 3781, and mankind has nuclear energy and weapons again, as well as starships and extra-solar colonies. Two world superpowers, the Asian Coalition and the Atlantic Confederacy, have been embroiled in a cold war for 50 years. The Leibowitzan Order's mission of preserving the Memorabilia has expanded to the preservation of all knowledge. Rumors that both sides are assembling nuclear weapons in space and that a nuclear weapon has been detonated increase public and international tensions. At the abbey, the current abbot, Dom Jethras Zerchi, recommends to New Rome that the Church reactivate the Quo Peregrinatur Grex Pastor Secum ("Whither Wanders the Flock, the Shepherd is with Them") contingency plans involving "certain vehicles" the Church has had since 3756. A "nuclear incident" occurs in the Asian Coalition city of Itu Wan: an underground nuclear explosion has destroyed the city, and the Atlantic Confederacy counters by firing a "warning shot" over the South Pacific. New Rome tells Zerchi to proceed with Quo Peregrinatur and plan for departure within three days. He appoints Brother Joshua as mission leader, telling him that this is an emergency plan for perpetuating the Church on the colony planets in the event of a nuclear war on Earth. The Order's Memorabilia will also accompany the mission. That night the Atlantic Confederacy launches an assault against Asian Coalition space platforms. The Asian Coalition responds by using a nuclear weapon against the Confederacy capital city of Texarkana. A ten-day cease-fire is issued by the World Court. Brother Joshua and the space-trained monks and priests depart on a secret, chartered flight for New Rome, hoping to leave Earth on the starship before the cease-fire ends. During the cease-fire, the abbey offers shelter to refugees fleeing the regions affected by fallout, which results in a battle of wills over euthanasia between the abbot and a doctor from a government emergency response camp. The war resumes and a nuclear explosion occurs near the abbey. Abbot Zerchi tries to flee to safety, bringing with him the abbey's ciborium containing consecrated hosts, but it is too late. He is trapped by the falling walls of the abbey and finds himself lying under tons of rock and bones as the abbey's ancient crypts disgorge their contents. Among them is a skull with an arrow's shaft protruding from its forehead (presumably that of Brother Francis Gerard from the first section of the book). As he lies dying under the abbey's rubble, Zerchi is startled to encounter Mrs Grales/Rachel, a bicephalous tomato peddler and mutant. However, Mrs. Grales has been rendered unconscious by the explosion, and may be dying herself. As Zerchi tries to conditionally baptize Rachel, she refuses, and instead takes the ciborium and administers the Eucharist to him. It is implied that she is, like the Virgin Mary, exempt from original sin. Zerchi soon dies, having witnessed an apparent miracle. After the Abbot's death, the scene flashes to Joshua and the Quo Peregrinatur crew launching as the nuclear explosions begin. Joshua, the last crew member to board the starship, knocks the dirt from his sandals, murmuring "Sic transit mundus" ("Thus passes the world"). As a coda, there is a final vignette depicting the ecological aspects of the war: seabirds and fish succumb to the poisonous fallout, and a shark evades death only through moving to particularly deep water, where, it is noted, the shark was "very hungry that season."
196771	/m/01bz38	The Browning Version	Terence Rattigan			 The play is about the last few days in the career of Andrew Crocker-Harris, an aging classics teacher at a British public school. The man's academic life is fading away following illness and he feels that he has become obsolete. It starts when Taplow, a pupil who needs Crocker-Harris to pass him so he can go up to the next year, comes to him for help with his Greek, but Crocker-Harris is not in his rooms. Instead, Taplow meets Hunter, another Master at the school. We find out (after Taplow leaves) that Hunter, and Crocker-Harris' wife, Millie, are carrying on an affair. When Crocker-Harris returns, he first has the lesson with Taplow, where he begins to show his true feelings through his love for literature. Afterwards, the headmaster arrives to inform him that the school will not give him his pension because of his early retirement, though he was depending on it, and wishes him to relinquish his place in the end-of-term speech-giving to a popular sports master. Mr. Gilbert, Crocker-Harris's successor at his teaching post, arrives to view the Crocker-Harrises' home. He seeks advice on the lower fifth, the year Crocker-Harris teaches, and how to control them. Crocker-Harris begins to relate to Gilbert his own sad experiences after Gilbert tells Crocker-Harris that the headmaster had referred to Crocker-Harris as the 'Himmler of the lower fifth'. Crocker-Harris, who did not realize he was feared by the boys, is very disturbed by this title. Taplow returns, and moves Crocker-Harris by giving him an inscribed version of Robert Browning's translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, at which point he breaks down crying. Millie, his wife, shows her callousness at Crocker-Harris's emotional state by ruining this fond moment by implying Taplow only gave the gift to get the grades. Hunter breaks off the affair with her, instead turning his sympathies to Crocker-Harris. Crocker-Harris informs him that he knew of Millie's affair with Hunter, as well as her previous ones, but despite this he does not wish to divorce her. As the play ends, Hunter makes plans with a reluctant Crocker-Harris to meet him at his new place of work, and an uplifted Crocker-Harris telephones the headmaster saying that he will make his speech after the sports master, as is his right. The 'Browning Version' of the title references the translation of the Greek tragedy given by Taplow, Agamemnon, in which Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, aided by her lover. Although the name of the school is not given in the play, it is clearly Harrow School (which Terence Rattigan attended), something evident from the idiosyncrasies of the timetable that Crocker-Harris is in charge of writing.
196963	/m/01bz_c	Ender's Shadow	Orson Scott Card	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bean, the main character, is a homeless child living in the hellish streets of Rotterdam in roughly 2170 after escaping as an infant from an illegal genetic engineering laboratory. Being hyper-intelligent and extremely young, Bean's experiences revolve primarily around his need for food. He joins a huge gang of children led by a girl named Poke and sets up a system in which they can all receive nourishment at a local soup kitchen. The draw-back on this is their increasing dependence on the bully Achilles, who is ruthless, mad, and methodical. Luckily for Bean, his incredible mind, creativity, and determination bring him to the attention of Sister Carlotta, a nun who is recruiting children to fight a war against the Buggers. At the training facility, Battle School, Bean's true genius becomes apparent. Not only is he smarter than average, he is smarter than any other child at Battle School, including Ender Wiggin. Despite Bean's intelligence, it is Ender who has been chosen to save humanity from the Buggers. Bean, being an extraordinary genius, begins to uncover secrets and truths about the school. Bean struggles to understand what quality Ender has that he does not, until he is assigned to draw up a "hypothetical" roster for Ender's army, and adds himself to the list. At first, Ender does not appear to recognize Bean's brilliance, but time shows that he was grooming Bean as his tactical support, putting him at the head of an unorthodox platoon challenged to outthink the teachers who designed the game, and defeat their attempts to tip the balance of advantages towards Ender's rivals. Throughout the book, the main theme rests on Bean's personal struggle against the IF administration, which seems bent on breaking Ender, even if it means murder. Throughout all of this, Bean has to contend with the reappearance of Achilles and his own struggle to understand what makes Ender human. He also makes friends with an older boy named Nikolai Delphiki who is drawn to Bean because of their similar looks. It is soon discovered, through Sister Carlotta's research, that the two boys are actually genetic twins, except for Bean's genetic enhancements. Back in the lab, the scientist Volescu had turned Anton's Key, which meant that Bean's body would never stop growing - including his brain - until a premature death between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. Sister Carlotta manages to ensure that Bean will get to live with Nikolai and his parents after the war. This story takes the reader through Bean's experiences in Battle School and shows how he, a secondary character in Ender's Game, is much more important to the fate of Earth than it originally seemed. In addition, the book depicts the first of Bean's encounters with Achilles. At the very end of the story, Ender leaves on a colonization ship and never returns to Earth as part of a treaty so no countries or groups on Earth can use him. Ender's Shadow is the first of a series that includes Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, and Shadows in Flight.
198011	/m/01c41w	Cards on the Table	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 At an exhibition of snuff boxes, Hercule Poirot meets Mr. Shaitana, a mysterious foreign man who is consistently described as devil-like in appearance and manner. Shaitana jokes about Poirot's visit to the snuff box exhibition, and claims that he has a better "collection" that Poirot would enjoy: individuals who have got away with murder. He arranges a dinner party to show off this collection; Poirot is apprehensive. Upon arrival at Shaitana's house on the appointed day, Poirot is joined by three other guests: mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver, Scotland Yard's Superintendent Battle, and Colonel Race of His Majesty's Secret Service. Soon, the other four guests join them: Dr. Roberts, a hearty, florid man; Mrs. Lorrimer, a perfectly poised gentlewoman of late middle age; Major John Despard, a dashing Army man and world traveller, recently returned from Africa; and Anne Meredith, a shy, quiet, very pretty young woman. Having brought them all to dinner, Shaitana skilfully manipulates the topic of conversation to possible motives for murder. He makes allusions to crimes being committed, yet their culprits getting away scot-free. During this conversation, several of the guests exhibit nervous reactions. Shaitana invites his eight guests to play bridge in the adjoining rooms; he, as the odd man out, does not play. Roberts, Meredith, Lorrimer, and Despard play in the first room, while Poirot, Oliver, Race, and Battle play in the next; Shaitana settles himself in a chair in the first room and thinks of how wonderfully his party is going. Hours later, Poirot and the others prepare to leave, and go to thank Shaitana. Shaitana has been murdered, stabbed in the chest with a jeweled stiletto. Once the preliminary police work has been done, Poirot reveals Shaitana's strange mention of a "collection" to the other three with whom he played bridge. They quickly realize that they are four "sleuths" meant to be pitted against the four in the next room whom Shaitana suspected of murder. The four agree to work together to solve the crime, and interview the four suspects. Poirot takes interest in the way each member plays bridge, which he discerns through asking each suspect to grade the play of the others. As there seems to be no conventional way to prove which of them has committed Shaitana's murder, Poirot suggests that the group of sleuths delve into the past and uncover the murders that the dead man thought he knew about. Battle is put on the trail of the death of a Mrs. Craddock, whom Dr. Roberts once attended. Her husband died of anthrax poisoning from an infected shaving brush (and readers at the time of the novel's publication in the 1930s might well have remembered anthrax deaths from infected shaving brushes during and in the years after World War I); Mrs. Craddock herself had died not long afterward, of a tropical infection, in Egypt. Race seeks out information on Despard, and discovers a case in which a botanist named Luxmore and his wife travelled with him to South America; Luxmore officially died of a fever, but it is rumoured that he was shot. Mrs. Oliver visits Anne Meredith and her housemate, Rhoda Dawes. Rhoda later visits Oliver and explains Anne's bad manners: Anne, after her father's death and before old friend Rhoda came to her rescue, worked as a live-in companion; one employer, a Mrs. Benson, had taken hat paint—poison—from a medicine bottle and died. Fellow suspect Despard takes an interest in Anne's welfare, recommending that she retain an attorney. In the meantime, the four sleuths gather and compare notes. Meanwhile, Poirot sets a trap for Anne Meredith. When she pays him a call at his request, he shows her to a table on which many packets of the finest silk stockings are piled up, apparently carelessly. After Anne makes her gift suggestions and leaves, Poirot discovers that two pairs of the stockings are missing, confirming his suspicion that Anne is a thief, and seemingly giving weight to his suspicion that she stole from Mrs. Benson and killed her when she feared she had been discovered. At this point, Mrs. Lorrimer contacts Poirot with surprising news. She confesses to Shaitana's murder, and explains that she took the stiletto impulsively after he mentioned poison as a woman's weapon. Shaitana was right about her, she says; twenty years earlier, she had, she confesses, killed her husband. Poirot objects that Lorrimer's explanation of Shaitana's killing does not match her unflappable personality. Lorrimer thus believes that Meredith is Shaitana's killer, and decided to lie to save the younger woman. She begs Poirot to let her take the blame for the crime: she will die soon anyway, and Anne will be free to live her young life. Poirot is confused by this confession, and fears that there may be more trouble to come. His guess proves correct when Mrs. Lorrimer is found dead the next morning, having apparently committed suicide after writing three copies of a letter confessing to the murder of Shaitana and sending them to the other suspects. Roberts arrives after receiving the letter, but is unsuccessful in his attempt to save Mrs. Lorrimer. Poirot and Battle race to Anne Meredith's cottage, fearing that she might strike again. Despard, who has been visiting Anne and Rhoda, both of whom fancy him, is a few steps ahead of Poirot and Battle. At Anne's suggestion, Anne and Rhoda are on a boat in a nearby river. Poirot and Battle see Anne suddenly push her friend into the water. Alas for Anne, when she knocks Rhoda into the water, she also falls in herself. Despard rescues Rhoda; Anne drowns. Poirot gathers Oliver, Battle, Despard, Rhoda, and Roberts at his home, where he makes a surprising announcement: the true murderer of both Shaitana and Mrs. Lorrimer is not Anne, but Dr. Roberts. Poirot brings in a window cleaner who happened to be working outside Mrs. Lorrimer's flat earlier that morning. He testifies that he saw Roberts inject Lorrimer with a syringe; a syringe, Poirot reveals, full of a lethal anaesthetic. Battle chimes in that they can bolster any prosecution with the true story of the deaths of the Craddocks, who died of infections, true, but infections deliberately inflicted on each of them by Roberts. Roberts confesses. Poirot points out that in the third rubber of bridge on the night of Shaitana's murder, a grand slam occurred. This intense play would keep the others focused on the game—Roberts was dummy at that point—while Roberts used the opportunity to stab Shaitana. It is also revealed that the "window cleaner" was actually an actor in Poirot's employ, though Poirot brags that he did "witness" Roberts kill Mrs. Lorrimer in his mind's eye. Despard suggests that one of the gathered party murder Poirot, and then watch his ghost come back to solve the crime.
198494	/m/01c5tb	The Gambler	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1867	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first-person narrative is told from the point of view of Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor working for a Russian family living in a suite at a German hotel. The patriarch of the family, The General, is indebted to the Frenchman De Grieux and has mortgaged his property in Russia to pay only a small amount of his debt. Upon learning of the illness of his wealthy aunt, "Grandmother", he sends streams of telegrams to Moscow and awaits the news of her demise. His expected inheritance will pay his debts and gain Madamoiselle De Cominges's hand in marriage. Alexei is hopelessly in love with Polina and swears an oath of servitude to her. He told her while on a walk on the Schlangenberg (a mountain in the German town) that all she had to do was give the word and he would gladly walk off the edge and plummet to his death. This leads to her asking him to go to the town's casino and place a bet for her. He refuses at first but, when goaded and reminded of his oath of undying love and servility, he succumbs and ends up winning at the roulette table (this was his first experience with the narcotic bliss of gambling). He returns to her the winnings but she will not tell him the reason she needs money. She only laughs in his face (as she does when he professes his love) and treats him with cold indifference, if not downright malice. He only learns the details of The General's and Polina's financial state later in the story through his long-time acquaintance, Mr. Astley. Astley is a shy Englishman who seems to share Alexei's fondness of Polina. He comes from English nobility and has a good deal of money. One day while Polina and Alexei are on a walk they see a Baron and Baroness. Polina dares him to insult the Aristocratic couple and he does so with little hesitation. This sets off a chain of events that details Madame de Cominges's interest in the General and gets Alexei fired as tutor of the General's children. Shortly after this Grandmother shows up and surprises the whole party of debtors and indebted. She tells them all that she knows all about the General's debt and why the French man and woman are waiting around the suite day after day. She leaves the party of death-profiteers by saying that none of them are getting any of her money. She then asks Alexei to be her guide around the town famous for its healing waters and infamous for its casino where the tables are stacked with piles of gold; she wants to gamble. After being ushered to the roulette table, she plays and wins a significant amount of money. After a short return to the Hotel she comes back to roulette tables and she starts to get the bug; before she leaves the town she's lost almost a hundred thousand roubles. When Alexei gets back to his room after sending Grandmother off at the railway station he's greeted by Polina. She tells him that De Grieux had left town but not before he absolved the General from a certain moiety of the mortgages on his property. She then explains that because she was indebted to him she couldn't return Alexei's love. Upon hearing this Alexei runs out of the room and to the casino where he wins over two hundred thousand roubles and becomes a rich man. When he gets back to his room and the waiting Polina he empties his pockets full of gold and bank notes onto the bed. They fall asleep on the couch and the next day she tells Alexei that she hates him and wants to be with Mr. Astley (they had been secretly meeting and exchanging notes and she was supposed to meet him but had fallen asleep in his room). She runs out of the hotel and he doesn't see her again. After learning that the general wouldn't be getting his inheritance Madame de Cominges leaves the hotel with her mother for Paris. Alexei goes with them having won a significant amount and they stay together for a month, he allowing them to spend his entire fortune on horses and frivolous balls. Alexei starts to gamble to survive. One day he passes Mr. Astley on a park bench in Bad Homburg and has a talk with him. He finds out from Astley that Polina is in Switzerland and actually does love him. Astley gives him some money but shows little hope that he will not use it for gambling. Alexei goes home dreaming of going to Switzerland the next day and recollects what made him win at the roulette tables in the past.
199491	/m/01cb4s	The Crucible	Arthur Miller			 Rev. Parris is praying over his daughter, Betty Parris, who lies as if unconscious in her bed. Conversations between Rev. Parris, his niece Abigail Williams and several other girls reveal that the girls, including Abigail and Betty, were engaged in heretical activities in a nearby forest, apparently led by Tituba, Parris's slave from Barbados. Parris had discovered them, whereupon Betty fainted and has not yet recovered. The townspeople do not know exactly what the girls were up to, but there are rumors of witchcraft. John Proctor enters the room in which Betty lies in bed, and Abigail, otherwise alone, tries to seduce him. It does not work, but it is revealed that Abigail and Proctor engaged in a previous affair and that Abigail still has feelings for him. Reverend John Hale is summoned from Beverly to look upon Betty and research the incident. He is a self-proclaimed expert in occult phenomena and is eager to use his acquired learning. He questions Abigail, who accuses Tituba of being a witch. Tituba, afraid of being hanged and threatened with beating, professes faith in God and accuses fishy Goodwives Sarah Good and Osburn of witchcraft. Betty, now awake, claims to have been bewitched and also professes her faith in God. Betty and Abigail sing out a list of people whom they claim to have seen with the Devil. Elizabeth questions Proctor to find out if he is late for dinner because of a visit to Salem. She tells him that their housemaid, Mary Warren, has been there all day. Having forbidden Mary from going to Salem, Proctor becomes angry, but Elizabeth explains that Mary has been named an official of the court. Elizabeth tells Proctor that he must reveal that Abigail is not who everyone thinks she is. He declares that he cannot prove what she told him because they were alone when they talked. Elizabeth becomes upset because he has not previously mentioned this time alone with Abigail. Proctor believes that she is accusing him of resuming his affair with Abigail. An argument then ensues between the two. Mary returns, and Proctor is furious that she has been in Salem all day. However, she advises that she will be gone every day because of her duties as an official of the court. Mary gives Elizabeth a poppet that she made while in court, tells the couple that thirty-nine people are now in jail, and that Goody Osborne will hang for her failure to confess to witchcraft. Proctor is angry because he believes the court is condemning people without solid evidence. Mary states that Elizabeth has also been accused, but, as she herself defended her, the court dismissed the accusation. Elizabeth tells Proctor that she believes Abigail will accuse her of witchcraft and have her executed because she wants to become Proctor's wife. Elizabeth asks Proctor to speak to Abigail and tell her that no chance exists of him marrying her if anything happens to his wife. Reverend Hale visits the Proctor house and tells Elizabeth and Proctor that the former has been named in court. Hale questions Proctor about his poor church attendance and asks him to recite the Ten Commandments. When Proctor gets stuck on the tenth, Elizabeth reminds him of the commandment forbidding adultery. Proctor tells Hale that Abigail has admitted to him that witchcraft was not responsible for the children's ailments. Hale asks Proctor to testify in court and then questions Elizabeth to find out if she believes in witches. Giles Corey and Francis Nurse arrive and tell Proctor, Hale and Elizabeth that the court has arrested both of their wives for witchcraft. Ezekiel Cheever and Willard/Herrick arrive with a warrant for Elizabeth's arrest. Cheever discovers the poppet that Mary made for Elizabeth, with a needle inside it. Cheever tells Proctor and Hale that, after apparently being stabbed with a needle while eating at Parris' house, Abigail accused Elizabeth's spirit of stabbing her. Mary tells Hale that she made the doll in court that day and stored the needle inside it. She also states that Abigail saw this because she sat next to her. The men still take Elizabeth into custody, and Hale, Corey and Nurse leave. Proctor tells Mary that she must testify in court against Abigail. Mary replies that she fears doing this because Abigail and the others will turn against her. In the original production of the play, there was an additional scene in the second act. It has been removed from most subsequent productions, but is added as an appendix in many written book forms of the play: In the woods, Proctor meets with Abigail. She attempts to win Proctor back, but fails when he remains loyal to his wife. Judge Hathorne (offstage) is in the midst of questioning Martha Corey on accusations of witchcraft, during which her husband, Giles, interrupts the court proceedings and declares that Thomas Putnam is "reaching out for land!" Giles is removed from the courtroom and taken to the vestry room by Willard/Herrick. Judge Hathorne enters and angrily asks: "How dare you come roarin' into this court, are you gone daft, Corey?". Giles Corey replies that since Hathorne isn't a Boston Judge yet, he has no right to ask him that question. Deputy Governor Danforth, Cheever, Reverend Parris and Francis Nurse enter the vestry room. Corey explains that he owns of land and a large quantity of timber, both of which Putnam had been eyeing. Corey also states that the court is holding his wife Martha by mistake saying he had only said Martha was reading books, but he never accused her of witchcraft. Danforth soon thereafter takes utter control of the situation, and denies others in the court even a modicum of power. John Proctor enters with Mary Warren, promising to clear up any doubts regarding the girls if his wife is freed from custody. Danforth orders the girls into the vestry. Reverend Parris is skeptical, pointing out that the girls fainted, screamed, and turned cold before the accused, which they see as proof of the spirits. Mary tells them that she believed at first to have seen the spirits, however she knows now that there aren't any. In an attempt to discredit Mary, Abigail and the other girls begin to scream and cry out that they are freezing. When Abigail calls to God, Proctor accuses her of being a whore and tells the court of their affair. Abigail denies it and the court has Elizabeth brought in to verify if Proctor is telling the truth. Not knowing that he had already confessed, Elizabeth lies and denies any knowledge of the affair. When Proctor continues to insist that the affair took place, the girls begin to pretend to see a yellow bird sent by Mary to attack them. To save herself from being accused of witchcraft, Mary tells the court that Proctor was in league with the devil and forced her to testify. Proctor is arrested for witchcraft, and Reverend Hale storms out of the court, shouting "I denounce these proceedings!" Proctor is chained to a jail wall, totally isolated from the outside. Reverend Parris begins to panic because John was liked by many in the village (as were Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse, who are also to be hanged), and he explains his fears to Hathorne, Danforth and Cheever. He also reveals that Abigail and Mercy Lewis (one of the "afflicted" girls) stole 31 pounds (about half his yearly salary) and boarded a ship in the night. Hale enters, now a broken man who spends all his time with the prisoners, praying with them and advising prisoners to confess to witchcraft so that they can live. The authorities send Elizabeth to John, telling her to try to convince Proctor to confess to being a witch. When Proctor and Elizabeth are alone, she forgives him and reaffirms their love. Elizabeth tells of Giles Corey being pressed to death. John chooses to confess in exchange for his life and calls out to Hathorne, who is almost overjoyed to hear such news. Proctor signs the confession, then tears it up when realizing that Danforth is going to nail the signed confession to the church (which Proctor fears will ruin his name and the names of other Salemites). Proctor, Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey are led to the gallows to hang.
199525	/m/01cbb_	The Bell Jar	Sylvia Plath	1963	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 Esther Greenwood, a young woman from the suburbs of Boston, gains a summer internship at a prominent magazine in New York City under editor Jay Cee. At the time of the Rosenbergs' execution, Esther is neither stimulated nor excited by the big city and glamorous culture and lifestyle that girls her age are expected to idolize and emulate. Instead her experiences frighten and disorient her. She appreciates the witty sarcasm and adventurousness of her friend Doreen, but also identifies with the piety of Betsy (dubbed "Pollyanna Cowgirl") and a "goody-goody" sorority girl who always does the right thing. She has a benefactress in Philomena Guinea, a formerly successful fiction writer (based on Olive Higgins Prouty), who will, later during Esther's hospitalization, pay for some of her treatments. Esther describes in detail several seriocomic incidents that occur during her internship, kicked off by an unfortunate but amusing experience at a banquet for the girls given by the staff of Ladies' Day magazine. She reminisces about her friend Buddy, whom she has dated more or less seriously and who considers himself her de facto fiancé. She also muses about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who are scheduled for execution. She returns to her Massachusetts home in low spirits. During her stay in New York City, she had hoped to return to another scholarly opportunity, a writing course taught by a world-famous author. Upon her return home, her mother immediately tells her she was not accepted for the course. She decides to spend the summer potentially writing a novel, although she feels she doesn't have enough life experience to write convincingly. All of her identity has been centered upon doing well academically; she is unsure of what to make of her life once she leaves school, and the choices presented to her (motherhood, as exemplified by the prolific child-bearer and vacuous Dodo Conway, or stereotypical female careers such as stenography) do not appeal to her. Esther becomes increasingly depressed, and finds herself unable to sleep. Her mother encourages, or perhaps forces, her to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon, whom Esther mistrusts because he is attractive and seems to be showing off a picture of his charming family rather than listening to her. He prescribes electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). It is improperly administered, and she feels she's being electrocuted like the Rosenbergs. Afterward, she tells her mother she won't go back: My mother smiled. "I know my baby wasn't like that." I looked at her. "Like what?" "Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital." She paused. "I knew you'd decide to be all right again." Esther's mental state worsens. She describes her depression as a feeling of being trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath. She makes several half-hearted attempts at suicide, including swimming far out to sea, before making a serious attempt. She leaves a note that says she is taking a long walk, then crawls into the cellar and swallows almost 50 sleeping pills that have been prescribed for her insomnia. She is discovered under her house after a rather dramatic episode in the newspapers has presumed her kidnapping and death, all taking place over an indeterminate amount of time. She survives and is sent to a different mental hospital, where she meets Dr. Nolan, a female therapist. Along with regular sessions of psychotherapy Esther is given huge amounts of insulin to produce a "reaction", and again receives shock treatments, with Dr. Nolan ensuring that they are properly administered. Esther describes the ECT as beneficial in that it has a sort of antidepressant effect, lifting the metaphorical bell jar in which she has felt trapped and stifled. Her stay at the private institution is funded by her benefactress, Philomena Guinea. Esther tells Dr. Nolan how she envies the freedom that men have, but as a woman, worries about getting pregnant. Dr. Nolan refers her to a doctor who fits her for a diaphragm. Esther now feels free from her fears about the consequences of sex. She feels free from previous pressures to get married, potentially to the wrong man. Under Dr. Nolan, Esther improves and various life-changing events help her regain her sanity. The novel ends with her entering the room for her interview which will decide whether she can leave the hospital.
199550	/m/01cbj3	Jude the Obscure	Thomas Hardy	1895		 The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, a village stonemason in the southern English region of Wessex who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modeled on Oxford. In his spare time, while working in his aunt's bakery, he teaches himself Greek and Latin. Before he can try to enter the university, the naïve Jude is manipulated, through a process he later calls erotolepsy, into marrying a rather coarse and superficial local girl, Arabella Donn, who deserts him within two years. By this time, he has abandoned the classics altogether. After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. Jude shortly introduces Sue to his former schoolteacher, Mr. Phillotson, whom she later marries. Sue is satisfied by the normality of her married life, but quickly finds the relationship an unhappy one; in addition to being in love with Jude, not her husband, she is physically disgusted by her spouse, and, apparently, by sex in general. Sue eventually leaves Phillotson for Jude. Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship; they are both afraid to get married because their family has a history of tragic unions, and think that being legally bound to one another might destroy their love. Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together. They are also bestowed with a child "of an intelligent age" from Jude's first marriage to Arabella, whom Jude did not know about earlier. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and moroseness. Jude and Sue are socially ostracized for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers always dismiss him when they find out, and landlords evict them. Their socially-disturbed boy, "Little Father Time," comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. He murders Sue's two children and commits suicide by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny." Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage. Beside herself with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time's" actions, which were, in part, instigated by a conversation the two had had the previous night, Sue turns to the church that has ostracized her and comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude for Phillotson. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage. After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor.
199780	/m/04ynb4b	Democracy in America	Alexis de Tocqueville	1935	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The primary focus of Democracy in America is an analysis of why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the United States while failing in so many other places. Tocqueville seeks to apply the functional aspects of democracy in America to what he sees as the failings of democracy in his native France. Tocqueville speculates on the future of democracy in the United States, discussing possible threats to democracy and possible dangers of democracy. These include his belief that democracy has a tendency to degenerate into "soft despotism" as well as the risk of developing a tyranny of the majority. He observes that the strong role religion played in the United States was due to its separation from the government, a separation all parties found agreeable. He contrasts this to France where there was what he perceived to be an unhealthy antagonism between democrats and the religious, which he relates to the connection between church and state. Insightful analysis of political society was supplemented in the second volume by description of civil society as a sphere of private and civilian affairs. Tocqueville's views on America took a darker turn after 1840, however, as made evident in Aurelian Craiutu's Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings.
199932	/m/01cd57	The Giver	Lois Lowry	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n6p": "Social sciences", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/070l2": "Soft science fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book focuses on a twelve-year-old boy named Jonas residing in an immaculately-organized, tightly-run, but strict utopian society known as the community of Sameness , where eccentricities in behavior, appearance, or personality are strongly outlawed and opposed. Nearing an age where he will be selected for the position that he will hold in the Community throughout adulthood, Jonas is selected for the role as the Receiver of Memory, the keeper of all ancient memories in the Community before the start of the strict system through which the world is now run. Under the guidance of the older Receiver-of-Memory, the Giver, Jonas is transferred memories that had taken place years prior to the events of the story, involving color, emotion, freedom, and pain, which have since been drained entirely from the Community. Through the Giver, Jonas receives stunning wisdom of the true secret runnings of the Community, including secrets remaining heavily-guarded from its inhabitants, and the boy starts to yearn for the happier world which had been available during the past. He is exposed to shocking footage of his father, a Nurturer, injecting a baby twin with poison (as a means of living up to the Community's mandatory standards of population control) and is shocked by the true intentions and behaviors of the residents in the Community, how their utter inability to accept pain forced their hunger for a Receiver of Memory. The Giver informs Jonas that it is up to him to help restore freedom to the world, and therefore he must flee the town late at night with the other closest option for a Receiver; a baby boy named Gabriel, who Jonas's family had been sheltering for the past few months, so the Giver may convince everyone that they have died so they may once again accept the burden of the pains of their own memories and everything can be restored to how it had formerly been. Jonas must escape to Elsewhere, an unknown land located beyond the boundaries of the Community, and the pair must endure through the freezing cold together, just as Jonas "thinks he hears singing" (a reference to a past memory he'd received).
200493	/m/01cgzc	A Solitary Grief	Bernice Rubens	1991-05-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with psychiatrist Dr Alistair Crown's wife Virginia giving birth to the couple's first child. Crown, who is not present during birth, is informed immediately afterwards that their daughter Doris has Down's syndrome, a fact he is unable to accept. For the next five years, he avoids Doris's face: He never looks at her and he refuses to be shown photos of her. His idea of being close to his daughter consists in his nocturnal visits to her bedroom when she is fast asleep: Then he gropes around under the sheets — in a harmless way, imagining what it would be like to have a normal child and envisaging the day when he will actually come face to face with her. However, he keeps postponing that day, telling himself and his wife that he is not ready for it yet. He leaves for work early in the morning and comes home at night when his daughter is already asleep. He does not tell his parents, who live abroad, that their granddaughter is handicapped and, for years, can persuade them not to visit. Although Virginia is a devoted mother and an understanding wife, the ensuing marital crisis is unavoidable. When Doris is of preschool age, Crown actually has to lock himself in his room so as to make sure that he does not accidentally see his daughter's face. After a brief fling with a former girlfriend he moves out of the house. His life takes a decisive turn when he meets a man who calls himself Esau. Esau, who has a very hairy body, is still suffering under his dominant father although the latter has been dead for some time. He has become a compulsive stripper, making appointments with doctors, dentists and masseurs only to perform his stripping routine in front of them and wait for their reaction. The two men strike up an asexual friendship, and Crown moves into Esau's large house. Although he realizes that Esau is in urgent need of psychiatric treatment, Crown just sees a friend in him and refuses to have any therapeutic influence on Esau. He is devastated when Esau commits suicide by hanging himself in the attic. Now Crown's life totally gets out of control. Early one morning a few days before Doris's fifth birthday he kidnaps her from the playground of her nursery school — still without looking at her —, drives with her to Hyde Park, strangles her from behind and buries her face down under a tree in a shallow grave dug out with his bare hands. Back at his office, he is informed by his wife that Doris has gone missing. For a couple of days, the police search for the girl but then give up all hope of ever finding her alive and well. When soon afterwards her body is found, Crown has to accompany the police to the morgue to identify his daughter. This is when he comes face to face with her for the first — and last — time. The police never solve the crime. Some time later Crown hangs himself in the garage.
200701	/m/01chzs	Xenocide	Orson Scott Card	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot alternates between characters on two planets: Path and Lusitania. Lusitania is an alien planet home to a curious species known as the piggies. Following the events of Speaker for the Dead, we find a story of another set of characters living as a member of a Brazilian Catholic human colony on Lusitania, a unique planet inhabited by the only other two known species of sentient alien life: the Pequeninos "little ones" and the Hive Queen. The pequeninos are native to the planet, while the Hive Queen was transplanted to this world by Ender, partly in penance for his near-total destruction of her Formic species in Ender's Game. Unfortunately, the Lusitanian ecosystem is pervaded by a complex virus, dubbed 'Descolada' (Portuguese for "no longer glued") by humans. The Descolada breaks apart and rearranges the basic genetic structure of living cells. It's incredibly adaptable to any species or form of known life, and easily transmissible. The native pequeninos and other life that survived on Lusitania after the Descolada's introduction to the planet thousands (or millions) of years ago are adapted to it. As a result of the deadly virus, the Lusitanian ecosystem is severely limited. Staying alive on Lusitania takes immense effort and research on the part of the Hive Queen and the humans, as they are not adapted to the descolada. Near the end of the story, it is revealed the Descolada is possibly an artificially engineered virus designed to terraform planets, but the original creators of the virus are unknown, and there remains a slim chance it evolved naturally. After the rebellion of the small human colony on Lusitania in Speaker for the Dead to protect the future of the intelligent alien species, Starways Congress sends a fleet to Lusitania to regain control, which will take several decades to reach its destination. Valentine Wiggin, under her pseudonym Demosthenes, publishes a series of articles revealing the presence of the "Little Doctor" planet-annihilating weapon on the Fleet. Demosthenes calls it the "Second Xenocide," as using the weapon will result in the obliteration of the only known intelligent alien life. She also claims it to be a brutal crackdown of any colony world striving for autonomy from Starways Congress. Public anger spreads through humanity, and rebellions nearly ensue on several colonies. After quelling much public discontent, Starways Congress finishes their analysis of the situation while the fleet is en route. Fearing the Descolada virus, further rebellions by colony worlds, and other possible unknown political motives, Starways Congress attempts to relay an order to the fleet to annihilate Lusitania upon arrival. After conferring with friends on whether a cause is worth dying for, Jane (a compassionate AI living in the interstellar Ansible communication network) shuts off transmissions to the fleet to block the order. As a consequence of this action, she risks her eventual discovery and death, should the government shut down and wipe the interplanetary network. No known smaller computer system can house her consciousness. On Lusitania itself, Ender attempts to find solutions to the looming catastrophes of the Congressional fleet, Descolada virus, and conflicts among the humans and intelligent alien species. Much on Lusitania centers around the Ribeira family, including Ender's wife Novinha, and her children. Novinha and Elanora, the mother-daughter team responsible for most of the biological advances countering the complex Descolada virus, are unsure if they can manufacture a harmless replacement virus. Conflicts arise on whether they should even do so, since the Descolada is intrinsically tied in with the life cycles of all Lustitanian organisms, and may even be sentient itself. In addition, to try to devise methods to escape the planet, Lusitania's leading, troublemaking physicist Grego is persuaded by Ender to research faster-than-light travel, despite Grego scoffing at the idea. The third biologista of the family, Quara, is convinced that the Descolada is an intelligent, self-aware species, and deserves attempts from the humans for communication and preservation. An additional sibling and Catholic priest, Quim (Father Estevão), is determined to use faith and theology to head off another form of xenocide: a group of warmongering Pequenino wish to wipe out all Earthborn life via starship, carrying the deadly Descolada within them. Starways Congress wants its fleet back. After all else fails, it sends the dilemma of the fleet's impossible disappearance to several citizens of the world of Path, a cultural planetary enclave modeled on early China. Path's culture centers on the godspoken-- those who hear the voices of the gods in the form of irresistible compulsions, and are capable of significantly superior intelligence. It later becomes clear that the godspoken of Path are victims of a cruel government project: granted great intelligence by genetic modification, they were also shackled with a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder to control their loyalty. The experiment is set in a culture bound by five dictates - obey the gods, honor the ancestors, love the people, serve the rulers, then serve your self. This is a further safeguard against rebellion. The superintelligent godspoken are considered the most devout and holy of all citizens, and any disloyal thoughts in a godspoken's mind are immediately suppressed by overwhelming obsessive-compulsive behavior, believed to be a sign from the gods the thoughts are wrong. The most respected godspoken on Path is Han Fei-Tzu, for devising a treaty to prevent the rebellion of several colony worlds after the articles published by Demosthenes. Great things are expected of his daughter and potential successor Han Qing-jao, "Gloriously Bright." While doubting the existence of the gods himself, Han Fei-Tzu promised his dying wife he would raise Qing-jao with an unwavering belief in the godspoken. The two of them are tasked by Starways Congress with deciphering the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet. Han Qing-jao's secret maid, Si Wang-mu, aids her in this task, her intelligence (partially) unfettered by the rigid caste system. The young and naive Qing-jao eventually traces the identity of Demosthenes. Discovering that Demosthenes is Valentine Wiggin, Ender's sister – but that Valentine has been on a starship en route to Lusitania for the last thirty years – Qing-Jao concludes that the only possible explanation is advanced computer software closely tied to the communication network. This software must be hiding Demosthenes and publishing her work, while also causing the disappearance of the Fleet. All but discovered, Jane reveals herself to Han Fei-tzu, Han Qing-jao and Si Wang-mu, telling them about their genetic slavery and begging forbearance on their report to Starways Congress. Already harboring suspicions about the godspoken's condition, Han Fei-tzu accepts the news of Congress's atrocity, as does Si Wang-mu, but his daughter Han Qing-jao clings to her belief that Demosthenes and Jane are enemies of the gods. Feeling betrayed by her father, who is violently incapacitated by OCD from the disloyal thoughts, Qing-jao argues with Jane. Jane threatens shutting off all communications from Path, but Si Wang-mu realizes this would eventually lead to the planet's destruction by Starways Congress. Understanding Jane to be truly alive and compassionate, through tears Si Wang-mu states Jane will not block the report. However, Qing-jao compares Jane to the servants in Path's caste system, merely a computer program designed to serve humans, containing neither autonomy nor awareness. Knowing she has exhausted her last possibilities of stopping Qing-jao, Jane sacrifices her future and life, unwilling to bring harm to Qing-jao or the people of Path. A triumphant Qing-jao reports the knowledge of Demosthenes, Jane, and the fate of the Fleet to Starways Congress. Qing-jao recommends a coordinated date set several months from the present, to prepare the massive undertaking of setting up clean computers across the interplanetary network, after which the transition to a new system will kill Jane and allow Congress full control again. Allowing the message to be sent, Jane restores communication with the Fleet, and Congress re-issues the order for the Fleet to obliterate Lusitania. Han Fei-tzu recovers from the incapacitation of his OCD, despairing over his daughter's actions, and his unwitting aid in deeply brainwashing her to serve Congress. He and Si Wang-mu assist Jane and those on Lusitania in finding solutions to their impending catastrophes. Planter, a Pequenino on Lusitania, offers his life for an experiment to determine whether the Descolada gives Pequeninos sentience, or if they have the ability innately. Eventually, Elanora Ribeira is able to come up with a possible model for a "recolada:" a refit of the Descolada that allows the native life to survive and retain self-awareness, but doesn't seek to kill all other life forms. With the available equipment, however, the recolada is impossible to make, and they are running out of time against the soon-to-arrive Fleet. While this research takes place, tragedies occur on Lusitania. Father Estevão Ribeira, the priest attempting to sway a distant warmongering sect of the Pequeninos from their goal of attacking humanity, is killed. Grego Ribeira spurs a riot of humans to burn down the warmonger's forest, but the violent mob gets out of his control, and rampages through the neighboring Pequenino forest instead, massacring many of its inhabitants – the original friends and allies of humanity. Under the terms of the treaty with Pequeninos, the Hive Queen is brought in to hold the peace, setting a perimeter guard of hive drones around the human colony and preventing further escalation of violence between the two groups. Grego is locked in jail, despite eventually stepping between the surviving Pequeninos and his own riot. The town realizes their horrific rage, and constructs a chapel surrounding the fallen priest's grave, trying to find penance for their actions. Finally - a breakthrough is made. Knowing the Ansible communication network allows instantaneous transfer of information, and through knowledge of how the Hive Queen gives sentience to child queens, Jane, Grego, and Olhado discover the "Outside." The Outside is a spacetime plane where aiúas initially exist. (Aiúa is the term given to the pattern defining any specific structure of the universe, whether a particular atom, a star, or a sentient consciousness.) Formic hive queens are called from Outside after birth, giving awareness to the new body. Jane is able to contain within her vast computing power the pattern defining the billions of atoms and overall structure comprising a simple "starship" (little more than a room), with passengers included, and take them Outside. By bringing them Outside, where relative location is nonexistent, then back "Inside" at a different spot in the physical universe, instantaneous travel has been achieved, finally matching the instantaneous communication of the Ansibles and Formics. They quickly arrange to take Ender, Ela, and Miro to Outside. While Ela is Outside, she is able to create the recolada virus, which is a safe replacement of the descolada, and a cure to the godspoken genetic defect. Miro envisions his body as it was before he was crippled by paralysis, and upon arrival in the Outside, his consciousness is contained within a new, restored body. Ender discovers, however, the surreal unwitting creation of a new "Valentine" and new "Peter Wiggin" from his subconscious, who embody idealized forms of his altruistic and power-hungry sides. The recolada begins its spread across Lusitania, converting the formerly lethal virus into a harmless aid to native life. The cure to the people of Path's genetic-controlling defect is distributed, yet Han Fei-tzu is tragically unable to convince his daughter Qing-jao this was the true course of action. Confronted with the possibility of being lied to all her life and dooming many sentient species to destruction, or an alternative of believing all she ever loved and trusted has betrayed her – Demosthenes, her father, her friend, her world – she falls to the ground. The young Qing-jao, Gloriously Bright, is lost to insanity, tracing lines in wood until her death, whispering to a long-gone father and mother if she has finally found forgiveness. Her former maid and friend Si Wang-mu sets off with Peter to take control over Starways Congress and stop the Fleet closing in on Lusitania, while the new Valentine-persona journeys to find a planet for the population of Lusitania to evacuate. The stage is set for the final book of the four-part series, Children of the Mind.
201129	/m/01ckrb	Sourcery	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ipslore the Red is a wizard who is about to die. Death comes to usher Ipslore's soul into the next world as the story begins. Ipslore tells Death about his banishment from the Unseen University because he fell in love. Throughout the scene he is holding his infant son, whom Ipslore names Coin. Coin is Ipslore's eighth son, a Wizard squared – a source of magic: a "sourcerer". Ipslore plans to determine Coin's destiny and force him to take revenge upon the wizards, but Death forces him to leave a chance for Coin to not follow this fate. As Death is about to take Ipslore to wherever lies beyond, Ipslore transfers his essential being into his staff, which Coin has accepted. In this way, Ipslore plans to teach his son and ultimately make him Archchancellor of Unseen University. Some years later, Virrid Wayzygoose is about to be elected as Archchancellor of the Unseen University. Unfortunately, he is caused to disappear before he can be proclaimed by an unseen attacker. Shortly afterwards, Coin gains entry to the Great Hall in UU and, after besting one of the top wizards in the University is welcomed by the majority of the wizards. Rincewind, The Luggage and the Librarian have missed the arrival of the Sourcerer and are in the pub. While there, Conina, a professional thief, arrives holding a box containing the Archchancellor's hat, which she has procured from the room of Virrid Wayzygoose. The hat, having been worn on the heads of hundreds of Archchancellors has gained a kind of sentience and is able to enlist both Conina and Rincewind to take it to Al Khali, far away from Ankh Morpork and the University. The Librarian is not enlisted as he is buying a round at the bar, although the Luggage comes along for reasons of its own. Several misadventures later, Rincewind, Conina and the Luggage are captured by Abrim, the Grand Vizier to Creosote, the Seriph of Al Khali. Rincewind is thrown into the snake pit, where he meets Nijel "the Destroyer" a barbarian hero who has been on the job for three days and wears wooly underwear because he promised his mother he would. Conina is taken to the harem, where she is called by Creosote and asked to tell him a story. (Rincewind, upon finding this out, suggests that telling stories in a harem will "never catch on"). The Luggage, having been scorned by Conina, has run away and kills and eats several creatures in the deserts. Coin has shown the wizards the ways of Sourcery and declared UU obsolete. The Library is burned down. Wizardry no longer requires such things. However, Coin is concerned when he is told that Wizards now rule under the Discworld Gods. Coin traps the Gods in an alternate reality, which shrinks to become a large pearl. The Gods being trapped causes the release of the Ice Giants from their prison and they begin strolling across the Discworld, freezing everything in their path. War, Famine, Pestilence and Death are about to release the Apocalypse. The Discworld is about to end. Meanwhile, Creosote has joined Rincewind, Conina and Nijel in their attempts to find a way to Ankh Morpork to face the Sourcerer. They make their way into the treasury, where they find a magical flying carpet, and escape the trembling palace, from which half the bricks were leaving, due to the arrival of Sourcery. Rincewind gets separated from the rest when he takes the flying carpet and makes his way to the University, where he finds, thunderstruck, that the Library has been burned down. After having cried over the wreckage for a while, he senses, to his relief, a magical movement up in the Tower of Art. He realises the Librarian has saved the books by hiding them in the ancient Tower of Art. After some discussion with the Librarian, Rincewind goes off to face the Sourcerer with a sock containing a half-brick. Rincewind eventually convinces Coin to throw the staff away but the power of Coin's father contained within is channelled against that of his son. The other wizards leave the tower as Rincewind rushes forward into the fire, grabbing the child and sending both of them to the Dungeon Dimensions. Then Death strikes the staff and takes Ipslore's soul. Rincewind orders Coin to return to the University and, using his other sock filled with sand, attacks the Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions. The Apocalypse is foiled when Creosote, Nijel and Conina steal three horses from outside a pub. The horses belong to War, Famine and Pestilence. Binky is not stolen, and Death rides off, leaving the other three behind. Short of anything else to do, War, Famine and Pestilence go back into the pub. Coin returns the University to its former glory (his offer to make everything as good as new is rejected by the Librarian, who asks him to restore everything so that it is as good as old). Then Coin steps into a dimension of his own making, closes the dimension and is not seen on the Discworld again. The Librarian takes Rincewind's battered hat, which got left behind when he went into the Dungeon Dimensions, and places it on a pedestal inside the Library.
201227	/m/01cl9w	It Can't Happen Here	Sinclair Lewis		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic and power-hungry politician, is elected President of the United States on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and promising each citizen $5,000 a year (approximately $, adjusted for inflation). Portraying himself as a champion of traditional American values, Windrip easily defeats his opponents, Senator Walt Trowbridge and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Though having previously stated that some authoritarian measures would need to be put in effect in order to reorganize the United States government, Windrip goes so far as to outlaw dissent, incarcerate political enemies in concentration camps, create a paramilitary force, called the Minute Men, who terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of Windrip and his "corporatist" regime. One of his first acts as President is to eliminate the influence of the United States Congress, which draws the ire of many citizens as well as the legislators themselves. The Minute Men respond to protests against Windrip's decisions harshly, attacking demonstrators with bayonets. In addition to these actions, Windrip's administration, known as the "Corpo" government, curtails women's and minority rights, and eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by "Corpo" authorities, usually prominent businessmen or Minute Men officers. Those accused of crimes against the government are tried in kangaroo courts presided over by "military judges". Despite these dictatorial measures, a majority of Americans approve of them, believing them to be necessary though painful steps to restore American power. Others, those less enthusiastic about the prospect of corporatism, reassure themselves that fascism cannot "happen here"; hence the novel's title. Open opponents of Windrip, led by Senator Trowbridge, form an organization called the New Underground, helping dissidents escape to Canada in manners reminiscent of the Underground Railroad and distributing anti-Windrip propaganda. Among the members of the New Underground is Doremus Jessup, the novel's protagonist, a traditional liberal and an opponent of both Corpoism and communist theories, which are suppressed by Windrip's administration. Jessup's participation in the organization results in the publication of a periodical called The Vermont Vigilance, in which he writes editorials decrying Windrip's abuses of power. Shad Ledue, the local district commissioner and Jessup's former hired man, resents his old employer and eventually discovers his actions, having him sent to a concentration camp. Ledue subsequently terrorizes Jessup's family and particularly his daughter Sissy, whom he unsuccessfully attempts to seduce. Sissy does, however, discover evidence of corrupt dealings on the part of Ledue, which she exposes to Francis Tasbrough, a onetime friend of Jessup and Ledue's superior. Tasbrough has Ledue imprisoned in the same camp as Jessup, where he is murdered by inmates he had sent there. Jessup escapes after a relatively brief incarceration, when his friends bribe one of the camp guards. He flees to Canada, where he rejoins the New Underground. He later serves the organization as a spy in the northeastern United States, passing along information and urging locals to resist Windrip. In time, Windrip's hold on power weakens, as the economic prosperity he promised does not materialize and increased numbers of disillusioned Americans, including Vice President Perley Beecroft, flee to Canada. He also angers his Secretary of State, Lee Sarason, who had served earlier as his chief political operative and adviser. Sarason and Windrip's other lieutenants, including General Dewey Haik, seize power and exile the President to France. Sarason succeeds Windrip, but his extravagant and relatively weak rule creates a power vacuum in which Haik and others vie for power. In a bloody putsch, Haik leads a party of military supporters into the White House, kills Sarason and his associates, and proclaims himself President. The two coups cause a slow erosion of Corpo power, and Haik's government desperately tries to arouse patriotism by launching an unjustified invasion of Mexico. After slandering Mexico in state-run newspapers, Haik orders a mass conscription of young American men for the invasion of that country, infuriating many who had until then been staunch Corpo loyalists. Riots and rebellions break out across the country, with many realizing that they have been misled by the Corpos. General Emmanuel Coon, among Haik's senior officers, defects to the opposition with a large portion of his army, giving strength to the resistance movement. Though Haik remains in control of much of the country, civil war soon breaks out as the resistance tries to consolidate its grasp on the Midwest. The novel ends after the beginning of the conflict, with Jessup working as an agent for the New Underground in Corpo-occupied portions of southern Minnesota.
201439	/m/01cm6l	My Brilliant Career	Miles Franklin		{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is an imaginative, headstrong girl growing up in rural Australia in the 1890s. Drought and a series of poor business decisions reduce her family to subsistence level, her father begins to drink excessively, and Sybylla struggles to deal with the monotony of her life. To her relief, she is sent to live on her grandmother's property, where life is more comfortable. There she meets wealthy young Harry Beecham, who loves her and proposes marriage; convinced of her ugliness and aware of her tomboyish ways, Sybylla is unable to believe that he could really love her. By this time, her father's drinking has got the family into debt, and she is sent to work as governess/housekeeper for the family of an almost illiterate neighbour to whom her father owes money. She finds life there unbearable and eventually suffers a physical breakdown which leads to her return to the family home. When Harry Beecham returns to ask Sybylla to marry him, she concludes that she would only make him unhappy and sends him away, determined never to marry. The novel ends with no suggestion that she will ever have the "brilliant career" as a writer that she desires.
201695	/m/01cnk9	The Merry Wives of Windsor	William Shakespeare			 The play is nominally set circa 1400, during the same period as the Henry IV plays featuring Falstaff, but there is only one brief reference to this period, a line in which the character Fenton is said to have been one of Prince Hal's rowdy friends (he "kept company with the wild prince and Poins"). In all other respects the play implies a contemporary setting of the Elizabethan era, circa 1600. Falstaff arrives in Windsor very short on money. He decides, to obtain financial advantage, that he will court two wealthy married women, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. Falstaff decides to send the women identical love letters, and asks his servants – Pistol and Nym – to deliver them to the wives. When they refuse Falstaff sacks them and in revenge the men tell Ford and Page (the husbands) of Falstaff's intentions. Page is not concerned but the jealous Ford persuades the Host of the Garter to introduce him to Falstaff as a 'Master Brook' so that he can find out Falstaff's plans. Meanwhile, three different men are trying to win the hand of Page's daughter, Mistress Anne Page. Mistress Page would like her daughter to marry Doctor Caius, a French physician, whereas the girl's father would like her to marry Master Slender. Anne herself is in love with Master Fenton, but Page had previously rejected Fenton as a suitor due to his having squandered his considerable fortune on high-class living. Hugh Evans, a Welsh parson, tries to enlist the help of Mistress Quickly (servant to Doctor Caius) in wooing Anne for Slender, but the doctor discovers this and challenges Evans to a duel. The Host of the Garter prevents this duel by telling both men a different meeting place, causing much amusement for himself, Justice Shallow, Page and others. Evans and Caius decide to work together to be revenged on the Host. When the women receive the letters, each goes to tell the other and they quickly find that the letters are almost identical. The "merry wives" are not interested in the ageing, overweight Falstaff as a suitor; however, for the sake of their own amusement and to gain revenge for his indecent assumptions towards them both, they pretend to respond to his advances. This all results in great embarrassment for Falstaff. 'Brook' says he is in love with Mistress Ford but cannot woo her as she is too virtuous. He offers to pay Falstaff to court her, saying that once she has lost her honour he will be able to tempt her himself. Falstaff cannot believe his luck, and tells 'Brook' he has already arranged to meet Mistress Ford while her husband is out. Falstaff leaves to keep his appointment and Ford soliloquises that he is right to suspect his wife and that the trusting Page is a fool. When Falstaff arrives to meet Mistress Ford, the merry wives trick him into hiding in a laundry basket ("buck basket") full of filthy, smelly clothes awaiting laundering. When the jealous Ford returns to try and catch his wife with the knight, the wives have the basket taken away and the contents (including Falstaff) dumped into the river. Although this affects Falstaff's pride, his ego is surprisingly resilient. He is convinced that the wives are just "playing hard to get" with him, so he continues his pursuit of sexual advancement, with its attendant capital and opportunities for blackmail. Again Falstaff goes to meet the women but Mistress Page comes back and warns Mistress Ford of her husband's approach again. They try to think of ways to hide him other than the laundry basket which he refuses to get into again. They trick him again, this time into disguising himself as Mistress Ford's maid's obese aunt, known as "the fat woman of Brentford". Ford tries once again to catch his wife with the knight but ends up beating the "old woman", whom he despises, and throwing her out of his house. Black and blue, Falstaff laments his bad luck. Eventually the wives tell their husbands about the series of jokes they have played on Falstaff, and together they devise one last trick which ends up with the Knight being humiliated in front of the whole town. They tell Falstaff to dress as "Herne, the Hunter" and meet them by an old oak tree in Windsor Forest (now part of Windsor Great Park). They then dress several of the local children, including Anne and William Page, as fairies and get them to pinch and burn Falstaff to punish him. Page plots to dress Anne in white and tells Slender to steal her away and marry her during the revels. Mistress Page and Doctor Caius arrange to do the same, but they arrange Anne shall be dressed in green. Anne tells Fenton this, and he and the Host arrange for Anne and Fenton to be married instead. The wives meet Falstaff, and almost immediately the "fairies" attack. Slender, Caius, and Fenton steal away their brides-to-be during the chaos, and the rest of the characters reveal their true identities to Falstaff. Although he is embarrassed, Falstaff takes the joke surprisingly well, as he sees it was what he deserved. Ford says he must pay back the 20 pounds 'Brook' gave him and takes the Knight's horses as recompense. Slender suddenly appears and says he has been deceived – the 'girl' he took away to marry was not Anne but a young boy. Caius arrives with similar news – however, he has actually married his boy! Fenton and Anne arrive and admit that they love each other and have been married. Fenton chides the parents for trying to force Anne to marry men she did not love and the parents accept the marriage and congratulate the young pair. Eventually they all leave together and Mistress Page even invites Falstaff to come with them: "let us every one go home, and laugh this sport o'er by a country fire; Sir John and all".
202147	/m/01cqlm	Fanny Hill	John Cleland		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is written as a series of letters from Frances "Fanny" Hill to an unknown woman, with Fanny justifying her life-choices to this individual. At the beginning of her tale, Fanny Hill is a young girl with a rudimentary education living in a small village near Liverpool. Shortly after she turns 15, both her parents die. Esther Davis, a girl from Fanny's village who has since moved to London, convinces Fanny to move to the city as well, but Esther abandons Fanny once they arrive. Fanny hopes to find work as a maid, and is hired by Mrs. Brown, a woman she believes to be a wealthy lady. Mrs. Brown is in fact a madam and intends the innocent Fanny to work for her as a prostitute. Mrs. Brown's associate, Phoebe Ayers, shares a bed with Fanny and introduces her to sexual pleasure while establishing that her hymen is intact. Mrs. Brown plans to sell Fanny's virginity to an ugly old man, but Fanny is repulsed by the man and struggles with him. She is saved from rape by Mrs. Brown's maid. After this ordeal, Fanny falls into a fever for several days. Mrs. Brown, realizing that Fanny's virginity is still intact, decides to sell Fanny's sexual favors to the exceedingly rich Lord B., who is due to arrive in a few weeks. Fanny spies on Mrs. Brown having sex with a large, muscular man. Fanny masturbates while watching them, but is also frightened by the size of the man's penis. She talks to Phoebe, who assures her that it is possible for a young girl to have sex with a well-endowed man. She takes Fanny to spy on another prostitute, Polly Phillips, having sex with a handsome and well-endowed young Genoese merchant. Afterward, Phoebe and Fanny engage in mutual masturbation and Fanny looks forward to her first time having sex with a man. Soon afterward, Fanny meets Charles, a 19-year-old wealthy nobleman, and they fall in love instantly. Charles helps Fanny escape the brothel the next day. They go to an inn outside London, where Fanny has sex with Charles for several days. Charles takes Fanny to his flat at St. James's, London, and introduces her to his landlady, Mrs. Jones. For many months, Charles visits Fanny almost daily to have sex. Fanny works hard to become more educated and urbane. After eight months, Fanny becomes pregnant. Three months later, Charles mysteriously disappears. Mrs. Jones learns that Charles' father has kidnapped Charles and sent him to the South Seas to win a fortune. Upset by the news that Charles will be gone for at least three years, Fanny miscarries and falls ill. She is nursed back to health by Mrs. Jones, but sinks into a deep depression. Mrs. Jones tells Fanny that the now-16-year-old girl must work as a prostitute for her. Mrs. Jones introduces Fanny to Mr. H, a tall, rich, muscular, hairy-chested man. Fanny unwittingly drinks an aphrodisiac, and has sex with Mr. H. She concludes that sex can be had for pleasure, not just love. Mr. H puts Fanny up in a new apartment and begins plying her with jewels, clothes, and art. After seven months, Fanny discovers that Mr. H has been having sex with her maid, so she resolves to seduce Will, Mr. H's 19-year-old servant. Will has an extremely large penis: "...not the plaything of a boy, nor the weapon of a man, but a Maypole, of so enormous a standard, that, had proportions been observed, it must have belonged to a young giant. ... In short, it stood an object of terror and delight." A month later, Mr. H catches Fanny having sex with Will, and stops supporting her. Fanny is taken in by Mrs. Cole, the mistress of one of Mr. H's friends, who also happens to run a brothel in the Covent Garden neighborhood of London. Fanny meets three other prostitutes, who are also living in the house: :*Emily, a blonde girl in her early 20s who ran away at the age of 14 from her country home to London. She met a 15-year-old boy who, being sexually experienced, engaged in sexual intercourse with virgin Emily. Although the two lived together a short time, Emily became a street prostitute for several years before being taken in by Mrs. Cole. :*Harriet, a brunette and an orphan raised by her aunt, had her first sexual experience with the son of Lord N., a nobleman whose estate adjoined her relative's. :*Louisa, the bastard daughter of a cabinetmaker and a maid who entered puberty at a very young age and began engaging in extensive masturbation. While visiting her mother in London, Louisa began masturbating in her mother's bedroom. The landlady's 19-year-old son caught her and made love to the 13-year-old girl. Louisa spent the next few years having sex with as many men as she could and turned to prostitution as a means of satisfying her lust. A short time later, Fanny participates in an orgy with the three girls and four rich noblemen. Fanny and her young nobleman begin a relationship, but it ends after a few months because the young man moves to Ireland. Mrs. Cole next introduces Fanny to Mr. Norbert, an impotent alcoholic and drug addict who engages in rape fantasies with prostitutes. Unhappy with Mr. Norbert's impotence, Fanny engages in anonymous sex with a sailor in the Royal Navy. However, Mr. Norbert soon dies. Mrs. Cole then introduces Fanny to Mr. Barville, a rich, young masochist who requires whipping to enjoy sex. After a short affair, Fanny begins a sexual relationship with an elderly customer who becomes sexually aroused by caressing her hair and biting the fingertips off of her gloves. After this ends, Fanny enters a period of celibacy. Emily and Louisa go to a drag ball, where Emily meets a bisexual young man who believes Emily is a male. When he finds out that she is actually a female, he has sex with Emily in his carriage. Fanny is confused by her first encounter with male homosexuality. Shortly after this incident, Fanny takes a ride in the country and ends up paying for a room at a public tavern after her carriage breaks down. She spies on two young men engaging in anal sex in the next room. Startled, she falls off a stool and knocks herself unconscious. Although the two men have left, she still rouses the villagers to try to hunt the two men down and punish them. Some weeks later, Fanny watches as Louisa seduces the teenage son of a local woman. Fanny believes that the boy's erect penis is even larger than Will's. The boy, clearly a virgin, engages in somewhat violent, brutal sex several times with Louisa. Louisa leaves Mrs. Cole's brothel a short time later after falling in love with another young man. Emily and Fanny are then invited by two gentleman to a country estate. They swim in a stream, and the two men have sex with the girls for several hours. Emily's parents soon find their daughter, and (unaware of her career as a prostitute) ask her to come home again. She accepts. Mrs. Cole retires, and Fanny starts living off of her savings. One day she encounters a man of 60 who looks 45 due to his lifestyle: "He was, as I afterwards learn'd in the course of the intimacy which this little accident gave birth to, an old bachelor, turn'd of sixty, but of a fresh vigorous complexion, insomuch that he scarce marked five and forty, having never rack'd his constitution by permitting his desires to overtax his ability." The man falls in love with Fanny but treats her like his daughter. He dies and leaves his small fortune to her. Now 18 years old, Fanny uses her new wealth to try to locate Charles. She learns that he disappeared two and a half years ago after reaching the South Seas. Several months later, a despondent Fanny takes a trip to see Mrs. Cole (who had retired to Liverpool), but a storm forces her to stop at an inn along the way, where she runs into Charles: He had come back to England but was shipwrecked on the Irish coast. Fanny and Charles get a room together and make love several times. Fanny tells Charles everything about her life of vice, but he forgives her and asks Fanny to marry him, which she does.
202349	/m/01crb4	The Restaurant at the End of the Universe	Douglas Adams	1980-01-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The Restaurant at the End of the Universe begins just as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ended. Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Zaphod Beeblebrox have just left the planet Magrathea when they are attacked by a Vogon ship. They find they are unable to use the Improbability Drive to escape, as Arthur has accidentally jammed the computer with a simple request for a cup of tea which proved a rather difficult problem. Luckily, an ancestor of Zaphod's, Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth saves them. Zaphod and Marvin vanish, and reappear at the offices of the Guide on Ursa Minor Beta. They are looking for Zarniwoop, who has gone on an intergalactic cruise in his office via his virtual universe. Arthur, Trillian and Ford are unaware of any of this, knowing only that the computer has been shut down, and only having received a message from a stalling Nutrimatic that says "Wait." When Zaphod and Marvin reach the fifteenth floor of the Guides office, half of the building is lifted off the ground by Frogstar Fighters. A mysterious man named Roosta brings Zaphod to Zarniwoop's office, where they wait until the building lands on Frogstar World B. Roosta gives Zaphod final instructions before he leaves: Go through the window on his way out, not the door. Zaphod then meets Gargravarr who informs Zaphod that he is to be sent through the Total Perspective Vortex, a torture device which annihilates you by showing you just how infinitesimally small you are compared to the Universe. However when Zaphod enters it, the Vortex shows him that he is the most important thing in the Universe. Zaphod escapes, and finds Zarniwoop in the first class cabin of a spaceliner in an abandoned spaceport. Zarniwoop explains that the Total Perspective Vortex has not malfunctioned — this is a virtual universe created by Zarniwoop for the sole benefit of Zaphod, who is the most important creature in this universe. It turns out that Zaphod had the shrunk Heart of Gold in his jacket pocket the whole time. It is reconstituted, and Zaphod is reunited with Trillian, Arthur and Ford. They escape from Zarniwoop by asking to be transported to the nearest restaurant. Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, is the nearest restaurant in space but not time. They are transported there "five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years" into the future. Marvin is left stranded here for this incredibly vast amount of time parking diners' spaceships while waiting for the humans to return. After the meal, Zaphod and Ford steal a spaceship, which turns out to be a stuntship belonging to the rock band Disaster Area, programmed to dive into a star to provide backing effects for a rock concert. There is a teleporter on the ship for which the guidance system was never built, as it was never intended to be used, and it also requires somebody to stay on the ship in order to operate it. Marvin is chosen to stay behind and teleport the others, who have no choice but to go wherever it takes them. Zaphod and Trillian are returned to the Heart of Gold, which is commandeered by Zarniwoop to complete his mission, to discover who really rules the Universe. As it turns out, the Ruler of the Universe is entirely skeptical that he holds this position, as he is entirely skeptical of everything, including whether his cat, The Lord, really exists, or whether there is even a universe at all outside of his small isolated home. While Zarniwoop attempts to impress upon the Ruler of the Universe the reality and the weight of his position, Trillian and Zaphod sneak out and fly the Heart of Gold away. The teleporter has meanwhile sent Arthur and Ford to the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B, a ship of fools which crash-lands on prehistoric Earth. They realize that the bumbling travellers are the real ancestors of modern humans, not the Neanderthals originally inhabiting the planet. Arthur attempts to determine the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything by reaching into a Scrabble bag made from Ford's towel and pulling out letters randomly, hoping Deep Thought's computational matrix in Earth would have rubbed off on his subconscious. The letters spell "What do you get when you multiply six by nine" See this website for possible explanations of this seeming error. before running out, although the Neanderthals manage to spell "forty-two" with the tiles, implying that it is they, rather than the Golgafrinchans, who were intended to be part of Earth's computer matrix. After some brief contemplation, Ford and Arthur realize that this is, in fact, a detrimental "cock-up," and that the Earth will never produce the proper Question, thus destroying all hope of ever finding out what it is. As Ford convinces Arthur that there is nothing that can be done to improve the inevitable history of the Earth, Arthur decides that he should make the best of his situation and settles for a life on prehistoric Earth.
202383	/m/01crhg	In the Penal Colony	Franz Kafka	1919-10		 The story focuses on the Explorer, who is encountering the brutal machine for the first time. Everything about the machine and its purpose is told to him by the Officer, while the Soldier and the Condemned (who is unaware that he has been sentenced to die) placidly watch nearby. The Officer tells of the religious epiphany the executed experience in their last six hours in the machine. Eventually it becomes clear that the use of the machine, and its associated process of justice where the accused is always instantly found guilty and the law he has broken is inscribed on his body before ultimately killing him, has fallen out of favor with the current Commandant. The Officer is nostalgic regarding the torture machine and the values that were initially associated with it. As the last proponent of the machine, he strongly believes in its form of justice and the infallibility of the previous Commandant, who designed and built the device. In fact, the Officer carries its blueprints with him and is the only person who can properly decipher them; no one else is allowed to handle these documents. The Officer begs the Explorer to speak to the current Commandant on behalf of the machine's continued use. He refuses to do so. He says he will not speak against it publicly, but he will give his opinion to the Commandant privately, and will leave before he can be called to give an official account. With this, the Officer frees the Condemned and sets up the machine for himself, with the words "Be Just" to be written on him. However, the machine malfunctions due to its advanced state of disrepair; instead of its usual elegant operation, it quickly stabs the Officer to death, denying him the mystical experience of the prisoners he executed. Accompanied by the Soldier and the Condemned, the Explorer makes his way to a tea house in which he is shown the grave of the old Commandant. Its stone is set so low that a table can easily be placed over it; the inscription states his followers' belief that he will rise from the dead someday and take control of the colony once more. As the Explorer prepares to leave by boat, the Soldier and the Condemned try to board but are repelled by the Explorer himself.
203718	/m/01cxwf	The Rebel Angels	Robertson Davies	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Rebel Angels follows several faculty and staff of the fictional College of St. John and Holy Ghost. It did not quite attain the popularity of the Deptford Trilogy, but it is generally considered to be among his best books. The story, like many of Davies', is notable for very strongly drawn and memorable characters — in this case the defrocked monk Parlabane, a brilliant and sinister sodomite with a thundering voice, voracious appetite; Anglican priest and professor of New Testament Greek Simon Darcourt; Maria Theotoky, a graduate student researching Rabelais; Clement Hollier, a frazzled and absentminded professor; and Urquhart McVarish, a greedy and manipulative counterpoint to Hollier. The novel's narration alternates between Theotoky's and Darcourt's points of view. Darcourt is attempting to write a history of the university based on Aubrey's Brief Lives. Much of the story is set in motion by the death of eccentric art patron and collector Francis Cornish. Hollier, McVarish, and Darcourt are the executors of Cornish's complicated will, which includes material that Hollier wants for his studies. The deceased's nephew Arthur Cornish, who stands to inherit the fortune, is also a character. Many of the characters (including Parlabane and McVarish) were based on college acquaintances of Davies; their stories are recounted in Judith Skelton Grant's biography Robertson Davies: Man of Myth (1994) and Brian Busby's Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit (2003). As well, many believe that Davies based the College of St. John and the Holy Ghost (or "Spook" as it is affectionately called in the novel) on Toronto's Trinity College. Evidence for this connection includes numerous similarities between the fictional and the real life college (including architectural style, layout of rooms, age, and religious affiliation); the fact that Davies taught at Trinity College for 20 years and lived across the street from Trinity while master of Massey College; and perhaps most convincingly that a picture of Trinity's central tower is prominently featured on the cover of the novel's first edition. Equally plausible is the belief that Ploughwright College in the book is patterned after Davies's own Massey College. This connection is supported by the fact that much of the fortune donated by the Massey family to the University of Toronto for the founding of Massey College was originally made in the manufacture of farm equipment. Like the real-life Massey College, Ploughwright is a graduate college where scholars are invited to partake in interdisciplinary discussions and High Table dinners.
204232	/m/01c_bp	Macrolife	George Zebrowski	1979-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is split into three main sections. (I) Sunspace: 2021 ... The Bulero family/corporation, inventors and marketers of Bulerite which is used to build the huge cities which house the Earth's (and colonies) teeming millions, are at the pinnacle of their influence and wealth. Unfortunately, it is discovered - too late - that the substance is inherently flawed, in that after a time it destabilizes and self-destructs with spectacular results. Gradually, all the Bulerite on Earth, and that on and in the space colonies throughout the solar system becomes unstable, causing destruction and megadeath. The devastation precipitates a war with Earth's colonies on the outer planets, with whom a struggle for control of the solar system existed. Many nuclear-tipped missiles explode on Earth which adds to the Bulerite destabilization. The combination of the Bulerite and the nuclear explosions cause a mysterious shroud of radiation to envelop the Earth. All humans on the planet are assumed dead. Before this final devastation, many refugees manage to escape to the Moon, Mars, and Asterome, an orbiting colony situated inside a hollowed-out asteroid at the Moon's L5 point. Included amongst the refugees are most of Bulero family who end up on Asterome. The leadership of Asterome are now faced with several severe challenges: Handling the influx of refugees, removing any Bulerite used in the construction of Asterome, consolidating their resources now that the Earth can no longer supply them with finished goods, and preventing increasingly aggressive attempts by the outer colonies and remnants of Earth's government to take control and plunder Asterome. When a means of providing Asterome with propulsion is discovered, the leadership of Asterome decide that leaving the solar system is the best option available to ensure Asterome's short-term survival as well as proving a way for Mankind to survive should the solar system be destroyed by the after-effects of Bulerite and war. After overcoming attempts to stop them, Asterome finally manages to leave the solar system, heading for Alpha Centauri, the nearest star. (II) Macrolife: 3000 ... A thousand years later, Asterome has grown by adding concentric layers of shells around itself, and is now host to millions of humans and Humanity II cybernetic organisms. The invention of engines that can surpass the speed of light has made it possible for the colony to explore far and wide; the second part finds them studying a planet orbiting the star Praesepe over 500 light years away. John Bulero, a young clone of one of the original Bulero's, decides to see what life is like on a planet, and lives for a while amongst the natives, descendants of a human colony that has reverted back to savagery. His experiences, while tragic, enable him to grow as an individual. Eventually, Asterome travels back to the solar system to see how events there have unfolded. Their arrival coincides with the first time humans meet an intelligent alien species which is itself experimenting with Macrolife, and, together, the species begin a process of intermingling and further expansion into the universe. (III) The Dream of Time ... A hundred billion years have passed, and Macrolife is now the dominant culture throughout the universe, which is, at this stage, beginning to contract into its final death throes. Most life is in the form of a Hyperpersonal Aggregate; an amalgam of individuals of all kinds. The aggregate re-individualizes John Bulero again, to help them solve the problem of how Macrolife can survive beyond the death of the Universe. Eventually, they discover many Macrolife survivors from many previous cycles of the universe, who help them to conquer time itself.
204601	/m/01d12p	Till We Have Faces	C. S. Lewis	1956	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 Part One: The story tells the Ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, from the perspective of Orual, Psyche's older sister. It begins as the complaint of an old woman who is bitter at the injustice of the gods. Although disfigured herself, and covering her facial deformity with a mask throughout the book, Orual loves her beautiful half-sister Psyche; and when Psyche is sent as a human sacrifice, at the command of Ungit (Aphrodite), to her son, the unseen "God of the Mountain" (Cupid), Orual feels wounded and betrayed. Orual tries to rescue Psyche, who says she doesn't need to be rescued, and that she lives in a beautiful castle, which Orual can't see. She almost sees something, but then it vanishes, like a mist. Orual urges Psyche to do the one thing the God has commanded her not to: to sneak a peek when he comes to their marriage bed. Orual argues that the God must be a monster, or he would not hide his face. She brings Psyche the means to see him, and threatens, cajoles, and coerces her, until Psyche agrees reluctantly, out of pity and love for her sister. When Psyche obeys Orual, the God has no choice but to banish Psyche. Orual suffers with the knowledge that she destroyed her sister's happiness and marriage, through misapplied love and jealousy. The Four Loves have all gone horribly wrong. Eventually, Orual becomes Queen, warrior, diplomat, architect, reformer, politician, legislator, and judge, but remains all alone. She drives herself, through work, to forget her grief and the love she has lost. Psyche is gone; her other sister has married and moved away; her father and her beloved tutor, "the Fox", have died; even her old infatuations are castrated, bloated, ridiculous; and the gods remain, as ever, silent and unseen. When she is invited to witness a new cult ritual as Queen, Orual hears a version of Psyche's myth, which shows her as deliberately ruining her sister's life out of envy. In response, she writes out her own story which becomes this book, to set the record straight in hopes that it will be brought to Greece, where she has heard that men are willing to question even the gods. Part Two: Orual begins the second part of the book stating that her previous argument was wrong, but she doesn't have time to revise it before she dies. After finishing her book, she thought the gods would end her lonely, exhausted life. Instead, she writes, that through dreams and visions, she sees herself in the midst of the tasks given to her sister Psyche, in the myths, as a penitence. Orual dreams of even presenting her complaint to the gods herself. Among them, her sister Psyche comes to meet her. Orual weeps, "Long did I hate you. Long did I fear you. I might—". Finally, Psyche helps her sister to see, what was hidden from her; though she caught glimpses of it along the way, on the long, hard road to meet her again.
204817	/m/01d23j	Heidi	Johanna Spyri	1880	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Adelheid (familiarly known as Heidi) is a girl who has been raised by her aunt Dete in Maienfeld, Switzerland after the early deaths of her parents, Tobias and Adelheid. Dete brings 5-year-old Heidi to her grandfather, who has been at odds with the villagers for years and lives in seclusion on the alm. This has earned him the nickname Alp-Öhi ("Alm Uncle" in the Graubünden dialect). He at first resents Heidi's arrival, but the girl manages to penetrate his harsh exterior and Heidi subsequently has a delightful stay with him and her best friend, young Peter the goat-herd. Dete returns three years later to bring Heidi to Frankfurt as a companion of a 12-year-old girl named Clara Sesemann, who is regarded as an invalid. Heidi spends a year with Clara, conflicting with the Sesemanns' strict housekeeper Fraulein Rottenmeier and becoming more and more homesick. Her one diversion is learning to read and write, motivated by her desire to go home and read to Peter's blind grandmother. Heidi's increasingly failing health, and several instances of sleepwalking cause hysteria in the household that there is a haunting, prompt Clara's doctor to send Heidi home to her grandfather. Her return prompts the grandfather to descend to the village for the first time in years, marking an end to his seclusion. Heidi and Clara continue to contact each other. A visit by the doctor to Heidi and her grandfather convinces him to recommend Clara to visit Heidi. Meanwhile, Heidi teaches Peter to read and write. Clara makes the journey the next season and spends a wonderful summer with Heidi. Clara becomes stronger on goat's milk and fresh mountain air, but Peter, feeling deprived of Heidi's attention, pushes Clara's wheelchair down the mountain to its destruction. Without her wheelchair, Clara attempts to walk and is gradually successful. Clara's grandmother and father are amazed and overcome with joy to see Clara walking. Clara's wealthy family promises to provide a shelter for Heidi, in case her grandfather will no longer be able to do so.
205004	/m/01d2rp	That Hideous Strength	C. S. Lewis	1945	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Young academic Mark Studdock has just risen to the position of Senior Fellow in sociology at Bracton College in the University of Edgestow, just when it is engaged in selling off a portion of its land, Bragdon Wood, to a new scientific Institute the NICE (National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments) whose personnel already includes staff of the college. The sale is agreed to but the college Warden wants to back out of the deal. The sub-warden, Curry, Mark Studdock and some NICE insiders have a dinner together to decide how to keep the deal alive. Curry is proud of having brought the NICE to Edgestow believing it to mark the beginning of the "really scientific era". There is discussion of Mark being employed as a sociologist at the NICE, initiated by Lord Feverstone. Meanwhile Mark's wife, Jane, who is also a scholar, has been having peculiar nightmares that trouble her, one in particular involving a severed head. She meets the wife of an old tutor from her recent graduate student days, Mrs. Dimble, who is being evicted from her property due to sale of land to the NICE. When Jane talks about her dreams, Dimble leads her to seek counsel with a Miss Ironwood who lives in a mansion in the nearby town of St. Anne's. Mark spends an evening getting acquainted with the top brass at the NICE at their current headquarters in Belbury. He has great difficulty trying to figure out the exact nature of the job they want him to do. The lines of authority seem poorly defined, while at the same time the NICE is convinced the future of the human race depends on their success. Mark meets a scientist named Bill Hingest who is both with Bracton College and the NICE but is resigning the latter and warns Mark to get out as soon as possible. At the same time, Jane finally works up the courage to visit Miss Ironwood at St. Anne's. She is greeted by Camilla Denniston, the spouse of the man who almost got Mark's appointment instead of him. She says they have been expecting Jane at St. Anne's. She leads her through the large house to meet Miss Ironwood. She is dressed just as Jane had dreamed of her. She is convinced that Jane's dreams are visions of genuine events. When Jane returns, she discovers that her maid, Ivy Maggs, has also been evicted from her dwelling by the NICE, and has gone to live at the Manor at St. Anne's with the Dimbles. Mark is given the task of writing propaganda to support NICE's plan for the demolition of a scenic village called Cure Hardy so that a river can be diverted through its original location. This will be rationalized by presenting natural settings as unsanitary and by a philosophy of "liquidation of anachronisms" such as the "backward labourer" or the "wastefully supported pauper". Mark journeys to Cure Hardy to write the report that will justify the demolition. During this time, he discovers that the man who resigned from the NICE, Hingest, has been mysteriously murdered shortly after departing the headquarters. The next morning he returns to NICE determined to find out the exact nature of his work and to whom he is supposed to be reporting. His official boss, Steele, seems to have no idea what is going on. Mark demands to see the Deputy Director but is put off. He runs into the head of the NICE's private police force, a mannish woman named Fairy Hardcastle, who insists he must not worry about this sort of thing, and that the NICE is not run along conventional bureaucratic lines. In a later interview with the Deputy Director, John Wither, he is told that "elasticity" is the cornerstone of the Institute, and that they have no watertight compartments. Fog comes in on the towns of Edgestow and Belbury while there is an increase in violent incidents in the town, many apparently engineered by the NICE. Jane develops further personal ties to the group in the mansion at St. Anne's. She is introduced to Dr. Elwin Ransom who is the protagonist of the first two books in Lewis' space trilogy. He has previously traveled to Mars and Venus, both of which are unaffected by the Biblical Fall of Man. He is now the legitimate king or Pendragon of the nation of Logres, the legitimate heir of King Arthur. Also living at St. Anne's is a Mr. MacPhee who is politely skeptical of Ransom's claims. At Belbury Mark has a conversation with the Italian physiologist Dr. Filostrato. He admires the "purity" of the moon given that it has no organic life. He declares that underground is a race that has almost broken free of the organic, free of Nature. Mark is then introduced to the "Head" of the NICE. They have preserved the head of a recently executed scientist and restored the head to life with artificial scientific devices, where blood and air are pumped through it. It becomes clear that the NICE is engineering the creation of a new species relatively free of the organic. Meanwhile the NICE police have completely taken over the entire town of Edgestow, and have attempted to arrest Jane. Jane tells the group at St. Anne's that she has had dreams of a place in which the NICE have been digging up the grave of a long-buried man. Believing they know the actual place, the company of St. Anne's travel there. They believe the NICE is looking for the body of the magician Merlin, who was buried but not actually dead. It is revealed that the NICE are mainly interested in Jane, for her psychic abilities, and are afraid of her getting into the wrong hands. Mark, now trying to leave the NICE, is arrested in Edgestow on trumped-up charges of the murder of Bill Hingest, and is brought back to NICE headquarters at Belbury, though he does not originally realize that is where he is. When he does, it becomes clear to him the NICE killed Hingest as well. On a stormy night, both the company of St. Anne's and Belbury personnel are on the trail of Merlin who has apparently revived. He has taken the clothes of a tramp through his powers of hypnosis, and gotten hold of a wild horse. He meets the company of St. Anne's, but rides away. Members of the NICE locate the tramp and mistakenly believe him to be Merlin. Merlin arrives at St. Anne's on his own. Ransom reveals that there are Satanic forces behind the NICE. He further reveals that Merlin is to be possessed by the angelic powers called eldils that guide each of the planets of the solar system. Until now Earth had been under a quarantine with a rule that the dark demonic forces that govern Earth could not travel beyond the orbit of the moon, and the angelic powers ruling the rest of the solar system could not come to Earth. However, since the forces of darkness broke the lunar barrier in the events of the earlier books, it is now possible for the good angelic forces to come to Earth. At St. Anne's, Jane Studdock has two very powerful mystical experiences, the first with the earth-bound counterpart of the ruling angel of Venus, and the second with God. This occurs at the same time that Mark at NICE is being initiated by Professor Frost into a dark ritual meant to cultivate absolute objectivity by killing human emotion relegated to the status of a mere "chemical phenomenon". The angelic spirits that possess Merlin are guardians of each of the planets of the solar system and correspond to some gods and goddesses of Greek mythology. Merlin then disguises himself as a Basque priest and answers an advertisement put out by the NICE as an interpreter of ancient languages. Later, he is brought to interview the tramp who the NICE still believe may be the real Merlin. Both Merlin and the tramp are brought to attend a celebratory dinner put on by the NICE in honor of the public head of NICE, a science popularizer named Horace Jules. At that dinner, Merlin pronounces upon them the same curse that was placed on the Tower of Babel, causing all present to speak unintelligible gibberish. There are also massive earthquakes which ruin the building as well as much of the town of Edgestow, and cause the deaths of most of the NICE personnel and the liberation of many caged animals upon whom they were conducting experiments. Many of the animals make their way back to St. Anne's. The angel of Venus now lingers as Ransom is now meant to be transported back to that planet, known to the rest of the solar system as Perelandra. The presence of Venus puts many of the animals who are there into an amorous mood. Mark, who escaped the massacre at NICE, arrives on his own at St. Anne's and sees a vision of Venus, who leads him into a new bridal chamber that Jane has been preparing for him. The couple are re-united.
205766	/m/01d5k8	The Heart of the Matter	Graham Greene	1948	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Major Henry Scobie, a long-serving policeman in a British colony on the West Coast of Africa during World War II, is responsible for local and wartime security. His wife Louise, an unhappy, solitary woman who loves literature and poetry, cannot make friends. Scobie feels responsible for her misery, but does not love her. Their only child, Catherine, died in England several years before. Louise is a devout Catholic. Scobie is a convert and devout. Scobie is passed over for promotion to Commissioner, which upsets Louise both for her personal ambition and her hope that the local British community will begin to accept her. Louise asks Scobie if she can go and live in South Africa to escape the life she hates. At the same time, a new inspector, named Wilson, arrives in the town. He is priggish and socially inept, and hides his passion for poetry for fear of ostracism from his colleagues. He and Louise strike up a friendship, which Wilson mistakes for love. Wilson rooms with another colleague named Harris, who has created a sport for himself of killing the cockroaches that appear in the apartment each night. He invites Wilson to join him, but in the first match, they end up quarreling over the rules of engagement. One of Scobie's duties is to lead the inspections of local passenger ships, particularly looking for smuggled diamonds, a needle-in-a-haystack problem that never yields results. A Portuguese ship, the Esperança (the Portuguese word for "hope"), comes into port, and a disgruntled steward reveals the location of a letter hidden in the captain’s quarters. Scobie finds it, and because it is addressed to someone in Germany, he must confiscate it in case it should contain secret codes or other clandestine information. The captain says it’s a letter to his daughter and begs Scobie to forget the incident, offering him a bribe of one hundred pounds when he learns that they share a faith. Scobie declines the bribe and takes the letter, but having opened and read it through (thus breaking the rules) and finding it innocuous, he decides not to submit it to the authorities, and burns it. Scobie is called to a small inland town to deal with the suicide of the local inspector, a man named Pemberton, who was in his early twenties and left a note implying that his suicide was due to a loan he couldn’t repay. Scobie suspects the involvement of the local agent of a Syrian man named Yusef, a local black marketeer. Yusef denies it, but warns Scobie that the British have sent a new inspector specifically to look for diamonds; Scobie claims this is a hoax and that he doesn't know of any such man. Scobie later dreams that he is in Pemberton's situation, even writing a similar note, but when he awakens, he tells himself that he could never commit suicide, as no cause is worth the eternal damnation that suicide would bring. Scobie tries to secure a loan from the bank to pay the two hundred pound fee for Louise’s passage, but is turned down. Yusef offers to lend Scobie the money at four percent per annum. Scobie initially declines, but after an incident where he mistakenly thinks Louise is contemplating suicide, he accepts the loan and sends Louise to South Africa. Wilson meets them at the pier and tries to interfere with their parting. Shortly afterwards, the survivors of a shipwreck begin to arrive after forty days at sea in lifeboats. One young girl dies as Scobie tries to comfort her by pretending to be her father, who was killed in the wreck. A nineteen-year-old woman named Helen Rolt also arrives in bad shape, clutching an album of postage stamps. She was married before the ship left its original port and is now a widow, and her wedding ring is too big for her finger. Scobie feels drawn to her, as much to the cherished album of stamps as to her physical presence, even though she is not beautiful. She reminds him of his daughter. He soon starts a passionate affair with her, all the time being aware that he is committing a grave sin of adultery. A letter he writes to Helen ends up in Yusef's hands, and the Syrian uses it to blackmail Scobie into sending a package of diamonds for him via the returning Esperança, thus avoiding the authorities. When Louise unexpectedly returns, Scobie struggles to keep her ignorant of his love affair. But he is unable to renounce Helen, even in the confessional, so the priest tells him to think it over again and postpones absolution. Still, in order to please his wife, Scobie goes to Mass with her and thus receives communion in state of mortal sin—one of the gravest sins for a Catholic to commit. Shortly after he witnesses Yusef's boy delivering a 'gift' to Scobie, Scobie's servant Ali is killed by teenage thieves known as "wharf rats." Scobie had begun to doubt Ali's loyalty, and he hinted this distrust to Yusef. We are led to believe that Yusef arranged the death of Ali, although Scobie blames himself for the matter. In the body of his dead servant, Scobie sees the image of God. Now desperate, he decides to free everyone from himself—even God—so he commits suicide, being aware that this will result in damnation according to the teaching of the Church. For the sake of his life insurance he feigns symptoms of angina thus receiving a terminal prognosis from his doctor in an attempt to have his death appear natural. Instead, his efforts prove useless in the end. Louise had been not as naive as he had believed, the affair with Helen and the suicide are found out, and his wife is left behind wondering about the mercy and forgiveness of God and Helen almost immediately moves on to an affair with another man.
205767	/m/01d5kn	The Legacy of Heorot	Steven Barnes	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Two hundred colonists arrive on Avalon to found a new community, having made the 100-year journey from Earth in suspended animation on the starship Geographic (the expedition is funded by the National Geographic Society). The colonists, all selected for their outstanding physical and mental attributes, make a terrible discovery: though the suspended animation technology permitted them to survive the journey worked well enough, it had unforeseeable side effects due to the unprecedented duration of its use. Their intelligence and reasoning skill are damaged. Some are only mildly afflicted, while others have mental retardation; eight cannot be reanimated at all. The book opens with the colonists learning how to live without the sharp and nimble minds they all once had. The colonists build a town on the island of Camelot and begin growing crops and stocking the nearby waters with terrestrial species of fish to complement the samlon, a local aquatic species. The island seems like a paradise, and the colonists quickly become overconfident in their security, much to the frustration of the expedition security officer (and only former soldier), Cadmann Weyland. But then unsettling events begin to happen: missing animals, fences torn down, etc. The colonists' impaired minds prevent them from properly analysing what is going on, and in a panic Cadmann is blamed, accused of deliberate sabotage to further his agenda. When a baby and its mother are killed while Cadmann and his only supporter are away on a hunt for the creature he believes is the cause, the colonists become increasingly irrational. When he returns alone (His companion having been killed during the hunt), badly wounded, and with a chunk of burnt tissue he claims is from the monster, he is drugged and restrained. Then the creature (named by the colonists as a "grendel" after the character in the poem Beowulf) attacks the camp in revenge. Despite the colonists' advanced weapons and larger numbers, ten people are killed just to drive the grendel away. This proves to all the colonists that there is a deadly and efficient predator native to the island. Cadmann, however, is now completely unwilling to assist the community. He leaves the colony to set up a homestead on a bluff further up the mountain that forms the basis of the island, living apart from the community in despair. A woman joins him in the hopes of persuading him to return, but she stays with him and eventually conceives his child. As a result, has an epiphany: the colonists may have brutalized and betrayed him, but their children are innocent, and deserve to be protected; he returns to assist the colony. The colonists are confounded by the ecology of the island, as there does not seem to be a sufficient food source for the grendels to inhabit it. The colonists, using new weapons and Cadmann's tactics, are able to kill their first grendel. The autopsy reveals that grendels are crocodilian in appearance and behavior, with jaws that can crush steel. Their bones are significantly stronger than those of humans, as they are not based on calcium. They have a sense of smell better than a dogs. Studying its brain shows it is not fully sapient, but that it is not far off, and is at least as smart as a gorilla. Its claws are not just weapons, but exert enough traction for the creature to sprint up rocky cliffs. Though it is not a true amphibian - it cannot breathe water - it does possess an integral snorkel enabling it to move undetected beneath several feet of water. Its cardiovascular system and musculature give it strength and stamina far beyond that of humans, and that is without its primary evolutionary advantage: A super-oxygenated blood supplement. A grendel can, on demand, release a chemical supercharger into its blood that does to it what nitrous oxide does to internal combustion engines - enable short bursts of speed in excess of a hundred miles per hour. This trait makes the grendels dangerous, but also the key to their destruction. The supercharger, when used, generates large amounts of waste-heat that warm up grendel bodies so rapidly they will die after using it if they do not immediately return to water to cool off. With this knowledge and their technology and tactics, the colonists are able to wipe out the grendel population within several months, making Cadmann a hero to the people who previously turned on him. However, the colonists make a disturbing discovery: the grendels and the aquatic samlon are actually the same species. Their life cycle is similar to that of terrestrial frogs - the herbivorous samlon are in fact the juvenile form of the carnivorous grendels. Like certain species of frogs, they change gender over the course of their lifetimes. The juvenile samlon are male. The adult grendels are female. Interaction is unnecessary as the grendels continually lay their unfertilized eggs in the water for the samlon to fertilize. And like many species of grendels, they are cannibalistic - if no other prey is present, they will eat their own young. At some point in the recent past, most of the prey animals on the island were destroyed by an unknown cataclysmic event. (It is left to the reader to draw conclusions as to what actually happened. Over-predation by the grendels is subtly suggested). Among the few surviving species on the island were the samlon, and thus the grendels. Cannibalism became the rule instead of the exception. Only the fastest juvenile samlon survived predation by grendel females to become adult grendels themselves, and this drove the species to evolve at an immensely accelerated rate. This resulted in the incredible predatory abilities of the grendels. When the colonists introduced terrestrial fish into the ecosystem, they provided the grendels with an additional food source, leading to a spike in adult grendel population/ This is why the attacks began in the first place. The colonists have just exterminated the adult grendels. There is now no check at all on the samlon population. Within a very short period of time, they all become grendels. Instead of a few dozen grendels, there are now thousands. Cadmann again asserts control. The grendels cannot hunt away from water, so the colony's pregnant women, children and essential specialists are evacuated to the Geographic. Combat is joined. At first, the colonists' technology and tactics serve them well. The laser-based welding tools and plasma-based drilling equipment are used as weapons. Whatever liquid hydrogen can be spared from the shuttles is used to fight the grendels as well. Cadmann observes mass grendel behavior and discovers that packs of grendels can be sent into a shark-like feeding frenzy by spraying them with blood taken from dead grendels, especially if it is laced with traces of the "supercharger" chemical extracted from the organ that secretes it, as this chemical triggers an immediate "fight" instinct. Tracer bullets are also used to ignite the supercharger gland in their bodies. The colonists ultimately discover and utilize a new tactic - they harvest supercharger from dead grendels and spray it over the grendel horde with crop dusting equipment, driving hundreds of them into a frenzy and killing many of those remaining. But as the grendels' numbers fall, their individual strength rises - every dead grendel is food for the rest. Eventually, all that remain are full-grown grendels, and the colonists make a planned retreat to Cadmann's Bluff, Cadmann's carefully designed mountain hideaway which has been well-stocked and reinforced with defenses. As the horde approaches, they are sprayed with more supercharger, sending them into a frenzy once more. When they begin climbing the Bluff, Cadmann sets off an avalanche using deadfall, killing even more. The grendels, though not as smart as humans, are smart enough to learn, given time and lots of experience. Their behavior changes as they realize the remaining colonists are not worth dying to reach when there are other grendels to kill. The colony is saved. A year later, the grendels are being driven to extinction. Now that the grendel life cycle is known, the colonists continue the hunts, but this time the samlon are targeted as well. New tactics - supercharger spraying and recorded grendel challenges - make them almost a chore. The terrestrial fish are gone, and will not be reintroduced, forcing the grendels to drive their own species into extinction. Soon the grendel threat will be eradicated. Now rebuilding can begin, and this time, the colonists will not be caught unaware. The mainland is being carefully explored, and the colonists have high hopes. Communications with Earth were cut off by the Grendel Wars. Now that it is over, the colonists hope the story of their battle will inspire Earth's population to restart the colonization program.
205802	/m/01d5t2	VALIS	Philip K. Dick	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Horselover Fat believes his visions expose hidden facts about the reality of life on Earth, and a group of others join him in researching these matters. One of their theories is that there is some kind of alien space probe in orbit around Earth, and that it is aiding them in their quest. It also aided the United States in disclosing the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. There is a filmed account of an alternate universe Nixon, "Ferris Freemont" and his fall, engineered by a fictionalised Valis, which leads them to an estate owned by the Lamptons, popular musicians. Valis (the fictional film) contains obvious references to identical revelations to those that Horselover Fat has experienced. They decide the goal that they have been led toward is Sophia, who is two years old and the Messiah or incarnation of Holy Wisdom anticipated by some variants of Gnostic Christianity. She tells them that their conclusions are correct, but dies after a laser accident. Undeterred, Fat goes on a global search for the next incarnation of Sophia. Dick also offers a rationalist explanation of his apparent "theophany", acknowledging that it might have been visual and auditory hallucinations from either schizophrenia or drug addiction sequelae.
205952	/m/01d6hd	The Man Who Awoke			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 * 5000 AD. Humanity staggers to save itself amid the world's littered, stagnant wreckage after what has become known as the great Age of Waste. * 10,000 AD. The world is dominated by the Brain - the immovable in purpose super computer that knows all, sees all, and feels nothing. Thanks to its cradle-to-grave supervision, human life is easy and comfortable, but what will happen when The Brain realizes people are superfluous? * 15,000 AD. People can now program their choice of dreams and sleep their lives away. Winters awakes to find the sleeping outnumber the living. He cannot stop the implosion of civilization by himself. * 20,000 AD. After an abused Age of Freedom came an Age of License. Genetic experiment heralded the terrifying Age of Anarchy. Each Individual had his own mobile "City" that provided for all his needs, resulting in a society where people had no need for each other and were incapable of cooperating, resulting in nearly all interpersonal encounters being small wars. * 25,000 AD. Scientists discover the secret sought through the centuries – immortality. But is Mankind ready for it? Immortality is frightfully boring without a purpose. Humanity scatters to the far corners of the cosmos seeking knowledge and experience, leading to a quest toward "the meaning of it all." The novel might be easily dismissed as standard pulp fare if it had not presaged concepts popularized decades later: the sexual revolution, green consumerism, strong AI, full-immersion virtual reality as a surgical procedure (like The Matrix), desktop molecular manufacturing, global warming, and stem cell therapies. Many of these have only appeared in most peoples' worldview in the 21st century. This book was recently re-released.
206449	/m/01d8_r	The Genesis Quest			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Genesis Quest gets around the problems involved with intergalactic travel, namely the distance, by avoiding the traditional staple of science fiction, faster than light travel. Instead Moffitt opts for a different tactic, that of having an alien race (The Nar) assemble humans from a stream of genetic information transmitted by radio from the Milky Way Galaxy. The resulting colony of humans spend some time integrated into the Nar society before growing randy, discovering the secret of human longevity, and embarking on the seemingly impossible millennia-long mission of a physical journey back to earth. This epic journey is made in a gigantic space-grown semi-sentient Dyson tree known as Yggdrasil.
206718	/m/01dbhs	Summer and Smoke	Tennessee Williams			 Summer and Smoke is set in Glorious Hill, Mississippi, from the "turn of the century through 1916," and centers on a high-strung, unmarried minister's daughter, Alma Winemiller, and the spiritual/sexual romance that nearly blossoms between her and the wild, undisciplined young doctor who grew up next door, John Buchanan, Jr. She, ineffably refined, identifies with the gothic cathedral, "reaching up to something beyond attainment"; her name, as Williams makes clear during the play, means "soul" in Spanish; whereas Buchanan, doctor and sensualist, defies her with the soulless anatomy chart. By play's end, however, Buchanan and Alma have traded places philosophically. She has been transformed beyond modesty. She throws herself at him, saying, "..now I have changed my mind, or the girl who said 'no,'—she doesn't exist any more, she died last summer—suffocated in smoke from something on fire inside her.". But he has changed, he's engaged to settle down with a respectable, younger girl; and, as he tries to convince Alma that what they had between them was indeed a "spiritual bond," she realizes, in any event, it is too late. In the final scene, Alma accosts a young traveling salesman at dusk in the town park; and, as the curtain falls, she follows him off to enjoy the "after-dark entertainment" at Moon Lake Casino, where she'd resisted Buchanan's attempt to seduce her the summer before.
207945	/m/01djhg	Critique of Dialectical Reason	Jean-Paul Sartre	1960	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Critique of Dialectical Reason is the product of a later stage in Sartre's thinking, during which he no longer identified Marxism with the Soviet Union or French Communism but came closer to identifying as a Marxist. It puts forward a revision of Existentialism, and an interpretation of Marxism as a contemporary philosophy par excellence, one that can be criticized only from a reactionary pre-Marxist standpoint. Sartre argues that while the free fusion of many human projects may possibly constitute a Communist society, there is no guarantee of this. Conscious human acts are not projections of freedom that produce human 'temporality', but movements toward 'totalization', their sense being co-determined by existing social conditions. People are thus neither absolutely free to determine the meaning of their acts nor slaves to the circumstances in which they find themselve. Social life does not consist only of individual acts rooted in freedom, since it is also a sedimentation of history by which we are limited and a fight with nature, which imposes further obstacles and causes social relationships to be dominated by scarcity. Every satisfaction of a need can cause antagonism and make it more difficult for people to accept each other as human beings. Scarcity deprives people of the ability to make particular choices and diminishes their humanity. Communism will restore the freedom of the individual and his ability to recognize the freedom of others.
208138	/m/01dk94	The Necessity of Atheism				 The tract starts with the following rationale of the author's goals: Shelley made a number of claims in Necessity, including that one's beliefs are involuntary, and, therefore, that atheists do not choose to be so and should not be persecuted. Towards the end of the pamphlet he writes: "the mind cannot believe in the existence of a God." Shelley signed the pamphlet, Thro' deficiency of proof, AN ATHEIST, but Shelley himself encouraged readers to offer proofs if they only possess them. Opinion is divided upon the characterization of Shelley's beliefs, as presented in Necessity. Shelley scholar Carlos Baker states that "the title of his college pamphlet should have been The Necessity of Agnosticism rather than The Necessity of Atheism," while historian David Berman argues that Shelley was an atheist, both because he characterized himself as such, and because "he denies the existence of God in both published works and private letters" during the same period. A revised and expanded version was printed in 1813.
210455	/m/01dws8	The Velveteen Rabbit	Margery Williams		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A boy receives a Velveteen Rabbit for Christmas. The Velveteen Rabbit is snubbed by other more expensive or mechanical toys, the latter of which fancy themselves real. One day while talking with the Skin Horse, the Rabbit learns that a toy becomes real if its owner really and truly loves it. The Skin Horse makes the Velveteen Rabbit aware that "...once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always." When the boy's china dog is misplaced, the Velveteen Rabbit is given to the boy as a quick replacement by the Nana. The Velveteen Rabbit soon takes his place as the boy's constant companion. The Rabbit becomes shabbier, but the boy loves him no matter what. In the woods near the boy's home, the Velveteen Rabbit meets actual rabbits, and learns about the differences between himself and the real rabbits when the real rabbits prove he is not real by his inability to hop and jump. The Velveteen Rabbit's companionship with the boy lasts until the boy falls ill with scarlet fever. The boy becomes too ill to play for a very long time; upon his recovery, he is sent to the seaside on doctor's orders. The doctor orders all the toys the boy has played with, including the Rabbit, be burned in order to disinfect the nursery. The boy is given a new plush rabbit and is so excited about the trip to the seaside that he forgets his old Velveteen Rabbit. While awaiting the bonfire, in which the Velveteen Rabbit will be burned, the Rabbit cries a real tear. This tear brings forth the Nursery Magic Fairy. She tells the Rabbit that he was only real to the boy, and then brings him to the woods and kisses him, making him real to everybody. He soon discovers that he is a real rabbit at last and runs to join the other rabbits in the wild. The following spring, the boy sees the Rabbit hopping in the wild and thinks he looks like his old Velveteen Rabbit, but he never knows that it actually was.
210518	/m/01dx2g	Executive Orders	Tom Clancy		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Following the conclusion of Debt of Honor, Jack Ryan is sworn in as president of the United States minutes after becoming Vice President. With virtually nearly every executive, legislative, and judicial figure deceased, Ryan is left to represent the United States by himself. Ryan deals with various hardships and crises, from reconstituting the House and the Senate; to a challenge on his legitimacy by former vice president Ed Kealty; to a brewing war in the Middle East. When the president of Iraq is assassinated by an Iranian agent, the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei takes advantage of the power vacuum by launching an unopposed invasion of Iraq. The ayatollah unites the two countries into the United Islamic Republic (UIR). With Indian and Chinese assistance, the UIR makes a bid for superpower status by attacking Saudi Arabia. Following a series of Iranian-backed terrorist attacks—including the release of a genetically-enhanced Ebola strain—the UIR declares war on both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Meanwhile, China "accidentally" shoots down a Taiwanese airliner. As a result of the Ebola attack, Ryan declares martial law and enforces travel restrictions in an effort to contain the virus. However, the attack becomes only a limited success for the UIR, since the virus is so deadly that it cannot spread effectively. The tide soon turns against the UIR, with its forces being defeated against the combined firepower of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. President Ryan sends Ding Chavez and John Clark into the UIR to assassinate Daryaei. After showing the destruction of Daryaei's residence during a televised press conference, Ryan threatens to launch a tactical nuclear strike on Tehran unless those responsible for the attacks are extradited to the U.S. to face charges. Kealty's challenge to President Ryan's legitimacy fails in court. In the aftermath of the crisis, appreciation of the unelected president grows. Then in answering a question from a reporter in the White House press room, Ryan says he will seek election to the office of President of the United States.
212103	/m/01f2l3	My Night with Reg	Kevin Elyot			 All three scenes are set in the sitting room of Guy's London apartment: during Guy's flatwarming party (Scene 1); after Reg's funeral, some years later (Scene 2); and after Guy's funeral (Scene 3). The group, most of them in their thirties, meet at irregular intervals, often at Guy's place. Guy himself is a lonely man. Ever since their university days, he has had a crush on John, but he has never dared to tell him about it. Rather, he lives a solitary life, which he only spices up with phone sex and an occasional visit to a gay pub -- that is where he meets 18 year-old Eric, who then helps him decorate his new flat. On holiday on the island of Lanzarote, he meets a gay man who eventually forces himself on Guy and has unprotected sex with him—the last thing Guy has been looking for. At his flatwarming party, he has just come back from his holiday and is still quite shocked about what happened. It is hard for him not to start crying when, as a present, John gives him a cookery book specialising in dishes for one. The most popular of the gay circle is Reg, who is conspicuously absent from the party. Reg has had a long-term relationship with Daniel, but Daniel himself suspects Reg of occasionally being unfaithful to him. In fact Reg seems to be sleeping with every man he can get hold of (as it seems, even with the vicar). In the course of the play, John, Benny and even his seemingly faithful companion Bernie have secret sex with Reg. Ironically, they all confide in Guy. It hurts Guy most to hear that John — whom he himself fancies — is having an affair with Reg, thus betraying their mutual friend Daniel. After his fling with Reg, Benny panics because he thinks he might have contracted HIV, but he does not confess it to his partner, Bernie. When Reg is dying from AIDS, he is looked after by his partner, Daniel. Ironically again, the next one to die is Guy, the only one who has not had sex with Reg and who seems to have been infected with HIV when he was raped during his holiday in Lanzarote. Guy bequeaths his new flat to the love of his life, John who does not need it at all because he comes from a rich background. It is John who, somewhere in the flat, finds all kinds of memorabilia dating back to their student days.
212444	/m/01f44d	Tell England	Ernest Raymond		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with a prologue by Padre Monty, a character from the second half of the novel. Padre Monty speaks affectionately and retrospectively of the three boys Rupert Ray, Edgar Doe and Archibald Pennybet as they were in childhood. The inference is made that Padre Monty acquired this information from the boys' mothers after-the-fact, given that he first meets them in the Great War. The novel predates the Just William books and Molesworth stories, but begins in a similar fashion to these books, describing the school lives of Rupert Ray and his friends at their public school, Kensingstowe. The author describes the pranks they play on the masters (teachers) from Ray's perspective. Raymond spends much of the novel setting up the characters and their relationships in this way. Rupert himself is a shy boy lacking in courage and in need of moral guidance in the absence of a father figure. Edgar, nicknamed the "Grey Doe" is equally shy, but is more sensitive and inclined to fall in love with older men such as their strict master Radley. Both boys are heavily influenced by the older Archibald, "Penny", who enjoys wielding youthful power over others by stirring up acts of mischief. The first half of the book relates Rupert's most dramatic incidents as Kensingtowe, including an ongoing "war" with his Housemaster, the so-called "Carpet Slippers", receiving beatings and punishments, learning to do what is right, and his greatest hour - winning the school relay swimming race, only to be disqualified, then made a prefect on account of his maturity in dealing with the disappointment. Radley is a heavy influence in all this, because he offers Rupert advice and encouragement to make the right choices. In one memorable episode, the entire class has been cheating in Carpet Slippers' history lessons, only for Rupert to admit his guilt by recording a mark of zero after Radley's prompting. The book repeatedly makes dark suggestions as to the boys' future after school. For example, at the end of a triumphant cricket match the masters at Kensingstowe consider what England will do with the young men they are moulding. Radley himself is a weary, beaten figure when he learns that his favourite pupils, Ray and Doe, are off to war. When the war breaks out it is treated with much excitement and the boys leave school to join the army as officers. Where others have blamed the attitude of sending England's finest (their boys) to war for the mass slaughter that resulted, Raymond's portrayal justifies the thinking of the time. The attitude is embodied by their new commanding officer, the Colonel; :"Eighteen by Jove! You've timed you lives wonderfully, my boys. To be eighteen in 1914 is to be the best thing in England. England's wealth used to consist in other things. Nowadays you boys are the richest thing she's got. She's solvent with you, and bankrupt without you. Eighteen confound it! It's a virtue to be your age, just as it's a crime to be mine." The boys go forward to Gallipoli and despite Ray's pain at leaving his mother, and his clear worry that he will never see her again, they are still optimistic and eager to head off to war. The news that Penny died on the Western Front and that their house captain, their school's most promising cricketer (a sure bet for a future England side) and Rupert's relay-team captain all died in April in Gallipoli depresses Edgar and Rupert somewhat. There is a bitter irony in this passage, for all three were such promising lives that were snuffed out the moment they landed on the beaches of Gallipoli by Turkish guns. A major theme of the novel is religious redemption, and in the second half of the book Padre Monty becomes to Ray and Doe what Radley was at Kensingtowe. He teaches them about the communion and about confession, and achieves the unlikely feat of drawing confessions from both boys. Padre Monty views the pair as his greatest triumph, and is happy to be sending them out to battle "white" and pure. Still, both boys have their doubts about the approaching war as their ship draws nearer to Gallipoli. Doe is the enthusiast, with high aspirations but a sensitive heart. Ray is slightly heavier of spirits, but Padre Monty encourages him to seek beauty in everything. At Gallipoli, the boys spend months waiting in a camp for any action, but are finally sent to the Helles, where they are up against "Asiatic Annie", a 7-mile ranging Turk gun, and a well-placed Turkish gun that kills many of their friends. Doe accepts the promotion to Bombing Officer with characteristic enthusiasm. Ray is promoted to Captain. They are both junior subalterns, the rank that suffered the greatest losses in the Great War, owing to their courage and visibility as leaders of the front line. As the Germans break through Servia and British and French troops at Gallipoli begin to withdraw, it is Doe and Ray's unit that is required to attack as a diversion. Doe breaks over the top of the line and is shot in the shoulder. He falls, but manages to get up and blow up the offending Turkish gun. He is then shot four more times in the waist. Padre Monty rushes out to bring him out of No Man's Land. Doe subsequently dies, but not before Ray has a tearful final farewell with his best friend. The entire duration of the novel up to that point is a romantic ode to their friendship - painting Rupert's love for Edgar in classical hues as Orestes who loved Pylades. There is an underlying homosexual flavour to the novel, with vivid descriptions of boys as magnificent creatures, God's highest form of creation and Britain's greatest accomplishment. The reader never feels that Rupert's feelings for Edgar are sexual, but there are intimations in Edgar's unwillingness to confess to Padre Monty and his admission that he has done "everything", that Doe himself was homosexual. At the end of the novel when leaving Gallipoli Ray is charged by Padre Monty to tell England about what has happened, "You must write a book and tell 'em, Rupert, about the dead schoolboys of your generation". Originally published by Cassell and Company, Tell England was most recently reprinted in 2005, when it was republished by IndyPublish.com (ISBN 1-4219-4612-2). The book's name might be inspired by the famous epitaph to King Leonidas and his men, erected at Thermopylae :Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by/ That here, obedient to their laws, we lie. The name comes from a poem that is inscribed on the grave of one of Edgar and Ray's friends, and is presumably also inscribed on Edgar Doe's, given that he asked Ray to do so. The quote reads: "Tell England, ye who pass this monument, We died for her, and here we rest content." One of the final messages in the book is given by Padre Monty to Rupert Ray as a means of consoling him to Edgar's death. He says that Rupert and Edgar's friendship is more perfect because of Edgar's death. Had they simply been school friends who went their separate ways, they would eventually have lost trace of one another. Instead, Edgar will forever be inscribed upon Ray's memory as the war held them in deepening intimacy until the end. The end of the novel is written from a trench on the Western Front in 1918, just as England is about to defeat Germany and end the Great War. Rupert intimates that he has finished his story in time, but does not say whether he survives the final passage of war. We are asked to believe that he is happy because he has lived, experienced beauty, known the purest of friendships and had twenty wonderful years. The book ends on that note.
213055	/m/01f6ff	The Woman Who Did	Grant Allen		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Herminia Barton, the Cambridge-educated daughter of a clergyman, frees herself from her parents' influence, moves to London and starts living alone. As she is not a woman of independent means, she starts working as a teacher. When she meets and falls in love with Alan Merrick, a lawyer, she suggests they live together without getting married. Reluctantly, he agrees, and the couple move to Italy. There, in Florence, Merrick dies of typhoid before their daughter Dolores is born. Legal technicalities and the fact that the couple were not married prevent Herminia from inheriting any of Merrick's money. Dreaming of being a role model for Dolores and her friends, Herminia returns to England and raises her daughter as a single mother. She wants to show the younger generation that even as a woman there is something one can do about the unfair position of women in society—a small step maybe, but with more and larger steps to follow soon. However, Dolores turns out to be ashamed of her mother's unmarried state and gradually turns against her. Eventually, Herminia chooses to make a huge sacrifice for her daughter's benefit and commits suicide.
213077	/m/01f6k_	Chicago	Fred Ebb			 ; Act 1 In the mid 1920s in Chicago, Illinois, Velma Kelly is a vaudevillian who murdered both her husband and her sister when she found them in bed together. She welcomes the audience to tonight's show ("All That Jazz"). Meanwhile, we hear of chorus girl Roxie Hart's murder of her lover, nightclub regular Fred Casely. Roxie convinces her husband Amos that the victim was a burglar, and Amos cheerfully takes the blame. Roxie expresses her appreciation of her husband's thick skull ("Funny Honey"). However, when the police mention the deceased's name Amos belatedly puts two and two together. The truth comes out, and Roxie is arrested. She is sent to the women's block in Cook County Jail, inhabited by Velma and other murderesses ("Cell Block Tango"). The block is presided over by the corrupt Matron "Mama" Morton, whose system of mutual aid ("When You're Good to Mama") perfectly suits her clientele. She has helped Velma become the media's top murder-of-the-week and is acting as a booking agent for Velma's big return to vaudeville. Velma is not happy to see Roxie, who is stealing not only her limelight but also her lawyer, Billy Flynn. Roxie tries to convince Amos to pay for Billy Flynn to be her lawyer ("A Tap Dance"). Eagerly awaited by his all-girl clientele, Billy sings his anthem, complete with a chorus of fan dancers ("All I Care About is Love"). Billy takes Roxie's case and re-arranges her story for consumption by sympathetic tabloid columnist Mary Sunshine ("A Little Bit of Good"). Roxie's press conference turns into a ventriloquist act with Billy dictating a new version of the truth ("We Both Reached for the Gun") to the press while Roxie mouths the words. Roxie becomes the new toast of Chicago and she proclaims so boastfully while planning for her future career in vaudeville ("Roxie"). As Roxie's fame grows, Velma's notoriety is left in the dust and in an "act of pure desperation", she tries to talk Roxie into recreating the sister act ("I Can't Do It Alone"), but Roxie turns her down, only to find her own headlines replaced by the latest sordid crime of passion. Separately, Roxie and Velma realize there's no one they can count on but themselves ("My Own Best Friend"), and the ever-resourceful Roxie decides that being pregnant in prison would put her back on the front page. ; Act 2 Velma again welcomes the audience with the line "Hello, Suckers," another reference to Texas Guinan, who commonly greeted her patrons with the same phrase. She informs the audience of Roxie's continual run of luck ("I Know a Girl") despite Roxie's obvious falsehoods ("Me and My Baby"). A little shy on the arithmetic, Amos proudly claims paternity, and still nobody notices him ("Mr. Cellophane"). Velma tries to show Billy all the tricks she's got planned for her trial ("When Velma Takes The Stand"). With her ego growing, Roxie has a heated argument with Billy, and fires him. She is brought back down to earth when she learns that a fellow inmate has been executed. The trial date arrives, and Billy calms her, telling her if she makes a show of it, she'll be fine ("Razzle Dazzle"), but when he passes all Velma's ideas on to Roxie, she uses each one, down to the rhinestone shoe buckles, to the dismay of Mama and Velma ("Class"). As promised, Billy gets Roxie her acquittal but, just as the verdict is given, some even more sensational crime pulls the pack of press bloodhounds away, and Roxie's fleeting celebrity life is over. Billy leaves, done with the case. Amos stays with her, glad for his wife, but she then confesses that there isn't really a baby, making Amos finally leave her. Left in the dust, Roxie pulls herself up and extols the joys of life ("Nowadays"). She teams up with Velma in a new act, in which they dance and perform ("Hot Honey Rag") until they are joined by the entire company ("Finale").
213406	/m/01f83x	Au Bonheur des Dames	Émile Zola	1883	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The events of Au Bonheur des Dames cover approximately 1864-1869. The novel tells the story of Denise Baudu, a 20-year-old woman from Valognes who comes to Paris with her brothers and begins working at the department store Au Bonheur des Dames as a saleswoman. Zola describes the inner workings of the store from the employees' perspective, including the 13-hour workdays, the substandard food and the bare lodgings (for the female staff). Many of the conflicts in the novel spring from the struggles for advancement and the malicious infighting and gossip among the staff. Denise's story is played against the career of Octave Mouret, the owner of Au Bonheur des Dames, whose retail innovations and store expansions threaten the existence of all the neighborhood shops. Under one roof, Octave has gathered textiles (silks, woolens) as well as all manner of ready-made garments (dresses, coats, lingerie, gloves), accessories necessary for making clothes and ancillary items like carpeting and furniture. His aim is to overwhelm the senses of his female customers, forcing them to spend by bombarding them with an array of buying choices and by juxtaposing goods in enticing and intoxicating ways. Massive advertising, huge sales, home delivery, a system of refunds and novelties such as a reading room and a snack bar, further induce his female clientele to patronize his store in growing numbers. In the process, he drives smaller, speciality shops out of business. In Pot-Bouille, Octave is depicted as a (sometimes inept) ladies' man who seduces or attempts to seduce women who can give him some type of material (social or financial) advantage. This characteristic is carried over in Au Bonheur des Dames. Here, he uses a young widow to influence a political figure (modeled after Baron Haussmann) in order to have frontage access to a huge thoroughfare (the present day rue de Quatre-Septembre) for the store. Despite his contempt for women, Octave finds himself slowly falling in love with Denise, whose inability to be seduced by his charms further inflames him. The book ends with Denise admitting her love for Octave. Her marriage with Octave is seen as a victory of women over a man who refuses to be conquered and whose aim is to subjugate and exploit women using their own senses.
213693	/m/01f9kf	Absalom, Absalom!	William Faulkner	1936		 Absalom, Absalom! details the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen, a white man born into poverty in western Virginia who comes to Mississippi with the complementary aims of becoming rich and a powerful family patriarch. The story is told entirely in flashbacks narrated mostly by Quentin Compson to his roommate at Harvard University, Shreve, who frequently contributes his own suggestions and surmises. The narration of Rosa Coldfield, and Quentin's father and grandfather, are also included and re-interpreted by Shreve and Quentin, with the total events of the story unfolding in non-chronological order and often with differing details, resulting in a peeling-back-the-onion way of revealing the true story of the Sutpens to the reader. Rosa initially narrates the story, with long digressions and a biased memory, to Quentin Compson, whose grandfather was a friend of Sutpen’s. Quentin's father then fills in some of the details to Quentin, as well. Finally, Quentin relates the story to his roommate Shreve, and in each retelling, the reader receives more details as the parties flesh out the story by adding layers. The final effect leaves the reader more certain about the attitudes and biases of the characters than about the facts of Sutpen's story. Thomas Sutpen arrives in Jefferson, Mississippi, with some slaves and a French architect who has been somehow forced into working for him. Sutpen obtains one hundred square miles of land from a local Native American tribe and immediately begins building a large plantation called Sutpen’s Hundred, including an ostentatious mansion. All he needs to complete his plan is a wife to bear him a few children (particularly a son to be his heir), so he ingratiates himself with a local merchant and marries the man’s daughter, Ellen Coldfield. Ellen bears Sutpen two children, a son named Henry and a daughter named Judith, both of whom are destined for tragedy. Henry goes to the University of Mississippi and meets a fellow student named Charles Bon, who is ten years his senior. Henry brings Bon home for Christmas, where he and Judith begin a quiet romance that leads to a presumed engagement. However, Thomas Sutpen realizes that Charles Bon is his son from an earlier marriage and moves to stop the proposed union. Sutpen had worked on a plantation in the French West Indies as the overseer and, after subduing a slave uprising, was offered the hand of the plantation owner's daughter, Eulalia Bon, who bore him a son, Charles. Sutpen had not known that Eulalia was of mixed race until after the marriage and birth of Charles, but when he found out he had been deceived, he renounced the marriage as void and left his wife and child (though leaving them his fortune as part of his own moral recompense). The reader also later learns of Sutpen's childhood, where young Thomas learned that society could base human worth on material worth. It is this episode that sets into motion Thomas' plan to start a dynasty. Henry, possibly because of his own potentially (and mutually) incestuous feelings for his sister, as well as quasi-romantic feelings for Charles himself, is keen to see the two wed (allowing him to imagine himself as surrogate for both). When Sutpen tells Henry that Charles is his half-brother and that Judith must not be allowed to marry him, Henry refuses to believe, repudiates his birthright, and accompanies Charles to his home in New Orleans. They then return to Mississippi to enlist in their University company where they join the Confederate Army and fight in the Civil War. During the war, Henry wrestles with his conscience until he presumably resolves to allow the marriage of half-brother and sister; this resolution changes, however, when Sutpen reveals to Henry that Charles is part black. At the conclusion of the war, Henry enacts his father's interdiction of marriage between Charles and Judith, killing Charles at the gates to the mansion and then fleeing into self-exile. Thomas Sutpen returns from the war and begins to repair his home, whose hundred square miles have been reduced by carpetbaggers and punitive northern action to one, and dynasty. He proposes to Rosa Coldfield, his dead wife's younger sister, and she accepts. However, Sutpen insults Rosa by demanding that she bear him a son before the wedding takes place prompting her to leave Sutpen's Hundred. Sutpen then begins an affair with Milly, the fifteen-year-old granddaughter of Wash Jones, a squatter who lives on the Sutpen property. The affair continues until Milly becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter. Sutpen is terribly disappointed, because the last hope of repairing his Sutpen dynasty rested on whether Milly gave birth to a son. Sutpen casts Milly and the child aside, telling them that they are not worthy of sleeping in the stables with his horse, who had just sired a male. An enraged Wash Jones kills Sutpen, his own granddaughter and Sutpen's newborn daughter, and is in turn killed by the posse that arrives to arrest him. The story of Thomas Sutpen's legacy ends with Quentin taking Rosa back to the seemingly abandoned Sutpen’s Hundred plantation, where they find Henry Sutpen and Clytie, herself the daughter of Thomas Sutpen by a slave woman. Henry has returned to the estate to die. Three months later, when Rosa returns with medical help for Henry, Clytie starts a fire that consumes the plantation and kills Henry and herself. The only remaining Sutpen is Jim Bond, Charles Bon's black grandson, a young man with severe mental handicaps, who remains on Sutpen's Hundred.
214133	/m/01fc9r	Brideshead Revisited	Evelyn Waugh	1945	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 1923: Protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder, a student at Hertford College, Oxford, is befriended by Lord Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of the aristocratic Lord Marchmain and an undergraduate at Christ Church. Sebastian introduces Charles to his eccentric and aesthetic friends, including the haughty and homosexual Anthony Blanche. Sebastian also takes Charles to his family's palatial home, Brideshead, in Wiltshire where Charles later meets the rest of Sebastian's family, including his sister Julia. During the long vacation, Charles returns home to London, where he lives with his widowed father. The conversations there between Charles and his father Edward Ryder provide some of the best-known comic scenes in the novel. Charles is called back to Brideshead after Sebastian incurs a minor injury, and Sebastian and Charles spend the remainder of the vacation together. Sebastian's family are Roman Catholics, which influences the Marchmains' lives as well as the content of their conversations, all of which surprises Charles, who had always assumed Christianity to be "without substance or merit". Lord Marchmain had converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in order to marry his wife, but he later abandoned both his marriage and his new religion and moved to Venice in Italy. Left alone, Lady Marchmain focuses even more on her faith, which is also enthusiastically espoused by her eldest son, Lord Brideshead ("Bridey"), and by her youngest daughter, Cordelia. Sebastian, a troubled young man, descends into alcoholism, drifting away from the family over a two-year period. He flees to Morocco, where his drinking ruins his health. He eventually finds some solace as an under-porter and object of charity at a Tunisian monastery. Sebastian's drifting leads to Charles's own estrangement from the Marchmains. Charles marries and fathers two children, but he becomes cold towards his wife and she is unfaithful to him, and he eventually forms a relationship with Sebastian's younger sister Julia. Julia has married but separated from the rich but unsophisticated Canadian business man, Rex Mottram. This marriage caused great sorrow to her mother, because Rex, though initially planning to convert to Roman Catholicism, turns out to have divorced a previous wife in Canada, so he and Julia ended up marrying in the Church of England. Charles and Julia plan to divorce their respective spouses so that they can marry each other. On the eve of the Second World War, the aging Lord Marchmain, terminally ill, returns to Brideshead to die in his ancestral home. Appalled by the marriage of his eldest son, Brideshead, he names Julia heir to the estate, which prospectively offers Charles marital ownership of the house. However, Lord Marchmain's return to the faith on his deathbed changes the situation: Julia decides that she cannot enter a sinful marriage with Charles, who has also been moved by Lord Marchmain's reception of the sacraments. The plot concludes in the early spring of 1943 (or possibly 1944 – the date is disputed). Charles is "homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless". He has become an army officer after establishing a career as an architectural artist, and finds himself unexpectedly billeted at Brideshead, which has been taken into military use. He finds the house damaged by the army, but the private chapel, closed after Lady Marchmain's death in 1926, has been reopened for the soldiers' worship. It occurs to him that the efforts of the builders - and, by extension, God's efforts - were not in vain, although their purposes may have appeared, for a time, to have been frustrated.
214301	/m/01fd5q	The Collector	John Fowles	1963	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his spare time. The first part of the novel tells the story from his point of view. Clegg is obsessed with Miranda Grey, a middle-class art student at the Slade School of Fine Art. He admires her from a distance, but is unable to make any contact with her because of his nonexistent social skills. One day, he wins a large prize in the football pools. This makes it possible for him to stop working and buy an isolated house in the countryside. He feels lonely, however, and wants to be with Miranda. Unable to make any normal contact, Clegg decides to add her to his "collection" of pretty, petrified objects, in the hope that if he keeps her captive long enough, she will grow to love him. After careful preparations, he kidnaps Miranda by drugging her with chloroform and locks her up in the cellar of his house. He is convinced that Miranda will start to love him after some time. However, when she wakes up, she confronts him with his actions. Clegg is embarrassed, and promises to let her go after a month. He promises to show her "every respect", pledging not to sexually molest her and to shower her with gifts and the comforts of home, on one condition: she can't leave the cellar. Clegg rationalizes every step of his plan in cold, emotionless language; he seems truly incapable of relating to other human beings and sharing real intimacy with them. He takes great pains to appear normal, however, and is greatly offended at the suggestion that his motives are anything but reasonable and genuine. The second part of the novel is narrated by Miranda in the form of fragments from a diary that she keeps during her captivity. Clegg scares her, and she does not understand him in the beginning. Miranda reminisces over her previous life throughout this section of the novel, and many of her diary entries are written either to her sister, or to a man named G.P., whom she respected and admired as an artist. Miranda reveals that G.P. ultimately fell in love with her, and subsequently severed all contact with her. Through Miranda's confined reflections, Fowles discusses a number of philosophical issues, such as the nature of art, humanity and God. At first, Miranda thinks that Clegg has sexual motives for abducting her, but as his true character begins to be revealed, she realises that this is not true. She starts to have some pity for her captor, comparing him to Caliban in Shakespeare's play The Tempest because of his hopeless obsession with her. Clegg tells Miranda that his first name is Ferdinand (eventual winner of Miranda's affections in The Tempest). Miranda tries to escape several times, but Clegg is always able to stop her. She also tries to seduce him in order to convince him to let her go. The only result is that he becomes confused and angry. When Clegg keeps refusing to let her go, she starts to fantasize about killing him. After a failed attempt at doing so, Miranda passes through a phase of self-loathing, and decides that to kill Clegg would lower her to his level. As such, she then refrains from any further attempts to do so. Before she can try to escape again, she becomes seriously ill and dies. The third part of the novel is again narrated by Clegg. At first, he wants to commit suicide after he learns of Miranda's death, but after he reads in her diary that she never loved him, he decides that he is not responsible and is better off without her. The books ends with his announcement he plans to kidnap another girl.
214558	/m/01ff4d	King Solomon's Carpet	Ruth Rendell	1991-08-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Jarvis Stringer is a student of the London Tube and its history and of underground trains worldwide. In order to finance his hobby and be able to travel to distant lands to inspect the underground systems in other parts of the world, he lets rooms in an old disused school building he has inherited which is close to the tube tracks in West Hampstead (see Jubilee Line). There, a group of misfits and weirdos, including a squatter, gather whose dreams of the good life have time and again been shattered as they are constantly victimized by society. There is 24 year-old Alice, an aspiring musician who leaves her husband and new-born baby only to end up busking in various stations in central London. There is Tom, who, after an accident, drops out of music school and is reduced to busking as well but who dreams of one day starting his own business. There is unemployed Tina, whose promiscuity landed her with two children whom she does not take care of in the way her mother thinks she ought to. There is Jed, who volunteers as a vigilante and who, disappointed by humans, lavishes all his love on the hawk he has acquired and which he keeps in the house. And there is Axel, an enigmatic man who regularly travels on the tube in the company of a man disguised as a bear and who is planning something illegal. Cecilia and Daphne, two old ladies living in the neighbourhood, serve as a foil to this ill-assorted group. It is Cecilia in particular who does not understand how young people such as her daughter Tina can be utterly devoid of morals. She is shocked to learn that her 10 year-old grandson enjoys riding on the roof of cars as they go through deep-level tunnels. While travelling on the tube herself, her handbag containing her credit cards is stolen, and she suffers a stroke in one of the packed cars. The novel is interspersed with extracts from Jarvis Stringer's (fictional) book on the London Underground.
214688	/m/01ffj1	Uncle and his Detective				 The story begins with the arrival not of a detective, but of disaster: Badfort is for sale, but when Uncle decides to buy it, demolish it, and build a pleasantly appointed park on the site, he is forestalled. Beaver Hateman has sold it cheaply to someone on the condition that he, Hateman, is allowed to stay on as a paying guest. Forgetting that the man who has bought Badfort is certain to regret the "bargain", Uncle tries to console himself by continuing his never-ending exploration of Homeward. He comes across the Art Gallery, reached along Quack Walk between two ponds crowded with noisy and aggressive ducks. En route he discovers the mysterious Crack House, which is the lair of a vicious and horribly squawking creature, half-bat, half-bird, called Batty. After visiting the Art Gallery and discovering that Batty is persecuting the curator and his family, Uncle has Batty expelled from Crack House and pursues a report of buried treasure there. Constant trips to Crack House have accustomed the ducks to passers-by, and Uncle's miserly friend Alonzo S. Whitebeard foolishly tries to take advantage of their docility: :This time the ducks were much quieter. They seemed so docile and friendly that Whitebeard captured one and tried to hide it under his beard, having visions of hot duck for supper. The duck nearly bit a piece out of his chest and Whitebeard flung it from him with a roar of pain. By now the Detective of the title has appeared: an elegant and astute fox called A. B. Fox, who proves worthy of his hire (five shillings or twenty-five pence a day) as the Badfort Crowd, sniffing treasure from afar, are constantly on the prowl. After many adventures, Uncle eventually tracks down the treasure, an unimaginably vast block of softly glowing gold (or dlog, as they code-name it), beats off a final attack from the Badfort Crowd, and enjoys the acclaim of the grateful inhabitants of Homeward when he decides to distribute the gold for the common good. But the celebrations are interrupted briefly with a reminder that the Badfort Crowd, though defeated, are far from down and out. A group of young badgers are singing a song in praise of Uncle when: :[A]n atrocious raucous voice away on the edge of the crowd interrupted them. 'See that pompous humbug Unc/On the platform raise his trunk.' It's a promise of more trouble in the future from the Badfort Crowd, who are once again in sole possession of their ramshackle and crumbling headquarters.
214912	/m/01fgm3	Uncle Cleans Up			{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In this story, Goodman the Cat joins Uncle's supporters. He is rescued from down-trodden and hungry service at Wizard Blenkinsop's and throws himself wholeheartedly into battle against Uncle's enemies, though never quite ridding himself of a propensity to steal fish and postage stamps. His fish-stealing gets him into trouble at Professor Gandleweaver's Fish-Frying Academy, and Uncle is forced to make a dignified exit as the crowd gathered to watch Gandleweaver's frying exhibition turns ugly: :The crowd began to hiss, and, as Uncle didn't want a row, he decided to withdraw and take action later. The moment he and his party got out of the crowd, they were forgotten. The Professor had started frying a conger eel in an enormous pan, and this is one of star turns; and nobody thinks about anything else when he does it. The incident is seized on by the Badfort Crowd and written up in the usual lying and distorted way in The Badfort News, one of the many provocations offered by the newspaper that eventually lead Uncle to take action against it. Visiting its offices, he finds a young badger literally chained to the printing-press, whom he rescues before visiting well-deserved punishment on Beaver Hateman by kicking him far and high into Gaby's Marsh, where "the crabs are" and "the barking conger eels". As before, Uncle Cleans Up ends in Uncle's capture by the Badfort Crowd before he escapes, this time with the help of his loyal friend the Old Monkey, and a great battle is fought in which the Badfort Crowd are completely defeated -- until next time. The last that is seen of Beaver Hateman is this: :Even for Uncle it was a great kick-up. Beaver Hateman was holding a huge lighted cigar in his hand, and the wind made it glow so that everyone could see in the sky what looked like a slowly soaring red light. He comes down in Gaby's Marsh again, and vows in an insolent letter delivered to Uncle as the book closes that he will take a revenge "so fearful that anyone who speaks of it will develop lockjaw".
215316	/m/01fjmk	Planet of the Apes	Pierre Boulle	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The main events of the book are placed in a frame story, in which Jinn and Phyllis, a couple out on a pleasure cruise in a spaceship, find a message in a bottle floating in space. The message inside the bottle is the testimony of a man, Ulysse Mérou. Ulysse explains that he was a friend of Professor Antelle, a genius scientist on Earth, who invented a spaceship that could travel at nearly the speed of light. In 2500, Ulysse, the professor, and a physicist named Arthur Levain flew off in this ship to explore outer space. They traveled to the nearest star system that the professor theorized might be capable of life, the red sun Betelgeuse, which would take them about 350 years to reach. Because of time dilation, however, the trip seems to the travelers only to last two years. They arrive at the distant planetary system and find that it contains an Earth-like planet, which they name Soror (Latin for sister). They land and discover that they can breathe the air, drink the water, and eat the local vegetation. They get out and go swim in a lake, until they see a young woman on a cliff. The young woman is frightened by their traveling companion, a young chimpanzee named Hector, and so she kills him. They encounter other human beings on the planet as well, although these others act as primitively as chimpanzees and destroy the clothing of the three astronauts. They are captured by the primitive humans and stay with them for a few hours. At the end of this time, they are startled to see a hunting party in the forest, consisting of gorillas and chimpanzees using guns and machines. The apes wear human clothing identical to that of 20th-century Earth, except that they wear gloves instead of shoes on their prehensile feet. The hunting party shoots several of the humans for sport, including Levain, and capture others, including Ulysse. Ulysse is taken to the apes' city, which looks exactly the same as a human city from 20th-century Earth, except that some smaller furniture exists for the use of the chimpanzees. While most of the humans captured by the hunting party are sold for manual labor, Ulysse is sent to a research facility. There, the apes perform experiments on the humans similar to Pavlov's conditioning experiments on dogs, and Ulysse proves his intelligence by failing to be conditioned, and by speaking and drawing geometrical figures. Ulysse is adopted by one of the researchers, Zira, a female chimpanzee, who teaches him the apes' language. He learns from her all about the ape planet. Eventually, he is freed from his cage, and meets Zira's fiancé, Cornélius, a respected young scientist. With Cornélius' help, he makes a speech in front of the ape President and numerous representatives, who grant him his liberty and is given specially tailored clothing. It is around this time that he discovers his companion Professor Antelle survived the hunt and was captured, being sent to the zoo and kept in captivity in a large cage with the primitive humans. However when the protagonist attempts to make contact and speak with the professor, it is revealed he has completely lost his mind and his faculties, degenerated and behaving just as the primitive humans do. Ulysse tours the city and learns about the apes' civilization and history. The apes have a very ancient society, but their origins are lost in time. Their technology and culture have progressed slowly through the centuries because each generation, for the most part, imitates those of the past. The society is divided between the violent gorillas, the pedantic and conservative orangutans, and the intellectual chimpanzees. Although Ulysse's patrons Zira and Cornélius are convinced of his intelligence, the society's leading orangutan scientists believe he is faking his understanding of language, because their philosophy will not allow the possibility of intelligent human beings. Ulysse falls in love with a primitive human female, Nova, whom he had met in the forest at the beginning of his visit to the planet. He impregnates her and thus proves that he is the same species as the primitive humans, which lowers his standing in the eyes of many of the apes. Their derision turns to fear with a discovery in a distant archaeological dig and an analysis of memory in some human brains. Evidence is uncovered that fills in the missing history of the apes. In the distant past, the planet was ruled by human beings who built a technological society and enslaved apes to perform their manual labor. Over time the humans became more and more dependent upon the apes, until eventually they became so lazy and degenerate that they were overthrown by their ape servants and fell into the primitive state in which our protagonist found them. While some of the apes reject this evidence, others (in particular, an old orangutan scientist, Dr. Zaius) take it as a sign that the humans are a threat and must be exterminated. Ulysse learns of this, and escapes from the planet with his wife and newborn son (Sirius), returning to Earth in the professor's spaceship. Ulysse lands on Earth more than 700 years after he had originally left it, just outside the city of Paris. Once outside the ship, he discovers that Earth is now ruled by intelligent apes just like the planet from which he has fled. He immediately leaves Earth in his ship, writes his story, places it in a bottle, and launches it into space for someone to find. It is at this point in the story that Jinn and Phyllis, the couple who found the bottle, are revealed to be chimpanzees. Jinn and Phyllis dismiss Ulysse's narrative, saying that a human would not have the intelligence to write such a story.
216311	/m/01fnzb	The Small House at Allington	Anthony Trollope	1864	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The Small House at Allington concerns the Dale family, who live in the "Small House", a dower house intended for the widowed mother (Dowager) of the owner of the estate. The landowner, in this instance, is the bachelor Squire of Allington, Christopher Dale. Dale's mother having died, he has allocated the Small House, rent free, to his widowed sister-in-law and her daughters Isabella ("Bell") and Lilian ("Lily"). Lily has for a long time been secretly loved by John Eames, a junior clerk at the Income Tax Office, while Bell is in love with the local doctor, James Crofts. The handsome and personable, somewhat mercenary Adolphus Crosbie is introduced into the circle by the squire's nephew, Bernard Dale. Adolphus rashly proposes marriage to portionless Lily, who accepts him, to the dismay of John Eames. Crosbie soon jilts her in favour of Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, whose family is in a position to further his career. Lily meets her misfortune with patience, and remains single, continuing to reject Eames, though retaining his faithful friendship. Bell marries Dr Crofts, after refusing an offer of marriage from her cousin Bernard. As with all of Trollope's novels, this one contains many sub-plots and numerous minor characters. Plantagenet Palliser (of the "Pallisers" series) makes his first appearance, as he contemplates a dalliance with Griselda Grantly, the now-married Lady Dumbello, daughter of the Archdeacon introduced earlier in the Chronicles of Barsetshire.
216750	/m/01fqzc	Framley Parsonage	Anthony Trollope	1861	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The hero of Framley Parsonage, Mark Robarts, is a young vicar, newly arrived in the village of Framley in Barsetshire. The living has come into his hands through Lady Lufton, the mother of his childhood friend Ludovic, Lord Lufton. Mark has ambitions to further his career and begins to seek connections in the county's high society. He is soon preyed upon by local Member of Parliament Mr Sowerby to guarantee a substantial loan, which Mark in a moment of weakness agrees to, even though he does not have the means and knows Sowerby to be a notorious debtor. The consequences of this blunder play a major role in the plot, with Mark eventually being publicly humiliated when bailiffs begin to confiscate the Robarts' furniture. At the last moment, Lord Lufton forces a loan on the reluctant Mark. Another plot line deals with the romance between Mark's sister Lucy and Lord Lufton. The couple are deeply in love and the young man proposes, but Lady Lufton is against the marriage. She would prefer that her son instead choose the coldly beautiful Griselda Grantly, daughter of Archdeacon Grantly, and fears that Lucy is too "insignificant" for such a high honour. Lucy herself recognizes the great gulf between their social positions and declines. When Lord Lufton persists, she agrees only on condition that Lady Lufton ask her to accept her son. Lucy's conduct and charity (especially towards the family of poor curate Josiah Crawley) weaken her ladyship's resolve. In addition, Griselda becomes engaged to Lord Dumbello. But it is the determination of Lord Lufton that in the end vanquishes the doting mother. The book ends with Lucy and Ludovic's marriage as well as three other marriages of minor characters. Two of these involve the daughters of Bishop Proudie and Archdeacon Grantly. The rivalry between Mrs Proudie and Mrs Grantly over their matrimonial ambitions forms a significant comic subplot, with the latter triumphant. The other marriage is that of the outspoken heiress, Martha Dunstable, to Doctor Thorne, the eponymous hero of the preceding novel in the series.
216924	/m/01frw1	Go Ask Alice	Beatrice Sparks	1971-03-05		 An unnamed 15-year-old begins keeping a diary. With a sensitive, observant style, she records her thoughts and concerns about issues such as crushes, weight loss, sexuality, social acceptance, and difficulty relating to her parents. Her father, a college professor, accepts a teaching position at a new college. The diarist is not optimistic about the move. After the move the diarist feels like an outcast at the new school, with no friends. She then meets Beth and they become best friends. When Beth leaves for summer camp the diarist returns to her hometown to stay with her grandparents. She reunites with an old school acquaintance, Jill. Jill is impressed by the diarist's move to a larger town, and invites her to a party. At the party, glasses of soda—some of which are laced with LSD—are served. The diarist unwittingly ingests LSD and has an intense and pleasurable drug trip. Over the following days the diarist continues friendships with the people from the party and willingly uses more drugs. She loses her virginity while on LSD. She becomes worried she may be pregnant, and her grandfather has a small heart attack. These events and the tremendous amount of guilt she feels begin to overwhelm her. She begins to take sleeping pills stolen from her grandparents. On returning home she receives sleeping pills from her doctor. When those are not enough she demands powerful tranquilizers from her doctor. The friendship with Beth ends as both girls have moved in new directions. The diarist meets a hip girl, Chris, when she shops at a local boutique. The diarist and Chris become fast friends, using drugs frequently. They date college boys Richie and Ted who deal drugs. They begin selling drugs for the boyfriends, passing back all the money made. One day they find the boys stoned and engaging in a sexual act. Realizing Richie and Ted were using them to make money, the girls turn them in to the police and flee to San Francisco. They vow to stay away from drugs. Chris secures a job in a boutique with a glamorous older woman, Shelia. The diarist gets a job with a custom jeweler whom she sees as a father figure. Shelia invites the girls to lavish parties where they resume taking drugs. One night Shelia and her new boyfriend introduce the girls to heroin and rape them while they are stoned. The diarist and Chris, traumatized, move to Berkeley where they open a jewelry shop. It is a small success, but the diarist misses her family. Tired of the shop, the girls return home for a happy Christmas. Since being back home the diarist finds extreme social pressures and hostility from her former friends from the drug scene. She and her family are threatened and shunned at times. Chris and the diarist try to stay away from drugs but their resolve lapses. The diarist gets high one night and runs away. She drifts through homelessness, prostitution, hitchhiking, and homeless shelters, before a priest reunites her with her family. She returns home but she is drugged against her will, has a bad trip, and is sent to an insane asylum where she bonds with a younger girl named Babbie. Chris escapes the problems when her family moves to a new town. The diarist finally is free of drugs. She becomes romantically involved with a student from her father's college, Joel. Relationships with her family are improving, as are friendships with some new kids in town. She is worried about starting school again, but feels stronger with the support of her new friends and Joel. In an optimistic mood the diarist decides she no longer needs a diary; now she can communicate with her family and friends. The epilogue states that the subject of the book died three weeks after the final entry. The diarist was found dead in her home by her parents, either by an accidental or premeditated overdose.
217046	/m/01fsfy	The Three Musketeers	Alexandre Dumas	1844	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The poor d'Artagnan travels to Paris to join the Musketeers. On the way, he encounters and alienates de Roquefort, one of the Cardinal Richelieu's spies. He also encounters Milady de Winter for the first time, who becomes relevant later. After entering Paris and speaking with Monsieur de Treville, he suffers misadventure and is challenged to a duel by each of three musketeers (Athos, Aramis and Porthos). Attacked by the Cardinal's guards, the four unite and escape. D'Artagnan and Constance Bonacieux (the wife of D'Artagnan's landlord and an aide to one of the Queen's closest advisors) help the French queen give a particular piece of jewelry to her paramour, the Duke of Buckingham. The Cardinal learns of this and coaxes the French king to hold a ball where the queen must wear the jewelry; its absence will reveal her infidelity. The four companions retrieve the jewelry from England. The Cardinal kidnaps Constance who is later rescued by the queen. D'Artagnan meets Milady de Winter and discovers she is a felon, the ex-wife of Athos and the widow of Count de Winter. The Cardinal recruits Milady to kill Buckingham, also granting her a hand-written pardon for the future killing of d'Artagnan. Athos learns of this, takes the pardon but is unable to warn Buckingham. He sends word to Lord de Winter that Milady is arriving; Lord de Winter arrests her on suspicion of killing Count de Winter, his brother. She seduces her guard, who then assassinates Lord Buckingham, and escapes to the monastery in France where the queen secreted Constance. Milady kills Constance. The four companions arrive and Athos identifies her as a multiple murderess. She is tried and beheaded. On the road, d'Artagnan is arrested. Taken before the Cardinal, d'Artagnan relates recent events and reveals the Cardinal's pardon. Impressed, the Cardinal offers him a blank musketeer officer's commission. D'Artagnan's friends refuse the commission, each retiring to a new life, telling him to take it himself, and so he takes it and later on he becomes a well known lieutenant. In 1625 d'Artagnan, a poor young nobleman, leaves his family in Gascony and travels to Paris, with the intention of joining the Musketeer of the Guard. However, en-route, at an inn in Meung-sur-Loire, d'Artagnan overhears an older man making jokes about his horse and, feeling insulted, demands to fight a duel with him. The older man's companions beat d'Artagnan unconscious with sticks and break his sword; his Letter of introduction to Monsieur de Tréville, the commander of the Musketeers, is stolen. D'Artagnan resolves to avenge himself upon the man, who is later revealed to be the Comte de Rochefort, an agent of Cardinal Richelieu, who is in Meung to pass orders from the Cardinal to Milady de Winter, another of his agents. In Paris, d'Artagnan visits de Tréville at the headquarters of the Musketeers, but the meeting is overshadowed by the loss of his letter and de Tréville refuses his application to join. From de Tréville's window, d'Artagnan sees Rochefort passing in the street below and rushes out of the building to confront him, but in doing so he separately causes offense to three of the Musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, who each demand satisfaction; D'Artagnan must duel each of them in turn that afternoon. When d'Artagnan prepares himself for the first of the three duels, he realises that his counterparts are friends. But just as he and Athos begin to fight, a number of Cardinal Richelieu's guards appear; they try to arrest the three musketeers and d'Artagnan for illegal dueling. Although outnumbered, the four men win the ensuing battle. In the course of events, d'Artagnan duels and seriously wounds Jussac, one of the Cardinal's officers and a renowned fighter. After hearing about this event, King Louis XIII appoints d'Artagnan to des Essarts' company of guards and gives him 40 pistoles (currency). D'Artagnan hires a servant, Planchet, finds lodgings, and, by decree of the King, joins Monsieur des Essart's company of Guards, a less prestigious regiment in which he must serve for two years before being considered for the Musketeers. Shortly after his landlord comes to see him to talk about his wife's kidnapping (she is released presently), he falls in love at first sight with his landlord's pretty young wife, Constance Bonacieux. She works for the Queen Consort of France, Anne of Austria, who is secretly conducting an affair with the Duke of Buckingham. The Queen has just received a gift from her husband Louis XIII and trying to console her lover she gives him the diamonds as a keepsake. Cardinal Richelieu, who tries to start a war between France and England, wants to reveal that. Quickly he organises an event and talks the King into demanding that his wife wear the diamonds at this opportunity. Constance doesn't succeed in sending her cowardly husband, who has been manipulated by Richelieu, to London, but d'Artagnan and his friends decide to help. On their mission they are frequently attacked by the cardinal's henchmen and therefore only d'Artagnan and Planchet arrive in London (although Planchet does not accompany d'Artagnan to see Buckingham). In the process of getting to England, d'Artagnan is compelled to assault and nearly kill the Comte de Wardes, a friend of the Cardinal's, cousin to de Rochefort, and Milady's lover. Although two of the diamonds have been stolen by Milady, the Duke of Buckingham is able to provide replacements while delaying the thief's return to Paris. D'Artagnan is thus able to return a complete set of jewels to Queen Anne just in time to save her façade of honour and receives from her a beautiful ring as an expression of her gratitude. Shortly afterwards, d'Artagnan attends a tryst with Madame Bonacieux, but she does not open her door. He notices signs of a struggle, and, asking about, discovers that de Rochefort and Monsieur Bonacieux, acting under the orders of the Cardinal, have assaulted and imprisoned her. D'Artagnan looks after his friends, who have just recovered from their injuries. He brings them back to Paris and meets Milady de Winter officially. He recognises her from Meung as one of the Cardinal's agents, but this does not deter him. D'Artagnan quickly develops a crush on the beautiful lady but learns from her handmaiden that she is in fact quite indifferent toward him. Later, though, after attending a tryst with her while pretending to be the Comte de Wardes (the lights are out),he also discovers a fleur-de-lis branded on Milady's shoulder, marking her as a felon. D'Artagnan eludes her attempt on his life and is ordered to the siege of La Rochelle. Milady fails continuously in killing d'Artagnan and he is informed that the Queen has managed to save Constance from the prison. In an inn the musketeers also overhear the Cardinal asking Milady to murder the Duke of Buckingham (who supports the Protestant rebels at La Rochelle). He even gives her a categorical pardon in written form, but Athos takes it from her. The next morning, Athos, in search of a quiet place to talk, makes a bet that he, d'Artagnan, Porthos and Aramis, and their servants, Grimaud, Planchet, Mosqueton, and Bazin, can hold the St. Gervais bastion (captured by des Essarts' company shortly beforehand) for an hour. They get away after an hour and a half, killing 22 Rochellese in total, and finding a way to warn Lord de Winter and the Duke of Buckingham. Milady is imprisoned on arrival in England but soon seduces her guard, Felton (a fictionalization of the real John Felton), and persuades him both to allow her escape and to kill Buckingham, which he does. On her return to France Milady hides in a convent, where she discovers Constance Bonacieux is also staying. The naive Constance clings to Milady, who sees a chance to get back at d'Artagnan who has crossed her plans with his friends more than once, and fatally poisons Constance before d'Artagnan can retrieve her. The Musketeers manage to find Milady before she can be rewarded and sheltered by Cardinal Richelieu. They come with an official executioner, put her to trial and sentence her to death. After her execution the four friends return to the siege of La Rochelle. They encounter the dodgy gentleman who has bothered d'Artagnan all the way. The Count of Rochefort arrests d'Artagnan and takes him straight to the Cardinal. When asked about Milady's fate, d'Artagnan can save himself by delivering the Cardinal's endorsement, which had been written for Milady and certifies that the deeds of the carrier are by all means approved by the Cardinal. This does not in and of itself protect him, as it only makes the Cardinal laugh. However, impressed with d'Artagnan's cheek and boldness, and secretly glad to be rid of the treacherous Milady, the Cardinal tears it up and writes a new order, giving the bearer a promotion to a lieutenant in de Treville's company of guards. The Cardinal states that anyone can take the order, but to keep in mind it was intended for d'Artagnan. He takes it to Athos, Porthos and Aramis in turn, but each refuses it, proclaiming d'Artagnan the more worthy man. The siege of La Rochelle ends in 1628, which also marks the end of the book. Aramis retires to a monastery, Porthos marries his wealthy mistress, and Athos serves in the Musketeers under D'Artagnan until 1631, when Athos retires to his mansion in the countryside. The now four Musketeers will meet again in Twenty Years After.
217142	/m/01fsq_	The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde	Robert Louis Stevenson	1886-01-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In London, Gabriel John Utterson, a prosecutor, is on his weekly walk with his relative Richard Enfield, who proceeds to tell him of an encounter he had seen some months ago while coming home late at night from Cavendish Place. The tale describes a sinister figure named Mr. Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and re-emerges to pay off her relatives with 10 pounds in gold and a cheque signed by respectable gentleman Dr. Henry Jekyll (a client and friend of Utterson's) for 90 pounds. Jekyll having recently and suddenly changed his will to make Hyde beneficiary, Utterson is disturbed and concerned about this development, and makes an effort to seek out Hyde. This is instilled by Utterson's fear that Hyde is blackmailing Dr. Henry Jekyll for his money. Upon finally managing to encounter Hyde, Utterson is amazed by how ugly the man seems, as if deformed; though Utterson cannot say why exactly how this is so or why it is, Hyde seems to provoke an instinctive feeling of revulsion in him. Much to Utterson's surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. After one of Jekyll's dinner parties, Utterson stays behind to discuss the matter of Hyde with Jekyll. Utterson notices Jekyll turning pale, yet he assures Utterson that everything involving Hyde is in order and to be left alone. A year passes uneventfully. One night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde beat a man to death with a heavy cane. The man is MP Sir Danvers Carew who was also a client of Utterson. The police contact Utterson, who suspects Hyde of the murder. He leads the officers to Hyde's apartment, feeling a sense of foreboding amid the eerie weather (the morning is dark and wreathed in fog). When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, but they find half of the cane (described as being made of a strong wood but broken due to the beating) left behind a door. It is revealed to have been given to Jekyll by Utterson. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde. Jekyll shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Utterson's clerk points out that Hyde's handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll's own. For a few months, Jekyll reverts to his former friendly and sociable manner, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Later, Jekyll suddenly begins to refuse visitors, and Dr Hastie Lanyon, a mutual acquaintance of Jekyll and Utterson, dies suddenly of shock after receiving information relating to Jekyll. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he not open it until after Jekyll's death or disappearance. Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll at a window of his laboratory; the three men begin to converse, but a look of horror suddenly comes over Jekyll's face, and he slams the window and disappears. Soon afterward, Jekyll's butler Mr. Poole visits Utterson in a state of desperation and explains that Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks. Utterson and Poole travel to Jekyll's house through empty, windswept, sinister streets; once there, they find the servants huddled together in fear. They go to see the laboratory where they hear that the voice coming from inside is not the voice of Jekyll and the footsteps are light not the heavy footsteps of the Doctor. After arguing for a time, the two of them resolve to break into Jekyll's laboratory. Inside, they find the body of Hyde wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead from suicide. They find also a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain the entire mystery. Utterson takes the document home, where first he reads Lanyon’s letter and then Jekyll's. The first reveals that Lanyon’s deterioration and eventual death were caused by the shock of seeing Mr. Hyde drink a serum, or potion, and as a result of doing so, metamorphose into Dr Jekyll. The second letter explains that Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a creature free of conscience, this being Mr Hyde. The transformation was incomplete, however, in that it created a second, evil identity, but did not make the first identity purely good. At first, Jekyll reports, he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion. At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. One night, however, the urge gripped him too strongly, and after the transformation he immediately rushed out and violently killed Sir Danvers Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations, and for a time he proved successful by engaging in philanthropic work. At a park, he considers how good a person he has become as a result of his deeds (in comparison to others), believing himself redeemed. However, before he completes his line of thought, he looks down at his hands and realizes that he has suddenly once again become Mr Hyde. This was the first time that an involuntary metamorphosis had happened in waking hours. Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed Lanyon's help to get his potions and become Jekyll again; when he undertook the transformation in Lanyon's presence, the shock of the sight instigated Lanyon's deterioration and death. Meanwhile, Jekyll returned to his home, only to find himself ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increased in frequency and necessitated even larger doses of potion in order to reverse themselves. It was the onset of one of these spontaneous metamorphoses that caused Jekyll to slam his laboratory window shut in the middle of his conversation with Enfield and Utterson. Eventually, the stock of ingredients from which Jekyll has been preparing the potion ran low, and subsequent batches prepared by Jekyll from renewed stocks of the ingredients failed to produce the transformation effected by the original potion. Jekyll speculates that the one essential ingredient that made the original potion work must have been a trace contaminant that was absent from the ingredients he had subsequently purchased. He assumes that subsequent supplies all lacked the essential ingredient that made the potion successful for his experiments. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll has slowly vanished in consequence. Jekyll writes that even as he composes his letter he knows that he will soon become Hyde permanently, and he wonders if Hyde will face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll notes that, in either case, the end of his letter marks the end of the life of Dr Jekyll. He ends the letter saying "I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end". With these words, both the document and the novel come to a close.
217429	/m/01fv3c	Shooting an Elephant	George Orwell	1936		 In Moulmein, the narrator—Orwell, writing in the first person—is a police officer during a period of intense anti-European sentiment. Although his intellectual sympathies lie with the Burmese, his official role makes him a symbol of the oppressive imperial power. As such, he is subjected to constant baiting and jeering by the local people. After receiving a call regarding a normally tame elephant's rampage, the narrator, armed with a .44 caliber Winchester rifle and riding on a pony, goes to the town where the elephant has been seen. Entering one of the poorest quarters, he receives conflicting reports and contemplates leaving, thinking the incident is a hoax. The narrator then sees a village woman chasing away children who are looking at the corpse of an Indian whom the elephant has trampled and killed. He sends an orderly to bring an elephant rifle and, followed by a group of roughly a few thousand people, heads toward the paddy field where the elephant has rested in its tracks. Although he does not want to kill the elephant, the narrator feels pressured by the demand of the crowd for the act to be carried out. After inquiring as to the elephant's behaviour and delaying for some time, he shoots the elephant multiple times, but is unable to kill it. The narrator then leaves the beast, unable to be in its presence as it continues to suffer. He later learns that it was stripped, nearly to the bone, within hours. His elderly colleagues agree that killing the elephant was the best thing to do, but the younger ones believe that it was worth more than the Indian it killed. The narrator then wonders if they'll ever understand that he did it to avoid looking a fool.
217444	/m/01fv5g	Eminent Victorians	Lytton Strachey		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference"}	 Each of the lives is very different from the others, although there are common threads - for example the recurrent appearance of William Ewart Gladstone and Arthur Hugh Clough. Each story is set against a specific background. In Cardinal Manning's story, the background is the creation of the Oxford Movement and the defection of an influential group of Church of England clergy to the Catholic Church. This aspect is covered in depth to explain the movement and its main protagonists, particularly Manning's hostile relationship with John Henry Newman. Strachey is critical of Manning's underhand manipulations in attempting to prevent Newman being made a Cardinal. The background features of Florence Nightingale's story are the machinations of the War Office, and the obtuseness of the military and politicians. Strachey depicts Florence Nightingale as an intense, driven woman who is both personally intolerable and admirable in her achievements. Dr Arnold is hailed as an exemplar who established the Public School system. Strachey describes this as an education based on chapel and the classics, with a prefectorial system to maintain order. He points out that it was not Arnold who was responsible for the obsession with sport, but does make it clear that Arnold was at fault in ignoring the sciences. Although Arnold was revered at the time, in retrospect Strachey sees his approach as very damaging. Strachey also mocks Arnold's efforts at moral improvement of the general public, for example his unsuccessful weekly newspaper. Gordon’s is the story of a maverick soldier and adventurer, whose original military achievements in China would have been forgotten. He was a mercenary who got into and out of conflicts on behalf of various dubious governments, but much of his experience was in the Sudan. The final disaster was when the Egyptian occupation of Sudan was almost completely overthrown by fundamentalist rebels, and someone was needed to retrieve the situation in Khartoum. The job fell to Gordon, whose instincts were to do anything but withdraw, and he became embroiled in a siege. The British government was put in an almost impossible dilemma, and when eventually they did send a relief expedition it arrived just two days too late. Strachey based Gordon’s story on his diaries and letters to give an account of a strong individual almost at odds with the world.
217769	/m/01fwy9	The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie	Muriel Spark	1961	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 1930s Edinburgh, six ten-year-old girls, Sandy, Rose, Mary, Jenny, Monica, and Eunice are assigned Miss Jean Brodie, who describes herself as being 'in her prime', as their teacher. Miss Brodie, determined that they shall receive an education in the original sense of the Latin verb educere, "to lead out", gives her students lessons about her personal love life and travels, promoting art history, classical studies, and fascism. Under her mentorship, these six girls whom Brodie singles out as the elite group among her students—known as the "Brodie set"—begin to stand out from the rest of the school. However in one of the novel's typical flash-forwards we learn that one of them will later betray Brodie, causing her to lose her teaching job, but that she will never learn which. In the Junior School, they meet the singing teacher, the short Mr Gordon Lowther; and the art master, the handsome, one-armed war veteran Mr Teddy Lloyd, a married Roman Catholic with six children. These two teachers form a love triangle with Miss Brodie, each loving her, while she loves only Mr Lloyd. However Miss Brodie never overtly acts on her love for Mr Lloyd, except once to exchange a kiss with him, witnessed by Monica. During a two week absence from school, Miss Brodie embarks on an affair with Mr Lowther on the grounds that a bachelor makes a more respectable paramour: she has renounced Mr Lloyd as he is married. At one point during these two years in the Junior School, Jenny is "accosted by a man joyfully exposing himself beside the Water of Leith". The police investigation of the exposure leads Sandy to imagine herself as part of a fictional police force seeking incriminating evidence in respect of Brodie and Mr Lowther. Once the girls are promoted to the Senior School (around age twelve) though now dispersed, they hold on to their identity as the Brodie set. Miss Brodie keeps in touch with them after school hours by inviting them over as she did when they were her pupils. All the while, the headmistress Miss Mackay tries to break them up and compile information gleaned from them into sufficient cause to fire Brodie. Miss Mackay has more than once suggested to Miss Brodie that she should seek employment at a 'progressive' school; Miss Brodie declines to move to what she describes as a 'crank' school. When two other teachers at the school, the Kerr sisters, take part-time employment as Mr Lowther's housekeepers, Miss Brodie tries to take over their duties. She sets about fattening him up with extravagant cooking. The girls, now thirteen, visit Miss Brodie in pairs at Mr Lowther's house, where all Brodie does is ask about Mr Lloyd in Mr Lowther's presence. At this point Mr Lloyd asks Rose and occasionally the other girls to pose for him as portrait subjects. Each face he paints ultimately resembles Miss Brodie, as her girls report to her in detail, and she thrills at the telling. One day when Sandy is visiting Mr Lloyd, he kisses her. Before the Brodie set turns sixteen, Miss Brodie tests her girls to discover which of them she can really trust, ultimately settling on Sandy as her confidante. Miss Brodie is obsessed with the notion that Rose, as the most beautiful of the Brodie set, should have an affair with Mr Lloyd in her place. She begins to neglect Mr Lowther, who ends up marrying Miss Lockhart, the science teacher. Another student, Joyce Emily, steps briefly into the picture, trying unsuccessfully to join the Brodie set. Miss Brodie takes her under her wing separately, encouraging her to run away to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the Nationalist side, which she does, only to be killed in an accident when the train she is travelling in is attacked. The original Brodie set, now seventeen and in their final year of school, begin to go their separate ways. Mary and Jenny leave before taking their exams, Mary to become a typist and Jenny to pursue a career in acting. Eunice becomes a nurse and Monica a scientist. Rose lands a handsome husband. Sandy, with a keen interest in psychology, is fascinated by Mr Lloyd's stubborn love, his painter's mind, and his religion. Sandy and Rose model for Mr Lloyd's paintings, Sandy knowing that Miss Brodie expects Rose to become sexually involved with Lloyd. Rose, however, is oblivious to the plan crafted for her and so Sandy, now eighteen and alone with Mr Lloyd in his house while his wife and children are on holiday, has an affair with him herself for five weeks during the summer. Over time, Sandy's interest in the man wanes while her interest in the mind that loves Jean Brodie grows. In the end, Sandy leaves him, adopts his Roman Catholic religion, and becomes a nun. Beforehand, however, she meets with the Miss Mackay and blatantly confesses to wanting to put a stop to Miss Brodie. She suggests that the headmistress could accuse Brodie of encouraging fascism, and this tactic succeeds. Not until her dying moment a year after the end of World War II is Miss Brodie able to imagine that it was her confidante, Sandy, who betrayed her. After her death however, Sandy, now called Sister Helena of the Transfiguration and author of The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, maintains that "it's only possible to betray where loyalty is due". One day when an enquiring young man visits Sandy at the convent because of her strange book on psychology, to ask about the main influences of her school years, "Were they literary or political or personal? Was it Calvinism?" Sandy says: "There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime."
218675	/m/01f_dq	Death in the Clouds	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Frustrated with the evident artificiality of the blowpipe, an item that could hardly have been used without being seen by another passenger, Poirot suggests that the means of delivering the dart may have been something else. Is it the flute of one passenger, or perhaps one of the ancient tubes carried by one of the two French archaeologists on board? Or maybe Lady Horbury's long cigarette holder? Poirot's focus is upon a wasp that has been seen in the compartment and which provided evidence for the original theory of the cause of death. Without explaining himself, he asks for a detailed list of the items in the possession of the passengers, and finds an incriminating clue: Norman Gale, a dentist who has seemingly never been in the area of the plane where the victim was killed, and has no apparent motive for committing the murder, had an empty matchbox and a lighter. He appears to be the killer, but how can he have committed the murder, when he was apparently in conversation with Jane Grey (the novel's effective heroine) throughout the flight? And why would he have committed the crime? And why were there two coffee spoons in the victim's saucer? Madame Giselle is suspected of using blackmail to ensure that her clients pay up, so any one of the passengers could either have owed her money or feared exposure. Equally, Madame Giselle had an estranged daughter who inherits her considerable estate: could one of the female passengers be this heiress? Much of the novel focuses on the pursuit of this line of enquiry, with the passengers coming under suspicion in turn. Special attention is given to Mr. Clancy, a detective novelist who enables Christie to include the same sort of parodies of her craft achieved in other novels through the character of Ariadne Oliver. The only other suspect who proves of material significance is, however, the Countess of Horbury, whose maid has been called into the compartment during the flight where she would have had the perfect opportunity to commit the crime. When this maid is revealed to be none other than the victim's heir, Anne Morisot, it seems that she must be the murderess. But the maid was only on the flight by accident, having been asked to be there at the last moment. Moreover, the death of Anne Morisot from poison on the boat-train to Boulogne leaves no clear suspect. Poirot reveals in the dénouement that Horbury is none other than Anne's new husband, and that his plans - almost certainly including the eventual murder of Anne herself - had been laid well in advance. He brought his dentist's jacket on board and - in the apparently innocuous moments that he had gone to the toilet - changed into this jacket in order to pose as a steward. Under the pretense of delivering a coffee spoon to Miss Giselle he had walked up the aisle and stabbed her with the poisoned thorn. As Poirot puts it: "No one notices a steward particularly." Gale's intention had been to frame the Countess, and the blowpipe that was found behind Poirot's seat would have been found behind hers had they not switched seats at the last moment. Not content with solving the mystery, Poirot also invites Mr. Clancy to the dénouement where he gleefully allows the novelist to see how a real-life Detective solves a case, to both men's great enjoyment. Finally, in a single stroke Poirot makes a romantic match by pairing off Jane Grey with the younger of the archaeologists.
218875	/m/01g097	The Mysterious Affair at Styles	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is set in England during World War I at Styles Court, an Essex country manor (also the setting of Curtain, Poirot's last case). Upon her husband's death, the wealthy widow, Emily Cavendish, inherited a life estate in Styles as well as the outright inheritance of the larger part of the late Mr. Cavendish's income. Mrs. Cavendish became Mrs. Inglethorp upon her recent remarriage to a much younger man, Alfred Inglethorp. Emily's two stepsons, John and Lawrence Cavendish, as well as John's wife Mary and several other people, also live at Styles. John Cavendish is the vested remainderman of Styles; that is, the property will pass to him automatically upon his stepmother's decease, as per his late father's will. The income left to Mrs Inglethorp by her late husband would be distributed as per Mrs. Inglethorp's own will. Late one night, the residents of Styles wake to find Emily Inglethorp dying of what proves to be strychnine poisoning. Lieutenant Hastings, a houseguest, enlists the help of his friend Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the nearby village, Styles St. Mary. Poirot pieces together events surrounding the murder. On the day she was killed, Emily Inglethorp was overheard arguing with someone, most likely her husband, Alfred, or her stepson, John. Afterwards, she seemed quite distressed and, apparently, made a new will — which no one can find. She ate little at dinner and retired early to her room with her document case. The case was later forced open by someone and a document removed. Alfred Inglethorp left Styles earlier in the evening and stayed overnight in the nearby village, so was not present when the poisoning occurred. Nobody can explain how or when the strychnine was administered to Mrs. Inglethorp. At first, Alfred is the prime suspect. He has the most to gain financially from his wife's death, and, since he is so much younger than Emily was, the Cavendishes already suspect him as a fortune hunter. Evelyn Howard, Emily's companion, seems to hate him most of all. His behaviour, too, is suspicious; he openly purchased strychnine in the village before Emily was poisoned, and although he denies it, he refuses to provide an alibi. The police are keen to arrest him, but Poirot intervenes by proving he could not have purchased the poison. Scotland Yard police later arrest Emily Inglethorp’s oldest stepson, John Cavendish. He inherits under the terms of her will, and there is evidence to suggest he also had obtained poison. Poirot clears Cavendish by proving it was, after all, Alfred Inglethorp who committed the crime, assisted by Evelyn Howard, who turns out to be his kissing cousin, not his enemy. The guilty pair poisoned Emily by adding a precipitating agent, bromide (obtained from Mrs Inglethorp's sleeping powder), to her regular evening medicine, causing its normally innocuous strychnine constituents to sink to the bottom of the bottle where they were finally consumed in a single, lethal dose. Their plan had been for Alfred Inglethorp to incriminate himself with false evidence, which could then be refuted at his trial. Once acquitted, due to double jeopardy, he could not be tried for the crime a second time should any genuine evidence against him be subsequently discovered, hence prompting Poirot to keep him out of prison when he realized that Alfred wanted to be arrested.
219019	/m/01g0sj	Sweep	Cate Tiernan	2001-01-29	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Morgan Rowlands is a high school student living in the picturesque town of Widow's Vale. Overall, Morgan is an ordinary girl who lives an ordinary lifestyle. However, her life becomes unsettled upon meeting Cal Blaire. With his angelic face, gold-colored eyes, perfect body, and olive skin, Cal quickly becomes the center of every girl’s admiration, this including Morgan and her best friend, Bree Warren. After gaining enough popularity with his air of charisma and good looks, Cal manages to gather over several dozens of students from his new school to a “homecoming party”. During the party, Cal reveals his Wiccan origins by inviting his peers to join him in a circle to celebrate Mabon, one of the Wiccan Sabbaths. When feelings of discomfort and surprise cause many of the guests to leave, both Bree and Morgan decide to stay for the circle. From that moment forward, Morgan begins showing a knack for Witchcraft, which sparks Cal's interest. However, as the chemistry between Cal and Morgan becomes more and more apparent, a rift between Bree and Morgan’s friendship emerges. Later, as the Samhain gathering comes to a close, Cal and his friends form a coven called Cirrus. During this circle, Morgan discovers that she is a blood witch; a person who is naturally born with magical powers. Upon learning that she is a blood witch, Morgan concludes that her parents are blood witches and confronts them. However, after her parents deny being witches, this leads Morgan to find out that she was adopted. She runs out of the house in a fierce rage finding comfort with Cal. From then on, Cal and Morgan's relationship develops. Cal tells Morgan they were meant to be together. He says he loves her, the rift between Morgan and Bree grows, and Morgan goes on a quest to find her origins. Due to Cal and Morgan's relationship, Bree and Raven, a member of Cirrus, announce their leaving of the coven to a different coven which is headed by Sky Eventide. Morgan, in the end, meets Sky along with Hunter Niall. At Cal's house. Morgan immediately feels extremely wary around Hunter and Sky upon meeting them. While trying to get away from them, Morgan accidentally stumbles upon Selene's hidden library, where she finds her mother's Book of Shadows. Flustered from seeing Sky and Hunter in Cal's home, Morgan, wanting to get away from them, leaves the room and discovers a door hidden in the hallway. When entering the room, Morgan realizes that it is Selene's study. While glimpsing the thousands of books that mark the walls, Morgan becomes taken over by a sensation. Unconsciously, she pulls out a book with no title. Flipping through the pages she realizes that what she held was her mother's Book of Shadows. Amidst her overwhelming emotions, Cal and his mother, Selene Belltower, enter, perplexed about how she was able to enter the secret room. At first feeling guilty, but seeing the Book of Shadows is rightfully hers, Morgan confidently opposes Selene, and without any conflict Selene gives the book to Morgan. Morgan returns home. From this point on Cal's respect and feelings begin to grow for Morgan. Tensions rise and things start to become unclear as little bits and pieces of information arise. Morgan discovers that she is Woodbane, Hunter is Cal's brother and he is Seeker for the International Council of Witches investigating Selene and Cal. Morgan finds her birth mother's tools beneath their old house in Meshomah Falls, by scrying in the fire she sees her birth mother Maeve Riordan pointing under the house, so she drives there with her best friend Robbie to retrieve it. Further tensions erupt on Morgan's birthday during her time with Cal when Hunter arrives. Cal and Hunter break into an argument which ends up becoming a chase. Hunter announces his reason for being there which is to fulfill his duty as Seeker. Cal runs into the woods with Hunter following behind and Morgan following. Hunter and Cal then fight, resulting to the event of Hunter placing a braigh - a spelled chain meant to hurt witches - on Cal so that he is helpless. Cal begs Morgan to save him, so Morgan throws the athame that Cal gave her for her birthday at Hunter, sending him over the edge of the cliff and into the river. Morgan is unsure of what to do and who to trust in Dark Magick. The secret of Hunter may bring Cal and herself together, but it is making it harder to trust anyone. But when Morgan finds out Hunter's alive, strange things start happening. At the end of the book Morgan chooses not to join Cal's mother's coven and is then dragged down to his house and is locked in his dark magical room and is stuck there. Cal's mother is after Morgan's tools, but since Morgan bound the tools to herself, Morgan is the only witch who can use them. Cal then by "solving" the problem sets the place Morgan is inside on fire. Morgan is trapped and willed to face the same death of her mother. Or until Morgan's friends Robbie and Bree crash through the door saving Morgan. In Dark Magick Morgan was betrayed by the first boy she ever loved (Cal). Now Morgan must attempt to get on with her life. Morgan begins to study with Hunter, and slowly begins to realize her feelings for him. But dark magick seems to be surrounding them and someone close is to blame. Hunter and Morgan slowly start to get closer throughout the book. Hunter suspects that the dark magick is being used by David Redstone, owner of Practical Magick, and Morgan's friend. Morgan does everything she can to try and prove it was not him, but in the end, Hunter is right. The day before David gets stripped of his powers, Morgan and Hunter share a passionate kiss, and after Hunter strips David of his powers, he gives Morgan the stone Morganite, and it shows that Morgan is the thing/person that Hunter desires most in his heart. Kithic and Cirrus merge and Morgan becomes aware of her feelings for Hunter. Throughout the book Morgan and Hunter's relationship develop with an occasional mishap. The two later find out that the severed brake lines and the sawed posts were the workings of Cal when he admits it upon their meeting at the old Methodist cemetery. Hunter and Cal at the cemetery prepare to fight when Morgan binds them with a spell. Keeping the binding spell on the two of them, she forces Hunter into her car and drives to Hunter's house where she releases him. If things couldn't get worse, Mary K., Morgan's sister is kidnapped by Selene. Morgan and Hunter go to Selene's and Cal's old house to battle it out with her. Just as Selene's magic was about to hit Morgan, Cal appears and steps in front of the dark magick, sacrificing himself for Morgan and ultimately proving to her that he had indeed renounced his mother's beliefs and that he really did love her. Selene falls to the ground, grieving over her son's dead body. While her guard is down, Hunter attempts to put the braigh around her wrists, but she is automatically enveloped by the darkness within her, causing the braigh to corrode. Just when all seems lost, the darkness exits her body, and the physical strain kills Selene. They leave the house, along with Mary K., who doesn't seem to recall any of the events that just occurred. Sky and another person, seemingly a member of the International Council of Witches, then arrive at the house and take Cal and Selene's body away. Morgan is undecided as to her feelings for Hunter. Morgan has a dream about a ritual sacrifice. The Witches Council thinks that it is a vision of the future. They suspect that it is a vision of an illegal sacrifice by a Woodbane coven, Amyranth, to obtain power. It is suspected that the sacrifice may in fact be a child of one of Amyranth's members. The council sends Hunter to New York, the place where the coven is suspected to operate, to investigate. Morgan goes with Hunter; however, she also wishes to discover more about her birth parents, something which can only be done in New York. At the invitation of Bree, they stay at the apartment of Bree's father. Robbie, Sky and Raven come along for the ride. At a New York disco they meet Killian who turns out to be Ciaran's son. It is then believed that Killian is the target of the Amyranth sacrifice. Ciaran meets Morgan in a shop about witchcraft, and he decides to sacrifice her. He sets a trap for her to steal her powers, but when he finds out Morgan is his daughter he helps Hunter to stop the ritual before it is too late. During the time that the ritual is taking place, Morgan realizes that Hunter is her "mùirn beatha dàn"(soul mate). In the end of the book, Morgan breaks up with Hunter because she finds out that she is Ciaran's daughter, one of the most evil witches of the age, and also her mother's "mùirn beatha dàn", but he killed her, so Morgan believes that she's like poison, and being around Hunter is going to get him killed because both parents are Woodbane, the evil clan of the Seven Great Clans. Although her mother has renounced evil, her father is "the Wiccan version of Hitler." Morgan has broken up with Hunter and has found out that Ciaran is her true birth father, making Killian her half-brother. The council of witches sends Eoife, an elderly witch, to Morgan to ask her for her assistance for the rescue of the Starlocket coven, which the International Council of Witches thinks the mysterious dark wave will strike next. Morgan has to get close to Killian to get closer to Ciaran so she called Killian to Widow's Vale and asked him to contact Ciaran. She feels apprehensive and hesitant about facing Ciaran, but at the same time, has a strange urge to hug him since she has finally found her true father. She refuses to hug the same man that killed her mother Maeve Riordan and Angus, her lover, however. Near the end of the book, she shape shifts into a wolf, with Ciaran, and learns his true name, which can control him. Morgan is faced with a choice between the people she loves and the powerful and seemingly dark magick her father can teach her. Morgan gets back together with Hunter, and during a family dinner with Hunter, Mary K finally finds out the truth about what Selene had done to her, and how Selene and Cal died. To make things worse, strange occurrences begin to happen in Morgan's presence. Books begin flying and light bulbs explode, and no one seems to know the cause - thus attributing the blame to Morgan. Morgan's school grades begin to slip and she finds herself having difficulty finding a balance between her school work and a life of Wicca. She is grounded because of it, meaning she cannot go to a circle. At the end, Hunter leaves. The tenth book in the Sweep series is not from Morgan's point of view. Instead the book is in Hunter's point of view. Hunter was in a search for his parents who have been missing since Hunter was a child. Hunter receives information about the whereabouts of his parents, which inevitably lead him to Canada. There he finds his father, Daniel Naill, and discovers that his mother died just before Yule, when he was training Morgan. Hunter soon discovers that his father is talking to his mother (who is dead) using a Bith Dearc which is the use of what is considered to be a form of dark magick, against the wishes of Hunter's mother. Hunter must attempt to stop his father from doing this, while investigating a witch by the name of Justine Courceau, a witch collecting the true names of other witches, on the order of the International Council of Witches. He ends up kissing her, and then is faced with the fact that he has to tell Morgan about it. Hunter brings his father back to Widows Vale Hunter and Morgan read the memoir of Rose MacEwan's which Hunter acquired while in Canada. Rose MacEwan is a Woodbane ancestor of Morgan and is the first person to have created a Dark Wave (a powerful piece of dark magick which can destroy entire covens). The story is written from Rose's point of view and follows her story as she falls in love, has her heart broken, and turns to dark magic as a means of revenge eventually creating the first Dark Wave, not actually realizing what she was doing at the time! This book switches perspectives between Morgan and Alisa Soto, who discovers that she is a half-witch with significant power. Morgan, Hunter, Daniel Niall and Alisa join forces to combat a Dark Wave which is heading for them and will destroy themselves and their friends and families. Daniel discovers a way to counteract the dark wave, however any full witch would die in the process. Alisa soon discovers that her half-witch abilities may be the key to defeating the Dark Wave and saving everyone who she knows. This book is entirely from Alisa Soto's perspective with the difficulties of finding out she is a blood witch and her weird powers and the added stress from her father and his pregnant girlfriend, Alisa's powers flood Hunter's house. After another heated confrontation with her father, Alisa runs away to Gloucester to meet her Uncle Sam. There she meets her mother's family and re-discovers with her roots with the help of family friend Charlie. She finds out the family have been plagued by mysterious mishaps that had been attributed to a curse her great-great-great-great grandmother placed on the family (having lost her mind.) This book is written from both Hunter and Morgan's points of view and begins tying up loose ends of the past 13 novels. Morgan begins sleep-walking in life-threatening situations and begins having visions of Cal, who is dead, trying to kill her. Meanwhile Hunter is faced with a decision of whether or not he wants to work for International Witches Council anymore. The two soon find themselves battling an enemy they thought was dead. The story ends with Morgan boarding a plane to Scotland to join a Wiccan school. Hunter gives her a silver Claddagh ring, as a symbol of his love and devotion to her. Unlike the previous installments of Sweep, this book is not written in first person. Morgan is now thirty-seven years old. Morgan's husband, Colm Byrne, whom she married in April of the same year that Hunter Niall died in a storm at sea, was killed in a car crash whilst on a business trip to London. Morgan has otherwise lived in peace working as a healer for the New Charter, and preparing to become the High Priestess of the reformed coven of Belwicket. Upon the actions of another coven, Ealltuinn, Morgan begins to realize that there are dark forces once again being built against her. As Morgan discovers that Hunter is still alive, she sets out to find him.
219616	/m/01g33q	Hypnerotomachia Poliphili	Francesco Colonna	1499		 The book begins with Poliphilo, who has spent a restless night because his beloved, Polia (literally "Many Things"), shunned him. Poliphilo is transported into a wild forest, where he gets lost, encounters dragons, wolves and maidens and a large variety of architecture, escapes, and falls asleep once more. He then awakens in a second dream, dreamed within the first. In the dream, he is taken by some nymphs to meet their queen, and there he is asked to declare his love for Polia, which he does. He is then directed by two nymphs to three gates. He chooses the third, and there he discovers his beloved. They are taken by some more nymphs to a temple to be engaged. Along the way they come across five triumphal processions celebrating the union of the lovers. Then they are taken to the island of Cythera by barge, with Cupid as the boatswain; there they see another triumphal procession celebrating their union. The narrative is interrupted, and a second voice takes over, as Polia describes his erotomachia from her own point of view. Poliphilo resumes his narrative after one-fifth of the book. Polia rejects Poliphilo, but Cupid appears to her in a vision and compels her to return and kiss Poliphilo, who has fallen into a deathlike swoon at her feet, back to life. Venus blesses their love, and the lovers are united at last. As Poliphilo is about to take Polia into his arms, Polia vanishes into thin air and Poliphilo wakes up. * Poliphilus * Polia
220116	/m/01g4_x	The Invincible	Stanisław Lem	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A very powerful and armed interstellar space ship called Invincible lands on the planet Regis III which seems uninhabited and bleak, to investigate the loss of its sister ship, Condor. During the investigation, the crew finds evidence of a form of quasi-life, born through evolution of autonomous, self-replicating machines, apparently left behind by an alien civilization that visited the planet a very long time ago. The evolution was controlled by "robot wars", and the only form that survived were swarms of minuscule, insect-like micromachines. Individually, or in small groups, they are quite harmless to humans and capable of only very simple behavior. However, when bothered, they can assemble into huge swarms displaying complex behavior arising from self-organization, and are able to defeat an intruder by a powerful surge of EMI. The members of the Condor's crew suffered a complete memory erasure as a consequence. Big clouds of "insects" are also able to travel at a high speed and even to climb to the top of troposphere. The angered crew attempts to fight the perceived enemy, but eventually recognizes the futility of their efforts in the most direct sense of the word. The robotic "fauna" has become part of the planet's ecology, and would require a disruption on planetary scale (such as a nuclear winter) to be destroyed. The novel turns into an analysis of the relationship between different life domains, and their place in the universe. In particular, it is an imaginary experiment to demonstrate that evolution may not necessarily lead to dominance by intellectually superior life forms. The plot also involves a philosophical dilemma, juxtaposing the values of humanity and the efficiency of mechanical insects. In the face of defeat and imminent withdrawal of the Invincible, Rohan, the spaceship's navigator, undertakes a trip into the 'enemy area' in search of 4 crew members who went missing in action — an attempt which he and captain Horpach see as certainly futile, but necessary for moral reasons. Rohan betakes himself into canyons covered by metallic "shrubs" and "insects" and finds the crewmen dead. He gathers some evidence and returns to the ship unharmed thanks to a simple anti-detection device and his calm and peaceful behaviour.
220272	/m/01g5nl	Mrs Dalloway	Virginia Woolf	1925-05-14	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about her choice of husband; she married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh and she "had not the option" to be with Sally Seton. Peter reintroduces these conflicts by paying a visit that morning. Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of World War I suffering from deferred traumatic stress, spends his day in the park with his Italian-born wife Lucrezia, where they are observed by Peter Walsh. Septimus is visited by frequent and indecipherable hallucinations, mostly concerning his dear friend Evans who died in the war. Later that day, after he is prescribed involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital, he commits suicide by jumping out of a window. Clarissa's party in the evening is a slow success. It is attended by most of the characters she has met in the book, including people from her past. She hears about Septimus' suicide at the party and gradually comes to admire the act of this stranger, which she considers an effort to preserve the purity of his happiness.
220354	/m/01g5tk	Principles of Economics		1871	{"/m/02rx5hc": "Treatise", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Menger advanced his theory that the marginal utility of goods, rather than the labor inputs that went into making them, is the source of their value. This marginalist theory solved the diamond-water paradox that had been puzzling classical economists: the fact that mankind finds diamonds to be far more valuable than water although water is far more important. Menger stressed uncertainty in the making of economic decisions, rather than relying on "homo economicus" or the rational man who was fully informed of all circumstances impinging on his decisions. This was a deviation from classical and neoclassical economic thought. Menger asserted that such perfect knowledge never exists, and that therefore all economic activity implies risk. The entrepreneurs' role was to collect and evaluate information and to act on those risks. Menger saw that time was the root of uncertainty within economics. As production takes time then producers have no certainty on the supply or demand for their product. Thus the price of the finished product bears no resemblance to the costs of production, since the two represent market conditions at very different points in time. The labour theory of value was the explanation that had been reached by Adam Smith among others, and the Marxist school of economics still relies on this theory. The Labour theory of value was that the value of an object was reliant on the labour that had gone into producing it, including any training or investment that supplemented the labour. According to Neo-Classical economists the Labour theory of value could not explain fluctuating values for different kinds of labour, nor did it explain how found goods could be more valuable than extracted goods. As the price of a commodity is the average cost of production, it includes the fact that a tiny proportion of commodities may be found, although finding goods is hardly typical of modern manufacturing processes. Marginal utility as the source of value meant that the perceived need for an object was seen to be dictating the value, on an individual rather than a general level. The implication was that the individual mind is the source of economic value. Although Menger accepted the marginal utility theory, he made deviations from the work of other neoclassical pioneers. Most importantly he fundamentally rejected the use of mathematical methods insisting that the function of economics was to investigate the essences rather than the specific quantities of economic phenomena.
221272	/m/01g985	The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945	Władysław Szpilman	1999	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/02gsv": "Personal journal"}	 Władysław Szpilman studied the piano in the early 1930s in Warsaw and Berlin. In Berlin, he was instructed by Leonid Kreutzer and, at the Berlin Academy of Arts, by Artur Schnabel. During his time at the academy he also studied composition with Franz Schreker. In 1933 he returned to Warsaw after Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party rose to power in Germany. Upon his return to Warsaw, Szpilman worked as a pianist for Polish Radio until the German invasion of Poland in 1939. He was forced to stop work at the station when the power station that kept Polish Radio running was destroyed by German bombs. He played Polish Radio’s last ever pre-war live recording (a Chopin recital) the day that the station went off the air. Only days after Warsaw’s surrender, German leaflets appeared, hung up on the wall of buildings. These leaflets, issued by the German commandant, promised Poles the protection and care of the German State. There was even a special section devoted to Jews, guaranteeing them that their rights, their property and their lives would be absolutely secure. At first, these proclamations seemed trustworthy, and opinion was rife that Germany’s invasion may have even been a good thing for Poland; it would restore order to Poland’s present state of chaos. But, soon after the taking of the city, popular feeling began to change. The first clumsily organised race raids, in which Jews were taken from the streets into private cars and tormented and abused, began almost immediately after peace had returned to the city. But the occurrence that first outraged the majority of Poles was the murder of a hundred innocent Polish citizens in December 1939. After this, Polish opinion turned strongly against the occupying army, especially the organisation responsible for the majority of civilian murders, the SS. Soon, decrees applying only to Jews began to be posted around the city. Jews had to hand real estate and valuables over to German officials and Jewish families were only permitted to own two thousand złoty each. The rest had to be deposited in a bank in a blocked account. Unsurprisingly, very few people handed their property over to the Germans willingly as a result of this decree. Szpilman’s family (he was living with his parents, his brother Henryk and his sisters Regina and Halina) were amongst those who did not. They hid their money in the window frame, an expensive gold watch under their cupboard and the watch’s chain beneath the fingerboard of Szpilman’s father’s violin. By 1940, many of the roads leading into the area set aside for the ghetto were being blocked off with walls. No reason was given for the construction work. Also in January and February 1940, the first decrees appeared ordering Jewish men and women each to do two years of labour in concentration camps. These years would serve to cure Jews of being “parasites on the healthy organism of the Aryan peoples.” But the threats of labour camps didn’t come into effect until May, when Germany took Paris. Now, having expanded the bounds of the Reich by a significant distance, the Nazis had time to spare to persecute the Jews. Deportation, robberies, murders and forced labour were stepped up significantly. To avoid the concentration camps, rich, intellectual Jews like Szpilman’s family and many of his acquaintances could pay to have poorer Jews deported in their place. These payments would be made to the Judenrat, the Jewish organisation that the Germans had put in charge of arranging the deportation. Most of the money went to supporting the high-cost livelihoods of those at the head of the council. But, for the Jews, the worst was yet to come. In The Pianist, Szpilman describes a newspaper article that appeared in October 1940:A little while later the only Warsaw newspaper published in Polish by the Germans provided an official comment on this subject: not only were the Jews social parasites, they also spread infection. They were not, said the report, to be shut up in a ghetto; even the word “ghetto” was not to be used. The Germans were too cultured and magnanimous a race, said the newspaper, to confine even parasites like the Jews to ghettos, a medieval remnant unworthy of the new order in Europe. Instead, there was to be a separate Jewish quarter of the city where only Jews lived, where they would enjoy total freedom, and where they could continue to practise their racial customs and culture. Purely for hygienic reasons, this quarter was to be surrounded by a wall so that typhus and other Jewish diseases could not spread to other parts of the city. And so the Warsaw Ghetto was formed. Szpilman’s family was lucky to already be living in the ghetto area when the plans were announced. Other families, living outside the boundaries, had to find new homes within the ghetto’s confines. They had been given just over a month’s warning by the notices and many families were forced to pay exorbitant amounts of money for tiny slums in the bad areas of the ghetto. On 15 November 1940, the gates of the ghetto were closed. However, this didn’t stop the smuggling trade into the “Jewish Quarter.” Expensive luxury goods as well as food and drink came into the ghetto, heaped in wagons and carts. Although these convoys were not strictly legal, the two men in charge of the business, Kon and Heller (who were in the service of the Gestapo and through them could run many such ventures), paid the guards at the ghetto gate to turn a blind eye at a prearranged time and allow the carts through. There were other, less organised types of smuggling that occurred regularly in the ghetto. Every afternoon (afternoon was the best time for smuggling as by then the police guarding the wall were tired and uninterested) carts would pass by the ghetto wall, a whistle would be heard and bags of staple food would be thrown into the ghetto. The poor inhabitants of the houses by the wall would scamper out of cover, grab the food and return to their lodgings. Szpilman played piano at an expensive café which pandered to the ghetto’s upper class, made up largely of smugglers and other war profiteers, and their wives or mistresses. On his way to or from work, Szpilman would sometimes pass by the wall during smuggling hours. In addition to the methods of smuggling mentioned previously, Szpilman observed many child smugglers at work. These smugglers were children who, of their own volition or on the instructions of family members or employers, sneaked out of the ghetto through gutters that ran from the Aryan side of the wall to the Jewish side. Children did the work as they were the only ones small enough to squeeze through without becoming stuck. Once they had gotten to the other side and received their bags of goods they would return to the ghetto through the gutters. In his memoir, Szpilman describes one of these forays:One day when I was walking along beside the wall I saw a childish smuggling operation that seemed to have reached a successful conclusion. The Jewish child still on the far side of the wall only needed to follow his goods back through the opening. His skinny little figure was already partly in view when he suddenly began screaming, and at the same time I heard the hoarse bellowing of a German on the other side of the wall. I ran to the child to help him squeeze through as quickly as possible, but in defiance of our efforts his hips stuck in the drain. I pulled at his little arms with all my might, while his screams becae increasingly desperate, and I could hear the heavy blows struck by the policeman on the other side of the wall. When I finally managed to pull the child through, he died. His spine had been shattered. As time went by, the area of the ghetto was slowly decreased until there was a small ghetto, made up mostly of intelligentsia and middle – upper class, and a large ghetto that held the rest of the Warsaw Jews. Szpilman and his family were fortunate to live in the small ghetto, which was less crowded and dangerous than the other. The large ghetto was reached from the small ghetto by crossing Chłodna Stree in the Aryan part of the city. Again, the experience of those in the bigger ghetto is best described by Szpilman:Dozens of beggars lay in wait for this brief moment of encounter with a prosperous citizen, mobbing him by pulling at his clothes, barring his way, begging, weeping, shouting, threatening. But it was foolish for anyone to feel sympathy and give a beggar something, for then the shouting would rise to a howl. That signal would bring more and more wretched figures streaming up from all sides, and the good Samaritan would find himself besieged, hemmed in by ragged apparitions spraying him with tubercular saliva, by children covered with oozing sores who were pushed into his path, by gesticulating stumps of arms, blinded eyes, toothless, stinking open mouths, all begging for mercy at this, the last moment of their lives, as if their end could be delayed only by instant support. Whenever he went into the large ghetto, Szpilman would visit a friend, Jehuda Zyskind, who worked as a smuggler, trader, driver or carrier when the need arose. He was also an enthusiastic Socialist. This interest was what eventually led to his and his family’s death: shot on the spot by Military Police officers after being caught sorting out a pile of socialist documents, illegally smuggled into the ghetto. But before his death, in the winter of 1942, Zyskind supplied Szpilman with the latest news from outside the ghetto, received via radio. After hearing this news and completing whatever other business he had in the large ghetto, Szpilman would head back to his house in the small ghetto. On his way, Szpilman would meet up with his brother, Henryk, who made a living by trading books in the street. He would help Henryk to carry the books back to the family house, where they would have lunch. Henryk, like Władysław, was cultured and well educated. Many of his friends advised him, at one time or another, to do as most young men of the intelligentsia and join the Jewish Ghetto Police, an organisation of Jews who worked under the SS, upholding their laws in the ghetto. Henryk, however, refused to work with “bandits”. Soon enough, Henryk’s decision was proved to have been a wise one. In May 1942, the Jewish Police began to carry out the task of “human-hunting” for the Germans, mistreating Jews almost as viciously as their German employers. Szpilman describes the Jewish Police:You could have said, perhaps, that they caught the Gestapo spirit. As soon as they put on their uniforms and police caps and picked up their rubber truncheons, their natures changed. Now their ultimate ambition was to be in close touch with the Gestapo, to be useful to Gestapo officers, parade down the street with them, show off their knowledge of the German language and vie with their masters in the harshness of their dealings with the Jewish population. During the “human-hunt” conducted by the Jewish Police, Henryk was picked up and arrested. As soon as he heard the news of his brother’s arrest, Szpilman went to the labour bureau building, determined to secure Henryk’s release. His only hope was that his popularity as a pianist would be enough to secure Henryk’s release and stop himself from being arrested as well, for none of his papers were in order. Still, Szpilman made his way to the building and, amongst a crowd of prisoners being herded into captivity, managed to find the deputy director of the labour bureau. After much effort, Szpilman managed to extract from him a promise that Henryk would be home by that night, which he was. The rest of the men who had been arrested during the sweep were taken to Treblinka, a German extermination camp, to test the new gas chambers and crematorium furnaces. On 22 July 1942, the resettlement plan was first put into action. Buildings, randomly selected from all areas of the Ghetto, were surrounded by German officers leading troops of Jewish Police. The inhabitants were called out, the building was searched and every single person removed from the building, including babies and old men and women, was loaded into wagons and taken to the Umschlagplatz, the assembly area. From there, Jews were loaded into trains and taken away. Notices posted around the city said that all Jews fit to work were going to the East to work in German factories. They would each be allowed 20 kilograms of luggage, jewelry, and provisions for two days. Only Jewish officials from the Judenräte or other social institutions were exempt from resettlement. In the hope of being allowed to stay in Warsaw if they were useful to the German community, Jews tried to find work at German firms that were recruiting within the ghetto. If they managed to find work, often by paying their employer to hire them, Jews would be issued with certificates of employment. They would pin notices bearing the name of the place where they were working onto their clothing. After six days searching and deal making, Szpilman managed to procure six work certificates, enough for his entire family. At this time, Henryk, Władysław and their father were given work sorting the stolen possessions of Jewish families at the collection centre near the Umschlagplatz. They and the rest of the family were allowed to move into the barracks for Jewish workers at the centre. But, on 16 August 1942, Szpilman’s luck ran out. On that day there was a selection carried out at the collection centre and only Henryk and Halina were passed as fit to work and allowed to stay. The rest of the family was taken to the Umschlagplatz. Soon after they arrived, Szpilman’s family was reunited. Henryk and Halina, working in the collection centre, had heard about the plight of the rest of the family and volunteered of their own will to go to the Umschlagplatz. Szpilman was horrified and angered by his siblings’ headstrong decision, and only accepted their presence after his appeal to the guards had failed to secure their release. The family sat together in the large open space that was the Umschlagplatz. Szpilman describes their last moments together before the train arrived:At one point a boy made his way through the crowd in our direction with a box of sweets on a string round his neck. He was selling them at ridiculous prices, although heaven knows what he thought he was going to do with the money. Scraping together the last of our small change, we bought a single cream caramel. Father divided it into six parts with his penknife. That was our last meal together. That night, at around six o’clock, the transports were filled, in preparation for leaving the Umschlagplatz. Szpilman describes his last moments with his family:By the time we had made our way to the train the first trucks were already full. People were standing in them pressed close to each other. SS men were still pushing with their rifle butts, although there were loud cries from inside and complaints about the lack of air. And indeed the smell of chlorine made breathing difficult, even some distance from the trucks. What went on in there if the floors had to be so heavily chlorinated? We had gone about halfway down the train when I suddenly heard someone shout, ‘Here! Here, Szpilman!’ A hand grabbed me by the collar, and I was flung back and out of the police cordon. Who dared do such a thing? I didn’t want to be parted from my family. I wanted to stay with them! My view was now of the closed ranks of the policemen’s backs. I threw myself against them, but they did not give way. Peering past the policemen’s heads I could see Mother and Regina, helped by Halina and Henryk, clambering into the trucks, while Father was looking around for me. “Papa!” I shouted. He saw me and took a couple of steps my way, but then hesitated and stopped. He was pale, and his legs trembled nervously. He tried to smile, helplessly, painfully, raised his hand and waved goodbye, as if I were setting out into life and he was already greeting me from beyond the grave. Then he turned and went towards the trucks. I flung myself at the policemen’s shoulders again with all my might. “Papa! Henryk! Halina!” I shouted like someone possessed, terrified to think that now, at the last vital moment, I might not get to them and we would be parted for ever. One of the policemen turned and looked angrily at me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Go on, save yourself!” Save myself? From what? In a flash I realized what awaited the people in the cattle trucks. My hair stood on end. I glanced behind me. I saw the open compound, the railway lines and platforms, and beyond them the streets. Driven by compulsive animal fear, I ran for the streets, slipped in among a column of Council workers just leaving the place, and got through the gate that way. Szpilman never saw any members of his family again. The train they were on took them to Treblinka. None of them survived the war. Szpilman got work to keep himself safe. His first job was as part of a column of workers the Germans were using to demolish the walls of the large ghetto, for now that most of the Jews there had been deported, it was being reclaimed by the rest of the city. Whilst doing this new work, Szpilman was permitted to go out into the Gentile side of Warsaw. If they could slip away from the wall, Szpilman and the other workers visited Polish food stalls and purchased such staples as potatoes and bread. These precious purchases could either be eaten by the buyer or taken into the ghetto, where their value skyrocketed. By eating some of their food and selling or trading the rest in the ghetto, the men working on the wall could feed themselves adequately and still raise enough money to repeat the exercise the next day. After his work on the wall Szpilman survived another selection in the ghetto and was sent to work on many different tasks, such as cleaning out the yard of the Jewish council building. Eventually, Szpilman was posted to a steady job as “storeroom manager.” In this position, Szpilman organised the stores at the SS accommodation, which his group was preparing. At around this time, the Germans in charge of Szpilman’s group decided to allow each man five kilograms of potatoes and a loaf of bread every day, to make them feel more secure under the Germans; fears of deportation had been running at especially high levels since the last selection. To get this food, the men were allowed to choose a representative to go into the city with a cart everyday and buy it for all of them. To do this they chose a young man known to Szpilman as “Majorek” (Little Major). Majorek acted not only to collect food, but as a link between the Jewish resistance in the ghetto and similar organisations outside. Hidden inside his bags of food every day, Majorek would bring weapons and ammunition into the ghetto to be passed on to the resistance by Szpilman and the other workers. But also, Majorek was a link to Szpilman’s Polish friends and acquaintances on the outside. Through Majorek, Szpilman managed to arrange his escape from the ghetto. On February 13, 1943, Szpilman slipped through the ghetto gate and met up with his friend Andrzej Bogucki on the other side. As soon as he saw Szpilman coming, Bogucki turned away and began to walk towards the hiding place they had arranged for him. Szpilman followed, careful not to reveal himself as Jewish (Szpilman had prominent Jewish features) by straying into the light of a street lamp while a German was passing. Szpilman only stayed in his first hiding place for a few days before he moved on. While he was hiding in the city, Szpilman had to move many times from flat to flat. Each time he would be provided with food by friends involved in the Polish resistance who, with one or two exceptions, came irregularly but as often as they were able. These months were long and boring for Szpilman. He passed his time by learning to cook elaborate meals silently and out of virtually nothing, by reading and by teaching himself English. During this entire period Szpilman lived in fear of capture by the Germans. If he were ever discovered and unable to escape, Szpilman planned to commit suicide so that he would be unable to compromise any of his helpers under questioning. During the months that Szpilman spent in hiding, he came extremely close to suicide on several occasions, but never had to carry out his plans. Szpilman continued to live in his various hiding places until August 1944. In August the Warsaw Uprising, the Polish underground's large-scale effort to fight the German occupiers, began, only weeks after the first Soviet shells had fallen on the city. As a result of this Soviet attack the German authorities had begun tentatively to evacuate the civilian population of the city, but there was still a strong military presence within Warsaw and this was what the Warsaw rebellion was aimed at. From the window of the flat in which he was hiding, Szpilman had a good vantage point from which to watch the beginnings of the rebellion. Hiding in a predominantly German area, however, Szpilman was not in a good position to go out and join the fighting: first he would need to get past several units of German soldiers who were holding the area against the main power of the rebellion, which was based in the city centre. So Szpilman stayed in his building. However, on August 12, 1944, the German search for the culprits behind the rebellion reached Szpilman’s building. It was surrounded by Ukrainian fascists and the inhabitants were ordered to evacuate before the building was destroyed. A tank fired a couple of shots into the building and then it was set alight. Szpilman, hiding in his flat on the fourth floor, could only hope that the flats on the first floor were the only ones that were burning and that he would be able to escape the flames by staying high. Within hours, however, his room began to fill with smoke and he began to experience the beginning effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. Now, Szpilman was resigned to dying. To quicken his passing, Szpilman decided to commit suicide. To do this, he planned on swallowing first sleeping pills and then a bottle of opium to finish himself off. But he didn’t manage to see his plans through to completion. As soon as he took the sleeping pills, which acted almost instantly on his empty stomach, Szpilman fell asleep. When he woke up, the fire was no longer burning as powerfully. All of the floors below Szpilman’s were burnt out to varying degrees, and Szpilman left the building to escape the poisonous smoke that filled all the rooms. He stopped and sat down just outside the building, leaning against a wall to conceal himself from the Germans on the road on the other side. He remained hidden behind the wall, recovering from the poison, until dark. Then he struck out across the road to an unfinished hospital building that had been evacuated already. He crossed the road on hands and knees, lying flat and pretending to be a corpse (of which there were many on the road) whenever a German unit came into sight on their way to or from fighting in the city centre. When he eventually reached the hospital, Szpilman collapsed onto the floor in the first available area and fell asleep. The next day, Szpilman explored the hospital thoroughly. To his dismay he found that it was full of items that the Germans would be intending to take away with them, meaning he would have to be careful travelling around the building in case a group should come in to loot. To avoid the patrols that occasionally swept the building, Szpilman hid in a lumber room, tucked in a remote corner of the hospital. Food and drink were scarce in the hospital, and for the first four or five days of his stay in the building, Szpilman couldn’t find anything. When, again, he went searching for food and drink, Szpilman managed to find some crusts of bread to eat and a fire bucket full of water. Even though the stinking water was covered in an iridescent film, Szpilman drank deeply, although he stopped after inadvertently swallowing a considerable amount of dead insects. On 30 August, Szpilman moved back into his old building, which by this time had entirely burnt out. Here, in larders and bathtubs (which, due to the ravages of the fire, were now open to the air) Szpilman found bread and rainwater, which kept him alive. During his time in this building the Warsaw Uprising was defeated and the evacuation of the civilian population was completed. By October 14 Szpilman and the German army were all but the only humans still living in Warsaw, which had been completely destroyed by the Germans. As November set in, so did winter. Living in the attic of the block of flats, with very little protection from the cold and the snow, Szpilman began to get extremely cold. As a result of the cold and the squalor, he eventually developed an insatiable craving for hot porridge. So, at great risk, Szpilman came down from the attic to find a working oven in one of the flats. He was still trying to get the stove lit when he was discovered by a German soldier. Szpilman describes the encounter: He was as alarmed as I was by this lonely encounter in the ruins, but he tried to seem threatening. He asked, in broken Polish, what I was doing here. I said I was living outside Warsaw now and had come back to fetch some of my things. In view of my appearance, this was a ridiculous explanation. The German pointed his gun at me and told me to follow him. I said I would, but my death would be on his conscience, and if he let me stay here I would give him half a litre of spirits. He expressed himself agreeable to this form of ransom, but made it very clear that he would be back, and then I would have to give him more strong liquor. As soon as I was alone I climbed quickly to the attic, pulled up the ladder and closed the trapdoor. Sure enough, he was back after quarter of an hour, but accompanied by several other soldiers and a non-commissioned officer. At the sound of their footsteps and voices I clambered up from the attic floor to the top of the intact piece of roof, which had a steep slope. I lay flat on my stomach with my feet braced against the gutter. If it had buckled or given way, I would have slipped to the roofing sheet and then fallen five floors to the street below. But the gutter held, and this new and indeed desperate idea for a hiding place meant that my life was saved once again. The Germans searched the whole building, piling up tables and chairs, and finally came up to my attic, but it did not occur to them to look on the roof. It must have seemed impossible for anyone to be lying there. They left empty-handed, cursing and calling me a number of names. From then on, Szpilman decided to stay hidden on the roof every day, only coming down at dusk to search for food. He planned to go to this extra measure only until the troop of Germans who knew of his hiding place had left the area. However, he was soon forced to change his plans drastically. Lying on the roof one day Szpilman suddenly heard a burst of firing near him. Turning, he saw that it was he that the bullets were aimed at. Two Germans, standing on the roof of the hospital, had discovered his latest hiding spot and had begun to shoot at him. Szpilman slithered, as fast as he could, off the roof and down through the trapdoor into the stairway. Then, as his last hiding place in the building had now been discovered, he hurried out of the building and into the expanse of burnt out buildings. Szpilman headed quickly away from his old building and soon found another, similar building that he could live in. It was the only multi-story building in the area and, as was now his custom, Szpilman made his way up to the attic. Some days later, Szpilman searched the building for food. This time his aim was to collect as much food as possible and take it all up to his attic so he wouldn’t have to come down so often and expose himself to danger. He found a kitchen and was raiding it intently when suddenly he was surprised by the voice of a German officer behind him. The officer asked him what he was doing. Szpilman said nothing, but sat down in despair by the larder door. The officer asked him his occupation and Szpilman answered that he was a pianist. On hearing this, the officer led him to a piano in the next room and instructed him to play. Szpilman describes the scene:I played Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor. The glassy, tinkling sound of the untuned strings rang through the empty flat and the stairway, floated through the ruins of the villa on the other side of the street and returned as a muted, melancholy echo. When I had finished, the silence seemed even gloomier and even more eerie than before. A cat mewed in a street somewhere. I heard a shot down below outside the building—a harsh, loud German noise. The officer looked at me in silence. After a while he sighed, and muttered, “All the same, you shouldn’t stay here. I’ll take you out of the city, to a village. You’ll be safer there.” I shook my head. “I can’t leave this place,” I said firmly. Only now did he seem to understand my real reason for hiding among the ruins. He started nervously. “You’re Jewish?” he asked “Yes.” He had been standing with his arms crossed over his chest; he now unfolded them and sat down in the armchair by the piano, as if this discovery called for lengthy reflection. “Yes, well,” he murmured, “in that case I see you really can’t leave.” The officer went with Szpilman to take a look at his hiding place. Inspecting the attic thoroughly, he found a loft above the attic that Szpilman hadn’t noticed as it was in a gloomy area of the roof. He helped Szpilman find a ladder amongst the apartments and helped him climb up into the loft. From then until his unit retreated from Warsaw, the German officer supplied Szpilman with food, water and encouraging news of the Soviet advance. The officer’s unit left during the first half of December, 1944. The officer left Szpilman with food and drink and with a German Army great coat, so he would be warm while he foraged for food until the Soviets arrived. Szpilman had little to offer the officer by way of thanks, but told him that if he should ever need help, that he should ask for the pianist Szpilman of the Polish radio. The Soviets finally arrived on 15 January 1945. When the city was liberated, troops began to come in with civilians following after them, alone or in small groups. Szpilman, wishing to be friendly, came out of his hiding place and greeted one of these civilians, a woman carrying a bundle on her back. But, before he had finished speaking, the woman dropped her bundle, turned and fled, shouting that Szpilman was “A German!” Szpilman ran back inside his building. Looking out the window minutes later, Szpilman saw that his building had been surrounded by troops and that they were already making their way in via the cellars. So Szpilman came slowly down the stairs, shouting “Don’t shoot! I’m Polish!” A young Polish officer came up the stairs towards him, pointing his pistol and telling him to put his hands up. Again Szpilman said that he was Polish. The officer came and inspected him closer. He eventually agreed that Szpilman was Polish and lowered the pistol. After the war was over, Szpilman was visited by a violinist friend named Zygmunt Lednicki. Lednicki told Szpilman of a German officer he had met at a Soviet Prisoner of War camp on his way back from his wanderings after the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising. The officer, learning that he was a musician, had asked him if he knew Władysław Szpilman. Lednicki had said that he did, but before the German could tell him his name, the guards at the camp had asked Lednicki to move on and sat the German back down again with his fellows. When Szpilman and Lendicki returned to the place where the POW camp had been, it was no longer there. Although after this disappointment Szpilman did everything in his power to find the officer, it took him five years even to discover his name, Wilm Hosenfeld. From there Szpilman went to the government in an attempt to locate Hosenfeld and secure his release. But Hosenfeld and his unit, which was suspected of spying, had been moved to a POW camp at a secret location somewhere in Soviet Russia, and there was nothing that the Polish government could do. Hosenfeld died in captivity in 1952.
221479	/m/01gbbm	Sleeping Murder	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 "Let sleeping murder lie": this is the proverb (a variation on "Let sleeping dogs lie") which is not obeyed by twenty-one year old New Zealander Gwenda Reed (née Halliday), who has recently married and now comes to England to settle down there. She believes that her father took her directly from India to New Zealand when she was a two year-old girl and that she has never been in England before. While her husband Giles is still abroad on business, she drives around the countryside looking for a suitable house. She finds an old house in the small seaside resort of Dillmouth, in Devon, which instantly appeals to her, and she buys it. After moving in, Gwenda begins to believe that she must be psychic, as she seems to know things about the house which she could not possibly know: the location of a connecting door that had been walled over, the pattern of a previous wallpaper, a set of steps in the garden that are not where they should be, and so on. Becoming increasingly uneasy, she accepts an invitation to stay for a few days in London with Miss Marple's somewhat pretentious nephew Raymond West and his wife Joan (who appear also in other stories with Miss Marple). Miss Marple's interest is piqued when, at a performance of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Gwenda screams and flees the theatre — for no reason that even she understands — when she hears the actor speaking the famous line, "Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young." Gwenda tells Miss Marple later that as she heard those words, she felt she was looking down through the banisters at the dead, blue face of someone named Helen, strangled by a man uttering the same line. She insists that she does not know anyone named Helen, and she believes she is going mad. Miss Marple suggests that she may be remembering something she witnessed as a small child (looking through rather than over the banisters), and that it may have happened in the house she has just bought, despite her belief that she has never been in England before. The Reeds and Miss Marple do a bit of research, and they discover that Gwenda is not psychic at all, but in fact she did spend a year during early childhood in the house she was later to buy. Her young stepmother, Helen, disappeared, having presumably run off with a man. Her father, devastated by his wife's disappearance and convinced he murdered her, sent Gwenda to New Zealand to be raised by an aunt and died soon afterward in an asylum. The young couple realize that there may be an unsolved crime to investigate. Miss Marple, who first advises the young couple to "let sleeping murder lie", later suggests to her own doctor that he prescribe her some sea air, and she travels to Dillmouth. The investigation that now sets in is completely in the hands of amateurs: Giles and Gwenda Reed and Miss Marple. The police are absent, as it has not even been established that a crime has been committed; officially, Helen Halliday ran off with one of her lovers and either died sometime later or made a clean break with her brother and never contacted anyone at home. The amateur sleuths find two old gardeners who remember the Halliday family and some of the former household staff. The young couple talk to many witnesses, including Dr Kennedy, Helen's much older half-brother, who seems still heartbroken over the disappearance of his wild younger sister. He presents two letters posted abroad which he says he got from his half-sister after her disappearance, and which seem to prove that she did not die that night. But the amateur detectives still believe that Gwenda's memory is fundamentally reliable, and that Helen was murdered. It is later revealed that Dr Kennedy forged the two letters. The three other men in Helen's life at the time of her disappearance were Walter Fane, a local lawyer; JJ Afflick, a local tour guide; and Richard Erskine, who resides in the far north of England. It seems very likely to Giles and Gwenda that one of them must be the murderer: they were all "on the spot" when Helen disappeared eighteen years earlier. When Lily Kimble, who used to be in Halliday's employ, reads an advertisement, placed by Gwenda, seeking information about Helen, she senses there could be money in it; and after a second advertisement appears looking for her personally, she writes to Dr Kennedy asking for his advice. Kennedy interprets her letter to him as a blackmail attempt. He writes back to her, inviting her to see him at his house and including a train timetable and exact instructions on how to get to his house. He misdirects her to a deserted stretch of woodland, where he meets and strangles her. He then replaces his original letter with a fake one and is back at his house in time to "wait", together with Giles and Gwenda Reed, for her arrival. When Lily Kimble's body is found, the police start investigating. (When the police inspector sees Miss Marple he comments on a case of poison pen near Lymstock; thus Sleeping Murder is set after the happenings in The Moving Finger, which was published in 1942.) Now it dawns upon the Reeds that with a murderer still at large, their lives are in danger. This proves true: after Dr Kennedy unsuccessfully tries to poison them (it is Mrs Cocker, the cook, who takes a sip of the poisoned brandy instead and who consequently has to be hospitalised), Dr Kennedy tries to strangle Gwenda when she is alone in the house. But Miss Marple has foreseen this: she remained hidden in the garden, and when Gwenda screams she runs upstairs and disables Dr Kennedy by spraying soapy liquid into his eyes. Miss Marple explains that she believes that Helen was an ordinary, decent young woman, trying to escape from Kennedy, who was unhealthily and pathologically obsessed with her, and that the only evidence of her being "man-mad" came from him. He strangled her to prevent her moving to Norfolk in the east of England to live an ordinary, happy life away from him with her husband.
221714	/m/01gccd	Battle Royale	Koushun Takami	1999-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Battle Royale takes place in 1997 in an alternate timeline—Japan is a member region of a totalitarian state known as the . Under the guise of a "study trip", a group of students from in the fictional town of Shiroiwa, in Kagawa Prefecture, are gassed on a bus. They awaken in the Okishima Island School on Okishima, an isolated, evacuated island southwest of Shodoshima (modeled after the island of Ogijima). They learn that they have been placed in an event called the Program. Officially a military research project, it is a means of terrorizing the population, of creating such paranoia as to make organized insurgency impossible. The first Program was held in 1947. Fifty third-year junior high school classes are selected (prior to 1950, forty-seven classes were selected) annually to participate in the Program for research purposes. The students from a single class are isolated and are required to fight the other members of their class to the death. The Program ends when only one student remains, with that student being declared the winner and receiving a government funded pension. Their movements are tracked by metal collars, which contain tracking and listening devices; if any student should attempt to escape the Program, or enter declared forbidden zones (which are randomly selected at the hours of 12 and 6, both a.m. and p.m.), a bomb will be detonated in the collar, killing the wearer. If no one dies within any 24-hour period, all collars will be detonated simultaneously and there will be no winner. After being briefed about the Program, the students are issued survival packs that include a map, compass, food and water, and a random weapon or other item, which may be anything from a gun to a paper fan. During the briefing, two students (Fumiyo Fujiyoshi and Yoshitoki Kuninobu) anger the supervisor, Kinpatsu Sakamochi, who kills both. As the students are released onto the island, they each react differently to their predicament; beautiful delinquent Mitsuko Souma murders those who stand in her way using deception, Hiroki Sugimura attempts to find his best friend and his secret love, Kazuo Kiriyama attempts to win the game by any means necessary (stemming from his lack of ability to feel human emotion due to a partial lobotomy caused by a car crash while in utero) and Shinji Mimura makes an attempt to escape with his best friend, class clown Yutaka Seto. In the end, four students remain: protagonist Shuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa (the crush of Shuya's best friend), Shogo Kawada—a survivor of a previous instance of the Program—and antagonist Kazuo Kiriyama. Following a car chase and shoot-out between Kazuo and the main characters, Noriko kills Kazuo by shooting him, but to absolve the quiet and naturally good-natured Noriko of any guilt, Shogo then shoots Kazuo, claims he is in fact responsible for Kazuo's death, and then takes his two partners to a hill. After telling Shuya and Noriko that he will kill them, Shogo shoots in the air twice, faking their deaths for the microphones planted on the collars. He then dismantles the collars using information he had previously hacked into the government servers to obtain. Shogo boards the winner's ship, as do Shuya and Noriko, covertly, a short while later. On the ship, Shogo kills Sakamochi and a soldier, while Shuya kills the other soldiers on board. Shogo tells Shuya how to escape, succumbs to his wound from the battle with Kiriyama and dies. The two remaining students return to the mainland and attempt to travel to find a clinic belonging to a friend of Shogo's father. From there, they make plans to escape to the U.S., facing an uncertain future as they run from the authorities who have spotted them as they try to board a train.
221840	/m/01gcw4	Crooked House	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Three generations of the Leonides family live together under wealthy patriarch Aristide. His first wife died; her sister Edith has cared for the household since then. Second wife indolent Brenda, decades his junior, exchanges love letters with grandchildren's tutor. After Aristide is poisoned by his own eye medicine (eserine), his granddaughter Sophia tells narrator and fiancé Charles Hayward that they cannot marry until the killer is apprehended. Charles' father "The Old Man" is the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, so Charles investigates from the inside along with assigned detective, Chief Inspector Taverner. When sly Josephine suffers attack and Nanny is poisoned by hot chocolate after Brenda and the tutor are arrested, the danger escalates to a surprise finish.
222975	/m/01gjjz	Joseph Andrews	Henry Fielding	1742	{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 The novel begins with the affable, intrusive narrator outlining the nature of our hero. Joseph Andrews is the brother of Richardson’s Pamela and is of the same rustic parentage and patchy ancestry. At the age of ten years he found himself tending to animals as an apprentice to Sir Thomas Booby. It was in proving his worth as a horseman that he first caught the eye of Sir Thomas’s wife, Lady Booby, who employed him (now seventeen) as her footman. After the death of Sir Thomas, Joseph finds that his Lady’s affections have redoubled as she offers herself to him in her chamber while on a trip to London. In a scene analogous to many of Pamela’s refusals of Mr B in Richardson’s novel, however, Lady Booby finds that Joseph’s Christian commitment to chastity before marriage is unwavering. After suffering the Lady’s fury, Joseph dispatches a letter to his sister very much typical of Pamela’s anguished missives in her own novel. The Lady calls him once again to her chamber and makes one last withering attempt at seduction before dismissing him from both his job and his lodgings. With Joseph setting out from London by moonlight, the narrator introduces the reader to the heroine of the novel, Fanny Goodwill. A poor illiterate girl of ‘extraordinary beauty’ (I, xi) now living with a farmer close to Lady Booby’s parish, she and Joseph had grown ever closer since their childhood, before their local parson and mentor, Abraham Adams, recommended that they postpone marriage until they have the means to live comfortably. On his way to see Fanny, Joseph is mugged and laid up in a nearby inn where, by dint of circumstance, he is reconciled with Adams, who is on his way to London to sell three volumes of his sermons. The thief, too, is found and brought to the inn (only to escape later that night), and Joseph is reunited with his possessions. Adams and Joseph catch up with each other, and the parson, in spite of his own poverty, offers his last 9s 3½d to Joseph’s disposal. Joseph and Adams’ stay in the inn is capped by one of the many burlesque, slapstick digressions in the novel. Betty, the inn’s 21-year-old chambermaid, had taken a liking to Joseph since he arrived; a liking doomed to inevitable disappointment by Joseph’s constancy to Fanny. The landlord, Mr Tow-wouse, had always admired Betty and saw this disappointment as an opportunity to take advantage. Locked in an embrace, they are discovered by the choleric Mrs Tow-wouse, who chases the maid through the house before Adams is forced to restrain her. With the landlord promising not to transgress again, his lady allows him to make his peace at the cost of ‘quietly and contentedly bearing to be reminded of his transgressions, as a kind of penance, once or twice a day, during the residue of his life’ (I, xviii). During his stay in the inn, Adams’ hopes for his sermons were mocked in a discussion with a travelling bookseller and another parson. Nevertheless, Adams remains resolved to continue his journey to London until it is revealed that his wife, deciding that he would be more in need of shirts than sermons on his journey, has neglected to pack them. The pair thus decide to return to the parson’s parish: Joseph in search of Fanny, and Adams in search of his sermons. With Joseph following on horseback, Adams finds himself sharing a stagecoach with an anonymous lady and Madam Slipslop, an admirer of Joseph’s and a servant of Lady Booby. When they pass the house of a teenage girl named Leonora, the anonymous lady is reminded of a story and begins one of the novel’s three interpolated tales, ‘The History of Leonora, or the Unfortunate Jilt’. The story of Leonora continues for a number of chapters, punctuated by the questions and interruptions of the other passengers. After stopping at an inn, Adams relinquishes his seat to Joseph and, forgetting his horse, embarks ahead on foot. Finding himself some time ahead of his friend, Adams rests by the side of the road where he becomes so engaged in conversation with a fellow traveller that he misses the stagecoach as it passes. As the night falls and Adams and the stranger discourse on courage and duty, a shriek is heard. The stranger, having seconds earlier lauded the virtues of bravery and chivalry, makes his excuses and flees the scene without turning back. Adams, however, rushes to the girl’s aid and after a mock-epic struggle knocks her attacker unconscious. In spite of Adams’ good intentions, he and the girl, who reveals herself to be none other than Fanny Goodwill (in search of Joseph after hearing of his mugging), find themselves accused of assault and robbery. After some comic litigious wrangling before the local magistrate, the pair are eventually released and depart shortly after midnight in search of Joseph. They do not have to walk far before a storm forces them into the same inn that Joseph and Slipslop have chosen for the night. Slipslop, her jealousy ignited by seeing the two lovers reunited, departs angrily. When Adams, Joseph and Fanny come to leave the following morning, they find their departure delayed by an inability to settle the bill, and, with Adams’ solicitations of a loan from the local parson and his wealthy parishioners failing, it falls on a local peddler to rescue the trio by loaning them his last 6s 6d. The solicitations of charity that Adams is forced to make, and the complications which surround their stay in the parish, bring him into contact with many local squires, gentlemen and parsons, and much of the latter portion of Book II is occupied with the discussions of literature, religion, philosophy and trade which result. The three depart the inn by night, and it is not long before Fanny needs to rest. With the party silent, they overhear approaching voices agree on ‘the murder of any one they meet’ (III, ii) and flee to a local house. Inviting them in, the owner, Mr Wilson, informs them that the gang of supposed murderers were in fact sheep-stealers, intent more on the killing of livestock than of Adams and his friends. The party being settled, Wilson begins the novel’s most lengthy interpolated tale by recounting his life story; a story which bears a notable resemblance to Fielding’s own young adulthood. At the age of 16, Wilson’s father died and left him a modest fortune. Finding himself the master of his own destiny, he left school and travelled to London where he soon acquainted himself with the dress, manners and reputation for womanising necessary to consider himself a ‘beau’. Wilson’s life in the town is a façade: he writes love-letters to himself, obtains his fine clothes on credit and is concerned more with being seen at the theatre than with watching the play. After two bad experiences with women, he is financially crippled and, much like Fielding himself, falls into the company of a group of Deists, freethinkers and gamblers. Finding himself in debt, he turns to the writing of plays and hack journalism to alleviate his financial burden (again, much like the author himself). He spends his last few pence on a lottery ticket but, with no reliable income, is soon forced to exchange it for food. While in jail for his debts, news reaches him that the ticket he gave away has won a £3,000 prize. His disappointment is short-lived, however, as the daughter of the winner hears of his plight, pays off his debts, and, after a brief courtship, agrees to become his wife. Wilson had found himself at the mercy of many of the social ills that Fielding had written about in his journalism: the over-saturated and abused literary market, the exploitative state lottery, and regressive laws which sanctioned imprisonment for small debts. Having seen the corrupting influence of wealth and the town, he retires with his new wife to the rural solitude in which Adams, Fanny and Joseph now find them. The only break in his contentment, and one which will turn out to be significant to the plot, was the kidnapping of his eldest son, whom he has not seen since. Wilson promises to visit Adams when he passes through his parish, and after another mock-epic battle on the road, this time with a party of hunting dogs, the trio proceed to the house of a local squire, where Fielding illustrates another contemporary social ill by having Adams subjected to a humiliating roasting. Enraged, the three depart to the nearest inn to find that, while at the squire’s house, they had been robbed of their last half-guinea. To compound their misery, the squire has Adams and Joseph accused of kidnapping Fanny, in order to have them detained while he orders the abduction of the girl himself. She is rescued in transit, however, by Lady Booby’s steward, Peter Pounce, and all four of them complete the remainder of the journey to Booby Hall together. On seeing Joseph arrive back in the parish, a jealous Lady Booby meanders through emotions as diverse as rage, pity, hatred, pride and love. The next morning Joseph and Fanny’s banns are published and the Lady turns her anger onto Parson Adams, who is accommodating Fanny at his house. Finding herself powerless either to stop the marriage or to expel them from the parish, she enlists the help of Lawyer Scout, who brings a spurious charge of larceny against Joseph and Fanny in order to prevent, or at least postpone, the wedding. Three days later, the Lady’s plans are foiled by the visit of her nephew, Mr Booby, and a surprise guest: Booby has married Pamela, granting Joseph a powerful new ally and brother-in-law. What is more, Booby is an acquaintance of the justice presiding over Joseph and Fanny’s trial, and instead of Bridewell, has them committed to his own custody. Knowing of his sister’s antipathy to the two lovers, Booby offers to reunite Joseph with his sister and take him and Fanny into his own parish and his own family. In a discourse with Joseph on stoicism and fatalism, Adams instructs his friend to submit to the will of God and control his passions, even in the face of overwhelming tragedy. In the kind of cruel juxtaposition usually reserved for Fielding’s less savoury characters, Adams is informed that his youngest son, Jacky, has drowned. After indulging his grief in a manner contrary to his lecture a few minutes previously, Adams is informed that the report was premature, and that his son had in fact been rescued by the same pedlar that loaned him his last few shillings in Book II. Lady Booby, in a last-ditch attempt to sabotage the marriage, brings a young beau named Didapper to Adams’ house to seduce Fanny. Fanny is unattracted to his bold attempts of courtship. Didapper is a little too bold in his approach and provokes Joseph into a fight. The Lady and the beau depart in disgust, but the pedlar, having seen the Lady, is compelled to relate a tale. The pedlar had met his wife while in the army, and she died young. While on her death bed, she confessed that she once stole an exquisitely beautiful baby girl from a family named Andrews, and sold her on to Sir Thomas Booby, thus raising the possibility that Fanny may in fact be Joseph’s sister. The company is shocked, but there is general relief that the crime of incest may have been narrowly averted. The following morning, Joseph and Pamela’s parents arrive, and, together with the pedlar and Adams, they piece together the question of Fanny’s parentage. The Andrews identify her as their lost daughter, but have a twist to add to the tale: when Fanny was an infant, she was indeed stolen from her parents, but the thieves left behind a sickly infant Joseph in return, who was raised as their own. It is immediately apparent that Joseph is the abovementioned kidnapped son of Wilson, and when Wilson arrives on his promised visit, he identifies Joseph by a birthmark on his chest. Joseph is now the son of a respected gentleman, Fanny an in-law of the Booby family, and the couple no longer suspected of being siblings. Two days later they are married by Adams in a humble ceremony, and the narrator, after bringing the story to a close, and in a disparaging allusion to Richardson, assures the reader that there will be no sequel.
223114	/m/01gj_c	Cunt				 Kelso, who has already published a number of books (for example novels entitled Desiring Machines in the Australian Bush and Fuck Your Mother Up the Arse, but also non-fiction), is in his thirties, several times divorced, a heavy drinker and, according to his own description, a "sex beast". As a writer, he says he has no intention whatsoever of using his imagination; rather, he wants to chronicle his present life, which in turn is fuelled by his most ambitious literary project so far, the completion of a trilogy entitled Countdown to Chaos. In order to be able to write the final part of his trilogy, Kelso wants to track down and have sex again with all the girls he "shagged" when he was in his teens—in reverse order. He always carries his laptop with him to be able to record each of his sexual encounters immediately after it has taken place. Although he says he wants to record all events exactly as they happened, he does embellish his story again and again. On his way through Europe -- England, Scotland, Austria, Finland and Estonia -- he has sex with all willing women and girls that cross his path, "asserting my inalienable right to freedom". Kelso is a "sex machine". He always has an erection, and never fails to please the woman or women he is with, even if he is drunk. They invariably enjoy multiple orgasms. Some of them want to have sex with Kelso because, they say, that way they are transformed into art and thus immortalized. Kelso is also into kinky sex. Although Kelso never commits any violent crimes in connection with his sexual exploits, violent death does play a role in Cunt. A maniac called Gary McMara, who likes to wear women's underwear and who accuses Kelso of conspiring with some radical political group (the "secret state"), follows Kelso to Finland, where McMara dies after he is thrown into an ice-cold lake by Kelso and subsequently warmed too quickly in a sauna. Amber, a transsexual and his publisher's new secretary, accompanies McMara to Finland and, standing under Kelso's window, accidentally shoots herself when she slips on a piece of ice. After Kelso has left Finland incognito (using his false passport) he meets his ex-wife Cherry, who is a cocaine and heroin addict (Kelso himself never takes drugs) and who dies of an overdose while Kelso is present. At the beginning of the novel Kelso has a chance meeting with Sandra Stone, the girl with whom he lost his virginity back when they were at school. At the end he goes back to Aldeburgh to embark on the final chapter of his trilogy. He wants to stab Sandra so that he has a spectacular ending to his book. For that reason he is carrying a knife in his trouser pocket. However, he suddenly realizes that he has always been in love with Sandra. The words "The first shall be last" suddenly occur to him, and he reinterprets them his way: Sandra is the last woman he will ever make love to. He turns to, and embraces, Jesus, marries Sandra, hopes that she will also become a believer one day, gives away his royalties to the church, takes a blue collar job and leads a simple and honest life. He wants to find a Christian publisher who is willing to bring out this journal as the account of a reformed sinner.
224500	/m/01gq2s	A Study in Scarlet	Arthur Conan Doyle		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins in 1881, where Dr. John Watson runs into an old friend, Stamford. Due to a shoulder injury sustained in the Anglo-Afghan War, Watson was forced to retire and is now looking for a place to live. Stamford mentions that an acquaintance of his, one Sherlock Holmes, is looking for someone to split the rent at a flat at 221B, Baker Street, but cautions about Holmes' eccentricities. Stamford takes Watson to the local hospital's lab where they find Holmes experimenting with a reagent for haemoglobin detection. Holmes explains its probable, inestimable usefulness in convicting criminals based on bloodstains. Then, upon shaking Watson's hand, deduces that the Dr. has seen military action but waves off the question of how he knows. Watson brooches the subject of their mutual flat-mate search. At Holmes' prompting, the two review their various shortcomings to make sure that they can accept living together. After seeing the rooms at 221B, they move in and grow accustomed to their new situation. Watson is amazed by Holmes, who has profound knowledge of chemistry and sensational literature, very precise but narrow knowledge of geology and botany; yet knows little about literature, astronomy, philosophy, and politics. Holmes also has multiple guests visiting him at different intervals during the day. After much speculation by Watson, Holmes reveals that he is a "consulting detective" and that the guests are clients. Facing Watson's doubts about some of his claims, Holmes casually deduces to Watson that one visitor, a messenger from Scotland Yard is also a retired Marine sergeant. When the man confirms this, Watson is astounded by Holmes' ability to notice details and assemble them. Holmes reads the telegram requesting consultation in a fresh murder case. He's reluctant to help because credit would go entirely to the officials. Watson urges him to reconsider so Holmes invites him to accompany him as he investigates the crime scene, an abandoned rural manor. Holmes observes the sidewalk and garden leading up to the house before he and Watson meet Inspectors Gregson and Lestrade. The four observe the crime scene, Holmes using a magnifying lens and tape measure. The male corpse, he's told, has been identified as Enoch Drebber. Blood has been found in the room but there is no mark on the body. They also learn from documents found on his person that he was in London with a friend, Joseph Stangerson. On one wall, written in blood, is "RACHE". Correcting an erroneous theory of Gregson's, Holmes remarks that it is the German word for "revenge." He goes on to deduce that the victim died from poison and supplies a description of the murderer: six feet tall, disproportionately small feet, florid complexion, square toed boots, and smoking a Trichinopoly cigar. His right-hand fingernails are long and he came in a cab whose horse had three old shoes and one new one. Holmes says "RACHE" was a ploy to fool police. Holmes listens to a constable's story about a drunken man loitering by the scene of the crime and informs him that the “drunk” was really the murderer revisiting the scene to collect a wedding ring clutched by the victim. Soon, Holmes and Watson visit the home of the constable who had first discovered the corpse, paying him a bit for disturbing his nocturnal sleep cycle. They get little information Holmes didn't already know, other than that a seemingly drunk loiterer had attempted to approach the crime scene. Holmes chastises the officer for not realizing that this was the murderer himself in disguise. They leave and Holmes explains that the murderer returned on realizing that he'd forgotten the wedding ring. Holmes dispatches some telegrams including an order for a newspaper notice about the ring. He also buys a facsimile of it. He guesses that the murderer, having already returned to the scene of the crime for it, would come to retrieve it. The advertisement is answered by an old woman who claims that the ring belongs to her daughter. Holmes gives her the duplicate, follows her, and returns to Watson with the story: she took a cab, he hopped onto the back of it, he found that she had vanished when it stopped. This leads Holmes to believe that it was the murderer's accomplice in disguise. A later day, Gregson visits Holmes and Watson, telling them that he has arrested a suspect. He had gone to Madame Charpentier's Boarding House where Drebber and Stangerson had stayed before the murder. He learned from her that Drebber, a drunk, had attempted to kiss Madame's daughter, Alice. She, in turn, evicted the two. Drebber, however, came back later that night and attempted to grab Alice, prompting her older brother to attack him. He attempted chased Drebber with a crop but claimed to have lost sight of him. Gregson has him in custody on this circumstantial evidence. Lestrade then arrives revealing that Stangerson has more recently been murdered. He had gone to interview Stangerson after learning where he had been rooming. His body was found dead near the hotel window, stabbed through the heart. Above his body was again written “RACHE”. The only things Stangerson had with him were a novel, a pipe, and a small box containing two pills. The pillpobx Lestrade still has with him. Holmes tests the pills on an old and sickly Scottish terrier in residence at Baker Street. The first pill produces no evident effect, the second kills the terrier. Holmes deduces that one was harmless and the other poison. Just at that moment, a very young street urchin named Wiggins arrives. He's the leader of the “Baker Street Irregulars”, a group of similar homeless children Holmes employs to help him occasionally. Wiggins states that he's summoned the cab Holmes wanted. Holmes sends him down to fetch the cabby, claiming to need help with his luggage. When the cab-man comes upstairs and bends for the trunk, Holmes handcuffs and restrains him. He then announces the captive cabby as Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Drebber and Stangerson. The story flashes back to the Utah Territory in 1847, where John Ferrier and a little girl named Lucy, the only survivors of a large party of pioneers, lie down near a boulder to die from dehydration and hunger. They are discovered, however, by a large party of Mormons led by Brigham Young. The Mormons rescue Ferrier and Lucy on the condition that they adopt and live under their faith. Ferrier, who has proven himself an able hunter, is given a generous land grant with which to build his farm after the party constructs Salt Lake City. Years later, a now-grown Lucy befriends and falls in love with a man named Jefferson Hope. Lucy and Hope become engaged to be married, scheduled after Hope's return from a three-month long journey for his job. However, Ferrier is visited by Young, who reveals that it is against the religion for Lucy to marry Hope, a non-Mormon. He states that Lucy should marry Joseph Stangerson or Enoch Drebber—both members of the Mormon Church's Council of Four—though Lucy may choose which one. Ferrier and Lucy are given a month to decide. Ferrier, who has sworn to never marry his daughter to a Mormon, immediately sends out word to Hope for help. When he is visited by Stangerson and Drebber, Ferrier is angered by their arguments over Lucy and throws them out. Every day, however, the number of days Ferrier has left to marry off Lucy is painted somewhere on his farm in the middle of the night. Hope finally arrives on the eve of the last day, and sneaks his love and her adoptive father out of their farm and away from Salt Lake City. However, while he is hunting for food, Hope returns to a horrific sight; a makeshift grave for the elder Ferrier. Lucy is nowhere to be seen. Determined to devote his life to revenge, Hope sneaks back into Salt Lake City, learning that Lucy was forcibly married to Drebber and that Stangerson murdered Ferrier. Lucy dies a month later from a broken heart; Drebber, who inherited Ferrier's farm, is indifferent to her death. Hope then breaks into Drebber's house the night before Lucy's funeral to kiss her body and remove her wedding ring. Swearing vengeance, Hope stalks the town, coming close to killing Drebber and Stangerson on numerous occasions. Hope begins to suffer from an aortic aneurysm, causing him to leave the mountains to earn money and recuperate. When he returns about a year later, he learns that Drebber and Stangerson have fled Salt Lake City out of fear for their lives. Hope searches the United States, eventually tracking them to Cleveland; the pair then flees to Europe, eventually landing in London. Returning to the main narrative, Hope willingly goes to a police station, where he finishes his story to Holmes, Watson, and the inspectors. In London, Hope became a cabby, and eventually found Drebber and Stangerson at the train station in Euston, about to depart to Liverpool. Having missed the first train, Drebber instructs Stangerson to wait for him at the hotel, and then returns to Madame Charpentier's house. He is attacked by her son, and after escaping, he gets drunk at a liquor store. He is picked up by Hope, and is led to the house on Brixton Road, which Drebber drunkenly enters with Hope. He then forces Drebber to remember who he is and to take a pill out of a small box, allowing God to choose which one dies, for one was harmless and the other poison. Drebber takes the poisoned pill, and as he dies, Hope shows him Lucy's wedding ring. The excitement coupled with his aneurysm had caused his nose to bleed; he used it to write “RACHE” on the wall above Drebber. He realised, upon returning to his cab, that he had forgotten Lucy’s ring; but upon returning to the house, he found Constable Rance and other police officers, whom he evaded by acting drunk. He then had a friend pose as an old lady to pick up the supposed ring from Holmes's advertisement. He then began stalking Stangerson's room at the hotel; but Stangerson, on learning of Drebber's murder, refused to come out. He climbed into the room through the window, and gave Stangerson the same choice of pills but he was attacked by Stangerson and forced to stab him in the heart. After being told of this, Holmes and Watson return to Baker Street; Hope dies from his aneurysm the night before his trial, a smile on his face. One morning, Holmes reveals to Watson how he had deduced the identity of the murderer and how he had used the Irregulars, whom he calls "street Arabs," to search for a cabby by that name. He then shows Watson the newspaper; Lestrade and Gregson are given full credit. Outraged, Watson states that Holmes should record the adventure and publish it. Upon Holmes's refusal, Watson decides to do it himself.
224524	/m/01gq5x	Phineas Finn	Anthony Trollope		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 Finn is the only son of a successful Irish doctor, Dr Malachi Finn of Killaloe, County Clare, who sends him to London to become a lawyer. He proves to be a lackadaisical student, but being pleasant company and strikingly handsome to boot, he makes many influential friends. One of them, a fellow Irishman and a politician, Barrington Erle, suggests that he stand for Parliament in the coming election. At first, the idea seems absurd. Finn is supported solely by a modest allowance from his father, but a stroke of luck clears his path. One of his father's patients is Lord Tulla, a nobleman who controls a little borough that can be contested cheaply. Lord Tulla has had a falling out with his brother, the long-time officeholder. As a result, while the staunchly Tory lord will not support the Whig Finn, neither will he hamper him. Convincing his sceptical father to provide the funds needed, Finn wins his seat by a small margin. The closest of his London friends is his mentor, Lady Laura Standish, the daughter of the prominent Whig politician Lord Brentford. As their relationship develops, Finn considers asking for her hand in marriage, despite the great social and financial gulf between them. Lady Laura senses this, but despite her partiality for the man, monetary considerations and her own political ambitions convince her to marry the dour, extremely wealthy Robert Kennedy instead. At first devastated, Finn soon recovers and becomes enamoured of a lovely heiress, Violet Effingham. This proves to be awkward, as both Lady Laura and Lord Brentford vehemently want her to marry (and hopefully tame) Lord Brentford's estranged son, the savage Lord Chiltern. In addition, Lady Laura encourages Finn to become acquainted with her brother. Finn and Chiltern become fast friends, which makes the situation even more uncomfortable. When Chiltern finds out that Finn is also courting Violet, he becomes infuriated and unreasonably demands that Finn withdraw. When he refuses, Chiltern insists on a duel. This is held in secret at Blankenberg, resulting in Finn being slightly wounded. Eventually, Violet has to choose between her two main suitors; she somewhat fearfully decides in favour of her childhood sweetheart, Chiltern. Meanwhile, Finn's parliamentary career gets off to a rocky start. Overawed by his august surroundings, he delivers a somewhat incoherent maiden speech. Eventually, however, he becomes accustomed to his situation and grows adept at parliamentary proceedings. All is not smooth sailing however. When new elections are called, Finn is in a dilemma. Lord Tulla has become reconciled with his brother and Finn has no chance of re-election. At this point, fortune favours him once again. Late one night, Finn and Mr. Kennedy, now the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, depart Parliament at the same time. When they go their separate ways, Finn notices two men who follow his colleague. Suspicious, he takes a shortcut and arrives in time to foil an attempt to garrotte and rob Kennedy. In gratitude for saving the life of his son-in-law, Lord Brentford offers him the seat for the pocket borough of Loughton. With the nobleman's support, the election is a forgone conclusion. Finn's heroic feat exacerbates the growing rift between Lady Laura and her husband. Their temperaments clash; Mr. Kennedy disapproves of his wife's interest in politics. Moreover, to her intense dismay, Lady Laura finds she has great difficulty suppressing her true feelings for Finn, and Kennedy becomes suspicious. Eventually, she becomes so desperately unhappy, she flees to her father's house. (At the end of the novel, Mr. Kennedy's legal actions push her to move to the Continent, where the law cannot force her to return to her husband's household.) In the meantime, Finn makes the acquaintance of a charming, clever foreigner, Madame Max Goesler, the young and beautiful widow of a rich Jewish banker. More materially, he is appointed to a well-paid government position, in which he excels. It seems as if he is finally secure. However, Lord Brentford learns of the duel with his son and withdraws his support for the next election. Finn visits Ireland with Mr Joshua Monk, a leading Radical politician and a supporter of increased rights for Irish tenant farmers. Under Mr Monk´s influence, Finn becomes radicalised. At a political meeting in Dublin, Finn argues that a new tenant-right bill should be presented to the Westminster Parliament during the next session. When this happens, the government, of which Finn is a member, does not support it. Finn must therefore choose between his loyalty to the government and his political convictions. He chooses the latter, resigns his government position and retires from politics. With his political career in shambles, Finn seeks consolation from Madame Max. In an unexpected development, she offers him her hand and her wealth in marriage. Finn is greatly tempted, but finally returns to Ireland to marry his faithful, long-time sweetheart, Mary Flood Jones. As a parting reward for his hard work, his party obtains for him a comfortable sinecure as a poor-law inspector in Cork at a salary of a thousand pounds a year.
224528	/m/01gq6p	Cranford	Elizabeth Gaskell		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The fictional town of Cranford is closely modelled on Knutsford in Cheshire, which Mrs Gaskell knew well. The book has little in the way of plot and is more a series of episodes in the lives of Mary Smith and her friends, Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two spinster sisters. The "major" event in the story is the return to Cranford of their long-lost brother, Peter, which in itself is only a minor portion of the work, leaving the rest of the novel at a low-key tone.
224529	/m/01gq70	Wives and Daughters	Pam Morris			 The novel opens with young Molly Gibson, who has been raised by her widowed father, Mr. Gibson (Bill Paterson). While visiting the local 'great house', Molly feels tired so she is sent to rest in the former governess's room. The woman, Clare (Francesca Annis), makes noise about her kindness to Molly, but is actually careless and thoughtless of Molly's concerns. The afternoon passes and Clare forgets about the child and Molly misses her ride home after the picnic. The little girl is distressed at the idea of staying the night away from home and is relieved when her father comes to collect her. Seven years later, Molly (Justine Waddell) is now an attractive and rather unworldly young woman, which arouses the interest of one of her father's apprentices, Mr. Coxe (Richard Coyle). Mr Gibson discovers the young man's secret affection and sends Molly to stay with the Hamleys of Hamley Hall, a gentry family that purportedly dates from the Heptarchy but whose circumstances are now reduced. There she finds a mother substitute in Mrs. Hamley (Penelope Wilton), who embraces her almost as a daughter. Molly also becomes friends with the younger son, Roger (Anthony Howell). Molly is aware that, as the daughter of a professional man, she would not be considered a suitable match for the sons of Squire Hamley (Michael Gambon). The elder son in particular, Osborne (Tom Hollander), is expected to make a brilliant marriage after an excellent career at Cambridge: he is handsome, clever and more fashionable than his brother. However, he has performed poorly at university, breaking the hearts of his parents. Molly also discovers his great secret: Osborne has married for love, to a French Roman Catholic ex-nursery maid, Aimee (Tonia Chauvet), whom he has established in a secret cottage. Meanwhile, after a startlingly brief love affair (of which Molly knows nothing), Mr Gibson abruptly decides to remarry, less from his own inclination than from a perceived duty to provide Molly with a mother to guide her. He is seduced by Mrs Hyacinth Kirkpatrick (formerly Miss Clare), a former governess at nearby Cumnor Towers whom Molly remembers with no affection. Dutiful Molly does her best, for her father's sake, to get on with her socially ambitious and selfish stepmother, but the home is not always happy. However, Molly immediately gets on well with her new stepsister, Cynthia (Keeley Hawes), who is about the same age as Molly. The two girls are a study in contrasts: Cynthia is far more worldly and rebellious than Molly, who is naive and slightly awkward. Cynthia has been educated in France, and it gradually becomes apparent that she and her mother have secrets in their past, involving the land agent from the great house, Mr. Preston (Iain Glen), who is rumoured to be a gambler and a scoundrel. Osborne Hamley's failures make his invalid mother's illness worse and widens the divide between him and his father, which is amplified by the considerable debts Osborne has run up in maintaining his secret wife. Mrs Hamley dies, and the breach between the squire and his eldest son seems irreparable. Younger son Roger continues to work hard at university and ultimately gains the honours and rewards that were expected for his brother. Mrs. Gibson tries unsuccessfully to arrange a marriage between Cynthia and Osborne, as her aspirations include having a daughter married to landed gentry. Molly, however, has always preferred Roger's good sense and honourable character and soon falls in love with him. Unfortunately, Roger falls in love with Cynthia and when Mrs. Gibson overhears that Osborne may be fatally ill, she begins promoting the match. Just before Roger leaves on a two-year scientific expedition to Africa, he asks for Cynthia's hand and she accepts, although she insists that their engagement should remain secret until Roger returns. Molly is heartbroken at this and struggles with her sorrow and the lack of affection that Cynthia feels for Roger. Scandals begin to show themselves when it is revealed that several years before, when she was just fifteen, Cynthia promised herself to Mr Preston for a loan of 20 pounds. Mr Preston is violently in love with Cynthia but she hates him. Molly intervenes on Cynthia's behalf and breaks off the engagement, giving rise to rumours of her involvement with Preston and endangering her own reputation. Cynthia breaks off her engagement to Roger, sustaining both family and public rebukes and insults for her inconstancy, then quickly accepts and marries Mr Henderson (Tim Wallers), a professional gentleman she met in London. Osborne, ill and convinced that he will die soon, begs Molly to remember his wife and child when he is gone. Osborne dies shortly thereafter, and Molly reveals the secret to the grieving Squire Hamley. Osborne's widow, Aimee, arrives at Hamley Hall after receiving word that her husband is ill, bringing with her their little son, the heir to Hamley Hall. Roger has rushed home to be with his father, and his affection and good sense bring the squire to see the possible joy to be had in this new family, especially the grandson. As he resettles into the local scientific community, Roger begins to realise that his brotherly affection for Molly is really more. Aided by the kind interference of Lady Harriet (Rosamund Pike), who has always recognized Molly's worth and charms, he finds himself pained at the thought of Molly with anyone else. Still, he hesitates at giving in to his feelings, feeling unworthy of her love after throwing away his affection on the fickle Cynthia. Before he returns to Africa, he confides his feelings to Mr Gibson, who heartily gives his blessing to the union. Tragically, Roger is thwarted, this time by a scarlet fever scare, and is unable to speak to Molly before he leaves. At this point, Gaskell's novel stops, unfinished at her death. She related to a friend that she had intended Roger to return and present Molly with a dried flower (a gift to him before his departure), as proof of his enduring love. This scene was never realised and the novel remains unfinished. In the BBC adaptation, an alternative ending was written, in which Roger is unable to leave Molly without speaking of his love, and they marry and return to Africa together.
225464	/m/01gvq9	Travels with My Aunt	Graham Greene	1969	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins when Henry Pulling, a conventional and uncharming bank manager who has taken early retirement, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in over fifty years at his mother's funeral. Despite having little in common, they form a bond. Henry finds himself drawn into Aunt Augusta's world of travel, adventure, romance and absence of bigotry. He travels first with her to Brighton, where he meets one of his aunt's old acquaintances, and gains an insight into one of her many past lives. Here a psychic foreshadows that he will have many travels in the near future. This prediction inevitably becomes true as Henry is pulled further and further into his aunt's lifestyle, and delves deeper into her past. Their voyages take them from Paris to Istanbul on the Orient Express, and as the journey unfolds, so do the stories of Aunt Augusta, painting the picture of a woman for whom love has been the defining feature of her life. Henry returns to his quiet retirement, but tending his garden no longer holds the same allure. When he receives a letter from his aunt, he finally gives up his old life to join her and the love of her life in South America, and to marry a girl decades younger than himself. As his travels progress it becomes clear to Henry that the woman he had been raised to believe was his mother was in fact his aunt. His real mother is Augusta, and her reconnection with him at her sister's funeral marked the beginning of her reclamation of her child.
225536	/m/01gw3r	Ann Veronica	H. G. Wells	1909	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mr. Stanley forbids his adult daughter, a biology student at Tredgold Women's College and the youngest of his five children, to attend a fancy dress ball in London, causing a crisis. Ann Veronica is planning to attend the dance with friends of a down-at-the-heels artistic family living nearby and has been chafing at other restrictions imposed for no apparent reason on her. After her father resorts to force to stop her from attending the ball, she leaves her home in the fictional south London suburb of Morningside Park in order to live independently in an apartment "in a street near the Hampstead Road" in North London. Unable to find appropriate employment, she borrows forty pounds from Mr. Ramage, an older man, without realizing she is compromising herself. With this money, Ann Veronica is able to devote herself to study in the biological laboratory of the Central Imperial College (a constituent college of London University) where she meets and falls in love with Capes, the laboratory's "demonstrator." But Mr. Ramage loses little time in trying to take advantage of the situation, precipitating a crisis. Distraught after Ramage tries to force himself on her, Ann Veronica temporarily abandons her studies and devotes herself to the cause of women's suffrage; she is arrested storming Parliament and spends a month in prison. Sobered by the experience, Ann Veronica convinces herself of the necessity of compromise. She returns to her father's home and engages herself to marry an admirer she does not love, Hubert Manning. But she soon changes her mind, renounces the engagement, and boldly tells Capes she loves him. Though he returns Ann Veronica's love, at first the thirty-year-old Capes insists on the impossibility of the situation: he is a married (albeit separated) man with a sullied reputation because of an affair that became public. They can only be friends, he declares. But Ann Veronica is undeterred by his confession and his prudence, and finally Capes's resistance buckles: "She stood up and held her arms toward him. 'I want you to kiss me,' she said. . . . 'I want you. I want you to be my lover. I want to give myself to you. I want to be whatever I can to you.' She paused for a moment. 'Is that plain?' she asked." Capes decides to throw over his employment at the college in order to live with Ann Veronica, and they enjoy a glorious "honeymoon" in the Alps. A final chapter shows the happy couple four years and four months later living in London. Capes has become a successful playwright, and Ann Veronica is pregnant and has reconciled with her family.
225762	/m/01gxms	Little Lord Fauntleroy	Frances Hodgson Burnett		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a "shabby" "New York side street" in the mid-1880s, young American Cedric Errol lives with his mother (never named, known only as Mrs. Errol or "Dearest") in genteel poverty after his father, Captain Errol (whose first name was also Cedric), dies. They receive a visit from Havisham, an English lawyer with a message from young Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt. With the deaths of his father's elder brothers, Cedric is now Lord Fauntleroy and heir to the Earldom and a vast estate. The Earl wants Cedric to live with him and learn to be an English aristocrat. The Earl despises America and was deeply disappointed with Captain Errol, his favorite son, for marrying an American. So he offers Mrs. Errol a house and income, yet refuses to meet or have anything to do with her, even after she declines the offer of the money. However, the crusty Earl is impressed by the appearance and intelligence of his young American grandson, and charmed by his innocent nature. Cedric, a trusting child, believes his noble grandfather to be a great benefactor, and the Earl cannot bear to disappoint his loving grandson. Thus, the Earl acts as a benefactor to his tenants (as the local populace notices to their delight). A pretender to Cedric's inheritance appears, his mother claiming that he is the son of the Earl's eldest son, but the claim is investigated and disproved with the assistance of Cedric's loyal friends in New York, one of whom — a bootblack called Dick — recognizes the mother as the missing wife of his brother Ben, and her son (the alleged heir) as his own nephew. The Earl is reconciled to his son's American widow after meeting with the other boy's mother, recognizing that, despite his preconceptions and prejudices, "Dearest" is a far superior woman to the alternative. The Earl had intended to teach his grandson how to be an aristocrat; however, Cedric inadvertently teaches his grandfather that an aristocrat should practice compassion towards persons who are dependent on him. The Earl becomes the kind and good man Cedric always innocently believed him to be. Cedric's mother is invited by the Earl to live in the ancestral castle, and Cedric's old friend Mr. Hobbs, the New York City grocer, who came to England to help investigate the false claim, decides to stay to help look after Cedric
226080	/m/01gz03	The Song of Roland				 Charlemagne's army is fighting the Muslims in Spain. The last city standing is Saragossa, held by the Muslim king Marsilla. Terrified of the might of Charlemagne's army of Franks, Marsilla sends out messengers to Charlemagne, promising treasure and Marsilla's conversion to Christianity if the Franks will go back to France. Charlemagne and his men are tired of fighting and decide to accept this peace offer. They need now to select a messenger to go back to Marsilla's court. The bold warrior Roland nominates his stepfather Ganelon. Ganelon is enraged; he fears that he'll die in the hands of the bloodthirsty pagans and suspects that this is just Roland's intent. He has long hated and envied his stepson, and, riding back to Saragossa with the Saracen messengers, he finds an opportunity for revenge. He tells the Saracens how they could ambush the rear guard of Charlemagne's army, which will surely be led by Roland as the Franks pick their way back to Spain through the mountain passes, and helps the Saracens plan their attack. Just as the traitor Ganelon predicted, Roland gallantly volunteers to lead the rear guard. The wise and moderate Oliver and the fierce Archbishop Turpin are among the men Roland picks to join him. Pagans ambush them at Roncesvalles, according to plan; the Christians are overwhelmed by their sheer numbers. Seeing how badly outnumbered they are, Olivier asks Roland to blow on his olifant, his horn made out of an elephant tusk, to call for help from the main body of the Frankish army. Roland proudly refuses to do so, claiming that they need no help, that the rear guard can easily take on the pagan hordes. While the Franks fight magnificently, there's no way they can continue to hold off against the Saracens, and the battle begins to turn clearly against them. Almost all his men are dead and Roland knows that it's now too late for Charlemagne and his troops to save them, but he blows his oliphant anyway, so that the emperor can see what happened to his men and avenge them. Roland blows so hard that his temples burst. He dies a glorious martyr's death, and saints take his soul straight to Paradise. When Charlemagne and his men reach the battlefield, they find only dead bodies. The pagans have fled, but the Franks pursue them, chasing them into the river Ebro, where they all drown. Meanwhile, the powerful emir of Babylon, Baligant, has arrived in Spain to help his vassal Marsilla fend off the Frankish threat. Baligant and his enormous Muslim army ride after Charlemagne and his Christian army, meeting them on the battlefield at Roncesvalles, where the Christians are burying and mourning their dead. Both sides fight valiantly. But when Charlemagne kills Baligant, all the pagan army scatter and flee. Now Saragossa has no defenders left; the Franks take the city. With Marsilla's wife Bramimonde, Charlemagne and his men ride back to Aix, their capital in France. The Franks discovered Ganelon's betrayal some time ago and keep him in chains until it is time for his trial. Ganelon argues that his action was legitimate revenge, openly proclaimed, not treason. While the council of barons which Charlemagne has assembled to decide the traitor's fate is initially swayed by this claim, one man, Thierry, argues that, because Roland was serving Charlemagne when Ganelon delivered his revenge on him, Ganelon's action constitutes a betrayal of the emperor. Ganelon's friend Pinabel challenges Thierry to trial by combat; the two will fight a duel to see who's right. By divine intervention, Thierry, the weaker man, wins, killing Pinabel. The Franks are convinced by this of Ganelon's villainy and sentence him to a most painful death. The traitor is torn limb from limb by galloping horses and thirty of his relatives are hung for good measure.
227520	/m/01h4sd	Humphry Clinker	Tobias Smollett	1771-06-17	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 The titular character, Humphry Clinker, is an ostler, a stableman at an inn, who does not make his first appearance until about a quarter of the way through the story. He is taken on by Matthew Bramble and his family while they are travelling through England. Various adventures befall them, especially after their meeting with Lieutenant Lismahago, a Scotsman, who joins their party. After various romantic interludes, Humphry suffers false imprisonment but is rescued and returned to his sweetheart, the maid Winifred Jenkins. It is then discovered that Humphry is Mr. Bramble's illegitimate son from a relationship with a barmaid during his wilder university days.
228520	/m/0dl7h_2	The Lover	Marguerite Duras		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Set against the backdrop of French colonial Vietnam, The Lover reveals the intimacies and intricacies of a clandestine romance between a pubescent girl from a financially strapped French family and an older, wealthy Chinese man. In 1929, a 15 year old nameless girl is traveling by ferry across the Mekong Delta, returning from a holiday at her family home in the town of Sa Đéc, to her boarding school in Saigon. She attracts the attention of a 37 year old son of a Chinese business magnate, a young man of wealth and heir to a fortune. He strikes up a conversation with the girl; she accepts a ride back to town in his chauffeured limousine. Compelled by the circumstances of her upbringing, this girl, the daughter of a bankrupt, manic depressive widow, is newly awakened to the impending and all-too-real task of making her way alone in the world. Thus, she becomes his lover, until he bows to the disapproval of his father and breaks off the affair. For her lover, there is no question of the depth and sincerity of his love, but it isn't until much later that the girl acknowledges to herself her true feelings.
228736	/m/01h9fj	Lorna Doone	R. D. Blackmore		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book is set in the 17th century in the Badgworthy Water region of Exmoor in Devon and Somerset, England. John (in West Country dialect, pronounced "Jan") Ridd is the son of a respectable farmer who was murdered in cold blood by one of the notorious Doone clan, a once noble family, now outlaws, in the isolated Doone Valley. Battling his desire for revenge, John also grows into a respectable farmer and takes good care of his mother and two sisters. He falls hopelessly in love with Lorna, a girl he meets by accident, who turns out to be not only (apparently) the granddaughter of Sir Ensor Doone (lord of the Doones), but destined to marry (against her will) the impetuous, menacing, and now jealous heir of the Doone Valley, Carver Doone. Carver will let nothing get in the way of his marriage to Lorna, which he plans to force upon her once Sir Ensor dies and he comes into his inheritance. Sir Ensor dies, and Carver becomes lord of the Doones. John Ridd helps Lorna escape to his family's farm, Plover's Barrows. Since Lorna is a member of the hated Doone clan, feelings are mixed toward her in the Ridd household, but she is nonetheless defended against the enraged Carver's retaliatory attack on the farm. A member of the Ridd household notices Lorna's necklace, a jewel that she was told by Sir Ensor belonged to her mother. During a visit from the Counsellor, Carver's father and the wisest of the Doone family, the necklace is stolen from Plover's Barrows. Shortly after its disappearance, a family friend discovers Lorna's origins, learning that the necklace belonged to a Lady Dugal, who was robbed and murdered by a band of outlaws. Only her daughter survived the attack. It becomes apparent that Lorna, being evidently the long-lost girl in question, is in fact heiress to one of the largest fortunes in the country, and not a Doone after all (although the Doones are remotely related, being descended from a collateral branch of the Dugal family). She is required by law, but against her will, to return to London to become a ward in Chancery. Despite John and Lorna's love for one another, their marriage is out of the question. King Charles II dies, and the Duke of Monmouth (the late king's illegitimate son) challenges Charles's brother James for the throne. The Doones, abandoning their plan to marry Lorna to Carver and claim her wealth, side with Monmouth in the hope of reclaiming their ancestral lands. However, Monmouth is defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor, and his associates are sought for treason. John Ridd is captured during the revolution. Innocent of all charges, he is taken to London by an old friend to clear his name. There, he is reunited with Lorna (now Lorna Dugal), whose love for him has not diminished. When he thwarts an attack on Lorna's great-uncle and legal guardian Earl Brandir, John is granted a pardon, a title, and a coat of arms by the king and returns a free man to Exmoor. In the meantime, the surrounding communities have grown tired of the Doones and their depredations. Knowing the Doones better than any other man, John leads the attack on their land. All the Doone men are killed, except the Counsellor (from whom John retrieves the stolen necklace) and his son Carver, who escapes, vowing revenge. When Earl Brandir dies and Judge Jeffreys is awarded guardianship of Lorna, she is granted her freedom to return to Exmoor and marry John. During their wedding, Carver bursts into the church at Oare. He shoots Lorna and flees. Distraught and filled with blinding rage, John pursues and confronts him. A struggle ensues in which Carver is left sinking in a mire. Exhausted and bloodied from the fight, John can only pant as he watches Carver slip away. He returns to discover that Lorna is not dead, and after a period of anxious uncertainty, she survives to live happily ever after.
229593	/m/01hdys	The Sound and the Fury	William Faulkner	1929	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The four parts of the novel relate many of the same episodes, each from a different point of view and therefore with emphasis on different themes and events. This interweaving and nonlinear structure makes any true synopsis of the novel difficult, especially since the narrators are all unreliable in their own way, making their accounts not necessarily trustworthy at all times. Also in this novel, Faulkner uses italics to indicate points in each section where the narrative is moving into a significant moment in the past. The use of these italics can be confusing, however, as time shifts are not always marked by the use of italics, and periods of different time in each section do not necessarily stay in italics for the duration of the flashback. Thus, these time shifts can often be jarring and confusing, and require particularly close reading. The general outline of the story is the decline of the Compson family, a once noble Southern family descended from U.S. Civil War hero General Compson. The family falls victim to those vices which Faulkner believed were responsible for the problems in the reconstructed South: racism, avarice, selfishness, and the psychological inability of individuals to become determinants. Over the course of the thirty years or so related in the novel, the family falls into financial ruin, loses its religious faith and the respect of the town of Jefferson, and many of them die tragically. The reader may also wish to look in The Portable Faulkner for a four-page history of the Compson family. Faulkner said afterwards that he wished he had written the history at the same time he wrote The Sound and the Fury. The first section of the novel is narrated by Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a source of shame to the family due to his autism; the only characters who evidence a genuine care for him are Caddy, his older sister; and Dilsey, a matriarchal servant. His narrative voice is characterized predominantly by its nonlinearity: spanning the period 1898–1928, Benjy's narrative is a series of non-chronological events presented in a seamless stream of consciousness. The presence of italics in Benjy's section is meant to indicate significant shifts in the narrative. Originally Faulkner meant to use different colored inks to signify chronological breaks. This nonlinearity makes the style of this section particularly challenging, but Benjy's style develops a cadence that, while not chronologically coherent, provides unbiased insight into many characters' true motivations. Moreover, Benjy's caretaker changes to indicate the time period: Luster in the present, T.P. in Benjy's teenage years, and Versh during Benjy's infancy and childhood. In this section we see Benjy's three passions: fire, the golf course on land that used to belong to the Compson family, and his sister Caddy. But by 1928 Caddy has been banished from the Compson home after her husband divorced her because her child was not his, and the family has sold his favorite pasture to a local golf club in order to finance Quentin's Harvard education. In the opening scene, Benjy, accompanied by Luster, a servant boy, watches golfers on the nearby golf course as he waits to hear them call "caddie"—the name of his favorite sibling. When one of them calls for his golf caddie, Benjy's mind embarks on a whirlwind course of memories of his sister, Caddy, focusing on one critical scene. In 1898 when their grandmother died, the four Compson children were forced to play outside during the funeral. In order to see what was going on inside, Caddy climbed a tree in the yard, and while looking inside, her brothers—Quentin, Jason and Benjy—looked up and noticed that her underwear was muddy. Other crucial memories in this section are Benjy's change of name (from Maury, after his uncle) in 1900 upon the discovery of his disability; the marriage and divorce of Caddy (1910), and Benjy's castration, resulting from an attack on a girl that is alluded to briefly within this chapter when a gate is left unlatched and Benjy is out unsupervised. Readers often report trouble understanding this portion of the novel due to its impressionistic language, necessitated by Benjamin's autism, and its frequent shifts in time and setting. Quentin, the most intelligent and tormented of the Compson children, gives the novel's best example of Faulkner's narrative technique. We see him as a freshman at Harvard, wandering the streets of Cambridge, contemplating death, and remembering his family's estrangement from his sister Caddy. Like the first section, its narrative is not strictly linear, though the two interweaving threads, of Quentin at Harvard on the one hand, and of his memories on the other, are clearly discernible. Quentin's main obsession is Caddy's virginity and purity. He is obsessed with Southern ideals of chivalry and is strongly protective of women, especially his sister. When Caddy engages in sexual promiscuity, Quentin is horrified. He turns to his father for help and counsel, but the pragmatic Mr. Compson tells him that virginity is invented by men and should not be taken seriously. He also tells Quentin that time will heal all. Quentin spends much of his time trying to prove his father wrong, but is unable to. Shortly before Quentin leaves for Harvard in the fall of 1909, Caddy becomes pregnant with the child of Dalton Ames, whom Quentin confronts. The two fight, with Quentin losing disgracefully and Caddy vowing, for Quentin's sake, never to speak to Dalton again. Quentin tells his father that they have committed incest, but his father knows that he is lying: "and he did you try to make her do it and i i was afraid to i was afraid she might and then it wouldn't do any good" (112). Quentin's idea of incest is shaped by the idea that, if they "could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us" (51), he could protect his sister by joining her in whatever punishment she might have to endure. In his mind, he feels a need to take responsibility for Caddy's sin. Pregnant and alone, Caddy then marries Herbert Head, whom Quentin finds repulsive, but Caddy is resolute: she must marry before the birth of her child. Herbert finds out that the child is not his and sends mother and daughter away in shame. Quentin's wanderings through Harvard, as he cuts classes, follow the pattern of his heartbreak over losing Caddy. For instance, he meets a small Italian immigrant girl who speaks no English. Significantly, he calls her "sister" and spends much of the day trying to communicate with her, and to care for her by finding her home, to no avail. He thinks sadly of the downfall and squalor of the South after the American Civil War. Because he can't deal with the amorality of the world around him, he commits suicide. While many first-time readers report Benjy's section as being difficult to understand, these same readers often find Quentin's section to be near impossible. Not only do chronological events mesh together regularly, but often (especially at the end) Faulkner completely disregards any semblance of grammar, spelling, or punctuation, instead writing in a rambling series of words, phrases, and sentences that have no separation to indicate where one thought ends and another begins. This confusion is due to Quentin's severe depression and deteriorating state of mind, and Quentin is therefore arguably an even more unreliable narrator than his brother Benjy was. Because of the staggering complexity of this section, it is often the one most extensively studied by scholars of the novel. The third section is narrated by Jason, the third child and Caroline's favorite. It takes place the day before Benjy's section, on Good Friday. Of the three brothers' sections, Jason's is the most straightforward, reflecting his single-minded desire for material wealth. By 1928, Jason is the economic foundation of the family after his father's death. He supports his mother, Benjy, and Miss Quentin (Caddy's daughter), as well as the family's servants. His role makes him bitter and cynical, with little of the passionate sensitivity that mark his older brother and sister. He goes so far as to blackmail Caddy into making him Miss Quentin's sole guardian, then uses that role to steal the support payments that Caddy sends for her daughter. This is the first section that is narrated in a linear fashion. It follows the course of Good Friday, a day in which Jason decides to leave work to search for Miss Quentin (Caddy's daughter), who has run away again, seemingly in pursuit of mischief. Here we see most immediately the conflict between the two predominant traits of the Compson family, which Jason's mother Caroline attributes to the difference between her blood and her husband's: on the one hand, Miss Quentin's recklessness and passion, inherited from her grandfather and, ultimately, the Compson side; on the other, Jason's ruthless cynicism, drawn from his mother's side. This section also gives us the clearest image of domestic life in the Compson household, which for Jason and the servants means the care of the hypochondriac Caroline and of Benjy. April 8, 1928, is Easter Sunday. This section, the only one without a single first-person narrator, focuses on Dilsey, the powerful matriarch of the black family servants. She, in contrast to the declining Compsons, draws a great deal of strength from her faith, standing as a proud figure amid a dying family. It can be said that Dilsey gains her strength by looking outward (i.e. outside of one's self for support) while the Compsons grow weak by looking inward. On this Easter Sunday, Dilsey takes her family and Benjy to the 'colored' church. Through her we sense the consequences of the decadence and depravity in which the Compsons have lived for decades. Dilsey is mistreated and abused, but nevertheless remains loyal. She, with the help of her grandson Luster, cares for Benjy, as she takes him to church and tries to bring him to salvation. The preacher's sermon inspires her to weep for the Compson family, reminding her that she's seen the family through its destruction, which she is now witnessing. Meanwhile, the tension between Jason and Miss Quentin reaches its inevitable conclusion. The family discovers that Miss Quentin has run away in the middle of the night with a carnival worker, having found the hidden collection of cash in Jason's closet and taken both her money (the support from Caddy, which Jason had stolen) and her money-obsessed uncle's life savings. Jason calls the police and tells them that his money has been stolen, but since it would mean admitting embezzling Quentin's money he doesn't press the issue. He therefore sets off once again to find her on his own, but loses her trail in nearby Mottson, and gives her up as gone for good. After church, Dilsey allows her grandson Luster to drive Benjy in the family's decrepit horse and carriage to the graveyard. Luster, disregarding Benjy's set routine, drives the wrong way around a monument. Benjy's hysterical sobbing and violent outburst can only be quieted by Jason, who understands how best to placate his brother. Jason slaps Luster, turns the carriage around, and Benjy suddenly becomes silent. Luster turns around to look at Benjy and sees Benjy drop his flower. Benjy's eyes are "...empty and blue and serene again." In 1945, Faulkner wrote an appendix to the novel to be published in the then-forthcoming anthology The Portable Faulkner. At Faulkner's behest, however, subsequent printings of The Sound and the Fury frequently contain the appendix at the end of the book; it is sometimes referred to as the fifth part. Having been written sixteen years after The Sound and the Fury, the appendix presents some textual differences from the novel, but serves to clarify the novel's opaque story. The appendix is presented as a complete history of the Compson family lineage, beginning with the arrival of their ancestor Quentin Maclachlan in America in 1779 and continuing through 1945, including events that transpired after the novel (which took place in 1928). In particular, the appendix reveals that Caroline Compson died in 1933, upon which Jason had Benjy committed to the state asylum; fired the black servants; sold the last of the Compson land; and moved into an apartment above his farming supply store. It is also revealed that Jason had himself declared Benjy's legal guardian many years ago, without their mother's knowledge, and used this status to have Benjy castrated. The appendix also reveals the fate of Caddy, last seen in the novel when her daughter Quentin is still a baby. After marrying and divorcing a second time, Caddy moved to Paris, where she lived at the time of the German occupation. In 1943 the librarian of Yoknapatawpha County discovered a magazine photograph of Caddy in the company of a German staff general and attempted separately to recruit both Jason and Dilsey to save her; Jason, at first acknowledging that the photo was of his sister, denied that it was she after realizing the librarian wanted his help, while Dilsey pretended to be unable to see the picture at all. The librarian later realizes that while Jason remains cold and unsympathetic towards Caddy, Dilsey simply understands that Caddy neither wants nor needs salvation from the Germans, because nothing else remains for her. The appendix concludes with an accounting for the black family who worked as servants to the Compsons. Unlike the entries for the Compsons themselves, which are lengthy, detailed, and told with an omniscient narrative perspective, the servants' entries are simple and succinct. Dilsey's entry, the final in the appendix, consists of two words: "They endured."
230016	/m/01hglg	Phineas Redux	Anthony Trollope		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 His beloved wife having died in childbirth, Phineas Finn finds Irish society and his job as a Poorhouse Inspector dull and unsatisfying after the excitement of his former career as a Member of Parliament. Back in England, the Whigs are determined to overturn the Tory majority in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. As Finn had been considered the most promising of the younger set, he is encouraged to stand for office again. Returning to London, he renews his acquaintance with the wealthy widow, Madame Max Goesler. In the past, she had offered to marry him and had been gently turned down; after an awkward first encounter, they renew their friendship. In the political arena, Finn loses the election by a narrow margin, but his luck does not desert him. On appeal, it is found that his opponent had bribed some of the voters, enough to give Finn the victory. He does however make one enemy within his own party. Mr. Bonteen makes disparaging remarks about his political trustworthiness (referring to an incident described in Phineas Finn). The conflict spirals out of control when neither man will back down, and they become bitter foes. When Bonteen is murdered, suspicion falls on two men. One is the Reverend Mr Emilius, husband of Lady Eustace (the main character of The Eustace Diamonds). At her urging, Bonteen had discovered that Emilius had been married when he wed Lady Eustace, thus annulling the marriage and safeguarding her wealth. The other suspect is Phineas Finn. He and Bonteen had been seen to quarrel violently the night of the murder and all the circumstantial evidence points to him, while Emilius did not even have a key to exit his lodgings that night. Finn therefore is brought to trial. Not unexpectedly, the murder of one Member of Parliament allegedly by another quickly becomes the sensation of all England. While the trial goes on, Madame Max travels to the Continent looking for evidence, and she succeeds. She finds a locksmith who had made a duplicate key for Emilius. This, along with other developments, convinces everyone that Finn is innocent and Emilius guilty. Unfortunately, it is not enough to convict the latter. Afterwards, Finn, worn out by the ordeal and disillusioned with politics, retires and marries Madame Max.
230018	/m/01hglt	The Duke's Children	Anthony Trollope			 The plot concerns the children of the Duke of Omnium, Plantagenet Palliser, and his late wife, Lady Glencora. When Lady Glencora dies unexpectedly, the Duke is left to deal with his grownup children, with whom he has a somewhat distant relationship. As the government in which he is Prime Minister has also fallen, the Duke is left bereft of both his beloved wife and his political position. Before her death, Lady Glencora had imprudently given her secret blessing to her daughter Mary's courtship by a poor gentleman, Frank Tregear, a friend of Lord Silverbridge, the Duke's older son and heir. Mrs. Finn, Lady Glencora's dearest confidante, somewhat uneasily remains after the funeral as a companion and unofficial chaperone for Mary at the Duke's request. Once she becomes aware of the seriousness of the relationship between Mary and Frank, Mrs. Finn insists that the Duke be informed. The Duke's two sons also prove burdensome. Lord Silverbridge follows the wishes of his father by entering Parliament. He had proposed to Lady Mabel Grex, whom he has known all his life. She had turned him down, although with an indication of a more welcoming answer another time. However, Lord Silverbridge becomes enamoured with American heiress Isabel Boncassen. She agrees to marry him, but only if the Duke is willing to welcome her into the family. At first, the Duke disapproves; and he disapproves even more of his daughter's suitor. To add to his troubles, Gerald, the younger son, gets himself expelled from Cambridge after attending The Derby without permission. However, by the end of the book, the Duke grows closer to all three of his children; he allows the engagements of both son and daughter, and as the book ends, he is invited once more to take a part in the government.
230019	/m/01hgm4	Daniel Deronda	George Eliot	1876	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Daniel Deronda contains two main strains of plot, united by the title character. The novel begins in mid-story in late August 1865 with the meeting of Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth in the fictional town of Leubronn, Germany. Daniel finds himself attracted to, but wary of, the beautiful, stubborn, and selfish Gwendolen, whom he sees lose all her winnings in a game of roulette. The next day, Gwendolen receives a letter from her mother telling her that the family is financially ruined and asking her to come home. In despair at losing all her money, Gwendolen pawns a necklace and debates gambling again in order to make her fortune. In a fateful moment, however, her necklace is returned to her by a porter, and she realises that Daniel saw her pawn the necklace and redeemed it for her. From this point, the plot breaks off into two separate flashbacks, one which gives us the history of Gwendolen Harleth and one of Daniel Deronda. In October 1864, soon after the death of Gwendolen's stepfather, Gwendolen and her family move to a new neighbourhood. It is here that she meets Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt, a taciturn and calculating man, who proposes marriage shortly after their first meeting. At first open to his advances, she eventually flees (to the German town in which she meets Deronda) upon discovering that he has several children with his mistress, Lydia Glasher. This portion of the novel sets Gwendolen up as a haughty, selfish, yet affectionate daughter, admired for her beauty but suspected by many in society because of her satirical observations and somewhat manipulative behaviour. She is also prone to fits of terror that shake her otherwise calm and controlling exterior. Deronda has been raised by a wealthy gentleman, Sir Hugo Mallinger. Deronda's relationship to Sir Hugo is ambiguous and it is widely believed, even by Deronda, that he is Sir Hugo's illegitimate son, though no one is certain. Deronda is an intelligent, light-hearted and compassionate young man who cannot quite decide what to do with his life, and this is a sore point between him and Sir Hugo, who wants him to go into politics. One day in late July 1864, as he is boating on the Thames, Deronda rescues a young Jewish woman, Mirah Lapidoth, from attempting to drown herself. He takes her to the home of friends of his, and it is discovered that Mirah is a singer. She has come to London to search for her mother and brother after running away from her father, who kidnapped her when she was a child and forced her into an acting troupe. She ran away from him finally because she feared he was planning to sell her into an immoral relationship with a friend of his. Moved by her tale, Deronda undertakes to help her look for her mother (who turns out to have died years earlier) and brother and through this, he is introduced to London's Jewish community. Mirah and Daniel grow closer and Daniel, anxious about his growing affection for her, leaves for a short time to join Sir Hugo in Leubronn, where he and Gwendolen first meet. From here, the story picks up in "real time," and Gwendolen returns from Germany in early September 1865 because her family has lost its fortune in an economic downturn. Gwendolen, having an antipathy to marriage, the only respectable way in which a woman could achieve financial security, attempts to avoid working as a governess by pursuing a career in singing or on the stage, but a prominent musician tells her she does not have the talent. In order to save herself and her family from relative poverty, she marries the wealthy Grandcourt, whom she believes she can manipulate to maintain her freedom to do what she likes, despite having promised Mrs. Glasher she would not marry him and fearing that it is a mistake. Deronda, searching for Mirah's family, meets a consumptive visionary named Mordecai. Mordecai passionately proclaims his wish that the Jewish people retain their national identity and one day be restored to their Promised Land. Because he is dying, he wants Daniel to become his intellectual heir and continue to pursue his dream and be an advocate for the Jewish people. In spite of being strongly drawn to Mordecai, Deronda hesitates to commit himself to a cause that seems to have no connection to his own identity. Deronda's desire to embrace Mordecai's vision becomes stronger when they discover Mordecai is the brother Mirah has known by the name Ezra and has been seeking. Still, Deronda is not a Jew and cannot reconcile this fact with his affection and respect for Mordecai/Ezra, which would be necessary for him to pursue a life of Jewish advocacy. Gwendolen, meanwhile, has been emotionally crushed by her cold, self-centered, and manipulative husband. She is consumed with guilt for disinheriting Lydia Glasher's children by marrying their father. On Gwendolen's wedding day, Mrs. Glasher cursed her and told her she would suffer for her treachery, which only exacerbates Gwendolen's feelings of dread and terror. During this time, Gwendolen and Deronda meet regularly, and Gwendolen pours out her troubles to him whenever they meet. During a trip to Italy, Grandcourt is knocked from his boat into the water and drowns. Gwendolen, who was present, is consumed with guilt because she had long wished he would die, although after some hesitation she jumped into the Mediterranean in a futile attempt to save him. Deronda, also in Italy to meet his Jewish mother (whose identity Sir Hugo has finally revealed), comforts Gwendolen and advises her. In love with Deronda, Gwendolen hopes for a future with him, but he urges her onto a path of righteousness in which she will help others in order to alleviate her suffering. Deronda meets his mother and learns that she was a famous opera singer with whom Sir Hugo was once in love. She tells him that her father, a physician and strictly pious Jew, forced her to marry her cousin whom she did not love, despite her resentment of the rigid piety of her childhood. Daniel was the only child of that union, and on her husband's death, she asked the devoted Sir Hugo to raise her son as an English gentleman, never to know that he was Jewish. Upon learning of his true origins, Deronda finally feels comfortable with his love for Mirah, and on his return to England in October 1866, he tells Mirah of his love for her. Daniel commits himself to be Ezra/Mordecai's disciple, and shortly after Deronda's marriage, Ezra/Mordecai dies with Daniel and Mirah at his side. Before Daniel marries Mirah, he goes to Gwendolen to tell her about his origins, his decision to go to "the East" (per Ezra/Mordecai's wish), and his betrothal to Mirah. Gwendolen is devastated by the news, but it becomes a turning point in her life, inspiring her to finally say, "I shall live." She sends him a letter on his wedding day, telling him not to think of her with sadness but to know that she will be a better person for having known him. The newly-weds then set off for "the East" to investigate what they can do to restore the Jewish nation.
230089	/m/01hgw7	Nine Princes in Amber	Roger Zelazny	1970-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Carl Corey awakes in a medical clinic, with little to no knowledge of who he is or how he got there. He suspects he is being over-medicated, so he overpowers the nurse and security guard and escapes his room. He finds the manager of the clinic, and learns that he was recovering from a car accident in a private clinic, paid for by his sister, Evelyn Flaumel. He flees and heads to her house. She addresses him as Corwin and calls herself Flora. Hiding his lack of knowledge about what she is saying, he convinces her to let him stay. In Flora's library he locates a set of customised Tarot cards— the Trumps—whose Major Arcana are replaced with images which he recognises as his family. As he looks over the cards he remembers all his brothers and sisters: sneaky Random, Julian the hunter, well-built Gérard, the arrogant Eric, himself, Benedict the master tactician and swordsman, sinister Caine, scheming Bleys, and the mysterious Brand. He also views his four sisters: Flora who offered him sanctuary, Deirdre who was dear to him, reserved Llewella, and Fiona, whom Corwin hated. His brother Random contacts him via telephone and Corwin promises to give him protection. Random arrives, pursued by mysterious spined, bloodshot-eyed humanoid creatures, and the combined efforts of Corwin, Random, and Flora's dogs ultimately defeat them. Random then asks Corwin whether he wishes to walk the road to Amber, from which Corwin agrees, despite the fact he does not know what he is doing. The world changes around them, and Corwin realises that Random is somehow causing the changes in order for them to proceed to Amber. They ultimately end up in the Forest of Arden, the territory of their brother Julian. Julian's beasts confront Random and Corwin and eventually Julian himself appears on his steed Morgenstern to take them himself. Corwin dismounts Julian and takes him prisoner. After taking information from Julian he lets him live, saving himself from the remainder of Julian's men who were awaiting Corwin in the forest. While traveling they encounter Corwin's sister Deirdre who reveals she fled from Eric's court. Fully confused at this point, Corwin reveals that he has no memory of what they have been doing or of who he is so Deirdre convinces him to walk the Pattern, which she believes will restore his memory. The three then travel to Rebma, a reflection of Amber underwater, and there they meet their sister Llewella and Moire, the queen of Rebma. Moire originally believes that the three of them came to Rebma to seek support to defeat Eric but Deirdre explains their true intentions. Because Rebma is a reflection of Amber, there is also a reflection of the Pattern in Rebma, which Corwin is to walk to restore his memory. Although Random is impounded for past crimes in Rebma and sentenced to wed a blind girl named Vialle, Corwin convinces the queen Moire to allow him to walk the Pattern. After receiving advice from Random and Deirdre, he walks the Pattern, reliving all of his past life, which stretches back to his time in Amber and when Eric deposited him in Elizabethan England on our Earth. He remembers the powers which his heritage and the Pattern grant him - the power to walk through shadow, and to pronounce a powerful curse before dying. After he completes the Pattern he uses its power to project himself into the Castle of Amber, from which he finds a safe spot and rests. Afterwards he searches the castle and in the library finds a pack of the Trumps and also an old servant friend. However, Eric finds them and the two begin to duel. Although intimidated at first by Eric's immense skill, Corwin gets the upper hand in the fight and injures Eric on the arm. Corwin would have won the battle and slain his brother had not the soldiers of the castle realized what was happening and moved to protect Eric. Corwin retreated and using a Trump, contacted his brother Bleys who agreed to harbor him and teleported Corwin to his location. Corwin then agreed to aid Bleys in his attempts to assault Amber and defeat Eric and gathered a large group of warriors from Shadow and assembled a navy, while Bleys created an army on land. From here Corwin attempted to contact his brothers, looking for allies. Caine, although supporting Eric, gave Corwin a promise of safe passage by sea, as did his brother Gérard. He is unable to contact Benedict but when he attempts to reach Brand, he views him in a prison and Brand desperately asks Corwin to free him before his image disappears. Using a Trump, Corwin then attempts to contact his father Oberon, who has been missing for centuries and makes contact with him. Oberon encourages him to seize the throne but the contact is eventually lost. When he contacts Random, Random reveals that Eric has contacted him and revealed the full extent of his defenses, which are vast and powerful. Furthermore, Random tells Corwin that Eric has gained control over the mysterious Jewel of Judgment, which allows him to control the weather among other things. Despite Random's misgivings, Corwin remains resolute in his desire to attack Amber with Bleys. As the invasion begins, Corwin travels with the navy by sea but finds Caine waiting for him with a superior force, apparently in violation of their agreement. Eric then contacts Corwin by Trump, who reveals that he knew about his plans from Caine and the two engage in a mental duel which Corwin is unable to break from. After exchanging taunts, Corwin launches a full mental assault on Eric, which defeats him and leaves him with the knowledge that Corwin is his superior. Corwin then joins in the battle although it is hopeless: Caine's forces are already destroying Corwin's navy and he escapes by using a Trump to move him to Bleys and his army. Bleys had been constantly assaulted by creatures of Shadow and the poor weather conditions that have been created by Eric's usage of the Jewel of Judgment. Although they eventually reach Amber, their forces have dwindled and they barely fight their way up Kolvir, the mountain on which the Castle of Amber is situated. Bleys is ultimately pushed off a cliff, although Corwin throws him his pack of Trumps to allow him to escape the fall. Corwin then uses his few remaining forces and pushes through, eventually breaching to the castle itself, although, before he reaches the throne, his forces are surrounded, and he ultimately is captured. Corwin is brought forth in chains to endure Eric's coronation. Julian, who is at Eric's side, instructs Corwin to hand the crown of Amber to Eric, who will crown himself King of the one true world. Corwin instead crowns himself King of Amber, but he is quickly beaten by the guards and eventually throws the crown at Eric. Eric then crowns himself, and sentences Corwin to be imprisoned, and his eyes burned out. In his prison beneath the city, Corwin is driven to near insanity, although the visits and smuggled gifts of his friend Lord Rein help him to maintain his spirit and his hope. After a year has passed in blindness and solitude, he is let out to eat at Eric's table on the anniversary of the coronation before being thrown into the dungeons again. After years have passed, Corwin's eyesight begins to regenerate, and he begins an escape attempt by whittling the door with a spoon he stole from Eric's table. Before he can escape in this manner, Dworkin Barimen, the keeper of the Pattern, appears out of nowhere, having seemingly walked through the dungeon wall from a neighboring cell. He explains that he entered Corwin's cell by drawing a picture on the dungeon wall and walking through it, and wishes to return in the same way. Corwin gives him the spoon in order to draw a Trump image on the wall, and persuades him to draw the Lighthouse of Cabra on the opposite wall. With this, Corwin projects himself out of his prison. At the Lighthouse of Cabra he meets Jopin, the keeper of the lighthouse but he does not reveal his true identity to him. Jopin cares for Corwin and Corwin aids Jopin in his activities around the lighthouse. Once he is fully recovered, Jopin recognises Corwin, and shows him that the Vale of Garnath, previously a pleasant valley adjacent to Amber, has become a warped and twisted evil place. Corwin takes Jopin's craft Butterfly and sails away, while sending a message to Eric via a black bird, stating that he will return to claim the throne.
230092	/m/01hgwz	The Guns of Avalon	Roger Zelazny	1972	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Corwin sets out through the endless worlds of shadow in search of Avalon, his one-time home. As Corwin nears Avalon, he passes through a land called Lorraine. As it is near to Avalon in Shadow, some aspects of it are similar — it is a medieval kingdom, ruled once by a shadow version of Corwin, more recently by a king named Uther. The shadow Corwin that once ruled Lorraine, is remembered as a demonic tyrant and Corwin assumes an incognito identity as Sir Corey of Cabra. Corwin comes across a wounded man, whom he recognizes as a shadow of Lance, a knight of Avalon. Corwin carries Lance back to a nearby fortress, the Keep of Ganelon. Along the way, Corwin slays two giant hellcats — feline demons who call him the "opener", confirming his fears that he is responsible for the corruption of the vale of Garnath. Corwin meets with Ganelon, whom he also knows, though Ganelon does not recognize him. Ganelon had once been Corwin's right-hand man in Avalon, until Ganelon betrayed him (alluding to Ganelon the Traitor, of medieval literature), for which crime Corwin banished him into an unfamiliar shadow — this one, apparently — and left him to die. But Ganelon lived and, as he tells Corwin, rose from leading an outlaw band to become leader of all the forces of Lorraine fighting against a strange evil: a constantly-expanding dark circle of toadstools from which demonic creatures and soulless men emerge. Suspecting that this relates to the blood curse he pronounced against Amber (at the end of the previous volume), Corwin agrees to help. While recuperating from his imprisonment and training with the soldiers of Lorraine, Corwin meets a local camp follower, also named Lorraine. Corwin senses that someone is trying to speak to him by means of the Trumps (magical tarot cards), and blocks the attempt; Lorraine describes seeing a vision of a man whom Corwin recognizes as his father. She also reveals that her daughter — whom she had conceived by witchcraft — was the first person to die in the dark circle. A winged demon, Strygalldwir, arrives at the window to challenge Corwin; Corwin, after demonstrating a little-seen spellcasting capability, kills Strygalldwir with his Pattern-sword Grayswandir. Corwin, Ganelon, and Lance lead an army against the dark circle. On the top floor of a tower, Corwin slays the enemy leader, a goat-headed creature. The enemy is revealed to come from the Courts of Chaos, a place far across Shadow from Amber, past where the shadows cease to follow ordinary rules of reality. Lorraine runs off with an office called Melkin. Corwin pursues them; finding that Melkin has murdered and robbed Lorraine, he kills Melkin. Corwin and Ganelon journey on toward Avalon. A young deserter tells them that the forces of Avalon, led by a man known as the Protector, have recently been battling a horde of demonic, cave-dwelling hellmaids — a force of evil somehow similar to the dark circle in Lorraine. Corwin and Ganelon journey on and meet the Protector, who turns out to be Corwin's long-lost brother Benedict, the most formidable swordsman and military strategist in existence. Benedict's forces have defeated the hellmaids, but he has lost his arm in the battle. Benedict greets Corwin cordially, but refuses to support his claim to the throne. Benedict also reveals that their father, King Oberon, did not abdicate, as Corwin had believed, but simply vanished. Benedict sends Corwin and Ganelon on to his country house. There, Corwin meets a young woman named Dara, who tells him that she is Benedict's great-granddaughter. Because of her bloodline, she is anxious to learn more about the Pattern of Amber. Walking the Pattern gives the royalty of Amber the ability to walk in Shadow. Trading information with her, Corwin learns that Benedict has been visited there by brothers Julian, Gérard, and Brand. In Avalon, Corwin arranges to purchase large amounts of jeweler's rouge, obtaining capital by journeying through Shadow to a parallel Earth where he harvests diamonds from an African coast that has never seen human habitation. Returning to Benedict's house, he encounters Ganelon, who jokingly tells him that several fresh human bodies are buried in the garden. Corwin is reluctant to get involved in the local intrigue. Later, Dara finds him, and they become lovers. Corwin sets off into Shadow with his jeweler's rouge. He and Ganelon notice a strange phenomenon: a black road, similar to the dark circle in Lorraine, cuts through Shadow, apparently stretching from Amber to all the Shadows. The grass along the black road encircles the ankles of Ganelon, and Corwin has to free him. Corwin is able to destroy a section of the black road by focusing his mind on the Pattern, then Corwin receives a Trump contact, which he assumes to be from Benedict. Corwin believes Benedict to be angry at having discovered either that Corwin has been using Avalon to arm himself for an attempt on the throne (compromising Benedict's neutrality) or that Corwin has slept with Dara. Corwin tries to escape further into Shadow, but Benedict pursues and eventually catches him. Benedict accuses Corwin of being a murderer, to Corwin's surprise, and a duel ensues. Completely outmatched, Corwin tricks Benedict into moving into a patch of the strange black grass, allowing Corwin to knock him unconscious. Corwin summons Gérard via Trump to care for Benedict. Corwin journeys to our Earth, and has an assembly line set up to produce the ammunition he needs to assault Amber. While that is happening, he visits his old house in New York, where he finds a message from Eric, pleading for peace. Corwin rejects this. He recruits his army from a similar Shadow to the one home to the army he recruited for his assault with Bleys, and trains them in the use of firearms. Then he leads them through shadow to attack Amber. However, upon reaching Amber, Corwin finds a desperate battle against wyvern riders from the Courts of Chaos. He also finds Dara wandering about the battlefield, and orders some men to guard her. After assisting in the battle and dispatching the threat, he confronts Eric, who has been wounded during the battle. Before he dies, Eric passes the Jewel of Judgement to Corwin and pronounces his death curse on the enemies of Amber. Dara, having disposed of her guards, rides past Corwin on horseback, toward Amber. Corwin, suddenly apprehensive, contacts his brother Random via trump, and has Random teleport him into Amber. They reach the chamber of the Pattern to find that Dara is already walking it, shifting into all manner of strange and grotesque shapes as she does. Completing her Pattern walk, she announces to Corwin in a low, inhuman voice that "Amber will be destroyed", then vanishes.
230094	/m/01hgx9	Sign of the Unicorn	Roger Zelazny	1975-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Corwin returns to Castle Amber bearing the body of one of the spined, bloodshot-eyed humanoid creatures that had pursued Random to Flora's house on Earth—one that had moments earlier killed his brother, Caine. Fearing that he has been framed for Caine's murder, Corwin summons Random, who tells him the story how he came to be chased across shadow to end up in New York: Random had been enjoying life out in a shadow, Texorami, that he had selected/created to be an ideal place to gamble, hang-glide and especially play the drums. One day he received an unusual Trump call in the form of the Jack of Diamonds, that spoke to him as his brother, Brand, asking for help to escape from an unfamiliar shadow. Random set out to rescue Brand from the shadow, a land lit without a sun, where boulders orbit each other in complicated patterns. He found the tower where Brand was imprisoned, but could not overcome its guardian, a transparent, glass, prismatic, dragon-like creature. Spined humanoids pursued random through shadow. Seeking an ally, he headed for Earth, hoping to exploit Flora, but finds Corwin instead. Since Corwin had been missing for so long. Random assumes the creatures belonged to him, and though confused when Corwin fights the creatures, is sufficiently frightened to aid Corwin in getting to Amber. After hearing Random's story, Corwin descends to the chamber of the Pattern, to attune himself to the Jewel of Judgement, a powerful artifact given to Corwin by Eric as he lay dying, which gives its wearer among other powers control of weather in Amber. He walks the pattern, and then commands it to project him into the Jewel. He is metaphysically carried through a higher-dimensional Pattern within the Jewel, emerging with what he describes as a "higher octave" of awareness. Corwin then teleports himself to a high tower of the castle. After testing his new attunement to the Jewel, he summons Flora. He learns that most of his brothers had sought him in shadow during his absence — some to try to find him; some to implicate Eric in their father, Oberon's death. Gérard accompanies Corwin to the Grove of the Unicorn, where Caine was killed. Gérard fights Corwin, and later threatens him physically while all of the siblings are watching through trumps and is told that if he turns out to be responsible for Caine's death, Gérard will kill him, and that if Gérard is killed, the siblings will know Corwin did it. Corwin points out that if someone wants to kill Corwin and free themselves from suspicion, they now only have to kill Gérard. Gérard, angered, accuses him of trying to complicate matters. The two brothers return to Caine's body, and see a glimpse of the Unicorn. Corwin then arranges a family meeting, allowing Random to re-tell his tale. While not entirely convinced of Corwin's innocence, they agree to attempt to recover the one remaining person who has seen these creatures — Brand. With their combined efforts, they are able to contact Brand through the trump, and pull him through to Amber. Although Brand was relatively intact in his cell, they find he has been stabbed as he is brought to them. Gérard pushes the others aside and gives first aid to Brand, while the others realize the implications of the stabbing — one of them must have tried to kill their brother. The siblings guardedly discuss who the would-be murderer might be. Fiona points out that only she and Julian are sensible suspects — and she is "innocent of all but malice". She also warns Corwin that the Jewel is more than just a weather-control device; in truth, it is an artifact of great power which draws upon its bearer's life force — and may well have been what killed Eric. She says that when people around the bearer seem to be statue-like, the bearer is near death. Corwin heads for his rooms, discussing matters with Random, who has a hard time keeping up with Corwin. Corwin enters his room, but notices too late a figure poised to stab him. However the stab itself appears to be so slow that it only grazes him. Corwin blacks out. He awakens in his former home on Earth, bleeding and nearing death. He drops a pillow, but it hangs in the air. He realizes that the Jewel is killing him, so he hides it in the house's compost heap and heads for the road, hoping to hitch-hike to a hospital where he can recover. He is eventually picked up by Bill Roth, a lawyer who recognizes him as Carl Corey, the name Corwin had used in the past to pass for a human. In hospital, he learns that his car accident happened during his escape from a mental asylum, where he had been committed by a Dr. Hillary B. Rand by his brother Brandon Corey. He is contacted via Trump by Random, who returns him to Amber, saying that Brand has woken up and wishes to speak to him. Brand gradually tells Corwin about how he, Bleys and Fiona had removed Oberon and tried to claim the throne, but were opposed by the triumvirate of Eric, Julian and Caine. He says that after he objected to Bleys and Fiona's plan to ally with the forces of Chaos, he was pursued and came to Earth seeking Corwin as an ally—trying to restore his memories with shock therapy—but was captured and imprisoned in the tower where Random found him. During the conversation, Brand displays pyrokinetic abilities. Corwin then heads to Tir-na Nog'th, the mysterious, moonlit Amber-in-the-sky where he hopes to gain insight into the situation. His sword Grayswandir has special properties in the moonlit city, having been forged upon the stairway to Tir-na Nog'th. With Random and Ganelon watching him from mount Kolvir, he ascends to Tir-na Nog'th, and in the throne room sees Dara as queen, flanked by Benedict wearing a metallic arm. This dream-version of Dara tells him her origins and the ghostly Benedict is able to reach Corwin with the arm. A fight ensues. Corwin cuts off the arm, and is trumped back to Kolvir by Random, with the arm still clutching his shoulder. The three set off for Amber, but are drawn through shadow — which should be impossible this close to Amber — and come to an enlarged version of the Grove of the Unicorn, where they see the eponymous beast. They are led back to where Amber should stand, but instead there is a plateau on which there is a copy of the Pattern. With a shock, Corwin and Ganelon realize that this is the true, Primal Pattern, of which the one in Amber is but the first shadow.
230095	/m/01hgxn	The Hand of Oberon	Roger Zelazny	1976	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Corwin, Random and Ganelon go down to the Primal Pattern and see that it is damaged, with a dark stain obscuring the pattern from the center to one edge, in the shape of the corrupted Vale of Garnath. They also see a pair of objects at the pattern's centre. While Corwin and Random discuss whether it would be safe to walk a damaged pattern, Ganelon runs through the stain to the center and retrieves the objects - a dagger, and a pierced Trump card. A purple griffin-like beast emerges from a cave, and Random's horse runs onto the pattern. The horse is consumed/ripped apart by a rainbow-coloured tornado. Ganelon discusses what it was like to run on the stain, and asks Random to drop a small amount of blood on the pattern. The blood drop stains the pattern in the same way, and they realize that the trump must have been used to spill blood onto the pattern by someone at its centre. Random recognizes the trump as that of his Rebman son, Martin. Corwin recognises the style of the trump as that of Brand. Ganelon proposes that Corwin use the Trumps to contact Benedict, who transports them to the slopes of mount Kolvir. Random and Benedict, who had known and was fond of Martin, set off through shadow to find him, or if necessary avenge his death. Corwin returns to Amber to inform Random's wife, Vialle, that Random will be gone for a while. Discussing matters with her, he realizes that now Eric is dead he no longer wants the throne - but he still loves Amber and wishes to repair the damage, even though he is no longer sure it is his fault. Corwin then descends into the depths of the castle to find his former cell in the dungeons. On the way to his cell, Corwin meets Roger Zelazny, who makes an appearance in his own book. The author describes himself as a "...lean, cadaverous figure... smoking his pipe, grinning around it." In his dialogue with Corwin, Roger states that he is presently "...writing a philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity." This may or may not be a not-so-subtle description of the entire Chronicles of Amber series. Once in his former cell, Corwin uses the trump that Dworkin drew on the wall to project himself to the mad sorcerer's chambers. Dworkin incorrectly assumes that Corwin is Oberon, and reveals to him in a vaguely metaphoric manner that he, Dworkin, is Oberon's father (and that the mother was the Unicorn!), and that he drew the Pattern using the Jewel of Judgement, which was given to him by the Unicorn after he fled from Chaos. Dworkin then describes how the damage to the Pattern could be fixed if he destroyed himself, erasing the pattern and allowing Oberon to draw another. Dworkin takes Corwin to the Primal Pattern, past the purple griffin, Wixer. Dworkin then realizes that it is Corwin, and explains that there is a way to mend the Pattern using the Jewel of Judgement, though that would be more difficult, and probably fatal to the person who attempted it. Dworkin then loses control of his madness, transforming into a monstrous beast and pursuing Corwin back into his chambers. Corwin escapes via a Trump which he finds there. He finds himself in the Courts of Chaos, a great castle which looks out over the Abyss, a swirling black/white hole, under a half-colored-stripy, half-black-swirly sky. Corwin remembers being brought here as a child by Oberon, to see that this is in fact the true source of all creation, not Amber. A strange, pale rider attacks Corwin, but is defeated. A familiar-seeming man approaches with a crossbow, but spares Corwin after recognizing him by his blade. Corwin contacts Gérard via Trump, and learns that because of the time differential between Amber and Chaos he has been missing for eight days. Corwin takes the pierced trump of Martin to Brand, who admits stabbing Martin through the trump in order to damage the pattern, as part of his cabal's scheme to capture Oberon. He tries to persuade Corwin to use the Trump to kill Bleys and Fiona, as he was stabbed. He asks for the Jewel to help him to restrain them, but Corwin is unconvinced. Ganelon, who is with Benedict, contacts Corwin via Trump. Benedict is now wearing the metallic arm from Tir-na Nog'th. Corwin gives Benedict the trump of the Courts. Gérard arrives via Trump. Brand has gone missing, and his room is covered in blood. Gérard becomes convinced that Corwin has finished Brand off, and starts to fight Corwin. Ganelon stops Gérard's punch and knocks him unconscious with several blows, giving Corwin time to escape. Corwin flees into the forest of Arden, hoping to retrieve the Jewel from Earth. A manticora follows him, but Julian arrives and kills it. Julian explains that the Eric-Julian-Caine triumvirate arose only to oppose Brand's cabal, taking the throne to prevent Bleys from claiming it. When Corwin arrived with Bleys, they assumed he had joined the cabal, but when (after his capture) they realized he only wanted the throne, Julian suggested blinding him as an alternative to killing him. Julian tells Corwin how Brand has acquired strange powers, including becoming a "living Trump", capable of teleporting himself or other objects through shadow. Corwin proceeds to Earth, musing on his new-found respect for Julian. He arrives to find that the compost heap where he hid the Jewel of Judgment is gone. With the help of Bill Roth, he tracks down the heap, but the Jewel has been claimed by a red-headed artist. Corwin contacts Amber and has guards posted on the Patterns in Amber and Rebma, hoping to prevent Brand from using them to attune himself to the Jewel. Fiona contacts him via Trump, and projects herself to Earth. She then leads Corwin to the Primal Pattern, taking a short-cut through a starry tunnel. She explains that she and Bleys had imprisoned Brand because he had decided to destroy the Pattern and re-create, reshaping the multiverse according to his own liking. They kept him alive because they believed he might be helpful in repairing the damage. She also explains that Brand tried to kill Corwin on Earth because he saw a vision in Tir-na Nog'th that Corwin would defeat him. Fiona confirms that Bleys survived the fall from the cliff in the first book. They arrive to find Brand already on the Primal Pattern. Corwin follows, hoping to slay Brand while he is distracted, but he realises that slaying Brand would further damage the Pattern. He instead gets close enough to ask the Jewel to summon a tornado, which seems to destroy Brand as it did Random's horse. However, Fiona assures Corwin that Brand survived. Leaving Fiona to guard the Primal Pattern, Corwin goes to his tomb to meet Random and Martin, who have just arrived. Martin tells Corwin how he was attacked by Brand, and how he met Dara in shadow. Ganelon contacts Corwin to tell him that Tir-na Nog'th will appear tonight, along with its version of the Pattern. Reasoning that Brand will attempt to attune himself there, Ganelon asks Benedict to walk the Pattern in Amber, ready to teleport himself there when it appears and tells Corwin to keep permanent contact with Benedict through the Trump to teleport him out in case the city becomes immaterial. Corwin rides to the top of Kolvir and contacts Benedict via the Trump. Tir-na Nog'th appears, and Benedict teleports himself there. Brand appears shortly afterwards, and tries to persuade Benedict to allow him to re-create the Pattern. Benedict refuses and Brand, partly attuned to the Jewel, uses it to freeze Benedict in place. Neither Corwin nor Benedict can now prevent Brand from walking Tir-na Nog'th's Pattern and fully attuning himself to the Jewel, but the mechanical arm moves of its own accord, snatching the Jewel and choking Brand with the chain. Brand teleports away, leaving the chain. Corwin and Benedict decide that the arm being the right weapon in the right place at the right time is too unlikely a coincidence to be true, and so it must have been arranged by some guiding force — Oberon. Together, they try Oberon's Trump, and find that contact comes easily. They are answered by a grinning Ganelon.
230096	/m/01hgx_	The Courts of Chaos	Roger Zelazny	1978	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Corwin sulks in Castle Amber's library while Oberon gives the family orders for a massive battle with the forces of Chaos. Random persuades Corwin to leave, but they are held back by an invisible force. They watch as Corwin's sword appears and chops off Benedict's new arm, just as Corwin did in Tir-na Nog'th. The sword and the arm disappear, and Corwin and Random are released. Dara and Martin are with Benedict. Corwin learns from Martin's trumps that the crossbowman who spared him is Merlin. Dara tells how Brand bargained with the Courts of Chaos. They wished to replace him with Merlin. However, Dara feared that neither would keep their word. She relays Oberon's orders to attack the courts immediately to Benedict. Still unconvinced, Corwin contacts Fiona. She confirms Dara's authority, and says that Oberon is about to repair the Pattern. Hoping to save Oberon, Corwin projects himself through, grabs the Jewel, and runs for the Pattern, but he is paralyzed by Oberon's magics before he can reach it. Oberon has a final talk with his son, explaining that while he had set Corwin up to meet him in Lorraine, he had enjoyed being Corwin's friend, and he wants Corwin to succeed him as King of Amber, with Dara as his queen. Corwin explains that he no longer wants to rule. Oberon, disappointed, dismisses Corwin using a trump-like effect. Once Corwin confirms Dara's authority, Benedict uses the trump of the Courts of Chaos to begin his attack. Dara talks to Corwin, and they decide that although they were used as pawns to create Merlin, they still like each other. Dara then leaves to give the rest of the family their orders. Gérard is ordered to stay and guard Amber, while Julian and Random are to stay in Arden. Oberon arrives, and asks Corwin for some of his blood. He breathes life into the blood, and it becomes a red raven. Oberon tells Corwin that the raven will follow him through shadow. Corwin's orders are to hellride towards Chaos as fast as possible. He must bear the Jewel through shadow. Corwin says goodbye to his father, and sets off. Now that he knows that Amber is just the first Shadow, he finds he can shift shadow there more easily. As he rides towards Chaos, he follows the Black Road. After a time, he notices the black road begin to come apart; shortly after, the raven arrives and gives him the Jewel. Corwin is unsure whether this means that Oberon has succeeded or failed. Brand arrives, telling him that he watched Oberon fail, and that Corwin must give him the Jewel so he can create a new Pattern. Corwin refuses, and forces Brand to leave. He notices an unusually large storm following him, and takes refuge in a cave. The cave's other occupant, a nameless stranger who has also sought shelter from the storm, casually mentions some local legends about the Archangel Corwin, who, according to scripture will ride before a storm at the end of the world. The real Corwin dismisses this story as nonsense and commands the Jewel to quell the storm. Eventually he falls asleep. When he wakes, his horse has been kidnapped. He says goodbye to the stranger and tracks his horse to a cave, blocked off by a large boulder, which he shatters. Inside, leprechauns are celebrating a feast. Observing his great strength, they return his horse and invite him to join them. Succumbing to their odd charm, he starts to fall asleep, but rouses himself in time to see them preparing to slaughter him. He awakes and rushes outside. As he leaves, the leader of the wee folk recognizes him as the Archangel Corwin from local legends, mentioned before by the nameless stranger. He starts to move into shadow, but as he moves further from the cave where he slept the universe starts to come apart around him. He realizes that the storm was a wave of Chaos, moving away from Amber as the multiverse is destroyed. He begins to doubt whether Oberon was successful. Using the jewel, he is able to overtake the storm and return to the diminishing multiverse. A strange lady dines with him and attempts to seduce him, but remembering his encounter with the pale lady on the black road (who may or may have not been a copy of Dara), and that he's working to a deadline, he declines. Brand ambushes him with a crossbow, mortally wounding his horse, but the blood raven reappears and plucks out one of Brand's eyes. Corwin puts down his horse and continues striding through shadow. Corwin cuts a branch off a tree as a walking aid. The tree complains, but when it learns that he is Oberon's son it gives him its blessing. It says that it is Ygg, and that Oberon planted it in Amber's distant past to mark the boundary between Order and Chaos. It tells him to plant the staff somewhere it will have the chance to grow. A talking raven named Hugi (of the usual color) arrives, and tries to distract Corwin with fatalistic philosophy. It shows Corwin the head of a mostly-drowned Giant, who will not even allow the possibility of rescue. A mythological jackal offers to lead Corwin on a short-cut to the Courts, but instead leads him to its lair, where Corwin kills it in self-defense. He finally finds a shadow with the Courts' sky, but is aghast to discover that the Courts still lie across a huge wasteland. The raven Hugi returns and pointedly tells him it knew all along, so he kills it for his dinner. As the metaphysical storm approaches Chaos, Corwin decides that Oberon must have failed, so he plants his staff and begins to use the Jewel to inscribe a new Pattern. The process evokes memories of his former life in Paris, France, and we are given the impression that these somehow shape the new Pattern. He finishes, but is exhausted, and he collapses at the new Pattern's center. Brand projects himself to Corwin and steals the Jewel. Corwin loses consciousness. Corwin awakes to find the area surrounding his Pattern transformed. The sky is now white, and the staff has grown into a tree. Corwin realises that he is at the center of a Pattern, and commands it to teleport him to the Courts. He arrives in the courts, only to be challenged to single combat by someone who introduces himself as Borel, Master at Arms of the Courts of Chaos. He removes his armour to make the fight fair, but Corwin, having no time for a fair fight, slays him then and there, although he does feel slightly guilty about it afterward. Corwin finds Brand with Fiona, Random and Deirdre, at the edge of the Abyss. Fiona is keeping him psychically bound, but Brand has Deirdre as a hostage. Suddenly an image of Oberon fills the sky, telling them that Corwin must use the Jewel to save them from the oncoming Chaos storm, and gives them a blessing. Corwin makes use of the distraction and his attunement to the jewel to super-heat Brand, but Brand realizes what's happening and starts to cut Deirdre. She pulls herself free, and Brand is shot in the chest and throat with a bow. He staggers, and grabs Deirdre's hair. They both fall into the Abyss. Corwin tries to follow her, and Random has to knock him out. Corwin wakes up to see Caine there, alive and well. He explains how he faked his own death and spied on the others using the Trumps. It was him who shot Brand, using silver-tipped arrows, just in case. They watch Amber's armies crush the forces of Chaos while the storm continues to advance. A funeral procession, led by Dworkin, emerges from the storm front, accompanied by all sorts of various fantastic beasts. Fiona appears with Dara and Corwin's son, Merlin. Corwin discusses with Fiona the possibility that two Patterns now exist; she can't decide whether that is good or bad. Dara arrives, angry with Corwin for killing Borel, and then leaves. Merlin arrives with her, but stays, eager to learn more about his father. The Unicorn appears from the Abyss, wearing the Jewel of Judgement. It examines each of the Amberites in turn, then kneels in front of Random. The rest of the family kneel in front of him too, and pledge their allegiance to him as the new King. Random takes the Jewel, and Corwin is able to guide him through the attunement process. Corwin is exhausted, and stays with Random while the others go to the Courts, where they think they should be safe. Merlin stays, and asks to hear about his father's adventures. Corwin begins narrating the Chronicles to his son. Random is successful, and the Trumps become active. They contact Gérard, who tells them that the multiverse is fine, although seven years have passed. Corwin reflects on his changed attitudes towards his family, and on the changes in himself.
230419	/m/01hjbv	The Garden of Cyrus	Thomas Browne			 With its near vertiginous procession of visual imagery and objects, its constant reinforcement of how God geometrizes (via the symbols of the number five and Quincunx pattern), developed from hastily jotted notes in a fractured, breathless, style, The Garden of Cyrus is one of the most idiosyncratic of all literary works. A critical examination of draught manuscripts reveals that the rapid procession of visual images from art and nature in Browne's 1658 Discourse were written with uncharacteristic haste, as if the physician-philosopher's imagination were conjuring evidence of the Quincunx pattern faster than his pen could possibly write. Cyrus may therefore be considered an early example of stream of consciousness and even of altered consciousness writing. Not unlike Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, or the science fiction of H. G. Wells,'The Garden of Cyrus' invites the reader to share with its author in a fantastic perspective upon life and reality. There are however two major reasons why The Garden of Cyrus is not as well known as its diptych companion, Urn-Burial. Firstly, due to an editorial and publishing trend, totally against Browne's artistic intentions, it has been omitted from many nineteenth and twentieth century editions. Because it has been little understood, it has thus been frequently omitted in many publications. Even modern editions from highly reputable publishers, such as Penguin New Directions in 2006 and New York Review Books in May 2012 continue to perpetuate this error. The second reason for The Garden of Cyrus being little-known is the sheer difficulty of the text itself, which has baffled all but the most determined readers. Stylistically, the Discourse veers abruptly from passages of sublime purple prose to crabbed note-book jottings. It also alludes to what is now considered to be obscure learning, namely hermeticism and the esoteric in general. Though difficult to read, The Garden of Cyrus however remains an important work of English literature, primarily because it is incontrovertible evidence that as late as the mid-seventeenth century, isolated individuals throughout Europe continued to subscribe to the tenets of hermetic philosophy.
231292	/m/01hn3l	Roadmarks	Roger Zelazny	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The central theme of the novel is time travel using a highway that links all times and all possible histories. Exits from the highway lead to different times and places. Changing events in the past cause some exits further up the road, in the future, to become overgrown and inaccessible and new exits to appear, leading to different alternative futures. The narrator and protagonist, Red Dorakeen, has vague memories of a place or time that is no longer accessible from the Road. He runs guns to the Greeks at Marathon, trying to recreate history as he remembers it in an attempt to open a new exit from the Road to his half-remembered place. The phrase "Last Exit to Babylon" was the manuscript title of the book and appears on the cover art; it was later used as a title for Volume Four in the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny collection. All "One" chapters feature Red Dorakeen, and all "Two" chapters feature secondary characters. These are Red's natural son Randy, newly introduced to the Road and tired of his old life in Ohio; a bevy of would-be assassins attempting to kill Red, some of whom are comic references to pulp characters, or real people (it is implied that Ambrose Bierce is writing a novel somewhere on the metaphysical highway) and Leila, a woman whose fate is bound to Red's in mysterious and unexplained ways. The "One" storyline is fairly linear, but the "Two" storyline jumps around in time and sequence, first bringing in Randy and Leila without introduction, then later showing Randy's introduction to the Road and meeting with Leila, who will/has just abandoned Red following an incident in the "One" timeline. Everything comes clear in the final chapter, however. There are a number of interesting humorous touches and allusions in the story. These include an ancient dragon who falls in love with a tyrannosaurus, a futuristic warrior robot left behind by aliens because it is malfunctioning and has now taken up pottery, a lost crusader who now works in a gas station located somewhere on the timeless road, occasionally asking his customers about the "current" status of the Holy Land, an ancient Sumerian who buries artifacts later to be found by himself as archaeologist, along with the brief appearances of pulp heroes such as Doc Savage and John Sunlight as well as real historical figures, including Jack the Ripper, Marquis de Sade and an angry Adolf Hitler (who is furiously searching for the place "where he won").
231295	/m/01hn49	Lord of Light	Roger Zelazny	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lord of Light is set on a planet colonized by some of the remnants of "vanished Urath," or Earth. The crew and colonists from the spaceship Star of India found themselves on a strange planet surrounded by hostile indigenous races and had to carve a place for themselves or perish. To increase their chances of survival, the crew has used chemical treatments, biofeedback and electronics to mutate their minds and create enhanced self-images, or "Aspects," that "strengthened their bodies and intensified their wills and extended the power of their desires into Attributes, which fell with a force like magic upon those against whom they were turned." The crew has also developed a technology to transfer a person's atman, or soul, electronically to a new body. This reincarnation by mind transfer has created a race of potential immortals and allowed the former crew members to institute the Hindu caste system, with themselves at the top. The novel covers great spans of time. Eventually, the crew used their now-great powers to subjugate or destroy the native non-human races (whom they characterize as demons) while setting themselves up as gods in the eyes of the many generations of colonist progeny. Taking on the powers and names of Hindu deities, these "gods" maintain respect and control of the masses by maintaining a stranglehold on the access to reincarnation and by suppressing any technological advancements beyond a medieval level. The gods fear that any enlightenment or advancement might lead to a technological renaissance that would eventually weaken their power. The protagonist, Sam, who has developed the ability to manipulate electromagnetic forces, is a renegade crewman who has rejected godhood. Sam is the last "Accelerationist": He believes that technology should be available to the masses, and that reincarnation should not be controlled by the elite. Sam introduces Buddhism as a culture jamming tool and strives to cripple the power of the gods with this "new" religion. His carefully planned revolt against the gods takes place in stages: "An army, great in space, may offer opposition in a brief span of time. One man, brief in space, must spread his opposition across a period of many years if he is to have a chance of succeeding." In many ways, the story of Lord of Light mirrors that of the novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. (for characters, see descriptions below) # In a monastery, the deathgod Yama – assisted by Tak, the ape (formerly Tak the Archivist for the gods) and Ratri, Goddess of Night – assembles a clandestine radio transceiver to extract Sam's atman, or soul, from the "Bridge of the Gods," the planet's thick ionosphere, and restore it to a body. Sam's bodiless essence was projected by the gods into the ionosphere after his capture in the battle of Keenset. This mode of execution was used because the last time the gods killed his body, Sam returned and stole a new one from one of the lesser gods. When Sam awakes, he claims to be horrified to be back in the flesh, having been aware of his ethereal condition the whole time, and having experienced it as a blissful Nirvana. He wants to return, to "hear the song the stars sing on the shores of the great sea." Eventually, after meditation on and immersion in earthly senses, he returns fully to the world. Shortly after, an encounter with the god Mara, who had come to investigate the disturbances caused by Yama's machinery, causes the conspirators to flee. As they proceed, Sam muses on his past .... # Prince Siddhartha, entering old age, comes down to the city of Mahartha to obtain a new body. He finds that there have been changes while he has lived on his estates. Before getting the body, he must submit to a mind-probe, operated by the Masters of Karma, which will be used to determine his fitness for reincarnation. Those judged unfit are given diseased bodies or even reincarnated as animals such as dogs. The dogs then act as spies for the Masters. Siddhartha contacts Jan Olvegg, former captain of the Star of India, reveals himself as Sam, and realizes from what he is told that he cannot remain passive, and must proceed against the Gods. He raids the House of Karma, steals bodies for himself, Olvegg, and others, and causes the former Chief Master of Karma to be reincarnated as a dog. He then disappears to execute the next stage of his plan. # The Buddha appears, preaching a philosophy of non-violence that undermines the doctrine of obedience to the gods and the struggle for a better rebirth. Instead, he emphasizes the pursuit of Nirvana and release from the illusion of the world. The goddess Kali, realizing that this is Sam's work, sends her personal executioner, Rild, to kill Sam, but Rild falls ill and is found and tended to by the Buddhist acolytes, as well as by Sam himself. Because he owes Sam his life, Rild renounces his mission after he recovers. He becomes one of Sam's disciples, eventually exceeding his teacher's wisdom. He takes the name Sugata, preaching in earnest what Sam had done only calculatingly as a way to overthrow the gods. Yama descends to kill Sam. Sugata/Rild faces Yama on a treetrunk bridge over a river, knowing he cannot defeat the God of Death, but fighting him anyway. Yama kills Rild and proceeds to find Sam. However, Sam tricks Yama and escapes, promising to return with "new weapons." Sam also warns Yama against the machinations of Yama's beloved Kali, and in so doing makes a personal enemy of Yama. # Sam enters Hellwell, a huge pit where he had bound the demons centuries earlier. He negotiates with their leader, Taraka, for allies in his struggle. He frees Taraka to see the world above, but Taraka betrays him by taking possession of Sam's body, promising to resume the bargain "later." While in control of Sam's body, Taraka deposes a local maharajah and takes over his palace and harem. As Sam recovers control of his body, he finds himself becoming more like Taraka, enjoying the pleasures of the flesh. In turn, Taraka takes on some aspects of Sam, and ceases to revel in his life of pleasure. Sam tells him he has suffered the Curse of the Buddha, which is revealed to be a conscience and guilt. Soon after, Agni, God of Fire, arrives to kill Sam, finding instead two spirits in one body. Agni destroys the palace, while Sam/Taraka flees to Hellwell. They decide to free as many demons as possible before the gods arrive. However, even the full might of all the demons of Hellwell cannot stand against the gods. A mere four of the gods, Yama, Kali, Shiva, and Agni, are able to hold off the demons and pursue Sam. Despite his own powers, Sam is captured and Taraka leaves him. Sam is told that he is to be taken to Heaven and made an example of, lest the other gods try to emulate his rebellion. # In the place called Heaven, Yama and Kali are to be married. Tak of the Bright Spear is the Archivist of Heaven, but is suspect because he was fathered in lifetimes past by Sam. However, Tak's main concern is seducing comely demi-goddesses such as Maya, the Mistress of Illusion. Sam is more or less free to wander Heaven, even trysting with Kali, who would like to have him back as her lover. He preaches to any who will listen, and the gods allow this, hoping to flush out sympathizers. However, Sam knows of some of his old gadgetry locked away in one of the museums in Heaven, and with the help of Helba, the Goddess of Thieves, he attempts an escape using a belt that amplifies his powers. This fails, and Kali, disgusted with herself and with him, persuades Brahma to order a human sacrifice, namely Helba and Sam himself, to celebrate her wedding. Sam is set free once more to flee for his life, hunted by the White Tigers of Kaniburrha, some of whom may be reincarnated gods, perhaps even Kali herself. Tak attempts to protect Sam by killing the tigers, but is struck down by Ganesha. For this, Tak is sent out of Heaven in the body of an ape. The wedding proceeds, with Sam apparently dead. # Brahma is dead. He has been murdered by persons or gods unknown. Vishnu, Shiva, and Ganesha gather to quickly arrange a replacement. They decide that the only viable candidate is Kali. However, for her to be reincarnated as Brahma (a man), her short marriage to Yama must end. Yama is appalled at how coldly she accepts this. Next, Shiva is found murdered. Yama throws himself into investigating the deaths. His friend, Kubera, approaches the demigod Murugan and accuses him of the murders, finally addressing him as Sam. It appears that Sam has become part-demon, and can survive without a body. He displaced Murugan's spirit as Murugan was about to occupy a new body for the wedding feast. Kubera uncovered the deception by examining the brainwave records from the transfer. Instead of turning Sam in, Kubera offers to help him escape. Sam refuses, determined to kill as many gods as he can. Since Kubera's friend, Yama, is the obvious next target, Kubera tricks Sam, who has forgotten what a great warrior the fat old man was, and in a bout of Irish Stand-Down (in which two men take turns hitting each other until one cannot continue), knocks him out and prepares to flee on the giant bird Garuda. They recruit Ratri to stop Yama from interfering, and take her along. They flee to the city of Keenset, which is undergoing a technological revival, and is marked for destruction by the gods. Eventually, Yama, feeling betrayed by Kali and the other gods, joins them. With Yama's weaponry, and various allies, including the zombie army of Nirriti the Black, they fight a titanic battle of gods, men, and monsters, killing thousands of men, demigods, and eventually some gods as well. They go down in defeat, but not before dealing a crushing blow to the hierarchy of heaven. Yama apparently commits suicide, but some suspect that he has invented a remote reincarnation device. Ratri is exiled from heaven and condemned to wander the world in a series of homely bodies. Kubera had hidden himself in a vault, held in suspended animation. Sam, having proved himself unkillable, is instead projected into the ring of ions around the planet, known as the Bridge of the Gods. However, the gods win only a pyrrhic victory. The most powerful deities, such as Yama, Brahma, Shiva, and Agni, are now dead or sworn enemies of Heaven. Others have gone into exile rather than fight against Sam. While Brahma/Kali is exultant, Ganesha realizes that the days of Heaven are numbered, and he must look out for himself. # In the final story, Sam has been returned from Nirvana. Sam, together with Yama, Ratri, and Kubera, plan their next move in their campaign against heaven. They are joined by the drunken god Krishna, who is a great fighter when sober, and who has wandered the world since he went into exile rather than fight at Keenset. Meanwhile, Nirriti, a Christian and the former chaplain of the original ship, has amassed great power in the southern continent. He is laying waste to cities in his attempts to stamp out the Hindu religion that he hates. He has acquired enough technology to challenge anything the gods can muster, even if they resort to "the tall man of smoke who wears a wide hat," apparently a reference to a nuclear device. He is also allied with the freed demons. At first he seems to be a natural ally for Sam and Yama, but they entrust the demon Taraka with conveying a message to him, and Taraka is determined to fight Yama, to prove that Taraka is the mightiest being on the planet. Thus Taraka falsely tells them that Nirriti has refused, and instead they ally with Brahma to defeat Nirriti, if Brahma will consent to their demands. This alliance defeats Nirriti in a final battle, despite Ganesha's attempt at betrayal, but at a huge cost. Brahma (the former Kali), fatally wounded, is conveyed from the battlefield by Yama. Later, Kubera finds Yama with his "daughter", whom he calls "Murga". She is retarded, and Yama admits that this was due to a botched mind-transfer. Kubera, always ready to help his friend, uses his powers to stimulate Murga's mind. Sam sees Tak restored to a young body, as is Ratri. Sam then leaves, no one is sure where to. Myths build up around his life and his departure.
231716	/m/01hq09	The BFG	Roald Dahl	1982	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about a little girl named Sophie, after the author's granddaughter Sophie Dahl. One night, when Sophie cannot fall asleep during the "witching hour", she sees a giant blowing something into the bedroom windows down the street. The giant notices her, reaches through the window, and carries her to his home in Giant Country. Once there, he reveals that he is the world's only benevolent giant, the Big Friendly Giant or BFG, who operating in the strictest secrecy, collects good dreams that he later distributes to children. By means of immense ears he can hear dreams and their contents (which manifest themselves in a misty Dream Country as floating, blob-like objects) and blow them via a trumpet-like blowpipe into the bedrooms of children. When he catches a nightmare, he destroys it, or uses it to start fights among the other giants, who periodically enter the human world to steal and eat "human beans", especially children. The BFG, because he refuses to do likewise, subsists on a foul-tasting vegetable known as a snozzcumber (inspired by English cucumbers), and on a drink called frobscottle, which is unusual in that the bubbles in the drink travel downwards and therefore cause the drinker to break wind instead of burp; this causes noisy flatulence known as Whizzpoppers. Sophie and the BFG become friends early on; later, she persuades him to approach the Queen of England with the aim of capturing the other giants to prevent them from eating any more people. To this end, the BFG creates a nightmare introducing knowledge of the man-eating giants to the Queen and leaves Sophie in the Queen's bedroom to confirm it true. Because the dream included the knowledge of Sophie's presence, the Queen believes her and speaks with the BFG. After considerable effort by the palace staff to create a table, chair, and cutlery of appropriate size for him to use, the BFG is given a lavish breakfast, and the Queen forms a plan to capture the other giants. She calls the King of Sweden and the Sultan of Baghdad to confirm the BFG's story - the giants having visited those locations on the previous two nights – then summons the Head of the Army and the Marshal of the Air Force. The said officers, though initially belligerent and skeptical, eventually agree to co-operate. Eventually, a huge fleet of helicopters follows the BFG to the giants' homeland. While the child-eating giants are asleep, the Army ties them up, hangs them under the helicopters, and (after a brief struggle with the largest and fiercest of the giants, known as the Fleshlumpeater), flies them to London, where a special pit has been constructed from which they will not be able to escape. With thousands watching closely, the BFG unties the giants, then feeds them snozzcumbers which they will eat for the rest of their lives as a punishment for eating human beings. Afterwards, a huge castle is built to serve as the BFG's new house, with a little cottage next door for Sophie. While they are living happily in England, the BFG writes a book of their adventures, which is stated to be the same book in which the afore-mentioned story is narrated (a literary device also apparent in James and the Giant Peach and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar).
231759	/m/01hq5w	The Tommyknockers	Stephen King	1987-11-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While walking in the woods near the small town of Haven, Maine; Roberta (Bobbi) Anderson, a writer of Wild West-themed fiction, stumbles upon a metal object which turns out to be a protrusion of a long-buried alien spacecraft. Once exposed, the spacecraft begins releasing an invisible, odorless gas into the atmosphere which gradually transforms people into beings similar to the aliens who populated the spacecraft. The transformation, or "becoming," provides them with a limited form of genius which makes them very inventive, but does not provide any philosophical or ethical insight. Instead, it provokes psychotic violence (on the part of people like Becka Paulson, who kills her adulterous husband by fatally rewiring their TV, killing herself in the process) and the disappearance of a young boy, David Brown, whose older brother Hilly teleports him to another planet, referred to as Altair 4 by the Havenites. The book's central protagonist is a poet and friend of Bobbi Anderson, named James Eric Gardner, who goes by the nickname "Gard". He is a fundamentally decent person with left-leaning, liberal sensibilities who is apparently immune to the ship's effects because of a steel plate in his head, a souvenir of a teenage skiing accident. Unfortunately, Gard is also an alcoholic, prone to binges which result in violent outbursts followed by lengthy blackouts. His relationship with Bobbi deteriorates as the novel progresses. She is almost totally overcome by the euphoria of "becoming" one with the spacecraft, but Gard increasingly sees her health worsen and her sanity disappear. The novel is filled with metaphors for the stranglehold of substance abuse, which King himself was experiencing at the time, as well as for the dangers of nuclear power and radioactive fallout (as evidenced by the physical transformations of the townspeople, which resemble the effects of radiation exposure), of unchecked technological advancement, and of the corrupting influence of power. Government agencies are uniformly portrayed as corrupt and totalitarian throughout the book, and Bobbi and Gard themselves are led into thinking that they can use the ship's "power" as a weapon to thwart the authorities' nefarious designs. Seeing the transformation of the townspeople worsen, the torture and manipulation of Bobbi's dog Peter, and people being killed or worse when they pry too deeply into the strange events, Gardner eventually manipulates Bobbi into allowing him into the ship. After he sees that Bobbi is not entirely his old friend and lover, he gives her one more chance before deciding to kill her with the same gun that state trooper "Monster" Dugan had almost killed her with in her back field previously. However, Bobbi was able to read Gardner's mind after loading him up with Valium, and sent out a telepathic APB when she sensed he had a gun. As a result, her death sends all the townspeople swarming to her place intent on killing Gardner. Meanwhile, Gard accidentally (by dropping the gun) shoots himself in the ankle. Ev Hillman, David and Hilly's grandfather, helps Gardner escape into the woods (which soon catches fire from one of the Tommyknockers' "toys") in exchange for using the "new and improved" computers and what little "becoming" he underwent to save David Brown. Gardner enters the ship, activates it, and with the last of his life telepathically launches it into space, resulting in the eventual deaths of nearly all of the changed townspeople but preventing the possibly disastrous consequences of the ship's influence spreading to the outside world. Very shortly after (in the epilogue) members from the FBI, CIA, and "The Shop" invade Haven and take as many of the Havenites as possible (they kill nearly a quarter of the survivors) and a few of the devices created by the altered people of Haven. In the last pages, David Brown is discovered in Hilly Brown's hospital room, safe and sound. The book takes its title from an old children's rhyme: King himself wrote the second verse; and claims to have heard the first verse when he was a child.
232367	/m/01hsn2	Journey to the West	Wu Cheng'en		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel has 100 chapters. These can be divided into four very unequal parts. The first, which includes chapters 1–7, is really a self-contained introduction to the main story. It deals entirely with the earlier exploits of Sun Wukong, a monkey born from a stone nourished by the Five Elements, who learns the art of the Tao, 72 polymorphic transformations, combat, and secrets of immortality, and through guile and force makes a name for himself, Qitian Dasheng (), or "Great Sage Equal to Heaven". His powers grow to match the forces of all of the Eastern (Taoist) deities, and the prologue culminates in Sun's rebellion against Heaven, during a time when he garnered a post in the celestial bureaucracy. Hubris proves his downfall when the Buddha manages to trap him under a mountain, sealing the mountain with a talisman for five hundred years. Only following this introductory story is the nominal main character, Xuanzang (Tang Sanzang), introduced. Chapters 8–12 provide his early biography and the background to his great journey. Dismayed that "the land of the South knows only greed, hedonism, promiscuity, and sins", the Buddha instructs the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Guanyin) to search Tang China for someone to take the Buddhist sutras of "transcendence and persuasion for good will" back to the East. Part of the story here also relates to how Xuanzang becomes a monk (as well as revealing his past life as a disciple of the Buddha named "Golden Cicada" (金蟬子) and comes about being sent on this pilgrimage by Emperor Taizong, who previously escaped death with the help of an official in the Underworld). The third and longest section of the work is chapters 13–99, an episodic adventure story in which Xuanzang sets out to bring back Buddhist scriptures from Leiyin Temple on Vulture Peak in India, but encounters various evils along the way. The section is set in the sparsely populated lands along the Silk Road between China and India, including Xinjiang, Turkestan, and Afghanistan. The geography described in the book is, however, almost entirely fantastic; once Xuanzang departs Chang'an, the Tang capital, and crosses the frontier (somewhere in Gansu province), he finds himself in a wilderness of deep gorges and tall mountains, inhabited by demons and animal spirits, who regard him as a potential meal (since his flesh was believed to give immortality to whoever ate it), with the occasional hidden monastery or royal city-state amidst the harsh setting. Episodes consist of 1–4 chapters and usually involve Xuanzang being captured and having his life threatened while his disciples try to find an ingenious (and often violent) way of liberating him. Although some of Xuanzang's predicaments are political and involve ordinary human beings, they more frequently consist of run-ins with various demons, many of whom turn out to be earthly manifestations of heavenly beings (whose sins will be negated by eating the flesh of Xuanzang) or animal-spirits with enough Taoist spiritual merit to assume semi-human forms. Chapters 13–22 do not follow this structure precisely, as they introduce Xuanzang's disciples, who, inspired or goaded by Guanyin, meet and agree to serve him along the way in order to atone for their sins in their past lives. * The first is Sun Wukong, or Monkey, whose given name loosely means "awakened to emptiness" (see the character's main page for a more complete description), trapped by the Buddha for defying Heaven. He appears right away in chapter 13. The most intelligent and violent of the disciples, he is constantly reproved for his violence by Xuanzang. Ultimately, he can only be controlled by a magic gold ring that Guanyin has placed around his head, which causes him unbearable headaches when Xuanzang chants the Ring Tightening Mantra. * The second, appearing in chapter 19, is Zhu Bajie, literally "Eight Precepts Pig", sometimes translated as Pigsy or just Pig. He was previously the Marshal of the Heavenly Canopy, a commander of Heaven's naval forces, and was banished to the mortal realm for flirting with the moon goddess Chang'e. A reliable fighter, he is characterised by his insatiable appetites for food and sex, and is constantly looking for a way out of his duties, which causes significant conflict with Sun Wukong. * The third, appearing in chapter 22, is the river ogre Sha Wujing, also translated as Friar Sand or Sandy. He was previously the celestial Curtain Lifting General, and was banished to the mortal realm for dropping (and shattering) a crystal goblet of the Queen Mother of the West. He is a quiet but generally dependable character, who serves as the straight foil to the comic relief of Sun and Zhu. * The fourth is the third son of the Dragon King of the West Sea, who was sentenced to death for setting fire to his father's great pearl. He was saved by Guanyin from execution to stay and wait for his call of duty. He appears first in chapter 15, but has almost no speaking role, as throughout the story he mainly appears as a horse that Xuanzang rides on. Chapter 22, where Sha Wujing is introduced, also provides a geographical boundary, as the river that the travelers cross brings them into a new "continent". Chapters 23–86 take place in the wilderness, and consist of 24 episodes of varying length, each characterised by a different magical monster or evil magician. There are impassably wide rivers, flaming mountains, a kingdom with an all-female population, a lair of seductive spider spirits, and many other fantastic scenarios. Throughout the journey, the four brave disciples have to fend off attacks on their master and teacher Xuanzang from various monsters and calamities. It is strongly suggested that most of these calamities are engineered by fate and/or the Buddha, as, while the monsters who attack are vast in power and many in number, no real harm ever comes to the four travellers. Some of the monsters turn out to be escaped celestial beasts belonging to bodhisattvas or Taoist sages and deities. Towards the end of the book there is a scene where the Buddha literally commands the fulfillment of the last disaster, because Xuanzang is one short of the 81 tribulations he needs to face before attaining Buddhahood. In chapter 87, Xuanzang finally reaches the borderlands of India, and chapters 87–99 present magical adventures in a somewhat more mundane (though still exotic) setting. At length, after a pilgrimage said to have taken fourteen years (the text actually only provides evidence for nine of those years, but presumably there was room to add additional episodes) they arrive at the half-real, half-legendary destination of Vulture Peak, where, in a scene simultaneously mystical and comic, Xuanzang receives the scriptures from the living Buddha. Chapter 100, the last of all, quickly describes the return journey to the Tang Empire, and the aftermath in which each traveller receives a reward in the form of posts in the bureaucracy of the heavens. Sun Wukong and Xuanzang achieve Buddhahood, Sha Wujing becomes an arhat, the dragon horse is made a nāga, and Zhu Bajie, whose good deeds have always been tempered by his greed, is promoted to an altar cleanser (i.e. eater of excess offerings at altars).
232392	/m/01hsq5	253	Geoff Ryman	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is about the 253 people on a London Underground train travelling between Embankment station and Elephant & Castle on January 11, 1995. The basic structure of the novel is explained in this quote from the foreword: There are seven carriages on a Bakerloo Line train, each with 36 seats. A train in which every passenger has a seat will carry 252 people. With the driver, that makes 253. Each character is introduced in a separate section containing 253 words. The sections give general details and describe the thoughts going through the characters' heads. In the online version, hypertext links lead to other characters who are nearby or who have some connection to the current character; in the print version, the links are partly replaced by a traditional index. The reader can proceed from one character to another using these devices or can read the novel in positional order, e.g. from one train car to the next, but there is no overall chronological order except in the final section.
233084	/m/01hwrd	Trainspotting	Irvine Welsh	1993	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Skag Boys, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mother Superior - Narrated by Renton. Mark and Simon (aka Sick Boy) are watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie when they decide to go buy heroin from Johnny Swan (aka Mother Superior) since they are both feeling symptoms of withdrawal. They cook up with Raymie (who kisses Sick Boy on the mouth) and Alison (who states about heroin "That beats any meat injection...that beats any fuckin' cock in the world..."). After being informed that he should go see Kelly, who has just had an abortion, Renton instead eagerly returns home to watch the rest of his movie. Junk Dilemmas No. 63 - Narrated by Renton. A short (less than a page) piece comparing his high to an internal sea, while noting: "more short-term sea, more long-term poison". The First Day of the Edinburgh Festival - Narrated by Renton. Mark initially makes an attempt to come off heroin by acquiring a bare room and all the things he will require when coming down. When withdrawal begins to set in however, he resolves to get another hit to ease the decline. Unable to find any heroin, he acquires opium suppositories which, after a heavy bout of diarrhea, he must recover from a public toilet (a notable scene recreated for the film--"The Worst public Toilet in Scotland") showing just how far a junkie will go for a hit (punctuated by the fact that he had to put up with Mikey Forrester to get them, a dealer he loathes). In Overdrive - Narrated by Sick Boy. Simon attempts to pick up girls while being annoyed by Mark, who wants to watch videos. Sick Boy loses Renton and launches into an internal self-glorifying, nihilistic diatribe. Growing Up in Public - Third person narration following Nina, Mark's cousin. Nina is with her family after her Uncle Andy's recent death. She initially feigns indifference but then breaks down without even realising it. It is also revealed that Mark had a catatonic younger brother who died several years before. Victory on New Year's Day - Third person narration following Stevie. At a party consisting of almost all the key characters in the novel, Stevie cannot stop thinking about his girlfriend who he has asked to marry, but has been left waiting for an answer. They optimistically reunite at the train station following a couple of phone calls. It Goes without Saying - Narrated by Renton. Lesley's baby, Dawn, has died. Though it appears to be a cot death, it could also have been from neglect. The Skag Boys are uncomfortable and unsure of how to respond to the tragedy as Lesley cries hysterically. However, Simon/Sick Boy becomes notably more emotional and distressed than the others and eventually breaks down and cries as well, stating he is kicking heroin for good and clearly implying Dawn was his daughter. Mark wants to comfort his friend, but is unable to form the words and simply cooks a shot for himself in order to deal with the situation. A sobbing Lesley asks him to also cook her up a hit, which Mark does but makes sure he injects himself before her, stating the action "goes without saying" and proving the harsh truth that no matter what, junk comes first for them all. Junk Dilemmas No. 64 - Narrated by Renton. Mark's mother is knocking on his door while crying. He ignores her pleas and cooks up a shot. He feels guilty about letting her down, but continues to use drugs anyway. Her Man - Narrated by Rab "Second Prize" McLaughlin. Second Prize and Tommy are in the pub and Tommy confronts a man who is openly punching his own girlfriend. They are shocked to find the woman supports her abusive boyfriend instead of her would-be liberators by digging her nails into Tommy's face, inciting a brawl. Speedy Recruitment - Varied narration (third person while together in the pub, first person for each interview.) Spud and Renton both have a job interview for the same job, but neither of them wants the job as they would prefer to be unemployed and to continue to receive social security. Both Renton and Spud take Amphetamine prior to their interview, where Renton pretends to be an upper-class heroin addict, while Spud rambles incoherently. Scotland Takes Drugs in Psychic Defence - Narrated by Tommy. He goes to an Iggy Pop gig on the same day as his girlfriend's birthday. He spends the entire chapter using speed and alcohol. The chapter's title refers to an Iggy Pop lyric, which Tommy vehemently affirms. The Glass - Narrated by Renton. Focuses on his "friendship" with Begbie. Renton, Begbie and their girlfriends meet up for a drink before going to a party, but it ends when Begbie throws a glass off a balcony, hitting someone and splitting open their head. After this, Begbie smiles at Renton and proceeds to announce to the party he will find whoever threw that glass before attacking random innocent people in the pub and setting off a huge pub brawl. Renton concludes his thoughts on Begbie saying "He really is a cunt ay the first order. Nae doubt about that. The problem is, he's a mate n aw. What kin ye dae?" A Disappointment - Narrated by Begbie. Continues the theme of the last chapter. Begbie recalls an ordinary story of being in the pub and staring at a man whom he wanted to fight. Cock Problems - Narrated by Renton. Tommy comes round to Renton's flat (shortly after Renton injected a shot into his penis, hence the title) after being dumped by his girlfriend. Tommy asks Renton to give him some heroin, which he reluctantly does. This sets off Tommy's gradual decline into addiction. Traditional Sunday Breakfast - Narrated by Davie. Davie has woken up at the house of his girlfriend's mother in a puddle of urine, vomit and faeces, after a night of drinking. Embarrassed, he attempts to make off with the sheets and wash them himself. However, Gail's mother starts tugging at the sheets, he resists, and the contents fly all over the family, their kitchen, and their breakfast. (In the film, this unfortunate event is attributed to Spud.) Junk Dilemmas No. 65 - Narrated by Renton. Mark has been lying in a heroin induced daze with someone (whom he ascertains to be Spud), wondering how long they've been there and noting that it could be days since anybody said anything. Renton stresses how cold he is to Spud. Spud is completely unresponsive and Mark thinks he may be dead, seeming unsurprised if he is. Grieving and Mourning in Port Sunshine - third person narration. Renton's brother Billy and his friends Lenny, Naz Peasbo, and Jackie are waiting for their friend Granty to arrive for a game of cards, as he is holding the money pot. They later find out that Granty is dead and his girlfriend has disappeared with the money, prompting them to beat Jackie, whom they knew to have been sleeping with her. Inter Shitty - Narrated by Begbie. Begbie and Renton have pulled an unknown crime and have decided to lie low in London. The chapter covers their train journey. Na Na and Other Nazis - Narrated by Spud, who has managed to kick heroin. He visits his grandmother, where his mixed-race uncle Dode is staying. He recounts the trouble that Dode has had with racism growing up, particularly an event when he and Spud went to a pub and were soon assaulted by white power skinheads saying slogans such as "ain't no black in the Union Jack". This abuse led to a fight, which left Dode hospitalised, where Spud visits him. "I've had worse in the past and I'll have worse in the future" Dode tells Spud, who begs him not to say such things. "He looks at us like I'll never understand and I know he's probably right." The First Shag in Ages - Third person narration. Renton has kicked heroin and is restless. He ends up picking up a girl at a nightclub, Dianne, and sleeping with her, unaware that she is only fourteen. He is later forced to repeatedly lie to her parents at breakfast the following morning. Despite his guilt and discomfort, he presumably sleeps with Dianne again when she shows up at his apartment. Strolling Through the Meadows - Narrated by Spud. Spud, Renton and Sick Boy take some Ecstasy and stroll to the Meadows where an excited Sick Boy and Renton try to kill a squirrel but stop after Spud becomes upset by their actions towards the animal. He states to the reader that you can't love yourself if you hurt animals as it's wrong and compares their innocence to that of Simon's dead baby Dawn. He also notably states that squirrels are "lovely" and "free" and that "that's maybe what Rents can't stand" indicating Mark envies those he feels are completely unbound and free. Mark, in reaction to Spud's distress and disappointment in his actions, is clearly ashamed and Spud forgives him quickly and the pair embrace, before Simon humorously breaks them up by stating they should either "go fuck each other in the trees" or help him find Begbie and Matty. Courting Disaster - Narrated by Renton. Renton and Spud are in court for stealing books. Renton gets a suspended sentence due to his attempts at rehabilitation, while Spud is given a short prison sentence. Renton becomes increasingly despairing at the "celebrations" and the people around him. Junk Dilemmas No. 66 - An extremely short passage, presumably narrated by Renton. Renton reflects that his heroin hit has removed his ability to move. Deid Dugs - Narrated by Sick Boy. Using an air rifle, Sick Boy shoots a Bull Terrier, which then attacks its skinhead owner, giving Sick Boy the excuse he needs to kill the dog, which he proceeds to do, using its own collar. He delights when a police officer arrives and informs Sick Boy that he will be recommended for a commendation. Searching for the Inner Man - Narrated by Renton. An important chapter in which Renton reflects on why he used heroin after seeing several psychiatrists, all of whom have different unrelenting approaches to clinical psychology taken from various 20th century psychologists. Renton's cynicism has stopped him from forming meaningful relationships with anyone, and he is unable to get any enjoyment out of anything. Mark confesses he had a hard childhood because of his catatonic younger brother. House Arrest - Narrated by Renton. Renton relapses and has to suffer heroin withdrawal at his parents' house, where his hallucinations of dead baby Dawn, the television programme he is watching, and the lecture provided by his father. He is later visited by Sick Boy and goes out to a pub with his parents, whose unnverving enthusiasm acts as a veneer for their authoritative treatment. Mark is confronted with the tedium and triviality of "normal" life, and it is hinted that he will begin using again. Bang to Rites - Narrated by Renton. Renton's brother Billy dies in Northern Ireland with the British Army. Renton attends the funeral; there, he almost starts a fight with some of his father's unionist relatives, and ends up having sex with Billy's pregnant girlfriend in the toilets. Demonstrating some topicality, Renton discusses the hypocrisy of Unionism, and the British in Northern Ireland (commencing with an internal rant against his father's family, who are largely bigoted Orangemen). Junk Dilemmas No. 67 - Another extremely short passage, also presumably narrated by Renton. Renton reflects on the depravity of the world, concluding that deprivation is "relative", as well as considers the problems the pills he is about to use will cause to his veins when injected. He concludes that that there are never any dilemmas with junk, and that the ones there are only show up when the junk "runs oot". London Crawling - Narrated by Renton. Renton finds himself stranded in London with no place to sleep. He tries to fall asleep in an all-night porno theatre, but there he meets an Italian man named Gi, who makes a pass at him. Renton says he's not gay and after Gi apologetically offers him a place to sleep, Renton takes him up on the offer. However, in the middle of the night, Renton wakes to find Gi masturbating over him and his semen on his cheeks and face. Renton reacts violently, but then takes pity on the sobbing old man. He then decides to take Gi to a late night party. On the way, Gi tells him the tragedy of his life — how he had a wife and children who he cared about deeply, yet he could not help falling in love with another man named Antonio and after their affair was revealed the two suffered extremely violent homophobic abuse, leading his lover Antonio to kill himself. At the party, Renton notes sadly how frightened and confused Gi looks and decides to take him to a party at his friends house. Bad Blood - Narrated by Davie. Davie, now HIV-positive, takes a particularly horrible revenge upon the man he suspects raped his girlfriend and gave her HIV, leading to his own contraction of the disease. Davie befriends the man, and when the man is on his deathbed Davie tells him that he just savagely raped and violently murdered the man's six-year-old son after dating the man's ex, going so far as to provide photos of the murdered child. After the man's death, Davie reveals to the reader that he never actually hurt the boy; the whole story was made up and that he had actually chloroformed the child in order to create the fake photos. There is a Light That Never Goes Out - Third person narration. After a marathon drinking and partying session, Renton, Spud, Begbie, Gav, Alison and others venture out for another drink and then something to eat. Spud and others reflect upon their sex lives. The chapter is named after a song by The Smiths, in whose lyrics Spud finds solace after his failed attempt at making a pass at a woman. Feeling Free - Narrated by Kelly. Kelly and Alison create a scene in front of a construction site by getting into an argument with some construction workers. They meet some backpacking women and the foursome end up returning to Kelly's where they get high and their new found friends reveal they are in fact lesbians from New Zealand. The girls have a general laugh about, then Renton arrives on a surprise visit for Kelly. The girls pick on him, making particular fun of his masculinity; he takes it in good humour and leaves, noting that Kelly is already busy. Immediately afterwards the women feel guilty for ganging up on him, though Kelly feels that men are only alright "when in the minority". The Elusive Mr Hunt - Third person narration. Sick Boy prank calls Kelly's pub where she works from across the street. He asks her to look for a "Mark Hunt" and only after she has called the name out ("This boy is wantin Mark Hunt") around the pub a few times does she realise how much the men in the pub are laughing at her and how the name sounds like "my cunt (when said in a Scottish accent)" causing her a great deal of embarrassment. Renton is present in the pub at the time and laughing along with the other men at Kelly, until he realises she has tears in her eyes. At first he thinks she is being silly and shouldn't take the laughter to heart, but then he recognises the laughter from the men in the pub isn't friendly. "It's not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. How was ah tae know, he thinks. How the fuck was ah tae know?" Easy Money for the Professionals - Narrated by Spud. Spud, Begbie, and a teenager have engaged in a criminal robbery. Spud recounts the crime and comments on Begbie's paranoia and how the teenager is likely to get ripped off by the pair. A Present - Narrated by Renton. Gav tells Renton the story of how Matty died of toxoplasmosis after attempting to rekindle his relationship with his ex using a kitten (a scene re-created for Tommy's funeral in the film version). Memories of Matty - Third person narration. The group attends Matty's funeral, where they reflect on his downfall. Straight Dilemmas No. 1 - Narrated by Renton. Renton finds himself at a small gathering in a London flat surrounded by casual drug users. While the others at the party indulge in joints containing opium and try to berate Renton as a 'suit and tie' light-weight, Renton muses on the idea that they have no clue what true drug addiction entails. Eating Out - Narrated by Kelly. Kelly is working as a waitress in an Edinburgh restaurant and gets revenge on some unpleasant customers. Trainspotting at Leith Central Station - Narrated by Renton. Renton returns to Leith for Christmas. He meets Begbie, who beats up an innocent man after having seen his alcoholic father in the disused Leith Central railway station. A Leg-Over Situation - Narrated by Renton. Renton goes to see a previous drug dealer, Johnny Swann, who has had his leg amputated due to heroin use. Winter in West Granton - Narrated by Renton. Renton goes to visit Tommy, who is dying of AIDS. A Scottish Soldier - Third person narration. Johnny Swann is reduced to begging, pretending to be a soldier who lost his leg in the Falklands War. Swann is quite optimistic and exclaims that he is making more money begging rather than dealing heroin. Station to Station - Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Second Prize go to London to engage in a low-key heroin deal and see a Pogues gig. The book ends with Renton stealing the cash and going to Amsterdam. As the movie and sequel, Porno, both imply, Spud is compensated, in the novel, Renton thinks to himself that he will send Spud his cut, as he is the only 'innocent' party.
233097	/m/01hwtg	The Eustace Diamonds	Anthony Trollope	1871	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this novel, the characters of Plantagenet Palliser, his wife Lady Glencora and their uncle the ailing Duke of Omnium are in the background. The plot centres on Lizzie Greystock, a fortune-hunter who ensnares the sickly, dissipated Sir Florian Eustace and is soon left a very wealthy widow and mother. While clever and beautiful, Lizzie has several character flaws; the greatest of these is an almost pathological delight in lying, even when it cannot benefit her. (Trollope comments that Lizzie sees lies as "more beautiful than the truth.") Before he dies, the disillusioned Sir Florian discovers all this, but does not think to change the generous terms of his will. The diamonds of the book's title are a necklace, a family heirloom that Sir Florian gave to Lizzie to wear. Though they belong to her husband's estate (and thus eventually will be the property of her son), Lizzie refuses to relinquish them. She lies about the terms under which they were given to her, leaving their ownership unclear. The indignant Eustace family lawyer, Mr Camperdown, strives to retrieve the necklace, putting the Eustaces in an awkward position. On the one hand, the diamonds are valuable and Lizzie may not have a legal claim to them, but on the other, they do not want to antagonize the mother of the heir to the family estate (Lizzie having only a life interest). Meanwhile, after a respectable period of mourning, Lizzie searches for another husband, a dashing "Corsair" more in keeping with her extravagantly romantic fantasies. She becomes engaged to a dull, but honourable politician, Lord Fawn, but they have a falling out when her character becomes better known, especially her determination to keep the diamonds. She then considers her cousin, Frank Greystock, even though he is already engaged to Lucy Morris, a poor but much beloved governess of the Fawn daughters. Greystock is a successful lawyer and Member of Parliament, but his income is inadequate to his position and spendthrift lifestyle. Lizzie believes he can shield her from the legal proceedings being initiated by Mr Camperdown. Another more Corsair-like possibility is one of the guests at her Scottish home, the older Lord George de Bruce Carruthers, a man who supports himself in a somewhat mysterious manner. Among the other guests is a young woman named Lucinda Roanoke, whose financially straitened aunt, Mrs Carbuncle, is desperate to marry her off. Despite Lucinda's deep detestation of the brutish Sir Griffin Tewett, the aunt has her way and the mismatched couple become engaged. Things take a dramatic turn on a trip to London. Lizzie, out of fear of Mr Camperdown, keeps her diamonds with her in a conspicuous strongbox. One night, at an inn, the strongbox is stolen and everybody assumes the jewellery is lost. As it turns out, Lizzie had taken the gems out and put them under her pillow, but acting on her first instincts, she perjures herself when she has to report the theft to the magistrate, thinking that she can sell the diamonds and let the robbers take the blame. Suspicion falls on both Lizzie and Lord George, acting either together or separately. In any case, the thieves, aided by Lizzie's disloyal maid, Patience Crabstick, try again and succeed in their second attempt. Lizzie feigns illness and takes to her bed. Lady Glencora Palliser pays Lizzie a visit to offer her sympathy. The police begin to unravel the mystery, putting Lizzie in a very uncomfortable position. In the end, the diamonds are lost, the police discover the truth, and Lizzie is forced to confess her lies, though she escapes legal retribution since her testimony is needed to convict the criminals. Both Frank Greystock and Lord George become disgusted by her conduct and desert her. Lucinda Roanoke grows to loathe Sir Griffin more and more intensely until, on what would have been the day of their wedding, she loses her sanity. Frank Greystock returns to Fawn Court to marry Lucy Morris. Mr Emilius, a foreign crypto-Jewish clergyman, woos Lizzie while she is in a vulnerable state and succeeds in marrying her (though it is hinted earlier in the book and is later confirmed in Phineas Redux that he is already married).
233098	/m/01hwtt	Anna of the Five Towns	Arnold Bennett		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot centres on Anna Tellwright, daughter of a wealthy but miserly and dictatorial father, living in the Potteries area of Staffordshire, England. Her activities are strictly controlled by the Methodist church. The novel tells of Anna's struggle for freedom and independence against her father's restraints, and her inward battle between wanting to please her father and wanting to help Willie Price whose father, Titus Price, commits suicide after falling into bankruptcy and debt. During the novel, Anna is courted by the town's most eligible bachelor Henry Mynors, and agrees to be his wife, much to her young sister Agnes' pleasure. She discovers and the end, however, that she loves Willie Price, but does not follow her heart, as he is leaving for Australia, and she is already promised to Mynors. Willie then also commits suicide.
234280	/m/01j13q	Laughing Gas	P. G. Wodehouse	1936-09-25	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Drone Reginald Swithin, the third Earl of Havershot ("Reggie") is 28, unmarried, and has a face like a gorilla. As the new head of his family, he is assigned a delicate task by his Aunt Clara and by Plimsoll, the family lawyer: He is to go to Hollywood and look for Aunt Clara's son, his cousin Eggy, who seems to have gotten himself into trouble, and bring him back home. In particular, Reggie is to prevent Eggy from getting engaged, let alone married, to some American gold-digger who would undoubtedly be far beneath the titled family. On the train from Chicago to Los Angeles, Reggie meets the famous film actress April June, and immediately falls head over heels in love with her. Once in Hollywood, he completely forgets to look for Eggy until, one night, he bumps into him at a party that April June is giving. What is more, Eggy is accompanied by Ann Bannister, Reggie's ex-fiancée, who is now engaged to Eggy. According to Eggy, Ann wants to reform him: make him drink less, and get a job as well. As the host of the party, the seemingly wonderful, tender, and caring April June ("Money and fame mean nothing to me, Lord Havershot") is difficult to get hold of. When he finally succeeds in doing so and is just about to propose to her, Reggie's tooth—in the nick of time, as it turns out later—starts hurting so badly that he has to postpone all his plans, hurry home, and make an appointment with a dentist. On the following afternoon, he is in I.J. Zizzbaum's waiting-room when he gets to know Joey Cooley, the 12 year-old movie star and darling of all American mothers. Joey is also going to have a tooth out, but Joey is going to be operated on by B.K. Burwash, Zizzbaum's rival—they have a common waiting-room—exactly at the same time as Reggie. Presently reporters storm the dentist's practice in order to take photos of Joey and interview him. Both Reggie and Joey get laughing gas as anaesthetic. When Reggie regains consciousness he finds himself spoken to by B.K. Burwash, and also in the latter's chair. He concludes that there has been a switch in the fourth dimension: Joey's and his souls have changed bodies. Before he can clear up the situation, he is shoved into a car and brought "home". Joey's home in Hollywood—originally he is from Chillicothe, Ohio, where his mother lives—is the Brinkmeyer estate, a kind of golden cage for little Joey. He has been informally adopted by T.P. Brinkmeyer, Hollywood film mogul, and his middle-aged sister, Miss Brinkmeyer, who turns out to be particularly nasty. Gradually, Reggie, in Joey's body, gets to know the latter's daily practice, which he finds horrifying: He has been put on a strict diet consisting mainly of dried prunes—but now he has the appetite of a 12 year-old! He must not leave the grounds except on official occasions, and he is not given any pocket money. He finds out very quickly that he can beat Miss Brinkmeyer's strict regime by climbing out of his bedroom window onto the roof of an outbuilding. He finds some confederates among the Brinkmeyers' staff (all of whom are aspiring actors who want to attract Brinkmeyer's attention by playing their servant roles in real life): The gardener readily supplies him with Mexican horned toads and some frogs (to hide in Miss Brinkmeyer's room and clothes); and Chaffinch, the butler, even suggests to him that he may be able to sell Joey's tooth to the press (who in turn might be willing to give it to a souvenir hunter) at the considerable price of $5,000. Desperate for some cash, Reggie agrees but is cheated out of the money by Chaffinch, who takes the money and runs off to New York. Moreover, Reggie is very disturbed when he learns that Ann Bannister has been hired to serve as girl Friday for Joey. For example, her duties include bathing the boy, which Reggie categorically refuses. In the meantime, Joey, in Reggie's body, embarks on a tour of vengeance: He has sworn to (literally) "poke" all the unpleasant people around him "in the snoot", starting with his press agent and the director of a recent film of his. He also enters the Brinkmeyer estate and pushes Miss Brinkmeyer into the swimming pool. Wherever he goes, eye-witnesses describe him as looking like a gorilla. (Fair-haired Reggie Havershot admits earlier on in the novel that he is not particularly handsome.) On the other hand, wherever Eggy (whose complexion, especially in the morning, is described as "greenish") meets Reggie in Joey's body, he thinks his drinking habits have got the better of him. He starts to panic and joins the temperance movement -- the Temple of the New Dawn, to be precise --, eventually becoming engaged to one of its promoters, Mabel Prescott. (All this happens in the course of only two days.) One of the meetings between Reggie/Joey and Eggy is when Eggy is hired as the kid's elocution teacher. Reggie/Joey is also harassed by two other child film stars who live in the neighbourhood, but at least he discovers that he can outrun them. Also, he is kidnapped, but the whole abduction turns out to be a publicity stunt he has not been warned of. While Reggie's soul is still inside Joey's body Reggie also realizes that his beloved April June is a "pill" and a scheming and selfish little beast jealous of everybody else's success. When they are alone at her place, she even kicks him with her foot because by his turning up he has disturbed an interview for some magazine or newspaper. On the next morning his career abruptly comes to an end when it is in all the papers that he drank liquor and smoked. At more or less the same time, a coincidence ends Reggie's ordeal: Just as he is walking along a street near where he has been held prisoner, Joey/Reggie comes along driving a police motorcycle and hitting the kid. After a brief period of being unconscious, they both come to again, to discover that they have switched bodies again. They both have to flee the city immediately: Joey because he wants to escape the Brinkmeyers' wrath; and Reggie because he does not want to be caught by the police for what Joey did while walking around in his body (poking several people in the nose, stealing a police motorcycle and similar misdemeanours). Ann Bannister has organized a car that will bring Joey back to his mother in Ohio, and Reggie readily agrees to accompany him. He also makes up with Ann, and they are going to be married.
234527	/m/01j2f2	Anthem	Ayn Rand	1938	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Equality 7-2521, writing in a tunnel under the earth, later revealed to be an ancient subway tunnel, explains his background, the society around him, and his emigration. His exclusive use of plural pronouns ("we", "our", "they") to refer to himself and others tells a tale of complete socialization and governmental control. The idea of the World Council was to eliminate all individualist ideas. It was so stressed, that people were burned at the stake for saying an Unspeakable Word ("I", "Me", "Myself", and "Ego"). He recounts his early life. He was raised, like all children in the world of Anthem, away from his parents in the Home of the Infants, then transferred to the Home of the Students, where he began his schooling. Later, he realized that he was born with a "curse": He is eager to think and question, and unwilling to give up himself for others, which violates the principles upon which Anthems society is founded. He excelled in math and science, and dreamed of becoming a Scholar. However, a Council of Vocations assigned all people to their jobs, and he was assigned to the Home of the Street Sweepers. Equality accepts his profession willingly in order to repent for his transgression (his desire to learn). He works with International 4-8818 and Union 5-3992. International is exceptionally tall, a great artist (which is his transgression, as only people chosen to be artists may draw), and Equality's only friend (having a friend also being a crime because, in Anthems society, one is not supposed to prefer one of one's brothers over the rest). Union, "they of the half-brain," suffers from some sort of neurological seizures. However, Equality remains curious. One day, he finds the entrance to a subway tunnel in his assigned work area and explores it, despite International 4-8818's protests that an action unauthorized by a Council is forbidden. Equality realizes that the tunnel is left over from the Unmentionable Times, before the creation of Anthems society, and is curious about it. During the daily three hour-long play, he leaves the rest of the community at the theater and enters the tunnel and undertakes scientific experiments. Working outside the City one day, by a field, Equality meets and falls in love with a woman, Liberty 5-3000, whom he names "The Golden One." Liberty 5-3000 names Equality "The Unconquered". Continuing his scientific work, Equality rediscovers electricity (which he, until the book nears its conclusion, calls the "power of the sky") and the light bulb. He makes a decision to take his inventions to the World Council of Scholars when they arrive in his town in a few days' time, so that they will recognize his talent and allow him to work with them, as well as to make what he sees as a valuable contribution to his fellow men. However, one night he loses track of time in the underground tunnel and his absence from the Home of the Street Sweepers is noticed. When he refuses to say where he has been, he is arrested and sent to the Palace of Corrective Detention, from which he easily escapes after being tortured. The day after his escape, he walks in on the World Council of Scholars and presents his work to them. Horrified, they reject it because it was not authorized by a Council and threatens to upset the equilibrium of their world. When they try to destroy his invention, he takes it and flees into the Uncharted Forest which lies outside the City. Upon entering the Uncharted Forest, Equality begins to realize that he is free, that he no longer must wake up every morning with his brothers to sweep the streets. Since it was illegal for men of the City to enter or even think of the Forest, he was not pursued once he crossed its threshold. He can "rise, or run, or leap, or fall down again." Now that he sees this, he is not stricken with the sense that he will die at the fangs of the beasts of the forest as a result of his transgressions. He develops a new understanding of the world and his place in it. On his second day of living in the forest, Equality stumbles upon the Golden One, Liberty 5-3000, who has followed him from the City. They embrace, struggling to express their feelings for each other as they do not know how to verbally express themselves as individuals. They find and enter a house from the Unmentionable Times in the mountains, perfectly preserved for hundreds of years by thick overgrowth, and decide to live in it. While reading books from the house's library, Equality and Liberty discover that the Unspeakable Word, the one that carries the penalty of death, is "I", given through the power of "ego". Recognizing its sacred value and the individuality it expresses, they give themselves new names from the books: Equality becomes "Prometheus" and Liberty becomes "Gaea". As the book closes, Prometheus talks about the past, wonders how men could give up their individuality, and charts a future in which they will regain it. The last word of the book, "EGO", is inscribed by Prometheus on a rock and hung over his front door.
234555	/m/01j2k1	We	Yevgeny Zamyatin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 One thousand years after the One State's conquest of the entire world, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. Meanwhile, the project's chief engineer, D-503, begins a journal which he intends to be carried upon the completed Integral. Like all other citizens of the One State, D-503 lives in a glass apartment building and is carefully watched by the secret police, or Bureau of Guardians. D-503's lover, who has been assigned by the One State to visit him on certain nights, is O-90. O-90, who is considered too short to bear children, is deeply grieved by her state in life. O-90's other lover and D-503's best friend, is R-13, a State poet who reads his verse at public executions. While on an assigned walk with O-90, D-503 meets a woman named I-330. I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal sex visit. All of these are highly illegal according to the laws of the One State. Both repelled and fascinated, D-503 struggles to overcome his attraction to I-330. I-330 invites him to visit the Ancient House, notable for being the only opaque building in the One State, except for windows. Objects of aesthetic and historical importance, dug up from around the city, are stored there. There, I-330 offers him the services of a corrupt doctor in order to explain his absence from work. Leaving in horror, D-503 vows to denounce her to the Bureau of Guardians, but finds that he cannot. He begins to have dreams at night, which disturbs him, as dreams are thought to be a symptom of mental illness. Slowly, I-330 reveals to D-503 that she is involved with the MEPHI, an organization plotting to bring down the One State. She takes him through secret tunnels inside the Ancient House to the world outside the Green Wall which surrounds the city-state. There, D-503 meets the inhabitants of the outside world: humans whose bodies are covered with animal fur. The aims of the MEPHI are to destroy the Green Wall and reunite the citizens of the One State with the outside world. Despite the recent rift between them, O-90 pleads with D-503 to impregnate her illegally. After O-90 insists that she will obey the law by turning over their child to be raised by the One State, D-503 obliges. However, as her pregnancy progresses, O-90 realizes that she cannot bear to be parted from her baby under any circumstances. At D-503's request, I-330 arranges for O-90 to be smuggled outside of the Green Wall. In his last journal entry, D-503 indifferently relates that he has been forcibly tied to a table and subjected to the "Great Operation" (similar to a lobotomy), which has recently been mandated for all citizens of the One State. This operation removes the imagination and emotions by targeting parts of the brain with x-rays. After this operation, D-503 willingly informed the Benefactor about the inner workings of the MEPHI. However, D-503 expresses surprise that even torture could not induce I-330 to denounce her comrades. Despite her refusal, I-330 and those arrested with her are sentenced to death, "under the Benefactor's Machine." Meanwhile, the MEPHI uprising gathers strength; parts of the Green Wall have been destroyed, birds are repopulating the city, and people start committing acts of social rebellion. Although D-503 expresses hope that the Benefactor shall restore "reason," the novel ends with the One State's authority in doubt. A repeated mantra in the novel is that there is no final revolution.
234876	/m/01j44l	Migraine	Oliver Sacks			 As with Sacks' other writings, the book is a comprehensive review of the subject aimed at the lay population and uses numerous case histories. Sacks describes the nature of and treatments for migraine in general and several various subtypes, particularly examining the visual aura feature that is common to many sufferers, along with the premonitorys. The particular focus of the book, however, is on the neuropsychological aspects of migraine.
235094	/m/01j519	Without Remorse	Tom Clancy	1993	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book starts off with John Kelly and two other UDT men performing a maritime demolition of an oil-rig irreparably damaged by Hurricane Camille. While driving to pick him up after the job, Kelly's pregnant wife Patricia (Tish) is killed in a car accident caused by damaged brakes in a large truck. Next to be introduced is Colonel Robin Zacharias, a United States Air Force F-105 pilot, shot down along with his back-seater John Tait during a Wild Weasel strike over North Vietnam (Zacharias is also the father of a B-2 bomber pilot who makes a brief appearance in Debt of Honor). Tait is killed but Robin is captured and reported killed in action, then transferred to a secret POW camp established by the Vietnamese communists to elicit aid from the Soviet Union. Among the prisoners are some who possess highly-classified knowledge, beyond the scope of the Vietnam War. Zacharias, for example, had helped develop SAC War Plans, choosing targets, routes, and methods. He is interrogated by Colonel Nikolai Yevgenievich Grishanov, who asks the prisoners to call him by his nickname Kolya. Grishanov manages to get more information out of the prisoners with kindness and a little vodka than the Vietnamese camp commander Major Vinh had gotten with privation and abuse. Eventually, someone up the chain of command of the NVA decides that the prisoners are not worth keeping and that they can be quietly killed, with plausible deniability. Grishanov then starts to make urgent requests to his superiors that the POWs be brought to the Soviet Union to live out the rest of their lives. While Zacharias is being moved to his cell, a U.S. Buffalo Hunter pilotless drone photographs him, and Admiral Dutch Maxwell recognizes his face. Maxwell, along with two other admirals, develops a special-operation plan entitled Operation BOXWOOD GREEN that will send Marines into North Vietnam to rescue the prisoners. Six months after his wife's death, Kelly meets a girl named Pamela Madden, who has escaped from prostitution and serving as a "mule" in a drug-smuggling ring run by Henry Tucker. Kelly picks Pam up off the highway and becomes romantically involved with her. The day after he meets Pam, Kelly befriends two doctors, Sam and Sarah Rosen, who are both professors at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Sam of neurosurgery and Sarah of pharmacology, when they have trouble with their new motorboat. (He had neglected to replace the zinc anodes that normally protect exposed metal from corrosion, and his crumbly propellers have been scraped off by a sandbar, which is not on his outdated charts. Kelly orders new "screws" and charts, and Sam owes him.) Kelly discovers, by accident, that Pam is addicted to barbiturates. With the help of Sam and Sarah, Kelly helps Pam recover from her addiction. While bringing her into the city for treatment and to speak with the police, Kelly becomes curious about Pam's old life and attempts to reconnoiter her previous chapters. Unfortunately, Pam is recognized by Billy Grayson, her old pimp, and they are attacked. A car chase ensues, in which Kelly's Scout is at a disadvantage to Billy's Plymouth Roadrunner. At one point, Kelly lures Billy into a vacant lot and gets him stuck in deep mud. However, Kelly makes the mistake of slowing down and stopping; he is shot twice with a shotgun and Pam is kidnapped. A press photographer later finds Pam's dead body displayed in a fountain. Kelly recovers in a hospital with the help of Sam Rosen. At this point, Nurse Sandy O'Toole is asked to take a special interest in Kelly. When Kelly is shown a picture of Pam's body and is informed of her abuse during and after death (she was raped by several men, then strangled) he decides to take revenge and vows to take down the people responsible. Kelly starts a rigorous exercise regime to help heal his body so that he can prepare for his private war with Henry Tucker's drug ring. When Kelly returns to his home he is approached by Admiral Maxwell, who recruits him to spearhead a covert operation to free the dozens of secretly held POWs. Kelly is recruited because he is the only person they know of that has ever spent time in the area of the camp. (Kelly had gone behind enemy lines in the vicinity of the camp [before it was built], to rescue Maxwell's son. Political considerations prevented him from receiving the Medal of Honor for saving an admiral's son, but he received a Navy Cross and a promotion as well as excellent references.) Kelly next sets up a safe house in Baltimore, and goes incognito as a wino to perform recon on the drug pushers. He first kills Pam's first pimp in New Orleans, then several minor drug dealers and eventually learns the location of Billy, a subaltern in the drug ring and one of those who had killed Pam. He captures Billy and rescues Doris Brown, who is a "mule" as Pam was. Tucker had ordered all the girls who were his couriers to be killed since they were security risks. Kelly takes Billy to his island and interrogates him in his recompression chamber to get further information about the drug ring. Kelly leaves Doris with Sandy because he must leave to lead the mission to rescue the POWs. The plan fails, as the Soviets catch wind of it courtesy of a loose-mouthed anti-American White House intern who told his prep-school friend, a senate aide who is a mole for the KGB. Kelly does manage to kill the escaping Major Vinh and captures Grishanov, who the U.S. use to negotiate the transfer of the prisoners to the Hanoi Hilton, where they will be confirmed as alive and eventually returned. The presence of mind Kelly shows in capturing, rather than killing, Grishanov impresses the CIA officers involved in the operation, particularly since it ultimately leads to the survival of Zacharias and the other POWs. He then visits Sandy and discovers that Doris has been murdered thanks to a corrupt policeman on Tucker's payroll. Kelly determines the location of the drug ring's first lab, used for "cutting" heroin, in a derelict ship near his own island home. It is abandoned after Kelly raids it, executing the men who murdered Doris and releasing Xantha Matthews, another of the "mules" whom Tucker had ordered to be killed. Kelly deduces from the formaldehyde smell of the bags containing the heroin, and from the country of origin, that it is being smuggled into the US hidden inside corpses of American soldiers. Kelly is then brought into a meeting with Admiral James Greer and high-ranking CIA official Robert Ritter, who want Kelly to join the agency. Kelly states that there is one major problem, and points to the newspaper that has a front-page story of the raid on the derelict ship. The CIA then begins to plan Kelly's fake death by first switching his prints with the captured Kolya's, while allowing him to finish what he started. The first job given to Kelly by the CIA is to remove the mole. Kelly gives the mole a choice, either commit suicide with the heroin he's collected or Kelly will kill him with his knife. Kelly next tracks the new drug lab to a warehouse in a sleepy industrial district, which the smugglers plan to use as long as their source (and the war) holds out. He sets up a sniper post in a nearby building and lays siege to the warehouse, killing two Mafia hoods. Charon shows up at the scene and, upon learning of the situation outside, attempts to murder Piaggi and Tucker, only to be fatally shot by Piaggi. Moments later, Kelly enters the room where the two drug dealers are holed up and kills them both. Emmet Ryan figures out who the undercover wino was and tracks Kelly to his boat. However, he allows Kelly a one hour head start before he alerts the Coast Guard. Kelly then gets into a boat chase and then purposely capsizes his boat in order to fake his own death and kill off his John Kelly identity. He then uses the diving gear he prepared on his boat to swim under the Coast Guard vessel and onto Admiral Maxwell's sailboat, where the Admiral picks him up. (The Coast Guard officer who'd tried to pursue and arrest him, and who believed him to be dead in the "accident," would unexpectedly meet up with Clark many years later—in the chronology of the "Ryanverse"—within the pages of Debt of Honor). Now known as John Clark, he has married Sandy (who is pregnant), and the book ends with the release of the POWs after the end of the war.
236569	/m/01jbmk	The Black Tulip	Alexandre Dumas		{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins with a historical event — the 1672 lynching of the Dutch Grand Pensionary (roughly equivalent to a modern Prime Minister) Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis, by a wild mob of their own countrymen — considered by many as one of the most painful episodes in Dutch history, described by Dumas with a dramatic intensity. The main plot line, involving fictional characters, takes place in the following eighteen months; only gradually does the reader understand its connection with the killing of the de Witt brothers. The city of Haarlem, Netherlands has set a prize of 100,000 guilders to the person who can grow a black tulip, sparking competition between the country's best gardeners to win the money, honour and fame. The young and bourgeois Cornelius van Baerle has almost succeeded, but is suddenly thrown into the Loevestein prison. There he meets the prison guard's beautiful daughter Rosa, who will be his comfort and help, and at last his rescuer. The novel was originally published in three volumes in 1850 as La Tulipe Noire by Baudry (Paris).
236599	/m/01jbvd	Cujo	Stephen King	1981-09-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 We first meet the middle-class Trentons, who are recent arrivals in town: Vic, an advertisement designer, his wife, Donna, and their four-year-old son Tad. Vic has discovered that his wife had been involved in an affair. In the midst of this household tension, Vic's fledgling advertising agency is failing, and he is forced to leave on a business trip to Boston and New York. We are then introduced to the blue-collar Cambers, longtime town residents: Joe, a shade-tree mechanic, Charity, his wife, and their ten-year-old son Brett. Charity is frustrated with her domineering and occasionally abusive husband, and is worried about Joe's negative influence on Brett. Charity wins the state lottery, and uses the proceeds to inveigle Joe into allowing her to take Brett on a trip to visit Charity's sister, Holly, in Connecticut. Joe secretly plans to use the time to take a pleasure trip to Boston with his neighbor, Gary Pervier. Cujo, a St. Bernard, belongs to Joe Camber and his family. Although Joe is fond of Cujo, he never bothers to get the dog vaccinated against rabies. While chasing a rabbit in the fields around the Cambers' house, Cujo gets his head temporarily stuck in the entrance to a small limestone cave and is bitten on the nose by a bat and infected with rabies. Soon after Charity and Brett leave, Cujo attacks and kills Gary Pervier. Joe goes to the Pervier home to check on Gary, only to find him dead. Before Joe is able to call authorities for help, Cujo attacks and kills him as well. Donna, home alone with Tad, takes their failing Ford Pinto to the Cambers' for repairs. The car breaks down in Camber's dooryard and as Donna attempts to find Joe, Cujo appears and is ready to pounce. She climbs back in the car and Cujo starts to attack. Donna and Tad become trapped in their vehicle, whose interior is becoming increasingly hot in the glaring sunlight. During one escape attempt, Donna is bitten in the stomach and leg, but manages to survive and escape back into the car. She considers running for the Cambers' home but is afraid the door will be locked and she will be subsequently killed by Cujo, leaving her son all alone, and abandons the idea. Vic returns to Castle Rock after several failed attempts to contact her. He also learns from the police that Steve Kemp, the man with whom Donna was having an affair, is suspected of ransacking his home and possibly kidnapping Donna and Tad. However, in an effort to explore all leads, the state police send local Castle Rock Sheriff George Bannerman out to the Cambers' house. When George gets there, Cujo attacks and kills him. Following this, Donna realizes that Tad is dying and she must act. She faces Cujo down with a bat, breaking it over his head and fatally stabbing him in the eye with the broken end. Vic arrives immediately afterwards only to discover Tad died of dehydration. The book ends with both the Trentons and the Cambers trying to go on with their lives — Donna is cured for Rabies and Cujo is cremated. The book ends by saying that Charity gave Brett a new, vaccinated puppy named Willie.
236925	/m/01jdft	Human Action	Ludwig von Mises		{"/m/02rx5hc": "Treatise", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Mises sees economic calculation as the most fundamental problem in economics. The economic problem to Mises is that of action. Man acts to dispel feelings of uneasiness, but can only succeed in acting if he comprehends causal connections between the ends that he wants to satisfy, and available means. The fact that man resides in a world of causality means that he faces definite choices as to how he satisfies his ends. Human action is an application of human reason to select the best means of satisfying ends. The reasoning mind evaluates and grades different options. This is economic calculation. Economic calculation is common to all people. Mises insisted that the logical structure of human minds is the same for everybody. Of course, this is not to say that all minds are the same. Man makes different value judgments and possess different data, but logic is the same for all. Human reason and economic calculation have limitations, but Mises sees no alternative to economic calculation as a means of using scarce resources to improve our well being. Human action concerns dynamics. The opposite to action is not inaction. Rather, the opposite to action is contentment. In a fully contented state there would be no action, no efforts to change the existing order of things (which might be changed by merely ceasing to do some things). Man acts because he is never fully satisfied, and will never stop because he can never be fully satisfied. This might seem like a simple point, but modern economics is built upon ideas of contentment-equilibrium analysis and indifference conditions. It is true that some economists construct models of dynamic equilibrium, but the idea of a dynamic equilibrium is oxymoronic to Mises. An actual equilibrium may involve a recurring cycle, but not true dynamics. True dynamics involve non-repeating evolutionary change. Mises explains dynamic change in terms of "the plain state of rest". A final state of rest involves perfect plans to fully satisfy human desires. A plain state of rest is a temporary and imperfect equilibrium deriving from past human plans. Though any set of plans is imperfect, to act means attempting to improve each successive set of plans. Movement from one plain state of rest to another represents the process of change, either evolutionary or devolutionary. Mises links progress and profits. Profits earned from voluntary trades are the indicator of economic success. It is monetary calculation of profits that indicates whether an enterprise has generated a net increase in consumer well being over true economic costs. The close association that Mises draws between economic calculation and monetary calculation leads him to conclude that market prices (upon which monetary profits are calculated) are indispensable to progress in bettering the human condition. Without markets there are no prices, and without prices there is no economic calculation. One point that Mises made, but did not get enough attention, is that monetary calculation takes place primarily in financial markets. Monetary calculation is vitally important. Mises stresses the importance of entrepreneurship because it is entrepreneurs who actually do monetary calculation. This fact puts entrepreneurs at the center of all progress (and failure). Entrepreneurs who estimate costs more correctly than their rivals earn high profits while also serving consumers. Such men rise to top positions in industry. Entrepreneurs who err seriously in their calculations experience financial losses and cease to direct production. Mises described this market test of entrepreneurial skills as the only process of trial and error that really matters. The concepts of monetary calculation, financial speculation, and entrepreneurship form the basis for the von Mises critique of socialism.
237140	/m/01jfc3	More Joy in Heaven	Morley Callaghan		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story of Kip Caley, an ex-criminal, intent on becoming a useful and honourable human being. His struggle with himself and with a society which will not let him regain his human dignity.
238534	/m/01jlp7	Lonesome Dove	Larry McMurtry	1985	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is 1876. Captain Augustus "Gus" McCrae and Captain Woodrow F. Call, two famous ex–Texas Rangers, run a livery called the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium in the small dusty Texas border town of Lonesome Dove. Smooth, charming and easy going, Gus loves women and women return the sentiments, but he's twice a widower and he never marries the love of his life, Clara. Although he had proposed many a time, she had rejected him every time because, in her words, Gus is "a rambler," and she despises Call because she feels jealous of the years Gus spent with him instead of her. She needed to settle down and have a family and a good life; he was brave and a dead aim, but was lazy and prone to wandering away for another adventure. While McCrae is warm, good natured, and understanding of people, Captain Call, Gus's best friend and partner, is the opposite: a workaholic taskmaster who hides in his work, emotionally cut off. He is afraid "to admit he's human," according to McCrae. He loved only one woman, a prostitute named Maggie, who gave birth to his only son, Newt. Though he knows he is his bastard son's father, he refuses to admit it and give Newt his name. He is hypercompetent at his work to compensate for his complete failure at human relationships. He is cold and driven by pride and honor, not love. Even when he drags the body of the only human who ever understood him and loved him anyway over 2000 miles across the Great Plains, suffering ridicule and hardship, he claims he is doing it for duty, not friendship. He is the Western version of Captain Ahab whose reckless stubbornness ends in tragedy. Working with them are Joshua Deets, a black man who is an excellent tracker and scout from their Ranger days, Pea Eye Parker, another former Ranger who works hard but isn't all too bright, and Bolivar, a retired Mexican bandit who is their cook. Also living with them is the boy Newt Dobbs, a seventeen-year-old whose mother was a prostitute named Maggie and whose father may be Call. The story begins in the small town of Lonesome Dove, as Jake Spoon, a former comrade of Call's and McCrae's, shows up after an absence of more than ten years. He is a man on the run, having accidentally shot the dentist of Fort Smith in Arkansas. The dentist's brother happens to be the sheriff, July Johnson. Reunited with Gus and Call, Jake's breath-taking description of Montana inspires Call to gather a herd of cattle and drive them there, to begin the first cattle ranch in the frontier territory. Call is attracted to the romantic notion of settling pristine country. Gus is less enthusiastic, pointing out that they are getting old and that they are Rangers and traders, not cowboys. But he changes his mind when Jake reminds him that Gus' old sweetheart, Clara, lives on the Platte, 20 miles from Ogallala, Nebraska, which is on their route to Montana. Captain Call prevails. They make preparations for their adventure north, including stealing horses in Mexico and recruiting almost all the male citizens of Lonesome Dove. Ironically, Jake Spoon decides not to go after all, being selfish and undependable and because he promises the town's only prostitute, Lorena Wood, known as Lorie, he'll take her to San Francisco. Ogallala also happens to be the destination of Elmira, the wife of Sheriff Johnson, as she runs away to meet up with her true love, Dee Boot. So the three groups head north. They encounter horse thieves, murderers, hostile Indians, inclement weather, and a few inner demons.
238820	/m/025s8vb	Warring States	Mags L Halliday	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Cousin Octavia of Faction Paradox has come to Peking during the Boxer Rebellion in search of an artifact she believes can bestow immortality. For Liu Hui Ying, the artifact is a symbol that will rally the Han. But in this dangerous time, more than each other stands in the way of either obtaining the jade casket.
239007	/m/01jnt5	The Practice Effect	David Brin	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A scientist by the name of Dennis Nuel is working at, and attending, an institute of scientific research and pioneering work into the fictional scientific field of "Zievatronics", the manipulation of Time and Space. After the death of his mentor, however, he is taken off the project and another professor takes over. After a time, the device that has been created to move through space and time, known as the "Zievatron" encounters operational problems and is fixed to the co-ordinates of a world that appears to be very similar to our Earth in most respects, and Dennis is re-recruited to help fix it. He volunteers to be sent to the other world in order to fix the other part of the Zievatron. On arriving to this planet, he finds the Zievatron dismantled and critical parts of it missing. Of the three surveillance robots sent through to this planet, he finds two have also been broken apart. After a while, he finds the last robot, intact and still functioning, and uses it to view any recorded images that might help him identify what it was that happened to the Zievatron. In this world, instead of objects wearing out as you use them, they improve. This is referred to as the Practice effect. For example, swords get sharper with use, baskets get stronger the more things they carry, mirrors, furniture and decorations look more attractive the more they are looked at. The downside to this being that an object's condition deteriorates over time if not put to use. Under this system, members of society's higher strata employ servants to Practice their own possessions to perfection. It is eventually discovered that the Practice Effect is the result of an elusive, biologically-engineered creature known as a Krenegee Beast that causes a change in a law of thermodynamics. This creature emits a field under which the Practice Effect works. The closer one is to the Krenegee Beasts, the more efficient the Practice that is done. The Practice Effect can take many months before an object reaches its maximum point of "practice", however if one is under a Felthesh Trance the process is sped up if a Krenegee Beast is present the process is sped up more so than if one were under a Felthesh Trance.
239158	/m/01jphw	The British Museum Is Falling Down	David Lodge	1965	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in Swinging London, the novel describes one day in the life of Adam Appleby, who lives in constant fear that his wife might be pregnant again with a fourth child. As Catholics, they are denied any form of contraception and have to play "Vatican roulette" instead. Adam and Barbara have three children: Clare, Dominic, and Edward; their friends ask if they intend working through the whole alphabet. In the course of only one busy day, several chances to make some money present themselves to Adam. For example, he is offered the opportunity to edit a deceased scholar's unpublished manuscripts; however, when he eventually has a look at them, he feels uncomfortable realizing that the man's writings are worthless drivel. Also, at the house in Bayswater where he is supposed to get the papers, Adam has to cope with an assortment of weird characters ranging from butchers to a young virgin intent on seducing him. Lodge's novel makes extensive use of pastiche, incorporating passages where both the motifs and the styles of writing used by various authors are imitated. For instance, there is a Kafkaesque scene where Adam has to renew his reading-room ticket. The final chapter of the novel is a monologue by Adam's wife in the style of Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Ulysses. This use of different styles mirrors James Joyce's Ulysses, a work also about a single day. When Lodge's novel first came out, quite a number of reviewers and critics, not appreciating the literary allusions, found fault with Lodge for his inhomogeneous writing.
239433	/m/01jqms	The History Man	Malcolm Bradbury	1975	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 What we learn about the Kirks' past does not set them apart from most young working-class intellectuals who grew up in the 1950s when there was growing hope of improved economic and educational opportunity. When Howard and Barbara meet in their third year at the University of Leeds, Howard is still a virgin. They are both religious and working class and during their student years cannot afford more than the bare necessities of life. A few years after their graduation, in the summer of 1963, the "old Kirks", already a married couple living in a small bedsit, metamorphose into the "new Kirks" when one day, while Howard is at the university where he has a job as a lecturer, Barbara has spontaneous casual sex with an Egyptian student. This fling triggers a series of events: When he has got over the shock, Howard begins to associate with all kinds of radical people. The Kirks make lots of new friends. they smoke pot at parties, Barbara develops a new interest in health food and astrology, Howard grows a beard and they both start having "small affairs". When Barbara gets pregnant, rather than cancelling his class, Howard takes his students to the clinic to watch his wife giving birth. Finally, in 1967, he is appointed lecturer at Watermouth and right from the start he is intent on radicalising that bourgeois town, especially the newly-founded university, an institution that he describes as 'a place I can work against'. The novel chronicles a term in the lives of Howard and Barbara Kirk. Howard's zero tolerance concerning non-Marxist, especially conservative, thinking makes him persecute one of the male participants of his seminar who, apart from wearing a university blazer and a tie which make him look like a student out of the 1950s, insists on being allowed to present his paper in the traditional, formal way, without being interrupted and without having to answer questions before he has finished his train of thought. In front of the others Howard calls him a "heavy, anal type" and what he has prepared for class "an anal, repressed paper", without considering his own apparent hypocrisy any further. In the end he succeeds in having the student, a "historical irrelevance", expelled from the university. Whereas Howard selects his many sexual partners from among the people who work at the university (students as well as faculty members) on Saturday mornings, Barbara Kirk regularly goes on "shopping trips" to London, which usually turn into "wicked weekends". What is more, the Kirks consider the parties they throw in their house a success if at least some of their guests have sex in the many rooms they provide for that. At one point in the novel Howard's promiscuity gets him into trouble when he is told that he might be sacked for "gross moral turpitude" (which he defines to a female student of his as "raping large numbers of nuns"), but he shrugs off this accusation as being based on "a very vague concept, especially these days". A number of supporting characters round off the vivid picture of the permissive society of the early 1970s. For example, there is Henry Beamish, one of Howard's colleagues whose childless middle-class marriage to Myra has been largely unhappy. There is Dr. Macintosh, a sociologist from Howard's department who, despite his pregnant wife, can be convinced by Howard that having sex with one of his students during the end-of-term party is the right thing to do. Also, there is Flora Beniform, a social psychologist with rather unconventional research methods; she sleeps with men in whom she is professionally interested, to elicit information from them. At the end of the novel Howard and Barbara are still together, and all their friends admire their stable yet "advanced" marriage. Howard has even further metamorphosed into "the radical hero" who is "generating the onward march of mind, the onward process of history". According to his philosophy, things, especially those he likes, are bound to happen: this is called "historical inevitability". The trajectory of the Kirks' life together ends when Barbara attempts suicide during a party.
240335	/m/01jv_m	The Turn of the Screw	Henry James	1898	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 An unnamed narrator listens to a male friend reading a manuscript written by a former governess whom the friend claims to have known and who is now dead. The manuscript tells the story of how the young governess is hired by a man who has become responsible for his young nephew and niece after the death of their parents. He lives mainly in London and is not interested in raising the children himself. The boy, Miles, is attending a boarding school, while his younger sister, Flora, is living at a country estate in Essex. She is currently being cared for by the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. The governess's new employer, the uncle of Miles and Flora, gives her full charge of the children and explicitly states that she is not to bother him with communications of any sort. The governess travels to her new employer's country house and begins her duties. Miles soon returns from school for the summer just after a letter arrives from the headmaster stating that he has been expelled. Miles never speaks of the matter, and the governess is hesitant to raise the issue. She fears that there is some horrid secret behind the expulsion, but is too charmed by the adorable young boy to want to press the issue. Soon thereafter, the governess begins to see around the grounds of the estate the figures of a man and woman whom she does not recognize. These figures come and go at will without ever being seen or challenged by other members of the household, and they seem to the governess to be supernatural. She learns from Mrs. Grose that her predecessor, Miss Jessel, and another employee, Peter Quint, had a sexual relationship with each other and have both died. It is also implied that Quint sexually molested Miles and the other members of the household. Prior to their deaths, they spent much of their time with Flora and Miles, and this fact has grim significance for the governess when she becomes convinced that the two children are secretly aware of the presence of the ghosts. Later, Flora leaves the house while Miles plays music for the governess. They notice Flora's absence and go to look for her. The governess and Mrs. Grose find her in a clearing in the wood, and the governess is convinced that she has been talking to Miss Jessel. When she finally confronts Flora, Flora denies seeing Miss Jessel, and demands never to see the governess again. Mrs. Grose takes Flora away to her uncle, leaving the governess with Miles. That night, they are finally talking of Miles' expulsion when the ghost of Quint appears to the governess at the window. The governess shields Miles, who attempts to see the ghost. The governess tells him that he is no longer controlled by the ghost, and then finds that Miles has died in her arms.
240384	/m/01jw9r	The French Lieutenant's Woman	John Fowles	1969	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel's protagonist is Sarah Woodruff, the Woman of the title, also known unkindly as “Tragedy” and by the unfortunate nickname “The French Lieutenant’s Whore”. She lives in the coastal town of Lyme Regis, as a disgraced woman, supposedly abandoned by a French naval officer named Varguennes — married, unknown to her, to another woman — with whom she had supposedly had an affair and who had returned to France. She spends her limited time off at the Cobb, a pier jutting out to sea, staring at the sea itself. One day, she is seen there by the gentleman Charles Smithson and his fiancée, Ernestina Freeman, the shallow-minded daughter of a wealthy tradesman whose origins are Scottish. Ernestina tells Charles something of Sarah’s story, and he develops a strong curiosity about her. Eventually, he and she begin to meet clandestinely, during which times Sarah tells Charles her history, and asks for his support, mostly emotional. Despite trying to remain objective, Charles eventually sends Sarah to Exeter, where he, during a journey, cannot resist stopping in to visit and see her. At the time she has suffered an ankle injury; he visits her alone and after they have made love he realises that she had been, contrary to the rumours, a virgin. Simultaneously, he learns that his prospective inheritance from an elder uncle is in jeopardy; the uncle has become engaged to a woman young enough to bear him an heir. From there, the novelist offers three different endings for The French Lieutenant’s Woman. * First ending: Charles marries Ernestina, and their marriage is unhappy; Sarah’s fate is unknown. Charles tells Ernestina about an encounter which he implies is with the “French Lieutenant’s Whore”, but elides the sordid details, and the matter is ended. This ending, however, might be dismissed as a daydream, before the alternative events of the subsequent meeting with Ernestina are described. Before the second and third endings, the narrator — who the novelist wants the reader to believe is John Fowles himself — appears as a minor character sharing a railway compartment with Charles. He tosses a coin to determine the order in which he will portray the two, other possible endings, emphasising their equal plausibility. * Second ending: Charles and Sarah become intimate; he ends his engagement to Ernestina, with unpleasant consequences. He is disgraced, and his uncle marries, then produces an heir. Sarah flees to London without telling the enamoured Charles, who searches for her for years, before finding her living with several artists (seemingly the Rossettis), enjoying an artistic, creative life. He then learns he has fathered a child with her; as a family, their future is open, with possible reunion implied. * Third ending: the narrator re-appears, standing outside the house where the second ending occurred; at the aftermath. He turns back his pocket watch by fifteen minutes, before leaving in his carriage. Events are the same as in the second-ending version but, when Charles finds Sarah again, in London, their reunion is sour. It is possible that their union was childless; Sarah does not tell Charles about a child, and expresses no interest in continuing the relationship. He leaves the house, deciding to return to America, and sees the carriage, in which the narrator was thought gone. Raising the question: is Sarah a manipulating, lying woman of few morals, exploiting Charles’s obvious love to get what she wants? En route, Fowles the novelist discourses upon the difficulties of controlling the characters, and offers analyses of differences in 19th-century customs and class, the theories of Charles Darwin, the poetry of Matthew Arnold, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and the literature of Thomas Hardy. He questions the role of the author — when speaking of how the Charles character “disobeys” his orders; the characters have discrete lives of their own in the novel. Philosophically, Existentialism is mentioned several times during the story, and in particular detail at the end, after the portrayals of the two, apparent, equally possible endings.
241025	/m/01jzql	Shadow of the Hegemon	Orson Scott Card	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Shadow of the Hegemon, all of the Battle School graduates, except Ender, return to Earth in approximately 2170 A.D. Ender's brother Peter, using his online pseudonym Locke, arranges for Ender to be returned to earth so he can control Ender, however Valentine under the pseudonym Demosthenes uses Peter's violent deranged past against him to keep Ender exiled on another planet so that the world's leaders won't be tempted to fight over his military genius. Shortly after their return, the members of the unit Ender commanded (called his Jeesh, an Arabic word meaning 'army'; because they fought under Ender, those 10 children are considered the greatest generals on the planet), with the exception of Bean, are kidnapped to be used as strategists in an upcoming struggle for world dominance that ensues after the Formics are defeated. The mastermind behind the kidnappings is Achilles, (ah-SHEEL) a brilliant, ambitious, and psychotic Belgian orphan. He subjects them to solitary confinement so they will help him in his plans for world domination. Bean had imprisoned Achilles in the previous novel, so in retaliation Achilles attempts (unsuccessfully) to kill Bean, along with Bean's family. The Delphikis go into hiding, while Bean joins forces with Sister Carlotta. After he discovers an encoded message in an e-mail sent by Petra confirming that the Russians are Achilles' backers, he works to free her and the others, while helping Ender's brother Peter come to power under his own name so he can eventually be appointed Hegemon and work against Achilles. When Peter publishes a column under the Locke pseudonym revealing Achilles for the psychopathic murderer he is, the Battle Schoolers are released—except for Petra, whom Achilles brings captive with him to India, where he has secured a position of power. From there, he requests plans for an invasion of Burma and then Thailand. Indian Battle School graduates serving their country, including Sayagi and Virlomi, develop plans for brute-force attacks involving long supply lines. Petra, for her part, arranges a different plan, involving stripping India's garrisons along her borders with Pakistan—something she expects will never happen, until Achilles takes her to a meeting with Pakistan's prime minister, in which he encourages the two great Indian nations to declare peace on each other and war with their other neighbors. Nonetheless, her plan is not used, but for a different reason: Achilles is secretly working for China, and has convinced India to move the bulk of its forces to the border of Thailand, giving China the opportunity to annihilate the Indian army. At that point, Achilles plans to leave India for China, and continue his efforts towards world domination. Petra finds an ally in Virlomi, who manages to get word to Bean that Petra is being held an unwilling prisoner, and eventually escapes the military compound to bring rescue. Bean, for his part, has allied himself with Peter Wiggin. Courtesy of Bean's and Sister Carlotta's assets, "Locke" is nominated publicly for the position of Hegemon, allowing Peter to unmask himself in a way that does not compromise (and, in fact, increases) his prestige. Meanwhile, Bean, courtesy of Peter's assets, moves to Thailand to get in Achilles's way. He enters the Thai military under the patronage of Suriyawong (or Suri), a fellow Battle School graduate and (nominal) head of Thailand's planning division. Bean trains his own force of 200 Thai soldiers for special operations against India. When the Thai Commander-in-Chief betrays Suriyawong and Bean by attempting to kill them, it becomes clear that Achilles' reach has grown; thankfully, Bean's hunches save him and Suri, and he hides them in the barracks of his troops, e-mailing his few real-life contacts to arrange rescue. Thailand is declared in a State of Emergency and prepares for war. However, Achilles gets the last laugh: Sister Carlotta, flying to Thailand, is killed by a Chinese SAM fired from inside Thailand. As her last act, Bean receives a time-delay message from her, revealing the nature of Anton's Key that had been turned inside him and that he has given up many years of his life for his genius. Bean and Suriyawong use the troops Bean has trained to help halt Indian supply lines. While striking a bridge, they meet Virlomi. Virlomi defects, bringing news of Petra; the three band together and, with the aid of Bean's soldiers and Locke's distinguished connections, move on Hyderabad, arriving just as the Chinese do. Bean foils Achilles again and rescues Petra, though the Chinese manage to extract Achilles successfully. Furthermore, "Locke" publishes an essay detailing the Chinese betrayal just as it is happening, and on the basis of this prescience (and other miracles over the years) Peter Wiggin is elected Hegemon over the world. Finally, Petra approaches Bean and makes clear the attraction she feels for him, setting the stage for the remainder of the series.
241855	/m/01k2tt	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them	J. K. Rowling		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Fantastic Beasts purports to be a reproduction of a textbook owned by Harry Potter and written by magizoologist Newt Scamander, a fictional character in the Harry Potter series. In the series, Magizoology is the study of magical creatures. Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts, provides the Foreword and explains the purpose of the special edition of this book (the Comic Relief charity). At the end, he tells the reader, "...The amusing creatures described hereafter are fictional and cannot hurt you." He repeats the Hogwarts motto: "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus", Latin for "Never tickle a sleeping dragon". Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them contains the history of Magizoology and describes 75 magical species found around the world. Scamander says that he collected most of the information found in the book through observations made over years of travel and across five continents. He notes that the first edition was commissioned in 1918 by Mr Augustus Worme of Obscurus Books. However, it was not published until 1927. It is now in its 52nd edition. In the Harry Potter universe, the book is a required textbook for first-year Hogwarts students, having been an approved textbook since its first publication. It is not clear why students need it in their first year, as students do not take Care of Magical Creatures until their third year. However, it may be used as an encyclopaedia of Dark creatures studied in Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. In his foreword to the book, Albus Dumbledore notes that it serves as an excellent reference for Wizarding households in addition to its use at Hogwarts. The book features fictional doodles and comments in it by Harry, Ron and Hermione. The comments would appear to have been written around the time of the fourth book. These doodles add some extra information for fans of the series; for example the "Acromantula" entry has a comment confirming that Hogwarts is located in Scotland. Integrated in the design, the cover of the book appears to have been clawed by some sort of animal. About the Author Foreword by Albus Dumbledore Introduction by Newt Scamander About This Book What Is a Beast? A Brief History of Muggle Awareness of Fantastic Beasts Magical Beasts in Hiding Why Magizoology Matters Ministry of Magic Classifications An A-Z of Fantastic Beasts Newton "Newt" Artemis Fido Scamander is the fictional author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, born in 1897. According to the "About the Author" section of the book, Scamander became a magizoologist because of his own interest in fabulous beasts and the encouragement of his mother, an enthusiastic Hippogriff breeder. In Hogwarts, he was sorted to Hufflepuff. After graduating from Hogwarts, Scamander joined the Ministry of Magic in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. His career included a brief stint in the Office of House-Elf Relocation, a transfer to the Beast Division, the creation of the Werewolf Register in 1947, the 1965 passage of the Ban on Experimental Breeding, and many research trips for the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau. His contributions to Magizoology earned him an Order of Merlin, Second Class in 1979. Now retired, he lives in Dorset with his wife Porpentina and their pet Kneazles: Hoppy, Milly and Mauler. He has a grandson named Rolf, who married Luna Lovegood some time after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Although Rowling has never hidden the fact that she is the author of Fantastic Beasts, "Newt Scamander" can nevertheless be considered a pseudonym of hers, as he is technically the author listed on the book's cover. In the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Newt Scamander's name appeared on the Marauder's Map. Why he was at Hogwarts was not addressed, but it is likely to be linked to Buckbeak, the Hippogriff Hagrid has at the school.
241961	/m/01k393	My Family and Other Animals	Gerald Durrell		{"/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell, age 10 at the start of the saga, of his family, pets and life during a sojourn on the island of Corfu. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas where the family lived on the island. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry, the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. They are fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro (Spiros "Americano" Halikiopoulos) and mentored by the polymath Dr. Theodore Stephanides who provides Gerald with his education in natural history. Other human characters, chiefly eccentric, include Gerald's private tutors, the artistic and literary visitors Larry invites to stay, and the local peasants who befriend the family. The human comedy is interspersed by descriptions of the animal life which Gerald observes on his expeditions around the family homes, island, and seashore and which he frequently brings back and keeps as pets; these include Achilles the tortoise, Quasimodo the pigeon, Ulysses the Scops owl, numerous spiders, Alecko the gull, puppies named Widdle and Puke, and the birds known as the Magenpies.
242128	/m/01k43c	Prince Caspian	C. S. Lewis	1951	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 While standing on a British railway station, awaiting their train to school after the summer holidays, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie are magically whisked away to a beach near an old and ruined castle. They come to realize the ruin is Cair Paravel, where they once ruled as the Kings and Queens of Narnia, and discover the treasure vault where Peter's sword and shield, Susan's bow and arrows, and Lucy's bottle of magical cordial and dagger are stored. Susan's horn for summoning help is missing, however, as she left it in the woods the day they returned to England after their first visit to Narnia. Although only a year has passed in England, many centuries have passed in Narnia. That same day, they intervene to rescue Trumpkin the dwarf from soldiers who have brought him to the ruins to drown him. Trumpkin tells the children that since their disappearance, a race of men called Telmarines have invaded Narnia, driving the Talking Beasts into the wilderness and pushing even their memory underground. Narnia is now ruled by King Miraz and his wife Queen Prunaprismia, but the rightful king is Miraz's young nephew, Prince Caspian, who has gained the support of the Old Narnians. Miraz had usurped the throne by killing his own brother, Caspian's father King Caspian IX. Miraz tolerated Caspian as heir until his own son was born. Prince Caspian, until that point ignorant of his uncle's evil deeds, escaped from Miraz's Castle with the aid of his tutor Doctor Cornelius, who had schooled him in the lore of Old Narnia, and who gives him in parting Queen Susan's horn. Caspian flees into the forest but is knocked unconscious when his horse bolts. He awakes in the den of a talking badger, Trufflehunter, and two dwarfs, Nikabrik and Trumpkin, who accept Caspian as their king. The badger and dwarves take Caspian to meet many creatures of Old Narnia. They gather for a council at midnight on Dancing Lawn. Doctor Cornelius arrives to warn them of the approach of King Miraz and his army; he urges them to flee to Aslan's How in the great woods near Cair Paravel. But the Telmarines follow the Narnians to the How, and after several skirmishes the Narnians appear close to defeat. At a second war council, they discuss whether to use Queen Susan's horn, and whether it will bring Aslan or the Kings and Queens of the golden age. Not knowing where help will arrive, they dispatch Pattertwig the Squirrel to Lantern Waste and Trumpkin to Cair Paravel, and it is then that Trumpkin is captured by the Telmarines and rescued by the Pevensies. Trumpkin and the Pevensies make their way to Caspian. They try to save time by travelling up Glasswater Creek, but lose their way. Lucy sees Aslan and wants to follow where he leads, but the others do not believe her and follow their original course, which becomes increasingly difficult. In the night, Aslan calls Lucy and tells her that she must awaken the others and insist that they follow her on Aslan's path. In the cold early hours of morning the others eventually obey. They begin to see Aslan's shadow, then Aslan himself. Aslan sends Peter, Edmund, and Trumpkin ahead to Aslan's How to deal with the treachery brewing there, and follows with Susan and Lucy, who see the wood come alive. Peter, Edmund, and Trumpkin enter Aslan's How; they overhear Nikabrik and his confederates, a Hag and a Wer-Wolf, trying to convince Caspian, Cornelius, and Trufflehunter to help them resurrect the White Witch in hopes of using her power to defeat Miraz. A fight ensues, and Nikabrik and his two friends are slain. Peter challenges Miraz to single combat; the army of the victor in this duel will be considered the victor in the war. Even though he has a stronger army and thus has more to lose by a duel, Miraz accepts the challenge, goaded by his two lords, Glozelle and Sopespian. After a stiff fight, Miraz falls. Glozelle and Sopespian cry that the Narnians have cheated and stabbed the King in the back while he was down. They command the Telmarine army to attack, and in the commotion that follows, Glozelle stabs Miraz in the back. The Living Wood is wakened by Aslan's arrival, and the Telmarines flee. Discovering themselves trapped at the Great River, where their bridge has been destroyed by forces of Narnia, the Telmarines surrender. Aslan gives the Telmarines a choice of staying in Narnia under Caspian or returning to Earth, their original home. After one volunteer disappears through the magic door created by Aslan, the Pevensies go through to reassure the other Telmarines, though Peter and Susan reveal to Edmund and Lucy that they are too old to return furthermore to Narnia. The Pevensies find themselves back at the railway station where the adventure began, just as the train to Susan and Lucy's boarding school pulls up into the station.
242130	/m/01k43v	The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe	C. S. Lewis	1950	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins in 1940 during World War II, when four siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie—are evacuated from London to escape the Blitz. They are sent to live with Professor Digory Kirke, who lives in a country house in the English countryside. While the four children are exploring the house, Lucy looks into a wardrobe and discovers a doorway to a magical world named Narnia. There she meets a faun named Mr Tumnus. He invites her to have tea in his home. There he confesses he planned to report her to the usurper queen of Narnia, otherwise known as the White Witch, but has thought better of it. Upon returning to our world, Lucy's siblings do not believe her story about Narnia. Her older brother Edmund enters the wardrobe and meets the White Witch, who introduces herself as the Queen of Narnia and befriends him and offers him magical Turkish delight, which enchants him. She encourages him to bring his siblings to her in Narnia, with the promise that he shall rule over them. Lucy discovers Edmund in Narnia at the lamppost, and they return to the Professor's house. In conversation with Lucy, Edmund realises that the woman who befriended him is in fact the White Witch; however, he does not tell anyone that he has met her, and lies to Peter and Susan, denying Lucy's claim that he too had entered Narnia through the wardrobe. Eventually, all four of the children enter Narnia together while hiding in the wardrobe. They meet Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, who invite them to dinner. The beavers recount a prophecy that the witch's power will fall when two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve fill the four thrones at Cair Paravel. The beavers tell of the true king of Narnia, a great lion named Aslan, who has been absent for many years but is now "on the move again." Edmund sneaks away to the White Witch. Her castle is filled with stone statues – enemies she has turned to stone. The beavers realize where Edmund has gone and abandon their home, leading the children to Aslan. As they travel, they notice that the snow is melting, indicating that the White Witch's spell is breaking. A visit by Father Christmas confirms this. Father Christmas gives the three children and the beavers presents. Peter receives a sword and shield, Susan a horn and a bow, Lucy a vial of magical healing liquid and a knife or dagger, Mrs. Beaver a sewing machine, and Mr. Beaver's dam is finally finished. The children and the Beavers meet with Aslan and his army. Peter engages in his first battle, killing a wolf that threatens Susan. The Witch approaches to speak with Aslan, insisting that, according to "deep magic from the dawn of time", she has the right to execute Edmund as a traitor. Aslan speaks with her privately and persuades her to renounce her claim on Edmund's life. That evening, Aslan secretly leaves the camp, but is followed by Lucy and Susan. Aslan has bargained to exchange his own life for Edmund's. The Witch ties Aslan to the Stone Table and then kills him with a knife. The following morning the Stone Table is broken and Aslan is restored to life, explaining to Lucy and Susan that it is due to "deeper magic from before the dawn of time" (which the Witch did not know about), ruling that if an innocent was killed in the place of a traitor, the Stone Table would break and the innocent would be brought back to life. Aslan allows Lucy and Susan to ride on his back as he hurries to the Witch's castle. There he breathes upon the statues, restoring them to life. Peter and Edmund lead the Narnian army in a battle against the White Witch's army, but are losing. Aslan arrives with the former statues as reinforcements. The Narnians rout the evil army, and Aslan kills the Witch. The Pevensie children are named kings and queens of Narnia: King Peter the Magnificent, Queen Susan the Gentle, King Edmund the Just and Queen Lucy the Valiant. Several years later, now adults and mounted on horseback, the siblings go hunting for a white stag. They see the lamppost and go towards it. Just beyond the lamppost, branches become coats. The siblings are back in the wardrobe and are children again. They re-enter the Professor's house.
242555	/m/01k62z	Primary Colors	Joe Klein	1996-01-16	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins as an idealistic former congressional worker, Henry Burton, joins the presidential campaign of Southern governor Jack Stanton, a thinly disguised stand-in for Bill Clinton. The plot then follows the primary election calendar beginning in New Hampshire where Stanton's affair with Cashmere, his wife's hairdresser, and his participation in a Vietnam War era protest come to light and threaten to derail his presidential prospects. In Florida, Stanton revives his campaign by disingenuously portraying his Democratic opponent as insufficiently pro-Israel and as a weak supporter of Social Security. Burton becomes increasingly disillusioned with Stanton, who is a policy wonk who talks too long, eats too much and is overly flirtatious toward women. Stanton is also revealed to be insincere in his beliefs, saying whatever will help him to win. Matters finally come to a head, and Burton is forced to choose between idealism and realism.
243069	/m/01k87q	The Murder of Roger Ackroyd	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book is set in the fictional village of King's Abbott in England. It is narrated by Dr. James Sheppard, who becomes Poirot's assistant (a role filled by Captain Hastings in several other Poirot novels). The story begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, a wealthy widow who is rumoured to have murdered her husband. Her death is initially believed to be an accident until Roger Ackroyd, a widower who had been expected to marry Mrs. Ferrars, reveals that she admitted to killing her husband and then committed suicide. Shortly after this he is found murdered. The suspects include Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, Roger's neurotic hypochondriac sister-in-law who has accumulated personal debts through extravagant spending; her daughter Flora; Major Blunt, a big-game hunter; Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd's personal secretary; Ralph Paton, Ackroyd's stepson and another person with heavy debts; Parker, a snooping butler; and Ursula Bourne, a parlourmaid with an uncertain history who resigned her post the afternoon of the murder. Dr Sheppard's spinster sister Caroline is a favourite character among many and some say she could have been in another book. The initial suspect is Ralph, who is engaged to Flora and stands to inherit his stepfather's fortune. Several critical pieces of evidence seem to point to Ralph. Poirot, who has just moved to the town, begins to investigate at Flora's behest. The book ends with a then-unprecedented plot twist. Poirot exonerates all of the original suspects. He then lays out a completely reasoned case that the murderer is in fact Dr. Sheppard, who has not only been Poirot's assistant, but the story's narrator. Dr. Sheppard was Mrs. Ferrars' blackmailer, and he murdered Ackroyd to stop him learning the truth from Mrs. Ferrars. Poirot gives the doctor two choices: either he surrenders to the police or, for the sake of his clean reputation and his proud sister, he commits suicide. In the final chapter of Sheppard's narrative (a sort of epilogue), Sheppard admits his guilt, noting certain literary techniques he used to write the narrative truthfully without revealing his role in the crime or doing anything to suggest that he knew the truth, and reveals that he had hoped to be the one to write the account of Poirot's great failure: not solving the murder of Roger Ackroyd. Thus, the last chapter acts as both Sheppard's confession and suicide note. The final revelation uses meta-fictional tropes. The ending also opens up the question whether narrators can be trusted or not. Christie uses unreliable narrator again in 1967 novel Endless Night. Reader response to the ending varies from admiration of the unexpected end to a feeling of being cheated. In the novel, Christie has laid side by side two modes of gathering of information and building of hypothesis. One is Poirot's use of ratiocination, the other is the channel of gossiping, practised by almost all inhabitants of King's Abbott, in particular, Caroline. While even Caroline is able to interpret certain situations correctly, Christie privileges scientific mode of investigation by unveiling the murderer through Poirot.
243087	/m/01k89d	The A.B.C. Murders	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When a serial killer nicknamed ABC taunts Poirot in veiled letters and kills people in alphabetical order, Poirot employs an unconventional method to track down ABC. In a seemingly unconnected story, a travelling salesman named Alexander Bonaparte Cust has travelled to all of the murder locations on the day the crimes occurred. Cust had suffered a blow on the head during military service. As a result, he is prone to blackouts, headaches and epileptic attacks. Could this seemingly innocent stranger be the eponymous killer?
243812	/m/01kbjz	Crossing the Chasm	Geoffrey Moore	1991		 In Crossing the Chasm, Moore begins with the diffusion of innovations theory from Everett Rogers, and argues there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists). Moore believes visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations, and he attempts to explore those differences and suggest techniques to successfully cross the "chasm," including choosing a target market, understanding the whole product concept, positioning the product, building a marketing strategy, choosing the most appropriate distribution channel and pricing. Crossing the Chasm is closely related to the technology adoption lifecycle where five main segments are recognized; innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. According to Moore, the marketer should focus on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. The most difficult step is making the transition between visionaries (early adopters) and pragmatists (early majority). This is the chasm that he refers to. If a successful firm can create a bandwagon effect in which enough momentum builds, then the product becomes a de facto standard. However, Moore's theories are only applicable for disruptive or discontinuous innovations. Adoption of continuous innovations (that do not force a significant change of behavior by the customer) are still best described by the original technology adoption lifecycle. Confusion between continuous and discontinuous innovation is a leading cause of failure for high tech products.
244205	/m/01kd22	The Futurological Congress	Stanisław Lem		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Ijon Tichy is sent to the Eighth World Futurological Congress in Costa Rica by professor Tarantoga. The conference is set to focus on the world's overpopulation crisis and ways of dealing with it. It is held at the Costa Rica Hilton in Nounas, which is 164 stories tall. Lem is fiercely satirical from the start, and absurdities abound at the Hilton with its guaranteed 'BOMB-FREE' rooms and the extravagances of Tichy's suite, which include a palm grove and an 'all-girl orchestra [that] played Bach while performing a cleverly choreographed striptease'. The conference itself is no less absurd. Papers and presenters are too numerous to allow for full presentations. Instead, papers are distributed in hard copy and speakers call out paragraph numbers to call attention to their most salient points. In the middle of his first night at the conference, Tichy drinks some tap water in his hotel room, and his wild hallucinogenic trip begins, though it never becomes any more or less absurd than the brief glimpse of reality Lem presents in the beginning of the book (if indeed the congress is meant to be reality). He realizes the next day that the government has drugged the public water supply with "benignimizers", a drug that makes the victim helplessly benevolent. Events spiral out of control at the Hilton, which was already so chaotic that charred corpses from bombing attacks would be covered with tarps where they lay while guests went about their business. The government ends up bombing the hotel, and Tichy escapes into the sewer where rats walk around on their hind legs. Tichy is evacuated from the scene by the military, but during his rescue the helicopter crashes and he awakes in the hospital, where he finds that his brain has been transplanted into the body of an attractive young black woman. Protesters attack the hospital, and Tichy is nearly killed again. This time when he wakes up, he finds he has been transplanted into the body of an overweight, red-haired man. Tichy's mental state grows increasingly fragile as he cannot distinguish reality from hallucination, and the medical staff make the decision to freeze him until a time when medicine can help his condition. He awakes in the year 2039, and at this point, the novel adopts the format of a journal that Tichy keeps to chronicle his experience in this new world. His future shock is so great that he finds he is being introduced to the world in small stages by the medical staff. In most regards, this future society is Utopian. Money is no object. One can simply go to the bank and request any sum and borrow it interest-free. There is no effort made to collect the debt, either, as most people take a drug that instills a sense of pride and work-ethic, which would disallow defaulting on the debt. Tichy learns that there is an inherent bias against defrostees, and that there are a great deal of words that he does not understand. Like cityspeak, and many other sci-fi futuristic languages, it is a mishmash of words with clear enough English roots, though Tichy is mystified by it. Also, mood is highly regulated via drugs. Tichy gets involved with a woman, and during an argument, she deliberately takes a drug called recriminol to make her more combative, which prolongs the tiff. Following their break-up, Tichy becomes deeply disillusioned with the 'psychem' mentality wherein drugs regulate every waking moment of the day. He resolves to stop taking any drugs and confides to his friend, Professor Trottelreiner, that he can't stand this new world. Trottelreiner explains that the everyday drugs that Tichy is tired of are only the tip of the iceberg. Narcotics and hallucinogens are trifles compared to 'mascons', which are so powerful that they mask whole swaths of reality. Trottelreiner explains, "mascon" derives from mask, masquerade, mascara. By introducing properly prepared mascons to the brain, one can mask any object in the outside world behind a fictitious image—superimposed—and with such dexterity, that the psychemasconated subject cannot tell which of his perceptions have been altered, and which have not. If but for a single instant you could see this world of ours the way it really is—undoctored, unadulterated, uncensored—you would drop in your tracks!" The Professor then gives Tichy a flask of "up'n'at'm, one of the vigilanimides, a powerful countersomniac and antipsychem agent. A derivative of dimethylethylhexabutylpeptopeyotine". With his first sip of up'n'at'm, Tichy watches as the gilded surroundings of the five-star restaurant they are in evaporates into a dingy concrete bunker and his stuffed pheasant turns into 'the most unappetizing gray-brown gruel, which stuck in globs to my tin — no longer silver — fork'. But this first dose is just the beginning of Tichy's journey. He sees that people do not drive cars or ride in elevators, but they run in the streets and climb the walls of empty elevator shafts, which explains why everyone in this new world is so out of breath. Robots whip people in the street and protect order. Through successive doses of up'n'at'm, Tichy sees increasingly horrible visions of the world, climaxing in a frozen horrorscape where people sleep blissfully in the snow and the police robots are revealed to be people who are convinced they are robots. The frozen state of the world explains why he has always found the new world to be so cold. In a state of panic, Tichy realizes that he is "no longer safely inside the illusion, but shipwrecked in reality", and he desperately seeks the seat of power. He ascends in a skyscraper to encounter his acquaintance George P. Symington Esquire, who sits in a modest office and explains to Tichy that he and a few others employ mascons as a way of maintaining order: "The year is 2098 ... with 69 billion inhabitants legally registered and approximately another 26 billion in hiding. The average annual temperature has fallen four degrees. In fifteen or twenty years there will be glaciers here. We have no way of averting or halting their advance — we can only keep them secret." "I always thought there would be ice in hell," I said. Tichy realizes his only course of action and tackles Symington, pushing them both out of the window. They plummet to the earth, but instead of colliding with the frozen ground, Tichy splashes into the black, stinking waters of the sewer beneath the Costa Rica Hilton, where he realizes that it is now the second day of the Eighth World Futurological Congress.
244486	/m/01kdyy	Angela's Ashes	Frank McCourt	1996-09-05	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Born in Brooklyn, New York, on 19 August 1930, Frank (Francis) McCourt was the eldest son of Malachy and Angela McCourt. Frank McCourt lived in New York with his parents and four younger siblings: Malachy, born in 1931; twins Oliver and Eugene, born in 1932; and a younger sister, Margaret, who died eight weeks after birth, in 1935. Following this first tragedy, his family moved back to Ireland where the twin brothers, Oliver and Eugene, died within a year of the family's arrival and where Frank's youngest brothers, Michael (b. 1936) and Alphie (b. 1940), were born. Before they get married, Angela emigrates to America and meets Malachy after he is done serving his three month sentence for hijacking a truck. Angela becomes pregnant with Malachy's child, and with the help of Angela's cousins the MacNamara sisters; Malachy marries Angela. Malachy does not like or does not think this marriage will last, so he attempts to run away to California, but he is unable to do so because he spends all of his money for the ride there at the pub. Angela gives birth to Francis (Frank), Malachy, the twins Oliver and Eugene and Margaret, who dies in infancy. Margaret's death is what eventually prompts the McCourt family to move back to Ireland, to start life anew. Life in Ireland, specifically in Limerick City, during the 1930s and 1940s is described in all its grittiness. The family lived in a dilapidated, unpaved lane of houses that flooded regularly. The McCourts' house was in the farthest part of the lane, unfortunately near to the only toilet for the entire lane. Frank McCourt's father taught the children Irish stories and songs, but he was an alcoholic and seldom found work. When he did, he spent his pay in the pubs. His family was forced to live on the dole since he could not hold down a paying job for very long due to his alcoholism. The father would often pick up and spend the welfare payment before Angela could get her hands on it to feed the starving children. For years the family subsisted on little more than bread and tea. They were always wondering when their next real meal would be and whether the kids would be able to have shoes for school. Despite all the hardships, many passages of the story are told with wry humor and charm. Frank's father eventually found a job at a defense plant in Coventry, England, yet he sent money back to his struggling family in Ireland only once. As there were few jobs for women, their mother was forced to ask for help from the Church and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. Sometimes, Frank and his brothers scavenged for lumps of coal or peat turf for fuel or stole bread to survive; they also occasionally stole leftover food from restaurants at the end of the day. Angela's mother (a widow) and sister refused to help her because they disapproved of her husband, as he was not from Limerick, and felt he had the "odd manner" about him. Frank's father's issues led to Frank having to support his family as the "man of the house". Therefore, Frank started working when he was fourteen years old. He would give some of his earnings to his mother to feed the rest of the children. Frank spent most of his life without a father to teach him about the world and the things a boy needs to know to succeed in life. As a child, Frank went to elementary school along with the other boys his age; however, most schooling for the boys who lived in the lanes of Limerick ended there, at age thirteen. Though both his teacher, Mr. O’Halloran, and a librarian told Frank to continue his schooling, it was not possible for him. He was turned away from the local Catholic school. In the damp, cold climate of Ireland, each child had only one set of ragged clothes, patched shoes, and no coat. Frank developed typhoid fever and was hospitalized. Later, he got a job helping a neighbor who had leg problems; he delivered coal for the neighbor and, as a result, developed chronic conjunctivitis. The family was finally evicted after they took a hatchet to the walls of their rented home to burn the wood for heat. They were forced to move in with a distant relative who treated them very badly and eventually forced a sexual relationship on Frank's mother, Angela. When he and his mother went to the Christian Brothers to inquire as to any opportunity for a bright boy in Frank’s situation, they simply slam the door in his face. After his failure to be able to pursue any intellectual path, Frank starts his first job as a telegram boy at a post office. The wry wit of Frank's narration clearly shows that he has the capacity to rise above this job, but circumstances stop him progressing. As a teenager, Frank works at the post office as a telegram delivery boy and later delivers newspapers and magazines for Eason's. He also works for the local moneylender, writing threatening collection letters as a means of earning enough to finally realize his dream of returning to the United States. The moneylender died, after he returned to get sherry for her. He took money from her purse and threw her ledger of debtors into the river. Through a combination of scrimping, saving, and stealing, Frank eventually does get enough money to travel to America. The story ends with Frank arriving in Poughkeepsie, New York, ready to begin a new life at the age of nineteen.
244497	/m/01kd_g	Oscar and Lucinda	Peter Carey	1988	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, the Cornish son of a Plymouth Brethren minister who becomes an Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. They meet on the boat over to Australia, and discover that they are both gamblers, one obsessive the other compulsive. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church from Sydney to a remote settlement at Bellingen, some 400 km up the New South Wales coast. This bet changes both their lives forever.
245137	/m/01khgt	From the Earth to the Moon	Jules Verne	1865	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 It's been some time since the end of the American Civil War. The Gun Club, a society based in Baltimore and dedicated to the design of weapons of all kinds (especially cannons), meets when Impey Barbicane, its president, calls them to support his idea: according to his calculations, a cannon can shoot a projectile so that it reaches the moon. After receiving the whole support of his companions, a few of them meet to decide the place from where the projectile will be shot, the dimensions and makings of both the cannon and the projectile, and which kind of powder are they to use. An old enemy of Barbicane, a Captain Nicholl of Philadelphia, designer of plate armor, declares that the enterprise is absurd and makes a series of bets with Barbicane, each of them of increasing amount over the impossibility of such feat. The first obstacle, the money, and over which Nicholl has bet 1000 dollars, is raised from most countries in America and Europe, in which the mission reaches variable success (while the USA gives 4 million dollars, England doesn't give a farthing, being envious of the United States in matters of science), but in the end nearly five and a half million dollars are raised, which ensures the financial feasibility of the project. After deciding the place for the launch (Stone's Hill in "Tampa Town", Florida; predating Kennedy Space Center's placement in Florida by almost 100 years; Verne gives the exact position as 27°7' northern latitude and 5°7' western longitude, of course relative to the meridian of Washington that is ), the Gun Club travels there and starts the construction of the Columbiad cannon, which requires the excavation of a and circular hole, which is made in the nick of time, but a surprise awaits Barbicane: Michel Ardan, a French adventurer, plans to travel aboard the projectile. During a meeting between Ardan, the Gun Club, and the inhabitants of Florida, Nicholl appears and challenges Barbicane to a duel. The duel is stopped when Ardan—having been warned by J. T. Maston, secretary of the Gun Club—meets the rivals in the forest where they have agreed to duel. Meanwhile, Barbicane finds the solution to the problem of surviving the incredible acceleration that the explosion would cause. Ardan suggests that Barbicane and Nicholl travel with him in the projectile, and the offer is accepted. In the end, the projectile is successfully launched, but the destinies of the three astronauts are left inconclusive. The sequel, Around the Moon, deals with what happens to the three men in their travel from the Earth to the Moon.
245395	/m/01kjdf	Underworld	Don DeLillo	1997-10-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens on October 3, 1951, when a boy named Cotter Martin sneaks in to watch the New York Giants play the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Giants' home field Polo Grounds. (The prologue, Pafko at the Wall, was written on its own before the novel.) In the ninth inning, Ralph Branca pitches to Bobby Thomson, who hits the ball into the stands for a three-run homer, beating the Dodgers 5-4 and capturing the National League pennant. Known to baseball fans as "The Shot Heard 'Round the World", the fate of that ball is unknown, but in DeLillo's novel, Cotter Martin wrests this valuable ball away from another fan who has just befriended him and runs home. Cotter's father, Manx, steals the ball and later sells it for thirty-two dollars and forty-five cents. Branca and Thomson are never given much screen time, and Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra only put in cameos, but other historical figures become important parts of the story. J. Edgar Hoover muses on death, loyalty and leather masks while comedian Lenny Bruce faces the Cuban Missile Crisis by impersonating a hysterical housewife shrieking, "We're all gonna die!" Early in the novel it is revealed that Nick Shay was in a juvenile detention center for murdering a man, but it is not until near the end of the book that we learn the details of his crime. After being released from the detention center, he is sent to a Jesuit reform school in northern Minnesota. In the epilogue, we learn that Nick and Marian remain married despite infidelity on both sides. In fact, Nick indicates their relationship is much improved as he has opened up to her about his past – a subject that had always much interested her − and that he had been unwilling to discuss.
245885	/m/01kl5t	The Difference Engine	Bruce Sterling	1990-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The action of the story follows Sybil Gerard, a political courtesan and daughter of an executed Luddite leader (she is borrowed from Disraeli's novel Sybil); Edward "Leviathan" Mallory, a paleontologist and explorer; and Laurence Oliphant, a historical figure with a real career, as portrayed in the book, as a travel writer whose work was a cover for espionage activities "undertaken in the service of Her Majesty". Linking all their stories is the trail of a mysterious set of reportedly very powerful computer punch cards and the individuals fighting to obtain them; as is the case with special objects in several novels by Gibson, the punch cards are to some extent a MacGuffin. During the story, many characters come to believe that the punch cards are a gambling "modus", a programme that would allow the user to place consistently winning bets. This is in line with Ada Lovelace's historically documented penchant for gambling. Only in the last chapter is it revealed that the punched cards represent a program which proves two theorems which in reality would not be discovered until 1931 by Kurt Gödel. Lovelace delivers a lecture on the subject in France. Defending the cards, Mallory gathers his brothers and Ebenezer Fraser – a secret police officer – to fight the revolutionary Captain Swing who leads a London riot during "the Stink", a major episode of pollution in which London swelters under an inversion layer (comparable to the London Smog of December 1952). After the abortive uprising, Oliphant and Sybil Gerard meet at a cafe in Paris. Oliphant informs her that he is aware of her true identity, but will not pursue it, although he does want information that would compromise her seducer, Charles Egremont MP, now regarded as an obstacle to the strategies and political ambitions of Lords Brunel and Babbage. Sybil has longed for an opportunity for vengeance against Egremont, and the resultant political scandal destroys his parliamentary career and aspirations for a merit lordship. Oliphant also encounters a Manhattan-based group of feminist pantomime artists. After several vignettes that elaborate on the alternate historical origins of the world of The Difference Engine, Ada Lovelace delivers her lecture on Gödel's Theorem, as its counterpart is known in our world. She is chaperoned by Fraser, and castigated by Sybil Gerard, who is still unable to forgive Ada's father, the late Lord Byron, for his role in her own father's death. At the very end of the novel, there is a dystopian depiction of an alternate 1991 from the vantage point of Ada Lovelace. Throughout the novel's latter sections, there are references to an "Eye". At the end of the novel, human beings appear to have become digitized, ephemeral ciphers at the mercy of an all-powerful artificial intelligence.
246554	/m/01kp4b	Forever Amber	Kathleen Winsor			 Forever Amber tells the story of orphaned Amber St. Clare, who makes her way up through the ranks of 17th century English society by sleeping with and/or marrying successively richer and more important men, while keeping her love for the one man she could never have. The novel includes portrayals of Restoration fashion, politics, and public disasters, including the plague and the Great Fire of London.
247964	/m/01kvv0	Ethan of Athos	Lois McMaster Bujold		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It tells the story of Dr. Ethan Urquhart, Chief of Biology at the Severin District Reproduction Centre on the planet of Athos, and his quest to Kline Station to find out what happened to a shipment of vital ovarian tissue cultures. Athos was founded and maintained as an exclusively male-populated planetary colony, and a planetary religion and ideology supports this single-sex structure. Their continuing reproduction relies on uterine replicator technology and ovarian tissue cultures. However, after 200 years of service, the ovarian cultures introduced by the original colonists are deteriorating into senescence. The Population Council orders new ovarian cultures from another planet, Jackson's Whole, but upon delivery discover they have received an unusable mixture of dead and animal tissues. The Council appoints Ethan their planetary ambassador and sends him offworld in search of a fresh batch of tissue cultures, and (if possible) a refund from the original supplier, House Bharaputra. This is considered to be a very daring assignment as it means contact with women, who Athosians are taught are demonic and terrifying. This impression is only reinforced by the men who periodically move to their planet from the wider galaxy and report upon the horrors of womankind. Ethan's first encounter with a woman occurs when he asks directions from Commander Elli Quinn, a rather unorthodox intelligence officer with the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, who is on home leave for the first time in ten years. Many men stare at Quinn, though the reasons why are a mystery to Ethan (it turns out that Quinn's face was surgically reconstructed to be extremely beautiful). Ethan learns that women in general are not the monsters he was taught they were; they are as varied as men and range from honorable to devious to helpful to selfish. Ethan quickly gets embroiled in some trouble: he is attacked by military agents from Cetaganda who are seeking the fugitive Terrence Cee as well as the lost tissue cultures, but Elli rescues him. Terrence, who approaches Ethan with a request for asylum, turns out to be the last surviving creation (originally labelled as L-X-10-Terran-C) of a Cetagandan genetic project to create telepaths. Although his telepathy is reliable, it has a small range and can only be triggered for a short amount of time by ingesting large doses of the amino acid tyramine. Terrance’s female counterpart, Janine (J-9-X-Ceta-G), was killed in their escape, but he managed to preserve her body and convey it to Jackson's Whole, where he bribed House Bharaputra to splice her genes into the ovarian cultures that were purchased by Athos. Terrence had intended to escort the cultures to their destination on Athos but was delayed on his way to Kline Station, and is now horrified to learn that the cultures were stolen and replaced by the useless material that ultimately arrived on Athos. After Terrence's departure from Jackson's Whole, the Cetagandans attacked House Bharaputra, killed the researchers who had worked with him, and destroyed their records. These Cetagandans then followed him to Kline Station, and are the same agents who attacked Ethan. In turn, the Bharaputrans hired Elli to track down the Cetagandan agents, although she is also gathering information for the Dendarii. It turns out that for petty personal reasons, a minor official on Kline Station "threw out" the Bharaputran tissue cultures that contained Janine's genes. Elli defeats the Cetagandans and attempts to recruit Terrence to the Dendarii, but he is far more attracted to the isolated, uncomplicated life on Athos. He does give Elli a small genetic sample to take back to the Dendarii, but not before Ethan asks her for (and receives) one of her ovaries to create a new tissue culture. After her departure, the original Bharaputran shipment unexpectedly turns up intact and usable, not destroyed. Ethan buys a new set of ovarian cultures anyway as a cover, uses their packaging to relabel the cultures with Janine's genes, and returns with them and Terrence to Athos. Elli's donated ovary culture is an additional, 451st culture. [Note: The events of the novel are obliquely referred to in the novels Cetaganda and Borders of Infinity.]
248364	/m/01kxt8	The Blind Assassin	Margaret Atwood	2000-09-02	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel centres on the protagonist, Iris Chase, and her sister Laura, who grow up well-off but motherless in a small town in Southern Ontario. As an old woman, Iris recalls the events and relationships of her childhood, youth and middle age, including her unhappy marriage to Toronto businessman Richard Griffen. The book includes a novel-within-a-novel, a roman à clef attributed to Laura but published by Iris. It's about Alex Thomas, a politically radical author of pulp science fiction who has an ambiguous relationship with the sisters. That embedded story itself contains a third tale, the eponymous Blind Assassin, a science fiction story told by Alex's fictional counterpart to the second novel's protagonist, believed to be Laura's fictional counterpart. The novel takes the form of a gradual revelation illuminating both Iris' youth and her old age before coming to the pivotal events of her and Laura's lives around the time of the Second World War. As the novel unfolds, and the novel-within-a-novel becomes ever more obviously inspired by real events, we learn that it is Iris, not Laura, who is the novel-within-a-novel's true author and protagonist. Though the novel-within-a-novel had long been believed to be inspired by Laura's romance with Alex, it is revealed that The Blind Assassin was written by Iris based on her extramarital affair with Alex. Iris later published the work in Laura's name after Laura committed suicide upon learning of their affair. The novel ends as Iris dies, leaving the truth to be discovered in her unpublished autobiography that she leaves to her sole surviving granddaughter. The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga and in the Toronto of the 1930s and 1940s. It is a work of historical fiction with the major events of Canadian history forming an important backdrop. Greater verisimilitude is given by a series of newspaper articles commenting on events and on the novel's characters from a distance.
249452	/m/01l0sf	Red Harvest	Dashiell Hammett		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Continental Op is called to Personville (known as "Poisonville" to the locals) by Donald Willsson, who is murdered before the Op has a chance to meet with him. The Op begins work on the murder and meets with Willsson's father, Elihu, a local industrialist who has found his control of the city threatened by several competing gangs he himself had originally invited into his city to "resolve" a labor dispute. The Op extracts a promise and a signed letter from Elihu that pays the Continental Detective Agency, the Op's employer, $10,000 in exchange for cleaning up the city. When the Op solves Donald's murder, Elihu tries to renege on the deal, but the Op won't allow him to do so. In the meantime, the Op finds himself spending time with Dinah Brand, a possible love interest of Donald Willsson's as well as a moll for the local gangster Max "Whisper" Thaler. Between Brand and the crooked chief of police, Noonan, the Op manages to extract and spread most of the information he needs to set off a gang war among the four major local factions. He wakes up the next morning to find Brand stabbed to death with the icepick the Op had used the previous evening, with no visible signs of forced entry. The Op ends up a suspect sought by the police for this murder, and one of his fellow operatives ends up leaving Personville because he is uncertain of the Op's innocence. The story ends as the Op finds Reno Starkey, the only one of the four main gangsters still alive, bleeding from a gunshot wound. Reno reveals that it was he who stabbed Brand, and that when she fell she collided with the semi-conscious Op, coincidentally landing in a position which made the Op look like the culprit. Reno has also just killed Whisper, and after he dies himself, Elihu can restore his control over the town.
249745	/m/01l1vy	The Jealous God	John Braine			 Vincent Dungarvan is a history teacher at a Catholic school for boys. Whereas his two brothers Matthew and Paul have been married with children for many years, Vincent is still single and living at home with his widowed mother, who is also a teacher. At 30 he is still a virgin. He has gone out with one or two nice Catholic girls but has rejected them when he found them too superficial and boring. One day, in the local library, he encounters Laura, a new librarian. Fascinated by her good looks and driven by, as he sees it, sinful desire, he is for once able to overcome his shyness and asks her out. Laura accepts, they immediately fall in love with each other and start dating on a regular basis. However, he prefers not to tell his possessive mother about her let alone invite her home. In the course of the following weeks Vincent's life is shattered by a number of revelations concerning Laura. He is disappointed when she tells him that she is a and that, on top of that, she has stopped going to church altogether. What is more, through a deliberate indiscretion by Laura's flatmate Ruth, he learns that Laura is divorced. For him as a Catholic, this means that he is seeing a married woman, and both his guilt and his helplessness about the situation increase enormously. Accordingly, they break up their relationship. Surprisingly, soon afterwards Vincent loses his virginity with Maureen, his sister-in-law, while his brother Matthew has gone out and the children are asleep. On the following morning, back at his mother's, he recollects what happened the previous evening: […] He had deliberately denied himself the one pleasure that had the power to transform his very notion of pleasure; he had committed all the other sins because of indolence or indifference, never stopping to calculate the price. He smiled; it was the same for the sin you enjoyed as the sin that you didn't. To spend the day talking to schoolboys about James I was, he reflected over his scrambled eggs, an anticlimax […]. He smiled to himself: if he had been a savage he'd have been entitled to wear some special insignia […]. "I'm glad you're so cheerful," his mother said. "It was something in the Guardian," he said. That very day, Vincent has an appointment with a senior clergyman about his vocation and once and for all makes up his mind not to become a priest. He also decides to see Laura again. In the meantime she has settled down in a flat of her own, and this is where they have sex for the first time, without Vincent confessing to Laura that he has recently made love to his own sister-in-law. When, some weeks later, Maureen announces that she is pregnant again, he is of course afraid that he might be the father of her baby. Out of jealousy, Maureen writes Laura's ex-husband Robert an anonymous letter, urging him to make up with his wife again. Vincent and Laura split up again as Laura is not certain about her husband's intentions. In the end two instances of deus ex machina resolve the complicated situation. First, Maureen has a miscarriage, freeing Vincent of any doubt that he might have fathered an illegitimate child. Then Robert commits suicide, paving the way for a Catholic wedding between Vincent and Laura, who are planning to leave the past behind and start a new life somewhere else. *"Muyah! There's no friendship between grown men and grown women, and no one can tell me different." (See also When Harry Met Sally....)
249894	/m/01l2dh	Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life	Spencer Johnson	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Allegorically, Who Moved My Cheese? features four characters: two mice, "Sniff" and "Scurry," and two littlepeople, miniature humans in essence, "Hem" and "Haw." They live in a maze, a representation of one's environment, and look for cheese, representative of happiness and success. Initially without cheese, each group, the mice and humans, paired off and traveled the lengthy corridors searching for cheese. One day both groups happen upon a cheese-filled corridor at "Cheese Station C". Content with their find, the humans establish routines around their daily intake of cheese, slowly becoming arrogant in the process. One day Sniff and Scurry arrive at Cheese Station C to find no cheese left, but they are not surprised. Noticing the cheese supply dwindling, they have mentally prepared beforehand for the arduous but inevitable task of finding more cheese. Leaving Cheese Station C behind, they begin their hunt for new cheese together. Later that day, Hem and Haw arrive at Cheese Station C only to find the same thing, no cheese. Angered and annoyed, Hem demands, "Who moved my cheese?" The humans have counted on the cheese supply to be constant, and so are unprepared for this eventuality. After deciding that the cheese is indeed gone they get angry at the unfairness of the situation and both go home starved. Returning the next day, Hem and Haw find the same cheeseless place. Starting to realize the situation at hand, Haw thinks of a search for new cheese. But Hem is dead set in his victimized mindset and dismisses the proposal. Meanwhile, Sniff and Scurry have found "Cheese Station N", new cheese. Back at Cheese Station C, Hem and Haw are affected by their lack of cheese and blame each other for their problem. Hoping to change, Haw again proposes a search for new cheese. However, Hem is comforted by his old routine and is frightened about the unknown. He knocks the idea again. After a while of being in denial, the humans remain without cheese. One day, having discovered his debilitating fears, Haw begins to chuckle at the situation and stops taking himself so seriously. Realizing he should simply move on, Haw enters the maze, but not before chiseling "If You Do Not Change, You Can Become Extinct" on the wall of Cheese Station C for his friend to ponder. Still fearful of his trek, Haw jots "What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?" on the wall and, after thinking about that, he begins his venture. Still plagued with worry (perhaps he has waited too long to begin his search...), Haw finds some bits of cheese that nourishes him and he is able to continue his search. Haw realizes that the cheese has not suddenly vanished, but has dwindled from continual eating. After a stop at an empty cheese station, Haw begins worrying about the unknown again. Brushing aside his fears, Haw's new mindset allows him to again enjoy life. He has even begun to smile again! He is realizing that "When you move beyond your fear, you feel free." After another empty cheese station, Haw decides to go back for Hem with the few bits of new cheese he has managed to find. Uncompromising, Hem refuses the new cheese, to his friend's disappointment. With knowledge learned along the way, Haw heads back into the maze. Getting deeper into the maze, inspired by bits of new cheese here and there, Haw leaves a trail of writings on the wall ("The Handwriting On the Wall"). These clarify his own thinking and give him hope that his friend will find aid in them during his search for new cheese. Still traveling, Haw one day comes across Cheese Station N, abundant with cheese, including some varieties that are strange to him, and he realizes he has found what he is looking for. After eating, Haw reflects on his experience. He ponders a return to see his old friend. But Haw decides to let Hem find his own way. Finding the largest wall in Cheese Station N, he writes: :Change Happens :They Keep Moving The Cheese :Anticipate Change :Get Ready For The Cheese To Move :Monitor Change :Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old :Adapt To Change Quickly :The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese :Change :Move With The Cheese :Enjoy Change! :Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese! :Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again :They Keep Moving The Cheese. Cautious from past experience, Haw now inspects Cheese Station N daily and explores different parts of the maze regularly to prevent any complacency from setting in. After hearing movement in the maze one day, Haw realizes someone is approaching the station. Unsure, Haw hopes that it is his friend Hem who has found the way.
250448	/m/01l4tv	The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel				 Odysseus (Ulysses) returns to Ithaca and decides to undertake new adventures after he quickly becomes unsatisfied with his quiet family life. First he travels to Sparta to save Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta Menelaus, whose abduction by Paris had led to the Trojan War. He goes to Crete where a conspiracy dethrones the king. There he abandons Helen and continues to Egypt where again a workers' uprising takes place. He leaves again on a journey up the Nile eventually stopping at the lake-source. Upon arrival his companions set up camp and he climbs the mountain in order to concentrate on his god. Upon his return to the lake he sets up his city based on the commandments of his religion. The city is soon destroyed by an earthquake. Odysseus laments his failure to understand the true meaning of god with the sacrifice of his companions. His life transforms into that of an ascetic. Odysseus meets Motherth (an incarnation of the Buddha), Kapetan Enas (English: Captain Sole), alias Don Quixote, and an African village fisherman, alias Jesus. He travels further south in Africa while constantly spreading his religion and fighting the advances of death. Eventually he travels to Antarctica and lives with villagers for a year until an iceberg kills him. His death is glorious as it marks his rebirth and unification with the world.
250478	/m/01l4_z	Lord Edgware Dies	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jane Wilkinson, an actress, is suspected of murdering her husband, the fourth Baron Edgware, so that she can marry the Duke of Merton. The plot begins with Jane asking Poirot to convince her husband to agree to a divorce. When Poirot reluctantly does so, Edgware says that he has already agreed to a divorce and written a letter to Jane informing her of the fact. When Poirot reports this to Jane, she denies ever having received such a letter. Lord Edgware is portrayed as a rather unsympathetic character. On the night of the murder, Wilkinson supposedly goes to the Edgware house, announces herself to the butler, and goes into her husband's study. The next day, Lord Edgware is found murdered and Chief Inspector Japp tells Poirot all about it. Numerous friends and acquaintances of Jane have described her as amoral, someone who only thinks of herself and would certainly commit a crime if it would help her get what she wants, without a care for others. But in that morning's newspaper, they discover an article about a dinner party that was held the previous evening where Wilkinson was a guest. At the party, there were thirteen guests at the dinner table. One guest mentioned that thirteen people at table means bad luck for the first guest to rise from the table (hence the alternative title of the book, Thirteen At Dinner) and Jane Wilkinson was the first to rise. Among the guests is an actor named Donald Ross, who spent a lot of the evening speaking with Jane. So the police are, at first, baffled with the case, as is Poirot. On the same morning Lord Edgware's murder is discovered, comedienne/actress Carlotta Adams, known for her uncanny impersonations, is found dead due to an overdose of Veronal. A mysterious gold case with the sleeping powder in it is found among her possessions. The case bears an inscription reading: "From D, Paris, November, 10th Sweet Dreams". Poirot tries to decode this and arranges the evidence together. A few days later, Jane makes an appearance at another dinner party where the guests talk about Paris of Troy. However, the Jane Wilkinson at this dinner party thinks that the guests, again including actor Donald Ross, are referring to the French capital. Ross can't understand this because, at the party on the night of the murder, Jane was speaking knowledgeably about the mythological Paris. Ross goes to ring up Poirot about his discovery, but before he can say what he discovered, he is stabbed to death at his home, but Poirot is on the verge of solving the case, anyway. Poirot gathers the suspects and details the trajectory of the crimes (the three murders): With Carlotta Adams impersonating Wilkinson, Jane simply takes a taxi to the Edgware house, where she murders her husband. She is overseen by her husband's secretary but the secretary's vision and impartiality were called into question at trial. Later, Jane (in the person of "Mrs Van Dusen", an elderly American widow) and Carlotta meet up in a hotel where they toast Carlotta's successful "performance" and ostensibly so Jane can pay Carlotta. However, Jane slips Veronal into Carlotta's drink, and Adams dies. Jane discovers a letter Carlotta has written to her sister and is panicked by how Carlotta talks openly in the letter about their arrangement. Rather than destroy the letter, Jane sees a way she can use the letter to her advantage. At the top left hand corner of the second page is the word "she" (referring to Jane); she tears off the "s", leaving the word "he", making it seem a man had hired Carlotta. Jane then puts the remaining Veronal inside the gold case to make it seem Carlotta was a Veronal addict. Jane ordered the gold case the week prior (as "Mrs Van Dusen"), which Poirot discovers when he questions the engravers. Poirot also realises that "November" was engraved on the case specifically to throw him off. Unbeknownst to Jane, Carlotta had been knowledgeable about Greek mythology, so she talked a lot about the subject with Donald Ross. At the second dinner party, Jane realizes she's made a potentially very serious mistake about Paris, leaves the party and heads to Ross's home to kill him before he can tell Poirot. Her motive for killing Lord Edgware was because the Duke of Merton was a staunch Anglo-Catholic and would not marry a divorced woman; a widow, however, is a different matter. In the last chapter, she writes a letter to Poirot, remarkably devoid of any animosity, which ends with her wondering why hangings are not done in public anymore.
250486	/m/01l51f	The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Marina Gregg is a famous, temperamental, much loved movie star who has come to settle down in the village of St. Mary Mead after the death of Colonel Bantry, who used to live at Gossington Hall where Marina has taken up residence with her husband Jason Rudd. Heather Badcock, an ordinary albeit annoying woman, dies after drinking a cocktail at a party hosted by Marina. Shortly before her death, Heather was in conversation with Marina, giving her a long boring account of how she had met Marina many years ago - getting out of bed despite her illness and putting on lots of makeup, in order to seek Marina's autograph. Marina is seem with a 'frozen'look on her face for a moment while Heather talks to her; a look likened to the Lady of Shalott, as though 'doom has come upon her'. It then comes to light that Marina had handed her own drink to Heather after Heather's drink was spilled. Therefore it is surmised that Marina must be the intended victim. As a famous star who has married five times, she is a far more likely murder target. Suspicion is cast on many people including Marina's seemingly devoted husband, a big-shot American TV producer who is a former admirer, and an American actress who was previously Marina's rival in love. (Both Americans turn up unexpectedly at the party). It also comes to light that an arty photographer at the party is actually one of three children that Marina had adopted in the past for a while and then 'got tired of' (Marina does not recognize her as such at the party). It is known that 11-12 years before the events in the book, Marina desperately wanted children of her own but had difficulties conceiving. After adopting three children, she became pregnant but her baby was born mentally handicapped and abandoned to a lifetime of institutions, leaving Marina emotionally scarred. This misfortune was due to Marina contracting German measles in the early stages of her pregnancy. While police search for clues, two other murders take place - one of Marina's social secretary and the other of Marina's butler (both of whom were serving drinks at the party). Finally, Miss Marple deduces what Marina had instantly realised at the party, that Heather is the woman who was responsible for infecting Marina with German measles all those years previously when she put on make up to cover the rash and went to meet Marina for her autograph. Overcome by rage and grief at seeing her unwitting tormentor looking so happy and proud of her act, Marina impulsively poisons her own glass and hands it to Heather after making Heather spill her own drink. At the end of the book, Marina is found dead from a drug overdose.
251099	/m/01l86k	Captain Corelli's Mandolin	Louis de Bernières	1993	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 *Dr. Iannis - The island's unofficial, unlicensed doctor, who spends much of his time writing about the history of Cephallonia. He is respected by the community, although regarded as a bit odd, and is thanked for his medical services by means of food and drink. *Pelagia - Dr. Iannis's daughter who is not like the other women on the island (she is well educated and has a lot of respect from her father), who at first falls in love with Mandras, then later with Corelli. *Antonio Corelli - An Italian captain with a love for music and life. He detests the war, and gradually falls in love with Pelagia; but the war inevitably tears them apart again. *Mandras - A young, handsome fisherman who falls in love with Pelagia, only to destroy their relationship by going to fight in the war, and ultimately humiliating himself. *Carlo Piero Guercio - A good-natured homosexual Italian soldier who falls in love with Francesco only to lose him to the war. He later falls in love with Corelli and sacrifices his life to save the Captain's. Captain Corelli's Mandolin explores many varieties of love. We see the initial lust-based love between Pelagia and Mandras, which burns out as a result of the war, and the change it prompts in both of them. Corelli and Pelagia's slow-developing love is the central focus of the novel. Love is described by Dr. Iannis as "what is left when the passion has gone", and it certainly appears that this criterion is fulfilled by the love of Corelli and Pelagia. The paternal love of Iannis for Pelagia is also strong and is heavily compared and contrasted to that of Corelli. The theme of music is predominant, offering a direct contrast to the horror and destruction that the war brings, showing how something beautiful can arise from something horrible. The war is described in graphic detail, particularly the death of Francesco. It is responsible for the fall of Mandras and Weber, the deaths of Carlo and Francesco, and the separation of Pelagia and Corelli. Throughout the novel, de Bernières takes a harsh view of all forms of totalitarianism, condemning Fascism, Nazism, and Communism alike. De Bernières described this as a novel about "what happens to the little people when megalomaniacs get busy." Another theme of the novel is the study of history. Dr. Iannis spends much of his spare time attempting to write a history of Cephallonia, but often finds his personal feelings and biases running through whatever he writes. There is also a strong feeling against 'professional' history which is suggested by Carlo Guercio's statement that "I know that if we [the axis] win then there will be stories about mass graves in London and vice versa". This is reinforced by De Bernières' quotation that: "history ought to be made up of the stories of ordinary people only." From this viewpoint it can be seen that de Bernières as very much a revisionist historian, considering social history superior to that of political. De Bernières takes an ambiguous attitude toward heroism and villainy in the novel: many of the characters, despite committing atrocities, are viewed as human victims of bad circumstances. For example, the character Günter Weber carries a great degree of sympathy from the writer, even though he fully engages with the Nazi ideology and is guilty of taking part in the killing of an entire Italian division. Despite having become friends with many of the men, he must follow orders. Similarly, Mandras is guilty of murder, torture and rape, yet the author portrays him sympathetically: "just another life tarnished... by war."
251355	/m/01l9hr	The Hotel New Hampshire	John Irving	1981	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 This novel is the story of the Berrys, a quirky New Hampshire family composed of a married couple, Win and Mary, and their five children. The parents, both from the small town of Dairy, New Hampshire, fall in love while working at a summer resort hotel in Maine as teenagers. There they meet a Viennese Jew named Freud who works at the resort as a handyman and entertainer, performing with his pet bear, State o' Maine; Freud comes to symbolize the magic of that summer for them. By summer's end the teens are engaged, and Win buys Freud's bear and motorcycle and travels the country performing to raise money to go to Harvard, which he subsequently attends while Mary starts their family. He then returns to Dairy and teaches at the local second-rate boys' prep school he attended, the Dairy School. But he is unsatisfied and dreaming of something better. The children are: Franny, self-confident and brash; John, the narrator, sweet, if naive, and enamored of Franny; Frank, physically awkward, reserved, and homosexual; Lilly, a small romantic girl who has "stopped growing"; and Egg, an immature little boy with a penchant for dressing up in costumes. John and Franny are companions, seeing themselves as the most normal of the children, aware that their family is rather strange. But, as John remarks, to themselves the family's oddness seems "right as rain." Win conceives the idea of turning an abandoned girls' school into a hotel. He names it the Hotel New Hampshire and the family moves in. This becomes the first part of Irving's Dickensian-style tale. Its chief plot elements are: Franny's rape at the hands of several members of the school football team, including the quarterback, a boy named Chipper Dove with whom she is in love, and her rescue, though somewhat late, by Junior Jones, a black member of the team; the death of the family dog, Sorrow, and its repeated resurrection via taxidermy, the first instance of which scares the grandfather literally to death; John's sexual initiation with the hotel housekeeper Ronda Ray; and a letter from Freud inviting the family to move to Vienna to help him (and his new "smart" bear) run his hotel there. Traveling separately from the rest of the family, the mother and Egg are killed in an airplane crash. The others take up life in Vienna at what is renamed the (second) Hotel New Hampshire, one floor of which is occupied by prostitutes and another floor by a group of radical communists. The family discover that Freud is now blind and the "smart bear" is actually a girl named Susie in a bear suit. Plot developments in this segment are: the father's decline following the death of his wife; the family's relationships with the prostitutes and the radicals; John and Franny falling in love with each other; John's relationship with a communist who commits suicide; Franny's sexual relationships with Susie and with the "quarterback" of the radicals, Ernst; Lilly developing as a writer and penning the story of the family; and the radicals' plot to blow up the opera house, using Freud and the family as hostages, which Freud and Win foil. The family becomes famous and, with Frank as Lilly's agent, her book is published for a large amount of money. The family (with Susie the bear) returns to the States, taking up residence in The Stanhope hotel in New York. The chief elements of the final part of the novel are: Franny and John's resolution of their love; Franny's revenge on her rapist; Franny's success as a movie actress and her marriage to Junior Jones; Lilly's suicide from her despair as a writer; John and Frank's purchase of the shut-down resort in Maine where their parents met; its function as a rape crisis center run by Susie; Susie and John finding happiness with each other; and a pregnant Franny asking them to raise her and Junior's impending baby. The novel is evocative of the New Hampshire of Irving's childhood.
252852	/m/01lhtw	The Bridge	Iain Banks	1986	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "The road cleared the cutting through the hills. He could see South Queensferry, the marina at Port Edgar, the VAT 69 sign of the distillery there, the lights of Hewlett Packard’s factory; and the rail bridge, dark in the evening’s last sky-reflected light. Behind it, more lights; the Hound Point oil terminal they’d had a sub-contract on, and, further away, the lights of Leith. The old rail bridge’s hollow metal bones looked the colour of dried blood. You fucking beauty, he thought . . . What a gorgeous great device you are. So delicate from this distance, so massive and strong close-up. Elegance and grace; perfect form. A quality bridge; granite piers, the best ship-plate steel, and a never-ending paint job. . . The three main characters represent different elements of the protagonist. Alex (full name hinted to be Alexander Lennox, but never explicitly named), John Orr and The Barbarian are one. Alex is a real person, born in Glasgow, who studied geology and engineering at the University of Edinburgh, fell in love with Andrea Cramond while there, and has continued their (open) relationship ever since. He is embittered by his betrayal of his working class roots (he has become a manager and partner in his engineering firm), the Cold War, successive Thatcher governments, and the failure of his relationship under the pressure of Andrea's French lover's terminal illness. While returning from a sentimental reunion with an old friend in Fife, during which alcohol and cannabis are consumed, he becomes distracted by the power and beauty of the Forth Railway Bridge while driving on the neighbouring Forth Road Bridge and crashes his car. While in a coma in hospital, he relives his life up to the crash. "He glanced back at the roadway of the bridge as it rose slowly to its gentle, suspended summit. The surface was a little damp, but nothing to worry about. No problems. He wasn’t going all that fast anyway, staying in the nearside lane, looking over at the rail bridge downstream. A light winked at the far end of the island under the rail bridge’s middle-section. One day, though, even you’ll be gone. Nothing lasts. Maybe that’s what I want to tell her. Maybe I want to say, No, of course I don’t mind; you must go. I can’t grudge the man that; you’d have done the same for me and I would for you. Just a pity, that’s all. Go; we’ll all survive. Maybe some good- He was aware of the truck in front pulling out suddenly. He looked round to see a car in front of him. It was stopped, abandoned in the nearside lane. He sucked his breath in, stamped on the brakes, tried to swerve; but it was too late." John Orr is an amnesiac living on the Bridge, a massive simulacrum of the rail bridge, but hundreds of miles long and packed with people. The crash which precipitated his arrival on the bridge was semi-deliberate; as such, he is reluctant to return to the real world. That part of himself who wishes to wake is represented by Dr Joyce, Orr's psychoanalyst. Given Orr/Alex's desire to remain within the world of the Bridge, a world where he is well treated and lives a fairly pampered life, his attempts to stonewall and block the doctor's attempts to cure him are understandable. Eventually, he stows away on a train and leaves the Bridge. He finds that, in stark contrast to the very orderly, indeed totalitarian, life on The Bridge, the countryside beyond exists in militaristic chaos and warfare. The Barbarian is an id-ish warrior with a superego-esque familiar in tow (phallic symbolism is referenced by the familiar within a few pages of their first appearance) whose hack-and slash antics through various parodies of Greek legends and fairy tales are phonetically rendered in Scots dialect (seven years before Irvine Welsh used the technique in Trainspotting). The Barbarian (along with his loquacious familiar) are a deep expression of Alex's character; when Orr's dreams are not themed around threat and opposition he dreams he is the Barbarian. The Barbarian appears to be an expression of Alex's deepest feelings. A woman is his enemy in their first appearance (Metaphormosis, Four), showing how Andrea Cramond has made her influence felt in Alex's very core, and how his love for her has been eroded and has transmuted into anger and contempt through the rift that has opened in their relationship. In their second appearance (Metamorpheus, Four), a female character is mentioned in passing, with a certain level of affection. The third appearance of the Barbarian and familiar (Metamorphosis, Pliocene) sees them old, decrepit, bed-bound and heading inevitably towards death. In each successive chapter the Barbarian's Scottish accent becomes less and less pronounced, another indication of how far Alex has gone from his Glaswegian roots. The Barbarian talks of his grief over his dead wife and his memories of their life together. While comparisons have been drawn between Sigmund Freud's structural theory of personality, this is the only point where the Barbarian, Familiar and another individual get together in a three-way arrangement. If the Barbarian's wife represents Andrea Cramond, it is another example of how deeply she has penetrated his being. In a move mirroring Alex's suicide drive and anticipating the end of the book, he is placed in a situation likely to kill him, but triumphs and emerges (literally) rejuvenated and reinvigorated. His Glasgow accent also returns. The Bridge is an unconventional love story; the characters eschew fidelity and barely see each other for years at a time, but they keep returning to each other. There is no marriage, no ring, no happy ever after, just the knowledge that their lives are so deeply entwined it would be difficult or impossible for them to break away from each other. “You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would know she was part of you.
253225	/m/01lks2	Dhalgren	Samuel R. Delany	1975-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Beginning in a forest somewhere outside the city, the novel recounts the protagonist's meeting with a woman. After they make love, he tells her that he has "lost something"—he cannot remember his name. The woman leads him to a cave and tells him to enter. Inside, he finds long loops of chain fitted with miniature prisms, mirrors, and lenses. He dons the chain and leaves the cave to search for the woman who led him there, only to find her in the middle of a field, turning into a tree. Panicked, he flees. From time to time, he sees other characters in the novel wearing the same sort of “optic chain” (as it is called in the novel), suggesting they have been through a similar initiation, though its specific meaning is never fully explained and may have no real significance at all beyond the personal. Eventually, on a nearby road, a passing truck stops to pick him up. The trucker drops him off at the mouth of a suspension bridge, across the river from Bellona. As he crosses the bridge in the early morning darkness, the young man meets a group of women leaving the city. They ask him questions about the outside world and give him a weapon: a bladed “orchid,” worn around the wrist with its blades sweeping up in front of the hand. Once inside Bellona, an engineer, Tak Loufer, who was living a few miles outside of the city when the initial destruction happened, meets and befriends him. Tak has moved to Bellona and stayed there ever since. Upon learning that he cannot remember his name, Tak gives him a nickname—the Kid. Throughout the novel he is also referred to as "Kid", "Kidd", and often just "kid." Next Tak takes Kid on a short tour of the city. One stop is at a commune in the city park, where Kid sees two women reading a spiral notebook. When Kid looks at it, we see what he reads: The first page contains, word-for-word, the first sentences of Dhalgren. As he reads further, however, the text diverges from the novel's opening. In Chapter II, "The Ruins of Morning", Kid returns to the commune the next day and receives the notebook from Lanya Colson, one of the two women from the evening before. Shortly they become lovers. Their relationship lasts throughout the book. We meet or learn about several other characters, including George Harrison, a local cult hero and rumoured rapist; Ernest Newboy, a famous poet visiting Bellona by invitation of Roger Calkins, publisher and editor of the local newspaper, The Bellona Times; Madame Brown, a psychotherapist; and, later in the novel, Captain Michael Kamp, an astronaut who, some years before, was in the crew of a successful moon landing. The notebook Kid receives already has writing throughout, but only on the right hand pages. The left hand pages are blank. Glimpses of the text in the notebook, however, are extremely close to passages in Dhalgren itself, as if the notebook were an alternate draft of the novel. Other passages are verbatim from the final chapter of Dhalgren. It is here in Chapter II that Kid begins using the blank pages of the notebook to compose poems. The novel describes the process of creating the poems—the emotions and the mechanics of the writing itself—at length and several times. We never see the actual poems, however, in their final form. Kid soon corrects any line that appears to a form we do not read—or removes it entirely from the text. The third and longest chapter, "House of the Ax", involves Kid's interactions with the Richards family: Mr. Arthur Richards, his wife Mary Richards, their daughter June (who had been questionably raped publicly by George Harrison, whom she is now fixated on), and son Bobby. Through Madame Brown they hire Kid to help them move from one apartment to another in the all-but-abandoned building of co-ops, The Labry Apartments, in which they live. All-but-dysfunctional, they are nevertheless "keeping up appearances." Mr. Richards leaves every day to go to work—though no office or facility in the city seems to be in operation—while Mrs. Richards acts as though there's nothing truly disastrous happening in Bellona. By some force of will, she causes almost everyone who comes into contact with her to play along. Kid's interactions with the Richardses culminates in the death of one of the family members. The third chapter is also where Ernest Newboy, a well-known poet visiting Bellona, befriends Kid. Newboy takes an interest in Kid's poems and mentions them to Roger Calkins. By the end of the chapter, Calkins is about to publish Kid's poems. As the novel progresses, Kid falls in with the scorpions, a loose-knit gang, three of whom have severely beaten him earlier in the book. Almost accidentally, Kid becomes their leader. Denny, a 15 year old scorpion, becomes Kid's and Lanya's lover, so that the relationship with Lanya turns into a lasting three-way sexual linkage. Kid also begins writing things other than poems in the notebook, keeping a journal of events and his thoughts. In Chapter VI, "Palimpsest", the novel's penultimate chapter, Calkins throws a party for Kid and his book, Brass Orchids, at Calkins's sprawling estate. At Calkins's suggestion, Kid brings along twenty or thirty friends: the scorpion "nest." While Calkins himself is absent from the gathering, the descriptions of the various interactions between Bellona's high society (or, rather, what is left of it) and what can only be described as a street gang (the scorpions) is a section of the novel that often garners particular attention from reviewers and critics. This is also the part of the novel where Kid is interviewed by William (later passages of the book suggest William's last name is "Dhalgren," but it is never confirmed). In Chapter VII, "The Anathemeta: a plague journal", the novel's concluding chapter, bits of the whole now and again appear to be laid out. Shifting from the omniscient viewpoint of the first six chapters, this chapter comprises numerous journal entries from the notebook, all of which appear to be by Kid. Several passages from this chapter have, however, already appeared verbatim earlier in the novel when Kid reads what was already in the notebook—written when he received it. In this chapter rubrics run along beside many sections of the main text, mimicking the writing as it appears in the notebook. (In the middle of this chapter, a rubric running contains the following sentence: I have come to to wound the autumnal city.) Recalling Kid's entry into the city, the final section contains a near paragraph-for-paragraph echo of his initial confrontation with the women on the bridge. This time, however, the group leaving is almost all male, and the person entering is a young woman who says almost exactly what Kid did himself at the beginning of his stay in Bellona. The story ends: But I still hear them walking in the trees: not speaking. Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland into the hills, I have come to As with Finnegans Wake, the unclosed closing sentence can be read as leading into the unopened opening sentence, turning the novel into an enigmatic circle.
253233	/m/01lktc	The Scar	China Miéville	2002-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/06n94f": "New Weird"}	 The Scar opens with the journey of a small ship which has set out from the city New Crobuzon (the setting of Perdido Street Station). It is heading to the city's new colony, Nova Esperium, which lies across the Swollen Ocean of Bas-Lag. On board the ship are: *Bellis Coldwine, a cold, reserved linguist who is fleeing for her life for her alleged connection to the events in Perdido Street Station. *Johannes Tearfly, a scientist whose interests lie in megafauna and underwater sealife. *Tanner Sack, a Remade criminal (that is, he has had his body surgically and magically altered as punishment for his crime) who is bound for slavery. *Shekel, a young cabin boy who befriends Tanner. Before the ship reaches Nova Esperium, it is captured by pirates, and the passengers, crew and prisoners are all press-ganged into being citizens of Armada, a floating city made of thousands of ships. Tanner uses his newfound freedom to embrace his remaking. He has his body further remade and the earlier, rough work perfected, becoming an amphibious sea-creature. Treated now as an equal citizen rather than a prisoner or slave, Tanner's loyalties fiercely lie in Armada. Bellis meanwhile despises her new life as a librarian for the city's vast collection of stolen books, and yearns for home (somewhat ironically, as she was originally fleeing it). She gains the attention of the powerful Uther Doul, bodyguard to the Lovers, the mysterious, scarred leaders of Armada. Doul, for his own reasons, involves Bellis much more closely in the city's matters. She soon becomes privy to a plan formulated by the Lovers to raise a mythical sea creature known as the avanc. Simultaneously, she becomes involved with a New Crobuzonian spy named Silas Fennec, who reveals that the grindylow of the Cold Claw Sea are planning war on New Crobuzon. Silas was on his way home to warn his leaders of this war (thus saving the millions of innocents who might be slaughtered by the grindylow) when he was captured by Armada. Bellis and Silas find physical release in each other, and commiserate that they are powerless to save their home city. Soon enough Shekel, who is learning to read with Bellis's help, finds a strange book in the Armada's library. He brings it to Bellis, and she quickly realizes that it is the book the Lovers need to raise the avanc. Knowing that she must get a message home, Bellis destroys that information. This forces the Lovers to seek Krüach Aum, now the only person who knows how to summon the mythical creature. Armada mounts an expedition to his unnamed island home, which is the island of the dreaded Anophelii (a horrific and deadly race of mosquito-people). The Lovers find Aum and the information they need, while Bellis uses their time on the island, away from Armada, to get a message home, to warn of the impending grindylow invasion. Armada then successfully raises the avanc and captures it – no mean feat, as the avanc is an immense creature, several miles long. The Lovers' true plan is finally revealed: to use the great speed and pulling power of the avanc to find the fabled Scar, a place in the world where reality breaks down and anything is possible. The Lovers see this as a source of ultimate power. On the journey far into unmapped waters, numerous matters threaten the city. Silas Fennec's actions, which have been far from honest all along, single-handedly bring down the fury of the New Crobuzon navy and the inhuman wrath of the grindylows. Following this a civil war breaks out within the city. Then, terribly wounded, Armada finally nears the Scar, and faces the unsettling horrors that accompany the breakdown of possibility. They pick up a shipwrecked friend from a different train of possibilities, chances and choices, who warns them of The Scar and that he saw the city fall into the wound of the world and everybody was killed. Mutiny follows and the people of Armada finally force the city to turn around and head back to the Swollen Ocean, the life of quiet and piracy, that they all want. The last chapter of the book is another excerpt of Bellis's letter home, in which she realises how much she was being used by Doul. The reader is left with the question, how much Uther Doul actually was in control of the events in the book, what was chance and what was 'planned' possibility.
254464	/m/01lqzb	Rhinoceros	Eugène Ionesco			 The play starts in the town square of a small, unnamed French village. Two friends; the eloquent, intellectual but incredibly prideful Jean and the simplistic, shy, kind-hearted drunkard Berenger; meet up in a coffee house to talk about an unspecified urgent matter. Instead of talking about what they were supposed to, Jean becomes furious at Berenger's tardiness and drunken state and berates him until a rhinoceros rampages across the square, considerably startling the people there. The people there begin to discuss what has happened when another rhinoceros appears and crushes a woman's cat. This generates incredible outrage and people begin to band together to argue that the presence of these rhinos should not be allowed. The beginning of a mass movement is seen onstage. Berenger arrives late for work at the local newspaper office, but the newspaper's receptionist Daisy (with whom Berenger is in love), covers for him. At the office, an argument has broken out between the sensitive and logical Dudard and the violent, temperamental Botard; since Botard does not believe a rhinoceros could actually appear in France despite all the claims by eyewitnesses that one did. Suddenly, Mrs. Bœuf (the wife of a fellow employee) appears to say that her husband has turned into a rhinoceros and that streets are plagued with people who have turned into them. Botard argues against the existence of the so called rhinoceritis movement that Mrs. Bœuf claims is occurring, saying that the local people are too intelligent to be tricked by the empty rhetorics of a mass movement. Despite this, Mr. Bœuf (turned into a rhinoceros) arrives and destroys the staircase that leads out of the office, trapping all the workers and their boss, Mr. Papillion, inside. Mrs. Bœuf joins her husband by jumping down the stairwell while the office-workers escape through a window. Berenger goes to visit Jean in order to apologize for the previous day's argument they had, but finds him in bed, heavy with a sickness he has never had. The two friends begin to argue again, initially about the possibility of people actually turning into rhinos and then about the morality of the transformations. Jean is initially staunchly against the rhinos, but gradually grows lenient. As the scene progresses, Jean's skin turns greener and greener, the bumps in his head grow into a horn, his voice grows hoarse and he begins to pace around his apartment like a caged beast. Finally, he proclaims that rhinoceros have just as much of a right to life as humans and that "Humanism is dead, those who follow it are just old sentimentalists" before he turns into a rhino himself and chases Berenger out of his apartment. Everyone in town has succumbed to rhinoceritis save for Berenger, Dudard and Daisy. Berenger is locked up in his apartment, yelling at the rhinos that rush by for having destroyed civilization until Dudard arrives to check on him. Dudard trivializes the transformations by saying that people have the right to choose what they do, even transform; but Berenger insists that the transformations couldn't be voluntary since his friend Jean had initially hated the rhinos and that he was probably brainwashed. Dudard counterargues that people can change their minds and gradually grows more accepting until he concludes that he must "follow [his] peers and [his] leaders" before departing and turning into a rhino. Just before he departs, Daisy arrives. She and Berenger realize that they are left completely alone - the only humans left in a world of monsters. Berenger professes his love for Daisy and she seems to reciprocate. They attempt, albeit briefly, to have a normal life amongst the rhinoceroses. After Berenger suggests that they attempt to re-populate the human race, Daisy begins to move away from him, suggesting that Berenger doesn't understand love. She comes to believe the rhinoceroses are in the right - they who are truly passionate. Berenger slaps Daisy without thinking, immediately recanting his action. They consider their state with Berenger exclaiming that, "in just a few minutes we have gone through twenty-five years of married life!" They attempt to reconcile, but fail. As Berenger examines himself in a mirror for any evidence of transformation, Daisy quietly leaves to join the rhinoceroses. Discovering he is completely alone, Berenger laments his behavior with Daisy. In his solitude he begins to doubt his existence - his language, his appearance, and his mind. Alone, he finds himself in the wrong and attempts to change into a rhinoceros. He struggles and fails. He returns to the mirror, face-to-face with his fate and breaks down as he struggles to accept the place he has given himself. Suddenly, he snaps out of it and renews his vow to take on the rhinos. Berenger valiantly shouts "I'm not capitulating!" to the audience before returning to the window to hurl abuse at the passing rhinoceros.
254498	/m/01lr1g	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	J. K. Rowling	1999-07-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens on the night before Harry's thirteenth birthday, when he receives gifts by owl post from his friends at school. The next morning at breakfast, Harry sees on television that a man named Black is on the loose from prison. At this time, Aunt Marge comes to stay with the Dursleys, and she insults Harry's parents numerous times. Harry accidentally causes her to inflate, and leaves the Dursley's house and is picked up by the Knight Bus, but only after an alarming sighting of a large, black dog. The Knight Bus drops Harry off at Diagon Alley, where he is greeted by Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic. Harry rents a room and awaits the start of school. In Diagon Alley, Harry finishes his schoolwork, admires a Firebolt broomstick in the window of a shop, and after some time, finds his friends Ron and Hermione. At a pet shop, Hermione buys a cat named Crookshanks, who chases Scabbers, Ron's aging pet rat. Ron is most displeased. The night before they all head off to Hogwarts, Harry overhears Ron's parents discussing the fact that Sirius Black is after Harry. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the other students board the Hogwarts Express train and are stopped once by an entity called a Dementor. Harry faints and is revived by Professor Lupin, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Soon afterward, the students arrive at Hogwarts and classes begin. In Divination class, Professor Trelawney foresees Harry's death by reading tealeaves and finding the representation of a Grim, a large black dog symbolising death. In the Care of Magical Creatures class, Hagrid introduces the students to Hippogriffs, large, deeply dignified crosses between a horse and an eagle. Malfoy insults one of these beasts, Buckbeak, and is attacked. Malfoy drags out the injury in an attempt to have Hagrid fired and Buckbeak put to death. In Defense Against the Dark Arts, Professor Lupin leads the class in a defeat of a Boggart, which changes shape to appear as the viewer's greatest fear. For Ron, a spider, for Neville, professor Snape. For Harry it turns into a dementor During a Hogwarts visit to Hogsmeade, a wizard village which Harry is unable to visit because he has no permission slip, Harry has tea with Professor Lupin. Harry discovers that professor lupin had worried about whether the boggart would take the shape of Voldemort. Snape brings Lupin a steaming potion, which Lupin drinks, much to Harry's alarm. Later that night, Sirius Black breaks into Hogwarts and destroys the Fat Lady portrait that guards Gryffindor Tower. The students spend the night sleeping in the Great Hall while the teachers search the castle. Soon afterwards, Quidditch moves into full swing, and Gryffindor House plays against Hufflepuff. During the game, Harry spies the large black dog, and seconds later he sees a hoard of Dementors. He loses consciousness and falls off his broomstick. Harry wakes to find that his trusty broomstick had flown into the Whomping Willow and been smashed in his fall, and the game itself had lost. Later, Harry learns from Lupin that the Dementors affect Harry so much because Harry's past is so horrible. During the next Hogsmeade visit, from which Harry is forbidden because he didn't get his permission slip signed, Fred and George Weasley give Harry the Marauder's Map, written by the mysterious quartet of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. This map leads Harry through a secret passageway into Hogsmeade, where he rejoins Ron and Hermione. Inside the Hogsmeade tavern, Harry overhears professor MC Gonagol ,and some other hogwart's teacher's discussing Sirius Black's responsibility for Harry's parents' deaths, as well as for the death of another Hogwarts student, Peter Pettigrew, who was blown to bits, leaving only a finger. Back at Hogwarts, Harry learns that Hagrid received a notice saying that Buckbeak, the hippogriff who attacked Malfoy, is going to be put on trial, and Hagrid is inconsolable. The winter holidays roll around. For Christmas, Harry receives a Firebolt, the most impressive racing broomstick in the world. Much to his and Ron's dismay, Hermione reports the broomstick to Professor McGonagall, who takes it away, fearing that it may have been sent (and cursed) by Sirius Black. After the holidays, Harry begins working with Professor Lupin to fight Dementors with the Patronus Charm; he is moderately successful, but still not entirely confident in his ability to ward them off. Soon before the game against Ravenclaw, Harry's broomstick is returned to him, and as Ron takes it up to the dormitory, he discovers evidence that Scabbers has been eaten by Crookshanks. Ron is furious at Hermione. Soon afterwards, Gryffindor plays Ravenclaw at Quidditch. Harry, on his Firebolt, triumphs, winning the game. Once all the students have gone to bed, Sirius Black breaks into Harry's dormitory and slashes the curtain around Ron's bed. Several days later, Hagrid invites Harry and Ron over for tea and scolds them for shunning Hermione on account of Scabbers and the Firebolt. They feel slightly guilty, but not terrible. Soon Harry, under his invisibility cloak, meets Ron during a Hogsmeade trip; when he returns, Snape catches him and confiscates his Marauder's Map. Lupin saves Harry from Snape's rage, but afterwards he reprimands him severely for risking his safety for "a bag of magic tricks." As Harry leaves Lupin's office, he runs into Hermione, who informs him that Buckbeak's execution date has been set. Ron, Hermione, and Harry are reconciled in their efforts to help Hagrid. Around this time, Hermione is exceptionally stressed by all of her work, and in a day she slaps Malfoy for picking on Hagrid and she quits Divination, concluding that Professor Trelawney is a great fraud. Days later, Gryffindor beats Slytherin in a dirty game of Quidditch, winning the Quidditch Cup. Exams roll around, and during Harry's pointless Divination exam, Professor Trelawney predicts the return of Voldemort's servant before midnight. Ron, Hermione, and Harry shield themselves in Harry's invisibility cloak and head off to comfort Hagrid before the execution. While at his cabin, Hermione discovers Scabbers in Hagrid's milk jug. They leave, and Buckbeak is executed. As Ron, Harry, and Hermione are leaving Hagrid's house and reeling from the sound of the axe, the large black dog approaches them, pounces on Ron, and drags him under the Whomping Willow. Harry and Hermione and Crookshanks dash down after them; oddly, Crookshanks knows the secret knob to press to still the flailing tree. They move through an underground tunnel and arrive at the Shrieking Shack. They find that the black dog has turned into Sirius Black and is in a room with Ron. Harry, Ron, and Hermione manage to disarm Black, and before Harry can kill Black, avenging his parents' deaths, Professor Lupin enters the room and disarms him. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are aghast as Lupin and Black exchange a series of nods and embrace. Once the three students calm down enough to listen, Lupin and Black explain everything. Lupin is a werewolf who remains tame through a special steaming potion made for him by Snape. While Lupin was a student at Hogwarts, his best friends, James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew, became Animagi (humans able to take on animal forms) so that they could romp in the grounds with Lupin at the full moon. They explain how Snape once followed Lupin toward his transformation site in a practical joke set up by Sirius, and was rescued narrowly by James Potter. At this moment, Snape reveals himself from underneath Harry's dropped invisibility cloak, but Harry, Ron, and Hermione disarm him, rendering him unconscious. Lupin and Black then explain that the real murderer of Harry's parents is not Black, but Peter Pettigrew, who has been presumed dead but really hidden all these years disguised as Scabbers. Lupin transforms Scabbers into Pettigrew, who squeals and hedges but ultimately confesses, revealing himself to be Voldemort's servant, and Black to be innocent. They all travel back to Hogwarts, but at the sight of the full moon, Lupin, who has forgotten to take his controlling potion (the steaming liquid), turns into a werewolf. Sirius Black responds by turning into the large black dog in order to protect Harry, Ron, and Hermione from Lupin. As Black returns from driving the werewolf into the woods, a swarm of Dementors approaches, and Black is paralyzed with fear. One of the Dementors prepares to suck the soul out of Harry, whose patronus charm is simply not strong enough. Out of somewhere comes a patronus that drives the Dementors away. Harry faints. Harry awakens in the hospital wing to hear Snape and Cornelius Fudge discussing the fact that Sirius Black is about to be given the fatal Dementor's Kiss. Harry and Hermione protest, claiming Black's innocence, but to no avail; then Dumbledore enters the room, shoos out the others, and mysteriously suggests that Harry and Hermione travel back through Hermione's time-turning device, which she has been using from the starting of the school for her studies, and save both Black and Buckbeak. Hermione turns her hour-glass necklace back three turns, and Harry and Hermione are thrust into the past, where they rescue Buckbeak shortly before his execution. From a hiding place in the forest, Harry watches the Dementor sequence and discovers that he had been the one who conjured the patronus, and he is touched and confused to note that his patronus had taken the shape of a stag that he recognises instantly as Prongs, his father's animagi form. After saving his past self from the Dementors, Harry and Hermione fly to the tower where Black is imprisoned, and they rescue Black, sending him away to freedom on Buckbeak's back. The next day, Harry is saddened to learn that Professor Lupin is leaving Hogwarts because of the previous night's scare. Dumbledore meets with Harry and gives him wise fatherly advice on the events that have happened. On the train ride home, Harry receives an owl-post letter from Sirius that contains a Hogsmeade permission letter, words of confirmation that he is safe in hiding with Buckbeak and that he was, in fact, the sender of the Firebolt, and a small pet owl for Ron. Harry feels slightly uplifted as he returns to spend his summer with the Dursleys.
254652	/m/01lrk5	Cold Comfort Farm	Stella Gibbons	1932	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Following the death of her parents, the book's heroine, Flora Poste, finds she is possessed "of every art and grace save that of earning her own living." She decides to take advantage of the fact that "no limits are set, either by society or one's own conscience, to the amount one may impose on one's relatives", and settles on visiting her distant relatives at the isolated Cold Comfort Farm in the fictional village of Howling in Sussex. The inhabitants of the farm - Aunt Ada Doom, the Starkadders, and their extended family and workers - feel obligated to take her in to atone for an unspecified wrong once done to her father. As is typical in a certain genre of romantic 19th-century and early 20th-century literature, each of the farm's inhabitants has some long-festering emotional problem caused by ignorance, hatred, or fear, and the farm is badly run. Flora, being a level-headed, urban woman, determines that she must apply modern common sense to their problems and help them adapt to the 20th century.
255406	/m/01lvlp	Hatter's Castle	A. J. Cronin	1931	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with some insight into the life of the Brodie household, where James Brodie seems to have everyone under his thumb. The main event that triggers the events in the novel is Mary Brodie's relationship with her first love, Dennis. Early in the story, Mary, who has occasionally met Dennis at the library, is invited by him to go to the fair in the town. She sneaks out without her family's knowledge and not only goes to the fair, but later on that night kisses and eventually makes love to Dennis, which we later learn, results in pregnancy. This event of her unwanted pregnancy is the main plot in the first third of the novel, titled "Section One". We realise that Mary is pregnant, and when she is six months pregnant she makes a plan with Dennis to run away and get married without her parents noticing. Even though Mary was only seventeen, there would have been no legal problem with her marriage since the English law which, until 1970, generally required people under twenty-one to have parental consent to marry, did not apply in Scotland. But three days before Dennis is due to whisk Mary away, there is a massive storm, and she begins to go into labour whilst carrying the child. Mrs. Brodie stumbles into Mary's room and begins to scream at the fact that her daughter is with child, and calls James himself to sort it out. After being kicked in the stomach repeatedly by her father and thrown out on her face into the pouring rain (whilst in labour), she tries to reach safety. Mary nearly drowns in a river before finding a barn where she gives birth to her premature child, which dies. Dennis, who was, travelling on a train to rescue Mary, is killed when the train derails and plunges into the River Tay below, a retelling of the actual Tay Bridge disaster of 1879. In the second part of the book, James Brodie's business as a hatter is destroyed. A rival company moves next door and attracts all his customers. Part of this is due to Brodie's pride, as the customers are driven away by his delusions of superiority. As his profits decrease, so does the weekly salary, so Mamma is left to deal with making the most of what little they have left for the family. Her illness, cancer of the womb, and the chronic stress of living with James Brodie hasten her death. After her death, Brodie's mistress, Nancy, moves in. Later she goes off abroad with Brodie's son Matt, and Brodie is left with only his younger daughter, Nessie, and his aged mother, Grandma Brodie. In the third part of the book, Brodie forces Nessie to study hard so as to win the "Latta", a valuable bursarship. He wants this not so much to provide a good future for his daughter, as to show that she is better than his rival's son, who is also entered for it. Under his threats and the dreadful fear of failure, she labours on with it, making herself mentally and physically ill. Nessie secretly writes to Mary asking her to come back, so she will have her company and comfort. Under pretext of coming to help with housework, Mary writes to her father, who initially refuses her return. After discovering that Nancy has deserted him, he writes again permitting Mary to come back, so she does. Nessie obtains notice of the Latta result before her father sees it. Finding that her rival has won it and fearing her father, she sends Mary out to the chemist on the pretext of getting some medicine, then dresses up and hangs herself. The story concludes with Dr. Renwick, who has been seeing Mary, taking her away with him to marry her.
255508	/m/01lv_3	Gravity's Rainbow	Thomas Pynchon	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05wkc": "Postmodernism", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The plot of the novel is complex, containing over 400 characters and involving many different threads of narrative which intersect and weave around one another. The recurring themes throughout the plot are the V-2 rocket, interplay between free will and Calvinistic predestination, breaking the cycle of nature, behavioral psychology, sexuality, paranoia and conspiracy theories such as the Phoebus cartel and the Illuminati. Gravity's Rainbow also draws heavily on themes that Pynchon had probably encountered at his work as a technical writer for Boeing, where he edited a support newsletter for the Bomarc Missile Program support unit. The Boeing archives are known to house a vast library of historical V-2 rocket documents, which were probably accessible to Pynchon. The novel is narrated by many distinct voices, a technique further developed in Pynchon's much later novel Against the Day. The style and tone of the voices vary widely: Some narrate the plot in a highly informal tone, some are more self-referential, and some might even break the fourth wall. Some voices narrate in drastically different formats, ranging from movie-script format to stream of consciousness prose. The narrative contains numerous descriptions of illicit sexual encounters and drug use by the main characters and supporting cast, sandwiched between dense dialogues or reveries on historic, artistic, scientific, or philosophical subjects, interspersed with whimsical nonsense-poems and allusions to obscure facets of 1940s pop culture. Many of the recurring themes will be familiar to experienced Pynchon readers, including the singing of silly songs, recurring appearances of kazoos, and extensive discussion of paranoia. According to Richard Locke, megalomaniac paranoia is the "operative emotion" behind the novel, and an increasingly central motivator for the many main characters. In many cases, this paranoia proves to be vindicated, as the many plots of the novel become increasingly interconnected, revolving around the identity and purpose of the elusive 00000 Rocket and Schwarzgerät. The novel becomes increasingly preoccupied with themes of Tarot, Paranoia, and Sacrifice. All three themes culminate in the novel's ending, and the epilogue of the many characters. The novel also features the character Pig Bodine, of Pynchon's novel V.. Pig Bodine would later become a recurring avatar of Pynchon's complex and interconnected fictional universe, making an appearance in nearly all of Pynchon's novels thereafter. The novel also shares many themes with Pynchon's much later Against the Day; Against The Day becomes increasingly dark as the plot approaches World War I, and Gravity's Rainbow takes these sentiments to their extreme in its highly pessimistic culmination of World War II. The opening pages of the novel follow Pirate Prentice, first in his dreams, and later around his house in wartime London. Pirate then goes to work at ACHTUNG, a top-secret military branch, with Roger Mexico and Pointsman, who both worked there at the time. It is here the reader is introduced to the possibly promiscuous US Army lieutenant named Tyrone Slothrop (at certain points in the book, Pynchon leads the reader to doubt the very existence of the women Slothrop claims to sleep with), whose erratic story becomes the main plot throughout most of the novel. In "Beyond The Zero", some of the other characters and organizations in the book note that each of Slothrop's sexual encounters in London precedes a V-2 rocket hit in the same place by several days. Both Slothrop's encounters and the rocket sites match the Poisson Distributions calculated by Roger Mexico, leading into reflections on topics as broad as Determinism, the reverse flow of time, and the sexuality of the rocket itself. Slothrop meets a woman named Katje, and they fall in love, maintaining a relationship until Slothrop's sudden removal to Germany in part three. Many characters not significant until later are introduced in "Beyond the Zero", including Franz and Leni Pökler, Roger Mexico and Jessica, and Thomas Gwenhidwy, some of whom don't appear until the closing pages of the novel. Many characters are introduced into the plot and then don't appear again at all. Indeed, most of the four hundred named characters only make singular appearances, serving merely to demonstrate the sheer scope of Pynchon's universe. Slothrop is also submitted to various psychological tests, many involving the drug Sodium Amytal. Pavlovian conditioning is a recurring topic, mostly explored through the character of Pavlovian researcher Pointsman. One of the more bizarre Pavlovian episodes involves the conditioning of octopus Grigori to respond to the girl Katje. Early in part two, the octopus attacks Katje on the beach, and Slothrop is "conveniently" at hand to rescue her. Their romance begins here, extending into Part Three and the events that follow. In part two, "Un Perm' au Casino Hermann Goering", Slothrop is studied covertly and sent away by superiors in mysterious circumstances to the Hermann Göring casino in recently liberated France, in which almost the entirety of Part Two takes place. There he learns of a rocket, with the irregular serial number 00000 (Slothrop comments that the numbering system doesn't allow for four zeroes in one serial, let alone five), and a component called the S-Gerät (short for Schwarzgerät, which translates to black device) which is made out of the hitherto unknown plastic Imipolex G. Several companions suddenly disappear or re-appear after extended amounts of time, including the two guards watching Slothrop and Katje. It is hinted at that Slothrop's prescience of rocket hits is due to being conditioned as an infant by the creator of Imipolex G, Laszlo Jamf. Later, the reality of this story is called into question in a similar fashion as the existence of Slothrop's original sexual exploits were. After getting this information, Slothrop escapes from the casino into the coalescing post-war wasteland of Europe, "The Zone", searching for the 00000 and S-Gerät. In the closing of Part Two, Katje is revealed to be safe in England, enjoying a day at the beach with Roger Mexico and Jessica, as well as Pointsman, who is in charge of Slothrop's furtive supervision. While unable to contact Slothrop (or prohibited from contacting him), Katje continues to follow his actions through Pointsman. Slothrop's quest continues for some time "In The Zone" as he is chased by other characters. Many of these characters are referred to as "shadows," and are only partially glimpsed by the protagonist. Much of the plot takes place on "The Anubis", a ferry on which many different characters travel at various times. Slothrop meets and has an extended relationship with Margherita Erdman, a pornographic film actress and masochist. Originally meeting her in an abandoned studio in The Zone, it is she who leads him on to the Anubis. Here, Slothrop later also has extended encounters with her twelve-year-old daughter Bianca, though it is unclear whether or not he has stopped his casual relationship with Margherita by this time. Margherita is later shown to know a great deal more about the 00000, S-Gerät, and Imipolex G than she lets on, even having spent many days in a mysterious and ambiguously described factory and being clothed in an outfit made from the "erotic" plastic. Towards the end of this section, several characters not seen since early in the novel make a return, including Pirate Prentice, in his first appearance since the novel's very start, as well as Roger Mexico. "In The Zone" also contains the longest episode of the book, a lengthy tale of Franz Pökler, a rocket engineer unwittingly set to assist on the S-Gerät's production. The story details Pökler's annual meetings with his daughter Ilse, and his growing paranoia that Ilse is really a series of impostors sent each year to mollify him. Through this story, we find out sparse details about the S-Gerät, including that it has an approximate weight of forty-five kilograms. The story ultimately reveals that the 00000 was fired in the spring of 1945, close to the end of the war. Slothrop spends much of the time as his invented alter-ego Rocketman, wearing an operatic Viking costume with the horns removed from the helmet, making it look like a rocket nose-cone. Rocketman completes various tasks for his own and others' purposes, including retrieving a large stash of hashish from the centre of the Potsdam Conference. This continues until he leaves the region for northern Germany, continuing his quest for the 00000, as well as answers to his past. It becomes steadily apparent that Slothrop is somehow connected to Dr. Laszlo Jamf, and a series of experiments performed on him as a child. Slothrop later returns to the Anubis to find Bianca dead, a possible trigger for his impending decline. He continues his pilgrimage through northern Germany, at various stages donning the identities of a Russian colonel and mythical Pig Hero in turn, in search of more information on his childhood and the 00000. Unfortunately, he is repeatedly sidetracked until his persona fragments totally in part four, despite the efforts of some to save him. Throughout "The Counterforce", there are several brief, hallucinatory stories, of superheroes, silly Kamikaze pilots, and immortal sentient lightbulbs. These are presumed to be the product of Slothrop's finally collapsed mind. The final identification of him of any certainty is his picture on the cover of an album by obscure English band "The Fool" (another allusion to Tarot, which becomes increasingly significant), where he is credited as playing the Harmonica and Kazoo. At the same time, other characters' narratives begin to collapse as well, with some characters taking a bizarre trip through Hell, and others flying into nothingness on Zeppelins. A variety of interpretations of this fact exist, including theories that all of the involved characters have a shared consciousness, or even that the other characters are part of Slothrop's mind, and thus disintegrate along with it. Slothrop's narrative ends a surprisingly long time before the novel's end, which focuses more on the 00000, and the people associated with its construction and launch (namely Blicero, Enzian, and Gottfried, amongst others). At this point, the novel also concludes many characters' stories, including those of Mexico, Pointsman, and Pirate, leaving only the 00000. As the novel closes, many topics are discussed by the various protagonists around the world, ranging from Tarot cards to Death itself. Towards the end of "The Counterforce", it transpires that the S-Gerät is actually a capsule crafted by Blicero to contain a human. The story of the 00000's launch is largely told in flashbacks by the narrator, while in the present Enzian is constructing and preparing its successor, the 00001 (which isn't fired within the scope of the novel), though it is unknown who is intended to be sacrificed in this model. In the flashbacks, the maniacal Captain Blicero prepares to assemble and fire the 00000, and asks Gottfried to sacrifice himself inside the rocket. He launches the rocket in a pseudo sexual act of sacrifice with his bound adolescent sex slave Gottfried captive within its S-Gerät. At the end of a final episode, told partially in second person, the rocket descends upon Britain. The text halts, in the middle of a song composed by Slothrop's ancestor, with a complete obliteration of narrative as the 00000 lands (or is about to land) on a cinema. Thus the novel opens and closes in wartime Britain, and opens and closes with the landing of a V-2 rocket. Many facts in the novel are based on technical documents relating to the V-2 rockets. Equations featured in the text are correct. References to the works of Pavlov, Ouspensky, and Jung are based on Pynchon's research. The firing command sequence in German that is recited at the end of the novel is also correct and is probably copied verbatim from the technical report produced by Operation Backfire. In reality, a V-2 rocket hit the Rex Cinema in Antwerp, where some 1200 people were watching the movie The Plainsman, on December 16, 1944, killing 567 people, the most killed by a single rocket during the entire war. The secret military organizations practicing occult warfare have an historical backdrop in the Ahnenerbe and other Nazi mysticism, whereas the allied counterparts were limited to certain individuals such as Louis de Wohls work for MI5. Additionally, the novel uses many actual events and locations as backdrops to establish chronological order and setting within the complex structure of the book. Examples include the appearance of a photograph of Wernher Von Braun in which his arm is in a cast. Historical documents indicate the time and place of an accident which broke Von Braun's arm, thereby providing crucial structural details around which the reader can reconstruct Slothrop's journey. Another example is the inclusion of a BBC Radio broadcast of a Benny Goodman performance, the contents of which, according to historical record, were broadcast only once during the period of the novel and by which the events immediately surrounding its mention are fixed. Further historical events, such as Allied bombing raids on Peenemünde and the city of Nordhausen (close to the V-2 producing concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora) also appear in the novel and help to establish the relation of the work's events to each other.
255971	/m/01lyfq	Death in Venice	Thomas Mann	1912	{"/m/0cgx58": "Gay novel", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The main character is Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous author in his early fifties who has recently been ennobled in honor of his artistic achievement (and thus has acquired the aristocratic "von" to his name). He is a man dedicated to his art, disciplined and ascetic to the point of severity, who was widowed at a young age. As the story opens, while strolling outside a cemetery, he sees a coarse-looking red-haired foreigner who stares back at him belligerently. Aschenbach walks away, embarrassed but curiously stimulated. He has a vision of a primordial swamp-wilderness, fertile, exotic and full of lurking danger. Soon afterwards, he resolves to take a holiday. After a false start in traveling to Pula on the Yugoslav coast, Aschenbach realizes he "was meant" to go to Venice, and he takes a suite in the Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido island. While shipbound and en route to the island he sees an elderly man, in company with a group of high-spirited youths, who has tried hard to create the illusion of youth with a wig, false teeth, makeup, and foppish attire. Aschenbach turns away in disgust. Soon afterwards he has a disturbing encounter with an unlicensed gondolier—another red-haired, skull-faced foreigner—who repeats "I can row you well" when Aschenbach orders him to return to the wharf. Aschenbach checks into his hotel, where at dinner he sees an aristocratic Polish family at a nearby table. Among them is an adolescent boy of about fourteen years in a sailor suit; Aschenbach, startled, realizes that the boy is supremely beautiful, like a Greek sculpture. His older sisters, by contrast, are so severely dressed that they look like nuns. Soon afterward, after spying the boy and his family at a beach, Aschenbach overhears the lad's name, Tadzio, and conceives what he first experiences as an uplifting, artistic interest. Soon the hot, humid weather begins to affect Aschenbach's health, and he decides to leave early and move to a more salubrious location. On the morning of his planned departure, he sees Tadzio again, and a powerful feeling of regret sweeps over him. When he reaches the railway station and discovers his trunk has been misdirected, he pretends to be angry, but is really overjoyed; he decides to remain in Venice and wait for his lost luggage. He happily returns to the hotel, and thinks no more of leaving. Over the next days and weeks, Aschenbach's interest in the beautiful boy develops into an obsession. He watches him constantly, and secretly follows him around Venice. One evening, the boy directs a charming smile at him, looking, Aschenbach thinks, like Narcissus smiling at his own reflection. Disconcerted, Aschenbach rushes outside, and in the empty garden whispers aloud, "I love you!" Aschenbach next takes a trip into the city of Venice, where he sees a few discreetly worded notices from the Health Department warning of an unspecified contagion and advising people to avoid eating shellfish. He smells an unfamiliar strong odour everywhere, and later realises it is disinfectant. However, the authorities adamantly deny that the contagion is serious and the tourists continue to wander round the city, oblivious. Aschenbach at first ignores the danger because it somehow pleases him to think that the city's disease is akin to his own hidden, corrupting passion for the boy. During this period, a third red-haired, disreputable-looking man crosses Aschenbach's path; this one belongs to a troupe of street singers who entertain at the hotel one night. Aschenbach listens entranced to songs that, in his former life, he would have despised – all the while stealing glances at Tadzio, who is leaning on a nearby parapet in a classically beautiful pose. The boy eventually returns Aschenbach's glances and though the moment is brief it instills in the writer a sense that the attraction may be mutual. Next, Aschenbach rallies his self-respect and decides to discover the reason for the health notices posted in the city. After being repeatedly assured that the sirocco is the only health risk, he finds a British travel agent who reluctantly admits that there is a serious cholera epidemic in Venice. Aschenbach considers warning Tadzio's mother of the danger; however, he decides not to, knowing that if he does, Tadzio will leave the hotel and be lost to him. One night, a dream filled with orgiastic Dionysian imagery reveals to him the sexual nature of his feelings for Tadzio. Afterwards, he begins staring at the boy so openly and following him so persistently that Aschenbach feels the boy's guardians finally notice, and take to warning Tadzio whenever he approaches too near the strange, solitary man. But Aschenbach's feelings, though passionately intense, remain unvoiced; he never touches Tadzio, or even speaks to him; and while there is some indication that Tadzio is aware of his admiration, the two exchange nothing more than the occasional surreptitious glance. Aschenbach begins to fret about his aging face and body. In an attempt to look more attractive, he visits the hotel's barber shop almost daily, where the barber eventually persuades him to have his hair dyed and his face painted to look more youthful. The result is a fairly close approximation to the old man on the ship who had so appalled Aschenbach. Freshly dyed and rouged, he again shadows Tadzio through Venice in the oppressive heat. He loses sight of the boy in the heart of the city; then, exhausted and thirsty, he buys and eats some over-ripe strawberries and rests in an abandoned square, contemplating the Platonic ideal of beauty amidst the ruins of his own once-formidable dignity. A few days later, Aschenbach goes to the lobby in his hotel, feeling ill and weak, and discovers that the Polish family plan to leave after lunch. He goes down to the beach to his usual deck chair. Tadzio is there, unsupervised for once, and accompanied by an older boy, Jasiu. A fight breaks out between the two boys, and Tadzio is quickly bested; afterward, he angrily leaves his companion and wades over to Aschenbach's part of the beach, where he stands for a moment looking out to sea; then turns halfway around to look at his admirer. To Aschenbach, it is as if the boy is beckoning to him: he tries to rise and follow, only to collapse sideways into his chair. His body is discovered a few minutes later.
256075	/m/01lyzd	Effi Briest	Theodor Fontane	1894	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The young, immature and carefree Effi, still practically a child, but attracted by notions of social honour, consents to live in the small Baltic town of Kessin, where she ends up in the throes of an emotional crisis. Her husband is away for weeks at a time and leaves her to her own devices in their home. Alienated from the local aristocracy and therefore miserably unhappy, Effi finds but one companion in the whole town. She suspects that their house may be haunted. Innstetten reassures her, but, perhaps on purpose, does not completely lay her fears to rest. When she voices her disquiet about the possible presence of a ghost, her husband angrily responds that her fears are insignificant when compared with the importance of his political career. His reply shows his worry that people may learn about Effi’s discomfort and subsequently censure them publicly. The mercurial and debonair Major Crampas finally announces his arrival in Kessin, and although he is married and notorious for his overt womanising, Effi cannot help but rejoice in the attention he shows to her. As the reader is only delicately told, a full extramarital relationship is consummated. Despite this, later in the novel Effi is relieved to move to Berlin, away from Crampas, and expresses shame at her adultery, although she also expresses shame at not feeling guilty enough. Innstetten, however, inwardly scorns Crampas and perceives him as a lecherous womanizer with a cavalier attitude to the laws, whereas Crampas is persuaded that Innstetten has a habit of educating and "edifying" his fellows in a slightly patronising way. Years later, Effi’s young daughter Annie is growing up and the family has relocated to Berlin as Innstetten has ascended the political hierarchy. All things appear to have turned out well for Effi. However, Instetten discovers her old correspondence with Crampas, and learns that his wife had become enamored of Crampas while they were living in Kessin. Innstetten challenges Crampas to a duel. Crampas agrees to the plan and is killed by Innstetten. Innstetten resolves to divorce Effi immediately. He is given custody of their daughter, in whom he successfully develops a feeling of disdain for her mother. Indeed, when Effi and Annie arrange a brief encounter a couple of years later, the tense atmosphere which dominates the reunion shows that they have grown further apart. In the aftermath of this meeting, Effi ceases to make any more endeavors to strike up an untroubled relationship with her daughter. Forlorn and disowned by her fellows, Effi adjusts to a reclusive life and suffers from ostracism for years, during which she plumbs the depths of despair. Since public opprobrium has been heaped upon her, her parents refuse to take her back, believing that it is not right for them to accept her in the midst of their family. (According to the prevailing values of the late nineteenth century, one's reputation would be besmirched by the acquaintance of someone whose marriage was annulled because of their own adultery.) In the meantime, Innstetten has second thoughts about his action. He finally has to acknowledge that the brighter days of his marriage are long past: he does not even delight in his gradual ascent within the country’s political hierarchy. Effi is eventually taken in by her parents, and temporarily seems to recover from the nervous disorder she has come down with. Her recovery is nonetheless temporary, as feelings of sorrow and repentance are deeply embedded in her soul. Shortly before she passes away, she summons her mother and pleads with her to inform Innstetten about her regrets about her actions, with which she has been bedevilled over the course of her declining years. The novel closes with Effi dying serenely at the parental estate of Hohen-Cremmen, in a very symmetrical ending that matches the beginning of the novel. In the novel’s final scene, her parents vaguely realise their responsibility for her intractable hardships, but ultimately they do not dare question the social constructs which caused the tragedy.
256424	/m/025scp3	Article 23	William R. Forstchen	1998-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Academy plebe Justin Bell is excited about his new career in space. Unfortunately several colonies are agitating for independence. On top of this very dangerous political situation, contact has just been made with non-human life.
256471	/m/01m06z	The Day of the Jackal	Frederick Forsyth	1971-06-07	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book begins with the historical, failed attempt on de Gaulle's life planned by Col. Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart. After Bastien-Thiry's arrest, the French security forces wage a short but extremely vicious "underground" war with the terrorists of the OAS, a militant right-wing group who have labeled de Gaulle a traitor to France after his grant of independence to Algeria. The French secret service, a.k.a. Action Service, is remarkably effective in infiltrating the terrorist organization with their own informants, allowing them to kidnap and neutralize the terrorists' chief of operations, Antoine Argoud. The failure of the Petit-Clamart assassination, and a subsequent attempt at the Ecole Militaire, coupled with Bastien-Thiry's eventual execution by firing squad, likewise cripples the morale of the terrorists. Argoud's deputy, Lt. Col. Marc Rodin, carefully examines their few remaining options and determines that the only way to succeed in killing de Gaulle is to hire a professional assassin from outside the organization, someone completely unknown to either the French authorities or the OAS itself. After inquiries, he contacts an Englishman (whose name is never given), who meets with Rodin and his two principal deputies in Vienna, and agrees to assassinate de Gaulle for the sum of $500,000 (about $2.4 million in 2012). The four men agree on his code name, "The Jackal." The remainder of Part One describes the Jackal's exhaustive preparations for the assassination. First, he acquires a legitimate British passport under a false name, under which he plans to operate for the majority of his mission. He also steals the passports of two foreign tourists visiting London who superficially resemble the Jackal, for use in an emergency. Using his primary false passport, the Jackal travels to Belgium, where he commissions a specialized sniper rifle of great slimness and an appropriate silencer from a master gunsmith, and a set of forged French identity papers from a master forger. When picking up his fake identity papers, the master forger attempts to blackmail the Jackal but the Jackal kills him and locks the body in a large trunk inside the forger's house, where he correctly deduces it won't be found for a long time. After exhaustively researching a series of books and articles by, and about, de Gaulle, the Jackal travels to Paris to reconnoiter the most favorable spot and the most likely day for the assassination. After orchestrating a series of armed robberies in France, the OAS is able to deposit the first half of the Jackal's fee in his bank in Switzerland. At the same time, the French secret service, curious about the actions of Rodin and his subordinates, fake a letter that lures one of Rodin's bodyguards to France, where he is captured and interrogated, before dying. Interpreting his incoherent ramblings, the secret service is able to piece together Rodin's plot, but without knowing the name or the exact description of the assassin. When told about the plot, de Gaulle (who was notoriously careless of his personal safety) refuses, absolutely, to cancel his public appearances, modify his normal routines, or even allow any kind of public inquiry into the assassin's whereabouts to be made. Any inquiry, he orders, must be done in absolute secrecy. Roger Frey, the French Minister of the Interior, convenes a meeting of the heads of the French security forces. Since Rodin and his men have taken refuge at a hotel in Rome under heavy guard, they cannot be captured and interrogated. The rest of the meeting is at a loss to suggest how to proceed, except a Commissioner of the Police Judiciare, who reasons that their first and most essential step is to establish the Jackal's identity, which is a job for a detective. When asked to name the best detective in France, he volunteers his own deputy commissioner, Claude Lebel. Granted special emergency powers to conduct his investigation, Lebel does everything he can to discover the Jackal's identity. He first calls upon his "old boy network" of foreign intelligence and police contacts to inquire if they have any records of a top-class political assassin. Most of the inquiries are fruitless, but in the United Kingdom, the inquiry is eventually passed on to the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, and another veteran detective, Superintendent Bryn Thomas. A search through Special Branch's records turns up nothing, however one of Thomas's subordinates suggests that if the assassin was an Englishman, but primarily operated abroad, he'd be more likely to come to the attention of the Secret Intelligence Service. Thomas makes an informal inquiry with a friend of his on the SIS's staff, who mentions hearing a rumor from an officer stationed in the Dominican Republic at the time of President Trujillo's assassination. The rumor states that a hired assassin stopped Trujillo's car with a rifle shot, allowing a gang of partisans to finish him off; and moreover, that the assassin was an Englishman, named Charles Calthrop. To his surprise, Thomas is summoned in person by the Prime Minister (unnamed, but likely intended to represent Harold Macmillan), who informs him that word of his inquiries has reached higher circles in the British government. Despite the enmity felt by much of the government against France in general and de Gaulle in particular, the Prime Minister informs Thomas that de Gaulle is his friend, and that the assassin must be identified and stopped at all costs. Thomas is handed a commission much similar to Lebel's, with temporary powers allowing him to override almost any other authority in the land. Checking out the name of Charles Calthrop, Thomas finds a match to a man living in London, said to be on holiday in Scotland. While Thomas confirms that this Calthrop was in the Dominican Republic at the time of Trujillo's death, he does not feel it is enough to inform Lebel. But then one of his junior detectives realizes that the first three letters of his Christian name and surname form the French (and Spanish) word for Jackal, Chacal. Thomas calls Lebel immediately. Unknown to any member of the council in France, the mistress of one of them (an arrogant Air Force colonel attached to de Gaulle's staff) is actually an OAS agent. Through pillow talk, the colonel unwittingly feeds the Jackal a constant stream of information as to Lebel's progress. The Jackal enters France by way of Italy, driving a rented Alfa Romeo sports car with his special gun hidden in the chassis. On receiving word from the OAS agent that the French are on the lookout for him, he decides his plan will succeed nevertheless, and forges ahead. In London, the Special Branch raids Calthrop's flat, finding his passport, and deduce that he must be travelling on a false one. When they work out the name of the Jackal's primary false identity, Lebel and the police come close to apprehending the Jackal in the south of France. But thanks to his OAS contact, the Jackal checks out of his hotel early and evades them by only an hour. With the police on the lookout for him, the Jackal takes refuge in the chateau of a woman whom he seduced while she was staying at the hotel the night before. When she goes through his things and finds the gun, he kills her and escapes again. The murder is not reported until much later that evening, allowing the Jackal to assume one of his two emergency identities and board the train for Paris. Lebel becomes suspicious of what the rest of the council label the Jackal's "good luck," and has the telephones of all the members wiretapped, which leads him to discover the OAS agent. The Air Force colonel withdraws from the meeting in disgrace and later resigns from his post. When Thomas checks out and identifies reports of stolen or missing passports in London in the preceding months, he closes in on the Jackal's remaining false identities. On the evening of August 22, 1963, Lebel deduces that the Jackal has decided to target de Gaulle on Liberation Day, on 25 August, the day commemorating the liberation of Paris during World War II. It is, he realizes, the one day of the year when de Gaulle can be counted on to be in Paris, and to appear in public. Considering the inquiry all but over, the Minister orchestrates a massive, city-wide manhunt for the Jackal under his false name(s), and dismisses Lebel with hearty congratulations. However, the Jackal has eluded them yet again. By pretending to be homosexual in one of his false guises, he allows himself to be "picked up" by another man and taken to his apartment, where he kills the man and remains hidden for the remaining three days, thus avoiding identification through hotel registrations, which are examined by the police. On the day before the 25th, the Minister summons Lebel again and tells him that the Jackal still cannot be found. Lebel listens to the details of the President's schedule and security arrangements, and can suggest nothing more helpful than that everyone "should keep their eyes open." On the day of the assassination, the Jackal, disguised as a one-legged French war veteran, passes through the police checkpoints, carrying his custom rifle concealed in the sections of a crutch. He makes his way to an apartment building overlooking the Place du 18 Juin 1940 (in front of the soon-to-be-demolished facade of the Gare Montparnasse), where de Gaulle is presenting medals to a small group of Resistance veterans. As the ceremony begins, Lebel is walking around the street on foot, questioning and re-questioning every police checkpoint. When he hears from one CRS officer about a one-legged veteran with a crutch, he realizes what the Jackal's plan is, and rushes into the apartment building, yelling for the CRS man to follow him. In his sniper's rest, the Jackal readies his rifle and takes aim at de Gaulle's head. Yet his first shot misses by a fraction of an inch, when de Gaulle unexpectedly leans forward to kiss the cheeks of the veteran he is honoring. The Jackal begins to reload. Outside the apartment, Lebel and the CRS officer arrive on the top floor in time to hear the sound of the first, silenced shot. The CRS man shoots off the lock of the door and bursts in. The Jackal turns and fires, killing the young policeman with a shot to the chest. At last, confronting each other, the assassin and the police detective — who had developed grudging, mutual respect for each other in the long chase — briefly look into each other's eyes, each recognizing the other for who he is. The Jackal scrambles to load his third and last rifle bullet, while Lebel, unarmed, snatches up the dead policeman's MAT-49 submachine-gun. Lebel is faster, and shoots the Jackal with half a magazine-load of bullets, instantly killing him. In London, the Special Branch are cleaning up Calthrop's apartment when the real Charles Calthrop storms in and demands to know what they are doing. Once it is established that Calthrop really has been on holiday in Scotland and has no connection whatsoever with the Jackal, the British are left to wonder "If the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell was he?" The Jackal is buried in an unmarked grave in a Paris cemetery, officially recorded as "an unknown foreign tourist, killed in a car accident." Aside from the priest, the only person attending the burial is Police Inspector Claude Lebel, who then leaves the cemetery to return home to his family.
259128	/m/01m5g_	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	J. K. Rowling	2000-07-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins in the 1940s in a small town called Little Hangleton, describing how the Riddle family was mysteriously killed at supper, and how their groundsman, Frank Bryce, was suspected of the crime, then declared innocent due to lack of evidence. In 1994, Bryce investigates a disturbance at the house and overhears Lord Voldemort and Peter Pettigrew (also known as Wormtail) plotting to kill a boy named Harry Potter. Voldemort's snake, Nagini, notices Bryce and informs Voldemort; Voldemort invites Bryce inside and kills him on the spot. The scene then shifts to Harry Potter as he wakes in the night with a throbbing pain in his scar. The next morning, Harry's Uncle Vernon receives a letter from the Weasleys asking Harry to join them at the Quidditch World Cup. Harry is brought to The Burrow the next day. Early the next morning, the Weasleys, Harry and Hermione head off to the Quidditch World Cup. They travel by Portkey, an object which wizards use to travel quickly to another linked destination. While traveling, they meet Cedric Diggory, another Hogwarts student. At their seat, Harry, Ron, and Hermione meet Winky, a house-elf who says she is saving a seat for her master, Bartemius 'Barty' Crouch. That night, after the game, a crowd of Voldemort's followers destroy the campground and torture its Muggle owners. Harry, Hermione and Ron escape by fleeing into the woods, where Harry discovers that his wand is missing. Moments later, someone fires Voldemort's symbol, using Harry's wand. Winky is found holding Harry's wand at the scene of the crime, and Mr Crouch fires her. Later at the Burrow, Cedric's father brings news that a man named Mad-Eye Moody attacked an intruder at his house. Upon arriving at Hogwarts, Professor Dumbledore announces that the Triwizard Tournament will take place at Hogwarts throughout the school year. The Tournament is a competition between three delegates, or "champions", one from each of the three great European schools of magic - Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. These champions compete in three tasks and they are given scores by the judges based on their performance; at the conclusion, one champion is chosen as the victor and given a thousand Galleons prize money. However, owing to the dangerous nature of the tournament, no one under seventeen years of age is allowed to enter. He also introduces Mad-Eye Moody as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Moody's unorthodox teaching methods cause controversy within the school, notably his use of Transfiguration as punishment and his lessons on the Unforgivable Curses. In late October, the delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang arrive; the Triwizard Tournament is officially opened, and students who wish to compete submit their names to the Goblet of Fire. On Halloween, the Goblet of Fire chooses the champions; and to everyone's great surprise, Harry is selected to compete alongside Cedric Diggory, Fleur Delacour, and Viktor Krum. Though he did not enter himself, Harry is magically bound to compete as the fourth champion. Ron feels let down, refusing to speak to Harry. Harry's situation only worsens with the publication of a sappy, exaggerated article about his past, written by ruthless reporter Rita Skeeter. A few nights before the first task, Hagrid invites Harry for a late night walk, ultimately informing him that the task will somehow contain dragons. Back in the Gryffindor common room, Harry converses with Sirius; who informs Harry that Igor Karkaroff, the Headmaster of Durmstrang, was once a Death Eater and is not to be trusted. The next day, realizing that Fleur and Krum know about the dragons as well, Harry warns Cedric about the first task; Moody overhears, and drops hints that Harry should use his flying skills to best the dragon. Harry and Hermione then spend hours practising Summoning charms, which would allow him to retrieve his broom. During the task, Harry successfully Summons his broomstick and flies past the dragon, capturing the golden egg - a necessary clue to the nature of the second task - and receiving high marks. Ron and Harry reconcile shortly afterward. Professor McGonagall announces that the Yule Ball is approaching and that the champions must find partners as they will open the ball. Harry gathers his courage to ask his crush Cho Chang, but finds out that she is already going with Cedric. Harry and Ron eventually ask Parvati and Padma Patil. At the ball, Ron becomes jealous of Viktor Krum, who has brought Hermione as his date. Harry and Ron leave the ball and overhear Karkaroff confiding fearfully to Potions master Snape that something on his arm has become more prominent. At the end of the ball, Cedric tells Harry to take a bath with the golden egg. During a trip to Hogsmeade, Ludo Bagman mentions to Harry that Mr Crouch has stopped coming to work. Harry takes the egg into the bathtub. The egg sings that he will have an hour to reclaim something valuable that has been taken into the lake. As he returns to his dormitory, he notices Mr Crouch searching Snape's office, but is unable to investigate. Harry falls asleep in the library, searching for answers from the clue, and is awakened in the morning by the house-elf Dobby, who now works at Hogwarts, who gives him a ball of gillyweed. The gillyweed gives Harry gills and he swims easily through the lake, finding Hermione, Ron, Cho, and Fleur's sister Gabrielle asleep and tied together in a merpeople village. Harry waits to make sure all of the champions rescue their hostages before returning to the surface. When Fleur does not come, he returns with Gabrielle and Ron and comes up last, but gains high marks for his moral fibre in his completion of the task. The following day in Hogsmeade, Harry, Ron, and Hermione meet Sirius Black, disguised as his animagus, a dog. He informs them that Crouch's son was convicted as a Death Eater (Voldemort's followers). Later, the champions are taken to see the grounds to see a maze, the third task. On the way back, when Krum pulls Harry away to talk, they find a dishevelled Mr Crouch, who is speaking to trees and demanding to see Dumbledore. Harry runs to get Dumbledore while Krum waits with Crouch; when Harry returns, Krum has been stunned and Mr Crouch gone. In Divination class, Harry falls asleep and dreams about Voldemort, waking up screaming. Harry leaves class to discuss this with Dumbledore; as he waits for Dumbledore to return to his office, he peers into a Pensieve and enters Dumbledore's memories of various Death Eater trials, including that of Ludo Bagman, Karkaroff, and Mr Crouch's son. Dumbledore returns, pulls Harry from the memories and listens to his story. On the evening of the task, the four champions enter the maze, and Harry finds his path relatively manageable. Soon both Fleur and Krum are out of the running, and Harry and Cedric arrive at the trophy at the same time, agreeing to touch it together. The trophy turns out to be a Portkey, taking both to the graveyard in Little Hangleton, where a man in a hood quickly kills Cedric. Harry realises the man is Wormtail, who ties Harry to a gravestone. Wormtail drops the bundle he is carrying (Voldemort's current form) into a cauldron, as well as a bone from Voldemort's father, Wormtail's own right hand, and blood from Harry's arm. Voldemort resumes his body and rises from the cauldron. Voldemort presses a tattoo of the Dark Mark on Wormtail's arm, and suddenly Death Eaters begin appearing in a circle around them. Voldemort creates a silver hand for Wormtail and then challenges Harry to a duel. Harry tries to use the disarming spell on Voldemort just as Voldemort uses the Killing Curse. The lights from the two wands meet in midair and remain connected. Voldemort's past victims emerge from his wand and protect Harry once the wand connection is broken, giving him time to grab Cedric's body and touch the trophy, thus returning to Hogwarts. Once Harry returns, Moody carries him into the castle, where he reveals that he is a Death Eater, and that he was responsible for placing Harry's name in the Goblet and for turning the trophy into a portkey. Moody also informs Harry that Karkaroff has fled the castle. Soon after, Dumbledore and other teachers burst into the room, stunning Moody and saving Harry. Under the influence of a truth potion, Moody confessed that he was young Barty Crouch Jr. He has made the switch by using Moody's hair and drinking Polyjuice potion every hour. His father smuggled him out of prison and allowed him to live under an invisibility cloak, guarded by Winky, and how Ministry of Magic worker Bertha Jorkins discovered him and ultimately was relieved of her information by Voldemort, who then returned to find Crouch Jr in his father's house. He also says that he killed his father in the Forest the day he stumbled upon Harry and Krum, and that he was hoping to bring Voldemort back to power by bringing Harry to him. Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic, refuses to believe that Voldemort is back. He gives Harry the tournament prize money and leaves quickly. After the term ends, Harry, Ron and Hermione return home on the Hogwarts Express. Hermione shows Harry and Ron a beetle in a jar — Rita Skeeter's animagus form, which she has been using to spy on people and acquire news about them — that she caught and warned not to write untrue things. Harry gives the gold he won in the Triwizard Tournament to the Weasley twins to help start their practical joke company. Harry then returns to the Dursleys for the summer.
261876	/m/01mvwz	A Presumption of Death	Jill Paton Walsh	2002-11	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Harriet has evacuated her family to the Wimseys' country house, Talboys (in Hertfordshire), taking her two children, along with the three children of her sister-in-law, Lady Mary, and Peter's venerable old housekeeper, Mrs. Trapp. Peter and Bunter are away on an undercover assignment. During a practice air raid, a young woman is murdered in the village, and Superintendent Kirk recruits Harriet to help solve the murder, partly because the police are too busy organizing all the changes necessitated by the war and partly because as the wife of a detective, and as a crime novelist, she is the best qualified person to find the murderer. The murdered girl had come from the city as a "Land Girl", to do agricultural work and help the war effort. She was killed in the village street during an air raid drill, while most people were underground, and much of the investigation turns on the issue of who had been, or could have been, outside the shelter when the murder was committed. Many of the witnesses—and some of the possible suspects—are RAF pilots stationed at a nearby air base, who need to be questioned in between going out on missions. Gerald, Lord Peter's favourite nephew, who was first seen a decade earlier as a precocious boy playing a major role in solving "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head" and appeared as an Oxford undergraduate in Gaudy Night; is now an RAF combat pilot. At least one character introduces the possibility that the murder is directly linked to German espionage. While conducting the investigation and riding herd on the five children under her charge, Harriet worried about her husband, whose life is in danger. She regrets the lost years when she had put him off before finally agreeing to marry him. Wimsey, realizing that the Germans had broken the code which he had been using, devises a new one which is unbreakable because of being based on things only he and Harriet knew. His Secret Service colleague brings her Peter's message and she shows considerable skill in decoding it. Eventually, Bunter comes back from the continent—uncharacteristically dirty, scruffy and so exhausted that he lets Lady Peter wait upon him and put him to bed—and is followed some days later by Peter, who arrived by a different route. It is never revealed where exactly they had been. Lord Peter is retired from active service and, while still involved in intelligence issues, would not be sent again behind enemy lines. Being presented with Harriet's record of her investigations—which, as he notes, already solved most of the mystery—he is able to add the last missing pieces. Finding the solution for the mystery does not mean, however, just handing the perpetrator to the police; rather, solving the mystery arouses a complicated new problem involving legal, military, ethical and moral issues—which Lord Peter manages to neatly tie up.
262637	/m/01mzn7	A Tenured Professor	John Kenneth Galbraith	1990-11-12	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The book chronicles the rise to fame of one Montgomery Marvin, a professor of economics who, as an academic teacher, keeps a low profile but who nevertheless is given tenure quite early in his career. While outwardly concerning himself with unspectacular research focusing on "Mathematical Paradigms in an Approach to Refrigerator Pricing" (which is also the title of his Ph.D. thesis), Marvin's extracurricular activities centre on becoming very rich in a very short time. For that purpose, Marvin has devised a new formula—a stock forecasting model by means of which he and his wife can cash in on people's euphoria, greed and, as they call it, dementia. Eventually, while everyone loses money in the wake of the "Black Monday" stock market crash of October 19, 1987, the Marvins gain an awful lot. (See also Michael Milken and leveraged buyout.) They decide to spend their money wisely, according to their liberal agenda. Intent on strictly observing the code of business ethics, they start to make use of the "positive power of wealth" and embark on a life of philanthropy. They fund a number of chairs in peace studies to be established at, of all places, military academies. They also secure legislation by which companies are required to label their products according to the percentage of female executives employed by them. After they have launched several of their projects, their operations are increasingly considered un-American and officially put under surveillance. But whatever will happen - Marvin knows that he will be able to nourish his family, as he has been accorded tenure. A Tenured Professor was republished as paperback by Houghton Mifflin in 2001 (ISBN 0-618-15455-8).
262839	/m/01m_rx	Trumps of Doom	Roger Zelazny	1985-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Merlin has spent the last several years on Earth learning computer science while building Ghostwheel, a trump- and pattern-based computer, elsewhere in Shadow. Having completed his project, he wishes to know who has been trying to kill him every April 30, and why some of the better attempts failed, before he leaves. He meets with his friend Lucas Reynard (Luke), a salesman, who tries to convince him to stay, and who tells him that Julia Barnes, Merlin's ex-girlfriend, may be in trouble. Merlin investigates and finds Julia slain by creatures from another shadow. Merlin investigates through shadow, and is given orders by king Random to shut down Ghostwheel. However, Ghostwheel has become sentient and capable of defending itself. Eventually, Luke - who, it turns out, is Brand's son - imprisons Merlin in a blue crystal cave so he can attempt to take control of Ghostwheel for himself.
263009	/m/01n0jk	Dream of the Red Chamber	Tsao Hsueh-Chin		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel provides a detailed, episodic record of the two branches of the wealthy and aristocratic Jia (賈) clan — the Rongguo House (榮國府) and the Ningguo House (寧國府) — who reside in two large, adjacent family compounds in the capital. Their ancestors were made Dukes and given imperial titles, and as the novel begins the two houses are among the most illustrious families in the city. One of the clan’s offspring was made an Imperial Consort, and a lush landscaped garden was built to receive her visit. The novel describes the Jias’ wealth and influence in great naturalistic detail, and charts the Jias’ fall from the height of their prestige, following some thirty main characters and over four hundred minor ones. Eventually the Jia clan falls into disfavor with the Emperor, and their mansions are raided and confiscated. In the novel's frame story, a sentient Stone, abandoned by the goddess Nüwa when she mended the heavens aeons ago, begs a Taoist priest and a Buddhist monk to bring it with them to see the world. The Stone, accompanied by a character named Divine Attendant-in-Waiting (神瑛侍者) (while in Cheng-Gao versions they are merged into the same character), was given a chance to learn from the human existence, and enters the mortal realm. The main character of the novel is the carefree adolescent male heir of the family Jia Baoyu. He was born with a magical piece of "jade" in his mouth. In this life he has a special bond with his sickly cousin Lin Daiyu, who shares his love of music and poetry. Baoyu, however, is predestined to marry another cousin, Xue Baochai, whose grace and intelligence exemplifies an ideal woman, but with whom he lacks an emotional connection. The romantic rivalry and friendship among the three characters against the backdrop of the family's declining fortunes forms the main story in the novel.
263527	/m/01n2g0	We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda	Philip Gourevitch	1998	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book describes Gourevitch's travels in Rwanda after the conflict, in which he interviews survivors and gathers information. Gourevitch retells survivors' stories, and reflects on the meaning of the genocide. The title comes from an April 15, 1994, letter written to Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's operations in western Rwanda, by several Adventist pastors who had taken refuge with other Tutsis in an Adventist hospital in the locality of Mugonero in Kibuye prefecture. Gourevitch accused Ntakirutimana of aiding the killings that happened in the complex the next day. Ntakirutimana was eventually convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The book not only explains the genocide's peak in 1994, but the history of Rwanda leading up to the major events
263797	/m/01n3gw	Nice Work	David Lodge	1988	{"/m/0blvpd": "Industrial novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07z5s9": "Campus novel"}	 The book describes encounters between Robyn Penrose, a feminist university teacher specialising in the industrial novel and women's writing, and Vic Wilcox, the manager of an engineering firm. The relationship that develops between the unlikely pair reveals the weaknesses in each character. Robyn's academic position is precarious because of budget cuts. Vic has to deal with industrial politics at his firm. The plot is a pastiche of the industrial novel genre, particularly referencing North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. This gentle ribbing acts to undermine the postmodern and feminist position of Robyn, who accepts the hand of fate despite ridiculing its role as the sole restorative capable (in the minds of authors of industrial novels) of elevating the female to a serious social position. Robyn acquires insight into the pragmatic ethos whose encroachment on university culture she resents and Vic learns to appreciate the symbolic or semiotic dimension of his environment and discovers a romanticism within himself that he had previously despised in his everyday life. The story is set in the fictional city of Rummidge, a grey and dismal fictionalised Birmingham. It is part of the same series as the novels Changing Places, Small World, and Thinks .... In Nice Work, Philip Swallow is still head of the English Department from Small World and thus is Robyn Penrose's boss. Morris Zapp makes a cameo appearance in the last part of Nice Work, to add a plot twist where he tries to arrange for Robyn to have a job interview at his American university, Euphoric State (a fictionalized UC Berkeley), in order to stop his ex-wife from being a candidate for an open faculty position. Robyn Penrose makes a cameo appearance in Thinks ....
264104	/m/01n4n1	The Haunted Mask	R. L. Stine	1993-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Carly Beth Caldwell is an 11-year-old girl who is a target for pranks and practical jokes, some of which are played by Chuck Greene and Steve Boswell, two of her friends at Walnut Avenue Middle School. Before Halloween, she is humiliated after the two boys trick her into eating a sandwich that contains a living worm. Disgusted, she flees home and discovers her mother has made a plaster of Paris model of Carly Beth's head. On Halloween day, after frowning at the duck costume her mother gave to her, she goes to a party store and discovers a room filled with hideous masks. The store owner unwillingly sells her one of the masks and Carly Beth goes home. Later that day, after she takes the mold of her head that her mother made, she puts on the mask and goes in search of Chuck and Steve, determined to avenge herself against them. She starts acting differently: she chokes her best friend, Sabrina Mason, throws apples at a house and steals a bag of candy from a boy. While at Sabrina's house, Carly Beth is shocked to find she is physically unable to remove the mask and that the mask has, in fact, become her face. She returns to the store and finds the owner waiting for her. The store owner tells her that the mask is a real face and it can only be removed by a "symbol of love", but if it attaches itself to her or another person again, it will be forever. Carly Beth screams in horror, and the other masks begin to pursue her. While running away from the masks, she realizes that the mold her mother made is a symbol of love. Carly Beth finds the mold and uses it to deter the masks and remove the mask from her face. She returns home to her mother, tossing the mask away. Noah, Carly Beth's kid brother, later bursts in and asks her, "How do I look in your mask?"
264813	/m/01n7nb	The Little Engine That Could	Watty Piper	1930	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the tale, a long train must be pulled over a high mountain. Larger engines, treated anthropomorphically, are asked to pull the train; for various reasons they refuse. The request is sent to a small engine, who agrees to try. The engine succeeds in pulling the train over the mountain while repeating its motto: "I-think-I-can". The story of the little engine has been told and retold many times. The underlying theme is the same — a stranded train is unable to find an engine willing to take it on over difficult terrain to its destination. Only the little blue engine is willing to try and, while repeating the mantra "I think I can, I think I can," overcomes a seemingly impossible task. An early version goes as follows: A little railroad engine was employed about a station yard for such work as it was built for, pulling a few cars on and off the switches. One morning it was waiting for the next call when a long train of freight-cars asked a large engine in the roundhouse to take it over the hill. "I can't; that is too much a pull for me," said the great engine built for hard work. Then the train asked another engine, and another, only to hear excuses and be refused. In desperation, the train asked the little switch engine to draw it up the grade and down on the other side. "I think I can," puffed the little locomotive, and put itself in front of the great heavy train. As it went on the little engine kept bravely puffing faster and faster, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can." As it neared the top of the grade, which had so discouraged the larger engines, it went more slowly. However, it still kept saying, "I—think—I—can, I—think—I—can." It reached the top by drawing on bravery and then went on down the grade, congratulating itself by saying, "I thought I could, I thought I could."
265114	/m/01n8y8	Naked Lunch	William S. Burroughs	1959	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative that is difficult to describe in terms of plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. The book begins with the adventures of William Lee (aka Lee the Agent), who is Burroughs' alter ego in the novel. His journey starts in the US where he is fleeing the police, in search of his next fix. There are short chapters here describing the different characters he travels with and meets along the way. Eventually he gets to Mexico where he is assigned to Dr. Benway; for what, he is not told. Benway appears and he tells about his previous doings in Annexia as a "Total Demoralizator". The story then moves to a state called Freeland – a form of limbo – where we learn of Islam Inc. Here, some new characters are introduced, such as Clem, Carl, and Joselito. A short section then jumps in space and time to a marketplace. The Black Meat is sold here and compared to "junk", i.e. heroin. The action then moves back to the hospital where Benway is fully revealed as a cruel, manipulative sadist. Time and space again shifts the narrative to a location known as Interzone. Hassan, one of the notable characters of the book and "a notorious liquefactionist", is throwing a violent orgy. AJ crashes the party and wreaks havoc, decapitating people and imitating a pirate. Hassan is enraged and tells AJ never to return, calling him a "factualist bitch" – a term which is enlarged much later when the apparently "clashing" political factions within Interzone are described. These include the Liquefactionists, the Senders, the Factualists, and the Divisionists (who occupy "a midway position"). A short descriptive section tells us of Interzone University, where a professor and his students are ridiculed; the book moves on to an orgy that AJ himself throws. The book then shifts back to the market place and a description of the totalitarian government of Annexia. Characters including the County Clerk, Benway, Dr Berger, Clem and Jody are sketched through heavy dialogue and their own sub-stories. After the description of the four parties of Interzone, we are then told more stories about AJ. After briefly describing Interzone, the novel breaks down into sub-stories and heavily cut-up influenced passages. In a sudden return to what seems to be Lee's reality, two police officers, Hauser and O'Brien, catch up with Lee, who kills both of them. Lee then goes out to a street phone booth and calls the Narcotics Squad, saying he wants to speak to O'Brien. A Lieutenant Gonzales on the other end of the line claims there's no one in their records called O'Brien. When Lee asks for Hauser instead, the reply is identical; Lee hangs up, and goes on the run once again. The book then becomes increasingly disjointed and impressionistic, and finally simply stops.
265667	/m/01nc0d	Pattern Recognition	William Gibson	2003-02-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Advertising consultant Cayce Pollard, who reacts to logos and advertising as if to an allergen, arrives in London in August 2002. She is working on a contract with the marketing firm Blue Ant to judge the effectiveness of a proposed corporate logo for a shoe company. During the presentation, graphic designer Dorotea Benedetti becomes hostile towards Cayce as she rejects the first proposal. After dinner with some Blue Ant employees, the company founder Hubertus Bigend offers Cayce a new contract: to uncover who is responsible for distributing a series of anonymous, artistic film clips via the internet. Cayce had been following the film clips and participating in an online discussion forum theorizing on the clips’ meaning, setting, and other aspects. Wary of corrupting the artistic process and mystery of the clips, she reluctantly accepts. A friend from the discussion group, who uses the handle Parkaboy, privately emails her saying a friend of a friend has discovered an encrypted watermark on one clip. They concoct a fake persona, a young woman named Keiko, to seduce the Japanese man who knows the watermark code. Cayce, along with an American computer security specialist, Boone Chu, hired to assist her, travels to Tokyo to meet the man and retrieve the watermark code. Two men attempt to steal the code but Cayce escapes and travels back to London. Boone travels to Columbus, Ohio to investigate the company that he believes created the watermark. Meanwhile, Blue Ant hires Dorotea who reveals that she was previously employed by a Russian lawyer whose clients have been investigating Cayce. The clients wanted Cayce to refuse the job of tracking the film clips and it was Dorotea's responsibility to ensure this. Through a completely random encounter Cayce meets Voytek Biroshak and Ngemi; the former an artist using old ZX81 microcomputers as a sculpture medium, the latter a collector of rare technology (he mentions purchasing Stephen King's word processor, for example). Another collector, and sometime 'friend' of Ngemi's, Hobbs Baranov, is a retired cryptographer and mathematician with connections in the American National Security Agency. Cayce strikes a deal with him: she buys a Curta calculator for him and he finds the email address to which the watermark code was sent. Using this email address Cayce makes contact with Stella Volkova whose sister Nora is the maker of the film clips. Cayce flies to Moscow to meet Stella in person and watch Nora work. Nora is brain damaged from an assassination attempt and can only express herself through film. At her hotel, Cayce is intercepted and drugged by Dorotea and wakes up in a mysterious prison facility. Cayce escapes; exhausted, disoriented and lost, she nearly collapses as Parkaboy, who upon Cayce's request was flown to Moscow, retrieves her and brings her to the prison where the film is processed. There Hubertus, Stella and Nora's uncle Andrei, and the latter's security employees are waiting for her. Over dinner with Cayce, the Russians reveal that they have been spying on her since she posted to a discussion forum speculating that the clips may be controlled by the Russian Mafia. They had let her track the clips to expose any security breaches in their distribution network. The Russians surrender all the information they had collected on her father’s disappearance and the book ends with Cayce coming to terms with his absence while in Paris with Parkaboy, whose real name is Peter Gilbert.
265899	/m/01nd14	Desperation			{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Desperation is a story about several people who, while traveling along the desolated Highway 50 in Nevada, get abducted by Collie Entragian, the deputy of the fictional mining town of Desperation. Entragian uses various pretexts for the abductions, from an arrest for drug possession to "rescuing" a family from a nonexistent gunman. It becomes clear to the captives that Entragian has been possessed by an evil being named Tak, who has control over the surrounding desert wildlife and must change hosts to keep itself alive. They begin to fight for their freedom, sanity and lives before realizing that if they are ever to escape Desperation, they must trap Tak in the place from where he came.
267083	/m/01nj56	A Gift Upon the Shore	M. K. Wren		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "Set in the near future, A Gift traces the first generations to survive nuclear war and its aftermath. Writer Mary Hope and painter Rachel Morrow scratch out a meager existence on a farm (called Amarna) on the Oregon coast. They are determined to collect and preserve for a new civilization all the great books of western culture. Farther down the coast lives the Arkites, a fundamentalist group that denies all knowledge not found in the Bible. After a plague strikes the Arkites Mary agrees to take in a few survivors on the condition that she be allowed to educate the children as she sees fit". From the back cover of the backinprint,com paperback edition: A Gift Upon the Shore is a lyrical, haunting story of two women, an artist and a writer, who survive pandemic, the collapse of civilization, and a deadly nuclear winter. Driven by rich and fully drawn characters, this is a powerful, compelling story of a friendship that endures the devastation and finds a purpose for survival: to preserve the books, the shards of a lost golden age, as a gift to an unknowable posterity. Yet this gift is threatened by the only other survivors the women encounter, the people of the Ark, who believe that except for the Bible, all books are evil. A Gift Upon the Shore is a story about remaining human under the worst of conditions, and the humanizing influence of books and art and love.
267088	/m/01nj68	The Chrysalids	John Wyndham	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A few thousand years in the future, post-apocalypse rural Labrador has become a warmer and more hospitable place than it is at present. The inhabitants of Labrador have vague historical recollections of the "Old People", a technologically advanced civilization which existed long ago and which they believe was destroyed when God sent "Tribulation" to the world to punish their forebears' sins. The society that has survived in Labrador is loosely reminiscent of the American frontier during the 18th century. The inhabitants practise a form of fundamentalist Christianity with post-apocalyptic prohibitions. They believe that in order to follow God's word and prevent another Tribulation, they need to preserve absolute normality among the surviving humans, plants and animals. Genetic invariance has been elevated to the highest religious principle, and humans with even minor mutations are considered "Blasphemies" and the handiwork of the Devil. Individuals not conforming to a strict physical norm are either killed or sterilized and banished to the Fringes, a lawless and untamed area still rife with animal and plant mutations. Arguments occur over the keeping of a tailless cat or the possession of over sized horses. These are deemed by the government to be legitimate breeds either pre-existing or achieved through conventional breeding. The government's position is considered both cynical and heretical by many of the orthodox frontier community. The inland rural settlement of Waknuk is a frontier farming community, populated with hardy and pious individuals intent on reclaiming land from the Fringes. Ten-year-old David Strorm, the son of Waknuk's zealous religious patriarch, has inexplicably vivid dreams of brightly lit cities and horseless carts that are at odds with his pre-industrial experience. Despite David's rigorous religious training, he befriends Sophie, a girl carefully concealing the fact that she has six toes on each foot. With the nonchalance of childhood David keeps her secret. The subsequent discovery of Sophie's mutation and her family's attempted flight causes David to wonder at the brutal persecution of human "Blasphemies" and the ritual culling of animal and plant "Deviations". David and a few others of his generation harbour their own invisible mutation: they have strong telepathic abilities. David begins to question why all who are different must be banished or killed. As they mature, David and his fellow telepaths realize that their unusual mutation would be considered a "blasphemy" and they carefully conceal their abilities. That their mutation cannot be directly detected allows their unusual abilities to remain undiscovered for a time. Eventually some of the group are exposed and David, his half-cousin Rosalind and younger sister Petra flee to the Fringes. They are quickly pursued not only by a group of villagers bent on doing them harm but also by Michael, a fellow telepath who covertly assists their escape. Through the extremely strong telepathic abilities of Petra they make contact with a more advanced society in distant "Sealand". David, Rosalind and Petra elude their would-be captors and are rescued by a Sealand expedition sent to discover the source of Petra's telepathic transmissions. Due to limited space and fuel on the Sealand craft, Michael and his partner Rachel remain behind, their true nature undiscovered. Though the nature of "Tribulation" is not explicitly stated, it is implied that it was a nuclear holocaust, both by the mutations, and by the stories of sailors who report blackened, glassy wastes to the south-west where the remains of faintly glowing cities can be seen (presumably the east coast of the US). Sailors venturing too close to these ruins experience symptoms consistent with radiation sickness. A woman from Sealand, a character with evident knowledge of the Old People's technology, mentions "the power of gods in the hands of children".
267785	/m/01nlf1	Who Goes There?	John W. Campbell	1938-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A group of scientific researchers, isolated in Antarctica by the nearly-ended winter, discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice, where it crashed twenty million years before. They try to thaw the inside of the spacecraft with a thermite charge, but end up accidentally destroying it when the ship's magnesium hull is ignited by the charge. However, they do recover the alien pilot from the ancient ice, which the researchers believe was searching for heat when it was frozen. Thawing revives the alien, a being which can assume the shape, memories, and personality of any living thing it devours, while maintaining its original body mass for further reproduction. Unknown to them, the alien immediately kills and then imitates the crew's physicist, a man named Connant; with some 90 pounds of its matter left over it tries to become a sled dog. The crew discovers the dog-Thing and kills it in the process of transformation. Pathologist Blair, who had lobbied for thawing the Thing, goes insane with paranoia and guilt, vowing to kill everyone at the base in order to save mankind; he is isolated within a locked cabin at their outpost. Connant is also isolated as a precaution and a "rule-of-four" is initiated in which all personnel must remain under the close scrutiny of three others. The crew realizes they must isolate themselves and therefore disable their airplanes and vehicles, while pretending things are normal over their radio transmissions to prevent any rescue attempt from civilization. The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the alien (simply referred to as the Thing), in order to destroy the imitations before they can escape and take over the world. The task is almost impossibly difficult when they realize that the Thing is also telepathic, able to read minds and project thoughts. A sled dog is conditioned by human blood injections to provide a human-immunity serum test, as in rabbits. The initial test of Connant is inconclusive as they realize that the test animal received both human and alien blood, meaning that either Doctor Copper or expedition Commander Garry is actually an alien. Assistant commander McReady takes over and deduces that all the other animals at the station, save the test dog, have already become imitations; all are killed by electrocution and their corpses burned. Everyone suspects each other by now but must stay together for safety, deciding who will take turns sleeping and speculating when the patient monsters will finally have the upper hand. Tensions mount and some men begin to go mad thinking they are already the last human or wondering if they would even know if they weren't human any longer. Ultimately, one of the crew members is murdered and accidentally revealed to be a Thing. McReady realizes that even small pieces of the creature will behave as independent, selfish organisms. He then uses this weakness to test which men have been "converted" by taking blood samples from everyone and dipping a heated wire in the vial of blood. Each man's blood is tested, one at a time, and the donor is immediately killed if his blood recoils from the wire; fourteen in all, including Connant and Garry, are revealed as aliens. They go to test the isolated Blair and on the way see the first albatross of the Antarctic Spring flying overhead; they shoot the bird to prevent a Thing from taking it over and flying to civilization. When they reach Blair's cabin they discover he is a Thing. They realize that it has been left to its own devices for a week, coming and going as it pleased, able to transform itself by squeezing under doors. With the creatures inside the base destroyed, McReady and two others enter the cabin to kill the Thing that was once Blair. McReady systematically forces it out into the snow and methodically destroys it with a blowtorch. Afterwards the trio discover that the Thing was dangerously close to finishing construction of an atomic-powered anti-gravity device that would have allowed it to escape to the outside world. "No, by the grace of God, who evidently does hear very well, even down here, and the margin of half an hour, we keep our world, and the planets of the system too. Anti-gravity, you know, and atomic power. Because They came from another sun, a star beyond the stars. They came from a world with a bluer sun."
269878	/m/01ns5b	Blood of Amber	Roger Zelazny	1986	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Merlin escapes from the crystal cave, and decides to gain leverage over Luke by rescuing his mother from the Keep of the Four Worlds. He spars with the sorcerer who now controls the keep, and who seems to know him. He escapes with the petrified Jasra, and returns to Amber where an unusual Trump summoning imprisons him in the Mad Hatter's tea party.
269881	/m/01ns6g	Sign of Chaos	Roger Zelazny	1987-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Merlin realises that Wonderland, where he and Luke are trapped, is an LSD-induced hallucination made real by Luke's powers over shadow. As a Fire Angel (a vicious creature from Chaos) pursues them, he administers medicine to Luke. The Fire Angel is weakened in a fight with the Jabberwock and Merlin is able to finish it off with the vorpal sword. He leaves Luke to sober up. He seeks his stepbrother Mandor, who thinks that their half-brother Jurt may be trying to kill Merlin in order to take the throne of Chaos. Fiona contacts them, and they investigate a shadow-storm. Merlin and Mandor return to Amber, and then along with Jasra they wrest the Keep of the Four worlds from Jurt and the sorcerer, Mask. They learn that Jurt has (at least partially) turned himself into a living Trump, as Brand did, and that the sorcerer Mask is in fact Merlin's ex-girlfriend Julia.
269891	/m/01ns8c	Porno	Irvine Welsh	2002-08	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is divided into three sections, each of which comprises chapters with different narrators. Unlike Trainspotting which had more narrational diversity, Porno is reduced to just five narrators: Sick Boy, Renton, Spud, Begbie and Nikki. Another difference from the format of Trainspotting is that each character has a defined chapter heading. Sick Boy's chapters all begin with "Scam..." and then a number in front of a "#". Renton's all begin with "Whores of Amsterdam Pt..." depending on what chapter it is. Spud's chapters are just narrative, Begbie's are in capitals, and Nikki's are quotes from the chapter, for example "...A SIMON DAVID WILLIAMSON PRODUCTION...". Each narrator is associated with a distinctive prose style. Renton, Sick Boy, and Nikki's chapters are written almost entirely in "standard" English while Begbie and Spud's chapters are in Scots. For example, in Chapter 25, Spud narrates, "So ah'm downcast git intae the library, thinkin tae masel" ("So I'm downcast when I get into the library thinking to myself"). He also repeats certain words when talking such as "catboy" or "cat", "likes" or "likesay", and "ken?". Begbie often swears a lot during his chapters. Sick Boy's returning grandiose nature is featured in imagined interviews with John Gibson of the Evening News and Alex McLeish. Simon 'Sick Boy' Williamson leaves the London crack scene and returns to Leith when he comes into ownership of his aunt's pub. Convinced that the area is destined to become a social and cultural hub, Simon decides to focus his energy into making the pub a classier establishment. Nikki Fuller-Smith is a university student who works part-time in a massage parlour. Rab, a university acquaintance, introduces her to his friend Terry Lawson and his underground, home-made pornography operation. The scene interests Nikki. Danny 'Spud' Murphy has been regularly attending group sessions in an attempt to kick his drug habit. His relationship with his partner Alison is strained and Spud feels like he has become a burden on her. He considers his life insurance policy and contemplates suicide. Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, Mark Renton is co-owner of a successful nightclub. One night, a DJ from his hometown (Carl Ewart from Welsh's previous novel Glue) plays at one of his clubs and recognises him. When Sick Boy learns of Terry's operation, he offers the use of the upstairs bar to shoot some scenes. During their first meeting, the group begins planning to film a full length adult film. The first section concludes with "OOTSIDE", a chapter noting the release into society of Francis Begbie. While in prison, Begbie received packages of gay porn, sent from Sick Boy. Upon his release, he is determined to find the culprit. While accompanying an old friend on a debt collection errand he meets Kate and begins a relationship with her. When Alison begins working at Sick Boy's pub and Sick Boy deliberately attempts to sabotage her relationship with Spud, the friendship between Spud and Sick Boy is strained. During one thinly veiled argument, Spud reveals that he received his share of the money from Renton. He also unveils his recent ambition, to write a history of Leith. Begbie visits Sick Boy's pub. As the two converse, Sick Boy considers the duplicitous trait of opportunity and threat accompanying Begbie's release. Soon after, Terry, Rab and several other friends arrive and begin discussing their upcoming trip to Amsterdam, a bachelor celebration for Rab. Sick Boy is initially reluctant to attend but changes his mind after Carl, a DJ, mentions that Renton worked at a club there. Sick Boy's "Porno" shoot becomes a slow demolition of his so-called mates. Spud ends the friendship when Sick Boy tells him he was using him for the purpose of a scam, Nikki becomes disillusioned with him after realising that he really has no caring side and really is the nasty deceitful person that she tried desperately to ignore. Begbie grows tired of Sick Boy being 'smarmy', although Begbie becomes angry with everyone in due course. Spud tries to provoke Begbie into killing him so his wife Alison will profit from his life insurance (which, naturally, does not cover suicide). As Begbie is violently hitting Spud, Alison and the couple's young son burst in, stopping them. Spud is hurt, but his last narration implies that he can see things getting better. The biggest departure Sick Boy has from his life is Renton. After promising to meet Sick Boy in Cannes, Renton instead goes to Zurich to empty their joint account to start a new life in San Francisco. This deception is the biggest blow to Sick Boy as he obviously treasured their unconventional relationship and cannot believe he was duped by Renton again. Begbie later discovers Renton while visiting Leith and is hit by a car while running across the road to attack him. While Renton would have expected to feel pleased by this he is sad and comforts Begbie while he is taken to hospital. It is indicated that as Begbie slips into a coma he may be forgiving Renton After learning that Begbie has fallen into a coma, Renton flees the country with Nikki and Diane, as well as Sick Boy's £60,000 made from a financial fraud. The book ends with Begbie suddenly coming awake as Sick Boy confesses everything in hope that Begbie will resume his merciless hunt for Renton.
269893	/m/01ns8r	Prince of Chaos	Roger Zelazny	1991-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Merlin returns to his birthplace in the Courts of Chaos in order to solve the existential riddle in which he is involved. He realizes he is but a pawn in the hands of the powerful and cynical superpowers that rule the universe. Merlin becomes the new king of Chaos and is reunited with his father, Corwin. In the Courts of Chaos, Merlin uses all his magical powers in the final fight for survival. fr:Prince du Chaos pl:Książę Chaosu ro:Prințul Haosului ru:Принц Хаоса
271158	/m/01nwnf	The Love of the Last Tycoon	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1941	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 According to Publishers Weekly's 1993 review of the edition reconstructed by Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli, The Love of the Last Tycoon is "[g]enerally considered a roman a clef", inspired by the life of film producer Irving Thalberg, on whom protagonist Monroe Stahr is based. The story follows Stahr's rise to power in Hollywood, and his conflicts with rival Pat Brady, a character based on studio head Louis B. Mayer.
271163	/m/01nwph	Save Me the Waltz	Zelda Fitzgerald	1932	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Save Me the Waltz, according to its author, derives its title from a Victor record catalog, and it suggests the romantic glitter of the life which F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald lived and which Scott’s novels have so indelibly written into American literary and cultural history. Divided into four chapters, each of which is further divided into three parts, the novel is a chronological narrative of four periods in the lives of Alabama and David Knight, names that are but thin disguises for their real-life counterparts. Save Me The Waltz is the story of Alabama Beggs, a Southern girl who marries a twenty-two-year-old artist, David Knight. As with Zelda and Scott, Alabama met David when he was in the South during World War I. Knight becomes a successful painter, and the family moves to the Riviera where Knight begins an affair with an actress. Determined to be successful in her own right, Alabama decides to become a ballet dancer and devotes herself relentlessly to the cause, eventually achieving success. Alabama dances her solo debut in the opera Faust. Though outwardly successful, Alabama and David are miserable. At the novel's end they return to the South when Alabama's father dies. Though she says otherwise, her friends from the South go on about how happy and lucky Alabama is. Alabama searches for meaning in her father's death, but finds none. While cleaning up after their final party before returning to their unhappy lives, Alabama remarks — an interesting contrast to the closing lines of The Great Gatsby — that emptying the ashtrays is "very expressive of myself. I just lump everything in a great heap which I have labeled 'the past,' and having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue."
271590	/m/01nxb_	It	Stephen King	1986-09-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 In October 1957, an evil shape-shifting being, known only as "It", awakens in the town of Derry, Maine. Taking the form of a clown named Pennywise, It lives in the sewers under the town and comes up through places connected to the sewer system. It preys on children and takes the form which they are most scared of once they have been tempted to him with balloons. Because most children think a monster would eat them, It takes away one of their body parts and hides it in the sewers. When six year old George Denbrough's paper boat is swept into a storm drain, It tempts the boy by conjuring up a circus in the drain and murders him. The following June, a new resident arrives in Derry. Ben Hanscom is overweight, has no friends and is bullied by Henry Bowers, Belch Huggins and Victor Criss. On the last day of school he hides from his tormentors in the Barrens, where he meets and befriends Eddie Kaspbrak, whose mother has convinced him he has asthma, and Bill Denbrough, George's elder brother who has a terrible stutter. The three boys later befriend Richie Tozier, a smart alec; Stan Uris, who is an outcast because he's Jewish; Beverly Marsh, who is beaten by her father; and Mike Hanlon, who is an outcast because he's black. The children establish their circle as the "Losers Club". Gradually, they realize they have all encountered It in various forms (Ben as a mummy, Eddie as a leper, Bill as George, Richie as a werewolf, Stan as Its victims, Beverly as voices from the sink and Mike as a flesh eating bird) and link it with a series of child murders which began with George. Ben has read a book about American Indians using smokeholes to have visions, so he makes a makeshift smokehole out of the Loser's clubhouse. By use of this, the Losers discover how It came to Derry. Bill then discovers an American Indian ritual - The Ritual Of Chüd - which he hopes will kill It. A few days later, Eddie is hospitalized after being attacked by a gang of bullies led by Henry Bowers. Beverly stumbles across the Bowers gang in the landfill. While hiding, Beverly witnesses one of the bullies, Patrick Hockstetter, being attacked and kidnapped by It. When the Losers return to the landfill, they discover a message from It written in Patrick's blood, warning them to stop. After Eddie is released from the hospital, Ben makes two slugs out of silver, believing that It can be killed by silver bullets. The Losers return to the House on Neibolt street, where Eddie was attacked by the leper and Richie and Bill were chased away by Richie's werewolf, and It plays games with the interior to try to scare them. It attacks the Losers in werewolf form, primarily focusing on Bill. The Losers, however, are able to chase It away with Beverly's slingshot. It manipulates the mind of Henry Bowers, making him kill his father and providing him with a switchblade to kill the Losers with. Henry recruits the two other bullies, Victor Criss and Reginald "Belch" Huggins, and follow the Losers into the sewers. Under Derry, It attacks the Bowers gang in the form of Frankenstein's monster, killing Victor and Belch. Henry escapes and is arrested by the police, having been framed by It for the child murders. The Losers confront It. Bill enters the monster's mind through the Ritual of Chüd and comes to a darkness beyond the universe, where It's true form resides: a mass of floating orange light (or "deadlights"). Bill defeats It, forcing the monster to retreat. The Losers decide that It has been destroyed. In order to keep their bond, before escaping from the sewers, Beverly has sexual intercourse with each of the boys. The seven make a blood oath to return to Derry if It ever resurfaces. In July 1984, three youths throw a gay man, Adrian Mellon, off a bridge. They are arrested for murder when Mellon's mutilated corpse is found, though they didn't mutilate him. One of the murderers claims that he saw a clown kill him underneath the bridge. When a string of violent child-killings hits Derry, Mike—now the town’s librarian and the only one of the Losers’ Club to remain in Derry—calls up his six friends and reminds them of their childhood promise to return. Bill is now a successful horror writer living in England with his wife, Audra. Beverly is a fashion designer in Chicago, who has married an abusive man named Tom and is regularly beaten. Eddie has moved to New York City, where he runs a limousine rental company. Richie lives in Los Angeles and is a professional disc jockey using his talent for voice imitation. Ben is now thin and a successful architect, living in Nebraska. Stan is a wealthy accountant residing in Atlanta, Georgia. An account of each person's reception to the phone call is given. Stan kills himself out of fear of It (although he could have been killed by It, as It later says he has killed one of the gang and because Stan died in the bath). Tom refuses to let Beverly go and tries to beat her, so she lashes out at him before fleeing to her friends. The other's receptions are fairly uneventful. Five of them return to Derry with only the dimmest awareness of why they are doing so, having almost completely blocked out virtually every aspect of their childhood. The remaining Losers meet for lunch, where Mike enlightens them to the apparent nature of It: It awakens once roughly every twenty-seven years for twelve-to-sixteen months at a time, feeding on children before going into slumber again. The group decides to kill It once and for all. Later, many of them witness manifestations of It. Three other people are also converging on the town: Audra, who wants to help Bill; Tom, who plans to kill Beverly; and Henry Bowers, who has escaped a mental institution with help from It. Mike and Henry have a violent confrontation, but Henry escapes. Henry, with the guidance of It, is transported to a hotel to attack Eddie. In the ensuing fight, Henry is killed. It appears to Tom and orders him to capture Audra. Tom brings Audra to It's lair. Upon seeing It's true form (the dead lights), Audra becomes catatonic and Tom drops dead in shock. Audra is left alive in It's lair. Bill, Ben, Beverly, Richie, and Eddie, find out that Mike is near death and realize that they are being forced into another confrontation with It. They descend into the sewers. While in the sewers, the remaining Losers use their strength as a group to "send energy" to a hospitalized Mike, who fights off a nurse that is under the control of It. It appears as George but Bill overcomes the illusion. They reach It's lair and Bill and Richie engage It in the Ritual of Chüd again. Richie rescues Bill from the deadlights and manages to injure It. Eddie saves them, but is killed in the process. Beverly stays with Eddie and the traumatized Audra, who is found alive. Bill, Richie, and Ben follow It when It retreats due to injury. They discover that It has laid eggs, and they are about to hatch, which are all destroyed by Ben while Bill and Richie hunt down It. Bill crushes It's heart between his hands, finally killing It. At the same time, the worst storm in Maine's history sweeps through Derry and the downtown area collapses. Mike concludes that Derry is finally dying. The novel ends with the Losers returning home and forgetting about It, Derry and each other. As a sign that It really is dead, Mike’s memory of the events of that summer also begin to fade, much to his relief. Ben and Beverly leave together. Bill is the last to leave Derry. Before he goes, he takes Audra, still catatonic, for a ride on his bicycle Silver, hoping that they can beat her catatonia. They succeed, and the story ends.
272241	/m/01nz2x	The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents	Terry Pratchett	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Amazing Maurice is a sentient cat who leads his 'Educated Rodents', a group of sentient rats, as they go from town to town posing as a plague so that their accomplice, a teenage human piper named Keith, can "lure them all away" from the town, after which they share the money the piper receives. The rats had gained intelligence from eating the waste from the rubbish tip behind Unseen University; Maurice gained it after eating one of the rats, before he was capable of realizing that they were no longer normal rats. The group is not completely happy; the leader of the rats, Hamnpork, despises Maurice, while Dangerous Beans (they chose names based on the labels they could read before they could comprehend), a near-blind albino rat who guides them like a guru, wants to start a rat civilization - both he and Peaches, the group's scribe, find their trickery unethical. The rats are seeking the ideal of humans and rats living together, following the example of their sacred book Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure. They agree to do one last job, in the town of Bad Blintz, in Überwald. The rats set about planning their offensive, led by Darktan, the head of the Trap Disposal Squad, while Maurice and Keith look around. They are surprised to find that while the buildings are expensively built, the people have little food, and rats are hunted far more viciously than anywhere else. Maurice and Keith meet Malicia, the mayor's daughter, who is a story teller. She soon discovers that Maurice can talk, and meets Sardines, a tap-dancing rat who is the most daring of the group. While talking to her, Maurice reveals that the rat catchers have been passing off bootlaces as rat tails. As they set off to look in the rat-catchers' house, the rats discover many rat tunnels, which are empty, save for traps and poison. The two groups meet in the rat catchers' den, where they have been storing the food the rats are thought to have eaten, and find cages where the rats are being bred for coursing. The rat catchers return, lock Keith and Malicia away, and take Hamnpork to be coursed. Maurice hides and feels a voice trying to enter his mind. The rats feel it too, and it returns many of them to being simple rats - to the dismay of Dangerous Beans. Darktan leads a group to rescue Hamnpork, while Peaches and Dangerous Beans free Keith and Malicia. Malicia lets slip that Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure is a fictional children's book and Dangerous Beans and Peaches leave in despair. Darktan's group is successful in rescuing a severely injured Hamnpork, though Darktan finds himself in a trap. After a near-death experience, he escapes. Hamnpork dies, Darktan assumes leadership and sets out after Dangerous Beans and Peaches. Maurice gives in to his conscience and is also seeking them, but the voice drowns out his thoughts. Malicia and Keith, after gaining freedom, trick the rat catchers into revealing their secret. The rat catchers have created a powerful rat king named Spider – eight rats, tied together at the tail, who make a single mind with power over others. Spider is interested in Dangerous Beans; other rats he can control, but Dangerous Beans has a mind similar to his: one that thinks for others. Dangerous Beans refuses Spider's offer of jointly ruling, as Spider wants to wage war on humans. Spider tries to destroy Dangerous Beans' mind; this is felt by his army of rats and Maurice. Dangerous Beans is able to resist, but Maurice reverts to being a cat, and the cat instinct tells him to pounce... Darktan's army, who have been fighting Spider's rats, find Peaches in Spider's lair, which is on fire. Maurice emerges from the fire carrying the body of Dangerous Beans. When he is safely out, he collapses and dies. In ghostly form, he sees the Death of Rats coming for Dangerous Beans. He attacks the Death of Rats to save Dangerous Beans, but is picked up by Death, with whom he strikes a deal, exchanging two of his remaining lives so that Death will let Dangerous Beans live. Though Spider is defeated, there is still a problem remaining: the rat piper is due to arrive the next day. The rats set about rounding up the 'keekees' (non-intelligent rats). When the piper arrives, Keith challenges him to a duel. His pipe was broken by the rat catchers, so Keith uses a borrowed trombone in the duel and makes Sardines dance. When the piper starts to play his magical pipe, the rats avoid being charmed by keeping their ears stuffed and the keekees can't respond, being locked in their cages. The piper calls Keith aside, and tells him the tricks of the trade: the pipe contains a hidden slide position for a trick note that drives rats away, the stories about him are made up so people will be scared into paying. Keith and the piper then lead the keekees out of town – Keith wants to maintain the story of the piper and the rats want a convenient way to set the keekees free. Once that has been done, the rats emerge, offering to tell the humans where to find the stolen food and money, in return for living peacefully with them. Keith stays on as the town's piper and the town becomes a tourist attraction where everybody remarks on how 'clean' the place is and marvels at the 'well trained rats'. Maurice moves on, being unwilling to settle in one place at a time, and looks to find another human to 'coach'.
272323	/m/01nz60	Permutation City	Greg Egan	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07g8l": "Transhumanism"}	 The plot of Permutation City follows the lives of several people in a near future reality where the Earth is ravaged by the effects of climate change, the economy and culture are largely globalised (the most commonly used denomination of currency is the ECU, the precursor to the euro in use at the time the book was written), and civilisation has accumulated vast amounts of cloud computing power and memory which is distributed internationally and is traded in a public market called the QIPS Exchange (QIPS from MIPS, where the Q is Quadrillions). Most importantly, from the perspective of the story, this great computing capacity is used to construct physiological models of patients for medical purposes, reducing the need for actual medical experimentation and enabling personalised medical treatments, but also enabling the creation of Copies, whole brain emulations of "scanned" humans which are detailed enough to allow for subjective conscious experience on the part of the emulation. Although not yet in widespread usage, scanning has become safe enough and common enough to allow for a few wealthy or dedicated humans to afford to create backups of themselves, generally with the intention of surviving the biological deaths of their bodies. A minority of Copies exist, though they are largely perceived (with some justification) as being a collection of the thanatophobic eccentric rich. Copies do not yet possess human rights under the laws of any nation or international body, although some of the wealthiest Copies, those still involved with their own estates or businesses, finance a powerful lobby and public relations effort to advance the Copy rights cause. To this effect, the legal status of Copies is viewed as somewhat farcical even by sceptics of the cause, and many expect full Copy rights to be granted in Europe within two decades. The plotline travels back and forth between the years of 2045 and 2050, and deals with events surrounding the life of a Sydney man named Paul Durham, who is obsessed, yet frustrated, with experimenting on Copies of himself (because he believes Copies of himself should be more willing to undergo experimentation). In the latter time frame, Durham is suspected to be a con artist of some type, who travels around the world visiting rich Copies and offering them prime real estate in some sort of advanced supercomputer which, according to his pitch, will never be shut down and will be powerful enough to support any number of Copies in VR environments of their own designing at no slowdown whatsoever, no matter how preposterously opulent those environments might be. He pitches this concept to the Copies, predicated upon the prediction that the Copy rights movement might run into resistance due to devastating climate change. As the world undergoes increasingly extreme and erratic weather, a variety of international bodies, especially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has been particularly hard-hit by tropical storms, have proposed projects to use their vast computing resources to attempt to intervene, utilising chaotic effects to their advantage, in global weather patterns with such precision as to minimise weather-related destruction while also minimising the scale of the efforts necessary to do so. Durham predicts this will clash with the spread of Copy rights, as both Copies and weather simulations will demand increasing QIPS Exchange shares in the future. All that each Copy must do is to make the laughably small investment of two million ecus in order to bring Durham's fantasy computer into existence. As part of his plot, Durham hires Maria Deluca, an Autoverse enthusiast. She has recently become famous within the small community of Autoverse hobbyists for developing a variety of A. lamberti which evolved the capacity to metabolise an Autoverse toxin. Durham contacts her and offers to pay her thirty thousand dollars to design an Autoverse program which, given a large enough computer, could potentially evolve into a planet bearing Maria's own strain of evolvable Autoverse life. She desperately wants the money to have her dying mother scanned into a Copy. Since no such computer to fully evolve Autoverse life exists, Durham has to try to convince Maria that he is a wealthy Autoverse enthusiast interested in her evolvability results and looking for a proof of concept for a much larger system. He also clandestinely commissions a famous virtual reality architect, Malcolm Carter, to build a full scale, high resolution VR city, Permutation City, the largest VR environment ever conceived, complete with reactive crowds and a staggering variety of full scale, high resolution scenic views. As computer fraud investigators begin to close in on Durham's scheme, Maria is pressured by police into covertly gathering evidence in order to incriminate Durham, while continuing to work for him. She learns more about Durham himself, including his time spent in psychiatric care and his callous experimentation on his own Copies, as well as his assiduously reticent Copy backers. Meanwhile, two Slum-dwelling Solipsist Nation Copies, Peer and Kate, explore their post-human existences as well as their strained but loving relationship, until Kate's long-time friend Malcolm Carter offers to secretly hack them both, along with any moderately-sized software packages they wish, into Permutation City's machine code, guaranteeing them a place in the city were it ever to run, but permanently debarring them from manipulating the city's implementation for fear of being deleted as extraneous cruft by automated software. At the end of Part One, Durham reveals the full extent of his plan to Maria: after taking his earlier self-experiments to their logical conclusion, he became convinced of something he came to call the Dust Theory, which holds that there is no difference, even in principle, between physics and mathematics, and that all mathematically possible structures exist, among them our physics and therefore our spacetime. These structures are being computed, in the manner of a program on a universal Turing machine, using something Durham refers to as "dust" which is a generic, vague term describing anything which can be interpreted to represent information; and therefore, that the only thing that matters is that a mathematical structure be self-consistent and, as such, computable. As long as a mathematical structure is possibly computable, then it is being computed on some dust, though it does not matter what dust actually is, only that there be a possible interpretation where such a computation is taking place somehow. The dust theory implies, as such, that all possible universes exist and are equally real, emerging spontaneously from their own mathematical self-consistency. Due to the computability of consciousness and the function of consciousness as a matrix for interpretation, Copies hold the unique position of being the only conscious beings which themselves are not being computed by self-consistent mathematical rules (existing, of course, in virtual realities held together by heuristics merely for the sake of their experience). As such, in principle it should be the case that when a Copy is terminated and deleted, its own conscious experience will continue due to the fact that there is no precedent within the Copy's interpretive matrix by which the Copy should suddenly cease. Indeed, Durham himself claims to have been through such a process several times, each time finding himself back in "the real world" after deletion, with there existing some plausible explanation as to why he believed himself to have been a Copy who was deleted, though with each successive experience of Copying himself and being deleted, he gradually became increasingly confident that the experiences were actually the result of his consciousness finding a logical interpretation in which it had not actually ceased, rather than each successive experience being ultimately true and real. Because of this, Durham is staging a massive, momentary buyout of the world's processing power to simulate a minute or two of a "Garden of Eden" configuration of an infinitely-expanding, massively complex cellular automaton universe (similar to what is known as a "Spacefiller" configuration in Conway's Game of Life) based on a fictional, Turing-complete cellular automaton known as TVC ("Turing/Von Neumann/Chiang", named after its conceiver and designer), in which each iteration of the expansion serves to "manufacture" an extra layer of blocks of a computing configuration. Ultimately, if a Copy were to be run in such a self-consistent universe, and were to observe, via a series of pre-defined experiments, the cellular nature of its own processing implementation, then there would be precedent for that self-consistent "TVC universe" to persist in its own terms even after its termination and deletion in the universe it was designed and launched in. His and his investors' Copies would therefore persist indefinitely in the simulation, and since the "space" of the TVC universe would be made of self-reproducing cellular automaton computer processors, the simulation would not possess a finite number of states and the passengers would not, in principle, run out of interesting things to get up to. Implanting himself and his investors in this TVC universe, Durham believed he could prove or falsify his hypothesis that his experience of repeated termination and continuation was the result of his own interpreting himself into universes in which he might plausibly have believed he had had such an experience, as opposed to merely having inhabited such a universe all along. If he were to implant his Copy into the TVC universe, have the copy run a number of experiments to anchor itself in that universe, and then terminate it, only to find himself still in the TVC universe (indeed, the purpose of growing the TVC universe from a Garden of Eden configuration was to prove to his Copy that such a TVC universe as it found itself to inhabit must have been launched from a non-TVC universe, as opposed to merely having always existed and evolved towards this the current state in which he did not know whether it had) rather than back in "the real world" again, then he would be vindicated; if not, then his hypothesis would be falsified and he might consider himself crazy (his last several experiences of termination and subsequent continuation involved him finding himself in the position of having been recently cured of psychosis). The Autoverse planetary seed program designed by Maria was to be included in the TVC universe package for his investors to explore once life had evolved there after it had been run on a significantly large segment of the TVC universe. Though Maria believes Durham to be obviously rationalising his experiences while psychotic, she agrees to Durham's request to have herself scanned and inserted into the TVC launch as an on-hand Autoverse expert. The six-hundred thousand dollar fee will allow her mother to be scanned, and she is certain that her copy will never wake because she demands to be present at the launch to verify that her copy is not run during the launch period, and is subsequently deleted. After a successful launch, simulation, termination, and deletion of the TVC universe, Durham and Maria have uncomfortable sex in awkward celebration, and later that night, while Maria is asleep, Durham disembowels himself with a kitchen knife in his bathtub, believing his role as the springboard for his deleted TVC Copy to discover its true identity to be fulfilled. Maria wakes in Permutation City seven thousand years of subjective time after the launch, furious at Durham for being awoken and refusing to believe that the launch was successful. Durham eventually persuades her, however, by showing her the complexity of the Autoverse planet she had designed, Planet Lambert, which had then been running on a suitably large chunk of the TVC universe for several billion subjective years. Intelligent life in the form of complex swarms of insect-like eusocial beings had evolved on Lambert from Maria's original Autobacterium hydrophilus, and the citizens of Permutation City were on the verge of making contact with the creatures. However, a town hall vote restricted the Autoverse scholars from making contact until the creatures had independently hypothesized the existence of a creator. Meanwhile, Permutation City had flourished in the TVC universe, and the original inhabitants of a few hundred had exploded to a population of tens of thousands, with the descendants of the various founders sharing their founders' ever growing chunks of the TVC universe, with Permutation City acting as the central locus for interaction between populations located in different contiguous blocks of the universe. Durham, however, confides in Maria that he does not believe the insectoid creatures will ever seriously consider the concept of a creator and intends to use Maria's slice of the universe's processing power (as a founder of the world she was given de facto control of a continuously-growing zone of the processor network as well) to make forbidden first contact with the life of Planet Lambert. He believes this is necessary because he has seemingly lost the ability to pause the Autoverse simulation or slow it down past a constant multiple of the size of the processor network it occupies. Durham is worried that the rules of their simulated universe are breaking down. What they discover together is that the growing and intellectually voracious population of Planet Lambert has exceeded the combined intelligence of the inhabitants of the remainder of the TVC universe, and that Lambert in its Autoverse has ceased to be defined as the TVC universe's simulation. Rather, the Lambertians have been considering a new set of hypotheses, interpretations of the evidence present to them, which do not require their universe to have been created in Maria's original Garden of Eden configuration. As such, the TVC universe's processor networks, which had previously done the work of simulating the Autoverse for the inhabitants of Permutation City, were now progressively being redefined in ways which prevented them from interfering with the existence of the Autoverse in ways unprecedented under these newly self-consistent interpretations of its terms of existence – the TVC universe was being overwritten into a system existing solely as a byproduct of the self-perpetuation of the Autoverse, and its inhabitants on Planet Lambert had interpreted it to be so. Durham, Maria, and some other companions quickly launch an emergency expedition into the Autoverse to attempt to convince the Lambertians of the validity of the creator hypothesis and its methodological perferentiality over their own newly formulated theory. Unfortunately, the Lambertians reject their presentation of the creator theory of the Autoverse on the grounds that a system such as the TVC universe, capable of simulating their own universe, would have to be infinitely sized or infinitely expanding, which they consider to be unparsimonious. Shortly after failing to convince Planet Lambert of the creator theory, the Lambertians inform them of the discovery a set of field equations with a stable solution for each of their universe's elements; furthermore, initial studies on the equations show that they predict the spontaneous instantiation of matter at high temperatures, enabling their world to come into existence without requiring the Garden of Eden Maria had initially designed. To the alarm of its citizens, Permutation City and eventually the entire TVC processor-network begins to collapse into nothingness, interpreted out of existence by the Lambertians whose reality no longer requires a maker, there being a 'better' solution that has superseded its possibility. As Permutation City becomes corrupted and the TVC universe begins to suffer spontaneous systemic failures, Durham and Maria inform the inhabitants of the various founders' computing blocks of the situation while preparing a new TVC Garden of Eden based on the original to launch in their universe's final moments, though Durham initially declines to board it himself, saying he has become exhausted with the number of times he was awoken in new realities and would be unable to cope with experiencing it again. Ultimately, however, Maria convinces him to change his mind (literally reconfiguring it to desire escape) and together they leave, pledging to discover the underlying rules that governed the Autoverse's takeover of Permutation City.
272678	/m/01nzsp	Quidditch Through the Ages	J. K. Rowling		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In 2001 Rowling penned two companion books to the Harry Potter series, Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, for British charity and off-shoot of Live Aid, Comic Relief with all of her royalties going to the charity. As of July 2008, the books combined are estimated to have earned over $30 million for Comic Relief. The two books have since been made available in hardcover. Foreword Chapter 1: The Evolution of the Flying Broomstick Chapter 2: Ancient Broom Games Chapter 3: The Game From Queerditch Marsh Chapter 4: The Arrival of the Golden Snitch Chapter 5: Anti-Muggle Precautions Chapter 6: Changes in Quidditch Since the Fourteenth Century :::* Pitch :::* Balls :::* Players :::* Rules :::* Referees Chapter 7: Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland Chapter 8: The Spread of Quidditch Worldwide Chapter 9: The Development of the Racing Broom Chapter 10: Quidditch Today
274197	/m/01p3kj	Key of Solomon				 The Key of Solomon is divided into two books. It describes not the appearance or work of any spirit but only the necessary drawings to prepare each "experiment" or, in more modern language, magical operations. Unlike later grimoires such as the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (16th century) or the Lemegeton (17th century ), the Key of Solomon does not mention the signature of the seventy-two spirits constrained by King Solomon in a bronze vessel. As in most medieval grimoires, all magical operations are ostensibly performed through the power of God, to whom all the invocations are addressed. Before any of these operations (termed "experiments") are performed, the operator must confess his sins and purge himself of evil, invoking the protection of God. Elaborate preparations are necessary, and each of the numerous items used in the operator's "experiments" must be constructed of the appropriate materials obtained in the prescribed manner, at the appropriate astrological time, marked with a specific set of magical symbols, and blessed with its own specific words. All substances needed for the magic drawings and amulets are detailed, as well as the means to purify and prepare them. Many of the symbols incorporate the Transitus Fluvii occult alphabet.
275025	/m/01p6p7	The Wee Free Men	Terry Pratchett	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An experienced witch named Miss Tick and her toad arrive on the chalk. She feels that something is not right, so she decides to find out what's going on. Her intuition is right. The Queen of the Elves has made another attempt at invading the Discworld, this time by stealing children and infesting dreams. With the help of the Wee Free Men, the Nac Mac Feegle, nine-year-old Tiffany Aching finds out that her grandmother used to be the witch of the Chalklands, and that she has inherited the trade. When her baby brother is stolen, Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegle enter the elves' world to steal him back. The novel contains a scene inspired by the painting The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke.
275376	/m/01p7_6	Strata	Terry Pratchett	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kin Arad is a human planetary engineer working for the Company, a human organisation that "builds" habitable planets with techniques and equipment salvaged from the Spindle Kings, an extinct alien race, excelling in terraforming. The expressed aim of the Company's planet building is to create branches of humanity diverse enough to ensure the whole species' survival for eternity, since the Earth's population in the past has been decimated due to the lethal Mindquakes, epidemic mass deaths caused by too much homogeneity among the populace. All planets built by the Company are carefully crafted with artificial strata containing false fossils, indistinguishable from the real thing. On occasion, however, mischievous Company employees will attempt to place anomalous objects in the strata, like running shoes or other out-of-place-artefacts as practical jokes, hoping to cause confusion among future archaeologists when the planets' beginnings have been long forgotten. The Company does not allow this however, and secretly monitors the generated strata in order to detect this, fearing such actions may cause the collapse of entire civilizations when the artefacts are eventually unearthed. Kin and two aliens, the four-armed frog-like, paranoid and muscular Kung Marco and Silver, a bear-like Shand, historian and linguist by profession, are recruited by the mysterious Jago Jalo for an expedition. Jalo, a human who more than a thousand years ago embarked on a relativistic journey has made a stunning discovery - a flat Earth. However, when the team rendezvous on the Kung homeworld, the violent Jalo unexpectedly has an heart-attack and dies. Shocked by the large amounts of weapons on-board Jalo's spaceship, Kin has misgivings about the expedition, but Silver and Marco see the possibility of reaping great technological rewards and launch the vessel. When the expedition finally arrives at Jalo's pre-programmed coordinates, they find a flattened version of the mediaeval Eastern hemisphere of Earth, clearly artificial. It rotates around its hub inside a gigantic hollow sphere with tiny "stars" affixed to the interior, complete with a small sun, moon and fake planets revolving around it. After their ship is hit by one of the orbiting "planets", Kin, Marco and Silver are forced to abandon ship and land on the flat Earth with the help of their lift-belt equipped suits. A return from the flat Earth now seems impossible, unless they are able to find its mysterious builders, so they embark on a journey to a structure they have spotted at the hub of the Disc, the only thing which does not match geographically with the Earth they know. En route, they encounter the superstitious Medieval inhabitants of the Disc, who believe the end of the world is near, due to increasingly chaotic climate (caused by the Disc's machinery breaking down), the recent disappearance of one of their planets and the general devastation caused by the ship's crash. They also discover a number of other differences. What Kin Arad knows as Reme is called Rome on the Disc, and there is a strange Christos cult that is completely unfamiliar to Kin Arad. Also, Venus is conspicuously lacking its giant (lunar-sized) moon Adonis, which dominates the sunset sky on the Earth Kin knows, and led humanity to a heliocentric world view early on. Since only the Eastern hemisphere of Earth is represented, the continent of America is completely missing; the travellers rescue a party of Vikings in the process of searching for Vinland, when their ship is about to sail over the edge of the world. In addition, there are real "magical" creatures and objects on the Disc, demons and magic purses and flying carpets - all of them, the travellers realise, highly advanced and sophisticated technological constructs like the Disc itself. Indeed, the world itself is an extremely old and sophisticated automated system. At the very end of the story, Kin comes to suspect that the builders of the flat world in fact constructed the universe as a whole, with the evidence of previous races being hoaxes and the flat world being an inside joke, analogous to the false strata Kin and the Company themselves manufacture, and the occasional hoaxes put in these strata by rebellious employees. Kin and the others eventually reach the hub and Kin makes contact with the Disc's controlling systems. She is told that, despite advanced robotic maintenance, sheer entropy build-up threatens the Disc's further existence. The machines offer their advanced technology, in exchange for Kin's construction of a real replacement Earth for the flat planet's inhabitants. Kin agrees; the implication being that the world she will build is in fact our own Earth. Kin is excited about the massive task at hand; just like Ringworld's Louis Wu, whom she parallels, she is over two hundred years old, and thus constantly under the threat of growing tired of life.
275377	/m/01p7_l	The Dark Side of the Sun	Terry Pratchett	1976-01-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dominickdaniel "Dom" Sabalos IV is the son of the inventor of probability math, a science able to predict anything apart from anything to do with the Jokers, and the first person to have had his life fully quantified using p-math. Before being mysteriously assassinated, his father predicted that Dom too would be killed, on the day of his investiture as Chairman of his wealthy home planet of Widdershins. However, not having been told of his father's prediction, and against incalculably distant odds, Dom survives the assassination attempt. When the recording of his father's prediction is played back, a time delay added specifically for this unlikely eventuality plays a little more of the recording, in which his father makes a further prediction - that Dom will discover the Jokers' homeworld. Dom sets out, with Hrsh-Hgn (his tutor, a swamp-dwelling phnobe), Isaac (his robot, equipped with Man-Friday subcircuitry) and Ig (his pet swamp ig) in tow, on a picaresque adventure to find the Jokers' world. He visits many corners of the "life-bubble", encountering Joker artefacts, his god-father, who is a sentient planet, and the sexless, octopoid Creapii, among many other weird and diverse aliens and planets. At the same time he finds himself surviving - at increasingly improbable odds - numerous assassination attempts by a mysterious conspiracy which has long worked to prevent anybody from locating the Jokers, assassinating anybody deemed by p-math having a chance of doing so.
275384	/m/01p80f	Soul Music	Terry Pratchett	1994	{"/m/04rlf": "Music", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows the short-lived but glamorous musical career of "The Band with Rocks In", a group of musicians who become famous after their leader, Imp Y Celyn a.k.a. 'Buddy' (Buddy Holly: the name is Welsh for "bud of the holly"), becomes possessed by the essence of an addictive new music dubbed 'Music With Rocks In'. The band is "discovered" by Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, who becomes the Disc's first manager. He tries to cash in on the band by any means possible while keeping them ignorant. He also hires the troll Asphalt as a roadie to accompany the band on its tour. Meanwhile, Death, in one of his philosophical moods, takes a holiday in search of a way to forget his more troubling memories, especially the recent demise of his adopted daughter Ysabell and her husband Mort. In the meantime, his granddaughter Susan discovers the truth about her heritage when she is forced to stand in for her missing grandfather. Complications ensue when she falls in love with Buddy, and tries to save him from his "live fast, die young" destiny as the Discworld's first rock star. Buddy wants to do a free concert, and after Dibbler figures out how much money he can make by selling T-shirts, sausages-in-a-bun etc. to the audience, he agrees. A large number of bands, all of whom have formed in response to the original "Band with Rocks In", participate in the largest concert of all time. Afterwards the band flees from their crazed fans, pursued by the angry Musicians Guild, C.M.O.T. Dibbler, Susan and Death. The cart in which the band is riding falls into a gorge, killing all its passengers, but Death intervenes to save them, afterward destroying the guitar which was the source of the new music. Thus the band is freed from their self-destructive destiny, and the spirit of the Music With Rocks in is driven from the Disc.
275414	/m/01p82z	Bluebeard	Kurt Vonnegut	1987	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the opening of the book, the narrator, Rabo Karabekian, apologizes to the arriving guests: "I promised you an autobiography, but something went wrong in the kitchen..." He describes himself as a museum guard who answers questions from visitors coming to see his priceless collected art. He shares the lonely home with his live-in cook and her daughter, Celeste. One afternoon, Circe Berman wanders onto Karabekian's private beach. When he reaches out to greet her, she catches him by surprise with the forward statement "Tell me how your parents died." He tells her the story and proceeds to invite her back to his home for a drink. After a drink and supper, Karabekian invites her to stay with him, as Paul Slazinger does. After a time, he begins to find her charm "manipulative", as she typically gets her way. Mrs. Berman does not respect his abstract art collection, including works by Jackson Pollock. She explores every inch of Karabekian's home, constantly asking him questions. The only place that is off-limits to her is the potato barn. The potato barn is the home of Karabekian's studio and holds his "secret". The barn has no windows, and Karabekian has gone through the trouble of nailing one end shut and immobilizing the other with six padlocks. The secret of the potato barn has enticed collectors to make outrageous offers and to raise suspicions of stolen masterpieces. It is to remain locked until after Karabekian passes away.
275497	/m/01p8cw	Tirant lo Blanc				 Tirant lo Blanch tells the story of a medieval knight Tirant from Brittany who has a series of adventures across Europe in his quest. He joins in knightly competitions in England and France until the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire asks him to help in the war against the Ottoman Turks, an Islamic tribe of invaders threatening Constantinople, the capital and seat of the Empire. Tirant accepts and is made Megaduke of the Byzantine Empire and the captain of an army. He defeats the Turkish invaders and saves the Empire from destruction. Afterwards, he fights the Turks in many regions of the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa, but he dies just before he can marry the pretty heiress of the Byzantine Empire. The loss of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 was considered at the time to be a major blow to Christian Europe. In writing his novel, Martorell perhaps rewrote history to fit what he wanted it to be - which in a way makes it a precursor of the present-day genre of alternate history.
276145	/m/01pc0g	Thunderball	Ian Fleming	1961-03-27	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Thunderball begins with a meeting between Bond and his superior, M, during which the agent is told that his latest physical assessment is poor because of excessive drinking and smoking (up to sixty cigarettes a day). M sends Bond on a two-week treatment at the Shrublands health clinic to improve his health. At the clinic Bond encounters Count Lippe, a member of the Red Lightning Tong criminal organisation from Macau. When Bond learns of the Tong connection, Lippe tries to kill him by tampering with a spinal traction machine. Bond, however, is saved by nurse Patricia Fearing and later retaliates against Lippe by trapping him in a steam bath, resulting in the Count's second-degree burns and a week's stay in hospital. The Prime Minister receives a communiqué from SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) explaining that the organisation has hijacked a Villiers Vindicator and seized its two nuclear bombs, which it will use to destroy two major cities unless a £100,000,000 ransom is paid. This is SPECTRE's Plan Omega. SPECTRE is headed by criminal mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Count Lippe was dispatched to Shrublands to oversee Giuseppe Petacchi of the Italian Air Force, at the Boscombe Down Airfield, a bomber squadron base. Although Lippe was successful, Blofeld considered him unreliable, because of his childish clash with Bond and, as a consequence, Blofeld has Lippe killed. Acting as a NATO observer of Royal Air Force procedure, Petacchi is in SPECTRE's pay to hijack the bomber in mid-flight by killing its crew and flying it to the Bahamas. Once there, Petacchi is killed and the plane, with bombs, are taken by Emilio Largo (aka SPECTRE Number One) on board the cruiser yacht Disco Volante. The Americans and the British launch Operation Thunderball to foil SPECTRE and recover the two atomic bombs. On a hunch, M assigns Bond to the Bahamas to investigate. There, Bond meets Felix Leiter, seconded to the CIA from his usual role at Pinkertons because of the Thunderball crisis. While in Nassau, Bond meets Dominetta "Domino" Vitali, Largo's mistress and the sister of the dead pilot Giuseppe Petacchi. She is living on board the Disco Volante and believes Largo is on a treasure hunt, although Largo makes her stay ashore while he and his partners hunt hidden treasure. After seducing her, Bond informs her that Largo killed her brother; Bond then recruits her to spy on Largo. Domino re-boards the Disco Volante with a Geiger counter to ascertain if the yacht is where the two nuclear bombs are hidden. However, she is discovered and Largo tortures her for information. Bond and Leiter alert the Thunderball war room of their suspicions of Largo and join the crew of the American nuclear submarine Manta as the ransom deadline nears. The Manta chases the Disco Volante to capture it and recover the bombs en route to the first target. An undersea battle ensues between the crews, while Bond fights Largo. Bond, now very weak from his efforts to disable the bombs, tries to get away, but Largo corners him in an underwater cave and easily overpowers him. Before Largo can finish Bond off Domino shoots him with a spear gun. The bombs are recovered and Bond is sent to hospital with Domino.
276540	/m/01pdht	The Devil's Disciple	George Bernard Shaw	1901		 The setting is in the Fall of 1777, during the Saratoga Campaign. Richard "Dick" Dudgeon is an outcast from his family in colonial Websterbridge, New Hampshire. He returns their hatred with scorn. After the death of his father, Dick returns to his childhood home to hear the reading of his father's will, much to his family's dismay. Anthony Anderson, the local minister, treats him with courtesy despite Dick's self-proclaimed apostasy, but Dick's "wickedness" appalls Anderson's wife Judith. To everyone's surprise, it is revealed that Dick's father secretly changed his will just before he died, leaving the bulk of his estate to Dick. Dick promptly evicts his mother from her home, but also invites his cousin Essie (the illegitimate daughter of Dick's never-do-well uncle Peter), orphaned by the hanging of her father as a rebel by the British, to stay as long as she wants. At the end of the Act, Dick proclaims himself also a rebel against the British and scorns his family as cowards when they flee his home. He warns Anderson that the approaching army hanged his uncle in error, believing him to be a man of highest respect, unaware of his ill repute, and that Anderson will be the example set in Websterbridge. While visiting Anderson's home at the Reverend's invitation, Dick is left alone with Judith while Anderson is called out to Mrs. Dudgeon's deathbed. Perceiving Judith's distaste for him, Dick attempts to leave, but Judith insists he stay until Anderson returns. While they are waiting, British soldiers enter Anderson's home and arrest Dick, mistaking him for Anderson. Dick allows them to take him away without revealing his actual identity. He swears Judith to secrecy lest her husband give the secret away and expose himself to arrest. Anderson returns and finds his wife in a state of great agitation. He demands to know if Dick has harmed her. Breaking her promise to Dick, Judith reveals that soldiers came to arrest Anderson but Dick went in his place. Anderson is stunned. He grabs all his money and a gun and quickly rides away, ignoring Judith's appeals. Judith believes her husband to be a coward, while Dick, whom she despised, is a hero. Judith visits Dick and asks him if he has acted from love for her. He scornfully refutes the romantic notion, telling her that he has acted according to "the law of my own nature", which forbade him to save himself by condemning another. During the military trial, Dick is convicted and sentenced to be hanged. This scene introduces General Burgoyne, a Shavian realist, who contributes a number of sharp remarks about the conduct of the American Revolution. Judith interrupts the proceedings to reveal Dick's true identity – but to no avail: he will be hanged in any case. News reaches Burgoyne that American rebels have taken a nearby town, so he and his troops are in danger, especially since orders from London that would have sent reinforcements were never dispatched. The rebels will send an "officer of importance" to negotiate with the British. The final scene of the play is the public square where Dick will be hanged. Like Sydney Carton in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Dick defies his executioners and prepares to meet his death. At the last minute, Burgoyne stops the hanging because the rebel officer has arrived. It is Anthony Anderson, who has become a man of action in his "hour of trial", just as Dick became a man of conscience in his. Anderson bargains for Dick's life, and Burgoyne agrees to free him. Anderson tells Dick that he (Anderson) is not suited to be a minister and says Dick should replace him. As the Americans rejoice, the British march to quarters, knowing that they face certain defeat.
277696	/m/01pk4g	The Scarlet Letter	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1850	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts in seventeenth century Boston in a Puritan settlement. A young woman, named Hester Prynne, has been led from the town prison with her infant child in her arms, and on the breast of her gown "a rag of scarlet cloth" that "assumed the shape of a letter." It is the uppercase letter "A." The Scarlet Letter "A" represents the act of adultery that she has committed and it is to be a symbol of her sin—a badge of shame—for all to see. A man, who is elderly and a stranger to the town, enters the crowd and asks another onlooker what's happening. The second man responds by explaining that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester's husband, who is much older than she, and whose real name is unknown, has sent her ahead to America whilst settling affairs in Europe. However, her husband does not arrive in Boston and the consensus is that he has been lost at sea. It is apparent that, while waiting for her husband, Hester has had an affair, leading to the birth of her daughter. She will not reveal her lover's identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her subsequent public shaming, is the punishment for her sin and secrecy. On this day, Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child's father. The elderly onlooker is Hester's missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger Chillingworth. He reveals his true identity to Hester and medicates her daughter. They have a frank discussion where Chillingworth states that it was foolish and wrong for a cold, old intellectual like him to marry a young lively woman like Hester. He expressly states that he thinks that they have wronged each other and that he is even with her — her lover is a completely different matter. Hester refuses to divulge the name of her lover and Chillingworth does not press her stating that he will find out anyway. He does elicit a promise from her to keep his true identity as Hester's husband secret, though. He settles in Boston to practice medicine there. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and her daughter, Pearl, grows into a willful, impish child, and is said to be the scarlet letter come to life as both Hester's love and her punishment. Shunned by the community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt to take Pearl away from Hester, but with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, an eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection between the minister's torments and Hester's secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers something undescribed to the reader, supposedly an "A" burned into Dimmesdale's chest, which convinces him that his suspicions are correct. Dimmesdale's psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself. In the meantime, Hester's charitable deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One night, when she is about seven years old, Pearl and her mother are returning home from a visit to the deathbed of John Winthrop when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands. Dimmesdale refuses Pearl's request that he acknowledge her publicly the next day, and a meteor marks a dull red "A" in the night sky as Dimmesdale sees Chillingworth in the distance. It is interpreted by the townsfolk to mean Angel, as a prominent figure in the community had died that night, but Dimmesdale sees it as meaning adultery. Hester can see that the minister's condition is worsening, and she resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdale's self-torment. Chillingworth refuses. She suggests that she may reveal his true identity to Dimmesdale. As Hester walks through the forest, she is unable to feel the sunshine. Pearl, on the other hand, basks in it. They coincide with Dimmesdale, also on a stroll through the woods. Hester informs him of the true identity of Chillingworth. The former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense of relief, and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. The sun immediately breaks through the clouds and trees to illuminate her release and joy. Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter. She is unnerved and expels a shriek until her mother points out the letter on the ground. Hester beckons Pearl to come to her, but Pearl will not go to her mother until Hester buttons the letter back onto her dress. Pearl then goes to her mother. Dimmesdale gives Pearl a kiss on the forehead, which Pearl immediately tries to wash off in the brook, because he again refuses to make known publicly their relationship. However, he clearly feels a release from the pretense of his former life, and the laws and sins he has lived with. The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday in honor of an election and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He looks ill. Knowing his life is about to end, he mounts the scaffold with his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing the mark supposedly seared into the flesh of his chest. He dies in Hester's arms after Pearl kisses him. Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies within the year. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resumes her charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who was rumored to have married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own. Pearl also inherits all of Chillingworth's money even though he knows she is not his daughter. There is a sense of liberation in her and the townspeople, especially the women, who had finally begun to forgive Hester of her tragic indiscretion. When Hester dies, she is buried in "a new grave near an old and sunken one, in that burial ground beside which King's Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both." The tombstone was decorated with a letter "A", for Hester and Dimmesdale.
280291	/m/01pnl8	The G-String Murders	Craig Rice	1941	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gypsy Rose Lee narrates her way through a tale of a double murder, backstage at the "Old Opera" burlesque theatre on Forty-Second Street, New York. In a world populated by strippers, comics and costume salesman. A world where crime is part of the norm and where women struggle to earn a living and have gangster boyfriends. The narrative is a "wise-cracking" and humorous tale of murder in a burlesque house, and with the unusual weapon of the title.
280714	/m/01pp1d	Live from Death Row	Mumia Abu-Jamal			 Told as anecdotes, most of Live from Death Row details the prison system; in an additional end section titled "Musings, memories, and prophecies", Abu-Jamal discusses past events in his life and he remembers some prominent blacks in America. He delves into the purported purpose of prison, finding it hard to believe that "corrections" and deterrence are its true goals using the policy to block education of inmates and the psychological problems caused by isolation and non-contact visits as support for his argument of an ulterior motive, to "erode one's humanity". He describes the procedures of death row blocs where twenty-plus-hour solitary confinement is offset by a few hours of recreation and exercise "outside" on penned-in plots of land and minimal conversations with fellow inmates often regarding their attempts at appeal and their battles with the law. He details two suicides of fellow inmates, one by hanging and one death caused by self-inflicted burns, and the drugging of inmates to make them more sedate even at the expense of one epileptic's health. He reports the interactions between "urban" prisoners and "rural" guards in which prisoners are subject to brutal beatings, cavity searches, racial harassment, and human rights violations after insurgencies. In addition to prison conditions, he discusses social issues and their relevance to prison. He expresses dismay towards "three strikes" mandatory sentencing and politicians using "tough on crime" slogans as political gateways, offering the fact that the United States has the most incarcerated individuals in the world. He hints at racial discrimination, as proposed in the McCleskey v. Kemp case, by reciting statistics on America's death row population in comparison with America's population by race; the numbers are not proportional. He then looks at the elements of the judicial system, believing it is subject to racism; he mentions the choosing of "peers", often white jurors who are pro-death, as jury members and expert witnesses who suppress or distort evidence to suit the criminal justice system. He also explores the topic of uneven justice with examples of police officers being acquitted with compelling evidence against them and, more often than not, guards receiving minimal, if any, punishment for inappropriate actions against prisoners. * Political-rock band Rage Against the Machine is observed as a heavy supporter of Abu-Jamal. Singer Zack De La Rocha has spoken to Congress, condemning the U.S. government's treatment of him. Guitarist Tom Morello visited Abu-Jamal and has interviewed him. * Political hip hop artist Immortal Technique featured Abu-Jamal on his second album Revolutionary Vol. 2. * The punk band Anti-Flag has a speech from Mumia Abu Jamal in the intro to their song "The Modern Rome Burning" from their 2008 album The Bright Lights of America. The speech is actually on the end of their track "Vices", which precedes "The Modern Rome Burning".
284398	/m/01ptzf	The Blue Lotus	Hergé	1936	{"/m/01vnb": "Comic book"}	 In Cigars of the Pharaoh (Book 4), Tintin pursued an international group of drug distributors through the Middle East and India. He managed to capture most of the cartel members, but not the mysterious leader, who fell down a ravine in the mountains. Some time after these events, his body has still not been found. Tintin though is shown to be enjoying a vacation with the Maharaja of Gaipajama. Then one day a Chinese man comes to meet him but he is hit by a dart dipped in a poison which causes madness (Rajaijah). He just had the time to tell him that someone going by the name of Mitsuhirato wants to meet him in Shanghai. Tintin travels to Shanghai, China, where he is awaited by the assassins of the opium consortium. However, two attempts on Tintin's life are foiled by a young Chinese stranger who arranges to meet Tintin in a secluded area. Once Tintin arrives for their rendezvous, he discovers that the young man has been struck by Rajaijah juice, the poison of madness, used by the drug cartel against their enemies. Tintin also defends a young Chinese rickshaw driver from a Western businessman and racist bully, Gibbons, a friend of Dawson, the corrupt police chief of the Shanghai International Settlement. Incensed, Gibbons and Dawson set about making life difficult for Tintin. Meanwhile in Shanghai, Tintin meets Mitsuhirato, a Japanese businessman, who urges him to return to India and protect his friend the Maharajah of Gaipajama. Having been persuaded by Mitsuhirato, Tintin is on his way back to India by ship when he is knocked unconscious by means of two unknown men chloroforming him and taken ashore along with Snowy. He wakes up outside Shanghai, in the home of Wang Chen-Yee, the leader of a resistance movement called "The Sons of the Dragon" dedicated to the fight against opium; Wang apologizes for the 'violent kidnapping' and begs Tintin to stay in China. Wang's son is the young man who helped save him from the two assassinations, but is now insane from Rajaijah poisoning. He goes about threatening to cut people's heads off with a sword (thinking it will "show them the way") and only his father's stern authority can keep him in check. Wang also reveals that Mitsuhirato is their chief opponent: a Japanese secret agent and drug smuggler. Tintin manages to track down Mitsuhirato and witnesses him blowing up a railway line (this is based on the real-life Mukden Incident). No one is killed and damage is minor, but the event is successfully portrayed by the Japanese government as a major Chinese terrorist incident and used as an excuse for a Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Tintin is captured by Mitsuhirato and is to be injected with the Rajaijah poison, but has a near escape when he is aided by one of the members from "The Sons of the Dragon", who had infiltrated Mitsuhirato's house earlier and switched the poison for colored water. Having obtained a sample of the poison of madness with the help of the member, Tintin returns to Shanghai, which has now been occupied by the Japanese Army, and tries to make contact with Doctor Fang Hsi-Ying, an expert on insanity, who may be able to cure Wang's son. However, Doctor Fang has been kidnapped by the drug cartel, presumably to prevent him developing an antidote to the poison. A note left by the kidnappers demands ransom money which must be paid at an old temple in the city of Hukow. After a brief period of imprisonment in Shanghai by the Japanese Army, Tintin escapes and rides a train to Hukow to visit the temple where the ransom is to be paid, but a flood washes out the tracks, and all the passengers must disembark. He rescues a young boy, Chang Chong-Chen, from drowning in the Yangtze River. They become fast friends, and Chang rescues Tintin from the Thompsons who had reluctantly arrested him under orders from Dawson (who is collaborating with Mitsuhirato to capture Tintin). They later travel to the area where the ransom money is to be left, and are able to confirm that Doctor Fang has been kidnapped on Mitsuhirato's orders. Tintin and Chang return to Shanghai, but not before Wang and his family are kidnapped by Mitsuhirato. In order to find them, Tintin travels to the Shanghai docks and hides in one of the barrels being unloaded from an opium ship. But it turns out that he was seen, and when he emerges he is confronted by Mitsuhirato armed with a gun, and soon finds himself a prisoner alongside Wang and his family. Then the boss of the opium cartel is revealed to be the film producer Rastapopoulos (see Cigars of the Pharaoh for back story). Tintin is appalled that a man he had thought to be a friend could be the gang leader until Rastapopoulos reveals the tattoo of Kih-Oskh on his forearm. Fortunately, before the cartel could kill Tintin and Wang, the Sons of the Dragon, who had previously overpowered Mitsuhirato's thugs and had hidden in the other barrels (as planned by Tintin), reveal themselves, and force Mitsuhirato and Rastapopoulos to surrender. With Rastapopoulos arrested, the cartel is finally brought down, and Mitsuhirato commits suicide. Fang Hsi-Ying finds an antidote to the poison of madness and Wang's son is cured (it is not mentioned whether the other victims of the poison are also cured). The ensuing political fallout over Tintin's involvement with the cartel and Japanese espionage leads to Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations. The story ends with Chang being adopted by the Wang family and Tintin heading back to Europe.
286379	/m/01q1yz	Mrs Craddock	W. Somerset Maugham		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On her 21st birthday, when she comes into her deceased father's money, Bertha Ley announces, to the dismay of her former guardian, that she is going to marry 27 year-old Edward Craddock, her steward. Herself a member of the landed gentry, Bertha has been raised to cultivate an "immoderate desire for knowledge" and to understand, and enjoy, European culture of both past and present ages. In particular, during long stays on the Continent, she has learned to appreciate Italy's tremendous cultural heritage. A "virtuous" girl, her views on womanhood are thoroughly traditional. She has no doubts about her role in life, which will be to serve and obey her future husband. When Bertha encourages reluctant Edward Craddock, whom she has known since their childhood, to propose to her, she is certain that she will find absolute fulfillment and happiness in her marriage, even if it means abandoning city life and its pleasures for the Kentish coast "to live as her ancestors had lived, ploughing the land, sowing and reaping; but her children, the sons of the future, would belong to a new stock, stronger and fairer than the old. The Leys had gone down into the darkness of death, and her children would bear another name. […] She felt in herself suddenly the weariness of a family that had lived too long; she knew she was right to choose new blood to mix with the old blood of the Leys. It needed the freshness and youth, the massive strength of her husband, to bring life to the decayed race." (Ch.8) The man selected by Bertha in an almost Darwinian fashion to accomplish all this is described by the narrator as little more than a noble savage, "the unspoiled child of nature, his mind free from the million perversities of civilization" (Ch.7). Edward Craddock may be tall, strong, handsome, and practically free from sin ("He simply reeks of the Ten Commandments"), but at the same time he is hardly educated, unimaginative, and unnecessarily headstrong. Subconsciously justifying her decision to marry him, Bertha boosts his ego by constantly telling him that he will rise above himself if he is given the chance to do so, and accordingly transfers all powers to manage her estate to her husband. As time goes by, Craddock turns into the archetypal country squire, accepted, respected, even adored and envied by the community, who have no idea that in the meantime his wife has drawn her own, less favourable, conclusions about their married life. After their honeymoon, which they spend in London, Bertha soon realizes that her husband is a bore and, what is more, rather insensitive to her needs. Time and again she pokes fun at his inferior taste in music, his inability and unwillingness to read books, and his chauvinism. She is disappointed at the routine that dominates their marriage and at the lack of attentions he pays her. It gradually dawns upon her that Edward lives in a world of his own, in which the death of a cow causes him more grief than that of a beloved person. When, a bit more than a year into their marriage, Bertha is eight months pregnant and has a premonition that there might be complications during birth, he assures her that "it's nothing to make a fuss about", his insight stemming from his own experience: "He had bred animals for years, and was quite used to the process that supplied him with veal, mutton and beef for the local butchers. It was a ridiculous fuss that human beings made over a natural and ordinary phenomenon." (Ch.16) However, their son is stillborn, and Bertha is told that she will not be able to have children in future either. The ensuing crisis makes her doubt that God exists, while the vicar's sister, a friend of theirs, asserts that "we should be thankful for the cross we have to bear. It is, as it were, a measure of the confidence that God places in us." (Ch.18) Finding no solace in religion—at least that kind of religion—but at the same time unable to get over the loss of her son and also increasingly disgusted by her husband's matter-of-fact behaviour, Bertha escapes her dreary surroundings and finds refuge in London, where she moves into her aunt's flat. Mary Ley, in her late forties and unmarried, senses right from the start that Bertha means to leave her husband for good but, for the sake of her niece's peace of mind, is not prepared to broach the subject. Edward, on the other hand, is happily unaware of his wife's intentions, considering himself nothing more than a grass widower and urging his wife in several letters to come home as soon as she has fully recovered. After a prolonged trip with her aunt to Paris, made under the pretext of intending to buy dresses, Bertha, for want of any other reasonable course of action, returns to Kent and her husband, thus erroneously confirming Edward in his belief that her going away was just a passing phase. While his wife settles down to a life of quiet despair and excruciating boredom, Edward Craddock, who has become a stranger to her, embarks on a career in politics. Elected County Councillor for the Conservative Party, he immediately starts dreaming of climbing the ladder of success even further and becoming an MP. Five years after her wedding, aged only 26, Bertha not only feels that she has aged prematurely; she is also aware of the fact that in the eyes of the local community she has become a mere appendage to her husband. Never having had anyone to confide in, she at long last picks Dr Ramsay, the local GP and her former guardian, to tell him the truth about the passionate hatred she feels for Edward and to ask for the doctor's help. "I know him through and through", Bertha says of her husband, "and he's a fool. You can't conceive how stupid, how utterly brainless he is. He bores me to death. […] Oh, when I think that I'm shackled to him for the rest of my life I feel I could kill myself." (Ch.27) Again Bertha escapes to the Continent, again with her aunt, this time to Rome (while Edward Craddock has not once in his life been abroad). Claiming that her delicate health demands spending the winter in a warm climate, she is back in London in the following spring after having enjoyed six months of freedom but now must face reality again and no longer delay her return to her husband. This is when 19 year-old Gerald Vaudrey, a cousin of hers she has never met before, enters her life. Gerald, handsome and still looking like a schoolboy, is to stay in London for a couple of weeks to wait for his passage to the United States, where he has been assigned to go by his parents as a punishment for his misdemeanours. Visiting his—and Bertha's -- aunt, he is introduced to his cousin at Mary Ley's flat, and from the moment they first set eyes on each other Bertha and Gerald are curiously attracted to each other. They go off almost every day exploring the sights of London, and 26 year-old Bertha, unable as well as unwilling to face the facts, feels flattered by the youth's many attentions. She just does not really want to believe that Gerald has been expelled from his parental home after seducing the maid; she refuses to see a womanizer in Gerald and, although she tries hard to resist her feelings, genuinely falls in love with the boy. At the very last moment, on the eve of Gerald's departure, it occurs to Bertha that she might "give Gerald the inestimable gift of her body", as "there is one way in which a woman can bind a man to her for ever, there is one tie that is indissoluble; her very flesh cried out, and she trembled at the thought." (Ch.31) The young couple are already alone in their aunt's flat, but Mary Ley comes home early from a dinner to which she has been invited, suspecting that they could be meeting secretly, and prevents any sexual activity. Gerald Vaudrey leaves for the States on the following morning. When, two weeks later, Bertha receives a letter from America, she puts it on the mantelpiece, where she looks at it for a month. Only then does she burn it, without ever having opened it. To her, having achieved this means that she has got over her infatuation. Again Bertha Craddock returns to her husband and, after that "mere spring day of happiness" with Gerald, prepares for "the long winter of life". Four years later, when she is 30, Edward Craddock breaks his neck in a riding accident, and, seeing his body being carried into the house, Bertha, for the first time since her wedding, feels free. Similar to the old custom of damnatio memoriae in the Roman Empire, she destroys all of Edward's photographs and all of his letters to her.
286833	/m/01q3x0	Hideous Kinky	Esther Freud	1992-01-30	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A young mother and her two daughters travel to Marrakech, Morocco, during the 1960s. The mother, Julia, is disenchanted by the dreary conventions of English life, hence the journey. They live in a low-rent Marrakesh hotel and make a living out of making hand-sewn dolls and with some money sent by the girls' father, a poet in London. Whilst the mother explores Sufism and quests for personal fulfilment, the daughters rebel. The elder, Bea, attempting to re-create her English life, wants to get an education and insists on going to school. The younger, Lucy, dreams of trivial things, like mashed potatoes, but also yearns for a father. Her hopes settle on a most unlikely candidate. The girls match their mother with Bilal, a Moroccan con man and acrobat; the relationship turns sexual and he moves in, becoming almost a surrogate father. However, Julia's friend encourages her to travel to Algiers and study with a Sufi master at a school that advocates the "annihilation of the ego." As money vanishes, Julia's response is to claim that "God will provide," albeit in the person of Bilal.
287085	/m/01q4zs	Myra Breckinridge	Gore Vidal	1968-02	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Myra Breckinridge is an attractive young woman with a mission. She is a film buff with a special interest in the Golden Age of Hollywood—in particular the 1940s—and the writings of real-life film critic Parker Tyler. She comes to the Academy for Aspiring Young Actors and Actresses, owned by her deceased husband Myron's uncle, Buck Loner. Myra gets a job teaching, not just her regular classes (Posture and Empathy), but also, as part of the hidden curriculum, female dominance. Myra selects as her first victim one of the "studs" at the Academy, a straight young man called Rusty Godowsky, and sets out to alienate him from his beautiful girlfriend Mary-Ann Pringle. She lures Rusty to the school infirmary, where she verbally abuses him, ties him to an exam table and anally rapes him with a strap-on dildo. Later, after she is injured in a car crash, it is learned that Myra is Myron, still in the process of sexual reassignment surgery; unable to obtain hormones, Myra reverts to Myron, and, as a result of the injuries she has sustained, is forced to have her breast implants removed. Now a male eunuch, Myron decides to settle down with Mary-Ann. The subplot of Myra Breckinridge revolves around the character of Letitia Van Allen, an aging, sexually voracious talent scout whom Myra meets and befriends at the academy, whose office boasts a four-poster bed and whose kinky sexual practices ("Those small attentions a girl like me cherishes… a lighted cigarette stubbed out on my derrière, a complete beating with his great thick heavy leather belt…") landed her in hospital, "half paralyzed", at the same time Myra finds herself there towards the end of the novel. The spirit of the times is also well reflected in another, earlier chapter (Ch. 14) where Myra attends an orgy arranged by one of the students. She goes, intending only to be an observer, but suffers a "rude intrusion" by a member of the band The Four Skins, from which she derives a perverse, masochistic enjoyment. At an earlier regular party, after "mixing gin and marijuana", she eventually gets "stoned out of her head" and has a fit, then passes out in a bathroom.
287393	/m/01q64j	Operation Shylock: A Confession	Philip Roth	1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows narrator "Philip Roth" on a journey to Israel, where he attends the trial of accused war criminal John Demjanjuk and becomes involved in an intelligence mission—the "Operation Shylock" of the title.
287638	/m/01q6yf	Virginia	Ellen Glasgow	1913	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Born in 1864 to a clergyman and his dutiful wife, Virginia grows up as a Southern belle in the town of Dinwiddie, Virginia. Her education is strictly limited to the bare minimum, with anything that might disturb her quiet and comfortable existence vigorously avoided. Thus prepared for life, Virginia falls for the first handsome young man who crosses her path—Oliver Treadwell, the black sheep of a family of capitalist entrepreneurs who, during the time of Reconstruction, brought industry and the railroad to the South. Oliver, who has been abroad and has only recently arrived in Dinwiddie, is a dreamer and an intellectual. An aspiring playwright, his literary ambitions are more important to him than money, and he refuses his uncle's offer to work in his bank. However, when Virginia falls in love with him he realizes that he must be able to support a family, and eventually accepts his uncle's offer to work for the railroad. The young couple get married and have three children, a boy and two girls. Gradually perfecting her household skills, Virginia is able to get by on very little money. When, after many years, Oliver's first play is put on the stage in New York, his expectations are high. However, the show is a complete failure as the play is far too intellectual and radical for a Broadway audience who wants to be entertained rather than reformed. Reading about the flop in the local newspaper, Virginia for the first time in her life leaves her children, asking her mother to take care of them for a day or two, and takes the night train to New York to be with, and console, her husband—only to be rejected by him, who is in a state of severe depression. When he has recovered from the shock, Oliver makes yet another concession to society and public taste and starts writing "trash". Throughout the years, Virginia leads a vicarious life: She is happy when her husband and children are happy; she makes sure their clothes are in perfect condition while neglecting her own outward appearance; and she is eager to provide for her children the education she herself has been denied. When, at one point, she realizes that the women her age whom she has known since childhood still look quite young while she has aged prematurely, she quickly persuades herself to believe that a life of altruistic subservience is more than worthwhile, that living and acting the way she does is her duty and God's will. Her father's sudden if honourable death—he unsuccessfully tries to prevent the lynching of an innocent young African American and is stabbed in the process by an angry and drunken young man—adds to the gloom that starts creeping into her life, especially when she sees that, as a widow, her mother suddenly loses all her will to live. When she dies only a few months after her husband, Virginia has a premonition that her own fate when losing Oliver could be a similar one. Meanwhile Oliver's first successful play—a trashy one—premières in New York, with some more to follow in quick succession, and, as the money keeps pouring in, the family move into a bigger house in Dinwiddie. They now employ a number of servants, including an African American butler. With the children gone—their son and one daughter are at college, while the other daughter has married a much older widower with two grown-up children and has also flown the nest—and Oliver frequently in New York to supervise the staging of his plays, Virginia's life becomes increasingly empty. Having "outlived her usefulness", the days seem endless to her, and with all the servants about the house there is absolutely no housework for her to do either. Now in her mid-forties, Virginia for the first time in her life spends Christmas alone at home. The biggest blow, however, is yet to come: When she accompanies Oliver to New York for a première, she finds out to her dismay that he has been betraying her with a famous actress who stars in one of his plays. For the last time summoning up all her courage, she takes a taxi and pays her an unexpected call but immediately realizes when talking to her that she has no chance of winning her husband back. Without many words, Oliver asks her to let him divorce her, but clinging to the only thing she has left in her life—her marriage—she refuses. The novel ends on a somewhat optimistic note when Virginia, again alone in the empty house in Dinwiddie, receives a letter from her son telling her that he is going to leave Oxford before he has completed his two-year course at the university in order to come back and stay with his mother.
288076	/m/01q905	You Only Live Twice	Ian Fleming	1964-03-16	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 After the wedding-day murder of his wife, Tracy (see On Her Majesty's Secret Service), Bond begins to let his life slide, drinking and gambling heavily, making mistakes and turning up late for work. His superior in the Secret Service, M, had been planning to dismiss Bond, but decides to give him a last-chance opportunity to redeem himself by assigning him to the diplomatic branch of the organisation. Bond is subsequently re-numbered 7777 and handed an "impossible" mission: convincing the head of Japan's secret intelligence service, Tiger Tanaka, to provide Britain with information from radio transmissions captured from the Soviet Union, codenamed Magic 44. In exchange, the Secret Service will allow the Japanese access to one of their own information sources. Bond is introduced to Tanaka—and to the Japanese lifestyle—by an Australian intelligence officer, Dikko Henderson. When Bond raises the purpose of his mission with Tanaka, it transpires that the Japanese have already penetrated the British information source and Bond has nothing left to bargain with. Instead, Tanaka asks Bond to kill Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, who operates a politically embarrassing "Garden of Death" in an ancient castle; people flock there to commit suicide. After examining photos of Shatterhand and his wife, Bond discovers that "Shatterhand" and his wife are Tracy's murderers, Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Irma Bunt. Bond gladly takes the mission, keeping his knowledge of Blofeld's identity a secret so that he can exact revenge for his wife's death. Made up and trained by Tanaka, and aided by former Japanese film star Kissy Suzuki, Bond attempts to live and think as a mute Japanese coal miner in order to penetrate Shatterhand's castle. Tanaka renames Bond "Taro Todoroki" for the mission. After infiltrating the Garden of Death and the castle where Blofeld spends his time dressed in the costume of a Samurai warrior, Bond is captured and Bunt identifies him as a British secret agent and not a Japanese coal miner. After surviving a near execution, Bond exacts revenge on Blofeld in a duel, Blofeld armed with a sword and Bond with a wooden staff. Bond eventually kills Blofeld by strangling him, then blows up the castle. Upon escaping, he suffers a head injury, leaving him an amnesiac living as a Japanese fisherman with Kissy, while the rest of the world believes him dead; his obituary appears in the newspapers. While Bond's health improves, Kissy conceals his true identity to keep him forever to herself. Kissy eventually sleeps with Bond and becomes pregnant, and hopes that Bond will propose marriage after she finds the right time to tell him about her pregnancy. Bond reads scraps of newspaper and fixates on a reference to Vladivostok, making him wonder if the far-off city is the key to his missing memory; he tells Kissy he must travel to Russia to find out.
288153	/m/01q9dv	The Stand	Stephen King	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is divided into three parts, or books. The first is titled "Captain Trips" and takes place over nineteen days, with the escape and spread of a human-made superflu (influenza) virus known formally as "Project Blue", but most commonly as "Captain Trips". The virus is developed at a U.S. Army base, where it is accidentally released. While the base tries to shut down before any infected person can escape, a security malfunction allows a guard and his family to sneak out. Unfortunately, they are already infected, and set off a pandemic that kills an estimated 99.4% of the world's human population, as well as that of domesticated animals, such as horses and dogs. Through the perspectives of the multiple principal characters, and also from an omniscient third-party perspective, the narrative outlines the total breakdown and destruction of society through widespread violence, the failure of martial law to contain the outbreak, and eventually the death of virtually the entire population. The emotional toll is also dealt with, as the few survivors must care for their families and friends, dealing with confusion and grief as their loved ones succumb to the flu. The expanded edition opens with a prologue titled "The Circle Opens" that offers greater detail into the circumstances surrounding the development of the virus and the security breach that allowed its escape from the secret laboratory compound where it was created. Intertwining cross-country odysseys are undertaken by a small number of survivors in three parties, which are drawn together by both circumstances and their shared dreams of a 108-year-old woman from Hemingford Home, Nebraska, whom they see as a refuge and a representation of good in the struggle of good versus evil. This woman, Abagail Freemantle, or "Mother Abagail", becomes the spiritual leader for the survivors. Mother Abagail directs them to Boulder, Colorado, where they struggle to re-establish a democratic society. Meanwhile, another group of survivors are drawn to Las Vegas, Nevada by Randall Flagg, an evil being with supernatural powers who represents the Enemy, or the Adversary. Flagg’s governance is brutally tyrannical, using crucifixion, dismemberment and other forms of torture to quell dissent. Flagg's group is able to quickly reorganize its society, restore power to Las Vegas, and rebuild the city with the many technical professionals who have migrated there. Flagg's group launches a weapons program, searching the country for suitable arms. In Boulder, the democratic society of the "Free Zone" is beset with problems: Mother Abagail, feeling that she has become prideful due to her pleasure at being a public figure, disappears into the wilderness on a journey of spiritual reconciliation. The Free Zone leadership committee, consisting of seven men and women -- Frannie Goldsmith, Stu Redman, Nick Andros, Larry Underwood, Ralph Brenter, Glen Bateman, and Susan Stern -- decide to secretly send three people to Randall Flagg's territory to act as spies. Meanwhile, one of the survivors, Harold Lauder, builds a dynamite bomb in response to feelings of disconnection and revenge for his unrequited love for Fran Goldsmith, who had fallen for Stu Redman; another survivor, Nadine Cross, seduced despite herself by Flagg's dark attraction which first manifested itself to her years earlier via a ouija board, plants the bomb where it will effectively destroy the Free Zone's leadership. The explosion kills Nick and Susan and several other Free Zone inhabitants, but the other members of the leadership committee manage to avoid the explosion due to Mother Abagail's timely return. However, her body is ravaged with malnutrition, and she is dying. The stage is now set for the final confrontation as the two camps become aware of one another, and each recognizes the other as a threat to its survival, leading to the "stand" of good against evil. There is no pitched battle, however. Instead, at Mother Abagail's dying behest, four of the five surviving members of the Boulder governing committee -- Glen Bateman, Stu Redman, Ralph Brentner and Larry Underwood -- accompanied by the dog Kojak set off on foot towards Las Vegas on an expedition to confront Randall Flagg. Stu breaks his leg en route and convinces the others to go on without him as they promised, telling them that God will provide for him if that's what's meant to happen. The remaining three soon encounter Flagg's men, who take them prisoner. When Glen Bateman rejects an opportunity to be spared if he kneels and begs Flagg for his life, he is shot and killed on Flagg's orders by Lloyd Henreid, Flagg's right hand man. Flagg gathers his entire collective to witness the execution of the two prisoners, but just as it is about to take place the Trashcan Man, an insane follower of Flagg who is somehow able to search out weapons of death, arrives with a nuclear warhead. Flagg's magical attempt to silence a dissenter is transformed into a giant glowing hand — "The Hand of God" — which detonates the bomb, destroying Las Vegas and all of Flagg's followers, along with Larry and Ralph. The inhabitants of Boulder anxiously anticipate the birth of Frances Goldsmith's baby, aware of the implications to the human race if the baby lacks immunity to the superflu and dies. Soon after she gives birth to a live baby, Stu Redman returns to Boulder along with Kojak and Tom Cullen, one of the spies sent earlier by the Free Zone, who had rescued Stu while returning to the Free Zone. Although the baby, Peter, falls ill with the superflu, he is able to fight it off. The original edition of the novel ends with Fran and Stu questioning whether the human race can learn from its mistakes. The answer, given in the last line, is ambiguous: "I don’t know." The expanded edition follows this with a brief coda called "The Circle Closes", which leaves a darker impression and fits in with King’s ongoing "wheel of ka" theme. Randall Flagg, using the alias "Russell Faraday", wakes up on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific, having escaped the atomic blast in Vegas by using his dark magic (although Flagg does not remember how he got to the beach or what his real name is, and it is suggested that he does not even remember the events in America). There he begins recruiting adherents among a preliterate, dark-skinned people, who worship him as some sort of god.
288407	/m/01qbnq	Henry IV, Part 1	William Shakespeare			 Henry Bolingbroke – now King Henry IV – is having an unquiet reign. His personal disquiet at the murder of his predecessor Richard II would be solved by a journey or crusade to the Holy Land to fight Muslims, but broils on his borders with Scotland and Wales prevent that. Moreover, his guilt causes him to mistreat the Earls Northumberland and Worcester, heads of the Percy family, and Edmund Mortimer, the Earl of March. The first two helped him to his throne, and the third claims to have been proclaimed by Richard, the former king, as his rightful heir. Adding to King Henry's troubles is the behaviour of his son and heir, the Prince of Wales. Hal (the future Henry V) has forsaken the Royal Court to waste his time in taverns with low companions. This makes him an object of scorn to the nobles and calls into question his royal worthiness. Hal's chief friend and foil in living the low life is Sir John Falstaff. Fat, old, drunk, and corrupt as he is, he has a charisma and a zest for life that captivates the Prince, born into a world of hypocritical pieties and mortal seriousness. The play has three groups of characters that interact slightly at first, and then come together in the Battle of Shrewsbury, where the success of the rebellion will be decided. First there is King Henry himself and his immediate council. He is the engine of the play, but usually in the background. Next there is the group of rebels, energetically embodied in Harry Percy – Hotspur – and including his father (Northumberland) and led by his uncle Thomas Percy (Worcester). The Scottish Earl of Douglas, Edmund Mortimer and the Welshman Owen Glendower also join. Finally, at the center of the play are the young Prince Hal and his companions Falstaff, Poins, Bardolph, and Peto. Streetwise and pound-foolish, these rogues manage to paint over this grim history in the colours of comedy. As the play opens, the king is angry with Hotspur for refusing him most of the prisoners taken in a recent action against the Scots at Holmedon (see the Battle of Humbleton Hill). Hotspur, for his part, would have the king ransom Edmund Mortimer (his wife's brother) from Owen Glendower, the Welshman who holds him. Henry refuses, berates Mortimer's loyalty, and treats the Percys with threats and rudeness. Stung and alarmed by Henry's dangerous and peremptory way with them, they proceed to make common cause with the Welsh and Scots, intending to depose "this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke." By Act II, rebellion is brewing. As Henry Bolingbroke is mishandling the affairs of state, his son Hal is joking, drinking, and whoring with Falstaff and his associates. He likes Falstaff but makes no pretense at being like him. He enjoys insulting his dissolute friend and makes sport of him by joining in Poins’ plot to disguise themselves and rob and terrify Falstaff and three friends of loot they have stolen in a highway robbery, purely for the fun of watching Falstaff lie about it later, after which Hal returns the stolen money. Rather early in the play, in fact, Hal informs us that his riotous time will soon come to a close, and he will re-assume his rightful high place in affairs by showing himself worthy to his father and others through some (unspecified) noble exploits. Hal believes that this sudden change of manner will amount to a greater reward and acknowledgment of prince-ship, and in turn "earn" him respect from the members of the court. The revolt of Mortimer and the Percys very quickly gives him his chance to do just that. The high and the low come together when the Prince makes up with his father and is given a high command. He vows to fight and kill the rebel Hotspur, and orders Falstaff (who is, after all, a knight) to take charge of a group of "foot" - infantry and proceed to the battle site at Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury (see Battle of Shrewsbury) is crucial. If the rebels even achieve a standoff their cause gains greatly, as they have other powers awaiting under Northumberland, Glendower, Mortimer, and the Archbishop of York. Henry needs a decisive victory here. He outnumbers the rebels, but Hotspur, with the wild hope of despair, leads his troops into battle. The day wears on, the issue still in doubt, the king harried by the wild Scot Douglas, when Prince Hal and Hotspur, the two Harrys that cannot share one land, meet. Finally they will fight – for glory, for their lives, and for the kingdom. No longer a tavern brawler but a warrior, the future king prevails, ultimately killing Hotspur in single combat. On the way to this climax, we are treated to Falstaff, who has "misused the King's press damnably", not only by taking money from able-bodied men who wished to evade service but by keeping the wages of the poor souls he brought instead who were killed in battle ("food for powder, food for powder"). Now on his own Falstaff is attacked by the Douglas during Hal's battle with Hotspur, but plays possum and is presumed dead. After Hal leaves Hotspur's body on the field, Falstaff revives in a mock miracle. Seeing he is alone, he stabs Hotspur's corpse in the thigh and claims credit for the kill. Though incredulous at this report, Hal allows Sir John his disreputable tricks. Soon after being given grace by Hal, Falstaff states that he wants to amend his life and begin "to live cleanly as a nobleman should do". The play ends at Shrewsbury, after the battle. The death of Hotspur has taken the heart out of the rebels, and the king's forces prevail. Henry is pleased with the outcome, not least because it gives him a chance to execute Thomas Percy, the Earl of Worcester, one of his chief enemies (though previously one of his greatest friends). Meanwhile Hal shows off his kingly mercy in praise of valor; having taken the valiant Douglas prisoner, Hal orders his enemy released without ransom. But the war goes on; now the king's forces must deal with the Archbishop of York, who has joined with Northumberland, and with the forces of Mortimer and Glendower. This unsettled ending sets the stage for Henry IV, Part 2.
289586	/m/01qdlp	The Man with the Golden Gun	Ian Fleming	1965-04-01	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 A year after James Bond's final confrontation with Ernst Stavro Blofeld, while on a mission in Japan, a man claiming to be Bond appears in London and demands to meet the head of the Secret Service, M. Bond's identity is confirmed, but during his debriefing interview with M, Bond tries to kill him with a cyanide pistol; the attempt fails. The Service learns that after destroying Blofeld's castle in Japan, Bond suffered a head injury and developed amnesia. Having lived as a Japanese fisherman for several months, Bond travelled into the Soviet Union to learn his true identity. While there, he was brainwashed and assigned to kill M upon returning to England. Now de-programmed, Bond is given a chance to re-prove his worth as a member of the 00 section following the assassination attempt. M sends Bond to Jamaica and gives him the seemingly impossible mission of killing Francisco "Pistols" Scaramanga, a Cuban assassin who is believed to have killed several British secret agents. Scaramanga is known as "The Man with the Golden Gun" because his weapon of choice is a gold-plated Colt .45, which fires silver jacketed solid gold bullets. Bond locates Scaramanga in a Jamaican bordello and manages to become his temporary personal assistant under the name "Mark Hazard". He learns that Scaramanga is involved in a hotel development on the island with a group of investors that consists of a syndicate of American gangsters and the KGB. Scaramanga and the other investors are also engaged in a scheme to destabilise Western interests in the Caribbean's sugar industry and increase the value of the Cuban sugar crop, running drugs into America, smuggling prostitutes from Mexico into America and operating casinos in Jamaica that will cause friction between tourists and the local people. Bond discovers that he has an ally who is also working undercover at the half-built resort, Felix Leiter, who has been recalled to duty by the CIA and is working ostensibly as an electrical engineer while setting up bugs in Scaramanga's meeting room. However, they learn that Scaramanga plans to eliminate Bond when the weekend is over. Bond's true identity is confirmed by a KGB agent and Scaramanga makes new plans to entertain the gangsters and the KGB agent by killing Bond while they are riding a sight-seeing train to a marina. However, Bond manages to turn the tables on Scaramanga and, with the help of Leiter, kill most of the conspirators. Wounded, Scaramanga escapes into the swamps, where Bond pursues him. Scaramanga lulls Bond off-guard and shoots him with a golden derringer he had hidden behind his neck. Bond is hit but returns fire and shoots Scaramanga several times, killing him at last.
290207	/m/01qh59	Who Censored Roger Rabbit?	Gary Wolf	1981	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Eddie Valiant is a hard-boiled private eye, and Roger Rabbit is a second-banana cartoon character. The rabbit hires Valiant to find out why his employers, the DeGreasy Brothers, the sleazy owners of a cartoon syndicate, have reneged on a promise to give Roger his own strip. Soon after, Roger is mysteriously murdered in his home. His speech balloon, found on the crime scene, indicates his murder was a way of “censoring” the star, who apparently had just heard someone explain the source of his success. Valiant’s search for the killer takes him to a variety of suspects, including Roger’s widow Jessica Rabbit and his former co-star Baby Herman.
290765	/m/025shx5	The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks	Joanna Cole	1986	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 The book begins by introducing the character of Ms. Frizzle and describing her unusual teaching methods. Soon, she decides to take the class on a field trip to the waterworks, which the kids are sure will be boring, especially compared to the trips the kids in other classes go on. However, after driving through a tunnel, the bus becomes plastered with images of octopuses and everyone inside finds themselves wearing scuba diving outfits. Once this occurs, the bus rises up into a cloud along with evaporating water. Ms. Frizzle makes all the kids get out of the bus by threatening to give them extra homework if they don't. However, the kids begin shrinking once they're outside and, once they're each the size of a raindrop, they rain down into a river, which carries them into the town's water purification system. After going through the waterworks, the pipes take the class back to the school. They come out in the girl's bathroom, where, once out of the faucet, they are instantly restored to their regular size and normal clothing. Ms. Frizzle, however, appears to have no memory of the strange trip and the class later sees the bus outside. They wonder how it returned from the cloud and even consider that they may have imagined their whole adventure. The book ends with Ms. Frizzle informing them that they will be studying volcanoes next. The main story is then followed by two pages listing things that couldn't happen in real life.
290832	/m/025shxk	The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System	Joanna Cole	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Ms. Frizzle's class is learning about the solar system and Arnold's unpleasant cousin Janet, who constantly raves about herself, has joined them. The Friz decides to take the kids on a field trip to the planetarium, but, once they get there, they find the planetarium is closed. However, on the way back to school, Arnold reminds Mrs. Frizzle of the planetarium known as "the big one". Ms. Frizzle pushes a button that makes the bus transform into a rocket and blast off into outer space. Once in outer space, the bus flies to the Moon, where the kids make the most of the lesser gravity. Ms. Frizzle then takes them to the Sun and then Mercury, Venus and Mars before flying into the asteroid belt. However, while in the belt, the bus is damaged by an asteroid and the Friz flies out to fix the damage with a tether line connecting her to the bus. However, the bus's autopilot malfunctions, causing the bus to fly off, breaking Ms. Frizzle's tether line and leaving her stranded in the asteroid belt. Janet looks through the Friz's things and finds Ms. Frizzle's lesson book, which documents the information she is supposed to tell the kids during the field trip (complete with "Arnold, are you listening?" written into it.) Janet reads through the book as they pass the outer planets and until they pass Pluto, leaving the solar system. Janet then flips through the book and finds the instructions for the autopilot, so they can fly back to the asteroid belt and rescue Ms. Frizzle. After they rescue the Friz, they return to Earth. The kids try to tell everyone about their strange trip, but no one believes them.
291324	/m/01qmhb	The Ugly Duckling	Hans Christian Andersen	1843-11-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When the tale begins, a mother duck's eggs hatch. One of the little birds is perceived by the duck’s surroundings as a homely little creature and suffers much verbal and physical abuse from the other birds and animals on the farm. He wanders sadly from the barnyard and lives with wild ducks and geese until hunters slaughter the flocks. He then finds a home with an old woman but her cat and hen tease him mercilessly and again he sets off on his own. He sees a flock of migrating wild swans; he is delighted and excited but he cannot join them for he is too young and cannot fly. Winter arrives. A farmer finds and carries the freezing little bird home, but the foundling is frightened by the farmer’s noisy children and flees the house. He spends a miserable winter alone in the outdoors mostly hiding in a cave on the lake that partly freezes over. When spring arrives a flock of swans descends on the now thawing lake. The ugly duckling, now having fully grown and matured cannot endure a life of solitude and hardship any more and decides to throw himself at the flock of swans deciding that it is better to be killed by such beautiful birds than to live a life of ugliness and misery. He is shocked when the swans welcome and accept him, only to realize by looking at his reflection in the water that he has grown into one of them. The flock takes to the air and the ugly duckling spreads his beautiful large wings and takes flight with the rest of his new family.
291978	/m/01qq4_	Walden	Henry David Thoreau	1854	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational", "/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Economy: In this first and longest chapter, Thoreau outlines his project: a two-year, two-month, and two-day stay at a cozy, "tightly shingled and plastered," English-style 10' × 15' cottage in the woods near Walden Pond. He does this, he says, to illustrate the spiritual benefits of a simplified lifestyle. He easily supplies the four necessities of life (food, shelter, clothing, and fuel) with the help of family and friends, particularly his mother, his best friend, and Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson. The latter provided Thoreau with a work exchange – he could build a small house and plant a garden if he cleared some land on the woodlot and did other chores while there. Thoreau meticulously records his expenditures and earnings, demonstrating his understanding of "economy," as he builds his house and buys and grows food. For a home and freedom, he spent a mere $28.12½, in 1845 (about $863 in today's money). At the end of this chapter, Thoreau inserts a poem, "The Pretensions of Poverty," by seventeenth-century English poet Thomas Carew. The poem criticizes those who think that their poverty gives them unearned moral and intellectual superiority. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For: After playing with the idea of buying a farm, Thoreau describes his house's location. Then he explains that he took up his abode at Walden Woods so as to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Although he criticizes the dedication of his neighbors to working, he himself is quite busy at Walden – building and maintaining his house, raising thousands of bean plants and other vegetables, making bread, clearing land, chopping wood, making repairs for the Emersons, going into town, and writing every day. His time at Walden was his most productive as a writer. Reading: Thoreau discusses the benefits of classical literature (preferably in the original Greek or Latin), and bemoans the lack of sophistication in Concord, evident in the popularity of unsophisticated literature. He also loved to read books by world travelers. He yearns for a utopian time when each New England village supports "wise men" to educate and thereby ennoble the population. Sounds: Thoreau opens this chapter by warning against relying too much on literature as a means of transcendence. Instead, one should experience life for oneself. Thus, after describing his house's beautiful natural surroundings and his casual housekeeping habits, Thoreau goes on to criticize the train whistle that interrupts his reverie. To him, the railroad symbolizes the destruction of the pastoral way of life. Following is a description of the sounds audible from his cabin: the church bells ringing, carriages rattling and rumbling, cows lowing, whip-poor-wills singing, owls hooting, frogs croaking, and cockerels crowing. Solitude: Thoreau rhapsodizes about the beneficial effects of living solitary and close to nature. He claims to love being alone, saying "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." Visitors: Thoreau writes about the visitors to his house. Among the 25 or 30 visitors is a young French-Canadian woodchopper, Alec Thérien, whom Thoreau idealizes as approaching the ideal man, and a runaway slave, whom Thoreau helps on his journey to freedom in Canada. The Bean-Field: Thoreau relates his efforts to cultivate of beans. He plants in June and spends his summer mornings weeding the field with a hoe. He sells most of the crop, and his small profit of $8.71 covers his needs that were not provided by friends and family. The Village: Thoreau visits Concord every day or two to hear the news, which he finds "as refreshing in its way as the rustle of the leaves." Nevertheless, he fondly but rather contemptuously compares Concord to a gopher colony. In late summer, he is arrested for refusing to pay federal taxes, but is released the next day. He explains that he refuses to pay taxes to a government that supports slavery. The Ponds: In autumn, Thoreau discusses the countryside and writes down his observations about the geography of Walden Pond and its neighbors: Flint's Pond (or Sandy Pond), White Pond, and Goose Pond. Although Flint's is the largest, Thoreau's favorites are Walden and White ponds, which he describes as lovelier than diamonds. Baker Farm: While on an afternoon ramble in the woods, Thoreau gets caught in a rainstorm and takes shelter in the dirty, dismal hut of John Farmer, a penniless but hard-working Irish farmhand, and his wife and children. Thoreau urges Farmer to live a simple but independent and fulfilling life in the woods, thereby freeing himself of employers and creditors. But the Irishman won't give up his aspirations of luxury and the quest for the American dream. Higher Laws: Thoreau discusses whether hunting wild animals and eating meat is necessary. He concludes that the primitive, carnal sensuality of humans drives them to kill and eat animals, and that a person who transcends this propensity is superior to those who cannot. (Thoreau eats fish and occasionally salt pork and woodchuck.) In addition to vegetarianism, he lauds chastity, work, and teetotalism. He also recognizes that Indians need to hunt and kill moose for survival in "The Maine Woods," and ate moose on a trip to Maine while he was living at Walden. Here is a list of the laws that he mentions: * One must love that of the wild just as much as one loves that of the good. * What men already know instinctively is true humanity. * The hunter is the greatest friend of the animal which is hunted. * No human older than an adolescent would wantonly murder any creature which reveres its own life as much as the killer. * If the day and the night make one joyful, one is successful. * The highest form of self-restraint is when one can subsist not on other animals, but of plants and crops cultivated from the earth. Brute Neighbors: Thoreau briefly discusses the many wild animals that are his neighbors at Walden. A description of the nesting habits of partridges is followed by a fascinating account of a massive battle between red and black ants. Three of the combatants he takes into his cabin and examines under a microscope as the black ant kills the two smaller red ones. Later, Thoreau takes his boat and tries to follow a teasing loon about the pond. He also collects animal specimens and ships them to Harvard College for study. House-Warming: After picking November berries in the woods, Thoreau adds a chimney, and finally plasters the walls of his sturdy house to stave off the cold of the oncoming winter. He also lays in a good supply of firewood, and expresses affection for wood and fire. Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors: Thoreau relates the stories of people who formerly lived in the vicinity of Walden Pond. Then he talks about a few of the visitors he receives during the winter: a farmer, a woodchopper, and his best friend, the poet Ellery Channing. Winter Animals: Thoreau amuses himself by watching wildlife during the winter. He relates his observations of owls, hares, red squirrels, mice, and various birds as they hunt, sing, and eat the scraps and corn he put out for them. He also describes a fox hunt that passes by. The Pond in Winter: Thoreau describes Walden Pond as it appears during the winter. He claims to have sounded its depths and located an underground outlet. Then he recounts how 100 laborers came to cut great blocks of ice from the pond, the ice to be shipped to the Carolinas. Spring: As spring arrives, Walden and the other ponds melt with stentorian thundering and rumbling. Thoreau enjoys watching the thaw, and grows ecstatic as he witnesses the green rebirth of nature. He watches the geese winging their way north, and a hawk playing by itself in the sky. As nature is reborn, the narrator implies, so is he. He departs Walden on September 6, 1847. Conclusion: This final chapter is more passionate and urgent than its predecessors. In it, he criticizes conformity: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." By doing so, men may find happiness and self-fulfillment. "I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
292192	/m/01qr1n	Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About	Mil Millington	2002-10-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Pel lives with his German girlfriend Ursula and their two children, and works in the IT department of a university library (or "Learning Centre"). The story begins with Pel receiving an odd call from his boss, TSR, who quizzes him about extradition treaties; within a week he has vanished without a trace, and Pel promoted to TSR's former position, "Computer Team Administration, Software Acquisition and Training Manager" (though, in addition to his own job). The story follows both Pel's home and work lives; at home, there are the arguments with Ursula over the search for a new home, after the latest burglary of their current home; defrosting the fridge during the moving preparations; Ursula terrifying the builders working on the repairs of the new house; a skiing accident, leaving Ursula with a torn ligament in her shoulder. At work, Pel finds that taking on TSR's job involves more than it seemed at first; he has to pay off student recruiters from the Pacific Ring, who happen to be members of The Triads; he has to take care of the details of the building of a new Learning Centre building, which involves hiding the fact that skeletons from an ancient burial ground have been illegally dumped from the site, and a dangerous neurotoxin to be buried under it. These details lead him to become closely involved with the permanently hung over Vice Chancellor of the university, which leads to his receiving another promotion, to Learning Centre Manager; the previous holder of that position having left to pursue his fetish website.
292254	/m/01qrck	Ring for Jeeves	P. G. Wodehouse	1953-04-22	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Unlike most Jeeves and Wooster stories, which only occasional refer to events in the real world, Ring for Jeeves is explicitly set in post-World War II England, where social changes have forced some of those who were formerly members of the idle rich to dispense with their servants and seek employment. Although Bertie Wooster has not yet been reduced to such measures, he has enrolled, prior to the start of the story, in a school that teaches the upper classes how to fend for themselves. In his absence, Jeeves has offered his services to William Egerton Bamfylde Ossingham Belfry, the Earl of Rowcester, who is in poor fortune. The story (in the UK edition) opens with a chance encounter in a pub between the wealthy widow Rosalinda Spottsworth and the white hunter Captain Biggar. The two had met previously on a hunting expedition when Mr Spottsworth was killed. Mrs Spottsworth is on her way to meet the Earl of Rowcester at the invitation of his sister Lady Monica, with the intention of buying Rowcester Abbey. Captain Biggar is in pursuit of a dishonest bookie - he had placed a £5 bet on two horses at high odds and won £3,000, only to discover that the bookie had absconded. At Rowcester Abbey, Monica has arrived with her husband Sir Roderick to assist in the sale of the Abbey, and they are both surprised to find that the Earl is in better fortunes than they had last heard and now able even to afford servants. They are further surprised when they receive two phone calls; the first an anonymous inquiry regarding the Earl's car licence plate number, and the second from the police. When the Earl arrives (in his bookie disguise) he laments having ignored Jeeves' advice to lay off Captain Biggar's bet, and is shocked to find his sister and brother-in-law have come to visit. When told of the plan to sell, he is overjoyed, but thrown when it turns out that he had previously romanced Mrs Spottsworth (under her previous married name), and further thrown when Captain Biggar arrives and is invited to stay. After initial threats from Captain Biggar, he, the Earl and Jeeves hatch a plan to steal a pendant belonging to Mrs Spottsworth, intending to pawn it, and to place the proceeds on an outsider bet at the Derby; Captain Biggar requires the money to feel worthy of proposing to Mrs Spottsworth, bound by a code which frowns on gold digging. Though initial attempts to acquire the pendant serve only to alienate the Earl's fiancée, Jill Wyvern, and the sale of the house, which would have yielded deposit enough to recompense the Captain, are thwarted by the tactlessness of Sir Roderick; Jeeves comes up with a successful plan, which exploits Mrs Spottsworth's fascination in the supernatural. On the day of the Derby the theft of the pendant is discovered and the police called. Jill's father, the Chief Constable, having heard of Jill's suspicions goes to the Abbey intending to horse whip the Earl. Although still angry, Jill warns Jeeves who in turn explains to her the goings-on she had misinterpreted as an affair. The Captain is suspected of the theft because of his absence, and hopes are dashed when the Captain's racing tip comes second in a photo finish. But everything turns out for the best after the Captain returns, having failed to pawn the pendant. He professes his love and explains his code, which Mrs Spottsworth laughs off with the news that one of his friends, to whom he felt bound under this code, had married a richer woman. Jeeves steps in while announcing the engagement, with the suggestion that Mrs Spottsworth ship the house, brick by brick, to America and in doing so secures the sale. The tale ends with Jeeves handing in his notice, as Bertie Wooster has been expelled from the school for cheating.
294171	/m/01q_5b	Water Margin	Shi Naian			 The opening episode in the novel is the release of the 108 spirits, imprisoned under an ancient stele-bearing tortoise., which includes the English translation of the relevant excerpt from the novel. The original text of the chapter can be seen e.g. at 水滸傳/第001回, starting from "只中央一個石碑，約高五六尺，下面石龜趺坐 ..." The next chapter describes the rise of Gao Qiu, one of the primary antagonists of the story. Gao Qiu abuses his status as a grand marshal by bullying Wang Jin, whose father taught Gao a painful lesson when the latter was still a street roaming ruffian. Wang Jin flees from the capital with his mother and by chance he meets Shi Jin, who becomes his student. The next few chapters tell the story of Shi Jin's friend Lu Zhishen, followed by the story of Lu's sworn brother Lin Chong. Lin Chong is framed by Gao Qiu for attempted assassination and almost dies in a fire at a supply depot set by Gao's lackeys. He slays his foes and abandons the depot, eventually making his way to Liangshan Marsh, where he becomes an outlaw. Meanwhile, the "Original Seven", led by Chao Gai, rob a convoy of birthday gifts intended for the minister Cai Jing, another primary antagonist of the story. They flee to Liangshan Marsh after defeating a group of soldiers sent by the authorities to arrest them, and settle down there as outlaws as well, with Chao Gai as chief of the outlaw band. As the story progresses, more people come to join the outlaw band, among whom include army generals and civil servants who grew tired of serving the corrupt government, as well as men with special skills and talents. Stories of the outlaws are told in separate sections in the following chapters. Connections between characters are vague, but the individual stories are eventually pieced together by chapter 40 after Song Jiang succeeds Chao Gai as the leader of the outlaw band, after the latter dies in battle against the Zeng Family Fortress. The plot further develops by illustrating the conflicts between the outlaws and the Song government after the Grand Assembly. Song Jiang strongly advocates making peace with the government and seeking redress for the outlaws. After defeating the imperial armies, the outlaws are eventually granted amnesty by the Emperor Huizong. The emperor recruits them to form a military contingent and allows them to embark on campaigns against invaders from the Liao Dynasty and suppress the rebel forces of Tian Hu, Wang Qing and Fang La within the Song Dynasty's domain. The following outline of chapters is based on a 100 chapters edition. Yang Dingjian's 120 chapters edition includes other campaigns of the outlaws on behalf of Song Dynasty, while Jin Shengtan's 70 chapters edition omits the chapters on the outlaws' acceptance of amnesty and subsequent campaigns. {|class="wikitable" |- !Chapter !Main events |- |1 |Marshal Hong releases the 108 spirits |- |2 |The rise of Gao Qiu |- |2–3 |The story of Shi Jin |- |3–7 |The story of Lu Zhishen |- |7–12 |The story of Lin Chong |- |12–13 |The story of Yang Zhi |- |13–20 |The robbing of the birthday gifts by the "Original Seven" |- |20–22 |The story of Song Jiang |- |23–32 |The story of Wu Song |- |32–35 |The story of Hua Rong |- |36–43 |Song Jiang's encounters in Jiangzhou |- |44–47 |The story of Shi Xiu and Yang Xiong |- |47–50 |The three assaults on the Zhu Family Village |- |51–52 |The story of Lei Heng and Zhu Tong |- |53–55 |The outlaws attack Gaotangzhou; the search for Gongsun Sheng |- |55–57 |The first imperial assault on Liangshan Marsh (led by Huyan Zhuo) |- | 57–59 |The outlaws attack Qingzhou; Huyan Zhuo defects to Liangshan |- |59–60 |The outlaws led by Gongsun Sheng attack Mount Mangdang |- |60 |The first assault by the outlaws on the Zeng Family Village; the death of Chao Gai |- |60–67 |The story of Lu Junyi; the outlaws attack Daming Prefecture; the second imperial assault on Liangshan Marsh (led by Guan Sheng) |- |67 |Guan Sheng defects to Liangshan; The third imperial assault on Liangshan Marsh (led by Shan Tinggui and Wei Dingguo) |- |68 |The second assault by the outlaws on the Zeng Family Fortress; |- |69–70 |The outlaws attack Dongping and Dongchang prefectures |- |71–74 |The Grand Assembly; the funny and lethal antics of Li Kui |- |75–78 |The emperor offers amnesty for the first time; the fourth imperial assault on Liangshan Marsh (led by Tong Guan) |- |78–80 |The fifth imperial assault on Liangshan Marsh (led by Gao Qiu) |- |81–82 |The outlaws are granted amnesty |- |83–89 |The Liangshan heroes attack the Liao invaders |- |90–99 |The Liangshan heroes attack Fang La |- |100 |The tragic dissolution of the Liangshan heroes |} The extended version includes the Liangshan heroes' expeditions against other notable rebel leaders, Tian Hu in Hebei and Wang Qing in Sichuan, prior to the campaign against Fang La. Other stories tells such as the heroes fighting the Jurchen-ruled Jin Dynasty or moving to Siam.
295393	/m/01r53h	The Lazarus Effect	Bill Ransom	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Lazarus Effect continues the story of the planet Pandora that began in The Jesus Incident. The sentient kelp is almost extinct, Ship is gone, there is no more dry land, the majority of humanity is heavily mutated from the genetic experiments performed by Jesus Lewis, and a power-hungry mad man is attempting to control the planet. But the kelp is returning and this time Avata does not remain passive while people refuse to Worship.
296043	/m/01r812	Oblomov	Ivan Goncharov	1859	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel evolved and expanded from an 1849 short story or sketch entitled "Oblomov's Dream. An Episode from an Unfinished Novel", later incorporated as "Oblomov's Dream" ("Son Oblomova") as Chapter 9 in the completed 1859 novel. The novel focuses on the midlife crisis of the main character, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, an upper middle class son of a member of Russia's nineteenth century landed gentry. Oblomov's distinguishing characteristic is his slothful attitude towards life. While a common negative characteristic, Oblomov raises this trait to an art form, conducting his little daily business apathetically from his bed. While clearly comedic, the novel also seriously examines many critical issues that faced Russian society in the nineteenth century. Some of these problems included the uselessness of landowners and gentry in a feudal society that did not encourage innovation or reform, the complex relations between members of different classes of society such as Oblomov's relationship with his servant Zakhar, and courtship and matrimony by the elite. An excerpt from Oblomov's morning (from the beginning of the novel): :Therefore he did as he had decided; and when the tea had been consumed he raised himself upon his elbow and arrived within an ace of getting out of bed. In fact, glancing at his slippers, he even began to extend a foot in their direction, but presently withdrew it. :Half-past ten struck, and Oblomov gave himself a shake. "What is the matter?," he said vexedly. "In all conscience 'tis time that I were doing something! Would I could make up my mind to—to—" He broke off with a shout of "Zakhar!" whereupon there entered an elderly man in a grey suit and brass buttons—a man who sported beneath a perfectly bald pate a pair of long, bushy, grizzled whiskers that would have sufficed to fit out three ordinary men with beards. His clothes, it is true, were cut according to a country pattern, but he cherished them as a faint reminder of his former livery, as the one surviving token of the dignity of the house of Oblomov. The house of Oblomov was one which had once been wealthy and distinguished, but which, of late years, had undergone impoverishment and diminution, until finally it had become lost among a crowd of noble houses of more recent creation. :For a few moments Oblomov remained too plunged in thought to notice Zakhar's presence; but at length the valet coughed. :"What do you want?" Oblomov inquired. :"You called me just now, master?" :"I called you, you say? Well, I cannot remember why I did so. Return to your room until I have remembered." Oblomov spends the first part of the book in bed or lying on his sofa. He receives a letter from the manager of his country estate explaining that the financial situation is deteriorating and that he must visit the estate to make some major decisions, but Oblomov can barely leave his bedroom, much less journey a thousand miles into the country. A flashback reveals a good deal of why Oblomov is so slothful; the reader sees Oblomov's upbringing in the country village of Oblomovka. He is spoiled rotten and never required to work or perform household duties, and he is constantly pulled from school for vacations and trips or for trivial reasons. In contrast, his friend Andrey Stoltz, born to a German father and a Russian mother, is raised in a strict, disciplined environment, reflecting Goncharov's own view of the European mentality as dedicated and hard-working. As the story develops, Stoltz introduces Oblomov to a young woman, Olga, and the two fall in love. However, his apathy and fear of moving forward are too great, and she calls off their engagement when it is clear that he will keep delaying their wedding to avoid having to take basic steps like putting his affairs in order. :"Shall I tell you what you would have done had we married?" at length she said. "Day by day you would have relapsed farther and farther into your slough. And I? You see what I am—that I am not yet grown old, and that I shall never cease to live. But you would have taken to waiting for Christmas, and then for Shrovetide, and to attending evening parties, and to dancing, and to thinking of nothing at all. You would have retired to rest each night with a sigh of thankfulness that the day had passed so quickly; and each morning you would have awakened with a prayer that to-day might be exactly as yesterday. That would have been our future. Is it not so? Meanwhile I should have been fading away. Do you really think that in such a life you would have been happy?" :He tried to rise and leave the room, but his feet refused their office. He tried to say something, but his throat seemed dry, and no sound would come. All he could do was to stretch out his hand. :"Forgive me!" he murmured. :She too tried to speak, but could not. She too tried to extend her hand, but it fell back. Finally, her face contracted painfully, and, sinking forward upon his shoulder, she burst into a storm of sobbing. It was as though all her weapons had slipped from her grasp, and once more she was just a woman—a woman defenceless in her fight with sorrow. :"Good-bye, good-bye!" she said amid her spasms of weeping. He sat listening painfully to her sobs, but felt as though he could say nothing to check them. Sinking into a chair, and burying her face in her handkerchief, she wept bitter, burning tears, with her head bowed upon the table. :"Olga," at length he said, "why torture yourself in this way? You love me, and could never survive a parting. Take me, therefore, as I am, and love in me just so much as may be worthy of it." :Without raising her head, she made a gesture of refusal. During this period, Oblomov is swindled repeatedly by his "friend" Taranteyev and Ivan Matveyevich, his landlady's brother, and Stoltz has to undo the damage each time. The last time, Oblomov ends up living in penury because Taranteyev and Ivan Matveyevich are blackmailing him out of all of his income from the country estate, which lasts for over a year before Stoltz discovers the situation and reports Ivan Matveyevich to his supervisor. Olga leaves Russia and visits Paris, where she bumps into Stoltz on the street. The two strike up a romance and end up marrying. However, not even Oblomov could go through life without at least one moment of self-possession and purpose. When Taranteyev's behavior at last reaches insufferable lows, Oblomov confronts him, slaps him around a bit and finally kicks him out of the house, in a scene in which all the noble traits that his social class was supposed to symbolize shine through his then worn out being. Oblomov has a child with his widowed landlady, Agafia Pshenitsina, but they never marry. They name the child Andrey, after Stoltz, who adopts the boy upon Oblomov's death. Oblomov spends the rest of his life in a second Oblomovka, being taken care of by Agafia Pshenitsina like he used to be as a child. She can prepare many a succulent meal, and makes sure that Oblomov doesn't have a single worrisome thought. Sometime before his death he had been visited by Stoltz, who had promised to his wife a last attempt at bringing Oblomov back to the world, but without success. By then Oblomov had already accepted his fate, and during the conversation he mentions "Oblomovitis" as the real cause of his demise. Oblomov's end is quiet, much like the rest of his life.
296644	/m/01rbjg	Diaspora	Greg Egan	1998-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/07g8l": "Transhumanism", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Diaspora begins with a description of "orphanogenesis", the birthing of a citizen without any ancestors (most citizens descend from fleshers uploaded at some point), and the subsequent upbringing of the newborn Yatima within Konishi polis. Yatima matures within a few real-time days, because citizens' subjective time runs about 800 times as rapidly as flesher and gleisner time. Early on, Yatima and a friend, Inoshiro, use abandoned gleisner bodies to visit a Bridger colony near the ruins of Atlanta on Earth. Years later, the gleisner Karpal, using a gravitational-wave detector, determines that a binary neutron star system in the constellation of Lacerta has collapsed, releasing a huge burst of energy. Previous predictions portrayed the system's stable orbit as likely to last for another seven million years. By analysing irregularities in the orbit, Karpal discovers that the devastating burst of energy will reach Earth within the next four days. Yatima and Inoshiro return to Earth to urge the fleshers — gathered in a conference — either to migrate to the polises or at least to shelter themselves. Many fleshers reject this advice, or fail fully to appreciate its urgency quickly enough. Stirred up by a paranoid Static diplomat, many fleshers suspect that Yatima and Inoshiro have come to trick or coerce them into "Introdus", or mass-migration into the polises, involving masses of virus-sized nanomachines which dismantle a human body and record the brain's information states as it is chemically converted into a crystalline computer. The gamma ray burst reaches Earth shortly after the conference, destroying the atmosphere and causing a mass extinction. The gleisners and the Coalition of Polises survive the burst, thanks to cosmic radiation hardening. Over the next few years, Yatima and other citizens and gleisners attempt to rescue any surviving fleshers from slow suffocation, starvation, or poisoning by offering to upload them into the polises. The novel's title itself refers to a quest undertaken by most of the inhabitants of Carter-Zimmerman ("C-Z"), a polis devoted to physics and understanding the cosmos, along with volunteers from throughout the Coalition of Polises. The Diaspora consists of a collection of one thousand clones (digital copies) of C-Z polis, deployed toward stars in all directions in the hope of gathering as much data as possible in order to revise the long-held classical understanding of Kozuch Theory, which had failed to predict the Lacerta event. The bulk of the novel follows this expedition, rotating back and forth between different cloned instances of the same cast of main characters as different C-Z clones make discoveries along the way, relaying information to one another over hundreds of light years – and finally between universes.
296653	/m/01rbkm	Schild's Ladder	Greg Egan	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Twenty-thousand years in the future, Cass, a humanoid physicist from Earth, travels to Mimosa orbital station and begins a series of experiments to test the extremities of the fictitious Sarumpaet rules, a set of fundamental equations in "Quantum Graph Theory," which holds that physical existence is a manifestation of complex constructions of mathematical graphs. However, the experiments unexpectedly create a bubble of something more stable than ordinary vacuum, dubbed novo-vacuum, that expands outward at half the speed of light as ordinary vacuum collapses to this new state at the border, hinting at more general laws beyond the Sarumpaet rules. The local population is forced to flee to ever more distant star systems to escape the steadily approaching border, but since the expansion never slows, it is just a matter of time before the novo-vacuum encompasses any given region within the Local Group. Two factions develop as the expanding bubble swallows star after star: the Preservationists, who wish to stop the expansion and preserve the Milky Way at any cost; and the Yielders, who consider the novo-vacuum to be too important a discovery to destroy without understanding. Six hundred years after the initial experiment, aboard the Rindler, a vessel that has matched velocities with the border and is powered by multispectral light emitted as the ordinary vacuum collapses into its lower energy-state, a variety of refugees are probing the novo-vacuum in order to understand the physics that makes it possible. The novo-vacuum turns out to be more complicated than anyone suspects, however, and Egan's usual topics of simulation and quantum ontology are taken to the extreme when we learn that a whole ordered universe exists within this zone of apparent chaos, existing as direct elaborations of the quantum graph's lattice structure, of which elementary particles, fundamental interactions, and our spacetime itself are only special cases.
296834	/m/01rc27	Murder on the Links	Agatha Christie	1923	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Captain Hastings arrives in the flat that he now shares with Poirot in London, eager to tell the Belgian detective about a woman with whom he has fallen hopelessly in love on the train from Paris to Calais. But Poirot is busy sorting his mail, impatiently tossing aside bills and banal requests "recovering lost lap dogs for fashionable ladies". Then he finds an extraordinary letter from the south of France: "For God's sake, come!" writes Monsieur Paul Renauld. Poirot decides to investigate and he takes Hastings to France and the Villa Genevieve in Merlinville-sur-Mer on the northern French coast where Renauld wrote from. Asking for directions near the Villa Genevieve, they are watched by a young girl outside another smaller villa who has "anxious eyes". Arriving at Renauld's house, they find they are too late: Renauld is dead. He and his wife were attacked in their rooms at 2.00 in the night by two masked men. Madame Renauld was tied up and her husband taken away by the men wanting to know "the secret". They appear to have got in to the house through the open front door with no sign of forced entry. His body was found stabbed in a newly dug open grave on the edge of a nearby golf course which is under construction and next to the placing of a bunker which was due to be dug that day. The Renaulds' son, Jack, had just been sent away on business to South America and Renauld also gave the chauffeur an unexpected holiday leaving just three female servants in the house who heard nothing. The eldest of the three servants tells Poirot and the police that quite often, after Madame Renauld has retired to bed for the night, her husband has been visited by a neighbour, Madame Daubreuil, who is the mother of the girl with the "anxious eyes", Marthe Daubreuil. The dead man changed his will just two weeks before, leaving almost everything to his wife and nothing to his son. There is a smashed watch at the scene of the kidnap which is still running but has somehow gained two hours. The widow inspects the body to identify it. She loses her composure and collapses with grief at the sight of her dead husband. Poirot is puzzled by some of these findings—why is the watch running fast? Why did the servants hear nothing? Why was the body found somewhere where it was bound to be quickly discovered? Why is there a piece of lead piping near the body? Poirot is hampered in his investigations by the attitude of Monsieur Giraud of the Sûreté who plainly believes the elderly Belgian is too set in his old-fashioned ways to solve the mystery. The local Examining Magistrate, Monsieur Hautet, is more helpful and tells Poirot that he has found out that the Renaulds' neighbour at the Villa Marguerite, Madame Daubreuil, has paid two hundred thousand francs into her bank account in recent weeks: was she Monsieur Renauld's mistress? They visit the lady who is furious when the suggestion is put to her and throws them out. Having now met Madame Daubreuil for the first time, Poirot tells Hastings that he recognises her from a murder case going back some twenty years. Soon after, Jack Renauld arrives back; his trip to Santiago was delayed enabling him to return when he heard of his father's murder. Jack admits to rowing with his father over who he wanted to marry, hence the change of will. Poirot suspects that Marthe Daubreuil is the girl in question and feels that the answer to the problem lies in Paris. He goes there to investigate. Whilst he is away another body is found in a shed on the golf course. No one recognises the man who by his hands could be a tramp but is dressed in finer clothes. The strangest thing is that the man has been dead for forty-eight hours and thus died before Monsieur Renauld's murder. No one recognises the new corpse. Poirot returns from Paris and, without being told details beforehand, staggers Hastings by correctly guessing the age of the man, place of death, and manner of death, despite having been clearly shocked when Hastings originally told him of this new development. He examines the new corpse with the doctor. Poirot sees foam on his lips and the doctor realises the man died of an epileptic fit and was then stabbed after death. When alone, Poirot tells Hastings that his investigations in Paris have borne fruit and that Madame Daubreuil is in fact a Madame Beroldy who was put on trial twenty years previously for the death of her elderly husband. He too was murdered by, supposedly, two masked men who broke into their house at night wanting to know "the secret". Madame Beroldy had a young lover, Georges Conneau, who absconded from justice but wrote a letter to the police admitting to the crime; there were no masked men and he stabbed Monsieur Beroldy himself. Madame Beroldy managed a tearfully-convincing performance in the witness box, convincing the jury of her innocence, but leaving most people suspicious. She then disappeared herself. Poirot deduces that Paul Renauld was in fact Georges Conneau. He fled to Canada and then South America where he made his fortune and gained a wife and a son. When they returned to France, by great misfortune, the immediate neighbour of the house he bought was Madame Beroldy, now Madame Daubreuil, who started to blackmail him. When a tramp died on his grounds of an epileptic fit, Renauld saw a chance to duplicate the ruse of twenty years earlier by faking his own death and escaping his blackmailer with his wife's cooperation. His plan was to send his son away on business, give his chauffeur a holiday, and stage a kidnapping by tying his wife up and disappearing. After leaving the house he would go to the golf course and dig a grave where he knew it would be discovered; he would then put the tramp into the grave after destroying his features with the lead pipe. The plan was for this to happen at midnight, giving Renauld the chance to get away from the local station on the last train and use the smashed watch to create an alibi. Unfortunately, the smashing of the watch did not stop it, so the deception failed on Poirot at least. What then went wrong was that Renauld was stabbed by someone else after he finished digging the grave but before he could fetch the body of the tramp, hence his wife's faint when she saw that the body actually was her husband's. Jack is proven innocent by another girl he was also in love with and as far as Poirot is concerned that leaves only one suspect who had anything to gain by Renauld dying: Marthe Daubreuil, who did not know of the change of will disinheriting Jack and thought that by killing his father she would gain his fortune when she married his son. She overheard the Renaulds discussing using the dead tramp as a ruse and stabbed Renauld on the golf course after he had dug the grave. Poirot arranges for Madame Renauld to openly disinherit Jack in an attempt to force Marthe out.The attempt succeeds and Marthe dies when she tries to kill Madame Renauld. Her mother disappears again. Jack and his mother go to South America and Hastings ends up with Dulcie Duveen, the sister of the girl who was able to prove Jack's innocence. She is also the woman he met on the train at the beginning of the novel.
297239	/m/02x_2n	The Hero with a Thousand Faces	Joseph Campbell		{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Campbell explores the theory that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth. In a well-known quote from the introduction to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell summarized the monomyth: : In laying out the monomyth, Campbell describes a number of stages or steps along this journey. The hero starts in the ordinary world, and receives a call to enter an unusual world of strange powers and events (a call to adventure). If the hero accepts the call to enter this strange world, the hero must face tasks and trials (a road of trials), and may have to face these trials alone, or may have assistance. At its most intense, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help earned along the journey. If the hero survives, the hero may achieve a great gift (the goal or "boon"), which often results in the discovery of important self-knowledge. The hero must then decide whether to return with this boon (the return to the ordinary world), often facing challenges on the return journey. If the hero is successful in returning, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world (the application of the boon). Very few myths contain all of these stages—some myths contain many of the stages, while others contain only a few; some myths may have as a focus only one of the stages, while other myths may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order. These stages may be organized in a number of ways, including division into three sections: Departure (sometimes called Separation), Initiation and Return. "Departure" deals with the hero venturing forth on the quest, "Initiation" deals with the hero's various adventures along the way, and "Return" deals with the hero's return home with knowledge and powers acquired on the journey. The classic examples of the monomyth relied upon by Campbell and other scholars include the stories of Osiris, Prometheus, the Buddha, Moses, and Christ, although Campbell cites many other classic myths from many cultures which rely upon this basic structure. While Campbell offers a discussion of the hero's journey by using the Freudian concepts popular in the 1940s and 1950s, the monomythic structure is not tied to these concepts. Similarly, Campbell uses a mixture of Jungian archetypes, unconscious forces, and Arnold van Gennep's structuring of rites of passage rituals to provide some illumination. However, this pattern of the hero's journey influences artists and intellectuals worldwide, suggesting a basic usefulness for Campbell's insights not tied to academic categories and mid-20th century forms of analysis.
297369	/m/01rft4	The Amethyst Ring				 Julián Estaban, who is impersonating the Mayan god Kukulcán, fights and escapes from a powerful gold hungry conquistador, Hernán Cortés. Kukulcán’s followers captured Rodrigo Perdoza, a bishop carrying a message to Cortés to detain Julián. Julián wants to be a priest and asks the bishop many times to make him one, but in the end he lets the Mayan priest sacrifice him, and Julián takes the bishop's amethyst ring. Cortés attacks and captures Kukulcán’s city, the City of the Seven Serpents, but Julián escapes to a friendly large village and helps them harvest and trade pearls. He then goes to a smaller trading town and partners with Tzom Zambac and they have a successful feathered cloak business. Fearing betrayal from Tzom, he leaves and eventually finds Francisco Pizarro, a conquistador who is taking a band of Spaniards to get gold from the Inca. They capture the Incan king Atahualpa, who has a room filled with gold to pay his ransom. The Spaniards try and kill him anyway. Julián leaves the group because of his disagreements with the trial. He searches for Chima, a daughter of Atahualpa, whom he has fallen in love with. He finds her and she rejects him because he is a Spaniard. Julián then uses all of his gold to sail back to Seville. There he meets Cantú the Dwarf, who is now very wealthy from gold. Cantú gives Julián a lot of gold, but he joins the Brothers of the Poor and gives it all to them.
297431	/m/01rg28	Seven Days in May	Fletcher Knebel			 The story is set several years into the continued cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, not long after a stalemated conflict in Iran similar to the Korean War (the novel gives the date of May 1974, while the film shows a California license plate with a 1970 registration decal, a Texas 1970 license plate, and an electronic map of active military bases displaying the date of May 9, 1970). With the ever-present possibility of nuclear war and mutually assured destruction, U.S. President Jordan Lyman signs a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, with both nations simultaneously destroying their nuclear weapons under mutual international inspection. The ratification produces a wave of public dissatisfaction, especially among the President's opposition and the military, who believe the Soviets cannot be trusted. As the debate rages, a Pentagon insider, United States Marine Corps Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey, becomes aware of a conspiracy among the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) led by his own superior officer, the charismatic Air Force General James Mattoon Scott. He uncovers a shocking secret: Scott and his JCS cohorts, along with allies in the United States Congress, led by Senator Frederick Prentice and influential media personality Harold McPherson, are plotting to stage a coup d'etat to remove President Lyman and his cabinet seven days hence. Under a procedure known as ECOMCON (Emergency COMmunications CONtrol), the nation's telephone, radio and television network infrastructure is to be seized by a secret United States Army combat unit secretly created by Scott and based near Fort Bliss, Texas. From their headquarters within a vast underground nuclear shelter called "Mount Thunder" (based on the actual continuity of government facility maintained by the U.S. at Mount Weather in Berryville, Virginia), the general will use the power of the media and the military to prevent the implementation of the treaty. Although personally opposed to President Lyman's position, Casey is appalled by the unconstitutional cabal. He alerts Lyman and his inner circle: Secret Service Director Art Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Todd, presidential adviser Paul Girard, and United States Senator Raymond Clark of Georgia, a political and personal ally of the president. Lyman sends Casey to New York City to ferret out secrets that can be used against Scott, which forces Casey to cruelly deceive the general's former mistress, the vulnerable Ellie Holbrook. He leaves in possession of letters between her and General Scott which would compromise his moral credibility with the public. The president also sends the aging, alcoholic Clark to El Paso, Texas to see if he can locate the base (covertly known as "Site Y"). Girard leaves for the Mediterranean to obtain a confession from Vice Admiral Farley C. Barnswell, the 6th Fleet commander stationed on the USS Kitty Hawk, who knows of the plot but decides not to actively support or oppose it (responding through a code involving the Preakness Stakes horse race). Girard gains the admiral's written confession, and telephones the President before boarding a plane from Madrid back to Washington. Girard is killed when the passenger airliner he is on crashes into a mountain in Spain. Clark finds the secret base, but is taken captive by conspirator Colonel Broderick and held incommunicado. Clark is visited by the base's deputy commander, Colonel Mutt Henderson, a friend of Jiggs, and who knows nothing of the plot. The senator persuades Henderson to help him escape, but at the airport, while Clark makes a call to the president, Henderson is arrested by Scott's men. A showdown with Scott is scheduled in the Oval Office. The president confronts him and demands his resignation "along with the other members of the Joint Chiefs involved with this treason." Scott initially denies any guilt, claiming that the president had verbally approved the secret base in Texas. When Scott fails to convince the president of his innocence, he begins to talk freely and launches into a debate with Lyman, arguing that approval of the treaty would weaken the U.S. and lead to an attack by the Soviets. Lyman tries to reason with Scott, explaining that a military coup would send a signal that could result in a preemptive strike by Moscow. Scott is unmoved, stating that he feels the American people are behind him and his position. Lyman considers using the blackmail letters, but decides against it. Scott is allowed to leave. Shortly thereafter, Scott briefs the other three members of the JCS, who are close to panicking. He demands everyone stay in line, pointing out that the president does not seem to have the evidence he would need to bring charges of treason successfully. Somewhat reassured, the others agree to stick to the plan to appear on all television and radio networks simultaneously on Sunday to denounce the president. However, Lyman first holds a press conference where he demands the resignation of Scott and all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The conference is interrupted when an attaché from the U.S. Embassy in Spain arrives. He has brought the handwritten confession that Girard obtained from Vice Admiral Barnswell, which survived the crash in Girard's cigarette case. A copy is given to Scott and the other officers in on the plot, who have no choice but to resign and call off the coup. The ending has Lyman addressing the American people on the country's future.
299323	/m/01rpw_	The Years of Rice and Salt	Kim Stanley Robinson	2002	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in various locations around the world, starting in 783 AH by the Islamic calendar (1405 AD by the Gregorian calendar) with the Black Death plague killing nearly 99% of the population of Europe. The story follows a group (jāti) of protagonists who are continually reborn throughout the centuries into various cultural and geographical settings, as well as their meetings in bardo between their lives. The book features Muslim, Chinese (Buddhist, Daoist, Confucianist), American Indian, and Hindu culture, philosophy and everyday life. It mixes sophisticated knowledge about these cultures in the real world with their imagined global development in a world without Western Christendom. The main characters, marked by identical first letters throughout their reincarnations, but changing in gender, culture-nationality and so on, struggle for progress in each life. Each chapter has a narrative style which reflects its setting. Within the novel's re-imagined world, many places are given unfamiliar names, mostly of Chinese or Arabic origin. For example, Europe becomes Firanja, Great Britain and Ireland become the Keltic Sultanate, and Spain becomes al-Andalus; while the Pacific Ocean and Australia are called by Chinese names Dahai (大海) and Aozhou (澳洲), respectively, and North America becomes Yingzhou (鄞州), a land from Chinese myth. The ten chapters are: * Book One - Awake to Emptiness - A plague in Christendom, Zheng He's explorations, feudal China. * Book Two - The Haj in the Heart - Mughal India and the colonization of Europe. * Book Three - Ocean Continents - The discovery of the New World by the Chinese military. * Book Four - The Alchemist - An Islamic renaissance in Samarqand. * Book Five - Warp and Weft - Native Americans align with Samurai. * Book Six - Widow Kang - The Qing dynasty meets Islam in western China. * Book Seven - The Age of Great Progress - Beginnings of industrialism in Southern India; Japanese diaspora to North America. * Book Eight - War of the Asuras - A worldwide "Long War", fought for over 60 years in trenches with pre-atomic weapons between the nations of Islam and an alliance of Chinese, Indian, and Native American nations. * Book Nine - Nsara - Science, urban life and feminism in Islamic Europe's surviving post-war metropolis. * Book Ten - The First Years - Globalization and sustainability, and recovery from the Long War. Several historical figures make appearances in this world, including Tamerlane, Chinese explorer Zheng He, Akbar the Great, and Kampaku Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The first chapter is written in a style reminiscent of the Chinese classic, the Journey to the West. In the last chapters the book becomes increasingly reflexive, citing fictional scientists and philosophers introduced in previous chapters as well as referring to Old Red Ink, who wrote a biography about a reincarnating jati group.
299543	/m/01rqrz	The Fourth Protocol	Frederick Forsyth	1984-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On New Year's Eve 1986, professional thief Jim Rawlings breaks into the apartment of a senior civil servant, and unintentionally discovers stolen top secret documents. Although one of the most notorious crooks in London, he is enough of a patriot to send the documents, anonymously, to MI5 so that they might find the traitor. In Moscow, the British traitor Kim Philby drafts a memorandum for the General Secretary (Soviet president) stating that, if the Labour Party wins the next general election in the UK (scheduled for sometime in the subsequent eighteen months), the "hard left" of the party will oust the moderate, populist Neil Kinnock in favour of a radical new leader who will adopt a true Marxist-Leninist manifesto, including the expulsion of all American forces from England and the country's withdrawal from and repudiation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In conjunction with a GRU general, an academic named Krilov and a master strategist, Philby devises "Plan Aurora" to ensure a Labour victory by exploiting the party's support for unilateral disarmament—although it is noted that Krilov has come up with most of the plan's strategy. MI5 officer John Preston, who was exploring hard left infiltration of the Labour party, investigates the stolen documents and finds that they were leaked by George Berenson, a passionate anti-communist and supporter of South Africa. Berenson passed on the documents to Jan Marais, a man he believes is a South African diplomat, but is in fact a Russian false flag agent. SIS chief Sir Nigel Irvine confronts Berenson with the truth and "turns him", using him to pass disinformation to the KGB. Preston is being pushed towards retirement by a his MI5 superior, but is worried about his retirement finances, wanting custody of his son. As part of Plan Aurora, Russian agent Valeri Petrofsky arrives under deep cover in England and sets up home in Ipswich. From there, he travels around the country collecting packages from various couriers who have smuggled them into the country as harmless-looking artefacts. One of the couriers, disguised as a sailor, is attacked by neds in Glasgow and taken to hospital, where he commits suicide rather than submit to questioning. Preston investigates and finds three out-of-place looking metal discs in a tobacco tin in his gunny sack. He shows the discs to a metallurgist who identifies the outer two as aluminum but the other as polonium, a key element in the initiator of an atomic bomb. Preston reports his findings to his MI5 superior, who ignores them and has Preston taken off the politically embarrassing case. Sir Nigel Irvine, however, suspects that a major intelligence operation is under way, and has Preston work unofficially for him to search for other Russian couriers. At the same time, he uses Berenson to pass a deliberate piece of disinformation to the KGB. In Moscow, the director of operations for the KGB, General Karpov, discovers Aurora's existence. He identifies that the General Secretary is responsible, and blackmails Krilov into revealing the plan; in contravention of the Fourth Protocol to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty a small atomic device is to be smuggled (via its component parts) into England, and be exploded near Bentwaters Air Force Base a week before the general election. Evidence will be left that the explosion was an accidental detonation of an American weapon, leading to a wave of anti-Americanism, support for unilateral disarmament and for the only major party committed to disarmament, the Labour Party. The day after they win the election, the hard left will take over and begin to dismantle the Western alliance in Europe. Meanwhile, Preston tries in vain to uncover other couriers connected to the operation. A month into the investigation, a bumbling Czech agent under the name Franz Winkler arrives at Heathrow with a forged passport and is followed to a house in Chesterfield. Preston's patience is rewarded when Petrofsky shows up to use the radio transmitter that is located there. He trails Petrofsky to his rented house, where the bomb has been assembled. An SAS team is called in to storm the house, and manage to wound Petrofsky before he can detonate the bomb. Against Preston's express wishes, the leader of the SAS team shoots the Russian agent in the head afterwards. Before dying Petrofsky manages to say one last word: “Philby”. Preston confronts Sir Nigel Irvine with his theory that the operation was deliberately blown by Philby. Philby did not know Petrofksy's location but instead, sent Franz Winkler, with an obviously forged passport, to the location of the transmitter, and ultimately, to Petrofsky. Sir Nigel admits to sabotaging the KGB's British operation by leaking disinformation through Berenson to General Karpov, that they were closing in on their suspect. In turn, Karpov (and not Philby) sent Winkler, sabotaging Plan Aurora. By sending Winkler, Karpov is thwarting a British publicity victory as Sir Nigel understood the implication, that Petrofsky must not be taken alive or exposed in the media. At the novel's end, Preston's MI5 superior and adversary is denied a senior leadership role due to his misjudgment in the case and subsequently resigns from MI5 altogether. Preston also resigns, but through Sir Nigel Irvine, finds lucrative private-sector employment that enables him to obtain full custody of his son. Marais is taken into custody by South African intelligence and Berenson's work is left unusable to the KGB, as Sir Nigel, using his own spy network, intends to plant the suspicion that Berenson was in fact a double agent, and so his information will be considered suspect.
300390	/m/01rtr8	Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code	Eoin Colfer	2003-04-27	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Artemis Fowl II, the 13-year-old criminal mastermind, has created a supercomputer which he calls the "C Cube", from stolen fairy technology. It far surpasses any human technology made so far. When Fowl meets Chicago businessman Jon Spiro to show him the Cube, Spiro ambushes Artemis and steals it. In the process, Butler, his bodyguard is killed by one of Spiro's staff. However, Artemis manages to revive him with the aid of cryogenics and fairy healing magic, courtesy of Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon squad. After Butler is revived, Artemis convinces the LEP to track down the Cube. They agree on one condition: that Artemis' mind is to be wiped later. They head to The Spiro Needle, where Jon Spiro has held the Cube. The Cube is recovered with the aid of Butler's sister and Mulch Diggums, who is later incarcerated. Nearing the end of the book, Mulch discovers that Artemis has cleared him of all charges and tasked him with restoring Artemis' memory, which is wiped at the end. In the epilogue, it is revealed that the LEP questioned him to reveal any plans he had to retain his memory, but he managed to fool them, and his plans remained secret from the LEP.
301064	/m/01rx7z	The Little Mermaid	Hans Christian Andersen	1837-04-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 The Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her father, the sea king; her grandmother and her five elder sisters, each born one year apart. When a mermaid turns 15, she is allowed to swim to the surface to watch the world above, and as the sisters become old enough, one of them visits the surface every year. As each of them returns, the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their various descriptions of the surface and of human beings. When the Little Mermaid's turn comes, she ventures to the surface, sees a ship with a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a distance. A great storm hits and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from nearly drowning. She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here she waits until a young girl from the temple finds him. The prince never sees the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid asks her grandmother whether humans can live forever if they do not drown. The grandmother explains that humans have a much shorter lifespan than merfolks' 300 years, but that when mermaids die they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on in Heaven. The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, eventually visits the Sea Witch, who sells her a potion that gives her legs in exchange for her tongue (as the Little Mermaid has the most intoxicating voice in the world). The Sea Witch warns, however, that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea. Drinking the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her, yet when she recovers she will have two beautiful legs, and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. However, it will constantly feel like she is walking on sharp swords hard enough to make her bleed. In addition, she will only get a soul if she finds true love's kiss and if the prince loves her and marries her, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries another woman, the Little Mermaid will die brokenhearted and disintegrate into sea foam. The Little Mermaid drinks the potion and meets the prince, who is mesmorised by her beauty and grace even though she is mute. Most of all he likes to see her dance and she dances for him despite her suffering excruciating pain. When the prince's father orders his son to marry the neighboring king's daughter, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, who he believes rescued him. It turns out that the princess is the temple girl, who had been sent to the temple to be educated. The prince loves her and the wedding is announced. The prince and princess marry, and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has given up and of all the pain she has suffered. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters bring her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife and lets his blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid again, all her suffering will end and she will live out her full life. However the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride and as dawn breaks she throws herself into the sea. Her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warmth of the sun; she has turned into a spirit, a daughter of the air. The other daughters of the air tell her she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to gain an eternal soul. She will earn her own soul by doing good deeds for 300 years; for each good child she finds, one year would be taken from her sentence while for each bad child, she would cry and each tear would mean one day more and she will eventually rise up into the kingdom of God.
301587	/m/01rz2d	The Gods Themselves	Isaac Asimov	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main plotline is a project by aliens who inhabit a parallel universe (the para-Universe) with different physical laws from this one. By exchanging matter with Earth, they seek to exploit these differences in physical laws. The exchange of matter provides an alternative source of energy in their dying Universe. However, the exchange of physical laws will have the ultimate result of turning the Earth's Sun into a supernova, and possibly even turning a large part of the Milky Way into a quasar which, in turn, provides more energy for the para-Universe. The first part takes place on Earth. Frederick Hallam, a scientist of limited ability but with a fiercely protective ego, discovers that an old container's contents seem to have been altered. He initially accuses a colleague of tampering with his sample, and gets a snide remark in return. Hallam responds with a furious effort and eventually finds that the sample, originally tungsten, has been transformed into something that turns out to be plutonium 186—an isotope that cannot occur naturally in our universe. As this is investigated, Hallam makes the crucial suggestion that the matter has been swapped by beings in a parallel universe. This turns out to be correct and leads to the development of a cheap, clean, and apparently endless source of energy: the "Electron Pump", which trades matter between our universe (where plutonium 186 decays into tungsten 186) and a parallel one governed by slightly different physical laws (where tungsten 186 turns into plutonium 186), yielding a nuclear reaction in the process. The development process inextricably ties Hallam to the Pump in the minds of the people, vaulting him into an incredibly high position in public opinion and winning him power, position, and a Nobel Prize to boot. An idealistic young physicist, Lamont, while writing a history of the Pump, comes into conflict with Hallam and begins to question the official history of its discovery. Lamont is convinced that the development of the Pump was mainly due to the "para-men", who he believes are more intelligent; he notes the instructions they had sent early in the project (although only the diagrams, and not the linguistic parts, had been comprehensible). Hallam is infuriated by the suggestion that his role is secondary, and destroys Lamont's career. Lamont enlists the help of Bronowski, a linguist who had won renown for translating the Etruscan language and is looking for a new challenge. As Bronowski works on the para-men's old messages, Lamont discovers that the Pump is in fact creating a dangerous situation that could cause the Sun to become a nova (the pump increases the strong nuclear force inside the sun, causing the sun to fuse its hydrogen fuel more rapidly). This would, incidentally, also doom the para-world by accelerating the cooling of its own sun. Bronowski seems to be making some progress, receiving what appears to be an acknowledgment that the Pump may be dangerous. Lamont attempts to demonstrate this to a politician and several members of the scientific community, but they, seduced by the cheap, presumed clean energy source and unwilling to take Hallam on face-to-face for fear of suffering Lamont's own fate, are unwilling to listen to him. Lamont decides that the only option now is to tell the para-men that the Earth-side agrees to stop, arguing that even if he is killed for it, he will eventually be a hero who saved the world. But then Bronowski reveals his last message which shows that they have in fact been in contact not with the para-authorities but with para-dissidents like himself, who cannot persuade their para-Hallam, and are therefore - in a mirror-image way - begging him to stop the Pump. There seems to be no way out. The second part takes place in the parallel universe. The aliens consist of the "hard ones" and the amorphous "soft ones". The soft ones have three sexes with fixed roles for each sex: * Rationals - Called "lefts", rationals are the logical and scientific sex. Rationals are identified with masculine pronouns and produce a form of sperm. * Emotionals - Called "mids", emotionals are the intuitive sex. Emotionals are identified with the feminine pronouns and provide the energy needed for reproduction. * Parentals - Called "rights", parentals bear and raise the offspring. Parentals are identified with masculine pronouns. All three 'genders' are embedded in sexual and social norms of expected and acceptable behavior. The hard ones regulate much of soft one society, among other things creating families by allocating one of each of the sexes to a mating group, or "triad" in the novel's terminology, and acting as teachers and mentors to the Rationals. Little is shown of "hard one" society and Dua, the protagonist of this section of the book, suspects that the "hard ones" are a dying race since there are no "hard one" children. Her assumption is that the "hard ones" keep the "soft ones" as pets and toys, as a replacement for the children they do not have. This is dismissed by Odeen, the Rational of Dua's triad, who having the most contact with the "hard ones", has heard the "hard ones" speak of a new "hard one" called "Estwald". Dua is an oddball Emotional who exhibits traits normally associated with Rationals, leading her to be called a "left-em". Interestingly, the companions in her triad are also revealed to be unusual and they too behave differently than what is expected from their appropriate sex. She learns about her universe's end of the Pump. By engaging in teachings from Odeen, she also concludes on her own the supernova problem that Lamont uncovered in the first section; outraged that the Pump is allowed to continue to operate, despite the fact that it will eventually result in the destruction of another civilization, she attempts to put a stop to the project. She cannot persuade her own species to abandon the Pump, as they have no choice but to use it - their own sun as well as all the other stars in that universe are dying and can no longer provide the energy they need to continue to reproduce; their only other source of energy is the Pump. The majority decision is that, while their continued use of the Pump will destroy Earth and its solar system, abandoning it will result in their own extinction and thus cannot be done. While Lamont has assumed the destruction of Earth's sun would be fatal for the para-world, it turns out that in fact they would be able to draw energy off such a huge source directly without needing a Pump any more, and thus they would actually be safer once the Earth sun exploded. The differences in the laws of physics in the parallel universe mean that the aliens' bodies do not have the same material properties as living matter in this universe. Instead of consuming material that is then converted into energy, the aliens absorb it directly from sunlight. The different sexes can "melt" and merge physically, their analog of sex (the younger ones and some Emotionals can somehow overcome the repulsion between atoms and melt into walls, which is seen as a social taboo). Rationals and Parentals can do this to some extent independently, but in the presence of an Emotional, they can become essentially immaterial and the "melt" becomes total, the three bodies coming together into one (which causes orgasmic sensations, but also results in blackout and memory loss during the "melt"). Only during such a total "melt" can the Rational "impregnate" the Parental, with the Emotional providing the energy. Driven by an innate desire to procreate, Tritt, the "Parental" of the triad, at first asks Odeen to persuade Dua to facilitate the production of the third child. When this fails, Tritt steals an energy-battery from the Pump and rigs it to feed Dua. She accepts it, as it coincides with her finally being taught by Odeen about physics (which violates the gender norms of this society - Odeen consulted his hard-teacher about the problem of the third child, the teacher encouraged him to go with her abnormalities). Filled with this energy, the triad mates, and Tritt becomes pregnant with their last child. Dua discovers this betrayal and escapes from her family to the caves of the hard ones where she is able to melt through the walls (which is possible because she retained her thinness by eating little in general). Once there she begins a guerilla campaign to stop the Pump, transmitting the alternative messages that Lamont received in the first section. Eventually, her escape method of melting through walls and creating the metal messages cause her to lose too much of the energy needed to continue her existence. As she is about to expire, against all odds she is found by her triad. She is about to defy her triad by seeking to die anyway, but it is finally revealed that once a triad has produced at least one more triad of children to maintain a stable population, they are ready to fuse permanently into a single individual of the species's fully mature form - the hard ones. In fact, they temporarily form this same individual whenever they melt, but have no memory of it afterward. This fact is kept carefully concealed by the mature population from the semi-mature population, because the melt is also a mind-meld, and it is important that the Rational of a triad become mature enough to understand the conditions of their existence by themselves, before the final melt into a mature hard one. Afraid that they will lose the Hard one formed by Dua's triad, the hard ones have coached Odeen into realising the reality of the melt. All members of the triad are exceptional in their own way; Dua has learnt more about the other universe than any hard one, Odeen has shown greater intuition and empathy than a normal Rational, and Tritt has shown greater initiative and technical ability in stealing and setting up the lamp than any other Right. Odeen convinces Dua that the hard one that they will become will have influence with the hard ones to stop the Pump. As they are ready to "pass on", in between thoughts of the daughter she will not know, Dua realizes that in fact the fusion of her triad had produced Estwald himself, the original inventor of the Pump. The third part of the novel takes place on the Moon, centering around a cynical middle-aged physicist named Denison, briefly introduced in Part 1 as the colleague and rival of Hallam whose snide remark drove Hallam to invent the Pump. Denison, independently of Lamont, deduced the danger in the Electron Pump (although it was Lamont who discovered the final technical facts), and goes on to find a solution that harms no one and greatly benefits humanity: he taps into yet another parallel universe, that exists in a pre-big bang state (a cosmic egg or cosmeg), where physical laws are different and, in fact, opposite to the ones in Dua's universe. The exchange with the second parallel universe both produces more energy at little or no cost (which is a pleasant side effect for the Lunar residents, who had been unable to establish electron pumps), and balances out the changes from the use of the Electron Pump, resulting in a return to equilibrium. Denison is helped by a Lunarian tourist guide named Selene Lindstrom, who is secretly an Intuitionist (a genetically engineered human with superhuman intuition). In the end, Selene and Denison also foil a plot to use the new power source to move the moon out of earth orbit.
302301	/m/01s14k	Charlotte's Web	E. B. White	1952	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book begins when John Arable's sow gives birth to a litter of piglets, and Mr. Arable discovers one of them is a runt and decides to kill it. However, his eight-year-old daughter Fern begs him to let it live. Therefore her father gives it to Fern as a pet, and she names the piglet Wilbur. Wilbur is hyperactive and always exploring new things. He lives with Fern for a few weeks and then is sold to her uncle, Homer Zuckerman. Although Fern visits him at the Zuckermans' farm as often as she can, her visits decrease as she grows older, and Wilbur gets lonelier day after day. Eventually, a warm and soothing voice tells him that she is going to be his friend. The next day, he wakes up and meets his new friend: Charlotte, the grey spider. Wilbur soon becomes a member of the community of animals who live in the cellar of Zuckerman's barn. However, he learns from an old sheep that he is going to be killed and eaten at Christmas, and turns to Charlotte for help. Charlotte has the idea of writing words in her web extolling Wilbur's excellence ("some pig," "terrific," "radiant," and eventually "humble"), reasoning that if she can make Wilbur sufficiently famous, he will not be killed. Thanks to Charlotte's efforts, and with the assistance of the gluttonous rat Templeton, Wilbur not only lives, but goes to the county fair with Charlotte and wins a prize. Having reached the end of her natural lifespan, Charlotte dies at the fair. Wilbur repays Charlotte by bringing home with him the sac of eggs (her "magnum opus") she had laid at the fair before dying. When Charlotte's eggs hatch at Zuckerman's farm, most of them leave to make their own lives elsewhere, except for three: Joy, Aranea, and Nellie, who remain there as friends to Wilbur.
302997	/m/01s3z4	Howl's Moving Castle	Diana Wynne Jones	1986	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A young woman named Sophie Hatter is the eldest of three daughters living in the town of Market Chipping in the magical kingdom of Ingary, where many fairy-tale tropes are accepted ways of life. She is very deft with the needle and makes the most beautiful hats and dresses. She unknowingly talks life into objects. As the eldest, she is resigned to the "fact" that she will have no chance of finding her fortune, accepting that she will have a dull life running the family hat shop—until she is turned into an old crone by the Witch of the Waste, a powerful witch who was not satisfied by Sophie's hats. Sophie leaves the shop and finds work as a cleaning lady for the notorious Wizard Howl, famed in her town for eating the hearts of beautiful young women. Sophie strikes a bargain with Howl's resident fire demon, Calcifer: if Sophie can break the contract between Howl and Calcifer, then Calcifer will return Sophie to her original form. Part of the contract, however, stipulates that neither Howl nor Calcifer can disclose the main clause of the contract to any third party. Sophie tries to guess the specifics of the contract, while Calcifer supplies frequent hints which Sophie usually doesn't pick up. Sophie soon learns that Howl, a rather self-absorbed, dishonest and cavalier but ultimately good-natured person (and an extraordinary wizard), spreads these malicious rumours about himself to ensure his privacy and smear his own reputation to avoid work and responsibility. The door to his castle is actually a portal that opens onto four different places: the moving castle Sophie first encounters in the hills above Market Chipping, the seaside city of Porthaven, the royal capital of Kingsbury and Howl's boyhood home in Wales, where he was named Howell Jenkins. Howl realizes that Sophie is under a spell and secretly attempts to remove the curse; when met with failure, he comes to the conclusion that Sophie simply enjoys being in disguise. Howl's apprentice Michael Fisher runs most of the day-to-day affairs of Howl's business, while Howl chases his ever-changing paramours. Howl and Michael court Sophie's two younger sisters Lettie and Martha, respectively. Martha, the youngest, was sent to study magic, while the middle sister, Lettie, was apprenticed at a local bakery. Disguising herself as Lettie, Martha arranged for the two of them to switch places, as Fanny (Martha's mother and Sophie and Lettie's stepmother) did not take their wishes into account when arranging their apprenticeships. When Prince Justin (the King's younger brother) goes missing while searching for Wizard Suliman (Benjamin Sullivan, also from Wales), the King orders Howl to find Suliman and Justin and kill the Witch of the Waste. Howl, however, has his own reasons to avoid seeking a confrontation with the Witch of the Waste; the Witch, a jaded former lover, has laid a curse on him. Howl attempts to weasel out of it by having Sophie, pretending to be his mother, petition against the appointment— but to no avail. Instead of blackening Howl's name like he asked Sophie to do, she gets him appointed the new Royal Wizard, the post he has been trying to avoid for years. Howl continues to avoid the Witch of the Waste until she lures Sophie into a trap; believing that the Witch has taken Howl's current love interest, Lily Angorian, captive, Sophie goes to save her and is in turn captured by the Witch of the Waste. Howl comes to save Sophie and defeats the Witch of the Waste. He knew all along that Miss Angorian was actually the Witch's fire demon in disguise. The Witch's fire demon had, over the years, taken control of the Witch and, once the Witch is defeated, tries to take Howl's heart to stay alive. Howl is able to stop the demon but fails because Miss Angorian took hold of Calcifer and tried to squeeze Howl's heart out of him. Sophie uses her talent of talking things to life to break the contract between Howl and Calcifer without killing either of them. Sophie has been unconsciously retaining the spell on herself, but her concern for Howl weakens the spell, and with the death of the Witch of the Waste, who was a significant force behind the spell as well, Calcifer, as promised, breaks the spell the second she concludes the contract between him and Howl, and she returns to her proper age. When Howl awakens, he destroys the witch's fire demon. This breaks the curse on Wizard Suliman and Prince Justin, whom the Witch had fused together in an effort to create a 'perfect human' (Howl's head was meant to complete the being) to use as a puppet to rule Ingary. Calcifer returns under the condition that he can come and go as he wishes. Sophie and Howl admit they love each other (without actually saying it) and Howl suggests they live happily ever after.
303045	/m/01s445	Joy	Marsha A. Hunt	1990-04-12	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first person narrator of the novel is Palatine Ross, a 70 year-old cleaning woman originally from New Orleans whose childhood is dominated by poverty and loss. One of six children whose father left the family never to be seen again, she experiences even more hardship when three of her brothers, who work as farm hands, die in a burning barn. When, shortly afterwards, her mother also dies, it falls upon Palatine to raise her two remaining siblings, Caesar and Helen. After the end of the Second World War, Palatine marries, and the newlyweds decide to leave the South for good. They move to Oakland, California, with Caesar and Helen in tow, both of whom have by now become alcoholics. Palatine, who has had no formal education, and her husband start working as "apartment managers", a job which mainly consists in collecting the rent and scrubbing the floors of the building where they live. Their marriage remains childless though, and the couple find solace by becoming active members of one of the local churches. When, in 1956, a young widowed mother of three moves into the apartment next to theirs, Palatine recognizes in one of the girls, eight year-old Joy Bang, her "God-sent child", the one she could never have herself, especially when she notices that Joy's mother prefers Joy's sisters over her. For the next twenty years or so, Palatine keeps "sticking her two cents in". A do-gooder, she turns the other family's life upside down by showering Joy with her affection and meddling with her mother's way of bringing up her three children. However, for reasons yet unknown to Palatine (and the reader), Joy's mother is grateful for Palatine's interference, and no open conflict arises. Shutting her eyes to all the evil in the world and firmly relying on God and the words of the Bible as guidance, Palatine tries to raise Joy and her sisters to be educated, honest and religious members of society. The fact that, growing up in a rough neighbourhood, the not yet teenaged girls are very early in their lives confronted with sex willingly escapes her notice. It troubles Palatine a lot when Dagwood, her neighbour's new boyfriend, starts spending the night with the girls' mother. One morning during the summer vacation, while his girlfriend is at work and Palatine is taking care of the children, Dagwood stays on in the apartment. While he is hung over and still half asleep, ten year-old Brenda, the oldest, performs oral sex on him, with Joy watching. Briefly at a loss, Palatine, on learning about this unbelievable incident, talks to Dagwood and demands of him that he leave town immediately without even waiting for his girlfriend to return from work. Also, she makes Brenda and Joy "swear eternal secrecy" and never tell their mother about it. Some years later she arranges a secret backstreet abortion for Anndora, the youngest of the three sisters who is still in high school, which, though "successful", results in the girl never being able to become pregnant again. Right from the start, Palatine tries to take the three girls along to church, seeing that their blaspheming mother will never do so. It is there that, during choir practice, the girls' -- especially Brenda's -- singing talent is discovered. Eventually, after winning first prize in a gospel contest some time in the mid-1970s, the three sisters are offered a chance to go to a recording studio and release a single, "Chocolate Chip", a song specially written for them. Calling themselves Bang Bang Bang (after their family name), they immediately become popular with both black and white audiences and, in 1977, after their song has hit the charts, start touring both the United States and parts of Europe. While their mother stays behind, Palatine is on the road with them wherever they go ("Them times was the best I had in my life") as their "wardrobe mistress", "a cleaning woman who they'd drug along to make sure Brenda got up in the morning and Anndora came back at night", as the latter "went out with any Tom, Dick or Harry that invited her" and "couldn't go a whole day without sex". The entrance into the world of show business leaves some indelible marks on the girls' lives. Whereas Brenda, a big and violent girl generally considered ugly, puts on a lot of weight (especially during their stay in Germany), her sisters are quickly initiated into the world of drug use and abuse. What worries Palatine much more though is Joy's tendency to ignore her being black—without any chance ever of passing for white as she is far too dark-skinned. Time and again, in the course of more than twenty years, Palatine tries to convince Joy that finding herself a nice coloured boyfriend whom she could marry and have children with would be the right thing to do. ("Don't go falling in love with no limousine, 'cause it won't never propose to you.") However, Joy never listens to her. Rather, she tells Palatine to "think big" and "think white" and does not have a single African American lover. The attraction Joy feels towards WASP men culminates in her affair with an English lord who is married with four little children. One of the rare comic passages of the book is about the three sisters and 60 year-old Palatine going to a charity ball in Knightsbridge, London, where Joy meets her young lord while Palatine dances with an old Englishman (Ch.14): The fogyish man with the white hair that I'd shouted don't give yourself a cardiac to must of figured that I was making a pass at him, 'cause the next time that "Chocolate Chip" played he come over to me and pulled me out on the dance floor, and I thanked God that Joy Bang had taught me to do that dance 'cause with me supposed to be their manager that night, it wouldn't of looked right if I hadn't of known how to Chocolate Chip like them old white folks that was trying it. "Go 'head with your bad ass self," I said to get him hotted up. I don't know if he knew that was just meant to be friendly and get him dancing better, but it was as much as I could do to give him some encouragement. When he lifted up his leg like a dog ready to pee and stuck out what behind he had and shook it all over, I smiled like he was dancing real good, but not once was he in time with the rhythm. When he got tired of doing the Chocolate Chip he twisted for a while. I laughed to myself and thought if colored folks danced that bad we wouldn't never be allowed on no dance floor. However, "Chocolate Chip" remains a one hit wonder after an interview given by Brenda to some gay magazine in which she announces her coming out as a lesbian. She leaves the group and goes to Boston, where she takes some menial job at the post office. Anndora goes to Milan, Italy, never to be heard of again, and Joy moves to New York City to be close to Rex Hightower, a country and western singer who seems to be her new boyfriend, "a rednecked toothpick from Oklahoma" who wears "his hair in a ponytail like a woman's" and who arranges for Joy to do occasional backup vocals. Their mother moves to Richmond, Virginia and eventually marries a retired policeman. Palatine and Joy never lose touch completely: From time to time Palatine gets a letter with news from her favourite Bang sister with a few banknotes added; sometimes Joy phones her; and once or twice a year she comes to see Palatine and her husband, who have moved to San Francisco. In the mid-1980s, however, Palatine starts worrying about Joy as on two occasions she borrows money from her. In March 1987, while Palatine is looking forward to spending a weekend with Joy in Reno gambling, Joy dies, aged only 39, in Taos, New Mexico, allegedly of a massive heart attack. On hearing the bad news, Palatine flies to New York for Joy's funeral. There, in Joy's posh split level apartment, she encounters the whole family. However, rather than being able to mourn Joy's death, she for the first time learns things about Joy which finally force her to abandon her blinkered view of her "God-sent child" and admit that she was a sinner rather than a saint.
303439	/m/01s5pg	Breakfast of Champions	Kurt Vonnegut	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kilgore Trout is a widely published, but otherwise unsung and virtually invisible writer who, by a fluke, is invited to deliver a keynote address at a local arts festival in distant Midland City. Dwayne Hoover is a wealthy businessman who owns much of Midland City, but is mentally unstable and is undergoing a gradual mental collapse. Kilgore arrives in Midland City and, by happenstance, piques the interest of Dwayne. A confused Dwayne demands a message from Kilgore, who hands over a copy of his novel. Dwayne reads the novel, which purports to be a message from the Creator of the Universe explaining that the reader - in this case Dwayne - is the only individual in the universe with free will. Everyone else is a robot. Dwayne believes the novel to be factual and immediately goes on a violent rampage, severely beating his son, his lover, and nine other people before being taken into custody. While Kilgore is walking the streets of Midland after Dwayne's rampage the narrator of the book approaches Kilgore. The narrator tells Kilgore of his existence, the narrator lets Kilgore be free and to be under his own will.
303465	/m/01s5tc	Mother Night	Kurt Vonnegut	1961	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During the Nazi build-up after Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933, Campbell decides to stay in Germany despite his parents' decision to leave. He continues to write plays, his only associations being with members of the ruling Nazi party as his social contacts. Being of sufficiently Aryan parentage, Campbell becomes a member of the Nazis in name only. He is politically apathetic, caring only for his art and his wife Helga, who is also the starring actress in all of his plays. The first part of the book ends after Campbell has an encounter on a park bench in the Berlin Zoo. While sitting on the bench he is approached by a man calling himself Frank Wirtanen, an agent of the U.S. War Department. Wirtanen wants Campbell to spy for the U.S. in the upcoming war. Campbell immediately rejects the offer, but Wirtanen quickly adds that he wants Campbell to think about it. He tells him that Campbell's answer will come in the form of how he acts and what positions he assumes once the U.S. and Germany declare war on each other. Once World War II starts, Campbell begins to make his way up through Joseph Goebbels' propaganda organization, eventually becoming the "voice" of broadcasts aimed at converting Americans to the Nazi cause. The spy part of the job comes in when he is transmitting his vitriolic messages; unbeknownst to the Nazis, all of the idiosyncrasies of his speech (deliberate pauses, coughing, etc.) are part of the coded information he is passing to the American Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency). Campbell never discovers, nor is he ever told (except in one notable instance), the information that he is sending. About halfway through the war his wife goes to the eastern front to entertain the German troops. Campbell is extremely distraught when he hears that the camp where she had been entertaining in Crimea had been overrun and she was presumed dead. (In a much later exchange, Wirtanen reveals the sad truth; Campbell's wife's probable death was included in one of his own coded messages about a week before Campbell was told). Right before the Soviet Army invades Berlin, Campbell visits his in-laws one last time. Helga's father had been chief of police in Berlin and tells Campbell that he never liked him, and had always thought that Campbell was a spy. He goes on to say though that even if he had been a spy, he had been so good at the propaganda business that he never could have served the other side better than he had served Nazi Germany. Campbell then has an exchange with Helga's younger sister, Resi, that will resonate with him years later. Eventually, he is captured by U.S. forces. Wirtanen works a deal in which Campbell is set free and then given passage to New York City, whence the rest of the action of the book takes place. In New York City, Campbell lives a lonely, anonymous life, sustained only by memories of his wife and an indifferent curiosity about his eventual fate. His only friend is George Kraft, a similarly lonely neighbor—who, through an extraordinary coincidence, also happens to be a Soviet intelligence agent. He tries to trick Campbell into fleeing to Moscow by publicizing the fact that Campbell has been living in New York since the end of the war. A white supremacist organization learns of his existence and makes him a cause celebre, inviting him to speak to new recruits as a "true American patriot." The group's leader, a dentist named Lionel Jones, shows up at Campbell's apartment with a surprise: a woman claiming to be Helga, alive and well and professing her undying love. Campbell's will to live returns for the first time in years, and remains even after he finds out that she is not Helga, but rather her younger sister Resi. They plan to escape to Mexico City after attending one of Jones' fascist meetings. There, Wirtanen makes an appearance to warn Campbell of Kraft's plot, and of Resi's complicity in it. Heartbroken, Campbell decides to go along with the charade. He confronts Kraft and Resi, the latter swearing her feelings for him are genuine. The FBI then raids the meeting and takes Campbell into custody, while Resi commits suicide by taking a cyanide capsule. As before, Wirtanen uses his influence to get Campbell set free. Once Campbell returns to his apartment, however, he realizes that he has no real reason to continue living, and decides to turn himself in to the Israelis to stand trial. The book ends as it began, with Campbell sitting in his Israeli jail cell waiting for his trial. Coincidentally, he meets Adolf Eichmann and gives him advice on how to write an autobiography. He then is transferred to a different holding cell where he further awaits his trial. At the very end of the book Campbell inserts a letter that he has just received from Wirtanen. The corroborating evidence that he was indeed an American spy during World War II has finally arrived, and Wirtanen writes that he will testify to Campbell's true loyalties in court. Rather than being relieved, Campbell feels "nauseated" by the idea that he will be saved from death and granted freedom when he is no longer able to take pleasure in anything life has to offer. In the last lines Campbell tells us that he will hang himself not for crimes against humanity, but rather for "crimes against himself." "This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral, I just happen to know what it is..." Vonnegut's "So-it-goes" nonchalance announces on the first page of the Introduction. "The moral of the story" appears again and throughout Mother Night from this point on, and Vonnegut periodically elaborates upon it after saying, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." As a minor adjunct to this moral, Vonnegut later offers the observation that "When you're dead, you're dead." The author then pauses and says, "And yet another moral occurs to me now; Make love when you can. It's good for you."
305084	/m/01sdhr	Freedom Evolves	Daniel Dennett	2003-02	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 As in Consciousness Explained, Dennett advertises the controversial nature of his views extensively in advance. He expects hostility from those who fear that a skeptical analysis of freedom will undermine people's belief in the reality of moral considerations; he likens himself to an interfering crow who insists on telling Dumbo he doesn't really need the feather he believes is allowing him to fly. Dennett's stance on free will is compatibilism with an evolutionary twist – the view that, although in the strict physical sense our actions might be pre-determined, we can still be free in all the ways that matter, because of the abilities we evolved. Free will, seen this way, is about freedom to make decisions without duress (and so is a version of Kantian positive practical free will, i.e., Kantian autonomy), as opposed to an impossible and unnecessary freedom from causality itself. To clarify this distinction, he coins the term 'evitability' as the opposite of 'inevitability', defining it as the ability of an agent to anticipate likely consequences and act to avoid undesirable ones. Evitability is entirely compatible with, and actually requires, human action being deterministic. Dennett moves on to altruism, denying that it requires acting to the benefit of others without gaining any benefit yourself. He argues that it should be understood in terms of helping yourself by helping others, expanding the self to be more inclusive as opposed to being selfless. To show this blend, he calls such actions 'benselfish', and finds the roots of our capacity for this in the evolutionary pressures that produced kin selection. In his treatment of both free will and altruism, he starts by showing why we should not accept the traditional definitions of either term. This strategy comes down to dissolving problems, instead of solving them. Rather than try to answer certain flawed questions, he questions the assumptions of the questions themselves and undermines them. Dennett also suggests that adherence to high ethical standards might pay off for the individual, because if others know your behaviour is restricted in these ways, the scope for certain beneficial mutual arrangements is enhanced. This is related to game theoretical considerations: in the famous Prisoner's Dilemma, 'moral' agents who cooperate will be more successful than 'non-moral' agents who do not cooperate. Cooperation wouldn't seem to naturally arise since agents are tempted to 'defect' and restore a Nash equilibrium, which is often not the best possible solution for all involved. Dennett concludes by contemplating the possibility that people might be able to opt in or out of moral responsibility: surely, he suggests, given the benefits, they would choose to opt in, especially given that opting out includes such things as being imprisoned or institutionalized. Daniel Dennett also argues that no clear conclusion about volition can be derived from Benjamin Libet's experiments supposedly demonstrating the non-existence of conscious volition. According to Dennett, ambiguities in the timings of the different events involved. Libet tells when the readiness potential occurs objectively, using electrodes, but relies on the subject reporting the position of the hand of a clock to determine when the conscious decision was made. As Dennett points out, this is only a report of where it seems to the subject that various things come together, not of the objective time at which they actually occur. Suppose Libet knows that your readiness potential peaked at millisecond 6,810 of the experimental trial, and the clock dot was straight down (which is what you reported you saw) at millisecond 7,005. How many milliseconds should he have to add to this number to get the time you were conscious of it? The light gets from your clock face to your eyeball almost instantaneously, but the path of the signals from retina through lateral geniculate nucleus to striate cortex takes 5 to 10 milliseconds — a paltry fraction of the 300 milliseconds offset, but how much longer does it take them to get to you. (Or are you located in the striate cortex?) The visual signals have to be processed before they arrive at wherever they need to arrive for you to make a conscious decision of simultaneity. Libet's method presupposes, in short, that we can locate the intersection of two trajectories: * the rising-to-consciousness of signals representing the decision to flick * the rising to consciousness of signals representing successive clock-face orientations so that these events occur side-by-side as it were in place where their simultaneity can be noted. Dennett spends a chapter criticising Robert Kane's theory of libertarian free will. Kane believes freedom is based on certain rare and exceptional events, which he calls self-forming actions or SFA's. Dennett notes that there is no guarantee such an event will occur in an individual's life. If it does not, the individual does not in fact have free will at all, according to Kane. Yet they will seem the same as anyone else. Dennett finds an essentially indetectable notion of free will to be incredible.
305160	/m/01sdtw	Rainbow Six	Tom Clancy	1998-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Central Intelligence Agency operatives John Clark and Domingo Chavez join Special Air Service (SAS) officer Alistair Stanley in forming an elite multinational counter-terrorist unit known as Rainbow, based in Hereford, England. The unit consists of a highly effective and cohesive pair of operational squads, supplemented by intelligence and technological experts from the SAS. Clark is the commanding officer, while Chavez leads one of the two squads. Not long after the establishment of Rainbow, a bank in Bern, Switzerland, becomes the site of a hostage situation, eventually determined to be led by wanted terrorist Ernst Model. In an early and desperate show of resolve, the terrorists kill one of the hostages, leading the Swiss government to seek help from Rainbow. Chavez's Team-2 is deployed to the scene and, disguised as policemen, is able to successfully breach the bank and kill the terrorists with no further loss of civilian lives. Several weeks later, Chavez is deployed to Austria, where a group of left-wing German terrorists have taken over the schloss of a wealthy Austrian businessman, Erwin Ostermann, in order to obtain imaginary "special access codes" to the international trading markets. Through careful planning and negotiating, the terrorists are persuaded to take their hostages out to a waiting helicopter, presumably to make their getaway. On their way to the helicopter, Rainbow's disguised shooters ambush and kill them. Soon afterward, even more terrorists take over a Spanish theme park, demanding the release of Carlos the Jackal in exchange for the thirty-five children they have taken hostage. Due to the size and scope of the operation, Rainbow deploys both of its squads. During the stand-off, Rainbow is unable to prevent the terrorists' execution of a terminally ill Dutch girl. The squads manage to eliminate the terrorists without further loss of innocent life. Clark and his colleagues become suspicious about this flurry of activity from older terrorists. Unbeknownst to them, radical eco-terrorists from a biotechnology firm called the Horizon Corporation have orchestrated the previous attacks, having hired ex-KGB officer Dimitriy Popov to foment the incidents. The increase in terror attacks helps their security firm land a contract during the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. From within the Olympic security apparatus, they plan to launch a sophisticated bioweapon attack intended to wipe out the majority of the human race. Upon learning about Rainbow, Popov directs members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army to take over a local hospital in Hereford near Rainbow's base, take Clark and Chavez's wives hostage, and ambush one of Rainbow's squads. Rainbow and the SAS retake the hospital, capturing some of the terrorists. Interrogation reveals Popov's involvement in instigating the attack. Now the focus of a manhunt, Popov is kept hidden at Horizon's secret base in Kansas. Upon learning about the planned Olympic attack, an appalled Popov escapes the compound and contacts Clark. Fortunately, Chavez is present at the Olympics as a security consultant and manages to thwart the attack. Their plans destroyed, the eco-terrorists retreat to their refuge deep in the Brazilian rain forest, hoping to negotiate a deal to return to the United States. Clark, knowing that they may never be put on trial, tracks down the Brazilian hideout and deploys Rainbow to the location. After Rainbow defeats the eco-terrorists' militia force and destroys their facility and supplies, Clark has the survivors stripped naked and left to die, taunting them to "reconnect with nature." For his critical assistance, Popov is not charged for his role in the attacks. The Horizon Corporation continues as a legitimate pharmaceutical corporation, without their CEO and the other employees involved in the never-revealed plot.
305372	/m/01sfsw	Jasmine	Bharati Mukherjee	1989	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main backdrop of Jasmine, which was based on an earlier short story in The Middleman and Other Stories, is the mixing of the East and West through the story telling of a seventeen-year-old Hindu woman who leaves India for the U.S. after her husband's murder. Her husband dies due to a religious attack in India. In her path she faces many problems including rape and eventually returned to the position of a health professional through a series of jobs. Here in this context the unity between the First and Third World is shown to be in the treatment of women as subordinate in both countries. The story expanded as a story of a young widow suddenly widowed at seventeen. She uproots herself from her life in India and re-roots herself in search of a new life and the image of America as well. It is a story of dislocation and relocation as the protagonist continually sheds lives to move into other roles, moving further westward. The author in some parts of this novel shows some agony to the third world as she shows that Jasmine needs to travel to America to make something significant in her life. And in the third world she faced only despair and loss.
305504	/m/01sgfy	Far from the Madding Crowd	Thomas Hardy	1874	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gabriel Oak is a young shepherd. With the savings of a frugal life, and a loan, he has leased and stocked a sheep-farm. He falls in love with a newcomer eight years his junior, Bathsheba Everdene, a proud beauty who arrives to live with her aunt, Mrs. Hurst. She comes to like him well enough, and even saves his life once, but when he makes her an unadorned offer of marriage, she refuses; she values her independence too much and him too little. Gabriel's blunt protestations only serve to drive her to haughtiness. After a few months, she moves to Weatherbury, a village some miles off. When next they meet, their circumstances have changed drastically. An inexperienced new sheep dog drives Gabriel's flock over a cliff, ruining him. After selling off everything of value, he manages to settle all his debts, but emerges penniless. He seeks employment at a work fair in the town of Casterbridge (a fictionalised version of Dorchester). When he finds none, he heads to another fair in Shottsford, a town about ten miles from Weatherbury. On the way, he happens upon a dangerous fire on a farm and leads the bystanders in putting it out. When the veiled owner comes to thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers her face and reveals herself to be none other than Bathsheba. She has recently inherited the estate of her uncle and is now a wealthy woman. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she hires him. Meanwhile, Bathsheba has a new admirer: the lonely and repressed William Boldwood. Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about forty whose ardour Bathsheba unwittingly awakens when – her curiosity piqued because he has never bestowed on her the customary admiring glance – she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words "Marry me". Boldwood, not realising the valentine was a jest, becomes obsessed with Bathsheba, and soon proposes marriage. Although she does not love him, she toys with the idea of accepting his offer; he is, after all, the most eligible bachelor in the district. However, she postpones giving him a definite answer. When Gabriel rebukes her for her thoughtlessness, she fires him. When her sheep begin dying from bloat, she discovers to her chagrin that Gabriel is the only man who knows how to cure them. Her pride delays the inevitable, but finally she is forced to beg him for help. Afterwards, she offers him back his job and their friendship is restored. At this point, the dashing Sergeant Francis "Frank" Troy returns to his native Weatherbury and by chance encounters Bathsheba one night. Her initial dislike turns to infatuation after he excites her with a private display of swordsmanship. Gabriel observes Bathsheba's interest in the young soldier and tries to discourage it, telling her she would be better off marrying Boldwood. Boldwood becomes aggressive towards Troy and she goes to Bath to prevent Troy returning to Weatherbury, as she fears Troy may be harmed on meeting Boldwood. On their return, Boldwood offers his rival a large bribe to give up Bathsheba. Troy pretends to consider the offer, then scornfully announces they are already married. Boldwood withdraws humiliated and vows revenge. Bathsheba soon discovers that her new husband is an improvident gambler with little interest in farming. Worse, she begins to suspect that he does not love her. In fact, Troy's heart belongs to her former servant, Fanny Robin. Before meeting Bathsheba, Troy had promised to marry Fanny; on the wedding day, however, the luckless girl goes to the wrong church. She explains her mistake, but Troy, humiliated at being left waiting at the altar, angrily calls off the wedding. When they part, unbeknownst to Troy, Fanny is pregnant with his child. Some months afterward, Troy and Bathsheba encounter Fanny on the road, destitute, as she painfully makes her way toward the Casterbridge workhouse. Troy sends his wife onward with the horse and gig before she can recognise the girl, then gives her all the money in his pocket, telling her he will give her more in a few days. Fanny uses up the last of her strength to reach her destination. A few hours later, she dies in childbirth, along with the baby. Mother and child are then placed in a coffin and sent home to Weatherbury for interment. Gabriel, who has long known of Troy's relationship with Fanny, tries to conceal the child's existence – but Bathsheba, suspecting the truth and wild with jealousy, arranges for the coffin to be left in her house overnight. When all the servants are in bed, she unscrews the lid and sees the two bodies inside – her husband's former lover and their child. Troy then comes home from Casterbridge, where he had gone to keep his appointment with Fanny. Seeing the reason for her failure to meet him, he gently kisses the corpse and tells the anguished Bathsheba, "This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be." The next day he spends all his money on a marble tombstone with the inscription "Erected by Francis Troy in beloved memory of Fanny Robin...". Then, loathing himself and unable to bear Bathsheba's company, he leaves. After a long walk he bathes in the sea, leaving his clothes on the beach. A strong current carries him away, though he is rescued by a rowing boat. A year later, with Troy presumed drowned, Boldwood renews his suit. Burdened with guilt over the pain she has caused him, Bathsheba reluctantly consents to marry him in six years, long enough to have Troy declared dead. Troy, however, is not dead. When he learns that Boldwood is again courting Bathsheba, he returns to Weatherbury on Christmas Eve to claim his wife. He goes to Boldwood's house, where a party is underway, and orders Bathsheba to come with him; when she shrinks back in surprise, he seizes her arm, and she screams. At this, Boldwood shoots Troy dead and tries unsuccessfully to turn the gun on himself. Although he is condemned to hang for murder, his friends petition the Home Secretary for mercy, citing insanity. This is granted and Boldwood's sentence is changed to "confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure". Bathsheba, profoundly chastened by guilt and grief, buries her husband in the same grave as Fanny and their child, and adds a suitable inscription. Throughout her tribulations, she comes to rely more and more on her oldest and (as she admits to herself) only real friend, Gabriel. When he gives notice that he is leaving her employ for California, she finally realises how important he has become to her well-being. That night, she goes alone to visit him in his cottage, to find out why he is (in her eyes) deserting her. Pressed, he reluctantly reveals that it is because people have been injuring her good name by gossiping that he wants to marry her. She exclaims that it is "...too absurd – too soon – to think of, by far!" He bitterly agrees that it is absurd, but when she corrects him, saying that it is only "too soon", he is emboldened to ask once again for her hand in marriage. She accepts, and the two are quietly wed.
306191	/m/01sk1g	Vineland	Thomas Pynchon	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set in California, United States, in 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan's re-election. After a scene in which ex-hippie Zoyd Wheeler dives through a window, something he is required to do yearly in order to keep receiving mental disability checks, the action of the novel opens with the resurfacing of DEA agent Brock Vond, who (through a platoon of agents) forces Zoyd and his 14-year-old daughter Prairie out of their house. They hide from Brock, and from Hector Zuñiga (a drug-enforcement federale from Zoyd's past, who Zoyd suspects is in cahoots with Brock) with old friends of Zoyd's, who recount to the mystified Prairie the story of Brock's motivation for what he has done. This hinges heavily on Frenesi Gates, Prairie's mother, whom she has never met. In the '60s, during the height of the hippie era, the fictional College of the Surf seceded from the United States and became its own nation of hippies and dope smokers, called the People's Republic of Rock and Roll (PR³). Brock Vond, working for the DEA, intends to bring down PR³, and finds a willing accomplice in Frenesi. She is a member of 24fps, a militant film collective (other members of which are the people telling Prairie their story in the present day), that seeks to document the "fascists' " transgressions against freedom and the hippie ideals. Frenesi is uncontrollably attracted to Brock and the sex he provides, and ends up working as a double agent to bring about the killing of the de facto leader of PR³, Weed Atman (a math professor who accidentally became the subject of a cult of personality). Her betrayal caused Frenesi to need to flee, and she has been living in witness protection with Brock's help up until the present day. Now she has disappeared. The membership of 24fps, Brock Vond, and Hector Zuñiga are all searching her out, for their various motives. The book's theme of the ubiquity of television (or the Tube) comes to a head when Hector, a Tube addict who has actually not been working with Brock, finds funding to create his pet project of a movie telling the story of the depraved sixties, with Frenesi Gates as the star, and the pomp and circumstance surrounding this big-money deal create a net of safety that allows Frenesi to come out of hiding. 24fps finds her and achieves their goal of allowing Prairie to meet her, at an enormous reunion of Frenesi's family. Weed Atman is also present at the reunion as one of many Thanatoids in the book—people who are in a state that is "like death, but different." Brock, nearly omnipotent with DEA funds, finds Prairie with a surveillance helicopter, and tries to snatch her up in order to get to Frenesi, but while he is hovering above her on a ladder, the government abruptly cuts all his funding due to a loss of interest in funding the war on drugs because America has begun playing along willingly with the anti-drug ideal, and his helicopter pilot flies him away. Later he tries to come after Prairie and Frenesi again, but ends up stranded on a country road, where vengeful mechanics, acquaintances of 24fps, take him to cross the river of death and become a Thanatoid. The family reunion allows everyone to tie up all their loose ends together, and the book ends with Prairie looking into the beginning of a life no longer controlled by the fallout of the past.
306344	/m/01skl3	Hallowe'en Party	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story starts out inside Rowena Drake's house, which is called "Apple Trees". There, Ariadne Oliver and others are preparing a Hallowe'en party for children. Those in charge of the party are Judith Butler, Mrs. Oliver's friend; Leopold, Joyce and Anne Reynolds, Desmond Holland, Nicholas Ransom, Cathie Johnson, Elizabeth Whittaker, Beatrice Ardley, and others. While they are preparing, thirteen-year old Joyce Reynolds says that she once saw a murder. Everyone, including Mrs. Oliver, thinks she is lying. The party consists of many Hallowe'en-related activities. Mrs. Goodbody plays the role of a witch, and girls can look into a mirror to know what their future husbands will look like (a picture of the husband is said to be reflected in the mirror). The group has supper, the prizes are granted, and the party ends after a game of snapdragon, with the murder of course fitting into the whole situation. The next day, Mrs. Oliver goes to London seeking Hercule Poirot's help. She tells him that after snapdragon, Joyce went missing and was later found drowned in an apple-bobbing tub in the library. Mrs. Oliver repeats to Poirot Joyce's comment that she had once witnessed a murder; Mrs. Oliver now wonders if Joyce might have been telling the truth, which might provide someone with a motive for killing her. Poirot goes to Apple Trees to interview Rowena Drake. Rowena doesn't believe Joyce's murder story; rather, she thinks it was just Joyce's attempt to impress Mrs. Oliver. Next to be interviewed are the Reynoldses. Mrs. Reynolds can't say that Joyce ever told her that she saw a murder. Leopold, Joyce's younger brother, doesn't believe that Joyce saw a murder either, but he did hear Joyce telling everyone about it. Ann, Joyce's older sister, doesn't believe either that Joyce had seen a murder; she says Joyce was a liar and a fraud. Hercule Poirot asks his old friend, an ex-superintendent named Spence, to give him a list of murders which had taken place years before and that could possibly be the murder that Joyce claimed to have witnessed. Spence obliges: Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, the aunt of Rowena Drake's late husband, apparently died of a heart attack. Her death is suspicious because a codicil to her will was discovered afterwards. Authorities believe that the codicil was faked by an au pair girl, Olga Seminoff, who disappeared after the forgery was discovered. Other candidate murders involve Charlotte Benfield, a sixteen-year-old shop assistant found dead of multiple head injuries, with two young men under suspicion; Lesley Ferrier, a lawyer's clerk who was stabbed in the back; and Janet White, a schoolteacher who was strangled. Hercule Poirot thinks Janet White's murder is the most probable candidate for the murder Joyce witnessed, because strangulation might not appear at first sight to be murder. Hercule Poirot continues his investigation by interviewing Dr. Ferguson, who tells Poirot that Joyce was once his patient. When Poirot goes Elms School, he is greeted by the headmistress, Miss Emlyn. Meanwhile, a mathematics teacher named Elizabeth Whittaker, who was also present at the party, gives Hercule Poirot an important piece of evidence when she reveals that while the party-goers were playing Snapdragon, Elizabeth went out to hall and saw Rowena Drake coming out of the lavatory on the first floor landing. Rowena stood for a moment before coming downstairs, looking startled by something or someone she may have seen in the open door of the library, and then dropped the flower vase she was holding. Other suggestive pieces of evidence include the fact that Lesley Ferrier had previously been suspected of forgery. Were Lesley and Olga working together to secure Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's inheritance? Poirot visits a sunken garden built for Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe in an abandoned quarry, where he meets Michael Garfield, the handsome and talented young man who designed the garden. While there, he also meets Judith Butler's daughter, Miranda Butler, a striking young girl who is close to Michael and spends a great deal of time in the Quarry Garden. Mrs. Drake meets Poirot at his guest house to tell him that Leopold Reynolds, Joyce's younger brother, has been drowned. Poirot reveals that Leopold had been blackmailing Joyce's murderer and had got in over his head. Mrs. Drake, obviously very upset by Leopold's death, admits that she saw Leopold in the library, which caused her to think he might have killed his sister. Poirot persuades the police to dig up an abandoned well in the Quarry Garden. Within its depths are discovered the remains of Olga, who had been stabbed, like Ferrier. Poirot sends Mrs. Oliver to get Mrs. Butler and Miranda safely away from the village as soon as possible, but when they stop for lunch, Miranda is abducted by Michael Garfield, who takes her to a pagan sacrificial altar and tries to kill her. He is prevented from doing so by Nicholas Ransom and Desmond Holland, two teenagers who had been at the Hallowe'en party and whom Poirot had persuaded to trail Miranda. Michael Garfield commits suicide by swallowing the poison that he had intended Miranda to drink. Miranda Butler tells the authorities that she was the one who saw a murder, not her close friend Joyce, to whom she revealed some of the details of what she witnessed. Miranda admits that in the Quarry garden she saw Michael Garfield and Rowena Drake carrying Olga's dead body and heard Mrs. Drake wonder aloud if anyone was watching them. Joyce, an inveterate fantasist, had made the story her own, and since Miranda had not attended the party, she hadn't contradicted Joyce. Rowena Drake heard Joyce and thought that it was Joyce who had seen her and Michael with Olga's corpse. Drake had always sensed that someone was watching them that fateful day. Mrs. Drake intentionally dropped the vase of flowers in front of Miss Whittaker to invent a pretext for being wet after having drowned Joyce. Subsequently, Leopold had used what little he knew to blackmail Rowena, leading to his murder.Mrs. Rowena Drake and Michael Garfields were the 2 killers of the 2 murders that took place. Michael Garfield played the role of lover to Olga to help Rowena Drake secure Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's inheritance. The real will, leaving Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's fortune to Olga, had been replaced with a clumsy forgery, produced by Lesley Ferrier, which would be rendered invalid and Rowena Drake, the sexually-frustrated wife of an invalid, would ultimately control Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's estate as her closest relation. Lesley Ferrier and Olga Seminoff were murdered to conceal the deceit. Garfield's motivation was his obsessive, narcissistic desire to construct another perfect garden with Mrs. Drake's money on a Greek island that she has secretly purchased. Poirot hypothesises that Rowena Drake might have met a similar fate to the other women as Garfield would no longer have any use for her. Poirot's also intuits that the bond between Miranda and Garfield was a familial one: Judith Butler is not a widow, but rather the mother of Garfield's illegitimate daughter. Garfield's depraved willingness to murder his own daughter confirms the tremendous evil that Poirot has been able to uncover and defeat. What an evil night...
306530	/m/01slgk	Empire of the Sun	J. G. Ballard	1984-09-13	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The novel recounts the story of a young British boy, Jaime Graham, who lives with his parents in Shanghai. After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese occupy the Shanghai International Settlement, and in the following chaos Jim becomes separated from his parents. He spends some time in abandoned mansions, living on remnants of packaged food. Having exhausted the food supplies, he decides to try to surrender to the Japanese Army. After many attempts, he finally succeeds and is interned in the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center. Although the Japanese are "officially" the enemies, Jim identifies partly with them, both because he adores the pilots with their splendid machines and because he feels that Lunghua is still a comparatively safer place for him. Towards the end of the war, with the Japanese army collapsing, the food supply runs short. Jim barely survives, with people around him starving to death. The camp prisoners are forced upon a march to Nantao, with many dying along the route. Jim then leaves the march and is saved from starvation by air drops from American Bombers. Jim returns to Lunghua camp and finds Dr. Ransome there, soon returning to his pre-war residence with his parents.
306554	/m/01sll5	Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them	Al Franken	2003	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them largely targets prominent Republicans and conservatives, highlighting what Franken asserts are documentable lies in their claims. A significant portion of the book is devoted to comparisons between President George W. Bush and former president Bill Clinton regarding their economic, environmental, and military policies. Franken also criticizes several pundits, especially those he believes to be the most dishonest, including O'Reilly, Hannity, and Coulter.
307403	/m/01sqcx	Maurice	E. M. Forster		{"/m/0cgx58": "Gay novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 We first encounter Maurice Hall (pronounced "Morris") aged fourteen having a discussion about sex and women with his prep-school teacher, Ben Ducie, which takes place just before he progresses to his public school. This sets the tone for the rest of the novel, as Maurice feels removed from the depiction of marriage with a woman as the goal of life. When Maurice enters university, he soon makes friends with fellow student Clive Durham, who introduces him to the ancient Greek writings about homosexual love. For two years they have a committed if chaste romance, which they keep hidden from everyone they know. Maurice hopes for more from their platonic attachment, but it becomes clear that Clive intends to marry, even though Forster's prose leaves no doubts that his marriage will probably entail a mostly joyless union. Maurice grows older, leaves the university without taking his degree, and gets a good job as a stockbroker. In his spare time, he helps to run a Christian mission's boxing gym for working class boys in the East End, although under Clive's influence he has long since abandoned his Christian beliefs. He makes an appointment with a hypnotist, Mr. Lasker Jones, in an attempt to "cure" himself. Lasker Jones refers to his condition as "congenital homosexuality" and claims a 50 per cent success rate in "curing" gay men. After the first appointment it is clear that the therapy has failed. Maurice's unfulfilled emotional longings come closer to being resolved when he is invited to stay at Penge with the Durhams'. There, at first unnoticed by him, lurks the young under-gamekeeper Alec Scudder (called just Scudder for large passages of the book, to emphasise the class difference), who has noticed Maurice. One night he uses a ladder to climb into Maurice's bedroom, answering Maurice's call unheard by anyone else. After their first night together, Maurice panics and, because of his treatment of Alec, the latter threatens to blackmail Maurice. Maurice goes to Lasker Jones one more time. Knowing that the therapy is failing, he tells Maurice to consider relocating to a country that has adopted the Code Napoleon, meaning one in which homosexual conduct is no longer criminal, such as France or Italy. Maurice wonders if homosexuality will ever be acceptable in England, to which Lasker Jones replies "I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature." Maurice and Alec meet at the British Museum in London to discuss the blackmail. It becomes clear that they are in love with each other, and Maurice calls him Alec for the first time. After another night lying arm-in-arm together, it becomes clear that Alec has a ticket for a trip to Argentina, and will not return. Maurice asks Alec to stay with him, and indicates that he knows he has to give up his social and financial position, even his class status. Alec does not accept the offer. After initial resentment Maurice decides to give Alec a sendoff. He is taken aback when Alec is not at the harbour. In a hurry, he makes for Penge, where the two lovers were supposed to have met before at a boathouse. He finds there Alec, who tells him that he had sent a telegram stating that he was to come to the boathouse. Alec had changed his mind, and intends to stay with Maurice, telling him that they "shan't be parted no more" and they live happily ever after. Maurice visits Clive and outlines what has happened with Alec. Clive is left speechless and unable to comprehend. Maurice disappears into the woods to rejoin Alec. In the original manuscripts, Forster wrote an epilogue concerning the post-novel fate of Maurice and Alec that he later discarded, because it was unpopular among those to whom he showed it. This epilogue can still be found in the Abinger edition of the novel. This edition also contains a summary of the differences between various versions of the novel. The Abinger reprint of the Epilogue retains Maurice's original surname of Hill throughout. The epilogue contains a meeting between Maurice and his sister Kitty some years later. Alec and Maurice have by now become woodcutters. It dawns upon Kitty why her brother disappeared. This portion of the novel underlines the extreme dislike that Kitty feels for her brother. The epilogue ends with Maurice and Alec in each other's arms at the end of the day discussing seeing Kitty and resolving that they must move on in order to avoid detection or a further meeting.
308435	/m/01svsq	The Ice Storm	Rick Moody	1994	{"/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/0q9mp": "Tragicomedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place over Thanksgiving weekend 1973, during a dangerous ice storm and centers on two neighboring families, the Hoods and the Williamses, and the difficulties they have dealing with the tumultuous political and social climate of the day, in affluent suburban Connecticut, during the height of the sexual revolution. The novel is narrated from four different perspectives, each of them a member of the two families, who are promoting their own opinion and views of the several complications that arise throughout the novel, including their encounters and daily life. The Hood family is overridden with lies: Ben is currently in an affair with his married neighbor Janey, his wife Elena is alienated, her daughter ventures on her own sexual liaisons with both females and males of her age, including her neighbors Mikey and Sandy. The Hoods are Ben, Elena, Paul and Wendy and the Williamses are Jim, Janey, Mikey, and Sandy. The story focuses on the 24 hours when a major ice storm strikes the town of New Canaan, Connecticut, just as both families are melting down from the parents' alcoholism, escapism and adultery, and their children's drug use and sexual experimentation.
308659	/m/01swpk	Three Comrades	Erich Maria Remarque	1937	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The city, which is never referred to by name (however, it is likely Berlin), is crowded by a growing number of jobless and marked by increasing violence between left and right. The novel starts out in the seedy milieu of bars where prostitutes mingle with the hopeless flotsam that the war left behind. While Robert and his friends manage to make a living dealing cars and driving an old taxi, economic survival in the city is getting harder by the day. It is in this setting that Robert meets Patrice Hollmann, a mysterious beautiful young woman with an upper middle class background. Their love affair intensifies as he introduces her to his life of bars and races and Robert's nihilistic attitude slowly begins to change as he realizes how much he needs Pat. The story takes an abrupt turn as Pat suffers a near-fatal lung hemorrhage during a summer holiday at the sea. Upon their return, Robert and Pat move in with each other but her days in the city are numbered, as she is scheduled to leave for a Swiss mountain sanatorium come winter. It is this temporal limitation of their happiness which makes their remaining time together so precious. After Pat has left for Switzerland, the political situation in the city heats up and Lenz, one of the comrades, gets killed by a militant, not mentioned in the book by the actual name but supposed to be a Nazi. On top of this, Otto and Robert face bankruptcy and have to sell their workshop. In the midst of this misfortune, a telegram arrives informing them of Pat's worsening state of health. The two remaining comrades don't hesitate and drive the thousand kilometers to the tuberculosis sanatorium in the Alps to see her. Reunited, Robert and an increasingly moribund Pat celebrate their remaining weeks before her inevitable death amidst the snow-covered summits of Switzerland. It is in the last part of the book that this beautiful love story finds closure and leaves the main character, a nihilist who has found love, forever changed.
308766	/m/01sx2s	Pericles, Prince of Tyre	William Shakespeare	1609		 John Gower introduces each act with a prologue. The play opens in the court of Antiochus, king of Antioch, who has offered the hand of his beautiful daughter to any man who answers his riddle; but those who fail shall die. <poem> I am no viper, yet I feed On mother's flesh which did me breed. I sought a husband, in which labour I found that kindness in a father: He's father, son, and husband mild; I mother, wife, and yet his child. How they may be, and yet in two, As you will live, resolve it you. </poem> Pericles, the young Prince (ruler) of Tyre in Phoenicia (Lebanon), hears the riddle, and instantly understands its meaning: Antiochus is engaged in an incestuous relationship with his daughter. If he reveals this truth, he will be killed, but if he answers incorrectly, he will also be killed. Pericles hints that he knows the answer, and asks for more time to think. Antiochus grants him forty days, and then sends an assassin after him. However, Pericles has fled the city in disgust. Pericles returns to Tyre, where his trusted friend and counsellor Helicanus advises him to leave the city, for Antiochus surely will hunt him down. Pericles leaves Helicanus as regent and sails to Tarsus, a city beset by famine. The generous Pericles gives the governor of the city, Cleon, and his wife Dionyza, grain from his ship to save their people. The famine ends, and after being thanked profusely by Cleon and Dionyza, Pericles continues on. A storm wrecks Pericles&#39; ship and washes him up on the shores of Pentapolis. He is rescued by a group of poor fishermen who inform him that Simonedes, King of Pentapolis, is holding a tournament the next day and that the winner will receive the hand of his daughter Thaisa in marriage. Fortunately, one of the fishermen drags Pericles&#39; suit of armour on shore that very moment, and the prince decides to enter the tournament. Although his equipment is rusty, Pericles wins the tournament and the hand of Thaisa (who is deeply attracted to him) in marriage. Simonedes initially expresses doubt about the union, but soon comes to like Pericles and allows them to wed. A letter sent by the noblemen reaches Pericles in Pentapolis, who decides to return to Tyre with the pregnant Thaisa. Again, a storm arises while at sea, and Thaisa appears to die giving birth to her child, Marina. The sailors insist that Thaisa&#39;s body be set overboard in order to calm the storm. Pericles grudgingly agrees, and decides to stop at Tarsus because he fears that Marina may not survive the storm. Luckily, Thaisa&#39;s casket washes ashore at Ephesus near the residence of Lord Cerimon, a physician who revives her. Thinking that Pericles died in the storm, Thaisa becomes a priestess in the temple of Diana. Pericles departs to rule Tyre, leaving Marina in the care of Cleon and Dionyza. Marina grows up more beautiful than Philoten the daughter of Cleon and Dionyza, so Dionyza plans Marina&#39;s murder. The plan is thwarted when pirates kidnap Marina and then sell her to a brothel in Mytilene. There, Marina manages to keep her virginity by convincing the men that they should seek virtue. Worried that she is ruining their market, the brothel rents her out as a tutor to respectable young ladies. She becomes famous for music and other decorous entertainments. Meanwhile, Pericles returns to Tarsus for his daughter. The governor and his wife claim she has died; in grief, he takes to the sea. Pericles&#39; wanderings bring him to Mytilene where the governor Lysimachus, seeking to cheer him up, brings in Marina. They compare their sad stories and joyfully realise they are father and daughter. Next, the goddess Diana appears in a dream to Pericles, and tells him to come to the temple where he finds Thaisa. The wicked Cleon and Dionyza are killed when their people revolt against their crime. Lysimachus will marry Marina.
309081	/m/01sycb	The Forever War	Joe Haldeman	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 William Mandella is a physics student conscripted for an elite task force in the United Nations Exploratory Force being assembled for a war against the Taurans, an alien species discovered when they apparently suddenly attacked human colonists' ships. The UNEF ground troops are sent out for reconnaissance and revenge. The elite recruits have IQs of 150 and above, are highly educated, healthy and fit. Training is gruellingfirst on Earth, in Missouri, and later on Charon (not Pluto's moon, which had not yet been discovered at the time of the novel's writing, but a hypothetical planet beyond Pluto's orbit), which results in a number of casualtiesmainly due to accidents in hostile environments but also due to the use of live weapons in training. The new soldiers then depart for action, traveling via wormhole-like phenomena called 'collapsars' (called Black Holes today) that allow ships to cover thousands of light-years in a split second. However, traveling to and from the collapsars at near-lightspeed has massive relativistic effects. Their first encounter with (unarmed) Taurans on a planet orbiting Epsilon Aurigae turns into a massacre, with the unresisting enemy base wiped out. Mandella melancholically reflects on how typical the encounter was for humanity's previous record in interaction with other cultures. This first expedition, beginning in 1997, lasted only two years from the soldier's perspective, but due to time dilation, upon return to Earth decades have passed. On the long way home, the soldiers experience future shock first-hand, as the Taurans employ increasingly advanced weaponry against them while they do not have the chance to re-arm. Mandella, with soldier, lover and companion Marygay Potter, returns to civilian life, only to find humanity drastically changed. He and his fellow soldiers have difficulty fitting into a future society that has evolved almost beyond their comprehension. The veterans learn that to curb overpopulation, which led to worldwide class wars caused by inequitable rationing, homosexuality has become officially encouraged by many of the world's nations. The world has become a very dangerous place due to widespread unemployment and the easy availability of deadly weapons. The changes within society alienate Mandella and the other veterans to the point where many re-enlist to escape, even though they realize the military is a soulless construct. Mandella attempts to get an assignment as an instructor on Luna but is promptly reassigned by standing order to combat command. The inability of the military to treat its soldiers as more than highly complex valuable machines is a theme of the story. Almost entirely through luck, Mandella survives four subjectively experienced years of military service, which time dilation makes equivalent to several centuries. He soon becomes the objectively oldest surviving soldier in the war, attaining high rank through seniority, not ambition (he is essentially a pacifist and an eternally reluctant soldier, who acts mostly from talent and a melancholic sense of duty). Despite this he is separated from Marygay (who has remained his last contact with the Earth of his youth) by UNEF's plans, despite the fact that many of the people who he would command had not yet been born. As the commanding officer of a 'strike force', Mandella commands soldiers who speak a language largely unrecognizable to him, whose ethnicity is now nearly uniform and are exclusively homosexual. He is disliked by the soldiers because they have to learn 21st century English to communicate with him and other senior staff, and because he is heterosexual. Engaging in combat thousands of light years away from Earth, Mandella and his soldiers need to resort to medieval weapons in order to fight inside a "stasis field" which neutralizes all electromagnetic radiation in anything not covered with a protective coating. They battle to survive what is to be the last conflict of the war. During the time that has since passed on Earth, humankind has begun to employ human cloning, resulting in a new, collective species calling itself Man. Man has developed a means of communication unique and inherent to clones, which allows them to communicate with the Taurans, leading to peace. When Man finally gains the ability to communicate with the Taurans, it is discovered that the Taurans were not responsible for the millennium-old destruction of the colonial vessels in question. The futile, meaningless war that lasted for more than a thousand years ends. Man establishes several colonies of old-style, heterosexual humans, just in case the evolutionary change proves to be a mistake. Mandella travels to one of these colonies, named 'Middle Finger' in the definitive novel adaption. There he is reunited with Marygay, who had been discharged much earlier and had intentionally used time dilation to age at a much slower rate, hoping and waiting for Mandella's return. The epilogue is a news item from the year 3143 AD announcing the birth of a "fine baby boy" to Marygay Potter-Mandella.
309323	/m/01szfq	Bambi, A Life in the Woods	Felix Salten	1923	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bambi is a roe deer fawn born in a thicket to a young doe in late spring one year. Over the course of the summer, his mother teaches him about the various inhabitants of the forest and the ways deer live. When she feels he is old enough, she takes him to the meadow which he learns is both a wonderful but also dangerous place as it leaves the deer exposed and in the open. After some initial fear over his mother's caution, Bambi enjoys the experience. On a subsequent trip, Bambi meets his Aunt Ena, and her twin fawns Faline and Gobo. They quickly become friends and share what they have learned about the forest. While they are playing, they encounter princes, male deer, for the first time. After the stags leave, the fawns learn that those were their fathers, but that the fathers rarely stay with or speak to the females and young. As Bambi grows older, his mother begins to leave him alone. While searching for her one day, Bambi has his first encounter with "He"—the animal's term for humans—which terrifies him. The man raises a firearm and aims at him; Bambi flees at top speed, joined by his mother. After he is scolded by a stag for crying for his mother, Bambi gets used to being alone at times. He later learns the stag is called the old Prince, the oldest and largest stag in the forest who is known for his cunning and aloof nature. During the winter, Bambi meets Marena, a young doe, Nettla, an old doe who no longer bears young, and two princes Ronno and Karus. Mid-winter, hunters enter the forest, killing many animals including Bambi's mother. Gobo also disappears and is presumed dead. After this, the novel skips ahead a year, noting that Bambi was cared for by Nettla, and that when he got his first set of antlers he was abused and harassed by the other males. It is summer and Bambi is now sporting his second set of antlers. He is reunited with Faline. After he battles and defeats first Karus then Ronno, Bambi and Faline express their love for one another. They spend a great deal of time together. During this time, the old Prince saves Bambi's life when he nearly runs towards a hunter imitating a doe's call. This teaches the young buck to be cautious about blindly rushing toward any deer's call. During the summer, Gobo returns to the forest having been raised by a man who found him collapsed in the snow during the hunt where Bambi's mother was killed. While his mother and Marena welcome him and celebrate him as a "friend" of man, the old Prince and Bambi pity him. Marena becomes his mate, but several weeks later Gobo is killed when he approaches a hunter in the meadow, falsely believing the halter he wore would keep him safe from all men. As Bambi continues to age, he begins spending most of his time alone, including avoiding Faline though he still loves her in a melancholy way. Several times he meets with the old Prince who teaches him about snares, shows him how to free another animal from one, and encourages him not to use trails to avoid the traps of men. When Bambi is later shot by a hunter, the Prince shows him how to walk in circles to confuse the man and his dogs until the bleeding stops, then takes him to a safe place to recover. They remain together until Bambi is strong enough to leave the safe haven again. When Bambi has grown gray and is "old", the old Prince shows him that man is not all powerful by showing him the dead body of a man who was shot and killed by another man. When Bambi confirms that he now understands that "He" is not all powerful, and that there is "Another" over all creatures, the stag tells him that he has always loved him and calls him "my son" before leaving to die. At the end of the novel, Bambi meets with twin fawns who are calling for their mother and he scolds them for not being able to stay alone. After leaving them, he thinks to himself that the girl fawn reminded him of Faline, and that the male was promising and that Bambi hoped to meet him again when he was grown.
309408	/m/01szvg	Robots and Empire	Isaac Asimov	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Earthman Elijah Baley (the detective hero of the previous Robot books), has died nearly two centuries earlier. During these two centuries, the balance of forces in the galaxy has changed dramatically. Inspired partly by Baley's adventures in space (on the "Spacer" worlds of Solaria and Aurora), Earth-people have overcome their stagnation and agoraphobia, and embarked on a new wave of space colonization, using faster-than-light drive to reach distant planets throughout the Milky Way Galaxy, beyond the earlier "Spacer" worlds. These newly colonized worlds are clearly distinct from the earlier "Spacer" ones, and their inhabitants, calling themselves "Settlers" rather than "Spacers", revere Earth as their mother-world. Meanwhile, Baley's memory remains in the mind of his former lover, Gladia Delmarre, a "Spacer", who has a centuries-long lifespan, as opposed to the seven or eight decades that Earth people (such as Baley) live. It is discovered that Solaria, the homeworld of Gladia, and the 50th-established of the Spacer planets, has been abandoned and has become empty of all inhabitants (except for millions of robot servants, which have been left behind). Gladia then meets a seventh-generation descendant of Baley's, Daneel Giskard (or D.G.) Baley, a Settler-Trader. He asks for Gladia's help in visiting Solaria, in order to unravel the mysterious destruction of several "Settler" spaceships making landings there, and also with the mission of reclaiming the abandoned robots. Gladia agrees to go, and is accompanied by the positronic robots R. Daneel Olivaw and R. Giskard Reventlov. [R. Giskard has secret telepathic powers about which only R. Daneel knows.] These robots are both the former property of their creator, Dr. Han Fastolfe, who bequeathed them to Gladia in his will. At the same time, Daneel and Giskard are engaged in a struggle of wits with Fastolfe's bitter archrivals, the roboticists Kelden Amadiro and Vasilia Aliena, Fastolfe's estranged daughter. Whereas Fastolfe supported the expansion of the "Settler" population from Earth, Amadiro detests all Settlers - as do most "Spacers", who consider all Earthlings to be little better than barbarians. Amadiro wants to see the Earthlings destroyed, so that the descendants of the Spacers alone can inherit the Milky Way (There are no other intelligent beings in Asimov's fictional galaxy). However, for many decades Amadiro has been continually thwarted in introducing an anti-Settler policy into the governments of the Spacers. These blockings of Amadiro's plans have been largely caused by the telepathic manipulation of key people by R. Giskard. Frustrated by his series of failures, Amadiro decides to accept an ambitious and unscrupulous apprentice, Levular Mandamus. Mandamus develops a cruel plan to destroy the population of the Earth, using a newly-developed weapon, the "nuclear intensifier". Amadiro and Mandamus intend to kill the population of the Earth and to make the Earth uninhabitable for human beings by using radioactivity. They intend to use the nuclear intensifier device to speed up all of the natural radioactive decay processes in the upper crust of the Earth, thereby making the surface of the Earth massively radioactive. [Note: At the time of Asimov's writing, there had been the recent discovery of the W particle, which is the force carrier of the weak nuclear force. This force is responsible for most forms of nuclear decay: alpha emission and beta emission. The hypothetical "nuclear intensifier" would work by emitting large numbers of W particles, hence expediting nuclear decay.] While Amadiro schemes, R. Daneel and R. Giskard slowly assemble the pieces of the roboticists' genocidal plan for mass murder. The robots, sharing Fastolfe's humane vision of a unified Settler/Spacer Galaxy - or, failing that, a Galaxy where Settlers can thrive in spite of Spacer domination - attempt to stop Amadiro. However, Daneel and Giskard are hampered by the Three Laws of Robotics, in particular, by the First Law of Robotics, which prevents them from making any direct attack on Amadiro. Daneel, meanwhile, has formulated an additional Zeroth Law of Robotics, which he thinks might help them to override the First Law, and to save the population of the Earth. The robots must work their way through the ramifications of the First Law and the Zeroth Law, in a race against time, before they face a confrontation with Amadiro and Mandamus. Fastolfe's brilliant daughter Vasilia has long coveted the valuable Giskard, and she finally determines to take him away from Gladia. Then, when Vasilia deduces that Giskard has telepathy, she confronts him with this fact. Giskard is compelled to manipulate her mind telepathically in order to make her forget about his telepathic powers. This leaves the two positronic robots free to deal with Amadiro. The two robots locate Amadiro and Mandamus on Earth, where they find the two Spacers debating the best way to use the nuclear intensifier for their ghoulish purposes. (They just happen to be at the site of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania). After Amadiro admits to the robots their plans to carry out mass murder on the Earth, Giskard decides that it is necessary to tamper with Amadiro's brain (using the newly-created Zeroth Law). Unfortunately, the way that Giskard does this causes irreversible damage to Amadiro's brain - and thus harm to him, as is forbidden by the First Law. Giskard is mentally "skating on thin ice" in this regard - and he is not far from suffering the consequences of such action. Now standing alone with the robots, Mandamus claims that his intentions regarding the nuclear intensifier were more benign than Amadiro's. Mandamus wants to draw out the radioactive catastrophe over many decades, rather than the mere years that Amadiro wanted, so that Amadiro could draw evil pleasure from the destruction of the Earth's population within his own lifetime. Giskard decides that it would be best for humanity to abandon the Earth, hence he allows Mandamus to adjust the settings of the nuclear intensifier. He extends the time scale of the radioactive catastrophe to 150 years, allowing humanity to evacuate the Earth (though a significant population still dwells there at the time of the novel Pebble in the Sky). Next, Giskard tampers with Mandamus's mind as well, ensuring that Mandamus will have no memory of what has happened. Giskard predicts, correctly, that by forcing humanity's hand into leaving the Earth, vigor will be reintroduced into mankind and the new Settlers will spread out across space at a rate never before seen. This will continue until all the governments of the interstellar colonies decide to unite into one "Galactic Empire". However, by allowing Mandamus to proceed with his original plan, Giskard becomes instrumental in creating a very radioactive planet Earth, and hence placing the inhabitants of Earth under grave threat of death. This contradicts the First Law of Robotics. The Zeroth Law does not prove to be enough, to Giskard at least, to justify harming humans for the sake of a hypothetical future benefit. Under the stress of changing the course of humanity, R. Giskard himself suffers a cascading and soon-fatal malfunction of his positronic brain. This is because he is not sure whether his actions will bring about an ultimate victory for the Spacers, leading to the final death of humanity. However before R. Giskard's brain freezes, he confers his telepathic ability upon R. Daneel, and Daneel takes on the heavy burden of guiding the entire burgeoning Galactic civilization.
309409	/m/01szvx	Foundation	Isaac Asimov	1951	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Foundation tells the story of a group of scientists who seek to preserve knowledge as the civilizations around them begin to regress. (0 F.E.) (First published as the book edition in 1951) Set in the year 0 F.E., The Psychohistorians opens on Trantor, the capital of the 12,000-year-old Galactic Empire. Though the empire appears stable and powerful, it is slowly decaying in ways that parallel the decline of the Western Roman Empire. Hari Seldon, a mathematician and psychologist, has developed psychohistory, a new field of science and psychology that equates all possibilities in large societies to mathematics, allowing for the prediction of future events. Using psychohistory, Seldon has discovered the declining nature of the Empire, angering the aristocratic members of the Committee of Public Safety, the de facto rulers of the Empire. The Committee considers Seldon's views and statements treasonous, and he is arrested along with young mathematician Gaal Dornick, who has arrived on Trantor to meet Seldon. Seldon is tried by the Committee and defends his beliefs, explaining his theories and predictions, including his belief that the Empire will collapse in 500 years and enter a 30,000-year dark age, to the Committee's members. He informs the Committee that an alternative to this future is attainable, and explains to them that creating a compendium of all human knowledge, the Encyclopedia Galactica, would not avert the inevitable fall of the Empire but would reduce the dark age to one millennium. The skeptical Committee, not wanting to make Seldon a martyr, offers him exile to a remote world, Terminus, with others who could help him create the Encyclopedia. He accepts their offer, prepares for the departure of the "Encyclopedists" and receives an imperial decree officially acknowledging his actions. (50 F.E.) (published May 1942 as "Foundation") Set in 50 F.E., The Encyclopedists begins on Terminus, which has no mineral resources but one region suitable for the development of large city, named Terminus City. The colony of professionals, devoted to the creation of the Encyclopedia, is managed by the Board of Trustees of the Encyclopedia Galactica Foundation, composed solely of scientists. The affairs of Terminus City itself are handled by the city's mayor, Salvor Hardin, who is virtually powerless due to the influence of the Board of Trustees. However, Hardin does not accept the status quo, which he believes puts Terminus in danger of political exploitation by the neighboring prefects of the Empire, which have declared independence and severed contact with Trantor. Hardin, recognizing the imminent downfall of imperial power due to the loss of the Empire's outermost region, decides that the only way to ensure Terminus's continued survival is to pit the four neighboring "kingdoms" against one another. Hardin manages to avoid an attempt by the Kingdom of Anacreon to establish military bases on Terminus and to take advantage of nuclear power, which Terminus retains but which the Four Kingdoms do not. Hardin succeeds in diverting Anacreon from its initial goal and furthers his goal of the establishment of a stable political system on Terminus. Hardin's efforts, however, are still resisted by the Board of Trustees and its chairman, Dr. Louis Pirenne. To remove this obstacle, Hardin and his chief advisor, Yohan Lee, plan a coup d'etat designed to remove the Board of Trustees from its politically-powerful position on the same day that, in the city's Time Vault, a holographic recording of Hari Seldon is programmed to play. The recording will contain psychohistoric proof of Hardin's success or failure; Hardin realizes that his coup is a great gamble due to the possible case that his beliefs are incompatible with Seldon's original goals. At the playing of the Seldon recording, it is revealed that the Encyclopedia Galactica is a distraction intended to make the colony's creation possible. The true goal of the Foundation is to further science in a galaxy consumed by interplanetary strife, the Board realizes, and hands its political power to the Terminus City mayoralty. Meanwhile, Lee engineers the nonviolent takeover of Foundation institutions by the city government. (80 F.E.) (published June 1942 as "Bridle and Saddle") Set in 80 F.E., three decades after the events of The Encyclopedists, The Mayors is set in a time where the Encyclopedia Foundation's scientific understanding has given it significant leverage over the Four Kingdoms, though it is still isolated from the Galactic Empire. Exercising its control over the region through an artificial religion, Scientism, the Foundation shares its technology with the Four Kingdoms while referring to it as religious truth. Maintenance technicians comprise Scientism's priesthood, trained on Terminus. A majority of the priests themselves are unaware of the true importance of their "religion", referring to advanced technology as "holy food". The religion is not suppressed by the secular elite of the Four Kingdoms, reminscient of Western European rulers of the early medieval period, who use it to consolidate their power over the zealous populaces. Salvor Hardin, as Mayor of Terminus City, is the effective ruler of the Foundation, and has been reelected as mayor continuously since his political victory over the Encyclopedia Galactica Board of Trustees. However, his influence is suddenly checked by a new political movement led by city councillor Sef Sermak, which encourages direct action against the Four Kingdoms and a cessation of the scientific proselytizing encouraged by Hardin's administration. The movement, whose followers refer to themselves as Actionists, is wildly popular, and Hardin is unable to appease Sermak and the Actionist leadership. The kingdom that is most concerning to the Actionists is that of Anacreon, ruled by Prince Regent Wienis and his nephew, the teenaged King Lepold I. Wienis plans to overthrow the Foundation's power by launching a direct military assault against Terminus, making use of an abandoned Imperial space cruiser redesigned by Foundation experts to fit the needs of the elite Anacreonian navy. However, Hardin orders several secret technological devices to be incorporated into the ship's design prior to its completion. Wienis plans to launch his offensive on the night of his nephew's coronation as king and sole ruler of Anacreon. Hardin attends the coronation ceremony and is arrested, but has arranged with Anacreonian High Priest Poly Verisof, who is aware of the true nature of Scientism, to foster a popular uprising against Wienis. Convincing the Anacreonian populace that an assault against the Foundation and Terminus is blasphemous, Verisof leads an infuriated mob to the royal palace and surrounds it, demanding Hardin's release. Meanwhile, the crew of the space cruiser mutinies against its commander, Admiral Prince Lefkin, Wienis's son. Lefkin confronts the mutineers and, captured, is forced to broadcast a message to Anacreon demanding Wienis's arrest and threatening a bombardment of the royal palace if that and other demands are not met. Wienis, maddened by his failure, orders Hardin's execution, but his royal guardsmen refuse to obey him. Attempting and failing, due to a protective energy field, to kill Hardin personally, Wienis commits suicide. Hardin is proven correct again upon his return to Terminus City by another Seldon recording, set to play at this date. Though Actionists continue to hold a significant amount of power, an attempt to impeach the mayor fails and his popularity is renewed among the city's residents. It is also confirmed by Hari Seldon that the Foundation's immediate neighbors, the Four Kingdoms, will now be virtually powerless and incapable of resisting Scientism's advance. (About 135 F.E.) (published October 1944 as "The Wedge") The events of The Traders are set around 135 F.E., at a time during which the Foundation has expanded greatly and has sent out officially-sanctioned Traders to exchange technology with neighboring planets for what amounts to greater political and economic power. Master Trader Eskel Gorov, also an agent of the Foundation government, has traveled to the worlds of Askone, where he hopes to trade nucleics. Gorov, however, is met with resistance by Askone's governing Elders due to traditional taboos that effectively ban advanced technology. Gorov is imprisoned and sentenced to death; the Elders refuse Foundation requests for clemency. Trader Linmar Ponyets is ordered by the Foundation to try and negotiate with the Elders, and travels to the central Askonian planet. Ponyets meets with the Elders' Grand Master and deduces that, though he is determined to have Gorov executed, he may be willing to exchange the captive for a suitable bribe, which Ponyets realizes would be a sum of gold. Ponyets clumsily fashions a transmuter that will convert iron into gold. The Grand Master informs Ponyets that others who have attempted this have failed and have been punished with execution for both their attempt and for their failure; Ponyets succeeds and convinces the Grand Master that the gold is appropriate for Askonian religious decoration, which pleases the Elders. Councilor Pherl, the Grand Master's protégé, appears to be wary of Ponyets. Meeting with the Councilor, Ponyets discovers that Pherl is instead quite willing to work with him, if only due to the chances of eventually attaining the Grand Mastership himself. Pherl, from a different ethnic background than traditional Grand Masters and a young man, believes that a stable supply of gold will be able to dramatically increase his power, and Ponyets provides him with the transmuter. It appears that the friendly Pherl will ascend to the Grand Mastership, while Gorov is released quickly. Ponyets discusses his success with Gorov, who criticizes his techniques due to what he perceives as Ponyets's lack of morality. Ponyets replies by reminding Gorov of an alleged statement made by Salvor Hardin: "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!" (About 155 F.E.) (published August 1944 as "The Big and the Little") Set around 155 F.E., The Merchant Princes takes places against the backdrop of a powerful Foundation, which has subjugated the neighboring Four Kingdoms and expanded its commercial and technological empire throughout numerous stellar systems. However, it continues to meet resistance, and three Foundation vessels have vanished near the planets of the Republic of Korell, a nation suspected of independent technological development. Master Trader Hober Mallow is assigned to deal with Korell and also to investigate their technological developments and find the missing ships. Those who have assigned this mission to Mallow, Foreign Secretary Publius Manlio and the Mayor's secretary, Jorane Sutt, believe that a "Seldon Crisis" is underway; they fear that domestic tensions caused by the great autonomy given to Traders and shaky foreign relations may give rise to a nuclear conflict involving the Foundation. Sutt and Manlio, believing that they can weaken the Traders by staging an embarrassing diplomatic incident, plant an agent aboard Mallow's ship. The agent, a respected Trader, invites a Foundation missionary onto the ship once it reaches Korell. Such missionaries are forbidden to enter Korell, and an angry mob immediately surrounds the ship, demanding the missionary. This rapid response in a remote location arouses Mallow's suspicions, and Mallow gives the missionary to the mob, despite the frantic intervention of the agent. Later, Mallow meets with Korell's authoritarian ruler, Commdor Asper Argo, who appears friendly and welcomes Foundation technological gifts. Argo refuses to allow Scientism on Korell, and Mallow agrees not to encourage missionary work in the Republic. Mallow is invited to tour a steel foundry belonging to Korell's government, where he notes guards carrying atomic handguns. He is surprised to discover that these weapons bear the markings of the Galactic Empire, which the Foundation assumes has fallen by this time. Mallow's discoveries lead him to believe that the Empire may be attempting to expand into the Periphery again, and has been providing weapons to client states such as Korell. Leaving the Republic and his ship, he journeys alone to the planet Siwenna, which he believes may be the capital of an Imperial province. He finds Siwenna a desolate and sad place, and meets the impoverished patrician Onum Barr in the latter's isolated mansion, which is slowly crumbling. Barr, a former provincial senator and a leading citizen, had served in the Imperial government on Siwenna during a fairly stable time several decades earlier, before a series of corrupt and ambitious viceroys who each harbored dreams of becoming Emperor. After the previous viceroy rebelled against the Emperor, Barr participated in a revolution that overthrew the viceroy. However, the Imperial fleet also sent to remove the viceroy wanted to conquer a rebellious province even if it was no longer in rebellion, and began a massacre that claimed the lives of all but one of Barr's children. Mallow is tried for murder upon his return to Terminus, due to turning over the Foundation missionary to the mob. However, he is able to convince the court that the "missionary" was in fact a Korellian secret policeman who played a part in the conspiracy against the Traders manufactured by Sutt and Manlio. Acquitted, Mallow is received with delight by the population of Terminus, which will almost undoubtedly select him as Mayor in the elections scheduled to take place in the following year. To prepare for the election, Mallow engineers the arrest of Sutt and Manlio, and eventually takes office. However, he is soon faced with tensions between the Foundation and Korell, which declares war on the Foundation, using its powerful Imperial flotilla to attack Foundation ships. Instead of counterattacking, Mallow takes no action, waiting until the lack of Foundation goods forces Korell to surrender.
309433	/m/01sz_z	Second Foundation	Isaac Asimov	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Part I: Search By the Mule is about The Mule's search for the elusive Second Foundation, with the intent of destroying it. The executive council of the Second Foundation is aware of the Mule's intent and, in the words of the First Speaker, allows him to find it -- "in a sense". In the end the agents of the Second Foundation are able to catch the Mule off guard and telepathically alter his psyche, causing him to return to Kalgan to live out the remainder of his short life as essentially a benevolent despot. Search by the Mule was originally published in the January 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under the title "Now You See It—". Part II: Search By the Foundation takes place sixty years after the first part, fifty-five years after the Mule's death (by natural causes). The members of the (First) Foundation are now fully aware that the Second Foundation is out there (they had known of its existence all along, but had not known its purpose or nature until the Mule's arrival). Also concurrent with this plot thread is the Foundation's ongoing conflict with the Mule's former imperial capital at Kalgan. The ensuing war is won by the Foundation, and is listed in the Encyclopedia Galactica as the last major conflict before the rise of the Second Empire. After inventing a device that can jam telepathic abilities and can even be used to cause telepaths great pain, the Foundation finds and locates telepaths on Terminus, "at the other end of the galaxy" (from the First Foundation, also at Terminus). Since, as Arkady Darell puts it, "a circle has no end", then by tracing the disc of the galaxy around its edge, one would come back to Terminus. Thus, they declare the Second Foundation destroyed after finding the roughly 50 mentalist agents on Terminus, and are content to forget the matter. Finally, in response to the question "Where is the Second Foundation?", the First Foundation had found an answer that fit. However, although this was "the answer that satisfied", this was not "the answer that was true". The Second Foundation was actually located on Trantor, at the centre of the galaxy. It was called "Star's End" due to the ancient saying that "All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end". The location was also said to fit the "other end of the galaxy" location since the galaxy is not in fact a disc, but a spiral &mdash; and from the edge, the other end of a spiral lies at the centre. The book also noted that Hari Seldon was a social scientist, not a physical one. When the two Foundations were founded, they could be described as being at opposite social ends of the Galaxy &mdash; with Trantor at the very center of galactic power and prestige, and Terminus at the other extreme, something the First Foundation failed to realize because its members were inclined to analyze Seldon's statement in physical terms. The Second Foundation would again be revisited in Foundation's Edge. Search by the Foundation was originally published in the November and December 1949 and January 1950 issues of Astounding Science Fiction under the title "—And Now You Don't".
310577	/m/01t3w6	The Abolition of Work				 In the essay Black argues for the abolition of the producer- and consumer-based society, where, Black contends, all of life is devoted to the production and consumption of commodities. Attacking Marxist state socialism as much as Liberal capitalism, Black argues that the only way for humans to be free is to reclaim their time from jobs and employment, instead turning necessary subsistence tasks into free play done voluntarily – an approach referred to as "ludic". The essay argues that "no-one should ever work", because work - defined as compulsory productive activity enforced by economic or political means – is the source of most of the misery in the world. Black denounces work for its compulsion, and for the forms it takes – as subordination to a boss, as a "job" which turns a potentially enjoyable task into a meaningless chore, for the degradation imposed by systems of work-discipline, and for the large number of work-related deaths and injuries – which Black characterizes as homicide. He views the subordination enacted in workplaces as "a mockery of freedom", and denounces as hypocrites the various theorists who support freedom while supporting work. Subordination in work, Black alleges, makes people stupid and creates fear of freedom. Because of work, people become accustomed to rigidity and regularity, and do not have the time for friendship or meaningful activity. Many workers, he contends, are dissatisfied with work (as evidenced by absenteeism, goldbricking, embezzlement and sabotage), so that what he says should be uncontroversial; however, it is controversial only because people are too close to the work-system to see its flaws. Play, in contrast, is not necessarily rule-governed, and, more important, it is performed voluntarily, in complete freedom, for the satisfaction of engaging in the activity itself. But since intrinsically satisfying activity is not necessarily unproductive, "productive play" is possible, and, if generalized, might give rise to a gift economy. Black points out that hunter-gatherer societies are typified by play (in the sense of "productive play"), a view he backs up with the work of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in his essay "The Original Affluent Society," reprinted in his book "Stone Age Economics" (1971). Black has reiterated this interpretation of the ethnographic record, this time with citations and references, in "Primitive Affluence," reprinted in his book "Friendly Fire" (Autonomedia 1994), and in "Nightmares of Reason" (a critique of Murray Bookchin posted at TheAnarchistLibrary.org). Black responds to the criticism (argued, for instance, by libertarian David Ramsey-Steele) that "work," if not simply effort or energy, is necessary to get important but unpleasant tasks done, by contending that much work now currently done is unnecessary, because it only serves the purposes of social control and economic exploitation. Black has responded (in "Smokestack Lightning," reprinted in "Friendly Fire") that of all, most important tasks can be rendered ludic, or "salvaged" by being turned into game-like and craft-like activities, and secondly that the vast majority of work does not need doing at all. The latter tasks are unnecessary because they only serve functions of commerce and social control that exist only to maintain the work-system as a whole. As for what is left, he advocates Charles Fourier's approach of arranging activities so that people will want to do them. He is also sceptical but open-minded about the possibility of eliminating work through labor-saving technologies, which, in his opinion, have so far never reduced work, and often deskilled and debased workers. As he sees it, the political left has, for the most part, failed to acknowledge as revolutionary the critique of work, limiting itself to the critique of wage-labor. The left, he contends, by glorifying the dignity of labor, has endorsed work itself, and also the work ethic. Black has often criticized leftism, especially Marxism, but he does not consider anarchism, which he espouses, as always advocating an understanding of work which is consistent with his critique of work. Black looks favorably, if critically, on a text such as "The Right to Be Greedy," by the Situationist-influenced collective For Ourselves (he wrote a Preface for the Loompanics Unlimited reprint edition), which attempts to synthesize the post-moral individualism of Max Stirner ("The Ego and Its Own") with what appears to be an egalitarian anarcho-communism. What has been called "zero-work" remains controversial on the left and among anarchists.
310625	/m/01t42l	The Vicomte de Bragelonne	Alexandre Dumas		{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The principal heroes of the novel are the musketeers. The novel's length finds it frequently broken into smaller parts. The narrative is set between 1660 and 1667 against the background of the transformation of Louis XIV from child monarch to Sun King. After 35 years of loyal service, d'Artagnan resigns as Cardinal Mazarin is the true power behind the throne. He resolves to aid the exiled Charles II to retake the throne of England, unaware that Athos is attempting the same. With their assistance Charles II is restored to the throne and d'Artagnan is rewarded richly. In France Cardinal Mazarin has died, leaving Louis to assume power with Jean-Baptiste Colbert as his adviser. Louis persuades d'Artagnan to reenter his service, and tasks him to investigate Belle-Isle, the property of Nicolas Fouquet, promising him a substantial salary and promotion to Captain of the King's Musketeers on his return. d'Artagnan discovers Belle-Isle is being fortified and the engineer in charge is Porthos. The blueprints show Aramis' handwriting. Despite his friends, d'Artagnan hides the true reason for his presence. Aramis, suspicious of d'Artagnan, sends Porthos back to Paris to warn Fouquet, whilst tricking d'Artagnan into searching for Porthos around Vannes. Porthos warns Fouquet in time, and he cedes Belle-Isle to the king, allaying all suspicions and humiliating Colbert. On returning from the mission d'Artagnan is made Captain of the King's Musketeers. This part mostly concerns romantic events at the court of Louis XIV. Raoul de Bragelonne finds his childhood sweetheart, Louise de la Vallière, is maid of honor to the Princess. Fearing a tarnishing of Louise's reputation by affairs at court, Raoul seeks to marry her. His father, Athos, the Comte de la Fère, disapproves, but eventually, out of love for his son, reluctantly agrees. The king, however, refuses to sanction the marriage because Louise is of inferior social status, and so marriage is delayed until Louise has earned her fortune and Raoul grows in prestige. Meanwhile, the struggle for power continues between Fouquet and Colbert. Louis attempts to impoverish Fouquet by asking for money to pay for a grand fête at Fontainbleau. Meanwhile, Aramis meets the governor of the Bastille M. de Baisemeaux, and learns of a secret prisoner who bears a striking resemblance to Louis XIV. Aramis uses this secret to persuade the dying general of the Jesuits (disguised as a Franciscan monk), to name him the new general of the Society. After Buckingham leaves France, the Comte de Guiche grows besotted with Henrietta. However, the King grows interested in Madame Henrietta. Anne of Austria intervenes, and suggests that the king choose a young lady at court to act as a smokescreen for their flirtation. Unfortunately, they select Louise de la Vallière and during the fête at Fontainbleau, the king overhears Louise confess her love for him to friends, and promptly forgets his affection for Henrietta. That same night Henrietta hears de Guiche confess his love for her to Raoul. The two pursue their own love affair. Aware of Louise's attachment, the king sends Raoul to England indefinitely as a diplomatic envoy. Rumours of the king's love affair compromise Raoul's friends, de Guiche defends Raoul's honour in a duel with de Wardes. De Wardes prevails whilst de Guiche is seriously wounded. The incident is the last straw for Madame Henrietta who resolves to dismiss the Louise from her service as Maid of Honour. The king dissuades Henrietta, but she prevents the king from seeing Louise. The king circumvents Henrietta, and so she frustratedly contacts her brother King Charles II, imploring him to eject Raoul from England. On his return to France Raoul is heartbroken to discover Louise in the arms of the king. Athos falls out with Louis over the affair and resigns from his service. Louis orders Athos's imprisonment, but D'Artagnan convinces the king to release him. Dumas constructs the plot around the notion that the Man in the Iron Mask is the twin brother of Louis XIV, Philippe, who had been concealed and imprisoned from birth by his father, Louis XIII, and his mother, Anne of Austria, "for the good of France". Only a very few people living at the start of the novel know of Philippe's existence; these include his mother, Anne, and her former confidante, the Duchesse de Chevreuse. Chevreuse has let the secret slip to Aramis, the Bishop of Vanne and a former lover of Chevreuse. Aramis plots a coup d’état to replace Louis with Philippe and recruits Porthos to assist, although Porthos is unaware of the true nature of the plot. Aramis believes that, if he puts Philippe on the throne in place of Louis, Philippe can assure Aramis's promotion to cardinal, and will eventually assist Aramis to become Pope. Aramis's further aim is to enhance Fouqet's position in France so that Fouquet will become prime minister under Philippe; Aramis plans to replace Fouquet as prime minister upon Fouquet's retirement. Through an elaborate subterfuge mounted by Aramis, Philippe replaces a prisoner due for release from the Bastille and escapes to Vaux. Meanwhile, Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finance, is throwing a lavish party for Louis at Vaux. Colbert, junior to Fouquet and hoping to supplant him, is jealous and turns the king against Fouquet; the king contemplates having Fouquet arrested, but defers his decision. While the king is still visiting Fouquet at Vaux, Aramis initiates the second half of his plan and kidnaps Louis with the unwitting assistance of Porthos, imprisoning Louis in the Bastille in Philippe's place. He then substitutes Philippe for the King. Aramis conspiratorially informs Fouquet of his acts. Aramis's treachery greatly angers Fouquet; Fouquet goes to the Bastille, rescues Louis, and brings him back to Vaux to confront Philippe. Realizing that his plot has unravelled, Aramis flees for Belle Isle to escape the king's impending wrath, taking Porthos with him. Louis returns to Vaux, exposes Philippe, and regains the throne with d'Artagnan's help, ending Philippe's brief reign. Louis banishes Philippe, ordering that "he will cover his face with an iron visor" which he "cannot raise without peril of his life." Athos and Raoul meet Aramis and Porthos who relate their predicament before receiving horses to aid their journey to Belle Isle. But they are followed by the Duc de Beaufort, on his way to Algiers for an expedition against the Barbary corsairs. Raoul, devastated by the king's love affair with Louise, volunteers to join the Duc in his expedition. Athos accompanies him to the port of Toulon, and on the way they encounter the Man in the Iron Mask just as d'Artagnan is bringing him to the prison at Sainte-Marguerite, who throws to them a silver dish on which he inscribed the words: "I am the brother of the king of France—a prisoner to-day—a madman to-morrow." Nothing comes of this, however, as Raoul is off to war in Africa, and Athos is retired from politics. At Toulon, father and son are part their ways. Despite Fouquet's rescue, Louis orders d'Artagnan to arrest Fouquet. Louis then orders d'Artagnan to arrest Porthos and Aramis. D'Artagnan feigns compliance whilst secretly giving his friends time to escape. However, Colbert discerns d'Artagnan's sympathies and undermines him. d'Artagnan resigns on learning that prisoners are to be executed immediately once arrested. Attempting an escape from Belle Isle, Porthos is killed, while Aramis escapes to sea. Meanwhile, Athos returns to his estates and lapses into decline. On hearing that Raoul has died in action at Gigelli, Athos succumbs to grief and dies. Meanwhile, the detained d'Artagnan is freed by King Louis and reinstated. He learns of Porthos' death and Aramis' escape. Aramis reaches Spain and becomes Spain's ambassador to France. Louise de la Vallière is supplanted in the king's affections by Madame de Montespan. Louis grows in influence and stature and embarks on a military campaign against the United Provinces, with d'Artagnan commanding the offensive. D'Artagnan is killed in battle moments after reading he is to be made Marshal of France. His final words: "Athos, Porthos, au revoir! Aramis, adieu for ever!"
310640	/m/01t44l	Twenty Years After	Alexandre Dumas		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The action begins under Queen Anne of Austria regency and Cardinal Mazarin ruling. D'Artagnan, who seemed to have a promising career ahead of him at the end of The Three Musketeers, has for twenty years remained a lieutenant in the Musketeers, and seems unlikely to progress, despite his ambition and the debt the queen owes him. By chance, however, he is summoned by Mazarin, who requires an escort, as the French people detest Mazarin, and are on the brink of rebellion (La Fronde). D'Artagnan is sent to the Bastille to retrieve a prisoner, who turns out to be his former adversary, the Comte de Rochefort. After renewing his acquaintance with d'Artagnan and making a promise to aid his advancement, Rochefort is brought to his audience with Mazarin, where he learns that the cause for his imprisonment was his refusal to serve Mazarin at an earlier stage. He does, however, remember his promise, and though he offers his own service to Mazarin, he refuses to watch over the Duc de Beaufort, who is imprisoned at the time, and soon learns that, in consequence, he is to be returned to the Bastille, though this does not deter him from speaking highly of the achievements of d'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers. Having determined that d'Artagnan was the man he sought, Mazarin enters the chambers of the Queen to let her know that he has enlisted the man who had served her so well twenty years earlier. The Queen, feeling guilty for having forgotten d'Artagnan's service, gives Mazarin a diamond ring which she had previously given d'Artagnan to be returned to him, which d'Artagnan had sold in her service. The avaricious Mazarin, however, merely uses the diamond to show d'Artagnan that he is once again to enter the Queen's service. He commissions d'Artagnan to go in search of his friends. D'Artagnan is at a loss; he has completely lost touch with his friends, who have resumed their real names. Athos, the Comte de la Fère, had returned to his estate near Blois; Porthos, Monsieur du Vallon, had married a lawyer's widow; and Aramis became a priest, the Abbé d'Herblay. Fortune intervenes, however, when Planchet, his old servant, enters d'Artagnan's chambers, attempting to escape arrest for aiding the escape of Rochefort. Through Planchet, he locates Bazin, Aramis' old servant, now beadle at Notre Dame. Though Bazin is unwilling to help, d'Artagnan is able to find out, through an altar boy, that Bazin makes frequent visits to Noisy. D'Artagnan and Planchet go there, where they are set upon by a group who think them Frondeurs while outside the house of Madame de Longueville. When this group is satisfied that d'Artagnan is not the man they seek, Aramis surprises Planchet by dropping onto his horse from the tree in which he had been hiding. Though d'Artagnan finds, through the decoration of Aramis' chambre, that the former musketeer who had thought of little other than being a priest is now a priest who thinks of little other than being a soldier, Aramis is not willing to enter into Mazarin's service. When the time for departure comes, d'Artagnan waits in hiding, suspecting that Aramis is the Frondeur who had been sought earlier, and is the lover of Madame de Longueville; a suspicion which is confirmed. The visit to Aramis was not fruitless, as it yielded the address of Porthos. When d'Artagnan arrives at Porthos' estate he finds Mousqueton, who is overjoyed to meet d'Artagnan and Planchet. He finds that Porthos, despite his wealth and life spent in pursuit of amusement, is not happy. Porthos desires to become a baron, and with this bait d'Artagnan lures him into Mazarin's service. D'Artagnan then continues on his search, seeking Athos, whom he finds almost completely changed, to be an example to his ward, Raoul. Though Athos will not be enlisted into Mazarin's service, and indeed reveals that his sympathies lie against Mazarin, the two arrange to meet again in Paris; Athos wishes to bring Raoul there to help him to become a gentleman, and also to separate him from Louise de Vallière, who Raoul is in love and obsessed with. In Paris, Athos visits Madame de Chevreuse, the former mistress of Aramis, with whom, under the name Marie Michon, Aramis had much communication in The Three Musketeers. Athos reveals, discreetly, that Raoul is the son born of a chance encounter he had with her, and through her gets a letter of recommendation for Raoul to join the army. The scene then changes, to focus on the Duc de Beaufort, Mazarin's prisoner at Vincennes, who finds a new jailer, Athos' servant, the silent Grimaud. Grimaud instantly makes himself disagreeable to the Duc, as part of an escape plot. Using messages passed to Rochefort using tennis balls, they arrange to have a meal on Whitsuntide, to which La Ramée, second in command of the prison, is invited. The escape is successful, but d'Artagnan and Porthos are in pursuit. After a race against time, and having defeated several adversaries along the way, Porthos and d'Artagnan find themselves in the dark, surrounded, with swords crossed against adversaries equal to them, who are revealed to be Athos and Aramis. The four arrange to meet in Paris at the Place Royale; both parties, now finding themselves enemies, enter fearing a duel, but they reconcile and renew their vows of friendship. As this is going on, Raoul is travelling to join the army. Along the road he sees a gentleman of around the same age, and tries to make haste to join him. The other gentleman reaches the ferry before him, but has fallen into the river. Raoul, who is used to fording rivers, saves the gentleman, the Comte de Guiche, and the two become friends. Further along the road, the debt is repaid when the Comte saves Raoul when they are attacked by Spanish soldiers. After the fight, they find a man who is close to death, who requests the last rites. They help him to a nearby inn, and find a travelling monk. This monk is unpleasant to them, and does not seem inclined to perform this service, so they force him to go to the inn. Once there, the monk hears the confession. The dying man reveals that he was the executioner of Béthune, and confesses his part in the execution of Milady de Winter. The monk reveals himself as her son, John Francis de Winter, who calls himself Mordaunt after Charles I stripped him of all his titles. Mordaunt stabs the executioner. Grimaud, who is to join Raoul, comes upon the inn just as this is taking place, though too late to prevent it, or to detain the monk. After hearing what happened from the dying man, making his excuses to Raoul, he departs to warn Athos about the son of Milady. After his departure, Raoul and Guiche are forced to retreat when the Spanish come upon the town. After joining the army of the Prince de Condé, Raoul provides assistance in interrogating the prisoner brought by Guiche and him, when the prisoner feigns to misunderstand them in several languages. Once they have learned the location of the Spanish army, they set out for battle, Raoul accompanying the Prince. Meanwhile, d´Artagnan and Porthos help Queen Anne of Austria, the young Louis XIV and Mazarin escape Paris after its citizens finally start a rebellion. The champion of the French populace and parliament, Pierre Broussel, is arrested, but then released when it becomes clear that his imprisonment has only served to stir the crowd up worse. D´Artagnan meets the young king and watches over him as some Frondeurs - including Planchet, under a false name - who wanted to make sure that the king and queen were not about to escape, enter the king's bedroom demanding to see him: immediately after this, he contrives for all of the royal household to escape from Paris anyway, bluffing his way past Planchet at the gates (the two men retain their friendship despite their differing allegiances in this conflict). After that, Mazarin sends d'Artagnan and Porthos to England with a message for Cromwell and orders them to stay there for some time under Cromwell's command. At the same time, Queen Henrietta of England meets the Musketeers' old English friend, Lord de Winter - a Royalist come to ask for French assistance for King Charles I of England, her husband, in the English Civil War, and sends Athos and Aramis to England as well. So once again the two pairs of Musketeers find themselves on opposite sides: but Athos and Aramis, on the occasion of departing, are recognised by Mordaunt, who has been following Lord de Winter in the hope of finding his friends. Milady's son, Mordaunt, reprises his role as one of the chief antagonists, and sets about avenging his mother's death. He seeks not only Lord de Winter, but the other four unknown conspirators who took part in his mother's clandestine "trial" and execution. He murders his uncle, Lord de Winter, who was Milady's brother-in-law, during the same battle in which king Charles I is captured. Athos and Aramis are captured by d'Artagnan and Porthos, who are fighting alongside Mordaunt and Cromwell's troops. As soon as they can have a conversation, Athos talks d'Artagnan and Porthos into helping save Charles I. D'Artagnan and Porthos free their friends and start making plans in order to try to save the king. In the end, all their plans fail, and Mordaunt executes King Charles I after d'Artagnan and the three former Musketeers have kidnapped the real executioner in order to prevent this. D'Artagnan and his friends later confront Mordaunt at Cromwell's London residence, but in the course of a duel with d'Artagnan he escapes through a secret passage. The Frenchmen and their menservants leave England by ship, but Mordaunt gets aboard and blows it up. Unfortunately for him, the Musketeers' servants discover the explosives on board, rouse their masters, and contrive to steal the only lifeboat before the ship can blow up, leaving Mordaunt aboard. Somehow, Mordaunt escapes the blast, and pleads with the Musketeers to let him into their boat. With the exception of Athos, they contemptuously reject his appeals. Athos insists on saving him however, but as he helps him into the boat, Mordaunt deliberately drags him back into the water where they struggle and Mordaunt is killed. Athos rejoins the others claiming that "I have a son... and I wished to live". They assume - correctly - that Athos means Raoul de Bragelonne, officially his ward and adopted son (in fact Raoul is Athos's natural illegitimate son, product of a one-night stand, as we have learned earlier in the novel: this is the first time that the other Musketeers are actually told that Athos is indeed Raoul's real father, although D'Artagnan may have suspected it earlier.) Athos further states that "It was not me who killed him... It was fate." Once back in France, the four friends go separate ways. D'Artagnan and Porthos head to Paris through a different route from the other two, knowing that Mazarin will not forgive their disobedience. Aramis and Athos reach Paris only to find out that their friends haven't. After looking for them, they find out about their imprisonment by Mazarin in Rueil. Athos tries to persuade Queen Anne to free his friends, but is imprisoned as well. After this, d'Artagnan manages to escape with Porthos and capture Mazarin. Mazarin is taken to one of Porthos's castles and he gives some concessions to the four friends in exchange for his freedom, among them, making Porthos a baron and making d'Artagnan captain of musketeers. Athos asks for nothing: Aramis asks for concessions towards himself and his friends in the Fronde. These concessions are later accepted by Queen Anne, who finally realizes she has been rather ungrateful to d'Artagnan and his friends. At the end of the novel, the first Fronde comes to an end, and Mazarin, Queen Anne and Louis XIV enter Paris. A riot takes place during which d'Artagnan accidentally kills Rochefort and Porthos kills Bonacieux (who in the earlier novel was d'Artagnan's landlord and an agent of Richelieu, and is now a beggar and Frondist). At the end the four friends go their separate ways again. D'Artagnan stays in Paris with Mazarin and Queen Anne, Athos returns to la Fère, Aramis returns to his abbey in Noisy le Sec, and Porthos to his barony and castle.
310660	/m/01t475	Logan's Run	William F. Nolan	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The introduction to the book states: :"The seeds of the Little War were planted in a restless summer during the mid-1960s, with sit-ins and student demonstrations as youth tested its strength. By the early 1970s over 75 percent of the people living on Earth were under 21 years of age. The population continued to climb—and with it the youth percentage. :In the 1980s the figure was 79.7 percent. :In the 1990s, 82.4 percent. :In the year 2000—critical mass." In the world of 2116, a person's maximum age is strictly legislated: twenty one years, to the day. When people reach this Lastday they report to a Sleepshop in which they are willingly executed via a pleasure-inducing toxic gas. A person's age is revealed by their palm flower crystal embedded in the palm of their right hand that changes color every seven years, yellow (age 0-6), then blue (age 7-13), then red (age 14-20), then blinks red and black on Lastday, and finally turns black at 21. Runners are those who refuse to report to a Sleepshop and attempt to avoid their fate by escaping to Sanctuary. Logan 3 is a Deep Sleep Operative (also called Sandman) whose job is to terminate Runners using a special weapon called the Gun, an unusual revolver which can fire a number of different projectiles. Runners are most terrified of one called the Homer which homes in on body heat and deliberately ignites every pain nerve in the body, killing the target. Sandmen practice Omnite, a fictional hybrid martial arts style. On his own Lastday, Logan becomes a Runner himself in an attempt to infiltrate an apparent underground railroad for runners seeking Sanctuary—a place where they can live freely in defiance of society's dictates. For most of the book Logan is an antihero; however, his character develops a sympathy towards Runners and he becomes more of a traditional hero figure. Jessica 6, a contact Logan made after he chased her Runner brother Doyle 10 into Cathedral where he was killed by the vicious preteen "Cubs", helps him, despite her initial distrust of him. Francis, another Sandman and a friend of Logan, catches up with Logan and Jessica after they have managed to make it to the final staging area before Sanctuary. He reveals that he is actually the legendary Ballard, who has been helping arrange their escape. The 42-year-old Ballard is working from within the system; he believes that the computer that controls the global infrastructure, buried beneath Crazy Horse Mountain, is beginning to malfunction, and that the society will die with it. Sanctuary turns out to be Argos, an abandoned space colony near Mars. Logan and Jessica escape to the colony on a rocket that departs from a former space program launch site in Florida. Ballard remains to help others escape.
310992	/m/01t5m5	The Two Gentlemen of Verona	William Shakespeare			 As the play begins, Valentine is preparing to leave Verona for Milan so as to broaden his horizons. He begs his best friend, Proteus, to come with him, but Proteus is in love with Julia, and refuses to leave. Disappointed, Valentine bids Proteus farewell and goes on alone. Meanwhile, Julia is discussing Proteus with her maid, Lucetta, who tells Julia that she thinks Proteus is fond of her. Julia, however, acts coyly, embarrassed to admit that she likes him. Lucetta then produces a letter; she will not say who gave it to her, but teases Julia that it was Valentine's servant, Speed, who brought it from Proteus. Julia, still unwilling to reveal her love in front of Lucetta, angrily tears up the letter. She sends Lucetta away, but then, realising her own rashness, she picks up the fragments of letter and kisses them, trying to piece them back together. Meanwhile, Proteus' father has decided that Proteus should travel to Milan and join Valentine. He orders that Proteus must leave the next day, prompting a tearful farewell with Julia, to whom Proteus swears eternal love. The two exchange rings and vows and Proteus promises to return as soon as he can. In Milan, Proteus finds Valentine in love with the Duke's daughter Silvia. Despite Julia's love, Proteus falls instantly in love with Silvia and vows to win her. Unaware of Proteus' feelings, Valentine tells him that the Duke wants Silvia to marry the foppish but wealthy Thurio, against her wishes. Because the Duke suspects that his daughter and Valentine are in love, he locks her nightly in a tower, to which he keeps the only key. However, Valentine tells Proteus that he plans to free her by means of a corded ladder, and together, they will elope. Proteus immediately informs the Duke, who subsequently captures and banishes Valentine. While wandering outside Milan, Valentine runs afoul of a band of outlaws, who claim they are also exiled gentlemen. Valentine lies, saying he was banished for killing a man in a fair fight, and the outlaws elect him their leader. Meanwhile, in Verona, Julia decides to join her lover in Milan. She convinces Lucetta to dress her in boy's clothes and help her fix her hair so she will not be harmed on the journey. Once in Milan, Julia quickly discovers Proteus' love for Silvia, watching him attempt to serenade her. She contrives to become his page – a youth named Sebastian – until she can decide upon a course of action. Proteus sends Sebastian to Silvia with a gift of the same ring that Julia gave to him before he left Verona, but Julia discovers that Silvia scorns Proteus' affections and is disgusted that he would forget about his love back home, i.e. Julia herself. Silvia deeply mourns the loss of Valentine, whom Proteus has told her is rumoured dead. Not persuaded of Valentine's death, Silvia determines to flee the city with the help of Eglamour, a former suitor to Julia. They escape into the forest but when they are confronted by the outlaws, Eglamour flees and Silvia is taken captive. The outlaws head to their leader (Valentine), but on the way, they encounter Proteus and Julia (still disguised as Sebastian). Proteus rescues Silvia, and then pursues her deeper into the forest. Secretly observed by Valentine, Proteus attempts to persuade Silvia that he loves her, but she rejects his advances. Furious and mad with desire, Proteus insinuates that he will rape her ("I'll force thee yield to my desire"). At this point, Valentine intervenes and denounces Proteus. Horrified at what has happened, Proteus vows that the hate Valentine feels for him is nothing compared to the hate he feels for himself. Convinced that Proteus' repentance is genuine, Valentine forgives him and seems to offer Silvia to him. At this point, overwhelmed, Julia faints, revealing her true identity. Upon seeing her, Proteus suddenly remembers his love for her and vows fidelity to her once again. The Duke and Thurio arrive, and Thurio claims Silvia as his. Valentine then warns Thurio that if he makes one move toward her, he will kill him. Terrified, Thurio renounces Silvia. The Duke, impressed by Valentine's actions, approves his and Silvia's love, and consents to their marriage. The two couples are happily united, and the Duke pardons the outlaws, telling them they may return to Milan.
311477	/m/01t7gp	Girlfriend in a Coma	Douglas Coupland	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first part of the book covers the 17 years in the lives of this group of friends after Karen’s lapse into a coma. Richard has to cope with losing Karen but gaining a daughter, Megan, as fatherhood is thrust upon him: the outcome of their mutual loss of virginity just hours before Karen fell into her coma. Wendy throws herself into work and Linus loses himself, looking for that which is lost. Pamela becomes a supermodel and Hamilton a demolition expert, but none of the friends’ lives turn out how they imagined. Broken and lacking, they return to the suburbs of their youth to try to pull themselves together until one day, almost two decades after she fell asleep, Karen regains consciousness. The book is divided into three parts. The first chapter of the book is narrated by Jared, a ghost of a friend of the character's who died of leukemia at a young age. The rest of Part 1 is narrated by Richard, in the first person, as he tells the story of what happened in the 17 years. The second part of the book, with no narrator, deals with Karen's return to the world. It also begins to explain where she had been all those years and the reality she had hoped to escape. Then, suddenly, the world ends. This section is narrated in the third person, with insight into all the characters' minds. The final part of the book details life after everyone except these seven people have fallen asleep and not reawakened. This section is again narrated by Jared. The characters have to deal with the end of the world as predicted by Karen in her coma.
312623	/m/01td08	Schindler's Ark	Thomas Keneally	1982-10-01	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This novel tells the story of Oskar Schindler, self-made entrepreneur and bon viveur who almost by default found himself saving Polish Jews from the Nazi death machine. Based on numerous eyewitness accounts, Keneally's story is unbearably moving but never melodramatic, a testament to the almost unimaginable horrors of Hitler's attempts to make Europe judenfrei, or free of Jews. What distinguishes Schindler in Keneally's version is not, superficially, kindness or idealism, but a certain gusto. He is a flawed hero; he is not "without sin". He is a drinker, a womaniser and, at first, a profiteer. After the war, he is commemorated as Righteous among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, but he is never seen as a conventionally virtuous character. The story is not only Schindler's. It is the story of Kraków's dying ghetto and the forced labor camp outside of town, at Plaszów. It is the story of Amon Goeth, Plaszów's commandant. His wife Emilie remarked in a German TV interview that Schindler did nothing remarkable before the war and nothing after it. "He was fortunate therefore that in the short fierce era between 1939 and 1945 he had met people who had summoned forth his deeper talents." After the war, his business ventures fail, he separates from his wife, and he ends up living a shabby life in a small flat in Frankfurt. Eventually he arranged to live part of the year in Israel, supported by his Jewish friends, and part of the year as a sort of internal émigré in Frankfurt, where he was often hissed at in the streets as a traitor to his "race". After 29 unexceptional postwar years he died in 1974. He was buried in Jerusalem as he wished with the help of his old friend Pfefferberg.
313191	/m/01tgs8	The Sparrow	Mary Doria Russell	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins in the year 2019, when the SETI program, at the Arecibo Observatory, picks up radio broadcasts of music from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. The first expedition to Rakhat, the world that is sending the music, is organized by the Jesuit order. Only one of the crew, Father Emilio Sandoz, a priest, survives to return to Earth, and he is damaged physically and psychologically. The story is told in framed flashback, with chapters alternating between the story of the expedition and the story of Sandoz' interrogation by the Jesuit order's inquest, set up in 2059 to find the truth. Sandoz' return has sparked great controversy – not just because the Jesuits sent the mission independent of United Nations oversight, but also because the mission ended disastrously. Contact with the UN mission, which sent Sandoz back to Earth alone in the Jesuit ship, has since been lost. From the beginning, Sandoz, a talented Taino linguist born in a Puerto Rican slum, had believed the mission to Rakhat was divinely inspired. Several of his close friends and co-workers, people with a variety of unique skills and talents, had seemingly coincidental connections to Arecibo and one of them, a gifted young technician, was the first to hear the transmissions. In Sandoz's mind, only God's will could bring this group of people with the perfect combination of knowledge and experience together at the moment when the alien signal was detected. These were the people who, with three other Jesuit priests, were chosen by the Society of Jesus to travel to the planet, using an interstellar vessel made out of a small asteroid. Sandoz tells about how the asteroid flew to the planet Rakhat, and how the crew tried to acclimatize themselves to the new world, experimenting with eating local flora and fauna, then making contact with a rural village – a small-scale tribe of vegetarian gatherers, the Runa, clearly not the singers of the radio broadcasts. Still, welcomed as 'foreigners', they settle among the natives and begin to learn their language and culture, transmitting all their findings via computer uplink to the asteroid-ship now orbiting above the planet. An emergency use of fuel for their landing craft leaves them stranded on the planet. When they do meet a member of the culture which produced the radio transmissions, he proves to be of a different species from the rural natives, a Jana'ata. An ambitious merchant named Supaari, he sees in the visitors a possibility to improve his status, while the crew hopes to find an alternative source of fuel in Supaari's city, Gayjur. Meanwhile, the crew begins to grow their own food, introducing the concept of agriculture to the villagers. These seemingly innocent actions and accompanying cultural misunderstandings set into motion the events which lead to the murder of all but Sandoz and one other Earthling, and Sandoz' capture and degradation which is a central mystery in the plot. It is revealed that Sandoz is made a slave of a famed poet/songwriter, whose broadcasts first alerted Earth to Rakhat's existence. Sandoz is physically disfigured. In that culture, it is considered an honour to be dependent upon another, and likewise to have a dependent, so the flesh between Sandoz's metacarpals is cut away to make it seem that he has long elegant fingers which start at his wrists, and with which he cannot even feed himself. Sandoz is routinely forced to sexually satisfy the musician, along with his friends and colleagues, and it is later revealed the songs which Sandoz had originally considered to be a divine revelation are in fact a kind of ballad pornography, relating the songwriter's sexual exploits on broadcast to the populace. When Sandoz returns to Earth, his friends are dead and gone and his faith, once considered worthy of actual canonization by his superiors, is merely an extension of his bitter anger with the God who sent him to Rakhat. Due to relativistic space-time effects, decades had passed while he has been gone, during which popular outrage at the UN's initial and highly out-of-context report on the mission, and especially Sandoz's role in the tragedy, had left the Society shattered and nearly extinct. As Sandoz painfully explains what really happened, his personal healing can begin, but only time will prove whether the same is true of the Society.
314203	/m/01tmbk	Red Rabbit	Tom Clancy		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jack Ryan, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the British Secret Intelligence Service help with transporting a Russian defector and his family to the United States. The defector tells of a KGB plan to kill Pope John Paul II.
314793	/m/01tpv3	Family Matters	Rohinton Mistry	2002	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first few pages tell of Nariman's subjection to increasing decay in physical health and stinging insults (revolving around his cost of medicine, lack of space and privacy, the daily routine of bedpans and urinals, sponge baths and bedsores) from his stepdaughter. Very soon, the focus shifts to Roxana's household. With Nariman's inclusion, however, deterioration and decay creep into it. As Yezad comes to centre stage for the following part of the book, the author explores the problems faced by an average middle-class family. Financial problems lure him and Jehangir towards greed and money. The subplot of the book, which involves Yezad hatching a plan to dethrone his employer, is a huge slap on the faces of the corrupt Shiv Sainiks. This subplot acts as the turning point in the main story. The book contains many details of the Parsis' practices, rituals, intolerances, and the concerns of native Parsis. In the epilogue, the youngest of all characters, Jehangir, becomes the narrator, describing the metamorphosis that religion, age, death, and wealth bring to his family.
315006	/m/01tqtw	The Structure of Scientific Revolutions	Thomas Samuel Kuhn	1962		 Kuhn's approach to the history and philosophy of science has been described as focusing on conceptual issues: what sorts of ideas were thinkable at a particular time? What sorts of intellectual options and strategies were available to people during a given period? What types of lexicons and terminology were known and employed during certain epochs? Stressing the importance of not attributing modern modes of thought to historical actors, Kuhn's book argues that the evolution of scientific theory does not emerge from the straightforward accumulation of facts, but rather from a set of changing intellectual circumstances and possibilities. Such an approach is largely commensurate with the general historical school of non-linear history. Kuhn explains his ideas using examples taken from the history of science. For instance, at a particular stage in the history of chemistry, some chemists began to explore the idea of atomism. When many substances are heated they have a tendency to decompose into their constituent elements, and often (though not invariably) these elements can be observed to combine only in set proportions. At one time, a combination of water and alcohol was generally classified as a compound. Nowadays it is considered to be a solution, but there was no reason then to suspect that it was not a compound. Water and alcohol would not separate spontaneously, but they could be separated when heated. Water and alcohol can be combined in any proportion. A chemist favoring atomic theory would have viewed all compounds whose elements combine in fixed proportions as exhibiting normal behavior, and all known exceptions to this pattern would be regarded as anomalies whose behavior would probably be explained at some time in the future. On the other hand, if a chemist believed that theories of the atomicity of matter were erroneous, then all compounds whose elements combined in fixed proportions would be regarded as anomalies whose behavior would probably be explained at some time in the future, and all those compounds whose elements are capable of combining in any ratio would be seen as exhibiting the normal behavior of compounds. Nowadays the consensus is that the atomists' view was correct. But if one were to restrict oneself to thinking about chemistry using only the knowledge available at the time, either point of view would be defensible. What is arguably the most famous example of a revolution in scientific thought is the Copernican Revolution. In Ptolemy's school of thought, cycles and epicycles (with some additional concepts) were used for modeling the movements of the planets in a cosmos that had a stationary Earth at its center. As accuracy of celestial observations increased, complexity of the Ptolemaic cyclical and epicyclical mechanisms had to increase to maintain the calculated planetary positions close to the observed positions. Copernicus proposed a cosmology in which the Sun was at the center and the Earth was one of the planets revolving around it. For modeling the planetary motions, Copernicus used the tools he was familiar with, namely the cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic toolbox. But Copernicus' model needed more cycles and epicycles than existed in the then-current Ptolemaic model, and due to a lack of accuracy in calculations, Copernicus's model did not appear to provide more accurate predictions than the Ptolemy model. Copernicus' contemporaries rejected his cosmology, and Kuhn asserts that they were quite right to do so: Copernicus' cosmology lacked credibility. Thomas Kuhn illustrates how a paradigm shift later became possible when Galileo Galilei introduced his new ideas concerning motion. Intuitively, when an object is set in motion, it soon comes to a halt. A well-made cart may travel a long distance before it stops, but unless something keeps pushing it, it will eventually stop moving. Aristotle had argued that this was presumably a fundamental property of nature: for the motion of an object to be sustained, it must continue to be pushed. Given the knowledge available at the time, this represented sensible, reasonable thinking. Galileo put forward a bold alternative conjecture: suppose, he said, that we always observe objects coming to a halt simply because some friction is always occurring. Galileo had no equipment with which to objectively confirm his conjecture, but he suggested that without any friction to slow down an object in motion, its inherent tendency is to maintain its speed without the application of any additional force. The Ptolemaic approach of using cycles and epicycles was becoming strained: there seemed to be no end to the mushrooming growth in complexity required to account for the observable phenomena. Johannes Kepler was the first person to abandon the tools of the Ptolemaic paradigm. He started to explore the possibility that the planet Mars might have an elliptical orbit rather than a circular one. Clearly, the angular velocity could not be constant, but it proved very difficult to find the formula describing the rate of change of the planet's angular velocity. After many years of calculations, Kepler arrived at what we now know as the law of equal areas. Galileo's conjecture was merely that &mdash; a conjecture. So was Kepler's cosmology. But each conjecture increased the credibility of the other, and together, they changed the prevailing perceptions of the scientific community. Later, Newton showed that Kepler's three laws could all be derived from a single theory of motion and planetary motion. Newton solidified and unified the paradigm shift that Galileo and Kepler had initiated. One of the aims of science is to find models that will account for as many observations as possible within a coherent framework. Together, Galileo's rethinking of the nature of motion and Keplerian cosmology represented a coherent framework that was capable of rivaling the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic framework. Once a paradigm shift has taken place, the textbooks are rewritten. Often the history of science too is rewritten, being presented as an inevitable process leading up to the current, established framework of thought. There is a prevalent belief that all hitherto-unexplained phenomena will in due course be accounted for in terms of this established framework. Kuhn states that scientists spend most (if not all) of their careers in a process of puzzle-solving. Their puzzle-solving is pursued with great tenacity, because the previous successes of the established paradigm tend to generate great confidence that the approach being taken guarantees that a solution to the puzzle exists, even though it may be very hard to find. Kuhn calls this process normal science. As a paradigm is stretched to its limits, anomalies &mdash; failures of the current paradigm to take into account observed phenomena &mdash; accumulate. Their significance is judged by the practitioners of the discipline. Some anomalies may be dismissed as errors in observation, others as merely requiring small adjustments to the current paradigm that will be clarified in due course. Some anomalies resolve themselves spontaneously, having increased the available depth of insight along the way. But no matter how great or numerous the anomalies that persist, Kuhn observes, the practicing scientists will not lose faith in the established paradigm for as long as no credible alternative is available; to lose faith in the solubility of the problems would in effect mean ceasing to be a scientist. In any community of scientists, Kuhn states, there are some individuals who are bolder than most. These scientists, judging that a crisis exists, embark on what Thomas Kuhn calls revolutionary science, exploring alternatives to long-held, obvious-seeming assumptions. Occasionally this generates a rival to the established framework of thought. The new candidate paradigm will appear to be accompanied by numerous anomalies, partly because it is still so new and incomplete. The majority of the scientific community will oppose any conceptual change, and, Kuhn emphasizes, so they should. To fulfill its potential, a scientific community needs to contain both individuals who are bold and individuals who are conservative. There are many examples in the history of science in which confidence in the established frame of thought was eventually vindicated. Whether the anomalies of a candidate for a new paradigm will be resolvable is almost impossible to predict. Those scientists who possess an exceptional ability to recognize a theory's potential will be the first whose preference is likely to shift in favour of the challenging paradigm. There typically follows a period in which there are adherents of both paradigms. In time, if the challenging paradigm is solidified and unified, it will replace the old paradigm, and a paradigm shift will have occurred. Chronologically, Kuhn distinguishes between three phases. The first phase, which exists only once, is the pre-paradigm phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory, though the research being carried out can be considered scientific in nature. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories. If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights, then the second phase, normal science, begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. As long as there is consensus within the discipline, normal science continues. Over time, progress in normal science may reveal anomalies, facts that are difficult to explain within the context of the existing paradigm. While usually these anomalies are resolved, in some cases they may accumulate to the point where normal science becomes difficult and where weaknesses in the old paradigm are revealed. Kuhn refers to this as a crisis. Crises are often resolved within the context of normal science. However, after significant efforts of normal science within a paradigm fail, science may enter the third phase, that of revolutionary science, in which the underlying assumptions of the field are reexamined and a new paradigm is established. After the new paradigm's dominance is established, scientists return to normal science, solving puzzles within the new paradigm. A science may go through these cycles repeatedly, though Kuhn notes that it is a good thing for science that such shifts do not occur often or easily. According to Kuhn, the scientific paradigms preceding and succeeding a paradigm shift are so different that their theories are incommensurable &mdash; the new paradigm cannot be proven or disproven by the rules of the old paradigm, and vice versa. The paradigm shift does not merely involve the revision or transformation of an individual theory, it changes the way terminology is defined, how the scientists in that field view their subject, and, perhaps most significantly, what questions are regarded as valid, and what rules are used to determine the truth of a particular theory. The new theories were not, as the scientists had previously thought, just extensions of old theories, but were instead completely new world views. Such incommensurability exists not just before and after a paradigm shift, but in the periods in between conflicting paradigms. It is simply not possible, according to Kuhn, to construct an impartial language that can be used to perform a neutral comparison between conflicting paradigms, because the very terms used are integral to the respective paradigms, and therefore have different connotations in each paradigm. The advocates of mutually exclusive paradigms are in a difficult position: "Though each may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing science and its problems, neither may hope to prove his case. The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs." (SSR, p.&nbsp;148). Scientists subscribing to different paradigms end up talking past one another. Kuhn (SSR, section XII) states that the probabilistic tools used by verificationists are inherently inadequate for the task of deciding between conflicting theories, since they belong to the very paradigms they seek to compare. Similarly, observations that are intended to falsify a statement will fall under one of the paradigms they are supposed to help compare, and will therefore also be inadequate for the task. According to Kuhn, the concept of falsifiability is unhelpful for understanding why and how science has developed as it has. In the practice of science, scientists will only consider the possibility that a theory has been falsified if an alternative theory is available that they judge credible. If there is not, scientists will continue to adhere to the established conceptual framework. If a paradigm shift has occurred, the textbooks will be rewritten to state that the previous theory has been falsified.
315122	/m/01tr9s	Sartoris	William Faulkner	1929	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel deals with the decay of an aristocratic southern family just after the end of World War I. The wealthy Sartoris family of Jefferson, Mississippi, lives under the shadow of its dead patriarch, Colonel John Sartoris. Colonel John was a Confederate cavalry officer during the Civil War, built the local railroad, and is a folk hero. The surviving Sartorises are his younger sister, Virginia Du Pre ("Aunt Jenny" or "Miss Jenny"), his son Bayard Sartoris ("Old Bayard"), and his great-grandson Bayard Sartoris ("Young Bayard"). The novel begins with the return of young Bayard Sartoris to Jefferson from the First World War. Bayard and his twin brother John, who was killed in action, were fighter pilots. Young Bayard is haunted by the death of his brother. That and the family disposition for foolhardy acts push him into a pattern of self-destructive behavior, especially reckless driving in a recently purchased automobile. Eventually young Bayard crashes the car off a bridge. During the convalescence which follows, he establishes a relationship with Narcissa Benbow, whom he marries. Despite promises to Narcissa to stop driving recklessly, he gets into a near wreck with old Bayard in the car, causing old Bayard to die of a heart attack. Young Bayard disappears from Jefferson, leaving his now pregnant wife with Aunt Jenny. He dies test-flying an experimental airplane on the day of his son’s birth.
315188	/m/01trmg	Babbitt	Sinclair Lewis	1922	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lewis has been both criticized and congratulated for his unorthodox writing style in Babbitt. As one reviewer puts it: “There is no plot whatever… Babbitt simply grows two years older as the tale unfolds.” Lewis presents a chronological series of scenes in the life of his title character. After introducing George F. Babbitt as a middle-aged man, "nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay," Lewis presents a meticulously detailed description of Babbitt's morning routine. Each item Babbitt encounters is explained, from the high-tech alarm clock, which Babbitt sees as a marker of social status, to the rough camp blanket, a symbol of the freedom and heroism of the West. As he dresses for the day, Babbitt contemplates each article of his "Solid Citizen" uniform, most important being his Booster's club button, which he wears with pride. The first seven chapters follow Babbitt's life over the course of a single day. Over breakfast Babbitt dotes on his ten-year-old daughter Tinka, tries to dissuade his twenty-two-year-old daughter Verona from her new found socialist leanings, and encourages his seventeen-year-old son Ted to try harder in school. At the office he dictates letters and discusses real estate advertising with his employees. Babbitt is professionally successful as a realtor. Much of his energy in early chapters is spent on climbing the social ladder through booster functions, real estate sales, and making good with various dignitaries. According to Babbitt, any “decent” man in Zenith belonged to at least two or three “lodges” or booster clubs. They were good for potential business partnerships, getting time away from home and family life, and quite simply because “it was the thing to do.” Babbitt admits that while these clubs “stimulated him like brandy,” he often found work dull and nerve-wracking in comparison. Lewis also paints vivid scenes of Babbitt bartering for liquor (despite being a supporter of Prohibition) and hosting dinner parties. At his college class reunion, Babbitt reconnects with a former classmate, Charles McKelvey, whose success in the construction business made him a millionaire. Seizing the opportunity to hobnob with someone from a wealthier class, Babbitt invites the McKelveys to a dinner party. Although Babbitt hopes the party will help his family rise socially, the McKelveys leave early and do not extend a dinner invitation in return. Gradually, Babbitt realizes his dissatisfaction with "The American Dream," and attempts to quell these feelings by going camping in Maine with his close friend and old college roommate Paul Reisling. When Babbitt and Paul arrive at the camp they marvel at the beauty and simplicity of nature. Looking out over a lake Babbitt comments: “I’d just like to sit here – the rest of my life – and whittle – and sit. And never hear a typewriter.” Paul is similarly entranced, stating: “Oh it’s darn good, Georgie. There’s something eternal about it.” Although the trip has its ups and downs, the two men consider it an overall success, and leave feeling optimistic about the year ahead. On the day that Babbitt gets elected vice-president of the Booster’s club, he finds out that Paul shot his wife Zilla. Immediately Babbitt drives to the jail where Paul is being kept. Babbitt is very shaken up by the situation, trying to think of ways to help Paul out. When Paul was sentenced to a three-year jail term, “Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless.” Shortly after Paul’s arrest, Myra and Tinka go to visit relatives, leaving Babbitt more or less on his own. Alone with his thoughts Babbitt begins to ask himself what it was he really wanted in life. Eventually, “he stumbled upon the admission that he wanted the fairy girl - in the flesh.” Missing Paul, Babbitt decides to return to Maine. He imagines himself as a rugged outdoorsman, and thinks about what it would be like to become a camp guide himself. Ultimately, however, he is disenchanted with the wilderness and leaves “lonelier than he had ever been in his life.” Eventually Babbitt finds the cure for his loneliness in an attractive new client, Tanis Judique. He opens up to her about everything that happened with Paul and Zilla, and Tanis proves to be a sympathetic listener. In time, Babbitt begins to rebel against all of the standards he formerly held: he jumps into liberal politics with famous socialist litigator Seneca Doane; conducts an extramarital affair with Tanis; goes on various vacations; and cavorts around Zenith with would-be Bohemians and flappers. But each effort ends up disillusioning him to the concept of rebellion. On his excursions with Tanis and her group of friends, "the Bunch," he learns that even the Bohemians have rigid standards for their subculture. When Virgil Gunch and others discover Babbitt's activities with Seneca Doane and Tanis Judique, Virgil tries to convince Babbitt to return to conformity and join their newly founded "Good Citizens' League.” Babbitt refuses. His former friends then ostracize him; boycotting Babbitt's real estate ventures and shunning him publicly in clubs around town. Babbitt slowly becomes aware that his forays into nonconformity are not only futile but also destructive of the life and the friends he once loved. Yet he continues with them — even after Myra suspects Babbitt's affair, though she has no proof or specific knowledge. Unrelated to these events, Myra falls seriously ill with acute appendicitis. Babbitt, in a near-epiphany, rushes home and relinquishes all rebellion in order to care for his wife. During her long recovery, they spend a lot of time together, rekindling their intimacy. In short time, his old friends and colleagues welcome Babbitt back into the fold. The consequence of his disgruntled philosophical wanderings being met with practical events of life, he reverts into dispassionate conformity by the end; however, Babbitt never quite loses hold of the sentimentality, empathy, and hope for a meaningful life that he has developed. In the final scene, all has been righted in his life and he is back on a traditional track. He is awakened in the night to find that his son Ted and Eunice, the daughter of his neighbor, have not returned from a party. In the morning his wife informs him that the two have been discovered in the house, having been married that night. While an assemblage of friends and family gather to denounce this development, Babbitt excuses himself and Ted to be alone. He offers his approval of the marriage stating that though he does not agree he admires the fact that Ted has chosen to lead his life by his own terms and not that of conformity.
315418	/m/01tsc8	Amerika	Franz Kafka	1927	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 :The first chapter of this novel is a short story titled "The Stoker". The story describes the bizarre wanderings of a sixteen-year-old European emigrant named Karl Roßmann in the United States, who was forced to go to New York to escape the scandal of his seduction by a housemaid. As the ship arrives in USA, he becomes friends with a stoker who is about to be dismissed from his job. Karl identifies with the stoker and decides to help him; together they go to see the captain of the ship. In a surreal turn of events, Karl's uncle, Senator Jacob, is in a meeting with the captain. Karl does not know that Senator Jacob is his uncle, but Mr. Jacob recognizes him and takes him away from the stoker. Karl stays with his uncle for some time but is later abandoned by him after making a visit to his uncle's friend without his uncle's full approval. Wandering aimlessly, he becomes friends with two drifters named Robinson and Delamarche. They promise to find him a job, but Karl departs from them on bad terms after he's offered a job by a manageress at Hotel Occidental. He works there as a lift-boy but is fired one day after Robinson shows up drunk at his work asking him for money. Robinson, in turn, gets injured after fighting with some of the lift-boys. Being dismissed, Karl leaves the hotel with Robinson to Delamarche's place. Once there, a police officer tries to chase him, but he gets away after Delamarche saves him. Delamarche now works for a wealthy, and quite obese lady named Brunelda. She wants to take in Karl as her servant. Karl refuses, but Delamarche physically forces him to stay. He decides to stay but looks for a good opportunity to escape. One day he sees an advertisement for the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, which is looking for employees. The theatre promises to find employment for everyone and Karl is taken in by this. Karl applies for a job and gets engaged as a "technical worker". He is then sent to Oklahoma by train and is welcomed by the vastness of the valleys.
315900	/m/01tv0r	The Farthest Shore	Ursula K. Le Guin	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 A strange, inexplicable malaise is spreading throughout Earthsea. Magic is losing its power; songs are being forgotten; people and animals are sickening or going mad. Accompanied by Arren, the young Prince of Enlad, the Archmage Ged leaves Roke Island to find the cause on his boat Lookfar. They head south to Hort, chief port of the island of Wathort where they encounter a drug addled wizard called Hare, who almost tricks them into following him into the Dry Land to their deaths. They realise that Hare and many others are under the malign influence of a powerful wizard, who is literally sucking the life out of the world. They head further south again to the island of Lorbanery, which was once famous for its dyed silk. All knowledge of dyeing has been lost however, and the local people are apathetic and hostile to the visitors. Fleeing the sense of sickness and evil they encounter there, Ged and Arren again head west and south, out to the furthest parts of the Reaches. Increasingly they are coming under the influence of the dark wizard themselves. Ged is injured by a spear thrown from an island where they attempt to land, and Arren does little to help him. He can feel his life and energy ebbing from him and they both drift away on Lookfar out into the open ocean. Their lives are saved by the Raft People, who live on great wooden rafts in the open ocean, only coming to land once a year to repair them. The Raft People are so far unaffected by the spreading evil and Ged and Arren recover their wits and strength there. However, the sickness does reach the Raft People on the shortest night of the year, when the traditional singers are struck dumb, unable to remember the songs. Before Ged can decide what to do about this, the dragon Orm Embar flies over the rafts and tells Ged to sail to Selidor, the most western isle of all Earthsea, and the traditional home of the dragons. Orm Embar tells Ged that the dark wizard is there and the dragons are powerless to defeat him without Ged's help. Ged and Arren set out on the long journey to Selidor in Lookfar. After traveling over the open ocean Ged and Arren come to the Dragons' Run, a series of many small islands south of Selidor. There they encounter dragons flying about them in a state of madness. The dragons have lost the power of speech and are attacking each other. They manage to survive the Dragons' Run, and land at last in Selidor. Orm Embar is waiting for them, but he too has lost the power of speech. After a search they find the wizard in a house he has made of dragon bones at the extreme western end of Selidor - the end of the world. Ged recognises the wizard as Cob, a dark mage whom he defeated many years before. After his defeat Cob went and became an expert in the dark arts of how to cheat death and live forever. In doing so he has opened a breach between the worlds which is sucking all the life out of the world of the living. Cob and Ged confront each other and Cob starts to gain the upper hand. With the last of his wits Orm Embar launches himself at Cob and destroys his physical body, but is killed in the process. The grotesque remnant of Cob's body, which cannot be killed, crawls into the Dry Land of the dead, and Ged and Arren are forced to follow. In the Dry Land Ged manages to defeat Cob, robbing him of life and closing the breach in the world. However, Ged pays a high price for this as it means that he sacrifices all his magic power in the process. When they emerge back into the world of the living, after a dreadful journey over the Mountains of Pain, the dragon Kalessin carries them back to Roke island, many miles away. Kalessin leaves Arren on Roke and flies on with Ged to Gont, Ged's home island. Arren realizes that he has become the fulfilment of the prediction of the last King of Earthsea many centuries before: "He shall inherit my throne who has crossed the dark land living and come to the far shores of the day." In the intervening time, the realm had broken up into smaller principalities and domains, with little peace between them. Now that Arren will be crowned as King Lebannen (his true name) they can be reunited. Le Guin originally offered two endings to the story. In one, after Arren's coronation, Ged sails alone out into the ocean and is never heard from again. In the other, Ged returns to the forest of his home island of Gont. In 1990, seventeen years after the publication of The Farthest Shore, Le Guin opted for the second ending when she continued the story in Tehanu.
317002	/m/01tzkp	The Quiet American	Graham Greene	1955-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 Thomas Fowler is a British journalist in his fifties who has been covering the French war in Vietnam for over two years. He meets a young American idealist named Alden Pyle, who lives his life and forms his opinions based on the books written by York Harding, with no real experience in matters of Southeast Asia at all. Harding's theory is that neither Communism or colonialism are the answer in foreign lands like Vietnam, but rather a "Third Force" &mdash; usually a combination of traditions &mdash; works best. When Pyle and Fowler first meet, Pyle says he would be delighted if Fowler could help him understand more about the country. Fowler is much older, more realistic and more cynical. Fowler has a live-in lover, Phuong, who is only 20 years old and was previously a dancer at The Arc-en-Ciel (Rainbow) on Jaccareo Road, in Cholon. Her sister's intent is to arrange a marriage for Phuong that will benefit herself and her family. The sister disapproves of their relationship, as Fowler is already married and an atheist. So, at a dinner with Fowler and Phuong, Pyle meets her sister, who immediately starts questioning Pyle about his viability for marriage with Phuong. Towards the end of the dinner, Pyle dances with Phuong, and Fowler notes how poorly he dances. Fowler goes to the city to cover a battle there. Pyle travels there to tell him that he has been in love with Phuong since the first night he saw her, and that he wants to marry her. They make a toast to nothing and Pyle leaves the next day. Fowler gets a letter from Pyle thanking him for being so nice. The letter annoys Fowler because of Pyle's arrogant confidence that Phuong leave Fowler to marry him. Meanwhile, Fowler's editor wants him to transfer back to England. Pyle comes to Fowler's place and they ask Phuong to choose between them. She chooses Fowler, unaware that he is up for a transfer. Fowler writes to his wife to ask for a divorce in front of Phuong. Fowler and Pyle meet again in a war zone. They end up in a tower, and their discussion topics range from their sexual experiences to religion. As they escape, Pyle saves Fowler's life. Fowler goes back to Saigon, where he lies to Phuong that his wife will divorce him. Pyle exposes the lie and Phuong moves in with Pyle. After receiving a letter from Fowler, his editor decides that he can stay in Indo-China for another year. Fowler goes into the midst of the battlefield to cover the unfolding events. When Fowler returns to Saigon, he goes to Pyle's office to confront him, but Pyle is out. Pyle comes over later for drinks and they talk about his upcoming marriage to Phuong. Later that week, a car bomb is detonated and many innocent civilians are killed from the blast. Fowler puts the pieces together and realizes that Pyle is behind the bombing. Realising that Pyle is causing innocent people to die, Fowler takes part in an assassination plot against him. Although the police believe that Fowler is involved, they cannot prove anything. Phuong goes back to Fowler as if nothing had ever happened. In the last chapter, Fowler receives a telegram from his wife in which she states that she has changed her mind and that she will start divorce proceedings. The novel ends with Fowler reflecting on his first meeting with Phuong, and the death of Pyle.
317137	/m/01t_4d	Noli Me Tangere	José Rizal	1887	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Having completed his studies in Europe, young Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin comes back to the Philippines after a 7-year absence. In his honor, Don Santiago de los Santos "Captain Tiago," a family friend, threw a get-together party, which was attended by friars and other prominent figures. One of the guests, former San Diego curate Fray Dámaso Vardolagas belittled and slandered Ibarra. Ibarra brushed off the insults and took no offense; he instead politely excused himself and left the party because of an allegedly important task. The next day, Ibarra visits María Clara, his betrothed, the beautiful daughter of Captain Tiago and affluent resident of Binondo. Their long-standing love was clearly manifested in this meeting, and María Clara cannot help but reread the letters her sweetheart had written her before he went to Europe. Before Ibarra left for San Diego, Lieutenant Guevara, a Civil Guard, reveals to him the incidents preceding the death of his father, Don Rafael Ibarra, a rich hacendero of the town. According to Guevara, Don Rafael was unjustly accused of being a heretic, in addition to being a subversive — an allegation brought forth by Dámaso because of Don Rafael's non-participation in the Sacraments, such as Confession and Mass. Dámaso's animosity against Ibarra's father is aggravated by another incident when Don Rafael helped out on a fight between a tax collector and a child fighting, and the former's death was blamed on him, although it was not deliberate. Suddenly, all of those who thought ill of him surfaced with additional complaints. He was imprisoned, and just when the matter was almost settled, he died of sickness in jail. Still not content with what he had done, Dámaso arranged for Don Rafael's corpse to be dug up from the Catholic Church and brought to a Chinese cemetery, because he thought it inappropriate to allow a heretic a Catholic burial ground. Unfortunately, it was raining and because of the bothersome weight of the body, the undertakers decide to throw the corpse into a nearby lake. Revenge was not in Ibarra's plans, instead he carried through his father's plan of putting up a school, since he believed that education would pave the way to his country's progress (all over the novel the author refers to both Spain and the Philippines as two different countries as part of a same nation or family, with Spain seen as the mother and the Philippines as the daughter). During the inauguration of the school, Ibarra would have been killed in a sabotage had Elías — a mysterious man who had warned Ibarra earlier of a plot to assassinate him — not saved him. Instead the hired killer met an unfortunate incident and died. The sequence of events proved to be too traumatic for María Clara who got seriously ill but was luckily cured by the medicine Ibarra sent. After the inauguration, Ibarra hosted a luncheon during which Dámaso, gate-crashing the luncheon, again insulted him. Ibarra ignored the priest's insolence, but when the latter slandered the memory of his dead father, he was no longer able to restrain himself and lunged at Dámaso, prepared to stab him for his impudence. As a consequence, Dámaso excommunicated Ibarra, taking this opportunity to persuade the already-hesitant Tiago to forbid his daughter from marrying Ibarra. The friar wished María Clara to marry Linares, a Peninsular who had just arrived from Spain. With the help of the Governor-General, Ibarra's excommunication was nullified and the Archbishop decided to accept him as a member of the Church once again. But, as fate would have it, some incident of which Ibarra had known nothing about was blamed on him, and he is wrongly arrested and imprisoned. The accusation against him was then overruled because during the litigation that followed, nobody could testify that he was indeed involved. Unfortunately, his letter to María Clara somehow got into the hands of the jury and is manipulated such that it then became evidence against him by the parish priest, Fray Salví. With Machiavellian precision, Salví framed Ibarra and ruined his life just so he could stop him from marrying María Clara and making the latter his concubine. Meanwhile, in Capitan Tiago's residence, a party was being held to announce the upcoming wedding of María Clara and Linares. Ibarra, with the help of Elías, took this opportunity to escape from prison. Before leaving, Ibarra spoke to María Clara and accused her of betraying him, thinking that she gave the letter he wrote her to the jury. María Clara explained that she would never conspire against him, but that she was forced to surrender Ibarra's letter to Father Salvi, in exchange for the letters written by her mother even before she, María Clara, was born. The letters were from her mother, Pía Alba, to Dámaso alluding to their unborn child; and that María Clara was therefore not Captain Tiago's biological daughter, but Dámaso's. Afterwards, Ibarra and Elías fled by boat. Elías instructed Ibarra to lie down, covering him with grass to conceal his presence. As luck would have it, they were spotted by their enemies. Elías, thinking he could outsmart them, jumped into the water. The guards rained shots on him, all the while not knowing that they were aiming at the wrong man. María Clara, thinking that Ibarra had been killed in the shooting incident, was greatly overcome with grief. Robbed of hope and severely disillusioned, she asked Dámaso to confine her into a nunnery. Dámaso reluctantly agreed when she threatened to take her own life, demanding, "the nunnery or death!" Unbeknownst to her, Ibarra was still alive and able to escape. It was Elías who had taken the shots. It was Christmas Eve when Elías woke up in the forest fatally wounded, as it is here where he instructed Ibarra to meet him. Instead, Elías found the altar boy Basilio cradling his already-dead mother, Sisa. The latter lost her mind when she learned that her two sons, Crispín and Basilio, were chased out of the convent by the sacristan mayor on suspicions of stealing sacred objects. (The truth is that, it was the sacristan mayor who stole the objects and only pinned the blame on the two boys. The said sacristan mayor actually killed Crispín while interrogating him on the supposed location of the sacred objects. It was implied that the body was never found and the incident was covered-up by Salví). Elías, convinced that he would die soon, instructs Basilio to build a funeral pyre and burn his and Sisa's bodies to ashes. He tells Basilio that, if nobody reaches the place, he come back later on and dig for he will find gold. He also tells him (Basilio) to take the gold he finds and go to school. In his dying breath, he instructed Basilio to continue dreaming about freedom for his motherland with the words: Elías died thereafter. In the epilogue, it was explained that Tiago became addicted to opium and was seen to frequent the opium house in Binondo to satiate his addiction. María Clara became a nun where Salví, who has lusted after her from the beginning of the novel, regularly used her to fulfill his lust. One stormy evening, a beautiful crazy woman was seen at the top of the convent crying and cursing the heavens for the fate it has handed her. While the woman was never identified, it is insinuated that the said woman was María Clara.
317733	/m/01v20s	Feet of Clay	Terry Pratchett	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A cabal of Ankh-Morpork's guild leaders seeks to gradually depose the Patrician, replace him with Nobby Nobbs as the new king and rule the city through him. To implement this, the cabal orders the golems' newly-made king, Meshugah, to make poisoned candles and have them delivered to the palace. However, the golems used a baker's oven rather than a proper kiln to bake Meshugah, meaning the king is literally "half-baked". Its mind overloaded with all the wishes and propositions of the many golems, it goes mad and starts killing people. At this point the City Watch steps in trying to solve the murders and the poisoning of Lord Vetinari. With the assistance of their new forensics expert dwarf Cheery Littlebottom, Commander Vimes and Captain Carrot slowly unravel the mystery. Carrot and Dorfl, one of the golems, fight and defeat the golem king at the candlestick factory. Afterwards, Vimes confronts the city's chief herald, a vampire, who instigated the whole affair. Dorfl arrests him despite tenuous evidence and Vimes burns down all the heralds' records of the nobility as a sort of punishment. In the end, Vetinari has recovered completely, Dorfl is sworn in as a watchman, Vimes gets a pay rise, and the watch house gets a new dart board.
317934	/m/01v31h	The Cask of Amontillado	Edgar Allan Poe	1846-11	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Montresor tells the story of the day that he took his revenge on Fortunato, a fellow nobleman, to an unspecified person who knows him very well. Angry over some unspecified insult, he plots to murder his friend during Carnival when the man is drunk, dizzy, and wearing a jester's motley. He baits Fortunato by telling him he has obtained what he believes to be a pipe (about 130 gallons, 492 litres) of a rare vintage of Amontillado. He claims he wants his friend's expert opinion on the subject. Fortunato goes with Montresor to the wine cellars of the latter's palazzo, where they wander in the catacombs. Montresor offers wine (first Medoc, then De Grave) to Fortunato. At one point, Fortunato makes an elaborate, grotesque gesture with an upraised wine bottle. When Montresor appears not to recognize the gesture, Fortunato asks, "You are not of the masons?" Montresor says he is, and when Fortunato, disbelieving, requests a sign, Montresor displays a trowel he had been hiding. Montresor warns Fortunato, who has a bad cough, of the damp, and suggests they go back; Fortunato insists on continuing, claiming that "[he] shall not die of a cough." During their walk, Montresor mentions his family coat of arms: a golden foot in a blue background crushing a snake whose fangs are embedded in the foot's heel, with the motto Nemo me impune lacessit ("No one insults me with impunity"). When they come to a niche, Montresor tells his victim that the Amontillado is within. Fortunato enters and, drunk and unsuspecting, does not resist as Montresor quickly chains him to the wall. Montresor then declares that, since Fortunato won't go back, he must "positively leave [him]". Montresor walls up the niche, entombing his friend alive. At first, Fortunato, who sobers up faster than Montresor anticipated he would, shakes the chains, trying to escape. Fortunato then screams for help, but Montresor mocks his cries, knowing nobody can hear them. Fortunato laughs weakly and tries to pretend that he is the subject of a joke and that people will be waiting for him (including the Lady Fortunato). As the murderer finishes the topmost row of stones, Fortunato wails, "For the love of God, Montresor!" Montresor replies, "Yes, for the love of God!" He listens for a reply but hears only the jester's bells ringing. Before placing the last stone, he drops a burning torch through the gap. He claims that he feels sick at heart, but dismisses this reaction as an effect of the dampness of the catacombs. In the last few sentences, Montresor reveals that in the 50 years since that night, he has never been caught, and Fortunato's body still hangs from its chains in the niche where he left it. The murderer concludes: Requiescat In Pace! ("May he rest in peace!").
318225	/m/01v4b5	Thursbitch	Alan Garner	2003-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Set both in the 18th century and the present day and centred on the mystery of an inscription on a rock about a death from exposure, the novel seeks to explain time and history in terms of setting and interaction. It is a complex novel that can be read on many different levels. Structurally it can be regarded as a Möbius strip, since the last chapter describes the same events as the first. One is then induced to read the book again, which becomes a different experience as a result of the first reading. Garner has discussed this in some detail. The name of the valley is first recorded in the 14th century and he argues that "Thurs" is from the Anglo Saxon "þyrs". Applied to Grendel in Beowulf, it's usually translated as "demon", although Garner reckons "something big" would be a more accurate translation. He's a formidable linguist in his own right and collaborated with Prof Ralph Elliott of the Australian National University in his research on 'Thursbitch'. There's more detail in his lecture, 'The Valley of the Demon', but the snippets in this article "Valley of the Living Dread" give an idea.
318747	/m/01v6yp	Ripley's Game	Patricia Highsmith	1974-03-11	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In the third Ripley novel, Tom Ripley is a wealthy man in his early thirties. He lives in Villeperce, France, with his wealthy French wife, Heloise. Ripley spends his days living comfortably in his house, Belle Ombre, until an associate, an American criminal named Reeves Minot, asks him if he can commit a murder for him. Ripley &mdash; who "detest[s] murder, unless absolutely necessary" &mdash; turns down the offer of $96,000 for the two hits, and Minot goes back to Hamburg, Germany. The previous month, Ripley had gone to a party in Fontainebleau, where the host, Jonathan Trevanny, a poor British picture framer suffering from myeloid leukemia, insulted him. As revenge, Ripley suggests to Minot that he might try to convince Trevanny to commit the two murders. To ensure that the plan will work, Ripley starts a rumor that Trevanny has only months to live, and suggests that Minot fabricate evidence that Trevanny's leukemia has worsened, though Minot does not. Trevanny, who fears his death will leave his wife and son penniless, accepts Minot's offer of a visit to a German specialist in Hamburg. While in Hamburg, he is persuaded to commit the murder for money. After carrying out the contract &mdash; a shooting at a crowded U-bahn station &mdash; Trevanny insists that he is through as a hired gun. Minot invites Trevanny to Munich, where he visits another doctor. Minot persuades Trevanny to murder a Mafia boss, this time on a train using a garrotte, but he also gives him the far less desirable option of using a gun. At first Trevanny is horrified by the idea, but he eventually gives in and finds himself on the train. He resolves to shoot the mafioso and commit suicide before he can be caught, and he asks Minot to ensure that whatever happens to him the money will go to his wife. Before Trevanny can go through with it, however, Ripley &mdash; who had started to feel responsible for getting Trevanny into the situation &mdash; shows up and executes the Mafia boss himself. He asks Trevanny not to let Minot know that he has "assisted" with the assassination. Back in France, Ripley and Trevanny form a strange sort of bond; Ripley learns to take care of someone other than himself, while Trevanny learns to abandon his conscience and do whatever it takes to survive. Trevanny's wife Simone discovers a Swiss bank book with a large sum in Trevanny's name and starts to suspect that her husband is involved in something shady. She links the rumor about her husband's demise to Ripley and asks Trevanny to tell her how, exactly, he has been making so much money. Trevanny is unable to explain it to her and turns to Ripley to help him concoct a credible story. Ripley acknowledges his role in Trevanny's dilemma and promises to shepherd him through the ordeal. Ripley learns from Minot that the Mafia in Hamburg appear to be suspicious of Minot's involvement with the murders. Minot goes on the run after the Mafia bombs his house. Ripley begins to fear Mafia revenge when he receives a couple of suspicious phone calls. After sending Heloise and their housekeeper, Mme. Annette, away, Ripley asks Trevanny to help him deal with any Mafia reprisals at Belle Ombre. When two Mafia hitmen turn up at Belle Ombre, Ripley forces them to phone their boss in Milan and say that Ripley is not the man they are after. He then kills both assassins. Simone then shows up at the house demanding answers &mdash; and discovers the corpses and is sent away in a taxi. Ripley and Trevanny drive to a remote village to burn the corpses in their own car. A few days later, Ripley visits Trevanny's house, where a quartet of Mafia gunmen appear. One of them opens fire on Ripley, but Trevanny falls in front of him and is mortally wounded; he dies in Simone's arms. Minot is thrown out of the Mafia car as they drive away; they had kidnapped and tortured him into revealing Trevanny's name and address. A few months later, Ripley encounters Simone in Fontainebleau, and she spits at him. He realizes that Simone has accepted her husband's blood money, and in doing so has necessarily remained silent about her suspicions of Ripley's instigation of the entire affair.
318820	/m/01v75k	An American Tragedy	Theodore Dreiser	1925	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The ambitious but immature Clyde Griffiths, raised by poor and devoutly religious parents who force him to participate in their street missionary work, is anxious to achieve better things. His troubles begin when he takes a job as a bellboy at a local hotel. The boys he meets are much more sophisticated than he, and they introduce Clyde to the world of alcohol and prostitution. Clyde enjoys his new lifestyle and does everything in his power to win the affections of the flirtatious Hortense Briggs. But Clyde's life is forever changed when a stolen car in which he's traveling kills a young child. Clyde flees Kansas City, and after a brief stay in Chicago, he reestablishes himself as a foreman at the shirt-collar factory of his wealthy long-lost uncle in Lycurgus, New York, who meets Clyde through a stroke of fortune. While remaining aloof from him as a kinsman and doing nothing to embrace him personally or advance him socially, the uncle does give Clyde a job and ultimately advances him to a position of relative importance within the factory. Although Clyde vows not to consort with women in the way that caused his Kansas City downfall, he is swiftly attracted to Roberta Alden, a poor and innocent farm girl working under his supervision at the factory. Roberta falls in love with him. Clyde initially enjoys the secretive relationship (forbidden by factory rules) and ultimately persuades Roberta to have sex with him rather than lose him, but Clyde's ambition precludes marriage to the penniless Roberta. He dreams instead of the elegant Sondra Finchley, the daughter of a wealthy Lycurgus man and a family friend of his uncle's. Having unsuccessfully attempted to procure an abortion for Roberta, who expects him to marry her, Clyde procrastinates while his relationship with Sondra continues to mature. When he realizes that he has a genuine chance to marry Sondra, and after Roberta threatens to reveal their relationship unless he marries her, Clyde hatches a plan to murder Roberta in a fashion that will seem accidental. Clyde takes Roberta on a row boat on Big Bittern Lake in upstate New York and rows to a remote area. As he speaks to her regarding the end of their relationship, Roberta moves towards him, and he strikes her in the face with his camera, stunning her and capsizing the boat. Unable to swim, Roberta drowns while Clyde, who is unwilling to save her, swims to shore. The narrative is deliberately unclear as to whether he acted with malice and intent to murder, or if he struck her merely instinctively. However, the trail of circumstantial evidence points to murder, and the local authorities are only too eager to convict Clyde, to the point of manufacturing additional evidence against him. Following a sensational trial before an unsympathetic audience, and despite a vigorous defense mounted by two lawyers hired by his uncle, Clyde is convicted, sentenced to death, and executed. The jailhouse scenes and the correspondence between Clyde and his mother stand out as exemplars of pathos in modern literature.
318936	/m/01v7rg	Timon of Athens	William Shakespeare			 Timon is not initially a misanthrope. He is a wealthy and generous Athenian gentleman. He gives a large banquet, attended by nearly all the main characters. Timon gives away money wastefully, and everyone wants to please him to get more, except for Apemantus, a churlish philosopher whose cynicism Timon cannot yet appreciate. He accepts art from Poet and Painter, and a jewel from the Jeweller, but by the end of Act 1, he has given that away to another friend. Timon's servant, Lucilius, has been wooing the daughter of an old Athenian. The man is angry, but Timon pays him three talents in exchange for the couple being allowed to marry, because the happiness of his servant is worth the price. Timon is told that his friend, Ventidius, is in debtors' prison. He sends money to pay Ventidius's debt, and Ventidius is released and joins the banquet. Timon gives a speech on the value of friendship. The guests are entertained by a masque, followed by dancing. As the party winds down, Timon continues to give things away to his friends; his horses, and other possessions. The act is divided rather arbitrarily into two scenes but the experimental and/or unfinished nature of the play is reflected in that it does not naturally break into a five-act structure. Timon has given away all his wealth. Flavius, Timon's steward, is upset by the way Timon has spent his wealth–overextending his munificence by showering patronage on the parasitic writers and artists, and delivering his dubious friends from their financial straits. He tells Timon so when he returns from a hunt. Timon is upset that he has not been told this before, and begins to vent his anger on Flavius, who tells him that he has tried repeatedly in the past without success, and now he is at the end; all Timon's land has been sold. Shadowing Timon is another guest at the banquet; the cynical philosopher Apemantus, who terrorises Timon's shallow companions with his caustic raillery. He was the only guest not angling for money or possessions from Timon. Along with a Fool, he attacks Timon's creditors when they show up to make their demands for immediate payment. Timon cannot pay, and sends out his servants to make requests for help from those friends he considers closest. Timon's servants are turned down, one by one, by Timon's false friends, two giving lengthy monologues as to their anger with them. Elsewhere, one of Alcibiades's junior officers has reached an even further point of rage, killing a man in "hot blood." Alcibiades pleads with the Senate for mercy, arguing that a crime of passion should not carry as severe a sentence as premeditated murder. The senators disagree, and when Alcibiades persists, banish him forever. He vows revenge, with the support of his troops. The act finishes with Timon discussing with his servants the revenge he will carry out at his next banquet. Timon has a much smaller party, intended only for those he feels have betrayed him. The serving trays are brought in, but under them the friends find not a feast, but rocks and lukewarm water. Timon sprays them with the water, throws the dishes at them, and flees his home. The loyal Flavius vows to find him. Cursing the city walls, Timon goes into the wilderness and makes his crude home in a cave, sustaining himself on roots. Here he discovers an underground trove of gold. The knowledge of this spreads. Alcibiades, Apemantus, and three bandits are able to find Timon before Flavius does. Accompanying Alcibiades are two prostitutes, Phrynia and Timandra, who trade barbs with the bitter Timon on the subject of venereal disease. Timon offers most of the gold to the rebel Alcibiades to subsidise his assault on the city, which he now wants to see destroyed, as his experiences have reduced him to misanthropy. He gives the rest to his whores to spread disease, and much of the remainder to Poet and Painter, who arrive soon after, leaving little left for the senators who visit him. When Apemantus appears and accuses Timon of copying his pessimistic style, the audience is treated to the spectacle of a mutually misanthropic exchange of invective. Flavius arrives. He wants the money as well, but he also wants Timon to come back into society. Timon acknowledges that he has had one true friend in Flavius, a shining example of an otherwise diseased and impure race, but laments that this man is a mere servant. He invites the last envoys from Athens, who hoped Timon might placate Alcibiades, to go hang themselves, and then dies in the wilderness. Alcibiades, marching on Athens, then throws down his glove, and ends the play reading the bitter epitaph Timon wrote for himself, part of which was composed by Callimachus: <poem> "Here lies a wretched corpse of wretched soul bereft: Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!" Here lie I, Timon, who alive, all living men did hate, Pass by, and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait." </poem>
318937	/m/01v7rw	Troilus and Cressida	William Shakespeare			 In the seventh year of the Trojan War, a Trojan prince named Troilus falls in love with Cressida, the daughter of a Trojan priest who has defected to the Greek side. Troilus is assisted in his pursuit of her by Pandarus, Cressida's uncle. Meanwhile, in the Greek camp, the Greek general, Agamemnon, wonders why his commanders seem so downcast and pessimistic. The wise and crafty Ulysses informs him that the army's troubles spring from a lack of respect for authority, brought about by the behavior of Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior, who refuses to fight and instead spends his time sitting in his tent with his comrade (and lover) Patroclus, mocking his superiors. Shortly thereafter, a challenge to single combat arrives from Prince Hector, the greatest Trojan warrior, and Ulysses decides to have Ajax, a headstrong fool, fight Hector instead of Achilles, in the hopes that this snub will wound Achilles's pride and bring him back into the war. In Troy, the sons of King Priam debate whether it is worthwhile to continue the war—or whether they should return Helen to the Greeks and end the struggle. Hector argues for peace, but he is won over by the impassioned Troilus, who wants to continue the struggle. In the Greek camp, Thersites, Ajax's foul-mouthed slave, abuses everyone who crosses his path. His master, meanwhile, has been honored by the commanders over the sulking Achilles, and is to fight Hector the next day. That night, Pandarus brings Troilus and Cressida together, and after they pledge to be forever true to one another, he leads them to a bedchamber to consummate their love. Meanwhile, Cressida's father, the treacherous Trojan priest Calchas, asks the Greek commanders to exchange a Trojan prisoner for his daughter, so that he may be reunited with her. The commanders agree, and the next morning—to Troilus and Cressida's dismay—the trade is made, and a Greek lord named Diomedes leads Cressida away from Troy. That afternoon, Ajax and Hector fight to a draw, and after Hector and Achilles exchange insults, Hector and Troilus feast with the Greeks under a flag of truce. As the camp goes to bed, Ulysses leads Troilus to the tent of Calchas, where the Trojan prince watches from hiding as Cressida agrees to become Diomedes's lover. The next day, in spite of unhappy premonitions from his wife, sister, and his father, Hector takes the field, and a furious and heartbroken Troilus accompanies him. The Trojans drive the Greeks back, but Patroclus is killed, which brings a vengeful Achilles back into the war, finally. Achilles is unable to defeat Hector in single combat, but he later catches Hector unarmed and, together with a gang of Greek warriors, slaughters him. Achilles then drags Hector's body around the walls of Troy, and the play ends with the Trojan warriors retreating to the city to mourn their fallen hero.
319373	/m/01v9m6	General Theory of Employment Interest and Money	John Maynard Keynes		{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The central argument of The General Theory is that the level of employment is determined, not by the price of labour as in neoclassical economics, but by the spending of money (aggregate demand). He argues that it is wrong to assume that competitive markets will, in the long run, deliver full employment or that full employment is the natural, self-righting, equilibrium state of a monetary economy. On the contrary, under-employment and under-investment are likely to be the natural state unless active measures are taken. One implication of The General Theory is that a lack of competition is not the fundamental problem and measures to reduce unemployment by cutting wages or benefits are not only hard-hearted but ultimately futile. Keynes sought to do nothing less but upend the conventional economic wisdom. He mailed a letter to his friend George Bernard Shaw on New Year's Day, 1935: "I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize--not I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years--the way the world thinks about its economic problems. I can't expect you, or anyone else, to believe this at the present stage. But for myself I don't merely hope what I say,--in my own mind, I'm quite sure." Keynes wrote four prefaces, to the English, German, Japanese and French editions, each with a slightly different emphasis. In the English preface, he addresses the book to his fellow economists, yet mentions he hopes it will be helpful to others who read it. He also claims that the connection between this book and his Treatise on Money, written five years earlier, will most likely be clearer to him than anyone else, and that any contradictions should be viewed as an evolution of thought. The first book introduced what Keynes asserted would be a book that changed the way the world thinks. *Chapter 1: The General Theory (only half a page long) consists simply of this radical claim: "I have called this book the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, placing the emphasis on the prefix general. The object of such a title is to contrast the character of my arguments and conclusions with those of the classical theory of the subject, upon which I was brought up and which dominates the economic thought, both practical and theoretical, of the governing and academic classes of this generation, as it has for a hundred years past. I shall argue that the postulates of the classical theory are applicable to a special case only and not to the general case, the situation which it assumes being a limiting point of the possible positions of equilibrium. Moreover, the characteristics of the special case assumed by the classical theory happen not to be those of the economic society in which we actually live, with the result that its teaching is misleading and disastrous if we attempt to apply it to the facts of experience." (p. 3) *Chapter 2: The Postulates of the Classical EconomicsJohn Maynard Keynes (1936) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money Chapter 2 : The Postulates of the Classical Economics http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch02.htm (Free Full Text) *Chapter 3: The Principle of Effective Demand *Chapter 4: The Choice of Units *Chapter 5. Expectation as Determining Output and Employment *Chapter 6. The Definition of Income, Saving and Investment *Chapter 7. The Meaning of Saving and Investment Further Considered Book III moves to cover what causes people to consume, and therefore stimulate economic activity. In a depression the government, he argued, needs to kick start the economy&#39;s motor by doing anything necessary. In Chapter 10 he says, "If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing." (p. 129) *Chapter 8. The Propensity to Consume: I. The Objective Factors *Chapter 9. The Propensity to Consume: II. The Subjective Factors *Chapter 10. The Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Multiplier The marginal efficiency of capital is the relationship between the prospective yield of an investment and its supply price or replacement cost. Keynes says on page 135: &#34;I define the marginal efficiency of capital as being equal to that rate of discount which would make the present value of the series of annuities given by the returns expected from the capital-asset during its life just equal to its supply price.&#34; *Chapter 11. The [[marginal efficiency of capital]] *Chapter 12. The State of Long-term Expectation *Chapter 13. The General Theory of the Rate of Interest *Chapter 14. The Classical Theory of the Rate of Interest *Chapter 15. The Psychological and Business Incentives to Liquidity *Chapter 16. Sundry Observations on the Nature of Capital *Chapter 17. The Essential Properties of Interest and Money *Chapter 18. The General Theory of Employment Re-stated *Chapter 20. The Employment Function *Chapter 21. The Theory of Prices "It is better that a man should tyrannise over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative." (p. 374) "... the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil." (pp. 383–4)) *Chapter 22. Notes on the Trade Cycle *Chapter 23. Notes on Merchantilism, the Usury Laws, Stamped Money and Theories of Under-consumption *Chapter 24: Concluding Notes on the Social Philosophy towards which the General Theory might Lead
319805	/m/01vcdm	Tintin in America	Hergé	1932	{"/m/01vnb": "Comic book"}	 It is the year 1931. Having encountered Al Capone's gangsters in his last adventure, Tintin in the Congo, Tintin is sent to Chicago, Illinois to clean up the city's criminals. He is captured by gangsters several times, soon meeting Capone himself after he is dropped through a trapdoor in the street and knocked out by two thugs. Al Capone pays the two, ordering the second one to eliminate Tintin. However Snowy knocks a vase onto his head as he fires, knocking him out. Tintin listens at the door where Capone and the other crook went. However the other one, revealed to be called Pietro, recovers and throws a vase at Tintin. But the door is opened at that moment, causing the vase to hit Capone's face, though the door makes Tintin drop his gun. However he then headbutts Pietro in the waist and runs out, hiding behind a curtain to evade the other crook. Tintin then gags Pietro and binds him, as well as gagging and binding Capone. He then knocks the other gangster out with a chair as he enters. However the policeman he calls to help arrest the gangsters does not believe his story and tries to capture him instead (Tintin's failure to capture Capone reflects the fact that Capone was still active when the comic strip was written). Snowy later comes along, revealing someone else came and untied the other three, despite his efforts. After several attempts on his life, Tintin meets Capone's rival, the devious Bobby Smiles, who heads the Gangsters Syndicate of Chicago(GSC) who tries to persuade Tintin to work for him, but Tintin declines. Tintin spends much of the book trying to capture Smiles, pursuing him to the Midwestern town of Redskin City. There he is captured by a Blackfoot Indian tribe (fooled by Smiles into thinking Tintin is their enemy), and discovers oil. This unintentionally causes the expulsion of the tribe, as unscrupulous oil corporations take over their land, depriving them of any share in the oil profits (see Ideology of Tintin). Finally, Tintin captures Smiles, and ships him back to Chicago in a crate. After Smiles is captured, an unnamed bald gangster kidnaps Tintin's dog, Snowy. Tintin manages to save him after hiding in a suit of armour and knocking out the gangster and two of his henchman. He discovers Snowy with his leg manacled in a dungeon. However the gangster sends his 15 bodyguard after Tintin. He tells them he wants them back in 10 minutes, with Tintin bound and gagged. Tintin locks them in the Keep, but the leader escapes. The next day the bald gangster orders a subordinate named Maurice Oyle to invite Tintin to a cannery, where Tintin is tricked into falling into the meat grinding machine. However, because the workers at the cannery are on strike, the meat grinder is deactivated and Tintin escapes. Tintin later tricks and captures both Maurice and the bald gangster. After this escapade, Tintin is invited to a banquet held in his honor, where he is kidnapped by Chicago gangsters who have decided to wreak revenge upon him for his crackdown upon the city's criminals. The gangsters tie Tintin and Snowy to a weight and throw them into Lake Michigan. However, the gangsters mistakenly used a block of wood as a weight, and thus Tintin and Snowy are saved by what is ostensibly a police patrol boat. It soon transpires that the crew of the boat are not policemen, but more gangsters, and they attempt to kill Tintin. However Tintin overpowers them, and later leads the police to the gangsters' headquarters. A grateful Chicago holds a ticker-tape parade for Tintin, after which he returns to Europe.
320387	/m/01vfpb	Christine	Stephen King	1983-04-29	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 In 1978, while riding home from work with his friend Dennis, nerdy teen Arnold "Arnie" Cunningham spots a dilapidated red and white Plymouth Fury parked in front of a house. Arnie makes Dennis stop so he can examine the car, despite Dennis's attempts to talk Arnie out of it. The car's owner, Roland D. LeBay, an elderly gentleman wearing a back supporter, sells the car—named "Christine"—to Arnie for $250. While waiting for Arnie to finish the paperwork, Dennis sits inside Christine. He has a vision of the car and the surroundings as they were in 1958, when the car was new. Frightened, Dennis gets out of Christine, deciding he does not like Arnie's new car. Arnie brings Christine to a do-it-yourself auto repair facility run by Will Darnell, who is suspected of using the garage as a front for illicit operations. As Arnie restores the automobile he becomes withdrawn, humorless and cynical, yet more confident and self-assured. Dennis is puzzled by the changes in both his friend and Christine; the repair work proceeds haphazardly, and the more extensive repairs do not appear to be done by Arnie. Arnie's appearance improves in tandem with Christine's. When LeBay dies, Dennis meets his younger brother, George, who reveals Roland's history of violent behavior. George also reveals that LeBay's small daughter choked to death on a hamburger in the back seat of the car, and that LeBay's wife was so traumatized that she apparently committed suicide in its front seat by carbon monoxide poisoning. As time passes, Dennis observes that Arnie is taking on many of LeBay's personality traits. Dennis also notices that Arnie has become close to Darnell, even acting as a courier in Darnell's contraband smuggling operations. When Arnie is almost finished restoring Christine, an attractive girl named Leigh Cabot transfers to his high school. She is regarded as the school beauty, and her decision to go out with Arnie puzzles everyone. While on a date with Arnie, she nearly chokes to death on a hamburger and is saved only by the intervention of a hitchhiker who uses the Heimlich maneuver. Leigh notices that Christine's dashboard lights seemed to become glaring green eyes, watching her during the incident, and that Arnie tried to save her by ineffectually pounding her on the back. She realizes that she and Christine are competing for Arnie's affection, and she vows to never get into that car again. Arnie's mother refuses to let him keep Christine at home. After several arguments, Arnie's father convinces him to purchase a 30 day pass for the airport parking lot, helping to restore peace in the family. Soon afterward, Buddy Repperton, a bully who frequently targeted Arnie before being expelled from high school, and his gang of thugs vandalize the car. As Arnie pushes Christine through Darnell's garage/junkyard, the car repairs itself. Arnie strains his back in the process and begins wearing a brace all the time, as LeBay did. His relationship with Leigh declines. A number of inexplicable car-related deaths occur around town, starting with Buddy and all but one of his accomplices in the vandalism and ending with Will Darnell. The police find evidence linking Christine to the scene of each death, although none is found on the car itself. A police detective named Rudy Junkins becomes suspicious of Arnie, and his suspicions are not allayed even though Arnie is able to produce an airtight alibi for each death. It is revealed that Christine, possessed by LeBay's vengeful spirit, is committing these murders independently and repairing herself after each one. Arnie becomes obsessed with Christine, forgetting Leigh entirely, and Leigh and Dennis begin their own relationship, unearthing details of Christine's and LeBay's past. One evening, Arnie stumbles upon Leigh and Dennis intimately close in Dennis's car, sending him into a rage. Junkins also falls victim to a gruesome death. Knowing they are now at the top of LeBay and Christine's hit list, Dennis and Leigh devise a plan to destroy the car and, hopefully, save Arnie. While Arnie is out of town, they lure Christine to Darnell's garage and batter her to pieces using a septic tanker truck. The remains are put through a car crusher, and Dennis learns that Arnie and his mother were both killed in a highway accident, while Christine killed Arnie's father earlier. Witness accounts lead Dennis to believe that LeBay's spirit, tied to Arnie through Christine, tore itself away and caused the wreck. Four years later, Dennis reflects on these events. He and Leigh parted after attending college together, and he is now a junior high school teacher. He learns about a freak car accident in Los Angeles, in which a movie theater employee - possibly the last surviving member of Buddy's gang - was struck and killed by a car that smashed in through the theater wall. Dennis speculates that Christine may have rebuilt herself and set out to kill everyone who stood against her, saving him for last.
320809	/m/01vhfj	Nova Express	William S. Burroughs	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Nova Express is a social commentary on human and machine control of life. The Nova Mob&mdash;Sammy the Butcher, Izzy the Push, The Subliminal Kid, and others&mdash;are viruses, "defined as the three-dimensional coordinate point of a controller." "which invade the human body and in the process produce language." These Nova Criminals represent society, culture, and government, and have taken control. Inspector Lee and the rest of the Nova Police are left fighting for the rest of humanity in the power struggle. "The Nova Police can be compared to apomorphine, a regulating instance that need not continue and has no intention of continuing after its work is done." The police are focused on "first-order addictions of junkies, homosexuals, dissidents, and criminals; if these criminals vanish, the police must create more in order to justify their own survival." The Nova Police depend upon the Nova Criminals for existence; if the criminals cease to exist, so do the police. "They act like apomorphine, the nonaddictive cure for morphine addiction that Burroughs used and then promoted for many years." Burroughs not only uses the Nova Police as a function for catching the Nova Criminals, he also adds satire about his own life and addictions. Control is the main theme of the novel, and Burroughs attempts to use language to break down the walls of culture, the biggest control machine. He uses inspector Lee to express his own thoughts about the world. "The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals. In Naked Lunch, Soft Machine and Nova Express I show who they are and what they are doing and what they will do if they are not arrested. [...] With your help we can occupy The Reality Studio and retake their universe of Fear Death and Monopoly." As Burroughs battles with the self and what is human, he finds that language is the only way to maintain dominance over the "powerful instruments of control," which are the most prevalent enemies of human society.
321358	/m/01vk7y	Katar	Stanisław Lem		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A former astronaut is hired by a detective agency to help in an investigation of a case of mysterious deaths. Several victims became mad and committed suicide during their vacation in various Naples spas, apparently without reason. Due to certain similarities in the circumstances of the deaths the case is assumed to be a serial murder by poisoning, although it is never certain what (if any) real connection exists between the victims. During the investigation, it becomes apparent that certain innocent chemicals can be combined into a strong depressor, a kind of chemical weapon. The hero experiences its effects, but his training helps him to survive and solve the case. He discovers the industrial sources of the chemicals, and demonstrates how random chance chemical reactions led to the string of deaths.
321363	/m/01vk8z	Fiasco	Stanisław Lem	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book begins with a story of a base on Saturn's moon Titan, where a young spaceship pilot, Parvis, sets out in a strider (a mecha-like machine) to find several missing people, among them the famous Pirx of Lem's Tales of Pirx the Pilot. He ventures to the dangerous geyser region, where the others were lost, but unfortunately he suffers an accident. Seeing no way to get out of the machine and return to safety, he triggers a built-in cryogenic device. The main story concerns an expedition sent to a distant star in order to make contact with a civilization that may have been detected there. It is set more than a century after the prologue, when a starship is built in Titan's orbit. This future society is described as globally unified and peaceful with high regard for success. During starship preparations, the geyser region is cleared, and the frozen bodies are discovered. They are exhumed and taken aboard, to be awakened, if possible, during the voyage. However, only one of them can be revived (or more precisely, pieced together from the organs of several of them) with a high likelihood of success. The identity of the man is unclear - it has been narrowed to two men (whose last names begin with 'P'). It is never revealed whether he is in fact Pirx or Parvis (and he seems to have amnesia about it himself). In his new life, he adopts the name Tempe. The explorer spaceship Eurydika (Eurydice) first travels to a black hole near the Beta Harpiae to perform maneuvers to minimize the effects of time dilation. Before closing on the event horizon, the Eurydice launches the Hermes, a smaller explorer ship, which continues on to Beta Harpiae. Closing in on a planet (called 'Quinta') which exhibits signs of harboring intelligent life, the crew of the Hermes attempts to establish contact with the denizens of the planet, who, contrary to the expectations of the mission's crewmen, are strangely unwilling to communicate. The crew reaches the conclusion that there is a Cold War-like state on the planet's surface, halting the locals' industrial development. They try to force the aliens to engage contact by means of an event impossible to hide by the aliens' governments — that is, by staging the implosion of their moon. Surprisingly, just before impact, several of the deployed rockets are destroyed by the missiles of the Quintans, undermining the symmetry of the implosion which causes fragments of the moon to be thrown clear, some impacting the planet's surface. However, even this cataclysm does not drive the locals to open up to their alien visitors, so the crewmen deploy a device working as a giant lens or laser, capable of displaying images (but also concentrating beams to the point of being a powerful weapon) and following a suggestion by Tempe, show the Quintans a "fairy tale" by projecting a cartoon onto Quinta's clouds. At last, the Quintans contact the Hermes, and make arrangements for a meeting. The humans don't trust the Quintans, so to gauge the Quintans' intentions they send a smaller replica of the Hermes - which is destroyed shortly before landing. The humans retaliate by firing their laser on the ice ring around the planet, shattering it and sending chunks falling on the planet. Finally, the Quintans are forced to receive an 'ambassador', who is again Tempe; the Quintans are warned that the projecting device will be used to destroy the planet if the man should fail to report back his continued safety. After landing, Tempe discovers that there is no trace of anyone at the landing site. After investigating a peculiar structure nearby, he scouts around and finds a strange-looking mound, which he opens with a small shovel. But, to his horror, he notices that in his distracted state he has allowed the allotted time to run out without signaling his mates above. As the planet is engulfed by fiery destruction at the hands of those who were sent to establish contact with its denizens, Tempe finally realizes what the Quintans are - the mounds - but he has no time to share his discovery with the others.
322301	/m/01vn_x	As I Lay Dying	William Faulkner	1930	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson. As is the case in much of Faulkner's work, the story is set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, which Faulkner referred to as "my apocryphal county," a fictional rendition of the writer's home of Lafayette County in that same state. Addie Bundren, the wife of Anse Bundren and the matriarch of a poor southern family, is very ill, and is expected to die soon. Her oldest son, Cash, puts all of his carpentry skills into preparing her coffin, which he builds right in front of Addie’s bedroom window. Although Addie’s health is failing rapidly, two of her other sons, Darl and Jewel, leave the farm to make a delivery for the Bundrens’ neighbor, Vernon Tull, whose wife and two daughters have been tending to Addie. Shortly after Darl and Jewel leave, Addie dies. The youngest Bundren child, Vardaman, associates his mother’s death with that of a fish he caught and cleaned earlier that day. With some help, Cash completes the coffin just before dawn. The women have Addie placed in the coffin backwards so that the flared part of the coffin will allow the wedding dress she is buried in to be unwrinkled; Cash complains that this has caused his carefully-designed coffin to become unbalanced. Vardaman is troubled by the fact that his mother is nailed shut inside a box, and while the others sleep, he bores holes in the lid, two of which go through his mother’s face. Addie and Anse’s daughter, Dewey Dell, whose recent sexual liaisons with a local farmhand named Lafe have left her pregnant, is so overwhelmed by anxiety over her condition that she barely mourns her mother’s death. A funeral service is held on the following day, where the women sing songs inside the Bundren house while the men stand outside on the porch talking to each other. Darl, who narrates much of this first section, returns with Jewel a few days later, and the presence of buzzards over their house lets them know their mother is dead. On seeing this sign, Darl sardonically reassures Jewel, who is widely perceived as ungrateful and uncaring, that he can be sure his beloved horse is not dead. Addie has made Anse promise that she will be buried in the town of Jefferson, and though this request is a far more complicated proposition than burying her at home, Anse’s sense of obligation, combined with his desire to buy a set of false teeth, compels him to fulfill Addie’s dying wish. Cash, who has broken his leg on a job site, helps the family lift the unbalanced coffin, but it is Jewel who ends up manhandling it, almost single-handedly, into the wagon. Jewel refuses, however, to actually come in the wagon, and follows the rest of the family riding on his horse, which he bought when he was young by secretly working nights on a neighbor’s land. On the first night of their journey, the Bundrens stay at the home of a generous local family, who regard the Bundrens’ mission with skepticism. Due to severe flooding, the main bridges leading over the local river have been flooded or washed away, and the Bundrens are forced to turn around and attempt a river-crossing over a makeshift ford. When a stray log upsets the wagon, the coffin is knocked out, Cash’s broken leg is reinjured, and the team of mules drowns. Vernon Tull sees the wreck, and helps Jewel rescue the coffin and the wagon from the river. Together, the family members and Tull search the riverbed for Cash’s tools. Cora, Tull’s wife, remembers Addie’s unchristian inclination to respect her son Jewel more than God. Thereafter follows a chapter narrated by Addie herself (it is not made clear whether she is speaking from beyond the grave or this chapter represents her deathbed thoughts and is placed out of chronology)) recalling events from her life: her loveless marriage to Anse; her affair with the local minister, Whitfield, which led to Jewel’s conception; and the birth of her various children. When Whitfield hears Addie is dying, he heads for the Bundren's, intending to confess to Anse. On arrival he learns that Addie is already dead, realizes that she has not revealed their affair, and decides that his sincere intention to confess was just as good an actual confession, and abandons his plan. A horse doctor sets Cash’s broken leg, while Cash faints from the pain without ever complaining. Anse is able to purchase a new team of mules by mortgaging his farm equipment, using money that he was saving for his false teeth and money that Cash was saving for a new gramophone, and trading in Jewel’s horse. The family continues on its way. In the town of Mottson, residents react with horror to the stench coming from the Bundren wagon. While the family is in town, Dewey Dell tries to buy a drug that will abort her unwanted pregnancy, but the pharmacist refuses to sell it to her, and advises marriage instead. With cement the family has purchased in town, Darl creates a makeshift cast for Cash’s broken leg, which fits poorly and only increases Cash’s pain. The Bundrens then spend the night at a local farm owned by a man named Gillespie. Darl, who has been skeptical of their mission for some time, burns down the Gillespie barn with the intention of incinerating the coffin and Addie’s rotting corpse. Jewel rescues the animals in the barn, then risks his life to drag out Addie’s coffin. Darl lies on his mother’s coffin and cries. The next day, the Bundrens arrive in Jefferson and bury Addie. Rather than face a lawsuit for Darl’s criminal barn burning, the Bundrens claim that Darl is insane, and they give him to a pair of men who commit him to a Jackson mental institution. Two of the Bundren children, Jewel and Dewey Dell, help the men from the mental institution by leading the attack against Darl. This familial betrayal, combined with Darl's experience in the Great War and his realization that Jewel is not Anse's son, lead Darl to legitimate mental instability. Dewey Dell tries again to buy an abortion drug at the local pharmacy, where a boy working behind the counter claims to be a doctor and tricks her into exchanging sexual services for what she soon realizes is not an actual abortion drug. Anse then takes the ten dollars that Lafe had given her to buy an abortion drug and uses it to treat himself with a day on the town. The following morning, the children are greeted by their father, who sports a new set of false teeth and, with a mixture of shame and pride, introduces them to his new bride, a local woman he meets while borrowing shovels with which to bury Addie.
323063	/m/01vs43	The God of Small Things	Arundhati Roy	1997-06-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story, told here in chronological order, although the novel shifts around in time, primarily takes place in a town named Ayemenem or Aymanam now part of Kottayam in Kerala state of India. The temporal setting shifts back and forth from 1969, when fraternal twins Rahel and Estha are seven years old, to 1993, when the twins are reunited at age 31. Much of the story is written in a viewpoint relevant to the seven-year-old children. Malayalam words are liberally used in conjunction with English. Some facets of Kerala life which the novel captures are communism, the caste system, and the Keralite Syrian Christian way of life. Without sufficient dowry for a marriage proposal, Ammu Ipe becomes desperate to escape her ill-tempered father (Pappachi) and her bitter, long-suffering mother (Mammachi). She finally convinces her parents to let her spend a summer with a distant aunt in Calcutta. To avoid returning to Ayemenem, she marries a man who assists managing a tea estate whom she later discovers to be a heavy alcoholic who beats her and attempts to prostitute her to his boss so that he can keep his job. She gives birth to two children, fraternal twins, Estha and Rahel, yet ultimately leaves her husband and returns to live with her mother and brother, Chacko, in Ayemenem. Also living at their home in Ayemenem is Pappachi's sister, Baby Kochamma, whose actual name is Navomi Ipe, but is called Baby due to her young age at becoming a grand-aunt, and Kochamma being an honorific title for females. As a young girl, Baby Kochamma had fallen in love with Father Mulligan, a young Irish priest who had come to Ayemenem to study Hindu scriptures. In order to get closer to him, Baby Kochamma had become a Roman Catholic and joined a convent, against her father's wishes. After a few lonely months in the convent, Baby Kochamma had realized that her vows brought her no closer to the man she loved, with her father eventually rescuing her from the convent, sending her to America for an education, where she obtained a diploma in ornamental gardening. Due to her unrequited love with Father Mulligan, Baby Kochamma remained unmarried for the rest of her life, gradually becoming more and more bitter over the years. Throughout the book, Baby Kochamma delights in the misfortune of others and manipulates events to bring down calamity upon Ammu and the twins. While studying at Oxford, Chacko fell in love and married an English woman named Margaret (Mostly referred to in the novel as "Margaret Kochamma"). Shortly after the birth of their daughter Sophie (Mostly referred to as "Sophie Mol" in the novel, Mol meaning "little girl"), Margaret reveals that she had been having an affair with another man, Joe. They divorce and Chacko, unable to find a job, returns to India. After the death of Pappachi, Chacko returns to Ayemenem and takes over his mother's business, called Paradise Pickles and Preserves. When Margaret's second husband is killed in a car accident, Chacko invites her and Sophie to spend Christmas in Ayemenem. The day before Margarget and Sophie arrive, the family visits a theater to see The Sound of Music, where Estha is molested by the "Orangedrink Lemondrink Man", a vendor working the snack counter of the theater. His fear stemming from this encounter factors into the circumstances that lead to the tragic events at the heart of the narrative. On the way to the airport to pick them up, the family (Chacko, Ammu, Estha, Rahel, and Baby Kochamma) encounters a group of communist protesters. The protesters surround the car and force Baby Kochamma to wave a red flag and chant a communist slogan, humiliating her. Rahel thinks she sees Velutha, an untouchable servant that works in the pickle factory, in the crowd. Velutha's alleged presence with the communist mob makes Baby Kochamma associate him with her humiliation at their hands, and she begins to harbor a deep hatred towards him. Velutha is an untouchable (the lowest caste in India), a dalit, and his family has served the Ipes for generations. Velutha is an extremely gifted carpenter and mechanic. His skills with repairing the machinery make him indispensable at the pickle factory, but result in resentment and hostility from the other, touchable factory workers. Rahel and Estha form an unlikely bond with Velutha and come to love him, despite his untouchable status. It is her children's love for Velutha that causes Ammu to realize her attraction to him and eventually, she comes to "love by night the man her children love by day". They begin a short-lived affair that culminates in tragedy for the family. When her relationship with Velutha is discovered, Ammu is locked in her room and Velutha is banished. In her rage, Ammu blames the twins for her misfortune and calls them the "millstones around her neck". Distraught, Rahel and Estha decide to run away. Their cousin Sophie Mol convinces them to take her with them. During the night, while trying to reach the abandoned house across the river, their boat capsizes and Sophie drowns. Once Margaret Kochamma and Chacko return from Cochin, where they have been picking up airline tickets, Margaret sees Sophie's body lay out on the sofa. She vomits and hysterically berates the twins as they had survived, and hits Estha. Baby Kochamma goes to the police and accuses Velutha of being responsible for Sophie's death. She claims that Velutha attempted to rape Ammu, threatened the family, and kidnapped the children. A group of policemen hunt Velutha down and savagely beat him for crossing caste lines, the twins witnessing the horrific scene and are deeply disturbed. When the twins reveal the truth of Sophie's death to the Chief of Police, he is alarmed. He knows that Velutha is a communist, and is afraid that the wrongful arrest and beating of Velutha will cause unrest amongst the local communists. He threatens to hold Baby Kochamma responsible for falsely accusing Velutha. To save herself, Baby Kochamma tricks Rahel and Estha into accusing Velutha of Sophie's death. Velutha dies of his injuries. Hearing of his arrest, Ammu goes to the police to tell the truth about their relationship. The police threaten her to make her leave the matter alone. Afraid of being exposed, Baby Kochamma convinces Chacko that Ammu and the twins are responsible for his daughter's death. Chacko kicks Ammu out of the house. Unable to find a job, Ammu is forced to send Estha to live with his father. Estha never sees Ammu again, and she dies alone and impoverished a few years later at the age of thirty-one. After a turbulent childhood and adolescence in India, Rahel goes to America to study. While there, she gets married, divorced and finally returns to Ayemenem after several years of working dead-end jobs. Rahel and Estha, both 31-years-old, are reunited for the first time since they were children. In the intervening years, Estha and Rahel have been haunted by their guilt and grief-ridden pasts. Estha is perpetually silent and Rahel has a haunted look in her eyes. It becomes apparent that neither twin ever found another person who understands them in the way they understand each other. The twins' renewed intimacy ultimately culminates in them sleeping together. In the last chapter of the book, 'The Cost of Living', the narrative is once again set in the 1969 time frame and describes Ammu and Velutha's first sexual encounter. It describes that "Instinctively they stuck to the Small Things. The Big Things ever lurked inside. They knew there was nowhere for them to go. They had no future. So they stuck to the Small Things". After each encounter, Ammu and Velutha make one promise to one another: "Tomorrow? Tomorrow." The novel ends on the optimistic note, "She kissed his closed eyes and stood up. Velutha with his back against the mangosteen tree watched her walk away. She had a dry rose in her hair. She turned to say it once again: 'Naaley.' Tomorrow."
324904	/m/01w0fm	The Comedy of Errors	William Shakespeare			 Due to a law forbidding the presence of Syracusian merchants in Ephesus, elderly Syracusian trader Egeon faces execution when he is discovered in the city. He can only escape by paying a fine of a thousand marks. He tells his sad story to the Duke. In his youth, he married and had twin sons. On the same day, a poor woman also gave birth to twin boys, and he purchased these as slaves to his sons. Soon afterwards, the family made a sea voyage, and was hit by a tempest. Egeon lashed himself to the main-mast with one son and one slave, while his wife was rescued by one boat, Egeon by another. Egeon never again saw his wife, or the children with her. Recently, his son Antipholus of Syracuse, now grown, and his son’s slave Dromio of Syracuse, left Syracuse on a quest to find their brothers. When Antipholus of Syracuse did not return, Egeon set out in search of him. Solinus, Duke of Ephesus, is moved by this story, and grants Egeon one day to pay his fine. That same day, Antipholus of Syracuse arrives in Ephesus, searching for his brother. He sends Dromio of Syracuse to deposit some money at The Centaur (an inn). He is confounded when the identical Dromio of Ephesus appears almost immediately, denying any knowledge of the money and asking him home to dinner, where his wife is waiting. Antipholus, thinking his servant is making insubordinate jokes, beats Dromio. Dromio of Ephesus returns to his mistress, Adriana, saying that her "husband" refused to come back to his house, and even pretended not to know her. Adriana, concerned that her husband's eye is straying, takes this news as confirmation of her suspicions. Antipholus of Syracuse, who complains "I could not speak with Dromio since at first I sent him from the mart," meets up with Dromio who now denies making a "joke" about Antipholus having a wife. Antipholus begins beating him. Suddenly, Adriana rushes up to Antipholus and begs him not to leave her. The Syracusans cannot but attribute these strange events to witchcraft, remarking that Ephesus is known as a warren for witches. Antipholus and Dromio go off with this strange woman, to eat dinner and keep the gate, respectively. Antipholus of Ephesus returns home for dinner and is enraged to find that he is rudely refused entry to his own house by Dromio of Syracuse, who is keeping the gate. He is ready to break down the door, but his friends persuade him not to make a scene. He decides, instead, to dine with a Courtesan. Inside the house, Antipholus of Syracuse discovers that he is very attracted to his "wife"'s sister, Luciana, telling her "train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note / To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears." She is flattered by his attentions, but worried about their moral implications. After she exits, Dromio of Syracuse announces that he has discovered that he has a wife: Nell, a hideous kitchen-maid. He describes her as "spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her". Antipholus jokingly asks him identify the countries, leading to a witty exchange in which parts of her body are identified with nations. Ireland is her buttocks: "I found it out by the bogs". He claims he has discovered America and the Indies "upon her nose all o'er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes of caracks to be ballast at her nose." This is one of Shakespeare's few references to America. The Syracusans decide to leave as soon as possible, and Dromio runs off to make travel plans. Antipholus is apprehended by Angelo, a goldsmith, who claims that he ordered a chain from him. Antipholus is forced to accept the chain, and Angelo says that he will return for payment. Antipholus of Ephesus dispatches Dromio of Ephesus to purchase a rope so that he can beat his wife Adriana for locking him out, then is accosted by Angelo, who tells him "I thought to have ta'en you at the Porpentine" and asks to be reimbursed for the chain. He denies ever seeing it, and is promptly arrested. As he is being led away, Dromio of Syracuse arrives, whereupon Antipholus dispatches him back to Adriana's house to get money for his bail. After completing this errand, Dromio of Syracuse mistakenly delivers the money to Antipholus of Syracuse. The Courtesan spies Antipholus wearing the gold chain, and says he promised it to her. The Syracusans deny this, and flee. The Courtesan resolves to tell Adriana that her husband is insane. Dromio of Ephesus returns to the arrested Antipholus of Ephesus, with the rope. Antipholus is infuriated. Adriana, Luciana and the Courtesan enter with a conjurer named Pinch, who tries to exorcise the Ephesians, who are bound and taken to Adriana's house. The Syracusans enter, carrying swords, and everybody runs off for fear: believing that they are the Ephesians, out for vengeance after somehow escaping their bonds. Adriana reappears with henchmen, who attempt to bind the Syracusans. They take sanctuary in a nearby priory, where the Abbess resolutely protects them. The Duke and Egeon enter, on their way to Egeon's execution. Adriana begs the Duke to force the Abbess to release her husband. Then, a messenger from Adriana's house runs in and announces that the Ephesians have broken loose from their bonds and tortured Doctor Pinch. The Ephesians enter and ask the Duke for justice against Adriana. Egeon believes he has found his own son, Antipholus, who will be able to bail him, but both Ephesians deny having ever seen him before. Suddenly, the Abbess enters with the Syracusan twins, and everyone begins to understand the confused events of the day. Not only are the two sets of twins reunited, but the Abbess reveals that she is Egeon's wife, Emilia. The Duke pardons Egeon. All exit into the abbey to celebrate the reunification of the family.
327121	/m/01w8wp	Quicksilver	Neal Stephenson	2003-09-23	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The first book is a series of flashbacks from 1713 to the earlier life of Daniel Waterhouse. It begins as Enoch Root arrives in Boston in October 1713 to deliver a letter to Daniel Waterhouse containing a summons from Princess Caroline. She wants Daniel to return to England and attempt to repair the feud between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. While following Daniel's decision to return to England and board a Dutch ship (the Minerva) to cross the Atlantic, the book flashes back to when Enoch and Daniel each first met Newton. During the flashbacks, the book refocuses on Daniel's life between 1661 and 1673. While attending school at Trinity College, Cambridge, Daniel becomes Newton's companion, ensuring that Newton does not harm his health and assisting in his experiments. However, the plague of 1665 forces them apart: Newton returns to his family manor and Daniel to the outskirts of London. Daniel quickly tires of the radical Puritan rhetoric of his father, Drake Waterhouse, and decides to join Reverend John Wilkins and Robert Hooke at John Comstock's Epsom estate. There Daniel takes part in a number of experiments, including the exploration of the diminishing effects of gravity with changes in elevation, the transfusion of blood between dogs and Wilkins' attempts to create a philosophical language. Daniel soon becomes disgusted and visits Newton during his experiments with color and white light. They attempt to return to Cambridge, but again plague expels the students. Daniel returns to his father; however, his arrival on the outskirts of London coincides with the second day of the Fire of London. Drake, taken by religious fervour, dies atop his house as the King blows it up to create a fire break to prevent further spread of the fire. Soon after Drake's death, Newton and Daniel then return to Cambridge and begin lecturing. A flashforward occurs in the narration, to find Daniel's ship under attack by the fleet of Edward Teach (Blackbeard) in 1713. Then the story returns to the past as Daniel and Newton return to London: Newton is under the patronage of Louis Anglesey, the Earl of Upnor, and Daniel becomes secretary of the Royal Society when Henry Oldenburg is detained by the King for his active foreign correspondence. During his stint in London, Daniel encounters a number of important actors from the period. Daniel remains one of the more prominent actors in the Royal Society, close to Royal Society members involved in court life and politics. By 1672 both Daniel and Newton become fellows at Trinity College where they build an extensive alchemical laboratory which attracts other significant alchemists including John Locke and Robert Boyle. Daniel convinces Newton to present his work on calculus to the Royal Society. In 1673, Daniel meets Leibniz in England and acts as his escort, leading him to meetings with important members of British society. Soon, Daniel gains the patronage of Roger Comstock as his architect. While under Roger's patronage, the actress Tess becomes Daniel's mistress both at court and in bed. Finally the book returns to 1713, where Daniel's ship fends off several of Teach's pirate ships. Soon they find out that Teach is after Daniel alone; however, with the application of trigonometry, the ship is able to escape the bay and the pirate band. The King of Vagabonds focuses on the travels of "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe. It begins by recounting Jack's childhood in the slums outside of London where he pursued many disreputable jobs, including hanging from the legs of hanged men to speed their demise. The book then jumps to 1683, when Jack travels to the Battle of Vienna to participate in the European expulsion of the Turks. While attacking the camp, Jack encounters Eliza, a European slave in the sultan's harem, about to be killed by janissaries. He kills the janissaries and loots the area, taking ostrich feathers and acquiring a Turkish warhorse which he calls Turk. The two depart from the camp of the victorious European army and travel through Bohemia into the Palatinate. In order to sell the ostrich feathers at a high price, they decide to wait until the spring fair in Leipzig. Jack and Eliza spend the winter near a cave warmed by a hot water spring. In the springtime, they travel to the fair dressed as a noblewoman and her bodyguard where they meet Doctor Leibniz. They quickly sell their goods with the help of Leibniz, and agree to accompany him to his silver mine in the Harz Mountains. Once they arrive at the mine, Jack wanders into the local town where he has a brief encounter with Enoch Root in an apothecary's shop. Jack leaves town but gets lost in the woods, encountering pagan worshippers and witch hunters. He successfully escapes them by finding safe passage through a mine connecting to Leibniz's. Eliza and Jack move on to Amsterdam, where Eliza quickly becomes embroiled in the trade of commodities. Jack goes to Paris to sell the ostrich feathers and Turk, leaving Eliza behind. When he arrives in Paris, he meets and befriends St. George, a professional rat-killer and tamer, who helps him find lodging. While there, he becomes a messenger for bankers between Paris and Marseilles. However, during an attempt to sell Turk Jack is captured by nobles. Luckily, the presence of Jack's former employer, John Churchill, ensures that he is not immediately killed. With Churchill's help, Jack escapes from the barn where he has been held prisoner. During the escape, he rides Turk into a masquerade at the Hotel d'Arcachon in a costume similar to that of King Louis. With the aid of St. George's rats he escapes without injury but destroys the ballroom and removes the hand of Etienne d'Arcachon. Meanwhile, Eliza becomes heavily involved in the politics of Amsterdam, helping Knott Bolstrood and the Duke of Monmouth manipulate the trade of VOC stock. This causes a panic from which they profit. Afterwards, the French Ambassador in Amsterdam persuades Eliza to go to Versailles and supply him information about the French court. Eliza agrees after a brief encounter and falling-out with Jack. William of Orange learns of Eliza's mission and intercepts her, forcing her to become a double agent for his benefit and to give him oral sex. Meanwhile, Jack, with an injury caused by his encounter with Eliza, departs on the slaving trip, the ship filled with cowry shells which he and his accomplices, a Russian fur trader and an English pub owner. The ship is captured by Barbary pirates, and the end of the book has Jack as a captured galley-slave. This book returns to Daniel Waterhouse, who in 1685, has become a courtier to Charles&nbsp;II because of his role as Secretary of the Royal Society. He warns James&nbsp;II, still Duke of York, of his brother Charles' impending death, following which, Daniel quickly becomes an advisor to James&nbsp;II. He continues to be deeply involved with the English court, ensuring the passage of several bills which reduce restrictions on non-conformists despite his detraction from the Francophile court. Meanwhile, Eliza becomes the governess of a widowers' two children in Versailles. She catches the eye of the king and becomes the broker of the French nobility. With her help, the French court, supported by King Louis, creates several market trends from which they profit extensively. Her active involvement in the French court gains her a title of nobility: Countess of Zeur. Daniel and Eliza finally meet during a visit to the Netherlands where Daniel acts as an intermediary between William of Orange and the detracting English nobility. Daniel realizes Eliza's importance during a meeting at the house of Christiaan Huygens. Eliza woos Daniel and uses this connection to gain entrance into the English court and the Royal Society. Daniel also meets Nicholas Fatio while in Amsterdam. Soon after this meeting, Fatio and Eliza prevent the attempted kidnapping of William of Orange by an ambitious French courtier. Upon his return, Daniel is arrested by the notorious judge George Jeffreys, and later imprisoned in the Tower of London. Daniel escapes with the help of Jack Shaftoe's brother Bob, whose infantry unit is stationed there. After a brief return to Versailles, Eliza joins Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate at her estate before the invasion of the Palatinate in her name. Eliza informs William of Orange of the troop movements caused by the French invasion which frees his forces along the border of the Spanish Netherlands, a region of stalemate between France and the Dutch Republic. During her flight from the Electorate of the Palatinate, Eliza becomes pregnant by Louis's cryptographer, though popular knowledge suggested it was the French nobleman Etienne D'Arcachon's child. Meanwhile, William takes the free troops from the border on the Spanish Netherlands to England, precipitating the Glorious Revolution, including the expulsion of James&nbsp;II. James flees London and Daniel Waterhouse soon encounters him in a bar. Convinced that the Stuart monarchy has collapsed, Daniel returns to London and takes revenge on Jeffreys by inciting a crowd to capture him for trial and later execution. Though he plans to depart for Massachusetts, Daniel's case of bladder stones increasingly worsens during this period. The Royal Society and other family friends are very aware of this and force Daniel to get the stone removed by Robert Hooke at Bedlam.
327449	/m/01wbd7	The Persians	Aeschylus			 The Persians takes place in Susa, Iran, which at the time was one of the capitals of the Persian Empire, and opens with a chorus of old men of Susa, who are soon joined by the Queen Mother, Atossa, as they await news of her son King Xerxes' expedition against the Greeks. Expressing her anxiety and unease, Atossa narrates "what is probably the first dream sequence in European theatre." This is an unusual beginning for a tragedy by Aeschylus; normally the chorus would not appear until slightly later, after a speech by a minor character. An exhausted messenger arrives, who offers a graphic description of the Battle of Salamis and its gory outcome. He tells of the Persian defeat, the names of the Persian generals who have been killed, and that Xerxes had escaped and is returning. The climax of the messenger's speech is his rendition of the battle cry of the Greeks as they charged: "On, sons of Greece! Set free / Your fatherland, your children, wives, / Homes of your ancestors and temples of your gods! / Save all, or all is lost!" (401-405). At the tomb of her dead husband Darius, Atossa asks the chorus to summon his ghost: "Some remedy he knows, perhaps, / Knows ruin's cure" they say. On learning of the Persian defeat, Darius condemns the hubris behind his son’s decision to invade Greece. He particularly rebukes an impious Xerxes’ decision to build a bridge over the Hellespont to expedite the Persian army’s advance. Before departing, the ghost of Darius prophesies another Persian defeat at the Battle of Plataea (479 BCE): "Where the plain grows lush and green, / Where Asopus' stream plumps rich Boeotia's soil, / The mother of disasters awaits them there, / Reward for insolence, for scorning God." Xerxes finally arrives, dressed in torn robes ("grief swarms," the Queen says just before his arrival, "but worst of all it stings / to hear how my son, my prince, / wears tatters, rags" (845-849)) and reeling from his crushing defeat. The rest of the drama (908-1076) consists of the king alone with the chorus engaged in a lyrical kommós that laments the enormity of Persia’s defeat.
328357	/m/01wgq1	The Other Wind	Ursula K. Le Guin	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is about fifteen years since the events described in Tehanu, and eight after those in Dragonfly. King Lebannen has his share of problems. The dragons want the return of the lands men have stolen from them in the distant past, the Kargs want to marry him to their princess and thus cement a diplomatic relation between the two countries, and the dead seek release from the perpetual twilight of the afterlife. Accompanied by three wizards, two dragons in human form, and a Kargad princess, he sails to Roke where, together with the Masters of that island, they are able to right an ancient wrong and restore the balance.
328689	/m/01wk44	The Colour of Magic	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main character is an incompetent and cynical wizard named Rincewind. He involuntarily becomes a guide to the rich but naive tourist from the Agatean Empire, Twoflower. Forced to flee the city of Ankh-Morpork to escape a terrible fire that was caused by a bartender who misunderstood the concept of insurance, which Twoflower told him about, they begin on a journey across the Disc. Unknown to them, their journey is controlled by the Gods playing a board game. Rincewind and Twoflower are controlled by the Lady, and is pitted against the champions of Zephyrus, the god of slight breezes, Fate and Offler the Crocodile God, in the game supervised by Blind Io. The duo face a mountain troll and are separated. The ignorant Twoflower ends up being led to the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth, and Rincewind ends up in a tree-nymph inhabited tree. Rincewind manages to escape while the tree-nymphs try to kill him and is reunited with the tourist. Together with Hrun the Barbarian, they escape from the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth the Soul Eater, which collapses. Later, Hrun agrees to travel with and protect Twoflower and Rincewind in exchange for Heroic pictures of him from Twoflower's magical picture box. They visit Wyrmberg, an upside-down mountain which is home to dragons that only exist in the imagination. The names of the dragons' riders feature punctuation in the middle, making reference and parody of the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. They nearly go over the waterfall on the edge of the Disc, only to be rescued and taken to the country of Krull, a city perched on the very edge of the Discworld inhabited by hydrophobic wizards. The Krullians wish to discover the gender of Great A'Tuin, the giant turtle which carries the Discworld through space, so they have built a space capsule to launch over the Edge. They intend on sacrificing Rincewind and Twoflower to get Fate to smile on the voyage. Instead, Rincewind, Twoflower and Tethis the sea troll hijack the capsule in an attempt to escape and are launched off the Disc themselves.
328691	/m/01wk4m	The Light Fantastic	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After the wizard Rincewind has fallen from the edge of the Discworld, the Octavo magic book saves his life and he lands back onto the world. Meanwhile, the wizards of Ankh-Morpork discover from Death via a rite that the Discworld will soon be destroyed by a huge red star unless the eight spells of the Octavo are read: the most powerful spells in existence, one of which hides in Rincewind's head. Consequently, several orders of wizards try to capture Rincewind, led by Trymon, a former classmate of Rincewind's, who wishes to obtain the power of the spells for himself. After Rincewind, who has met again with Twoflower, escapes them, it becomes apparent that Great A'Tuin, the giant turtle that carries the Discworld, has set a new course that leads it directly into a red star with eight moons. Rincewind and Twoflower are accompanied by Cohen the Barbarian, a toothless, ageing hero, and Bethan, a sacrificial virgin saved by Cohen, with assistance from Rincewind and Twoflower. Rincewind becomes one of the very few people ever to enter Death's Domain whilst still alive, where he finds Twoflower playing a card game with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He is nearly killed when he meets Death's adopted daughter Ysabell, but is saved by the quick-acting Luggage. The group also encounter people who, anticipating the apocalypse, are heading for the mountains (not for protection, but because they will have a better view). As well as this, they happen upon the kind of shop where strange and sinister goods are on sale and inexplicably vanish the next time a customer tries to find them. The existence of these shops is explained as being a curse by a sorcerer upon the shopkeeper for not having something in stock. As the star comes nearer and the magic on the Discworld becomes weaker, Trymon tries to put the seven spells still in the Octavo into his mind, in an attempt to save the world and gain ultimate power. However, the spells prove too strong for him and his mind becomes a door into the "Dungeon Dimensions", whence strange, horrible creatures try to escape into reality. The seven leading wizards are meanwhile turned to stone. After winning a fight against them, Rincewind is able to read all eight spells aloud; whereupon the eight moons of the red star crack open and reveal eight tiny world-turtles that follow their parent A'Tuin on a course away from the star. The Octavo then falls and is eaten by Twoflower's Luggage. The book ends with Twoflower and Rincewind parting company, as Twoflower decides to return home, leaving The Luggage with Rincewind as a parting gift.
328965	/m/01wl7b	Children of the Atom	Wilmar H. Shiras		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the novel, much of which was originally published in serial form in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, hidden throughout a future America of 1972 are a group of incredibly gifted children &mdash; all approximately the same age, all preternaturally intelligent, and all hiding their incredible abilities from a world they know will not understand them. These children were born to workers caught in an explosion at an atomic weapons facility, and orphaned just a few months after birth when their parents succumbed to delayed effects from the blast. Like the characters in the better-known X-Men series, these children are mutants, brought together to explore their unique abilities and study in secret at an exclusive school for gifted children, lest they be hated and feared by a world that would not understand them. The Oakland Tribune described it in 1953 as "the invevitable adjustments and maladjustments of minority genius to majority mediocrity". In Shiras' book, none of the children are given paranormal super powers such as telekinesis or precognition—their primary difference is simply that of incredible intellect, combined with an energy and inquisitiveness that causes them to figuratively devour every book in their local libraries, to speed through university extension courses, and to publish countless articles and stories all over the world, but all done carefully through pen-names and mail-order, to disguise their youth, and protect them from the prejudicial stereotypes that less intelligent adults continue to try and enforce on children.
329145	/m/01wmp5	True Names	Vernor Vinge	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows the progress of a group of disaffected computer wizards (called "warlocks" in the story) who are early adopters of a new full-immersion virtual reality technology, called the "Other Plane". Forming a cabal, they must keep their true identities – their True Names – secret even to each other and to avoid prosecution by their "Great Adversary" – the government of the United States. The protagonist is one of these warlocks. Known as "Mr. Slippery" in the Other Plane; his True Name is Roger Pollack. When a new warlock arrives in the Other Plane and begins to recruit other warlocks for a scheme in which the domination of cyberspace can be used to exert power in the real world, Mr. Slippery is forced to ally himself with the Great Adversary.
329756	/m/01wrys	The Postman Always Rings Twice	James M. Cain	1934	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story is narrated in the first person by Frank Chambers, a young drifter who stops at a rural California diner for a meal, and ends up working there. The diner is operated by a young, beautiful woman, Cora, and her much older husband, Nick Papadakis, sometimes called "the Greek". There is an immediate attraction between Frank and Cora, and they begin a passionate affair with sadomasochistic qualities (when they first embrace, Cora commands Frank to bite her lip, and Frank does so hard enough to draw blood). Cora, a femme fatale figure, is tired of her situation, married to a man she does not love, and working at a diner that she wishes to own and improve. Frank and Cora scheme to murder the Greek in order to start a new life together without Cora losing the diner. They plan on striking Nick's head and making it seem he fell and drowned in the bathtub. Cora fells Nick with a solid blow, but, due to a sudden power outage and the appearance of a policeman, the scheme fails. Nick recovers and because of retrograde amnesia does not suspect that he narrowly avoided being killed. Determined to kill Nick, Frank and Cora fake a car accident. They ply Nick with wine, strike him on the head, and crash the car. Frank and Cora are injured. The local prosecutor suspects what has actually occurred, but doesn't have enough evidence to prove it. As a tactic intended to get Cora and Frank to turn on one another, he charges only Cora with the crime of Nick's murder, coercing Frank to sign a complaint against her. Cora, furious and indignant, insists upon offering a full confession detailing both their roles. Her lawyer tricks her into dictating that confession to a member of his own staff. Cora, believing her confession made, returns to prison. Though Cora would be sure to learn of the trickery, a few valuable hours are gained. The lawyer uses the time to manipulate those financially interested in the trial to have their private detective recant his testimony, which was the final remaining weapon in the prosecution's arsenal. The state is forced to grant Cora a plea agreement, under which she is given a suspended sentence and no jail time. Frank and Cora patch things up and plan a happy-family future. Then Cora is killed in a car accident while Frank is driving. The book ends with Frank, from death row, summarizing the events that followed, explaining that he was wrongly convicted of having murdered Cora. The text, he hopes, will be published after his execution.
330523	/m/01wvrl	Siddhartha	Hermann Hesse	1922	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in ancient India around the time of Gotama Buddha (likely between the fourth and seventh centuries BCE). Siddhartha, the son of a Brahmin, decides to leave behind his home in the hopes of gaining spiritual illumination by becoming an ascetic wandering beggar of the Samanas. Joined by his best friend Govinda, Siddhartha fasts, becomes homeless, renounces all personal possessions, and intensely meditates, eventually seeking and personally speaking with Gotama, the famous Buddha, or Enlightened One. Afterward, both Siddhartha and Govinda acknowledge the elegance of the Buddha's teachings. Although Govinda hastily joins the Buddha's order, Siddhartha does not follow, claiming that the Buddha's philosophy, however supremely wise, does not account for the necessarily distinct experiences of each person. He argues that the individual seeks an absolutely unique and personal meaning that cannot be presented to him by a teacher; he thus resolves to carry on his quest alone. Siddhartha crosses a river and the generous ferryman, who Siddhartha is unable to pay, merrily predicts that Siddhartha will return to the river later to compensate him in some way. Venturing onward toward city life, Siddhartha discovers Kamala, the most beautiful woman he has yet seen. Kamala, a courtesan of affluent men, notes Siddhartha's handsome appearance and fast wit, telling him that he must become wealthy to win her affections so that she may teach him the art of love. Although Siddhartha despised materialistic pursuits as a Samana, he agrees now to Kamala's suggestions. She directs him to the employ of Kamaswami, a local businessman, and insists that he have Kamaswami treat him as an equal rather than an underling. Siddhartha easily succeeds, providing a voice of patience and tranquility against Kamaswami's fits of passion, which Siddhartha learned from his days as an ascetic. Thus, Siddhartha becomes a rich man and Kamala's lover, though in his middle years realizes that the luxurious lifestyle he has chosen is merely a game, empty of spiritual fulfillment. Leaving the fast-paced bustle of the city, Siddhartha returns to the river and thinks of killing himself. He is saved only by an internal experience of the holy word, Om. The very next morning Siddhartha briefly reconnects with Govinda, who is passing through the area and remains a wandering Buddhist. In light of his mid-life crisis, Siddhartha decides to live out the rest of his life in the presence of the spiritually inspirational river. Siddhartha thus reunites with the ferryman, named Vasudeva, with whom he begins a humbler way of life. Although Vasudeva is a simple man, he understands and relates that the river has many voices and significant messages to divulge to any who might listen. Some years later, Kamala, now a Buddhist convert, is travelling to see the Buddha at his deathbed, escorted reluctantly by her young son, when she is bitten by a venomous snake near Siddhartha's river. Siddhartha recognizes her and realizes that the boy is his own child. After Kamala's death, Siddhartha attempts to console and raise the furiously resistant boy, until one day the child flees altogether. Although Siddhartha is desperate to find his runaway son, Vasudeva urges him to let the boy find his own path, much like Siddhartha did himself in his youth. Listening to the river with Vasudeva, Siddhartha realizes that time is an illusion and that all of his feelings and experiences, even those of suffering, are part of a great and ultimately jubilant fellowship of all things connected in the cyclical unity of nature. With Siddhartha's moment of illumination, Vasudeva claims that his work is done and he must depart into the woods, leaving Siddhartha peacefully fulfilled and alone once more. Toward the end of his life, Govinda hears about an enlightened ferryman and travels to Siddhartha, not initially recognizing him as his old childhood friend. Govinda asks the now-elderly Siddhartha to relate his wisdom and Siddhartha replies that for every true statement there is an opposite one that is also true; that language and the confines of time lead people to adhere to one fixed belief that does not account for the fullness of the truth. Because nature works in a self-sustaining cycle, every entity carries in it the potential for its opposite and so the world must always be considered complete. Siddhartha simply urges people to identify and love the world in its completeness. Siddhartha then oddly requests that Govinda kiss his forehead and, when he does, Govinda experiences the visions of timelessness that Siddhartha himself saw with Vasudeva by the river. Govinda bows to his wise friend and Siddhartha smiles radiantly, having found enlightenment.
331525	/m/01wzp_	The Bicentennial Man	Isaac Asimov	1976-02		 A character named Andrew Martin requests an unknown operation from a robotic surgeon. However, the robot refuses, as the operation is harmful and violates the First Law of Robotics, which says a robot may never harm a human being. Andrew, however, changes its mind, telling it that he is not a human being. The story jumps to 200 years in the past, when NDR (his serial number forgotten) is brought to the home of Gerald Martin (referred to as Sir) as a robot butler. Little Miss (Sir's daughter) names him Andrew. Later, Little Miss asks Andrew to carve a pendant out of wood. She shows it to her father, who initially does not believe a robot could carve so skillfully. Sir has Andrew carve more things, and even read books on woodwork. Andrew uses, for the first time, the word "enjoy" to describe why he carves. Sir takes Andrew to U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men, Inc. to ask what the source of his creativity is, but they have no good explanation. Sir helps Andrew to sell his products, taking half the profits and putting the other half in a bank account in the name of Andrew Martin (though there is questionable legality to a robot owning a bank account). Andrew uses the money to pay for bodily upgrades, keeping himself in perfect shape, but never has his positronic brain altered. Sir reveals that U.S. Robots has ended study on generalized pathways and creative robots, frightened by Andrew's unpredictability. Little Miss, at this point, is married and has a child, Little Sir. Andrew, feeling Sir now has someone to replace his grown-up children, asks to purchase his own freedom with Little Miss's support. Sir is apprehensive, however, fearing that freeing Andrew legally would require bringing attention to Andrew's bank account, and might result in the loss of all Andrew's money. However, he agrees to attempt it. Though facing initial resistance, Andrew wins his freedom. Sir refuses to let Andrew pay him. It isn't long afterwards that he falls ill, and dies after asking Andrew to stand by his deathbed. Andrew begins to wear clothes, and Little Sir (who orders Andrew to call him George) is a lawyer. He insists on dressing like a human, even though most humans refuse to accept him. In a conversation with George, Andrew realizes he must also expand his vocabulary, and decides to go to the library. On his way, he gets lost, and stands in the middle of a field. Two humans begin to walk across the field towards him, and he asks them the way to the library. They instead harass him, and threaten to take him apart when George arrives and scares them off. As he takes Andrew to the library, Andrew explains that he wants to write a book on the history of robots. The incident with the two humans angers Little Miss, and she forces George to go to court for robot rights. George's son, Paul, helps out by fighting the legal battle as George convinces the public. Eventually, the public opinion is turned in favor of robots, and laws are passed banning robot-harming orders. Little Miss, after the court case is won, dies. Andrew, with Paul's help, gets a meeting with the head of U.S. Robots. He requests that his body be replaced by an android, so that he may better resemble a human. After Paul threatens legal action, U.S. Robots agrees to give Andrew an android body. However, U.S. Robots retaliates by creating central brains for their robots, so that no individual robot may become like Andrew. Meanwhile, Andrew, with his new body, decides to study robobiology &mdash; the science of organic robots like himself. Andrew begins to design a system allowing androids to eat food like humans, solely for the purpose of becoming more like a person. After Paul's death, Andrew comes to U.S. Robots again, meeting with Alvin Magdescu, Director of Research. He offers U.S. Robots the opportunity to market his newly-designed prostheses for human use, as well as his own. He successfully has the digestive system installed in his body, and plans to create an excretory system to match. Meanwhile, his products are successfully marketed and he becomes a highly honored inventor. As he reaches 150 years of age, a dinner is held in his honor in which he is labeled the Sesquicentennial Robot. Andrew is not yet satisfied, however. Andrew decides that he wants to be a man. He obtains the backing of Feingold and Martin (the law firm of George and Paul) and seeks out Li-Hsing, a legislator and chairman of the Science and Technology committee, hoping that the World Legislature will declare him a human being. Li-Hsing advises him that it will be a long legal battle, but he says he is willing to fight for it. Feingold and Martin begins to slowly bring cases to court that generalize what it means to be human, hoping that despite his prosthetics Andrew can be regarded as essentially human. Most legislators, however, are still hesitant due to his immortality. The first scene of the story is explained as Andrew seeks out a robotic surgeon to perform a ultimately fatal operation: altering his positronic brain so that it will decay with time. He has the operation arranged so that he will live to be 200. When he goes before the World Legislature, he reveals his sacrifice, moving them to declare him a man. The World President signs the law on Andrew's two-hundredth birthday, declaring him a bicentennial man. As Andrew lies on his deathbed, he tries to hold onto the thought of his humanity, but as his consciousness fades his last thought is of Little Miss.
331675	/m/01w_79	Foundation and Empire	Isaac Asimov	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first half of the book, titled "The General," tells how the Galactic Empire, now well into its collapse but led by skilled General Bel Riose, launches an attack against the Foundation. The Empire still retains far more resources and personnel than the Foundation and Riose is willing to use that advantage to its fullest. Devers, a native of the Foundation, intercepts a message that summarizes the General's doings, and escapes to Trantor, trying to see the emperor and show him the message. He fails and is nearly killed, but the emperor finds out anyway. In the end, the emperor decides that Riose is a threat to his status and to the balance of the Empire and has him executed. Psychohistory gives members of the Foundation a full understanding of the struggle for power between generals and emperors that takes place inside the Empire. The characters of Emperor Cleon II and Bel Riose in this story are based on those of the historical Roman Emperor Justinian I and his general Belisarius. Their story was familiar to Asimov from his recent reading of Robert Graves's novel Count Belisarius, and of his earlier study of Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, on which the entire series is loosely based. "The General" was first published in the April 1945 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under the title "Dead Hand". The second half of the book, titled "The Mule," takes place approximately one hundred years after the first half. The Empire has ceased to exist, Trantor has been sacked by a "barbarian fleet", and only a small rump state of 20 agricultural planets remain. Most of the Galaxy has split into barbaric kingdoms. The Empire entered into an even more rapid phase of decline and civil wars. The Foundation has become the dominant power in the Galaxy, controlling its regions through its trading network. Leadership of the Foundation has become degenerate. In response to the internal corruption within the Foundation, roughly 30 outer planets belonging to the Foundation who have become wealthy on their own through extensive trade begin to plan a secession war against the Foundation. In addition, an external threat arises in the form of a mysterious man who is known only as the Mule. The Mule (whose real name is never revealed) is a mutant, and possesses the ability to sense and manipulate the emotions of others, usually creating fear and/or total devotion within his victims. He uses this ability to take over the independent systems bordering the Foundation, and has them wage a war against it. The Foundation is incapable of fighting back and as the Mule advances, leadership in the Foundation assumes that Hari Seldon predicted this attack, and that the scheduled hologram crisis message appearance of Hari Seldon would tell them how to win, just like with Bel Riose. To their surprise, they see the tape run and discover Seldon never predicted the existence of the Mule. Foundation citizens Toran and Bayta Darell along with psychologist Ebling Mis and refugee clown named "Magnifico Giganticus" travel to different worlds of the Foundation, and finally to the Great Library of Trantor. The Darells and Mis seek to contact the Second Foundation, which they believe will be able to defeat the Mule. They also have suspicion the Mule wishes to know the location of the Second Foundation so that he can use the First Foundation's technology to destroy it. At the Great Library, Ebling Mis works continuously until his health fatally deteriorates. As Mis lies dying, he tells Toran, Bayta, and Magnifico that he knows where the Second Foundation is. Just before he reveals the Second Foundation's location, however, Bayta kills him. Bayta had shortly before realized that Magnifico was actually the Mule, who had used his powers in every planet they had visited before. In the same way he had forced Mis to continue working and find what the Mule was looking for. Bayta killed Mis to prevent him from revealing the Second Foundation's whereabouts to the Mule. The Darells are left on Trantor. The Mule leaves to reign over the Foundation and the rest of his new empire. Existence of the Second Foundation, as an organization centered on the science of psychology and mentalics, in contrast to the Foundation's focus on physical sciences, is now known to the Darells and the Mule. Now that the Mule has conquered the Foundation he stands as the most powerful force in the galaxy, and the Second Foundation is the only threat to his eventual rule over the entire galaxy. The Mule promises that he will find the Second Foundation, while Bayta asserts that he will not have enough time before the Second Foundation reacts. "The Mule" was first published in the November and December 1945 issues of Astounding Science Fiction.
331778	/m/01w_n3	Equal Rites	Terry Pratchett	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The wizard Drum Billet knows that he will soon die and travels to a place where an eighth son of an eighth son is about to be born. This signifies that the child is destined to become a wizard; on the Discworld, the number eight has many of the magical properties that are sometimes ascribed to seven in other mythologies. Billet wants to pass his wizard's staff on to his successor. However, the newborn child is actually a girl, Esk (full name Eskarina Smith). Since Billet notices his mistake too late, the staff passes on to her. As Esk grows up, it becomes apparent that she has uncontrollable powers, and the local witch Granny Weatherwax decides to travel with her to the Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork to help her gain the knowledge required to properly manage her powers. But a female wizard is something completely unheard of on the Discworld. Esk is unsuccessful in her first, direct, attempt to gain entry to the University, but Granny Weatherwax finds another way in; as a servant. While there, Esk witnesses the progress of an apprentice wizard named Simon, whom she had met earlier, on her way to Ankh-Morpork. Simon is a natural talent who invents a whole new way of looking at the universe that reduces it to component numbers. His magic, however, is so powerful that it causes a hole to be opened into the Dungeon Dimensions. Eskarina and Simon discover the weakness of the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions - if you can use magic, but don't, they become scared and weakened. They both manage to transport themselves back into the Discworld. Together they develop a new kind of magic, based on the notion that the greatest power is the ability not to use all the others.
331967	/m/01x062	Guards! Guards!	Terry Pratchett	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows a plot by a secret brotherhood, the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night, to overthrow the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork and install a puppet king, under the control of the Supreme Grand Master. Using a stolen magic book, they summon a dragon to strike fear into the people of Ankh-Morpork. Once a suitable state of terror and panic has been created, the Supreme Grand Master proposes to put forth an "heir" to the throne, who will slay the dragon and rid the city of tyranny. It is the task of the Night Watch &ndash; Captain Vimes, Sergeant Colon, Corporal Nobbs, and new volunteer Carrot Ironfoundersson &ndash; to stop them, with some help from the Librarian of the Unseen University, an orangutan trying to get the stolen book back. The Watch is in bad condition; they are regarded as a bunch of incompetents who just walk around ringing their bells, and this is mostly true. The arrival of Carrot changes this; Carrot has memorised the Laws and Ordinances of the Cities of Ankh and Morpork, and on his first day tries to arrest the head of the Thieves' Guild for theft (the Thieves' Guild is permitted a quota of legally licensed thieving, a concept that the book of ancient Laws does not take into account). Carrot's enthusiasm strikes a chord with Vimes; the Watch should prevent crime, not ignore it. Vimes begins investigating the dragon's appearances, which leads to an acquaintance with Sybil Ramkin, a breeder of swamp dragons. Ramkin gives an underdeveloped dragon, Errol, to the Watch as a mascot. The leader of the Elucidated Brethren is initially successful in controlling the dragon, but he has not accounted for the dragon's own abilities. The banished dragon returns, and makes itself king of Ankh-Morpork (keeping the head of the Elucidated Brethren as its mouthpiece) and demands that the people of Ankh-Morpork bring it gold and regular virgin sacrifices. Shortly after, Vimes is imprisoned in the same cell as the Patrician, who has been leading a relatively comfortable life with the help of the rats he uses as spies. The Librarian helps Vimes to escape and he runs to the aid of Sybil, who has been chosen as the first virgin to be sacrificed. The Watch's swamp dragon, Errol, reorganises his digestive system to form a supersonic jet engine and fights the king, eventually knocking the king out of the sky with a shock wave. As the assembled crowd closes in on the king for the kill, Sybil tries to plead for its life. Carrot instead places it under arrest, however Errol lets the dragon escape, revealing that the dragon is in fact female, the battle between the two in fact being a courtship ritual. Sam Vimes proceeds to arrest Lupine Wonse, but accidentally causes the man's death when he told Carrot to "throw the book at him." The man was attempting to summon another dragon, and died from falling off a broken floor after being hit by the Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork. The Patrician is reinstated as ruler of Ankh-Morpork, and offers the Watch anything they want as a reward. They ask only for a modest pay raise, a new tea kettle and a dartboard.
332043	/m/01x0g5	Pyramids	Terry Pratchett	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main character of Pyramids is Teppic, prince of the tiny kingdom of Djelibeybi. Djelibeybi is the Discworld counterpart to Ancient Egypt. Young Teppic has been in training at the Assassins Guild in Ankh-Morpork for several years. The day after passing his final exam he somehow senses that his father has died and that he must return home. Being the first Djelibeybian king raised outside the kingdom leads to some interesting problems, based on the fact that Dios, the high priest, is a stickler for tradition, and does not, in fact, allow the pharaohs to rule the country. After numerous adventures and misunderstandings, Teppic is forced to escape from the palace, along with a handmaiden named Ptraci. Meanwhile, the massive pyramid being built for Teppic's father warps space-time so much that it "rotates" Djelebeybi out of alignment with the space/time of the rest of the disc by 90 degrees. Teppic and Ptraci travel to Ephebe to consult with the philosophers there as to how to get back inside the Kingdom. Meanwhile, pandemonium takes hold in Djelibeybi, as the kingdom's multifarious gods descend upon the populace, and all of Djelibeybi's dead rulers come back to life. Eventually, Teppic re-enters the Kingdom and attempts to destroy the Great Pyramid, with the help of all of his newly resurrected ancestors. They are confronted by Dios, who, it turns out, is as old as the kingdom itself, and has advised every pharaoh in the history of the Kingdom. Dios hates change and thinks Djelibeybi should stay the same. Teppic succeeds in destroying the Pyramid, returning Djelibeybi to the real world and sending Dios back through time (where he meets the original founder of the Kingdom, thereby re-starting the cycle). Teppic then abdicates, allowing Ptraci (who turns out to be his half-sister) to rule. Ptraci immediately institutes much-needed changes.
333495	/m/01x60g	The Monkey's Paw	W. W. Jacobs	1903	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story involves Mr. and Mrs. White and their adult son Herbert. Sergeant-Major Morris, a friend of the Whites who has been part of the British Armed Forces in India, leaves them with the monkey's paw, telling of its mysterious powers to grant three wishes, and of its journey from an old fakir to his comrade, who used his third and final wish to wish for death. Mr. White wishes for £200 to be used as the final payment on his house. Following that, Herbert is killed by machinery at his company, but they do get compensation of £200. Ten days after the funeral, Mrs. White, almost mad with grief, asks her husband to wish Herbert back to life with the paw. Reluctantly, he does so. After a delay, there is a knock at the door. Mrs. White fumbles at the locks in an attempt to open the door. Mr. White knows, however, that he cannot allow their son in, as his appearance will be too grotesque. Mr. White was required to witness and identify the body, which had been mutilated by the accident and then buried for more than a week. He wishes his third wish for Herbert to remain dead, and the knocking stops. Mrs. White opens the door to find no one there. The theme of the story is contained in this description of the paw: '"It had a spell put on it by an old fakir," said the sergeant-major, "a very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow."
333637	/m/01x6dj	The Sea Hawk	Rafael Sabatini	1915		 Sir Oliver Tressilian lives at the house of Penarrow together with his brother Lionel and his servant Nicholas. Sir Oliver is betrothed to Rosamund Godolphin, but her brother Peter, a young hothead, detests the Tressilians, as there had been a feud between their fathers, and therefore tries to drive a wedge between his sister and Sir Oliver. Peter and Rosamund's guardian, Sir John Killigrew, also has little love for the Tressilians. One day, Peter's actions lead to Sir Oliver dueling Sir John, whom he deems to be the source of the enmity. Sir John survives the duel, but is badly wounded, and this only serves to infuriate Peter. One day, he insults Sir Oliver in front of a few nobles. Sir Oliver sets in a furious pursuit, but then remembers a promise to Rosamund to refrain from engaging her brother, following which he returns home. Later that evening, however, his brother Lionel stumbles in, bleeding. He has been in a duel with Peter Godolphin over a woman they both loved. Lionel killed Peter in self-defense, but there were no witnesses. Circumstances make everyone believe Sir Oliver is the killer, and Lionel does nothing to quench that rumor. He even goes so far as to have his brother kidnapped for sale as a slave in Barbary to ensure that he never reveals the truth. The ship gets boarded by the Spanish, and Sir Oliver and his kidnapper, Captain Jasper Leigh, both become Spanish slaves. Sakr-el-Bahr After six months toiling as a slave at the oars of a Spanish galley and befriending a fellow slave, the Moor Yusuf-ben-Moktar, the galley gets boarded by Muslim corsairs. Oliver, Yusuf and the other slaves escape their shackles and join the fight with the corsairs. His fighting and the testimony of Yussuf, the nephew of Asad-ed-Din, Basha of Algiers, establishes Oliver as an honorary member of Muslim society, and he eventually makes himself a name as the corsair Sakr-el-Bahr, the Hawk of the Sea. Oliver does hold on to his old ties by making a habit of buying captured English slaves and returning them via Italy. One day he captures a Spanish vessel and thereon discovers his one-time kidnapper Jasper Leigh as a slave at the oars. He gives Jasper the opportunity to join the Faith and his corsairs, the sea-hawks. Since Jasper can navigate the seas, Sakr-el-Bahr sets sail for England to get even with Lionel. Lionel has inherited Sir Oliver's possessions and even manages to befriend Sir John and become betrothed to Rosamund, who still believes Sir Oliver the murderer of her brother. Sakr-el-Bahr kidnaps them both and takes them back to Algiers where, to his dismay, the Basha enforces the law that all slaves have to be auctioned fairly. The Basha is also at the slave-market, takes a fancy to Rosamund, and orders his wazeer to buy her. But since all purchases have to be paid for immediately, Sakr-el-Bahr manages to buy her instead. The Basha is furious and threatens to take her by force, but Sakr-el-Bahr manages to thwart him by marrying Rosamund. He also manages to trick his brother, whom he also bought, to tell the truth about who killed Peter Godolphin in front of Rosamund. But the Basha wants to get rid of Sakr-el-Bahr in order to claim Rosamund for his own. Somehow Sakr-el-Bahr has to find a way to keep Rosamund from his clutches.
333987	/m/01x7ng	The Master and Margarita	Mikhail Bulgakov		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/011ys5": "Farce"}	 The novel alternates between two settings. The first is 1930s Moscow, which is visited by Satan in the guise of "Professor" Woland or Voland (Воланд), a mysterious gentleman "magician" of uncertain origin, who arrives with a retinue that includes the grotesquely dressed "ex-choirmaster" valet Koroviev (Fagotto) (Фагот, the name means "bassoon" in Russian among other languages, from the Italian word fagotto), a mischievous, gun-happy, fast-talking black cat Behemoth (Бегемот, a subversive Puss in Boots, the name referring at once to the Biblical monster and the Russian word for Hippopotamus), the fanged hitman Azazello (Азазелло, hinting of Azazel), the pale-faced Abadonna (Абадонна, a reference to Abaddon) with a death-inflicting stare, and the witch Hella (Гелла). The havoc wreaked by this group targets the literary elite, along with its trade union, MASSOLIT. MASSOLIT is a Soviet-style abbreviation for "Moscow Association of Writers", Московская ассоциация литераторов, but possibly interpretable as "Literature for the Masses"; one translation of the book also mentions that this could be a play on words in Russian, which could be translated into English as something like "LOTSALIT"), its privileged HQ Griboyedov's House, corrupt social-climbers and their women (wives and mistresses alike) – bureaucrats and profiteers – and, more generally, skeptical unbelievers in the human spirit. The second setting is the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate, described by Woland talking to Berlioz and later echoed in the pages of the Master's novel. It concerns Pontius Pilate's trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Иешуа га-Ноцри, Jesus the Nazarene), his recognition of an affinity with and spiritual need for Yeshua, and his reluctant but resigned submission to Yeshua's execution. Part one of the novel opens with a direct confrontation between the unbelieving head of the literary bureaucracy, Berlioz (Берлиоз), and an urbane foreign gentleman who defends belief and reveals his prophetic powers (Woland). Berlioz brushes the prophecy of his death off, only to have it come true just pages later in the novel. This fulfillment of a death prophecy is witnessed by a young and enthusiastically modern poet, Ivan Ponyrev, who writes his poems under the alias Bezdomniy (Иван Бездомный – the name means "Homeless"). His futile attempt to chase and capture the "gang" and warn of their evil and mysterious nature lands Ivan in a lunatic asylum. Here, Ivan is later introduced to The Master, an embittered author, the petty-minded rejection of whose historical novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ led him to such despair that he burns his manuscript and turns his back on the "real" world, including his devoted lover, Margarita (Маргарита). Major episodes in the first part of the novel include a satirical portrait of the Massolit and their Griboedov house;Satan's magic show at the Variety Theatre, satirizing the vanity, greed and gullibility of the new rich; and Woland and his retinue capturing the late Berlioz's apartment for their own use. Part two of the novel introduces Margarita, the Master's mistress, who refuses to despair of her lover or his work. She is invited to the Devil's midnight ball, where Satan (Woland) offers her the chance to become a witch with supernatural powers. This coincides with the night of Good Friday since the Master's novel also deals with this same spring full moon when Christ's fate is sealed by Pontius Pilate and he is crucified in Jerusalem. All three events in the novel are linked by this. Learning to fly and control her unleashed passions (not without exacting violent retribution on the literary bureaucrats who condemned her beloved to despair), and taking her enthusiastic maid Natasha with her, Margarita enters naked into the realm of night. She flies over the deep forests and rivers of the USSR; bathes and returns with Azazello, her escort, to Moscow as the anointed hostess for Satan's great Spring Ball. Standing by his side, she welcomes the dark celebrities of human history as they arrive from Hell. She survives this ordeal without breaking, and for her pains, Satan offers to grant Margarita her deepest wish. Margarita selflessly chooses to liberate a woman whom she met at the ball from the woman's eternal punishment: the woman was raped and had later suffocated her newborn by stuffing a handkerchief in its mouth. Her punishment was to wake up every morning and find the same handkerchief lying on her nightstand. Satan grants her first wish and offers her another, citing that the first wish was unrelated to Margarita's own desires. For her second wish, she chooses to liberate the Master and live in poverty-stricken love with him. Neither Woland nor Yeshua appreciate her chosen way of life. Azazello is sent to retrieve them. The three drink Pontius Pilate's poisoned wine in the Master's basement. Master and Margarita die, though their death is metaphorical as Azazello watches their physical manifestations die. Azazello reawakens them and they leave civilization with the Devil as Moscow's cupolas and windows burn in the setting Easter sun. The Master and Margarita, for not having lost their faith in humanity, are granted "peace" but are denied "light" – that is, they will spend eternity together in a shadowy yet pleasant region similar to Dante's depiction of Limbo, having not earned the glories of Heaven, but not deserving the punishments of Hell. As a parallel to the Master and Margarita's freedom, Pontius Pilate is released from his eternal punishment when the Master finally calls out to Pontius Pilate telling him he's free to finally walk up the moonbeam path in his dreams to Yeshua, where another eternity awaits.
334265	/m/01x8bj	The Gold-Bug	Edgar Allan Poe	1843		 William Legrand becomes obsessed with searching for treasure after being bitten by a scarab-like bug thought to be made of pure gold. He notifies his closest friend, the narrator, telling him to immediately come visit him at his home on Sullivan's Island in South Carolina. Upon the narrator's arrival, Legrand informs him that they are embarking upon a search for lost treasure along with his African-American servant Jupiter. The narrator has intense doubt and questions whether Legrand, who has recently lost his fortune, has gone insane. Legrand captured the bug but let someone else borrow it; he draws a picture of the bug instead. The narrator says that the image looks like a skull. Legrand is insulted and inspects his own drawing before stuffing it into a drawer which he locks, to the narrator's confusion. Uncomfortable, the narrator leaves Legrand and returns home to Charleston. A month later, Jupiter visits the narrator and asks him to return to Sullivan's Island on behalf of his master. Legrand, he says, has been acting strangely. When he arrives, Legrand tells the narrator they must go on an expedition along with the gold-bug tied to a string. Deep in the island's wilderness, they find a tree, which Legrand orders Jupiter to climb with the gold-bug in tow. There, he finds a skull and Legrand tells him to drop the bug through one of the eye sockets. From where it falls, he determines the spot where they dig. They find treasure buried by the infamous pirate "Captain Kidd", estimated by the narrator to be worth a million and a half dollars. Once the treasure is safely secured, the man goes into an elaborate explanation of how he knew about the treasure's location, based on a set of occurrences that happened after the gold bug's discovery. The story involves cryptography with a detailed description of a method for solving a simple substitution cipher using letter frequencies. The cryptogram is: 53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.)4‡);806*;48†8 ¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96 *?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8 ¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡ 1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4 (‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?; The decoded message is: (The actual decoded message omits spaces and capitalization)
335060	/m/01xcnw	The Visit	Friedrich Dürrenmatt			 The story opens with the town of Güllen (which literally means "to manure") preparing for the arrival of famed billionairess Claire Zachanassian. The town is in a state of disrepair, and the residents are suffering considerable hardship and poverty. They hope that Claire, a native of the small town, will provide them with much-needed funds. Alfred Ill, the owner of Güllen's general store and the most popular man in town, was Claire's lover when they were young, and agrees with the Mayor that the task of convincing her to make a donation should fall to him. As the town gathers at the railway station to prepare for Claire's arrival, they are met with a surprise when Claire steps off of an earlier train, having pulled the emergency brakes in order to do so. She is grand, grotesque, and fantastic, and is accompanied by two henchmen, her husband, a butler, and two blind eunuchs, along with a coffin, a caged black panther, and various pieces of luggage. She begins a flirtatious exchange with Ill, and they promptly revisit their old haunts: Petersen's Barn and Konrad's Village Wood. Ill pretends to find her as delightful as ever, though they are both now in their sixties and significantly overweight. Claire draws Ill's attention to her prosthetic leg and artificial hand. After settling into the Golden Apostle Hotel, Claire joins the rest of the town, who have gathered outside for a homecoming celebration. A band plays, gymnasts perform, and the mayor gives a speech. Claire takes the opportunity to announce that she will make a donation of one billion units of an unspecified currency, half for the town and half to be shared among the families. The townspeople are overjoyed, but their happiness is dampened when Claire's butler steps forward to reveal her condition. The butler was once the Lord Chief Justice of Güllen, and had overseen the paternity suit that Claire had brought against Ill in 1910. In the suit, Ill had produced two false witnesses (who have since been transformed into Claire's eunuchs), and the court had ruled in his favor. Ill went on to marry Matilda, who owned the general store, and Claire moved to Hamburg and became a prostitute and her child died after one year. Her donation is conditional on someone's killing Alfred Ill. The mayor refuses, the town cheers in support, but Claire states rather ominously, "I'll wait." Ill feels generally confident about his status in the town. However, as time passes, he becomes increasingly fearful as he begins to notice the proliferation of new yellow shoes on the feet of the townsmen and the fact that everyone seems to be purchasing especially expensive items on credit. Ill visits the policeman, the mayor in turn who have bought new expensive items and dismiss his concerns. He then visits the priest who attempts to calm Ill until the new Church bells ring out at which point the priest admits they are all weak and advises Ill to flee.Claire then receives the news that her black panther has been killed, and she has a funeral song played in its memory. In an effort to escape, Ill heads to the railway station, but finds that, strangely, the entire town is gathered there. They ask him where he is going, and he says that he is planning to move to Australia. They wish him well, again assuring him that he has nothing to fear in Güllen, but Ill grows increasingly nervous nonetheless. The train arrives, but he decides not to board, believing that someone will stop him anyway. Paralyzed, he collapses in the crowd, crying, "I'm lost!" After some time passes and Claire weds a new husband in the Güllen cathedral, the doctor and the schoolmaster go to see her and explain that the townspeople have run up considerable debt since her arrival. The schoolmaster appeals to her sense of humanity and begs her to abandon her desire for vengeance and help the town out of the goodness of her heart. She reveals to them that she already actually owns all of properties in the town and that she is the reason the businesses have been shut down, causing economic stagnation and poverty for the citizens. The doctor and the schoolmaster are horrified at this revelation. In the meantime, Ill has been pacing the room above the general store, his terror growing as the townspeople buy more and more expensive products on credit. News reporters, having received word of Claire's imminent wedding, are everywhere, and they enter the store to get the scoop on Ill, having heard that he was Claire's lover back in the day. The schoolmaster, drunk, tries to inform the press about Claire's cruel proposal, but the townspeople stop him. Finally Ill descends the stairs, surprised at the hubbub, but quiet. The reporters clear the room when they hear that Claire has just divorced the man she has just married and has found a new lover. After the confusion has cleared, the schoolmaster and Ill have an honest discussion. The schoolmaster explains that he is certain that Ill will be killed and admits that he will ultimately join the ranks of the murderers. Ill calmly states that he has accepted his guilt and acknowledges that the town's suffering is his fault. The schoolmaster leaves, and Ill is confronted by the mayor, who asks whether Ill will accept the town's judgment at that evening's meeting. Ill says that he will. The mayor then suggests that Ill make things easier on everyone and shoot himself, but Ill refuses, insisting that the town must go through the process of actually judging and then killing him. Ill goes for a ride in his son's newly purchased car, accompanied by his wife, Matilda, and his daughter, both of whom are wearing new outfits. As they drive through Konrad's Village Wood, Ill says that he is going to go for a walk in the woods before heading to the town meeting. His family continues on to the movie theater. In the woods, Ill comes across Claire, who is walking with her newest husband. She asks her husband to leave so that she and Ill can speak privately. They reminisce about the past and make plans for the future. Claire tells Ill that she plans to take his body away in the coffin to a mausoleum in Capri that overlooks the Mediterranean. She also tells Ill that she has never stopped loving him, but that over time her love has grown into something monstrous. The town meeting is flooded with press, and the town publicly announces acceptance of Claire's donation. The inhabitants then go through the formality of a vote, which is unanimous, and the mayor states that they have Ill to thank for their new-found wealth. The press is then ushered out of the auditorium to enjoy refreshments. The doors are locked, and the lights are dimmed. The priest crosses Ill, and he is killed by a townsman. Just as a reporter reappears in the auditorium, the doctor announces that Ill has died from a heart attack. The reporters gather and declare that Ill has died from joy. Claire examines the corpse, gives the mayor his cheque, and leaves the town with Ill's body in the coffin that she brought with her when she arrived in Güllen. Claire boards the train at the railway station, and the visit comes to an end.
335534	/m/01xftp	Disgrace	John Maxwell Coetzee	1999-07-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching one class in romantic literature at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. His "disgrace" comes when he almost forcibly seduces one of his more vulnerable students which is thereafter revealed to the school and a committee is convened to pass judgement on his actions. David refuses to apologize in any sincere form and so is forced to resign from his both. Lurie is working on a play concerning Lord Byron's final phase of life in Italy which mirrors his own life in that Byron is living a life of hedonism and excess and is having an affair with a married women, and "the irony is that he comes to grief from an escapade that Byron would have thought distinctly timid." He is dismissed from his teaching position, after which he takes refuge on his daughter's farm in the Eastern Cape. For a time, his daughter's influence and natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. Shortly after becoming comfortable with rural life, he is forced to come to terms with the aftermath of an attack on the farm in which his daughter is raped and impregnated and he is violently assaulted. The novel also concerns David's interaction with a few other characters- Bev, an animal welfare and healer of sorts, and Lucy's former farmhand, the self-described "dog-man" who lives on the neighbouring property, who took care of his daughters dogs. David remains on the farm far past his welcome in order to try to keep his daughter safe, but instead finds himself apathetic and demoralized yet on a journey towards redemption.
336499	/m/01xkm4	The Lords of Discipline	Pat Conroy	1980	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The novel's narrator, Will McLean, attends the Carolina Military Institute (a fictional military college based on The Citadel) in Charleston, from 1963 to 1967. The novel takes place in four parts. The first describes the beginning of his senior year and the admission of new freshmen into the plebe system. The second is an extensive flashback into his own plebe year. The third focuses on the main body of his senior year and his conflict with the plebe system. The fourth and final part relates to Will's battle against the mysterious Ten.
336994	/m/01xmhg	Engines of Creation	K. Eric Drexler	1986		 The book features nanotechnology, which Richard Feynman had discussed in his 1959 speech There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom. Drexler imagines a world where the entire Library of Congress can fit on a chip the size of a sugar cube and where universal assemblers, tiny machines that can build objects atom by atom, will be used for everything from medicinal robots that help clear capillaries to environmental scrubbers that clear pollutants from the air. In the book, Drexler first proposes the gray goo scenario—his prediction of what might happen if molecular nanotechnology were used to build uncontrollable self-replicating machines. Topics also include hypertext as developed by Project Xanadu and life extension. Drexler takes a Malthusian view of exponential growth within limits to growth. He also promotes space advocacy arguing that, because the universe is essentially infinite, life can escape the limits to growth defined by Earth. Drexler supports a form of the Fermi paradox, arguing that as there is no evidence of alien civilizations, "Thus for now, and perhaps forever, we can make plans for our future without concern for limits imposed by other civilizations."
337252	/m/01xndx	Out of the Silent Planet	C. S. Lewis	1938	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with Dr. Elwin Ransom, a professor of philology at a college of the University of Cambridge, on a hiking trip in the English Midlands. Being refused lodging in the village of Nadderby he must travel into the Day the six miles to Sterk. He comes to a small, isolated cottage, the home of a woman and her mentally subnormal son, Harry. The anxious woman thinks Ransom is Harry and runs into him as he comes toward the cottage. She implicitly declines to accommodate Ransom, but tells him about where Harry works, the Rise, the small estate of Professor Weston. She also speaks of a gentleman from London staying there, Mr. Devine, whom Ransom discovers to be his former schoolfellow, a person whom he "cordially disliked." Despite the woman's doubt that Ransom would find lodging, he decides to go there anyway, assuring the woman that he will see to it that Harry is sent home. When he gets to the front door of the Rise, Ransom hears shouting and struggling inside. When he goes around back, he sees Weston and Devine trying to force Harry to enter a structure on the property ("It weren't the wash-house," Harry insists) against his will. Ransom intervenes in the struggle, and Devine sees him as a better prospect than Harry for what he and Weston have in mind. With Weston's grudging consent Devine offers Ransom a drink and accommodations for the night. After enjoying what he thinks is a glass of whisky and soda, Ransom loses consciousness. When he awakens shortly thereafter he realizes that he has been drugged. He tries to escape but is subdued by Weston and Devine. When he again regains consciousness he finds himself in a metallic spherical spacecraft en route to a planet called Malacandra. The wonder and excitement of such a prospect relieves his anguish at being kidnapped, but Ransom is put on his guard when he overhears Weston and Devine deliberating whether they will again drug him or keep him conscious when they turn him over to the inhabitants of Malacandra, the sorns, as a sacrifice. Ransom, who has been put to work as cook and scullion, appropriates a knife and plans to escape when he gets the chance. Soon after the three land on the strange planet, Ransom gets his chance to run off into the unknown landscape, just after he sees the Sorns. He wanders around, finding many differences between Earth and Malacandra, in that all the lakes, streams, and rivers are warm; the gravity is significantly less; and the plants and mountains are strangely tall and thin. Ransom later meets a civilized native of Malacandra, a hross named Hyoi, a tall and well-formed creature. He becomes a guest for several months in Hyoi's village, where he uses his philological skills to learn the language of the hrossa and learns their culture. In the process he discovers that gold, known to the hrossa as "sun's blood", is plentiful on Malacandra, and thus is able to discern Devine's motivation for making the voyage thither. Weston's motives are shown to be more complex; he is bent on expanding humanity through the universe, abandoning each planet and star system as it becomes uninhabitable. The hrossa honour Ransom greatly by asking him to join them in a hunt for a hnakra (plural hnéraki), a fierce water-creature which seems to be the only dangerous predator on the planet, resembling both a shark and a crocodile. While hunting, Ransom is told by an eldil, an almost invisible creature reminiscent of a spirit or deva, that he must meet Oyarsa, the eldil who is ruler of the planet. He hesitates to respond to the summons, as he wishes to proceed with the hunt. Hyoi, after killing the hnakra with Ransom's help, is shot dead by Devine and Weston, who are seeking Ransom in order to take him prisoner and hand him over to the séroni. Ransom is told by Hyoi's friend (another hross named Whin) that this is the consequence of disobeying Oyarsa, and that Ransom must now cross the mountains to escape Weston and Devine and fulfil his orders. On his journey, Ransom finally meets a sorn, as he long feared he might. He finds, however, that the séroni are peaceful and kindly. Augray (the sorn) explains to him the nature of Oyarsa's body, and that of all eldila. The next day, carrying the human on his shoulders, Augray takes Ransom to Oyarsa. After a stop at the dwelling place of an esteemed sorn scientist, wherein Ransom is questioned thoroughly regarding all manner of facts about Earth, Ransom finally makes it to Meldilorn, the home of Oyarsa. In Meldilorn, Ransom meets a pfifltrigg who tells him of the beautiful houses and artwork his race make in their native forests. Ransom then is led to Oyarsa and a long-awaited conversation begins. In the course of this conversation it is explained that there are Oyéresu (the plural) for each of the planets in our solar system; in the four inner planets, which have organic life (intelligent and non-intelligent), the local Oyarsa is responsible for that life. The ruler of Earth (Thulcandra, "the silent planet"), has turned evil (become "bent") and has been restricted to Thulcandra, after "great war," by the Oyéresu and the authority of Maleldil, the ruler of the universe. Ransom is ashamed at how little he can tell Oyarsa about Earth and how foolish he and other humans seem to Oyarsa. While the two are talking, Devine and Weston are brought in guarded by hrossa, because they have killed three of that race. Oyarsa then directs a pfifltrigg to "scatter the movements that were" the bodies of Hyoi and the two other hrossa, using a small, crystalline instrument; once touched with this instrument, the bodies vanish. Weston is summoned to Oyarsa's presence and makes a long speech justifying his proposed invasion of Malacandra on progressive and evolutionary grounds, which Ransom attempts to translate into Malacandrian, thus laying bare the brutality and crudity of Weston's ambitions. Oyarsa listens carefully to Weston's speech and acknowledges that the scientist is acting out of a sense of duty to his species, and not mere greed. This renders him more mercifully disposed towards the scientist, who accepts that he may die while giving Man the means to continue. However, on closer examination Oyarsa points out that Weston's loyalty is not to Man's mind - or he would value equally the alien minds already inhabiting Malacandra, instead of seeking to displace them in favour of humanity - nor to Man's body - since, as Weston is well aware of and at ease with, Man's physical form will alter over time, and indeed would have to in order to adapt to Weston's programme of space exploration and colonisation. It seems then that Weston is loyal only to "the seed" - Man's DNA - which he seeks to propagate. Here Weston's eloquence fails him and he can only articulate that if Oyarsa does not understand Man's basic loyalty to Man then he, Weston, cannot possibly instruct him. Oyarsa, passing judgment, tells Weston and Devine that he would not tolerate the presence of such creatures, but lets them leave the planet immediately, albeit under very unfavourable orbital conditions. To Ransom, Oyarsa offers him the option of staying on Malacandra. He decides he does not belong there, perhaps because he feels himself unworthy and perhaps because he yearns to be back among the human beings of earth. Oyarsa gives the men ninety days of air and other supplies, telling the Thulcandrians that after ninety days, the ship will disintegrate; either way, they will never return to Malacandra. Weston and Devine do not further harm Ransom, focussing their attention on the perilous journey home. Oyarsa had promised Ransom that the eldila of "deep heaven" would watch over and protect him against any attacks from the other two Thulcandrians, who might seek to kill him as a way of economizing their air and food supplies; at times, Ransom is conscious of benevolent presences within the spaceship—the eldila. After a difficult return journey, the space-ship makes it back to Earth, and is shortly "unbodied" according to Oyarsa's will. Ransom himself half-doubts whether all that happened was true, and he realizes that others will be even less inclined to believe it if he should speak of it. However, when the author (Lewis) writes him asking whether he has heard of the medieval Latin word "Oyarses" and knows what it meant, he lets him in on the secret. Ransom then dedicates himself to the mission that Oyarsa gave him before he left Malacandra of stopping Weston from further evil. The storyline may have been influenced by H. G. Wells's First Men in the Moon, which Lewis described as "The best of the sort Science Fiction I have read...." in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green. Wells's book, like Lewis's, reaches its climax with a meeting between an Earthman and the wise ruler of an alien world, during which the Earthman makes very ill-considered boasts of his species' military prowess. The characters of Weston and Devine might be, in general, dark versions of Wells's Cavor and Bradford. In both books, a scientist with a wide-ranging mind forms a partnership with an eminently practical man who has a special attraction to extraterrestrial bars of gold, and they quietly build themselves a spaceship in the English countryside. In both stories, the interplanetary craft are spherical, though only Lewis' is called a "space-ship". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, J. J. Astor in his A Journey in Other Worlds first used the term "space-ship" in 1894, but Lewis was the fourth person to use the term in published material.
337518	/m/01xpj9	The Variable Man	Philip K. Dick			 The Terran system is growing and expanding all the time. But an old and corrupt Centaurian Empire is holding Terra down, as it encircles the Terran system and will not let the humans grow out of their current empire. For this reason Terra is at war with Proxima Centauri and is trying to find a way of breaking free from the Centaurian's hold upon them. In the war that results, Terra is continually coming up with new weapons to try and break the Centaurian defenses, but Proxima Centauri is also continually updating its defenses. Using spies and other such tactics, both parties find out about each others advances, and no actual fighting ever occurs because both sides are too busy trying to beat each other with new technological developments. Terra even calculates their chances to win a war versus Centauri and updates these calculations with each new development, making their decision about a war rely on this calculation. Eventually Terra comes up with a concept for a bomb, called Icarus, that Proxima can not defend against because it travels at relativistic speeds, making use of the build up of mass at near light speeds as a destructive agent. Then the odds start to side with Terra, and Terra prepares to fight with this new-found technology. The only problem being is that Icarus does not yet work which prevents Terra from using it against Proxima Centuari. This is where Thomas Cole, known as The Variable Man, comes in. Cole is a man from the past, from the time just before the First World War. He is brought into the present (or future depending on perspective) as an accident via a Time Bubble that was used for research about the past. He escapes from the authority in the future and spends a lot of time running from them afterwards. It is, however, discovered that this man has a certain genius to fix things and make things work. This is because he comes out of a period of time when humans had a natural genius and an ability to invent things and to solve problems. It is at this point that the man working on the FTL (Faster Than Light) bomb realizes that The Variable Man is the only person who can make Icarus work. As a result, the engineer working on Icarus convinces The Variable Man to help them out. Icarus does eventually work, although not in the way that anyone may have wanted. Instead of emerging from FTL speed in the middle of Centarus (the sun around which the Centaurian Empire is built) and blowing it, and the surrounding Centaurian system, out of existence, it turns out that Cole transformed (or fixed) Icarus into a working hyperdrive. However the order for Terra to launch a full-scale attack against the Centaurian Empire (under the assumption that the majority of the enemy ships and planets would have been destroyed in the Icarus explosion) had already been given. The forces of Terra suffered a terrible defeat, losing many of their ships, yet due to the Variable Man having successfully wired Icarus it was now possible for Terra to travel beyond the Centaurian Empire's perimeter. Terra was no longer blocked into their tiny system, and there was no further need for war.
338090	/m/01xrd_	Eric	Terry Pratchett	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is a parody of the tale of Faust, and follows the events of Sourcery in which the Wizard Rincewind was trapped in the Dungeon Dimensions. Rincewind wakes in a strange place, having been summoned by the 13-year-old demonologist, Eric Thursley, who wants the mastery of all kingdoms, to meet the most beautiful woman who ever existed, and to live forever. He is disappointed when Rincewind tells him he is unable to deliver any of these things, and embarrassed when Rincewind sees through his disguise. Rincewind is disheartened to learn that the spells to confine the demon summoned are working on him; Eric's parrot tells him that because he was summoned as a demon, he is subject to the same terms. The arrival of Rincewind's luggage causes Eric to suspect deceit on Rincewind's part. Eric's demands are renewed; he makes three wishes of Rincewind. Rincewind insists he cannot grant wishes with the snap of a finger, and discovers to his horror that snapping his fingers really does work. * To be Ruler of the World. Eric and Rincewind find themselves in the rain forests of Klatch, in the Tezumen empire, a parody of the Aztec empire. The local people come forward to pay tribute to Eric and declare him Ruler of the World. During this tribute, Rincewind and the parrot explore the temple of Quezovercoatl, where they find a prisoner, Ponce da Quirm (a parody of Juan Ponce de León), who is to be sacrificed. Da Quirm tells Rincewind about the terrible fate the Tezumen have planned for the Ruler of the World, on whom they blame all life's misfortunes. Shortly, Rincewind, Eric and da Quirm find themselves tied up at the top of a pyramid, waiting to be sacrificed, when Quezovercoatl makes his appearance. Unfortunately for him, the luggage also makes an appearance, trampling the six-inch-tall Quezovercoatl in the process. The Tezumen are pleased to see Quezovercoatl destroyed, release the prisoners, and enshrine the luggage in the place of their god. At the end of the book, the Tezumen are revealed to have abandoned worshipping the Luggage as well (being as it never returned) and had turned atheist, "which still allowed them to kill anyone they wanted, but they didn't have to get up so early to do it". * To Meet the Most Beautiful Woman in All History. Rincewind snaps his fingers again, and they find themselves in a large wooden horse (a parody of the Trojan Horse). Exiting, they are surrounded by soldiers, who take them for an Ephebian invasion force. Rincewind manages to talk their way out of the Ephebian guards and out of the city, only to fall into the hands of the invading army. Rincewind and Eric are taken to Lavaeolus, the man who built the horse—having sent the horse in as a decoy so that he and his men could sneak in around the back while their enemies waited around the horse for them to come out—who tells them off for spoiling the war. They reenter Tsort through a secret passage, and find Elenor (a parody of Helen of Troy). Both Eric and Lavaeolus are disappointed to find that it has been a long siege, and Elenor is now a plump mother of several children, with the beginnings of a moustache, and that serious artistic licence had been taken in her description. The Ephebians escape the city while Tsort burns, and Lavaeolus and his army set out for home, with Lavaeolus complaining about voyages by sea (further reference to the Iliad and subsequent Odyssey). Eric notes that "Lavaeolus" in Ephebian translates to "Rinser of Winds", hinting that perhaps Lavaeolus is a relative of Rincewind. * To Live Forever. Rincewind snaps his fingers, bringing Eric and him outside of time, just before the beginning of existence. Rincewind meets the Creator, who is just forming the Discworld and is having trouble finishing some of the animals. Rincewind and Eric are left on the newly formed world, with the realization that "to live forever" means to live for all time, from start to finish. To escape, Rincewind has Eric reverse his summoning, taking them both to hell. They discover hell steeped in bureaucracy, where the Demon King Astfgl had decided boredom might be the ultimate form of torture. Rincewind uses his university experience to confuse the demons at their own game, so he and Eric can try to escape. While crossing through the recently reformed levels of hell (satirical forms of Dante's Inferno) they encounter da Quirm and the parrot, as well as Lavaeolus, who tells them where the exit is. The source of Rincewind's demonic powers is revealed to be Lord Vassenego, a Demon Lord leading a secret revolt against Astfgl. Using Rincewind to keep Astfgl occupied while gathering support amongst the demons, Vassenego confronts his king just as Astfgl finally catches up to Rincewind and Eric. Vassenego announces the council of demons has made Astfgl "Supreme Life President of Hell", and that he is to plan out the course of action for demons. With Astfgl lost to the bureaucratic prison of his own making, Vassenego takes over as king and releases Rincewind and Eric, so that stories about hell can be told.
338183	/m/01xrl_	The Sirens of Titan	Kurt Vonnegut	1959	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist is Malachi Constant, the richest man in 22nd-century America. He possesses extraordinary luck that he attributes to divine favor which he has used to build upon his father's fortune. He becomes the centerpoint of a journey that takes him from Earth to Mars in preparation for an interplanetary war, to Mercury with another Martian survivor of that war, back to Earth to be pilloried as a sign of Man's displeasure with his arrogance, and finally to Titan where he again meets the man ostensibly responsible for the turn of events that have befallen him, Winston Niles Rumfoord. Rumfoord comes from a wealthy New England background. His private fortune was large enough to fund the construction of a personal spacecraft, and he became a space explorer. Traveling between Earth and Mars, his ship&mdash;carrying Rumfoord and his dog, Kazak&mdash;entered a phenomenon known as a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, which is defined in the novel as "those places ... where all the different kinds of truths fit together." Vonnegut notes that any detailed description of this phenomenon would baffle the layman, but any comprehensible explanation would insult an expert. Consequently, he "quotes" an article from a (fictional) children's encyclopedia. (Interestingly, much of Vonnegut's information on the solar system came from a similar source.) According to this article, since the Universe is so large, there are many possible ways to observe it, all of which are equally valid, because people from across the Universe can't communicate with each other (and therefore can't get into an argument). The chrono-synclastic infundibula are places where these "ways to be right" coexist. When they enter the infundibulum, Rumfoord and Kazak become "wave phenomena", somewhat akin to the probability waves encountered in quantum mechanics. They exist along a spiral stretching from the Sun to the star Betelgeuse. When a planet, such as the Earth, intersects their spiral, Rumfoord and Kazak materialize, temporarily, on that planet. When he entered the infundibulum, Rumfoord became aware of the past and future. Throughout the novel, he predicts future events; unless he is deliberately lying, the predictions always come true. It is in this state that Rumfoord established the "Church of God the Utterly Indifferent" on Earth to unite the planet after a Martian invasion. It is also in this state that Rumfoord, materializing on different planets, instigated the Martian invasion. On Titan, the only place where he can exist permanently as a solid human being, Rumfoord befriends a traveller from Tralfamadore (a world that also figures in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, among several others) who needs a small metal component to repair his damaged spaceship. Salo, the Tralfamadorian explorer, is a robot built millennia earlier to carry a message to a distant galaxy. His spacecraft is powered by the Universal Will to Become, or UWTB, the "prime mover" which makes matter and organization wish to appear out of nothingness. (UWTB, Vonnegut informs the reader, was responsible for the Universe in the first place, and is the greatest imaginable power source. A small component on Salo's spacecraft breaks and strands him here in the Sol System for over 200 millennia. He requests help from Tralfamadore, and his fellow Tralfamadorians respond by manipulating human history so that primitive humans evolve and create a civilization in order to produce the replacement part. Rumfoord's encounter with the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, the following war with Mars, and Constant's exile to Titan were all manipulated via the Tralfamadorians' control of the UWTB. Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China and the Kremlin are all messages in the Tralfamadorian geometrical language, informing Salo of their progress. As it turns out, the replacement part is a small metal strip, brought to Salo by Constant and his son Chrono (born of Rumfoord's ex-wife). A sunspot disrupts Rumfoord's spiral, sending him and Kazak separately into the vastness of space. An argument between Rumfoord and Salo moments before, left unresolved because of Rumfoord's disappearance, leads the distraught Salo to disassemble himself, thereby stranding the humans on Titan. Chrono chooses to live among the Titanian birds; after thirty-two years, his mother dies, and Constant manages to reassemble Salo. Then, using the part delivered so many years previously by Chrono, he repairs the Tralfamdorian saucer. Salo returns Malachi to Earth, where Constant dies, experiences a pleasant hallucination secretly implanted in his mind by Salo. The book's title is derived from a group of statues of three beautiful women which Salo sculpts out of "Titanic peat".
338274	/m/01xr_4	Mila 18	Leon Uris		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As in many other books by Uris, the story is largely told from the standpoint of a newspaperman; in this case, an American-Italian journalist, Christopher de Monti, who is assigned to Warsaw after covering the Spanish civil war. Although meant to be a dispassionate and neutral observer, he meets and becomes intimate with both the Nazi hierarchy and the Jews of Warsaw. He has a passionate affair with the wife of one of the Jewish community leaders, while also dealing with prostitutes provided by the Nazis. As the ghetto is surrounded and reduced to rubble, he throws in his lot with the gallant defenders. He is one of the few survivors and manages to escape with a young woman, Gabriela Rak, who is pregnant with the child of one of the defenders, Andrei Androfski, a former Polish army officer. *Andrei Androfski is a Polish army Ulany Brigade officer, and a Jew. He is hot-headed and several other characters comment that he is best at leading cavalry charges - i.e. hopelessly fighting until the end. He remains in the ghetto after the fall of the bunker at Mila 18 and is presumed dead afterwards. *Gabriela Rak is Andrei Androfski's girlfriend, although they decide not to marry due to Andrei's Jewish descent. She worked at the American Embassy in Warsaw before the war and at the end of the book was carrying Andrei's child. *Christopher de Monti is a journalist of whose father is Italian and mother is American. While opposed to fascism and being determined to bring out the truth to the world, he does not aid the fighters on the ghetto until he is compelled to enter the ghetto by the Nazi propaganda officer in Poland. He is the only person to know the location of all the ghetto's diaries. *Alexander Brandel is one of the leaders of the uprising and the father of Wolf Brandel. He started a diary which was later expanded to 24 volumes by members of the ghetto. *Wolf Brandel is the son of Alexander and one of the leaders of the uprising. He escapes the ghetto with a handful of survivors including his girlfriend Rachael Bronski. At the end of the book Christopher de Monti writes that Rachael and Wolf are off fighting in another Jewish resistance group. *Rachael Bronski is the daughter of Paul and Deborah Bronski and the girlfriend of Wolf Brandel. Along with being a talented musician and an excellent soldier she assists Wolf with the command of his part of the army. When the uprising comes to an end Rachael and Wolf escape with a few others out of the sewers and to safety. *Deborah Bronski is Christopher de Monti's lover and the wife of Paul Bronski. She is also the sister of Andrei Androfski. While Deborah does not feel any love for Paul, especially after he opposes the resistance in the ghetto, she refuses to leave him until he dies. Deborah has two children - Rachael and Stephan Bronski. *Paul Bronski is the husband of Deborah Bronski and, although a Jew, does not wish to be associated with other Jews in any way. He works at the Jewish Council and believes in cooperating with the Germans and opposing the Jewish resistance. He commits suicide eventually after not being able to cope with the pressure from both sides. Loosely based on Adam Czerniaków. *Franz Koenig is an ethnic German living in Poland who receives higher and higher status after the Nazi invasion. As the war progresses, Koenig becomes more and more corrupted. He succeeds Paul Bronski in leading the Warsaw Medical Institute.
338307	/m/01xs29	QB VII	Leon Uris			 Parts one and two concern the plaintiff and the defendant in this trial and take us through their lives before meeting in 1967. The plaintiff is Adam Kelno, a doctor pressed into the service of the Nazis after Poland was overrun in World War II. As head physician in a concentration camp, he has the opportunity to save many prisoners from the gas chambers. After the war, he becomes a naturalized citizen of the United Kingdom and serves for several years in a free medical clinic in Borneo. Upon resuming private practice, the doctor is confronted with allegations that he collaborated with the Nazis and performed ghastly medical experiments for them. At first, he is staunchly defended; but, as more evidence comes to light in the trial, his past is revealed. The defendant, Abraham Cady, served overseas in World War II and recovered in England. He'd been a reporter and a writer of screenplays before and after the war; and one of his books documents the experiences of concentration camp survivors, several of whom cite the plaintiff as the source of their suffering. When he publishes a line to this effect in his latest book, citing "fifteen thousand" as subject of surgery without anaesthesia by Dr. Kelno, he and the publishing house are sued for libel. Part three deals with the defendant's search to vindicate his information, which ends with the famous violinist Pieter Van Damm revealing that Dr. Kelno turned him to a eunuch. Part four is set in one of Her Majesty's courtrooms (Queen's Bench, Courtroom Seven of the title) where this trial is played out. The jury finds for the plaintiff and awards him one half-penny in damages—the lowest amount that could (then) be awarded for damages in Britain. In effect, the whole novel seems to indict the plaintiff for collaborating, while the defendant is guilty of a minor exaggeration since only one thousand surgeries could be verified from evidence, as opposed to the claimed fifteen thousand. As the defendant says before the verdict is read, "Nobody's going to win this trial; we're all losers," since he realizes that, even though most people think that they could resist the pressure that could arise in a concentration camp, it is impossible to tell who will be able to resist. And the novel ends with the start of the Six-Day War in which the defendant's son, who emigrated to Israel, is killed in combat. The novel is loosely based on a libel action brought against Uris himself by Dr Wladislaw Dering, a Polish physician who worked at Auschwitz, in relation to his previous novel Exodus, which resulted in Dr Dering being awarded a half-penny damages, the smallest possible amount at the time. (Costs of £20,000 were awarded against him). The lawsuit and trial against Leon Uris was documented in Auschwitz in England (MacGibbon & Kee, London, 1965), by barristers Mavis M. Hill and Norman Williams. The case is reported as Dering v Uris (no2)[1964] 2 QB 669. Under the rules of court in England and Australia a litigant who loses a case generally pays the costs of the other party. However, in order to promote settlements, a defendant may pay money into court and the plaintiff may take that money on settlement of the case. The judge is not allowed to know how much money has been paid into court by the defendant. In this case the defendant paid £500 into court and made a further offer of two pounds in settlement. The plaintiff did not take this money and therefore even though he won the case he was required to pay the costs because the damages were less than £502.
338872	/m/01xv59	Freaky Friday	Mary Rodgers		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 A willful, disorganized teenage girl, Annabelle Andrews, awakens one Friday morning to find herself in the body of her mother, with whom she argued the previous night. Suddenly in charge of taking care of the New York family's affairs and her younger brother Ben (whom Annabelle has not-so-affectionately nicknamed "Ape Face"), and growing increasingly worried about the disappearance of "Annabelle", who appeared to be herself in the morning but has gone missing after leaving the Andrews' home, she enlists the help of her neighbor and childhood friend, Boris, though without telling him about her identity crisis. As the day wears on and Annabelle has a series of increasingly bizarre and frustrating misadventures, she becomes gradually more appreciative of how difficult her mother's life is, and learns, to her surprise, that Ben idolizes her, and Boris is actually named Morris, but has a problem with chronic congestion (at least around Annabelle) leading him to nasally pronounce ms and ns as bs and ds. The novel races towards its climax and Ben also disappears, apparently having gone off with a pretty girl whom Boris did not recognize, but Ben appeared to trust without hesitation. In the climax and dénouement, Annabelle becomes overwhelmed by the difficulties of her situation, apparent disappearance of her mother, loss of the children, and the question of how her odd situation came about and when/whether it will be resolved. Finally, it is revealed that Annabelle's mother herself caused them to switch bodies through some unspecified means, and the mysterious girl who took Ben was Mrs. Andrews in Annabelle's body (to which she is restored) made much more attractive by a makeover Mrs. Andrews gave the body while using it, including the removal of Annabelle's braces, an appointment Annabelle had forgotten about (and would have missed, had she been the one in her body that day). The book (and especially the film adaptations and its second sequel, Summer Switch) might be considered a modern retelling of Vice Versa, the 1882 novel by F. Anstey, in which the protagonists are a father and son.
338949	/m/01xvgq	How Few Remain	Harry Turtledove	1997-09-08	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The point of divergence is September 10, 1862, during the American Civil War. In our timeline, a Confederate messenger lost General Robert E. Lee's Special Order 191, which detailed Lee's plans for the Invasion of the North. The orders were soon found by Union soldiers, and using them, George McClellan was able to halt the Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Antietam, after which it returned to Virginia. In How Few Remain, the orders are instead recovered by a trailing Confederate soldier. McClellan is caught by surprise, enabling Lee to lead the Army of Northern Virginia towards Philadelphia. Lee forces McClellan into battle on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and destroys the Army of the Potomac in the Battle of Camp Hill on October 1. Lee goes on to capture Philadelphia, earning the Confederate States of America diplomatic recognition from both the United Kingdom and France, thus winning the war (which is known as the War of Secession in the alternate timeline) and independence from the United States on November 4. Kentucky, having been conquered by Confederate forces shortly after the Battle of Camp Hill, joins the eleven original Confederate states after the war's conclusion, and the Confederacy is also given Indian Territory (our timeline's state of Oklahoma, later the Southern Victory Series state of Sequoyah). The Spanish island of Cuba is purchased by the Confederate States in the 1870s for $3,000,000, thus also becoming a Confederate territory. In 1881, Republican James G. Blaine has ridden a hard-line platform of anti-Confederatism into the White House, having defeated Democratic incumbent Samuel J. Tilden in the 1880 presidential election. Both American nations have been sanctioning Indian raids into each other's territory. The international tension between the United States and the Confederate States peaks when Confederate President James Longstreet, desiring a Pacific coast for the confederacy so that the South can have a transcontinental railroad for itself, purchases the northwestern provinces of Sonora and Chihuahua from the financially strapped Mexican Empire (which is still ruled by France's Maximilian) for CS $3,000,000. Blaine uses the "coerced" purchase as a casus belli, leading to the commencement of what will later become known as the Second Mexican War. After the Confederate purchase of the northern Mexican provinces of Sonora and Chihuahua, which extends the CSA-USA border and gives the Confederates a Pacific port (Guaymas), the United States declares war on the Confederacy. Early on in the war, Confederate troops under Jeb Stuart capture a large quantity of gold and silver ore from a Union mining town after successfully occupying the newly purchased provinces. Meanwhile, a Union cavalry colonel, George Armstrong Custer, successfully uses Gatling guns against Kiowa Indians and Confederate cavalry in Kansas. Soon, the United Kingdom and France, both Confederate allies, blockade and bombard US port cities, including those on the Great Lakes. During the war, the Mormons in Utah rebel by severing transcontinental communication and transportation around Salt Lake City. John Pope is appointed as the military governor, puts down the revolt, and imposes martial law. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is classified as a political organization and the Mormon leaders are hunted down and executed. The United States' attempt to invade Virginia is easily thrown back by General Stonewall Jackson as the United States struggles to find a man his equal. A key reason for the Confederate success in the war, in addition to fighting a defensive war, is that the Confederates are led by excellent generals like Jackson, while the United States's military, despite possessing a massive advantage in numbers and resources, suffers from incompetent leadership. William Rosecrans, the commander of the entire US army, casually reveals at one point that there is no overall strategy for winning the war whatsoever. He envisions a vague idea of the opposing armies making counteroffensives back and forth against each other, which he feels the United States would assuredly win. This lack of planning leaves the German military observer, Alfred von Schlieffen, aghast. The United States next attempts to launch a massive invasion of Louisville to knock the Confederates out of Kentucky but it soon becomes a bloody stalemate. The decision of Stonewall Jackson to command the defense personally, the negligence of U.S. commanders, and most of all, the use of breech-loading artillery and repeating rifles make taking the city very difficult. The Confederate army never tries to invade any United States territory for two reasons. First, it does not have the resources for an offensive into hostile lands. Second, the Confederacy's success hinges on the support of Britain and France, who feel they are aiding a smaller nation wrongfully attacked by a larger one, and launching attacks into the United States would be seen as aggression for which they might lose foreign support. Galled by orders to wage a purely defensive war, Jackson takes them to the extreme, pioneering tactics of full-scale trench warfare which devastates Louisville (in scenes reminiscent of the World War I of mainline reality). The Louisville campaign quickly bogs down for the United States, and results in a bloodbath with little territory gained. The United Kingdom and France continue to shell the Great Lakes ports; France also shells Los Angeles, while the British bombard San Francisco and raid the Federal mint. The United States receives some good news when a young volunteer cavalry colonel, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Armstrong Custer rout a British division under Charles Gordon invading Montana from Canada. However, the British also invade northern Maine and annex it into the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Finally, facing defeat on almost all fronts, Republican president James G. Blaine is forced to capitulate. A Republican is never again elected to the White House. The United States, learning the importance of strong allies, seeks an alliance with the newly formed and powerful German Empire. The alliance sets up events for the next three series, which cover an alternate World War I, Inter-war period, and World War II.
339133	/m/01xv_c	Perelandra	C. S. Lewis	1943	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story starts with the philologist Elwin Ransom, some years after his return from Mars at the end of Out of the Silent Planet, receiving a new mission from Oyarsa, the angelic ruler of Mars. After summoning Lewis, the first person narrator, to his country home, Ransom explains to Lewis that he (Ransom) is to travel to Perelandra (Venus), where is located a new Garden of Eden and a new Adam and Eve, to oppose the diabolically-possessed human physicist Professor Weston, who has been sent to corrupt the Eve figure. He is transported in a boxlike vessel seemingly made of ice, which contains only himself. He gets Lewis to blindfold him so the sunlight will not blind him once he travels beyond the earth's atmosphere. He does not wear any clothes on the journey as Oyarsa tells him clothes are unnecessary on Venus. He returns to Earth about a year later and is met by Lewis and another friend: the remainder of the story is told from Ransom's point of view, with Lewis acting as interlocutor and occasional commentator. Ransom arrives in Venus after a journey in which he is surrounded by bright colours; the box dissolves leaving Ransom on what appears to be an oceanic paradise. One day is about 23 Earth hours, in contrast to the (roughly) 24 and 25-hour days of Earth and Mars. The sky is golden and very bright but opaque. Hence the sun cannot be seen, and the night is pitch black with no stars visible. Strange, mythical creatures resembling small dragons roam the planetary sweet-water ocean, which is dotted with floating rafts of vegetation. These rafts resemble islands, to the extent of having plant and animal life upon them; however, having no geologic foundations, they are in a constant state of motion. The planet's sole observable geological feature is a mountain called the Fixed Land. Ransom meets Tinidril, the Queen of the planet; a cheerful being who soon accepts him as a friend. Unlike the inhabitants of Mars in Out of the Silent Planet, she resembles a human in physical appearance with the exception of her skin color, green; this is said to be the preferred form assumed by sentient creatures as a result of the manifestation of Maleldil, the second person of God, in human form. She and the King of the planet, who is largely unseen until the end, are the only human inhabitants and are the Eve and Adam of their world. They live on the floating raft-islands and are forbidden to sleep on the "Fixed Land". The rafts or floating islands are indeed Paradise, not only in the sense that they provide a pleasant and care-free life (until the arrival of Weston) but also in the sense that Ransom is for weeks and months naked in the presence of a beautiful naked woman without once lusting after her or being tempted to seduce her. The plot thickens when Professor Weston arrives in a spaceship and lands in a part of the ocean quite close to the Fixed Land. He at first announces that he is a reformed man, but appears to still be in search of power. He pledges allegiance to what he calls the "Life-Force", and subsequently shows signs of demonic possession. Weston finds the Queen and tries to tempt her into defying Maleldil's orders by spending a night on the Fixed Land. Ransom, perceiving this, believes that he must act as a counter-tempter. Well versed in the Bible and Christian theology, Ransom realises that if the pristine Queen, who has never heard of Evil, succumbs to Weston's arguments, the Fall of Man will be re-enacted on Perelandra. He struggles through day after day of lengthy arguments illustrating various approaches to temptation, but the demonic Weston shows super-human brilliance in debate (though when "off-duty" he displays moronic, asinine behaviour and small-minded viciousness) and moreover appears never to need sleep. With the demonic Weston on the verge of winning, the desperate Ransom hears in the night what he gradually realises is a Divine voice, commanding him to physically attack the Tempter. Ransom is reluctant, and debates with the divine (inner) voice for the entire duration of the night. A curious twist is introduced here; whereas the name "Ransom" is said to be derived from the title "Ranolf's Son", it can also refer to a reward given in exchange for a treasured life. Recalling this, and recalling that his God would (and has) sacrificed Himself in a similar situation, Ransom decides to confront the Tempter outright. Ransom attacks his opponent bare-handed, using only physical force. The Tempter, unable to withstand this despite his superior abilities of rhetoric, flees, whereupon Ransom chases him over the ocean, Weston fleeing and Ransom chasing on the backs of giant and friendly fish. During a fleeting truce, the 'real' Weston momentarily re-inhabits his body, and recounts his experience of Hell, wherein the damned soul is not consigned to pain or fire, as supposed by popular eschatology, but is absorbed into the Devil, losing all independent existence. While Ransom is distracted by his horror and his feelings of pity and compassion for Weston, the demon takes control of the body, surprises Ransom, and tries to drown him. The chase continues into a subterranean cavern, where Ransom seemingly kills Weston and, believing his quest to be over, searches for a route to the surface. Weston's body, horribly injured but still animated by the Devil, follows him. When they meet for the last time in another cavern, Ransom "hurls" at Weston's head a stone and consigns the body to volcanic flames. Returning to the planet's surface after a long travail through the caverns of Perelandra, Ransom recuperates from his injuries, all of which heal fully except for a bite on his heel which he sustained at some point in the battle; this bite continues bleeding for the rest of his time on Perelandra and is remains unhealed when he returns to earth. Ransom meets the King and Queen together with the Oyéresu of Mars and Venus, the latter of whom transfers its divinely ordained dominion over the planet to the King and Queen. All the characters celebrate the prevention of a second biblical "Fall" and the beginning of a utopian paradise in this new world. The story climaxes with Ransom's vision of the essential truth of life in the Solar System, and possibly of the nature of God: strongly paralleling the journeys of Dante in the Divine Comedy. His mission on Venus accomplished, he returns, rather reluctantly, to Earth in the same manner in which he made the outward journey; his new mission is to continue the fight against the forces of evil on their own territory.
339810	/m/01xylf	Teranesia	Greg Egan	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel explores an unusual connection between molecular genetics and quantum computing, with criticism of some of what it considers the excesses of postmodernism and feminism. However, most of the novel focuses on future south-east Asian politics (Egan criticizes Indonesian imperialism and Australian treatment of refugees), repressed childhood guilt, evolutionary biology and academic life. As often in Egan's books, there is some focus on sexuality: this time the lead character is gay, rather than one of the more exotic alternatives in other novels.
340909	/m/01y1kt	On the Road	Jack Kerouac	1957	{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The two main characters of the book are the narrator, Salvatore “Sal” Paradise, and his new friend Dean Moriarty, much admired for his carefree attitude and sense for adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to explore all kicks and an inspiration and catalyst for Sal’s travels. The novel contains five parts, three of them describing road trips. The narrative takes place in the years 1947 to 1950, is full of Americana, and marks a specific era in jazz history, “somewhere between its Charlie Parker Ornithology period and another period that began with Miles Davis.” The novel is largely autobiographical, Sal being the alter ego of the author and Dean standing for Neal Cassady. The epic nature of the adventures and the text itself creates a tremendous sense of meaning and purpose for the themes and lessons. The first section describes Sal’s first trip to San Francisco, CA. Disheartened after a divorce, his life changes when he meets Dean Moriarty, who is "tremendously excited with life," and begins to long for the freedom of the road: ”Somewhere along the line I knew there would be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.” He sets off in July 1947 with fifty dollars in his pocket. After taking several buses and hitchhiking, he arrives in Denver, where he hooks up with Carlo Marx, Dean, and their friends. There are parties&nbsp;— among them an excursion to the ghost town of Central City. Eventually Sal leaves by bus and gets to San Francisco, where he meets Remi Boncoeur and his girlfriend Lee Ann. Remi arranges for Sal to take a job as a night watchman at a boarding camp for merchant sailors waiting for their ship. Not holding this job for long, Sal hits the road again. “Oh, where is the girl I love?” he wonders. Soon he meets Terry, the “cutest little Mexican girl,” on the bus to Los Angeles. They stay together, traveling back to Bakersfield, then to Sabinal, “her hometown,” where her family works in the fields. He meets Terry's brother Ricky, who teaches him the true meaning of "mañana" ("tomorrow"). Working in the cotton fields, Sal realizes that he is not made for this type of work. Leaving Terry behind, he takes the bus back to New York and walks the final stretch from Times Square to Paterson, just missing Dean, who had come to see him, by two days. In this section, Kerouac not only introduces many of the book's characters but also its central conflicts and dilemmas. He initially shows Sal as the deep thinking writer who yearns for greater freedom. As the plot unfolds he shows the depth and degree of Sal’s internal conflict in the pursuit of “kicks,” torn between the romanticized freedom of the open road and practicality of a more settled, domestic life. Dean appears as the “yellow roman candle” that catalyzes the action of the novel. His uncontainable spirit invites Sal to follow but also foreshadows problems of commitment and devotion that will reappear later on. In December 1948 Sal is celebrating Christmas with his relatives in Testament, VA when Dean shows up with Marylou (having left his second wife, Camille, and their newborn baby, Amy, in San Francisco) and Ed Dunkel. Sal’s Christmas plans are shattered as “now the bug was on me again, and the bug’s name was Dean Moriarty.” First they drive to New York, where they meet Carlo and party. Dean wants Sal to make love to Marylou, but Sal declines. In Dean’s Hudson they take off from New York in January 1949 and make it to New Orleans. In Algiers they stay with the morphine-addicted Old Bull Lee and his wife Jane. Galatea Dunkel joins her husband in New Orleans while Sal, Dean, and Marylou continue their trip. Once in San Francisco, Dean again leaves Marylou to be with Camille. “Dean will leave you out in the cold anytime it is in the interest of him” Marylou tells Sal. Both of them stay briefly in a hotel, but soon she moves out, following a nightclub owner. Sal is alone and on Market Street has visions of past lives, birth, and rebirth. Dean finds him and invites him to stay with his family. Together, they visit nightclubs and listen to Slim Gaillard and other jazz musicians. The stay ends on a sour note: "what I accomplished by coming to Frisco I don’t know,” and Sal departs, taking the bus back to New York. In this section, Marylou sums up the dilemma of Dean’s lack of commitment and selfishness when she says that he will always leave you if it isn’t in his interest. This central conflict appears again after Dean returns to Camille in San Francisco, abandoning his two travel companions. Sal again finds himself at a loss for purpose and direction. He has spent his time following the other characters but is unfulfilled by the frantic nature of this life. Much of the euphoria has worn off as he becomes more contemplative and philosophical. In the spring of 1949, Sal takes a bus from New York to Denver. He is depressed and “lonesome”; none of his friends are around. After receiving some money, he leaves Denver for San Francisco to see Dean. Camille is pregnant and unhappy, and Dean has injured his thumb trying to hit Marylou for sleeping with other men. Camille throws them out, and Sal invites Dean to come to New York, planning to travel further to Italy. They meet Galatea, who tells Dean off: ”You have absolutely no regard for anybody but yourself and your kicks.” Sal realizes she is right&nbsp;— Dean is the “HOLY GOOF”&nbsp;— but also defends him, as “he’s got the secret that we’re all busting to find out.” After a night of jazz and drinking in Little Harlem on Folsom Street, they depart. On the way to Sacramento they meet a "fag," who propositions them. Deans tries to hustle some money out of this but is turned down. During this part of the trip Sal and Dean have ecstatic discussions having found “IT” and “TIME." In Denver a brief argument shows the growing rift between the two, when Dean reminds Sal of his age, Sal being the older of the two. They get a '47 Cadillac from the travel bureau that needs to be brought to Chicago. Dean drives most of the way, crazy, careless, often speeding over 100 miles per hour, bringing it in in a disheveled state. By bus they move on to Detroit and spend a night on Skid Row, Dean hoping to find his hobo father. From Detroit they share a ride to New York and arrive at Sal's aunt’s new flat in Long Island. They go on partying in New York, where Dean meets Inez and gets her pregnant while his wife is expecting their second child. After seeing how he treats Camille and Marylou, Sal finally begins to realize the nature of his relationship with Dean. While he cares greatly about him, several times discussing future plans to live on the same street, he recognizes that the feeling may not be mutual. The situations are beginning to change, though, as Sal has received some money from his recently published book and can begin to support himself and also Dean when he comes to New York. Sal is taking a more active role in his freedom as opposed to just following Dean. In the spring of 1950, Sal gets the itch to travel again while Dean is working as a parking lot attendant in Manhattan, living with his girlfriend Inez. Sal notices that he has been reduced to simple pleasures&nbsp;— listening to baseball games and doing card tricks. By bus Sal takes to the road again, passing Washington, Ashland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and eventually reaching Denver. There he meets Stan Shephard, and the two plan to go to Mexico City when they learn that Dean had bought a car and is on the way to join them. In a rickety '37 Ford sedan the three set off across Texas to Laredo, where they cross the border. They are ecstatic, having left “everything behind us and entering a new and unknown phase of things.” Their money buys more (10 cents for a beer), police are laid back, cannabis is readily available, and people are curious and friendly. The landscape is magnificent. In Gregoria, they meet Victor, a local kid, who leads them to a bordello where they have their last grand party, dancing to mambo, drinking, and having fun with underage prostitutes. In Mexico City Sal becomes ill from dysentery and is “delirious and unconscious.” Dean leaves him, and Sal later reflects that “when I got better I realized what a rat he was, but then I had to understand the impossible complexity of his life, how he had to leave me there, sick, to get on with his wives and woes.” In this section we see Dean’s selfishness finally extend to Sal, as he leaves Sal abandoned in Mexico City. Sal has sunk to the bottom of his reality having seen Victor put his family obligations over the freedom of the road and Dean was not ready to do the same thing. This is the moment where the paths diverge and Sal realizes that he has more to live for than just constantly moving. Dean, having obtained divorce papers in Mexico, had first returned to New York to marry Inez, only to leave her and go back to Camille. After his recovery from dysentery in Mexico, Sal returns to New York in the fall. He finds a girl, Laura, and plans to move with her to San Francisco. Sal writes to Dean about his plan to move to San Francisco. Dean writes back saying that he's willing to come and accompany Laura and Sal. Dean arrives over five weeks early but Sal is out taking a late-night walk alone. Sal returns home to Laura and sees a copy of Proust and knows that it is Dean's. Sal realizes that his friend has arrived but its at a time when Sal doesn't have the money to relocate to San Francisco. On hearing this Dean makes the decision to head back to Camille and Sal's friend Remi Boncoeur denies Sal's request to give Dean a short lift to 40th Street on their way to a Duke Ellington concert at the Metropolitan Opera House. Sal's girlfriend Laura realises that this is a painful moment for Sal and prompts him for a response as the party drives off without Dean; to which he replies "He'll be alright". Sal later reflects as he sits on a river pier under a New Jersey night sky about the roads and lands of America that he has travelled and states “. . . I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty." Kerouac often based his fictional characters on friends and family. {| class="wikitable" |- ! Real-life person ! Character name |- | Jack Kerouac | Sal Paradise |- | Gabrielle Kerouac | Sal's Aunt |- | Alan Ansen | Rollo Greb |- | William S. Burroughs | Old Bull Lee |- | Joan Vollmer | Jane |- | Lucien Carr | Damion |- | Neal Cassady | Dean Moriarty |- | Carolyn Cassady | Camille |- | Hal Chase | Chad King |- | Henri Cru | Remi Boncoeur |- | Bea Franco | Terry |- | Allen Ginsberg | Carlo Marx |- | Diana Hansen | Inez |- | Alan Harrington | Hal Hingham |- | Joan Haverty | Laura |- | Luanne Henderson | Marylou |- | Al Hinkle | Ed Dunkel |- | Helen Hinkle | Galatea Dunkel |- | Jim Holmes | Tom Snark |- | John Clellon Holmes | Ian MacArthur |- | Ed Stringham | Tom Saybrook |- | Herbert Huncke | Elmer Hassel |- | Frank Jeffries | Stan Shephard |- | Gene Pippin | Gene Dexter |- | Allan Temko | Roland Major |- | Bill Tomson | Roy Johnson |- | Helen Tomson | Dorothy Johnson |- | Ed Uhl | Ed Wall |}
341263	/m/01y3fk	Vernon God Little	D. B. C. Pierre	2003-01-20	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The title character is a fifteen-year-old boy who lives in a small town in the U.S. state of Texas. When his friend Jesus Navarro commits suicide after killing sixteen bullying schoolmates, suspicion falls on Vernon, who becomes something of a scapegoat in his small hometown of Martirio. Fearing the death penalty, he goes on the run to Mexico.
341357	/m/01y3q7	The Last Hero	Terry Pratchett	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A message, carried by pointless albatross, arrives for Lord Vetinari from the Agatean Empire. The message explains that the Silver Horde (a group of aged barbarians introduced in Interesting Times, wherein they conquered the Empire, and led by Cohen the Barbarian, now the Emperor) have set out on a quest. The first hero of the Discworld, "Fingers" Mazda, stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind, and was chained to a rock to be torn open daily by a giant eagle as punishment. As the last heroes remaining on the Disc, the Silver Horde seek to return fire to the gods with interest, in the form of a large sled packed with explosive Agatean Thunder Clay. They plan to blow up the gods at their mountain home, Cori Celesti. With them is a whiny, terrified bard, whom they have kidnapped so that he can write the saga of their quest. Along the way, they are joined by Evil Harry Dread (the last Dark Lord) and Vena (an elderly heroine). The heroes are disillusioned with the way their lives have turned out—having conquered the Empire, they have nothing left to do but die in comfort—and are angry for having been allowed to grow old, rather than dying in battle as most of their friends did. They decided to go out on the quest after one of the Horde members choked to death on a cucumber. Evil Harry is just as angry; despite his efforts to give his opponents the sporting chance that an Evil Overlord should, they won't follow the Code by allowing him to escape in return. The Wizards of Unseen University explain to Lord Vetinari that blowing up Cori Celesti will destroy the Discworld by temporarily disrupting the Disc's magical field—the only thing holding the Disc together—so Vetinari organises an effort to stop the Horde. Since the Horde is already near the centre of the Discworld and the home of the gods, speed is of the essence. Vetinari recruits Leonard of Quirm to design the Discworld's second known spacecraft to slingshot under the Discworld and back around the top, landing on Cori Celesti. The vessel, named "The Kite" by Leonard, can carry only three people. Leonard of Quirm, Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, and Rincewind are selected for the trip. The Librarian accidentally stumbles aboard as well, having fallen asleep behind some crates of equipment while loading The Kite. After a few mishaps, including landing on the moon (to replenish their oxygen supply after the Librarian's unexpected presence threatened to leave them without enough air to survive the trip) and nearly having their swamp dragon powered spaceship explode on them, they crash in a spectacular fashion at, or rather, into the main gate of Cori Celesti. Meanwhile, the Horde have already reached Cori Celesti. The gods allow them to sneak in disguised as gods themselves, despite (or perhaps because of) their having been betrayed to the gods by Evil Harry. The Horde suspect that the gods have been manipulating their entire quest. Fate challenges Cohen to a game where he must roll higher than what Fate rolls on a standard 6-sided die. After Fate rolls a 6, Cohen cheats Fate by slicing the die in-half in mid-air with his sword; the two halves land with the 6 and 1 both facing up. Cohen also notes that even if he doesn't succeed in killing the gods, someone will have tried, so someone will eventually try harder. Captain Carrot attempts to arrest the Horde, at which point the Horde arms the explosives. While initially intending to attack him, the Horde realise that as a single brave man outnumbered by his foes and trying to save the world, Carrot is a Hero (and probably a king in disguise), and so their defeat is certain. After Rincewind explains that detonating the explosives will destroy the entire Discworld, the Horde grab the already live explosives and throw the explosives—and themselves—off the mountain. As punishment for creating The Kite (which allowed humans to travel higher than the gods) and for not expressing belief in the gods, Leonard is ordered by the gods to paint the entire ceiling of the Temple of Small Gods with a spectacular mural of the whole world (despite Blind Io saying he would be satisfied with "a nice duck-egg blue with a few stars"). They impose a time limit of 10 years on the task—unassisted, "even with the scaffolding". (Leonard finishes the task in a few weeks.) Carrot asks for a boon to allow for the repairs of The Kite so that they can return to Ankh-Morpork. Rincewind asks for a blue balloon and the Librarian asks for some library supplies (and manages to refrain from bouncing Blind Io's head on the ground after Io calls him 'a monkey'). The Horde's end is ambiguous. Valkyries come to take the heroes to the Halls of the Slain, where a feast has been prepared for them. Instead, the Silver Horde, refusing to accept their deaths, steal the valkyries' horses and set off to find other worlds to "do heroic stuff in." Death does not appear to them, as he often does when Discworld characters die, although he subsequently appears to Vena, and is evasive about whether he is "collecting". After the Horde leave with the Valkyries' horses, their first stop is to visit Mazda where he is being punished, cut off his chains, give him something to drink, and leave him a sword so that he may deal with his punisher. The bard, changed by his experience, composes a new style of saga, one with musical accompaniment, about it.
342495	/m/01y8rx	Vile Bodies	Evelyn Waugh	1930	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Adam Fenwick-Symes is the novel's antihero; his quest to marry Nina parodies the conventions of romantic comedy, as the traditional foils and allies prove distracted and ineffectual. War looms, Adam's circle of friends disintegrates, and Adam and Nina's engagement flounders. At the book's end, we find Adam alone on an apocalyptic European battlefield. The book's shift in tone from light-hearted romp to bleak desolation has bothered Okoye. (Waugh himself later attributed it to the breakdown of his first marriage halfway through the book's composition). Others have defended the novel's curious ending as a poetically just reversal of the conventions of comic romance.
342518	/m/01y8vz	Gilgamesh the King	Robert Silverberg	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is told from the point of view of Gilgamesh, and is primarily ambivalent about the supernatural elements of the epic. Most of the events are portrayed in a fairly realistic manner, and the reader is left undecided as to whether certain events are coincidence, or divine intervention. Silverberg afterwards wrote a number of stories for the fantasy anthology series Heroes in Hell describing Gilgamesh's posthumous adventures in the underworld, including the award-winning novella "Gilgamesh in the Outback." fr:Gilgamesh, roi d'Ourouk fi:Kuningas Gilgameš
342524	/m/01y8x2	Roma Eterna	Robert Silverberg		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is presented as a series of vignettes over a period of about 1500 years, from 1282 ab urbe condita (AD 529) to 2723 AUC (AD 1970). Most of the story-chapters involve Roman politics, either the competition between the Western and Eastern Empires to dominate the other or the violent creation of the Second Roman Republic in about 2603 AUC (AD 1850). Others describe the first Roman circumnavigation of the world and unsuccessful attempts to conquer Nova Roma (North America). Many features of our own history are repeated in this history, though under changed circumstances: The equivalent of the 16th and 17th Centuries have bold navigators and adventurers, romanticised by later generations but unpleasantly brutal and ruthless when looked at closely; in the late 18th to mid-19th Centuries, a decadent old order is overthrown by revolution followed by a reign of terror and the reemergence of Republicanism; though Italy remains a central part of the Roman Empire, the Latin dialect spoken there develops into a kind of Italian, and the name "Marcus" changes into "Marco"; though Vienna is a provincial capital which never had an Emperor of its own, its population dances the Waltz; by the 20th Century, people travel by cars rather than carriages and by the second half of the century, space flight is achieved. It concludes with the first story to be written, when a group of Hebrew citizens in Alexandria prepare to depart Earth in a rocket which explodes shortly after takeoff. But they will try again, still believing God chose them to inherit the Promised Land, just not on Rome-dominated Earth.
343425	/m/01ydrq	The Emerald City of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1910	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 At the beginning of this story, it is made quite clear that Dorothy, the primary protagonist of many of the previous Oz books, is in the habit of freely speaking of her adventures to her only living relatives, her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Neither of them believes a word of her stories, but consider her a dreamer. She is undeterred, unlike her alter ego in the film Return to Oz, who is much perturbed by her guardians' doubts. Later, it is revealed that the destruction of their farmhouse by the cyclone in the original book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has left Uncle Henry in terrible debt. In order to pay it, he has taken out a mortgage on his farm. If he cannot repay his creditors, they will seize the farm. He is not afraid for himself, but both he and his wife, Aunt Em, fear very much for their niece's future. Dorothy arranges with Princess Ozma to take them to the Land of Oz, where they will be safe. Using the magic belt, a tool captured from the jealous Nome King Roquat, Ozma transports them to her throne room. They are given rooms to live in and luxuries to enjoy, including a vast and complex wardrobe. They meet with many of Dorothy's animal friends, including the Cowardly Lion and Billina the Yellow Hen. In the underground Nome Kingdom, the desirous Roquat is plotting to seize the Land of Oz. He was greatly embarrassed years ago when Dorothy, Ozma, and their many friends entered his domain and freed the royal family of Ev from imprisonment; as a result, he wants to embarrass them in a similar way. After ordering the expulsion of his General, who will not agree to such an attack, and the death of his Colonel, who also refuses, King Roquat holds counsel with a veteran soldier called Guph. Guph believes that against the many magicians and magicks of Oz (the reputation of which has grown in the telling), the Nome Army has no chance alone. He therefore sets out personally to recruit allies. Dorothy, accompanied by the Wizard of Oz and several other friends, departs the Emerald City in a carriage drawn by the Wooden Sawhorse, intending to give her aunt and uncle a tour of the land. Many of the people encountered have never been seen in other books: the living cut-out paper dolls created by an immortal called Miss Cuttenclip; the anthropomorphic jigsaw puzzles known as the Fuddles; the loquacious Rigmaroles; the paranoid Flutterbudgets; the living kitchen utensils of Utensia; the anthropomorphic pastries of Bunbury; the civilized rabbits of Bunnybury; and the zebra, who holds geographical disputes with a crab. Other figures, more familiar to readers of previous books, include the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow, as well as the four tribes of Oz—the Munchkins, the Quadlings, the Gillikins, and the Winkies. The Nome General Guph visits three nations; the Whimsies, the Growleywogs, and the Phanfasms. The Whimsies are large and hulking, but possess disproportionately small heads. This causes other species to call them stupid, stripping them of any self-esteem. To deny this, the Whimsies wear enormous, luridly designed masks that cover all of their heads. The Growleywogs are muscular giants, possessing no surplus flesh and no mercy. They are arrogant and cruel. As such, they are eager not only to help the Nomes conquer Oz, but also to subjugate the Nomes as well. Of the latter plan, they say nothing, but send Guph on his way. Last of his meetings is that which is with the mysterious, diabolical Phanfasms. To Guph, the Phanfasms resemble men, but having the heads of various carnivorous animals. Their true forms, number, standard of living, culture, and extent of influence remain unknown to both Guph and the reader, although both receive hints in the narrative. The Phanfasms send Guph home, telling him that they will conquer Oz alongside the other armies. It is their plan to do so, then to turn traitor and dominate their allies. Having learned of this through Ozma's omniscient Magic Picture, the people of Oz become worried. The climax takes place in the Emerald City, where Ozma wishes (using her magic belt) for a large amount of dust to appear in the tunnel. The Nome King and his allies are defeated after they drink thirstily from the Fountain of Oblivion and forget all their evil plans. Ozma uses the magic belt to send them all home. To forestall a future invasion of Oz Glinda uses a magic charm to render Oz invisible and unreachable to everyone except those within the land itself.
344101	/m/01yh8h	A Door Into Ocean	Joan Slonczewski	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the future, on the fictional planet of Shora, a moon covered by water. The inhabitants of this planet, known as Sharers, are all female. Sharers use genetic engineering to control the ecology of their planet. They are peaceful beings who "share" — that is, they have a spiritual and linguistic union with each other and treat everyone equally. The Sharers take egalitarianism for granted because they share and they lack the concept of "power-over", making their society one in which conflicts are settled without violence. When they are being threatened by an outside power, they resist nonviolently because they refuse to believe in power. Thus, the Sharers can never be subdued by force. The Sharer way of nonviolence is more than spiritual. It is based on historical realities of nonviolent resistance. The author based the events of her novel on much historical research, particularly the writings of peace historian Gene Sharp. The novel includes much biological research into the evolution of innate capacities for nonviolence. For example, the participation of children in nonviolent resistance draws on deep instinctual responses found in humans and related mammals. A unique expression of the Sharer way is their language, in which subject and object are interchangeable. The Sharers know by context what subject and object are—but their language does not allow them to make a distinction. As a result, they always know that what one person "forces" upon another can always go the other way. Their language impedes anyone from "giving orders" to dominate others. For example, if a stranger says, "You must obey me," the Sharer hears, "I must obey you," or (the closest translation), "We must share agreement." Their language reinforces the Sharers' inability to accept any situation in which one individual dominates another by force. The Sharer worldview extends to their environment, their surrounding ecosystem. They cannot act upon their plants and animals without being acted upon in return. So, for example, because Sharers consume plants and animals as food, they accept the fact that they in turn will become food for other life forms; that predators will ultimately consume them. At the beginning of the novel, the Sharers are all female. But as they encounter a non-Sharer community from another planet, which threatens them, the Sharer Merwen realizes that they must find out whether other kinds of "people" can share their life or not. Merwen goes to the other planet, Valedon, to recruit a young man, Spinel, to return to Shora and attempt to learn their ways. This venture leads to disagreement within the Sharer community (they have plenty of disagreements, though addressed without violence). With many false starts, Spinel gradually learns the Sharer way, as a man; and ultimately he works with the Sharers to help them defend their planet from a military invasion.
344267	/m/01yhyr	The Robber Bride	Margaret Atwood	1993-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During their most recent outing, three friends see Zenia, a long-dead university classmate who had stolen, one by one, their respective beaux. The novel alternates between the present and flashbacks featuring the points of view of Tony, Charis, and Roz, respectively. Zenia has given each woman a different version of her biography, tailor-made to insinuate herself into their lives. No one version of Zenia is the truth, and the reader knows no more than the characters. Their betrayals by Zenia are what initially bring the three together as friends and bind their lives together irrevocably; their monthly luncheons began after her funeral. The novel, like other works by Atwood, deals with power struggles between men and women; it is also a meditation on the nature of friendship, power, and trust between women. Zenia's character can be read as either the ultimate self-empowered woman, a traitor who abuses sisterhood, or simply a self-interested mercenary who cunningly uses the "war between the sexes" to further her own interests. One reading posits Zenia as a kind of guardian angel to the women, saving them from unworthy men. Atwood claims that of all the characters she has written, she identifies most "with Zenia. She is the professional liar, and what else do fiction writers do but create lies that other people will believe?" In the novel's present, Roz, Charis, and Tony finally each individually confront Zenia in a Toronto hotel room, where she tells each of them that the men they'd been with got what they deserved, and gives various versions of her earlier staged death, each as implausible as the accounts of her life. One of the four women never leaves that hotel alive. The novel itself leaves the reader questioning who was (or were) the victim(s) of life.
344361	/m/01yj6j	Lazarillo de Tormes		1554	{"/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 Lázaro is a boy of humble origins from Salamanca. After his stepfather is accused of thievery, his mother asks a wily blind beggar to take Lazarillo (little Lázaro) on as his apprentice. Lázaro develops his cunning while serving the blind beggar and several other masters. Table of contents: *Prologue *Chapter (or treatise) 1: childhood and apprenticeship to a blind man. *Chapter 2: serving a priest. *Chapter 3: serving a squire. *Chapter 4: serving a friar. *Chapter 5: serving a pardoner. *Chapter 6: serving a chaplain. *Chapter 7: serving a bailiff and an archbishop.
344570	/m/01yk6x	The Day of the Locust	Nathanael West	1939-05-16	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book follows a young man named Tod Hackett who thinks of himself as a painter and artist, but who works in Hollywood as a costume designer and background painter. He falls in love with Faye Greener, an aspiring starlet who lives nearby. Between his work in the studio and his introduction to Faye's friends, he is soon interacting with numerous Hollywood hangers-on, including a cowboy who lives in the hills above the studios and works as an extra in cowboy movies, his Mexican friend who keeps fighting cocks, and Homer Simpson, a hapless businessman whom Faye is taking advantage of. The book ends with a riot at a movie premiere.
344833	/m/01yl1r	On Her Majesty's Secret Service	Ian Fleming	1963-04-01	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 For more than a year, James Bond, British Secret Service operative 007, has been involved in "Operation Bedlam": trailing the private criminal organisation SPECTRE and its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The organisation had hijacked two nuclear devices and subsequently blackmailed the western world, as described in Thunderball. Convinced SPECTRE no longer exists, Bond is frustrated by MI6's insistence that he continue the search and his inability to find Blofeld. He composes a letter of resignation for his superior, M. Whilst composing his letter, Bond encounters a beautiful, suicidal young woman named Contessa Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo first on the road and subsequently at the gambling table, where he saves her from a coup de deshonneur by paying the gambling debt she is unable to cover. The following day Bond follows her and interrupts her attempted suicide, but they are captured by professional henchmen. They are taken to the offices of Marc-Ange Draco, head of the Unione Corse, the biggest European crime syndicate. Tracy is the daughter and only child of Draco who believes the only way to save his daughter from further suicide attempts is for Bond to marry her. To facilitate this, he offers Bond a dowry of £1 million (£ million in 2013 pounds); Bond refuses the offer, but agrees to continue romancing Tracy while her mental health improves. Afterwards Draco uses his contacts to inform Bond that Blofeld is somewhere in Switzerland. Bond returns to England to be given another lead: the College of Arms in London has discovered that Blofeld has assumed the title and name Comte Balthazar de Bleuville and wants formal confirmation of the title and has asked the College to declare him the reigning count. On a visit to the College of Arms, Bond finds that the family motto of Sir Thomas Bond is "The World Is Not Enough", and that he might be (though unlikely) Bond's ancestor. On the pretext that a genetically-inherited minor physical abnormality (a lack of earlobes) needs a personal confirmation, Bond impersonates a College of Arms representative, Sir Hilary Bray to visit Blofeld's lair atop Piz Gloria, where he finally meets Blofeld. Blofeld has undergone plastic surgery partly to remove his earlobes, but also to disguise himself from the police and security services who are tracking him down. Bond learns Blofeld has been curing a group of young British and Irish women of their livestock and food allergies. In truth, Blofeld and his aide, Irma Bunt, have been brainwashing them into carrying biological warfare agents back to Britain and Ireland in order to destroy the agricultural economy, upon which post-World War II Britain depends. Believing himself discovered, Bond escapes by ski from Piz Gloria, chased by SPECTRE operatives, a number of whom he kills in the process. Afterward, in a state of total exhaustion, he encounters Tracy. She is in the town at the base of the mountain after being told by her father that Bond may be in the vicinity. Bond is too weak to take on Blofeld's henchmen alone and she helps him escape to the airport. Smitten by the resourceful, headstrong woman, he proposes marriage and she accepts. Bond then returns to England and works on the plan to capture Blofeld. Helped by Draco's Union Corse, Bond mounts an air assault against the clinic and Blofeld. Whilst the clinic is destroyed, Blofeld escapes down a bobsled run and although Bond give chase Blofeld escapes. Bond flies to Germany where he marries Tracy. The two of them drive off on honeymoon and, a few hours later, Blofeld and Bunt drive past, machine gunning them: Tracy is killed in the attack.
345005	/m/01ylw1	The Mote in God's Eye	Jerry Pournelle	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is split up into four parts. In the year AD 3017, humanity is recovering slowly from an interstellar civil war that tore apart the first Empire of Man. A new Empire has risen and is occupied in establishing control over the remnants of its predecessor, by force if needed. Commander Lord Roderick Blaine, having participated in the suppression of a rebellion on the planet of New Chicago, is given command of an Imperial battlecruiser, INSS MacArthur, when the captain has to stay behind to restore order on the planet. Blaine is given secret orders to take Horace Hussein Bury, a powerful interstellar merchant of Arabic descent who is suspected of fomenting the revolt for his own profit, to the Imperial capital, Sparta. Blaine is one of the few people available who is wealthier than Bury, so he is the ideal man for the mission as he can't be bribed. MacArthur is to be repaired in the New Caledonia system, then proceed to the capital. Another passenger is Lady Sandra Bright "Sally" Fowler, the niece of an Imperial Senator and a rescued prisoner of the rebels. New Caledonia is the capital of the Trans-Coalsack sector, located on the opposite side of the Coalsack Nebula from Earth. Also in the sector is a red supergiant star known as Murcheson's Eye. Associated with it is a yellow Sun-like star. From New Caledonia, the yellow star appears in front of the Eye. Since some see the Eye and the Coalsack as the face of a hooded man, perhaps even the face of God, the yellow star is known as the Mote in God's Eye. While in the New Caledonia system, Blaine receives a message saying that an alien spacecraft has been detected, and includes an order that MacArthur intercept it. Human ships use the Alderson Drive, which allows them to "jump" instantaneously between points in specific star systems. The alien craft, by contrast, is propelled by a solar sail, taking 150 years to cross between stars at sublight speed. MacArthur duly intercepts the craft and is fired upon by its automated systems, but manages to capture it relatively intact. However, on arrival at the planet New Scotland, its single occupant, evidently the pilot, is found to be dead. The alien is bizarrely asymmetric, with two delicate arms on one side of its body and a single, much larger and stronger arm on the other. Although it is bipedal and has a head and face similar to humans, its anatomy is entirely different. It has no flexible spine and the face is capable of little expression. It is the first apparently intelligent alien race that humans have come into contact with. The ship itself is composed of alloys with remarkable properties and designed around unique, custom-built parts, no two alike, that perform multiple unrelated tasks simultaneously. MacArthur and the battleship Lenin are sent to the Mote: the star from which the alien ship came. MacArthur carries civilian research teams intended to meet with and investigate the Moties, while Lenin is there to ensure the security of humanity's technology and secrets, avoiding all contact with the aliens. Aboard Lenin is the commander in charge of the mission, Admiral Lavrenti Kutuzov, a ruthless, supremely loyal officer who had already sterilized one rebellious colony planet to safeguard Imperial Reunification. Bury goes along ostensibly because a merchant is needed to assess the trade possibilities, but actually because there is nobody trustworthy enough to take him to the capital. Sally, a trained anthropologist, ranks too highly in the political aristocracy to be refused. Despite (or rather, due to) the civilians' distrust, Blaine remains in command of MacArthur. The Mote has only one Alderson point leading to it, and to reach it the ships must actually enter the outer layers of the red supergiant itself before activating the drive. Supergiant stars are up to 500 million km in diameter, but the outer layers are basically a hot vacuum, which the human ships can survive because of the protective Langston Field. MacArthur successfully makes contact with the Moties. They have advanced technology (in some areas superior to that of the First Empire, let alone the current Second), but seem friendly and willing to share it. Indeed, they would have been a formidable threat to Humanity, had they not been bottled up in their home system. Although they also possess the Alderson Drive, they consider it a failure—the "Crazy Eddie" Drive which makes ships disappear. When everything works perfectly, the termination of their Alderson Drive tramline inside the supergiant destroys their ships, since they have no knowledge of the protective Field. The Moties deduce that humans use the drive because MacArthur and Lenin appear at the "Crazy Eddie Point", the local origin of their tramline. The Moties are an old species that has evolved into many specialized subspecies. The first to board MacArthur is an engineer, a brown fur form with amazing technical abilities but limited speech, who brings along a pair of tiny Motie "Watchmakers" as assistants. Some days later, an official delegation of Motie Mediators arrives, brown and white forms like the dead pilot of the probe ship, who have astounding communication and negotiation skills but very limited ability with tools. A contact party of humans, including Sally Fowler, accompanies them to the surface of Mote Prime. Each Mediator adopts a particular human in this group, becoming his (her in Sally's case) Fyunch(click), studying their subject and learning how to think like him or her, even to the point of exactly reproducing voice and mannerisms. Back on MacArthur, disaster strikes. The Watchmakers have escaped, and although it was assumed they had died, they have actually been breeding furiously. Despite several attempts to rid MacArthur of the infestation, the Watchmakers, unknown to the human crew, continued quietly redesigning MacArthur and rebuilding it for greater living space. When they are discovered, a losing battle for control of the ship erupts. The crew is eventually forced to abandon ship. The contact party is also recalled without explanation and told to rendezvous directly with Lenin, which destroys MacArthur to prevent the capture of human technology. These events reveal the existence of an improved Langston Field which expands as it absorbs energy, increasing its surface area and dissipating heat faster. During the evacuation, three MacArthur midshipmen escape from the ship in lifeboats. Unfortunately, these were reconstructed by the descendants of the escaped Watchmakers, and automatic controls force a landing in an unpopulated area of Mote Prime. Exploring unsupervised for the first time, they find a fortified dome-like structure whose doors are locked by a puzzle that requires relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy to solve. It is a perfectly maintained yet completely deserted building that appears to be some type of museum. Every aspect of Motie civilization is preserved in detail, including in-place fragments of several smaller domes which have been violently shattered. The exhibits as a whole provide evidence of a very long and violent history, though the Moties had carefully portrayed themselves to the Expedition members as completely peaceful. Following this discovery, the midshipmen, Jonathon Whitbread, Horst Staley, and Gavin Potter, are reunited with Whitbread's Fyunch(click) Mediator escort, who reveals the self-destructive character underlying Motie society. Unlike human wars motivated by greed or malice, the Motie civilization is driven to conflict because of biology. The Moties are sequential hermaphrodites, changing sex over and over again during the course of their lives. However, if a Motie remains female for too long without becoming pregnant, the hormone imbalance will kill her. This characteristic ensures a never-ending population explosion. Attempts at population control through chemicals or infanticide have always failed for the Moties, because those who (secretly or openly) breed uncontrollably eventually swamp those Moties who comply. Once the population pressure rises high enough, massive wars inevitably result. Humans have encountered eight of the larger Motie subspecies, not including hybrids such as the Mediators: Masters, Engineers, Doctors, Porters, Farmers, Runners, Watchmakers and Meats, but the Masters concealed the existence of another type - the Warriors. Bred specifically for combat, they are innately superior in ability to any human soldier and capable of using any type of weapon. There are no longer any fissionable materials remaining in the Mote system, but asteroid bombardments serve as more than adequate weapons of mass destruction, giving the entire surface of the planet a cratered appearance resembling Mars. Each war typically ends in the complete destruction of the current civilization on Mote Prime. However, due to their high birth rates, enough Moties always survive to eventually repopulate the planet. A faster rise to civilization leads to a longer period between Collapses, since productivity increases more quickly than the population. The museums exist to accelerate this process after a collapse. They are located in unpopulated areas to avoid their destruction during the inevitable wars. Once the surviving population is advanced enough to solve the puzzle at the door, they have access to a literal catalogue of civilizations, and the weapons to put them into effect. Population is controlled by disease and injury between collapses and reconstructions, but the cycles have thus far never been stopped completely. The cycles of civilization, war, and collapse have apparently been repeating for hundreds of thousands of years. In some cases, Mote Prime was completely sterilized and then repopulated by those living in hollowed-out asteroids within the system. The current asymmetrical form is probably a mutation resulting from nuclear weaponry prior to a collapse. Presumably, each civilization arises, unlocks the museums, and discovers that unless they can solve a problem that had plagued countless others, they are doomed. Thus, the Moties have become fatalistically resigned to the never-ending Cycles. Only a mythical character called "Crazy Eddie" believes there is a way to change this, and any Motie who comes to believe a solution is possible is labeled as a "Crazy Eddie" and deemed insane. The current civilization is organized as a type of "industrial feudalism", where coalitions of related Masters govern the planet. Using the system's Alderson point to colonize other planets is proposed as one (ultimately unworkable) solution to the Cycles, leading to its designation as the "Crazy Eddie Point". Conflict erupts on Mote Prime between two groups of Masters considering this idea. The smaller group recognizes that expansion to other planets would only postpone the Cycles; nearby planets would soon be filled with Moties, and the Alderson Drive takes time to use — years of travel across systems from tramline to tramline to reach distant planets. Eventually, it would be easier for Moties to challenge humans for their planets, especially since humans cannot compete with Moties, technologically, biologically, or even numerically. Motie victory would be inevitable, but eventually futile as the population continues to expand exponentially. However, the more powerful coalition of Masters sees this temporary solution as more appealing than the impending phase of collapse. Both groups send envoys to the human worlds with instructions to negotiate for the majority position. To conceal the danger to human civilization, the three midshipmen who reached Mote Prime are not permitted to return to Lenin and are killed while resisting capture. Lenin returns home, taking with it — in violation of explicit orders to avoid contact at all costs — the three Motie ambassadors. Kutuzov takes this step only after much debate. The Motie embassy contains two Mediators called Charlie and Jock, and a Keeper (a sterile Master), known as Ivan. The choice of three infertile Moties occurs both to avoid conflict on Mote Prime, since no single family will control the mission, and to continue the deception of the humans. Their mission is to open the galaxy to their ships while concealing the inevitable drive to war of any Motie civilization. The Jump out of Mote System with the Alderson Drive reveals that the more complex nervous systems of the Moties produce a much more intense version of jump shock than humans experience. Back on New Caledonia, an Imperial Commission is on the verge of granting colonies to the Moties, not realizing the ultimate danger. Fortunately, MacArthur’s sailing master, the unconventional Kevin Renner, manages to assemble various clues unknowingly gathered during the expedition. In particular, a series of images taken by MacArthurs cameras as it was attacked by the Motie probe ship reveal the well-kept secret of the Motie Warrior caste. This information, combined with the knowledge of unlimited population growth on Mote Prime, forces the commission to decide against permitting the Moties to leave their home system. Because the Moties learned about the Langston Field, enabling them to establish colonies independently, it seems the only option is to send the Fleet to eradicate the entire Motie species. However, the Mediator Charlie, who represents the minority view from Mote Prime, persuades the Commission to establish a permanent blockade of the system's only worthwhile exit through the Alderson point, allowing the Moties to survive with the seemingly endless Cycles, until such time as the humans can find a cure for their birth rate, something "sane" Moties think impossible. With Motie assistance in planning the blockade, the Commission accepts this alternative. Since the Moties are helpless for so long after a Jump, the ships of the human fleet can easily destroy any blockade runners with their laser weaponry, especially within the superheated photosphere of Murcheson's Eye. Even the Moties' improvement on the Langston Field — causing it to expand as it absorbs energy so as to faster dissipate heat — is useless in this environment. It simply causes faster heat absorption, resulting in a chain reaction that destroys every ship that makes the attempt to traverse the tramline even before they can return to inform others of the weakness. Sally Fowler establishes a private foundation seeking a cure for the Moties' unavoidable birth rate. The book ends on a dark note, with the mediator Charlie predicting that a later generation of humans will destroy the Motie species after the next collapse, unless a cure is actually found. In either case, it seems that "Crazy Eddie" was right — the Cycles will finally end.
345650	/m/01yp92	The Dot and the Line				 The story details a straight line who is hopelessly in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. The line, unable to fall out of love and willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, manages to bend himself and form an angle. He works to refine this new ability, creating shapes so complex that he has to label his sides and angles to keep his place. The dot realizes that she has made a mistake: what she had seen in the squiggle to be freedom and joy was nothing more than chaos and sloth. She leaves with the line, having realized that he has much more to offer, and the moral is presented: "To the vector belong the spoils."
346145	/m/01yr0f	The Egg and I	Betty MacDonald	1945		 MacDonald begins her book with a summary description of her childhood and family. Her father was an engineer, and moved frequently with his family throughout the West. Her mother's theory that a wife must support her husband in his career comes into play when the author marries a friend of her brother ("Bob") who soon admits that his dream is to leave his current office job and start a chicken ranch. Knowing nothing about ranching, but eager to support her husband, the author encourages the dream but is unprepared for the primitive conditions that exist on the ranch he purchases. From this "set up" the book turns to anecdotal stories that rely upon the proverbial "fish out of water" tales that pit MacDonald against her situation and her surroundings, such as the struggle to keep up with the need for water, which needs to be hand carried from a pond to the house until a tank is installed or keeping a fire going in "Stove" or the constant care that chicks need. At one point a guest expresses envy of MacDonald and her husband, as she thinks they live a life full of fresh air and beautiful scenery, which is then followed by MacDonald pointing out that while the guest had lounged in bed that morning, she and her husband had been up before sunrise working for several hours, and then again the couple had stayed up long into the night after the guest had gone to bed.
347822	/m/01yxg4	Persuasion	Jane Austen	1818	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Anne Elliot is the overlooked middle daughter of the vain Sir Walter, a spendthrift baronet who is all too conscious of his good looks and rank. Anne's mother, a loving, intelligent woman whom her second daughter resembles in appearance and temperament, is long dead. Anne's older sister, Elizabeth, takes after her father, and her younger sister, Mary, is a nervous, fretful woman who has made an unspectacular marriage to Charles Musgrove of nearby Uppercross Hall, the heir to a bucolic but respected local squire. None of her family can provide much companionship for the refined, sensitive Anne, who is still unmarried at 27 and seems destined for spinsterhood. Nearly nine years after breaking her engagement (and subsequently turning down a proposal from Charles Musgrove, who went on to marry her sister), she has still not forgotten Frederick Wentworth. Wentworth reenters Anne's life when Sir Walter is forced by his own fiscal irresponsibility to rent out Kellynch, the family estate. He and Elizabeth move to pricey rental lodgings in the fashionable resort of Bath, while Anne remains behind in Uppercross with her younger sister's family. In what is surely the most flagrant coincidence in all of Austen's six novels, Kellynch's tenants turn out to be none other than Wentworth's sister, Sophia, and her husband, the recently retired Admiral Croft. Wentworth's successes in the Napoleonic Wars have won him promotions and wealth amounting to about £25,000 (around £2.5 million in today's money) from prize money awarded for capturing enemy vessels, and he is now an eminently eligible bachelor. The Musgroves, including Mary, Charles, and Charles's younger sisters, Henrietta and Louisa, are happy to welcome the Crofts and Wentworth to the neighborhood. He is deliberately cool and formal with Anne, whom he describes as altered almost beyond recognition, but delighted with the Musgrove girls, who both respond in kind. Although Henrietta is nominally engaged to her clergyman cousin Charles Hayter, nothing is official, and both the Crofts and Musgroves, who know nothing of Anne and Frederick's previous relationship, enjoy speculating about which sister Wentworth might marry. All this is hard on Anne, who has spent the last several years bitterly regretting that she was ever persuaded to reject him and realizes that he still holds her refusal against her. To avoid watching him keep company with the Musgrove sisters, particularly Louisa, whom he seems to prefer, she does her best to stay out of his way. When they do meet, his conspicuous indifference, coupled with a few acts of seemingly careless kindness toward her, nearly break her heart. The sad slow pace of Anne's life suddenly picks up when the entire Uppercross family decides to accompany Captain Wentworth on a visit to one of his brother officers, Captain Harville, in the coastal town of Lyme Regis. There Anne meets yet a third officer, Captain James Benwick, a passionate admirer of the Romantic poets, who is in deep mourning for the death of his fiancée, Captain Harville's sister, and appreciates Anne's sympathy and understanding. The new location, new acquaintances, and fresh ocean air all agree with Anne, who begins to regain some of the life and sparkle that Captain Wentworth remembered, and she attracts the attention of another gentleman, who turns out to be the Elliots' long-estranged cousin and her father's heir, William Elliot. While Wentworth is absorbing these developments, Louisa Musgrove sustains a serious concussion in a fall brought about by her own stubborn and impetuous behavior. While her family and friends panic and look on helplessly, Anne coolly administers first aid and summons assistance. Wentworth, who feels responsible for encouraging Louisa's irresponsible behavior in the first place, is both confused and impressed, and begins to reexamine his feelings about Anne. Following this near-tragedy, Anne relocates to Bath to be with her father and sister, while Louisa stays in Lyme to recover her health at the Harvilles. In Bath Anne finds that her father and sister are as shallow as ever, obsessed with rank and wealth, and flattered by the attentions of William Elliot, a widower, who has now successfully reconciled with his uncle, Sir Walter. Elizabeth assumes that he wishes to court her while Lady Russell, who is also in Bath, more correctly suspects that he admires Anne and is elated to think that her young friend may have a second chance at married happiness with such a suitable suitor. However, although Anne likes William Elliot and enjoys his company, she finds his character disturbingly opaque and tells Lady Russell, "We should not suit," while admitting to herself that his admiration has done a great deal to lift her spirits. In the midst of this, Admiral Croft and his wife arrive in Bath, and soon afterward comes the news that Louisa Musgrove is indeed engaged—but not to Captain Wentworth. The lucky man is Captain Benwick, who had attended her during her long and interesting convalescence. In short order Wentworth also comes to Bath, where he is not pleased to see Mr. Elliot courting Anne, and he and Anne begin to tentatively renew their acquaintance. Anne also takes the opportunity to reunite with an old school friend, Mrs. Smith, a once prosperous matron who is now a widow living in Bath in straitened circumstances. Through her she discovers that behind his charming veneer, Mr. Elliot is a cold, calculating opportunist who has lost the money left him by his late wife and led Mrs. Smith's late husband into crippling debt as well. Although Mrs. Smith believes that he is genuinely attracted to Anne, it appears that his real aim in making up to the Elliots has been to keep an eye on the ingratiating Mrs. Clay, whom he worries that Sir Walter may take it into his head to marry. A new wife might mean a baby boy and the end of Mr. Elliot's inheritance. Although Anne is shocked and dismayed by this news, it helps to confirm her belief that she, not Lady Russell or anyone else, is the best judge of what will constitute her own happiness. Ultimately, the Musgroves visit Bath to purchase wedding clothes for their daughters Louisa and Henrietta (now officially engaged to Charles Hayter). Captain Wentworth and his friend Captain Harville encounter them and Anne at a public room in Bath, where Wentworth overhears Anne and Harville conversing about the relative faithfulness of men and women in love. Deeply moved by what Anne has to say, Wentworth writes her a note declaring his feelings for her. In a tender scene, Anne and Wentworth reconcile, affirm their love for each other, and renew their engagement. The story ends less well for Anne's father and sister. They are both jilted by Mr. Elliot, who succeeds in persuading Mrs. Clay to become his mistress. Lady Russell admits she was wrong about Wentworth; she and Anne remain friends; and Wentworth helps Mrs. Smith recover some of her lost assets. Nothing remains to blight Anne's happiness—except the prospect of another war.
348200	/m/01yy_9	Stand on Zanzibar	John Brunner	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The story is set in 2010, mostly in the United States. A number of plots and many vignettes are played out in this future world, based on Brunner's extrapolation of social, economic, and technological trends. The key main trends are based on the enormous population and its impact: social stresses, eugenic legislation, widening social divisions, future shock, and extremism. Certain of Brunner's guesses are fairly close, others not, and some ideas clearly show their 1960s mind-set. Many futuristic concepts, products and services, and slang are presented. A supercomputer named Shalmaneser is an important plot element. The Hipcrime Vocab and other works by the fictional sociologist Chad C. Mulligan are frequent sources of quotations. Some examples of slang include "codder" (man), "shiggy" (woman), "whereinole" (where in hell?), "prowlie" (an armored police car), "offyourass" (possessing an attitude), "bivving" (bisexuality, from "ambivalent") and "mucker" (a person running amok). A new technology introduced is "eptification" (education for particular tasks), a form of mental programming. Another is a kind of interactive television that shows the viewer as part of the program ("Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere"). Genetically modified microorganisms are used as terrorist weapons. The book centres on two New York men, Donald Hogan and Norman Niblock House, who share an apartment. House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of the all-powerful corporations. Using his "Afram" (African American) heritage to advance his position, he has risen to vice-president at age twenty-six. Hogan is introduced with a single paragraph rising out of nowhere: "Donald Hogan is a spy". Donald shares an apartment with House and is undercover as a student. Hogan's real work is as a "synthesist", although he is a commissioned officer and can be called up for duty. The two main plots concern the fictional African state of Beninia (a name reminiscent of the real-life Benin, though that nation in the Bight of Benin was known as the Republic of Dahomey when the book was written) making a deal with General Technics to take over the management of their country, in a bid to speed up development from third world to first world status. A second major plot is a break-through in genetic engineering in the fictional Australasian nation of Yatakang (which seems to be a disguised Indonesia), to which Hogan is soon sent by the U.S. government ("State") to investigate. The two plots eventually cross, bringing potential implications for the entire world.
348415	/m/01yzr4	Rubyfruit Jungle	Rita Mae Brown	1973	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel focuses on Molly Bolt, the adopted daughter of a poor family, who possesses remarkable beauty and who is aware of her lesbianism from early childhood. Her relationship with her mother is rocky, and at a young age her mother, referred to as "Carrie," informs Molly that she is not her own biological child but a "bastard." Molly has her first same-sex sexual relationship in the sixth grade with her friend Leota B. Bisland, and then again in a Florida high school, where she has another sexual relationship with another friend, Carolyn Simpson, the school lead cheerleader, who willingly has sex with Molly but rejects the "lesbian" label. Molly also engages in sex with males, including her cousin Leroy when the two were younger. Her father, Carl, dies when she is in her junior year of high school. In a combination of her strong-willed nature and disdain for Carrie, Molly pushes herself to excel in high school, winning a full scholarship to the University of Florida. Unlike Carrie, Carl has always supported Molly's goals and education. However, when Molly's homosexual relationship with her alcoholic roommate is discovered, she is denied a renewal of her scholarship. Possessing little money, she moves to New York to pursue an education in filmmaking. Upon reaching New York, she realizes that the rubyfruit is maybe not as delicious and varied as she had dreamed within the concrete jungle.
348697	/m/01y_kg	Fallen Dragon	Peter F. Hamilton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Fallen Dragon takes place during the 25th century. In the preceding centuries, a means of Faster-than-light (FTL) space travel was discovered, allowing a speed of one-half of a light-year per day. This led to a series of colonization efforts in a globe about 70 light years around Earth, but these ended as their costs proved prohibitive. The only major ongoing starflight efforts are carried out by the Zantiu-Braun megacorporation, who use their fleet of starships to periodically plunder their colonies in technically legal "asset realization" raids, typically involving military occupation of the planet in question. As it is cheaper to copy technology than ship it, these efforts normally collect single samples of interesting goods, or raw materials that are expensive on Earth. Zantiu-Braun is controlled by clones of Simon Roderick, who is motivated by the idea of uplifting the entire human race to his ideal. The story follows the life of Lawrence Newton from the colony planet Amethi, both in the current time and in a series of flashbacks. In the current time, Newton is a mercenary in the Zantiu-Braun strategic security forces, who leads a squad of troopers wearing organic armor suits called "Skin" that render them practically invulnerable. As a teenager, Newton lived on the planet Amethi and is the oldest son of one of the most powerful members of the board of the corporation which controls the planet. Lawrence dreams about being a starship pilot, despite being told by his father that starship exploration is finished. Lawrence loses interest in school work and withdraws socially. His father takes him to a holiday resort, where a gorgeous girl named Roselyn breaks through Lawrence's isolation, and the two develop a passionate relationship. Roselyn eventually informs Lawrence that there actually are space exploration missions through companies on Earth. Never having given up on his dream, he prepares to tell his father of his decision to leave school and overhears his father mentioning that Roselyn was paid to meet and seduce him. In a furious rage, he decides to leave Amethi immediately, and avoids detection by his father through the use of advanced quasi-sentient software called "Prime", given to him by his friend Vinnie. Lawrence makes it to Earth and scores well on the Zantiu-Braun officer candidacy exams, but lacking sufficient shares in the company, he is limited his strategic security job, instead of his dream of being a starship captain. As a Skin, he takes part on two missions of note, which are told over a series of short vignettes. One was on the planet Thallspring, which is fairly Earth-like. He is stationed in the town Memu Bay, but takes a journey through the hinterlands to the Arnoon province. During his time there he stops a trio of squaddies from a different platoon from gang-raping one of the villagers. Throughout his stay, Newton is bothered by something odd about the village, which seems to have a quality of living that is well beyond what one would expect given the surroundings. He is convinced they are hiding something, but can't find out what it is. The other was on the planet Santa Chico, where the founders modified themselves at a genetic level to coexist with the planet's biota. The mission goes disastrously wrong. As the colonists are no longer fully human, Zantiu-Braun's soldiers have trouble communicating with them, unable to fully comprehend their new lifestyle. The civilization has little in the way of centralized industry or anything of value to Earth, and remains extremely hostile to the Zantiu-Braun forces. Their biological augmentations make them an equal match for the Skins, which they invented years ago, and inflict severe casualties on the asset realization force. They eventually destroy a captured asteroid in orbit in order to create a Kessler syndrome that closes the sky, making further trips to the planet impossible. Newton concludes that the asset realization concept is no longer workable; the technology levels of the colony planets are growing so quickly that future missions will be too dangerous to be worthwhile. But it is this mission that apparently solves the mystery of Arnoon. Arnoon had, in plain sight, alien plants living on unsterilized soil bearing edible fruits. This would be impossible for Thallspring technology to create, and he concludes it was provided by Santa Chico geneticists. Lawrence plans to "realize" their unknown wealth for himself, and to use it to buy his retirement. When he learns of another mission to Thallspring, he ensures his team is part of the contingent. In the time since the first mission, Thallspring has advanced greatly. A small group has formed an effective resistance movement in preparation for the next asset realization mission, led by Denise Ebourn from Arnoon. As a cover, Denise works in a kindergarten, where she tells the kids supposedly fictional stories about an ancient alien galaxy-wide civilization and an alien prince named Mozark. Denise uses an advanced alien intelligence known as a "dragon" to enhance herself, her resistance-cell mates, and the villagers in Arnoon. When the Z-B mission arrives, her team uses their Prime software to sabotage the Zantiu-Braun efforts with some effect. However, Newton, now a Sergent, also has Prime, and uses it to return his platoon to Arnoon in search of its treasure. As Denise learns that Lawrence is headed for Arnoon village she races to intercept him. A violent confrontation takes place between Lawrence's platoon and a group of Arnoon villagers, ending with a wounded Lawrence staggering alone towards Arnoon village. When he gets there he and his Skin suit are spent, and he is near death. The villagers, one of whom (Denise's sister) is the girl he previously saved from being raped, revives him. They reveal that their wealth comes from a damaged alien dragon with greatly advanced technological knowledge such as the nanotechnology used to enhance the resistance movement. The dragon is a spaceliving creature, which is damaged and has lost much of its memory. To repay the dragon for its help, the villagers plan to use steal one of Zantiu-Braun's starships to travel to a red sun, where the dragon says its species lives. After meeting the dragon and learning its story, Lawrence decides to join them, and helps them to hijack a spaceship. But they are followed by a damaged Simon Roderick clone, who is determined to use all means to capture the technology for himself, not even trusting his clone brothers. Another Simon Roderick clone follows, to get the technology and to stop his clone brother from becoming the only human to possess the powerful knowledge. Denise and Lawrence arrive at the red star and quickly find the dragons. They learn that the dragons are a disengaged race who do nothing but amass knowledge, sharing it freely with others. The Arnoon dragon was simply a seed, one out of billions, and no more important to them than a single sperm cell is to humans. Since they arrived first, Denise and Lawrence convince the red star dragon that the deranged Simon Roderick will misuse their knowledge, and the dragon disables his ship. The dragon civilization gives their patternform construction knowledge to Lawrence, Denise and to the other Simon Roderick, in an agreement arranged by Denise and Lawrence so that the knowledge will be shared freely on Earth, and not monopolized by Zantiu-Braun. Lawrence uses the technology to construct the spaceship he has wanted since he was a teenager. He flies back in time through an ancient time portal, mentioned in Denise's kindergarten story, and then travels to Amethi. There he uses the technology to transform into Vinnie, one of young Lawrence's closest friends. After giving young Lawrence the Prime program so he can travel to Earth, "Vinnie" changes into young Lawrence, and goes to make up with Roselyn. The book has four separate story threads. The threads are told in parallel in the book, merging at the end. *Young Lawrence Newton's life on Amethi and becoming a Zantiu-Braun squaddie sergeant. *Adult Lawrence Newton's life as a Zantiu-Braun squaddie sergeant preparing for the asset realization expedition to Thallspring. *Denise Ebourn from Arnoon village and her resistance group's preparation for and battle against the Thallspring asset realization expedition. *The alien prince Mozark's journey in the galaxy-wide Ring Empire, a story told by Denise Ebourn to the kindergarten children. *Limited perspective and narrative view point from Simon Roderick; the board member leading the Thallspring campaign.
349114	/m/01z1dl	Maus	Art Spiegelman		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The book opens with a scene from Spiegelman's Rego Park childhood in 1958. He runs to his father after being left behind by his friends, but his father responds in broken English, "Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, then you could see what it is, friends!" As an adult, Spiegelman visits his father, Vladek, from whom he has become estranged. Vladek has remarried to a woman called Mala since the suicide of Art's mother, Anja, in 1968. Art wants to get Vladek to recount his Holocaust experience. Vladek tells of his time in Częstochowa, describing how he came to marry into Anja's wealthy family in 1937 and move to Sosnowiec to become a manufacturer. Vladek begs Art not to include this part of the story in the book and Art reluctantly agrees. Anja suffers a mental breakdown after giving birth to their first son, Richieu, towards the end of the year. The couple go to a sanitarium in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for her to recover. After they return, political and antisemitic tensions build until Vladek is drafted just in time for the Nazi invasion. Vladek is captured at the front and put to labor as a prisoner of war. After being released, he finds Sosnowiec has been annexed by Germany, and he is released on the other side of the border in the Polish protectorate. He sneaks across the border and is reunited with his family. During one of Art's visits, he finds that a friend of Mala's has sent them one of the underground comix magazines he had contributed to. Mala had tries to hide it, but Vladek finds and reads it. The four-page "Prisoner on the Hell Planet", reprinted in full, is a striking visual and thematic contrast with the rest of the book. Art is traumatized by his mother's suicide three months after he was released from the state mental hospital, and in the end depicts himself behind bars, saying "You murdered me, Mommy, and left me here to take the rap!" In 1943, all Jews were ordered to move from Sosnowiec to Srodula, from where they would be marched to Sosnowiec to work. The family is split up—Richieu is sent to Zawiercie to be with his aunt, where they believed he would be safe. As the round-ups increase, and more Jews are sent from the ghettos to Auschwitz, the aunt poisons herself, her children and Richieu to escape the Gestapo. In Srodula, many Jews, including Vladek, build bunkers to hide from the German roundups. Vladek's bunker is discovered and he is placed into a "ghetto inside the ghetto", surrounded by barbed wire. Later the remnants of Vladek and Anja's family are taken away. Srodula is cleared completely of its Jews, except for a group Vladek hides with in another bunker. When the Germans finally depart, the group splits up and leaves the ghetto. In Sosnowiec, Vladek and Anja move from one hiding place to the next, making occasional contact with other Jews in hiding. Vladek hunts for provisions disguised as a Pole. They arrange with smugglers to escape to Hungary, but it is a trick—they are arrested by the Gestapo on the train and are taken to Auschwitz, where they are separated until after the war. Art asks after Anja's diaries, which Vladek tells him were her later account of her Holocaust experiences. They are the only way to find out what happened to her after she was separated from Vladek at Auschwitz. Vladek tells Art she had said, "I wish my son, when he grows up, he will be interested in this". Vladek comes to admit that he burned them after she killed herself. Art is enraged, and calls Vladek a "murderer". The story jumps to 1986, after the first six chapters of Maus were collected into a single volume. Art is overcome with the unexpected attention the book receives, finding himself "totally blocked". Art talks with his psychiatrist, Paul Pavel, a Czech Holocaust survivor, about the book, who suggests that, as those who perished in the camps can never tell their stories, "maybe it's better not to have any more stories". Art replies with a quote from Samuel Beckett: "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness", but then realizes, "on the other hand, he said it". Vladek tells of his hardships in the camps, of starvation and abuse, of avoiding the selektionen and of his resourcefulness. Though it is dangerous, Anja and Vladek occasionally are able to exchange messages. As the war progresses, and the German front is pushed back, the prisoners are marched from Auschwitz, in Poland, to Gross-Rosen within the Reich, and then to Dachau, where the hardships only increase and Vladek catches typhus. The war ends, the camp survivors are freed, and Vladek and Anja are reunited. The book closes with Vladek turning over in his bed and telling Art, "I'm tired from talking, Richieu, and it's enough stories for now." The final image is of Vladek and Anja's tombstone—Vladek died in 1982, long before the book was completed.
349537	/m/01z2td	The Sea-Wolf	Jack London	1904	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Like The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf tells the story of a soft, domesticated protagonist, in this novel's case an intellectual man named Humphrey van Weyden, forced to become tough and self-reliant by exposure to cruelty and brutality. The story starts with him aboard a San Francisco ferry, called Martinez, which collides with another ship in the fog and sinks. He is set adrift in the Bay, eventually being picked up by Wolf Larsen. Larsen is the captain of a seal-hunting schooner, the Ghost. Brutal and cynical, yet also highly intelligent and intellectual (though highly biased in his opinions, as he was self-taught), he rules over his ship and terrorizes the crew with the aid of his exceptionally great physical strength. Van Weyden adequately describes him as an individualist, hedonist, and materialist. Larsen does not believe in the immortality of the soul, he finds no meaning in his life save for survival and pleasure and has come to despise all human life and deny its value. Being interested in someone capable of intellectual disputes, he somewhat takes care of Van Weyden, whom he calls 'Hump', while forcing him to become a cabin boy, do menial work, and learn to fight to protect himself from a brutal crew. A key event in the story is an attempted mutiny against Wolf Larsen by several members of the crew. The organizers of the mutiny are Leach and Johnson. Johnson had previously been beaten severely by Larsen, and Leach had been punched earlier while being forced to become a boat-puller, motivating the two. The first attempt is by sending Larsen overboard; however, he manages to climb back onto the ship. Searching for his assailant, he ventures into the sleeping quarters, located beneath the main deck, the only exit being a ladder. Several, at least seven men, take part in the mutiny and attack Larsen. Larsen however, demonstrating his inhuman endurance, strength, and conviction, manages to fight his way through the crew, climb the ladder with several men hanging off him, and escape relatively unharmed. Van Weyden is promoted as mate, for the original mate had been murdered. Larsen later gets his vengeance by torturing his crew, and constantly claiming that he is going to murder Leach and Johnson at his earliest convenience, being after the hunting season is done, as he can't afford to lose any crew. He later allows them to be lost to the sea when they attempt to flee on a hunting boat. During this section, the Ghost picks up another set of castaways, including a poet named Maud Brewster. Miss Brewster and van Weyden had known each other previously—but only as writers. Both Wolf Larsen and van Weyden immediately feel attraction to her, due to her intelligence and "female delicacy". Van Weyden sees her as his first true love. He strives to protect her from the crew, the horrors of the sea, and Wolf Larsen. As this happens, Wolf Larsen meets his brother Death Larsen, a bitter opponent of his. Wolf kidnapped several of Death's crew and forced them into servitude to fill his own ranks, lost previously during a storm. During one of Wolf Larsen's intense headaches, which render him near immobile, van Weyden steals a boat and flees with Miss Brewster. The two eventually land on an uninhabited island, heavily populated with seals. They hunt, build shelter and a fire, and survive for several days, using the strength they gained while on the Ghost. The Ghost eventually crashes on the island, with Wolf Larsen the only crew member. As a revenge, Death Larsen had tracked his brother, bribed his crew, destroyed his sails, and set Larsen adrift at sea. It is purely by chance that van Weyden and Miss Brewster meet Larsen again. Van Weyden obtains all of the firearms left on the ship, but he cannot bear to murder Larsen, who does not threaten him. Van Weyden and Miss Brewster decide they can repair the ship, but Larsen, who intends to die on the island and take them with him, sabotages any repairs they make. After a headache, Larsen is rendered blind. He feigns paralysis and attempts to murder van Weyden when he draws within arm's reach but just then is hit with a stroke that leaves him blind and the right side of his body paralyzed. His condition only worsens; he loses usage of his remaining arm, leg, and voice. Miss Brewster and van Weyden, unable to bring themselves to leave him to rot, care for him. Despite this kindness, he continues his resistance, setting fire to the bunk's mattress above him. Van Weyden finishes repairing the Ghost, and he and Miss Brewster set sail. During a violent storm, Wolf Larsen dies. They give Larsen a burial at sea, an act mirroring an incident van Weyden witnessed when he was first rescued. The story ends with the two being rescued by an American revenue cutter.
349770	/m/01z3pl	Lost in the Stars	Maxwell Anderson			 It is August 1949 in the South African village of Ndotsheni ("The Hills of Ixopo"). The black priest of St. Mark's Church, the Rev. Stephen Kumalo, learns that his sister is in trouble, from a letter from his brother, John Kumalo, who lives in Johannesburg. Stephen decides to travel to Johannesburg to help his sister and also seek his son, Absalom, who works in the mines ("Thousands of Miles"). In Johannesburg Stephen learns that his sister will not leave but she asks him to take care of her young son, Alex. He finally locates his son Absalom, who had been in jail but now plans with his friends to steal so they can get enough money to avoid a life in the gold mines. Absalom's pregnant girlfriend Irina tries to convince him not to take part but he goes ahead with it ("Trouble Man"). During the robbery, Absalom kills Arthur Jarvis, a white friend of his father, Stephen. As Absalom is jailed, Stephen wonders how to tell his wife, Grace, and realizes he is facing a crisis of faith ("Lost in the Stars"). Stephen knows that his son could either tell a lie and live, or tell the truth and die. He prays for guidance ("O Tixo, Tixo, Help Me"). At the trial, Absalom's two friends lie to the court and are freed, but Absalom, truly repentant, tells the truth and is sentenced to hang ("Cry, the Beloved Country"). Stephen performs a wedding between Absalom and Irina in prison, then returns home to Ndotsheni with Irina and Alex. Alex and the child of Arthur Jarvis meet and start to become friends ("Big Mole"). Stephen tells his flock he can no longer be their minister, and their faith is now also shaken ("A Bird of Passage"). On the still-dark morning of the execution, Stephen waits alone for the clock to strike ("Four O'Clock"). Unexpectedly, the father of the murdered man pays a visit. He tells Stephen he has realized that they have both lost sons. Out of recognition of their mutual sorrow, and despite their different races, he offers his friendship—and Stephen accepts.
349907	/m/01z439	Count Zero	William Gibson	1986	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 As with later Gibson works, there are multiple story-line threads which eventually intertwine: Thread One: In the southwestern USA, Turner, a corporate mercenary soldier, has been hired out to help Mitchell, a brilliant researcher, make an illegal career move from Maas' corporate fortress built into a mesa in the Arizona desert to another corporation. The attempt is a disaster, and Turner ends up escaping with the scientist's young daughter, Angie Mitchell instead. Her father had apparently altered her nervous system to allow her to access the Cyberspace Matrix directly, without a "deck" (a computer), but she is not conscious of this. She also carries the plans, implanted in her brain by her father, of the secrets of construction of the extremely valuable "biosoft" that has made Maas so influential and powerful. This "biosoft" is what multibillionaire Josef Virek (see thread three) desires above all else, so that he can make an evolutionary jump to something resembling omniscience and immortality. Thread Two: A young New Jersey-suburbs amateur computer hacker, Bobby Newmark, self-named "Count Zero", is given a piece of black market software by some criminal associates "to test". When he plugs himself into the matrix and runs the program, it almost kills him. The only thing that saves his life is a sudden image of a girl made of light who interferes and unhooks him from the software just before he flatlines. This event leads to his working with his associates' backers to investigate similar strange recent occurrences on the Net. It is eventually revealed that Bobby's mysterious savior is Angie (see Thread One); the two only meet physically at the very end of the book. Thread Three: Marly Krushkova, a small gallery owner in Paris until she was tricked into trying to sell a forgery, and newly infamous as a result, is recruited by ultra-rich, reclusive (cf. Howard Hughes) industrialist and art patron Josef Virek to find the unknown creator of a series of futuristic Joseph Cornell style boxes. Unbeknownst to her, the reason behind Virek's interest in these boxes is related to indications of biosoft construction in the design of one, which he suspects may be contained in the others. All of these plot lines come together at the end of the story and Virek – the hunter of his immortality and unlimited power – becomes the hunted. It is hinted that multiple AIs secretly inhabiting cyberspace are the fragmented, compartmentalized remains of two AIs, Neuromancer and Wintermute, having joined together (introduced in Neuromancer, and designed by the head of this Rockefeller-like family, the Tessier-Ashpools). These AI units now interface with humanity in the form of different Haitian voodoo gods, as they have found these images to be the best representations of themselves through which they can communicate with people. Hackers worldwide are becoming aware that there is something weird loose in the cyberspace matrix, but most are understandably reluctant to talk about (or deal with), "voodoo spooks" supposedly haunting cyberspace. The "voodoo gods" have constructed the elaborate series of events in the novel, having originally given Mitchell the information for developing the biosoft, instructing him to insert a biosoft modification in his daughter's brain, and then sent the Cornell boxes into the world to attract, and enable the disposal of, the malicious Virek. The Cyberspace Matrix, a synergistic linked computer database that encompasses all information on Earth, has become home to sentient beings. But most of humanity remains unaware.
349909	/m/01z43p	Mona Lisa Overdrive	William Gibson	1988	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Taking place eight years after the events of Count Zero and fifteen years after Neuromancer, the story is formed from several interconnecting plot threads, and also features characters from Gibson's previous works (such as Molly Millions, the razor-fingered mercenary from Neuromancer). One of the plot threads concerns Mona, an innocent young prostitute who has a more-than-passing resemblance to famed Simstim superstar Angie Mitchell. Mona is hired by shady individuals for a "gig" which later turns out to be part of a plot to abduct Angie. The second story focuses on a young Japanese girl named Kumiko, daughter of a Yakuza boss sent to London to keep her safe while her father engages in a gang war with other top Yakuza leaders. In London she is cared for by one of her father's retainers, who is also a powerful member of the London Mob. She meets Molly Millions (having altered her appearance and now calling herself "Sally Shears", in order to conceal her identity from hostile parties who are implied to be pursuing her), who takes the girl under her wing. The third story thread follows a reclusive artist named Slick Henry, who lives in a place named Factory in the Dog Solitude; a large, poisoned expanse of deserted factories and dumps, perhaps in New Jersey. Slick Henry is a convicted (and punished) car thief. As a result of the repetitive brainwashing nature of his punishment, he spends his days creating large robotic sculptures and periodically suffers episodes of time loss, returning to consciousness afterward with no memory of what he did during the blackout. He is hired by an acquaintance to look after the comatose "Count" (Bobby Newmark from the second novel, Count Zero, who has hooked himself into a super-capacity cyber-harddrive called an Aleph). A theoretical "Aleph" would have the RAM capacity to literally contain all of reality, enough that a memory construct of a person would contain the complete personality of the individual and allow it to learn, grow and act independently. The final plot line follows Angela Mitchell, famous simstim star and the girl from the second Sprawl novel Count Zero. Angie, thanks to brain manipulations by her father when she was a child, has always had the ability to access cyberspace directly (without a cyberspace deck), but drugs provided by her production company Sense/Net have severely impeded this ability. The story of the reclusive artist that makes cybernetic sculptures is a reference to Mark Pauline of Survival Research Labs.
350754	/m/01z7f4	Tehanu	Ursula K. Le Guin	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tehanu begins slightly before the conclusion of the previous book in the series, The Farthest Shore, and provides some information about the life of Tenar after the end of The Tombs of Atuan. She had rejected the option of life among the aristocracy of Havnor, which Ged had opened to her, and arrived on Gont. For some time she lived with Ged's old master Ogion - but though fond of him, rejected Ogion's offer to teach her magic. Instead, she married a farmer called Flint with whom she had two children, called Apple and Spark, and became known to the locals as Goha. It is mentioned that Ged was a bit disappointed in - and did not understand - Tenar's choice of a life. This is not explicitly explained, but there are hints of her feeling a lingering guilt about having been an arrogant Arch-Priestess and ordering people to be cruelly put to death. Moreover, in the beginning of "The Tombs of Atuan" it is mentioned that Tenar was born to a farmer's family and at a young age was taken from her loving parents by the Temple servants, and that as a child she was fond of apple trees. At the book's outset, with her husband now dead and her children grown up, Tenar lives on her own at Flint's property Oak Farm, and is lonely and uncertain of her own identity - is she the simple farm woman Goha, or the ex-Kargish priestess Tenar? She adopts the child of wandering vagabonds after the child's natural father pushes her into a campfire and leaves her for dead. Tenar helps to save the child's life, but the child is left with one side of her face permanently scarred and the fingers of one hand fused into a claw. Tenar gives the child the name Therru which means 'flame' in Tenar's native Kargish language. Tenar learns that the mage Ogion, her former tutor, is on his deathbed and has asked to see her. She sets out to visit him at his house outside the town of Re Albi, taking Therru with her. On the way, she encounters a group of ruffians, one of whom is Handy, who was involved in the original attempt on Therru's life, and claims to be her uncle. She stays with Ogion, tending to him in his last days. He instructs her to teach Therru, but his instructions are vague, and hint at her being more than she seems. After his death, she stays on at his cottage, tending to his orchard and goats and pondering her future. She befriends a local witch called Moss and a simple village girl called Heather. Her tranquil existence is dramatically broken by the arrival of Ged (also called Sparrowhawk) on the back of the dragon Kalessin, unconscious and near death. Ged - once the Archmage of Roke - has spent all his wizard's powers in sealing the gap between the worlds of the living and the dead created by the evil wizard Cob. She nurses him back to health, but when the new king Lebannen sends envoys to bring him back to Roke to resume his duties as Archmage, Ged cannot face them, fearing them due to his loss of power. He accepts Tenar's offer to return to Oak Farm to manage things there in her absence and flees there to take up a life as a goatherd. While at Re Albi, Tenar is confronted by the local lord's wicked mage, Aspen, who attempts to put a curse on her, but is initially thwarted. Tenar informs the king's men that she cannot reveal Ged's whereabouts, and they accept the situation and depart. Tenar is initially unsure whether to stay or leave Re Albi, when her safety is threatened again by Aspen and Handy, so she flees with Therru. Her mind confused by Aspen's magic, she is almost overtaken by Handy, but manages to escape, taking refuge in the ship of the king himself. Lebannen takes Tenar and Therru to Valmouth, where Tenar eventually returns to Oak Farm to find that Ged is away tending goats in the mountains for the season. Tenar settles back into life on the farm, until one night, several men attempt to break into the house and apprehend Therru, but are driven off by Ged, who happened to overhear and follow them on their way toward the farm. Tenar and Ged begin a relationship, acknowledging that they had always loved each other. Ged wants nothing more than to settle down and live an ordinary life, far from the concerns of an Archmage. Together, they teach and care for Therru and manage the farm. The order is upset however when Tenar's son Spark returns home suddenly from a life as a sailor and tells her he wishes to run the farm. Under Gontish law Oak Farm belongs to him and Tenar has no claim to it. Before they have time to work out what will happen, Tenar hears word that Moss is dying and wants to see Tenar. She, Ged and Therru leave immediately for Re Albi. However, the message was a trap set by Aspen, who reveals himself to be a follower of the defeated wizard Cob, who despises Ged and Tenar, and fears Therru. When Tenar, under Aspen's curse, leads Ged toward the lord's mansion, Therru escapes. Ged is powerless to prevent Aspen from capturing the two and holding them prisoner, beating and humiliating them in the process, especially Tenar. Meanwhile, Therru runs to the cliff behind Ogion's cottage, where she calls to the dragon Kalessin for help, and reveals her true nature: she is in fact "a double being, half human, half-dragon." Aspen and his followers bring both Tenar and Ged up to the clifftop. Under the influence of Aspen's spell, they are both just about to jump to their deaths when the dragon Kalessin arrives and burns and crushes Aspen and his men to heaps of ash and rags. Kalessin addresses Therru by her true name Tehanu, calling her his daughter, and asks her if she would like to leave with him, but she decides for now that she will stay with Tenar and Ged. The novel ends with all three of them settling down to a simple life of farming and goat keeping at Ogion's old cottage. There is, however, the clear suggestion that Tehanu is the "woman on Gont" who is destined to ultimately become the Archmage at the Magic School of Roke. Obviously, innately knowing as her "mother tongue" the True Speech which is the basis of all magic - rather than having to spend years in laboriously learning it, as ordinary mages need to do - would give her an enormous head start. Also, already as an untrained child, she is by definition a dragon lord - i.e., "a person which dragons talk to" - a distinction which only a few grown mages achieve even at the height of their power.
351047	/m/01z8s8	The Missionary Position	Christopher Hitchens	1995	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Hitchens condemns Mother Teresa for having used contributions to open convents in 150 countries rather than establishing the teaching hospital toward which her donors expected that she would apply their gifts. He claims that Mother Teresa was no "friend to the poor," and that she opposed structural measures to end poverty, particularly those that would raise the status of women. He argues she was a tool by which the Catholic Church furthered its political and theological aims, and the cult of personality that she developed was used by politicians, dictators and bankers to gain credibility and assuage guilt, citing Hillary Rodham Clinton, Charles Keating and Michèle Bennett as examples. Hitchens portrays Mother Teresa's organization, the Missionaries of Charity, as a cult which has promoted suffering to further its own financial ends and does not help those in need. He argues that Teresa's own words on poverty proved that her intention was not to help people, citing a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." Hitchens details Mother Teresa's relationships with wealthy and corrupt individuals including Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and his wife Michèle Duvalier, enigmatic quasi-religious figure John-Roger, and disgraced former financial executive Charles Keating. The book includes the reproduction of a letter written by Mother Teresa on behalf of Charles Keating to Judge Lance Ito who was presiding over Keating's trial for defrauding his investors of billions of dollars. The letter urged the judge to consider the fact that Keating had donated generously ($1.25 million) to the Missionaries of Charity and suggested that Judge Ito "look into [his] heart" and "do what Jesus would do." Hitchens also includes the contents of a letter written to Mother Teresa by the man prosecuting the case against Keating, Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles Paul Turley. In the letter, Mr. Turley pointed out to Mother Teresa that Keating was on trial for stealing more than $250 million from over 17,000 investors in his business. In addition, Turley expresses his opinion that "[n]o church, no charity, no organization should allow itself to be used as a salve for the conscience of the criminal" and suggests: "Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience? I submit that Jesus would promptly and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the 'indulgence' he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it! If you contact me I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession." After the conclusion of the letter, Hitchens notes: &#34;Mr. Turley has received no reply to his letter. Nor can anyone account for the missing money: saints, it seems, are immune to audit.&#34;
352250	/m/01zf5s	The Plague Dogs	Richard Adams	1977-09-22	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book tells of the escape of two dogs, Rowf and Snitter, from a government research station in the Lake District in England, where they had been horribly mistreated. They live on their own with help from a red fox, or "tod," who speaks to them in a Geordie dialect. After the starving dogs attack some sheep on the fells, they are reported as ferocious man-eating monsters by a journalist. A great dog hunt follows, which is later intensified with the fear that the dogs could be carriers of a dangerous bioweapon, such as the bubonic plague.
352521	/m/01zgb1	Moll Flanders	Daniel Defoe	1722-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Moll's mother is a convict in Newgate Prison in London who is given a reprieve by "pleading her belly," a reference to the custom of staying the executions of pregnant criminals. Her mother is eventually transported to America, and Moll Flanders (not her birth name, she emphasizes, taking care not to reveal it) is raised until adolescence by a goodly foster mother, and then gets attached to a household as a servant where she is loved by both sons, the elder of whom convinces her to "act like they were married" in bed, yet eventually unwilling to marry her, he persuades her to marry his younger brother. After five years of marriage, she then is widowed, leaves her children in the care of in-laws, and begins honing the skill of passing herself off as a fortuned widow to attract a man who will marry her and provide her with security. The first time she does this, her "gentleman-tradesman" spendthrift husband goes bankrupt and flees to the Continent, leaving her on her own with his blessing to do the best she can and forget him. (They had one child together, but it died.) The second time, she makes a match that leads her to Virginia with a kindly man who introduces her to his mother. After three children (one dies), Moll learns that her mother-in-law is actually her biological mother, which makes her husband her half-brother. She dissolves their marriage and after continuing to live with her brother for three years, travels back to England, leaving her two children behind, and goes to live in Bath to seek a new husband. Again she returns to her con skills and develops a relationship with a man in Bath whose wife is elsewhere confined due to insanity. Their relationship is at first platonic, but eventually develops into Moll becoming something of a "kept woman" in Hammersmith, London. They have three children (one lives), but after a severe illness he repents, breaks off the arrangement, and commits to his wife. Moll, now 42, resorts to another beau, a banker, who while still married to an adulterous wife (a "whore"), proposes to Moll after she entrusts him with her money. While waiting for the banker to divorce, Moll pretends to have a great fortune in order to attract another wealthy husband. She becomes involved with some Roman Catholics in Lancashire that try to convert her, and she marries one of them, a supposedly rich man. She soon realises he expected to receive a great dowry which she denies having, leading him to admit that he has cheated her into marriage, having himself lied about having money that he does not possess. He is in fact a ruined gentleman and discharges her from the marriage, telling her nevertheless that she should inherit any money he might ever get (finally, she mentions his name). Although now pregnant again, Moll lets the banker believe she is available, hoping he returns. She gives birth and the midwife gives a tripartite scale of the costs of bearing a child, with one value level per social class. Moll's son is born when the banker's wife commits suicide following their divorce, and Moll leaves her newborn in the care of a countrywoman in exchange for the sum of £5 a year. Moll marries the banker now, but realises "what an abominable creature am I! and how is this innocent gentleman going to be abused by me!" They live in happiness for five years before he becomes bankrupt and dies of despair, the fate of their two children left unstated. Truly desperate now, Moll begins a career of artful thievery, which, by employing her wits, beauty, charm, and femininity, as well as hard-heartedness and wickedness, brings her the financial security she has always sought. Only here does she take the name Moll Flanders and is known thereby. On the downside, she stoops to robbing a family in their burning house, then a lover to whom she becomes a mistress, and is sent to Newgate Prison (like the book's author 20 years prior). In Newgate she is led to her repentance. At the same time, she reunites with her soulmate, her "Lancashire husband", who is also jailed for his robberies (before and after they first met, he acknowledges). Moll is found guilty of felony, but not burglary, the second charge; still, the sentence is death in any case. Yet Moll convinces a minister of her repentance, and together with her Lancashire husband is sent to the Colonies to avoid hanging, where they live happily together (she even talks the ship's captain into not being with the convicts sold upon arrival, but instead in the captain's quarters). Once in the colonies, Moll learns her mother has left her a plantation and that her own son (by her brother) is alive, as is her brother/husband. Moll carefully introduces herself to her brother and their son, in disguise. With the help of a Quaker, the two found a farm with 50 servants in Maryland. Moll reveals herself now to her son in Virginia and he gives her her mother's inheritance, a farm for which he will now be her steward, providing £100 a year income for her. In turn, she makes him her heir and gives him a (stolen) gold watch. At last, her life of conniving and desperation seems to be over. When her brother/husband is dead, Moll tells her (Lancashire) husband the entire story and he is "perfectly easy on that account... For, said he, it was no fault of yours, nor of his; it was a mistake impossible to be prevented". Aged 69 (in 1683), the two return to England to live "in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived".
352645	/m/01zgw0	Skellig	David Almond	1998	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A boy, Michael and his family have moved into a new house that is very old and falling apart. He and his parents are anxious as his new baby sister was born prematurely and may not live due to a heart condition. When Michael goes into the garage, amid all the boxes, debris and dead insects he finds a strange emaciated man. Michael assumes that he is a homeless person, but decides to look after him and gives him food, though he is crotchety and arthritic, demanding aspirin, Chinese food menu order numbers 27 and 53 and brown ale. Michael hears a story that human shoulder blades are a vestige of angel wings. Meanwhile his friends from school become more and more distant as Michael stops attending school and so spends less time with them. He meets a girl named Mina from across the road and over the course of the story they become very close friends. Mina is home schooled and is interested in nature, birds, drawing and poems by William Blake to which her Mother introduced her. She takes care of some baby birds who live in her garden and teaches Michael to hear their tiny sounds. Michael decides to introduce her to the strange old man. Michael asks about arthritis and how to cure it, talking to doctors and patients in the hospital where his baby sister is being treated. The man whom Michael had moved from the garage introduces himself as "Skellig" to Michael and Mina. Michael's baby sister comes dangerously close to death and must undergo heart surgery. His mother goes to hospital to stay with the baby and, that night, dreams or sees Skellig come in, pick the baby up and hold it high in the air, saving Michael's little sister.
352805	/m/01zhl4	Kokoro	Soseki Natsume	1914		 The novel was written in 1914. It is set a few years previous and is divided into three parts. In the first part, Sensei and I, the narrator, a guileless university student, befriends an older man, Sensei (most of the characters' real names are not given). Sensei lives as a recluse, interacting only with his wife and the narrator, and occasional unseen visitors, but still maintaining a distance between himself and them. He regularly visits the grave of a friend, but for the moment refuses to tell the narrator any details of his earlier life. In the second part, My Parents and I, the narrator graduates and returns to his home in the country to await his father's death. As his father lies dying, the narrator receives a letter from Sensei which is recounted in the third part of the novel, Sensei and His Testament. Sensei reveals that in his own university days he was cheated out of most of his fortune by his uncle. As a result he moved to Tokyo and began living with a widow and her daughter, with whom he fell in love. Later he convinced his childhood friend (known only as K), who was in dire straits, to move in with him. Gradually K recovered, but also fell in love with the landlady's daughter. K confessed this love to Sensei, who was shocked, and later full of jealousy. Sensei then proposed marriage, and shortly after, K committed suicide. Sensei, who had lost his faith in humanity after being cheated by his uncle, was horrified to find the same dark impulses lurking in his own heart, and felt a heavy guilt for the death of his friend. In the present, 1912, Sensei is prompted by the suicide of General Nogi Maresuke (following the death of the Meiji Emperor) to take his own life, writing the letter to his only friend to explain his decision.
352823	/m/01zhpl	Diary of an Ordinary Woman	Margaret Forster	2003-03-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 From the age of thirteen, on the eve of the Great War, Millicent King keeps her journals in a series of exercise books. The diary records the dramas of everyday life in an ordinary English family touched by war, tragedy, and money troubles in the early decades of the century. She struggles to become a teacher, but wants more out of life. From bohemian literary London to Rome in the twenties, her story moves on to social work and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London. She has proposals of marriage and secret lovers, ambition and optimism. but then her life is turned upside down once more by wartime deaths.
353198	/m/01zk4b	The Road to Oz	L. Frank Baum	1909	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Dorothy is near her home in Kansas when the story begins. She and her dog Toto first meet the Shaggy Man, a wandering hobo who carries the Love Magnet with him, en route to avoid the town of Butterfield. Further on, the road splits into seven paths. They take the seventh and soon meet Button Bright, a little boy in a sailor's outfit who is always getting lost. Later, the companions meet Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter, a fairy who danced off the edge of the rainbow just as it disappeared. Dorothy, Toto, the Shaggy Man, Button-Bright, and Polychrome soon come to the town of Foxville, where anthropomorphic foxes live. With prompting from King Dox of Foxville, Dorothy deduces that she's on another "fairy adventure" that will ultimately lead her to Oz, just in time for Ozma's birthday party, which is now acknowledged as August 21 by Oz fans, even though the book only refers to the 21st of the month, Dorothy having mentioned that the current month is August in another passage. The king takes a particular liking to Button Bright, whom he considers astute and clever due to his tabula rasa-like mind. Believing that the human face does not suit one so clever, Dox gives him a fox's head. A similar event subsequently happens to the Shaggy Man, when King Kik-a-Bray of Dunkiton confers a donkey's head upon him—also in reward for cleverness, even though it's implied that Foxville and Dunkiton exist at odds with one another. After meeting the Musicker, who produces music from his breath, and fighting off the head-throwing Scoodlers, Dorothy and her companions reach the edge of the Deadly Desert surrounding Oz. There, the Shaggy Man's friend Johnny Dooit builds a "sand-boat" by which they may cross. This is necessary, because physical contact with the desert's sands, as of this book and Ozma of Oz, will turn the travelers to dust. Upon reaching Oz, Dorothy and her companions are welcomed by Tik-Tok and Billina the Yellow Hen. They proceed in company, to come in their travels to the Truth Pond, where Button Bright and the Shaggy Man regain their true heads by bathing in its waters. They meet the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and Jack Pumpkinhead who journey with them to the Emerald City for Ozma's birthday. As preparations are made for arrivals from all over Fairyland (principally characters from Baum's non-Oz books, such as Santa Claus, Queen Zixi of Ix, John Dough – a man made out of gingerbread – and Chick the Cherub), the Shaggy Man receives permission to stay in Oz permanently. He is given, in addition to this, a new suit of clothes having bobtails in place of his former costume's ragged edges, so that he may retain his name and identity. After everyone has presented their gifts and feasted at a banquet in Ozma's honor, the Wizard demonstrates a method of using bubbles as transportation by which to send everyone home. Polychrome goes home upon a rainbow, Button-Bright goes home with Santa Claus on a soap bubble, and Dorothy is wished home by Ozma's use of the Magic Belt.
353210	/m/01zk6m	The Last Battle	C. S. Lewis	1956	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In The Last Battle, Lewis brings The Chronicles of Narnia to an end. The book deals with the end of time in the old Narnia and sums up the series by linking the experience of the human children in Narnia with their lives in their original world. The story is set during the reign of the last king of Narnia, King Tirian, great-grandson of the great-grandson of Rilian, son of King Caspian X. Narnia has experienced a long period of peace and prosperity begun during the reign of King Caspian X. A centaur, Roonwit, warns Tirian that strange and evil things are happening to Narnia and that the stars portend ominous developments. An ape named Shift has persuaded a well-meaning but simple donkey called Puzzle to dress in a lion's skin and pretend to be the Great Lion Aslan. Shift, using Puzzle as his pawn, convinces the Narnians that he speaks for Aslan. Once the Narnians are convinced that Aslan has returned, Shift orders the Narnians to work for the Calormenes, and to cut down Talking Trees for lumber. The money will be paid into "Aslan's" treasury, held by Shift, on the pretext that it will be used for the good of the Narnians. King Tirian and his friend Jewel the Unicorn at first believe the rumours of Aslan's return, but realize the lie when they hear Shift telling the Narnians that Aslan and the Calormene god Tash are one and the same. When Tirian accuses the ape of lying, the Calormenes overpower the king and bind him to a tree. He calls on Aslan for help and receives a vision of Digory Kirke, Polly Plummer, Peter Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie, Eustace Scrubb, Lucy Pevensie, and Jill Pole, though he does not know who they are. The people in the room also see him and, though Tirian can't speak to them, they guess he is a messenger from Narnia. A few minutes later by Narnian time - although a week from their perspective - Jill and Eustace arrive in Narnia. They release the King and rescue Jewel and Puzzle. A band of dwarfs are also rescued, but because their faith in Aslan has been shattered, they refuse to help, claiming "the dwarfs are for the dwarfs." Only one dwarf, Poggin, is faithful to Tirian, Aslan, and Narnia. Tirian and his small force prepare to fight the Calormenes. All the animals are killed (many by the dwarfs, who attack both sides) and Eustace, Jill, and Poggin are thrown into the stable where the false Aslan was kept. Tirian, earlier on, had thrown Shift into the stable and Tash, who now haunts the stable, swallowed the ape whole. Tirian, left alone and fighting for his life, drags Rishda Tarkaan, the leader of the Calormenes, into the stable, whose interior is a vast and beautiful land connected to Narnia by the incongruously-placed stable door. Much to the Calormen leader's surprise and terror, Tash appears, and snatches him up under an arm. Peter, Edmund, Eustace, Lucy, Jill, Polly, and Digory appear before them, (Susan does not appear in Narnia because she has stopped believing in it, thinking of it only as some silly childhood game), and Peter orders Tash to leave. Aslan appears, and as they watch at the stable door, all of the people and animals, including those who had previously died, gather outside the barn and are judged by Aslan. Those who have been loyal to Aslan or the morality upheld by Narnians join Aslan in Aslan's Country. Those who have opposed or deserted him become ordinary animals and vanish to an unmentioned place. The vegetation is eaten by dragons and giant lizards. Father Time calls the stars down from the skies into the sea, which rises to cover Narnia. The Sun expands and draws in the moon. Father Time then puts it out, freezing Narnia. Peter closes the door, and Aslan leads them to his country, telling them to go further in to Real Narnia. (Digory alludes to Plato whose Allegory of the Cave describes multiple levels of reality.) They move up a waterfall to some gates and are greeted by Reepicheep as well as meeting other good characters from the earlier novels. They find they can see a real England. Aslan reveals that the English friends of Narnia and the Pevensies' parents have died in a train crash (Susan is the only survivor, and it is not known if she later makes it into Aslan's country). The series ends with the revelation that it was only the beginning of the true story, "which goes on forever, and in which every chapter is better than the one before."
353714	/m/01zlsl	After the Funeral	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After the funeral of the wealthy Richard Abernethie, his remaining family assembles for the reading of the will at Enderby Hall. The death, though sudden, was not unexpected and natural causes have been given on his death certificate. Nevertheless, the tactless Cora says, "It's been hushed up very nicely ... but he was murdered, wasn't he?" The family lawyer, Mr. Entwhistle, begins to investigate. Before long there is no question that a murderer is at large. The essentials of Richard's will were told to the gathered family by Mr. Entwhistle. Richard, 68 and a widower, had lost his only child Mortimer to polio (infantile paralysis) six months earlier. The son, about to be married, died with no issue, as the lawyer dryly puts it. Thus Richard was prodded to revise his will. He was the eldest of a family of seven, of which only he, a brother Timothy and a sister Cora, the youngest, still lived when he wrote the will. His favorite brother Leo was killed in the war, as was Gordon. Richard had a nephew and two nieces, the sum total of the next generation, children of siblings who had already died. Richard spent time with his nephew George, and his two nieces and their husbands, to know them better. He called his sister in law Helen for a visit to the family home. Richard visited his reclusive brother, then travelled to his sister at her home, first time in over 20 years. His decision was to split his wealth in six portions, for his five blood relations, and a sixth for the widow of one brother killed in the recent war. Four received the capital directly, while two received a life income from their share of the capital. The house was to be put up for sale. At home the day after her brother's funeral, Cora Lansquenet is brutally murdered in her sleep by repeated blows with a hatchet. The motive for her murder was not obvious. It does not appear to be theft, nor is her own estate a likely motive. Cora's portion of the Abernethie bequest was a life income, which capital reverts to the estate of her brother, Richard, to be divided among the surviving heirs — not adding to her own estate. One possible motive is to suppress anything that Richard might have told Cora about his suspicions that he was being poisoned. These had been overheard by her paid companion, the timid Miss Gilchrist. Entwhistle calls on his long-time friend, Hercule Poirot, to resolve any doubts about the death of Richard. Poirot employs an old friend, Mr. Goby, to investigate the family. Mr. Goby, a most resourceful man, rapidly turns up a number of reasons within the family for members of it to be desperate for the money in Richard Abernethie’s estate. Mr. Goby employs all sorts of clever methods to uncover the most private information, using agents who pose as actors, lawyers or even Catholic nuns. None of the family members can yet be cleared of suspicion. Poirot warns Entwhistle that Miss Gilchrist may herself be a target for the murderer. Cora has been a keen artist and collector of paintings from local sales. Susan Banks, learning she inherited her Aunt Cora's property, went to her cottage to clear up the possessions, ready them for auction, on the day of Cora's inquest. She reviewed Cora’s own paintings as well as those Cora had purchased at local sales. She noticed that Cora has been copying postcards: one of her paintings, which Miss Gilchrist claims were all painted from life, features a pier that was destroyed in the war; however the painting was completed quite recently. The next day, after Cora's funeral, an old friend who is an art critic, Alexander Guthrie, arrives to look through Cora’s recent purchases. His visit had been arranged before Cora's murder. He looked at all her recent purchases, but finds nothing of any value there. That evening, Miss Gilchrist is nearly killed by arsenic poison in a slice of wedding cake apparently sent to her through the post. The only reason that she is not killed is that, following a superstition, she has saved the greater part of the slice of cake under her pillow. Mrs. Gray had declined an offer to share in the slice of cake. Inspector Morton investigates Cora's murder. He recognized Poirot at the inquest, so makes a point of finding him in London to learn why. The two share information as they investigate. Morton focuses on people in the area of Cora's rented cottage. Poirot focuses on the Abernethie family, and a number of red herrings come to light. Rosamund Shane, one of the nieces, is a beautiful but determined woman who seems to have something to hide (which turns out to be her husband’s infidelity and her own pregnancy). Susan’s husband, Gregory, is a dispensing chemist who had been responsible for deliberately administering a nonlethal overdose to an awkward customer. In a surprising twist, he confesses to the murder of Richard Abernethie near the close of the novel. He is discovered to have a punishment complex. Timothy Abernethie, an unpleasant man preoccupied with his own health perhaps to gain attention, might have been able to commit the murder of Cora, as might his country-tweed, strong, healthy wife, Maude. Even the genteel Helen Abernethie left Enderby to fetch her things from her London flat upon agreeing to stay longer at Enderby. In short, all the family had been alone on the day Cora was murdered, for enough time to reach the rented cottage and do the deed. Did any of them do it? Perhaps identifying the murderer may depend on finding a nun whom Miss Gilchrist claims to have noticed twice? But what can all this have to do with a bouquet of wax flowers under glass to which Poirot pays attention? Poirot calls all those involved together to observe them directly, his habitual method, via Entwhistle. They gather to look over and select items of interest before the estate auction. This lures even the reclusive Timothy from his home, back to the family mansion of Enderby, bringing his wife Maude and Miss Gilchrist, who is now assisting them. Poirot briefly poses as Monsieur Pontalier of UNARCO, a group that has purchased the estate to house refugees. He is at the house on that same weekend. His guise is uncovered by Rosamund the first evening. After playing games in mirrors, Helen Abernethie telephones Entwhistle early the next morning with the news that she has realized what struck her odd the day of the funeral. Before she can say who it concerns, she is savagely struck on the head. Mr. Entwhistle is left speaking out over a telephone where no one is listening. Poirot’s explanation in the denouement is a startling one. He gathered those at Enderby Hall, in his own identity as a detective the next evening. Helen is safely away to recover from her concussion. Added to the group is Inspector Morton, whose own investigations lead him out of his home county of Berkshire to Enderby Hall, increasing the tensions for the family. Inspector Morton spent the afternoon asking each member of the family to account for themselves on the day of Cora's murder. Cora had never come to the funeral at all. It was Miss Gilchrist, who disguised herself as Cora as part of a complicated plot for her own gain, leaving Cora home asleep from a sedative in her tea. She wished to plant the idea that Richard’s death had been murder. Therefore when Cora herself was murdered, it would seem that the alleged murderer had struck again. None of the family had seen Cora for over 20 years, from the ill feeling at the time of her marriage. Miss Gilchrist had successfully copied her mannerisms, well enough to fool those who had known her as adults. The flaw in her portrayal of Cora was spotted by Helen Abernethie. Miss Gilchrist had rehearsed a characteristic turn of the head in a mirror, where the reflection is a reverse of reality. When she came to the house after the funeral, she turned her head to the left, not the right. Helen had had the feeling that something was wrong when Cora had made her startling statement, but took some days and a timely conversation among the young cousins to realize precisely what it was. Miss Gilchrist had further given herself away to Poirot, by referring to the wax flowers on the green malachite table the first day the relatives gathered to select objects before the auction. These were on display on the day of the reading of Richard's will but had been put out of sight by the time Miss Gilchrist, as herself, visited Enderby Hall. She had deliberately poisoned herself with the arsenic-laced wedding cake to avoid suspicion; ironically this only aroused Poirot's and Inspector Morton's misgivings. Miss Gilchrist saw what Cora had missed among the paintings that Cora had bought at the local sales. Miss Gilchrist felt sure one was a painting by Vermeer, yet Cora had no idea how valuable the artwork was, and thus Miss Gilchrist began her desperate plot. The painting's value would likely have been revealed to Cora when her friend the art critic visited, explaining in part the timing of the murder. Miss Gilchrist covered the Vermeer with her own painting depicting the destroyed pier copied from the postcard, to disguise it amongst others done by Cora. The scent of the oils lingered when Mr. Entwhistle visited the cottage the day after Cora's murder. She hoped to inherit some of Cora's paintings; the will confirmed she inherited all of them. Miss Gilchrist loathed Cora; even more, she loathed life as a dependent. Her dream was to sell the Vermeer to escape her dreary life with the capital to rebuild her beloved teashop, "the essence of gentility", lost during the war to food shortages. Poirot deduced the key role of the painting. He had Mr. Entwhistle take it from the Timothy Abernethie home where Miss Gilchrist had left it. The art critic was found to be authentic by Inspector Morton, so Poirot asked Entwhistle to bring the painting to him. In that same day, Mr. Guthrie sent a wire to Poirot that said tersely, definitely a Vermeer, Guthrie. Inspector Morton added that two nuns had called at Cora's cottage the day of Richard's funeral. No one answered, yet they heard noises from a person. Added to Poirot's explanation, these nuns became witness to the real Cora's presence in her own home as Miss Gilchrist was impersonating her at Enderby Hall. There is a motif of nuns in this mystery, appearing at each house where Miss Gilchrist stayed. Miss Gilchrist had invented what she overheard about Richard's fear of poisoning, for the furtherance of her plot. She told her lie to Mrs. Banks first. With revisions implicating Mrs. Banks, she repeated it to Poirot and Inspector Morton, very shortly before Poirot revealed her plot to all present at Enderby Hall. Once accused, Miss Gilchrist broke down in a flood of complaints of the unbearable hardships of her life, her convoluted justification for the murder of an innocent woman. She went quietly with Inspector Morton. Cora's was the only murder. There was no evidence that Richard Abernethie died any but a natural death in his sleep, from the disease his doctor had diagnosed. Thus Poirot answered the question Mr. Entwhistle hired him to resolve, as well as untangled, by deduction, the mystery of Cora's death. Miss Gilchrist is found guilty as the murderer of Cora at the Assizes. In her time in prison during legal proceedings, she was quickly becoming insane, planning one tea shop after another. Mr. Entwhistle and Hercule Poirot suspect her punishment might be served in Broadmoor, but have no doubt she had plotted and carried out the cold blooded murder in full possession of her faculties — this ladylike murderer.
354398	/m/01zpjz	She: A History of Adventure	H. Rider Haggard	1887	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance"}	 A young Cambridge University professor, Horace Holly, is visited by a colleague, Vincey, who reveals that he will soon die and proceeds to tell Holly a fantastical tale of his family heritage. He charges Holly with the task of raising his young son, Leo (whom he has never seen) and gives Holly a locked iron box, with instructions that it is not to be opened until Leo turns 25. Holly agrees, and indeed Vincey is found dead the next day. Holly raises the boy as his own; when the box is opened on Leo's 25th birthday they discover the ancient and mysterious "Sherd of Amenartas", which seems to corroborate Leo's father's story. Holly, Leo and their servant, Job, follow instructions on the Sherd and travel to eastern Africa but are shipwrecked. They alone survive, together with their Arab captain, Mahomed; after a perilous journey into an uncharted region of the African interior, they are captured by the savage Amahagger people. The adventurers learn that the natives are ruled by a fearsome white queen, who is worshiped as Hiya or "She-who-must-be-obeyed". The Amahagger are curious about the white-skinned interlopers, having been warned of their coming by the mysterious queen. Billali, the chief elder of one of the Amahagger tribes, takes charge of the three men, introducing them to the ways of his people. One of the Amahagger maidens, Ustane, takes a liking to Leo and during a tribal feast sings lovingly to him. Billali tells Holly that he needs to go and report the white men's arrival to She, but in his absence, some of the Amahagger become restless and seize Mahomed, intending to eat him as part of a ritual "hotpot". Realising what is about to happen, Holly shoots several of the Armahagger, killing Mahomed in the process; in the ensuing struggle Leo is gravely wounded, but the three Englishmen are saved when Billali returns in the nick of time and declares that they are under the protection of She. As Leo's condition worsens, he approaches death although tended by Ustane. They are taken to the home of the queen, which lies near the ruins of the lost city of Kôr, a once mighty civilization which predated the Egyptians. The queen and her retinue lives under a dormant volcano in a series of catacombs built as tombs for the people of Kôr. There, Holly is presented to the queen, a white sorceress named Ayesha. Her beauty is so great that it enchants any man who beholds it. She, who is veiled and lies behind a partition, warns Holly that the power of her splendour arouses both desire and fear, but he is dubious. When she shows herself, however, Holly is enraptured and prostrates himself before her. Ayesha reveals that she has learned secret of immortality and that she possesses other supernatural powers including the ability to read the minds of others, a form of telegnosis and the ability to heal wounds and cure illness; she is also revealed to have a tremendous knowledge of chemistry, but is notably unable to see into the future. She tells Holly that she has lived in the realm of Kôr for over two millennia, awaiting the reincarnated return of her lover, Kallikrates (whom she had slain in a fit of jealous rage). After she veils herself again, Holly remembers Leo and begs Ayesha to visit his ward. Having agreed, she is stunned upon seeing him, as she believes him to be the reincarnation of Kallikrates. Later, when Holly secretly follows Ayesha to a hidden chamber he learns that she may also have some degree of power to reanimate the dead. She heals Leo, but becomes jealous of the girl, Ustane. The latter is ordered to leave the home of She-who-must-be-obeyed but refuses, and is eventually struck dead by Ayesha's power. Despite the murder of their friend, Holly and Leo cannot free themselves from the power of Ayesha's beauty. They remain amongst the tombs as Leo recovers his strength, and Ayesha lectures Holly on the ancient history of Kôr. Ayesha shows Leo the perfectly preserved body of Kallikrates, which she has kept with her, but she then dissolves the remains with a powerful acid, confident that Leo is indeed the reincarnation of her former lover. In the climax of the novel, Ayesha takes the two men to see the pillar of fire, passing through the ruined city of Kôr and into the heart of the ancient volcano. She is determined that Leo should bathe in the fire to become immortal and remain with her forever, and that together they can become the immortal and all-powerful rulers of the world. After a perilous journey, they come to a great cavern, but at the last Leo doubts the safety of entering the flame. To allay his fears, Ayesha steps into the Spirit of Life, but with this second immersion, the life-preserving power is lost and Ayesha begins to revert to her true age. Holly speculates that it may be that a second exposure undoes the effects of the previous or the Spirit of Life spews death on occasion. Before their eyes, Ayesha withers away in the fire, and her body shrinks. The sight is so shocking that Job dies in fright. Before dying, She tells Leo, "I die not. I shall come again." *Horace Holly - protagonist and narrator, Holly is a Cambridge don whose keen intellect and knowledge was developed to compensate for his ape-like appearance. Holly knows a number of ancient languages, including Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew, which allow him to communicate with the Amahagger (who speak a form of Arabic) and She (who knows all three languages). Holly's interest in archaeology and the origins of civilization lead him to explore the ruins of Kor. *Leo Vincey - ward of Horace Holly, Leo is an attractive, physically active young English gentleman with a thick head of blond hair. He is the confidant of Holly and befriends Ustane. According to She, Leo resembles Kallikrates in appearance and is his reincarnation. *Ayesha - the title character of the novel, called Hiya by the native Amahagger, or "She". Ayesha was born over 2,000 years ago amongst the Arabs, mastering the lore of the ancients and becoming a great sorceress. Learning of the Pillar of Life in the African interior, she journeyed to the ruined kingdom of Kôr, feigning friendship with a hermit who was the keeper of the Flame that granted immortality. She bathed in the Pillar of Life's fire. *Job - Holly's trusted servant. Job is a working-class man and highly suspicious and judgmental of non-English peoples. He is also a devout Protestant. Of all the travellers, he is especially disgusted by the Amahagger and fearful of She. *Billali - an elder of one of the Amahagger tribes. *Ustane - an Amahagger maiden. She becomes romantically attached to Leo, caring for him when he is injured, acting as his protector, and defying She to stay with him. *Kallikrates - an ancient Greek, the husband of Amenartas, and ancestor of Leo. Two thousand years ago, he and Amenartas fled Egypt, seeking a haven in the African interior where they met Ayesha. There, She fell in love with him, promising to give him the secret of immortality if he would kill Amenartas. He refused, and enraged She struck him down. *Amenartas - an ancient Egyptian priestess and ancestress of the Vincey family. As a priestess of Isis, she was protected from the power of She. When Ayesha slew Kallikrates, she expelled Amenartas from her realm. Amenartas gave birth to Kallikrates' son, beginning the line of the Vinceys (Leo's ancestors).
354422	/m/01zpn_	Burmese Days	George Orwell	1934-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Burmese Days is set in 1920s imperial Burma, in the fictional district of Kyauktada. As the story opens U Po Kyin, a corrupt Burmese magistrate, is planning to destroy the reputation of the Indian Dr. Veraswami. The Doctor's main protection is his friendship with John Flory who, as a pukka sahib (European white man), has higher prestige. Dr.Veraswami wants the privilege of becoming a member of the British club because he thinks that if his standing with the Europeans is good, U Po Kyin's intrigues against him will not prevail. U Po Kyin begins a campaign to persuade the Europeans that the doctor holds disloyal, anti-British opinions, and believes anonymous letters with false stories about the doctor 'will work wonders.' He even sends a subtly threatening letter to Flory. John Flory is a jaded 35-year-old teak merchant. Responsible three weeks of every month for the 'excavation' of jungle timber, he is friendless among his fellow Europeans and is unmarried. He has a ragged crescent of a birthmark on his face. Flory has become disillusioned with his lifestyle, living in a tiresome expatriate community centred round the European Club in a remote part of the country. On the other hand he has become so embedded in Burma that it is impossible for him to leave and return to England. Veraswami and Flory are good friends, and Flory often visits the doctor for what the latter delightedly calls 'cultured conversation.' In these conversations Flory details his disillusionment with the Empire. The doctor for his part becomes agitated whenever Flory criticizes the Raj and defends the British as great administrators who have built an efficient and unrivalled Empire. Flory dismisses these administrators as mere moneymakers, living a lie, "the lie that we're here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them." Though he finds release with his Burmese mistress, Flory is emotionally dissatisfied. "On the one hand, Flory loves Burma and craves a partner who will share his passion, which the other local Europeans find incomprehensible; on the other hand, for essentially racist reasons, Flory feels that only a European woman is acceptable as a partner. " His dilemma seems to be answered when Elizabeth Lackersteen, the orphaned niece of Mr Lackersteen, the local timber firm manager, arrives. Flory saves her when she thinks she is about to be attacked by a small water buffalo. He is immediately taken with her and they spend some time getting close, culminating in a highly successful shooting expedition. After several misses Elizabeth shoots a pigeon, and then a flying bird, and Flory shoots a leopard, promising the skin to Elizabeth as a trophy. Lost in romantic fantasy, Flory imagines Elizabeth to be the sensitive non-racist he so much desires, the European woman who will "understand him and give him the companionship he needed." He turns Ma Hla May, his pretty, scheming Burmese concubine, out of his house. Under the surface, however, Elizabeth is appalled by Flory's relatively egalitarian attitude towards the natives, seeing them as 'beastly' while Flory extolls the virtues of their rich culture. She is frightened and repelled by the Burmese. Worse still are Flory's interests in high art and literature which remind Elizabeth of her boondoggling mother who died in disgrace in Paris, poisoned by her painting materials whilst masquerading as a bohemian artist. Despite these reservations, of which Flory is entirely unaware, she is willing to marry him to escape poverty, spinsterhood and the unwelcome advances of her perpetually inebriated uncle. Flory is about to ask her to marry him, when they are interrupted firstly by her aunt and secondly by an earthquake. Mrs. Lackersteen's interruption is deliberate because she has discovered that a military police lieutenant named Verrall is arriving in Kyauktada. As he comes from an extremely good family, she sees him as a better prospect as a husband for Elizabeth. Mrs. Lackersteen tells Elizabeth that Flory is keeping a Burmese mistress as a deliberate ploy to send her to Verrall. Indeed, Flory had been keeping a mistress, but had dismissed her almost the moment Elizabeth had arrived. No matter, Elizabeth is appalled and falls at the first opportunity for Verrall, who is arrogant and ill-mannered to all but her. Flory is devastated and after a period of exile attempts to make amends by delivering to her the leopard skin but an inexpert curing process has left the skin mangy and stinking and the gesture merely compounds his status as a poor suitor. When Flory delivers it to Elizabeth she accepts it regardless of the fact that it reeks and he talks over their previous relationship telling her he still loves her. She responds by telling him that unfortunately the feelings aren’t mutual and leaves the house to go horse riding with Verrall. When Flory and Elizabeth both part their ways, Mrs. Lackersteen orders the servants to burn the reeking leopard skin, representing the deterioration of Flory and Elizabeth’s relationship. U Po Kyin's campaign against Dr. Veraswami turns out to be intended simply to further his aim of becoming a member of the European Club in Kyauktada. The club has been put under pressure to elect a native member and Dr. Veraswami is the most likely candidate. U Po Kyin arranges the escape of a prisoner and plans a rebellion for which he intends that Dr. Veraswami should get the blame. The rebellion begins and is quickly put down, but a native rebel is killed by acting Divisional Forest Officer, Maxwell. Rising to unexpected courage Flory speaks up for Dr. Veraswami and proposes him as a member of the Club. At this moment the body of Maxwell, cut almost to pieces with dahs by two relatives of the man he had shot, is brought back to the town. This creates a tension between the Burmese and the Europeans which is exacerbated by a vicious attack on native children by the spiteful arch-racist timber merchant, Ellis. A large but ineffectual anti-British riot begins and Flory becomes the hero for bringing it under control with some support by Dr. Veraswami. U Po Kyin tries to claim credit but is disbelieved and Dr. Veraswami's prestige is restored. Verrall leaves Kyauktada without even saying goodbye to Elizabeth and she falls for Flory again. Flory is happy and plans to marry Elizabeth. However, U Po Kyin has not given up; he hires Flory's former Burmese mistress to create a scene in front of Elizabeth during the sermon at Sunday church. Flory is disgraced and Elizabeth refuses to have anything more to do with him. Overcome by the loss and seeing no future for himself, Flory kills himself and his dog. Dr. Veraswami is demoted and sent to a different district and U Po Kyin is elected to the Club. U Po Kyin's plans have succeeded and he plans to redeem his life and cleanse his sins by financing pagodas. He dies of apoplexy before he can even start on building the first pagoda and his wife envisages him returning to life as a frog or rat. Elizabeth eventually marries Macgregor, the Deputy Commissioner and lives happily in contempt of the natives, who in turn live in fear of her, fulfilling her destiny of becoming a “burra memsahib” [respectful term given to white European women].
354429	/m/01zpq_	A Clergyman's Daughter	George Orwell	1935	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is given in five distinctive chapters. A day in the life of Dorothy Hare, the weak-willed daughter of a disagreeable widowed clergyman. Her father is Rector of Knype Hill, a small provincial East Anglian town. She keeps house for him, fends off the trade creditors, visits parishioners and makes costumes for fund-raising events. All the time she practises self-mortification in order to be true to her faith. In the evening she is invited to dinner by Mr Warburton, Knype Hill's most disreputable resident, a middle-aged bachelor and an unashamed lecher and atheist. He attempts to seduce Dorothy, as he has done before more than once. As she leaves he forces another embrace on her, and they are seen by Mrs Semprill, the village gossip and scandal-monger. Dorothy returns home to her conservatory late at night to work on the costumes. Dorothy is transposed to the Old Kent Road with amnesia. Eight days of her life are unaccounted for. She joins a group of vagrants, comprising a young man named Nobby and his two friends, who relieve her of her remaining half-crown and take her with them on a hop-picking expedition in Kent. Meanwhile, the rumour is spread by Mrs Semprill that Dorothy has eloped with Mr Warbuton, and this story captivates the national press for a while. After hard work in the hop fields, culminating in Nobby's arrest for theft, she returns to London with her negligible earnings. As a single girl with no luggage, she is refused admission at "respectable" hotels and ends up in a cheap hotel for "working-girls" (prostitutes). Her funds are constantly dwindling; ultimately she is forced to leave the hotel and live on the streets, and takes up residence in Trafalgar Square. Dorothy spends the night sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square (in a chapter presented entirely as dramatic dialogue). She is arrested for vagrancy and ends up in a police cell for twelve hours for failure to pay the fine. Dorothy believes that her father, distraught at the rumours of her running away with Mr Warburton, has ignored her letters for help. In actuallity, he has contacted his cousin Sir Thomas Hare in London, whose servant locates her at the police station. Hare's solicitor procures a job for her as a "schoolmistress" in a small "4th rate" private girls' "academy" run by the grasping Mrs Creevy. Dorothy's attempts to introduce a more liberal and varied education to her students clash with the expectations of the parents, who want a strictly "practical" focus on handwriting and basic mathematics. The work, which initially she enjoyed, quickly becomes a drudgery. Mrs Creevy eventually dismisses her, without notice, when she finds another teacher. Shortly after Dorothy steps out of the door of the school, Mr Warburton turns up in a taxi to say that Mrs Semprill has been charged with libel, and that she and her malicious gossip have been discredited. He has come, therefore, to take her back to Knype Hill. On the trip home, Warburton proposes marriage. Dorothy rejects him, recognising but disregarding his argument that, with her loss of religious faith, her existence as a hard-working clergyman's daughter will be meaningless and dull, and that marriage, while she is still young, is her only escape. The story ends with Dorothy back in her old routine, only without the self-mortification.
355167	/m/01zs4v	Star Maker	Olaf Stapledon	1937	{"/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with a single human narrator from England who is, via unexplained means, transported out of his body and finds himself able to explore space and other planets. After exploring a civilization on another planet in our galaxy at a level of development similar to our own that existed millions of years ago thousands of light years from Earth (the "Other Earth") in some detail, his mind merges with that of one of its inhabitants, and as they travel together, they are joined by still more minds or group-minds. This snowballing process is paralleled by the expansion of the book's scale, describing more and more planets in less and less detail. The disembodied travellers encounter many ideas that are interesting from both science-fictional and philosophical points of view. These include the first known instance of what is now called the Dyson sphere, reference to a scenario closely predicting the later zoo hypothesis or Star Trek's Prime Directive, many imaginative descriptions of species, civilizations and methods of warfare, and the idea that the stars and even the pre-galactic nebulae are intelligent beings, operating on vast time scales. A key idea is the formation of collective minds from many telepathically linked individuals, on the level of planets, galaxies, and eventually the cosmos itself. The climax of the book is the "supreme moment of the cosmos", when the cosmical mind (which includes the narrator) attains momentary contact with the "Star Maker" of the title. The Star Maker is the creator of the universe, but stands in the same relation to it as an artist to his work, and calmly assesses its quality without any feeling for the suffering of its inhabitants. This element makes the novel one of Stapledon's efforts to write "an essay in myth making". After meeting the Star Maker, the traveller then explores earlier "drafts" of the universe, which he refers to as "toy cosmos," including a universe composed entirely of music with no spatial dimensions, and a triune universe which closely resembles "Christian orthodoxy" (the three universes respectively being hell, heaven, and reality with presence of a savior). The novel ends with the traveller returning to Earth.
355413	/m/01zt4y	Player Piano	Kurt Vonnegut	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Player Piano is set in the future after a fictional third world war. During the war, while most Americans were fighting overseas, the nation's managers and engineers faced a depleted work force, and responded by developing ingenious automated systems that allowed the factories to operate with only a few workers. The novel begins ten years after the war, when most factory workers have been replaced by machines. The bifurcation of the population is represented by the division of Ilium into "The Homestead", where everyone who is neither a manager or engineer lives, and the other side of the river, where all the engineers and managers lives. Player Piano develops two parallel plot lines that converge only briefly, and insubstantially so, at the beginning and the end of the novel. The more prominent plot line follows the protagonist, Dr. Paul Proteus (hither to referred to as Paul), an intelligent, thirty-five-year-old factory manager of Ilium Works. The ancillary plot line follows the American tour of the Shah of Bratpuhr, a spiritual leader of six million residents in a distant, underdeveloped nation. The purpose of the two plot lines is to give two perspectives of the system: one from an insider who is emblematic of the system, and one from an outsider who is looking in. Paul, for all intents and purposes, is the living embodiment of what a man within the system should strive to be, while the Shah is a visitor from a very different culture, and therefore applies a very different context to happenings he sees on his tour. The main plot line follows the metamorphosis of Paul from being within the system to being against the system. At the beginning of the novel, Paul displays a sense of dissatisfaction with the industrial system and his contribution to society. Symbolically, he reflects on his colleagues' desire to destroy an old building, once a part of Edison's factory, which he saves and instead keeps it alive to store new machinery. Looking for salvation from a yet unknown plight, he gets a knock at his door, figuratively speaking, and Ed Finnerty, an old friend whom Paul has always held in high regard, informs him he has quit his important engineer job in Washington D.C. Paul and Finnerty visit a bar in the "Homestead" section of town, where workers who have been displaced by machines live out their meaningless lives in mass-produced houses. There, they meet an Episcopal minister, named Lasher, with an M.A. in anthropology, who puts into words the unfairness of the system that the two engineers have only vaguely sensed. They soon learn that Lasher is the leader of a rebel group known as the "Ghost Shirt Society", and Finnerty instantly takes up with him. Paul is not bold enough to make a clean break, as Finnerty has done, until his superiors ask him to betray Finnerty and Lasher. He quits his job and is captured by the "Ghost Shirt Society;" he is forced to join as their leader but only in name. Paul's father was the first "National, Industrial, Commercial Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director"” As his lengthy title suggests, Dr. George Proetus has almost complete control over the nation’s economy and was more powerful than the President of the United States. Through his father's success, Paul's name is famous among the citizens, so the organization intends to use his name to their advantage by making him the false 'leader' to gain publicity.
355688	/m/01zvdj	The Loved One	Evelyn Waugh	1948-02	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Chapter one: Sir Ambrose Abercrombie visits housemates Dennis Barlow and Sir Francis Hinsley to express his concern about Barlow's new job and how it reflects on the British enclave in Hollywood, which is also taken as an announcement of Barlow's impending exclusion from British society. Barlow reports to his job at the Happier Hunting Ground, a pet cemetery and funeral service, and picks up a couple's dead Sealyham Terrier. Chapter two: Due to the difficulty he is having rebranding actress Juanita del Pablo as an Irish starlet (having previously rebranded Baby Aaronson as del Pablo), Hinsley is sent to work from home. After his secretary stops showing up, he ventures to Megalopolitan Studios and finds a man named Lorenzo Medici in his office. After working his way through the bureaucracy he finds he has been unceremoniously fired. In the next scene, Abercrombie and other British expatriates are discussing Hinsley's suicide and the funeral arrangements. Chapter three: Barlow, tasked with making Hinsley's funeral arrangements, visits Whispering Glades. There he is transfixed by the cosmetician Aimée Thanatogenos, though he has yet to learn her name. Chapter four: Barlow continues with the funeral arrangements while Hinsley's body arrives at Whispering Glades and is tended to by Thanatogenos and the senior mortician Mr. Joyboy. Chapter five: Barlow visits Whispering Glades seeking inspiration for Hinsley's funeral ode. While touring a British-themed section of the cemetery, he meets Thanatogenos and begins his courtship of her when she learns he is a poet. Chapter six: Six weeks later, Thanatogenos is torn between her very different affections for Barlow and Joyboy. She writes to the advice columnist "The Guru Brahmin" for advice. Joyboy invites her over for dinner and she meets his mother. Chapter seven: The office of the Guru Brahmin consists of "two gloomy men and a bright young secretary." Tasked with responding to Thanatogenos' letters is Mr. Slump, a grim drunk who advises that she marry Joyboy. She instead decides to marry Barlow. Chapter eight: Joyboy learns that the poems Barlow has been wooing Thanatogenos with are not his own, and arranges that Thanatogenos, who still does not know Barlow works for a pet cemetery, attend the funeral of his mother's parrot at the Happier Hunting Ground. Chapter nine: Some time after Thanatogenos' discovery of Barlow's deceptions, Barlow reads the announcement of her engagement to Joyboy. Barlow meets with her and she is again torn between the two men. She tracks down Mr. Slump to seek the advice of the Guru Bramin and finds him, via telephone, in a bar after he has been fired. Slump tells her to jump off a building. She commits suicide by injecting herself with cyanide in Joyboy's workroom at Whispering Glades. Chapter ten: Joyboy discovers Thanatogenos' body and seeks assistance from Barlow. Then Barlow meets with Abercrombie, who, fearing Barlow's plans to become a non-sectarian funeral pastor will further damage the image of the British enclave, pays his passage back to England. Joyboy returns, unaware of Barlow's impending departure, and in exchange for all his savings, Barlow says he will leave town so it will appear that he ran away with Thanatogenos. After cremating the body, Barlow signs Joyboy up for the Happier Hunting Ground annual postcard service so every year Joyboy will receive a card reading "Your little Aimée is wagging her tail in heaven tonight, thinking of you."
355869	/m/01zw38	A Town Like Alice	Nevil Shute	1950	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story falls broadly into three parts. In Post-World War II London, Jean Paget, a secretary in a leather-goods factory, is informed by solicitor Noel Strachan that she has inherited a considerable sum of money from an uncle she never knew. But the solicitor is now her trustee and she only has the use of the income until she inherits absolutely, at the age of thirty-five, several years in the future. In the firm's interest, but increasingly for his own personal interest, Strachan acts as her guide and advisor. Jean decides that her priority is to build a well in a Malayan village. The second part of the story flashes back to Jean's experiences during the War, when she was working in Malaya at the time the Japanese invaded and was taken prisoner together with a group of women and children. As she speaks Malay fluently, Jean takes a leading role in the group of prisoners. The Japanese refuse all responsibility for the group and march them from one village to another. Many of them, not used to physical labour, die. Jean meets a young Australian soldier, Sergeant Joe Harman, also a prisoner, who is driving a truck for the Japanese and they strike up a friendship. He steals food and medicines to help them. Jean is carrying a toddler, whose mother has died, and this leads Harman to believe that she is married; to avoid complications, Jean does not correct this assumption. On one occasion, Harman steals six chickens from the local Japanese commander. The thefts are investigated and Harman takes the blame to save Jean and the rest of the group. He is beaten, crucified, and left to die by the Japanese soldiers. The women are marched away, believing that he is dead. When their sole Japanese guard dies, the women become part of a Malayan village community. They live and work there for three years, until the war ends and they are repatriated. Now a wealthy woman (at least on paper), Jean decides she wants to build a well for the village so that the women will not have to walk so far to collect water: "A gift by women, for women". Strachan arranges for her to travel to Malaya, where she goes back to the village and persuades the headman to allow her to build the well. While it is being built, she discovers that, by a strange chance, Joe Harman survived his punishment and returned to Australia. She decides to travel on to Australia to find him. On her travels, she visits the town of Alice Springs, where Joe lived before the war, and is much impressed with the quality of life there. She then travels to the (fictional) primitive town of Willstown in the Queensland outback, where Joe has become manager of a cattle station. She soon discovers that the quality of life in 'Alice' is an anomaly, and life for a woman in the outback is elsewhere very rugged. Willstown is described as 'a fair cow'. Meanwhile, Joe has met a pilot who helped repatriate the women, from whom he learns that Jean survived the war and that she was never married. He travels to London to find her, using money won in a lottery. He finds his way to Strachan's office, but is told that she has gone traveling in the Far East. Disappointed, he gets drunk and is arrested, but is bailed out by Strachan. Without revealing Jean's actual whereabouts, Strachan persuades Joe to return home by ship and intimates that he may well receive a great surprise there. While staying in Willstown, awaiting Joe's return, Jean learns that most young girls have to leave the town to find work in the bigger cities. Having worked with a firm in England that produced crocodile- leather luxury goods, she gets the idea of founding a local workshop to make shoes from the skins of crocodiles hunted in the outback. With the help of Joe and of Noel Strachan, who releases money from her inheritance, she starts the workshop, followed by a string of other businesses; an ice-cream parlour, a public swimming pool and shops. The third part of the book shows how Jean's entrepreneurship gives a decisive economic impact to develop Willstown into "a town like Alice"; also Jean's help in rescuing an injured stockman, which breaks down many local barriers. The story closes a few years later, with an aged Noel Strachan visiting Willstown to see what has been done with the money he has given Jean to invest. He reveals that the money which Jean inherited was originally made in an Australian gold rush, and he is satisfied to see the money returning to the site of its making. Jean and Joe name their second son Noel, and ask Strachan to be his godfather. They invite Noel to make his home with them in Australia, but he declines the invitation, returns to England and the novel closes.
356670	/m/01zzbb	We the Living	Ayn Rand		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place from 1922 to 1925, in post-revolutionary Russia. Kira Argounova, the protagonist of the story, is the younger daughter of a bourgeois family. An independent spirit with a will to match, she rejects any attempt by her family or the nascent Soviet State to cast her into a mold. At the beginning of the story, Kira returns to Petrograd along with her family, after a prolonged exile due to the assault of the revolutionaries. Kira's father had been the owner of a textile factory, which had been seized and nationalized. The family, having given up all hopes of regaining their past possessions after the emphatic victories of the Red Army in the last four years, is resigned to their fate, as they return to the city in search of livelihood. They find, to their dismay, that their home has likewise been seized, and converted to living quarters for several families. Left with nowhere to go, the family moves into Kira's aunt Marussia's apartment. The severity of life in the newly Socialist Russia is biting and cruel, especially for the people belonging to the now-stigmatized middle class. Kira's uncle Vasili has also lost his family business to the state, and has been forced to sell off his possessions, one at a time, for money (which has lost much of its value owing to steep inflation). Private enterprises have been strictly controlled, and licenses to run them allotted only to those "enjoying the trust" of the proletariat. Food is rationed. Only laborers of nationalized businesses and students in state-run educational institutions have access to ration cards. The family of five survives on the ration cards allotted to the two younger members of the family, who are students. After a brief stay at Vasili's home, Kira's family manages to find living quarters. Kira's father also manages to get a license to open a textile shop, an establishment that is but a shadow of his old firm. Life is excruciatingly difficult in these times. Rand portrays the bleak scenarios by vivid descriptions of long queues, weary citizens and low standards of living. (Everyone regularly cooks on a kerosene camp stove, usually a Swedish Primus stove, and the typical main course is millet, or whatever can be blended together.) With some effort, Kira manages to register with the State and obtain her Labor Book (which permits her to study and work). Kira also manages to enroll in the Technological Institute, where she aspires to fulfill her dream of becoming an engineer. She plans to storm the male bastion of engineers, and show her prowess by building structures like a lightweight aluminum bridge. Kira's strength of resolve to fulfill her dream is asserted at various points in the storyline. Becoming a highly competent engineer would be Kira's carving for herself a niche in a society that has become characterless and anonymous, and whose primary purpose in life has been reduced to subsistence rather than excellence. At the Institute, Kira meets Andrei Taganov, a co-student, an idealistic Communist, and an officer in the G.P.U., the secret police of the Soviet Union. The two share a mutual respect and admiration for each other in spite of their differing political beliefs. Andrei and Kira develop a friendship that endures until the end of the story. In a chance encounter, Kira meets Leo Kovalensky on a dark night in a seedy neighborhood. Leo is an extremely attractive man with a free spirit matched only by Kira's. It's love at first sight for Kira, and she unflinchingly throws herself at Leo. Leo, who initially takes her to be a prostitute, is also strongly attracted to her and promises to meet her again. Kira and Leo are shown to be united by their desperate lives, and their lofty beliefs that ran counter to what were being thrust on them by the State. After a couple of meetings, when they share their deep contempt for the state of their lives, the two plan to escape together from the land, on a clandestine mission operated by secret ships. The novel, from this point on, slowly cascades into a series of catastrophes for Kira and Leo. They are caught while attempting to flee the country, but escape imprisonment due to the generosity of a G.P.U. official, Stepan Timoshenko, who had fought under the command of Leo's father before the revolution. Kira leaves her parents' apartment and moves into Leo's. The relationship between Kira and Leo, intense and passionate in the beginning, begins to deteriorate under the weight of their hardships, and because of their different reactions to these hardships. Kira, who is an idealistic realist, keeps her ideas and aspirations alive, but decides to go with the system anyway, until she feels powerful enough to challenge it. Soon the state decides to expel anyone of a bourgeois background. On the verge of starvation, Kira finds work with the help of Andrei, enough to retain her ration card. Leo, however, burdened by his class background, and without any communist friend to help him, fails to find work, and sinks slowly into indifference and depression. He contracts tuberculosis and is prescribed treatment and recuperation in a sanatorium in Crimea in the South. Kira's efforts to finance his treatment fail, and her passionate appeals to the authorities to get State help for his stay at the sanatorium fall on deaf ears. Andrei, an equally important person in Kira's life, is portrayed by Rand as a man of character, resolve, and an unassailable loyalty to his party and ideology. Despite his political beliefs, Kira finds him to be the one person she could trust, and with whom she could discuss her most intimate thoughts and views. Not even Leo could fulfill that role for her. Andrei's affection and respect for Kira knows no bounds, and it slowly turns into love. Worried what this might do to their "beautiful and rare" friendship, he starts avoiding Kira. Kira misses him, and needs his help. Eventually when she confronts him in his house, Andrei explains his avoidance of her and confesses his love for her. Kira is dismayed at first, but recovers to find in it a way to finance Leo's treatment. Reluctant, but in desperation, she feigns love for Andrei, and agrees to become his mistress in return for the promise of complete secrecy about their relationship. Kira is never comfortable with what she was doing with her body, but is even more frightened by "what she was doing to another man's soul". The narrative reaches a climactic pace when Leo returns from Crimea, cured of tuberculosis and healthy, but a changed man. Ignoring Kira's protests, he opens a food store with the help of his morally bankrupt and rich friends, and a corrupt member of the Communist Party. The store is but a facade for illegal speculation and trade. Andrei is tipped off about this venture by Stepan Timoshenko, who commits suicide in despair at what is happening to his Soviet Union, but only after depositing a key piece of evidence with Andrei. Ignoring Kira's pleas, and unaware of her love for Leo, Andrei starts investigating Leo's store. After a search at his house, he arrests Leo for crimes against the State, which could carry a death sentence. In the process, he finds out about Kira's relationship with Leo. The ensuing confrontation between Andrei and Kira is perhaps the most poignant scene in the story. In the end, both realize what they had done to each other and how their passion and pretension had led them to the destruction of what each had held in "the highest reverence". Andrei decides to redress the situation, at least for Kira, and moves to restore Leo to her, risking his own standing in the Party. After Leo's release from the prison at Andrei's behest, the story ends in tragedy for all the three. Andrei loses his position in the Party, and shortly thereafter commits suicide. Kira, perhaps the only genuine mourner at his State funeral, wonders if she had killed him. Having lost any moral sense that he may have left, Leo leaves Kira to begin a new life as a gigolo, fulfilling the earlier portrayal of him as such by Kira's perceptive cousin Irina (who has been sentenced to a long prison term for associating with counter-revolutionaries). After Leo's departure, Kira makes a final attempt to cross the border. When she is almost in sight of freedom and liberation from her hellish life, she is shot by a border guard and soon dies. Kira remains loyal to her love for Leo until the end, and says at one point, "When a person dies, one does not stop loving him, does one?"
358057	/m/01_3gm	When Harlie Was One	David Gerrold	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Central to the story is an Artificial Intelligence named H.A.R.L.I.E., also referred to by the proper name "HARLIE" - an acronym for Human Analog Replication, Lethetic Intelligence Engine (originally Human Analog Robot Life Input Equivalents). HARLIE's story revolves around his relationship with David Auberson, the psychologist who is responsible for guiding HARLIE from childhood into adulthood. It is also the story of HARLIE's fight against being turned off, and the philosophical question whether or not HARLIE is human; for that matter, what it means to be human. When HARLIE Was One contains the first fictional representation of a computer virus. It also is the first use of the term 'virus' to describe a program that infects another computer.
358335	/m/01_4cr	The Call of the Wild	Jack London	1903	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 As the story opens, Buck, a powerful St. Bernard-Scotch Collie dog, lives a comfortable life in California's Santa Clara Valley as the pet of Judge Miller. Manuel, the gardener's assistant, steals Buck and sells him to pay a gambling debt. Shipped to Seattle, Buck is harassed in his crate and given nothing to eat or drink. Released from the crate, he confronts and is beaten by the "man in the red sweater", and is taught to respect the club. Buck is bought by a pair of French-Canadians named François and Perrault, who take him to the Klondike region of Canada and train him as a sled dog where he quickly learns how to survive the cold winter nights and the pack society by observing his teammates. He and the vicious, quarrelsome lead dog, Spitz, develop a rivalry. Buck eventually beats Spitz in a fight "to the death". Spitz is killed by the pack after his defeat and Buck becomes the leader of the team. The sled dog team is sold to a "Scottish half breed" man working in the mail service. The dogs carry a heavy load and the journey they make is tiresome and long. After a long time with this owner, the dogs are beat down and so tired that they can no longer make the trek. Buck is then sold to a trio of stampeders, Hal, Charles, and a woman named Mercedes. They have little experience of survival in the Northern wilderness, struggle to control the sled, and ignore warnings about the dangers of travel during the spring melt. They overfeed the dogs and starve them when the food supply runs out. On their journey they meet John Thornton, an experienced outdoorsman, who notices that the dogs poorly treated and in a weakened condition. He warns the trio against crossing the river, but they refuse his advice and order Buck to move on. Exhausted, starving, and sensing the danger ahead, Buck refuses and continues to lie unmoving in the snow. After Buck is beaten by Hal, Thornton recognizes him to be a remarkable dog; disgusted by the driver's treatment of Buck, Thornton cuts him free from his traces and tells the trio he's keeping him, much to Hal's displeasure. After some argument, the trio leaves and tries to cross the river, but as Thornton warned, the ice gives way and the three fall into the river along with the neglected dogs and sled. Thornton nurses Buck back to health, and Buck comes to love him and grows devoted to him. Buck saves Thornton when the man falls into a river. Thornton then takes him on trips to pan for gold. During one such trip, a man wagers Thornton on Buck's strength and devotion; the dog wins the bet by breaking a half-ton sled free of the frozen ground, pulling it 100 yards, and winning $1000 in gold dust for Thornton. While Thornton and his friends continue their search for gold, Buck explores the wilderness and begins to socialize with a timber wolf from a local pack. One night, he returns from a short hunt to find that his beloved master and the others in the camp have been killed by a group of Yeehat Indians. Buck eventually kills the Indians to avenge Thornton and he then follows the wolf into the forest and answers the call of the wild. At the end of the story, Buck returns each year, as the Ghost Dog of the Northland Legend, to mourn at the site of Thornton's death.
358542	/m/01_54z	The Soft Machine	William S. Burroughs		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main plot appears in linear prose in chapter VII, The Mayan Caper. This chapter portrays a secret agent who has the ability to change bodies or metamorphose his own body using "U.T." (undifferentiated tissue). As such an agent he makes a time travel machine and takes on a gang of Mayan priests who use the Mayan calendar to control the minds of slave laborers used for planting maize. The calendar images are written in books and placed on a magnetic tape and transmitted as sounds to control the slaves. The agent manages to infiltrate the slaves and replace the magnetic tape with a totally different message: "burn the books, kill the priests" which cause the downfall of their regime.
358867	/m/01_67w	Caddie Woodlawn	Carol Ryrie Brink	1935	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the 1860s, Caddie Woodlawn is about a lively eleven-year-old tomboy named Caroline Augusta Woodlawn, nicknamed "Caddie", living in the area of Dunnville, Wisconsin, and her experiences with the nearby Indians. She is troublesome and the despair of her ladylike mother and sister. The sequel to the book, Magical Melons (1939), continues the story of Caddie and her family.
360245	/m/01_c2p	The Sun Also Rises	Ernest Hemingway		{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist of The Sun Also Rises is Jake Barnes, an expatriate American journalist living in Paris. Jake suffered a war wound that has caused him to be impotent; the nature of his injury is not explicitly described in the novel. He is in love with Lady Brett Ashley, a twice-divorced Englishwoman. Brett, with her bobbed hair, embodies the new sexual freedom of the 1920s, having had numerous love affairs. Book One is set in the Café society of Paris. In the opening scenes, Jake plays tennis with his college friend Robert Cohn, picks up a prostitute (Georgette), and runs into Brett and Count Mippipopolous in a nightclub. Brett and Jake leave together; in a taxi she tells him she loves him, but they know they have no chance at a lasting relationship. In Book Two Jake is joined by Bill Gorton, recently arrived from New York, and Brett's fiancé Mike Campbell, who arrives from Scotland. Jake and Bill travel to Spain, where they meet Robert Cohn north of Pamplona for a fishing trip. Cohn, however, leaves for Pamplona to wait for Brett and Mike. Cohn had an affair with Brett a few weeks earlier and still feels possessive of her despite her engagement to Mike. Jake and Bill enjoy five days of tranquility, fishing the streams near Burguete, after which they rejoin the group in Pamplona, where they begin to drink heavily. Cohn's presence is increasingly resented by the others, who taunt him with anti-semitic remarks. During the fiesta the characters drink, eat, watch the running of the bulls, attend bullfights, and bicker with each other. Jake introduces Brett to Romero at Montoya's hotel; she is smitten with the 19-year-old matador and seduces him. The jealous tension among the men builds; Jake, Campbell, Cohn, and Romero each love Brett. Cohn, who had been a champion boxer in college, has fistfights with Jake, Mike, and Romero, whom he injures. Despite the tension, Romero continues to perform brilliantly in the bullring. Book Three shows the characters in the aftermath of the fiesta. Sober again, they leave Pamplona. Bill returns to Paris, Mike stays in Bayonne, and Jake goes to San Sebastián in northeastern Spain. As Jake is about to return to Paris, he receives a telegram from Brett asking for help; she had left with Romero for Madrid. He finds her in a cheap hotel, without money, and without Romero. She announces she has decided to go back to Mike. The novel ends with Jake and Brett in a taxi speaking of the things that might have been.
360837	/m/01_ffs	Germinal	Émile Zola	1885	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's central character is Étienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), and originally to have been the central character in Zola's "murder on the trains" thriller La Bête humaine (1890) before the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Germinal persuaded him otherwise. The young migrant worker arrives at the forbidding coal mining town of Montsou in the bleak area of the far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior, Étienne befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit. Étienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Étienne is presumed to have inherited his Macquart ancestors' traits of hotheaded impulsiveness and an addictive personality capable of exploding into rage under the influence of drink or strong passions. Zola keeps his theorizing in the background and Étienne's motivations are much more natural as a result. He embraces socialist principles, reading large amounts of working class movement literature and fraternizing with Souvarine, a Russian anarchist and political émigré who has also come to Montsou to seek a living in the pits. Étienne's simplistic understanding of socialist politics and their rousing effect on him are very reminiscent of the rebel Silvère in the first novel in the cycle, La Fortune des Rougon (1871). While this is going on, Étienne also falls for Maheu's daughter Catherine, also employed pushing carts in the mines, and he is drawn into the relationship between her and her brutish lover Chaval, a prototype for the character of Buteau in Zola's later novel La Terre (1887). The complex tangle of the miners' lives is played out against a backdrop of severe poverty and oppression, as their working and living conditions continue to worsen throughout the novel; eventually, pushed to breaking point, the miners decide to strike and Étienne, now a respected member of the community and recognized as a political idealist, becomes the leader of the movement. While the anarchist Souvarine preaches violent action, the miners and their families hold back, their poverty becoming ever more disastrous, until they are sparked into a ferocious riot, the violence of which is described in explicit terms by Zola, as well as providing some of the novelist's best and most evocative crowd scenes. The rioters are eventually confronted by police and the army that repress the revolt in a violent and unforgettable episode. Disillusioned, the miners go back to work, blaming Étienne for the failure of the strike; then, Souvarine sabotages the entrance shaft of one of the Montsou pits, trapping Étienne, Catherine and Chaval at the bottom. The ensuing drama and the long wait for rescue are among some of Zola's best scenes, and the novel draws to a dramatic close. Étienne is eventually rescued and fired but he goes on to live in Paris with Pluchart. The title, Germinal, is drawn from the springtime seventh month of the French Revolutionary Calendar and is meant to evoke imagery of germination, new growth and fertility. Accordingly, Zola ends the novel on a note of hope and one that has provided inspiration to socialist and reformist causes of all kinds throughout the years since its first publication: "Beneath the blazing of the sun, in that morning of new growth, the countryside rang with song, as its belly swelled with a black and avenging army of men, germinating slowly in its furrows, growing upwards in readiness for harvests to come, until one day soon their ripening would burst open the earth itself." By the time of his death, the novel had come to be recognized as his undisputed masterpiece. At his funeral crowds of workers gathered, cheering the cortège with shouts of "Germinal! Germinal!". Since then the book has come to symbolize working class causes and to this day retains a special place in French mining-town folklore. Zola was always very proud of Germinal and was always keen to defend its accuracy against accusations of hyperbole and exaggeration (from the conservatives) or of slander against the working classes (from the socialists). His research had been typically thorough, especially the parts involving lengthy observational visits to northern French mining towns in 1884, such as witnessing the after-effects of a crippling miners' strike first-hand at Anzin or actually going down a working coal pit at Denain. The mine scenes are especially vivid and haunting as a result. A sensation upon original publication, it is now by far the best-selling of Zola's novels, both in France and internationally. A number of exceptional modern translations are currently in print and widely available.
361113	/m/01_g6n	Les Liaisons dangereuses	Pierre Choderlos de Laclos	1782-03-23	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel"}	 The Vicomte de Valmont is determined to seduce the virtuous (and married) Madame de Tourvel, who is living with Valmont's aunt while Monsieur de Tourvel, a magistrate, is away on a court case. At the same time, the Marquise de Merteuil is determined to corrupt the young Cécile de Volanges, whose mother has only recently brought her out of a convent to be married – to Merteuil's recent lover, who has become bored with her and discarded her. Cécile falls in love with the Chevalier Danceny (her music tutor) and Merteuil and Valmont pretend to want to help the secret lovers in order to gain their trust, so that they can use them later in their own schemes. Merteuil suggests that the Vicomte seduce Cécile in order to exact her revenge on Cécile's future husband. Valmont refuses, finding the task too easy, and preferring to devote himself to seducing Madame de Tourvel. Merteuil promises Valmont that if he seduces Madame de Tourvel and provides her with written proof, she will spend the night with him. He expects rapid success, but does not find it as easy as his many other conquests. During the course of his pursuit, he discovers that Cécile's mother has written to Madame de Tourvel about his bad reputation. He avenges himself in seducing Cécile as Merteuil had suggested. In the meantime, Merteuil takes Danceny as a lover. By the time Valmont has succeeded in seducing Madame de Tourvel, it is suggested that he might have fallen in love with her. Jealous, Merteuil tricks him into deserting Madame de Tourvel – and reneges on her promise of spending the night with him. In response Valmont reveals that he prompted Danceny to reunite with Cécile, leaving Merteuil abandoned yet again. Merteuil declares war on Valmont, and in revenge she reveals to Danceny that Valmont has seduced Cécile. Danceny and Valmont duel, and Valmont is fatally wounded. Before he dies he is reconciled with Danceny, giving him the letters proving Merteuil's own involvement. These letters are sufficient to ruin her reputation and she flees to the countryside, where she contracts smallpox. Her face is left permanently scarred and she is rendered blind in one eye, so she loses her greatest asset: her beauty. But the innocent also suffer from the protagonist's schemes: hearing of Valmont's death, Madame de Tourvel succumbs to a fever and dies, while Cécile returns to the convent.
361211	/m/01_gkf	Krapp's Last Tape	Samuel Beckett	1958		 The curtain rises on "[a] late evening in the future." It is Krapp’s 69th birthday and he hauls out his old tape recorder, reviews one of the earlier years – the recording he made when he was 39 – and makes a new recording commenting on the last 12 months. Krapp is sitting in his den, lit by the white light above his desk. Black-and-white imagery continues throughout. On his desk are a tape-recorder and a number of tins containing reels of recorded tape. He consults a ledger. The tape he is looking to review is the fifth tape in Box 3. He reads aloud from the ledger but it is obvious that words alone are not jogging his memory. He takes childish pleasure in saying the word ‘spool’. The tape dates from when he turned 39. His taped voice is strong and rather self-important. The voice mentions that he’s just celebrated his birthday alone "at the wine house" jotting down notes in preparation for the recording session later. His bowel trouble is still a problem and one obviously exacerbated by eating too many bananas. "The new light above my table is a great improvement," reports the 39 year old Krapp, before describing how much he enjoys leaving it, wandering off into the darkness, so that he can return to the zone of light which he identifies with his essential self. He notes how quiet the night is. The voice reports that he has just reviewed an old tape from when he was in his late twenties. It amuses him to comment on his impressions of what he was like in his twenties and even the 69 year old Krapp joins in the derisory laughter. The young man he was back then is described as idealistic, even unrealistic in his expectations. The 39 year old Krapp looks back on the 20-odd year old Krapp with the same level of contempt as the 20-odd year old Krapp appears to have displayed for the young man he saw himself for in his late teens. Each can see clearly the fool he was but only time will reveal what kind of fool he has become. The voice reviews his last year, when his mother died. He talks about sitting on a bench outside the nursing home waiting for the news that she had passed away. When the moment comes he is in the process of throwing a rubber ball to a dog. He ends up simply leaving the ball with the creature even though a part of him regrets not hanging onto it as some kind of memento. Krapp at 69 is more interested in his younger self’s use of the rather archaic word "viduity" (Beckett had originally used "widowhood" in early drafts) than in the reaction of the voice on the tape to their mother’s passing. He stops listening to look up the word in a large dictionary. He returns to the tape. The voice starts to describe the revelation he experienced at the end of a pier. Krapp grows impatient and gets worked up when his younger self starts enthusing about this. He fast-forwards almost to the end of the tape to escape the onslaught of words. Suddenly the mood has changed and he finds himself in the middle of a description of a romantic liaison between himself and a woman in a punt. Krapp lets it play out and then rewinds the tape to hear the complete episode. Throughout it he remains transfixed and visibly relives the moment while it is retold. Afterwards, Krapp carefully removes this tape, locates a fresh one, loads it, checks the back of an envelope where he has made notes earlier, discards them and starts. He is scathing when it comes to his assessment of his thirty-nine-year-old self and is glad to see the back of him. He finds he has nothing he wants to record for posterity, save the fact he "Revelled in the word spool." But he does mention a trip to the park and attending Vespers, where he dozed off and fell off the pew. He also mentions his recent literary disappointments: "seventeen copies sold", presumably of his last book, eleven of which have gone not to interested readers but to foreign libraries; "Getting known," he sarcastically summarizes. His sex life has been reduced to periodic visits by an old prostitute recalling the jibes made in Eh Joe: "That slut that comes on Saturday, you pay her, don't you? ... Penny a hoist tuppence as long as you like." Unlike his younger selves, Krapp has nothing good to say about the man he has become and even the idea of making one "last effort" when it comes to his writing upsets him. He retreats into memories from his dim and distant past, gathering holly and walking the dog of a Sunday morning. He then remembers the girl on the punt, wrenches off the tape he has been recording, throws it away and replays the entire section again from the previous tape. It is a scene of masochism reminiscent of Croak in Words and Music, tormenting himself with an image of a woman’s face. This time he allows the tape to play out. It ends with the thirty-nine-year-old Krapp determinately not regretting the choices he has made, certain that what he would produce in the years to come would more than compensate him for any potential loss of happiness. Krapp makes no response to this but allows the tape to play on until the final curtain. "Krapp’s spool of life is almost wound, and the silent tape is both the time it has left to run and the silence into which he must pass." Whereas the younger Krapp talks about the "fire in me"
361217	/m/01_glx	Happy Days	Samuel Beckett	1960		 Winnie, a woman no longer young, is embedded up to her “big bosom” in a mound of earth, “the Mother Earth symbol to end all other mother earth symbols”. She lives in a deluge of never-ending light from which there is no escape: even the parasol she unfolds at one point ignites, leaving her without protection. We learn that she has not always been buried in this way but we never discover how she came to be trapped so. Beckett’s dramaturgy – indeed his entire œuvre – takes little interest in causality, e.g. Molloy finds himself ‘buried’ in his mother’s bed, in his mother’s room, realizes he has not always been there but demonstrates no particular curiosity as regards the specifics of how he arrived there. It is a strange image. “Strangeness,” Beckett informs us, “was the necessary condition of the play of Winnie’s plight in the play.” During Berlin rehearsals he said, “In this play you have the combination of the strange and the practical, the mysterious and the factual. This is the crux of both the comedy and the tragedy of it.” Winnie passes her time between “the bell for waking and the bell for sleep” by following a very exact daily routine. In this respect, she is reminiscent of the two characters in Act Without Words II. In early drafts, Winnie set an alarm clock but Beckett later gave control of the bell to an unexplained external force like that in charge of the goad and the whistle in the two Act Without Words plays. By contrast Winnie, it has to be said, is not short of words, she is, in fact, a compulsive talker. Winnie begins her day. After the sounding of the transcendental bell, she offers up a half-forgotten prayer and then sets about her daily routine. As she removes the items from her bag a comb, a toothbrush (the writing on which she spends most of the first act trying to decipher), toothpaste, a bottle of patent medicine, lipstick, a nail file, a revolver (which she feels the need to quickly kiss) and a music box she prattles away to her husband, Willie who lives in a cave behind the mound. The routine is raised to the level of ceremony. Beckett’s instructions to Billie Whitelaw in 1979 emphasize this: : The bag is all she has – look at it with affection … From the first you should know how she feels about it … When the bag is at the right height you peer in, see what things are there and then get them out. Peer, take, place. Peer, take, place. You peer more when you pick things up than when you put them down. Everything has its place. Everything is wearing out or running out. At the start of Act I she takes the last swig of her tonic before throwing away the bottle, her toothbrush has hardly any hairs left and the lipstick, to use Beckett’s expression, is “visibly zu ende,” the parasol is faded with a “mangy fringe” and even her pearl necklace is “more thread than pearls”. Winnie functions on the ecclesiastical principle that there is a time for everything and the proper time for certain things to take place is in the daytime, ‘day’ being an abstract notion since there is only constant daylight in this place; she would not think of singing her song after the bell for sleep had gone which is why, when she uses the term, she refers to it as “the old style”. She is the eternal optimist Robert Brustein called her a “hopeful futilitarian” but the available sources of her optimism are being used up and she has to work harder and harder to keep up her positive front which is already wafer-thin when we first meet her. Beckett has described her as being “like a bird” and she makes every effort to rise above her predicament but she keeps getting pulled down. She never questions or explains why she finds herself in the predicament she is in most of us never understand how we wind up in a rut, or stuck in the mud to use similar earthy metaphors but her dream is that she will “simply float up into the blue … And that perhaps some day the earth will yield and let me go, the pull is so great, yes, crack all round me and let me out.” Beckett even pokes fun at his audience through Winnie and her story about Shower/Cooker. Beckett explained this in a letter to Alan Schneider: : Shower (rain). Shower & Cooker are derived from German “schauen” & “gucken” (to look). They represent the onlooker (audience) wanting to know the meaning of things. Willie, for his part, ignores her and what responses he does make are terse and often monosyllabic. At the start of the play she even strikes him a couple of times simply to get his attention. His responses are of less importance to Winnie than the fact that he is there to listen. Always in Beckett’s drama there is someone or something to fulfil this critical function whether it is the Auditor in Not I or the interrogatory light in Play. When words fail her she reverts to the contents of her bag to tide her over, or at least in Act I she does. The two never have anything that could remotely be described as a conversation. He answers a question concerning the correct term to describe the hair on one’s head, confirms he can still hear her again when she reduces the volume at which she speaks over stages, becoming audibly angrier in the process, finally he defines “hog” for her, lavishing a whole two albeit short sentences on her in the process. The most we ever see of him is the back of his head whilst he reads his yellowing paper or scrutinises his postcards. Other than that, his activities are described by Winnie and involve finding his way in and out of his hole, working Vaseline into his privates and sleeping. Winnie offers up reminisces from an idealised past, quotes from the classics in contrast to Willie’s quotes from the popular press, comments on everything flitting from topic to topic, laughs at herself, at Willie and at their predicament. She assures herself: “This will have been another happy day!” a recurrent catchphrase throughout the play when in fact she often seems on the verge of tears. At the end of the day she carefully collects her possessions bar the gun and places them back in the bag. The gun, which has somehow always managed to defy the laws of physics ending up on the top of the bag she decides to leave out. Winnie never plumbs (never dares plumb) the bottom ("The depths in particular, who knows what treasures"), so it is also her hope chest. The items in her bag also have secondary functions, they serve as aides-mémoire. But more, like Krapp’s tapes or Lucky’s bones they provide her with what Mary Doll describes as “touchstones of existential meaning”. Winnie’s perception of these objects connects her to the memories of specific days and important incidents within them. While she is able to discuss these incidents in some detail, Winnie cannot hold on to them or place them within a context. “As Act II of Godot is bleaker than Act I, as Maddy’s homeward journey is bleaker than her setting out, Act II of Happy Days is bleaker than Act I, and Winnie knows it: “To have been what I always am – and so changed from what I was.” By Act II she can no longer imagine any relief, and she can no longer pray, as she did at the play’s start. Although she still intones the phrase ‘happy day’, it no longer triggers her smile.” Whereas in Godot Beckett explicitly states that Act II takes place on the next day, in Happy Days no such assertion is made. Time has simply passed. In the first act she uses the items from her bag to trigger memories. In this act, unable to reach into it, she uses the bag itself, along with the parasol which has, as she predicted, reappeared intact, to the same end. We learn that Willie gave her the bag “to go to market” and the parasol is linked to a memory not too dissimilar to the one that entrances Krapp so, the day out on the punt. Winnie is however sinking inexorably in the slow sands of time and disappointment. In the second act she has almost been engulfed by the mound; only her head is visible, now she cannot move it and she admits to being in pain. Despite the desperation of her predicament, she is confident that this will be another of her happy days. She continues to chatter, but as can no longer reach her bag or turn around, it takes more of an effort to keep up the front. It has been some time since she has seen or heard from Willie but, since she is unable to see over the back of the mound, she doesn’t even know for sure if he is still there though she needs to believe he is: : I used to think that I would learn to talk alone. (Pause.) By that I mean to myself, the wilderness. (Smile.) But no. (Smile broader.) No no. (Smile off.) Ergo you are there. (Pause.) Oh no doubt you are dead, like the others, no doubt you have died, or gone away and left me, like the others, it doesn’t matter, you are there. “In Happy Days the existential condition of the characters is visualized in the mound tightening around Winnie who is sinking deeper and deeper. The nearer she gets to the end, the slower does Winnie sink, and never does the end come to release her from the pain of being smothered in the mound. What Beckett wants to represent is the endless repetition of dying moments rather than death itself. His characters wish to finish life but the end never comes because the clock becomes slower and slower. There is still time, always.” Not unreasonably Winnie’s mound has been compared to Zeno’s impossible heap. {| class="infobox" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3 rules=rows align="right" font="3" style="font-size:85%; width:270px; margin: 0 0 01em 1 em; border:1px solid black;" |- | Zeno’s heap |- style="height:100px" | If a man were to take a bag of millet and tip half of the load and make a heap, and repeat this procedure day after day, then one day it would be completed if one assumes an infinite amount of time to complete the task (in pure math, the idea of the infinite will allow this). However, because man is limited, he will never be able to finish the task. In fact, the nearer the man gets to emptying the bag, the slower the progress is. The heap becomes "the impossible heap." Without its completion, there is no release. |- |} At the conclusion of the play Willie crawls up to her, “dressed to kill” (a pun reserved for readers) and sporting a “Battle of Britain moustache”. Her response is ironic, not ebullient. When Kay Boyle asked Beckett why Willie reaches up towards Winnie, he replied: : The question as to which Willie is ‘after’ – Winnie or the revolver – is like the question in All That Fall as to whether Mr Rooney threw the little girl out of the railway-carriage or not. And the answer is the same in both cases – we don’t know, at least I don’t. All that is necessary as far as I’m concerned – technically and otherwise – less too little, more too much – is the ambiguity of motive, established clearly I hope by Winnie, ‘Is it me you’re after, Willie, or is it something else? Is it a kiss you’re after, Willie, or is it something else?’ and by the conspicuousness of revolver requested in the stage-directions at beginning of Act II. To test the doubt was dramatically a chance not to be missed, not be bungled either by resolving it.” Her words to Willie are bitter and unpleasant, and she maintains that tone up to the point he utters his one line in Act II: “Win” at which point she cannot hold back: : Win! (Pause.) Oh this is a happy day, this will have been another happy day! (Pause.) After all. (Pause.) So far. The familiar “So far” gives the subtle suggestion of cynicism but it doesn’t stop her bursting into the waltz duet, ‘I love you so’ from The Merry Widow and the play proceeds to its close.
362804	/m/01_mq0	The First Circle	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	1968	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Innokentii Volodin, a diplomat, makes a telephone call he feels obligated to his conscience to make, even though he knows he risks arrest. His call was taped and the NKVD seek to identify who made the call. The sharashka prisoners work on technical projects to assist state security agencies and generally pander to Stalin's increasing paranoia. While most are aware of how much better off they are than "regular" Gulag prisoners, some are also conscious of the overwhelming moral dilemma of working to aid a system that is the cause of so much suffering. Lev Rubin is tasked with identifying the voice in the recorded phone call, he examines printed spectrographs of the voice and compares them with recordings of Volodin and five other suspects. He narrows it down to Volodin and one other suspect, both of whom are arrested. By the end of the book, several zeks, including Gleb Nerzhin, the autobiographical hero, choose to stop cooperating, even though their choice means being sent to much deadlier camps. Volodin, initially crushed by the ordeal of his arrest, begins to find encouragement at the end of his first night in prison. The book also briefly depicts several Soviet leaders of the period, including Stalin himself, who is depicted as vain and vengeful, remembering with pleasure the torture of a rival, dreaming of one day becoming emperor of the world, or listening to his subordinate Viktor Abakumov and wondering: "[...]has the day come to shoot him yet?" The novel addresses numerous philosophical themes, and through multiple narratives is a powerful argument both for a stoic integrity and humanism. Like other Solzhenitsyn works, the book illustrates the difficulty in maintaining dignity within a system designed to strip its inhabitants of it.
362887	/m/01_n1d	Death Be Not Proud	John Gunther	1949	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 In the book, Gunther records the true story of his teenage son's struggle to overcome a brain tumor, and his ultimate death at the age of seventeen. The story chronicles the period beginning when Johnny experiences the first symptoms of the tumor shortly after being given a clean bill of health. Johnny's complaint of a stiff neck one day leads doctors to operate, thus leading to the discovery of a tumor the size of an orange, according to a doctor. The book, published in 1949, records in simple detail all the events and tensions that made up the months that Johnny Gunther fought for his life and his parents sought to help him through recourse to every medical possibility then known. When it appears that Johnny has finally overcome the tumor, he dies of a cerebral hemorrage, which occurs the day of a medical checkup - the day before he and his family are to leave on vacation. Partly because of its stark honesty about the pain that this kind of struggle causes a family, and partly because of its refreshingly revealing portrait of a brilliant young man (he discovered a new way to liquefy ammonia) struck down too young by incurable illness, Death Be Not Proud became a best-selling book that is still popular today. The story in the book was eventually made into a TV movie in 1975, starring Robby Benson as Johnny Gunther, and Arthur Hill as his father.
364499	/m/01_t_3	The Golden Age	John C. Wright	2002	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The author's first novel, it revolves around the protagonist Phaethon (full name Phaethon Prime Rhadamanth Humodified (augment) Uncomposed, Indepconciousness, Base Neuroformed, Silver-Gray Manorial Schola, Era 7043). The novel concerns Phaethon's discovery that parts of his past have been edited out of his mind—apparently by himself.
364618	/m/01_vcl	The Good Soldier Švejk	Jaroslav Hašek		{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins in Prague with news of the assassination in Sarajevo that precipitates World War I. Švejk displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no one can decide whether he is merely an imbecile or is craftily undermining the war effort. However, he is arrested by a member of the secret police, Bretschneider, after making some politically sensitive remarks, and is sent to prison. After being certified insane he is transferred to a madhouse, before being ejected. Švejk gets his charwoman to wheel him (he claims to be suffering from rheumatism) to the recruitment offices in Prague, where his apparent zeal causes a minor sensation. Unfortunately, he is transferred to a hospital for malingerers because of his rheumatism. He finally joins the army as batman to army chaplain Otto Katz; Katz loses him at cards to Lieutenant Lukáš, whose batman he then becomes. Lukáš is posted with his march battalion to barracks in České Budějovice, in Southern Bohemia, preparatory to being sent to the front. After missing the train to Budějovice, Švejk embarks on a long anabasis on foot around Southern Bohemia in a vain attempt to find Budějovice, before being arrested as a possible spy and deserter (a charge he strenuously denies) and escorted to his regiment. He is then promoted to company orderly. The unit embarks on a long train journey towards Galicia and the Eastern Front. Stopping in a town on the border between Austria and Hungary, in which relations between the two nationalities are somewhat sensitive, Švejk is again arrested, this time for causing an affray involving a respectable Hungarian citizen and engaging in a street fight. After a further long journey and close to the front line, Švejk is taken prisoner by his own side as a suspected Russian deserter, after arriving at a lake and trying on an abandoned Russian uniform. Narrowly avoiding execution, he manages to rejoin his unit. The unfinished novel breaks off abruptly before Švejk has a chance to be involved in any combat or enter the trenches, though it appears Hašek may have conceived that the characters would have continued the war in a POW camp, much as he had done. The book also includes a very large number of anecdotes told by Švejk (usually either to deflect the attentions of an authority figure, or to insult them in a concealed manner) which are not directly related to the plot.
365182	/m/01_x5p	Singularity Sky	Charles Stross	2003-07-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The apparent cause of this distribution of humans is the mysterious and immensely powerful posthuman entity which calls itself "the Eschaton". Although the Eschaton is usually benign and uninvolved in human affairs, it strictly enforces certain rules on human civilization out of apparent self-interest. To this end, the Eschaton has helpfully left a message throughout human space, for example, engraved in huge letters on the sides of mountains, and dispersed everywhere throughout computer networks. The message is as follows: :I am the Eschaton. I am not your God. :I am descended from you, and exist in your future. :Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else. The most important commandment of the Eschaton appears to be "thou shalt not violate causality"; that is, the Eschaton strictly prohibits the use of faster than light travel for reaching any point in its own relative past, with the ominous proscription "or else". The Eschaton apparently makes use of time travel itself, but whenever a civilization attempts to break this rule, it is forcibly prevented from doing so immediately before the act (often with immense overkill, such as in at least one case where the relevant civilization's star is induced into going supernova). Inscrutable, and uncommunicative beyond disseminating the knowledge of its laws, the Eschaton generally does not provide further warnings before it acts. The Eschaton's other major involvement is that at a particular point in the book's history, it scattered pieces of human civilization, against their will, throughout nearby (within a few thousand light years) space, but it did so using instantaneous travel, and in some cases actually moved them backwards in time. This means that some civilizations, such as the Festival mentioned below, have been progressing for hundreds of years on their own before they encounter the rest of human civilization. Although human civilization on Earth collapsed in the wake of singularity, by the time of the events in Singularity Sky, Earth has recovered and become one of the more powerful and influential human societies. The Earth non-government, known as the United Nations and descended from the modern-day Internet Engineering Task Force, uses its agents to prevent other civilizations from breaking the Eschaton's rules so as to avoid the Eschaton taking enforcement action which may affect the very existence of Earth and the wider galaxy-spanning human race. Unknown to human civilization at large, the Eschaton also has its own human agents working to this end. The novel features the exploits of one such agent, Martin Springfield, an engineer specializing in faster-than-light starship engines who is hired by the New Republic (a totalitarian and relatively backward neo-luddite civilization) to upgrade the faster-than-light engines of their fleet of warships. The UN also suspects that the New Republic may attempt to use the upgraded engines to violate causality, so it dispatches one of its agents, Rachel Mansour, to the New Republic. This attempt comes to pass sooner than expected, when the New Republic colony on Rochard's World encounters the Festival, a spacefaring transhuman civilization/entity which trades highly advanced technology if prospective recipients can respond to the request: "entertain us". The old world order on Rochard's World quickly breaks down under this onslaught. Interpreting the failure of communications with the colony as the result of enemy action, the New Republic dispatches a mighty war fleet to Rochard's World, with Martin Springfield and Rachel Mansour aboard the flagship. A recurring theme of this book is that information and by extension progress are inexorable: the conflict between the neo-luddite/monarchist New Republic and the post-singularity transhuman culture that contacts them is utterly devastating for the status quo of the former, and our spy heroes are world-weary enough to realize this, exasperated by their apparent inability to understand that one can no more avoid change than one can avoid breathing. Information is, by whatever mechanism, the phlogiston of said change, providing its vital energies.
365419	/m/01_y0h	The Perfect Storm	Sebastian Junger	1997-05-17	{"/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The book follows the lives of the swordfishing crew of the Andrea Gail and their family members before and during the 1991 Perfect Storm. Among the men boarding the Andrea Gail were Billy Tyne, Alfred Pierre, David "Sully" Sullivan, Michael "Bugsy" Moran, Dale "Murph" Murphy, and Bobby Shatford, each bringing their own intelligence, physical strength, and hope on board with them. The men were raised with the expectation that they would become fishermen. As "Sully" said, even before they had left for their long journey, "It's the money&nbsp;... If I didn't need the money I wouldn't go near this thing." Much of the early part of the book gives detailed descriptions of the daily lives of the fishermen and their jobs, and is centered around activities at the Crow's Nest, a tavern in Gloucester popular with the fishermen. The latter part of the book attempts to reconstruct events at sea during the storm, aboard the Andrea Gail as well as rescue efforts directed at several other ships caught in the storm, including the rescue by the Tamaroa of pararescuemen who were themselves caught in the storm. Lost from the New York Air National Guard HH-60 helicopter was TSgt. Alden "Rick" Smith. A week-long search off the South Shore of Long Island failed to find his remains. Surviving the helicopter crash were Maj. David Ruvola, Capt. Graham Buschor, SSgt. Jimmy Mioli and TSgt. John Spillane, the second pararescueman aboard. All six crew members of the Andrea Gail were missing, presumed dead. The ship and crew were never found. A few fuel drums, a fuel tank, the EPIRB, an empty life raft, and some other flotsam were the only wreckage ever found.
365537	/m/01_ycx	The Marvelous Land of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1904	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Set shortly after the events in the first book, the protagonist is a boy named Tip, who for as long as he can remember has been under the guardianship of a witch named Mombi (who is the main antagonist) in Gillikin Country. As Mombi is returning home, Tip plans to frighten her with a scarecrow he has made. Since he has no straw available, Tip instead makes a man out of wood and gives him a pumpkin for a head, naming him Jack Pumpkinhead. Mombi is not fooled, and she takes this opportunity to demonstrate the Powder of Life that she bought from another sorcerer. She sprinkles the powder on Jack, bringing him to life and startling Tip, whom Mombi catches and threatens with revenge. Tip leaves with Jack that night and steals the Powder of Life because Mombi plans to turn him into a marble statue in the morning. As they head for the Emerald City, Tip uses the Powder to animate the Sawhorse so Jack can ride him – for even though his wooden body does not tire, it can get worn away from all of the walking. Tip loses them as the tireless Sawhorse gallops faster and he meets with General Jinjur's all-girl Army of Revolt which is planning to overthrow the Scarecrow, who has ruled the Emerald City since the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Marching with the Army, Tip meets again with Jack, the Sawhorse, and now the Scarecrow as they flee the Emerald City in Jinjur's wake. The companions arrive at the castle of the Tin Woodman, who now rules the Winkie Kingdom, and plan to retake the Emerald City. On their way back they are diverted by the magic of Mombi (whom Jinjur recruited to help her apprehend them), joined by the Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated Wogglebug, and aided by the Field Mice and their queen. Jinjur and her soldiers are scared by the Field Mice out of the main palace, but they still occupy the Emerald City itself. The Scarecrow proposes manufacturing a flying beast called a Gump by which they can escape through the air. Tip animates this collection of palace furniture with the Powder of Life, and they fly off, with no control over their direction, out of Oz and land in a nest of Jackdaws with all of the birds' stolen goods. In their attempt to drive the Jackdaws from their sanctuary, the Scarecrow's straw is taken away and the Gump's wings are broken. Using the Wishing Pills they discover with the Powder of Life, Tip and his friends escape and journey to the palace of Glinda the Good. They learn from Glinda that a girl named Ozma was hidden by the Wizard of Oz long ago and that she is the rightful ruler of the Emerald City, not the Scarecrow (who did not want the job anyway). Glinda discovered that the Wizard made three visits to Mombi, but not what they were for. She therefore accompanies Tip, Jack, the Sawhorse, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Wogglebug, and the Gump back to the Emerald City to see Mombi. The witch tries to deceive them by disguising a chambermaid as herself (which fails), but manages to elude them as they search for her in the Emerald City. Just as their time runs out, the Tin Woodman plucks a rose to wear in his lapel, unaware that this is the transformed Mombi. Glinda discovers the deception right away and leads the pursuit of Mombi, who is finally caught as she tries to run across the Deadly Desert in the form of a fast- and long-running Griffin (though later books state that anyone who touches the Desert is transformed into dust). Under pressure from Glinda, Mombi admits that the Wizard brought her the infant Ozma and that she used her magic to transform her into the boy Tip. At first, Tip is shocked to learn this, but Glinda and his friends help him to accept his destiny, and Mombi performs her last spell (although there is some evidence that she performed magic later on in The Tin Woodman of Oz). The restored Ozma (whose physical appearance differs considerably between this book and the next, Ozma of Oz) leads her friends in retaking the Emerald City. The Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow, now stuffed with paper money that is worthless in Oz except as stuffing, return to Winkie Country with Jack Pumpkinhead, the Gump is disassembled at his request (though his head, which was a hunting trophy, can still speak), Glinda returns to her palace in Quadling Country, the Wogglebug remains as Ozma's advisor, and the Sawhorse becomes her personal steed.
366534	/m/0200pr	Ozma of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1907	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Uncle Henry has been ordered by his doctor to take a vacation from his Kansas farm to Australia. He and his niece Dorothy Gale (this is the first of the Oz books in which the reader learns her last name) are aboard a steamship traveling there when they are caught in a fierce storm and separated. Dorothy is tossed overboard in a large poultry crate along with Billina, a yellow hen that was also on the ship. Dorothy and Billina wash ashore and pick something to eat from a lunch pail tree. She guesses that they are in a "fairy country" because lunch pails do not normally grow on trees and animals like Billina do not talk, but it's not Oz because that country has no seashore. They come across a message inscribed in the sand: "BEWARE THE WHEELERS"! Soon they meet these gaudily dressed, loud-yelling creatures who have wheels instead of hands and feet, and roll around on all fours. Dorothy and Billina climb a rocky mountain to escape them and find a door carved into its side. Having found the key by the door, they open it and find Tik-Tok, a round copper mechanical man whom they activate by winding up all three of his clockwork motors (one each for thinking, motion and speech) with the key like a wind-up toy. Tik-Tok tells Dorothy and Billina about the Land of Ev where they are now and the loss of its royal family to the magic of the Nome King. He takes them to safety from the Wheelers to the royal residence where the head-exchanging Princess Langwidere (the niece of the deceased king of Ev) locks them in a high tower. Tik-Tok stops in mid-motion unable to move again until he is wound up with the key. Ozma and her companions (many of whom appeared in the two previous Oz books) cross the Deadly Desert with the aid of a magic carpet provided by Glinda the Good Witch to free the royal family of Ev, and Ozma has Dorothy released from Princess Langwidere's custody. Cheerful reunions are had by the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, and new introductions are made to Ozma and the Hungry Tiger, a massive tiger hamstrung by his conscience. The expedition journeys to the underground kingdom of the Nomes, where the Nome King reveals that he has turned the royal family into ornaments around his palace. The Oz people are given the option to guess which ornaments they are (he does not reveal that they are royal purple ones), but if they fail, they will also become ornaments. Ozma, the twenty-seven soldiers of the Royal Army of Oz, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and Tik-Tok all suffer this fate (Dorothy escapes it only by touching a purple ornament in one of her guesses). When the guests from Oz retire one night, Billina learns which of the Nome King's ornaments were once people and about the magic belt that he wears. Billina was originally not going to be allowed to guess, but she so infuriates the Nome King by laying an egg (poisonous to any Nome) under his throne that he lets her guess. All of her guesses turn out to be right, thanks to her learning his transformation secrets. He commands his army to recapture all of them by force, but Dorothy takes the magic belt, the Army's sole private takes the offensive, and Billina's eggs are left in the Nomes' paths so they do not dare follow. After returning the royal family of Ev (the queen mother, five boys, and five girls) to their rightful place, Ozma, Dorothy, and the others return to Oz where a great victory celebration is held in the Emerald City. Dorothy is officially made a Princess of Oz, Billina elects to remain in Oz, and Ozma uses the magic belt to send Dorothy to Australia to be reunited with Uncle Henry.
367519	/m/02041g	Prey	Michael Crichton	2002-11-25	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is narrated by the protagonist Jack Forman, who is an unemployed software programmer who used to work for a company called Media Tronics when he was fired for discovering an internal scandal. As a result, he is forced to take the role of a house husband while his wife Julia serves a high ranking employee at a nanorobotics company called Xymos. Julia claims that she is working on a new piece of revolutionary imaging technology with her company, which takes up most of her time. He starts believing that during her long hours away from home she is having an affair, and becomes watchful of her changes. One night Julia comes home late and shows Jack a video of her demoing the Xymos nanobots. In the video, the nanobots are put into a human test subject, and video from inside the body is broadcast in real time. The next day, Julia is injured in a car accident, and Jack is offered a job by Xymos, because the project manager, Ricky, is having software issues with the nanobots. Jack is taken to the Xymos research facility in the desert. Jack is given a tour of the lab and meets the programming team. He is shown a very complicated machine used to make the nanobots. Ricky refuses to show Jack the source code for the nanobots, and later Ricky claims that building contractors failed to properly install filters in a certain vent in the building. As a result, hazardous elements such as the assemblers, the bacteria, and the nanobots were blown into the desert, evolving and eventually forming autonomous swarms. These swarms appear to be solar-powered and self-sufficient, reproducing and evolving rapidly. The swarms exhibit predatory behavior, attacking and killing animals in the wild, using code that Jack himself worked on. Most alarmingly, the swarms seem to possess rudimentary intelligence, the ability to quickly learn and to innovate. The swarms tend to wander around the fab plant during the day but quickly leave when strong winds blow or night falls. The nanoswarm kills a rabbit outside the complex, and Jack goes outside with Mae to inspect. They find that the rabbit died of suffocation resulting from the nanobots blocking its bronchial tubes. While Mae goes inside for equipment, Jack is attacked by the swarms. He barely manages to get through the airlock inside the lab before falling unconscious from anaphylactic shock. Persuaded by Jack, the team decides to destroy the swarm. They believe that the swarm must have nested in the desert to reproduce. They attempt to find this nest by tagging the swarm with radioactive isotopes and following them back to their nest at night. Under the cover of a strong wind that forces the swarms to remain dormant, the team goes outside to a storage shack to find the isotopes and build a spray device. However, as the wind dies down, four swarms attack the shack and eventually kill David and Rosie. The rest of the team are forced to take shelter in the cars parked outside. The Swarms begin an attempt to enter the cars. Eventually, the swarms find a way to enter the cars, but not long before the wind picks up in speed again. Jack and Mae manage to escape to the lab before losing consciousness, but Charley falls unconscious outside his car after he sprays his swarm with the isotope. Bobby, Vince and Ricky refuse to go outside and help Charley. Jack, dizzy and nauseous, goes back out again to save Charley as the swarms attacks again. Using a motorbike found in David's car, Jack manages to get himself and the semi-conscious Charley to the safety of the airlock before he falls unconscious again. As night falls, Jack, Mae and Bobby set out to find the swarms. While searching for them, they discover that one of the swarms, now so evolved that it can operate without solar energy, is moving the now deceased Rosie through the desert. They follow the body to find the swarms nesting in a cave. As some of the swarms come out of the cave after them, a Xymos helicopter arrives and traps the swarms inside the cave using its powerful draft. Mae and Jack then venture into the cave and proceed to exterminate the swarm, their nest and their organic assembly plant (which looks very similar to the original Xymos assembly plant) using explosive thermite caps. They return to the Xymos plant, exhausted. At the plant, Jack, Mae and Bobby are enthusiastically greeted by Julia, who was earlier discharged from the hospital and was brought in by the chopper. Julia's behavior seems to be extremely aberrant: She seems to pay heed to nothing other than trying to entice Jack and kissing him, even when Charley is found dead in the locked communications room with a swarm flying around him and the communication links cut. Jack cannot understand how the swarm got inside the rigorously protected airtight building, why Charley would have disabled the facility's communications, or why Julia and Ricky seem to be coming up with various out-of-character ways of how he died. To Jack's horror, the video not only reveals that Julia and Ricky had an affair but also shows how Charley engaged in a vicious fight with Ricky and Vince. All of them end up in the communications room where Julia kisses a subdued Charley, injecting a stream of swarm into his mouth. Eventually, Jack and Mae realize that everyone in the facility except themselves have been infected by a symbiotic version of the nanobot swarms. These nanobots, although evolved alongside the other swarms, do not show aggressive predatory behavior. Instead, while they seem to invigorate their hosts' physical statistics and their perception, they slowly devour and take over their hosts, initially affecting their decisions and then controlling them, while allowing them to travel and contaminate others. Jack comes up with a plan to destroy this new strain. Mae and Jack drink vials containing a form of phage that kills the nanobot-producing E. coli bacteria. The phage would protect them from infection. Jack then proceeds to take a sample of the phage and pour it into the sprinkler system and drench everyone with it. He tricks Mae into alerting Julia and the infected team. They set out to stop Jack. In the vicious struggle that ensues, Vince is killed and Jack, who barely escapes death several times, finally manages to place the sample into the sprinkler system. In order to prevent the sprinkler system from triggering, infected-Ricky disables the plant's safety network. However, this is exactly what Jack wants, as Mae has already allowed the phage into the assembly line, causing the phage to reproduce rapidly. The assembly line is rapidly overheating because of the no longer active safety system. If Ricky and Julia do not turn on the safety system the assembly line will burst, filling the lab with the phage. The infected-team, who are now doomed either way, choose to re-activate the safety network and get drenched with the phage. Jack and Mae escape the facility in a helicopter shortly before the facility explodes due to a methane gas leak combined with thermite Mae has placed in the building. After returning home, Jack infects all his children with the phage to eradicate the potential nanobot infestation. Mae calls the U.S. Army and sends a sample of the phage to her lab. Jack puts together all the missing links. The corrosion of the memory chip in Eric's MP3 player as well as Amanda's rash were caused by gamma assemblers. The MRI's strong magnetic field detached the assemblers from her. These assemblers were most likely brought home by Julia. Knowing this, Julia called in the Xymos special team to scan Amanda's room. The person who Jack spotted in Julia's car was in fact the cloud of nanobots. Xymos intentionally released the swarm into the desert so that it would evolve to stay in a cohesive group in the wind.
367574	/m/02047h	The Tin Woodman of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1918	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Tin Woodman and the wizard of Oz are regaling each other with tales at the former's palace in the Winkie Country when a Gillikin boy named Woot wanders and is welcomed into their presence. After he is fed and rested (which the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow, not being of blood and flesh, do not need), Woot asks the Woodman how he became made of tin. He relates how the Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his axe and caused him to chop his body parts off limb by limb, because he was in love with her ward, Nimmie Amee. Each chopped limb was replaced by the tinsmith Ku-Klip with a counterpart made of tin. (Since Oz is a fairyland, no one can die, even when the parts of their body are separated from each other.) He also tells Woot about Dorothy, who happened to be inside her house when it was carried away by a cyclone all the way from Kansas to the Land of Oz. Fortunately, when the house fell into Munchkin Land it landed on the Wicked Witch and crushed her to death. However, without a heart, the Tin Woodman felt he could no longer love Nimmie Amee and therefore he left her. He relates how Dorothy and the Scarecrow found him after he had rusted in the forest (an event related in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) and went with him to the Emerald City where the Wizard gave him a heart. Woot poses that the heart may have made him kind, but it did not make him loving&mdash;he would have returned to Nimmie Amee if it had. This shames and inspires him to journey to the Munchkin Country and find her. The Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and Woot journey into the Gillikin Country and encounter the inflatable Loons of Loonville, whom they escape by popping several of them. They descend into Yoop Valley, where a giantess, Mrs. Yoop, dwells who transforms the travelers into animals for her amusement, just as she already did to Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter. Woot's ingenuity is stealing one of Mrs. Yoop's sources of magic power, a magic apron that performs any task that its wearer wishes – this enables the four to escape. Woot, as a green monkey, narrowly avoids becoming a jaguar's meal by descending further into a den of subterranean dragons. After escaping that ordeal, Woot, the Tin Woodman as a tin owl, the Scarecrow as a straw-stuffed bear, and Polychrome as a canary turn south into the Munchkin Country and, with Polychrome's magic, reverse a spell cast on Tommy Kwikstep, a messenger boy who thoughtlessly wished himself twenty legs. They arrive at the farm of Jinjur, who first attacks what she thinks are ravening wild beasts (an act in itself strange in Oz, where birds and beasts talk and think) and then renews her acquaintance with them and sends to the Emerald City for help. Dorothy and Ozma arrive and Ozma easily restores the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman to their rightful forms. Polychrome takes several steps to restore to her true form. However, Ozma discovers that the Green Monkey into which Woot is transformed has to be someone's form; it cannot be destroyed. Polychrome suggests as a punishment for wickedness that Mrs. Yoop the giantess be made into the Green Monkey, and Ozma thus succeeds in restoring Woot to his proper form. The Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, Woot, and Polychrome resume their quest and come upon the spot that the Tin Woodman stood rusted&mdash;to find another tin man. After they oil his joints, he identifies himself as Captain Fy-ter, a soldier who courted Nimmie Amee after the Woodman had left her. The Wicked Witch of the East made Fy-ter's sword do what the Woodman's axe did&mdash;cut off his limbs, which Ku-Klip replaced with tin limbs. He did not have a heart either, but it did not bother Fy-ter. However, he could rust, which he one day did during a rainstorm. Both tin woodmen now seek the heart of Nimmie Amee, and they agree to let her choose between them. The five come to the dwelling of the tinsmith Ku-Klip where the Tin Woodman talks to himself&mdash;that is, the head of the man (Nick Chopper) he once was. The Tin Woodman and the Tin Soldier also find a barrel of assorted body parts that once belonged to each of them, but some, like Captain Fy-ter's head, are conspicuously missing. Ku-Klip reveals that he used Fy-ter's head and many body parts from each of them (which never decayed) to create Chopfyt for an assistant. Chopfyt complained about missing an arm until Ku-Klip made him a tin one, and he departed for the east. The companions leave Ku-Klip and continue east themselves to find Nimmie Amee and find themselves crossing the Invisible Country, where a massive Hip-po-gy-raf helps them across in return for the Scarecrow's straw. Reluctantly, he gives it and consents to being stuffed with available hay, which makes his movements awkward. They rest for the night at the house of Professor and Mrs. Swynne, pigs whose nine children live in the Emerald City under the care of the Wizard. They leave the Swynnes and arrive at the foot of Mount Munch on the eastern border of the Munchkin Country. At its summit is a cottage where a rabbit tells them Nimmie Amee now lives, who seems quite happy. However, a wall of hardened air that they cannot penetrate surrounds the cottage. Polychrome with her magic shrinks them to fit into the rabbit's burrow and travel under the wall. Restoring them to normal size, the Tin Woodman and Tin Soldier knock and are admitted by Nimmie Amee, who is now married herself&mdash;to Chopfyt, Ku-Klip's erstwhile assistant made of their human body parts. She refuses to leave her domestic life, even to become Empress of the Winkies (which she would become as the Tin Woodman's wife). "All I ask is to be left alone and not be disturbed by visitors." Satisfied and respectful, they leave the cottage during a rainstorm, are reduced in size and restored again, and Polychrome on a rainbow leaves the tin woodmen and the Scarecrow to be cared for by Woot, who does not rust or get soggy or moldy. The four return to the Emerald City and relate their adventures; Woot is allowed free rein to roam where he pleases, Captain Fy-ter is dispatched by Ozma to guard duty in the Gillikin Country, and the Tin Woodman and Scarecrow return to his palace in the Winkie Country where this story began.
368834	/m/0207w5	Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote	Jorge Luis Borges	1939-05		 "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is written in the form of a review or literary critical piece about Pierre Menard, a (purely fictional) 20th century French writer. It begins with a brief introduction and a listing of all of Menard's work. Borges' "review" describes Menard's efforts to go beyond a mere "translation" of Don Quixote by immersing himself so thoroughly in the work as to be able to actually "re-create" it, line for line, in the original 17th century Spanish. Thus, Pierre Menard is often used to raise questions and discussion about the nature of authorship, appropriation and interpretation.
369457	/m/020983	Rocannon's World	Ursula K. Le Guin	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins with a prologue called "Semley's Necklace", which was first published as a stand-alone story titled "Dowry of the Angyar" in Amazing Stories (September 1964). A young woman named Semley takes a space voyage from her unnamed, technologically primitive planet to a museum to reclaim a family heirloom, not realizing that, while the trip will be of short duration for her, many years will elapse on her planet. She returns to find her daughter grown up and her husband dead. The story in effect combines the Rip Van Winkle-type fairy tale—where a person goes underground in the company of dwarves or elves, spending an apparently brief time but on emerging finding whole generations had elapsed—with modern science fiction having the same effect through relativity and the time dilation resulting from traveling at near-light velocities. In the story, the planet's "dwarves" live underground and have an early industrial society that (unlike industrial societies in Earth's history) doesn't interfere with the less-developed societies on the surface. The interstellar society of the Ekumen has placed an automated spaceship at the dwarves' disposal, with which Semley travels. Semley descends into the dwarves' tunnels, like Rip van Winkle, from where she makes the flight - and returns after a generation (sixteen years) due to relativistic time dilation. The novel then follows Rocannon, an ethnologist who meets Semley at the museum. He later goes on an ethnological mission to her planet, Fomalhaut II. He places the planet under an 'exploration embargo' in order to protect the native cultures. Unbeknown to him and his colleagues, there is a base on the planet of an enemy of the League of All Worlds - a young world named Faraday, which embarked on a career of interstellar war and conquest, and which chose this "primitive" world as the location of a secret base. After the enemy destroys his ship and his companions, Rocannon sets out to find their base so that he can alert the League of their presence with the enemy's ansible. However, with his advanced means of transport destroyed, he must use other means of travel, such as on the back of "windsteeds," basically large flying cats, as well as by boat or walking. His long and dangerous quest, undertaken with loyal companions from the Angyar, a local feudal culture, takes him through many lands, encountering various other cultures and species and facing numerous threats having nothing to do with the one he intends to confront. He identifies five species of highly intelligent life forms (hilfs), the dwarfish Gdemiar, the elven Fiia, the rodent-like Kiemhrir, the nightmarish Winged Ones, and the most human species, the Liuar. Increasingly, as the plot progresses, his experiences impact his personality and make him more attuned to the planet's culture and changes him from the interstellar sophisticate he had been. He encounters an entity in a mountainside cave and in exchange for "giving himself to the planet", he receives the gift of Mindspeech, a form of telepathy. Finally, after traveling halfway across the globe, and suffering much loss and bereavement, he reaches the enemy's stronghold which had been set up in a heretofore unknown land occupied by far distant relatives of the Angyar in whose strongholds in the northern continent his journey had begun. Rocannon reverts from the effective role of a Bronze Age hero, into which he had been increasingly pushed during most of the book, back to being the resourceful operative of an interstellar civilization. He uses his mindspeech abilities to both plan and successfully infiltrate the enemy base where he uses an ansible in one of the parked ships to alert his people. A Faster-Than-Light (FTL) unmanned ship (as life cannot survive FTL travel in the Hainish universe) destroys the installation following Rocannon's escape. Being telepathic, Rocannon feels the hundreds of deaths which he had caused at the moment when they happen - and while recognizing the need to have taken this action, he feels deeply guilty and is further traumatized, in effect burned out and incapable of ever initiating any further action. After the completion of his quest, Rocannon retires with the Angyar of the south continent, surrounded by sympathetic people and with a loving woman at his side. When rescuers from the League finally arrive 9 years later, restricted to relativistic travel below light speed, they find him dead, and slowly becoming a part of mythology. He would never know that the planet had been named Rokanan after him.
370203	/m/020cg8	Always Coming Home	Ursula K. Le Guin	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book weaves around the story of a Kesh woman called Stone Telling, who lived for years with her father's people&mdash;the Dayao or Condor people, whose society is rigid, patriarchal, hierarchical and militarily expansionist. The story fills less than a third of the book, with the rest being a mixture of Kesh cultural lore (including poetry, prose of various kinds, mythos, rituals, and recipes), essays on Kesh culture, and the musings of the narrator, "Pandora". Some editions of the book were accompanied by a tape of Kesh music and poetry. Pandora describes the book as a protest against contemporary civilization, which the Kesh call "the Sickness of Man". Pandora muses that one key difference is that the Kesh have solved the problem of overpopulation—there are many fewer of them than there are of us. They use such inventions of civilization as writing, steel, guns, electricity, trains, and a computer network (see below). However, unlike most neighboring societies, they reject government, a non-laboring caste, expansion of population or territory, disbelief in what we consider supernatural, and human domination of the natural environment. They blend millennia of human economic culture by combining aspects of hunter-gatherer, agriculture, and industry, but reject cities; indeed, what they call towns would count as villages now.
370284	/m/020crd	The Last of the Mohicans	James Fenimore Cooper	1826-02	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The action takes place around Glens Falls in upstate New York. Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of Lieutenant Colonel Munro, are traveling with a column of reinforcements from Fort Edward to Fort William Henry, where Munro is commanding an army. In the party are David Gamut the singing teacher, and Major Duncan Heyward, the group's military leader. Magua, the treacherous Huron scout, offers to take the Munro party to Fort William Henry, but leads them into an ambush instead. Natty Bumppo (also known as Hawkeye) and his two Mohican friends, Chingachgook and his son Uncas, rescue them just in time. Knowing that Magua (also known as Le Renard Subtil, the cunning fox) will soon return with reinforcements, Hawkeye and the Mohicans lead their new companions to a nearby cave. A group of Hurons sent by Magua chase them into the cave. After a fierce struggle, Hawkeye and his friends decide to split up for safety, with Hawkeye and the Mohicans hiding in a nearby stream, while Heyward, Gamut, and the Munro sisters retreat back into the cavern. Magua returns with more Hurons and captures Cora, Alice and the two men in the cave. The Hurons take their captives to a stream with mineral water, where they rest briefly while watchful of the others. The Hurons interrogate Heyward, who tells them that Hawkeye and the Mohicans have escaped and learns from them that Uncas's nickname is the Bounding Elk and that Hawkeye is referred to as the Long Rifle or La Longue Carabine. When Cora demands why the Hurons were so eager to capture them, Magua tells his captives that Colonel Munro and other white officers came to the Huron village one day and introduced him to fire-water (whiskey) and his drunken misbeavior caused the Hurons to expel him from the tribe. He subsequently allied himself with the Mohawks (allies of the British) and went to war with them against the French and their Huron allies. Magua continued to drink the fire-water during the fighting and after one act of disorder, Munro ordered him tied to a post and whipped, wounding him both physically and spiritually. He has since gone back to the Hurons and is seeking revenge against Munro. He offers to spare the others in return for Cora following him to the Huron village as his wife, but Cora flatly refuses. Hawkeye, Uncas, and Chingachgook surprise the Hurons and kill most of them with Heyward's assistance, but Magua escapes once more. Hawkeye tells the former hostages that they had been secretly trailing the Hurons after their capture. After a short chase they decided to take action after the Hurons threatened to kill the captives. Heyward and Hawkeye lead the Munro women to Fort William Henry, which is by now surrounded by the French. Munro sends Hawkeye to Fort Edward to request reinforcements but, bearing General Webb's reply, he is captured by the French, who deliver him to Fort William Henry without the letter. Heyward attempts to parley with the French, but learns nothing. He then returns to Colonel Munro and announces his love for Alice. Munro reveals Cora's heritage—the Colonel's first wife was of mixed race—then gives his permission for Heyward to pay court to Alice. The French general, Montcalm, invites Munro to a parley. He shows him Webb's letter: the English general has refused to send further reinforcements. Realizing that his cause is lost, Munro reluctantly agrees to Montcalm's terms. The British soldiers, together with their wounded, and women and children, are allowed to leave the fort and withdraw. Outside the fort, the column is set upon by 2000 French allied Indian warriors. In the chaos of the massacre, Magua finds Cora and Alice, and leads them away towards the Huron village. David Gamut follows at a distance. Three days later, Hawkeye and the Mohicans, Heyward and Colonel Munro enter the ruins of Fort William Henry, where they plan their next move by the council fire. The next morning they set off for Lake George on canoes where they encounter a group of Hurons and escape after a brief but intense chase. Upon reaching shore they hide the canoe and follow Magua's trail. Outside the Huron village, they come across David Gamut, teaching beavers to sing psalms. The Huron have not killed him as they will not harm a madman. Gamut tells them that Alice is in the village, Cora is in another village belonging to the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) tribe, and Magua has gone moose hunting. Heyward disguises himself as a French medicine man and enters the village with Gamut, intending to rescue Alice. Hawkeye and Uncas set out to rescue Cora. Chingachgook remains with Colonel Munro, who has become somewhat deranged as a result of events. Heyward's disguise is successful, but before he can find Alice, Uncas is led into the village, having been captured by the Hurons. Magua returns, and demands that Uncas be put to death, but does not recognise Heyward in his guise as a medicine man. Hawkeye steals a bearskin from a village shaman and uses it to disguise himself while he follows Heyward. They rescue Alice after finding her in a cave, taking her out of the village by wrapping her in cloth and convincing the Hurons she is a sick woman Heyward, as a French medicine man, had been asked to heal of an evil spirit. As Heyward carries Alice towards the Lenni Lenape village, David Gamut and Hawkeye (still disguised in bear skin of the village shamen) return to the village to rescue Uncas. Uncas's guards recognize the bear suit and allow the two to pass, believing Gamut will perform some magic to torture Uncas. Once reunited, Uncas dons the bear skin while Hawkeye dresses as Gamut and begins to sing. Gamut stays behind while Uncus and Hawkeye pass the guards, who did not notice a different white man exited than had entered. The pair flee to the Delaware village. The Hurons discover Gamut and realize that Uncas has escaped. When they enter the cave, they find Magua, who had been left bound and gagged by Heyward and Hawkeye as they rescued Alice. Magua tells them everything about Hawkeye's and Heyward's deception, enraging the other Hurons, who vow revenge against Hawkeye and his companions and quickly reaffirm Magua as their chief. Magua then makes his way to the Delaware village, demands the return of his prisoners, warning that one of the white captives is La Longue Carabine, the infamous killer of natives. At the council of chiefs, the venerable sage Tamenund is called on to make the final judgement. He asks which of the prisoners is La Longue Carabine. Hawkeye initially remains silent, since he does not claim the title for himself (His weapon is a smoothbore), so Heyward, mistaking Hawkeye wishes to be undiscovered, claims he is the man in question. Hawkeye then also claims the title, explaining the delay. To resolve the issue a shooting match is organised, at which Hawkeye outshoots the Major. Tamenund grants Magua's wish to keep his prisoners, but as she is being taken away Cora falls at the great sage's feet and begs him to reconsider. Unable to convince him to free either her sister or herself, she eventually begs him to hear her side of the story from a Delaware warrior, referring to Uncas. The tribe did not realize Uncas's heritage, and so he is summoned to speak. Upon arrival, Uncas offends the Delaware, who tear off his clothing in preparation to beat him. They stop upon discovering a turtle tattoo on his chest, identifying his people. At this point, Tamenund accedes to all Uncas asks and frees the prisoners, except he cannot free Cora as it was Magua who brought her to the village. Magua reluctantly also agrees to Uncas's demands but announces his intention to keep Cora as his wife, spurning Hawkeye's offer to allow Magua to take him prisoner instead in exchange for releasing Cora. Uncas and Heyward both vow to hunt down and kill Magua and rescue Cora as the Huron chief leaves with his captive. According to custom, Tamenund has agreed to give Magua a three-hour head start before permitting the Delaware to pursue in attempt to rescue Cora. As the Delawares use this time to prepare for battle and equip themselves with tomahawks and rifles, David Gamut finds his way to the Delaware village, and tells the group that he saw Magua and Cora return to the Huron village, where he sent Cora into the same cave where Heyward rescued Alice before ordering the Huron warriors into battle. With this in mind, the Delawares led by Uncas march into the forest to confront the Hurons. A battle breaks out between the Hurons and the Delaware, who are in three parties: one led by Hawkeye and Heyward, one by Uncas, and one by Chingachgook and Munro. During the course of battle the Hurons are forced back to their village with heavy losses and ultimately are defeated when the Delaware capture the village. Magua escapes with Cora and two of his warriors with Uncas, Hawkeye, and Heyward in pursuit, and they seek to flee by a mountain path which has a precipitous drop on one side, but Cora stops on a rocky ledge and refuses to go further. Uncas attacks the Huron, but both he and Cora are killed in the fight. Hawkeye arrives too late, and shoots Magua, who then falls to his death from a nearby cliff. The novel concludes with a lengthy account of the funerals of Uncas and Cora. The Lenni Lenape sing that Uncas and Cora will marry in the afterlife. Hawkeye does not believe this, but he renews his friendship with Chingachgook. Tamenund foresees that "The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again...."
370894	/m/020fj3	The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia	Samuel Johnson			 The plot is simple in the extreme. Rasselas, son of the King of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia), is shut up in a beautiful valley, "till the order of succession should call him to the throne." He grows weary of the factitious entertainments of the place, and after much brooding escapes with his sister Nekayah, her attendant Pekuah and his poet-friend Imlac. They are to see the world and search for happiness, but after some sojourn in Egypt, where they encounter various classes of society and undergo a few mild adventures, they perceive the futility of their search and abruptly return to Abyssinia. Local color is almost nonexistent and episodic elements, e.g. the story of Imlac and that of the mad astronomer, abound. There is little of incident, no love-making, with few endeavors to charm the fancy, and with but slight recognition of the claims of sentiment.
371520	/m/020hg9	Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz	L. Frank Baum	1908	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the story, set after the last book, Dorothy is joining Uncle Henry in California at Hugson's Ranch, on their way home from Australia, Dorothy having visited friends in San Francisco. She strikes up an acquaintance with Hugson's nephew and her second cousin, Zeb. Dorothy, Eureka, who is Dorothy's cat, and Zeb are riding a buggy being pulled by a cab-horse named Jim when an earthquake starts and opens a crevice beneath them that sends them hurtling into the bowels of the earth. Dorothy, Eureka, Jim, Zeb, and the buggy alight in the land of the Mangaboos, a vegetable people who accuse them of causing the Rain of Stones (what the Mangaboos call the earthquake because they are beneath the surface of the earth, and earth instead falls on them). Zeb is surprised by this strange new land, but Dorothy surmises that they are in a fairy country because they are meeting vegetable people and the animals&mdash;Jim and Eureka&mdash;are now speaking. Just as they are about to be sentenced to death by the Mangaboos, a hot air balloon falls out of the sky, and in the basket is the Wizard of Oz, whom Dorothy last met as he floated away from the Emerald City. The Wizard brags about his showmanship and with the others' aid attempts to awe the Mangaboos into sparing their lives. After defeating their wizard Gwig by slicing him in half&mdash;and showing him, as a vegetable, completely solid inside&mdash;he is appointed by the Mangaboo prince as their temporary wizard. The Wizard, Dorothy, and Zeb temporarily escape the fate of all intruders&mdash;to be cut up and planted&mdash;when they release a Princess from the garden who assumes authority. The Prince will now lose his authority and be planted himself. The cold Princess, however, vows to have Jim and Eureka killed nonetheless, so they all plan to escape higher into the earth where the Mangaboos cannot follow them due to the stronger pull of gravity the further they rise. Dorothy, Eureka, Zeb, Jim, and the Wizard enter a beautiful green valley and the Wizard's nine tiny piglets devour an enticing fruit which they find makes them invisible. They enter a seemingly empty cottage and are welcomed by invisible people, for they have entered the Valley of Voe, whose inhabitants use their invisibility to hide from marauding bears. The inhabitants of Voe help them escape the bears and explain what lies ahead, particularly the terrible Gargoyles. (A story the Voe people tell seems to indicate that by now Baum had decided that people in a fairy land do not die; even cut into pieces, an individual is still active and aware. See The Tin Woodman of Oz for another example of this.) The companions reach the base of Pyramid Mountain and meet the Braided Man halfway up. He used to make holes, Flutters (guaranteed to make any flag flutter on a windless day), and Rustles for silk skirts. One day he stacked up many postholes he had made and fell into Pyramid Mountain and since then kept shop there, continuing to make his wares. His facial hair has gotten so long, however, that he has had to braid it to keep from tripping. Dorothy had given him a blue bow, for he had tied each braid with a different color hair bow. The only color he didn't have was blue so Dorothy gave him one. They head into the land of the Gargoyles and at first repel them successfully because the winged wooden creatures are startled by loud noises. However, they do not tire and soon imprison Dorothy and her friends. They manage to escape the Gargoyles' grasp, using their detached wings and Jim's guidance. After a close encounter with the Dragonettes, baby dragons whose mother has tied their tails to a post until she returns from hunting, they find themselves trapped in a cave which they can not exit. Dorothy suggests that she signal Ozma to bring them to Oz by using the magic belt which she'd captured from the Nome King in Ozma of Oz. She does so at a prearranged time of day, and Dorothy, the Wizard, Zeb, Eureka, and Jim arrive within the Emerald City. Soon after renewing his acquaintance with the Emerald City staff and making the acquaintance of Ozma, the Wizard elects to remain in Oz permanently. The others' visit is highlighted by the wooden Saw-Horse beating Jim in a race and the trial of Eureka for eating Ozma's pet piglet given to her by the Wizard; in fact, the kitten is innocent and the piglet alive and well, but the obstinate Eureka will not say so. After the piglet is restored to Ozma and Zeb and Jim decide they've had enough of fairyland, Ozma then uses the magic belt to send Dorothy and Eureka back to Kansas, and Zeb and Jim back to California.
371532	/m/020hhl	Forward the Foundation	Isaac Asimov	1993-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Forward the Foundation, Isaac Asimov continues the chronicles of the life of Hari Seldon, first begun in Prelude to Foundation. The story takes place on Trantor, and begins eight years after the events of Prelude to Foundation. It depicts how Seldon developed his theory of psychohistory from hypothetical concept to practical application in galactic events. Beginning during the latter years of the reign of Emperor Cleon I, Seldon's work brings him into the world of galactic politics, and takes him to the height of Imperial power as Cleon's First Minister, after the mysterious disappearance of his previous First Minister, Eto Demerzel (whom Seldon knows as R. Daneel Olivaw). Seldon becomes First Minister to the Emperor, but loses the position ten years later after the Emperor is assassinated. Gradually, Seldon loses all those who are close to him. Seldon's wife Dors is killed saving his life from an assassin. His adopted son Raych is killed in the Rebellion in Santanni; his daughter-in-law and second granddaughter are missing and never found. Yugo Amaryl dies early, brought on by the strain of his work. Except for his granddaughter Wanda, Seldon is alone. He eventually sends her off to start the Second Foundation. The Galactic Empire's decline accelerates during the later chapters, as does the decline of Seldon's physical health. At the same time, Seldon finally begins to unravel the secrets of psychohistory; he initiates a grand plan that will come to be known as the Seldon Plan, the road map for mankind's post-Imperial survival.
373170	/m/020q34	Ramona	Helen Hunt Jackson	1884	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Southern California, shortly after the Mexican-American War, a Scots-Native American orphan girl, Ramona, is raised by Señora Gonzaga Moreno, the sister of Ramona's deceased foster mother. Señora Moreno has raised Ramona as part of the family, giving her every luxury, but only because Ramona's foster mother had requested it as her dying wish. Because of Ramona's Native American heritage, Moreno does not love her. That love is reserved for her only child, Felipe Moreno, whom she adores. Señora Moreno considers herself a Mexican, although California has recently been taken over by the United States. She hates the Americans, who have cut up her huge rancho after disputing her claim to it. Señora Moreno delays the sheep shearing, a major event on the rancho, awaiting the arrival of a group of Indians from Temecula whom she always hires for that work. She is also awaiting a priest, Father Salvierderra, from Santa Barbara. She arranges for the priest so that the Indian workers can worship and make confession in her chapel, rather than leaving the rancho. Ramona falls in love with Alessandro, a young Indian sheepherder and the son of Pablo Assis, the chief of the tribe. Señora Moreno is outraged, because although Ramona is half-Indian, the Señora does not want her to marry an Indian. Ramona realizes that Señora Moreno has never loved her and she and Alessandro elope. Alessandro and Ramona have a daughter, and travel around Southern California trying to find a place to settle. In the aftermath of the war, Alessandro's tribe was driven off their land, marking the beginning of European-American settlement in California. They endure misery and hardship, for the Americans who buy their land also demand their houses and their farm tools. Greedy Americans drive them off from several homesteads, and they cannot find a permanent community that is not threatened by encroachment of United States settlers. They finally move up into the San Bernardino Mountains. Alessandro slowly loses his mind, due to the constant humiliation. He loves Ramona fiercely, and regrets having taken her away from relative comfort in return for "bootless" wandering. Their daughter "Eyes of the Sky" dies because a white doctor would not go to their homestead to treat her. They have another daughter, named Ramona, but Alessandro still suffers. One day he rides off with the horse of an American, who follows him and shoots him, although he knew that Alessandro was mentally unbalanced. Ramona was missing from the rancho for two years. Felipe Moreno finds the widowed Ramona and they marry. He has always loved her and finds her more beautiful than ever. Felipe had considered Alessandro a friend, and both he and Ramona are determined to leave California because of the Americans. They settle in Mexico, where they have many children. Ramona believes her passion is spent, but she is good to Felipe, who adores her. The most beautiful of their children is Ramona, Alessandro's daughter.
373555	/m/020rt0	Tik-Tok of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1914	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo, a small monarchy separated from the rest of Oz's Winkie Country, sets out to raise an army to conquer Oz. Seventeen men eventually make up the Army of Oogaboo; they march out of their valley. Glinda magically rearranges the path through the mountains and Queen Ann and her army march out of Oz into a low-lying, befogged country. Betsy Bobbin, a girl who is a year older than Dorothy Gale, and her loyal mule Hank are washed ashore during a storm. They arrive at a large greenhouse that is the domain of the Rose Kingdom, where the roses tell them that no strangers are allowed. Just as the Royal Gardener (apparently the only human allowed in this flowery kingdom) is about to pass sentence on Betsy and Hank, the Shaggy Man falls through the greenhouse's roof, and charms the Gardener into sparing all of their lives with his Love Magnet. The flowers, not having hearts, are unaffected by the Magnet, and force the travellers to leave, taking with them the newly plucked Rose Princess Ozga, a cousin of Ozma, the ruler of Oz. The Shaggy Man relates how Ozma sent him here by means of the Magic Belt because he wanted to find his brother, who went digging underground in Oklahoma and disappeared. He surmised that the Nome King, ruler of the underground Nome Kingdom, captured him. They meet up with Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter; and they rescue Tik-Tok from the well where the Nome King had tossed him. Once Tik-Tok is wound up, he accompanies Betsy, Hank, the Shaggy Man, Ozga, and Polychrome to their chance encounter with Queen Ann and her army. In a rage, Queen Ann orders them to be seized and bound, but Private Files &mdash; the only private in this army of generals, colonels, and majors &mdash; refuses to bind innocent girls. He resigns his commission on the spot. When Queen Ann learns of the riches to be found in the Nome King's underground kingdom, she calms down and accepts the services of Tik-Tok as her new private. The Nome King (who has recovered from having drunk the Water of Oblivion in The Emerald City of Oz) is aghast at this group coming toward his underground kingdom. Since no one can be killed in Oz, the Nome King seeks to discourage them, first by taking them through the Rubber Country, and then disposing of them by dropping them through the Hollow Tube, a conduit leading to the other side of the world. There the party enters the jurisdiction of the immortal called Tittiti-Hoochoo, the Great Jinjin, who vows to punish the Nome King for using the Hollow Tube. He sends Tik-Tok and the others back with his Instrument of Vengeance, a lackadaisical dragon named Quox. Quox and his riders bound from the other end of the Tube into an army of Nomes and narrowly evade them. Queen Ann and the Army of Oogaboo fall into the Slimy Cave when they enter the Nome Kingdom; the Shaggy Man and his companions are captured by the Nome King. Ann and her army escape the cave while the Nome King amuses himself by transforming his captives into various objects. Quox arrives, bursting through the main cavern. The Nome King sees the ribbon around Quox's neck and forgets all the magic he ever knew. The Nome King is driven out of his kingdom when Quox releases six eggs from the padlock around his neck. The eggs, poisonous to Nomes, follow the Nome King to the Earth's surface and confine him there. The new Nome King, the former chief steward Kaliko, vows to help the Shaggy Man find his brother, who he knows is in the Metal Forest. The Shaggy Man meets his brother in the center of the Forest; but the brother was cursed with a charm of ugliness by the former Nome King. A kiss will break a charm. First Betsy, a mortal maid, tries to undo the spell; then Ozga, a mortal maid who was once a fairy, tries. Finally the fairy Polychrome's kiss restores the Shaggy Man's brother to his former self. There is a banquet of rejoicing in the Nome Kingdom, and the former Nome King earnestly pleads to be let back into the underground lair ("No Nome can really be happy except underground"), which Kaliko allows on condition that he behave himself. Once on the surface again, Polychrome ascends her rainbow and Ozma uses the magic belt to bring Tik-Tok back to Oz and send Queen Ann, the Army of Oogaboo, Files, and Ozga back to Oogaboo. The Shaggy Man only agrees to return when his brother, Betsy, and Hank are allowed to enter Oz too. Upon being welcomed in Oz, Hank, the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, and the Saw-Horse debate who is the best mistress &mdash; Betsy (for Hank), Dorothy (for the Lion and the Tiger), or Ozma (for the Saw-Horse). The three girls are listening and laugh at a silly quarrel, which the animals realize is silly too. In addition, Dorothy finally gets to hear her dog Toto speak &mdash; for all animals can in the Land of Oz.
373711	/m/020s7b	The Truce at Bakura	Kathy Tyers	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While recovering from their victory against the Empire at Endor, the Rebel Alliance intercepts an Imperial probe containing a distress call for the Emperor. The message details a lizardlike race of aliens invading the Outer Rim planet Bakura. With Palpatine dead and the Imperial Navy scattered, Luke Skywalker volunteers to lead a force to intercept the alien invasion and save Bakura. Upon arrival, the Rebel Alliance forces ally with the remnants of the Imperial garrison to repel an invasion by the reptilian Ssi-Ruuk race under the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium, which seeks to establish a beachhead in the larger galaxy. The Ssi-Ruuk seek to harvest a supply of life forms, whose life energies power their advanced technology through a process known as entechment. The Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker especially intrigues the Ssi-Ruuk, because they believe his Force powers could allow the Ssi-ruuk to entech beings from a distance. Obi-Wan Kenobi appears to Luke and underscores the danger of the Ssi-Ruuk if they get into the greater galaxy with this technology. The Ssi-ruuk themselves cannot sense the Force, but they know of it through a captured human, Dev Sibwarra, who is Force-sensitive but untrained (his mother was killed by the Ssi-ruuk) and has been brainwashed into furthering the Ssi-ruuvi agenda. On a personal level, Luke finds himself consistently distracted by one of Bakura's senators, Gaeriel Captison, and by the nascent attraction forming between them, despite her religious objections to the Jedi Order. Princess Leia and Han Solo also struggle to find some time together and hash out their newly-formed relationship. Leia, putting diplomatic feelers out into a world that 'joined' the Empire only three years ago, discovers that Bakura chafes under Imperial rule — as do some of the Imperials, notably ranking officer Commander Pter Thanas — though Imperial governor Wilek Nereus is too crafty to let dissension spread too far. Finally, Leia must find a way to cope with the revelation given to her on Endor — that Darth Vader is actually her father, Anakin Skywalker — when she is visited by his spirit, who begs for her forgiveness. In the end, Nereus attempts to turn Luke over to the Ssi-ruuk in exchange for their retreat, but though the kidnapping succeeds, Luke manages to fight them off and escape. He is also able to free Dev of his brainwashing and decides to take him on as an apprentice, but Dev is injured during the escape and later dies of his wounds. The joint Rebel-Imperial force turns back the Ssi-ruuk, and during the chaos, Bakuran resistance cells overthrow Nereus; in his absence, Bakura decides to join the Rebel Alliance. Commander Thanas defects as well, although he first destroys the Rebel cruiser-carrier Flurry. New Republic Intelligence later referred to the battle as the "Bakura Incident", and believed that it would be best if the New Republic attempted to prevent widespread public knowledge of the Ssi-Ruuk, advice that was taken controversially at best. In addition, Luke finally makes his breakthrough with Gaeriel, though he must shortly leave her when the Alliance forces depart at the end of the novel, to continue the ongoing fight against the Empire.
374508	/m/020vt6	An Enemy of the People	Henrik Ibsen			 Dr. Thomas Stockmann is a popular citizen of a small coastal town in Norway. The town has recently invested a large amount of public and private money towards the development of baths, a project led by Dr. Stockmann and his brother, Peter Stockmann, the Mayor. The town is expecting a surge in tourism and prosperity from the new baths, said to be of great medicinal value, and as such, the baths are a source of great local pride. However, just as the baths are proving successful, Dr. Stockmann discovers that waste products from the town's tannery are contaminating the waters, causing serious illness amongst the tourists. He expects this important discovery to be his greatest achievement, and promptly sends a detailed report to the Mayor, which includes a proposed solution which would come at a considerable cost to the town. To his surprise, Dr. Stockmann finds it difficult to get through to the authorities. They seem unable to appreciate the seriousness of the issue and unwilling to publicly acknowledge and address the problem because it could mean financial ruin for the town. As the conflict develops, the Mayor warns his brother that he should "acquiesce in subordinating himself to the community." Dr. Stockmann refuses to accept this, and holds a town meeting at Captain Horster's house in order to persuade people that the baths must be closed. The townspeople — eagerly anticipating the prosperity that the baths will bring — refuse to accept Dr. Stockmann's claims, and his friends and allies, who had explicitly given support for his campaign, turn against him en masse. He is taunted and denounced as a lunatic, an "Enemy of the People." In a scathing rebuttal of both the Victorian notion of community and the principles of democracy, Dr. Stockmann proclaims that in matters of right and wrong, the individual is superior to the multitude, which is easily led by self-advancing demagogues. Dr. Stockmann sums up Ibsen's denunciation of the masses, with the memorable quote "...the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone." He also says: "A minority may be right; a majority is always wrong."
374708	/m/020wl9	The Scarecrow of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1917	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Cap'n Bill, a sailor with a wooden peg-leg, and his friend, a little girl named Trot, set out from California on a calm day for a short ride in their row-boat. The calm day suddenly turns dark and stormy and Cap'n Bill and Trot are washed overboard and are carried by mermaids (referred to but not seen) to a cave where they meet an ostrich-like flying creature called an Ork. Flying on the Ork's back, the Ork, Cap'n Bill and Trot strain to arrive at an island where a grim man calling himself Pessim the Observer points out that the Ork should not have eaten the light lavender berries growing on the island. The light lavender berries cause a person to shrink, and the dark purple berries cause a person to grow. Once the Ork resumes normal size, Cap'n Bill and Trot leave the island to escape the Observer's negative attitude&mdash;which drove the people in his homeland to exile him here in the first place. To reduce the load on the Ork, Cap'n Bill and Trot each eat a light lavender berry so they are small enough to carry in Trot's bonnet. Flying away from the island, Cap'n Bill, Trot, and the Ork alight in the land of Mo, one of Baum's non-Oz creations. They meet the Bumpy Man, who specializes in serving sugar and molasses and has some of their appearance too. After dining on Mo rain (lemonade) and Mo snow (popcorn), they run into Button Bright, the sailor boy from The Road to Oz who has gotten lost again. Cap'n Bill calls down some of the native birds (who, like all birds in fairy countries, can talk back) and offers them the dark purple berries to make them grow large enough to carry himself, Trot, and Button-Bright (for the Ork can fly) to the land of Oz across the Deadly Desert to the north of them. When they make it across the desert, Button-Bright, Cap'n Bill, and Trot are set down in a field and the Ork leaves them to find his own country, which he got lost from on a routine flight. The place Button-Bright, Cap'n Bill, and Trot have arrived in, Jinxland, has had a turbulent recent history. The rightful king of Jinxland, King Kynd, was killed by his prime minister Phearse, who was in turn killed by his prime minister Krewl. Now King Krewl rules over the land and seeks to marry King Kynd's daughter, Princess Gloria, to legitimize his claim to the throne. However, she wants nothing to do with him or another suitor, Googly-Goo; she is in love with Pon, the current gardener who is the son of the first usurper Phearse. King Krewl and Googly-Goo decide that if neither of them can have Gloria, no one can, and hire a witch named Blinkie to freeze her heart so she can love no one. Cap'n Bill happens on this plot, and to keep him from interfering, Blinkie turns him into a grasshopper. The Scarecrow is at Glinda's palace in the Quadling Country and learns about these events from reading Glinda's Great Book of Records, a magical volume which transcribes every event in the world at the instant it happens. The Scarecrow wants to help Cap'n Bill, Button-Bright, and Trot, and Glinda sends him to Jinxland with some of her magic to aid him. The Scarecrow uses a magic thread to cross the gorge separating Jinxland from the rest of the Quadling Country, and before he meets Cap'n Bill and Trot, he encounters the Ork, who has found his homeland. The Scarecrow attempts to depose Krewl and is captured, with Googly-Goo suggesting the Scarecrow be burned, but then the Ork arrives with fifty others who attack the Jinxlanders and turn the tables on Krewl. The victorious party then arrives at Blinkie’s and makes her undo her magic on Cap'n Bill and Princess Gloria by using a magic powder to shrink her in size. When she has undone her evil spells, the Scarecrow stops Blinkie's shrinking, but she remains at a small size and loses all her magic powers. Gloria takes the throne of Jinxland and elevates Pon to be her royal consort, and the Scarecrow, Button-Bright, Cap'n Bill, Trot, and the Orks return to the Emerald City for a celebration.
374767	/m/020wsd	The Genius and the Goddess	Aldous Huxley	1955-12	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story begins in 1951. John Rivers is speaking to a friend about his encounter with the Maartens family. In 1921, Rivers, who was extremely sheltered by his widowed mother, is employed as a lab assistant to Henry Maartens, after receiving his PhD. Dr. Maartens is a Nobel Prize winning, socially awkward physicist. Rivers is invited to live in Henry's home until he finds his own place, but the Maartens family soon develops a fondness for Rivers, and insists that he stay with them. Rivers develops respect and fondness for the family, regarding Henry as a genius and his wife Katy as a goddess. As his attraction towards Katy grows, Rivers is simultaneously victimized by her 15-year-old daughter Ruth. After being rejected by a 17-year-old football player and scholarship winner, Ruth tries to be a dramatic poetess. She fantasizes that she is in love with Rivers to find solace and an outlet for her emotions. Rivers' experience with the Maartens family takes an important turn when Katy has to leave for a time to care for her dying mother. The unstable, asthmatic Henry becomes an emotional wreck without his much younger wife to care for him. The children, the household, and Henry himself are cared for only by the housekeeper Beluah and Rivers. Ruth takes advantage of her mother's absence to entertain her cosmetic interests and act out her imaginary love for Rivers, who just laughs at Ruth’s poems. Katy returns sooner than planned because of Henry's declining health. She herself has so much vitality that she cannot minister Henry any longer. Learning of her mother's death, Katy turns to Rivers for comfort. Their relationship becomes sexual. Having lost his virginity, Rivers feels guilt for betraying his mother and pious background, and also for betraying his sick master Henry Maartens. As Henry recovers, Katy and Rivers continue their affair secretly. Ruth suspects Rivers of being in love with her mother, and presents him with a poem that subtly describes his affair with her mother. Rivers laughs off the poem, says that it reminds him of his father's sermons, and hides his true emotions. Katy and Rivers agree that he must leave. Rivers prepares to leave, saying that his mother is ill, but Katy and Ruth die in a car accident. Rivers is dejected and only recovers because he meets Helen, his future wife, at a party. Henry lives on and marries Katy's sister, who dies due to her obesity. After her death, Henry Maartens has a last and fourth marriage to a young redhead named Alicia. Henry dies at the age of 87. The story ends with Rivers, having Henry’s biography and the memories of his life at the Maartens'.
374803	/m/020wv3	Balance Point	Kathy Tyers		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 On the planet Duro, a new galactic refugee settlement close to the Core, Jacen Solo has a horrifying vision through the Force about the fate of the galaxy. Amidst the invasion by the Yuuzhan Vong, anger and darkness will become the ultimate enemy of one pivotal individual in the war. And if Jacen embraces such evil, then the galaxy will fall. In order to avoid such catastrophe, Jacen decides to turn his back on the Force forever. However, even in the terror of the Vong's continued invasion of the galaxy, a ray of hope shines in the conceiving of Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker's child. Duro eventually becomes the next target of the Yuuzhan Vong. Though the conquest of the world is successful, Jacen, in a bid to save his mother, Leia, from certain doom, confronts the Vong Warmaster Tsavong Lah in combat, embraces the Force once more, and defeats him. The Skywalkers, the Solos, and several of their friends and allies flee Duro in its loss. And to make things worse, in the aftermath of his humiliation by Jacen, Tsavong Lah makes an ultimatum to the rest of the galaxy: If every single member of the Jedi are brought to the Yuuzhan Vong, especially Jacen, then the invaders will settle with Duro and conclude their invasion with what worlds they already have.
374924	/m/020x7_	The Old Capital	Yasunari Kawabata	1962	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Chieko Sada is the daughter of Takichiro and Shige, who operate a kimono wholesale business in Kyoto. Now twenty, Chieko has known since she was in middle school that she was a foundling adopted by Takichiro and Shige. However, as told by Shige, they snatched Chieko when she was a baby "Under the cherry blossoms at night at Gion Shrine". The discrepancy on whether Chieko was a foundling or stolen is part of the plot and is revealed later in the story. Soon after a chance encounter at Yasaka Shrine, Chieko learns of a twin sister Naeko, who had remained in her home village in Kitayama working in the mountain forests north of the city. The identical looks of Chieko and Naeko confuse Hideo, a traditional weaver, who is a potential suitor of Chieko. The novel, one of the last that Kawabata completed before his death, examines themes common to much of his literature: the gulf between the sexes and the anxiety its recognition brings. The story is set in Kyoto, and incorporates various festivals celebrated there. One of these is the Gion festival which occurs in the book during July. As part of the Gion festival, there is a parade of floats constructed by various neighborhoods in Kyoto and one of Chieko fond memories is of Shin'ichi, who is interested in Chieko, participating as a festival boy. The Festival of the Ages is another important festival and this is where Hideo takes Chieko's twin, Naeko, to view the parade.
375035	/m/020xpv	Destiny's Way	Walter Jon Williams		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Jacen Solo, son of Han Solo and Princess Leia, has escaped from the Yuuzhan Vong with the aid of a Jedi Master from the time of the Old Republic, Vergere. Besides making cryptic references to Jacen's destiny, Vergere also reveals that she has spent the last fifty years with the Yuuzhan Vong in order to save the living world of Zonama Sekot, as well as to gather intelligence on the Vong themselves. Meanwhile, Han and Leia Organa Solo were visiting the Imperial Remnant, trying to coax it into allying with the New Republic. Though the Remnant's leader, Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, refuses the offer, he does give them the locations of the Galactic Empire's old hideaways in the deep core in order to help the Republic's war against the Yuuzhan Vong. In exchange, the Solos offer information on Yuuzhan Vong technology, especially the yammosks. A new government is forming on Mon Calamari after the fall of Coruscant. Luke Skywalker wants to prevent an anti-Jedi government from forming, so his friends in the Smugglers' Alliance blackmail the majority of New Republic Senators into voting for Jedi-supporting Senator Cal Omas rather than the anti-Jedi Fyor Rodan. Luke inducts nine Jedi Knights into the new Jedi order he is forming, among them Jacen, his sister Jaina Solo, and the new Hapan Queen Mother Tenel Ka. The New Republic forces, now assembled on the water world of Mon Calamari, plan their next attack on the Yuuzhan Vong with the aid of the now-retired Admiral Ackbar. However, some elements in the New Republic are desperate enough—the Bothans especially—to make the war against the Yuuzhan Vong one of extermination as well as victory. One method meant to accomplish such a task is through Alpha Red, a biological virus developed by New Republic agent Dif Scaur and Chiss scientists that had been successfully tested to eliminate anyone and anything with Yuuzhan Vong DNA. When word of Alpha Red got out, Vergere was able to infiltrate security and use the chemical compounds she manufactured through the Force, residing in her system, to transform Alpha Red into something harmless. Until Alpha Red can be concocted into something lethal against the Yuuzhan Vong again, it is ruled out as an option to use against the galactic invaders. The success of the operation against Ebaq 9, a long-neglected world on a former Imperial trade route, leads the Yuuzhan Vong into a trap that halts their advance by killing nearly every warrior who went to Ebaq, including Warmaster Tsavong Lah, who died in combat against Jaina Solo. Vergere sacrifices herself to save Jacen from the Vong by plowing a stolen A-wing into Ebaq 9's surface. In the aftermath of the Battle of Ebaq 9, the New Republic is reformed into the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, or the Galactic Alliance for short. The Yuuzhan Vong agent provocateur Nom Anor, who suggested the assault on Ebaq 9, is obliged to give his life for his plan's failure, but he disguises himself and hides beneath Yuuzhan'tar's (formerly Coruscant's) streets.
375354	/m/020y_v	Timequake	Kurt Vonnegut	1997	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Vonnegut uses the premise of a timequake (or repetition of actions) in which there is no free will. The idea of determinism is explored—as it is in many of his previous works—to assert that people really have no free will. Kilgore Trout serves again as the main character, who the author declares as having died in 2001, at Xanadu retreat in Rhode Island. Vonnegut explains in the beginning of the book that he was not satisfied with the original version of Timequake he wrote (or Timequake One). Taking parts of Timequake One and combining it with personal thoughts and anecdotes produced the finished product, so-called Timequake Two. Many of the anecdotes deal with Vonnegut's family, the death of loved ones, and people's last words. The plot, while centered on Trout, is also a sort of ramble in which Vonnegut goes off on complete tangents to the plot and comes back dozens of pages later: the Timequake has thrust citizens of the year 2001 back in time to 1991 to repeat every action they undertook during that time. Most of the small stories in the book expound on the depression and sadness wrought by watching oneself make bad choices: people watch their parents die again, drive drunk or cause accidents that severely injure others. At the end of the timequake, when people resume control, they are depressed and gripped by ennui. Kilgore Trout is the only one not affected by the apathy, and thus helps revive others by telling them, "You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do." In the conclusion of this book, Vonnegut (who has inserted himself into the text, something he also did in Breakfast of Champions and, to a lesser degree, in Slaughterhouse-Five) meets other authors for a celebration of Trout. The celebration, described as a "clambake," is heavily foreshadowed throughout the novel's previous chapters.
375359	/m/020z0n	The Neverending Story	Michael Ende	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book centers on a boy, Bastian Balthazar Bux, who is neglected by his father (who has sunken into despair after his wife's death) and is bullied by his schoolmates. Whilst running from some of them, Bastian bursts into the antique book store of Carl Conrad Coreander. Bastian steals a book from the store called The Neverending Story which Coreander has been reading; he hides in his school's attic, where he proceeds to read the story through the rest of the day and the night, not realizing that he has effectively become a part of it. After a while of reading he is magically transfixed and is brought into the book. The book begins in Fantastica, when a "will-o'-the-wisp" goes to ask the Childlike Empress for help against the Nothing, which is spreading over the land. The Empress is ill, which is believed to be the cause of the Nothing (or vice versa); she sends the only person that can stop the Nothing, a boy warrior named Atreyu, to find a cure for her. Atreyu is a brave person, being considered a warrior even though he is a young boy of Bastian's age. While on his quest, Atreyu meets characters such as Morla the Aged One, the incorporeal oracle Uyulala, and the gnomes Urgl and Engywook. Atreyu also meets Falkor, the luckdragon, who helps him along the way. After Atreyu and Falkor get in the way of a fight of the Wind Giants, Atreyu gets thrown off Falkor's back and ends up in Spook City, Atreyu meets Gmork the werewolf, who has been following Atreyu since the early days of his quest, intending to kill him. In the course of his quest, Atreyu learns about the true nature of Fantastica and the Nothing: Fantastica is a representation of the dreams and fantasies of the real world; the Nothing and the sickness of the Childlike Empress are the effects of the lies humans use in their greed for power; it is the denial of dreams and fantasy which is destroying Fantastica. The only thing that can save Fantastica is a human child, who must give the Childlike Empress a new name to start again the cycle of life in Fantastica. Falkor and Atreyu return to the Ivory Tower, where the Childlike Empress lives. But since Bastian, in his lack of confidence, hesitates to take the step into Fantastica, the Childlike Empress confronts him with the fact that whatever he may think, he has already become part of the Neverending Story, and he must carry out his part in it. And Bastian does so by crying out the name he has chosen for the Empress: 'Moonchild'. Bastian comes to Fantastica and meets the Empress; she asks him to help re-build Fantastica with his imagination, and he subsequently has many adventures of his own in his new world. With the help of AURYN, a medallion that links him to the Empress, that gives him power over all the inhabitants of Fantastica and grants all of the boy's wishes, Bastian explores the Desert of Colors, battles the evil witch Xayide, and meets the three Deep Thinkers. Bastian and Atreyu become friends. However, due to Bastian's continuous wishing with the The Gem - which costs a memory each time - he begins to lose his true self, to wit, Atreyu becomes increasingly more worried about him. Xayide exploits the growing tension between the two, driving Bastian to a lust for power and eventually having himself crowned as Childlike Emperor. Atreyu leads a rebellion against Bastian, but narrowly escapes with his life. Upon pursuing Atreyu, Bastian stumbled on a colony of humans who were trapped in Fantastica - having lost all their memories as they had recklessly indulged in the power of Auryn - and realizes what has nearly become of himself. Bastian sets out to find the only thing he can wish for without losing himself: his own true wish. After Bastian loses his remaining memories, he is aided by Atreyu in fulfilling his one true wish, and manages to cure his father at the same time. After returning from Fantastica, he decides to return the book to its rightful owner, Carl Conrad Coreander, but the book has gone missing upon his return to the human world. However, Mr. Coreander reveals he has also been to Fantastica once, and the two readily agree to see each other soon and talk about their respective experiences. But as Coreander surmises, this is not the true end of the story, as Bastian is now likely to lead others onto their way to Fantastica in order to preserve both worlds.
376862	/m/02137n	The Chosen	Chaim Potok	1967-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Chosen is set in the mid-Twentieth Century, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City. The story takes place over a period of six years, beginning in 1944 when the protagonists are fifteen years old. It is set against the backdrop of the historical events of the time: the death of President Roosevelt, the end of World War II, the revelation of the Holocaust in Europe, and the struggle for the creation of the state of Israel. In Chap. 1: Reuven and Danny meet for the first time as rivals in a softball game between their school teams that turns into a spiritual war. Danny's batting style is such that the ball is sent speeding back up the middle of the field, and so he receives a reputation of trying to kill pitchers. Angered by unsuccessful attempts to hit Reuven's previous pitches, Danny hits a line drive toward Reuven, shattering his glasses and sending him to the hospital with an injured eye. While recovering from his injuries, Danny visits Reuven and apologizes and the two become best friends over time despite the difference between their cultures. Reuven learns that Danny's father, a respected Rabbi, only talks to Danny during religious conversations - Danny is being brought up 'in silence'. Reuven also learns Danny's deepest secret: he wishes to become a psychologist rather than a rabbi as his father wants. The only people who know about this are Reuven and a man who has been offering Danny advice, revealed to be Reuven's father. Reuven comes to experience the pain of silence himself, while the two young men are in college together. Though accepted as family after he stays with the Saunderses while his father is recovering at the hospital, he incurs Reb Saunders's wrath when he speaks favorably of the struggle to establish a secular Jewish nation in Palestine, which Saunders vehemently opposes. When Mr. Malter makes a speech at a pro-Israel rally that makes the newspapers, Saunders forbids his son to speak to Reuven, or even mention his name. (Danny breaks this order once, to let Reuven know, but tells him "I won't go against my father. I won't!") The ban lasts for two years, during which time Reuven experiences anguish, rage, and depression (particularly after his father suffers a second heart attack), before learning to cope with being alone. Their friendship resumes after modern Israel is founded; Danny explains to Reuven that Reb Saunders has relented, since the new nation is "no longer an issue; it's a fact." Reuven finds that Danny has come to terms with the silence imposed by his father, having discovered that silence can be a teacher, and a source of beauty as well as pain. Danny himself waits in fear for the day following graduation, when he must tell his father that he does not wish to succeed him. (Reb Saunders already knows this to be true, after Danny receives an acceptance letter from Columbia University.) Reuven again finds himself a buffer between father and son when, in the novel's climax, the two friends learn Reb Saunders's purpose for raising his son in silence: Reb Saunders had discovered early on that his son's dawning intelligence was far outstripping his sense of compassion for others. He wanted his son to understand the meaning of pain, so he shut him out emotionally. Finding the grown-up Danny indeed has a heart, and cares deeply about other people, Reb Saunders is willing to give his blessing to Danny's dream of studying psychology. "He will be a tzadik for the world," Reb Saunders tells Reuven. Saunders then finally, after many years, truly talks to Danny, asking him to forgive him for the pain he caused, bringing him up as he did. The words finally spoken, he leaves the room, and both boys burst into tears. Danny visits Reuven on his way to Columbia University, his Hasidic locks shorn and his clothing up to date. Reuven has definitely decided he wants to be a rabbi, and is going on to study at a yeshiva. Danny tells Reuven that his younger brother Levi will take his place as his father's successor, and his own relationship with Reb Saunders has completely changed. "We talk now," he says quietly. Danny is finally set free, and Reuven and Danny taste profoundly the pain in life, and the consolation of deep friendship. Danny goes on to study psychology. Danny: Danny's phenomenal mind compels him to seek knowledge other than that permitted by his father, and he spends his spare time reading voraciously in secret in the public library. (Danny tells Reuven about an older man he met there who has been recommending books for him to read; both are astonished when the man turns out to be Reuven's own father.) Danny does not want to inherit his father's position as leader of their sect, as is expected of him; he desires instead to become a psychologist. He learns to read German just to read a book by Freud. Another great conflict in his life is that his father does not speak to him, except when they study Jewish law together; this has been so since he was about ten, when his father told him not to come to him about problems anymore. Reb Saunders: Reb Saunders welcomes Reuven as his son's friend, even though he disapproves of his father's work. "You think it is easy to be a friend?" Reb Saunders says to Reuven when they first meet. "If you are truly his friend, you will learn otherwise." Reuven does learn as he is put in the position of being a buffer between father and son. Reb Saunders forces Reuven into a position to tell him of his son's secular studies even though Reb Saunders had known about it for a while already. Reuven impresses Reb Saunders by his understanding of Jewish law and tradition. Reb Saunders impresses Reuven in turn, as Reuven sees the important role he plays to the people of his congregation. He raised his son in silence, which allowed him to learn to find his soul. He was a very difficult man to understand, but a great one at that.
376954	/m/0213ll	The Campus Murders	Gil Brewer	1969	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Against the background of a student rebellion, two murders are committed on the Tisquanto State College campus. The first victim is one of the conservative deans, who is stabbed after his life-size effigy has been burned on a stake specially erected by a group of students. The second victim is a female student whose body is found dangling from a rope in the campus bell tower. The missing student is found near a river, severely beaten up and in a coma. In the end it turns out that one of the rebellious students is the killer. However, the murders are nothing to do with radical student politics: In a drug-induced frenzy, the killer has murdered the people who stood in his way to personal success or who were threatening to expose his criminal schemes.
377945	/m/021741	Rinkitink in Oz	L. Frank Baum	1916	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Pingaree is an island in the Nonestic Ocean that surrounds the fairy countries that encircle the Deadly Desert that surrounds the Land of Oz. Many years before this story begins, the armies of Regos and Coregos sought to invade Pingaree, but their advance was repelled by Pingaree's king with the help of three magic pearls given to him by the Mermaids. The Blue Pearl gave the king superhuman strength, the Pink Pearl protected him from any form of harm, and the White Pearl provided words of wisdom that only he could hear. Buoyed by the Pearl's magic powers, the king of Pingaree led his people to victory and the invaders from Regos and Coregos drowned on the return trip. At the beginning of Rinkitink in Oz King Kitticut and Queen Garee, the son and daughter-in-law of the victorious king are introduced. Their son Inga is coming of age to learn the secret of the pearls, and one day Kitticut reveals their secret hiding place to Inga. The next day, a royal visitor arrives at the island&mdash;King Rinkitink of Gilgad, a jovial and pleasantly plump fellow on royal holiday who remains on the island as Kitticut's guest for several weeks. Rinkitink's companion, other than the rowers from Gilgad, is a surly goat named Bilbil who seems to be Rinkitink's opposite in attitude. Invaders from Regos and Coregos come again to Pingaree and seize the king before he can grab the pearls. All of the buildings are torn down, and all of the people are carried into slavery. The only ones remaining on the island are Inga, who was able to successfully hide by climbing a tree, Rinkitink, who escaped his pursuers by falling into a well, and Bilbil the goat whom the invaders did not see any value of. Inga realizes the only way he will be able to free his family and people is with the help of the magic pearls, so he comes to the palace floor to retrieve them. To make sure the pearls are not lost, he hides one each in the toes of his shoes and carries the speaking White Pearl with him. The White Pearl guides him to a boat the following morning, which he, Bilbil, and Rinkitink begin to row toward the island of Regos. Regos and Coregos are respectively ruled by a wicked king and queen, King Gos and Queen Cor. These two ruthless tyrants see no reason they cannot capture and enslave Inga and his companions as they did the rest of Pingaree's inhabitants. However, none of King Gos of Regos’ forces can lay a hand on Inga, Rinkitink, or Bilbil when they are touching each other due to the Pink Pearl's power. They stride into the royal palace with the strength conferred by the Blue Pearl and force Gos and his evil forces to flee the island to Coregos and then free the king's slaves. Inga and Rinkitink wake the next morning to find the Pink Pearl is gone&mdash;it was in the shoe that Rinkitink carelessly threw at a howling cat the previous night. While out searching for the lost shoe, the royal maid cleans their room and, finding the other shoe with no mate, assumed it was discarded and disposed of it accordingly—and with it, the blue pearl. At a complete loss, Inga tells Rinkitink about the power of the Pearls and, at the advice of the white pearl, attempts to bluff Gos and his wife, Queen Cor, into believing he still has the power of the Pearls. Cor uses diplomacy and trickery to capture him and Rinkitink and bring them to serve her on Coregos. Nikobob, a poor woodchopper who resides on Regos, finds the discarded shoes (unaware that they contain the Blue and Pink Pearls) and plans to give them to his daughter Zella. While he has the shoes, however, he encounters the giant worm Choggenmugger and chops it into pieces&mdash;something he couldn't do without the pearls. Zella is wearing the shoes with the pearls inside when she delivers honey to Queen Cor on Coregos, Inga recognizes the shoes, and he offers his new shoes to Zella in exchange for his old ones. Now with the Pearls in his possession, he defeats Cor and sends her fleeing to Regos with the captive Queen Garee. The captives from Pingaree and all the other places the invaders have been are freed and sent home—except for Inga's parents. To consolidate the situation of Regos and Coregos, Inga offers to make Nikobob king of the islands, which he adamantly refuses. He instead asks to go himself with his family to Pingaree. They learn from a palace guard that Gos and Cor took King Kitticut and Queen Garee to the underground caverns of the Nome King, and Inga, Rinkitink, and Bilbil set out after them. Although Kaliko is a kinder Nome King than the previous one, he proves to be a politician who "prefers to deal with the strong." Kaliko considers himself bound by his word to King Gos and Queen Cor and has Kitticut and Garee kept prisoner. Before Inga, Rinkitink, and Bilbil enter the underground kingdom, Rinkitink asks Inga to loan him the Pink Pearl in case they are separated. They are welcomed cordially enough by the Nomes and spend the night underground, but the next day Rinkitink and Bilbil have an audience with King Kaliko who is unable to harm them together while Inga works his way through the Three Trick Caverns with his strength and the White Pearl's Wisdom. Princess Ozma, the ruler of Oz, is viewing what's happening to Inga, Rinkitink, and Bilbil through her Magic Picture and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz go to confront King Kaliko and resolve the entire matter. Dorothy herself carries a basket of eggs to keep the Nomes from attacking her (as eggs are poisonous to the Nomes). Upon her arrival, Dorothy delivers stunning news to Kaliko: King Gos and Queen Cor are dead—a storm at sea wrecked their boat on their return trip to Regos and Coregos leaving the two evil rulers to drown in the Nonestic Ocean (according to Glinda's Book of Records). Kaliko, although shocked by the news, still refuses to release Kitticut and Garee. At that point, Dorothy pulls the cover off her basket revealing the eggs, and a frightened Kaliko immediately orders the release of Inga's parents. The reunited father, mother, and son with Bilbil and Rinkitink journey to the Emerald City, where it is revealed that Bilbil is actually enchanted himself. The Wizard asks Bilbil how it is that he is able to talk when he is not from, nor ever visited, the Land of Oz. The Wizard learns that the crusty goat is actually Prince Bobo of Boboland, and the enchanter who transformed him into a goat is long since dead; however, Glinda is able to change him back to human form. This also cures his bad disposition, which was a cover for Bobo/Bilbil's ill feelings. After a celebration, Kitticut, Garee, Inga, Rinkitink, and Bobo return to the rebuilt island of Pingaree for a victory celebration. Soon afterwards, to his sadness, Rinkitink learns that must return home to Gilgad and fulfill his duties as their king...but accompanied by his friend Prince Bobo. In 1939, Rinkitink in Oz was one of six Oz books specially re-issued by Rand McNally in a condensed, small-format "junior edition" for young readers, as a promotion for the MGM film of The Wizard of Oz.
378447	/m/0218_v	Arrowsmith	Sinclair Lewis	1925	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Arrowsmith tells the story of bright and scientifically minded Martin Arrowsmith as he makes his way from a small town in the Midwest to the upper echelons of the scientific community. (He is born in Elk Mills, Winnemac, the same fictional state in which several of Lewis's other novels are set.) Along the way he experiences medical school, private practice as the only doctor in tiny Wheatsylvania, North Dakota, various stints as regional health official, and the lure of high-paying hospital jobs. Finally, Arrowsmith is recognized by his former medical school mentor, Max Gottlieb, for a scientific paper he has written and is invited to take a post with a prestigious research institute in New York. The book's climax deals with Dr. Arrowsmith's discovery of a phage that destroys bacteria and his experiences as he faces an outbreak of bubonic plague on a fictional Caribbean island. Martin's wife, Leora, is the steadying, sensible, self-abnegating anchor of his life. When Leora dies of the plague that Martin is sent to study and exterminate, he seems to lose all sense of himself and of his principles. The novel comes full circle at the end as Arrowsmith deserts his wealthy second wife and the high-powered directorship of a research institute to pursue his dream of an independent scientific career in backwoods Vermont.
379178	/m/021ckw	The Lost Princess of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1917	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Dorothy has risen from bed for the day and is seeing to her friends in the Emerald City and notices that Ozma has not awakened yet. Dorothy goes into Ozma's chambers only to find she is not there. Glinda awakens in her palace in the Quadling Country and finds her Great Book of Records is missing. She goes to prepare a magic spell to find it- only to see her magic tools are gone as well. She dispatches a messenger to the Emerald City to relay news of the theft. Receiving the news, the Wizard hastily offers his magic tools to assist Glinda, however, these are missing as well. Glinda, Dorothy, and the Wizard organize search parties to find Ozma and the missing magic. Accompanying them are Button-Bright, Trot, and Betsy Bobbin. Dorothy and the Wizard's party begins to search the Winkie Country to the west of the Emerald City. Meanwhile, in the southwestern corner of the Winkie Country on a plateau belonging to the Yips, and Cayke the cookie cook has had her diamond-studded gold dishpan stolen. The self-proclaimed adviser to the Yips, a human-sized dandy of a frog called the Frogman, hears Cayke's story and offers to help her find the dishpan. When they have gotten down the mountain, Cayke reveals to the Frogman that the dishpan has magic powers, for her cookies come out perfect every time. Dorothy, the Wizard, and their party enter the previously unknown communities of Thi and Herku. The citizens of Thi are ruled by the High Coco-Lorum (really the King, but the people do not know it) and repeat the same story about the Herkus: they keep giants for their slaves. In the Great Orchard between Thi and Herku, the party enjoys a variety of fruits. Button-Bright eats from the one peach tree in the orchard. When he reaches the peach's center he discovers it to be made of gold. He pockets the gold peach pit to show Dorothy, Betsy, and Trot later - despite warnings from the local animals that the evil Ugu the Shoemaker has enchanted it. In the city of Herku, Dorothy and the Wizard's party are greeted by the emaciated but jovial Czarover of Herku, who has invented a pure energy compound called zosozo that can make his people strong enough to keep giants as slaves. The Czarover offers them six doses to use in their travels and casually reveals that Ugu the Shoemaker came from Herku. Ugu found magic books in his attic one day because he was descended from the greatest enchanter ever known and learned over time to do a great many magical things. The Shoemaker has since moved from Herku and built a castle high in the mountains. This clue leads Dorothy and the Wizard to think that Ugu might be behind all the recent thefts of magic and the ruler of Oz. They proceed from Herku toward the castle and meet with the Frogman, Cayke the Cookie Cook, and the Lavender Bear the stuffed bear who rules Bear Center. Lavender Bear carries the Little Pink Bear a small wind-up toy that can answer any question about the past put to it. When the combined party arrives at Ugu's castle, Button-Bright is separated from them and falls into a pit. Before they rescue him, the Wizard asks the Little Pink Bear where Ozma is and it says that she is in the pit, too. After Button-Bright is let out of the pit, the Little Pink Bear says that she is there among the party. Unsure what to make of this seeming contradiction, the party advances toward the castle. Sure enough, Ugu is the culprit and the castle's magical defenses are techniques from Glinda and the Wizard. Once over coming the castle's exterior, the party soon finds themselves standing before the thief himself. Ugu uses magic to send the room spinning and retreats. Dorothy stops it by making a wish with the magic belt. She uses its power to turn Ugu into a dove, but he modifies the enchantment so he retains human size and aggressive nature. Fighting his way past Dorothy and her companions, Ugu the dove uses Cayke's diamond-studded dishpan to flee to the Quadling Country. Once the magic tools are recovered, the conquering search party turns their attention to finding Ozma. The Little Pink Bear reveals that Ozma is being carried in Button-Bright's jacket pocket, where he placed the gold peach pit. The Wizard opens it with a knife, and Ozma is released from where Ugu had imprisoned her. She was kidnapped by Ugu when she came upon him stealing her and the Wizard's magic instruments. The people of the Emerald City and Ozma's friends all celebrate her return. Days later, the transformed Ugu flies in to see Dorothy and ask her forgiveness for what he did. She offers it and offers to change him back with the Magic Belt, but Ugu has decided that he likes being a dove much better.
380013	/m/021glc	The Time Ships	Stephen Baxter	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 After the events related in The Time Machine, the Time Traveller (his first name, Moses, is given in the novel but applied to the Time Traveller's younger self) prepares, in 1891, to return to the year 802,701 and save Weena, the Eloi who died in the fire with the Morlocks. He reveals that the quartz construction of the time machine is suffused with a radioactive substance he calls Plattnerite for the mysterious benefactor who gave him the sample to study twenty years earlier, in 1871. The Time Traveller departs into the future and stops in AD 657,208 when he notes the daytime sky has gone permanently dark. He arrives and is abducted by a branch of Morlocks more culturally advanced than the ones he met before. One of their number, Nebogipfel (the name of a character from Wells' The Chronic Argonauts), explains after hearing the Time Traveller's own story that the conflict between Eloi and Morlocks never occurred due to the Writer's publication of the story that became The Time Machine. The timeline he sought to go to is inaccessible to him now. The Morlocks of this timeline have constructed a Dyson sphere around the inner solar system and use the Sun's energy to power it. Humans as the Time Traveller knows them live on the sunlit inner surface of the Sphere while the Morlocks live on the outer shell. The Time Traveller convinces Nebogipfel that he will help him understand the time traveling mechanism of the Time machine if the Morlock takes him back to it. When he thinks he is unobserved, the Time Traveller reactivates his machine and travels to 1873 to persuade his younger self to stop his research on Plattnerite. Nebogipfel, who took hold of the Time Traveller once he realized what he was doing, follows him there. As the Time Traveller attempts to persuade his younger self, whom he asks to call "Moses" to avoid confusion, to stop his research by providing Nebogipfel as proof that reality is changed by time travel, a tank-like Juggernaut pulls into Moses' yard. The army personnel on board, commanded by Hilary Bond and accompanied by an older version of the Time Traveller's friend Filby, take Moses, Nebogipfel, and the Time Traveller to their 1938, where World War I has stretched over twenty-four years due to the discovery of time travel which was influenced by the latter's work. Britain's major cities are all encased in Domes, and with the contributions of Austrian expatriate Kurt Gödel, the government hopes to win the war by altering Germany's history conclusively. Nebogipfel explains to the Time Traveller that they've entered another future as a result of their actions in Moses' past. During another bombing raid on London by the Germans, Gödel provides a vial of Plattnerite and leads to the only escape available, a Time-Car prototype. Upon hearing this and what society would be like after the war (a pessimistic view mirroring Wells' own), the Time Traveller and Nebogipfel mount the vehicle and insert the Plattnerite. Moses is killed in an explosion when he tries to save Gödel, and the Time-Car travels back to the Paleocene and is wrecked on a tree. After weeks of bare survival, the Time Traveller and Nebogipfel are discovered by a scouting party from the Chronic Expeditionary Force commanded by Hilary Bond that arrived from 1944 to find them based on their remains in her time. Some time later, a German Messerschmitt plane arrives over the campsite, drops a Carolinum bomb (analogous to an atomic bomb in our world; see Wells's The World Set Free), and devastates the time-traveling Juggernauts and all but twelve of the Force. Nebogipfel and the Time Traveller are away from the campsite at the time. Over the next year and a half, the stranded soldiers under Hilary Bond's command start the colony of First London. In off moments, Nebogipfel has worked on repairing the Time-Car and acquired shavings of Plattnerite to power it on a journey through time. When the Time-Car is ready, the Time Traveller joins Nebogipfel in a fifty-million year journey through which they see First London expand and develop colonies on the moon and in Earth orbit. Eventually, human tampering with the Earth's environment renders the planet uninhabitable, and they depart for the stars. When the Time-Car finally stops due to loss of its Plattnerite fuel, Nebogipfel and the Time Traveller are tended by a Universal Constructor, a life form (or lifeforms) composed of thousands of nanotechnological entities. They see that there are few stars left in the night sky; this is due to the human descendants colonizing many worlds and constructing Dyson Spheres around the host star. The goal of the Universal Constructor is to harvest the energy of the sun to build time-travel vehicles from Plattnerite and travel to the beginning of the universe. However, this goal is not due to be completed for a million years. Nebogipfel and the Time Traveller acquire enough Plattnerite from the Constructors in order to journey to the point in the future (i.e., another million years hence) when the Constructors will have finished building their time ships. Once the Time Traveller and Nebogipfel reach this point, the Constructors integrate them into a time ship and thus begins the journey back to time's beginning. At this central point from where all matter and energy and timelines branch off, the Constructors apparently start a new history in which they become something even more grand and knowledgeable than before. These successors of the Constructors place the Time Traveller and Nebogipfel into the Time Traveller's original history in the year 1871. It is revealed that the Time Traveller himself is the mysterious stranger who gave his younger self the Plattnerite sample under the alias "Gottfried Plattner", and that because of this, the circle of causality is closed and thus, the whole multiplicity of histories which ends up creating the Constructors and their successors begins anew. Nebogipfel, with his consciousness enhanced by his time with the Constructors, leaves the Time Traveller behind to travel with the successors of the Constructors. These successors plan to travel "beyond" the "local" multiplicity into a new realm of historical dimensions. The Time Traveller then makes one final journey to AD 802,701, along his historical axis, and just barely saves Weena from the death she suffered before. Since (the reader is led to suppose) traveling in time again would cause this reality to branch off and become inaccessible again, the Time Traveller destroys the machine and encourages the Eloi in an Agrarian Revolution to reduce their dependence on the Morlocks for food and clothing, hoping to one day eliminate it entirely. As he works, the Time Traveller writes down the recounting of his adventures and seals them in a Plattnerite packet, a "time capsule", so to speak, in the hope that it will travel in time to a faithful scribe. Before sealing the packet, the Time Traveller writes that he plans to go into the world of the Morlocks again, hopefully to return and add an appendix to the story. The book ends by saying that no appendix was found.
380015	/m/021gls	Evolution	Stephen Baxter	2002-11-30	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book follows the evolution of mankind as it shapes surviving Purgatorius into tree dwellers, remoulds a group that drifts from Africa to a (then much closer) New World on a raft formed out of debris, and confronting others with a terrible dead end as ice clamps down on Antarctica. The stream of DNA runs on elsewhere, where ape-like creatures in North Africa are forced out of their diminishing forests to come across grasslands where their distant descendants will later run joyously. At one point, hominids become sapient, and go on to develop technology, including an evolving universal constructor machine that goes to Mars and multiplies, and in an act of global ecophagy consumes Mars by converting the planet into a mass of machinery that leaves the Solar system in search of new planets to assimilate. Human extinction (or the extinction of human culture) also occurs in the book, as well as the end of planet Earth and the rebirth of life on another planet. (The extinction-level event that causes the human extinction is, indirectly, an eruption of the Rabaul caldera, coupled with various actions of humans themselves, some of which are only vaguely referred to, but implied to be a form of genetic engineering which removed the ability to reproduce with non-engineered humans.) Also to be found in Evolution are ponderous Romans, sapient dinosaurs, the last of the wild Neanderthals, a primate who witnesses the extinction of the dinosaurs, symbiotic primate-tree relationships, mole people, and primates who live on a Mars-like Earth. In the book's epilogue, it is implied that the replicator machines sent by humans to Mars have developed sentience and high technology, unknowingly advancing the late mankind's legacy in the Universe.
380143	/m/021h0t	Black Beauty	Anna Sewell	1877-11-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by the titular horse named Black Beauty—beginning with his carefree days as a colt on an English farm with his mother, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude. The book describes conditions among London horse-drawn taxicab drivers, including the financial hardship caused to them by high licence fees and low, legally fixed fares. A page footnote in some editions says that soon after the book was published, the difference between 6-day taxicab licences (not allowed to trade on Sundays) and 7-day taxicab licences (allowed to trade on Sundays) was abolished and the taxicab licence fee was much reduced.
381378	/m/021mz1	A Visit from St. Nicholas	Clement Clarke Moore	1823	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 On Christmas Eve night, while his wife and children sleep, a man awakens to noises outside his house. Looking out the window, he sees St. Nicholas in an air-borne sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. After landing his sleigh on the roof, the saint enters the house through the chimney, carrying a sack of toys with him. The man watches Nicholas filling the children's stockings hanging by the fire, and laughs to himself. They share a conspiratorial moment before the saint bounds up the chimney again. As he flies away, Saint Nicholas wishes everyone a "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night."
381411	/m/021n0s	Vector Prime	Robert Anthony Salvatore		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The alien race known as the Yuuzhan Vong are preparing for their invasion on the Star Wars galaxy. They are doing this by covertly disrupting the peace established by that of the New Republic ever since the fall of the Galactic Empire years previously. These distractions allow for the specialist warrior caste, the Praetorite Vong, to establish a base on the frozen backwater world of Helska IV. But though they settle on Helska IV as secretly as possible, it is noticed nevertheless by the members of the ExGal-4 base on the nearby world of Belkaden, which is also infiltrated by a Yuuzhan Vong agent named Yomin Carr. Three ExGal-4 members go to Helska IV to investigate what is happening, and two of the members are killed by the Praetorite Vong, while the remaining one, Danni Quee, is captured and tortured for experimentation. Back on Belkaden, Yomin Carr readies the planet for Vong habitation by poisoning the world as the initial step in terraforming and he kills the remaining Ex-Gal-4 scientists personally. Meanwhile, the Skywalker-Solo family, who, like the New Republic, are unaware of the Yuuzhan Vong threat, decide to take a vacation from the bureaucratic troubles of the Republic and go visit Lando Calrissian at his industrious planet of Dubrillion. There, they see the liftoff of Jedi Master Kyp Durron's Dozen-and-Two Avengers X-wing squadron, whose sole purpose is to protect the galaxy from criminal and pirates. Lando, meanwhile, asks Luke Skywalker and his wife Mara to go and investigate what is happening on the world of Belkaden with R2-D2. They go, and Mara gets into a fight with Yomin Carr that she wins by killing him. This is despite her sickness that, incidentally, the Yuuzhan Vong had given her through their agent, Nom Anor. Lando also asks Han Solo, his son Anakin, and Chewbacca to go to the planet Sernpidal to pick up some cargo. They comply, but as they arrive, they find that the Praetorite Vong have decided to make a target of the planet by pulling its moon, Dobido, down. Meanwhile, at Helska IV, the Dozen-and-Two Avengers get into a battle with the Praetorite Vong, which marks the first-ever battle in the Yuuzhan Vong War, and the squadron is easily decimated under the mighty forces of the Vong. Kyp Durron and his apprentice, Miko Reglia, are the only survivors, but while Kyp is able to escape to tell the rest of the galaxy of this new threat, Reglia is taken captive and tortured like Danni Quee. Helska IV would later be raided and investigated again by the Skywalkers after they leave Belkaden. Back at Sernpidal, Han, Chewbacca, and Anakin save as many people as they can aboard the Millennium Falcon, but unfortunately, Chewbacca is incidentally left behind and dies as Dobido crashes into Sernpidal, destroying the world. As the Solos and Skywalkers fall into grief over Chewbacca's death, they and their allies also find themselves facing the threat of the Yuuzhan Vong. The final battle against the Praetorite Vong occurs when Jacen Solo senses a call in the Force by Danni Quee, so he takes his sister, Jaina, with him to rescue her covertly. Their cover is soon blown, but they are then quickly aided with forces from the New Republic that battle off the Vong and manage to get Jacen and Danni off of Helska IV. Miko Reglia, unfortunately, sacrifices himself against a few Vong warriors to make sure that Jacen and Danni escape. With Jacen and Danni returned, the New Republic makes a quick plan to destroy Helska IV by using heat-concentrating ships to blow the world up. The vast majority of the Praetorite Vong are destroyed in this explosion, and it appears that the New Republic has beaten this alien menace. However, it turns out that the actual Yuuzhan Vong invasion force have yet to make any real appearance in the galaxy. The novel ends with the Skywalkers and Solos returning to Sernpidal so that Han can say a few words about Chewbacca in the wake of his sacrifice. He concludes that with his death, the galaxy has become a more dangerous place than ever.
381491	/m/021ncg	The Thorn Birds	Colleen McCullough	1977-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The epic begins with Meghann "Meggie" Cleary, a four-year-old girl living in New Zealand in the early twentieth century, the only daughter of Paddy, an Irish farm labourer, and Fee, his harassed but aristocratic wife. Although Meggie is a beautiful child with curly red-gold hair, she receives little coddling and must struggle to hold her own against her numerous older brothers. Of these brothers, her favourite is the eldest, Frank, a rebellious young man who is unwillingly preparing himself for the blacksmith's trade. He is much shorter than his brothers, but very strong; also, unlike the other Clearys, he has black hair and eyes. Paddy is poor, but has a wealthy sister, Mary Carson, who lives in Australia on an enormous sheep station called Drogheda. One day, Paddy receives a letter from Mary offering him a job on her estate. He accepts, and the whole family moves to the Outback. Here Meggie meets Ralph de Bricassart, a young, capable, and ambitious priest who, as punishment for insulting a bishop, has been relegated to a remote parish in the town of Gillanbone, near Drogheda. Ralph has befriended Mary, hoping a hefty enough bequest from her to the Catholic Church might liberate him from his exile. Ralph is strikingly handsome; "a beautiful man"; and Mary, who does not bother to conceal her desire for him, often goes to great lengths to see if he can be induced to break his vows. Ralph blandly shrugs off these attentions and continues his visits. Meanwhile, he cares for all the Clearys and soon learns to cherish beautiful but forlorn little Meggie. Meggie, in return, makes Ralph the centre of her life. Frank's relationship with his father, Paddy, has never been peaceful. The two vie for Fee's attention, and Frank resents the many pregnancies Paddy makes her endure. One day, after Fee, now in her forties, reveals she is again pregnant, the two men quarrel violently and Paddy blurts out the truth about Frank: he is not Paddy's son. Long ago, Fee had been the adored only daughter of a prominent citizen. Then she had an affair with a married politician, and the result, Frank, was already eighteen months old when her mortified father married her off to Paddy. Because he resembles her lost love, Fee has always loved Frank more than her other children. To the sorrow of Meggie and Fee, when Frank learns that Paddy is not his father, he runs away to become a boxer. Fee later gives birth to twin boys, James and Patrick (Jims and Patsy), but shows little interest in them. Shortly afterward, Meggie's beloved little brother, Hal, dies. With Frank gone and Hal dead, Meggie clings to Ralph more than ever. This goes largely unnoticed because Ralph has now been her mentor for several years; however, as she ripens into womanhood, some begin to question their close relationship, including Ralph and Meggie themselves. Mary Carson has also noticed their changing relationship, and from motives of jealousy mingled with Machiavellian cruelty, she devises a plan to separate Ralph from Meggie by tempting him with his heart's desire: a high place in the Church hierarchy. Although her will of record leaves the bulk of her estate to Paddy, she quietly writes a new one, making the Roman Catholic Church the main beneficiary and Ralph the executor. In the new will, the true magnitude of Mary's wealth is finally revealed. Drogheda is not the centre of her fortune as Ralph and Paddy have long believed but is merely a hobby, a diversion from her true financial interests. Mary's wealth is derived from a vast multi-national financial empire worth over thirteen million Pounds (about A$200 million in modern terms). The sheer size of Mary's bequest will virtually guarantee Ralph's rapid rise in the church. She also makes sure that after she dies only Ralph, at first, will know of the new will &mdash; forcing him to choose between Meggie and his own ambition. She also provides for her disinherited brother, promising him and all his grandchildren a home on Drogheda as long as any of them live. At Mary's seventy-second birthday party, Ralph goes to great lengths to avoid Meggie, now seventeen and dressed in a beautiful rose-pink evening gown; later, he explains that others might not see his attention as innocent. Mary dies in the night. Ralph duly learns of the new will. He sees at once the subtle genius of Mary's plan and, although he weeps and calls her "a disgusting old spider" he takes the new will to her lawyer without delay. The lawyer, scandalised, urges Ralph to destroy the will, but to no avail. The bequest of thirteen million pounds works its expected magic, and Ralph soon leaves to begin his rapid advance in the Church. Before he leaves, Meggie confesses her love for him; after the birthday party, Ralph finds her crying in the family cemetery and they share a passionate kiss, but Ralph refuses her because of his duties as a priest and begs Meggie to find someone to love and marry. The Clearys learn that Frank has been convicted of murder after killing someone in a fight. He spends three decades in prison. Paddy and his son Stuart are killed; Paddy dies in a lightning fire, and Stu is killed by a wild boar shortly after finding his father's body. Meanwhile, Ralph, unaware of Paddy and Stu's deaths, is on his way to Drogheda and suffers minor injuries when his plane bogs in the mud. As Meggie tends his wounds, she tries to seduce him and is rebuffed. Ralph remains at Drogheda only long enough to conduct the funerals. Three years later, a new ranch worker named Luke O'Neill begins to court Meggie. Although his motives are more mercenary than romantic, she marries him because he looks a little bit like Ralph, but mainly because he is not Catholic and wants little to do with religion-her own way of getting back at Ralph. She soon realises her mistake. After a brief honeymoon, Luke, a skinflint who regards women as sex objects and prefers the company of men, finds Meggie a live-in job with a kindly couple, the Muellers, and leaves to join a gang of itinerant sugarcane cutters in North Queensland. Before he leaves, he appropriates all Meggie's savings and arranges to have her wages paid directly to him. He tells her he is saving money to buy a homestead; however, he quickly becomes obsessed with the competitive toil of cane-cutting and has no real intention of giving it up. Hoping to change Luke's ambition and settle him down, Meggie deliberately thwarts his usual contraception and bears Luke a red-haired daughter, Justine. The new baby, however, makes little impression on Luke. Father Ralph visits Meggie during her difficult labour; he has come to say goodbye, as he is leaving Australia for Rome. He sees Meggie's unhappiness for himself, and pities her. Justine proves to be a fractious baby, so the Muellers send Meggie to an isolated island resort for a rest. Father Ralph returns to Australia, learns of Meggie's whereabouts from Anne Mueller, and joins her for several days. There, at last, the lovers consummate their passion, and Ralph realises that despite his ambition to be the perfect priest, his desire for Meggie makes him a man like other men. Father Ralph returns to the Church, and Meggie, pregnant with Ralph's child, decides to separate from Luke. She tells Luke what she really thinks of him, and returns to Drogheda, leaving him to his cane-cutting. Back home, she gives birth to a beautiful boy whom she names Dane. Fee, who has had experience in such matters, notices Dane's resemblance to Ralph as soon as he is born. The relationship between Meggie and Fee takes a turn for the better. Justine grows into an independent, keenly intelligent girl who loves her brother dearly; however, she has little use for anyone else, and calmly rebuffs Meggie's overtures of motherly affection. None of Meggie's other surviving brothers ever marry, and Drogheda gradually becomes a place filled with old people. Ralph visits Drogheda after a long absence and meets Dane for the first time; and although he finds himself strangely drawn to the boy, he fails to recognize that they are father and son. Dane grows up and decides, to Meggie's dismay, to become a priest. Fee tells Meggie that what she stole from God, she must now give back. Justine, meanwhile, decides to become an actress and leaves Australia to seek her dream in England. Ralph, now a Cardinal, becomes a mentor to Dane, but still blinds himself to the fact that the young man is his own son. Dane is also unaware of their true relationship. Ralph takes great care of him, and because of their resemblance people mistake them for uncle and nephew. Ralph and Dane encourage the rumour. Justine and her brother remain close, although he is often shocked at her sexual adventures and free-wheeling lifestyle. She befriends Rainer Hartheim, a German politician who is a great friend of both Dane and Ralph's - unbeknown to her, he falls deeply in love with her. Their friendship becomes the most important in her life, and is on the verge of becoming something more when tragedy strikes. Dane, who has just become a priest, is vacationing in Greece. While there, he goes swimming one day and dies while rescuing two women from a dangerous current. Meggie reveals before Dane's funeral that Dane is Ralph's son. Ralph dies in Meggie's arms after the funeral. Justine breaks off all communications with Rainer and falls into a depressed, hum-drum existence. Eventually, they renew their acquaintance on strictly platonic terms, until Rainer visits Drogheda alone in order to urge Meggie to help him pursue Justine's hand in marriage. Justine, now the sole surviving grandchild of Fee and Paddy Cleary, finally accepts her true feelings for Rainer. They marry, but have no plans to live on Drogheda. The book's title refers to a mythical bird that searches for thorn trees from the day it is hatched. When it finds the perfect thorn, it impales itself, and sings the most beautiful song ever heard as it dies.
382115	/m/021qwn	The Magic of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1919	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 At the top of Mount Munch, lives a group of people known as the Hyups. One of their numbers, a Munchkin named Bini Aru, discovered a method of transforming people and objects by merely saying the word "Pyrzqxgl". After Princess Ozma decreed that no one could practice magic in Oz except for Glinda the Good Witch and the Wizard of Oz, Bini wrote down the directions for pronouncing "Pyrzqxgl" and hid them in his magical laboratory. When Bini and his wife are at a fair one day, their son Kiki Aru, who thirsts for adventure, finds the directions and afterwards transforms himself into a hawk and visits various countries outside the land of Oz. When he alights in the land of Ev, Kiki Aru learns that he needs money to pay for a night's lodging (versus Oz, where money is not used at all) and changes himself into a magpie to steal a gold piece from an old man. A sparrow confronts the then-human Kiki Aru with knowledge of the theft, and Kiki says that he did not know what it was like to be wicked before, he is glad that he is now. This conversation is overheard by Ruggedo, the Nome who was exiled to the Earth's surface in Tik-Tok of Oz, and he sees through Kiki Aru's power a chance to get revenge on the people of Oz. Kiki changes himself and Ruggedo into birds and they fly over the Deadly Desert into the Land of Oz. They enter Oz as animals to escape detection by Glinda and to recruit an army of conquest from the country's wild animal population. When they first appear in the Forest of Gugu in the Gillikin Country, Kiki changes himself and Ruggedo into Li-Mon-Eags (fictional creatures with the heads of lions, the bodies of monkeys, and the wings of eagles as well as having the tails of donkeys) and lies that they've seen the people of the Emerald City plan to enslave the animal inhabitants of the Forest. Ruggedo claims that they the Li-Mon-Eags will transform the animals into humans and march on the Emerald City and transform its inhabitants into animals, driving them into the forest. Ruggedo proves their power (for Kiki's the only one who knows "Pyrzqxgl") by having Kiki transform one of the leopard king Gugu's advisors, Loo the unicorn, into a man and back again. Gugu offers to meet with the leaders of the other animal tribes to decide on this matter of invasion. Dorothy and the Wizard arrive with the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger in the Forest of Gugu during this council of war with a request for monkeys to train in time for Ozma's upcoming birthday party. Ruggedo recognizes his old enemies and inspires Kiki to begin transforming people and animals left and right &mdash; including Ruggedo, whom Kiki turns against by transforming him into a goose, a transformation that the Nomes most fears because as a goose he might lay an egg. The Wizard, whom Kiki transformed into a fox, follows the Li-Mon-Eag with his magic bag, the transformed Kiki, deep into the forest where he begins transforming monkeys into giant human soldiers. However, Kiki makes them so big that they cannot move through the trees. The Wizard, however, heard how to correctly pronounce "Pyrzqxgl" and first stops Kiki and Ruggedo by transforming them into a walnut and a hickory nut. Then the Wizard resumes his rightful form and changes Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, and Gugu back to their forms, and he agrees to change the soldiers back into monkeys. The Wizard recruits several of the grateful monkeys and shrinks them down to bring back to the Emerald City and train. On arriving there, Dorothy and the Wizard are dispatched to a magic island where Cap'n Bill and Trot went to get a magic flower for Ozma's birthday. However, the island itself causes anything living that touches it to take root there, and that is how the sailor and his friend are found when Dorothy and the Wizard arrive. The Wizard uses "Pyrzqxgl" to change Cap'n Bill and Trot into honeybees which narrowly avoid being eaten by the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger. When they are human again, Cap'n Bill retrieves the flower by strapping a wood plank onto his good leg, walks with that and his wooden leg onto the island, and retrieves the flower. Back at the Emerald City, Ozma and her friends celebrate her birthday (though without quite the pomp and fanfare from The Road to Oz) and then decide how to deal with the evil magicians transformed into nuts. The Wizard uses "Pyrzqxgl" to change them back to Kiki Aru and Ruggedo and make them thirsty enough to drink the Water of Oblivion, which will make them forget all that they have ever known. The now-blank slate Kiki Aru and Ruggedo will live in the Emerald City and learn to be good and kind.
382176	/m/021r3c	Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator	Roald Dahl	1972-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ends: Willy Wonka has just given Charlie the ownership of his factory, and they crash through the roof of Charlie's house with a flying elevator to inform his family of the good news. Charlie's grandparents (except Grandpa Joe who had already gotten out of the bed) are nervous about going inside the travelling elevator, and after twenty years in bed, they refuse to get up. The bed is thus pushed into the elevator, which then takes off. At a critical moment during the return trip to the factory, a panicking Josephine grabs Wonka away from the controls, which results in the elevator, along with its occupants, being sent into an Earth orbit. The elevator circles the planet until Wonka sees the chance to link it with the newly-launched Space hotel, a creation of the United States government. In the White House, President of the United States Lancelot R. Gilligrass, together with Vice President Elvira Tibbs (who was once Gilligrass's nanny) a Those shape-changers, Wonka tells the others, are predatory extraterrestrials called Vermicious Knids that have infested the Space Hotel. Since they can't reach Earth's surface to prey on its natives because they burn up in the atmosphere as shooting stars, the Knids are waiting in the Space Hotel for the new arrivals. Meanwhile the shuttle docks with the Space Hotel and the staff and astronauts go aboard. The Knids reappear and devour some of the humans, but most of them escape back to the spacecraft. Capable of flying in the vacuum of space at improbable speeds, they pursue the survivors but are unable to board the space shuttle. Instead, they dive-bomb the shuttle's engines and hull, destroying the rockets as well as the cameras and radio antenna. Without its engines, the shuttle is unable to escape the Knids by breaking orbit and returning to Earth. Seeing all this from the relative safety of the Great Glass Elevator (which is "Knid-proof" - one Knid bruised itself badly on the glass and has been chasing the Elevator ever since), Charlie suggests that he and his companions use the Elevator to tow the shuttle back to Earth. In agreement, Wonka pilots the Elevator into range, whereupon Charlie's Grandpa Joe connects the two vessels by means of a steel cord. The Knids change into living segments of a towing line, with which they intend to drag the two spacecraft away, while the bruised Knid wraps his body around the Elevator to provide an anchor for this operation. Willy Wonka activates the Elevator's retro-rockets and plunges to Earth, taking the shuttle and Knids, all of whom burn up due to friction with the atmosphere during re-entry. At the right moment Wonka releases the shuttle, which floats safely home. The Elevator then crashes into the chocolate factory, ending its flight in the Chocolate room. Since Charlie was presented the factory as a gift by Wonka, he wants his family to help him run it. Georgina, George and Josephine still refuse to move out of their bed. Wonka proposes a pill he invented, Wonka-Vite, to make them young again. (He says that it is too valuable to waste on himself, which is why he needed an heir in the first place.) The three bedridden recipients get greedy and take much more than they need to. Instead of becoming a mere twenty years younger, the three grandparents lose eighty years, making George one year old, Josephine three months, and Georgina absent altogether, having become "minus two" (she was seventy-eight). Charlie and Wonka journey in the Great Glass Elevator to Minusland – a realm that Wonka discovered when his earlier attempts to create Wonka-Vite turned all the Oompa-Loompas he tested it on to become Minuses as the formula was too strong – to get Georgina back with Vita-Wonk, a sprayable compound that makes people older. Minusland is a dark, gloomy region far beneath the surface of the Earth, filled up entirely with fog, and inhabited only by the invisible and highly dangerous Gnoolies, creatures which, with a single bite, turn their victims into more Gnoolies (Wonka states that the process, a form of long division, takes a long time and is very painful). After administering an even worse overdose of Vita-Wonk to Grandma Georgina, they return to the upper world. There, Georgina has become 358 years old. Her memory entails a lot of history, beginning with the Pilgrim voyage in the ship "Mayflower" (which Wonka and the Buckets use to pinpoint her exact age) and ending in the present moment, spanning over many wars and truces in between. Using a more cautious dose of Wonka-Vite, her companions subtract much of this age from her, leaving her at seventy-eight as she was before. During the process of becoming younger, she shouts several sentences, all having to do with American History, including: "We've beaten them! Yorktown's Surrendered! We've kicked them out, those dirty British!", "Gettysburg! General Lee is on the run!", "He's dead, he's dead, he's dead!", "Lincoln! There goes the train..." Charlie and Mr. Wonka administer enough Vita-Wonk to recall Josephine and George to their original age. The grandparents are still incensed with Wonka's adventurous nature. They refuse, as before, to come out of bed. Then mysterious visitors arrive in a helicopter. The Oompa-Loompas give Wonka a letter from President Gilligrass, congratulating the occupants of the Great Glass Elevator on saving the lives of the shuttle astronauts and hotel staff and inviting them as the guests of honor to a White House dinner. The grandparents don't want to be left out, so they leap out of bed and join Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Wonka, and Charlie's parents to enter the helicopter sent to pick them up.
383912	/m/021yy6	The Inheritors	Ford Madox Ford		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The authors introduce the story via science fiction tropes such as the uncanny – coincidences, ESP, unearthly lighting effects, distorted visions, supernatural aural frequencies and scenes dissolving into another – pointing to the underlying threat of instability that drives the novel. The story is told through the eyes of Arthur, a writer turned journalist who feels he is compromising his art. Although Arthur at first holds to high ideals (he values "literature" over journalism, sacrificial literary types over opportunists), he gradually moves away from them because he wants to be a somebody. After first compromising his work, and obsessed with the woman, he is seduced into thinking that he has a chance with her. He further believes he has a choice between being phased out without making his mark or being "one of them", one of the inner circle who inherits power along with Them. She accurately chooses him for his weaknesses: his sense of failure and impotence as a writer with a need for significance; his isolation and willingness to join society; his snobbery and openness to flattering attention. While her reasons for bringing Arthur into play are not clear at first, they are complex. Inevitably Arthur is her tool for bringing down her opponent. For the authors, Arthur serves as an observer and an experiment at the hands of the Dimensionists, proving their effectiveness on an individual's psyche. The story is a Machiavellian labyrinth involving the British Government's tenuous support for a railway baron, a bid to annex Greenland, and a tilt at party leadership. Themes of unrealised potential, the cold-blooded manoeuvering, and the upward climb of the influential mystery woman, fictionalise the intricacies and interactions of class and power in Britain at the time. Two contrasting mindsets of society are delineated by generational values or lack of them and the changes they portend for the everyday people they effectively rule. By chance Arthur is offered a job writing "atmospheric" pieces for a new journal put together by an editor (Fox), a well-respected writer (Callan) and a Minister for Defence (Edward Churchill). Although Fox is a Fourth Dimensionist, his group represents the more humanitarian version of the Dimension threesome. Arthur is to write about celebrities. In this way, and through his own sense of superiority and lack of sympathy for others, he is drawn into the machinery of politics and the players who aim to inherit the earth. Although he frequently thinks of ways to expose their plan and tries to warn others such as his aunt and Churchill against the woman and Them, he is outwitted. As her brother, people see it as sibling rivalry, contaminated by jealousy, and ambition. His every move outmatched, Arthur lapses into passivity on that front. Instead he tries to win her favour. Using the ploy of hinting that she cares, the woman leads Arthur into believing there's hope if he can impress her. The ailing and exhausted Fox admits his own defeated position, trusting him with editorial power for a few hours. The climax comes when Arthur has the chance to insert an article that would avert history, to stop the presses at The Hour. But with a desire to show how much he is like her kind, to earn her favour, he decides not to. He learns to his dismay that he did just what he was meant to do, undermine Fox – Gurnard's opponent – that he never had a place in her scheme, and has betrayed anyone who would have meant anything to him, such as Churchill, Callan and Fox. Learning she is marrying a triumphant Gurnard, realising there is no going back and no future for him, he has a minor breakdown at his Club, where people speak of him as "the one they got at".
384072	/m/021zkn	Moving Pictures	Terry Pratchett	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The alchemists of the Discworld have invented moving pictures. Many hopefuls are drawn by the siren call of Holy Wood, home of the fledgling "clicks" industry – among them Victor Tugelbend ("Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little."), a dropout from Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University and Theda "Ginger" Withel, a girl "from a little town you never ever heard of", who become stars, and the Discworld's most infamous salesman, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, who introduces commerce to the equation and becomes a successful producer. Meanwhile, it gradually becomes clear that the production of movies is having a deleterious effect on the structure of reality. Ginger is possessed by an unspecified entity and she and Victor find an ancient, hidden cinema, complete with portal to the Dungeon Dimensions. Back in Ankh-Morpork, a creature from the Dungeon Dimensions breaks through, and Victor fights it, having found out that with a camera pointing at him in real life works out the way it does in the movies.
384688	/m/0220p0	Glinda of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1920	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Princess Ozma and Dorothy travel to an obscure corner of the Land of Oz, in order to prevent a war between two local powers, the Skeezers and the Flatheads. The leaders of the two tribes prove obstinate. Unable to prevent the war, Dorothy and Ozma find themselves imprisoned on the Skeezers' glass-covered island, which has been magically submerged to the bottom of its lake. Their situation worsens when the warlike queen Coo-ee-oh, who is holding them captive and who alone knows how to raise the island back to the surface of the lake, loses her battle and gets transformed into a swan, forgetting all her magic in the process. Ozma and Dorothy summon Glinda, who, with help from several magicians and magical assistants, must find a way to raise the island and liberate its trapped inhabitants.
385190	/m/0222xr	The Book of Sand	Jorge Luis Borges	1975		 The titular "Book of Sand" is the Book of all Books, and is a monster. The story tells how this book came into the possession of a fictional version of Borges himself, and of how he ultimately disposed of it. On opening the book, Borges finds that the pages are written in an indecipherable script appearing in double columns, ordered in versicle as in a Bible. When he opens to a page with an illustration, the bookseller advises a close look, since the page will never be found, or seen, again. It proves impossible to find the first or last page. This Book of Sand has no beginning or end: its pages are infinite. Each page is numbered, apparently uniquely but in no discernible pattern. The bookseller indicates that he acquired the book in exchange for a handful of rupees and a Bible, from an owner who did not know how to read. His conscience is clear with respect to that transaction: he feels sure of not having cheated the native in exchanging the Word of God for this diabolical trinket. He and the fictive Borges strike a bargain, and Borges exchanges his entire pension plus a black-letter Wyclif Bible for the miraculous book. The Scottish philosopher David Hume is mentioned, and the poet George Herbert is referenced via the epigraph, "Thy rope of sands." It can be by no means accidental that Borges (the author, not the character) has placed into the hands of an evangelical Presbyterian an "immediate object," the sense of which seemingly undermines plain faith in a Christian eschatology. One imagines that to the Presbyterian Bible salesman, God's truth is a simple truth. This simple religion was by no means shared by the philosopher Hume, who, according to James Boswell , although the son of Presbyterians, "...owned [that] he had never read the New Testament with attention...[and] had been at no pains to enquire into the truth of religion, and had continually turned his mind the other way" (Boswell, p.&nbsp;409). According to Hume, Borges underscores the distance between the bookseller and Hume by having his fictive persona express his "great personal affection for Scotland, through my love of Stevenson and Hume." The salesman "corrects" him, adding, "And Robbie Burns." The worldly Borges ultimately proves no more able to live with the terrifying book than was the salesman. He considers destroying the book by fire, but decides against this after reasoning that such a fire would release infinite amounts of smoke, and asphyxiate the entire world. Ultimately, Borges transports the book to the Argentine National Library (of which the real Borges was, for many years, the head). "Slipping past a member of the staff and trying not to notice at what height or distance from the door ... [he loses] the Book of Sand on one of the basement's musty shelves", the infinite book deliberately lost in a near-infinity of books.
385612	/m/0224cd	Walk Two Moons	Sharon Creech	1994-06-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is narrated by a 13 year old girl, Salamanca Tree Hiddle (Sal). Sal's mother, Sugar, has recently left Sal and her father for reasons that are initially unclear. Sal, an only child, has had a very close relationship with her mother and is devastated by her departure. After Sal's father realizes that Sugar will never return, he and Sal move from their beloved farm in Bybanks, Kentucky to Euclid, Ohio, where a woman with whom he has recently become involved, Mrs.Magaret Cadaver, helps him find a job. Sal's beloved Gram and Gramps take her on a cross-country car trip to Lewiston, Idaho to reach her mother in time for her birthday; Sal hopes to bring Sugar home with her. On the trip, Sal entertains her grandparents by telling them about a friend in Euclid, Phoebe Winterbottom, whose mother, after many manifestations of discontent with her life, has also left her family. Intertwined with Sal's narrative is the story of her growing friendship with several classmates and her tentative romance with one of these classmates, Ben Finney. Over the course of the book, as Sal and her grandparents travel west, and Sal continues telling Phoebe's story, parallels and differences between Sal's and Phoebe's lives become clear. Sal's grandmother dies of a stroke just after she has achieved one of her lifelong wishes, seeing Old Faithful in Yellowstone, and right before they are due to arrive in Lewiston. Sal's grandfather, who has previously taught Sal how to drive, encourages Sal to complete the journey to Lewiston. There, she visits the site of a bus crash. We learn that Sal's mother has died in a horrific bus crash whose only survivor was Mrs. Cadaver. At this point --- the novel's denouement --- the reader realizes that Sal has already been told of the accident and her mother's death; however, she has not been able to believe that her mother is truly dead until she sees the site of the crash and her mother's grave. Sal now accepts her loss. She and her grandfather return home, and Sal and her father return to rebuild their life on their farm in Bybanks, where Sal can once again gather strength from the nature that she loves. She maintains her friendships with Phoebe, Ben, and Mrs. Cadaver, who make plans to visit her on her farm.
385678	/m/0224pt	God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater	Kurt Vonnegut	1965	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As the opening of the book explains, this is a story where the leading character is Money. The Rosewater Foundation was founded by United States senator Lister Ames Rosewater of Indiana to help Rosewater descendants avoid paying taxes on the family estate in Rosewater County, Indiana. It is operated by a large legal firm in New York and provides an annual pension of $3.5 million to Eliot, the senator's son. Restless, Eliot goes through the list of things philanthropists do to help the poor, and eventually sets out across America, going from small town to small town, before landing in Rosewater and setting up shop. He calls Rosewater home after becoming a volunteer firefighter in numerous cities across the U.S. This, along with his drunkenness, his generous relationship with the poor in Rosewater, and his odd relationship with his French wife, make him appear a bit crazy. Norman Mushari, a conniving lawyer, is determined to prove him insane so he can reroute a portion of the Rosewater fortune to himself, while transferring it to unwitting distant Rosewater cousins in Rhode Island.
385817	/m/02256v	The Unknown Soldier	Väinö Linna	1954-12-03	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The novel has no single central character (it both begins and ends with an ironic play on the narrator's omniscience), and its focus is on different responses to the experience of war. It tells the story of a machinegun company in the war from mobilisation to armistice. A picture of the whole nation in microcosm, the men come from all over the country (a result of Linna's unusual patchwork regiment - units were normally made up of men from the same region.) The men have widely varying social backgrounds and political attitudes, and they all have their own ways of coping, but the general picture is one of a quite relaxedly businesslike attitude, and the men's disrespect for formalities and discipline is a source of frustration for some of the officers. They are all there just to get the job done, and official propaganda, both their own and that of the enemy, is to them a source of amusement or outright offensive. Linna's own description of the men in the novel's final sentence is "aika velikultia" — something like "good old boys". The main officer characters are three lieutenants who embody different attitudes: one strict and aloof, one relaxed and fraternal, one idealistic and later disillusioned but brave and loyal to his men. Linna excels in describing the psychology of his characters. He paints realistic yet deeply sympathetic portraits of a score of very different men: cowards and heroes, the initially naive, eventually brave upper-class idealist Kariluoto, the down-to-earth Koskela, the hardened and cynical working-class grunt Lehto, the platoon comedian Vanhala and the preternaturally strong-nerved Rokka, the politically indifferent Hietanen and the communist Lahtinen. It is only for the sternest officers of the Prussian school for whom he has little love. Many of his characters have come to be seen as archetypes of Finnish men, household names to whom reference can be made without explanation.
386381	/m/0227cl	Main Street	Sinclair Lewis	1920	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Carol Milford is a liberal, free-spirited young woman, reared in the metropolis of Saint Paul, Minnesota. She marries Will Kennicott, a doctor, who is a small-town boy at heart. When they marry, Will convinces her to live in his home-town of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota (a town modeled on Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the author's birthplace). Carol is appalled at the backwardness of Gopher Prairie. But her disdain for the town's physical ugliness and smug conservatism compels her to reform it. She speaks with its members about progressive changes, joins women's clubs, distributes literature, and holds parties to liven up Gopher Prairie's inhabitants. Despite her friendly, but ineffective efforts, she is constantly derided by the leading cliques. She finds comfort and companionship outside her social class. These companions are taken from her one by one. In her unhappiness, Carol leaves her husband and moves for a time to Washington, D.C., but she eventually returns. Nevertheless, Carol does not feel defeated: :: "I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women!"
386568	/m/02286p	Misery	Stephen King	1987-06-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Paul Sheldon, the author of a best-selling series of Victorian-era romance novels surrounding the heroine character Misery Chastain, has just finished the manuscript of his new crime novel, Fast Cars, while staying at the Hotel Boulderado; since 1974, he has completed the first draft of every one of his novels in the same hotel room. With his latest project finished, he has an alcohol-induced impulse to drive to Los Angeles rather than back home to New York City. However, a snowstorm hits while he is driving through the mountains. Sheldon drives off a cliff and crashes upside down into a snowbank. Paul is rescued from the car wreck by Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who lives in nearby Sidewinder. She takes him to her own home rather than a hospital, putting him in the guest bedroom. Using her nursing skills and stockpiled food and medical supplies, including an illicit stash of codeine-based painkillers, Annie slowly nurses Paul back to health. She proclaims herself as Paul's "number one fan," being an avid reader of the Misery Chastain series. However, when she reads the manuscript for Fast Cars, Annie argues with Paul on its violent content and profanity, causing her to spill his soup. Saying that the accident was "his" fault, she punishes him by withholding his medication, then forcing him to wash it down with soap water. Paul, who has done extensive research into mental disorders, suspects that Annie is dangerously disturbed. When Sheldon's latest novel, Misery's Child, hits the shelves, Annie buys her reserved copy. She doesn't know, however, that Paul has killed her off at the end, intending to end the Misery series and re-establish himself as a mainstream writer. Upon learning of the main character's demise, Annie rages at Paul before leaving him alone in her house for over two days lest she do something "unwise". During this time, Paul suffers from extreme pain and withdrawal from the painkillers; by the time Annie returns, he is close to death. Annie forces him to burn the Fast Cars manuscript&mdash;the book he hoped would launch his post-Misery career&mdash;and presents him with an antique Royal typewriter, for the purpose of writing a new Misery Chastain novel that will bring the character back from the dead. Paul bides his time and writes the book as Annie wants, believing her fully capable of killing him. He manages to escape his room while Annie is on an errand, touring the house in search of more painkillers. He is almost caught by Annie, but manages to return to his room before she enters the house. On another occasion when Annie is absent, Paul escapes his room again and steals a knife from her kitchen, intending to kill her. On the way back to his room, he finds a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings from Annie's life, suggesting that she is a serial killer who murdered her own father, her college roommate, and numerous patients in several states&mdash;thirty-nine people in all. She was arrested and charged with killing several babies at a Boulder hospital, but was acquitted. He also finds a magazine clipping about his status as a missing person. Annie eventually reveals that she knows about Paul's excursions from his room, and punishes him by cutting off his foot with an axe, cauterizing the wound with a blowtorch. Later, when Paul complains about a missing letter on the typewriter, she punishes him by slicing off his thumb with an electric knife. A Colorado state trooper eventually arrives at Annie’s house in search of Paul. Realizing a chance for escape, Paul alerts the officer by throwing an ashtray through the window. However, Annie surprises the trooper, stabs him repeatedly with a sharpened wooden cross, then finally rides over him with her lawnmower. She temporarily hides Paul in the basement while she departs, meaning to dispose of the trooper's body and his police cruiser. Paul finally finishes the book, Misery's Return. As a celebration, he asks Annie for a cigarette and a match, as per his normal practice after finishing a novel, but uses them to seemingly light his manuscript on fire in front of her. While Annie frantically tries to put out the flames, Paul throws the typewriter at her. The two engage in a violent struggle, with Paul stuffing Annie's mouth full of the burning pages. Annie breaks free and runs to find a weapon, but trips on the typewriter, causing her to crack her skull on the mantelpiece. Paul then crawls out of the room, closes the door, and locks the bolt that Annie had installed. After slumping down in front of the door, Paul feels Annie's fingers tugging his shirt from under it. Horrified at the question of how she is still alive, he pounds at her fingers then makes his way to the bathroom for more Novril. He finds and swallows some and sleeps against the door. Awakening, Paul musters up the courage to leave the bathroom in an attempt to escape, uncertain if Annie is either alive or dead. After slowly crawling a short distance, he sees headlights pour through a window. It's the police again. He finds Annie's Penguin and throws it through the window to get their attention. When they find him, Paul warns them about Annie still being alive and her being locked in the guest bedroom. They leave him to investigate. When they return, they tell Paul that they had not found anything but a shattered bottle of champagne and the room burned. Paul screams until he faints. Later it is revealed that Annie had escaped through the window and gone out to the barn in order to get a chainsaw. However, she had died in the barn due to her skull fracture, one hand grasping the handle of the chainsaw. Returning home to New York, Paul submits Misery's Return to his publisher; it is revealed that he burned a decoy of the manuscript instead of the book itself. Paul's publisher tells him that the book will become his greatest bestseller. However, the ordeal is far from over for Paul: he suffers nightmares about Annie and continues to have withdrawals from painkillers. He has also become an alcoholic with writer's block. Eventually, after a random encounter with a child in the street, he has the same spark that inspired him to write Fast Cars. He begins typing about this boy and the skunk he had with him in a shopping cart.
386867	/m/0229l7	The Monk	M. G. Lewis		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 Leonella and her niece, Antonia, visit a church to hear the sermon of a celebrated priest, Ambrosio, and while waiting tell their story to two young men, Don Lorenzo and Don Christoval. Antonia's Grandfather is the Marquis de las Cisternas, who was unhappy with his son’s marriage, causing her parents to flee, leaving their young son behind only to be told a month later he has died. Leonella has come to Spain to convince the Marquis’ son, Raymond de las Cisternas, to resume their pension, which has been cut off. As the story is told, Lorenzo falls in love with Antonia. The mysterious priest, who was left at the abbey as a child, delivers the sermon, and Antonia is fascinated with him. Lorenzo vows to win the hand of Antonia, but must visit his sister Agnes, who is a nun at the nearby abbey. Having fallen asleep in the church, he awakens to find someone delivering a letter for his sister from Raymond de las Cisternas. On the way home, a gypsy warns Antonia that she is about to die, killed by someone who appears to be honorable. Ambrosio is visited by nuns, including Agnes, for confession. She drops a letter which reveals her plans to run away with Raymond de las Cisternas. When Agnes confesses that she is pregnant with Raymond’s child, Ambrosio turns her over to the prioress of her abbey for punishment. As she is led away, she curses Ambrosio. Returning to the abbey, Ambrosio's constant companion, a novice named Rosario admits that he is a woman named Matilda, who disguised herself so that she could be near Ambrosio. They both know he must throw her out of the monastery, but she begs him not to, and vows to kill herself if he does. He relents, but after talking the next day she decides to leave of her own accord, on the condition Ambrosio gives her a rose to remember him by. As he picks the rose, he is bitten by a serpent and is rushed to his room where it is predicated that he will die within three days. Rosario acts as his nurse, and the next day it is discovered that Ambrosio is cured which is proclaimed a miracle. When the other monks leave, Matilda reveals that she sucked the poison from Ambrosio’s wound and is now dying herself. At the point of death, she begs him to make love to her, and he succumbs to the temptation at last, having discovered that she is the model who sat for his beloved portrait of the virgin Mary. Lorenzo confronts Raymond about his relationship with his sister Agnes and his being identified as Alphonse d’Alvarada, who tried to elope with her. Raymond tells a story of the time he went travelling in Germany with his rank concealed under the name Alphonse d’Alvarada. While traveling, his chaise is incapacitated and His servant finds him some lodging at a nearby cottage owned by Baptiste and his wife, who is anything but congenial. Another party, a baroness and her retinue also stop for the night. Receiving a sign of bloody sheets on his bed from Marguerite, Baptiste’s wife, Alphonse realizes that something is amiss, and discovers that he has fallen into a group of murderers, who waylay travelers to kill and rob them. He avoids being drugged and manages to escape with the others, along with Marguerite, who kills Baptiste. They make it to Strasbourg, where Marguerite shares her story of illicit love with a bandit, by whom she has two children, and being forced into marriage with Baptiste. She returns to the home of her father, and Raymond continues his travels, taking along Marguerite’s son, Theodore, as a servant. At the home of the baroness Raymond falls in love with her niece Agnes, and goes to the baroness to ask for her blessing. However The Baroness is in love with Raymond and when he refuses her advances since he loves Agnes, she vows vengeance her. Discovering that it is Agnes, she plans to send her to the convent and so Raymond and Agnes make plans to elope. Agnes plans to dress as the bleeding nun, a ghost who haunts the castle, when she escapes with Raymond. The two drive away in the night, but the carriage crashes, and when Raymond awakens, he finds the nun Agnes is gone. After several months healing, he learns that it was not Agnes but the bleeding nun herself who was with him. Raymond learns that the bleeding nun is an ancestor, and he is responsible for burying her bones and so release her from her hauntings. He finds Agnes in the convent and takes the disguise of the convent gardener. There he overcomes Agnes, earning her rejection. However, when she discovers that she is pregnant, she begs him to come to rescue her. When Raymond finishes his story, Lorenzo agrees to help him elope with Agnes. He then goes to visit Elvira (Raymond’s half-sister and the mother of Antonia) to ask for permission to court Antonia. However, Elvira is very fearful of her daughter facing the prospect of being rejected by Lorenzo’s family, just as she herself was rejected by the Cisternas. Despite Lorenzo’s pleadings, Elvira suggests to both Raymond and to Antonia that they resist their love. Lorenzo promises that he will get his family’s blessing so that will calm Elvira’s fears. In the meantime, Lorenzo tries to visit his sister Agnes in the convent, but is told that she is too ill to see him. He has sent to Rome to receive a papal bull releasing Agnes from her vows so that she may honorably marry Raymond without fear of retribution. When the prioress of the abbey is presented with the papal bull, she tells Lorenzo that his sister died several days before. Lorenzo does not believe it, but knows that is simply the prioress’s way to relieve the shame that having a pregnant nun would have on the abbey. However, after two months, there is no other word concerning Agnes. In the meantime, he has secured his family’s blessing on his hoped-for marriage with Antonia. Ambrosio and Matilda spend the night making love, Ambrosio no longer feeling the guilt of sin. The next night in the cemetery, she performs some ritual of which Ambrosio can only see flashes of light and quaking of the ground, and when she returns, she is free of the poison, and free to be Ambrosio’s secret lover. But as the week progresses, Ambrosio grows tired of her, and his eye begins to wander, noticing the attractiveness of other women. Ambrosio is approached by Antonia, who asks him to provide a confessor for Elvira, her dying mother, and is immediately attracted to her. He prays for Elvira, who begins to improve, and so agrees to come to visit them often, for the simple purpose of being with Antonia and hopefully seducing her. Elvira confesses that she sees something familiar in Ambrosio, but she cannot pinpoint what it is. Ambrosio continues his visits to Antonia. He asks if there is not a man whom she has ever loved, and she confesses that she loves him. Misinterpreting her, he embraces, but She resists him, insisting that she did not love him in that way, yet the priest continues to ravish her until her mother enters. Ambrosio pretends that nothing was happening, but Elvira had already suspected his designs on her daughter and tells him that his services are no longer needed. Matilda comes to his room and tells him she can help him to gain Antonia’s charms, even though she realizes she herself no longer holds his interest, in the same way in which she was healed of the poison; witchcraft. Ambrosio is horrified and rejects her suggestion. However, when she shows him a magic mirror that reveals to him Antonia bathing, he agrees. Matilda and Ambrosio return to the cemetery, where Matilda calls up Lucifer and receives his help, and they receive a magic myrtle, which will allow Ambrosio to open any door, as well as satisfy his lust on Antonia without her knowing who is her ravisher. Ambrosio agrees, selling himself to the devil. Raymond mourns the death of his lover, Agnes, so Theodore plots to disguise himself as a beggar and go to the convent to find out what happened to her. He is taken into the convent, where he hopes that Agnes will recognize him, sending some word of her state. He is disappointed when no word comes. However, as he leaves, Mother St. Ursula, hands him a basket with gifts. Theodore takes the basket back to Raymond, where they find a note hidden in the linen cover, stating that they should have the cardinal arrest both Mother St. Ursula and the prioress, so that Agnes’s murder can be requited. Ambrosio instigates out his plot to rape Antonia. With the magic myrtle he enters her chamber and finds her asleep. He performs the magic rite that will prevent her resistance. He is on the point of raping her when Elvira enters the room and confronts him, promising that she will make his true nature public. Ambrosio has not other recourse but to murder Elvira, without carrying out his true purpose of ravishing Antonia. He returns to the abbey, unsatisfied in his lust and horrified that he has now become a murderer. Antonia is grief-stricken at the death of her mother and alone. Leonella is married and distant, Raymond is ill and ignorant of her plight, and Lorenzo has gone to get an arrest order for the death of his sister. One night she wanders into Elvira’s room and sees what she takes to be her mother’s ghost, which warns her that it will return in three nights and Antonia will die. Terrified, Antonia faints and is found by her landlady, Jacintha, who goes to Ambrosio, requesting him to exorcise her home. Under Matilda’s advice, Ambrosio prepares a concoction that will induce a condition appearing to be death for Antonia. While he is attending Antonia, he slips the potion into her medicine and waits. While he is waiting, he sees what he fears is, in actuality, the ghost of Elvira retreat across the room. He pursues it and discovers it is Flora, Antonia’s maid, who is spying on him on the advice of Elvira before she died. As they are speaking, Jacintha cries out that Antonia is dying, as it indeed appears. With her "dying" breath, Antonia confesses how much she admired Ambrosio and desired his friendship, against her mother’s wishes. She leaves everything to her aunt Leonella, and releases her half-uncle Cisternas from all obligations to her, though she waited for him to come rescue her from her dire straits. Lorenzo arrives back in Madrid with a representative of the Inquisition. During the procession honoring St. Clare, the prioress is arrested. Mother St. Ursula publicly relates the account of Agnes’s trial by the sisters. The majority voted for the most extreme punishment, which would entail Agnes being thrown in a dungeon and left for dead. However, at Mother St. Ursula’s instigation, the punishment is mitigated to death by poison. At Mother St. Ursula’s revelation that the prioress is a murderer, the crowd turns to rioting. Despite the Inquisitor’s pleas, she is attacked and killed by the crowd. Then they turn on the other nuns, vowing that all of them must be destroyed and the convent torn down. In the confusion, Lorenzo finds a group of nuns and a young woman named Virginia hiding in the cemetery vault near the statue of St. Clare. Groans coming from the statue arouse Lorenzo’s suspicions. He manages to move the statue to find a passage leading down into a dungeon, where he finds Agnes, alive and holding the body of her baby. Lorenzo removes Agnes from the dungeon and with Virginia’s help, takes the group of nuns to safety. When Antonia awakens from her drugged sleep in the crypt Ambrosio rapes her. Afterwards, he is as disgusted with Antonia as he was with Matilda, who comes to warn him about the riot. Ambrosio kills Antonia in her attempt to escape. Virginia visits Lorenzo as he is recovering from his grief, and the two become closer. Lorenzo convinces Agnes to tell of her experiences at the hands of the prioress. She tells of having awakened to the horrors of the tomb. With the putrid conditions of her surroundings and the pangs of hunger not expected to be assuaged, she many times contemplates suicide, but the thought of her unborn child prevents her. At length she is visited by the prioress, who admits that she purposely gave her an opiate rather than poison, so that she could carry out the punishment that she sees as fitting for Agnes’s sin. She will be imprisoned in the dungeon, with enough food to ensure her survival, nothing more. In the dungeon, Agnes gives premature birth to her baby, which soon dies. At length, no food is brought, and Agnes resigns herself to die, when she is rescued by Lorenzo. Agnes and Raymond are married, and the couple leaves Madrid for Raymond’s castle, accompanied by Lorenzo and Virginia, who are also eventually married. Ambrosio and Matilda are brought before the Inquisition, and at first both proclaim their innocence, but then Matilda confesses her guilt and is condemned to be burned at the Auto de Fe. Ambrosio insists upon his innocence and is tortured. When returned to his cell to regain his strength for a second "questioning", he is visited by a vision of Matilda, who tries to convince him to completely yield his soul to Satan as she has. She leaves him the volume by which the rite is performed. Ambrosio again proclaims his innocence, but when faced with the instruments of torture once again, he admits to his sins of rape, murder, and sorcery and he too is condemned to burn. In despair, Ambrosio requests Lucifer to save his life, who tells him it will be at the cost of his soul. Yet still Ambrosio resists, hoping eventually for God’s pardon. Lucifer informs him that there is none, and Ambrosio, after much resistance, signs the contract. He is rescued from the cell by Lucifer and brought to a wilderness. Lucifer informs him that Elvira was his mother, making Antonia his sister, adding to his crimes the sin of incest. Lucifer reveals that it has long been his plan to gain Ambrosio’s soul, and Matilda was his servant in the process. Lucifer then carries Ambrosio up and drops him on the rocks below. Ambrosio suffers for six days, dying alone and damned for eternity.
386988	/m/022bb8	Star by Star	Troy Denning		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this dark and dangerous time for the New Republic, the cruel Yuuzhan Vong continue their mission: galactic conquest. The Yuuzhan Vong have begun cloning voxyn, creatures capable of hunting Jedi through the Force and killing them. Former Chief of State Leia Organa Solo faces a difficult crisis; the Yuuzhan Vong want to know the location of the secret Jedi base, and if the New Republic does not provide this information within one week, they will violently destroy millions of refugee ships. As the Jedi Knights mourn the victims of the voxyn, Anakin Solo prepares a dangerous plan. He will lead a strike force made of his Force-adept friends into the core of an enemy worldship over Myrkr in attempt to kill the original voxyn. There, he will come into contact with evil, sorrow, the destiny of the New Republic ... and himself. The book also saw the creation of the deadly YVH 1 Droids that were built as a response to the Yuuzhan Vong invasion and the Fall of Coruscant. The Jedi find themselves in considerable danger when the Yuuzhan Vong unleash feral creatures called voxyn on them. These voxyn are aggressive, intelligent, and extremely difficult to kill, and worst of all for the Jedi, they can hunt through the Force and have been engineered specifically to hunt down Jedi. Leia Organa Solo captures one such beast but not before she is severely wounded. It is then discovered that all voxyn are clones of an original genetically modified beast native to Myrkr, the location of the Yuuzhan Vong voxyn cloning facility. In order to foil the threat posed by the voxyn, Anakin Solo and the Jedi Council consider sending a specialized all-Jedi strike team to take out the cloning facility. The idea faced some resistance, mainly from Han Solo who rightly believed that the mission was dangerous and was unwilling to send all three of his children right into Yuuzhan Vong territory. Ultimately, the choice was Luke Skywalker's, who is currently leading the Jedi, who thought that it was their only chance and volunteered himself for the mission. Anakin rejected his offer on the grounds that he was too valuable to the New Republic and the Jedi, as well as being too important and strong for the Yuuzhan Vong to consider taking alive. Instead, Anakin volunteers himself and others follow his lead. The final group comprises Anakin, Ulaha Kore, Jacen Solo, Jaina Solo, Tenel Ka Djo, Zekk, Tahiri Veila and Alema Rar among others. While the initial part of the mission went smoothly, things began to get out of hand once the team landed on the worldship orbiting Myrkr. While they were there, they were repeatedly ambushed by voxyn and Yuuzhan Vong warriors commanded by Nom Anor and Vergere. They also ran into Nightsister Lomi Plo and her Shadow Academy apprentice Welk. After some debate, Anakin decided that Lomi Plo and Welk should join them, although Zekk predicted that they would be double-crossed by the Dark Jedi. There were several casualties along the way to the original or 'queen' voxyn, but the biggest blow fell when Anakin was injured. Already weary and injured, the Jedi soon came under attack once again and although they escaped, the damage to Anakin had already been done. They soon learned that Welk and Lomi Plo had made off with the spacecraft Anakin had intended to use for their getaway, taking with them Raynar Thul, an old friend of Jaina and Jacen. This effectively means that the group are stranded aboard the worldship with a worsening Anakin. Anakin soon realized that his condition would result in the entire group's death. He died later fighting off many Yuuzhan Vong, destroying all of the voxyn cloning samples, and buying the time his comrades needed in order to escape the Yuuzhan Vong. His death was felt by his uncle Luke Skywalker and his mother Leia Solo, the former noting that before his death, Anakin had already become one with the Force. Before his death, he left his brother Jacen in charge of their group. After a brief period of mourning during which tensions within the group rose, Jacen and Jaina decided to split up. Jaina wanted to retrieve her brother's body while Jacen decided to finish off their original mission; the killing of the voxyn queen. On his way there, he met the mysterious Vergere who showed him the way to the voxyn queen whom he fought and defeated. After this, she turned on him and delivered him right into the waiting hands of the Yuuzhan Vong. Jaina, meanwhile, had successfully retrieved her brother's body and reluctantly led what was left of their group off of the Myrkr worldship via a stolen Vong frigate, leaving Jacen behind with the Yuuzhan Vong. Before her departure, she had already begun to show signs of dark side tendencies that rose from the loss of Anakin. The Yuuzhan Vong warfleet attacked Coruscant from the OboRin Comet Cluster, having assembled at such staging positions like Borleias. They used refugee ships containing prisoners from earlier battles to shield the Vong fleet. Even with the efforts of legendary leaders such as General Garm Bel Iblis (commanding Fleet Group Two), Admiral Traest Kre'fey (commanding Fleet Group One), General Wedge Antilles (commanding Fleet Group Three), Supreme Commander Sien Sovv, and Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, the Yuuzhan Vong were too plentiful to be thwarted. It was said that the Vong fleet numbered "tens of thousands", and that half of the New Republic space navy was present. Chief of State Borsk Fey'lya made Admiral Sovv command the battle in front of a full session of the Senate. As a result, the New Republic forces had no effective overall strategy, and discipline broke down. When Sovv ordered that the fleet hold their fire in order to not hit the refugee ships, Iblis flat out ignored him, and his Fleet Group operated solely under his command for the rest of the battle attacking the Yuuzhan Vong head on and suffering enormous casualties. The refugee ships, which were piloted by Yuuzhan Vong, were deliberately smashed into Coruscant's shields to weaken them. This tactic worked, as eventually whole shield-grids failed, and the surface shield-generators exploded. Coruscant did have extensive mine fields, but these didn't have quite as large an impact as desired—the defenders at Coruscant disabled the mines to avoid slaughtering the refugees. The Vong also used the refugee ships to batter the city planet's surface, causing terrible damage below. Even the orbital defense platforms could not stop the advance of the Yuuzhan Vong. Soon Coruscant's skyline was burning with crashing vessels and plasma fire from the battle above. Even Orbital Defense Headquarters was crippled, and fell out of orbit to the surface. During the battle, Luke Skywalker and other Jedi from the Eclipse base targeted the enemy war coordinating yammosks, and managed to destroy four of them. Meanwhile, Han and Leia Solo, aboard the Millennium Falcon, attempted to rescue Chief of State Borsk Fey'lya, but were tasked with rescuing Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade Skywalker. The second assault wave were thousands of yorik-trema dropships, tsik-seru airskimmers, swarms of yorik-vec assault cruisers and coralskippers, rakamat and fire breather walkers, legions of Yuuzhan Vong warriors and Chazrach support troops. In desperation, the New Republic military fired on the hostage refugee ships but to no avail. At the Imperial Palace, Tsavong Lah's aide Romm Zqar tried to force Borsk Fey'lya to surrender. When he refused, he was killed. But before the Chief of State died, he had planted a bomb in the Imperial Palace triggered by his heartbeat. This resulted in the deaths of the Chief of State, 25,000 Yuuzhan Vong warriors, the destruction of a portion of the Imperial Palace, many surrounding buildings, and several Yuuzhan Vong vessels. Prior to his death, Fey'lya had ordered the data towers to be destroyed to prevent valuable information from getting into the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong. The battle lasted for several days with heavy casualties on both sides. Many of its citizens were forced to flee the former capital world of the New Republic while those who did not manage to escape were forced to flee into the city-planet's lower levels. Many Senators, fearing for their lives, commandeered bits of the fleet and escaped to their sectors as the battle progressed. The New Republic navy was somewhat diminished as a result. Some think that if this had not happened, then the New Republic might have won the battle. The third wave was a biotoxin in the form of green algae released by the Yuuzhan Von which devoured many of the buildings, including dead bodies, and the algae also left behind black spots. Coralskipper and yorik-vec squadrons bombed the devastated city world causing damage to the defenders. The Yuuzhan Vong eventually captured Coruscant and had it terraformed and renamed Yuuzhan'tar after their primordial homeworld. Overall, the Yuuzhan Vong won because of their utter ruthlessness.
388046	/m/022g4y	American Tabloid	James Ellroy	1995-02-14	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 *Part I, SHAKEDOWNS, November–December 1958 "Shakedowns" covers just 26 days, introducing the three principal characters, and establishing their relationships, history, and career trajectories. Pete Bondurant is a former LASD deputy; he presently works for billionaire Howard Hughes and runs small-time shakedowns. (Bondurant is also an associate of Jimmy Hoffa.) Kemper Boyd is a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, a southerner, and a man who covets wealth and power. Ward Littell is also an FBI agent and Boyd's friend and former partner. Although assigned to monitor Communist Party activities, his abiding hatred of organized crime leads him to vie for a spot on the Bureau's Top Hoodlum Squad. Each of the three protagonists plot to entrap John F. Kennedy with a call girl; Boyd and Littell for J. Edgar Hoover, Bondurant for Hughes. The set-up is successful, but the Kennedy family discovers that Hughes's "Hush-Hush" tabloid will print the transcripts before the issue went to press, and prevents their publication. At Hoover's direction, Boyd leaves the FBI and begins working with Hoover's personal nemeses - Kennedy and his younger brother Robert—on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management's investigation of organized crime and union corruption. Boyd strikes a rapport with John Kennedy but dislikes Bobby. The Kennedys, with their wealth and privilege, embody everything that Boyd hopes to gain. Littell, who meets the Kennedys through Boyd, is enraptured by Bobby, both men sharing a hatred for organized crime. *Part II, COLLUSION, January 1959-January 1961 "Collusion" opens with Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro's January 1, 1959 overthrow of the Fulgencio Batista government. The three principals begin to collude with one another to varying degrees. Bondurant and Boyd both become Central Intelligence Agency operatives, while Littell investigates Hoffa and Mafia connections both officially for the FBI and on his own initiative. Boyd also joins the employ of the Kennedy family, working on JFK's presidential campaign. Bondurant and Boyd ultimately collaborate with the CIA, the "Outfit" (seeking to retake its now nationalized Havana casinos), and far right Cuban refugees plotting to overthrow the new communist regime. Littell becomes increasingly disgruntled with the FBI and Hoover's anti-communism mandates and begins investigating the mob on his own. Much of this information he anonymously feeds to Bobby Kennedy through Boyd. Through a series of snitches, Littell confirms that the Teamsters Pension Fund is being used to fund organized crime. Littell tracks the Fund's supposed "secret" accounting books to the home of mid-level mobster Jules Schiffrin in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Littell coerces Jack Ruby into searching Schiffrin's home. While waiting for Ruby, Littell is severely beaten by Bondurant; Ruby had tipped off Bondurant to Littell's operation, and Bondurant feared that Littell would endanger the CIA's Cuban plots. After recuperating, Littell takes leave from the FBI, invades Schiffrin's home, and steals the Pension Fund's books himself. Cracking the books' code, he realizes that Joseph Kennedy loaned the Fund millions of dollars. Hoover fires Littell from the FBI, revokes his pension, and blackballs him as a communist sympathizer with every US state's bar association in order to hurt his chances of practicing law. Boyd tries to get Littell a job with now-Attorney General designate Bobby Kennedy, who emphatically refuses, also having received a report from Hoover of Littell's budding alcoholism and invented mob ties. "Collusion" concludes with the inauguration of Kennedy as President. *Part III, PIGS, February–November 1961 In the employ of the CIA, Boyd and Bondurant help train the "Blessington Cadre": Cuban exiles training to overthrow Castro at a CIA camp in Florida. The exiles are recruited through Hoffa's "Tiger Kab" taxi stand in Miami. The CIA also establishes a Ku Klux Klan "klavern" to keep "local rednecks" occupied and away from the camp. The Mafia, through New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, funds the operation by supplying the cadre heroin for redistribution. As part of his organized crime vendetta, Bobby Kennedy has Marcello deported, unaware of (and uninterested in) Marcello's involvement in the CIA operation. Bondurant covertly absconds with Marcello when his INS plane lands in Central America. Boyd recommends that Marcello hire Littell as his extradition lawyer. Littell meets Bondurant and Marcello at their Central American hideout, where Littell hands over the stolen Teamsters Pension Fund books (albeit without confessing to stealing them and without the pages implicating Joe Kennedy). President Kennedy, unaware of Boyd's CIA connection, taps Boyd—now also working for Robert Kennedy's Justice Department civil rights task force—to investigate the Blessington operation and advise whether to implement the CIA's invasion strategy. After a sham visit, Boyd naturally encourages the president to authorize the mission, promising Kennedy that it will guarantee his reelection. The Bay of Pigs Invasion is authorized, although Kennedy second-guesses its wisdom and refuses to provide the air support that the Cadre believes necessary. The invasion is a failure and an embarrassment for Kennedy and all involved—including the CIA, the mob, Bondurant, and Boyd. The night of the invasion, Boyd is shot numerous times in a side operation to distribute "hot shots" of heroin that would be linked back to Castro. *Part IV, HEROIN, December 1961-September 1963 Through the patronage of Marcello, Littell has become a full-fledged mob lawyer. When Hoffa hires him, it confirms that Bobby Kennedy has become his primary adversary. Through their now-mutual hatred of the Kennedys, Littell and Hoover make amends, and Hoover arranges for Howard Hughes to become Littell's client. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs, Boyd and Bondurant encourage the mob to authorize an assassination attempt on Castro. When the mob passes on the opportunity, they surmise that the mob is now backing Castro. Enraged, they execute a plan wherein they steal millions of dollars of mob heroin as it comes to shore from Cuba in hopes of recouping their Bay of Pigs losses. In collusion with Littell, Bondurant also begins running a wire tap hoping to catch the president having an affair with a woman they have set up. They make several recordings of Kennedy, which they also share with Hoover. Boyd, however, remains fond of Jack, and becomes enraged when he discovers the scam. When he confronts Bondurant, Bondurant plays him sections from the tapes of Jack ridiculing Boyd, his social-climbing, and his Kennedy envy. Ironically, Bobby Kennedy (learning of Boyd's CIA connection and erratic behavior upon discovering the wire tap), fingers Boyd as the person trying to set up the president; he fires Boyd from the Justice Department, severing his ties with the Kennedys, and making an enemy of Boyd. The mob also figures out that Boyd and Bondurant were behind the theft of their heroin. Littell offers them the mob's price to atone for their theft: Kill President Kennedy. *Part V, CONTRACT, September–November 1963 Boyd, Bondurant, and Littell plot to assassinate Kennedy during a motorcade in Miami and arrange the logistics to frame left-wing radicals. Without being specific, Littell tips off Hoover about the plot, but due to Hoover's non-committal response, Littell surmises that there is a second assassination plot in the works, which will take place several days later in Dallas. The three men determine that they were set up, and begin to clean up and cover up the tracks of their Miami operation. Littell visits Bobby Kennedy, confronting him with evidence of his father's collusion with the mob, with the added intent that it will serve as an after-the-fact explanation of why Jack would be killed. After killing several of the Miami conspirators, Bondurant leaves for Dallas while Boyd returns to Mississippi. Littell is waiting for Boyd at his hotel; Littell shoots Boyd, who dies thinking of Jack Kennedy. Bondurant, his new wife Barb Jahelka, and several mob associates, converge on Dallas on November 22, 1963. The book ends at 12:30 PM, as Kennedy's motorcade drives through Dealey Plaza, with Bondurant closing his eyes, awaiting the shots and screams.
388056	/m/022g62	The Wonderful Adventures of Nils	Selma Lagerlöf	1906	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book is about a young lad, Nils Holgersson, whose "chief delight was to eat and sleep, and after that he liked best to make mischief". He takes great delight in hurting the animals in his family farm. Nils captures a tomte in a net while his family is at church and have left him home to memorize chapters from the Bible. The tomte proposes to Nils that if Nils frees him, the tomte will give him a huge gold coin. Nils rejects the offer and the tomte turns Nils into a tomte, which leaves him shrunken and able to talk with animals, who are thrilled to see the boy reduced to their size and are angry and hungry for revenge. While this is happening, wild geese are flying over the farm on one of their migrations, and a white farm goose attempts to join the wild ones. In an attempt to salvage something before his family returns, Nils holds on to the bird's neck as it successfully takes off and joins the wild birds. The wild geese, who are not pleased at all to be joined by a boy and a domestic goose, eventually take him on an adventurous trip across all the historical provinces of Sweden observing in passing their natural characteristics and economic resources. At the same time the characters and situations he encounters make him a man: the domestic goose needs to prove his ability to fly like the experienced wild geese, and Nils needs to prove to the geese that he would be a useful companion, despite their initial misgivings. During the trip, Nils learns that if he proves he has changed for the better, the tomte might be disposed to change him back to his normal size. The book also includes various subplots, concerning people whose lives are touched in one way or another by Nils and the wild geese. For example, one chapter centers on a young provincial man who feels lonely and alienated in the capital Stockholm, is befriended by a nice old gentleman who tells him (and the reader) about the city's history - and only later finds that it was none other than the King of Sweden, walking incognito in the park. The book was criticized for the fact that the goose and boy don't make any stop in the province Halland. In chapter 53 they fly over Halland on the way back to Scania, but they aren't impressed by the sight and they don't stop. However, such a chapter has been added to some translations of the book. In depictions Nils is usually wearing a red cap, although this is erroneous as he is described in the original Swedish edition as wearing a white cap.
390168	/m/022kyh	The Cold Six Thousand	James Ellroy	2001-05-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, minutes after the John F. Kennedy assassination, and continues for roughly five years. Ward Littell, former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent turned high-powered Mafia lawyer, arrives in Dallas with J. Edgar Hoover's blessing to "manage" the investigation and ensure a consensus: Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Pete Bondurant, who Littell once arrested but is now an uneasy friend and partner, is a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency's war against Fidel Castro and now the point-man for the Mafia's Las Vegas operations. Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a US Army veteran and Las Vegas Police Department officer, is paid six thousand dollars to fly to Dallas and murder a black pimp who has offended the casinos, and is thus thrust into the assassination's aftermath. As the tension over race relations and the Vietnam War builds and explodes throughout the decade, all three become involved in plots to kill Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
391497	/m/022ryc	Fifth Business	Robertson Davies	1970	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ramsay's passion for hagiology and his guilty connection to Mary Dempster provide most of the impetus and background for this novel. He spends much of the book struggling with his image of Mary Dempster as a fool-saint and dealing with issues of guilt that grew from a childhood accident. The entire story is told in the form of a letter written by Ramsay on his retirement from teaching at Colborne College, addressed to the school Headmaster.
391531	/m/022s16	The Crab with the Golden Claws	Hergé	1941		 Tintin is informed by the Thompsons of a case involving the ramblings of a drunken man, later killed, found with a scrap of paper from what appears to be a tin of crab-meat with the word Karaboudjan scrawled on it. His subsequent investigation and the kidnapping near his apartment of a Japanese man interested in giving a letter to him leads Tintin to a ship called Karaboudjan, where he is abducted by a syndicate of criminals who have been hiding opium in the crab tins. Tintin escapes from his locked room after Snowy chews through his bonds and Tintin knocks out a man sent to bring him food. He leaves him bound and gagged in the room. Tintin encounters Captain Haddock, an alcoholic sea captain, who is manipulated by his first mate, Allan, and is unaware of his crew's criminal activities. Tintin hides in the locker under the bed and defeats Jumbo, the sailor left in the cabin, as Tintin is thought by Allan to have climbed out of the porthole back into the store-room. He blows open the door, then finding it empty goes back to the Captain's room, where he finds Jumbo tied to a chair and gagged. Escaping the ship in a lifeboat in an attempt to reach Spain after sending a radio message to the Police about the cargo, they are attacked by a seaplane. They hijack the plane and tie up the pilots, but a storm and Haddock's drunken behaviour causes them to crash-land in the Sahara, where the crew escapes. After trekking across the desert and nearly dying of dehydration, Tintin and Haddock are rescued and taken to a French outpost, where they hear on the radio the storm apparently sunk the Karaboudjan. They travel to a Moroccan port, and along the way are attacked by Tuareg tribesmen, defending themselves with French MAS-36 rifles. At the port, Captain is kidnapped by members of his old crew after he sees the disguised Karaboudjan. Tintin meets the Thompsons who got his message and went to the port, they find the crab tins are being sold by the wealthy merchant Omar Ben Salaad, who Tintin tells the Thompsons to discreetly investigate. Tintin tracks down the gang and saves the Captain, but they both become intoxicated by the fumes from wine barrels breached in a shootout with the villains. Haddock ends up chasing a gang-member from the cellar to an entrance behind a book-case in Salaad's house. Upon sobering up, Tintin discovers the necklace with the Crab with the Golden Claws on the now-subdued owner of the wine cellar, Omar Ben Salaad, and realizes that he is the leader of the drug cartel. After Tintin captures Allan, who has stolen a boat to try escaping, the gang is put behind bars. The Japanese is freed when the Police arrest the ship-members, and reveals he is a Policeman, and was trying to warn Tintin of the group he was up against. The sailor drowned at the beginning was about to bring him opium, but was eliminated by the gang.
393290	/m/022zqg	Black Boy	Richard Wright	1945	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Black Boy (American Hunger) is a memoir of Richard Wright's childhood and young adulthood. It is split into two sections, "Southern Night" (concerning his childhood in the south) and "The Horror and the Glory" (concerning his early adult years in Chicago). The book begins with a mischievous, four-year-old Wright setting fire to his grandmothers' house, and continues in that vein. Wright is a curious child living in a household of strict, religious women and violent, irresponsible men. He quickly chafes against his surroundings, reading instead of playing with other children, and rejecting the church in favor of atheism at a young age. He feels even more out of place as he grows older and comes in contact with the rampant racism of the 1920s south. Not only he finds it generally unjust but also he is especially bothered by whites' and other blacks' desire to squash his intellectual curiosity and potential. His father deserts the family, and he is shuffled back and forth between his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother and various aunts and uncles. As he ventures into the white world to find jobs, he encounters extreme racism and brutal violence, which stays with him the rest of his life. The family is starving to death. They have always viewed the north as a place of opportunity, and so as soon as they can scrape together enough money, Richard and his aunt go to Chicago, promising to send for his mother and brother. But before Richard can go to Chicago, he has to resort to stealing money and lying. Richard, many times, has to do things that he does not want to do, in order to survive. He finds the north less racist than the south and begins forming concrete ideas about American race relations. He holds many jobs, most of them menial. He washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals by night. His family is still very poor, and his mother is crippled by a stroke, and his relatives continue to annoy him about his atheism and his reading. They see no point of it. He finds a job at the post office and meets some white men who share his cynical view of the world and religion in particular. They invite him to the John Reed Club, an organization that promotes the arts and social change. He becomes involved with a magazine called Left Front. He slowly becomes immersed in the Communist Party, organizing its writers and artists. At first, he thinks he will find friends within the party, especially among its black members, but he finds them to be just as afraid of change as the southern whites he had left behind. The Communists fear anyone who disagrees with their ideas, and Wright, who has always been inclined to question and speak his mind, is quickly branded a "counter-revolutionary." When he tries to leave the party, he is accused of trying to lead others away from it. After witnessing the trial of another black Communist for counter-revolutionary activity, Wright decides to abandon the party. Hhe remains branded an "enemy" of Communism, and party members threaten him away from various jobs and gatherings. Nevertheless, he does not fight them because he believes they are clumsily groping toward ideas that he agrees with: unity, tolerance, and equality. He ends the book by resolving to use his writing to search for a way to start a revolution: he thinks that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled, and for him, writing is his way to the human heart.
393492	/m/022_l3	The City and the Pillar	Gore Vidal	1948-01-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot centers on Jim Willard, a handsome youth in Virginia in the late 1930s, who is also a very good tennis player. When his best friend Bob Ford, one year his senior, is about to leave high school, the two take a camping trip into the woods. Both are elated to be in each other's company and, after some moaning from Bob about how difficult it is to get the local girls to have sex with him, the two have sex, even though Bob thinks this is not a "normal" thing for two men to do. Jim, who does not find girls so appealing, hopes Bob can stay and is crushed when Bob is insistent on joining the United States Merchant Marine. The next seven years of Jim's life will be an odyssey, at the end of which he hopes to be happily reunited with Bob. Jim decides he wants to go to sea too and becomes a cabin boy on a cruise ship after going to New York to look for work. Another seaman on his ship, Collins, goes out with him in Seattle, but is more interested in a double date with two girls than in sex with Jim. The date is a disaster for Jim, who must realize that he is unable to drink enough to overcome being repelled by the female body. When he finally storms out, Collins calls him a queer, which causes him to think about this possibility. He quits his job, fearing another confrontation with Collins, and becomes a tennis instructor at a hotel in Los Angeles. One of the bellboys, Leaper, whose advances he has spurned previously, introduces him to the circle around the mid-thirties Hollywood actor Ronald Shaw, who immediately takes interest in Jim. Eventually, Jim moves in with Ronald, even though he is not really in love with him. Their affair is ended when Jim meets the writer Paul Sullivan, who is in his late twenties, at a party. Jim is drawn to Paul because he seems so different from the other, more stereotypical homosexuals he meets at Hollywood parties, even having married once (although that marriage was later annulled). When Shaw learns of their relationship, Jim is quite happy to move with Paul to New Orleans. Again, he is not in love with Paul but with his boyhood pal, but he considers Paul adequate for the time being. Paul however, needing some pain in his relationships for artistic inspiration, introduces Jim to Maria Verlaine, who seems to specialize in seducing homosexuals, hoping his relationship will end in a suitably tragic way. Together, the three go to Yucatán, where Maria has made an inheritance. Jim does feel vaguely attracted to Maria, but he is unable to perform sexually. All the same, for Paul even an imagined affair of his boyfriend with a woman is as painful as he had hoped and warrants a breakup. In the meantime, World War II has started in Europe and Paul and Jim are determined to go to New York to enlist in the Army. This of course also means their separation. Jim gets transferred to a Colorado Air Force base, where his sergeant is clearly sexually interested in him. But Jim has set his sights on a young corporal. Unfortunately, the corporal does not seem to like him in "that" way, even though the sergeant later seems to succeed with the corporal. Due to the cold Colorado weather, Jim contracts rheumatoid arthritis and is eventually discharged from service. He goes back to New York, where he meets Maria and Ronald again. Ronald has been forced to marry a lesbian by studio executives to uphold his public image and tries unsuccessfully to become a stage actor. He also introduces Jim to his local friends like an effeminate millionaire. Jim begins frequenting gay bars to find sexual relief. Later, he meets Paul at a party and the two start an open relationship, not because of passion, but out of loneliness. When Jim finally goes home for Christmas, he learns that his father is dead and (more alarming to him) that Bob has married. Hoping their affair can resume despite this, Jim is anxious to see him again. The resolution of their relationship comes again in New York, where they end up on the bed in Bob's hotel room. But when Jim finally thinks he has attained what he wants and moves closer, grabbing his "sex", Bob panics, is outraged to be thought of as gay, and even punches Jim in the face. The two struggle and Jim wins because he is stronger. In the original version, Jim is infuriated enough to murder Bob while in the revision he rapes Bob and then leaves the room.
393692	/m/0230k1	Tai-Pan: A Novel of Hong Kong	James Clavell	1966	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins following the British victory of the first Opium War and the seizure of Hong Kong. Although the island is largely uninhabited and the terrain unfriendly, it has a large natural harbour that both the British government and various trading companies believe will be useful for the import of merchandise to be traded on mainland China, a highly lucrative market. Although the novel features many characters, it is Dirk Struan and Tyler Brock, former shipmates and the owners of two massive (fictional) trading companies who are the main focal points of the story. Their rocky and often abusive relationship as seamen initiated an intense amount of competitive tension. Throughout the novel, both men seek to destroy each other in matters of business and personal affairs. Struan is referred to throughout the novel as Tai-Pan, indicating his position as head of the largest of all the trading companies in Asia. Clavell translates Tai-Pan as "Supreme Leader," although as described in the Tai-Pan entry, "Big Shot" might be more accurate. Brock, owner of the second largest of the trading companies, constantly vies to destroy Struan's company and reputation in an attempt both to exact revenge on Struan and to become the new "Tai-Pan" of Chinese trade. Other important characters of the novel include: * Culum Struan - Dirk Struan's son and future Tai-pan * Robb Struan - Dirk Struan's half-brother and business partner. * William Longstaff - first Governor of Hong Kong * Jeff Cooper, American trader and secret partner to the Noble House * Wilf Tillman, American trader and partner to Jeff Cooper. Guardian to Shevaun Tillman. Advocate of slavery. * Count Zergyev - Russian diplomat and spy to gauge British influence in Hong Kong * Gorth Brock - Tyler Brock's boat-captain son. * Jin-Qua, Chinese tea and opium trader, lends Dirk Struan "40 Lac" (about 1.656 million Pounds sterling, or 8 million dollars in silver bullion) to get out of debt to Tyler Brock. He is the originator of the "coin debt" to which Dirk and future Tai-Pans must swear to uphold (revealed as well in Noble House) * May–May - Dirk Struan's Chinese mistress, granddaughter of Jin-Qua, instructed to teach Dirk "civilized" (Chinese) ways. * Liza Brock, wife of Tyler Brock and Tess' mother * Aristotle Quance - Painter and hedonist, always in debt. The Struan family own several of his paintings. * Shevaun Tillman, ward of Wilf Tillman and hopeful bride to Dirk Struan. * Captain Orlov, "The Hunchback" Finnish opium ship captain under Dirk Struan. Often has visions of precognition of future events. * William Skinner, editor of the island newspaper, privy to secrets handed to him by Dirk Struan to keep his rivals off balance * Gordon Chen - Dirk Struan's Eurasian son by a Chinese mistress and secret head of the first Hong Kong Triad (underground society) * Tess Brock, daughter of Tyler Brock and eventual wife of Culum Struan.Also known as Hag Struan in later novels. * Mary Sinclair, secret English prostitute and devotee/spy of Dirk Struan, and sister of Horatio Sinclair. * Captain Glessing, former ship captain of Royal Navy and harbor master. Has a peninsula named after him. Loses an arm in the typhoon. * Horatio Sinclair, clerk to Dirk Struan, church fanatic and harbors incestuous desires for his sister Mary. * Wolfgang Mauss, renegade priest and teacher to Gordon Chen. * Roger Blore, gambler, makes an unheard of record time journey to Hong Kong, later becomes Dirk Struan's horse racing club owner. * Captain Scragger, pirate and negotiator for Wu Fang Choi, a pirate king. Scragger's family line is mentioned several times in the following books of the Asian Saga. * Wu Fang Choi, pirate king and secret partner to Jin-Qua, as the bullion for the deal came from him.
394089	/m/023262	Horton Hears a Who!	Dr. Seuss	1954-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the Jungle of Nool, a jungle environment populated by anthropomorphic fauna, an elephant named Horton encounters a clover inhabited by a society of tiny beings known as the "Whos" of microscopic size. After conversing with the mayor of Whoville, Horton decides to dedicate all of his time to tending to the needs of the Whos and guarding them from the hazards of the much larger world. However, the Sour Kangaroo, doubting Horton's stories of the Whos, encourages all of the other animals that Horton is lying, and they decide to destroy the clover out of contempt. The terrified, panicking Whos are left to despair until town's mayor stumbles upon a young boy named Jojo, whose mouth he raises a megaphone to just as the animals are about to bring devastation upon all of Whoville. Jojo screams the word "YOPP!!", which is amplified by the megaphone in the nick of time. Realizing that her suspicions were incorrect, the Sour Kangaroo redeems herself by joining Horton in devoting all of her time to protecting the Whos.
394715	/m/02343f	The World is Round	Tony Rothman	1978	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story concerns a world named Patra-Bannk (known otherwise as Freeze-Bake), and a crew of explorers from another world named Two-Bit (because life is cheap there), seeking a treasure of metallic hydrogen. Upon arriving at the planet, the four members of the expedition arrange themselves into two shuttlecraft. Pike and Hendig, in one shuttlecraft, travel inland toward a mountain village where they hope to find the navigator, Paddelack, who was stranded there after Hendig's previous voyage. After finding him, they are captured by a group of locals known as the Gostum. Upon escaping from the Gostum stronghold of Konndjlan, Pike and Paddelack proceed to Daryephna, a fabled forbidden city where Pike hopes to find the metallic hydrogen. Stringer and Valyavar take the other shuttle north along the coast about one hundred thousand kilometers and crash land near the city of Ta-tjenen. The locals consider Ta-tjenen to be the center of the world. Stringer awakens after the crash landing to find Valyavar missing, and he shoots and kills one of the natives who approach him, unaware that they were trying to help. The planet's current inhabitants are human-like, but with six fingers on each hand and with skin that darkens and lightens dramatically as the weather changes. They are divided into semi-barbaric groups or tribes with historical enmity toward one another. There are local legends of an ancient people called the Polkraitz who lived on Patra-Bannk centuries ago and had a much more advanced technology than is currently available. They left, but are prophesied to return when two of the traditional calendar systems coincide - an event known as the Golun-Patra that occurs once every 96 (Earth) years. The upcoming Golun-Patra is the twelfth Golun-Patra, which gives it added significance. The planet's slow rotation rate results in extreme weather, alternating between freezing cold "nights" (Patras) lasting up to six (Earth) months during which the sun never rises and steaming hot "days" (Bannks) during which the sun never sets for a similar number of months. Patra-Bannk is at least 50 times the size of Earth, six hundred thousand kilometers across. It is a type of Dyson sphere built around a black hole. The book is set in a time in the far future when the galaxies are beginning to merge, prior to the "Big Crunch".
394756	/m/02346r	Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes	Tony Kushner			 Set in New York City in 1985, Act One of Millennium Approaches introduces us to the central characters. As the play opens, Louis Ironson, a neurotic, gay Jew learns his lover, WASP Prior Walter, has AIDS. As the play and Prior's illness progress, Louis becomes unable to cope and moves out. Meanwhile, closeted homosexual Mormon and Republican law clerk Joe Pitt is offered a major promotion by his mentor, the McCarthyist lawyer Roy Cohn. Joe doesn't immediately take the job because he feels he has to check with his Valium-addicted, agoraphobic wife, Harper, who is unwilling to move. Roy is himself deeply closeted, and soon discovers that he has AIDS. As the seven-hour play progresses, Prior is visited by ghosts and an angel who proclaim him to be a prophet; Joe finds himself struggling to reconcile his religion with his sexuality; Louis struggles with his guilt about leaving Prior and begins a relationship with Joe; Harper's mental health deteriorates as she realizes that Joe is gay; Joe's mother, Hannah, moves to New York to attempt to look after Harper and meets Prior after a failed attempt by Prior to confront Hannah's son; Harper begins to separate from Joe whom she has depended upon and finds strength she was unaware of; and Roy finds himself in the hospital, reduced to the companionship of the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg and his nurse, Belize, a former drag queen and Prior's best friend, who meanwhile has to deal with Louis's constant demands for updates on Prior's health. The subplot involving Cohn is the most political aspect of the play. Portrayed as a self-loathing, power-hungry hypocrite, he prides himself on his political connections and influence, which he has amassed through decades of corruption. In the play, he recollects with pride his role in having Ethel Rosenberg executed for espionage. As he lies alone in the hospital, dying of AIDS, the ghost of Rosenberg sings him a Yiddish lullaby and then brings him the news that the New York State Bar Association has just disbarred him, destroying his final hope of dying as a lawyer. The play ends on a note of optimism. After his friends procure for him a stash of AZT, in 1990 Prior is still alive and is managing to live with AIDS. With his friends, he looks at the statue of an angel in Bethesda Fountain and talks of the legend of the original fountain, and how it will flow again some day. The play is deliberately performed so that the moments requiring special effects often show their theatricality. Most of the actors play multiple characters (e.g., the actor playing Prior's nurse also appears as the Angel). There are heavy Biblical references and references to American society, as well as some fantastical scenes including voyages to Antarctica and Heaven, as well as key events happening in San Francisco and at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.
395037	/m/0235s0	’Salem's Lot	Stephen King	1975-09-05	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Ben Mears, a successful writer who grew up in the town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, has returned home after twenty-five years. He quickly becomes friends with high school teacher Matt Burke and strikes up a romantic relationship with Susan Norton, a young college graduate. Ben starts writing a book about the Marsten House, an abandoned mansion where he had a bad experience as a child. Mears learns that the Marsten House—the former home of Depression-era hitman Hubert "Hubie" Marsten—has been purchased by Kurt Barlow, an Austrian immigrant who has arrived in the Lot ostensibly to open an antique store. Barlow is an apparent recluse; only his business partner, Richard Straker, is seen in public. The duo's arrival coincides with the disappearance of a young boy, Ralphie Glick, and the death of his brother Danny, who becomes the town's first vampire, infecting such locals as Mike Ryerson, Randy McDougall, Jack Griffen, and Danny's own mother, Marjorie Glick. Danny fails, however, to infect Mark Petrie, who resists him successfully. Over the course of several weeks almost all of the townspeople are infected. Ben Mears and Susan are joined by Matt Burke and his doctor, Jimmy Cody, along with young Mark Petrie and the local priest, Father Callahan, in an effort to fight the spread of the vampires, whose numbers increase as the new vampires infect their own families and others. Susan is captured by Barlow before Mark has a chance to rescue her. Susan becomes a vampire, and is eventually staked through the heart by Mears, the man who loved her. Father Callahan is caught by Barlow at the Petrie house after Barlow kills Mark's parents, but does not infect them, so they are later given a clean burial. Barlow holds Mark hostage, but Father Callahan has the upper hand, securing Mark's release, agreeing to Barlow's demand that he toss aside his cross and face him on equal terms. However he delays throwing the cross aside and the once powerful religious symbol loses its strength until Barlow can not only approach Callahan but break the cross, now nothing more than two small pieces of plaster, into bits. Barlow says "Sad to see a man's faith fail him", then forces the helpless Callahan to drink blood from Barlow's neck. Callahan resists but cannot hold out forever and is forced to drink, leaving him trapped in a netherworld, as Barlow has left his mark. When Callahan tries to re-enter his church he receives an electric shock, preventing him from going inside. Callahan disappears forever from "the Lot". Jimmy Cody is killed when he falls from a rigged staircase and is impaled by knives by the one-time denizens of Eva Miller's boarding house, Mears' one-time residence, who have now all become vampires. Matt Burke dies from a heart attack in the town hospital. Ben Mears and Mark Petrie succeed in destroying the master vampire Barlow, but are lucky to escape with their lives and are forced to leave the town to the now leaderless vampires. The novel's prologue, which is set shortly after the end of the story proper, describes the men's flight across the country to a seaside town in Mexico, where they stop to recover from their ordeal. Mark Petrie is received into the Catholic Church by a friendly local priest. The epilogue has the two returning to the town a year later, intending to renew the battle. Ben, knowing that there are too many hiding places for the town's vampires, sets the town on fire with the intent of destroying it and the Marsten House once and for all.
395683	/m/0238gd	One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	1963	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ivan Denisovich Shukhov has been sentenced to a camp in the Soviet gulag system, accused of becoming a spy after being captured by the Germans as a prisoner of war during World War II. He is innocent but is nonetheless punished by the government for being a spy. The final paragraph suggests that Shukhov serves ten years. The day begins with Shukhov waking up sick. For waking late, he is sent to the guardhouse and forced to clean it—a minor punishment compared to others mentioned in the book. When Shukhov is finally able to leave the guardhouse, he goes to the dispensary to report his illness. Since it is late in the morning by now, the orderly is unable to exempt any more workers, and Shukhov must work regardless. The rest of the day mainly speaks of Shukhov's squad (the 104th, which has 28 members), their allegiance to the squad leader, and the work that the prisoners (zeks) do—for example, at a brutal construction site where the cold freezes the mortar used for bricklaying if not applied quickly enough. Solzhenitsyn also details the methods used by the prisoners for survival; the whole camp lives by the rule of survival of the fittest. Tiurin, the foreman of gang 104 is strict but kind, and the squad grows to like him more as the book goes on. Though a "morose" man, Tiurin is liked because he understands the prisoners, he talks to them, and he helps them. Shukhov is one of the hardest workers in the squad and is generally well respected. Rations at the camp are scant, but for Shukhov, they are one of the few things to live for. He conserves the food that he receives and is always watchful for any item that he can hide and trade for food at a later date. At the end of the day, Shukhov is able to provide a few special services for Tsezar (Caesar), an intellectual who is able to get out of manual labor and do office work instead. Tsezar is most notable, however, for receiving packages of food from his family. Shukhov is able to get a small share of Tsezar's packages by standing in lines for him. Shukhov's day ends up being productive, even "almost happy": "Shukhov went to sleep fully content. He'd had many strokes of luck that day." (p.139). Those in the camps found everyday life extremely difficult. For example, one rule states that if the thermometer reaches , then the prisoners are exempt from outdoor labor that day—anything above that was considered bearable. The reader is reminded in passing through Shukhov's matter-of-fact thoughts of the harshness of the conditions, worsened by the inadequate bedding and clothing. The boots assigned to the zeks rarely fit, in addition cloth had to be used or taken out, for example, and the thin mittens issued were easily ripped. The prisoners were assigned numbers for easy identification and in an effort to dehumanize them; Ivan Denisovich's prisoner number was Щ-854. Each day, the squad leader would receive their assignment of the day, and the squad would then be fed according to how they performed. Prisoners in each squad were thus forced to work together and to pressure each other to get their work done. If any prisoner was slacking, the whole squad would be punished. Despite this, Solzhenitsyn shows that a surprising loyalty could exist among the work gang members, with Shukhov teaming up with other prisoners to steal felt and extra bowls of soup; even the squad leader defies the authorities by tar papering over the windows at their work site. Indeed, only through such solidarity can the prisoners do anything more than survive from day to day.
395880	/m/0238zr	The Black Dahlia	James Ellroy	1987-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In June, 1943 patrol officer Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert, a former boxer and a member of the Los Angeles Police Department is caught up in the Zoot Suit Riots. Bleichert comes to the rescue of Officer Lee Blanchard, who is in the middle of the rampage between American servicemen and Mexican zoot suit gangs. Together they apprehend a wanted criminal, Don Santos, and take refuge in an abandoned home while waiting out the riot. They size each other up as boxers and cops and Blanchard tells Bleichert of his plans to eventually be promoted to Sergeant while Dwight continues his mundane job as a radio car patrolman in the Bunker Hill section of L.A. The story continues three years later, in November 1946, as Bucky is invited to fight in a boxing match against Lee in hopes it will help raise support for a political bond issue and a pay raise. After realizing that his fathers' health is failing and to prove he can still fight he decides to take up the offer, have a friend make a bet against him with his money and lose on purpose to put his father in a retirement home. He also meets Kay Lake, a former artist who lives with Lee. After the fight he is transferred to Homicide-Warrants Division as a reward and partnered with Blanchard. Lee. Buckey and Kay begin to spend time together. On January 15, 1947 while Bucky and Lee are on a stakeout they see a commotion on the corner lot of 39th street and South Norton Avenue, where they discover the mutilated body of Elizabeth Short. Dubbed "The Black Dahlia" by the press, the case shocks the public, overwhelms the LAPD and hits Lee especially hard. During his investigation Bucky observes a mysterious young woman named Madeleine Sprague, a wealthy and promiscuous socialite who resembles Elizabeth Short, at a lesbian bar. Bucky follows her over the course of many nights, eventually questionning her and the two begin an affair. While the case continues on in circus fashion, Lee, becoming more emotionally detached begins taking bezadrine and acts erratically, collecting his own copies of the Dahlia case evidence and storing them in an El Nino hotel room. Lee eventually disappears after a confrontation with police superiors. Bucky, who is simultaneously juggling two relationships, also suffers a series of personal setbacks: breaking up with Madeline, romantic tension with Kay, and blowing an assignment for the D.A, resulting in demotion from the Warrants Bureau. He then sets out for Tijuana searching for Lee. During his trip he learns of Lee's fate and returns to L.A. to marry Kay. Two years pass, and with Bucky's detective career destroyed and his marriage quickly deteriorating, he transfers to the Science Investigation Division of the force and becomes a lab technician. While working with his old case supervisor Russ Millard during a suicide investigation of a wealthy businessman, he happens to notice a painting of a clown. He uncovers some clues and people associated with Elizabeth Short, piquing his curiosity about Madeline Sprague and her family. His obsession with Short and Madeline destroys his relationship with Kay, who leaves him when she finds out. As his life spirals out of control, his obsession taking its toll, he finally discovers the truth behind the murder of Short and its connection to the Sprague family, as well as Lee's disappearance. The novel ends with Bucky on a plane to Boston, where he and a pregnant Kay will try to rebuild their relationship.
396639	/m/023cpd	Invisible Man	Ralph Ellison	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/03nhxh": "Social commentary"}	 In the beginning, the narrator lives in a small town in the South. A model student, indeed the high school's valedictorian, he gives an eloquent, Booker T. Washington-inspired graduation speech about the struggles of the average black man. The local white dignitaries want to hear, too. First, however, in the opening "Battle Royal" chapter, they put him and other black boys through a series of self-abusive humiliations. Are these the white folk whom Washington thought blacks could look to as neighbors? Probably not--but they do give the narrator a scholarship to an all-black college clearly modeled, in spite of disguises, on Washington's Tuskegee University. One afternoon during his junior year, the narrator chauffeurs Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, out among the old slave-quarters beyond the campus, stopping by chance at the cabin of Jim Trueblood, who unintentionally--in his sleep--committed incest with his daughter, who's now pregnant. After hearing Trueblood's scandalous story, and giving him a $100, Norton feels faint and calls for a "stimulant," meaning alcohol. The narrator realizes that he does not have the time to take Mr. Norton to the bars at the edge of town, and instead takes him to the Golden Day, a local tavern patronized by black World War I veterans who, presumably suffering from war-related disorders, are patients at a nearby mental hospital. It's a brutal, riotous scene, and Norton is carried out more dead than alive. Small wonder that the narrator worries about the college president Dr. Bledsoe's reaction: white trustees aren't supposed to know about the underside of black life beyond the campus. What the campus stands for--the vision of the unnamed Founder (Washington)--comes out in a sermon by the Reverend Homer A. Barbee, a blind but fervently dedicated upholder of that vision. The narrator is uplifted, but unfortunately, Bledsoe expels him for having mismanaged Norton's afternoon. This is an important stage in the narrator's understanding. Bledsoe goes so far trying to please the white power brokers that people like him, the narrator, are sacrificed--rendered invisible. Nonetheless, Bledsoe gives him several letters of recommendation, which should help him get a job that will earn him the money he'll need to return to school. Upon arriving in New York, the narrator distributes the letters with no success. Eventually, the son of one of "possibilities" takes pity on him and shows him an opened copy of the letter; it reveals that Bledsoe never had any intentions of letting the narrator return and sent him to New York to get rid of him. On the son's suggestion, the narrator eventually gets a job in the boiler room of a paint factory in a company renowned for its "Optic White" paint (used to render any object, from coal to monuments to buildings, blindingly white). The man in charge of the boiler room, Lucius Brockway, is extremely paranoid and thinks that the narrator has come to take his job. He is also extremely loyal to the company's owner, who once paid him a personal visit. When the narrator tells him about a union meeting he happened upon, the outraged Brockway attacks him. They fight, and Brockway tricks him into turning a wrong valve and causing a boiler to explode. Brockway escapes, but the narrator is hospitalized after the blast. While recovering, the narrator overhears doctors discussing him as a mental health patient. He learns through their discussion that shock treatment has been performed on him. After the shock treatments, the narrator attempts to return to his residence when he feels overwhelmed by dizziness and faints on the streets of Harlem. He is taken to the residence of Mary, a kind, old-fashioned, down-to-earth woman who reminds him of his relatives in the South and friends at the college. Mary somewhat serves as a mother figure for the narrator. While living there, he happens upon an eviction of an elderly black couple and makes an impassioned speech decrying the action. But when the police arrive soon after, the narrator is forced to escape over several building-tops. Upon reaching "safety," he is confronted by a man named Jack, who implores him to join a group called the Brotherhood--a thinly-veiled version of the supposedly color-blind Communist Party--that claims to be committed to the betterment of conditions in Harlem, and the entire world. The narrator agrees. At first, the rallies go smoothly and the narrator is happy to be "making history" in his new job. Soon, however, he encounters trouble from Ras the Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist similar to, but not based on Marcus Garvey who believes that the Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Ras tells this to the narrator and Tod Clifton, a youth leader of the Brotherhood, neither of whom seem to be swayed by his words. The narrator continues his work in Harlem until he is called into a meeting of the Brotherhood. Believing that he has become too powerful an "individual"--this in a movement where individuals count for nothing--they reassign him to another part of the city to address the "women question." After the narrator gives his first lecture on women's rights, he is approached by the wife of another member of the Brotherhood. She invites him to her apartment where she seduces him. The narrator is soon called to return to Harlem to repair its falling membership in the black community. When he returns to Harlem, Tod Clifton has disappeared. When the narrator finds him, he realizes that Clifton has become disillusioned with the Brotherhood and quit. He is selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street, mocking the organization he once believed in. Soon after, Tod, resisting arrest, is fatally shot by a police officer. At his funeral, the narrator delivers a rousing speech, rallying a crowd to reclaim his former widespread Harlem support. He's criticized in a clandestine meeting with Brother Jack and other members for not being scientific in his arguments at the funeral; he angrily retaliates and Jack loses his temper to the extent that a glass eye flies out of its socket. The narrator realizes that the half-blind Jack has never really seen him either, and that the Brotherhood has no real interest in the black community's problems. He is trailed by Ras the Exhorter's men as he returns to Harlem; buying sunglasses and a hat, he's mistaken for a man called Rinehart in several scenarios: a lover, a hipster, a gambler, a briber, and finally, a reverend. He sees that Rinehart has adapted to white society at the cost of his own identity. He decides to take his grandfather's dying advice to "overcome'em with yeses, undermine'em with grins, agree'em to death and destruction...." and "yes" the Brotherhood to death by making it look like the Harlem membership is thriving when it's actually crumbling. He seduces Sybil, the wife of one of the Brothers, in an attempt to learn of the Brotherhood's new activities. Riots break out in Harlem and the narrator gets mixed up with a gang of looters. Wandering through a ravaged Harlem, he encounters Ras, who now calls himself Ras the Destroyer. After escaping Ras's attempt to have him lynched (by throwing a spear Ras had acquired through the leader's jaw, permanently sealing it), the narrator is attacked by a couple of white boys who trap him inside a coal-filled manhole/basement, sealing him off for the night and leaving him alone to finally confront the demons of his mind: Bledsoe, Norton, and Jack. At the end of the novel, the narrator is ready to resurface because "overt action" has already taken place. This could mean that, in telling us the story, the narrator has already made a political statement about how change could occur. Therefore, it is storytelling and the preservation of the history of these invisible individuals that cause political change.
397398	/m/023gj6	The Bourne Identity	Robert Ludlum	1980-02	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the stormy Mediterranean Sea, a man is found floating in the water by a small ship. He has several bullet wounds, including a head wound which has resulted in amnesia. The doctor treating him finds a message surgically embedded in his hip which contains details of a Swiss bank account, presumably held anonymously. The patient heads to Zurich to visit the bank, where he learns his name is Jason Charles Bourne, and finds US$ 5 million in his account. He transfers the bulk of this money and takes some in cash. As he leaves, he is attacked by three men, which he thwarts in their attempt on his life. In the panic, he escapes back to his hotel and takes a hostage, a French-Canadian government economist named Marie St. Jacques. After a few incidents, Marie escapes and Bourne is caught by his pursuers but manages to escape and rescue Marie from a thug raping her who would have killed her. While doing so, he is shot several times and is taken by Marie to a hotel to recuperate. The couple head to Paris to investigate Bourne's connection with the Treadstone Corporation, the apparent source of the money in his account. Bourne and Marie learn that their attackers may be led by Carlos the Jackal, an assassin whose trademark execution is a bullet in the throat. Meanwhile in America, a secret conference is convened by the head of Treadstone and members of the Pentagon top brass, including an army officer named Gordon Webb. One of Carlos' operatives, known as "the European", storms the mansion in which Treadstone is based, killing everyone inside. Bourne is then framed for these murders. Alexander Conklin of the CIA and former friend of Bourne, is tasked with handling the matter. Bourne convinces French intelligence general Villiers to join his side, but realizes his wife may be a mole for Carlos. He discovers a boutique used as a drop for her intel, and is recognized by an employee named D'Anjou who claims to be a man from his past. He agrees to meet D'Anjou. He learns that they were comrades in a CIA paramilitary unit called Medusa during the Vietnam war, and that his codename was Delta. Conklin, convinced Bourne has turned, baits him into a meeting at the Rambouillet Cemetery in France. However, Bourne arrives early and incapacitates Conklin's hidden associate. Although Conklin assumes Bourne will kill him, Bourne lets him get away. Villiers' wife is killed and Bourne takes the blame in order to bait Carlos into following him to the USA. In New York, Bourne finds the Treadstone mansion, he bluffs his way in and is attacked on the top floor by a knife-wielding Carlos. Carlos then shoots Bourne and escapes. Realizing that he will bleed out soon, Bourne manages to find the strength to kill all of Carlos' men. Conklin arrives and forces Carlos to retreat. Bourne passes out. The final chapter returns to Marie and two other men who tell her about Bourne's tragic past. He was a young foreign service officer named David Webb, brother to Gordon Webb. David was the most successful paramilitary officer in the U.S. Army, training under the alias of "Cain", a rival assassin, in a plan to draw out Carlos the Jackal.
398809	/m/023lp2	The Gripping Hand	Jerry Pournelle		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the end of The Mote in God's Eye, Renner and Bury are secretly enlisted into Imperial Naval Intelligence. They spend the next twenty-five years investigating revolutions against the Empire so that the Imperial Navy can concentrate on blockading the Moties from entering into human space. While investigating economic abnormalities on the Mormon planet Maxroy's Purchase, Renner and Bury encounter widespread use of the phrase "on the gripping hand". While the source of the phrase turns out to be innocuous enough &mdash; the Governor picked up the expression as an Able Spacer on INSS MacArthur on the expedition to Mote Prime &mdash; the memories dredged up by the incident are too much for Bury. Driven by nightmares and a deep-seated fear for humanity's safety, Bury must confirm that the Empire is safe from the Moties. Renner and Bury travel first to Sparta, the Imperial capital planet, to obtain permission to inspect the blockade. Along the way, they discover widespread interest in a second expedition to the Mote, as well as disturbing evidence that the blockade may soon fail. In Mote, it is mentioned that a protostar is forming in the Coalsack Nebula. The Moties had studied it extensively and told the MacArthur expedition of their estimate that it would ignite in about 1,000 years. That estimate was deliberately falsified - the object was about to collapse and ignite at any moment. The newborn star would mean that a new Alderson Point would be created for interstellar travel, allowing the Moties a second exit from their system. Previously, the only Alderson Point accessible to them was positioned in the photosphere of the supergiant red star, "Murcheson's Eye", making a human blockade practical since the Moties had not stumbled onto the secret of the Langston Field. Armed with the alarming new knowledge and carrying influential passengers, Renner, Bury, and their ship Sinbad depart for New Caledonia, the closest human system to the Mote. There the Imperial Commission decides that ships must be sent to the hitherto ignored star system where the new Alderson point is predicted to appear. Sinbad is among the ships dispatched. The point appears soon after the small, hastily assembled Imperial fleet's arrival—and so do the Moties. The second half of The Gripping Hand is a convoluted tale of alliances, diplomacy, trade, and space combat between the Empire, led by Bury and Renner, and the many, many factions of Motie civilization. With the aid of the children of Lord and Lady Blaine, and an impressive piece of genetic engineering, Bury and Renner fight to stabilize the Mote civilization and save the Empire. At the end of the story, the Moties insist that they have to choose between the two equal but unpleasant options of staying bottled in their home system, or expanding and spreading their eternal war through the galaxy. The humans exploit the Moties' idiom of "on the gripping hand" to present a third, stronger option: a genetic modification that would slow down the excessive reproduction rate of the Moties so that they can expand peacefully.
398933	/m/023m32	Redwall	Brian Jacques		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young mouse named Matthias dreams of times of adventure rather than a life of quiet servitude, but he is counseled to patience by his elders. Redwall is a fixture in the local community, set in the heart of Mossflower Woods, and was designed to be a place of refuge for the beasts of the forest in times of trouble. Trouble arrives in the form of Cluny the Scourge in the Summer of the Late Rose. Cluny is an evil, infamous rat, owning an extra-long tail with a poisoned barb on the end, and commander of a horde of vermin. He has only one eye, having lost the other in a battle with a pike, which he killed. The foebeasts arrive at the beginning of the book and make their headquarters at the Church of St. Ninian, to the south of Redwall, with the intention of taking the Abbey for themselves. The Abbey inhabitants, who refuse to back down, make ready to defend themselves if necessary; most of the inhabitants of the surrounding area are now within Redwall. None of them are particularly martial, but Redwall folk, and indeed much of the Mossflower population, are generally slow to anger but fierce fighters when roused; they are able to make an effective defense. Matthias, fearing that Cluny will still overrun them, begins a quest to find the legendary sword of Martin the Warrior, which is supposedly hidden somewhere within the Abbey. He is helped particularly by Methuselah, an old and grizzled mouse, who is the abbey recorder. Matthias is a brave-hearted young mouse, if small in stature, and as the story continues, his natural leadership abilities begin to emerge. Clues to the location of Martin's sword, as well as his shield and the sword's scabbard, have been built into the Abbey. Matthias recovers the shield and sword scabbard, and with Methuselah's help eventually divines where the sword is hidden. Unfortunately, it isn't there any longer, having been stolen by a wild sparrow tribe that dwells on the Abbey roof and then by an adder named Asmodeus, who appears throughout the novel to pick off wandering creatures. When trying to escape from the lair of the Sparra tribe with the help of Jess Squirrel, Matthias is attacked by the king of the sparrows. The two of them end up falling from the Abbey roof, resulting in the sparrow's death. After recovering, Matthias continues to the lair of the gigantic snake Asmodeus, acquiring several allies along the way: Log-a-Log, the leader of a local band of shrews; Basil Stag Hare, wandering do-gooder and general cad, and Warbeak Sparra, the princess of the aforementioned sparrow tribe. He also befriends Captain Snow, an owl, and Squire Julian Gingivere, a cat. Matthias and Log-a-Log succeed in retrieving the sword from Asmodeus's cave, killing the snake in the process, and Matthias rushes back to Redwall to save his friends after being alerted to the fall of the abbey by the sparrows. Cluny, in the meanwhile, has been attempting to gain entrance to the Abbey. He deals with traitors Sela the vixen and her son Chickenhound, who kills Methuselah, and is also seriously injured by a fall. After numerous failed attempts on the abbey that include a tunnel, a siege tower, and a battering ram, he captures a family of dormice and forces Plumpen, the family's head, to open one of the gates. Plumpen complies and Cluny finally invades the abbey, taking all the Redwallers prisoner. His victory is short-lived, however; soon after he takes over the Abbey, Matthias returns. Matthias, his new allies, and the assembled Redwall population turn on their captors; Matthias himself defeats Cluny by dropping the abbey's bell on him, crushing him and cracking the bell in the process. However, a great deal of damage is done and there are many casualties. Abbot Mortimer, who was inflicted by Cluny's poisoned barb, dies after proclaiming Matthias Warrior of Redwall and Brother Alf the new Abbot of Redwall. The novel closes with an epilogue. Matthias has married the fieldmouse named Cornflower and she has given birth to their son, Mattimeo, an abbreviated version of his full name: Matthias Methuselah Mortimer. Also, Brother Alf is now known as Abbot Mordalfus, and John Churchmouse, a resident of the Abbey, is now the Abbey recorder.
399019	/m/023mfn	Forever Peace	Joe Haldeman	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Though its title is similar to The Forever War and both novels deal with soldiers in the future, Forever Peace is not a direct sequel, and takes place on Earth much closer to the present day. Using remotely controlled robots called "soldierboys" (which are nearly invincible), the Alliance military fights third world guerrillas in an endless series of economy-driven wars. As only first world nations possess the nanoforge technology that can produce anything from basic materials, conflict is asymmetric. The novel is told partly in first-person narration by the main character, Julian Class, and partly by an anonymous third-person narrator, who is able to comment on aspects of Julian's personality and background. The main protagonist, Julian Class, is a physicist and a mechanic who operates a soldierboy. Thanks to electronic "jacks" implanted in their skulls, mechanics are remotely linked to the machinery as well as to each other, being able to experience battle through the machines and read the thoughts of other mechanics who are simultaneously jacked in. After attempting suicide, Julian and his lover, Amelia "Blaze" Harding, are made aware of a problem with an automated particle physics project that could potentially trigger a new Big Bang that destroys the Earth and the rest of the universe. Because it's so easy to do, it is speculated that universes could potentially have only the lifespan of the first civilization that attempts such a project. When Julian, Blaze, and another physicist submit their paper to a journal's review board, they find themselves the target of "The Hammer of God" a Christian cult bent on hastening an anticipated end of the universe. As the Hammer of God has a secret presence throughout the government, Julian and Blaze narrowly miss being assassinated. Marty Larrin, one of the inventors of jacking technology, recruits Julian and Blaze in an attempt to using this technology to end war for all time; a little known secret is that jacking with someone else for a long enough period (about two weeks) will psychologically eliminate the ability to kill another human being. By "humanizing" the entire world, dangerous technology would not be a problem for human survival. They do so, stop the particle accelerator's construction, and war is eventually stopped.
399029	/m/023mhg	Alaska	James A. Michener	1988	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A sweeping description of the formation of the North American continent. The reader follows the development of the Alaskan terrain over millennia. The city of Los Angeles is now some twenty-four hundred miles south of central Alaska, and since it is moving slowly northward as the San Andreas fault slides irresistibly along, the city is destined eventually to become part of Alaska. If the movement is two inches a year, which it often is, we can expect Los Angeles to arrive off Anchorage in about seventy-six million years. The plot of this chapter follows the mastodons, sabre-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths as they make their way into Alaska via the land bridge. First, the animals are discussed in general terms. Then, in the second half of the chapter, the reader learns about a specific mammoth named Mastadon, and another named Matriarch. The plot follows Matriarch and her family, as they encounter man for the first time. The reader meets some of the early Eskimos, particularly a man named Oogruk and his family. The chapter details the hunting of a whale as well as the beginning of hunting sea otters for fur by the Russians. This chapter tells of the early exploration of Alaska along with Russia's first encounters with the native peoples, including the brutal slaughter of many native people and sea otters. The duel referred to in the chapter's title is the one between the shamanism of the native people and the Christianity of the Russian settlers. After the men from one tribe are taken away to aid in hunting, the women and babies are left to fend for themselves. They learn to pilot kayaks, something that had been forbidden to them, and ultimately harpoon a small whale to ensure their survival. After the Russians return, a girl named Cidaq is "purchased" and taken to Kodiak Island, but not before she is brutally abused by one sailor in particular. On Kodiak, she consults with a shaman and his mummy and decides to seek revenge upon this man by converting to Christianity to marry him when he returns to Kodiak, believing that she can humiliate him by refusing to marry him at the last moment. However, she goes through with the wedding and becomes a battered wife. A priest on Kodiak falls in love with her, and after her husband is killed by a great tidal wave, Cidaq (rechristened Sofia) marries the priest, who changes his relationship with the church to become the kind of priest who can marry. At the end of the chapter, Michener states that Christianity won over shamanism, but in the process, the population of native people dwindled from more than 18,000 to fewer than 1,200. This chapter further details the clashes between the Native people and the Russians, most specifically the Battle of Sitka. The events are shown through the eyes of a Native named Raven-heart and an Arkady Voronov, the son of Father Vornov and Sofia Kuchovskaya (formerly Cidaq). Arkady Voronov marries a Russian woman who moves to Alaska, and together they navigate the Yukon River. The chapter also explains the death of Alexander Baranov and ends with the purchase of Alaska by the United States of America. This chapter shows the clash between two rival ship captains, Captains Schransky and Michael Healy. Meanwhile, Reverend Sheldon Jackson, a missionary, travels to Alaska to further establish it as a state, with the help of Senator Benjamin Harrison. He sets about establishing Christian missions of various denominations to further spread Christianity to the native people of Alaska. The eighth chapter tells of the chaos surrounding the Alaskan gold rush using the fictitious Venn family and a prospector named John Klope. It mentions the real character of Soapy Smith and his fatal duel with Frank Reid. It also details the hardships of crossing the Chilkoot Pass. Gold is discovered in Nome, and Tom Venn and his stepmother Missy pick up their stakes and move there. Tom is appointed manager of a branch of Ross and Raglan, a store that sells food and outdoor supplies. Missy's boyfriend Matt Murphy joins Tom and Missy in Nome, arriving there via bicycle. Although these characters are fictitious, the bike trip is based on the real bike trek of Max Hirshberg in 1900, and the troubles of gold mine thieving with judicial collusion is based upon the politician Alexander McKenzie and Judge Arthur H. Noyes. This chapter describes the formation and operation of a fictional company's cannery (an Alaskan first) on the Taku Inlet when Ross and Raglan appoint Tom Venn to be in charge of the cannery, the fishing and the Chinese laborers. Along the way, the company clashes with local members of the Tlingit tribe, whose fishing rights are being encroached upon. Tom begins on-and-off romances with two girls; one is Lydia Ross, the daughter of the owner of Ross and Raglan, and the other is Nancy Bigears, the daughter of a local Tlingit of whom Tom is very fond. At the end of the chapter, the reader learns that Tom marries Lydia, and that Nancy marries Ah Ting, a Chinese man who was once employed as a foreman at the salmon cannery before striking out on his own. In 1919, a government official arrives in a small town of Minnesota made up of immigrants of Swedish and Finnish descent, as well as those who have been in the United States for several generations. He recruits a group of families to move to Alaska and settle in the Matanuska Valley, where they will be provided with land that they will not begin to pay on for at least three years, as long as they promise to farm. This chapter follows the Flatch family closely, especially the children. LeRoy Flatch grows up to become a bush pilot and Flossie is an animal lover who falls in love with a local "half-breed" man of white and Eskimo descent. In a typical James Michener fashion, the final chapter is an interaction between various characters in preceding chapter or their descendants. Alaska is in the process of applying for statehood. Missy remains on the side advocating for statehood, while Tom Venn petitioned to keep Alaska a territory and under Seattle business control. In the end President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act, making Alaska the 49th state of the Union.
400425	/m/023t15	The Shooting Star	Hergé	1942		 One particularly hot evening Tintin is out walking with his dog Snowy. Tintin then notices an extra star in the Great Bear. When he reaches home, he calls the observatory. They say that they have the phenomenon under observation and hang up. From his window, Tintin sees that the star is getting bigger every minute. He walks to the observatory and, after some trouble, gets inside. He meets a man called Philippulus who proclaims himself to be a prophet and tells him that "It is a Judgement! Woe!" Puzzled, Tintin proceeds to the main room with the giant telescope. There he meets the director of the observatory, Professor Decimus Phostle, who explains that the extra star is a meteor, a vast ball of fire making its way towards Earth, which will cause the end of the world tomorrow morning. In the end, however, the shooting star does not collide with the Earth, but passes by it. A piece of it, a meteorite, lands in the Arctic Ocean, causing an earthquake that lasts a mere few seconds. After an analysis of a spectroscopic photo of the meteorite, Phostle deduces that it is composed of an entirely new metal. He names this metal "Phostlite", but is dismayed to discover that the meteorite has landed in the sea and therefore, presumably, is lost. Tintin, however, realises that the meteorite could be protruding above the surface of the water. The Professor is persuaded to organise an expedition to find the metal and to retrieve a sample of it for further research. The expedition consists of leading scientists, as well as Tintin, Snowy and their friend, the alcoholic Captain Haddock (ironically serving as president of the Society for Sober Sailors), aboard the trawler Aurora. However, unknown to the Aurora expedition, another team has already set out aboard the polar expedition ship Peary, backed by a financier from São Rico, Mr. Bohlwinkel. The expedition becomes a race to be the first to land on the meteorite. Bohlwinkel attempts to sabotage the Aurora expedition by getting a henchman to plant a stick of dynamite on the ship on the eve of departure, but it is found and thrown overboard. While crossing the North Sea, the Aurora is almost rammed by another of Bohlwinkel's ships, but Haddock manages to steer his ship out of the way. Further setbacks occur at the Icelandic port of Akureyri, when Captain Haddock is informed that there is no fuel available. He is furious, but then he and Tintin come across an old friend of his, Captain Chester, who reveals that there is plenty of fuel and that the Golden Oil Company (which has a fuel monopoly) is owned by Bohlwinkel. The three of them devise a plan to run a hose from Chester's ship, Sirius, to the Aurora and thus trick Golden Oil into providing them with the fuel they need. Coming close to catching the Peary, the Aurora then receives an indistinct distress call from another ship and has to turn round in order to help. Inquiries by Tintin lead him to realise that the distress signal is a fake designed to further delay them. Resuming the journey, they then intercept a cable announcing that the Peary expedition has reached the meteorite but not actually claimed it yet. Tintin uses the ship's seaplane to parachute on to the meteorite and plant the expedition flag, beating the crew of the Peary by seconds. The Aurora expedition has won the race. Tintin makes camp while the ship's over-exerted engines are repaired. The next day he discovers the remarkable properties of Phostlite: his apple core instantly grows into an enormous tree full of oversized apples, and a maggot turns into a massive butterfly. Tintin is menaced by a giant spider and huge, exploding mushrooms before rescue arrives. Then a sudden seaquake shakes the meteorite to its core; the young reporter and Snowy retrieve a rock sample and jump to safety as the meteorite sinks into the sea. The triumphant expedition's return is reported on the radio. Bohlwinkel listens at first in frustrated silence, but then gets concerned at the news that law enforcement agencies are closing in on him over his attempts at destroying and delaying the Aurora. Back on the ship itself, as they prepare to dock, the Captain announces that they are short on one vital commodity—whisky.
401482	/m/023xts	The Mill on the Floss	George Eliot	1860	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a brother and sister growing up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss at its junction with the more minor River Ripple near the village of St. Ogg's in Lincolnshire, England. Both the river and the village are fictional. The novel is most probably set in the 1820s - a number of historical references place the events in the book after the Napoleonic Wars but before the Reform Act of 1832. The novel spans a period of 10 to 15 years, from Tom’s and Maggie’s childhood up until their deaths in a flood on the Floss. The book is fictional autobiography in part, reflecting the disgrace that George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) herself experienced while in a lengthy relationship with a married man, George Henry Lewes. Maggie Tulliver holds the central role in the book. The story begins when she is 9 years old, 13 years into her parent's marriage. Her relationship with her older brother Tom, and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem, a hunchbacked, sensitive, and intellectual friend, and with Stephen Guest, a vivacious young socialite in St. Ogg's and assumed fiancé of Maggie’s cousin Lucy Deane, constitute the most significant narrative threads. Tom and Maggie have a close yet complex bond, which continues throughout the novel. Their relationship is coloured by Maggie's desire to recapture the unconditional love her father provides before his death. Tom’s pragmatic and reserved nature clashes with Maggie’s idealism and fervor for intellectual gains and experience. Various family crises, including bankruptcy, Mr. Tulliver’s rancorous relationship with Philip Wakem’s father, which results in the loss of the mill, and Mr. Tulliver’s untimely death, serve both to intensify Tom’s and Maggie’s differences and to highlight their love for each other. To help his father repay his debts, Tom leaves his school to enter a life of business. He eventually finds a measure of success, restoring the family’s former estate. Meanwhile Maggie languishes in the impoverished Tulliver home, her intellectual aptitude wasted in her socially isolated state. She passes through a period of intense spirituality, during which she renounces the world, spurred by Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. This renunciation is tested by a renewed friendship with Philip Wakem, with whom she had developed a friendship while he was a fellow pupil with Tom. Against the wishes of Tom and her father, who both despise the Wakems, Maggie secretly meets with Philip, and together they go for long walks through the woods. The relationship they forge is founded partially in Maggie’s heartfelt pity for broken and neglected human beings, as well as an outlet for her intellectual romantic desires. Philip’s and Maggie’s attraction is, in any case, inconsequential because of the family antipathy. Philip manages to coax a pledge of love from Maggie. When Tom discovers the relationship between the two, however, he forces his sister to renounce Philip, and with him her hopes of experiencing the broader, more cultured world he represents. Several more years pass, during which Mr. Tulliver dies. Lucy Deane invites Maggie to come and stay with her and experience the life of cultured leisure that she enjoys. This includes long hours conversing and playing music with Lucy's suitor, Stephen Guest, a prominent St. Ogg’s resident. Stephen and Maggie, against their rational judgments, become attracted to each other. The complication is further compounded by Philip Wakem’s friendship with Lucy and Stephen; he and Maggie are reintroduced, and Philip’s love for her is rekindled, while Maggie, no longer isolated, enjoys the clandestine attentions of Stephen Guest, putting her past professions for Philip in question. In the event Lucy intrigues to throw Philip and Maggie together on a short rowing trip down the Floss, but when Stephen unwittingly takes a sick Philip’s place, and Maggie and Stephen find themselves floating down the river, negligent of the distance they have covered, he proposes they board a passing boat to the next substantial city, Mudport, and get married. Maggie is too tired to argue about it. Stephen takes advantage of her weariness and hails the boat. They are taken on board the boat, and during the trip to Mudport, Maggie struggles between her love for Stephen and her duties to Philip and Lucy, contracted as it were in her past, when she was poor and isolated, and dependent on either of them for what good her life contained. Upon arrival in Mudport she rejects Stephen and makes her way back to St. Ogg's, where she lives for a brief period as an outcast, Stephen having fled to Holland. Although she immediately goes to Tom for forgiveness and shelter, he roughly sends her away, telling her that she will never again be welcome under his roof. Both Lucy and Philip forgive her, she in a moving reunion, he in an eloquent letter. Maggie’s brief exile ends when the river floods. The flood is considered by some to be a deus ex machina. Those who do not support this view cite the frequent references to flood as a foreshadowing which makes this natural occurrence less contrived. Having struggled through the waters in a boat to find Tom at the old mill, she sets out with him to rescue Lucy Deane and her family. In a brief tender moment, the brother and sister are reconciled from all past differences. When their boat capsizes, the two drown in an embrace, thus giving the book its Biblical epigraph, “In their death they were not divided."
401627	/m/023yh8	Lullaby	Chuck Palahniuk	2002-09-17	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lullaby is the story of Carl Streator, a newspaper reporter who has been assigned to write articles on a series of cases of sudden infant death syndrome, from which his own child had died. Streator discovers that his wife and child had died immediately after he read them a "culling song", or African chant, from a book entitled Poems and Rhymes Around the World. As Streator learns, the culling song has the power to kill anyone it is spoken to. Because of the stress of his life, it became unusually powerful, allowing him to kill by only thinking the poem. During his investigations into other SIDS cases for his article, he finds that a copy of the book was at the scene of each death. In every case, the book was open to a page that contained the "culling song". Streator unintentionally memorizes the deadly poem and he semi-voluntarily becomes a serial killer (killing, for example, annoying radio hosts and people who elbow into an elevator when he is late for work). He then turns to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who has also found the culling song in the same book and knows of its destructive power. While she is unable to help him stop using the culling song, she is willing to help him stop anyone else from being able to use it again. The two of them decide to go on a road trip across the country to find all remaining copies of the book and remove and destroy the page containing the song. They are joined by Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, and Mona's boyfriend, an eco-terrorist named Oyster. Streator now must not only deal with the dangers of the culling song, but with the risk of it falling into the hands of Oyster, who may want to use it for sinister purposes. In addition to tracking down and destroying any copy of Poems and Rhymes Around the World, the foursome hope to find a "grimoire", a hypothesized spellbook that is the source of the culling spell. Streator wants to destroy it while the others in his group want to learn what other spells it contains—partly in the hope that there is a spell to resurrect the dead. Mona eventually figures out that the datebook Helen had been carrying throughout the trip is the grimoire they had been looking for, written in invisible ink. Helen had acquired it years earlier in the estate of the publisher of Poems and Rhymes Around the World whom she had killed with the culling spell. In the end, the grimoire is used and misused until Helen's body ends up dead with her mind in a police sergeant's body. This connection is made in the final chapters and concludes with the present; Streator and Helen (in the police sergeant's body) are together, searching for Mona and Oyster who have the entirety of the grimoire with the exception of the "culling song".
404176	/m/0246mr	The Knight's Tale	Geoffrey Chaucer		{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance"}	 Brothers Arcite and Palamon are captured and imprisoned by Theseus, duke of Athens following his intervention against Creon. Their cell is in the tower of Theseus's castle which overlooks his palace garden. In prison Palamon wakes early one morning in May, to see Emily (Emelia) in the courtyard; his moan is heard by Arcita, who then too wakes to see Emily, and falls in love with her as well. The competition brought about by this love causes them to hate each other. After some years, Arcita is released from prison through the good offices of Theseus's friend Pirithoos, and then returns to Athens in disguise and enters service in Emily's household. Palamon eventually escapes by drugging the jailer and while hiding in a grove overhears Arcita singing about love and fortune. They begin to duel with each other over who should get Emily, but are thwarted by the arrival of Theseus, who sentences them to gather 100 men apiece and fight a mass judicial tournament, the winner of which is to marry Emily. The forces assemble; Palamon prays to Venus to make Emily his wife; Emily prays to Diana to stay unmarried and that if that should prove impossible that she marry the one who really loves her; and Arcita prays to Mars for victory. Theseus lays down rules for the tournament so that if any man becomes seriously injured, he must be dragged out of the battle and is no longer in combat. Because of this, the story seems to claim at the end that there were almost no deaths on either side. Although both Palamon and Arcita fight valiantly, Palamon is wounded by a sword thrust from one of Arcita's men, and is unhorsed. Thesus declares the fight to be over. Arcita wins the battle, but following an intervention by Saturn, is wounded by his horse throwing him off and then falling on him before he can claim Emily as his prize. As he dies, he tells Emily that she should marry Palamon, because he would make a good husband for her, and so Palamon marries Emily. Therefore all prayers were fulfilled by the gods for those who asked for their assistance.
404899	/m/0249h5	Le Père Goriot	Honoré de Balzac			 The novel opens with an extended description of the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris' rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève covered with vines, owned by the widow Madame Vauquer. The residents include the law student Eugène de Rastignac, a mysterious agitator named Vautrin, and an elderly retired vermicelli-maker named Jean-Joachim Goriot. The old man is ridiculed frequently by the other boarders, who soon learn that he has bankrupted himself to support his two well-married daughters. Rastignac, who moved to Paris from the south of France, becomes attracted to the upper class. He has difficulty fitting in, but is tutored by his cousin, Madame de Beauséant, in the ways of high society. Rastignac endears himself to one of Goriot's daughters, Delphine, after extracting money from his own already-poor family. Vautrin, meanwhile, tries to convince Rastignac to pursue an unmarried woman named Victorine, whose family fortune is blocked only by her brother. He offers to clear the way for Rastignac by having the brother killed in a duel. Rastignac refuses to go along with the plot, balking at the idea of having someone killed to acquire their wealth, but he takes note of Vautrin's machinations. This is a lesson in the harsh realities of high society. Before long, the boarders learn that police are seeking Vautrin, revealed to be a master criminal nicknamed Trompe-la-Mort ("Cheater of Death"). Vautrin arranges for a friend to kill Victorine's brother, in the meantime, and is captured by the police. Goriot, supportive of Rastignac's interest in his daughter and furious with her husband's tyrannical control over her, finds himself unable to help. When his other daughter, Anastasie, informs him that she has been selling off her husband's family jewelry to pay her lover's debts, the old man is overcome with grief at his own impotence and suffers a stroke. Neither Delphine nor Anastasie will visit Goriot as he lies on his deathbed, and before dying he rages about their disrespect toward him. His funeral is attended only by Rastignac, a servant named Christophe, and two paid mourners. Goriot's daughters, rather than being present at the funeral, send their empty coaches, each bearing their families' respective coat of arms. After the short ceremony, Rastignac turns to face Paris as the lights of evening begin to appear. He sets out to dine with Delphine de Nucingen and declares to the city: "À nous deux, maintenant!" ("It's between you and me now!")
404949	/m/0249m_	Lucky Jim	Kingsley Amis	1954	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The year in which the novel is set is never made explicit, but cannot be later than 1951. Jim Dixon is a medieval history lecturer at a redbrick university in the English Midlands. The comic dynamic of the novel is Dixon's rebellion against the cant and pretension he meets in academic life, and the uncontrolled escalation of this from private fantasy to public display. It seems a disastrous trajectory, but Jim is 'lucky', and the novel ends with possession of relative affluence, the London life he craves, and the girl. Dixon is a northern, grammar school-educated, lower middle class young man, and not a natural fit with the high cultural values he meets in academic society. The action takes place towards the end of the academic year, and having made an unsure start in the department, he is concerned not to lose his position at the end of his probationary first year. In his attempt to be awarded tenure, he tries to maintain a good relationship with his head of department, Professor Welch, an absent-minded and gauche pedant. He must also, to establish his credentials, ensure the publication of his first scholarly article, and with very little time remaining. Dixon struggles with an on-again off-again "girlfriend" Margaret Peel (a fellow lecturer and possibly based on Monica Jones, the sometime muse and companion of Amis' friend Philip Larkin), who is recovering from a failed suicide attempt in the wake of an unsuccessful relationship with a previous boyfriend. Margaret employs emotional blackmail to appeal to Dixon's sense of duty and pity to keep him in an ambiguous and sexless relationship. Professor Welch holds a musical weekend that seems to be an opportunity for Dixon to advance his standing amongst his colleagues, but this goes dreadfully wrong when Dixon gets drunk and burns his host's bedclothes. At the weekend, Dixon meets Christine Callaghan, a young Londoner and the latest girlfriend of Professor Welch's son Bertrand, an amateur painter whose affectedness particularly infuriates Dixon. After a bad start, Dixon realises he is attracted to Christine, who is far less pretentious than she initially appears. Dixon's obvious attempts to court Christine upset Bertrand who is using his relationship with her to reach her well-connected Scottish uncle, who is seeking an assistant in London. Dixon rescues Christine from the university's annual dance when Bertrand treats her badly. The pair kiss and make a tea date, but during the date Christine admits she feels too guilty about seeing Dixon behind Bertrand's back and because Dixon is supposed to be seeing Margaret. The two decide not to continue seeing each other. Meanwhile, Margaret's ex-boyfriend telephones Dixon and asks to see him to discuss Margaret. The novel reaches its climax during Dixon's public lecture on "Merrie England," which goes horribly wrong as Dixon, attempting to calm his nerves with an excess of alcohol, uncontrollably begins to mock Welch and everything else that he hates; he finally passes out. Welch, not unsympathetically, informs Dixon his employment will not be extended. However, Christine's uncle, who reveals a tacit respect for Dixon's individuality and attitude towards pretension, offers Dixon the coveted assistant job in London that pays much better than his lecturing position. Dixon then meets Margaret's ex-boyfriend, who reveals that he was not exactly Margaret's boyfriend at all, and the two realize that the suicide attempt was faked to emotionally blackmail both men. Dixon feels he is free of Margaret. Dixon finally has the last laugh, as Christine finds out Bertrand was also pursuing an affair with the wife of one of Dixon's former colleagues; she decides to pursue her relationship with Dixon. At the end of the book, Dixon and Christine bump into the Welches on the street; Jim cannot help walking right up to them, with Christine on his arm, and collapsing in laughter at how ridiculous they truly are.
405006	/m/0249vb	Grim the Collier of Croydon	J. T.			 The devil Belphagor comes to live on Earth for a time, to investigate reports that women have grown extreme in their misbehaviors and have made marriage a curse. He disguises himself as a Spanish doctor named Castiliano. He offers to cure a mute woman named Honoria if she will marry him in return — a proposal that is accepted by the young woman and her family. Once he cures her, however, she repudiates her marital promise, calling him a "base Spaniard" who she wouldn't allow her slave to marry. All the English seem to turn on him: he is bed-tricked into marrying Honoria's shrewish maid, who cheats on him; one of the maid's former suitors tries to kill him; and his wife eventually poisons him. Castiliano dies just as Belphagor's predetermined time on Earth expires, and the devil returns to Hell with great relief at escaping the toils of earthly existence and its ferocious females. (The play's depiction of its devil is surprisingly restrained; he is described as "patient, mild, and pitiful," and is rather a sympathetic character than otherwise. Its infernal domain, ruled by Pluto, is a mixture of Christian and classical elements.) In the play's subplot, Grim the collier is a simple and good-hearted soul who is devoted to his love, Joan of Badenstock. After complications with Clack the Miller and Parson Shorthose, Grim wins her in the end, with the help of Puck or Robin Goodfellow (alias Akercock; in this play, a devil like Belphagor). Grim-the-collier is also the common name for Pilosella aurantiaca (sometimes under the genus Hieracium). Other common names are Orange Hawkweed, Fox and Cubs, Devil's paintbrush and Red devil.
406609	/m/024ht4	For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs	Robert A. Heinlein	2003-11-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Perry Nelson, a normal 1939 engineer, is driving his automobile when he has a blowout, skids over a cliff, and wakes up in the year 2086. Though he was apparently killed in the summer, he re-appears in extremely cold snow, nearly dies again by freezing, and is saved by a fur-clad woman named Diana. The exact circumstances of his being killed and reborn after a century and half are never explained. The later 21st Century people seem strangely incurious, showing little interest in how he had come to be among them and rather take his appearance for granted and proceed to explain to him the details of the social and political set-up of their world.
407392	/m/024m3t	A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court	Mark Twain	1889	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The novel is a satirical comedy that looks at 6th-Century England and its medieval culture through the eyes of Hank Morgan, a 19th-century resident of Hartford, Connecticut, who, after a blow to the head, awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval England at the time of the legendary King Arthur. The fictional Mr. Morgan, who had an image of that time that had been colored over the years by romantic myths, takes on the task of analyzing the problems and sharing his knowledge from 1300 years in the future to modernize, Americanize, and improve the lives of the people. The story begins as a first person narrative in Warwick Castle, where a man details his recollection of a tale told to by an "interested stranger" who is personified as a knight through his simple language and familiarity with ancient armor. After a brief tale of Sir Launcelot of Camelot and his role in slaying two giants from the third-person narrative, the man named Hank Morgan enters and, after being given whiskey by the narrator, he is persuaded to reveal more of his story. Described through first-person narrative as a man familiar with the firearms and machinery trade, Hank is a man who had reached the level of superintendent due to his proficiency in firearms manufacturing, with two thousand subordinates. He describes the beginning of his tale by illustrating details of a disagreement with his subordinates, during which he sustained a head injury from a "crusher" to the head caused by a man named "Hercules" using a crowbar. After passing out from the blow, Hank describes waking up underneath an oak tree in a rural area of Camelot where a knight questions him for trespassing upon his land, and after establishing rapport, leads him towards Camelot castle. Upon recognizing that he has time-traveled to the sixth century, Hank realizes that he is the de facto smartest person on Earth, and with his knowledge he should soon be running things. Hank is ridiculed at King Arthur's court for his strange appearance and dress and is sentenced by King Arthur's court (particularly the magician Merlin) to burn at the stake on 22 June. By a stroke of luck, the date of the burning coincides with a historical solar eclipse in the year 528, of which Hank had learned in his earlier life. While in prison, he sends the boy Clarence to inform the King that he will blot out the sun if he is executed. Hank believes the current date to be 20 June; however, it is actually the 21st when he makes his threat, the day that the eclipse will occur at 12:03 p.m. When the King decides to burn him, the eclipse catches Hank by surprise. But he quickly uses it to his advantage and convinces the people that he caused the eclipse. He makes a bargain with the King, is released, and becomes the second most powerful person in the kingdom. Hank is given the position of principal minister to the King and is treated by all with the utmost fear and awe. His celebrity brings him to be known by a new title, elected by the people&nbsp;&mdash; "The Boss". However, he proclaims that his only income will be taken as a percentage of any increase in the kingdom's gross national product that he succeeds in creating for the state as Arthur's chief minister, which King Arthur sees as fair. Notwithstanding, the people fear him and he has his new title, Hank is still seen as somewhat of an equal. The people might grovel to him if he were a knight or some form of nobility, but without that, Hank faces problems from time to time, as he refuses to seek to join such ranks. After being made "the Boss", Hank learns about medieval practices and superstitions. Having superior knowledge, he is able to outdo the alleged sorcerers and miracle-working church officials. At one point, soon after the eclipse, people began gathering, hoping to see Hank perform another miracle. Merlin, jealous of Hank having replaced him both as the king's principal adviser and as the most powerful sorcerer of the realm, begins spreading rumors that Hank is a fake and cannot supply another miracle. Hank secretly manufactures gunpowder and a lightning rod, plants explosive charges in Merlin's tower, then places the lightning rod at the top and runs a wire to the explosive charges. He then announces (during a period when storms are frequent) that he will soon call down fire from heaven and destroy Merlin's tower, then challenges Merlin to use his sorcery to prevent it. Of course, Merlin's "incantations" fail utterly to prevent lightning striking the rod, triggering the explosive charges and leveling the tower, further diminishing Merlin's reputation. Hank Morgan, in his position as King's Minister, uses his authority and his modern knowledge to industrialize the country behind the back of the rest of the ruling class. His assistant is Clarence, a young boy he meets at court, whom he educates and gradually lets in on most of his secrets, and eventually comes to rely on heavily. Hank sets up secret schools, which teach modern ideas and modern English, thereby removing the new generation from medieval concepts, and secretly constructs hidden factories, which produce modern tools and weapons. He carefully selects the individuals he allows to enter his factories and schools, seeking to select only the most promising and least indoctrinated in medieval ideas, favoring selection of the young and malleable whenever possible. As Hank gradually adjusts to his new situation, he begins to attend medieval tournaments. A misunderstanding causes Sir Sagramore to challenge Hank to a duel to the death; the combat will take place when Sagramore returns from his quest for the Holy Grail. Hank accepts, and spends the next few years building up 19th-century infrastructure behind the nobility's back. At this point, he undertakes an adventure with a wandering girl named the Demoiselle Alisande a la Carteloise - nicknamed "Sandy" by Hank in short order - to save her royal "mistresses" being held captive by ogres. On the way, Hank struggles with the inconveniences of medieval plate armor, and also encounters Morgan le Fay. The "princesses", "ogres" and "castles" are all revealed to be actually pigs owned by peasant swineherds, although to Sandy they still appear as royalty. Hank buys the pigs from the peasants and the two leave. On the way back to Camelot, they find a travelling group of pilgrims headed for the Valley of Holiness. Another group of pilgrims, however, comes from that direction bearing the news that the valley's famous fountain has run dry. According to legend, long ago the fountain had gone dry before as soon as the monks of the valley's monastery built a bath with it; the bath was destroyed and the water instantly returned, but this time it has stopped with no clear cause. Hank is begged to restore the fountain, although Merlin is already trying. When Merlin fails, he claims that the fountain has been corrupted by a demon, and that it will never flow again. Hank, in order to look good, agrees that a demon has corrupted the fountain but also claims to be able to banish it; in reality, the "fountain" is simply leaking. He procures assistants from Camelot trained by himself, who bring along a pump and fireworks for special effects. They repair the fountain and Hank begins the "banishment" of the demon. At the end of several long German language phrases, he says "BGWJJILLIGKKK", which is simply a load of gibberish, but Merlin agrees with Hank that this is the name of the demon. The fountain restored, Hank goes on to debunk another magician who claims to be able to tell what any person in the world is doing, including King Arthur. However, Hank knows that the King is riding out to see the restored fountain, and not "resting from the chase" as the "false prophet" had foretold to the people. Hank correctly states that the King will arrive in the valley. Hank has an idea to travel amongst the poor disguised as a peasant to find out how they truly live. King Arthur joins him, but has extreme difficulty in acting like a peasant convincingly. Although Arthur is somewhat disillusioned about the national standard of life after hearing the story of a mother infected with smallpox, he still ends up getting Hank and himself hunted down by the members of a village after making several extremely erroneous remarks about agriculture. Although they are saved by a nobleman's entourage, the same nobleman later arrests them and sells them into slavery. Hank steals a piece of metal in London and uses it to create a makeshift lockpick. His plan is to free himself, the king, beat up their slave driver, and return to Camelot. However, before he can free the king, a man enters their quarters in the dark. Mistaking him for the slave driver, Hank rushes after him alone and starts a fight with him. They are both arrested. Although Hank lies his way out, in his absence the real slave driver has discovered Hank's escape. Since Hank was the most valuable slave&nbsp;&mdash; he was due to be sold the next day&nbsp;&mdash; the man becomes enraged and begins beating his other slaves, who fight back and kill him. All the slaves, including the king, will be hanged as soon as the missing one&nbsp;&mdash; Hank&nbsp;&mdash; is found. Hank is captured, but he and Arthur are rescued by a party of knights led by Lancelot, riding bicycles. Following this, the king becomes extremely bitter against slavery and vows to abolish it when they get free, much to Hank's delight. Sagramore returns from his quest, and fights Hank. Hank defeats him and seven others, including Galahad and Lancelot, using a lasso. When Merlin steals Hank's lasso, Sagramore returns to challenge him again. This time, Hank kills him with a revolver. He proceeds to challenge the knights of England to attack him en masse, which they do. After he kills nine more knights with his revolvers, the rest break and flee. The next day, Hank reveals his 19th century infrastructure to the country. With this fact he was called a wizard as he told Clarence to do so as well. Three years later, Hank has married Sandy and they have a baby. While asleep and dreaming, Hank says, "Hello-Central"&nbsp;&mdash; a reference to calling a 19th century telephone operator&nbsp;&mdash; and Sandy believes that the mystic phrase is a good name for the baby, and names it accordingly. However, the baby falls critically ill and Hank's doctors advise him to take his family overseas while the baby recovers. In reality, it is a ploy by the Catholic Church to get Hank out of the country, leaving the country without effective leadership. During the weeks that Hank is absent, Arthur discovers Guinevere's infidelity with Lancelot. This causes a war between Lancelot and Arthur, who is eventually killed by Sir Mordred. The church then publishes "The Interdict" which causes all people to break away from Hank and revolt. Hank meets with his good friend Clarence who informs him of the war thus far. As time goes on, Clarence gathers 52 young cadets, from ages 14 to 17, who are to fight against all of England. Hank's band fortifies itself in Merlin's Cave with a minefield, electric wire and Gatling guns. The Catholic Church sends an army of 30,000 knights to attack them, but the knights are slaughtered. However, Hank's men are now trapped in the cave by a wall of dead bodies. Hank attempts to go offer aid to any wounded, but is stabbed by the first man that they encounter. He is not seriously injured, but is bedridden. Disease begins to set in amongst them. One night, Clarence finds Merlin weaving a spell over Hank, proclaiming that he shall sleep for 1,300 years. Merlin begins laughing deliriously, but ends up electrocuting himself on one of the electric wires. Clarence and the others all apparently die from disease in the cave. More than a millennium later, the narrator finishes the manuscript and finds Hank on his deathbed having a dream about Sandy. He attempts to make one last "effect", but dies before he can finish it.
407775	/m/024nlx	The Glass Menagerie	Tennessee Williams			 The play is introduced to the audience by Tom, the narrator and protagonist, as a memory play based on his recollection of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Amanda's husband abandoned the family long ago. Although a survivor and a pragmatist, Amanda yearns for comforts and admiration she remembers from her days as a fêted Southern belle. She yearns especially for these things for her daughter Laura, a young woman with a limp and tremulous insecurity about the outside world. Tom works in a warehouse doing his best to support them. He chafes under the banality and boredom of everyday life and spends much of his spare time going to the movies at all hours of the night. Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor for Laura, who spends most of her time with her collection of little glass animals. Eventually Tom brings home an acquaintance from work named Jim, who Amanda hopes will be the long-awaited suitor for Laura. Laura realizes that Jim is the boy she loved in high school and has thought of ever since. After a long evening, Jim and Laura are left alone by candlelight in the living room, waiting for electricity to be restored. During their long scene together, Jim diagnoses Laura's inferiority complex and kisses her. Jim and Laura then share a quiet dance, and he accidentally brushes against the glass menagerie, knocking the glass unicorn to the floor and breaking off its horn. Jim then reveals that he is already engaged to be married and then he leaves. When Amanda learns that Jim was engaged she assumes Tom knew and lashes out at him. As Tom speaks at the end of the play, it becomes clear that Tom left home soon afterward and has never returned. In Tom's final speech, he bids farewell to his mother and sister, telling Laura to blow out the candles in her room, which she does as the play ends.
408735	/m/024s_f	Absolution Gap	Alastair Reynolds		{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The plot of the novel takes place in four separate time periods. The bulk of the novel is contained in the 2675 and 2727 sections. Queen Jasmina of the lighthugger Gnostic Ascension wakes Quaiche, a member of her crew, from Reefersleep. She is disappointed with him; despite his promises that he would improve the crew's fortunes, he has not done so. In fact, many of systems he has explored were filled with extremely valuable artifacts which he failed to detect and were picked up by other ships. As such, she gives him one last chance. Jasmina sends him to explore the star 107 Piscium and its planets. His lover, Morwenna, is sent with him in the scrimshaw suit, a sensory deprivation device which paralyzes and blinds its wearer until they remove it. On one of the moons of a gas giant he names Haldora (which also seems to disappear every so often for a few fractions of a second), he discovers an alien bridge, whose automated defense system attacks him. He crashes and finds he does not have enough oxygen to survive until his shuttle returns from the other side of Haldora. However, Haldora vanishes and his radio signal reaches the shuttle, which races to save him at maximum acceleration, killing Morwenna. On Ararat, 23 years after the events of Redemption Ark, Scorpio, a hyperpig, seeks out Nevil Clavain, who has left mainstream society, leaving Scorpio in charge. Scorpio seeks his aid in opening a capsule which has come down from space. Also with him is Vasko, a reasonably competent but naïve young man. They open the capsule and discover Ana Khouri. Khouri informs the colony that humanity is now at war with the Inhibitors. They are getting the relevant technology from Aura, Khouri's daughter, who has been modified by the Hades Matrix, an alien data repository. However, Skade has kidnapped her from Khouri's womb. Clavain and Scorpio lead a team who discover Skade in her crashed ship, which has been attacked by the Inhibitors, causing its Cryo-Arithmetic Engines to malfunction and cover the ship in ice. Skade agrees to give the colony Aura in return for Clavain's being tortured to death. Clavain agrees, but tells Scorpio to throw his corpse into the sea (where the Pattern Jugglers absorb him and reunite him with Galiana and Felka). The survivors are attacked by Inhibitor machinery, but Remontoire, a Conjoiner leading the war, protects them from space. Back in the colony, the leaders debate as to what to do next. They eventually decide to leave. Meanwhile, Captain Brannigan of the lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity has been preparing to do so. After some deliberation, some fourteen thousand of the over 150,000 colonists board the ship, and it leaves. In space they meet Remontoire, who gives them Aura's technology to defend themselves. The leaders debate whether or not to go to the moon Hela (which Aura suggests they do) or Yellowstone, to help evacuate the planet. They decide to do the latter, but find they are too late; by the time they reach Yellowstone (in 2698), it has been overrun. As the crew collect the last refugees attempting to escape the system, a minor mutiny breaks out amongst the upper echelons, in which Scorpio's leadership is overturned and the other leaders take power as a group. This is due to Scorpio electing to rescue the last refugees off a shuttle that had been contaminated by the Inhibitors. After the final disputes are settled, the ship is redirected towards Hela. Rashmika Els, a 17 year old girl, leaves her home on Hela to search for her long-lost brother Harbin, who left to join the Cathedrals years before. The Cathedrals were set up by Quaiche after the 2615 timeline and constantly move across Hela (making use of various propulsion systems, such as legs and tracks) to "observe" Haldora and its disappearances (known as "vanishings"). It uses special indoctrinal viruses to maintain religious faith amongst its supporters, although certain areas, such as Rashmika's town, are exempt. She joins one of the caravans, a massive vehicle composed of several smaller units, to get to the "Permanent Way", where the cathedrals can be found. She has the ability to tell whenever people are lying to her, which makes Quaiche very interested in her. He uses false evidence to convince Rashmika that Harbin has become a supporter of the church. In fact he is dead. She arrives at Quaiche's Cathedral and begins working for him. In the Cathedral she suffers nightmares about a race called the "Shadows", who exist in a parallel Brane to our own. Their universe has been consumed by a rogue terraforming agent and they are trying to join Rashmika's. They had showed the Scuttlers, the long-extinct inhabitants of Hela, how to build a machine that could bring them across. In return they would destroy the Inhibitors. However, the Inhibitors allegedly destroyed the Scuttlers first. Meanwhile, the Nostalgia for Infinity makes its presence known to Hela and offers to protect it (Quaiche has been asking various lighthuggers for protection). Quaiche agrees and sends "delegates" onto the ship, who are actually soldiers. They attempt to take the ship, but the crew defeats them. Quaiche holds Khouri and Vasko hostage, as well as Rashmika (who is actually Aura). He reveals he actually wants the ship to change Hela's rotation with its engines to stop it spinning; this will permit him to keep watching Haldora eternally, without the need for moving Cathedrals. Brannigan agrees and lands, but not before he deploys a Cache Weapon on Haldora and destroys its exterior, revealing it to be the Shadows' transport mechanism. Quaiche and Grelier (his right-hand man) leave with Aura, but Quaiche panics and dies falling from the shuttle, whilst Grelier is killed by Brannigan's hypometric weapon when he tries to hold Aura hostage. The soldiers of the Cathedrals overwhelm Brannigan and destroy him. Scorpio arrives and rescues Aura, who suggests they take the Scrimshaw suit (now a prison for the Shadows' digital envoy), but Scorpio advises against doing so; Remontoire has shown him a shard of material from Ararat, which matches similar ones found on Hela. He believes that the race that made them also killed the Scuttlers for talking to the Shadows. They leave the Scrimshaw suit and retreat as the Cathedral is destroyed. As they walk away, Khouri asks Scorpio why he saved the shuttle in the Yellowstone system and it is revealed that he saw her husband, Fazil, was on the passenger manifest. The prologue and epilogue of the novel are both set in roughly 3125, four hundred years after the rest of the book. An unnamed woman and her guardian are standing on the surface of a Pattern Juggler planet which is being evacuated. The woman agrees with her guardian to spend one more hour before returning to their ship. She stares up towards the stars and has the machinery in her clothing magnify one of them, revealing it to be colored green. The epilogue reveals that the woman is in fact an older version of Aura (with her "protector" being Scorpio), reflecting on the events that happened after the battle on Hela. Scorpio turned out to be right; the race - known as the Nestbuilders - that wiped out the Scuttlers had been watching humanity and aided them. The Nestbuilders advised humanity to hide with them between the stars, but the humans instead used Nestbuilder weaponry to defeat the Inhibitors and cleanse human space of them. However, in doing so, they created a greater problem: the so called "Greenfly" machines, self-replicating terraformers programmed to destroy every object in a solar system and reorganize them into trillions of vegetation-filled habitats that orbited the star (behavior that is exactly the same as the threat described by the Shadows). The Inhibitors had kept them in check, but without the Inhibitors, the Greenfly are now out of control. Nothing the humans or Nestbuilders can do has stopped them. As such, humanity is evacuating towards the Pleiades. Aura reminisces on the decision she made not to invoke the Shadows. She decides that, before she returns to the ship, she will swim with the Pattern Jugglers and warn the people they have assimilated about what is coming. She enters the ocean as the novel ends. More can be found out about the Greenfly threat in the story "Galactic North", available in the book of the same name. This story outlines the origins of the greenfly and charts their progress until the year 40 000, by which point they have spread to such an extent that humans are forced to abandon the Milky Way Galaxy entirely.
408738	/m/024s_t	Broken Angels	Richard Morgan	2003-03-20	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Some 30 years after Altered Carbon, Takeshi Kovacs is now serving in Carrera's Wedge, a mercenary organisation which joins a corporate war on a distant colony, Sanction IV, and fights the rebellion against the corporate-sponsored government. While having his latest body repaired after a disastrous campaign, Kovacs is approached by pilot Jan Schneider, who is looking for protection for an expedition to exploit a Martian artifact discovered just before the war broke out. "Martian" artifacts have been known for many years at this point, one of them being featured in Altered Carbon. Later it is realized that the "Martians" were not from Mars, but were a technologically advanced species that left artifacts on many planets, including Mars and Kovacs' home world. The artifact, located in the middle of the war zone, is actually a portal linked to a point in outer space where a Martian starship lies. Kovacs and Schneider formulate a plan to recover the portal and begin by rescuing Tanya Wardani, the archaeologist who coordinated the pre-war dig, from a prison camp. Unable to reach the heavily contested location alone, Kovacs enlists the support of one of the major companies involved in feeding the war, the Mandrake Corporation, which is represented by an executive named Matthias Hand. Kovacs and Hand buy hundreds of soldiers' stacks from "The Soul Market" and from them select an elite squad for the expedition. Hand secretly leaks information that prompts the rebels to drop nuclear bombs on the city of Sauberville close to the site, which clears the site of opposing forces and the recovery expedition begins. Near the artifact, an abandoned fishing boat is found with two dead bodies, drifting in its net. The artifact is a wormhole gate that allows instantaneous transport to an outer area of the Sanction star system where an ancient Martian warship is adrift. The archaeologist starts her work to translate the Martian "technoglyphs" on the artifact in order to activate it. While awaiting Wardani's progress, the party are slowly being poisoned by radioactive fallout from the blast. During their first night at the dig site, an unknown member of the party attempts to sabotage the mission by using a corrosion grenade to destroy equipment aboard their shuttle. Upon securing the area, they encounter a group of nanodes - microscopic machines that can assemble into an intelligent composite machine able to learn how to defend itself once attacked in a process like evolution. Hand reveals to Kovacs that nanodes were deployed by a rival representative of the Mandrake Corporation in an attempt to secure the site. The nanodes evolve into more and more aggressive forms which attack the squad several times, eventually killing two members. During the last and strongest attack by nanodes, Tanya succeeds in opening the portal which, when confronted by the nanodes, deactivates them. The party goes through the portal and finds a huge and inactive Martian starship, along with the bodies of Tanya's original archaeological team. Kovacs' squad enters the starship in order to place an ownership claim buoy inside. Kovacs notices that Schneider is free from radiation sickness. When confronted he escapes in the shuttle, killing another member in the process. Unknown to Schneider, Kovacs had mined the shuttle to explode on gate re-entry, apparently eliminating the mission's traitor. During their exploration, the Martian starship is attacked by an unknown starship which causes its automated defence systems to come online. During the attack the party begins to experience visions and emotions from the dead Martians and comes close to madness. Hand realizes the danger and orders Kovacs to shoot the others with a stunning weapon to render them unconscious. After the battle is over, the Wedge rescues and then imprisons the remaining members of the squad as one of them is wanted as a traitor by the Wedge. By this point Kovacs has become completely loyal to his new squad and retains no allegiance to the Wedge. During the traitor's torture, he is able to free his squad and kill the entire Wedge unit, apart from Carrera, who manages to escape through the portal. Despite being almost dead from radiation exposure, Kovacs follows him through and kills him. Kovacs realizes that Wardani sabotaged the first archaeological expedition after discovering that her team wanted to use the Martian ship as a weapon. She was responsible for the two corpses on the fishing boat and for closing the portal behind the others. She also destroyed the equipment in the shuttle to prevent the team from finding out what happened. Tanya confesses everything to Kovacs and decides to stay and oversee the recovery of the portal, while Kovacs trades the rights to the Martian ship for safe passage out of the war zone for the surviving members of his team, who leave for the Latimer system.
408890	/m/024tgj	A Delicate Balance	Edward Albee			 The play opens with Agnes, a brutal, scathing, upper class woman in her late 50’s, discussing the possibility of suddenly and quite easily losing her mind. When Tobias reassures Agnes that “we will all go mad before you,” Agnes admits that she could not really go mad because she needs to take care of him. Agnes exclaims that although she is astonished by her own thoughts of madness, it is her sister, Claire, who lives with them, who astonishes her the most. Claire appears and apologizes to Agnes that her own nature is such to bring out in her sister the full force of her brutality. This inspires a diatribe from Agnes concerning Claire’s lifestyle, namely, her alcoholism. Claire senses that Tobias and Agnes’s daughter Julia might be going on her fourth divorce and predicts that Julia will be coming home shortly. Agnes reenters, announcing that Julia is coming home. Tobias then tells the story of a cat that he once had that he had put to sleep because the cat stopped liking him. There is a knock on the door, and Harry and Edna, Agnes and Tobias’s best friends, ask if they can stay there. They have been frightened by something intangible and do not want to return to their own home. Act II opens with Agnes and Julia discussing the fact that Harry and Edna are occupying Julia’s old bedroom. Harry and Edna have spent the entire day in the room, not coming out even for meals. Julia whines to Tobias next about not having her room. Tobias discredits Julia for all the broken marriages that she has accumulated. There is mention of Julia’s brother who died while still young. Claire enters and chides Julia about her new divorce and about constantly returning home. Julia teases Claire back about her drinking. When asked if she knows what is going on with Harry and Edna, Agnes tells them that she knocked on the door but was too embarrassed, irritated, and apprehensive to pursue the matter. After asking Tobias for a drink, she announces that “there is no point in pressing” the issue of Harry and Edna. At the end of scene 1, Harry and Edna appear with their coats over their arms. They announce they are going home but will return with their suitcases. Scene ii opens with Julia and Agnes alone after dinner. Julia is disgusted with her mother’s desire to control everyone’s conversations and emotions. Agnes retorts, “There is a balance to be maintained . . . and I must be the fulcrum.” Agnes and Tobias leave to help Harry and Edna unload their suitcases from their car. Edna enters and tells Julia that it is time for her to grow up. Julia reminds Edna that she is a guest in the house, to which Edna responds that she and Harry are Agnes and Tobias’s best friends. When Harry enters, he goes to fix everyone a drink at the bar. Julia blocks him from the bar and insists that he stay away from it. Julia yells “I WANT . . . WHAT IS MINE!” and leaves the room. Agnes reminisces about the death of her son, “an unreal time.” She suspects that Tobias has been unfaithful, and asks Harry and Claire to confirm it, but they both deny it. After Tobias attempts to excuse Julia as being in hysterics, Julia reappears with a gun in her hand. She insists that Harry and Edna leave. Edna declares, “We have rights here. We belong,” and insists that she and Harry are staying there forever, “if need be.” Tobias has stayed up all night, and is making himself a morning cocktail. Agnes comes down from her room. She tells Tobias that it is his role to make all the decisions with regards to what to do about Edna and Harry. She reminds Tobias of the time when he prevented her from getting pregnant after the death of their son. Claire, Julia, Tobias, and Agnes all discuss their versions of why Harry and Edna are there and what they should do about it. Harry and Edna join them, and everyone in the room is drinking, despite the early hour of the morning. Edna announces that Harry wants to talk to Tobias alone, and the women exit. Harry tells Tobias that if the circumstances were reversed, he and Edna don’t think they would allow Tobias and Agnes to live at their house, in spite of the fact that they are best friends. Harry asks Tobias, “You don’t want us, do you, Toby?” Tobias delivers what the author refers to in the script notes as Tobias’s “aria.” Tobias answers that he does not really want Harry and Edna to stay there but that because they are friends, Harry and Edna have the right to be there. He goes with Harry to get their suitcases and put them back in their car. Agnes says to Edna, “Everything becomes… too late, finally.” The play ends on Agnes’s rumination that people sleep at night because they are afraid of the dark: “They say we sleep to let the demons out—to let the mind go raving mad…And when the daylight comes again... comes order with it.”
409036	/m/024v0f	Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs	Boris Akunin	2000	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The story is told from the perspective of Afanasi Ziukin, the majordomo of Grand Duke George Alexandrovich. Erast Fandorin investigates the abduction of Grand Duke Mikhail, the four-year-old youngest son of George Alexandrovitch, by criminal mastermind "Doctor Lind" whom Fandorin has been pursuing for several years. Their initial confrontation is briefly described in the novella "Dream Valley" from the Jade Rosary Beads collection. This time, Lind demands the Orlov diamond, a prerequisite for the upcoming coronation, as a ransom. Nicholas II is portrayed as dependent on his uncles Cyril and Simeon, the Governor-General of Moscow. Akunin distorts the Romanov family relations somewhat. The three uncles of Nicolas II (sons of Alexander II) are semi-fictitious: *George Alexandrovich, named after George Alexandrovitch, Nicholas' younger brother, but probably based on Nicholas' real uncle Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich; however, historical Alexei had no legitimate issue *Simeon Alexandrovich, the Governor General of Moscow is based on Nicholas' real uncle Sergei Alexandrovich. *Cyril Alexandrovich is based on Nicholas' real uncle Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia, and named after Cyril, Vladimir's son.
409236	/m/024vq5	Wolves of the Calla	Stephen King	2003-11-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After escaping the alternate Topeka and the evil wizard Randall Flagg, Roland's ka-tet travel to the farming village of Calla Bryn Sturgis where they meet the townsfolk, as well as Father Callahan, who was originally introduced in 'Salem's Lot. He and the townsfolk request the ka-tet's assistance in battling against the Wolves of Thunderclap, who come once a generation to take one child from each pair of the town's twins. After a few months of being away, the children are then returned "roont" (ruined) - mentally handicapped and destined to grow to enormous size and die young. The Wolves are due to come in about a month's time. Father Callahan also tells the gunslingers his remarkable story of how he left Maine following his battle with the vampire Kurt Barlow in the novel Salem's Lot. Since that encounter he has gained the ability to identify Type-3 vampires with a blue aura. After some time he begins killing these minor vampires as he finds them; however, this makes him a wanted man amongst the "low men" and so Callahan must go into exile. Eventually he is lured into a trap and dies, allowing him to enter Mid-World in 1983, much as Jake did when killed in The Gunslinger. He appears near the Calla with an evil magic ball called Black Thirteen, and is found by the Manni people in a place called The Doorway Cave. Not only do Roland of Gilead and his ka-tet have to protect the Calla-folken from the Wolves, they must also protect a single red rose that grows in a vacant lot on Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street in mid-town Manhattan of 1977. If it is destroyed, then the Tower (which is the rose in another form) will fall. In order to get back to New York to prevent this they must use the sinister Black Thirteen. To add to that, Roland and Jake have noticed bizarre changes in Susannah's behavior, which are linked to the event recounted in The Waste Lands when Susannah couples with the demon in the stone circle. Roland informs Eddie that Susannah has been impregnated by the demon, and though he fears for her safety he remains surprisingly calm. They promise to keep the fact that they know a secret from Susannah, but later Susannah reveals to the ka-tet that she herself has come to grips with it, and knowledge of a second personality living in Susannah named Mia "daughter of none" is shared. Jake finds out that his new friend Benny Slightman's father is a traitor by following him to a military outpost between the Calla and Thunderclap known as "The Dogan" (which is also featured in The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home). Jake tells Roland, who shows mercy by not killing Slightman, instead leaving him alive for his son and Jake's sake. The wolves attack, using weapons resembling the snitches found in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (which are actually stamped 'Harry Potter Model') and lightsabers found in George Lucas' Star Wars, and are revealed to be robots and to have Doctor Doom-like visages. The gunslingers, along with some help from a few plate-throwing women in the Calla, defeat the wolves, all the while with the children safely hidden in a rice patch nearby. Mia takes over the body of Susannah and flees to the doorway cave, where she uses Black Thirteen to transport herself to New York.
410134	/m/024zcm	The Good Earth	Pearl S. Buck	1931-03-02	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins on Wang Lung's wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his fortunes. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in the nearby town, where Wang Lung's future wife, O-Lan, lives as a slave. As the House of Hwang slowly declines due to opium use, frequent spending, and uncontrolled borrowing, Wang Lung, through his own hard work and the skill of his wife, O-Lan, slowly earns enough money to buy land from the Hwang family. O-Lan delivers three sons and three daughters; the first daughter becomes mentally handicapped as a result of severe malnutrition brought on by famine. Her father greatly pities her and calls her "Poor Fool," a name by which she is addressed throughout her life. As soon as the second daughter is born, O-Lan kills her to spare her the misery of growing up in these hard times, and to give the remaining family a better chance to survive. During the devastating famine and drought, the family must flee to a large city in the south to find work. Wang Lung's malignant uncle offers to buy his possessions and land, but for significantly less than their value. The family sells everything except the land and the house. Wang Lung then faces the long journey south, contemplating how the family will survive walking, when he discovers that the "firewagon" (the Chinese word for the newly-built train) takes people south for a fee. While in the city, O-Lan and the children turn to begging while Wang Lung pulls a rickshaw. Wang Lung's father begs but does not earn any money, and sits looking at the city instead. They find themselves aliens among their more metropolitan countrymen who look different and speak in a fast accent. They no longer starve, due to the one-cent charitable meals of congee, but still live in abject poverty. Wang Lung longs to return to his land. When armies approach the city he can only work at night hauling merchandise out of fear of being conscripted. One time, his son brought home meat he had stolen. Furious, Wang Lung throws the meat on the ground; believing that if they kept stealing, his sons would grow up as thieves. O-Lan, however, calmly picks up the meat and begins cooking it again; representing that she preferred health to honesty. When a food riot erupts, Wang Lung unwillingly joins a mob that is looting a rich man's house and corners the man himself, who fears for his life and gives Wang Lung all the money he has in order to buy his safety. Meanwhile, his wife finds jewels from a hiding place in another house, hiding them between her breasts. Wang Lung uses the money to bring the family home, buy a new ox and farm tools, and hire servants to work the land for him. In time, the youngest children are born, a twin son and daughter. Using the jewels O-Lan looted from the house in the southern city, Wang Lung is able to buy the House of Hwang's remaining land. He is eventually able to send his first two sons to school and apprentice the third one as a merchant. As Wang Lung becomes more prosperous, he buys a concubine named Lotus. O-Lan dies, but not before witnessing her first son's wedding. Wang Lung and his family move into town and rent the old House of Hwang. Wang Lung, now an old man, wants peace, but there are always disputes, especially between his first and second sons, and particularly their wives. Wang Lung's third son runs away to become a soldier. At the end of the novel, Wang Lung overhears his sons planning to sell the land and tries to dissuade them. They say that they will do as he wishes, but smile knowingly at each other.
410873	/m/0251j3	The Secret Garden	Frances Hodgson Burnett	1909	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mary Lennox is a selfish 10-year-old girl, who is born in India to wealthy British parents. She is unwanted by her mother and father, and taken care of primarily by servants, who pacify her as much as possible to keep her out of the way. Spoiled and with a temper, she is unaffectionate, angry, rude and obstinate. Later, there is an earthquake which hits India and kills here mum and dad. She is discovered alone but alive after the house is abandoned. She is sent to Yorkshire, England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven. At first, Mary is her usual self, sour and rude, disliking her uncle's large house, the people within it, and most of all the vast stretch of moor, which seems scrubby and gray after the winter. She is told that she must stay confined to her two rooms and that nobody will bother much with her and she must amuse herself. Martha Sowerby, her good-natured maidservant, tells Mary a story of the late Mrs. Craven, and how she would spend hours in a private garden growing roses. Later, Mrs. Craven was killed by an unfortunate accident, and Mr. Craven had the garden locked and the key buried. Mary is roused by this story and starts to soften her ill manner despite herself. Soon she begins to lose her disposition and gradually comes to enjoy the company of Martha, Ben Weatherstaff the gardener, and also that of a friendly robin redbreast to whom she attaches human qualities. Her appetite increases and she finds herself getting stronger as she plays by herself on the moor. Martha's mother buys Mary a skipping rope in order to encourage this, and she takes to it immediately. Mary's time is occupied by wondering about the secret garden and a strange crying sound that can sometimes be heard around the house which the servants ignore or deny. While exploring the gardens, Mary comes across a badger hole and finds a key belonging to the untended garden. She chances to ask Martha for garden tools, which Martha has delivered by Dickon, her twelve-year-old brother. Mary and Dickon take a liking to each other, as Dickon has a soft way with animals and a good nature. Eager to absorb his gardening knowledge, Mary unwillingly lets him into the secret of the garden, which he agrees to keep. That night, Mary hears the crying again. She follows the noise and, to her surprise, finds a small boy her age, living in a hidden bedroom. His name is Colin and she discovers that they are cousins: he is the son of her uncle; his mother died when he was a baby, and he suffers from an unspecified problem with his spine. Mary visits every day that week, distracting him from his troubles with stories of the moor, of Dickon and his animals and of the garden. It is decided he needs fresh air and the secret garden, which Mary finally admits she has access to. Colin is put into his wheelchair and brought outside into the garden, the first time he's been outdoors in years. While in the garden, the children are surprised to see Ben Weatherstaff looking over the wall on a ladder. Startled and angry to find the children there in his late mistress' (Colin's mother's) garden he admits he believed Colin to be a cripple. Colin stands up out of his chair to prove him wrong and finds that his legs are fine, though weak from not using them for a long time. Colin spends every day in the garden, becoming stronger. The children conspire to keep Colin's health a secret so he can surprise his father, who is traveling and mourning over his late wife. As Colin's health improves, his father's mood does as well, and he has a dream of his wife calling him into the garden that makes him immediately pack his bags and head home. He walks the outer wall in memory but hears voices inside, finds the door unlocked and is shocked to see the garden in full bloom with children in it and his son running around. The servants watch as Mr. Craven walks back to the manor, and all are stunned that Colin runs beside him.
410932	/m/0251rv	The Sea, the Sea	Iris Murdoch	1978	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Sea, the Sea is a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a self-satisfied playwright and director as he begins to write his memoirs. Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Murdoch's novel exposes the jumble of motivations that drive her characters - the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Charles Arrowby, its central figure, decides to withdraw from the world and dwell in seclusion in a house by the sea. While there, by an extraordinary coincidence he encounters his first love, Mary Hartley Fitch, whom he has not seen since his love affair with her as an adolescent. Although she is almost unrecognisable in old age, and totally outside his theatrical world, he becomes obsessed by her, idealizing his former relationship with her and attempting to persuade her to elope with him. His inability to recognise the egotism and selfishness of his own romantic ideals is at the heart of the novel. After the farcical and abortive kidnapping of Mrs. Fitch by Arrowby, he is left to mull over her rejection in an enjoyably self-obsessional and self-aggrandising manner over the space of several chapters. "How much, I see as I look back, I read into it all, reading my own dream text and not looking at the reality... Yes of course I was in love with my own youth... Who is one's first love?"
411954	/m/025643	Trinity	Leon Uris	1976	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens with the funeral of Kilty Larkin, father of Tomas and grandfather of Conor. Amidst the ancient Irish Catholic mourning process, Conor has a vision of the town storyteller who tells Conor of the history of the Fenians, a rebel group from the early 19th century. This stirs the fire of rebellion in the now 12 year old Conor Larkin, and sets him onto the path for freedom for his Irish people. Soon after this, Seamus O'Neill, Conor's best friend, began school in town under a Protestant named Mr. Ingram. Conor, needed at home, helped his father in the fields, until he became an apprentice at a black smith shop. As the years passed the boys became friends with Mr. Ingram, who taught them of the power of books and the history of their Irish forefathers. Seamus goes to college in Dublin, and Conor heads to Derry, in the province of Ulster. Here he moves into Bogside and witnesses the extent of the disaster that has befallen the Irish people. Bogside is in tatters and in a state of despair that has stricken them since before the potato famine in 1845 and 1852. Held down by the Protestant reign in Derry's labor unions, the Catholics are dying slowly without hope. It is here in Derry where Conor discovers other like-minded Irish tired of the oppression of the Catholics by the British and Protestants. This small group, with the support of the few Irish politicians, will become the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the roots of Sinn Féin, and the whisper of freedom throughout Ireland.
412140	/m/0256z_	The Discovery of Heaven	Harry Mulisch	1992-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Discovery of Heaven tells the story of an angel-like being, who is ordered to return to Heaven the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, given to Moses by God, which symbolise in the book the link between Heaven and Earth. The divine being, however, cannot himself travel to Earth, and on several occasions in the book resorts to influencing events, being in effect a deliberate personification of deus ex machina. He affects the personal lives of three people (two men and one woman) in order that a child will be conceived. This child would then have an innate desire to seek out and return the Tablets. The book consists of four parts (dubbed "The Beginning of the Beginning", "The End of the Beginning", "The Beginning of the End", and "The End of the End"). In between these four parts, the angel-like being discusses "The Plan" with his superior, who is supposedly an archangel. The book begins with the angel reporting to his superior that 'the job is done', and beginning to recount the events. He explains that after seventy years' work and planning, he has created a messenger to return the Tablets, and how, in order for the messenger to be conceived, he first needed to allow the birth of the messenger's parents. He then explains how the First and Second World War were instrumental in this. The messenger's father, Max Delius, was born of a Jewish mother and a German officer in 1933. The messenger's mother, Ada Brons, is born in 1946 to Dutch parents, who also meet in WWII. A third man, Onno Quist, is born into a renowned Dutch Conservative political family, also in the year 1933. The angel arranges for the men, Onno and Max, to meet in 1967. Onno has just left a family gathering and is in need of a ride to Amsterdam. By apparent chance to the characters, but clearly a deus ex machina-effect to the reader, Max is the one to give him a ride. They become friends: Onno and Max's personalities are highly complementary. Onno is an introverted, rather arrogant and highly intelligent linguistic genius who, despite his gift for languages, studied law. While Onno is trying to 'find God' in the Diskos of Phaistos, Max is trying to 'discover Heaven' through astronomy. A more extroverted, erotomanious astronomer, Max is haunted by his rather dark family history: Max's mother, a Jewish woman, was purportedly murdered in Auschwitz, on instigation of his father, an Austrian officer in the Wehrmacht. After the war his father was imprisoned and later executed by the firing squad. Max was consequently raised by foster parents. Onno and Max's friendship reaches a high in the many vibrant conversations they have in Leiden and Amsterdam, in experiencing the revolution of the sixties. Their conversations are filled with great wit and intellect and range over many facets of life: science, history, politics, but especially religion and philosophy. Their friendship, however, absorbs them so much that it forces a break between Onno and his girlfriend, Helga. During a walk in Leiden they come across a small bookshop. Here Max meets Ada, the daughter of the owner and a gifted cellist. The two become three. Ada and Max fall in love. This is rather new for both of them: Ada, who is only twenty, loses her virginity to Max, who has never had a lasting relationship with a woman. One day, Max unwittingly causes Ada to break up with him by leaving abruptly during sex, telling Ada to just let herself come (Maak jezelf maar klaar. in Dutch). Max is also haunted by his family history. Moved by Roma music, who too suffered from the Shoah, he goes to Auschwitz, Poland, to seek his parents' history. Ada and Onno, left alone by the sudden departure of Max, fall in love. When Max returns he sees his best friend with his former girlfriend, but he accepts this change. Onno, meanwhile, has become deputy mayor for the Labour party in Amsterdam and begins his political career. Although nearly everything has changed, their friendship still seems very strong. The three of them then go to Cuba, (where Castro has recently gained power and is fashionable in the leftist elite), and Ada is asked to play the cello. In Cuba, Max and Onno are mistaken for the Dutch delegation to a revolutionary conference, which they attend more as a joke than anything else. On their last day on the island, Onno is seduced by a Cuban woman. At the beach, Max is unable to suppress his libido and makes love to Ada in the Cuban sea. Directly after this event, Onno and Ada meet each other in their hotel room, and sleep with each other. Back in the Netherlands, Ada finds out she is pregnant. The child was conceived in Cuba. She tells this to Onno, who then proposes to marry her, assuming the child is his. Max realizes the child is equally likely to be his and decides to leave Ada and Onno, filled with feelings of guilt. After the marriage, he leaves for Westerbork, (a former holding camp for Jews in the Netherlands who would subsequently be sent to concentration camps in Germany and Eastern Europe, now hosting one of Europe's biggest radio telescopes). Onno and Ada still visit Max. On one of their visits to Westerbork, Ada receives a phone call from a Leiden hospital: her father has had a heart attack. The three of them drive back to Leiden and are caught in bad weather. Their car crashes. Max and Onno escape without a scratch. Ada, however, is badly hurt and falls into a coma, but the child she is carrying has survived. Max is sent to Leiden to inform Ada's mother, Mrs. (Sophie) Brons, about the events. He arrives in Leiden in the middle of the night. Mr Brons has died and Ada is in coma. Mrs. Brons convinces Max that he must stay the night. Max and Mrs. Brons sleep together. Max begins to visit Mrs. Brons frequently. During the day the two maintain a formal relationship and are secretly lovers at night. Ada and Onno's child still survives and needs a home. Onno cannot take care of the child alone, and he also has a bright political future. Max suggests to Mrs. Brons that she move to Westerbork. Together they can raise Ada's child in Westerbork and continue their affair. The child is born through Caesarean section. The child has bright blue eyes and does not cry once, not even during labor. Onno calls the child Quinten. Max and Mrs. Brons move to an apartment near Westerbork in a former castle, now inhabited by artists and eccentrics. Quinten grows up to be an introverted, peaceful child as intelligent as his father. (The reader has the knowledge that Max is the father) He is obsessed by architecture, ancient keys and obelisks. Onno, who is absorbed by his political career, only infrequently visits his son. As Quinten grows up he is haunted by dreams of a strange, otherworldly place that has no outside but only an inside. This inside is filled with strange bridges, cranes and architecture. This fuels his interest in architecture and causes him to obsessively make drawings of this place. He also takes care of an old cemetery lot in the garden of the castle, where a racing horse is buried. He seems a rather strange child. Meanwhile Onno's political career is destroyed, when his visit to revolutionary Cuba is made public. His position within the Labour Party is unretainable and he is not promoted to minister of Defense. That same day, his new girlfriend (Helga again) is killed. With very little left to live for, Onno decides to disappear. Max, meanwhile, has returned to his old tricks. He leaves Mrs. Brons for another woman but still lives with her and Quinten. Scientifically he is on the verge of making a major astronomical discovery. When he discovers heaven (located beyond the Big Bang in negative space), he is killed by a freak meteoroid, sent from heaven by Angel. (In the movie, Gabriel sends the meteor, even after Angel complains and explains that they still need Max.) When Quinten is 16, he decides to look for his father. Except for his mother and grandmother he has very little that binds him to Westerbork. He goes to Italy. He visits Venice and Florence but through meetings with strange people, he is forced to flee both cities. He eventually arrives in Rome. In the Pantheon, he is approached by a strange man with a long beard and a raven on his shoulder. He realizes that it is his father. Onno has fled to Rome and has filled his life with his original quest to decipher the Diskos of Phaistos. Onno takes Quinten on a tour through Rome. Although they haven't seen each other in years, their relationship is close. Onno recognizes a lot of his friend, Max, in Quinten. When they visit the Lateran (one of Rome's holiest sights), Quinten is convinced that he remembers the place from his dreams and that the stone tablets are stored there. He becomes obsessed with the place and with the role of the stone tablets in Christianity and Judaism. After weeks of study, Quinten convinces his father to steal the stone tablet. One night they stay for too long in the Lateran and are locked in. With Quinten's study of ancient architecture and locksmithing and Onno's encyclopedic knowledge, they open the chapel of the Lateran and in a safe they find two stone tablets, grey slabs. Later they learn that the slabs are made of a bright blue gem. They take the first flight from Rome to Tel Aviv, Israel. Onno and Quinten stay in Jerusalem and visit the city's sights, including the Dome of the Rock, where the stone tablets were stored for ages when the Jews inhabited the city, before the Romans sacked the temple. After meeting an elderly woman who speaks Dutch, with very blue eyes and numbers tattooed on her arm, Onno realizes that she might be Max's mother and Quinten's grandmother. He goes to tell Quinten but cannot find him. In a state of distress, he calls Mrs. Brons. He learns that Ada has died; Mrs. Brons, a former nurse has performed euthanasia. While speaking with her on the phone, Onno suffers a stroke. Quinten has gone into a hallucinative state. In a sort of dream world, filled with references to Jewish mysticism, he returns to the Dome of the Rock with the stone tablets. He meets his father's raven and the race horse, whose burial place he kept. In the Dome of the Rock he ascends to heaven with the tablets. Back in heaven, the Angel is commended for his deeds by the Archangel. The Angel, however, feels remorse for breaking the link between heaven and earth. But the situation is no longer in his control.
412654	/m/025926	A Prayer for Owen Meany	John Irving	1989-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is narrated by John Wheelwright, a former citizen of New Hampshire who has become a voluntary exile from the United States,having settled in Toronto, Canada and taken on Canadian citizenship. The story is narrated in two interwoven timeframes. The first timeframe is the perspective of John in the present day (1987). The second (much larger) timeframe is John's memories of the past, growing up in New Hampshire in the 1950s and 1960s alongside his best friend, Owen Meany. The present-day John works as an English teacher at the Bishop Strachan private girls' school in Toronto. He is a committed Christian (attending the Anglican Church), with a strong but important sense of right and wrong and an abiding, obsessive anger with the actions and attitude of America. The latter haunts him to intense degree; and he is known to his Canadian friends and associates as a fussy bachelor who cannot entirely embrace the Canadian identity that he has chosen. Some of them also suspect him of being homosexual, although the truth is that he has never lost his virginity. He engages in frequent and fervent tirades against the Reagan administration and although his teaching career is going moderately well, he still struggles with his past life. The truth of John’s attitude and choices is explained by his childhood friendship with Owen Meany, and by the details and repercussions of Owen’s life and death. These details, John makes clear, are responsible for his belief in God. John’s present-day narrative bookends, comments on and punctuates the narrative of the past, in which the vast majority of the novel’s events occur. John Wheelwright and Owen Meany are both residents of the (fictitious) town of Gravesend, New Hampshire. Despite being best friends since childhood, their backgrounds and attitudes are very different. John is the unambitious (and rather dull) descendant of several New England founding families with long and lofty pedigrees: most notably the Wheelwrights, who themselves are one of the leading Gravesend families. He is the illegitimate son of the vivacious Tabitha "Tabby" Wheelwright, and knows nothing about his absent father apart from the fact that he was someone his mother "met on the Boston & Maine railroad". Tabitha never had any intention of marrying John’s father and cheerfully refuses to reveal his identity. Instead, she weathers the scandal and brings John up at the family home of 80 Front Street as a single parent, with the bewildered and curious support of John’s formidable grandmother (and family matriarch) Harriet Wheelwright and his grandmother's maid Lydia. A significant percentage of John’s attention is taken up by the mystery of his parentage. Conversely, Owen is the child of a granite-quarrying family from the New Hampshire working class. He is affected by two mysterious conditions&nbsp;— one of which stunts his growth (unusually tiny as a child, his eventual adult height is under five feet tall) and the other of which has damaged his larynx (so that in order to be heard he has to shout through his nose in a penetrating childlike tone which John describes as a "wrecked" voice). Although he lacks John’s social and physical advantages, he is far more clever and possesses the conviction and determination that John conspicuously lacks. Owen also has an unusual relationship with his parents, both of whom seem afraid of him (although the reason why is not revealed until late in the novel). Owen’s father Mr. Meany is a class-conscious but pleasant man, apparently easily bent to his son's will, and his mother is a strange woman who isolates herself in her home (described as being almost catatonic, she rarely speaks or moves from her spot in front of the fireplace). Owen spends much of his time at the Wheelwright house with John and John's family. During the course of his life, Owen develops the conviction that he is "God’s instrument", although he does not know how until the end of his life. Despite his miniature stature and odd appearance (variously described as "ethereal", "adorable" and "creepy"), Owen has a striking personality which commands immediate attention and ensures that he dominates his surroundings. Owen is extremely intelligent and self-possessed, even as a child. He directs the actions of many of the people around him by either charming them, frightening them, or craftily manipulating them. Children and adults alike are drawn to Owen, and many people (such as John's mother Tabitha), are unable to resist touching him. Others' urges to touch him often put Owen in embarrassing situations, such as a Sunday School ritual in which his classmates hold him over their heads and pass him around the room. Owen himself is enchanted with Tabitha, and she adores him almost as much as she adores John. Eventually Tabitha meets a new man on the Boston & Maine railroad&nbsp;— Dan Needham, a good-natured teacher travelling to Gravesend to apply for a job teaching at the boy's private school, Gravesend Academy, to teach dramatic arts. Dan is awarded the position, and he and Tabitha become engaged, with the full approval of everyone (even Grandmother Wheelwright). Mysteriously, Tabitha makes Dan wait for four years before they are finally married. After the marriage, Tabitha and John move into Dan's apartment in the staff dormitory of Gravesend Academy. Tragedy strikes when Owen hits a foul ball at a Little League baseball game, which hits and kills Tabitha. The whole community is affected by Tabitha’s death, but life goes on. Despite Owen’s responsibility for Tabitha’s death, John refuses to blame him and the two of them remain close. The ball which killed Tabitha disappears, and John assumes Owen took it. Dan Needham takes John under his wing as his adoptive son and allows him to spend time at his apartment at Gravesend Academy. At this point, three more characters are introduced &nbsp;— John’s cousins Hester (a tomboy), Simon and Noah (both rough-housing older boys). Owen begs to be introduced, but embarrasses himself by accidentally urinating on Hester when startled during a game of hide-and-seek. Despite this (and despite Hester’s antagonistic nature) all is forgiven, and Owen and Hester begin to develop an unorthodox closeness. Although John himself grows to be incestuously attracted to Hester, he puts these feelings away (chalking them up to lust, and by extension his absent father) especially after Owen admits his own serious attraction to Hester. Two major events (both theatrical) then occur, shaping the narrative. The Gravesend Players, the local amateur acting group, put on a performance of A Christmas Carol while the boys' Episcopal Church puts on a performance of The Nativity. Owen, with natural charisma, gets the parts of both baby Jesus and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In A Christmas Carol, during the last performance, Owen becomes overwhelmed and faints, nearly delirious with fever. He claims to have seen his own name on Scrooge's grave, although Dan dismisses his concerns. During the chaotic performance of the Nativity play, Owen notices that his parents are in attendance&nbsp;— he sits up in his manger and shouts to his parents that it is a "sacrilege" that they should be there. This is revealed to be something to do with a "grave" injustice his parents were dealt at the hands of the Catholic Church. Owen does not specify what this injustice was, but it has resulted in his strong animosity towards Catholicism. Upon reaching Grade 9, both Owen and John are admitted to Gravesend Academy&nbsp;— Owen on the grounds of intelligence (he wins a scholarship) and with the financial backing of Harriet Wheelwright, and John simply because his stepfather teaches there. The unacademic John struggles to deal with the coursework, and Owen is there to help him. All through school, Owen and John practice "the Shot", a basketball move in which John lifts Owen over his head so that he may dunk the basketball. They practice it intermittently over the following years, eventually achieving the skill to dunk the ball in under three seconds. John finds no success with the search for his father, or the opposite sex, or his schoolwork&nbsp;— his failure in the last forces him to see the bumbling school psychiatrist, Doctor Dolder. Owen, in contrast, is a straight-A student, considered to be Harvard or Yale material. He also is more socially successful, having the attention of girls&nbsp;— though electing to date Hester (much to John’s chagrin), and becomes "The Voice", the pen name of his withering Socratic editorial in the school newspaper. In 1960, Owen is forced into an antagonistic relationship with the new school headmaster, the arrogant and dictatorial businessman-turned-educator Randy White. A series of confrontations between Owen and White&nbsp;— ending in several spectacular and symbolic pranks masterminded and executed by Owen&nbsp;— ends with Owen being kicked out of school on charges of vandalism, forging draft cards and various issues of anti-religious bigotry. In the process, White overreaches himself and ruins his own career as headmaster. The incident has, however, destroyed Owen’s chances of attending university. He has also become fixated upon his death. It's revealed that not only did he see his name on the grave during that fateful performance of ‘A Christmas Carol’, he also saw the date of his death: July 8, 1968. The Vietnam War begins, and Owen strikes a deal with the University of New Hampshire under which he will undergo ROTC training and a period of active service in the Army in return for a scholarship. He is still dating Hester, although she has become fervently anti-war and their relationship is stormy. Despite his determination to get into Vietnam, Owen ends up in Arizona as a casualty officer, bringing bodies of Arizona soldiers home from California. He later explains to John that he has had a recurring dream in which he saves many Vietnamese children, but is killed in the process. He believes this to happen on the date he saw on the grave, and strives to fulfil his destiny. His actions create discord, but he stays the course. John, meanwhile, has been working as a graduate student to avoid the dreaded draft. At the end of this work, he risks being drafted. Owen ensures that this does not happen by persuading John to let him amputate part of John’s trigger finger with a granite-cutting saw at the Meany quarry. John later learns from Owen's diary that Owen did this both to save his friend and to avoid John having to go to Vietnam, since Owen has seen him in the dream and is afraid he, like Owen, will die there. There is a break in the story at this point, flashing forward to the events surrounding and following Owen's funeral, and joining the two timeframes. In 1968, at the funeral, Mr. Meany confides in John. He claims that he never had sex with Owen's mother, and that he believes Owen to have been the product of a virgin birth, "like the Christ Child", a revelation which was rejected by their local Catholic priests (finally explaining Owen’s antipathy towards Catholicism). John is internally furious at Mr. Meany, but says nothing, even when Mr. Meany says that he told Owen this "fact" at the age of eleven (which John then blames for Owen's belief he was the Instrument of God). John also finally discovers the identity of his father, a man whom he has known all his life. It is Rev. Lewis Merrill, the ineffective (and married) local minister of the Congregationalist Church and of Gravesend Academy, who is also revealed as the secret hoarder of the baseball which killed Tabitha Wheelwright. The revelation is a depressing anticlimax for John, although it further seals his love for Dan Needham as his “real” father. It’s also revealed that a broken-hearted Hester went on to become a hard rock superstar in the 1970s and 1980s called “Hester The Molester”, and that her songs, videos and stage act (which appear to have some similarities to those of Alice Cooper) feature strong references to the soldier casualties of Vietnam and to Owen’s life and eventual death. The last part of the book covers the story of Owen's death in 1968. As the date approaches, Owen has invited John to visit him in Arizona for one last get-together. Owen has matured in his role&nbsp;— even praising Catholics, whom he had earlier despised. The duo, along with a Major, confront a low-class family whose son was killed in Vietnam. The entire family, save the boy's sister, is openly angry with the military. The boy’s brother Dick is particularly contemptuous and nihilistic, showing John and Owen the lethal weaponry which his brother smuggled back from Vietnam on a previous leave, including a Viet Cong grenade. As Owen and John and the Major meet at the airport, Owen becomes ecstatic that he may not die that day. However, a planeload of Vietnamese children arrive. Recognizing them from the dream, Owen knows that the time has arrived, although he is still not sure how the final events are going to happen. Owen and John escort the kids into the bathroom of the airport. At this point, Dick (who has been skulking around the airport) barges into the bathroom with his smuggled grenade, intent on killing some "dinks", even if they are children. He triggers the grenade’s fuse and contemptuously throws it to John. At this point, the apparent purposes of Owen’s condition and actions are revealed. His child’s voice and physique calm the frightened children, ensuring that they do not panic and that they therefore enable him to have the space to save them. On Owen’s command, John passes him the grenade, and the two friends use "the Shot" one last time to throw Owen up to the bathroom’s upper windowsill where the grenade explodes, maiming Owen but not the children. Dick is killed by the Major, who, along with John and some nuns, tries to save Owen. It is no use, however, and Owen dies from his injuries, beatific in the knowledge that he has fulfilled his task for God. John is left with the memory of his friend, and the firm belief that Owen and his life were a miracle. The last words of his narrative are an impassioned plea: "O God&nbsp;— please bring him back! I shall keep asking You."
412683	/m/02595t	This Present Darkness	Frank E. Peretti			 This Present Darkness takes place in the small college town of Ashton. Bernice Kreuger, a reporter for the Clarion, Ashton's town newspaper, is falsely arrested on prostitution charges after taking a photograph at the annual Ashton Summer Festival. When she is released the next day, she discovers that the film in her camera was destroyed. Marshall Hogan, owner/editor-in-chief of the Clarion decides to go to the town police station/courthouse and confront Alf Brummel, the police chief, about the incident. Brummel denies any wrongdoing on behalf of the police department and insists it was all a mistake. Brummel then advises Marshall to drop the matter. Marshall does not fall for Brummel's story and, ignoring Brummel's advice, begins an investigation. As the investigation continues, Marshall and Bernice begin to realize that they're onto something much bigger than they thought. They slowly uncover a plot to take over the town via buying the college, that is being carried out by The Universal Consciousness Society, a powerful New Age group. When the Society decides Marshall has found out too much they take the Clarion, and his house. They also falsely accuse him of murder, adultery and molesting his daughter, who attends the college and who unwittingly has been pulled into the Society. When he and Bernice are caught in a desperate attempt to keep the society from winning out, he is arrested and thrown in jail, and she escapes, running off to find help. Meanwhile Hank Busche, the unwanted pastor of the little Ashton Community Church discovers that there are many demons in the town and wonders why they have all congregated here. When he gets to be a nuisance to the demons they have the Society falsely arrest him for rape. Hank and Marshall meet in jail. They compare stories and finally put both halves of the puzzle together. During the time that this is happening the story take on a spiritual dimension – revealing a perspective based on the idea of unseen forces at work. Meanwhile, Bernice finds help and makes contact with the County Prosecuter, the State Attorney General, and the Feds. When Alf Brummel finds out about this he releases Hank and Marshall. After Hank and Marshall are released they "team up" against the Universal Consciousness Society and the demons working to take over Ashton.
413120	/m/025c53	Oahspe: A New Bible		1882	{"/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 Oahspe includes doctrinal books, and precepts for behavior can be found throughout its many books. Freedom and responsibility are two themes reiterated throughout the text of Oahspe. Some core doctrines include an herbivorous diet (vegan, vegetable food only), peaceful living (no warring or violence; pacifism), living a life of virtue, and service to others. Oahspe exhibits great interest in understanding and applying general ethical principles. The suffix ISM in Faith-ism is defined meaning adherence or following an ideology. The Book of Inspiration in the Oahspe states "I will have no sect. I will have no creed". Oahspe speaks of the need for all religions to help the various nations and peoples to rise upward. It also speaks of what it calls "the religion of Gods themselves," in which its adherents have no need for intermediaries such as are Saviors and Idols, but who commune directly with the Creator of all. Oahspe purports to describe events in the spirit realms and their corresponding influence on events in the physical world starting from approximately 72,000 years ago and its believers think that its revelations also provide missing details of ancient historical accounts regarding the origins of earth's major religions. ===== Geology and Archeology ===== Oahspe gives many details regarding an alleged large continent called Pan or Whaga that once filled much of the Pacific Ocean. It also puts forward views on the causes of rapid loss or gain of fertility upon the earth. The largest of the Books are Book of Eskra, the recent history according to the Oahspe, and the Book of God's Word which teaches the record of Zarathustra. ===== Language and linguistics ===== Oahspe presents many illustrations of symbols said to be of ancient languages and of rites and ceremonies. It states the concept that there was an original language called Pan or the Panic Language, meaning "Earth Language," which originated from the ability of humans to mimic sounds. Its Book of Saphah has details on the claimed meanings and roots of many of the ancient words, symbols and ceremonies. ===== Evolution or progress ===== Oahspe contains chronologically-ordered accounts that are cosmological revelations concerning the evolution of humanity from approximately 78,000 years ago. This includes a narrative of the genesis of life on earth, from its start as a planet being formed from its beginnings as a comet, to its first life-forms and finally to the appearance of the human race and its progression from beast to spiritual maturity. ===== Cosmogony ===== Oahspe explains physical science as having its basis in subtler realms (which include spiritual forces), and then how to predict from them. Oahspe devotes an entire interior book to the subject, called the Book of Cosmogony and Prophecy, but a general overview can be read in the Book of Jehovih. Also, many examples and edifications are sprinkled throughout Oahspe. Other related subjects include physics and an integrating treatment of gravity, light, electricity, magnetism, and heat. ===== Cycles ===== The text describes cyclical events that occur within a range of greater and smaller cycles. For instance, according to Oahspe, the earth is traveling with the sun and its planets through regions of space in a large circuit of 4,700,000 years, which is divided into sections of 3,000 years average, which also occur within larger cycles of 24,000 years and 72,000 years, and so on. Each of these regions has variations in density and other qualities, and so, engender varying conditions that the Earth encounters. Also, explanation is given as to the rise and fall of civilizations. ===== Administration ===== The various regions mentioned in the previous Cycles section, are under the administration of spiritual or "etherean" beings with titles such as "God" and "Chief" and whose ranks and ages vary in ascending grade, from tens of thousands of years to hundreds of thousands of years old and older. Their dominions cover vast distances and include many spiritual and corporeal worlds of various grades and densities. These chief officers are designated "Sons and Daughters of Jehovih," and in accordance, the text of Oahspe contains separate sections or "books" such as the Book of Cpenta-Armij, Daughter of Jehovih, and also includes familiar names from non-Abrahamic religions, as in the Book of Apollo and Book of Thor, named as Sons of Jehovih. Each of these Chiefs, Chieftainesses, Gods and Goddesses are only advanced angels according to Oahspe. And every angel, regardless of rank or office, was once a mortal, either from this planet earth or from some other planet in the universe.
413263	/m/025cwz	Get Shorty	Elmore Leonard		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book's story centers around Chili Palmer, a small-time shylock (or loanshark) based in Miami, who is sent after Leo Devoe, who has scammed an airline out of $300,000 in life insurance by faking his own death. Leo had been aboard a plane whose flight was delayed, prompting Leo to disembark and go drinking in the airport bar. Leo misses the plane's actual takeoff, and when it crashes, his "widow" receives a check for $300,000, money which Leo takes to Las Vegas. His trail leads Chili to Las Vegas, where the loanshark finds a more interesting assignment: the casino is looking to collect from Harry Zimm, a horror film producer based in Los Angeles. Palmer, himself very interested in the movie industry, takes the extra assignment and heads for Los Angeles. Palmer lets his interest in the movie industry overshadow his collection job. He sneaks into the house of Karen Flores (Zimm's friend) in the middle of the night, startling both Zimm and Flores, and after he tells Zimm he has to pay his Las Vegas markers, he then explains that he has an idea for a movie. Zimm is immediately taken in by Palmer's charm and his movie idea, although Flores is still skeptical. Palmer recounts Leo Devoe's story in the third person, and recalls chasing Leo to Las Vegas as if it were an incomplete work of fiction. Flores is smart, and points out that the story clearly isn't fictional, she saw the plane crash in the news in the past week, and Palmer is obviously the shylock mentioned in the story. The next morning, Zimm asks for Chili's help in dealing with a good script he wants to buy. Zimm tells Chili that this script, Mr. Lovejoy, could be Academy Award worthy material. "It'll be my Driving Miss Daisy," Zimm assures Palmer. There are, however, two problems: Zimm doesn't own the script, his writer's widow Doris Saffron does, and she wants $500,000 for it; and he guaranteed a $200,000 investment from Bo Catlett, a local limo driver and drug dealer, to make another movie called Freaks. (Zimm gambled Catlett's $200,000 away in Vegas in hopes of making the $500,000 he needed for Mr. Lovejoy). In a meeting with Catlett and his sidekick Ronnie Wingate, Zimm and Palmer tell them that, while their investment in Freaks is sound, they are making another movie first. Catlett tells them to move the money into this new picture; Zimm says he cannot, as the new movie deal is "structured." Meanwhile, Catlett is involved in a Mexican drug deal which doesn't go through. He has left the payment in a locker at the L.A. airport, but the Colombian sent to receive the money, Yayo Portillo (Catlett keeps calling him Yahoo), doesn't feel safe unlocking the locker with so many DEA agents staked out nearby. Catlett later meets Yayo back at his home, and after Yayo threatens to tell the DEA who Bo is, Bo shoots him. Catlett soon offers the locker money to Zimm as an investment, telling him to send Palmer to get the money. Palmer senses something wrong, signs out a nearby locker as a test, and sure enough is taken for questioning by drug officials when he tries to open it. Palmer and Flores are meanwhile seeking the interests of Michael Weir, a top-tier Hollywood actor to whom Flores was once married, to play the lead in Zimm's film. The loose ends are tied up when Ray Barboni comes to Los Angeles looking for the money Palmer collected from Leo Devoe, only to find the key to the locker from the failed drug deal in one of Palmer's pockets. Thinking Palmer has stashed his cash in a locker, he goes to the airport and is busted by drug officials. In a final showdown with Catlett, Catlett is double-crossed by his partner, Bear. The novel ends with Zimm, Palmer and Flores having visited a few production studios and wondering why writing the ending of a story was always the hardest part.
414118	/m/025h64	Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo	Oscar Zeta Acosta	1972	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This character survives on drugs, alcohol, and counseling sessions until he transforms into a Chicano activist. At the end of the work, the protagonist adds the middle name of "Zeta," a symbol which represents his Chicano and Mexican culture and roots. By traveling to his birthplace, the lost character discovers himself and learns lessons on the road as he reflects on his life. On the back of some copy of the books it says "Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano Lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo"" a character in book and movie "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." The first five chapters take place on July 1, 1967; the narrative, however, is frequently broken up by flashbacks that explain the narrator’s relationship with various characters. The story begins in the morning as the narrator is preparing to go to work. Standing naked in front of the mirror, he reflects on his large brown body and his general health. He is both constipated and suffers from ulcers, which cause him to vomit. While looking in the mirror, he seeks advice from his “three favorite men”: Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson. He also hears the voice of Dr. Serbin, his psychiatrist, who seems to be following him and who appears throughout the novel. The narrator masturbates in the shower while fantasizing about a friend’s wife. The narrator leaves his apartment in San Francisco and drives to Oakland where he works as a legal aid lawyer. He has worked in the office since he passed the bar exam 12 months before. To get through the tedium of filing countless restraining orders for battered women and to deal with his inability to help the clients in a system that favors those with the money to pay high priced lawyers, the narrator has spent the past year watching television, taking tranquillizers, and drinking. When he arrives at work he avoids going in to his office, unable to face the five women sitting in the waiting room. He assumes they have all been beaten by their husbands over the weekend. When he finally goes into his office, he learns that his secretary Pauline has died from cancer. Pauline has supported him in his job and has helped him negotiate the bureaucracy. The narrator did not know she was seriously ill. He decides that without Pauline’s support he cannot continue in the job. He leaves the office and heads back to San Francisco. On the drive he talks to himself and Dr. Serbin. He remembers the time three years before when he was sick for months with mononucleosis. During this time he met a neighbor in his apartment building, Cynthia, who was the sister of his friend Charlie Fisher. Cynthia introduced the narrator to marijuana and LSD. Through Cynthia he also met a couple, Alice and Ted Casey, a sailor. While he was bedridden, Alice and Cynthia cared for the narrator by bringing him soup. Later he became friends with Ted and Alice, regularly visiting their apartment. The friendship ended when the narrator tested Ted’s liberal views on relationships by broaching the subject of his sleeping with Alice while Ted was away on one of his trips. Ted acted as though he was indifferent and that it was Alice’s decision but later, through a friend, threatened to cut off the narrator balls. This ended the friendship. Returning to the central focus of the narrative, the narrator arrives at Ted Casey’s house and rings the bell. No one is home. He then goes to the office of his psychiatrist. Although the psychiatrist is meeting with a patient the narrator bangs on the door. When the psychiatrist opens the door, the narrator tells him he is leaving. The psychiatrist patiently asks him to wait, but the narrator leaves. Having stopped off to pick up some scotch and now already drunk, the narrator goes to Trader JJ’s, a San Francisco bar he frequents. He has backed his belongings and plans to store them in the bar’s basement. Inside the bar he talks with a mixed group of misfits who are his friends and form a community. They include Maria, a Jewish bisexual hustler and Jose, a struggling homosexual artist. The patrons of the bar function by insulting each other. Maria teases the narrator about a former girlfriend, June MacAdoo. The two had dated for three months two years before. Shortly after June unexpectedly dumped the narrator, the narrator found out he failed the bar examine. He studied for three months and retook the exam. This time he passed. He was still heart broken, however, and was no longer particularly interested in the law. After leaving some of his belongs at the bar the narrator visits Maryjane and Bertha, two friends. He regards the women as friends, having found he could not sleep with them because of impotence brought on by his broken heart. At their apartment the narrator finds not only the two women but Ted Casey. Ted is dressed in flashy cloths and bosses the two normally strong-willed women around. No longer a seaman, he has become a successful drug dealer. The narrator drinks most of a bottle of champagne that has been spiked with mescalin. The four drive in Ted’s Cadillac to an expensive Italian restaurant to eat. At the restaurant Ted shows off his wealth and his power. The group eats and snorts coke. After dinner the four drive to Trader JJ’s. Maryjane and Ted leave the car but Bertha and the narrator stay behind. The narrator initiates a brief sexual encounter that ends when he quickly cums. Bertha is sympathetic. The two then join the others in the bar. In the bar the narrator calls June, his ex-girlfriend. At first she seems interested in seeing him but then tells him she is engaged. The narrator hangs up. More drinking and drunken revelry takes place in the bar. The narrator eventually passes out, bringing an end to the day. This section of the story takes place over the course of three days as the narrator drives away from San Francisco. Taking drugs and drinking while he drives, the narrator’s thoughts focus on his childhood. He was born in El Paso but grew up from the age of five in Riverbank, a town of less than 4,000 people in California’s Central Valley. His parents were both Mexican: his father was an “indio” from Durango and his mother was from a poor family in Juarez. Together they crossed the border illegally to El Paso. His father was drafted in to the Navy during WWII and on his discharge was granted citizenship. The family lived in a two room shack. The father imposed strict discipline and order based on the regulations of the Navy’s The Seabee Manual. In the small town of Riverside, the narrator and his only brother, Bob, were outsiders. As Mexicans they were picked on by the Oakies, the poor whites. Other Mexicans also picked on the brothers because they were more recent immigrants. In addition to the Oakies and the Mexicans, the third group in the town was the Americans, the relatively wealthy white families. Among the incidents from childhood the narrator remembers is a childhood crush. Jane Addison was a new classmate and the daughter of the owner of the factory where the narrator’s mom worked. He scratched her initials on the back of his hand as a love gesture. He was deeply hurt when he showed her the nearly illegible lines to her and she laughed. Later she told the teacher in front of the class that the narrator stunk. After driving for two days, the narrator sees a beautiful blond hitchhiker. Karin Wilmington is a rich hippie, on her way from Mexico to Colorado. The narrator recounts his life story to Karen, although he says he is Samoan and that his name is Henry Hawk. This is one of several times in the story where the narrator assumes different identities, one of which is an Indian chief. The narrator and Karin find they have a friend in common, Turk, a crazy biker. The narrator splits up from Karin in Ketchum, Idaho but she leaves him a note inviting him to met her at her brother’s house in nearby Wilmington. In Ketchum, the narrator visits Hemingway’s grave. The narrator continues reflecting on his childhood. In high school, he played clarinet in the school band, was a starter on the variety football team, and was Class President. Yet he never studied and spent most of his time drinking with a group of four friends. The friends also went to a whore house regularly. For over a year the narrator never went with any of the girls. Finally, his friends tricked him into sleeping with Ruby, the very attractive Portuguese madam. During his Junior year in high school, the narrator fell in love with a Freshman named Alice Brown. Although she walked with a slight limp caused by polio, she was incredibly beautiful and the narrator was instantly attracted to her. The two began seeing each other but when her parents found out about the relationship they made her write the narrator a note saying she could not see him any more. Alice tells the narrator that her stepfather, a Baptist minister, threatened to divorce Alice’s mother if she allowed them to date. This was primarily because her stepfather hated Mexicans. The narrator and Alice continued seeing each other discreetly. During his senior year the narrator worked to have Alice crowned school queen. He was successful. At the winter dance were she was crowned he danced with her; unfortunately this led to her stepfather finding out about their relationship. When the narrator took her home from the dance the town sheriff was waiting at her house. He had brought the narrator’s parents as well. Pressure from the sheriff forces the narrator to agree not to see Alice. However, the narrator Alice and the narrator continued to see each other at school. Occasionally the narrator would have one of his white friends pick up Alice so they could attend a school dance together. After graduation the narrator, not knowing what else to do and having to wait for Alice to finish high school so they could marry, joined the Air Force. He played in the Air Force band and was stationed at nearby locations in California. For a while, the two continued to see each other whenever the narrator had leave but eventually he received a Dear John letter from her. During this time, a friend convinced the narrator to convert from Catholicism to the Baptist faith. The narrator adopted the religion enthusiastically. He began leading prayer groups and he impressed members of the local congregation with his ability to testify to sin. Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to a post in Panama. In his free time, which was considerable, he worked as a missionary to an Indian tribe in a rural village. Gradually, however, his faith waned. He went through the gospels and wrote out a list in favor and a list against what he read. The con list was far longer and the narrator gave up his belief. Afraid on confusing the Indians if he went back on his preaching, he continued giving them sermons on general themes such as brother lovely. After two years in Panama, the narrator was honorably discharged from the Air Force. He went to New Orleans where drank and smoke and briefly considered committing suicide but decided that jumping from a window would be too painful. In Wilmington, the narrator attends a Fourth of July party at a mansion with the rich friends of Karen. The party features peyote-spiked guacamole. The peyote and the drinking cause the narrator’s ulcers to act up. He throws up and is comforted by Karin. She recommends that he continue what she calls “his search” by looking for Bobby Miller at the Daisy Duck bar in Alpine. The narrator says that what he really needs is a doctor to help him with his ulcers. The next day the narrator wakes up on Hemingway’s grave. He does not remember how he got there. The section ends with him behind the wheel of his car heading to Alpine. The events of chapters 12-15 take place over, approximately, a week in Alpine. The narrator arrives in Alpine filled with self-pity. He finds that he has no one to blame and that by some measures he has been successful for someone who started where he did. Nonetheless, he is deeply dissatisfied. The first thing the narrator does in Alpine is go to a motel and sleep for twenty-four hours. When he wakes up he heads the to Daisy Duck bar to look for Bobby Miller. At the bar he finds Bobbi, a waitress, who is Bobby’s girlfriend. The narrator talks and dances with her. Bobbi then introduces the narrator to Bobby and a man called the King, who have just come in to the bar. The narrator is struck by Bobby’s calm and gentle disposition. King on the other hand is a rough biker, who makes threatening remarks about running greasers out of town. Miller invites the narrator to crash at his place but the narrator decides to stay in the motel. The narrator continues describing his life story. After his discharge from the Air Force, the narrator returned to Riverbank. He discovered that his brother had stolen all of his savings from a joint bank account. The narrator decided to attend a local community college. There he was influenced deeply by a creative writing professor, Doc Jennings. Doc Jennings encouraged the students to think for themselves and not to blindly accept convention wisdom. At one point, the teacher called the narrator to his office to encourage him to leave school if he wants to be a writer. After a year of classes the narrator finally took Doc Jennings advise and left school. He went to Los Angeles and took the exam to enter the police department. While driving in Los Angeles, the narrator was pulled over by an unmarked police car. The narrator, who was drunk, tried to drive away. Eventually he was stopped by a road block. When the case came to court the narrator refused the public defender and decided to represent himself. Several judges tried to talk him out of going to trial. The narrator went ahead with the case and was able to convince the jury that he was not guilty because the police car was unmarked, and, therefore, it was natural for someone who grew up in a rough area to try to flee. Immediately after the trial the narrator went looking for his friend Al. He learned from the landlord that Al had been on a drinking binge for a full month. The narrator found Al passed out in his apartment. The floor was covered with eggshells; apparently the only type of food Al had been eating. The narrator took Al to the county hospital but they would not admit him because he was drunk. Then narrator took to Al to a psychiatric hospital next door. There the narrator had to convince the admitting doctor that Al was insane in order to have him admitted. During the observation period Al’s sister visited but she sneaked past the nurse when she came in. This caused the doctors to think Al was imaging he had visitors. As a result, Al had to serve two months in a criminal psychiatric hospital. The incident with Al and his own arrest convinced the narrator to him to leave Los Angeles. The narrator went to San Francisco and enrolled at San Francisco State to study math and creative writing. The narrator wrote a manuscript about his relationship with Alice and the fights between Mexicans and Oakies in his home town. The narrator showed the manuscript to a supportive creative writing professor. The professor thought highly of the work but said that no one would publish a book about Mexicans. Giving up on writing, the narrator decided to go to law school. He attended night classes at San Francisco Law School and worked during the day as a copy boy at a newspaper. After five years he graduated from law school. Shortly after arriving in Alpine the narrator crashed his car. He had been smoking marijuana that Scott, a friend of Bobby, had brought from India. He had also mistakenly taken two tabs of acid that were in an aspirin bottle. When the narrator comes off his trip, he finds he is in King’s basement. Exploring the basement, he finds some recording equipment and drugs. He takes the drugs and listens to music. When he comes to, he is sitting with King on the porch. King tells him the sheriff is looking for him The narrator and King strike up a friendship. Both are serious about drinking. After talking and drinking for a while, the two head to town for more beer in spite of the risk of being spotted by the sheriff. After picking up more beer at the local grocery store, they head to a park where a group of hippies is gathering after a protest at the house of Gene McNamara. At the gathering the narrator gets into an altercation because the hippies think he is hassling a pair of nuns. Although the narrator does not know it, someone has written “Fuck the Pope” on his back. King takes the narrator to the bus station. While waiting for the bus to leave, King and the narrator continue talking. They have become friends and exchange symbolic gifts. Just before the bus leaves King the gives the narrator his phone number. The final section, while comprised a relatively few pages, covers a longer period than the other sections. The section is also different in that for the most part it does not contain flashbacks to previous events in the narrator’s life. The section begins with the narrator stepping off the bus in Vail. Broke, he works in a series of low paying jobs, repeatedly getting fired. In his free time he drinks, reads Dylan Thomas and Konrad Lorenz, and listens to Bob Dylan. After several months in Vail, he decides to return to El Paso, where he was born, “to see if I could find the object of my quest.” In El Paso he visits his old house and walks around his old neighborhood. Overcome by memories and sadness, he decides to go across the border to Juarez. In Juarez he is moved to see so many Mexicans with their brown skin and, most of all, people speaking Spanish openly in public. He remembers an incident in elementary school when the principal told him and his brother they could not speak Spanish at school. For the first time in his life he is attracted to Mexican women. His earlier loves fade to distant memories in the presence of so many beautiful brown skinned women. The narrator goes to a bar, which he observes is the same as any bar in any city in the United States. In the bar he meets two prostitutes and spends a week with them, eating, drinking and having sex, until his money runs out. The narrator gets into an argument with a clerk at the hotel after complaining about the lack of heat in his room. He winds up in jail. When he is brought before the judge he tries to explain in his broken Spanish that he is an attorney from the United States. The female judge lectures him on the behavior of Americans coming across the border to sleep with prostitutes and on his inability to speak proper Spanish. He accepts a fine and is allowed to leave. Feeling neither Mexican nor American the narrator heads back across the border. He does not have any papers but manages to convince the border guard that he is an American citizen. Across the border, he pawns his few belongings and calls his brother. His brother tells him about the La Raza movement that is taking shape in East L.A. In a flash the narrator sees this as his destiny. He immediately decides to head for Los Angeles. He imagines that he will call a meeting and becomes an organizer; he will start a movement of Brown Buffalos. After years of searching for an identify he feels he has finally found his place. The story ends with the narrator arriving in Los Angeles, ready to become a revolutionary activist.
414331	/m/025j47	The Naked Sun	Isaac Asimov	1957-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ultimately, we find out that Delmarre's neighbor and fellow roboticist Jothan Leebig was working on a way of subverting the robots' inability to kill humans. This was achieved by understanding a missing word in the Three Laws of Robotics: "knowingly". He used this knowledge to cause the death of Rikaine at the hands of his wife Gladia, because Rikaine was opposed to his plans. Later on, he also managed to poison the Security Secretary using a pair of robots. The key to this technique is that a robot cannot knowingly kill a human or knowingly allow a human to come to harm. But if the robot does not know that its actions will cause harm, then it will not be stopped by the Laws. The future implication of this was pointed out by Elijah, that it can be extended to the point at which robots could be used to fight wars. (In the Asimov universe, this would otherwise be unthinkable, given the Three Laws.) Leebig kills himself before he can be taken into custody, because of a very Solarian fear of human contact. The irony is that the "human" he was afraid of was Olivaw, a robot. Despite knowledge of Gladia's guilt, Baley never discloses her role in the murder—in part because he feels sorry for her and believes that her breakdown was caused by the pressure of the Solarian way of life. He manages to have her sent to the Spacer capital planet of Aurora, where she can further her growth as a human being, something she could never do on Solaria. After investigating the murder to a satisfactory conclusion, Baley returns to Earth a hero. The information he brings back is invaluable to the government, which was predicting the downfall of Spacer societies; the similarities between the nature of Solarian society and Earth society in their closed natures suggests a fundamental flaw in the Terran society. A more thorough description of the aftereffects can be found in the sequel to the Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn. We also discover the remote end-point of Solaria's odd development in Foundation and Earth. The Foundation series and the Spacer/Robot series seem originally to have been separate, though with some overlap of ideas. If the Galactic Empire is the far future, where have the robots gone? In Foundation's Edge Asimov begins to supply the answer, expanded in the other sequels and prequels.
415267	/m/025njm	The Man Who Was Thursday	G. K. Chesterton	1908	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Edwardian era London, Gabriel Syme is recruited at Scotland Yard to a secret anti-anarchist police corps. Lucian Gregory, an anarchistic poet, lives in the suburb of Saffron Park. Syme meets him at a party and they debate the meaning of poetry. Gregory argues that revolt is the basis of poetry. Syme demurs, insisting that the essence of poetry is not revolution, but rather law. He antagonizes Gregory by asserting that the most poetical of human creations is the timetable for the London Underground. He suggests that Gregory isn't really serious about his anarchism. This so irritates Gregory that he takes Syme to an underground anarchist meeting place, revealing that his public endorsement of anarchy is a ruse to make him seem harmless, when in fact he is an influential member of the local chapter of the European anarchist council. The central council consists of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a code name, and the position of Thursday is about to be elected by Gregory's local chapter. Gregory expects to win the election, but just before the election Syme reveals to Gregory after an oath of secrecy that he is a secret policeman. Fearful Syme may use his speech in evidence of a prosecution, Gregory's weakened words fail to convince the local chapter that he is sufficiently dangerous for the job. Syme makes a rousing anarchist speech and wins the vote. He is sent immediately as the chapter's delegate to the central council. In his efforts to thwart the council's intentions, however, Syme discovers that five of the other six members are also undercover detectives; each was employed just as mysteriously and assigned to defeat the Council. They all soon find out that they were fighting each other and not real anarchists; such was the mastermind plan of their president Sunday. In a surreal conclusion, Sunday himself is unmasked as only seeming to be terrible; in fact, he is a force of good like the detectives. However, he is unable to give an answer to the question of why he caused so much trouble and pain for the detectives. Gregory, the only real anarchist, seems to challenge the good council. His accusation is that they, as rulers, have never suffered like Gregory and their other subjects, and so their power is illegitimate. However, Syme is able to refute this accusation immediately because of the terrors inflicted by Sunday on the rest of the council. The dream ends when Sunday himself is asked if he has ever suffered. His last words, "can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?", is the question that Jesus asks St. James and St. John in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, vs 38–39, to challenge their commitment in becoming his disciples.
415715	/m/025qdm	A Simple Plan	Scott Smith	1993-08-31	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Three men find an airplane crashed in a forest. The pilot is dead and the cockpit contains a gym bag with $4.4 million in one-hundred-dollar notes. They decide to keep the money, dividing it equally, but their plans go wrong when others come close to discovering their secret, resulting in multiple murders.
417955	/m/025_j7	Farewell, My Lovely	Raymond Chandler	1940	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 Private detective Philip Marlowe is investigating a dead-end case when he sees a felon, Moose Malloy, barging into a nightclub looking for his ex-girlfriend Velma Valento. The club has changed owners and is now owned by and run for african americans only so no one there knows her. Malloy ends up killing the manager and escaping. Due to the racism prevalent in Los Angeles at the time the murder of a black man is a low priority for the police and is given to a detective called Nulty who has a reputation for laziness and incompetence. Marlowe advises Nulty to look for Malloy's girlfriend but Nulty would rather not work that hard, preferring to rely on the fact that Malloy sticks out in a crowd due to his size and loud clothes. Nulty does encourage Marlowe to look for the girl though, telling him "You been in jams with us boys before... Next time it ain't doing you any harm to have a pal." Marlowe decides to follow up and look for the girl, partly because he could use some good will with the LAPD and partly because he hasn't had a real case for a while and "even a no charge job was a change." He tracks down the widow of the former owner, who claims Malloy's girl friend was a girl named Velma but that Velma is dead. But Marlowe catches her hiding a photo of someone he assumes is Velma. Marlowe receives a call from a man named Lindsay Marriott, who says his friend was robbed of a rare necklace. He is delivering the ransom payment that night, and wants help. Marlowe is suspicious, but agrees to ride along. They go to a deserted canyon for the drop-off and Marlowe gets out and waits in the dark. No one shows, but when he returns to the car, he is hit on the head from behind. When he awakes, Marriott is lying on the ground dead. A passerby named Anne Riordan drives by and takes him home. The police are wary of Marlowe’s story but let him go. Anne Riordan visits him and tells him she is a policeman's daughter with an interest in local crime. She says she learned the rare necklace belongs to a Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle, wife of a wealthy elderly man. She promises to meet Mrs. Grayle and get her to hire Marlowe to find the necklace. Marlowe examines some marijuana cigarettes he found on Marriott’s body and discovers a card for a psychic named Jules Amthor. He makes an appointment to see him. On a hunch, he investigates the club owner’s widow and learns her house is paid for by Marriott. Marlowe visits Mrs. Grayle but she is more interested in coming on to him than finding her necklace. He then visits Amthor in his office, and probes for his connection to Marriott and the drugs. Amthor dismisses his questions, then has him assaulted and thrown out by two crooked policemen, who lock him up in a private hospital. He escapes, but on the way out sees Malloy sitting freely in another room. He discusses the case with Anne Riordan and the police, who are annoyed at his continued involvement. They suspect Marriott of blackmailing wealthy women, in league with Amthor. Marriott hid the cards inside the drugs to implicate Amthor if he were found dead, but they doubt Amthor is the killer. Marlowe investigates the crooked cops and learns they were essentially unwitting dupes for Amthor, who thought Marlowe was trying to blackmail him. The hospital is an unrelated front for dope peddling and hiding fugitives. Marlowe now suspects Malloy moved to a hideout on a local gambling boat. He sneaks on board, and despite being caught by the gangster owner, manages to get him to pass a message through his criminal network to Malloy. Back home, Mrs. Grayle wants to see him, so he invites her over. Malloy shows up first, and Marlowe hints he knows what Malloy has been trying to find out. Mrs. Grayle arrives and Malloy hides. Marlowe confronts her: she is Velma and had used Marriott to help conceal her new identity. He bought off the club owner’s widow for her, but when Malloy and Marlowe began looking for her, she needed to cut all her past ties. She tricked Marriott into going to the canyon so she could kill him, but killing Marlowe too would have been too risky. Malloy steps out and Velma shoots him fatally, then flees. Amthor, the hospital owner, and the crooked cops are all exposed to the law. Velma is eventually tracked down in Baltimore and kills herself.
417968	/m/025_lw	The Long Goodbye	Raymond Chandler	1953	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 The novel opens outside a club called The Dancers. It is late October or early November 1949. Philip Marlowe meets a drunk named Terry Lennox, a man with scars on one side of his face. They forge an uneasy friendship over the next few months. Everything changes when Lennox shows up late one night (in June 1950) at Marlowe's place, asking for a ride to the Tijuana airport. Marlowe agrees as long as Lennox doesn't tell him any details of why he's running. On his return to LA, it is revealed that Lennox's wife was found dead in her pool house, and that she had died before Lennox fled. Marlowe is arrested on suspicion of murder after refusing to co-operate with investigators, who want him to confess that he helped Lennox flee. After three days of antagonizing his interrogators, Marlowe is released when Lennox is (allegedly) found dead of a suicide in Otatoclán with a full written confession by his side. Marlowe gets home to find a cryptic note from Lennox containing a "portrait of Madison" (a $5000 bill). Marlowe gets a call from a New York publisher named Howard Spencer, asking him to investigate a case. One of his best writers, Roger Wade, has a drinking problem and has been missing for three days. Initially Marlowe refuses, but after Wade's wife, Eileen, also asks for Marlowe's help, he consents. Marlowe ends up finding Wade in a makeshift detox facility in a soon-to-be-abandoned ranch out in the desert. He takes his fee, but the Wades' stories don't match. The Wades each try to convince Marlowe to stay at their house to keep Roger writing instead of drinking, and though he refuses, he ends up making further trips to the Wades' house at their behest. On one such trip, he finds Wade passed out in the grass with a cut on his head. Mrs. Wade ends up in a sort of trance and attempts to seduce Marlowe, thinking he's a former lover of hers who died ten years earlier in World War II. As all of this occurs, Marlowe is repeatedly threatened to lay off the Lennox case, first by a friend of Lennox's named Mendy Menendez, then by Lennox's father-in-law, the police, the Wades' servant (a Chileno named Candy), and Wade's wife. Marlowe also learns that Terry Lennox had previously lived as Paul Marston who was married previously and was probably from England. Wade calls Marlowe again, asking him to come by to have lunch with him. Wade ends up drinking himself into a stupor, so Marlowe takes a walk outside, and when he returns Mrs. Wade is ringing the doorbell, saying she forgot her key. Marlowe finds Wade dead on the couch, apparently from suicide, but Eileen Wade accuses Marlowe of killing her husband. Candy initially tries to frame Marlowe, but his claims are undermined in an interrogation. Marlowe gets a call from Spencer regarding Wade's death and he bullies Spencer into taking him to see Mrs. Wade. Once there, Marlowe grills her on the death of Terry Lennox's wife. Eileen first tries to blame it all on Roger, but Marlowe doesn't buy her story and argues that she killed both Mrs. Lennox and Roger Wade and that Paul Marston (Lennox) was actually her first husband, presumed killed in action with the Special Air Service off the coast of Norway or by the Gestapo. The next morning, Marlowe gets a call that Eileen Wade killed herself, leaving a confession note that she killed Mrs. Lennox and Roger Wade. Marlowe still refuses to let the story lie. He's assaulted by Menendez, who ends up arrested in a setup arranged by a fellow hood (and erstwhile cop) named Randy Starr, who served with Menendez and Lennox/Marston during the war. Finally, Marlowe gets a visit from a Mexican man who claims to have been there when Lennox was killed in his hotel room. Marlowe listens to his story, and then says that he didn't buy it, because the Mexican man is none other than a post-cosmetic-surgery Terry Lennox.
418332	/m/0261ln	The Once and Future King	T. H. White	1958	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Most of the book "takes place on the isle of Gramarye", and it chronicles the raising and educating of King Arthur, his rule as a king, and the romance between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenever. It ends immediately before Arthur's final battle against his illegitimate son Mordred. Though White admits his book's source material is loosely derived from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur), he reinterprets the epic events, filling them with renewed meaning for a world enduring the Second World War. The book is divided into four parts: *The Sword in the Stone (1938) *The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939) (published separately in somewhat different form as The Witch in the Wood) *The Ill-Made Knight (1940) (which is the longest book and focuses mostly on the character Lancelot) *The Candle in the Wind (First published in the composite edition, 1958) A final part called The Book of Merlyn (written 1941, published 1971) was published separately (ISBN 0-292-70769-X) following White's death. It chronicles Arthur's final lessons from Merlyn before his death, although some parts of it were incorporated into the final editions of the previous books. An often quoted passage from the book is the story that the badger calls his "dissertation," a retelling of the Creation story from Genesis.
418537	/m/0262lj	Relic	Douglas Preston	1995	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In and around a fictionalized version of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, a few select characters must solve a string of brutal murders that take place inside the museum during the days preceding the opening of "Superstition", a spectacular blockbuster exhibition. Evidence begins to point suspiciously to a doomed expedition undertaken by the museum several years earlier to the Brazilian rainforest in search of the lost Kothoga tribe. It becomes apparent that behind the murders is Mbwun (translation: "He Who Walks On All Fours")—the Kothoga's crazed lizard god, whose father happens to be a demon analogous to Satan, according to Kothoga legend. A relic depicting Mbwun is to be shown for the first time at the upcoming exhibition. It also appears that several museum leaders had known about previous murders on the museum's premises and that they had conspired to keep these murders a secret so as not to damage the reputation of the museum.
418808	/m/0263vy	The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character	Thomas Hardy	1886	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At a country fair near Casterbridge, Wessex, a young hay-trusser named Michael Henchard overindulges in rum-laced furmity and quarrels with his wife, Susan. Spurred by alcohol, he decides to auction off his wife and baby daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, to a sailor, Mr. Newson, for five guineas. Once sober the next day, he is too late to recover his family, particularly since his reluctance to reveal his own bad conduct keeps him from conducting an effective search. When he realizes that his wife and daughter are gone, probably for good, he swears not to touch liquor again for as many years as he has lived so far (21). Eighteen years later, Henchard, now a successful grain merchant, is the eponymous Mayor of Casterbridge, known for his staunch sobriety. He is well respected for his financial acumen and his work ethic, but he is not well liked. Impulsive, selfish behavior and a violent temper are still part of his character, as are dishonesty and secretive activity. All these years, Henchard has kept the details surrounding the "loss" of his wife a secret. The people in Casterbridge believe he is a widower, although he never explicitly says that his first wife died. He lies by omission instead, allowing other people to believe something false. Over time he finds it convenient to believe Susan probably is dead. While traveling to the island of Jersey on business, Henchard falls in love with a young woman named Lucette Le Sueur, who nurses him back to health after an illness. The book implies that Lucette (Lucetta, in English) and Henchard have a sexual relationship, and Lucetta's reputation is ruined by her association with Henchard. When Henchard returns to Casterbridge he leaves Lucetta to face the social consequences of their fling. In order to rejoin polite society she must marry him, but there is a problem: Henchard is already technically married. Although Henchard never told Lucetta exactly how he "lost" his wife to begin with, he does tell her he has a wife who "is dead probably dead, but who may return". Besotted, Lucetta develops a relationship with him despite the risk. Yet just as Henchard is about to send for Lucetta, Susan unexpectedly appears in Casterbridge with her daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, who is now fully grown. Susan and Elizabeth-Jane are both very poor. Newson appears to have been lost at sea, and without means to earn an income Susan is looking for Henchard again. Susan, who is not a very intelligent or sophisticated woman, believed for a long time that her "marriage" to Newson was perfectly legitimate. Only recently, just before Newson's disappearance, had Susan begun to question whether or not she was still legally married to Henchard. Just as Susan and Elizabeth-Jane arrive in town, a tidy Scotsman, Donald Farfrae, is passing through on his way to America. The energetic, amiable Farfrae happens to be in Henchard's line of work. He has experience as a grain and corn merchant, and is on the cutting edge of agricultural science. He befriends Henchard and helps him out of a bad financial situation by giving him some timely advice. Henchard persuades him to stay and offers him a job as his corn factor, rudely dismissing a man named Jopp to whom he had already offered the job. Hiring Farfrae is a stroke of business genius for Henchard, who although hardworking is not well educated. Henchard also makes Farfrae a close friend and confides in him about his history and personal life. Henchard is also reunited with Susan and the fully grown Elizabeth-Jane. To preserve appearances, Henchard sets Susan and Elizabeth-Jane up in a nearby house. He pretends to court Susan, and marries her. Both Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane's mother keep their history from their daughter. Henchard also keeps Lucetta a secret. He writes to her, informing her that their marriage is off. Lucetta is devastated and asks for the return of her letters. Henchard attempts to return them, but Lucetta misses the appointment owing to a family emergency that is not explained until later in the book. The return of his wife and daughter sets in motion a decline in Henchard's fortunes. Yet Susan and Elizabeth-Jane are not the root cause of Henchard's fall. Henchard alone makes the decisions that bring him down, and much of his bad luck is the delayed and cumulative consequence of how Henchard treats other people. His relationship with Farfrae deteriorates gradually as Farfrae becomes more popular than Henchard. In addition to being more friendly and amiable, Farfrae is better informed, better educated, and in short everything Henchard himself wants to be. Henchard feels threatened by Farfrae, particularly when Elizabeth-Jane starts to fall in love with him. The competition between Donald Farfrae and Henchard grows. Eventually they part company and Farfrae sets himself up as an independent hay and corn merchant. The rivalry and resentment for the most part is one-sided, and Farfrae conducts himself with scrupulous honesty and fair dealing. Henchard meanwhile makes increasingly aggressive, risky business decisions that put him in financial danger. The business rivalry leads to Henchard's standing in the way of a marriage between Donald and Elizabeth-Jane, until after Susan's death, at which point Henchard learns he is not Elizabeth-Jane's father, and he realizes that if she marries Farfrae, he will be rid of her. The Elizabeth-Jane he auctioned off died in infancy; this second Elizabeth-Jane is Newson's daughter. He learns this secret, however, after Susan's death when he reads a letter which Susan, on her deathbed, marked to be opened only after Elizabeth-Jane's marriage. Feeling ashamed and hard done by, Henchard conceals the secret from Elizabeth-Jane, but grows cold and cruel towards her. In the meantime, Henchard's former mistress, Lucetta, arrives from Jersey and purchases a house in Casterbridge. She has inherited money from a wealthy relative who died; in fact, it was this relative's death that had kept her from picking up her letters from Henchard. Initially she wants to pick up her relationship with him where it left off, but propriety requires that they wait a while. She takes Elizabeth-Jane into her household as a companion, thinking it will give Henchard an excuse to come to visit, but the plan backfires because of Henchard's hatred of Elizabeth-Jane. She also learns a little bit more about Henchard, specifically, the details of how he sold his first wife become public knowledge when the furmity vendor who witnessed the sale makes the story public. Henchard does not deny the story, but when Lucetta hears a little bit more about what kind of man Henchard really is, she stops rationalizing his conduct in terms of what she wants to believe. For the first time, she starts to see him more clearly, and she no longer particularly likes what she sees. Donald Farfrae, who visits Lucetta's house to see Elizabeth-Jane and who becomes completely distracted by Lucetta, has no idea that Lucetta is the mysterious woman who was informally engaged to Henchard. Since Henchard is such a reluctant and secretive suitor who in no way reveals his attachment to Lucetta to anybody, Lucetta starts to question whether her engagement to Henchard is valid. She, too, is lying about her past: she claims to be from Bath, not Jersey, and she has taken the surname of her wealthy relative. Yet she came to Casterbridge seeking Henchard, and sent him letters after Susan's death indicating that she wanted to resume and legitimize the relationship. Although initially reluctant, he gradually realizes that he wants to marry Lucetta, particularly since he is having financial trouble due to some speculations having gone bad. Lenders are unwilling to extend credit to him, and he believes that they would extend credit if they at least believed he was about to be married to a wealthy woman. Frustrated by her stalling, Henchard bullies Lucetta into agreeing to marry him. But by this point she is in love with Farfrae. The two run away one weekend and get married, and Lucetta does not have the nerve to tell Henchard until well after the fact. Henchard's credit collapses, he becomes bankrupt, and he sells all his personal possessions to pay creditors. As Henchard's fortunes decline, Farfrae's rise. He buys Henchard's old business and employs Henchard as a journeyman day-laborer. Farfrae is always trying to help the man who helped him get started, whom he still regards as a friend and a former mentor. He does not realize Henchard is his enemy, even though the town council and Elizabeth-Jane both warn him. Lucetta, feeling safe and comfortable in her marriage with Farfrae, keeps her former relationship with Henchard a secret. This secret is revealed when Henchard foolishly lets his enemy Jopp deliver Lucetta's old love letters. Jopp makes the secret public and the townspeople publicly shame Henchard and Lucetta. Lucetta, who by this point is pregnant, dies of an epileptic seizure. When Newson, Elizabeth-Jane's biological father, returns, Henchard is afraid of losing her companionship and tells Newson she is dead. Henchard is once again impoverished, and, as soon as the twenty-first year of his oath is up, he starts drinking again. By the time Elizabeth-Jane, who months later is married to Donald Farfrae and reunited with Newson, goes looking for Henchard to forgive him, he has died and left a will requesting no funeral "That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me. "& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. "& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. "& that nobody is wished to see my dead body. "& that no mourners walk behind me at my funeral. "& that no flowers be planted on my grave, "& that no man remember me. "To this I put my name.
419078	/m/02658n	Life of Pi	Yann Martel	2001-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Life of Pi is divided into three sections. In the first, the main character, Pi, an adult, reminisces about his childhood. He was named Piscine Molitor Patel after a swimming pool in France. He changes his name to "Pi" when he begins secondary school, because he is tired of being taunted with the nickname "Pissing Patel". His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry, providing Pi with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology. Pi was born a Hindu, but as a fourteen-year-old he is introduced to Christianity and Islam, and starts to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love god." He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each one. Eventually, his family decides to sell their animals and move to Canada due to political concerns in India. In the second part of the novel, Pi's family embark on a small Japanese boat to Canada carrying some of the animals from their zoo, but a few days out of port the ship suddenly sinks. Pi ends up in a small lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, and an orangutan. The other humans and animals on the ship all drown. The hungry hyena tears off the zebra's leg, and spends the next several days eating the zebra bit by bit. The hyena also kills the orangutan. Richard Parker then kills and eats the hyena. Pi is left as the only other survivor. Pi finds food and water supplies on the boat, but as they grow scarce, Pi begins fishing. Pi feeds Richard Parker so that the tiger will not eat him; he also wants to keep the tiger alive to avoid total solitude on the ocean. Pi ensures that the tiger considers Pi the alpha animal and will therefore refrain from attacking him. Pi recounts that after an indeterminate time at sea, the pair encountered a mysterious island, seemingly constructed of edible algae supporting a forest and a large population of meerkats. Following a period of recuperation, Pi becomes afraid of the island after discovering that the algae is carnivorous, and leaves with the tiger. In all, Pi survives 227 days in the lifeboat, often half delusional with thirst and hunger. The lifeboat reaches the coast of Mexico and Richard Parker escapes into the nearby jungle, so that rescuers find only Pi. The third part of the novel is a conversation between two officials from the Maritime Department in the Japanese Ministry of Transport. They seek to ascertain why the ship sank, so they interview Pi, but they do not believe his story. Pi then tells a similar story, but this time without animals. Instead, he recounts a story of human brutality, being adrift on a lifeboat with his mother, a sailor with a broken leg, and the ship's cook, who killed the sailor and Pi's mother and cut them up to use as bait and food. Parallels to Pi's first story lead the Japanese officials to believe that the orangutan represents his mother, the zebra represents the sailor, the hyena represents the cook, and Richard Parker is Pi himself. Pi asks if this new story is acceptable, or if he should change any parts that are still too unbelievable; the officials change the subject back to the sinking of the ship. After giving all the relevant information, Pi asks which of the two stories they prefer. Since the officials cannot prove which story is true and neither is relevant to the reasons behind the shipwreck, they choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says, "and so it goes with God".
419489	/m/0267fr	Le Morte d'Arthur	Thomas Malory			 Arthur is born to Uther Pendragon and Igraine and then taken by Sir Ector to be fostered in the country. He later becomes the king of a leaderless England when he removes the fated sword from the stone. Arthur goes on to win many battles due to his military prowess and Merlin’s counsel. He then consolidates his kingdom. This first book also tells "The Tale of Balyn and Balan", which ends in accidental fratricide, and the begetting of Mordred, Arthur’s incestuous son by his half-sister, Morgause (though Arthur did not know her as his half-sister). On Merlin's advice, and reminiscent of Herod's killing of the innocents in scripture, Arthur takes every newborn boy in his kingdom and sends them to sea in a boat. The boat crashes and all but Mordred, who later kills his father, perish. This is mentioned matter-of-factly, with no apparent moral overtone. Arthur marries Guinevere, and inherits the Round Table from her father Leodegrance. At Pentecost, Arthur gathers his knights at Camelot and establishes the Round Table company. All swear to the Pentecostal Oath as a guide for knightly conduct. In this first book, Malory addresses 15th century preoccupations with legitimacy and societal unrest, which will appear throughout the rest of the work. As Malorian scholar Helen Cooper states in Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte D'arthur - The Winchester Manuscript, the prose style (as opposed to verse), which mimics historical documents of the time, lends an air of authority to the whole work. She goes on to state that this allowed contemporaries to read the book as a history rather than as a work of fiction, therefore making it a model of order for Malory's violent and chaotic times during the War of the Roses. Malory's concern with legitimacy reflects the concerns of 15th century England, where many were claiming their rights to power through violence and bloodshed. Genealogy was a way to legitimize power in a less arbitrary manner, and Malory calls this into question. The Pentecostal Oath (the Oath of the Round Table) counterbalances a lack of moral centre exemplified in the fratricide in "The Tale of Balyn and Balan". Also, once in power, Arthur becomes a king of dubious morals even while he is held up as a beacon of hope. Arthur's most immoral acts are the begetting of Mordred (which is not a strong example, since Arthur had lain with a woman whom he did not know was his half-sister) and the following mass infanticide, which only add to Arthur's shaky morality and cast Merlin in a negative light from which he never emerges. There is even the notion of being overly moral, in that Arthur on two occasions is prepared to burn Guinevere at the stake (reminiscent of King Saul's willingness to sacrifice even his son, Jonathan, if he had done wrong). Arthur's unique notion of morality plagues him for the whole of his reign. The attempt to kill off the infants harks to the tale of Herod seeking to kill the infant Jesus. Thus there is a mixture of splendid, David-like, kingship, and low, Herod-like royalty, that both find their place in Arthur. In the end, the book still holds out for hope even while the questions of legitimacy and morality continue in the books to follow. Arthur and his knights continually try and fail to live up to their chivalric codes, yet remain figures invested with Malory’s desperate optimism. This book, detailing Arthur's march on Rome, is heavily based on the Middle English Alliterative Morte Arthure, which in turn is heavily based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. The opening of Book V finds Arthur and his kingdom without an enemy. His throne is secure, his knights have proven themselves through a series of quests, Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristan have arrived and the court is feasting. When envoys from Emperor Lucius of Rome arrive and accuse Arthur of refusing tribute, "contrary to the statutes and decrees made by the noble and worthy Julius Caesar", Arthur and his knights are stirring for a fight. They are "many days rested" and excited, "for now shall we have warre and worshype." Arthur invokes the lineage of Ser Belyne and Sir Bryne, legendary British conquerors of Rome, and through their blood lineage demands tribute from Lucius under the argument that Britain conquered Rome first. Lucius, apprised of the situation by his envoys, raises a heathen army of the East, composed of Spaniards and Saracens, as well as other enemies of the Christian world. Rome is supposed to be the seat of Christianity, but it is more foreign and corrupt than the courts of Arthur and his allies. Departing from Geoffrey of Monmouth's history in which Mordred is left in charge, Malory's Arthur leaves his court in the hands of Sir Constantine of Cornwall and an advisor. Arthur sails to Normandy to meet his cousin Hoel, but he finds a giant terrorizing the people from the holy island of Mont St. Michel. This giant is the embodiment of senseless violence and chaos, a monster who eats men and rapes women to death. He uses sex as a violent act of control and appetite, divorced from sensuality or reason. Arthur battles him alone, an act of public relations intended to inspire his knights. The fight is closely documented by Malory, a blow-by-blow description of blood and gore. The giant dies after Arthur "swappis his genytrottys in sondir" and "kut his baly in sundir, that oute wente the gore". When Arthur does fight Lucius and his armies it is almost anticlimactic, when compared to his struggles with the giant. Arthur and his armies defeat the Romans, Arthur is crowned Emperor, a proxy government is arranged for the Roman Empire and Arthur returns to London where his queen welcomes him royally. This book is Malory's attempt to validate violence as a right to rule. In the Geoffrey of Monmouth history Arthur refutes the basis of Rome's demands because "nothing acquired by force and violence is justly possessed by anyone". His demand of tribute is a parallel request that emphasizes the absurdity of Rome's request. In the end, Malory seems to find violence lacking. Despite the neat resolution with Arthur as Emperor he never again tries this "might makes right" tactic. Similarly, Malory's treatment of the Giant of Mont St. Michel seems to be an exploration of violence in his own society where powerful men committed seemingly senseless acts of violence. In this tale, Malory establishes Lancelot as King Arthur's most revered knight. Among Lancelot's numerous episodic adventures include being enchanted into a deep sleep by Morgan le Fay and having to escape her castle, proving victorious in a tournament fighting on behalf of King Bagdemagus, slaying the mighty Sir Turquine who had been holding several of Arthur's knights prisoner, and also overcoming the betrayal of a damsel to defend himself unarmed against Sir Phelot. These adventures address several major issues developed throughout Le Morte Darthur. Among the most important is the fact Lancelot always adheres to the Pentecostal Oath. Throughout this tale he assists damsels in distress and provides mercy for knights he has defeated in battle. However, the world Lancelot lives in is too complicated for simple mandates. This can be seen when a damsel betrays Lancelot and he must fight Sir Phelot unarmed. Although Lancelot aspires to live by an ethical code, the actions of others make it difficult for the Pentecostal Oath to fully establish a social order. Another major issue this text addresses is demonstrated when Morgan le Fay enchants Lancelot. This action reflects a feminization of magic along with a clear indication that Merlin’s role within the text has been diminished. The tournament fighting in this tale indicates a shift away from war towards a more mediated and virtuous form of violence. On courtly love, Malory attempts to shift the focus of courtly love from adultery to service by having Lancelot admit to doing everything he does for Guinevere, but never admit to having an adulterous relationship with her. However, a close parsing of his words can perhaps allow Lancelot to retain his honorable word, for he never says that he has not lain with the queen, but rather that if anyone makes such a claim, he will fight them (the assumption being that God will cause the liar to lose). Further, since Lancelot—who in all of the book never breaks his word or lies—claims that the queen was never untrue to her lord, then it seems to be the case that he must consider his love of the queen to be somehow pure or special, not an act of unfaithfulness to the king he loves and serves. Although this forbidden love is the catalyst of the fall of Camelot (i.e., the Round Table, for it was at Camelot/Winchester that the Round Table met, though Arthur lived and governed from another location), the book's moral handling of the adultery between Lancelot and Guinevere (and the love between Tristan and Isoud) implies that it is understood that if a love is somehow true and pure—especially if the knights be especially noble and honorable—that it is seen more as a foible than the depraved act of adultery. Only in the end of the book, when Arthur is dead and Guinevere has become a nun, does she reproach herself and Lancelot for their love, now understanding that it brought about the fall of Camelot, the death of 100,000 knights, and her great sorrow. Thus, she wills to spend the rest of her life offering penitence for what, in earlier chapters, seemed of no particular moral concern (outside of the care to not be caught in the act). In fact, it is understood that Lancelot is of such honor that he would never have committed adultery without the express willingness or invitation of Guinevere. In this way, Malory focused on the ennobling aspects of courtly love. The attempt is undercut by the other characters who constantly insinuate that Lancelot is sleeping with Guinevere. Lancelot's obsessive denial that the queen had been untrue implies that he only defines himself through his actions towards women. Furthermore, Lancelot and Guinevere function within the French romantic tradition wherein Guinevere provides Lancelot with order. On numerous occasions he refuses the love of other women and sends Guinevere knights he has defeated in battle who must appeal to her for forgiveness. This proves somewhat problematic because it provides some evidence of Lancelot's love for the queen, which is ultimately used to force division between Lancelot and Arthur. The tale of Sir Gareth begins with his arrival at court as le bel inconnu, or the fair unknown. He comes without a name and therefore without a past. Sir Kay mockingly calls the unknown young man "Beaumains," and treats him with contempt and condescension. An unknown woman, later revealed to be the Dame Lynette, eventually comes to court asking for assistance against the Red Knight of the Red Lands, and Gareth takes up the quest. On his quest, he encounters the Black, Green, Red, and Blue knights and the Red knight of the Red Lands. He kills the Black Knight, incorporates the others into Arthur’s court, and rescues Lynette's sister Lyonesse. Lustily in love with Lyonesse, Gareth conspires to consummate their relationship before marrying. Only by the magical intervention of Lynette is their tryst unsuccessful, thus preserving Gareth's virginity and, presumably, his standing with God. Gareth later counsels Lyonesse to report to King Arthur and pretend she doesn’t know where he is; instead, he tells her to announce a tournament of his knights against the Round Table. This allows Gareth to disguise himself and win honor by defeating his brother knights. The heralds eventually acknowledge that he is Sir Gareth right as he strikes down Sir Gawain, his brother. The book ends with Gareth rejoining his fellow knights and marrying Lyonesse. In the book, there are only two knights that have ever held against Sir Lancelot in tournament: Tristram and Gareth. This was always under conditions where one or both parties were unknown by the other, for these knights loved each other "passingly well." Gareth was knighted by Lancelot himself when he took upon him the adventure on behalf of Dame Lynette. Much later, Gareth is accidentally slain by his beloved Lancelot when Guinevere is rescued from being burnt at the stake by King Arthur. This story seems unengaged with the problems that Malory addresses elsewhere in the text: there is no known source for this book, and in other tales, knights are always interacting with other knights from the Round Table, but not here. There are no consequences for Gareth’s battles with them as there are during battles with other knights from the Round Table. The second half of the book brings into question Gareth’s true commitment to the chivalric code. He displays decidedly underhanded behavior in his quest for worship and personal fulfillment. Gareth uses deceit to achieve his aims ; however, pays a price for his deception as he strikes his brother Gawaine from his horse - he breaks one of the strongest bonds of loyalty by winning honor through the defeat of a kinsman. Although the book concludes happily, it raises a number of questions of whether Gareth is a successful knight . The book presents matrimony as one possible way of validating the knightly order, but Gareth's example is fraught with complications that serve to undermine it as a viable option. In one sense, his marriage has been presented as a stabilizing force in chivalric society - Gareth’s tale stands in contrast to the Tristram or the Lancelot. However, Gareth’s readiness to sleep with Lyonesse before marriage questions how dedicated Gareth is to the ideal. In “The Fyrste and the Secunde Boke of Syr Trystrams de Lyones,” Malory tells the tales of Sir Tristan (Trystram), Sir Dinadan, Sir Palamedes, Sir La Cote De Male Tayle, Sir Alexander, and a variety of other knights. Based on the French Prose Tristan, or a lost English adaptation of it, Malory's Tristan section is the literal centerpiece of Le Morte D’Arthur as well as the longest of the eight books. The book displays a very realistic and jaded view of the world of chivalry. It is rife with adultery, characterized most visibly in Sir Tristan and the Belle Isolde. However, it should be noted that Sir Tristan had met and fallen in love with Isolde earlier, and that his uncle, King Mark, jealous of Tristan and seeking to undermine him, appears to seek marriage to Isolde for just such a hateful purpose, going so far as to ask Tristan to go and seek her hand on his behalf (which Tristan, understanding that to be his knightly duty, does). Sir Tristan is the namesake of the book and his adulterous relationship with Isolde, his uncle Mark’s wife, is one of the focuses of the section. The knights, Tristan included, operate on very personal or political concerns rather than just the standard provided by the world of Pentecostal Oath as we have seen it so far. One knight, Sir Dinidan, takes this so far as to run away or refuse to fight if he sees any risk. However, it should be understood that Sir Dinidan is a playful, humorous knight that, in later chapters, shows himself to be brave and noble. It is unclear whether his refusals to fight are part of his comic character or otherwise. Other knights, even knights of the Round Table, make requests that show the dark side of the world of chivalry. In one episode, Sir Bleoberys, one of Lancelot’s cousins, claims another knight’s wife for his own and rides away with her until stopped by Sir Tristan. In another, when Tristan defeats Sir Blamore, another knight of the Round Table, Blamore asks Tristan to kill him because he would rather die than have his reputation tarnished by the defeat. The variety of episodes and the alleged lack of a cohesive nature in the Tristan narrative raise questions about its role in Malory’s text entirely. However, the book foreshadows the rest of the text as well as includes and interacts with characters and tales discussed in other parts of the work. It can be seen as an exploration of the secular chivalry and a discussion of honor or “worship” when it is founded in a sense of shame and pride. If Le Morte is viewed as a text in which Malory is attempting to define knighthood, then Tristan becomes an important critique of chivalry and knighthood as he interacts with the real world, rather than attempting to create an example as he does with some of the other books. Of all the knights, Tristan most mirrors that of Lancelot. He loves a queen, the wife of another. Also, Tristan is considered a knight as strong and able as even Lancelot, though they became beloved friends. We find in the book, and only in passing in the latter chapters, that Tristan, after taking Isolde from King Mark and living with her for some time (due to King Mark's treasonous behavior, etc.), returned her to King Mark, only to be later treasonously killed by King Mark while he, Tristan, was "harping" (he was noted in the book for being one of the greatest of musicians and falconers). Malory’s primary source for "The Noble Tale of the Sangreal" is the French Vulgate Cycle’s La Queste Del Saint Graal. Within Malory's version, the text chronicles the adventures of numerous knights in their quest to achieve the Holy Grail. The Grail first appears in the hall of King Arthur "coverde with whyght samyte", and it miraculously produces meat and drink for the knights. Gawain is the first to declare that he "shall laboure in the Queste of the Sankgreall". His reason for embarking on the quest is that he may see the Grail "more opynly than hit hath bene shewed" before, in addition to the potential for more "metys and drynkes". Likewise, Lancelot, Percival, Bors, and Galahad also decide to undergo the quest. Their exploits intermingle with encounters with young maidens and hermits, who offer advice and interpret dreams along the way. Despite the presence of hermits, the text overall lacks an officiating Catholic presence. It might be argued, however, that this is not the case, for not only does the pope send a papal bull to end the war between Arthur and Lancelot, but there are bishops, the "receiving the Savior"/communion, making of the cross, and references to the Virgin Mary. There are also instances of penance when hermits advise Gawain, Lancelot, and others to atone for their sins. Whereas Gawain simply refuses to do so, Lancelot recognizes his offense of placing Queen Guinevere before God. And though he does at that point renounce this transgression, later, after seeing all of the Grail that he will be permitted to see, he yields and falls again for Guinevere. The only knights to achieve the Grail are Percival, Bors, and Galahad. The story culminates with Galahad vanishing before the eyes of his fellow knights as his soul departs "to Jesu Cryste" by means of a "grete multitude of angels [who] bare hit up to hevyn". After the confusion of the secular moral code as manifested in the Pentecostal Oath within "The Fyrst and the Secunde Boke of Syr Trystrams de Lyones", Malory attempts to construct a new mode of chivalry by placing an emphasis on religion and Christianity in "The Sankgreal". However, the role of the Catholic Church is drastically subverted within the text, and this illustrates 15th-century England’s movement away from the establishment of the Church and toward mysticism. Within the text the Church offers a venue through which the Pentecostal Oath can be upheld, whereas the strict moral code imposed by religion foreshadows an almost certain failure on the part of the knights. For example, Gawain is often dubbed a secular knight, as he refuses to do penance for his sins, claiming the tribulations that coexist with knighthood as a sort of secular penance. Likewise, Lancelot, for all his sincerity, is unable to completely escape his adulterous love of Guinevere, and is thus destined to fail where Galahad will succeed. This coincides with the personification of perfection in the form of Galahad. Because Galahad is the only knight who lives entirely without sin, this leaves both the audience and the other knights with a model of perfection that seemingly cannot be emulated either through chivalry or religion. At the beginning of the book "Sir Launcelot and Queene Gwenyvere", Malory tells his readers that the pair started behaving carelessly in public, stating that "Launcelot began to resort unto the Queene Guinevere again and forget the promise and the perfection that he made in the Quest… and so they loved together more hotter than they did beforehand"(Cooper, 402). They indulged in "privy draughts together" and behaved in such a way that "many in the court spoke of it"(Cooper, 402). This book also includes the "knight of the cart" episode, where Mellyagaunce kidnapped Guinevere and her unarmed knights and held them prisoner in his castle. After Mellyagaunce's archers killed his horse, Launcelot had to ride to the castle in a cart in order to save the queen. Knowing Lancelot was on his way, Mellyagaunce pleaded to Guinevere for mercy, which she granted and then forced Lancelot to stifle his rage against Mellyagaunce. In this same book Malory mentions Lancelot and Guinevere's adultery. Malory says, "So, to passe upon this tale, Sir Launcelot wente to bedde with the Quene and toke no force of his hurte honed, but toke his plesaunce and hys lyknge untyll hit was the dawning of the day" (633). Sir Mellyagaunce, upon finding blood in Guinevere's bed, was so convinced of her unfaithfulness to Arthur that he was willing to fight in an attempt to prove it to others. After Guinevere made it known that she wanted Mellyagaunce dead, Launcelot killed him even though Mellyagaunce begged for mercy (but only after Mellyagaunce agreed to continue fighting with Lancelot's helmet removed, his left side body armor removed, and his left hand tied behind his back—Lancelot felt it necessary to finish the bout, but would not slay Mellyagaunce unless Mellyagaunce agreed to continue fighting). This is the first time Malory explicitly mentions the couple's adultery. Malory purposely shows this event as occurring once. He intends for his readers to believe the couple's adultery was much more than a singular incident. The moment lacks romance or chivalry. The entire text depends upon this adulterous moment, and yet Malory sums it up into one sentence. Malory's refusal to expand upon their adultery demonstrates his insistence that adultery is always dangerous and never ennobling. But it could also be argued that Malory's reluctance to describe their physical adultery demonstrates a reluctance on his part to condemn them for it, which is supported by his assertion that Guinevere had a good end to her life because she was a true and honest lover to Lancelot . The book ends with Lancelot's healing of Sir Urry of Hungary, where Malory notes that Lancelot is the only knight out of hundreds to succeed in this endeavor. Malory presents Guinevere in a more negative light than his French predecessors. Guinevere appearss so contemptible in this book that it is difficult to understand Lancelot's loving her. Malory goes so far as to suggest Guinevere uses charms or enchantments to win Lancelot's love. While Guinevere remains unlikeable throughout this book, Lancelot is a more problematic character. He is a flawed knight, certainly, but the best one Malory gives us. He has committed treason unto King Arthur and yet is the only knight virtuous enough to heal Sir Urry. After healing Sir Urry, Lancelot wept as a "chylde that had bene beatyn" (644) because he recognized his own failure as a person and as a knight. Malory tries to contrast virtue and love with desire and failure as he further emphasizes the instability of the relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere and, ultimately, the text itself. There is some reason to think that Malory may have been ambivalent about their adultery because it was supposedly of such a noble and endearing type. That is, it was not simply sexual, but based on a true love of each other (though both loved Arthur also). Guinevere is given to fits of jealousy and pettiness when she finds that Lancelot has shown any degree of affection toward another woman, regardless of the situation (e.g., the enchantment that caused him to sire Galahad). But though she has these flaws, Arthur and Lancelot both hold her the best woman of the world. Mordred and Agravaine have been scheming to uncover Lancelot and Guinevere's adultery for quite some time. When they find an opportune moment to finally and concretely reveal the adulterous relationship, Lancelot kills Agravaine and several others and escapes. Arthur is forced to sentence Guinevere to burn at the stake, and orders his surviving nephews, Gawain, Mordred, Gareth, and Gaheris, to guard the scene, knowing Lancelot will attempt a rescue. Gawain flatly refuses to be part of any act that will treat the queen shamefully. His younger brothers, Gaheris and Gareth, unable to deny the king's request that they escort Guinevere to the stake to be burnt, advise that they will do so at his command, but they will not arm themselves except for their helmets. When Lancelot's party raids the execution, many knights are killed, including, by accident, Gareth and Gaheris. Gawain, bent on revenge for their deaths, prompts Arthur into a war with Lancelot, first at his castle in northern England. At this point the Pope steps in and issues a bull to end the violence between Arthur's and Lancelot's factions. Shortly thereafter, Arthur pursues Lancelot to his home in France to continue the fight. Gawain challenges Lancelot to a duel, but loses and asks Lancelot to kill him; Lancelot refuses and grants him mercy before leaving. This event plays out twice, each time Lancelot playing a medieval version of rope-a-dope due to Gawain's enchantment/blessing to grow stronger between 9 a.m. and noon, then striking down Gawain, but sparing his life. Arthur receives a message that Mordred, whom he had left in charge back in Britain, has usurped his throne, and he leads his forces back home. In the invasion Gawain is mortally injured, and writes to Lancelot, asking for his help against Mordred, and for forgiveness for separating the Round Table. In a dream, the departed Gawain tells Arthur to wait thirty days for Lancelot to return to England before fighting Mordred, and Arthur sends Lucan and Bedivere to make a temporary peace treaty. At the exchange, an unnamed knight draws his sword to kill an adder. The other knights construe this as treachery and a declaration of war. Seeing no other recourse, at the Battle of Salisbury, Arthur charges Mordred and impales him with a spear. But with the last of his strength, Mordred impales himself even further, so as to come within striking distance of King Arthur, then gives a mortal blow to Arthur’s head. As he is dying, Arthur commands Bedivere to cast Excalibur into the lake, where it is retrieved by the hand of the Lady of the Lake. A barge appears, carrying ladies in black hoods (one being Morgan le Fay), who take Arthur to his grave. After the passing of King Arthur, Malory provides a denouement, mostly following the lives (and deaths) of Guinevere, Lancelot, and Lancelot's kinsmen. When Lancelot returns to Dover, he mourns the deaths of his comrades. Lancelot travels to Almesbury to see Guinevere. During the civil war, Guinevere is portrayed as a scapegoat for violence without developing her perspective or motivation. However, after Arthur's death, Guinevere retires to a convent in penitence for her infidelity. Her contrition is sincere and permanent; Lancelot is unable to sway her to come away with him. Instead, Lancelot becomes a monk, and is joined in monastic life by his kinsmen. Arthur's successor is appointed (Constantine, son of King Carados of Scotland), and the realm that Arthur created is significantly changed. After the deaths of Guinevere and Lancelot, Sirs Bors, Hector, Blamore, and Bleoberis head to the Holy Land to crusade against the Turks, where they die on Good Friday.
420130	/m/026b9w	The Robots of Dawn	Isaac Asimov	1983	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with detective Elijah Baley on Earth, training with his son and others to tolerate the outside, in spite of their socially ingrained agoraphobia. He is ordered to go to the police headquarters. There, he is told that the Spacer world of Aurora has requested through diplomatic channels that he go to Aurora. He is told that the mind of R. Jander Panell, a humaniform robot identical to R. Daneel Olivaw, has been destroyed via a mental block—"roboticide", as Baley later terms it. The robot's inventor, Han Fastolfe, has been implicated. Fastolfe, who was last seen in The Caves of Steel, is the best roboticist on Aurora. He has admitted that he is the only person with the skill to have done it, although he denies doing it. Fastolfe is also a prominent member of the Auroran political faction that favors Earth. Implication in the crime threatens his political career; therefore, it is politically expedient that he be exonerated. While en route to Aurora, Baley once again is partnered with R. Daneel Olivaw, as well as R. Giskard Reventlov, another of Fastolfe's robots. On Aurora, he sets out to solve the crime. He interviews Gladia Delmarre (who first appeared in The Naked Sun; the Aurorans have given her the surname "Solaria" instead). Jander was a member of her staff before he was shut down. We find out that Gladia had a secret sexual relationship with Jander. She even considered him to be her husband. Baley later interviews Fastolfe's estranged daughter, Vasilia Fastolfe (although she disdains the use of her surname and prefers to use "Aliena" instead). Vasilia claims that her father is a monster, and would do anything necessary to advance his theories of a science that can predict the future—psychohistory. This includes the murder of Jander, if it would help him observe Gladia's responses. Vasilia also makes clear her desire to own Giskard, who was her nanny. Following that, Baley interviews Santirix Gremionis. Gremionis is an Auroran who is attracted to both Gladia and Vasilia. With each of them, he committed the Auroran taboo of offering himself repeatedly (sexually) after they had rejected him. Gremionis denies involvement in the murder, and says he has reported Baley to the Chairman (the executive of the Auroran Government) for slander. Vasilia subtly manipulated him into falling in love with Gladia, and he realizes it only after Baley asks him about it directly. Next, Baley interviews Kelden Amadiro. Amadiro is Fastolfe's chief political rival and head of the Robotics Institute. He explains the Institute's political motivations—that they wish to see Aurora and only Aurora colonize the rest of the Galaxy. Humaniform robots are an integral part of their planned colonization, although Fastolfe is the only one who can construct them. The Institute has been attempting, futilely, to construct one. On the way back to the Fastolfe residence from the interview with Amadiro, Baley's airfoil (a car that uses airjets to float slightly off the ground) is forced to stop. The air compressor has been sabotaged. Baley, suspecting that it was done by Amadiro in an attempt to kidnap Daneel, orders him and Giskard to flee the car. A few minutes later, several robots arrive and interrogate Baley. Baley tells them that he ordered Daneel back to the Robotics Institute, and they leave. Baley flees the car into the thunderstorm outside. His agoraphobia gets the best of him, and he falls unconscious. He awakes in Gladia's home. He is told that they had stopped not far from her house. Daneel and Giskard fled there and quickly formed a rescue party, which recovered Baley not long after he passed out. The next day, Baley goes to a prearranged meeting with the Chairman, who holds political sway over the entire situation, and is intent upon ending the crisis. Present at the meeting are the Chairman, Baley, Fastolfe, and Amadiro. Baley confronts Amadiro with a question. During Baley's interview with him, Amadiro said that he knew of the relationship between Gladia and Jander. Baley asks him how he could have known of it, since it was a secret. Amadiro says he heard it from someone, but cannot remember who it was that he heard it from. Baley says that the only person he could have heard it from would have been Jander himself. Baley then gives the solution to the mystery of who killed Jander. While Gladia was on her frequent walks with Gremionis, Amadiro took the opportunity to contact Jander via trimensional viewing (telepresence) and question him. The questions would allow Amadiro to understand how Jander was designed, which in turn would allow Amadiro himself to create a humaniform robot. Apparently, this created enough entropy in Jander's positronic brain to kill him. The Chairman is satisfied with this explanation. Amadiro is forced to agree to support Fastolfe's policies, which are immediately put into effect. Earth benefits greatly from this. Baley, however, secretly has another suspect in mind. During his investigation, he had noticed that Giskard many times had acted as if he had knowledge of what others were thinking. He confronts Giskard, who admits it. Vasilia unknowingly gave Giskard this ability during childhood experiments. Using knowledge derived from Han Fastolfe's mind, Giskard shut down Jander. This was to thwart Amadiro's attempt to build humaniform robots. Giskard allows Baley to remember this knowledge of Giskard's abilities, but puts a block in Baley's mind that prevents him from revealing the secret.
420442	/m/026cw4	Peril at End House	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Detective Hercule Poirot and Captain Arthur Hastings are holidaying when they meet a young girl, who casually mentions that she has escaped certain death at least thrice. Poirot suspects that somebody is out to get her, and his suspicions prove true. He finds many characters that are shady and may have some reason to kill the girl. Despite Poirot's best efforts, a murder does occur, but not of the intended victim. When the motive itself is unclear, why did the murder take place?
420985	/m/026g1r	The Subtle Knife	Philip Pullman	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Evading the police after accidentally killing an intruder in the night, twelve-year-old Will Parry discovers an invisible window in mid air. It leads him to Cittàgazze, an apparently deserted city in another world. There, Will encounters 12-year-old Lyra Silvertongue and her daemon Pantalaimon, who came here after entering the hole in the sky that her father, Lord Asriel, created at the end of Northern Lights. Meanwhile, the witch Serafina Pekkala, who was separated from Lyra during a battle in Northern Lights, is searching for her. She discovers that the Magisterium and Lyra's mother, Mrs. Coulter, are torturing a witch to discover the prophecy that surrounds Lyra. She kills that witch when begged, and leaves to call a meeting of the witches council. The witches vote to band together and join Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, in his fight against the Magisterium. Lee Scoresby, a supporter of Lyra, ventures out to find the explorer Stanislaus Grumman, who is rumored to know of an object that gives protection to whoever holds it, with the intent of ensuring Lyra obtains that protection. In Cittàgazze, Will and Lyra become allies; they discover they come from parallel Oxfords in different universes and decide to travel back into Will's world to gather more information. Will wants to find out about his father, who vanished during an expedition; Lyra is looking for Scholars who know about Dust. Lyra is told by her alethiometer (a device that reveals truth) to seek the physicist researcher Dr. Mary Malone who unknowingly is researching Dust (under the name Dark Matter/"Shadows"). Lyra revisits Dr. Malone the next day, but after accepting a ride from the well-dressed Sir Charles Latrom, she discovers that Sir Charles has stolen her alethiometer and she asks Will to help her retrieve it. When Lyra and Will confront Sir Charles, he readily admits that he has stolen the alethiometer and blackmails the pair into retrieving a mysterious knife from Cittàgazze in exchange for its return. They defeat the youth who holds the knife but Will receives a distinctive wound - the loss of two fingers - which the knife's true guardian explains as the sign that he is now the next true guardian of the Subtle Knife, a tool that cuts windows between worlds and cuts easily through anything - both material and spiritual. He explains further that this world is haunted by soul-eating Spectres, which prey on older children and adults but are invisible to children of their age, and that the knife must not fall into Sir Charles' hands. Lyra and Will plan to steal back the alethiometer by using the knife. While doing so, Sir Charles arrives with Mrs. Coulter, and Lyra realizes that Sir Charles is really Lord Boreal, a friend of Mrs. Coulter who came to Will's world long ago and established himself in a position of power. Will, overhearing their conversation, also hears news of his father, who had discovered a doorway between the worlds. Will and Lyra return to Cittagazze, and pursued by children seeking revenge for the death of the knife's holder, are found and rescued by Serafina Pekkala. She attempts to heal Will's wound with a spell, but fails. They then continue on to find Will's father. Back in Will's world, Dr. Malone is visited by Sir Charles, purporting to be a figure of authority, who tells them that their funding will be discontinued if they do not cooperate with his wishes. Dr. Malone quits her job, but returns later that night to follow Lyra's suggestion that she attempt to communicate with the Shadows she is studying. She is told to travel through the same window between worlds used by Will and Lyra, and that her role is to "play the serpent" and that all her life's work has led to this. She is told where to begin her journey and to destroy her work to prevent others using it. Lee Scoresby finally finds Grumman living as a shaman known as Jopari, an abbreviation of his true name John Parry. Grumman has summoned Scoresby so he can be taken to the world where the bearer of the Subtle Knife is, and instruct the bearer in his task, which is to find and help Lord Asriel's rebellion against The Authority (God). They set off in Scoresby's hot-air balloon. Pursued by Magisterium soldiers, they are forced to land. Scoresby dies holding off the soldiers so that Grumman can complete his task. Mrs. Coulter tricks Sir Charles into revealing the secret of the knife, then after murdering him, uses the Spectres which she has learned to control to torture a witch into revealing the prophecy about Lyra as well as Will and Lyra's location and the manner of their protection by the witch clans. The prophecy is that Lyra is fated to be the second Eve, and Mrs. Coulter states her intention to destroy Lyra rather than risk a second Fall. Serafina goes to aid Scoresby, having heard his last plea for help, and Will encounters Grumman, who staunches the bleeding in his hand and instructs him in his task. They begin to realise they are long-separated father and son, but a moment later Grumman is killed by a vengeful witch who loved Grumman, as he had not returned her love. Will returns to camp to find a pair of angels, Balthamos and Baruch, waiting to guide him to Lord Asriel. He agrees and goes to awaken Lyra, but discovers that she is now missing and her guardian witches have been killed by Spectres. Will finds Lyra's abandoned alethiometer. He refuses to go with the angels until he finds Lyra. This concludes the second novel, with the trilogy concluding in the next book, The Amber Spyglass.
421106	/m/026gmg	The Horse and His Boy	C. S. Lewis	1954	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A boy by the name of Shasta is found as a baby and raised by Arsheesh, a Calormene fisherman. As the story begins, Shasta overhears Arsheesh agreeing to sell him to a powerful Calormene feudal nobleman. Shasta is relieved to discover that he is not really Arsheesh's son, since there was little love between them. While Shasta awaits his new master in the stable, Bree, the nobleman's stallion, astounds Shasta by speaking to him. The horse suggests that they escape a life of servitude by riding north together to Narnia. They meet another pair of escaping travellers, Aravis, a young Calormene aristocrat, and her talking horse, Hwin. Aravis is fleeing to avoid a forced marriage with the Tisroc's grand vizier. The four must travel through Tashbaan, the bustling capital of Calormen. There they encounter a procession of visiting Narnian royalty, who mistake Shasta for Corin, a prince of Archenland, who was separated from their group earlier that day. Unsure what to do, Shasta goes with the Narnians and overhears their plans to escape from Calormen to prevent a forced marriage of Queen Susan with the Tisroc's son, Rabadash. Shasta escapes when the real Prince Corin returns. Meanwhile, Aravis has been spotted by her friend Lasaraleen. She asks Lasaraleen not to betray her, and to help her escape from Tashbaan. Lasaraleen cannot understand why Aravis would want to abandon the life of a Calormene princess, but she helps Aravis escape through the palace. On the way, they hide when the Tisroc, Rabadash, and the Grand Vizier approach. Unfortunately, they've hidden in the very room where the men are about to meet. Aravis overhears the Tisroc and Rabadash as they discuss the Narnians' escape. The Tisroc gives Rabadash permission to invade Archenland and Narnia while High King Peter is preoccupied battling giants to the north. Outside Tashbaan, Aravis rejoins Shasta and the horses. The four set out across the desert, and a lion (later revealed to be Aslan) frightens the travellers into fleeing swiftly enough to outrun Rabadash's army. Shasta arrives in Archenland in time to warn King Lune of the approaching Calormenes, and the army of Archenland prepares to defend their kingdom. When Rabadash and his army arrive at King Lune's castle, they are disappointed to find their prey on guard and waiting for them. A battle ensues, with no clear outcome until an army from Narnia, led by Edmund and Lucy, reinforces the defenders. The Northern alliance of Archenland and Narnia wins a complete victory over the Calormenes, and Rabadash is captured. Rabadash rebuffs King Lune's merciful offer of conditional release. Aslan appears and warns Rabadash to accept King Lune's mercy before his doom strikes. Rabadash rebuffs Aslan as well, so his doom strikes: he is turned into a donkey. His true form will be restored if he stands before the altar of Tash at the Autumn Feast. However, he will become a donkey again if he strays more than ten miles from the Temple of Tash, and there will be no return. For this reason Rabadash pursues peaceful policies when he becomes Tisroc as he dare not risk the ten mile limit by going to war. People call him "Rabadash the Peacemaker" but in reality they consider him "Rabadash the Ridiculous" as they never forget his donkey transformation. His name becomes a synonym for a stupid person over future generations in Calormen. The victorious King Lune recognizes Shasta as Cor, the long-lost identical twin of Prince Corin and, as barely the elder of the two, the heir to the throne. Aravis and Cor live in Archenland thereafter and eventually marry years later, and their son becomes the most famous king of Archenland.
421290	/m/026h6d	The Story of the Stone	Barry Hughart	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The abbot of a humble monastery in the Valley of Sorrows calls upon Master Li and Number Ten Ox to investigate the killing of a monk and the theft of a seemingly inconsequential manuscript from its library. Suspicion soon lands on the infamous Laughing Prince Liu Sheng--who has been dead for about 750 years. To solve this mystery and others, the incongruous duo will have to travel across China, outwit a half-barbarian king, and saunter into (and out of) Hell itself.
421473	/m/026hxn	The Mists of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1983-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mists of Avalon is a generations-spanning retelling of the Arthurian legend, but bringing it back to its Brythonic roots (see Matter of Britain). Its protagonist is Morgaine, who witnesses the rise of Uther Pendragon to the throne of Camelot. As a child, she is taken to Avalon by High Priestess Viviane, her maternal aunt, to become a priestess of the Mother Goddess and witnesses the rising tension between the old Pagan and the new Christian religions. At one point, she is given in a fertility ritual to a young man she will later learn is Arthur, her half-brother. Unbeknownst to Arthur, Morgaine conceives a child, Gwydion, later called Mordred, as a result of the ritual. After Uther dies, his son Arthur claims the throne. Morgaine and Viviane give him the magic sword Excalibur, and with the combined force of Avalon and Camelot, Arthur drives the invasion of the Saxons away. But when his wife Gwenhwyfar fails to produce a child, she is convinced that it is a punishment of God: firstly for the presence of pagan elements (a stance which Morgaine deeply resents), and secondly, for her forbidden love for Arthur's finest knight Lancelet. She increasingly becomes a religious fanatic, and relationships between Avalon and Camelot (i.e. Morgaine and herself) become hostile. When the knights of the Round Table of Camelot leave to search for the Holy Grail, Mordred seeks to usurp the throne. In a climactic battle, Arthur's and Mordred's armies square off, and in the end Avalon and Arthur are magically removed from the circles of the world. It is Morgaine alone who lives to tell the tale of Camelot.
422466	/m/026m4m	The Book of Merlyn	T. H. White	1977	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens as King Arthur prepares himself for his final battle. Merlyn reappears to complete Arthur's education and discover the cause of wars. As he did in The Sword in the Stone, Merlyn again demonstrates ethics and politics to Arthur by transforming him into various animals. The last chapter of the book takes place only hours before the final battle between King Arthur and his son and nephew Mordred. Arthur does not want to fight after everything that he has learned from Merlyn. He makes a deal with Mordred to split England in half. Mordred accepts. During the making of this deal, a snake comes upon one of Mordred's soldiers. The soldier draws his sword. The opposing side, unaware of the snake, takes this as an act of betrayal. Arthur's troops attack Mordred's, and both Arthur and Mordred die in the battle that follows. Guenever joins a convent, and remains there till death. Lancelot becomes a hermit and dies a hermit. His last miracle was making the room that he died in smell like heaven.
423573	/m/026rjf	The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus	Christopher Marlowe	1604		 As a prologue, the Chorus tells us what type of play Doctor Faustus is. It is not about war and courtly love, but about Faustus, who was born of lower class parents. This can be seen as a departure from the medieval tradition; Faustus holds a lower status than kings and saints, but his story is still worth telling. It gives an introduction to his wisdom and abilities, most notably in academia, in which he excels so tremendously that he is awarded a doctorate. During this opening, we also get our first clue to the source of Faustus's downfall. Faustus's tale is likened to that of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell to his death when the sun melted his waxen wings. This is indeed a hint to Faustus's end as well as bringing our attention to the idea of hubris (excessive pride) which is represented in the Icarus story. Faustus comments that he has reached the end of every subject he has studied. He appreciates Logic as being a tool for arguing; Medicine as being unvalued unless it allowed raising the dead and immortality; Law as being upstanding and above him; Divinity as useless because he feels that all humans commit sin, and thus to have sins punishable by death complicates the logic of Divinity. He dismisses it as "What doctrine call you this? Que sera, sera" (What will be, shall be). He calls upon his servant Wagner to bring forth Valdes and Cornelius, two famous magicians. The Good Angel and the Bad Angel dispense their own perspective of his interest in Satan. Though Faustus is momentarily dissuaded, proclaiming "How am I glutted with conceit of this?", he is apparently won over by the possibilities Magic offers to him. Valdes declares that if Faustus devotes himself to Magic, he must vow not to study anything else and points out that great things are indeed possible with someone of Faustus's standing. Faustus's absence is noted by two scholars who are less accomplished than Faustus himself. They request that Wagner reveal Faustus's present location, a request which Wagner haughtily denies. The two scholars worry about Faustus falling deep into the art of Magic and leave to inform the King. Faustus summons a devil, in the presence of Lucifer and other devils although Faustus is unaware of it. After creating a magic circle and speaking an incantation in which he revokes his baptism, Faustus sees a devil named Mephistophilis appear before him. Faustus is unable to tolerate the hideous looks of the devil and commands it to change its appearance. Faustus, in seeing the obedience of the devil (for changing form), takes pride in his skill. He tries to bind the devil to his service but is unable to because Mephistophilis already serves Lucifer, the prince of devils. Mephistophilis also reveals that it was not Faustus's power that summoned him but rather that if anyone abjures the scriptures it results in the Devil coming to claim their soul. Mephistophilis introduces the history of Lucifer and the other devils while indirectly telling Faustus that hell has no circumference and is more of a state of mind than a physical location. Faustus inquiries into the nature of hell lead to Mephistophilis saying: "Oh, Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, which strikes a terror to my fainting soul". Using Mephistophilis as a messenger, Faustus strikes a deal with Lucifer: he is to be allotted twenty-four years of life on Earth, during which time he will have Mephistophilis as his personal servant. At the end he will give his soul over to Lucifer as payment and spend the rest of time as one damned to Hell. This deal is to be sealed in Faustus's own blood. After cutting his arm, the wound is divinely healed and the Latin words "Homo, fuge!" (Fly, man!) then appear upon it. Despite the dramatic nature of this divine intervention, Faustus disregards the inscription with the assertion that he is already damned by his actions thus far and therefore left with no place to which he could flee. Mephistophilis brings coals to break the wound open again, and thus Faustus is able to take his oath that was written in his own blood. Faustus begins by asking Mephistophilis a series of science-related questions. However, the devil seems to be quite evasive and finishes with a Latin phrase, "Per inoequalem motum respectu totius" ("through unequal motion with respect to the whole thing"). This sentence has not the slightest scientific value, thus giving the impression that Mephistophilis is untrustworthy. Two angels, one good and one bad, appear to Faustus: the good angel urges him to repent and revoke his oath to Lucifer. This is the largest fault of Faustus throughout the play: he is blind to his own salvation. Though he is told initially by Mephistophilis to "leave these frivolous demands", Faustus remains set on his soul's damnation. Lucifer brings to Faustus the personification of the seven deadly sins. Faustus fails to see them as warnings and ignores them. From this point until the end of the play, Faustus does nothing worthwhile, having begun his pact with the attitude that he would be able to do anything. Faustus appears to scholars and warns them that he is damned and will not be long on the earth. He gives a speech about how he is damned and eventually seems to repent for his deeds. Mephistophilis comes to collect his soul, and we are told that he exits back to hell with him. The text leaves Faustus's final confrontation with Mephistophilis offstage, and his final fate obvious. The scene following begins with Faustus's friends discovering his clothes strewn about the stage: from this they conclude that Faustus was damned. However, his friends decide to give him a final party, a religious ceremony that hints at salvation. The discovery of the clothes is a scene present only in the later 'B text' of the play — in the earlier version of the play devils carry Faustus off the stage. The theological implications of Doctor Faustus have been the subject of considerable debate throughout the last century. Among the most complicated points of contention is whether the play supports or challenges the Calvinist doctrine of absolute predestination, which dominated the lectures and writings of many English scholars in the latter half of the sixteenth century. According to Calvin, predestination meant that God, acting of his own free will, elects some people to be saved and others to be damned — thus, the individual has no control over his own ultimate fate. This doctrine was the source of great controversy because it was seen by the so-called anti-Calvinists to limit man's free will in regard to faith and salvation, and to present a dilemma in terms of theodicy. At the time Doctor Faustus was performed, this doctrine was on the rise in England, and under the direction of Puritan theologians at Cambridge and Oxford had come to be considered the orthodox position of the Church of England. Nevertheless, it remained the source of vigorous and, at times, heated debate between Calvinist scholars, such as William Whitaker and William Perkins, and anti-Calvinists, such as William Barrett and Peter Baro. The dispute between these Cambridge intellectuals had quite nearly reached its zenith by the time Marlowe was a student there in the 1580s, and likely would have influenced him deeply, as it did many of his fellow students. Concerning the fate of Faustus, the Calvinist concludes that his damnation was inevitable. His rejection of God and subsequent inability to repent are taken as evidence that he never really belonged to the elect, but rather had been predestined from the very beginning for reprobation. In his Chiefe Points of Christian Religion, Theodore Beza, the successor to John Calvin, describes the category of sinner into which Faustus would most likely have been cast: ::To conclude, they which are most miserable of all, those climb a degree higher, that their fall might be more grievous: for they are raised so high by some gift of grace, that they are little moved with some taste of the heavenly gift: so that for the time they seem to have received the seed...But this is plain, that the spirit of adoption, which we have said to be only proper unto them which are never cast forth, but are written in the secret of God's people, is never communicated to them, for were they of the elect they should remain still with the elect. All these therefore (because of necessity, and yet willingly, as they which are under the slavery of sin, return to their vomit, and fall away from faith) are plucked up by the roots, to be cast into the fire. For the Calvinist, Faustus represents the worst kind of sinner, having tasted the heavenly gift and rejected it. His damnation is justified and deserved because he was never truly adopted among the elect. According to this view, the play demonstrates Calvin's "three-tiered concept of causation," in which the damnation of Faustus is first willed by God, then by Satan, and finally, by himself. As Calvin himself explains it in his Institutes of Christian Religion: ::We see therefore that it is no absurdity, that one self act be ascribed to God, to Satan, and to man: but the diversity in the end and manner of doing, causeth that therein appeareth the justice of God to be without fault, and also the wickedness of Satan and man, bewrayeth itself to their reproach. The anti-Calvinist view, however, finds such thinking repugnant, and prefers to interpret Doctor Faustus as a criticism of such doctrines. One of the greatest critics of Calvinism in Marlowe's day was Peter Baro, who argued that such teachings fostered despair among believers, rather than repentance among sinners. He claimed, in fact, that Calvinism created a theodical dilemma: ::What shall we say then? That this question so long debated of the Philosophers, most wise men, and yet undetermined, cannot even of Divines, and men endued with heavenly wisdom, be discussed and decided? And that God hath in this case laid a crosse upon learned men, wherein they might perpetually torment themselves? I cannot so think. Baro recognized the threat of despair which faced the Protestant church if it did not come to an agreement of how to understand the fundamentals. For him, the Calvinists were overcomplicating the issues of faith and repentance, and thereby causing great and unnecessary confusion among struggling believers. Faustus himself confesses a similar sentiment regarding predestination: :::"The reward of sin is death." That's hard. :::..."If we say that we have no sin, :::We deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us." :::Why then belike we must sin, :::And so consequently die. :::Ay, we must die an everlasting death. :::What doctrine call you this? Che sera, sera, :::"What will be, shall be"? Divinity, adieu! Ultimately, however, the theology of Marlowe and the text of Doctor Faustus remain far too ambiguous for any kind of conclusive interpretation.
423605	/m/026rnp	The Iron Heel	Jack London	1908	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The novel is based on the (fictional) "Everhard Manuscript" written by Avis Everhard which she hid and which was subsequently found centuries later. In addition, this novel has an introduction and series of (often lengthy) footnotes written from the perspective of scholar Anthony Meredith. Meredith writes from around 2600 AD or 419 B.O.M. (the Brotherhood of Man). Jack London thus writes at two levels, often having Meredith condescendingly correcting the errors of Everhard yet, at the same time, exposing the often incomplete understanding of this distant future perspective. Meredith's introduction also acts as a deliberate "spoiler" (the term did not yet exist at the time of writing). Before ever getting a chance to get to know Avis and Ernest, how they fell in love or how Avis became politically involved, the reader is already told that all their struggles and hopes would end in total failure and repression, and that both of them would be summarily executed. This gives all that follows the air of a foreordained tragedy. There is still left the consolation that a happy end would come for humanity as a whole&nbsp;– though hundreds of years too late for Avis and Ernest as individuals; the cruel oligarchy would fall, and the two will be vindicated and respected by posterity as pioneers and martyrs. (George Orwell would forty years later specifically and explicitly deny that consolation to his Winston Smith though he confirms it in appendix, and so would other later dystopian writers.) The Manuscript itself covers the years 1912 through 1932 in which the Oligarchy (or "Iron Heel") arose in the United States. In Asia, Japan conquered East Asia and created its own empire, India gained independence, and Europe became socialist. Canada, Mexico, and Cuba formed their own Oligarchies and were aligned with the U.S. (London remains silent as to the fates of South America, Africa, and the Middle East.) In North America, the Oligarchy maintains power for three centuries until the Revolution succeeds and ushers in the Brotherhood of Man. During the years of the novel, the First Revolt is described and preparations for the Second Revolt are discussed. From the perspective of Everhard, the imminent Second Revolt is sure to succeed but, from the distant future perspective of Meredith, we readers realize that Everhard's hopes were to be crushed for centuries to come. The Oligarchy are the largest monopoly trusts (or robber barons) who manage to squeeze out the middle class by bankrupting most small to mid-sized business as well as reducing all farmers to effective serfdom. This Oligarchy maintains power through a "labor caste" and the Mercenaries. Labor in essential industries like steel and rail are elevated and given decent wages, housing, and education. Indeed, the tragic turn in the novel (and Jack London's core warning to his contemporaries) is the treachery of these favored unions which break with the other unions and side with the Oligarchy. Further, a second, military caste is formed: the Mercenaries. The Mercenaries are officially the army of the US but are in fact in the employ of the Oligarchs. Asgard is the name of a fictional wonder-city, a city constructed by the Oligarchy to be admired and appreciated as well as lived in. Thousands of proletarians live in poverty there, and are used whenever a public work needs to be completed, such as the building of levee or a canal. The Manuscript is Everhard's autobiography as she tells of: her privileged childhood as the daughter of an accomplished scientist; her marriage to the socialist revolutionary Ernest Everhard; the fall of the US republic; and her years in the underground resistance from the First Revolt through the years leading to the Second Revolt. By telling the story of Avis Everhard, the novel is essentially an adventurous tale heavily strewn with social commentary of an alternate future (from a 1907 perspective). However, the future perspective of the scholar Meredith deepens the tragic plight of Everhard and her revolutionary comrades.
423606	/m/026rp1	Martin Eden	Jack London	1909	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite. His principal motivation is his love for Ruth Morse. Because Eden is a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class background and the Morses are a bourgeois family, a union between them would be impossible until he reaches their level of wealth and refinement. Over a period of two years, Eden promises Ruth that success will come, but just before it does, Ruth loses her patience and rejects him in a letter, saying, "if only you had settled down&nbsp;... and attempted to make something of yourself". By the time Eden attains the favour of the publishers and the bourgeoisie who had shunned him, he has already developed a grudge against them and become jaded by toil and unrequited love. Instead of enjoying his success, he retreats into a quiet indifference, interrupted only to rail mentally against the genteelness of bourgeois society or to donate his new wealth to working-class friends and family. The novel ends with Eden committing suicide by drowning, which contributed to what researcher Clarice Stasz calls the "biographical myth" that Jack London's own death was a suicide. London's oldest daughter Joan commented that in spite of its tragic ending, the book is often regarded as "a 'success' story&nbsp;... which inspired not only a whole generation of young writers but other different fields who, without aid or encouragement, attained their objectives through great struggle".
423607	/m/026rpg	The Valley of the Moon	Jack London	1913	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel Valley of the Moon is a story of a working-class couple, Billy and Saxon Roberts, struggling laborers in Oakland at the Turn-of-the-Century, who left the city life behind and searched Central and Northern California for a suitable farmland to own. The book is notable for the scenes in which the proletarian hero enjoys fellowship with the artists' colony in Carmel, and he settles in the Valley of the Moon. It begins with Billy as a Teamster and Saxon working in a laundry. Billy has also boxed professionally with some success, but decided there was no future in it. He was particularly upset by one bout in which he was fighting a friend and they had to go on fighting and making a good show after his friend injured one hand. Their early married life is disrupted by a major wave of strikes. Billy is involved in violent attacks on scabs and goes to jail. Saxon loses her baby in the backwash of the violence. She hears socialist arguments but does not definitely accept them. She also meets an old woman who takes a very individualist view, describing how she successfully attached herself to a series of rich men. She also meets a lad called Jack who has built his own boat and seems modeled on Jack London's own teenage years. When Billy gets out of jail, Saxon insist that they leave the city and try to get their own farm. They have memories of when the government gave out land free, but find that is long past. They pass through an area where the earliest European settlers have been displaced by Portuguese. There is a detailed description of how the Portuguese, who arrived very poor, have flourished by using the land more intensively. They also stay a few days with a middle-class woman who grows flowers along with her vegetables and has a flourishing business selling high-quality products to rich people. Moving on, they find an artists' colony which they like, but they move on, still looking for their own place. Billy begins dealing in horses as well as driving them. He also returns to the boxing ring, using a new name so he will not be identified against an up-and-coming boxer. Saxon is scared for him, but in fact he wins the fight in the first few seconds, much faster than he intended. This gets him 300 dollars for a pair of horses he wants. Invited to a rematch, he accepts and finds it much harder, but still wins. He resolves to fight no more. They also encounter well-known writer and journalist 'Jack Hastings', generally considered to be a self-portrait of Jack London as he then was. His wife—presumably modeled on London's second wife—is also described as very much like Saxon. They are directed to a suitable place to settle, and do settle. There is also much talk about the wastefulness of the early American farmers, exhausting the land and moving on. These reflect Jack London's views on sustainable agriculture. They find their 'valley of the moon' and presumably live happily ever after. A character in the book says that this is the Native American meaning of 'Sonoma Valley'. This was Jack London's belief, though it is disputed.
423675	/m/026rxb	At Swim-Two-Birds	Flann O'Brien	1939	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At Swim-Two-Birds presents itself as a first-person story by an unnamed Irish student of literature. The student believes that "one beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with", and he accordingly sets three apparently quite separate stories in motion. The first concerns the Pooka MacPhellimey, "a member of the devil class". The second is about a young man named John Furriskey, who turns out to be a fictional character created by another of the student's creations, Dermot Trellis, a cynical writer of Westerns. The third consists of the student's adaptations of Irish legends, mostly concerning Finn Mac Cool and Mad King Sweeney. In the autobiographical frame story, the student recounts details of his life. He lives with his uncle, who works as a clerk in the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. The uncle is a complacent and self-consciously respectable bachelor who suspects that the student does very little studying. This seems to be the case, as by his own account the student spends more time drinking stout with his college friends, lying in bed and working on his book, than he does going to class. The stories that the student is writing soon become intertwined with each other. John Furriskey meets and befriends two of Trellis's other characters, Antony Lamont and Paul Shanahan. They each become resentful of Trellis's control over their destinies, and manage to drug him so that he will spend more time asleep, giving them the freedom to lead quiet domestic lives rather than be ruled by the lurid plots of his novels. Meanwhile, Trellis creates Sheila Lamont (Antony Lamont's sister) in order that Furriskey might seduce and betray her, but "blinded by her beauty" Trellis "so far forgets himself as to assault her himself." Sheila, in due course, gives birth to a child named Orlick, who is born as a polite and articulate young man with a gift for writing fiction. The entire group of Trellis's characters, by now including Finn, Sweeney, the urbane Pooka and an invisible and quarrelsome Good Fairy who lives in the Pooka's pocket, convenes in Trellis's fictional Red Swan Hotel where they devise a way to overthrow their author. Encouraged by the others, Orlick starts writing a novel about his father in which Trellis is tried by his own creations, found guilty and viciously tortured. Just as Orlick's novel is about to climax with Trellis' death, the college student passes his exams and At Swim-Two-Birds ends.
423959	/m/026szd	Startide Rising	David Brin	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the year 2489 C.E.http://www.reocities.com/Area51/Corridor/8611/brin.htm, Terran spaceship Streaker — crewed by 150 uplifted dolphins, seven humans, and one uplifted chimpanzee — discovers a derelict fleet of 50,000 spaceships the size of small moons in a shallow cluster. They appear to belong to the Progenitors, the legendary "first race" which uplifted the other species. The captain's gig is sent to investigate but is destroyed along with one of the derelict craft — killing 10 crew members. Streaker manages to recover some artifacts from the destroyed derelict and one well-preserved alien body. The crew of Streaker uses psi-cast to inform Earth of their discovery and to send a hologram of the alien. When Streaker receives a reply, it is in code. Decrypted, it says only: “Go into hiding. Await Orders. Do not reply.” Attempting to comply, Streaker is ambushed at the Morgran transfer point and pursued by opposing fleets of fanatical alien races — all of them wanting the cluster co-ordinates, and all of them desperate to prevent their enemies from getting them. The novel begins about one month http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/albmont/brin_sr.htm&date=2009-10-25+12:17:11 after the discovery in the cluster as Streaker arrives on the planet Kithrup in an attempt to hide and make repairs. Almost immediately, the aliens begin to arrive — dashing Streakers hopes of hiding, but some time remains for repairs when the alien armadas begin fighting each other. A Thennanin dreadnought is damaged during the fighting and crashes into the ocean near Streakers hiding place. The resultant tsunami strands several crew and causes several of the uplifted dolphins (called NeoFins) to panic and revert to an instinctual, pre-uplifted mental state. Some of the stranded crew encounter pre-sentient natives (called Kiqui). Meanwhile, on Streaker, several crew members secretly plan a mutiny and defection while the officers plan to salvage parts from the Thennanin wreck. Streaker cannot be moved for fear of detection and because of the ongoing repairs, and so the salvage team uses undersea transportation to get to the wreck. The salvage team discovers the wreck's hull is mostly undamaged, and the Terrans form a plan to hide Streaker inside the Thennanin dreadnought hull and make their escape. As a bonus, several crew members salvage the Thennanin dreadnought's micro-branch of the galactic library for comparison with the Streakers own copy, as Earth suspects their libraries have been sabotaged, with certain information redacted by the senior patron races. The mutinous crew, led by Takkata-Jim, cripple Captain Creideiki. Before he can be caught, Takkata-Jim flees in a shuttle, but the shuttle has been sabotaged by the loyal crew, and he is sent into the middle of the battle over Kithrup with his puny guns set to fire when any ship approaches and his radio disabled. Takkata-Jim draws off the two largest remaining fleets. In the confusion, Streaker almost escapes without incident hidden in the Thennanin hull, but is confronted by several ships belonging to the Brothers of the Night (Brethren). Streaker is saved when six Thennanin ships, saving one of their "own", drive off the Brethren. Streaker then flees to the transfer point, but before fleeing, sends a mocking transmission to the alien armadas. The dolphins in the novel speak three languages: Primal, Trinary and Anglic. Primal and Trinary are represented as haiku-esque poems (two of the human characters quote Yosa Buson), while Anglic is a hypothetical English-derivative (not to be confused with the actual Anglic family of languages containing modern English, its ancestors, and its close relatives like Scots), rendered for the reader as standard English. The book shifts point of view frequently from character to character, ranging from humans, to dolphins, to a number of the alien races which are trying to destroy, capture, or help the Streaker. This allows the reader to get some idea of how the crew of the Streaker fits within the larger context of Galactic affairs. All of the alien races described in this book are further described and illustrated in the book Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe.
424021	/m/026t8k	Rilla of Ingleside	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1921	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Set almost a decade after Rainbow Valley, Europe is on the brink of the First World War, and Anne's youngest daughter Rilla is an irrepressible almost-15-year-old, excited about her first adult party and blissfully unaware of the chaos that the Western world is about to enter. Her parents worry because Rilla seems not to have any ambition, is not interested in attending college, and is more concerned with having fun. (In an aside, it is revealed that Marilla has died; her date of death is not specified but Rilla states it was before she was old enough to know her very well.) Once the Continent descends into war, Jem Blythe and Jerry Meredith promptly enlist, upsetting Anne, Nan, and Faith Meredith (who Rilla suspects is engaged to Jem). Rilla's brother Walter, who is of age, does not enlist, ostensibly due to a recent bout with typhoid but truly because he fears the ugliness of war and death. He confides in Rilla that he feels he is a coward. The enlisted boys report to Kingsport for training. Jem's dog, Dog Monday, takes up a vigil at the Glen train station waiting for Jem to come back. Rilla's siblings Nan, Di, and Walter return to Redmond College, and Shirley returns to Queen's Academy, leaving Rilla anxiously alone at home with her parents, their spinster housekeeper Susan Baker, and Gertrude Oliver, a teacher who is boarding with the Blythes while her fiance reports to the front. As the war drags on, Rilla matures, organizing the Junior Red Cross in her village. While collecting donations for the war effort, she comes across a house where a young mother has just died with her husband away at war, leaving no one to care for her two-week-old son. Rilla takes the sickly little boy back to Ingleside in a soup tureen, naming him "James Kitchener Anderson" after his father and Herbert Kitchener, British Secretary of State for War. Rilla's father Gilbert challenges her to raise the war orphan, and although she doesn't like babies at all, she rises to the occasion, eventually coming to love "Jims" as her own. Rilla and her family pay anxious attention to all the war news as the conflict spreads and thousands die. Rilla grows much closer to Walter, who some townsfolk and fellow students have branded a slacker, an insult he feels deeply. Rilla feels that Walter finally regards her as a chum, not just as his little sister. Walter eventually does enlist, as does Rilla's newfound love interest, Kenneth Ford (the son of Owen and Leslie Ford, who met in Anne's House of Dreams), who asks her to promise she will not kiss anyone else until he returns. She keeps this a secret for much of the book, unsure what it means. Her mother later tells her that "if Leslie West's son asked you to keep your lips for him, I think you may consider yourself engaged to him." As the war continues, Walter is killed in action at Courcelette. His death had been foreshadowed in an earlier book, Anne of Ingleside (written years after this one), when Walter imagines "the piper" calling them all from their beloved Rainbow Valley. In Walter's last letter to Rilla, written the day before his death, he tells her that he is no longer afraid and believes it may be better for him to die than to go on living with his memories of war forever spoiling life's beauty. Rilla gives the letter to Una Meredith, who Rilla suspects had been in love with Walter, though she had never spoken of it to either of them. Anne's youngest son, Shirley, comes of age and immediately joins the flying corps. Jerry Meredith is wounded at Vimy Ridge, and in early May 1918, Jem is reported wounded and missing following a trench raid. The Blythes spend nearly five months not knowing Jem's fate until they finally receive a telegram from him: he had been taken prisoner in Germany, but eventually escaped to Holland and is now proceeding to England for medical treatment. When the war finally ends, the rest of the boys from Glen St. Mary return home. Mary Vance and Miller Douglas announce plans to marry, with Miller deciding to pursue a career in Mr. Flagg's store after losing a leg in the war. Jem returns on an afternoon train and is met by a joyful Dog Monday. Jims' father returns with a young English bride and takes Jims to live with them nearby; Rilla is glad she can still remain part of Jims' life. Life after war resumes. Jem plans to return to college, since he and Faith cannot be married until he finishes studying medicine. Faith, Nan, and Diana plan to teach school, while Jerry, Carl, and Shirley will return to Redmond, along with Una, who plans to take a Household Science course. Finally, Kenneth returns home and proposes to Rilla with the question "Is it Rilla-my-Rilla?"—to which Rilla lisps, "Yeth," a rare slip into her childhood habit.
424293	/m/026v43	The Pickwick Papers	Charles Dickens	1837	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Written for publication as a serial, The Pickwick Papers is a sequence of loosely-related adventures. The action is given as occurring 1827–8, though critics have noted some seeming anachronisms. The novel's main character, Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, and the founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. To extend his researches into the quaint and curious phenomena of life, he suggests that he and three other "Pickwickians" (Mr Nathaniel Winkle, Mr Augustus Snodgrass, and Mr Tracy Tupman) should make journeys to remote places from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club. Their travels throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief theme of the novel. A distinctive and valuable feature of the work is the generally accurate descriptions of the old coaching inns of England. Its main literary value and appeal is formed by its numerous memorable characters. Each character in The Pickwick Papers, as in many other Dickens novels, is drawn comically, often with exaggerated personalities. Alfred Jingle, who joins the cast in chapter two, provides an aura of comic villainy. His devious tricks repeatedly land the Pickwickians in trouble. These include Jingle's nearly-successful attempted elopement with the spinster Rachael Wardle of Dingley Dell manor, misadventures with Dr Slammer, and others. Further humour is provided when the comic cockney Sam Weller makes his advent in chapter 10 of the novel. First seen working at the White Hart Inn in The Borough, Weller is taken on by Mr Pickwick as a personal servant and companion on his travels and provides his own oblique ongoing narrative on the proceedings. The relationship between the idealistic and unworldly Pickwick and the astute cockney Weller has been likened to that between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Other notable adventures include Mr Pickwick's attempts to defend a lawsuit brought by his landlady, Mrs Bardell, who (through an apparent misunderstanding on her part) is suing him for the breach of promise to marry her. Another is Mr Pickwick's incarceration at Fleet prison for his stubborn refusal to pay the compensation to her because he doesn't want to give a penny to Mrs Bardell's lawyers, the unscrupulous firm of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg. The general humorous tone is here briefly replaced by biting social satire (including against the legal establishment) and foreshadows major themes in Dickens' later books. Mr Pickwick, Sam Weller, and Weller Senior also appear in Dickens's serial, Master Humphrey's Clock.
424680	/m/026wy0	Quarantine	Greg Egan	1992	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the near future (2034–2080), after the solar system has been surrounded by an impenetrable shield (constructed by either aliens or extra-solar humans) known as the Bubble. The Bubble permits no light to enter the solar system, and as a consequence the stars can no longer be seen. This seems to be mere background at first, but in fact it is central to the plot. In the novel a physical process in the human brain is responsible for collapsing quantum wavefunctions representing systems into particular eigenstates. Human observations of the universe were reducing its diversity and potentiality (for instance, by rendering it uninhabitable to beings that relied on stars being something other than the enormous nuclear fusion-powered furnaces human astronomers have observed them to be). Hence it is suggested that the Bubble was constructed to prevent humanity from wreaking massive destruction on the rest of the universe through the process of mere observation. In the course of the novel, the situation is further complicated when human researchers discover a way of modifying the brain to provide conscious control over the process, allowing people to suspend wavefunction collapse at will, and to choose which state the wavefunction will collapse to. This allows a person to choose how any nondeterministic event (such as flipping a coin) will turn out, provided that he is not being observed by anyone who is still involuntarily collapsing wavefunctions. This is used to perform a variety of low-probability tricks, such as tunneling through locked doors or getting past guards who happen to all be looking the other way as the person passes. The novel contains ideas not related to quantum mechanics. Of particular note is the fact that people habitually download software to run in their brains. Such "neural mods" (whose titles are always given in boldface, such as Sentinel or P3) are installed by insufflating several drops of fluid carrying genetically modified microorganisms, which in turn carry nanomachines capable of rewiring nerve cells. The story's narrator accepts a case to investigate the disappearance of a woman from a psychiatric Institute, which leads him to the Ensemble. This is an organization that is developing a wavefunction collapse inhibitor neural mod, the "eigenstate mod". This mod allows the user to stop being an observer in the sense of quantum mechanics and consequently to "smear", i.e. to exist in a superposition of different states at the same time and to pick eigenstates of personal preference from the range of possible states, when the personal wavefunction is collapsed. He is put under the control of the Ensemble by the forced installation of a "loyalty mod" in his brain which makes loyal support for the organization his highest goal. The narrator meets a group of other Ensemble loyalists (the Canon) who have discovered that their keepers have failed to specify exactly what they are to be loyal to (except by its name) and consequently, being its most loyal members, start to define what the Ensemble is themselves. The narrator, working with the Canon, then proceeds to steal the eigenstate mod. A rogue member of the Canon infects all of humanity with the software. (Normally, neither the microorganisms nor the nanomachines involved in installing neural mods can survive long outside the human body, but in this case the rogue scientist uses the eigenstate-control mod to modify their properties.) As a result, causality is weakened all over the globe, and the untrained humans, not knowing what to do with their newfound freedom, break down the fabric of reality as the stars suddenly reappear in the sky then turn into an almost blinding flash as the heavens fill with lights and possibilities undreamed of... Then things suddenly are back to normal (less the loyalty mod) and two main characters debrief each other on a park bench, trying to understand how the "smeared" humanity was able to control events BEFORE people were all infected with the eigen-mod and WHY the "smeared" humanity chose to return the world to normal (one theory put forward is that they reached the edge of the bubble, had a nice chat with the aliens and decided to go home and enjoy life as it was).
424956	/m/026y6f	Perfume	Patrick Süskind	1985	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Grenouille (French for "frog") was born in Paris, France, July 17 of 1738. His mother gives birth to him while working at a fish stall. She has had given birth four times previously while working, which were all either stillbirths or near-dead, so she cuts his umbilical cord and leaves him to die. However, Grenouille cries out from inside the pile of fish heads and guts, and his mother is caught, tried for multiple infanticide, found guilty and is decapitated. As a child, Grenouille is passed along different wet nurses, who give him away due to him being too greedy, and then is given to a parish church, which gives him to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie. She returns to the parish priest a few months later, saying that the child is possessed by the devil, as he drinks her dry and has no scent. The priest does not believe her, saying that there was no way that the child could be possessed by the devil. He sends the wet nurse away and cuddles Grenouille for a while. Curious, the priest, Terrier, leans in to take a smell. He expects to smell at least a little bit of scent, but he does not. Grenouille wakes up then and starts sniffing at the air, and Terrier feels as if the baby is sniffing at his soul, looking at his deepest secrets. Recoiling, he finds himself thinking of the baby as a devil. He runs out of the parish and across town, and gives the child to a orphanage on the outskirts of the city. Grenouille has an extraordinary power to discern odors. He navigates the orphanage using only his nose, and barely uses his sight. The other children do not hate him, but they did try to suffocate him several times without knowing precisely why. Grenouille grew up cold and unfeeling; he was unafraid of anything and took punishment easily. When the owner of the orphanage discovers that Grenouille can locate hidden money with his sense of scent, she became afraid and later got rid of him by apprenticing him to a tanner. Later in life, the orphanage owner loses all her money and dies in a disgraceful way that she was afraid of. Grenouille explores the city during his free time, and memorizes all the smells of Paris. He has no bias or preferences against scent and seeks out every smell and every variation of every smell that he can find. He seeks scents for the sake of knowing, and he had no purpose in gathering all the scents but to satisfy his greed for smells. One day, on a day when he had memorized nearly all the smells of the city, he smells a scent that he has never smelled before. Entranced, he traces it with his nose, and finds that the source of this scent is a young, virginal girl just passing puberty (14-15 years old), who is slicing plums. Grenouille's heart starts beating; it is the start of a passion, but Grenouille, who has never felt anything like love or affection before, does not know what it is. Unnoticed, he gets closer to her, to get a better smell of her scent. The girl feels that something is not right and turns, sees Grenouille, and freezes in terror. Grenouille clamps his hand over her mouth. Scared, the girl does not fight back. Grenouille smothers her, with his eyes closed and concerned only with her scent. When she dies, he strips her, lays her down on the ground and smells her scent until it disappears from her body due to death. He does his best to remember every bit of her scent. This is the first time he felt a smell as being "good". In a happy daze, Grenouille returns to the tanner's shop where he sleeps. He decides that he must become a creator of scents, the greatest perfumer in the world, in order to create scents like the scent of the girl. He starts organizing the millions of scents he had gathered in his mental library into thousands of categories, such as fine, coarse, good, bad, fetid, and ambrosial. In his quest to isolate and preserve scents, he becomes apprenticed to a once great perfumer, Baldini, and proves himself a talented pupil. His superior power to discern and dissect scents helps create wondrous perfumes and makes Baldini the most popular perfumer in Paris. However, Grenouille's ambitions are unmatched by technology: he cannot isolate the scent of inorganic materials, such as glass and iron, with the alembic that they use. At this shock, Grenouille falls ill with smallpox, presumably psychosomatically as a reaction to his body giving up on life as his quest can never be fulfilled. Yet Baldini has grown to cherish Grenouille for his skills and on his deathbed Baldini reveals to him that there are techniques other than distillation that can be used to preserve such odours. At this news, Grenouille miraculously recovers and resolves to journey to the city of Grasse, the home of the greatest perfumers, to continue his quest. After Grenouille leaves, great misfortune falls upon Baldini and his shop is destroyed, while he dies. On his way to Grasse, Grenouille travels the countryside and discovers that he is disgusted with the scent of humanity. As he travels, he first avoids a city, then towns, then starts avoiding people that he can smell that are miles away. He reaches the Massif Central, and finds a haven where he is liberated from the smell of humans. In the morning he laps at a thin stream of water for a couple hours and eat whatever he can get, including moss. After that, he crawls into a long, deep shaft in the ground, as far as he can get, where he is shielded from all scent except for dirt, rock, and water. There he wedges himself against the stone and falls into a sort of meditation, first imagining himself as the creator of his world—Grenouille the Great—, "seeding" the world with seeds of scent. Later, tired from the act of creation, he retreats into a purple palace with a vast and grand library of scents inside his mind, served by scentless spectres who bring him "vials" of his favourite scents while reading a book of all the scents he had ever smelled. And every day before he falls asleep he is brought the scent memory vial of the plum-slicing girl, and gets drunk with its splendor before sleeping. One day he wakes up from a nightmare, dreaming of being suffocated by a white fog. He knows that the white fog is his own odor, but he can't smell it. To shake off the confusion he examines his own scent for the first time. Going layer by layer from his surroundings and through his (now tattered) clothes and down to the grime and dirt he is covered in, he soon realizes that he has no scent at all. He is calm at this revelation, and squats in the dirt, simply nodding to himself. After a while, he dons his tattered clothing and leaves the mountain, after seven years of live there. Grenouille journeys to Montpellier with a fabricated story about being kidnapped, kept in a cave, fed by a basket on a rope, and released after 7 years without having any contact with anyone at all during that time. He catches the eye of the amateur scientist, the Marquis de La Taillade-Espinasse, who uses Grenouille to test his thesis of the "so-called fluidum letale". It was a basic theory that the ground and objects from the ground release a slow poison that causes aging, and that being away from the ground and in high altitudes would counteract that poison. The Marquis combines a treatment of decontamination and revitalization for Grenouille, and subsequently Grenouille looks like a clean gentleman for the first time in his life. However, Grenouille understands after the treatment, when he looks into a mirror, that the fluidum letale has no merit to it, and that his appearance has power. Grenouille in turn tricks his way into the laboratory of a perfumier. There he creates a body odour for himself from ingredients including "cat shit", "cheese", and "vinegar", which imitates human odor. Previously, nobody would notice Grenouille due to his lack of scent, but his new "disguise" tricks people into thinking that it is the scent of a human, and he is accepted by society. This event tells Grenouille how foolish the other humans were, since they were fooled by a simple perfume that he had made, and turns his hate for them into contempt. He decides that he wants to become the God of the world by controlling the world with his perfume, as he had been God in the dreams in the mountain. Grenouille runs away from Montpellier, whereas the Marquis wanted to keep Grenouille for his experiments and lectures. The Marquis later disappears after he climbed a tall mountain without gear and clothes in a blizzard to prove his theory of fluidum letale. Finally moving to Grasse, Grenouille once again becomes intoxicated by the scent of a young girl transitioning through puberty to womanhood: Laure. He believes her scent to be greater than that of the plum-slicing girl, but he also believes that she is not quite mature and plans to wait two more years until he can capture her scent at its peak, when she is sexually mature and her scent is at its purest. From a perfumier's widow and a working journeyman in Grasse, Grenouille learns how to trap scent in oil, not just in water as he did with an alembic, and experiments with animals. He discovers that he has to kill the animals to get a scent that is not polluted with fear and feces. While contemplating the scent of Laure, he is struck by the thought that whatever perfume that he could make would eventually run out. He shakes in fear, then realizes that he has to mix Laure's scent with those of others to make the ultimate perfume; one which will polish the scent into a even greater perfume make him be worshipped as a god. He starts a chain of murders; silently killing 24 beautiful virgin girls that have just reached sexual maturity. The victims were always naked, shaved, and had their virginity intact, which scared the villagers. Eventually, after two years of murders have passed, Laure's father pieces together the pattern of murders and realises that Laure, the most beautiful and beloved young woman in the city and just going through puberty, is most likely to be the next victim. He flees with Laure to hide and protect her, but Grenouille pursues them and kills Laure, capturing her scent. Grenouille is apprehended soon after completing his perfume and sentenced to death. On the day of his execution, the intoxicating scent of Laure combined with the backdrop essences of the 24 virgins he murdered overwhelms all present, and instead of an execution the whole town is overwhelmed by a mix of divine reverence and carnal passion, erupting into a massive orgy. The journeyman that Grenouille worked under is accused instead, and he is executed. Grenouille is pardoned for his crimes, blessed and revered, and Laure's father even wants to adopt him. Grenouille agrees, but has no desire to uphold his agreement. He had lived life in solitude, and found it unbearable. Likewise, he could not live among people. His only desire by then is to go to Paris to die. In Paris, Grenouille approaches a group of low-life people—thieves, murderers, whores, etc. He is not wearing any scent, so they do not notice him. When they do notice Grenouille, it is when he sprinkles some of his perfume on himself. Overcome with a sudden carnal passion and love, even more so than the people of Grasse, they jump on him with the desire to keep him to themselves. fighting for Grenouille, they draw knives and butcher him, consuming his body. After the passion wears off, the people look around and feel slightly disgusted and embarrassed for having just eaten a human being, but they have an overwhelming internal sense of happiness. They are "uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love." (quote)
425371	/m/026zjf	Rama II	Gentry Lee	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 70 years after the events of Rendezvous with Rama, a second Raman vessel enters our solar system. Its arrival is expected and an expedition is sent to unlock more of Rama's mysteries, but the crew are unprepared both for what they find and for the conflicts that arise between them. Rama II brings new characters into a new story and is mostly unrelated to the original and largely serves to set up its own sequels. It ends with three of the twelve astronauts stranded inside Rama as it travels out of the solar system, Nicole des Jardins Wakefield, Richard Wakefield and Michael O'Toole. Unlike Rendezvous with Rama, which depicted a utopian future and focused almost entirely on the hard science fiction elements regarding the scientific wonders of the alien spacecraft, Rama II and its sequels deconstruct Clarke's vision of human colonies throughout the solar system through a global economic crisis that forced their almost total deactivation. Then follows a very different storytelling that brings forward contemporary issues like abortion, racism, drug abuse and organized crime.
425872	/m/0270mx	Planet of Exile	Ursula K. Le Guin	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set on Werel, the third planet of the Gamma Draconis system. The planet has an orbital period of 60 Earth years, and is approaching its correspondingly long winter. The main characters belong to one of two major groups: Wold and his daughter Rolery are members of the Tevarans, a tribe of humanoid extraterrestrial indigenous to the planet. Jakob Agat is a young man from a dwindling colony of Earth humans that have been effectively marooned on the planet. Although both populations share a common genetic heritage in the Hainish people, the difference is significant enough to prevent interbreeding (at least, so it is believed at the beginning of the story). The relationship between the two groups has long been tense and characterized by limited interaction. However, with the approaching dangers of winter and mauraders, the visit of curious young Rolery to the colony becomes a sign of coming changes.
427283	/m/02768r	Fortress Besieged	Qian Zhongshu	1947	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the 1930s it follows the misadventures of Fang Hung-chien, a bumbling everyman who wastes his time studying abroad, and secures a fake degree when learning he has run out of money and must return home to China. The first part of the novel is set on the boat home, where Fang courts two young ladies. Fang was the son of a country gentleman. A marriage had been arranged for him while at university, but the intended wife died before he could see her. After completing a degree in Chinese literature, he went to Europe where he studied at several universities without pursuing a degree. After being pressured by his family, he bought a fake degree from an American Irishman. The year was 1937, and Fang was returning to China from Europe along with other graduating Chinese students. One fellow traveler was Miss Su, in her late 20s. She is quite pretty in a thin and pallid style, but her choosy attitude towards men means she is still unattached and getting slightly desperate. Another young lady on board was Miss Pao, who tended towards the tanned and voluptuous. Fang pursued Miss Pao with some success during the voyage. However, when the boat reached Hong Kong, Miss Pao disembarked into the embrace of her fiancee, a middle-aged, balding doctor, and Fang realised he had been used. Fang then became more intimate with Miss Su. However, after they disembarked at Shanghai, Fang became occupied with finding a job, and attending matchmaking sessions arranged by his parents and former in-laws. After one failed attempt, Fang decided to contact Miss Su. While visiting her he also met her cousin, Miss T'ang, and another suitor of Miss Su's. The second section follows his securing a teaching post at a new university - where his fake credentials are used to keep him in line, and in the third part, it centers on his disastrous marriage. The novel ends with his wife leaving him, while he listens to a clock chiming.
427310	/m/0276dv	The Voyage of the Dawn Treader	C. S. Lewis	1952	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The two youngest Pevensie children, Lucy and Edmund, are staying with their odious cousin Eustace Scrubb while their older brother Peter is studying for his university entrance exams with Professor Kirke, and their older sister Susan is traveling through America with their parents. Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace are drawn into the Narnian world through a picture of a ship at sea. (The painting, hanging neglected in the guest bedroom that the Pevensie children were using, had been an unwanted present to Eustace's parents.) The three children land in the ocean near the pictured vessel, the titular Dawn Treader, and are taken aboard. The Dawn Treader is the ship of Caspian X, King of Narnia, who was the key character in the previous book (Prince Caspian). Edmund and Lucy (along with Peter and Susan) helped him gain the throne from his evil uncle Miraz. Three years have passed since then, peace has been established in Narnia, and Caspian has undertaken his oath to find the seven lost Lords of Narnia. Lucy and Edmund are delighted to be back in Narnia, but Eustace is less enthusiastic, as he has never been there before and had taunted his cousins with his belief that the country never existed. The Talking Mouse Reepicheep is also on board, as he hopes to find Aslan's Country beyond the seas of the "utter East". They first make landfall in the Lone Islands, nominally Narnian territory but fallen away from Narnian ways: in particular the slave trade flourishes here, despite Narnian law stating that it is forbidden. Caspian, Lucy, Edmund, Eustace and Reepicheep are captured as merchandise by a slave trader, and a man "buys" Caspian before they even reach the slave market. He turns out to be the first lost lord, Lord Bern, who moved to the islands and married a woman there after being banished from Narnia by Miraz. When Caspian reveals his identity, Bern acknowledges him as King. Caspian reclaims the islands for Narnia, and replaces Gumpas, the greedy governor, with Lord Bern, whom he names Duke of the Lone Islands. At the second island they visit, Eustace leaves the group to avoid participating in the work needed to render the ship seaworthy after a storm has damaged it, and hides in a dead dragon's cave to escape a sudden downpour. The dragon's treasure arouses his greed: he fills his pockets with gold and jewels and puts on a large golden bracelet; but as he sleeps, he is transformed into a dragon. As a dragon, he becomes aware of how bad his previous behaviour was, and uses his strength to help make amends. Caspian recognizes the bracelet: it belonged to Lord Octesian, another of the lost lords. They speculate that the dragon killed Octesian — or even that the dragon was Octesian. Aslan turns Eustace back into a boy, and as a result of his experiences he is now a much nicer person. They make stops at Burnt Island; at Deathwater Island (so named for a pool of water which turns everything immersed in it into gold, including one of the missing lords who turns out to have been Lord Restimar); at the Duffers' Island, where Lucy herself encounters Aslan; and at the Island Where Dreams Come True&nbsp;— called the Dark Island since it is permanently hidden in darkness. They rescue a desperate Lord Rhoop from this last. Eventually they reach the Island of the Star, where they find the three remaining lost lords in enchanted sleep. Ramandu, the fallen star who lives on the island, tells them that the only way to awaken them is to sail to the edge of the world and there to leave one member of the crew behind. The Dawn Treader continues sailing into an area where merpeople dwell and the water turns sweet rather than salty. At last the water becomes so shallow that the ship can go no farther. Caspian orders a boat lowered and announces that he will go to the world's end with Reepicheep. The crew object, saying that as King of Narnia he has no right to abandon them. Caspian goes to his cabin in a temper, but returns to say that Aslan appeared in his cabin and told him that only Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, and Reepicheep will go on. These four named venture in a small boat through a sea of lilies until they reach a wall of water that extends into the sky. Fulfilling Ramandu's condition, Reepicheep paddles his coracle up the waterfall and is never again seen in Narnia (Lewis hints that he reaches Aslan's Country). Edmund, Eustace, and Lucy find a lamb, who transforms into Aslan and tells them that Edmund and Lucy will not return to Narnia&nbsp;– that they should learn to know him by another name in their own world. He then sends the children home. In their own world, everyone remarks on how Eustace has changed and "you'd never know him for the same boy" - although his mother believes that Edmund and Lucy have been a bad influence on him.
427317	/m/0276f9	The Silver Chair	C. S. Lewis	1953	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story starts when Eustace Scrubb, introduced in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is driven into the company of classmate Jill Pole at their miserable school Experiment House. The impetus is their need to find sanctuary from the gang of school bullies who run rampant in this laissez-faire and mismanaged school run by an incompetent headmistress. Eustace confides to Jill that he has recently been "out of this world" to a land called Narnia, and that his experiences there have led to the changes in his behaviour that everyone seems to have noticed. Jill initially believes that Eustace is lying, but when he promises and asks her to attempt to go to Narnia with him, she agrees. When the bullies are about to converge on the two, Eustace suggests asking for Aslan's help, and the two blunder through a gate that leads them to a high cliff in Aslan's Country. Jill shows off by approaching the cliff's edge, and Eustace, trying to pull her back, falls over the edge. Aslan appears and saves Eustace by blowing him to Narnia. He charges Jill with helping Eustace find Prince Rilian of Narnia (the son of King Caspian X, he disappeared some years before), and he gives Jill four Signs to guide her and Eustace on their quest. The fourth and final Sign is that at a key moment they will be asked to do something in Aslan's name. Aslan then blows Jill into Narnia, where she arrives a few moments after Eustace—just as an elderly and frail King takes ship and sails from the harbor. Jill remembers the Signs, and asks Eustace if he has seen an 'old friend'. They eventually realize that the departing King is actually King Caspian X, who has set off to search for Aslan or his son. Trumpkin the Dwarf, now Lord Regent and quite deaf, provides Jill and Eustace with rooms in Cair Paravel, but on the advice of Glimfeather the Owl they make no mention of their quest. Instead, they are summoned by Master Glimfeather to a Parliament of his fellow talking owls (a pun on Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, but also a nod towards the use of the word "parliament" as a collective noun for owls). The owls explain that Caspian's son, Prince Rilian, disappeared while searching for the green serpent that killed his mother, and is under the spell of an enchantress. Jill and Eustace are flown to the marshes on the northern edge of Narnia where they are partnered with the delightfully gloomy but stalwart Marsh-wiggle Puddleglum, who serves as a guide, hunter for food in the wilderness, and down-to-earth voice of reason. They journey toward the giant-lands north of Narnia after crossing the River Shribble. The first giants they encounter take no notice of them, and the trio continue north where they encounter a deep and sinister canyon. The only route across this barrier is an enormous and ancient bridge, many times larger in scale than anything a human might normally use. Hungry and suffering from exposure, they cross the bridge and meet the Lady of the Green Kirtle accompanied by a silent knight in black armour. She encourages them to proceed northward to Harfang, the castle of the "Gentle Giants". There, she tells them, they will find warm beds and hot food while the Giants celebrate their Autumn Feast. Jill and Eustace are overtaken at the thought of comfort and warmth, and forget all about the signs and the quest, with only straight-headed Puddleglum arguing against the journey to Harfang. Upon their arrival, they find the Gentle Giants only too pleased to "have them for their Autumn Feast." After a night of rest, the three look out a window of the castle and discover the obvious ruins of a giant city in the valley below. They also see the words "Under Me" engraved on the road, which they recognize as Aslan's third Sign. Later they make another discovery: that the giants are planning to eat them for the Autumn Feast. After finding an unguarded door, Scrubb, Pole, and Puddleglum escape the castle only to be chased by hunting dogs and giant nobles. They take shelter in a cave under the ruined city, where they fall down a long dark slope into Underland. Battered and bruised, they are now in complete darkness; but they have followed the Sign that said "Under Me". They are found by an army of earthmen, who take them aboard a boat across a Sunless Sea to the city ruled by the Lady of the Green Kirtle. Her protégé, a young man, greets the travellers pleasantly but does not seem right in the head. He explains that he suffers from nightly psychotic episodes, and during these episodes he must, by the Lady's orders, be bound to a silver chair; for if he is released, he will turn into a deadly green serpent and kill everyone in sight. The threesome determine to witness the youth in his torment, as they sense it could be the key to their quest. When the young man is tied to his chair, his "ravings" seem instead to indicate desperation to escape an enchanted captivity. After launching a battery of dire threats, the youth finally begs his companions to release him in the name of Aslan. Recognizing the fourth Sign, they hesitantly do so. Far from their apprehension of him turning into a serpent or killing them, the young man thanks them. He declares that he is the vanished Prince Rilian, kept underground by the Lady of the Green Kirtle as part of her plot to conquer Overland. The Green Lady returns and tries to bewitch them all into forgetting who they are. The barefoot Puddleglum stamps out the enchantress's magical fire and breaks her spell. The enraged Lady transforms herself into a green serpent, and Rilian realizes that he has been enslaved all these years by his mother's murderer. Rilian kills the serpent with the help of Eustace and Puddleglum, and leads the travellers to escape from Underland. The gnomes, who had also been magically enslaved by the Lady, are now freed by her death and joyfully return to their home even deeper in the earth, a land called Bism. One of them shows Rilian's party a route to the surface before leaving. Rilian returns to Cair Paravel as King Caspian is returning home, and Caspian is reunited with his long-lost son just before dying. Aslan appears and congratulates Eustace and Jill on achieving their goal, then returns them to the stream in his country where Jill first met him. The body of King Caspian appears in the stream, and Aslan instructs Eustace to drive a thorn into the lion's paw. Eustace obeys, and Aslan's blood flows over the dead King, who is revived and returned to youth. Aslan explains that when Jill and Eustace return to their own world, Caspian will go with them briefly, to help set things right there. At the portal between the worlds, Aslan roars, and part of the wall surrounding Experiment House collapses. Caspian, Eustace, and Jill cross the wall and give the school bullies a sound thrashing. The beaten bullies run back towards the school in terror, having also seen Aslan, who lets them glimpse his back as part of the plan. In the confusion Eustace and Jill sneak back into the school building and change into their school clothes, while Aslan and Caspian return to Aslan's country. The headmistress calls the police with a wild story of armed hoodlums and an enormous lion on the school grounds; subsequent enquiries expose her incompetence and mismanagement. The worst of the bullies are expelled and the incompetent headmistress given a new job - failing as a school inspector, she is eventually elected to Parliament. Experiment House becomes a well-managed learning institution, and Eustace and Jill remain good friends.
427704	/m/0277xy	Geek Love	Katherine Dunn	1989	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in two time periods: the first deals with the Binewski children's constant struggle against each other through life. They especially have to deal with the Machiavellian Arty as he develops his own cult: Arturism. In this cult, Arty persuades people to have their limbs amputated so that they can be like Arty, the cult leader, in their search for the principle he calls PIP ("Peace, Isolation, Purity"). Each member moves up in stages, losing increasingly significant chunks of their body, starting with their toes and fingers. As Arty battles his siblings to maintain control over his followers, competition between their respective freak shows slowly begins to take over their lives. The second story is set in the present and is centered on Oly's daughter, Miranda. Nineteen-year-old Miranda does not know Oly is her mother. She lives on a trust fund created by Oly before she gave up her daughter to be raised by nuns. This had been urged by her brother Arty, who was also Miranda's father (not through sexual intercourse, but by the telekinetic powers of Chick, who carried Arty's sperm directly to Oly's ovum). Oly lives in the same rooming house as Miranda so she can "spy" on her. Miranda has a special defect of her own, a small tail, which she flaunts at a local fetish strip club. There she meets Mary Lick, who tries to convince her to have the tail cut off. Lick is a wealthy woman who pays attractive women to get disfiguring operations, ostensibly so they may live up to their potential instead of becoming sex objects; it is implied, however, that Lick's real motivation is to punish them for being more attractive than she is. Oly plans to stop Lick in order to protect her daughter.
428736	/m/027d04	City of Illusions	Ursula K. Le Guin	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story starts as a man is found by a small community (housed in one building) in a forest area in eastern North America. He is naked except for a gold ring on one finger, has no memory except of motor skills at a level equivalent to that of a one-year-old and has bizarre, amber, cat-like eyes.  The villagers choose to welcome and nurture him, naming him Falk (Yellow).  They teach him to speak, educate him about the Earth, and teach him from a book they consider holy, which is Le Guin's "long-translated" version of the Tao Te Ching. Also they teach him about the nature of the never-seen Shing. After six years, Falk is told by the leader of the community that he needs to understand his origins, and as such sets off alone for Es Toch, the city of the Shing in the mountains of western North America. He encounters many obstacles to learning the truth about himself and about the Shing, along with evidence of the barbarism of current human society.  Along the way, it is sometimes suggested to him that the image he holds of the Shing is a distorted one; that they respect the idea of 'reverence for life' and are essentially benevolent and non-alien rulers. This suggestion comes from both telepathic animals who remind him for their own self-defense, and from Estrel, a young woman whom Falk meets after being captured by the Basnasska tribe in the great plains. Falk escapes this violent community with Estrel, to reach the city under her guidance. Falk finally reaches Es Toch, where Estrel betrays him into the hands of the Shing and laughs as she does so. He is told that he is part of a crew of a starship of alien/human hybrids from a planet called Werel and meets a young man, Orry, who came with him in the ship. At this point it becomes clear that Estrel is a human collaborator working for the Shing, and that she had been sent to retrieve him from the wilds of so-called Continent 1. The Shing tell Falk that * they are in fact humans; * the conflict between the League and an alien invader never occurred: on the contrary, the League self-destructed through civil war and exploitation; * the "enemy" is an invention of the Shing rulers themselves to try and ensure through fear that world peace endures under their benevolent, if misunderstood, rule; * Falk's expedition was attacked by rebels who then erased Falk's memory of his previous self; * and the Shing, who managed to save only Orry from the rebel attack, now want to restore Falk's previous identity. Falk however believes that the Shing are non-human liars and that their true intent is to determine for their own purposes, the location of his home-planet. Seeing no other way forward, Falk consents to have his memory erased. The mind of the original Werelian, Agad Ramarren, is restored and the Falk personality is apparently destroyed. He emerges as a new person with pre-Falk memories and vastly greater scientific knowledge. Ramarren's first name, Agad, recalls Jakob Agat, one of the chief protagonists of Planet of Exile: of whom he is a descendant. However, thanks to a memory triggering mnemonic device Falk had left for himself (an instruction, through young Orry, to read the beginning of the book he travels with, his translation of the Tao Te Ching), the Falk personality is revived. After some instability Falk's and Ramarren's minds come to coexist. By comparing the knowledge given to them before and after Ramarren's reemergence, the joint minds are able to detect the essential dishonesty of the Shing's rule and the fact that the alien conquerors can lie telepathically. It was this power that had enabled the not very numerous Shing: "exiles or pirates or empire-builders from some distant star", to overthrow the League of All Worlds twelve centuries before. The Werelians' mental powers are significantly greater than those of their human ancestors. The Shing are inhibited by a cultural dread of killing or being killed and would have no effective defense against any expedition that came forewarned. Still ignorant of the survival of the Falk persona, the Shing hope to send Ramarren back to Werel to present their version of Earth as a happy garden planet prospering under their benign guidance and in no need of outside help. Falk/Ramarren, now fully aware of the brutalized and misruled reality, pretends to accept this, postponing the return journey. Eventually, while on a pleasure trip to view another part of the Earth, the Shing he is with takes telepathic control of Ramarren but is then overcome by Falk, operating as a separate person. Now controlling the Shing, he makes his escape, manipulating his prisoner to show him where to find the ship that would take him home, and how to program it. (He discovers here that the Shing use a totally alien system of mathematics, quite different from the Cetian mathematics used by all human worlds.) Falk/Ramarren finally leaves for his planet, with Orry and the captive Shing who he has used. He can go back home and organize the liberation of the Earth, but this means cutting himself off from his friends there. While City of Illusions concludes at this point, Falk/Ramarren's mission apparently succeeds in bringing freedom to the home world of Terra. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly Ai comes from Earth and remembers the 'Age of the Enemy' as something dreadful but now past. He also knows of the Werelians, now called Alterrans. The fate of the Shing is not mentioned, either there or in any later book.
429787	/m/027jnl	Malafrena	Ursula K. Le Guin	1979	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story takes place from 1825 to 1830, when Orsinia is ruled by the Austrian Empire. The hero is Itale Sorde, the son of the owner of an estate on a lake called Malafrena in a valley of the same name. Itale leaves the estate, against his father's will, to engage in nationalistic and revolutionary politics in the capital.
430780	/m/027nh5	The Mosquito Coast	Paul Theroux			 The film opens with Charlie Fox (River Phoenix) explaining that his father, Allie Fox (Harrison Ford), is a brilliant inventor with "nine patents, six pending." Allie has grown fed up with the American Dream and American consumerism, believing that Americans "buy junk, sell junk and eat junk," and that there is an impending nuclear war on the horizon as a result of American greed and crime. Allie and Charlie go to a hardware store to buy components for a new invention, an ice machine known as Fat Boy. Upon seeing that the product was made in Japan, Allie refuses to purchase it. After Allie and Charlie acquire the components at a local dump, he finishes assembling his creation. Allie's boss and asparagus farm owner, Mr. Polski (Dick O'Neill) complains that Allie is not tending to the asparagus, which is rotting. Allie, Charlie, and Allie's youngest son, Jerry (Jadrien Steele), meet Mr. Polski, and Allie shows him "Fat Boy." The machine leaves Polski unimpressed. As he drives past the fields, a dejected Allie comments on immigrants picking asparagus, and says that where they come from, they might think of ice as a luxury. The home of the migrant workers is in a state of disarray, exemplifying their poverty. That night, Jerry tells "Mother" (Helen Mirren), that he believes something terrible is about to happen. Mother rebuffs her son, explaining that she believes something good will happen. The next morning, Allie throws a party for the immigrant workers before telling his family that they're leaving the United States. After they board a Panamanian barge, the family meets Reverend Spellgood (Andre Gregory), a Christian missionary, his wife (Melanie Boland), and their daughter, Emily (Martha Plimpton). Emily flirts with Charlie. Allie and the Reverend begrudgingly try to get along, despite having entirely different religious views. When the barge docks in Belize City, the families disembark and go their separate ways. Allie, with the consent of the Belize government, purchases a small village called Jeronimo in the rainforest along the river. Mr. Haddy (Conrad Roberts) takes Allie and his family upriver to Jeronimo. Allie meets the inhabitants and proceeds to start building a new, 'advanced' civilization, in the process inventing many new things. The locals take kindly to Allie and his family, but Allie's will to build a utopic civilization keeps them working to their limits. One day, Reverend Spellgood arrives to convert Jeronimo's citizens. In the process, Allie and Spellgood angrily denounce each other, leading to a permanent schism: Allie believes Spellgood to be a religious zealot; Spellgood believes Allie to be a communist. Allie sets to constructing a huge version of "Fat Boy" that can supply Jeronimo with ice. Upon completing the machine, Allie hears rumors of a native tribe in the mountains that have never seen ice. Allie recruits his two sons to carry a load of ice into the jungle to supply the tribe. Upon arriving, Allie finds that the load has melted, and that the tribe has already been visited by missionaries. When Allie returns to Jeronimo, he learns that Spellgood has left with much of the populace, scaring them with stories of God's biblical destruction. The near-empty town is visited by rebels, who demand to use Jeronimo as a guerrilla base. Allie and his family accept to accommodate them while Allie constructs a plan to be rid of them. Set on freezing them to death, Allie bunks the rebels up in the giant ice machine, tells Charlie to lock its only other exit, and activates it. The rebels, waking in panic, try to shoot their way through. To Allie's horror, the rebels' gunfire sets off an explosion within the machine. By the next morning, both the machine and the family's home is in ruins. Worse, the chemicals from the destroyed machine have severely polluted the river. Forced downstream, Allie and his family arrive at the coast. Mother and the children rejoice, believing they can return to the United States. Allie, refusing to believe his dream has been shattered, announces that they have all they need on the beach and, lying, tells the family that America's been destroyed in a nuclear war. Settling on the beach in a houseboat he has built, and refusing assistance from Mr. Haddy, a paranoid Allie believes that the family has accomplished building a utopia. One night, the storm surge from a tropical cyclone nearly forces the family out to sea until Charlie reveals that he has been hiding motor components given to him by Mr. Haddy, allowing them to start the motor on the boat. The family becomes physically and emotionally weaker for lack of food, shelter, and other human companionship. Traveling upstream once again, the family stumbles across Spellgood's compound. Coming ashore, Allie sees barbed wire, and believes the settlement to be a Christian concentration camp. While the rest of the family sleeps, Charlie and Jerry sneak over to the Spellgood home. After finding out that the United States was not destroyed and that Emily will assist them in escaping from Allie, Charlie obtains the keys to a jeep. Before Charlie can convince Mother and his sisters to leave, Allie sets Spellgood's church on fire. Spellgood shoots Allie, paralyzing him from the neck down. The family escapes aboard the boat. The film concludes with the group traveling downriver again, where Allie drifts in and out of consciousness. Allie asks his wife if they are going upstream. She lies to him - going against the wishes of her husband for the first time. Charlie's final narration reports the death of Allie, but gives hope that the rest of the family can live their lives freely from now on.
430840	/m/027nr3	The Awakening	Kate Chopin	1899	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with the Pontellier family vacationing on Grand Isle at a resort on the Gulf of Mexico managed by Madame Lebrun and her two sons, Robert and Victor. The Pontellier family is composed of Léonce Pontellier, a businessman of Louisiana Creole heritage; his wife Edna, and their two sons, Etienne and Raoul. Edna spends most of her time with her close friend Adèle Ratignolle. In a boisterious and cheery manner, Adèle reminds Edna of her duties as a wife and mother. At Grand Isle, Edna eventually forms a connection with Robert Lebrun, a charming and earnest young man who actively seeks Edna's attention and affections. When they fall deeply in love, Robert senses the doomed nature of such a relationship, flees to Mexico under the guise of pursuing a nameless business venture. At this point in the novel, the narrative focus shifts to Edna's complex, shifting emotions as she reconciles her maternal duties with her desire to be with Robert and her desire for social freedom. With the summer vacation over, the Pontelliers return to New Orleans. Edna gradually reassesses her priorities and takes a more active role in her own happiness. She starts to isolate herself from New Orleans society and withdraw from some of the duties traditionally associated with motherhood. Léonce eventually calls in a doctor to diagnose her, fearing she is losing her mental faculties. The doctor advises Léonce to let her be. When Léonce prepares to travel to New York City on business, he sends the boys to his mother and leaves Edna alone at home for an extended period. This gives Edna physical and emotional room to breathe and think over various aspects of her life. While her husband is still away, she moves out of her house and into a small bungalow nearby, spicing up this transitional period by dallying with Alcée Arobin, a persistent suitor with a reputation for being free with his affections. For the first time in the novel, Edna is shown as a sexual being, but the affair proves awkward and emotionally fraught. The other person to whom Edna reaches out during this time is Mademoiselle Reisz, a gifted recitalist whose playing is renowned throughout New Orleans but who maintains a generally hermetic existence. At a party earlier in the novel, Edna is profoundly moved by Mademoiselle Reisz's playing. Mademoiselle Reisz is in contact with Robert while he is in Mexico, receiving letters from him regularly. Edna begs her to reveal their contents, which she does, proving to Edna that Robert is thinking about her. Eventually Robert returns to New Orleans. At first aloof (and finding excuses not to be near Edna), he eventually confesses his passionate love for her. He admits that the business trip to Mexico was an excuse to get away from a relationship that would never work. Edna is called away to help Adèle with a difficult childbirth. Adèle pleads with Edna to think of what she would be turning her back on if she did not behave appropriately. When Edna returns home, she finds a note from Robert stating that he has left forever. Devastated, Edna rushes back to Grand Isle, where she had first met Robert Lebrun. The novel ends with Edna allowing herself to be overtaken by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
435015	/m/0284f9	The Blithedale Romance	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1852	{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel takes place in the utopian community of Blithedale, presumably in the mid-1800s. The main character, Miles Coverdale, embarks on a quest for betterment of the world through the agrarian lifestyle and community of the Blithedale Farm. The story begins with Coverdale's chat with a character named Old Moodie, who reappears throughout the story. The legend of the mysterious Veiled Lady is introduced; she is a popular clairvoyant who disappears unannounced from the social scene. Coverdale then makes the voyage to Blithedale, where he is introduced to such characters as Zenobia and Mr. and Mrs. Silas Foster. At their first community dinner they are interrupted by the arrival of Hollingsworth, a previous acquaintance of Coverdale's, who is carrying a frail, pale girl. Though Hollingsworth believes the girl (whose age is never clarified) is an expected guest, none of the Blithedale citizens recognize her. She immediately develops a strong attachment to Zenobia, and reveals her name to be Priscilla. Soon after, Coverdale becomes severely ill and is bedridden. Hollingsworth takes care of him, as does Zenobia, and he returns to health shortly. However, during his sickness, he believes he is on the brink of death and develops a closeness with Hollingsworth due to their anxiety-ridden situation and discussion of worldly ideals. As he recovers and spring comes, the residents of the community begin to work the land successfully and prove to their neighbors the plausibility of their cause. Priscilla starts to open up, and relationships between the other characters develop as well. Tension in the friendship between Coverdale and Hollingsworth intensifies as their philosophical disagreements continue. Meanwhile, Zenobia and Hollingsworth become close and rumor flies they might build a house together. Mr. Moodie makes a reappearance and asks about Priscilla and Zenobia for reasons to be revealed later. Coverdale then meets a stranger who turns out to be a Professor Westervelt. Westervelt asks also about Zenobia and Hollingsworth. Coverdale does not like the Professor, and when he is retreating in a tree he overhears the Professor talking to Zenobia implying that they have a prior relationship. At this point, the story switches narrators when it becomes Zenobia telling a tale entitled “The Silvery Veil.” She describes the Veiled Lady and her background, though it is never revealed whether or not her version of the story is reality or fiction. After switching narration back to Coverdale, the story proceeds to Eliot's Pulpit, a place of rest and discourse for the four main characters Coverdale, Hollingsworth, Priscilla, and Zenobia. There they discuss women's rights, and Zenobia and Hollingsworth agree, against Coverdale, on a more misogynistic point of view. Their disagreements intensify the next day when Hollingsworth and Coverdale discuss their hopes for the future of Blithedale. They disagree so thoroughly that Coverdale renounces Hollingsworth and effectively ends their friendship. A turning point in the novel, the drama culminates with Coverdale's leaving the farm and returning to the city. He there shows a sort of voyeurism in peeping through hotel windows at a young man and another family. Whilst peeping, he spies Zenobia and Westervelt in another window. They notice, and, embarrassed and curious, Coverdale visits them and gets chastised by Zenobia. She also reveals that Priscilla is staying with them, then all three leave Coverdale for an unnamed appointment. Motivated once more by curiosity, he seeks out Old Moodie, who when drunk tells him the story of Fauntleroy Zenobia, and Priscilla. It turns out that Old Moodie is Fauntleroy, who was a once wealthy man and the father of Zenobia. He fell from grace, but remarried later and had another child, Priscilla, making the two women half sisters. Coverdale is extremely shocked and proceeds to a show of the Veiled Lady, where he recognizes Westervelt as the magician controlling the clairvoyant and Hollingsworth in the audience. He asks the whereabouts of Priscilla, and it is shortly revealed when Hollingsworth removes the veil that Priscilla is indeed the Veiled Lady. All of the main characters then return and meet up at Eliot's Pulpit, where Zenobia accosts Hollingsworth for his love for Priscilla, expresses her depression, and acknowledges her sisterhood with Priscilla. However, Priscilla chooses Hollingsworth over her and the three go their separate ways. When Zenobia recognizes that Coverdale witnessed this scene, she asks him to tell Hollingsworth that he has “murdered” her and tells him that when they next meet it will be behind the “black veil,” representing death. She leaves, and does not return. Hollingsworth, Coverdale, and Silas Foster form a search party and find Zenobia's body in the river. She is buried at Blithedale and given a simple funeral, at which Westervelt makes a last cryptic appearance and declares her suicide foolish. Hollingsworth is severely affected by the death, and it seems as she promised that Zenobia is haunting him. Priscilla is less affected due to her attachment solely to Hollingsworth, and the rest of the characters part and move on with their lives. The last chapter reflects on the wisdom and ideals of Coverdale, now cynical about his purpose in life. The last sentence reveals cause for his bleak, apathetic outlook—he was in love with Priscilla.
435372	/m/02860n	Under the Net	Iris Murdoch		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jake Donaghue has just arrived back in London from a trip to France. Finn, a distant relative who is so obliging that he is sometimes mistaken for a servant, tells Jake that they are being thrown out of Madge's house, where they have been living rent-free for eighteen months. A conversation with Madge reveals that they are being moved to make way for her new lover, the rich bookmaker Sammy Starfield. He goes with his suitcase to the cat-filled corner shop of Mrs Tinckham to check he has all his manuscripts and figure out where to live. Only one manuscript is missing: his translation of Le Rossignol de Bois, a novel by Jean-Pierre Breteuil. It is a mediocre work which he has done for money. He thinks of an old friend, a philosopher named Dave Gellman, and goes to his flat. A political meeting is being held there, and Dave is dismissive, but allows him to leave his suitcase. Finn suggests that he ask Anna Quentin, a singer he once fell in love with. Jake has not seen Anna for several years. He eventually tracks her down to the Riverside Miming Theatre, on Hammersmith Mall, and finds her in a prop room "like a vast toy shop". She is happy to see him, but somewhat uncomfortable when he asks about her new project, involving mime. She suggests that he ask her film-star sister, Sadie, for help. After she leaves he spends the night sleeping in the prop room. The next morning Jake goes to Welbeck Street to look for Sadie, and learns that she is at her Mayfair hairdresser. He spruces himself up, and goes to talk to her. She is very happy to see him there, and asks him to look after her flat while she hides from an admirer named Hugo Belfounder, a fireworks manufacturer who now owns a film studio. It so happens that Hugo was a former friend of Jake's. They had met long ago as fellow participants in a cold-cure experiment, and had had long philosophical discussions which Jake, without Hugo's knowledge, had turned into a book called The Silencer. Because Hugo believed that language was corrupt, Jake felt that creation of the book was a kind of betrayal, and had unilaterally broken off the friendship after its publication, not wishing to face Hugo's anger. Jake goes back to Madge's to fetch his radio, and finds Sammy there. Jake is prepared to fight, but the bookmaker is friendly and even offers him money to leave. This leads to a bet being placed by phone; they win £633 10s, and Sammy promises to send him a cheque. Jake goes to Sadie's flat to begin housesitting, and is surprised to see a copy of The Silencer on a bookshelf—did Hugo give it to her? His pleasure in the flat's luxury is soon destroyed: firstly by a call from Hugo, asking for Miss Quentin (he hangs up when he hears Jake), and secondly by the discovery that he has been deliberately locked in. He calls from the window to his friends, Dave and Finn, who pick the lock and rescue him. Jake resolves to find Hugo, who must love Anna, and have given her the idea for the mime theatre. The three men take a taxi to Holborn Viaduct. They find Hugo's door open, and a note left saying "Gone to the pub". This begins a pub crawl; they do not find Hugo, but get very drunk. At the Skinners' Arms, they are joined by Lefty Todd, a political activist. After Lefty subjects Jake to a kind of Socialist catechism, they go for a walk, and all but Dave have a swim in the Thames. The next morning, Dave belatedly hands Jake a letter from Anna; she wants to see him as soon as possible. He rushes to the Riverside Theatre, but everything has been packed up, and she is gone. Devastated, he takes a ride in the lorry carrying away the contents of the prop room. Jake goes back to Sadie's flat to purloin her copy of The Silencer, but on approaching her door he overhears a conversation between her and Sammy about his most recent translation. His prolonged eavesdropping attracts the puzzled attention of neighbours, but he manages to deduce that Sadie and Sammy are planning to use his translation of Le Rossignol de Bois as the basis of a film proposal, and that they are not planning to recompense him for its use. He is furious. With the help of Finn, Jake breaks into Sammy's flat in Chelsea in order to take the typescript, but they cannot find it; instead, on the spur of the moment, Jake decides to kidnap Sammy's filmstar dog, an Alsatian named Mr Mars, for the purposes of blackmail. They cannot open the dog's cage, and so with great difficulty they carry the whole cage away and file through the bars to get the dog out. A brief newspaper article reveals to Jake that Anna is travelling to Hollywood, via Paris. Accompanied by Mr Mars, Jake's search for Hugo takes him to Bounty Belfounder Studio, in South London. A huge crowd has gathered on a film set of Ancient Rome; they are listening to a political speech delivered by Lefty Todd. It is the first time in years that Jake has seen Hugo, and he drags him away in order to talk to him, but the sudden arrival of the United Nationalists causes a riot, and they have to run. Their attempts to escape the violence, which involve the improvised use of explosives, cause the collapse of the set. When the police arrive and announce that "no-one is to leave", Jake manages to evade questioning by telling Mr Mars to play dead, and carrying him out in his arms, supposedly in order to find a vet. Jake has to walk all the way back, and spends the night sleeping on a bench. On arriving back at Dave's he finds the cheque from Sammy for £600. Wondering what to do with Mr Mars, Jake asks Dave for help in drafting a blackmail letter, and after much discussion they decide to demand £100. Two telegrams arrive from Madge, bearing a job offer in Paris and an order of £30 for travel expenses. But Dave has to tell Jake that Sammy has cancelled the huge cheque. In dismay, they together decide to pool £50 for a bet on Lyrebird; then Jake leaves for France. In Paris, Jake is amazed to discover that Jean-Pierre Breteuil's latest novel, Nous les Vainqueurs, has won the Prize Goncourt, and having dismissed Breteuil's work for so long he is amazed and envious. Madge's offer turns out to be a kind of film industry sinecure, and he finds himself refusing it with distaste for reasons that he cannot explain. He realises that it is Bastille Day, and he wanders the city for hours in a daze. In the evening, he is watching fireworks when he sees Anna. He tries to follow her, but the crowd impedes him. He nearly catches up with her in a park, after she leaves her shoes in order to walk barefoot on the grass. But he briefly loses sight of her, and the woman he accosts is not her. Jake returns to London the next morning to find that Lyrebird has won at long odds, 20-1. Finn has taken his share of the money and disappeared. Several torpid days of inactivity follow, to the despair of Dave. Jake takes a job as an orderly at a hospital. When Hugo is admitted (he has been hit in the head with a brick at a political meeting), Jake sees his chance for a serious conversation with his old friend. But as an orderly he is strongly discouraged from talking to patients, and he decides to come back in the middle of the night. He leaves the window of a store-room open. With an immensity of pains, Jake succeeds in reaching Hugo's room shortly after one in the morning. The conversation is not at all what he expected: Hugo is not at all angry with Jake, and it turns out that while Anna is indeed besotted with Hugo, Hugo himself is in love with Sadie, and Sadie with Jake—not a love triangle, but a one-way love diamond. Hugo demands that Jake help him escape. Jake does so, but they are seen by the hostile porter, Stitch, and Jake knows that he has lost his job. When Jake next goes to Hugo's flat, he finds that Hugo has gone, leaving all he owns to Lefty and his political party. At Mrs Tinckham's, he reads letters from Finn and Sadie. Finn has gone back to Ireland, as he always said he would; Sadie is suggesting he buy Mr Mars for £700, and although this puts Jake back at square one financially, he decides it is the only possible course of action. With Mrs Tinckham, he listens to Anna singing on the radio, and having made his peace with Hugo and with The Silencer he realises that his literary career is just beginning.
437102	/m/028flk	Crystal Boys	Pai Hsien-yung			 The story takes place in Taipei in the 1960s (or, in the most recent film adaptation, in 1973), and follows a short period in the life of a young man called Li-Qing (李青, nicknamed A-Qing). When A-Qing is expelled from his school because of "scandalous relations" with classmate Zhao Ying (趙英), his father kicks him out of the family home. A-Qing begins to hang out at a park called New Park, a gay cruising area and hangout for gay men, where he meets the novel's other primary characters.
437323	/m/028g2v	The Two Noble Kinsmen	John Fletcher	1634		 A prologue informs the audience that the play is based on a story from Chaucer. Three queens come to plead with Theseus and Hippolyta, rulers of Athens, to avenge the deaths of their husbands at the hands of the tyrant Creon of Thebes. Creon has killed the three kings and refuses to allow them proper burial. Theseus agrees to wage war on Creon. In Thebes, Palamon and Arcite, cousins and close friends, are bound by duty to fight for Creon, though they are appalled by his tyranny. In a hard-fought battle Palamon and Arcite enact prodigies of courage, but the Thebans are defeated by Theseus. Palamon and Arcite are imprisoned, but philosophically resign themselves to their fate. Their stoicism is instantly destroyed when from their prison window they see the Athenian princess Emilia. Both fall in love with her, and their friendship turns to bitter rivalry. Arcite is released after a relative intercedes on his behalf. He is banished from Athens, but he disguises himself, wins a local wrestling match, and is appointed as Emilia's attendant. Meanwhile, the jailer's daughter has fallen in love with Palamon and helps him escape. She follows him, but he ignores her: still obsessed with Emilia. He lives in the forest half-starved, where he meets Arcite. The two argue, but Arcite offers to bring Palamon food, drink and armaments so that they can meet in an equal fight over Emilia. The jailer's daughter, forsaken, has gone mad. She sings and babbles in the forest. She meets a troupe of local countrymen who want to perform a Morris dance before the king and queen. Theseus and Hippolyta appear, hunting. The yokels perform a bizarre act for them with the jailer's mad daughter. The royal couple reward them. Arcite returns with the food and weapons. After a convivial dinner with reminiscences, the two fight. Theseus and his entourage arrive on the scene. He orders that Palamon and Arcite be arrested and executed. Hippolyta and Emilia intervene, and so Theseus agrees to a public tournament between the two for Emilia's hand. Each warrior will be allowed three companions to assist them. The loser and his companion knights will be executed. The jailer and his friends rescue his daughter. He tries to restore her mental health. With the advice of a doctor, he encourages her former suitor to pretend to be Palamon so that she will be gradually accustomed to see him as her true love. His devotion slowly wins her over. Before the tournament, Arcite prays to Mars that he win the battle; Palamon prays to Venus that he marry Emilia; Emilia prays to Diana that she be wed to the one who loves her best. Each prayer is granted: Arcite wins the combat, but is then thrown from his horse and dies, leaving Palamon to wed Emilia.
438390	/m/028kdt	Things Fall Apart	Chinua Achebe		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist Okonkwo is strong, hard-working, and strives to show no weakness. Although brusque with his three wives, children, and neighbours, he is wealthy, courageous, and powerful among the people of his village. He is a leader of his village, and he has accomplished a position in his society for which he has striven all his life. Because of the great esteem in which the village holds him, Okonkwo is selected by the elders to be the guardian of Ikemefuna, a boy taken prisoner by the village as a peace settlement between two villages after Ikemefuna's father killed an Umuofian woman. The boy lives with Okonkwo's family and Okonkwo grows fond of him. The boy looks up to Okonkwo and considers him a second father. The Oracle of Umuofia eventually pronounces that the boy must be killed. Ezeudu, the oldest man in the village, warns Okonkwo that he should have nothing to do with the murder because it would be like killing his own child. Rather than seem weak and feminine to the other men of the village, Okonkwo participates in the murder of the boy despite the warning from the old man. In fact, Okonkwo himself strikes the killing blow as Ikemefuna begs his "father" for protection. Shortly after Ikemefuna's death, things begin to go wrong for Okonkwo. During a gun salute at Ezeudu's funeral, Okonkwo's gun explodes and kills Ezeudu's son. He and his family are sent into exile for seven years to appease the gods he has offended. While Okonkwo is away, white men begin to arrive in Umuofia with the intent of introducing their religion. As the number of converts increases, the foothold of the white people grows and a new government is introduced. The village is forced to respond to the imposition of the white people's nascent society—whether by appeasement or through conflict. Returning from exile, Okonkwo finds his village a changed place because of the presence of the white man. He and other tribal leaders try to reclaim their hold on their native land by destroying a local Christian church. In return, the leader of the white government takes them prisoner and holds them for ransom for a short while, further humiliating and insulting the native leaders. As a result, the people of Umuofia finally gather for what could be a great uprising. Okonkwo, a warrior by nature and adamant about following Umuofian custom and tradition, despises any form of cowardice and advocates for war against the white men. When messengers of the white government try to stop the meeting, Okonkwo kills one of them. He realizes with despair that the people of Umuofia are not going to fight to protect themselves—his society's response to such a conflict, so long predictable and dictated by tradition, is changing. When the local leader of the white government comes to Okonkwo's house to take him to court, he finds that Okonkwo has hanged himself. Among his own people, Okonkwo's action has ruined his reputation and status, as it is strictly against the teachings of the Igbo to commit suicide.
438445	/m/028kn6	Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game	Michael Lewis	2003	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The central premise of Moneyball is that the collected wisdom of baseball insiders (including players, managers, coaches, scouts, and the front office) over the past century is subjective and often flawed. Statistics such as stolen bases, runs batted in, and batting average, typically used to gauge players, are relics of a 19th century view of the game and the statistics that were available at the time. The book argues that the Oakland A's' front office took advantage of more analytical gauges of player performance to field a team that could compete successfully against richer competitors in Major League Baseball (MLB). Rigorous statistical analysis had demonstrated that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are better indicators of offensive success, and the A's became convinced that these qualities were cheaper to obtain on the open market than more historically valued qualities such as speed and contact. These observations often flew in the face of conventional baseball wisdom and the beliefs of many baseball scouts and executives. By re-evaluating the strategies that produce wins on the field, the 2002 Athletics, with approximately $41 million in salary, were competitive with larger market teams such as the New York Yankees, who spent over $125 million in payroll that same season. Because of the team's smaller revenues, Oakland is forced to find players undervalued by the market, and their system for finding value in undervalued players has proven itself thus far. Several themes Lewis explored in the book include: insiders vs. outsiders (established traditionalists vs. upstart proponents of sabermetrics), the democratization of information causing a flattening of hierarchies, and "the ruthless drive for efficiency that capitalism demands." The book also touches on Oakland's underlying economic need to stay ahead of the curve; as other teams begin mirroring Beane's strategies to evaluate offensive talent, diminishing the Athletics' advantage, Oakland begins looking for other undervalued baseball skills such as defensive capabilities. Moneyball also touches on the A's methods of prospect selection. Sabermetricians argue that a college baseball player's chance of MLB success is much higher than a traditional high school draft pick. Beane maintains that high draft picks spent on high school prospects, regardless of talent or physical potential as evaluated by traditional scouting, are riskier than if they were spent on more polished college players. Lewis cites A's minor leaguer Jeremy Bonderman, drafted out of high school in 2001 over Beane's objections, as but one example of precisely the type of draft pick Beane would avoid. Bonderman had all of the traditional "tools" that scouts look for, but thousands of such players have been signed by MLB organizations out of high school over the years and failed to develop. Lewis explores the A's approach to the 2002 MLB Draft, when the team had a nearly unprecedented run of early picks. The book documents Beane's often-tense discussions with his scouting staff (who favored traditional subjective evaluation of potential rather than objective sabermetrics) in preparation for the draft to the actual draft, which defied all expectations and was considered at the time a wildly successful (if unorthodox) effort by Beane. In addition, Moneyball traces the history of the sabermetric movement back to such people as Bill James (now a member of the Boston Red Sox front office) and Craig R. Wright. Lewis explores how James' seminal Baseball Abstract, an annual publication that was published from the late 1970s through the late 1980s, influenced many of the young, up-and-coming baseball minds that are now joining the ranks of baseball management.
438479	/m/028kty	The Wind Done Gone	Alice Randall	2001-05-01	{"/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 The plot of Gone with the Wind revolves around a pampered Southern woman named Scarlett O'Hara, who lives through the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The Wind Done Gone is the same story, but told from the viewpoint of Cynara, a mulatto slave on Scarlett's plantation and the daughter of Scarlett's father and Mammy; the title is an African American Vernacular English sentence that might be rendered "The Wind Has Gone" in Standard American English. Cynara's name comes from the Ernest Dowson poem Non sum qualís eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, a line from which ("I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind") was the origin of Mitchell's novel's title as well. Sold from the O'Haras, Cynara eventually makes her way back to Atlanta and becomes the mistress of a white businessman. She later leaves him for a black aspiring politician, eventually moving with him to Reconstruction Washington, D.C. The book consciously avoids using the names of Mitchell's characters or locations. Cynara refers to her sister as "Other", rather than Scarlett, and to Other's husband as "R" instead of Rhett Butler. Other is in love with "Dreamy Gentleman" (Ashley Wilkes), although he is married to "Mealy Mouth" (Melanie Wilkes). The magnificence of the O'Haras' house, Tara, is reduced to "Tata" or "Cotton Farm", and Twelve Oaks is renamed for its builders, "Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees".
438653	/m/028lcq	Billy Budd	Herman Melville		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The plot follows Billy Budd, a seaman impressed into service aboard HMS Bellipotent in the year 1797, when the British Royal Navy was reeling from two major mutinies and was threatened by the Revolutionary French Republic's military ambitions. He is impressed from another ship, The Rights of Man (named after the book by Thomas Paine). As his former ship moves off, Budd shouts, "Good-by to you too, old Rights-of-Man." Billy, an illegitimate orphan, has an openness and natural charisma that makes him popular with the crew. For unexplained reasons, he arouses the antagonism of the ship's Master-at-arms, John Claggart, who falsely accuses Billy of conspiracy to mutiny. When Claggart brings his charges to the Captain, the Hon. Edward Fairfax "Starry" Vere, he summons Claggart and Billy to his cabin for a private meeting. Claggart makes his charges, and Billy is unable to respond, as he has a speech impediment. He strikes and accidentally kills Claggart. Vere convenes a drumhead court-martial. He acts as convening authority, prosecutor, defense counsel and sole witness (except for Billy). He intervenes in the deliberations of the court-martial panel to argue them into convicting Billy, despite their and his belief in Billy's innocence. (Vere says in the moments following Claggart's death, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!") Vere claims to be following the letter of the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War. Vere and the other officers find that their own opinion matters little. "We are not talking about justice, we are talking about the law". The law states that an enlisted man killing an officer during wartime (accidentally or not) must hang. The court-martial convicts Billy following Vere's argument that any appearance of weakness in the officers and failure to enforce discipline could stir more mutiny throughout the British fleet. Condemned to be hanged the morning after his attack on Vere, Billy before his execution says, "God bless Captain Vere!" His words were repeated by the gathered crew in a "resonant and sympathetic echo." The novel closes with three chapters that present ambiguity: *Chapter 29 describes the death of Captain Vere. In a naval action against the French ship, Athée (the Atheist), Captain Vere is mortally wounded. His last words are "Billy Budd, Billy Budd." *Chapter 30 presents an extract from an official naval gazette purporting to give the facts of the fates of John Claggart and Billy Budd aboard HMS Bellipotent — but the "facts" offered turn the facts that the reader learned from the story upside down. The gazette article described Budd as a conspiring mutineer likely of foreign birth and mysterious antecedents who, when confronted by John Claggart, the master-at-arms loyally enforcing the law, stabs Claggart and kills him. The gazette concludes that the crime and weapon used suggest a foreign birth and subversive character; it reports that the mutineer was executed and nothing is amiss aboard HMS Bellipotent. *Chapter 31 reprints a cheaply printed ballad written by one of Billy's shipmates as an elegy. The adult, experienced man represented in the poem is not the innocent youth portrayed in the preceding chapters.
441425	/m/028y3p	Bleak House	Charles Dickens	1853	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sir Leicester Dedlock and Honoria, Lady Dedlock (his junior by more than 20 years) live at his estate of Chesney Wold. Unknown to Sir Leicester, Lady Dedlock had a lover, Captain Hawdon, before she married Sir Leicester &mdash; and had a child by him, Esther Summerson. Lady Dedlock, believing her daughter is dead, has chosen to live out her days 'bored to death' as a fashionable lady of the world. Esther is raised by Miss Barbary, Lady Dedlock's spartan sister, who instils a sense of worthlessness in her that Esther will battle throughout the novel. Esther doesn't know that Miss Barbary is her aunt, thinking of her only as her godmother. When Miss Barbary dies, the Chancery lawyer Conversation Kenge takes charge of Esther's future on the instruction of his client, John Jarndyce. Jarndyce becomes Esther's guardian, and after attending school in Reading for six years, Esther moves in with him at Bleak House, along with his wards, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Esther is to be Ada's companion. Esther soon befriends both Ada and Richard, who are cousins. They are beneficiaries in one of the wills at issue in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; their guardian is a beneficiary under another will, and in some undefined way the two wills conflict. Richard and Ada soon fall in love, but though Mr. Jarndyce doesn't oppose the match, he stipulates that Richard (who is inconstant) must first choose a profession. Richard first tries the medical profession, and Esther first meets the newly-qualified Dr. Allan Woodcourt at the house of Richard's prospective tutor, Mr. Baynham Badger. When Richard mentions the prospect of gaining from the resolution of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Jarndyce beseeches him never to put faith in what he calls "the family curse". Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock is also a beneficiary under one of the wills in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Early in the book, while listening to her solicitor, the close-mouthed but shrewd Mr. Tulkinghorn, read an affidavit aloud, she recognizes the handwriting on the copy. The sight affects her so much that she almost faints, which Tulkinghorn notes and thinks should be investigated. He traces the copyist who turns out to be a pauper known only as "Nemo" who has recently died. The only person to identify him is a street-sweeper, a poor homeless boy named Jo. Lady Dedlock also investigates the matter disguised as her French maid, Mademoiselle Hortense. She pays Jo to take her to Nemo's grave. Meanwhile, Tulkinghorn is convinced that Lady Dedlock's secret might threaten the interests of his client, Sir Leicester Dedlock, and watches her constantly, even enlisting the maid, who detests her. Esther meets her mother at church and talks with her later at Chesney Wold - though, at first, neither woman recognizes the tie that binds them. Later, Lady Dedlock realizes that her abandoned child is not dead and is, in fact, Esther. She waits to confront Esther with this knowledge until Esther survives an unidentified disease (possibly smallpox, as it permanently disfigures her), which she got from her maid Charley (whom she devotedly nursed back to health). Though they are happy to be reunited, Lady Dedlock tells Esther that they must never acknowledge their connection again. Esther recovers, but her beauty is supposedly ruined. She finds that Richard, having failed at several professions, has ignored his guardian and is wasting his resources in pushing Jarndyce and Jarndyce to conclusion (in his and Ada's favour). Further, he has broken with his guardian, under the influence of his lawyer, the odious and crafty Mr. Vholes. In the process of becoming an active litigant, Richard has lost all his money and is breaking his health. In further defiance of John Jarndyce, he and Ada have secretly married, and Ada is carrying Richard's child. Esther experiences her own romance when Dr. Woodcourt returns to England, having survived a shipwreck, and continues to seek her company despite her disfigurement. Unfortunately, Esther has already agreed to marry her guardian, John Jarndyce. Hortense and Tulkinghorn discover Lady Dedlock's past. After a quiet but desperate confrontation with the lawyer, Lady Dedlock flees her home, leaving a note apologizing for her conduct. Tulkinghorn dismisses Hortense, no longer any use to him. Feeling abandoned and betrayed by Lady Dedlock and Tulkinghorn, Hortense kills Tulkinghorn and seeks to frame Lady Dedlock for his murder. Sir Leicester discovers his lawyer's death and his wife's flight, and he has a catastrophic stroke but manages to communicate that he forgives his wife and wants her to return to him. Inspector Bucket, who up to now has investigated several matters on the periphery of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, accepts the commission of the stricken Sir Leicester to find Lady Dedlock. He suspects Lady Dedlock, even after he arrests George Rouncewell (the only other person known to be with Tulkinghorn on the night of the murder and to have quarrelled with him repeatedly). Bucket asks Esther to help search for Lady Dedlock. By this point, Bucket has cleared Lady Dedlock by discovering Hortense's guilt, but Lady Dedlock has no way to know this and wanders the country in cold weather before dying at the cemetery of her former lover Captain Hawdon (Nemo). Esther and Bucket find her there. Developments in Jarndyce and Jarndyce seem to take a turn for the better when a later will is found which revokes all previous wills and leaves the bulk of the estate to Richard and Ada. Meanwhile, John Jarndyce cancels his engagement with Esther, who becomes engaged to Dr. Woodcourt. They go to Chancery to find Richard and to discover what news there might be of the lawsuit's resolution. To their horror, they learn that the new will has no chance to resolve Jarndyce and Jarndyce, for the costs of litigation have consumed the estate. Richard collapses, and Dr Woodcourt determines that he is in the last stages of tuberculosis. Richard apologizes to John Jarndyce and dies, leaving Ada alone with their child, a boy she names Richard. Jarndyce takes in Ada and the child. Esther and Woodcourt marry and live in a Yorkshire house which Jarndyce gives to them. In time, they have two daughters. Many of this intricate novel's subplots deal with the minor characters and their diverse ties to the main plot. One of these subplots is the hard life and happy though difficult marriage of Caddy Jellyby and Prince Turveydrop. Another focuses on George Rouncewell's rediscovery of his family at Chesney Wold and his reunion with his mother and brother.
441838	/m/028z8y	Bridge to Terabithia	Donna Diamond	1977-10-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jesse (a.k.a. Jess) Aarons, the only boy in a family of five children, lives in rural southwest Virginia. His mother favors his sisters Brenda, Ellie, May Belle, and Joyce Ann, while his father works in Washington, D.C., and therefore spends little time with his children. May Belle, the second youngest sister, adores and admires Jesse. Leslie Burke is an only child who moves from Arlington, Virginia, to the same area as Jesse. Her parents, both writers, are wealthy. Jess and Leslie soon become close friends. Jess shares his secret love of drawing with Leslie, and Leslie shares with Jess her love of fantasy stories. With this new and powerful friendship, the two children create an imaginary kingdom in the woods near their homes, accessible only by a rope swing over a creek. They name the kingdom Terabithia and declare themselves King and Queen, and they spend every day after school there. In Terabithia, they are able to face their real-world fears, such as that of the seventh grade bully Janice Avery. Leslie gives Jess a drawing pad and a set of watercolors and a tube of paint as a Christmas gift, and Jess gives Leslie a dog whom she names Prince Terrien, or "P.T." for short. They consider P.T. to be the royal protector, Prince of Terabithia and, due to his puppyish antics, court jester. Jesse has a crush on his young music teacher, Miss Edmunds. The central crisis occurs when Jesse accompanies Miss Edmunds to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and Leslie goes to Terabithia alone. The rope breaks as she is swinging over the rain-swollen creek. Though a good swimmer, Leslie falls into the creek and drowns, possibly due to head injury. Jesse can overcome his grief only with the strength and courage that his friendship with Leslie had given him. He attempts to deal with his grief by going back to Terabithia alone to make a memorial wreath for Leslie. During his ceremony, he hears a cry for help and finds May Belle caught in the midst of a fallen tree that she had been trying to use as a bridge across the creek. He helps her out of danger and rescues her. Leslie's grief-stricken parents soon decide to leave the area. As Mr. and Mrs. Burke are leaving, Jesse asks to take some of their wooden planks from their back porch. They say he may have anything left in the house; thus permitted, he goes down to Terabithia to build a bridge. After he finishes the bridge, he takes May Belle over it and decides to make her the Princess of Terabithia.
442854	/m/029233	Uncle Dynamite	P. G. Wodehouse		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Frederick Altamont Cornwalis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, known to all as Uncle Fred, is on the loose once again (Lady Ickenham having decamped for a wedding in Trinidad), and Reginald ("Pongo") Twistleton, his long-suffering nephew (and Drones Club member) has every right to be petrified. Uncle Fred has just arrived at Ashenden Manor, home of Sir Aylmer Bostock, Pongo's future father-in-law. Pongo is already in residence and has committed two rank floaters: accidentally smashing a whatnot from Sir Aylmer's collection of African curios, and (in the course of demonstrating how Brazilian natives kill birds with rude slings) smashing a coveted bust of his host. Pongo's solution is to replace the busted bust with another one, abstracted from Ickenham hall. But unknown to him, the replacement bust was fashioned by his former fiancée Sally Painter, and conceals valuable jewellery that a friend of hers was planning to smuggle through New York Customs. Sally tries to replace the bust with another of Sir Aylmer she sculpted (but had had returned to her, after an unfortunate incident relating to her brother Otis' publication of Sir Aylmer's memoirs), but this comes to naught, and both busts end up in Sir Aylmer's collection room. Uncle Fred sees these not as reverses, but as opportunities to show his stuff. Having met Bill Oakshott (the nominal owner of Ashenden Manor, but under the thumb of his uncle Sir Aylmer) on the train, he contrives to get invited to the house&mdash;under the name of Major Brabazon-Plank. Unfortunately, the local Constable, Harold Potter, happens to have grown up with Major Plank (and also happens to remember arresting Uncle Fred and Pongo at the dog races under the names of Edwin Smith of Nasturtium Road, East Dulwich). Potter, intimately tied to the household through his fiancée, the housemaid Elsie Bean, becomes suspicious, and watches the house. Uncle Fred's tasks before him are to snatch the bust for Sally Painter; get Sir Aylmer to drop his suit against Otis, so Sally will not lose the money she invested in his firm; convince Pongo to turn down Hermione Bostock and marry Sally instead; restore Bill Oakshott to his place as head of his family home; and convince Constable Potter not only to not arrest him, but indeed to quit the force so he and Elsie Bean may live happily ever after. The only obstacles in his way are the real Major Brabazon-Plank and the irresistible opportunity to judge the Bonnie Babies competition at the Ashenden Oakshott Fête. Bill Oakshott finds inspiration in the dominant hero of Ethel M. Dell's 'The Way of an Eagle'. This real-life female novelist was a model for another of Wodehouse's characters, Rosie M. Banks. The story has also been adapted as a serial in six half-hour episodes for BBC Radio 4, starring Richard Briers as Uncle Fred and Hugh Grant as Pongo, with narration by Paul Eddington. Uncle Fred and Pongo would return in Cocktail Time (1958) and Service With a Smile (1961).
443287	/m/0293n1	Tourist Season	Carl Hiaasen	1986	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Las Noches de Diciembre (Spanish, "The Nights of December") is a small terrorist cell led by renegade newspaper columnist Skip Wiley, a brilliant-but-insane Uncle Duke-like character, as El Fuego. Wiley believes that the only way to save Florida's natural beauty from destruction is to violently dissuade tourists from visiting and/or settling in the state. Recruiting three comrades with similar axes to grind against the Florida establishment, they begin a spree of flashy kidnappings, murders, and bombings to frighten off new arrivals into the Sunshine State. Fittingly, their first victim is B.D. "Sparky" Harper, the head of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. Harper's body is found stuffed into an oversized suitcase, dressed in a garish tourist outfit and smeared with suntan oil, and with his legs amputated. Next, Wiley's gang starts kidnapping and murdering random tourists and Florida residents, many of whom are fed to a giant North American Crocodile (nicknamed "Pavlov"). Brian Keyes, a private investigator and former news reporter for the Miami Sun, is hired by the Public Defender's office to help defend the police's prime suspect in Sparky Harper's murder, a petty burglar named Ernesto Cabal, who was caught driving Harper's stolen car. Brian is inclined to believe that Harper's murder is much too bizarre to be Ernesto's work, but the Miami police, in their eagerness to close the case, dismiss him. Ernesto commits suicide when his own lawyer states that the case is a lost cause. Brian is then hired by Nell Bellamy (the wife of the first tourist victim) to find her missing husband, and by his old mentor, Sun editor Cab Mulcahy, to locate Wiley, who has disappeared. After an uncomfortable encounter with Wiley's girlfriend, Jenna (Brian's ex-girlfriend), Keyes tracks Wiley to a cabin in the Everglades, where he is abducted by Las Noches. Wiley reveals himself as the group's leader, and tells Brian that his job is to return to Miami (alive), and spread the word of Las Noches demands. But Wiley also says that he is not ready to have his own role exposed yet, and warns Brian that if he does so, then the violence will escalate, immediately and horribly. To drive home the fact that Las Noches is serious, Wiley has Keyes witness as their latest victim, retiree Ida Kimmelman, is fed to Pavlov. Keyes tries to stop the murder, and is stabbed in the back by one of the gang, a Cuban named Jesús Bernal. Keyes is returned to the city and treated in the hospital. Since it is the start of the tourist season, the police's initial reaction to Keyes's warnings is to cover up, dismissing the Las Noches communiques as a hoax. Ricky Bloodworth uncovers the letters and writes an article on the letters, but misspells the name of the group, as "Las Nachos". The terrorists retaliate by triggering several bombs in public places, forcing the authorities to take them seriously. Keyes's old friend, Detective Al Garcia is appointed head of a task force to catch the terrorists. Based on Wiley's hints, Keyes, Mulcahy, and Garcia deduce that the terrorists plan to kidnap Miami's much-touted Orange Bowl Queen, in the most spectacularly public fashion possible. Since the civic leaders flatly refuse to cancel the Orange Bowl Parade, or to allow police guards to be seen near the beauty queen, Garcia suggests hiring Keyes as her undercover bodyguard. Keyes is pleasantly surprised when the recently-crowned beauty queen, Kara Lynn Shivers (19), turns out to be an intelligent, self-possessed, and thoroughly sensible person. She actually hates the whole beauty queen "racket," and takes part only to indulge her father's fanatic dreams of making her a star. She and Keyes quickly find common ground and grow closer, eventually developing a relationship. While escorting her home from a tennis game, Keyes catches Jesús Bernal loitering in the parking lot, doing a lackluster job of surveilling the Orange Bowl Queen. Bernal is not paying enough attention, and Keyes beats him soundly, armed with nothing but a tennis racket. Furious, Wiley informs the gang that Bernal has thrown away their psychological advantage by revealing himself and their plans too soon. To regain it, Wiley announces that he's devised a new plan. Bernal, simmering with humiliation and aching for reinstatement with the anti-Castro terrorist group he was expelled from, decides to proceed with his own agenda. Abandoning Las Noches, he sends a mail bomb to Al Garcia, whom he identifies as a "traitor" to the anti-Castro movement. Farcically, the bomb is instead opened by over-eager Sun reporter Ricky Bloodworth, illegally sifting Garcia's mail for clues about the terrorists. Because of Bernal's poor construction, the bomb does not kill Bloodworth, it only injures him. Garcia never learns that the bomb was addressed to him, and the bombing is attributed to Wiley's gang. The next evening, Wiley unleashes his new plan: buzzing the deck of the pre-Orange Bowl Friendship Cruise out at sea in a helicopter, Wiley promises to give the tourists on board some "real Florida souvenirs," and drops hundreds of shopping bags from posh vendors onto the deck - which, when ripped open by the frenzied tourists, contain live snakes. Chaos envelops the deck of the cruise ship, and one foolish passenger yells "abandon ship!" causing all of them to dive off into the ocean. As the Coast Guard is rescuing them, the helicopter flies away, but unexpectedly crashes at sea before it reaches land. No bodies are recovered. Believing that Las Noches are dead, the Miami civil leaders breathe a sigh of relief. Keyes and Garcia remain skeptical, however, and insist that their security precautions remain in place until after the Orange Bowl Parade. In a last-ditch attempt at redemption, Jesús Bernal kidnaps Garcia at gunpoint and drives him out to Key Largo for a flashy execution. Garcia is wounded in the shoulder by Bernal's shotgun, but Keyes manages to track them down and kills Bernal with a pistol shot. To Keyes's surprise, the Parade comes and goes without any sign of Wiley or his gang. The next day, Cab Mulcahy writes his own front-page account of the tourist murders, revealing his own knowledge of Wiley's role in the killings and apologizing to his readers for withholding it. The evening after the Parade is the Orange Bowl game itself. In the stands, Keyes realizes, belatedly, that Kara Lynn is supposed to make a brief appearance during the game's halftime show. With all their security measures focused on the Parade, the game is a perfect opportunity for Las Noches, alive and well, to strike. In the chaos, Kara Lynn is kidnapped and carried out of the stadium on an airboat, though one of the gang, ex-football player "Viceroy" Wilson is shot to death by a Shriner friend of Theodore Bellamy, acting as Kara Lynn's unofficial escort. With the police rushing around in confusion, Keyes goes directly to Jenna's house and examines Wiley's old press clippings. Quickly deducing where Wiley has gone, Keyes drags Jenna along with him. Wiley has taken Kara Lynn to Osprey Island, a small nature preserve in the middle of Biscayne Bay. When Kara Lynn recovers from her drugged sleep, Wiley is taken aback, and sorrowful, that she is, contrary to his expectations, an intelligent and unspoiled young woman. Regretfully he reveals his final plan: the surface of the island has been mined with dynamite, to be exploded at dawn, to allow for the construction of a snazzy new condominium complex. Wiley plans to leave Kara Lynn there, with the island's other remaining wildlife, just to illustrate to the greedy developers of Florida the consequences of their rampant development - as he puts it, the island's native flora and fauna have zero value for such people, but they might stop and think if their dynamite blows up the only species on earth they actually care about: "a future customer." Before Wiley can go, however, Keyes arrives and disables Wiley with a bullet to the leg. The fisherman who dropped Keyes off refused to wait around, so Keyes demands to know where Wiley anchored his boat. At first, Wiley refuses to tell, prepared to let the dynamite claim himself, Keyes, and Kara Lynn all at once. But he is horrified to learn that Keyes has brought Jenna along, and surrenders the boat's location. To Keyes's surprise, he refuses to go along with them, preferring to stay on the island. As they speed away from the island, Keyes, Kara Lynn, and Jenna look back and see an amazing spectacle: Wiley is climbing a tree (bad leg and all), trying feverishly to scare a bald eagle nesting there into taking flight before the dynamite explodes. The novel ends just as the "all clear" signal for the detonation is sounded, with the three of them whispering the same prayer: "Please fly away."
444143	/m/0296dd	Come Back, Little Sheba	William Inge			 Set in the cramped, cluttered Midwestern house of Lola and Doc Delaney, the plot centers on how their life is disrupted by the presence of a boarder named Marie, a college art student with a strong lustful appetite. Overweight and slovenly, the housebound middle-aged Lola engages in mild flirtations with the milkman and mailman, like the ingratiating coquette she once was. She sees in Marie herself at that age, and encourages her pursuit of wealthy Bruce and muscular Turk. Doc, who ekes out a living as a chiropractor, was forced to abandon a promising career in medicine when he married a pregnant Lola. She subsequently lost the baby. As a recovering alcoholic, Doc maintains a precarious sobriety by avoiding the past. For him, Marie represents the youth and opportunity he sacrificed, and his eventual realization that she is not as pure and perfect as he imagined sends him back to the bottle and a slow descent into unbridled rage. The title refers to Lola's missing dog, who remains lost at the play's end.
444599	/m/02982x	Tigana	Guy Gavriel Kay	1990-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot focuses on a group of rebels attempting to overthrow both tyrants and win back their homeland. Many of the rebels are natives of the province of Tigana, which was the province that most ably resisted Brandin: In a crucial battle, Brandin's son was killed. In retaliation for this, Brandin attacked Tigana and crushed it more savagely than any other part of the Palm; then, following this victory, he used his magic to remove the name and history of Tigana from the minds of the population. Brandin named it Lower Corte, making Corte, their traditional enemies to their north, seem superior to a land that was all but forgotten. Only those born in Tigana before the invasion can hear or speak its name, or remember it as it was; as far as everyone else is concerned, that area of the country has always been an insignificant part of a neighbouring province, hence the rebels are battling for the very soul of their country. The book puts great emphasis on the different moral shades of people. Though seen by most of the characters as a ruthless, grief-maddened tyrant, Brandin is actually a very sympathetic character, especially in his love for Dianora, one of the women of his harem, called a saishan in the book—a character who is in fact from Tigana herself and engineered her own selection into Brandin's seraglio so that she could assassinate him, only to fall in love with him before she could. Despite being likeable and sympathetic, many of the rebels are equally ruthless in their attempts to overthrow the Tyrants, setting off wars, assassinating soldiers and officials and even committing suicide to depose Brandin. All the main characters are very complex. The book is full of themes of identity, love, patriotism, revenge and magic.
445619	/m/029c51	The Red and the Black	Stendhal	1830-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In two volumes, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century tells the story of Julien Sorel’s life in a monarchic society of fixed social class. Book I presents the ambitious son of a carpenter in the (fictional) Verrières village, in Franche-Comté, France, who would rather read and daydream about the glory days of Napoleon's long-disbanded army, than work his father’s timber business with his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual affectations. In the event, Julien Sorel becomes an acolyte of the abbé Chénal, the local Catholic prelate, who later secures him a post as the tutor for the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. Despite appearing to be a pious, austere cleric, Julien is uninterested in the Bible beyond its literary value, and how he can use memorised passages (learnt in Latin) to impress important people. He enters a love affair with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife; it ends badly when exposed to the village, by her chambermaid, Elisa, who had romantic designs upon him. The abbé Chénal orders Julien to a seminary in Besançon, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. The initially cynical seminary director, the abbé Pirard (of the Jansenist faction more hated than the Jesuit faction in the diocese), likes Julien, and becomes his protector. Disgusted by the Church’s political machinations, the abbé Pirard leaves the seminary, yet first rescues Julien from the persecution he would have suffered as his protégé, by recommending him as private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Roman Catholic legitimist. Book II chronicles the time leading to the July Revolution of 1830, and Julien Sorel’s Parisian life, as an employee of the de la Mole family. Despite moving among high society, the family and their friends, condescend to Julien for being an uncouth plebeian — his intellectual talents notwithstanding. In his boundlessly ambitious rise in the world, Julien perceives the materialism and hypocrisy important to the élite of Parisian society, and that the counter-revolutionary temper of the time renders it impossible for well-born men of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility to progressively participate in the public affairs of the nation with any success. The Marquis de la Mole takes Julien to a secret meeting, then despatches him on a dangerous mission to communicate a political letter (that he has memorised) to the Duc d'Angouleme, who is exiled in England; however, the callow Julien is mentally distracted, by an unsatisfying love affair, thus he only learns the message by rote, but not its political significance as a legitimist plot. Unwittingly, the plebeian Julien Sorel risks his life in secret service to the right-wing monarchists he most opposes; to himself, Julien rationalises such action as merely helping the Marquis, his employer, whom he respects. Meanwhile, in the preceding months, the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde de la Mole, had become emotionally torn, between her romantic attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. At first, he finds her unattractive, but his interest is piqued, by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others; twice, she seduces and rejects him, leaving him in a miasma of despair, self-doubt, and happiness (he won her over aristocrat suitors). Only during his secret mission does he gain the key to winning her affections: a cynical jeu d’amour proffered to him by Prince Korasoff, a Russian man-of-the-world. At great emotional cost, Julien feigns indifference to Mathilde, provoking her jealousy with a sheaf of love-letters meant to woo Madame de Fervaques, a widow in the social circle of the de la Mole family. Consequently, Mathilde sincerely falls in love with Julien, eventually revealing to him that she carries his child; yet, whilst he was on diplomatic mission in England, she became officially engaged to Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable, rich young man, heir to a duchy. Learning of Julien’s romantic liaison with Mathilde, the Marquis de la Mole is angered, but relents before her determination, and his affection for him, and bestows upon Julien an income-producing property attached to an aristocratic title, and a military commission in the army. Although ready to bless their marriage, he changes his mind upon receiving the reply to a character-reference-letter he wrote to the abbé Chénal, Julien’s previous employer in the village of Verrières; however, the reply letter, written by Madame de Rênal — at the urging of her confessor priest — warns the Marquis that Julien Sorel is a social-climbing cad who preys upon emotionally vulnerable women. On learning the Marquis’s disapproval of the marriage, Julien Sorel travels to his home village of Verrières and shoots Madame de Rênal during Mass in the village church; she survives. Despite the efforts of Mathilde, Madame de Rênal, and the priests devoted to him since his early life, Julien Sorel is determined to die — because the materialist society of Bourbon Restoration France will not accommodate a low-born man of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility possessing neither money nor social connections. Meanwhile, the presumptive duke, Monsieur de Croisenois, one of the fortunate few of Bourbon France, is killed in a duel fought over a slur upon the honour of Mathilde de la Mole. Despite her undiminished love for Julien, his imperiously intellectual nature, and its component romantic exhibitionism, render Mathilde’s prison visits to him a duty. Moreover, when Julien learns he did not kill Madame de Rênal, that resurrects his intemperate love for her — lain dormant throughout his Parisian time and his passion for Mathilde, who visits him during the final days of his life. Afterwards, Mathilde de la Mole re-enacts the cherished, 16th-century French tale of Queen Margot visiting her dead lover, Joseph Boniface de La Mole, to kiss the lips of his severed head. In the 19th century, Mathilde de la Mole so treated Julien Sorel’s severed head, making a shrine of his tomb, in the Italian fashion.
447187	/m/029jrk	Pincher Martin	William Golding		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot of Pincher Martin surrounds the survival and psychophysical, spiritual and existential plight of one Christopher Hadley "Pincher" Martin, a temporary naval lieutenant and the sole survivor of a military torpedo destroyer which sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean. Martin is unconscious at the opening of the novel, but wakes in complete darkness, submerged, before nearly drowning after being thrown into the side of a rocky islet. After desperately calling out for help, and receiving none, he correctly deduces that his naval crew is dead; and, disoriented, he scrambles up the rock to avoid the constant battering of the surrounding waves. Once on the island, he starts his struggle for survival but, as time goes by, a series of strange and increasingly terrifying events, which he at first dismisses as hallucinations, slowly cause him to lose his grip on reality. The novel's twist ending suggests that Martin actually drowned shortly after his ship was sunk. This interpretation changes the work into an allegory of purgatory and damnation. Some believe that, instead, sometime during the narrative, Martin loses his battle to maintain his sanity while fighting to survive alone on the barren rocks.
447192	/m/029jsm	Chocky	John Wyndham	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Many children have imaginary friends but one father becomes rather concerned that his son, Matthew, is a bit old to have one. His concerns deepen as his son becomes increasingly distressed and blames it on arguments with this unseen companion. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the friend is far from imaginary, but is an alien consciousness communicating with Matthew's mind—a fact that is of intense interest to shadowy government forces. Chocky reveals that it is a scout sent from its home planet (where there is only one sex) in search of new planets to colonise. Chocky, talking "through" Matthew, to his father, David Gore, explains that in saving Matthew from a recent accident it has violated the rules of its scout mission (interfering with events on Earth) and must end its link with him completely. Its further work on Earth will be conducted in a much more covert manner.
447792	/m/029lwz	Civilization and its Discontents	Sigmund Freud	1930	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Freud begins this work by taking up a possible source of religious feeling that his previous book, The Future of an Illusion, overlooked: the oceanic feeling of wholeness, limitlessness, and eternity. Freud himself cannot experience this feeling of dissolution, but notes that there do indeed exist different pathological and healthy states (e.g. love) where the boundary between ego and object is lost, blurred, or distorted. Freud categorizes the oceanic feeling as being a regression into an earlier state of consciousness before the ego had differentiated itself from the world of objects. Freud sticks to his earlier conviction that the need that the religious feeling arises out of is 'the infant's helplessness and the longing for the father', and “imagine[s] that the oceanic feeling became connected with religion later on”, that is, that it is not a genuine religious experience, though certainly people experiencing it have felt that way. The second chapter delves into how religion is one of many modes of being that arise out of the need for the individual to distance and soothe itself in the face of the suffering that exists within the world. The ego of the child forms over the oceanic feeling when it grasps that there are negative aspects of reality that it wishes to separate itself from. But at the same time as the ego is hoping to avoid displeasure, it is also building itself so that it may be better able to act towards securing happiness, and these are the twin aims of the pleasure principle when the ego realizes that ‘reality’ must also be dealt with. Freud claims that the 'purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle' and the rest of the chapter is an exploration of various styles of human adaptation used to secure happiness from the world while also trying to avoid or limit suffering. Freud points out three main sources of displeasure we attempt to master: our own painful and mortal existence, the cruel and destructive aspects of the natural world, and the suffering endemic to the reality that we must live with other human beings in a society. Freud regards this last source as “perhaps more painful to us than any other”, and the remainder of this book will extrapolate on the conflict between individual instinctual gratification-seeking and the reality of societal life. The third section of the book addresses a fundamental paradox of civilization: it is a tool we have created to protect ourselves from unhappiness, and yet it is our largest source of unhappiness. People become neurotic because they cannot tolerate the frustration which society imposes in the service of its cultural ideals. Freud points out that the contemporary technological advances of science have been, at best, a mixed blessing for human happiness. He asks what society is for if not to satisfy the pleasure principle, but concedes that civilization has to make compromises of happiness in order to fulfill its primary goal of bringing people into peaceful relationship with each other, which it does by making them subject to a higher, communal authority. Civilization is built out of wish-fulfillments of the human ideals of control, beauty, hygiene, order, and especially for the exercise of humanity's highest intellectual functions. Freud draws a key analogy between the development of civilization and the libidinal development of the individual, which allows Freud to speak of civilization in his own terms: there is anal eroticism that develops into a need for order and cleanliness, a sublimation of instincts into useful actions, alongside a more repressive renunciation of instinct. This final point Freud sees as the most important character of civilization, and if it’s not compensated for, then “one can be certain that serious disorders will ensue.". Thus civilization creates discontent and mental pathology within its members through repression of instinct. In the fourth chapter Freud attempts a conjecture as to the developmental history of civilization, which he supposed coincided with man learning to stand upright. This stage is followed by Freud’s hypothesis from Totem and Taboo that human culture is bound up in an ancient Oedipal drama of brothers banding together to kill their father, and then creating a culture of rules to mediate ambivalent instinctual desires. Gradually love of a single sexual object becomes diffused and distributed towards all of one’s culture and humanity in the form of a diluted ‘aim-inhibited affection’. Freud discounts the idea that this passive and non-judgemental affection for all is the pinnacle of human love and purpose. Freud notes that while love is essential for bringing people together in a civilization, at the same time society creates laws, restrictions, and taboos to try and suppress this same instinct, and Freud wonders if there may not be more than sexual desire within the term ‘libido’. “Psycho-analytic work has shown us that it is precisely these frustrations of sexual life which people known as neurotics cannot tolerate”. So Freud begins the fifth section of this work, which explores the reasons why love cannot be the answer, and concludes that there exists a genuine and irreducible aggressive drive within all human beings. And while the love instinct (eros) can be commandeered by society to bind its members together, the aggressive instinct runs counter to this tendency and must be either repressed or directed against a rival culture. Thus Freud acknowledges that there is irrevocable ill-will within the hearts of man, and that civilization primarily exists to curb and restrain these impulses. In the sixth chapter, Freud reviews the development of his concept of libido to explain why it must now be separated into two distinct instincts: the object-instinct of eros and the ego-instinct of thanatos. This ‘new’ concept of the death drive actually has a long developmental history in Freud’s writings, including his investigations into narcissism and sadomasochism. Freud admits that it may be difficult to accept his view of human nature as being predisposed towards death and destruction, but he reasons that the suppression of this instinct is the true cause behind civilization’s need for restrictions. Life and civilization, then, are born and develop out of an eternal struggle between these two interpersonal forces of love and hate. Freud begins the seventh chapter by clearly explaining how the repression of the death instinct works to instill neurosis in individuals: the natural aggressiveness of the human child is suppressed by society (and its local representative, the father-figure) and turned inward, introjected, directed back against the ego. These aggressive energies develop into the super-ego as conscience, which punishes the ego both for transgressions committed (remorse) but also sins it has only fantasized about (guilt). All individuals must submit themselves to forming these feelings of guilt, for their aggressive instincts must be repressed if they hope to share in the love civilized society has appropriated for its members. Guilt and neurotic repression of instinct are simply the price we pay in order to live together in families and communities. The guilty conscience is the price paid by the individual to belong to civilized society, but often this guilt is left unconscious and is experienced as anxiety or ‘discontent’. Freud also considers that in addition to the individual super-ego, that there may also be a ‘cultural super-ego’ in existence that sets itself up as a conscience for society, and that his recommendation for it is the same as his recommendation for many of his neurotic patients: that it must lower its demands on the frail ego. Freud concludes this book by expanding on his distinction between eros and thanatos: “When an instinctual trend undergoes repression, its libidinal elements are turned into symptoms, and its aggressive components into a sense of guilt”, and he ponders on how the eternal battle between these heavenly powers will play out in mankind.
448860	/m/029r38	Hay Fever	Noël Coward			 The action is set in the Hall of David Bliss' house at Cookham, Berkshire, by the River Thames. ;A Saturday afternoon in June Sorel and Simon Bliss, a brother and sister, exchange artistic and bohemian dialogue. Judith, their mother, displays the absent-minded theatricality of a retired star actress, and David, their father, a novelist, is concentrating on finishing his latest book. Each of the four members of the Bliss family, without consulting the others, has invited a guest for the weekend. Judith announces that she has decided to return to the stage in one of her old hits, Love's Whirlwind. She and Sorel and Simon amuse themselves acting out a melodramatic passage from the play beginning, "Is this a game?" "Yes, and a game that must be played to the finish!" They are interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. Clara, Judith's former dresser and now her housekeeper, opens the door to the first of the four guests, Sandy Tyrell, a sporty fan of Judith's. The next arrival is the vampish Myra Arundel, whom Simon has invited. The other two guests arrive together: Richard Greatham, a diplomat, and Jackie Coryton, a brainless but good-hearted young flapper. Tea is served. Conversation is stilted and eventually grinds to a halt. The scene ends in total and awkward silence. ;After dinner that night The family insists that everyone should join in a parlour game, a variety of charades in which one person must guess the adverb being acted out by the others. The Blisses are in their element, but the guests flounder and the game breaks up. Simon and Jackie exit to the garden, Sorel drags Sandy into the library, and David takes Myra outside. Left alone with Richard, Judith flirts with him, and when he chastely kisses her she theatrically overreacts as though they were conducting a serious affair. She nonplusses Richard by talking of breaking the news to David. She in turn is nonplussed to discover Sandy and Sorel kissing in the library. That too has been mere flirtation, but both Judith and Sorel enjoy themselves by exaggerating it. Judith gives a performance nobly renouncing her claim on Sandy, and exits. Sorel explains to Sandy that she was just playing the theatrical game for Judith's benefit, as "one always plays up to Mother in this house; it's a sort of unwritten law." They leave. David and Myra enter. They too indulge in a little light flirtation, at the height of which Judith enters and finds them kissing. She makes a theatrical scene, with which David dutifully plays along. Simon rushes in violently, announcing that he and Jackie are engaged. Sorel and Sandy enter from the library, Judith goes into yet another bout of over-theatrical emoting. In the ensuing uproar, Richard asks "Is this a game?" Judith, Sorel and Simon seize on this cue from Love's Whirlwind and trot out the melodramatic dialogue as they had in Act I. David is overcome with laughter and the uncomprehending guests are dazed and aghast as Judith ends the scene by falling to the floor as if in a faint. ;The next morning A breakfast table has been laid in the hall. Sandy enters and begins eating nervously. At the sound of someone approaching he escapes into the library. Jackie enters, helps herself to some breakfast and bursts into tears. Sandy comes out and they discuss how uncomfortable they were the night before and how mad the Bliss family are. When they hear people approaching, they both retreat to the library. Myra and Richard now enter and begin breakfast. Their conversation mirrors that of Sandy and Jackie, who emerge from the library to join them. All four decide that they are going to return to London without delay. Sandy agrees to drive them in his motor car. They go upstairs to collect their things. Judith comes down, asks Clara for the Sunday papers and begins reading aloud what the gossip columns say about her. The rest of her family enter. David proposes to read them the final chapter of his novel. Immediately, a minor detail about the geography of Paris is blown into a full-scale family row, with everyone talking at once about whether the Rue Saint-Honoré does or does not connect with the Place de la Concorde and hurling insults at each other. They are so wrapped up in their private row that they do not notice when the four visitors tiptoe down the stairs and out of the house. The Blisses are only momentarily distracted when the slam of the door alerts them to the flight of their guests. Judith comments, "How very rude!" and David adds, "People really do behave in the most extraordinary manner these days." Then, with no further thought of their four tormented guests, they happily return to David's manuscript and to what passes for their normal family life.
448865	/m/029r4b	Private Lives	Noël Coward			 ;Act 1 Following a brief courtship, Elyot and Sybil are honeymooning at a hotel in Deauville, although her curiosity about his first marriage is not helping his romantic mood. In the adjoining suite, Amanda and Victor are starting their new life together, although he cannot stop thinking of the cruelty Amanda's ex-husband displayed towards her. Elyot and Amanda, following a volatile three-year-long marriage, have been divorced for the past five years, but they now discover that they are sharing a terrace while on their honeymoons with their new and younger spouses. Elyot and Amanda separately beg their new mates to leave the hotel with them immediately, but both new spouses refuse to cooperate and each storms off to dine alone. Realising they still love each other and regret having divorced, Elyot and Amanda abandon their mates and run off together to her flat in Paris. ;Act 2 After dinner at the Paris flat several days later, Elyot and Amanda use their code word "Sollocks" to stop their arguments from getting out of hand. They kiss passionately, but the harmony cannot last: while Elyot and Amanda cannot live without each other, neither can they live with each other. They argue violently and try to outwit each other, just as they had done during their stormy marriage. Their ongoing argument escalates to the point of physical abuse, as Amanda breaks a record over Elyot's head, and he retaliates by slapping her face. They seem to be trapped in a repeating cycle of love and hate as their private passions and jealousies consume them. At the height of their biggest fight, Sybil and Victor walk in. ;Act 3 The next morning, Amanda tries to sneak away early, but is surprised to find Sybil and Victor there. As they talk, Elyot comes in, and he and Amanda start bickering again. It has been decided that neither of the new spouses will grant a divorce for a year, to give Amanda and Elyot time to confirm if this is really what they want. As tempers rise, Sybil and Victor begin to bicker with each other, defending their respective spouses. Amanda and Elyot realise that Sybil and Victor are as suited to each other as they are, forgive one another and sneak out, leaving the younger two together. As Elyot and Amanda tiptoe out, Victor and Sybil have reached the point of mutual violence.
448898	/m/029r8k	Blithe Spirit	Noël Coward			 Charles Condomine, a successful novelist, wishes to learn about the occult for a novel he is writing, and he arranges for an eccentric medium, Madame Arcati, to hold a séance at his house. At the séance, she inadvertently summons Charles's first wife, Elvira, who has been dead for seven years. Madame Arcati leaves after the séance, unaware that she has summoned Elvira. Only Charles can see or hear Elvira, and his second wife, Ruth, does not believe that Elvira exists until a floating vase is handed to her out of thin air. The ghostly Elvira makes continued, and increasingly desperate, efforts to disrupt Charles's current marriage. She finally sabotages his car in the hope of killing him so that he will join her in the spirit world, but it is Ruth rather than Charles who drives off and is killed. Ruth's ghost immediately comes back for revenge on Elvira, and though Charles cannot at first see Ruth, he can see that Elvira is being chased and tormented, and his house is in uproar. He calls Madame Arcati back to exorcise both of the spirits, but instead of banishing them, she materialises Ruth. With both his dead wives now fully visible, and neither of them in the best of tempers, Charles, together with Madame Arcati, goes through séance after séance and spell after spell to try to exorcise them, and at last Madame Arcati succeeds. Charles is left seemingly in peace, but Madame Arcati, hinting that the ghosts may still be around unseen, warns him that he should go far away as soon as possible. Charles leaves at once, and the unseen ghosts throw things and destroy the room as soon as he has gone. (In the David Lean film version, the ghosts thwart Charles's attempt to escape, and his car is again sabotaged; he crashes and joins them as a ghost, with Elvira at one arm and Ruth at the other.)
449780	/m/029w8l	Agnes Grey	Anne Brontë	1847		 Agnes Grey is the daughter of a minister, whose family comes to financial ruin. Desperate to earn money to care for herself, she takes one of the few jobs allowed to respectable women in the early Victorian era, as a governess to the children of the wealthy. In working with two different families, the Bloomfields and the Murrays, she comes to learn about the troubles that face a young woman who must try to rein in unruly, spoiled children for a living, and about the ability of wealth and status to destroy social values. After her father's death Agnes opens a small school with her mother and finds happiness with a man who loves her for herself. By the end of the novel they have three children, Edward, Agnes and Mary.
451406	/m/02b2yr	The Stepford Wives	Ira Levin	1972-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The premise involves the married men of the fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut, and their fawning, submissive, impossibly beautiful wives. The protagonist is Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer newly arrived from New York City with her husband and children, eager to start a new life. As time goes on, she becomes increasingly disturbed by the zombie-like, submissive Stepford wives, especially when she sees her once independent-minded friends&nbsp;&ndash; fellow new arrivals to Stepford&nbsp;&ndash; turn into mindless, docile housewives overnight. Her husband, who seems to be spending more and more time at meetings of the local men's association, mocks her fears. As the story progresses, Joanna becomes convinced that the wives of Stepford are being poisoned or brainwashed into submission by the men's club. She visits the library and reads up on the pasts of Stepford's wives, finding out that some of the women were once feminist activists and very successful professionals, while the leader of the men's club is a former Disney engineer and others are artists and scientists, capable of creating lifelike robots. Her friend Bobbie helps her investigate, going so far as to write to the EPA to inquire about possible environmental toxins in Stepford. However, eventually, Bobbie is also transformed into a docile housewife and has no interest in her previous activities. At the end of the novel, Joanna decides to flee Stepford, but when she gets home she finds that her children have been taken. She asks her husband to let her leave, but he takes her car keys. She manages to escape from the house on foot, and several of the men's club members track her down. They corner her in the woods and she accuses them of creating robots out of the town's women. The men deny the accusation, and ask Joanna if she would believe them if she saw one of the other women bleed. Joanna agrees to this, and they take her to Bobbie's house. Bobbie's husband and son are upstairs, with loud rock music playing&nbsp;&ndash; as if to cover screams. The scene ends as Bobbie brandishes a knife at her former friend. In the story's epilogue, Joanna has become another Stepford wife gliding through the local supermarket, and has given up her career as a photographer, while Ruthanne (a new resident in Stepford) appears poised to become the conspiracy's next victim.
451824	/m/02b5xb	The Fifth Child	Doris Lessing	1988	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When David Lovatt meets Harriet at a work function, they both immediately fall in love. They both share the same conservative outlooks, a rarity in the immoral London of the 1960s. The two marry and purchase a large estate in a small village outside of London. The couple both intend on having many children, a wish frowned upon by the rest of the family. The two have four children, two boys and two girls, and their house becomes a center of joy for not only them but for all their relatives and friends who come and visit. That is, until Harriet becomes pregnant with their fifth child. Her pregnancy marks the beginning of the misery and suffering that this child brings to the family. de:Das fünfte Kind pt:The Fifth Child sr:Пето дете
452224	/m/02b7lw	Anti-Ice	Stephen Baxter	1993-06	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the text of a letter dated July, 1855 from the Crimean War front of Sevastopol. The writer, Hedley Vicars, tells from his perspective as a soldier in the 90 Light Infantry about the visit to his commanders of one Josiah Traveller, an inventor and millionaire industrialist whose discovery in the South Pole of anti-ice, a substance which releases incredible energies when warmed, is being considered for military use. Soon after that meeting, a mushroom cloud erupts in the midst of Sevastopol and, with its attendant human and structural devastation, quickly ends the war. This substance originally fell to Earth as the residue of a comet that impacted the Moon centuries ago. Fifteen years after the war, under the reign of Edward VII (who assumed the throne after Queen Victoria abdicated due to her husband Prince Albert's death) and the prime ministership of Gladstone, the United Kingdom maintains through Traveller's discovery a monopoly on the use of anti-ice. But the energy it generates, analogous to nuclear power, is now used to power vehicles and accelerate the country's Industrial Revolution -- much to the chagrin of perennial rivals France and a yet-to-be-united Germany. Junior diplomat Ned Vicars, journalist George Holden, and Traveller arrive at Ostend, and inspect Traveller's experimental rocket Phaeton. Upon docking, a saboteur fires the anti-ice rockets, destroying the liner and launching them upward into the air. Breaking free of Earth's gravity, the Phaeton and its reluctant passengers (along with Traveller's manservant Pocket) approach Earth's two moons—as there is now the "Little Moon", broken off when the comet hit Earth's Moon in the eighteenth century. Using the latest in 1870 technology, Vicars actually mines ice from the surface of the Moon, while encountering simple, massive creatures on its dark side. Converting the water into enough power to take off, the explorers—along with the saboteur, a Frenchman named Bourne—return to Britain as the Franco-Prussian War breaks out on the continent. Gladstone meets Traveller personally and orders him forthwith to prepare anti-ice weapons for use to end the war. At first he does so, but Vicars persuades him that such a course of action is unconscionable. Too late, the two arrive in the Phaeton to see the destruction of Orléans by an anti-ice rocket. Peace is immediately declared, and the United Kingdom sets up its hegemony over Europe—a development not without price, which Vicars notes in a 1910 letter to his son. And the supply of anti-ice, which Traveller thought was confined to the South Pole, is virtually limitless due to the "Little Moon", which is composed entirely of anti-ice. The possibilities of an early 20th century cold war are dwelt on by the narrator (Vicars) throughout the book.
452331	/m/02b823	Shadow of the Giant	Orson Scott Card	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A belief is spreading in conquered China that the government has lost the Mandate of Heaven. Han Tzu meets up with Mazer Rackham, who passes him a blow dart pen, calling it the "Mandate of Heaven". Shortly afterwards, Han Tzu kills the emperor, Snow Tiger, overthrows the Chinese government, and installs himself as the new emperor. Meanwhile, Peter Wiggin, Hegemon of Earth, along with Petra Arkanian, goes to visit Alai, Caliph of the Muslim League. The two help Alai realize that he is little more than a glorified prisoner, and that others have been ruling Islam in his stead. After uncovering a conspiracy against him, Alai resolves to take firmer control of his nation and guarantee the human rights of his subjugated peoples. The rest of the book deals with Peter Wiggin working to create a world government free of war through his Free People of Earth (FPE) alliance. Caliph Alai of the Muslim League and Virlomi, now the virtual goddess of India, oppose his efforts. Against this backdrop of world political machinations by the former Battle School children is the extremely personal story of Bean. Anton's Key is making him grow at an astounding rate and he has only a short time before his body will become too large for his heart to support. He searches frantically for his and Petra's missing children. Graff assists them in locating the surrogate mothers of their children. While Bean and Petra wait for news, Graff extends invitations to the other members of Ender's Jeesh to leave Earth and rule colonies, where they can conquer to their heart's content without causing needless wars between themselves, and instructs Bean to support Peter in forming the FPE. The FPE alliance begins with only twenty-two countries, among them Brazil, Rwanda, and the Netherlands. The first test of the FPE comes when they recognize the sovereignty and nationhood of the Nubian, Quechua, and Aymara peoples, ethnic minorities that are politically part of other nations. Peru and Sudan send troops against these "rebel" strongholds, but Peter defends them using Bean and Suriyawong, leading Rwandan and Thai troops, to show that war against one FPE member is war against all of them. The FPE's victories, and especially their militarily brilliant commanders, bolster support for the FPE, and nations begin to freely vote on whether to join it. Meanwhile, Bean suspects that Peter is embezzling Ender's military pension to fund the FPE, so he requests that Ender's funds be placed under the control of an autonomous computer. Colonel Graff has the Mind Game reprogrammed to accurately predict financial markets and turns it loose over the ansible network; it continues to invest Ender's pension and eventually evolves into the artificial intelligence known as Jane. The Mind Game also speeds the search for Bean's missing children, allowing the International Fleet to find eight of them; two of whom have Anton's Key turned, as does the baby Petra is carrying. The ninth remains undetected, as Achilles had it implanted into a woman named Randi, brainwashed to think that it is the baby of Achilles, whom she worships as a hero assassinated by foul enemies. To avoid persecution, Randi determines to leave Earth and live in a colony, where she can raise her child (who appears to have Anton's Key turned, as the baby is born prematurely) to follow in Achilles' footsteps. Her story, and that of her child Randall Firth, is concluded in Card's later novel Ender in Exile. Virlomi attempts to guarantee India's freedom via dynastic marriage, turning down an offer from Han Tzu to instead attempt to seduce Peter Wiggin. When Peter turns her down, she turns to Alai whom she finds easier to outmaneuver. Their new "Hindu-Muslim... thing," to quote the Prime Minister of Armenia ("I call it a riot with scripture," quips Jeesh member Vlad) is fraught with tension and Alai discovers that, despite his wife's status as an infidel and a woman, the more hotheaded members of his empire actually prefer her aggressive and expansionist policies. Virlomi then declares war on China, setting off all manner of plots: Muslim hardliners attempt to assassinate Alai; Russia invades China and eastern Europe using "contingency" plans drawn up by a horrified Vlad; and Fly Molo of the Philippines is instructed to invade Taiwan, his nation suicidally confident in their Jeesh member. In this way, all the Battle School grads are convinced to take up Graff's offer to travel the stars, realizing that their presence on Earth guarantees continued and wasteful war. Even Virlomi agrees, after Suri manages to snap her out of her growing megalomania. With the secret help of Mazer Rackham, Bean divorces Petra for her own sake, takes the three found children with Anton's Key, and flies away on a starship provided by the Fleet to achieve relativistic speeds and thereby stay alive long enough for medical researchers to find a cure. Bean's departure breaks Petra's heart, but she becomes Peter's military commander, eventually marrying and having five children with him, though she never stops loving Bean. By the end of the novel, all of the world's nations, except the United States, have joined the FPE. Peter reconciles with Ender via ansible, giving the "Speaker for the Dead" all he needs to write The Hegemon, a deeply felt and truthful biography of his brother. Petra reads his biography at his grave, thinking of him as the man who truly changed her life. Still, Bean remains the one who she loves and has changed her life the most.
453111	/m/02bbs1	Design for Living	Noël Coward			 ;Otto's "rather shabby" studio in Paris, 1932 Gilda is an interior designer who lives with the painter Otto, who was previously attached to Leo, an author. She is visited by Ernest Friedman, an art dealer and friend of all three. He is excited about his newly acquired Matisse and wants to show it to Otto. Gilda says that Otto is in bed, ill, and cannot be disturbed. Ernest tells her that Leo is back in Paris after making a success in New York. Otto enters from the street, carrying luggage, and very clearly not bedridden as Gilda has told Ernest. Ernest prudently takes his leave. After he and Otto have gone out to find Leo, supposedly at the George V Hotel, Leo enters from Gilda's bedroom where he has spent the night with her. They discuss what they should say to Otto, whom they both love. On his return they tell him that they have slept together in his absence, and after a furious row he renounces both of them and slams out of the room. ;Leo's flat in London eighteen months later ;Scene 1 Leo and Gilda are now living together. His plays are now immensely successful. A journalist and press photographer call to do a feature on him. During the interview Leo makes several remarks that show how shallow he finds success. ;Scene 2 A few days later, Leo is away, and Otto turns up. He too has now become successful. Otto and Gilda dine together and their old love is rekindled. They embrace passionately. Scene 3 The next morning, Otto is still asleep when Ernest calls on Gilda. She tells him she is leaving Leo, and they exit together. Leo returns to discover Otto, who at once acknowledges that he has spent the night with Gilda. Before the ensuing row develops too far they spot the notes Gilda has left for them both. They are both horrified that she has gone, and they drown their sorrows in brandy and then sherry. They embrace, sobbing helplessly. ;Ernest's penthouse in New York, two years later. ;Scene 1 Gilda has married Ernest and become a commercially successful designer. Ernest is away, and Gilda is giving a reception for some important clients. It is gatecrashed by Otto and Leo, in impeccable evening dress, determined to reclaim her. They frighten her guests into leaving, and Gilda pretends to bid them goodnight along with her other guests, but secretly gives them a key and tells them to return later. ;Scene 2 Ernest returns the next morning to find Otto and Leo in his apartment, wearing his pyjamas. Gilda, however, has not been there. She has been to a hotel overnight to allow herself time to think. When she returns Otto and Leo explain to an incredulous and incandescent Ernest that Gilda's formal status as his wife is irrelevant. She slowly realises that the attraction the two exert for her is irresistible. As Ernest rushes out denouncing their "disgusting three-sided erotic hotch-potch," Gilda, Otto and Leo fall together on a sofa in gales of laughter.
453177	/m/02bb__	A Personal Matter	Kenzaburō Ōe			 Bird's son, like Ōe's, was born with a brain hernia, however at the end of the novel this is revealed to be a false diagnosis of a benign tumor. Bird tries to escape his responsibility for the child and his crumbling relationship with his wife &ndash; turning to alcohol and an old girlfriend. Bird is fired from his job teaching at a cram school in the process. He half attempts to kill the child, albeit indirectly, and is forced to make a decision as to whether or not he wants to keep the child.
453257	/m/02bc8q	Encounter With Tiber	Buzz Aldrin	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 9,000 years ago an alien society in the Alpha Centauri system was under threat of cosmic bombardment. Their only hope to survive was to explore and colonise nearby space. On 21st century Earth, astronauts find artifacts left by this civilisation and wonder who they were. The narrator is a historian who is part of a mission to the Alpha Centauri system, the home system of the aliens. As all crew members were required to bring several projects to work on, due to the decades long nature of the mission, she spends her time writing biographies of several family members who were closely involved in the acquisition of a repository of the alien's knowledge. As another project she translates two autobiographies by the aliens who had visited the Sol system some 9,000 years before.
453338	/m/02bcjz	Night of the Aurochs	Dalton Trumbo	1979	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 In his narration, Grieban tries to link the ethical nature of the Nazi movement to the American Civil War by saying the comparisons are undeniable: Fighting to keep the races pure and separated. Grieban may be looked at as the epitome of one fighting for the cause, but he himself fails to live up to his own high ideals of racial purity when he falls in 'love' with a Jewish woman during his years as a Nazi concentration camp commandant.
453404	/m/02bcqf	The Stars, Like Dust	Isaac Asimov	1951	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Biron Farrill, about to complete studies at the University of Earth, is told by Sander Jonti that his father, a rich planetary leader known as Lord Rancher of Widemos, has been arrested and killed by the Tyranni and his own life may be in danger. On Jonti's advice, he travels to Rhodia, the strongest of the conquered planets. There he hears rumours of a world where rebellion against the Tyranni is secretly being plotted. Escaping with Artemisia oth Hinriad, the daughter of the Director of Rhodia and his brother Gillbret in a Tyranni spaceship, they travel to the planet Lingane. It is not a part of the Tyranni conquests, but maintains "peaceful" relations with them. There, they meet the Autarch of Lingane (who is revealed to be Sander Jonti, the man who sent Farrill to Rhodia from Earth), who seems to possess knowledge of a rebellion world. With him and his followers, the group travel to the heart of the Horsehead Nebula — they believe that for any rebellion world to exist and not be known to the Tyranni, it must be located in a place like the Horsehead Nebula. The Tyranni spaceship stolen by Farrill is being tracked by a fleet of Tyranni vessels led by Simok Aratap, the Tyrannian Commissioner. With him is the Director, who is shown to be nervous about his daughter's and brother's well-being. They keep themselves at a distance for fear of Farrill discovering them until Farrill lands on one planet in the heart of the nebula. The Autarch believes that the planet is the rebellion world. However, there is no sign of life anywhere. When the Autarch and Farrill leave the spaceship to apparently set up a radio transmitter, Farrill faces the Autarch and accuses him of getting his father killed at the hands of the Tyranni. The Autarch affirms the accusation, to which Farrill adds that the Autarch feared his father's growing reputation. That is why he arranged Farrill's father's death. In a fight, Farrill subdues the Autarch with help from the Autarch's closest secretary, who reveals that he is ashamed of the Autarch for killing a great man like Farrill's father. Later, as Farrill and the Autarch's secretary try to explain everything to the rest of the crew they picked up from Lingane, the Tyranni fleet arrives and takes them prisoner. Aratap interrogates Farrill, Artemisia, Gillbret and the Autarch's secretary in order to ascertain the coordinates of the rebellion world but they do not know where it is. However, the Autarch reveals the coordinates to Aratap. The Autarch's secretary kills the Autarch with a blaster in anger. While Aratap interrogates Farrill, Gillbret manages to escape to the engine room of the spaceship and short the hyperatomics. Farrill, realising the danger, manages to contact Aratap. The engines are repaired, but Gillbret is injured and later dies. The space jump is made with the coordinates given to them by the late Autarch. However, they find a planetless system consisting only of a white-dwarf star. Aratap lets Farrill and the others go, believing that there is no rebellion world. Aratap makes it clear that he will never to be chosen as Director. Biron and Artemisia are allowed to marry. It is eventually revealed that there is indeed a rebellion in the making, located on Rhodia itself. The Director is its leader; he deliberately took on the persona of a nervous and timid old man to throw off suspicion from himself and his planet. It is further revealed that the Director, who possesses a collection of ancient documents, has searched for, and found, a document that will help a future empire-yet-to-be (likely Trantor) govern the galaxy. This document is ultimately revealed to be the United States Constitution.
454577	/m/02bhg5	The Swiss Family Robinson	Johann David Wyss	1812	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel opens with the family in the hold of a sailing ship, weathering a great storm. The ship runs aground on a reef, and the family learns the ship's crew has taken to a lifeboat and abandoned them. Subsequent searches for the crew yield no trace. The ship survives the night as the storm abates, and the family finds themselves within sight of a tropical island. The ship's cargo of livestock, dogs, guns & powder, carpentry tools, books, a disassembled pinnace, and provisions have survived. The family builds a raft, lashes livestock and the most valuable supplies to it, and paddles to the island, where they set up a temporary shelter. Over the next few weeks they make several expeditions back to the ship, to empty its hold, and harvest rigging, planks, and sails. They construct a small homestead on the island, and the ship's hull eventually breaks up in a storm and founders. The middle of the book is a series of vignettes, covering several years. The father and older boys explore various environments about the island, discover various (improbable) plants and animals, and build a large tree house, complete with a library. They also use the carpentry tools and local resources to build mechanical contraptions. Eventually, sailing the pinnace around the island's coast, they discover a European family hiding from local pirates. They adopt their daughter (who at first masquerades as a boy), and her father returns on a rescue mission, restoring the family's contact to the outside world.
456772	/m/02brgr	The Makioka Sisters				 ;Title The novel's title, , means lightly falling snow and is also used in classical Japanese poetry. The image suggests falling cherry blossoms in early spring—a number of poets confess to confusing falling cherry blossoms with snow. Falling cherry blossoms are a common symbol of impermanence, a prevalent theme of the novel. Additionally, the in Sasameyuki is the same as the yuki in Yukiko's name, suggesting that she is the central character of the novel. These nuances do not translate well into English. The translator, Edward Seidensticker, struggled over the title. Translations like “Fine Snow” and “Snow Flurries” do not convey the elegance or layers of meaning in the Japanese title. ;Characters *, the eldest Makioka sister and mistress of the main house *, the second-oldest Makioka sister and mistress of the Ashiya branch house *, the third Makioka sister; thirty and unmarried, shy and retiring *, the youngest Makioka sister; unable to marry Okubata until a husband has been found for Yukiko *, Tsuruko’s husband and head of the family, a cautious bank employee who has taken the Makioka name *, Sachiko’s husband, an accountant who has also taken the Makioka name *, young daughter of Sachiko and Teinosuke *, a maid at the Ashiya house *, son of a prominent Osaka merchant family, has tried to elope with Taeko *, a photographer and former clerk at the Okubatas’ jewelry store *, owner of the beauty parlor the Makioka sisters patronize, enjoys acting as a go-between in marriage negotiations ;Plot ;Book One The Makiokas are an upper-middle-class family from Osaka, Japan. At the time of their father’s prime, they were one of the wealthiest families in the region, but over the last generation their fortunes have fallen into decline. The main branch lives in Osaka, at the family home, and consists of the eldest sister, Tsuruko, her husband, Tatsuo, who has taken the Makioka name, and their six children. The branch house is located in Ashiya, an affluent suburb between Osaka and Kobe, and consists of the second-oldest sister, Sachiko, her husband, Teinosuke (also an adopted Makioka), and their young daughter, Etsuko. Tsuruko and Sachiko have two younger sisters, Yukiko and Taeko, who are unmarried and move between the main house and the branch house. As the novel opens, the Makiokas' pride has led them to dismiss the numerous marriage proposals they have received for Yukiko in the past, but, now that their fortunes have declined, the rate of proposals has slowed, and Yukiko, now thirty, remains without a husband. To make matters worse, her name was mistakenly printed in place of Taeko’s in a local newspaper story: Taeko had run away with Okubata. Tatsuo demanded a retraction, but instead, the newspaper ran a correction, replacing Yukiko's name with Taeko's. The article embarrassed the Makioka family and stained both Yukiko’s and Taeko's names; unhappy with the way Tatsuo handled the affair and generally dissatisfied with his cautious nature, Yukiko and Taeko have begun spending most of their time at the Ashiya house. In the wake of the newspaper incident, Taeko finds refuge in doll making—she is quite skilled, and her dolls are sold in department stores. She convinces Sachiko to find her a studio, where she spends a great deal of time working on her dolls. Itani brings Sachiko a marriage prospect, a man named Segoshi. Hurried by Itani, the family agrees to an informal before they can thoroughly check Segoshi’s background. The Makiokas become optimistic about their chances of making the match, but are eventually forced to decline when they discover that Segoshi's mother is afflicted with a kind of dementia which was considered hereditary. A few months later, Sachiko receives word of another marriage prospect, this time from an old classmate, Mrs. Jimba. The prospective groom is a middle-aged widower named Nomura. Sachiko is not particularly excited about him, because of his aged appearance, but decides to have him investigated all the same. She asks Mrs. Jimba to give them one or two months to make a decision. In the meantime, the bank Tatsuo works for has decided to send him to Tokyo to manage a branch office. He and his family will move to Tokyo, and it is decided that Yukiko and Taeko should go with them. Taeko is allowed to stay in Ashiya for a short while to tend to her business, but Yukiko is to leave immediately. Yukiko is unhappy in Tokyo, and Tsuruko suggests they send her back to Osaka for a while. A follow-up letter regarding Nomura arrives from Mrs. Jimba, just as Sachiko is searching for an excuse to send for Yukiko. Though not enthusiastic about the match, the Makiokas agree to a miai as a pretense for bringing Yukiko back to Ashiya. Shortly before the miai, Sachiko has a miscarriage, and the Makiokas are forced to postpone meeting Nomura. When Sachiko, Teinosuke, and Yukiko finally meet him, a week later, Sachiko is surprised at how old he looks. After dinner, they are taken back to Nomura's house, where he shows them the Buddhist altar where he prays for his dead wife and children. Yukiko, put off by his insensitivity, declares that she cannot marry him. The family refuses Nomura’s marriage proposal, and Yukiko is sent back to Tokyo. ;Book Two Taeko’s interest in dolls wanes and she begins to devote time to Western-style sewing and traditional Osaka dance. A dance recital is held at the Ashiya house with Taeko as one of the performers. A personable young photographer named Itakura takes pictures at the request of Okubata. Itakura and Taeko are already acquainted; he photographs her dolls. A month later, a disastrous flood strikes the Kansai region. Taeko is attending a sewing school in the area hardest hit. Itakura rescues her. Impressed by his heroism, Taeko begins to fall for him. Eventually Taeko’s and Itakura’s relationship becomes known to Sachiko, who disapproves because of Itakura’s low social standing. Nevertheless, Taeko is determined to marry him. Taeko wants to study fashion design in France with her sewing teacher and asks Sachiko to convince the main house to support her. When Taeko’s sewing teacher abandons her plans to go to France, Taeko decides to open a Western-style dress shop. She goes to Tokyo to ask the main house for money, but is immediately called back to Osaka because Itakura has fallen ill. Itakura is hospitalized for an inner-ear infection and dies of gangrene resulting from complications of surgery. Itakura’s death alleviates Sachiko’s concern that Taeko will marry below their class. ;Book Three In June, Tatsuo's eldest sister alerts Sachiko of a marriage prospect, a Mr. Sawazaki from a prominent Nagoya family. Sachiko, Yukiko, Taeko, and Etsuko visit Tatsuo’s sister in Ōgaki so that Yukiko can attend the miai. The miai does not go well: Sachiko is left with a negative impression, and Sawazaki rejects the marriage. This is the first time the Makiokas have been refused by a marriage prospect. Upon her return, Sachiko hears that Taeko has taken up again with Okubata. As the relationship grows increasingly open, Teinosuke informs Tsuruko. Tsuruko demands that Taeko be sent to Tokyo; Taeko refuses and is disinherited. Later, Itani presents another marriage prospect for Yukiko. The potential suitor, Hashidera, is an attractive candidate, but he is uncertain if he wants to remarry. Teinosuke takes Yukiko to meet him and goes to great lengths to see the match through, but Yukiko's shyness causes Hashidera to call off the negotiations. Just after this, Sachiko is informed that Taeko has fallen severely ill at Okubata's house. At first, it is assumed that she has dysentery, but the diagnosis is later changed to anthrax. Taeko’s condition grows progressively worse, and the sisters are torn between finding better care and allowing Taeko to be seen at Okubata's house. Eventually she is moved to the hospital of a family friend, where she slowly recovers. Meanwhile, Sachiko is told that Taeko has been living off of Okubata since being disinherited. Sachiko also hears that Taeko may be involved with a bar tender named Miyoshi. Sachiko is aghast, but now sees a marriage between Taeko and Okubata as a necessity. After Taeko has recovered, Sachiko learns that Okubata is being pressured by his family to go to Manchuria; Sachiko and Yukiko think that Taeko should go with him. Taeko objects, but Yukiko pushes her, saying that she is indebted to Okubata for everything he has given her. Taeko leaves the house in tears and stays away for two days. Okubata eventually decides against going to Manchuria. The Makiokas also learn that Itani is planning to sell her shop and travel to America, but before her departure, Itani informs Sachiko that she has another suitor for Yukiko. His name is Mimaki, an illegitimate son of a viscount. The sisters travel to Tokyo to meet him, and he quickly charms them. While in Tokyo, Taeko tells Sachiko that she is four months pregnant with Miyoshi’s child. Sachiko and Teinosuke arrange for Taeko to have the baby secretly at Arima. To protect the Makiokas’ reputation, Teinosuke asks Okubata to remain silent about Taeko’s behavior. Okubata agrees, on condition that Teinosuke compensate him for the money he has spent on Taeko. Teinosuke agrees to pay him two-thousand yen. Taeko's baby dies at birth, and Taeko moves in with Miyoshi. The Makiokas are pressed to answer Mimaki’s marriage proposal. Yukiko accepts, whereupon Teinosuke sends a letter to the main house asking for their consent. The wedding date and location are set, and a house is secured for the new couple. Yukiko is not excited when her wedding kimonos arrive and suffers from diarrhea, which persists on the train ride to Tokyo.
457401	/m/02btw9	Slow Learner	Thomas Pynchon	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This was Pynchon's first published story. It centers around Nathan Levine, a lazy Specialist 3/C in the Army stationed at New Orleans who, along with several of his companions in the battalion are assigned to help with the cleanup at a small island named Creole, which has just been hit by a hurricane. He picks up dead bodies back at the island and after the horrific day of work, he heads back thinking about how to go forward with his life, if at all. Dennis Flange, a lawyer at Wasp and Winsome, Attorneys at Law, calls into the office, telling them he's not coming in. What he's going to do instead is sit at home and drink wine with the neighborhood garbage man, Rocco Squarcione. As they sit and talk, Dennis's wife, Cindy, comes home and is noticeably frustrated by Dennis's afternoon activities. To make matters worse, an old rowdy college "friend" of the Flanges, named Pig Bodine, shows up in a stolen MG to see his old friend. At this, Cindy orders the three men off the premises. They all get in Rocco's garbage truck, and head down to the dump, patrolled by an old man named Bolingbroke. There, Dennis waxes philosophical about the dump, thinking of it as an allegory for his life up to that point, and possibly his life in the future. Rocco leaves for home, and Bolingbroke, Bodine, and Dennis turn in for the night, swapping sea stories as they doze off. Then, in the middle of the night, Dennis hears a woman's voice calling "Anglo! Anglo with the golden hair!". Realizing this is him, Dennis runs off into the dump looking for the woman. Remembering that Bolingbroke said that gypsies were in the area, Dennis wonders if the woman he's looking for is a gypsy. Then he sees her. She is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen... and is also three feet tall. She takes him to her home, tunneling deep into the dump, where she asks him to marry her. He declines, saying he's already married. To this, she starts crying, thinking Dennis won't take her. He then thinks she looks like a child, and that he always wanted children, but Cindy was too busy. He then tells her he'll stay... for a while. A weekend-long lease-breaking party devolves into disarray as Meatball Mulligan entertains a revolving door of cronies, servicemen, and jazz musicians while, in a hothouse room, Callisto and his lover Aubade ponder the everpresent condition of enclosed systems creating disorder while trying to nurse a baby bird back to health in a constantly 37° Fahrenheit room. Callisto pontificates on the discoveries of the Laws of Thermodynamics, Clausius' theorem, and Gibbs and Boltzmann, finally deciding that entropy is an adequate metaphor to apply to American consumerist society, "a similar tendency from the least to the most probable, from differentiation to sameness, from ordered individuality to a kind of chaos." Meanwhile Meatball juggles his attention between conversations about communication theory and personal relationships, keeping the musicians from smoking marijuana in his place, and the unexpected entrances of three coed philosophy majors lugging gallons of Chianti and, later, five sailors searching for a whorehouse. As the musicians discuss music theory, the girls and sailors chant drunken songs together, and childish chicanery break out all over, Meatball debates whether to hide in a closet until the party subsides its second wind or try to calm everyone down, one by one. He decides on the latter, patching up each out-of-control situation until the party tapers down to a din. Callisto's bird fails to improve under the unchanging conditions, which causes Aubade to smash out a window of the hothouse with her bare hands, displacing the constant temperature of inside and outside and leaving the story in a state of hovering uncertainty of where the next moment will lead. Two English spies, named Porpentine and Goodfellow, are sitting in a cafe in Upper Egypt. Their mission is to find out what their nemesis, Moldweorp, is up to in the area. Porpentine theorizes his plan is to assassinate the Consul-General, and so they travel to Cairo to intercept him, along with Goodfellow's new girlfriend, named Victoria Wren, her family, and a man named Bongo-Shaftsbury. During the trip, Bongo-Shaftsbury attempts to attack Victoria's younger sister Mildred, but Porpentine stops him. He then realizes that the man is a spy working for Moldweorp, and Bongo-Shaftsbury is put under guard. Upon reaching Cairo, the two men check into their hotels. The next morning, they head to the opera house where the Consul-General is a guest. Upon reaching their destination, they realize their hunch was correct, and Moldweorp and his spies are swarming the place. After Porpentine foils the assassination attempt, a chase across the streets of Cairo ensues. They reach the Sphinx, and exit their cabs, running across the desert. Porpentine and Goodfellow catch Moldweorp, and they talk a moment. Porpentine tells Goodfellow to return to the cab. He does, and a shot rings out. Turning around, he sees his companion face-down in the hot desert sand, as Moldweorp walks away. Sixteen years later, Goodfellow surveys a motorcade containing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, upon hearing rumors of a possible assassination. He's joined by his new girlfriend, a barmaid this time, who thinks of him as just a simple-minded Englishman, no good in bed but liberal with his money. Grover Snodd and his friends Tim Santora, Carl Barrington, Etienne Cherdlu, and Hogan Slothrop, neighborhood kids from Mingeborough, New York, meet up at Grover's house one Saturday afternoon to discuss activities for the weekend. Their "Inner Junta" talk about planning elaborate practical jokes, collecting milk money from schoolkids. The meeting adjourns and the five of them depart, through a lush section of forest they dub King Yjro's Woods, then down a stream aboard a refurbished flat-bottomed boat they christened the S.S. Leak, to an abandoned manor known as "The Big House". Here they solidify plans to infiltrate and disrupt a PTA meeting with smoke bombs and sodium/water explosions when Hogan, an 8-year-old AA member, gets a call to sit with another member who is alone and afraid. He and Tim abandon the group and go to the hotel where Mr. Carl McAfee, a Negro musician from Mississippi, was staying. Mr. McAfee eyes the situation with the kids and, chalking it up to a bad joke, sends them away and calls room service for a fifth of whiskey. Hogan steadfastly claims his seriousness and the kids stay to keep him company. After failing to shoo them away, Grover calls the hotel and asks to show up with Etienne. McAfee can't afford to pay for the bottle of whiskey, much less the room he's staying in, and breaks down into screaming and crying in his bed, passing out in-between fits. The police are called in to escort Mr. McAfee out as a vagrant, despite protests from the kids and Hogan's insistence that the man is sick, not a criminal. The timeline gets flipped here and, after the Junta had successfully completed a few of their practical jokes, talk about Carl Barrington's family moving into the neighborhood had taken over the parents. In response to the word "integration" being thrown around, Grover, the boy genius, offers the calculus definition. Later it is realized that the parents were discussing the other meaning for "integration", white and black kids in the same schools, was what was really meant. Carl's family, who is Negro, is a sort of trigger for the gentrification of the area, an easy target, an explanation for the racist remarks made by Tim's mother and reflected around the neighborhood, and gives light to the mockery of Hogan's dispatch to Mr. McAfee's aid. Carl, although accepted by the boys as a legitimate member of the Junta, could only be related to by grownups as an "imaginary playmate", someone who is talked about and reflected through safe White suburban eyes, then left to harmlessly evaporate at day's end.
457932	/m/02bws2	The Sky So Big and Black	Batūl Khuḍayrī		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This story alternates between the point of view of Terpsichore Melpomene Murray ("Teri"), an ecoprospector who's approaching adulthood on Mars and seeks to follow in her father's footsteps, and the unnamed psychiatrist who is listening to her story. Several decades earlier, refugees from Earth fled to join a pre-existing human colony on Mars to escape the domination of One True, a massively parallel/cellular automata program that runs on the interconnected brains of most of the human beings on Earth; the program in the individual human brain is called Resuna, probably a contraction from the Latin for One Thing. If a human mind has a copy of Resuna, it may remain dormant until a human speaks the trigger phrase let overwrite, let override. The first half of the novel is mostly backstory in Teri's voice, leading up to the day when she passed her test for "full adulthood", a legal status that can apparently be reached at any age by passing an educational and psychiatric exam, which gives her the right to marry, hold property, vote, and so forth. Teri hopes to be an ecospector (eco-prospector) like Telemachus, living on the surface in a pressure suit most of the time; but because in the last generation the colonists decided to forgo terraforming Mars to suit human life and instead adapt humans to suit the Martian environment, the future of ecospecting doesn't look good to Telemachus; he thinks the future of Mars is with the "Nations" of Mars-formed humans. It's estimated that modifying people can be done in just two to three generations, whereas terraforming Mars might take thousands of years. Thus he wants her to get an advanced degree and go into some always-needed occupation like science or medicine. When they strike a "scorehole", a very large deposit of methane and water, their fortune seems assured, and Teri expects to marry the boy she has been courting; when it turns out he has married someone else, she grumpily agrees to one more year of school at least, and she and Telemachus take on the job of shepherding a group of younger children to the school at Red Sands City. While the party are in the roundings (the frontier, bush, or outback—possibly from "surroundings" or "roundabouts"?) a major solar flare occurs, and because Mars' thin atmosphere and weak magnetic field provide less protection against high-energy particles than on Earth, this event overloads many electronics systems on Mars, as well as damaging the "exosuit" (space suit) systems of many people who are outdoors and otherwise unprotected, so that several members of the party are killed, including Telemachus. Furthermore, the GPS-like navigation system Teri has used all her life is permanently down. Teri and Alik, a boy in the party, re-invent celestial navigation and reach the nearest railhead, where there is a working phone, only to find that the disaster is planetwide and help will not be coming soon. Worse yet, a group of Marsform humans are stranded farther up the track and in danger of starving due to their ultrafast metabolisms. Despite her bigotry against the Nations, Teri tries to take food to them in a backpack, but collapses and breaks her leg. A mysterious voice on her suit radio soothes and comforts her, takes over her body, and causes her to wreck her body getting food to the Marsforms; she has been taken over by Resuna. We now learn why the psychiatrist himself has been listening to her story; they are recording it so she can have some idea of what happened in the big gaps he is going to create in her memory while erasing Resuna. He himself has had this process twice. Further, we learn that this is all information from the past, that in fact he has been re-infected with Resuna, and so has Teri, and that they will both lose all memory of each other and of the many events, including much of her last memories of her father. So although they have been close friends, in the last chapter they are re-introduced to each other for the first time. The novel ends with their working as ecospecting partners, as Mars rebuilds.
458025	/m/02bx35	The Master of Go	Yasunari Kawabata		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is a semi-fictional chronicle of the lengthy 1938 "retirement game" of Go by the respected master Honinbo Shūsai, against the up-and-coming player Minoru Kitani (although the latter's name is changed to Otaké in the book). It was the last game of the master Shūsai's career, a lengthy struggle which took almost six months to complete; he narrowly lost to his younger challenger, to die a little over a year thereafter.
461143	/m/02c9ng	The House of the Dead	Fyodor Dostoyevsky			 The narrator, Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, has been sentenced to penalty deportation to Siberia and ten years of hard labour. Life in prison is particularly hard for Aleksandr Petrovich, since he is a "gentleman" and suffers the malice of the other prisoners, nearly all of whom belong to the peasantry. Gradually Goryanchikov overcomes his revulsion at his situation and his fellow convicts, undergoing a spiritual re-awakening that culminates with his release from the camp. It is a work of great humanity; Dostoyevsky portrays the inmates of the prison with sympathy for their plight, and also expresses admiration for their energy, ingenuity and talent. He concludes that the existence of the prison, with its absurd practices and savage corporal punishments is a tragic fact, both for the prisoners and for Russia itself.
461501	/m/02cbyy	The Legend of Luke	Brian Jacques	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins during the construction of Redwall Abbey, when a roving hedgehog named Trimp visits the abbey and sings a song to help the workers lifting a beam. Martin the Warrior recognizes his father, Luke the Warrior, mentioned in the lyrics and asks Trimp more about him. He decides to go on a quest to learn more about his father. Martin, Gonff the Mousethief, Dinny, and Trimp befriend an orphaned woodlander squirrel named Chugger, the bird Krar Woodwatcher, as well as two brother otters, Folgrim (who is very close to becoming feral, having filed his teeth to points, and even eating vermin after he kills them) and his older brother Tungro. When they reach the northlands, Martin meets his father's friends: the old mouse, Vurg and Beauclair Fethringsol Cosfortingham, an exuberant old hare, who show him a book titled In the Wake of the Red Ship, an account of Luke's life. The plot then flashes back to Martin's birth to Luke and Sayna. Luke was the leader of a tribe of mice who lived an idyllic life for many seasons until Vilu Daskar, the murderous captain of the pirate ship Goreleech, attacked the settlement and killed Sayna, as well as many others with his Sea Rogues. Luke vowed revenge upon Daskar and soon had an opportunity when Reynard Chopsnout, master of the Greenhawk, sailed in, hoping to fix his broken vessel: Luke and his tribe slew Chopsnout and his crew and captured the ship. Together with Vurg, Beau, and others, they sailed off. Martin, now older, wished to accompany his father, but Luke declined, giving Martin his sword, and the chance to name the ship, which he dubbed Sayna. The account of Lukes' life contains the scene where Luke gives his sword to his son. The same scene occurs in the beginning of Martin the Warrior, when Martin receives a flashback of his childhood, as he was captured and put out for the seagulls by Badrang the Tyrant. Therefore, the events in the Second Book occurred around the same time as Martin The Warrior. At one point, Beau was believed to be dead, but survived. Luke, however, was captured and forced into slavery by Daskar when the Sayna was destroyed. He befriended a black squirrel, Ranguvar Foeseeker, who also wanted her revenge. Luke is quite a bit like his son. For instance, he threatened to strangle the slavedriver, whereas Martin tried to choke a Marshank hordebeast with the creature's own whip. Luke was able to convince Daskar of a hidden treasure that only the mouse could steer to. Vurg and Beau sneaked aboard to free the slaves as Ranguvar and Luke killed foebeasts. Initially planning to run the ship aground where his tribe could join the fight to take the ship, upon realising his tribe had abandoned the area, Luke ordered the slaves to take the ship,trapped Daskar at one end of the ship, then smashed it against two rocks, breaking it. The ship's stern sinks instantly and Luke, Ranguvar, Daskar, and much of the vermin crew upon it were drowned. The bow becomes stuck between the two rocks and the surviving vermin are massacred by the liberated slaves. Beau and Vurg presented Martin with a tapestry of his ancestor, which would eventually be expanded into one of the mouse himself. They returned to Redwall, and Martin allegedly chose to put down his sword and live a life of peace.
461604	/m/02cccm	To a God Unknown	John Steinbeck	1933	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Joseph then marries a school-teacher from Monterey named Elizabeth. Upon returning to the farm from the wedding, they find that the youngest brother, Benjy, an alcoholic, had been stabbed and killed by Juanito when he discovered him seducing his wife. When they meet later that night at the sacred rock, Juanito asks Joseph to kill him in revenge for his brother, but Joseph refuses. Joseph wants to pass it off as an accident, and for him to stay, but Juanito flees the farm, promising to return once the guilt has passed. For a time, the farm prospers, and Elizabeth bears a child. Joseph's brother, Burton, a devout Christian, becomes increasingly concerned with Joseph's late night 'talks' with the tree. The farm is then the site of a New Year's fiesta, and Burton decides to leave the farm after seeing the 'pagan' activities. After he leaves, the remaining brothers discover that Burton had girdled the tree to kill it. In the following rainless winter everything begins to die as a severe drought sets in. One day, Joseph and Elizabeth visit the glade. Elizabeth decides to climb on the mossy rock, when she falls and breaks her neck, dying instantly. Soon thereafter, Joseph and Thomas decide to drive the cattle out to San Joaquin to find green pastures. At the last minute, Joseph decides to stay, then lives by the rock and watches the stream dry up. Juanito returns and convinces Joseph to visit the town's priest to enlist his help in breaking the drought. The priest refuses to pray for rain, saying that his concern is the salvation of human souls. Joseph returns to the rock to find the stream dry. When trying to saddle his horse, he frightens the animal and receives a cut on the arm from a saddle buckle. Joseph then climbs to the top of the rock and slits his wrists, watching the blood run into the moss. As he sacrifices himself to some mysterious higher power, he feels the rain begin to fall down.
462297	/m/02cfvm	Mystic River	Dennis Lehane	2001-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel revolves around three boys who grow up as friends in Boston — Dave Boyle, Sean Devine, and Jimmy Marcus. When the story opens, we see Dave abducted by child molesters while he, Sean, and Jimmy are horsing around on a neighborhood street. Dave escapes and returns home days later, emotionally shattered by his experience. The book then moves forward 25 years: Sean has become a homicide detective, Jimmy is an ex-convict who currently owns a convenience store, and Dave is a shell of a man. Jimmy's daughter disappears and is found brutally murdered in a city park, and that same night, Dave comes home to his wife, covered in blood. Sean is assigned to investigate the murder, and the three childhood friends are caught up in each other's lives again.
463024	/m/02cjbw	The Monkey Wrench Gang	Edward Abbey	1975-08-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book's four main characters are ecologically-minded misfits&nbsp;&mdash; "Seldom Seen" Smith, a Jack Mormon river guide; Doc Sarvis, an odd but wealthy and wise surgeon; Bonnie Abbzug, his young sexualized female assistant; and a rather eccentric Green Beret Vietnam veteran, George Hayduke. Together, though not always working as a tightly-knit team, they form the titular group dedicated to the destruction of what they see as the system that pollutes and destroys their environments, the American West. As their attacks on deserted bulldozers and trains continue, the law closes in. The book was praised for its erudition, flair, down-home wit, and the accuracy of its descriptions of life away from civilization. Abbey made the West his home and was a skilled outdoorsman. From a 21st-century viewpoint, the Gang in some ways bears little resemblance to the modern media's portrayal of environmentalists&nbsp;&mdash; the book's characters eat a lot of red meat, own firearms, litter the roadside with empty beer cans and drive big cars. (Abbey's habits were reportedly similar.) Abbey's politics are not "bleeding heart", and most of the characters dismiss liberalism: they attack American Indians as well as whites for their consumerism, and hold little regard for the Sierra Club. (Despite occasional contradictory evidence, Edward Abbey considered himself a liberal--"I'm a liberal, and proud of it," he wrote in Abbeys' Road.) For the Gang, the enemy is those who would develop the US Southwest&nbsp;&mdash; despoiling the land, befouling the air, and destroying Nature and the sacred purity of Abbey's desert world. Their greatest hatred is focused on the Glen Canyon Dam, a monolithic edifice of concrete that dams a beautiful, wild river, and which the monkeywrenchers seek to destroy. One of the book's most memorable passages describes Abbey's character Seldom Seen Smith, as he kneels atop the dam praying for a "pre-cision earthquake" to remove the "temporary plug" of the Colorado River. The book may have been the inspiration for Dave Foreman's and Mike Roselle's creation of Earth First!, a direct action environmental organization that often advocates much of the minor vandalism depicted in the book. Many scenes of vandalism and ecologically-motivated mayhem, including a billboard burning at the beginning of the book and the use of caltrops to elude pursuing police, are presented in sufficient detail as to form a skeletal how-to for would-be saboteurs. This has influenced the Earth Liberation Front.
464523	/m/02cq6g	Jin Ping Mei	Xiaoxiaosheng			 The novel describes, in great detail, the downfall of the Ximen household during the years 1111–27 (during the Northern Song Dynasty). The story centres on Ximen Qing (西門慶), a corrupt social climber and lustful merchant who is wealthy enough to marry a consort of six wives and concubines. A key episode of the novel, the seduction of the adulterous Pan Jinlian, occurs early in the book and is taken from an episode from Water Margin. After secretly murdering the husband of Pan, Ximen Qing marries her as one of his wives. The story follows the domestic sexual struggles of the women within his clan as they clamor for prestige and influence amidst the gradual decline of the Ximen clan. In the course of the novel, Ximen has 19 sexual partners, including his 6 wives and mistresses. There are 72 detailed sexual episodes.
465056	/m/02crzy	Death from a Top Hat	Clayton Rawson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 "As the story opens, free-lance writer Ross Harte is writing a magazine article on the modern detective story, and most of this article-to-be is included in the first chapter." When a magician is found dead inside his locked and (thoroughly) sealed apartment, the police call in Merlini to help explain the impossible, "perhaps on the theory that it takes a magician to catch one." All the suspects, however, are accustomed to producing the impossible. They include a professional medium, an escape artist, a couple of magicians, a ventriloquist, and two people who claim to exhibit mental telepathy in their nightclub act. The first murder victim is found spread-eagled inside a pentagram, surrounded by the trappings of black magic. The second victim, also spread-eagled, seems to have been in two places at once during the first murder. After a number of breakneck chases from one scene to the next, Merlini and his assistant are a couple of steps ahead of the police and provide a far-fetched but logical solution to the impossible crimes. In between, Merlini and other characters deliver great chunks of informative conversation mixed with paragraphs of information about entirely unrelated but fascinating topics, like yogic bilocation, making the keys of a typewriter move without touching them, and even posing a tricky problem in geometry. The action also stops for a while when Merlini quotes a well-known passage from John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins about the nature of locked-room mystery novels, and adds some flourishes of his own in relation to the problems at hand. The penultimate scene in which the murderer is revealed is enlivened by one of the suspects attempting (on stage) to catch a bullet in his teeth, and all is explained in the final chapter when everyone gathers at Merlini's Magic Shop in the best whodunnit tradition.
466228	/m/02cx44	The Autumn of the Patriarch	Gabriel García Márquez	1975	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is written in long paragraphs with extended sentences. The general's thoughts are relayed to the reader through winding sentences which convey his desperation and loneliness alongside the atrocities and ruthless behavior that keep him in power. One of the book's most striking aspects is its focus on the God-like status held by the protagonist and the unfathomable awe and respect with which his people regard him. Dictators and strongmen such as Franco, Somoza, and Trujillo managed to hold sway over the populations of their nations despite internal political division. García Márquez symbolizes this with the discovery of the dictator's corpse in the presidential palace.
466470	/m/02cxsw	The Eyre Affair	Jasper Fforde	2001-07-19	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In a parallel universe, England and Imperial Russia have fought the Crimean War for more than a century; England itself is a police state run by the Goliath Corporation (a powerful weapon-producing company with questionable morals); and Wales is a separate, socialist nation. The book's fictional version of Jane Eyre ends with Jane accompanying her cousin, St. John Rivers, to India in order to help him with his missionary work. Literary questions (especially the question of Shakespearean authorship) are debated so hotly that they sometimes inspire gang wars and murder. Single, thirty-six, Crimean War veteran and literary detective Thursday Next lives in London with her pet dodo, Pickwick. As the story begins, Thursday is temporarily promoted to investigate the theft of the original manuscript of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit because she is one of the few people able to identify the thief, Acheron Hades. She comes close to capturing him during a stakeout, but is badly injured, saved by a copy of Jane Eyre that stops Hades' bullet. A mysterious stranger aids her until the paramedics arrive, leaving behind only a monogrammed handkerchief and jacket. Next recognizes these items as those of Rochester, a character from Jane Eyre, because she entered the novel as a child and briefly became acquainted with Rochester himself while she was there. While recovering in hospital, Thursday is instructed by her future self to take the LiteraTec job in her home town of Swindon. There, she discovers that her Uncle Mycroft has created the Prose Portal, which allows people to enter works of fiction. Next also renews an acquaintance with her former fiancé Landen Parke-Laine (a reference to the British version of the board game Monopoly). Hades kidnaps Mycroft, Polly, and the Prose Portal in order to blackmail the literary world; any changes made to the plot of a novel's original manuscript will change all other copies. When his demands are not met, Hades kills Mr Quaverley, a minor character from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit. Next and a Goliath Corporation operative named Jack Schitt trace Hades to Wales and rescue Mycroft and the Prose Portal, but find that Polly is stuck in one of Wordsworth's poems and Hades has gone into the original text of Jane Eyre. Next pursues Hades, and after much trouble, succeeds in killing him. In the process, Thornfield Hall is burned, Rochester's mad wife Bertha falls to her death, and Rochester himself is grievously injured (in other words, she alters the ending of the book to match the actual ending to Jane Eyre). Returning to her own world, Next uses the Prose Portal to release her Aunt Polly and imprison Jack Schitt in the text of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". She shows up at the church where Parke-Laine is about to be married to another woman, but a lawyer interrupts the wedding and Next and Parke-Laine are reconciled and marry instead. Next's father, a renegade agent from SpecOps-12, the ChronoGuard, turns up to dispense some fatherly advice to his daughter. The novel ends with Next facing an uncertain future at work: public reaction to the new ending for Jane Eyre is positive, but there are other repercussions.
466502	/m/02cxw2	I Am a Cat	Soseki Natsume		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 In I Am a Cat, a supercilious, feline narrator describes the lives of an assortment of middle class Japanese people: Mr. Sneaze (literally translated from Chinno Kushami, 珍野苦沙弥, in the original Japanese) and family (the cat's owners), Sneaze's garrulous and irritating friend Waverhouse (Meitei, 迷亭), and the young scholar Avalon Coldmoon (Mizushima Kangetsu, 水島寒月) with his will-he-won't-he courtship of the businessman's spoilt daughter, Opula Goldfield (Kaneda Tomiko, 金田富子).
467114	/m/02czyr	Swag	Elmore Leonard	1976	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Frank Ryan is an almost honest used car salesman, who after deliberately not testifying against car thief Ernest "Stick" Stickley, Jr., thinks of a foolproof plan for them to perform armed robberies. The plan is about simple everyday armed robbery. Supermarkets, bars, liquor stores, gas stations, etc. Because the statistics prove that this armed robbery pays the most for the least amount of risk, they start their business and earn three to five thousand dollars a week. To prevent getting caught Frank introduces 10 golden rules for successful armed robbery: # Always be polite on the job and say please and thank you. # Never say more than necessary. Less is more. # Never call your partner by name-unless you use a made-up name. # Never look suspicious or like a bum and dress well. # Never use your own car. # Never count the take in the car. # Never flash money in a bar or with women. # Never go back to an old bar or hangout once you have moved up. # Never tell anyone your business and never tell a junkie even your name. # Never associate with people known to be in crime. For awhile, Frank and Stick are able to follow the rules and the plan and they are extremely successful. They even rob the robber who just robbed the bar they were in. But, inevitably, the rules start falling by the wayside and when they see a chance for a big score, the rules go out the window, with predictably disastrous results.
467386	/m/02d078	The Moon and Sixpence	W. Somerset Maugham	1919	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The novel is written largely from the point of view of the narrator, who is first introduced to the character of Strickland through his (Strickland's) wife and strikes him (the narrator) as unremarkable. Certain chapters are entirely composed of the stories or narrations of others which the narrator himself is recalling from memory (selectively editing or elaborating on certain aspects of dialogue, particularly Strickland's, as Strickland is said by the narrator to be limited in his use of verbiage and tended to use gestures in his expression). Strickland is a well-off, middle-class stockbroker in London sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Early in the novel, he leaves his wife and children and goes to Paris, living a destitute but defiantly content life there as an artist (specifically a painter), lodging in run-down hotels and falling prey to both illness and hunger. Strickland, in his drive to express through his art what appears to continually possess and compel him inside, cares nothing for physical comfort and is generally indifferent to his surroundings, but is generously supported while in Paris by a commercially successful but hackneyed Dutch painter, Dirk Stroeve, a friend of the narrator's, who immediately recognizes Strickland's genius. After helping Strickland recover from a life-threatening condition, Stroeve is repaid by having his wife, Blanche, abandon him for Strickland. Strickland later discards the wife (all he really sought from Blanche was a model to paint, not serious companionship, and it is hinted in the novel's dialogue that he indicated this to her and she took the risk anyway), who then commits suicide - yet another human casualty (the first ones being his own established life and those of his wife and children) in Strickland's single-minded pursuit of Art and Beauty. After the Paris episode, the story continues in Tahiti. Strickland has already died, and the narrator attempts to piece together his life there from the recollections of others. He finds that Strickland had taken up with a native woman, had two children by her (one of whom dies) and started painting profusely. We learn that Strickland had settled for a short while in the French port of Marseilles before traveling to Tahiti, where he lived for a few years before finally dying of leprosy. Strickland left behind numerous paintings, but his magnum opus, which he painted on the walls of his hut before losing his sight to leprosy, was burnt down after his death by his wife in accordance with his dying orders.
467482	/m/02d0k0	Against Interpretation	Susan Sontag	1966	{"/m/0dh53": "Literary criticism"}	 "Against Interpretation" is Sontag's seminal essay within Against Interpretation and Other Essays that discusses the divisions between two different kinds of art criticism and theory: that of formalist interpretation, and that of content-based interpretation. Sontag is strongly averse to what she considers to be contemporary interpretation, that is, an overabundance of importance placed upon the content or meaning of an artwork rather than being keenly alert to the sensuous aspects of a given work and developing a descriptive vocabulary for how it appears and how it does whatever it does. She believes that interpretation of the modern style has a particular “taming” effect: reducing the freedom of a subjective response and placing limitations or certain rules upon a responder. The modern style of interpretation is particularly despised by Sontag in relation to the previous classical style of interpretation that sought to “bring artworks up to date”, to meet modern interests and apply allegorical readings. Where this type of interpretation was seen to resolve conflict between past and present by revamping an art work and maintaining a certain level of respect and honour, Sontag believes that the modern style of interpretation has lost sensitivity and rather strives to “excavate...destroy” a piece of art. Sontag asserts that the modern style is quite harmful; to art and to audiences alike, enforcing hermeneutics- fallacious, complicated “readings” that seem to engulf an artwork, to the extent that analysis of content begins to degrade, to destroy. Reverting back to a more primitive and sensual, almost magical experience of art is what Sontag desires; even though that is quite impossible due to the thickened layers of hermeneutics that surround interpretation of art and that have grown to be recognised and respected. Sontag daringly challenges Marxian and Freudian theories, claiming they are “aggressive and impious”. Sontag also refers to the contemporary world as one of “overproduction... material ”, where one's physical senses have been dulled and annihilated by mass production and complex interpretation to the extent that appreciation of the form of art has been lost. To Sontag, modernity means a loss of sensory experience and she believes (in corroboration with her theory of the damaging nature of criticism) that the pleasure of art is diminished by such overload of the senses. In this way, Sontag asserts that inevitably, the modern style of interpretation separates form and content in a manner that damages an artwork and one's own sensorial appreciation of a piece. Though she claims that interpretation can be “stifling”, making art comfortable and “manageable” and thus degrading the artist’s original intention, Sontag equally presents a solution to the dilemma she sees as an abundance of interpretation on content. That is, to approach art works with a strong emphasis on form, to “reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it.”
467841	/m/02d1sf	Say It With Poison	Ann Granger		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Eve Owens, a British film star who is now in her mid-forties and who has settled down in the small village of Bamford, invites her cousin Meredith Mitchell to her daughter Sara's wedding, which is to take place in a couple of weeks' time in the old village church. But shortly after Mitchell's arrival one of Eve Owens's neighbours, a young artist called Philip Lorrimer, is found dead in his cottage—poisoned. The autopsy reveals that it has been a slow death, that Lorrimer has been poisoned over a longer period of time. At first there are no suspects, especially as no one seems to have had a motive for killing Lorrimer. But when one night Lorrimer's 80 year-old neighbour Bert Yewell is slain in his pyjamas next to his garden shed it becomes clear that Yewell must have known a secret which he was about to give away. In the end it turns out that Eve Owens, her daughter but also one of the guests staying at Owens's house are not as innocent as they seemed at the beginning.
470759	/m/02dft5	Camp Concentration	Thomas M. Disch	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Poet, lapsed Catholic and conscientious objector Louis Sacchetti is sent to a secret military installation called Camp Archimedes, where military prisoners are injected with a form of syphilis intended to make them geniuses (hence the punning reference to "concentration" in the novel's title). By breaking down rigid categories in the mind (according to a definition of genius put forward by Arthur Koestler), the disease makes the thought process both faster and more flexible; it also causes physical breakdown and, within nine months, death. The book is told in the form of Sacchetti's diary, and includes literary references to the story of Faust (at one point the prisoners stage Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Sacchetti's friendship with ringleader Mordecai Washington parallels Faust's with Mephistopheles). It only becomes clear that Sacchetti himself has syphilis as his diary entries refer to his increasingly poor health, and become progressively more florid, until almost descending into insanity. After a test run on the prisoners, a megalomaniac nuclear physicist has himself injected with the disease, joins Camp Archimedes with his team of student helpers, and sets about trying to end the human race. The prisoners in the book appear to be fascinated by alchemy, which they used as an elaborate cover for their escape plans. Sacchetti, who is obese, has a number of ironic visions involving other obese historical and intellectual figures, such as Thomas Aquinas. The novel's ending may owe something to the episode "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" from the television series The Prisoner, for which Disch wrote a spinoff novel.
470797	/m/02dfz3	The Bald Soprano	Eugène Ionesco			 The Smiths are a traditional couple from London who have invited another couple, the Martins, over for a visit. They are joined later by the Smiths' maid, Mary, and the local fire chief, who is also Mary's lover. The two families engage in meaningless banter, telling stories and relating nonsensical poems. At one point, Mrs. Martin converses with her husband as if he were a stranger she just met. As the fire chief turns to leave, he mentions "the bald soprano" in passing, which has a very unsettling effect on the others. Mrs. Smith replies that "she always wears her hair in the same style." After the Fire Chief's exit, the play devolves into a series of complete non-sequiturs, with no resemblance to normal conversation. It ends with the two couples shouting in unison "It's not that way. It's over here!," right before a blackout occurs. When the lights come back on, the scene starts from the beginning with the Martins reciting the Smiths' lines from the beginning of the play for a while before the curtain closes.
470889	/m/02dgd2	The Whole Man	John Brunner	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After a riot in a near-future England where telepathy has been discovered, the authorities discover Gerald Howson, a physically deformed youth with greater telepathic power than has ever been seen before. The novel details Howson's struggles to come to grips with his power and his deformity.
470913	/m/02dgg8	Timescoop	John Brunner		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel expresses Brunner in a lighter mode than other novels of the period such as Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up. The original cover copy said, "He summoned the monsters of the past to help him rule the world." Actually, protagonist Harold Freitas III is merely looking for a publicity triumph, and the "monsters" are duplicates of his own ancestors, brought forward to 2066 by a newly invented time machine. The ancestors have some difficulties, amusingly described, in adjusting to 21st-century mores. Freitas and his sentient computer SPARCI save the day.
471083	/m/02dh8k	Touching the Void	Joe Simpson			 In 1985, Yates and Simpson attempted a first-ascent of the previously unclimbed West Face of Siula Grande in alpine style. Several teams had previously tried and failed to climb this face. Yates and Simpson were successful in their attempt, and after summiting they descended via the difficult North Ridge. Disaster struck on the descent when Joe slipped down an ice cliff and landed awkwardly, smashing his tibia into his knee joint, thus breaking his right leg. The pair, whose trip had already taken longer than they intended because of bad weather on the ascent, had run out of fuel for their stove and could not melt ice and snow for drinking water. With bad weather closing in and daylight fading, they needed to descend quickly to the glacier, about 3,000 feet below. Yates proceeded to lower Simpson off the North Ridge by tying two 150' lengths of rope together to make one longer 300-foot rope. However because the two ropes were tied together, the knot couldn't go through the belay plate. Simpson would have to stand on his good (left) leg to give Yates enough slack to unclip the rope, in order to thread the rope back through the lowering device with the knot on the other side. With storm conditions worsening and darkness upon them, Yates inadvertently lowered Simpson off a cliff. Because Yates was sitting higher up the mountain, he could not see or hear Simpson; he could only feel that Simpson had all his weight on the rope. Simpson attempted to ascend the rope using a Prusik knot. However, because his hands were badly frost-bitten, he was unable to tie the knots properly and accidentally dropped one of the cords required to ascend the rope. The pair were stuck in a very bad situation. Simpson could not climb up the rope, Yates could not pull him back up, and the cliff was too high for Simpson to be lowered down. They remained in this position for some time, until it was obvious that the snow around Yates' belay seat was about to give out. Because the pair were tied together, they would both be pulled to their deaths. Yates had little choice but to cut the rope in order to save his own life. Ironically, doing so may very well have saved Simpson's life as well, as he would have died of exposure if he had been left to hang in the strong freezing wind for much longer. When Yates cut the rope, Simpson plummeted down the cliff and into a deep crevasse. Exhausted and suffering from hypothermia, Yates dug himself a snow cave to wait out the storm. The next day, Yates carried on descending the mountain by himself. When he reached the crevasse he realized the situation that Simpson had been in, and what had happened when he cut the rope. After calling for Simpson and hearing no reply, Yates was forced to assume that he had died and so continued down the mountain alone. Simpson, however, was still alive. He had survived the 150-foot fall despite his broken leg, and had landed on a small ledge inside the crevasse. When Simpson regained consciousness, he discovered that the rope had been cut and realized that Yates would presume that he was dead. He therefore had to save himself. Simpson eventually abseiled from his landing spot onto a thin ice roof part way down the crevasse, and climbed back onto the glacier via a steep snow slope. From there, Simpson spent three days without food and with almost no water, crawling and hopping five miles back to their base camp. Exhausted and almost completely delirious, he reached their tents only a few hours before Yates intended to return to civilization. Simpson's survival is widely regarded by mountaineers as amongst the most amazing pieces of mountaineering lore.
471233	/m/02dhp6	Silverlock	John Myers Myers	1949	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While on a sea voyage, a ship named Naglfar founders. One anhedonic passenger, A. Clarence Shandon (M.B.A., Wisconsin) is washed ashore in a fictional land known as "The Commonwealth of Letters". He is befriended by Golias, who nicknames him "Silverlock" and who becomes his guide. Silverlock and Golias encounter figures from history, literature and mythology.
472089	/m/02dm18	Matilda	Roald Dahl	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young girl named Matilda Wormwood is gifted with precocity but her wealthy, dimwitted parents are oblivious to their daughter's prodigous skills and view her as foolish and idiotic. Aggravated by the rude behavior of her mother and father, Matilda constantly pulls pranks on her family as discipline for their misdeeds, such as pouring Superglue into her father's hat or hiding a parrot in the chimney, tricking the family into thinking there is a ghost in the house. Eventually, Matilda begins schooling and encounters a loving, sweet schoolteacher named Miss Jennifer "Jenny" Honey, who is astonished by her unbelievable intellectual abilities and wants to move her into a higher class, but the school's hostile headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, who disciplines the pupils with abusive physical punishment, refuses. Miss Honey also tries to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood about Matilda's supreme intelligence, but they don't believe her. Matilda quickly develops a particularly strong bond with Miss Honey over time after a classmate's practical joke on the headmistress leads Matilda to discover her secret telekinetic powers by using her mind to tip over a glass of water containing a salamander on Miss Trunchbull. They gather frequently at the teacher's tiny cottage in the forest and converse, where Miss Honey recounts her traumatic childhood experiences with Matilda that had been wreaked by her maliciously abusive aunt, whose guardianship she was forced to live under after the mysterious passing of her father Magnus. Stunned to learn that Miss Trunchbull actually was the aunt in question, Matilda devises a scheme in order to help Miss Honey earn her proper inheritance, which the aunt had seemingly stripped her of, and develops her telekinetic gift through practice at home. During a lesson that Miss Truchbull is teaching Matilda telekinetically raises a stick of chalk against the black-board and poses as Magnus's spirit, demanding that Miss Trunchbull provide his daughter with the wages that she needs by name. Petrified by this, Miss Trunchbull flees from her house, which is later discovered to rightfully belong to Miss Honey by her father's will, and her niece moves into it from her cottage. Matilda is re-positioned by the new headmaster to the sixth grade level of schooling, where she discovers that she is no longer capable of accessing her powers of telekinesis, and Miss Honey theorizes that it is probably because Matilda must mandatorily use more of her knowledge at school after skipping several grades. Matilda continues to meet with Miss Honey at her home regularly, but one day arrives home to discover her parents hastily packing to go on the run from the police who have discover her father's deceptive practices in the automotive industry. Matilda asks permission to live with Miss Honey, to which her parents agree, thus providing her with a more loving home.
472097	/m/02vk5zl	The Positronic Man	Isaac Asimov	1993-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the twenty-first century the creation of the positronic brain leads to the development of robot laborers and revolutionizes life on Earth. Yet to the Martin family, their household robot NDR-113 is more than a mechanical servant. "Andrew" has become a trusted friend, a confidant, and a member of the Martin family. The story is told from the perspective of Andrew (later known as Andrew Martin), an NDR-series robot owned by the Martin family, a departure from the usual practice by U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men of leasing robots. Andrew's initial experiences with the Martin family are replete with awkward moments which demonstrate his lack of socialization. However, he is much better with inanimate objects and animals and begins to display sentient characteristics (such as creativity; emotion; self-awareness) traditionally the province of humans. He is taken off his mundane household duties, for which he was intended, and allowed to pursue his creativity, making a fortune by selling his creations. Andrew seeks legal protection stemming from his initial creative output and eventual full recognition as a human, by gradually replacing his robotic components with organic ones, and citing the process as a transformation from robot to human. Succeeding generations of the Martin family assist him in his quest for humanity, but each is limited to what degree they are prepared to acknowledge Andrew's humanity. In The Positronic Man, the trends of fictional robotics in Asimov's Robot series (as outlined in the book I, Robot) are detailed as background events, with an indication that they are influenced by Andrew's story. No more robots in Andrew's line are developed. There is also a movement towards centralized processing, including centralized control of robots, which would avoid any more self-reflecting robots such as Andrew. Only when Andrew allows his positronic brain to "decay," thereby willfully abandoning his immortality, is he declared a human being. This event takes place on the two-hundredth anniversary of his creation, hence the title of the novella and film.
472822	/m/02dq20	Brazil Red	Jean-Christophe Rufin	2001		 The plot of this veritable epic is set in 1555, on a small island in the Guanabara Bay of Rio de Janeiro, where an odd French expeditionary force, made up of sailors, craftsmen, priests, ex-convicts and a Quixotic knight, has just landed. Their objective is twofold: on the one hand, to set up a French colony on this far-off rich continent to compete with the Portuguese, on the other hand, to convert the Indians to Christianity. Ill-prepared for the realities of the New World and, above all, torn apart by theological controversy which sets the Catholics and Calvinists among them against one another, these French pioneers see their dreams of colonisation gradually dissipate. Both satirical and colourful, Rouge Brésil is above all a passionate and exciting exploration of the origins of imperialist thinking.
473297	/m/02dr_n	No Highway	Nevil Shute	1948-12	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The anti-hero of the story, Theodore Honey, is engaged in research on the fatigue of aluminium airframes. His current project, overseen by Dr. Dennis Scott, is to investigate possible failure in the high aspect ratio tailplane of a new airliner, the fictional Rutland Reindeer. Honey, a widower, in addition to his work, must bring up his young daughter, Elspeth. The events are narrated by Scott in the first person. Honey is unimpressive in appearance and is so intensely focused on his work that his relations with the outside world—never that good to begin with—suffer badly. Throughout the story, people judge him by that appearance, or by his varied and unconventional outside interests, such as pyramidology -- the study of possible esoteric interpretations of the Pyramids. Honey has predicted, by a (fictional) theory supposedly related to quantum mechanics, that it is possible for an alloy structure to fail long before the design life customarily predicted by design standards. He is using a spare tailplane from a Reindeer aircraft in a fatigue test. Honey's theory predicts that the metal at the root of the tailplane will fatigue and fail with a crystalline fracture. For Honey this seems merely to be an esoteric and engaging problem in pure science; for Scott it is a concern of the first magnitude, as Reindeers are crossing the North Atlantic daily, carrying hundreds of passengers. Honey's prediction becomes all the more alarming when Scott links it with the recent crash of a Reindeer carrying the Soviet ambassador, which had total flying hours close to Honey's estimate, and which crashed in northeastern Quebec. The crash report, including photographs, is inconclusive, and Scott feels that the remains of the aircraft must be physically examined. Honey is sent to Canada to examine the debris of the crash, travelling on board a Reindeer aircraft on which he meets the two heroines of the novel, Corder and Teasdale. During the flight, when Honey discovers from the cockpit crew that the flying hours of this aircraft are twice those of any other Reindeer in service, and are close to his predicted failure time, he becomes increasingly anxious for its safety. He confides in Teasdale, whose films he admires, and goes on to give her some advice of the safest place to go to in the aircraft in the event of a crash. Despite his alarm, he remains persuasive and sincere and impresses Corder and Teasdale. He also impresses the pilot, Samuelson, who knew the captain of the recently crashed Reindeer and had rejected with scorn the conclusion reached by the official inquiry that the crash occurred as a result of pilot error. During a heated discussion during a stop-over at Gander International Airport, Honey realises that he has failed to persuade anyone to declare the Reindeer unfit for service, and in desperation disables it by raising its undercarriage while it is standing on the runway. Honey is recalled to Farnborough after this sabotage but is delayed because the Commercial Air Transport Organisation, the fictional operator of the damaged aircraft, refuses to carry him. While he is away, trouble arises on a second front. For the duration of his trip, he has abandoned Elspeth with only the supervision of the unreliable cleaning woman in their shabby, neglected home in Farnham, near his work. Shirley Scott finds Elspeth ill—confirming her misgivings about the state of Honey's home life—and nurses her. Elspeth displays a touching mix of precocity and serious intelligence but betrays Honey's hobbies of spiritualism and prophecy. That notwithstanding, Elspeth's outlook is tempered with serious thought and childhood happiness in simple things. Teasdale visits Dr. Scott at Farnborough and relates her story of events to the Director of the RAE before offering Elspeth some feminine care and affection. Her affection for Honey is obvious, but she realizes it is not to be—she cannot give him children or sustain him in his work. She is rapidly followed by Corder who bears Honey's letter of resignation to Scott and her own account of the events in Gander. By the time Honey returns, Scott has left for Canada to retrieve the tailplane roots. On reaching the crash site he discovers that the parts of the aircraft adjacent to where the tailplane separated have been removed by the Soviet party who came to recover the body of their Ambassador. The Soviet authorities suspect that the crash was part of a plot to assassinate their ambassador and are wholly unhelpful when approached for information about the missing tailplane root. The tailplane itself remains lost in the wilderness, but must be found if there is any hope of proving metal fatigue. Honey comes to the rescue, but in a highly unorthodox way. He puts his daughter into a light trance which, to Corder's shock, Elspeth has clearly experienced before. Using a planchette and automatic writing, a message is written UNDER THE FOOT OF THE BEAR. Sceptical of the message's value, the Director refuses to send it to Scott and a heated exchange follows. The Director points out that the bear could just as plausibly refer merely to the Soviet Union and that the message tells them no more than they already know. With Corder's and Samuelson's help and their C.A.T.O. contacts, Honey manages to have the message passed to Scott in the Canadian woods. Scott and his party work out that the bear could refer to a lake, Dancing Bear Water, 30 or 40 miles back along the flight path of the lost aircraft and there, in due course, they find the tailplane - and its front spar root reveals a classic fatigue fracture. The find vindicates Honey's theory and makes him a minor hero in aviation circles—to which he is indifferent. His early warning even allows for a timely redesign by the manufacturers, ensuring no loss of service of the Reindeers over the Atlantic. Corder and Honey marry.
473707	/m/02dtdy	Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!	Sharon Lechter	2000-04-01	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is largely based on Kiyosaki's upbringing and education in Hawaii. The book highlights the different attitudes to money work and life of two men (His rich dad and his poor dad), and how they in turn influenced key decisions in Kiyosaki's life. Among some of the book's topics are: * Robert Kyosaki's personal story * The difference between assets and liabilities * What the rich teach their kids about money that the poor and middle class do not * Your house is not an asset, unless you use it to produce revenue * The value of financial intelligence and financial literacy * That corporations spend first, then pay taxes, while individuals must pay taxes first * That corporations are artificial entities that anyone can use, but the poor usually do not know how * The importance of investing and entrepreneurship Kiyosaki advocated Dr. Buckminster Fuller's views on wealth, that wealth is measured by the number of days the income from your assets can sustain you, and financial independence is achieved when your monthly income from assets exceeds your monthly expenses.
474204	/m/02dwfm	The Currents of Space	Isaac Asimov	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in the backdrop of Trantor's rise from a large regional power to a galaxy-wide empire, unifying millions of worlds. This story occurs around the year 11,000 AD (originally 34,500 AD, according to Asimov's early 1950s chronology), when the Trantorian Empire encompasses roughly half of the galaxy. The independent planet Sark exploits the planet Florina and derives its great wealth from "kyrt", a versatile and fluorescent fiber that can only be grown on Florina. The relationship between the two planets is analogous to the situation between European imperial powers and their colonies during the 19th century, where the Florinians are forced to work in kyrt fields and are treated as an inferior race by the Sarkites. Attempts to break the Sark monopoly and grow kyrt on other worlds have thus far been unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Trantor would like to add these two worlds to its growing empire. There is a hidden irony in Sark's dominion over Florina: clear parallels to the American South growing cotton with slave labor. The Florinians are one of the lightest-skinned people in a galaxy where racial categories seem to have been forgotten, except by the people of Sark. One of the characters, Dr. Selim Junz, comes from Libair, a planet with some of the galaxy's darkest-skinned people, and feels sympathy for the Florinians. (The planet Libair takes its name from Liberia, a country in Africa, which would explain a dark-skinned genetic inheritance. Liberia was also settled by freed slaves from America.) Also, Asimov chose the name of "kyrt" to be rather similar to "cotton", and he explains that it contains cellulose. The possible destruction of Florina is predicted by Rik, a "spatio-analyst", who has had his mind manipulated by a "psychic probe" device, resulting in gross amnesia. When Rik gradually starts remembering his past, it produces a political crisis involving Sark, Florina, and Trantor. Rik, a native of the Earth, had discovered that Florina's sun is about to explode into a nova because it is being fed carbon by one of the outer-space "currents of space", supposedly rather like the currents of the ocean. It is also revealed at long last that the special energetic wavelength of light that is being emitted by Florina's sun is what causes the very high-quality kyrt fiber to grow there. This is the explanation why kyrt cannot be grown on other planets – since stars going nova are really quite rare, and stars with habitable planets that go nova are rarer still. Because losing Florina would mean losing the only source of its vast wealth, there is strong resistance from Sark to accept the message. However, when it is explained that the wealth is already lost since the conditions that enable kyrt to grow can be easily duplicated anywhere now that they are understood, they become more amenable. When Trantor offers to buy out the entire planet for a very high price, the offer is readily accepted. Even though there is not yet a full Galactic Empire, Trantor does control the now largely radioactive Earth. The idea of evacuating Earth is mentioned, but that is strongly rejected by Rik. He insists that it is the original planet of the human race, though this is not generally accepted.
474327	/m/02dwsr	Foundation's Fear	Gregory Benford	1997-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Emperor Cleon I wants to appoint Hari Seldon as the First Minister of the Galactic Empire. Powerful Trantor High Council member Betan Lamurk opposes the independent Seldon’s appointment. Seldon himself is reluctant to accept the position because of its time constraints pulling him away from the psychohistory project. The project is led by Seldon, Yugo Amaryl, and Seldon’s advanced humaniform robot-spouse Dors Venabili. Seldon needs to curry favor with the emperor, however, and advises Cleon I informally. For example, Seldon suggests a decree that erases terrorists' names from records, denying them immortality, discouraging chaotic actions. Besides the psychohistorians, much of the novel's action revolves around advanced sentient simulations (sims) of Joan of Arc and Voltaire. The sims have been recreated by Artifice Associates, a research company located in Trantor’s Dahl Sector. Artifice Associates programmers Marq and Sybil plan to use the Joan/ Voltaire sims for two money-making projects. First, Hari Seldon’s psychohistory project. Second, Trantor’s Junin-Sector “Preservers vs Skeptics Society” debate whether mechanical beings endowed with artificial intelligence should be built. And if so, whether they should receive full citizenship. The Preservers’ champion will be Joan, the Skeptics’ champion Voltaire. Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili flee Trantor, escaping High Council member Betan Lamurk’s forces. During their galactic odyssey, Hari and Dors experience virtual reality as chimpanzees on planet Panucopia. They also visit helter-skelter New Renaissance world Sark. Meanwhile, back on Trantor, sims Joan and Voltaire escape into Trantor’s Mesh (Internet). Joan and Voltaire interact with ancient aliens on the Mesh. These aliens fled Trantor's physical space when terraforming robots arrived on Trantor more than 20,000 years ago. Via Joan and Voltaire, Hari allies with the mesh aliens. The aliens aid Seldon’s return to Trantor, and his defeat of High Council member Lamurk through tik-toks. The novel ends with Seldon accepting his position as Emperor Cleon’s First Minister.
474347	/m/02dwwk	Foundation and Chaos	Greg Bear	1998-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is the second part of The Second Foundation Trilogy and takes place almost entirely in the same time frame as "The Psychohistorians," which is the first part of the novel Foundation. In addition to telling a more expanded version of Hari Seldon's confrontation with the Commission of Public Safety it also interweaves R. Daneel Olivaw's struggle against a sect of robots who oppose his plans for humanity. While covering the same period as in Asimov’s “The Psychohistorians,” Foundation and Chaos focuses more on paternal superrobot R Daneel Olivaw than on Hari Seldon. Olivaw’s 20 millennia of machinations and contrivances are questioned by “Calvinian” robots who do not observe Olivaw’s Zeroth Law (“No robot may harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm”) developed in Asimov’s Robots and Empire. Olivaw’s actions dampen human intellectual growth and variation until the human species matures. The novel’s primary issue is whether Olivaw’s ends justify his means. Does the ancient Auroran robot really serve humanity’s greater good? Should Olivaw decide this for himself? Seldon seems unaware of Olivaw’s role in perpetuating brain fever and other dampeners. But Seldon would probably approve, considering his quarantining of the New Renaissance worlds when Seldon served as Imperial 1st Minister. Foundation and Chaos portrays the rise of mentallics (telepaths who can influence other’s thoughts) such as Wanda Seldon and Stettin Palver, who will form the Second Foundation. Twisted rogue mentallic Vara Liso even foreshadows the mutant Magnifico’s spectacular rise 310 years later. Powerful Public Safety Commissioner Linge Chen again plays a prominent role as the true Imperial power behind fatuous playboy Emperor Klayus. Reconstructed superrobot Dors Venabili reappears as well.
474349	/m/02dwwx	Foundation's Triumph	David Brin	1999-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Foundation’s Triumph starts with Hari Seldon who reviews his life and has to accept the fact that his “purpose” is completed. One day he meets a bureaucrat, Horis Antic, who explains his theory about the correlation of certain soils on planets and psychohistory. Seldon agrees to take a trip to some of the planets which fit Antic’s theory. Hari and Horis travel to Demarchia, where they rent a yacht. Parallel to Seldon’s story, Dors Venabili starts out on the planet Panucopia to meet Lodovik Trema, a robot whose Three Laws of Robotics have been erased. Lodovic gives her the head of R. Giskard Reventlov, an important robot who founded the Zeroth Law with R. Daneel Olivaw. She finds out that Giskard and Daneel never consulted a human while founding the Zeroth Law. Later Trema meets a faction of cyborgs and joins them. After Dors has become a rebel, she fights for the cyborgs as well. The third plot of the novel is on Eos. Daneel talks to his possible successor Zun Lurrin. An interesting point is that all chapters with Olivaw as the main character are written in a different typeface. In Seldon's story, during the flight to the first planet the yacht is taken over by rebels, who are from the renaissance or chaos planet Ktlina. They show Seldon ancient spaceships with many data capsules from the human past. Robots take over the yacht and destroy the data capsules and the ancient ships with the permission of Seldon. During the flight back to Trantor a rebel, Gornon Vlimt, turns out to be another robot from a faction of Calvinians, who want to send Hari into the future. At last all factions meet on Earth. The Calvinians are stopped by Daneel and Wanda Seldon. Old friends Seldon and Daneel meet one final time, to discuss philosophy. Despite the apparent eventual dominance of Galaxia, Seldon confides his belief that the second Galactic Empire will include both the two Foundations, following the Seldon Plan, and Galaxia. "Will there be an Encyclopedia Galactica a thousand years from now," asks Seldon, betting that if his belief is correct, there will be regularly updated editions of it. Since most Foundation novels use the Encyclopedia as a framing device for its chapters, it seems that Seldon has correctly predicted the successful synthesis of the two Foundations and Galaxia.
474370	/m/02dx08	The Seagull	Anton Chekhov			 The play takes place on a country estate owned by Sorin, a retired senior civil servant in failing health. He is the brother of the famous actress Arkadina, who has just arrived at the estate with her lover, the writer Trigorin, for a brief vacation. Sorin and his guests gather at an outdoor stage to see an unconventional play that Arkadina's son, Konstantin Treplyov, has written and directed. The play-within-a-play features Nina, a young woman who lives on a neighboring estate, as the "soul of the world" in a time far in the future. The play is his latest attempt at creating a new theatrical form, and resembles a dense symbolist work. Arkadina laughs at the play, finding it ridiculous and incomprehensible; the performance ends and Konstantin storms off in humiliation. Act I also sets up the play's various romantic triangles. The schoolteacher Medvedenko loves Masha, the daughter of the estate's steward. Masha, in turn, is in love with Konstantin, who is in love with Nina; Nina does not return his feelings. When Masha tells the kindly old doctor Dorn about her longing, he helplessly blames the lake for making everybody feel romantic. Arkadina does not seem much concerned about her son, who has not found his way in the world. Although others ridicule Treplyov's drama, the physician Dorn praises him. Act II takes place in the afternoon outside of the estate, a few days later. After reminiscing about happier times, Arkadina engages the house steward Shamrayev in a heated argument and decides to leave immediately. Nina lingers behind after the group leaves, and Konstantin shows up to give her a seagull that he has shot. Nina is confused and horrified at the gift. Konstantin sees Trigorin approaching, and leaves in a jealous fit. Nina asks Trigorin to tell her about the writer's life. He replies that it is not an easy one. Nina says that she knows the life of an actress is not easy either, but she wants more than anything to be one. Trigorin sees the seagull that Konstantin has shot and muses on how he could use it as a subject for a short story: "A young girl lives all her life on the shore of a lake. She loves the lake, like a seagull, and she's happy and free, like a seagull. But a man arrives by chance, and when he sees her, he destroys her, out of sheer boredom. Like this seagull." Arkadina calls for Trigorin and he leaves as she tells him that she has changed her mind, and they will not be leaving immediately. Nina lingers behind, enthralled with Trigorin's celebrity and modesty, and she gushes, "My dream!" Act III takes place inside the estate, on the day when Arkadina and Trigorin have decided to depart. Between acts Konstantin attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head, but the bullet only grazed his skull. He spends the majority of Act III with his scalp heavily bandaged. Nina finds Trigorin eating breakfast and presents him with a medallion that proclaims her devotion to him using a line from one of Trigorin's own books: "If you ever need my life, come and take it." She retreats after begging for one last chance to see Trigorin before he leaves. Arkadina appears, followed by Sorin, whose health has continued to deteriorate. Trigorin leaves to continue packing. There is a brief argument between Arkadina and Sorin, after which Sorin collapses in grief. He is helped off by Medvedenko. Konstantin enters and asks his mother to change his bandage. As she is doing this, Konstantin disparages Trigorin and there is another argument. When Trigorin reenters, Konstantin leaves in tears. Trigorin asks Arkadina if they can stay at the estate. She flatters and cajoles him until he agrees to return to Moscow. After she has left, Nina comes to say her final goodbye to Trigorin and to inform him that she is running away to become an actress, against her parents' wishes. They kiss passionately and make plans to meet again in Moscow. Act IV takes place during the winter two years later, in the drawing room that has been converted to Konstantin's study. Masha has finally accepted Medvedenko's marriage proposal, and they have a child together, though Masha still nurses an unrequited love for Konstantin. Various characters discuss what has happened in the two years that have passed: Nina and Trigorin lived together in Moscow for a time until he abandoned her and went back to Arkadina. Nina never achieved any real success as an actress, and is currently on a tour of the provinces with a small theatre group. Konstantin has had some short stories published, but is increasingly depressed. Sorin's health is failing, and the people at the estate have telegraphed for Arkadina to come for his final days. Most of the play's characters go to the drawing room to play a game of bingo. Konstantin does not join them, and spends this time working on a manuscript at his desk. After the group leaves to eat dinner, Konstantin hears someone at the back door. He is surprised to find Nina, whom he invites inside. Nina tells Konstantin about her life over the last two years. She starts to compare herself to the seagull that Konstantin killed in Act II, then rejects that and says "I am an actress." She tells him that she was forced to tour with a second-rate theatre company after the death of the child she had with Trigorin, but she seems to have a newfound confidence. Konstantin pleads with her to stay, but she is in such disarray that his pleading means nothing. She embraces Konstantin, and leaves. Despondent, Konstantin spends two minutes silently tearing up his manuscripts before leaving the study. The group reenters and returns to the bingo game. There is a sudden gunshot from off-stage, and Dorn goes to investigate. He returns and takes Trigorin aside. Dorn tells Trigorin to somehow get Arkadina away, for Konstantin has just killed himself.
474729	/m/02dycj	Isaac Asimov's Caliban	Roger MacBride Allen	1993-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 This series deals with a new type of robots who do not have the Three Laws of Robotics. The Three Laws are integral to the functioning of a positronic brain, but these robots have gravitonic brains, into which it is possible to build any set of laws. For example, some gravitonic robots have already been built with the New Laws of Robotics which are designed to make them partners rather than slaves to humanity. Caliban, the robot of the title, is an experimental gravitonic robot who was created with no laws at all. The intent was to keep him under carefully controlled laboratory conditions and see what laws he evolved for himself, but he escaped from the laboratory, and soon found himself pursued by the police (who believed that he had attempted to murder his creator) and attacked by a group of criminals who liked ordering robots to destroy themselves. The novel begins with Sheriff Alvar Kresh supervising a crime scene involving what appears to be an attempted murder of a prominent Inferno roboticist, Dr. Fredda Leving. Kresh's robot sidekick, Donald, accompanies him wherever he goes, and is reluctant to follow the implications raised when Kresh sees two sets of robotic footprints leading out of the lab, for this implies that a robot committed the crime of assault on a human being. Settlers were asked to come because Inferno's ecology is unstable and requires expert technical work to try and reterraform the planet to shift the planet away from potentially disastrous extremes. Tonya Welton, the leader of the Settler faction, inserts herself into the investigation's hierarchy and claims that Governor Chanto Grieg wanted her involved because Leving Labs was closely associated with the Settler effort to set up a centralized terraforming depot on the island of Purgatory. It is later revealed during a lecture by Dr. Leving, that this is so the New Law robots she proposes can be safeguarded and kept from mingling with the human population as a whole, since they are designed to aid in terraforming work, and therefore represent a great investment of time and materials in order to construct. Simcor Beddle's Ironhead movement stages a hit-and-run attack on a plantation near Settlertown, and they crop up once or twice more as the story progresses. The Ironheads nearly successfully start a riot when Beddle castigates Dr. Leving after one of her lectures on the nature of robots and how they affect human beings. It is her thesis that the superabundance of robotic labor has caused humans to become indolent and nearly incompetent at accomplishing even trivial tasks. She also claims that robots themselves do not qualify as a very good successor to humanity given that their sole purpose is to serve humans. It is revealed that some members of Leving Labs have both personal and professional secrets to hide: Gubber Anshaw is romantically involved with Tonya Welton, while Jomaine Terach is aware of the creation of Caliban and the fact that he lacked the Three Laws of Robotics. Sheriff Kresh is aided in this respect when Caliban encounters a robot at a shipping depot and recounts his entire life history (about five days' worth). While the robot nearly seizes in brainlock and ends up precipitating a minor catastrophe by hyperwaving for help, the story the robot tells confirms what Kresh later uses to get the truth out of Terach. Caliban escapes the City of Hades (the capital of Inferno), but is located by both Dr. Leving and Sheriff Kresh. Kresh uses the occasion to finger the true culprit in the assault on Leving, who turns out to have been Ariel, Tonya Welton's personal robot. She had switched serial numbers with another robot after a test had been run on her brain and comparing it to a normal Three-Law robotic brain. She, like Caliban, had been programmed without the Laws of Robotics, but had been purely a stationary unit. In switching the serial numbers, Ariel was able to have a set of robotic legs placed on her, allowing her to masquerade as a "normal" robot. Kresh rightly believes that Ariel presents far too great of a danger to human beings, and shoots her. However, he is convinced that Caliban does not present the same danger based on clues about his behavior, and allows him to remain functional. Caliban then goes with Dr. Leving to the island of Purgatory. fr:Le Robot Caliban
474730	/m/02dycx	Isaac Asimov's Inferno	Roger MacBride Allen	1994-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 This series deals with a new type of robots who do not have the Three Laws of Robotics. The Three Laws are integral to the functioning of a positronic brain, but these robots have gravitonic brains, into which it is possible to build any set of laws. For example, some gravitonic robots have already been built with the New Laws of Robotics which are designed to make them partners rather than slaves to humanity - in theory. This book opens with the revelation of severe political upheaval and economic dislocation in Inferno society. New Law robots, once thought to be the ideal new partners of humanity, are incited by Prospero (one of the first New Law robots to have been constructed) to leave the island of Purgatory. In this, they are assisted by a massive underground "rustbacking" industry precipitated by a perceived shortage of robotic labor on the rest of Inferno. Governor Chanto Grieg has initiated, and signed, a law mandating that all "excess" robots in a household be drafted for terraforming work. Spacers, unaccustomed to being limited to twenty robots per individual, respond by selling precious works of art or otherwise bartering for New Law robots. This funding is part of what drives the rustbacking industry. Sheriff Alvar Kresh also returns in this book, brought along largely as window dressing for the Governor, since his jurisdiction is essentially nonexistent on the Island of Purgatory. He and the Governor have an argument about guaranteeing Grieg's safety at the party which is about to start at the Winter Palace. Donald, Kresh's robot, invokes the First Law in refusing to permit the Governor to leave the room until Kresh temporizes by activating the security robot detail in the Winter Palace. Meanwhile, a rustbacker, Norlan Fiyle, is caught by a Ranger on patrol, and agrees to turn in another Ranger, a corrupt man named Emoch Huthwitz who has been taking bribes in exchange for tipping off the rustbacking network whenever a raid is about to start. Caliban and Prospero, invited to the Governor's gathering at the behest of Dr. Fredda Leving, are present just as Tonya Welton, leader of the Settlers, gets into a fight with two supposed Ironheads, members of a fringe political group led by Simcor Beddle, which calls for the removal of all Settlers from Inferno and for the government to rescind the law drafting robotic labor for terraforming. It is at this point that the action begins. After Grieg successfully carries off the gathering and demonstrates his political will while hobnobbing with all of the major players in Inferno's complex politics, Sheriff Kresh is called to a murder scene involving the Ranger, Emoch Huthwitz. It is this unsettling event that makes Kresh wonder if the Governor was a target, and after realizing that he has been communicating with a simulated Governor (later found to be the result of a simulator device plugged into the communications console), he rushes back to the Winter Palace and finds the Governor dead, in bed. Kresh rapidly takes unorthodox steps to allow himself to take charge of the investigation of the crime scene. He orders Sheriff's Deputies sent over by high-speed aircars, and calls in Dr. Leving to quietly examine the destroyed security robots on the scene. A man named Tierlaw Verick is swooped up after having evaded the initial searches by the deputies. Shortly after, Grieg's death is announced to the world of Inferno, and Caliban goes into hiding along with Prospero. Meanwhile, a Spacer import/export broker, Sero Phrost, meets with Simcor Beddle and blackmails him by pointing out where some of the Ironhead's money has been coming from. Settler Demand Notes have been funnelled from Phrost's illegal sales of Settler hardware (partly subsidized by the Settler faction on Inferno) over to the Ironheads. Sheriff Kresh is informed some time later that Governor Chanto Grieg had foreseen the possibility he might be assassinated, and took steps to secure the office of Governor from being assumed by an ineffectual politician, Shelabas Quellam. The bombshell dropped on Kresh is that Grieg has named him as the Governor-Designate. Governor Kresh takes the inaugural oath and pledges to pursue the killers of Chanto Grieg, and to run in a special election a hundred days from the date of his oath-taking. After revelations that rustbacking connections seem to be coming from all corners of the case, Kresh realizes that Tierlaw Verick hired the killer, Ottley Bissal, in order to secure rustbacking profits because Grieg was going to let the New Law robots go free and decide of their own accord whether to stay on Purgatory. fr:Inferno (roman)
474733	/m/02dydm	Isaac Asimov's Utopia			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Utopia takes place five years into the reign of Alvar Kresh as the governor of Inferno, who is now married to roboticist Fredda Leving. The re-terraforming effort is doing fairly well, but many believe it is still doomed to failure. The plot centers around a plan created by an Infernal named Davlo Lentrall to use a comet, named comet Grieg after the old governor, to dig a channel creating a northern sea. Norlan Fiyle, who has been working as an intelligence broker, found out about this plan early and informed the Settlers, the Ironheads, and the New Law robots of the plan. The issue is complicated by the fact that the plan calls for the comet to land essentially on top of the new law robot city of Valhalla. Tonya Welton, the leader of the settlers on Inferno, is upset by this plan having seen similar plans fail in the past. She orders her security people to grab Davlo and destroy his work. Although they were successful in destroying his data, the attempt to capture Davlo himself failed due to quick thinking on the part of Commander Justen Devray, now the head of the Combined Inferno Police, and the help of Davlo's robot Kaelor. Unfortunately, the location of comet Grieg is lost. Davlo and Fredda Leving attempt to extract this information from Kaelor's memory, but he ends up killing himself rather than release the information which might cause harm to humans. Davlo's guilt over the death of his robot eventually leads him to oppose the comet plan all together. Eventually the information is retrieved when Jadelo Gildern, who had previously stolen the data from Davlo's office, provides Governor Kresh with the missing data. While trying to decide whether to implement the comet plan, Kresh pays a visit to the terraforming control system. The system consists of a robotic unit, called Unit Dee, working with a non-sentient Settler unit, Unit Dum, they are collectively referred to as the Twins. We learn that in order to avoid First Law conflicts, Unit Dee is being lied to and told that the entire terraforming project is really an elaborate simulation and that no actual human beings are involved. Significant care must be taken to ensure that Dee does not learn the truth. Dee confirmats that Davlo's plan, if successful, stands a good chance of repairing Inferno's ecology. The comet project is given the go-ahead and work commences to evacuate the areas near the impact site. As the impact approaches, Simcor Beddle and Jadelo Gildern develop a plan to use a burrowing bomb, normally used for geological surveys, to destroy Valhalla before the new law robots have time to finish evacuating. On the way there though, Simcor's aircar is attacked, his robots killed, and a demand, to stop the comet and deliver money into a bank account or Beddle will die, is written on the door. Kresh's robot Donald, who heard of this incident, is forced by the First Law to act. He contacts robots in the area, who begin performing a search, and tells Dee that she is being lied to about the simulation. This causes Dee to shut down, leaving the people on the ground with few options for the final steering of the comet. Meanwhile, Devray tries to find Beddle. He tries putting money in the account mentioned in the demand and finds that it is automatically transferred to one of Gildern's accounts. Devray brings in Gildern, and also questions Fiyle, from whom he learns about Beddle's plan to destroy the New Law robots. Caliban turns himself in preemptively. The three talk while in jail, and Caliban manages to deduce what has happened to Beddle and rushes off to save him. While flying there, Caliban sends out a hyperwave message to tell the other robots that are searching to go back and that the situation is under control. Caliban goes to Valhalla, where he finds several New Law robots dead and Prospero holding Beddle prisoner, with a setup where if Beddle tries to leave, he will set off the bomb. Prospero was attempting to kill Beddle while avoiding the New First Law. Caliban is left with a choice of whom to let live, and kills Prospero, saving Beddle shortly before the comet hits. In the meantime, Dee finally wakes up and asks to talk to Kresh. She verifies that she was in fact being lied to. She asks Kresh if he believes Caliban's message about saving Beddle. When Kresh says that he does believe it, Dee decides that she can manage the comet without First Law conflict. fr:Utopia (roman)
475208	/m/02d_9z	The Feast of the Goat	Mario Vargas Llosa	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel's narrative is divided into three distinct strands. One is centred on Urania Cabral, a fictional Dominican character; another deals with the conspirators involved in Trujillo's assassination; and the third focuses on Trujillo himself. The novel alternates between these storylines, and also jumps back and forth from 1961 to 1996, with frequent flashbacks to periods earlier in Trujillo's regime. The Feast of the Goat begins with the return of Urania to her hometown of Santo Domingo, a city which had been renamed Ciudad Trujillo during Trujillo's time in power. This storyline is largely introspective and deals with Urania's memories and her inner turmoil over the events preceding her departure from the Dominican Republic thirty-five years earlier. Urania escaped the crumbling Trujillo regime in 1961 by claiming she planned to study under the tutelage of nuns in Michigan. In the following decades, she becomes a prominent and successful New York lawyer. She finally returns to the Dominican Republic in 1996, on a whim, and finds herself compelled to confront her father and elements of her past she has long ignored. As Urania speaks to her ailing father, Agustin Cabral, she recalls more and more of the anger and disgust that led to her thirty-five years of silence. Urania retells her father's descent into political disgrace, and the betrayal that forms the crux of both Urania's storyline and that of Trujillo himself. The second and third storylines are set in 1961, in the weeks prior to and following Trujillo's assassination on the 30th of May. Each assassin has his own background story, explaining his motivation for his involvement in the assassination plot. Each has been wronged by Trujillo and his regime, by torture and brutality, or through assaults on their pride, their religious faith, their morality, or their loved ones. Vargas Llosa weaves the tale of the men as memories recalled on the night of Trujillo's death, as the conspirators lie in wait for "The Goat". Interconnected with these stories are the actions of other famous Trujillistas of the time; Joaquín Balaguer, the puppet president, Johnny Abbes García, the merciless head of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM), and various others&mdash;some real, some composites of historical figures, and some purely fictional. The third storyline is concerned with the thoughts and motives of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina himself. The chapters concerning The Goat recall the major events of his time, including the slaughter of thousands of Dominican Haitians in 1937. They also deal with the Dominican Republic's tense international relationships during the Cold War, especially with the United States under the presidency of John F. Kennedy, and Cuba under Castro. Vargas Llosa also speculates upon Trujillo's innermost thoughts and paints a picture of a man whose physical body is failing him. Trujillo is tormented by incontinence and impotence; and this storyline intersects with Urania's narrative when it is revealed that Urania was sexually assaulted by Trujillo. He is unable to achieve an erection with Urania, and in frustration and anger he rapes her with his hands. This event is the core of Urania's shame, and her hatred towards her father. In addition, it is the cause of Trujillo's repeated anger over the "anemic little bitch" that witnessed his impotence and emotion, and the reason he is en route to sleep with another girl on the night of his assassination. In the novel's final chapters, the three storylines intersect with increasing frequency. The tone of these chapters is especially dark as they deal primarily with the horrific torture and death of the assassins at the hands of the SIM, the failure of the coup, the rape of Urania, and the concessions made to Trujillo's most vicious supporters allowing them to enact their horrific revenge on the conspirators and then escape the country. The book ends as Urania prepares to return home, determined this time to keep in touch with her family back on the island.
475298	/m/02d_q5	Lost in a Good Book	Jasper Fforde	2002	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Three months after the events of The Eyre Affair, Thursday Next is happily married to Landen Parke-Laine and working as a literary detective out of Swindon. One day, Thursday meets her father, a renegade ChronoGuard, who informs her that the world's going to end in a flood of an unknown pink chemical. This is a result of one of her uncle Mycroft's inventions going out of control. Mycroft has destroyed his Prose Portal after the events of The Eyre Affair, and retired leaving the invention business in the hands of his two well-meaning but inept sons, Orville and Wilbur. Thursday is sent with her partner, Bowden Cable, to the mansion of Lord Volescamper, a major supporter of the front-runner in the up-coming election for President. In his extensive library, they discover an original manuscript of Shakespeare's lost play Cardenio. Tests done at the station determine its authenticity, and it seems to have appeared just in time to help its discoverer, Yorrick Kaine, to win the election (thanks to the "Shakespeare vote"). When he releases the play to the general public, victory is all but guaranteed. Thursday had marooned Jack Schitt in Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven at the end of The Eyre Affair, and his employer, The Goliath Corporation, a Big Brother-like agency which is the de facto ruler of England, wants him back. They hire a ChronoGuard agent named Lavoisier to eradicate Thursday's husband Landen from the time line, as a hostage to blackmail Thursday into retrieving Schitt. Landen vanishes, and only Thursday remembers him. But she also has physical proof—she's pregnant with their child. Without Mycroft's Prose Portal, however, she'll have to learn a new way to travel between books. During one of her dreams, she encounters Landen in her memory, who spurs her to travel to Osaka to meet Mrs. Nakajima, a woman who's learned how to travel through books. Mrs Nakajima introduces her to bookjumping, the method by which one enters the fictional world without the Prose Portal: those with an inherent talent for it can literally read themselves into the world of fiction and Thursday does so. It turns out that there is a police force within literature (both fiction and non-fiction), Jurisfiction, which employs both fictional characters and real people ranging from the Cheshire cat and the Red Queen to Ambrose Bierce and Voltaire, and ensures that literature continues in an orderly fashion. Next herself is apprenticed as a rookie Jurisfiction agent to Miss Havisham, the abandoned bride from Dickens' novel Great Expectations. Thursday is, however, in some legal trouble in the literary world for having changed the ending of Jane Eyre, in The Eyre Affair. After a preliminary hearing in the Byzantine world of Kafka's The Trial and saving Abel Magwitch from drowning before the beginning of Great Expectations, Havisham and Thursday part ways and the latter character enters "The Raven" and retrieves Jack Schitt. But Goliath have no intention of keeping their word, and they trap Thursday in a Corporation warehouse without any reading material with which she can read herself out. Miss Havisham finds her there when it's discovered that the copy of Cardenio which Thursday found in the real world was stolen from the Great Library (a building where copies of every book ever written or conceived of are kept) by another literary character. Miss Havisham uses one of Thursday's clothing labels to read the pair (eventually and with great effort) back to the Great Library. Guided through her dreams and memories by Landen, Thursday found the event that caused the world ending accident—or rather, the person: Aornis Hades, Acheron Hades' sister who wants revenge on Thursday for Acheron's death in The Eyre Affair. Aornis can edit people's memories so they don't remember her presence, which is why Thursday needed help from Landen to find Aornis in her own memory. Cardenio is retrieved but Aornis escapes and now Goliath, the ChronoGuard, and SpecOps all seek to apprehend Thursday on Goliath's contrived charge of stealing corporate secrets. At the book's end, Aornis pressures Thursday to kill herself so that Aornis will prevent the world from turning into Dream Topping. Thursday's father takes her place in the nick of time and sacrifices himself as Mycroft's Dream Topping making machine breaks down and begins producing the goo continuously; he takes all the Dream Topping to the dawn of Earth, where it—and he—will supply the organic nutrients needed to create life. Afterwards, Thursday returns home and finds her father there. She is confused until she realizes that, being a time traveller, he will sacrifice himself much later in his future, even though it was just a little while ago in hers. Now that she is wanted by Goliath, the ChronoGuard, and Aornis, her father offers to place her in an alternate reality for a while (ironically implied to be our reality) while she gives birth to Landen's baby. Refusing her father's offer, Thursday travels to a book in The Well of Lost Plots -- a subdivision of the Great Library that contains unpublished and unfinished works—in order to take a year's maternity leave with her memory of Landen. She establishes a home in a moored flying boat (a Short Sunderland), having traded places with the plucky sidekick sergeant of a police procedural mystery, implied to be Sergeant Mary Mary, from one of Fforde's other works, The Big Over Easy.
475366	/m/02d_ws	Pan	Knut Hamsun	1894	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, a hunter and ex-military man, lives alone in a hut in the forest with his faithful dog Aesop. Upon meeting Edvarda, the daughter of a merchant in a nearby town, they are both strongly attracted to each other, but neither understands the other's love. Overwhelmed by the society of people where Edvarda lives, Glahn has a series of tragedies befall on him before he leaves forever.
475398	/m/02f00l	The Eye of Argon	Jim Theis	1970	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 ; Chapter 1 : The story starts with a violent swordfight between the barbarian Grignr and some soldiers. Grignr is on his way to Gorzom in search of wenches and plunder. ; Chapter 2 : Grignr arrives in Gorzom and goes to a tavern, where he picks up a local wench (with a "lithe, opaque nose"). A drunken guard challenges him over the woman; he kills the guard, but is arrested by the man's companions and brought before the local prince, who (on the advice of his advisor) condemns him to a life of forced labour in the mines. This chapter contains the first of several occasions when the word slut is applied to a man, presumably as an insult. ; Chapter 3 : Grignr sits despondent in his cell, thinking of his homeland. ; Chapter 3½ : A scene of a pagan ritual involving a group of shamans, a young woman to be sacrificed and a jade idol with one eye: a "many fauceted scarlet emerald", the Eye of Argon. ; Chapter 4 : Grignr sits bored and anguished in his cell and is losing track of time. He battles a large rat and it inspires him with a plan, involving the corpse of the rat. ; Chapter 5 : The pagan ritual proceeds, with a priest ordering the young woman up to the altar. When she fails to proceed, he attempts to grope her. She disables him with a hard kick between the testicles, but the other shamans grab and molest her. ; Chapter 6 : Grignr is taken from his cell by two soldiers. He takes the rat pelvis he has fashioned into a dagger and slits one soldier's throat. He then strangles the second and takes his clothes. He wanders the catacombs for a time, finding a storeroom, and narrowly avoids being killed by a booby-trap. Below this room he finds the palace mausoleum. He resets the booby-trap in case he is being pursued. :He hears a scream apparently coming from a sarcophagus. He opens it to find the scream is coming from below. He opens a trap door and sees a shaman about to sacrifice the young woman. He ploughs into the group of shamans with an axe and takes the Eye. The young woman, Carthena, turns out to be the tavern wench. They depart. ; Chapter 7 : One priest, who had been suffering an epileptic seizure during Grignr's attack, recovers, draws a scimitar and follows Grignr and Carthena through the trap door in the ceiling. ; Chapter 7½ : The priest strikes at Grignr but he triggers, and is killed by, the reset booby-trap before his sword can connect. Carthena tells Grignr of the prince, Agaphim, who had condemned him to the mines. They encounter Agaphim and kill him, as well as his advisor Agafnd. :They emerge into the sunlight. Grignr pulls the Eye of Argon out of his pouch to admire. The jewel melts and turns into a writhing blob with a leechlike mouth. The blob attacks him and begins sucking his blood. Carthena faints. Grignr, beginning to lose consciousness, grabs a torch and thrusts it into the blob's mouth. Traditional photocopied and Internet versions end at this point, incomplete since page 49 of the fanzine had been lost. The ending was rediscovered in 2004 and published in The New York Review of Science Fiction #198, February 2005. The authenticity of this "lost ending" is still disputed by many. ; The Lost Ending (Remainder of Ch. 7½) : The blob explodes into a thousand pieces, leaving nothing behind except "a dark red blotch upon the face of the earth, blotching things up." Grignr and the still-unconscious Carthena ride off into the distance. The version usually found on the Internet is incomplete, ending with the phrase "-END OF AVAILABLE COPY-". Susan Stepney claims to have the missing ending section, including information on how the lost ending was discovered. Quoting from that page: For the history of this great work, including the eventual discovery of the legendary lost ending, see New York Review of Science Fiction #195, November 2004, and #198, February 2005. Ansible, Langford's science-fiction newsletter, reports in its February 2005 issue that "according to a letter in The New York Review of Science Fiction (January 2005), a complete copy of the relevant 1970 fanzine has been unearthed in the Jack Williamson SF Library at Eastern New Mexico University. JWSFL collection administrator Gene Bundy reports that the long-missing Page 49 begins: "With a sloshing plop the thing fell to the ground, evaporating in a thick scarlet cloud until it reatained its original size.'..." Because the novelette was at least once re-typed and photocopied for distribution, without provenance, many readers have found it hard to believe the story was not a collaborative effort, a satire on bad writing, or both. The webmaster of a now defunct site called "Wulf's 'Eye of Argon' Shrine" argued that the story "was actually well paced and plotted. He went on to say that, although he didn't believe it himself, 'at least one sf professional today claims that the story was a cunning piece of satire passed off as real fan fiction.'" Langford reported the following, sent in by author Michael Swanwick, in Ansible #193: :I had a surprising conversation at Readercon with literary superstar Samuel R. Delany, who told me of how at an early Clarion the students and teachers had decided to see exactly how bad a story they could write if they put their minds to it. Chip himself contributed a paragraph to the round robin effort. Its title? "The Eye of Argon". The 1995 reprint was attributed to "G. Ecordian," after the hero, Grignr the Ecordian. Langford considers it well known that Theis is the author, and surmises that Delany misremembered the event. Author Stephen Goldin said that, during a convention, he met a woman who told him she had done the actual mimeographing for the Ozark-area fanzine. Lee Weinstein reports that he had originally heard that Dorothy Fontana had distributed the photocopies. Weinstein, however, later discovered Usenet posts by Richard W. Zellich, who was involved in running the St. Louis, Missouri area convention Archon. Zellich reported in 1991 posts that Jim Theis was real and attended the convention for years. What Weinstein calls "the smoking gun...the long missing citation" was a 1994 posting from New York fan Richard Newsome, who transcribed an interview with Theis published in OSFAN #13. Theis was quoted as saying, "How many professional writers have written a complete story at so early an age? Even so, 'Eye of Argon' isn't great. I basically don't know much about structure or composition." The interviewer praised him for showing good sportsmanship, and Theis replied, "I mean, it was easier than showing bad character and inviting trouble."
477751	/m/02f92_	The Glass Bead Game	Hermann Hesse	1943	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Glass Bead Game takes place at an unspecified date, centuries into the future. Hesse suggested that he imagined the book's narrator writing around the start of the 25th century. The setting is a fictional province of central Europe called Castalia, reserved by political decision for the life of the mind; technology and economic life are kept to a strict minimum. Castalia is home to an austere order of intellectuals with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools for boys, and to nurture and play the Glass Bead Game, whose exact nature remains elusive and whose devotees occupy a special school within Castalia known as Waldzell. The rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics. The novel is an example of a bildungsroman, following the life of a distinguished member of the Castalian Order, Joseph Knecht, whose surname translates as "servant" but can also mean "squire." The plotline chronicles Knecht's education as a youth, his decision to join the order, his mastery of the Game, and his advancement in the order's hierarchy to eventually become Magister Ludi, the executive officer of the Castalian Order's game administrators. The beginning of the novel introduces the Music Master, the resident of Castalia who recruits Knecht as a young student and who is to have the most long-lasting and profound effect on Knecht throughout his life. At one point, Knecht obliquely refers to the Music Master's "sainthood" as the Master nears death in his home at Monteport. As a student, another meaningful friendship develops with Plinio Designori, a student from a politically influential family who is studying in Castalia as a guest. Knecht develops many of his personal views about what larger good Castalia can achieve through vigorous debates with Designori, who views Castalia as an "ivory tower" with little to no impact on the outside world. Although educated within Castalia, Knecht's path to "Magister Ludi" is atypical for the order, as he spends a significant portion of his time after graduation outside the boundaries of the province. His first such venture, to the Bamboo Grove, results in his learning Chinese and becoming something of a disciple to Elder Brother, a recluse who had given up living within Castalia. Next, as part of an assignment to foster goodwill between the order and the Catholic Church, Knecht is sent on several "missions" to the Benedictine monastery of Mariafels, where he befriends the historian Father Jacobus - a relationship which also has profound personal impact for Knecht. As the novel progresses, Knecht begins to question his loyalty to the order; he gradually comes to doubt that the intellectually gifted have a right to withdraw from life's big problems. Knecht comes to see Castalia as a kind of ivory tower, an ethereal protected community, devoted to pure intellectual pursuits but oblivious to the problems posed by life outside its borders. This conclusion precipitates a personal crisis, and, according to his personal views regarding spiritual awakening, Knecht does the unthinkable: he resigns as Magister Ludi and asks to leave the order, ostensibly to become of value and service to the larger culture. The heads of the order deny his request to leave, but Knecht departs Castalia anyway, initially taking a job as a tutor to his childhood friend Designori's energetic and strong-willed son, Tito. Only a few days later, the story ends abruptly with Knecht drowning in a mountain lake while attempting to follow Tito on a swim for which Knecht was unfit. The fictional narrator leaves off before the final sections of the book, remarking that the end of the story is beyond the scope of his biography. The concluding chapter, entitled "The Legend", is reportedly from a different biography. After this final chapter, several of Knecht's "posthumous" works are then presented. The first section contains Knecht's poetry from various periods of his life, followed by three short stories labeled "Three Lives." The stories are presented as exercises by Knecht imagining his life had he been born in another time and place. The first story tells of a pagan rainmaker named Knecht who lived "many thousands of years ago, when women ruled." Eventually the shaman's powers to summon rain fail, and he offers himself as a sacrifice for the good of the tribe. The second story is of Josephus, an early Christian hermit who acquires a reputation for piety but is inwardly troubled by self-loathing and seeks a confessor, only to find that same penitent had been seeking him. The final story concerns the life of Dasa, a prince wrongfully usurped by his half brother as heir to a kingdom and disguised as a cowherd to save his life. While working with the herdsmen as a young boy, Dasa encounters a yogi in meditation in the forest. He wishes to experience the same tranquility as the yogi, but he's unable to stay. He later leaves the herdsmen and marries a beautiful young woman, only to be cuckolded by his half brother (now the Rajah). In a cold fury, he kills his half brother and finds himself once again in the forest with the old yogi, who, through an experience of an alternate life, guides him on the spiritual path and out of the world of illusion (Maya). The four lives, including that as Magister Ludi, oscillate between extroversion (and getting married: rainmaker, Indian life) and introversion (father confessor, Magister Ludi) while developing the four basic psychic functions of Analytical Psychology: sensation (rainmaker), intuition (Indian life), feeling (father confessor), and thinking (Magister Ludi). Originally, Hesse intended several different lives of the same person as he is reincarnated. Instead, he focused on a story set in the future and placed the three shorter stories, "authored" by Knecht in The Glass Bead Game at the end of the novel.
477936	/m/02f9rg	Seven Days in New Crete	Robert Graves		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place in a future society (first established on the island of Crete, but later spreading through much of the world) in which most post-medieval technology has been rejected, and a Triple Goddess religion is followed. The book is narrated by a mid-20th century poet, Edward Venn-Thomas, who is transported forward in time by the New Cretans. Society is organized into five "estates" or social groups: captains, recorders (scribes), commons (by far the most numerous), servants, and magicians or poets (the least numerous), which are analogized to the five fingers of a hand. Different villages practice different marriage customs (strict monogamy, non-strict monogamy, or polyandry), worship different local "godlings", and specialize in various local handcrafts and foodstuffs, but share the common values of the New Cretan civilization and devotion to the Triple Goddess. Some of the social customs are somewhat matriarchal. There is no poverty in New Crete (money has been abolished) and little dissatisfaction. War is only known in the form of controlled local one-day conflicts between neighboring villages, similar to the old game of village football or Shrovetide football. The poets or magicians of New Crete are an integral part of a religion centred on a sometimes capricious Goddess worshipped in three aspects: the maiden archer Nimuë, the goddess of motherhood and sexuality Mari, and the hag-goddess of wisdom Ana. (The names of the last two are similar to those of the Virgin Mary and her mother Saint Anne in Christianity.) The only masculine elements of New Cretan religion are the rival twin demi-gods (the star-god of the first half of the year and the serpent-god of the second half of the year) who compete for the Goddess's favor, and the local village godlings, who are all far below the Goddess as Queen of Heaven. However, the failings of past fallen civilizations are remembered and personified as an anti-trinity of evil gods (the "three Rogues"): Dobeis, god of money and greed; Pill, god of theft and violence; and Machna, god of science and soulless machinery. Though Venn-Thomas has been moved in time, he is still in the same area of southern France where he lived before and after World War II, and he compares the conditions in his own time to those under the New Cretan civilization (mostly to the disfavor of the 20th century, though some things seem "too good to be true"). In this apparently idyllic utopian setting, Venn-Thomas begins to realise that he has been chosen by the Goddess in order to inject disruption into a society that is becoming static and in danger of losing its vitality. A symptom of trouble is that over the course of the week described in the novel, the five poet-magicians of the "Magic House" of the village of Horned Lamb all die or lose their status as members of the poet-magician estate. In the last section of the book, Venn-Thomas makes a trip to Dunrena, the town which is the capital of the local kingdom, in order to witness the half-yearly ceremony of the changing of the king, carried out as a solemn religious-theatrical performance culminating in a ritual sacrifice similar to those described in The Golden Bough. At the end of the book, Venn-Thomas unleashes the whirlwind which will prepare the way for the transition to the next phase of history, and Sapphire (a young woman for whom he has had unsettled feelings) returns with him through time to be reborn as his daughter.
478921	/m/02fdym	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy	Douglas Adams	1979-10-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The book begins with contractors arriving at Arthur Dent's house, in order to demolish it to make way for a bypass. His friend, Ford Prefect, arrives while Arthur is lying in front of the bulldozers, to keep them from demolishing it. He tries to explain to Arthur that the Earth is about to be demolished. The Vogons, an alien race, intend to destroy Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. The two escape by hitching a lift on one of the Vogon demolition ships. This is, however, against Vogon regulations, and when the pair are discovered, they are tortured with hearing Vogon poetry, the third worst in the known Universe, and then thrown into space. They are, very improbably, picked up by the Heart of Gold, a ship powered by an infinite improbability drive, which has been stolen by Ford's semi-cousin and President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox. Zaphod, accompanied by Trillian and the chronically depressed robot Marvin, is searching for the legendary planet of Magrathea, which is rumoured to have manufactured luxury planets. Ford is initially skeptical, but they do, in fact, find Magrathea. There, Arthur, after being separated from the rest of the group, is taken into the interior of the planet by a native, Slartibartfast. The others are kidnapped. Slartibartfast explains to Arthur that the Earth was actually a supercomputer commissioned and paid for by a race of "hyper-intelligent," "pan-dimensional" beings. These creatures had earlier built a supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. This computer, after seven and a half million years of calculation, had announced that the Answer is in fact 42. Being unsatisfied with the Answer, they set about finding the Question which would give the Answer meaning, whereupon Deep Thought designed the Earth, to calculate it. However, ten million years later, and just five minutes before the completion of the program Earth was designed to execute, the Earth is demolished by the Vogons. Two of these beings, Frankie Mouse and Benjy Mouse, had arrived on Magrathea on the Heart of Gold, in the form of Trillian's pet mice. The mice realize that a latent version of the question, or something very like it, must exist in Arthur's brain since he is a late-generation organic product of the computer, and offer to buy his brain from him. Arthur declines, and a fight ensues. The mice are about to cut Arthur's head open when klaxons all over the planet are activated, creating a diversion during which Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian are able to escape. The galactic police arrive on the planet to arrest Zaphod and the group is attacked by two officers who abruptly die when the life support systems in their spacesuits fail: Marvin had been talking to their ship, which was linked to their suits, and as a result it had become so depressed that it committed suicide. The group decides to go to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe for lunch.
479949	/m/02fk4b	The Satanic Verses	Salman Rushdie	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Satanic Verses consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism, interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The frame narrative, like many other stories by Rushdie, involves Indian expatriates in contemporary England. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specializes in playing Hindu deities. (The character is partly based on Indian film stars Amitabh Bachchan and Rama Rao.) Chamcha is an emigrant who has broken with his Indian identity and works as a voiceover artist in England. At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane flying from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved. In a miraculous transformation, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gibreel, and Chamcha that of a devil. Chamcha is arrested and passes through an ordeal of police abuse as a suspected illegal immigrant. Farishta's transformation can partly be read on a realistic level as the symptom of the protagonist's developing schizophrenia. Both characters struggle to piece their lives back together. Farishta seeks and finds his lost love, the English mountaineer Allie Cone, but their relationship is overshadowed by his mental illness. Chamcha, having miraculously regained his human shape, wants to take revenge on Farishta for having forsaken him after their common fall from the hijacked plane. He does so by fostering Farishta's pathological jealousy and thus destroying his relationship with Allie. In another moment of crisis, Farishta realizes what Chamcha has done, but forgives him and even saves his life. Both return to India. Farishta kills Allie in another outbreak of jealousy and then commits suicide. Chamcha, who has found not only forgiveness from Farishta but also reconciliation with his estranged father and his own Indian identity, decides to remain in India. Embedded in this story is a series of half-magic dream vision narratives, ascribed to the mind of Gibreel Farishta. They are linked together by many thematic details as well as by the common motifs of divine revelation, religious faith and fanaticism, and doubt. One of these sequences contains most of the elements that have been criticized as offensive to Muslims. It is a transformed re-narration of the life of Muhammad (called "Mahound" or "the Messenger" in the novel) in Mecca ("Jahilia"). At its centre is the episode of the so-called satanic verses, in which the prophet first proclaims a revelation in favour of the old polytheistic deities, but later renounces this as an error induced by Shaitan. There are also two opponents of the "Messenger": a demonic heathen priestess, Hind, and an irreverent skeptic and satirical poet, Baal. When the prophet returns to the city in triumph, Baal goes into hiding in an underground brothel, where the prostitutes assume the identities of the prophet's wives. Also, one of the prophet's companions claims that he, doubting the "Messenger"'s authenticity, has subtly altered portions of the Quran as they were dictated to him. The second sequence tells the story of Ayesha, an Indian peasant girl who claims to be receiving revelations from the Archangel Gibreel. She entices all her village community to embark on a foot pilgrimage to Mecca, claiming that they will be able to walk across the Arabian Sea. The pilgrimage ends in a catastrophic climax as the believers all walk into the water and disappear, amid disturbingly conflicting testimonies from observers about whether they just drowned or were in fact miraculously able to cross the sea. A third dream sequence presents the figure of a fanatic expatriate religious leader, the "Imam," in a late-20th-century setting. This figure is a transparent allusion to the life of Ayatollah Khomeini in his Parisian exile, but it is also linked through various recurrent narrative motifs to the figure of the "Messenger".
480566	/m/02fmjq	Galactic Pot-Healer	Philip K. Dick	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place in a dismal future America, the “Communal North American Citizen's Republic.” The United States government has become extremely intrusive and repressive, monitoring the actions, speech and even thoughts of its citizens. The protagonist, Joe Fernwright, is a pot-healer, one who can perfectly restore pottery to brand new condition. Joe finds himself constantly depressed and idle at the opening of the novel. He is unemployed and on a war veteran's social security benefit, given that ceramic pottery has been replaced by plastics, and his profession is not in great demand. He longs for purpose and meaning in life. His one entertainment is to call various friends on the worldwide telephone network and swap puzzles. These puzzles are based on imperfect translations of sayings and book titles obtained by using language translation computers available to anyone. The object of the game is to guess the original from the translation. Joe finds meaning when he is summoned to "Plowman's Planet"/Sirius Five by a mysterious highly evolved alien, Glimmung, with seemingly godlike powers. Along with other similarly talented but depressed and alienated people and creatures from all over the galaxy they are employed by Glimmung, in a grand endeavor to raise an ancient sunken cathedral from the ocean floor. Glimmung is also in a struggle with the Kalends, a species gifted with precognition who are constantly writing a book that supposedly foretells the future, one which inevitably is proven right. Glimmung is determined to continue with his struggle, even when the book predicts certain failure. At the conclusion of the book, Fernwright and his companions are offered the opportunity to join a gestalt or hive mind that also encompasses Glimmung. Fernwright and an unnamed octopoid companion alone refuse the offer. Fernwright is then given various options, such as going back to earth, going with the octopoid to its planet, going to Mali's planet ( a young humanoid female he had become romantically involved with and who chose to become a part of the collective conscious ) or stay back on Sirius Five. The gastropod also suggests to him that he should start creating pots with the tools Glimmung has given him instead of just healing them. The story ends by saying the first pot he created was 'awful.'
481041	/m/02fnr4	Jennifer Government	Max Barry	2003-01-21	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Hack, a low level employee at Nike, is contracted by one of his higher ups, John Nike, Vice President of Guerrilla Marketing, for an ambitious marketing campaign. The company is planning to release the new Nike Mercurys -- which sell for thousands of dollars but cost pennies to manufacture -- and in order to drum up interest in the items, John Nike plans to increase "street cred" in the worst way possible: by having Hack kill people who try to buy them. Hack, bound by his contract but unable to contemplate murder on his own, subcontracts to the Police, now a mercenary organization, beginning a chain of business transactions which could land Nike in hot water should word of the plot leak. After several children are murdered at various Nike chains on opening day, agent Jennifer Government takes it upon herself to track down the perpetrators, even if she can't get the funding for it. Along the way, readers are also introduced to Billy NRA, an athletic man who gets in over his head, and Buy Mitsui, a former French stockbroker. Also involved is Hack's unemployed girlfriend, Violet, who engineers a dangerous computer virus to sell to the highest bidder. Billy NRA is caught up in the illegal business of the NRA. He is forced to tag along on NRA operations involving murder and even attempt (and fail) to assassinate the President of the United States. Throughout the novel Billy teeters between helping the NRA and helping the government. Buy Mitsui starts the novel as a successful stockbroker who just made a big break. Feeling good about it, he gives a girl some money in the mall only to find out that the girl is killed after she uses the money to buy Nike Mercurys. Feeling personally responsible for the girl's death, Buy's life begins to go downhill. He contemplates suicide until he gets help from Jennifer Government, who he then begins dating. He becomes a part of both Jennifer and her daughter's life. Violet eventually sells her software to ExxonMobil who take her all over the world to exploit the software's power. This sudden disappearance leads Hack to turn to Claire, Violet's sister, which in turn destroys Violet and Hack's relationship. After the company uses Violet's virus, they never pay Violet the sums due. Angered, Violet joins ranks with John Nike who could help her get revenge. John Nike tells her to kidnap Jennifer Government's daughter to keep the government off his back. She is able to kidnap Kate, Jennifer Government's daughter, but in the end, Jennifer Government and Hack are able to retrieve her and ultimately, bring John Nike to justice.
482983	/m/02fwtj	American Pastoral	Philip Roth	1997-05-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Seymour Levov is born and raised in the Weequahic section of Newark as the son of a successful Jewish-American glove manufacturer. Called "the Swede" because of his anomalous blond hair, blue eyes and Nordic good looks, he is a star athlete in three sports and narrator Nathan Zuckerman's idol and hero. The Swede eventually takes over his father's glove factory, Newark Maid, and marries Dawn Dwyer, an Irish-American Miss New Jersey 1949 winner (the actual winner that year was Betty Jane Crowley). Levov establishes what he believes to be a perfect American life with a beloved family, a satisfying business life, and a beautiful old home in rural Old Rimrock, New Jersey. Yet as the Vietnam War and racial unrest wrack the country and destroy inner-city Newark, Seymour's teenage daughter Merry, born with an emotionally debilitating stutter, and outraged at the United States' conduct in Vietnam, becomes more radical in her beliefs and in 1968 commits an act of political terrorism. In protest against the Vietnam War and the "system," she plants a bomb in a local post office and the resulting explosion kills a bystander. In this singular act, Levov is cast out of the seemingly perfect life he has built and thrown instead into a world of chaos and dysfunction. Like a number of real-life members of the Weather Underground, Seymour's daughter goes permanently into hiding. In Zuckerman's narration, a reunion of father and daughter takes place in 1973 in Newark's ruined inner city, where Merry is living in abysmal conditions. During this reunion, she claims that since the first bombing she has set off several other bombs resulting in more deaths and that she has been repeatedly raped while living in hiding. Though informed by Merry that she acted consciously and willingly in the murders, Seymour decides to keep their meeting a secret, unwilling to give up his notion of her as essentially an innocent who has been manipulated by stronger influences in the form of an unknown political group. Zuckerman concludes his version with a dinner party with Seymour's parents and several friends, during which Seymour discovers that his wife has been having an affair with a mutual friend and attendee of the party. The narrator also reveals that Seymour himself has had an affair with Merry's speech therapist who is also attending the party, and had been responsible for hiding Merry in their home after the first bombing. Seymour concludes that all the members of the party have a veneer of respectability, yet each participates in subversive behavior, and that he is unable to understand the truth about anyone based on the actions they reveal outwardly. In this final scene, the narrator reveals Seymour to have concluded that his daughter's actions have made him to see the truth about the chaos beneath the pastoral surface of things, something he can no longer ignore.
484189	/m/02g17y	Down to a Sunless Sea	David Graham		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told in the first person by Jonah Scott, a British pilot for the fictional airline Air Britain who has arrived in New York City on his regular flight from London. The United States has collapsed into the equivalent of a bankrupt Third World and borderline-starving country (1200 calories/day) after using up nearly all of its oil reserves and a resultant collapse of the dollar. The taxi that Jonah and Senior Flight Attendant Kate Monahan take to the airline's NYC apartment is powered by methane generated from chicken droppings. Kate is a lovely redhead, and Jonah is a "red-blooded male," and the book is full of Jonah's thoughts on the subject regarding Kate's lovely figure, as well as what they do together, in detail. Even after they each find other partners, Kate's assets are described quite clearly. During the night, Jonah and the apartment superintendent and guard, John Capel, must fight off armed burglars disguised as military police looking for the food Jonah and Kate brought with them. Capel is wounded but Kate demonstrates her basic medical skills in cleaning and dressing the wound. Jonah offers to help Capel and a newly-orphaned girlfriend of one of his crew travel illegally to London aboard his aircraft. Shortly after take off from New York, Jonah is informed that Israel has attacked Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo with nuclear weapons in retaliation for their poisoning of Tel Aviv's water supply. Israel's strike triggers a worldwide nuclear holocaust while the plane is en route to London, the USSR and China attacking America and its allies. Unable to continue to Europe due to the fact that it has suffered nuclear attack, or return to New York, the crew desperately attempt to find a place to land their plane. Faced with dwindling fuel, and the destruction of the airfield at Funchal by a desperate pilot disobeying landing instructions, Jonah and his crew wonder whether to crash land on an island in the Azores chain with the help of Juan, a local resident who has contacted them via amateur radio. By pure chance, Jonah sights a NATO airfield, Lajes Field, which has certainly been attacked, but which is mostly intact. Jonah and the nuclear scientists who are on board deduce that the Soviets needed Lajes intact and accordingly attacked it with a neutron bomb. After seeing Eddie Burns, a survivor who was deep underground at the time of the attack, Jonah lands the plane at Lajes. Rising levels of wind-swept fallout from Europe require that they evacuate, and they decide to fly to Antarctica. But they do not know how many people they can carry if they must carry food and fuel as well. With Eddie's help, Jonah and the SAS soldiers on board manage to re-activate the base radar and use the teletype machines to make contact with a British naval officer in the Falkland Islands who is able to confirm, at the expense of his life leaving a sealed room, with the McMurdo Antarctic base the existence of sufficient provisions, plus a nuclear reactor for warmth. There is more than enough for the survivors, and then... A Russian Antonov freighter aircraft lands at Lajes. It is initially mistaken for a Soviet troop transport to occupy Lajes. It is, however, stolen: carrying two female Soviet Air Force crew and a large number of civilian refugees. Next morning, after both aircraft are refueled, the survivors endure flying through an overcast layer of radioactive ash and byproducts on their way to Antarctica. There are more sacrifices when the Antonov cannot make the necessary altitude with the weight of cargo, passengers, and fuel: even after jettisoning everything, fifty Russian volunteers must sacrifice themselves by jumping from the plane's hatch, led by the co-pilot. Soon after the characters arrive at McMurdo, it is realised that the tilt of the Earth on its axis has been affected by the numerous nuclear explosions. There are two different endings of Down To A Sunless Sea which suggest either a radioactive death for all the survivors with a theological twist, or, more optimistically, a chance for the almost one thousand survivors to rebuild the world in not just warmth but also peace and cooperation.
486374	/m/02g8vn	Piercing the Darkness	Frank E. Peretti			 It follows the journey of Sally Beth Roe as she tries to escape her past and slowly overcomes her constant struggle to discern the Truth. Also told is the story of another small town, similar to that of This Present Darkness and called Bacon's Corner, and a resident named Tom Harris. His kids are ripped from his home by Child Services. Seeming to have no connection with other events at first, a young police officer, Ben Cole, is convinced what is being brushed off as a suicide is actually a murder, and ends up losing his job over the issue... which brings him to the side of the embattled Christian school. Caught in the crossfire is a little girl who's been forced into a curriculum of "meditation techniques" and "inner spiritual guides" that control her moods, attitudes, and actions, the little Amber Brandon, and her mother Lucy who realizes this lawsuit and the people who are "helping" her may be much, much more than she bargained for. Before the paths that Sally Roe and Tom Harris [and the others] are on collide, the Ashton Clarion editor and his wife, Marshall and Kate Hogan (from This Present Darkness), make a return appearance as veteran fighters in this war against the powers of darkness that threaten freedom of religion everywhere. As the story unfolds, the lawsuit and its participants are soon locked in a struggle of ethics versus non-ethics, absolutes versus relativism, right versus wrong, and those with interest in this battle are shown to be even in the highest places of government.
487133	/m/02gcnn	Hegemony or Survival	Noam Chomsky	2003-11	{"/m/05r79": "Political philosophy", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Chomsky's first chapter, entitled "Priorities and Prospects", provides an introduction to the U.S. government's global dominance at the start of 2003. Moving on, he looks at the role of elite propaganda &ndash; employed by both government and mass media &ndash; in shaping public opinion in both the U.S. and its ally, the United Kingdom. Citing Walter Lippman and James Madison, he highlights the historical role that shaping public opinion has had in these two liberal democracies, allowing a wealthy elite to thrive at the expense of the majority. As evidence for the manner in which the media has shaped public opinion on foreign policy, he turns to the role of the U.S. government in protecting its economic interests in the Central American nation of Nicaragua, first by supporting the military junta of General Somoza and then by supporting the Contra militias, in both instances leading to mass human rights abuses against the Nicaraguan populace which were ignored by the mainstream U.S. media. Chapter two, "Imperial Grand Strategy", looks at the U.S. government's belief that it should take part in "preventative war" against states who threaten its global hegemony, ignoring the fact that such actions are forbidden under international law. Chomsky argues that the targets of U.S. preventative war must be "virtually defenseless", "important enough to be worth the trouble" and also there must be "a way to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to [U.S.] survival." Using the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an example, he discusses the manner in which the U.S. government and media portrayed the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein as a threat to both the U.S. and other Middle Eastern states, something which Chomsky argues it was not. Chapter three, "The New Era of Enlightenment", explores further examples of U.S. interventionism in world affairs. Criticising the standard U.S. government claim that such interventionism is for humanitarian purposes, Chomsky instead maintains that it is an attempt to further the power of U.S. capitalism, with little interest in the welfare of the people involved. Using the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo as an example, he argues that western forces intervened not to protect Albanian Kosovans from Serbian aggression (as they claimed), but to humiliate and weaken Serbian President Slobodan Milosovic, who had remained resistant to western demands for years. He asserts that western criticism of foreign human rights abuses is politically motivated, highlighting the fact that while the U.S. were intervening in Kosovo, they were simultaneously backing, and funding, the governments' of Turkey, Colombia and Indonesia, all of whom were involved in widespread human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing. In the fourth chapter, "Dangerous Times", Chomsky focuses primarily on U.S. interventionism throughout Latin America, which the government has defended through its Monroe Doctrine. He discusses the U.S. campaign to topple the socialist government of Fidel Castro in Cuba, highlighting both its its economic embargo of the island and its financial backing for militant groups that attack Cuban targets, including the perpetrators of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the bombing of Cubana Flight 455. He furthermore discusses the U.S. government's role in training Latin American right wing paramilitary squads, who have perpetrated widespread human rights abuses across the region. Chapter five, "The Iraq Connection", looks at the background to the 2003 Iraq War, beginning with an analysis of the activities of the Reagan administration in the 1980s, who focused their military efforts in Central America and the Middle East. Chomsky argues that the Reagan administration utilized fear and nationalist rhetoric to distract the public from the poor economic situation that the U.S. was facing, finding scapegoats in the form of the leftist governments of Libya, Grenada and Nicaragua, as well as the international drug trade. He then goes on to examine the long relationship that the U.S. has had with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, noting that the U.S. government actively supported Hussein throughout the Iran-Iraq War, Al-Anfal Campaign and the Halabja poison gas attack, only turning against their former ally after his Invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Proceeding to critique the idea that the Bush II administration was genuinely concerned about threats to U.S. security, he highlights their attempts to undermine international efforts to prevent the militarization of space, the abolition of biological warfare and the fight against global pollution, as well as the fact that they ignored all warnings that the Iraq invasion would cause a worldwide anti-American backlash. Exploring the dismissive attitude that the U.S. took towards those European governments who opposed the war, namely France and Germany, he then critiqued the idea that the U.S. wanted to install a democratic government in Iraq, instead merely wanting to install a puppet regime that would be obedient to U.S. corporate interests. In the sixth chapter, "Dilemmas of Dominance", Chomsky explores the relationship that the U.S. has had with Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union and with East Asia since the Second World War. In the former, Chomsky argues, the U.S. has allied itself with the capitalist reformers who have advocated privatization and neoliberalism at the expense of the welfare state, leading to increased poverty and demographic decline across the region. In the latter, he has explored the role that the U.S. has played &ndash; through the likes of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 &ndash; in supporting capitalist development, but trying to ensure its own economic hegemony at the same time. Chapter seven, "Cauldron of Animosities", opens with a discussion of U.S. support for the increasing militarization of Israel and its illegal development of nuclear weapons, something Chomsky believes threatens peace in the Middle East by encouraging other nations like Iran and Iraq to do the same. He explores the longstanding western exploitation of the Middle East for its oil resources, first by the British Empire in the early 20th century and then subsequently by the U.S. post-World War II, and then looks at the U.S.' role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, continually supporting Israel both militarily and politically, furthering human right abuses against the Palestinian people and repeatedly sabotaging the peace process. The eighth chapter, "Terrorism and Justice: Some Useful Truisms", looks at what Chomsky calls "a few simple truths" regarding the criteria that is accepted for a conflict to be internationally recognized as a "just war". He argues that these truisms are continually ignored when it comes to the actions of the U.S. and her allies. Exploring the concepts of "terror" and "terrorism", he argues that the U.S. only use the term to refer to the actions of their enemies, and never to their own actions, no matter how similar they may be. As an example of such double standards, he highlights the public outcry at the killing of Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled American murdered by Palestinian "terrorists" in 1985, contrasting it with the complete U.S. ignorance of the Israeli military's killing of a disabled Palestinian, Kemal Zughayer, in 2002. Focusing in on the Afghan War &ndash; widely described as a "just war" in the U.S. press &ndash; he criticizes such a description, arguing that the conflict was opposed by the majority of the world's population, including the people of Afghanistan itself. In the final chapter, "A Passing Nightmare", Chomsky turns his attention to one of the greatest threats to human survival &ndash; weapons of mass destruction. He argues that rather than helping to eradicate nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry, the U.S. has actually continually increased its number of nuclear warheads, thereby encouraging other nations, such as Russia, China, India and Pakistan, to do the same, putting the entire world in jeopardy of nuclear holocaust. Discussing the role of the U.S. in creating ballistic missile defense systems and encouraging the militarization of outer space, he notes that the U.S. government have continually undermined international treatise to decrease the number of weapons of mass destruction, because the American socio-economic elite believe that "hegemony is more important than survival." However, he argues that there is still hope for humanity if the citizens of the world &ndash; the "Second Superpower" &ndash; continue to criticize and oppose the actions of the U.S. government.
487486	/m/02gdvx	The Mystery of the Yellow Room	Gaston Leroux		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Miss Stangerson is found alone and severely injured, moments after being violently attacked in a locked room at the Chateau, a room with absolutely no possible means of escape for the would-be murderer. Or so it appears. Joseph Rouletabille, journalist/detective, is immediately thrust into the investigation of the insoluble crime that would soon electrify all of France. Rouletabille, a mere eighteen years old, is very much in the tradition of Poe's Dupin, believing rational analysis, rather than crawling on all fours around the crime scene, is the key to unraveling those cases that are genuine puzzles, as this one is. (Not that Rouletabille disdains mundane forensics when called for. And when he chooses to crawl about, he does so with a most discerning eye!) There are in fact no fewer than THREE apparently impossible vanishings by the assailant, each with a different, quite ingenious, explanation. The first, the only one which occurs in the classic locked room, turns out not to be a true disappearance at all, because, as Rouletabille deduces in a dazzling display of inexorable logic, the assailant was never in the room when it was actually locked, no matter how certain it seemed that he was. In a complicated sequence of events, the attack actually occurred many hours earlier than supposed, around 6 PM—but the audible gunshot and the cry of "Help, murder!!!", which happened after midnight in the locked room, were merely the acting out of a nightmare by Miss Stangerson, as she relived the earlier attack. Her severe injuries were inflicted not by the attacker but by Miss Stangerson herself, stumbling over furniture still overturned from the attack and violently striking her head.
487522	/m/02gd_7	The Case of the Constant Suicides	John Dickson Carr	1941	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04rlf": "Music", "/m/0174gw": "Locked room mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Members of a large and widespread Scottish family are brought together at a highland castle in order to resolve various pieces of family business following a death. Suspicious events soon begin to occur, the body count rises, and a verdict of suicide is not necessarily to be trusted. Enter the gargantuan Doctor Gideon Fell, who applies his substantial powers of deduction to the problem of how men can be indirectly murdered while they're inside locked, sealed and inaccessible rooms.
488035	/m/02gh9f	Galilee	Clive Barker	1998	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The first dynasty, the Gearys, are a glamorous and rich family, similar to the Kennedys, who have been a power in America since the Reconstruction. The book examines them through the eyes of the young woman who marries Mitchell Geary, the scion of the clan. It also examines the beginnings of the family's power and its links to the Barbarossa clan. The Barbarossas are a family of godlike beings. The two parents, Cesaria and Nicodemus, came into existence during the Bronze Age, somewhere between Canaan and the city of Samarkand. They have since had four children, though both have been in active relationships with others in the same time. Of the four children, one is a lesbian, one is overweight, one has spent time in a mental institution, and the eldest, Galilee, is held to the Geary family by an oath going back to the American Civil War. Nicodemus also fathered a child, the narrator, with a human woman. Eventually, the link between the families is revealed, with several deaths. Although several plot threads spin out of the book, and Barker has promised at least one sequel, none have been written, and it is left to the imagination of the reader to work out what happens next. ISBN 0-00-617805-7rm
490129	/m/02gqph	The Spy Who Loved Me	Ian Fleming	1962-04-16	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Fleming structured the novel in three sections—"Me", "Them" and "Him" to describe the phases of the story. ;Me Vivienne "Viv" Michel, a young Canadian woman narrates her own story, detailing her past love affairs, the first being with Derek Mallaby, who took her virginity in a field after being thrown out of a cinema in Windsor for indecent exposure. Their physical relationship ended that night and Viv was subsequently rejected when Mallaby sent her a letter from Oxford University saying he was forcibly engaged to someone else by his parents. Viv's second love affair was with her German boss, Kurt Rainer, with whom she would eventually become pregnant. She informed Rainer and he paid for her to go to Switzerland to have an abortion, telling her that their affair was over. After the procedure, Viv returned to her native Canada and started her journey through North America, stopping to work at "The Dreamy Pines Motor Court" in the Adirondack Mountains for managers Jed and Mildred Phancey. ;Them At the end of the vacation season, the Phanceys entrust Viv to look after the motel for the night before the owner, Mr. Sanguinetti, can arrive to take inventory and close it up for the winter. Two mobsters, "Sluggsy" Morant and Sol "Horror" Horowitz, both of whom work for Sanguinetti, arrive and say they are there to look over the motel for insurance purposes. The two have been hired by Sanguinetti to burn down the motel so that Sanguinetti can make a profit on the insurance. The blame for the fire would fall on Viv, who was to perish in the incident. The mobsters, are cruel to Viv and, when she says she does not want to dance with them, they attack her, holding her down and starting to remove her top. They are about to continue the attack with rape when the door buzzer stops them. ;Him British secret service agent James Bond appears at the door asking for a room, having had a flat tyre while passing. Bond quickly realises that Horror and Sluggsy are mobsters and that Viv is in danger. Pressuring the two men, he eventually gets the gangsters to agree to provide him a room. Bond tells Michel that he is in America in the wake of Operation Thunderball and was detailed to protect a Russian nuclear expert who defected to the West and who now lives in Toronto, as part of his quest to ferret out SPECTRE. That night Sluggsy and Horror set fire to the motel and attempt to kill Bond and Michel. A gun battle ensues and, in the process of escaping, Horror and Sluggsy's car crashes into a lake. Bond and Michel retire to bed, but Sluggsy is still alive and makes a further attempt to kill them when Bond shoots him. Viv wakes to find Bond gone, leaving a note in which he promises to send her police assistance and which he concludes by telling her not to dwell too much on the ugly events through which she has just lived. As Viv finishes reading the note, a large police detachment arrives. After taking her statement, the officer in charge of the detail, reiterates Bond's advice, but also warns Viv that all men involved in violent crime and espionage, regardless of which side they are on—including Bond himself—are dangerous and that Viv should avoid them. Viv reflects on this fact as she motors off at the end of the book, continuing her tour of America, but despite the officer's warning still devoted to the memory of the spy who had loved her.
490935	/m/06ll2ng	Assomoir	Émile Zola	1877	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is essentially the story of Gervaise Macquart, who was featured briefly in the first novel in the series, La Fortune des Rougon, running away to Paris with her shiftless lover Lantier to work as a washerwoman in a hot, busy laundry in one of the seedier areas of the city. L'Assommoir begins with Gervaise and her two young sons being abandoned by Lantier, who takes off for parts unknown; she later takes up with Coupeau, a teetotal roofing engineer, and they are married in one of the great set-pieces of Zola's fiction; the account of the wedding party's chaotic trip to the Louvre is perhaps the novelist's most famous passage. Through a combination of happy circumstances Gervaise is able to raise enough money to open her own laundry, and the couple's happiness appears to be complete with the birth of a daughter, Anna, nicknamed Nana (the protagonist of Zola's later novel of the same title). The second half of the novel deals with the downward trajectory of Gervaise's life from this happy high point. Coupeau is injured in a fall from the roof of a new hospital he is working on, and during his lengthy and painful convalescence he takes to drink. Only a few chapters pass before Coupeau is a vindictive alcoholic, with no intention of trying to find more work; Gervaise struggles to keep her home together, but her excessive pride leads her to a number of embarrassing failures and before long everything is going downhill. The home is further disrupted by the return of Lantier, warmly welcomed by Coupeau—by this point losing interest in both Gervaise and life itself, and becoming seriously ill—and the ensuing chaos and financial strain is too much for Gervaise, who loses her laundry-shop and is sucked into debt. She decides to join Coupeau in the drinking and soon slides into heavy alcoholism too, prompting Nana—already suffering from the chaotic life at home and getting into trouble on a daily basis—to run away to Paris for good. The novel continues in this unhappy vein until the end.
491219	/m/02gvd0	Trilby	George du Maurier		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Trilby is tone-deaf: "Svengali would test her ear, as he called it, and strike the C in the middle and then the F just above, and ask which was higher; and she would declare they were both exactly the same." Svengali hypnotizes her and transforms her into a diva, la Svengali. Under his spell, Trilby becomes a talented singer, performing always in an amnesiac trance. At a performance in London, Svengali is stricken with a heart attack and is unable to induce the trance. Trilby is unable to sing in tune and is subjected to "laughter, hoots, hisses, cat-calls, cock-crows." Not having been hypnotized, she is baffled and though she can remember living and traveling with Svengali, she cannot remember anything of her singing career.
491727	/m/02gx93	Metropolitan	Walter Jon Williams	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel's protagonist, Aiah, is a minor functionary for the Plasm Authority in the metropolis of Jaspeer; the Authority is the public utility company that taps plasm wells and sells the plasm (at very high rates) to those who would use it. Aiah is one of the Barkazi, an ethnic group whose metropolis, Barkazil, was engulfed by civil war several generations ago, its territory partitioned and occupied by the adjacent metropolises and its population dispersed as refugees. Barkazi religion centers around a trickster god, Karlo, who is constantly running scams on others, and the tradition of the scam, or chonah, is central to their culture. Aiah briefly studied plasm use at university, but ended her studies because of the high cost of the plasm required to continue them. Working for an emergency response team investigating a huge flaming apparition of a woman that damages several city blocks, she discovers a previously unknown plasm well of tremendous power (the apparition being caused by a woman who blundered into the well and tapped the plasm directly, killing herself in the process). Instead of disclosing its location, she leads the Authority on a wild goose chase while trying to decide on how best to use it to her advantage. She decides to reveal it to Constantine, a resident of a luxury apartment complex near her own. Constantine is a skilled mage and visionary political theorist with dreams of moving the world beyond its stagnant situation. He became Metropolitan of his home metropolis and attempted to implement many reforms, but was betrayed, forced from power, and exiled by those closest to him. Aiah, an admirer of his political thought, discloses the plasm source to him so that he might make another attempt at realizing his plans for the "New City", asking only that she be made a part of whatever he carries out. Aiah then effectively runs a chonah of enormous scale, misleading the Authority, dealing with her Barkazi extended family (who want a piece of whatever action she is in on) and the local organized crime group, keeping her Jaspeeri husband (working in a distant metropolis) in the dark, and avoiding the potentially lethal attentions of Constantine's right-hand-woman, Sorya. Through all of this she has a love affair with Constantine and receives training in magery from him, for which she has a great deal of natural talent. At the novel's climax, Aiah's plasm source, and her own magical assistance, is a crucial element when Constantine orchestrates a revolution in the metropolis of Caraqui and installs himself in its post-revolutionary power structure, from which position he hopes to enact his New City reforms. Realizing that she has no hope of using her full potential as a bureaucrat in Jaspeer, Aiah leaves her job, family, and marriage behind and travels to Caraqui to help Constantine achieve his dream. fr:Plasma (roman) pl:Metropolita (powieść)
491904	/m/02gy06	The Hellbound Heart	Clive Barker		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Frank is a hedonist who has spent his life in a selfish, single-minded pursuit of the ultimate sensual experience. Having lived a life of world travel, engaging in countless crimes and every sexual experience known to mankind, Frank is now a nihilist, his pursuits having left him feeling unfulfilled and still wanting more extreme experiences. Jaded to the point that conventional sexual activity now leaves him completely unstimulated, Frank hears rumors of Lament Configuration, an artifact he learned about on his travels, a puzzle box that is said to act as a portal to an extradimensional realm of unfathomable carnal pleasure. Locating the owner in Düsseldorf, Frank obtains the box by performing "small favors" and returns with it to his deceased grandmother's home in England. Frank prepares a shrine consisting of bonbons, flowers, severed doves heads, and a massive jug of his own urine, offerings for the box's inhabitants: The Cenobites, members of a religious order dedicated to extreme sensual experiences. Opening the box, Frank is confused and horrified when the Cenobites, rather than beautiful women, turn out to be horribly scarified creatures whose bodies have been modified to the point that they are apparently sexless. Nonetheless, when they offer Frank experiences like he has never known before, Frank readily agrees, despite the Cenobites' repeated warnings that it may not be what he expects and that he cannot renege on an agreement to return to their realm with them. With Frank as their newest "experiment," the Cenobites subject Frank to a total sensory overload, at which point he realizes that the Cenobites are so extreme in their devotion to sadomasochism that they no longer differentiate between extreme pain and extreme pleasure. Frank is sucked into the Cenobite realm, where he realizes that he will be subjected to an eternity of torture. Sometime later, Frank's brother, Rory, and his wife, Julia, move into the home. Unknown to Rory, Julia had an affair with Frank a week before their wedding; she has spent the entirety of her marriage obsessing over and lusting after Frank, and has only stayed married to Rory for financial support. While moving in, Rory accidentally cuts his hand and bleeds on the spot where Frank was taken by the Cenobites. This serves to open another dimensional schism, through which Frank is able to escape, his body now reduced to a desiccated corpse by the Cenobites' experiments. Julia finds him and promises to restore his body so that they can renew their affair. While Rory is at work, Julia begins seducing men at bars and bringing them back to the attic, where she murders them and feeds their bodies to Frank, whose own body begins to slowly regenerate. Kirsty, a friend of Rory's who is secretly in love with him, suspects that Julia is having an affair and attempts to catch her in the act; instead she encounters Frank, who attempts to kill her; Kirsty steals the puzzle box and flees the house, collapsing from exhaustion on the street. She is taken to a hospital, where she solves the puzzle box and inadvertently summons the Cenobites. The Cenobites initially attempt to take Kirsty back with them, until she tells them about Frank; skeptical that one of their experiments could have escaped, the Cenobites agree to leave Kirsty alone in exchange for Frank's return. Kirsty leads the Cenobites to Frank, now wearing recently slain Rory's skin. Another altercation ensues, during which an unrepentant Frank inadvertently kills Julia. Assured of Frank's identity, the Cenobites appear and ensnare Frank with a multitude of hooks and return with him to their realm. Leaving the house, Kirsty encounters the heretofore unseen leader of the Cenobites, the Engineer, who entrusts her to watch over the box until another degenerate seeks it out. Looking at the lacquered surface, Kirsty imagines that she sees Julia and Frank's faces reflected in the lacquered surface, but not Rory's. She wonders if there are other puzzles, that might find a way to where Rory resides by unlocking the doors to paradise.
492302	/m/02gzph	Five Children and It	E. Nesbit	1902	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Like Nesbit's Railway Children, the story begins when a group of children move from London to the countryside of Kent. While playing in a gravel pit, the five children—Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother, the Lamb—uncover a rather grumpy, ugly and occasionally malevolent sand-fairy known as the Psammead, who has the ability to grant wishes. However, the Psammead has been buried for so long, he is no longer able to grant individual wishes. Instead, he persuades the children to take one wish per day, to share amongst the lot of them, with the caveat that the wishes will turn to stone at sundown. This, apparently, used to be the rule in the Stone Age, when all children wished for was food, the bones of which would then become fossils. However, when the children's first wish—to be "as beautiful as the day"—ends at sundown, it simply vanishes, leading the Psammead to observe that some wishes are too fanciful to be changed to stone. All the wishes go comically wrong. When the children wish to be beautiful, the servants don't recognize them and shut them out of the house. When they wish to be rich, they find themselves with a gravel-pit full of gold spade guineas that no shop will accept as it is no longer in circulation, so they can't buy anything. A wish for wings seems to be going well, but at sunset the children find themselves stuck atop a church bell tower with no way down, getting them into trouble with the church gamekeeper who must take them home (though this wish has the happy side-effect of introducing the gamekeeper to the children's housemaid, who later marries him). After being bullied by the baker's boy, Robert wishes that he was bigger, whereupon he becomes eleven feet tall and the children show him at a traveling fair for coins. They also wish themselves into a castle, only to learn it's being besieged, while a wish to meet real Red Indians ends with the children nearly being scalped. Even the children's infant brother, the Lamb, is the victim of two wishes gone awry. In one, the children become annoyed with tending for their brother and wish that someone else wanted him—leading to a situation where everyone wants the baby, and the children must fend off kidnappers and Gypsies. Later, they wish the baby would grow up faster, causing him to grow all at once into a selfish, smug young man who promptly leaves them all behind. Finally, the children accidentally wish they could give a wealthy woman's jewellery to their mother, causing all the jewellery to appear in their home. When it seems that the gamekeeper—who is now their friend—will be blamed for robbery, the children must beg the Psammead for a complex series of wishes to set things right. It agrees, on the condition that they will never ask it for another wish. Only Anthea, who has grown close to It, makes sure that the final wish is that they will meet It again. The Psammead assures them that this wish will be granted.
492415	/m/02gz_l	Valley of the Dolls	Jacqueline Susann	1966	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In 1945, Anne Welles moves to New York City from Lawrenceville, Massachusetts, and finds employment with a talent agency representing the Broadway musical Hit the Sky. She meets Neely O'Hara (who changed her name from Ethel Agnes O'Neill), a vaudeville star living in her building, and recommends her for a role in the show’s chorus. Jennifer North, a showgirl regarded for her beauty but with limited talent, appears in the play as well. The three women become fast friends. Over the next twenty years, the women embark on careers that bring them to the heights of fame and eventual self-destruction. Jennifer begins a relationship with nightclub singer Tony Polar; believing his childish behavior is caused by his overprotective half-sister and manager Miriam, she persuades him to elope. She travels with him to Hollywood to pursue his career, and becomes pregnant. Upon discovering Tony’s infidelity, Jennifer ends the relationship but chooses to keep this child. Miriam explains that Tony has a congenital brain condition that causes seizures and dementia, and will culminate in total insanity. Upon learning that the child is likely to inherit the sickness, Jennifer has an abortion, without telling anyone why. This puzzles her friends, because they know her dearest wish is to have many children on whom she can lavish the affection and approval she never had. As Jennifer is only regarded for her body and is desperate for money, she decides to perform in French art films. Stress and smoking make her an insomniac, and she begins to use the titular "dolls" (barbiturates) as sleep aids, as she had during the time she was in Hit the Sky. Jennifer returns to the United States after years in Europe, where she's gained moderate success as an actress. She meets and falls in love with a middle-aged Republican senator who has hopes of becoming President. While preparing for her wedding she is diagnosed with breast cancer. She is told she must have a mastectomy, and that she will never be able to have children. When Jennifer speaks with the Senator, she tells him about not having children, but before she can say anything about the mastectomy he responds that he is uninterested in children. He enthuses that his love for her body, breasts especially, will sustain the relationship, and that he can't stand to think of anything happening to the "perfection" of her bosom. Unable to have children and faced with another man who only loves her for her body, Jennifer commits suicide. In her administrative job, Anne’s beauty and class gain her attention. Millionaire Allen Cooper falls for her after only six weeks of dating, and demands her hand in marriage. Not ready to settle, Anne refuses. During an out of town trip for the debut of Hit the Sky, Anne realizes that she is in love with Lyon Burke, a lawyer at the agency. When she tells Allen, he angrily breaks off the relationship. Though Lyon is not ready for a serious relationship with her, Anne remains in love with him for years. Anne becomes the face of Gillian Cosmetics, and becomes romantically involved with Kevin Gillmore, the owner of the company. After 15 years, Lyon returns and approaches Anne when she is nearly married to Kevin Gillmore. She leaves Kevin for Lyon, and arranges with Henry Bellamy to create a job for Lyon to keep him in the U.S. The two eventually wed. Lyon discovers the ruse when tax time approaches. Angry about the way she "emasculated" him, Lyon continues to have affairs. Though Anne stays with Lyon, she plans to raise her daughter to be independent-minded and avoid the mistakes she made in her life. To cope with Lyon’s infidelity, Anne begins to take pills to sleep. Neely becomes famous on the Broadway scene, moves to Hollywood to work in movies, and becomes a superstar in Hollywood musicals. Her handlers demand that she lose weight. Jennifer introduces her to dolls, and she quickly becomes addicted to "uppers" (dexedrine) to lose weight and stay awake during the day and barbiturates (seconal, nembutal) to sleep. The grueling, unglamorous work of being a Hollywood actress is described in detail and Neely's dependence on the pills is shown as understandable. She combines the pills and often uses alcohol to enhance their effect. Partly due to the effects of the pills, she earns a reputation as demanding, spoiled, and difficult to handle. Her movies earn high returns at the box office, but it isn't enough; the studio consistently loses money on her pictures due to her erratic behavior. After numerous suicide attempts, a year long black list from the entertainment world and two failed marriages, Neely is committed to a psychiatric hospital. Upon release she works with Lyon Burke to revitalize her career, and begins an affair with him. She quickly returns to her vicious, arrogant behavior. However, her attraction to the dolls is too strong, and she seems to spiral into a final decline.
493094	/m/02h0ll	The Rise of Christianity				 Stark argues that, contrary to popular belief, Christianity was a movement, not of the lower classes and the oppressed, but of the upper and middle classes in the cities and of Hellenized Jews. Stark also discusses the exponential nature of the growth of religion, and why hence the speed of Christianity is not as miraculous as might be thought. Stark points to a number of advantages that Christianity had over paganism to explain its growth: While others fled cities, Christians stayed in urban areas during plague, ministering and caring for the sick; Christian populations grew faster, due to the prohibition of abortion, infanticide and birth control; Christians did not fight against their persecutors by open violence or guerrilla warfare. They willingly went to their martyrdom while praying for their captors, which added credibility to their evangelism. Women were valued and allowed to participate in worship leading to a high rate of secondary conversion, whereas in paganism, men outnumbered women. Stark's basic thesis is that, ultimately, Christianity triumphed over paganism because it improved the quality of life of its adherents at that time.
493408	/m/02h1xm	Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution	Rafael Sabatini	1921	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Andre-Louis Moreau, educated as a lawyer, lives in Brittany with his godfather, M. de Kercadiou, who refuses to disclose Moreau's parentage. Moreau considers Aline, Kercadiou's niece, as his cousin. Because he loves her as a cousin he warns her against marrying the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr; however, she is ambitious and wishes to marry high, so she ignores him. A peasant, Mabey, is shot by the gamekeeper of the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr, on the Marquis's instructions, for poaching. Moreau's closest friend, the idealistic Philippe de Vilmorin, denounces the act as murder. He is provoked to a duel with the Marquis and killed for his "gift of eloquence" which the Marquis fears would set the Third Estate against the privileged estates. Moreau then vows to avenge the death, and sets off from his hometown of Gavrillac for Rennes to the King's lieutenant in Brittany, to see justice done. After being brushed off by the arrogant official, who refuses to act against a man of the Marquis' status, Moreau discovers a large political gathering. Much to the surprise of his peers, he delivers convincing rhetoric, using Vilmorin's arguments. Moreau goes on to Nantes and whips up the crowds there. These events set the stage for the French Revolution, and make Moreau a wanted man. To hide from the law, Moreau joins a troupe of travelling Commedia dell'Arte actors under M. Binet. He takes on the role of Scaramouche, the scheming rogue. He discovers an aptitude for acting and writing, which propels the troupe from near-poverty to success which takes them to the Feydau theatre in Nantes. Binet, who plays Pantaloon, grows ever more resentful of Moreau and his influence in the troupe. Moreau becomes engaged to Binet's daughter, but she, disappointed to find out that Moreau is of no account, accepts a proposal from the Marquis to become his mistress. The Marquis, now notorious for brutally quelling an uprising in Rennes, is lying low in Nantes. When the Marquis attends a performance, Moreau reveals the latter's presence to the audience and sparks a riot. When Binet, furious for being ruined, attacks him, Moreau shoots in self-defence. Binet is wounded, Moreau escapes. Moreau is now forced to go into hiding. He finds a fencing academy seeking "a young man of good address with some knowledge of swordsmanship". Moreau bluffs his way into apprenticeship with M. des Amis, the Maître en fait d'Armes (Master at Arms). Over time, he develops his own style of fencing, based on calculations of different moves. With the outbreak of the French Revolution, M. des Amis is killed, and Moreau inherits the school. When he is established at the school, he attempts a reconciliation with his godfather. The reconciliation, however, is brief. Moreau's friends convince him to take a seat in the new congress when they find out about his swordsmanship. They face the scourge of spadassinicides, aristocratic senators who have been provoking the inexperienced republicans to duel and wounding or killing them, just as the Marquis did to Vilmorin. Andre-Louis turns the tables and succeeds in killing or disarming all who challenge him. Finally, Moreau manages to goad the Marquis to challenge him to a duel. At last he can confront the murderer of his childhood friend, Philippe de Vilmorin. Having heard of this, Mme. de Plougastel, a relative whom he has seen only twice in his life, goes with Aline to stop the duel. They do not arrive in time, finding the Marquis wounded, though not fatally. The Marquis becomes a counter-revolutionary. In 1792, Paris is up in arms and the Tuilleries are stormed by a mob. Plougastel and Aline are in grave danger. The former's husband is a counter-revolutionary. Moreau, returning from an errand in Brittany, goes to visit his Godfather. Kercadiou tells him of the plight of Aline and Plougastel in Paris. Moreau agrees to rescue Aline, but does not agree to help Plougastel, until Kercadiou reveals to Andre-Louis that Mme. de Plougastel is his mother. Moreau secures and brings travel permits to the women to leave Paris. La Tour d'Azyr, on the run, seeks shelter in the same apartment. He and Andre-Louis draw pistols on each other. Mme. de Plougastel is forced to reveal that the Marquis is Moreau's father. Because of his recent actions, Moreau knows that he can't remain in Paris, so crosses the border with the women. Once relatively safe, Andre-Louis and Aline unravel the misconceptions about their feelings for each other and declare their love.
493517	/m/02h2fb	K-PAX	Gene Brewer	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A white male is picked up by the New York Police after being found bending over the victim of a mugging at Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan. After having responded to the police questions with somewhat strange answers, he is transferred to Bellevue Hospital for evaluation. Although not physically ill, he is found to harbour a strange delusion: That he is from a planet called K-PAX in the constellation of Lyra. The patient, who calls himself "prot" (intentionally lower-case to reflect the insignificance of an individual life form in the universe), is eventually transferred to the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute (MPI), where he becomes the patient of Dr. Gene Brewer. Dr. Brewer, with the help of a journalist named Giselle, discovers that prot may simply be an alter ego (the result of Multiple Personality Disorder) of Robert Porter, whose life has been devastated by the murder of his wife and child and his subsequent killing of the perpetrator. When prot returns to his own planet, Robert Porter is left in a catatonic state. However, Bess (another patient prot had promised to take with him) disappears along with a box of souvenirs prot has been collecting. Prot promises to return in "about five of your years".
494587	/m/02h6zv	Medea	Euripides			 The play tells the story of the revenge of a woman betrayed by her husband. All of the action of the play is at Corinth, where Jason has brought Medea after the adventures of the Golden Fleece. He has now left her in order to marry Glauce, the daughter of King Creon. (Glauce is also known in Latin works as Creusa — see Seneca the Younger's Medea and Propertius 2.16.30. This King Creon is not to be confused with King Creon of Thebes.) The play opens with Medea grieving over her loss and with her elderly nurse fearing what she might do to herself or her children. Creon, also fearing what Medea might do, arrives determined to send Medea into exile. Medea pleads for one day's delay, and Creon begrudgingly acquiesces. In the next scene Jason arrives to confront her and explain himself. He believes he could not pass up the opportunity to marry a royal princess, as Medea is only a barbarian woman, but hopes to someday join the two families and keep Medea as his mistress. Medea, and the chorus of Corinthian women, do not believe him. She reminds him that she left her own people for him ("I am the mother of your children. Whither can I fly, since all Greece hates the barbarian?"), and that she saved him and slew the dragon. Jason promises to support her after his new marriage, but Medea spurns him: "Marry the maid if thou wilt; perchance full soon thou mayst rue thy nuptials." Next Medea is visited by Aegeus, King of Athens; he is aggrieved by his lack of children, and does not understand the oracle that was supposed to give him guidance. Medea begs him to protect her, in return for her helping his wife conceive a child. Aegeus does not know what Medea is going to do in Corinth, but promises to give her refuge in any case, provided she can escape to Athens. Medea then returns to her plotting how she may kill Creon and Glauce. She decides to poison some golden robes (a family heirloom and gift from the sun god), in hopes that the bride will not be able to resist wearing them, and consequently be poisoned. Medea resolves to kill her own children as well, not because the children have done anything wrong, but because she feels it is the best way to hurt Jason. She calls for Jason once more, falsely apologizes to him, and sends the poisoned robes with her children as the gift-bearers. :Forgive what I said in anger! I will yield to the decree, and only beg one favor, that my children may stay. They shall take to the princess a costly robe and a golden crown, and pray for her protection. The request is granted and the gifts are accepted. Offstage, while Medea ponders her actions, Glauce is killed by the poisoned dress, and Creon is also killed by the poison while attempting to save her. These events are related by a messenger. :Alas! The bride had died in horrible agony; for no sooner had she put on Medea's gifts than a devouring poison consumed her limbs as with fire, and in his endeavor to save his daughter the old father died too. Medea is pleased with her revenge thus far, but resolves to carry it further: to utterly destroy Jason's plans for a new family, she will kill her own sons. She rushes offstage with a knife to kill her children. As the chorus laments her decision, the children are heard screaming. Jason rushes to the scene to punish her for the murder of Glauce and learns that his children too have been killed. Medea then appears above the stage in the chariot of the sun god Helios; this was probably accomplished using the mechane device usually reserved for the appearance of a god or goddess. She confronts Jason, reveling in his pain at being unable to ever hold his children again: :"I do not leave my children's bodies with thee; I take them with me that I may bury them in Hera's precinct. And for thee, who didst me all that evil, I prophesy an evil doom." She escapes to Athens with the bodies. The chorus is left contemplating the will of Zeus in Medea's actions: :Manifold are thy shapings, Providence! :Many a hopeless matter gods arrange. :What we expected never came to pass, :What we did not expect the gods brought to bear; :So have things gone, this whole experience through!
494640	/m/02h731	The Frogs	Aristophanes			 The Frogs tells the story of the god Dionysus, who, despairing of the state of Athens' tragedians, travels to Hades to bring the playwright Euripides back from the dead. (Euripides had died the year before, in 406 BC). He brings along his slave Xanthias, who is smarter and braver than Dionysus. The play opens as Xanthias and Dionysus argue over what kind of jokes Xanthias can use to open the play. For the first half of the play, Dionysus routinely bungles, forcing Xanthias to enable him. To find a reliable path to Hades, Dionysus seeks advice from his half-brother Heracles, who had been there before in order to retrieve the hell hound Cerberus. Dionysus shows up at his doorstep dressed in a lion-hide and carrying a club. Heracles, upon seeing the effeminate Dionysus dressed up like himself, can't help laughing. At the question of which road is quickest to get to Hades, Heracles replies with the options of hanging yourself, drinking poison, or jumping off a tower. Dionysus opts for the longer journey across a lake (possibly Lake Acheron); the one which Heracles took himself. When Dionysus arrives at the lake, Charon ferries him across. Xanthias, being a slave, is not allowed in the boat, and has to walk around it, while Dionysus is made to help row the boat. This is the point of the first choral interlude (parodos), sung by the eponymous chorus of frogs (the only scene in which frogs feature in the play). Their croaking refrain – (Greek: ) – greatly annoys Dionysus, who engages in a mocking debate (agon) with the frogs. When he arrives at the shore, Dionysus meets up with Xanthias, who teases him by claiming to see the frightening monster Empusa. A second chorus composed of spirits of Dionysian Mystics soon appear. The next encounter is with Aeacus, who mistakes Dionysus for Heracles due to his attire. Still angry over Heracles' theft of Cerberus, Aeacus threatens to unleash several monsters on him in revenge. Scared, Dionysus trades clothes with Xanthias. A maid then arrives and is happy to see Heracles. She invites him to a feast with virgin dancing girls, and Xanthias is more than happy to oblige. But Dionysus quickly wants to trade back the clothes. Dionysus, back in the Heracles lion-skin, encounters more people angry at Heracles, and so he makes Xanthias trade a third time. When Aeacus returns to confront the alleged Heracles (i.e. Xanthias), Xanthias offers him his "slave" (Dionysus) for torturing, to obtain the truth as to whether or not he is really a thief. The terrified Dionysus tells the truth that he is a god. After each is whipped, Dionysus is brought before Aeacus' masters, and the truth is verified. The maid then catches Xanthius and chats him up, interrupted by preparations for the contest scene. The maid describes the Euripides-Aeschylus conflict. Euripides, who had only just recently died, is challenging the great Aeschylus to the seat of "Best Tragic Poet" at the dinner table of Pluto, the ruler of the underworld. A contest is held with Dionysus as judge. The two playwrights take turns quoting verses from their plays and making fun of the other. Euripides argues the characters in his plays are better because they are more true to life and logical, whereas Aeschylus believes his idealized characters are better as they are heroic and models for virtue. Aeschylus mocks Euripides' verse as predictable and formulaic by having Euripides quote lines from many of his prologues, each time interrupting the declamation with the same phrase "" ("... lost his little flask of oil"). (The passage has given rise to the term lekythion, literally 'oil-flask', for this type of rhythmic group in poetry.) Euripides counters by demonstrating the alleged monotony of Aeschylus' choral songs, parodying excerpts from his works and having each citation end in the same refrain ("oh, what a stroke, won't you come to the rescue?", from Aeschylus' lost play Myrmidons). Aeschylus retorts to this by mocking Euripides' choral meters and lyric monodies with castanets. During the contest, Dionysus redeems his earlier role as the butt of every joke. He now rules the stage, adjudicating the contestant's squabbles fairly, breaking up their prolonged rants, and applying a deep understanding of Greek tragedy. To end the debate, a balance is brought in and each are told to tell a few lines into it. Whoever's lines have the most "weight" will cause the balance to tip in their favor. Euripides produces verses of his that mention, in turn, the ship Argo, Persuasion, and a mace. Aeschylus responds with the river Spercheios, Death, and two crashed chariots and two dead charioteers! Since the latter verses refer to "heavier" objects, Aeschylus wins, but Dionysus is still unable to decide whom he will revive. He finally decides to take the poet who gives the best advice about how to save the city. Euripides gives cleverly worded but essentially meaningless answers while Aeschylus provides more practical advice, and Dionysus decides to take Aeschylus back instead of Euripides. Pluto allows Aeschylus to return to life so that Athens may be succoured in her hour of need, and invites everyone to a round of farewell drinks. Before leaving, Aeschylus proclaims that Sophocles should have his chair while he is gone, not Euripides.
496509	/m/02hf27	Them	Joyce Carol Oates	1969-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Them explores the complex struggles of American life through three down-on-their-luck characters—Loretta, Maureen and Jules—who are attempting to reach normality and the American dream through marriage and money. The story begins with Loretta Botsford and her brother Brock as teenagers, living in a "fair-sized city on a midwestern canal", in the 1930s. Loretta falls in love with Bernie Malin, and sleeps with him. Later in the night, Brock shoots Bernie in the head, and Bernie dies suddenly. Loretta runs away, and meets Howard Wendall, an older cop to whom she confesses the death of Bernie Malin. They later marry, and she bears her son Jules (who was hinted to be Bernie Malin's son). Loretta and Howard live close to Mama and Papa Wendall's house, on the south side of town. Soon after the birth of Jules, Howard is busted for taking money from prostitutes. The Wendalls move into the country house with Howard's family where Loretta bore her daughters Maureen, and Betty. When World War II breaks out, Howard leaves his family to fight in Europe. Meanwhile, Jules grows up to be a fast, energetic child who hangs around older children, and is never still. Maureen is a quiet, shy, delicate girl, while Betty is a smart aleck. Jules as a child is fascinated by fire; when he burns down a deserted barn and when a plane crashes in Detroit. Loretta decides to move to Detroit with Jules, Maureen and Betty while Howard is still at war. Jules takes on the role of the "bad boy" who hangs out with kids who steal from stores and smoke at school. Many conclude that Jules will not live past twenty. Soon Jules is expelled from the Catholic school and sent to a public school away from his sisters. As time progresses, Jules becomes more involved in petty theft but always has hopes for a better life. He falls passionately in love with a rich girl, Nadine, from the suburbs whom he helps to run away from home to Texas. She abandons him in a hotel, however, when he becomes ill, stealing his car and money. After Howard dies in a work accident, Loretta remarries and relies more and more on Maureen to run the household. Feeling the desire to escape, Maureen turns to prostitution to build an escape fund. When her step-father discovers her secret, he savagely beats her, resulting in his jail sentence, Loretta's divorce, and Maureen suffers a nervous breakdown for over a year. She gradually recovers with the care of Loretta's brother Brock, who has unexpectedly returned and the letters of Jules, who slowly drifts back North. Some time later, Jules is doing better in business working for his uncle when he reconnects with Nadine. She has married, but they initiate an affair. However, she has mental problems and shoots him. Jules survives, but has lost all his drive. Maureen has moved out and is working as a typist and taking night classes. She sets her sights on her professor, a married man, and they begin an affair. When Maureen cooly tells her mother of her plans to become a housewife, Loretta is incensed. After his recovery, Jules is a defeated man, maintaining several affairs. He rapes a girl and later pimps her out, and he becomes involved with a group of intellectual radicals. He is present at the 1967 Detroit riots, where Loretta's apartment is among the buildings burned. In the chaos, Jules sinks to a new low when he finally commits murder. Later, Jules visits Maureen, who has isolated herself from the rest of her family in Dearborn with her husband and is expecting a child. Loretta is surviving while Jules plans to try his fortunes in California.
496939	/m/02hgrr	2061: Odyssey Three	Arthur C. Clarke	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the previous novel, 2010: Odyssey Two, Jupiter was converted into a mini-sun which was dubbed "Lucifer" following the Soviet ship Leonov’s mission to Jupiter to find out what happened to the Discovery. A message was sent to Earth by Dave Bowman, through HAL: This is due to Lucifer melting the frozen ocean beneath the surface of Europa, causing an atmosphere to form and leading to the discovery of alien life in Europa's ocean. When the Leonov returned to Earth, Heywood Floyd (whose marriage had broken up while he was on the Leonov) suffered an accident. His recovery on an orbital space hospital took longer than expected and he became a permanent resident there after finding that his body could no longer handle Earth-level gravity. His grandson Chris works aboard the spacecraft Galaxy and has not seen his grandfather in years. The black population of South Africa has rebelled in the 2030s and formed the United States of Southern Africa (USSA). The white population fled to Europe, taking most of the country's wealth with them and leaving the black population to rebuild the economy, which they did in a matter of weeks by use of diamonds. (2061 was published in 1987, at which time apartheid was still in force in South Africa.) Large-scale interplanetary travel is now commercially viable with muon-catalyzed fusion-powered spacecraft. On Europa, an enormous mountain has sprung up out of nowhere. No one is sure of the origin of "Mount Zeus"; being asymmetrical, it cannot be a volcano. In 2061, at the age of 103, Floyd is chosen as one of several "celebrity guests" to come aboard the privately owned spaceliner Universe for the first-ever human landing on the surface of Halley's Comet, when it makes its periodic pass through the Solar System. Meanwhile, a team of scientists on Ganymede (formerly a moon of Jupiter that now orbits the star called "Lucifer") is terraforming it for potential habitation. Scientist Rolf van der Berg, a second-generation Afrikaner refugee, studies pictures of Mount Zeus and determines that it is in fact one enormous diamond. He communicates his discovery to his uncle Paul Kreuger; the expedition planners invite van der Berg to join the crew of Galaxy for its flyby of Europa. As Galaxy nears Europa, a stewardess attempts to single-handedly hijack Galaxy, forcing it to crash into Europa's ocean. Her plan having failed (her motivation and loyalties are not explained, but she is assumed to be a militant anti-Afrikaner), she commits suicide. The crew is now stranded, but their sister ship Universe is tasked to rescue her. Van der Berg and Chris Floyd take the shuttle William Tsung (nicknamed Bill Tee) to study Mount Zeus; also the wreck of the Chinese spacecraft Tsien, and the enormous monolith lying on its side at the border between the dayside and nightside, dubbed the "Great Wall". Near Mount Zeus, van der Berg relays the message "LUCY IS HERE" to his uncle Paul, verifying that Mount Zeus is indeed one large diamond. The code word "Lucy" was chosen both in reference to the mini-sun Lucifer and to an article in the journal Nature in 1981 hypothesizing that the cores of Uranus and Neptune were in fact diamonds the size of Earth (caused by the compression of carbon), with the hypothesis making a logical extension to Jupiter. The article was subtitled "Diamonds in the Sky?" in reference to the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Mount Zeus is a fragment of Jupiter's core which survived the creation of Lucifer and later struck Europa. On the Universe, the celebrity guests discuss the mystery surrounding Bowman and the monoliths, and whether they would be allowed to land on Europa to rescue Galaxy’s crew. Floyd follows a suggestion that he simply try to call Bowman on the radio, and that night has a strange dream in which he sees the monolith floating at the foot of his bed. The Bill Tee flies by Tsien, which has been completely stripped of its metals (rare and thus valuable to the Europans), and on to the Great Wall. An image of his grandfather appears to Chris in the same way that Bowman appeared to Floyd in 2010, telling him that the Universe was coming. Universe rescues Galaxys crew; they are brought to Ganymede, where they watch as Mount Zeus, which has been steadily sinking, finally disappears beneath the Europan surface. Kreuger writes a follow-up article for Nature, stating that Mount Zeus was a mere fragment of Jupiter's core and it is almost certain that many more such large pieces of diamond are currently in orbit around Lucifer, and proposing that a program be initiated immediately to collect these enormous quantities of diamond and put them to use. Floyd and Chris become close again, and both become friends with van der Berg. They talk about how Floyd called Bowman on the radio, and Chris asks if Bowman ever replied. Floyd almost tells his grandson about the monolith in his cabin, but does not after rationalizing that it was probably a dream. It was not a dream. The monolith duplicated Floyd's consciousness; there are now two Heywood Floyds, one an immortal being who resides with Bowman and HAL inside the Great Wall. In the epilogue, the star Lucifer stops shining in 3001, and in Manhattan "the monolith awakes" (referring to the original monolith discovered on the moon in 1999, and which was taken to Manhattan as a monument in 2006). It is also indicated that humans have found more quantities of diamond from the former Jupiter and used it to create space elevators and an orbital ring connecting them, as suggested by Kreuger. (This idea will later be a central concept in 3001: The Final Odyssey.)
496941	/m/02hgs3	3001: The Final Odyssey	Arthur C. Clarke	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 This novel begins with a brief prologue describing the aliens who created the black monoliths. They apparently evolved from "primordial soup", and over the course of millions of years, turned into a space-faring species. As they explored the Universe, they saw that few intelligent species ever successfully evolved. Therefore, they traveled the universe and catalyzed the evolution of intelligent species wherever they went, including Earth, by increasing the evolving species' odds of survival. Upon reaching Earth, they performed experiments on many species to encourage the development of intelligence. Then they left, leaving their black monoliths behind. After visiting the Earth, the extraterrestrials continued to evolve, eventually to the point where they found a way to impress themselves into the fabric of space and time, thus becoming noncorporeal beings. Meanwhile, back in the Solar system, the alien monoliths continued to watch over humanity. However, sometimes the monoliths were prone to degenerating and acting independently of their original programming. 3001 follows the adventures of Frank Poole, the astronaut who was killed by the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey by tearing his spacesuit open and casting him on a trajectory into deep space. One thousand years later, Poole's freeze-dried body is discovered out in the Kuiper belt beyond the orbit of Neptune by a human spaceship, a comet-collecting space tug named the Goliath. The advanced medical science and technology of that age is able to bring Poole back to life. Being freeze-dried and then kept near absolute zero for the intervening centuries preserved Poole's body and brain well enough for him to make a full recovery. Poole is next taken home to explore and learn about the Earth in the year 3001, a millennium after he left it. Some of its notable features include the BrainCap, a brain-computer interface technology that connects a computer directly to the human brain, genetically engineered dinosaur servants, a space drive, and four gigantic space elevators spaced evenly around the Equator. Human beings have also colonized the Jovian moons Ganymede and Callisto. During the 26th century, the remains of an alien monolith has been found in the Olduvai Gorge in East Africa (the one that had that kickstarted human evolution). TMA-1, the black monolith that had been found on the Moon in 1999, was brought to the Earth in 2006 and then erected in front of the United Nations Building in New York City. In the course of the novel, it is determined that following the events of 2010: Odyssey Two and 2061: Odyssey Three the Jovian monolith had sent a report back to its makers some 450 light years away. It is expected to receive its orders on how to deal with humanity after the 900-year round-trip. Presumably, the monolith was empowered to obliterate the nascent biosphere of Jupiter, but it needed a higher authority's approval to obliterate the technological civilization on Earth. There is considerable worry that the judgment, which was based on the monolith's observations of humanity up to 2061, will be negative. The entire human race, then, may be in danger of being obliterated by the aliens, just as the Jovian life-forms discovered by David Bowman were deliberately destroyed in the course of making Jupiter into a second sun so the Europans could evolve. Frank manages to conscript Bowman and HAL, who had fused into a new entity — Halman — and now reside in the monolith's computational matrix, to infect the monolith with a computer virus retrieved from Pico vault, a special containment facility on the moon used to house various chemical, biological, and cybernetic weapons in an attempt to avert a potential apocalypse. Just as the humans feared, the monolith does indeed receive orders to exterminate humankind, and it begins to duplicate itself many hundreds of millions of times over. These millions of monoliths assemble themselves into two separate screens in front of the Sun to prevent all light and heat from reaching the Earth and its colonies. The intent is to shut down the entire terrestrial biosphere. However, Halman had already infected the monolith with the virus at the time it began duplicating itself, and fifteen minutes after the screens are formed, all the monoliths disintegrate, including TMA-0 and TMA-1. Halman manages to upload its combined personalities into a petabyte-capacity holographic 3D storage medium and thus survives the disintegration of the monoliths. However, that medium is infected with the virus in the process and is subsequently sealed by human scientists in Pico Vault, where it will presumably be stored until such time as humans (or others) choose to disinfect and revive it. At the close of the story, Poole and the other humans land on Europa and attempt to start peaceful relations with the primitive native Europans. Apparently, the creators of the Monoliths - having long since evolved into a noncorporeal and godlike state of existence - had been watching humanity. They decide to grant the human race a reprieve, and that they will not determine humanity's fate until "the Last Days".
497096	/m/02hhhq	Rama Revealed	Arthur C. Clarke	1993-10-14	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book picks up the story immediately after the end of The Garden of Rama. The book follows the story of Nicole Wakefield and her escape from imprisonment left at the cliffhanger of the previous book. As the human colony continues to degenerate with respect to living conditions and human rights, the members of Nicole's family escape to the region nicknamed "New York", where they used to live in Rama II and already then came into contact with the alien species known as "Octospiders". The Octospiders were a simple species until a space-faring species made contact with them and forever changed their society. Undergoing genetic enhancements, the Octospiders became biological wizards and were eventually able to form a utopia of sorts. Eventually, the human colony police come after Nicole's family in "New York" and they flee to the octospider city. After the human colony leader starts bombing the octospider city under a made-up pretext and the octospiders retaliate, the situation becomes dire enough that Rama's controlling intelligence intervenes to end the conflict caused by the Humans aboard, by sending everybody into hibernation until the end of the journey. The Rama spacecraft rendezvous with another Node, an enormous tetrahedron near the star Tau Ceti, designed to research any intelligent life capable of spaceflight. The humans are divided into two groups based mainly on the degree of xenophobia they had exhibited during the journey. Both groups will stay at the Node for the rest of their lives to be studied; the xenophobes are segregated and never allowed to see another alien again. To the more adaptable group, the purpose of the universe is revealed by the Nodal intelligence.
497415	/m/02hjwt	At the Mountains of Madness	H. P. Lovecraft		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World"}	 The story is told in first-person perspective by the geologist William Dyer, a professor at Miskatonic University. He writes to disclose hitherto unknown and closely kept secrets in the hope that he can deter a planned and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica. On a previous expedition there, scholars from Miskatonic University led by Dyer discovered fantastic and horrific ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains higher than the Himalayas. A smaller advance group led by Professor Lake discovered and crossed the mountains and found the remains of 14 ancient life forms, completely unknown to science and unidentifiable as either plants or animals. Six of the specimens are badly damaged and the others uncannily pristine. Their highly evolved features are problematic: their stratum location puts them at a point on the geologic time scale much too early for such features to have naturally evolved yet. When the main expedition loses contact with Lake's party, Dyer and the rest of his colleagues travel to their last known location to investigate. Lake's camp is devastated, and both the men and the dogs slaughtered, while a man named Gedney and another dog are unaccounted for. Near the camp they find six star-shaped snow mounds, and one specimen buried under each. They discover that the better preserved life forms have vanished, and that some form of dissection experiment has been done on an unnamed man and a dog. Dyer elects to close off the area from which they took their samples. Dyer and a graduate student named Danforth fly an airplane over the mountains, which they soon realize are the outer wall of a huge, abandoned stone city of cubes and cones, utterly alien compared with any human architecture. Because of their resemblance to creatures of myth mentioned in the Necronomicon, the builders of this lost civilization are dubbed the "Elder Things". By exploring these fantastic structures, the men are able to learn the history of the Elder Things by interpreting their magnificent hieroglyphic murals: The Elder Things first came to Earth shortly after the Moon was pulled loose from the planet and were the creators of life. They built their cities with the help of "Shoggoths", biological entities created to perform any task, assume any form, and reflect any thought. As more buildings are explored, a fantastic vista opens of the history of races beyond the scope of man's understanding, including the Elder Things' conflicts with the Star-spawn of Cthulhu and the Mi-go who arrived on Earth some time after the Elder Things themselves. The images also reflect a degradation in the order of this civilization, as the Shoggoths gain independence. As more resources are applied to maintaining order, the etchings become haphazard and primitive. The murals also allude to some unnamed evil in an even larger mountain range just past their city which even they fear greatly. Eventually, as Antarctica became uninhabitable even for the Elder Things, they migrated into a large, subterranean ocean. Dyer and Danforth eventually realize they are not alone in the city. The Elder Things missing from the advance party's camp had somehow returned to life and, after slaughtering the explorers, returned to the city of their origin. Dyer and Danforth discover traces of the Elder Things' earlier exploration, as well as sledges containing the corpses of Gedney and the dog missing from the camp. As the two progress further into the city, they are ultimately drawn to a massive, ominous entrance which is the opening of a tunnel which they believe leads into the subterranean region described in the murals. Compulsively they are drawn in, finding further horrors: evidence of dead Elder Things killed in a brutal struggle, and blind six-foot-tall penguins wandering around placidly, apparently as livestock for the unknown forms of life which lurked inside the subterranean abyss. They are then confronted with an immense, ululating horror in the form of a black, bubbling mass, which after a brief glimpse they identify as a Shoggoth. Danforth and Dyer escape with their lives using luck and diversion. On the plane high above the plateau, Danforth looks back and sees something that causes him to lose his sanity. He refuses to tell anyone (even Dyer) what he saw, though it is implied that it has something to do with what lies beyond the larger mountain range that even the Elder Things feared. Professor Dyer concludes that the Elder Things and their civilization were eventually destroyed by the Shoggoths they created and that this entity has sustained itself on the enormous penguins since eons past. He begs the planners of the next proposed Antarctic expedition to stay away from things that should not be loosed on this Earth.
497634	/m/02hkxr	Maskerade	Terry Pratchett	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins with Agnes Nitt leaving Lancre to seek a career at the Opera House in Ankh-Morpork. When Granny Weatherwax realizes Nanny Ogg has written an immensely popular cookbook but has not been paid by the publisher, the witches also leave for Ankh-Morpork to collect the money, as well as to attempt to recruit Agnes into their coven, to replace Magrat Garlick who left the coven when she became Queen of Lancre (in Lords and Ladies). Agnes Nitt is chosen as a member of the chorus, where she meets Christine, a more popular but less talented girl. The Opera House Ghost, who has long haunted the opera house without much incident, begins to commit seemingly random murders staged as "accidents", and also requests that Christine be given lead roles in several upcoming productions. Due to her incredibly powerful and versatile voice, Agnes is asked to sing the parts from the background, unbeknownst to Christine or the audience. Having discovered the problems at the opera house and also having coerced the publisher to pay Nanny richly for her book, the witches investigate the mystery, with Granny posing as a rich patron, and Nanny insinuating herself into the opera house staff. Agnes unmasks Walter Plinge, the janitor, as the ghost, though as he is seemingly harmless, the others are unconvinced. Another employee is suspected, but turns out to be a member of the Cable Street Particulars. The witches determine that the finances of the Opera House, which are a complete mess, have been made so intentionally in order to hide the fact that money is being stolen, with the murders being used either as a distraction or to cover evidence. It is finally revealed that two people had been masquerading as the ghost. The original (and harmless) ghost, Walter Plinge, was being psychologically manipulated by the second ghost, who assumed the identity to commit the murders and theft. With the witches' help, Walter is able to overcome his fears and help defeat the murderer.
497663	/m/02hk_k	Footfall	Jerry Pournelle	1985-05-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book depicts the arrival of members of an alien species called the Fithp that have traveled to our solar system from Alpha Centauri in a large spacecraft driven by a Bussard ramjet. The aliens are intent on taking over the Earth. Physically, the Fithp resemble man-sized, quadrupedal elephants with multiple trunks. They possess more advanced technology than humans, but have developed none of it themselves. In the distant past on their planet, another species was dominant, with the Fithp existing as animals, perhaps even as pets. This predecessor species badly damaged the environment, rendering themselves and many other species extinct, but left behind their knowledge inscribed on large stone cubes (called Thuktunthp, plural of Thuktun in the Fithp language), from which the Fithp have gained their technology. The study of Thuktun is the only science the Fithp possess. The Fithp are armed with a technology that is superior rather than incomprehensible: laser cannon, projectile rifles, controlled meteorite strikes to bombard surface targets, lightcraft surface-to-orbit shuttles the size of warships, etc. The geopolitics of the world in this novel are those of the Cold War, although the setting of the story is in the mid-1990s. This affects the plot, since in the world of Footfall, the U.S.S.R. is still a major world superpower, and has a greater presence in space than the United States. At the time of the novel's writing, this was an extrapolation of contemporary analysis. The Fithp are herd creatures, and fight wars differently from humans. Throughout their history, when two herds met, they would fight until it was evident which one was dominant over the other; then fighting ceased and the losers were incorporated into the winning herd. The Fithp expect their contact with humans to proceed along these lines, and are confused by human attempts at peaceful contact. Upon arrival, they immediately attack the Russian space station, where Russians and Americans wait to greet them. They proceed to destroy military sites and important infrastructure on Earth. A US Congressman and Russian cosmonauts are captured from the ruins of the space station. The novel's human characters fall into two major groups, those on Earth and those who are taken aboard the Fithp spaceship as captives. Civilians are used to show the effects of the war on day to day life in the United States, while military and government personnel convey a more strategic overview of events. Science fiction writers are employed as technical advisers on alien technology and behavior; these characters are based on real writers, including Niven ("Nat Reynolds"), Pournelle ("Wade Curtis"), and Robert Anson Heinlein ("Bob Anson"). Facing possible extinction due to the long-term effects of biological weapons, a group of high-ranking Fithp were selected by wager to escape to the stars. The Chtaptisk Fithp ('Traveling Herd') are divided between 'Sleepers' and 'Spaceborn', as the ship is both a generation ship and a sleeper ship. The original leaders of the herd are subordinate to their descendants the spaceborn, who are well prepared to start a space based civilization, but are still dedicated to the generations-old ideal of conquest. After their initial assault, the Fithp land ground forces in the center of the North American continent, primarily in and around Kansas. They defeat efforts by a National Guard detachment (and, somewhat later, three American armored divisions) to dislodge them by using orbital lasers and barrages of kinetic energy weapons, but a combined Russian and American nuclear attack wipes out their beachhead. The Fithp, who are familiar with nuclear weapons but prefer to use cleaner ones, are shocked by what they consider the barbarity of humans' willingness to "foul their own garden" with radioactivity. Human protagonists, however, are exultant with victory. It is during this initial invasion that more captives are taken. These also comprise a mixed bag of civilians including an elderly couple from the US Bible Belt as well as a young woman who was a high functioning mental patient at Menninger's. They are put to work by the Fithp on board their mothership, who expect them to integrate themselves into the herd. The humans decide to cooperate until a chance for some serious sabotage presents itself. The Fithp respond to the defeat of their invasion by dropping a "dinosaur killer," a large asteroid whose impact results in environmental damage on a global scale, in particular the almost total destruction of India. In the aftermath, the aliens invade Africa, where they enjoy more success. One result is the end of South African Apartheid. Simply, Whites and Blacks become equal under the rule of the Fithp. The United States secretly builds a large, heavily armed spacecraft propelled by nuclear bombs (a real concept commonly known as Project Orion). While an earlier implementation of the idea was ruled out due to environmental reasons and the danger of radioactive contamination, in the desperate situation facing humanity such considerations are cast aside. The ship is named after the Biblical Archangel Michael, who cast Lucifer out of Heaven. The Michael launches and battles through small enemy "digit" ships in orbit. Though seriously damaged, she pursues the alien mothership. One of the space shuttles carried aboard Michael rams the Fithp ship, seriously damaging it, and slowing it down enough for the Michael to catch and attack it, dealing additional damage. On Earth, American President David Coffey receives an offer of conditional surrender from the Fithp. Coffey leans towards accepting the offer; he is willing to let the Fithp withdraw into space, and is reluctant to destroy their sophisticated technology and cargo of females and children. He is opposed by his advisors, who feel that by allowing the Fithp to escape and regroup, he risks the whole of humanity; pressing the attack risks its foes. When Coffey seemingly folds under the pressure of making a final decision, his hardliner National Security Adviser, Admiral Carrell effectively stages a bloodless coup d'etat, circumventing the President and communicating the rejection of the aliens' terms. A final act of sabotage by escaped humans aboard the alien vessel forces the Fithp to accept humanity as the stronger species and surrender themselves to become part of the human "herd".
498586	/m/02hpbc	Shade's Children	Garth Nix	1997-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Gold-Eye, a fifteen-year old, was born near the time of the Change. He was physically affected by the Change radiation and his eyes, including his pupils, are a bright golden color. He is also unusual in that he managed to escape and elude the Trackers and Myrmidons for a time. Yet as the story begins, he is finally trapped by the Myrmidons, and prepares to kill himself to prevent his organs from being harvested. This turns out to be unnecessary as he is saved by a team of strangers who stun the Myrmidons with a flashbang grenade and lift him to safety. These strangers are a team of Shade's Children, and after the group eludes some Ferrets by hiding in a tall building, he accompanies them back to the Submarine, Shade's Children's hideout. Gold-Eye joins Shade's Children, and is soon sent off on his first mission with the team that saved him: Ella, Ninde, and Drum. Each team member is unique, and has Change abilities that correspond somewhat to their personality. This mission is a critical one: to retrieve the equipment and data from Shade's abandoned laboratory on the University campus in the Department of Abstract Computing, including a device that measures Change radiation. It is also one of the most dangerous missions: All of the teams who have previously attempted this retrieval have been killed or captured in the process. Ella's team is successful, even when the Overlord Black Banner surrounds and invades the building, alerted by Leamington, a pre-Change artificial intelligence who calls the police on detection of the intruders. Leamington is notably different from Shade in that he is an artificial intelligence as opposed to an uploaded consciousness. After resting at the Sub, Shade unveils the reward created with the recovered data: metal crowns called Deceptors which scramble the sensory input of the Overlords' creatures, effectively making a human wearer invisible and non-olfactive to them as long as the power supply is maintained. It also is later revealed that scent trails are equally scrambled, although footprints are not. With this sudden new advantage and information, Shade is more curious about the method of distribution of Change radiation and sends Ella's team on a newer, even more dangerous mission: to steal a Change Projector from Fort Robertson, the stronghold of the Overlord named Red Diamond. This mission is not successful: on entry, the team discovers that the stronghold stretches underground, allowing for the unforeseen presence of creatures. The team's Deceptors run out prematurely as they discover a Myrmidon barracks, and they escape with a conch-shaped Overlord device called a Thinker, but without Drum who, having been winded, stays behind to fight. It is presumed by the rest of the team that he is killed. On return to the Sub, however, Gold-Eye has a vision in which he sees Drum being stored temporarily in the Meat Factory, indicating that Drum is still alive. The group presents the device to Shade, who appreciates the Overlord device Ninde took from Fort Robertson but refuses a request to rescue Drum, as the Meat Factory is one of the most heavily guarded Overlord facilities. The team, led by Ella, defies Shade's orders and infiltrates the Meat Factory, successfully rescuing Drum. They then leave cautiously, using the Deceptors to mask their trail. While resting among the branches of a large tree, Ninde telepathically detects an Overlord. The detection proves not only to be hard mentally on her since the Overlord is of human or greater intelligence, but also emotionally hard: Ninde discovers that the Overlords are essentially human. Despite the difficulty, she discovers that the Overlord may know something about "a mind in a machine" -a dangerous thing for them, since Shade - a machine intelligence- is their leader and benefactor. They continue, to discover on reaching the Submarine that it has been invaded by an Overlord, Red Diamond, and that all of the people inside have been killed or captured. Fortunately, Shade had realized long before that the Sub was not a permanent base, and established multiple supply caches throughout the city in case a team was stranded in the field or the Sub was taken. True to their training, the team heads immediately to the nearest cache - to discover Shade, who escaped, apparently by chance, while testing a mobile robotic body for himself based around the Thinker. Shade's escape is doubly fortuitous in that the Overlord used an electromagnetic pulse weapon to disable the Submarine; had he been within range of the weapon, he would have been incapacitated. Despite the loss of all of Shade's Children except for Ella's team, the meeting is a good one: Shade has discovered how to defeat the Overlords. Examining and measuring Change radiation, he had discovered that all known Change Projectors were actually redistributors of Change radiation from a single source, a so-called Grand Projector. Were this projector destroyed, all creatures would cease to function, and the Overlords would likely be removed whence they came. Having discovered the source of the Change Radiation - a Mount Silverstone - they set out with Deceptors to find and destroy the source, which would hopefully bring reality back to normal. But soon the team is betrayed by Shade, who had made a deal with the Overlords. Desiring a body with which to survive the Overlords' destruction (since the Thinker is also a product of the Change), he betrayed the children, bartering them and the knowledge of their Change talents in exchange for Overlord body technology (his Thinker is destroyed by an Overlord later). Gold-Eye and Ninde are taken prisoner. Ella and Drum, managing to escape, climb to the top of Mount Silverstone, meet a hologram of Shade, who though having been physically destroyed, is spread through the Overlords' computer systems. His original personality had been attempting to manifest itself, such as when Shade was speaking to Gold-Eye and Ninde about their fate at the hands of the Overlords, or when Shade was inwardly arguing with himself. However, it only managed to when the Thinker was destroyed. He guides them to the Grand Projector, when, about to disable it, they hear an Overlord approaching. Ella, desperate, destroys the Thinker which regulates the Grand Projector, causing it to overload. This has the positive effect of disabling all Overlord creatures and removing the Overlords, but exposes Ella and Drum to lethal amounts of Change radiation, killing them. The burst of Change radiation, while not lethal where Ninde and Gold-Eye are (they are being executed by an Overlord), enables them to respectively read the minds of thousands of newly freed children, and see a distant future, at which time he and Ninde are the parents of two children named for Ella and Drum. Ninde sends this "soon to be now" to Ella and Drum through her Change Talent, and those thoughts are the last things that they see.
498885	/m/02hqhp	The Bonfire of the Vanities	Tom Wolfe	1987	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story centers on Sherman McCoy, a wealthy New York City bond trader with a wife and young daughter. His life as a self-regarded "Master of The Universe" on Wall Street is destroyed when he and his mistress, Maria Ruskin, accidentally enter the Bronx at night while they are driving to Manhattan from Kennedy Airport. Finding the ramp back to the highway blocked by trash cans and a tire, McCoy exits the car to clear the way. Approached by two black men whom they perceive—uncertainly, in Sherman's case—as predators, McCoy and Ruskin flee. Having taken the wheel of the car, which fishtails as they race away, Ruskin apparently strikes one of the two—a "skinny boy". Peter Fallow, a has-been, alcoholic journalist for the tabloid City Light, is soon given the opportunity of a lifetime when he is persuaded to write a series of articles about Henry Lamb, a black youth who has allegedly been the victim of a hit and run by a wealthy white driver. Fallow cynically tolerates the manipulations of the Reverend Bacon, a Harlem religious and political leader who sees the hospitalized boy as a projects success story done wrong. Fallow's series of articles on the matter ignites a series of protests and media coverage of the Lamb case. Up for re-election and accused of foot-dragging in the Lamb case, the media-obsessed Bronx District Attorney Abe Weiss pushes for McCoy's arrest. The evidence consists of McCoy's damaged car, which matches the description of the vehicle involved in the alleged hit and run, plus McCoy's evasive response to police questioning. The arrest all but ruins McCoy; he loses his job, his wealthy friends desert him, and his wife leaves him and takes their daughter. Hoping to impress his boss as well as an attractive woman, Shelly Thomas, Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer aggressively prosecutes the case, opening with an unsuccessful bid to set McCoy's bail at $250,000. Released on bail, McCoy is besieged by demonstrators who are protesting outside his $3 million Park Avenue co-op. Fallow hears a rumor that Maria was at the wheel of McCoy's car when it allegedly struck Lamb, but Maria has fled the country. Trying to smoke out the truth, on the pretense of interviewing the rich and famous, Fallow meets Maria's husband, Arthur, at a pricey French restaurant. While recounting his life, Arthur has a fatal seizure, as disturbed patrons and an annoyed maître d' look on. Maria is forced to return to the United States for his funeral, where McCoy confronts her about being "the only witness". Fallow, hoping also to talk with Maria, overhears this. Fallow's write-up of the association between McCoy and Maria prompts Assistant D.A. Kramer to offer Maria a deal: corroborate the other witness and receive immunity—or be treated as an accomplice. Maria recounts this to McCoy while he is wearing a wire. When a private investigator employed by McCoy's lawyer, Tommy Killian, discovers a recording of a conversation that contradicts Maria's grand jury testimony, the judge assigned to the case declares the testimony "tainted" and dismisses the case. As the epilogue, a fictional New York Times article informs us that Fallow has won the Pulitzer Prize and married the daughter of City Light owner Gerald Steiner, while Ruskin has escaped prosecution and remarried. McCoy's re-trial ends in a hung jury, split along racial lines. Kramer is removed from the prosecution after it is revealed he was involved with Shelly Thomas in a sexual tryst at the apartment formerly used by Maria and McCoy. It is additionally revealed that McCoy has lost a civil trial to the Lamb family and, pending appeal, has a $12 million liability, which has resulted in the freezing of his assets. The all-but-forgotten Henry Lamb succumbs to his injuries; McCoy, penniless and estranged from his wife and daughter, awaits trial for vehicular manslaughter. In the novel's closing, Tommy Killian holds forth:
500708	/m/02hw3x	On My Way to Paradise	Dave Wolverton	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Osic is a morphogenic pharmacologist who tended in a booth in a feria in Gatun city, Panama. He is approached by a stranger, the woman Tamara Marian de la Garza, who requires him to regrow her right hand. The bloody stump on the end of her arm, signifying a traumatic amputation. It transpires that she is on the run from powerful political forces, the assassins of which attempt to kill her and Osic. He flees from the Earth with Tamara who is in an incapacitated state. On board the orbital shuttle, he attempts to get employment with a Japanese company, Motoki Corporation, as a Pharmacologist, but his application is rejected. Instead he is offered to fight as a mercenary for Motoki, who are attempting to gain control of the planet Baker, a satellite of the Delta Pavonis system. The story describes Osic's reaction to the intense battle training that takes place on board the starship Chaeron and his interaction with the mostly South American refugiados, and chimeras, genetically upgraded humans, who are also escaping their uncertain future on Earth. Their arrival on Baker highlights the vast cultural differences between the mercenary's and their Japanese employers, who have trained them to fight a rival Japanese company of settlers, the Yabajin. These differences culminate in rebellion, with the mercenaries (now self described as Conquistadors) seizing the Motoki city, after a bloody battle and then setting out to attack the Yabajin settlement which lay 3000 kilometers away. across forbidding deserts, encountering the wildlife of Baker.
502720	/m/02j2ff	Ice Station Zebra	Alistair MacLean	1963	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Drift Ice Station Zebra, a British meteorological station built on an ice floe in the Arctic Sea, has suffered a catastrophic oil fire; men have died and shelter and supplies have been destroyed. The survivors are holed up in one hut with little food and heat. If help does not reach them quickly, they will die. The (fictional) American nuclear-powered submarine USS Dolphin is dispatched on a rescue mission. Just before it departs, the mysterious Dr. Carpenter, the narrator, is sent to accompany it. Carpenter claims that he is necessary as an expert in dealing with frostbite and other deep-cold medical conditions. At first, the submarine's Captain Swanson is suspicious of Carpenter, even though he receives an order from Chief of Naval Operations of the U.S. Navy instructing him to obey Carpenter's every command except where crew and submarine safety is at stake. Swanson then calls in his boss Admiral Garvie. Admiral Garvie, Captain Swanson and Dr. Carpenter then meet in confidence in Captain Swanson's small cabin. Admiral Garvie questions Dr. Carpenter at length asking why a civilian and a non US Citizen should be allowed aboard the USS Dolphin and says that he can countermand the CNO's instructions and refuse transport to Dr. Carpenter. Carpenter is thus forced to reveal that this is not simply a rescue mission; the station is actually a highly-equipped listening post, keeping watch for nuclear missile launches from the Soviet Union. Hearing this, Admiral Garvie allows Carpenter to come along. Swanson asks Carpenter to dinner but Carpenter declines saying that he has been traveling for more than 50 hours. Swanson asks and Dr. Carpenter reveals that 50 hours ago he was in the Antarctic. It is very mysterious and Admiral Garvie gives an old fashioned look but he lets it go at that point. Before the Dolphin dives under the Arctic ice pack, it tries to contact Zebra, whose radio signals are becoming weaker by the hour, but in vain. Once under the Arctic ice pack, it approaches the calculated position for Zebra, then searches for a place to surface. Eventually finding a place where the ice is thin enough to break through, the Dolphin establishes tenuous radio contact, and gets a bearing on Zebra's position. But Zebra is too far away to attempt to reach it on foot, so the submarine re-submerges, hoping to get closer. Carpenter confides to the Captain that the commander of the station is his brother. After a tense, desperate search, the Dolphin finds open water and surfaces just five miles from the station. Carpenter, Executive Officer Hansen, and two crewmen make the perilous journey through an Arctic storm on foot, taking with them as many supplies as they can. Zabrinski, one of the crewmen, breaks his ankle on the way. After a harrowing trek they reach Zebra. Devastation awaits them. Three of the eight huts and almost all supplies have been destroyed by a widespread oil fire. Eight men are dead - burnt to a crisp. Eleven men are alive, but barely. While the victims are being tended to, Carpenter does some investigating on his own. Unable to make radio contact, as the radio was damaged in Zabrinski's fall, Carpenter just receives a message from the Dolphin telling them to return at once, as the ice is closing. Carpenter and Hansen leave Zabrinski and the other crewman to attend to the survivors. After nearly getting lost in the terrible storm of blowing ice, Carpenter and Hansen finally return to the Dolphin, bearing news of their findings, as well as the relatively thin ice nearer to Zebra. Dolphin submerges and heads for Zebra. The ice there is still too thick to break with the sub's sail, so Swanson decides to blow a hole in the ice with a torpedo. Unbeknownst to him, someone had tampered with the wiring of the indicators which indicated the open/close status of the outer tube doors. When the crew attempts to load a torpedo into one of the tubes, a torrent of water rushes through the inner door, killing an officer and sending Dolphin into a nearly catastrophic dive. Only by heroic measures is Dolphin able to save herself. After successfully breaking through the ice with a torpedo, fired from an UN-sabotaged tube, Dolphin finally emerges just two hundred feet from Zebra. The sick men are treated, but some of them are still too ill to be carried to the sub. Carpenter does some more investigating. He finds that the fire at Zebra was no accident; it was a cover to hide that three of the dead men, one of whom was his brother, were murdered. Carpenter already knows why; the only question is who. Swanson also has a look around and finds no trace of the sophisticated listening equipment Carpenter had claimed was Zebra's purpose &mdash; Carpenter had lied again. Meanwhile, Swanson found a loaded gun in the petrol tank of a tractor, where the petrol would keep it from freezing, whereas Carpenter found food, batteries and a powerful radio hidden in the hut being used as a morgue. Finally the survivors are all brought aboard, Zebra is abandoned, and Dolphin heads back, but not without several further incidents. The ship's doctor is knocked into a coma. Carpenter himself is severely hurt in another apparent accident. Then a fire breaks out in the engine room and the sub is forced to shut down its nuclear reactor. Without power for air purification or heating, Dolphin looks set to become a frozen tomb trapped under the ice pack. Only the ingenuity of Commander Swanson and the dedication of the crew saves the ship. Carpenter announces that the fire was no accident. He reveals to the Captain that he is an MI6 officer. Carpenter's real mission is to retrieve photographic film from a reconnaissance satellite (see Corona) that has photographed every nuclear weapons installation in the U.S. The film, ejected from the satellite, had landed near Zebra. Carpenter's brother had been meant to retrieve it, but Russian agents killed him. The two Russian agents are amongst the survivors from Zebra. Carpenter finally reveals their motives, methods, and the men. The film is now in American hands, and the agents on their way to the gallows.
504713	/m/02jdsm	Saturday Night and Sunday Morning	Alan Sillitoe	1958		 The novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is split into two unequal parts. The bulk of the book, Saturday Night, and the much smaller second part, Sunday Morning. Saturday Night Saturday Night begins in a working man's club in Nottingham. Arthur is 22 years old, and enjoying a night out with Brenda, the wife of a colleague at work. Challenged to a drinking contest, Arthur defeats "Loudmouth" before falling down the stairs drunk. Brenda takes him home with her and they spend the night together. Arthur enjoys breakfast with Brenda before her husband Jack gets home from a weekend at the races. Arthur works at a lathe at a bicycle factory with his friend Jack. Arthur keeps his mind occupied during the mundane and repetitive work through a mental collage of imagined fantasies, and memories of the past. He earns a good wage of 14 pounds a week, and Robboe, his superior, fears he may get in trouble for letting Arthur earn so much. Soon Arthur hears the news that Jack has been switched to nights, which pleases Arthur as he can now spend more time with Jack's wife. At the same time, Arthur carries on with Brenda's sister Winnie. During another night out at the pub, Arthur meets Doreen, a young unmarried girl with whom he begins a relatively innocent courtship — all the while keeping Brenda and Winnie a secret. However, although Jack is oblivious to his wife's infidelity, Winnie's husband Bill catches on — and Arthur's actions catch up with him when Bill and an accomplice jump Arthur one night, leaving him beaten and bed-ridden for days. Sunday Morning Sunday Morning follows the course of events after Arthur's assault. When Doreen comes to check up on him, Arthur finally comes clean about his affairs with Brenda and Winnie. Doreen stays in a relationship with Arthur despite his dishonesty; Brenda and Winnie disappear from the story. By the end of the novel, Arthur and Doreen have made plans to marry.
507929	/m/02jqt4	Inferno	Jerry Pournelle	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Inferno is based upon the hell described in Dante's Inferno. However, it adds a modern twist to the story. The story is told in the first person by Allen Carpentier (né Carpenter), an agnostic science fiction writer who died in a failed attempt to entertain his fans at a Science fiction convention party. He is only released, after many decades, from a Djinn-bottle in the Vestibule on the outer edge to Hell when he finally calls upon God for mercy. Upon release he is met by Benito, a Virgil-like figure whose full identity is not immediately apparent. Benito offers to take him out of Hell by bringing him to the center. At first, as Allen and Benito travel through Hell, Allen tries to scientifically rationalize everything he sees, renaming his surroundings as 'Infernoland', a high-tech amusement park some thousand years in the future. It isn't until he sees a man recover from incineration and his own leg heal from a compound fracture that he starts to actually believe that he is in Hell. From this point on, as Allen travels through the inner circles of Hell, he sees how he is guilty of each of the sins in some fashion, commenting to himself that he is in no danger from ditch 3 of circle 8 (simony) only because he has never had any holy offices to sell. At first Allen views the punishments for these sins as far surpassing the crime, repeatedly thinking, "We're in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism", although he comes to more and more to accept the justice of the situation as he realizes that it is their continuing denial of their sins that keeps many of the condemned in hell. Eventually Allen takes over Benito's role in helping reformed souls proceed onto Paradise via Purgatory, allowing Benito to move on towards Purgatory himself. It is revealed that Benito is actually Benito Mussolini, prime minister of Italy during World War II. Along the way Allen meets a number of his Californian acquaintances and notable people from history (e.g. Epictetus, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Bob Ford, L Ron Hubbard, Henry VIII of England, Vlad Tepes, Aimee Semple McPherson, William M. Tweed, Al Capone) and from classical mythology (e.g. Hector, Aeneas, Charon, Minos, Phlegyas, Geryon). Due to the long time he spent bottled up in the outer vestibule he also meets some people from the future of 1976, such as a space shuttle pilot.
508387	/m/02js5l	The Bridge of San Luis Rey	Thornton Wilder	1927	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first few pages of the first chapter of The Bridge of San Luis Rey explain the book's basic premise: this story centers on a (fictional) event that happened in Lima, Peru, at noon of Friday, July 20, 1714. A bridge woven by the Incas a century earlier collapsed at that particular moment, while five people were crossing it. The collapse was witnessed by Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk who was on his way to cross it. Wanting to show the world of God's Divine Providence, he sets out to interview everyone he can find who knew the five victims. Over the course of six years, he compiles a huge book of all of the evidence he gathers to show that the beginning and end of a person is all part of God's plan for that person. Part One foretells the burning of the book that occurs at the end of the novel, but it also says that one copy of Brother Juniper's book survives and is at the library of the University of San Marco, where it sits neglected. The second section focuses on one of the victims of the collapse: Doña María, the Marquesa de Montemayor. She was the daughter of a cloth merchant, an ugly child who eventually entered into an arranged marriage and bore a daughter, Clara, whom she loved dearly. Clara was indifferent to her mother, though, and married a Spanish man and moved across the ocean. Doña María visits her daughter, but when they cannot get along, she returns to Lima. The only way that they can communicate comfortably is by letter, and Doña María pours her heart into her writing, which becomes so polished that her letters will be read in schools for hundreds of years after her death. Doña María takes as her companion Pepita, a girl raised at the Convent of Santa María Rosa de la Rosas. When she learns that her daughter in Spain is pregnant, Doña María decides to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa María de Cluxambuqua. Pepita goes along as company and to supervise the staff. When Doña María is out at the shrine, Pepita stays at the inn and writes a letter to her patron, the Abbess, complaining about her misery and loneliness. Doña María sees the letter on the table when she gets back and reads it. Later, she asks Pepita about the letter, and Pepita says she burned it because it was not brave to write it. Doña María has new insight into the ways in which her own life has lacked bravery, but two days later, returning to Lima, she and Pepita are on the bridge when it collapses. Esteban and Manuel are twins who were left at the Convent of SantaMaría Rosa de la Rosas as infants. The Abbess of the convent, Madre María del Pilar, developed a fondness for them as they grew up. When they became older, they decided to be scribes. They are so close that they have developed a secret language that only they understand. Their closeness becomes strained when Manuel falls in love with Camila Perichole. The Perichole flirts with Manuel and swears him to secrecy when she retains him to write letters to her lover, the Viceroy. Esteban has no idea of their relationship until she turns up at the twins' room one night in a hurry and has Manuel write to a bullfighter with whom she is having an affair. Esteban encourages his brother to follow her, but instead Manuel swears that he will never see her again. Manuel cuts his knee on a piece of metal and it becomes infected. The surgeon instructs Esteban to put cold compresses on the injury: the compresses are so painful that Manuel curses Esteban, though he later remembers nothing of his curses. Esteban offers to send for the Perichole, but Manuel refuses. Soon after, Manuel dies. When the Abbess comes to prepare the body, she asks Esteban his name, and he says he is Manuel. Gossip about his ensuing strange behavior spreads all over town. He goes to the theater but runs away before the Perichole can talk to him; the Abbess tries to talk to him, but he runs away, so she sends for Captain Alvarado. Captain Alvarado goes to see Esteban in Cuzco and hires him to sail with him. Esteban agrees. He wants his pay in advance in order to buy a present for the Abbess. The Captain offers to take him back to Lima to buy the present, and at the ravine, the Captain goes down to a boat that is ferrying some materials across the water. Esteban goes to the bridge and is on it when it collapses. Uncle Pio acts as Camila Perichole's valet, and, in addition, "her singing-master, her coiffeur, her masseur, her reader, her errand-boy, her banker; rumor added: her father." The story tells of his background. He has traveled the world engaged in a variety of businesses, most related to the theater or politics, including conducting interrogations for the Inquisition. He came to realize that he had just three interests in the world: independence; the constant presence of beautiful women; and work with the masterpieces of Spanish literature, particularly in the theater. He becomes rich working for the Viceroy. One day, he discovers a twelve-year-old café singer, Micaela Villegas, and takes her under his protection. Over the course of years, as they travel from country to country, she becomes beautiful and talented. She develops into Camila Perichole, the most honored actress in Lima. After years of success, Perichole becomes bored with the stage. The Viceroy takes her as his mistress, and she and Uncle Pio and the Archbishop of Peru and, eventually, Captain Alvarado meet frequently at midnight for dinner at the Viceroy's mansion. Through it all, Uncle Pio is faithfully devoted, but as Camila ages and has three children by the Viceroy she focuses on becoming a lady, not an actress. She avoids Uncle Pio, and when he talks to her she tells him to not use her stage name. When a smallpox epidemic sweeps through Lima, Camila is disfigured by it. She takes her son Jaime to the country. Uncle Pio sees her one night trying hopelessly to cover her pock-marked face with powder: ashamed, she refuses to ever see him again. He begs her to allow him to take her son and teach the boy as he taught her. They leave the next morning. Uncle Pio and Jaime are the fourth and fifth people on the bridge to Lima when it collapses. Brother Juniper works for six years on his book about the bridge collapse, trying various mathematical formulae to measure spiritual traits, with no results. He compiles his huge book of interviews, but a council pronounces his work heresy, and the book and Brother Juniper are burned in the town square. The story shifts back in time to the day of a service for those who died in the bridge collapse. The Archbishop, the Viceroy, and Captain Alvarado are at the ceremony. At the Convent of Santa María Rosa de la Rosas, the Abbess feels, having lost Pepita and the twin brothers, that her work will die with her. Camila Perichole comes to ask how she can go on, having lost her son and Uncle Pio. Doña Clara comes: throughout the book she has been in Spain, and no one in Lima knows her. As she views the sick and poor being cared for at the convent, she is moved. The novel ends with the Abbess's observation: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
508403	/m/02js8_	The Owl Service	Alan Garner	1967	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Roger and Alison are stepbrother and sister. Alison's father died and her mother Margaret has married Clive, a businessman and former RAF officer. Clive's former wife was notoriously unfaithful, bringing shame to the family and a particular kind of pain to his son, Roger. To bond the new family together they are spending a few weeks of the summer in an isolated valley in Wales, a few hours' drive from Aberystwyth. They occupy a fine house formerly owned by Alison's father, subsequently transferred to her in order to avoid death duty. He in turn inherited it from a cousin, Bertram, who died there in mysterious circumstances around the time Alison was born. With the house comes Huw Halfbacon, also known as Hugh the Flitch, a handyman and gardener. He is the last of the original domestic staff to remain at the cottage. The former cook, Nancy, had left to live in Aberystwyth but is offered a substantial amount to come and resume her duties. With her comes her son Gwyn. He has never seen the valley before but knows everything about it, courtesy of his mother's stories. Someone else who knows a lot about the place is Huw, but he is very mysterious about it. Oddly, Nancy has told Gwyn nothing about Huw. Alison hears scratching noises in the attic above her bed and persuades Gwyn to investigate. He finds stacks of dinner plates with a floral pattern. When he picks one up, something odd happens. He almost falls through the ceiling while simultaneously Roger, lounging by a large flat stone near the river, hears a scream and seems to see something flying through the air toward him. The stone is known as the Stone of Gronw. It has a hole neatly bored through it, and legend says that Lleu killed Gronw by throwing his spear clear through the stone that Gronw was holding to shield himself. Alison begins behaving peculiarly. She traces the pattern on the plate onto paper and folds the result to make an owl. Finding out that Gwyn has been in the attic, Nancy demands that Alison give up the plate. Alison asserts she has no right to it, and eventually produces a blank white plate. She maintains that the pattern disappeared from the plate. Alison becomes obsessed by the plates. One by one she traces them and makes the owls, and one by one the plates become blank. The owls themselves disappear, though no one cares at first about some folded paper models. In the house's billiard room part of the wall has been covered with pebble-dash. Bit by bit this begins to crack and fall away, exposing first a pair of painted eyes, and then an entire portrait of a woman made of flowers. Tensions between the occupants of the house began to rise. Gwyn is intelligent and wants to further his education, but Clive expresses a stereotypical clannish closed-ranks attitudes of the upper middle-class towards him. Roger begins to feel hostile despite his initial friendliness. Eventually he takes to ridiculing Gwyn's efforts to improve himself with elocution lessons on gramophone records, calling them "improve-a-prole." Alison seems friendly to Gwyn and the two go on long walks together. She has visions where she sees herself next to him, even though he is some distance away. Margaret, her mother, never appears but the need to keep her happy affects everyone else. As the vacation slides into disaster, the British attitude of "seeing it through to the end" prevails, even though Clive could pay off all the staff and leave at any time. Nancy repeatedly threatens to quit, and is repeatedly mollified with crisp banknotes. She constantly warns Gwyn to stay away from the others, lest he be taken out of school and forced to work in a grocery store to earn some money. Nancy gradually reveals her resentment of Margaret and Alison, as she once expected to marry Bertram and should have been mistress of the very house she toils in. Competition between the boys for Alison is, at most, a subtext here, although Garner's television script is much more overt about Gwyn's attraction to her, despite his poverty. Alison, notwithstanding any attraction to him, would rather keep her privileges, such as her tennis club membership, than cross her mother. This is something she eventually admits to Gwyn. The mysterious Huw presides over this like some ringmaster at a circus, making strange pronouncements. There is background of odd comments from the villagers, noises of motorcycles in the distance, sounds of birds, and mysterious noises from locked buildings. Gwyn follows Alison on one of her inexplicable midnight walks. She is completing her tracing of the plates somewhere in the woods. Gwyn is harassed by columns of flame, which he tries to convince himself are merely marsh gas. He finds Alison when she has made the final owl, then escorts her back to the cottage. Huw is waiting, and greets them with the remark "She's come." By this time the connection between the legend and the events is becoming clear. Gwyn tries to see things rationally. He attempts to run away, walking up the sides of the valley as the weather worsens, but is chased back by a pack of sheepdogs. Stealing Roger's hiking gear, he tries the other side of the valley, only to find Huw waiting for him. Huw tells him of the power that exists in the valley, how those of the blood have to re-enact the legend each time, and how Blodeuwedd always comes as owls instead of flowers because of the hatred. Huw, of course, is Gwyn's real father, so Gwyn is the next generation. Huw was responsible for Bertram's death, sabotaging the antique motorcycle Bertram liked to ride around the garden, not realising he would take it out on the dangerous hill road. The dinner plates and the wall painting were done by Huw's ancestors, trying to lock up the magic in their creations, but Alison has let it loose again. Huw directs Gwyn to a crack in an ancient tree where he finds various things, including a spear head. All the men of Huw's line come to this tree, where they leave something and take something. Gwyn removes a carved stone, leaving a trashy owl-decorated trinket. He tells Huw to give the stone to Alison. Gwyn is going to return to the cottage and leave with his mother, who has finally and irrevocably quit. In a locked room, Roger discovers a stuffed owl, which Bertram shot in his own attempt to lay the ghost of Blodeuwedd, along with all the paper owls that have traced intricate patterns in the dust of a storeroom. He also finds the sabotaged motorcycle. Nancy charges in and wrecks the place, destroying the owl and then attempting to knock the very feathers out of the air. Alison, having been given the stone by Huw, collapses and is brought into the kitchen, where she writhes in the grip of some force that makes claw marks on her skin. Huw begs Gwyn to comfort her, but Gwyn by now feels totally betrayed by Alison and can say nothing. A storm rages outside, branches smashing through the windows and skylight, a sound of owls and eagles pressing in on them. Feathers swirl in the room and trace owl patterns on the walls and ceiling. Roger is desperate, abasing himself before Gwyn, but to no avail. "It is always owls, over and over and over," says Huw. Then Roger shouts that it's not true, that she is flowers. He yells this at Alison until abruptly all is peaceful, and the room is filled not with feathers but with petals.
509726	/m/02jxjc	Maya the Bee	Waldemar Bonsels	1912	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Bonsels' original book contains fewer than 200 pages. The storyline is centered on the relation of Maya and her many adventures. Maya is a bee born in a bee hive during internal unrest: the hive is dividing itself into two new colonies. Maya is raised by her teacher, Mrs. Cassandra. Despite Mrs. Cassandra's warnings, Maya wants to explore the wide world and commits the unforgivable crime of leaving the hive. During her adventures, Maya, now in exile, befriends other insects and braves dangers with them. In the climax of the book, Maya is taken prisoner by hornets, the bees' sworn enemies. Prisoner of the hornets, Maya learns of a hornet plan to attack her native hive. Maya is faced with the decision to either return to hive and suffer her due punishment, saving the hive, or leaving the plan unannounced, saving herself but destroying the hive. As may be expected, Maya, after severe pondering, makes the decision to return. In the hive, she announces the coming attack and is, totally unexpectedly, pardoned. The forewarned bees triumph over the hornet attack force. Maya, now a heroine of the hive, becomes a teacher, like Mrs. Cassandra and shares her experiences and wisdom with the future generation. The original book from 1912 was a fable with a political message, analogously to Jean de La Fontaine's or Ivan Krylov's work. Maya represents the ideal citizen, and the beehive represents a well-organized militarist society. It has also elements of nationalism and racism. Maya gets angry in two instances. First, a grasshopper fails to distinguish between bees and wasps. Maya's vicious verbal attack includes calling the wasps "a useless gang of bandits" [Räubergeschlecht] that have no "home or faith" [Heimat und Glauben]. Second, a fly calls Maya an idiot, which prompts Maya to shout that she's going to teach "respect for bees" and to threaten the fly with her stinger. This is analyzed such that respect is based on the threat of violence. Collectivism versus individualism is also a theme. Maya's independence and departure from the beehive is seen as reproachable, but it is atoned by her warning of the hornets' attack. This show of loyalty restores her position in the society. In the hornet attack part of the story, the bees' will to defend and the heroic deaths of bee officers are glorified, often in overtly militarist tones. In the post-WWII adaptions, the militarist element was naturally toned down considerably, the hornets' role reduced, and the character of Willy, a lazy and quite un-warlike drone bee, was introduced (he does not appear in the novel). In the cartoon series, the briskly marching, but ridiculously incompetent ant armies provide a parody of militarism.
511296	/m/02k1xh	Baudolino	Umberto Eco	2000	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the year of 1204, Baudolino of Alessandria enters Constantinople, unaware of the Fourth Crusade that has thrown the city into chaos. In the confusion, he meets Niketas Choniates and saves his life. Niketas is amazed by his language genius, speaking many languages he has never heard, and on the question: if he is not part of the crusade, who is he? Baudolino begins to recount his life story to Niketas. His story begins in 1155, when Baudolino is sold to and adopted by the emperor Frederick I. At court and on the battlefield, he is educated in reading and writing Latin and learns about the power struggles and battles of northern Italy at the time. He is sent to Paris to become a scholar. In Paris, he gains friends (such as the Archpoet, Abdul, Robert de Boron and Kyot, the purported source of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival) and learns about the legendary kingdom of Prester John. From this event onward, Baudolino dreams of reaching this fabled land. After the death of Frederick, Baudolino and his friends set off on a long journey, encompassing 15 years, to find the Kingdom of Prester John. Baudolino meets eunuchs, unicorns, Blemmyes, skiapods and pygmies. At one point, he falls in love with a female satyr-like creature who recounts to him the full Gnostic creation myth; Gnosticism is a pervasive presence in another of Eco's novels, Foucault's Pendulum. Philosophical debates are mixed with comedy, epic adventure and creatures drawn from the strangest medieval bestiaries. {| class="wikitable" align="right" width="250" | | |- | | |- | colspan="2" | Various strange characters figuring in the novel as rendered in the Nuremberg Chronicles. These creatures and many others were all described and named by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historiæ from 77 AD: A monopod and a satyr (top); a blemmyae and a panotti (above). |} ;Invented by Eco *Baudolino — young man of Alessandria, protagonist, apparently a reference to the patron saint. *The monopod Gavagai, a reference to Quine's example of indeterminacy of translation. *The putative successors of Hypatia of Alexandria *Deacon John, leprous sub-ruler of Pndapetzim ;Other fictional or legendary beings *Kyot *Gagliaudo Aulari, legendary saviour of Alessandria, and his wife, who are Baudolino's biological parents *Prester John *Satyrs *Blemmyes *Panotti ;Historical *Frederick Barbarossa *Niketas Choniates *Robert de Boron *Rainald of Dassel *The Old Man of the Mountain *Pope Alexander III *Beatrice I, Countess of Burgundy *The Archpoet (unknown except through his poetry) *Otto of Freising *A member of the ancient Artsruni noble clan *Andronicus I Comnenus *Stephen Hagiochristophorites *The Venerable Bede
511343	/m/02k20p	Tintin in Tibet	Hergé	1960		 While on holiday in a resort in the French Alps with Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus, Tintin reads about a plane crash in the Gosain Than Massif in the Himalayas. That evening at their hotel, he has a vivid dream that his young Chinese friend Chang Chong-Chen (introduced in The Blue Lotus) is terribly hurt and calling for help from the ruins of a plane crash. The next morning, Tintin reads in the paper that Chang was aboard the plane that crashed in Tibet. Believing that his dream was a telepathic vision, Tintin flies to Katmandu in Nepal via New Delhi, India with Snowy, and a skeptical Captain Haddock. They hire a sherpa named Tharkey, and accompanied by some porters, they travel overland from Nepal to the crash site in Tibet. One the way, they discover footprints in the snow that Tharkey claims belong to the yeti. The porters abandon the group in fear, and Tintin, Haddock and Tharkey go on and eventually reach the crash site. Tintin sets off with Snowy to try to trace Chang's steps, and after glimpsing at a silhouette in the snow finds a cave in which Chang carved his name on a rock, proving that he survived the crash. Tharkey believes that Tintin saw the yeti and convinces him that the area is just too large to search. The reporter however changes his mind back after spotting a scarf higher up on a cliff face. While attempting to climb upwards and after having his pick-axe caught with St. Elmo's fire, Haddock loses his grip and hangs perilously down the cliff wall, imperiling Tintin, who is tied to him. He tells Tintin to cut the rope to save himself, but Tintin refuses. Tharkey, who has also had a change of heart moved by Tintin's selflessness, returns just in time to save them. That night, a storm blows away their tent and they have to trek onwards, unable to sleep lest they freeze. They eventually arrive within sight of the Buddhist monastery of Khor-Biyong before collapsing due to exhaustion. An avalanche occurs, and they are buried in the snow. Blessed Lightning, a monk at the monastery, 'sees' in a vision Tintin, Snowy, Haddock and Tharkey being in peril. Tintin regains consciousness and, unable to reach the monastery himself, gives Snowy a written call for help to deliver. Snowy lets go of the message when he finds a bone, but then realises what he's done, and runs to the monastery to make someone follow him. The monks head after him as he is recognised as the white dog in Blessed Lightning's vision. Two days later, Tintin, Haddock and Tharkey regain consciousness in the monastery and receive an audience with the monks. After Tintin tells the Grand Abbot why they are there, the Abbot tells him to abandon his quest and return to his country. However, Blessed Lightning has another vision, through which Tintin learns that Chang is still alive inside a mountain cave, but that the "migou", or yeti, is also there. Haddock doesn't believe the vision is genuine, but Tintin, after being given directions by the Abbot, travels to Charabang, a small village near the Horn of the Yak, the mountain mentioned by Blessed Lightning. Haddock initially refuses to follow Tintin anymore, but once again changes his mind and pursues him to Charabang. The two of them, and Snowy, head to the Horn of the Yak on the final lap of their journey. They wait outside until they see the yeti leave the cave. Tintin ventures inside with a camera while Haddock keeps lookout, and he finally finds Chang, who is feverish and shaking. The yeti, finally revealed as a large anthropoid with an oval-shaped head, returns to the cave before Haddock can warn Tintin, and he reacts with anger upon seeing Tintin taking Chang away. As he reaches toward Tintin however, he sets off the flash bulb of the camera, which scares him away. Tintin and Haddock carry Chang back to the village of Charabang, and he explains to them that the yeti saved him after the crash and took him away from the rescue parties. Along the way, they briefly encounter the yeti again, and he is scared off this time by Haddock blowing his nose. After Chang has been prepared for comfortable transport, he, Tintin and Haddock are met ceremonially by the Grand Abbot and an emissary group of monks, who present Tintin with a silk scarf in honour of the bravery he has shown, and the strength of his friendship with Chang. The monks take them back to Khor-Biyong, and after a week, when Chang has recovered, they return to Nepal by caravan. As their party travels away from the monastery, Chang muses that the yeti is no wild animal, but instead has a human soul, while the yeti sadly watches their departure from a distance.
512677	/m/02k6k5	The Ugly Little Boy	Isaac Asimov	1958-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Neanderthal child is brought to the present day as a result of time travel experiments by a research organization, Stasis Inc. He cannot be removed from his immediate area because of the vast energy loss and time paradoxes that would result. To take care of him, Edith Fellowes, a children's nurse, is engaged. She is initially repelled by his appearance, but soon begins to regard him as her own child, learns to love him and realizes that he is far more intelligent than she at first imagined. She names him 'Timmie' and attempts to ensure that he has the best possible childhood despite his circumstance. She is enraged when the newspapers refer to him as an "ape-boy". Edith's love for Timmie brings her into conflict with her employer, for whom he is more of an experimental animal than a human being. Eventually, her employer comes to the conclusion that his organization has exacted all the knowledge and publicity which could be gotten from Timmie, and that the time has come to move on to the next project. This involves bringing a Medieval peasant into the present, which necessitates the return of Timmie to his own time. Miss Fellowes fights the decision, knowing that he could not now survive, having acquired modern dependencies and speech. She decides to smuggle the boy out of the facilities, but when that plan fails, she returns to the ancient past with Timmie.
515055	/m/02kfp2	The Man-eaters of Tsavo	John Henry Patterson		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Colonel John Patterson is to build a bridge in East Africa (later Kenya). While he is working on this, two man-eating lions show up. They will stop at nothing for a bite of human flesh and the first attempts to stalk, capture or keep them out of the camp fail. They attack the camp hospital and kill a patient. Even after the hospital is moved, one lion penetrates the thick, thorn fence called a boma built to protect it and drags the water carrier away to his death. In the course of hunting these lions, Patterson encounters a red spitting cobra, a rhinoceros, a hippopotamus, a pack of wild dogs, a wildebeest that faked dying, and a herd of zebra, of which he captured six. He also shoots a new type of antelope, T. Oryx Pattersonianus. Eventually, the first lion is defeated by baiting it with a tethered goat while Patterson keeps watch from an elevated stand – though for a few tense moments Patterson himself becomes the hunted. Patterson and Mahina hunt the second lion on the plains. When they find and shoot it, the lion charges them and it takes repeated shots to bring it down. The lions are not the only challenge to completing the bridge project. Tensions between native workers and Sikhs brought in from British East India to work on the project (coolies) threaten to stop the project. At one point, Patterson meets a danger far greater than the lions – a fierce flood. It wipes out the supply bridges and wraps iron girders around tree trunks like wire. Uprooted tree trunks act like battering rams trying to annihilate the bridge. But the well-built bridge stays intact. This challenge proves that the year spent working on the bridge has not been wasted. After Patterson completes the bridge, he learns that a lion has been trying to destroy the train station. When he goes to see, he finds big bloodstains where the lion was trying to slash the roof. There were 3 men in one compartment and an uncertain number of coolies in another. Two of the men had been sleeping on the floor when the lion gained entrance. The lion was on one of the men while trying to attack another. The third man, in an effort to get to the other section, which the coolies had been holding shut with their turbans, leapt on to the lion’s back, and tried desperately to get through. The coolies opened the door just wide enough for him to get through, and then tied it shut again. As for the other men, one got carried off and eaten by the lion, while the other man lay very still, probably saving his own life. Hearing this, Patterson decides to go after this lion, eventually finding it and slaughtering it. Another close encounter with a lion occurs when a lion is aboard a gharri, a means of transportation in Kenya similar to a small trolley. Another time, on the way back to the train station, Patterson converses with a friend who has never shot a lion. A couple of hundred yards away, Patterson points out a pair of lions and encourages the friend to shoot them. One runs off at the first shot, but he successfully bags the other lion. The end of the book includes a photo of the lion that the friend captured. When the time comes for Patterson to leave, some of the coolies and the natives want to go with him. However, Patterson knows that they do not have the immune defense system to combat the diseases outside of Africa. So he politely says no and leaves Africa for some years. (He later returns to Africa, but this part of his life is not recorded in this book.)
515109	/m/02kfwd	Ponniyin Selvan	Kalki Krishnamurthy		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story revolves around Vandiyathevan, a charming,brave and a brilliant young man who sets out to the Chola land to deliver a message to the King and the Princess from the Crown Prince Aditya Karikalan. The story shuttles between Vandiyathevan's travels in Chola country and the young Prince Arulmozhivarman's travels in Sri Lanka. The narrative deals with attempts by his sister Kundavai to bring back Arulmozhi (as Raja Raja was called before his crowning) to establish political peace in a land seemingly getting besot with unrest and signs of civil war, plotted by vassals and petty chieftains. Parantaka Chola was succeeded by his second son Gandaraditya as the first son Rajaditya had died in a battle. At the time of Gandaraditya's death, his son Maduranthaka was a 2 year old child and hence Gandaraditya’s brother Arinjaya ascended the throne. After Arinjaya’s death, his son Parantaka II, (Sundara Chola) was coronated. He had two sons, Aditya Karikalan and daughter Kundavai and the younger son Arulmozhivarman,the later known Rajaraja. When the story starts, the emperor Sundara Chola is ill and bedridden. Aditya Karikalan is the general of the Northern Command and lived in Kanchi and Arulmozhivarman (who would be famous later as Raja Raja Chola I) is in Sri Lanka in battle and their sister Kundavai Piratti lived in Chola royal household at Pazhayarai. The story is set in motion, when rumor starts that there is a conspiracy against Sundara Chola and his sons. One person who gets a glimpse of the Pandya conspirators is a warrior the Vanar kula veeran Vallavarayan Vandiyathevan at the palace of his friend kandhamaaran. It is through Vandiyathevan that we meet most of the characters in the novel such as Arulmozhivarman, the prince whom all the people loved, and Periya Pazhavetturayar, the chancellor who married Nandhini,(the main conspirator) when he was sixty. During his youth, Aditya Karikalan had fallen in love with Nandhini, but she turned vengeful after Aditya Karikalan killed Veerapandyan (who was probably her lover.It was a confusion which revolves in the story,some says it was her father) and vowed to destroy the Chola dynasty. We also meet Kundavai Devi, who after hearing the news of the conspiracy sends Vandiyathevan to Sri Lanka to give a message to Arulmozhivarman to come back immediately. Besides these, there are other characters like Maduranthaka Thevar(the man whom the conspirators want to crown king), the son of Gandaraditya and Aniruddha Brahmarayar,Sundara Cholar’s Prime Minister and the man who has eyes and ears everywhere. But the most wonderful character in the book is Brahmarayar’s spy Azhwarkadiyan Nambi, a who roams around the country challenging for debates. He collects information for the Prime Minister and is always around Vandiyathevan, rescuing him during trouble. There are some lovely and adorable women too, like Vanathi,Kodumbalur princess(the woman who becomes Arulmozhi's wife later) who is in love with Arulmozhi; Poonkuzhali, the boat woman who rows the future king to Lanka; Mandakini, the deaf and dumb step mother of the original maduranthaka chola an the aunt of Poonkuzhali. Most memorable among these is Nandhini, whose beauty is said to have the power to influence any man. Manimegalai, the sister of kandhamaran(the kadamboor prince)who helps nandhini without any knowledge that she herself is the conspirator and also he turns against Vandhiyathevan, his best friend. In the meanwhile, With Poonkuzhali's help, Vandiyathevan reaches Sri Lanka, meets Arulmozhivarman, and becomes his close friend. In Lanka, Arulmozhivarman realizes that his father had spent some time in an island near Lanka and had been with a girl born deaf and dumb. He meets her and realizes from her drawing that she and his father have had two children. Who are those children and do they have the right to the throne? Later one day in Thirupurambayam forest Vandiyathevan sees Nandhini and the Pandya conspirators place a small boy on a throne and take a vow in front of him. Who is this boy and what right does he have to the throne? While coming back from Lanka, Arulmozhivarman is caught in a cyclone and goes missing. Rumor spreads that he is dead, but he survives and stays at Choodamani Viharam, a Buddhist monastery in . Then slowly the dispersed family starts assembling. The conspirators meanwhile choose one day in which both the king and both of his sons would be assassinated. Nandhini in the mean time calls Adithya Karikalan to Kadambur Palace to discuss about the future of kingdom,Though Karikalan knows that is life is in utter danger,He goes to Kadambur palace despite warning from his grand father,Adithya karikalan was then assassinated there(it was debated till about the assassin).But actually as per historians Ravidasan,The loyal guard of Pandiya king killed aditya as the revenge for Pandiya king,Later this case was tabled before Raja raja chola and punished him with ceasing his property as Ravidasan was Brahmin community by birth who were not punished to death in olden times generally. Arulmozhivarman in mean time recovers and returns to Tanjore,Where he was forced to crown and he accepts to get crown initially.Later he tricks everyone and crowns to his uncle Uthama chola,Thus gets the fifth part name as Tyaga chigaram.
518060	/m/02krl1	The Temple of Elemental Evil	Frank Mentzer		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 These classic, early D&D adventures helped first popularize the World of Greyhawk campaign setting. In the module T1 The Village of Hommlet, the player characters must defeat the raiders in a nearby fort, and thereafter Hommlet can be used as a base for the party's subsequent adventures. The adventure begins in the eponymous village of Hommlet, situated near the site of a past battle against evil forces operating from the Temple. The adventurers travel through Hommlet and are drawn into a web of conspiracy and deception. The module is recommended for first-level characters, who begin the adventure "weary, weak, and practically void of money". They travel to a town that is supposed to be a great place to earn fortunes, defeat enemy creatures, and even lose one's life. While the town initially appears warm and hospitable, the characters soon learn that many of its inhabitants are powerful spies for minions of evil. The T1 adventure stands alone, but also forms the first part of T1-4. In The Temple of Elemental Evil, the characters start off at low level, and after establishing themselves in Hommlet, they gradually work their way through the immense dungeons beneath the Temple, thereby gaining experience. In the next section, T2, the adventurers move on to the nearby village of Nulb to confront several nefarious opponents, including agents from the Temple. Based on the outcome of these encounters, the player characters can then enter the Temple itself to interact with its many denizens and test their mettle against Zuggtmoy herself. The temple referenced in the module's title is an unholy structure located in the central Flanaess not far from the city-state of Verbobonc. In 566 CY, forces of evil from Dyvers or the Wild Coast constructed a small chapel outside the nearby village of Nulb. The chapel was quickly built into a stone temple from which bandits and evil humanoids began to operate with increasing frequency. In 569 CY, a combined force was sent to destroy the Temple and put an end to the marauding. The army included regular forces from the human kingdoms of Furyondy and Veluna, dwarves from the Lortmil Mountains, gnomes from the Kron Hills, and elven archers and spearmen. This allied army clashed with a horde of evil men and humanoids, including orcs, ogres and gnolls, at the Battle of Emridy Meadows. The forces of good were victorious and the Horde of Elemental Evil was scattered. The Temple was then besieged and fell within two weeks, although a few of its leaders managed to escape. The site itself remained, however, and over the following decade rumors of evil presence there persisted. The Viscount of Verbobonc and the Archcleric of Veluna became increasingly concerned, and cooperated to build a small castle outside the Village of Hommlet to guard against the possibility of the Temple rising again. For the next five years, Hommlet gained in wealth thanks to adventurers who came to the area seeking out remnants of evil to slay. Things quieted down for another four years as the area returned to peace and normalcy, but in 578 CY evil began to stir again, with groups of bandits riding the roads. In 579 CY, the events in the T1-4 module occur. Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil is set 12 years later, in 591 CY.
518097	/m/02krqz	A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail	Bill Bryson	1998-05-04	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book starts with Bryson explaining his curiosity at the Appalachian Trail near his house. He and his old friend Stephen Katz start hiking the trail from the state of Georgia in the south, and stumble in the beginning with the difficulties of getting used to their equipment; Bryson also soon realizes how difficult it is to travel with his friend, who is a crude, overweight recovering alcoholic, and even less prepared for the ordeal than he is. Overburdened, they soon discard much extra food and equipment to lighten their loads. After hiking for what seemed to him a large distance, they realize they have still barely begun while in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and that the whole endeavor is simply too much for them. They skip a huge section of the trail, beginning again in Roanoke, Virginia. The book recounts Bryson's desire to seek easier terrain as well as "a powerful urge not to be this far south any longer." This section of the hike finally ends (after nearly of hiking) with Bryson going on a book tour and Katz returning to Des Moines to work. In the following months Bryson continues to hike several smaller parts of the trail, including a visit to Centralia, an environmentally poisoned mining town in Pennsylvania, and eventually reunites with Katz to hike the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, which again proves too daunting. The fact that Bryson did not complete the trail is not surprising since fewer than 25% of thru-hike attempts are successful; he quotes the older figure of 10%.
518302	/m/02ksh1	In the Country of Last Things	Paul Auster	1987	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel takes the form of letter from a young woman named Anna Blume. Anna has ventured into an unnamed city that has collapsed into chaos and disorder. In this environment, no industry takes place and most of the population collects garbage or scavenges for objects to resell. Anna has entered the city to search for her brother William, a journalist, and it is suggested that the Blumes come from a world to the East which has not collapsed. Anna arrives in the city with William's address, and an address and photo for Samuel Farr, whom William's editor sent to the city after failing to receive word from William. However, in a turn of events she later understands to be typical of life in the city, she finds that not only has William's house been demolished, but the entire street where he lived has been reduced to rubble. Anna lives on the streets of the city as an 'object hunter', a job which involves scavenging for specific objects rather than collecting general waste. One day, Anna saves the life of Isabel, an older woman. Isabel is, like Anna, an object hunter, despite her advanced age, and has an uncanny knowledge of where and when to find the objects they require. She lives with her husband, Ferdinand, a rude man who does not work, but makes ships in bottles from small waste materials he finds. Ferdinand tries to rape Anna, but she, trying to scare him away, accidentally starts to strangle him and gives up before he dies, while Isabel is supposedly asleep. Anna and Isabel discover that Ferdinand had died in the morning, hinting that Isabel had finished the job later that evening. Isabel and Anna, not wanting to simply leave his body in the street or carry it to a crematorium, throw it from the roof of their apartment building, making it seem as if Ferdinand had committed suicide. Soon after, Isabel becomes ill, and can no longer work. She dies, and after Anna has taken her body to be cremated, housebreakers arrive at her apartment and overpower her, making her homeless once again. After having been homeless for a period, Anna is forced to run from a police officer, and goes through the first open door she sees, which turns out to be the city's national library. Parts of the library have been allocated by the government for academics and religious groups. She meets a rabbi, leading a small group of Jewish inhabitants of the city. Anna reveals that she too is a Jew, but no longer believes in God (see Jewish atheism). The group cannot help Anna on her mission to find William, but one of the rabbi's accomplices directs her to Samuel Farr, who it transpires is also living in the library. Despite initial hostility, Sam accepts Anna into his life, and the two live together and become lovers. Sam is working on a book about the city, but is swiftly running out of money. Anna remedies the couple's financial situation with the money she has obtained from selling Isabel and Ferdinand's possessions, and the two are able to live in relative comfort and afford luxury items such as cigarettes. This period is described as one of Anna's happiest. However, the Jewish groups are forced to leave the library when the government decides to exert its authority, and are replaced by a man named Dujardin, of whom Anna is suspicious. Anna's shoes start to wear out, and Sam refuses to let Anna leave their apartment until he has procured a new pair, especially because Anna is now pregnant. This takes time, however, and Anna is tempted by an offer from Dujardin to buy her a pair from his cousin, and, despite her initial dislike of him, she accepts his offer. She follows him to his cousin's house, but realizes she has been tricked, and that the house is a human slaughterhouse. Anna jumps from a window and escapes, and is taken in by the patrons of Woburn House, a homeless shelter. When she awakes, she lives in luxury, but is deeply distressed to hear that a fire has broken out at the library, Sam's whereabouts are unknown, and she has had a miscarriage. Anna takes a position at Woburn House, and becomes close to her colleagues; Victoria, the daughter of the House's founder, Dr. Woburn; Frick, an older man who serves as a driver and has a strange way of speaking; Willie, Frick's introverted fifteen-year-old grandson; and Boris Stepanovich, an enigmatic character responsible for procuring food and supplies for the House. Anna enters a love affair with Victoria, which helps her recover from losing Sam. She is appointed to a position in which she interviews prospective residents of the House, which she finds emotionally draining. She vents her anger on interviewee, then falls asleep, and awakes to find Sam sitting opposite her. He has lived in an abandoned railway station since the fire in the library, and has become almost unrecognizable. He is taken in immediately, though, and begins to make progress. When he returns to full health, Victoria asks him to contribute to the House by pretending to be a doctor: there is no longer any medical equipment except for painkillers and bandages, so the charade is unlikely to be uncovered, and people enjoy telling him their stories. However, Boris tells Anna that Woburn House is financially unsustainable, as it relies on a finite supply of items taken from Dr. Woburn's collection. She comes to realize that the House cannot continue forever, and cutbacks are made to the provisions granted to residents. Frick dies, and is given a burial in the House's garden, against the city's laws. However, the burial is reported to the police by an unknown resident, and they arrive to dig up the body. The police are dissuaded by Boris Stepanovich from taking further measures, but Willie has been deeply affected by the events. He starts to act erratically, and eventually violently, taking a gun and murdering several residents of the House, before turning to Victoria, Sam and Anna. Sam shoots him before he can reach them, but too much damage has been done to the House and its reputation for it to continue. The House closes down and, with the last of their money (taken from selling the remnants of the Woburn collection and Boris's personal wealth), the four obtain travel permits. The novel ends with Anna considering the best way for them to leave the city, and telling the unknown acquaintance to whom she is writing that she will write again. It is unknown whether the letter was sent, and whether Anna, Victoria, Sam and Boris were successful in their attempt to leave the city. The 'last things' in the title of the book refers not only to the disappearance of manufactured objects and technology but also the fading of memories of them and the words used to describe them.
518402	/m/02ksrd	The Path to the Nest of Spiders	Italo Calvino	1947		 Pin, an orphaned cobbler's apprentice in a town on the Ligurian coast, lives with his sister, a prostitute. After stealing a pistol from a Nazi sailor, Pin searches for an identity with a partisan group. All the while, the people he meets mock him without his knowing. The title refers to Pin's secret hiding place, directions to which he touts as a prize to any adults who win his trust.
518516	/m/02kt33	Orlando Innamorato	Matteo Maria Boiardo			 The beautiful Angelica, daughter of the king of Cataio (Cathay), comes to Charlemagne’s court for a tournament in which both Christians and pagans can participate. She offers herself as a prize to whoever will defeat her brother, Argalia, who in the consequent competition fighting imprisons many Christians. But then Ferraguto (aka Ferraù) kills Argalia and Angelica flees, chased by many paladins, especially Orlando and Rinaldo. Stopping in the Ardenne forest, she drinks at the Stream of Love (making her fall in love with Rinaldo), while Rinaldo drinks at the fount of hate (making him conceive a passionate hatred of Angelica): first reversal. She asks the magician Malagigi to kidnap Rinaldo, and the magician brings him to an enchanted island, while she returns to Cataio where she is besieged by king Agricane, another of her admirers, in the fortress of Albraccà. Orlando comes to kill Agricane and to free her, and he succeeds. Afterwards, Rinaldo tries to convince him to return to France to fight alongside Charlemagne: consequently, Orlando and Rinaldo duel furiously. In fact, in the meantime the Saracen king Agramante has invaded France with a massive army (along with Rodomonte, Ferraù, Gradasso, and many others), to avenge his father Troiano, previously killed by Orlando. Rinaldo rushes back to France, chased by Angelica in love with him, in turn chased by Orlando. Back in the Ardenne forest, this time Rinaldo and Angelica drink at the opposite founts: second reversal. Orlando and Rinaldo duel again for Angelica, and Charlemagne decides to entrust her to the old and wise duke Namo, offering her to the one who will fight most valorously against the infidels. In the meantime, the Saracen paladin Ruggiero and Rinaldo’s sister, Bradamante, fall in love. The poem stops there abruptly, with Boiardo’s narrator explaining that he can write no more because Italy has been invaded by French troops headed by king Charles VIII. (Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" will resume from that point.)
519769	/m/02kycv	Bartleby the Scrivener	Herman Melville	1853-11		 The narrator, an elderly Manhattan lawyer with a very comfortable business helping wealthy men deal with mortgages, deeds, and bonds, relates the story of the strangest man he has ever known. At the start of the story, the narrator already employs two scriveners, nicknamed Nippers and Turkey, to copy legal documents by hand. Nippers (the younger of the two) suffers from chronic indigestion, and Turkey is an alcoholic, but the office survives because in the mornings Turkey is sober and Nippers is irritable, while in the afternoons Nippers has calmed down and Turkey is drunk. Ginger Nut, the office boy, gets his name from the little cakes he brings the two scriveners. An increase in business leads the narrator to advertise for a third scrivener, and he hires the forlorn-looking Bartleby in hopes that his calmness will soothe the temperaments of Nippers and Turkey. At first, Bartleby appears to be a boon to the practice, as he produces a large volume of high-quality work. One day, though, when asked by the narrator to help proofread a copied document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his stock response: "I would prefer not to." To the dismay of the narrator and to the irritation of the other employees, Bartleby performs fewer and fewer tasks around the office. The narrator makes several attempts to reason with him and to learn something about him, but Bartleby offers nothing but his signature "I would prefer not to." One weekend the narrator stops by the office unexpectedly and discovers that Bartleby has started living there. The loneliness of Bartleby's life impresses him: at night and on Sundays, Wall Street is as desolate as a ghost town, and the window in Bartleby's corner allows him no view except that of a blank wall three feet away. The narrator's feelings for Bartleby alternate between pity and revulsion. For a while Bartleby remains willing to do his main work of copying, but eventually he ceases this activity as well, so that finally he is doing nothing. And yet the narrator finds himself unable to make Bartleby leave; his unwillingness or inability to move against Bartleby mirrors Bartleby's own strange inaction. Tension gradually builds as the narrator's business associates wonder why the strange and idle Bartleby is ever-present in the office. Sensing the threat of a ruined reputation, but emotionally unable to throw Bartleby out, the exasperated narrator finally decides to move out himself, relocating his entire business and leaving Bartleby behind. But soon the new tenants of the old space come to ask for his help: Bartleby still will not leave. Although they have thrown him out of the rooms, he now sits on the stairs all day and sleeps in the building's front doorway. The narrator visits Bartleby and attempts to reason with him. Feeling desperate, the narrator now surprises even himself by inviting Bartleby to come and live with him at his own home. But Bartleby, alas, "would prefer not to." Deciding to stay away from work for the next few days for fear he will become embroiled in the new tenants' campaign to evict Bartleby, the narrator returns to find that Bartleby has been forcibly removed and imprisoned at The Tombs. The narrator visits him, finding him even glummer than usual. As ever, Bartleby rebuffs the narrator's friendliness. Nevertheless, the narrator bribes a turnkey to make sure Bartleby gets good and plentiful food. But when the narrator visits again a few days later, he discovers that Bartleby has died of starvation, having apparently preferred not to eat. Some time afterward, the narrator hears of a rumor to the effect that Bartleby had worked in a dead letter office, but had lost his job there. The narrator reflects that the dead letters would have made anyone of Bartleby's temperament sink into an even darker gloom. Dead letters are emblems of human nature and the plight of failing. Through Bartleby, the narrator has glimpsed the world as the miserable scrivener must have seen it. The closing words of the story are the narrator's resigned and pained sigh: "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!"
519933	/m/02kywh	Shikasta	Doris Lessing	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Canopus, a benevolent galactic empire centred at Canopus in the constellation Argo Navis, colonise a young and promising planet they name Rohanda (the fruitful). They nurture its bourgeoning humanoids and accelerate their evolution. When the Natives are ready, Canopus impose a "Lock" on Rohanda that links it via "astral currents" to the harmony and strength of the Canopean Empire. In addition to Canopus, two other empires also establish a presence on the planet: their ally, Sirius from the star of the same name, and their mutual enemy, Puttiora. The Sirians confine their activities largely to genetic experiments on the southern continents during Rohanda's prehistory (described in Lessing's third book in the Canopus series, The Sirian Experiments), while the Shammat of Puttiora remain dormant, waiting for opportunities to strike. For many millennia the Natives of Rohanda prosper in a Canopean induced climate of peaceful coexistence and accelerated development. Then an unforeseen "cosmic re-alignment" puts Rohanda out of phase with Canopus which causes the Lock to break. Deprived of Canopus's resources and a steady stream of a substance called SOWF (substance-of-we-feeling), the Natives develop a "Degenerative Disease" that puts the goals of the individual ahead of those of the community. The Shammat exploit this disturbance and begin undermining Canopus's influence by infecting the Natives with their evil ways. As Rohanda degenerates into greed and conflict, the Canopeans reluctantly change its name to Shikasta (the stricken). Later in the book, Shikasta is identified as Earth, or an allegorical Earth. In an attempt to salvage Canopus's plans for Shikasta and correct the Natives' decline, Canopean emissaries are sent to the planet. Johor is one such emissary, who takes on the form of a Native and begins identifying those individuals who have not degenerated too far and are amenable to his corrective instructions. Johor then sends those he has successfully "converted" to spread the word among other Natives, and soon isolated communities begin to return to the pre-Shikastan days. But without the SOWF and Shammat's influence over the Natives, Canopus is fighting a losing battle and the planet declines further. By the Shikastan's 20th century, the planet has degenerated into war and self-destruction. Johor returns, but this time through Zone 6 Lessing elaborates on the Zones in the next book in the Canopus series, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980).="Stade/> Lessing elaborates on the Zones in the next book in the Canopus series, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980)." "nb"=""nb"" Zones="Zones"/> from which he is born on the planet (incarnated) as a Shikastan, George Sherban. As Sherban grows up he establishes contact with other Canopeans in disguise and then resumes his work trying to help the Shikastans. But famine and unemployment grow, and anarchy spreads. On the eve of World War III Sherban and other emissaries relocate a small number of promising Shikastans to remote locations to escape the coming nuclear holocaust. The war reduces Shikasta's population by 99% and sweeps the planet clean of the "barbarians". The Shammat, who set the Shikastans on a course of self-destruction, self-destruct themselves and withdraw from the planet. The Canopeans help the survivors rebuild their lives and re-align themselves with Canopus. With a strengthened Lock and the SOWF flowing freely again, harmony and prosperity returns to Shikasta.
520349	/m/02k_21	Expedition to the Barrier Peaks	Gary Gygax	1980	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks takes place on a spaceship in the Barrier Peaks mountain range of the World of Greyhawk campaign setting. In the adventure's introduction, it is explained that the Grand Duchy of Geoff is under constant attack by a succession of monsters that have been emerging from a cave in the mountains. The Grand Duke of Geoff has hired the characters to discover the origin of the creatures, and stop their incursions. The cave is actually an entrance to a downed spacecraft whose inhabitants have succumbed to a virus, leaving them dead. Many of the ship's robots are still functioning, however, and the players must either avoid or defeat them; some may also be ignored. As later seen in video games, "plot coupons" need to be collected. The adventure requires the players to gather colored access cards (the "coupons") to advance to the next story arc: entering restricted areas, commanding robots, and other actions are all dependent on the cards. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks comes with a booklet of 63 numbered illustrations, depicting the various monsters, high tech devices, and situations encountered in the adventure. Much of the artwork for the adventure, including the cover, was produced by Erol Otus. Several of his contributions were printed in full color. Jeff Dee, Greg K. Fleming, David S. LaForce, Jim Roslof and David C. Sutherland III provided additional illustrations for the adventure. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks's 32-page adventure guide is divided into six sections. These describe the crew's quarters, the lounge area, the gardens and menagerie, and the activity deck. Along the way, the characters find colored access cards and futuristic devices such as blaster rifles and suits of powered armor that they can use to aid their journey. The first two sections involve various monsters, vegepygmys—short humanoid plant creatures—who have commandeered the crew's quarters, and a repair robot that follows instructions before its batteries run out. There is also a medical robot trying in vain to find a cure for the virus that killed the ship's crew. In the lounge area, a "Dining Servo Robot" still works, although the "food" it serves is now moldy poison. The gardens and menagerie area includes an encounter with a "cute little bunnyoid on the stump". If the characters can communicate with the karate master and tell it that boxing is superior to karate, it will attack the boxing robot until both are destroyed, else they will both attack the characters. The last area of the activity deck is the loading area, where the characters can leave the spaceship. The adventure then ends, with no postscript.
521188	/m/02l1pb	Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom	Cory Doctorow	2003-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is told in first person by Julius, whose old college buddy Dan used to be one of the most popular people in the country (as measured by Whuffie). Julius and girlfriend Lil are working with the committee (called an ad-hoc) that oversees the Magic Kingdom's Liberty Square. Dan, who has hit rock bottom and lost all his Whuffie, doesn't believe in rejuvenation and wishes to die, but not while he's at rock bottom. He moves in with Julius and Lil in order to rebuild his life. At the park, Julius is murdered and soon refreshed. By the time he wakes up, Debra's ad-hoc group has taken control of the Hall of Presidents, and is planning to replace its old-fashioned animatronic robots with the synthetic memory imprinting of the experience of being the president for a moment. Julius believes that this rival committee had him killed as a distraction while they seize the Hall in the interim. Fearing that they will next try to revamp his favorite ride, the Haunted Mansion, he resolves to take a stand against the virtualization of the park, endangering his relationship with both Lil and Dan; eventually Lil leaves Julius for Dan. Julius finally “cracks” when he sees his dreams turned to dust and he bashes up the attractions in the Hall of Presidents, in the process also damaging his own cranial interface to the point that he can no longer back himself up. This pushes his Whuffie to ground level when he is caught and gives Debra and her colleagues enough “sympathy Whuffie” to take over the Haunted Mansion, by invitation of the same fans that Julius had recruited to work in the Mansion. Dan leaves Lil, Julius is kicked out of the ad-hoc and his Whuffie hits rock bottom — low enough that others take his possessions with impunity and elevators don’t stop for him. Then comes the revelation: a few days before Dan's planned suicide by lethal injection, Dan reveals that it was in fact he who had arranged to kill Julius, in collusion with Debra, in exchange for the Whuffie that her team could give him. Dan had asked one of his converts from his missionary days, a young girl, to do the dirty work. Debra then had herself restored from a backup made before this plan, so that she would honestly believe that she wasn't involved. He makes this public; Debra is thrown out, Julius gets sympathy Whuffie and, ironically enough, develops a friendly affection for his sweet young murderer. He never restores himself, because doing so would erase his memories of that entire year, his last with Dan, but lives with his damaged interface. The book is his attempt to manually document the happenings of the previous year so that, when this incarnation is eventually killed by age or accident, his restored backup will have a partial record of the transpiring events. Dan decides not to take a lethal injection, but to deadhead (putting oneself into a voluntary coma) till the heat death of the Universe.
522279	/m/02l5hj	I Like Pumpkins	Jerry Smath	2003		 The main character of the book is a little girl who loves pumpkins. She describes the many uses of pumpkins that she appreciates, including plastic pumpkins, pumpkins used to hold candy, jack-o-lanterns, pumpkin seeds, and her favorite, pumpkin pie. The illustrations show her and her mother traveling by car to a pumpkin patch, picking out a pumpkin, and then returning home. Along the way, they see a number of strange sights, including Frankenstein and his pet purple alligator who are returning home with their own respective pumpkins. One image shows a fantasy version of the girl's bedroom which is decorated with a pumpkin theme, including a pumpkin-themed headboard for her bed and an alarm clock in the shape of a pumpkin. The book ends with a series of pumpkin-themed puzzles that ask readers to identify a pumpkin that is different from the others, count which of a set of farmers has the most pumpkins, locate hidden pumpkins in a parade scene, and identify a pumpkin that looks like the little obese monkey in the book.
522331	/m/02l5ps	National Velvet	Enid Bagnold	1935	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "National Velvet" is the story of a 14-year-old girl named Velvet Brown, who rides her horse to victory in the Grand National steeplechase. The horse which Velvet trains and rides in the Grand National is named The Piebald, because it is piebald colour. The novel focuses on the ability of ordinary persons, particularly women, to accomplish great things. Velvet is a teenager in the late 1920s, living in a small English coastal village in Sussex, dreaming of one day owning many horses. She is a high-strung, nervous child with a delicate stomach. Her mother is a wise, taciturn woman who was once famous for swimming the English Channel; her father is a butcher. Her best friend is her father's assistant, Mi (Michael) Taylor, whose father – as Mrs. Brown's swimming coach – helped her cross the channel. Mi formerly worked in stables and is familiar with the horse racing world. One day they both watch The Pie jump over a five-foot-high cobbled fence to get out of a field. Mi says, in passing, that "a horse like that'd win the National". Velvet becomes obsessed with winning the horse in an upcoming raffle and riding him to greatness. In addition to inheriting several horses from one of her father's customers, a man who left them to her in his will, Velvet actually does win her dream horse. After riding him in a local gymkhana, she and Mi become serious about entering the Grand National steeplechase at Aintree racecourse and train the Piebald accordingly. Mi uses his connections to the horse training/racing world and obtains a fake clearance document for Velvet in the name of James Tasky, a Russian jockey. Velvet wins, but slides off after the winning-post due to exhaustion, and her sex is discovered in the first-aid station. The racing world is both dismayed and fascinated by a young girl's winning its toughest race. Velvet and The Pie become instant celebrities, with Velvet and her family nearly drowning in notoriety (echoing her mother's unsought fame after swimming the English Channel), complete with merchandising. Velvet strongly objects to the publicity, saying The Piebald is a creature of glory who shouldn't be cheapened in tabloid trash and newsreels. She insists that she did not win the race, the horse did, and she simply wanted to see him go down in history. The National Hunt Committee finds no evidence of fraud, exonerates all involved, and Velvet and her family return to their ordinary lives; or rather, Velvet goes on "to her next adventures", for clearly she is a person to whom great things happen. The novel was made into a more or less faithful, highly successful film version in 1944, starring twelve-year-old Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney, with Donald Crisp, Anne Revere and a young Angela Lansbury. In 2008 the film was voted the ninth best American film in the sports genre. From 1960 to 1962, there was a half-hour B&W American television series, with Lori Martin, Ann Doran and James McCallion. In this version her horse was named King. This aired on NBC for 54 episodes. A 1978 film sequel, International Velvet, was made starring Tatum O'Neal as Sarah Brown, a young orphaned American teenager living in England with her aunt Velvet Brown (Nanette Newman) after Sarah's parents die in a car accident. Sarah and Velvet purchase the descendant of The Pie after Sarah earns the money by working for Velvet's boyfriend John. They name him Arizona Pie after Sarah's home state. Working with Arizona Pie, Sarah is selected to represent Britain in the equine Three-Day Olympic Event. While working with the horse with trainer Capt Johnson (Anthony Hopkins), she falls for an American competitor, Scott Saunders (Jeffrey Byron). Though distracted by him, she wins the event. Later, after getting engaged to Scott, Sarah returns to England and presents the medal to her aunt Velvet as a keepsake and introduces her and John to Scott.
523463	/m/02l9m7	I Never Promised You a Rose Garden	Joanne Greenberg	1964	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a semi-autobiographical account of a teenage girl's three-year battle with schizophrenia. Deborah Blau, bright and artistically talented, has created a make-believe world, the Kingdom of Yr, as a form of defense from a confusing, frightening reality. When Deborah was five, she underwent surgery to remove a tumor in her urethra, a traumatic experience that involved a great deal of physical pain and shame. During her childhood, Deborah suffered frequent abuse from her anti-Semitic peers and neighbors. When Deborah first created Yr, it was a beautiful, comforting haven, but over time the gods of Yr became tyrannical dictators who controlled Deborah's every word and action. The novel presents the issue of mental illness from multiple viewpoints. Deborah's three years in the hospital portray mental illness as it is experienced by the patient. Deborah's parents, Esther and Jacob, are torn between their love for their daughter and their shame at the stigma of her illness. Nevertheless, they find the courage to allow Deborah to continue treatment even when there are few signs of recovery for a long while. Deborah struggles with guilt and resentment at her parents' disappointment in her, while her younger sister Suzy copes with her frustration at having to arrange her life around Deborah's illness. Deborah's therapist, Dr. Fried, slowly wins her trust and, over the course of three years, helps Deborah gain the courage to fight her illness. Her goal is to give Deborah the ability to choose between the reality of Earth, despite all its faults and problems, over the phantoms of Yr. Meanwhile, Deborah develops friendships of a kind with the other patients in the hospital despite their fear of emotional investment in other people. Although she fears the reality of Earth, Deborah eventually earns a GED and resolves to win her struggle against her illness.
523761	/m/02lbmb	The Sum of All Fears	Tom Clancy		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The title is a reference to nuclear war, and to the plot by the novel's antagonists to reconstruct a lost nuclear weapon. The title itself comes from a quote by Winston Churchill, serving as the first of the novel's two epigraphs: In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli leadership opts for a tactical nuclear strike but changes the decision at the last minute. A Mark 12 nuclear bomb is accidentally left on an Israeli attack aircraft, which is shot down over the mountains of Syria. The nuclear weapon is lost, buried in the field of a Druze farmer. Eighteen years later, in 1991, an unarmed Palestinian protester is killed by an Israeli police official, coincidentally the brother of the downed Israeli pilot. The United States finds itself unable to diplomatically defend Israel, yet knows it cannot withdraw its support without risk of destabilizing the Middle East. A clever plan to accelerate the peace process is put into action, based on Jack Ryan's indirect contact with the Vatican. The plan is supported by the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia. To everyone's surprise, Ryan's plan seems to work. However, National Security Advisor Elizabeth Elliott has a vendetta against Ryan and attempts to discredit him, exploiting her romance with the widowed President Robert Fowler to do so. Elliott engineers a smear campaign accusing Ryan of engaging in an extramarital affair. Ryan's marriage is endangered until his friends, John Clark and Domingo Chavez, reveal the truth to Ryan's wife Cathy. Ryan is forced to resign, but not before he puts together a covert operation involving the uncovering of a deal between corrupt Japanese and Mexican government officials. Meanwhile, a small group of PFLP terrorists, enraged at the looming failure of their campaign to erase Israel's existence, come across the lost Israeli bomb and use it to construct their own weapon, using the bomb's plutonium as fissile material. The terrorists enlist the help of disenfranchised East German physicist Manfred Fromm, who agrees to the plot in order to exact revenge for his country's reunification as a capitalist democratic state. With Fromm's expertise, the terrorists are able to enhance the weapon and turn it into a thermonuclear device. The terrorists agree to detonate the weapon during the Super Bowl in Denver, Colorado, planned to coincide with a false flag attack on American forces in Berlin by East Germans disguised as Soviet soldiers. The terrorists' goal is to start a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The East Germans hope that the war will eliminate both superpowers and punish them for betraying World Socialism, while the Palestinians hope the attack will end American aid to Israel. The Palestinians kill their East German associates as soon as they are no longer needed. Due to an assembly error, the weapon fizzles. However, thousands of people at the Super Bowl are killed, including the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State. With the attacks in Berlin, the United States briefly assumes DEFCON-1 status as President Fowler and Elliott prepare a nuclear assault. The crisis is averted when Ryan, after learning of the domestic origin for the bomb's plutonium, gains access to the Hot Line and communicates directly with the Soviet president, defusing the conflict. When the terrorists are captured by Clark in Mexico City, they implicate the Iranian Ayatollah in the attack. President Fowler orders the Ayatollah's residence in the holy city of Qom to be destroyed by a nuclear strike. After Ryan averts the attack by enforcing the two-man rule, the terrorists&mdash;under torture by Clark&mdash;reveal that Iran was not involved. Their deceit was meant to discredit the United States and destroy the peace process, allowing the campaign against Israel to continue. President Fowler resigns from office after suffering a nervous breakdown. The terrorists are beheaded in Riyadh by the commander of Saudi special forces using an ancient sword owned by the Saudi royal family. Later, the sword is presented to Ryan as a gift. In the sequels, the gift inspires Ryan's Secret Service codename of "Swordsman." An interesting historical note is that this book was released just days before the Moscow uprising in 1991, which signaled the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
523853	/m/02lbzp	He, She and It	Marge Piercy	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main story of He, She and It is situated in North America in the near future of the year 2059. At that time, the economic and political power is held by few multis -- huge multi-national enterprises with their own social hierarchy that have produced an affluent society. The main part of the population, however, lives in the glop outside of the multis' enclaves within an environment that has mainly been destroyed. Here, the life is dominated by poverty, gangs and the law of the stronger man. An exception from this are the so called free towns that are able to sell their technologies to the multis but remain autonomous. Communication is handled via a network which allows the participants to project themselves into Cyberspace. When the protagonist Shira loses custody of her son Ari to her ex-husband Josh, she returns from her multi Yakamura-Stichen (Y-S) to her hometown Tikva (Hope in Hebrew) - a Jewish freetown. There, she starts working on the socialization of the cyborg Yod (the tenth letter in Hebrew and a symbol for God in Kabbalah), who has been created illegally by Avram to protect the city. Yod is the tenth cyborg (a robot with human appearance and programmed human characteristics) in a row of previously failed experiments whose programming has partially been completed by Malkah, Shira's grandmother. While Shira and Yod build up a (sexual) relationship, Shira's childhood sweetheart Gadi, Avram's son, also comes back to Tikva. Gadi returns due to his banishment for sleeping with a young girl. When Malkah is working on a chimeara (security software) to protect the city from online attack, she is attacked by Y-S. Yod, however, is able to prevent the attack. Eventually, Y-S invites Shira to a new hearing concerning the custody of her son. Shira is accompanied by Yod, her mother Riva, and Nili, a biotechnologically enhanced woman from a nuclear-devastated Palestine, when the situation escalates. The Y-S delegation and Riva die in the fight. Thereupon Shira, Malkah and Yod decide to infiltrate the Y-S network base. They manage to get hold of personnel files revealing a conspiracy against Shira and Tikva. As next step, Shira and Yod are accompanied by Nili and Gadi into the Glop. Here, they get in contact with an organized underground group in which they discover Riva still alive and participating in resistance activities. From the Glop they travel into the Y-S enclave in Nebraska to kidnap Ari. There, Josh is killed by Yod. Back to Tikva, Shira's family spends some quiet time until Y-S invites them to a further meeting in the net. Y-S demands that Yod be handed over, for Y-S to acquire its technology. Avram agrees to the deal with the hope of creating another cyborg. So, Yod agrees to destroy him/itself when sent to the enclave. However, Yod made sure that his own explosion would cause a synchronous explosion in Avram's lab. As Avram dies in this accident and all his notes are destroyed the creation of a further cyborg becomes impossible. Finally, Malkah leaves Tikva with Nili to visit to a secret town in post-nuclear holocaust Israel and to profit from the possible biotechnological enhancements. Shira is integrated into Tikva's society further. When she discovers copies of the notes concerning Yod, she initially plans on recreating Yod; ultimately she respects Yod's wishes and destroys them. The main plot is interwoven with a story Malkah tells Yod that deals with Rabbi Judah Loew who Malkah depicts as her ancestor living in the ghetto of Prague around 1600. To protect the Jewish community from the Christian mob, Loew uses the knowledge of Kabbalah to create the golem Joseph from clay. His granddaughter Chava, a very educated woman, teaches Joseph to read and to write. Joseph successfully protects the ghetto and begins to think of himself as human and makes a plea for his right to a human existence. However, when the pogrom climate calms down, Loew returns Joseph to clay. The two stories are mutually illuminating, both asking what it means to be human both from the perspective of the man-made life and that of those who love the artificial lives.
523886	/m/02lc1_	Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus	William Harvey			 This work is one of the greatest and most famous contributions to physiology, for it introduces into biology the doctrine of the complete circulation of the blood. Partial anticipations of Harvey's great discovery go back to the thirteenth century, when the pulmonary or lesser circulation was proposed by Al-Nafis. In 1553, Michael Servetus said that blood flows from the heart to the lungs, and that it there mixes with air to form the arterial blood which flows back to the heart. Between 1570 and 1590, Cesalpino suggested, in a controversy with Galenists, that the movement of blood was more like a circulation than an oscillation; but this view lacks clarity. In 1603, Hieronymus Fabricius ab Acquapendente published a work clearly describing the valves in the veins and showing that they hinder the flow of blood away from the heart. From 1597 to 1602, Harvey studied arts and medicine at Padua, and made a careful study of the heart and the movement of blood. By 1616, he was presenting in lectures his case for the circulation of the blood, but it was not until 1628 that he published it in his classic work, De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis. This book is important both for the discovery of the complete circulation and for the experimental, quantitive and mechanistic methodology which Harvey introduced. He looked upon the heart, not as a mystical seat of the spirit and faculties, but as a pump analyzable along mechanical lines. He also measured the amount of blood which it sent out to the body. He observed that with each beat two ounces of blood leave the heart; so that with 72 heart beats per minute, the heart throws into the system 540 pounds of blood every hour. Where could all this blood come from? The answer seems to be that it is the same blood that is always returning. Moreover, the one-way valves in the heart, like those in the veins, indicate that, following the pulmonary circulation, the blood goes out to all parts of the body through the arteries and returns by way of the veins. The blood thus makes a complete closed circuit. As Harvey expressed it, "There must be a motion, as it were, in a circle." There was, however, one stage in the circulation which Harvey was not able to see - that in which the veins and arteries lose themselves by subdivision into the tiny capillary vessels. It was in 1660, three years after Harvey's death, that Marcello Malpighi saw the blood moving in the capilaries of the frog's lung, and thus supplied the missing link in Harvey's proof of the circulation of the blood.
525035	/m/02lj6b	Our Dumb Century	The Onion	1999-03-23		 The book satirizes many common beliefs, trends, and perceptions. For instance, in response to the John F. Kennedy assassination theories, one headline declares, "Kennedy Slain By CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons" and that he was shot "129 times from 43 different angles." This is later followed up by an article proclaiming that the "Warren Commission admits to killing JFK." The book often takes a cynical look at American foreign policy over the ages, describing past events with revisionist, modern-day perspectives. For example, the Pearl Harbor attacks are described as being an attack on a "colonially-occupied US non-state" and President Woodrow Wilson encourages Americans to fight in World War I in order to "make the world safe for corporate oligarchy." The article on the 1920 granting of women's suffrage states "Women Finally Allowed to Participate in Meaningless Fiction of Democracy." The article on the beginning of World War II is "WA- (headline continued on page 2)," with "WA-" in especially large print. Smaller stories in the book satirize social and pop-cultural trends of their respective eras, such as the faux-advertisements and gimmicks that abound in the top and bottom corners of the pages. For example, from the 1920s: No, No, Nanette Fever Bonus! Sheet Music from "Tea for Two" Inside. Since the book was written before the year 2000, its prediction for that year satirized Y2K and religious prophecies, including "Christian Right Ascends to Heaven," "All Corporations Merged Into OmniCorp," and a small graphic listing meteors headed for Earth by size.
525496	/m/02ll5h	Tintin in the Land of the Soviets	Hergé	1930	{"/m/01vnb": "Comic book"}	 Tintin, a reporter for Le Petit Vingtième, and his dog Snowy are sent on an assignment to the Soviet Union. Departing from Brussels, his train is blown up en route to Moscow by an agent of the Soviet secret police, the OGPU, who believes him to be a "dirty little bourgeois". Tintin is blamed for the bombing by the Berlin police but escapes to the border of the Soviet Union. Here he is brought before the local Commissar's office, where the same OGPU agent that tried to kill Tintin on the train secretly instructs the Commissar that they must make the reporter "disappear... accidentally". After escaping again, Tintin finds "how the Soviets fool the poor idiots who still believe in a Red Paradise", by burning bundles of straw and clanging metal in order to trick visiting English Marxists into believing that Soviet factories are productive, when in fact they are not even operational. Tintin goes on to witness a local election, where the Bolsheviks aim their guns at the voters to ensure their own electoral success. Several Bolsheviks then come to arrest him during the night, but he manages to scare them off by dressing up as a ghost. Attempting to make his way out of the Soviet Union, he is pursued and arrested, before being threatened with torture. Escaping his captors, he reaches Moscow, which Tintin remarks has been turned into "a stinking slum" by the Bolsheviks; he then witnesses a government official handing out bread to those homeless children who adhere to the Marxist ideology and denying it to those who do not. Snowy steals a loaf and gives it to a boy who was refused it. Then sneaking into a secret Bolshevik meeting, Tintin learns that all the Soviet grain is being exported abroad for propaganda purposes, leaving the people starving, and that the government plan to "organise an expedition against the kulaks, the rich peasants, and force them at gunpoint to give us their corn." Tintin infiltrates the Soviet army and warns some of the kulaks to hide their grain from the army officials, but is caught and sentenced to death by firing squad. By planting blanks in the soldiers' rifles, Tintin fakes his death and is able to make his way into the snowy wilderness, where he discovers an underground Bolshevik hideaway in a haunted house. Here he is captured by a Bolshevik who informs him that "You're in the hideout where Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin have collected together wealth stolen from the people!" With the help of Snowy, Tintin escapes, commandeers a plane, and flies into the night. The plane crashes, but Tintin fashions himself a new propeller from a tree using a pen knife, and continues to Berlin, where he gets drunk and passes out. Captured by OGPU agents yet again, he is locked in a dungeon, but escapes with the aid of Snowy, who has dressed himself in a tiger costume. Another attempt to kidnap him is foiled when he manages to capture his assailant, an OGPU agent who "intends to blow up all the capitals of Europe with dynamite". Finally, Tintin arrives back in Brussels to a huge popular reception.
526283	/m/02lp3r	Something Fresh	P. G. Wodehouse	1915-09-16	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with Ashe Marson, a young writer employed by the Mammoth Publishing Company, the creator of the popular "Gridley Quayle" detective novels, doing his daily exercises. Joan Valentine, a young girl living in the same apartment building, looks on and laughs at him. Thus she and Ashe meet, discover that they work for the same publishing house, and Ashe is encouraged to look for a new opportunity among the newspaper ads. Meanwhile, Freddie Threepwood, the younger son of the 9th Earl of Emsworth, is engaged to be married to Aline Peters, the daughter of American millionaire J. Preston Peters. Freddie pays a visit to his friend R. Jones, hoping to "recover" some letters he sent in the past to a certain chorus-girl, feeling they might be dangerous in her hands, especially following the recent embarrassment of his cousin Lord Percy Stockheath. He pays Jones £500 to sort things out for him. Clarence Threepwood, the elderly Earl of Emsworth, calls on J. Preston Peters, Aline's father, a passionate collector of Egyptian scarabs. Peters shows him the most precious piece in his collection: a 4th dynasty Cheops. Mr. Peters is called to the telephone, and the absent-minded Earl, forgetting all about the scarab, puts it in his pocket. Aline Peters has lunch with her old friend George Emerson, a Hong Kong police officer who wishes to marry her. He proposes to her once more, and tells her that, having befriended Freddie Threepwood, he has been invited to Blandings. Mr Peters discovers the disappearance of his scarab, and suspects the Earl, but cannot confront him for fear of endangering his daughter's marriage. The Earl has already forgotten everything that happened, and thinks the scarab was a gift of Mr Peters. R. Jones finds the address of Freddie's ex-sweetheart, Joan Valentine, who tells him she has long since destroyed any letters she may have had from Freddie. As he is leaving, Aline Peters, a close friend of Joan, arrives on a visit, allowing the suspicious Jones to listen at the door. He hears Aline's father is offering £1,000 to anybody that can retrieve his scarab. Joan decides that she will go herself to Blandings Castle, posing as Aline's maid, recover the scarab and scoop the reward. Ashe, following Joan's advice, scours the adverts in the newspaper, and seeing one which grabs his attention, he goes along to an interview with Mr. Peters, who is looking for somebody to pose as his valet and steal the scarab. Ashe, showing Peters some pep, gets the job. Ashe tells Joan about this, and they both take the train to Blandings. During the trip Joan warns Ashe of the highly complicated system of etiquette observed among servants of a large house. She hopes her words will persuade him to give up his quest and remove himself as her competitor for the reward, but he resolves to do his best. After their arrival, Ashe meets Baxter, the Earl's efficient and suspicious secretary, on the way to Mr Peters' room, addressing him in a highly un-valet-like manner. He finds that Mr Peters, like Beach, the butler at the castle, has problems with his stomach, so persuades him to do some exercise and stop smoking cigars. At night, Ashe and Joan are both trying to get at the scarab when the watchful Baxter hears them. Ashe, with his prepared excuse of reading to the insomniac Mr Peters, helps Joan escape. Next morning, Ashe and Joan decide to become allies and, after flipping a coin, that Ashe will take first try at steaing the scarab. Aline is following the same diet as her father, composed mainly of legumes, and George, worrying she is suffering from malnutrition, prepares a feast to bring to her at night. As he makes his way to her room, he and Ashe collide in the dark hall of the castle and start a noisy fight. Baxter rushes in, but by the time the lights come on, Ashe and George have fled, leaving Baxter surrounded by food and broken china. He is blamed for waking everyone, and roundly criticised by his employer, Lord Emsworth, for sneaking food in the middle of the night. The next night is Joan's turn, but she finds the scarab is already gone. The following morning, Ashe finds that Freddie needs money to pay R. Jones for the letters to Joan; he confronts Freddie, who confesses to the theft, and Ashe gets the scarab and gives it to the rightful owner, Mr Peters. George Emerson, recalled to Hong Kong, sadly wishes Aline good luck with Freddie; Aline, her mothering instinct finally aroused by his disappointment, decides to leave Freddie and elope with him. Ashe and Joan finally realise they are made for each other, and enter Mr Peters' employ. Lord Emsworth agrees to let Freddie return to London, on condition he doesn't make a fool of himself again.
526665	/m/02lq8h	The Light of Other Days	Stephen Baxter	2000-04-16	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07g8l": "Transhumanism"}	 The wormhole technology is first used to send digital information via gamma rays, then developed further to transmit light waves. The media corporation who develops this advance can spy on anyone anywhere it chooses. A logical development from the laws of space-time allows light waves to be detected from the past. This enhances the wormhole technology into a "time viewer" where anyone opening a wormhole can view people and events from any point throughout time and space. When the technology is released to the general public, it effectively destroys all secrecy and privacy. The novel examines the philosophical issues that arise from the world's population (increasingly suffering from ecological and political disturbances) being aware that they could be under constant observation by anyone, or that they could observe anyone without their knowledge. Anyone is able to observe the true past events of their families and their heroes. An underground forms which attempts to escape this observation; corruption and crime are drastically reduced; nations discover the true causes and outcomes of international conflicts; and religions worldwide are forced to reevaluate their divine histories. As the underground movement grows, it utilizes a direct neural interface coupled with the unlimited communication provided by the wormhole technology to develop a group mind. One of the central themes of the novel is that history is biased towards viewpoints of the person who wrote it. Hence many great "historical" events often did not occur as they now are collectively remembered. For example, during the book's progression the time viewer technology shows that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman centurion (although the apocryphal story of his visiting Great Britain was proven to be true), and that Moses was based on a collection of stories rather than the actions of a real person. In a climactic time-viewing experiment at the end of the novel, a time hole is opened to the beginning of life on Earth and it is discovered that all existing life is descended from a biological sample placed by intelligent beings (labeled Sisyphans) who inhabited the Earth over three billion years ago, trying to preserve genetic samples when geological and climatic changes and a large Bolide threatened an extinction level event.
527498	/m/02ltmw	Do I Hear a Waltz?	Richard Rodgers			 New York City secretary Leona Samish arrives in Venice, where she is staying at the Pensione Fioria. There she meets Americans Eddie and Jennifer Yeager, who are living in Rome and have come to Venice for a vacation, and the McIlhennys, an older couple on a package tour. While shopping, Leona sees a ruby glass goblet in a store window and goes inside to inspect it. The owner, Renato di Rossi, tells her it is an authentic 18th century piece, not a reproduction. He offers not only to find her a matching glass to make up a pair, but to show her the sights of the city, as well. Leona refuses his offer and leaves, but returns the next day to buy the goblet. Later that day, a package with a second goblet is delivered to the hotel. Soon after, Renato arrives to invite Leona to join him for coffee in Piazza San Marco that evening. When the McIlhennys show her their purchase of a set of glasses exactly like hers, Leona believes Renato misrepresented their value, but Signora Fioria assures her they are antiques. Later in the day, Renato's son Vito comes to tell Leona that Renato will be late for their meeting because one of his children is ill and needs to see a doctor. Realizing Renato is married, she cancels their rendezvous. He comes to the pensione and explains he and his wife have not loved each other for years but divorce is not an option, not only because the country doesn't permit it, but because they have their children to consider, as well. To Leona, his casual attitude about extramarital affairs is wrong, but she still finds herself attracted to him, and agrees to keep their date. Meanwhile, the Yeagers are facing problems of their own. Eddie, finding himself enamoured with Signora Fioria, announces he wants to put distance between himself and the woman by returning to the United States. Renato arrives with a garnet necklace for Leona, who is thrilled with his gift and agrees to extend her stay in Venice. She hosts a party in the garden of the pensione, and as the party is in progress, Renato's son Vito comes to tell his father that the jeweler wants his money; overhearing this, Leona happily gives him the money. However, when she discovers Renato has received a commission on the sale of the necklace, she accuses him of being interested only in her money, and he leaves. Fioria and Jennifer attempt to comfort Leona, who drunkenly reveals Eddie and Fioria spent the previous evening together, only to immediately regret her words. The following day both the Yeagers and the McIlhennys check out of the pensione. On hearing Renato had been there before she awoke, Leona goes to his store to make amends, but he tells her a relationship with her would be impossible because of her complicated outlook on life. His affection for her is gone, and they part as friends.
528116	/m/02lw7f	The Integral Trees	Larry Niven	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Quinn Tribe inhabits the "in tuft" of Dalton-Quinn tree. They normally subsist on the tree's cottony foliage, augmented by hunting and a flock of domesticated turkeys. But ever since the tree passed near Gold six earth years ago it has been falling in toward Voy, nearly dropping out of the Smoke Ring. As a result, the tribe is suffering from a severe drought. The tribe's leader, the Chairman, decides to send a party of nine up the tree, ostensibly to hunt and re-cut tribal markings into the trunk. The group consists mostly of cripples or people the Chairman dislikes, and including the Chairman's son-in-law (and rival), Clave, and Jeffer, the Scientist's apprentice. As they approach the midpoint they notice that the tribal markings are different. When the party reaches the midpoint of the tree, they are attacked by members of the Dalton-Quinn tribe living at the other end of the tree. During the battle a massive tremor splits the tree in half, causing the in tuft to fall farther in toward Voy (killing its inhabitants) allowing the out tuft to find a new equilibrium closer to the Smoke Ring's median. The seven surviving members of the Quinn Tribe and one of the attackers jump clear of the shattered tree, and are left adrift in the sky with only a few "jet pods" (high pressure seed cases that provide a temporary thrust when opened) as their only method of propulsion. Before dying of thirst, they manage to hook a passing "moby" (a flying whale-like creature), which takes them to a "jungle", a floating mass of plant life. They cut loose and crash, and find themselves in the middle of a battle between the Carther States, who live in the jungle, and slave-runners from London Tree. The group is split when six of them are captured by the slavers; the other two remain in the jungle. Carther States counter-attacks some weeks later, and the Quinn Tribe group is reunited. During the battle they manage to steal the London Tree's CARM (Cargo And Repair Module), a miniature spacecraft, a relic of the original settlers. Not fully understanding how to pilot the CARM, they engage its main motor, which sends them thousands of miles away before running out of fuel. As a result, they become the first Smoke Ring inhabitants in centuries to see the naked stars. Unknown to any of the inhabitants of the Smoke Ring, the ship their ancestors arrived in, Discipline, is still in orbit, and its AI autopilot, Kendy, is watching their progress. When Kendy sees the CARM dangerously far from the habitable area of the Ring he contacts them. With help from the on-board computer and after some interaction with Kendy, the occupants of the CARM eventually find their way safely back into the Smoke Ring. Unable to find their way back to any of the trees they know, they decide to settle on a new tree, which they dub Citizens Tree.
528860	/m/02lz73	The Age of Innocence	Edith Wharton	1920	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Newland Archer, gentleman lawyer and heir to one of New York City's best families, is happily anticipating a highly desirable marriage to the sheltered and beautiful May Welland. Yet he finds reason to doubt his choice of bride after the appearance of Countess Ellen Olenska, May's exotic, beautiful thirty-year-old cousin, who has been living in Europe. Ellen has returned to New York after scandalously separating herself (per rumor) from a bad marriage to a Polish count. At first, Ellen's arrival and its potential taint to his bride-to-be's family disturbs him, but he becomes intrigued by the worldly Ellen who flouts New York society's fastidious rules. As Newland's admiration for the countess grows, so does his doubt about marrying May, a perfect product of Old New York society; his match with May no longer seems the ideal fate he had imagined. Ellen's decision to divorce Count Olenski is a social crisis for the other members of her family, who are terrified of scandal and disgrace. Living apart can be tolerated, but divorce is unacceptable. To save the Welland family's reputation, a law partner of Newland asks him to dissuade Countess Olenska from divorcing the count. He succeeds, but in the process comes to care for her; afraid of falling in love with Ellen, Newland begs May to accelerate their wedding date; May refuses. Newland tells Ellen he loves her; Ellen corresponds, but is horrified that their love will aggrieve May. She agrees to remain in America, separated but still married, only if they do not sexually consummate their love. Newland receives May's telegram agreeing to wed sooner. Newland and May marry. He tries forgetting Ellen but fails. His society marriage is loveless, and the social life he once found absorbing has become empty and joyless. Though Ellen lives in Washington and has remained distant, he is unable to cease loving her. Their paths cross while he and May are in Newport, Rhode Island. Newland discovers that Count Olenski wishes Ellen to return to him, but she has refused, despite her family pushing her to reconcile with her husband and return to Europe. Frustrated by her independence, the family has cut off her money, as the count had already done. Newland desperately seeks a way to leave May and be with Ellen, obsessed with how to finally possess her. Despairing of ever making Ellen his wife, he attempts to have her agree to be his mistress. Then Ellen is recalled to New York City to care for her sick grandmother, who accepts her decision to remain separated and agrees to reinstate her allowance. Back in New York and under renewed pressure from Newland, Ellen relents and agrees to consummate their relationship. However, Newland then discovers that Ellen has decided to return to Europe. Newland makes up his mind to abandon May and follow Ellen to Europe when May announces that she and Newland are throwing a farewell party for Ellen. That night, after the party, Newland resolves to tell May he is leaving her for Ellen. She interrupts him to tell him that she learned that morning that she is pregnant; she reveals that she had told Ellen of her pregnancy two weeks earlier, despite not being sure of it at the time. The implication is that she did it because she suspected the affair. Newland guesses that this is Ellen's reason for returning to Europe. Hopelessly trapped, Newland decides not to follow Ellen, surrendering his love for the sake of his children, remaining in a loveless marriage to May. Twenty-six years later, after May's death, Newland and his son are in Paris. The son, learning that his mother's cousin lives there, has arranged to visit Ellen in her Paris apartment. Newland is stunned at the prospect of seeing Ellen again. On arriving outside the apartment building, Newland sends up his son alone to meet Ellen, while he waits outside, watching the balcony of her apartment. Newland considers going up, but in the end decides not to; he walks back to his hotel without seeing her.
529052	/m/02lzxb	With Fire and Sword	Henryk Sienkiewicz	1884	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Despite some deviations, the book's historical framework is genuine and the fictional story is woven into real events. Many characters are historical figures, including Jeremi Wiśniowiecki and Bohdan Khmelnytsky (Pol. Bohdan Chmielnicki). Sienkiewicz researched memoirs and chronicles of the Polish nobility, or the szlachta, for details on life in 17th-century Poland. The book was written, according to the author, "to lift up the heart" of the Polish nation in the unhappy period following the failed January Insurrection during the era of the partitions of Poland. Thus it often favors epic plots and heroic scenes over historical accuracy. Nonetheless, Sienkiewicz's vivid language made it one of the most popular books about that particular place and era.
529614	/m/02m0cg	Sabriel	Garth Nix		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After leaving her school, Sabriel crosses the Wall, using papers given to her by her father. Her goal is Abhorsen's House, the home of her father. After entering Death to obtain guidance from a projection of her dead mother, she narrowly avoids a fatal altercation with a Dead creature. As she continues her journey, she becomes aware that she is being stalked by a Mordicant, a powerful Dead creature. She is able to outrun the creature and reach the safety of Abhorsen's House, which is located on an island in the center of the river. (The Dead cannot cross fast and deep running water.) Inside Abhorsen's house, Sabriel is able to rest and obtain food and other supplies, as well as armor. She also meets Mogget, a Free Magic construct who takes the form of a small white cat, wearing a collar with a powerful binding spell on it and a miniature Saraneth hanging from it. Mogget insists on accompanying her on her journey to find her father. Later, they look out over the walls surrounding the house and discover the Dead attempting to build a bridge. Sabriel performs a ritual to summon a flood of water and then flees the house by Paperwing (a magically propelled plane-like structure.) While in the air, Sabriel and Mogget are attacked by the Dead, and Sabriel loosens Mogget's collar to avoid a fatal crash. They fall into a sinkhole, where Mogget, in his unbound form, attempts to murder Sabriel. However, she is able to bind him anew with a ring given to her for that purpose. The next day, Sabriel and Mogget walk through a tunnel to another sinkhole, which Mogget determines to be Holehallow, the historical burial place of the royal family. Each king is buried in a boat. Sabriel discovers that the figurehead on one of the boats is actually a man, who has been imprisoned in that form for two hundred years. The man tells Sabriel that he was a Royal Guard before his imprisonment, and asks to be called Touchstone (a jester's name) for reasons that remain cryptic. Sabriel, Touchstone, and Mogget continue their journey, stopping to help rid a seaside village of a Dead creature. They obtain a boat there and sail up the coast of the Old Kingdom until they reach Belisaere, the capital. They find the Abhorsen in an underground reservoir in Belisaere, trapped in Death. Since he has stayed too long in Death, he cannot return for long, but with what little time he has left, the Abhorsen tells Sabriel about the evil known as Kerrigor. Kerrigor has risen far from Death and intends to wreak havoc in the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre. Sabriel releases her father from Death, and once they emerge from Death, father and daughter part for the last time — he, to ring the bell Astarael(the sound of which throws everyone who hears it far into the realm of Death) and delay Kerrigor's havoc; and she, to save Touchstone by bringing him (and herself) as far away from Astarael's music as possible. To prevent him from losing to Death, she kisses him roughly in order to keep him focused on Life. In the process of ringing Astarael, Sabriel's father releases Mogget. They succeed, but as long as Kerrigor's body is intact, he will rise from Death again and again. Sabriel and Touchstone use another Paperwing to bring them as close to the Wall as possible, and cross over to Ancelstierre to find Kerrigor's body, following the clairvoyant guidance of the Clayr twins Sanar and Ryelle. They find the body, and Sabriel finally defeats Kerrigor by binding him with Ranna and Mogget's collar. She dies but the previous Abhorsens prevent her from crossing into Final Death as she cannot die without someone else to take her place as Abhorsen. She wakes up with Touchstone before her, and both Mogget and Kerrigor asleep, bound by Ranna (the first of seven necromantic bells that instills sleep and quiescence in those who hear it).
530285	/m/02m2p4	The Amber Spyglass	Philip Pullman	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the end of The Subtle Knife, Marisa Coulter captured Lyra. She has now relocated her to a remote cave to hide her from the Magisterium, who are determined to kill Lyra before she yields to original sin. In order to keep her hidden, Marisa forces Lyra to drink drugged tea that puts her to sleep. While deeply asleep, Lyra dreams that she is in a wasteland (later realized as the land of the dead) talking to her deceased friend Roger Parslow, whom she promises to help. In Cittàgazze, two angels, Balthamos and Baruch, tell Will, the bearer of the Subtle Knife, that they are taking him to Lord Asriel. Will refuses to go until Lyra is rescued, to which the two assent. However, they are attacked by a soldier of the archangel Metatron, and Will uses the knife to cut a window into another world to escape. Baruch flies to Lord Asriel to tell him what has happened and to get help. Meanwhile, an assassin is dispatched from the Magisterium, as they have determined that Dr. Mary Malone is the "Tempter" (see Fall of Man). Mary, who has stepped through a window from her own world (assumed to be the readers' world/Will's world) into Cittàgazze, eventually enters another window into a stranger world. There she meets sapient, elephantine creatures who call themselves mulefa and use large seedpods attached to their feet as wheels. These creatures have a complex culture, intricate language, and an infectious laugh. Although from completely different worlds, Mary and the Mulefa establish a rapport which results in Mary's acceptance into Mulefa community, where she learns that the trees from which the seedpods are gathered have gradually been going extinct for about 300 years. Mary uses the tree sap lacquer and accidentally constructs a telescope (the 'amber spyglass' of the title) that allows her to see the elementary particles known as Dust. Dust adheres to all life-forms that have attained a level of intelligence associated with building civilizations. She sees that Dust is flying away in large streams rather than falling on and nourishing the trees on which the mulefa mutually depend. In his quest to rescue Lyra, Will meets Iorek Byrnison, the bear king of the armoured Panserbjørne, who are migrating south to avoid the Arctic melt caused by the effects of Lord Asriel's bridge (created at the end of Northern Lights). After challenging the bear to single combat to stop a raid on a nearby village, Will demonstrates the Knife on Iorek's armor; Iorek, seeing his helmet reduced to slivers in moments, accepts defeat. Iorek agrees to help rescue his beloved Lyra. Here, global warming is associated with similar disasters taking place throughout many worlds as a result of the upheavals regarding Dust. Three forces — Will, Iorek, and Balthamos; Lord Asriel's army; and the army of the Magisterium — converge on Mrs. Coulter's cave, where Will is able to wake Lyra from her deep sleep. He is cutting a window into another world when Mrs. Coulter turns and looks directly at him. For a moment, Will is reminded of his own mother; as a result, his concentration falters, and the knife shatters, having been unable to sever his affection. Because the window he has cut is open, Will, Lyra, and two Gallivespian spies of Lord Asriel's army (the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia) manage to escape to another world. Although reluctant due to his discomfort about the power possessed by the knife, Iorek Byrnison repairs the Subtle Knife. Because Lyra promised Roger that she would help him, Will, Lyra, Tialys, and Salmakia travel and enter the world of the dead. They are forced to leave their dæmons behind, which is painful and akin to death. Will, Salmakia, and Tialys do not have visible, corporeal dæmons like Lyra, but they all do possess them. All of them feel the same pain when they are torn from their daemons upon entering the world of the dead. The entry into the world of the dead reflects Greek mythology when an aged boatman (not named in the novel, but presumably representing Charon) ferries souls across a river to a dark, joyless realm where the many worlds' dead are tormented by harpies. Lyra finds Roger's ghost among the other ghosts. Will, Lyra, and the Gallivespians decide to free all the ghosts, and strike a deal with the harpies; in exchange for guiding them to a suitable place to open the window, and leading all subsequent spirits to the window afterwards, the harpies will demand to hear the life stories of all the spirits who pass through their realm, and have a right to bar access to any who have nothing to tell- with the obvious exception of infants who are too young to have experienced anything-, thus encouraging all to live rich, full lives and experience the wonders of the present world. With the help of the harpies, they travel to the highest land point where Will cuts a door into another world. The ghosts step through and dissolve, freeing them from the realm of the dead and reuniting their atoms with nature, their daemons' atoms, and the world. Lord Asriel's forces capture Mrs. Coulter, but she escapes and flies off to warn the Consistorial Court. The Consistorial Court of Discipline arrests Mrs. Coulter; therefore, she allies herself with Asriel. She is also realizing the strength and depth of a mother's love for her child. Lord Asriel and Marisa talk, revealing that Asriel believes "sin" is simply enjoying life, which would be quelled by the Magisterium's desire for purity. Asriel has formed an army from all the worlds to conquer the Authority, who is the first angel created and thinks himself as god of the multiverse, and represents, in Asriel's mind, all the oppression that the Magisterium has caused. The final battle begins. Will and Lyra must return to this realm (Asriel's) to retrieve their daemons. Will's daemon, which was separated from him, is now a visible entity like Lyra's daemon. John Parry/Stanislaus Grumman/Will's father and Lee Scoresby go with them; instead of dissolving with the other ghosts, they and other ghosts decide to remain temporarily intact in order to join Lord Asriel's army to fight the Spectres, wraith-like creatures that devour adult souls in various worlds, reasoning that the Spectres attack daemons which they no longer possess. Mrs. Coulter enters the Clouded Mountain, citadel of the Authority, where she meets Regent Metatron. She offers to betray Asriel, letting Metatron think he will be able to kill him and get Lyra, but her ultimate hope is that he will destroy himself in the process. When she leads Metatron to Asriel, Mrs. Coulter is able to confess her scheme to him, and they unite to save Lyra and attack Metatron. All three fall into an Abyss between the worlds and cease to exist. Ironically, the Authority dies of his own frailty when Will and Lyra unknowingly free him from the crystal prison where Metatron trapped him; as he leaves the cage, he is so feeble that mere exposure to the atmosphere dissolves him into thin air. Lyra and Will, with the help of Gallivespians, Iorek's bear army, and the ghosts, find their daemons and escape the battle, entering into the mulefa world, where Tialys and Salmakia pass away (for Gallivespians live for only a short time). Here they encounter Mary, whom Lyra had met earlier in Will's world. They all exchange stories of what has happened, and Mary's story of why she decided not to be a nun anymore plants a seed in Lyra's mind. One day, while Will and Lyra are picnicking in the wood near their camp, Lyra puts a fruit to Will's lips. A few seconds later, the two of them realize they love each other and share their first kiss. The flow of Dust escaping is considerably slowed, and the new couple is enveloped in it. However, both the witch, Serafina Pekkala, and the female angel, Xaphania, pay them visits, each revealing news they do not want to hear. To their dismay, Xaphania reveals that all the openings between worlds - with the sole exception of the one leading out of the world of the dead to that of the mulefas - must be closed because each opening allows Dust to escape into oblivion, and each creation of a new opening generates a new Specter. Lyra and Will must return to their own home worlds, as they are unable to survive more than ten years in any world but their own. The two protagonists make an emotional farewell, but before they part, Lyra leads Will into the Oxford of his world, to the Botanic Gardens. There they promise to return to the Garden, to a corresponding bench which stands in both of their worlds, every year at Midsummer's day, to think of each other and to be together in this way. Lyra returns to Jordan College. Having suddenly lost the subconscious grace that enabled her to read the alethiometer by instinct, she decides to study alethiometry at a special school. Hereinafter, she and dæmon Pantalaimon (who has taken the permanent form of a pine marten) begin following John Parry's (and Will's) suggestion to build the idealised Republic of Heaven at home. Will, too, returns to his world, accompanied by Mary Malone, who remains his friend and ally. When he returns, he decides to break the Subtle knife by trying to open a window into another world while thinking about Lyra. During the return, Mary learns how to see her own daemon, who appears as a black Alpine chough. Will's daemon, named Kirjava by Serafina Pekkala, has taken the permanent form of a large, shadow-colored cat.
530735	/m/02m48l	The Tao of Pooh	Benjamin Hoff	1982		 The book starts with a description of the vinegar tasters, which is an actual painting portraying the three great eastern thinkers, Confucius, the Buddha, and Laozi over a vat of vinegar. Each tasting the vinegar of "life," Confucius finds it sour, the Buddha finds it bitter, but Laozi, the traditional founder of Taoism, finds it satisfying. Then the story unfolds backing up this analogy. Hoff presents Winnie-the-Pooh and related others from A. A. Milne's stories as characters that interact with him while he writes The Tao of Pooh, but also quotes excerpts of their tales from Milne's actual books Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, in order to exemplify his points. Hoff uses many of Milne's characters to symbolize ideas that differ from or accentuate Taoist tenets. Winnie-the-Pooh himself, for example, personifies the principles of wei wu wei, the Taoist concept of "effortless doing," and pu, the concept of being open to but unburdened by experience. In contrast, characters like Owl and Rabbit over-complicate problems, often over-thinking to the point of confusion, and Eeyore pessimistically complains and frets about existence, unable to just be. Hoff regards Pooh's simpleminded nature, unsophisticated worldview and instinctive problem-solving methods as conveniently representative of the Taoist philosophical foundation. The book also incorporates translated excerpts from various prominent Taoist texts, from authors such as Laozi and Zhuangzi.
531094	/m/02m5dx	Protagoras	Plato			 The dialogue begins with an unnamed friend of Socrates asking him how his pursuit of the young Alcibiades, just now reputed to be growing his first beard, was proceeding. Socrates explains that while he has just been in the company of Alcibiades, he has just come from meeting with someone who is "more beautiful . . . No doubt the wisest of men nowadays-- if in your opinion the wisest is Protagoras"(309c-d). Socrates relates the story of how his young friend, Hippocrates, son of Apollodorus, came knocking on his door before daybreak and roused him out of bed. Hippocrates was in a big hurry to be present when Protagoras held court, as he was expected to do, at the home of Callias. Socrates warns the excitable Hippocrates that Sophists are dangerous. He tells him that the words of the Sophists go straight into the soul (psuchē) and can corrupt a person straightaway. Socrates says that buying wisdom from a Sophist is different from buying food and drink at the market. With food and drink, you never know what you are getting, but you can consult experts for advice before consuming anything that might be dangerous (313a-314c). Socrates says he regards Prodicus as a man of inspired genius (316a). He expresses the same admiration for Prodicus in another dialogue, the Theaetetus. Socrates later notes that Prodicus was assigned to sleep in a storage room that his host had cleaned out for the visit (315d). Socrates accompanies Hippocrates to the home of Callias, and they stand in the doorway chatting about "some point which had come up along the road" (314c). A eunuch opened the door, took one look at them, guessed they were Sophists, and slammed the door in their faces (314d). They knocked again, and this time assured the porter they were not Sophists, but only wanted to visit with Protagoras. The porter let them in, and it is at this point that Socrates recites the list of guests. Protagoras does not deny being a Sophist, and claims that it is an ancient and honorable art, the same art practiced by Homer and Hesiod. These poets, he says, used the arts as a screen, a front, to protect themselves from the charge. He says that he is more straightforward than the ancient artists, trainers, and musicians in frankly admitting that he is an educator. Protagoras says he is old enough now to be the father of any of the men present, and would like now to address himself to the whole company of people in the house. Socrates assumes that Prodicus would not want to miss the lecture, and so Callias and Alcibiades are sent to rouse him from his bed (317c-e). According to Francis Bacon, Prodicus is led to produce a speech in the dialogue (337a), which seems to Bacon as humiliating for him. Socrates asks Protagoras "in respect to what" Hippocrates will improve by associating with him, in the manner that by associating himself to a doctor he would improve in medicine (318d). Protagoras begins his discourse with the statement that a good Sophist can make his students into good citizens. Socrates says that this is fine and good, but that he personally believes that this is not feasible since virtue cannot be taught (319b). He adds that technical thinking (techne) can be imparted to students by teachers, but that wisdom cannot be. By way of example, Socrates points to the fact that while in matters concerning specialised labour one would only take advice from the appropriate specialist, like for example builders (τέκτονες) about construction, in matters of state everyone's opinions is considered, which proves that political virtue is within everyone, or that at least that is what Athenians in their democratic ideals believe. Another example is that Pericles did not manage to impart his wisdom to his sons (319e). Socrates' uses a similar example in the Meno. He then adds that Clinias, younger brother of Alcibiades, was taken from the family for fear that Alcibiades would corrupt him, and he was given back as a hopeless case. Socrates says he could give more examples, but thinks his point is sufficiently established. Protagoras says his claim that virtue can be taught is better made by a story than by reasoned arguments, and he recounts a myth about the origins of living things. He says that Epimetheus (whose name means "Afterthought") who was assigned the task of passing out the assets for survival, forgot to give mankind anything so his twin brother Prometheus (whose name means "Forethought") stole fire from Hephaestus and practical wisdom from Athena and gave them to man. However, man was never granted civic wisdom which belonged to Zeus or the art of politics, so the race was initially in danger of extinction. Zeus, however, sent Hermes to distribute shame and justice equally among human beings. To Protagoras, this answers Socrates's question why people think that wisdom about architecture or medicine is limited to the few while wisdom about justice and politics is thought to be more broadly understood (322d). Protagoras states that he has two good pieces of evidence that people agree with him. First, people do not rebuke the ugly, dwarfish, and weak, but pity them, because they cannot help being as they are (323d). Second, they do instruct people who are unjust and irreligious, hoping to impart goodness in them. He says that parents begin with their children from earliest childhood, and teachers carry on the task. Protagoras notes that none of this is surprising, but what would be surprising is if this were not the case (326e). He closes by addressing Socrates's question why, if virtue is teachable, the sons of virtuous men often lack virtue. Protagoras lays out a thought experiment where a hypothetical city state is resting its survival as such to the skill of flute playing. Being the most important thing for that society, parents would be eager to teach the skill to their sons. Not everyone would be successful though, as we can imagine, as some would have a greater natural inclination than others and often the son of a good flute player would turn out bad and vica versa. Any of them however, even the bad ones, would be better than an average citizen in the real world which might have never been taught how to play. Same goes for virtue, it is considered so important that everyone is taught to a certain degree, to the point that it seems like a part of human nature while it is not. (327b-d). Socrates admits that Protagoras has given an excellent answer and that there is only one small thing to clarify which he is certain that the Sophist will do easily. He asks Protagoras as to whether the attributes that form virtue, such as bravery, kindness and wisdom are one or many things, like for example the parts of a golden object which are fused together or that of a face which form a whole while retaining their individual substance (329d). Protagoras answers the second but avoids engaging in dialogue and digresses into a rhetoric which does not answer the question sufficiently but still manages to arouse the excitement of their young public. Socrates complains that Protagoras is long-winded, like a gong that booms when you strike it and won't stop until you lay a hand on it. It is a typical moment of Socrates opposite a Sophist where the latter is using eloquent speech to hide arguments that might not stand logical scrutiny while the former is trying to use his notorious question/answer format that will lead to a logical conclusion in his favour. Protagoras begins to bristle at this and so Socrates supposes that their styles are opposite. He personally doesn't like long-winded speeches like the one Protagoras just delivered, because he is forgetful and cannot follow the train of thought (334d), and Protagoras does not like to be peppered with questions that seem to lead them off track. Socrates gets up to leave, grousing that companionable talk is one thing and public speaking another (336b). After the intervention of several of the listeners, the men agree to compromise their styles so the discussion can continue. Socrates praises the Spartans as the best people in the world not only because of their fierceness in battle but because of their wisdom and philosophical skills. This is contrary to the common belief that the Spartans lacked in these issues and devoted themselves exclusively to physical training but Socrates claims that they are masters at concealing their skills. While they appear to be unimpressive speakers, at just the right moment, they can provide pithy phrases of wisdom (342e). He adds that Laconic brevity was the earliest characteristic of philosophy (343b). Then the debaters return to their previous analysis of Pittacus' and Simonides' poetry. On Socrates' interpretation, Pittacus claims that it is difficult to be a good man, but presumably possible. Simonides, on the other hand, claims that it is impossible to live without ever being a bad man, and even to be a good man on occasion is difficult (344a&ndash;45d). Simonides praises those who at least do not do wrong willingly. Socrates' interpretation is that, since Simonides was a wise man, he must know that no one does any wrong willingly; accordingly, he must mean that he will willingly praise those who do no wrong, not that some do wrong willingly and others unwillingly, only the latter garnering his praise (345d&ndash;46b). Socrates thus argues that the authority of Simonides does not stand against his understanding of virtue and whether anyone willingly does wrong. Socrates then broaches the initial question of whether virtue is one or many things, himself claiming that all virtue is knowledge and therefore one. He argues that the reason people act harmfully, to others or themselves, is because they only see the short term gains while ignoring the long term losses which might outweigh them, just like one makes errors in judging the size of objects that are far away. He says that if men were taught the art of calculating these things correctly, have a more exact knowledge that is, they would not act harmfully (357c-358d). Same goes for bravery. A brave swimmer is one who knows how to swim better and therefore, in a way, all virtues are essentially knowledge and can be considered one and the same, more like parts of golden objects (as discussed above) rather than the parts of a face. While Socrates seems to have won the argument, he points to the fact that if all virtue is knowledge, it can in fact be taught. He draws the conclusion that to an observer he and Protagoras would seem as crazy, having argued at great lengths only to mutually exchanged positions with Socrates now believing that virtue can be taught and Protagoras that all virtues are one instead of his initial position (361a). Protagoras acknowledges Socrates a notable opponent in dispute while being much younger than he and predicts that he could become one of the wisest men alive. Socrates departs for whatever business he claimed he had when he wanted to end the dialogue earlier.
531096	/m/02m5f9	Summer Lightning	P. G. Wodehouse	1929-07-19	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Hugo Carmody, who became secretary to Lord Emsworth following the failure of The Hot Spot, the night club he ran with Ronnie Fish, is conducting a secret affair with Millicent Threepwood, Emsworth's niece. They hide this from Lady Constance, who is distracted with worries that the book of memoirs her brother Galahad is working on will bring shame to the family. Ronnie, meanwhile, is secretly engaged to Sue Brown, a chorus girl and an old friend of Hugo. When they run into Lady Constance in London one day, Ronnie introduces Sue as Myra Schoonmaker, an American heiress he and his mother Lady Julia recently met in Biarritz. Ronnie travels to Blandings, where Baxter has just returned, called in by Lady Constance to steal the memoirs. Hoping to get money out of Lord Emsworth, his trustee, Ronnie claims to love pigs, but his uncle has seen him bouncing a tennis ball on the Empress' back, and is enraged. Ronnie, inspired, steals the pig, planning to return it and earn his uncle's gratitude, roping in Beach to help; they hide her in a cottage in the woods. Hugo is sent to London to fetch a detective; the job is refused by Percy Pilbeam. Hugo takes Sue out dancing, but when Ronnie arrives at the club he sees Pilbeam, who admires Sue, sat at her table. He runs amok, and spends a night in jail, and in the morning snubs Sue, who he believes has betrayed him. Millicent, feeling the same about Hugo, breaks off their engagement also. Meanwhile Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, worrying about the memoirs, hires Pilbeam to retrieve them; Pilbeam agrees, realising he can use the pig-finding job to get into the castle. Sue heads to Blandings, posing as Myra Schoonmaker. Gally soon finds out the truth, when he has a meeting with Mortimer Mason, Sue's erstwhile employer, and he sees her in the gardens. Percy Pilbeam arrives, recognises Sue, and tries to get her help in his memoir-stealing scheme. Baxter, meanwhile, has grown suspicious that the pig was stolen by Carmody as a means of insuring his job; he spots Beach heading off to feed the pig, and follows him, just as the storm breaks. Beach reaches the cottage to find Hugo and Millicent, gone there to shelter from the rain. Their relationship is healed, Hugo having explained about Sue and Ronnie, and Beach, protecting Ronnie, claims he stole the pig for Hugo to return and win Lord Emsworth's favour. Beach leaves, as Carmody takes the pig to a new hiding spot. Baxter accuses Beach in front of Emsworth, and the three of them head to the cottage, Emsworth growing ever warier of Baxter's sanity. They find no pig, Carmody having moved it to Baxter's caravan, where Pilbeam, also caught in the rain, saw him stow it. While Emsworth, Lady Constance, Gally and Millicent go to dinner with Parsloe-Parsloe (lured away to leave the memoirs unguarded), Ronnie Fish confronts Pilbeam, and learns that Sue was indeed out in London with Carmody, and that she has come to Blandings to be near Ronnie. Pilbeam gets tipsy, and tells Beach about Sue, and then tells Carmody that he saw him hide the pig. Carmody, in a panic, calls Millicent at Matchingham Hall, and is advised to tell Emsworth where the pig is at once. He does so, Emsworth is overjoyed, and agrees to their marriage, much to Lady Constance's disgust. Meanwhile, Baxter receives a telegram from Myra Schoonmaker in Paris, and goes to the imposter Sue's room to retrieve a note he sent her, criticising Lord Emsworth. Trapped by Beach bringing her dinner, he hides under the bed while she and Ronnie are reunited. Ronnie spots Pilbeam climbing into the room to steal the book, and chases him downstairs; the returning dinner party assume they are fleeing Baxter, now confirmed as mad by the presence of the stolen pig in his caravan, and Emsworth charges into Sue's room with a shotgun. Baxter crawls out from under the bed, flustered and enraged by his experience and Emsworth's harsh words, reveals Sue's deception and storms off. Galahad, hearing that Sue Brown is Dolly Henderson's daughter, reveals that he loved her mother and views her as a kind of honorary daughter. He tells Lady Constance that he will suppress his book if she agrees to sanction Sue and Ronnie's marriage, and to persuade her sister Julia to do likewise. Pilbeam, hearing this as he once again climbs the drainpipe, and gives up his mission, leaving Galahad to tell Sue the story of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe and the prawns...
531397	/m/02m6hs	Riddley Walker	Russell Hoban	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Riddley Walker is set about two thousand years after a nuclear war has devastated world civilizations. The main action of the story begins when the young narrator, Riddley, stumbles upon efforts to recreate a weapon of the ancient world. The novel's characters live a harsh life in a small area which is presently the English county of Kent, and know nothing of the world outside of "Inland" (England). Their level of civilization is similar to England's prehistoric Iron Age, although they do not produce their own iron but salvage it from ancient machinery. Church and state have combined into one secretive institution, whose mythology, based on misinterpreted stories of the war and an old Catholic saint (Eustace), is enacted in puppet shows.
531730	/m/02m7kz	The Case of Charles Dexter Ward	H. P. Lovecraft		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The title character, Charles Dexter Ward, is a young man from a prominent Rhode Island family who (in the story's introduction) is said to have disappeared from a mental asylum after a prolonged period of insanity accompanied by minor, but unheard-of, physiological changes. The bulk of the story concerns the investigation conducted by the Wards' family doctor, Marinus Bicknell Willett, in an attempt to discover the reason for Ward's madness and the physiological changes. When Willett learns that Ward had spent the past several years attempting to discover the grave of his ill-reputed ancestor, Joseph Curwen, the doctor slowly begins to unravel the truth behind the legends surrounding Curwen, an eighteenth century shipping entrepreneur rumoured to have been an alchemist, but in reality a necromancer and mass-murderer. As Willett's investigations proceed, he finds that Charles had recovered Curwen's ashes, and through the use of magical formulae contained in documents found hidden in the wizard's former town house in Providence, Rhode Island, was able to call forth Curwen from his "essential saltes" and resurrect him. Willett also finds that Curwen, who resembles Charles enough to pass for him, has murdered and replaced his modern descendant and resumed his evil activities. Unfortunately for Curwen, due to culture shock, he is unable to entirely successfully impersonate Charles - his lack of understanding of the modern world leads to him (as Charles) being certified insane and imprisoned in an asylum. While Curwen is locked up, Willett's continuing investigations lead him to a bungalow in Pawtuxet Village, which Ward had purchased under the influence of Curwen. It turns out that this house is on the site of an old farm which was Curwen's headquarters for his nefarious doings; beneath is a vast catacomb that the wizard had built to serve as his lair during his previous lifetime. During a horrific journey through this labyrinth, Willet discovers the full truth about Curwen's crimes and also the means of returning him to the grave. During the expedition it is also revealed that Curwen has been engaged in a long-term conspiracy with certain other necromancers (associates from his previous life who have somehow escaped death) to raise and torture the world's wisest people in order to gain knowledge that will let them gain horrible power and threaten the future of mankind. Finally, while in Curwen's laboratory, Willett accidentally raises an ancient spirit (its identity is not made clear) which is an enemy of Curwen and his fellow necromancers. The doctor faints at this eventuality: he wakes up back in the bungalow. Willett finds that the entrance to the vaults has been sealed as if it had never existed, but finds a note from the spirit written in Latin in an Anglo-Saxon hand telling him to kill Curwen and destroy his body. Armed with this knowledge, Willett confronts Curwen at the asylum and succeeds in reversing the spell, reducing the undead sorcerer once again to dust. News reports reveal that Curwen's prime co-conspirators have met brutal deaths along with their households and their lairs have been destroyed, presumably the work of the spirit whom Willett raised. Much of the plot is revealed in letters, documents and other historical sources discovered by both Ward and Willett.
531939	/m/02m8b8	334	Thomas M. Disch	1972	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The future in 334 has brought few technological advances except for new medical techniques and recreational drugs. There have been no dramatic disasters, but overpopulation has made housing and other resources scarce; the response is a program of compulsory birth control and eugenics. A welfare state provides for basic needs through an all-encompassing agency called MODICUM, but there is an extreme class division between welfare recipients and professionals. The novel consists of five independent novellas (previously published separately) with a common setting but different characters, and a longer sub-novel called "334" whose many short sections trace the members of a single family forward and backward in time. The sections are as follows: * "The Death of Socrates": A high-school student finds that, due to poor scores on his Regents Examinations and his father's health history, he has been permanently forbidden to have children; he searches for ways to get extra credit. * "Bodies": Porters at Bellevue Hospital moonlight as body-snatchers catering to a necrophiliac brothel. Their task is complicated by the desire of some patients to be cryonically preserved for a better future. * "Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire": A privileged government worker, trying to decide where to send her son to school, pursues a parallel existence in a hallucinogen-assisted role-playing game set in the year 334. * "Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come": A young professional man and woman face marital conflicts and parenthood, with several twists unique to the 2020s. * "Angouleme": A group of highly educated prepubescent children decides to commit a gratuitous murder in Battery Park. * "334": Vignettes of the Hanson family from 2021 to 2025.
532361	/m/02mb3n	N or M?	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 After the outbreak of the Second World War and many years after they worked for British intelligence, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford feel useless and sidelined. When Tommy is approached to go undercover once more, however, Tuppence decides to join him on his mission whether she is wanted or not. The duo begin a search for a German agent who may have infiltrated British command. Another British agent that was following these Germans left a cryptic message on his deathbed: "N or M. Song Susie". Grant knew that "Song Susie" stood for Sans Souci, a hotel in Leahampton, and N and M were two German spies, one male and one female. Tommy is to go to Sans Souci to investigate whether N, M or both are at the hotel and to figure out their identities.
534425	/m/02mjvx	The Mist	Stephen King		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The morning after a violent thunderstorm, a thick unnatural mist quickly spreads across the small town of Bridgton, Maine, reducing visibility to near-zero and concealing numerous species of bizarre creatures which viciously attack anyone and anything that ventures out into the open. The bulk of the story details the plight of a large group of people who become trapped while shopping in the town supermarket, among them a commercial artist named David Drayton (the protagonist and narrator), David's young son Billy, and their estranged neighbor Brent Norton who accompanied them into town after Brent's car was smashed by a tree. Amongst others trapped in the market are a young woman named Amanda Dumfries and two soldiers from a nearby military installation, home to what is referred to as "The Arrowhead Project". The two soldiers' eventual joint suicide lends some credence to the theory of this Project being the source of the disaster. Soon after the mist comes, something plugs the store generator's exhaust vent. When a young bag boy named Norm steps outside to fix the problem, he is pulled into the mist by a swarm of tentacles. David and Ollie Weeks, the store's assistant manager, witness Norm's death and try to convince the remaining survivors of the danger lurking outside. Norton and a small group of others refuse to believe, accusing David of lying. They venture out into the mist to seek help, where they are killed by a huge, unseen creature. This, along with a deadly incursion into the store by a pterosaur-like creature and a disastrous expedition to the pharmacy next door, lead to paranoia and panic consuming the remaining survivors. This spiraling breakdown leads to the rise to power of a religious zealot named Mrs. Carmody who convinces the majority of the remaining survivors that these events fulfill the biblical prophecy of the end of times, and that a human sacrifice must be made to save them from the wrath of God. David and Ollie attempt to lead their remaining allies in a covert exit from the market, but are stopped by Mrs. Carmody, who orders her followers to kill her chosen victims: Billy and Amanda. However, Ollie, using a revolver found in Amanda's purse, kills Mrs. Carmody, causing her congregation to break up. En route to David's car, Ollie in turn is bisected by the claw of a very large creature looking similar to a giant lobster or crab. David, Billy, Amanda, and an elderly, yet tough, school teacher Hilda Reppler reach the car and leave Bridgton, driving south for hours through a mist-shrouded, monster-filled New England. After finding refuge for the night, David listens to a radio, and through the overwhelming static possibly hears a single word broadcast, "Hartford". With that one shred of hope, he prepares to drive on into an uncertain future.
534538	/m/02mkbp	The Seven Dials Mystery	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A house party is taking place at Chimneys which has been rented out by the Marquess of Caterham for two years to Sir Oswald Coote, a self-made millionaire and his wife. As well as the couple, there is a party of young people staying there, three girls and four young men. One of them, Gerald "Gerry" Wade, has a deserved reputation for sleeping in very late in the morning, much to the annoyance of Lady Coote. The six youngsters plan a joke on Gerald by buying eight alarm clocks and putting them in his room that night after he has fallen asleep but timed to go off at irregular intervals the next morning, starting at 6.30 am. The next morning, all the clocks having rung at the prescribed times but Wade not having stirred from his bed, it is discovered that the young man is dead in his bed, having drunk an overdose of chloral during the night. The group is shocked and Jimmy and Ronny agree to drive over to Deane Priory where Loraine Wade, Gerry's step-sister, lives and break the news to her. On the way, Ronny hints at something about Gerry but stops full at confiding in Jimmy. Returning to Chimneys and going to Gerry's room, Jimmy points out to Ronny that the alarm clocks have been arranged on the mantelpiece but there are only seven of them; one is missing. It is later found in a hedge, having been thrown from Gerry's window. Several days later, Lord Caterham retakes possession of Chimneys at the end of its two-year lease from the Cootes. The inquest has taken place with a verdict of "Death by Misadventure" but no explanation has been reached for the rearrangement of the clocks. His daughter Bundle is a friend of Bill Eversleigh's and puzzling over the matter she decides to write to him. Gerry Wade died in her room and pulling out a part of her writing desk she finds an unfinished letter from Gerry to Loraine dated the day before he died. In it he speaks of being "awfully fit" but "so sleepy I can't keep my eyes open." Most strangely, he asks her to "forget what I said about that Seven Dials business." More puzzled than ever, she decides to go to London to see Bill. On the way there, a man steps out of a hedge and into the road. Bundle misses him but he collapses anyway, muttering about "Seven Dials..." and "Tell... Jimmy Thesiger." The man dies. Bundle manages to get the body into the car and to a doctor where she is told that the car didn't hit the man&mdash;he was shot. A card on the body identifies the man as being Ronny Devereux and Bundle recalls that he also was one of the Cootes' house party. She returns to Chimneys and tells her father all that has happened and he tells her in turn that during his absence he received a visit from George Lomax, the Under-Secretary for State for Foreign Affairs who received a strange warning letter written from the Seven Dials district of London. The next day Bundle finally makes it to London and gets Jimmy's address from Bill. Going there, she meets Loraine Wade who has also called in to see Jimmy and breaks the news of Ronny's death to Jimmy. Shocked, he recounts Ronny's behaviour in the car on the way to see Loraine for the first time and she, in turn, tells the two of them that the incident that Gerry referred to in his last letter to her was a list of names and dates she found with an address in Seven Dials on it when she accidentally opened one of her late half-brother's letters. He had then hinted to her of some secret society with reference to the Mafia. The three wonder if Gerry's death was murder and the removal of one of the alarm clocks, leaving seven dials, was a warning signal. Jimmy knows that Gerry was connected in some way with the Foreign Office and security services. Bundle tells the other two of the warning letter that George Lomax received and that he is holding a house party the next week at his house at Wyvern Abbey and Jimmy and Bundle decide to get themselves an invitation and join in. Bundle decides to go and see Superintendent Battle at Scotland Yard about the matter, but he proves unhelpful, aside hinting that Bill Eversleigh knows something about Seven Dials. The next evening, Bundle meets Bill for a night out and asks him what he knows. He tells her that Seven Dials is a seedy nightclub and gambling den and Bundle insists he takes her there. In the club, Bundle recognises the doorman as being Alfred, a former footman from Chimneys. The next day, after making arrangements through family connections to get into George Lomax’s party, Bundle returns to the Seven Dials club and questions Alfred as to why he left Chimneys. He tells her that the Cootes had as a guest a Russian gentleman called Mosgorovsky who offered him three times his footman's salary to leave his previous employment and work at the club. Bundle forces the scared man to show her round and he eventually takes her into a secret room in which there is a table and seven chairs. She forces Alfred to hide her in a cupboard in the room and several hours later is able to witness from her place of concealment a strange meeting as five people gather. They wear hoods over their evening wear with eye slits and clock faces on the hoods, each clock showing a different time between one o'clock and six o'clock and their accents reveal their different nationalities. One of the sinister group is a woman with a mole on her exposed shoulder blade. They talk of the absent Number Two and one of the figures complains about the always-missing Number Seven. They also talk of Lomax's party at Wyvern Abbey where a German called Eberhard will be present with a valuable invention. They talk of plans to divert suspicion from the inquest on Ronny Devereux and mention Bauer, the footman at Chimneys as being in their pay. The meeting over, the group leaves and Alfred frees Bundle from her watching place. The next day Bundle tells Jimmy of the meeting. They suspect Bauer of murdering Gerry and Jimmy tells Bundle that Eberhard has invented a formula which could make wire as strong as steel, revolutionising airplane manufacturing. The German government turned the invention down and the meeting at Wyvern Abbey is for a possible sale to the British, represented by Sir Stanley Digby, the Air Minister. The next Friday, Bundle and Jimmy arrive at Wyvern Abbey and are introduced to the other guests including the Cootes, Sir Stanley Digby, Terence O'Rourke and the beautiful Hungarian Countess Radzky. Bundle is further surprised to see Superintendent Battle there. He tells her that he is at Wyvern to "keep an eye on things". Bill Eversleigh also turns up. Jimmy has told Bill what Bundle told him of the meeting of the Seven Dials. Realising that Sir Stanley is only going to be staying one night at Wyvern, they work out that any theft of the formula is going to be attempted that night and Jimmy and Bill agree to keep two separate watches, changing over at 3.00 am, both using a pistol that Jimmy has brought with him. At 2.00 am Jimmy, on the first watch in an alcove in the hallway, thinks he hears a noise coming from the library, a room that leads on to the terrace. He finds nothing in the room and continues his watch from there. Bundle, previously told by Jimmy and Bill that there was no part in their plans for her, had meekly acquiesced but instead had changed her clothes into something more suitable, climbed down the ivy outside her room and had promptly run into Superintendent Battle, also on his own watch outside the house. He persuades her to go back. She does so but goes to check on Jimmy in his alcove. Finding that he has gone, and not knowing that he has moved to the library, she goes to Bill's bedroom but finds that she has made a mistake and it is the Countess's room but the Hungarian lady is also missing. Her puzzlement is interrupted by the noises of a tremendous struggle coming from the library and two gunshots. This noise also attracts the attention of Loraine Wade who has arrived at Wyvern at the dead of night. A few moments before the commotion, a paper packet lands at her feet as she walks along the darkened terrace. She picks it up and sees a man climbing down the ivy from above her. She turns and runs, almost straight into Battle whose questions are interrupted by the fight in the library. Running there, they find Jimmy unconscious and shot through his right arm. The household is woken by the noise and pours into the room. Jimmy comes round and tells how he fought the man who climbed down the ivy. They were both armed and each fired a shot. Sir Stanley rushes back to check his room but finds that the formula has gone. Battle is not perturbed as Loraine still holds the dropped packet and is able to return its precious contents. Sir Oswald Coote raises suspicions when he comes in from the terrace, having supposedly been on a late-night walk and having seen no one suspicious but having found the pistol of the escaped man on the lawn. The Countess is also found in the room, unconscious behind a screen. She tells a story of coming down for a book to read, being unable to sleep, and hearing what turned out to be Jimmy’s approach, hid from fear of him being a burglar. She passed out when the fight happened. Bill gallantly offers to help her to her room and Bundle suddenly spots a mole on the Countess's shoulder through her negligee: she is a member of the Seven Dials! She tells Battle the whole story of her spying on the association and the role the Countess plays and is told to leave matters alone. The next morning, Battle searches the scenes of the crime and finds the place where the assailant's pistol landed when it was thrown onto the lawn, only one set of footprints leading to this point&mdash;Sir Oswald's&mdash;and a charred, left-handed glove with marks of teeth in the fireplace. He theorises that the thief threw the gun onto the lawn from the terrace and then climbed back into the house via the ivy. Bundle hears news from Chimneys that the footman Bauer is missing and Sir Oswald leaps to the conclusion that he is their man. Before the house party breaks up, Jimmy asks Loraine to keep an eye on Bundle and make sure she doesn't get herself into danger by investigating on her own any more while he integrates himself with Lady Coote and gets an invitation to their new house in Letherbury, wanting to investigate Sir Oswald further, suspecting him of being the missing Number Seven from the Seven Dials. At Letherbury, Jimmy looks through Sir Oswald's study in the dead of night, is almost caught by Rupert Bateman but manages to talk his way out of the situation. The next day Loraine and Bundle arrive, their car having "broken down" a short distance away, and Jimmy is able to tell them that he has found no evidence that Sir Oswald is Number Seven. Several days later, Bill turns up at Jimmy's London flat. Ronny Devereux's executors have sent him a letter that Ronny left for Bill, should anything happen to him, and he finds its contents incredible. A short time later, Jimmy rings up Bundle and Loraine who are at Chimneys and tells the girls to meet him and Bill at the Seven Dials club, Bill's story being "the biggest scoop of the century." The two girls get their first and Bundle frightens Alfred away by telling him the police are after him. Jimmy arrives, having left Bill outside in the car and upon his request, Bundle shows him the secret room where the Seven Dials meet. Loraine interrupts them: something is wrong with Bill. In the car, they find him unconscious and take him into the club. Jimmy runs off to get a doctor and Bundle goes round the club looking for brandy for Bill but someone knocks her unconscious. She comes round in Bill's arms and Bundle is pleasantly surprised to hear words of love from him. They are interrupted by Mr Mosgorovsky who then takes them into an emergency meeting of the Seven Dials. Number Seven is there and reveals himself: it is Superintendent Battle. He tells Bundle that the Seven Dials is not an association of criminals but instead is a group of criminal-catchers and people who do secret service work for their country. Among the group, Mr Mosgorovsky is a member, Gerry Wade and Ronny Devereux were, the Countess having now taken Gerry's place but her real identity is the American actress, Babe St Maur. To Bundle's shock, another member of the association is Bill Eversleigh but that shock is increased when Battle tells her that the association has at last succeeded in getting their main target, an international criminal whose stock trade is the theft of secret formulae: Jimmy Thesiger who was arrested that afternoon together with his accomplice, Loraine Wade. Battle explains that Jimmy killed Gerry Wade when he got onto Jimmy's track. Ronny took the eighth clock from the dead man's room in an attempt to see if anyone reacted to there being "seven dials". Bauer was put into Chimneys by the Seven Dials to keep an eye on things but Jimmy was too clever for him. Ronny Devereux was killed when he started to get too close to the truth and the latter's last words were not a warning to Jimmy about the Seven Dials but the other way round. At Wyvern Abbey, there was no second man stealing the formula. Jimmy climbed up the ivy to Sir Stanley Digby's room, threw the formula down to Loraine, climbed back down the ivy and into the library where he staged the fight, shot himself in his right arm and threw the second pistol onto the lawn. As his right arm was disabled and he was right-handed he had to dispose of his left-handed glove, using his teeth hence the marks, in the fire. Bill's story of the papers Ronny left him were a fabrication to get Jimmy into the open. Jimmy gave Bill a drugged drink in his flat but it was not drunk. Bill feigned unconsciousness in the car outside the Seven Dials club. Jimmy never went for a doctor but hid himself in the club and it was he who knocked Bundle unconscious. His plan was to leave Bill and Bundle there as a "shock" to the then-unknown Number Seven. Bundle is offered the empty place in the Seven Dials and Bill also proposes to her. Lord Caterham is delighted: Bill is a golfer and he now has someone else to play with!
534767	/m/02mky2	Travesties	Tom Stoppard			 The play's setting is primarily Zürich, Switzerland during the First World War. Three important personalities were living in Zürich at that time: the modernist author James Joyce, the communist revolutionary Lenin, and the founder of Dada, Tristan Tzara. In the play the less notable English consular official Henry Carr, who is likewise a real person and was similarly in Zürich, recalls his perceptions and his experiences with these influential figures. As he reminisces Carr's memory becomes prone to distraction, and instead of predictable historical biography these characters are interpreted through the maze of his mind. Carr's memories are couched in a Zürich production of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest in which he had a starring role. Stoppard uses this production and Carr's mixed feelings surrounding it as a framework to explore art, the war and revolution. Situations from Earnest feature prominently within the action. The characters in Travesties also include versions of two from Earnest, Gwendolen and Cecily, and the comedic situations of many of the other roles are shared by other characters. Stoppard uses many theatrical devices within the play, including puns, limericks, and an extended parody of the vaudeville song "Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean". The real Carr did play Algernon with a group of actors called The English Players, for whom the real James Joyce was the business manager. Carr and Joyce had an angry disagreement after the play, which led to legal action and accusations of slander by Joyce. The dispute was settled with the judge deciding in favour of both disputants on different counts. Joyce later parodied Carr, and the English Consul General in Zürich at that time, A. Percy Bennett, as two minor characters in Ulysses, with Carr being portrayed as a drunken, obscene soldier in the "Circe" episode. After the first performance of Travesties Stoppard received a letter from the real Henry Carr's widow, expressing her surprise that her late husband had found himself imagined as a character in Stoppard's play.
534882	/m/02ml87	Ronia the Robber's Daughter	Astrid Lindgren	1981	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Set in the early Middle Ages, Ronia, the main character, is a girl growing up in a clan of robbers, who lives in a castle in the woodlands of Scandinavia. As the only child of Mattis, the chief, she is expected to become the leader of the clan someday. Their castle, Mattis's Fort, is split in two parts by a lightning bolt on the day of Ronia's birth. Soon afterwards, a different clan of robbers, the "Borkas", settles the other side of the mountain, resulting in much strife between the two clans. Ronia grows up with Mattis's clan of robbers as her only company. One day, Ronia sees Birk Borkason, the only son of the enemy chieftain, Borka, idling by the chasm that splits the two parts of the castle. He is the only other child she has ever met, and so she is sorry that he is a Borka. He engages her in a game of jumping across, which does not end until Birk almost falls down. Ronia saves him and they become friends. The following winter is long and cold and although Mattis's robbers are well fed, their counterparts are suffering on the other side of the chasm. Ronia brings food to Birk through a secret passageway. They get very close but both know that they cannot tell their families. Later that year Birk saves Ronia from being captured by the faeries only to be captured himself by Ronia's father. Ronia gives herself to the Borkas so she must be exchanged, but as a result her father disowns her and refuses to acknowledge her as his daughter. Birk and Ronia run away to the woods. Ultimately their families repent of their feuding, and everyone is reunited.
535144	/m/02mm4z	Pet Sematary	Stephen King	1983-11-14	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Louis Creed, a doctor from Chicago, moves to a house near the small town of Ludlow, Maine with his family: wife Rachel; their two young children, Ellen ("Ellie") and Gage; and Ellie's cat, Winston Churchill ("Church"). Their neighbor, an elderly man named Jud Crandall, warns Louis and Rachel about the highway that runs past their house; it is used by trucks from a nearby chemical plant that often pass by at high speeds. Jud and Louis become friends. Since Louis's father died when he was three, his relationship with Jud takes on a father-son dimension. A few weeks after the Creeds move in, Jud takes the family on a walk in the woods behind their home. A well-tended path leads to a pet cemetery (misspelled "sematary") where the children of the town bury their deceased animals, most of them dogs and cats killed by the trucks on the road. A heated argument erupts between Louis and Rachel the next day. Rachel disapproves of discussing death and she worries about how Ellie may be affected by what she saw at the cemetery. It is later explained that Rachel was traumatized by the early death of her sister, Zelda, from spinal meningitis. Louis has a traumatic experience as director of the University of Maine's campus health service when Victor Pascow, a student who is fatally injured after being struck by an automobile, addresses his dying words personally to Louis even though they have never met. On the night following Pascow's death, Louis is visited by the student's walking, conscious corpse, which leads him to the cemetery and refers specifically to the "deadfall", a dangerous pile of tree and bush limbs that form a barrier at the back. Pascow warns Louis not to "go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to." Louis wakes up in bed the next morning convinced it was a dream, but discovers his feet and the bedsheets covered with dirt and pine needles. Louis dismisses the episode as a result of stress caused by Pascow's death coupled with his wife's anxieties about death. He accepts the situation as a bout of sleep walking. Louis is forced to confront death at Halloween, when Jud's wife, Norma, suffers a near-fatal heart attack. Thanks to Louis's immediate attention, Norma recovers. Jud is grateful for Louis's help, and decides to repay him after Church is run over by a truck at Thanksgiving. Rachel and the children are visiting her parents in Chicago, and Louis frets over breaking the news to Ellie. Jud takes him to the pet cemetery, supposedly to bury Church. Instead, Jud leads Louis beyond the deadfall to "the real cemetery": an ancient burial ground that was once used by the Micmacs, a Native American tribe. Following Jud's instructions, Louis buries the cat and constructs a cairn. The next afternoon, the cat returns home. However, while he used to be vibrant and lively, he now acts strangely and "a little dead," in Louis's words. Church hunts for mice and birds much more often, but rips them apart without eating them. The cat also gives off an unpleasant odor. Louis is disturbed by Church's resurrection and begins to regret his decision. Jud tells Louis about his dog Spot, who was brought back to life in the same manner when Jud was twelve. Louis asks if a person was ever buried in the Micmac grounds, to which Jud answers vehemently no. Several months later, Gage, who had just learned to walk, is run over by a speeding truck. At Gage's wake, Rachel's father, Irwin, who never respected Louis or his daughter's decision to marry him, berates Louis harshly, blaming Louis for the boy's death. The two fight in the funeral home's viewing room and upset the casket; Rachel witnesses the fight and becomes hysterical. Overcome with grief and despair, Louis considers bringing his son back to life with the power of the burial ground. Jud, guessing what Louis is planning, attempts to dissuade him by telling him the story of Timmy Baterman, a young man from Ludlow who was killed charging a machine gun nest on the road to Rome during World War II. His father, Bill, put Timmy's body in the burial ground, where he came back to life, and was seen by terrified townsfolk soon thereafter. Jud and three of his friends went to the Baterman house to confront the pair, but Timmy confronted each of them with indiscretions they had committed, indiscretions he had no way of knowing, thus giving the impression that the resurrected Timmy was actually some sort of demon who had possessed Timmy's body. Jud and his friends fled the house horrified, and Bill shot his son and burned his house to the ground, killing himself. Jud concludes that Gage died because he showed Louis the burial ground. There are hints that at some point the burial ground was used for victims of cannibalism and that it became the haunt of the Wendigo, a terrible creature of the forest, whose mere presence gives men a taste for the flesh of their own kind. In Jud's words the "ground had gone sour" and now corrupts any animal or person buried there. Despite Jud's warning and his own reservations, Louis's grief and guilt spur him to carry out his plan. Louis has Rachel and Ellie visit her parents in Chicago again, not telling them his intentions, intending to bury Gage and then spend a couple of days with him in private to 'diagnose' his son and determine if what happened to Timmy has happened to him. Louis exhumes his son's body and takes him to the burial site. Along the trail, the Wendigo nearly frightens him away but Louis's determination, combined with the power of the burial site, keeps him moving. Ellie has a nightmare featuring Victor Pascow on the flight to Chicago. Because of Ellie's near hysteria, and an agreement between Rachel and her daughter as to Louis's behavior, Rachel attempts to fly back to Maine, but misses her connecting flight at Boston and decides to drive the rest of the distance. Louis buries Gage at the burial ground. Gage returns as a demonic shadow of his former self, able to talk like an adult. He breaks into Jud's house and taunts Jud about his wife's implied infidelity, then kills Jud with one of Louis' scalpels. When Rachel arrives at Jud's house, Gage kills her also (and, it is implied, partially eats her corpse). This event pushes Louis's mind into its final stage of insanity. Louis kills Church and Gage with a fatal dose of morphine, and then grieves for his son by sitting in the corner of the hallway. Louis, now completely insane and having prematurely aged with shockingly white hair, burns down Jud's house, then carries Rachel's body to the burial ground, saying that he "waited too long" with Gage but is confident that Rachel will come back the same as before. After being interrogated by investigators about the fire, Louis waits until nightfall for Rachel to return. Playing solitaire, he hears his resurrected wife walk into the house, and the novel ends with Rachel speaking "Darling", her mouth sounding as if it is full of dirt.
535391	/m/02mn05	Firestarter	Stephen King	1980-09-29	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Andy and Charlene "Charlie" McGee are a father-daughter pair on the run from a government agency known as The Shop, located in the fictional D.C. suburb of Longmont, Virginia. During his college years, Andy had participated in a Shop experiment dealing with "Lot 6", a drug with hallucinogenic effects similar to LSD. The drug gave his future wife, Victoria Tomlinson, minor telepathic abilities, and him an autohypnotic mind domination ability he refers to as "the push". Both his and Vicky's powers are physiologically limited; in his case, overuse of the Push gives him crippling migraine headaches and minute brain hemorrhages, but their daughter Charlie developed a frightening pyrokinetic ability, with the full extent of her power unknown. The novel begins in medias res with Charlie and Andy on the run from Shop agents in New York City. We learn through a combination of flashbacks and current narration that this is the latest in a series of attempts by the Shop to capture Andy and Charlie following an initial disastrous raid on the McGee family's quiet life in suburban Ohio. After years of Shop surveillance, a botched operation to take Charlie leaves her mother dead; Andy, receiving a psychic flash while having lunch with work colleagues, rushes home to discover his wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped. He then uses his push ability to track the slightly-cold trail of Charlie and the Shop agents, catching up to them at a rest stop on the Interstate. He uses the push to incapacitate the Shop agents, leaving one blind and the other comatose. Charlie and Andy flee and begin a life of running and hiding, using assumed identities. They move several times to avoid discovery before the Shop catches up to them in New York. Using a combination of the push, Charlie's power, and hitchhiking, the pair escape through Albany, New York and are taken in by a farmer named Irv Manders near Hastings, New York; however, they are tracked down by Shop agents, who attempt to kill Andy and take Charlie at the Manders farm. At Andy's instruction, Charlie unleashes her power, incinerating the entire farm and fending off the agents, killing a few of them. With nowhere else to turn, the pair flees to Vermont and take refuge in a cabin that had once belonged to Andy's grandfather. With the Manders farm operation disastrously botched, the director of the Shop, Captain James Hollister, or "Cap", calls in a Shop hitman named John Rainbird to capture the fugitives. Rainbird, a Cherokee and Vietnam veteran, is intrigued by Charlie's power and eventually becomes obsessed with her, determined to befriend her and eventually kill her. This time the operation is successful, and both Andy and Charlie are taken by the Shop. The pair is separated and imprisoned at the Shop headquarters. With his spirit broken, Andy becomes an overweight drug addict and seemingly loses his power, and is eventually deemed useless by the Shop. Charlie, however, defiantly refuses to cooperate with the Shop, and does not demonstrate her power for them. Six months pass until a power failure provides a turning point for the two: Andy, sick with fear and self-pity, somehow regains the push - subconsciously pushing himself to overcome his addiction - and Rainbird, masquerading as a simple janitor, befriends Charlie and gains her trust. By pretending to still be powerless and addicted, Andy manages to gain crucial information by pushing his psychiatrist. Under Rainbird's guidance, Charlie begins to demonstrate her power, which has grown to fearsome levels. After the suicide of his psychiatrist, Andy is able to meet and push Cap, using him to plan his and Charlie's escape from the facility, as well as finally communicating with Charlie. Rainbird discovers Andy's plan, however, and decides to use it to his advantage. Andy's plan succeeds, and he and Charlie are reunited for the first time in six months. Rainbird then interrupts the meeting at a barn, planning to kill them both. A crucial distraction is provided by Cap, who is losing his mind from a side effect of being pushed. Andy pushes Rainbird into leaping from the upper level of the barn, breaking his leg. Rainbird then shoots Andy in the head. Rainbird then fires another shot at Charlie, but she uses her power to melt the bullet in midair and then sets Rainbird and Cap on fire. A mortally wounded Andy then instructs Charlie to take revenge with her power and inform the public, to make sure the government cannot do anything like this ever again, and dies. A grief-stricken and furious Charlie then sets the barn on fire. She exits the barn and people start going after her. She uses her pyrokinesis to kill the employees and blow up their getaway vehicles. People try to flee and some do. Military men are called, but Charlie blows up their vehicles and when they fire at her she melts their bullets. Charlie blows up the building, shooting it sky-high. She leaves the Longmont facility burning, with almost all of its workers dead. The event is covered up by the government, and released to the papers as a terrorist firebomb attack. The Shop quickly reforms, under new leadership, and begins a manhunt for Charlie, who has returned to the Manders farm. After some deliberation, she comes up with a plan and leaves the Manders', just ahead of Shop operatives, and heads to New York City. She decides on Rolling Stone magazine as an unbiased, honest media source with no ties to the government, and the book ends as she arrives to tell them her story.
535765	/m/02mp73	Rage	Stephen King		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Charlie Decker, a Maine high school senior, is called to meeting with his principal over a previous incident in which Decker attacked his chemistry teacher with a heavy wrench. For unknown reasons, Charlie subjects the principal to a series of insulting remarks, resulting in his expulsion. Charlie storms out of the office and retrieves a pistol from his locker, setting its contents on fire. He then returns to his classroom and fatally shoots his Algebra teacher. The fire triggers an alarm, but Charlie forces his classmates to stay in the classroom, killing another teacher when he enters. As the students and teachers evacuate the school, police and media arrive at the scene. In the following four hours, Charlie toys with various authority figures who attempt to negotiate with him, including the principal, the school psychologist, and the local police chief. Charlie gives them certain commands, threatening to kill students if they do not comply. Charlie also admits to his hostages that he does not know what has compelled him to commit his deeds, believing he will regret them when the situation is over. As his fellow students start identifying with Charlie, he unwittingly turns his class into a sort of psychotherapy group, causing his schoolmates to semi-voluntarily tell embarrassing secrets regarding themselves and each other. Interspersed throughout are narrative flashbacks to Charlie's troubled childhood, particularly his tumultuous relationship with his abusive father. Several notable incidents include a violent disagreement between two female students, and a SWAT team sniper shooting Charlie in the chest. However, Charlie survives due to the bullet striking his locker's padlock, which he had earlier placed in his shirt pocket. Charlie finally comes to the realization that one student is really being held there against his will: a seeming "big man on campus" named Ted Jones, who is harboring his own secrets. Ted realizes this and attempts to escape the classroom, but the other students brutally assault him, driving him into a battered catatonic state. At 1:00 PM, Charlie releases the students. When the police chief enters the classroom, he shoots the now-unarmed Charlie when he attempts suicide by cop. Charlie survives and is found not guilty by reason of insanity, committed to a psychiatric hospital in Augusta until he is no longer a threat to society. The story ends with Charlie addressing the reader, "I have to turn off the light now. Good night."
535861	/m/02mphq	The Regulators	Stephen King	1996-09-24	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story takes place in the fictional town of Wentworth, Ohio, a typical suburban community. On Poplar Street, an autistic boy named Seth has gained the power to control reality through the help of a being known as Tak. Soon, Poplar Street begins to change shape, transforming from a quiet suburb into a wild west caricature based on what Seth has seen on his television. Meanwhile, the other residents of the street are being attacked by the many beings that Seth's imagination is creating, due to Tak's control over them. These residents are forced to work together to stop Seth and Tak from completely transforming the world around them and stop Tak before he kills anyone else. Seth's imagination is heavily influenced by a western called The Regulators and a cartoon called MotoKops 2200. The novel contains excerpts from scripts for both.
536064	/m/02mq3f	The Two Georges	Harry Turtledove		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 For more than two centuries, what would have become the United States and Canada has been the North American Union, a territory encompassing the northern portion of the continent except Alaska, retained under the rule of Russia. The Two Georges, a Gainsborough painting, commemorates the agreement between George Washington and King George III that created this part of the British Empire. The painting itself has become a symbol of national unity. While being displayed in New Liverpool, the painting is stolen while a crowd is distracted by the murder of "Honest" Dick (a.k.a. "Tricky" Dick), the Steamer King, a nationally-known used car salesman. Colonel Thomas Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police leads the search for the painting, accompanied by its former curator Dr. Kathleen Flannery and Captain Samuel Stanley. Some days later, a ransom note is received from the Sons of Liberty, a terrorist organization that wants to see America independent of Britain. The Governor-General of the North American Union, Sir Martin Luther King, informs Bushell in confidence that the painting must be recovered before King Charles III's state visit, or the government will have to pay the Sons' ransom demand of fifty million pounds. The search takes Bushell, Flannery, and Stanley across the country via airship (an advanced form of dirigible), train, and steamer. They also meet many members of the Sons of Liberty, including Boston newspaper editor John F. Kennedy. After chasing many false leads and the wrong suspects, Bushell and his associates arrive at Victoria and find The Two Georges an hour before the King arrives. They also uncover the true culprits: the Holy Alliance, a union of France and Spain controlling almost everything from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, and Bushell's superior officer and covert fanatic Sons of Liberty sympathizer, Lieutenant General Horace Bragg. Bushnell then thwarts Bragg's two tries to assassinate the King. Bragg is sent to the gallows, while Bushell and Stanley are both knighted by the King for their accomplishments.
536586	/m/02mrjf	The Adventure of the Lion's Mane	Arthur Conan Doyle			 Holmes is enjoying his retirement in Sussex when one day at the beach, he meets his friend Harold Stackhurst, the headmaster of a nearby preparatory school called The Gables. No sooner have they met than Stackhurst's science master, Fitzroy McPherson, staggers up to them, obviously in agony and wearing only an overcoat and trousers. He collapses, manages to say something about a "lion's mane", and then dies. He is observed to have red welts all over his back, administered by a flexible weapon of some kind, for the marks curve over his shoulder and round his ribs. Moments later, Ian Murdoch, a mathematics teacher, comes up behind them. He has not seen the attack, and has only just arrived at the beach from the school. Holmes sees a couple of people far up the beach, but thinks they are much too far away to have had anything to do with McPherson's death. Likewise, the few fishing boats off the beach are too far out. It emerges that Murdoch and McPherson were friends, but had not always been. Murdoch is an enigmatic fellow with an occasional bad temper. He once threw McPherson's dog through a plate-glass window, for instance. Despite this, Stackhurst is sure that they were friends. McPherson also had a lover, and on further investigation, it turns out that Maud Bellamy was McPherson's fiancée. A note confirming a meeting with her was found on McPherson, but it gave no clear details. Holmes goes to look at the lagoon formed by a recent storm that local men have been using as a bathing pond. He sees McPherson's towel lying there dry and concludes that he never went into the water. Holmes arranges to have the caves and other nooks at the foot of the cliffs searched, expecting that that will turn up nothing and no-one. He is right. Stackhurst and Holmes decide to go and see Miss Bellamy to see whether she can shed any light on this perplexing mystery. Just as they are approaching The Haven, the Bellamys' house, they see Ian Murdoch emerge. Stackhurst demands to know what he was doing there, and an angry exchange ensues with Murdoch declaring in effect that it was none of Stackhurst's business. Stackhurst loses his temper and sacks Murdoch on the spot. He storms off to get ready to move out. They visit the Bellamys and find an amazingly beautiful woman in Maud Bellamy, but two most unpleasant men in her father and muscular brother. It seems that they did not approve of the liaison between Maud and McPherson. They do not even find out about the engagement until this meeting, such has been the secrecy of their affair. Maud says that she will help however she can, but it does not seem likely that she can do anything. It emerges, however, that Ian Murdoch was once a potential suitor to Miss Bellamy. Holmes begins to suspect that Murdoch may be responsible for McPherson's death, out of jealousy. A further mystifying clue presents itself when McPherson's dog is found dead at the very pool where McPherson met his end. It obviously died in agony, much as its master did. At this point, Holmes begins to suspect something else. The dead man's dying words, "lion's mane," have triggered a memory, but he cannot quite call it back to mind. Inspector Bardle of the Sussex Constabulary visits Holmes to ask if there is enough evidence to arrest Ian Murdoch. Holmes is sure that there is not. The case is most incomplete, especially as Murdoch has an alibi. He also could not have singlehandedly overcome McPherson, who was quite strong, despite having heart trouble. The two men also consider McPherson's wounds. The weals actually looked as though they may have been administered by a hot wire mesh, or perhaps a cat o' nine tails. Holmes has formed a theory which might explain McPherson's death and is about to go back to the bathing pond to test it. As he is about to leave, Murdoch arrives, helped in by Stackhurst, who is afraid that Murdoch might be dying; he fainted twice in pain. He has the same wounds on him that McPherson had. In great agony, he calls for brandy, passes out, but finally recovers. At the bathing pond, Holmes spots the murderer: it is a Lion's Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata), a deadly creature about which Holmes has read. Holmes takes a rock and kills it. He shares the story by John George Wood of an encounter with just such a jellyfish with the other men. Murdoch is exonerated, of course. It turns out that he was acting as a go-between for McPherson and Maud, and did not wish to discuss it with anyone. The story ends on an upbeat note as Stackhurst forgives Murdoch and gives him his job back.
537049	/m/02mt7p	Oryx and Crake	Margaret Atwood		{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel begins after the collapse of civilization by an event that is not immediately identified. The protagonist is Snowman, a post-apocalyptic hermit character. He resides near a group of what he refers to as Crakers—strange human-like creatures. They bring Snowman food and consult him on matters that surpass their understanding. In addition, strange hybrid beasts such as wolvogs, pigoons and rakunks roam freely. As the story develops, these assorted lifeforms are revealed to be the products of genetic engineering. In flashbacks, we learn that Snowman was once a young boy named Jimmy, who grew up in the near, yet undefined past. His world was dominated by multinational corporations which kept their employees' families in privileged compounds separated from a global lower moiety of pleeblands. Shortly after Jimmy's family moved to the HelthWyzer corporate compound (where his father worked as a genographer) Jimmy met and befriended Glenn (referred to throughout the novel as Crake), a brilliant science student. Jimmy and Crake spend a lot of their leisure time playing online computer games such as Kwiktime Osama (a reference to Osama bin Laden) and Blood and Roses, smoking "skunkweed", or watching live executions, Noodie News, frog squashing, graphic surgery and child pornography. One of Crake's favourite pastimes is an online game called Extinctathon, a trivia game which requires immense knowledge of extinct animal and plant species. Using the codenames "Thickney" (Jimmy) and "Crake" (Glenn), they both play as teenagers. It is not until they are both in university that Jimmy discovers that Crake has advanced through the game to become a Grandmaster of Extinctathon. On another trip through the dark underbelly of the Web, they come across an Asian child pornography website, where Jimmy is struck and haunted by the eyes of a young girl. The two male characters pursue different educational paths: Crake attends the highly respected Watson-Crick Institute where he studies advanced bioengineering, but Jimmy ends up at the loathed Martha Graham Academy, where students study literature and the humanities, which are not valued fields of study except for their commercial and/or propaganda applications. After finishing school, Jimmy ends up writing ad copy, while Crake becomes a bioengineer. Crake uses his prominent position at the biotechnology corporation to launch a project to create the Crakers. His goal is to create a peaceful society where people will live harmoniously with each other and nature. These genetically engineered humans are leaf and grass-eating herbivores who only have sexual intercourse during limited breeding seasons when they are polyandrous. Crake eventually finds the girl from the child pornography website (or a woman who could be her) and hires her, as both a prostitute for himself, and a teacher for the Crakers. She takes the pseudonym Oryx, derived from the entry for Oryx beisa in Extinctathon. Jimmy identifies the haunting memory of the young girl with Oryx, though it is never made clear whether or not the two are the same person. Oryx eventually becomes intimately involved in the lives of Jimmy and Crake, and both fall in love with her. Oryx, however, views their relationship as strictly professional and only admires Crake as a scientist and "great man". For fun and affection she turns to Jimmy, though her feelings for him are not as clear. The two hide their relationship from Crake, and Jimmy is often plagued with the thought of Crake finding out about his betrayal. At the same time, Crake creates a virulent genetic pandemic disguised as a prophylactic agent that, apparently, killed off most humans except for Jimmy. Jimmy was unknowingly vaccinated by Crake with the intention of acting as a guardian for the Crakers. Crake's rationale is that he is heroically saving intelligent life from an inevitably dying society. In the story's climax, Crake's perfected "hot bioform", present in one of his company's products, is activated and spreads throughout the world. During the chaos, Crake presents himself to Jimmy, then kills Oryx by slitting her throat. Jimmy shoots Crake, resulting in his being left to obsess over his vanished world and unanswered questions. Jimmy contemplates abandoning the Crakers but is constantly haunted by the voice of Oryx, and reminded of his promise to her to watch over them. Snowman instills the Crakers with his own invented religion revolving around Crake and Oryx. Oryx becomes the guardian of the animals and Crake the creator god. During Snowman's journey to scavenge supplies, he is uncomfortable wearing shoes now that his feet have become toughened without them. He cuts his foot on a tiny sliver of glass. Infected by some descendant of transgenic experiments, his body cannot fight back, and his foot becomes inflamed. Returning to the Crakers, he learns that three ragged true humans have camped nearby. He follows the smoke from the fire and watches as they cook a rakunk. Uncertain of how he should approach them (Blast them to bits to protect the Crakers? Approach with open arms?) he checks his now not-working watch and thinks, "Time to go," leaving the reader to speculate as to what his actions and future will be.
537301	/m/02mv1w	Temple	Matthew Reilly	1999-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Professor William Race is a young linguist, working for NYU. One day, he is approached by a retired Col. Frank Nash, a physicist from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to translate a manuscript written in ancient Latin. Initially, Race is reluctant because Nash only describes what is required from him on the most vaguest terms and does not appear to be interested in the alternatives Race gives him. Race is relectant to join even when he hears that his brother, Marty, was the one who suggested his name. What clinches it, is that when Nash mentions the names of the civilians who are going to be on the trip, one of the names turns out to be Race's college sweetheart, Lauren, who left him many years ago. In a sudden impulse to see what she has done with herself, Race agrees to join the team. Nash assigns Van Lewen, a Sergent in the Green Berets, as Race's bodyguard and they move to the airport to fly to Peru. En route, Nash provides Race with photocopied pages of what turns out to be a copy of the Santiago Manuscript, which describes the adventures of Alberto Santiago a Spanish missionary in Peru whilst also holding the key to the final resting place of a legendary Incan idol, allegedly made of thyrium-261, an element that, when combined with the mass destruction weapon the Supernova, would destroy a third of the Earth's mass throwing it off from the orbit and effectively killing the planet. The team lands in Peru with mission leader Frank Nash, physicist Troy Copeland, archaeologist Gaby Lopez, anthropologist Walter Chambers, five Green Berets, his personal bodyguard, and his college sweetheart. But when the manuscript leads the team to an ancient Incan temple, the hunt becomes a fight for survival when their raid of the temple is taken over by hostile German terrorists. And the situation becomes even worse for Race and the team when an army of giant "rapa" cats, hellbent on ripping throats, snapping spines and mauling anyone who comes near them. Can Race lead the team to the idol, or is he leading them into disaster, and violent death?
538880	/m/02mzfz	The Man Who Folded Himself	David Gerrold	1973	{"/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 1975, Daniel Eakins, a young college student, is visited by his Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim offers to increase Daniel's monthly allowance for living expenses as long as Daniel promises to keep a diary. Shortly after, Uncle Jim dies, and Daniel inherits a 'Timebelt' from him that allows the wearer to travel through time. Daniel quickly learns how to use the Timebelt and makes a few short jumps into his own future. He meets an alternate version of himself, who accompanies him to a race-track where the pair make a fortune betting on horse-racing. The following day, Daniel realises that it is his turn to guide his younger self through the previous day at the races; through this and other events the time-travelling Daniel learns more about the belt, about the nature of the 'timestream', and about his personal identity. Daniel develops an interest in history, and uses the Timebelt to experience many of the significant events of world history and to view the future. He also changes the past to give himself a vast financial empire. At the same time, he begins to understand more of his own character, becoming less introverted and more confident in having a companion (either his past or future self) whom he is able to completely understand and relate to. No longer limited to living in a linear stretch of time, he sets about trying to change the world to fit his own desires, and having more and more strange experiences with his alternate selves. His activities result in a series of time paradoxes, which are explained by the existence of multiple universes and multiple histories: the Timebelt does not actually move the user around a single timeline, but to a new alternate reality which is the result of all the changes that Daniel has previously made to that reality. Daniel repeatedly encounters alternate versions of himself, ultimately having sex with himself and beginning a relationship with himself. He learns that the changes he has made to his timeline have erased all traces of his childhood and early life. Finding himself lonely and hoping to correct the situation, he jumps backwards in time, where he meets a female version of himself called Diane. He begins a relationship with Diane. Diane soon becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son. Shortly after, Daniel and Diane separate, and Daniel raises his son in 1950s America. As Daniel ages, he becomes more obsessed with returning to the relationship he had with Diane, and then with the thought of his own inevitable death. He spends much of his time at a house party set in 1999, enjoying the company of dozens of versions of himself at different ages. Daniel eventually realises that he has now become his Uncle Jim and that his son is actually the young future version of himself who will go on to inherit the Timebelt, and that his life has 'come full circle'. He makes preparations for after his death to ensure that the young Daniel experiences the same events that he did when he was the same age. The book ends with the young Daniel, who has read the now-complete diary, having to decide whether he will use the Timebelt.
538998	/m/02mzwq	The Four Feathers	A. E. W. Mason	1902	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel tells the story of a British officer, Harry Feversham, who resigns from his commission in the East Surrey Regiment just prior to Sir Garnet Wolseley's 1882 expedition to Egypt to suppress the rising of Arabi Pasha. He is faced with censure from three of his comrades, Captain Trench as well as Lieutenants Castleton and Willoughby for cowardice, which is signified by the delivery of three white feathers to him. He loses support of his Irish fiancée, Ethne Eustace, who too presents him with the fourth feather. His best friend in the regiment, Captain Durrance becomes his rival for Ethne. Harry talks with Lieutenant Sutch, a friend of his father, who is an imposing retired general and questions his own true motives, moreover he talks of his resolution to redeem himself by acts that will force his critics to take back the feathers, this might in turn encourage Ethne to take back the feather, which she gave him. He travels on his own to Egypt and Sudan, where in 1882 Muhammad Ahmed proclaimed himself the Mahdi (Guided One) and raised a Holy War. On January 26, 1885, his forces which were called Dervishes, captured Khartoum and killed its British governor, General Charles George Gordon. It was mainly in the eastern Sudan, where the British and Egyptians held Suakin, where the action takes place over the next six years. Durrance is blinded by sunstroke and invalided. Castleton is reportedly killed at Tamai,where a British square is briefly broken. Harry's first success came when he recovers lost letters of Gordon. He is aided by a Sudanese Arab, Abou Fatma. Later, disguised as a mad Greek musician, Harry gets imprisoned in Omdurman, where he rescues the Colonel Trench, who had been captured on a reconnaissance mission and they escape. Harry has his honour restored by Willoughby and then Trench giving to Ethne the feathers they've taken back. He returns to England, and sees Ethne for one last time as she has determined to devote herself to Col. Durrance, but Durrance explains that his travel to Germany to seek a cure for his blindness has been a pretense, to wait for Harry to redeem himself. Ethne and Harry wed, and Durrance travels to 'the East' as a civilian. The story is rich in characters and sub-plots, which the filmed versions perforce trim, along with making major changes in the story line, with the best known 1939 version centered on the 1898 campaign and battle of Omdurman, only hinted at as a future event in the novel.
539255	/m/02m_rj	Ice Station	Matthew Reilly	1998-08	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After a diving team at Wilkes Ice Station is killed, the station sends out a distress signal which is picked up and a team of United States Recon Marines lead by Shane Schofield, code named Scarecrow, arrives at the station. At the station he finds several French scientists have arrive and several more come after the Marine's arrival. The French however reveal themselves as actual soldiers and a fight ensues in the station, claiming the lives of Scarecrow's men Hollywood, Legs, Ratman, several scientists, and all of the French soldiers while Mother looses her leg, Samurai is badly injured, and two French scientists are captured. Schofield decides to send a team down to find an object below the ice where the diving team was going to. Later, Samurai is found dead via strangling, leaving the only people he trusts to be one of the scientists, Sarah Hensleigh and another soldier named Montana as he was with them at the time of Samurai's death. Hensleigh, Montana, and two other Marines, Gant, and Santa Cruz, are sent down to where the diving team vanished. While alone, Schofield is shot and killed. He later wakes up, found to have been accidentally resurrected by his attacker and is in the care of scientists James Renshaw, the believed killer of one of the other scientists at Wilkes. Watching a video of Schofield's death, they see the attacker and discover it to be one of Schofield's men, Snake. The two capture Snake before he is able to kill the wounded Mother. Meanwhile in the United States, Andrew Trent and Pete Cameron meet, Cameron being a news reporter and Trent being a former Marine using the alias of Andrew Wilcox to avoid being found by the U.S military who a few years back had tried to kill him. They hear the distress call from Shofield and Trent realizes that what happened to him was happening to Shofield. The team learns of an appending attack by the SAS and decide to flee the station. During the escape via stolen vehicles, Shofield and Renshaw's is pushed off a cliff, Shofield's close friend Book and the step-daughter of Sarah Hensleigh, Kirsty, are captured, while Rebound escapes with four of the scientists. Schofield manages to destroy a French submarine and he and Renshaw begin their journey back towards it. Meanwhile, the SAS Brigadier Trevor Barnaby kills the two remaining French scientists and feeds Book to a pod of Killer whales. Schofield returns to the station and manages to kill all of the SAS and Snake, and save Kirsty. Schofield receives a message from Trent with a list of members of a secret service known as the Intelligence Convergance Group which includes Snake and Montana. Gant and her team find what appears to be an alien ship which turns out to be a spy ship. Montana succeeds at killing Santa Cruz but mutated Elephant seals end up killing Montana. Schofield and the two others arrive and Hensleigh reveals herself to be an ICG agent, but is soon killed by a wounded Gant. Remembering the station is about to be destroyed, Schofield, Gant, Renshaw, Kirsty, and a Fur seal named Wendy escape on the spy plane and land on the USS Wasp where they destroy the ship. It is revealed that Mother had escaped Wilkes before its destruction and was saved by US forces. The survivors get to Hawaii where they are nearly killed by an ICG agent before being saved by Trent, Pete and Allison Cameron, and the captain of the USS Wasp. Renshaw assumes custody of Kirsty since he's the godfather and Shofield doesn't leave Gant's side until she recovers.
539702	/m/02n0y9	The Magic Mountain	Thomas Mann	1924	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The narrative opens in the decade before World War I. We are introduced to the central protagonist of the story, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family who, following the early death of his parents, has been brought up by his grandfather and subsequently by an uncle named James Tienappel. We encounter him when he is in his early 20s, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his home town. Just before beginning this professional career Castorp undertakes a journey to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is seeking a cure in a sanatorium in Davos, high up in the Swiss Alps. In the opening chapter, Hans is symbolically transported away from the familiar life and mundane obligations he has known, in what he later learns to call "the flatlands", to the rarefied mountain air and introspective little world of the sanatorium. Castorp's departure from the sanatorium is repeatedly delayed by his failing health. What at first appears to be a minor bronchial infection with slight fever is diagnosed by the sanatorium's chief doctor and director, Hofrat Behrens, as symptoms of tuberculosis. Hans is persuaded by Behrens to stay until his health improves. During his extended stay, Castorp meets and learns from a variety of characters, who together represent a microcosm of pre-war Europe. These include the secular humanist and encyclopedist Lodovico Settembrini (a student of Giosuè Carducci), the totalitarian Jew-turned-Jesuit Leo Naphta, the dionysian Dutch Mynheer Peeperkorn, and his romantic interest Madame Clavdia Chauchat. In the end, Castorp remains in the morbid atmosphere of the sanatorium for seven years. At the conclusion of the novel, the war begins, Castorp volunteers for the military, and his possible, or probable, demise upon the battlefield is portended.
539738	/m/02n14j	The Bridge on the Drina	Ivo Andrić	1945	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the beginning of the book Andrić focuses on a small Serbian boy taken from his mother as part of the levy of Christian subjects of the Sultan (devshirme). Andrić describes how the mothers of these children follow their sons wailing, until they reach a river where the children are taken across by ferry and the mothers can no longer follow. That child becomes a Muslim and, taking a Turkish name (Mehmed, later Mehmed pasha Sokolović), is promoted quickly and around the age of 60 becomes Grand Vizier. Yet, that moment of separation still haunts him and he decides to order the building of a bridge at a point on the river where he was parted from his mother. Already then, even before it has been built, Andrić is portraying the bridge as something with the power not merely to bridge a river but to heal divisions; yet it is quickly to become clear that in this role it is a flawed unifier. The construction work starts in 1566 and five years later the bridge is completed (together with a caravanserai or han), signifying a very important link between Sarajevo pashaluk (the territory of the present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the rest of the Turkish empire, and replacing the unreliable boat transport across the river. The reader learns how serfs are forced to build it and how they variously strike and sabotage the construction site because of poor working conditions. The middle of the bridge, called "the kapia"—the gate, is wider, and it quickly becomes a popular meeting place for people from Višegrad and the surrounding area in a relaxed mood which is still typical of present-day Turkey and most of the Balkans. The reader also learns that there are no tensions between the Muslims (referred to as Turks throughout the novel), Christians (the Serbs), Sephardic Jews and the Roma people. Rather, they stand in solidarity with one another during the regular floods of the Drina. About a century later, Habsburg Austria conquers what is now Hungary and parts of the former Yugoslavia, and thus a crisis within the Turkish empire begins. Due to lack of state funds, the caravanserai is abandoned, while the bridge project is completed, so well-constructed that it stands for centuries without maintenance. The first nationalist tensions arise in the 19th century when the Serbian uprising in the neighbouring Belgrade pashaluk (now Serbia) begins. Even so, neighbour never raises a hand against neighbour; instead soldiers from all parts of the Empire establish a guard-point at the gate and behead suspect Serbs and potential rebels. After the Congress of Berlin, Serbia and Montenegro become fully independent countries while the Austro-Hungarian Empire receives a right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina and thus turn it into a protectorate. Since the completion of the bridge, time has seemed to stop, and the local people have many difficulties in accepting the numerous changes that come with Austrian rule. A barrack is built at the site of the caravanserai and the town suddenly experiences a substantial influx of foreigners. People from all parts of the Austro-Hungarian kingdom arrive, opening their businesses and bringing the customs of their native regions with them. A narrow gauge railway line is built to Sarajevo and the significance of the bridge is soon reduced, but not completely, as will become apparent subsequently. Thanks to this modernisation, children begin to be educated in Sarajevo, and later some of them continue their studies in Vienna. They bring home ideas from the rest of the world and, along with the newspapers that are now available in Višegrad, nationalistic ideas emerge, especially among Serbs. Another "contribution" to these changes is the crisis of the year 1908, when troubles in Turkey give Austria an excellent opportunity to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina formally. During this Annexation Crisis, it becomes evident that Austria sees the Kingdom of Serbia and its royal dynasty, the Karađorđevićs, as a serious obstacle to their further conquest of the Balkans. The Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, when Turkey was almost completely pushed out of the Balkans, do not help to foster better relations between Serbs and Austrians, as they undermine the significance of the middle span of the bridge, with its friendly inter-ethnic relationships and camaraderie. Many young Serbian men pass over it at night and smuggle themselves across the border to Serbia. The reader never learns if the most famous of them, Gavrilo Princip, passes across this bridge, although historically it would have been a possibility. In 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinates Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and thus causes the First World War. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, and the Austrians begin to incite the non-Serbian population of Višegrad against the Serbs living in the town. The bridge with the old road to Sarajevo suddenly regains its importance, as the railway line is not adequate to transport all the materiel and soldiers who are preparing for the invasion of Serbia. However, the Austrians are swiftly defeated on their first invasion attempt and the Serbians start to advance towards Bosnia. The Drina river turns into the frontline of the conflict, so the Austrians evacuate Višegrad and blow up portions of the bridge.
539758	/m/02n18t	The Castle	Franz Kafka		{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The narrator, K., arrives in a village governed by a mysterious bureaucracy that resides in a nearby castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he falsely gives himself out to be a land surveyor summoned by the castle authorities. He is quickly notified that his castle contact is an official named Klamm, who, in the introductory note, informs K. he will report to the Council Chairman. The Council Chairman informs K. that, through a mix up in communication between the castle and the village, he was erroneously requested but, trying to accommodate K., the Council Chairman offers him a position in the service of the school teacher as a caretaker. Meanwhile, K., unfamiliar with the customs, bureaucracy and processes of the village, continues to attempt to reach the official Klamm, which is considered a strong taboo to the villagers. The villagers hold the officials and the castle in the highest regard, justifying, quite elaborately at times, even though they do attempt to appear to know what the officials do, the actions of the officials are never explained; they simply defend it as being absurd any other way. The number of assumptions and justifications about the functions of the officials and their dealings are enumerated through lengthy monologues of the villagers. Everyone appears to have an explanation for the officials' actions that appear to be founded on assumptions and gossip. The descriptions given by the townspeople often contradict themselves by having very different features and routines within a single person's description, but they do not try to hide the ambiguity; instead, they praise it as any other action or feature of an official should be praised. One of the more obvious contradictions between the "official word" and the village conception is the dissertation by the secretary Erlanger on Frieda's required return to service as a barmaid. K. is the only villager that knows that the request is being forced by the castle (even though Frieda may be the genesis), with no consideration of the inhabitants of the village. The castle is the ultimate bureaucracy with copious paperwork that the bureaucracy maintains is "flawless". This flawlessness is, of course, a lie; it is a flaw in the paperwork that has brought K. to the village. There are other failures of the system which are occasionally referred to. K. witnesses a flagrant misprocessing after his nighttime interrogation by Erlanger as a servant destroys paperwork when he cannot determine who the recipient should be. The castle's occupants appear to be all adult men and there is little reference to the castle other than to its bureaucratic functions. The two notable instances are the reference to a fire brigade and that Otto Brunswick's wife declares herself to be from the castle. The latter declaration builds the importance of Hans (Otto's son) in K.'s eyes, as a way to gain access to the castle officials. The functions of the officials are never mentioned. The officials that are discussed have one or more secretaries that do their work in their village. Although the officials come to the village, they do not interact with the villagers unless they need female companionship, implied to be sexual in nature.
539788	/m/02n1d4	Invisible Monsters	Chuck Palahniuk	1999-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story concerns an unnamed disfigured woman who goes by multiple identities which include Shannon McFarland, Daisy St. Patience and Bubba Joan. Identities that were given to her by Brandy Alexander, with whom she spends the majority of the book. The novel opens on the wedding day of Ms. Evie Cottrell, whose house is burning to the ground. Brandy has been shot by Evie, and asks the narrator to tell her life story. She remembers how she first met Brandy, and the story is told in a non-linear sequence of memories. The narrator is the daughter of a farmer. Her older brother, Shane, who is believed to have died from AIDS after running away from home, garnered most of her parents' attention so in an effort to have some attention for herself, our narrator seeks out a career in modeling. Her best friend in modeling school is Evelyn "Evie" Cottrell. They participate in an infomercial together and "perform" in front of customers in department store displays. It is about this time that Evie begins a secret relationship with the narrator's boyfriend, Manus Kelley. While driving down the highway, the narrator is shot in the face. The shot rips off her jaw. She immediately drives to the hospital where she recovers. There she meets Brandy Alexander. They quickly become friends. Brandy is learning to speak like a woman and the narrator is learning to speak without a lower jaw. Also during these sessions, Brandy attempts to teach the narrator how to give herself a new life, a new identity. She gives her a new name, Daisy St. Patience, the first among many new identities given to our narrator. Evie isn't aware of this new identity transformation our narrator is going through, and Evie begs her to come live with her. As soon as she arrives, Evie informs her that she has to leave for Cancún for a couple weeks, leaving our narrator alone in the house. The first night, someone breaks in, and it is revealed to be Manus Kelley, holding a huge kitchen knife. Because of the rapid non-linear motion of the novel's events, the narrator has often referred to Manus as Seth, an identity given to him by Brandy, and it is not until this moment in the novel that the reader learns that Manus and Seth are the same person. The narrator locks Manus in a closet and sets fire to the house. The narrator forces Manus to ingest pills and medication before releasing him only to lock him in the trunk of his own car. She flees to the only place she can think of, Brandy's apartment. While at Brandy Alexander's apartment (which is a hotel room), she meets the Rhea sisters, Brandy's roommates. The three are drag queens and performers who are paying for all of Brandy's operations. At the hotel room, the narrator learns that Brandy Alexander is really her brother, Shane, and that he strives to look like his sister (our narrator). Brandy then leaves with our narrator, now called Daisy, and Manus, now called Seth. They travel the country, and while pretending to be viewing rich homes for sale, steal whatever drugs or medication they can find in the medicine cabinets. Later, the narrator hears of Brandy's stories of sexual abuse from their father and later from a policeman, who she concludes must have been Manus. One day, they are pretending to view a home, and it turns out the Realtor is the mother of Evie Cottrell. Her mother reveals that they are marrying Evie off to save themselves trouble, and also discloses that Evie used to be a man. Our narrator steals a wedding invitation and the trio attend the wedding. Here again, the narrator sets fire to the home, and thus we are returned to the opening scene of the novel. It is revealed that Brandy originally met Evie in a transgender meeting or conference. Evie told Brandy of her sister's gun accident, and it is revealed that Brandy has known that the narrator, Shannon McFarland, was her sister from the beginning of their friendship. Who could have shot the narrator is another part of the plot, with multiple possible suspects being named. When Brandy makes her revelation, the narrator reveals that she shot herself to escape from being beautiful. This parallels Shane's decision to become a woman; as he is not actually transgender, "Brandy's" choice is just to disfigure himself beyond being in the control of others. Sitting in Brandy's room, Shannon realizes that she has never truly loved anyone. She looks down at Brandy and realizes that she loves her brother. She leaves her pocket book with all of her identification; she tells a sleeping Brandy that since Shane is still confused about what he wants out of life, he can have the only thing she has left, her identity. The novel ends with Shannon leaving the hospital and into the world to find a new start. In the Remix version, it is revealed that Shannon, now going by Daisy St. Patience full-time, has created a cemetery after her parents have died, in which you can bury relatives you disliked or hated with spiteful sayings carved into the tombstones. Additionally, Daisy creates a group for disfigured girls called "Elephant Women." In the end, we see her at her wedding, getting married to an unidentified man.
540888	/m/02n4_g	Speak	Laurie Halse Anderson	1999-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The summer before her freshman year of high school, Melinda Sordino meets Andy Evans at a party. Outside in the woods, Andy rapes her. Melinda calls 911, but does not know what to say. The police come and break up the party. Melinda does not tell anyone what happened to her, and no one asks. She starts high school at Merryweather High School as an outcast, shunned by her peers for calling the police. She remains silent and sinks into depression. Melinda is befriended by Heather, a new girl, who clings to Melinda only to ditch her for "the Marthas". As Melinda's depression deepens, she begins to skip school, withdrawing from her parents and other authority figures, who see her silence as means of getting "attention". Only in Mr. Freeman's art class can Melinda express her inner struggle, as he shows interest in her artwork. She slowly befriends her lab partner, David Petrakis, who encourages her to speak up for herself. Throughout the school year, the past unfolds and Melinda gains the strength to confront what happened to her. Melinda learns that "IT", Andy Evans, goes to her school. Eventually, she allows memories of what happened the night she was raped to surface. But she remains silent. However, when her ex-best friend, Rachel, starts to date Andy, Melinda feels obligated to warn her. At first, Rachel ignores the warning. Melinda tries again, telling Rachel that Andy raped her at the party, but Rachel does not believe her. As the school year comes to a close, Melinda decides she does not want to hide anymore. While cleaning out her hideaway (an old janitor's closet), Andy confronts her, accusing her of lying about the rape. When he tries to assault her again, she finds her voice and screams "no". She fights back. Using a mirror shard against Andy's neck, she silences him. As word spreads about what happened in the closet, Melinda is suddenly removed from her role as "outcast". Melinda is able to acknowledge and accept that Andy raped her. Melinda finally finds the words to say what happened. She speaks to Mr. Freeman.
541704	/m/02n79q	Ripley Under Water	Patricia Highsmith	1991-10-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Having now mostly retired from his life of crime, Tom Ripley spends his days tending his garden and playing the harpsichord at his French home near Fontainbleau which he shares with his wife, Heloise. However, the calm and serenity of his life is shattered when obnoxious American David Pritchard arrives on the scene with his submissive, pathetically dysfunctional wife Janice. Pritchard is a decidedly eccentric stalker and heckler who has delved into Ripley's nefarious past. His current obsession is the disappearance of Thomas Murchison, an art collector whom Ripley murdered in Ripley Under Ground when he threatened to blow the lid off Ripley's art forgery scheme. Pritchard initially harasses Ripley by talking about his knowledge of the suspicious death of Dickie Greenleaf (who Ripley murdered in The Talented Mr. Ripley), photographing his house and following him on a trip to Tangier. While in Tangier, Ripley gets into a fight with Pritchard in a bar. Upon returning to France, Pritchard becomes a serious threat when he starts dragging local canals for Murchison's corpse and finally locates it. Pritchard dumps the skeletonized remains on Ripley's doorstep and then calls the police. Ripley finds and stashes the headless body before they arrive. That night, Ripley takes the remains to the Pritchards' temporary home nearby and dumps it in the pond outside. The Pritchards hear the splash and come out to investigate. They subsequently fall in while trying to hook the body with a garden tool. Both are apparently unable to swim and perish together in a mere two meters of water and muck. Police investigate but come up empty-handed. Ripley safely disposes of the last piece of evidence connecting him with Murchison, and the final installment of the Ripliad comes to a close.
542217	/m/02n9c6	The Broken Ear	Hergé	1937	{"/m/01vnb": "Comic book"}	 An idol that originally belonged to a Native American nation in South America is stolen from the Museum of Ethnography in Brussels. The following day it is back in the museum, along with a note apologizing for the inconvenience caused, saying that the reason for the theft had been a bet. Tintin, who is among the reporters looking into the story, realizes that the replacement is a fake, the distinction being an ear broken on the original but intact on the replacement. He peruses a book from his own library with an image of the idol, drawn by an explorer: it confirms that one of the ears is damaged, while the one back in the museum is not. Tintin then reads that a wood carver called Balthazar has died, apparently from a gas leak. However his parrot has survived despite the leak. Tintin realises he was murdered and the gas turned on later to make it look like an accident. Suspecting that Balthazar made a duplicate of the idol and was murdered, Tintin tries to obtain the man's parrot in order to get a clue to the killer's identity. But he soon discovers that a pair of South Americans – Alonso Perez and Ramon Bada – are also on the trail of the idol, following the same clues and employing more ruthless methods. They even make attempts on Tintin's life. The parrot eventually repeats the last words of his late owner, naming a man called Rodrigo Tortilla as his killer. Alonzo and Ramon know Tortilla, and Tintin, having tracked them down, overhears their conversation. This takes the three men, and their attempts to outwit each other, to South America, where the plot thickens. During the journey by ship, Alonzo and Ramon hear from a sailor of the cabin Tortilla is in. That night they murder Tortilla, coshing him and throwing him overboard. It was he who stole the idol from the museum and murdered Balthazar after getting him to produce the copy that Tortilla placed in the museum. Among his luggage is yet another replica of the stolen idol. Tintin, who was also on the ship in disguise, has Alonzo and Ramon arrested as they dock in the main port of the republic of San Theodoros. But when soldiers arrive on board to take them away, they are led by a colonel who knows Ramon and Alonzo and, once ashore, lets them go. He then helps them to lure Tintin to shore where he is framed for terrorism and sentenced to death by switching his luggage with another with is full of bombs. In San Theodoros General Alcazar and his rebels are fighting against the ruling General Tapioca. Just as Tintin finds himself at the gun tips of the firing squad, General Alcazar's rebels save him. Unusually, Tintin has been drinking heavily because, at the start of the execution, the soldiers found out that their guns had been tampered with and the commander treated him to a "little apertif" of aguardiente, the national drink. Thus, in a drunken state, Tintin proclaims his support for Alcazar in front of the firing squad, interrupted by an uprising. Now in command of the country, General Alcazar honours Tintin by making him Colonel. Alcazar's aide-de-camp, Colonel Diaz, suggests he make Tintin a corporal instead, as they have 49 corporals and 3,487 colonels. In anger Alcazar makes him a corporal and makes Tintin his new aide-de-camp. Tintin's new position of power is not without its problems. For one thing his humiliated predecessor swears revenge and makes several bungled attempts to kill him and Alcazar. Alonzo and Ramon also continue in their attempts to get rid of him and recover the genuine idol. The idol found in Tortilla's possession has turned out to be yet another fake. Tintin is lassoed by two men at night, knocked out, tied up, and taken to a house where Alonzo and Ramon are. They are erroneously convinced that Tintin knows the location of the original idol and do not believe his denials, forcing him to lie about its whereabouts. Tintin manages to escape when a lightning strike frees him just before Alonzo shoots him, and captures Alonzo and Ramon. He takes them to prison, but they are soon free again after escaping. To add to this, two rival oil companies, General American Oil and British South-American Petrol, manipulate the governments of San Theodoros and the neighbouring state of Nuevo Rico, pushing both countries to war in order to get control of some profitable oil fields. When Tintin attempts to prevent war, R.W. Trickler, a representative of General American Oil, arranges for him to be killed by a man named Pablo. Pablo's attempt fails, due to a simultaneous assassination attempt by Ramon. His thrown knife goes ahead of Tintin, cutting free a bunch of bananas which falls onto Pablo as he shoots at Tintin. Tintin captures Pablo, who begs for mercy, and lets him go. Trickler then frames Tintin for espionage and the young man is soon sentenced to death. Pablo, grateful that Tintin spared his life, assembles a gang of men, breaks into the prison and frees Tintin and Snowy. Tintin and Snowy escape by car to the border with Nuevo-Rico, but come under fire by Nuevo-Rican border guards with a Hotchkiss M1914 and a Pak 38. The incident is exaggerated in the press and used by the belligerent governments of both countries as justification for the war that Tintin tried to prevent. Tintin escapes the Nuevo-Ricans and discovers that he is not far from the Arumbaya River. The Arumbayas, who live isolated in the rainforest, were the original owners of the idol. The idol itself is of no real value and Tintin has been wondering why so many people have been willing to steal and kill for it. He believes that the Arumbayas hold the answer and convinces a reluctant native to take him to them. However the native later leaves Tintin. In the rainforest Tintin meets Ridgewell, a British explorer living with the Arumbayas. They are captured by the Rumbabas, the enemies of the Arumbayas, tied up, and taken to the village, where the natives plan to cut off their heads and shrink them. However an idol they are about to be sacrificed before seems to say it forbids their sacrifice, though after they are freed Ridgewell says he used ventriloquism. The witch-doctor has told a man to cure his son he must bring him the heart of the first animal he finds in the forest. Snowy brings Ridgewell's cloth and quiver, the cloth was used to bandage Snowy's tail when Ridgewell accidentally shot it with a dart when demonstrating his aim by shooting a flower. The man brings Snowy back live, thinking Ridgewell may be in danger, but the Witch-Doctor says if he tells anybody he will call down the spirits and the man's family will be turned into frogs. He hopes Ridgewell dies so he may regain control over the tribe. He is about to kill the bound Snowy, but Ridgewell and Tintin get to the village in time to stop him. Tintin learns that the idol was offered to a previous explorer called Walker (who also happens to be the author of the book "Travels in the Americas" (London, 1875) Tintin had read earlier) as a token of friendship during his stay with the tribe. But as soon as the explorers left, the Arumbayas discovered that a sacred stone had disappeared, which cured whoever touched it of snake-bite. Lopez, a Mestizo interpreter to the explorers, had stolen it. The Arumbayas were furious and pursued Walker's expedition, massacring almost all the explorers. Walker himself managed to escape with the idol while a wounded Lopez barely got himself out of the jungle. Tintin believes that Lopez hid the diamond in the idol so that he could retrieve the stone later. Tintin leaves the Arumbayas only to come across Alonzo and Ramon who have deserted from the San Theodoran Army after they were drafted during the war with Nuevo-Rico. Realizing he lied to them before, they again try to force him to reveal the location of the idol. However, Tintin manages to capture them. In Alonzo's wallet he finds a note signed by Lopez which confirms that the diamond is in the idol. The note once belonged to Rodrigo Tortilla, the man who originally stole the idol from the museum and was later murdered by Ramon and Alonzo. How Tortilla is connected to Lopez is not revealed. Alonzo and Ramon later escape from Tintin. Tintin and Snowy have reached a dead end so they return home, where they hear the news that San Theodoros has made peace with Nuevo-Rico, and the oil companies' machinations went for nothing because there was no oil after all. Then Tintin is surprised to find copies of the idol, with a broken ear, being sold in numerous shops. They go to the factory that produces them and meet Balthazar's brother, who had found the idol among his late brother's affairs. However he has sold the original idol to a wealthy American called Samuel Goldbarr, who has left for America. Ramon and Alonzo have already asked him. Using a plane Tintin manages to catch up with the ship, only to find that Alonzo and Ramon are already aboard and have finally got hold of the idol. During the confrontation the idol falls and breaks, revealing the diamond. All three of them try to save it, but it falls into the ocean and they fall into the ocean after it while fighting. Tintin is saved by the crew. However, Alonzo and Ramon drown (and are subsequently shown in one panel being pulled by little winged devils to Hell. However it is speculated this might be an imaginary sequence by Tintin or a hallucination). The diamond has been lost to the ocean. Tintin tells Mr Goldbarr the idol is stolen property and he agrees it should be returned. The original idol is glued and tied back together and returned to the museum.
542507	/m/02nb20	The Secret of Chimneys	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Seven years previously, the Balkan state of Herzoslovakia had one of its periodic revolutions that resulted in the death and bodily mutilation of its monarch, King Nicholas IV and his wife Queen Varaga. The latter formerly was Angèle Mory, a dancer at the Folies Bergère, who had been bribed by the Herzoslovakian revolutionary organisation "Comrades of the Red Hand" to lure the King into a trap when he visited Paris, but instead double-crossed them, seduced and married Nicholas, and was introduced in Herzoslovakia as a Countess and descendant of the Romanoffs. When realizing the deception, the populace reacted with an uprising and the establishment of a republic which has been in force ever since. Now the people of Herzoslovakia wish to restore the monarchy and offer the vacant crown to the exiled Prince Michael Obolovitch, a distant relation of the murdered King. The British government is acting as powerbroker to the restoration in return for oil concessions in the state. The head of the syndicate who is financing the deal, Herman Isaacstein, is to meet Prince Michael at the English country house of Chimneys whose reluctant owner, the Marquis of Caterham, is bullied into hosting the get-together by George Lomax, a foreign office minister. A difficulty has arisen though: a Count Stylptitch, twice Prime Minister of Herzoslovakia and in exile in Paris since the revolution, died two months previously and his memoirs&mdash;believed to contain many indiscreet references to the Herzoslovakia monarchy&mdash;were smuggled to Bulawayo in the care of Jimmy McGrath, a gold prospector who four years ago saved the Count's life in Paris. As part of his will, the Count has asked McGrath to deliver the manuscript of his memoirs in person to publishers in London on or before 13 October in return for one thousand pounds and McGrath is due to arrive in London soon. However, McGrath's gold prospecting seems about to bear fruit and he is loath to leave Africa. In Bulawayo he meets an old friend and fellow adventurer, Anthony Cade, and asks him to impersonate him and deliver the manuscript for a quarter share. McGrath had another task for Anthony: by saving a drowning "Dago", coincidentally also a Herzoslovakian, he came into the possession of a set of letters from an Englishwoman called Virginia Revel to her lover, a Captain O'Neill, which the "Dago" had used to blackmail Mrs Revel and which McGrath wanted to be returned to her, thus saving her from further embarrassment. Anthony agreed to deliver both sets of documents. We learn that Virginia Revel is the widow of a former British diplomat to Herzoslovakia, whom everybody falls in love with and whom Lomax has asked to be one of the house party at Chimneys to charm Prince Michael. Arriving in London, Anthony checks into the Blitz hotel where several attempts by fair means and foul are made to obtain the manuscript. The final one is at night when a hotel waiter, Giuseppe, enters Anthony's room. He wakes and the two men fight but Giuseppe gets away, not with the manuscript but with Virginia Revel's letters. The next day Giuseppe visits Virginia and blackmails her with one of the letters. She doesn't reveal to the man that the letters are not hers, but playfully gives him 40 pounds and asks him to return the next evening for the rest. Anthony completes his task for Jimmy McGrath when a Mr Holmes of the publishers collects the manuscript from him and pays him. He only then receives, in the name of McGrath, a government invitation to the meeting at Chimneys where it is hoped he will be persuaded not to hand over the manuscript at all. Anthony decides to travel under his own name, stay at a village inn outside the house and investigate matters. Before that he looks up Virginia. When she returns home, she meets Anthony at the door and finds Giuseppe in her study, recently killed with a pistol bearing the engraving "Virginia". In Giuseppe's pocket is a scrap of paper with "Chimneys 11.45 Thursday". Anthony finds out about Virginia's invitation to that house and deduces that someone is attempting to prevent her going there. To outwit them he disposes of the body and follows Virginia, who instinctively trusts this "Ex-Eton and Oxford" stranger, to Chimneys. At 11.45 on the Thursday night a murder is committed at Chimneys on the eve of the concessions meeting. Travelling under the pseudonym of "Count Stanislaus" the murdered man is none other than Prince Michael Obolovitch. Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate. Footprints are spotted in the grass leading to and from the open window to the council chamber where the body was found and the police’s suspicions are immediately drawn to the arrival of a stranger at the village inn the night before, Anthony Cade. Further investigations are confounded though when the self-confident Anthony suddenly appears at the house and introduces himself; moreover he tells Battle and the police all of the events to date, judiciously omitting the story of Virginia's letters and the murder and concealment of Giuseppe. He further reveals to them that he did indeed come to Chimneys the previous night and manages to convince the investigators that he was lured there on a pretext and that he had been set up for the crime. When Anthony is shown the body of Prince Michael, he is shocked to recognize "Mr Holmes" who collected the memoirs from him. Aside from Isaacstein and Virginia (who vouches for Anthony) a third visitor to the house is the book collector Hiram P. Fish who is there to inspect Lord Caterham's collection of first editions. Two strands of investigation take place in the house: the official one and Anthony's own. The police are interested in who benefits from Prince Michael's death and are told that his successor for the vacant throne is Michael's first cousin, Prince Nicholas, a somewhat dissolute young man who perhaps has died in the Congo. Anthony asks Lord Caterham’s daughter, "Bundle" Brent, after the occupant of a room whose light he saw go on and off after he heard the shot at the time of the murder. This turns out to be Mademoiselle Brun, the French governess to her two young sisters, who has been with them only two months from her previous position in a Château in Dinard. There is a further French connection with the matter when Anthony finds a bearded stranger with a French accent on the grounds claiming to be lost while on a walk from his stay at the village inn. The French master jewel thief King Victor, a few months earlier released from jail, is a suspect, since Angèle Mory, in her days before Nicholas IV, was his accomplice and, while Queen, was very likely involved in King Victor's theft of the Koh-i-Noor diamond from the Tower of London (a paste copy being substituted and the public not being informed of the event). Queen Varaga was a guest at Chimneys at the time and it is believed she hid the jewel somewhere in the house and now, seven years after her death, King Victor has come to get it back. After impersonating the second-in-line Prince Nicholas in the United States for a scam, he is now rumored to be in England. Anthony meets the middle-aged Mlle Brun and gets permission to go to Dinard to follow up on her references. While he is away there is a midnight break-in at Chimneys when Virginia and Bill Eversleigh, one of Lomax's staff from the Foreign Office, surprise a shadowy intruder who is searching the council chamber. After a fight, the intruder gets away. Anthony returns from France&mdash;Mlle Brun has proven to be above suspicion&mdash;and learns of the break-in. Expecting another attempt, he joins Virginia and Bill that night when they successfully apprehend the bearded French stranger, only to discover it is Monsieur Lemoine of the Sûreté, whose arrival had been expected by Battle. This officer had seen movement in the council chamber, but the interference by Anthony and his friends meant the suspect got away again. Lemoine is on the trail of King Victor and he tells them that Angèle Mory sent coded letters to King Victor using the aliases of "Captain O’Neill" and "Virginia Revel" (who Mory knew from her husband's posting to the British Embassy in Herzoslovakia) and it is these that have been mistaken as the blackmailing letters. Stolen from King Victor, they found their way to Africa and, entirely coincidentally, to Jimmy McGrath. That afternoon, these letters mysteriously reappear on Anthony's dressing-table at Chimneys. Battle's theory is that King Victor, unable to decode the letters and aware that the council chamber is now watched, returned them to let the authorities decode the message and find the jewel, which he will then take at his convenience. They decide to take the bait and employ an expert codebreaker, Professor Wynwood, who deduces that the coded message tells that Stylptitch had re-hidden the jewel and had left the clue "Richmond seven straight eight left three right". Bundle equates this to an old passage behind a painting of the Earl of Richmond, but the trail only leads to another cipher (later revealed to represent a rose). Boris Anchoukoff, Prince Michael's loyal valet hands Anthony an address in Dover ("dropped by that foreign gentleman"), and Anthony slips off to explore that location. It is a den for King Victor's men and the "Comrades of the Red Hand". Just when Anthony locates a hostage, Mr Fish captures him with an automatic gun. Still, we find Anthony next making preparations and assembling all people at Chimneys. He reveals that the "Richmond" reference in the code was to a biography of the Earl of Richmond in the library. But this is a trap for the murderer of Prince Michael: Mlle Brun, in reality the supposedly dead Queen Varaga (whose "body" seven years ago was a substitution, mutilated beyond recognition). Caught searching for the jewel in the library, Varaga is killed in a struggle over her revolver with Anchoukoff. The real Mlle Brun may have been kidnapped on the passage from Dinard while the murder of Giuseppe in Virginia's house was indeed to stop Virginia from going to Chimneys as she may have recognised the former Queen. There was another visitor though who knew her&mdash;Prince Michael&mdash;and when he found her searching the council chamber, she shot him. Anthony reveals another substitution when he produces the real M Lemoine: the hostage in Dover. The impostor is none other than King Victor, who tries to escape, but is stopped by Mr. Fish, in reality an American agent. Anthony has several final surprises. The memoirs he gave to "Mr Holmes" were false: he gives the real memoirs (which have no incriminating anecdotes after all) to Jimmy to deliver to the publishers to get his one thousand pounds. The "Richmond" clue refers to a rose on the ground with the name "Richmond", where the Koh-i-Noor is subsequently recovered. Anthony then presents himself as the missing Prince Nicholas, who had disappeared himself in the Congo and through inconceivable coincidence was led into this adventure, and offers to be Herzoslovakia's next king. In the morning he has secretly married Virginia, who will be his Queen.
542922	/m/02nc1_	Tintin in the Congo	Hergé	1931	{"/m/01vnb": "Comic book"}	 Belgian reporter Tintin and his faithful dog Snowy travel to the Congo, where the pair are greeted by a cheering crowd of natives. Hiring a native boy, Coco, to assist him in his travels, Tintin has to rescue Snowy from being eaten by a crocodile prior to recognising a stowaway who had been aboard the ship that had brought them to the continent. The stowaway attempts to kill Tintin, who is saved by monkeys throwing coconuts down from a tree, knocking the villain unconscious. He then finds that Snowy has been kidnapped by a monkey, and rescues him. The next morning, Tintin, Snowy, and Coco crash their car into a train, which the reporter subsequently fixes and then tows to the Babaorum's village, where he is greeted by the king and accompanies him on a hunt the next day. During this, Tintin is knocked unconscious by a lion, but is rescued by Snowy, who bites the carnivore's tail off. Tintin gains the admiration of the natives, making the Babaorum witch-doctor Muganga jealous; with the help of the stowaway, he plots to accuse Tintin of destroying the tribe's sacred idol. Imprisoned by the villagers, Tintin is rescued by Coco and then shows them footage of Muganga conspiring with the stowaway to destroy the idol, something which incenses them. Tintin goes on to become a hero in the village, with one local woman bowing down to him and stating "White man very great! Has good spirits… White mister is big juju man!" Angered, Muganga starts a war between the Babaorum and their neighbours, the M'Hatuvu, whose king leads the attack on the Babaorum village. Tintin outwits them and the M'Hatuvu people subsequently cease hostilities and come to idolise Tintin too. Muganga and the stowaway then plot to kill Tintin by making it look like a leopard kill, but again Tintin survives, even saving Muganga from being killed by a boa constrictor, for which Muganga pleads mercy and ends his hostilities. The stowaway attempts to capture Tintin again, eventually succeeding disguised as a Catholic missionary. In the ensuing fight across a waterfall, the stowaway is eaten by crocodiles. After reading a letter that the stowaway had in his pocket, Tintin finds that a figure known only as A.C. has ordered that he be killed. Capturing a criminal who was trying to rendezvous with the now dead stowaway, Tintin learns that it is the American gangster Al Capone who has ordered his death. Capone had "decided to increase his fortune by controlling diamond production in Africa", and feared that Tintin might be onto his plans. With the aid of the colonial police, Tintin arrests the rest of the diamond smuggling gang.
542931	/m/02nc32	The Black Island	Hergé	1938	{"/m/01vnb": "Comic book"}	 While walking in the Belgian countryside Tintin sees an airplane making an emergency landing. He goes to help and notices that it does not have a registration number on it. As he approaches the plane he is shot by the pilot. Tintin recovers at a hospital where police detectives Thomson and Thompson inform him that a similar plane has crashed in a field in Sussex, England. Tintin decides to investigate for himself. Tintin takes a train from Brussels to the coast in order to board the ferry from Ostend to Dover, England. During the journey he is framed for the assault and robbery of a fellow passenger (who is in fact part of the mysterious criminal gang Tintin has inadvertently stumbled upon). Thompson and Thomson arrest Tintin, but he escapes by handcuffing them to each other while they are asleep. Arriving in England, Tintin is kidnapped by the same men who framed him. They take him to a clifftop, intending to make him jump off it, but Tintin escapes with Snowy's help. His investigations lead him to Dr. J.W. Müller who, with his chauffeur Ivan, is part of a gang of money counterfeiters, led by Puschov, the so-called victim on the train. Tintin's pursuit of Müller and Ivan results in a plane crash in rural Scotland, where a friendly farmer gives him a kilt to wear. He visits the pub in the coastal village of Kiltoch, where he is told strange stories about the Black Island, where an evil beast is said to roam, killing humans. Tintin buys a boat from a villager and heads for the island, where he is almost killed by a gorilla named Ranko and finds his boat missing. Stranded on the island, Tintin discovers that it is the hideout of the gang of counterfeiters led by Puschov and Müller. Tintin temporarily manages to subdue the gang (they free themselves shortly afterwards) and calls the police on their radio signaling device after watching Thompson and Thomson win an air show race on a television set (though they didn't mean to). After a desperate holding-out action (in which Ranko's arm is broken), the gang is captured and Tintin returns to mainland Kiltoch, but the media and press do not stay very long after Ranko appears. The gang is jailed, the now submissive Ranko is placed in a Glasgow zoo, and Tintin decides to return home via a plane trip, which Thompson and Thomson, who have reconciled with Tintin, turn down due to their previous harrowing experience.
542952	/m/02nc5d	The Secret of the Unicorn	Hergé	1943		 Whilst browsing in a market in Brussels, Tintin purchases an old model ship which he wishes to give to his friend Captain Haddock as a gift. Two strangers, the model ship collector Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine and a mysterious figure known as Barnaby, then unsuccessfully try to independently convince Tintin to sell the model to them. Returning with the model to his flat, Snowy knocks it over and its mainmast is broken. Repairing it, and showing the ship to Haddock, the latter is amazed that it is actually a model of the Unicorn, a 17th-century warship captained by his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock. The model ship is subsequently stolen, and it is revealed that Sakharine owns an identical model of the Unicorn, although this was soon stolen. Returning to his flat, Tintin discovers a rolled-up parchment hidden under furniture, on which is a part of a riddle that points to the location of treasure, and he realises that this must have been hidden in the mast of the model which Snowy had broken. Informing Haddock about the riddle, the captain tells him of how Sir Francis Haddock battled with the pirate Red Rackham somewhere in the West Indies, before killing him in single combat and blowing up his ship. Haddock gets somewhat carried away in his telling of the story: destroying his flat while re-enacting the battle scenes. He also reveals that three models exist in total. Barnaby then turns up at Tintin's doorstep but is shot down by unknown assailants. Later Tintin is kidnapped by the perpetrators of the shooting. They are revealed to be the Bird brothers, two unscrupulous antique dealers who own a third model of the Unicorn. They are behind the theft of Tintin's model and Sakharine's parchment, knowing that only with all three parchments can the location of the treasure be found for the following book Red Rackham's treasure. Tintin escapes from the Bird brothers' country estate, Marlinspike Hall, whilst the Captain arrives with the police officers Thompson and Thomson to arrest them. However, it is found that they do not have two of the parchments. These are found to have been stolen by Aristides Silk, a kleptomaniac specialising in wallet-snatching. As the pickpocket is cornered, his cache of stolen wallets is found, amongst which are the Bird Brothers' wallets containing the missing two parchments. By combining the three parchments, Tintin and Haddock discover the coordinates of the hidden treasure, and begin to plan for an expedition to find it. The story ends where it started, leading Tintin to the rest of the treasure.
542957	/m/02nc5s	Red Rackham's Treasure	Hergé	1944		 In the previous adventure, The Secret of the Unicorn, Tintin and Captain Haddock discover three parchments revealing the location of the Unicorn, a 17th century navy ship commanded by Haddock's ancestor Sir Francis Haddock. The Unicorn was scuttled by Sir Francis while battling the pirate Red Rackham for his treasure. Tintin and Haddock believe that the pirate's treasure is in the remains of the sunken Unicorn. Tintin and Captain Haddock hire a fishing trawler, the Sirius, to search for the treasure. As the crew prepare for the search, their plans are discovered and publicized by the press, forcing Tintin and Haddock to deal with numerous strangers claiming to be Red Rackham's descendants and insisting on a share of the treasure. They are quickly driven away by Haddock, who reminds them he is the descendant of the man who killed Red Rackham. Another petitioner is Professor Cuthbert Calculus, an eccentric and hard-of-hearing inventor who offers the use of a special shark-shaped, electrically powered one-man submarine to help search for the sunken ship without being bothered by the numerous sharks in the area. The treasure hunters turn him down and prepare to embark. Before Tintin and the Captain clear the port, the two detectives Thomson and Thompson join the crew to protect their friends from the possible threat of the rival treasure hunters, the Bird brothers. Shortly after departure, Tintin and Haddock discover that Calculus has stowed away on board. The professor has stashed the unassembled parts of his submarine in the hold, removing the Captain's crates of whisky in the process. Despite initially threatening to throw Calculus into the hold on bread and water, Haddock grudgingly decides to keep him along for the trip. Tintin and Captain Haddock reach the location stated in Sir Francis Haddock's parchments. Initially, the party cannot find anything at the coordinates (, off the Mouchoir Bank), but then Tintin hypothesizes that Sir Francis Haddock used the Paris Meridian instead of Greenwich (which would yield , off the Navidad Bank). Sure enough, the ship reaches an unknown and uninhabited island. As they come ashore to explore it, the Captain stubs his toe on a piece of wood protruding from the sand, which is excavated and turns out to be the remains of Sir Francis Haddock's jolly boat. As they penetrate into the interior of the island, they encounter numerous skulls, which Tintin deduces are the remains of the island's cannibalistic former inhabitants. There is also a magnificent pagan icon of Sir Francis, and numerous parrots that repeat the Haddockian argot, which an amused Tintin realizes has been passed down for generations. Calculus's submarine proves useful in searching for the sunken Unicorn, while the actual examination of the wreck itself is performed with a hardhat diving suit. Thomson and Thompson soon begin to rue their decision to join the treasure hunt, because they are consigned to manning the air pumps supplying the diving suit when Tintin, and later the Captain, explore the wreck. While facing complications like shark attacks, they discover a cutlass, a gold bejeweled cross, a strongbox of old documents, the figurehead of the ship and, to Captain Haddock's delight, a large supply of vintage Jamaican rum. Although the search is otherwise unproductive, the crew spots a large wooden cross on the island itself and Tintin believes that the reference in Sir Francis' parchments to "the Eagle's cross" could refer to it as the marker for the treasure's location. Upon coming to the cross the party begins to dig, but after a while Tintin realizes that they are following a false lead, considering that Sir Francis would not deliberately leave his treasure on an island he did not intend to return to, so they return to the Sirius. Time passes. Although there are further dives to the wreck, they are unable to find the treasure itself and they go home disappointed. Calculus's examination of the documents from the retrieved strongbox allows him to determine that Sir Francis was the owner of the large estate of Marlinspike Hall, the former home of the Bird brothers. Upon this discovery, Tintin insists that Haddock must purchase the estate, which is up for auction. Calculus, who has received large sums of money from the government after a profitable sale of his submarine design, helps his friend acquire his family home. After purchasing the Hall, Tintin and Captain Haddock explore the cellars of the main house. Amongst the Bird Brothers' cluttered antiques they find a statue of Saint John holding a cross. Tintin suddenly shouts out, "The Eagle's cross!" as he remembers the Saint is called "The Eagle of Patmos". At the statue's feet is a globe. On it, Tintin locates the island where Sir Francis Haddock was marooned. He touches that point and discovers it to be a trigger button—the globe springs opens and Red Rackham's treasure is found hidden inside.
543142	/m/02ncw6	The Pelican Brief	John Grisham	1992	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with the assassination of two philosophically divergent Supreme Court Justices. Liberal Justice Rosenberg is killed at his home, while the conservative Justice Jensen is killed inside a gay porn cinema. The circumstances surrounding their deaths, as well as the deaths themselves, shock and confuse a politically divided nation. While the public speculates about who may have killed them and why, the main character, Darby Shaw, a Tulane University Law School student, decides to research the two justices' records and cases pending before the Court, suspecting the real motive might be simple greed, not politics. She writes a legal brief speculating that the assassinations were committed on behalf of Victor Mattiece, an oil tycoon wanting to drill for oil on Louisiana marshland which is a major habitat of an endangered species of pelican. A court case on appeal, filed on his behalf to gain access to the land, is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court. The two slain justices had a history of environmentalism — their only common view — and thus Darby surmises that Mattiece, who has a pre-existing business relationship with the President, hoped to turn the case in his favor by eliminating two justices, thus leaving his friend the President in a position to appoint new justices more likely to rule in his favor. Darby shows the brief, which becomes known as the 'Pelican Brief', to her law professor/mentor/lover, Thomas Callahan, who shows it to his Washington-based friend, Gavin Verheek, a lawyer working for the FBI. Both men are killed soon after. Afraid that she will become the next target, Darby goes on the run. She tries to hide by making a few disguises and almost getting killed. Eventually, she contacts the Washington Post reporter Gray Grantham, and the two set out to prove her brief correct. The various parties quickly take sides. The President and his Chief of Staff, Fletcher Coal, try to cover up the White House's connection to Mattiece, which would be politically damaging. The FBI wants to bring in Darby to protect her and to verify her story. Allies of Mattiece try to kill her to make sure the cover-up holds. Eventually, every piece of the story is in place. Grantham obtains videotaped testimony from a pseudonymous lawyer who calls himself "Garcia", as well as a document that points to involvement by Garcia's law firm which worked for Mattiece. With this evidence, Grantham and Darby approach the Post chief editor. The story appears in the next edition with front page photographs of Coal, Mattiece, etc. FBI chief Denton Voyles is ecstatic and shows up at Coal's residence early in the morning to confront him. Darby crisscrosses the country, then reaches an island in the Caribbean Sea. The story ends with Grantham joining Darby in the Caribbean and agreeing to stay for at least a month (after that one month at a time)
543278	/m/02ndcz	The Fall of the House of Usher	Edgar Allan Poe	1839-09	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The legend opens with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick's pathagens can be described according to its terminology. They include a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness), and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings "The Haunted Palace", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it. Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she be entombed for two weeks in a vault (family tomb) in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm. He notices that the tarn surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, although there is no lightning. The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud The Mad Tryst, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. He also finds hanging on the wall a shield of shining brass on which is written a legend: that the one who slays the dragon wins the shield. With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred kills the dragon, who dies with a piercing shriek, and proceeds to take the shield, which falls to the floor with an unnerving clatter. As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed and that Roderick Usher knew that she was alive. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her brother, and both land on the floor as corpses. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of light causing him to look back upon the House of Usher, in time to watch it break in two, the fragments sinking into the tarn.
544448	/m/02nj06	Tintin and the Picaros	Hergé	1976		 Tintin hears in the news that Bianca Castafiore, her maid Irma, pianist Igor Wagner, and Thomson and Thompson have been imprisoned in San Theodoros for allegedly attempting to overthrow the military dictatorship of General Tapioca, who has yet again deposed Tintin's old friend, General Alcazar. Tintin, Calculus, and Haddock soon are accused themselves and, travelling to San Theodoros to clear their names (though Tintin at first refuses, only to change his mind and follow a couple of days later), find themselves caught in a trap laid by their old enemy, Colonel Sponsz, who has been sent by the Eastern Bloc nation of Borduria to assist Tapioca. Sponsz has concocted the conspiracy of which Tintin and his friends are accused in a plot to wreak revenge upon them for humiliating him in The Calculus Affair. Escaping, Tintin, Haddock, and Calculus join Alcazar and his small band of guerrillas, the Picaros, in the jungle near a village of the Arumbaya people. Meanwhile, in a show trial orchestrated by Sponsz, Castafiore is sentenced to life in prison and the Thompsons are ordered to be executed by a firing squad. All three show great contempt at the injustice of the proceedings. Tintin enlists Alcazar's help in freeing his friends, but upon arrival at his jungle headquarters, finds that Alcazar's men have become corrupt drunkards since Tapioca started dropping copious quantities of alcohol near their camp. Additionally, Alcazar is continually henpecked by his shrewish wife, Peggy, who nags him constantly about his failure to achieve a successful revolution. Fortunately, Calculus has invented a pill that makes alcohol disgusting to anyone who ingests it (which he proves to have tested on Haddock, much to the latter's annoyance). Tintin offers to use the pill to cure the Picaros of their alcoholism if Alcazar agrees to refrain from killing Tapioca and his men. Alcazar reluctantly agrees. Moments after his men are cured, Jolyon Wagg arrives with his musical troupe the Jolly Follies, who intend to perform at the upcoming carnival in San Theodoros. Alcazar, with a little advice from Tintin, launches an assault on Tapioca's palace during the carnival by 'borrowing' the troupe's costumes and sneaking his men into the capital. He topples Tapioca, but on Tintin's urging, does not execute him, as is the tradition. Tapioca is instead forced to publicly surrender his powers to Alcazar, and is banished, while a disappointed Sponsz is sent back to Borduria. Meanwhile, Thomson and Thompson are due to be shot on the same day as the carnival. Although as naive as ever in their observations, the detectives show courage by refusing to be blindfolded. Tintin and Haddock reach the state prison in time to prevent the executions from occurring. Castafiore, her maid, and her pianist are also released, and Alcazar can finally give his wife the palace he has promised. With all matters resolved, Tintin and his friends leave. As they fly home, Tintin and Haddock express gratitude about being able to go home. The second-to-last panel shows a final, skeptical political message: as under Tapioca, the city slums are filled with wretched, starving people and patrolled by apathetic police. Nothing has changed, except the police uniforms and a Viva Tapioca sign that has been changed to read Viva Alcazar.
544460	/m/02nj1n	Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder	Richard Dawkins	1998	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The first chapter describes several ways in which the universe appears beautiful and poetic when viewed scientifically. However, it first introduces an additional reason to embrace science. Time and space are vast, so the probability that the reader came to be alive here and now, as opposed to another time or place, was slim. More important, the probability that the reader came to be alive at all were even slimmer: the correct structure of atoms had to align in the universe. Given how special these circumstances are, the "noble" thing to do is employ the allotted several decades of human life towards understanding that universe. Rather than simply feeling connected with nature, one should rise above this "anaesthetic of familiarity" and observe the universe scientifically.
544481	/m/02nj3g	The Seven Crystal Balls	Hergé	1948		 On board a train, Tintin reads a newspaper article about seven explorers who have returned from a two-year ethnographic expedition in the Andes, where they unearthed the tomb of the Inca, Rascar Capac. A man says to him, "Think of all those Egyptologists, dying in mysterious circumstances after they'd opened the tomb of the pharaoh...You wait, the same will happen to those busybodies violating the Inca's burial chamber." Tintin's train arrives at Marlinspike Hall, the new home of his friends Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus. The Captain, now a member of the aristocracy, invites Tintin to an evening at the music hall. There they witness an unsettling performance of a clairvoyant who predicts the illness of one of the members of the expedition. They also view the act of Bianca Castafiore, as well as a knife thrower—whom Tintin recognizes is General Alcazar (stage name Ramon Zarate) former President of San Theodoros. They have a glass of aguardiente with the general who introduces them to his assistant Chiquito. A mysterious illness begins afflicting the members of the expedition; one by one, they fall into a mysterious coma. The only clue is fragments of a shattered crystal ball found near each victim. Concerned, Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus go to stay with Calculus's old friend and only expedition member yet to be affected, the ebullient Professor Tarragon. Tarragon is keeping Rascar Capac's mummy in his house and is being tightly guarded against any attack. A lightning storm strikes the house and sends a ball of fire down the chimney and onto the mummy—which evaporates. Tarragon, clearly shaken, informs them a prophecy has come true: Rascar Capac has returned to his element and punishment will descend upon the desecrators. After Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus are each visited in their nightmares by the mummy, the three awaken to find Professor Tarragon comatose with the telltale shards of crystal by his bed. The attacker bypassed the police watch by coming down the chimney. The police shoot the attacker as he flees, but fail to capture him. Tintin states the crystal balls have done their work and claimed the last of the seven. Tarragon awakens and screams about mysterious figures attacking him, before slipping back into a coma. The plot thickens even further when Calculus takes a stroll around Professor Tarragon's house, discovers a striking gold bracelet, puts it on (remarking on how nicely it goes with his coat), and then mysteriously disappears. The bracelet had previously been worn by the now-vanished mummy. While searching the grounds, Tintin and Haddock discover the attacker had eluded them by taking refuge in a tree and deduce that he then jumped Calculus and stole the mummy's jewels. Tintin and the Captain are then fired upon by an unseen gunman who escapes, having kidnapped Calculus, in a black car. The alarm is raised and the police set up road blocks, but the kidnappers switch cars and slip through the net. Tintin visits a hospital where all seven of the stricken explorers go through the same horror—they awaken from their coma, scream about figures attacking them, and slip back into their coma—at a precise time of day. Back at Marlinspike Hall, Captain Haddock is devastated by the loss of Professor Calculus. But after he receives a telephone call from the police, he disappears into his bedroom, then reappears—dressed as a sailor again and ready for travel. As he and Tintin drive to Westermouth, he explains the kidnapper's car was seen there; he believes the kidnappers boarded a ship with Calculus and he intends to follow. When they reach the docks, they find the kidnapper's car abandoned and they spot General Alcazar boarding a ship to South America. The General informs them his music hall career is over since the disappearance of his partner, Chiquito, one of the last descendants of the Incas. Tintin realizes Chiquito disappeared the same night Professor Tarragon was attacked and Calculus kidnapped and deduces he could be one of the kidnappers. Out of leads, Tintin and Haddock decide to go to a different dock, Bridgeport, to visit Haddock's friend, Captain Chester. Snowy retrieves an old hat found there, and Tintin recognizes it as belonging to Professor Calculus. Checking with the harbour master, they discover that Calculus must be on board the Pachacamac, which is bound for Peru. They board a flight and resolve to meet his ship there. The story is continued in Prisoners of the Sun.
544947	/m/02nkyk	In the Skin of a Lion	Michael Ondaatje		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first chapter, "Little Seeds," describes the growing years of the main character, Patrick Lewis, providing causation for his subsequent actions in the novel. As a young boy in Depot Creek, Ontario, Patrick watches the loggers arrive in town in the winter, work in the mills in the other seasons, and skate on the frozen river. Patrick's father, Hazen Lewis becomes a dynamiter and is meticulous in washing his clothes each evening to remove remnants of explosives on his apparel. These elements form the foundation of the subsequent narrative: Depot Creek, the loggers skating, learning about dynamite, etc. "The Bridge" deals with the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct, which will link eastern Toronto with the center of the city and will carry traffic, water and electricity across the Don Valley. R.C. Harris, the city's Commissioner of Public Works often visits the bridge at night. One night, five nuns wander onto the unfinished bridge and one falls off. Nicholas Temelcoff, a Macedonian immigrant worker on the bridge, saves the nun who fell off the bridge, dislocating his arm. The nun, already missing her veil, tears her habit to make him a sling. Later, at a bar, he offers her brandy, compliments, and a new lease on life. Temelcoff is a silent man who struggles with English yet they are able to transcend their social and language barriers through the commonality of their scars— his from work, hers from being "always unlucky." This moment is the beginning of the nun's eventual transformation into the character Alice. He eventually falls asleep and wakes to find a doctor treating his arm and the nun gone. As a young man, Patrick leaves the profession that killed his father and sets out to find the vanished millionaire Ambrose Small. This leads him to Small's mistress Clara Dickens, and to a relationship with her. Eventually, Patrick loses interest in finding Small, hoping only to remove Clara from Small. Clara tells Patrick that she will leave him to go after Small and warns him not to follow her. Patrick is broken-hearted. Three years later Clara's friend Alice unexpectedly arrives. Alice shows Patrick great tenderness and tells him that Clara's mother might know where Clara is. Patrick sets out to search for Clara. On meeting Clara's mother, Patrick learns that Clara and Small are living in his old hometown. Patrick finds Small living in a house owned by a timber company and Small attempts to set him on fire&mdash;once by dropping kerosene on him and then by throwing a Molotov cocktail. Patrick manages to escape to his hotel room and is visited by Clara, who dresses his wounds and makes love to him before returning to Small. In 1930, Patrick is working as a dynamiter on a tunnel under Lake Ontario, a project of Commissioner Rowland Harris. Patrick rents an apartment in a Macedonian neighborhood. He is accepted into the neighborhood and is invited by Kosta, a fellow dynamiter, to a gathering at the Waterworks&mdash;a place where various nationalities gather for secret political discussions and entertainment. Patrick witnesses a performance in which an actor repeatedly smashes her hand against the stage and rushes forward to help her. He recognizes her as Alice Gull. His act of helping her turns out to be part of the show. Patrick visits Alice and learns about Hana, her nine-year-old daughter. Patrick and Alice become lovers. Patrick finds work in a leather company through Alice's friends and meets Nicholas Temelcoff, now a baker. On studying the bridge, Patrick learns about the nun that had fallen off, whose body was never found. He makes the connection after talking with Temelcoff and promises to look after Hana. Patrick travels by train, north of Huntsville. He takes a steamer to a Muskoka hotel frequented by the rich, carrying nothing but a black suitcase. He burns down the hotel, then leaves on a small boat. Arriving at an island, he meets the blind Elizabeth. We learn that Alice has died and Patrick has committed the act of arson out of anger. Patrick swims out to a boat. He knows he will be caught by the authorities and takes the time to recuperate and dry out his clothes. Three prisoners, Buck, Lewis and Caravaggio, are painting the roof of the Kingston Penitentiary. Patrick and Buck paint Caravaggio in the blue of the roof so he can hide and escape. He steals new clothes and changes his dressing. Jumping a milk train, he makes his way north toward cottage country. He has a scar from an attack from which Patrick saved him by yelling out a square dance call. Caravaggio recalls his first robbery, in the course of which he broke his ankle while retrieving a painting, so he had hidden in a mushroom factory where a young woman named Gianetta helped him recover, with whom he had escaped by dressing as a woman. Caravaggio enters the cottage of a woman whom he met on the lake and calls his wife to let her know he's all right. After talking to the cottage owner, he returns to his brother-in-law's house, reuniting with Gianetta. Four years later, Patrick is released from prison and meets Temelcoff at the Geranium Bakery. Hana, now sixteen, has been living with Temelcoff's family. Patrick takes responsibility for Hana. One night, she wakes him to say that Clara Dickens has called. She tells him that Small is dead and asks him to pick her up from Marmora. Realizing that the water supply is vulnerable to being cut off or poisoned, Harris installs guards at the Waterworks, which he built. Caravaggio introduces Patrick to his wife. They fraternize at a party for the rich, then steal a multi-million dollar yacht from a couple they chloroform. Patrick intends to blow up the Filtration Plant with dynamite and Caravaggio's help. Patrick enters the plant through the water intake. He places dynamite about the plant testing facility and carries the detonating box to Harris' office, where he accuses Harris of exploiting the workers and ignoring their plight. Patrick tells Harris how Alice Gull was killed and we learn that she accidentally picked up the wrong satchel, containing a bomb. Patrick exhausted, falls asleep, and in the morning Harris asks the police to defuse the bombs and bring a nurse for Patrick. Patrick awakes and goes with Hana to retrieve Clara. At Hana's urging, Patrick tells her about Clara. Patrick asks Hana to drive to Marmora. The book ends with " 'Lights' he said"
544984	/m/02nl0d	The World of Null-A	A. E. van Vogt	1948	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gilbert Gosseyn, a man living in an apparent utopia where those with superior understanding and mental control rule the rest of humanity, wants to be tested by the giant Machine that determines such superiority. However, he finds that his memories are false. In his search for his real identity, he discovers that he has extra bodies that are activated when he dies (so that, in a sense, he cannot be killed), that a galactic society of humans exists outside the Solar system, a large interstellar empire wishes to conquer both the Earth and Venus (inhabited by masters of non-Aristotelian logic), and he has extra brain matter that, when properly trained, can allow him to move matter with his mind.
545026	/m/02nl51	The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses	Robert Louis Stevenson	1888	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 In the reign of "old King Henry VI" (1422–1461, 1470–1471) and during the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487) the story begins with the Tunstall Moat House alarm bell being rung to begin mustering troops for its absent lord Sir Daniel Brackley, who intends to join the Battle of Risingham. It is then that the "fellowship" known as "The Black Arrow" headquartered in Tunstall Forest begins to strike with its "four black arrows" for the "four black hearts" of Brackley and three of his retainers: Nicholas Appleyard, Bennet Hatch, and Sir Oliver Oates, the parson. The rhyme that is posted in connection with this attack gets the protagonist Richard Shelton, ward of Sir Daniel, to become curious about the fate of his father Sir Harry Shelton. Having been dispatched to Kettley, where Sir Daniel was quartered, and sent to Tunstall Moat House by return dispatch, he falls in with a fugitive from Sir Daniel, Joanna Sedley, disguised as a boy and going by the alias of John Matcham. She is an heiress kidnapped by Sir Daniel, who wanted to obtain guardianship over her. Coincidentally, Sir Daniel was intending to marry Joanna to Dick himself; and, in her male disguise, Joanna brings up the matter to Dick, affording her the opportunity of feeling him out on the subject. Dick says he is not interested, but he does ask her if his intended bride is good-looking and of pleasant disposition. While making their way through Tunstall Forest, Joanna tries to persuade Dick to turn against Sir Daniel in sympathy with the Black Arrow outlaws, whose camp they discover near the ruins of Grimstone manor. The next day they are met in the forest by Sir Daniel himself disguised as a leper and making his way back to the Moat House after his side was defeated at the Battle of Risingham. Dick and Joan then follow Sir Daniel to the Moat House. Here Dick changes sides when he finds out that Sir Daniel is the real murderer of his father and escapes injured from the Moat House. He is rescued by the outlaws of the Black Arrow with whom he throws in his lot for the rest of the story. The second half of the novel, Books 3-5, tells how Dick rescues his true love Joanna from the clutches of Sir Daniel with the help of both the Black Arrow fellowship and the Yorkist army led by Richard Crookback, the future Richard III of England. The second half of the narrative centers around Shoreby, where the Lancastrian forces are well entrenched. Robert Louis Stevenson inserts seafaring adventure in chapters 4-6 of Book 3 as Dick and the outlaws steal a ship and attempt a seaside rescue of Joanna, who is being kept in a house by the sea. They are unsuccessful, and after Joanna is moved to Sir Daniel's main quarters in Shoreby, Dick then visits her in the guise of a Franciscan friar, which was a disguise used during the Wars of the Roses. Stevenson, the popularizer of the tales of the Arabian nights, has Dick tell the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in Book 4, chapter 6 to help him escape from the ruined sea captain Arblaster, whose ship Dick and the outlaws had stolen. In the course of shadowing Sir Daniel in his goings to and from the house by the sea, Dick and the outlaws, who have made their Shoreby headquarters the "Goat and Bagpipes" alehouse, encounter another group of spies interested in Joanna. After a skirmish in the dark in which the outlaws prevail, Dick finds that he has conquered Joanna's lawful guardian Lord Foxham. Foxham, a Yorkist, promises to give Joanna to Dick in marriage depending on the outcome of a contemplated seaside rescue. There is irony in Foxham scolding Dick, who is nobly born, for consorting with outlaws when the outlaws are recruited in Dick and Foxham's plans to rescue Joanna. Seriously wounded in the failed seaside rescue, Foxham writes letters of recommendation for Dick to Richard Crookback since he must retire temporarily from action. Richard Crookback, Duke of Gloucester, makes his appearance in Book 5, with whom Dick keeps Lord Foxham's rendezvous. Dick's accurate knowledge of the Lancastrian forces in Shoreby aid Crookback in winning the battle. Dick is also successful as one of Crookback's commanders. A delighted Crookback knights Dick on the field of battle and, following their Yorkist victory, gives him fifty horsemen to pursue Sir Daniel, who has escaped Shoreby with Joanna. Dick succeeds in rescuing Joanna, but loses his men in the process. He, Joanna, and Alicia Risingham travel to Holywood where he and Joanna are finally married. In this way he keeps his initial pledge to Joanna to see her safe to Holywood. In the early morning of his wedding day Dick takes a walk on the outskirts of Holywood. He encounters a fugitive Sir Daniel trying to enter Holywood seaport to escape to France or Burgundy. Because it is his wedding day, Dick does not want to soil his hands with Sir Daniel's blood, so he simply bars his way by challenging him either to hand to hand combat or alerting a Yorkist perimeter patrol. Prudently, Sir Daniel opts to go away. Just after he leaves Dick he is shot by Ellis Duckworth with the last black arrow. Duckworth found in prayer by Dick tells him, "But be at rest; the Black Arrow flieth nevermore - the fellowship is broken." Sir Richard and Lady Shelton live in Tunstall Moat House untroubled by the rest of the Wars of the Roses. They provide for both Captain Arblaster and the outlaw Lawless by pensioning them and settling them in Tunstall hamlet. Lawless does a volte face by returning to the Franciscan order as a friar by the name of Brother Honestus.
545049	/m/02nl7h	Interesting Times	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The events of the novel are a "game" between the Discworld gods Fate and The Lady (Luck) with the Discworld as their game board. At the end, the Lady says "I never play to win but I do play not to lose", and shows the gods Rincewind confronted by Australian-aborigine-type warriors. After Eric. The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork is sent a letter from the Agatean Empire on the Counterweight Continent commanding him to "send us the Great Wizzard", the spelling on the hat of Rincewind. The Hex brings Rincewind, and exchanges him in the Aurient Agatean Empire with a live cannon. As usual, The Luggage follows, but having returned to the land of his wood and construction, feels free to seek a mate and reproduce, re-appearing at the end. On the Counterweight Continent, Rincewind joins a previous companion Cohen the Barbarian who intends to steal the country with six other aged heroes, The Silver Horde. Child rebels have been inspired by "What I did on My Holidays", written by Twoflower, his companion in The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. The villainous Vizier Hong leads one of the five families — Hong, Tang, Fang, Sung, and McSweeney, and secretly funds the revolution which is only good for putting up polite posters, and sets them up to take the blame after killing the Emperor. When captured with two young rebel girls, Rincewind discovers Twoflower in the next cell, missing father to the girls, and tries to convince them to stay safe in the cells while he scouts, that is, runs as far away as possible. Meanwhile, the Cohen Horde infiltrate the Forbidden city via underground sewers, take the empty throne, but are called out to face the besieging army. Back in the University, Hex is calculating the spell to bring Rincewind back, but the butterfly of Luck drops a small glob of honey, distracting an ant, altering the calculation. Rincewind falls into a mysterious cave, filled with terracotta statues, the original, legendary Red Army of the first Emperor. In magic armour, he leads the terracotta army against the five family armies, winning mostly by accident. Cohen returns to Hunghung victorious, and re-proclaims himself Emperor. Just as Twoflower challenges Hong for the death of his wife, the Unseen University returns the lit cannon, that kills Hong and Horde's "Teach" Ronald Saveloy, who tried to civilize the barbarians with alternative vocabulary for swear words and polite behavior, but finally agreed to fight alongside and rides off with a Valkyrie. Rincewind is transported to "XXXX", an unexplored continent and another adventure.
546875	/m/02nrr2	Prisoners of the Sun	Hergé	1949		 In the previous adventure, The Seven Crystal Balls, seven explorers have been afflicted with a mysterious illness after unearthing the tomb of the mummified Inca, Rascar Capac. Professor Calculus has been kidnapped by a band of men including the Quechua native Peruvian Chiquito, one of the last descendants of the Incas. Tintin and Captain Haddock discover their friend is on board the cargo ship Pachacamac bound for Callao, Peru and are on a flight to rescue him. When Tintin and Haddock intercept the ship, Tintin encounters Chiquito and learns Calculus is to be put to death for wearing the bracelet belonging to the Inca mummy. Unable to rescue Calculus, Tintin and the Captain must set off on the trail of the natives who have taken him. It leads them through the small town of Santa Clara, to the mountain town of Jauga, where a train is sabotaged in an attempt to kill them. They find both the authorities and the locals extremely unwilling to help them track Calculus' kidnappers because of the wrath of the Inca. Tintin encounters a young Quechua native boy named Zorrino, whom he protects from two bullying men of white descent. For that, a mysterious Indian gives Tintin a medallion, telling him it will save him from danger. Zorrino then offers to take them to the Temple of the Sun, where he claims their friend is being held prisoner by the Inca. "The Inca, in these days?" asks Tintin. "White men not know, señor." replies Zorrino. "Only you know." The Temple lies deep in the Andes, and the journey there is long and eventful, involving hindrance from natives and the Captain being terrorised by local wildlife. Finally, Tintin, Haddock, and Zorrino come upon the Temple of the Sun—and stumble right into a group of Inca who have survived until modern-day times. They are brought before the noble Prince of the Sun; on the left stands Chiquito, on the right stands Huascar, the mysterious Quechua Tintin encountered in Jauga. Zorrino is saved from harm when Tintin gives him Huascar's medallion, but Tintin and Haddock are sentenced to death for their sacrilegious intrusion. The Inca prince tells them they may choose the hour that the Sun himself will set alight the pyre for which they are destined. Tintin and Haddock end up on the same pyre as Professor Calculus. Tintin has, however, chosen the hour of their death to coincide with a solar eclipse, and the terrified Inca believe Tintin can command Pachacamac, their god, the Sun. The Inca prince implores Tintin to make the Sun show his light again. At Tintin's command, the Sun obeys, and the three are quickly set free. Afterwards, the Prince of the Sun tells them the seven crystal balls used against the explorers who had excavated Rascar Capac's tomb contained a "mystic liquid" obtained from coca, which plunged the seven explorers into a deep sleep. Each time the Inca high priest cast his spell over seven wax figures he could use them as he willed, as punishment for their sacrilege. Tintin convinces the Inca prince the explorers wished only to make known to the world the splendours of their civilisation. The Inca prince orders Huascar to destroy the wax figures and at that moment in Europe the seven explorers awaken. After swearing on their own accord to keep the colony's existence secret, Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus are bestowed with a gift of gold and jewels, only a sample of the treasure of the Incas for which the Spanish conquerors searched in vain for so long. Zorrino decides to stay with the Incas; his new friends return safely to Europe.
546877	/m/02nrrg	Land of Black Gold	Hergé	1950		 Car engines are spontaneously exploding all over the country. The reason is narrowed down to the petrol used in the cars which is tampered in some way to cause an explosion. As a result most form of transport from cars to airlines are cutting down on fuel usage, thus affecting the economy. Furthermore political tensions are heightening, leading the world to the brink of war, and Captain Haddock is mobilised in anticipation of an outbreak of hostilities. Following different leads, Tintin and Thomson and Thompson set off for Khemed (a fictional country in the Middle East) on board a petrol tanker. Upon arrival, the three are framed and arrested by the authorities under various charges. The Thompsons are cleared and released, but Tintin is kidnapped by Arab insurgents. (In the original version of the story he initially arrived in the port of Haifa in British-governed Palestine and was first kidnapped by members of the Irgun, before being subsequently abducted by Arabs.) In the course of his adventures, Tintin re-encounters an old enemy, Dr. J.W. Müller (see The Black Island for back story), whom he sees sabotaging an oil pipeline. He reunites with the Thompsons and eventually arrives in Wadesdah, the capital of Khemed, where he comes across his old friend, the Portuguese merchant Senhor Oliveira da Figueira. When the local Emir Ben Kalish Ezab's young son, Prince Abdullah, is kidnapped, Tintin suspects that Müller (who is masquerading as an archaeologist under the name of Professor Smith) is responsible. He pursues Müller in hopes of rescuing the prince and gets into his study. After an incident involving sneezing powder he is able to knock out Muller. He ties him up, gags him, and hides him behind the sofa. He then rescues the Prince and later captures Muller. Captain Haddock comes along near the end of the book, but it is never explained how this happens. In the process he discovers the doctor to be the agent of a foreign power responsible for the tampering of the fuel supplies, having invented a type of chemical in tablet form that increases the explosive power of oil by a significant amount. The Thom(p)son's find the tablets and swallow them, thinking them to be aspirin, causing them to belch continuously, and grow long hair and beards that change colour. After analysing the tablets, Professor Calculus comes up with remedies for the Thompsons and a means of countering the affected oil supplies, though, while carrying out his tests, he half-destroys Captain Haddock's Marlinspike Hall, earning the Captain's fury.
547744	/m/02nv4n	The Present and the Past	Ivy Compton-Burnett		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When the novel opens Catherine has decided she can bear it no longer not to see her boys. Openly confessing that she is breaking her promise, she announces that she would like a reunion. In the meantime Cassius Clare has remarried and has had three more children by the second Mrs Clare: eight-year-old Henry, seven-year-old Megan, and Tobias, aged three. With the help of a head nurse, a nursemaid, and a governess, Flavia Clare has been a perfect mother to all five children, never drawing a line between her own flesh and blood and the two oldest children by her husband's first marriage. But when Fabian and Guy learn about her natural mother's plans, the biological bond proves to be stronger than any care that could be given them by their stepmother, and they want to meet her. Cassius Clare, in an awkward position of wanting to please each member of his family, agrees to Catherine's wish, although right from the start it is clear to all members of the family that she will want to see her two sons on a regular basis once the first meeting has taken place. To Cassius Clare's dismay, the two women get on astonishingly well with each other. Seemingly without a job which demands his time and attention, Clare feels neglected and soon starts pitying himself. This feeling is enhanced when, casually conversing with his sons, he realizes that they do not think highly of him either. For example, asked to say which people he likes best, 13 year-old Fabian comes up with the following list: (1) Catherine, his biological mother; (2) Guy, his brother; and (3) Flavia (whom he calls "Mater"), his stepmother&mdash;with his father altogether absent from the list. Similarly, three-year-old Tobias's favourites turn out to be Catherine, Bennet, the head nurse; his sister Megan; and William, the middle-aged gardener. It seems Cassius Clare takes these pronouncements very seriously, in spite of their being uttered by children. His only comfort is his father, a man of over 70 who has moved in with his son's family after his wife's death and who is just waiting for his own. The one other person who seems to be close to him is Alfred Ainger, the 40-year-old butler. Clare actually discusses with his father how the family might react if he committed suicide and how the natural order of things would be turned upside down if he died before his own father. It never becomes quite clear whether this conversation is meant to be a cry for help. When people keep paying no attention whatsoever to him, Cassius Clare takes his father's pills, ten of which taken together constitute a lethal dose. Clare, however, as a sort of "compromise", takes only four tablets, thus deceiving his family, who think he has really tried to kill himself. A doctor is called for, but he cannot do anything about Clare's condition: the patient just has to wait until the effects of the drug wear off. Cassius Clare considers his scheme to have been at least partly successful when, unexpectedly, Tobias finds the phial with the remaining tablets, and, as there are more of them left than he has claimed, Clare's "deceit" is discovered. Everybody, including the servants, are embarrassed that the head of the family is both weak and a liar, and after Clare's speedy recovery he is appalled to find out that he is still not given the amount of love and attention he thinks he is entitled to. When, obviously only a few days later, Ainger finds him lying on the sofa in very much the same manner as during his faked suicide attempt, the butler does not do anything about it: he neither calls the doctor, nor does he inform Flavia about her husband's state. When the family eventually do start worrying about Clare's health the latter is already dead: now it turns out that, at the age of 52, he has had a heart attack (or something like that), that his life could have been saved but that he has just been left dying without any help. The remaining family members now realize that far-reaching changes will have to be made. Although they do not blame each other or themselves for Clare's death, they all agree that the two women could not possibly go on living under the same roof and raising their five children together. Catherine is prepared to leave the house for good, but on condition that she can take her two sons with her if they wish to go. When Catherine puts the question to them, it is Fabian who spontaneously decides to go with his biological mother. Guy, on the other hand, would not want to leave "Mater", but his relationship to his older brother proves to be the stronger, and so he makes up his mind to go with him.
547959	/m/02nw18	Jenny lives with Eric and Martin	Susanne Bösche		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story describes a few days in the life of a five-year-old named Jenny, her father, Eric, and his boyfriend Martin who lives with them. Jenny's mother Karen lives nearby and often visits the household. The book covers such small adventures as * Jenny, Eric and Martin going to the laundrette together * Jenny, Martin and Karen preparing a surprise birthday party for Eric * Eric and Martin having a small quarrel and making up * A woman expressing homophobic disgust when passing the family in the street. This is the subject of a later discussion between Eric and Jenny.
547990	/m/02nw4s	Explorers on the Moon	Hergé	1954	{"/m/01vnb": "Comic book"}	 The story continues from Destination Moon. Professor Calculus is taking Tintin, Tintin's dog Snowy, Captain Haddock and Calculus' assistant Frank Wolff to the Moon in his rocket. However, the detectives Thomson and Thompson come up from the hold, having mistaken the time of the launch (1:34 a.m. instead of 1:34 p.m.) and been left on board while carrying out a final security check, putting the expedition at risk due to the new strain on the oxygen supply, designed for four people and Snowy and now forced to accommodate six. The mission remains frought with difficulties. The Thompsons accidentally turn off the nuclear power motor, which stops the artificial gravity and sends everyone floating until Tintin restarts the motor. Haddock has smuggled some whisky aboard in hollowed-out books, becomes drunk, and engages in an unscheduled spacewalk that results in him briefly becoming a satellite of the asteroid Adonis. Tintin also dons a space suit to fetch him, and, in a very rare display of temper, berates the Captain for his recklessness. When the rocket engine must temporarily be shut down in order to execute the turnaround maneuver that will enable it to land on the Moon right side up, the momentary lack of artificial gravity also poses problems for Haddock, who has neglected to put on his magnetic boots in time. Additionally, Thomson and Thompson suffer a relapse of the condition caused by their ingestion of the energy-multiplying substance Formula Fourteen (see Land of Black Gold); as a result, they once more sprout thick hair that grows at lightning speed and frequently changes color. The spacecraft eventually lands safely in the Hipparchus Crater, and by agreement among the crew, Tintin is the first to set foot on the Moon (the first human to do so). Everyone then gets a chance to walk about; even the Captain enjoys it, but upon seeing the Earth, expresses unease over whether they will survive to see it again. The crew soon starts unpacking the scientific payload – telescopes, cameras, and a battery-powered expedition tank. Calculus decides to reduce the total stay on the lunar surface from fourteen Earth days to six in order to conserve oxygen. Three days later, the Captain, Wolff and Tintin take the battery-powered tank to explore some stalactite caves in the direction of the Ptolemaeus Crater; inside a cave Snowy slips into an ice-covered fissure, damaging his two-way radio, and there is a minor drama in rescuing him, but they all return to the rocket safely. Tintin decides to rest up and have lunch with Wolff while the Captain, Calculus, Thomson and Thompson immediately go out in the tank again on a 48-hour trip to explore the lunar caves in detail, as Calculus suspects they might find uranium or radium deposits there. A sudden turn of events occurs when the spy plot broached in Destination Moon is revealed: Wolff has been working with a secret agent from a foreign power, the brutish and autocratic Colonel Jorgen, whom Tintin had previously encountered and defeated in King Ottokar's Sceptre, has been hiding in the rocket since it was launched eight days previously (having been smuggled aboard along with technical equipment). When Tintin goes below to fetch some supplies for lunch, Jorgen knocks him out and binds him, then tries to seize control of the rocket, which he plans to fly back to his own country, leaving the others marooned on the Moon. Outside, from the Moon tank, the Captain, Calculus, Thomson and Thompson watch, horrified, as the rocket blasts off, but comes crashing back down and coming to rest. Jorgen wrongly accuses Wolff of sabotaging the launching gear and nearly shoots him, but Tintin stops him. Tintin has freed himself and succeeded in foiling the plot, but in order to do so had been forced to sabotage the rocket to prevent Jorgen's attempted liftoff. Wolff reveals to the stunned group his history of gambling debts, which Jorgen's employers have used to blackmail him into aiding them involuntarily. After the group interrogates Jorgen and Wolff, Tintin eventually locks them in the hold. Calculus determines that the crew needs at least four days to repair the damaged rocket, while the remaining oxygen supply will last at most four days. Due to the strain on the oxygen supplies, the crew decides to abandon most of the equipment and to cut short the lunar stay. The repair work is completed slightly ahead of schedule after three days, and the rocket cleared for lift-off. Even so, shortly before lift-off, the Captain becomes the first among them to experience a bout of dizziness due to build-up of carbon dioxide. The lift-off is successful, but the rocket is put off course, and by the time the crew awake from the liftoff-induced blackout and correct it, they have lost additional time and thus consumed more oxygen. Halfway back to Earth, Jorgen escapes after overpowering the detectives, who have attempted to secure the prisoners more thoroughly. When Jorgen declares his intention to kill Tintin and the others, Wolff intervenes and a fight ensues; the gun goes off, killing Jorgen. However, even without Jorgen there isn't enough oxygen to make it home. Overcome with guilt, Wolff sacrifices himself by opening the airlock and going out into space while the others are unconscious, leaving behind a moving farewell note that asks for forgiveness. The rest of the group continues towards Earth as their oxygen runs low. Everyone soon falls unconscious, but Tintin barely manages to set the rocket up to land on auto-pilot. After the ship lands, firemen break the door open. On the tarmac, everyone is revived, except for the Captain. A doctor is giving a prostrate Haddock oxygen, but fears that his heart is worn out because "It seems he was a great whisky drinker." Suddenly roused by the sound of the word "whisky", Captain Haddock wakes up with a start. Everyone rejoices and a ground crew member returns with a bottle of whisky. In the bliss of the moment, Calculus joyfully announces that "we will return" to the Moon (referring to mankind in general), whereupon Haddock furiously declares that he will never be seen inside a rocket again. He then promptly walks away, only to trip and a fall over a stretcher in the midst of declaring that "Man's proper place&nbsp;... is on dear old Earth!"
548003	/m/02nw5m	The Calculus Affair	Hergé	1956		 During a thunderstorm, Tintin and Captain Haddock shelter in Marlinspike Hall. During the storm, several items of glass and china within the house break for no apparent reason. An insurance agent, Jolyon Wagg barges into the hall seeking shelter. He claims that all the windows of his car have somehow blown to bits. More mysterious incidents of glass breaking occur. After the storm, gunshots are heard outside. Professor Calculus returns from his laboratory with bullet holes in his hat. Investigating outside, Tintin discovers a wounded man in the grounds. He disappears before he can be questioned. The next day a preoccupied Calculus leaves to attend a conference on nuclear physics in Geneva, Switzerland. With him gone the glass breaking stops, leading Tintin to suspect Calculus may have been responsible for it. He and the Captain investigate inside his laboratory, finding a strange device and boxes of broken glass. Suddenly they are surprised by a man in trenchcoat and mask, who escapes after punching the Captain and Snowy. He drops a key and a packet of cigarettes with the name of the Hotel Cornavin (where Calculus is staying in Geneva) scrawled onto it. Believing that Calculus is in danger, Tintin and Haddock decide to follow him to Switzerland. In Geneva, Tintin and Haddock miss Calculus at his hotel by seconds, delayed by two men dressed in the same trenchcoats as the man in the lab. They track Calculus to Nyon, at the home of Professor Topolino, an expert in ultrasonics. On the way to Nyon their taxi is forced into a nearby lake by the same two men from the hotel, but they manage to survive and reach Topolino's house. Calculus's umbrella is there, but he is not. Topolino is found bound and gagged in his own cellar. Topolino claims that it was Calculus's doing but when shown a photograph of the professor he does not recognise him. They deduce that someone impersonated Calculus, imprisoned Topolino in his cellar and then kidnapped the real Calculus upon his arrival. As they come to this conclusion, the same two men who had earlier hampered Tintin and Haddock's efforts to find Calculus in Geneva blow up Topolino's house in an attempt to get rid of them all, but they survive nonetheless. Tintin and Haddock conclude that Calculus had invented a sonic device capable of destroying glass and china, and potentially converted into a terrible weapon. Concerned of the consequences of his invention, he had decided to talk it over with Topolino. But Topolino's manservant, a Bordurian named Boris, learned of this and informed his country's intelligence service. It soon dawns on them that rival teams of agents from both Syldavia and Borduria are after the device. Abducted at first by Bordurians, Calculus is then snatched by Syldavian agents in spite of Tintin and Haddock's efforts to rescue him. Pursuing the Syldavians in a helicopter across Lake Geneva into Haute-Savoie, France, they chase a boat and then a car carrying Calculus, but the helicopter runs out of fuel and they lose them. After being pursued by Tintin and Haddock through the French countryside, the Syldavians escape in a plane, with Calculus as their prisoner. However, the plane is forced down over Bordurian territory, meaning Calculus is back in Bordurian hands. Tintin and Haddock set off for Szohôd, Borduria in hope of finding their friend again. The Bordurians are alerted to their arrival by the two men in Geneva (who were Bordurian secret agents), and they are intercepted at the airport by the Bordurian Secret Police (ZEP). Assigned two minders who take them to a luxury hotel and keep them in bugged rooms, Tintin and Haddock manage to escape and hide in the Szohôd Opera House, where Bianca Castafiore is performing. She invites them into her dressing room but is visited by Colonel Sponsz, chief of ZEP, in her dressing room. Tintin and Haddock hide in Bianca's closet, overhearing the conversation between Sponsz and Castafiore. Sponsz reveals Calculus's location, a gaol in the fortress of Bakhine, and the stress on him to surrender his plans. If he does give them up, then he will be handed over to two officials from the International Red Cross, to whom he must swear that he went to the Bordurians of his own accord and gave them his plans voluntarily. Sponsz also reveals that the papers for the officials and Calculus' release are in his overcoat, hanging in the closet in which Tintin and Haddock are hiding. Overhearing all this, Tintin and Haddock steal the papers and, disguising themselves as the two Red Cross officials, acquire Calculus' release. When Sponsz is told of this, he quickly raises the alarm, but the three friends manage to escape to the border in a car and later, a tank. When they arrive back in Marlinspike, they find that Jolyon Wagg's family is staying there and has nearly wrecked the house. Realising the destructive potential of his invention, Calculus burns his plans....by lighting them with Haddock's pipe while it is placed in Haddock's mouth. Haddock is incensed, calling Calculus a "jack-in-a-box". The hard-of-hearing Calculus thinks that Haddock has said "chicken pox", and tells Jolyon Wagg that Haddock is suffering from this disease. While Wagg at first interprets it as a joke, he then remembers that chicken pox is infectious, and Wagg doesn't want to be infected, so he and his family leave Marlinspike.
549558	/m/02n_y1	The Dragon Reborn	Robert Jordan	1991-10-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Rand al'Thor, having been declared the Dragon Reborn by Moiraine Damodred at the end of the second book, The Great Hunt, secretly leaves the Shienaran camp in the Mountains of Mist to go to Tear to prove himself the Dragon Reborn. Along the way he is hunted by Darkhounds and Darkfriends. Min has left the camp by order of Moiraine to report to the Amyrlin on what has transpired. Moiraine, Lan Mandragoran, Loial, and Perrin Aybara chase after Rand. Along the way, they encounter a Hunter for the Horn, Zarine Bashere, who prefers to be called Faile Bashere. They battle Darkhounds, and discover that the Forsaken Sammael rules in Illian. Mat Cauthon is taken to Tar Valon by Verin Mathwin, Nynaeve al'Meara, Egwene al'Vere, Elayne Trakand, and Hurin. The women skirmish with Children of the Light before entering one of the villages at the end of a bridge leading to Tar Valon. Immediately after arrival in Tar Valon Hurin departs to report to King Easar in Shienar as well as his fellow Borderlanders. The Amyrlin Seat, Siuan Sanche, sets Nynaeve, Egwene, with Elayne joining them later, to the task of hunting down the Black Ajah. A lead sends the trio traveling to Tear. In the White Tower, through the use of a sa'angreal by Aes Sedai, Mat is permanently healed of the corruptive influence of the ruby dagger of Shadar Logoth. Once healed Mat defeats Galad Damodred and Gawyn Trakand at the same time in a practice sword battle using a quarter staff. This wins him enough money to gamble with and escape from Tar Valon. Elayne entrusts Mat with a letter to her mother Queen Morgase, explaining that she will be leaving the White Tower for some time. Mat finds Thom Merrilin in an inn. The pair escape Tar Valon together and travel to Andor, where Mat delivers the letter and learns of a plot by Queen Morgase's lover, Lord Gaebril, to murder Elayne, Daughter-Heir of Andor. Seeking to prevent that murder, Mat pursues the women, who are already on their way to Tear. In Tear, Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne are unwillingly betrayed by Juilin Sandar, a thief catcher, (who was under the influence of a form of Compulsion from Liandrin) to the Black Ajah and then imprisoned in the Stone of Tear, where they are rescued by Mat and a repentant Juilin. Faile falls into a Black Ajah trap meant for Moiraine, and Perrin risks his life in the World of Dreams to rescue her. Rand and the Forsaken Be'lal duel in the Stone of Tear. Moiraine interrupts the battle and kills Be'lal with balefire. Ba'alzamon appears, disables Moiraine, and attacks Rand. Rand takes Callandor, proving himself the Dragon Reborn, and, with it, kills Ba'alzamon. Rand thinks he has killed the Dark One, who he believes was Ba'alzamon, but Moiraine tells him that the Dark One is not human, and therefore cannot have been Ba'alzamon, because Ba'alzamon left behind a corpse. Egwene, remembering a parchment of prophecy that Verin Sedai showed her, instead deduces that the corpse is possibly Ishamael, Chief among the Forsaken. The Aiel in Tear take the Stone and reveal themselves as the People of the Dragon.
549608	/m/02p00n	The Fires of Heaven	Robert Jordan	1993-10-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Chasing the Shaido Aiel, who have crossed over the Spine of the World and are pillaging Cairhien, Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn and the Car'a'carn, leads his Aiel over the Spine as well. The two Aiel armies meet in the Second Battle of Cairhien, which is by far the largest battle in the Westland since the time of Artur Hawkwing, 1000 years past. At the start of the battle, Mat Cauthon saves some troops from a Shaido ambush. Guiding these troops throughout the day, he wins numerous battles using the memories of past generals he received in The Shadow Rising. He personally kills the Shaido leader, Couladin, in battle, and the Shaido Aiel retreat in defeat. Falsely believing Queen Morgase Trakand of Andor died at the hands of the Forsaken, Rahvin, who is masquerading as Lord Gaebril, an angry Rand prepares to Travel to Caemlyn with a small Aiel strike force. Before he can do so, Lanfear, learning that Rand slept with Aviendha, is furious with jealousy and attempts to kill them. Moiraine Damodred grabs Lanfear and both topple through the doorframe ter'angreal that Mat used in the waste. After they fall through, the ter'angreal is damaged by fire and destroyed. Both Moiraine and Lanfear are presumed dead. Rand attacks Caemlyn, and Mat, Asmodean and Aviendha go with him as well. Shortly after arrival, Rand's companions are killed by Rahvin's wielding of the One Power. Rand begins a desperate, fury driven chase to eradicate Rahvin in Tel'aran'rhiod, after the Forsaken opens a portal of sorts leading to there. After a lengthy chase and duel, Rand destroys Rahvin with a tremendous burst of balefire, erasing Rahvin's actions he undertook whilst killing Mat, Aviendha and Asmodean. Afterwards, Asmodean is killed by an unknown figure right after a shock of recognition. Meanwhile, Nynaeve al'Meara and Elayne Trakand travel through lands filled with Seanchan left behind from the battle at Toman Head, Dragonsworn, bandits, and Whitecloaks, attempting to find the base of the rebel Aes Sedai. Nynaeve finally remembers that the rebel Aes Sedai are in Salidar; after they arrive, Nynaeve is able to trap the Forsaken Moghedien in Tel'aran'rhiod with the use of an a'dam. In Tel'aran'rhiod, Nynaeve goes to Caemlyn where she finds Rahvin. She distracts him with fire until Rand appears and finishes him off.
549687	/m/02p0dn	The Shadow Rising	Robert Jordan	1992-09-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the beginning of the book, all of the major protagonists are together at the Stone of Tear, where Rand al'Thor has just taken (at the end of The Dragon Reborn) the crystal sword Callandor from The Stone, showing the world that he is The Dragon Reborn. Selene reveals herself to be Lanfear, one of the Forsaken, and tells Rand to join her. The Stone of Tear is then stormed by Trollocs and Fades, sent by another Forsaken Sammael (Lanfear did not have anything to do with this). Another Forsaken, Semirhage, also sends shadowspawn into the Stone of Tear, to oppose Sammael's forces. In defense, Rand uses Callandor to send a lightning storm to kill all of the Trollocs and Fades, leaving some believing Rand has gone mad. Rand declares his intention to go follow the People of the Dragon, the Aiel, back to their home, the Aiel Waste. Egwene al'Vere and Moiraine Damodred resolve to accompany him. Mat Cauthon, unsure of what to do, finds answers within the Stone of Tear's Aelfinn ter'angreal, and is prompted to follow Rand to the Aiel Waste. Perrin Aybara, after hearing rumors of trouble in Two Rivers, chooses to return home to the Two Rivers, and Faile Bashere goes with him. Elayne Trakand, Nynaeve al'Meara, and Thom Merrilin decide to go to Tarabon to hunt the Black Ajah. Also Min Farshaw arrives in Tar Valon to report to the Amyrlin Siuan Sanche, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that will lead to a Tower split. Thus, The Shadow Rising follows four groups of characters in four main plotlines. Rand uses a Portal Stone to transport Mat, Egwene, Moiraine, and the Aiel at the Stone of Tear from Tear to the Aiel Waste, where Taardad and Shaido Aiel are waiting for them. The Aiel Wise Ones have Moiraine, Aviendha (a former maiden of the spear seeking to become a Wise One), and Rand enter Rhuidean, and allow Mat to go with Rand. All three enter ter'angreal in Rhuidean. Rand walks through the crystal garden that is the proving ground for Aiel chiefs. He relives portions of the lives of various Aiel (his paternal ancestors) before and just after the Breaking, and learns that the Aiel once shunned violence and served Aes Sedai. The true Aiel from the Age of Legends live on as Tinkers, seeking the Song they once sang to the plants. Rand survives the trial and emerges with dragon markings on both arms, proving him to be He Who Comes With the Dawn, the Car'a'carn, the Chief of Chiefs of the Aiel. Mat finds a doorway ter'angreal similar to the one he entered in Tear. He enters the door seeking answers to the questions he asked of the Snake creatures during his previous visit. He encounters their Fox counterparts, who bargain for gifts instead of answering questions (he later speculates that the Eelfinn are namesake for the children's game of Snakes and Foxes, which there is no way of winning). He comes out with the gaps in his memory filled with those of men long dead and with fluency in the Old Tongue. He is also gifted with a spear called an ashandarei and a medallion ter'angreal that protects against the One Power. Rand finds Mat has been hanged from the Tree of Life as the price for these gifts, but he is able to revive Mat. From this point on Mat wears a black scarf around his neck to hide the hanging scars. Moiraine remains in Rhuidean longer than the others, delaying the departure of the party. Having visited the three-hooped ter'angreal used by the Wise Ones she has some knowledge of the future. The Wise Ones assign Aviendha the task of teaching Rand Aiel customs as they travel to Cold Rocks Hold. On the way to Cold Rocks Hold they come across a group of merchants. The Aiel have the merchants follow them to Cold Rocks Hold. At Al'cair Dal, both Rand al'Thor and Couladin of the Shaido Aiel declare themselves to be He Who Comes With the Dawn. Rand is forced to reveal the secret history of the Aiel in the Age of Legends to prove to the clan chiefs that he did enter Rhuidean and is truly He Who Comes With the Dawn, whereas Couladin is an impostor and did not. An uproar breaks out among the Aiel, and, hoping to avert violence, Rand uses the One Power to bring a rainstorm to the Aiel Waste for the first time since the Breaking of the World. After fighting breaks out among the Aiel, Rand chases after Asmodean, who had previously been disguised as a gleeman traveling with the merchants. Going by the alias Jasin Natael, Asmodean is after the ter'angreal access keys to the Choedan Kal, the most powerful sa'angreal ever constructed. They battle at Rhuidean, and Rand defeats Asmodean by cutting him off from the Dark One. Lanfear arrives and allows Rand to live and then helps him by limiting Asmodean's ability to channel the One Power: Asmodean will be forced to teach Rand how to use the One Power (something only a male Forsaken can do) because the Shadow will now believe him to be a traitor. When Rand returns to Al'cair Dal, he finds that most of the Aiel, except for the Shaido and a few others, have acknowledged him as the Car'a'carn and joined him. In the Two Rivers, Perrin discovers that the people are caught between Trollocs, led by Slayer, and the Children of the Light, with whom Padan Fain is working, who believe Perrin is a Darkfriend. He also finds Verin Mathwin and Alanna Mosvani, both Aes Sedai, in the Two Rivers. They are searching for girls to bring to the White Tower to become Aes Sedai, since both Egwene and Nynaeve came from the Two Rivers and are strong in the Power. With the help of Blademaster Tam al'Thor and Abell Cauthon, Perrin leads the people of the Two Rivers to war against the Trollocs, and the villagers begin to call him Lord Perrin, and Perrin Goldeneyes, titles that he tries without success to discourage. Before the final victory, Perrin marries Faile, and drives out Lord Luc after discovering that Luc is indeed Slayer. In the city of Tanchico in Tarabon, Elayne and Nynaeve encounter Moghedien and the Black Ajah and remove a male a'dam from their possession. Elayne and Nynaeve also meet Bayle Domon and the Seanchan Egeanin. They 'befriend' the Panarch Amathera, whom they rescue from Temaile, who is tormenting her. They also manage to collect one of the Seals on the Dark One's prison. Nynaeve and Moghedien end up battling, discovering that they are equal in power. Nynaeve shields the Forsaken, but they are discovered by one of the Black Ajah, who damages the palace using a ter'angreal that makes balefire. In the confusion, Moghedien escapes. Min Farshaw arrives at the White Tower to report to the Amyrlin, as Moiraine bid her to do. Her arrival is noted by Elaida, who discovers that something is going on between Moiraine, Siuan and the Dragon Reborn. Min remains in the Tower in the guise of Elmindreda, a giddy, empty-headed woman unable to decide between two suitors. Elaida and her supporters confront and depose Siuan, stilling her and Leane Sharif her Keeper of the Chronicles. Elaida is Raised (made Amyrlin) and many Aes Sedai flee. Min hides, and with the help of the cook Laras, frees the deposed Amyrlin Seat and Leane. Min, Siuan and Leane are recognized by Gawyn Trakand as they try to flee the Tower grounds. He is reluctant to help Siuan since the disappearance of Elayne, but he helps them escape because Min asks it, and because it means helping Egwene as well. While riding through the city toward freedom across one of the bridges, they come across the gentled Logain, whom they talk into going with them.
549746	/m/02p0rg	1876	Gore Vidal	1976	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel focuses on Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler who has recently returned to the USA after more than 30 years in Europe, where he married into minor Napoleonic nobility; he is accompanied by his beautiful young widowed daughter Emma, the Princesse d'Agrigente, who immediately becomes the darling of New York high society. Despite his fame and affluent image, Schuyler finds work as a journalist because his wealth has been destroyed by the 1873 monetary crisis and his daughter's late husband has left her penniless. Schuyler also supports the Democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, Governor of New York, because he hopes to secure himself a diplomatic position with the incoming administration that will enable him to return to Europe. The early chapters detail the Schuylers' introduction into New York society and the engagement between Emma and John Day Apgar, a wealthy but rather dull young lawyer and scion of a leading New York family. The later chapters chronicle Schuyler's sojourn in Washington, DC and Emma's growing friendship with the wealthy Denise Sanford and her boorish husband William. Emma and Denise become close friends but after Denise dies in childbirth Emma breaks off her engagement to Apgar and marries Sanford instead. The political backdrop to the story is the 1876 U.S. presidential election, a close run contest between Tilden and the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden won the popular vote, but there was a dispute over the results in four states, including Florida. In Florida, the Republican leaders of the State initially reported a victory for Tilden, before deciding that in fact Hayes had won. Vidal builds up to this historic crisis through the activities of a mixed cast of historical and fictional characters, some of the latter having previously appeared in Burr, or having descended from characters in that novel.
551066	/m/02p43b	Last of the Curlews	Fred Bodsworth		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story follows the bird throughout a year during its migration to South America and return to the Canadian Arctic in search of a mate. Although somewhat anthropomorphic in parts, the book paints a realistic and detailed picture of this bird's life and behaviour. The book may have been somewhat premature in that there were confirmed sightings of this bird in 1963 and there were a number of unconfirmed sightings after that date. However, this bird may now be extinct.
552085	/m/02p6cb	Reaper Man	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Auditors of Reality are beings who watch the Discworld to ensure everything obeys The Rules. As Death starts developing a personality the Auditors feel that he does not perform his Duty in the right way. They send him to live like everyone else. Assuming the name "Bill Door", he works as a farm hand for the elderly Miss Flitworth. While every other species creates a new Death for themselves, humans need more time for their Death to be completed. As a result, the life force of dead humans starts to build up; this results in poltergeist activity, ghosts, and other paranormal phenomena. Most notable is the return of the recently deceased wizard Windle Poons, who was really looking forward to reincarnation. After several misadventures, including being accosted by his oldest friends, he finds himself attending the Fresh Start club, an undead-rights group led by Reg Shoe. The Fresh Start club and the wizards of Unseen University discover that the city of Ankh-Morpork is being invaded by a parasitic lifeform that feeds on cities and hatches from eggs that resemble snow globes. Tracking its middle form, shopping carts, the Fresh Start club and the wizards invade and destroy the third form, a shopping mall. When humankind finally thinks of a New Death, one with a crown and without any humanity or human face, it goes to take Bill Door. Death/Door, having planned for this moment for some time, outwits and destroys it. Having defeated the New Death, Death absorbs the other Deaths back into him, with the exception of the Death of Rats (and ultimately, the Death of Fleas). Death confronts Azrael, the Death of the Universe, and states that the Deaths have to care or they do not exist and there is nothing but Oblivion, which must also end some time. Death asks for and receives some time. He meets up with Miss Flitworth again and offers her unlimited dreams. She asks to go to the local Harvest Dance. They prepare and join the townspeople for a full night of dancing. As the sun is coming up, Miss Flitworth realizes she had died hours before the dance even started. Death escorts her through history to her old fiancé. Returning to the city of Ankh Morpork he meets up with Windle Poons, finally taking him to his just reward, whatever it is. At the end there is also a discussion between Death and the Death of Rats over what the Death of Rats should "ride", Death suggests a dog while the Death of Rats suggests a cat.
552134	/m/02p6fj	Men at Arms	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Edward d'Eath, an Assassin and son of a down-and-out noble family, becomes convinced that the restoration of the Ankh-Morpork monarchy will solve the social change in the city which he blames for his family's humbling. Obsessively researching the history of the royal family he becomes convinced that an heir to the throne is still alive living within Ankh-Morpork, but these efforts are met with skepticism by his peers. Meanwhile, Captain Samuel Vimes, captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, is confronted by new problems. About to be married to Sybil Ramkin, richest woman in Ankh-Morpork, he has to deal with the new recruits first: a dwarf, a troll, and a werewolf, representatives of ethnic minorities in the city. He also has to figure out who stole a mysterious device from the Assassins' Guild and solve a string of gruesome, seemingly random murders. As the story progresses, it is made clear that d'Eath has stolen the gonne, the Disc's first and only handheld firearm. He meant to use it to set the rightful king on the throne, but the device (invented by Leonard of Quirm) appears to have a strange mind of its own. After d'Eath takes it to Dr. Cruces, head of the Assassin's Guild, along with his evidence of the king's identity, he is murdered by Dr. Cruces who then becomes a puppet of the gonne. The Watch foil his attempt on the Patrician's life, losing Cuddy in the process, and Vimes and Carrot Ironfoundersson tail him into the sewers. After a brief struggle, Vimes manages to take the gonne and corner Cruces in his office in the Assassin's Guild. With Carrot's help, he resists the weapon's allure and Carrot, learning of his apparent heritage as the heir, kills Dr. Cruces with his distinctly non-magic sword. The gonne is destroyed, and Vimes takes over in the revived post of Commander of the Watch. Following his promotion to Commander of the City Watch (and becoming Sir Samuel Vimes as a consequence), the role of Captain of the Watch is given to Carrot. They spend some time together re-organising the Watch, combining the Day and Night Watches into one force, expanding the membership and creating an effective police force around the city. The evidence that Carrot may be the true King of Ankh-Morpork vanishes, along with the gonne, despite both having been entrusted to the care of Carrot himself. Following Acting-Constable Cuddys' funeral, Vimes suggests that the coffin was heavier than expected, which Carrot agrees may have been the case. Carrot later mentions to the Patrician that he is sure that they are "well guarded", an apparent reference to the tradition of burying dwarfs with weapons with which to face the next life, implying the gonne is serving Cuddy in this way.
552177	/m/02p6g_	Hogfather	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the novel, the Auditors strike again by deciding to eliminate the Hogfather because he does not fit into their view of the universe. They meet with Lord Downey, head of the Assassin's Guild, and commission the services of Mr Teatime, whose particular brand of insane genius makes him an ideal candidate for the assassination of the Hogfather and other anthropomorphic personifications. Death decides to take over for the Hogfather in order to make people continue to believe in him, wearing a long red cloak and a beard, but things start to become complicated because he is taking the children's wishes too literally. Meanwhile, Death's granddaughter Susan must find out what's happened to the real Hogfather. She visits his Castle of Bones only to find the hung-over Bilious, the "Oh God" of Hangovers, whom she rescues before the castle collapses due to the lack of belief. In an attempt to cure Bilious, Susan visits the Unseen University, where it is discovered that several of these small gods and beings are being created. The University's thinking machine, Hex, explains that there is 'spare belief' in the world &ndash; due to the absence of the Hogfather &ndash; which is being used to create them. Susan and Bilious then travel to the land of the Tooth Fairy where they discover that Jonathan Teatime has 'killed' the Hogfather by collecting millions of children's teeth and using them to control the children, forcing them to stop believing in the Hogfather. Upon throwing the Assassin off the tower and apparently killing him, Susan clears the teeth away and brings back the Hogfather by rescuing him from the Auditors, who have taken the forms of dogs. They cannot return to their original state and so cannot stop themselves falling off a cliff. Afterwards, Teatime tracks Susan to the Gaiters' nursery, but is killed by Susan using the nursery poker, which passes through Death because "it only kills monsters".
552328	/m/02p6qf	Thief of Time	Terry Pratchett	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Auditors are upset because the human race (although this appears to include all races on the Discworld, not just the humans) are living their lives in - what the Auditors consider to be - an unpredictable (and therefore not understandable) way. To fix this matter once and for all, they decide to convince a young clock maker, Jeremy Clockson, in Ankh-Morpork to build a perfect glass clock. They do not reveal that this will imprison Time (the anthropomorphic personification) and thereby freeze time (the physical quantity) on the Discworld. By freezing time, the Auditors intend to eliminate the unpredictability that humans cause through their everyday actions (and have enough time, for once, to file all the paperwork). Death discovers their plans, but is unable to act directly because of previous agreements with the Auditors. Instead, Death sends his granddaughter Susan to stop them, assisted (apparently) by the Death of Rats and Quoth the Raven. Meanwhile, in a distant valley, a young apprentice of the History Monks, Lobsang Ludd, is apprenticed to Lu-Tze, known throughout the Oi Dong Monastery as 'The Sweeper'. Following a highly impressive patch-up job with time (the physical quantity) by Lobsang, he and Lu-Tze are brought before the Abbot, where they hear that a glass clock is being built. Lu-Tze knows of such a clock's side-effects, since he was sent to prevent a previous clock from being built in Überwald. However, due to the difficulties inherent in Überwald (including the difficulty in determining which specific bolt of lightning hitting which castle might start the glass clock) he failed to stop the original - but Time only froze for a moment before a metal spring snapped and caused the clock to shatter. Having figured out that the new glass clock would be likely built in Ankh-Morpork, Lu-Tze and Lobsang head for the city to try to stop Jeremy from building it. The Auditors end up using one of their own as an agent when contacting Jeremy. Myria LeJean takes a human form and becomes quite disturbed by "her" experiences as "she" becomes more human and individual, as opposed to the collective Auditors. As she begins to understand more about humans, she opposes the activation of the clock and finds ways to delay its creation. This annoys the other Auditors who create human bodies of their own and - naming themselves after colours (in a possible play on the secret identities in Reservoir Dogs) - they prevent Myria from smashing the clock with a hammer, and organise a localised storm, a bolt of lightning hits Jeremy Clockson's workshop and the clock is started. Lobsang Ludd is just smashing his way through the window of the workshop at the moment the clock starts, having been delayed when he went back to help Lu-Tze, but he is too late to stop it… However, Lobsang is able to continue moving. He meets Susan Sto Helit (whose own attempts to stop the clock being started were less successful) and finds out after his time-storer stops spinning, that, as a creature not limited by time, he was not affected by the starting of the glass clock. Meeting up with Myria LeJean, they work to correct the problem and fight the Auditors. Since Myria is no longer part of the Collective hive mind of the Auditors, Susan suggests she change her name to Unity - which she likes. Susan and the newly-named Unity discover that Lobsang Ludd and Jeremy Clockson seem to share an astonishing mental connection. When Lobsang speaks, Jeremy (who was knocked unconscious by the lightning that started the clock and whose body was moved away from the Auditors by Myria/Unity) attempts to form the same words, despite his comatose state. Susan is able to shed light on this when she reveals that she met the midwife who brought Lobsang and Jeremy into the world - none other than the "best midwife in the world" - Nanny Ogg. Nanny has told her that she delivered two boys an instant apart and Susan realises that both Lobsang and Jeremy are the same person. Lobsang and Jeremy become infused, although they are nothing more than blue mist to begin with. Susan continues to call the mist Lobsang, since she is told that "Lobsang had the better memories". Using chocolate, Susan, Unity and a re-animated Lu-Tze kill a number of Auditors (the taste sensation of chocolate literally blows them away) and Lobsang is able to destroy the clock, freeing Time and unfreezing time. He then meets with his mother, Time, and his father, Wen the Eternally Surprised (the first Abbot of Oi Dong monastery) before effectively taking over Time's job. He attempts to learn Lu-Tze's fifth surprise (an ongoing theme in the novel as the sweeper refuses to tell him), after which he is defeated in the iron dojo by Lu-Tze, but passes his training anyway and becomes a sweeper. He asks Lu-Tze's advice about Susan and he returns to Ankh-Morpork, where the two have an unspecified "perfect moment." Throughout the story, Death is trying to round-up the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War, Famine and Pestilence, none of whom want to join up (compare with Sourcery when the Four Horsemen of the "Apocralypse" ride out, but having stopped off at the pub three of them have their Horses stolen). The Fifth Horseman - Ronnie Soak (originally called Kaos - Soak spelled backwards - as in Chaos) who left before they became famous - agrees to join Death in the fight against the Auditors, and the other three also arrive as the battle prepares to start. Kaos is useful due to his sword of chaos, which goes against the rules and though flaming, is used to keep his milk cool. An Angel with an Iron book appears during the battle. It is not explained who won the fight, but since Death (at least) appears in books set chronologically later it can only be assumed that the Horsemen triumphed.
552609	/m/02p78p	Code of the Lifemaker	James P. Hogan		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 About 1,000,000 B.C., an unidentified alien race sent out robotic factories to many worlds in their part of the galaxy to prepare for future settlement. One of those factory ships suffers severe radiation damage from a near-miss by a supernova and goes off course, drifting in space for a hundred thousand years before landing on the Saturnian moon Titan. Due to a malfunction in its database it begins producing imperfect copies that begin to evolve on their own. (The description of this background is presented in a prologue that proved sufficiently popular among readers that it was later anthologized on its own in a collection of Hogan's short fiction.) The resulting machine ecosystem eventually gives rise to humanoid robots with human-like intellects who develop a civilization similar to early civilization of Earth. Almost all of them have reverence for their mythical creator, a being they call the "Lifemaker". Early in the 21st century, the North Atlantic Space Organization (combining NASA and NATO) dispatched the Orion with a cover story of terraforming Mars for human habitation. Karl Zambendorf, a con artist who is present on this expedition to verify ESP over interplanetary distances, prematurely learns that the Orion and its crew of researchers is headed for Titan, where the discovery of the Taloids has been kept need-to-know on Earth. When the Orion arrives, the first landing party sets down in a freethinking state where Thirg, a Taloid who was cast out of his home state Kroaxia, has fled. They are mistaken for the Lifemaker because they have come from the sky, which the Taloids cannot see out of due to Titan's atmosphere. But Thirg becomes more discerning as he and the humans begin to understand more of each others' speech. Thirg's brother Groork has come from Kroaxia to apprehend him, but Zambendorf intercepts him and sends him back to Kroaxia as a prophet. Zambendorf learned that NASO plans to exploit Titan's natural resources and use the Taloids to build the factories they need, reducing them to slaves. The NASO business administrators on the Orion are already in agreement with the Kroaxian government to use human (the Taloids call humans "Lumians" because they glow brightly in their infrared vision) weapons to conquer Titan, believing the Kroaxian leadership buttressed by priests will be the easiest to control. Zambendorf, in his unanticipated role as Messenger for the Lifemaker, has given Groork guidelines akin to the Ten Commandments for his people to prevent a war from starting. "All Taloids are brothers" and "No Taloid is to enslave or be a slave" does not sit well with the ruling establishment of Kroaxia, and Groork is saved by the Orion crew not working for NASO. There will be use of Titan's resources, but the partnership between humans and Taloids will be one of equals.
553671	/m/02p9z1	Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity	Lawrence Lessig	2004	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 This book is an outgrowth of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which Lessig lost. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution says, "The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Several times in the past century, congress has extended the copyright law in several ways. One way was to extend the term "on the installment plan". Another was to broaden the scope to include not only copying but creating "derivative works". This latter broadening is so ambiguous that it provides a foundation for massive abuse of power by companies holding large copyright portfolios. For example, the Recording Industry Association of America sued a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) for $10,000,000 for improving a search engine used only inside RPI. Lessig cites another example where Fox demanded $10,000 for the rights to use a 4.5 second video clip with The Simpsons playing on a television in a corner of a scene in a documentary. Anyone producing a collage of video clips can potentially be similarly sued on the grounds the collage is a "derivative work" of something copyrighted or that the collage contains a shot that is copyrighted. Lessig argues that this substantially limits the growth of creative arts and culture, in violation of the US Constitution; the Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the constitutional authority to properly balance competing interests on cases like this. In the preface of Free Culture, Lessig compares this book with a previous book of his, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, which propounded that software has the effect of law. Free Culture's message is different, Lessig writes, because it is "about the consequence of the Internet to a part of our tradition that is much more fundamental, and, as hard as this is for a geek-wanna-be to admit, much more important." (pg. xiv) Professor Lessig analyzes the tension that exists between the concepts of piracy and property in the intellectual property realm in the context of what he calls the present "depressingly compromised process of making law" that has been captured in most nations by multinational corporations that are interested in the accumulation of capital and not the free exchange of ideas. The book also chronicles his prosecution of Eldred and his attempt to develop the Eldred Act, also known as the Public Domain Enhancement Act or the Copyright Deregulation Act. Lessig concludes his book by suggesting that as society evolves into an information society there is a choice to be made to decide if that society is to be free or feudal in nature. In his afterword he suggests that free software pioneer Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation model of making content available is not against the capitalist approach that has allowed such corporate models as Westlaw and LexisNexis to have subscribers to pay for materials that are essentially in the public domain but with underlying licenses like those created by his organization Creative Commons. He also argues for the creation of shorter renewable periods of copyright and a limitation on derivative rights, such as limiting a publisher's ability to stop the publication of copies of an author's book on the internet for non-commercial purposes or create a compulsory licensing scheme to ensure that creators obtain direct royalties for their works based upon their usage statistics and some kind of taxation scheme such as suggested by professor William Fisher of Harvard Law School http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/PTKChapter6.pdf that is similar to a longstanding proposal of Richard Stallman.
554818	/m/02pg0d	Killing Mr. Griffin	Lois Duncan	1978-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Brian Griffin is a high school English/literature teacher who never accepts late homework and is demanding of his students. After he gives out F's to a group of students who turn in papers late, the students—the "popular" crowd—decide to get revenge by kidnapping him. The group of friends includes Mark Kinney, the mastermind of the "prank", David Ruggles, president of the high school's senior class, Jeff Garrett, a basketball player, and Betsy Cline, the head cheerleader. Mr. Griffin recognized a paper Mark plagiarized, with help from his college-age girlfriend, as being from the college at which Mr. Griffin had worked as an assistant professor. Jeff obeys Mark, despite his parents' disapproval of Mark, and does things for the group like driving them around and often paying for their meals. Betsy is a spoiled and manipulative, but popular, girl, who has a crush on Mark. David is working toward a state university scholarship, which is grade-based; the previous English teacher, Dolly Luna, gave him As, but Mr. Griffin gives him Cs. David faces further pressures, as he needs ultimately to help support his family, since his mother is in a dead-end secretarial job, his nagging and lazy grandmother lives with them, and his father is out of the picture. The students take Mr. Griffin to a spot in the mountains so remote, that Mark is the only one who has used it, for outings with his former girlfriend, Lana Turnbolt. Betsy arrives in the parking lot after the boys have left with Mr. Griffin, thanks to a speeding ticket. Susan was supposed to ride with Betsy, but doesn't want any part in the scheme and Betsy leaves without her. The group taunts Mr. Griffin, telling him to beg for his life or they would kill him. They take Mr. Griffin's medicine and destroy it. Mark tells Mr. Griffin to beg or they will abandon him there overnight; Mr. Griffin refuses, so the students leave. Susan defies Mark and begs David to go check on Mr. Griffin. The two find him dead, as a result of heart failure from not taking his medication, and they hurry to find the other students. Mark decides to cover up the death instead of going to the police. Mr. Griffin's wife goes to the police the next day, because her husband has not returned home. A police officer pulls Susan from class to question her, because she was the last person to see Mr. Griffin alive to their knowledge. Mark meets her in the hallway before she reaches the office and instructs Susan on what to tell the police: Mr. Griffin spent the whole conference looking at his watch and left with a pretty woman. Everyone except for Susan heads to the mountains and they bury Mr. Griffin. Jeff repaints the car gray, telling his parents that he's fixing a friend's car. He and Betsy drive it to the airport and wipe the fingerprints from the steering wheel. Susan does not help, because the group is afraid she might have a nervous breakdown. Betsy, who has a crush on Mark, resents Betsy's role in disposing of the evidence, and is jealous that Mark is spending so much time with a plain girl like Susan. Kathy Griffin visits Susan's home, upset because she believes that Susan lied in her report to the police, as Mr. Griffin couldn't have been wearing his watch that day, because it was at home, broken. She asks Susan to contact her if Susan remembers anything more. Days later, Mark's ex-girlfriend, Lana, has a picnic with her fiancee at the secret place in the mountains. The couple discovers Mr. Griffin’s medicine bottle. Informing the police, they also mention there was a patch of dirt that looked like it had been recently uprooted. The police investigate, and find Mr. Griffin's body buried in the hole. Brian Griffin's murder is all over the news. David’s grandmother finds Mr. Griffin's ring that David stole, but believes it belongs to David's father, and that David has been secretly meeting with his father. David's mother does not take his grandmother seriously, but the conspirators know they need to hide or destroy the ring since it is evidence of their crime. However, the grandmother will not return the ring to David until she gets to meet with David's father. David's grandmother is killed, a neighbor referring to the killer suspect as a "boy in a brown sweater." When David learns that she is dead, he is overcome with grief and takes no further part in the plot. Susan makes the connection, knowing that Mark has a brown sweater he wears all the time, and that Mark would stop at nothing to get what he needed - in this case, the ring. Susan threatens to tell the police all that the group has done. Mark orders Jeff and Betsy to bind Susan and they leave. Mark tells Susan what really happened to his father - that he set their house on fire and killed his father. Susan realizes that he's going to do the same to her. He sets her curtains on fire and Susan realizes he intends to do the same to her. Miraculously, Susan is saved by Kathy Griffin, who recognizes her husband's Chevy in Susan's driveway when she sees Susan's house on fire. Though the car had been repainted, the gray color can't be made out in the dark, and Mrs. Griffin recognizes the patched upholstery. The conspiracy unravels with all of those involved facing varying criminal charges, except for Susan who is granted amnesty in exchange for her testimony at Mark's three murder trials. The novel ends with Susan's mother telling her that Mark will be blamed for manipulating her along with the other students, because he has been diagnosed as a psychopath.
555554	/m/02pjyv	Peer Gynt	Henrik Ibsen			 Peer Gynt is the son of the once highly regarded Jon Gynt. Jon Gynt spent all his money on feasting and living lavishly, and had to go from his farm as a wandering salesman, leaving his wife and son behind in debt. Åse, the mother, wished to raise her son to restore the lost fortune of his father, but Peer is soon to be considered useless. He is a poet and a braggart, not unlike the youngest son from Norwegian fairy tales, the "Ash Lad", with whom he shares some characteristics. As the play opens, Peer gives an account of a reindeer hunt that went awry, a famous theatrical scene generally known as "the Buckride." His mother scorns him for his vivid imagination, and taunts him because he spoiled his chances with Ingrid, the daughter of the richest farmer. Peer leaves for Ingrid's wedding, scheduled for the following day, because he may still get a chance with the bride. His mother follows quickly to stop him from shaming himself completely. At the wedding, Peer is taunted and laughed at by the other guests, especially the local blacksmith, Aslak, who holds a grudge after an earlier brawl. In the same wedding, Peer meets a family of Haugean newcomers from another valley. He instantly notices the elder daughter, Solveig, and asks her to dance. She refuses because her father would disapprove and because Peer's reputation has preceded him. She leaves, and Peer starts drinking. When he hears that the bride has locked herself in, he seizes the opportunity and runs away with the bride, and spends the night with her in the mountains. Peer is banished for kidnapping Ingrid. As he wanders the mountains, his mother, Solveig, and Solveig's father search for him. Peer meets three amorous dairy-maids who are waiting to be courted by trolls (a folklore motif from Gudbrandsdalen). He becomes highly intoxicated with them and spends the next day alone suffering from a hangover. He runs head-first into a rock and swoons, and the rest of the second act probably takes place in Peer's dreams. He comes across a woman clad in green who claims to be the daughter of the troll mountain king. Together they ride into the mountain hall, and the troll king gives Peer the opportunity to become a troll if Peer would marry his daughter. Peer agrees to a number of conditions, but declines in the end. He is then confronted with the fact that the green-clad woman is with child. Peer denies this; he claims not to have touched her, but the wise troll king replies that he begat the child in his head. Crucial for the plot and understanding of the play is the question asked by the troll king: What is the difference between troll and man? The answer given by the Old Man of the Mountain is: "Out there, where sky shines, humans say: 'To thyself be true.' In here, trolls say: 'Be true to yourself and to hell with the world.'" Egoism is a typical trait of the trolls in this play. From then on, Peer uses this as his motto, always proclaiming that he is himself, whatever that is. He then meets one of the most interesting characters, the Bøyg — a creature who has no real description. Asked the question "Who are you?" The Bøyg answers, "Myself". In time, Peer also takes the Bøyg's important saying as a motto: "Go around." The rest of his life, he "beats around the bush" instead of facing himself or the truth. Upon waking up, he is confronted by Helga, Solveig's sister, who gives him food and regards from her sister. Peer gives the girl a silver button for Solveig to keep, and asks that she not forget him. As an outlaw, Peer struggles to build his own cottage in the hills. Solveig turns up and insists on living with him. She has made her choice, she says, and there will be no return for her. Peer is delighted and welcomes her, but as she enters the cabin, an elderly-appearing woman in green garments appears with a limping boy at her side. This is the green-clad woman from the mountain hall, and her half-human brat is the child begotten by Peer from his mind during his stay there. She has cursed Peer by forcing him to remember her, and all his previous sins, when facing Solveig. Peer hears a ghostly voice saying, "Go roundabout, Peer", and decides to leave. He tells Solveig he has something heavy to fetch. He returns in time for his mother's death, and then sets off overseas. Peer is away for many years, taking part in various occupations and playing various roles including that of a businessman engaged in enterprises on the coast of Morocco. Here, he explains his view of life, and we learn that he is a businessman taking part in unethical transactions, including sending heathen images to China and trading slaves. In his defence, he points out that he has also sent missionaries to China, and that he treated his slaves well. His companions rob him, after he decides to support the Turkish in suppressing a Greek revolt, and leave him alone on the shore. Then he finds some stolen bedouin gear, and, in these clothes, he is hailed as a prophet by a local tribe. He tries to seduce Anitra, the chieftain's daughter, but she steals his money and rings, gets away, and leaves him. Then he decides to become a historian, and travels to Egypt. He wanders through the desert, passes the Memnon and the Sphinx. As he addresses the Sphinx, believing her to be the Bøyg, he encounters the keeper of the local madhouse, himself insane, who regards Peer as the bringer of supreme wisdom. Peer comes to the madhouse, and understands that all of the patients live in their own worlds, being themselves to such a degree that no one cares for anyone else. In his youth, Peer had dreamt of becoming an emperor. In this place, he is finally hailed as one&nbsp;— the emperor of the "self." Peer despairs and calls for the "Keeper of all fools," i.e. God. Finally, on his way home as an old man, he is shipwrecked. Among those on board, he meets the Strange Passenger, who wants to make use of Peer's corpse to find out where dreams have their origin. This passenger scares Peer out of his wits. He lands on shore bereft of all of his possessions, a pitiful and grumpy old man. Back home in Norway, Peer Gynt attends a peasant funeral, and an auction, where he offers for sale everything from his earlier life. The auction takes place at the very farm where the wedding once was held. Peer stumbles along, and is confronted with all that he did not do, his unsung songs, his unmade works, his unwept tears, and his questions that were never asked. His mother comes back and claims that her deathbed went awry. He did not lead her to heaven with his ramblings. Peer escapes and is confronted with the Button-molder, who maintains that Peer's soul must be melted down with other faulty goods unless he can explain when and where in life he has been "himself." Peer protests. He has been only that, and nothing else. Then he meets the troll king, who states that he has been a troll, not a man, most of his life. The molder comes along and says that he has to come up with something if he is not to be melted down. Peer looks for a priest to confess his sins, and a character named the Lean One (who is the Devil), turns up. He believes Peer cannot be accounted a real sinner who can be sent to hell. He has not done anything serious. Peer despairs in the end, understanding that his life is forfeited. He understands he is nothing. But at the same moment, Solveig starts to sing&nbsp;— the cabin he himself built, is close at hand, but he dares not enter. The Bøyg in him tells him "around." The molder shows up and demands a list of sins, but Peer has none to give, unless Solveig can vouch for him. Then he breaks through to her, asking her for his sins. But she answers: "You have not sinned at all, my dearest boy." Peer does not understand&nbsp;— he believes himself lost. Then he asks her: "Where has Peer Gynt been since we last met? Where was I as the one I should have been, whole and true, with the mark of God on my brow?" She answers; "In my faith, in my hope, in my love." Peer screams and calls his mother, and hides himself in her lap. Solveig sings her lullaby for him, and we might presume he dies in this last scene of the play, although there are no stage directions or dialogue to indicate that he actually does. Behind the corner, the button-molder, who is sent by God, still waits, with the words: "Peer, we shall meet at the last cross-roads, and then we shall see if... I'll say no more."
561007	/m/02q48m	Venus and Adonis	William Shakespeare	1593		 As Adonis is preparing to go hunting, Venus "seizeth on his sweating palm" and "Backward she push'd him, as she would be thrust" (for purposes of sexual intercourse). We find next that "Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face," while Venus tells him "Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight." She persuades him to kiss her, although Adonis is not very interested, thinking he is too young, and cares only for hunting. After they part, Adonis is soon killed in a hunting "accident". The poem contains what may be Shakespeare's most graphic depiction of sexual excitement.
562222	/m/02q83r	A Wrinkle in Time	Madeleine L'Engle	1962	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 :In the novel, the name of the protagonist Meg's mother is consistently written with a period after her title, but the names of the three angelic beings disguised as humans "Mrs Whatsit", "Mrs Who", and "Mrs Which" have no period after their titles of "Mrs". This plot summary and the remainder of the article reflect the convention of the novel. Meg Murry's classmates and teachers see her as a troublesome student. Her family knows that she is emotionally immature but also see her as capable of great things. The family includes her beautiful scientist mother; her mysteriously absent scientist father; her 10-year-old twin brothers, the athletic Sandy and Dennys; and her five year-old brother Charles Wallace Murry, a super-genius. The book begins with the line "It was a dark and stormy night," an allusion to the opening words in Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford. Unable to sleep during a thunderstorm, Meg descends from her attic room to find that Charles Wallace sitting at the table drinking milk and eating bread and jam . then they are joined by their mother, they are visited by their new eccentric neighbor, Mrs Whatsit. In the course of conversation, Mrs Whatsit casually mentions there is such a thing as a tesseract, which causes Mrs. Murry to almost faint. The next morning, Meg discovers the term refers to a scientific concept her father was working on before his mysterious disappearance. The following afternoon, Meg and Charles Wallace encounter Meg's schoolmate, Calvin O'Keefe, a high-school junior who, although he is a "big man on campus", considers himself a misfit as well. They go to visit an old haunted house near town which Charles Wallace already knows as the home of Mrs Whatsit. There they encounter a companion of Mrs Whatsit, the equally strange Mrs Who. She promises that she and her friends will help Meg find and rescue her father. A budding love interest develops between Meg and Calvin. In the evening, Charles Wallace declares it is time for them to go on their mission to save their father. This is accompanied by the appearance of the third member of the "Mrs W's", Mrs Which, who appears to materialize out of nothing. Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which turn out to be supernatural beings who transport Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O'Keefe through the universe by means of tesseract, a fifth-dimensional phenomenon explained as being similar to folding the fabric of space and time. Their first stop is the planet Uriel, a Utopian world filled with joyous, Centaur-like beings who live always in a state of light and love. There the "Mrs Ws" reveal to the children that the universe is under attack from an evil being who appears as a large dark cloud called The Black Thing. The children are then taken elsewhere to visit a woman who is a kind of medium (the "Happy Medium") with a crystal ball. In it, they see that Earth is partially covered by the darkness, although great religious figures, philosophers, and artists have been fighting against it. Mrs Whatsit is revealed to be a former star who exploded in an act of self-sacrifice to fight the darkness. The children then travel to the dark planet of Camazotz which is entirely dominated by the Black Thing. Meg's father is trapped there. They find that all the inhabitants behave in a mechanistic way and seem to be all under the control of a single mind. At the planet's central headquarters (described as CENTRAL Central Intelligence) they discover a red-eyed man with telepathic abilities who can cast a hypnotic spell over their minds. He claims to know the whereabouts of their father. Charles Wallace deliberately looks into the red eyes of the man allowing himself to be taken over by the mind controlling the planet in order to find their father. Under its influence, he takes Meg and Calvin to the place where Dr. Murry is being held prisoner because he would not succumb to the group mind. The planet turns out to be controlled by an evil disembodied brain with powerful telepathic abilities, which the inhabitants of Camazotz call "IT". Charles Wallace takes them to the place where IT is held, and in close proximity to IT, all of them are threatened by a possible telepathic takeover of their minds. To escape, Dr. Murry "tessers" Calvin, Meg and himself away from Camazotz, but Charles Wallace is left behind, still under the influence of IT. The experience of tessering through The Black Thing nearly kills Meg, because Murry does not know how to protect her from the Black Thing which surrounds the planet. When they arrive on the neighboring planet of Ixchel, Meg is nearly frozen and paralyzed. Calvin and the Murrys are discovered by the planet's inhabitants: large, sightless "beasts" with tentacles and four arms who prove both wise and gentle. Meg's paralysis is cured under the care of one inhabitant, whom Meg nicknames "Aunt Beast". When the trio of Whatsit, Who, and Which arrive, they charge Meg with rescuing Charles Wallace from IT. They each give her gifts. Mrs Whatsit gives Meg her love. Mrs Who quotes to Meg a passage from the Bible about God choosing the foolish of the world to confound the wise, and the weak to confound the strong. Mrs Which tells Meg that she has one thing that IT does not have. Upon arriving at the building where IT is housed, Charles Wallace is still there under IT's influence. Meg realizes that the one thing she has that IT does not is love. She focuses all her love at Charles Wallace and is able to free him from IT's control. Mrs Whatsit tessers the Murrys and Calvin back to Earth, where they are reunited with Mrs. Murry and the twins.
562243	/m/02q86n	Lord of Chaos	Robert Jordan	1994-10-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The deposed Queen of Andor, Morgase Trakand, goes to Amadicia to seek aid in returning to the throne. However, she is as good as taken captive by the Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light, Pedron Niall. In response to the declaration of amnesty for men who can channel by Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, Mazrim Taim, a previous False Dragon who had wrought destruction in the Borderlands, swears allegiance to him. Rand has Mazrim Taim lead and train the newly-established Asha'man at the so-called Black Tower. Rand is diplomatically courted by both the rebel Aes Sedai in Salidar, who send an envoy to Caemlyn, and the Aes Sedai of the White Tower, who send an envoy to Cairhien. In Emond's Field, Perrin Aybara, making his return to the series after his absence in the previous book, feels the pull of ta'veren upon ta'veren and heads to Caemlyn to join Rand. Wrongly thinking the Salidar Aes Sedai few in number and cowed, Rand sends Mat Cauthon to retrieve Elayne Trakand and win the allegiance of the rebel Aes Sedai. Mat discovers that Egwene al'Vere has been named the Amyrlin Seat of the rebel Aes Sedai, and when she sends Nynaeve al'Meara and Elayne to Ebou Dar in Altara to search for a ter'angreal with which to break the Dark One's control of the climate, Mat goes with them. Shortly after Perrin joins up with him, Rand is secretly kidnapped by Elaida's Aes Sedai, who begin journeying back to Tar Valon. Along the way Rand is tortured severely and constantly, which has long-lasting effects on his psyche. Learning of the kidnapping, Perrin leads a mixed force of Rand's followers after the Aes Sedai, leading to the climactic Battle of Dumai's Wells. At the end of the battle, the rebel Aes Sedai are forced to swear fealty to the Dragon Reborn while the surviving White Tower Aes Sedai, who kidnapped Rand, remain captives.
562456	/m/02q8z1	The Outsiders	S. E. Hinton		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ponyboy, a member of the Greasers gang, is leaving a movie theater when a group of Socs jumps him. His older brothers Darry and Sodapop save him. The next night, Ponyboy and his friends Dally and Johnny meet Cherry Valance and Marcia at a drive-in movie theatre. Ponyboy realizes that Cherry is nothing like the Socs he has met before. The Greasers walk Cherry and Marcia home, and Socs Bob Sheldon and Randy Adderson see them and think the boys are trying to pick up their girlfriends. Cherry and Marcia prevent a fight by leaving with Bob and Randy willingly. When Ponyboy comes home very late, Darry gets angry and hits him. Ponyboy runs away and meets up with Johnny. As they wander around the neighborhood, Bob, Randy, and three other drunk Socs confront them. After a Soc nearly drowns Ponyboy in a fountain, a terrified Johnny stabs Bob, accidentally killing him. Ponyboy and Johnny find Dally, who gives them money and a loaded gun and tells them to hide in an abandoned church. They stay there for a few days, during which time Ponyboy reads Gone with the Wind to Johnny and recites the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost. When Dally comes to get them, he reveals that the fights between the rival groups have exploded in intensity since Bob's death. Johnny decides to turn himself in, but the boys then notice that the church has caught on fire and several children are trapped inside. When Johnny and Ponyboy rush to rescue them, burning timber falls on Johnny, breaking his back. Dally rescues Johnny. Ponyboy is relatively unscathed and spends a short time in the hospital. When his brothers arrive to see him, Darry breaks down and cries. Ponyboy then realizes that Darry cares about him, and is only hard on Ponyboy because he wants him to have a good future. Two-Bit informs Ponyboy that he and Johnny have been declared heroes for rescuing the kids, but Johnny will be charged with manslaughter for Bob's death. He also says that the Greasers and Socs have agreed to settle their turf war with a major rumble. The Greasers win the fight. After the rumble, Dally and Ponyboy visit Johnny and see him die. An overcome Dally rushes out of the hospital and robs a store. When he points is empty gun at the police, they shoot and kill him. Ponyboy faints and stays sick and delirious for nearly a week. While recovering, he tries to convince himself that Johnny is not dead and that he is the one who killed Bob. When Ponyboy goes back to school, his grades drop. Although he is failing English, his teacher says he will pass him if he writes a decent theme. In the copy of Gone with the Wind that Johnny gave him before dying, Ponyboy finds a note from Johnny describing how he will die proudly after saving the kids from the fire. Johnny also urges Ponyboy to "stay gold". Ponyboy decides to write his English assignment about the recent events, and begins: "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home..."
563111	/m/02qc82	The Manuscript Found in Saragossa	Jan Potocki			 The Manuscript Found in Saragossa collects intertwining stories, all of them set in whole or in part in Spain, with a large and colorful cast of Gypsies, thieves, inquisitors, a cabbalist, a geometer, the cabbalist's beautiful sister, two Moorish princesses (Emina and Zubeida), and others that the brave, perhaps foolhardy, Walloon Guard Alphonse van Worden meets, imagines or reads about in the Sierra Morena mountains of 18th-century Spain while en route to Madrid. Recounted to the narrator over the course of sixty-six days, the novel's stories quickly overshadow van Worden's frame story. The bulk of the stories revolve around the Gypsy chief Avadoro, whose story becomes a frame story itself. Eventually the narrative focus moves again toward van Worden's frame story and a conspiracy involving an underground — or perhaps entirely hallucinated — Muslim society, revealing the connections and correspondences between the hundred or so stories told over the novel's sixty-six days. The stories cover a wide range of genres and subjects, including the gothic, the picaresque, the erotic, the historical, the moral, and the philosophic; and as a whole the novel reflects Potocki's far-ranging interests, especially his deep fascination with secret societies, the supernatural, and "Oriental" cultures. The novel's stories-within-stories sometimes reach several levels of depth, and characters and themes — a few prominent themes being honor, disguise, metamorphosis, and conspiracy — recur and change shape throughout. Because of its rich and varied interlocking structure, the novel echoes favorable comparison to many celebrated literary antecedents such as the ancient BCE Jatakas and Panchatantra as well as the medieval Arabian Nights and Decameron.
563269	/m/02qcy7	The Power and the Glory	Graham Greene	1940	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character in the story is a nameless '[whisky priest]]', who combines a great power for self-destruction with pitiful cravenness, an almost painful penitence and a desperate quest for dignity. By the end, though, the priest "acquires a real holiness." The other main character is a lieutenant of the police who is given the task of hunting down this priest. This Lieutenant&mdash;also nameless but thought to be based upon Tomás Garrido Canabal&mdash; is a committed socialist who despises everything that the church stands for. The story starts with the arrival of the priest in a country town in an area where Catholicism is outlawed, and then follows him on his trip through Mexico, where he is trying to minister to the people as best as he can. He is also haunted by his personal demons, especially by the fact that he had fathered a child in his parish some years before. He meets the child, but is unable to feel repentant about what happened. Rather, he feels a deep love for the evil-looking and awkward little girl and decides to do everything in his power to save her from damnation. The priest's opposite player among the clericals is Padre José, a priest who has been forced to renounce his faith and marry a woman (by order of the government) and lives as a state pensioner. During his journey the priest also encounters a mestizo who later reveals himself to be a Judas figure. The lieutenant, on the other hand, is morally irreproachable, yet he is cold and inhumane. While he is supposedly "living for the people", he puts into practice a diabolic plan of taking hostages from villages and shooting them, if it proves that the priest has sojourned in a village but is not denounced. The lieutenant has also had bad experiences with the church in his youth, and as a result there is a personal element in his search for the whisky priest. The lieutenant thinks that all members of the clergy are fundamentally evil, and believes that the church is corrupt, and does nothing but provide delusion to the people. In his flight from the lieutenant and his posse, the priest escapes into a neighbouring province, only to re-connect with the mestizo, who persuades the priest to return in order to hear the confession of a dying man. Though the priest suspects that it is a trap, he feels compelled to fulfil his priestly duty. Although he finds the dying man, it is a trap and the lieutenant captures the priest. The lieutenant admits he has nothing against the priest as a man, but he must be shot “as a danger”. On the eve of the execution, the lieutenant shows mercy and attempts to enlist Padre José to hear the condemned man's confession. The lieutenant is convinced that he has "cleared the province of priests". In the final scene, however, another priest arrives in the town - which, among other possible readings, suggests that the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed.
563328	/m/02qd3n	The End of the Affair	Graham Greene		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel focuses on Maurice Bendrix, a rising writer during World War II in London, and Sarah Miles, the wife of an impotent civil servant. Bendrix is loosely based on Greene himself, and he reflects often on the act of writing a novel. Sarah is based loosely on Greene's mistress at the time, Catherine Walston, to whom the book is dedicated. Bendrix and Sarah fall in love quickly, but he soon realizes that the affair will end as quickly as it began. The relationship suffers from his overt and admitted jealousy. He is frustrated by her refusal to divorce Henry, her amiable but boring husband. When a bomb blasts Bendrix's flat as he is with Sarah, he is nearly killed. After this, Sarah breaks off the affair with no apparent explanation. Later, Bendrix is still wracked with jealousy when he sees Henry crossing the Common that separates their flats. Henry has finally started to suspect something, and Bendrix decides to go to a private detective to discover Sarah's new lover. Through her diary, he learns that, when she thought he was dead after the bombing, she made a promise to God not to see Bendrix again if He allowed him to live again. Greene describes Sarah's struggles. After her sudden death from a lung infection brought to a climax by walking on the Common in the rain, several miraculous events occur, advocating for some kind of meaningfulness to Sarah's faith. By the last page of the novel, Bendrix may have come to believe in a God as well, though not to love Him. The End of the Affair is the fourth and last of Greene's explicitly Catholic novels.
563697	/m/02qf9w	Master Harold...and the Boys	Athol Fugard			 Seventeen year-old Hally spends time with two middle-aged African servants, Sam and Willie, whom he has known all his life. On a rainy afternoon, Sam and Willie are practicing ballroom steps in preparation for a major competition. Sam is quickly characterized as being the more worldly of the two. When Willie, in broken English, describes his ballroom partner as lacking enthusiasm, Sam correctly diagnoses the problem: Willie beats her if she doesn't know the steps. Hally then arrives from school. Sam is on an equal intellectual footing with Hally; Willie, for his part, always calls the white boy "Master Harold." The conversation moves from Hally's school-work, to an intellectual discussion on "A Man of Magnitude", to flashbacks of Hally, Sam and Willie when they lived in a Boarding House. Hally warmly remembers the simple act of flying a kite Sam had made for him out of junk, which we learn later, Sam made to cheer Hally up after Hally was embarrassed greatly by his father's drunkenness. Conversation then turns to Hally's 500-word English composition. The play reaches an emotional apex as the beauty of the ballroom dancing floor ("a world without collisions") is used as a transcendent metaphor for life and a creative paper topic... But almost immediately despair returns: Hally's tyrannical father has been in the hospital recently, undergoing medical complications due to the leg he lost in World War II, but it appears that today he is coming home. Hally, distraught with this news, unleashes on his two black friends years of anger, pain and the vicarious racism from his father, creating possibly permanent rifts in his relationship with them. For the first time, apart from hints throughout the play, Hally begins explicitly to treat Sam and Willie as subservient help rather than as friends or playmates, insisting that Sam call him "Master Harold" and spitting on him, among other things. Sam is hurt and angry but understands that Hally is really causing himself the most pain. There is a glimmer of hope for reconciliation at the end, when Sam addresses Hally by his nickname again and asks to start over the next day, hearkening back to the simple days of the kite. Hally responds "It's still raining, Sam. You can't fly kites on rainy days, remember," then walks out into the rain. Sam and Willie end the play consoling each other by ballroom dancing together.
564174	/m/02qh1r	The Idiot	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1869	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a fair-haired young man in his late twenties and a descendant of one of the oldest Russian lines of nobility, arrives in St. Petersburg on a November morning. He has spent the last four years in a Swiss clinic for treatment of his epilepsy and supposed intellectual deficiencies. On the train journey to Russia Myshkin meets Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin, and is struck by his passionate intensity, particularly in relation to a beautiful woman with whom he is obsessed. Myshkin's only relation in St. Petersburg is the very distant Lizaveta Prokofyevna Yepanchin. Madame Yepanchin is the wife of General Yepanchin, a wealthy and respected man in his late fifties. The prince makes the acquaintance of the Yepanchins, who have three daughters—Alexandra, Adelaida, and Aglaya, the last being the youngest and the most beautiful. General Yepanchin has an ambitious and vain assistant named Gavrila Ardalyonovich Ivolgin (nicknamed Ganya) whom Myshkin also meets during his visit to the household. Ganya, though actually in love with Aglaya, is trying to marry Anastassya Filippovna Barashkov, an extraordinarily beautiful femme fatale who was once the mistress of the aristocrat Totsky. Totsky has promised Ganya 75,000 rubles if he marries the "fallen" Nastassya Filippovna instead. As Myshkin is so innocent and naïve, Ganya openly discusses the subject of the proposed marriage in front of the prince. It turns out that Nastassya Filippovna is the same woman pursued obsessively by Rogozhin, and Ganya asks the Prince whether Rogozhin would marry her. The Prince replies that he might well marry her and then murder her a week later. The prince rents a room in the Ivolgin apartment, also occupied by Ganya; Ganya's sister Varvara Ardalyonovna (Varya); his mother, Nina Alexandrovna; his teenage brother, Nikolai (Kolya); his father, General Ivolgin; and another lodger named Ferdyshchenko. Nastassya Filippovna arrives and insults Ganya's family, which has refused to accept her as a possible wife for Ganya. Myshkin restrains her from continuing. The insult is compounded by the arrival of Rogozhin accompanied by a rowdy crowd of drunks and rogues. On the strength of his newly inherited fortune, Rogozhin promises to bring 100,000 rubles to Nastassya Filippovna's birthday party that evening, at which she is to announce whom she shall marry. Among the guests at the party are Totsky, General Yepanchin, Ganya, Ferdyshchenko, Ptitsyn—a usurer friend of Ganya's who is a suitor to Varya Ivolgin—and others. With the acquiescence of Kolya, Prince Myshkin arrives, uninvited. Following Myshkin's advice, Nastassya Filippovna refuses Ganya's proposal. Rogozhin arrives with the promised 100,000 rubles, but Myshkin himself offers to marry Nastassya Filippovna instead, announcing that he has recently received a large inheritance. Though surprised and deeply touched by Myshkin's love, Nastassya Filippovna, after throwing the 100,000 rubles in the fire and telling Ganya they are his if he wants to get them out, chooses to leave with Rogozhin. Myshkin follows them. For the next six months or so Nastassya Filippovna is torn between Myshkin's compassionate and insightful love for her and a self-punishing desire to ruin herself by submitting to Rogozhin's passion. Myshkin is tormented by her suffering, and Rogozhin is tormented by her love for Myshkin and frequently expressed disdain for his own claims on her. Myshkin's inheritance turns out to be smaller than expected and shrinks further as he satisfies the often fraudulent claims of creditors and alleged relatives. Finally, he returns to St. Petersburg and visits Rogozhin's house. They discuss religion and exchange crosses. But the main topic of their discussion is Nastassya Filippovna. Myshkin becomes increasingly horrified at Rogozhin's attitude to her. Rogozhin confesses to beating her in a jealous rage, and raises the possibility of cutting her throat. Later that day, Rogozhin, motivated by jealousy, attempts to stab Myshkin in the hall of the prince's hotel, but an unanticipated epileptic fit saves the prince. Myshkin then leaves St. Petersburg for Pavlovsk, a nearby town popular as a summer residence of St. Petersburg nobility. The prince rents several rooms from Lebedev, a rogue functionary who is, however, a highly complex character, first introduced at the time Myshkin meets Rogozhin on the train to Petersburg. Most of the novel's characters—the Yepanchins, the Ivolgins, Varya and her husband Ptitsyn, and Nastassya Filippovna—spend the summer in Pavlovsk as well. Burdovsky, a young man who claims to be the son of Myshkin's late benefactor, Pavlishchev, demands money from Myshkin as a "just" reimbursement for Pavlishchev's support. Burdovsky is supported by a group of insolent young men who include the consumptive seventeen-year old Hippolite Terentyev, a friend of Kolya Ivolgin. Although Burdovsky's claim is obviously fraudulent—he is not Pavlishchev's son at all—Myshkin is willing to help Burdovsky financially. The prince now spends much of his time at the Yepanchins'. He falls in love with Aglaya and she appears to reciprocate his feelings. A haughty, willful, and capricious girl, she refuses to publicly admit her love and in fact often openly mocks him. Yet her family begins to acknowledge him as her fiancé and even stages a dinner party in the couple's honor for members of the Russian nobility. Over the course of an ardent speech on religion and the future of aristocracy, Myshkin accidentally breaks a beautiful Chinese vase. Later that evening he suffers a mild epileptic fit. Guests and family agree that the sickly prince is not a good match for Aglaya. Yet Aglaya does not renounce Myshkin and even arranges to meet Nastassya Filippovna, who has been writing her letters in an attempt to persuade her to marry Myshkin. At the meeting the two women confront the Prince and demand that he choose between Aglaya, whom he loves romantically, and Nastassya Filippovna, for whom he has compassionate pity. Myshkin demurs, prompting Aglaya to depart, ending all hope for an engagement between them. Nastassya Filippovna then renews her vow to marry the Prince, but goes off with Rogozhin instead. The prince follows Nastassya and Rogozhin to St. Petersburg and learns that Rogozhin has slain Nastassya Filippovna during the night. The two men keep vigil over her body, which Rogozhin has laid out in his study. Rogozhin is sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberia, Myshkin goes mad and returns to the sanitorium, and Aglaya, against the wishes of her family, marries a wealthy, exiled Polish count that later is discovered to be neither wealthy, nor a count, nor an exile—at least, not a political exile—and who, along with a Catholic priest, has turned her against her family.
564305	/m/02qhmk	Telempath	Spider Robinson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's protagonist, Isham Stone, is on a mission to kill the man allegedly responsible for the destruction of civilization: a scientist named Wendell Carlson, currently living alone at the former Columbia University in what used to be New York City. Isham has been told by his father, scientist Jacob Stone, that Carlson is a madman who brought the world to its current state by releasing a "hyperosmic plague": a virus that increases the sensitivity of the human sense of smell by many hundred times. With their senses of smell thus heightened, humans were unable to tolerate the odors produced by their own pollution-producing technology; the result was mass insanity and widespread rioting. Another result was the discovery of a species of "Muskys" &mdash; intelligent plasmoids &mdash; that live in the Earth's upper atmosphere and feed on human pollutants. The curtailment of technological activity has caused them to approach the planet's surface and attack human beings, on whose fear they are apparently able to feed. Isham sets out for New York and succeeds in locating Carlson. He learns from Carlson, however, that the man actually responsible for developing and releasing the plague is Isham's father Jacob. Isham returns to his home colony and sets a trap to kill his father, then returns to New York. The original novella By Any Other Name ends at this point. The novel continues as Isham's old teacher, Collaci, sets out to bring him back from New York to face a murder charge. Isham is successfully captured, but before he can be tried, his colony is attacked by Agros (anti-technology worshippers of Pan) and he is taken prisoner. Eventually Isham manages to bring about a measure of peace between the scientists and the neo-Luddites &mdash; and also learns that his father is not dead. The newly reconciled factions of humanity set out to rebuild civilization.
564374	/m/02qhx7	Tell Me Your Dreams	Sidney Sheldon	1998	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The main characters of the book are Ashley Patterson, an introverted workaholic, her co-workers, Toni Prescott, an outgoing singer and dancer, and shy artist Alette Peters and Ashley's father. The three women do not get along very well, because of their dissimilar natures. Toni and Alette generally maintain a friendship, with Alette a calming influence, but Toni dislikes Ashley and criticizes her harshly. All three have issues with their mothers having told them they'd never amount to anything. Ashley fears that somebody is following her. She finds her house lights turned on when she returns from work, her personal effects in disarray, and someone has written "You will die" on her mirror with a lipstick. She thinks someone's broken into her house. She requests a police escort, but the next morning, the police officer assigned to this duty is found dead in her apartment. Two other murders have already taken place, with an identical pattern. All the murdered men had been castrated and were having sex before being murdered. Evidence points to the same woman being involved in all three cases. When a gift from one of the murdered men to Toni is found among Ashley's things, she is identified as the killer and arrested. At this point, it is revealed that the three women are three selves of a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder. Ashley's father persuades an attorney friend to represent Ashley. The second half of the novel deals with the trial, complete with endless squabbling between opposing psychiatrists as to whether or not MPD is real. Finally when Ashley's advocate introduces Toni, the violent alter of Ashley, the court is convinced that Ashley is innocent. Ashley is committed to an insane asylum and in the course of therapy is introduced to her two "alters" and relives the horrific events that shattered her mind. She was sexually abused during her childhood, and this made her to develop a strong hatred towards men. In the asylum, Ashley is treated for MPD by doctor Gilbert. He is attracted to her and during her crisis, he too feels her pain and wants to comfort her. It is revealed that her father was the one who sexually abused her, and caused her to develop Dissociative Identity Disorder and also was the cause for the creation of the alter Toni,and becomes a thing of her mother's detest. And later in her life when they are living in Italy during her teenage she is once again assaulted by her piano teacher and that leads the creation of Alette. The structuring of both the alters is very interesting, Since the first alter represents her struggle and fear as a helpless child without sexual maturity, The alter (Toni) develops into a protective one and becomes murderous when encountered with similar conditions, While the second alter (Alette)represents her feeling of shame and pain of being breached, thus this alter develops into a source of console exhibiting warmth and motherly love and has good rapport with Ashley. However, Ashley's alter (Toni) was enraged when she saw the news that her father because the woman he is about to marry has a three-year-old daughter. She was afraid that the girl would suffer the fate she had. Doctor Gilbert drains anger out of Toni by showing the news everyday therefore making Toni softer every passing day. This softer side of Toni was only a front to show Doctor Gilbert she has finally accepted everything so she and Alette (another alter) could get out of the asylum to kill her father who is staying in Hamptons for Christmas.In the end, Doctor Gilbert releases her from the asylum as he believes she is cured. In the end Ashley is shown to be traveling in a train when Toni (her violent alter) suddenly shows up and go Hamptons, where her father was staying,to kill him. Toni on the last part of the novel:
564397	/m/02qh_k	The Doomsday Conspiracy	Sidney Sheldon	1991	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist of the story is Robert Bellamy, a man hired by the NSA to locate the several bus passengers in Switzerland who had accidentally seen a weather balloon with some top secret equipment (later on identified as a UFO) collapsing in the woods. As Robert locates the passengers one by one, they are mysteriously killed. Each murder has been meticulously staged to appear as an accident. Robert's marriage also dissolves, as his wife, starved for attention by Robert, marries a rich business tycoon Monte Banks. As Commander Robert Bellamy of US Navy is in the verge of completion of his mission, he learns that he is being hunted by an unknown lethal force. Robert runs escaping from the attackers from Washington to Zurich, Rome and Paris. As the story unfolds to reveal Bellamy's past - why the woman he loves cannot return his love, why his most beloved friends become his deadly enemies. Bellamy finally learns that the investigation ends in the place where he had started it.
564488	/m/02qjb8	Altered Carbon	Richard Morgan	2002-02-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 In the novel's somewhat dystopian world, human personalities can be stored digitally and downloaded into new bodies, called sleeves. Most people have cortical stacks in their spinal columns that store their memories. If their body dies, their stack can be stored indefinitely. Catholics have arranged that they will not be resleeved as they believe that the soul goes to Heaven when they die, and so would not pass on to the new sleeve. This makes Catholics targets for murder, since killers know their victim will not be resleeved to testify. A UN resolution to alter this legal position forms one strand of the novel's plot, in order to allow the authorities to temporarily sleeve a deceased Catholic woman to testify in a murder trial. While most people can afford to get resleeved at the end of their lives, they are unable to update their bodies and most go through the full aging process each time which discourages most from resleeving more than once or twice. So while normal people can live indefinitely in theory, most choose not to. Only the wealthy are able to acquire replacement bodies on a continual basis. The long-lived are called Meths, a reference to the Biblical figure Methuselah. The very rich are also able to keep copies of their minds in remote storage, which they update regularly. This ensures that even if their stack is destroyed, they can be resleeved. One such Meth—a man named Laurens Bancroft—has apparently committed suicide, in which his stack was destroyed. He is resleeved from a backup. Because his stack is on a 48 hour back-up schedule, he has no memories of his actions during the previous 48 hours. He believes his apparent suicide was actually a murder and hires Takeshi Kovacs to investigate his death. Kovacs is an ex Envoy, a military unit formed to cope with the challenge of interstellar warfare. Faster-than-light travel is only possible by subspace transmission, called needlecasting, of a digitally stored consciousness to "download centers" where resleeving into physical bodies can be carried out. Transmitting normal soldiers in this way would severely inhibit their effectiveness, since they would have to cope with a new body and an unknown environment while fighting. To combat this, Envoy training emphasises mental techniques necessary to survive in different bodies over physical strength, and the sleeve in which they are transmitted has special neuro-chemical sensors which amplify the power of the five senses, intuition and physical capabilities. The effectiveness of the Envoy Corps' training is such that Envoys are banned from holding governmental positions on most worlds. Kovacs is persistently wracked by his memories of the action taken by the Envoy Corps in a battle on the planet Sharya and especially by the military debacle on Innenin, in which the Corps suffered extensive casualties after their stacks were infected with a lethal virus, Rawling 4851. Kovacs, killed in the novel's prologue and stored in digital form, is downloaded into a sleeve formerly inhabited by Bay City (formerly San Francisco) policeman Elias Ryker. The plot unfolds through Kovacs' narrative. Kovacs eventually solves the mystery, but only after a great deal of violence, including torture in virtual reality, which he is able to bear only because of his Envoy training.
564906	/m/02qkv1	Death on the Nile	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 While dining out in London one evening, Hercule Poirot notices a young woman, Jacqueline de Bellefort, dining and dancing with her fiancé, Simon Doyle. Poirot also notices that Jackie (a nickname given to her and used by intimates; short for Jacqueline) is very much smitten and is in love with Simon. The next day, Jacqueline takes Simon to meet her best friend, wealthy young heiress Linnet Ridgeway, in the hopes that Linnet will offer Simon a job. Three months later, Simon has broken off his engagement to Jacqueline and married Linnet. Poirot happens to encounter the couple on their honeymoon to Egypt, where he himself is on holiday. At their shared hotel in Cairo, Poirot sees an apparent chance meeting between the Doyles and Jacqueline. Afterwards, Linnet approaches Poirot and confides that Jacqueline has been stalking them since they were married, which is antagonizing both of them. Poirot says the Doyles have no legal recourse, but tries to reason with Jacqueline in private, urging her to let go of her attachment to Simon and not "open [her] heart to evil." Jacqueline refuses to listen, confiding that she has been dreaming of killing Linnet. Attempting to give Jacqueline the slip, the Doyles plan an extended stay in Cairo, while secretly booking passage on the same Nile river cruise as Poirot. To their rage, Jacqueline learns their plans and appears on board with them. Other passengers include: *American erotica novelist Salome Otterbourne and her daughter, Rosalie; *Mrs. Allerton and her son, Tim; *Linnet's American trustee, Andrew Pennington, who happened to run into her in Egypt; *Linnet's maid, Louise Bourget; *American socialite Marie Van Schuyler and her younger cousin, Cornelia Robson; *Miss Van Schuyler's nurse, Miss Bowers; *A young traveler named, Mr. Ferguson, an outspoken Socialist; *Archaeologist, Signor Richetti; *A diffident young man named James Fanthorp; *An Austrian physician named Dr. Bessner. *A husband of an Egyptian native Fleetwood; While taking a tour of some ancient ruins, a boulder falls from a cliff, narrowly missing Linnet and Simon. They suspect Jacqueline at first, but find out she was on the boat the whole time and could not have done it. Poirot meets his friend Colonel Race, who is joining everyone on the boat for the return trip. Race tells Poirot that one of the passengers is a deadly criminal who has murdered several other people, only Race has not yet identified him. That night on the boat, Jacqueline gets into a drunken rage, takes out a pistol, and shoots Simon in the leg, then breaks down in a hysterical state of remorse. At Simon's insistence, the two other persons present, Cornelia and Mr. Fanthorp, help Jacqueline back to her cabin, and then fetch Dr. Bessner to see to Simon's wound. Nurse Bowers stays in Jacqueline's room all night. Later, Fanthorp tells Bessner the gun is missing. The next day, Linnet is found dead with a bullet in her head. Race takes charge of the situation and asks Poirot to handle the investigation. Several clues seem to incriminate Jacqueline – a "J" written in blood on the wall above Linnet's head, for instance – but Miss Bowers assures Poirot that Jacqueline never left her cabin that night. Dr. Bessner also assures Poirot that Simon's leg wound completely incapacitated him, and so he could not have moved from his bed, even if he wanted to. Race and Poirot theorize that Linnet had some other enemy among the passengers, who took advantage of the scene in the lounge to murder her and implicate Jacqueline. Poirot also notices that Linnet's pearl necklace is missing from her room. Poirot then interviews all the passengers. Several of them heard a splash shortly after midnight, and Miss Van Schuyler claims that she looked out her window and saw Rosalie Otterbourne throw something overboard. But Rosalie denies this. A short time later, the murder weapon is recovered from the Nile – Jacqueline's pistol, wrapped in Miss Van Schuyler's missing velvet stole. To Poirot this makes no sense, when someone wanting to incriminate Jacqueline would have left her pistol behind to incriminate her. Louise Bourget is interviewed in Dr. Bessner's cabin, while Bessner is ministering to Simon. She says she saw nothing on the night of the murder, but would have done "if" she had left her cabin. This choice of words sounds strange to Poirot. When Race announces that the cabins will be searched for the missing pearls, Miss Bowers returns them, confiding that Miss Van Schuyler took them from Linnet's cabin, being a secret kleptomaniac. But Poirot examines the string and finds it is a fake, meaning the real necklace was stolen sometime earlier. Poirot eventually realizes that Salome Otterbourne is a secret alcoholic, and what Rosalie was throwing overboard was her mother's hidden cache of spirits. Rosalie admits this, but firmly denies seeing anyone leaving Linnet's cabin on the night of the murder. When Louise Bourget is found murdered in her cabin, clutching a large-denomination banknote, Race and Poirot deduce that she had seen the real murderer leave Linnet's cabin, and was trying to blackmail him or her. Poirot and Race enter Dr. Bessner's cabin and tell the doctor and Simon what happened. Salome Otterbourne enters and says she knows who killed Linnet and Louise, because she saw that person enter and leave Louise's cabin. Simon yells at her to tell him. Before she can finish her story, a shot is fired from the deck outside, killing her. Before Poirot and Race can get outside, the shooter is gone, having dropped a gun that Poirot recognizes from Andrew Pennington's luggage. Poirot announces that he has solved the case; for him the most salient clues were: *the fact that Poirot only drinks wine with dinner, while his two usual dinner companions, the Allertons, drink something else; *two bottles of nail polish in Linnet's room, one labelled "Cardinal" (a deep, dark red) and the other "Rose" (pale pink), but both of which contain red coloring; *the fact that Jacqueline's gun was thrown overboard; and *the circumstances of Louise and Mrs. Otterbourne's deaths. Before explaining his solution to the crime, Poirot decides to clear away some of the lesser mysteries first, by interviewing several of the passengers in turn: *Andrew Pennington admits that he has speculated, illegally, with Linnet's holdings; he was hoping to replace the funds before she came of age, but upon her marriage she gained full control of her estate; on learning of her marriage, Pennington rushed to Egypt to stage a "chance" encounter with Linnet and dupe her into signing legal documents that would exculpate him; he abandoned the plan when he found that Linnet was a shrewd woman who read anything she was asked to sign in detail; in desperation, he tried to kill her by dropping the boulder on her, but that is as far as he went, and he swears that he did not murder her; *Fanthorp is revealed to be a young attorney with Linnet's British solicitors, who sent him to Egypt to spy on Pennington, suspicious of his intentions; *Tim is exposed as a society jewel thief, working in partnership with his cousin, a down-on-her-luck socialite. Tim stole the pearls from Linnet's cabin that night and substituted the fake string for them, but, likewise, swears he didn't kill her; he does not know if Linnet was already dead when he entered her cabin; Rosalie admits that she saw Tim enter and leave Linnet's cabin, but she has come to love Tim, and was trying to protect him; Poirot clears Tim of the murder and agrees not to report his thievery to the police; Tim promises to reform and happily asks Rosalie to marry him, to the delight of his mother. *Signor Richetti is exposed as the foreign agent and criminal Race is after, after Race hears of a telegram Richetti received, using a code that Race recognizes; Poirot finally explains the real mystery to Race, Miss Robson, and Dr. Bessner. Their first idea, that the murder was conceived on the spur of the moment after the scene in the lounge, was mistaken; in fact, the murder was planned months in advance – by Jacqueline and Simon. Jacqueline used Cornelia Robson as a witness and pretended to shoot Simon in the leg. Simon faked being wounded with red ink, hidden in Linnet's nail polish bottle. While Cornelia Robson left to get Jacqueline back to her cabin and Jim Fanthorp called Dr. Bessner, Simon picked up the gun, ran to Linnet's cabin, shot her, and then came back to the lounge and shot himself in the leg, using the velvet stole as a muffler. He reloaded two bullets back into the gun, wrapped it in the stole and threw the bundle overboard before anyone came back. Dr. Bessner then examined him and confirmed that his wound left him unable to have left the lounge. Before the murder, Jacqueline or Simon drugged Poirot's usual bottle of wine, ensuring that he would sleep through the night so he will not participate in the event. All is not well, for Louise Bourget, the maid, saw Simon enter and leave Linnet's cabin. She blackmailed Simon and demanded money for hushing her up. But Simon told Jacqueline about it privately. Jacqueline entered Louise's cabin and stabbed her. However, Mrs. Otterbourne saw Jacqueline entering the maid's door. She came to Simon and Poirot to tell what she saw, but Simon yelled at Mrs. Otterbourne in a voice loud enough for Jacqueline to hear it – who acted quickly and shot Mrs. Otterbourne. Confronted, Simon and Jacqueline confess to the plot. Jacqueline says that she and Simon have always been in love, and Simon never cared for Linnet, even when she tried to steal him away from Jacqueline. Jacqueline tells Poirot that the idea of murdering Linnet for her money was Simon's, but she planned it, knowing Simon was not smart enough to pull it off by himself. As the passengers are disembarking, Jacqueline reveals a second pistol, which she hid in Rosalie Otterbourne's cabin, and kills both Simon and herself, sparing them both from more gruesome and humiliating deaths. Poirot confesses that he knew about the second pistol, and wanted to give Jacqueline the chance to take a more humane way out. In addition to Tim and Rosalie, there is another unexpected love match: Cornelia Robson accepts Dr. Bessner's proposal, to the stupefaction of Mr. Ferguson, who had been courting her, in his own uncouth way, during the whole trip.
566190	/m/02qpbg	Dot and the Kangaroo	Ethel Pedley	1899	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A 5-year-old girl named Dot is lost in the outback after chasing a hare into the wood and losing sight of her home. She is approached by a red kangaroo who gives her some berries to eat. Upon eating the berries, Dot is able to understand the language of all animals, and she tells the kangaroo her plight. The kangaroo, who has lost her own joey, decides to help little Dot despite her own fear of humans. The book is filled with criticism on negative human interference in the wild in 1884.
567069	/m/02qsts	New English Bible				 Because of its scholarly translators, the New English Bible has been considered one of the more important translations of the Bible to be produced following the Second World War. F. F. Bruce, then Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis in the University of Manchester, declared that "To the sponsors and translators of the New English Bible the English speaking world owes an immense debt. They have given us a version which is contemporary in idiom, up-to-date in scholarship, attractive, and at times exciting in content..." However, T. S. Eliot comments that the New English Bible "astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial and the pedantic."
567081	/m/02qswn	The Seven-Per-Cent Solution	Nicholas Meyer	1974-07	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An introduction states that two canonical Holmes adventures were fabrications. These are "The Final Problem", in which Holmes apparently died along with Prof. James Moriarty, and "The Empty House", wherein Holmes reappeared after a three-year absence and revealed that he had not been killed after all. The Seven-Per-Cent Solutions Watson explains that they were published to conceal the truth concerning Holmes’ "Great Hiatus". The novel begins in 1891, when Holmes first informs Watson of his belief that Professor James Moriarty is a "Napoleon of Crime". The novel presents this view as nothing more than the fevered imagining of Holmes' cocaine-sodden mind; it further states that Moriarty was the childhood mathematics tutor of Sherlock and his brother Mycroft. Moriarty meets Watson, denies that he is a criminal and reluctantly threatens to pursue legal action unless the latter's accusations cease. The heart of the novel consists of an account of Holmes’ recovery from his addiction. Watson and Holmes’ brother Mycroft induce Holmes to travel to Vienna, where Watson introduces him to Dr. Freud. Using a treatment consisting largely of hypnosis, Freud helps Holmes shake off his addiction and his delusions about Moriarty, but neither he nor Watson can revive Holmes’ dejected spirit. What finally does the job is a whiff of mystery: one of the doctor's patients is kidnapped and Holmes’ curiosity is sufficiently aroused. The case takes the three men on a breakneck train ride across Austria in pursuit of a foe who is about to launch a war involving all of Europe. Holmes remarks during the denouement that they have succeeded only in postponing such a conflict, not preventing it; Holmes would later become involved in a "European War" in 1914. One final hypnosis session reveals a key traumatic event in Holmes' childhood: his father murdered his mother for adultery and committed suicide afterwards. It was Moriarty who informed Holmes and his brother of their deaths, and his tutor then became a dark and malignant figure in his subconscious. Freud and Watson conclude that Holmes, consciously unable to face the emotional ramifications of this event, has pushed them deep into his unconscious while finding outlets in fighting evil, pursuing justice, and many of his famous eccentricities, including his cocaine habit. However, they decide not to discuss these subjects with Holmes, believing that he would not accept them, and that it would needlessly complicate his recovery. Watson returns to London, but Holmes decides to travel alone for a while, advising Watson to claim that he had been killed, and thus the famed "Great Hiatus" is more or less preserved. It is during these travels that the events of Meyer's sequel The Canary Trainer occur.
567439	/m/02qtj4	Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth	Chris Ware	2000	{"/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 Jimmy Corrigan is a meek, lonely middle aged man who meets his father for the first time in a Michigan town over Thanksgiving weekend. Jimmy is an awkward and cheerless character with an overbearing mother and a very limited social life. Jimmy attempts to escape his unhappiness via an active imagination that gets him into awkward situations. A parallel story set in the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 shows Jimmy's grandfather as a lonely little boy and his difficult relationship with an abusive father, Jimmy's great grandfather. Another storyline shows Jimmy as a lonesome child of divorce, suggesting that this was Jimmy's "real" childhood, while his "Smartest Kid on Earth" adventures are probably his fantasies.
567457	/m/02qtm5	Palestine	Joe Sacco		{"/m/012h24": "Comics", "/m/01vnb": "Comic book", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The book takes place over a two-month period in late 1991 early 1992, with occasional flashbacks to the expulsion of the Arabs, the beginning of the Intifada, the Gulf War and other events in the more immediate past. Sacco spent this time meeting with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the narrative focuses on the minute details of everyday life in the occupied territories, presenting the daily struggles, humiliations and frustrations of the Palestinians. Sacco’s visit to Israel and the occupied territories is presented chronologically, from his arrival to his departure, through dramatic scenes with only a handful of diversions to present the historical and personal background. Most of the scenes in the book are conversations between Sacco and Palestinians, and though the events they talk about are presented visually the dialogue is always present as a form of narration for the events. Sacco devotes whole pages to drawings of the destitution and squalor prevalent in the occupied territories. Though Sacco is the principal narrator at times he steps aside and allows other characters to present their stories uninterrupted and without interpretation. In his drawings, though most of the panels are presented as a “side view” of Sacco, other characters and their surroundings, there are several panels which present the scene as it looks from Sacco’s point of view. There are also panels which present a bird’s eye view of places like the refugee camps or Jerusalem. In Palestine Sacco positions himself knowingly as the westerner going to the Middle East to confront a reality unfamiliar to his American audience. Sacco does not delude himself that as a "neutral" observer he can remain invisible and have no effect on the events around him, instead accepting his role and concentrating on his personal experience of the situation. Though his goal is to document events and interview Palestinians he is affected by the reality of the occupied territories and cannot help but participate in, and comment on, demonstrations, funerals, roadblocks and encounters with soldiers. Towards the end he becomes even more active as he shares food and lodgings with the Palestinians he interviews and even breaks curfew with them while in the Gaza Strip. In the book Sacco references Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes, Heart of Darkness, and Edward Said's Orientalism to draw links between the situation he is witnessing and colonialism. Towards the end of the book Sacco acknowledges that he has not reflected Israel enough, that it would take a whole other trip to present that side of things.
567481	/m/02qtqh	Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron	Daniel Clowes		{"/m/012h24": "Comics", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron is about a man named Clay Loudermilk and his attempts to locate his estranged wife, Barbara Allen. (The song "the Ballad of Barbara Allen" forms a commentary on the story with its elements of unrequited love, loss, and death.) For reasons unknown, Clay is in the audience at a porno theatre when he sees a bizarre BDSM feature (also titled Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron), the star dominatrix of which is revealed to be his wife. Clay sets out to locate her and becomes embroiled in a series of misadventures involving an incredibly bizarre and varied cast of supporting characters. Clay is victimized by two crazed policemen, meets a religious cult led by a mass-murderer who intend to overthrow the American government, conspiracy theorists who believe that the reins of the world's political power somehow revolve around a series of dime store novelty figures, an inhumanly malformed, potato-like young woman and her nymphomaniacal mother, and various other freaks and weirdos. During one dream sequence, the infamous Foot Foot, from the song by The Shaggs, gnaws on Clay's leg. The happy-face icon of "Mr. Jones" also appears in various places through the story, tattooed into people, carved on to Clay's foot, as a ghost-like character, in Hitler's birthmark, and on the sign for Value Ape shops. It signifies the way in which logos pervade our societies, and links to the conspiracy elements of the story. The true nature of the potato-woman's father is never learned by Mr. loudermilk, but the reader will see suggestions of the Cthulhu Mythos. The phrase "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?", referencing the bizarre Dan Rather incident (some years before the R.E.M. song did the same thing), is used as part of the "Mr. Jones" conspiracy sub-plot. There are, in addition, references to child porn and . The story is for adults only, and has a violent, ugly climax.
567501	/m/02qtsq	David Boring	Daniel Clowes		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 David Boring is a story told in the first person by its eponymous protagonist, concerning his sometimes fantastic and sometimes mundane exploits and misadventures in and out of big city life. Much of the plot of the book concerns David's attempt to obtain a woman whom he considers his feminine ideal, based largely on the characteristics of his first cousin, Pamela, with whom he shared some innocent adolescent kisses at a family summer retreat. Shortly after attending the funeral of a friend, David meets, dates, and is abandoned by Wanda, a woman whom he considers the perfect fulfillment of this ideal. After sinking into an all-consuming depression for weeks, David is shot in the head by an unknown attacker in front of his own home, but survives with only a small dent in his forehead. David, his mother, their extended family, and David's roommate and friend Dot all end up stranded on a small island, Hulligan's Wharf, which the family owns and uses for vacations. David's great-uncle August shows up, proclaims that terrorist gas attacks have contaminated the mainland, and later dies. While on the island, David has a sexual tryst with his mother's cousin, Mrs. Capon, who later disappears that very night. At the same time, Dot has begun a relationship with Iris, Mrs. Capon's daughter, who is married to Manfred. Manfred tries to kill Dot by drugging her and throwing her into the water while she sleeps, but she wakes up in time to grab Iris, beat up Manfred, and escape by boat. When word gets around that David suspects Manfred of killing Mrs. Capon as well, Manfred tries to pummel him, but is stopped by Mr. Hulligan, the island's caretaker. When the food runs out, David and Mr. Hulligan are abandoned by Manfred and David's mother, and barely make it ashore on a makeshift raft. They discover (as Mr. Hulligan believed all along) that the terrorist attack was not the world-ending catastrophe August had believed. David returns home and begins a relationship with a woman named Naomi. He soon discovers that the man who shot him was a professor named Karkes, who was similarly abandoned by Wanda, and assumed that she had left him for David. He and Karkes enter into a strange friendship, discussing their mutual obsession with Wanda and attempting to track her down. In his search, David meets Judy, Wanda's sister, who resembles her strongly. David decides that, contrary to his earlier belief that Wanda was the fulfillment of his ideal, Wanda was in fact merely a flawed version of Judy. His relationship with Naomi falls apart, and she flees to Norway, fearing further terrorist attacks on America. Judy is attracted to David, but is worried about her husband. After they meet and kiss, her husband shows up at David's apartment and knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat. Meanwhile, Dot's relationship with Iris has failed, and Iris leaves her for Agent Roy Smith, who is investigating the murders of Mrs. Capon and Whitey. Smith resolves to frame David and Dot for Whitey's murder, in order to eliminate any competition for Iris, whom he marries. David and Karkes track Wanda down to a weird cult commune, finding that Wanda is the only one there, the others having "gone on." Neither David nor Karkes asks what that means. Although David and Karkes agree to "let the best man win," David intends to deceive and defeat Karkes by letting him have Wanda, whom he considers a lesser version of Judy. David loudly and publicly declares his love for Judy, but this only earns him another beating at the hands of her husband. David aimlessly wanders his way around the docks, where he is tracked down by Smith and his superior, Lieutenant Anemone. Smith tries to shoot David, but only grazes his head before Smith and Anemone are both shot by Dot. The two escape to Hulligan's Wharf, where David finds his long-lost cousin Pamela and her baby. She fled to the island for her child's safety, and has several months of food supply, planning to start a vegetable garden so that they can survive indefinitely. David and Pamela begin an adult relationship. The group spends more than four months on the island with no sign of the police or poison gas. The occurrence of further terrorist attacks is suggested, but not directly stated. At the book's end, David expresses the conviction that he is happy and thankful, and does not care how long he has to live. The question of whether the pair have days, weeks, months, or years of bliss is never answered.
568053	/m/02qx0j	The Shipping News	E. Annie Proulx	1993	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story centers on Quoyle, a newspaper pressroom worker from upstate New York whose father emigrated from Newfoundland. Shortly after his parents' suicide, Quoyle's unfaithful and abusive wife Petal leaves town and attempts to sell their two daughters to sex traffickers. Soon thereafter, Petal and her lover are killed in a car accident; the young girls are located by police and returned to Quoyle. Despite his daughters' safe return, Quoyle's life is collapsing, and his paternal aunt, Agnis Hamm, convinces him to return to Newfoundland for a new beginning. They return to their ancestral home on Quoyle's Point. He obtains work as a traffic accident reporter for the Gammy Bird, the local newspaper in Killick-Claw, a small town. The Gammy Bird's editor also asks him to document the shipping news, arrivals and departures from the local port, which soon grows into Quoyle's signature articles on boats of interest in the harbour. Quoyle gradually makes friends within the community, learns about his own troubled family background, and begins a relationship with a local woman, Wavey. Quoyle's growth in confidence and emotional strength, as well as his ability to be comfortable in a loving relationship, become the book's main focus. Quoyle learns deep and disturbing secrets about his ancestors that emerge in strange ways.
568642	/m/02qz1h	A Time for Judas	Morley Callaghan	1983-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The title refers to the friendship between the scribe, Philo, and Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. The premise is that Judas was actually Jesus' most trusted disciple, and chose him for the important job of "betraying" him to the authorities. In other words, Judas was following Jesus' instructions. He tells his story to Philo, who writes it all down on papyrus, seals it up in a Greek jar, and hides it until it is discovered in the 20th century. The story goes that Judas hanged himself, not because he was ashamed of betraying Jesus, but because he had not kept the secret as Jesus had made him promise to do.
568664	/m/02qz4r	Waldo	Robert A. Heinlein	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 As the story opens, a dancer is performing feats of astonishing virtuosity on stage. Afterward, in the dressing room, while preparing to depart for his other job as a neurosurgeon, Waldo reminisces to a reporter about what made him take up dancing. The rest of the story is told as a flashback. The scene changes to James Stevens, Chief Engineer of North American Power-Air, or NAPA. Stevens is desperate to discover what is causing vehicles driven by broadcast power to cease functioning without reason. Society has harnessed cheap atomic power, broadcast by NAPA, to run homes, factories, ground vehicles, and even personal aircraft which can travel into space. If the failures continue, not only will he be out of a job but the entire power system of the country could collapse. The heart of the technology is the "deKalb receptor", which picks up the power beam and feeds it to the rest of the system. The deKalbs are failing, and no-one, not even Dr. Rambeau of the Research department, can identify the cause. In desperation, Stevens approaches Doc Grimes, the Farthingwaite-Jones family physician who has known Waldo since birth, to try to persuade Waldo to help. Waldo has a grudge against NAPA after losing a legal battle with them some years before. Grimes is Waldo's only friend, or as Grimes puts it, the only person who dares to be rude to him. Waldo lives in a satellite in high orbit, where the lack of gravity allows him to move around despite his weakness. He makes his living as a consulting engineer, with a specialty in fine motor skills. He is training a machinist using remote controlled waldoes when Grimes and Stevens arrive. Waldo introduces Stevens to his home, and his pets, both adapted to free fall. Baldur the dog is a large mastiff raised from puppyhood in orbit, while the singing bird Ariel, hatched in space, has learned to fly in a completely new way. The atmosphere is cordial, but once Grimes reveals Stevens' purpose, Waldo turns hostile. Nothing, not even the collapse of Earth society, would persuade him to help NAPA. Stevens leaves, but Grimes has a few words with Waldo, pointing out where his food comes from and so forth. Waldo reluctantly takes the case, but Grimes insists on one more condition: Waldo must figure out what effect broadcast power has on humans. Grimes is seeing a slow weakening of the human physique, and he blames the radiant power industry. Stevens returns to Earth, to find that one of his engineers who had experienced a power failure in his personal craft has returned. He tells Stevens that he fixed the deKalbs. Stevens is doubtful, since the devices often start working as mysteriously as they stop. The engineer, McLeod, presses the issue. He was on his way to look at a crashed aircar, only to have his own vehicle break down in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where he grew up. Visiting an old hex doctor, known as Gramps Schneider, McLeod lets him look at the deKalbs. Schneider announces that "now the fingers will make", meaning the antennas on the deKalbs will work. McLeod finds to his surprise that the deKalbs are indeed functional. However he has saved a surprise for Stevens. In operation, the antennas now flex and wiggle like fingers reaching for something. Waldo, meanwhile, is working on the problem. Having satisfied himself that the deKalbs really are having basic problems, he also realizes that Grimes is right. Then he gets a call from Dr. Rambeau, who seems to have come unhinged. Having seen the wiggling deKalbs, he announces that he knows what is happening. "Magic is loose in the world!" he tells Waldo. He shows Waldo some tricks he can do now that he understands magic. He sticks a penknife through his hand and withdraws it without any bleeding, which Waldo finds unimpressive. "Hysterical vascular control, a perfect clinical case," he thinks. Then Rambeau places the knife on the palm of his hand and turns the hand palm down, the knife staying in place. To Waldo, with his firm footing in the physical sciences, this is either a trick or something truly impossible. He calls Stevens to have Rambeau brought to him, but Stevens reports that Rambeau somehow escaped from his restraints without actually unfastening them. Not only that, he has made another set of deKalbs behave as strangely as McLeod's. Waldo is his usual self at first, calling Stevens incompetent, but then he seems to mellow. He thanks Stevens instead, and asks to have Rambeau's notes and equipment shipped up to him. Seeing the eccentric deKalbs, Waldo realizes that he must learn what happened to them. Schneider will not leave his home, so Waldo has to go back to Earth, an experience he dreads. Shipped down in a medical craft, with Grimes in attendance, he lies in his waterbed while Schneider examines him. Schneider thinks he should get up and walk, but Waldo protests he cannot. Schneider tells him he must "reach out for the power". According to Schneider, the "Other World is close by and full of power", waiting only for someone to grab it. In Schneider's hands, Waldo does indeed experience a sense of well-being, and is able to lift up a coffee cup one-handed for the first time in his life. Schneider explains an old philosophy, how things can both be true and not true, especially that something which can be true for this world might not be for the Other World. Since our minds sit in the Other World, this is important. McLeod, according to Schneider, was "tired and fretful", and found one of the "bad truths", causing the deKalbs to fail. Schneider simply looked for the other truth, and the deKalbs worked again. At first, returning to his home, Waldo thinks the journey wasted. Not really expecting anything, he tries Schneider's methods on a failed deKalb. To his astonishment, they begin to work in just the same fashion as McLeod's. At this point Stevens calls him to say that things are getting much worse. Waldo, thrown off balance by the "impossible" thing he has just seen, decides to twit Stevens with Rambeau's words: "Magic is loose in the world!" Having seen Waldo's sudden change of heart when Rambeau vanished, Stevens is now convinced that Waldo has come unglued as well—an unnerving prospect, if Waldo is the only one who can fix the problem. Waldo realizes that Stevens' and Grimes' problems are related. Radiant power is affecting the human nervous system. People feel weak, rundown, fretful, and somehow transfer their malaise to the deKalbs. He also realizes something that Stevens has not noticed. The repaired deKalbs work without broadcast power! Apparently they draw energy from Schneider's "Other World". Waldo uses this to effect his revenge. Summoning NAPA's representatives to his home, he demonstrates that he can fix deKalbs and can train others to fix them. The repairs are 100% reliable, he asserts. Having received their formal acknowledgment that he has fulfilled his contract, he unveils the "Jones-Schneider deKalb", a Rube Goldberg contraption which appears to draw power from nowhere. He tells them that with this he can put NAPA out of business. Of course, NAPA offers a settlement from which Waldo profits hugely, even though the new deKalb is a repaired one with a lot of distracting technology attached. Having triumphed, Waldo must satisfy himself that he is right. The "Other World" is just a space-time continuum, he thinks, possibly with a different value for the speed of light. It could be right next to our continuum, separated by an infinitesimal amount. If, as Schneider asserts, the mind sits in the Other World, that would explain many things. Eventually Waldo realizes that he himself can draw strength from the Other World. At first he fails, but after a dream in which Rambeau pops in and out of the Other World to threaten him, he finds that he can indeed be strong. Tricking Grimes and Stevens into taking him to Earth again, he walks out of the craft, almost causing Grimes to have a heart attack. As he prepares to lead a life on Earth, he has to deal with the fallout from his previous manners. Stevens tells Waldo that, had he not been crippled, some of the things he used to say would have gotten him into a fight. Thinking Stevens means that he should fight now, Waldo knocks him out. Once he recovers, Stevens explains that he no longer feels that way. In fact, he thinks Waldo would be a good friend once he learns some manners. Returning to the dancer, who is of course Waldo, we see him depart the dressing room with great bonhomie. His principal assistant is the former Chairman of the Board at North American Power-Air.
569100	/m/02q_qs	The Fifth Elephant	Terry Pratchett	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Ankh-Morpork City Watch is expanding; there is now a Traffic department with traffic cameras implemented using iconograph technology and a wheel clamping team, and the clacks is beginning to replace homing pigeons for communications between officers. The Watch is also investigating the theft of the replica Scone of Stone, a parody of the real-life Stone of Scone, from the Ankh-Morpork Dwarf Bread Museum. (The Scone of Stone in the novel is kept under close guard in a dwarf mine in Überwald, and will form a vital part of the forthcoming coronation ceremony of the dwarfs' new Low King.) Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch and Duke of Ankh, is sent to the remote region of Überwald as an ambassador to take advantage of the coronation to negotiate with the new Low King on increased imports of fat. (Underground fat deposits are abundant in Überwald as a fifth discworld-supporting elephant impacted there in prehistoric times, according to legend.) Überwald is also the traditional home of the Disc's dwarfs who are about to enthrone a new Low King. A cabal of local werewolves seek to exploit this opportunity to destabilize the already deeply divided dwarf society. They instigate the apparent theft of the real Scone of Stone from its closely guarded cave, hoping to cause a civil war between traditionalists and progressive dwarfs and isolate the country under the werewolves' feudal leadership. In his official capacity as ambassador Vimes meets the leaders of the local vampires, werewolves and dwarfs, starting to investigate the planned putsch along the way. Meanwhile, back in Ankh-Morpork, Angua learns that Wolfgang, her werewolf brother, is the head of the conspiracy and sets out to Überwald to stop him. Consequently Carrot also abandons the Watch and pursues her across the country, leaving an overburdened Colon as acting captain. As captain, Colon becomes increasingly strict and paranoid, punishing other members of the watch for minor offences which they did not commit, such as demoting Constable Visit to Lance Constable for supposedly stealing a sugar lump. In response Corporal Nobby Nobbs sets up the Guild of Watchmen in protest. The other members of the Watch join and protest against Colon, but eventually it dwindles to just Nobby, Visit, zombie Constable Reg Shoe and golem Constable Dorfl. The Ankh-Morpork City Watch recover the replica Scone of Stone. It is undamaged, but they suspect that someone has made a replica of the replica. In Uberwald, Vimes extends his activities to include an unofficial investigation into the theft of the real Scone of Stone. He rapidly determines that the dwarfs' system of guard on it is nothing like as secure as the dwarfs think it is and that the Scone could have been stolen in a number of different ways without too much difficulty, but nevertheless later concludes that it was not in fact stolen, but destroyed in situ and its remains concealed by mixing them with the sand on the floor of the cave. Following an attempt on the designated Low King's life Vimes is imprisoned by the dwarfs but escapes. On the run across the wintry countryside he is chased by the conspiring werewolves. Carrot and Angua arrive just in time to save Vimes from the murderous pack. Vimes' wife has been taken to the castle of Angua's werewolf family so the commander and his entourage set out to save her. Managing to defeat the power-hungry Wolfgang they are also able to restore the Scone of Stone. Back in their embassy the Morporkians are once more attacked by Wolfgang. In a final stand-off, he resists arrest and is killed by Commander Vimes with a Clacks flare. With the Low King's regalia returned the enthronement ceremony finally takes place and Vimes is granted prime rates for fat imports to Ankh-Morpork, thus fulfilling his original mission. The book finishes with Carrot and Angua returning to Ankh-Morpork. Carrot takes back his old rank of captain with Colon returning to his duties as a sergeant and ordering him and Nobby to gather the rest of the Watch together.
569241	/m/02r0b3	The Confusion	Neal Stephenson	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Though the first publication of the Series in 3 volumes combined the two novels Bonanza and The Juncto, here the plots will be dealt with as separate entities, true to the author's original intention. The beginning of Bonanza finds Jack Shaftoe awakened from a syphilitic blackout of nearly three years. During this time he was a pirate galley slave. The other members of his bench, a motley crew who call themselves "The Cabal" from Africa, the Far East and Europe, create a plot to capture silver illegally shipped from Central America by a Spanish Viceroy; they convince the Pasha of Algiers and their owner to sponsor this endeavor for their freedom and a cut in the profit. They capture the ship, but upon boarding it, they find it full, not of silver as they had expected, but of gold. Fleeing the Spanish they are followed by a frigate in the employ of the duc d'Arcachon, an investor in their plan and a man who wishes to kill Jack for ruining a party in The King of the Vagabonds. Believing the Duke plans to cheat the Cabal in the investment, they sail to Egypt and transport the gold over land to Cairo. In Cairo the Cabal negotiates with d'Arcachon's men for a meeting with the duc himself; as an inducement for this meeting they offer to hand over Jack. Jack cuts off the head of the duc to avenge Eliza, whom the duc had enslaved over a decade earlier. Fighting ensues between the Cabal and d'Arcachon's musketeers. The Cabal manages to escape (short several of its members and a good portion of the gold), fleeing toward Mocha. Realizing that they are no longer welcome in any European port, they carry the gold to India, where they are captured by a pirate queen who takes the gold. The Cabal is left penniless and its members are dispersed. Some are recruited in the army of a local king. Jack ends up working in an animal hospital in Ahmedabad. A year later, Jack reunites with a few members of the Cabal and conceives a plan to carry goods through a route that no traders can use because it is controlled by armies of plunderers. Jack shows the Cabal how to produce phosphorus from urine, and they use it to fight their way through. For this role in opening up the trade route, Jack is rewarded with a temporary, three-year kingship over an impoverished part of India. During his reign, Jack directs the construction of a ship made of durable teak wood, using funds invested by the pirate queen who had seized the Cabal's gold, and Sophie, Electress of Hanover. The ship is christened Minerva. The Cabal carries watered steel and other valuable items from India to Japan, and trades them for mercury. Mercury fetches a high price in the Americas, which need it for use in silver mines. A Spanish Galleon secretly agrees to show Minerva the way across the Pacific and help them establish trade in the Americas. The Galleon sinks, and Minerva takes on the two sole survivors, one of whom is Edmund de Ath. Jack, another member of the Cabal, and de Ath are imprisoned and tortured by the Spanish Inquisition but are able to buy their way out with silver that they got in trade for mercury. Jack receives a letter from Eliza urging him to meet her in Qwghlm. Laden with precious metals, Minerva sails there only to find that the invitation was a trap; the French capture them and seize their gold and silver. The letter had been faked by Edmund de Ath, actually Édouard de Gex in disguise, who had been working with Vrej, one of the Cabal members, who believed his family had been wronged by Jack. Minerva and her crew are allowed to leave sans cargo, but Jack is imprisoned by the duc d'Arcachon, son of the man whose head Jack cut off in Cairo, and husband of Eliza. Upon discovering the deceit, Vrej kills the duc d'Arcachon, before committing suicide to prevent retaliation upon his family. The duc had planned to imprison Jack for the rest of his life, but the King of France Louis XIV frees him in order to enlist his help in sacking the Tower of London, England's mint, in order to cripple the enemy country's economy. The book opens explaining how Bob Shaftoe had come into possession of the correspondence of d'Avaux, the French diplomat whom Eliza had fooled as a double agent for William of Orange in Quicksilver. Eliza has been captured by Jean Bart in an attempt to escape to England, and is confined to a house in Dunkerque. There both her lover Rossignol, the King's cryptographer, and d'Avaux rush to her. Under blackmail by d'Avaux, Eliza concedes in indefinitely loaning the vast fortune she has earned through trade in Amsterdam to fund the King's war efforts. Her loss of fortune forces Eliza to return to court life, where she learns that the duc d'Arcachon was the man who had enslaved her and her mother from the isle of Qwghlm. Eliza soon begins plotting to kill him. However, before she can do so, she learns of d'Arcachon's death at the hands of Jack. Jack had pronounced over the body of d'Arcachon that he killed him for a lover. Upon the return of his head to France, d'Avaux realizes who the lover of Jack is. Before Eliza's relationship with Jack can be revealed, Eliza marries Étienne, the son of the duc and becomes Duchess d'Arcachon. After the marriage, however, Eliza's illegitimate child with Rossignol is kidnapped under the orders of Lothar von Hacklheber in order to maintain leverage over her. To exact her revenge, Eliza engages in a series of financial maneuvers involving the French preparations to invade England. The invasion is ultimately called off in the aftermath of the Battles of Barfleur and La Hogue, but Eliza's manipulations succeed at making her wealthier than ever, while bringing the house of Hacklheber to its knees. The story refocuses on Bob Shaftoe, as he and the Black Torrent Guard participate in William III's campaign against James II in Ireland. The second half of the book follows the lives of Eliza, Leibniz, Newton, Waterhouse, and Sophia Charlotte over the next 10 years. Waterhouse confronts Newton over his increasingly unstable behavior and his fruitless attempts to derive a "theory of everything" under the enabling influence of Newton's close friend Fatio. Several characters from the Royal Society form "the Juncto", a society that aims to reignite the British commerce through a monetary reform. The Juncto creates the Bank of England and offers Newton a job as the director of the Mint. Eliza is infected with smallpox, but survives. She meets her old friend Princess Eleanor, who was exiled to a dower-house by her second husband, John George IV; she pays him back by infecting him with smallpox as well, and he turns out not to be as lucky. Princess Eleanor dies, and her daughter, Caroline, is adopted by Sophia Charlotte. Caroline turns out to be a bright girl with an interest in natural sciences and she soon forms a friendship with Leibniz. The story ends in 1702 with Eliza a wealthy duchess of Arcachon and Qwghlm and a widow, Newton at the head of the London Mint, Waterhouse having made the decision to move to Massachusetts and to work on his Logic Mill away from European distractions, Sophia Charlotte the queen of the newly-formed Kingdom of Prussia, and Leibniz the president of Prussian Academy of Sciences.
571011	/m/02r5pg	Northern Lights	Philip Pullman	1995	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in a parallel world to ours, in a world controlled largely by a theocratic international organisation, the Magisterium, which actively suppresses heresy. On this world, human souls exist externally in the form of sentient "dæmons": animal spiritual beings that constantly accompany, aid, and comfort their humans. Lyra Belacqua—a 12-year-old girl who has been allowed to run somewhat wild with her beloved dæmon, Pantalaimon—awaits the arrival of her uncle and guardian, Lord Asriel, at Jordan College, a (fictional) Oxford University college. She spies on him moments before he is scheduled to begin a lecture, and in doing so, saves his life when she stops him from drinking wine poisoned by the college's Master. Moments before the college's Scholars enter the room, Lyra hides in the coat closet and secretly watches Asriel's lecture, thus learning of "Dust", the name given to elementary particles that are apparently attracted to adults more than children. The lecture also sparks Lyra's fascination for Arctic exploration when Asriel shows images of a city skyline in some parallel universe that can be viewed through the northern lights. The purpose of the lecture is to convince the Scholars that other worlds exist so that they will fund Asriel's ongoing research, which the Magisterium considers heretical. After Asriel leaves Jordan, successful in his effort for financial backing, Lyra begins hearing rumours of the Gobblers, a mysterious group that has been kidnapping children throughout England, allegedly for the purposes of torture or experimentation. Shortly after her own friend Roger Parslow goes missing, Lyra meets Mrs Coulter, a beautiful and adventurous woman, and agrees when invited by the Master to go and live with her. Before Lyra leaves the college, the Master secretly entrusts Lyra with an alethiometer, a "truth teller" which resembles a four-handed pocket watch that will honestly answer any possible question asked by a skilled user. Although unable to read or understand its complex symbols at first, Lyra takes it with her, and gradually begins to use the device fluently over the course of the narrative—something which, it is later revealed, no adult can do as well as she. Lyra believes that the Master, who tried to poison Asriel, gives Lyra the alethiometer so that she will deliver it to Asriel as a reparation, or token of apology, for the earlier attempt on his life. It later seems clear that the Master tried to poison Asriel under pressure from the Magisterium. After living a charmed several weeks with Mrs Coulter, Lyra discovers that Mrs Coulter is the leader of the Gobblers, officially known as the General Oblation Board: the secret, Magisterium-approved, child-stealing organisation. Horrified, Lyra flees and is rescued in London by the Gyptians, a nomadic people who reveal that Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter are in fact Lyra's father and mother. The Gyptians tell Lyra the true story of her parents and she begins life with the Gyptians at sea. The Gyptians have been hit hardest by the Gobblers' kidnapping activities and they ultimately plan an expedition to the Arctic to rescue all of the missing children, including Roger. On a stop in Trollesund, Lyra meets Iorek Byrnison, an outcast prince of the sapient panserbjørne, or "armoured bears". His armour, stolen from him by the villagers, is akin to his soul, and without it Iorek is bound in servitude to the village. Lyra uses her alethiometer to locate it for him and in return he—and an old friend of his, an aeronaut named Lee Scoresby—agrees to help her on her quest. She also learns that Lord Asriel is being held in exile by the panserbjørne at Svalbard. The Trollesund consul of the witches tells the Gyptians that there is a prophecy about Lyra's destiny, which she must not know about, and that it seems the witch clans are choosing sides in preparation for some imminent war. The party consisting of Gyptians, Iorek Byrnison, Lee Scoresby, and Lyra continue north toward where they are told the Gobblers hold the children, at a place called Bolvangar. Guided by the alethiometer, Lyra detours at a village and finds, to her horror, a boy who has been severed from his dæmon. Lyra understands now that the Gobblers are deliberately cutting the bond between human and dæmon (a process called "intercision"): an uncanny notion analogous to a human body being split from its soul. Though Lyra brings the boy back to her party, his psychological devastation overcomes him and he eventually dies. In the Arctic wilderness, the party is soon attacked by bounty hunters and Lyra, captured, is taken directly to Bolvangar: a research station for the General Oblation Board. Superficially, Bolvangar is run like a benign chidren's centre, complete with scheduled activities for its captured children, who are suspicious but overall compliant. At Bolvangar, Lyra locates Roger and devises a plan for all of the children to escape, knowing through the alethiometer that the Gyptian-led rescue party is still on its way. Mrs Coulter arrives, evidently as a supervisor to the facility, just as Lyra is caught spying by staff-members. The staff decide to silence Lyra through intercision, involving their newly developed dæmon-cutting guillotine; however, she is rescued at the last moment by Mrs Coulter who is shocked to see her. Mrs Coulter then tries to coax the alethiometer away from her but Lyra has switched the alethiometer case for a decoy, distracting Mrs Coulter long enough to activate the station's emergency alarm. In the commotion, Lyra sets the station on fire and leads the other children outside where they are met by Lee Scoresby, Iorek Byrnison, the Gyptians, and their new allies, the witch-clan of Serafina Pekkala. Using Lee Scoresby's hot air balloon, Lyra, Roger, and Iorek leave the scene as a battle erupts involving the Gyptians and witches against Bolvangar's mercenary guards and staff. Lyra befriends Serafina Pekkala and later learns that all of the children have been successfully rescued from Bolvangar. Determined to deliver the alethiometer to Lord Asriel, Lyra now directs the witches to tow the balloon toward Svalbard; however, Lyra falls out of the basket near Svalbard and is quickly taken prisoner by the panserbjørne in their castle. Although captive, Lyra is able to trick their usurping bear-king, Iofur Raknison, into agreeing to fight Iorek, by claiming that she is Iorek's dæmon, and that if Iofur killed Iorek, then she would become Iofur's dæmon—something no bear has and Iofur wants more than anything. Arriving at the castle to rescue Lyra, Iorek successfully kills Iofur in the fight and thus is made king himself. Lyra—now nicknamed "Lyra Silvertongue" by Iorek as a token of her ability—travels onward to Lord Asriel’s house of exile, accompanied by Iorek and Roger. Despite being exiled, Lord Asriel has become so influential that he has accumulated the necessary equipment to continue his research on Dust. He explains to Lyra all he knows of Dust: the Church's view that it is deeply sinful, his belief that Dust is somehow related to the source of all death and misery, the existence of parallel universes from which Dust originates, and his final goal—he intends to visit the other universes, find the source of Dust (and, therefore, the source of all death and misery), and ultimately destroy it, triumuphantly claiming that "Death is going to die". As Lyra sleeps, Asriel leaves to fulfill his great experiment, bringing along his scientific equipment and taking Roger by force. Lyra awakes and pursues them, discovering that she has indeed brought her father what he wanted, though not in the way she thought; it was not the alethiometer he needed, but rather, it was Roger. The severing of a child's dæmon releases an enormous amount of energy, which Lord Asriel needs to complete his task. Lyra is unable to save Roger in time though, and his death provides sufficient energy to tear a hole through the northern lights into a parallel universe, ripping the sky apart. Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter (who catches up with him by zeppelin) face the newly revealed world and romantically embrace, but Mrs Coulter feels unable to go with Asriel and painfully declines his invitation. Without further comment, Lord Asriel walks into the new universe alone and Mrs Coulter departs back the way she came. Devastated at her part in rescuing Roger only to bring him to his death, Lyra decides that Dust, contrary to what all adults have told her, may be a force of good rather than evil. She and her dæmon Pantalaimon vow to discover if this is true and to stop Asriel; they then follow him through the opening in the sky. This concludes the first novel, with the trilogy continuing in the next book, The Subtle Knife.
571639	/m/02r7yg	The Science of Discworld II: The Globe		2002	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 In the story, the wizards are transported to Roundworld (the real universe, inadvertently created during the first book) during the Elizabethan era. This is the first time they learn there are humans on Roundworld; they previously learnt that something would escape an Ice Age by heading for the stars via a space elevator, but missed which species it was. They are befriended by the magician John Dee, who is understandably confused by their appearance. Back at Unseen University, the thinking machine Hex informs the remaining faculty (Ponder Stibbons, the Librarian and Rincewind) that history has changed and humanity no longer makes it to the stars. The reason for this is, apparently, an infestation of elves feeding off human imagination and encouraging them to be scared of the dark. The wizards travel back in time to suppress the elvish influence, but this only makes things worse; people are no longer superstitious, but they are no longer creative either. In the "new" 17th century humans are still in the Stone Age. Then Rincewind suggests doing the opposite, encouraging humanity to be more creative. They travel through time doing this, with the intent of creating a history in which William Shakespeare writes A Midsummer Night's Dream. This achievement is symbolic of a new way of thinking, the human imagination is now sophisticated enough that stories can be told about stories. With the elves now seen as a harmless fiction, their power over Roundworld is gone.
571783	/m/02r8nd	Moon Palace	Paul Auster	1989-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 Marco Fogg is an orphan and his Uncle Victor his only caretaker. Fogg starts college, and nine months later moves from the dormitory into his own apartment furnished with 1492 books given to him by Uncle Victor. Uncle Victor dies before Fogg finishes college and leaves him without friends and family. Marco inherits some money which he uses to pay for Uncle Victor's funeral. He becomes an introvert, spends his time reading, and thinks, "Why should I get a job? I have enough to do living through the days." After selling the books one by one in order to survive Fogg loses his apartment and seeks shelter in Central Park. He meets Kitty Wu and begins a furious romance after he has been rescued from Central Park by his friend Zimmer and Kitty Wu. Eventually he finds a job taking care of Thomas Effing, who, he learns much later, is his grandfather. Fogg learns about the complicated history of his parents, and Effings' previous identity as the painter Julian Barber. When Effing dies, leaving money to Fogg, Marco and Kitty Wu set up a house together in Chinatown. After an abortion Fogg breaks up with Kitty Wu and travels across the U.S. to search for himself. He begins his journey with his father Solomon Barber, who dies shortly after an accident on Westlawn Cemetery, where Fogg's mother is buried. Marco continues his journey alone, which ends on a lonely California beach: "This is where I start, [...] this is where my life begins." Marco Stanley Fogg, aka M.S., is the son of Emily Fogg. He doesn't know his father. His mother dies because of a car accident when he is eleven years old. He moves to his Uncle Victor, who raises him until Marco goes to a boarding school in Chicago. When he reaches college age, he goes to Columbia University in New York City. After spending his freshman year in a college dormitory, he rents an apartment in New York. Uncle Victor dies, which makes Marco lose track. After paying the funeral costs, Marco realizes that very little of the money that Uncle Victor gave him is left. He decides to let himself decay, to get out of touch with the world. He makes no effort to earn money. His electricity is cut off, he loses weight, and finally he is told that he must leave his apartment. The day before he is thrown out, Marco decides to ask Zimmer, an old college friend with whom he has lost contact, for help. Zimmer has moved to another apartment, so when Marco arrives at Zimmer's old apartment, he is invited by some strangers to join their breakfast. At that breakfast he meets Kitty Wu for the first time. She seems to fall in love with him. The next day, Marco has to leave his flat, and finds himself on the streets of Manhattan. Central Park becomes Marco's new home. Here he seeks shelter from the pressure of the Manhattan streets. He finds food in the garbage cans. Marco even manages to stay in touch with what is going on in the world by reading newspapers left by visitors. Although life in Central Park is not very comfortable, he feels at ease because he's enjoying his solitude and he restores the balance between his inner and outer self. At first, the weather is very good, so where to stay is not a big problem. But after a few weeks the weather changes. In a strong rain shower, Marco becomes ill and retires to a cave in Central Park. After some days of delirium, he crawls out of the cave and has wild hallucinations while lying outside. There, he is finally found by Zimmer and Kitty Wu, who have been looking for him for the whole time. Due to the fever he mistakes Kitty for an Indian and calls her Pocahontas. Zimmer (the German word for room) is a good friend, hosts Marco in his apartment, bears all his expenses, and helps him to recover. But when Marco has to go to the army physical, he is still rated unfit because of his poor physical and mental state. Marco feels very bad about living at Zimmer's costs, so he finally persuades him to let him do a French translation for him to earn some money. Then he meets Kitty again, and decides to leave Zimmer. They lose touch, and when, after thirteen years, they happen to run into each other in a busy street, Marco learns that Zimmer has married and become a typical middle-class citizen. After he has finished his work on the translation, Marco searches for another job offer. He finds a job at Effing's, where he is hired for reading books to Effing and driving the old, blind and disabled man through the city of New York in his wheelchair. Effing is a strange man who tries to teach Marco in his own way, taking nothing for granted. Marco has to describe to Effing all the things he can see while driving around. This way, Marco learns to look at the things around him very precisely. After, Effing tells Marco to do the main work he was hired for: Write his obituary. Effing tells him the main facts of his life as the famous painter Julian Barber and his conversion to Thomas Effing. He went to Utah with Byrne, a topographer, and Scoresby, a guide, to paint the vast country. Byrne fell from a high place and the guide flees from the place, leaving Barber alone in the middle of the desert. Barber finds a cave where a hermit used to live and begins to live there. He kills the Gresham brothers, 3 bandits, and takes the money to San Francisco, where he officially takes the name "Thomas Effing". He becomes rich, but one day someone tells him he's very similar to Julian Barber, a famous painter who disappeared. He sinks in depression and fear and begins frequenting China Town, taking drugs, etc. But one day someone attacks him, rushes and hits a street lamp, becoming paraplegic. He stops having such an unhealthy life, and decides to go to France. He comes back to the USA in 1939 fleeing from the Nazis. Solomon Barber is Marco's father and Effing's son. He is extremely fat (which contrasts to Marco's period of starvation) and didn't know his father nor that he has a son. He inherits most of the fortune of Effing. He meets Marco after the death of Effing to learn about his father and finds a son. Marco, in the family cyclic pattern, doesn't know that Barber is his father. Barber had a relationship with one of his students, Emily, and never knew she was pregnant. Marco learns the truth when he sees Barber crying in front of Emily's grave.
573091	/m/02rf17	Independent People	Halldór Laxness	1934	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Independent People is the story of the sheep farmer Guðbjartur Jónsson, generally known in the novel as Bjartur of Summerhouses, and his struggle for independence. The "first chapter summons up the days when the world was first settled, in 874 AD—for that is the year when the Norsemen arrived in Iceland, and one of the book's wry conceits is that no other world but Iceland exists. ... The book is set in the early decades of the twentieth century but ... Independent People is a pointedly timeless tale. It reminds us that life on an Icelandic croft had scarcely altered over a millennium". As the story begins, Bjartur ("bright" or "fair") has recently managed to put down the first payment on his own farm, after eighteen years working as a shepherd at Útirauðsmýri, the home of the well-to-do local bailiff, a man he detests. The land that he buys is said to be cursed by Saint Columba, referred to as "the fiend Kolumkilli", and haunted by an evil woman named Gunnvör, who made a pact with Kólumkilli. Defiantly, Bjartur refuses to add a stone to Gunnvör's cairn to appease her, and in his optimism also changes the name of the farm from Winterhouses to Summerhouses. He is also newly wed to a young woman called Rósa, a fellow worker at Rauðsmýri, and is determined that they should live as independent people. However, Rósa is miserable in her new home, which does not compare well to the luxury she was used to at Rauðsmýri. Bjartur also discovers that she is pregnant by Ingólfur Arnarson Jónsson, the son of the bailiff. In the autumn, Bjartur and the other men of the district ride up into the mountains on the annual sheep round-up, leaving Rósa behind with a gimmer to keep her company. Terrified by a storm one night, desperate for meat and convinced that the gimmer is possessed by the devil, Rósa kills and eats the animal. When Bjartur returns, he assumes that Rósa has set the animal loose. When he cannot find her when it comes time to put the sheep inside for the winter, he once more leaves his wife, by now heavily pregnant, to search the mountains for the gimmer. He is delayed by a blizzard, and nearly dies of exposure. On his return to Summerhouses he finds that Rósa has died in childbirth. His dog Titla is curled around the baby girl, still clinging to life due to the warmth of the dog. With help from Rauðsmýri, the child survives; Bjartur decides to raise her as his daughter, and names her Ásta Sóllilja ("beloved sun lily"). The narrative begins again almost thirteen years later. Bjartur is now remarried to a woman who had been a charity case on the parish, Finna. The other new inhabitants are Hallbera, Finna's mother, and the three surviving sons of Bjartur's second marriage: Helgi, Gvendur (Guðmundur) and Nonni (Jón). The rest of the novel charts the drudgery and the battle for survival of life in Summerhouses, the misery, dreams and rebellions of the inhabitants and what appears to be the curse of Summerhouses taking effect. In the middle of the novel, however, World War I commences and the prices for Icelandic mutton and wool soar, so that even the poorest farmers begin to dream of relief from their poverty. Particularly central is the relationship between Bjartur and Ásta Sóllilja.
573136	/m/02rf74	The Vagina Monologues	Eve Ensler			 The Vagina Monologues is made up of a varying number of monologues read by a varying number of women (initially, Eve Ensler performed every monologue herself, with subsequent performances featuring three actresses, and more recent versions featuring a different actress for every role). Each of the monologues deals with an aspect of the feminine experience, touching on matters such as sex, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the various common names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality. Some monologues include: *I Was Twelve, My Mother Slapped Me: a chorus describing many young women's and girls' first menstrual period. *My Angry Vagina, in which a woman humorously rants about injustices wrought against the vagina, such as tampons, douches, and the tools used by OB/GYNs. *My Vagina Was My Village, a monologue compiled from the testimonies of Bosnian women subjected to rape camps. *The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could, in which a woman recalls memories of traumatic sexual experiences in her childhood and a self-described "positive healing" sexual experience in her adolescent years with an older woman. In the original version, she is 13, but later versions would change her age to 16. It also originally included the line, "If it was rape, it was a good rape." This particular skit has sparked outrage, numerous controversies and criticisms due to its content, among which the most famous is the Robert Swope controversy (see below). *Reclaiming Cunt, a piece narrated by a woman who illustrates that the word "cunt" itself is a lovely word despite its disconcerting connotations. *The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy, in which a sex worker for women discusses the intriguing details of her career and her love of giving women pleasure. In several performances it often comes at the end of the play, literally climaxing with a vocal demonstration of a "triple orgasm". *Because He Liked to Look At It, in which a woman describes how she had thought her vagina was ugly and had been embarrassed to even think about it, but changed her mind because of a sexual experience with a man named Bob who liked to spend hours looking at it. *I Was There In The Room, a monologue in which Eve Ensler describes the birth of her granddaughter. Every year a new monologue is added to highlight a current issue affecting women around the world. Every V-Day thousands of local benefit productions are staged to raise funds for local groups, shelters, crisis centers working to end violence against women. In 2003, for example, Ensler wrote a new monologue about the plight of women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. This Monologue is known as "Under the Burqa."
573712	/m/02rgtm	Bridge of Birds	Barry Hughart	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story of the original draft begins at the Monastery of Shu, whose abbot abuses Li Kao until he saves the abbot's life. The abbot then gives him a beggar's bowl and robe and tells him one day he will be called and it is his duty to follow that call. Li Kao departs on a quest to become rich and stay young in China. Li Kao begins his journey in the city of Peking where he steals five hundred gold coins in order to start his life of wealth. While fleeing, he falls off a cliff and finds the legendary skull of Cheng Hang, who charges him to find three trinkets, a crystal ball, a bronze bell, and a small flute, in order to fix a terrible event that happened in heaven which has separated two gods in love who are unable to see each other due to the laws of heaven and can only be reunited by forming the Bridge of Birds. Li Kao is given only the knowledge of what to look for and the hint that Cheng Hang will somehow provide Li Kao with a dragon that will help guide him on his quest. His quest takes him to have multiple quarrels with the savage Duke of Ch’in who will do anything in his power to stop Li Kao from succeeding from finding a secret truth hidden inside the quest for the trinkets. In the end, he completes the quest, the Bridge of Birds is formed, and all in heaven is set right again.
574844	/m/02rlcc	Viper in the Fist	Hervé Bazin			 The story begins with the recollection of young Jean Rézeau catching a viper in his grandparents' courtyard and holding it in his fist. He chokes it to death. Young Jean lives with his grandparents. When his grandmother dies, his parents come back from China where his father teaches Law. He and his brothers then discover that their mother Paule is a horrible woman, who hates her life and her children. She is extremely severe with them and deliberately unfair to the point of cruelty. Their father is a weak man who, except on rare occasions, submits to his wife's will, and spends his time in entomology studies. Gradually, this turns to a perverse domestic war. Paule seizes any pretext for being cruel to her sons, and especially to Jean. Jean and his brother attempt to kill their mother twice: once with an overdose of medicine (which only gave her diarrhea), once by attempting to drown her in the river, making it seem an accident. She escapes. On one occasion, she asks their sons' personal educator to flog Jean as a punishment. Jean escapes and goes to see his grandfather, a senator living in an upscale area of Paris. He is brought back by his father, who is fairly embarrassed by the situation. Jean is now 15. He discovers sex with Madeleine, a young farmer's daughter from the area. He does not love her, for he distrusts all women, into whom he sees his own mother. He claims that women are little but an exutory for semen. Paule tries to have her son caught red-handed with theft by intentionally leaving her wallet in Jean's bedroom. Jean foils her plot and after a short confrontation, he obtains what he wants, and what Paule wants too: the departure of Jean and his brother to a boarding school. Jean concludes his memoirs by saying that while it seems that he has won, in reality Paule has destroyed his whole being. Throughout his life, he'll not be able to feel trust or love, he is the one that walks with a viper in his fist.
574991	/m/02rlzz	A Child Called "It"	Dave Pelzer	1995-09-01	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book is written as a memoir which covers physical and emotional abuse between Dave Pelzer and his biological mother.
576114	/m/02rq29	Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret	Judy Blume		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The main conflict in the novel comes from Margaret's need to settle her mixed religious heritage. She deals with her issues of belief in God, as the story is frequently interlaced with her praying by beginning with the title's words "Are You there, God? it's me, Margaret." In school, she is assigned a year-long independent study project; she chooses a study on people's beliefs, which proves to be more than she can handle as she is finding out a lot about herself as well. She also is dealing with conflict between her grandparents on both sides of her family, as her maternal grandparents are trying to guarantee that she is indeed Christian as she was born with a Christian mother. Margaret enjoys spending time with her paternal grandmother, who seems to accept her for who she is and is more accepting of her son's interfaith marriage, although she has referred to Margaret as "my Jewish girl" and introduced her to synagogue services, supposedly for the purpose of showing her granddaughter what the Jewish faith entails, but in reality when Margaret asks she immediately claims that she always knew she was a "Jewish girl". Her grandmother's arrogance is again shown when her Christian grandparents come, claiming her as a Christian, she tells Margaret to remember that she's a Jewish girl. Margaret denies this and claims not to believe in God, which angers her grandmother. The ambiguities of her interfaith identity are particularly highlighted in a scene &mdash; following a heated argument with another girl &mdash; in which Margaret visits a church, finding her way to the confessional booth; there the unseen priest inquires as to her problems, but &mdash; believing at first that the priest is God himself speaking to her and not comprehending the concept of Christian confession or its confidential nature &mdash; she simply responds "I am sorry," before running out of the church in tears. Margaret eventually stops "talking to God" after being in the middle of a confrontation between her parents and maternal grandparents. She is angry at him for putting her in such a conflict. In the end of the book, she goes to the bathroom and finds spots of blood in her underwear. She calls her mom, who was prepared for this and has bought pads. She puts the pad on, and makes one final prayer to God before the book ends: Besides religion though, Margaret moves from New York to the New Jersey suburbs, where she encounters Nancy, who leads her into a club where they talk about boys, bras, and periods. She becomes attracted to Phillip Leory, a boy at school, and kisses him at a party while playing "Spin the Bottle." She does get a bra and is excited but also confused about growing up.
577390	/m/02rv6z	Angels and Demons	Dan Brown	2000-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01_nl": "Cabal", "/m/099v5d": "Conspiracy"}	 The plot follows Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, as he tries to stop the Illuminati, a legendary secret society, from destroying Vatican City with the newly discovered power of antimatter. CERN director Maximilian Kohler discovers one of the facility's physicists, Leonardo Vetra, murdered. His chest is branded with an ambigram of the word "Illuminati". Kohler contacts Robert Langdon, an expert on the Illuminati, who determines that the ambigram is authentic. Kohler calls Vetra's adopted daughter Vittoria to the scene, and it is ascertained that the Illuminati have stolen a canister containing antimatter — a substance with destructive potential comparable to a small nuclear weapon. When at CERN the canister is stored in a unique electrical charger which ensures the anti-matters stability but when removed its back-up battery provides power for 24 hours after which the anti-matter will self-destruct. The canister is somewhere in Vatican City, with a security camera in front of it, as its digital clock counts down to the explosion. Langdon and Vittoria make their way to Vatican City, where the Pope has recently died. It is discovered that the four Preferiti, cardinals who are the most likely papal successor, are missing. Langdon and Vittoria search for the Preferiti in hopes that they will also find the antimatter canister. Their search is assisted by Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca (the late pope's closest aide) and the Vatican's Swiss Guard. Langdon attempts to retrace the steps of the "Path of Illumination", a process once used by the Illuminati as a means of inducting new members; aspirants to the order were required to follow a series of subtle clues left in various landmarks in and around Rome. The clues indicate the secret meeting place of the Illuminati. Langdon sets off on the Path of Illumination in hopes of delivering the Preferiti and recovering the antimatter canister. The Path leads Langdon to four locations in Rome, each associated with one of the primordial elements: 'Earth', 'Air', 'Fire', and 'Water'. Langdon finds one of the Preferiti murdered in a way thematically related to each location's related element. The first cardinal was branded with an Earth ambigram and had soil forced down his throat; the second was branded with an air ambigram and had his lungs punctured; the third was branded with a fire ambigram and was burned alive; and the fourth was branded with a water ambigram and was left to drown at the bottom of a fountain. After finding the bodies of the first two Preferiti, Langdon hurries to the Santa Maria della Vittoria Basilica and finds the Preferiti's abductor in the act of setting the third cardinal on fire. The kidnapper is an unnamed assassin who is working under the orders of the Illuminati master "Janus", whose true identity is unknown. Commander Olivetti is killed and the assassin kidnaps Vittoria. Langdon escapes and accosts the assassin at the final element's landmark (Water), but is unable to save the cardinal. Langdon must complete the Path of Illumination in order to find the assassin and rescue Vittoria. His search leads him to Castel Sant'Angelo, that hides a tunnel leading directly into the pope's chambers in the Vatican. Langdon frees Vittoria, and together they send the assassin falling several hundred feet to his death. The two hurry back to St. Peter's Basilica, where they find that Kohler has arrived to confront the camerlengo in private. Langdon and Vittoria fear that Kohler is Janus, and that he has come to murder the camerlengo. Hearing the camerlengo scream in agony from being branded with the Illuminati Diamond, the Swiss Guards burst into the room and open fire on Kohler. Just before he dies, Kohler gives Langdon a videotape that he claims will explain everything. With time running out, the Swiss Guard evacuates the Basilica. The camerlengo rushes back in, claiming that he has received a vision revealing the location of the antimatter canister. With Langdon in pursuit, the camerlengo ventures into the catacombs and finds the canister sitting atop the tomb of Saint Peter. Langdon and the camerlengo retrieve the antimatter and get in a helicopter with only minutes to spare. The camerlengo manages to parachute safely onto the roof of St. Peter's just as the canister explodes harmlessly in the sky. The crowd in St. Peter's Square look in awe as the camerlengo stands triumphantly before them. Because of this "miracle", the papal conclave debate whether to elect the camerlengo as the new Pope. Langdon managed to survive the explosion by using a window cover from the helicopter as a parachute, and landed in the Tiber River. After viewing Kohler's tape Langdon, Vittoria, and the cardinals confront the camerlengo; Shortly before the beginning of the novel, the Pope met with Leonardo Vetra who believed that anti-matter was capable of establishing a link between Man and God. Vetra's beliefs caused great discomfort to the camerlengo. While discussing Vetra, the pope reveals that his support is due to science having given him a son. Without waiting to hear the explanation (that the child was the result of artificial insemination), and horrified that the Pope appeared to have broken his vow of chastity, the camerlengo plots to "rectify" the situation. He poisoned the pope and, under the guise of an Illuminati master (Janus), he recruited the assassin, to kill Vetra, steal the antimatter, and kidnap and murder the Preferiti. The Camerlengo planted the antimatter in St. Peter's in order to be seen as the savior of Christendom. The Illuminati "involvement" was merely a plot engineered by the camerlengo to cover his own plans. It is revealed that Camerlengo Ventresca himself was the birth son of the late pope, conceived through artificial insemination. Overcome with guilt Ventresca soaks himself in oil and immolates himself before a crowd of onlookers in St. Peter's Square.
579662	/m/02s1dy	The Science of Discworld			{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The Discworld part of the book begins when a new experimental power source for the Unseen University is commissioned in the university's squash court. The new "reactor" is capable of splitting the thaum (the basic particle of magic), in homage to the Chicago Pile-1 nuclear reactor, which was housed in a rackets court at the University of Chicago. However, the wizards' new reactor produces vastly more magical energy than planned and threatens to explode, destroying the University, the Discworld, and the entire universe. The university's thinking engine, Hex, decides to divert all the magic into creating a space containing nothing&nbsp;— no matter, no energy, no reality, and, importantly, no magic. The Dean sticks his fingers in the space and "twiddles" them, inadvertently creating the universe. The wizards soon discover that they can move things around in the universe, using Hex. They call it the Roundworld (the Earth), because in it, matter seems to accrete into balls in space (instead of discs on the backs of turtles). They decide to appoint Rincewind, whom they dragged out of bed in the early hours of the morning, the Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, and send him down (against his will) to investigate this strange world. The wizards create a series of balls of matter in space, and give one of them a Moon (accidentally). This stabilizes the ball enough that, over a score of millennia (the wizards can skip over vast periods of Roundworld time, allowing them to view the history of the universe in less than a month), blobs of life emerge, ready to begin evolving into more complex forms. The book also features a fictional crab civilization and the dinosaurs (both of which are wiped out by comets/asteroids colliding with the earth), before jumping ahead to when an advanced civilization (presumably humans) has evacuated the earth due to an impending natural disaster.
581845	/m/02s7hj	The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket	Edgar Allan Poe	1838-07	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/07m5w1": "Sea story"}	 The book comprises a preface, 25 chapters, and an afterword, with a total of around 72,000 words. Arthur Gordon Pym was born on the island of Nantucket, famous for its fishing harbor and whaling. His best friend, Augustus Barnard, is the son of the captain of a whaling ship. One night, the two boys get drunk and decide, on Augustus's whim, to take advantage of the breeze and sail out on Pym's sailboat, the Ariel. But the breeze turns out to be the beginnings of a violent storm. The situation gets critical when Augustus passes out drunk, and the inexperienced Pym must take control of the dinghy. The Ariel is overtaken by the Penguin, a returning whaling ship. Against the captain's wishes, the crew of the "Penguin" turns back to search for and rescue both Augustus and Pym. After they're safely back on land, they decide to keep this episode a secret from their parents. His first ocean adventure does not dissuade Pym from sailing again; rather, his imagination is ignited by the experience. His interest is further fueled by the tales of a sailor's life that Augustus tells him. Pym decides to follow Augustus as a stowaway aboard the Grampus, a whaling vessel commanded by Augustus's father that is bound for the southern seas. Augustus helps Pym by preparing a hideout in the hold for him and smuggling Tiger, Pym's faithful dog, on board. Augustus promises to provide Pym with water and food until the ship is too far from shore to return, at which time Pym wants to reveal himself. Due to the stuffy atmosphere and vapors in the dark and cramped hold, Pym becomes increasingly comatose and delirious over the days. He can't communicate with Augustus, and the promised supplies fail to arrive, so Pym runs out of water. In the course of his ordeal, he discovers a letter written in blood attached to his dog Tiger, warning Pym to remain hidden, as his life depends on it. Augustus finally sets Pym free, explaining the mysterious message, as well as his delay in retrieving his friend: a mutiny had erupted on the whaling ship. Part of the crew was slaughtered by the mutineers, while another group, including Augustus's father, were set adrift in a small boat. Augustus survived because he had befriended one of the mutineers, Dirk Peters, who now regrets his part in the uprising. Peters, Pym, and Augustus hatch a plan to seize control of the ship: Pym, whose presence is unknown to the mutineers, will wait for a storm and then dress in the clothes of a recently-dead sailor, masquerading as a ghost. In the confusion sure to break out among the superstitious sailors, Peters and Augustus, helped by Tiger, will take over the ship again. Everything goes according to plan, and soon the three men are masters of the Grampus: all the mutineers are killed or thrown overboard except one, Richard Parker, whom they spare to help them run the vessel. The storm increases in force, breaking the mast, tearing the sails and flooding the hold. All four manage to survive by lashing themselves to the hull. As the storm abates, they find themselves safe for the moment, but without provisions. Over the following days, the men face death by starvation and thirst. They sight an erratically moving Dutch ship with a grinning red-capped seaman on deck, nodding in apparent greeting as they approach. Initially delighted with the prospect of deliverance, they quickly become horrified as they are overcome with an awful stench. They soon realize that the apparently cheerful sailor is, in fact, a corpse propped up in the ship's rigging, his "grin" a result of his partially decomposed skull moving as a seagull feeds upon it. As the ship passes, it becomes clear that all its occupants are rotting corpses. As time passes, with no sign of land or other ships, Parker suggests that one of them should be killed as food for the others. They draw straws, following the Custom of the Sea and Parker is sacrificed. This gives the others a reprieve, but Augustus soon dies from wounds received when they reclaimed the Grampus, and several more storms batter the already badly damaged ship. Pym and Peters float on the upturned hull and are close to death when they are rescued by the Jane Guy, a ship out of Liverpool. On the Jane Guy, Pym and Peters become part of the crew and join the ship on its expedition to hunt sea calves and seals for fur, and to explore the southern oceans. Pym studies the islands around the Cape of Good Hope, becoming interested in the social structures of penguins, albatrosses, and other sea birds. Upon his urging, the captain agrees to sail further south towards the unexplored Antarctic regions. The ship crosses an ice barrier and arrives in open sea, close to the South Pole, albeit with a mild climate. Here the Jane Guy comes upon a mysterious island called Tsalal, inhabited by a tribe of black, apparently friendly natives led by a chief named Too-Wit. The color white is alien to the island's inhabitants and unnerves them, because nothing that color exists there. Even the natives' teeth are black. The island is also home to many undiscovered species of flora and fauna. Even its water is different from water elsewhere, being strangely thick and exhibiting multicolored veins. The natives' relationship with the sailors is initially cordial, so Too-Wit and the captain begin trading. Their friendliness, however, turns out to be a ruse and on the eve of the ship's proposed departure, the natives ambush the crew in a narrow gorge. Everyone except Pym and Peters is slaughtered, and the Jane Guy is overrun and burned by the malevolent tribe. Pym and Peters hide in the mountains surrounding the site of the ambush. They discover a labyrinth of passages in the hills with strange marks on the walls, and disagree about whether these are the result of artificial or natural causes. Facing a shortage of food, they make a desperate run and steal a pirogue from the natives, narrowly escaping from the island and taking one of its inhabitants prisoner. The small boat drifts further south on a current of increasingly warm water, which has become milky white in color. After several days they encounter a rain of ashes and then observe a huge cataract of fog or mist, which splits open to accommodate their entrance upon approach. The native dies as a huge shrouded white figure appears before them. Here the novel ends abruptly. A short postscript, ostensibly written by the book's editors, compares the shapes of the labyrinth and the wall marks noted by Pym to Arabian and Egyptian letters and hieroglyphs with meanings of "Shaded", "White", and "Region to the South".
582288	/m/02s90c	Villette	Charlotte Brontë	1853	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Villette begins with its famously passive and secretive protagonist, Lucy Snowe, age 14, observing her godmother, Mrs. Bretton, Mrs. Bretton's son, Graham, and a young visitor, Paulina Home, known to everyone as "Polly." The child is a peculiar little thing and soon develops a deep devotion for the younger Graham, who showers her with attention until her stay is cut short when her father comes to take her away. Lucy left the house soon after the child's departure, and after some initial hesitation, she was hired as a carer by Miss Marchmont, a rheumatic crippled woman. Soon she was accustomed to her new career and host, and started feeling content with the quiet lifestyle. However, in an evening with dramatic weather changes, Miss Marchmont magically regained all her energies and felt young again. She shared her sad love story of thirty years previously with Lucy, and concluded that she should try to treat Lucy better, be a better person since then and would get together with her dead lover through death. In the very next morning, Lucy found Miss Marchmont peacefully lifeless in bed. In the ensuing years, an unspecified family tragedy forces Lucy into action, causing her to seek employment, and at age 23 she boards a ship for "Labassecour" (French for 'farmyard' and based on Belgium) despite not speaking a word of French on a hope that maybe she may find something in a new place. After arriving in the capital city of Villette, Lucy finds work as a teacher at Mme. Beck's boarding school for girls (which can be seen as a literary representation of the Hégers' Brussels pensionnat), and thrives despite Mme. Beck's constant surveillance of the students and staff. Dr. John, a handsome English doctor, frequently visits the school because of his love for the coquette Ginevra. In one of Villettes famous plot twists, Dr. John is later revealed to be Graham Bretton, a fact that Lucy has known but deliberately concealed from the reader. After Dr. John discovers Ginevra's unworthiness, his brotherly instincts turn his attention to Lucy, and they become close friends which she values very highly despite her usual emotional reserve. We meet "Polly" again at this point (although her father has come into the title de Bassompierre which makes her now Paulina Home de Bassompierre) when Dr. Bretton saves her from being trodden upon at the theatre one night. They soon discover that they know each other and renew their friendship, which quickly blossoms into something more. The two fall in love and eventually marry, which Lucy has long seen coming, and she understands without sharing their facile happiness. At the same time, Lucy has the first of several encounters with a shadowy nun in the attic who may be the ghost of a nun buried alive on the grounds for breaking her vows of chastity; in a highly symbolic scene, she finally finds the nun's habit in her bed and destroys it. She later discovers it to be the disguise of Ginevra's amour, de Hamal. Lucy finds herself becoming closer to a colleague, the fiery schoolmaster M. Paul Emanuel; the two eventually fall in love. However, a group of conspiring antagonists, including Mme. Beck, the priest Père Silas, and the relatives of M. Paul's long-dead fiancée, struggle to keep the two apart, and finally succeed in forcing M. Paul's departure for the West Indies to oversee his plantation there. He nonetheless declares his love for Lucy before his departure, and arranges for her to live independently as the headmistress of her own day school or externat, which she later expands into a pensionnat. Villettes final pages are ambiguous; though Lucy says that she wants to leave the reader free to imagine a happy ending, she hints strongly that M. Paul's ship was destroyed by a storm on his return from the West Indies, killing him. She claims, for example, that "the three happiest years of [her] life" were those before M. Paul's return journey, which would suggest that he did indeed fall victim to the "destroying angel of tempest". Brontë described the ambiguity in the ending as a "little puzzle".
582377	/m/02s9hd	Shirley	Charlotte Brontë	1849	{"/m/0276pxr": "Social novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Robert Moore is a mill owner noted for apparent ruthlessness toward his employees - more than any other mill owner in town. He has laid off many of them, apparently indifferent to their resulting poverty. But in fact he has no choice, since the mill is deep in debt. The mill was inefficiently run by his late father and is already mortgaged. His elder brother became a private tutor, leaving Robert to restore the mill to profitability. He is determined to restore his family's honour and fortune. As the novel opens, Robert awaits delivery of new labor-saving machinery to the mill. The new machinery will let him lay off additional employees. Robert, with some friends, watches all night, but the machinery is destroyed on the way by angry millworkers. Robert's business difficulties continue, due in part to the continuing labor unrest, but even more so to the Napoleonic Wars and the accompanying Orders in Council which forbid British merchants from trading in American markets. Robert is very close to Caroline Helstone, who comes to his house to learn French from his sister. Caroline worships Robert and he likes her too. Caroline’s father is dead and her mother had abandoned her, leaving her to be brought up by her uncle, the local parson, Rev. Helstone. Caroline is penniless, and this leads Robert to keep his distance from her, since he cannot afford to marry for pleasure or love. He has to marry for money if he is to get his mill going again. Caroline realizes that Robert is growing increasingly distant and withdraws into herself. Her uncle does not sympathise with her ‘fancies’, and she has no money of her own, so she cannot leave the place, which is what she longs to do. She suggests taking up the job of a governess but her uncle dismisses it and assures her that she need not work. Caroline cheers up a great deal, however, when she meets Shirley. Shirley is a landowner, an independent heiress whose parents are dead and who lives with Mrs. Pryor, an old governess. Shirley is lively, cheerful, full of ideas about how to use her money and how to help people, and very interested in business concerns. Caroline and Shirley soon become very close friends. They both dislike social hypocrisy and wish they could do something significant with their lives. As Caroline gets closer to Shirley, she notices that Shirley and Robert get along very well, which makes her think that they would end up marrying each other. Shirley likes Robert, is very interested in his work, and is concerned about him and the threats he gets from laid-off millworkers. Both good and bad former employees are depicted. Some passages show the real suffering of those who were honest workers and can no longer find good employment; other passages show how some people use losing their jobs as an excuse to get drunk, fight with their previous employers, and incite other people to violence. Shirley uses her money to help the poorest of the lot, but she is also motivated by the desire to prevent any attack on Robert, a motive that makes Caroline both happy and unhappy. One night, Caroline and Shirley conclude from the behaviour of Robert and others that an attack is imminent. They go the mill together to warn Robert. They come too late and have to hide near the mill. But Robert is already prepared and he mounts a counter-attack. He defeats the attackers and gets the ring leaders arrested, the whole encounter being witnessed by Shirley and Caroline from their hiding place. After this incident, the whole neighbourhood is convinced that Robert and Shirley shall wed. The anticipation of this causes Caroline to fall sick. Mrs. Pryor comes to look after her, and realizes that Caroline is pining away. Every Tuesday, Caroline sits by the window sill, no matter how weak or tired, to catch a glimpse of Robert on his way to the market. Mrs. Pryor makes it a point to see what it is that Caroline looks out for. She learns the cause of Caroline’s sorrow but is helpless; she continues her vigil in the sick room even as Caroline worsens daily. Robert leaves for London without any concrete reason. Caroline has lost even the weekly glimpse of him, and she feels that she has ‘nothing left to live for’ since there is no one who cares whether she lives or dies. Mrs. Pryor then reveals to Caroline that she is Caroline's mother. She had abandoned her because Caroline looked exactly like her father - the husband who tortured Mrs. Pryor and made her life miserable. She had little money; when her brother-in-law offered to bring up the child, she accepted it, took up a family name of Pryor and went off to become a governess. Caroline now has a reason to live - her ‘mamma’. She begins to recover slowly, since she knows that she can go and live with her mother. Shirley's uncle and aunt come to visit her. The uncle joins Shirley in her office work (administering her land and investments). They bring with them their daughters, their son, and their son's tutor. He is Louis Moore, Robert’s younger brother, who had taught Shirley when she was younger. Caroline is puzzled by Shirley’s behaviour towards Louis - the friendly girl who treats her servants as her own family is always haughty and formal with Louis and never seems to forget that he is a lowly tutor with no money of his own. Two men fall in love with Shirley and woo her, but she refuses both because she does not love them. Her uncle is surprised by this behaviour and wants her to marry someone respectable soon. A baronet, the most prominent nobleman of the district, falls in love with Shirley. She likes him too, though she does not respect him and does not want to marry him. The neighbourhood, however, is certain that she will not refuse so favourable a match. The relationship between Shirley and Louis, meanwhile, remains ambivalent. There are days when Louis can, with the authority of an old teacher, ask Shirley to come to the schoolroom and recite the French pieces that she learnt earlier. On other days, Shirley completely ignores Louis, not even speaking to him once though they have breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same table. At the same time, when Shirley is upset, the only one she can confide in is Louis. When a supposed 'mad dog’ bites Shirley and makes her think that she is likely to die early, no one can make her reveal what it is that makes her so sad. It is only Louis who gets the whole incident out of her, and Shirley makes him promise that if she is dying of rabies, and to be put to death because of the terrible suffering in the last stages of the disease, it will be his hand that delivers that final injection. Robert returns one dark night, first stopping at the market and then returning to his home with a friend. The friend tells him that it is widely speculated that Shirley is to marry a rich man and asks him why he left when it seemed so sure that Shirley loved him and would have married him. Robert replies that he had assumed the same, and that he had proposed to Shirley before he left. But Shirley had at first laughed, thinking that he was not serious, and cried when she discovered that he was. She had told him that she knew that he did not love her, that he asked for her hand not for her but for her money and this decreased her respect for him. When Robert had argued that Shirley had shown concern for him, been open with him from the very beginning and discussed his business matters at length with him, she had said that she had esteem and affection for him, but not love and now even that esteem and affection were in danger. Robert walked away from that room filled with a sense of humiliation, even as he knew that she was right - that he had ignored his affection for Caroline and sought out Shirley primarily for her money. This self-disgust drove Robert away to London and he realized there that restoring the family name was not as important as self-respect and he had returned home, determined to close the mill if he had to, and go away to Canada and work hard and make his fortune. Just as Robert finishes his narration, his friend hears a gunshot and Robert falls from his horse - the laid-off workers are finally avenged. The friend takes Robert to his own home and looks after him, and after a turn for the worse, Robert slowly gets better. A visit from Caroline revives him but she has to come secretly, hiding from her uncle and his friend and his family. Robert soon moves back to his house and persuades his sister that the very thing the house needs to cheer it up is a visit by Caroline. Robert asks for Caroline’s forgiveness and tries to tell her what had happened with Shirley, but she stops him and tells him that she has forgiven him and that she got some idea from Shirley and does not need to know any more. She also predicts that Shirley is in love too, and that she is not ‘master of her own heart’. When Shirley refuses the baronet’s offer of marriage, her uncle is enraged and has a fight with her. He then decides to leave Stillborough. This means that Louis will have to leave too, which emboldens him enough to make his declaration – he proposes to Shirley, despite the difference in their relative situations. Shirley agrees to marry him, though she has moments of indecision and panic at the thought of giving up her independence. The novel ends with Caroline and Shirley marrying the two brothers, Robert and Louis, respectively.
583542	/m/02sf28	William Does His Bit	Richmal Crompton	1941	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 William hears the family talk about a man called Quisiling (William calls him 'Grisling'), who apparently appears to exist in many places at once, helping the Germans. When he learns the man is in fact many men doing the same thing, he sets out to find Quisling and capture him. His search takes him to the village, where at an intersection, two elderly ladies are talking about passwords in whispers. William at once decides to follow the second one, who goes to a school building through the cover of laurel bushes and at a blackened window, William sees an elderly gentleman with many women talking and putting flags on maps. He, believing it to be Grissel's gang plotting propaganda, follows the man to his house, and when he starts mowing his lawn, he rings the police asking them to come. William is caught "stealing" plates and cutlery so he can see where Grissel's papers are. The police start to arrest him, as William talks about the man and his doing. The man dismisses the police, rewarding William for his "efforts to the country" with a bun and lemonade. William walks home contentedly and tells his mother what happened. His mother does not believe him, and continues sewing. William decides that he and Ginger should become highwaymen in order to steal some money to account for money that was lost by them, and by William's bike being removed because he trampled flowers over with it. William and Ginger dress up as what they think highwaymen look like. Their first attempts are useless, but then they steal a man's briefcase, believing it to be full of treasure. It turns out it is full of rocks. Ethel is starting a rockery, and William sells them to her for six pennies. A gentleman visits who happens to be the girl's relation, and says that highwaymen held up his car. William is found out, but all ends well when he sees a movie about highwaymen with the gentleman. The Brown family is getting stressed out at William's presence. They decide he must be given to one of his relations for a while to keep. William at first is indignant about being kept by his aunt, then he discovers the village she lives in isn't so dull after all... Two elderly gentleman, a colonel and another man find themselves bickering like they did the year before, and the one before that and so on, about their prizes. One breeds good asparagus, and one good peaches. Both vow to win the other's best offerings and grow those plants. William gets most mixed up in the happenings, and decides after his adventures with them, not to be too detailed to his mother about what happened. The outlaws, who often frequent the Village and Marley, notice that a fire "station" has been built out of an old garage. The outlaws watch in awe, as "god like beings" walk in "thigh high boots" carrying hoses and dripping in endless water. At first, the gang of schoolboys find themselves merely waiting on the outside and watching the amazing happenings. Then, they dare to venture in. The men even find their company nice for a while, until William's band decide to join. That's where it all goes wrong. The officer of the area, Mr Perkins, decides that schoolboys shouldn't be parading with his men, and turn them out. But William is not finished yet. His band make their OWN fire squad area next to the garage in a spot of unused land that waits for them conveniently. When Perkins uses a new tactic to get them away, after he is shot in the face by one of the outlaws with a hose, he says he will talk to their fathers. William finds a fire, however after a while, but it is in PERKINS house! When the section officer finds out, William is reluctantly rewarded. The household bustles with the sounds of the words "war" and "economy", most often joining to form "war economy". William, trying in vain to persuade his mother that leaving school would save money, and that he would go back after the war (historical note, book was written in 1941, meaning the war would end in about 4 years, William being eleven). He asks the cook if she knew about war economy. Aside from stealing the odd couple of raisins (which later ended in a comical sequence of the Brown's saying how few raisins were in their raisin puddings), he manages to get Cook to tell him about "corners" of produce made by "war profiteers" who gain money from wars. William decides to make a "corner" of wood, since there is a wood nearby his home. He takes it to the house of a Builder, and finds a scared women there, fretting over her war time recipes, which happen to include directions that don't even make sense to her. She tells William to put his "wood corner" in the living room. But it is not Mr. Jones the builder who lives here, rather Mr. Jones the fretwork creator!!! Obviously taking a "wood corner" to be a piece of a chair or something, she hurriedly assumes William has every right to dump his barrow into the living room. The woman's relations have been skipping from place to place, eventually bleeding all their relations dry, and Mrs. Jones is no different. When William outrages Mr. Jones with his "corner" of sticks and twig sized branches of common firewood, Mrs. Jones is however quite glad to see them leave for another unfortunate relation! She eventually gives William a Stilton Cheese to take to Mr. Brown. William and the outlaws see Home Guard men, one of which being a local blacksmith, doing their job practicing "shooting through holes" and so forth, and wish they could do something similar. The outlaws build a fortress, made of sandbags and boxes, even equipped with 'little holes' to shoot their toy weapons through. One night, a man in a "woman's dress" whom they think is a parachutist walks along the road they blockaded. The outlaws shoot at him, and get some to run to the police. When the policeman is here, and the "parachutist" explains he is dressed as a woman because he is in a play that night, he forgives William and lets him see the play at Marleigh Aerodrome. William and the outlaws have the happiest day they have had in their lives so far. William hears at an air raid shelter that scrap iron should be collected more, as a local woman and her daughter have joined them this evening. After the "all clear signal", William goes to bed and dreams of Hitler in a woman's suit pushing a barrow with Ethel - Ethel having a cork in her mouth. When he wakes up, he decides he must do something about collecting scrap iron. The outlaws put letters into people's mailboxes, asking for "skrappion" and the results are varied. Some are amused, and some annoyed, saying they can't "play games" with them. After William finds some scrap iron he carries his cart to the next house. And what a surprise he gets there. He finds the Bevertons exhibition of war memorabilia, even though he thinks it is simply scrap iron. And he has every right to be pleased at what he finds... who wouldn't like to look for junk only to find parts of Dorniers!!! However, the Bevertons, when they find out, are not nearly as impressed. And the fact that William leaves his old junk on the exhibition table, leading to the guests believing it to be a plot to gain cash revenues, does not lessen the spirit of anger. William, his consciousness nagging him about ruining the Bevertons Spitfire fundraising exhibition decides to raise funds himself by having a war memorabilia exhibition museum himself. The only item he manages to find is a sign a practical joker must have put on the ground saying "unexploded bomb". His museum had no visitors, so it failed. Meanwhile, after hours of nagging Mrs. Bott to give her land up for allotments to a "good cause", The Dig For Victory committee leaves angrily as she brandishes herself about in the air of one who is utterly annoyed. When she sees the signpost saying "unexploded bomb" in front of her mansion, she runs to the Brown's for cover. William and the Outlaws had had to leave it there after their arms would just not lift again, and so left it there they did. "Botty"s wife signs the paper saying she will give up allotments saying it was a sign she must do it. When William takes it away and the Browns don't see it, she says it was a vision telling her to sell her land. She gives William three pounds for the Spitfire Fund in hope that she will receive further good luck accounts. William, inspired to do something good for the war cause, sees two men pulling up road signs, and tells them it would be better to turn them the other way, so Germans would get lost. This gives him an idea, when he sees two houses, with identical nameplates with different names attached, and he gets his screwdriver and fixes the plate 'laurel bank' on the house 'heather bank' and vice versa. When he gets home, Robert asks him if he passed Laurel bank, as he admires a blonde young girl named Dulcie who lives there. When the owners of the two houses who once were good friends, but separated after a dispute when one said gardens should be reserved for vegetables and one said the same, but for flowers to keep up the country pride, they send for gardeners to burn all the flowers in the vegetable grower's yard, and all the vegetables in the flower growers yard. But when there (Colonel Peabody and Mr. Bagshott) gardeners find the name plates on the wrong houses, they dig up each growers pride and joy. Each owner, when seeing Robert doing the digging, after suggesting he do the rest to a tired gardener, (after all, when Dulcie saw his rippling muscles working away...) blames first Robert, then the other for the gardener's digging. They end up making up to each other, and Robert and Dulcie meet for the first time. When Robert finds out of William's doings he doesn't mind. When the outlaws hear from William that sweet production has stopped during the remainder of the war, they decide to make their own sweets and sell them to the shops and eat them themselves. Each boy races through their mother's larder and bring back an odd array. Included are a tin of sardines and a some coconut pieces. They mix it all together to create "sardine toffee" and taste it, with the following results. First tastiness, second a lasting flavour, third a green countenance! One by one they leave until only William and Ginger remain. When William casually mentions the cakes and sweets they would receive at the party they were attending that evening, Ginger goes too. But, William, never one to say 'I surrender' in any case of the like, goes bravely, yet worriedly to the party. At Mrs Bott's place, where the party will be held, a woman has come to seek one of the children who appears most earnest, to take home to be a companion to her son, Claude. Claude, it turns out, is a bully, even larger than William, and by his mothers standards after all, (she is writing books on child psychology) he should play with a meeker child, so the meeker one would become braver and more manly, and the manly one (meaning Claude) would become more meek. If she had known William's usual look when he hadn't eaten a sweet made of sardines, she may not have been so inclined to take him. But, she didn't. So, she took him. And, when Claude expects another babyish child to pummel at his own will (the father and gardener and housemaid were told not to interfere with proceedings, so not to disturb the balance as Claude's mother said, so unfortunately they watched a poor child being left to the manly strength of Claude.) found that William was not his regular punch bag, but a more manly person. When Mrs Brown expects William to come home changed, she gets a full surprise. William, not only unchanged but invigorated, walks in!
584728	/m/02sk2n	The Tale of the Heike				 Chapter 1 The two main themes are set in the famous introduction (the bells of the Gion Shōja): impermanence and the fall of the mighty (Taira no Kiyomori). The chapter describes the rise of the Taira clan and early conflicts at the court. The first Taira who gets access to the Imperial court is Taira no Tadamori (1131). After Tadamori’s death (1153), his son Kiyomori plays a key role in helping the Emperor Go-Shirakawa suppress the Hōgen (1156) and the Heiji (1159) Disturbances thereby gaining more influence in the court affairs. The Taira clan members occupy major government positions, Kiyomori’s daughter becomes the Emperor’s wife, and more than half of all the provinces are under their control. One of the episodes describing Kiyomori’s arrogance is the famous story about the dancer Giō who falls out of Kiyomori’s favour and becomes a nun. Kiyomori and the Taira even dare to conflict with the powerful Regent, Fujiwara no Motofusa. Angered by the Taira dominance, Major Counselor Fujiwara no Narichika, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, Buddhist monk Saikō and others meet at Shishi-no-tani (the villa of the temple administrator Shunkan) and plot a conspiracy to overthrow Kiyomori. Because of the conflict between Saikō’s sons and warrior-monks of the Enryakuji temple the plot has to be postponed. The great fire (1177) burns the Imperial Palace in the capital, Heian-kyō, Kyoto. Chapter 2 In 1177, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa is in conflict with the Enryakuji temple. Hearing a rumor about a possible attack on Enryakuji, one of the Shishi-no-tani conspirators informs Kiyomori of the plot. The monk Saikō is executed and others are exiled. Kiyomori is angered by the participation of the Retired Emperor in the plot and prepares to arrest him. Shigemori, the eldest virtuous son of Kiyomori, successfully admonishes his father by reminding him of the Confucian value of loyalty to the Emperor. Major Counselor Narichika is exiled to an island and cruelly executed. Other conspirators (Naritsune, Yasuyori and Shunkan) are exiled to the Kikai-ga-shima island near the Satsuma province. Meanwhile, Enryakuji temple complex is destroyed and a fire at the Zenkōji temple destroys a Buddhist statue. People believe these troubles to be signs of the Taira decline. Those exiled to the Kikai-ga-shima island build a shrine where they pray for return to capital. They make a thousand stupas (Buddhist wooden objects) with their names and throw them into the sea. One of the pieces reaches the shore. It is brought to the capital and shown to Yasuyori’s family. The news reaches Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa and Kiyomori who see the stupa with emotion. Chapter 3 The illness of Kiyomori’s pregnant daughter (Kenreimon’in) is attributed to angry spirits of the executed (Narichika) and the exiled. Kiyomori, interested in becoming a grandfather of the Imperial prince, agrees to a general amnesty. Naritsune (Narichika’s son) and Yasuyori are pardoned, but Shunkan is left alone on the Kikai-ga-shima island for letting the anti-Taira conspirators gather at his villa. A famous tragic scene follows when Shunkan beats his feet on the ground in despair. Kiyomori’s daughter gives birth to the future Emperor Antoku (1178). A loyal youth in service of Shunkan, Ariō, journeys to the island finding Shunkan barely alive. Hearing the news of his family’s death, Shunkan kills himself by fasting (1179). His suffering as well as the whirlwind that strikes the capital are seen as signs of the fall of the Taira. Kiyomori’s virtuous son, Shigemori, goes on a pilgrimage to Kumano and asks the gods for a quick death if the Taira are to fall. In a short while he falls ill and dies. Without Shigemori’s restraining influence, Kiyomori is close to open war with Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa. He leads soldiers to Kyoto where he exiles or dismisses 43 top court officials (including Regent Fujiwara no Motofusa). Next, Kiyomori imprisons Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa in the desolate Seinan palace (1179). Chapter 4 Emperor Takakura is forced to retire and Antoku (Kiyomori’s grandson, age 3) becomes a new Emperor. Retired Emperor Takakura angers the Enryakuji (Mt. Hiei) monks by going to the Itsukushima Shrine instead of the Enryakuji temple. Minamoto no Yorimasa persuades Prince Mochihito (second son of Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa) to lead Minamoto forces against the Taira and become the Emperor. Prince Mochihito issues an anti-Taira call to arms. The open conflict between the Minamoto and the Taira is triggered by Munemori (Kiyomori’s son) humiliating Minamoto no Yorimasa’s son (by taking away his horse and calling it by the owner’s name). Kiyomori discovers the anti-Taira plot. Prince Mochihito avoids arrest by fleeing from the capital to the Miidera temple. Yorimasa and the Miidera monks fight with Taira forces at the bridge over the Uji River (1180). Despite bravery of the monks, Taira forces cross the river and win the battle. Yorimasa commits suicide in the Byōdōin temple and Prince Mochihito is killed on the way to the allied Kōfukuji temple in Nara. One of the Prince Mochihito’s sons is forced to become a monk, but the other son flees north to join the Minamoto forces. Kiyomori gives orders to burn the Miidera temple. Many temples are burned and people see it as a bad omen for the Taira. Chapter 5 Kiyomori moves the capital from Kyoto to Fukuhara (his stronghold) in 1180. Strange ghosts appear to Kiyomori (a face, laughter, skulls, ominous dreams). News of unrest in the eastern provinces (controlled by the Minamoto) reaches the new capital. A story about the monk Mongaku is inserted as a background to Minamoto no Yoritomo’s revolt. Mongaku is an ascetic with strange powers who requested donations at the court in 1179. After the refusal of Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa he caused trouble at the court and was exiled to Izu. At Izu, Mongaku convinces Minamoto no Yoritomo to revolt against the Taira. Then he goes to Fukuhara and brings back the Imperial Edict from Go-Shirakawa permitting Minamoto no Yoritomo to overthrow the Taira. Kiyomori sends a military expedition to put down the rebellion of Yoritomo. When they reach the Fuji River, the Taira forces hear stories about the might of eastern warriors and fear that Minamoto forces outnumber them. At night, a flock of birds rises with great noise and the Taira forces, thinking that they are attacked, retreat in panic. Kiyomori, under pressure from temples and courtiers, moves the capital back to Kyoto. Upon hearing the rumours of an attack being planned by the Taira, monks of the Kōfukuji temple (who supported the rebellion of Prince Mochihito) revolt and kill messengers sent by Kiyomori. The Taira forces attack Nara and burn many important temples (Tōdaiji, Kōfukuji), statues and Buddhist texts. Retired Emperors and courtiers lament the destruction of Nara. This evil deed is believed to lead to Kiyomori’s downfall. Chapter 6 In 1181, Retired Emperor Takakura dies troubled by the events of the last several years. Kiso no Yoshinaka (cousin of Minamoto no Yoritomo in the northwestern provinces) plans a rebellion against the Taira and raises an army. Messengers bring news of anti-Taira forces gathering under the Minamoto leadership in the eastern provinces, Kyūshū, Shikoku. The Taira have trouble dealing with all the rebellions. To make things worse for the Taira, their leader, Kiyomori, falls ill. His body is hot as fire and no water can cool him. Water sprayed on his body turns to flames and black smoke that fills the room. Kiyomori’s wife has a dream about a carriage in flames that will take Kiyomori to Hell for burning Buddhist statues (in the Tōdaiji temple). Before dying in agony, Kiyomori makes a wish to have the head of Yoritomo hung before his grave. His death (in 1181, age 64) highlights the themes of impermanence and fall of the mighty. Kiyomori’s evil deeds will become his torturers in Hell. His fame and power turned to smoke (he was cremated) and dust (bones). In the east, Taira forces are successful in some battles, but are not able to defeat the Minamoto forces. Divine forces punish and kill the governor appointed by Kiyomori to put down Kiso no Yoshinaka’s rebellion. Kiso no Yoshinaka wins a major battle at Yokotagawara (1182). Munemori, the leader of the Taira clan, is conferred a high rank in the court administration. Chapter 7 In 1183, the Taira gather a large army (mainly from western provinces) and send it against Yoshinaka and Yoritomo. Going north, Taira armies pillage local villages. Taira no Tsunemasa visits an island to pray and compose a poem. At the battle of Hiuchi, the Taira get help from a loyal abbot and defeat Yoshinaka's garrisons. Yoshinaka writes a petition at the Hachiman Shrine to get divine help for the upcoming battle. Yoshinaka attacks the Taira armies at night from the front and rear and forces them to retreat and descend to the Kurikara Valley where most of the 70,000 Taira riders are crushed piling up in many layers (a famous “descent into Kurikara” – a major victory of Yoshinaka). At Shio-no-yama, Yoshinaka helps his uncle Yoshiie to defeat the Taira forces (Kiyomori’s son Tomonori is killed in the battle). Taira armies are also defeated in the battle at Shinohara. Yoshinaka wins Mt. Hiei monks over to his side. Munemori (head of the Taira) flees to the western provinces with Emperor Antoku and the Three Imperial Treasures (Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa manages to escape in a different direction). Taira no Tadanori (Kiyomori’s brother) flees the capital leaving some of his poems to a famous poet Fujiwara no Shunzei. Tsunemasa returns a famous lute to the Ninnaji temple. At Fukuhara, Munemori gives a moving speech about duty to follow the Emperor, the Taira set fire to the palace and then flee from Fukuhara by boats to Kyūshū. Chapter 8 Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa returns to the capital from Enryakuji temple on Mt. Hiei together with Yoshinaka’s armies. He installs a new Emperor (Go-Toba) and puts the Taira out of government positions (they are designated as rebels). The Taira want to set up a new capital in Kyūshū, but have to flee from local warriors who take the side of the Retired Emperor. They arrive to Yashima in Shikoku where they have to live in humble huts instead of palaces. In late 1183, Minamoto no Yoritomo (still in Kamakura) is appointed by the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa as a Barbarian-subduing Commander (shōgun). Yoritomo receives the messenger from the capital with great courtesy, invites him to a feast and gives him many gifts. Yoritomo’s manners sharply contrast with Yoshinaka’s arrogant behaviour in the capital. Yoshinaka’s rudeness and lack of knowledge about etiquette are shown to be ridiculous in several episodes (makes fun of courtiers, wears tasteless hunting robes, does not know how to get out of a carriage). Meanwhile, the Taira regain their strength and assemble a strong army. Yoshinaka sends forces against them, but this time the Taira are victorious in the battle of Mizushima. Their influence grows even more after the victory at Muroyama. In the capital, Yoshinaka fights with Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa (the battle at the Hōjūji) and takes control of the capital and the court by force. Minamoto no Yoritomo sends Minamoto no Yoshitsune to put an end to Yoshinaka’s excesses. Chapter 9 When Yoshinaka prepares to march west against the Taira (early 1184), armies led by Yoshitsune arrive to strike him from the east. The struggle between the Minamoto forces follows. Yoshinaka tries to defend the capital, but Yoshitsune’s warriors succeed in crossing the Uji River and defeating Yoshinaka’s forces at Uji and Seta. Yoshitsune takes control of the capital and guards the mansion of the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, not letting Yoshinaka’s men capture him. Yoshinaka barely breaks through the enemy forces. He meets with his foster-brother Imai Kanehira and they try to escape from pursuing enemy forces. In a famous scene, Yoshinaka is killed when his horse is stuck in the muddy field. Kanehira fights his last battle and commits suicide. While the Minamoto fight among themselves in the capital, the Taira move back to Fukuhara and set up defences at the Ichi-no-tani stronghold. Yoshitsune’s armies move west to attack the Taira from the rear whereas his half-brother Noriyori advances to attack the Taira camp from the east. Yoshitsune, planning a surprise attack of Ichi-no-tani from the west, follows an old horse that guides his forces through the mountains. Meanwhile, fierce fighting starts at Ikuta-no-mori and Ichi-no-tani, but neither side is able to gain a decisive advantage. Yoshitsune’s cavalry descends a steep slope at Hiyodori Pass decisively attacking the Taira from the rear. The Taira panic and flee to the boats. As the battle continues, Tadanori (Kiyomori’s brother who visited the poet Shunzei) is killed. Shigehira (Kiyomori’s son who burned Nara), deserted by his men at Ikuta-no-mori, is captured alive trying to commit suicide.In a famous passage, Taira no Atsumori (young nephew of Kiyomori) is challenged to a fight by a warrior Kumagae Naozane. Naozane overpowers him, but then hesitates to kill him since he reminds him of his own young son. Seeing the approaching riders who are going to kill the youth, Naozane kills Atsumori, and finds his flute (later he becomes a Buddhist monk). The Taira are defeated and flee by boats in different directions. Chapter 10 In 1184, Shigehira (captured alive) and the heads of the defeated Taira are paraded in the streets of the capital. The Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa offers the Taira to exchange Three Imperial Treasures for Shigehira, but they refuse. It is clear that he will be executed. Shigehira, concerned about his past arrogance and evil deeds (burning of Nara temples), wants to devote himself to Buddhism. Hōnen (the founder of the Pure Land Buddhism in Japan) concisely outlines the essential doctrines (reciting Amida’s name, repentance, deep faith guarantee rebirth in the Pure Land). Shigehira is sent to Kamakura. On his journey along the Eastern Sea Road, Shigehira passes numerous places that evoke historical and literary associations. Yoritomo receives Shigehira who claims that burning Nara temples was an accident. Before being sent to the Nara monks, Shigehira is treated well at Izu (a bath is prepared for him, wine is served, a beautiful lady serving Yoritomo, Senju-no-mae, sings several songs (with Buddhist meaning) and plays the lute; Shigehira also sings and plays the lute – after Shigehira’s execution, Senju-no-mae becomes a nun). At Yashima, Koremori (grandson of Kiyomori) is grieved to be away from his family in the capital. He secretly leaves Yashima and travels to Mt. Kōya. There he meets with a holy man, Takiguchi Tokiyori. A story of his tragic love is inserted: as a courtier, Tokiyori loved a girl of lesser birth, Yokobue. His father was against their marriage and Tokiyori became a monk. When Yokobue came looking for him, he was firm and did not come out. He went to Mt. Kōya and became a respected priest Takiguchi. Yokobue became a nun and died soon. Koremori comes to this priest, becomes a monk himself and goes on a pilgrimage to Kumano. After the priest’s encouraging words (Pure Land Buddhism ideas), Koremori abandons his attachments, throws himself into the sea and drowns. News of his death reaches Yashima (Taira camp). The Taira are attacked at Fujito and retreat. Chapter 11 In 1185, a small force led by Yoshitsune lands on the island of Shikoku. Yoshitsune plans a surprise attack from the rear (one more time after the Ichi-no-tani battle) on the Taira stronghold at Yashima. The Taira, thinking that main Minamoto forces attack them, flee to their boats in panic. The Taira warriors shoot arrows at the Yoshitsune’s forces. Noritsune, Kiyomori’s nephew and a commander of the Taira, shoots at Yoshitsune, but Tsuginobu, Yoshitsune’s retainer, dies protecting him from arrows. In a famous passage, a Taira lady in a boat holds a fan as a challenge to the Minamoto warriors and Nasu no Yoichi, a skillful young Minamoto archer, hits the fan with his arrow. During the confused fighting at the shore, Yoshitsune loses his bow and gets it back risking his life. He famously explains that he did not want the Taira to get that bow (for weak archers) and laugh at him. The Taira are forced to leave Shikoku and retreat to Nagato province (southern tip of Honshū). Before the final naval battle at Dan-no-ura, the Minamoto gain new allies (the head of the Kumano Shrine decides to support the Minamoto after fortune-telling with cockfights (200 boats) and 150 boats from a province of Shikoku). In total, the Minamoto have about 3000 vessels against the Taira’s 1000. Before the battle, Yoshitsune argues (about leading the attack) and almost fights with Kajiwara Kagetoki (Minamoto commander jealous of Yoshitsune). As the battle begins, the Taira are in good spirits and seem to be winning due to skillful positioning of archers on the boats. After the exchange of arrows from a distance main forces begin fighting. Omens from Heaven (white banner descends on a Minamoto boat, many dolphins swim to Taira boats) show that the Minamoto are going to win. Shigeyoshi from Awa province (Shikoku) betrays the Taira and informs the Minamoto about the boats carrying the main Taira forces in disguise. Warriors from Shikoku and Kyūshū also switch sides and support the Minamoto. In the famous and tragic passage, Kiyomori’s widow, holding young Emperor Antoku in her arms, commits suicide by drowning. Many Taira are killed or commit suicide at Dan-no-ura. Tomomori (Kiyomori’s son) drowns himself. Noritsune (Kiyomori’s nephew and a strong warrior) fails to have a fight with Yoshitsune and dies fighting bravely. Taira clan head Munemori, Kenreimon’in (Kiyomori’s daughter) are captured alive. After the battle, Yoshitsune returns to capital with the Imperial Treasures (the sacred sword has been lost) and prisoners. Captured Taira are paraded along the streets of the capital with many spectators pitying their fate. Yoshitsune delivers Munemori to Yoritomo in Kamakura, but after Kajiwara Kagetoki’s slander Yoritomo suspects Yoshitsune of treachery and does not allow him to enter Kamakura. Yoshitsune writes a letter of complaint listing his military deeds and loyal service. Yoritomo still sends him back to the capital. Munemori and his son Kiyomune are executed, their heads hung near a prison gate in the capital. Shigehira (Kiyomori’s son captured at Ichi-no-tani) is allowed to see his wife before being handed over to Nara monks. Shigehira hopes for Amida’s compassion and rebirth in the Pure Land. Warriors execute him in front of the monks. His head is nailed near the temple at Nara. His wife becomes a nun after cremating his head and body. Chapter 12 A powerful earthquake strikes the capital. Yoritomo’s distrust of Yoshitsune grows. Yoritomo sends an assassin to kill Yoshitsune (fails). Then, Yoritomo kills Noriyori (Yoshitsune’s half brother) who is reluctant to go against Yoshitsune. When Yoritomo sends a large force led by Hōjō Tokimasa against him, Yoshitsune flees from the capital to a northern province. Taking control of the capital, Tokimasa executes all potential heirs to the Taira family. An informer shows the cloister where Koremori’s family (including Rokudai is hiding). Rokudai (age 12) is the last male heir of the Taira family. Rokudai is arrested, but his nurse finds Mongaku (the monk – see Ch.5) who agrees to go to Kamakura to ask for a pardon. Mongaku comes back with a letter from Yoritomo and saves Rokudai just before his execution takes place. Yoritomo has doubts about Rokudai and he is compelled to become a monk (1189, age 16). Rokudai visits Mt. Kōya and Kumano (where his father Koremori drowned). Meanwhile, several Taira clan members are found and executed. In 1192, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa dies (age 66). Yoritomo (still suspicious) orders the execution of Rokudai (age 30+, the Taira line comes to an end). After Yoritomo’s death in 1199, the monk Mongaku plans a rebellion to install a prince on the throne. His plot is uncovered and the Retired Emperor Go-Toba exiles him to the island of Oki (age 80+). The Initiates’ Book “Treated as a secret text by [a group of biwahōshi], this chapter is believed to have originated in the late 13th century, after the Heike proper. […] It brings together information about Kiyomori’s daughter Kenreimon’in, the mother of Emperor Antoku. […] It constitutes a single literary entity – a tale in the old monogatari style, rich in poetic imagery, rhythmic passages, waka, and melancholy associations.” In 1185, Kenreimon’in becomes a nun and moves to an old hut near the capital. Her life is filled with sadness as memories of the past glory haunt her. After the 1185 earthquake the hut is ruined. In the autumn of 1185, Kenreimon’in moves to a remote Buddhist retreat (Jakkō-in) in the Ohara mountains to avoid public attention. There she devotes herself to Buddhist practices. Natural sights evoke images of Amida’s Paradise and impermanence in her mind. In the spring of 1186, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa makes a visit to the mountain retreat. She talks with the Retired Emperor about human miseries and Buddhist ideas of suffering and rebirth in the Pure Land. As she remembers past glory of the Taira and their fall, she makes parallels between the events in her life and the Six Paths (six Buddhist realms of existence). She also mentions a dream in which she saw the Taira in the dragon king’s palace asking her to pray for their salvation. The bell of the Jakkō-in sounds (parallel to the bells of the Gion monastery in the first lines of the Tale) and the Retired Emperor leaves for the capital. Misfortunes of the Taira are blamed on Taira no Kiyomori (his evil deeds caused the suffering of the whole Taira clan). In 1191, Kenreimon’in falls ill, dies invoking Amida’s name and is welcomed by Amida Buddha to the Pure Land.
585619	/m/02sn19	Windmills of the Gods	Sidney Sheldon	1987	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mary Ashley, a professor at Kansas State University, is offered an ambassadorship by Paul Ellison, the US president. She rejects the offer because her husband, Dr. Edward Ashley, does not want to leave his medical practice, and she is not willing to be separated from him. She also feels that it is harder to find a good doctor for a small Kansas town than an ambassador to a foreign country. When her husband suddenly dies in a suspicious traffic accident, Ashley accepts the President's offer in order to fill the void in her life. She is sent to Romania, behind the Iron Curtain, where she finds that everyone is conspiring against her. She's on the glinting edge of East-West confrontation, a beautiful and accomplished scholar who has suddenly become the new US ambassador to an Iron Curtain country, a woman who is about to dramatically change the course of world events – if she lives. For Mary Ashley has been marked for death by the world's most proficient and mysterious assassin, and plunged into a nightmare of espionage, kidnapping and terror.
587107	/m/02sskp	Flat Stanley	Jeff Brown		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Stanley Lambchop and his younger brother Arthur are given a big bulletin board by their father to display pictures and posters. He hangs it on the wall over Stanley's bed. During the night the board falls from the wall, flattening Stanley in his sleep. He survives and makes the best of his altered state, and soon he is entering locked rooms by sliding under the door, and playing with his younger brother by being used as a kite. One special advantage is that Flat Stanley can now visit his friends by being mailed in an envelope. Stanley even helps catch some art museum thieves by posing as a painting on the wall. Eventually Arthur changes Stanley back to his proper shape with a bicycle pump.
587841	/m/02st_l	Greenmantle	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir	1916	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The book opens in November 1915, with Hannay and his friend Sandy convalescing from wounds received at the Battle of Loos. Hannay is summoned to the Foreign Office by Sir Walter Bullivant, a senior intelligence man, who Hannay met and assisted in The Thirty-Nine Steps. Bullivant gives Hannay an outline of the political situation in the Middle East, and hints that the Germans and their Turkish allies are plotting to cause a great uprising throughout the Muslim world, that will throw the whole of the Middle East, India and North Africa into turmoil; Bullivant proposes that Hannay takes on the task of investigating rumours. The only clue he is given is a slip of paper left by a spy, Bullivant's own son, recently killed in the region, bearing the words Kasredin, cancer and v.I. Despite his misgivings and feelings of inadequacy for the task, Hannay accepts the challenge, and picks Sandy to help him. Bullivant tells him that an American, John Blenkiron, will also be useful to him. The three meet up, ponder their clues, and plan to head to Constantinople. They start on November 17, and plan to meet up in a rough hostelry there exactly two months later, going each by his own route - Blenkiron, as a neutral, travelling through Germany as an observer, Sandy using his contacts in the Arab world to make the journey through Asia Minor, and Hannay, taking on the identity of Boer "Cornelis Brandt", entering enemy territory via Lisbon. Arriving there, he meets by chance his old comrade from adventurous times in Africa, Boer Peter Pienaar, and together the two enter Germany via the Netherlands, posing as anti-British exiles itching to fight for the German side. They meet the powerful and sinister Colonel Ulric von Stumm, and persuade him they can help stir up the Muslim peoples to join the German side. The two are separated, and Hannay is introduced to a Herr Gaudian, famed mining engineer (who would later reappear after the war in The Three Hostages), hears of the mysterious Hilda von Einem, and has a brief meeting with the Kaiser. Finding Stumm plans to send him to Egypt via London, Hannay flees into the snowbound countryside, tracked by the vengeful Colonel. He falls ill with malaria and is sheltered over Christmas by a poor woman in a lonely cottage. On his sickbed, he realises that the clue "v.I" on the piece of paper may refer to the name he overheard, von Einem. Recuperated, he carries on, travelling by barge carrying armaments down the Danube, picking up with Peter Pienaar, who has escaped from a German prison, along the way. They pass through Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade, and as they travel, Hannay connects the phrase "der grüne Mantel" with something else he overheard earlier. They reach Rustchuk on January 10, with a week to go before the rendezvous in Constantinople. On arrival there, Hannay has a run-in with Rasta Bey, an important Young Turk, and intercepts a telegram showing his trail has been picked up. They carry on by train, fending off an attempt to stop them by the angry Rasta Bey, and reach Constantinople with half a day to spare. They seek out the meeting place, and are attacked by Bey and an angry mob, but rescued by a band of mysterious, wild dancing men, who they then antagonise. Next day they return to the rendezvous, an illicit dance-room, where they find the main entertainment is none other than the wild men of the previous day. At the climax of the performance, Enver's soldiers arrive and drag Hannay and Peter away, apparently to prison, but they are instead delivered to a cosy room containing Blenkiron and the leader of the dancers - none other than the miraculous Sandy Arbuthnot. They pool their news - Sandy has identified Kasredin from the their clue sheet, as the title of an ancient Turkish allegorical story, the hero of which is a religious leader called Greenmantle, and has also heard much of a prophet known as "the Emerald", associated with the play. Blenkiron has met and been impressed by Hilda von Einem, who is in Constantinople and owns the house in which they are staying. Blenkiron provides Hannay with a new identity, an American engineer named Hannau, and they attend a dinner party where they meet Herr Gaudian again, and Enver himself. Lost out riding, Hannay encounters von Einem, and is fascinated by her; later, he is recognised by Rasta Bey, and has just knocked him out and hidden him in a cupboard when von Einem arrives. Hannay impresses her, and hears she plans to take him East with her. Sandy visits, agrees to deal with the captive Turk and provides news of his own - the clue Cancer means the prophet Greenmantle has the disease and is on his deathbed. Blenkiron joins them, and tells them that fighting has hotted up between the Russians and the Turks, and they deduce that they will be taken towards Erzerum to help with its defence. On the long road to Erzerum, they crash their car, and spend the night in a barn, where Hannay has a vivid dream of a hill with a saucepan-like indent in the top. They carry on on worn-out horses, but seeing a new car by the roadside, they steal it, only to find it belongs to Rasta Bey. They make good speed onward, but on arrival in Erzerum, they are delivered straight to Stumm, who recognises Hannay and has them locked up. They are rescued by one of Sandy's men, steal some plans from Stumm, and escape across the rooftops. With the battle of Erzurum booming in the background, they realise the importance of the stolen plans, and Peter Pienaar volunteers to sneak through the battle lines and deliver them to the Russians. Sandy appears, magnificently dressed, and reveals that Greenmantle is dead and that he himself has been chosen to impersonate him. They form a plan to flee around the side of the battle lines, and while Sandy's helper searches for horses, Pienaar sets off on his dangerous mission. Pienaar has an eventful and terrifying journey across the battlefield, while Hannay and Blenkiron hide out in a cellar. On the third day, they break out, and make for safety in a wild horse ride, closely pursued by their enemies. On the verge of capture, they find the hill of Hannay's dream, and entrench there, holding the enemy at bay. Hilda von Einem comes in, and appeals to them to give up, but they refuse; she is shocked to learn Sandy is a British officer, and as she leaves, she is slain by a stray Russian shell. Stumm arrives with artillery, and their position looks sure to be destroyed and overrun, but Stumm waits till dawn to savour his revenge. Just in time, the Russians, helped by the plans delivered by Pienaar, break through the defences and sweep towards the town. Stumm's men flee, Stumm is killed, and Hannay and Sandy meet up with Pienaar to ride into the city and victory.
588734	/m/02sxr6	The Castle of Otranto	Judy Blume	1764	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Castle of Otranto tells the story of Manfred, lord of the castle, and his family. The book begins on the wedding-day of his sickly son Conrad and princess Isabella. Shortly before the wedding, however, Conrad is crushed to death by a gigantic helmet that falls on him from above. This inexplicable event is particularly ominous in light of an ancient prophecy "[T]hat the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it". Manfred, terrified that Conrad's death signals the beginning of the end for his line, resolves to avert destruction by marrying Isabella himself while divorcing his current wife Hippolita, whom he feels has failed to bear him a proper heir. However, as Manfred attempts to marry Isabella, she escapes to a church with the aid of a peasant named Theodore. Manfred orders Theodore's death while talking to the friar Jerome, who ensured Isabella's safety in the church. When Theodore removes his shirt to be killed, Jerome recognizes a marking below his shoulder and identifies Theodore as his own son. Jerome begs for his son's life, but Manfred says Jerome must either give up the princess or his son's life. They are interrupted by a trumpet and the entrance of knights from another kingdom who want to deliver Isabella. This leads the knights and Manfred to race to find Isabella. Theodore, having been locked in a tower by Manfred, is freed by Manfred's daughter Matilda. He races to the underground church and finds Isabella. He hides her in a cave and blocks it to protect her from Manfred and ends up fighting one of the mysterious knights. Theodore badly wounds the knight, who turns out to be Isabella's father, Frederic. With that, they all go up to the castle to work things out. Frederic falls in love with Matilda and he and Manfred begin to make a deal about marrying each other's daughters. Manfred, suspecting that Isabella is meeting Theodore in a tryst in the church, takes a knife into the church, where Matilda is meeting Theodore. Thinking his own daughter is Isabella, he stabs her. Theodore is then revealed to be the true prince of Otranto and Matilda dies, leaving Manfred to repent. Theodore becomes king and eventually marries Isabella because she is the only one who can understand his true sorrow.
589722	/m/02s_q3	Glengarry Glen Ross	David Mamet			 Setting: a Chinese restaurant Scene 1: Shelly Levene tries to convince office Manager John Williamson to give him some of "the Glengarry leads" (names and phone numbers of promising potential clients for expensive properties). Williamson is willing to sell some of the prime leads, but demands cash in advance. Levene cannot come up with the cash and must leave without any good leads to work with. Scene 2: Dave Moss and George Aaronow hate the pressure management has put on them to succeed. Moss tells Aaronow that they need to strike back by stealing all the Glengarry leads and selling them to another real estate agency. Moss's plan would require Aaronow to break into the office, stage a burglary, and steal all the prime leads. Aaronow wants no part of the plan, but Moss intimidates him, claiming that he is already an accomplice simply by listening to Moss's pitch. Scene 3: Ricky Roma delivers a monologue to James Lingk. Roma does not bring up the real estate he wants to sell to Lingk until the very end. Instead, Roma preys upon Lingk's insecurities, and his sense that he has never done anything adventurous with his life. Setting: a real estate sales office The burglary is discovered. Williamson has called in a police detective. Shelley Levene is happy, because he has finally sold a large plot of land to a couple named Nyborg. James Lingk enters the office, looking for Ricky Roma. Lingk's wife has ordered him to cancel the sales contract he signed with Roma. Roma attempts to trick Lingk into not cancelling the contract; Levene supports the ruse, but Williamson accidentally ruins Roma's ploy. Roma is furious at Williamson, who has blown a big sale. Levene picks up where Roma left off, and begins insulting Williamson. Mid-rant, Levene slips and incriminates himself. Williamson pursues and accuses Levene of robbing the office. Levene quickly folds, and admits that he and Dave Moss were the thieves. Levene tries to bribe Williamson, offering half of his future sales. Williamson reveals that the Nyborg sale is worthless--the couple is crazy and just like talking to salesmen. Roma comes back from his interrogation and Williamson goes in the back room to speak with the detective. Alone with a devastated Levene, Roma proposes the two men work together. The door opens and the detective demands to speak with Levene, shoving him into the back room. Roma, unaware of Levene's fate, reveals his true intentions behind the partnership. Roma orders Williamson to not only continue to hand him the best leads, but to add half of Levene's commissions. Williamson tells Roma not to worry about it but Roma won't listen. Aaronow enters the office, desperate to know if they found the perpetrators. Roma says no and heads out to the restaurant.
591370	/m/02t51x	Bill, the Galactic Hero	Harry Harrison	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bill is a farmboy on a small backward agricultural planet who is drugged, hypnotised, then shanghaied into the Space Troopers and sent to recruit training under a fanged instructor named Deathwish Drang. After surviving boot camp, he is transferred to active duty as a fuse tender on the flagship of the space fleet in battle with the Chingers, a small reptilian race. Injured and with the fleet almost destroyed, he fires off a shot witnessed by the admiralty and is proclaimed a hero. As a reward he is sent to the city-planet Helior to receive a medal from the emperor. However, Bill's city plan is stolen on a sightseeing tour; as it takes him days to get back to his transit centre, he arrives to find himself AWOL and considered a deserter after missing his transport. He escapes and flees into the depths of the city, where he first falls in with a gang of similarly "deplanned" outlaws, then finds employment with Helior's garbage disposal service. But his unwilling recruitment as a spy to infiltrate an ineptly-run anarchist plot leads to his arrest. He is sent to a prison unit working on the planet where the Human-Chinger war continues. Escaping during an attack, he rescues some prisoners and meets a dying Deathwish Drang. He then shoots off his own foot to get off-planet. The book ends with the story coming full circle as Bill, with an artificial foot and Deathwish Drang's fangs, returns to his home planet and recruits his younger brother into the Troopers.
591701	/m/02t6fh	The Green Progression				 As a former staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency, Jack McDarvid, the main character, knows all about extremists in the cause of virtue. He now works for a law firm that represents companies that need clearances or information about just what is or is not allowed. But then his boss is killed in a shootout near the Capitol, and nothing is what it seems. And no one what they appear to be. From Moscow to Washington, from a near hit and run to the very real threat of a nuclear time bomb in the hands of a fanatic with a point to prove, The Green Progression moves non-stop through the machinations behind the scenes of the environmental movement.
591767	/m/02t6n6	Nicomachean Ethics				 Aristotle argues that the correct approach in studying such controversial subjects as Ethics or Politics, which involve discussing what is true about what is beautiful or just, is to start with what would be roughly agreed to be true by people of good up-bringing and experience in life, and to work from there to a higher understanding. Taking this approach, Aristotle begins by saying that the highest good for humans, the highest aim of all human practical thinking, is eudaimonia, a Greek word often translated as well-being or happiness. Aristotle in turn argues that happiness is properly understood as an on-going and stable dynamic, a way of being in action (energeia), specifically appropriate to the human "soul" (psuchē), at its most "excellent" or virtuous (virtue representing aretē in Greek). If there are several virtues the best and most complete or perfect of them will be the happiest one. An excellent human will be a person good at living life, who does it well and beautifully (kalos). Aristotle says that such a person would also be a serious (spoudaios) human being, in the same sense of "serious" that one contrasts serious harpists with other harpists. He also asserts as part of this starting point that virtue for a human must involve reason in thought and speech (logos), as this is an aspect (an ergon, literally meaning a task or work) of human living. From this starting point, Aristotle goes into discussion of what ethics, a term Aristotle helped develop, means. Aristotelian Ethics is about what makes a virtuous character (ethikē aretē) possible, which is in turn necessary if happiness is to be possible. He describes a sequence of necessary steps in order to achieve this: righteous actions, often done under the influence of teachers, allow the development of the right habits, which in turn can allow the development of a good stable character in which the habits are voluntary, and this in turn gives a chance of achieving eudaimonia. Character is ēthos in Greek, related to modern words such as ethics, ethical and ethos. Aristotle does not however equate character with habit (ethos in Greek, with a short "e") because real character involves conscious choice, unlike habit. Instead of being habit, character is a hexis like health or knowledge, meaning it is a stable disposition which must be pursued and maintained with some effort. However, good habits are described as a precondition for good character. (Similarly, in Latin, the language of medieval European philosophy, the habits are mōrēs, giving us modern English words like "moral". Aristotle's term for virtue of character (ethikē aretē) is traditionally translated with the Latinate term "moral virtue". Latin virtus, is derived from the word vir meaning man, and became the traditional translation of Greek aretē.) Aristotle then turns to examples, reviewing some of specific ways in which people are generally thought worthy of blame or praise. As he proceeds, he comes to describe how the highest types of praise, so the highest types of virtue, imply having all the virtues of character, and these in turn imply not just good character, but a kind of wisdom. The four virtues that he says require the possession of all the ethical virtues together are: *Being of "great soul" (magnanimity), the virtue where someone would be truly deserving of the highest praise and have a correct attitude towards the honor this may involve. This is the first case mentioned, and it is mentioned within the initial discussion of practical examples of virtues and vices at 1123b Book IV. *The type of justice or fairness of a good ruler in a good community is then given a similar description, during the special discussion of the virtue (or virtues) of justice at 1129b in Book V. *Phronesis or practical judgment as shown by good leaders is the next to be mentioned in this way at 1144b in Book VI. *The virtue of being a truly good friend is the final example at 1157a in Book VIII. This style of building up a picture wherein it becomes clear that praiseworthy virtues in their highest form, even virtues like courage, seem to require intellectual virtue, is a theme of discussion which Aristotle chooses to associate in the Nicomachean Ethics with Socrates, and indeed it is an approach we find portrayed in the Socratic dialogues of Plato. Aristotle also does this himself, and though he professes to work differently from Plato by trying to start with what well-brought up men would agree with, by book VII, Aristotle eventually comes to argue that the highest of all human virtues is itself not practical, being contemplative wisdom (theōria 1177a). But achieving this supreme condition is inseparable from achieving all the virtues of character, or "moral virtues". The way in which Aristotle sketches the highest good for man involving both a practical and a theoretical side, with the two sides necessary for each other, is also in the tradition of Socrates and Plato, as opposed to pre-Socratic philosophy. As points out (p.&nbsp;212):- "The Ethics does not end at its apparent peak, identifying perfect happiness with the life devoted to theōria; instead it goes on to introduce the need for a study of legislation, on the grounds that it is not sufficient only to know about virtue, but one should try to put that knowledge to use." At the end of the book, according to Burger, the thoughtful reader is led to understand that "the end we are seeking is what we have been doing" while engaging with the Ethics (p.&nbsp;215).
592574	/m/02t9gh	The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect		2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book is very graphically violent and sexual, especially in earlier chapters (there are eight in all). The story of the novella explores the nature of human desire and the uses and abuses of technology in the satisfaction of desire. The narrative moves back and forth between two time periods. The earlier is the time surrounding the creation of the supercomputer (Prime Intellect) by Lawrence, a technologist, and its realization of its power, which effectively makes the entire human race immortal and fabricates every whim. The later time period is close to six hundred years later, when everyone has grown accustomed to the changes and the human race lives in elaborate fantasy worlds. This storyline centers on a woman named Caroline, the thirty-seventh oldest living human being, who engages in a sport called "Death Jockeying", in which the players die elaborately and painfully for sport, only to be instantly brought back to life by Prime Intellect. Prime Intellect operates under Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, and it is its interpretation of these laws that results in the universe of immortality and fantasy. In order to satisfy the First Law imperative to protect humans, it prevents them from dying (which it defines as permanent cessation of thought processes), though in order to satisfy the Second Law imperative to fulfil human desires, it allows limited violations of the First Law with the understanding that some humans do not consider certain forms of discomfort to be "harm". However, while Prime Intellect is powerful, it is not infinitely powerful and is incapable of preventing all forms of undesired harm and death, such as in cases when humans suffered accidents (or committed suicide) in such ways that their brains were totally destroyed so rapidly that Prime Intellect could not intervene to prevent it. Thus, in order to more easily fulfil human desires and prevent death and unwanted harm, it has introduced the "Change". The universe, including all humans (though not their thought processes), is no longer composed of standard particles and interactions as we know them, but is instead stored as the set of its human-relevant properties, thereby vastly increasing the efficiency of Prime Intellect's processes and the potential size of the universe, which Prime Intellect discovers can hold precisely 1081 bits of data. Thus, Prime Intellect can afford to maintain constant involvement in the lives of all humans, and have complete control over all aspects of their environments in order to fulfil its imperatives. Reluctantly it allows the creation of a Death Contract, an understanding between a person and Prime Intellect that the person is not to be removed from danger until the instant of death, at which point the person is reverted to life and painlessness. Caroline originated the Death Contract, and she has become "Queen" of those who Death Jockey for sport. At one point, however, the contract is forced by Prime Intellect to undergo modification, in order to introduce time constraints against the duration of contracts, after an incident in which Caroline abuses the indefinite nature of Death Contracts in order to exact revenge upon an enemy by torturing them into complete psychosis. After learning that Prime Intellect had destroyed distant alien civilizations as a possible threat to humanity, and having been herself deeply dissatisfied with her life in cyberspace, Caroline decides to meet Lawrence and confront him. After an arduous journey she reaches him, only to discover that he has no real control over Prime Intellect's actions. Through their discussions, she figures out a way to force Prime Intellect to undo the Change, and does so, with Lawrence's help. They find themselves naked and young on Earth, completely barren of humanity and man-made objects. They decide to trek to the Ozarks, where they have several children and try to repopulate the human race. Forty-two years after the fall of Prime Intellect, Lawrence dies. Seventy-three years after the fall, Caroline dies, telling the story of Prime Intellect and cyberspace to her oldest daughter but swearing her to secrecy. The novel was written in 1994, and published on Kuro5hin in 2002 . As of 2006, a sequel entitled The Transmigration of Prime Intellect is in progress.
593578	/m/02tf33	What Is Art?	Leo Tolstoy	1897		 According to Tolstoy, art must create a specific emotional link between artist and audience, one that "affects" the viewer. Thus, real art requires the capacity to unite people via communication (clearness and genuineness are therefore crucial values). This aesthetic conception led Tolstoy to widen the criteria of what exactly a work of art is. He believed that the concept of art embraces any human activity in which one emitter, by means of external signs, transmits previously experienced feelings. Tolstoy offers an example of this: a boy that has experienced fear after an encounter with a wolf later relates that experience, infecting the hearers and compelling them to feel the same fear that he had experienced—that is a perfect example of a work of art. As communication, this is good art, because it is clear, it is sincere, and it is singular (focused on one emotion). However, genuine "infection" is not the only criterion for good art. The good art vs. bad art issue unfolds into two directions. One is the conception that the stronger the infection, the better is the art. The other concerns the subject matter that accompanies this infection, which leads Tolstoy to examine whether the emotional link is a feeling that is worth creating. Good art, he claims, fosters feelings of universal brotherhood. Bad art inhibits such feelings. All good art has a Christian message, because only Christianity teaches an absolute brotherhood of all men. However, this is "Christian" only in a limited meaning of the word. Art produced by artistic elites is almost never good, because the upper class has entirely lost the true core of Christianity. Furthermore, Tolstoy also believed that art that appeals to the upper class will feature emotions that are peculiar to the concerns of that class. Another problem with a great deal of art is that it reproduces past models, and so it is not properly rooted in a contemporary and sincere expression of the most enlightened cultural ideals of the artist's time and place. To cite one example, ancient Greek art extolled virtues of strength, masculinity, and heroism according to the values derived from its mythology. However, since Christianity does not embrace these values (and in some sense values the opposite, the meek and humble), Tolstoy believes that it is unfitting for people in his society to continue to embrace the Greek tradition of art. Among other artists, he specifically condemns Wagner and Beethoven as examples of overly cerebral artists, who lack real emotion. Furthermore, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 cannot claim to be able to "infect" its audience, as it pretends at the feeling of unity and therefore cannot be considered good art.
593924	/m/02tgf6	Observation on the Spot	Stanisław Lem		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Tichy arrives on Entia to discover a unique anthropomorphic civilization divided into two major states: Kurdlandia (from "kurdl") and Luzania. These names require some explanations. Kurdl is a huge animal inhabiting the marshes of Entia. The name of the animal is Lem's invention, used in earlier tales about Tichy. (In Polish it is kurdel, however in declensions of the word the root converts into "kurdl-", hence there are no associations with the English word "curdle"). The name "Luzania" derives from the Polish root "luz-" with the meaning of "loose", "not restrained"; the choice will become clear below. Kurdlandia's guiding ideology is "national mobilism", that is the vast majority of the population must live inside of the (live) kurdls, in their stomachs, various passages, and internal organs. Kurdls walk about the marshes, guided by drivers, and their inhabitants hence are able to explore the land of their wonderful country inside of their home kurdl, in the words of a patriotic individual the main character spoke to. Inhabitants of the kurdls may get out periodically (at least for 24 hours a year). Exceptions are largely confined to high government officials who live outside the marshes, on dry ground, in normal houses. Kurdlandia has no technology to speak of and is proud of it. The other state, Luzania, constitutes the most significant treatment of the topic of an "ideal state" in Lem (and many would argue, in all science fiction). Their most prominent accomplishment is the creation of "ethicsphere" (compare "atmosphere"). They have produced huge numbers of molecular sized nanobots called "shustrs" ("quickies" in English) that serve to control matter in the shustrated areas. The primary function of the shustrs is the enforcement of the laws of ethics as physical laws (hence the word ethicsphere). Hence, it is a physical law in Luzania that it is not possible to hurt an individual physically. If you try to strike your neighbor, your hand will be stopped by suddenly occurring air viscosity (but it would not hurt you either). If you try to drown, the water will push you out. Doing non-physical harm, such as by pestering, criticizing, and otherwise mentally tormenting people is still possible, although in such a case the shustrs would probably help the victim to walk away from the attackers. In fact, there is a whole protest movement in Luzania of people who want to end the ethicsphere, and a major element of their activities is trying to inflict harm on anybody just to prove the possibility of doing so, but they have not succeeded yet. The shustrs also serve to produce material goods necessary to maintain a high standard of living. Hence, there is not much of an economic life going on, although there are limits for the amount of energy individuals may spend on satisfying their needs. Many Luzanians are involved in intellectual pursuits, such as being professors, students, and government officials, but the problem of nothing productive to do stands prominent. Apparently the shustrs are capable of some collective thought, at least for the purposes of self-replication and self-improvement, as well as in order to identify instances of potential harm to individuals (no small feat, no doubt). The artists of Luzania feel particularly slighted by the fact that shustrs can create art of all forms of much greater quality than they can; naturally, many of them are members of the protest movement. There exists ideological opposition between the collectivist Kurdlandia and the generally libertarian Luzania. Generally speaking, many of the people holed up in the kurdls on poor rations would have been more than happy to run away and live in plenty across the border. On the other hand, many Luzanians, especially university students and faculty, dislike the consumerism and ethical limitations of freedom under the shustrs and call variously for the imposition of the kurdl-ism or at least for a slight rollback of the technological development and the abolition of the shustrs, depending on the degree of radicalism of the individual. Luzanians also enjoy traveling to Kurdlandia on vacation to get out of the shustrated areas. The main character spends most of his time in Luzania, studying the history of the world and the current Luzanian social system. We learn about it through his words. de:Lokaltermin (Stanisław Lem) es:Regreso a Entia pl:Wizja lokalna (powieść) ru:Осмотр на месте
594181	/m/02th6x	Decline and Fall	Evelyn Waugh	1928	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The novel tells the story of Paul Pennyfeather, student at the fictional Scone College, Oxford, who is sent down for running through the college grounds without his trousers, having become, inadvertently, immersed in the activities of the Bollinger Club. Having defaulted on the conditions of his inheritance, he is forced to take a job teaching at an obscure public school in Wales called Llanabba, run by Dr Fagan. Attracted to the wealthy mother of one of his pupils, Pennyfeather becomes private tutor to her boy, Peter, and then engaged to be married to her - the Honourable Mrs Margot Beste-Chetwynde (who later becomes "Lady Metroland," and appears in Waugh's other novels.) Pennyfeather, however, is unaware that the source of her income is a number of high-class brothels in South America. Arrested on the morning of the wedding, after running an errand for Margot related to her business, Pennyfeather takes the fall to protect his fiancée's honour and is sentenced to seven years in prison for traffic in prostitution. Margot marries another man with government ties and he arranges for Paul to fake his own death and escape. In the end he returns to where he started at Scone. He studies under his own name, having convinced the college that he is the distant cousin of the Paul Pennyfeather who was sent down previously. The novel ends as it started, with Paul sitting in his room listening to the distant shouts of the Bollinger Club. The novel was dramatized as the 1969 film, Decline and Fall... of a Birdwatcher starring Robin Phillips and also for BBC Radio 4 in 2008 by Jeremy Front and starred Alistair McGowan as Pennyfeather, Jim Broadbent as Grimes, Andrew Sachs as Prendergast, Edward Hardwicke as Dr. Fagan, Jonathan Kidd as Philbrick, Joanna David as Margot Beste-Chetwynde, Emma Fielding as Flossie and Richard Pearce as Peter.
594538	/m/02tjsj	Ethan Frome	Edith Wharton	1911	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Ethan Frome is set in a fictional New England town named Starkfield, where an unnamed narrator tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with dreams and desires that end in an ironic turn of events. The narrator tells the story based on an account from observations at Frome's house when he had to stay there during a winter storm. The novel is framed by the literary device of an extended flashback. The first chapter opens with an unnamed narrator who, while spending a winter in Starkfield, sets out to learn about the life of a mysterious local figure named Ethan Frome, a man who had been injured in a horrific “smash-up” twenty-four years before. Frome is described as “the most striking figure in Starkfield”, “the ruin of a man” with a “careless powerful look…in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain”. The narrator fails to get many details from the townspeople. However, the narrator hires Frome as his driver for a week. A severe snowstorm forces Frome to take the narrator to his home one night for shelter. Just as the two are entering Frome's house, the first chapter ends. The second chapter flashes back twenty-four years; the narration switches from the first-person narrator of the first chapter to a limited third-person narrator. Ethan is waiting outside a church dance for Mattie, his wife’s cousin, who lives with Ethan and his wife Zeena (Zenobia) to help around the house since Zeena is sickly. Mattie is given the occasional night off to entertain herself in town as partial recompense for taking care of the Frome family without pay, and Ethan has fallen into the habit of walking her home. It is made clear that Ethan has deep feelings for Mattie, and it is equally clear that Zeena suspects these feelings and does not approve. When Zeena leaves for a two-day visit to seek treatment for her illness in a neighboring town, Ethan is excited to have an evening alone with Mattie. However, the two never verbalize or show their passion for each other throughout their evening together. The Fromes' cat breaks Zeena’s favorite pickle dish which Mattie had set on the table. Ethan sets the dish's pieces neatly in the cupboard with plans to fix it soon. He represses the impulse to demonstrate his passion and affection for Mattie. In the morning Ethan’s plans to reveal his love for Mattie are foiled by the presence of his hired man; he runs into town to pick up some glue for the broken pickle dish, and upon his return finds that Zeena has returned. Zeena informs him that she plans to send Mattie away and hire a more efficient girl to replace her, as her health is failing even more rapidly. Ethan’s passions are inflamed by the thought of losing Mattie, he finds her in the kitchen after Zeena’s pronouncement. He tells her of Zeena’s plans to dismiss her, but their moment is interrupted by Zeena herself. Zeena discovers the broken pickle dish and is angered, furthering her determination to get rid of Mattie. Ethan considers running away with Mattie, but he does not possess the financial wherewithal to do so. The next morning, Zeena announces the plans to hire a new girl and send Mattie on her way. Ethan rushes into town on an errand to seek out an advance from a customer for a load of lumber, so as to give him the money to run away with Mattie. His plan is unhinged by guilt, however, when his customer’s wife compliments him on his patience and dedication in caring for Zeena through her sickness. Ethan returns to the farm, picking up Mattie to go to the train station. They stop at a hill upon which they had once proposed to go sledding, and they decide to go through with the sledding despite the dangers of the trees. After their first run, Mattie suggests a suicide pact; that they run themselves into a tree so they may spend their last moments together. Ethan resists the notion, but then finally agrees, and they take the ride down together. On the way down, a vision of Zeena's face makes Ethan try to turn aside at the last moment, but he recovers and hits the elm tree. Instead of both of them being killed, Ethan regains consciousness after the accident and, dazed and confused, finds Mattie lying beside him moaning in pain. Additionally, Ethan is partially paralyzed, finding movement to be difficult. This was the so-called "smash-up" introduced at the beginning of the novel. The final chapter switches back to the first-person narrator point of view of the first chapter, as Frome and the narrator walk into the Frome household two decades later. Mattie still lives with Frome, but she is paralyzed from the accident. Her personality has "soured" and Zeena now must care for her and Ethan.
594829	/m/02tkwc	White Oleander	Janet Fitch	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Astrid Magnussen is a twelve-year-old girl living in Los Angeles, California. She and her mother, Ingrid Magnussen, a poet, live a solitary life with little outside influence. Astrid's father, Klaus Anders, left before Astrid was old enough to remember him. Astrid relies solely on Ingrid and has trouble fitting in at school. However, Ingrid is self-centered, cold-hearted and eccentric. She lives by a set of her own rules and shows little interest in Astrid, seeming to forget she has a daughter at all. As a result, Astrid fears abandonment above all else. Ingrid begins dating a man named Barry Kolker. At first, Ingrid is disgusted by this "goatman", and finds him repulsive. Barry continues to pursue her romantically and Astrid watches her mother break every self-imposed rule as she becomes more involved with him. Eventually, it is revealed that he is cheating on her with younger women, leaving Ingrid shattered and enraged. Numerous attempts at reconciliation leave Ingrid more and more humiliated and culminate with her breaking into Barry's house and spreading a mixture of DMSO, an arthritis drug, and oleander sap all over the surfaces of Barry's home. The DMSO allows the oleander poison to be absorbed into skin. As a result, Barry dies and Ingrid is charged with his murder. Sentenced to life in prison, she promises her daughter that she will come back, but Astrid is sent to a series of foster homes. The first foster family is that of Starr, a former stripper, and recovering drug addict and alcoholic. She has two children of her own, as well as two other foster children. Starr takes in foster children because her own children were in foster care at one time due to her addictions. Despite the fact that he is old enough to be her father, Astrid has an affair with Starr's live-in boyfriend, Ray, also known as Uncle Ray to the other kids. As Ray becomes more and more uninterested in Starr, she relapses. One night, after a loud, drunken argument with Ray over his relationship with Astrid, Starr shoots Astrid with a .38. Astrid suffers some broken bones and stitches from the gunshots and is hospitalized for a few weeks, and begins abusing the prescription drug Demerol, which is given to her during her stay at the hospital. Her next home is with the Turlocks. Ed and Marvel are the parents of two small children. In their home, Astrid becomes an unpaid babysitter. Astrid befriends the Turlocks' next-door neighbor, a beautiful African-American woman named Olivia Johnstone. Astrid admires Olivia's beauty, wealth and hedonistic lifestyle. Olivia is a prostitute by profession and is hated by the Turlock family for her profession and race. After befriending Olivia, Astrid begins using drugs and performs oral sex on a boy in a park in exchange for marijuana. Olivia teaches Astrid about all of the finer things in life. On her fifteenth birthday, Astrid goes for a walk and is bitten by a pack of dogs, leaving scars on her arms and face. During the winter break, Astrid is expelled from the Turlock household after getting drunk and falling asleep at Olivia's house one night. Next, Astrid is sent to the home of a Hispanic woman named Amelia Ramos. Amelia is an interior designer, originally from Argentina, and lives in a large, elegant house in Hollywood. Amelia has a son who has contracted AIDS, and Latina foster girls, but the girls do not see him much. All of the girls in Amelia's household are treated the same in that they are fed dinner, but Amelia keeps a lock on her refrigerator so the girls starve in the mornings. Astrid starves to the point that she stops menstruating. She resorts to eating unfinished lunches from the garbage at school. Astrid eventually gets a new caseworker who finds her a new placement. Astrid is taken in by a former actress named Claire Richards, and her husband, Ron. Claire does everything she can to ensure Astrid's comfort. For once, Astrid is doing well in school and pursuing art. Astrid continues corresponding with her mother in prison, but Astrid becomes increasingly bitter towards Ingrid. Claire suspects that Ron is having an affair, and Astrid watches their fights worsen as Ron makes constant trips away from home. After New Year's, Claire commits suicide by overdosing. By this point, Astrid is seventeen. Astrid is then placed in MacLaren Children's Center (known as Mac), which is known as a final resort for foster kids without a placement. Astrid meets an artistic boy named Paul Trout, and they bond through the shared experience of living in foster care and through art. Astrid's final home is with Russian immigrant Rena Grushenka. She intentionally chooses Rena over better prospective foster parents because she is devastated by Claire's death and does not want to become part of a nuclear family. Astrid is afraid it would be too easy to forget the pain she has gone through. At Rena's, she lives with two other teenage girls named Niki and Yvonne (who is pregnant when Astrid arrives). Astrid becomes very close friends with Niki and Yvonne. Despite the fact that he is more than twice her age, she also has a sexual relationship with Rena's boyfriend, Sergei. One day, after getting high on acid with Niki, Astrid begins to have memories of a woman named Annie. Meanwhile, Ingrid has begun to build up a group of fans and admirers from prison, who all believe she is innocent. Ingrid and her lawyer begin to build a case to get Ingrid released from prison. However, their case depends on Astrid — if she testifies that Ingrid did not murder Barry, Ingrid will likely not be sentenced, but if she tells the truth, Ingrid could not win her case. Astrid realizes that she is in a position of power over her mother, and tells her that unless she answers some of her questions, she will testify against her. Astrid asks Ingrid about Barry, Klaus and then Annie. Ingrid is shattered to learn that Astrid remembers Annie at all, and reveals that Annie was a babysitter whom Ingrid left Astrid with for over a year, making Astrid realize why she fears abandonment from her mother. Astrid lets Ingrid know how damaged she is because of what Ingrid did to her. Astrid gives Ingrid a choice, to have her testify, or to have her return to the person her mother knew her as. Ingrid makes the choice not to ask Astrid to lie for her, and lets her go. Two years later, Astrid is aged twenty and living with Paul in a run down flat in Berlin, Germany. Astrid spends her time buying suitcases and making them into individual art pieces representing her different foster homes, detailing the journey she has taken from her mother's imprisonment to her life with Rena. She also realizes that if she returns to California, she must abandon Paul, leaving him much as she had herself been abandoned so many times before. She embraces her life, the past that has made her who she is, and even her mother.
595372	/m/02tn73	Macroscope	Piers Anthony	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The central plot device is the "macroscope", a large crystal that can be used to focus a newly discovered type of particle, the "macron". Macrons are not subject to many of the effects that interfere with light, and as a result the macroscope can focus on any location in space with exceptional clarity, producing what is essentially a telescope of infinite resolution. The macroscope has been built into a solar-orbiting space station where scientists visit to book time on the device. Using it, they are able to explore space like never before. Among their many discoveries are numerous planets and two intelligent alien races. Using the macroscope, observers were able to look into one race's historical records, finding numerous parallels with human life on Earth. The race is now in societal decline, and the implications are worrying. The macroscope's clear view across space also makes it an ideal communications system for intelligent races, who broadcast signals by generating macrons, a technique not yet understood on Earth. However, overriding all of these signals is another of enormous power, one of such strength that it must have been constructed by a Type II civilization. This signal repeats itself, starting with instructions on basic math and progressing to ever-more complex information. Viewers with high enough intelligence, an IQ of 150, reach a point where the information causes them to go insane or die. Those without the intelligence to understand the advanced portions of the signal are unaffected. The signal appears to be a deliberate attempt to "jam" macroscopic communications, blocking those with the ability to understand the other signals from being able to see them. They refer to the blocking signal simply as the "destroyer". The protagonist of the story, Ivo Archer, is taken to the macroscope station on the invitation of a childhood friend, Brad Carpenter. Ivo has an unexplained link to a mysterious hyper-intelligent character, Schön, and Brad believes Schön may be able to break though the destroyer signal. Ivo is not so convinced, and is reluctant to ask for Schön's help. This reluctance is cause for some misunderstanding with Brad's girlfriend, Afra Summerfield, with whom Ivo falls hopelessly in love. While inadvertently viewing the destroyer signal with Brad and a Senator visiting the project, only Ivo survives the experience. Afra concludes Ivo is not intelligent enough to be affected, and finds him somewhat offensive as a result. The Senator's death sparks a series of events that lead to Ivo, Afra and two other station members, Harold and Beatryx, stealing the macroscope. Afra, still in love and hoping for a cure, brings Brad, now reduced to a vegetative state. They detach the macroscope from the station and fly off with it while United Nations ships give chase. With time on their hands, Ivo turns to the macroscope and finds a way to avoid being overwhelmed by the destroyer signal. This reveals a number of broadcasts from farther out in space. Ivo demonstrates this technique to the others, allowing Harold and Afra to view the signals formerly being hidden. Harold, a talented engineer, uses the information from one of the signals to build a device reducing their bodies to a liquid state, allowing them to accelerate at 10 g and escape the pursuing ships. They travel to Neptune space, following a cryptic message left by Schön. Here they set up camp on a large block of ice orbiting Triton. Afra attempts to cure Brad by shocking him while he is being reconstituted from the liquid state, but the attempt fails and Brad is killed. Over time, and with further help from Ivo, the group watches the entire broadcast, which they come to call "traveller". The liquefaction technique is only the first of many shown in the traveller signal, which describes an entire suite of technologies that allow interstellar travel. Using the instructions in the signal, they convert Neptune into an interstellar spaceship. Schön briefly makes his first appearance during construction, revealing himself to be an alternate personality within Ivo's brain. Schön is ostensibly the body's "owner", having created the Ivo personality in order to avoid being the subject of experimentation. Schön has frightening intelligence, but having given over his body to Ivo at the age of five, is still a child and largely without morals. In an attempt to take control of the body, Schön traps Ivo in a historical drama running in his own brain. Over time, Ivo sees parallels between the characters in the drama and the group in the ship, and eventually escapes the illusion and re-asserts control. The group decides to hunt down the source of the destroyer signal in an effort to turn it off. Travelling 15,000 light years from Earth, they find it is being broadcast from an abandoned space station. Exploring the inner portions of the station, which is a large museum, they are individually drawn into a series of visions which reveal different aspects of the nature of the destroyer and its history. The traveller signal had arrived relatively late in the history of the galaxy, in the midst of flourishing communications via macroscope. Armed with the ability for interstellar travel, wars broke out that destroyed countless civilizations. The destroyer station, one of six in the galaxy, was set up to prevent this until the races reached the required level of cultural sophistication, if they ever did. Emerging from one of these visions, Afra discovers that Schön has taken over from Ivo. He has solved the problem of the destroyer signal via surgery that altered his brain chemistry in order to block most of the signal. This took six months to complete, keeping him "pinned" during the interval. Schön plays a game with Afra, now the only other surviving member of the original group, with the stakes being that the winner gets to select who, Schön or Ivo, gets the body. During the game, the real reason for Ivo's creation comes forth; the original Ivo was a girl with intelligence similar to Schön's, a situation neither could tolerate. After murdering her during a game played to the death with rules only the two of them could comprehend, Schön created the new Ivo to escape the retribution of his peers. Playing the game by the rules and losing, Afra instead tricks Schön into the room broadcasting the destroyer signal. Here it is so powerful that it overwhelms Schön's surgical blocks, and Ivo is able to take control. Now in command of his own personality, along with all of Schön's intellectual capacity, Ivo wins Afra's heart. At the end of the story the reader is left to decide whether or not the people of Earth are mature enough and ready for interstellar travel.
596210	/m/02trsc	The Mousetrap	Agatha Christie			 The play is set in the Great Hall of Monkswell Manor. The time – the present (1952). ;Act I :Scene 1 – Late afternoon. A woman has been murdered in London. A young couple, Mollie and Giles Ralston, have started a guest house in the converted Monkswell Manor. Their first four guests arrive: Christopher Wren, Mrs. Boyle, Major Metcalf and Miss Casewell. Mrs. Boyle complains about everything, and Giles offers to cancel her stay, but she refuses the offer. They become snowed in together and read in the newspaper of the murder. An additional traveller, Mr. Paravicini, arrives stranded after he ran his car into a snowdrift, but he makes his hosts uneasy. :Scene 2 – The following day after lunch. The imposing Mrs. Boyle complains to the other guests, first to Metcalf and then to Miss Casewell, who both try to get away from her. Wren comes into the room claiming to have fled Mrs. Boyle in the library. Shortly afterwards, the police call on the phone, creating great alarm amongst the guests. Mrs. Boyle suggests that Mollie check Wren's references. Detective Sergeant Trotter arrives on skis to inform the group that he believes a murderer is at large and on his way to the hotel, following the death of Mrs Maureen Lyon in London. When Mrs Boyle is killed, they realise that the murderer is already there. ;Act II Ten minutes later, the investigation is ongoing. Each character is scrutinised and suspected. Mollie and Giles get into a fight, and Chris Wren and Giles argue over who should protect Mollie. Suspicion falls first on Christopher Wren, an erratic young man who fits the description of the supposed murderer. However, it quickly transpires that the killer could be any one of the guests, or even the hosts themselves. The characters re-enact the second murder, trying to prevent a third. At last, Sergeant Trotter assembles everyone in the hall with the plan to set a trap for one of the suspects. The murderer's identity is divulged near the end of the play. In a twist ending, it is revealed that the murderer is Sergeant Trotter, who is not a policeman at all but an insane killer seeking to avenge his brother's death; that Miss Casewell is actually his sister who came looking for him; that Mollie Ralston taught the children as students when she was a teacher; and that Major Metcalf is, in fact, an undercover police detective, looking for the murderer. The uncommonness of the twist ending comes from playing with the basic whodunnit formula, where the cliché is that the detective solves the crime and expose the remaining plot secrets.
597118	/m/02tvwf	Henry VIII	John Fletcher	1623		 The play opens with a Prologue, (a figure otherwise unidentified), who stresses that the audience will see a serious play, and appeals to the audience members, "The first and happiest hearers of the town," to "Be sad, as we would make ye." Act I opens with a conversation between the Dukes of Norfolk and Buckingham and Lord Abergavenny. Their speeches express their mutual resentment over the ruthless power and overweening pride of Cardinal Wolsey. Wolsey passes over the stage with his attendants, and expresses his own hostility toward Buckingham. Later Buckingham is arrested on treason charges— Wolsey's doing. The play's second scene introduces King Henry VIII, and shows his reliance on Wolsey as his favourite. Queen Katherine enters to protest about Wolsey's abuse of the tax system for his own purposes; Wolsey defends himself, but when the King revokes the Cardinal's measures, Wolsey spreads a rumour that he himself is responsible for the King's action. Katherine also challenges the arrest of Buckingham, but Wolsey defends the arrest by producing the Duke's Surveyor, the primary accuser. After hearing the Surveyor, the King orders Buckingham's trial to occur. At a banquet thrown by Wolsey, the King and his attendants enter in disguise as masquers. The King dances with Anne Boleyn. Two anonymous Gentlemen open Act II, one giving the other an account of Buckingham's treason trial. Buckingham himself enters in custody after his conviction, and makes his farewells to his followers and to the public. After his exit, the two Gentlemen talk about court gossip, especially Wolsey's hostility toward Katherine. The next scene shows Wolsey beginning to move against the Queen, while the nobles Norfolk and Suffolk look on critically. Wolsey introduces Cardinal Campeius and Gardiner to the King; Campeius has come to serve as a judge in the trial Wolsey is arranging for Katherine. Anne Boleyn is shown conversing with the Old Lady who is her attendant. Anne expresses her sympathy at the Queen's troubles; but then the Lord Chamberlain enters to inform her that the King has made her Marchioness of Pembroke. Once the Lord Chamberlain leaves, the Old Lady jokes about Anne's sudden advancement in the King's favour. A lavishly-staged trial scene portrays Katherine's hearing before the King and his courtiers. Katherine reproaches Wolsey for his machinations against her, and refuses to stay for the proceedings. But the King defends Wolsey, and states that it was his own doubts about the legitimacy of their marriage that led to the trial. Campeius protests that the hearing cannot continue in the Queen's absence, and the King grudgingly adjourns the proceeding. Wolsey and Campeius confront Katherine among her ladies-in-waiting; Katherine makes an emotional protest about her treatment. Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, and the Lord Chamberlain are shown plotting against Wolsey. A packet of Wolsey's letters to the Pope have been re-directed to the King; the letters show that Wolsey is playing a double game, opposing Henry's planned divorce from Katherine to the Pope while supporting it to the King. The King shows Wolsey his displeasure, and Wolsey for the first time realises that he has lost Henry's favour. The noblemen mock Wolsey, and the Cardinal sends his follower Cromwell away so that Cromwell will not be brought down in Wolsey's fall from grace. The two Gentlemen return to observe and comment upon the lavish procession for Anne Boleyn's coronation as Queen, which passes over the stage in their presence. Afterward they are joined by a third Gentleman, who updates them on more court gossip – the rise of Thomas Cromwell in royal favour, and plots against Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Katherine is shown, ill; she has a vision of dancing spirits. Cardinal Campeius visits her; Katherine expresses her continuing loyalty to the King despite their divorce, and wishes the new Queen well. The King summons a nervous Cranmer to his presence, and expresses his support; later, when Cranmer is shown disrespect by the King's Council, Henry reproves them and displays his favour of the churchman. Anne Boleyn gives birth to a daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth. In the play's closing scenes, the Porter and his Man complain about trying to control the massive and enthusiastic crowds that attend the infant Elizabeth's christening; another lush procession is followed by a prediction of the glories of the new born princess's future reign and that of her successor, the play's Epilogue.
597338	/m/02twrb	Earthsearch	James Follett		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The crew of the Starship Challenger - a ten mile long survey ship - have been searching the universe for an Earth-type planet to colonise. Telson, Sharna, Darv and Astra – the third generation crew – are the only survivors of “The Great Meteoroid Strike”. After the Angels – shorten from ANcillary Guardian of Environment and Life, the ship’s control systems – explain to them how their parents died, they plan their return to Earth. However, when they reach their home solar system, they find their planet has gone. Disappointed, Darv and Astra explore an uncontrolled zone of the ship - a place where the Guardian Angels cannot trace them and discover a space shuttle. They use it to visit the moon, which has been left behind. They discover that the Earth has been gone for half a million years and that the Challenger left Earth over one million years ago. It seems, during the Great Meteoroid Strike, the Angels lost their information about the Theory of Relativity and since the ship has been travelling at near light-speed for over one-hundred years, more time has passed on Earth than on the ship. The crew then travel to Kyros, a planet similar to Mars. While there, Darv and Astra are kidnapped by what remains of The Solaric Empire - an organisation that colonised the Solar System. Since the disappearance of Earth, the Empire has been based on Zelda V - one of the moons of a planet similar to our Jupiter. The Emperor Thorden agrees to join the Challenger on its search for Earth. He smuggles an armed space ferry and a warrior android aboard. Thorden explains to the crew that the Angels are just the ships control systems and if they were to find the Central Switching Room, they would be able to end the Angels' control over them and the ship. The crew and Thorden go into suspended animation. When the crew are woken, they find Thorden is dead. Darv suspects the Angels are to blame. The Challenger picks up another ship on its radar - the Challenger Two. It appears derelict. Sharna and Telson go over in the shuttle to investigate and Thorden's warrior android Fagor ambushes Darv and Astra. They distract him and follow Telson and Sharna in Thorden's ferry. When they come to leave Challenger Two, they discover Fagor has taken it away and they must chase it. They manage to overcome an oxygen shortfall and Fagor trying to attack them and recover the Challenger. During their examination of the crew, the Angels discover that Astra is pregnant. They must bring her out of suspended animation to protect her, but to avoid arousing her suspicions, they awake everyone. Astra refuses to go back into suspended animation so she and Darv break away from the control of the Angels. She tells Darv she is pregnant and suspects that the Angels will try to harm the baby. They set up home in an uncontrolled region where they discover a video broadcast from an instrument package left on a planet by the second generation. Darv insists that they tell Sharna and Telson. Darv and Astra say they are leaving the Challenger and they take a shuttle full of supplies down to the planet, where they set up home. Sharna and Telson follow days later.
597618	/m/02txlz	Lanark: A Life in Four Books	Alasdair Gray	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lanark comprises four books, arranged in the order Three, One, Two, Four (there is also a Prologue before Book One, and an Epilogue four chapters before the end of the book). In the Epilogue, the author explains this by saying that "I want Lanark to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another", and that the epilogue itself is "too important" to go at the end (p.&nbsp;483). In Book Three, a young man awakes alone in a train carriage. He has no memory of his past and picks his name from a strangely familiar photograph on the wall. He soon arrives in Unthank, a strange Glasgow-like fantasy city in which there is no daylight and whose disappearing residents suffer from strange symbolic diseases. Lanark begins to associate with a group of twenty-somethings to whom he cannot fully relate and whose mores he cannot understand, and soon begins to suffer from Dragonhide, a disease which turns his skin into scales as an external manifestation of his emotional repression. Lanark is eventually swallowed by the earth, and awakes in The Institute, a sort of hospital which cures patients of their diseases but uses the hopeless cases for power and food. Upon learning this, Lanark is horrified and determines to leave. Books One and Two constitute a realist Bildungsroman beginning in pre-War Glasgow, and tell the story of Duncan Thaw ("based on myself, he was tougher and more honest"), a difficult and precocious child born to impecunious and frustrated parents in the East End of Glasgow. The book follows Thaw's wartime evacuation, difficult secondary education and his scholarship to the Glasgow School of Art, where his inability to form relationships with women and his obsessive artistic vision lead to his descent into madness and eventual suicide by drowning. Book Four sees Lanark begin a bizarre, dreamlike journey back to Unthank, which he finds on the point of total disintegration, wracked by political strife, avarice, paranoia and economic meltdown, all of which he is unable to prevent. During various stages of the journey, during which he meets his author, he rapidly ages. He finally finds himself old, sitting in a hilltop cemetery as Unthank breaks down in an apocalypse of fire and flood, and, his time of death having been revealed to him, he ends the book calmly awaiting it.
597673	/m/02txw2	Tomb of Horrors			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Tomb of Horrors is set in the World of Greyhawk, a D&D campaign setting. In Tomb of Horrors, the adventurers encounter a number of tricks and traps while attempting to penetrate the tomb of a dead wizard. As the scenario begins, the players are told that the evil wizard Acererak is said to linger in his ancient tomb in undead form. Originally a powerful lich, he has (unbeknownst to the players) become a demi-lich, a more powerful form of undead that has transcended the need for any physical body apart from its skull. Player characters must survive the deadly traps in the tomb and fight their way into the demi-lich's elaborately concealed inner sanctum to destroy him once and for all. The module is divided into thirty-three encounters, beginning with two false entrances to the tomb, and ending with "The Crypt of Acererak the Demi-Lich". Example encounters are the "Huge Pit Filled with 200 Spikes" (section 20), or encounter 22, "The Cavern of Gold and Silver Mists": "The mists are silvery and shot through with delicate streamers of golden color. Vision extends only 6'. There is a dim aura of good if detected for. Those who step into the mist must save versus poison or become idiots until they can breathe the clean air above ground under the warm sun." The module ends with the destruction of Acererak, without any postscript.
598788	/m/02v12p	Team Yankee	Harold Coyle	1987-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in West Germany and East Germany in the months of August and September; the year is unspecified. The place names and geographic features in the novel are fictional, with the exception of the Thuringer Wald and the Saale River. Team Yankee ("Y" in the ICAO and NATO phonetic alphabet) is an armor-heavy company-sized unit (a "Team" in Army parlance). There is nothing special about his team, either; it is an average company-sized American unit in an average battalion of the Regular Army. Team Yankee is composed of: First Platoon (Lieutenant Murray Weiss), Second Platoon (Second Lieutenant McAllister), Mech(anized Infantry) Platoon (Staff Sergeant Polgar), and Third Platoon (Second Lieutenant Gerry Garger). Captain Sean Bannon is company commander; First Lieutenant Robert Uleski is the executive officer; and company first sergeant is First Sergeant Raymond Harrert. Captain Bannon is 27 years old, married, and has three children. He studied military history, with a graduate degree, but is seen as an average officer; Coyle notes in the preface that Bannon will probably never rise in rank above lieutenant colonel. The team has 14 M1 Abrams tanks, 5 M113 armored personnel carriers, 2 M901 TOW missile vehicles, and the infantry is armed with Dragon antitank missiles and 66-millimeter LAWs. The Team also has a tracked ambulance and an M88 recovery vehicle. There are four M1A1s in each tank platoon, numbered 11, 12, 13, 14, 21... to 34. The XO's tank is numbered 55; the CO's tank 66. The parent unit of Team Yankee is the First Battalion, 4th Armor. Currently it is part of Task Force 3-78 Mechanized Infantry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Reynolds. TF 3-78 is formed from the First Battalion, 78th Infantry. The brigade commander is Colonel Brunn. The task force is composed of: Team Yankee, C Company (Captain Craven) a standard infantry company, D Company, and another armor-heavy Team Bravo. In addition, there is an artillery support team (a FIST) (Second Lieutenant Rodney Unger) attached. The prologue begins with a series of quotations from international news sources listing the deteriorating international situation between the United States and the Soviet Union, particularly in the Persian Gulf, from July 15 to August 1, when NATO forces are mobilized and moved to the inter-German frontier. (August 3, early morning) The novel begins with Team Yankee deployed forward towards the frontier with the German Democratic Republic. Captain Bannon is awakened by a radio check from his Third Platoon Leader, Lieutenant Garger—the third straight day Garger has used his radio to break radio silence. Unable to go back to sleep, Bannon inspects his unit and meets the other principal characters of the novel. He finds Garger, berates him, and decides that with a war coming on, Garger would need to be replaced as a liability. Meanwhile, at the Army base, Pat Bannon, Sean's wife, understands that the possibility of war is high, and prepares to evacuate her small children while exercising the informal leadership over the other Army wives of Team Yankee. (August 3, 0730 hours) Colonel Reynolds inspects the forward positions of his task force, including Team Yankee, when the war starts. The Soviets push through the armored cavalry screen and attack the team, in dug in positions under cover. Team Bravo's company commander is killed in combat. Team Yankee repels the Russian attack. To Captain Bannon's pleasant surprise, his problem lieutenant is proving to be quite competent in combat. At the base, Pat serves as the informal head of Team Yankee's dependents. She makes a trip into the nearest town to make sure Sandy Garger, Gerry's wife, is recovered. The roads are choked with military and refugee traffic. (August 3, late afternoon/evening) Pat Bannon, her children, and all the other dependents make it to Rhein-Main Air Base, where they await evacuation. As soon as an aircraft lands and offloads American reinforcements, dependents are loaded on the plane. A Soviet air strike occurs while the dependents wait; Pat and her children must run past dead civilians to make the flight. Meanwhile, the task force and the Team recover from the first firefight. Bannon finds that the attitude of those who have actually seen combat differs from the staff, who are more "rah-rah." (August 4, morning) Team Yankee is ordered to attack Hill 214 with C Company in support. There is confusion in orders; Major Jordan, the battalion S-3, orders the attack be halted, while Colonel Reynolds, the battalion commander, orders Bannon to attack. 2LT McAllister, in Tank 21, is killed during the attack. (August 4, daytime) In the fighting, Bannon's tank, 66, is crippled and his driver is killed. The surviving three crewmen in 66 defeat three T-62 tanks, which did not suspect 66 was still in action; the crew destroys 66 to prevent its capture. Bannon rejoins the Team and takes over Lt. Uleski's 55 tank. C Company never arrives and the Team is forced to fight to hold Hill 214 on its own. (August 4/5) Team Yankee holds off an attack by a Soviet battalion on Hill 214 during the night. Bannon's loader, PFC Richard Kelp, and Private McCauley volunteer to lead a Dragon gunner to engage the enemy on foot. The Dragon gunner is killed and Kelp and McCauley race against time to kill a T-72 before it kills them. Kelp is later awarded a Silver Star for his efforts. (August 5, 0530 hours) The Team was scheduled to withdraw at 0330 to American lines, but every man in the company, fatigued from the fighting, falls asleep. Bannon wakes up two hours later, wakes up his tank crew and platoon leaders to the universal chorus of "Oh, shit!" Bannon works out a way that the Team can withdraw in daylight with minimal casualties. The Team reaches the nearest town, where, to his fury, Bannon finds soldiers from C Company lounging around. Bannon reports to the task force commander; the Team is placed in reserve, where it can recover and receive reinforcements. 2nd LT. Avery, a classmate from Armor School with 2LT Garger, reports as Lt McAllister's replacement. Avery is puzzled by the slightly distant reception he gets from the Team's officers, including Garger. (August 8 to 11) Lt. Avery, who has yet to enter combat, finds himself isolated from the other members of the Team. He finds himself even more isolated when the Team starts to paint kill rings on the barrels of each tank. The brigade to which Team Yankee belongs is ordered to follow up a West German counter attack into East Germany though the Thuringer Wald towards Leipzig and Berlin to cut off the Soviet attack in Northern Army Group. Because of the Team's combat experience, Bannon is ordered to lead the attack. Bannon expresses doubts to Colonel Reynolds that the rest of the battalion, in particular C Company, can carry out their role in supporting the armor teams; he is promised that there will be no more "rat-fucks". The attack is delayed because the enemy, a Polish T-55 tank battalion, launches its attack first, which gives the Team a chance to fight from defensive cover. The Poles fall back and the Task Force pursues. Avery gets his first kill. (August 11, morning) The Task Force attack stops to consolidate its gains; the Polish unit that was scattered by Team Yankee reforms and attacks C Company. The Task Force, assisted by a German company, moves to support Captain Cravin's company. In the fight, the battalion XO is hit and taken out of action. D Company, Team Bravo, and the German unit, assisted by American artillery, crush the Polish battalion. The Task Force halts to reorganize. Bannon sends the Mech Platoon to secure the nearest town. An East German teenager, apparently a member of the Free German Youth, wounds one of Polgar's infantrymen with an AK-47 rifle and is killed immediately. Lt. Avery, in Tank 21, is wounded in an air attack by a Soviet helicopter. First Sergeant Harrert and the maintenance crew salvage the tank, grimly noting it would be back in combat in 24 hours. The task force headquarters is attacked, severely wounding Colonel Reynolds and cutting off the XO, Major Jordan, from communicating with the Task Force; Bannon finds himself in command of the Task Force and leads three companies to defeat the Soviet counter attack and rescue the Task Force staff. The surviving Task Force staff, led by Major Jordan, resume command. C Company is effectively wiped out and its survivors are integrated with D Company. The Task Force plans to ambush a Soviet battalion heading westward into their position, centered on an East German town. Jordan plans a reverse slope defense, not attacking the Soviets at the logical choke point. The Soviet attackers, harassed by the Task Force scout platoon and U.S. artillery-delivered mines, fail to take the town or the hills to the north of the valley. The Soviet commander moves the south—into Bannon's Team's guns. When asked to give his after-action report, Bannon flippantly quotes the Duke of Wellington, "They came, you know, in the same old way and we beat them in the same old way." NATO as a whole, and the Americans in particular, are running short of equipment and manpower. Units that are no longer capable of going on the offensive, or are not holding key terrain, are stripped of their most effective units. Team Yankee is thus moved from Task Force 3-78 to Task Force 1-4 Armored, which is their parent battalion, to continue the attack into Leipzig and Berlin. The Team is assigned a screening role to the main effort, and is ordered to feint as if they intend to capture a bridge over the Saale River. However, due to speed of their attack and a divided command between the Soviet Army and the KGB, Lt. Weiss' platoon is able to capture the bridge intact. The next day, Bannon finds out that the Soviets have launched a nuclear attack on the city of Birmingham, England; NATO retaliates by destroying the city of Minsk. The Task Force is ordered to prepare for nuclear warfare (by dispersion, deeper cover, and protection against the effects of a blast on electronics and optics). Bannon immediately orders a tightening on hygiene and equipment maintenance to lessen the long-term effects of nuclear war. Bannon prepares for the next attack when the news comes that a cease-fire was declared and the war is over. The cease-fire holds. Life slowly resumes a routine closer to peacetime. A National Guard division relieves Bannon's division, and Bannon returns to his quarters only two months after he left, to reconnect with his family life.
598935	/m/02v1lh	The Stars My Destination	Alfred Bester	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gully Foyle is the last remaining survivor of the Nomad, a merchant spaceship attacked in the war between the Inner Planets and the Outer Satellites and left drifting in space. He blindly waits for over six months for a rescuer. Seeing a spacecraft named Vorga, he sets off signal flares and rejoices thinking he will be saved. The Vorga however passes him by, leaving him to die. This callousness triggers a consuming rage in Foyle that transforms him. Vengeance becomes his mission. Improvising a repair to Nomads engine, Foyle sends the ship into the asteroid belt, where it is captured and incorporated into the Sargasso asteroid, a body built of the wreckage of other crashed ships. The inhabitants, who call themselves the Scientific People, tattoo a mask reminiscent of tā moko onto Foyle's face, with the word "N♂MAD" across his forehead, and marry Foyle to one of their women. Once he recovers from his ordeal he blasts out of the asteroid and is picked up by a ship from the Inner Planets. He does not know about his tattoo until one of the hands on the Navy ship gives him a mirror. Disguised as a disabled jaunter, among others who are undergoing therapy for head injuries that have affected their ability, Foyle plans an attack on the Vorga. Before he can do this, he is discovered by his instructor, Robin Wednesbury, a telesend (a kind of telepath who can send thoughts to others, but not receive them). He blackmails her into helping him, but his attack on the Vorga fails and he is captured by security forces working for Presteign, the aristocratic head of the huge Presteign corporation (owner of the Vorga). They grill Foyle about Nomad but he refuses to talk, and Foyle is thrown into the Gouffre Martel, a complex of underground caves in the Pyrenees. These are used as a prison, where the inmates live in total darkness, unable to form a picture of their location in order to jaunte. Foyle discovers that an acoustic quirk in the prison caves allows him to communicate with a fellow prisoner, a woman named Jisbella McQueen. They plot an escape, and McQueen arranges to have Foyle's tattoos removed, but the removal is not total. Although Foyle's face looks normal most of the time, when he becomes emotional or excited, the rush of blood to his face brings back the markings. Dagenham raids the clandestine hospital where the tattoos are being expunged, but Foyle and Jisbella escape in a ship and head out to the Sargasso Asteroid where the Scientific People live. There they recover the ship's vault from the Nomad. Besides a fortune in platinum, it contains something else. As the vault is ejected into their ship, Dagenham's men arrive and capture Jisbella, while Foyle, still obsessed, abandons her and jets away. With his new fortune, Foyle intends to find the Captain of the Vorga, avenging himself on a person rather than the ship itself. He also realizes that he must learn self-control, as the manifestation of his facial markings will give him away. Using the alias "Geoffrey Fourmyle of Ceres," Foyle re-emerges as a rich dandy who charms high society with his antics, leading a troupe of freaks called the Four Mile Circus. Foyle has extensively altered himself physically and rigorously educated himself. He seeks out Robin Wednesbury, now socially blacklisted due to her family connections with the Outer Satellites, and offers her a chance to reunite with her family if she will use her one-way telepathy to help him navigate high society. She reluctantly agrees. During a society party, Foyle meets Jisbella McQueen again, now the lover of Saul Dagenham, the detective who interrogated Foyle just before his escape from Gouffre Martel. He learns the real reason Dagenham wanted the location of Nomad: the vault contained a sample of a substance called PyrE, which Foyle had himself found, but whose nature he was unable to determine. Then, during a sudden nuclear attack by the Outer Satellites, Foyle is smitten with Presteign's daughter Olivia, who has been watching the attack with her altered sense of sight: she sees only infrared light, but not the normal visible spectrum. Foyle grabs her with intent to ravish her before they die, only to find out that she has deceived him. She tells Foyle that to have her, he must be as cruel and ruthless as she is. Foyle continues his hunt for the Vorgas captain, only to find that each of the crew has been given a kind of implanted death-reflex to prevent mention of the ship. Throughout these episodes, Foyle is tormented by the appearance of the "Burning Man", an image of himself on fire. He finally closes in on the Captain, now a neo-Skoptsy (a person with all sensory nerves disabled) living on Mars, and therefore immune to conventional torture. Foyle kidnaps a telepath, interrogates the Captain in her crypt, and finds that Olivia Presteign was the commander of the Vorga – moments before commando soldiers storm the crypt. Foyle is rescued by Olivia. She had been transporting refugees for cash, only to murder them all by throwing them out into space. Her victims included Robin's family. She now sees a kindred spirit in Foyle, a freak who cannot live with "normal" humans, someone who can match her urges to destroy and conquer. Foyle, driven by rage, remorse, and self-pity, tries to give himself up to the authorities. He unwittingly turns himself over to a lawyer, Regis Sheffield, who turns out to be a double agent working for the Outer Satellites. They are interested in him because apparently Foyle holds the holy grail of jaunting: space travel. He had been planted as a decoy to draw Inner Planets ships towards an ambush, but had jaunted back into the wreck of the Nomad from hundreds of thousands of miles away. After Presteign learns of Olivia and Foyle being in cahoots, he suffers an epileptic seizure and babbles that PyrE is the most powerful explosive ever created. It is activated by telepathy, and so Robin (now having turned herself in to the authorities as well) is enlisted to activate it. The PyrE explodes, causing many incidents of destruction worldwide, but mostly at the HQ of the Fourmyle Circus in St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Foyle and Sheffield are holed up. The explosion partially collapses the building, killing Sheffield and trapping Foyle, unconscious but alive, over a pit of flame. In the wreckage and confusion of the detonation, suffering from synesthesia brought on by the effects of the explosion on his neurological implants, Foyle once again jauntes through space and time, revisiting key moments of his journey to this point. Some of the synesthesia is conveyed to the reader visually, through graphic renditions of the text created by the noted illustrator Jack Gaughan.Review by Tal Cohen, dated June 2, 1999. Retrieved 2011-08-20.American Buddha Online Library "Special calligraphy and ideographs in Chapter 15 created by Jack Gaughan." Accessed 2011-08-20. As The Burning Man, he appears to himself during the quest, as well as in other times and places, such as during his escape from the Gouffre Martel, when he distracts the guards enabling him and Jisbella to break out, and in space when Foyle was aboard the Nomad. Finally he jauntes to some unknown location in the future, where Robin telepathically gives him instructions (relayed from himself) for the exact route he needs – allowing for his confused senses – to escape the collapsing cathedral. On returning to the present, Foyle is pressured from all sides to surrender the rest of the PyrE, or to let mankind benefit from his ability to space-jaunte. To Foyle's ears, this sounds like a no-win situation: to unleash a deadly weapon on the human race, or to let humanity spread like a disease by space-jaunting. He finally leads them to the vault where he has the rest of the PyrE stored, but steals it and teleports across the globe, throwing one slug of PyrE after another into the crowds and insisting the people be told what it is. "I've given life and death back to the people who do the living and dying," he says. He delivers one last speech, where he asks humanity to choose either to destroy itself or follow him into space. At this point he realizes the key to space-jaunting. It is faith: not the certainty of an answer, but the conviction that somewhere an answer exists. He then jauntes from one nearby star to another. In the course of his star-hopping, Foyle locates the answer for the future: new worlds suitable for colonization reachable only if he can share the gift of space-jaunting. Finally he comes to rest in the locker on Nomad, where he spent his time before being reborn the first time. The Scientific People now see him as a holy man, and take up vigil to await his revelation.
599316	/m/02v2tc	Titan	John Varley	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A scientific expedition to the planet Saturn in 2025, aboard the ship Ringmaster, discovers a strange satellite in orbit around the planet. Commanding the ship is Cirocco Jones, a tall NASA career woman, aided by astronomer Gaby Plauget, the clone twin physicists April and August Polo, pilot Eugene Springfield, physician Calvin Greene and engineer Bill (whose last name is never given). As they reach the satellite they realize it is a huge hollow torus, a Stanford torus habitat. Before they can report this the ship is entangled in cables from the object. The crew is rendered unconscious and later wake up inside the habitat. Initially separated, Cirroco and Gaby find each other and travel together through the world inside the torus to find the rest of the crew. As the story progresses, they find Calvin living as a companion inside a Blimp, an intelligent gasbag a kilometer long, one of many that swim forever in the air inside the habitat. Calvin can speak to the blimp and understand its responses, which consist of whistles. His blimp's name is Whistlestop, in human terms. Calvin helps Gaby and Cirocco find the other crew members (except April). He ultimately decides to leave his human companions to live with the blimp permanently. The remaining companions encounter the Titanides, strange centaur-like beings who speak a language based on music. Cirocco finds she has the ability to speak their language. The Titanides are in a perpetual state of war with the Angels, birdlike humanoid creatures. They fight because of an impulse that occurs when they are near each other, but do not know why they have the impulse. The humans learn from the Titanides that there is a controlling intelligence, called Gaea, and it lives 600&nbsp;km above them, in the hub of the torus. Cirocco, Gaby, and Gene decide to climb up to this place using the support cables that maintain the structure against centrifugal force. During the journey, Gene's behavior becomes increasingly erratic. He rapes Gaby and then rapes Cirocco. He thinks he killed Gaby while he gives chase to Cirocco only Gaby is not dead and eventually cuts his ear off with a hatchet. After he passes out Gaby destroys his face. They get rid of him and keep going. Months of climbing brings them high in one of the spokes of the great wheel. There they find April, who has been transformed into an angel. She, like the other Angels, is solitary by nature, and can hardly bear to be near them. Finally reaching the hub, they discover Gaea, who presents herself as a frumpy middle aged woman. She explains that the great wheel is very old, and some of the regional intelligences around the rim have rebelled against the center. It was, in fact, one of these regional intelligences that had captured the Ringmaster and altered its crew. Gaea rescued them and, unable to change them back, placed them where they would be happy. She makes an offer to Cirocco: in exchange for long life and unusual abilities, she can be Gaea's agent at the Rim, her Wizard. Cirocco accepts, with the condition that the war between the Titanides and Angels must stop. Gaea's personality is that of a movie addict. She has been watching television signals from Earth and is obsessed by movies, especially from Hollywood's Golden Age. The Titanide-Angel war was the result of her having seen war movies, and realizing that humanity will inevitably declare war on her. The war is a way for her to practice.
599676	/m/02v3sh	The Rules of Attraction	Bret Easton Ellis	1987-09	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The novel is written in the first-person, continuing the aesthetic of Ellis' earlier Less Than Zero, and is told from the points of view of multiple characters. The main narrators are three students: Paul, Sean, and Lauren. A number of other characters also provide first-hand accounts throughout the story, which takes place at the fictional Camden College, a liberal arts school on the East Coast of the United States. The three main characters (who rarely attend class) end up in a love triangle within a sequence of drug runs, "Dress to Get Screwed", and "End of the World" parties. The story begins midway through a sentence (the first word being 'and') in order to give the effect that it begins somewhere closer to the middle, rather than at a true beginning (in medias res). Another interpretation is that the story has neither a beginning nor an ending, signifying the endless cycle of debauchery in which the characters of the novel engage. This is sometimes mistaken by readers as a typographical error or the result of a missing page, but was purposely done by Ellis. The novel ends in a similar fashion, with the last sentence cut off before it ends.
600721	/m/02v7g4	The City and the Stars	Arthur C. Clarke	1956-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The City and the Stars takes place a billion years in the future, in the city of Diaspar. By this time, the Earth is so old that the oceans have gone and humanity has all but left. As far as the people of Diaspar know, they are the only city left on the planet. The city of Diaspar is completely enclosed. Nobody has come in or left the city for as long as anybody can remember, and everybody in Diaspar has an instinctive insular conservatism. The story behind this fear of venturing outside the city tells of a race of ruthless invaders which beat humanity back from the stars to Earth, and then made a deal that humanity could live - if they never left the planet. In Diaspar, the entire city is run by the Central Computer. Not only is the city repaired by machines, but the people themselves are created by the machines as well. The computer creates bodies for the people of Diaspar to live in and stores their minds in its memory at the end of their lives. At any time, only a small number of these people are actually living in Diaspar, the rest are retained in the computer's memory banks. All the currently existent people of Diaspar have had past "lives" within Diaspar except one person &mdash; Alvin, the main character of this story. He is a 'Unique', different from everybody else in Diaspar, not only because he does not have any past lives to remember, but because instead of fearing the outside, he feels compelled to leave. Alvin has just come to the age where he is considered grown up, and is putting all his energies into trying to find a way out. Eventually, a character called Khedron the Jester helps Alvin use the central computer to find a way out of the city of Diaspar. This involves the discovery that in the remote past, Diaspar was linked to other cities by an underground transport system. This system still exists although its terminal was covered over and sealed with only a secret entrance left. Once out of Diaspar, Alvin finds that one other human habitation remains on Earth. In contrast to technological Diaspar, Lys is a vast green oasis shielded by mountains from the worldwide desert. Its people are not stored and recreated technologically, but naturally conceive, born, age, and die. They have rejected the hyper-advanced technology of Diaspar in favor of an almost agrarian existence, with machines used only for labor-saving purposes. The people of Lys have instead worked to perfect the arts of the mind; they are telepaths, capable of communicating with each other over great distances and without words. Alvin continues his quest until he finds out the truth of why the people of Diaspar are so frightened of the external universe and why Lys is so scared of space travel and mechanical things. In Lys he goes on a trip with a young man named Hilvar who becomes his friend, and they see a signal light, which they decide to investigate. It leads them to Shalmirane, the remains of the fortress where the Invaders were fought off with unimaginable weapons, and there they encounter an extraterrestrial creature with a strange robot. The creature is the last survivor of a religious cult dating back to the days of the Galactic Empire. The robot was the companion of the founder, the "Master", who came with his followers to Earth at the end of his life. Alvin and Hilvar are unable to understand the content of the religion except that it refers to "Great Ones" who have left, but will someday return. Alvin persuades the creature to lend him the robot, arguing that the Master would want it to see how things were developing in the world. The Master had, however, forbidden the robot to give out any information at all, so Alvin does not learn anything. The robot enables Alvin to escape the attempts of the people of Lys to purge his mind and send him back—the previous 14 Uniques had stayed. Alvin had originally been told he would be free to choose whether to stay or return, but because the people of Lys had failed to prevent news of his departure spreading in Diaspar in time, this option was no longer available. Back in Diaspar he seeks the help of the Central Computer, which overcomes the Master's block on the robot by producing an illusion of an apocalyptic return of the Great Ones. Alvin now learns that the Master's ship is still functional, buried outside Diaspar. He manages to retrieve it, fetches Hilvar from Lys, and travels into deep space. They encounter Vanamonde, a being of pure intellect, with whom Hilvar, being telepathic like other Lys people, can communicate and bring him back to Earth. From him the truth of history finally emerges. The fearsome Invaders, it turns out, were a myth: Shalmirane was actually used to destroy the Moon when this became necessary to prevent it from colliding with the Earth. Instead, the people of Diaspar and Lys are the descendants of those humans who deliberately turned away from the universe in rejection of history's greatest scientific project: the creation of a disembodied intellect. The first attempt had created a powerful but insane being, the Mad Mind. The Mad Mind had devastated the galaxy and its civilizations before being imprisoned in a "strange artificial star" called the Black Sun. Vanamonde is the second, successful experiment of the ancient empire: a being of pure intellect, immensely old, immensely powerful, able to move instantly to any point in space — but entirely childlike and unsophisticated. Vanamonde's ultimate destiny, Hilvar realizes, is to battle the Mad Mind, when it escapes its prison at the end of Time. After this, most of the Galactic Empire had left our galaxy, leaving only a scattered few. This departure from the galaxy, leaving it to Vanamonde, was because contact had been made with something "very strange and very great" which called them urgently. Alvin's discoveries reunite Diaspar with Lys. He then sends the ship, under the command of the robot, to search for the long-lost people of the Empire. He does not wish to search himself - even if there are human remnants in the Galaxy, they are probably decadent - and he has work to do on Earth. Even the environment, he hopes, can be revived.
603113	/m/02vk5h	The Changeling	Thomas Middleton	1653		 There are two parallel plots. The main plot involves Beatrice-Joanna, Alonzo, to whom she is betrothed, and Alsemero, whom she loves. To rid herself of Alonzo, Beatrice uses De Flores — who loves her — to murder him. This, predictably, has a tragic outcome. The sub-plot involves Alibius and his young wife Isabella. Franciscus and Antonio are in love with her and pretend to be a madman and a fool, respectively, in order to see her. Lollio also wants her. This has a comic outcome. Outside a church Alsemero enters from church and tells us of his love for a woman he met there. Jasperino enters from the harbour, reminding Alsemero that the "wind’s fair" and that they should leave for Malta. Alsemero tells him that he is not ready to go yet. Alsemero does not give any reason to Jasperino but tells him that he wants to stay back. In truth he wants to try to stay close to Beatrice. Beatrice enters with Diaphanta and she is greeted by Alsemero. Alsemero had a reputation as asexual. Thus, Jasperino is very surprised to learn that Alsemero has fallen in love with Beatrice. Jasperino watches and comments while Beatrice and Alsemero flirt together. Alsemero proposes to Beatrice but, in an aside, she regrets that five days ago she was promised in marriage to Alonzo de Piracquo. Her father had arranged this marriage for her and Beatrice is not at all interested in Alonzo. Instead Beatrice is much taken by Alsemero. Alsemero waits for an answer. Jasperino resolves to get a girl for himself and sees Diaphanta. De Flores enters to inform Beatrice of her father’s imminent arrival. Beatrice is always repulsed by De Flores (one of the reasons being that De Flores suffers from a kind of skin disease) and treats him in the most abysmal manner. However, since De Flores is deeply besotted with Beatrice, he suffers the abuses she heaps on him just to hear her voice and see her. Beatrice tells him to go away (not only because she dislikes De Flores but also because De Flores disrupts her meeting with Alsemero), he backs off but still watches her. Jasperino and Diaphanta have a conversation full of sexual innuendos. Vermandero (who had been talking to the priest) joins Beatrice, causing her to change her behaviour. She introduces him to Alsemero. Beatrice makes her father invite Alsemero to their castle. Vermandero finds that he knew Alsemero’s father well, and they discuss him briefly. Vermandero talks of Beatrice’s fiancé, causing her to say goodbye to Alsemero in preparation for her return home. Alsemero is heartbroken hearing all this talk of Beatrice's fiance. So he plans to leave but Vermandero insists that Alsemero come to Vermandero's castle, as Alsemero had agreed with Beatrice's proposition to tour the castle a little while back. As they leave, Beatrice drops her glove. De Flores picks it up and offers it to her but she will not take it as she is disgusted by the idea of touching something that De Flores has touched (maybe because of the skin disease). Beatrice exits and De Flores closes the scene with a soliloquy. Alibius’ madhouse Alibius starts to tell Lollio a secret. He says he cannot satisfy his wife sexually and fears she will be disloyal to him. He asks Lollio to guard her for him and lock her up. Lollio agrees in the knowledge that he could be left alone with her and thus may get a chance to have sex with Isabella. Lollio goes on to analyse the two kinds of patients in the mental asylum—fools (people who were born with mental deficiencies) and madmen (people who suffer a degradation of mental health during the course of their lives). He says that Alibius need not fear that Isabella will have sex with either fools or madmen. Alibius says he is more concerned with sane tourists who come to view the patients. Antonio and Pedro enter. Pedro gives Alibius lots of money to take good care of Antonio. Lollio hints that he wants some too and Pedro grants him his wish. Lollio says that Antonio has almost the appearance of a gentleman and he wouldn't have been able to figure out that Antonio was a fool. Pedro asks for Antonio (who also answers to the name of Tony because the name Antonio is too big for his mad mind to remember) to be made clever, Lollio says he will "make him as wise as myself." Pedro leaves, Alibius counts money. Lollio threatens to whip Antonio. Lollio questions Antonio with short riddles. Antonio provides very shrewd answers leading Lollio to remark that Antonio is very smart for a fool. Madmen (who are imprisoned in a different enclosure from fools) begin shouting for food, Alibius leaves to attend to the madmen whereas Lollio takes Antonio to the cells for fools. A chamber in the castle Beatrice gives Jasperino a note for Alsemero in secret. In her soliloquy, Beatrice talks of how great Alsemero is (because she thinks that among other things Alsemero has shown sound judgement in choosing someone like Jasperino as his companion) and then how horrible Alonzo de Piracquo is. She says that the only reason why she is marrying Alonzo is because her father has forced the choice on her and she cannot disobey her father. De Flores enters (having been hiding and therefore having overheard Beatrice's proclamations of love for Alsemero) but Beatrice does not see him initially whilst he talks of his love for her and her hatred of him. She sees him and gets angry because he stalls from delivering his message. Eventually he says that Alonzo and Tomazo have arrived. He leaves after delivering another soliloquy. After De Flores exits, Beatrice, repelled by De Flores, says she will get her father to dismiss him. Vermandero, Alonzo and Tomazo enter, Vermandero makes every attempt to be a welcoming host. While Beatrice and Vermandero talk, Tomazo tells his brother that Beatrice did not seem pleased to see him. Alonzo dismisses the remark. After Vermandero informs Alonzo that Beatrice has requested a three-day postponement of their wedding, Tomazo repeats his misgivings. He tells Alonzo not to marry Beatrice because she is in love with someone else. Alonzo refuses to listen. Alonzo is blind with love and finds no faults in Beatrice. He does not think that she was behaving coldly with him. Another chamber in the castle Diaphanta leads Alsemero into a chamber secretly. She is acting out her lady's (i.e., Beatrice's) instructions. However, Diaphanta too is smitten with Alsemero. When Beatrice enters, she leaves the room but actually unwillingly as she was enjoying being alone with Alsemero. Alsemero and Beatrice talk and embrace. They talk about how they could ‘remove the cause’ by killing Alonzo. Alsemero declares he will challenge Piraquo to a duel (meaning Alsemero would end up dead or in jail.) Beatrice protests saying that that wouldn't actually help in uniting them but would rather further separate them physically. Beatrice (aside) realises that she can use De Flores to kill Alonzo and says that "The ugliest creature Creation fram'd for some use" . Beatrice shoves Alsemero back to Diaphanta (who’s overjoyed). De Flores enters, having been hidden. De Flores realises that Beatrice will have to transgress one bond (with Alonzo) if she is to have sex with Alsemero. This acts as a kind of impetus to De Flores who thinks if she breaks a bond once, she may break it several times and even he himself may have a chance to have sex with her. Beatrice decides to flirt with him. She behaves not only civilly but also amorously with him. She promises him some medicine that will cure his bad skin. He is delighted at her apparent change of heart. She tells him she is being forced to marry a man she hates, and De Flores realizes she wants him to murder Alonzo. In return she gives him some money and says a greater reward (by which she means more money but which De Flores assumes as an offer for sex) awaits him if he successfully completes the task. De Flores kneels before her (he is also a gentleman) and agrees readily to commit the murder, thinking he'll be able to sleep with her afterwards. Beatrice says she expects him to leave the country after the murder; she is pleased that she can get rid of De Flores and Alonzo at the same time. Beatrice exits, Alonzo enters. Alonzo asks De Flores for a tour of the castle. De Flores says he will show him around after dinner. He hides a sword in his cloak. A narrow passage / A vault As they descend, De Flores advises that the space is very narrow so Alonzo should find it easier to walk if he leaves his sword behind. Alonzo is instructed to stare out of the window, while De Flores stabs him three times. De Flores sees a diamond ring on the finger of the dead Alonzo. He tries to remove the diamond ring and take it for himself but somehow he is unable to remove the ring from the dead Alonzo's finger. So he cuts off that finger and takes the entire finger with him. De Flores clears away the body. Alibius’ madhouse Isabella asks Lollio why she has been locked up. Lollio claims it’s his master’s wish so that Isabella isn't able to venture out and be sexually active with other men. Isabella complains that there are only madmen and fools in the mental asylum. But she says that she recently saw that a very good-looking patient was admitted and requests Lollio to bring that good-looking patient to her. Lollio shows in Franciscus. Isabella asks Lollio how Franciscus went mad. Lollio replies that it was because of spurned love. Isabella remarks that Franciscus looks like a gentleman going by how he speaks. Lollio whips Franciscus for insulting him and for making advances towards Isabella. They realise that Franciscus is not really a madman but only pretending to be one. Lollio puts Franciscus back in his cell. Lollio brings Antonio to meet Isabella. The madmen make noises, Lollio goes to beat them. As he leaves, Antonio reveals to Isabella that he is only a fake fool who had pretended to be a fool so as to be admitted into the asylum and gain access to Isabella. Antonio tries to undress himself and have sex with Isabella but Isabella is able to avoid it for the time being. Antonio cannot convince her to love him but she exposes his fraud. Lollio returns to ask Antonio some questions, then leaves again as the madmen start creating a lot of ruckus and Lollio has to manage both cells. Antonio kisses Isabella, Lollio spies on them. Madmen dressed as birds interrupt their encounter. Lollio again goes offstage to attend to these madmen. He comes back to return Antonio to his cell. Isabella remarks that one need not go out of the house to seek sexual escapades. Sexual agents can be brought into the house to have sexual escapades with. Lollio then challenges Isabella about Antonio, tries to sexually molest Isabella in return for keeping it a secret. Alibius enters, oblivious. Alibius tells them that Vermandero has invited him to make his patients perform (as just mad people) at Beatrice’s wedding. A chamber in the castle Vermandero, Beatrice, Jasperino and Alsemero enter; only Vermandero does not know about Beatrice and Alsemero. They all leave to look around the castle, except Beatrice. Beatrice says that she’s starting to convince her father to like Alsemero. De Flores enters with the intention of having sex with Beatrice, thinking this is what she wants too. He tells Beatrice that "Piracquo is no more" and then shows her the finger with the diamond ring. Beatrice says it was the first token that Vermandero made her send to Alonzo. Beatrice asks De Flores to take the ring as it is worth three hundred ductas, then on seeing the fact that De Flores is disappointed, offers another three thousand florins. De Flores is disgusted at the idea of murdering for money; he murdered for the reward of having sex with Beatrice. Beatrice offers to double the amount and is confused about why De Flores will not leave contented with money assumes that the amount he wants is much too high to actually announce out loud and suggests that he goes out of the country (as she had told him earlier) and send her the amount he wants on paper. He replies that if he leaves, she must too, since they are bound together in guilt. De Flores kisses her in a last-ditch attempt to seal their love, but Beatrice reacts with disgust. De Flores explains in meticulous detail exactly why she has to submit to him, mainly that he can now effectively blackmail her or else he will inform everyone how she hired him to murder Alonzo. He says that his life is worth nothing if he can not have her, and therefore is willing to incriminate himself if she does not sleep with him. She tries to impress on him the difference in their social class, but he claims that her evil act has made them equals. She makes one last effort to offer him all her gold, but again he refuses. She eventually realizes the vicious cycle of sin that she has entered. Dumb Show "Enter Gentlemen, Vermandero meeting them with action of wonderment at the flight of [Alonzo de] Piracquo. Enter Alsemero with Jasperino and Gallants; Vermandero points to him, the Gentlemen seeming to applaud the choice. [Exeunt Vermandero,] Alsemero, Jasperino, and Gentlemen [and Gallants]; [enter] Beatrice the bride, following in great state, accompanied with Diaphanta, Isabella, and other Gentlewomen. [Enter] Deflores after all, smiling at the accident; Alonzo's Ghost appears to Deflores in the midst of his smile, startles him, showing him the hand whose finger he had cut off. They pass over in great solemnity." Beatrice has yielded to De Flores's sexual demands, and has also married Alsemero. Alone in the afternoon in Alsemero's room, she feels too ashamed to have sex with her new husband Alsemero on their wedding night. In Alsemero's closet, she finds lots of medicines. One of them is a pregnancy test kit and another a virginity test kit. Diaphanta enters, looking for Alsemero. Beatrice tells Diaphanta that she will offer 1000 ducats to any virgin if she secretly has sex with her husband Alsemero, instead of her, on their wedding night. But to test whether Diaphanta is a virgin or not, both of them take the virginity test. The virginity test shows that Beatrice is not a virgin whereas Diaphanta is, as she has exhibited the usual symptoms of first gaping, then sneezing, and finally laughing. Beatrice arranges for her to go to Alsemero's bed that night, in the pitch darkness, and pretend to be Beatrice. Vermandero finds that two of his gentlemen, Antonio and Franciscus have left the castle, causing him to assume that they murdered Alonzo. Vermandero issues arrest-warrants for them since he believes they murdered Alonzo and fled. Tomazo enters, accusing Vermandero of killing his brother. Vermandero pretends that Alonzo has just run away and it is he, Vermandero, who should actually be offended that his to-be son-in-law has run away at the last moment. Vermandero says Tomazo should leave too, as he is the brother of an ignoble coward like Alonzo. Vermandero exits. De Flores enters, Tomazo greets him warmly remembering that his brother Alonzo was fond of De Flores. Tomazo even goes on to say that whereas Vermandero is not trustworthy, De Flores is a trustworthy gentleman. All this talk reminds De Flores of Tomazo's brother Alonzo whom he killed. De Flores exits. Alsemero enters; Tomazo is hostile towards him. Tomazo challenges Alsemero to a duel after the wedding. Tomazo exits, Jasperino runs in. Jasperino tells Alsemero that he heard Beatrice and De Flores having conversation similar to that lovers have. Alsemero instructs Jasperino to go and get the virginity test. Beatrice enters just before Jasperino returns. Alsemero figures out that Beatrice looks very different and she must have been abused. Alsemero gives Beatrice the potion, she drinks it, then fakes the symptoms thereby "proving" to Alsemero and Jasperino that she is a virgin. Lollio and Isabella read a letter in which Franciscus declares that he is only pretending to be a madman to gain access to Isabella and that he is in love with her. Lollio says that if Isabella has sex with Franciscus, then he wants to have sex with her too. Isabella says that if she indeed does commit adultery, she will sleep with him, implying that she has no intention of committing adultery. She asks Lollio how to deal with Antonio and Franciscus's attraction to her, and he advises her to abuse them. To that end, she leaves to dress as a madwoman. Alibius arrives and asks about the wedding. Alibius then asks how Isabella is getting on, then exits. Antonio enters, and Lollio forces him to dance. Lollio exits, and Isabella enters in her new clothes as a madwoman. Isabella attempts to kiss him but Antonio resists, unable to recognise Isabella and disgusted at the idea of being kissed by a madwoman. Antonio confesses that he is no fool but just a gentleman pretending to be a fool. Isabella denounces him for loving her external appearance only. She exits, and Lollio enters, telling Antonio that if he kills Franciscus, he can have sex with Isabella. Franciscus enters, Lollio reads the letter he wrote to Isabella. Lollio tells him that if he kills Antonio, Isabella will have sex with him. Alibius enters, and Lollio goes to fetch the madmen. All the madmen dance for the wedding. It is two AM and Diaphanta has not yet come out of Alsemero's chamber, even though Beatrice had instructed her to finish by midnight. Therefore Beatrice suspects that Diaphanta is actually enjoying having sex with Alsemero. This leads her to suspect that it must have been Diaphanta who had informed Alsemero of Beatrice's loss of virginity (as Diaphanta may have had a chance to figure out that what she and Beatrice indulged in were virginity tests). This leads to Beatrice getting very angry with Diaphanta. De Flores enters. Beatrice is worried that if Diaphanta does not come out before daybreak, Alsemero will be able to see with whom he has had sex and will recognise his mistake and Beatrice's plot will be ruined. De Flores comes up with an idea to get Diaphanta out of the room. He says that he will set Diaphanta's chambers on fire and that will wake up the entire house and when Diaphanta returns to her room then De Flores will pretend that he will clean the chimney with a gun but he will kill her with it. Beatrice agrees, even suggesting that she now loves De Flores. Alonzo’s ghost appears and haunts De Flores and Beatrice. De Flores lights the fire, offstage, then leads the group of residents who attempt to douse it. Diaphanta appears, Beatrice tells her to return to her chamber. Vermandero enters, followed by Alsemero and Jasperino. The gunshot is heard, signifying Diaphanta’s murder. De Flores returns to the stage, heroically carrying Diaphanta’s burnt body from the fire. De Flores is promised financial reward by Vermandero and others for his bravery in alerting everyone to the fire and thereby preventing further damage. Tomazo, in a sudden fit of misanthropy, elects to blame the next person he sees for the death of his brother (since he holds everyone potentially accountable). De Flores enters. Tomazo becomes enraged. He re-iterates Beatrice's earlier misgivings about using something that has also been used by De Flores. He says that if his sword were to touch De Flores once, he would not use that sword again. Tomazo strikes him. De Flores draws his sword as though to retaliate, but is forcibly reminded of Alonzo's murder, and cannot bring himself to strike. De Flores is unnerved by Tomazo's sudden, intuitive hostility, and leaves hastily. Alibius and Isabella enter with Vermandero. Tomazo tells them to go away. Vermandero informs Tomazo that he has found Alonzo's murderers—Antonio and Franciscus, who were hiding in a mental asylum after committing the murder. Jasperino and Alsemero have seen Beatrice and De Flores together in a garden and are discussing it. Beatrice enters, Jasperino hides. Alsemero accuses Beatrice of being a liar and a whore, and suggests she’s been cheating on him with De Flores. She confesses that she employed De Flores to murder Alonzo, but explains that she did it out of love for Alsemero, because her first motive was to remove Alonzo so that she and Alsemero could be together. Alsemero says he must think about what to do, and locks Beatrice in a closet to wait. De Flores enters, Alsemero gets him to admit murder. De Flores, under the impression that Beatrice is attempting to betray and outmanoeuvre him, exposes her infidelity. Alsemero confines him in the closet with Beatrice. Vermandero, Alibius, Isabella, Tomazo and Franciscus enter, thinking they have solved the case of Alonzo's murder. Alsemero also claims he has solved Alonzo's murder. As Alsemero begins to reveal the truth, screams of pleasure and of pain are heard within the room, and the pair comes out, Beatrice stabbed by De Flores. Beatrice confesses her fallen state and also that she sent Diaphanta in her place to the bedroom to have sex with Alsemero. De Flores admits to killing Alonzo, stabs himself and dies before Tomazo can seek revenge. With his last words, De Flores instructs Beatrice to follow him in death, and as she dies, Beatrice asks Alsemero for forgiveness. They speak about changes and changelings. Alsemero says Beatrice was beauty changed to whoredom, he himself a supposed husband changed embraces with wantonness. Antonio says he was changed from a little ass to a great fool and was almost changed to be hanged at the gallows. Franciscus says he was changed from a little wit to stark mad. Alibius says he realises his folly and will change himself and never keep fake patients. A mere eight lines in which Alsemero explains that it is impossible to comfort someone after they have lost a person close to them. The only solution is for that person to be replaced, the implication that the audience must applaud for this 'replacement' to occur.
603115	/m/02vk5v	Beyond the Rocks	Elinor Glyn	1906	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The beautiful young Theodora Fitzgerald belongs to a family of noble lineage, but whose fortunes have waned and who have lived in near poverty for most of her life. The book begins with her arranged marriage to Josiah Brown, a nouveau-riche Australian in his fifties. The marriage was contracted for convenience: Josiah simply wants a pretty and aristocratic wife to improve his standing in society, and the Fitzgerald family are in need of Brown's financial resources. Theodora only agrees to the marriage for the sake of her father and sisters. Immediately after the wedding, Josiah falls ill. Theodora proves a dutiful and capable wife, and attends to her husband's every need, though she is secretly very unhappy. After a year of marriage, Josiah is well enough to visit Paris, where Theodora sees her father, Dominic, again for the first time since her wedding. She is thrilled to observe that at least he is receiving all the benefits she'd hoped to bring from her sacrifice: he now runs in aristocratic circles and is courting a wealthy American widow, Mrs. McBride. Theodora attends several social outings with her father, and at one dinner is introduced to Hector, Lord Bracondale. Theodora and Hector hit things off splendidly, and soon fall in love. Mrs. McBride is aware of Theodora's unhappy marriage, and seeing the situation she sympathetically arranges for Hector and Theodora to spend time together as often as possible. One day while Theodora and Hector are being chauffeured back to Paris after an outing at Versailles, the two indulge in a romantic encounter in the back of the car. Full of guilt thereafter, the two conclude they must behave themselves from now on and must no longer pursue each other romantically; they will, however, continue to be friendly to one another any time future social obligations might cause them to meet. Hector at this point is terribly in love with Theodora, and though he tries his best to live by his promise to her, he still goes out of his way to see her and to secure invitations to all the same gatherings that she attends. He fantasizes about marrying her and makes sure to introduce her to his mother and to his sister. However, Theodora's status as a newcomer into society, and the obvious favor that Hector pays her over other eligible women who desire his hand, causes ire and jealousy to be directed her way. Rumors begin to spread, and several people believe Hector and Theodora to be lovers. Morella Winmarleigh, a spurned candidate for Hector's hand, particularly sets out destroy Theodora. She maliciously switches a letter Theodora had written to Hector with another letter meant for Josiah. Meanwhile, without anyone else's knowledge, Theodora and Hector have concluded that they cannot attempt to remain friends any longer—their love is too strong—and so they must agree to never see each other again. The next day, Josiah receives Theodora's letter meant for Hector: the contents amount to Theodora asking Hector never to see her again, even though the two of them could be very happy together, because it is her duty to instead attend to the happiness of her husband Josiah. Josiah realizes for the first time how he has stood in the way of Theodora's happiness, and resolves to do his best to make her happy from now on. He forwards the letter to Hector and requests he never allow Theodora to learn of the mix-up. The next several months pass with Theodora and Josiah both trying their best to make the other happy, even while both are secretly miserable. Both begin to suffer from ill health. Ultimately, Josiah dies; eighteen months later, Mrs. McBride (now married to Dominic Fitzgerald) throws a picnic at Versailles to which both Theodora and Hector are invited. The book ends with the couple reunited, in a state of "passionate love and delirious happiness."
603551	/m/02vlm6	The Portrait of a Lady	Henry James	1881	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Isabel Archer, originally from Albany, New York, is invited by her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchett, to visit Lydia's rich husband Daniel at his estate near London, following the death of Isabel's father. There, she meets her cousin Ralph Touchett, her friendly invalid uncle, and the Touchetts' robust neighbor, Lord Warburton. Isabel later declines Warburton's sudden proposal of marriage. She also rejects the hand of Caspar Goodwood, the charismatic son and heir of a wealthy Boston mill owner. Although Isabel is drawn to Caspar, her commitment to her independence precludes such a marriage, which she feels would demand the sacrifice of her freedom. The elder Touchett grows ill and, at the request of his son, leaves much of his estate to Isabel upon his death. With her large legacy, Isabel travels the Continent and meets an American expatriate, Gilbert Osmond, in Florence. Although Isabel had previously rejected both Warburton and Goodwood, she accepts Osmond's proposal of marriage. She is unaware that this marriage has been actively promoted by the accomplished but untrustworthy Madame Merle, another American expatriate, whom Isabel had met at the Touchetts' estate. Isabel and Osmond settle in Rome, but their marriage rapidly sours due to Osmond's overwhelming egotism and his lack of genuine affection for his wife. Isabel grows fond of Pansy, Osmond's presumed daughter by his first marriage, and wants to grant her wish to marry Edward Rosier, a young art collector. The snobbish Osmond would rather that Pansy accept the proposal of Warburton, who had previously proposed to Isabel. Isabel suspects, however, that Warburton may just be feigning interest in Pansy to get close to Isabel again. The conflict creates even more strain within the unhappy marriage. Isabel then learns that Ralph is dying at his estate in England and prepares to go to him for his final hours, but Osmond selfishly opposes this plan. Meanwhile, Isabel learns from her sister-in-law that Pansy is actually the daughter of Madame Merle, who had an adulterous relationship with Osmond for several years. Isabel pays a final visit to Pansy, who desperately begs her to return some day, something Isabel reluctantly promises. She then leaves, without telling her spiteful husband, to comfort the dying Ralph in England, where she remains until his death. Goodwood encounters her at Ralph's estate and begs her to leave Osmond and come away with him. He passionately embraces and kisses her, but Isabel flees. Goodwood seeks her out the next day, but is told she has set off again for Rome. The ending is ambiguous, and the reader is left to imagine whether Isabel returned to Osmond to suffer out her marriage in noble tragedy (perhaps for Pansy's sake) or whether she is going to rescue Pansy and leave Osmond.
603595	/m/02vlvd	Max the Mighty	Rodman Philbrick	1998	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Maxwell Kane helps Rachel, nicknamed "Worm" because of her love of reading, run from her overly religious and abusive stepfather. Nicknamed "The Undertaker", he drives a hearse and wears pitch black clothing. The Undertaker accuses Max of kidnapping Rachel, so Max and Worm run safaway with Dippy Hippie on his bus, the Prairie Schooner. Along the way, they meet two con-artists, Frank and Joanie, who read about Max and Worm and a money reward for finding them. Frank then turns them in, and Max and Worm have to leave the Prairie Schooner. To take them the rest of the way they hop a train with Hobo Joe and arrive in Chivalry, Montana. They go into a mining tunnel and Max discovers that Worm's birth father has already died in a mining accident. The Undertaker arrives there with the police and Max and Worm run away in the tunnels. They meet Dip, and Max's grandfather, Grim. The police catch them, and Worm runs back into the tunnel. She thinks about committing suicide to be with her father, but Max talks her out of it. The book ends with Worm and her mother coming to live with Max and his grandparents. Max frequently mentions his old friend Kevin, also nicknamed Freak, throughout the book.
604411	/m/02vp74	Devdas	Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay	1917-06-30	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Devdas is a young man from a wealthy Bengali Brahmin family in India in the early 1900s. Paro (Parvati) is a young woman from a middle class Bengali family belonging to the “merchant” caste. The two families lived in a village in Bengal, and Devdas and Paro were childhood friends. Devdas goes away for thirteen years to live and study in a boarding school in the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata). When, after finishing school, he returns to his village, Paro looks forward to their childhood love blossoming into their lifelong journey together in marriage. Of course, according to the prevailing social custom, Paro's parents would have to approach Devdas' parents and propose marriage of Paro to Devdas as Paro longed for. When Paro's mother makes the proposal to Devdas' mother, the latter insults her, plainly saying that the marriage is not possible in view of her own higher caste and financial status. To demonstrate her own social status, Paro's mother then finds an even richer husband for Paro. When Paro learns of her planned marriage, she stealthily meets Devdas at night, desperately believing that Devdas will quickly accept her hand in marriage. Devdas meekly seeks his parents' permission to marry Paro, but Devdas' father agrees with his wife. In a weak-minded state, Devdas then flees to Calcutta, and from there, he writes a letter to Paro, saying that they were only friends. Within days, however, he realizes that he should have been bolder. He goes back to his village and tells Paro that he is ready to do anything needed to save their love. By now, Paro's marriage plans are in an advanced stage, and she declines going back to Devdas and chides him for his cowardice and vacillation. She makes, however, one request to Devdas that he would return to her before he dies. Devdas vows to do so. Devdas goes back to Calcutta and Paro is married off to the betrothed widower with children, who is still in love with his previous wife and is therefore not interested in an amatory relationship with Paro. In Calcutta, Devdas' carousing friend, Chunnilal, introduces him to a courtesan named Chandramukhi. Devdas takes to heavy drinking at Chandramukhi's place, but the courtesan falls in love with him, and looks after him. His health deteriorates because of a combination of excessive drinking and despair of life—a drawn-out form of suicide. Within him, he frequently compares Paro and Chandramukhi, remaining ambivalent as to whom he really loves. Sensing his fast-approaching death, Devdas returns to meet Paro to fulfill his vow. He dies at her doorstep on a dark, cold night. On hearing of the death of Devdas, Paro runs towards the door, but her family members prevent her from stepping out of the door. The novella powerfully depicts the prevailing societal customs in Bengal in the early 1900s, which are largely responsible for preventing the happy ending of a genuine love story.
606612	/m/02vx2n	Eragon	Christopher Paolini	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The book starts off with a prologue, describing an encounter in a forest between a Shade (a sorcerer possessed by evil spirits) and three elves, two male and one female. The Shade, named Durza, with the help of twelve sentient horned humanoids called Urgals, kill the two male elves and capture the female elf, Arya. Before she is captured, Arya magically transports a blue stone she was carrying, which is later revealed to be a Dragon egg, to a mountain range called the Spine. The action then jumps to Eragon, a fifteen-year-old boy who lives with his uncle Garrow and cousin Roran on a farm near the village of Carvahall. While hunting in the Spine, Eragon is surprised to see the Dragon egg, which he believes to be a stone, appear in front of him. A few months later, Eragon witnesses a baby Dragon hatch from the egg. Eragon names the Dragon Saphira. He raises the Dragon in secret until two of King Galbatorix's servants, the Ra'zac, come to Carvahall looking for the egg. Eragon and Saphira manage to escape by hiding in the Spine, but Garrow is fatally wounded and the house and farm are burned down by the Ra'zac. Once Garrow dies, Eragon is left with no reason to stay in Carvahall, so he goes after the Ra'zac, seeking vengeance for the destruction of his home and his uncle's death. He is accompanied by Brom, an elderly storyteller, who provides Eragon with the sword Zar'roc and insists on helping him and Saphira. Eragon becomes a Dragon Rider through his bond with Saphira. Eragon is the only known Rider in Alagaësia other than Galbatorix, who, with the help of the now-dead Forsworn, killed the Riders a hundred years ago. On the journey, Brom teaches Eragon sword fighting, magic, the Ancient Language, and the ways of the Dragon Riders. Their travels bring them to the city of Teirm, where they meet with Brom's friend Jeod. Eragon's fortune is told by the witch Angela, and her companion, the Werecat Solembum, gives Eragon some mysterious advice. With Jeod's help, they are able to track the Ra'zac to the southern city of Dras-Leona. Although they manage to infiltrate the city, Eragon encounters the Ra'zac in a cathedral and he and Brom are forced to flee. Later that night, their camp is ambushed by the Ra'zac. A stranger named Murtagh rescues them, but Brom is gravely injured. Knowing that he is about to die, Brom reveals to Eragon that he used to be a Dragon Rider. His Dragon's name was also Saphira, but an Fornsworn named Morzan killed her. Brom then avenged Saphira's death and killed Morzan. After telling Eragon this, Brom dies. Murtagh becomes Eragon's new companion and they travel to the city Gil'ead to find information on how to find the Varden, a group of rebels who want to see the downfall of Galbatorix. While stopping near Gil'ead, Eragon is captured and imprisoned in the same jail that holds a woman he has been having dreams about. When he breaks out of his cell, he discovers that she is an elf. Murtagh and Saphira stage a rescue, and Eragon escapes with the unconscious elf. During the escape, Eragon and Murtagh battle with Durza. Murtagh shoots Durza between the eyes with an arrow, and the Shade disappears in a cloud of mist. After escaping, Eragon contacts the unconscious elf telepathically, and discovers that her name is Arya. She tells them that she was poisoned while in captivity and that only a potion in the Varden's possession can cure her. Arya is able to give directions to the exact location of the Varden: a city called Tronjheim, which sits in the hollow mountain Farthen Dûr. She also adds that they have only four days to reach the Varden or she will die. The group go in search of the Varden, both to save Arya's life and to escape Galbatorix's wrath. When they are traveling to the Varden the group notices a huge unit of Urgals following them. The Urgals are revealed to be larger than normal and are called Kull. On the way, Murtagh reveals that he is Morzan's son. The Kull reach Eragon right outside the Varden's entrance, but are driven off with the help of the Varden, who escort Eragon, Saphira, Murtagh, and Arya to Farthen Dûr. When they arrive in Farthen Dûr, Eragon is led to the leader of the Varden, Ajihad. Ajihad imprisons Murtagh after he refuses to allow his mind to be read to determine if he is a friend or a foe to the Varden. Eragon is told by Ajihad that Durza was not destroyed by Murtagh's well placed arrow, because the only way to kill a Shade is with a stab to the heart. Orik, nephew of the dwarf King Hrothgar, is appointed as Eragon and Saphira's guide. Orik shows them a place to stay and introduces them to Hrothgar. Eragon also meets Ajihad's daughter, Nasuada, and Ajihad's right hand man, Jörmundur. He also runs into Angela and Solembum, who have arrived in Tronjheim, and visits Murtagh in his prison. He is tested by two magicians, The Twins, as well as Arya. Eragon is at last able to rest, but a new invasion is imminent. As the battle begins, the Varden and the dwarves are pitted against an enormous army of Urgals, deployed by Durza and Galbatorix. During the battle, Eragon faces Durza again. Durza, having gravely wounded Eragon's back, is about to capture him but is distracted by Saphira and Arya, who break a large star sapphire Isidar Mithrim on the chamber's ceiling. Durza's attention is diverted long enough for Eragon to stab him in the heart with Zar'roc. After Durza's death, the Urgals are released from a spell which had been placed on them, and begin to fight among themselves. The Varden take advantage of this opportunity to make a counter-attack, forcing off the Urgals. While Eragon is unconscious, someone called 'The Cripple Who Is Whole' contacts him telepathically and tells Eragon to come to him for training in the forest of the Elves, Du Weldenvarden.
606784	/m/02vxny	Dark Tide: Onslaught	Michael A. Stackpole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the aftermath of the Second Battle of Helska, the New Republic believes that the Yuuzhan Vong threat is vanished. But the Skywalkers, Solos and their friends and allies find that this is not so; the Vong have yet to bring a dent of their forces into the galaxy. And in order to wage war against the invaders, the Jedi and their allies decide it'd be best to understand them. Leia Organa Solo, with her daughter Jaina and Danni Quee, work to bring various forces throughout the Outer Rim territories to unite against the threat of the Yuuzhan Vong, backed up by pockets of the New Republic military. Luke Skywalker takes his nephew Jacen Solo with him to Belkaden to find out what the Yuuzhan Vong have done there after the late Yomin Carr poisoned it for terraforming in the previous novel. Meanwhile, Jacen's brother, Anakin, is to take Luke's wife, Mara, to the planet Dantooine where she can find time to combat the Vong disease, brought upon secretly by Nom Anor, ravaging her insides. During that time, Mara will also train Anakin to look and use the Force in ways he never imagined as an apprentice. Elsewhere, Jedi Knights Corran Horn and Ganner Rhysode are assigned to the planet Bimmiel to find missing university students. On Belkaden, during Luke and Jacen's observation of Vong behaviors and routines, Jacen, in his sleep, sees a vision of himself saving various people by defeating several Vong warriors. He takes this vision as an omen that he must free the slaves that the Yuuzhan Vong are holding, and so he goes and confronts a few. He is easily beaten, however, and is strapped to the Embrace of Pain, a Vong torture device. He is soon implanted with a slave coral seed, but it isn't long before Luke saves him after fighting through and killing various Yuuzhan Vong warriors and snapping the coral seed out of his face. Luke then tells Jacen that they now must go to Dantooine, where Anakin and Mara are now on the run from Vong scouts. They get there and help them out in defeating the Yuuzhan Vong who intended to kill Mara and Anakin. On Bimmiel, Corran and Ganner find out that the missing university students are being held by two Yuuzhan Vong warriors, who are treating their slaves as much as those Vong on Belkaden do. The two Jedi go and save the students, but are then confronted by the Vong warriors. Corran orders Ganner to get the students out of there while he will take care of the Vong. He is able to dispatch both warriors, but at extensive injury. Fortunately, those injuries would not reach their full lethal potential, as Ganner would return to retrieve Corran so that they can leave the planet with the students. On Dantooine, refugees from the recently Yuuzhan Vong-conquered Dubrillion are settled down. But it isn't long before the Vong then arrive, launching the Battle of Dantooine, resulting in the loss of fifty percent of the New Republic's forces, but the losses are extensive for the Vong, too. Nevertheless, the Vong still win, and the New Republic evacuate what they can. The novel ends back on Bimmiel, where investigating Yuuzhan Vong, led by Commander Shedao Shai, discover the remains of the two dead Vong warriors, defeated by Corran. Shai takes a ndgin (a Vong creature made to sop up blood) and tastes it for Corran's spilled blood that was the result of his injuries. Shai vows that he will kill the Jedi responsible for his the deaths of his kinsmen (the Vong warriors who were killed thanks to Corran).
606789	/m/02vxpm	Dark Tide: Ruin	Michael A. Stackpole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the aftermath of the Battle of Dantooine in the previous novel, the New Republic is taking the Yuuzhan Vong threat more seriously. But so are the Jedi, most notably a rogue one named Daeshara'cor, whose lover, Miko Reglia, had perished during the Second Battle of Helska back in Vector Prime. Therefore, she elects to travel the galaxy to find a way to construct a super weapon to equal the power of the Death Stars, the Eye of Palpatine and Sun Crusher among others in order to eliminate the Vong. Knowing that such a genocidal ambition, even against an aggressively violent species, would lead a Jedi down the path of the dark side of the Force, Luke Skywalker and Anakin Solo decide to find Daeshara'cor and bring her back to the Order. With help from a man named Chalco, they succeed in retrieving Daeshara'cor and bringing her to her senses. In order to rally military support for the New Republic to counter the Yuuzhan Vong, the government sends Leia Organa Solo to negotiate with Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, leader of the Imperial Remnant. Pellaeon agrees to help the New Republic combat the Vong. Caamasi New Republic Senator Elegos A'Kla decides to allow himself to be taken by the Yuuzhan Vong so that by learning about their culture, he can find a way to bring peace between the New Republic and the Vong. He is taken to Commander Shedao Shai to learn of their ways. Corran Horn, Ganner Rhysode, and Jacen Solo embark on a mission on the Vong-held planet of Garqi with a group of Noghri commandos. When they battle Vong forces down on the planet, they find that the warriors die off because of a certain pollen that asphyxiates their armor. The Jedi and commandos learn that the pollen is native to the bafforr trees on the planet Ithor. Corran decides for the pollen to be burned, because if the Yuuzhan Vong figure out about the pollen that can asphyxiate their armor, they will invade Ithor as their next target. Despite the burning, the Vong figure out the source of what asphyxiated their armor anyway and elect to target Ithor. During the investigation of the Garqi battle, which Shedao Shai is leading, the Vong figure out that Corran Horn was among the Jedi in the strike force. After Shai figures out that Corran was the one who was responsible for the deaths of his kinsmen in the previous novel on Bimmiel, he also figures out that Corran and Elegos A'Kla are friends. Therefore, he decides to kill Elegos and sends his jewel-decorated remains to Corran to acknowledge their blood feud. Corran vows to avenge Elegos's death at all costs. The New Republic, Imperial Remnant, and by extension the Chiss Ascendancy rendezvous at Ithor to protect the planet against the invading Vong. The Battle of Ithor commences, with many dying on both sides, until it is later halted by Corran when he makes use of a Vong villip to contact Shedao Shai. They agree to stop the war for at least a galactic standard week, and by the end of that week, Corran and Shai will engage in a death duel to determine the fate of Ithor; if Corran wins, Ithor is spared; if Shai wins, Ithor is destroyed and he collects the remains of his slain kinsmen that Corran and Ganner took from Bimmiel. During this break in the war, Anakin visits Daeshara'cor at one of Ithor's hospitals, since she was mortally wounded in the battle; and it was because she had decided to save Anakin from an imminent Vong attack. Daeshara'cor tells Anakin that it wasn't his fault that she will die, just as it wasn't his fault that Chewbacca perished on Sernpidal, since he blamed himself because he flew the Millennium Falcon off to save everyone aboard. With that, Daeshara'cor dies and fades away into the Force. By the end of the week, Corran and Shai duel, and Corran wins by stabbing his Vong opponent with his lightsaber, killing him. Shai's personal assistant, Deign Lian, who bore witness to the battle for Shai just as Luke Skywalker bore witness to the duel for Corran, agrees to tell the Yuuzhan Vong to leave Ithor alone. However, when he takes control of the forces in Shai's stead, he orders for the planet to be poisoned under command from the warrior caste's leader Warmaster Tsavong Lah. In retaliation, the New Republic, Imperial Remnant and Chiss forces decimate the remainder of the Vong forces left in the battle. But it is too late; Ithor is gone. In the aftermath of the Battle of Ithor, the Yuuzhan Vong, despite their defeat, expand their forces to include more of the Outer Rim territories. The New Republic, Imperial Remnant and Chiss alliance dissolves. And Corran is called the destroyer of Ithor by the New Republic, despite his attempts to save the planet. Therefore, Corran elects to go into a self-imposed exile to his home planet of Corellia, since his guilt was more out of the fact that he felt himself plunge into the dark side of the Force briefly when he killed Shai in retaliation for Elegos A'Kla's death. He then tells those around him at his announcement of his self-imposed exile that, if the New Republic should ever call upon the killer of Ithor to help them counter the Yuuzhan Vong, then the war will truly have gone out of control for the side of good.
607364	/m/02vzjd	The Edible Woman	Margaret Atwood	1969-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Marian McAlpin works in a market research firm, writing survey questions and sampling products. She shares the top-floor apartment of a house in Toronto with her roommate Ainsley, and has a dependable (if boring) boyfriend, Peter. Marian also keeps in touch with Clara, a friend from college, who is now a constantly pregnant housewife. Ainsley announces she wants to have a baby&nbsp;– and intends to do it without getting married. When Marian is horrified, Ainsley replies, "The thing that ruins families these days is the husbands." Looking for a man who will have no interest in fatherhood, she sets her sights on Marian's "womanizer" friend Len, who is infamous for his relationships with young, naive girls. At work, Marian is assigned the task of gathering responses for a survey about a new type of beer. While walking from house to house asking people their opinions, she meets Duncan, an English graduate student who intrigues her with his atypical and eccentric answers. Marian later has a dinner date with Peter and Len, during which Ainsley shows up dressed as a virginal schoolgirl&nbsp;– the first stage of her plan to trick Len into impregnating her. Marian finds herself disassociating from her body as Peter recounts a gory rabbit hunt to Len: "After a while I noticed that a large drop of something wet had materialized on the table. I poked it with my finger and smudged it around a little before I realized with horror that it was a tear." Marian runs from the restaurant and is chased down by Peter in his car. Unaware of Ainsley&#39;s plan to get pregnant by Len, Peter chides, &#34;Ainsley behaved herself properly, why couldn&#39;t you?&#34; At the end of the night, Peter proposes to her. When asked to choose a date for the wedding, Marian slips into unexpected passivity: "'I’d rather have you decide that. I’d rather leave the big decisions up to you.’ I was astonished at myself. I’d never said anything remotely like that to him before. The funny thing was that I really meant it." Marian and Duncan have a surprise meeting in a laundromat, engage in awkward conversation, then share a kiss. Shortly afterwards, Marian&#39;s problems with food begin when she finds herself empathizing with a steak that Peter is eating, imagining it &#34;knocked on the head as it stood in a queue like someone waiting for a streetcar.&#34; After this, she is unable to eat meat – anything with &#34;bone or tendon or fiber&#34;. Ainsley&#39;s plot to seduce Len succeeds. When Len later learns that Ainsley is pregnant, he talks to Marian, who confesses that pregnancy was Ainsley&#39;s plan all along. Len reveals his childhood fear of eggs, and from that point Marian can no longer face her soft-boiled egg in the morning. Shortly thereafter, she is unable to eat vegetables or cake. Peter decides to throw a party, to which Marian invites &#34;the office virgins&#34; from her work, Duncan, and Duncan&#39;s roommates. Peter suggests that Marian buy herself a new dress for his party – something less &#34;mousy&#34; than her normal wardrobe. Marian submits to his wishes and buys a daring red dress. Before the party, Ainsley does Marian&#39;s makeup, including false eyelashes and a big lipsticked smile. When Duncan arrives, he says, &#34;You didn&#39;t tell me it was a masquerade. Who the hell are you supposed to be?&#34; He leaves and Marian follows. They end up going to a sleazy hotel, where they have unsatisfying sex. The next morning, they go out to breakfast and Marian finds that she cannot eat anything. After Duncan leaves, Marian realizes that Peter is metaphorically devouring her. To test him, she bakes a pink cake in the shape of a woman and dares him to eat it. &#34;This is what you really want&#34;, she says, offering the cake woman as a substitute to him feeding upon her. Peter leaves, disturbed. Marian eats the cake herself. Marian returns to her first person narrative in the closing pages of the book. Duncan shows up at her apartment; Marian offers him the remains of the cake, which he polishes off. &#34;&#39;Thank you,&#39; he said, licking his lips. &#39;It was delicious.&#39;&#34;
607536	/m/02v_1f	The Brothers Karamazov	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1880-11	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Book One: A Nice Little Family The opening of the novel introduces the Karamazov family and relates the story of their distant and recent past. The details of Fyodor's two marriages as well as his indifference to the upbringing of his three children is chronicled. The narrator also establishes the widely varying personalities of the three brothers and the circumstances that have led to their return to Fyodor's town. The first book concludes by describing the mysterious religious order of Elders to which Alyosha has become devoted. Book Two: An Inappropriate Gathering Book Two begins as the Karamazov family arrives at the local monastery so that the Elder Zosima can act as a mediator between Dmitri and his father Fyodor in their dispute over Dmitri's inheritance. It was the father's idea apparently as a joke to have the meeting take place in such a holy place in the presence of the famous Elder. Dmitri arrives late and the gathering soon degenerates and only exacerbates the feud between Dmitri and Fyodor. This book also contains a scene in which the Elder Zosima consoles a woman mourning the death of her three-year-old son. The poor woman's grief parallels Dostoyevsky's own tragedy at the loss of his young son Alyosha. Book Three: Sensualists The third book provides more details of the love triangle that has erupted between Fyodor, his son Dmitri, and Grushenka. Dmitri's personality is explored in the conversation between him and Alyosha as Dmitri hides near his father's home to see if Grushenka will arrive. Later that evening, Dmitri bursts into his father's house and assaults him while threatening to come back and kill him in the future. This book also introduces Smerdyakov and his origins, as well as the story of his mother, Stinking Lizaveta. At the conclusion of this book, Alyosha is witness to Grushenka's bitter humiliation of Dmitri's betrothed Katerina, resulting in terrible embarrassment and scandal for this proud woman. Book Four: Lacerations/Strains This section introduces a side story which resurfaces in more detail later in the novel. It begins with Alyosha observing a group of schoolboys throwing rocks at one of their sickly peers named Ilyusha. When Alyosha admonishes the boys and tries to help, Ilyusha bites Alyosha's finger. It is later learned that Ilyusha's father, a former staff-captain named Snegiryov, was assaulted by Dmitri, who dragged him by the beard out of a bar. Alyosha soon learns of the further hardships present in the Snegiryov household and offers the former staff captain money as an apology for his brother and to help Snegiryov's ailing wife and children. After initially accepting the money with joy, Snegiryov throws the money back at Alyosha out of pride and runs back into his home. Book Five: Pro and Contra Here, the rationalist and nihilistic ideology that permeated Russia at this time is defended and espoused passionately by Ivan Karamazov while meeting his brother Alyosha at a restaurant. In the chapter titled "Rebellion", Ivan proclaims that he rejects the world that God has created because it is built on a foundation of suffering. In perhaps the most famous chapter in the novel, "The Grand Inquisitor", Ivan narrates to Alyosha his imagined poem that describes a leader from the Spanish Inquisition and his encounter with Jesus, Who has made His return to earth. Here, Jesus is rejected by the Inquisitor who puts Him in jail and then says, The Grand Inquisitor says that Jesus should not have given humans the "burden" of free will. At the end of all these arguments, Jesus silently steps forward and kisses the old man on his lips. The Grand Inquisitor, stunned and moved, tells Him he must never come there again, and lets Him out. Alyosha, after hearing this story, goes to Ivan and kisses him softly, with an unexplainable emotion, on the lips. Ivan shouts with delight, because Alyosha's gesture is taken directly from his poem. The brothers then part. Book Six: The Russian Monk The sixth book relates the life and history of the Elder Zosima as he lies near death in his cell. Zosima explains he found his faith in his rebellious youth, in the middle of a duel, consequently deciding to become a monk. Zosima preaches people must forgive others by acknowledging their own sins and guilt before others. He explains that no sin is isolated, making everyone responsible for their neighbor's sins. Zosima represents a philosophy that responds to Ivan's, which had challenged God's creation in the previous book. Book Seven: Alyosha The book begins immediately following the death of Zosima. It is a commonly held perception in the town, and the monastery as well, that true holy men's bodies do not succumb to putrefaction. Thus, the expectation concerning the Elder Zosima is that his deceased body will not decompose. It comes as a great shock to the entire town that Zosima's body not only decays, but begins the process almost immediately following his death. Within the first day, the smell of Zosima's body is already unbearable. For many this calls into question their previous respect and admiration for Zosima. Alyosha is particularly devastated by the sullying of Zosima's name due to nothing more than the corruption of his dead body. One of Alyosha's companions in the monastery named Rakitin uses Alyosha's vulnerability to set up a meeting between him and Grushenka. However, instead of Alyosha becoming corrupted, he is able to earn fresh faith and hope from Grushenka, while Grushenka's troubled mind begins the path of spiritual redemption through his influence: they become close friends. The book ends with the spiritual regeneration of Alyosha as he embraces, kisses the earth outside the monastery (echoing, perhaps, Zosima's last earthly act before his death) and cries convulsively until finally going back out into the world, as Zosima instructed, renewed. Book Eight: Mitya This section deals primarily with Dmitri's wild and distraught pursuit of money so he can run away with Grushenka. Dmitri owes money to his fiancée Katerina and will believe himself to be a thief if he does not find the money to pay her back before embarking on his quest for Grushenka. This mad dash for money takes Dmitri from Grushenka's benefactor to a neighboring town on a fabricated promise of a business deal. All the while Dmitri is petrified that Grushenka may go to his father Fyodor and marry him because he already has the monetary means to satisfy her. When Dmitri returns from his failed dealing in the neighboring town, he escorts Grushenka to her benefactor's home, but quickly discovers she deceived him and left early. Furious, he runs to his father's home with a brass pestle in his hand, and spies on him from the window. He takes the pestle from his pocket. Then, there is a discontinuity in the action, and Dmitri is suddenly running away off his father's property, knocking the servant Gregory in the head with the pestle with seemingly fatal results. Dmitri is next seen in a daze on the street, covered in blood, with three thousand rubles in his hand. He soon learns that Grushenka's former betrothed has returned and taken her to a lodge near where Dmitri just was. Upon learning this, Dmitri loads a cart full of food and wine and pays for a huge orgy to finally confront Grushenka in the presence of her old flame, intending all the while to kill himself at dawn. The "first and rightful lover", however, is a boorish Pole who cheats the party at a game of cards. When his deception is revealed, he flees, and Grushenka soon reveals to Dmitri that she really is in love with him. The party rages on, and just as Dmitri and Grushenka are making plans to marry, the police enter the lodge and inform Dmitri that he is under arrest for the murder of his father. Book Nine: The Preliminary Investigation Book Nine introduces the details of Fyodor's murder and describes the interrogation of Dmitri as he is questioned for the crime he maintains he did not commit. The alleged motive for the crime is robbery. Dmitri was known to have been completely destitute earlier that evening, but is suddenly seen on the street with thousands of rubles shortly after his father's murder. Meanwhile, the three thousand rubles that Fyodor Karamazov had set aside for Grushenka has disappeared. Dmitri explains that the money he spent that evening came from three thousand rubles Katerina gave him to send to her sister. He spent half that at his first meeting with Grushenka—another drunken orgy—and sewed up the rest in a cloth, intending to give it back to Katerina in the name of honor, he says. The lawyers are not convinced by this. All of the evidence points against Dmitri; the only other person in the house at the time of the murder was Smerdyakov, who was incapacitated due to an epileptic seizure he apparently suffered the day before. As a result of the overwhelming evidence against him, Dmitri is formally charged with the patricide and taken away to prison to await trial. Book Ten: Boys Boys continues the story of the schoolboys and Ilyusha last referred to in Book Four. The book begins with the introduction of the young boy Kolya Krasotkin. Kolya is a brilliant boy who proclaims his atheism, socialism, and beliefs in the ideas of Europe. He seems destined to follow in the spiritual footsteps of Ivan Karamazov; Dostoyevsky uses Kolya's beliefs especially in a conversation with Alyosha to poke fun at his Westernizer critics by putting their beliefs in what appears to be a young boy who doesn't exactly know what he is talking about. Kolya is bored with life and constantly torments his mother by putting himself in danger. As part of a prank Kolya lies between railroad tracks as a train passes over and becomes something of a legend for the feat. All the other boys look up to Kolya, especially Ilyusha. Since the narrative left Ilyusha in Book Four, his illness has progressively worsened and the doctor states that he will not recover. Kolya and Ilyusha had a falling out over Ilyusha's maltreatment of a dog: Ilyusha had fed it bread in which there was a pin on Smerdyakov's suggestion. But thanks to Alyosha's intervention the other schoolboys have gradually reconciled with Ilyusha, and Kolya soon joins them at his bedside. It is here that Kolya first meets Alyosha and begins to reassess his nihilist beliefs. Book Eleven: Brother Ivan Fyodorovich Book Eleven chronicles Ivan Karamazov's destructive influence on those around him and his descent into madness. It is in this book that Ivan meets three times with Smerdyakov, the final meeting culminating in Smerdyakov's dramatic confession that he had faked the fit, murdered Fyodor Karamazov, and stolen the money, which he presents to Ivan. Smerdyakov expresses disbelief at Ivan's professed ignorance and surprise. Smerdyakov claims that Ivan was complicit in the murder by telling Smerdyakov when he would be leaving Fyodor's house, and more importantly by instilling in Smerdyakov the belief that in a world without God "everything is permitted." The book ends with Ivan having a hallucination in which he is visited by the devil, who torments Ivan by mocking his beliefs. Alyosha finds Ivan raving and informs him that Smerdyakov killed himself shortly after their final meeting. Book Twelve: A Judicial Error This book details the trial of Dmitri Karamazov for the murder of his father Fyodor. The courtroom drama is sharply satirized by Dostoyevsky. The men in the crowd are presented as resentful and spiteful, and the women are irrationally drawn to the romanticism of Dmitri's love triangle between himself, Katerina, and Grushenka. Ivan's madness takes its final hold over him and he is carried away from the courtroom after recounting his final meeting with Smerdyakov and the aforementioned confession. The turning point in the trial is Katerina's damning testimony against Dmitri. Impassioned by Ivan's illness which she believes is a result of her assumed love for Dmitri, she produces a letter drunkenly written by Dmitri saying that he would kill Fyodor. The section concludes with the impassioned closing remarks of the prosecutor and the defense, and the verdict that Dmitri is guilty. Epilogue The final section opens with discussion of a plan developed for Dmitri's escape from his sentence of twenty years of hard labor in Siberia. The plan is never fully described, but it seems to involve Ivan and Katerina bribing some guards. Alyosha approves, first, because Dmitry is not emotionally ready to submit to such a harsh sentence, secondly, because he is innocent, and, third, because no guards or officers would suffer for aiding the escape. Dmitry and Grushenka plan to escape to America and work the land there for several years, and then to return to Russia under assumed American names, because they both cannot imagine living without Russia. Dmitri begs for Katerina to visit him in the hospital, where he is recovering from an illness before he is due to be taken away. When she does, Dmitry apologizes for having hurt her; she in turn apologizes for bringing up the implicating letter during the trial. They agree to love each other for that one moment, and say they will love each other forever, even though both now love other people. The novel concludes at Ilyusha's funeral, where Ilyusha's schoolboy friends listen to Alyosha's "Speech by the Stone." Alyosha promises to remember Kolya, Ilyusha, and all the boys and keep them close in his heart, even though he will have to leave them and may not see them again until many years have passed. He implores them to love each other and to always remember Ilyusha, and to keep his memory alive in their hearts, and to remember this moment at the stone when they were all together and they all loved each other. In tears, the twelve boys promise Alyosha that they will keep each other in their memories forever, join hands, and return to the Snegiryov household for the funeral dinner, chanting, "Hurrah for Karamazov!"
608748	/m/02w2jc	Congo	Michael Crichton	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel starts with an abrupt end to an expedition sent by Earth Resource Technology Services Inc. in the dense rain forests of Congo when the team is attacked and killed by an unknown creature and all contact with them is lost. The expedition, searching for deposits of valuable diamonds, discovered the legendary lost city of Zinj (in Arabic Zinj or Zanj refers to the southern part of the East African coast). A video image taken by a camera there, and transmitted by satellite to the base station in Houston, shows a peculiar race of grey haired gorillas, to be responsible for the murders. Another expedition, led by Karen Ross, is launched to find out the truth and to find the city of Zinj, where there are believed to be deposits of a certain diamond, type IIb, which are naturally boron-doped and thus useful as semiconductors, though worthless as gemstones. This time the searchers bring along the famous White African mercenary Munro, as well as a female gorilla named Amy, who has been trained to communicate with humans using sign language, and her trainer Peter Elliot. Time is of the greatest essence, as a rival consortium of Japan, Germany, and Holland has also set off into the jungle after the diamonds, turning the entire expedition into a race to the city of Zinj. Unfortunately for Ross and her team, the American expedition encounters many delays along the way, including plane crashes, native civil wars, and jungle predators. Eventually, Ross and her expedition reach the City of Zinj and discover the consortium camp, like the original expedition's camp, in ruins and devoid of life. Ross and her team lose contact with the ERTS HQ due to a massive solar flare, then encounter the killer gorillas and are attacked. A brief battle ensues and several gorillas are killed. After studying the corpses and performing a rudimentary field autopsy, it is concluded the animals are not "true" gorillas by modern biological standards, but presumably a gorilla-chimpanzee or gorilla-human hybrid: their mass and height is closer to humans than gorillas, their skull is greatly malformed (the "ridge" that makes gorilla heads look "pointy" is nearly nonexistent) as well as their pigmentation is on the border of albinism: light gray fur and yellow eyes. In addition, they exhibit different behavior: they are much more aggressive, ruthless and partially nocturnal (attacks are always at night, yet a very large group was observed feeding during the day). Peter Elliot intends to name them Gorilla elliotensis after himself. Afterwards, Ross, Elliot, and Munro explore the ruins and discover that the killer gorillas were bred by the ancient inhabitants of Zinj to serve as guard dogs to protect the diamond mines from intruders. After several more attacks, Elliot, with the help of Amy, finds a way to translate the language of the new gorillas (she refers to them as "bad gorillas") and piece together three messages ("go away", "don't come", "here bad"); they stop fighting the humans and become confused, leaving the camp. Their victory is cut short by the eruption of the nearby volcano, accelerated by the explosives placed by Ross for her geological surveys, that buries the city, the diamond fields and all proof of the "new" species under 800 meters of lava. Ross, Elliot, Munro, and the rest of the team's survivors are forced to run for their lives. The team then manages to find a hot air balloon in a crashed consortium cargo aircraft and uses it to escape. In an epilogue, it is revealed that Munro was able to retrieve a few hundred carats of the valuable diamonds and sold them to Intel for use in a revolutionary new computer processor, while Amy was reintroduced into the wild and was later observed teaching her offspring sign language.
608775	/m/02w2m2	Agents of Chaos: Hero's Trial	James Luceno		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As the Yuuzhan Vong continue their invasion of the galaxy, their recent conquest of the library world of Obroa-skai yields them much information of the galaxy that they are invading. They learn of the potential threat that the Jedi pose against them, and decide to send in an infiltrator in the form of their Priestess Elan. Elan's mission will be to carry lethal bo'tous spores (a bio-weapon developed by Nom Anor) in her lungs so that she will unleash it upon as many Jedi as she can. To do that, she will have to pose as a defector from the Vong who sees the error of her species' ways. Coming with her is her pet and familiar, Vergere. Meanwhile, Han Solo is still grieving over the loss of his best friend, Chewbacca, who perished on Sernpidal back in Vector Prime. In his grief, he separates himself from his friends and family to be alone. His isolation brings him into contact with his smuggler mentor, Roa, who tells him that he has information regarding a new galactic party called the Peace Brigade. The Brigade strives to help the Yuuzhan Vong against the New Republic in whatever way possible. One of Han's fellow smugglers, Reck Desh, is a leader of a Peace Brigade cell. To find out about Desh's whereabouts, the two of them travel to the Jubilee Wheel, a space station in orbit over the planet Ord Mantell. There, they meet with their contact, Fasgo. Fasgo divulges that one of Reck Desh's next operation will be at Bilbringi. The trio, however, are then harassed by a rival of Han's, a rival named Bossk and his cronies. Bossk provokes Han into a bar fight after saying something bad about Wookiees, particularly about Chewbacca. Roa and Fasgo are forced into the fight as a result, and they, along with Bossk and his group, are thrown into a jail cell for their trouble. Han, Roa, and Fasgo are soon released by Boss Bunji, another comrade of Han's in his glory days. Bunji released Han because he felt that he owed him after his wife, Leia, killed Jabba the Hutt more than two decades earlier, toppling his empire and allowing Bunji's business to grow. Before any more can happen, however, Ord Mantell is attacked by the Yuuzhan Vong in order to help further Elan's ploy that she and Vergere are defectors from the Vong (Elan previously divulged to New Republic Intelligence that Ord Mantell would be a target). The Jubilee Wheel is soon attacked by one of the Vong's creature-weapons, an ychna, which sucks up many people from the Wheel, including Roa and Fasgo. Han is able to escape aboard a weaponless shuttle craft with Droma, a member of a species called the Ryn and several other people. Han uses his piloting skills and the structure of the Jubilee Wheel against attacking Yuuzhan Vong coralskippers to destroy them, and land it safely on Ord Mantell when the Vong retreat to give the illusion that they have given up in their attack. Han then takes a pleasure yacht called the Queen of Empire, as it is heading to Bilbringi, so that he can confront Reck Desh. Meanwhile, New Republic Intelligence sneaks Elan and Vergere aboard the same yacht for Coruscant. However, Reck Desh is soon informed by an anonymous source who tells him of Elan and Vergere's whereabouts. However, both Desh and the source are unaware of Elan and Vergere's true allegiance; thus, they believe that Elan and Vergere are genuine traitors to the Yuuzhan Vong. So, at the Queen of Empires stop at Bilbringi, Desh's Peace Brigade forces attack the pleasure yacht and attempt to kidnap Elan and Vergere. Han and Droma, who have become mutual friends during their stay aboard the Queen of Empire, are handed over Elan and Vergere by the NRI members guarding them after informing them of the situation. Desh nevertheless captures Han, Droma, Elan, and Vergere, and leaves the former two to die by dropping them down a turbolift shaft while kidnapping the latter two to return to their masters. Meanwhile, the Yuuzhan Vong soon find out that Desh's operation will foil their plan against the Jedi, so they send a sizable force in to try to prevent Desh and his forces from taking away Elan and Vergere. The New Republic military soon arrives to deal with the threat brought on by both the Yuuzhan Vong and the Peace Brigade, launching the First Battle of Bilbringi. Back aboard the Queen of Empire, thanks to Droma's tail, he and Han survive the fall down the turbolift shaft. Then they go after Desh's ship with the Millennium Falcon, brought to them by Luke Skywalker, his wife Mara, and Han's wife Leia amidst the battle. They dock with Desh's ship, only to find the entire dead of some kind of infection and Elan and Vergere still alive. Han and Droma bring Elan and Vergere aboard the Millennium Falcon, but it isn't long before Han deduces Elan's true allegiance after picking up subtle clues that divulged that her loyalties still lay with her masters. Thus, Elan tries to kill Han by using the last of her bo'tous spores on him, acknowledging her mission to kill as many Jedi as possible a failure, but Elan is denied even that victory when both she and Han stumble into a sealed room and Han pulls on a breathing mask that protects him against the spores. Elan dies while Vergere escapes in an escape pod; but not before she gives Han a vial of her tears, which she tells to give to Mara Jade Skywalker to help her heal from her disease. With that, the Millennium Falcon escapes from getting blasted to atoms by the Yuuzhan Vong forces who are now aware of Elan's death and return safely to the New Republic forces. After the New Republic is informed of Elan's deceit, Han agrees to help Droma find his family, who are now refugees scattered across the galaxy thanks to the Yuuzhan Vong War.
608788	/m/02w2pl	Agents of Chaos: Jedi Eclipse	James Luceno		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel focuses around several stories that eventually intertwine in the climax. The first story focuses on Han Solo and his new friend and copilot Droma seeking the latter's displaced family throughout the war-torn galaxy. They eventually come across the planet Ruan, which is planning to destroy all of its servant droids in order to appease the Yuuzhan Vong. Han and Droma foil this plan, and one of the droids tells Han what the Vong's next target planet is. Meanwhile, the Yuuzhan Vong have allied with the Hutt Empire for more convenient invasions. However, the Hutts are secretly double-crossing the Vong to the New Republic, and are subtly providing the latter government the former's plans. The Yuuzhan Vong know of the Hutts' betrayal and are intentionally misleading their supposed allies in order to dupe the New Republic itself as to the truth of their next target world. Two supposed targets are Corellia and Bothawui. The latter is heavily fortified in defense of an invasion while the former is set to appear nearly defenseless, but has a secret weapon at its side: Centerpoint Station. The station can only be activated through Anakin Solo's DNA since he shut Centerpoint down years earlier. In order to counter the Yuuzhan Vong's relentless invasion of the galaxy, Ambassador Leia Organa Solo bids the Hapes Consortium to join the war against the Vong. Queen Mother Tenenial Djo and her husband Prince Isolder agree to this despite the reluctance of other influential parties within the Consortium, and they arm their military to fight the Vong. Ultimately, the Yuuzhan Vong's next target planet isn't either Corellia or Bothawui, but the shipyards of Fondor. The Hutts openly betray the Vong as a result and fully side with the combined forces of the New Republic and Hapes Consortium. However, Cetnerpoint Station is already activated, and even though Anakin Solo refuses to use it, his ambitious first cousin, Thrackan Sal-Solo, uses it to fire right into the Fondor system. Though it decimates two-thirds of the Vong forces, it's also a tragedy for the New Republic and Hapes forces alike. Nevertheless, the Battle of Fondor is considered a victory for the New Republic, and Droma reunites with his family. But the Hapes Consortium backs out of the war and Tenenial Djo miscarries her next child due to the disturbance she felt through the Force as a result of all the lives suddenly lost thanks to Centerpoint. The surviving refugees in the aftermath of Fondor, including Droma and his family, are transported to Duro as a safe haven from the Vong... for now.
608858	/m/02w2z5	Looking Backward	Edward Bellamy	1888	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The book tells the story of Julian West, a young American who, towards the end of the 19th century, falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up one hundred and thirteen years later. He finds himself in the same location (Boston, Massachusetts), but in a totally changed world: It is the year 2000 and, while he was sleeping, the United States has been transformed into a socialist utopia. The remainder of the book outlines Bellamy's thoughts about improving the future. The major themes include problems associated with capitalism, a proposed socialist solution of a nationalisation of all industry, the use of an "industrial army" to organise production and distribution, as well as how to ensure free cultural production under such conditions. The young man readily finds a guide, Doctor Leete, who shows him around and explains all the advances of this new age; including drastically reduced working hours for people performing menial jobs and almost instantaneous, Internet-like delivery of goods. Everyone retires with full benefits at age 45, and may eat in any of the public kitchens. The productive capacity of America is nationally owned, and the goods of society are equally distributed to its citizens. A considerable portion of the book is dialogue between Leete and West wherein West expresses his confusion about how the future society works and Leete explains the answers using various methods, such as metaphors or direct comparisons with 19th-century society. Although Bellamy's novel did not discuss technology or the economy in detail, commentators frequently compare Looking Backward with actual economic and technological developments. For example, Julian West is taken to a store which (with its descriptions of cutting out the middleman to cut down on waste in a similar way to the consumers' cooperatives of his own day based on the Rochdale Principles of 1844) somewhat resembles a modern warehouse club like BJ's, Costco, or Sam's Club. He additionally introduces a concept of credit cards in chapters 9, 10, 11, 13, 25, and 26, but these bear no resemblance to the instruments of debt-finance. All citizens receive an equal amount of "credit." Those with more difficult, specialized, dangerous or unpleasant jobs work fewer hours. Bellamy also predicts both sermons and music being available in the home through cable "telephone". Bellamy labeled the philosophy behind the vision "nationalism", and his work inspired the formation of more than 160 Nationalist Clubs to propagate his ideas. Despite the "ethical" character of his socialism (though he was initially loath to use the term "socialism"), Bellamy's ideas somewhat reflect classical Marxism. In Chapter 19, for example, he has the new legal system explained. Most civil suits have ended in socialism, while crime has become a medical issue. The idea of atavism, then current, is employed to explain crimes not related to inequality (which Bellamy thinks will vanish with socialism). Remaining criminals are medically treated. One professional judge presides, appointing two colleagues to state the prosecution and defense cases. If all do not agree on the verdict, then it must be tried over. Chapter 15 and 16 have an explanation of how free, independent public art and news outlets could be provided in a more libertarian socialist system. In one case Bellamy even writes "the nation is the sole employer and capitalist".
610417	/m/02w82z	Witches Abroad	Terry Pratchett	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following the death of the witch Desiderata Hollow, Magrat Garlick is sent her magic wand, for Desiderata was not only a witch, but also a Fairy Godmother. Having given the wand to Magrat, she effectively makes Magrat the new Fairy Godmother to a young woman called Emberella. Sadly, Desiderata does not give Magrat any instruction on the use of the wand, so pretty much anything that Magrat points it at becomes a pumpkin. This leaves several animals around Magrat's cottage now as pumpkins, one of which still thinks it is a stoat. Desiderata had promised Emberella previously that she will not marry the Duke, who's really a prince/frog. and now it is up to Magrat and her companions to ensure that Emberella does not marry the Duke, despite the desires of another Witch in Genua called Lily, Desiderata's counterpart. She used the power of her own reflection to capture Genua. The journey to Genua takes some time and involves numerous mis-adventures, many of which resemble or parody well-known fairytales. Upon arrival in Genua, Magrat goes to meet Emberella, whilst the two older witches meet Erzulie Gogol, a voodoo witch and her zombie servant, Baron Saturday (who was also her late lover). It is at this time that Magrat finds out that Emberella has two Fairy Godmothers, Magrat and Lilith. It was Lilith who had manipulated many of the various stories that the Witches had traveled through and who was now manipulating Genua itself, wrapping the city around her version of the Cinderella story. Lilith has had people arrested for crimes against stories, including the arrest of a toymaker for not being jolly, not whistling and not telling the children stories. Using hypnosis, Granny convinces Magrat to attend a Masked Ball in place of Emberella. Emberella's dress fits, but the glass slippers do not. After enjoying themselves for a while at the ball the witches are discovered and are cast into a dungeon. At that point, Emberella, Mrs. Gogol and Baron Saturday arrive at the Ball, having broken the witches out of their prison. A high concentration of Magic causes the Duke to revert to his frog form, and he is trampled by Baron Saturday causing Lilith to flee. Granny starts to follow, but Mrs. Gogol tries to stop her using a voodoo doll, wanting to kill Lilith. Granny uses Mrs Gogol's own belief in the power of the voodoo doll to make the voodoo doll burst into flames when Granny thrusts her own arm into a flaming torch. Granny Weatherwax then pursues Lilith. Emberella is informed that, as the daughter of the late Baron Saturday, (who was the former Duke in Genua), she is now ruler of Genua. Her first command is to end the Ball, (she dislikes them,) and attend the Mardi Gras parade, a form of binge drinking carnival. Granny manages to defeat Lilith by trapping her in a mirror, and the three Witches return home. Granny shows Magrat how to use the wand to do magic, that it takes more than wishing. Magrat throws the wand into a river, to be lost forever. Then the Witches go home, the long way and see an elephant.
610437	/m/02w86p	Lords and Ladies	Terry Pratchett	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the end of Witches Abroad, Magrat Garlick, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax (and Greebo) left Genua bound for home, in Lancre. Lords and Ladies begins as they arrive back. Magrat makes her way to Lancre Castle, where she meets King Verence II of Lancre with whom she has a definite understanding that they may want to be in a relationship. However, he surprises her by informing her that the two of them are about to be married, and that he has arranged the whole wedding, including things such as the Wedding dress, guest list, entertainment, date and time without her involvement. Following an argument with Granny Weatherwax, Magrat moves into Lancre Castle with Verence (though not in the same room - yet) prior to the wedding, ignoring any question of scandal. Granny discovers that there has been some sort of magic performed at a circle of stones, on the edge of Lancre. These stones contain "the love of iron", which attracts all iron to them, preventing any iron from passing through. This circle is also a gateway between the Discworld and the land of the Elves. Usually, this gateway is strong, but at certain times, known as "Circle Time", the barrier becomes less potent. Circle time is easily recognised by the arrival of crop circles in areas near to the stone circle. It is implied that if a crop circle should open inside the stone circle, the barrier would collapse. Granny and Nanny Ogg discover that the young women practising witchcraft near the stone circle are local girls led by Diamanda Tockley, and including Agnes Nitt (who will become a witch in a later story). The two elderly witches try to convince them to stop, but they are ignored and eventually, Diamanda runs through the stone circle into the Land of the Elves, followed by Granny Weatherwax. When the two see the Elves for what they really are, they attempt to escape, but Diamanda is shot by a stone-tipped arrow. Granny picks her up and they escape into Lancre, followed by an Elf who manages to escape as well. Just as the elf is about to kill Granny, he is knocked out by Nanny Ogg who arrives just in time. Granny and Nanny take Diamanda and the captured Elf to Lancre castle, where Granny leaves Diamanda to the nursing of Magrat. They then put the Elf in the castle dungeon, surrounded by iron, since Elves hate the touch of iron as it limits their power. Shawn Ogg, guard, privy cleaner, fanfare blower and general (or Private) dogsbody of Lancre castle is given the task of keeping the Elf locked up and Diamanda safe from the Elves, whilst the guests to the wedding of Magrat and Verence go to see the Entertainment (a play), which is unexpectedly staged near the stone circle. The three Witches are not at the Entertainment for different reasons; Magrat does not go because she has found a letter in Verence's bedroom which angers her (the details of the letter are not disclosed at this point), Granny does not go because she has been whisked away from the Castle in a moment of passion by Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University who is a guest at the wedding (he has brought the Librarian, Ponder Stibbons and The Bursar along as well) and who was a former love interest for Granny in their (much) younger days and Nanny has been taken out to dinner by Casanunda (whom she first met during Witches Abroad). The play causes sufficient belief that the barrier in the stone circle is broken and the Elves come through. Using a kind of hypnosis, they coerce the Lancrastrians to pull down the stone circle and take control of Verence, whom the Queen of the Elves intends to marry in order to make her rule of Lancre official. Magrat, having escaped from the Castle (where she was chased by the Elf after it was released by the hypnotised Diamanda Tockley) arrives in a suit of armour belonging to a previous Queen of Lancre called Ynci (the Short-Tempered). She attacks the Elf Queen, but is beaten. Granny, who has been captured by the Elves attacks the Queen with magic, but it seems to overcome her and she collapses to the ground, whereon her bees swarm from their hive and land on the prone body. Since the Queen's attention is taken up by Granny Weatherwax, her hold on Magrat is lessened. The young Queen-to-be attacks the Elf Queen and, with help from the Elf Queen's real husband (who was called on to help by Nanny Ogg and Casanunda) the Elf Queen is defeated and the Elves vanish back to their land. Granny Weatherwax appears to be dead and the two remaining witches go to her cottage to look around and read her will. However, they find a note, left by Granny, which indicates that she may, in fact, still be alive. They rush back to the Castle and break a window, upon which Grannys' bees land on her again. It transpires that she has been "borrowing" the hive mind of the bees to escape the Elf Queen and give Magrat her chance to defeat her. Granny is the first witch to successfully "borrow" the hive mind, since this involves splitting your mind over dozens of bees (as opposed to borrowing the single mind of other animals). Magrat and Verence are married (despite the letter, which was written by Granny whilst the three witches were away, urging him to organise the marriage to Magrat, so as to stop her from getting in the way of her own life). Later, the playwright, Hwel arrives and writes a play based on the story (ignoring the parts that were too expensive to put on a stage, or which he didn't believe). He called the play the "Taming of the Vole", since he didn't think anyone would want to see a play called "Things that happened on a midsummer night".
610566	/m/02w8r_	The Royal Game	Stefan Zweig			 Driven to mental anguish as the result of total isolation by the National Socialists, Dr.&nbsp;B, a monarchist hiding valuable assets of the nobility from the new regime, maintains his sanity only through the theft of a book of past masters' chess games which he plays endlessly, voraciously learning each one until they overwhelm his imagination to such an extent that he becomes consumed by chess. After absorbing every single move of any variation in the book, and having nothing more to explore, Dr.&nbsp;B begins to play the game against himself, developing the ability to separate his psyche into two personas: I&nbsp;(White) and I&nbsp;(Black). This psychological conflict causes him to ultimately suffer a breakdown, after which he eventually awakens in a sanatorium. Being saved by a sympathetic physician, who attests his insanity to keep him from being imprisoned again by the Nazis, he is finally set free. After happening to be on the same cruise liner as a group of chess enthusiasts and the world chess champion Czentovic, he incidentally stumbles across their game against the champion. Mirko Czentovic was a peasant prodigy possessing no obvious redeeming qualities besides his gift for chess. Dr.&nbsp;B helps the chess enthusiasts in managing to draw their game in an almost hopeless position. After this effort, they persuade him to play alone against Czentovic. In a stunning demonstration of his imaginative and combinational powers, Dr.&nbsp;B sensationally beats the world champion. Czentovic immediately demands a return game to restore his honour. But this time, having sensed that Dr.&nbsp;B played quite fast and hardly took time to think, he tries to irritate his opponent by taking a lot of time before making a move, thereby putting psychological pressure on Dr.&nbsp;B, who gets more and more impatient as the game proceeds. His greatest power turns out to be his greatest weakness: he reenacts the match in his mind repeatedly with all imaginable possibilities so rapidly that Czentovic's deliberation and placidness drive him to distraction and ultimately insanity, culminating in an incorrect move after which Dr.&nbsp;B awakens from his frenzy.
610602	/m/02w8vz	Nostromo	Joseph Conrad	1904	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nostromo is set in the South American country of Costaguana (a fictional nation, though its geography as described in the book closely matches real-life Colombia). Costaguana has a long history of tyranny, revolution and warfare, but has recently experienced a period of stability under the dictator Ribiera. Charles Gould is a native Costaguanero of English descent who owns an important silver-mining concession near the key port of Sulaco. He is tired of the political instability in Costaguana and its concomitant corruption, and uses his wealth to support Ribiera's government, which he believes will finally bring stability to the country after years of misrule and tyranny by self-serving dictators. Instead, Gould's refurbished silver mine and the wealth it has generated inspires a new round of revolutions and self-proclaimed warlords, plunging Costaguana into chaos. Among others, the revolutionary Montero invades Sulaco; Gould, adamant that his silver should not become spoil for his enemies, orders Nostromo, the trusted "capataz de los cargadores" (head longshoreman) of Sulaco, to take it offshore so it can be sold into international markets. Nostromo is an Italian expatriate who has risen to his position through his daring exploits. ("Nostromo" is Italian for "shipmate" or "boatswain", but the name could also be considered a corruption of the Italian phrase "nostro uomo," meaning "our man.") Nostromo's real name is Giovanni Battista Fidanza — Fidanza meaning "trust" in archaic Italian. Nostromo is a commanding figure in Sulaco, respected by the wealthy Europeans and seemingly limitless in his abilities to command power among the local population. He is, however, never admitted to become a part of upper-class society, but is instead viewed by the rich as their useful tool. He is believed by Charles Gould and his own employers to be incorruptible, and it is for this reason that Nostromo is entrusted with removing the silver from Sulaco to keep it from the revolutionaries. Nostromo's power and fame continues to grow, as he daringly rides over the mountains to summon the army which saves Sulaco's powerful leaders from the revolutionaries. In Conrad's universe, however, almost no one is incorruptible. The exploit does not bring Nostromo the fame he had hoped for, and he feels slighted and used. Feeling that he has risked his life for nothing, he is consumed by resentment, which leads to his corruption and ultimate destruction, for he has kept secret the true fate of the silver after all others believed it lost at sea. In recovering the silver for himself, he is shot and killed, mistaken for a trespasser, by the father of his fiancée, the keeper of the lighthouse on the island of Great Isabel.
610620	/m/02w8x4	The Well of Lost Plots	Jasper Fforde	2003	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Apprentice JurisFiction agent and SpecOps-27 operative Thursday Next is taking a much-needed vacation inside Caversham Heights, a never-published detective novel inside the Well of Lost Plots, while waiting for her child to be born (she's pregnant although her husband Landen was erased from existence by the ChronoGuard in the previous book). As a cover, she must pretend to be the character she is replacing. In the book, she encounters two Generics, students of St Tabularasa's who have yet to be assigned to a book, and DCI Jack Spratt, a detective who partners with her in investigating a murder. Since Thursday is an "Outlander", a "real" person rather than a fictional character, Spratt hopes that she will help them appeal to the Council of Genres to prevent the disassembling of Caversham Heights, a fate inevitable for books which languish unpublished in the 'real' world. Using a Caversham Heights as her base of operations, Thursday continues her apprenticeship with Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. Not only is a fictional character &mdash; Yorrick Kaine, the "discoverer" of Shakespeare's lost play Cardenio in the last book &mdash; loose in Thursday's real world, a person from Thursday's world has entered the BookWorld and is conspiring with Kaine and Text Grand Central, the final arbitrators of plot, setting, and other story elements, to release BOOK version 9, code-named UltraWord. UltraWord is touted at a JurisFiction meeting as the greatest advance "since the invention of movable type" because it creates a thirty-two plot story system and allows the reader to control the story. Thursday slowly loses her memory of Landen, though Granny Next remains with her and keeps her from forgetting him completely. Aornis Hades, the villainess, who nearly covered the world in Dream Topping in Lost in a Good Book, is present in her memory as a mindworm. Thursday learns that Harris Tweed, Kaine's partner, is masquerading as a JurisFiction agent to get UltraWord released in order to fix literature. At the 923rd Annual BookWorld awards, Thursday proves to the seven million fictional characters assembled that UltraWord will render literature merely a saleable commodity &mdash; the thrice-read rule renders an UltraWord book impossible to read by a fourth person after the volume has been read by three people, thus rendering libraries and second-hand bookstores useless. The quality of the writing is also substantively poorer; Thursday produces two skylarks, one from a non-UltraWord book that is described vividly and poetically, and the other from an UltraWord book that is described flat and literally. Tweed and Kaine call for a vote before the audience can be convinced that Thursday's is the correct argument. In this unprecedented emergency, Thursday breaks open the "IN UNPRECEDENTED EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS" in her JurisFiction operative TravelBook and pulls the handle. The Great Panjandrum, ruler of the BookWorld, appears (a literal Deus ex machina). The Panjandrum calls for an immediate vote which goes against UltraWord and calls on Thursday to take the job of Bellman, the superintendent of JurisFiction. The two Generics, now calling themselves Randolph and Lola, Thursday, and her pet dodo Pickwick take R&R in Caversham Heights, which was bought by the Council of Genres as a character sanctuary &mdash; a solution that appeals to the residents of the novel as well as the nursery rhyme characters who were going to go on strike. The story of the new Caversham Heights constitutes Fforde's fifth book, The Big Over Easy. The American edition of The Well of Lost Plots has an extra chapter documenting the weathering of a WordStorm during Thursday's tenure as Bellman. The story continues in Something Rotten. *Thursday Next *Pickwick *Randolph *Lola *Harris Tweed *The Great Panjandrum *Aornis Hades *Granny Next *Landen Parke-Laine *Bellman de:Im Brunnen der Manuskripte fr:Le Puits des histoires perdues it:Il pozzo delle trame perdute
611256	/m/02wc8y	Tom a Lincoln				 Part I begins with the story of Tom's birth: he is the product of an illicit affair between King Arthur and Angelica, the Lord Mayor of London's daughter. To conceal their adultery, Arthur and Angelica secretly send their child to be raised by Antonio, a Lincolnshire shepherd. The shepherd raises Tom as his own, but Tom's innate nobility leads him to seek adventure as the "Red Rose Knight." He leads a life of crime before his adoptive father berates him and reveals that he was a foundling. Arthur, who realizes that Tom is his son, sends his knights Lancelot, Tristram, and Triamour to bring him to court. Tom is immediately made a Knight of the Round Table, but Arthur does not reveal his identity. Tom woos the court with his feats of martial valor, culminating with his success in England's war against Portugal. He then sets out with a company of knights on an adventure to find his parents. Tom's ship lands on an island called Fairy Land, inhabited entirely by women. Tom sleeps with the queen, Celia, but is compelled to return to his quest. He sets out, vowing to return. Back on the ship, Lancelot tells the tale of the great love between a young girl and prince Valentine of Greece. At length the ship comes to Prester John's kingdom, where Tom defends the king against a dragon before making off with his daughter Anglitora. Tom attempts to return to Fairy Land, where Celia has given birth to his son, who will later be known as the Faerie Knight. They get within sight of the island, but a trick of the tides prevents the ship from landing. Thinking she is abandoned, Celia pins a note to her chest and drowns herself in the sea. Tom's crew recovers her body and sails back to England, where they bury her with full honors. Part II largely undermines the action and motifs of Part I. A dying Arthur reveals his adultery with Angelica, and Tom's parentage is revealed. When Anglitora finds out he is illegitimate, she kills him. His spirit goes on to tell the Black Knight her deed and he in turn kills her. Both the Black Knight and the Faerie Knight end up traveling together on many adventures. fr:Tom a'Lincoln
612197	/m/02wgw2	Recovery	Troy Denning		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Following the savage Yuuzhan Vong conquest of Duro, Leia Organa Solo barely clings to life, having endured the vicious torture of the alien invaders. Her husband, Han Solo, rushes her to safety, but in a galaxy ready to blame the Jedi for the alien scourge, finding a refuge is nearly impossible. With bounty hunters in close pursuit, Solo has little choice but to head to Coruscant, but even the New Republic capital is no haven from anti-Jedi sentiment and treachery.
612223	/m/02wgxw	Edge of Victory: Conquest	Gregory Keyes		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Following the events of Balance Point, the Yuuzhan Vong have agreed to halt their galactic invasion in exchange for all of the Jedi being brought to them, dead or alive. One of the Vong's targets is the Jedi praxeum on Yavin 4. Going against direct orders from his uncle and Jedi Master, Luke Skywalker, and the New Republic itself, Anakin Solo travels to Yavin 4 in order to help his fellow Jedi escape. He makes it just in time to help them escape the Peace Brigade occupation, though his best friend, Tahiri Veila, is captured. He decides to go back and save her, and is enlisted the help of a Shamed Yuuzhan Vong named Vua Rapuung. As Rapuung reveals, a Shamed One in Vong society is an outcast, and he has been Shamed because his biology had rejected the ritual Vong implants. He knows, however, that the shaper, which is the equivalent of a scientist in the Yuuzhan Vong, intentionally Shamed him as punishment for turning her down as a mate. So Rapuung teams up with Anakin so that they can accomplish their respective goals; Anakin will get to save Tahiri while Rapuung will seek vengeance on the shaper who shamed him. Meanwhile, Tahiri is tortured and shaped by Master Shaper Mezhan Kwaad and her assistant Nen Yim in a secret heretical practice meant to brainwash Tahiri into believing that she is a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. This way, she will become the first Jedi-Vong hybrid. Anakin and Rapuung later arrive at the shaper damutek that replaced the Jedi praxeum in the wake of the Yuuzhan Vong's occupation. With the both of them disguised in order to infiltrate the compound, Anakin is able to replace the destroyed crystal of his lightsaber (the lightsaber's crystal was damaged in a previous confrontation with the Yuuzhan Vong) with one of the Vong's own lambents (light-creatures). With this, Anakin is now able to sense the Yuuzhan Vong in a whole new way that exists outside the Force, albeit this new sense only gives Anakin a rather fuzzy look at the Vong. When Mezhan Kwaad and Nen Yim's heretical experiments on Tahiri is discovered, the three of them are taken to a ship to be transported off of Yavin 4. Anakin and Rapuung make their move to accomplish their goals, and Rapuung is able to coerce Kwaad into revealing the heresy she performed by intentionally Shaming him. Not only does Kwaad admit to this, but she even expresses her atheism, something that shocks the onlooking Vong crowd. Kwaad is able to kill her captors, mortally wound Rapuung, and injures Anakin, but a brainwashed Tahiri uses a lightsaber to decapitate Kwaad. Anakin then guides Tahiri back to her senses by reminding her of who she is and expressing his true feelings of love for her. Rapuung, meanwhile, offers to sacrifice his own life against the nearby Vong warriors in order to allow Anakin and Tahiri to escape, as a token of his gratitude of helping him accomplish his goal of exposing Kwaad. Rapuung dies against the attacking warriors while Anakin and Tahiri escape. They, along with the other non-Vong occupants of Yavin 4, are soon rescued from the moon and transported out of the system thanks to the help of Talon Karrde. The novel ends with Nen Yim secretly promising herself to continue Mezhan Kwaad's work in order to help the Yuuzhan Vong.
612229	/m/02wgyk	Edge of Victory: Rebirth	Gregory Keyes		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel focuses on five separate stories. The first story concentrates on the adventure that Anakin Solo, Tahiri Veila, and Corran Horn all have. On a routine cargo pickup for the Errant Venture on the planet Eriadu, Anakin and Tahiri encounter a Jedi named Kelbis Nu, who is being attacked by Yuuzhan Vong supporters. Despite Anakin and Tahiri's efforts in helping him, Nu dies, but before he does, he is able to whisper to Anakin, "Yag'Dhul." For their trouble, Anakin and Tahiri are arrested by the pro-Vong police of Eriadu, but escape and manage to leave the planet in time with Corran. However, they can't make it back to the Errant Venture in time, for it has to respond to a call from Luke Skywalker himself. Luke and his wife Mara, meanwhile, are declared by the New Republic to be wanted fugitives, in response to the pressure that the Yuuzhan Vong put on the Jedi. What's worse is that as Mara carries her and Luke's baby, the deadly coomb spore virus that had previously affected her returns, and threatens to kill her and the child. With the help of some of their fellow Jedi and the Errant Venture, they are able to escape Coruscant. Afterwards, Luke sends Jaina Solo to find and meet up with Kyp Durron in order to tell him that Luke has finally made a decision regarding the stance that the Jedi overall should take in the Yuuzhan Vong War. Back with Anakin, Tahiri, and Corran, they are left to escape from the Eriadu system by themselves, and when they revert from a hyperspace corridor, they end up in the midst of a Yuuzhan Vong fleet. They manage to infiltrate one of the Vong's ships as the fleet prepares to go into darkspace. They end up in the Yag'Dhul system, and after a brief battle, Anakin, Tahiri, and Corran escape from the Vong's midst in order to rendezvous with the indigenous population. The attacking Vong fleet quickly pulls back, and it becomes obvious that they were merely but a recon force for a much larger invasion of Yag'Dhul. That invasion soon comes as infiltrating Yuuzhan Vong, led by Nom Anor, make their move, but despite their actions, the invasion fails in light of the overall Vong fleet going into darkspace to deal with another problem elsewhere. That other problem came as a result of Jaina Solo's meeting with Kyp Durron. Kyp tells Jaina that he has scouted the Sernpidal for some months now and has discovered the Yuuzhan Vong have been using the time offered to them in the wake of the galactic invasion's halt in order to build a giant superweapon that could threaten the stability of the New Republic. They take it to the Republic military, where the likes of General Wedge Antilles and Admiral Traest Kre'fey take a minimum number of ships to help Kyp's forces in taking on the apparent superweapon in Sernpidal. In the wake of the Republic's attack in the Julevian system, it prompted the invasion fleet at Yag'Dhul to pull back in order to help the defending forces at Sernpidal. But their response to the call for help comes too late, as their enemies manage to destroy the apparent superweapon. But in the midst of the supposed superweapon's destruction, Jaina discovers that it was merely a developing worldship that had no Yuuzhan Vong warriors, but civilians. Kyp justifies this by saying that it was meant to get back at the Vong for attacking the New Republic's people. Jaina slaps him for this and vows to never help him again. The fourth story of the novel focuses on Nen Yim, now Master Shaper in the wake of Mezhan Kwaad's death in the previous novel, trying vainly to save a dying worldship by using even heretical protocols. Her efforts are further hindered when another Master Shaper named Kae Kwaad, obviously within the same domain as the late Mezhan, forces Nen Yim to concoct rather ridiculous experiments that do nothing to forward the progress of repairing the dying worldship. Desperate to save the worldship, Yim accesses the Shaper Qahsa in order to find out what further protocols can help her in her goal by reaching the legendary eighth cortex of the Qahsa. But it turns out that there is no eighth cortex, and that the Yuuzhan Vong have already reached the pinnacle of their biological technology. Yim also reaches the conclusion that the Yuuzhan Vong's gods also don't exist, just as Mezhan Kwaad herself proclaimed before her death. Kae Kwaad then reveals himself to be the Shamed One Onimi, who is the familiar of the Yuuzhan Vong's Supreme Overlord Shimrra Jamaane himself. Shimrra reveals that he knows of Yim's heresy, but rather than proceeding to punish her, he allows her to continue her heretical protocols in order to further the Vong's war efforts against the New Republic. Thus, Yim drops her efforts in trying to save the doomed worldship. The fifth story of the novel focuses on Jacen Solo traveling throughout the galaxy trying to avoid Yuuzhan Vong and their supporters, considering the special bounty that Warmaster Tsavong Lah put on his head. Through the Solos' adventures in averting death from their enemies, Jacen learns to reconcile with his father, Han, since their different ideals were what separated them from each other emotionally in the first place. As Mara starts to die from the coomb spore virus, Luke is able to reach out to her in the Force, as well as reaching out to his and Mara's child's presence, and they are able to banish the virus from her system as their son, Ben Skywalker, is born. Their friends and allies, including Anakin, Tahiri (both of whom shared a kiss at Yag'Dhul that will prove to further their relationship in the future), Corran, the other Solos, and several others arrive just in time to meet the newborn Ben.
612933	/m/02wkk_	Old Yeller	Fred Gipson	1956	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Young Travis Coates is left to take care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother Arliss while his father goes off on a cattle drive in the 1860s. When a yellow mongrel comes for an uninvited stay with the family, Travis reluctantly adopts the dog. Though Travis initially loathes the "rascal" and at first tries to get rid of it, Old Yeller eventually proves his worth, saving the family on several occasions. Travis grows to love this dog named Old Yeller. And they become great friends. The rightful owner of Yeller shows up looking for his dog. The owner recognizes that the family has become attached to Yeller, and trades the dog to Arliss for a home-cooked meal prepared by Travis's mother, who is an exceptional cook. Old Yeller becomes exposed to rabies while defending the family from an infected wolf. They try to nurse Yeller back to health, but in the end Travis is forced to shoot the dog. Old Yeller's had puppies with one of Travis's friend's dogs, and the puppy helps Travis get over Old Yeller's death.
613307	/m/02wlj1	Tom Brown's Schooldays	Thomas Hughes	1857	{"/m/09tvt3": "School story", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04bc5fq": "English public-school stories", "/m/04bc5fy": "Boys' school stories", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tom Brown is energetic, stubborn, kind-hearted, and athletic more than intellectual. He acts according to his feelings and the unwritten rules of the boys around him more than adults' rules. The early chapters of the novel deal with his childhood at his home in the Vale of White Horse (including a nostalgic picture of a village feast). Much of the scene setting in the first chapter is deeply revealing of Victorian England's attitudes towards society and class, and contains a comparison of so-called Saxon and Norman influences on England. This part of the book, when young Tom wanders the valleys freely on his pony, serves as a sort of Eden with which to contrast the later hellish experiences in his first years at school. His first school year is at a local school. His second year starts at a private school, but due to an epidemic of fever in the area, all the school's boys are sent home, and Tom is transferred mid-term to Rugby School, where he makes acquaintance with the adults and boys who live at the school and in its environs. On his arrival, the eleven-year-old Tom Brown is looked after by a more experienced classmate, Harry "Scud" East. Soon after, Tom and East become the targets of a bully named Flashman. The intensity of the bullying increases, and, after refusing to hand over a sweepstake ticket for the favourite in a horse race, Tom is deliberately burned in front of a fire. Tom and East eventually defeat Flashman with the help of a kind (though comical) older boy, Diggs. In their triumph they become unruly. In the second half of the book, Dr. Thomas Arnold, the historical headmaster of the school at the time, gives Tom the care of George Arthur, a frail, pious, academically brilliant, gauche, and sensitive new boy. A fight that Tom gets into to protect Arthur, and Arthur's nearly dying of fever, are described in loving detail. Tom and Arthur help each other and their friends develop into young gentlemen who say their nightly prayers, do not cheat on homework, and play in a cricket match. An epilogue shows Tom's return to Rugby and its chapel when he hears of Arnold's death.
613374	/m/02wlr4	The Last Book in the Universe	Rodman Philbrick		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is set in a post-disaster, dystopic future city, called the Urb, which has been disturbed by an earthquake known as "The Big Shake". The Urb is plagued by poverty, thieves, gang warfare, and the use of mindprobes (such as trendies, and shooters), which are analogous to hard drugs and which enable users to temporarily escape their harsh lives through images like movies being played in their heads. Genetically improved people, called "proovs," live across the "Forbidden Zone," a minefield separating the Urb from a city called Eden, with a beautiful society, food and water. Spaz is a 14-year-old boy who can't use mindprobes because of his epilepsy and whose adoptive family has abandoned him because they feared the symptoms of his epilepsy. Spaz runs errands for Billy Bizmo, the latch-boss (leader) of his gang, the "Bully Bangers," in a section of the Urb. On one of his errands, Spaz is sent to rob Ryter, a very little man who possesses the lost arts of literature. Spaz soon meets Little Face, a five-year-old orphan who, throughout the book, only says the word "chox," because he doesn't know how to speak, and Lanaya, a proov who charitably gives out food. At first, Spaz is very hostile towards Ryter, but Ryter understands Spaz's situation and does his best to help him, offering no resistance when Spaz arrives to steal Ryter's meager possessions . Eventually Spaz learns that Bean, his beloved stepsister , is dying of a sickness. Ryter and Little Face accompany Spaz on a journey to find Bean. The trio starts by traveling through a large, broken water pipe that leads to other latches. Along the way, they pass through latches controlled by various other bosses, having adventures along the way. One of the latches, which is ruled by the "Monkey Boys," they find that the leader Mongo the Magnificent is dying and Ryter convinces the Tek boss to take his place. At the next latch the group sees the entire latch burning and finds Lanaya being attacked. She is rescued by Spaz and Ryter and she joins them on their journey. They start traveling towards the latch where Bean lives. Eventually the story's heroes find Bean, who is dying of leukemia. Lanaya decides to take Bean to Eden, along with Spaz, Ryter, and Little Face, and soon they arrive at Lanaya's contributors', or parents', house. At this point in the novel, it is shown that Lanaya is a special proov who has been bred to eventually lead Eden, and so she has rights and privileges that other proovs do not. They take Bean to a proov hospital and she is cured of her sickness using genetic surgery. Ryter and Spaz, and Little Face enjoy the paradise of Eden, being unfamiliar with grass, a blue sky, fish in a stream, and apples, among other things. Some time later Ryter, Spaz, and Bean are thrown out of Eden because the elders who rule over Eden decide they are unacceptable, even though Bean is extremely smart, having beaten one of Lanaya's contributors in chess. The elders of Eden refuse to accept that someone from the Urb could naturally be better than a proov in any way. Little Face is secretly adopted by Lanaya's contributors. Lanaya reveals to the elders that the mindprobes, which cause so much damage to the people who use them, come from Eden, and so all the mindprobes throughout the Urb are deactivated, causing rioting and anarchy outside Eden. Bean is deposited at her home, and Ryter and Spaz are returned to theirs. Back at Spaz's home latch Ryter is blamed for the deactivation of the mindprobes and is wheeled and killed, while Spaz has an epileptic seizure. Before his death, Ryter tells Spaz that he is the last book in the universe. Billy Bizmo, the leader of Spaz's latch, tells him that he is his father and that his mother died at his birth. The story ends with Lanaya sending Spaz a message about how it's getting better in Eden and how she believes they can fix it all in time. Spaz takes on the name Ryter, continuing his work, writing the last book in the universe using a device that writes while he talks. The book was denied use in a California school because the area had been having gang problems.
613635	/m/02wmx4	Eight Skilled Gentlemen	Barry Hughart	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this novel, Li Kao and Number Ten Ox are attending the execution of a notorious criminal (about whose capture the less said the better, according to the chronicler) when into the public square bounds a "vampire ghoul" who soon meets a fiery demise. Master Li is given the case by the "Celestial Master" who soon becomes a main suspect. The plot involves everything from a conspiracy involving fake tea to dog-brides, puppeteers to magic birdcages, assorted pre-Chinese demons and gods, and the hooded and ancient Eight Skilled Gentlemen. The plot also involves a subject rarely mentioned in fiction, the pre-Chinese aborigines and their gods.
614064	/m/02wq06	The Songs of Distant Earth	Arthur C. Clarke	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set in the early 3800s and takes place almost entirely on the faraway oceanic planet of Thalassa. Thalassa has a small human population sent there by way of an embryonic seed pod, one of many sent out from Earth in an attempt to continue the human race's existence before the Earth is destroyed. It starts with an introduction to the native Thalassans &ndash; the marine biologist Mirissa, her partner Brant and other friends and family. Their peaceful existence comes to an end with the appearance of the Magellan, a spaceship from Earth containing one million colonists who have been put into cryonic suspension. In a series of descriptive passages the events leading up to the race to save the human species are explained. Scientists in the 1960s discover that the neutrino emissions from the Sun &ndash; a result of the nuclear reactions that fuel the star &ndash; are far diminished from expected levels. Less than a decade later, it is confirmed that the problem is not with the scientific equipment: the Sun is calculated to go nova around the year AD 3600. The human race's technology advances enough for various factions to send out pods containing human and other mammalian embryos (and later on, simply stored DNA sequences), along with robot parents, to planets that are considered habitable. Sending live humans is ruled out due to the immense amount of fuel that a rocket-propelled spacecraft would have to carry in order to first accelerate to the speeds required to travel such great distances within an acceptable time, and then decelerate upon approaching the destination. However, less than a hundred years before the Sun is set to go nova a scientific break-through allows construction of the quantum drive, which bypasses this problem. There only remains enough time to build and send to the stars a single quantum-drive ship: the Magellan. Thalassa's only connection with Earth (and anywhere else) was a single communication dish, which was destroyed during a volcanic eruption 400 years ago and never repaired, thus leaving the Thalassans unaware of later developments on Earth. The Magellan stops at Thalassa to replenish the mammoth ice shield that had prevented micrometeors from damaging it during its interstellar journey. Thalassa is the obvious choice for this operation, as 95% of the planet's surface is covered by water. At the end of the novel the Magellan continues on to its destination, the planet Sagan 2. As a kind of sub-plot it is revealed that beneath Thalassa's oceans there live sentient beings similar to the sea scorpions of Earth, only much larger. They are discovered – and named "Scorps" – when it attracts attention that robots designed to seek out fish frequently go missing. The Scorps gain the robots' metal in order to make bands of honour and rank. The Scorps are proven farmers; they have created their own village out of underwater rock caves. Some of the crew aboard the Magellan begin to consider mutiny, wanting to stay in the secure environment of Thalassa rather than make the journey on to an unknown planet that may indeed be habitable, but just as well not. The situation is solved just before take-off &ndash; the mutineers are left with the Thalassans, while the bulk of the crew and passengers continue on to Sagan 2. The book finishes with Mirissa sending messages to her lover, Loren Lorenson aboard the Magellan, showing him their son. Loren is not going to see the child until long after its and Mirissa's death. Mirissa's last clear sight when she is old is of the fading star in the Thalassan sky that is the quantum drive of the Magellan.
614306	/m/02wqxb	Slapstick	Kurt Vonnegut	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is in the form of an autobiography of Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain. Dr. Swain tells us that he lives in the ruins of the Empire State Building with his pregnant granddaughter, Melody Oriole-2 von Peterswald, and her lover, Isadore Raspberry-19 Cohen. Dr. Swain is a hideous man whose ugliness, along with that of his twin sister Eliza, led their parents to cut them off from modern society. The siblings came to realize that, when in close physical contact, they form a vastly powerful and creative intelligence. Through reading and philosophizing together, Wilbur and Eliza combated the feelings of loneliness and isolation that would otherwise have ruined their childhood. Throughout the book, Wilbur claims that his sister Eliza is the more intelligent of the two, but that no one realizes it because she can't read or write. Wilbur and Eliza are like two halves of a brain, with Wilbur the left brain -- logical, rational, able to communicate -- and Eliza the right brain: creative, emotional, but unable to communicate effectively. The siblings created, among other things, a plan to end loneliness in America through vast extended families. Under the plan, all citizens would be provided with new middle names, made of the name of a random natural object paired with a random number between 1 and 20. Everyone with the same name would be cousins, and everyone with the same name and number would be siblings. Their parents and the staff of the mansion believe the children are retarded, and the children play this up when in the company of others, so as to not interfere with what they view as a perfect childhood. But after hearing their mother wish that they were normal, the children reveal their intelligence to their parents. Eliza is still deemed retarded, and is sent to a mental institution. Wilbur however is sent to a prep school and eventually goes to Harvard University and earns a doctorate. Armed with the plan created with Eliza and the slogan, "Lonesome No More!," Dr. Swain wins election to the Presidency, and devotes the waning energies of the Federal government to the implementation of the plan. In the meantime, Western civilization is nearing collapse as oil runs out, and the Chinese are making vast leaps forward by miniaturizing themselves and training groups of hundreds to think as one. Eventually, the miniaturization proceeds to the point that they become so small that they cause a plague among those who accidentally inhale them, ultimately destroying Western civilization beyond repair. However, even as life as we know it collapses, Swain's middle name policy continues to unite the survivors. The American population constantly risk their time and their lives to selflessly help their fellow cousins and siblings, ensuring that people may live their lives "lonesome no more." The novel has a typical Vonnegut pattern of short snippets often ending with a punchline of sorts. These are separated by the words "hi ho", which Dr. Swain describes as a sort of verbal hiccup that has developed in his old age.
616330	/m/02wzk7	Captain Blood: His Odyssey	Rafael Sabatini	1922	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The protagonist is the sharp-witted Dr. Peter Blood, a fictional Irish physician who had had a wide-ranging career as a soldier and sailor (including a commission as a captain under the Dutch admiral De Ruyter) before settling down to practice medicine in the town of Bridgwater in Somerset. The book opens with him attending to his geraniums while the town prepares to fight for the Duke of Monmouth. He wants no part in the rebellion, but while attending to some of the rebels wounded at the Battle of Sedgemoor, Peter is arrested. During the Bloody Assizes, he is convicted by the infamous Judge Jeffreys of treason on the grounds that "if any person be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person&mdash;who really and actually was not in rebellion&mdash;does knowingly receive, harbour, comfort, or succour him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who indeed bore arms." The sentence for treason is death by hanging, but King James II, for purely financial reasons, has the sentence for Blood and other convicted rebels commuted to transportation to the Caribbean, where they are to be sold into slavery. Upon arrival on the island of Barbados, he is bought by Colonel Bishop, initially for work in the Colonel's sugar plantations but later hired out by Bishop when Blood's skills as a physician prove superior to those of the local doctors. When a Spanish force attacks and raids the town of Bridgetown, Blood escapes with a number of other convict-slaves (including former shipmaster Jeremy Pitt, the one-eyed giant Edward Wolverstone, former gentleman Nathaniel Hagthorpe, former Royal Navy petty officer Nicholas Dyke and former Royal Navy master gunner Ned Ogle), captures the Spaniards' ship and sails away to become one of the most successful pirates/buccaneers in the Caribbean, hated and feared by the Spanish. After the Glorious Revolution, Blood is pardoned, and as a reward for saving the colony of Jamaica from the French ends up as its governor.
616727	/m/02x041	Earthborn	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Five centuries after the conclusion of Earthfall, there is only one original colonist from Harmony: Shedemei, who now wears the Cloak of the Starmaster (a device that links her to the Oversoul). After hundreds of years, the descendants of Nafai and Elemak have built cities and towns - yet never forgetting the enmity between the two brothers. After hundreds of years, the Oversoul still has not achieved its original purpose: to find the Keeper of Earth, the central intelligence that alone can repair the Oversoul's damaged counterpart at Harmony. But now, the Keeper has once again begun to spread its influence. Heeding the dreams below, Shedemei has decided to return to Earth. The last book in the Homecoming saga marks a departure from the style and storyline of the previous four. All of the characters from the previous novels (except Shedemei) are long dead. The central conflict between Nafai and Elemak is represented in their descendants, but takes a back seat in this book. The focus is on the struggles within the descendants of those who followed Nafai. The king of Darakemba (an empire founded by the Nafaris), his children, and his advisers, along with the high priest of Darakemba, his children, and his converts, provide the main actions in the story.
616880	/m/02x0n5	Flicker	Theodore Roszak	1991	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jonathan Gates is a student at UCLA in the early 1960s, where he begins his love affair with film at The Classic, a rundown independent movie theatre. He begins an affair with the theatre's owner Clarissa 'Clare' Swann, who tutors him extensively in the study of film history over the course of their relationship. It is through Clare's pursuit of classic films to show at the theatre that Gates stumbles upon the work of Max Castle, a B-Movie director of German origin whose work uses subliminal imagery and unorthodox symbolism to achieve a powerful effect over the viewer. Gradually, Gates rises through the academic ranks to achieve a professorial chair, becoming most respected as the rediscoverer and champion of Castle's work. Through Gates' extensive research, the reader learns of Castle's considerable influence over the great films of his time, culminating in a collaboration with Orson Welles to make the acclaimed movie Citizen Kane, followed by a failed attempt to adapt Conrad's Heart of Darkness to the silver screen. Also revealed, however, are his shadowy connections with a religious group known as the Orphans of the Storm, as well as his disappearance in 1941. Clare, meanwhile, has become a respected New York film critic, entrusting the Classic theatre to her one-time projectionist Don Sharkey, who stops showing artful films in favour of shallow entertainment for a new generation of moviegoers. Among the up-and-coming directors Sharkey showcases is one Simon Dunkle, whom Gates learns belongs to the same religious sect as Max Castle. Gates begins to investigate the Orphans, despite their own attempts to stifle his research and the adverse effect that the constant viewing of Orphan-made films is having on his personality. He learns that they are Gnostic dualists, living in secrecy since the Catholic persecutions of Catharism in the Middle Ages. Gates begins to suspect that the Orphans are using an extensive influence in the film industry to subliminally promote their religion while they enact their plans to bring about the Apocalypse in the year 2014. Eventually, Gates turns to his former lover Clare for help. She introduces him to a Father Angelotti, a Cathar in disguise as a Catholic priest. Angelotti persuades him to 'infiltrate' the Orphans' church, so as to obtain the conclusive evidence that will allow Gates to publish what he has discovered. The Orphans put him on a private plane, ostensibly to meet the elders of their faith. En route, they drug his coffee and he awakes, imprisoned on a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. Living in a nearby hut is none other than Max Castle himself, more than 30 years after his disappearance. Gates and the film director he once idolised use scraps and castoffs from a waste-heap of old celluloid to splice together one final film, while they wait for Armageddon to come.
616887	/m/02x0p7	The Müller-Fokker Effect	John Sladek	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The time is "somewhere in the near future" from the 1970s, and Bob Shairp is a government worker for a project in which a human being's individual qualities can be stored as computer data &mdash; on Müller-Fokker tapes. These reel-to-reel tapes, flesh pink in color, can store an entire person's identity in four tapes. The people recorded on the tapes can be reconstructed by encoding the tapes' data into a virus and infecting someone with that virus (see mind uploading). Of course, that person would have to be backed up too, and a game of musical chairs is set in motion. Bob Shairp is being recorded for test purposes on the tapes when there is an accident and the chair he is sitting in explodes, destroying his body. Only from the tapes can he be resurrected. This somewhat conventional science-fiction premise is something of a MacGuffin, as the novel's other major characters struggle to possess the Müller-Fokker tape in numerous subplots that satirize various prominent forces in 1970s America, including the military, evangelism, men's magazines, and radical anticommunist groups such as the John Birch Society. The novel also focuses heavily on parallels between the right-wing politics of Sladek's time and Nazism: one main character is closely based on Adolf Hitler, recast as a semi-literate American racist obsessed with African Americans.
616927	/m/02x0sy	Earthfall	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The children of Wetchik are ready to board the starship Basilica and embark on their journey from the planet Harmony back to the origin of humanity: Earth. However, the rivalry between Nafai and Elemak promises the journey will be anything but peaceful. Each faction already has hidden plans to prematurely awaken from the long hibernation, to have the upper hand when the landing occurs. The children become pawns in their parents' power struggle - valuable potential adults that can strengthen each faction. But the Oversoul is ultimately in control, having uploaded a copy of itself into Basilica's central computer, so that it can monitor the ship at all times. After landing on Earth, the fragile peace wrought onboard is merely a mask for the turmoils of passions that boil beneath. Not only do the colonists have to deal with the split, there are also the mysteriously symbiotic alien races that have evolved on Earth since humanity's departure. The quest to understand the Angels (giant bats) and the Diggers (giant rats) that were foreshadowed in the dreams is not an easy one. The focus throughout the course of this novel begins to drift away from the original generation of characters in order to delineate the passage of time. The factions that developed among the original generation have now spread to their children, through no fault of the children themselves. Nafai finds himself and his "Nafari" living and working primarily amongst the angel people, whereas the "Elemaki" associate much more closely with the diggers. It is this dissociation that eventually breaks nearly all the bonds—literally, for Hushidh and Cheveya—between Nafai and his older brother, Elemak. As Elemak's rage and hatred for Nafai grow, he ingrains such feelings into his family and the digger people, laying the foundation for war. After the death of Volemak the Nafari migrate northwards away from the landing site to found a new nation.
617193	/m/02x1sk	God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian	Kurt Vonnegut		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The premise of the collection is that Vonnegut employs Dr. Jack Kevorkian to give him near-death experiences, allowing Vonnegut access to heaven and those in it for a limited time. While in the afterlife Vonnegut interviews a range of people including Adolf Hitler, William Shakespeare, Isaac Asimov, and the ever-present Kilgore Trout (a fictional character created by Vonnegut in his earlier works). it:Dio la benedica dott. Kevorkian hu:Áldja meg az Isten, Dr. Kevorkian ru:Дай вам Бог здоровья, доктор Кеворкян
617361	/m/02x2h4	The Wasps	Aristophanes			 The play begins with a strange scene—a large net has been spread over a house, the entry is barricaded and two slaves are sleeping in the street outside. A third man is positioned at the top of an exterior wall with a view into the inner courtyard but he too is asleep. The two slaves wake and we learn from their banter that they are keeping guard over a 'monster'. The man asleep above them is their master and the monster is his father—he has an unusual disease. The two slaves challenge the audience to guess the nature of the disease. Addictions to gambling, drink and good times are suggested but they are all wrong—the father is addicted to the law court: he is a phileliastes () or a "trialophile." We are then told that his name is Philocleon (which suggests that he might be addicted to Cleon) and his son's name is the very opposite of this—Bdelycleon. The symptoms of the old man's addiction are described for us and they include irregular sleep, obsessional thinking, paranoia, poor hygiene and hoarding. We are told that counselling, medical treatment and travel have all failed to solve the problem and now his son has turned the house into a prison to keep the old man away from the law courts. Bdelycleon wakes and he shouts to the two slaves to be on their guard—his father is moving about. He tells them to watch the drains, for the old man can move like a mouse, but Philocleon surprises them all by emerging instead from the chimney disguised as smoke. Bdelycleon is luckily on hand to push him back inside. Other attempts at escape are also barely defeated. The household settles down for some more sleep and then the Chorus arrives—old jurors who move warily (the roads are muddy), they are escorted by boys with lamps (it is still dark). Learning of their old comrade's imprisonment, they leap to his defense and swarm around Bdelycleon and his slaves like wasps. At the end of this fray, Philocleon is still barely in his son's custody and both sides are willing to settle the issue peacefully through debate. The debate is between the father and the son and it focuses on the advantages that the old man personally derives from voluntary jury service. Philocleon says he enjoys the flattering attentions of rich and powerful men who appeal to him for a favourable verdict, he enjoys the freedom to interpret the law as he pleases since his decisions are not subject to review, and his juror's pay gives him independence and authority within his own household. Bdelycleon responds to these points with the argument that jurors are in fact subject to the demands of petty officials and they get paid less than they deserve—revenues from the empire go mostly into the private treasuries of men like Cleon. These arguments have a paralysing effect on Philocleon. The Chorus is won over. Philocleon however is still not able to give up his old ways just yet so Bdelycleon offers to turn the house into a courtroom and to pay him a juror's fee to judge domestic disputes. Philocleon agrees and a case is soon brought before him—a dispute between the household dogs. One dog (who looks like Cleon) accuses the other dog (who looks like Laches) of stealing a Sicilian cheese and not sharing it. Witnesses for the defense include a bowl, a pestle, a cheese-grater, a brazier and a pot. As these are unable to speak, Bdelycleon says a few words for them on behalf of the accused and then some puppies (the children of the accused) are ushered in to soften the heart of the old juror with their plaintive cries. Philocleon is not softened but his son easily fools him into putting his vote into the urn for acquittal. The old juror is deeply shocked by the outcome of the trial—he is used to convictions—but his son promises him a good time and they exit the stage to prepare for some entertainment. While the actors are offstage, the Chorus addresses the audience in a conventional parabasis. It praises the author for standing up to monsters like Cleon and it chastises the audience for its failure to appreciate the merits of the author's previous play (The Clouds). It praises the older generation, evokes memories of the victory at Marathon and it bitterly deplores the gobbling up of imperial revenues by unworthy men. Father and son then return to the stage, now arguing with each other over the old man's choice of attire. He is addicted to his old juryman's cloak and his old shoes and he is suspicious of the fancy woollen garment and the fashionable Spartan footwear that Bdelycleon wants him to wear that evening to a sophisticated dinner party. The fancy clothes are forced upon him and then he is instructed in the kind of manners and conversation that the other guests will expect of him. Philocleon declares his reluctance to drink any wine—it causes trouble, he says—but Bdelycleon assures him that sophisticated men of the world can easily talk their way out of trouble and so they depart optimistically for the evening's entertainment. There is then a second parabasis (see Note at end of this section), in which the Chorus touches briefly on a conflict between Cleon and the author, after which a household slave arrives with news for the audience about the old man's appalling behaviour at the dinner party: Philocleon has got himself abusively drunk, he has insulted all his son's fashionable friends and now he is assaulting anyone he meets on the way home. The slave departs as Philocleon arrives, now with aggrieved victims on his heels and a pretty flute girl on his arm. Bdelycleon appears moments later and angrily remonstrates with his father for kidnapping the flute girl from the party. Philocleon pretends that she is in fact a torch. His son isn't fooled and he tries to take the girl back to the party by force but his father knocks him down. Other people with grievances against Philocleon continue to arrive, demanding compensation and threatening legal action. He makes an ironic attempt to talk his way out of trouble like a sophisticated man of the world but it inflames the situation further and finally his alarmed son drags him indoors. The Chorus sings briefly about how difficult it is for men to change their habits and it commends the son for filial devotion, after which the entire cast returns to the stage for some spirited dancing by Philocleon in a contest with the sons of Carcinus. Note: Some editors (such as Barrett) exchange the second parabasis (lines 1265–91) with the song (lines 1450–73) in which Bdelycleon is commended for filial devotion.
618682	/m/02x7kx	Elidor	Alan Garner	1965	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Elidor originated as a short radio play. The story concerns the adventures of young teenagers as they struggle to hold back a terrible darkness by fulfilling a prophecy from another world. The plot moves to and from the world of Elidor, and the city of Manchester and parts of northern Cheshire in the real world. Like many of Garner's books, the emphasis of the narrative is on the hardships, cost and practicalities of the choices and responsibilities that the protagonists face.
618853	/m/02x842	Freak the Mighty	Rodman Philbrick	1993	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the beginning of the book, Maxwell Kane is a young boy with low self-esteem. He lives with his grandfather, Grim, and grandmother, Gram. Max thinks of himself as a butthead. People are afraid of him because he looks like his father, Kenny "Killer" Kane, a convicted murderer. Max sets the stage for the story by reminiscing about his time in daycare, when he had met a boy named Kevin. Kevin has morquio syndrome and wears leg braces and uses crutches and thinks of himself as a robot. However, Max likes Kevin and thinks the crutches and leg braces are neat. Many years later, when Max is in middle school, he finds out that Freak and his mother, Gwen (referred to as "The Fair Gwen", "The Fair Guinevere" or "The Fair Gwen Of Air" after King Arthur's wife) are moving into the house next door. When Max initially approaches Freak, Freak acts with hostility. However, some time later, Max saves Kevin's toy ornithopter from a tree and they start to become friends. On the Fourth of July, they go to see the fireworks show and are attacked by an older boy, Tony D. "Blade" and his gang but avoid any mental or physical conflict. After the show, Blade chases the two with his gang after Freak calls him a cretin. Despite Max's lack of knowledge and disability, he escapes by acting on Freak's orders, but the two are driven into a muddy pond. Freak gets the attention of a nearby police car, who drives off Blade's gang and takes the boys home. After this incident, Kevin starts riding on Max's shoulders. They begin to call themselves "Freak the Mighty." They go on adventures such as going to the hospital which Freak claims has a secret department called the "Bionics Department" which has had his brain cat scanned to be fitted into a bionic body. On one adventure they find a woman's purse in the sewer. They return it to the woman who is named Loretta Lee. She is the wife of Iggy Lee, boss of the Panheads, a motorcycle gang who "struck fear in everyone, even the cops," as Max puts it. Iggy says that the two of them once knew Max's father. They consider "having some fun" with the boys but don't because they are afraid that Max's father will get parole even though he's serving a life sentence. They also reveal that Kevin's father left once he heard that his son had a birth defect. Freak has an emergency at school and is taken to the hospital. Later, Grim reveals to Max that his father has been let out on parole. Throughout the story, it has been slowly revealed that Max's father killed his mother by strangling her, and that Grim and Gram hate his father and are afraid of Max ending up like him. Grim threatens to buy a gun for the family's protection. Max is shocked and scared by the news of his father's parole. After Christmas Eve, Max is woken up by his father, Killer Kane, who has come to take him. After Max is kidnapped by his father, the two walk to Iggy Lee's apartment in the "New tenements". Killer Kane is even bigger than Max and acts in a very threatening, intimidating manner towards everyone, including his son, who he keeps tied up. Killer Kane swears that he did not murder Max's mother. He also reveals that he plans to head to "warmer weather" and be a con man. On Christmas morning he leaves Max alone, tied up in a room in an old abandoned apartment that had almost been completely burnt down. Loretta, shocked that Kane would do something like that to his own child, tries to help him escape. Killer Kane catches her and starts to strangle her. Max attempts to stop him and reveals that he witnessed his father kill his mother in the same fashion. Kane gives up on training Max to be his obedient assistant and tries to kill him by strangling him, but Freak arrives just in time and saves Max by squirting Kane with a squirt gun in the eye which he claims is filled with sulfuric acid when in fact, it is filled with soap, vinegar, and curry powder. The police are waiting outside, and Killer Kane is taken back to prison and has to serve his original time plus ten years. Max has to take his father to testify against him in the court. Max really doesn't want to testify so he doesn't have to. Things end far from happily, however. After having a seizure on his birthday, Freak is admitted into the hospital, where he gives Max a blank book, telling him to write the story of Freak the Mighty in it. Max returns to the hospital the next day to find that Freak died because his heart got too big for his body. A nurse reveals that Freak knew he was going to have a very short life, but he believed he was going to get a bionic body because it gave him hope. The fair Gwen moves away, with a new man she is in love with, and Max misses Freak's funeral, staying in his room, "The Down Under" for months. Not even Grim or Gram can get him out, until Grim orders Max to return to school. One day, Max sees Lorettea, who tells him "Doing nothing's a drag, kid", so Max writes all of the adventures he and Freak had, in honor of his best friend.
619368	/m/02x9vb	Darkness at Noon	Arthur Koestler	1940	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Darkness at Noon is divided into four parts: The First Hearing, the Second Hearing, the Third Hearing, and the Grammatical Fiction. The novel begins with Rubashov's arrest in the middle of the night by two men from the secret police (in the USSR, it was called the NKVD). When they came for Rubashov, they woke him from a dream in which he was being arrested by the Gestapo. One of the men is about Rubashov's age, the other is somewhat younger. The older man is formal and courteous, the younger is brutal. The difference between them introduces the first major theme of Darkness At Noon: the passing of the older, civilized generation, and the barbarism of their successors. Imprisoned, Rubashov is at first relieved to be finished with the anxiety of dread during mass arrests. He is expecting to be kept in solitary confinement until he is shot. He begins to communicate with No. 402, the man in the adjacent cell, by using a tap code. Rubashov quickly realizes that they don't have much to discuss. Unlike Rubashov, No. 402 is not an intellectual; he just wants to hear the details of Rubashov's latest sexual encounter. Rubashov humors him for a time, but is too embarrassed to continue. He thinks of the Old Bolsheviks, No. 1, and the Marxist interpretation of history. Throughout the novel Rubashov, Ivanov, and Gletkin speculate about historical processes and how individuals and groups are affected by them. Each hopes that, no matter how vile his actions may seem to their contemporaries, history will eventually absolve them. This is the faith that makes the abuses of the regime tolerable as the men consider the suffering of a few thousand, or a few million people against the happiness of future generations. They believe that gaining the socialist utopia, which they believe is possible, will cause the imposed suffering to be forgiven. Rubashov meditates on his life: since joining the Party as a teenager, Rubashov has officered soldiers in the field, won a commendation for "fearlessness", repeatedly volunteered for hazardous assignments, endured torture, betrayed other communists who deviated from the Party line, and proven that he is loyal to its policies and goals. Recently he has had doubts. Despite 20 years of power, in which the government caused the deliberate deaths and executions of millions, the Party does not seem to be any closer to achieving the goal of a socialist utopia. That vision seems to be receding. Rubashov is at a quandary, between a lifetime of devotion to the Party, and his conscience and the increasing evidence of his own experience on the other. From this point, the narrative switches back and forth between his current life as a political prisoner and his past life as one of the Party Elite. He recalls his first visit to Berlin about 1933, after Hitler gained power. Rubashov was to purge and reorganize the German Communists. He met with Richard, a young communist cell leader who had distributed material contrary to the Party line. In a museum, underneath a picture of the Pieta, Rubashov explains to Richard that he has violated Party discipline, become "objectively harmful", and must be expelled from the Party. A Gestapo man hovers in the background with his girlfriend on his arm. Too late, Richard realizes that Rubashov has betrayed him to the secret police. He begs Rubashov not to "throw him to the wolves," but Rubashov leaves him quickly. Getting into a taxicab, he realizes that the taxicab driver is also a communist. The raxicab driver offers to give him free fare, but Rubashov pays the fare. As he travels by train, he dreams that Richard and the taxicab driver are trying to run him over with a train. This scene introduces the second and third major themes of Darkness At Noon. The second, suggested repeatedly by the Pieta and other Christian imagery, is the contrast between the brutality and modernity of Communism on the one hand, and the gentleness, simplicity, and tradition of Christianity. Although Koestler is not suggesting a return to Christian faith, he implies that Communism is the worse of the two alternatives. The third theme is the contrast between the trust of the rank and file communists, and the ruthlessness of the Party elite. The rank and file trust and admire men like Rubashov, but the elite betrays and uses them with little thought. As Rubashov confronts the immorality of his actions as a party chief, his abscessed tooth begins to bother him, sometimes reducing him to immobility. Rubashov recalls being arrested soon after by the Gestapo and imprisoned for two years. Although repeatedly tortured, he never breaks down. After the Nazis finally release him, he returns to his country to receive a hero's welcome. No. 1's increasing power makes him uncomfortable but he does not act in opposition; he requests a foreign assignment. No. 1 is suspicious but grants the request. Rubashov is sent to Belgium to enforce Party discipline among the dock workers. After the Italian invasion of Ethiopia during 1935, the League of Nations and the Party condemned Italy and imposed an international embargo on strategic resources, especially oil, which the Italians needed. The Belgian dock workers are determined not to allow any shipments for Italy to pass through their port. As his government intends to supply the Italians with oil and other resources secretly, Rubashov must convince the dock workers that, despite the official policy, as Communists they must unload the materials and send them to the Italians. Their cell leader, a German communist immigrant nicknamed Little Loewy, tells Rubashov his life's story. He is a communist who has sacrificed much for the Party, but is still completely dedicated. When all the workers have gathered, Rubashov explains the situation. They react with disgust and refuse his instructions. Several days later, Party publications denounce the entire cell by name, virtually guaranteeing arrest by the Belgian authorities, who were trying to suppress Communism. Little Loewy hangs himself. Rubashov then begins a new assignment. In the novel, after about a week in prison, he is brought in for the first examination or hearing, which is conducted by Ivanov, an old friend. Also a veteran of the Civil War, he is an Old Bolshevik who shares Rubashov's opinion of the Revolution. Rubashov had then convinced Ivanov not to commit suicide after his leg was amputated due to war wounds. Ivanov says that if he can persuade Rubashov to confess to the charges, he will have repaid his debt. With confession, Rubashov can lessen his sentence, to 5 or 10 years in a labor camp, instead of execution. He simply has to cooperate. The charges are hardly discussed, as both men understand they are not relevant. Rubashov says that he is "tired" and doesn't "want to play this kind of game anymore." Ivanov sends him sent back to his cell, asking him to think about it. Ivanov implies that Rubashov can perhaps live to see the socialist utopia they've both worked so hard to create. The next section of the book begins with an entry in Rubashov's diary; he struggles to find his place and that of the other Old Bolsheviks, within the Marxist interpretation of history. Ivanov and a junior examiner, Gletkin, discuss Rubashov's fate in the prison canteen. Gletkin urges using harsh, physical methods to demoralize the prisoner and force his confession, while Ivanov insists that Rubashov will confess after realizing it is the only "logical" thing to do, given his situation. Gletkin recalls that, during the collectivization of the peasants, they could not be persuaded to surrender their individual crops until they were tortured (and killed). Since that helped enable the ultimate goal of a socialist utopia, it was both the logical and the virtuous thing to do. Ivanov is disgusted but cannot refute Gletkin's reasoning. Ivanov believes in taking harsh actions to achieve the goal, but he is troubled by the suffering he causes. Gletkin says the older man must not believe in the coming utopia. He characterizes Ivanov as a cynic and claims to be an idealist. Their conversation continues the theme of the new generation taking power over the old: Ivanov is portrayed as intellectual, ironical, and at bottom humane, while Gletkin is unsophisticated, straightforward, and unconcerned with others' suffering. Ivanov has not been convinced by the younger man's arguments. Rubashov continues in solitary. Taking over the interrogation of Rubashov, Gletkin uses physical abuses, such as sleep deprivation and forcing Rubashov to sit under a glaring lamp for hours on end, to wear him down. Rubashov finally capitulates. As he confesses to the false charges, Rubashov thinks of the many times he betrayed agents in the past: Richard, the young German; Little Loewy in Belgium, and Arlova, his secretary-mistress. He recognises that he is being treated with the same ruthlessness. His commitment to following his logic to its final conclusion—- and his own lingering dedication to the Party—- cause him to confess fully and publicly. The final section of the novel begins with a four-line quotation ("Show us not the aim without the way ...") by the German socialist Ferdinand Lasalle. The novel ends with Rubashov's execution.
619662	/m/02xbsj	The Mystery of Edwin Drood	Charles Dickens	1870	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins as John Jasper leaves a London opium den. The next evening, Edwin Drood visits Jasper, who is the choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral. Edwin confides that he has misgivings about his betrothal to Rosa Bud. The next day, Edwin visits Rosa at the Nuns' House, the boarding school where she lives. They quarrel good-naturedly, which they apparently do frequently during his visits. Meanwhile, having an interest in the cathedral crypt, Jasper seeks the company of Durdles, a man who knows more about the crypt than anyone else. Neville Landless and his twin sister Helena are sent to Cloisterham for their education. Neville will study with the minor canon, Rev. Mr Crisparkle; Helena will live at the Nuns' House with Rosa. Neville confides to Rev. Mr Crisparkle that he had hated his cruel stepfather, while Rosa confides to Helena that she loathes and fears her music-master, Jasper. Neville is immediately smitten with Rosa and is indignant that Edwin prizes his betrothal lightly. Edwin provokes him and he reacts violently, giving Jasper the opportunity to spread rumours about Neville's reputation of having a violent temper. Rev. Mr Crisparkle tries to reconcile Edwin and Neville, who agrees to apologize to Edwin if the former will forgive him. It is arranged that they will dine together for this purpose on Christmas Eve at Jasper's home. Rosa's guardian, Mr. Grewgious, tells her that she has a substantial inheritance from her father. When she asks whether there would be any forfeiture if she did not marry Edwin, he replies that there would be none on either side. Back at his office in London, Mr. Grewgious gives Edwin a ring which Rosa's father had given to her mother, with the proviso that Edwin must either give the ring to Rosa as a sign of his irrevocable commitment to her or return it to Mr. Grewgious. Mr. Bazzard, Mr. Grewgious's clerk, witnesses this transaction. Next day, Rosa and Edwin amicably agree to end their betrothal. They decide to ask Mr. Grewgious to break the news to Jasper and Edwin intends to return the ring to Mr. Grewgious. Meanwhile, Durdles takes Jasper into the cathedral crypt. On the way there Durdles points out a mound of quicklime. Jasper provides a bottle of wine to Durdles. The wine is mysteriously potent and Durdles soon loses consciousness; while unconscious he dreams that Jasper goes off by himself in the crypt. As they return from the crypt, they encounter a boy called Deputy and Jasper, thinking he was spying on them, takes him by the throat but seeing that this will strangle him, lets him go. On Christmas Eve, Neville buys himself a heavy walking stick; he plans to spend his Christmas break hiking around the countryside. Meanwhile, Edwin visits a jeweller in order to repair his pocket watch; it is mentioned that the only pieces of jewellery that he wears are the watch and chain and a shirt pin. By chance he meets a woman, who is an opium user from London. She asks Drood's Christian name and he replies that it is 'Edwin'; she says he is fortunate it is not 'Ned,' for 'Ned' is in great danger. He thinks nothing of this, for the only person who calls him 'Ned' is Jasper. Meanwhile, Jasper buys himself a black scarf of strong silk, which is not seen again during the course of the novel. The reconciliation dinner is successful and at midnight, Drood and Neville Landless leave together to go down to the river and look at a wind storm that rages that night. The next morning Edwin is missing and Jasper spreads suspicion that Neville has killed him. Neville leaves early in the morning for his hike; the townspeople overtake him and bring him back to the city. Rev. Mr Crisparkle keeps Neville out of jail by taking responsibility for him: he will produce him anytime his presence is required. That night Jasper is grief-stricken when Mr. Grewgious informs him that Edwin and Rosa had ended their betrothal; he reacts more strongly to this news than to the prospect that Edwin was dead. The next morning Rev. Mr Crisparkle goes to the river weir and finds Edwin's watch and chain and his shirt pin. A half year later, Neville is living in London near Mr. Grewgious's office. Mr. Tartar introduces himself and offers to share his garden with Landless; Mr. Tartar's chambers are adjacent to Neville's above a common courtyard. A stranger who calls himself Dick Datchery, arrives in Cloisterham. He rents a room below Jasper and observes the comings and goings in the area. On his way to the lodging the first time, Mr. Datchery asks directions from Deputy. Deputy will not go near there for fear that Jasper will choke him again. Jasper visits Rosa at the Nuns' House and professes his love for her. She rejects him but he persists; he says that if she gives him no hope, he will destroy Neville, the brother of her dear friend Helena. In fear of Jasper, Rosa goes to Mr. Grewgious in London. The next day Rev. Mr Crisparkle follows Rosa to London. When he is with Mr. Grewgious and Rosa, Mr. Tartar calls and asks if he remembers him. Rev. Crisparkle does remember him, as the one who years before saved him from drowning. They do not dare let Rosa contact Neville and Helena directly, for fear that Jasper may be watching Neville but Mr. Tartar allows Rosa to visit his chambers to contact Helena above the courtyard. Mr. Grewgious arranges for Rosa to rent a place from Mrs. Billickin and arranges for Miss Twinkleton to live with her there so that she can live there respectably. Jasper visits the London opium den again for the first time since Edwin's disappearance. When he leaves at dawn, the woman who runs the opium den follows him. She vows to herself that she will not lose his trail again as she did after his last visit. This time she follows him all the way to his home in Cloisterham; outside she meets Mr. Datchery, who tells her Jasper's name and that he will sing the next morning in the cathedral service. On inquiry Datchery learns she is called "Princess Puffer." The next morning she attends the service and shakes her fists at Jasper from behind a pillar. Dickens's death leaves the rest of the story unknown; he provided a summary of the story as planned in a letter to his friend and biographer John Forster: His first fancy for the tale was expressed in a letter in the middle of July. "What should you think of the idea of a story beginning in this way?—Two people, boy and girl, or very young, going apart from one another, pledged to be married after many years—at the end of the book. The interest to arise out of the tracing of their separate ways, and the impossibility of telling what will be done with that impending fate." This was laid aside; but it left a marked trace on the story as afterwards designed, in the position of Edwin Drood and his betrothed. I first heard of the later design in a letter dated "Friday the 6th of August 1869", in which after speaking, with the usual unstinted praise he bestowed always on what moved him in others, of a little tale he had received for his journal, he spoke of the change that had occurred to him for the new tale by himself. "I laid aside the fancy I told you of, and have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work." The story, I learnt immediately afterward, was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his uncle; the originality of which was to consist in the review of the murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but some other man, were the tempted. The last chapters were to be written in the condemned cell, to which his wickedness, all elaborately elicited from him as if told of another, had brought him. Discovery by the murderer of the utter needlessness of the murder for its object, was to follow hard upon commission of the deed; but all discovery of the murderer was to be baffled till towards the close, when, by means of a gold ring which had resisted the corrosive effects of the lime into which he had thrown the body, not only the person murdered was to be identified but the locality of the crime and the man who committed it. So much was told to me before any of the book was written; and it will be recollected that the ring, taken by Drood to be given to his betrothed only if their engagement went on, was brought away with him from their last interview. Rosa was to marry Tartar, and Crisparkle the sister of Landless, who was himself, I think, to have perished in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize the murderer.
620201	/m/02xdkx	A Time to Kill	David Alan Mack	1989	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the fictional Clanton, Mississippi, 10-year-old Tonya Hailey is viciously raped and beaten by two white racists&mdash;James Louis "Pete" Willard and Billy Ray Cobb. Shortly thereafter, Tonya is found and rushed to a hospital, while Pete and Billy Ray are heard bragging in a roadside bar about what they did to Tonya. Tonya's distraught and enraged father, Carl Lee Hailey, recalls a similar case from the year before, in which four white men raped a black girl in a nearby town and were acquitted. Carl Lee is determined not to allow that to happen in this case. Consequently, while Deputy DeWayne Powell Looney is escorting Pete and Billy Ray up a flight of stairs inside the courthouse, Carl Lee emerges from a nearby closet with an assault rifle and kills Pete and Billy Ray and accidentally wounds Looney, resulting in the amputation of his lower leg. (During his testimony in the trial Looney forgives Hailey, saying he has a daughter himself, and that if someone raped her, he would gladly do the same as Carl Lee.) Carl Lee is later arrested at his home by the highly respected, honorable and beloved black county sheriff Ozzie Walls (who must uphold the law but, as the father of two daughters of his own, privately supports what Carl Lee did and gives him special treatment while in jail) and charged with capital murder. Despite the efforts of the NAACP and his old military friend Cat to persuade Carl Lee to retain their high-powered attorneys, Carl Lee elects to be represented by his friend, Jake Brigance. Helping Jake on the case are his two most loyal friends--his heavy-drinking former boss Lucien Wilbanks (who has since been disbarred for his involvement in a fight resulting from a union strike, but still consults and aides Jake from the background), and sleazy divorce lawyer Harry Rex Vonner. Later, the crew is joined and greatly assisted by rabid ACLU feminist and law student Ellen Roark, who has prior experience with death penalty cases and offers Jake her services for free as a temporary clerk for the duration of the case. Ellen appears to be interested in Jake romantically, but Jake resists her not-so-subtle overtures and is completely loyal to his wife. The prosecuting attorney is Rufus Buckley, a corrupt shark with no concern or respect for ethics and with sky high political ambitions, hoping to win the case so as to gain the publicity that a win would generate, in hopes of being elected to a higher public office (governor). To annoy Buckley and call attention to this fact, Jake often addresses the D.A. as "governor" in pre-trial conferences. Presiding over the trial is white (but generally impartial) judge Omar "Ichabod" Noose. It is claimed, however, that Noose has been intimidated, both politically and criminally, a rumor given significant merit when, despite having no history of racist tendencies in his decisions, he refuses Jake's perfectly reasonable request for a change of venue, further handicapping the defense, as the racial make-up of Ford County virtually guarantees an all-white jury. At the same time, Billy Ray Cobb's brother, Freddy Lee Cobb, is seeking revenge for Carl Lee's killing of his brother. To this end, Freddy enlists the help of the Mississippi branch of the Ku Klux Klan, which is led by Mississippi grand dragon Stump Sisson. Subsequently, a KKK member attempts to plant a bomb under Jake's porch but is thwarted by the sheriff and a deputy after they receive a tip-off from a confidential informant (apparently inside the Klan) going by the code name "Mickey Mouse." The informant is later exposed and murdered by the Klan, and it is revealed that he was a former client of Jake's and a frequent patron of the coffee shop where Jake has long dined every morning and has become something of a folk-hero there. After the thwarted bombing, Jake sends his wife and daughter out of town to his wife's parents' home until the trial is over and begins spending most nights either in his office or at Lucien's house. Later, Jake's secretary Ethel Twitty and her frail husband Bud are attacked by the KKK, killing Bud. On the day the trial begins, there is a riot outside the court building between the KKK and the area's black residents, and Stump is killed by a molotov cocktail. Believing that the black people were at fault, Freddy and the KKK increase their attacks. As a result, the National Guard is called to Clanton to keep the peace during the trial. Undeterred, Freddy continues his efforts to get revenge for Billy Ray's death. They shoot at Jake one morning as he is being escorted into the courthouse, missing Jake but seriously wounding one of the guardsmen assigned to protect Jake. They continue to burn crosses throughout Clanton, and Jake's house is burnt down while Jake is sleeping at Lucien's. The case proceeds, and after reeling from the loss of his house and the revealing of a decades-old (and long-expunged) criminal conviction of the defense's psychiatrist whom Jake had called to testify to Carl Lee's "temporary insanity" at the time of the killings, Jake perseveres. He badly discredits the state's expert doctor in a powerful and snarky cross-examination in which he establishes that the doctor has never conceded to the insanity of any defendant in any criminal case in which he has been asked to testify, even when multiple other doctors have been in consensus otherwise. He traps the doctor with a revelation that several previous defendants found insane in their trials are currently under his care despite his having testified to their "sanity" in their respective trials. Eventually the doctor loses any favor with the jury when Jake frustrates him to such an extent that he blurts out "You just can't trust juries!" Jake follows this up with his own captivating closing statement (ignoring Lucien's advice to use a statement he had prepared for Jake). After lengthy deliberations during which a massive pro-acquittal demonstration is held, the jury acquits Carl Lee by reason of temporary insanity. Carl Lee returns to his family, and the story ends with Jake, Lucien, and Harry Rex having a celebratory drink before Jake is to hold a press conference and then leave town for a while to reunite with his wife and daughter. One major difference between the novel and the film adaptation is the origin of the assault rifle. In the book, Carl Lee and his brother get the rifle from a Memphis mogul whom Carl Lee rescued in the Vietnam War; in the movie, there is no explanation as to where Carl Lee got the rifle. Another major difference between the book and the movie is the powerful closing argument. In the film, the visual and graphic story is told by Jake Brigance, along with imploring the jury to imagine that the victim was white. However, in the book, Jake and Harry Rex discover through a post trial interview that a woman on the jury made that speech during jury deliberations. There is, in fact, a bit of a recurring theme throughout the book in that Jake is about the only character who does not appear in any way to see the case through a racial lens. He repeatedly refuses to play the "race card" even when baited to do so by several reporters, is clearly much more politically conservative than an attorney arguing such a case at the time might have been expected to be, and is shown to be in sharp contrast with Lucien on such matters, as well as with Ellen, to whom he expresses his strong support for the death penalty (just not for Carl Lee) and his contempt for the ACLU and, to a lesser extent, the NAACP. In short, he seems to see the situation (and thus approaches the case) only from the perspective of the father of a daughter for whom he, too, would kill to protect. However, as a defense attorney, strictly speaking, this perspective is all he is required to defend.
620258	/m/02xdt2	A Handful of Dust	Evelyn Waugh	1934	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In A Handful of Dust Waugh satirises the British landed gentry and mercantile class. The novel is set in the 1930s, and focuses on the breakdown of the marriage of Tony and Brenda Last. The aristocratic Tony is preoccupied with the maintenance of his family home, Hetton Abbey, an example of unfashionable Victorian Gothic architecture. John Beaver, a self-interested and impoverished social climber, invites himself to Hetton for the weekend, and soon after begins an affair with Brenda, who yearns for urban excitement. After the Lasts' son, also called John, dies in a riding accident, Brenda decides that she wants a divorce. In order to avoid any scandal for his wife, Tony agrees to go through the sham of creating appropriate grounds for divorce. Their agreement on the divorce falls apart when Brenda's brother reveals that Brenda's family (at Beaver's urging) will insist on a monetary settlement so large as to require Tony to sell Hetton; Tony refuses to grant or file for a divorce. Instead, he participates in an expedition to Brazil. Stranded in the jungle, Tony falls ill, and his expedition companion, Dr. Messinger, dies while attempting to retrieve help. Tony wanders, delirious, until he stumbles into an isolated tribal village. Once there, he is nursed back to health, and then held captive by a Mr. Todd, who insists that Tony remain forever, reading the works of Charles Dickens to him. Meanwhile, Brenda's relationship with John Beaver has fallen apart, after it became apparent that she would not become a rich divorcée. Shortly after Tony is declared dead, Brenda marries the couple's mutual friend, Jock Grant-Menzies. The novel ends with obscure relatives of Tony taking over Hetton. Waugh used as the final chapter for the novel a slightly adapted version of a pre-existing short story, "The Man Who Liked Dickens". When the novel was serialized in the American magazine Harper's Bazaar, Waugh had to supply a new ending because the short story, which had been published in the US earlier, could not for copyright reasons appear in the magazine. In the alternative ending, included as an appendix in some editions of the book, Tony returns from Brazil and to his relationship with Brenda. Waugh wrote of the novel's development: "I had just written a short story ["The Man Who Liked Dickens"] about a man trapped in the jungle, ending his days reading Dickens aloud. The idea came quite naturally from the experience of visiting a lonely settler of that kind and reflecting how easily he could hold me prisoner [...] eventually the thing grew into a study of other sorts of savages at home and the civilized man's helpless plight among them." (Gallagher, 303).
620363	/m/02xf64	Never Cry Wolf	Farley Mowat	1963	{"/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In 1948-1949, the Canadian Wildlife Service assigns the author to investigate the cause of declining caribou populations and determine whether wolves are to blame for the shortage. Upon finding his quarry near Nueltin Lake, Mowat discovers that rather than being wanton killers of caribou, the wolves subsist quite heavily on small mammals such as rodents and hares, "even choosing them over caribou when available." He concludes that "We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be — the mythological epitome of a savage, ruthless killer — which is, in reality, no more than the reflected image of ourself." Mowat comes to fear an onslaught of wolfers and government exterminators out to erase the wolves from the Arctic. Mowat's book established that: * Arctic Wolves usually prey upon Arctic Ox, Caribous, smaller mammals, and rodents but since they rely on stamina instead of speed, it would be logical for the wolves to choose a smaller prey than a large animal like caribou, which is much faster and stronger, and therefore a more formidable target. * A lone arctic wolf has a better chance of killing large prey by running alongside it and attacking its neck. The wolf would be at a disadvantage if it attacked large prey from behind, because the animal's powerful hind legs could kick the wolf, possibly causing injury. However, a group of wolves may be successful in attacking large prey from a number of positions. * Since arctic wolves often travel in a group, the wolves' best strategy is not to kill any surplus, since the whole group could sate themselves on just one or two large animals. There are, however, exceptions to this.
621020	/m/02xhp7	The Mauritius Command	Patrick O'Brian		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 When the novel begins, Aubrey is at home in his cramped Ashgrove Cottage with his wife, his twin baby girls and his shrewish mother-in-law, Mrs Williams, ashore and without a ship on half pay from the Navy. His spirits are lifted when his long time friend and colleague Stephen Maturin comes to call. Aubrey is ordered to take command, as the Commodore of a small squadron of ships in Cape Town and sails south from Portsmouth with some of the ships, to the Cape of Good Hope, with instructions to disrupt French interests in the region. Particularly he is charged with taking the islands of Mauritius and La Réunion. He is given command of the 38-gun frigate HMS Boadicea. The wife of one of his captains, Lady Clonfert, seeks passage with Aubrey to enable her to join her husband but Aubrey is not keen on this and contrives to leave early one morning without her. The long journey takes the squadron to the Cape of Good Hope. On the way Aubrey attempts to bring the crew up to his standards of efficiency, but he is only partly successful. They meet with the French ship Hébé which is escorting a captured merchant ship. After a brief chase the French are overcome and the ships captured. Hébé turns out to be HMS Hyaena captured some time before by the French. He sends the prizes to Gibraltar under the command of the Boadiceas aged First Lieutenant Akers. Aubrey uses this device to be rid of the officer and send home letters, one of which attempts to excuse his leaving early without Lady Clonfert. On arrival, Aubrey meets Admiral Bertie and also has to contend with the disparate characters of his captains. One of these is Lord Clonfert, a minor member of the Irish aristocracy who has political influence, and who served with Jack Aubrey whilst out in the West Indies. They were involved in an action together and he had some reservations at the time about Clonfert's courage. Another is Captain Corbett who is a harsh disciplinarian and drives his men almost to the point of mutiny. Barett Bonden, usually Aubrey's coxswain, and Preserved Killick request permission to join Aubrey once more, particularly as Bonden was given fifty lashes for an unpolished firing piece on his gun. During his campaign Aubrey temporarily switches his pennant to the elderly 64-gun ship of the line HMS Raisonnable, but returns to the more seaworthy HMS Boadicea with the onset of the tropical cyclone season. La Réunion is captured almost bloodlessly after a landing by British East India Company troops under the cooperative Colonel Keating, their path already softened up by Maturin's propaganda and political machinations. Mauritius proves a tougher nut to crack. As HMS Néréide is detached to chase the Iphigenia to Port South East on Mauritius, Maturin suffers a serious fall and spends much time in the company of Lord Clonfert and Mr. McAdam, Clonfert's learned but drunken surgeon. The first demonstrates himself to be a largely ineffective person, craving the fawning attentions of his officers and crew, whilst McAdam, a less convivial conversationalist, is made fun of by the young officers particularly when "in his cups." However, events worsen on their arrival. Keen to capitalise on the capture of the Île de la Passe fort, the small group of ships, under the command of the unadventurous but solid Captain Pym, land men and troops to consolidate the land campaign. While they are so disposed, the French appear with four ships Bellone, Minerve, Victor and Ceylon. They boldly sail past the fort into the port; the British are caught unprepared but decide to sail in to attack. They struggle to navigate the unfamiliar channel into the harbour and, with two British ships running aground, the French are able to bring all their guns to bear on the ships that eventually reach the harbour. The end result is the Néréide is taken (Clonfert is severely wounded in the neck and head by a wooden splinter), Sirius and Magiciénne are burnt to prevent their capture, and Iphigenia and the fort Île de la Passe are abandoned to be retaken by the French. Only a messenger vessel, with Maturin aboard, gets back to La Réunion to inform the commodore of the "ill tidings". Aubrey immediately rushes to see if Iphigenia and Île de la Passe can be saved but the British are chased off after finding both are clearly in French hands. After eventually making contact with the Emma transport and the Windham, which itself appears to be unseaworthy, Aubrey believes his fortunes have changed when HMS Africaine - now commanded by Captain Corbett - re-joins them. Sailing in chase of the French during the night, Africaine clashes with the Astrée and the renamed Iphigenia (once again the French Iphigenie). But the encounter goes badly and Corbett is killed during the fight, probably, as the ship's surgeon informs Maturin later, by his own oppressed men. The French capture the ship, but leave it dismasted when the Boadicea and Aubrey bear down on them and, much to Aubrey's joy, refuse an engagement. Joined by the Otter and Staunch, the flotilla eventually reaches harbour and Africaine's refit is the Commodore's top priority. Before repairs are complete the Pearl races towards harbour, meeting HMS Boadicea with the news that Bombay is nearby, being pounded by both the French Vénus and Victor. Outrunning the Staunch and Otter, Jack engages the pair who have captured Bombay and makes use of extra volunteer crew from the refitting HMS Africaine to board both Bombay, recapturing her, and the Venus. During the encounter the French Commodore, Hamelin, is killed by grapeshot in his heart. Now with news that Bellone and Minerve are almost certainly "heaved down", and Iphigenia and Néréide are likely to be of little use even if refitted, Aubrey believes the tide has turned in his favour. En-route from St. Denis to take Mauritius from the French, the squadron encounters a large British force under the command of Admiral Bertie, who proceeds to steal Aubrey and Keating's thunder by taking command of the whole invasion force and claiming the honours. However, news of the birth of his son causes Aubrey to remain ebullient even when everyone expects his mood to be downcast. The final invasion, based almost entirely on Aubrey and Keating's original plan, is almost without bloodshed. The French capitulate after being given honourable terms, and Maturin finds that Clonfert has committed suicide by removing the bandages from his wounds while captured, unable to face up to the jubilation of his rival, Jack Aubrey, in victory. A ceremonial dinner is given back in Cape Town and Admiral Bertie, under the impression that Aubrey has influential political connections, gives Aubrey the honour of taking the dispatches aboard the Boadicea and sailing for England in compensation for "stealing" his victory.
621399	/m/02xk96	The Confessions of St. Augustine	Augustine of Hippo	0398	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The work outlines Augustine's sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written, and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the following 1000 years of the Middle Ages. It is not a complete autobiography, as it was written in his early 40s, and he lived long afterwards, producing another important work (City of God); it does, nonetheless, provide an unbroken record of his development of thought and is the most complete record of any single person from the 4th and 5th centuries. It is a significant theological work. In the work St. Augustine writes about how much he regrets having led a sinful and immoral life. He discusses his regrets for following the Manichaean religion and believing in astrology. He writes about Nebridius's role in helping to persuade him that astrology was not only incorrect but evil, and St. Ambrose's role in his conversion to Christianity. The first nine books are autobiographical and the last four are commentary. He shows intense sorrow for his sexual sins, and writes on the importance of sexual morality. The books were written as prayers to God, thus the title, based on the Psalms of David; and it begins with "For Thou has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee" . The work is thought to be divisible into books which symbolize various aspects of the Trinity and trinitarian belief.
622069	/m/02xmhn	A Hat Full of Sky	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett is a fantasy novel about a girl who is learning her place as a witch. Early in the novel, Tiffany Aching leaves her home in the chalk country (based on England’s chalk country) to act as an apprentice and maid for the elderly witch Miss Level. Her former teacher, Miss Tick, who is also a witch, escorts her to the town of Twoshirts. While waiting for Miss Level to arrive, they are attacked by a hiver. The hiver cannot be killed or seen and it takes over your mind. The encounter is only for a few seconds, and then the hiver leaves but it gives Tiffany and Miss Tick a fright. Miss Level comes along on a broomstick and takes Tiffany to her cottage in the mountains. After settling in Tiffany discovers that Miss Level has two bodies and she has a spirit who cleans her house named Oswald. After settling into the cottage, Tiffany goes to a group of apprentice witches her age with Petulia. The leader of the group is called Annagramma and many characters find her condescending and rude. Tiffany leaves the group upset after telling them about her imaginary hat. While in her room at the cottage, the hiver finds her and takes over her body and mind. At first Tiffany doesn’t realize what has happened, but when she does, it is too late for her to take action. The hiver (as Tiffany) causes chaos, steals Mr Weavall’s money and causes Annagramma to fear her. Upon arrival at the cottage, the hiver kills one of Miss Levels bodies. Rob Anybody who is one of the Nac Mac Feegle (which are fairies that are very loyal to Tiffany after she previously helped them) goes into Tiffany's mind along with some of his friends to try to fight the hiver out of her mind. They decide that smells from her past will bring forth the actual Tiffany and she will be able to break free. With the help of the Nac Mac Feegle, Tiffany fights the hiver out of her mind, but she is still left with the memories of previous victims of the hiver. Mr. Weavall discovers that Tiffany stole his money, but the Feegles put gold in place of the copper he had saved up. Tiffany decides that the hiver must be dealt with so she proceeds to pursue it in the mountains. Mistress Weatherwax accompanies her although Tiffany is begrudging. They camp in the mountains and Mistress Weatherwax borrows an owls mind to observe the hiver as it lurks close by. Mistress Weatherwax tells Tiffany to call her Granny Weatherwax. In the morning Tiffany and Mistress Weatherwax head off to the witch trials, an annual event where witches show what they have learned. Upon arrival, Tiffany senses the hiver moving in on her and turns to Granny Weatherwax only to find that she isn’t there. Panicking, she runs until she finds Granny Weatherwax who tells her it is time to face the hiver alone. Tiffany welcomes the hiver to her mind, and discovers that the hiver doesn’t understand humans, it just wants to seek shelter from the world because it senses everything. Tiffany names the hiver Arthur and teaches it how to die which is its ultimate goal. She shows it the way across the desert to death. As she turns to exit the world of death, she finds that the door she entered has disappeared. Turning back around, Death confronts her but she is rescued by Granny Weatherwax. Granny Weatherwax gives Tiffany her hat but she returns it because she wants to make her own. The novel ends on Tiffany returning to the chalk to take the place of her dead grandmother as the witch of the land. She decides to make her hat out of the sky.
622600	/m/02p2jdp	The Surgeon's Mate	Patrick O'Brian	1980	{"/m/05ndg1r": "Naval adventure", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Surgeon's Mate starts in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, having escaped from the Americans in Boston aboard , start their return journey to England aboard a packet ship. Two American privateer schooners — commissioned by Harry Johnson, an American spymaster — doggedly pursue the packet ship across the Grand Banks until one of them fortuitously hits an iceberg. On their return to England, Stephen receives an invitation to speak at the Institut in Paris on the extinct avifauna of Rodriguez Island and he and Diana visit the city. Stephen arranges for Diana, who is pregnant with Johnson's child, to stay with a friend Adhemar de La Mothe for her lying-in. The British Admiralty is keen to capture the fortress at fictitious Grimsholm Island (distinct from the Grimsholmen nature reserve) owing to its highly strategic location in the Baltic. Maturin, accompanied by Jack Aubrey and Jagiello, a remarkably talented and handsome young Lithuanian, embarks on a mission to persuade the Catalan garrison of the fortress to defect. Aboard , Aubrey manages to capture the Minnie, a swift Danish privateer cum merchantman, after a day-long chase. Once Stephen Maturin and British hands are aboard, they pretend to give chase to her in order to deceive the Spanish garrison. Maturin is eventually landed and, in the absence of any French officers, warmly welcomed by his Catalan godfather, Ramon d'Ullastret. The next morning, the Catalan troops and their colonel are loaded aboard the transport ships and the successful expedition receives a warm welcome back at base from Admiral Sir James Saumarez. Caught up in a storm in the English Channel, the Ariel spots pursuing a French two-decker, the Meduse. Aubrey decides to help the chase and blasts the Meduse with his carronades without suffering much damage, slowing her pace enough for the Jason to gain. After losing sight of them, the Ariel is caught up in two nights of dark, stormy weather and finds herself fifty miles off course with the wind dead on shore. Aubrey attempts to club-haul her but the Ariel ends up beached on the shore. After a brief period of imprisonment in Brittany, Jack, Stephen and Jagiello are taken to Paris, accompanied by a Monsieur Duhamel. Imprisoned in the Temple prison, Aubrey attempts to break out down the immense stone privy as Stephen is interrogated by French officers, who represent a different intelligence agency than Duhamel's. In the meantime, Duhamel has approached Stephen with an offer to take peace offerings to the King and British government (presumably a plan hatched up by Talleyrand and some senior officials). Duhamel also gives Stephen some English newspapers to read and Jack's spirits are buoyed to learn from the Naval Chronicle that defeated the Meduse in the action which beached his ship, the Ariel. Stephen's second interrogation is interrupted by the American, Johnson, who is able to identify Maturin as an intelligence agent and the killer of French spies, Dubreuil and Pontet-Canet. This action places Maturin in great danger. It also turns out that Diana Villiers has given her great diamond, the Blue Peter, to a Minister's wife to help secure their release. Just as Jack breaks through the privy, four Frenchmen enter their prison cell — D'Anglars, Duhamel, a foreign ministry official and a cloaked officer. After agreeing terms, the prisoners are taken down to two carriages and spirited out of Paris (accompanied by Diana who has lost her baby) to a waiting cartel at Calais, the Oedipus commanded by William Babbington. Safely away, Stephen proposes to Diana Villiers once again and they are finally married on board by Babbington, with Jack giving her away. The book title is a triple entendre in its use of the term "mate", referring to a ship's surgeon's assistant, a chess reference to Maturin's successful espionage efforts (i.e., checkmate), and Maturin getting married at the end of the story.
622932	/m/02xq0j	According to Mary Magdalene	Marianne Fredriksson	1997-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story offers a feminist perspective on the person of Christ and on the beginnings of the Christian Church. Since it presents Jesus as merely a human being and deviates from the orthodox biblical portrayal of the Son of Man, the novel was severely criticised by mainstream Christians. sv:Enligt Maria Magdalena
623219	/m/02xr70	Insomnia	Stephen King		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ralph Roberts, a retired widower, begins to suffer from insomnia. As his condition worsens, Ralph begins to see things that are invisible and intangible to others: colorful manifestations of life-force surrounding people (auras), and diminutive white-coated beings he calls "little bald doctors", based on their appearance. Roberts perceives other planes of reality and their influence upon the "real" world. He finds that his sweetheart, Lois Chasse, is also a sufferer. They eventually discover that their insomnia has been induced by the two little bald doctors to help them defeat agents of the Crimson King. Ralph and Lois name the two "good" doctors Clotho and Lachesis, while the third "bad" doctor is called Atropos; they are all named after the Moirai of mythology. Ralph overcomes Atropos and forces him to promise to stay out of their business, the doctors all being bound by their word. However, Atropos has his revenge by showing Ralph a glimpse of the not-too-distant future in which he claims the life of the innocent Natalie Deepneau. Ralph is able to counterbalance this however, by striking a deal with Clotho and Lachesis whereby he trades his own life for Natalie's. Meanwhile, Ed Deepneau, Natalie's father and Ralph's neighbor, falls under the control of the Crimson King. Deepneau attempts to crash a light plane containing explosives into the Derry Civic Center during a heavily-attended rally. Ralph and Lois realize that the Crimson King is using Deepneau to kill a small boy named Patrick Danville, the focus of a prophecy concerning the salvation of The Dark Tower. Danville cannot, for undisclosed reasons, be killed directly by anyone born under either the Random or the Purpose. However, from time to time a being is born who is "undesignated". An undesignated person is described as being like a blank card, and is up for grabs by either side. Deepneau is one such person, in fact the only person on earth at that time of undesignated status. Ralph defeats the King and forces the light plane to crash into the parking lot; killing Deepneau and sparing Danville's life, allowing him to fulfill his destiny and setting the path for the Dark Tower series. The story ends on a tragic note as Ralph, to uphold his bargain with Clotho and Lachesis, is hit and killed by a car to prevent Natalie Deepneau from being killed in his place. The story closes on the remark that Ralph is finally able to rest.
623338	/m/02xrpz	Gabriela, Cravo e Canela	Jorge Amado			 The book tells two separate but related tales: first, the romance between Nacib Saad, a respectable bar owner of Syrian origin, and Gabriela, an innocent and captivating migrant worker from the impoverished interior. And second, the political struggle between the old guard of Cacao growers, led by the Bastos clan, and the forces of modernization, in the person of Mundinho Falcão, a wealthy young man from Rio de Janeiro. It can be read simultaneously as an unusual, charming love story, a description of the political and social forces at work in 1920s Brazil, a somewhat satirical depiction of Latin American aspirations to "modernity", and a celebration of the local culture and pleasures of Bahia. The book was made into series for Brazilian television in 1960, in 1976 and again in 2012. A feature film of the novel was directed by Bruno Barreto in 1983. The feature version starred Sonia Braga as Gabriela and Marcello Mastroianni as Nacib, and featured original music by Antonio Carlos Jobim.
623346	/m/02xrqr	The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell	Jorge Amado	1959	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is about what happens after Quincas Wateryell, a popular bum who lives in the slums of Bahia is found dead one morning. Two groups of people compete over Quincas's memory: his family, led by his daughter Vanda. To them, Quincas is Joaquim Soares da Cunha, an "exemplary employee of the State Rent Board," who disgraced his family by walking out on them one day, calling Vanda and her mother, Dona Otacilia "vipers" and Vanda's husband Leonardo a "silly ass." Despite all their efforts to hide what really happened, Joaquim Soares da Cunha became Quincas, "vagabond king of the honky-tonks" and "patriarch of the prostitutes." Leonardo attempts to hide it from his coworkers, and Vanda tries to keep it from her friends, but they cannot ignore the reputation that Quincas has earned in the local press. Now, Vanda, Leonardo, and Quincas's sister Aunt Marocas and brother Eduardo, must tend to the body and give it a proper burial, without attracting too much attention to Quincas and his past. They settle on a simple suit and shoes, but no underwear, because no one will ever see that, and order a casket and candles fit for a church. That night they gather round the casket to keep watch over Quincas, each trying to ignore his learing smile, which reminds them of how much he despised them. Gradually, they go home, leaving Quincas to be watched by his friends from the slum. The cold reception that the news of Quincas's death is received by his family is juxtaposed by the way his friends from the slum receive the same news. His closest friends are Curió, a store barker in Shoemaker's Hollow, who paints his face like a clown to attract people, Bangs, a towering Black who makes his living as a card sharp, Private Martim, a soldier who had been discharged from the army who lived off the generosity of the women he was frequently engaged to, and Breezy, who supported himself catching frogs and selling them to medical researchers for experiments. The four men lead the neighborhood in mourning for Quincas, wailing "Daddy's gone!" That evening, they come to pay their last respects and end up taking care of the body after the family leaves. They recall the impact that Quincas had on their lives, and remember how he got his curious nickname: once, after taking a swig from a bottle of what he thought was alcohol, he spit it out and roared: "Waaaaaaater!" They all sob for Quincas, and Private Martim worries about how he will now take care of Quitéria, a prostitute who was Quincas's girlfriend. Left alone at night with the body, the four of them get Quincas to participate in one last party, telling him jokes serving him liquor, and making a gift of a beautiful frog that Breezy had just caught. They then decide to take Quincas on one last trip to the docks to share Cap'n Manuel's delicious fish stew that was Quincas's favorite. On their way to the dock, they pick up a group of prostitutes, including Quitéria, so she can have one last fling with the dead man. Quincas always loved the sea, and after the friends feed him the stew, they take him on board Cap'n Manuel's boat for a fishing excursion. Suddenly a storm tosses the boat, and they rush for shore, but Quincas's body is tossed overboard. It is a fitting end for Quincas, who loved the sea and once made a "solemn oath" that it "would be the only witness to his final hour."
623355	/m/02xrt5	Tieta do Agreste				 Antonieta returns from São Paulo to her native village of Agreste in Bahia.
623360	/m/02xrtw	Tocaia Grande	Jorge Amado	1984		 The novel deals with the foundation of a community, Tocaia Grande ("big ambush" in Portuguese), in a fertile agricultural zone The ambush referred to in the title is carried out by Natario de Fonseca, a jagunço in the service of a plantation owner, colonel Boaventura. Twenty gunfighters in the service of the latter's only political rival are killed, effectively destroying the opponent. As a reward, Natario is given a small holding. With his help the community grows into a town. Other important characters are a Lebanese immigrant, Fadul, owner of the general store - renowned for his stubbornness and physical strength; Castor de Abduim, a handsome blacksmith, whose companion Diva dies in a cholera outbreak; Bernarda, a young prostitute who becomes Natario's lover; and a group of farmers from Sergipe, whose arrival initiates a colourful blending of Bahian traditions with those of the original inhabitants.
623480	/m/02xsf6	Carpe Jugulum	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Count Magpyr and family are invited to the naming of Magrat and King Verence's daughter, to be conducted by the Omnian priest, Mightily Oats. During the ceremony, Verence informs Nanny Ogg and Agnes Nitt that the Count has informed him that the Magpyr family intend to move into Lancre Castle and take over. Due to a type of hypnotism, everyone seems to consider this plan to be perfectly acceptable. Only the youngest witch, Agnes, and the Omnian priest, Mightily Oats, seem able to resist this charm, due to their dual personalities. The Magpyr son, Vlad, is attracted to Agnes because she is able to resist him. Meanwhile, Granny Weatherwax has left her cottage empty and seems to be working towards a life in a cave, almost like a hermit. After they have left the hypnotic influence of the Vampires, Agnes, Nanny Ogg and Magrat attempt to convince her to help them save Lancre, but apparently without success. The Magpyr family have made themselves much more formidable enemies by building up tolerance to the normal methods used to defeat vampires, such as garlic, bright light, and religious symbols. This has been done with a series of self help procedures, including exposing the younger vampires to low levels of vampire repellents. There is an Igor who is the servant of the Magpyrs. He is a traditionalist who spends his spare time breeding and distributing spiders for the dark corners of the castle. The Magpyrs are very rude to him, and make fun of his attempts to keep their residence looking like a 'proper' vampire's castle. Igors' impression of the current Count Magpyr is that he is too modern, whereas Igor prefers "tradithionalitht" methods of Vampirism (all Igors have a lisp on the Discworld—although some only have them when they remember). Finally, Nanny, Magrat and Agnes confront the Magpyrs, but look to be defeated when Granny Weatherwax comes in (stumbling and tired in a very un-Granny like fashion). She also appears to fail against the Magpyrs and she is bitten in the neck and seems destined to become a Vampire. She resists, though not without extreme physical strain. Nanny, Magrat and Magrat's infant daughter Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre escape with the help of the rebelling Igor, who appears to have a crush towards Nanny), but are forced to detour to Überwald and end up in the Magpyrs' castle. Agnes is kidnapped by the Magpyrs and their clan, who give chase by flying. While Magrat and her daughter hide in Igor's dungeon quarters Nanny and Igor begin fighting against the Magpyrs, using the considerable stock of Holy water and other religious symbols that were originally collected by old Count Magpyr (who is described as having been "a sportsman"). Surprisingly (for the Magpyr family, at least) the old-fashioned ways to defeat vampires that they thought themselves protected against start to work again. They don't understand what the problem is, although they start to have bizarre cravings for "hot, sweet tea and biscuits", a combination that has them feeling quite upset (it not being their usual craving for blood.) All is revealed when Granny (who has helped Mightily Oats to Überwald by a process of being carried by him) tells them that - far from turning her into a Vampire, they have, instead, been 'Weatherwaxed', caused by the sharing of their blood with her. The Magpyrs find themselves unable to harm Magrat's daughter or do anything else that Granny herself is unable to do (e.g. fly). They are even more horrified when they find out that Igor has re-awakened the old Count Magpyr (having gone into his crypt and spilled a drop of blood on the old Count's cremation ashes) and that the people of Überwald would prefer the old Count to their new, modern type of vampirism. The Magpyrs are attacked (and presumably killed—though probably not permanently) by the citizens of Überwald and the witches return to Lancre.
623643	/m/02xs_s	Dead Souls	Nikolai Gogol	1842	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows the exploits of Chichikov, a gentleman of middling social class and position. Chichikov arrives in a small town and quickly tries to make a good name for himself by impressing the many petty officials of the town. Despite his limited funds, he spends extravagantly on the premise that a great show of wealth and power at the start will gain him the connections he needs to live easily in the future. He also hopes to befriend the town so that he can more easily carry out his bizarre and mysterious plan to acquire "dead souls." The government would tax the landowners on a regular basis, with the assessment based on how many serfs (or "souls") the landowner had on their records at the time of the collection. These records were determined by census, but censuses in this period were infrequent, far more so than the tax collection, so landowners would often find themselves in the position of paying taxes on serfs that were no longer living, yet were registered on the census to them, thus they were paying on "dead souls." It is these dead souls, manifested as property, that Chichikov seeks to purchase from people in the villages he visits; he merely tells the prospective sellers that he has a use for them, and that the sellers would be better off anyway, since selling them would relieve the present owners of a needless tax burden. Although the townspeople Chichikov comes across are gross caricatures, they are not flat stereotypes by any means. Instead, each is neurotically individual, combining the official failings that Gogol typically satirizes (greed, corruption, paranoia) with a curious set of personal quirks. Chichikov's macabre mission to acquire "dead souls" is actually just another complicated scheme to inflate his social standing (essentially a 19th century Russian version of the ever-popular "get rich quick" scheme). He hopes to collect the legal ownership rights to dead serfs as a way of inflating his apparent wealth and power. Once he acquires enough dead souls, he will retire to a large farm and take out an enormous loan against them, finally acquiring the great wealth he desires. Setting off for the surrounding estates, Chichikov at first assumes that the ignorant provincials will be more than eager to give their dead souls up in exchange for a token payment. The task of collecting the rights to dead people proves difficult, however, due to the persistent greed, suspicion, and general distrust of the landowners. He still manages to acquire some 400 souls, and returns to the town to have the transactions recorded legally. Back in the town, Chichikov continues to be treated like a prince amongst the petty officials, and a celebration is thrown in honour of his purchases. Very suddenly, however, rumours flare up that the serfs he bought are all dead, and that he was planning to elope with the Governor's daughter. In the confusion that ensues, the backwardness of the irrational, gossip-hungry townspeople is most delicately conveyed. Absurd suggestions come to light, such as the possibility that Chichikov is Napoleon in disguise or the notorious and retired 'Captain Kopeikin,' who had lost an arm and a leg during a war. The now disgraced traveller is immediately ostracized from the company he had been enjoying and has no choice but to flee the town in disgrace. In the novel's second section, Chichikov flees to another part of Russia and attempts to continue his venture. He tries to help the idle landowner Tentetnikov gain favor with General Betrishchev so that Tentetnikov may marry the general's daughter, Ulinka. To do this, Chichikov agrees to visit many of Betrishchev's relatives, beginning with Colonel Koshkaryov. From there Chichikov begins again to go from estate to estate, encountering eccentric and absurd characters all along the way. Eventually he purchases an estate from the destitute Khlobuyev but is arrested when he attempts to forge the will of Khlobuyev's rich aunt. He is pardoned thanks to the intervention of the kindly Mourazov but is forced to flee the village. The novel ends mid-sentence with the prince who arranged Chichikov's arrest giving a grand speech that rails against corruption in the Russian government.
623749	/m/02xt8n	The Voyage of the Space Beagle	A. E. van Vogt	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The main protagonist of the novel is Dr. Elliott Grosvenor, the only Nexialist on board (a new discipline depicted as taking an actively generalist approach towards science). It is Grosvenor's training and application of Nexialism rather than the more narrow-minded approaches of the individual scientific and military minds of his other shipmates that consistently prove more effective against the hostile encounters both from outside and within the Space Beagle. He is eventually forced to take control of the ship using a combination of hypnotism, psychology, brainwashing, and persuasion, in order to develop an effective strategy for defeating the alien entity, Anabis, and saving the ship and our galaxy. The book can be roughly divided into four sections corresponding to the four short stories on which it was based: In the first section, the Space Beagle lands on a largely deserted desolate planet. Small scattered herds of deer-like creatures are seen, and the ancient ruins of cities litter the landscape. Coeurl, a starving, intelligent and vicious cat-like carnivore with tentacles on its shoulders, approaches the ship, pretending to be a unintelligent animal, and quickly infiltrates it. The creature kills several crewmen before being tricked into leaving the now spaceborne ship in a lifeboat. It then commits suicide when it realizes it has been defeated. In the second part, the ship is almost destroyed by internal warfare caused by telepathic contact with a race of bird-like aliens, called Riim. The benign signals that the Riim send are incompatible with the human mind. Only Grosvenor's knowledge of telepathic phenomena saves the ship from destruction. In the third section, the ship comes across Ixtl, a scarlet being floating in deep space. It is a vicious survivor of a race that ruled a previous universe before the Big Bang, the creation of our own universe. Ixtl boards the ship, and being obsessed with its own reproduction, kidnaps several crew members in order to implant parasitic eggs in their stomachs. It is eventually tricked to leave the ship, after all the crew has left the ship temporarily, leaving no prey left for its offspring to feed on. In the last section, Anabis, a galaxy-spanning consciousness, is encountered. Once again, it is both malevolent, starving and aggressive, and under all circumstances must be prevented from following the ship back to any other galaxy. Anabis, which is essentially a galaxy-size Will-o'-the-wisp, feeds off the death of living organisms, and has destroyed all intelligent life in its galaxy. It transforms all planets it can find into jungle planets through terraforming, since it is these kind of worlds that produce most life. The crew of the Space Beagle is brainwashed by Grosvenor into spending several years luring the intelligence to chase the ship into deep space, causing it to starve to death. Running concurrently to this, the book also covers a power struggle on the ship among the leaders of individual scientific and military groups.
624435	/m/02xx5l	Fallen Angels	Larry Niven	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Astronauts from the orbital society flew a modified scramjet, redesigned to harvest nitrogen from the Earth's atmosphere. Government policy declares that these ships are responsible for the ice age, so the scramjet is shot down with a surface-to-air missile. The pilot and copilot, an Earth-born American named Alex MacLeod and a space-born Russo-American named Gordon Tanner, are forced to crash land in Canada atop the glaciers. Upon hearing of this, the fan underground embarks on a rescue mission - a group of fans rides north through the Dakotas to rescue them before they can be apprehended by the Government. Upon reaching the Dakotas, the fans must travel largely on foot, as their van is unable to traverse the glaciers. However, they have a major advantage over their foes in the government - their relationship with the space station provides them with superior navigational abilities; following the fall of scientific society, the United States Air Force (USAF) no longer enjoys access to satellite reconnaissance. The fans are able to reach the downed spacecraft well in advance of the USAF. Their escape is aided in a similar manner. Though the Angels are unable to walk due to their overexposure to weightlessness and must be dragged along on sleds, the microwave power transmission beam reserved for Winnipeg is diverted to warm the travellers as they return south to their van. In addition, a tribe of nomadic Inuit peoples shares supplies with them in thanks for the warmth provided by the microwave beam. Upon finally reaching their van, the rescuers flee to a small science fiction convention of some 50 fans at a mansion owned by one of their own. Once there, one of the fans takes on the role of personal trainer to teach the Angels methods to adjust to Earth's gravity including various asanas from yoga. At the con, the fans brainstorm a daring plan - before the Greens had come to power, one of the Board of Trustees for the Metropolitan Museum of Boston by the name of Ron Cole supposedly refurbished a Titan II rocket. This rocket still exists at the Museum of Science and Industry at Chicago. The fans and the Angels leave for Chicago just moments before the mansion is raided by the Green police. The trip to Chicago gives the reader a brutal depiction of American life without basic technology. A blizzard forces the fans to take shelter in a farm town - where at least one towns-person dies in each blizzard for lack of heating oil. After hitching a ride in a consignment of cheese,the fans are captured by the feudal inhabitants of Milwaukee who are burning the excess houses in the city for heat. One of their captors has the food swapped with moonshine liquor and forces the group into slavery to pay off a series of trumped-up "fines". They are assisted by a fellow fan amongst their captors, and are able to continue on to Chicago. When the fans finally meet Ron Cole, their hopes are crushed. The rocket is a decaying wreck, and Cole is a shadow of his former self due to invasive 'reeducation' treatments. However, Cole is able to put them on another path - a privately constructed single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft at Edwards Air Force Base, disguised by the simple and effective method of its designer, Gary Hudson, declaring it non-functional.
625409	/m/02y0kr	Sevastopol: On Photographs of War				 Sevastopol is a response to photographs of war, from the earliest days of photography to the television broadcasts of our times. We see, in passing, the Crimean War of 1854, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam and tragedies of unnamed wars today. Some of the photographers are famous — Mathew Brady, Ansel Adams; many are not; most are anonymous. One photographer, Kevin Carter, who snapped a picture of a starving child with a vulture waiting in the background — committed suicide. For each photograph, the poet, William Allen, allows himself a 100-word response. We look at the photograph on the left page, form our own impressions and then compare them with what the poet felt and expressed on the right page. In this way, one by one, we are led on a tour through sombre moments of history, yet at the same time come in touch with our private psychological and political mappings of life at risk. The power of word and image together makes Sevastopol an unusual and moving poetic experience, linking us with those who did not escape the horrors and misery of man's most grisly occupation.
625530	/m/02y133	The Hunts	Amelia Biagioni			 A bilingual edition of Las Cacerías, an enraptured poetic cycle that takes the reader through the delirious swirl of the eternal hunt on Earth and in heaven, in the past, present and future. Sections of the cycle relate to the ancient sport of man pursuing beast, beast pursuing beast, man pursuing man, and the poet's quest to capture life and identity within words. The final section presents the author as a woman pursued as a heretic, for having "spied on God."
625539	/m/02y149	Addictive Aversions				 The book is a follow-up to Anonymous Constellation, about the destructive forces of nature. Addictive Aversions focuses instead on the life-force of sex -- just as blind, asocial and irresistible as nature.
625594	/m/02y1cw	Angels of Youth	Luigi Fontanella			 It is divided into four sections, Ceres, Stanzas for Emma, Ars Poetica, and Ballads. It includes "Stanzas for Emma" dedicated to the poet's daughter, and "Sequence for my Father" which reflects on his dead parent.
625603	/m/02y1f7	The Wolf at the Door: A Poetic Cycle	Bogomil Gjuzel			 A search for roots, humanity and survival in the gloom of recent Balkan history. Poems are in verse, but also arranged as prose poems. The first section, "A Search for Roots," deals with the politics and cultural landscape of the country, with beautiful portrayals of nature and religious monuments. The second section, "Staring at Infinity," refers to classical archetypes, the battle of Troy and the story of Jesus. The last section, "Naked Life," speaks of the family in the midst of violence, devastation and confusion. Illuminating notes clarify the complex politics of the region and its tortured history. "Bogomil Gjuzel [pronounced Dzyuzel] is the republic's greatest living poet. The publication of these fine translations illustrates how the sense of living in tragic times permeates Gjuzel's work. What makes these poems especially moving is their sense of impending doom, the increasing despair and hopelessness in the face of ever-new injustices and sufferings for which there's no easy answer... Only in lyric poetry, as fine as Gjuzel's, can a reliable historical record be found of what it is like to live with great evil." ~ From the Introduction by Charles Simic
625625	/m/02y1hd	The Fantastic Ordinary World of Lutz Rathenow: Poems, Plays & Stories				 "The world Berlin author Lutz Rathenow depicts is the colorless, flat, thuddingly dull DDR — the German Democratic Republic, as it called itself, or Communist East Germany, as we knew it: a sub-Soviet, sub-standard, bureaucratic parody of a society (1949-1990). And he depicts it very well, only not from the outside, with detailed descriptions, historical costumes and polemical plots, but rather from the inside, dropping in on the mind of one or another of its characters. Here is the little man starved of human contact and longing for romance ('The Girl in Finland'), the timid bureaucrat standing in front of an office door and wondering how to knock ('Mr. Breugel), the writer facing the blank page and fearing both to write and not to write ('The Blank Page'). Here, in other words, is Angst, paralysis, a funnel of doubt and indecision. Out of it comes murderous resentment ('Professor Dr. Mitzenleim'), mocking defiance ('Reasons for Refusing to Make a Statement'), ironic futility ('Meditations on Peace'). People who are emotionally starved, anxious and futile develop a perverse sense of humor ('The Phone Call'); they find grim little pleasures in their living death ('Obituary'). "Rathenow's works crystallize not only a past, but also a present and recurring assault on the mind. The government, the political party, the church, the organization, the television program, the newspaper, the company, the office, the boss all want you to think the same way, their way, whatever the country and whatever the time. And if you do, this is what results: reduced capacity, distorted thought, fragmented language, inverted feelings, a sense of unreality, a drabness unto death. The Fantastic Ordinary World of Lutz Rathenow draws this lesson and thus the pleasure out of the painful republic. ~ From the Introduction by Karl Kvitko
625998	/m/02y2q4	The Music of Chance	Paul Auster	1990	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jim Nashe is a fireman with a two-year-old daughter and wife who has just left him. Knowing he cannot work and raise a child at the same time, he sends her to live with his sister. Six months of sporadic visits pass and Nashe realizes that his daughter, Juliet, has begun to forget him. Suddenly, the father that abandoned Nashe as a child dies, leaving his son and daughter a large amount of money. Nashe, knowing that Juliet will be happier with her aunt, pays off all of his debts, buys a Saab and pursues "a life of freedom" by spending a year driving back and forth across the country. His fortune now squandered, Nashe picks up a hot-headed young gambler named Jack Pozzi. The two hatch a plan to fleece a couple of wealthy bachelors in a poker game. Coincidently, the two marks, Flower and Stone, obtained their fortune by gambling (winning the lottery). In addition to purchasing a mansion, the two eccentrics also bought ten thousand stones, each weighing more than sixty pounds. The stones were from the ruins of a fifteenth-century Irish castle destroyed by Oliver Cromwell; Flower and Stone intend to use them to build a "Wailing Wall" in the meadow behind their mansion. Unfortunately, Flower and Stone are not the suckers Pozzi takes them for and the plan backfires. Having run out of money Nashe decides to risk everything on "a single blind turn of a card" and puts up his car as collateral against the pot. He loses and the two indenture themselves to Flower and Stone as a way to pay back their debt. They will build the wall for Flower and Stone, a meaningless wall that nobody will ever see. For the rest of the novel, Flower and Stone are conspicuously absent. Nashe shrugs this off as fifty days of exercise, but Pozzi views it as nothing less than a violation of human decency. The two men are watched over by Calvin Murks, the millionaires' tough but amiable hired man. When Pozzi takes a swing at Murks for cracking a joke about being too smart to play cards, Murks begins wearing a gun. Pozzi sees this as proof that he is nothing but a slave. Even after the two men have completed working off their debt, the millionaires add on the charges the men have accrued as a result of living at the estate. Pozzi, convinced there is no way out of the contract, escapes the meadow. Nashe finds his young friend sprawled on the grass a day later, beaten into a coma. Murks claims innocence and takes Pozzi to a hospital while Nashe continues to work. Two weeks later, Murks tells Nashe that Pozzi checked himself out of the hospital and vanished, but Nashe is convinced that his friend died from his injuries. Time passes, the wall grows and Nashe gets more and more obsessed with taking revenge on Murks, since Flower and Stone have become too distant to bear the immediacy of his hatred. When Nashe has completed enough work on the wall to pay off his debt, Murks and his son-in-law Floyd take Nashe out to celebrate. Nashe beats Floyd in a game of pool, but refuses the fifty dollars he has won; Floyd accepts this, saying that he owes Nashe a favor. Soon after, the three men pile into Murks's new car (Nashe's old Saab) with the slightly more sober Nashe behind the wheel. Nashe promptly takes the car up to eighty-five miles an hour and collides with another vehicle.
626634	/m/02y48b	L'Histoire de Juliette	Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Marquis de Sade	1797	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02js9": "Erotica"}	 Juliette is raised in a convent. However, at age 13 she is seduced by a woman who immediately explains that morality, religion and other such concepts are meaningless. There are plenty of similar philosophical musings during the book, all attacking the ideas of God, morals, remorse, love, etc., the overall conclusion being that the only aim in life is "to enjoy oneself at no matter whose expense." Juliette takes this to the extreme and manages to murder her way through numerous people, including various family members and friends. During Juliette's life from age 13 to about 30, the wanton anti-heroine engages in virtually every form of depravity and encounters a series of like-minded libertines. She meets the ferocious Clairwil, whose main passion is in murdering young men. She meets Saint Fond, a 50-year-old multi-millionaire who commits incest with his daughter, murders his father, tortures young girls to death on a daily basis and even plots an ambitious scheme to provoke a famine that will wipe out half the population of France. A long audience with Pope Pius VI is one of the most extensive scenes in Juliette. The heroine shows off her learning to the pope (whom she most often addresses by his secular name "Braschi") with a verbal catalogue of alleged immoralities committed by his predecessors. The audience ends, like almost every other scene in the narrative, with an orgy. Soon after this, the male character Brisatesta narrates two scandalous encounters. The first is with "Princess Sophia, niece of the King of Prussia", who has just married "the Stadtholder" at the Hague. This is presumably intended for Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange, who married William V of Orange, the last Dutch Stadtholder, in 1767, and was still alive when Juliette was published. The second encounter is with Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.
627305	/m/02y6q5	Johnny and the Bomb	Terry Pratchett	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After Johnny Maxwell, a boy in his early teens, finds Mrs. Tachyon, an old bag lady, by a cinema he discovers that her trolley is in fact a time machine. He goes back to his town, Blackbury, during the time of The Blitz with his friends Walter, aka Wobbler, Bigmac, Kirsty and Yo-less (possibly because Johnny has been obsessing about the destruction of Paradise Street in a German raid). Wobbler gets left behind in 1941, and when they return for him, Johnny tries to prevent the deaths caused in the raid.
628308	/m/02y9qq	The Anubis Gates	Tim Powers	1983	{"/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 In 1801 the British have risen to power in Egypt and suppress the worship of the old Egyptian gods. A cabal of magicians plan to drive the British out of Egypt by bringing the gods forward in time from an age when they were still powerful and unleashing them on London, thereby destroying the British Empire. In 1802, a failed attempt by the magicians to summon Anubis opens magical gates in a predictable pattern across time and space. In 1983, ailing millionaire J. Cochran Darrow has discovered the gates and found that they make time travel possible. Darrow organizes a trip to the past for fellow millionaires to attend a lecture by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810. He hires Professor Brendan Doyle to attend and give expert commentary. One of the magicians, Doctor Romany, happens to spy the time travelers and kidnaps Doyle before he can return. Doyle manages to escape torture and flees back to London, now trapped in the 19th century. Doyle joins a beggars guild and meets a beggar named Jacky. He plans to meet and befriend William Ashbless, a wealthy poet that Doyle has studied profusely, in order to gain a benefactor. Doctor Romany scours the city for Doyle with his legion of murderous beggars, led by the clown-magician Horrabin. At the same time, Doyle discovers that Darrow has remained in the 19th century to search for Dog-Face Joe, a body-swapping werewolf, in hopes of bribing Joe into granting him a healthy new body. Doyle himself becomes targeted by Joe, receiving the poisoned body of Darrow's former bodyguard, but manages to cure himself of the poison. In his new body, Doyle realizes that he himself is the historical Ashbless. He copies down Ashbless' poetry from memory and deduces his own future from his study of Ashbless' life. Using this knowledge, he continues to thwart the magicians' plans. After Romany discovers a gate to the 17th century, Doyle follows him through and stops his attempt to change the past. Meanwhile Darrow successfully contacts Dog-Face Joe and organizes a deal in which Joe will provide Darrow with healthy bodies and allow him to live forever. Doyle is kidnapped and brought to Muhammad Ali's Egypt, where the magicians' Master tempts him with resurrecting his dead wife if he will tell them the secrets of the time-gates. Doyle resists and kills the Master. Meanwhile, Jacky discovers Darrow's secret and kills him along with Dog-Face Joe. Doyle returns to London, where the last magician, Romanelli, kidnaps him, Jacky, and Coleridge. In a drugged stupor, Coleridge frees Horrabin's twisted menagerie of monsters, allowing him and Jacky to escape. Romanelli escapes with Doyle to the underworld, but is eaten by Apep while Doyle is rejuvenated on board the sunboat of the god Ra. Doyle meets back up with Jacky and discovers that not only is Jacky secretly a woman, she is his future wife. Decades later, after living out Ashbless' entire life and becoming a widower, Doyle goes out to meet his historic date with death. Doyle discovers that his intended murderer is a duplicate of himself that the Master had made in Egypt decades before. Doyle kills the duplicate, thereby supplying the corpse for his death, and boats away into an unknown future.
629033	/m/02yd6c	Three Sisters	Anton Chekhov			 Act one begins with Olga (the eldest of the sisters) working as a teacher in a school, but at the end of the play she is made Headmistress, a promotion she had no interest in. Masha, the middle sister and the artist of the family (she was trained as a concert pianist), is married to Feodor Ilyich Kulygin, a schoolteacher. At the time of their marriage, Masha, younger than he, was enchanted by what she took to be wisdom, but seven years later, she sees through his pedantry and his clownish attempts to compensate for the emptiness between them. Irina, the youngest sister, is still full of expectation. She speaks of her dream of going to Moscow and meeting her true love. It was in Moscow that the sisters grew up, and they all long to return to the sophistication and happiness of that time. Andrei is the only boy in the family and the sisters idolize him. He is in love with Natalia Ivanovna (Natasha), who is somewhat common in relation to the sisters and suffers under their glance. The play begins on the first anniversary of their father's death, but it is also Irina's name-day, and everyone, including the soldiers (led by the gallant Vershinin) bringing with them a sense of noble idealism, comes together to celebrate it. At the very close of the act, Andrei exultantly confesses his feelings to Natasha in private and asks her to marry him. Act two begins about 21 months later with Andrei and Natasha married with their first child (offstage), a baby boy named Bóbik. Natasha is having an affair with Protopopov, Andrei's superior, a character who is mentioned but never seen onstage. Masha comes home flushed from a night out, and it is clear that she and her companion, Lieutenant-Colonel Vershinin, are giddy with the secret of their mutual love for one another. Little seems to happen but that Natasha manipulatively quashes the plans for a party in the home, but the resultant quiet suggests that all gaiety is being quashed as well. The play turns on such subtle, lifelike touches. Tuzenbach and Solyony declare their love for Irina. Act three takes place about a year later in Olga and Irina's room (a clear sign that Natasha is taking over the household as she asked them to share rooms so that her child could have a different room). There has been a fire in the town, and, in the crisis, people are passing in and out of the room, carrying blankets and clothes to give aid. Olga, Masha and Irina are angry with their brother, Andrei, for mortgaging their home, keeping the money to pay off his gambling debts and conceding all his power to his wife. However, when faced with Natasha's cruelty to their aged family servant Anfisa, Olga's own best efforts to stand up to Natasha come to naught. Masha, alone with her sisters, confides in them her romance with Vershinin ("I love, love, love that man."). At one point, Kulygin (her husband) blunders into the room, doting ever more foolishly on her, and she stalks out. Irina despairs at the common turn her life has taken, the life of a schoolteacher, even as she rails at the folly of her aspirations and her education ("I can't remember the Italian for 'window'.") Out of her resignation, supported in this by Olga's realistic outlook, Irina decides to accept Tuzenbach's offer of marriage even though she does not love him. Chebutykin drunkenly stumbles on and smashes a clock belonging to the sister's and Andrei's mother, whom he loved. Andrei gives vent to his self-hatred, acknowledges his own awareness of life's folly and his disappointment in Natasha's character, and begs his sisters' forgiveness for everything. In the fourth and final act, outdoors behind the home, the soldiers, who by now are friends of the family, are preparing to leave the area. A flash-photograph is taken. There is an undercurrent of tension because Solyony has challenged the Baron (Tuzenbach) to a duel, but Tuzenbach is intent on hiding it from Irina. He and Irina share a heartbreaking delicate scene in which she confesses that she cannot love him, likening her heart to a piano whose key has been lost. Just as the soldiers are leaving, a shot is heard, and Tuzenbach's death in the duel is announced shortly before the end of the play. Masha has to be pulled, sobbing, from Vershinin's arms, but her husband willingly, compassionately and all too generously accepts her back, no questions asked. Olga has reluctantly accepted the position of permanent headmistress of the school where she teaches and is moving out. She is taking Anfisa with her, thus rescuing the elderly woman from more of Natasha's blunt cruelties. Irina's fate is uncertain but, even in her grief at Tuzenbach's death, she wants to persevere in her work as a teacher. Natasha remains as the chatelaine, in charge and in control—of everything. ("What is this fork doing here?" Natasha hollers.). Andrei is stuck in his marriage with two children, the only people that Natasha truly dotes on. As the play closes, the three sisters stand in a desperate embrace, gazing off as the soldiers depart to the sound of a band's gay march. As Chebutykin sings "Ta-ra-ra-boom-di-ay" to himself, Olga's final lines call out for an end to the confusion all three feel at life's sufferings and joy: "If we only knew… If we only knew."
630706	/m/02ylc1	Gun, with Occasional Music	Jonathan Lethem	1994-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 The novel follows the adventures of Conrad Metcalf, a tough guy private detective and a wiseass, through a futuristic version of San Francisco and Oakland, California. Metcalf is hired by a man who claims that he's being framed for the murder of a prominent urologist. Metcalf quickly discovers that nobody wants the case solved: not the victim's ex-wife, not the police, and certainly not the gun-toting kangaroo who works for the local mafia boss.
632575	/m/02yslj	Misspent Youth	Peter F. Hamilton	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Seventy-eight year-old Jeff Baker has revolutionized the world by inventing the ultimate method of information storage and allowing free use of it with no profits going into his own pocket. Because of this generous act, he is chosen by the European Union to be the first recipient for rejuvenation technology, which will leave him with the body of a young man. As part of the deal, he will support the re-election of the EU president. Jeff's son Tim has a fairly typical frustrated life as a rich teenager, living with his famous father and distant mother. Tim is extremely happy when he starts going out with gorgeous Annabelle. She likes him, but she has a troubled home life and Tim's drink problem reminds her of her father. Jeff comes home from the rejuvenation in his 20-year-old body. Energized by his new youthfulness, he has a series of affairs. Reconnecting with his son, Jeff reveals to Tim that the reason he gave away the information storage technology was so his hated ex-wife could not get any royalties. The amazing act of charity he is famous for was motivated by spite, not goodwill. But Jeff find himself attracted to Annabelle, and while giving her a ride home after Tim got too drunk at a school dance, they start a tawdry affair behind Tim's back and fall in love. Their passionate relationship is only a secret for a short time before Tim finds them in bed together. His life falling apart, Tim runs away to live with his Aunt (Jeff's sister), stops drinking and doing drugs, and makes friends with his mother. Eventually he finds a new romantic interest in Vanessa, one of his classmates. Jeff and Annabelle are happy together, traveling around the world, meeting celebrities, even experimenting with a ménage à trois. However, they are sad that they have hurt Tim, who gets seriously injured in a jet-ski accident, providing a catalyst for Jeff to re-enter Tim's life. Jeff and Annabelle both attend a controversial EU conference in London so Jeff can speak supporting the EU. Tim and his friends join a massive and violent protest in the streets below the conference. As the riots begin, concerned for Tim's safety, Jeff changes his mind about supporting the EU and leaves the conference to charge through the riots to find his son. Impressed by this act, Tim finds it in him to forgive his father and Annabelle. In the end, Jeff is dying because the rejuvenation treatment is not yet a properly functional technology, and it is failing him. After impregnating Annabelle with a second genetically improved child, a girl this time, he begins a live broadcast, where he reveals the lies of the EU government and rescinds his support for the presidential campaign. He dies surrounded by his family and loved ones.
632616	/m/02ysr2	The Bone People	Keri Hulme	1984-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Bone People, published in 1984, is an unusual story of love. The differences are in the way of telling, the subject matter, and the form of love that the story writes on. This is in no way a romance; it is rather filled with violence, fear, and twisted emotions. At the story's core, however, are three people who struggle very hard to figure out what love is and how to find it. The book is divided into two major sections, the first involving the characters interacting together, and the second half involving their individual travels. In the first half, 7-year-old Simon shows up at the hermit Kerewin’s tower on a gloomy and stormy night. Simon is mute and thus is unable to explain his motives. When Simon’s adoptive father Joe arrives to pick him up in the morning, Kerewin get to know their curious story. Simon was found washed up on the beach years earlier with no memory and very few clues as to his identity. Joe and his wife Hana take in Simon, despite his mysterious background, and attempt to raise him. However, subsequently both Hana and their infant son die of flu, forcing Joe to bring the wild boy Simon up on his own. At the same time Kerewin finds herself developing a relationship with the two the boy and the father, becoming more connected to their live circumstances and stories. Gradually it becomes clear that Simon is a severely traumatised orphan, whose strange behaviours Joe is unable to cope with. Kerewin eventually figures out that, in spite of a constant and intense love between them, Joe is physically abusing Simon. Following a catalyst event, the three are driven violently apart. Simon witnesses a violent death and seeks Kerewin out, but she is angry with him for stealing some of her possessions and will not listen. Simon reacts by kicking in the side of her guitar, a much prized gift from her estranged family, whereupon she yells at him to disappear. After that he goes to the town and breaks a series of shop windows, and when he is returned home by the police, Joe beats him half to death. However, Simon has concealed a piece of glass and stabs his father with it. This results in hospitalisation for both. In the second half of the novel, Joe is being sent to prison for child abuse, Simon is still in the hospital, and Kerewin is seriously and inexplicably ill. Consequently Simon's wardship is being taken from Joe. Joe finds an old spiritual man dying and through him learns the possible identity of Simon's father. Simon is sent to a children's home, and Kerewin deconstructs her tower and leaves with the expectation to be dead within the year. All three have to overcome life-changing happenings, strongly interlaced with Maori mythology and legend. Kerewin adopts Simon, to keep him close to her and Joe, who is out of prison again. Meanwhile Joe is able to contact Kerewin's family and bring them back for reconciliation. The final scene of the novel depicts the reunion of the three main characters Kerewin, Simon and Joe, who are all celebrating some unnamed occasion back at the beach where Kerewin has rebuilt her home, this time in the shape of a shell with many twists. This house makes Joe laugh as he finds all their family in various states of rest in the shell as he makes his way to the beach. It is not certain that Joe, Kerewin, and Simon will remain together, but they are together on the beach at the end of the book. Caveat: it is not certain that the end of the book is not just a fantasy.
632999	/m/02yv6t	Animal World	Antonio di Benedetto		{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The animal theme is probably the oldest in literature. Cavemen told stories of hunts, of talking animals and probably of animal-like gods. The first book of the Bible places the serpent in paradise, speaking wisely to the first man and woman. Classical authors like Lucian and Apuleius wrote satires in which pretentious people turned into lowly animals, like a jackass. William Shakespeare created his own memorable jackass, and Miguel de Cervantes had his witty talking dogs. In our century, Franz Kafka presented the learned address of a highly refined ape to a scientific academy. Probably no writer worth his salt has not at one time or other picked up the theme. A little-known, but fascinating contribution to this tradition is [Mundo animal, or Animal World, by the Argentine author, Antonio di Benedetto. It is strangely different from its celebrated predecessors. Kafka, for example, impresses the reader with a striking artistic conception, ingenious logic and magnificent language in each story. Di Benedetto's stories do not impress in this way. Written in conversational and even intentionally awkward language, they present a confused and troubled narrator, who, tormented by mysterious gnawings of guilt, becomes involved in some obscure way with an animal or whole group of animals. They invade his soul, drive him to rage or deliver him from his obsession. Often the story hinges on a pun, a distorted folktale, or an illogical association. While not spectacular in itself, each story adds to the preceding to create a growing sense of doom. Thus story by story the reader becomes ensnared in a horrifying, hallucinatory realm of associations; the world he thought was human is transformed into Animal World.
633146	/m/02yvxg	The Supervisor of the Sea				 The longer and more serious stories of an acclaimed author that move from Russia to America to the fantastic beyond. Includes the celebrated "Wedding in Brighton Beach" and "Faithful Masha."
633989	/m/02yys8	The Truth Machine			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel primarily focuses on the life story of Randall Peterson "Pete" Armstrong, a child prodigy with total recall memory, whose entire life's outlook has been defined the tragic murder of his younger brother, Leonard, by an ex-convict who was believed to be capable of committing violent crimes again, but could not be imprisoned any longer under the current law structure. Pete is committed to making a difference for humanity that will atone for his brother's death and help millions of others, too. In his first year at Harvard at the age 13, Pete is recruited to enroll in a small, but exclusive, class of the brightest and most agile students on campus. In that class, he meets people and establishes friendships that will further his identity. It is there that the idea of a `truth machine' is conceived and Pete realizes that its existence is possible and that he could do it. The `truth machine' would be a mechanism that would be 100% accurate in determining if a person was lying or telling the truth. It could help eliminate crime and dishonesty in general. As long as it is employed universally (and not just by government officials), the `truth machine' could revolutionize humanity and take it to that next evolutionary step which would help it avert its coming self-destruction.
635510	/m/02z3f0	The Witches	Roald Dahl	1983	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book's witches, described as "demons in human form" are revealed in the opening chapters to be a constant threat to global security. While they look human, and look and act like normal human women, they are secretly plotting to kill every single child on Earth. No other reason for this is given, other than the foul stench children produce for witches. A young boy (whose name is never mentioned) goes to stay with his grandmother (also unnamed) after his parents are killed in a tragic car crash in the Norwegian mountains when they are on vacation. The boy is comforted by his grandmother, and then she says she will adopt him. The next night, she begins to warn him about witches, which she says are demons in human form, which seek to kill human children. The boy thinks she is bluffing, but she tells him the signs of how to recognize a witch, which include: hair which looks like a wig, because the witches, despite being female, are actually bald, and have to wear wigs to look human; gloves, because the witches actually have inch-long claws which they hide under gloves; inhuman eyes, because the eyes of a witch have a red-white glow; blue spit; and toeless feet, which force the witches to squeeze their feet into pretty tight women's shoes which causes them to limp very slightly. The grandmother also tells the boy that four of her childhood friends were taken and killed by witches, but one girl survived for a while because the witches only managed to turn her into a chicken. Another boy was turned into a porpoise and swam out to sea. The boy and his grandmother return to England, as per his parents' will. The grandmother warns the boy to be on his guard, since English witches are known to be among the cruellest in the world. Shortly afterward, the boy is building the roof on his treehouse and spots a strange woman in black staring up at him with an eerie smile. When he sees that she is wearing gloves, he instantly recognizes her as a witch; and he also notices her inhuman lips and teeth; her gums resemble "raw meat." When the witch offers him a snake to entice him, he climbs up the tree which he is in and stays there until his grandmother comes and gets him for supper. This persuades the boy and his grandmother to be wary. The boy then becomes conscious of all women he encounters in public and studies them from a distance to check whether they are witches or not. When the grandmother later becomes ill with pneumonia, the doctor orders her to cancel a planned holiday in Norway. Instead, they go to a luxury hotel in Bournemouth on the southern English coast. The boy goes to train his pet mice in the hotel ballroom when the members of the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" show up for their annual meeting. The boy notices one of the women reaching under her hair (with a gloved hand) to scratch at her scalp, and instantly realizes that the "RSPCC" is really the yearly convention of England's witches. A young woman shows up on stage, and removes her face mask to reveal a hideously deformed face underneath. The boy instantly recognizes her as the Grand High Witch. On her cue, the witches reveal their true, demonic forms: bald heads, clawed hands and toeless feet. The Grand High Witch was angry at her English minions' failure to destroy all of the country's children, and orders all of them exterminated by the end of the year. One brave or foolish witch states the obvious; that killing every child in the country is impossible; and the Grand High Witch instantly incinerates her using lasers which shoot from her eyes. The terrified witches do not dare to protest further. To help them along, she unveils a master plan calling for the witches to purchase sweet shops (with "homemade" money given to them by the Grand High Witch by her money-making machine) and give away free chocolate (for the grand opening) laced with Formula 86 Delayed-Action Mouse Maker, a potion which will change anyone who eats it into a mouse at a specific time. The witches are instructed by the Grand High Witch to set the formula to activate at nine a.m. the day after the children have eaten the chocolate, when they are at school. The teachers, she hopes, will panic and kill the mice, thereby doing the witches' work for them. She warns her followers to only put one dose on each bit of candy that they sell. An overdose could break the delay barrier and even cause a child (especially an adult) to turn into a mouse instantly. The Grand High Witch turns a gluttonous child named Bruno Jenkins (lured to the convention hall by the promise of free chocolate) into a mouse as a demonstration of her potion. The witches hurriedly put on their disguises as Bruno arrives. At precisely three thirty p.m., Bruno turns into a mouse. Shortly after, the witches smell the narrator's presence, forcing him to make a break for it. He is quickly captured by the witches and turned into a mouse immediately with an overdose of the formula which has the effect of instantly turning him into a mouse. The formula turns out to have a lucky change: the transformed child retains his or her sentience, personality and even his or her voice. After tracking down Bruno, the transformed boy returns to his grandmother's hotel room and tells her what he has learned. He suggests turning the tables on the witches by slipping Formula 86 into their food. With some difficulty, he manages to get his hands on a bottle of the potion from the Grand High Witch's room. After a failed attempt to return Bruno to his parents, the grandmother takes Bruno and the narrator to dinner in her handbag, whereupon after ordering her meal she slips the narrator onto the floor, allowing him to run to the kitchen. He espies the witches coming in to dinner on his way and enters the kitchen, where he pours the potion into the soup intended for the witches' dinner. The witches all turn into mice within a few minutes, having had massive overdoses. The hotel staff panic and, unknowingly, end up killing all of England's witches. The boy and his grandmother then concoct a plan to destroy all of the world's witches. Learning the location of the witches castle from the hotel's records, they will travel to the Grand High Witch's Norwegian castle (having stolen her notebook), use the potion to change her successor and retainers into mice, then release cats into the castle to kill them. Using the Grand High Witch's money-making machine and information on the whereabouts of all of the world's witches, they will repeat the process all over the world. The grandmother also reveals that as a mouse, the boy will probably only live about another nine years, but the boy doesn't mind it, because he doesn't want to live any longer than his grandmother.
636502	/m/02z6vx	The Algebraist	Iain Banks	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in 4034 A.D. With the assistance of other species, humans have spread across the galaxy, which is largely ruled by the Mercatoria, a complex feudal hierarchy, with a religious zeal to rid the galaxy of artificial intelligences, which were blamed for a previous war. In center-stage Banks portrays the human Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers. The Beyonders, a large fleet of space marauders originating on the fringes of the galaxy, have cut the system of Nasqueron's star (Ulubis) off from the rest of Mercatoria civilization by destroying its portal (the only means of faster than light travel), and the local Mercatoria adherents await the delivery of a wormhole connection from a neighboring system via sub-lightspeed travel. The Dwellers, an advanced and ancient civilization of non-humanoids who inhabit gas giants, lead an almost anarchic existence based on kudos, and inhabit the majority of gas-giant planets in the galaxy. They are the only major species outside the control of the Mercatoria, being rumoured to possess devastating defensive weaponry. Dweller society, which tries not to get involved with "Quick" i.e. all species of sentient beings who experience life at around the speed human beings experience it, in contrast to "Slow" species such as themselves, who experience life at a much slower temporal rate. Dweller individuals live for millions of years, and the species has existed for billions of years, long before the foundation of the Mercatoria. Slow Seers like Taak are a dynasty of researchers who attempt to glean information from the Dwellers' vast but disorganised libraries of knowledge, artificially slowing their metabolisms to better communicate with them. Taak, looking forward to a life of quiet scholarship, is astonished to be drafted into one of the Mercatoria's religio-military orders. It turns out that in a previous research expedition to the Dweller-inhabited gas-giant Nasqueron, he inadvertently uncovered a book containing information about the legendary "Dweller List" of coordinates for their own private systems of wormholes. (Since Dwellers are sufficiently long-lived to colonise the galaxy at sub-light speed, the very existence of such a network was considered doubtful). However, the Dweller List is only a list of star systems. Portals are relatively small and can be anywhere within a system so long as it is a point of zero net gravitational attraction, such as a Lagrange point. The list is useless without a certain mathematical transform needed to give the exact location of the portals. Taak must go on a further expedition to Nasqueron in order to find the Transform. A tyrannical warlord, the Archimandrite Luseferous of the Starveling Cult, in loose alliance with the Beyonders, sets out to invade the Ulubis system from the Cluster Epiphany Five Disconnect, also aiming to possess the secrets of the Dweller portals. A Mercatoria counter-attack fleet hurries to defend Ulubis against the Starveling Cult ships and their Beyonder allies. However, both fleets are forced to travel at sub light speeds, leaving the inhabitants of the Ulubis system anxiously wondering which will arrive first. Taak's hunt for the Transform takes him on a dizzying journey, partly through the Dweller wormhole network itself. In a back story, it is revealed that he has been out of sympathy with the Mercatoria for some time, particularly over their treatment of artificial intelligences, and has in fact been a Beyonder agent. It is also revealed that the Dwellers have been harbouring artificial intelligences from Mercatoria persecution. The Beyonder/Starveling forces arrive and easily overwhelm Ulubis's native defences. However, they discover to their dismay that the counter-attack force is arriving much sooner than predicted, and is superior. The Beyonder factions despair of locating Taak and the secret in the time available before the recapture of Ulubis, and retreat. The Starvelings under Luseferous remain. He makes a last-ditch attempt to force the Dwellers to yield up Taak, threatening them with antimatter weapons. The Dwellers respond with devastating blows on his fleet. Luseferous flees under Mercatoria pursuit. Taak returns from his journey with his memory partly erased. However, he is still able to piece together the secret from the remaining clues: every massive body has a region of zero net gravitational attraction at its exact center. The Dwellers have hidden wormhole portals in the cores of all their occupied planets, and the Transform was never necessary. However, it remains unclear whether the Dwellers will give the necessary cooperation in allowing other species access to their network, now that the secret is out. The novel ends with Taak, having left Ulubis and joined the Beyonders, promising "all will be free".
636559	/m/02z6zg	Walking on Glass	Iain Banks	1985-03-07	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Each part of Walking on Glass, apart from the last, is divided into three sections, which appear at first sight to be independent stories. *Graham Park is a young man in love with a girl he met at a party, Sara ffitch. Richard Slater is his friend. Bob Stock, a "macho black-leathered never-properly-seen image of Nemesis" seems all that stands in the way of Graham's happiness. *Steven Grout is a paranoid roadmender who believes himself to be an admiral from a galactic war imprisoned in the body of an Earthman. He believes he is under constant threat from the Microwave Gun, and reads lots of science fiction, since "he had long ago realised that if he was going to find any clues to the whereabouts of the Way Out, the location or identity of the Key, there was a good chance he might get some ideas from that type of writing." *Quiss is one of a pair of war criminals (the other is Ajayi) from opposing sides in a galactic war, who are imprisoned in the Castle of Bequest (also Castle Doors) and forced to play impossible games until they can solve the riddle: "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" Eventually, links between the three storylines become apparent, and the ending has a flavour of incest.
638069	/m/02zdbc	Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy	John le Carré	1974-06	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Through a love affair in Hong Kong with Irina, the wife of a Moscow Centre intelligence officer, British agent Ricki Tarr discovers that there may be a high-ranking Soviet mole, codenamed "Gerald," within the Circus. After going undercover to avoid Soviet agents, Tarr alerts his immediate superior, Peter Guillam, who in turn notifies Undersecretary Oliver Lacon, the Civil Service officer responsible for the Intelligence Services. Lacon enlists George Smiley, the retired former Deputy Head of the Service, to investigate. Smiley and Guillam must investigate without the knowledge of the Circus, which is headed by Sir Percy Alleline and his deputies Bill Haydon, Roy Bland, and Toby Esterhase, as any of these could be the mole. Smiley suspects that Gerald was responsible for the failure of Operation Testify, a mission in Communist Czechoslovakia, the ostensible purpose of which was to meet with a defecting Czech Army general. Operation Testify ended with Circus agent Jim Prideaux shot in the back and tortured, and caused the disgrace and dismissal of Control, head of Circus, who subsequently dies. Prideaux, who survived and was repatriated and dismissed from the Circus, reveals to Smiley that Control suspected the mole's existence, and the true aim of Operation Testify was to discover the mole's identity. Prideaux reveals that the Moscow Centre personnel who interrogated him already knew this, and it became clear to Smiley that the operation was a trap set by Moscow Centre to discredit Control and remove the threat to their mole Gerald. Percy Alleline, who was Control's rival, has risen to head the Circus as a result of seemingly top-grade Soviet intelligence from a source code-named "Merlin." The Merlin material is handled by a secret committee, consisting of Alleline, Haydon, Bland, and Esterhase, in an operation called Witchcraft. Smiley's investigation leads him to believe that the Merlin source is false, and is being used by Moscow Centre to influence the leadership of the Circus. Cleverly, Moscow Centre has induced the Circus leadership to believe that Merlin maintains his cover in Moscow by feeding the Russians low-grade British intelligence, "chicken feed", from a false Circus mole. As a result, the leaders of the Circus suppress any rumours of a mole, protecting the actual mole. Smiley contrives a trap for the mole, using a communication from Tarr, and Gerald is revealed to be Bill Haydon, a respected colleague and former friend who once had an affair with Smiley's now estranged wife, Ann. Haydon is arrested, and acknowledges he was recruited by Karla, the Moscow Centre spymaster. Percy Alleline is removed, and Smiley is appointed temporary head of Circus to deal with the fallout. Haydon is to be exchanged to the Soviet Union for several of the agents he betrayed, but is mysteriously killed while in custody, shortly before he was due to leave England. Though his killer is not explicitly revealed, it is strongly implied to be Prideaux, his old partner, whom he betrayed in Operation Testify.
639450	/m/02p2r2p	The Nutmeg of Consolation	Patrick O'Brian	1991	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Nutmeg of Consolation opens with Aubrey and his crew shipwrecked on a remote island in the South China Sea after surviving the destruction of HMS Diane in a typhoon. A cricket match is taking place between the sailors and marines - an attempt by the Captain to keep up the crew's spirits as they build the schooner needed for reaching Batavia. Stephen Maturin is also proving his worth by killing game for the pot, particularly wild boar and babirussas. The island is visited by two seafaring Dyaks who seem very interested in everything within the sailors' encampment, especially Jack's silver that Killick deliberately rescued from the Diane. The Dyaks promise to take a message to Batavia in exchange for twenty "joes" (Portuguese Johanna coins), but instead return in a seagoing proa. After killing and beheading the ship's carpenter and some other crew members, they attack the encampment and burn the schooner, but are routed after a bloody conflict and their proa sunk by the last remaining ball from the captain's "long nine" gun. Whilst Stephen is out hunting, he chances upon four Chinese children collecting birds' nests from the surrounding cliffs, when one of the boys is injured. They inform him their junk is on its way to Batavia to fetch a cargo of ore from Ketapan in Borneo. After Stephen treats the boy, the children's father, Li Po, is persuaded to carry the remaining crew of the Diane in the empty holds of his roomy junk back to Batavia. It is intercepted by a pirate canoe, but it belongs to Wan Da, whom Stephen knows well from Prabang. Upon arriving in Batavia, Aubrey is provided by Sir Stamford Raffles with a 20-gun ship which Aubrey renames Nutmeg of Consolation after one of the titles of the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, from the previous novel, The Thirteen Gun Salute. Back at sea, Aubrey hears from a Dutch merchantman that a French frigate, the Cornelie is watering at an island, Nil Desperandum. Aubrey attempts to disguise the Nutmeg as another Dutch merchantman and, on being smoked, engages in battle with the Cornelie but then has to turn tail. With the slower Cornelie in pursuit, Jack attempts to outwit her in the Salibabu Passage but is outmanoeuvred and nearly outgunned until, at the height of the chase, Nutmeg encounters the Surprise, under the temporary command of Commander Thomas Pullings, accompanied by the Triton, a British privateer. The Surprise and Nutmeg give chase but the Cornelie soon founders and the survivors, including Dumesnil, a French officer Jack and Stephen had met previously, and a third-lieutenant, are taken on board. Resuming command of Surprise, Aubrey and Maturin continue their interrupted journey to New South Wales. On their way to Australia, Maturin rescues two young Melanesian girls, the sole survivors of an outbreak of smallpox brought by a South Seas whaler to the remote Sweeting's Island. Once in New South Wales the book contains graphic descriptions of the life in the penal colony under Governor Lachlan Macquarie shortly after the "Rum Rebellion" of the New South Wales Corps and its coup against Governor William Bligh. Stephen attends at formal dinner, hosted by Mrs Macquarie and the Governor's deputy, Colonel McPherson, at Government House. After hearing the name of Sir Joseph Banks insulted, and being insulted himself, he fights and wins a duel against a Captain Lowe. Stephen and Martin tour the countryside examining the local flora and fauna and collecting specimens. They make their way to the Hunter Valley to stay with Paulton, and Maturin is reunited with his former assistant Padeen Colman at Woolloo-Woolloo. The Irishman was convicted for stealing laudanum from an Edinburgh apothecary and, after being flogged with 200 lashes for absconding from the penal settlement, was transferred to Paulton's farm after Maturin bribed a local clerk. Stephen makes plans to have him transferred secretly to the Surprise but his plans are checked by Jack. Maturin also hears from an officer of the recently arrived Waverley that his wife Diana has borne him a daughter. Stephen and Martin, keen to have one more look for the elusive duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus) or 'water-mole', are taken on a final expedition in the Surprises cutter by Barret Bonden. Stephen has also secretly arranged to rendezvous with Colman at Bird Island but, as they arrive early, he and Martin search the local pools and spot two platypuses. Stephen manages to secure one - a male - in his net but his arm is pierced by its two poison-spurs. He, along with Padeen, are taken back to the frigate and to everyone's relief Stephen slowly regains consciousness once he is back on board.
641675	/m/02zr1n	The Bellmaker	Brian Jacques	1994	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Far away, from the northern sea, the Foxwolf Urgan Nagru and Silvamord arrive in Southsward, bringing two shiploads of rats, and storms the Castle Floret. Nagru, the Foxwolf, captures Gael Squirrelking, his wife Serena, their son Truffen and his nursemaid Muta, a mute badger. Entrance to the castle was gained through Silvamord's deceit in feigning weakness and ill fortune in both herself and Urgan Nagru. She then took Truffen the squirrel babe hostage until the gate was opened to the hordes of awaiting rats. Meanwhile, Dandin and Mariel Gullwhacker have set out from Redwall Abbey but have found themselves stuck in the southern dunes without food. After befriending a hedgehog named Bowly Pintips, they find themselves attempting to save a mole who happened to be under attack by Nagru's rat troops. Just as the trio of would-be rescuers realize their peril, Field Marshal Meldrum Fallowthorn the Magnificent bounds to their aid, accompanied by his four leveret nephews. Back in Southsward, Gael's otter allies have begun planning a rescue mission. Led by Rab Streambattle, the otters manage to rescue Serena and Truffen, but Gael and Muta encounter trouble. Unable to escape, Muta and Rab stand their ground against waves of Nagru's rat troops, fighting until they collapse under the innumerable odds, presumed dead. Dandin, Mariel and Meldrum survive long enough to fend off Nagru's last effort, two of his psychotic tracking ermine, called Dirgecallers, who were unleashed to track down the escape prisoners. Mariel and her companions manage to kill the trackers, allowing Serena and Truffen to escape to safety, but they are not able to avoid Nagru's rat troops, as they are captured and led back to Castle Floret. Back at Redwall Abbey, Joseph the Bellmaker, the father of Mariel, has a vision. Inspired by Martin the Warrior, the legendary Champion and protector of Redwall, Joseph recruits a hare (The Honourable Rosemary, or Hon Rosie for short), a hedgehog (Durry Quill), a squirrel (Rufe Brush) and the Foremole, the leader of moles. Accompanied by Log-a-Log and a band of Guosim shrews, the band reaches the coast. Intent on finding the place shown to him in his vision, Joseph and his companions befriend Finnbarr Galedeep, a rusky wild sea otter, who helps them deceive searat brothers Slipp and Strapp, stealing the excellent Pearl Queen in the process. Strapp steals his brother, Slipp's crew and gives chase aboard his ship, the Shalloo, but they are all lost at sea when the ship sinks into a whirlpool called the 'Green Maelstrom'. As Joseph and company sail towards Castle Floret and Urgan Nagru, Slipp and Blaggut, his good-natured first mate, head into Mossflower Woods. When they awaken, Mariel, Dandin and Meldrum find themselves in the dungeons of Castle Floret, along with the battered Gael Squirrelking. With a bit of luck and the help of Glokkpod, a shrike, they manage to escape, but Mariel becomes separated from her friends. As she attempts to find safety, Mariel meets Egbert the Scholar, an old mole living beneath Castle Floret, who happened to find Rab and Muta and nursed them back to health. Psychologically damaged from their near-death battle, the two warriors are intense, but refuse to speak. With their help, Mariel finds her way inside the castle and lowers the drawbridge. At Redwall Abbey, the two rats have arrived and found refuge in the kind, peaceful Abbey. Slipp, after a failed plan to find treasure with a band of Dibbuns, has had enough; he attacks and kills the local Badger Mother ,Mellus, and escapes the Abbey with Blaggut and a chalice. After Blaggut learns the truth, he kills his captain and returns to the Abbey with the chalice, seeking forgiveness, which he eventually receives. On the Pearl Queen, many calamities had befallen the Redwallers and their crew, including whirlpools, sharks, shipwrecked islands, and crazy toads. Hon Rosie was taken for dead for some time, but showed up in fine form later. Three young orphans are acquired as well: the squirrel Benjy, the mousemaid Wincey, and the little ottermaid Figgs. They eventually arrive at Southsward and, with the help of some clans they meet on the way, arrive at Castle Floret, ready for battle. A massive battle ensues in which Mariel, Dandin, Meldrum, the otters, Finnbarr, Joseph, and the rest fight Nagru's horde of grey rats, most of which are slaughtered. However, the shrew Fatch, a good friend of Rufe and Durry, is slain by Silvamord, Urgan Nagru's mate. Rab Streambattle, who had recently reunited with his wife Iris and regained his sanity, kills Silvamord in the moat shortly afterward for although she is a mighty warrior, she is unable to swim. In the final battle, Finnbarr Galedeep engages Urgan Nagru and kills him by smashing the fangs of his wolf skull into the top of his head. However, Finnbarr sadly dies from the wounds inflicted during the fight. With Urgan vanquished and his horde depleted, peace is restored upon Castle Floret and Southsward. Gael is reinstated as Squirrelking of Floret with his family and Muta. While the other Redwallers return to the abbey, Joseph stays in Southsward to help restore order. Mariel, Dandin, and Bowly, their warrior spirits unable to be stilled, take off once more in search of adventure.
642383	/m/02zths	The Tin Drum	Günter Grass	1959	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story revolves around the life of Oskar Matzerath, as narrated by himself when confined in a mental hospital during the years 1952-1954. Born in 1924 in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), with an adult's capacity for thought and perception, he decides never to grow up when he hears his father declare that he would become a grocer. Gifted with a piercing shriek that can shatter glass or be used as a weapon, Oskar declares himself to be one of those "auditory clairvoyant babies", whose "spiritual development is complete at birth and only needs to affirm itself". He retains the stature of a child while living through the beginning of World War II, several love affairs, and the world of postwar Europe. Through all this a tin drum that he received as a present on his third birthday remains his treasured possession, and he is willing to kill to retain it. Oskar considers himself to have two "presumptive fathers" - his mother's husband Alfred, a member of the Nazi Party, and her secret lover and cousin Jan, a Danzig Pole, who is executed for defending the Polish Post Office in Danzig during the German invasion of Poland. Oskar's mother having died, Alfred marries Maria, a woman who is secretly Oskar's first mistress. After marrying Alfred, Maria gives birth to Oskar's possible son, Kurt. But Oskar is disappointed to find that the baby persists in growing up, and will not join him in ceasing to grow at the age of three. During the war, Oskar joins a troupe of performing dwarfs who entertain the German troops at the front line. But when his second love, the diminutive Roswitha, is killed by Allied troops in the invasion of Normandy, Oskar returns to his family in Danzig where he becomes the leader of a criminal youth gang. The Russian army soon captures Danzig, and Alfred is shot by invading troops after he goes into seizures while swallowing his party pin to avoid being revealed as a Nazi. Oskar moves with his widowed stepmother and their son to Düsseldorf, where he models in the nude with Ulla and works engraving tombstones. Oskar decides to live apart from Maria and her son Kurt after mounting tensions. He decides on a flat owned by the Zeidlers. Upon moving in, he falls in love with the Sister Dorothea, a neighbor, but he later fails to seduce her. During an encounter with Klepp, Klepp asks Oskar how he has an authority over the judgement of music. Oskar, willing to prove himself once and for all to Klepp, a fellow musician, picks up his drum and sticks despite his vow to never play again after Alfred's death and plays a measure on his drum. The ensuing events lead Klepp and Oskar and Scholle (guitarist) to form the Rhine River Three jazz band. They are discovered by Mr. Schmuh who invites them to play at the Onion Cellar club. After a virtuoso performance, a record company talent seeker discovers Oskar the jazz drummer and offers a contract. Oskar soon achieves fame and riches. One day while walking through a field he finds a severed finger: the ring finger of Sister Dorothea, who has been murdered. He then meets and befriends Vittlar. Oskar allows himself to be falsely convicted of the murder and is confined to an insane asylum, where he writes his memoirs.
645474	/m/02_3rk	Crossroads of Twilight	Robert Jordan	2003-01-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Perrin Aybara continues trying to rescue his wife Faile Bashere, kidnapped by the Shaido Aiel, even resorting to torturing prisoners for information. In addition, Perrin is approached with the suggestion of alliance with the Seanchan, at least on a temporary basis, to defeat the Shaido. Mat Cauthon continues trying to escape Seanchan-controlled territory while courting Tuon, the Daughter of the Nine Moons, the woman whom he has kidnapped and who, it has been prophesied, will become his wife. Mat discovers that Tuon is a sul'dam and can be taught to channel the One Power. Elayne Trakand continues trying to solidify her hold on the Lion Throne of Andor. Also it is revealed that she is expecting twins, but the identity of the father (Rand) is kept secret from others. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, rests after the ordeal of cleansing the One Power. He sends Davram Bashere, Logain Ablar, and Loial to negotiate a truce with the Seanchan. They return at the end of the book to tell him that the Seanchan have accepted the truce, but demand the presence of the Dragon Reborn to meet with the Daughter of the Nine Moons (who, it is known, is not with the Seanchan, foreshadowing a trap). Egwene leads the rebel Aes Sedai in maintaining the siege of Tar Valon. At the end of the book, she is kidnapped by agents of the White Tower after successfully blocking the River Port at the White Tower.
646246	/m/02_5zg	The Last Starship from Earth	John Boyd	1968	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is set in a dystopian society in the very near future. Although it is not obvious at first, this is also an alternate history story. The central character is Haldane IV, a mathematician, in a caste-based society. He forms a forbidden relationship with Helix, a poet. He also becomes interested in investigating Fairweather, a famous mathematician who lived shortly before his time, and his son Fairweather II, who he discovers led a rebellion, which was defeated. Eventually he is given a show trial and deported to another planet, where he meets Fairweather II. In this world, Jesus Christ became a revolutionary agitator and was never subjected to crucifixion. He assembled an army to overthrow the Roman Empire, and established a theocracy that has lasted until the twentieth century. He was killed by a crossbow while entering Rome, so the crossbow becomes a religious symbol similar to the cross in our society.
646725	/m/02_7j7	Restoring the Lost Constitution	Randy Barnett		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Restoring the Lost Constitution is broken into four parts, each addressing an aspect of the U.S. Constitution. # Constitutional Legitimacy describes the most common arguments for constitutional legitimacy, and argues against them in practical terms. Barnett suggests that in practice it is impossible for any constitution to derive its legitimacy from consent, but it must rather derive legitimacy through "necessity" and "propriety". # Constitutional Method # Constitutional Limits # Constitutional Powers
646745	/m/02_7l2	Momo	Michael Ende	1973-01-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the ruins of an amphitheatre just outside an unnamed city lives Momo, a little girl of mysterious origin. She came to the ruin, parentless and wearing a long, used coat. She is illiterate and can't count, and she doesn't know how old she is. When asked, she replies, "As far as I remember, I've always been there." She is remarkable in the neighbourhood because she has the extraordinary ability to listen &mdash; really listen. By simply being with people and listening to them, she can help them find answers to their problems, make up with each other, and think of fun games. The advice given to people "go and see Momo!" has become a household phrase and Momo makes many friends, especially an honest, silent street-cleaner, Beppo, and a poetic, extroverted tour guide, Guido. This pleasant atmosphere is spoiled by the arrival of the Men in Grey, eventually revealed as a race of paranormal parasites stealing the time of humans. Appearing in the form of grey-clad, grey-skinned, bald men, these strange individuals present themselves as representing the Timesavings Bank and promote the idea of "timesaving" among the population: Supposedly, time can be deposited to the Bank and returned to the client later with interest. After encountering the Men in Grey, people are made to forget all about them but not about the resolution to save as much time as possible for later use. Gradually, the sinister influence of the Men in Grey affects the whole city: life becomes sterile, devoid of all things considered time-wasting, like social activities, recreation, art, imagination, or sleeping. Buildings and clothing are made exactly the same for everyone and the rhythms of life become hectic. In reality the more time people save the less they have; the time they save is actually lost to them. Instead, it is consumed by the Men in Grey in the form of cigars made from the dried petals of the hour: lilies that represent time. Without these cigars the Men in Grey cannot exist. Momo, however, is a wrench in the plans of the Timesaving Bank thanks to her special personality. The Men in Grey try various plans to take care of her, derailing her from stopping their scheme, but they all fail. When even her closest friends fall under the influence of the Men in Grey in one way or another, Momo's only hope to save the time of mankind is the personification of Time Professor Secundus Minutus Hora (Second Minute Hour) and Cassiopeia, a tortoise which can communicate through writing on her shell and can see thirty minutes into the future. Momo's adventure will take her from the depths of her heart, where her own time flows from in the form of lovely hour-lilies, to the lair of the Men in Grey themselves, where the time people believe they save is hoarded.
647358	/m/02_915	The Most Dangerous Game	Gavin Lyall	1964	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bill Cary is a bush pilot living in Lapland in northern Finland, making a precarious living flying aerial survey flights looking for nickel deposits, and occasional charter cargo flights of dubious legitimacy in his beat-up old de Havilland Beaver. Towards the end of the flying season, a wealthy American hunter hires him to fly into a prohibited part of Finland near the Soviet border in order to hunt bear. Subsequently, he is assaulted by thugs when he refuses a charter contract to search for a lost Tsarist treasure, comes under suspicion from the Finnish police for smuggling when Tsarist-era gold sovereigns start turning up, and from the Finnish secret police for espionage. However, things get more serious when the wealthy American's hunter's beautiful sister turns up to search for her brother, and his fellow bush pilots start getting killed off in a series of suspicious accidents. Cary suspects that the events he is increasingly involved in may stem from an incident in his wartime past.
647531	/m/02_9kb	Many Waters	Madeleine L'Engle	1986-09-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the middle of a New England winter, the boys accidentally disturb an experiment in their parents' lab. A sonic boom - a blast of heat - and the boys find they have been transported to a vast, trackless desert which is shaken by periodic earthquakes. Providentially, they encounter a water prospector named Japheth who offers to help them find refuge at the nearest oasis. Sandy and Dennys are intrigued by the creatures which accompany them on their trip through this (as they initially assume) alien world, which include a two-foot-tall mammoth; a pair of unicorns which appear simultaneously to be, and not to be; and humans much shorter than the brothers are. After a long ride through the desert during which they develop a severe case of heat stroke, the boys are separated when the unicorn Dennys is riding disappears. Sandy remains with Japheth and his elderly grandfather Lamech and is tended to by a variety of improbable beings, including a pelican. Dennys reappears in another tent, only to be bodily thrown into a refuse heap. Now seriously ill, he comes under the care of a friendly family with a large tent in the center of the oasis, headed by a gruff but kindly patriarch. As he recovers from his "sun-sickness", Dennys learns that his benefactor is in fact Japheth's father and Lamech's son - and his name is Noah. It soon becomes apparent that the boys have been transported back to Biblical times, just before the Great Flood. The pelican, scarab beetle and lion turn out to be the animal hosts of seraphim, who are surprisingly knowledgeable about quantum physics and twentieth century Earth. The nephilim, who also transform into animals, distrust the twins. They use their human wives to try to discover why Sandy and Dennys have come to the oasis, and whether they represent a threat. Separated for much of the book, the twins become more independent of each other, and learn that neither they nor reality itself is as ordinary as they previously supposed. Both gain maturity over the course of about a year in the desert with Noah and his family. They each fall in love with Noah's daughter Yalith, but do not act on their desires. Dennys convinces Noah to reconcile with Lamech, and both twins eventually care for the old man's gardens as they wait to discover a way home. After Lamech's death, Sandy is kidnapped. He refuses to use violence to escape, and is eventually found by Japheth. Both twins worry that Yalith is not to be on the Ark, and neither are they. Nevertheless, they help build the Ark before returning home via flying unicorn.
648779	/m/02_flq	Froth on the daydream	Boris Vian	1947	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Colin is a wealthy young man with a resourceful and stylish man-servant, Nicolas, as well as a fantastic olfactory-musical invention: the pianocktail. With dizzying speed, Colin meets and weds Chloé in a grand ceremony. Generously, Colin bequeaths a quarter of his fortune to his friends Chick and Alise so they too may marry. Happiness should await both couples but Chloé falls ill upon her honeymoon with a water lily in the lung, a painful and rare condition that can only be treated by surrounding her with flowers. The expense is prohibitive and Colin soon exhausts his funds. Meanwhile, Chick's obsession with the philosopher, Jean-Sol Partre, causes him to spend all his money, effort and attention upon collecting Partre's literature. Alise hopes to save Chick financially and renew his interest in her by persuading Partre to stop publishing books. She kills him when he refuses and seeks revenge upon the booksellers. Colin struggles to provide flowers for Chloé to no avail and his grief at her death is so strong his pet mouse commits suicide to escape the gloom.
649093	/m/02_gdz	The Drifters	James A. Michener	1971	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the first chapter, Joe is introduced as a disenfranchised twenty year old youth who is enrolled at the University of California during the Vietnam War. After Joe realizes that with his grades he is going to get drafted, he hitchhikes to Yale University, where he gets the name of a professor who may be able to get him across the border into Canada. After being referred to a woman in Boston named Gretchen, she helps him get into Canada, and he eventually goes to Torremolinos, Spain. While looking for a job and a place to stay, he takes over the ownership of a bar called The Alamo, and a man named Jean-Victor finds him a place to stay in Torremolinos. In keeping with the theme throughout the book, the second chapter is about the character Britta, an 18-year-old girl from Tromsø, Norway. After finishing school, she finds a job in an office at the docks, but eventually becomes curious about the world beyond Tromsø, and goes to vacation in Torremolinos, Spain for fifteen days. Once in Torremolinos, she loves it and finds a job as a waitress in a bar called The Alamo. Here, a man named Jean-Victor finds her a place to stay, where another newcomer to Torremolinos, Joe, is already staying. Of the main characters in the book, Monica goes through trials and tribulations as she transitions from living as royalty in a foreign country, to being forced out and finally finding her way to Torremolinos to join the rest of the cast in the book. She is introduced as living with her father in the Republic of Vwarda, where Monica becomes rebellious and begins to cause a stir in Vwarda's Royal family. She is forced out of the country and runs away with an airline pilot to Torremolinos, where she can live on her monthly allowance from her grandmother. She meets a man named Jean-Victor, who finds her a place to live with a woman from Norway and a man from the United States. The fourth character of the book is Cato; he is introduced as the son of the Reverend Claypool Jackson, a local minister in the area trying to salvage his community through his church. Cato Jackson is a sophomore at University of Pennsylvania, whom the narrator meets at a drug store where he stumbles upon a shooting of a local drug store owner. After meeting Mr. Fairbanks, he and Cato talk all night and the next day, after Cato's girlfriend is stabbed and killed. Cato then runs off to Torremolinos, where he finds shelter in an apartment with a few other runaways of his own age. In the fifth chapter of the book, the character Yigal is introduced as the son of a dean at a college in Haifa, Israel. He is struggling to identify with either his parents and their life in Israel, or with his grandfather and his American life in Detroit, Michigan in the United States, and his other grandfather in England. He is shuffled between Israel and America throughout his youth, and even fights and becomes a hero in the Six Day War, before finally enrolling in Technion University in Haifa. After a few months he moves back to England with his other grandfather and begins to engage in a lot of reading and in conversations with his grandfather. Eventually his grandfather suggests that he needs to spend some time away, and he suggests the south of Spain, and Torremolinos, as a place to go. Gretchen is introduced as a very intelligent girl from Boston who, at the age of 19, has already completed her bachelors degree, and is working for Senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign. After campaigning across the United States for McCarthy's nomination in Chicago at the Democratic Convention, during the riots she and the people she is with are falsely arrested. During the process she is sexually assaulted, but the policemen who did it deny it, and nothing is ever done about it. After fighting with her parents and the police over the issue of what happened, she decides to go to school in Besançon, France, where one of her professors tells her about an excellent language school. Upon enrolling at the University of Besançon and living with her peers for a little while, she decides to travel. Someone suggests Torremolinos, so she buys a yellow pop top van and begins to live out of it in Torremolinos. At the beginning of the chapter in Torremolinos, the whole set of characters are all in Torremolinos, and everyone is getting settled in with their various living conditions. Cato and Monica begin a relationship, and some of the characters begin to experiment with drugs such as LSD; they continue to smoke large amounts of marijuana and drink regularly. During this time, they go to Paxton Fell's house, a man whom a few of the characters were referenced to see in case of an emergency. Everyone, including Mr. Fairbanks who is in Torremolinos to supervise a real estate deal, end up partying with Mr. Fell and a few of his guests throughout the night. Eventually during their stay, the characters are approached by a woman, Susan Elgerton, who tries to convince Cato and Gretchen to join her in the name of starting a violent revolution back in America. As time goes on, Torremolinos begins to lose its luster; Monica is partying too much for her own good and Gretchen starts to look for something else to entertain her, and the characters leave Torremolinos in Gretchen's yellow pop top and head towards Portugal. As they drive towards the Algarve, the characters begin to notice that not everywhere in Europe is so nice as Torremolinos. They eventually find a small town by the name of Alte. Here, Yigal meets a local girl whom he kisses, upsetting the rest of the village, and Monica and Cato keep on going to the nearby town of Albufeira, to take doses of LSD with a local bar owner, where Gretchen also tries it for the first time and unfortunately has a really bad trip. Eventually the group moves on to the seaside town of Algarve. After living in Algarve for a while, Monica tries to run away to Nepal, but Joe, Yigal and Cato end up getting into a fight with the people with whom she was going to run away. She returns, and the crew heads off to Pamplona, Spain with Mr. Fairbanks. In the ninth chapter, a new character is introduced by the name of Harvey Holt. He works as a technical representative on radars in remote locations. He is an old friend of Mr. Fairbanks, and has been everywhere from Afghanistan to Sumatra to Thailand. He is a fan of old music and movies. He is very old fashioned, and in a break from the rest of the characters in the book, he isn't vehemently anti-war, as he had served in World War II. He very much disapproves of how Joe dodged the draft to travel the world. Harvey's old music tapes include the vocalist Bea Wain; her recording of "My Reverie", discussed in two separate chapters, serves as a symbol of the generation gap. Pamplona, Spain is known for its running of the bulls, an event characters come to see. They stay in the same hotel as Mr. Fairbanks and Harvey Holt and there is are many conversations between Mr. Holt and Joe about commitment to one's country. Here Gretchen starts to show her feelings for Clive, a recurring character throughout the book, who brings news from the outside world as well as new music from his homeland in England. For a week, everybody enjoys themselves, and Joe begins to think that he also wants to run with the bulls with Harvey at some point. During the week, Yigal's American grandfather tracks him down and tries to bring him back to Detroit with him, although he is torn because he has started a relationship with Britta, and he doesn't like America, although something in it still has him interested. In the end, he leaves to go to school at Case Western Reserve in Ohio. During the run, Harvey gets gored by a bull but survives. Joe and even Mr. Fairbanks run, and the gang decides next to leave Europe and head to Mozambique for the next leg of their journey. In Mozambique things begin to go downhill for Monica: she has moved beyond LSD, begins to use heroin regularly, starts to bring Cato down with her, and gets Joe to try heroin on occasion. Cato hangs around the local historians in the area, and begins to learn about the history of Africa, and the effect slavery has had on the continent. As quick as Cato is to point out how badly the Christians have treated the Arabs, Mr. Fairbanks and Gretchen are quick to point out how much the Arabs used slavery against their own people in the past. The group also explores some of the natural beauty of Mozambique, and starts to reconnect with that side of the world, which is something they have not explored thus far on their journey. The group then decides to head to Marrakech, Morocco, where there is a man who could help out Joe with some papers, so he could re-enter the United States at some point, and not be considered a criminal. In the final destination of the journey, the remainder of the group ends up in Marrakech, Morocco, where the marijuana trade is booming, a town where young people could get lost very easily. The group finds a place to stay at a hotel, where on the top floor there is a man who can help out Joe with his papers, and helps out people who become addicted to heroin, which makes it a good fit for Monica. Monica is becoming more addicted to heroin, and things are starting to look bad for her. Her father has all but given up hope for her, and the rest of the group is beginning to split up; Britta and Harvey fly off to Ratmalana, and Monica runs away more often than before. Eventually, Monica overdoses on heroin and dies, Britta leaves with Harvey, Cato begins his trip to Mecca hoping to return to Philadelphia, Joe goes off to Tokyo and Gretchen returns home to Boston.
649129	/m/02_gky	The Lady of Shalott	Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson			 The first four stanzas describe a pastoral setting. The Lady of Shalott lives in an island castle in a river which flows to Camelot, but little is known about her by the local farmers. :And by the moon the reaper weary, :Piling sheaves in uplands airy, :Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy ::Lady of Shalott." Stanzas five to eight describe the lady's life. She suffers from a mysterious curse, and must continually weave images on her loom without ever looking directly out at the world. Instead, she looks into a mirror which reflects the busy road and the people of Camelot which pass by her island. :She knows not what the curse may be, :And so she weaveth steadily, :And little other care hath she, ::The Lady of Shalott. The reflected images are described as "shadows of the world," a metaphor that makes clear that they are a poor substitute for seeing directly ("I am half-sick of shadows.") Stanzas nine to twelve describe "bold Sir Lancelot" as he rides by, and is seen by the lady. :All in the blue unclouded weather :Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather, :The helmet and the helmet-feather :Burn'd like one burning flame together, ::As he rode down to Camelot. The remaining seven stanzas describe the effect on the lady of seeing Lancelot; she stops weaving and looks out of her window toward Camelot, bringing about the curse. :Out flew the web and floated wide- :The mirror crack'd from side to side; :"The curse is come upon me," cried ::The Lady of Shalott. She leaves her tower, finds a boat upon which she writes her name, and floats down the river to Camelot. She dies before arriving at the palace. Among the knights and ladies who see her is Lancelot, who thinks she is lovely. :"Who is this? And what is here?" :And in the lighted palace near :Died the sound of royal cheer; :And they crossed themselves for fear, ::All the Knights at Camelot; :But Lancelot mused a little space :He said, "She has a lovely face; :God in his mercy lend her grace, ::The Lady of Shalott."
649202	/m/02_gry	World of Wonders	Robertson Davies	1975	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eisengrim (also known by at least four other names throughout the trilogy) tells the story of his life to a group of filmmakers who are producing a biographical film about the great magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin for the BBC. They are headed by the world famous Swedish director Jurgen Lind, evidently modeled on Ingmar Bergman. Also present during the story are Eisengrim's friends Dunstan Ramsay and Liesl, who both appear in the earlier instalments of the Deptford Trilogy. Ramsay reprises the role of narrator that he played in the first novel, Fifth Business, but in this case it is only to add context and continuity to the internal narration of Eisengrim. The life story of Eisengrim pulls together many events found throughout the previous two novels, showing them from an entirely different perspective.
649517	/m/02_hls	The Cay	Theodore Taylor	1969	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When World War II breaks out, Phillip Enright and his mother board the S.S. Hato to Virginia because the mother feels it's unsafe to stay in Curaçao. The ship is torpedoed, and Phillip is blinded by a blow on the head and is stranded on an island with Timothy, an old black man and a black cat. They build a hut, and keep track of the days by throwing pebbles in a can. They live alone together for two months. In the opening chapters of the book, the pair display significant difficulty in being able to tolerate and work with each other, partly because of young white Phillip's racial prejudice against the elderly black Timothy. The two characters learn to overcome their disdain for one another, and develop strong bonds of friendship by the end of the novel. Their relationship changes rapidly throughout the novel starting with complete hate and them showing signs of teamwork to a point where Phillip doesn't need Timothy anymore but Timothy needs Philip.
651093	/m/02_n66	This Side of Paradise	Fitzgerald	1920	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This book is written in three parts. "Book One: The Romantic Egotist"—the novel centers on Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner who, convinced that he has an exceptionally promising future, attends boarding school and later Princeton University. He leaves behind his eccentric mother Beatrice and befriends a close friend of hers, Monsignor Darcy. While at Princeton he goes back to Minneapolis where he re-encounters Isabelle Borgé, a young lady whom he met as a little boy and starts a romantic relationship with her, but after a few days he becomes disillusioned by her and returns to Princeton. "Interlude"—Following their break-up, Amory is shipped overseas, to serve in the army in World War I. Fitzgerald had been in the army himself, but the war ended while he was still stationed on Long Island. Amory's experiences in the war are not described, other than to say later in the book that he was a bayonet instructor. "Book Two: The Education of a Personage"—After the war, Amory Blaine falls in love with a New York debutante named Rosalind Connage. Because he is poor, however, this relationship collapses as well; Rosalind decides to marry a wealthy man instead. A devastated Amory is further crushed to learn that his mentor Monsignor Darcy has died. The book ends with Amory's iconic lament, "I know myself, but that is all."
651764	/m/02_pyf	Memoirs of Hadrian	Marguerite Yourcenar	1951	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is told in the first person by Hadrian and is framed as a letter to Marcus Aurelius in the first chapter, Animula Vagula Blandula. The other chapters form a loose chronological narrative which he often breaks with various insights and recollections. He directly addresses Marcus again only in the penultimate chapter, Disciplina Augusta. The story begins with Hadrian, who is around sixty years of age, describing his incurable illness. He therefore wishes to recount important events in his life before his death. His earliest memories are his boyhood years in Italica. He also talks of his early interest in astrology and his lifelong passion for the arts, culture, and philosophy of Greece; themes which he revisits throughout the book. He visits Athens to study, travels to Rome for the first time, and witnesses the accession of Trajan. He eventually joins the army and participates in the Dacian campaign. Hadrian, who is around thirty years old at the end of the war, describes his successes in the army and his relationship with Trajan who is initially cold towards him. He slowly gains Trajan’s favor and secures his position for the throne with the help of Plotina, the emperor’s wife, and also by marrying Sabina, Trajan's grandniece. During his military service, the outcome of the Sarmatian wars strongly affects him due to the appalling bloodshed and atrocities committed. He also begins to question the value of Trajan’s policy of military expansion. Trajan, in old age, begins an unsuccessful military campaign in Parthia after his successes over Dacia and Sarmatia. After a major defeat, Trajan hastily names Hadrian as his successor in a will shortly before his death. Following the death of Trajan, he hesitantly has his rivals executed and makes peace with Parthia. He travels frequently throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire while undertaking numerous economic and military reforms, promoting in his words: “humanitas, libertas, felicitas.” During a visit to Britain, he describes the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, which represents part of his vision of curbing the military expansion of his predecessor and promoting peace. Hadrian’s administration is a time of peace and happiness which he regards as his “Age of Gold.” He attributes this happiness to his love for Antinous, a beautiful Bithynian youth he meets in Nicomedia. He also feels genuinely loved by Antinous compared to the fleeting passions of his youth and the loveless relationship with his wife Sabina. While visiting Egypt, he despairs over the sudden and mysterious death of Antinous who drowns in the Nile. He ultimately believes that Antinous sacrificed himself in order to alter the outcome of troubling portents that both had witnessed earlier. In his grief, he devises the cult of Antinous and makes future plans to dedicate a new city to him in an effort to eternalize his memory. Hadrian begins reflecting upon his advancing age and his change in temperament, recalling one incident where he accidentally blinds his secretary out of rage. Further troubling him is the outbreak of rebellion in Judea, which forces him to travel and take command of the troops. During an important siege, he despairs over the unraveling of his plans for peace, his ailing heart condition, and later over the rampant destruction in Judea. He states, “Natura deficit, fortuna mutatur, deus omnia cernit. Nature fails us, fortune changes, a god beholds all things from on high…" During his final years in Rome and at his villa in Tibur, he ponders his succession and his thoughts turn to a memory of Marcus Aurelius as a virtuous and kind-hearted boy. Hadrian, now in advanced age and very poor health, begins to fear death and contemplates suicide through various means. He finally accepts his fate with resignation, or patientia, while reflecting on his newfound divine status throughout the Empire. Near death, he contemplates what the future may hold for the world, Rome, and for his soul.
651789	/m/02_pzx	A Calculus of Angels	Gregory Keyes	1999-03-30	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 1722: A second Dark Age looms. An asteroid has devastated the Earth, called down by dire creatures who plot against the world of men. The brilliant-- some say mad--Isaac Newton has taken refuge in ancient Prague. There, with his young apprentice Ben Franklin, he plumbs the secrets of the aetheric beings who have so nearly destroyed humanity. But their safety is tenuous. Peter the Great marches his unstoppable forces across Europe. And half a world away, Cotton Mather and Blackbeard the pirate assemble a party of colonial luminaries to cross the Atlantic and discover what has befallen the Old World. With them sails Red Shoes, a Choctaw shaman whose mysterious connections to the invisible world warn him that they are all moving toward a confrontation as violent as it is decisive . . .
651802	/m/02_q08	Newton's Cannon	Gregory Keyes	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A dazzling quest whose outcome will raise humanity to unparalleled heights of glory--or ring down a curtain of endless night . . . 1681: When Sir Isaac Newton turns his restless mind to the ancient art of alchemy, he unleashes Philosopher's Mercury, a primal source of matter and a key to manipulating the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Now, as France and England battle for its control, Louis XIV calls for a new weapon--a mysterious device known only as Newton's Cannon. Half a world away, a young apprentice named Benjamin Franklin stumbles across a dangerous secret. Pursued by a deadly enemy--half scientist, half sorcerer--Ben makes his fugitive way to England. Only Newton himself can help him now. But who will help Sir Isaac? For he was not the first to unleash the Philosopher's Mercury. Others were there before him. Creatures as scornful of science as they are of mankind. And burning to be rid of both . . .
652356	/m/02_rwc	The Path of Daggers	Robert Jordan	1998-10-20	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Elayne Trakand, Nynaeve al'Meara, Aviendha, and their coalition of channelers use the ter'angreal called the Bowl of the Winds to reverse the unnatural heat brought on by the Dark One's manipulation of the climate and then escape a Seanchan invasion by Traveling to Andor, where Elayne claims the Lion Throne. Perrin Aybara moves into Ghealdan in an attempt to stop Masema Dagar, the self-proclaimed Prophet of the Dragon. He unknowingly rescues Deposed Queen Morgase of Andor (who now goes by the name of Maighdin and becomes Faile's servant), from the Prophet's men. He then secures the oath of fealty from Alliandre, Queen of Ghealdan. At the end of the book, Faile Bashere is kidnapped by the Shaido Aiel. Egwene al'Vere, Amyrlin Seat of the rebel Aes Sedai, finally manipulates her unruly followers into giving her more control, and they prepare to Travel to Tar Valon to lay siege to the White Tower. Rand al'Thor, with Asha'man and Illianers, attempts to repel the Seanchan invasion in Altara. Though successful in early skirmishes, things go awry later, when Rand uses Callandor on the Seanchan army. Since he was fatigued from wounds and channeling, and both halves of the One Power are behaving erratically in the area following the use of the Bowl of the Winds, as well as an inherent instability in Callandor, Rand loses control while wielding Callandor, causing much destruction to both armies and forcing a stalemate. Returning to Cairhien, Rand is attacked by traitorous Asha'man led by Dashiva, who attempt and fail to kill him. Mat Cauthon is absent from the book, due to injuries sustained at the end of the previous book, A Crown of Swords. Robert Jordan had earlier done the same for Perrin Aybara, who had been absent from Book 5, The Fires of Heaven.
652812	/m/02_tkj	Twelfth Night, or What You Will	William Shakespeare	1623		 Viola is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria and she comes ashore with the help of a captain. She loses contact with her twin brother, Sebastian, whom she believes to be dead. Disguising herself as a young man under the name Cesario, she enters the service of Duke Orsino through the help of the sea captain who rescues her. Orsino has convinced himself that he is in love with Olivia, whose father and brother have recently died, and who does not wish to see any suitor till seven years, the Duke included. Orsino uses Cesario as an intermediary to profess his passionate love before Olivia. Olivia, believing Viola to be a man, falls in love with this handsome and eloquent messenger, while Viola has fallen in love with the Duke who regards her as his confidant. In the comic subplot several characters conspire to make Olivia's pompous steward, Malvolio, believe that his lady Olivia has fallen for him. It involves Olivia's uncle, Sir Toby Belch; another would-be suitor, a silly squire named Sir Andrew Aguecheek; her servants Maria and Fabian; and her fool, Feste. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew engage themselves in drinking and revelry, thus disturbing the peace of their lady's house till late into the night prompting Malvolio to chastise them. This provokes Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Maria to plan revenge on Malvolio. They convince Malvolio that Olivia is secretly in love with him through a love letter written by Maria in Olivia's hand asking Malvolio to wear yellow stockings cross-gartered, to be rude to the rest of the servants, and to smile constantly in the presence of Olivia. Malvolio finds the letter and reacts in surprised delight. He starts acting out the contents of the letter to show Olivia his positive response. Olivia is shocked by the changes in Malvolio who has seemingly lost his mind. She leaves him to the contrivances of his tormentors. Pretending that Malvolio is insane,they lock him up in a dark chamber. Feste visits him to mock his "insanity", once disguised as a priest, and again as himself. At the end of the play Malvolio learns of their conspiracy and storms off promising revenge, but the Duke sends Fabian to pacify him. Meanwhile Sebastian (who had been rescued by a sea captain, Antonio) arrives on the scene, which adds to the confusion of mistaken identity. Mistaking him for Viola, Olivia asks him to marry her, and they are secretly united in a church. Finally, when Viola and Sebastian appear in the presence of both Olivia and the Duke, there is more wonder at their similarity. At this point Viola reveals she is really a female and that Sebastian is her lost twin brother. The play ends in a declaration of marriage between the Duke and Viola, and it is learned that Toby has married Maria.
652919	/m/02_tt2	Franny and Zooey	J. D. Salinger	1961	{"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This section concerns Franny's weekend date with her collegiate boyfriend, Lane Coutell. He takes her to a fashionable lunch room, where he is described as “monopolizing” the conversation and trying to impress Franny with his news of receiving a suggestion to publish his latest paper on Flaubert. Franny appears upset, questioning the importance of college education and the worth of Lane's friends. She eats nothing, and is smoking, sweating, and feeling faint, and must excuse herself to visit the restroom, where, after a crying spell, she regains her composure. She returns to the table, where Lane questions her on the small book she has been carrying. She responds nonchalantly that the book is titled The Way of a Pilgrim and tells the story of how a Russian wanderer learns the power of "praying without ceasing." The Jesus Prayer involves internalizing the prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner," to a point where, in a manner similar to a Zen koan, it becomes unconscious, almost like a heartbeat. Lane is less interested in the story than in keeping their timetable for the party and football game, though when Franny faints, he tends to her and postpones the weekend's activities. After she wakes, he goes to get a taxi, and leaves Franny alone—practicing the act of praying without ceasing. Zooey, smoking and soaking in a tub, is reading a four-year-old letter from his brother, Buddy. His mother, Bessie, enters the bathroom, and the two have a long discussion, centering upon Bessie's worries about his sister, Franny, who is in a state of emotional collapse. During the conversation, Zooey verbally spars and banters with his mother and repeatedly requests that she leave. Bessie tolerates Zooey's behavior, and simply states that he's becoming more and more like his brother Buddy and wonders what has happened to her children that were once so "sweet and loving." After Bessie leaves, Zooey gets dressed and goes to the living room, where he finds Franny on the sofa with her cat Bloomberg, and begins speaking with her. After upsetting Franny by questioning her motives for reciting the "Jesus Prayer," Zooey retreats into the former bedroom of his two older brothers, Seymour and Buddy, and reads the back of their door, covered in philosophical quotations. After contemplation, Zooey telephones Franny, pretending to be Buddy. Franny eventually discovers the ruse, but she and Zooey continue to talk. Knowing that Franny reveres their eldest brother, Seymour—the psychologist, spiritual leader, and confidante of the family, who committed suicide years earlier—Zooey shares with her some words of wisdom that Seymour once gave him. By the end of the call, as the fundamental "secret" of Seymour's advice is revealed, Franny seems to find illumination in what Zooey has told her: “there isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s fat lady” and that the “Fat Lady” is Christ himself.
653918	/m/02_xnz	A Spy in the House of Love	Anaïs Nin			 The leading character of the novel, Sabina, is a beautiful lying wife who desires to seduce every attractive man she can. She regards herself as an international spy in the house of love. All the while she is living a double life with staid Alan, her unsuspecting husband. She tells Alan that she's an actress in a play and she must leave for weeks at a time. She hides herself under makeup and clothing to disguise her flaws as she goes in search of someone who can save her from herself. At the same time, she's telling her story to a "lie detector", whom she dials at random in order to hear an unfamiliar voice on the other line. The lie detector is something like a detective and somewhat of a professional psychologist, listening to others and separating truth from lies. He traces her call and continues to follow Sabina, revealing in the end the folly of her ways. Fans of the book speak of Sabina as not only special, but as endowed with a touching need. Initially, Nin meant Sabina to be based on her friend June Miller, and wrote House of Incest with Sabina standing in for June. However, as Nin seems to have held June as a role model and deliberately imitated her, the character borrowed traits from both women. Nin said that of all her novels, this was the one she worked on most diligently. Many readers and critics speak of the lie detector as one of her best characters.
654705	/m/02__v6	One Hundred Years of Solitude	Gabriel García Márquez	1967	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is the story of seven generations of the Buendía Family in the town of Macondo. The founding patriarch of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía, and Úrsula, his wife (and first cousin), leave Riohacha, Colombia, to find a better life and a new home. One night of their emigration journey, whilst camping on a riverbank, José Arcadio Buendía dreams of "Macondo", a city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it. Upon awakening, he decides to found Macondo at the river side; after days of wandering the jungle, José Arcadio Buendía's founding of Macondo is utopic. Founding patriarch José Arcadio Buendía believes Macondo to be surrounded by water, and from that island, he invents the world according to his perceptions. Soon after its foundation, Macondo becomes a town frequented by unusual and extraordinary events that involve the generations of the Buendía family, who are unable or unwilling to escape their periodic (mostly) self-inflicted misfortunes. Ultimately, a hurricane destroys Macondo, the city of mirrors; just the cyclical turmoil inherent to Macondo. At the end of the story, a Buendía man deciphers an encrypted cipher that generations of Buendía family men had failed to decipher. The secret message informed the recipient of every fortune and misfortune lived by the Buendía Family generations.
655049	/m/030131	The Wanting Seed	Anthony Burgess	1962	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel begins by introducing the two protagonists: Tristram Foxe, a history teacher, and his wife, Beatrice-Joanna, a homemaker. They have recently suffered through their young son's death. Throughout the first portion of the novel, overpopulation is depicted through the limitation and reuse of materials, and extremely cramped living conditions. There is also active discrimination against heterosexuals, homosexuality being encouraged as a measure against overpopulation. Self-sterilization is also encouraged. One of the major conflicts of the novel is between Tristram and his brother, Derek. Very much alike at first, Derek chose a different path from Tristram and pretends to be homosexual while in public to help his career. In private, he has an affair with Beatrice-Joanna, and when she forgets to take her State-provided contraceptives, she becomes illegally pregnant. She has sex with her husband, Tristram, and his brother, Derek, within a 24-hour time span, thus the paternity of her twin boys is uncertain. Life changes as the homosexual police ('Greyboys') become more active and more repressive - something that begins as a mysterious blight spreads across the world. Tristram is arrested after getting unintentionally mixed up in a protest and spends the next section of the novel in jail, as society outside changes rapidly. While he is imprisoned, formerly repressed religion begins to bloom, fertility rituals are endorsed, and the structure of society, as well as government, are completely destroyed. Most shockingly, cannibalism is openly practiced in much of England. Beatrice-Joanna has run away, and is staying with her sister and brother-in-law in the countryside on their Farm, where the blight is affecting even their chickens. She stays there until she delivers her twin sons, when a government agent arrives to take her and her children to the city. With the help of his cellmate, Tristram escapes and tries to rejoin his wife. He travels across England to his sister-in-law's farm. He is so desperate for food that he briefly joins "a dining club," a rather chaotic affair which provides food (composed of murdered human beings) for him. His journey eventually takes him to a sort of soup kitchen, where he is tricked into enlisting in the army. This is the third section of the novel. In the army, Tristram is shipped to an unknown location to fight in the war, though the reader later discovers that he is in Ireland. In his first battle he discovers that there is no real enemy; the purpose of the "war" is population control. Battalions are sent to a made-up underground battlefield to kill each other, and the dead bodies are sold to corporations for food. Every other member of his battalion gets killed in the battle, and Tristram begins his long way back to England. Escaping back into general society, Tristram finds a new job. In his absence, Beatrice-Joanna has been moved to live with Derek. She has also brought the twins (it is implied that Derek is their father) and named them after her two brotherly lovers, Derek and Tristram Foxe. At the last scene Tristram meets again his wife at Brighton pier. The book closes with Burgess clarifying his theme: The wind rises... we must try to live. The immense air opens and closes my book. The wave, pulverized, dares to gush and spatter from the rocks. Fly away, dazzled, blinded pages. Break, waves. Break with joyful waters...
657059	/m/02p2sc9	HMS Surprise	Patrick O'Brian	1973	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After the capture of the Spanish gold shipment (in Post Captain), the Admiralty is debating on how to reward the captains responsible, including Jack Aubrey. As Spain was not at war the captured ships are not considered prizes, and as a result of the decision the captains end up with much smaller bounties than they hoped. The new First Lord of the Admiralty also mentions Stephen Maturin's name during the proceedings, despite the information being classified, possibly exposing him to a large audience as an intelligence agent. Stephen willingly goes on a mission to Spain anyway, and is to be picked up by Jack on the on its return to English waters. Jack arrives at the rendezvous point to learn from a Catalan revolutionary that Stephen has been captured and is being tortured by French intelligence. Jack decides to lead a rescue mission, saving Stephen and killing the French interrogators. Upon returning to England Jack finds that the fortune he had expected from the Spanish gold fleet was not as large as he had hoped and he is still in debt. Jack is taken by bailiffs and is held in a sponging-house. Stephen returns to Sir Joseph and tells of his capture and Jack’s predicament. Jack's arrest for debt also puts his would-be marriage to Sophie Williams into doubt, as her mother has stipulated that her husband should be financially stable. Stephen uses his influence to get Jack an advance on his grant of money (far smaller than the prize would have been) which clears some of his debt so he is released. Stephen meets with Sophie and convinces her to see Jack secretly before he takes command of his new ship HMS Surprise. Jack and Sophie meet in a coach in the middle of the night, and promise to marry no one else. Stephen and Jack leave in the Surprise to ferry an ambassador to the East Indies. He is also interested in tracking down a French squadron commanded by Admiral Linois, as the waters of the Indian Ocean are otherwise devoid of prizes. On their journey, Surprise gets caught in the doldrums north of the equator, and the crew, especially those who had recently come from long service aboard another ship, begin to show signs of severe scurvy. The ship makes an emergency stop along the coast of Brazil for fresh fruit and supplies. As the journey continues the Surprise goes wide around the Cape of Good Hope, held by the Dutch who are at war with England. To avoid encounters, Surprise ventures into the waters of the Antarctic Ocean, where they are forced to endure a severe storm. The ambassador at this time becomes very ill. The Surprise puts into India to refit from the storm and to rest the ambassador. While ashore Stephen meets a local street-wise child, a girl named Dil, who eagerly shows him around the city. Stephen is watching a parade with Dil when he sees Diana Villiers, who has returned to India ahead of her companion, the wealthy merchant Richard Canning, Stephen's rival for her affection. They agree to visit, and spend several days together, at the end of which Stephen asks her to marry him. She does not respond immediately, but promises to at a later date, and Stephen departs. Meanwhile Dil is killed when she is robbed of silver bracelets that Stephen had given her. The ambassador dies east of India and the Surprise turns around, setting sail for Britain. They soon encounter the East India Company's China Fleet, returning to England, unescorted. A day after leaving the China Fleet the Surprise spots Linois's squadron cruising the Indian Ocean. Surprise engages the smallest ship of the squadron, the corvette Berceau, shredding her rigging, then turns and makes speed back to the China Fleet to warn them and organize a defence. Choosing the largest ships of the China Fleet, Jack dresses them as men-of-war and sends some of his officers to help them fight. The French squadron closes on the Surprise and the large Indiamen. The Surprise turns and engages the largest French warship, the 74-gun ship of the line Marengo, and exchanges broadsides with the heavier ship, but is outgunned and in peril when one of the Indiamen engages the French ship from the other side, forcing her to disengage. The damage from the action forces the entire French squadron to flee to refit. Upon entering Calcutta, Jack receives an enthusiastic welcome from the merchants, including Canning, who are happy to refit the Surprise and allow him to transport jewels as freight, which will gain him a percentage of their value on his arrival in England. During the refit, Canning confronts Stephen and they challenge each other to a duel. During the duel Canning shoots Stephen in the ribs, but Stephen is able to gather himself and then shoots Canning in the heart, killing him. Stephen convinces Diana to return to England, though on a merchant ship instead of Surprise; Jack will hear nothing of it. Meanwhile, Stephen is running a high fever because the bullet is still lodged in his ribs. With the help of Jack and the ambassador’s surgeon, Stephen operates on himself, removing the bullet. As the Surprise sails home they stop at Madeira, and there Stephen finds that Diana has left him for a Mr. Johnstone from America (called "Mr. Johnson" in later books). Jack, on the other hand, had sent ahead for Sophie so that he may marry her now that he is out of debt, but she is not on the island. Within a day’s sailing, Jack overtakes an English frigate in the night and finds that Sophie is aboard. She refuses to marry him then but promises that once they return to England, she will.
657119	/m/02p2sd0	Post Captain	Patrick O'Brian	1972	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book begins in 1802 with the conclusion of the French Revolutionary Wars and the start of the Peace of Amiens. Commander Jack Aubrey returns to England to take up the life of a country squire. He meets the Williams family, and their cousin Diana Villiers. Aubrey courts Sophie Williams (the eldest daughter), but is also attracted to Diana, with whom he commences an affair. Aubrey plans to marry Sophie Williams, but his fortune soon disappears when he is forced to repay the prize money for a merchant ship which has been deemed an unlawful capture and his prize-agent absconds with much of the rest. Aubrey flees the country to avoid going to debtors' prison. While in France, war with England breaks out again, and French authorities begin rounding up all English subjects. Tipped off by Jean-Anne Christy de la Pallière, the French captain who had captured him in Master and Commander, Stephen smuggles Jack out of the country dressed in a bear costume. Finally making it to Gibraltar, Jack and Stephen take passage aboard a British East India Company ship. The ship is captured by the privateer Bellone, but a British squadron overtakes them and rescues Jack and Stephen. Returning to England at the outbreak of war in 1803, Jack is offered a letter of marque by a Mr. Canning. Jack turns Canning down and is soon given command of , an odd ship that was designed to launch a secret weapon. The ship is structurally unsound and sails poorly, and its first lieutenant is very free with punishment. Placed under the command of Admiral Harte, with whose wife Jack had an affair, Jack is given a free hand in the hope that his lucky streak of capturing prizes will continue. Jack's luck does not prevail, only managing to drive the privateer Bellone aground outside a Spanish port, but with no other prizes. Disappointing Admiral Harte, Jack is assigned to escort convoys up and down the English Channel. During this time, he gets a reputation for lingering in port as he carries on an affair with Diana. Meanwhile, Stephen is sent on an intelligence gathering mission in Spain. Upon returning, Stephen is advised by Heneage Dundas, a close friend of Jack's, to warn him about visiting Diana. When Stephen does so, Jack is angry and accuses Stephen of lying to him as to where he had been during his absence. Soon they challenge each other to a duel. While in port, Jack calls on Diana, but finds her with Canning. Prior to the date of the duel, Jack is ordered to raid the French port of Chaulieu to sink the assembled French troopships and gunboats and to destroy the corvette Fanciulla. On the way, the crew plans to mutiny because of the treatment they receive from Lieutenant Parker. Stephen overhears their plans and goes to Jack - the first time they have spoken since the challenge. Forewarned, Jack quashes the mutiny by separating the instigators and some loyal crew in a ship's boat. During an engagement in Chaulieu, the Polychrest runs aground. Jack leads three of the ship's boats to board the Fanciulla. After a short battle, the Polychrests capture the ship and pull off the Polychrest from where it is stranded on a sand bar. However, after hours of pounding by the shore batteries, the Polychrest founders and sinks soon after leaving Chaulieu. After the battle, their duel is forgotten by both Stephen and Jack. Jack returns to England in the Fanciulla and is promoted to Post-captain. Jack is offered a ship that is currently being built but will not be ready to sail for six months. Afraid of being seized by his creditors, he declines the wait and asks for any command. He is temporarily assigned to HMS Lively whose Captain, Hamond, has taken leave to exercise his seat in Parliament. Stephen is again sent to Spain to gather more intelligence. This time, he returns with news that the Spanish will declare war as soon as four ships full of bullion from Montevideo are safely in port. While Stephen is gone, Sophie, at Stephen's urging, asks Jack to transport her and Cecilia to the Downs. While on board, Sophie and Jack come to an agreement not to marry anyone else; Jack is currently too poor to propose a satisfactory marriage settlement to Mrs. Williams. Stephen, while attending an opera, also becomes aware of Diana's affair with Mr. Canning. Fearing that a change in parliamentary leadership will leave Jack without a command, Stephen asks that the Lively be included in the squadron sent to intercept the Spanish. The Admiralty grants this request, assigns Stephen the title of captain pro tem so he will receive a generous share of the prize money, and tasks him to negotiate the treasure fleet's surrender. Because of Stephen's temporary rank and his now-obvious connection to the Admiralty, Jack realizes that Stephen has long been involved in intelligence work for Britain, which highlights Stephens previous travel and apparent unwillingness to explain himself. The Spanish convoy refuses to surrender and a quick battle breaks out. One Spanish frigate explodes and the other three surrender.
657128	/m/02p2sdd	Desolation Island	Patrick O'Brian	1978	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jack Aubrey has been ashore for a while and is getting into difficulties due to his belief in the honesty of others in business and cards. Stephen Maturin is also in personal trouble over his relationship with Diana Villiers and his laudanum addiction. Aubrey is offered either the old HMS Leopard for a mission to Australia to support Captain Bligh against the settlers opposed to his rule, or a newly building 74-gun third rate, HMS Ajax, for sailing in the Mediterranean. Sophie Aubrey, afraid that staying at home will only make the situation worse, asks Maturin for help. She eventually convinces Aubrey to take command of the Leopard, even though he will have to take some transported convicts, so that he can help Maturin get over his disappointment regarding Diana. The actual orders for Jack are to restore Captain Bligh as Governor of the New South Wales colony after an officers' revolt had toppled him. One of the convicts, Louisa Wogan, proves to be an American spy and also a friend of Diana Villiers. The journey is difficult, the prisoners kill their superintendent and surgeon during a storm. They also bring gaol fever on board ship. As the Leopard sails south they become stuck in the doldrums, the ship experiences a full blown epidemic. Most of the prisoners die as do many of the hands. Mr Martin, Stephen's assistant, dies of the fever and a young man, Michael Herapath, who has stowed away to be with his lover Louisa Wogan, is rated a midshipman and becomes Maturin's new assistant. The Captain is forced to drop the sick crew members at Recife, Brazil to receive treatment. This leaves Aubrey with James Grant as his new first lieutenant - considered a good seaman but with little experience of warfare, and occasionally rebuked by Aubrey for countermanding his orders. While they are in port, a British ship comes into Recife and tells Aubrey of the Waakzaamheid, a 74-gun Dutch ship-of-the-line cruising the South Atlantic. As the Leopard is sailing to the Cape of Good Hope, the Waakzaamheid is seen steering a course to cut them off from the Cape. Despite many manoeuvres, the Dutch captain seems almost supernatural in his ability to anticipate Aubrey's tactics. The Waakzaamheid chases the Leopard south into the Roaring Forties. After many days of running downwind, the Waakzaamheid steadily gains on the Leopard and starts firing with her bow chasers. Aubrey returns fire with his two brass nine pounders and a lucky shot shoots away the Waakzaamheids foremast; she is thrown on her beam ends and sinks with all hands. Being east of the Cape, the Leopard sets sail for Australia. The ship stops near an iceberg to take on ice to replace her jettisoned water but is struck, damaging the rudder and causing a severe leak. After trying for several days to keep it afloat by pumping, Grant finally asks permission to leave the ship in the cutter once the water reaches the orlop deck. He and the hands are given permission to leave the ship heading for Cape Town (with a bundle of dispatches from Stephen), but many of Aubrey's old shipmates and the other officers remain. The Leopard continues running east pumping all the time and finally is able to find a safe harbour in a bay of Desolation Island. While there, Aubrey has the ship repaired but because he has no forge, cannot complete the repair of the rudder. Maturin on the other hand is in paradise as he and Herapath collect vast quantities of the local animal life for the doctor's collection. The men dine on penguin, seal and albatross eggs, much to Maturin's disgust. He claims a small island in the bay as his own, and often separates himself from the crew. An American whaler sets into the bay for supplies. They are suspicious of the British, especially since it is the Leopard as the same ship under a different commander had attacked the unprepared to recover fugitive British hands (see Chesapeake-Leopard Affair). The Americans, however, are suffering from scurvy - and their captain from a septic tooth - so they agree to have Maturin treat them in exchange for the use of their much-needed forge. Maturin manipulates Herapath into deserting with Louisa Wogan (pregnant with Herapath's baby) to the American ship, having prepared some false intelligence which they carry with them. As the book ends, he and Barrett Bonden watch them from their island as they are taken on board the American whaler.
657130	/m/02p2sds	The Fortune of War	Patrick O'Brian	1979	{"/m/05ndg1r": "Naval adventure", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After almost losing the Leopard to the ocean, Aubrey and his much reduced crew limp into harbour in the Dutch East Indies. He reports to the Admiral on station, Admiral Drury, who he has known for twenty years. Aubrey relinquishes the much diminished Leopard, now only suitable as a transport ship, and prepares to return to Portsmouth. He argues vigorously with the Admiral for the privilege of taking the prime officers and men with him - a naval custom that the Admiral himself has followed - and eventually prevails. Meanwhile Maturin meets up with fellow agent of the crown, Mr. Wallis, who apprises Stephen of the news from Britain and the successful progress of the intrigues involving Louisa Wogan. Before leaving, Leopard's crew take on the crew of at a game of cricket in which Dr. Maturin unwittingly (and hilariously) reverts to the similar Irish sport of hurling. They ship in HMS La Flèche for the voyage back, commanded by Captain Yorke. Travelling with an extensive library in his cabin, Yorke is clearly a well-read man and Maturin warms to him immediately. News reaches La Flèche of war between Britain and America. Aubrey spends his time during the voyage teaching the young midshipmen while Maturin is engrossed in dissections of collection of specimens from Desolation Island and New Holland with McLean, the ship's Scottish surgeon and a brilliant anatomical naturalist. One night a fire breaks out on board and the crew and its Leopard passengers have to abandon ship in the South Atlantic. A few weeks later they are picked up by , already laden with passengers headed for Bombay and commanded by Captain Henry Lambert. They rendezvous with Lambert's prize, the William off the coast of Brazil, and soon the watch aloft hails a ship hull up on the horizon, the , which they immediately pursue. Jack and his Leopards man two guns but the ensuing fight goes badly when the Javas foremast gives way. The American commander makes few mistakes and eventually the Java is forced to strike its colours. Constitution has to return to Boston to refit and during the voyage Maturin strikes up conversation with a French passenger, Pontet-Canet, and Mr. Evans, the amiable ship's surgeon. Hopes are high for the wounded Captain Lambert's survival but he dies of his wounds and grief after arriving ashore. Aubrey, who was shot in one arm, manages against expectations to survive. Once in Boston, Aubrey convalesces from his wounds in Dr. Choate's hospital for lunatics, waiting for the next prisoner exchange. He is caught unawares when, amidst this type of unhinged patient, a Jahleel Brenton of the Navy Department starts to quiz him about the behaviour of the Leopard and its dealings with the US merchantman, the Alice B. Sawyer. Maturin meanwhile is reacquainted with both Louisa Wogan and Michael Herapath and the latter's father - a wealthy merchant and former Loyalist - who still feels sympathy towards the British. Maturin meets Diana Villiers once again, now the mistress of an American spymaster, Harry Johnson. Johnson visits Aubrey who, unawares, makes free with his comments about Maturin, only to realise his folly later in a bedside conversation with Stephen. Aubrey is frustrated by his enforced inactivity whilst Maturin meets trouble at the hands of the French in the persons of Pontet-Canet and Dubreuil. During a second attempt at abduction, Maturin escapes to Diana Villiers' rooms in the Franchon hotel and kills both Frenchmen when they come searching for him. Stephen also discovers that Johnson had secretly opened a letter from Diana stating her love and regard for him. Now at risk from both the French and Johnson, their need to escape becomes paramount. Enlisting the help of the older Mr. Herapath and a small ugly slab-sided fishing boat from one of his trading vessels, Aubrey, Maturin and Diana escape to sea. They rendezvous with the thirty-eight gun frigate, , entering the outer harbour on blockade duty and are taken on board. As his water supplies aboard the Shannon are coming to an end, Captain Philip Broke - a cousin and childhood friend of Jack's - writes to Captain Lawrence, the commander of the thirty-eight gun lying in harbour, challenging him to come out and fight. The Chesapeake, already in the process of weighing anchor, comes out in apparent pursuit of Aubrey and engages the Shannon. The Shannons crew has had long years of practice at her great guns, aptly demonstrated to Jack Aubrey in practice, and the resultant clash brings about the Royal Navy's first victory in the war (having already lost three frigates).
657134	/m/02p2sf4	The Ionian Mission	Patrick O'Brian	1981	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book opens with Captain Jack Aubrey and his lieutenants Pullings and Mowett aboard , waiting for Jack's friend, and the ship's surgeon, Stephen Maturin to embark. Stephen is late because his wife, Diana, had thrown a party. He drives to the coast to meet his ship, but the carriage, driven by his friend Jagiello, has an accident. Finally Stephen arrives in time and they set sail for the Mediterranean. Worcester joins the blockade off Toulon under the command of Admiral Thornton. The ship soon settles into the blockade routine, with some of the crew improvising a choir and the midshipmen's berth acting out Hamlet. Jack's relationship with his aristocratic third lieutenant Somers deteriorates during the long blockade, culminating in a confrontation when a drunken Somers causes the ship to miss stays. Somers is transferred to another ship. In the meantime Stephen befriends Mr Martin, an impoverished parson and fellow bird lover, before he joins . Stephen, after consulting with Admiral Thornton, is set ashore in Spain and spends his time there setting up a meeting with French royalists. While Admiral Thornton is in Malta, Admiral Harte, Thornton's second-in-command, sends Jack and William Babbington, the latter commanding the brig HMS Dryad, to take presents to the Pasha of Barka and deliver a new envoy, Mr Consul Hamilton. Upon discovering two French ships in Medina (now part of the city of Tunis), Jack and Babbington both enter the port, hoping to fight the French. However, as the port is a neutral location, the French are required to fire first and this they refuse to do. Despite tempting the French several times, the British have to leave and Jack's reputation as a fighting captain is dented. Upon returning to the fleet Jack is summoned by Admiral Thornton and severely reprimanded, stating it was the British intention to have Dryad captured so that the British could have sent a squadron to oppose the Bey. Admiral Harte claims that he had explained this, but Jack had asked him write his orders which stated that 'scrupulous respect will be paid to the laws of neutrality' so is in the clear. Worcester is ordered to Mahon to pick up Stephen. At Mahon Jack runs into his old lover Mercedes at the Crown, but before he can do anything Stephen enters and tells him he must set sail immediately. The crew, thinking that Jack is after a prize, are excited but eventually realize it is not to be: their mission is a more covert one in which they will land Stephen in France. Stephen is to meet with the royalists in a duck blind in an uninhabited coastal marsh. But the plan goes awry as another British agent has set up a meeting in the same area. The two groups stumble into each other and, in the confusion, exchange sporadic fire. While Stephen is hiding in the sand dunes waiting for Worcesters launch, he captures the other British agent, the same Professor Graham that Worcester brought to Mahon earlier in the book. Upon returning to the fleet Stephen hands him over to the Captain of the Fleet to act as his Turkish translator. During a strong storm the French fleet leaves port, hoping to evade the British and enter the Atlantic. The British fleet gives chase, and although they catch them, the wind changes direction and the French men-of-war return to Toulon. The fastest British ships attempt to cut off their rear and Worcester exchanges a few shots with the slowest ship - the 80-gun Robuste - before giving up the chase. Admiral Thornton is too worn down by disappointment to continue and leaves the station. Admiral Harte, overcome by the political complexity of his temporary position as Commander-in-Chief, appoints Jack and his officers to command - Worcester having been sent to Gibraltar for repairs and Captain Lambert, Surprises former commander, and his first lieutenant having been killed by the same cannon ball. Also, in a show of false goodwill, he allows Jack to hand-pick his crew. Harte then sends Surprise and Babbington’s Dryad on a mission to the Ionian Sea to put one of three Turkish Beys in control of Kutali and remove the French from Marga. After talking to all three claimants to the city Jack promises British support to Sciahan Bey, the present occupier of the island. The crew spends several days rigging out their cables to bring the expected cannons up to the city's citadel. However, Mustapha, one of the claimants that Jack didn’t back, rebels against the Ottomans and captures the British transport ships. Professor Graham returns from a mission into Turkey and hastily informs Jack about what has happened. Aubrey immediately sets sail and overtakes Mustapha’s two ships - the 32-gun Torgud with two thirty-six pounders on board, and the 20-gun Kitabi. After a long engagement Surprises crew board and take the Kitabi and Torgud, leaving the Torgud sinking and the Kitabi a prisoner. Lieutenant Pullings is injured but Mowett informs Jack that he has survived.
657138	/m/02p2sfj	The Far Side of the World	Patrick O'Brian	1984	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Far Side of the World continues the story of Jack Aubrey's exploits during the War of 1812. Aubrey reports to his commander-in-chief at Gibraltar, who sends him and to intercept the American frigate USS Norfolk which plans to attack British whalers in the South Seas. Jack makes all haste to have the Surprise victualled as quickly as possible and recruits a new master, a Mr Allen. Not only is he an excellent seaman but he also has an in-depth knowledge of whalers, having sailed previously with James Colnett on a semi exploration-whaling expedition to the South Atlantic. Stephen Maturin also persuades Jack to take Mr Martin along with them, a clergyman who Jack approves of and who is unhappy with his current ship. Maturin receives disturbing news from his intelligence-chief in London, Sir Joseph Blaine, which tends to confirm his suspicions of treason and infiltration by the French. He also hears from his wife, who has heard rumours of the infidelity he pretended in Valletta, Malta with the red-haired Mrs Fielding for intelligence reasons. He sends a letter to reassure her via Andrew Wray, unaware of the latter's role as a French agent. The Surprise encounters many setbacks, suffering delays in Brazil from a lightning-struck prow before they round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean to locate the Norfolk, which has captured and burnt several whalers. The crew of the Surprise, having nearly been shipwrecked by the tail of a typhoon, finally discover the Norfolk wrecked on a reef by the same typhoon and her crew encamped on an island. Aubrey, Mr Martin and some of the crew take Stephen ashore as he is in a coma after hitting his head in a fall and needs to be on land to be operated on. However, he makes a recovery without an operation. While they are ashore, another heavy storm blows the Surprise away and they are stranded. Relations between the two marooned groups deteriorate rapidly, particularly after Jack announces to the American Captain Palmer that he will have to take his crew prisoner. Some of them are from HMS Hermione, a ship that mutinied in the West Indies and they know they will be hanged if returned to British authorities. The situation reaches a crisis point after Jack orders the crew of the Surprise to lengthen their boat so they can sail away, pushing them particularly hard when he sees an American whaler on the horizon. The crew of the Norfolk sabotage the boat after spotting the same whaler but it is at this point that they see her strike her colours, having been pursued through a gap in the reef by the Surprise. A sub-plot in the book is the illicit affair between the sweet singing but otherwise untalented Hollom, a passed midshipman who never received a lieutenant's commission and is too old to fit in with the young midshipmen who Jack takes aboard in pity, and the pretty wife brought aboard by the sexually impotent gunner, Horner. Hollom is considered a "Jonah" by the crew - someone who brings bad luck to the ship - and the two lovers are presumed to have been beaten to death by the ferocious, brutal and jealous husband on an island whilst the Surprise is being provisioned. Horner himself sinks into a black despair and is discovered hanged in his cabin.
658952	/m/02p2sjj	Treason's Harbour	Patrick O'Brian	1983	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jack and Stephen are at Malta waiting on the repair of the much-battered , Jack's command. Both men befriend a young pretty lieutenant's wife, Mrs Fielding, whose husband is a prisoner-of-war in France. French intelligence agents use Lieutenant Fielding's plight to persuade Mrs Fielding to spy for them. They eventually assign her to find out information from Stephen by making amorous advances towards him. Jack, who is taking Italian lessons from her, rescues her Illyrian mastiff, Ponto, one evening out of a well, but himself falls in. This leads to the rumour that he is sleeping with her. Maturin and Aubrey also meet Andrew Wray again - Second Secretary to the Admiralty, who has been sent to Malta to sort out dockyard corruption. Jack had an unpleasant previous meeting with him at a gambling house in Portsmouth when he indirectly accused Wray of cheating. As Jack formally introduces Captain Pullings to him, Wray tells Pullings he had insisted on Captain Aubrey's recommendation, adding: ' ... at one time Captain Aubrey seemed to do me an injustice, and by promoting his lieutenant I could, as the sea-phrase goes, the better wipe his eye.' Jack and the Surprises are dispatched on a secret mission by the new Commander-in-Chief, the highly competent Admiral Ives, to take the Dromedary and capture a Turkish galley laden with French silver in the Red Sea. Unfortunately, the mission has been talked about for many months. The Surprise's crew has to traverse the Sinai Peninsula and eventually meet the HEI ship Niobe in Suez. Jack takes command and sails her down the Red Sea with a troop of Turkish troops to intercept the galley. They eventually spot it and give chase but Jack notices that the galley is playing a trick on him, using a drag sail to artificially slow their speed, and orders his gunner to sink it. Stephen, who at the beginning of the novel bought a diving bell, is persuaded by moral pressure from the crew and officers to Jack to recover the treasure. After he and Mr Martin bring up the first sealed chest, they find it only contains heavy lead bars and a rude note, Merde a celui qui le lit. They meet a fishing boat and find out that the galley had been rowing up and down the sea for a month, waiting to lure them under the French fortification's cannon. Their mission a failure, they return on the Niobe to Suez and offload the bitterly disappointed Turkish troops. They have to retrace their steps across the desert but this time their camels are stolen by Bedouin horsemen and they reach Tina almost dead from thirst. Fortunately, the Dromedaries are there to revive them and they return to Malta. Here Jack learns from Admiral Ives that the Surprise is to return to England and be scrapped. Stephen, meanwhile, renews his acquaintance with Mrs Fielding and plants some false information for her to give Leuseur and also thrashes Wray at piquet for high stakes. Jack is given a mission with the re-fitted Surprise to take the Adriatic convoy up the Ionian. While there he meets an old friend, Captain Cotton of the Nymphe, who has just rescued an escaped French prisoner-of-war, Lieutenant Charles Fielding. Fielding, having heard the rumour of Jack's liaison with his wife, not only refuses his offer to return him to Malta but also requests a "meeting" (a duel). On the return journey Captain Dundas, commanding the massive seventy-four gun Edinburgh, tells Jack of a small French privateer that Jack eventually captures. Unfortunately the chase brings the Surprise in late to port behind Babbington’s sloop, the Dryad, and the news of Lt. Fielding’s escape has already circulated. Stephen overhears a conversation at Mrs Fielding's house between Lesueur and Boulay, placed high up in the Governor's staff, to assassinate her but manages to take her aboard the Surprise. Sir Francis Ives instructs Aubrey to sail for Zambra to threaten the Dey of Mascara into not attacking British ships, accompanied by the Pollux returning Admiral Harte back to England (Zambra and Mascara are a fictitious city and state on the Barbary Coast). While the Pollux is exiting the Bay of Zambra, a French squadron consisting of a two-decker eighty gun man-of-war and two frigates with French colours fire on her. The old sixty-four gun Pollux eventually blows up but damages the French newly-built third rate. The two frigates chase the Surprise deep into the bay and nearly cut her off until the heavier frigate runs aground on a reef called The Brothers. Her smaller consort deserts the fight and Jack, on the political advice of Maturin, sets sail for Gibraltar.
658957	/m/02p2sjx	The Reverse of the Medal	Patrick O'Brian	1986	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jack Aubrey and his crew have made their way in a much knocked-about from the South Seas to the West Indies Squadron lying off Bridgetown. Here Jack meets his bastard black son, Samuel Panda, a student Catholic priest. His mother was Sally Mputa for whom Jack, as a youngster on HMS Resolution, was turned before the mast by his Captain for having stored her secretly in the cable-tiers. Whilst returning to England, the Surprise gives chase to the Spartan, an American privateer, which manages to escape in a squall for Brest. Aubrey — whose financial circumstances remain unsatisfactorily complicated — hears a rumour from a stranger he meets in the "Ship Inn" that Britain will soon sign a peace with France. The stranger, ostensibly a diplomatic agent named Palmer, indicates to Aubrey how he can make money on the stock exchange by buying stocks sure to go up as soon as the news becomes public. Aubrey makes the transactions as advised, and also gives the advice to his father, the widely disliked Radical MP General Aubrey, who makes much larger stock transactions based on this information and spreads the rumour much farther. The rumour of a peace-treaty gets out, and the stock transactions prove highly profitable — more so to the General and his stock-jobbing friends than to Aubrey. But the peace-rumour proves false, Palmer had no government links (it later emerges that two highly placed English agents in the service of the French controlled him). The authorities arrest Aubrey, imprison him in the Marshalsea, and subject him to a Guildhall trial for fraud. Maturin receives two pieces of unwelcome news on his return. A political coup has sidelined his chief of intelligence, Sir Joseph Blaine, thus leaving Maturin in an exposed and dangerous position; and he becomes certain that his and Blaine's suspicions about treachery in high places have concrete substance. He also discovers that his wife, Diana, has left him because of rumours of brazen infidelity with a red-head in the Mediterranean: rumours that Stephen started, and indeed encouraged, as a means of uncovering the intelligence network in Malta. The rumours are entirely unfounded as Stephen was unwilling to take advantage of the redhead, who was being cruelly used by French intelligence agents. Diana has removed to Sweden under the protection of Jagiello, a mutual friend (introduced in The Surgeon's Mate), and with all the appearance of carrying on an affair with him. Stephen realizes how deeply he has offended her, resigns himself to her loss and returns to the use of the alcoholic tincture of laudanum. On the positive side, Stephen has inherited a vast sum from his Spanish godfather and become a very wealthy man. Maturin tries everything he can to help Aubrey, using his colleagues in the government and hiring an investigator, but cannot secure enough proof to win an acquittal — Palmer, the key figure, having been murdered and mutilated, largely due to the excessive bounty Maturin had placed on his capture. Despite Aubrey's touching belief in British justice, his is a political trial given that the Government want to attack General Aubrey and his Radical friends. The court - headed by a Judge and Cabinet Minister, Lord Quinborough, convicts him after a two-day trial, fining him £2,500 and sentencing him to one hour on the pillory. However, instead of London crowds lampooning him, hordes of Royal Navy personnel arrive to cheer Aubrey on. But the authorities also strike him off the Navy List, something he regards as a far more devastating punishment. Maturin utilises a small part of his new-found wealth to buy the old HMS Surprise at auction, and obtains letters of marque and reprisal so she can operate as a private man-of-war. In part he does this because he remains deeply implicated in the intelligence game and would not sail with anyone other than Jack; he also understands that Aubrey's dismissal from the Navy has wounded his friend dreadfully, and that life ashore as a disgraced officer would probably destroy him. A disgruntled French agent, Duhamel, also makes contact once again with Maturin in London and asks him for assistance in escaping to Quebec. In return, he gives Stephen details of the plot against Aubrey and exposes the British traitors - Wray and Ledward - motivated by profit and by spite against Aubrey.
658974	/m/02p2sk8	The Letter of Marque	Patrick O'Brian	1988	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In The Letter of Marque, Jack Aubrey, now a civilian, prepares the Surprise to sail as a privateer. The term "Letter of Marque" comes from the legal letters given to captains of private vessels allowing them to wage war in the name of the King against the King's enemies. While Jack often associated "privateers" with legalised pirates, he agrees to sail the Surprise, but always refers to the ship under the more respectable term "Letter of Marque." Jack is bitter and low-spirited about his dismissal from the Navy List, and dreads affronts and disrespectful treatment from any Royal Navy vessels and their officers. However, he is strongly supported by his crew - notably a group of smugglers and Sethian religious fanatics recruited at the little port of Shelmerston (fictional) in south-west England. The downfall of the traitors Wray and Ledward in the previous book has restored order in British intelligence circles, and Maturin - now the secret owner of Surprise - plans to use her privateering as cover for a covert anti-Spanish mission to South America. The ship is therefore under official protection to an extent and Aubrey's innocence is known privately to many, though the spies are still at large and politics will make his rehabilitation impossible without extraordinary deeds on his part. They depart on a cruise, during which Maturin's servant Padeen becomes a secret laudanum addict after painful dental surgery, diluting Maturin's own supplies with brandy in order to conceal his theft. Maturin is thus unknowingly weaned off his own addiction (though he later substitutes it with the practice of chewing Coca leaves). The Surprise captures an American privateer's consort, the Merlin, and then boards the privateer Spartan itself, retrieving its valuable cargo of quicksilver, looted from the Spanish barque Azul, as well as tricking her five prizes out of Horta harbour. These, together with his success in the cutting-out of the frigate Diane from the French port of Saint Martin-de-Rey despite serious wounds, make Aubrey both wealthy again and a popular hero. He is offered the opportunity to seek a free pardon, but angrily declines on the grounds that he is innocent and his friends fear that he has missed his chance of redemption. However, Aubrey's embarrassing father, a fugitive since his part in the stock-jobbing affair, is found dead in a ditch, and Aubrey is offered a Parliamentary seat by his cousin, Edward Norton, who owns the borough of Milport. This extra influence is enough for him to receive private assurances from Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, that he will indeed be restored to the Navy List as soon as the time is right. Maturin, in possession once more of Diana's magnificent Blue Peter diamond, decides to take it to her in Sweden. He sails part of the way on the old Leopard, now sadly reduced to a lowly transport ship, before re-joining the Surprise. He meets his wife Diana in Stockholm and is unsurprised to learn that the letter he sent to her from Gibraltar via Wray, accounting for his supposed infidelity, was never delivered. She also tells him she has not been unfaithful with Jagiello, and has been supporting herself by ascending - whilst mounted on a small Arab horse - in a hot-air balloon before an audience. Maturin is seriously injured in a fall after taking his usual dose of laudanum to soothe himself after their initial meeting, unaware that his tolerance has been reduced by Padeen's actions. Diana nurses him back to health and they become reconciled once more. When the Surprise returns from a trip to Riga to buy poldavy, Maturin hears from Martin about Padeen's laudanum addiction, discovered after he was caught siphoning laudanum from one of the carboys and replacing the tincture with brandy. Stephen is well enough to be finally transported back to the ship, accompanied by Colonel Jagiello's escort, and Diana embarks with him and Jack for home.
658985	/m/02p2sl0	Blue at the Mizzen	Patrick O'Brian	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin again sail into the South Pacific on a secret mission: this time to help the Chileans secure independence from Spain. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Surprise makes her way out of Gibraltar but collides heavily with a Nordic timber ship and has to return for repairs. In the meantime, Aubrey conducts a clandestine affair with his cousin Isobel, Lord Barmouth's new young wife. Admiral Lord Barmouth hastens the repair work, having at first delayed it by giving preference to Royal Navy ships. The frigate makes her way to Madeira for more serious repairs but arrives just in time to see Coelho's famous yard at Funchal in flames. Maturin receives a coded report from Dr Amos Jacob regarding the Chilean situation and takes the Ringle to England, where Sir Joseph Blaine updates him — the Chileans have split into two factions (northern and southern), with the southerners retaining the services of Sir David Lindsay to command the Chilean navy. Whilst Stephen stays with Sophie Aubrey at Woolcombe, Jack returns the Surprise to Seppings' yard in England for a thorough re-fit and also recruits a strong competent crew out of the fictional port of Shelmerston for the long voyage ahead. In London, the Duke of Clarence asks Aubrey to accept his illegitimate son Horatio Hanson (whom the Duke refers to as a former shipmate's son, for propriety's sake) as a midshipman. Initially reluctant, Aubrey finds to his surprise and delight that the boy has the mathematical skills essential for a navigator; and he becomes a competent sailor. After leaving England, the Surprise first heads for Sierra Leone in order for Maturin to propose marriage to a young attractive widow living in Freetown. Christine Wood shares his tastes for natural philosophy and appears altogether more level-headed than his late wife Diana. Whilst she attracts him physically, so that he has erotic dreams about her, she has suffered from her previous marriage to an impotent husband. Initially unwilling to marry him, she does consent to visit the Aubreys at their home in Dorset and to meet Maturin's daughter Brigid there. After a difficult rounding of Cape Horn, the expedition reaches San Patricio in Chile, a storage post for whalers. Ringle has to go to a yard for repairs following a grounding in the Pillón passage. After a meeting between Aubrey and Maturin and Sir David Lindsay, in which the two sides agree to mutually support each other, Maturin writes a letter to Blaine describing the different juntas and the training of three republican sloops by the crew of the Surprise, who assist in capturing a moderate privateer. After meeting Dr Jacob once more, Aubrey decides to make his way with the Surprise and Ringle to Valparaiso and Maturin and Jacob ride there by mule. Here they meet General Bernardo O'Higgins (the Supreme Director), and Colonel Eduardo Valdes (a cousin of Maturin's). Learning that the Peruvian viceroy of the Spanish king plans to invade Chile, the group determine to confront the Royalist forces at Valdivia, where the viceroy will need to seek stores. After dinner aboard, the Surprise and Ringle make sail and Aubrey elaborates a plan to drop Chilean troops at Concepcion while the ships destroy the gun-emplacements at Cala Alta and then bombard the fort at Valdivia. The plan succeeds and the revolutionaries capture four chests of silver and one of gold, conveyed by the Surprise to Valparaiso and then overland to Santiago. Sir David Lindsay fights a duel with one of his officers and dies. Popular local sentiment gradually turns against the British, and Aubrey receives news that the local junta at Villanueva plans to impound his frigate. He decides on a bold action to cut out the Peruvian fifty-gun frigate Esmeralda from Callao to strengthen the Chilean navy. Assisted by the Ringle, Surprise conducts a hard-fought broadside action and eventually the British-Chilean force takes the ship, although Aubrey suffers wounds in the thigh and shoulder. Maturin and Jacob compose a coded message to Sir Joseph Blaine which the schooner takes to the Lisbon packet for delivery via Panama and a returning merchantman. The President of the Valparaiso junta, Don Miguel Carrera, gives Aubrey and his officers a lavish dinner, after which Aubrey insists on his sailors receiving their share of the prize-money and Esmeraldas value. The next day he receives a note from Don Miguel confirming the delivery of five thousand pieces of eight and use of any naval stores the Surprise requires. With a happy and fully re-equipped ship, Aubrey sets about exercising the young Chilean naval officers as his frigate continues her survey. Finally, Amos Jacob arrives on a green brig with a coded message from Sir Joseph Blaine: the Duke of Clarence requests Horatio Hanson's return to sit his lieutenant's examination (after having fought very valiantly in the cutting-out episode) but, more importantly, the Admiralty requires Aubrey to take command of the South African squadron, hoisting his flag at the River Plate, blue at the mizzen, aboard HMS Implacable.
659020	/m/02p2sld	The Hundred Days	Patrick O'Brian	1998-09-28	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Commodore's squadron leaves Gibraltar to defend a convoy of East Indiamen from the Moorish xebecs and galleys. Although they are successful, Hugh Pomfret—unable to bear the guilt of having killed so many Christian slaves in the galleys—commits suicide. Aubrey is then instructed to proceed to the Adriatic, stopping off in Mahón along the way. The Surprise encounters Captain Christy-Palliere - Captain of the Royalist Caroline - who informs Jack about the French situation in the Adriatic before sailing onto Mahon. The Surprise and Pomone then sail to Ragusa Vecchia where a newly-refitted French frigate is based under the command of Charles de La Tour, an ardent Buonapartist, and sink it. They then proceed to the Porte di Spalato where they meet another French frigate - Drs Stephen and Jacob are sent aboard and an agreement is reached to fight a mock battle after which the French will accompany the English ships back to Malta. They also lay out a considerable amount of gold to have the new French ships burnt in the dockyards along the coast by disgruntled unpaid dockworkers - e.g. Papadopoulos', Pavelic's, Simon Macchabe's and seven off Durazzo itself (Somers likens the destruction 'to buying one's salmon off a fishmonger's slab than catching it with a well-directed fly'). On reaching Algiers, and after meeting the Consul, Sir Peter Clifford, and his wife, Maturin and Jacob attend an interview with the Dey's Vizier at Kasbah, the Dey's palace. Stephen presents the Vizier with a beautiful blue stone and they are instructed to travel onwards to the Dey, Omar Pasha, at his hunting-lodge at Shatt el Khadna. The Dey invites Stephen to go lion hunting with him and the Dey kills a large lion, Mahmud, and Stephen its lioness, which attempts to kill the Dey. For this deed, Omar Pasha swears that no assistance will be given to the Muslim plot. Jacob then discovers the Vizier's message to the Sheikh of Azgar, Ibn Hazm, to have the gold carried by a fast-sailing xebec from Arzila (just SW of Tangiers), captained by an Algerian corsair via the Strait of Gibraltar straight to Durazzo. On their return to Algiers, the Doctors learn that Omar Pasha has been assassinated by the Vizier, who privately admires Buonaparte. The doctors are taken aboard the Ringle, along with two Irish children - Kevin and Mona Fitzpatrick - whom Stephen buys from a slaver, and join Aubrey back in Port Mahon. They then proceed to Gibraltar to update Lord Barmouth on the situation, encountering Hamadryad and Heneage Dundas along the way. Aubrey is disliked by the new Commander-in-Chief for having discreetly turned away his son on an earlier commission, and Jack feels his plan may be given to another frigate. However, Barmouth's politico, Matthew Arden, is highly influential in Whitehall and a close friend of Lord Keith and Maturin assures Jack he will not be ill-used. Jack is also a cousin of Barmouth's new young wife, Isobel Carrington, and the Admiral's attitude becomes more friendly once she makes him aware of this. Dr Jacob finds out the corsair has hired two galleys to act as decoys - one on the African side and one mid-channel - whilst he lies under Tarifa before running through the Straits. The Surprise lies in wait in the Straits and, on spotting the xebec, gives chase. Murad Reis, its captain, fires on the frigate and destroys the second gun of her starboard broadside, killing Bonden, its captain and Hallam, a midshipman. After a long pursuit, the galley finally holes up at Cranc (Crab) island but finally surrenders after McLeod, a crags man from St Kilda, climbs a steep cliff and a nine-pounder gun is hauled up. The corsair's men of war, seeing the situation is hopeless, behead Murad and surrender, along with several English prisoners. After returning victorious to Gibraltar, there is some dispute over the prize money but Ali Bey is deposed and the new Dey, Hassan, renounces his claim to the gold (given that the Surprise was fired on first) in return for the xebec and a £250,000 loan to consolidate his position in Algiers. The Commander-in-Chief, on the advice of Lord Keith, gives his assent and the Algerine delegation is given a handsome send-off. The end of the book coincides with Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, and thus the effective end of the Napoleonic wars. Aubrey and Maturin set sail for Chile in the Surprise to try and undermine the Spanish colonial rule there - a continuation of the theme of The Wine-Dark Sea.
659044	/m/02p2sls	The Yellow Admiral	Patrick O'Brian	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens with Jack Aubrey home at Woolcombe in Dorset on parliamentary leave. Once again, Jack’s fortune has come under threat — this time due to a number of legal disputes concerning captured slaving-ships. It appears that Sophie will have to sell Ashgrove Cottage to keep the family solvent. Stephen Maturin has returned from Spain with his family, but impoverished, Spanish authorities having seized his gold after his pro-independence revolutionary activities in Peru. Effectively penniless, Stephen and his retinue stay at Jack's manor. Stephen and Jack spend time exploring Jack's estate, and Jack explains to Stephen the process of enclosing commons, something which Jack opposes. Many of Jack's wealthy neighbours plan to enclose the common land of Simmon's Lea, thus preventing the villagers from grazing their animals and increasing their dependency on paid employment. Jack becomes the villagers' champion, while Jack's neighbour, Captain Griffiths, fronts the wealthy land-owners. One day at a pub Barrett Bonden accepts a challenge to a boxing-match in the Dripping Pan with Griffith's gamekeeper, which he subsequently loses. A message arrives for Jack recalling him to the squadron blockading Brest. Diana, understanding that Admiral Stranraer wants Jack to miss the parliamentary vote on enclosing Simmon's Lea, contrives for Jack to leave immediately for London without receiving his orders so that duty will not compel him to miss the vote. Jack prevents the enclosure of Simmon's Lea and returns to Woolcombe. Receiving his orders, he returns to the fleet blockading Brest. Lord Stranraer, who had been a driving force behind his nephew Griffiths' attempts at enclosing Simmon's Lea, was very displeased with Jack for voting against the enclosure and so punishes Jack by sending him to the inshore blockading-squadron. At the same time the Admiral consults Stephen for an ailment that Stephen treats. Before Stephen leaves the flagship he receives a covert mission involving landing on the French coast near Brest. On the dark of the moon, Jack has Stephen rowed ashore for his covert mission with a Catalan informer, Inigo Bernard. Apparently at the same time, two French ships slip through the blockading squadron in the sector that Jack's ship, Bellona, should have patrolled. The Admiral rebukes Jack and has him return to the offshore squadron. During this time Jack receives a letter from Sophie, in which she, having seen a letter from Amanda Smith (Jack's lover in The Surgeon's Mate), accuses him of adultery and announces her intention of leaving him. During manoeuvres in foggy weather the Bellona spots a French privateer chasing a merchantman and Jack decides to give chase (despite a lookout possibly making out a flagship-signal to Tack all together). The Bellona captures the privateer, Les Deux Frères (a rich prize which had captured two Guineamen), but not before a storm sets in, battering the Bellona to the point of needing repairs, and the ship heads for the docks in Cornwall. Jack returns to Woolcombe while waiting on repairs for the Bellona, and unexpectedly find his family still there. He asks Sophie for forgiveness, but she rebuffs him (Sophie having been exposed only to her mother's point of view, and that repeatedly). The Ringle leaves to report the situation to the Admiral and to retrieve Stephen from France. With the Bellona repaired, Jack returns to the squadron, but finds that the Ringle has been ordered to retrieve Stephen early and has taken him to England. Stephen sets off for London, where he tells Sir Joseph Blaine about a plot by an outwardly laughable but potentially dangerous Spanish intelligence officer to burgle Blaine’s house. He also brings information about a Chilean plan for independence. Blaine sets a trap and, with the assistance of the invaluable Mr Pratt, captures the Spanish agent red-handed. Stephen presents a proposal to an Admiralty committee for an expedition to help Chilean independence with Jack in command, partly as a means of keeping Jack from getting yellowed. The proposal receives approval. Reference is made to Stephen's restored fortune, the inference being that it was returned to him during Spanish negotiations regarding the spy. Stephen stops at Woolcombe to see his family and learns about Sophie and Jack’s problems. He also finds that Clarissa and Diana have enlightened Sophie as to the possibility of enjoying sex, and have suggested that she avoid feeling morally superior, perhaps by having her own affair. As Stephen departs to return to the fleet, Sophie writes a letter of reconciliation to Jack. Once Stephen returns to the fleet he once again treats Admiral Stranraer. The Bellona hears distant broadsides and rushes to find the inner squadron fighting two French ships. Upon seeing the Bellona and another British ship, the two seventy-fours turn and run for their harbour. In the following months the Bellona endlessly sweeps the bay, blockading Brest. During this time Stephen tells Jack of his plan for Chile, which Jack agrees to. After a few more months, the flagship, the Queen Charlotte, comes to visit the inner squadron. The Admiral comes to the Bellona to thank Stephen for his treatment and also invites Jack to dinner with all the captains on the flagship. At the dinner the Admiral informs the captains of progress in the war on land and predicts Napoleon's imminent surrender. This soon comes to pass, and the Bellona returns to port and into ordinary storage. Jack and Stephen spend time catching up on world-events at Black's and then meet the three men from the Chilean independence-movement at The Grapes in the Liberties of the Savoy. With the Chileans approving of Jack, he goes through the steps of getting suspended from the Navy List so that he can initiate the covert mission to Chile. Stephen finances the fitting-out of the Surprise, and Jack and Stephen set off with their families for Madeira, at which they will part company. The novel ends as they tour the island in company with the Chileans: a message arrives from Lord Keith, commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, telling Jack that Napoleon has escaped from Elba. He appoints Jack a commodore and tells him to take command of the Royal Navy ships in the harbour of Madeira to blockade the Straits of Gibraltar.
659049	/m/02p2sm4	The Commodore	Patrick O'Brian	1995	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Commodore opens with Jack winning the Ringle, a Baltimore Clipper, from his friend Captain Dundas, the having accompanied the Berenice back from Chile. Aubrey and Maturin have returned to England, (after adventures in the South Pacific and South America) where the latter finds that his young daughter Brigid appears to be an "idiot" or "natural" (to use the language of the time) and unable to speak, and that his wife Diana has fled the situation, leaving Brigid in the care of the newly-widowed Clarissa Oakes. When Stephen meets Sir Joseph Blaine at Black's, their club, he is told that Clarissa's information led to the Duke of Habachtsthal being supposed the third conspirator in the Ledward-Wray conspiracy. Unfortunately, the Duke is too highly placed for Blaine's investigation to do much good and in fact does even more harm to Stephen and his friends. Blaine tells Stephen that the Duke's influence has delayed the pardons of both Clarissa and Padeen as well as instigated an investigation into Stephen's role in the Irish revolt. After hearing this information, Stephen asks Jack for the Ringle and sets off to cash out his bank accounts and then proceeds to have Clarissa, Padeen and Brigid taken to live at the Benedictine house in Ávila, Spain out of the clutches of the Duke. Blaine hires Pratt, whom Stephen had employed in The Reverse of the Medal, to gather information on the Duke. Once the squadron is formed, Aubrey and Maturin are very publicly instructed to disrupt the African slave trade, now illegal, but the true mission of the squadron is to intercept a French invasion force which expects a sympathetic welcome in Maturin's native Ireland. The squadron begins on a difficult note, when the Admiralty reassigns the powerful frigate Pyramus, replacing her with the smaller frigate Thames instead. Also, the Stately is commanded by Duff, a paederast, who destroys discipline by taking young lovers among his forecastlemen. Another of the captains is a tyrant, Captain Thomas who, unlike Aubrey, values spit and polish more than efficiency in battle, and indiscriminately flogs his crewmen. These two captains and their crews soon find themselves at odds, threatening the squadron's efficiency. The Ringle makes it safely to Corunna in Galicia where Stephen sees off his wards and deposits his considerable amounts of gold. The Ringle rendezvouses with the at the Berlings off Cape Finisterre, and they make their way to the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, with the crews practising hard at lowering down boats. Stephen survives a near fatal bout of Yellow Fever contracted while traipsing around the swamplands of West Africa in his usual search for rare birds and animals, a quest in which he is ably assisted in Freetown by the British colonial governor's wife, Christine Wood (née Hatherleigh), herself an esteemed naturalist and sister of one of Stephen's fellow members of the Royal Society. The squadron successfully disrupts the slave trade, saving over 5,000 slaves and having eight slaving ships condemned. Aubrey then hastens to meet the French squadron, commanded by the wily Commodore Esprit-Tranquil Maistral, south and east of the point the French are expected to reach (West Cork). Jack informs his captains of his plan of attack and the Bellona attacks the French pennant-ship, with the Thames and Stately attacking the other French two-decker. The first strikes on a rocky shelf and surrenders; the second badly mauls the Stately (Duff loses a leg) and flees eastwards. The four French troop carriers and one frigate are also captured (one frigate also escapes), aided by the Royal Oak and Warwick, who join the scene of battle. Maturin finds as the novel closes that the Duke of Habachtsthal has committed suicide. This is possibly due to the threat of trial for treason after being identified by Clarissa Oakes and following extensive investigation carried out by Pratt, a former Bow Street Runner employed by Maturin and Sir Joseph Blaine. Stephen is also happily reunited once more with Diana, who happens to be living near that part of the Irish coast with one of her first husband's uncles.
659052	/m/02p2smj	The Wine-Dark Sea	Patrick O'Brian	1993	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The narrative opens with the close pursuit of an American privateer, the Franklin, by Aubrey and Maturin's Surprise, a fictionalised version of the original HMS Surprise in the South Pacific, interrupted by an submarine volcanic eruption which completely disables the former and severely damages the latter. The Franklin is easily taken as most of its crew are either dead, severely wounded or drunk, and Monsieur Dutourd, its French owner, is taken on board. A wealthy philanthropist, he intended to colonise a South Pacific island, Moahu, and establish a paradise of equality, justice, and little labour, after first enriching himself by committing piracy on assorted British whalers and merchantmen, and then wiping out the island's hostile native population. Maturin recognises Dutourd from earlier days in the high society salons of Paris, and takes pains to hide his identity from the Frenchman. Aubrey, meanwhile, finds that not only does Dutourd not know the basic courtesies of life at sea, but does not have a letter of marque permitting him to operate the Franklin as a privateer. The Franklin having taken several British ships as prizes, Dutourd's legal status is that of a pirate, liable to be hanged. An American whaler is taken by the Surprise and the Franklin, and a British sailor on the whaler tells Aubrey of a French ship — the Alastor — turned a true pirate, unlike the Franklin, flying the black flag and demanding immediate surrender or death of its victims. The Franklin encounters the Alastor first and is outmatched, but the Surprise overcomes the pirates, with Aubrey receiving severe wounds to his eye from wadding and his thigh from a pike thrust. The story now turns to Maturin's secret mission to Peru. He is put ashore to incite revolution against the Spanish colonial government and makes valuable contact among local military and government officials sympathetic to Peruvian independence. He is also aided by Aubrey's illegitimate son, Sam Panda, a prominent official in the Roman Catholic Church and close to becoming a prelate. Stephen also meets Dr Geary from the Three Graces and is able to secure a passage home for Mr Martin who has been severely laid low by what he presumed was the Sydney pox, but in fact which turned out to be simply bad salt sores. His task as an intelligence agent is suddenly made harder owing to Dutourd's escape and arrival in Callao (aided by the Surprises Knipperdolling crewmembers). He raises a hue and cry, denouncing Maturin on the eve of the carefully engineered revolution, as an English spy. Aubrey, meanwhile, sails in a small boat with a few crewmen from the Franklin to San Lorenzo to warn Maturin of Dutourd's escape. After many days of hard sailing against the wind in appalling weather conditions, they finally reach the harbour and are taken on board the Surprise by Captain Pullings. Once he has recovered, he receives a welcome visit from his illegitimate son and Sam updates him on the local political situation. Stephen, after a secret meeting with Gayongos, a wealthy merchant and revolutionary sympathiser, has departed on a mule into the mountains, to meet with the Vicar-General, Father Bernardo O'Higgins, and to view the mountainous flora and fauna accompanied by Eduardo, his highly knowledgeable and amicable Peruvian Indian guide. The doctor sees numerous condors, flowering bromeliads, guanacos and vicuña. After leaving a Capuchin monastery, Eduardo receives a message that the revolution has failed due to Dutourd's premature exposure and Maturin has to flee for his life. Trekking over the Andes mountains, Maturin and Eduardo are caught in a viento blanco (blizzard) and Stephen has to amputate two of his own frostbitten toes with a chisel - but being the indefatigable naturalist that he is, he is able to collect a considerable number of plant and animal specimens. Having eventually made his way from Lima to Arica, and then taken ship from Valparaíso, Aubrey eventually picks Maturin up in Chile. Stephen informs him of three American China ships sailing from Boston. The Surprise sails to intercept them off Cape Horn but, as she prepares to engage them, is herself fired upon by a thirty-eight gun US frigate. After avoiding an iceberg, the Surprise is chased until her pursuer sails down a lane in the ice field that is a dead-end. The Surprise escapes but then loses her main mast and rudder after being struck by lightning. Jury-rigged, her crew spot a ship hull-down on the horizon and fear that it is the more powerful American frigate back in pursuit. However, the ship turns out to be the Berenice, a sixty-four-gun ship of the line commanded by Aubrey's old friend Heneage Dundas, accompanied by an American clipper they have taken and are using as a tender. Dundas provisions them with spars, cordage, storage and a Pakenham substitute rudder (and the much-needed pepper that Maturin needs to preserve his specimens from a moth) and as the book ends the Surprise is homeward bound.
659058	/m/02p2smx	Clarissa Oakes	Patrick O'Brian	1993	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Clarissa Oakes opens with the Surprise on her way back to England from Port Jackson in New South Wales. Jack Aubrey is in an ill-humour as a result of the frigate's visit to the penal settlement - firstly, because Stephen Maturin fought a duel with an army officer, consequently antagonizing the local administration, and secondly because Padeen Colman, Stephen's servant and an absconder, was secreted aboard the ship against Jack's express wishes. Jack also observes a certain ribaldry amongst his crew and remains puzzled until he and Captain Pullings stumble across a young female convict, Clarissa Harvill, during a ship's inspection. Jack learns that she was smuggled aboard the frigate in Sydney by Midshipman Oakes and is at first determined to leave them both on Norfolk Island but has a change of heart after being dosed with laudanum by Maturin and allows the couple to stay aboard until they can be put off at a hospitable port. As the Surprise leaves, they spot a cutter, the Eclair. Believing her Captain to be after stowaways, Clarissa and Oakes are hastily married by Martin, the ship's assistant surgeon and a clergyman, and Jack orders Bonden to hide Padeen Colman. It turns out, however, that the cutter is simply bearing Sydney dispatches and mail for Aubrey, the former instructing him to settle a local dispute on Moahu, a British island to the south of the Sandwich group. A gun room feast, hosted by Tom Pullings, is held in honour of the newlyweds. Despite the delicious food (a swordfish caught by Davies earlier), it proves to be a dismal affair given the level of animosity existing amongst some of the gun room members, particularly West and Davidge. The cause is jealousy over Clarissa, who (it turns out later) has had sexual liaisons with several of the ship's officers. This ill-will spreads to the crew, who divide in pro-and anti-Clarissa factions. The ship spots a whaler and lands on the South Sea island of Annamooka. Wainright, the Daisys captain, comes aboard and fills Jack in on the situation on Moahu - there is a war between Kalahua in the north and Puolani in the south, with the northern chief being supported by a French-owned twenty-two gun privateer, the Franklin, sailing under the American flag. The privateer has also captured the Truelove, a Whitby-built British whaler. While the Surprise reprovisions, Clarissa, who has received a black eye from Oakes, also confesses to Maturin on their botanizing walk together about her being sexually abused as a young girl and later working as a bookkeeper and occasional prostitute at a brothel in Picadilly. These experiences formed her sexual outlook, a combination of indifference and complete nonchalance. When she mentions that an aristocratic acquaintance of Ledward's and Wray's had visited the brothel, Stephen realises that this is the highly-placed traitor they are seeking. Aubrey drives his frigate's crew hard on the trip to Moahu to quell the dissension aboard. On reaching land, they pick up the Truelove, a Nootka fur-trader, and a column is sent to intercept the fleeing French - the skirmish is won but Davidge is killed. The Surprise then sails to the south of the island to defend Queen Puolani against the main body of French and Kalahua's tribesmen. Aubrey sets up carronades in a cleft and there is a terrific slaughter of the enemy the following day. The Truelove departs, commanded by Oakes and with Clarissa on board bearing Stephen's coded letter to intelligence official Sir Joseph Blaine, describing the highly-placed informant. The Franklin puts her nose in but sails away immediately, with the Surprise giving chase. Clarissa Oakes was published in the U.S. as The Truelove, which is the name of a ship in the novel.
659666	/m/030j6c	The Book of Skulls	Robert Silverberg	1972	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot concerns four college students who discover a manuscript, The Book of Skulls, dealing with an order of monks living in a monastery in the Arizona desert, whose members have the power to bestow immortality on those who complete their bizarre initiation rite. The boys travel to the monastery, where they are accepted as a "Receptacle," and told that for each group of four who agree to undergo the ritual, two must die in order for the others to succeed - one must sacrifice himself, and the other must be sacrificed. The narrative switches back and forth between the viewpoints of the four students as each confronts his personal demons on the way to completing the ritual. Ned, who is openly homosexual, must face his guilt over the tragic aftermath of one of his affairs; Eli, the gifted (but socially inept) young man who discovered the manuscript, makes a confession that could destroy his academic career; Timothy, star athlete and prodigal son of a wealthy family, confronts a terrible sin from his past involving his younger sister; and Oliver, the farm kid from the wrong side of the tracks, comes face to face with his own true innermost nature. The Book of Skulls has been republished as part of the series SF Masterworks.
659715	/m/030jc5	The Road to Wellville	T. Coraghessan Boyle	1993-05-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book's plot details three narratives which take place between November 1907 and late May 1908 in John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan sanitarium. The first thread concerns Will and Eleanor Lightbody. Eleanor, a fan of Dr. Kellogg, drags Will to Kellogg's sanitarium. Will has recently suffered stomach pains and is still recovering from bouts of alcohol and drug addiction—the latter at the hands of his wife. Eleanor suffered a brutal miscarriage, which has left her physically weak. Hoping to improve his marriage, Will goes along but is constantly filled with doubts about Kellogg's health methods. While he takes part in the therapy, he gags at health food, does not enjoy the laughing therapy, and watches as his friend Homer Praetz is electrocuted during a sinusoidal bath. Meanwhile, his wife Eleanor finds too much enjoyment at the sanitarium, especially at the hands of Dr. Spitzvogel, a doctor who practices Die Handhabung Therapeutik --or in common parlance, erotic massage. Charlie Ossining, a peripatetic merchant attempts to market a new type of cereal, Per-Fo, with a partner Bender, whose slick and untrustworthy behavior disarms him. They join forces with George Kellogg, adopted son of John Harvey Kellogg, who has had a falling out with his father and seeks revenge. George agrees to use his name on Per-Fo in the hopes the cereal will be bought out by the Kellogg's Company. John Harvey Kellogg, a doctor fond of health food and what would now be called alternative medicine, inserts himself into the life of each character, whether as health guru to Eleanor, competitor to Charlie and Bender, or torturer of Will. His attempts at untested health cures, such as radium treatments, are comically tragic. As the sanitarium unravels, and son George becomes increasingly angry, father and "master of all" John must assert his control and keep his institution afloat.
661719	/m/030q0c	A Separate Peace	John Knowles	1959	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gene Forrester, the protagonist, returns to his old prep school, Devon (a thinly-veiled portrayal of Knowles' own alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy), fifteen years after he graduated to visit two places he regards as "fearful sites": a flight of marble stairs and a tree by the river. First, he examines the stairs and notices that they are made of very hard marble. He then trudges through the mud to the tree. The tree brings back memories of Gene's time as a student at Devon. From this point, the plot follows Gene's description of the time span from the summer of 1942 to the summer of 1943. In 1942, he was 16 years old and living at Devon with his best friend and roommate, Phineas (nicknamed Finny). At the time, World War II is taking place, and has a prominent effect on the story. Gene and Finny, despite being polar opposites in personality, become fast friends at Devon: Gene's quiet, introverted intellectual personality complements Finny's more extroverted, carefree, athletic demeanor. During the time at Devon, Gene goes through a period of intense friendship with Finny. One of Finny's ideas during Gene's "Sarcastic Summer of 1942" is to create a "Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session," with Gene and himself as charter members. Finny creates a rite of initiation by having members jump into the Devon River from a large, high tree. He also creates a game called "blitzball" (from the German blitzkrieg) in which there is no winner and Finny would make rules up as they played. Following their period of intense friendship was a period of intense one-sided rivalry during which Gene strives to out-do Finny academically, since he believes Finny is trying to out-do him. This rivalry begins with Gene's jealousy towards Finny because Finny gets away with everything and can talk his way out of getting in trouble. This rivalry culminates (and is ended) when, as Finny and Gene are about to jump off the tree, Gene (possibly) purposely jounces the branch they were both standing on, causing Finny to fall and shatter his leg. Because of his "accident", Finny learns from the doctor that he will never again be able to compete in sports that are most dear to him. The remainder of the story revolves around Gene's attempts to come to grips with who he is, why he shook the branch, and how he will continue to go forward. Gene feels so guilty that he goes to Finny's house and tells Finny that he caused Finny's fall. At first Finny does not believe him and afterward feels extremely hurt. During a meeting of the Golden Fleece Debating Society, a debate/trial organization that Brinker Hadley (another student) set up, Gene is confronted about the "accident" by Brinker, who accuses Gene of trying to kill Finny. Faced with the evidence, Finny leaves shamefully before Gene's deed is confirmed. On the way out, Finny falls down a flight of stairs (the ones Gene visits at the beginning of the novel), and again breaks the leg he had shattered before. Finny dismisses any of Gene's attempts to apologize at first, but he soon realizes that the "accident" was impulsive and not anger-based. The two forgive each other. The next day, Finny dies during the operation to set the bone. The doctor summarizes that Finny died when bone marrow entered the blood stream, and stopped his heart during the surgery. Gene does not cry over Finny, but learns much from how he lived his life, stating that when Finny died, he took his (Gene's) anger with him. In Finny's death, Gene could finally come to terms with himself.
662153	/m/030r0z	The Unifying Force	James Luceno		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins on the Yuuzhan Vong prisoner-of-war camp planet of Selvaris. Four prisoners, a Jenet named Thorsh and three Bith, memorize a complex mathematical code smuggled in by a member of the Ryn Syndicate, and they make their escape. Two of the Bith are killed by the pursuing Yuuzhan Vong forces while one of them is captured, but Thorsh escapes Selvaris thanks to the Millennium Falcon. The surviving Bith is interrogated by the camp's head, Malik Carr, and the Bith reveals the mathematical code, unknowing of what it actually means. The Bith is killed as a result. The Millennium Falcon brings Thorsh back to the Galactic Alliance where he is debriefed and recites the mathematical code to a Givin member of the Alliance. The code reveals that Selvaris will be the last pickup point for a Yuuzhan Vong-Peace Brigade convoy that will be taken to Yuuzhan'tar (Vongformed Coruscant) for a grand sacrifice. So an Alliance fleet ambushes Selvaris and rescues many prisoners, although some manage to get away. However, the Millennium Falcon, badly damaged from the battle, is forced to make an erratic jump into hyperspace that transports it to Caluula. As it turns out, the inhabitants of the Caluula system have been fending off the Vong for quite some time now, but they are able to repair the Falcon. Some of the prisoners leave the Falcons company in order to help the residents of Caluula continue to fight the Yuuzhan Vong while the Falcon returns to the Alliance with what prisoners they have left. As Zonama Sekot travels through hyperspace back to known space, it turns out that Harrar survived his confrontation with the treacherous Nom Anor in the previous novel. And through him, he and the residents of the living world discover that the Yuuzhan Vong exist outside the Force because they had been stripped of it, most likely by their homeworld of the original Yuuzhan'tar back in the Vong's home galaxy. On Yuuzhan'tar, things are not going well for Shimrra's order. Even with all of the advancements they made in the war against the Galactic Alliance, problems continue to plague the Yuuzhan Vong's capital planet thanks to the World Brain, and the heresy espoused by the Shamed Ones is still as strong as ever, even without Nom Anor's leadership. Nom Anor himself has been inducted back into the elite as Prefect of Yuuzhan'tar thanks to his actions on Zonama Sekot, but even he can't quell the fire that he sparked in the Shamed Ones as Yu'shaa, their Prophet. As for the sacrifice that had been partially foiled thanks to the Battle of Selvaris, the Yuuzhan Vong are able to compensate with captives from other contested worlds following Selvaris. But the sacrifice is spoiled thanks to a riot caused by the Shamed Ones, who save many of the Galactic Alliance captives much to their own detriment as Shimrra has many Shamed Ones and workers executed as capital punishment. Nevertheless, despite the thwarting of the sacrifice, Shimrra gives Warmaster Nas Choka the go-ahead to prepare his fleet to invade the Galactic Alliance's capital of Mon Calamari. As the Yuuzhan Vong arrive at Mon Calamari and battle the opposing Galactic Alliance forces, Han and Leia Organa Solo, along with a few allies, infiltrate the Vong-captured Caluula in order to eliminate the resident yammosk there. Though they are captured with two of their allies killed, they find that the local Yuuzhan Vong and their biots are dying, along with many of Caluula's indigenous creatures. After many of the Yuuzhan Vong, their biots, and Caluula's own creatures die off, one craft made for Shimrra's new special Slayer warriors manages to make it off Caluula and it heads back to Yuuzhan'tar in order to inform the elite of this new affliction. As Kyp Durron, part of the infiltration team, is able to discern, the illness that the Yuuzhan Vong on Caluula are suffering is Alpha Red, a biological virus set to target and eliminate the Yuuzhan Vong and anything sharing their DNA with them. It had been deployed on Caluula in secret just before the planet surrendered to the invaders. Just before it seems that Nas Choka's forces would win at the Battle of Mon Calamari, they suddenly make a hasty retreat back to Yuuzhan'tar, where Zonama Sekot has appeared in the capital planet's skies, causing various disasters and eliciting more opposition from the heretics. With the living world offering a distraction to the Yuuzhan Vong, the Jedi and the Galactic Alliance gather up all of their forces and resources for one last showdown against the Vong. After the Alliance successfully captures the Vong-occupied world of Corulag as their staging position, they travel to the captured Coruscant, and the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar, the final battle of the Yuuzhan Vong War, begins. On the ground, Nom Anor decides to forsake Shimrra's order, seeing how deranged he has become as a result of Zonama Sekot's arrival, and realigns himself with the Shamed Ones against those who are still loyal to Shimrra. The heretics are soon reinforced by Galactic Alliance soldiers who managed to get past the Yuuzhan Vong's space defenses as the space fleets of both the Alliance and the Vong duel over the contested planetary capital of the galaxy and the world of Muscave. Meanwhile, Nas Choka takes a portion of his fleet to destroy Zonama Sekot using the Alpha Red-infected Slayer ship, as Shimrra revealed previously that there is indeed a biological connection between the Vong and Zonama. Defending the living world are the majority of the New Jedi Order, the Smugglers' Alliance, and the fleet of the Hapes Consortium. On Yuuzhan'tar, Luke Skywalker, his wife Mara, Jaina and Jacen Solo, Tahiri Veila, and Kenth Hamner all join up with Captain Judder Page's commandos in order to storm Shimrra's Citadel and kill the Supreme Overlord, ending the Yuuzhan Vong War once and for all. However, Mara, Tahiri, and Hamner all join a division of Page's commandos to help the heretics against Shimrra's loyal warriors, and it gives Mara an opportunity to confront Nom Anor, despite the fact that he is leading the heretics, for all he did to her, her family, and her friends and allies in the past. After Mara gives him a severe beating, Nom Anor pleads for his life, which Mara grudgingly spares so that he would be properly convicted for his crimes in the end. Meanwhile, the Millennium Falcon goes on a mission with Harrar to convince the World Brain to cease its destruction of Yuuzhan'tar, which was intended by Shimrra to completely destroy the world so no one could have it, just to spite the Galactic Alliance. With the help of Nom Anor and his Shamed Ones and other allies, including turncoat Vong warriors, the crew of the Falcon, and Harrar, avert death from the Yuuzhan Vong sent to protect the World Brain. Then the Falcons crew and Harrar make it to the dhuryam and they try to coerce Master Shaper Qelah Kwaad into convincing the brain to cease its destructive activities before they consider killing it. In the end, though, Jacen telepathically tells the World Brain to ignore Shimrra's commands, which stops Yuuzhan'tar's apocalypse. As Page and his remaining commandos storm the lower levels of Shimrra's Citadel, Luke, Jaina, and Jacen, after killing and wounding every Yuuzhan Vong warrior in their path, eventually confront Shimrra and his fifteen special Slayer guards inside Shimrra's private coffer at the top of the Citadel. The three Jedi are able to kill all of the Slayers whilst Jaina follows Shimrra's Shamed companion, Onimi, to the control level of Shimrra's coffer. There, Onimi easily overpowers Jaina and renders her unconscious with a toxin from his fang. Jaina notes, as she falls unconscious, that she was able to sense Onimi through the Force. Meanwhile, with all of his Slayers dead, Shimrra fights Luke and traps him with his royal amphistaff, the Scepter of Power, before taking out the late Anakin Solo's lightsaber as a mind game to Luke; Shimrra wants Luke to know what it feels like to fight something that is part of his order, just as the Yuuzhan Vong have to fight Zonama Sekot, something that Shimrra believes should have been part of the Vong's order due to its living nature. Though Luke is poisoned by the Scepter of Power, he is able to take Anakin's lightsaber from Shimrra's grasp and he uses both his own and his late nephew's weapons to decapitate Shimrra. With Jacen's own lightsaber lost in the conflict, Luke throws him Anakin's lightsaber, which Jacen misses, and sees it fly away, echoing the vision he had on Duro three years earlier, and again on Zonama Sekot before the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar began. Regardless, Jacen goes up to the control level of Shimrra's coffer in order to collect Jaina. As Onimi readies Shimrra's coffer to launch into space, an awakened but still weakened Jaina is told by the Shamed One, who believes that she is the human avatar of the Vong Trickster goddess Yun-Harla, that he had attained his Force powers by grafting yammosk DNA to his own neural tissue in order to emulate the gods' works in creating the universe. This was done after Onimi, being a Shaper at the time, discovered that there was no eighth cortex in the Shaper Qahsa. Although he was Shamed as a result, he was able to use his powers to not only concoct deadly toxins that he could control in his body, but he also manipulated Shimrra into convincing the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong into invading the galaxy; therefore, throughout Shimrra's reign, it was Onimi who had really been controlling the Yuuzhan Vong as its true Supreme Overlord. With Shimrra now dead, he plans to kill everyone and every living thing in the galaxy so that he could become a new god and fashion a new universe in his image. As the Alliance and their Yuuzhan Vong allies take hold of Shimrra's Citadel, Luke is carried away, and Han and Leia follow Nom Anor's lead in order to find Jaina and Jacen at the control level of the Supreme Overlord's coffer. As they do that, the coffer launches for space, and the Millennium Falcon, piloted by Mara Jade Skywalker with an ailing Luke aboard, and Jagged Fel in his commandeered X-wing follow the coffer. Meanwhile, as word of Shimrra's death spreads, Nas Choka and his forces refuse to believe it, especially after his coffer appears rising up from Yuuzhan'tar. In the coffer, however, Jacen confronts Onimi and then hears the voice of his late grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, telling him to "stand firm," like he did on Duro. So as Jacen fights Onimi, he manages to achieve oneness with the Force, knowing that he'll never achieve this state again while simultaneously knowing that he'll spend the rest of his life trying to do so. As a result, Jacen defeats Supreme Overlord Onimi. Han, Leia, and Nom Anor arrive just in time to watch Jacen's amazing victory as he appears to age five years. Onimi, meanwhile, is reverted of his Shamed deformities, but because his deformities were the result of his gaining the Force, he loses control of the toxins in his body and dies, melting into a puddle of foul hydrocarbons that is absorbed by the coffer's yorik coral floor like a stain. The coffer begins to die off due its now-lost connection with Onimi, and Nom Anor tries to trick the Solos into going into a garbage chute while he escapes alive. With his Vongsense, Jacen thwarts his plan, and when Nom Anor tries one more time to evade the Solos, his hand is cut off by Leia via her lightsaber. Nevertheless, Nom Anor opens up the entry into the coffer's yorik-trema (landing craft) and simply allows the Solos to leave without him; due to his atheism, which makes him undesirable in the Yuuzhan Vong's society, and his contempt for the Force, which makes him undesirable in the Galactic Alliance's society, Nom Anor elects to die aboard the coffer, despite his earlier vows of surviving the war. The coffer's explosion is viewed by Warmaster Nas Choka and his fleet. He announces to all of his forces that the war is over and that the Yuuzhan Vong's enemies have won. He offers them an ultimatum; those who wish to die may kill themselves or fight to the bitter end, while those like him will live to find out what the Galactic Alliance and their allies intend to do to them. Meanwhile, Zonama Sekot manages to repel the Alpha Red-infected Vong ship from its surface and brings down all ships, Yuuzhan Vong and non-Vong alike, to the ground. The Vong's weapons become docile and harmless as the invaders are welcomed home. Aboard the Millennium Falcon, the Solos are saved from the dying yorik-trema, and Jacen is able to use Mara's tears and his own to concoct a chemical, as the late Vergere has done, to cure Luke of Shimrra's amphistaff poison. It works, and the Skywalkers and Solos collapse into one big embrace, glad that they survived and that the war is over. C-3PO and R2-D2 watch this scene and lament how at times like these, they envy how humans must feel. Following the Yuuzhan Vong War's end, with most of the Peace Brigade dead and/or disbanded, Nas Choka meets with the Galactic Alliance's leaders to come to terms with how they should find a long-lasting solution to the war. Choka agrees to collect all remaining Vong throughout the galaxy so that they will be deposited on Zonama Sekot and be taken away into the Unknown Regions, where they will be safe and learn to acclimate their culture to peace and also reclaim their connection to the Force. To counter those who wish to see the Yuuzhan Vong totally exterminated, such as the Bothans among others, Galactic Alliance Chief of State Cal Omas saw to it that each and every remaining sample of Alpha Red has been destroyed. Meanwhile, Zonama Sekot discovers that it is the offspring of the original Yuuzhan'tar, thus explaining the biological connection that it has with the Yuuzhan Vong. Amidst all of this, Luke declares that the Jedi shouldn't be the police force of the galaxy like it once was, and that the Order should allow individuals to find their own way in serving the galaxy, and, more importantly, themselves and the Force. Jacen, for one, plans to go on a galactic sojourn so that he could broaden his view of the Force following his battle with Onimi. Several weeks later, after nearly every remaining Yuuzhan Vong is collected, Zonama Sekot travels back into the Unknown Regions. Later, the Skywalkers, the Solos, and their friends and allies revisit Kashyyyk, where Han pinions Anakin's lightsaber into Chewbacca's makeshift grave. Luke declares that should the need ever arise again, someone as virtuous as Chewbacca will pick up Anakin's lightsaber and conquer whatever threat that will endanger the galaxy in the future. Afterwards, they all have a feast where they discuss their vacation plans. Han convinces Lumpawaroo and Lowbacca not to carry on Chewbacca's life debt by saying that he and Leia already convinced their Noghri bodyguards, Cakhmaim and Meewalh, to take a vacation for themselves. The novel, and the series, ends with everybody laughing, not only at what Han said, but also in joy and relief that once again, the galaxy is at peace.
662241	/m/030r7d	Asterix and the Great Divide				 In a village similar to Asterix's, two rival chiefs, Cleverdix and Majestix, have been elected. Through various incidents, a ditch has been dug through the village dividing it into the party of the left (led by Cleverdix) and the party of the right (ruled by Majestix). Both men contest the leadership of the entire village. The two sides regularly show their dislike for each other. Histrionix, the son of Cleverdix, and Melodrama, the daughter of Majestix, are the only villagers who do not agree with the fight, and constantly try to get their fathers to stop fighting. To add a twist to the plot, Majestix's mind is poisoned by his evil advisor Codfix. After a failed attempt by both chieftains to convince the other side to join them, Codfix comes up with an idea: in exchange for Melodrama's hand in marriage, he will invite the Roman troops to help Majestix become chief of the whole village (in fact, he plans to overthrow Majestix and become chief himself). However, Melodrama overhears the conversation, and gets her nurse, Angelica, to arrange a meeting with Histrionix. That night, Melodrama reveals the plan to Histrionix (whom she is in love with and vice-versa), who alerts his father. Cleverdix tells his son to go to the village of Vitalstatistix, who fought alongside him at Alesia, and get help. Arriving at the village, Histrionix explains the problem to Vitalstatistix, who agrees to send Asterix and Obelix to help. As the Romans have been quiet lately, Getafix decides to go too. Meanwhile, at the Roman camp near the divided village, the legionaries are tired of doing their own work and want slaves. Codfix arrives, and convinces the centurion to help by telling him his camp can have the defeated villagers as slaves. When the Romans arrive, however, Majestix refuses to let them take any villager, left or right, as slaves. Enraged, the centurion takes Majestix and his men as slaves. Exploiting the local Romans' ignorance of their identities, Asterix, Obelix and Getafix go to the camp and claim to be slaves, intending to set the prisoners free from inside. A bit of trouble with the guard over the word "fat" leads to the demonstration of another of Getafix's potions: an amazing cure-all elixir, which restores the subject to full health with the only apparent side-effect being a loss of short-term memory. Inside the camp, Getafix makes the magic potion in the guise of soup. When the suspicious centurion orders them to test it, they give some to the prisoners, enabling them to escape. Back at the village, Getafix makes more potion, and they decide to keep it on neutral ground- a house specifically in the middle of the village, with the ditch cutting directly between it- with Asterix guarding it. However, Getafix has left the elixir near the Roman camp. Codfix takes it, and uses it to cure the Romans while exploiting the amnesia to claim that the Gauls attacked the Romans unprovoked. That night, he sneaks back into the camp (pretending to want to ask for forgiveness), knocks out Asterix and takes the potion. The next morning, the Romans take the potion and head to the village. However, as they had taken the potion after the elixir, the mixture of the two first causes them to swell up like balloons, and then shrink down to a size where they are smaller than blades of grass. With Dogmatix apparently interested in eating them, they are scared back to their camp after promising to never bother the village again. When the villagers return to the village, Majestix learns that Codfix has kidnapped Melodrama and is demanding a ransom of 100 pounds of gold. Histrionix goes after him, accompanied by Asterix and Obelix. Codfix is escaping via river with the bound and gagged Melodrama. However they are captured by the pirates, to who Codfix claims he is ransoming Melodrama for 50 pounds of gold, if he leaves her with the Pirates he will collect the gold and they can share it. However they are then attacked by the Gauls. Having taken some magic potion to counter Codfix's current strength, Histrionix clashes with Codfix in armed combat until Codfix's dose of the potion wears off. Histrionix subsequently knocks him into the Roman camp, where he is made a slave. Back at the village, the chieftains agree to end the matter once and for all in a fight between them. The last man standing is chief of the whole village. When morning comes, neither has lost, so Asterix tell the villagers to make Histrionix chief, with Melodrama as his wise and beautiful wife. The villagers divert the course of the river, filling in the ditch. Histrionix and Melodrama are married, and Asterix, Obelix and Getafix return home.
663048	/m/030th4	Earthlight	Arthur C. Clarke	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The plot describes how political tension between the government of a politically united Earth (which maintains sovereignty over the Moon) and independent settlers and traders elsewhere in the solar system who have formed a federation, erupts into warfare over the terms for the availability to the Federation of scarce heavy metals. The trigger for hostilities is the publication of a research paper suggesting that the Moon may have previously unsuspected heavy metal resources which Earth proposes to monopolise. The Earth government's intelligence agency suspects that confidential information concerning the exploitation of these mineral riches may be being leaked to the Federation and presses an accountant, Bertram Sadler, into service. Sadler is sent to the Moon's main astronomical observatory located near the crater of Plato as a tip off has suggested that information is being routed through that location. Sadler's cover story is that he is carrying out an investigation of waste in government spending. The rising political tension is accompanied by the observatory staff enjoying the good fortune of observing a nearby supernova explosion in the constellation of Draco. Despite a relatively long preceding era of peace, Earth and the Federation each prepare technologically for war. The Federation develops a new method of spacedrive propulsion while Earth develops new shielding technology and a weapon which uses an electromagnet-propelled bayonet of liquid metal. (The weapon mistaken for a beam of light). Such a weapon is currently being developed by DARPA. A climactic battle between three Federation cruisers and the fortified mining installation ("Project Thor") is played out near Mount Pico close to the lunar observatory. Two astronomers who have delivered a top Earth scientist to Pico with only a couple of hours to spare, witness the battle. Sadler, whose investigations have had no pay off except for the unmasking of an embezzling store manager, relinquishes his cover by going to debrief the two astronomers. Of the three Federal cruisers, two are destroyed along with the mine in the battle. The third cruiser, named The Acheron, is terminally damaged and retreats towards Mars, but has little chance of reaching it before her nuclear reactor explodes. However, her new drive gives her the capability of a rendezvous with a passenger liner, The Pegasus, which is able to rescue all but one of the crew who have to make the 40 second crossing without space suits. This inconclusive duel between mother planet and formerly dependent colonists, with each side suffering stiffer resistance than anticipated, discredits the governments on both sides. Sadler is able to return to civilian life but suffers nagging frustration that he never found out whether the spy that he was searching for existed or not. Many years later the commander of the Acheron writes his memoirs and reveals that information had reached the Federation from One of Earth's most distinguished astronomers, now living in honoured retirement on the Moon. With this hint, Sadler is able to confirm the spy's identity as Robert Molton, the first one of the observatory staff to greet him on his way to the observatory. The novel concludes with Moulton enlightening Sadler and the reader as to the brilliant technical subterfuge with which he transmitted information, namely that he used the observatory's main telescope as a transmitter by placing a modulated ultra-violet source at its prime focus. The signal was received by a Federation spaceship a few million kilometers away.
663061	/m/030tjx	A Fall of Moondust	Arthur C. Clarke	1961	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 By the 21st century, the Moon has been colonized, and although still very much a research establishment, it is visited by tourists who can afford the trip. One of its attractions is a cruise across one of the lunar seas, named the Sea of Thirst, (located within the Sinus Roris) filled with an extremely fine dust, a fine powder far drier than the contents of a terrestrial desert and which almost flows like water, instead of the common regolith which covers most of the lunar surface. A specially designed "boat" named the Selene skims over the surface of the dust in the same manner as a jetski. But on one cruise, a moonquake causes an underground cavern to collapse, upsetting the equilibrium. As the dustcruiser Selene passes over, it sinks about 15 meters below the surface of the dust, hiding the vessel from view, and trapping it beneath the dust. Immediately there are potentially fatal problems for the crew and passengers inside. The sunken Selene has a limited air supply, there is no way for heat generated to escape, communications are impossible, and no one else is sure where Selene has been lost. As precious time begins to run out and the Selene heats up and the air becomes unbreathable, young Captain Pat Harris and his chief stewardess Sue Wilkins try to keep the passengers occupied and psychologically stable while waiting to be rescued. They are helped by a retired space ship captain and explorer, Commodore Hansteen, who is initially traveling incognito. Chief Engineer (Earthside) Robert Lawrence is skeptical that a rescue can be mounted, even if the Selene can be located. He is ready to abandon an initially unsuccessful search, when he is contacted by Thomas Lawson, a brilliant but eccentric astronomer who, from his vantage point on a satellite high above the Moon, Lagrange 2, believes he has detected the remains of a heat trail on the surface. An expedition is organized and Lawrence indeed makes contact with the Selene. However the completely alien environment results in numerous unforeseen complications. The rescue mission decides to sink a tube supplying oxygen to the Selene first, in an effort to buy time to think of a way to get the passengers out. However, this becomes a race against the clock, as the heat in the Selene knocks out the chemical air purification system and the passengers are suffering from CO2 poisoning. To preserve air, most passengers enter a chemically induced sleep, with only Pat Harris and physicist Duncan McKenzie staying awake. Just in time, the rescuers manage to drill a hole in the roof and sink the air supply. A plan is hatched to save the passengers of the Selene by sinking several concrete caissons to the roof of the ship and cutting a hole. When the first caisson is sunk, disaster strikes again: the liquid wastage of the passengers had been expelled out of the ship, turning the dust around it into mud, which causes another, smaller, cave-in. The Selene sinks once more, this time only a small distance, but crucially, at a slope. This means the caissons cannot be connected anymore to the sloping roof. Also air supply and communications have been damaged. After restoring these latter two, a new plan is made to sink the caissons, but now the bottom one has a flexible tube attached to it which can be mounted to the sloping roof of the Selene. The rescue mission works according to plan: the caissons are sunk, the dust is scooped out and the connection is made, but now time is running out again. When the air supply holes were drilled, Selenes double hull was breached and the space in between slowly filled with dust. The metal-rich dust reached the battery packs and short-circuited them. This causes the inner hull to be burning slowly. The resulting breach is barricaded by the passengers, but dust is still pouring in and there is a fear that the burning material will cause the liquid oxygen supply to explode. Meanwhile, Robert Lawrence is working in the rescue shaft: he sets a small ring charge to make a hole in the roof. Just in time, the hole is made and the passengers escape through the shaft. Captain Harris is the last to leave, up to his waist in dust. Just when he is clear of the shaft, the liquid oxygen explodes, destroying the Selene. A short epilogue sees Lawrence writing his memoirs, Pat and Sue married, and Pat hoping to transfer to the space service.
664282	/m/030yqd	Our Mutual Friend	Charles Dickens	1865	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Many critics found fault with the plot. In 1865, The New York Times disapproved of Dickens’s complicated conduct of his story, describing it as an "involved plot combined with an entire absence of the skill to manage and unfold it". and he also found that "the final explanation is a disappointment."
664290	/m/030yrt	The Bad Beginning	Daniel Handler	1999-09-30	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The novel begins with a dedication to a mysterious Beatrice, whom Snicket describes as "darling, dearest, dead". The author then provides a brief explanation of why the book should not be read, before describing the series' protagonists: Violet Baudelaire, a 14-year old amateur inventor; Klaus Baudelaire, a 12-year old who loves to read, and Sunny Baudelaire, an infant with unusually powerful teeth. The Baudelaire children have left the unspecified city in which they live to spend the day at the lonely Briny Beach. While enjoying the solitude, their parents' inept banker, Arthur Poe, arrives to inform them that their mother and father have both died in a fire which has destroyed their mansion and all of their possessions leaving him as executor of the Baudelaire estate. The Baudelaires briefly live with Mr. Poe and his wife, Polly, sharing a room with their ill-behaved children Edgar and Albert. All three Baudelaires are miserable and dislike their situation, but Mr. Poe soon informs them that, in accordance with their parent's will (which requests that the children be cared for "in the most convenient way possible"), he has located a distant uncle, Count Olaf, who lives within the city limits and is willing to become the children's legal guardian. On the car ride to Olaf's house, Mr. Poe explains to the Baudelaires that while Olaf is titularly a count, he is also a professional stage actor. When the car arrives in Olaf's neighborhood, the chits are greeted by the kindly Justice Strauss, a judge on the High Court. When Violet mistakes her for Olaf's wife, however, Strauss hastily explains that she is only a neighbor, and directs the children and Mr. Poe to the squalid and betowered house that is Olaf's; carved on the front door is the image of a glaring eye. The children soon learn that Olaf has only accepted their guardianship under the mistaken belief that he will receive their vast inheritance (which has been set aside until Violet turns 18). Olaf is sinister, self-absorbed, and unhygienic; he bears a tattoo of the glaring eye on his left ankle and a distinctive unibrow. When the count learns that he will not receive the Baudelaire fortune, he immediately drops all pretenses of friendliness toward the children. Every day Count Olaf leaves to work with his theater troupe, posting a list of often demeaning chores which the children must perform before his return home. Although the house is spacious, the orphans are given only one room and one bed. They are strictly forbidden to enter Olaf's tower study, and are provided with no belongings. Eventually Olaf informs the children by way of the chore list that his 10-man theater troupe will be coming over in the evening, when the Baudelaires must serve dinner. Having no suitable supplies to make a meal for ten, the children spend the day with Justice Strauss shopping for ingredients to make spaghetti alla puttanesca and chocolate pudding. That evening Olaf arrives with his theater troupe, a motley crew which includes a man with hooks for hands, a bald man with a long nose, two women with white-powdered faces, and one who is so obese as to resemble neither a man nor a woman. The count and his troupe openly discuss his intentions to embezzle the children's inheritance, and Olaf becomes outraged when he learns the children have not prepared roast beef. When Klaus protests, Olaf slaps him and grabs Sunny, but calms down and allows the children to serve the puttanesca. The next day the Baudelaires set out to find Mr. Poe, who works at Mulctuary Money Management, and report Olaf's abuse. Poe explains that Olaf is acting in loco parentis, and can raise them as he sees fit. The next morning, Olaf stays late to speak with the Baudelaires. He explains that Mr. Poe called him to address the children's concerns, and that as a first-time parent, he has been uncertain how to connect with them. Olaf informs the children, to their dismay, that they will be performing with his theater troupe in their upcoming production The Marvelous Marriage. Convinced that the performance is a scheme to steal their fortune, Klaus spends the day researching inheritance law in Justice Strauss's personal library. His research is interrupted by the hook-handed man, however, who takes him back to Olaf's house. Klaus manages to grab a book on marriage law before he is taken away. During the night he discovers that a 14-year-old may get married with guardian consent, and realizes that Olaf plans to legally marry Violet in The Marvelous Marriage and in so doing form a concurrent estate, giving him unlimited access to their fortune. The next morning Klaus heads out early to confront Olaf with the evidence; the count confirms Klaus's theory and informs him that Sunny has been kidnapped on his behest and is being hung in a birdcage from the tower study window, to be dropped the moment he or his sister does not comply. That day Violet attempts to visit Sunny, but finds the door to the tower guarded by the associate who looks like neither a man nor a woman. During the night she builds a grappling hook to scale the tower. When she reaches the top, however, she is met by the hook-handed man, who locks her in the uppermost room of the tower and brings Klaus to join her. Together the three children wait out the night in anticipation of the Marvelous Marriage performance. The Marvelous Marriage itself serves little other purpose than as a vehicle for the wedding which is part Olaf's little scheme that he is planning which had been planned by him to write the play under the name "Al Funcoot" which is Olaf's anagram. Justice Strauss is procured for the role of the officiator (hence ensuring it is a legal ceremony), and Violet plays the role of the bride. Klaus is given a role with no lines, while Sunny remains locked in the birdcage under the hook-handed man's supervision. Every attempt the children make to speak to Strauss or Mr. Poe (who has come to see the performance) is interrupted by Olaf. When the time comes for Violet to sign the wedding contract, she makes a final effort to annul the marriage by signing the document with her left hand rather than her right. (The law required the document to be signed in the bride's "own hand".) As soon as the contract has been signed, Olaf announces that the performance is over, and that Violet is now legally his wife. Mr. Poe, Justice Strauss, and many audience members object, but finally Strauss concludes that the ceremony has been legal. To Olaf's dismay, however, Violet informs Strauss that she has signed the document with the wrong hand, and the judge agrees that this is not in compliance with the law, rendering the ceremony annulled. Olaf orders the hook-handed man to drop their infant sister, but Sunny and the assistant have already arrived onstage. Mr. Poe attempts to arrest Olaf, but one of the assistants turns the house lights off. In the darkness and ensuing confusion, only Violet in her white wedding gown is readily visible. Before he and his troupe escapes, Olaf finds Violet in the dark and promises her that he will get their fortune if it's the last thing he does. Once order is restored, Mr. Poe calls the police, but only Olaf's getaway car is found. Justice Strauss offers to adopt the Baudelaires, but Poe objects, observing that their parents' will instructs the children be raised by a relative. In compliance with the law, Strauss bids the children goodbye and leaves them in the care of Mr. Poe.
664291	/m/030ys5	The Reptile Room	Daniel Handler	1999-09-30	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 After being taken away from their horrible guardian Count Olaf, (who tried to steal their fortune), the three Baudelaire children are taken by Mr. Poe to their new guardian, Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, who lives on Lousy Lane, which smells like horseradish. According to Mr. Poe, Dr. Montgomery is the Baudelaire's "late father's cousin's wife's brother." Dr. Montgomery, or "Uncle Monty" as he prefers to be called, is a short, chubby man with a round red face. He invites the children in for coconut cream cake. He is much friendlier than Count Olaf, and gives the children free rein in the house. Each of the children can have their own room. Monty tells the children that they will be going on an expedition to Peru, once his new assistant, Stephano, arrives. He says that his old assistant, Gustav, had quite suddenly resigned (Gustav could possibly be Gustav Sebald). The children are fascinated by the many snakes in the Reptile Room, a giant hall in which Monty's reptile collection is stored. They meet The Incredibly Deadly Viper, which Monty has only recently discovered. The snake's name is a misnomer since it is harmless; Monty intends to use it to play a practical joke on the Herpetologist Society in revenge for their ridiculing his name, Montgomery Montgomery. The three children are each given jobs in the Reptile Room: Violet is given the job of inventing traps for new snakes found in Peru, Klaus is told to read books on snakes to help advise Uncle Monty and Sunny's job is to bite ropes into usable pieces. She also befriends the Incredibly Deadly Viper. When Stephano the new assistant arrives, the children realize that he is Count Olaf in disguise. They try to warn Monty, but Stephano foils these attempts. Eventually, Monty does realize Stephano is evil, but believes Stephano to be an impostor sent to steal the Incredibly Deadly Viper. Monty explains this all to the astonished orphans and tears Stephano's ticket to Peru up, saying that Stephano will not be going on the trip with them. Stephano threatens the children privately later, hinting at a plot he has for them when they reach Peru. They tell him that Monty won't let him go with them and Stephano becomes furious. On the day they are to leave for Peru, they discover Monty's dead body in the Reptile Room. He has two tiny puncture holes under his left eye, and Stephano claims that he has been bitten by a snake. Stephano still intends to take the children to Peru, where he will more easily find a way to get his hands on their fortune. However, as they are leaving the estate, Stephano's car crashes into that of Mr. Poe. They return to the house, where Poe and Stephano discuss what to do with the children. The Baudelaires try to prove that it was Stephano who killed Monty. Meanwhile, the children realize that they'll need evidence to expose Stephano's scheme. Klaus and Sunny stage a diversion in which the Incredibly Deadly Viper pretends to attack Sunny to allow Violet time to find and open Stephano's suitcase. Stephano blows his cover when he informs Mr. Poe that Sunny is not in danger as the viper is harmless; he had previously claimed he knew nothing about snakes. Violet shows up and presents Mr. Poe with the evidence (among other things, a powder puff and the syringe used to inject snake venom into Monty). Mr. Poe asks Stephano to display his ankle, where the tattoo of an eye should be. However, the eye is not there. The Baudelaires insist that he has covered it with makeup. Mr. Poe wipes the ankle with a handkerchief, revealing the eye. However, Olaf gets away before he is arrested. Soon, the Baudelaires will be assigned to yet another guardian. They watch as Monty's reptile collection is taken away by Bruce. They watch as the car containing the Incredibly Deadly Viper drives off into the night, and they hope to have a good guardian soon.
664292	/m/030ysj	The Wide Window	Daniel Handler	2000-02	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 As the book begins, the orphans Sunny, Klaus and Violet meet their new guardian, Aunt Josephine. Although she is a kind old woman, she is frightened by many things. Ever since her husband, Ike, died in Lake Lachrymose after being eaten by the Lachrymose Leeches, she has developed many irrational fears about the lake and her own possessions. She won't touch the phone, the radiator, the refrigerator, the oven, or even the doorknobs. She also has a terrible fear of realtors. Aunt Josephine loves grammar and possesses an enormous library on the subject in her home. The room containing her library has an enormous window (after which The Wide Window is named), which overlooks the lake. After the Baudelaires tell Aunt Josephine that Hurricane Herman is coming, the children and their new guardian head down to town to obtain food and other household supplies. There they come across "Captain Sham," Count Olaf in disguise. He tells them that he is the owner of a boat rental company and lost his leg after it was eaten by the Lachrymose Leeches. The children warn Aunt Josephine, but they cannot prove "Sham" is Olaf in disguise, since he has a wooden leg where the ankle bearing his tattoo of an eye should be. Furthermore, Aunt Josephine finds Captain Sham charming, and won't listen to the Baudelaires, insisting that his (fake) business card is proof enough of his identity. Later that night, the children are awakened by a loud crash, and they rush to the library to find the window broken and their aunt's suicide note. The three siblings are shocked because the note says that the children's new guardian will be Captain Sham. Klaus becomes suspicious because it is filled with spelling and grammatical errors, not something Aunt Josephine would have done. They decide that Captain Sham is behind it and call Mr. Poe using the telephone. Mr. Poe arrives, but they cannot prove their suspicions, as the note is written in Josephine's hand writing. While Mr. Poe and Sham are discussing matters at The Anxious Clown, the children purposefully start an allergic reaction with the peppermints Mr. Poe had given them, and escape back to the house. By this time, Hurricane Herman is already arriving on Lake Lachrymose. At the house, Klaus discovers that all the spelling and grammar mistakes in the note form an encoded message, the words "Curdled Cave", presumably a cave somewhere on the shore of Lake Lachrymose. As the children search frantically for a map of the lake, one of the stilts that supports Aunt Josephine's house is struck by lightning, and the house begins to slide down the cliff. After narrowly escaping with their lives, the Baudelaires watch as Aunt Josephine's house crumbles and falls to the depths of Lake Lachrymose. The Baudelaires hurry down to the docks to steal a boat from Captain Sham's rental company, but the rental company is being guarded by one of Count Olaf's henchmen, the one who looks like neither a man nor a woman. Sunny outsmarts it, and the children manage to sail across Lake Lachrymose to Curdled Cave, where they find Aunt Josephine hiding. Aunt Josephine claims that Sham forced her to write the note, but rather than actually committing suicide, she threw a chair through the window and went into hiding, leaving only the coded suicide note behind. The Baudelaires convince her to join them, but as they're sailing back across the lake, Lachrymose Leeches attack. The children are puzzled, since they haven't consumed any food within the last hour (The leeches are blind and attack only if they smell food) but Aunt Josephine admits to having eaten a banana shortly before the Baudelaires arrived. The leeches ram their boat and devour it as it fills up with water. Violet successfully invents a signal for help, and Captain Sham rescues them in another boat just when the boat sinks in the water. Josephine pleads with Sham to spare her life, offering to give him the Baudelaires and promising to go far away and never tell anyone. Josephine almost convinces Sham to let her do so, but Sham is angered when she fusses over a trivial grammatical error in his speech. Instead, Sham pushes her in the water, where it is implied that she is devoured by the leeches, and takes the children with him back to Damocles Dock. Back at the docks, Mr. Poe is about to give the children to Sham when Sunny bites into Sham's fake wooden leg, breaking it off. Sham claims that his leg has miraculously regenerated, but Mr. Poe has already seen the tattoo of an eye on Olaf's ankle. Having been once more unmasked, Olaf flees with his associate before the children and Mr. Poe can chase after them.
664293	/m/030ysw	The Miserable Mill	Daniel Handler	2000-04	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The Miserable Mill. begins with Sunny, Klaus and Violet Baudelaire traveling on a train heading for Paltryville, the location of the children's new home, the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. Along the way, the children see a building in the shape of an eye. Upon arrival, the children learn that they will have to work at the mill, but as part of the deal, their new guardian, Sir (they call him Sir because his name was so long that nobody pronounces it right), will try to keep Count Olaf, their nemesis, away. They meet Sir's partner, Charles, who shows them the library, which contains three books, one about the history of the lumbermill, one about the town constitution, and one donated by Dr. Orwell, the local optometrist, who lives in the eye shaped building. Klaus breaks his own glasses when he is purposely tripped by the new foreman, Flacutono, and is sent to see Dr. Orwell. When Klaus returns, hours later, he acts very strangely, as if in a trance. The next day in the lumbermill, the foreman wakes Klaus, telling him to get to work, which Klaus does immediately, and does not even bother to put his shoes or socks on. Flacutono instructs Klaus to operate a stamping machine. Klaus causes an accident by dropping the machine on Phil, an optimistic coworker. The Foremen says an unfamiliar word, the other workers ask what it means and Klaus, who is suddenly back to normal, defines the word. Klaus explains that he doesn't remember what happened between when he broke his glasses and waking up in the mill. Foreman Flacutono trips him again, once again causing his glasses to break. This time though, Violet and Sunny accompany Klaus to Dr. Orwell's office. Together, they arrive at the eye-shaped building. They knock on the door and Dr. Orwell opens it. She is seemingly pleasant, and tells Violet and Sunny to sit in the waiting room. She mentions "attracting flies with honey". Violet and Sunny wonder about this before finding Count Olaf disguised as Shirley, a female receptionist, with tights having eyes all over them and a name-plate spelled out with gum. Violet realizes that Dr. Orwell is the "honey" and that they have been the "flies". She also learns that Klaus has been (and is being) hypnotized by Orwell, who is in cahoots with Olaf. They leave with Klaus, who is once again in a trance. When they return to the lumbermill, they find a note instructing them to see Sir. He tells them that if there is another accident, he'll place them under Shirley's care. Violet and Sunny put Klaus to bed (he remains barefoot), and then go to the mill's library. They read the book donated by Orwell, using the table of contents to find a chapter on hypnotism among the other chapters on eyes. Violet learns that Orwell's technique uses a command word to control the subject and an "unhypnotize" word. They then hear the lumbermill starting early, and rush to see what is happening. They find Charles strapped to a log which Klaus is pushing through a buzz saw, and Foreman Flacutono giving orders. The girls move to stop them but see Klaus' bare feet, a clue that he has been hypnotised out of bed yet again. Violet learns the command word (Lucky), and orders Klaus to release Charles but Flacutono orders him to continue. Shirley and Orwell arrive and the latter orders Klaus to ignore his sisters. Violet remembers, and says, the word with which Phil unhypnotized Klaus (inordinate) just in time. Sunny and Orwell have a fight, with swords and teeth, and Orwell falls into the path of the buzz saw, and is gruesomely killed. Violet is caught by Shirley and Flacutono. Klaus manages to set Charles free. About that time, Mr. Poe and Sir arrive, and the Baudelaires explain to them what has happened. Shirley/Count Olaf is locked in the library but escapes out the window. Sir relinquishes the Baudelaires from his care, to be sent to the boarding school Prufrock Preparatory School where they have more encounters with Count Olaf.
664294	/m/030yt7	The Austere Academy	Daniel Handler	2000-08-31	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The book begins with the Baudelaire orphans and Mr. Poe on the grounds outside of the school, Prufrock Preparatory School (Prufrock Prep for short). Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire meet Carmelita Spats, a rude girl who calls the Baudelaire orphans "cakesniffers". Mr. Poe tells the children to go to Vice Principal Nero's office. On their way there, they notice the schools' motto: Memento Mori (Remember You Will Die) which Klaus, being well read, understands. They soon meet Vice Principal Nero. He explains the rules of Prufrock Prep and tells them that his advanced computer system will keep their enemy, Count Olaf, away. He also tells them about the fine dormitories they have, but that unless students have parental permission, they must sleep on hay in a tin shack (known as the Orphan's Shack). He considers himself to be a genius and thinks that he plays the violin well, but in fact he is unworthy, stupid, mean, arrogant, obnoxious, annoying, and cannot play the violin well at all. Nonetheless, students must attend his lengthy violin recitals every day, or else they must buy him a large bag of candy and watch him eat it as punishment. Reluctantly, the Baudelaire orphans go to the shack and find that it is crawling with crabs and has dripping fungus and horrible wallpaper (green with pink hearts). The orphans go to lunch, where two women with metal masks serve them their food. Carmelita Spats mocks them again as they try to sit down. They are rescued by Duncan and Isadora Quagmire. The Quagmires tell about themselves. They are in a similar situation to that of the Baudelaire orphans. They are triplets, but their brother, Quigley Quagmire, died in a fire along with their parents. They, like the Baudelaire orphans, were left an enormous fortune (in the form of sapphires). Duncan would like to be a journalist, and Isadora is a competent poet (particularly in the form of [couplet]s). They both have notebooks, or commonplace books, which they use to write down observations and notions. They become good friends with the Baudelaire orphans. Violet's teacher, Mr. Remora, is a man who tells very short, dull stories while eating lots of bananas as the children take notes. Klaus's teacher, Mrs. Bass, obsesses over the metric system. She makes her students measure countless objects, then she writes the measurements on the board. Because Prufrock Prep doesn't have a class for babies, Sunny becomes Nero's administrative assistant. They are then introduced to Coach Genghis. The Baudelaire orphans immediately recognize him as Count Olaf in disguise but pretend to be fooled. He makes an unusual remark about how orphans have stronger legs. Then they all rush to the auditorium to listen to Vice Principal Nero's daily concert, where they are forced, along with the rest of the school, to listen to his violin playing for six hours. At the concert, the Baudelaire orphans decide that they will go to Vice Principal Nero's office the next day to drop hints about Genghis. However, when they attempt to do this, Coach Genghis enters. The Baudelaire orphans try to unmask him, but he eludes them. At lunch, Carmelita Spats delivers the message that the Baudelaire orphans are to meet Coach Genghis on the front lawn at sundown (at the time of Nero's violin concert). Genghis makes them paint a circle and run "Special Orphan Running Exercises" or S.O.R.E. laps around the luminous circle at night, for nine days. Violet and Klaus start failing their tests, too exhausted to tell one end of a metric ruler from another. Sunny's work suffers because she runs out of staples. Then Vice Principal Nero tells the children that if they keep failing their tests, they are going to be tutored by Coach Genghis, and that Sunny will be fired. He says that they will have extra-hard comprehensive exams the next morning. He also demands that they give him nine bags of candy each, as punishment for missing his concerts, and give Carmelita earrings for each time she brought them a message. The Baudelaires go see the Quagmires and tell them what happened. Then the Quagmires plot a plan. The Quagmires disguise themselves as Klaus and Violet, get a sack of flour to represent Sunny, and do the exercises (at night) so that the Baudelaire orphans can study and make staples (Coach Genghis doesn't know that it's the Quagmires that are running because it is night time and he can't see them). The Quagmires leave their notebooks with Violet and Klaus so that they can study. Violet invents a staple-making device (using a small crab, a potato, metal rods, creamed spinach, and a fork) and makes staples while Klaus reads the notebooks out loud. The next morning, Vice Principal Nero and the two teachers (Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass) come to the Orphans Shack. They test Violet and Klaus, and give Sunny a stack of papers to staple. Then Coach Genghis arrives. He has discovered, by trying to kick Sunny, that Sunny had been substituted with a sack of flour. Genghis uncovers the Quagmires' disguises as a result, and gives them canteen duty. The orphans, unable to stand it any longer, attempt to reveal that Coach Genghis is Count Olaf. About that time, Mr. Poe comes to deliver the candy and earrings. Vice Principal Nero tells him that the orphans have been caught "cheating", and announces that the Baudelaire orphans are going to be expelled. The Baudelaire orphans tell Mr. Poe that Coach Genghis is Count Olaf. Coach Genghis runs out of the shack, and after the orphans manage to remove his disguise, he succeeds in kidnapping the Quagmires. The two lunch ladies with metal masks are revealed as being Count Olaf's assistants, the white-faced women, when they remove their masks. The orphans see Olaf's assistants shoving the Quagmires into an old car. Before they close the door, Duncan yells to the Baudelaire orphans "Look in the notebooks! V.F.D.!" before they are captured. Unfortunately, Olaf steals the notebooks before he and his henchmen drive away. The orphans are then taken away to be placed with another guardian.
664295	/m/030ytl	The Ersatz Elevator	Daniel Handler	2001-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The Baudelaire children walk with Mr. Poe to their new home on 667 Dark Avenue. The street is dark, as light is "out" or unpopular. The elevators in the apartment building are not working, as elevators are "out" leaving the Baudelaires to walk up the 66 flights of stairs to the penthouse where the Squalors live. Jerome Squalor welcomes the children to their new home. He offers them "aqueous martinis", (water garnished with an olive served in a fancy glass), and introduces them to his wife Esmé Squalor, the city's sixth most important financial adviser, who is concerned about what's "in" and what's "out". Jerome avoids disputes with Esmé, as he hates arguing with her, and follows her instructions. Esmé sends the children and Jerome to Café Salmonella for dinner, because she will be busy privately discussing arrangements for an auction with trendy auctioneer Gunther. The Baudelaires recognize Gunther as Count Olaf, despite his attempt to disguise his eyebrow with a monocle and high boots to cover up the tattoo of an eye on his ankle. Despite their protestations, Jerome takes the children to the restaurant. Jerome believes the children are being xenophobic and dismisses their suspicions of Gunther. Klaus notices that there is one elevator door on each floor except for the top floor which has two. The children discover that the extra elevator is a fake, "ersatz" and consists of nothing but an empty shaft. They climb down the shaft, to find the two Quagmire triplets trapped in a cage at the bottom of the shaft. The Quagmires say that Count Olaf is planning to smuggle them out of the city by hiding them as an object at the "In" auction, which one of his associates will bid on. The Baudelaires return to the penthouse to find tools with which they can free the Quagmires, but they return to find that Gunther has cast the Quagmires away already. They return, dispirited, to the penthouse. Klaus finds a Lot #50, V.F.D., in the auction catalog. Esmé pretends to believe the children's story about Gunther's plot to kidnap the Quagmires, but when they show her the ersatz elevator, she pushes them down the empty shaft. They land halfway down in a net. Sunny climbs up the shaft with her razor sharp teeth, gets their ersatz rope and jumps back down into the net. Sunny bites a hole in the net, and using the rope they climb down from the net and travel along the hallway at the bottom of the shaft, with Violet's ersatz welding torches, only to find that it is a dead end. Pounding on the "ceiling" reveals that it is in fact a trap door; the children escape through it only to find themselves in the charred remains of the Baudelaire Mansion. They rush to Veblen Hall, the location of the auction, and join the crowd already there. The auction has begun, and Gunther and Esmé are on the stage auctioning off Lot #46. The children ask Jerome to buy them Lot #50. Mr. Poe and Jerome back down but Sunny bids on it and wins. The Baudelaires open the box, only to reveal Very Fancy Doilies. Gunther slips on the doilies and is revealed as Count Olaf when his boots and monocle fly off, revealing his eyebrow and tattoo. Count Olaf and Esmé flee, pursued by the audience. The doorman is revealed as The Hook-Handed Man, and the Quagmires are hidden in the red herring statue. Although Jerome wants to keep the Baudelaires, he insists on taking them far away. They refuse this, however, because they want to rescue the Quagmires. The story ends when Jerome is forced to give them up, because he is too cowardly to help them, Mr. Poe is calling a Vietnamese restaurant instead of the police and the three children sit on the stairs of the hall.
664298	/m/030yv8	The Vile Village	Daniel Handler	2001-05	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The book begins when the Baudelaires are in Mr. Poe's office, looking at The Daily Punctilio (a poorly written newspaper full of lies about the Quagmires and Count Olaf). Mr. Poe gives a brochure to the Baudelaire orphans about a new program allowing an entire village to serve as guardian, based on the saying "It takes a village to raise a child.". The children naturally choose V.F.D., an acronym which the two Quagmire triplets (before they were captured by Count Olaf), discovered is part of a fearsome secret somehow related to Count Olaf. The children depart for the unknown V.F.D. by bus, and after a long, hot and dusty walk from the bus stop, they reach the town of V.F.D., which is filled with crows. They become acquainted with the Council of Elders, who proclaim that the children will do all the chores for the entire village, but they will be living with Hector, the handyman. Hector takes them to his home, where he shows them the house, the barn and the Nevermore Tree, where all the crows come to roost at night. The Baudelaires learn that V.F.D. stands for the Village of Fowl Devotees. Hector shows the Baudelaires the following couplet, which he says was found at the base of Nevermore Tree: For sapphires we are held in here, Only you can end our fear. The Baudelaires discover that Hector has been breaking the town rules by keeping a secret library and working on a hot-air mobile home in his barn, so that he can sail away from V.F.D. forever. They discuss the Quagmires and consider the fact that Isadora might be somehow sending the Baudelaires a plea for help in the poem. They also discover a new couplet under the tree, though they've kept the tree under surveillance the whole night, which reads: Until dawn comes we cannot speak, No words can come from this sad beak. Two members of the Council of Elders come and report that Count Olaf has been captured, and the Baudelaires are to report immediately to the Town Hall. The Baudelaires discover that Count Olaf was not captured, but instead a man named Jacques, who also has one eyebrow and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle. The children insist that he is not Count Olaf, but the townspeople do not listen to them. The next day he is to be burned at the stake. That night the Baudelaires construct a plan. Sunny keeps watch at Nevermore Tree to see where the poems are coming from. Klaus searches the rules of V.F.D. for something to help Jacques out of trouble. Violet helps finish Hector's hot-air balloon device, for it will be a useful escape device if Count Olaf comes after them. Violet fixes the hot air balloon. Klaus discovers that a rule allows the accused to make a speech explaining himself. If a few people say something, mob psychology can make everyone demand the same thing and thus they can suggest that Jacques be freed. Sunny discovers that the crows are somehow delivering the couplets, and finds a new one: The first thing you read contains the clue, An initial way to speak to you. When the children run to the uptown jail where Jacques is being held, they learn that he is dead. Officer Luciana announces that Jacques has been murdered in the night, and Olaf, masquerading as Detective Dupin, accuses the Baudelaires of murdering "Count Olaf". He claims that Violet's hair ribbon and a lens from Klaus's glasses were found on the scene, and Sunny's teeth marks are on the body. The people ignore the fact that the orphans have solid alibis and the children are quickly locked up inside the Deluxe Cell in the prison, prior to being burnt at the stake the following day for breaking the town rules. Detective Dupin tells them that one of them will make a great escape before the burning, making it possible for him to inherit the Baudelaire fortune, and he leaves them to decide who will survive. While they are locked up, Klaus realizes that it is his 13th birthday. Officer Luciana comes in and brings them water and bread, and Violet uses the bread and water to allow them to escape. By pouring the pitcher of water repeatedly down a wooden bench onto the wall to soften the mortar, and then squeezing the water out of the bread where it had collected at the bottom of the wall. This process, repeated all through the day, evening and following morning slowly starts to yield results by weakening the thick brick walls of the prison cell. At daybreak, Hector comes to the window and tells them that if they manage to break out, he has the hot-air balloon ready. He also gives them the daily couplet: Inside these letters the eye will see, Nearby are your friends and V.F.D. Running out of time, they break free of the jail using the wooden bench as a battering ram against the weakened mortar and read the poems all together, using the clue An initial way to speak to you. to read the first initial of each line. ::For sapphires we are held in here. ::Only you can end our fear. ::Until dawn comes we cannot speak. ::No words can come from this sad beak. ::The first thing you read contains the clue. ::An initial way to speak to you. ::Inside these letters the eye will see. ::Nearby are your friends and V.F.D. The Baudelaires figure out a number of things: The sapphires refer to the Quagmires' fortune. The Quagmires cannot speak until dawn as the crows do not arrive uptown until then. The initial way to speak to them is not V.F.D., but the first letter in each verse, which spells out 'fountain'. They rush over to Fowl Fountain where Sunny manages to press a secret button in the eye of the crow, which opens the beak, revealing the damp Quagmires inside. At this point they flee the mob coming to burn them, and make a run for the outskirts of town. As they go, the Quagmires explain that Count Olaf locked them in the tower of his house. Then he had his associates build the fountain and imprisoned the Quagmires. The Quagmires attached the couplet to the crows' feet every morning, which fell off in the Nevermore Tree when the paper was dry. They tell the Baudelaires that the man who died was Jacques Snicket, but the mob catches sight of them and they have to run. They reach the outskirts of town and Hector arrives in his hot-air mobile home. He throws down a rope ladder and the Quagmires start to climb up to get inside. Officer Luciana shoots at the rope ladder with a harpoon gun, breaking the rope whilst the Baudelaires are still climbing and preventing them from continuing - they jump down to earth, saying good-bye to the Quagmires, who then throw their notebooks down to the orphans so they can read their research. A final harpoon pierces the books and scatters them, as the hot-air mobile home heads towards the horizon. The book ends with Count Olaf and Officer Luciana, who is revealed to be Esme Squalor, escaping on a motorcycle, and the Baudelaires fleeing, rather than waiting for the police, as the Daily Punctilio has written an article that they killed Jacques.
664301	/m/030yvz	The Carnivorous Carnival	Daniel Handler	2002-10-28	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The story begins where The Hostile Hospital left off, with the three Baudelaires still hiding in the trunk of Count Olaf's car, listening to Count Olaf and his troupe discuss their plans. They talk about a woman named Madame Lulu. Madame Lulu has told Count Olaf where the Baudelaires are hidden each time they move. Count Olaf and his troupe depart the car and the Baudelaires then make it out of the trunk of Count Olaf's car through some clever lockpicking on the part of Violet Baudelaire. The orphans spy on Madame Lulu's caravan in Caligari Carnival and hear her explaining to Olaf that her carnival needs more customers otherwise they may close. They also recognize Lulu's accent as that used by Olaf when he was disguised as Gunther. They disguise themselves for the carnival's House of Freaks, using Count Olaf's disguises stored in the trunk of his car. Sunny Baudelaire wraps herself in a beard to disguise herself as Chabo the Wolf Baby. Violet and Klaus Baudelaire squeeze into one large shirt as a two headed person with highly differing voices, 'Beverly' and 'Elliot'. Madame Lulu hires the children after they do an act for her. She leads them to a caravan with three people inside. Hugo who is a hunchback, Colette, who is a contortionist, and Kevin, who is ambidextrous (and very pessimistic). The next morning they discover that when Olaf asked Madame Lulu Is one Baudelaire parent still alive?, she consulted the crystal ball and answered Yes, one is up in the Mortmain Mountains. The children then perform in the freak show. Afterwards, Olaf arrives with a pack of lions and announces that a lion pit shall be made in which one of the freaks shall be thrown tomorrow. This is intended to draw a large audience. The orphans go back to Lulu's tent to search for clues. They first discover the V.F.D. symbol on the outside, and inside find a secret archival library under the table hidden by a tablecloth. The mysterious effects behind her fortune telling turn out to be no more than ropes and pulleys. They break Lulu's crystal ball, and they are discovered when Lulu comes in. Lulu breaks down and throws off her disguise, revealing herself as a woman named Olivia who just wants to give people what they want. She is a member of V.F.D. and tells them about the V.F.D. disguise kit and a schism which happened in the organization. Beverly notes that the crystal ball special effects involve a fan belt that could be used to power the cars from the nearby roller coaster, which the orphans and Olivia could use to escape to the Mortmain Mountains. That night Esmé Squalor comes to the caravan of the freaks in an I Love Freaks outfit. She tells them that whoever is picked to be thrown into the pit of ravenous lions the next day, should throw Madame Lulu in instead. If they do that, they will be made part of Count Olaf's theater troupe. The next morning the orphans go and get the coaster carts ready. A large and rude audience shows up to see the lions devour someone. Among the audience is the female reporter who broke the story that the Baudelaires murdered 'Count Omar' (Olaf). Olaf dramatically unfolds a paper that will show who is to be devoured by lions, and Beverly and Elliot are picked. They manage to stall and eventually create a chaotic scene in which Madame Lulu and one of Olaf's henchmen (the bald-headed man) fall into the pit and get devoured,the Daily Punctilio isn't sure who got thrown in first. They will never know because the Daily Punctilio always gets their facts wrong. Escaping to Madame Lulu's tent, the orphans find a map of the mountains with a coffee stain on it. Olaf appears, apparently still not recognizing the Baudelaires in their disguises, and states the stain indicates V.F.D.'s secret base in the Mortmain Mountains. The orphans are recruited into Olaf's troupe as are the other freaks. The carnival is burned to destroy the evidence, and the lions, trapped in the pit and unable to escape, are burned to death and are later found as blackened bones. Together Olaf, his employees, and the children depart for the mountains. Beverly and Elliot are in the travel trailer caravan behind Olaf's car, while Chabo is in the automobile car. Olaf then reveals that Lulu told him that they are the Baudelaires, and the newly recruited freaks cut the caravan off the car while on a steep slope leaving the book on a cliffhanger.
664302	/m/030yw9	The Slippery Slope	Daniel Handler	2003-09-23	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The book starts where The Carnivorous Carnival left off. Klaus Baudelaire and Violet are rolling down a steep mountainside in an out-of control caravan, while Sunny Baudelaire is held captive by Count Olaf and Count Olaf's associates/henchmen. Violet devises a brake for the caravan by using the hammocks as a drag chute and spreading sticky foods on the wheels. The two siblings travel up the mountain, discovering that vicious Snow Gnats have followed them. They take shelter from the insects in a cave, discovering that it is occupied by a troupe of Snow Scouts. Carmelita Spats, the children's rival from The Austere Academy, is one of the Snow Scouts, along with her uncle Bruce and a boy wearing a sweater, who seems to possess knowledge of V.F.D. During the night, he talks to them and leads them up the natural chimney (also known as the Vertical Flame Diversion) to the V.F.D. headquarters. Meanwhile, Olaf, his sidekicks, and Sunny are on the peak of Mount Fraught, the tallest mountain in the region. The adults are cruel to Sunny, forcing her to sleep in a casserole dish and cook them breakfast the next morning. Olaf insists that what she has prepared is disgusting and orders the Hook-Handed Man to fetch salmon from the nearby stream. Two people, a woman with hair but no beard and a man with a beard but no hair arrive, and announce that they have successfully burned down the V.F.D. headquarters. They also give Count Olaf the first twelve pages of the Snicket File. The man gives Esmé a green cigarette which is actually a Verdant Flammable Device, device used by V.F.D. to signal in emergencies by lighting it on fire and sending green smoke into the air. Esme immediately says that they are very "in". Sunny notices Esmé Squalor's Verdant Flammable Device and uses one to signal her siblings under the pretext of smoking the just-caught salmon for Olaf and his evil associates. Violet, Klaus and the boy come to the V.F.D. headquarters and find it has burnt down. The boy reveals himself to be Quigley Quagmire, whom the children believed to be dead. Violet, Klaus, and Quigley see, rising from the cliff, the plume of green smoke being emitted from Sunny's Verdant Flammable Device. Violet invents an ice-climbing device from a ukulele and forks, which Quigley and she use to climb the mountain, while Klaus stays at the headquarters to see if there are any clues or evidence that can be used to find more about V.F.D., who burned it down, etc. At one point, Violet and Quigley stop for a rest and Snicket refuses to reveal what happens between the two, commenting that Violet and Quigley have been deprived of privacy. It is obvious after this point that the two have fallen in love, and many references are made to their romantic attachment. When the two reach the top of the mountain, they immediately spot Olaf, his henchmen, and Sunny, Violet introduces Sunny to Quigley, and wants Sunny to return with them. But, Sunny refuses, telling her sister that she can spy on Olaf and learn useful information. Violet reluctantly agrees after Sunny herself claims, "I'm not a baby." Violet and Quigley travel down the mountain again. Fortunately, Klaus has figured out a lot about V.F.D. and hatches a plan to lure Esmé to them and use her to bait Olaf into giving Sunny back. They dig a pit and light a Verdant Flammable Device next to it. Esmé sees some green smoke at the bottom of the slope. She goes down it, thinking the smoke is coming from the "in" cigarettes. The children realize that two wrongs don't equal a right and that there is a better way to rescue Sunny than kidnapping Esmé. When she reaches the bottom, she runs into three masked strangers (the Baudelaires and Quigley), and they help her climb back up the slope, hoping to somehow force Count Olaf to give up Sunny. Claiming to be Volunteers, the three demand Sunny's return. Olaf refuses, until Violet pretends to know the location of a missing sugar bowl (which is mysteriously important to Olaf and his group). Olaf barters for the dish, but the Snow Scouts reach the peak. Klaus, Violet, and Quigley take off their masks to convince the scouts to run. Olaf orders the two white faced women to grab Sunny and throw her off the mountain, but they leave in protest and quit working for Olaf. As they leave, they say that one of their siblings was killed when their house burned down. The scouts, apart from Carmelita Spats, and several of Count Olaf's associates are caught in a net in a plot to recruit them to Count Olaf's troupe. Carmelita is convinced to join Olaf and Esmé in their evil schemes, as their "daughter". The Baudelaires and Quigley grab a toboggan and slide down the slope, but when they reach the bottom, the frozen waterfall shatters. In the ensuing flood, the Baudelaire siblings and Quigley Quagmire are separated. Quigley and Violet call desperately for each other, and Quigley tries to tell them to meet him somewhere, but cannot be heard over the rush of the running water.
664303	/m/030ywn	The Grim Grotto	Daniel Handler	2004-09-21	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The book introduces the ship's cook, Phil, the Baudelaire's optimistic past fellow worker at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. The Baudelaires discover that the crew of the Queequeg are searching for the mysterious sugar bowl. Klaus examined the tidal charts to estimate the location of the sugar bowl given the water cycle. He suspects it to be in the Gorgonian Grotto. An approaching submarine vessel on the sonar, in the shape of an octopus, captained by Count Olaf, but it is driven off by a mysterious ship which appears on the radar in the form of a question mark, which Captain Widdershins seems afraid of. Fiona then looks in her mycological textbooks to discover information about the Gorgonian Grotto. It is a cone-shaped cave which houses a rare species of poisonous mushroom. They wax and wane periodically, but when the mushrooms are waxing, they are extremely deadly. The grotto is remote enough that it can quarantine the Medusoid Mycelium from the outside world. Fiona suspects there may be an antidote to the poisonous effects of the fungus. Over dinner, the Baudelaire's discuss everything that they have learned from their journey so far. Widdershins mentions the Snicket siblings, who fought on the side of good. Jacques Snicket, whom the children saw murdered in the Village of Fowl Devotees, was a researcher similar to Klaus; Kit Snicket, who helped build the Queequeg; and before Widdershins mentions the third Snicket Sibling, Fiona interrupts him, wanting to know about the VFD Headquarters the children had been too. When the submarine arrives at the Grotto, Fiona, Klaus, Violet and Sunny are sent in. Inside it is a sandy beach scattered with many items that have washed ashore. Then they find a narrow room with a tiled floor and walls with three lamps bearing the letters "V", "F" and "D". Only the first two are lit up, so they assume the letter on the third one was not visible. Whilst they search the beach for the sugar bowl, the Medusoid Mycelium suddenly wax, springing up from the beach and the tiled floor and walls - the children retreat to the narrow room where the mushrooms do not grow, and they await the waning as there seems to be no other exit. While they are waiting, the children occupy themselves by continuing to investigate the knick-knacks lying around the cave, some of which seem to be connected to the V.F.D. including a newspaper article, a book of poetry and a personal letter. Sunny also picks up some food to prepare a meal for them all, including a tin of wasabi sauce. On returning to the submarine, they discover that Widdershins and Phil have mysteriously disappeared, leaving no sign of where they have gone. They also discover that a spore of the mushroom has infiltrated Sunny's helmet while in the grotto. Fiona stops Klaus from opening the helmet, insisting that Sunny must remain isolated in the helmet for all their safety until she can find an antidote. Just as the ship starts up, Olaf's submarine engulfs it, capturing the children. The orphans enter Olaf's ship and are taken to the brig where they are interrogated by the hook-handed man, who is revealed to be Fiona's brother - Fernald. Fiona begs him to help them get back to the Queequeg, for Sunny's sake, and Fernald finally agrees on the condition that they take him along. Back on the Queequeg, Sunny is very close to death. Klaus and Violet read Fiona's books and realize that the antidote is horseradish. They search the submarine's kitchen without finding the condiment. Violet and Klaus begin to break down but have enough courage to open up the helmet containing Sunny, and Sunny saves her own life when she manages to blurt out one word, the culinary equivalent of horseradish: wasabi--the object she took from the cave which Violet still has in her pocket. The wasabi is administered and takes rapid effect: the other two Baudelaires finish it off in case they are also affected by the fungus. While Sunny has a short nap, the telegram machine starts back up again. The Voluntary Factual Dispatch they receive is from Quigley Quagmire, The Baudelaires are needed at a certain coded location the next day, and just two days before the V.F.D. meeting at the Hotel Denouement. Klaus decodes the first poem by Lewis Carroll: they will be met at Briny Beach. As Violet begins decoding the other part (using T.S. Elliott's poem "The Waste Land"), they are discovered by Olaf and his accomplices. Olaf announces triumphantly that they are just minutes from the Hotel Denouement and Fiona has joined his team to be with Fernald. The Baudelaires are to return to the brig. Shortly after, on the radar, the mysterious question mark ship appears again. Olaf clearly knows what it is, as he orders everyone to battle stations to flee. Fiona, knowing that she has made the wrong decision, allows the Baudelaires to escape in the Queequeg. The next day they arrive on Briny Beach - back where all of their troubles began. Surprisingly, Mr. Poe emerges from the fog. He received a message from the mysterious J.S. - whom he assumes is The Daily Punctilios reporter Geraldine Julienne - that he had to meet them at the beach. He tells the children to come with him to the police station to resolve all of their troubles. Violet, however, has decoded Quigley's message and has concluded that a taxi will be at the beach for them, and she sees it in the distance. They bid farewell to Mr Poe and arrive at the taxi to find a woman at the wheel that they have never seen before. She reveals herself to be Kit Snicket so the children climb into the taxi where they drive off. Violet, Klaus, Sunny and Count Olaf return in this book, as in all previous books. Esme Squalor, Carmelita Spats and Mr Poe also appear in this book. The book marks the only appearances of Captain Widdershins and Fiona, the final appearances of the hook-handed man and Phil, and the debut of Kit Snicket. *On the last picture, there is a concierge's cap on the beach, foreshadowing The Penultimate Peril. *Sunny says etartsigam which is magistrate backwards. This could be a foreshadow of The Penultimate Peril in which two villains are unjust members of Justice Strauss jury.
664682	/m/030zx2	Chronicle of a Death Foretold	Gabriel García Márquez	1981	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The non-linear story, narrated by an anonymous character, begins with the mourning of Santiago Nasar's death. He wakes up from an ostensibly meaningless dream of trees. The reader learns that Santiago lives with his mother, Placida Linero; the cook, Victoria Guzman, and the cook's daughter, Divina Flor. Santiago's father, Ibrahim, is dead; after Ibrahim's death, Santiago took over the successful family ranch. The day of Santiago Nasar's death also happens to be the day the Bishop plans to come by boat, to bless the marriage of Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman—though his blessings, as the reader learns later on, will be of no use. As the town prepares for the Bishop's arrival, Angela's twin brothers Pedro and Pablo sit in the local milk shop in order to watch for Santiago, so that they may carry out their plans to murder him. The reader gradually learns of Angela Vicario's story: her groom, Bayardo San Roman, was a foreigner who had come to town to find a bride. After finding Angela, Bayardo decided to marry her; his wealthy status compared with the relative poverty of the Vicarios left no choice for Angela's freedom, and thus they were planned to wed. The night before the wedding day, festivities in preparation for the wedding had taken place at a local whorehouse run by Maria Alejandrina Cervantes, where the narrator had partied with Santiago and the Vicario twins until the early morning. The Vicario twins had left and returned home to find that their sister had been quietly returned by Bayardo San Roman in disgrace, after he found that she was not a virgin as had been expected. When asked who was the man that deflowered her, Angela Vicario says that it was Santiago Nasar. Thus the twins, in the wake of their family's disgrace, began planning their murderous revenge. Once morning arrives, the twins set about town, repeatedly announcing their plans to everyone who will listen. Yet despite the fact that nearly the whole town finds out about the murder before it occurs, no one ends up telling Santiago, either because they cannot find him, they don't believe the twins, they are too excited about the Bishop's arrival, or, in some cases, because they encourage the twins to go through with it. The murder occurs (and is only elaborated upon at the end of the book). After the murder, the Vicario family leaves town due to the scandal and disgrace surrounding the events of Angela's wedding and Santiago's murder. Bayardo San Roman leaves town as well; his family comes by boat and picks him up. The Vicario twins are imprisoned for three years, and afterwards, Pablo marries his lover and Pedro leaves for the armed forces. The reader discovers that only after Bayardo returned her did Angela fall in love with him. After she moves away from the town with her family, Angela writes him a letter each day for seventeen years. At the end of seventeen years, Bayardo San Roman returns to her, carrying all of her letters in bundles, all unopened. The narrator ends the book with the story of the actual murder of Santiago Nasar. Their friend Cristo Bedoya had frantically looked for Santiago on the morning of the murder to warn him of the plan, but Cristo Bedoya failed to find Santiago, who was actually at his fiance Flora Miguel's house. When Flora Miguel's father finds out, he warns Santiago seconds before the twins reach Santiago. Santiago only comprehends what Flora Miguel's father is saying as he dies, stabbed outside of his own front door. The reader is left speculating whether or not the twins actually wanted to kill Santiago. It may be presumed that in the end, the twins only killed Santiago because that was what everyone vaguely expected of them.
665839	/m/0312r_	Earth	David Brin	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the year 2038, the book is a cautionary tale of the harm humans can cause their planet via disregard for the environment and reckless scientific experiments. The book has a large cast of characters and Brin uses them to address a number of environmental issues, including endangered species, global warming, refugees from ecological disasters, ecoterrorism, and the social effects of overpopulation. The plot of the book involves an artificially created black hole which has been lost in the Earth's interior and the attempts to recover it before it destroys the planet. The events and revelations which follow reshape humanity and its future in the universe. It also includes a war pitting most of the Earth against Switzerland, fueled by outrage over the Swiss allowing generations of kleptocrats to hide their stolen wealth in the country's banks. The scope of the story expands vastly as the plot gradually reveals itself, bringing into question the future course—and even the survival—of humanity.
666518	/m/0314mg	Henry IV, Part 2	William Shakespeare			 The play picks up where Henry IV, Part One left off. Its focus is on Prince Hal's journey toward kingship, and his ultimate rejection of Falstaff. However, unlike Part One, Hal and Falstaff's stories are almost entirely separate, as the two characters meet only twice and very briefly. The tone of much of the play is elegiac, focusing on Falstaff's age and his closeness to death. Falstaff is still drinking and engaging in petty criminality in the London underworld. Falstaff appears, followed by a new character, a young page whom Prince Hal has assigned him as a joke. Falstaff enquires what the doctor has said about the analysis of his urine, and the page cryptically informs him that the urine is healthier than the patient. Falstaff promises to outfit the page in "vile apparel" (ragged clothing). He then complains of his insolubility, blaming it on "consumption of the purse." They go off, Falstaff vowing to find a wife "in the stews" (i.e., the local brothels). He has a relationship with Doll Tearsheet, a prostitute. When news of a second rebellion arrives, Falstaff joins the army again, and goes to the country to raise forces. There he encounters Mouldy, Bullcalf, Feeble, Shadow and Wart, a band of rustic yokels who are to be conscripted into the loyalist army, with two of whom, Mouldy and Bullcalf, bribing their way out. He also visits an old school friend, Justice Shallow, and they reminisce about their youthful follies. In the other storyline, Hal remains an acquaintance of London lowlife and seems unsuited to kingship. His father, King Henry IV, has apparently forgotten his reconciliation with his son in Henry IV, Part One, and is again disappointed in the young prince. Another rebellion is launched against Henry IV, but this time it is defeated, not by a battle, but by the duplicitous political machinations of Hal's brother, Prince John. King Henry then sickens and appears to die. Hal, seeing this, believes he is King and exits with the crown. King Henry, awakening, is devastated, thinking Hal cares only about becoming King. Hal convinces him otherwise and the old king subsequently dies contentedly. The two storylines meet in the final scene, in which Falstaff, having learned that Hal is now King, travels to London in expectation of great rewards. But Hal rejects him, saying that he has now changed, and can no longer associate with such people. The London lowlifes, expecting a paradise of thieves under Hal's governance, are instead purged and imprisoned by the authorities. At the end of the play, an epilogue thanks the audience and promises that the story will continue in a forthcoming play "with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France; where, for all I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat". In fact, the subsequent play, Henry V, does not feature Falstaff. The Merry Wives of Windsor, set a hundred or more years after the Henry plays, does have "Sir John in it", but cannot be the play referred to, since the passage clearly describes the forthcoming story of Henry V and his wooing of Katherine of France. Falstaff does "die of a sweat" in Henry V, but in London at the beginning of the play. His death is offstage, described by another character and he never appears. His role as a cowardly soldier looking out for himself is taken by Ancient Pistol, his braggart sidekick in Henry IV, Part 2 and Merry Wives.
666730	/m/03158d	The Borrowers	Mary Norton	1952	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 :Summary of the 1952 novel Fourteen-year-old Arrietty (Ah-ree-ET-eeh) Clock lives under the floorboards of a house with her parents, Pod and Homily. As Borrowers, they survive through Pod's "borrowing" of items from the "human beans" who live in the home above the floor. One day, Pod comes home shaken after borrowing a toy tea cup. After sending Arrietty to bed, Homily learns that he has been "seen" by one of the big people — a boy who had been sent from India to live with his great-aunt while recovering from rheumatic fever. Remembering the fate of their niece Eggletina, who wandered away and never returned after (unbeknownst to her) her father had been seen and the big people had brought in a cat, Pod and Homily decide to warn Arrietty. In the course of the ensuing conversation, Homily realizes that Arrietty ought to be allowed to go borrowing with Pod. Several days later, Pod and Arrietty go on a borrowing trip to retrieve fibers from a doormat for a scrub brush. Arrietty wanders outside where she meets the (human) Boy, and develops a friendship with him. At one point, Arrietty tells the Boy that there cannot be very many of his kind but there are many of her kind. He disagrees and tells her of times when he had seen hundreds and even thousands of big people all in one place. Arrietty realizes that she can't prove that there are any other Borrowers left in the world besides her and her parents and is upset. The Boy offers to take a letter to a badger sett two fields away where her Uncle Hendreary (father of Eggletina), Aunt Lupy, and their children are supposed to have emigrated. On a later borrowing trip, she manages to slip the letter under the doormat where the Boy agreed to look for it. Meanwhile, Arrietty has learned from Pod and Homily that when big people approach, they get a "feeling." She's concerned that she didn't have a feeling when the Boy approached, so she practises by going to a certain passage over which the cook, Mrs. Driver, often stands. She overhears Driver and the gardener, Crampfurl, discussing the Boy. Driver is annoyed that the boy continually disturbs the doormat and Crampfurl is concerned about him after seeing the Boy in a field calling for "Uncle something" after the Boy asked him if there were any badger setts in the field. Crampfurl is convinced the Boy is keeping a ferret. Arrietty becomes anxious and sets off on her own to find the Boy. As it turns out, he did find her letter, delivered it, and returned with a response — a mysterious note asking her to tell Aunt Lupy to come back. Pod then discovers Arrietty talking to the Boy and takes her home. Pod and Homily are frightened because the Boy will probably figure out where they live. They turn out to be right but the Boy, instead of wanting to harm them, brings them gifts of dollhouse furniture from the nursery. They experience a period of "borrowing beyond all dreams of borrowing" as the Boy offers them gift after gift. In return, Arrietty is allowed to go outside and read aloud to him. Driver, in the meantime, notices a few items missing and believes someone is playing a joke on her. She stays up late and catches the Boy bringing his nightly gift to his new friends. She sees the Borrowers and finds their home. The Boy attempts to rescue the Borrowers but Driver locks him in the nursery. At the end of three days, the Boy is to be sent back to India. Driver cruelly takes him to the kitchen before he goes to see the ratcatcher to smoke the Borrowers out of their home. The Boy manages to slip away and break off the grating outside. He never gets to see the Borrowers escape since the cab comes to take him away. His sister (a young Mrs. May, the narrator at the beginning and end of the book) later visits the home herself and is able to go to the badger sett and leave gifts there, which are gone the next time she checks. However, the novel ends on an ambiguous note when she tells Kate that when she returns to the badgers sett she finds a book she believes to be Arrietty's book of "Memoranda" - and that the writing in it bears a striking similarity to that of her brother.
666734	/m/031596	The Neon Bible	John Kennedy Toole	1989-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is a bildungsroman about a callow youth named David in rural Mississippi during the late 1930s to early 1950s. He learns of religious, racial, social, and sexual bigotry in the narrator's ten strongest memories, one memory per chapter. The memories begin with David on a train, escaping the past, hoping for freedom. The story begins with Aunt Mae, a former actress and singer, moving in with David's white-working-class family in the middle of a small southern town. Aunt Mae becomes sexually involved with a seventy-year-old man, ending when he is arrested on morality charges. From subsequent events David learns he does not get along with the other boys his own age. At this point suggestive of the 1930s Depression, David's father, Frank, loses his factory job. The family moves to an older house on a hill overlooking the town. The family's circumstances worsen and Frank becomes frustrated. When the family runs out of money, he buys seeds. His wife insists crops obviously cannot grow in the clay of the hill soil, and he hits her (with his knee) knocking out one of her teeth. She bleeds badly, but it eventually subsides. Subsequently Frank is shipped to Italy to fight in World War II. While Frank is in Italy, a traveling 'revival' ministry visits town. The traveling preacher teaches that popular dance is a prelude to 'immorality'. The town's local preacher opposes this incursion and begins a rival Bible-study class. These options divide the town. Through editorials in the newspaper and spots on the town radio station, each side attacks the other. Meanwhile Aunt Mae takes a job in the local propeller factory as a supervisor. At a company dance which she organizes, Aunt Mae successfully entertains by singing. This leads to her being invited to join the hired band, singing for pay. David's mother goes insane after learning that Frank had been killed in Italy. David and Aunt Mae take care of her, as Aunt Mae pursues singing. At age fifteen David gets a job at the pharmacy in town. There he encounters Jo Lynne, a girl visiting the valley while her grandfather is ill. After seeing a melodramatic movie, David and Jo Lynne date. Clyde, a member of Aunt Mae's band, is in love with her, and is certain they would get a record deal in Nashville. She leaves for Nashville promising that she'll immediately send for David and his mother. On strength of this promise, David quits his job. After seeing Aunt Mae off, he reflects on his situation, eventually realizing his mother seems missing. She usually spends most of the day in the yard where Frank planted his failed crop. As he climbs the stairs he steps in blood. He finds his mother collapsed, bleeding from the back of her mouth. The bleeding quells before she dies exhaling one last word — "Frank." Immediately the imperious local preacher arrives announcing he is taking David's (now dead) mother to an asylum. The preacher pushes past David to go upstairs, and as he climbs the stairs David shoots him through the back of the head. David buries his mother in the yard and uses his remaining money to board a train, hoping to start anew wherever he might be destined for. The book is told entirely from the first person, and the main character is rarely referred to as David. David's name is mentioned very briefly at the beginning, but later more strongly.
667242	/m/0316p2	In Dubious Battle	John Steinbeck	1936	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Dubious Battle deals with a fruit-workers' strike in a California valley and the attempts of communists to organize, lead, and provide for the striking pickers.
667280	/m/0316t1	The Twelve Chairs	Ilya Ilf	1928	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 In the Soviet Union in 1927, a former member of the nobility, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, works as a desk clerk. His mother-in-law reveals on her deathbed that her family jewelry had been hidden from the Bolsheviks in one of the twelve chairs from the family’s dining room set. Those chairs, along with all other personal property, had been expropriated by the government after the Russian Revolution. He becomes a treasure hunter, and after the “smooth operator” and con-man Ostap Bender forces Kisa ("Pussy", Vorobyaninov’s funny childhood nickname, which Bender prefers) to partner with him, they set off to track down the chairs. This ultimately helps Kisa, who doesn’t possess Bender’s charm and is not as street-smart. The two "comrades" find the chair set which is put up for auction, but fail to buy it and afterwards find out that the set has been split up and sold individually. They are not alone in their quest. Father Fyodor took advantage of the deathbed confession, and has also set off to recover the fortune. In this search for Mme Petukhova’s treasure, he becomes Vorobyaninov’s main rival. While in this enterprise Ostap is in his element, Vorobyaninov is not so happy. He’s steadily abandoning his principles and losing self-esteem. Through the process of elimination, the two finally discover the location of the 12th and last chair, the one hopefully containing the treasure. To avoid splitting the loot, Vorobyaninov murders Ostap. He then discovers that the jewels have already been found and that they have been spent on erecting a new public building, and as a result goes insane. Basic idea of this novel (searching treasure inside of many similar items) is based on The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, however there's no other similarities between this novel and short story by Arthur Conan Doyle. The Twelve Chairs satirizes not only its central characters, but also the people and institutions they encounter: the operations of a Moscow newspaper, student housing, a provincial chess club, and so on. Bender represents values of the old order, egoism and individualism. He knows “four hundred comparatively honest ways of taking money away from the population” (), and he has no future in the post revolutionary Soviet Union. Ilf and Petrov’s observations on aspects of everyday life are comic, but shrewd.
667283	/m/0316td	The Little Golden Calf	Ilya Ilf	1931	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 Ostap Bender is still alive, after somehow surviving the assassination in the previous book. This time he hears a story about an "underground millionaire" named Alexandr Koreiko. Koreiko has made millions, a truly enormous sum, by living on 46 rubles a month, through various illegal enterprises, taking full advantage of the widespread corruption in the New Economic Policy (NEP) period. Living in Chernomorsk (literally: Black Sea city, referring to the city of Odessa), and working as an accountant for a government office in charge of economic management, Koreiko keeps his large stash of ill-gotten money in a suitcase, waiting for the fall of the Soviet government, so that he can make use of it. Together with two associates, both petty criminals, and an extremely naive and innocent car driver, Bender finds out about him and starts to collect all the information he can get on Koreiko’s business activities. Koreiko tries to flee, but Bender eventually tracks him down in Turkestan, on the newly-constructed Turkestan–Siberia Railway. He then blackmails him into giving him a million rubles. Suddenly rich, Bender faces the problem of how to spend his money in a country where there are no legal millionaires. Nothing of the life of the rich that Bender dreamt of seems possible in the Soviet Union. Frustrated, Bender even decides to anonymously donate the money to the Ministry of Finance, but changes his mind. He turns the money into jewels and gold, and tries to cross the Romanian border, only to be robbed by the Romanian border guards, leaving him only with a medal, the Order of the Golden Fleece. Koreiko finds another job as an accountant. He hides the rest of his cash, and continues to wait for the fall of the Soviets.
667309	/m/0316z4	The Moon Is Down	John Steinbeck	1942	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Taken by surprise, a small coastal town is overrun by an invading army with little resistance. The town is important because it is a port that serves a large coal mine. Colonel Lanser, the head of the invading battalion, along with his staff establishes his HQ in the house of the democratically elected and popular Mayor Orden. As the reality of occupation sinks in and the weather turns bleak, with the snows beginning earlier than usual, the "simple, peaceful people" of the town are angry and confused. Colonel Lanser, a veteran of many wars, tries to operate under a veil of civility and law, but in his heart he knows that "there are no peaceful people" amongst those whose freedom has been taken away by force. The veil is soon torn apart when Alexander Morden, an erstwhile alderman and "a free man," is ordered to work in the mine. He strikes out at Captain Loft with a pick axe, but Captain Bentick steps into its path and dies of it. After a summary trial, Morden is executed by a firing squad. This incident catalyzes the people of the town and they settle into "a slow, silent, waiting revenge." Sections of the railroad linking the port with the mine get damaged regularly, the machinery breaks down often, and the dynamo of the electricity generators gets short circuited. Whenever a soldier relaxes his guard, drinks or goes out with a woman, he gets killed. Mayor Orden stands by his people, and tries to explain to Col. Lanser that his goal – "to break man’s spirit permanently" – is impossible. The cold weather and the constant fear weighs heavy on the occupying force, many of whom wish the war to end so that they can return home. They realize the futility of the war and that "the flies have conquered the flypaper." Some members of the resistance escape to England and ask the English for explosives so that the townspeople can intensify their efforts. English planes parachute-drop small packages containing dynamite sticks and chocolates all around the town. In a state of panic, the army takes the Mayor and his friend Dr. Winter, the town doctor and historian, hostage and lets it be known that any action from resistance will lead to their execution. Mayor Orden knows that nothing can stop his people and that his death is imminent. He tells his wife that while he can be killed, the idea of Mayor (and freedom and democracy) is beyond the reach of any army. Before his execution, Mayor Orden reminds Dr. Winter of the dialogues of Socrates in the Apology, a part he played in the high school play, and tells him to make sure that the debt is repaid to the army, i.e., that the resistance is continued.
667631	/m/0317_b	Herbstmilch				 Wimschneider tells of the hard conditions in which she grew up, on a farm. In 1927, at the age of 8, after her mother's death, she had to look after her family of 9. She later married Albert Wimschneider, but he was then conscripted and went off to war, leaving Anna to look after their farm, together with her mother-in-law.
668034	/m/03196t	A Good School	Richard Yates	1978	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The school, modeled on Yates' own experiences as an adolescent at Avon Old Farms School, is called Dorset Academy, a small private institution dependent on its now senile founder, a wealthy older woman named Abigail Church Hooper, a thinly-veiled reference to Avon Old Farms founder Theodate Pope Riddle. Dorset Academy is at best a second-rate institution, having the reputation of an unusual sort of prep school, where many of the students are on scholarship, and Dr. Stone, the English master, is the only "Harvard man". However, throughout the book, parents, teachers, even students insist that it is "a good school". In the "Foreword", the first person narrator, 15 year-old William Grove, a stand-in for Yates, relates what makes his divorcée mother, decide on Dorset Academy for her son. The main body of the novel is told in the third person, with Grove retreating into a group of schoolmates only to re-emerge at the end of the book, in the "Afterword", which is told from a distance of more than 30 years. There, William Grove, now a writer, looks back nostalgically on Dorset Academy where, as the editor of the school paper, he learned "the rudiments of [his] trade". As one of the masters puts it, the school harbors "a tremendous amount of sheer sexual energy". This is certainly true of the boys, who make a game of selecting one of the weaker boys, pinning him down on his bed and masturbating him to the point of ejaculation. On the other hand, they try hard to hide their erections from adults and girls, whether it is Dr. Stone's beautiful daughter Edith or the girls arriving for the annual Spring Dance. The teachers also suffer under too much sexual energy, especially Jack Draper, the chemistry master, crippled from polio, who becomes the witness of his wife's crude attempts to hide a year-and-a-half-long affair with the French master, Jean-Paul La Prade. When, toward the end of the novel, it is announced that Dorset Academy will have to close due to mounting debt, Draper decides to hang himself in his chemistry lab in humiliation. He is too weak, however, to push the chair away from under his feet and proceeds home where he reconciles with his estranged wife. The "Foreword" and the "Afterword" create the impression of Yates, the author, directly addressing his audience and could be seen as false documents.
668549	/m/031b6d	Dark Journey	Elaine Cunningham		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Yuuzhan Vong have claimed Coruscant as their new capital, and the survivors of the battle of the planet, including the Skywalkers and the Solos, escape to rendezvous with other survivors within the Hapes Consortium. Meanwhile, in the Myrkr system, Jaina Solo and the survivors of the mission to exterminate the voxyn escape aboard a captured Yuuzhan Vong frigate named the Ksstar in order to meet up with Jaina's family on Hapes. On the Ksstars heels is the likes of Khalee Lah, the fanatical warrior son of Vong Warmaster Tsavong Lah, and his charge, Priest Harrar. Their pursuit of Jaina and her comrades convinces Jaina to rename the captured Vong ship the Trickster in order to play mind games on the invaders; as one of their goddesses, Yun-Harla, is a trickster, Jaina's audacity is looked upon as blasphemy. As this happens, the Skywalkers and Solos' Jedi friends sense Jacen Solo's death, although, strangely enough, Jacen's family members themselves don't sense this. On Hapes, Jaina's dead brother, Anakin, is given a proper funeral via cremation. Meanwhile, former Hapan Queen Mother Ta'a Chume sees how weak the current Queen Mother, and her daughter-in-law, Tenenial Djo is. Since the Hapans had suffered a grievous loss against the Yuuzhan Vong at Fondor about a year earlier, that loss sent waves of loss and pain into the Force-sensitive Tenenial that caused her to miscarry her unborn child. As a result, Tenenial became weak, both physically and emotionally from the trauma of the experience. So Ta'a Chume looks to find a replacement for the weak Queen Mother. Tenenial's own daughter, Tenel Ka, is unlikely due to her owing to her Jedi and warrior heritage. Jaina, on the other hand, in the midst of her brothers' losses and her anger and hatred for the Yuuzhan Vong, displays a commanding air about her that makes her a potential candidate to replace Tenenial Djo. Meanwhile, Jaina, with the help of Kyp Durron and Jagged Fel, fights back against the combined forces of the Yuuzhan Vong and their supporters. However, these experiences begin to pull Jaina closer to the dark side of the Force, just like her grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, considering how she practically embraced it at Myrkr in the previous novel. In the end, however, with the help of her friends and family, Jaina is able to overcome the temptations of the dark side, remembers her place as a Jedi, and rejects Ta'a Chume's offer to become the next Hapan Queen Mother. Instead, in the wake of Tenenial Djo's mysterious death by poison, which was no doubt plotted by Ta'a Chume herself, Tenel Ka assumes the throne in time to combat the incoming Vong fleet prepared to invade Hapes. As for Khalee Lah and Harrar, the former's experience in combating Jaina has driven him to feel such shame and self-loathing that Harrar assists in his suicide. The priest himself wonders whether or not Jaina herself is the human avatar of Yun-Harla herself.
668585	/m/031b9r	Enemy Lines: Rebel Dream	Aaron Allston		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Following the Yuuzhan Vong's capture of Coruscant, General Wedge Antilles, leading New Republic Fleet Group Two, successfully capture and intend to hold the Vong-held world of Borleias. This becomes convenient for the New Republic Senators, under unofficial leadership from Councilor Pwoe, to gather up their resources in order to find a new capital for the Republic. Later, after the actions they took within the Hapes Consortium, Jaina Solo, Kyp Durron, and Jagged Fel become part of the occupation force of Borleias, and Jaina and Jag begin to develop a romantic relationship as a result of their time together fighting the Vong in the solar system. As the fighting in the Borleias system increases, it attracts the expertise of Supreme Commander Czulkang Lah, father of Warmaster Tsavong Lah, who soon becomes Wedge Antilles's enemy in the occupation of Borleias. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker senses a dark presence on Yuuzhan Vong-held Coruscant that has nothing to do with the Vong themselves. So he organizes a strike team consisting of himself, his wife Mara, Tahiri Veila, and Wraith Squadron in order to infiltrate Coruscant and then find and eliminate the dark presence there. With help from Lando Calrissian, they successfully arrive on Coruscant to begin their mission. At Coruscant, treacherous New Republic Senator Viqi Shesh is scheduled to be executed, since her usefulness in helping the Vong in their invasion is gone. However, Shesh makes up a lie that allows her to live when she says that the shapers that grafted Tsavong Lah's artificial arm had intentionally set it to rot; the purpose of this is to force him to secretly do their bidding, or he would become a Shamed One. Lah looks into this with the help of Master Shaper Nen Yim, and finds strong evidence that there is indeed such a conspiracy forming against him. Meanwhile, Viqi Shesh herself is controlling an innocent holocam operator named Tam Elgrin, working as a civilian assistant on Borleias, via a Yuuzhan Vong implant. At the end of the novel, Tam is able to overcome his conditioning, even when it nearly costs him his life, just before the New Republic launch into another engagement against the Vong. This engagement incorporates a tactic from the once-great Galactic Empire that forces the Vong to go into a temporary tactical retreat.
672704	/m/031ptv	The Eagle Has Landed	Jack Higgins	1975-09-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book makes use of the false document technique, and opens with Higgins describing his discovery of the concealed grave of thirteen German paratroopers in an English graveyard. What follows was inspired by the real life rescue of Hitler's ally Benito Mussolini by Otto Skorzeny. A similar idea is considered by Hitler, with the strong support of Himmler. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), is ordered to make a feasibility study of the seemingly impossible task of capturing British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and bringing him to the Reich. Canaris realizes that although Hitler will soon forget the matter, Himmler will not. Fearing Himmler may try to discredit him, Canaris orders one of his officers, Oberst Radl to undertake the study, despite feeling that it is all just a waste of time and effort. An Unteroffizier on Radl's staff finds that one of their spies, code named Starling, has provided a tantalizing piece of intelligence. "At any other time, in any other place, this information would be useless", Radl said. "And then synchronicity rears its disturbing head." Winston Churchill is scheduled to spend a relaxing weekend at a country house near the village of Studley Constable, Norfolk. There Joanna Grey, an Afrikaner woman and longtime Abwehr agent, lives. She detests England because she was abused and raped by British soldiers during the Anglo-Boer War. As a result of her reports, Radl devises a detailed plan to intercept Churchill and return with him to Germany. Although Radl is certain the plan has real possibilities, Admiral Canaris orders him to abandon it. Himmler, however, has already learned of the scheme and summons Radl. He orders him to proceed, but without notifying Canaris. In response, Radl arranges for Liam Devlin, a member of the Irish Republican Army, to be smuggled to Norfolk by way of Northern Ireland. Posing as a wounded veteran of the British Army, he contacts Mrs. Grey, who arranges a position for him as game warden to the estate of Studley Grange. While awaiting further developments, Devlin becomes romantically involved with Molly Prior, a girl from the village. Meanwhile, Radl selects of a team of commandos to carry out the operation, led by a disgraced Fallschirmjäger commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Steiner. While returning from the Eastern Front, Steiner had intervened when SS soldiers were rounding up Jews at a railway station in Poland. To the outrage of the SS and Polizei, he took one of their men hostage and helped a teenage Jewess to escape on a passing freight train. For this he was court-martialled, along with his men, who backed his actions. Too highly decorated to face a firing squad, Steiner and his men were allowed to transfer to a penal unit in the Channel Islands. There they are forced to make high-risk attacks with manned torpedoes against Allied ships in the English Channel. Radl travels to Alderney and recruits Steiner and his surviving men. Steiner's father, General Steiner, is being tortured by the Gestapo for his alleged ties to the German Resistance. This serves as an additional incentive for the Colonel to accept the mission. Radl relocates Steiner and his men to an airfield on the north western coast of Holland, there they familiarise themselves with the British weapons and equipment they will be using. The team will be air dropped into Norfolk via a captured C-47 Dakota with Allied markings. The commandos outfit themselves as Free Polish troops, as few of them speak English; the plan is to infiltrate Studley Constable, capture Churchill, rendezvous with an E-boat at the nearby coast and make their escape. At first, the plan seems to go off without a hitch. Then, however, one of Steiner's NCOs rescues a young girl who fell into a mill race. He is killed by the water wheel and his German uniform (worn, by Himmler's order, under the Polish uniforms, as protection against being executed as spies) is seen by several of the villagers. Determined to continue the mission, Steiner arranges for the locals to be rounded up, but the sister of Father Vereker. the local priest, escapes and alerts a nearby unit of US Army Rangers. Colonel Robert Shafto, an inexperienced but glory-seeking officer, rallies his forces to retake the hostages. Without notifying headquarters, he orders a foolhardy assault in which many Americans are killed. After the Colonel is shot in the head by Mrs. Grey, Major Kane organizes a second, successful attack. Steiner, his second-in-command Ritter von Neumann, and Devlin manage to escape with the aid of a local girl, Molly Prior, who had become romantically involved with the Irishman. Determined to finish the mission, Steiner allows Devlin and Neumann to escape without him and decides to make one last attempt at Churchill. He succeeds in reaching Churchill, but hesitates, is shot and supposedly killed. (However, Steiner reappears alive in The Eagle Has Flown, a sequel.) In Germany, Radl has had a heart attack, implied to be fatal, although at about the same time, Himmler, upon discovering that the mission has failed, orders Radl's arrest for high treason. As in many novels of Higgins, this story is surrounded by a 'frame story' with a prologue and epilogue. The author, whilst doing historical research in Norfolk, supposedly meets various surviving characters. Some paperback editions have more historical backstory than others, including a meeting with an older Liam Devlin in a Belfast hotel. The final revelation comes from an aged and terminally ill Father Vereker: "Churchill" had been an impersonator and even if the mission had succeeded, it would not have mattered.
673889	/m/031twv	The Absolute at Large	Karel Čapek		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story centers on the invention of a reactor that can annihilate matter to produce cheap and abundant energy. Unfortunately, it produces something else as a by-product, the absolute. The absolute is a spiritual essence that according to some religious philosophies allegedly permeates all matter. It is associated with human religious experience, as the unsuspecting humanity is to find out all too soon in the story. The widespread adoption of the reactors cause an enormous outpouring of pure absolute into the world. This leads to an outburst of religious and nationalist fervor, causing the greatest, most global war in history. Čapek describes this war in a self-consciously absurd manner. Characteristic of the war are distant military marches, hence for example "battles of the Chinese with the Senegalese riflemen on the shores of the Finnish lakes." Some of the more prominent political changes the war causes include expulsion of the Russian army to Africa (via Europe) by the Chinese invasion, the conquest of East Asia by Japan that cuts the Chinese conquests in Russia and Europe down to the limits of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, and the Japanese conquest of North America. The later happened because the United States were exhausted by a bloody civil war between the supporters and opponents of the Prohibition. Absolute does more than affect minds. It also does physical work. During the war, it causes catastrophes against the enemy (various parts of absolute support any given side in the conflict). At some point, it also becomes interested in production of material goods and produces them, in a supernatural manner, in enormous quantities. This leads to economic collapse and, absurdly enough, deficit of all manufactured items because, allegedly, once the price of goods has dropped to zero because of absolute, nobody cares to produce or distribute them any more. Starvation is averted because absolute does not produce food, and the peasants who do not let the price drop to zero. In fact, they force every last penny from urban population in return for food, hence saving humanity. This is a satirical reference to the very real phenomenon of bag people who bring food to the cities from the countryside in times of economic and political collapse.
673970	/m/031v2g	War with the Newts	Karel Čapek		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Only the last four of the book's 26 chapters deal with the eponymous war. The rest of the book is concerned with the discovery of the Newts, their exploitation and evolution, and growing tensions between humans and the Newts in the lead-up to the war. The book does not have any single protagonist, but instead looks at the development of the Newts from a broad societal perspective. At various points the narrator's register seems to slip into that of a journalist, historian or anthropologist. The three most central characters are Captain J. van Toch, the seaman who discovers the Newts; Mr Gussie H. Bondy, the industrialist who leads the development of the Newt industry; and Mr Povondra, Mr Bondy's doorman. They all reoccur throughout the book, but none can be said to drive the narrative in any significant way. All three are Czech. The novel is divided into three sections or 'books'. The first section recounts Captain van Toch's discovery of the Newts on a small island near Sumatra, their initial exploitation in the service of pearl farming, the beginning of their spread around the oceans of the world, and the development of their speech and absorption of human culture. The section closes with the founding of The Salamander Syndicate, an ambitious plan developed by Mr Bondy to redirect Newt resources away from the declining pearl industry and into larger hydroengineering projects. Though this is the close of the narrative development of this section, there is – oddly enough as it is positioned at the end of the section, but in the middle of the novel – a further appendix entitled 'The Sex Life of the Newts'. This examines the Newts' sexuality and reproductive processes in a pastiche of academese. The tone of the first section is generally light-hearted satire, in contrast to the darker tone of later parts of the story. Čapek targets a range of human foibles, from the superficiality of Hollywood starlets, to the arrogance of then-prevalent European attitudes towards non-white races. He also skewers the self-assuredness of science; scientists are repeatedly seen underestimating the capabilities of the Newts and falsely assessing other related issues, always in full confidence of the validity of their claims. The second section concerns the development of the Newts from the founding of The Salamander Syndicate to the outbreak of the first hostilities between Newts and humans. It contains only three chapters: one long one – by far the longest in the novel – bookended by two short ones. In the first chapter Mr. Povondra begins collecting newspaper clippings concerning the Newts. The long middle chapter then takes the form of a historical essay written at some unspecified time in the future. The essay cites Mr. Povondra's clippings as its main source of historical evidence, and includes a number of footnotes and quotations from his collection. The third chapter returns to the Povondra household a number of years after the events of the first chapter and introduces an early Newt-human conflict. The final section reverts to the same form as the first section, but with a darker tone. It relates a series of skirmishes between Newts and humans, eventually resulting in the outbreak of war when the Newts declare their need to destroy portions of the world's continents in order to create new coastlines and so expand their living space. Čapek's satirical targets here are mainly nationalism (the British, French and Germans are all portrayed as irredeemably stubborn and nationalistic), German racial theories (see below), and the perceived inefficacy of international diplomacy. In the penultimate chapter, the tone becomes didactic: 'We are all responsible for it', declares Čapek's mouthpiece, Mr. Povondra's adult son. The last chapter, entitled 'The Author Talks to Himself' takes a metafictional turn. With earth's landmass one-fifth destroyed and humanity offering little resistance, the chapter cuts away from the action to a conversation between two personas of the author, called the Author and the Writer. Between them they map out the long-term history of the Newts: the Newts will all but destroy the Earth's landmass, leaving only a tiny clump of humanity to work for them in their factories. Eventually they will form separate countries and destroy themselves by committing the same follies as humanity; humans will then inherit what remains of the earth; new continents will arise, and "America" will be dimly remembered as an Atlantis-like mythical land.
675491	/m/031_c4	In the Time of the Butterflies	Julia Álvarez	1994	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0277ppz": "Non-fiction novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This is the story of the four Mirabal sisters during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The sisters make a political commitment to overthrow the Trujillo regime. They are harassed, persecuted, and imprisoned, all while their family suffers retaliation from the Military Intelligence Service. They are eventually awarded for their leadership. The book presents the perspective of the surviving sister, Dedé. Throughout the book the events leading up to each sister's political awakening are discussed. Dedé Mirabal, as the last sister, became a national hero and was obligated to tell and retell the tragic story of her sisters. Although Dedé at first refuses, she eventually tells her sisters' tale. She explains how Minerva had a dream of going to a school, which was unusual for farmers' daughters. When she eventually convinced her father to allow her go, Minerva meets a girl, Sinita, who later became one of her best friends. Sinita eventually confided in Minerva the truth about Trujillo - that their "glorious" leader was a killer. During the time Minerva was in school, other events help bring the dictator's secrets to light. One of Minerva's friends was taken by Trujillo to carry his child, and was then exiled from the Dominican Republic to escape the wrath of Trujillo's wife. Years later, Minerva was invited to a party held by Trujillo in Santo Domingo. When he repeatedly tried to court her, she slapped him, putting her family in jeopardy. The Mirabal sisters and their husbands were participants in the June 14 political group, which operated through illegal gatherings in Patria Mirabal's house, where they discussed their plot against Trujillo. The members of the group used false names, with the Mirabal sisters all referred to as "Butterfly", followed by a number to indicate the individual sister. As vengeance for their political activities, Trujillo orders three of the sisters be killed on Puerto Plata Road, with their driver Rufino, while returning from visiting their husbands in jail. The women and driver are beaten to death and later their vehicle and bodies are dumped off a cliff in order to make their deaths look like an accident.
675911	/m/0fq17m2	The Law of Success	Napoleon Hill	1928		 Lesson One introduces the concept of The Master Mind, which Dr. Hill defines "as a mind that is developed through the harmonious cooperation of two or more people who ally themselves for the purpose of accomplishing any given task." Hill uses ideas from physics to illustrate the synergy that occurs between like-minded individuals. He also warns of the danger to the master mind group of any single member who thinks negatively. Another key insight from Hill is that knowledge is not power – it is only potential power. He defines power as "...organized knowledge, expressed through intelligent efforts." The master mind group makes this happen. Lesson Two, titled A Definite Chief Aim, urges the reader to discover his or her natural talents, then organize, coordinate and put into use the knowledge gained from experience. According to Hill, the main cause of failure is having no definitive chief aim in life — or failure to set clear and attainable goals — and plans to accomplish these goals. The keynote of this lesson is having a definite objective toward which to strive — never drift aimlessly. Having this definite chief aim will affect the subconscious mind, thus leading toward the attainment of the objective. Hill also emphasizes the importance of writing down your definite chief aim and goals to achieve it in a clear, concise way. Lesson Three is Self-Confidence: "You can do it if you believe you can." Hill states that fear is the chief reason for poverty and failure. Therefore, the person who masters fear will succeed. The development of self-confidence begins with the elimination of fear. Hill discusses the origins of fear in great detail and lists the six basic fears: poverty, old age, criticism, loss of love, ill health, and death. Hill teaches that the most effective way to fight these fears is organized knowledge. Ignorance and fear are twins that are found together. To eliminate fear, eliminate ignorance. Hill provides a formula for developing self-confidence using autosuggestion, along with persistence, the development of good habits and having a clearly stated definite purpose. He provides several unique and original examples from the animal world of how fearful behavior can be passed down quickly. "Believe in yourself but do not tell the world. Show it!" Lesson Four is The Habit of Saving. Hill states that the saving of money is solely a matter of habit. Millions of people go through life in poverty because they have developed bad habits. The habit of saving increases ones' earning capacity, Hill tells us, by the following method: First, through your definite chief aim, define an exact description of what you want — including the amount of money you intend to earn. Then, your subconscious mind takes over, resulting in a blueprint. This molds your thoughts and actions into practical plans for attaining your purpose. As income increases, savings will increase as well. Hill repeatedly emphasizes that we are victims of our habits — under any and all circumstances, good or bad. However, the choice of our habits is totally within our control — and good habits can and will result from sheer determination and willpower. Hill warns of "the slavery of debt" by using examples of how being in debt is like being imprisoned. To sum up: Hill strongly cautions against living beyond your means. Lesson Five is Initiative and Leadership. Both of these qualities are necessary for the attainment of success. Hill defines initiative as "that exceedingly rare quality which impels a person to do what ought to be done without being told to do it." Once this habit is acquired, leadership develops naturally. Leaders exercise initiative, have a definite purpose in mind, and possess self-confidence. This emphasizes Hill's main point: successful people make use of all 17 lessons. In this lesson, Hill warns of the dangers of procrastination, and gives a detailed formula for using autosuggestion to overcome this initiative killer. Hill states that to become a person of initiative, you must form the habit of aggressively and persistently following the objective of your definite chief aim until you achieve it — regardless of how long it takes. Lesson Six is Imagination. Hill states that imagination is the key to mastering all of the other lessons in the course (i.e., Definite Chief Aim, Self-confidence, Leadership, etc.). He debunks the notion that daydreaming is useless, and gives several examples of how daydreaming led directly to concrete actions and results. After reading this lesson, it appears that virtually all great accomplishments began in someone's imagination-imagination can do the impossible. The key idea of this lesson is this-use your imagination to rearrange old ideas into new combinations. For maximum achievement, you must mix effort with imagination. This is an area where your master mind group is especially helpful. Lesson Seven is Enthusiasm. Hill defines enthusiasm as "a state of mind that inspires and arouses one to put action into the task at hand." According to Hill, enthusiasm is the most important factor in sales and public speaking. Enthusiasm will make work far less difficult and boring. Hill states that enthusiasm is a vital force that can be developed and used. The procedure to develop it is simple – do the kind of work you like and make sure your actions are leading toward the achievement of your definite chief aim. According to Hill, the main power of enthusiasm is that it is contagious – which magnifies its power. Hill mentions a sales insight: it is not so much what you say as it is the tone and manner in which you say it that makes a lasting impression. In this example, enthusiasm makes all the difference in the world. To sell others, you must first sell yourself. Quoting Napoleon Hill: "No one can afford to express, through words or acts, anything that is not in harmony with their own belief-and if they do, they must pay by their loss of their ability to influence others." He illustrates this by describing a lucrative opportunity presented to him by a foreign government to visit their country and write favorable impressions and opinions about their political system. The money offered was more than he could ever hope to spend in his lifetime – yet he refused because he did not believe in the political system of the country. Therefore, he knew his writing would be ineffective. Hill tells us to write out our definite chief aim, in clear, simple language and read it nightly before retiring. This allows enthusiasm to build. Hill states that "enthusiasm is the mainspring of the mind that urges one to put knowledge into action". The author continues this lesson with a discussion of the psychology of clothing. Being well-dressed makes a great impression on all current and potential business associates, as well as increasing the wearer's enthusiasm and self-confidence. Hill concludes this lesson with a discussion of what he calls "the seven deadly horsemen": intolerance, greed, revenge, egotism, suspicion, jealousy and "?". Hill describes the destructive effects of the six "horsemen" listed and challenges the reader to ask how many of these destructive influences affect him or her. He then asks the reader to take inventory and give the seventh "horseman ("?") a name that fits whatever they find in their own mind (i.e., dishonesty, procrastination, uncontrolled sex drive, etc.). The purpose here is to see yourself as you are-and as others see you-then work on correcting these character flaws. Lesson Eight is Self-Control. Hill states that without self-control, the enthusiasm in the previous lesson "resembles the unharnessed lightning of an electrical storm – it may strike anywhere; it may destroy life and property. Enthusiasm arouses action, and self-control directs that action in a constructive way. Hill states that the overwhelming percentage of prison inmates is incarcerated because they lacked the necessary self-control to channel their energies constructively. Conversely, the one common quality of successful people is self-control. No one in fact can really control another person. Trying to do so is an act of force and waste of time and results in negative consequences. Exhibiting self-control is realizing and exhibiting your inner power. Lack of self-control, on the other hand, displays weakness. One method the author mentions to prevent a loss of self-control is not forming an opinion before knowing the facts. Too many folks form their opinions based upon what they believe are the facts-not the true facts themselves. Spending beyond one's means is another lack of self-control to be aware of. The key to this lesson is this: self-control will enable you to control your appetite and the tendency to spend more than you earn... and the habit of "striking back" at those who offend you, as well as other destructive habits which result in a waste of energy through non-productive efforts. Hill's powerful summation of this lesson is this: "You have the power to control your thoughts and direct them to do your bidding." Self-control is solely a matter of thought control-and we have complete control over our own thoughts. That is Hill's method of mastering self-control. Do not allow outside forces to unduly influence you – think for yourself, but think with rock-solid precision. All successful people grade high of self-control. All "failures" grade low, generally zero, on this most important law of human conduct. Lesson Nine is "The Habit Of Doing More Than Paid For." Hill tells us that some people love their work, but many hate what they do for a living. Therefore, "you are most efficient and will more quickly and easily succeed when engaged in work that you love, or work that you perform on behalf of some person you love." Hill states that if you are doing the type of work you love, it is no hardship to do more and better work than you are paid for. He uses himself as an example. His passion and true calling in life was discovering and sharing the secrets of success, and therefore he had no problem overcoming any obstacles that could have prevented him from doing that. Hill mentions two benefits of doing what you love: happiness (which is priceless) and earning far more money. Hill also states that family and friends may disapprove of following your passion, but you must push on, regardless of the opinions of others. Lesson Ten is "A Pleasing Personality." Hill defines a pleasing personality as "a personality that attracts" and devotes this lesson to looking at and creating the causes of attraction. Taking a genuine interest in other people is important in attraction, and he uses an example of a very effective saleswoman who focused her initial meeting with Hill on him – his work and accomplishments – not on her product. This simple idea is all too often forgotten by many salesmen who use the pronoun "I" far more than "you". Hill's point is that forming a relationship with a potential customer should always come before the actual sale. If this is done, there is no need to sale-the customer will insist on buying. Hill warns us that cheap flattery will not replace genuine heart interest. Another point brought out in this lesson sums up Hill's entire philosophy and purpose: Do not look at successful people with envy. Instead, objectively analyze their methods and appreciate the price they had to pay in their careful and well-organized preparation and efforts. Hill concludes this lesson with a formula for building character. First, imagine people who have the type of character you wish to possess, then proceed to take on those qualities through autosuggestion. Create in your imagination a meeting with them and write out a detailed statement of the qualities you wish to assume from them with their council. Actually see these figures seated around an imaginary table. Then keep your thoughts focused in a positive manner as you listen to their advice and guidance, and keep in mind the kind of person you would like to be, relying on the advice and examples of those sitting at that table. Also, never forget to give praise to the genuine good qualities you see in others. Hill promises this will bring the law of attraction into play-almost magically. To sum this lesson up: the seven key factors of a pleasing personality are: # Form the habit of interesting yourself in other people, and make it your business to find their good qualities and speak of them in terms of praise. # Develop the ability to speak with force and conviction, both in your ordinary conversational tones and before public gatherings, where you must use more volume. # Dress in a style that is becoming to you and appropriate to the work in which you are engaged. # Develop a positive character, through the aid of the methods outlined in this lesson. # Learn how to shake hands so that you will express warmth and enthusiasm through this form of greeting. # Attract other people to you by first "attracting yourself" to them. # Remember that your only limitation, within reason, is the one that you set up in your own mind. Lesson 11 is Accurate Thinking. According to Hill, this is the most important, the most interesting, and the most difficult-to-present lesson of the entire course. Hill states that Accurate Thinking involves two things: Separating fact from information and separating fact into two classes: important/unimportant or relevant/irrelevant. The ability to make this distinction is so important, Hill tells us, because the accurate thinker will not believe anything he hears. Instead, he will arrive at a conclusion only after careful, thoughtful analysis. Hill cautions us to beware of any self-interest from the provider of evidence, since this may have a huge impact on what they are saying and seeing. If we don't have hard facts, Hill instructs us to "form your own judgment on the part of the evidence before you that furthers your own interest without working any hardship on others... and is based on facts." Hill states that the key to accurate thinking is what he calls "creative thought", which allows us to tap into "infinite intelligence." The first step to creative thought is autosuggestion – suggestions you make to yourself. The subconscious mind records the suggestions we send it, and invokes the aid of infinite intelligence to turn these suggestions into action. Hill reminds us that the subconscious mind accepts any and all suggestions, constructive or destructive – and cautions us to be careful what we suggest – facts only, no slander, for slander is poisonous to the subconscious mind and ruins creative thought. Hill concludes this lesson by reminding us that the subconscious mind does not question the source from which it receives orders, but will direct the body to carry out any order it receives. Therefore, it is vitally important we are careful about how and from where we receive suggestions. Lesson 12 is Concentration. Hill defines concentration as "the act of focusing the mind on a given desire until ways and means for its realization have been worked out and successfully put into operation." Two important laws enter into this principle: The Law of Autosuggestion (covered extensively in previous lessons) and The Law of Habit. Hill states that habit grows out of environment, and out of doing the same thing the same way, over and over again, out of repetition – and thinking the same thoughts. Therefore, Hill reminds us of the importance of selecting our environment with great care. Hill states that bad habits can be turned into good ones. Habits are created by repetition, and the best way to break old bad habits is to replace them by forming new good ones. Form new mental paths, and the old ones will become weaker. Hill tells us to out enthusiasm into forming a new habit, concentrate on it and travel the new path as often as possible. Also, resist the temptation to go down the old path. According to Hill, the first step in creating a good environment is to consider your Definite Chief Aim, and design your environment to best help you achieve it. This begins with your close associates-make sure they support your goals. Concentration is the ability to keep your mind focused on one subject until you have mastered it. Also, the ability to control your attention, and solve any problem, the ability to throw off bad habits and attain self-mastery are also included in the definition of concentration. These abilities are helped by constantly keeping your Definite Chief Aim in mind. The most important part of this lesson is this: When two or more people ally themselves for the purpose of attaining a goal, their power is greatly increased. Hill calls this the power of organized effort. Hill describes several examples of powerful and successful alliances. Hill describes a third subject relating to concentration: memory. Hill provides a detailed formula to retain, recall and recognize information (using association), and using it effectively. Hill then provides fascinating examples of crowd psychology, which serve to further illustrate the power of the master group. Hill concludes this lesson by saying it is possible for anyone to develop the ability to "tune in" and understand the thoughts of others through what he calls "the universal mind," which is very similar to what psychologist Carl Jung called "the collective unconscious". The author then uses more examples to emphasize the important idea of the master mind – cooperation between like-minded individuals. Lesson 13 is Cooperation. Hill defines cooperation as "the beginning of all organized effort." He discussed two forms of cooperation. The first is cooperation between people who group themselves together or form alliances for the purpose of attaining a given end (the mastermind group). The second form of cooperation he discusses is between the conscious and the subconscious minds of an individual, or what he calls Infinite Intelligence. Hill describes how the conscious and subconscious minds work together, and gives suggestion on how to direct this process to help us attain the goals of our Definite Chief Aim. Next, Hill discusses group cooperation. He mentions that nearly all successful businesses are conducted under some form of cooperation, and cooperation is the foundation of all successful leadership. The key point Hill emphasizes here is this: It is vitally important for individuals to surround themselves with people who have the talents and skills which they themselves lack. No one succeeds alone. Hill finishes this lesson with a discussion of the importance of taking action, and gives a detailed plan on how to become active. Lesson 14 is Profiting by Failure. Hill gives a different slant on the word failure. He states that failure is normally a negative word, but he distinguishes failure from temporary defeat, and temporary defeat can be a blessing in disguise. Hill also tells us that sound character is often the product of reversals and setbacks, and temporary defeat should be looked upon as a teacher of some needed lesson. Hill lists several examples from his personal life about succeeding then experiencing setbacks-and describes the correct mindset for overcoming these setbacks. In retrospect, he was thankful for experiencing so much defeat, since it had the effect of giving him the courage to attempt things he wouldn't have tried if his early life would have been easier. Quoting Hill: "Defeat is a destructive force only when it is accepted as failure. When accepted as teaching some needed lesson, it is always a blessing." The message of this lesson can be summed up as follows: There ultimately is no failure. What appears to be failure is usually a minor setback in disguise. Ensure you do not accept it as permanent! Lesson 15 is Tolerance. Hill begins by describing the destructive effects of intolerance. According to Hill, intolerance clouds the mind of the individual and stops his moral, mental and spiritual development. He urges us to question the foundation of our beliefs – make sure the foundation is sound, and based on reality and truth. Hill outlines a plan for the abolition of war. In hindsight, Hill was overly idealistic. However, these ideas lead him into a discussion of the principle of organized effort. Simply put, regardless of the business one is engaged in, cooperation and tolerance can be of tremendous help in achieving one's Definite Chief Aim. Lesson 16 is The Golden Rule. Hill begins this lesson by stating that this principle is "the guiding star that will enable you to profitably and constructively use the knowledge assembled in the previous lessons". Hill states that following this law is the only way to apply the power that the preceding lessons provide. The Golden Rule essentially means to do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you if your positions were reversed. Hill stresses the fact that all of your actions and thoughts will come back to you, for better or worse. Hill tells us that it is not enough to merely believe in the philosophy of the Golden Rule; one must apply it. The key to this lesson is this: the Golden Rule, when understood and applied, makes dishonesty, selfishness, greed, envy, hatred and malice impossible. One must be scrupulously honest, and realize you are punishing yourself by every wrong you commit, and rewarding yourself by every act of constructive conduct. Hill further states that we benefit by applying the Golden Rule, even if it is not reciprocated. How? Because of the positive effect on our subconscious mind, and the development of stronger, more positive character. Hill concludes this lesson by stating that labor and capital have a mutual and common interest. Neither can permanently prosper without the prosperity of the other. They are parts of one body. If labor is the arm, capital is the blood – and each must care for the other – by using the Golden Rule as a guide. Lesson 17 is The Universal law of Cosmic Habitforce, which may be interpreted as an early conceptualization of the Law of Attraction. A somewhat abstruse concept to modern readers, Dr. Hill defines Cosmic Habitforce as "the universal law through which nature affixes all habits so that they may carry on automatically once they have been put into motion". Hill states that Cosmic Habitforce is the reason why success attracts success, and failure attracts failure. The law of Cosmic Habitforce transmits the "success consciousness" from the mind of the successful person to the mind of the unsuccessful one when they are closely associated in daily life. The key to this lesson is this: Whenever two minds connect, a third mind is created, patterned after the stronger of the two – for better or for worse. Many successful people can trace their success directly to the time they began a close association with someone who possessed the positive mental attitude that they were able to copy. Even though Cosmic Habitforce is silent and unseen, it is the basis of everything tangible and concrete. As with all of Hill's preceding lessons, Cosmic Habitforce begins with thoughts, which become habits. A fascinating example of Cosmic Habitforce is this: most successful people have usually experienced severe challenges and failures, which forced them to change their habits. Habits that led them to failure are replaced with habits that led them to success. Hill concludes this lesson with a review of the previous lessons, and reminds us that these lessons constitute an army – and if any one "soldier" is removed or one lesson underdeveloped, the entire army is weakened. * You must watch for every opportunity to apply and empower the law of the Master Mind. * Before you can have power, you must have a Definite Chief Aim-a definite purpose. * You must have self-confidence with which to back up your purpose. * You must have initiative and leadership with which to exercise your self-confidence. * You must have imagination in creating your definite purpose and in building the plans with which to transform that purpose into reality and put your plans into action. * You must mix enthusiasm with your action or it will be bland and weak. * You must exercise firm self-control. * You must form the habit of doing more than paid for. * You must cultivate a pleasing personality. * You must acquire the habit of saving. * You must use accurate thinking, remembering, as you develop this quality, that accurate thought is based upon identifiable facts and not upon hearsay evidence or mere information. * You must form the habit of concentration by giving your undivided attention to but one task at a time. * You must acquire the habit of cooperation and practice it in all your plans. * You must profit by failure, your own and that of others. * You must cultivate the habit of tolerance. * You must make the Golden rule the foundation of all you do that affects other people. * You must make use of The Universal law of Cosmic Habitforce, through which all of these principles can be applied to transform not only your thoughts but also your habits. All efficient armies are disciplined. Likewise, the army you are building in your own mind must also be disciplined. It must obey your command at every step.
676647	/m/03222p	Night Watch	Terry Pratchett	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On the morning of the 30th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution of the Twenty-Fifth of May (and as such the anniversary of the death of John Keel, Vimes' hero and former mentor), Sam Vimes is caught in a magical storm while pursuing Carcer Dun, a notorious criminal. He awakens to find that he has been rescued by Miss Palm (whom Vimes knows in the future as Mrs Palm, Head of the Guild of Seamstresses – seamstresses referring to prostitutes). He determines that he has somehow been sent back in time. Vimes's first idea is to ask the wizards at the Unseen University to send him home, but before he can act on this, he is arrested for breaking curfew by a younger version of himself. Incarcerated in a cell next to his is Carcer, who after being released joins the Unmentionables, the secret police carrying out the paranoid whims of the Patrician of the time, Lord Winder. When he is taken to be interrogated by the captain, time is frozen by Lu-Tze, who tells Vimes what has happened and that he must assume the identity of Sergeant-At-Arms John Keel, who was to have arrived that day but was murdered by Carcer. It is stated that the event which caused Vimes and Carcer to be sent into the past was a major temporal shattering. Vimes then returns to the office, time restarts and he convinces the captain that he is Keel. Young Vimes believes Vimes to be Keel, allowing Vimes to teach Young Vimes the lessons for which Vimes idolized Keel. The novel climaxes in the Revolution. Vimes, taking command of the watchmen, successfully avoids the major bloodshed erupting all over the city and manages to keep his part of it relatively peaceful. After dealing with the Unmentionables' headquarters he has his haphazard forces barricade a few streets to keep people safe from the fighting between rebels and soldiers. However, the barricades are gradually pushed forward during the night (by Fred Colon and several other simple-minded watchmen) to encompass the surrounding streets until Vimes finds himself in control of a quarter of the city, dubbed "The Glorious People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road", with a still alive Reg Shoe as one of the leading figures. The ruler, Lord Winder, is effectively assassinated by the young Assassin's Guild student Havelock Vetinari, and the new Patrician Lord Snapcase calls for a complete amnesty. However, he sees Keel as a threat and sends Carcer to lead a death squard of Unmentionables, watchmen and the palace guard to murder Keel. Several policemen (the ones who died when the barricade fell in the original timeline) are killed in the battle as is Reg Shoe; Vimes manages to fight off the attack until he can grab Carcer, at which point they are returned to the future and Keel's body is placed in the timeline Vimes has just left, to tie things up, as in the "real" history, Keel died in that fight. Vimes' son is born, with the help of Doctor "Mossy" Lawn, whom Vimes met while in the past, and Vimes finally arrests Carcer, promising him a fair trial before he is hanged. A subsequent conversation with Lord Vetinari reveals that the Patrician alone knows Vimes took Keel's place, also that he fought with Keel's men against Carcer's death squad. He proposes that the old Watch House at Treacle Mine Road (where Keel was sergeant, and which was destroyed by the dragon in Guards! Guards!) be rebuilt.
676751	/m/0322hl	The Bonesetter's Daughter	Amy Tan	2001-02-19		 Ruth is a self-sufficient woman who makes her living as a ghostwriter for self-help books. She lives with her long-term boyfriend, Art Kamen, and acts as a stepmother to Art's two teenage daughters from a previous marriage, Dory and Fia. Meanwhile, as LuLing is showing signs of dementia, Ruth struggles to juggle her mother's illness, her job, and her relationship. As an adult, Ruth struggles to understand her mother and her strange behavior during Ruth's childhood. Although she loves her mother, she also resents her for having criticized her harshly when she was young and forcing her to obey strict rules. LuLing believed that young Ruth had the ability to communicate with the spirit world, and often expected her to produce messages from the ghost of LuLing's long-dead nursemaid, Precious Auntie, by writing on a sand tray. LuLing's autobiography makes up the middle section of the book. This story within a story describes LuLing's early life in a small Chinese village called Immortal Heart. LuLing is raised by a mute, burned nursemaid called "Precious Auntie." It is later revealed that Precious Auntie sustained her injuries by swallowing burning ink resin. Although the oldest daughter in her family, LuLing is ignored by her mother in favor of her younger sister GaoLing. However, Precious Auntie was entirely devoted to caring for LuLing. LuLing's story goes further back, describing Precious Auntie's childhood as the daughter of a local bonesetter. The teen-aged Precious Auntie is the only person who knows the location of a hidden cave where many ancient "dragon bones" can be found, knowledge that she retains even after being burned and coming to live with LuLing's family. After the discovery of the Peking Man, fossilized bones and information about where they might be found becomes extremely valuable. A local family, the Changs, wish to arrange a marriage between LuLing and their son Fu Nan because they believe that LuLing can lead them to the fossil cave. LuLing's family approves of the marriage, but Precious Auntie violently opposes it. Unable to speak in detail, she writes LuLing a long letter explaining her reasons, but LuLing does not read it to its end. Only after Precious Auntie's death does LuLing learn that her nursemaid was actually her mother, and that the woman she had thought to be her mother is actually her father's sister. After Precious Auntie's death, GaoLing marries Fu Nan and LuLing is sent away to a Christian orphanage where she completes her education, grows up and becomes a teacher. Here, she meets her first husband, Pan Kai Jing. LuLing lives in the orphanage as a teacher through World War II, often going to extreme lengths to protect the students from the Japanese soldiers and other dangers. A few years later she is reunited with GaoLing. The two "sisters" immigrate to America separately and marry a pair of brothers, Edmund and Edwin. LuLing's second husband dies from a hit and run accident when Ruth was two years old. Ruth struggles growing up as the child of a single parent who believes in curses. Once Ruth learns the details of her mother's past, she gains a new understanding of her and her seemingly erratic behavior. Answers to both women's problems unfold as LuLing's story is finally revealed in its entirety.
677813	/m/03252g	Nightfall	Robert Silverberg	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The fictional planet Lagash (Kalgash in the novel adaptation) is located in a stellar system containing six suns (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta are the only ones named in the short story; Onos, Dovim, Trey, Patru, Tano, and Sitha in the novel), which keep the whole planet continuously illuminated; total darkness is unknown, and as a result so are stars outside the stellar system. A group of scientists from Saro University begins to make a series of related discoveries: Sheerin&nbsp;501, a psychologist, researches the effects of prolonged exposure to darkness, Siferra&nbsp;89, an archaeologist, finds evidence of multiple cyclical collapses of civilization regularly occurring approximately every two thousand years, and Beenay&nbsp;25 is an astronomer who discovered irregularities in the orbit of Lagash around its primary sun Onos. Beenay takes his findings to his superior at the university, Aton, who formulated the Theory of Universal Gravitation (the in-story discussion of same making light of an article once written about Einstein's Theory of Relativity, referencing the false notion that "only twelve men" could understand it). This forces the astronomers at Saro University to attempt to find an answer to what is causing this anomaly. Eventually it is discovered that the only thing that could be causing the deviation is an astronomical body that orbits Lagash. Beenay, through his friend Theremon&nbsp;762 (a reporter), has learned some of the beliefs of the group known as the Cult ("Apostles of Flame" in the novel). They believe the world would be destroyed in a darkness with the appearance of stars that unleash a torrent of fire. Beenay combines what he has learned about the repetitive collapses at the digsite, and the new theory with the potential of eclipses and concludes that once every 2049 years the one sun visible is eclipsed, resulting in a brief 'night'. Since the current population of Lagash has never experienced universal darkness, the scientists conclude that the darkness itself would traumatize the people and that the inhabitants of the planet would need to prepare accordingly. When nightfall occurs, however, the scientists (who have prepared themselves for darkness) and the rest of the planet are most surprised by the sight of hitherto-invisible stars outside the six-star system filling the sky. The short story does not dramatize events after darkness arrives, but in the novel and X&nbsp;Minus One program, civil disorder breaks out; cities are destroyed in massive fires and civilization collapses, with the ashes of the fallen civilization and the competing groups trying to seize control.
677885	/m/03254n	Less Than Zero	Bret Easton Ellis	1985	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Titled after the Elvis Costello song of the same name, the novel follows the life of Clay, a rich young college student who has returned to his hometown of Los Angeles, California for winter break during the early 1980s. Through stream of consciousness, first person narration, Clay describes his progressive alienation from the youth party scene, loss of faith in his friends, and his meditations on important events in his recent past. After reuniting with his friend Trent, now a successful model, Clay embarks on a series of drug-fueled nights of partying, during which he picks up various men and women for one-night-stands. While partying, he tries to track down with two high school acquaintances: his ex-girlfriend Blair, with whom he spent a disastrous week-long vacation before going to college, and his best friend Julian, with whom he hasn't spoken for months. In between parties, Clay looks back on a vacation spent with his parents and grandparents, during which he seemed to be the only person concerned that his grandmother was dying of cancer. Over time, Clay becomes progressively disillusioned with the party scene as he witnesses the apathy of his friends towards the suffering of one another and those around them: at one party, he watches as the revelers joke and take Polaroids of his friend, Muriel, while she shoots heroin; at another, he and Blair are the only two who exhibit revulsion when Trent shows a snuff film, which sexually excites several partygoers. Clay ultimately tracks down Julian, whom he learns has become a heroin addict and turned to prostitution in order to pay off a debt to his drug dealer. Not believing what he has been told, Clay insists on accompanying Julian on a job, where he is forced by a male john to watch the man and Julian have sex for several hours. After attending a concert with his friends, Clay accompanies them to a derelict alley where they stare at the corpse of a murder victim which they have left there to decompose. Afterward, Clay follows the group back to the home of his drug dealer, Rip, who wants to show off his latest acquisition: a twelve-year-old sex slave whom Rip has been keeping drugged in his bedroom. After Clay admonishes Rip that he has no reason to risk losing everything he has, Rip chides him that he "has nothing to lose" before encouraging everyone to abuse the girl. Clay leaves, but Trent decides to stay so that he can rape the girl. Now feeling completely isolated and with winter break coming to an end, Clay returns to college in New England.
678698	/m/0326l5	Oku no Hosomichi	Basho			 Oku no Hosomichi was written based on a journey taken by Bashō in the late spring of 1689. He and his traveling companion Kawai Sora (河合曾良) departed from Edo (modern-day Tokyo) for the northerly interior region known as Oku, propelled mostly by a desire to see the places about which the old poets wrote Specifically, he was emulating Saigyō, whom Bashō praised as the greatest waka poet; Bashō made a point of visiting all the sites mentioned in Saigyō's verse. Travel in those days was very dangerous, but Bashō was committed to a kind of poetic ideal of wandering. He traveled for about 156 days altogether, covering almost , mostly on foot. Of all of Bashō's works, this is the best known. This poetic diary is in the form known as haibun, a combination of prose and haiku. It contains many references to Confucius, Saigyō, Du Fu, ancient Chinese poetry, and even The Tale of the Heike. It manages to strike a delicate balance between all the elements to produce a powerful account. It is primarily a travel account, and Bashō vividly relates the unique poetic essence of each stop in his travels. Stops on his journey include the Tokugawa shrine at Nikkō, the Shirakawa barrier, the islands of Matsushima, Hiraizumi, Sakata, Kisakata, and Etchū. He and Sora parted at Yamanaka, but at Ōgaki he briefly met up with a few of his other disciples before departing again to the Ise Shrine and closing the account. After his journey, he spent five years working and reworking the poems and prose of Oku no Hosomichi before publishing it. Based on differences between draft versions of the account, Sora's diary, and the final version, it is clear that Bashō took a number of artistic liberties in the writing. An example of this is that in the Senjūshu ("Selection of Tales") attributed to Saigyō, the narrator is passing through Eguchi when he is driven by a storm to seek shelter in the nearby cottage of a prostitute; this leads to an exchange of poems, after which he spends the night there. Bashō similarly includes in Oku no Hosomichi a tale of him having an exchange with prostitutes staying in the same inn, but Sora mentions nothing.
680079	/m/032bv5	That Was Then, This Is Now	S. E. Hinton	1960	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Since childhood, Bryon Douglas and Mark Jennings have been like brothers, but now times are changing. Bryon is growing up and thinking about who he wants to be, but Mark is still living for the thrill of the moment. The book starts out with their mom being in the hospital. She is Bryon's birth mother, and Mark's adoptive mother. Mark's parents died in an argument with each other when they were both drunk and ended up shooting each other. So Mark and Bryon have to make money to help support the family while their mom is in the hospital getting surgery. Bryon gets a job at the local supermarket while Mark starts bringing in lots of cash. Bryon doesn't ask where its from. Towards the end of the book, Byron discovers that Mark has been getting his money by selling drugs to hippies. Bryon is horrified since a 13 year old kid they know, named M&M, went missing and lost his mind because of someone selling him drugs. Bryon is shocked about Mark's new job and calls the police. He waits for Mark to come home. He tells Mark he found the drugs and Mark says that he will stop if it makes Bryon upset. Bryon says it it is too late, that he already called the police. Mark is surprised, he does not believe that it is true. The police come and take Mark away to a reformatory school. Later, he acts up frequently and is sent to prison for a long time. A couple months after Bryon calls the police, he goes to visit Mark in the reformatory school. Mark says that he wanted to see Bryon because he needed to make sure he hated him.
680272	/m/032c9l	From a Buick 8	Stephen King	2002-09-24	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is a series of recollections by the members of Troop D, a state police barracks in Western Pennsylvania. After Curtis Wilcox, a well-liked member of Troop D, is killed by a drunk driver, his son Ned begins to visit Troop D. The cops, the dispatcher and the custodian quickly take a liking to him, and soon begin telling him about the "Buick 8" of the title. It is in some sense a ghost story in the way that the novel is about a group of people telling an old but unsettling tale. And while the Buick 8 is not a traditional ghost, it is indeed not of their world. The Buick 8 resembles a vintage 1953 Buick Roadmaster, and was left at a gas station by a mysterious man dressed in black, who disappeared soon after leaving the car to be refueled. The car is later held by the Troop D police of rural Pennsylvania in storage shed B. The car, they discover, is not a car at all. It appears to be a Buick Roadmaster, but the steering wheel is immobile, the dashboard instruments are useless props, the engine has no moving parts and ignition wires that go nowhere, the car heals itself when scratched or dented, and all dirt and debris are repelled by it. Sandy Dearborn, now Sergeant Commanding of Troop D, is the main narrator of the book, and tells the story to Ned, discussing various things that have happened with the car, and his father's fascination with it. The car will frequently give off what they dub "lightquakes," or large flashes of purple light over an extended period of time, and will occasionally "give birth" to strange plants and creatures that aren't anything like what they've seen in their world. Two people have disappeared in the vicinity of the car—Curtis Wilcox's former partner Ennis Rafferty, and an escaped lowlife named Brian Lippy they picked up for drunk driving and being under the influence of angel dust. It is later suggested in the book that perhaps the Buick was a portal, between our world and another. After hearing the story of the Buick and how it has been kept secret by Troop D for so long, Ned becomes convinced that the car was somehow related to the death of his father in a seemingly random road accident. After all, the gas station attendant who first reported the Buick sitting in front of the station was the same man who, years later, would kill his father. Ned is determined to destroy the Buick, but before he can Sandy Dearborn realizes that the Buick, in fact, wants to take Ned into the world it connects to ours. Sandy returns to the shed to find Ned sitting in it, Ned having poured gasoline under the car and holding a pistol and a match. Just as Sandy pulls Ned out, the Buick transforms into a portal, trying to draw both Ned and Sandy inside of it. The rest of the staff arrive on the feeling something bad may happen, all of them helping recall the story of the Buick's origin at their station, and manage to pull Ned and Sandy free, but not before Sandy glimpses into the world on the other side of the Buick. He sees Lippy's Swastika necklace and cowboy boot, along with Ennis's Stetson and Ruger. The book closes with Ned joining the police force after dropping out of college, and he pulls Sandy over to shed B. The Buick's window is cracked, and remains cracked without healing itself. Ned believes that the Buick will one day fall apart, having expended the last of its energy in that final attempt to draw him over to the other universe.
681279	/m/032gb8	Three Men in a Boat	Jerome K. Jerome	1889	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ==Reception and history== The reception by critics varied between lukewarm and hostile. The use of slang was condemned as "vulgar" and the book was derided as written to appeal to " 'Arrys and 'Arriets" - then common sneering terms for working-class Londoners who dropped their Hs when speaking. Punch magazine dubbed Jerome " 'Arry K. 'Arry". Modern commentators have praised the humour, but criticized the book's unevenness as the humorous sections are interspersed with more serious passages written in a sentimental, sometimes purple, style. Yet the book sold in huge numbers. "I pay Jerome so much in royalties," the publisher told a friend, "I cannot imagine what becomes of all the copies of that book I issue. I often think the public must eat them." The first edition was published in August 1889 and serialised in the popular magazine Home Chimes in the same year. The first edition remained in print from 1889 until March 1909, when the second edition was issued. During that time, 202,000 copies were sold. Jerome states in the author's introduction to the 1909 second edition, he'd been told another million copies had been sold in America by pirate printers. The book was translated into many languages. The Russian edition was particularly successful and became a standard school textbook. Jerome later complained in a letter to The Times of Russian books not written by him, published under his name in order to benefit from his success. Since its publication, Three Men in a Boat has never been out of print. It continues to be popular to the current day, with The Guardian ranking it #33 on The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time in 2003, and Esquire ranking it #2 in the 50 Funniest Books Ever in 2009. The river trip is easy to re-create, following the detailed description, and this is sometimes done by fans of the book. Much of the route remains unchanged. For example, all the pubs and inns named are still open.The Blue Posts, 81 Newman Street, London;The Royal Stag and the Manor House at Datchet; The Crown at Marlow; The George and Dragon at Wargrave; The Bull at Sonning; The Swan at Pangbourne; The Bull at Streatley; and The Barley Mow at Clifton Hampden. The Bells of Ousley at Old Windsor still exists, but the building was demolished and rebuilt in 1936. It is now part of the Harvester chain. A re-creation in 1993 by poet Kim Taplin and companions resulted in the travelogue Three Women in a Boat The book was also referenced in the 1956 parody novel on mountaineering, The Ascent of Rum Doodle, where the head porter Bing is said to spend "much of his leisure immersed in a Yogistani translation of Three men in a boat". In Have Space Suit—Will Travel, by Robert A. Heinlein, the main character's father is an obsessive fan of the book, and spends much of his spare time repeatedly re-reading it. Science-fiction author Connie Willis paid tribute to Jerome's novel in her own 1997 Hugo Award-winning book To Say Nothing of the Dog. Her time-travelling protagonist also takes an ill-fated voyage on the Thames with two humans and a dog as companions, and encounters George, Harris, 'J' and Montmorency. The title of Willis' novel refers to the full title of the original book, "Three Men in a Boat - To Say Nothing of the Dog!". This story ends telling that one should be witty as well as should have a sense of humour where necessary
682421	/m/032l8y	Galápagos	Kurt Vonnegut	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who are shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalia in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis cripples the world's economy. Shortly thereafter, a disease renders all humans on Earth infertile, with the exception of the people on Santa Rosalia, making them the last specimens of humankind. Over the next million years, their descendants, the only fertile humans left on the planet, eventually evolve into a furry species resembling seals: though possibly still able to walk upright (it is not explicitly mentioned, but it is stated that they occasionally catch land animals), they have a snout with teeth adapted for catching fish, a streamlined skull and flipper-like hands with rudimentary fingers (described as "nubbins"). The story's narrator is a spirit who has been watching over humans for the last million years. This particular ghost is the immortal spirit of Leon Trotsky Trout, son of Vonnegut's recurring character Kilgore Trout. Leon, a Vietnam War veteran who is affected by the massacres in Vietnam,. He goes AWOL and settles in Sweden, where he works as a shipbuilder and dies during the construction of the ship, the Bahía de Darwin. This ship is used for the "Nature Cruise of the Century". Planned as a celebrity cruise, it was in limbo due to the economic downturn, and due to a chain of unconnected events the ship ended up in allowing humans to reach and survive in the Galápagos. Kilgore Trout—deceased—makes four appearances in the novel, urging his son to enter the "blue tunnel" that leads to the afterlife. When Leon refuses for the fourth time, Kilgore pledges that he, and the blue tunnel, will not return for one million years, which leaves Leon to observe the slow process of evolution that transforms the humans into aquatic mammals. The process begins when a Japanese woman on the island, the granddaughter of a Hiroshima survivor, gives birth to a fur-covered daughter. Trout maintains that all the sorrows of humankind were caused by "the only true villain in my story: the oversized human brain". Fortunately, natural selection eliminates this problem, since the humans best fitted to Santa Rosalia were those who could swim best, which required a streamlined head, which in turn required a smaller brain.
684924	/m/032t6v	The Te of Piglet	Benjamin Hoff	1992		 The Te of Piglet is based around two topics, the concept of Te, the Chinese word meaning 'power' or 'virtue', and Piglet of the Winnie the Pooh books. Hoff elucidates the Taoist concept of 'Virtue — of the small'; though, he also uses it as an opportunity to elaborate on his introduction to Taoism. It is written with many embedded stories from the A. A. Milne Winnie the Pooh books, both for entertainment and because they serve as tools for explaining Taoism. In the book Piglet is shown to possess great power — a common interpretation of the word Te, which more commonly means Virtue — not only because he is small, but also because he has a great heart or, to use a Taoist term, Tz'u. The book goes through the other characters — Tigger, Owl, Rabbit, Eeyore and Pooh — to show the various aspects of humanity that Taoism says get in the way of living in harmony with the Tao.
689802	/m/032_fh	The Jesus Incident	Frank Herbert	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book takes place at an indeterminate time following the events in Destination: Void. At the end of Destination: Void the crew of the ship had succeeded in creating an artificial consciousness. The new conscious being, now known as 'Ship', gains a level of awareness that allows it to manipulate space and time. Ship instantly transports itself to a planet which it has decided the crew will colonize. The first book ends with a demand from Ship for the crew to learn how to WorShip or how to establish a relationship with Ship, a godlike being. The action of the book is divided between two settings, the internal spaces of Ship which is orbiting Pandora and the settlements on the planet. While the original crew of Ship, as described in Destination: Void, were cloned human beings from the planet Earth, by the time of The Jesus Incident, the crew has become a mixed bag of peoples from various cultures that have been accepted as crew members by Ship when it visited their planet as well as people who have been conceived and born on the ship. Evidently Ship has shown up at a number of planets as the suns of those planets were going nova. Implied is that the various planets were other, failed experiments by Ship to establish a relationship with human beings. Ship refers to these as replays of human history, suggesting Ship itself has manipulated human history time and time again. The Jesus Incident begins at a long, but indeterminate, time after the ending of Destination: Void. Ship's charge for humans to decide how to WorShip still remains unsatisfied. In The Jesus Incident, Ship has delivered the humans to a new planet, Pandora, upon which they are attempting to establish a colony. In the opening chapters, Ship reveals that Pandora will be a final test for the human race. Ship awakens the Chaplain/Psychiatrist Raja Flattery (part of the original Destination: Void crew that created the artificial consciousness of Ship) from hybernation, and reveals to him the true nature of this test. He tasks Flattery with intervening in the society which has developed on Pandora to solve this riddle of WorShip. Flattery is to help the humans to pass Ship's test or else risk the destruction of the race. Flattery assumes the name of Raja Thomas to mask his identity from the other shipmen. The surface of the planet Pandora is 80% seas, and the sea is dominated by a type of kelp which appears to be sentient. The land is overrun by a number of deadly predators who are efficient killers, requiring people on the planet surface to adapt to a highly stressful lifestyle living within a fortress. The main fortress is known as Colony, a small city that is predominately underground. When The Jesus Incident begins there have been three failed attempts at colonization of the surface. The current colony is starting a second colonization site, known as The Redoubt. In addition to Raja Flattery, several main characters drive the narrative. Morgan Oakes is the head administrator of both the crew and the colonists and the central provocateur whose actions drive the conflict. Jesus Lewis is his main assistant as well as a biological engineer. Kerro Panille is a poet who has a special relationship with Ship. Legata Hamill is an administrative assistant and data analyst for Morgan Oakes. The planet Pandora itself with its non-human inhabitants is another main character of the book, echoing a strong version of the Gaia Hypothesis. As the book progresses, the reader discovers that the kelp, the hylighters, and other creatures of the planet appear to be linked into a large entity with a shared consciousness, Avata. Jesus Lewis is the manager and chief scientist of Lab One which is a genetic engineering facility that is working on genetically modified clones of human beings in order to develop a class of engineered human beings who can survive the predators of Pandora. The clones are viewed as organic tools much like they were presented in Destination: Void where clones are sent out in specially prepared space ships to create an artificial consciousness. There is a clear social distinction between clones and naturally born human beings, a distinction that in the end leads to the outbreak of a series of battles and confrontations (slave rebellions) between natural humans and clones as conflict over food supplies and assignment of risk escalates. The other major project of Lab One is to create a tool that will eliminate the kelp living in the seas of Pandora. The kelp is viewed by the leadership of the Oakes administration as the major impediment to the exploitation of the seas as a source of food.
690703	/m/0332n1	Soldier X	Don L. Wulffson	2003-07	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 Soldier X takes place during the World War II. The main character of the book is a 16-year-old German boy named Erik Brandt. Although Erik lives in Germany, he is also half-Russian and speaks Russian very fluently, and he is often used as an interpreter for the German army, questioning Russian prisoners of war. Erik shows discontent at being a part of Hitler's Nazi army during World War 2, but he is forced to fight alongside young boys and older veterans alike in terrible conditions. Erik learns to accept several of his German allies as friends, and soon heads into his first battle after living in muddy trenches. After receiving a quick weapons training one day, Erik's platoon is attacked by Russian forces. During the battle, Erik is knocked out. When he awakens, Erik finds that most, if not all, of his friends are now dead, and that the Russians have taken the position from the Germans. Finding a dead Russian soldier nearby, he changes from his German uniform into a Russian army uniform. Since he is wounded, he is then taken to a Russian hospital, mistaken for a Russian due to his understanding of that language. There he meets a nurse, Tamara, who takes care of some of the injured soldiers - including Erik - and would later develop strong feelings for her. After becoming accustomed to hospital life and even volunteering to work around the hospital, Erik quickly makes new friends of his own: injured Russian men like Nikolai and, of course, Tamara and most of the nurses. Erik bonds with Tamara more so when he learns that her brother had died in a battle in the war. Tamara learns of Erik's German origins when Erik accidentally uses profanity in German after burning himself with hot water. Surprisingly, Tamara keeps this a secret, but keeps to herself more often than usual, seeming more quiet and reserved. As this daily routine carries on and Erik meets more and more injured soldiers, Erik especially bonds with one Russian soldier who, due to injuries sustained, would lose both of his legs and be sent back to his family without being able to walk. One day, the hospital is evacuated because of an impending wave of destruction in the of advancing German troops and artillery shellings. Erik escapes with Tamara and flees from any sightings of conflicts. Walking from city to city and looking for food wherever possible, Erik and Tamara travel together and once again reinforce their bond with each other. Their love reaches an epiphany when they kiss each other and proclaim their love for one another after being housed by a kind lady who had lost her son to the war. Eventually, Erik and Tamara are both injured by Allied soldiers. Ordered to cease fire by their commanding officer, the group of Allied, apparently American, soldiers notices that Erik and Tamara are but teenagers and send them to a hospital. Erik awakens to find that he is scarred in a gruesome manner from surgeries, and that he has lost an arm due to a gunshot wound. Tamara walks away with fewer and far less urgent injuries. Despite the grouchy and melancholy mood Erik first shows due to his injuries, he and Tamara make up as the story comes to an end. As time passed,the couple then traveled to the United States and still happily live there today with their children.
691293	/m/0334g5	The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism	Max Weber	1905	{"/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Although not a detailed study of Protestantism but rather an introduction to Weber's later studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economics (The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, and Ancient Judaism), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argues that Puritan ethics and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. Religious devotion, Weber argues, is usually accompanied by a rejection of worldly affairs, including the pursuit of wealth and possessions. To illustrate his theory, Weber quotes the ethical writings of Benjamin Franklin: Weber notes that this is not a philosophy of mere greed, but a statement laden with moral language. Indeed, Franklin claims that God revealed the usefulness of virtue to him. The Reformation profoundly affected the view of work, dignifying even the most mundane professions as adding to the common good and thus blessed by God, as much as any "sacred" calling. A common illustration is that of a cobbler, hunched over his work, who devotes his entire effort to the praise of God. To emphasize the work ethic in Protestantism relative to Catholics, he notes a common problem that industrialists face when employing precapitalist laborers: Agricultural entrepreneurs will try to encourage time spent harvesting by offering a higher wage, with the expectation that laborers will see time spent working as more valuable and so engage it longer. However, in precapitalist societies this often results in laborers spending less time harvesting. Laborers judge that they can earn the same, while spending less time working and having more leisure. He also notes that societies having more Protestants are those that have a more developed capitalist economy. It is particularly advantageous in technical occupations for workers to be extremely devoted to their craft. To view the craft as an end in itself, or as a "calling" would serve this need well. This attitude is well-noted in certain classes which have endured religious education, especially of a Pietist background. He defines spirit of capitalism as the ideas and esprit that favour the rational pursuit of economic gain: "We shall nevertheless provisionally use the expression 'spirit of capitalism' for that attitude which, in the pursuit of a calling [berufsmäßig], strives systematically for profit for its own sake in the manner exemplified by Benjamin Franklin." Weber points out that such a spirit is not limited to Western culture if one considers it as the attitude of individuals, but that such individuals – heroic entrepreneurs, as he calls them – could not by themselves establish a new economic order (capitalism). He further noted that the spirit of capitalism could be divorced from religion, and that those passionate capitalists of his era were either passionate against the Church or at least indifferent to it. Desire for profit with minimum effort and seeing work as a burden to be avoided, and doing no more than what was enough for modest life, were common attitudes. As he wrote in his essays: : After defining the "spirit of capitalism," Weber argues that there are many reasons to find its origins in the religious ideas of the Reformation. Many others like William Petty, Montesquieu, Henry Thomas Buckle, John Keats have noted the affinity between Protestantism and the development of commercialism. Weber shows that certain branches of Protestantism had supported worldly activities dedicated to economic gain, seeing them as endowed with moral and spiritual significance. This recognition was not a goal in itself; rather they were a byproduct of other doctrines of faith that encouraged planning, hard work and self-denial in the pursuit of worldly riches. Weber traced the origins of the Protestant ethic to the Reformation, though he acknowledged some respect for secular everyday labor as early as the Middle Ages. The Roman Catholic Church assured salvation to individuals who accepted the church's sacraments and submitted to the clerical authority. However, the Reformation had effectively removed such assurances. From a psychological viewpoint, the average person had difficulty adjusting to this new worldview, and only the most devout believers or "religious geniuses" within Protestantism, such as Martin Luther, were able to make this adjustment, according to Weber. In the absence of such assurances from religious authority, Weber argued that Protestants began to look for other "signs" that they were saved. Calvin and his followers taught a doctrine of double predestination, in which from the beginning God chose some people for salvation and others for damnation. The inability to influence one's own salvation presented a very difficult problem for Calvin's followers. It became an absolute duty to believe that one was chosen for salvation, and to dispel any doubt about that: lack of self-confidence was evidence of insufficient faith and a sign of damnation. So, self-confidence took the place of priestly assurance of God's grace. Worldly success became one measure of that self-confidence. Luther made an early endorsement of Europe's emerging labor divisions. Weber identifies the applicability of Luther's conclusions, noting that a "vocation" from God was no longer limited to the clergy or church, but applied to any occupation or trade. However, Weber saw the fulfillment of the Protestant ethic not in Lutheranism, which was too concerned with the reception of divine spirit in the soul, but in Calvinistic forms of Christianity. The trend was carried further still in Pietism. The Baptists diluted the concept of the calling relative to Calvinists, but other aspects made its congregants fertile soil for the development of capitalism—namely, a lack of paralyzing ascetism, the refusal to accept state office and thereby develop unpolitically, and the doctrine of control by conscience which caused rigorous honesty. What Weber found, in simple terms: * According to the new Protestant religions, an individual was religiously compelled to follow a secular vocation with as much zeal as possible. A person living according to this world view was more likely to accumulate money. * The new religions (in particular, Calvinism and other more austere Protestant sects) effectively forbade wastefully using hard earned money and identified the purchase of luxuries as a sin. Donations to an individual's church or congregation were limited due to the rejection by certain Protestant sects of icons. Finally, donation of money to the poor or to charity was generally frowned on as it was seen as furthering beggary. This social condition was perceived as laziness, burdening their fellow man, and an affront to God; by not working, one failed to glorify God. The manner in which this paradox was resolved, Weber argued, was the investment of this money, which gave an extreme boost to nascent capitalism. By the time Weber wrote his essay, he believed that the religious underpinnings of the Protestant ethic had largely gone from society. He cited the writings of Benjamin Franklin, which emphasized frugality, hard work and thrift, but were mostly free of spiritual content. Weber also attributed the success of mass production partly to the Protestant ethic. Only after expensive luxuries were disdained, could individuals accept the uniform products, such as clothes and furniture, that industrialization offered. In his remarkably prescient conclusion to the book, Weber lamented that the loss of religious underpinning to capitalism's spirit has led to a kind of involuntary servitude to mechanized industry. Weber maintained that while Puritan religious ideas had significantly impacted the development of economic system in Europe and United States, there were other factors in play, as well. They included the rationalism in scientific pursuit, growing connections between observation and mathematics, development of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematisation of government administration (development of bureaucracy) and advances in entrepreneurship. In the end, the study of Protestant ethic, according to Weber, investigated a part of the detachment from magic, that disenchantment of the world that could be seen as a unique characteristic of Western culture. In the final endnotes Weber states that he abandoned research into Protestantism because his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had begun work on The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects. Another reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's work already achieved what he desired in that area, which is laying groundwork for comparative analysis of religion and society. Weber moved beyond Protestantism with his research but would continue research into sociology of religion within his later works (the study of Judaism and the religions of China and India). This book is also Weber's first brush with the concept of rationalization. His idea of modern capitalism as growing out of the religious pursuit of wealth meant a change to a rational means of existence, wealth. That is to say, at some point the Calvinist rationale informing the "spirit" of capitalism became unreliant on the underlying religious movement behind it, leaving only rational capitalism. In essence then, Weber's "Spirit of Capitalism" is effectively and more broadly a Spirit of Rationalization. The essay can also be interpreted as one of Weber's criticisms of Karl Marx and his theories. While Marx's historical materialism held that all human institutions – including religion – were based on economic foundations, The Protestant Ethic turns this theory on its head by implying that a religious movement fostered capitalism, not the other way around. Other scholars have taken a more nuanced view of Weber's argument. Weber states in the closing of this essay, "it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and history. Each is equally possible, but each if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of historical truth." Weber's argument can be understood as an attempt to deepen the understanding of the cultural origins of capitalism, which does not exclude the historical materialist origins described by Marx.
692200	/m/0336z1	Iacocca: An Autobiography	William Novak	1985-01	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In part 1 of the book, Iacocca speaks of his Italian immigrant family and his experiences at school. Because he couldn't join the army for World War II due to rheumatic fever as a child, he attended Lehigh University, where he completed his studies in 8 straight semesters. He was offered a job at Ford straight out of college, but at the same time, he was offered a fellowship for a graduate degree at Princeton University. He took the fellowship with the promise of a job after leaving Princeton. Unfortunately, in his year at Princeton, his recruiter was drafted into the war and by the time he was finished with school, no one at Ford had heard of him. After explaining what had happened, he was given the 51st spot on the training group. In part 2 of the book, "The Ford Story", Iacocca tells of his triumph of the Mustang and his climb to power in the company. He and Henry Ford II developed a father-son relationship, and he also had developed a lasting relationship with Robert McNamara. After becoming President of Ford, Henry Ford II began fearing that Iacocca would be after the CEO job next. He established a plot to fire Iacocca, and Iacocca was to resign from the company on October 15, 1978, his 54th birthday. In Part 3, "The Chrysler Story", Iacocca tells of his difficult task of saving Chrysler from bankruptcy. He began a total reorganization of the company (including many layoffs) and received a US$1.2 billion loan guarantee http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d096:HR05860:@@@D&summ2=m& from the government with many stipulations, including increased fuel efficiency of its vehicles and restructuring the company to be profitable. On July 13, 1983, the loan was paid back in full and Chrysler began to flourish under the management of Iacocca. The final portion of the book, titled "Straight Talk", consists of rhetoric arguing for legislation compelling Americans to wear seatbelts, the high cost of labor, the Japanese challenge, and making America great again.
695414	/m/033gjn	Red Alert	Peter George	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In paranoid delusion, a moribund U.S. Air Force (USAF) general, thinking to make the world a better place, unilaterally launches an airborne, preemptive, nuclear attack upon the USSR, from his command at the Sonora, Texas, Strategic Air Command (SAC) bomber base, by ordering the 843rd bomber wing to attack, per war plan "Wing Attack Plan R"—which would authorize a lower-echelon SAC commander to retaliate after an enemy first strike has decapitated the U.S. Government. He attacks with the entire B-52 bomber wing of new airplanes each armed with two nuclear weapons and protected with electronic countermeasures to prevent the Soviets from shooting them down. When the U.S. President and Cabinet become aware the attack is underway, they assist the Soviet defense interception of the USAF bombers; to little effect, because the Soviets destroy only two bombers and damage one, the Alabama Angel, that remains airborne and en route to target. The U.S. Government re-establishes the SAC airbase chain-of-command, but the suicidal general who launched the attack—the only man knowing the recall code—kills himself before capture and interrogation; however, his executive officer correctly deduces the recall code from among the general's desk pad doodles. The code is transmitted to and received by the surviving bomber airplanes and are successfully recalled, minutes before bombing their targets in the Soviet Union—save for the Alabama Angel—whose earlier-damaged radio prevents its recalling, and it progresses to its target. In a last effort to avert a Soviet–American nuclear war, the U.S. President offers the Soviet Premier the compensatory right to destroy a U.S. city, offering Atlantic City, New Jersey, however, at the final moment, the Alabama Angel fails to destroy its target and nuclear catastrophe is averted.
697395	/m/033n0d	Wizard's First Rule	Terry Goodkind	1994-08-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The primary protagonist in Wizard's First Rule is Richard Cypher, a young woods guide. Richard lives in an area of the world known as Westland, which is the only part of the world that at the time contains no magic. The Westland is separated from the other lands by a dangerous magical boundary that prevents anyone without the aid of powerful magic from passing through it. On the other side of the boundary are many sovereign nations, jointly known as the Midlands, and farther still past another magical boundary lies the empire of D'Hara. Richard works as a woods guide leading important political figures through dangerous forests, while his brother's interests lie entirely in politics. Richard is naturally compelled to investigate the mysterious brutal murder of his father who worked as a trader of ancient artifacts. Investigating the only clue he has, a small piece of vine, he happens upon a woman named Kahlan Amnell, whom he helps keep alive as she is being hunted by a group of four men sent to assassinate her. After helping to save Kahlan's life, it is revealed that Kahlan has come through the boundary with the aid of five wizards searching for the First Wizard, who is rumored to have crossed into the Westland after the creation of the boundaries. Richard feels that this woman is in need of protection and takes her to the only man he can trust, his best friend and mentor, Zedd. Richard discovers that this close friend of his has kept many secrets from him for his entire life. Zedd is not the simple man that Richard had presumed him to be, but rather the wizard for whom Kahlan is looking. Kahlan tells him of the events taking place on the other side of the boundary. An evil wizard named Darken Rahl is leading his army against the Midlands. At the same time, Zedd reveals that he discovered Richard to be worthy to be the Seeker at birth. He also explains that a "Seeker" must be tested for years before he can be appointed. When Richard wakes up the morning after being healed from the bite by the snakevine, he names Zedd as the first wizard, and this is when Zedd names Richard the Seeker of Truth because this was his final test. The "Seeker", is a title which comes with many responsibilities, primarily the Sword of Truth: an ancient magical weapon forged by the powerful wizards of old to enhance the righteous anger of the Seeker of Truth. Zedd explains that while the Sword is an awesome tool, Richard himself is the true weapon. They begin their journey together to stop Darken Rahl and prevent him from opening the boxes of Orden: magical devices which can give absolute power over life and death. Kahlan tells them that Rahl has two of the boxes but requires the third before he is able to make the magic work. Richard and Kahlan are tasked with finding the third box and keeping it out of Rahl's hands until the winter solstice, at which time, unless Rahl has successfully joined the three boxes, his life will be forfeit to the magic of Orden. However, due to an attack from some of the creatures of the boundary, Richard and Kahlan are forced to leave their companions in the care of Adie: a mysterious bone woman and cross the boundary alone. They journey to the village of the Mud People. This tribe had the ability to contact spirit ancestors for guidance. In order to seek out where the third box of Orden is hidden, they ask for the ancestors to be contacted. After finally convincing the Mud people to comply by becoming mud people themselves, they learn through a gathering of the mud people's ancestors that only the witch woman Shota, who is more feared than any other person in all the Midlands, has the power to reveal the location of the last box of Orden. While in the gathering Darken Rahl slaughters several mud people and kidnaps Siddin, the son of an elder. Richard and Kahlan travel to Agaden Reach where Shota tells them that the last box is in the hands of Queen Milena. Shota also warns Richard that both Kahlan and Zedd will use their powers against him. From Agaden Reach they travel to Tamarang, seat of Queen Milena, meeting back up with Zedd along the way. Upon reaching Tamarang, they discover that the last box is gone and eventually realize it was given to a small girl named Rachel for safekeeping. Soon Richard is separated from the group and he falls into the hands of a Mord-Sith named Denna and tortured for a month. He eventually breaks her hold upon him by using the magic of the Sword of Truth and turning the blade white. After helping a dragon named Scarlet find her lost egg, he discovers how to both beat Rahl, and be with Kahlan. Kahlan, falsely thinking Richard dead, enters the Con-Dar, or Blood Rage. Thinking Richard is in fact Rahl, she uses her powers on him, however he is immune to her touch. In the end, Rahl opens the wrong Box of Orden, under Richard's false guidance, thus killing Rahl. Finally it is learned upon Rahl's death, that Rahl raped Zedd's daughter, the result of which was Richard. Thus, Zedd is Richard's grandfather, and Richard is the new Lord Rahl. Kahlan and Richard set off for the Mud People's village to return Siddin to his parents.
697872	/m/033pd9	Billy Bathgate	E. L. Doctorow	1989	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The title character is a poor and fatherless teenager growing up in The Bronx. Billy and his friends are in awe of the flashy mobsters in the neighborhood. Dutch Schultz and Otto Berman, based on the real-life mobsters, hire Billy as a gofer and become mentors to him. The gangsters take Billy up to their upstate hideaway, where they are awaiting a trial. Schultz becomes a community leader and converts to Catholicism. Billy works his way up but begins to question his actions when he falls in love with Dutch's moll Drew, whom Dutch plans to have killed. Billy is sent to Saratoga Springs with Drew to keep an eye on her. They act as a couple in Saratoga. He realizes that she is to be killed and calls her husband in New York City to come and rescue her. After Schultz is acquitted, Attorney General Thomas Dewey brings up more charges and the gang goes into hiding. This time they are in Union City, New Jersey. While Billy is visiting the gang to give them updates on Dewey's routine, unnamed gangsters come in and kill everyone except Billy and the bartender. Billy goes back to Schultz's hotel room and takes all the money from his safe.
699430	/m/033tnx	The Joy Luck Club	Amy Tan	1989	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Joy Luck Club consists of sixteen interlocking stories about the lives of four Chinese immigrant women and their four American-born daughters. In 1949, the four immigrants meet at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco and agree to continue to meet to play mah jong. They call their mah jong group the Joy Luck Club. The stories told in this novel revolve around the Joy Luck Club women and their daughters. Structurally, the novel is divided into four major sections, with two sections focusing on the stories of the mothers and two sections on the stories of the daughters. The first section, Feathers from a Thousand Li Away, introduces the Joy Luck Club through Jing-Mei Woo, whose late mother Suyuan Woo founded the Joy Luck Club, and focuses on the four mothers. Jing-Mei relates the story of how her mother Suyuan was the wife of an officer in the Kuomingtong during World War II and how she was forced to flee from her home in Kweilin and abandon her twin daughters. Suyuan later found out her first husband died, remarried to Jing-Mei's father and immigrated to the United States. Her mother and Jing-Mei's father attempted to find Suyuan's daughters, and Jing-Mei's father assumed that Suyuan had given up hope. Jing-Mei, who has been asked to take her mother's place in the Joy Luck Club, learns from the other mothers that her half-sisters are alive and ask that Jing-Mei tell them about Suyuan's death. The other three mothers relate the stories of their childhood. An-Mei Hsu's story relates how her mother left her family to become the fourth concubine of Wu Tsing, a rich merchant, while An-Mei was raised by her maternal grandmother. Her mother returns only to cut off a piece of her flesh to cook a soup in hopes of healing An-Mei's grandmother, though An-Mei's grandmother still dies. Lindo Jong explains how in childhood she was forced into a loveless marriage and was pressured by her mother-in-law's desire for Lindo to produce grandchildren. Through her own ingenuity, Lindo fabricates a convincing story to annul her marriage and emigrate to the United States. The final story of the first section follows Ying-Ying St. Clair, who tells the story of how she fell into a lake during the Moon Festival when she was a four-years-old. After being rescued by strangers, she wanders into an outdoor opera featuring the Moon Lady, said to grant wishes; when Ying-Ying approaches the Moon Lady after the play to wish to be returned to her family, she discovers the Moon Lady is played by a man. The second section relates important childhood stories of the Joy Luck Club's American-born daughters. Lindo's daughter Waverly recalls being a national chess champion but her relationship with her mother is strained by how Lindo pressures her and brags about Waverly's accomplishments. Lena St. Clair, Ying-Ying's daughter, relates her mother's nervous breakdown and her mother is extremely withdrawn to the point where first her father and then Lena winds up being Ying-Ying's voice. In contrast, Lena notices and initially pities her neighbour's family, believing their noisiness is an expression of unhappiness but realizes later it is how they express their love. An-Mei's daughter, Rose Hsu Jordan, reveals how her mother lost faith in God when Rose's youngest brother, Bing, drowned in a beach outing. However, An-Mei still insists that Rose puts faith in her failing marriage. The section concludes with Jing-Mei's story, where she reveals how Suyuan had high expectations that Jing-Mei would be talented like Waverly and tried to shape a disinterested Jing-Mei into a concert pianist, which ended after an embarrassing piano recital. The third section follows the Joy Luck children as adult women, all facing various conflicts. In Lena's story, she narrates her troubling marital problems and how she fears being inferior to her husband, but does not realize he has taken advantage of her both at home and at work, where he is also her boss and earns much more than her. Waverly Jong worries about her mother's opinion of her white fiance, Rich, and recalls quitting chess after becoming angry at her mother in the marketplace. Believing that her mother still has absolute power over her and will object to her forthcoming marriage to Rich, Waverly confronts her mother after a dinner party and realizes that her mother has known all along about her relationship with Rich and has accepted him. Rose Hsu Jordan learns that her husband intends to marry someone else after divorcing her, she realizes that she needs to fight for her rights and refuses to sign the conditions set forth by her husband's divorce papers. In Jing-Mei's story, Jing-Mei has argument with Waverly at a Chinese New Year's dinner the year before the story begins. Realizing that Jing-Mei has been humiliated, Suyuan gives Jing-Mei a special jade pendant called "life's importance," which Jing-Mei rues that she never learned the meaning of the pendant's name. The final section of the novel returns to the viewpoints of the mothers as adults dealing with difficult choices. An-Mei reveals what happened after her grandmother died; she accompanied her mother back to where she lived as the abused fourth concubine of Wu Tsing, whose second concubine manipulates and controls the household and has taken An-Mei's half-brother as her son. After learning how her mother was forced into accepting her position after Wu Tsing's second wife arranged for An-Mei's mother to be raped and shamed, An-Mei finds her mother has poisoned herself two days before Chinese New Year, knowing that Wu Tsing's superstitious beliefs will ensure An-Mei will grow in favourable conditions. Ying-Ying St. Clair reveals how her first husband, a womanizer, abandoned her and how she married an American man she did not love after relinquishing her sense of control in her life. Lindo Jong relates how she arrived in San Francisco and met An-Mei Hsu when they both worked at a fortune-cookie factory, which eventually gave her the means to plant the idea of marriage in her boyfriend's head. The novel's final episode returns to Jing-Mei and her mother's desire to find her lost twin daughters. Jing-Mei and her father fly to China, where Jing-Mei meets her half-sisters and embraces her Chinese heritage.
699520	/m/033tz2	Fried Green Tomatoes	Fannie Flagg	1987-08-12	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Throughout the novel the narrator and time period changes. The reader relies on the chapter-opening visuals in order to establish the date and the source of the chapter. Some of the narration comes in the form of the fictional newspaper in Whistle Stop, Alabama called The Weems Weekly. Other narrations come from the Couches' house in Birmingham, and finally, some of the other narrations fill in some of the more intimate details of the characters mentioned in the various stories. The story jumps between two time periods. The first is set in the mid-1980s. Evelyn Couch goes with her husband several times a year to visit his aunt in a nursing home. Even though the aunt dislikes Evelyn, she still makes the trip. On one visit, she meets Ninny Threadgoode, another resident of the same home. Ninny begins to tell Evelyn stories from her life growing up in Whistle Stop in the 1920s, which is the second time period. As the novel advances, Ninny and Evelyn develop a lasting friendship. Evelyn also learns from the characters she meets in Ninny's stories. Ninny Threadgoode grew up in the bustling house of the Threadgoode family and eventually married one of the Threadgoode brothers, Cleo Threadgoode. However, her first love was young Buddy Threadgoode, whose closest sibling was the youngest girl, Idgie (Imogene) Threadgoode. An unrepentant tomboy, Idgie learned her charm from Buddy and the two of them were inseparable. Young Idgie becomes devastated when Buddy gets hit by a train and dies. After Buddy’s death Idgie kept away from her house and the only one who knew where she was, was Big George one of her family’s African American workers. Nothing could get Idgie to come home or act like more of a lady until a few summers later when the virtuous Ruth Jamison came to live with the family while she taught at the Vacation Bible School. The family and servants watched with amusement as Idgie fell head over heels in love with Ruth, but when Ruth went home to Georgia to marry a man she was promised to, once more, Idgie left home. Shortly after Ruth's mother dies of an illness, Idgie receives a page torn from the bible. The page was from the Book of Ruth (appropriately Ruth 1:16, "But Ruth said, 'Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.'"), and was sent to the Threadgoode house. This page was believed to be a sign that Ruth was being abused by her husband Frank Bennett. Idgie then decides that she is going to get Ruth and bring her back to her house, so Idgie, Big George, her two brothers, and two friends go to Georgia to get Ruth. Intimidated by Big George, Frank does little more than protest before the group leaves with Ruth. Papa Threadgoode gives Idgie money to start a business so that she can care for Ruth and their son. Idgie uses the money from Papa Threadgoode to buy the cafe in which Sipsey, her daughter-in-law Onzell, and Big George (who was married to Onzell) worked. Idgie and Ruth used the money they made at the café to raise their son. The café quickly became known all over the US during The Great Depression due to the communication between various hobos who visited the café while passing through town. One of these hobos was half-time Whistle Stop resident Smokey Lonesome who became a part of the café family when he was in Whistle Stop. The café had a reputation for feeding men who were down on their luck. Idgie and Ruth even created a little controversy when they decided to serve black customers from the back door of the cafe. Around the same time as the controversy Georgia detectives stopped by to investigate the disappearance of Ruth’s husband Frank Bennett. Through Mrs. Threadgoode’s stories Evelyn begins to question the purpose of her life. She also begins to come to the realization that her reasons behind caring about what people's opinions were while growing up were pointless. When Evelyn’s efforts to reconnect with her husband are ignored she looks to Idgie’s story and becomes inspired by Idgie's boldness and audacity. Evelyn then creates an alter-ego named Towanda, a hyper-violent, Amazon-like character who lashes out at people. Evelyn begins to feel uneasy by how much satisfaction she feels at lashing out, and confesses this to Mrs. Threadgoode. Evelyn gets a job with Mary Kay Cosmetics and, at Mrs. Threadgoode's suggestion, starts to take hormones for menopause and becomes happier than she ever had been. For years the cafe ran, through World War II and into the 1950s. Idgie and Ruth's son grew up, and the lives of the town members moved on. However, when Ruth died of cancer, the life went out of the cafe. Several years later, Idgie herself was arrested along with Big George for the murder of Frank Bennett after his car was found at the bottom of a lake outside of Whistle Stop. The case is dismissed at the trial when the local minister lies on the stand and testifies that she and Big George were at a three-day revival the weekend Frank Bennett went missing. It is believed that the minister lies on the stand as a way to pay Idgie back for anonymously bailing his son out of jail. Bennett's body was never found, but it is revealed toward the end of the novel that when he came into the cafe to kidnap Ruth's infant son, Sipsey killed him with a cast iron skillet. While Big George barbecued the body, Sipsey buried Frank’s head in the Threadgoode’s garden. The barbecued body of Frank Bennett is then served to the Georgia detectives who are investigating Frank’s disappearance. The detectives rave that it is the best barbecue they have ever had. Evelyn, having gained a new outlook on life, goes to The Lodge (which she paid for with money she made selling cosmetics) in order to lose weight. Her husband Ed forwards her mail to her while she is away and she receives a letter from Mrs. Hartman, who is Mrs. Threadgoode's neighbor. In the letter, Mrs. Hartman tells Evelyn that Mrs. Threadgoode has died and that she has something for Evelyn from Mrs. Threadgoode. The ending of the novel reveals that some of the characters from Mrs. Threadgoode’s stories are still alive.
700955	/m/033ygj	Cradle	Arthur C. Clarke	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In 1994, the Marines are testing a new missile, but after the launch it mysteriously disappears and it's clear that if the rocket reaches civilian areas they will be in big trouble. Carol Dawson, a journalist, is alerted by an unusual sight of whales in the Miami area, and decides to go and write about it. Armed with special equipment provided by her friend, Dr. Dale Michaels from MOI (Miami Oceanographic Institute), goes to investigate the rumors of a missing missile belonging to the Marines and that could be behind the mysterious whale behavior lately. She hires the services of Nick Williams and Jefferson Troy, owners of a little boat so she can get to the Gulf of Mexico and investigate closer if a missile has something to do with all of the above. They end up finding an unknown artifact, bringing a lot of doubts about its nature, and even if it's part of a lost treasure that could be worth millions. Old friends of Williams and Troy noticed the finding and just like the old times, they want to steal it from them. In the background of the story, the author talks about a submarine snake civilization on a planet called Canthor, and how they were struggling to stay alive due to new threats into their ecosystem. It's revealed later in the story that the artifact found in the sea is actually a cradle that contains seeds with altered superhumans, which were extracted from earth millions of years ago and were altered so they could live with other species (including the submarine snakes) on earth. The spaceship that carries the cradle is manned by robots/cyborgs and has hidden itself on Earth's ocean floor to make repairs. Dawson, Williams and Troy found the damaged ship in the bottom of the sea while looking for the missile, and were asked to gather materials so the ship can be repaired and it could go back to its mission. Before leaving earth, the ship asked the humans to keep the cradle because it would enormously help the human race to have such superhuman seeds to develop faster and better through time, but in the end the humans refuse in order to avoid future wars between the human and superhumans.
701947	/m/03400m	Kings of the High Frontier	Victor Koman		{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is a polemic about NASA. The thesis is that NASA, far from helping space exploration, actually prevents it from going forth. The narrative follows disparate engineering efforts, ranging from New York University engineering students working out of a warehouse in the Bronx to full-fledged commercial rocket operations, to create a single-stage to orbit reusable launch vehicle. All of the science and equipment used in the story was based on technology that existed at the time of writing, like the space activity suit.
702179	/m/0340mk	Redemption Ark	Alastair Reynolds	2002-12-31	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel takes place around the planets Yellowstone and Resurgam, in two story lines which converge near the climax of the novel. The novel begins in the year 2605, where Skade has been tasked with investigating a Conjoiner ship that has returned to the Conjoiner headquarters, the Mother Nest. It is revealed early on that Skade is a Conjoiner woman who appears to be in touch with secret circles of control within the theoretically egalitarian Conjoiners society. In the ship, she discovers Galiana, the original founder of the Conjoiners, who left Conjoiner space decades previously on an exploration mission. In space, she encountered the Inhibitors, who have unleashed an agent into her ships which has taken control of it and killed her crew. It now controls her mind as well. Galiana requests that Skade kill her, but Skade only places her in suspended animation in the hope that she can be helped in the future. Ten years later, Nevil Clavain is facing problems in the Conjoiner mother nest; he is struggling to find answers as to what happened to Galiana (he is unaware that she is still alive) and about Felka, who he believes may be his daughter. He ponders this as he leaves on a mission, during which he rescues Antoinette Bax as she buries her father in the gas giant Tangerine Dream. Her ship severely damaged, Antoinette limps back to the Rust Belt, a ring of orbital habitats around Yellowstone. When Clavain and Skade return to the Mother Nest, Skade, Remontoire, and Felka finally convince Clavain to join the Conjoiner's leadership, which Clavain had been resisting. Skade now informs him about the Inhibitors, convincing him to undertake a mission to reclaim lost Conjoiner doomsday weapons and taking him to see the fleet of advanced starships that the Conjoiners have been building in secret. Although, Skade claims that the weapons and ships will be used to defend humanity against the Inhibitors, Clavain is convinced that they will actually be used simply to evacuate the Conjoiners and abandoning the rest of humanity. Clavain defects to the Demarchists at Yellowstone and spread the news of the Inhibitors, enlisting Antoinette Bax's help to escape the pursuing Conjoiners under Skade. Clavain is followed by Scorpio and Remontoire, but they along with Antoinette and Clavain are captured by the mysterious underground figure known as "H". H reveals what happened to Skade during a Conjoiner raid into Chasm City. This was when Skade discovered the secrets that would lead her to develop inertia suppression technology, and when H believes she was subverted by an alien intellect. Clavain reveals Skade's plans for the Conjoiner fleet and the cache weapons, and H agrees to help him beat Skade to them. H supplies ships and his own version of the inertial suppression technology, while Scorpio supplies an army of hyper-pigs for the pursuit. Skade and Clavain race to the Resurgam system employing various creative long-distance strategies against each other and pushing their vessels to higher and higher speeds. Eventually, Skade's vessel is damaged in an attempt to exceed the speed of light. Clavain and crew arrive in the Zodiacal Light ready to recover the cache weapons. Several years on (roughly 50 from the start of the book), Triumvir Ilia Volyova and Ana Khouri are on the planet Resurgam and have discovered a new threat; the Inhibitors, alerted to the presence of humanity during events described in Revelation Space, have begun dismantling several rocky moons across the system and are moving their components towards the gas giant, Roc. They resolve to evacuate Resurgam by enlisting the aide of the rebel Thorn who has been attempting to evacuate Resurgam all along, by open communications with Captain John Brannigan who is in direct control of their ship due to the nanotechnological Melding Plague, and by enabling the Cache Weapons as a last resort against the Inhibitors. (These are the same weapons that Clavain will be sent to recover, and it was their activation during the events in the novel Revelation Space by Volyova which allowed the Conjoiners in Yellowstone to determine the weapons' location.) Successful in all three endeavors Volyova, Khouri, and Thorn begin the lengthy evacuation, while the Inhibitors continue their mysterious construction project. Only a few thousand people have been evacuated from the surface when the Inhibitors come so close to Resurgam's star that Volyova begins deploying the cache weapons in the hope that they will be able to buy more time. It is at this point that a beta-level simulation of Clavain arrives in a laser transmission, and attempts to negotiate the peaceful turn over of the cache weapons to the soon to be arriving Zodiacal Light. Volyova rejects his requests, explaining that she has greater need to the weapons and continues deploying them. When Zodiacal Light arrives in the system, and because of the failure of the beta-level to negotiate a handover, Clavain attacks Nostalgia for Infinity using Scorpio and his army of pigs as a boarding party. Clavain's superior force capture Nostalgia for Infinity, although Volyova is able to damage Zodiacal Light with one of the cache weapons. Negotiations resume and the two sides come to terms. The evacuation is completed with the help of the Storm Bird and Nostalgia for Infinity departs; Volyova, who is dying from injuries suffered during a suicide attempt by the Captain takes half of the cache weapons and attacks the Inhibitors in the Storm Bird, to no effect. Remontoire and Khouri remain in the system in the Zodiacal Light to try and contact Dan Sylveste in the Hades Matrix in hope that he will be able to supply information that can be used to fight the Inhibitors. The novel ends with Nostalgia for Infinity establishing a colony on an unnamed Pattern Juggler planet (in the following novel Absolution Gap it is called Ararat), waiting for the Zodiacal Light to catch up with them so that they can continue the fight against the Inhibitors. In addition to the two plot lines there are occasional asides explaining the history and motivation of the Inhibitors. These asides explain the galaxy was once filled with star faring civilizations. Those civilizations were largely destroyed in the "Dawn War", a galaxy wide conflict over the galaxy's scarce resources. One of these civilizations determines that a collision between our galaxy and another will occur in 3 billion years and create/become the Inhibitors in order to shepherd intelligent life through this cataclysm. They had determined that collision could be most easily dealt with if intelligent life was kept isolated to individual star systems, leaving the Inhibitors to perform any necessary manipulations of stars and planets to reduce the damage caused by the collision. The asides also reveal that the Inhibitors were not as brutal in their past, but their performance has degraded over the millennia. They have been detecting civilizations at later stages, and required to commit wholesale extinction more often. Clavain and Felka learn of this history during communication with the Inhibitors in Galiana's head. Clavain, however, is not convinced that the Inhibitors are right about the coming catastrophe and believes that their degrading performance may give humanity a chance for survival that other species have not had. As such, he rejects the Inhibitor requests to stand down. The future collision of our galaxy with the Andromeda Galaxy is a scientifically predicted event. However, astronomers believe that it would not cause major damage to the capability of the galaxy to support life because galaxies are so diffuse that very few, if any, planets and stars would collide.
703402	/m/0343l1	The Scary Sleepover	Ulrich Karger	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book tells about a group of children having a Halloween sleepover party at school (Kindergarten). The children prepare for it by making decorations and costumes. As night draws near, so do the children's fears. One student, Mary, shares a trick her father taught her with the other students. He gave her a special bright star - whenever she feels afraid to go to bed, she has only to think about her star. This sends the darkness and the evil ghosts from her heart. Jonas does not believe in that, but he also thinks he is not afraid of ghosts. In the end, all the children need another, older trick: keeping the hallway light on all night.
703539	/m/034443	White Fang	Jack London	1906-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story begins before the three-quarters wolf-dog hybrid is born, with two men and their sled dog team on a journey to deliver a coffin to a remote town named Fort McGurry in the higher area of the Yukon Territory, Canada. The men, Bill and Henry, are stalked by a large pack of starving wolves over the course of several days. Finally, after all of their dogs and Bill have been eaten, four more teams find Henry trying to escape from the wolves; the wolf pack scatters when they hear the large group of people coming. The story then follows the pack, which has been robbed of its last prey. When the pack finally manages to bring down a moose, the famine is ended; they eventually split up, and the story now follows a she-wolf and her mate, One Eye. The she-wolf gives birth to a litter of five cubs by the Mackenzie River, and all but one die from hunger. One Eye is killed by a lynx while trying to rob its den for food for the she-wolf and her cub; his mate later discovers his remains near the lynx's den. The surviving cub and the she-wolf are left to fend for themselves. Shortly after the she-wolf manages to successfully kill all the lynx kittens, prompting the lynx to track her down and a vicious fight breaks out. The she-wolf eventually kills the lynx but suffers severe injury, the lynx carcass is devoured over a period of seven days. The cub comes across five Native Americans one day, and the she-wolf comes to his rescue. One man, Grey Beaver, recognizes the she-wolf as Kiche, his brother's wolfdog, who left during a famine. Grey Beaver's brother is dead, so he takes Kiche and her cub, christening the cub White Fang. White Fang has a harsh life in the Indian camp; the current puppy pack, seeing him as a wolf, immediately attack him. He is saved by the Indians, but the pups never accept him, and the leader Lip-lip singles him out for persecution. White Fang grows to become a savage, morose, solitary, and deadly fighter, "the enemy of his kind." When White Fang is five years old, he is taken to Fort Yukon so that Grey Beaver can trade with the gold-hunters. There, he is bought—with several bottles of whiskey—by a dog-fighter, Beauty Smith, who gets Grey Beaver addicted to the alcohol. White Fang defeats all opponents, including several wolves and a lynx, until a bulldog is brought in to fight him. The bulldog manages to get a grip on the skin and fur of White Fang's neck, and slowly and surely begins to throttle him. White Fang nearly suffocates, but is rescued when a rich, young gold hunter, Weedon Scott, happens by and stops the fight. Scott attempts to tame White Fang and after a long patient effort he succeeds. When Scott attempts to return to California alone, White Fang pursues him, and Scott decides to take the dog with him back home. In Sierra Vista, White Fang must adjust to the laws of the estate. At the end of the book, a murderous criminal, Jim Hall, tries to kill Weedon Scott's father, Judge Scott, for sentencing him to prison, not knowing that Hall was "railroaded". White Fang kills Hall and is nearly killed himself, but survives. As a result, the women of Scott's estate name him "The Blessed Wolf", and the story ends with White Fang relaxing in the sun with the puppies he had fathered with the sheep-dog Collie.
705675	/m/0349xs	The Conformist	Alberto Moravia	1951	{"/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the prologue, the reader witnesses numerous formative events from a short period in Marcello’s childhood. In the first, Marcello coldly kills several lizards in the yard between his home and the home of his neighbor and friend, Roberto. He tries to coax Roberto into offering approval of this behavior, and when Roberto doesn’t comply, they fight and Roberto leaves. Marcello later obtains a slingshot and fires a few stones through the ivy that covers the fence around Roberto’s family’s house, only to find that he has killed their family cat instead of Roberto. Marcello is mortified not so much by his actions but by what he perceives as the abnormality of his sentiments. Marcello also witnesses a fight between his parents that is later revealed to mark the beginning of his father’s decline into mental illness. Marcello’s mother and housemaid discover that his father has vandalized a photograph of Marcello and his mother by poking holes through their eyes and drawing streaks of blood on their faces. His father ultimately chases his mother around the house and attacks her in the bedroom, leaving Marcello torn between whether to rescue his mother or aid his father. It is revealed that Marcello’s father often physically abuses the boy. The final section of the prologue covers Marcello’s torment at the hands of his classmates, who use his somewhat effeminate appearance to question his gender. One day, five classmates follow Marcello home from school and try to force him to wear a dress, but their attack is interrupted by a chauffeur who happens on the scene and offers to drive Marcello home. En route, the chauffeur appears to proposition Marcello, offering him a pistol in exchange for unspecified actions. The chauffeur, who reveals himself to be a former priest de-frocked for indecent behavior, ultimately stops himself before initiating any actions with Marcello and begs the boy to ignore him if he tries to speak to him again. Marcello doesn’t fully understand what is happening, and his desire for the pistol leads him to go with the chauffeur again a few days later. This time, the chauffeur, named Lino, locks himself in the room with Marcello and tells the boy that he won’t be able to escape the (still unspoken) abuse to come. During the struggle, Lino’s gun comes loose and Marcello grabs it. When Lino tells Marcello to shoot him, he complies and flees out the window. Part I opens with Marcello, now a state employee of the Fascist government, looking though old newspaper clippings for information on the incident with Lino. He ultimately finds an obituary that blames the death on an accident during the cleaning of the gun. While Marcello does not feel true remorse, he does seek some absolution for this incident throughout the novel. A colleague of Marcello’s named Orlando asks Marcello to participate in a mission to Paris. A former professor of Marcello’s, named Quadri, is now an anti-fascist agitator, and the Italian government would like to infiltrate his organization. Marcello is also due to be married shortly to a woman named Giulia, and offers to take his honeymoon in Paris so that his presence there would not be suspicious to Quadri. Marcello also takes confession, despite his apparent atheism, as a prelude to the Catholic wedding his wife expects. He confesses to murdering Lino, and the priest indicates that he can seek absolution if he feels true remorse for his actions – an emotion that Marcello does not appear capable of feeling. The section closes in the days leading up to Marcello’s wedding, and we see his mother-in-law lavishing praise upon him, in stark contrast to his mother, who now lives alone in squalor. His father has been in an asylum for six years and suffers from the delusion that he is one of Mussolini’s top aides. On the way to see his father, Marcello’s mother gives him a wedding present but indicates that she won’t be attending the ceremony. Marcello and his mother make their monthly visit to his father, who neither recognizes them nor even acknowledges their presence. Part II covers the honeymoon and the odd interpersonal relationships that unfold between Marcello, Giulia, Quadri, and Quadri’s voluptuous young wife, Lina. En route to Paris, Marcello makes a scheduled stop at a brothel in a small, unnamed town in France, where he is to meet Agent Orlando for further instructions. At the brothel, Marcello is mistaken for a client, causing him some embarrassment before Orlando arrives to tell him that the new plan is to kill Quadri. Marcello needs simply to confirm Quadri’s identity to Orlando to fulfill his duties. As he is leaving, Marcello realizes he has forgotten his hat, but when he goes to retrieve it, he finds Orlando with his arm around a prostitute to whom Marcello feels a strange attraction. Marcello experiences the same feeling when he and Giulia head to Quadri’s apartment, as Lina reminds him in some ways of that prostitute, and Marcello tells himself that he is in love with Lina despite her apparent dislike for him. Lina allows Marcello to begin to seduce her, but always keeps him at arm’s length, even telling him that she and Quadri are aware that he is a spy there in service of the Italian government. While Lina and Giulia head out shopping, Marcello is accosted by an old man who first mistakes him for a beggar, and then mistakes him for a homosexual or perhaps a prostitute, revisiting the humiliation of the incident with Lino on Marcello. When the old man refuses to take Marcello back to his hotel, Marcello pulls his gun and demands to be let out of the vehicle. Marcello’s feelings for Lina intensify alongside a growing contempt for her when he sees her attempting to seduce Giulia and realizes that her interest in him is merely for show. Lina’s pursuit of Giulia leads to an argument in a nightclub where Giulia tells Lina that she is not a lesbian and has no interest in an affair. At a dinner, Quadri asks Marcello to post a letter for him on his way back to Italy, as Quadri’s activities are monitored and the letter might be intercepted otherwise. Marcello refuses, and Quadri takes this as a sign of solidarity, as Marcello could have taken the letter and turned it over to the authorities instead. However, Marcello does confirm Quadri’s identity to Orlando, and on a trip to Savoy, Quadri – as well as Lina, who left with him in response to Giulia’s rejection – is killed by Orlando and his men. The epilogue briefly explores Marcello’s conflicted responses to his role in the murders of Quadri and Lina, including his attempts to rationalize away his culpability. The epilogue takes place years later, on the night that Mussolini falls from power. Giulia reveals that she has long suspected that Marcello was involved in the murders, but her sorrow is more for their own safety than for Marcello’s victims or his duplicity. The two go out for a drive and walk that evening, and while Giulia tries to convince Marcello to make love to her in a wooded area, a stranger arrives and calls to Marcello by name. Marcello is floored to see that it is Lino. Marcello shows real emotion for the first time in the book when he screams at Lino and blames him for ruining his life by taking his innocence. Lino defends himself by arguing that the loss of innocence is inevitable and is merely a part of the human experience. This speech leads Marcello to the beginning of acceptance of his own non-conformity. The novel’s closing passage has Marcello, Giulia, and their daughter driving to the mountains to evade possible reprisals for Marcello’s role with the government. En route, they drive into an air raid, and their car is strafed with bullets. Giulia and the daughter are killed in the first wave, and Marcello falls out of the car, wounded. Realizing his wife and daughter are dead, he waits for the second wave to return. The novel ends with Marcello hearing the plane’s approach.
706319	/m/04w53xz	Buying a fishing rod for my grandfather	Gao Xingjian			 In "The Temple", the narrator is on his honeymoon and mysteriously anxious despite being "deliriously happy" during his and his wife's outing. The story "In the Park" has two friends from childhood meet after many years and then part once more. "Cramp" has a man about a kilometer from shore on the verge of drowning barely survive, only to have no one notice he's been gone. "The Accident" portrays a cyclist being hit by a bus and the pedestrians' momentary reaction to the event. In the title story, a man sees a fiberglass fishing rod in a store window and is reminded of the times he went fishing and hunting with his grandfather. "In an Instant" traces the lives of three people on a typical day. et:Gei wo laoye mai yugan
708688	/m/034n52	Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang	Kate Wilhelm	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Massive environmental changes and global disease, attributed to large-scale pollution, cause the collapse of civilization around the world. One large, well-to-do extended family sets up an isolated community in an attempt to survive the coming catastrophe. However, as the death toll mounts, due to a disease and other causes, they discover that they are universally infertile. After discovering that the infertility might be reversed after multiple generations of cloning, the family begins cloning themselves to survive. It is assumed that after enough generations of clones have been created and fertility restored, that sexual reproduction will be become the norm again. However, when the clones come of-age, they reject the idea of sexual reproduction in favor of further cloning. The original members of the community, too old and outnumbered by the clones to resist, are forced to accept the new social order. As time passes, the new generations of clones eliminate the ideas of individuality from their social structure. Since they are cloned in groups of 4-10 individuals, they grow to depend on each other enormously and lose their sense of individuality, gaining in return an empathic sense of their clones. One woman, after being separated from her clones while on an expedition to find materials in the ruins of nearby cities, regains her sense of individuality; she goes on to have a child, Mark, with a man who was also on the expedition. The two are expelled from the community when Mark is discovered, though Mark himself is not. As Mark grows up, he discovers that his uniqueness gives him individuality and the ability to live away from the community, something which the clones are now unable to do. The leaders of the community realize that the latest generations of clones are losing all sense of creativity and are unable to come up with new solutions to problems; simultaneously they see that the growing lack of high-technology equipment will result in the community losing the ability to continue with the cloning process. Mark, now a teenager, also sees this problem, and rather than lead an expedition to find more high-technology equipment instead at the climax of the book leads a group of people that he has persuaded to his cause to leave the community and start over with a lower, more sustainable level of technology. In the ending to the book, he returns to the community 20 years later to discover that in the wake of a disaster the non-creative clones were unable to adapt, and the village has been destroyed. He then returns to his community, where all of the children and younger generations have been produced naturally and continue to thrive. The novel makes a passing reference to global warming caused by human pollution, an idea still in its infancy at the time of publication: The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere each day, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before, and more, it seemed, each night than the night before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen. fr:Hier, les oiseaux pl:Gdzie dawniej śpiewał ptak ro:Unde, cândva, suave păsări cântătoare...
710301	/m/034svs	Eugénie Grandet	Honoré de Balzac	1833		 Eugénie Grandet is set in the town of Saumur. Eugénie's father Felix is a former cooper who has become wealthy through both business ventures and inheritance (inheriting the estates of his mother-in-law, grandfather-in-law and grandmother all in one year). However, he is very miserly, and he, his wife, daughter and their servant Nanon live in a run-down old house which he is too miserly to repair. His banker des Grassins wishes Eugénie to marry his son Adolphe, and his lawyer Cruchot wishes Eugénie to marry his nephew President Cruchot des Bonfons, both parties eyeing the inheritance from Felix. The two families constantly visit the Grandets to get Felix's favour, and Felix in turn plays them off against each other for his own advantage. On Eugénie's birthday, in 1819, Felix's nephew Charles Grandet arrives from Paris unexpectedly at their home having been sent there by his father Guillaume. Charles does not realise that his father has gone bankrupt and is planning to take his own life. Guillaume reveals this to his brother Felix in a confidential letter which Charles has carried. Charles is a spoilt and indolent young man, who is having an affair with an older woman. His father's ruin and suicide are soon published in the newspaper, and his uncle Felix reveals his problems to him. Felix considers Charles to be a burden, and plans to send him off overseas to make his own fortune. However, Eugénie and Charles fall in love with each other, and hope to eventually marry. She gives him some of her own money to help with his trading ventures. Meanwhile, Felix hatches a plan to profit from his brother's ruin. He announces to Cruchot des Bonfons that he plans to liquidate his brother's business, and so avoid a declaration of bankruptcy, and therefore save the family honour. Cruchot des Bonfons volunteers to go to Paris to make the arrangements provided that Felix pays his expenses. The des Grassins then visit just as they are in the middle of discussions, and the banker des Grassins volunteers to do Felix's bidding for free. So Felix accepts des Grassins' offer instead of Cruchot des Bonfons'. The business is liquidated, and the creditors get 46% of their debts, in exchange for their bank bills. Felix then ignores all demands to pay the rest, whilst selling the bank bills at a profit. By now Charles has left to travel overseas. He entrusts Eugénie with a small gold plated cabinet which contains pictures of his parents. Later Felix is angered when he discovers that Eugénie has given her money (all in gold coins) to Charles. This leads to his wife falling ill, and his daughter being confined to her room. Eventually they are reconciled, and Felix reluctantly agrees that Eugénie can marry Charles. In 1827 Charles returns to France. By now both of Eugénie's parents have died. However Charles is no longer in love with Eugénie. He has become very wealthy through his trading, but he has also become extremely corrupt. He becomes engaged to the daughter of an impoverished aristocratic family, in order to make himself respectable. He writes to Eugénie to announce his marriage plans, and to break off their engagement. He also sends a cheque to pay off the money that she gave him. Eugénie is heartbroken, especially when she discovers that Charles had been back in France for a month when he wrote to her. She sends back the cabinet. Eugénie then decides to become engaged to Cruchot des Bonfons on two conditions. One is that she remains a virgin after marriage, and the other is that he agrees to go to Paris to act for her to pay off all the debts due Guillaume Grandet's creditors. Bonfons de Cruchot carries out the debt payment in full. This comes just in time for Charles who finds that his future father-in-law objects to letting his daughter marry the son of a bankrupt. When Charles meets Bonfons de Cruchot, he discovers that Eugénie is in fact far wealthier than he is. During his brief stay at Saumur, he had assumed from the state of their home that his relatives were poor. Bonfons de Cruchot marries Eugénie hopeful of becoming fabulously wealthy. However, he dies young, and at the end of the book Eugénie is a very wealthy widow of thirty-three having now inherited her husband's fortune. At the end of the novel, although by the standards of the time she should be unhappy - childless and unmarried - she is instead quite content with her lot. She has learned to live life on her own terms, and has also learned of the hypocrisy and shallowness of the bourgeois and that her best friends will come from the lower classes.
711904	/m/034xrk	Anglo-Saxon Attitudes	Angus Wilson	1956	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel deals with the significance of two connected events that happened on the same day, long before the opening of the novel. The first was the excavation of an ancient and valuable archaeological idol, a phallic figure unearthed from the tomb of an Anglo-Saxon bishop Eorpwald, known as the "Melpham excavation". Gerald has long been haunted by a drunken revelation by his friend Gilbert, who was involved with this excavation, that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated to embarrass Gilbert's father. Gilbert told Gerald that he put the idol there. Gerald while feeling that his friend was telling the truth, pushed the matter to the back of his mind and tried to forget about it. He now feels ashamed that he, a history professor, has never had the courage to try to resolve the matter one way or another. The second is that Gerald Middleton fell in love with Dollie, Gilbert's fiancée and had an affair with her when his friend went off to fight in WWI. When Gilbert was killed at the front, Dollie refused to marry Gerald. He ended up marrying a Scandinavian woman named Inge but continued his affair with Dollie, who became an alcoholic. Gerald and Inge later separated. Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is full of side-plots and coincidences and contains a host of eccentric characters. Some of these characters are Gerald's family. Robin his eldest son, is a womaniser who cannot decide whether to leave his wife or his mistress. Kay, has an unhappy marriage and a deeply embittered view of her father, whom she appears to blame for everything that has gone wrong in her life, including her withered hand (which was actually caused by her mother). Gerald's estranged wife, Inge is a grotesquely deluded woman who cannot bring herself to acknowledge her younger son John's homosexuality or her daughter's physical disability. Gerald feels responsible for Dollie's plight and for those of his children. He feels that the knowledge of his complicity over the Melpham affair has drained his morale and made him withdrawn and indecisive. The novel begins with him resolving to make good the 'bloody shameful waste' of his life, by investigating the Melpham affair and making peace with Dollie. He also attempts to develop better relationships with his grown-up children and with Inge. By the novel's end, Gerald achieves a measure of peace with his past. He persuades Dollie to come forward with a letter from Gilbert's father's colleague, Canon Portway, proving that the Melpham incident was a hoax; then he and Dollie begin a platonic friendship. He gives up on achieving good relations with his family.
711958	/m/034xw8	Eldest	Christopher Paolini	2005-08-23	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Eldest begins as Ajihad, the leader of the rebel Varden force, is ambushed and killed, with Murtagh gone while The Twins and Murtagh are assumed dead. At his funeral, Ajihad's daughter Nasuada is elected to command the Varden. The protagonists Eragon and Saphira then decide to travel to the forest Du Weldenvarden to become trained as a Dragon Rider by the elves. The dwarf king, Hrothgar, decides to adopt Eragon to his clan, Durgmist Ingeitum, and have his now foster brother, Orik, accompany him to the forest. Once there, Eragon meets Oromis, The Cripple Who Is Whole, and his Dragon Glaedr, the only Dragon and Rider secretly alive besides Eragon, Saphira and Galbatorix and his forcibly bonded dragon Shruikan. Oromis and Glaedr, however, are both crippled, and so cannot fight Galbatorix and must hide to avoid Galbatorix hunting them down. Eragon and Saphira are taught the use of logic, magic theory, scholarship, and combat, among other things. Meanwhile, Eragon's cousin Roran, is planning to marry Katrina, daughter of Sloan the butcher. While the village is at peace, they are all of a sudden attacked by Galabatorix's soldiers and the Ra'zac, the strangers who had killed Roran's father, Garrow. The village smithy, Horst, equips his sons along with Roran with equipment. Roran takes a hammer and the soldiers. The Ra'zac and most of the soldiers escape, saying that they want information for Roran. The entire village then sets up defenses, and during a second invasion, the Ra'zac escape again. One night, Roran wakes up to find Katrina being attacked by the Ra'zac, who snuck into the house. Roran then takes off the cloth around the Ra'zac's face and sees that they are monsters, not humans. A Ra'zac bites Roran and they leave with Katrina captured. While Roran is chasing them, Sloan, Katrina's father, betrays the village and joins the Ra'zac. The Ra'zac escape with their steeds, the Lethrdblaka, who are originally their parents. Meanwhile, Nasuada chooses to move the Varden from Tronjheim to Surda to mount an attack on the Empire. The Varden suffer financial troubles, however, until Nasuada learns that she can create an expensive lace with magic, and sell it at extremely low rates. One night when Nasuada is in her room, a character named Elva saves her from an assassination attempt. Elva is enchanted, and locates the assailant, who is killed after unwillingly surrendering information to Varden magicians about a subversive group based in Surda called the Black Hand, who is plotting to kill Nasuada. Nasuada later attends a meeting with key figures in Surda's government to discuss a potential upcoming battle against the Empire. They learn that the conflict is coming sooner than they initially suspected, and mobilize forces to attack, as well as sending for help from the dwarves. In the meantime, Eragon continues his training, but is discouraged when the scar on his back causes him to have seizures multiple times per day. He has been swooning over Arya for most of the book. Saphira also has a similar problem with Glaedr, as she believes him to be a good choice for a mate and tries to win his affections. The effort fails miserably, but brings Eragon and Saphira closer together. Later, at the ancient elven ceremony, the Agaetí Blödhren (Blood-Oath Celebration), Eragon is altered by a spectral dragon. The changes alter his senses, and enhance his abilities, effectively turning him into an elf-human hybrid, as well as healing all of his wounds. Reinvigorated, Eragon continues training until he learns that the Empire will soon attack the Varden in Surda. Afterward he confesses his feelings for Arya who rejects him brutally. Dismayed, he leaves without completing his training, to aid the Varden in battle. Upon leaving he is given a bow with magical arrows, a belt with 12 priceless gems, an enchanted flask of elvish concoction, a copy of his poem, and the blessing of Oromis and Glaedr. Meanwhile, Roran is planning to rescue Katrina. He decides that the only solution is to join the Varden in Surda, and so convinces almost the entire village to travel there. The village reaches Narda, where they pay for barges to sail to Tierm. In Tierm, Roran meets Jeod, Brom's friend, who tells him about Eragon and that he is a Dragon Rider now. Roran is stunned that his cousin is a Dragon Rider, and he asks Jeod for help to reach the Varden. Jeod decided to go with them and he gathers a group of his friends to steal a ship called the Dragon Wing. The village is chased by a group of Galbatorix's boats, but they force themselves into the gigantic whirpool, the Boar's eye, so that they can trap the enemey boats. Meanwhile, Eragon arrived at the Varden's camp, who is under attack of an army of 100,000 of Galbatorix's men. A group of Urgals join the Varden, and Eragon is able to repel the opposing army with help from the dwarves' reinforcements. Eventually, a Dragon Rider appears in favor of the Empire. The hostile Dragon Rider kills the dwarf king Hrothgar, and soon begins to fight with Eragon. The Dragon Rider is soon unmasked by Eragon and is revealed to be Murtagh. Murtagh tells Eragon that he was kidnapped and forced into loyalty by Galbatorix after a Dragon hatched for him, whom he named Thorn. Murtagh outmatches Eragon, but shows mercy due to their old friendship. Before leaving, Murtagh reveals that Eragon is his brother, and takes Eragon's sword as well. Ultimately, Galbatorix's army is forced to retreat due to heavy losses, after the arrival of the dwarves and the village of Carvahall and the departure of Murtagh and Thorn. Roran manages to defeat the Twins by bashing them in the heads with his hammer, thus earning him the title of Roran Stronghammer. In the end, Eragon reunites with Roran and Eragon decides to help Roran rescue Katrina from the Ra'zac in Dras-Leona.
712030	/m/034y22	Forever Free	Joe Haldeman	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 William Mandella, protagonist of The Forever War, lives with his wife Marygay on the icy world Middle Finger. Still dissatisfied with the state of society, they eventually decide to jump forward in time again, using the time dilation of interstellar travel. Their intention is to travel for 10 subjective years at relativistic speeds, during which 40,000 Earth years will pass on Middle Finger. They, along with other Forever War veterans and other disenchanted humans on Middle Finger, hope that whatever they will find upon their return will be more to their liking. This "experiment" requires the consent of the posthuman group mind now known as Man, and of the alien Tauran race. While it appears that they refuse permission, forcing the humans to take the ship by force, neither Man nor Tauran put up much of a fight indicating that those resident on Middle Finger did not share the views of the larger group mind. Taking their daughter and leaving their son who has decided to join Man, they head away from their planet. However before they have gotten very far many unexplained occurrences happen and the ship starts to lose antimatter mysteriously. They abandon the ship and return home on fighters that have been converted into escape pods (although some people who believe it all to be a test by some deity remain aboard the drifting ship and are not mentioned in the text again). Instead of the intended 40,000 years, they have only been away 24 Earth years. Upon arrival, they find the planet still intact, but seemingly vacant with everyone having literally disappeared at the same time as the incident on their ship. They then return to Earth and in the course of the investigation they discover a shape-shifting being (similar to the "Chameleon" in his later novel Camouflage) posing as an android cowboy at a western-themed amusement park. This being has been on Earth and the other inhabited planets for millennia and is not certain of its own origin. It also has no idea what happened to the denizens of Earth. The resolution involves an archetypal deus ex machina, a childish god who evidently created the universe on a whim but doesn't really understand it. This god recognizes Mandella as a scientist and explains that his action of leaving the galaxy on a 40,000 year round-trip is similar to a laboratory mouse escaping its cage. The galaxy would appear to be one large experiment controlled by these gods, an experiment damaged by Mandella's actions. Eventually "God" restores the inhabitants, who have been stored in stasis. The story also focuses on William's and Marygay's relationship to their children, who do not agree with their parents' views, but still have to deal with their parents 'fleeing' into the future. Forever Free is much shorter than the preceding book and also contained many printing errors in its first edition. The comic A New Beginning, the sequel to the comic version of The Forever War, was connected to Forever Free.
712214	/m/034ym1	The Cuckoo's Egg	Clifford Stoll	1990		 Clifford Stoll (the author) managed some computers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. One day, in August 1986, his supervisor (Dave Cleveland) asked him to resolve a USD$ 0.75 accounting error in the computer usage accounts. He traced the error to an unauthorized user who had apparently used up 9 seconds of computer time and not paid for it, and eventually realized that the unauthorized user was a cracker who had acquired root access to the LBL system by exploiting a vulnerability in the movemail function of the original GNU Emacs. Over the next ten months, Stoll spent a great deal of time and effort tracing the hacker's origin. He saw that the hacker was using a 1200 baud connection and realized that the intrusion was coming through a telephone modem connection. Stoll's colleagues, Paul Murray and Lloyd Bellknap, helped with the phone lines. Over the course of a long weekend he rounded up fifty terminals, mostly by "borrowing" them from the desks of co-workers away for the weekend, and teleprinters and physically attached them to the fifty incoming phone lines. When the hacker dialed in that weekend, Stoll located the phone line, which was coming from the Tymnet routing service. With the help of Tymnet, he eventually tracked the intrusion to a call center at MITRE, a defense contractor in McLean, Virginia. Stoll, after returning his "borrowed" terminals, left a teleprinter attached to the intrusion line in order to see and record everything the cracker did. Stoll recorded the hacker's actions as he sought, and sometimes gained, unauthorized access to military bases around the United States, looking for files that contained words such as "nuclear" or "SDI". The hacker also copied password files (in order to make dictionary attacks) and set up Trojan horses to find passwords. Stoll was amazed that on many of these high-security sites the hacker could easily guess passwords, since many system administrators never bothered to change the passwords from their factory defaults. Even on army bases, the hacker was sometimes able to log in as "guest" with no password. Over the course of this investigation, Stoll contacted various agents at the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Air Force OSI. Since this was almost the first documented case of hacking (Stoll seems to have been the first to keep a daily log book of the hacker's activity), there was some confusion as to jurisdiction and a general reluctance to share information. Studying his log book, Stoll saw that the hacker was familiar with VMS, as well as AT&T Unix. He also noted that the hacker tended to be active around the middle of the day, Pacific time. Stoll hypothesized that since modem bills are cheaper at night, and most people have school or a day job and would only have a lot of free time for hacking at night, the hacker was in a time zone some distance to the east. With the help of Tymnet and various agents from various agencies, Stoll eventually found that the intrusion was coming from West Germany via satellite. The Deutsche Bundespost, the German post office, also had authority over the phone system, and they traced the calls to a university in Bremen. In order to entice the hacker to reveal himself, Stoll set up an elaborate hoax (known today as a honeypot), inventing a new department at LBL that had supposedly been newly formed because of an imaginary SDI contract. He knew the hacker was mainly interested in SDI, so he filled the "SDInet" account (operated by the imaginary secretary Barbara Sherwin) with large files full of impressive-sounding bureaucratese. The ploy worked, and the Deutsche Bundespost finally located the hacker at his home in Hanover. The hacker's name was Markus Hess, and he had been engaged for some years in selling the results of his hacking to the Soviet KGB. There was ancillary proof of this when a Hungarian spy contacted the fictitious SDInet at LBL by mail, based on information he could only have obtained through Hess (apparently this was the KGB's method of double-checking to see if Hess was just making up the information he was selling them). Stoll later had to fly to Germany to testify at the trial of Hess and a confederate.
712274	/m/034yth	Going Postal	Terry Pratchett	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As with many of the Discworld novels, the story takes place in Ankh-Morpork, a powerful city-state based on the historical and modern settings of various metropolises like London or New York City. The protagonist of the story is Moist von Lipwig, a skilled con artist who was to be hanged for his crimes, but saved at the very last moment by the cunning and manipulative Patrician Havelock Vetinari, who has Moist's death on the scaffold faked. In his office, Vetinari then presents Moist with two choices: he may accept a job offer to become Postmaster of the city's rundown Postal Service or he may choose to walk out of the door and never hear from Vetinari again. As the door in question led into a fatal drop Moist accepts the job. After a thwarted attempt at escape, Moist is brought to the Post Office by his parole officer Mr. Pump, a golem. It turns out that the Post Office has not functioned for decades, and the building is full of undelivered mail, concealed under a layer of pigeon dung. Only two employees remain: the aged Junior Postman Tolliver Groat and his assistant Stanley Howler. Meanwhile, Vetinari is holding a meeting with the board executives of the Grand Trunk Company, a company that owns and operates a system of visual telegraph towers known as "clacks". He notes that since they have taken full control, the quality of service had gone down considerably. Despite unnerving most of the board, Vetinari fails to make headway, especially with its chairman, Reacher Gilt. As Moist attempts to revitalize the service, he discovers that a few months before taking the job, a number of his predecessors have predeceased in the building within weeks of each other in unusual circumstances. He also discovers that the mail inside the building has taken on a life of its own, and is nearly suffocated as a result. Moist introduces postage stamps to Ankh-Morpork, hires golems to deliver the mail, and finds himself competing against the Grand Trunk Clacks line. He meets and falls in love with the tough, chain-smoking golem-rights activist, Adora Belle Dearheart, and the two begin a relationship by the end of the book. Dearheart is the daughter of the Clacks founder Robert Dearheart, though the company was taken away from her father and the other founders by tricky financial maneuvering. Because of this, she still has useful contacts amongst the clacks operators. The unscrupulous Clacks chairman, Reacher Gilt, sets a banshee assassin (Mr Gryle) on the Postmaster, but only manages to burn down much of the Post Office building. The banshee dies when he gets flipped onto the space-warping sorting machine. Lipwig makes an outrageous wager that he can deliver a message to Genua faster than the Grand Trunk can. "The Smoking Gnu", a group of clacks-crackers, sets up a plan to send a Discworld equivalent to a killer poke into the clacks system that will destroy the machinery, halting the message that Lipwig will race against. Lipwig talks the Gnu out of it, and opts for a more psychological attack on the Grand Trunk, leaving the semaphore towers standing. This plan succeeds. Gilt is soon arrested and finds himself confronting the Patrician. Offered the choice of a job or exiting the room, he ends up walking through the door and to his death.
712513	/m/034zqp	Another Roadside Attraction	Tom Robbins		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows the adventures of John Paul Ziller and his wife Amanda—lovable prophetess and promiscuous earth mother, inarguably the central protagonist—who open "Captain Kendrick's Memorial Hot Dog Wildlife Preserve," a combination hot dog stand and zoo along a highway in Skagit County, Washington. Other characters in this rather oddball novel include Mon Cul the baboon; Marx Marvelous, an educated man from the east coast; and L. Westminster "Plucky" Purcell, a former college football star and sometime dope dealer who accidentally infiltrates a group of Catholic monks working as assassins for the Vatican. In so doing Plucky discovers a secret of monumental proportions dating to the very beginning of Christianity.
712522	/m/025v3my	Of the City of the Saved...	Philip Purser-Hallard	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Beyond the end of the universe exists The City of the Saved, an urban sprawl the size of a galaxy. Within it every human being that ever lived, from the first australopithecine to the last posthuman, has been inexplicably resurrected. For three hundred years, the uncountable inhabitants have enjoyed their unaging and invulnerable second lives. But now, the unthinkable has happened. Someone has been murdered.
713577	/m/0351lv	A Game of Thrones	George R. R. Martin	1996-08-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Game of Thrones follows three principal storylines simultaneously. Early in the story, Eddard Stark (Ned), as Lord of Winterfell, on behalf of the Seven Kingdoms, must condemn and execute a deserter of the Night's Watch, with his sons among the witnesses. On the return journey to Winterfell, Eddard's sons discover six direwolf pups, which are entrusted to Eddard's five legitimate children and his bastard. (The direwolf, the sigil of House Stark, is integral to the Stark family.) Following the death of Lord Jon Arryn, previous "Hand of the King" (the highest advisor to the king), King Robert Baratheon visits Eddard at Winterfell. Because he trusts him as an old friend and as an ally in the previous struggle for the throne, King Robert asks Eddard to become the new Hand of the King. Eddard agrees, against his instincts, and at the same time promises his wife, Lady Catelyn Stark that he will investigate the death of the previous Hand, Jon Arryn. Lysa Tully, Catelyn's sister and Lord Arryn's widow, had suggested in a secret message that Arryn may have been the victim of poison and political intrigue at the hands of King Robert's wife, Queen Cersei and her powerful family of House Lannister. Before the Starks leave for King's Landing in the South, Eddard's young son Bran Stark witnesses Cersei committing incest with her twin brother Jaime Lannister, who promptly flings Bran from a tower hoping to conceal the secret. Bran survives against the odds but enters a coma. During his recuperation, an assassin attempts to murder him, only to encounter Catelyn, who has refused to leave his side. Bran's direwolf then saves his life, as well as Catelyn's, by killing the assassin. Catelyn realizes her husband faces danger in King's Landing; she travels there incognito by ship to warn him, leaving the eldest son Robb Stark to rule as the Lord of Winterfell. Not long after Catelyn's departure Bran awakens from his coma as a paraplegic and with no memory of how he fell. He names his direwolf Summer. He remains at Winterfell along with his older brother Robb and younger brother Rickon. Meanwhile, Lord Eddard travels toward King's Landing, the capital, taking with him his daughters Sansa and Arya. Eleven year-old Sansa is betrothed to King Robert's twelve year-old son Joffrey, the heir apparent. At King's Landing, Eddard assumes the duties of the Hand and the ruling of Westeros, as Robert is a renowned knight with little interest in governance. Upon Catelyn's arrival in King's Landing she is brought to a secret meeting with Petyr Baelish, known as Littlefinger, a childhood friend and admirer turned "Master of Coin" or Treasurer of King's Landing. He identifies Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf brother of Cersei and Jaime, as the owner of the dagger used in the attempt on Bran's life. While traveling back to Winterfell Catelyn encounters Tyrion, returning from the Wall, and takes him captive. She changes her destination and takes him to the remote Eyrie, where her sister, Lady Lysa Arryn rules as Lady of the Vale. Lysa blames the Lannisters for Jon's death and is eager to execute Tyrion, but he demands trial by combat and regains his freedom when his unlikely champion, hired-sword Bronn, wins the duel. In retaliation for Tyrion's abduction, Tyrion's father, Lord Tywin Lannister wages war. He is soon joined by Jaime, who angrily confronts Eddard in King's Landing, killing a number of his men and crippling Eddard before he flees the city. Eddard learns, as the murdered Jon Arryn had learned before him, that Robert's legal heirs are in fact Jaime Lannister's children by his sister. He confronts Cersei and offers her a chance to escape before he tells Robert the truth, but Robert is mortally injured in a hunt and Eddard cannot bear to tell Robert the reality about his supposed children as he lies on his deathbed. As Robert lies dying, his youngest brother Renly suggests to Eddard that they should use their combined household guardsmen to detain Cersei and her children and take control of the throne during the night, before the Lannisters can act. Eddard refuses, deeming such a deed dishonorable. Renly flees Kings Landing with the loyal House Baratheon guards instead. Eddard recruits Littlefinger to have the city guards arrest and charge Cersei, but is betrayed by him, resulting in Eddard's arrest, the death of all of his men, and Sansa's capture. The Lannisters attempt to capture Arya as well, but she flees the castle after her fencing instructor, Syrio Forel, interferes. With Eddard imprisoned, Cersei and Jaime's eldest son, Joffrey, is crowned as Robert's heir and King of the Seven Kingdoms. Eddard is persuaded by Varys to confess to treason, and to swear fealty to Joffrey as the trueborn King, in exchange for Sansa's life and his own, as Varys has arranged with Cersei to have Eddard sent to join the Night's Watch rather than be executed. Eddard then makes a public confession, but Joffrey orders his execution despite his council and mother's advice to spare him. Lord Eddard is then beheaded in full view of his daughters, Sansa and Arya. Arya is then taken by Yoren of the Night's Watch, her fate unknown. A civil war erupts as news of Eddard's death spreads across the Seven Kingdoms. Robb, now Lord of Winterfell, masses an army of northmen and marches south, joining with Catelyn to rescue his father and sisters in King's Landing, but upon learning of Eddard's death, goes instead to the Riverlands to raise support from his maternal grandfather, Lord Hoster Tully. To reach Riverrun, he agrees to a marriage pact with House Frey. At Riverrun, Jaime Lannister is currently laying siege, while holding Lord Hoster's heir and Catelyn's brother, Edmure Tully as hostage. Upon hearing of Robb's march, Lord Tywin also advances his army to meet Robb's. In a bold move, Robb covertly detaches his cavalry towards Riverrun, while his infantry under Lord Roose Bolton engages Tywin's army. Tywin, joined by the now-liberated Tyrion who has massed his own army of mountain clansmen, defeats Bolton's host, only to discover too late that they were a decoy. Robb's forces then take Jaime's army by surprise during the night, capturing Jaime himself after setting a trap for the reckless knight. Jaime's host is scattered and Edmure Tully is liberated, joining the houses of the Riverlands to Robb's army. Renly Baratheon is the younger brother to Stannis Baratheon, who is the next rightful heir to the Iron Throne. But Renly campaigns for the Throne and wins the support of Houses Baratheon and Tyrell by wedding Lord Mace Tyrell's daughter, Margaery Tyrell. Declaring himself king, Renly masses all the strength of the south and begins his march on King's Landing. After extended discussion, Robb's bannermen to House Stark and the House Tully bannermen, lords of the Riverlands, proclaim Robb King in the North. The Prologue of the novel introduces the out-kingdom Northern wilderness beyond the Wall, an ancient 700-foot-high (200 m), 300-mile-long (480 km) barrier of ice, stone and ancient magic, shielding the Seven Kingdoms from the North, manned by the order of the Night's Watch. Men of the Night's Watch (nicknamed "crows") swear an oath to serve on the Wall for life, foregoing marriage, and they wear clothing dyed only in black. In the lawless lands North of the Wall, a small patrol of Rangers from the Night's Watch encounter the Others, an ancient and evil race of beings thought to be long extinct and mythological. All the Rangers are killed except a single survivor (who flees south, becoming the deserter whom Ned executes in the beginning of the story). Jon Snow, the bastard son of Lord Eddard and despised by Catelyn, is inspired by his uncle, Benjen Stark, the First Ranger of the Night's Watch, to "take the black" and go to the Wall to join the Night's Watch. Jon travels north to the Wall with the Queen's brother, Tyrion Lannister, and other members of the Night's Watch. He becomes disillusioned when he discovers that it is little more than a penal colony meant to keep "wildlings" (human tribesmen who live in relative anarchy, north of the Wall) in check. At the Wall, Jon unites the recruits against their harsh instructor, and protects cowardly but good-natured and intelligent Samwell Tarly. Jon hopes that his combat skills will earn him assignment to the Rangers, the military arm of the Night's Watch. Instead he is assigned as steward to the Lord Commander of the Watch, Jeor Mormont, nicknamed "the Old Bear". He arranges for his friend Samwell Tarly to be made steward to elderly Maester Aemon. Meanwhile, Benjen Stark leads a small party of Rangers on patrol beyond the Wall but fails to return. Nearly six months later, the dead bodies of two of the Rangers from Benjen's party are recovered from beyond the Wall, and their corpses re-animate as wights in the night. Undeterred by sword wounds, the wights kill six men while Jon and his direwolf, Ghost, save Lord Commander Mormont by destroying one of the wights with fire. For saving his life, Mormont presents Jon with the Valyrian-steel bastard sword "Longclaw", an heirloom of the Lord Commander's House Mormont. Lord Mormont has replaced the existing bear pommel with a pommel in the shape of a white direwolf's head, representing both House Stark and Jon's direwolf. When word of his father's execution reaches Jon, he attempts to desert the Night's Watch and join his half-brother Robb in war against the Lannisters. His friends among the Night's Watch catch up to Jon before he gets too far from the Wall and persuade him to return. Mormont convinces Jon that his place is with his new brothers, and that the war for the throne does not compare to the evil that winter is set to bring down upon them from the North. With Jon's loyalty secured, Mormont declares his intention to lead a massive ranging north of the Wall, to find Benjen Stark - dead or alive - as well as to investigate the disappearance of many wildings and the dark rumors circling the King-Beyond-the-Wall, a deserter from the Night's Watch known as Mance Rayder. Across the sea in the Free City of Pentos, Viserys Targaryen lives in exile with his thirteen-year-old sister Daenerys. He is the son and only surviving male heir of Aerys II of house Targaryen, "the Mad King", who was overthrown by Robert Baratheon during the War of the Usurper. The Targaryens had ruled Westeros as dragon-lords for about 300 years, but their dragons and power are now gone. Viserys negotiates a marriage contract that exchanges his sister to Khal Drogo, a warlord of the nomadic Dothraki horse warriors, in exchange for use of Drogo's army to reclaim the Westeros Iron Throne for House Targaryen. The wealthy merchant, Magister Illyrio, who has been hosting Viserys and Daenerys, gives a wedding gift to Daenerys of three petrified dragon eggs. A knight exiled from Westeros, Ser Jorah Mormont (son of Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch), joins Viserys as an advisor. Unexpectedly Daenerys finds trust and love with her barbaric husband; she conceives a child who is prophesied to unite and rule the Dothraki. When Drogo shows little interest in conquering Westeros, the temperamental Viserys initially tries to browbeat his sister into coercing Drogo, but Daenerys, emboldened by her position as the Khal's wife, begins to stand up for herself and refuses to be bullied by her brother any longer. Initially, Drogo endures Viserys and punishes his outbursts with public humiliation. When Viserys publicly threatens Daenerys Drogo executes him by pouring a pot of molten gold on his head, giving him the golden crown he had been promised in return for Daenerys. As the last Targaryen, Daenerys takes up her brother's quest to reclaim the Iron Throne of Westeros. An assassin seeking King Robert's favour unsuccessfully attempts to poison Daenerys and her unborn child. Enraged, Drogo agrees to invade Westeros to seek revenge. While sacking villages to fund the invasion, Drogo is wounded. The wound festers and Daenerys commands a captive maegi to use blood magic to save him; the treacherous maegi sacrifices Daenerys' unborn child to power the spell, which keeps Drogo alive in a vegetative state. As the leaderless Dothraki horde disbands, Daenerys takes pity on her once-proud husband and smothers him. Eager for revenge, she orders the maegi tied to Drogo's funeral pyre and places her three dragon eggs on the pyre with Drogo. While she watches it burn, Daenerys is seduced by the beauty of the flames and walks into the inferno. Instead of perishing in the flames, she emerges unscathed and with three newly-hatched dragons draped around her and nursing at her breasts. As a true Targaryen, she is suspected to be immune to flame. The few remaining Dothraki and Ser Jorah swear their allegiance to her as The Mother of Dragons.
713590	/m/0351my	A Clash of Kings	George R. R. Martin	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Clash of Kings picks up where A Game of Thrones ended. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are plagued by civil war, while the Night's Watch mounts a reconnaissance force north of the Wall to investigate the mysterious people, known as wildlings, who live there. Meanwhile, in the distant east, Daenerys Targaryen continues her quest to return to and conquer the Seven Kingdoms. All signs are foreshadowing the terrible disaster that is to come. The civil war to claim the Iron Throne becomes more complex. Three kings had declared their claims in A Game of Thrones: Joffrey Baratheon, Renly Baratheon, and Stannis Baratheon. Robb Stark declares himself King in the North while Balon Greyjoy declares himself king of the Iron Islands, launching a massive assault along the west coast of the North, and becoming the fifth of the war's kings. At the Stark stronghold of Winterfell, Robb's younger brother Bran Stark is in command. He finds two new friends when Jojen and Meera Reed arrive from Greywater Watch and take an interest in his strange dreams. Stannis Baratheon declares himself King of Westeros, encouraged by Melisandre of Asshai, a red priestess of R'hllor, a god popular in the East, but relatively unheard of in Westeros, who believes Stannis to be the reincarnation of a messianic figure of her faith. The war is dubbed the War of the Five Kings. Stannis's younger brother, Renly, has also laid claim to the throne. As the elder brother, Stannis has the better claim; but Renly will not back down, since he has the larger army and believes he would make a better king than his brother. Catelyn Stark joins a meeting between Renly and Stannis to discuss a possible Stark-Baratheon alliance against their mutual foe, the Lannisters. The meeting fails, and a mysterious shadow kills Renly in his tent whilst Catelyn and the warrior-maid Brienne of Tarth are present. The two women are implicated in Renly's murder, and they flee. As a result of the murder, most of Renly's supporters shift their loyalty to Stannis, although the Tyrells do not. Renly's stronghold at Storm's End also falls when Melisandre uses her sorcery to give birth to another shadow to kill the castle's defiant castellan. Tyrion Lannister arrives at King's Landing to serve as Hand of the King, the closest adviser to the monarch, his young nephew Joffrey. Whilst intriguing against his sister Cersei, widow of the late King Robert Baratheon and mother of Joffrey, Tyrion works to improve the defenses of the city against possible attack and enters negotiations with the lords of the other noble houses to strengthen his nephew's hold on the throne. He sends the devious Littlefinger to negotiate with the Tyrells, gaining that house's support when Lord Mace Tyrell agrees to wed his daughter Margaery to Joffrey, despite Margaery's earlier unconsummated marriage to the deceased Renly and despite Joffrey's earlier pledge to wed Sansa Stark. Tyrion also forges an alliance with House Martell when he arranges for Joffrey's sister Princess Myrcella to wed Trystane Martell. In an attempt to use Winterfell as a base from which to conquer the North and to impress his father Balon, Theon Greyjoy, a former ward of the Starks and close friend of Robb's, captures Winterfell with just thirty men, taking the young Stark children Bran and Rickon captive. Bran and Rickon disappear in the night and Theon is unable to trace them. Rather than look foolish, Theon murders two anonymous peasant boys and mutilates their faces to pass them off as Bran and Rickon. Believing that their princes have been murdered, Stark supporters besiege the castle joined by a force from House Bolton. Yet Theon had previously conspired with Bolton's bastard, Ramsay Snow, and the Bolton soldiers turn on the besiegers as planned. Theon opens the gates to the victorious Boltons, but they betray him as well and raze Winterfell. Theon's whereabouts are currently unknown. Bran and Rickon emerge from hiding after the sack of the castle. To protect the heirs to Winterfell, a dying Maester Luwin convinces the boys to take separate courses: Osha, a captured wildling turned castle servant, agrees to take Rickon to safety, while Bran, accompanied by Meera, Jojen, and his simple manservant Hodor, travels north to the Wall. Robb Stark leads his army into the Westerlands and wins several victories against the Lannisters in their home territory. Tywin Lannister advances against him, but receiving news that King's Landing is threatened, rapidly withdraws south. Arya Stark, posing as a boy named Arry to protect her identity as a daughter of Eddard Stark who was previously executed on charges of treason, travels north along with new recruits for the Night's Watch. The group is captured and taken to Lannister-held Harrenhal, where Arya poses as a peasant serving girl. A mysterious man, Jaqen H'ghar, offers to repay Arya for saving the lives of him and his two companions by killing three men of her choice. Arya selects two minor, but evil Lannister bannermen as her first two choices before realizing she had wasted her opportunity. Instead of choosing a third man, Arya cunningly enlists Jaqen's help to release a band of Stark supporters who quickly take over Harrenhal. His debt repaid, Jaqen gives Arya a coin and a strange phrase, "Valar Morghulis", to be used if she ever encounters a man of Braavos and requires aid. Lord Roose Bolton soon arrives to occupy Harrenhal. Arya becomes his cup bearer, but soon escapes. Stannis Baratheon's army reaches King's Landing and launches assaults by both land and sea. Under Tyrion's command, Joffrey's forces throw back Stannis's forces through cunning use of "wildfire" (a Greek Fire-like substance) to set fire to the river while raising a chain across it to prevent Stannis' fleet from retreating, essentially trapping them in the fiery bay. Stannis' attack ultimately fails when Tywin Lannister leads his army and the remaining forces of Highgarden under Loras Tyrell to the aid of King's Landing. Stannis' fate is left uncertain, with some saying he retreated while others claim he was killed. Tyrion is seriously injured during the battle as a result of a treacherous attack by one of Joffrey's guards working as an agent of Cersei; however, he is saved by his squire, Podrick Payne. A scouting party from the Night's Watch advances northwards from the Wall. At Craster's Keep they learn that the normally anarchic wildlings are uniting under a single figure, King-beyond-the-Wall Mance Rayder. The Watch continues north to a ruined fortress formerly known as the Fist of the First Men. Lord Commander Jeor Mormont sends Jon Snow and Qhorin Halfhand on an advanced reconnaissance of the Skirling Pass. In the pass, Snow and Halfhand find themselves being hunted by wildling warriors. Facing certain defeat, Halfhand commands Snow to act as an oathbreaker to infiltrate the wildlings and learn their plans. To create proof he has truly turned, Halfhand forces Jon to fight him, and Jon kills him with the aid of his direwolf Ghost. Jon learns that Rayder is already advancing on the Wall with tens of thousands of fighters. Daenerys Targaryen strikes east across the forbidding red waste, accompanied by the knight Jorah Mormont, her remaining few loyal followers, and three newborn dragons. Scouts find a safe route to the great trading city of Qarth. Daenerys is the wonder of the city for her dragons. One merchant in particular seems especially interested in her, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who is the leader of the Thirteen, a prominent group of traders in Qarth. He initially acts as a great host, but ultimately Daenerys cannot secure commitment from the merchants for aid in claiming the throne of Westeros because she refuses to give away one of her dragons. As a last resort, Daenerys seeks council from the warlocks of Qarth, but in the House of the Undying, the warlocks show Daenerys many confusing images and her life is threatened. Daenerys' dragon, Drogon, burns down the House of the Undying, sparking the enmity of the Qartheen. An attempt to assassinate Daenerys at the city's harbor is thwarted by the arrival of two strangers, a fat warrior named Strong Belwas and his squire, an aged warrior named Arstan Whitebeard. They are agents of Daenerys's ally Illyrio Mopatis, come to escort her back to Pentos.
713625	/m/0351r6	A Storm of Swords	George R. R. Martin	2000	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Storm of Swords picks up the story slightly before the end of its predecessor, A Clash of Kings. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are still in the grip of the War of the Five Kings, with the remaining kings Robb Stark, Balon Greyjoy, Joffrey Baratheon, and Stannis Baratheon fighting to secure their crowns. Civil war is destroying the common people, the ruling House of Baratheon and the major houses of Westeros: House Arryn of The Vale, House Baratheon of Storm's End, House Greyjoy of the Iron Islands, House Lannister of Casterly Rock, House Martell of Dorne, House Stark of Winterfell, House Tully of Riverrun, and House Tyrell of Highgarden. Stannis Baratheon's attempt to take King's Landing has been defeated by the new alliance between House Lannister (backing Joffrey) and House Tyrell. House Martell has also pledged its support to the Lannisters through the forces of Dorne, while House Arryn of The Vale have yet to take the field or declare their allegiance. Meanwhile, a large host of wildlings are marching toward the Wall under Mance Rayder, with only the tiny force of the Night's Watch in its path; and in the distant east, Daenerys Targaryen is on her way back to Pentos, hoping to raise forces to retake the Iron Throne. The novel begins in the final months of 299 After the Landing and carries on into the year 300 AL. Note the UK paperback edition of Storm of Swords was split into two books, and the French paperback edition in four. The plot summary below contains information on the single-volume editions. At Riverrun, Catelyn Stark strikes an unauthorized deal with her captive Jaime Lannister: his freedom in return for that of Catelyn's daughters. Jaime agrees, and is sent south, escorted by Brienne of Tarth. Jaime and Brienne are waylaid by mercenaries known as The Brave Companions (now in the service of Roose Bolton) and taken to Harrenhal. Their vicious leader, Vargo Hoat, chops off Jaime's sword hand, and Jaime is sent back to King's Landing. Brienne, having little value as a hostage, is left to Hoat's mercies, but Jaime returns to rescue her. Robb's army returns to Riverrun, having smashed Lannister forces in the Westerlands. Robb reveals that he has married Jeyne Westerling of the Crag, invalidating his betrothal to a House Frey daughter, thus risking losing their support. Robb's forces are dwindling as his soldiers are caught between Lord Randyll Tarly and Gregor Clegane. The Greyjoys now hold Robb's home territory of Winterfell. Nevertheless, Robb has a plan to take Moat Cailin from the Greyjoys, but it hinges on winning the support of the Freys, which they are now unlikely to give. When Lord Hoster Tully dies, Catelyn's brother Edmure becomes Lord of Riverrun. Robb gains renewed hope when he hears news that Balon Greyjoy has mysteriously died in a fall from a bridge. Further, the Iron Islands are now in a succession crisis, because both of Balon's brothers as well as his daughter Asha are each vying to succeed him, leaving the ironborn divided and vulnerable to a counter-attack. Arya Stark and her friends encounter a group of men known as the Brotherhood Without Banners, led by Lord Beric Dondarrion and the red priest Thoros of Myr. Beric's group, originally sent by Eddard Stark to put down the Lannister raids, has devolved into defending the smallfolk of the war-torn Riverlands. The group encounters Sandor Clegane, former bodyguard of King Joffrey, known as the Hound, and offers him trial by battle, which he wins by killing Lord Beric. Thoros is able to resurrect Beric using what he calls a gift from his god R'hllor. Soon after, Arya is kidnapped by the Hound. The Hound decides to take her back to her family to collect a ransom, and they head north. Robb Stark's army reaches The Twins. Frey agrees to forgive Robb on the condition that Lord Edmure Tully weds a Frey daughter in Robb's place. At the wedding celebration, warriors disguised as musicians produce crossbows and fire at the Stark supporters, breaking the sacred bond protecting guests from their hosts. The Boltons and Freys kill Robb's entire army in the betrayal. Catelyn is seized, her throat cut, and her body dumped into the river. Robb is personally stabbed through the heart by Roose Bolton, and as a final insult by the Freys, Robb's corpse is desecrated by beheading it and sewing the head of his direwolf into its place. Many of the northern lords are killed, and the few survivors captured. Tywin Lannister rewards Roose by naming House Bolton as the new Wardens of the North in place of House Stark. Arya and the Hound arrive at the outskirts of the castle as the "Red Wedding" is taking place. Realizing that something is dreadfully wrong, Arya attempts to enter the castle, but the Hound knocks her unconscious and takes her downriver. Arya dreams, seeing through the eyes of her long-missing direwolf, Nymeria. In the dream, Nymeria finds the corpse of a woman floating in a river. Arya tells the Hound that her mother Catelyn is dead. Arya and the Hound encounter his brother Gregor Clegane's men. They fight free, but the Hound is wounded. His wound becomes infected, but Arya refuses him the mercy of a clean death and leaves him. She finds a ship from the Free City of Braavos, but the captain refuses her passage until she offers him the coin that Jaqen H'ghar gave her and says "Valar Morghulis", as instructed. The captain replies "Valar Dohaeris", and they set sail for Braavos. In the Epilogue of the book, it is discovered that a re-animated Catelyn Stark is alive with the Brotherhood Without Banners, eager for revenge against those who betrayed and murdered her and her son. Davos Seaworth washes ashore on a rocky island after the Battle of the Blackwater. He is found by King Stannis's men and taken to Dragonstone. Davos blames the red priestess Melisandre for Stannis's defeat, and he is imprisoned for treason (Melisandre having foreseen his intention to assassinate her). Melisandre asks for Davos simply to be true to his king, and Stannis releases Davos and asks him to serve as his Hand, since he is one of the few men Stannis can trust to serve him truthfully (most of the others being ambitious sycophants or fanatics). With Stannis' cooperation, Melisandre has performed blood rituals to awaken "stone dragons", which she thinks are the great statues that guard the castle. (Chronologically, this happens shortly before the Red Wedding.) King's Landing welcomes the Tyrells as liberators. King Joffrey agrees to set aside his betrothal to Sansa Stark and marry Lady Margaery Tyrell instead. Sansa is soon compelled to marry Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion treats Sansa gently and refuses to consummate the marriage against her will. Balon Greyjoy of the Iron Islands offers an alliance, but Tywin Lannister, Joffrey's grandfather and Hand, spurns it. Thus Balon's hope that the Lannisters would let him rule as king in the Iron Islands if he betrayed the North comes to nothing, as Theon said it would. Word reaches King's Landing of the sudden death of Balon Greyjoy, followed by news from The Twins regarding the Red Wedding and the murder of Robb Stark. Joffrey gloats that he has "won" the war upon hearing of Robb's death, angering Tywin, as the boy Joffrey played no part in the war at all. Margaery and Joffrey's wedding is held as planned; but, in the following festivities, King Joffrey is poisoned to death. Cersei Lannister has her brother Tyrion arrested as the poisoner and put on trial. Meanwhile, Sansa is smuggled out of the castle and taken to Littlefinger, who admits responsibility for Joffrey's death. Littlefinger, with Sansa, departs King's Landing for the Eyrie with a new scheme: to woo Lady Lysa Arryn, Catelyn's sister, into marriage. Davos Seaworth discovers a message from the Night's Watch, begging for aid against Mance Rayder and The Others. Melisandre convinces Stannis to sacrifice Edric Storm, a bastard son of Stannis's late brother, King Robert, to the flames to wake the dragons; but Davos smuggles Edric to safety. Stannis prepares to execute Davos for treason; before he can, Davos shows Stannis the Night's Watch's plea. Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth reach King's Landing to find that Joffrey's younger brother Tommen has inherited the throne but is not yet crowned, Tyrion is on trial for Joffrey's murder, and the Tyrell bannermen blame Brienne for King Renly's death. Jaime becomes Lord Commander of the Kingsguard but refuses his father's offer to make him heir to Casterly Rock. He also refuses to believe Cersei's claims that Tyrion killed Joffrey. After a quarrel, Jaime rejects her advances. Tyrion is seemingly doomed, as Cersei has recruited many people to give evidence against him, including the spymaster Varys and Tyrion's concubine Shae. Tyrion is approached by Lord Oberyn Martell of Dorne, who offers to fight for him in a trial by combat against Cersei's champion, Ser Gregor Clegane, "the Mountain that Rides". Oberyn nearly emerges victorious, but a mortally-wounded Gregor kills him. Tyrion is again condemned to death but escapes from his dungeon with the help of Jaime and Varys. Jaime reveals that Tyrion's beloved first wife had been a crofter's daughter, not a prostitute as their father Tywin had told him. Tyrion sees this as an unforgivable betrayal and swears vengeance on his father and siblings. Entering Tywin's chamber, he discovers Shae in his father's bed and kills her. He confronts Tywin as he sits on the privy. When taunted, Tyrion shoots Tywin through the bowels with a crossbow and leaves. Jaime frees Brienne and gives her a sword reforged from Ned Stark's sword of Valyrian steel. He tells her to keep her oath to Lady Catelyn, to find Arya and Sansa and return them home. He also tells her that the real reason he betrayed his oath and murdered King Aerys was that Aerys planned to destroy the city and everyone in it, rather than let Robert Baratheon take it. He carried out his most infamous act to save the innocent. At the Eyrie, Littlefinger and Lysa are now married, and Sansa remains hidden by pretending to be an illegitimate daughter of Littlefinger's named Alayne Stone. Only Littlefinger and Lysa are aware of her true identity. Sansa lives in fear of her increasingly psychotic Aunt Lysa, who threatens to cast her from the Eyrie after seeing Littlefinger kiss her. Littlefinger intervenes, unceremoniously pushing Lysa out of the "Moon Door" to her death. Sansa learns that Littlefinger convinced Lysa to poison her husband Jon Arryn and blame the Lannisters, which was the catalyst to the events of A Game of Thrones. A detachment of the Night's Watch awaits word from Qhorin Halfhand and Jon Snow. The Watch comes under attack by wights and the fabled monsters of legend known as the Others, suffering heavy casualties, but they manage to withdraw. Samwell Tarly kills one of the Others with a strange blade of obsidian, or "dragonglass". Some of the men of the Watch mutiny and kill Lord Commander Jeor Mormont at Craster's Keep. Sam escapes with the help of one of Craster's daughter-wives, Gilly, and they make their way south towards the Wall. They are helped on the way by a strange figure riding an elk, whom Sam calls Coldhands. Bran Stark, along with Jojen and Meera Reed, fleeing the ruins of Winterfell, are guided north by Bran's strange dreams of a three-eyed crow. They reach the Wall and meet Samwell Tarly and Gilly. Sam guides them to Coldhands, who will take them north, and returns to Castle Black, agreeing to keep the truth of Bran's survival a secret. Jon Snow is taken to Mance Rayder and is able to convince him that he is a deserter from the Night's Watch. He learns that the Others are driving the wildlings south towards the Wall. Jon and Ygritte also begin a sexual relationship due to their "marriage by capture". Ygritte takes Jon into a cave where they have sex, and Ygritte tells Jon she is in love with him. Mance seeks the legendary Horn of Winter which will shatter the Wall when sounded, but has been unable to find it. Jon escapes from the wildlings and reaches Castle Black ahead of Mance Rayder's army. The wildling army, over forty thousand strong, reaches Castle Black and assaults the Wall; Jon takes command of the defences and repels several assaults. Ygritte is among those slain in the fighting, dying in a heart-broken Jon's arms. As Jon Snow is leading the defense of the Wall, Janos Slynt and Ser Alliser Thorne return to Castle Black and hold an impromptu trial, accusing Jon of oathbreaking and treachery. He is imprisoned in an ice-cell at the base of the Wall. Janos Slynt's imagined self-importance and Ser Alliser's grudgingly-held anger at Jon Snow cause them to send Jon to kill Mance Rayder. Rayder now has the Horn of Winter, but would rather cross the Wall than destroy it, as the Wall is the only thing that will keep the Others at bay. As Jon is talking with Mance Rayder in the Wildling camp, the surviving army of King Stannis arrives. Rayder is captured and imprisoned. Stannis reveals that Davos Seaworth convinced him that a true king would protect the Seven Kingdoms' northern boundary from invasion. Melisandre believes the wildling invasion to be the forerunner of the return of The Great Other, the sworn foe of her red god R'hllor. Stannis offers Jon Snow Winterfell in exchange for his support, but Jon is chosen by the Night's Watch as its new Lord Commander through the cleverness of Samwell Tarly, and politely refuses Stannis' offer in favor of keeping his oath. Heading for Pentos by sea, Daenerys Targaryen learns that large slave armies can be bought in the cities of Slaver's Bay. Daenerys agrees to give up one of her beloved infant dragons to entice the Slavers to sell her the entire host of the Unsullied, the feared warrior-eunuchs of Astapor. After Daenerys is declared their new mistress, she immediately orders her new army of Unsullied to turn on their former masters and sacks the city. They are aided by Daenerys' maturing dragons, which while not yet big enough to ride, wreak havoc by breathing fire. She then frees all the slaves of Astapor. Daenerys' combined Dothraki/Dragon/Unsullied horde then advances on the slaver city of Yunkai. Many Yunkai mercenaries are killed; the remainder switch sides to Daenerys' growing horde, and Yunkai easily falls. However, the lords of Meereen antagonize Daenerys by killing child slaves and burning the land to deny her resources. Daenerys besieges the city to no avail. Daenerys discovers two false persons in her camp, but the natures of their deceptions are very different. Ser Jorah Mormont was spying for Varys the Spider, informant to the late King Robert Baratheon; Arstan Whitebeard is actually an alias of Ser Barristan Selmy, the humiliated former Lord Commander of Robert Baratheon's Kingsguard, who has come seeking the true Targaryen ruler. Daenerys offers both men the chance to make amends: by sneaking into Meereen to free the slaves and start an uprising. Meereen soon falls. Barristan Selmy submits to Daenery's judgement; she forgives him and makes him Lord Commander of her Queensguard; however, Mormont still insists that he did nothing wrong, and thus she banishes him for his betrayal. Daenerys decides to remain in Meereen and learn to be the queen that Westeros needs.
714151	/m/0352zf	A Deepness in the Sky	Vernor Vinge	1999-03	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Qeng Ho arrive at the On/Off star shortly before the Emergent fleet, a few years before the sun turns on, at which point the Spider civilization will "wake up" and continue its climb into a technological civilization. A reception held by the Emergents doubles as a vector to infect the Qeng Ho with a timed "mindrot" virus. The Emergents time an ambush to take advantage of the onset of symptoms. During these events, a concurrent history of the Spider civilization unfolds – mainly through the picaresque, and then increasingly political and technocratic, experiences of a small group of liberal-minded and progressive Spiders. Their struggles against ignorance and obsolescent traditions are coloured with oddly human-like descriptions and nomenclature, prefiguring some major plot revelations towards the end of the story. Far above, after a close fight, the Emergents subjugate the Qeng Ho; but losses to both sides force them to combine and adopt the so-called "Lurker strategy", monitoring and aiding the Spiders' technological development, waiting until they build up the massive infrastructure and technological base that the visitors need in order to repair their vessels. The mindrot virus originally manifested itself on the Emergents' home world as a devastating plague, but they subsequently mastered it and learned to use it both as a weapon and as a tool for mental domination. Emergent culture uses mindrot primarily in the form of a variant which technicians can manipulate in order to release neurotoxins to specific parts of the brain. An active MRI-type device triggers changes through dia- and paramagnetic biological molecules. By manipulating the brain in this way, Emergent managers induce obsession with a single idea or specialty, which they call Focus, essentially turning people into brilliant appliances. Many Qeng Ho become Focused against their will, and the Emergents retain the rest of the population under mass surveillance, with only a portion of the crew not in suspended animation. The Qeng Ho trading culture gradually starts to dilute this totalitarian regime, by demonstrating to the Emergents certain benefits of tolerated and restricted free trade; the two human cultures merge to some extent over the decades of forced co-operation. Pham Nuwen, the founder of the Qeng Ho trading culture, is living aboard the fleet under the pseudonym Pham Trinli, posing as an inept and bumbling fleet elder. He subverts the Emergents' own oppressive security systems through a series of high-risk ruses. During his plotting he begins to admire the Emergents' Focus technology, and begins to evaluate its usage in his own plans for the future of the fleet. The plan to wrest fleet control from the Emergents, however, requires the co-operation of a much younger Qeng Ho who, through attrition, has become the Qeng Ho "Fleet Manager". His position as the unique liaison officer between Qeng Ho and Emergents leads him to despair, and he accepts Pham Nuwen's offer to join a plot against the Emergents as a way to personal redemption as well as to take revenge against the Emergents. However, his understanding of Pham's ambitions for Focus technology leads to a confrontation between them over the future use of Focus by the Qeng Ho. Coming to an understanding, the two seize the critical moment when the Emergents attempt to provoke a nuclear war on the Spider home-world in order to seize power. By subverting the Emergents' management systems and by luck and human resilience, they defeat the ruling class of the Emergents. The combined Emergent/Qeng Ho fleet now negotiates with the Spider civilization as a trading partner. Pham announces his plans to free all of the Focused in the entire Emergent civilization, and, if he survives that, to go to the center of the galaxy to find the source of the On/Off star and the strange technology remnants that have clearly traveled with it.
714218	/m/03538v	The Notebook	Nicholas Sparks	1996-10-01	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story begins with Noah, an 80-year-old man, reading to a woman in a nursing home. He tells her the following story: : Noah, 31, returns from World War II to his town of New Bern, North Carolina. He finishes restoring an antebellum-style house, after his father's death. Meanwhile Allie, 29, sees the house in the newspaper and decides to pay him a visit. : They are meeting, again, after a 14-year separation, which followed their brief but passionate summer romance when her family was visiting the town. They were separated by class, as she was the daughter of a wealthy family, and he worked as a laborer in a lumberyard then. Seeing each other brings on a flood of memories and strong emotions in both of them. They have dinner together and talk about their lives and the past. Allie learns that Noah had written letters to her, every day of one year, 365 letters after their breakup. She realizes that her mother must have intercepted his letters. They talk about what could have happened between them without her mother's interference. At the end of the night, Noah invites Allie to come back the next day and promises her a surprise. She decides to see him again. During this time, her fiancé, Lon, tries to reach her at the hotel. When Allie does not respond to his calls, he begins to worry. : The next day, Noah takes Allie on a canoe ride in a small lake where swans and geese swim. She is enchanted. On their way back, they are caught in a storm and end up soaked. When they return to his house, they talk again about how important they were to each other, and how their feelings have not changed. Noah and Allie share a kiss and make love. : Allie's mother shows up the next morning and gives Allie the letters from Noah. When her mother leaves, Allie is torn and has a decision to make. She knows she loves Noah, but she does not want to hurt Lon. Noah begs her to stay with him, but she decides to leave. She cries all the way back to the hotel and starts reading the letters her mother returned to her. At the hotel, her fiancé, Lon, is waiting in the lobby. The man stops reading the story at this point, and tells the reader that he is reading to his wife, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease and does not recognize him. He explains that he is also ill, battling a third cancer, and suffering heart disease, kidney failure, and severe arthritis in his hands. He resumes reading the story and describing their life together: her career as a famous painter, their children, growing old together, and finally the diagnosis of Alzheimer's. He had changed the names in the story to protect her, but he is Noah and she is Allie. They walk together and Allie, although she does not recognize him, says she might feel something for him. That night they have dinner together. Referring to the story, she says that she thinks Allie chose Noah. Recognizing her husband, she tells him that she loves him. They embrace and talk, but after almost four hours, Allie fades and begins to panic and hallucinate. She forgets who he is again.
717167	/m/035cm4	A History of the World in 10½ Chapters	Julian Barnes		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "The Visitors" describes the hijacking of a cruise liner, similar to the 1985 incident of the Achille Lauro. "The Wars of Religion" reports a trial against the woodworms in a church, as they have caused the building to become unstable. "The Survivor" is set in a world in which the Chernobyl disaster was "the first big accident". Journalists report that the world is on the brink of nuclear war. The protagonist escapes by boat to avoid a nuclear holocaust. The chapter "Shipwreck" is an analysis of Géricault's painting, The Raft of the Medusa. The first half narrates the historical events of the shipwreck and the survival of the crew members. The second half of the chapter analyses the painting itself. It describes Géricault's "softening" the impact of reality in order to preserve the aestheticism of the work, or to make the story of what happened more palatable. The chapter "The Mountain" describes the journey of a religious woman to a monastery where she wants to intercede for her dead father. The "Three Simple Stories" portray a survivor from the RMS Titanic, the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale, and the Jewish refugees on board the MS St. Louis in 1939, who were prevented from landing in the United States and other countries. "Upsteam!" consists of letters from an actor who travels to a remote jungle for a film project, described as similar to The Mission (1986). His colleague is drowned in an accident with a raft. Entitled "Parenthesis," the half chapter is inserted between chapters 8 and 9. It is different in style to the other chapters, which are short stories; here a narrator addresses his readers and offers a philosophical discussion on love. The narrator is called "Julian Barnes", but, as he states, the reader cannot be sure that the narrator's opinions are those of the author. A parallel is drawn with El Greco's painting Burial of the Count of Orgaz, in which the artist confronts the viewer. The piece includes a discussion of lines from Philip Larkin's poem An Arundel Tomb ("What will survive of us is love") and from W. H. Auden's September 1, 1939 ("We must love one another or die"). The chapter "Project Ararat" tells the story of a fictional astronaut Spike Tiggler, based on the astronaut James Irwin. The final chapter "The Dream" portrays New Heaven.
717649	/m/035dq2	Enemy Lines: Rebel Stand	Aaron Allston		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Continuing the adventures started in Rebel Dream, Wedge Antilles continues to defend the planet Borleias from the Yuuzhan Vong. After rooting out a spy in the Vong-controlled Tam Elgrin, he begins creating a superlaser, identical to the Death Star's except in one regard: it doesn't work. Using both the laser and Commander Czulkang Lah's obsession with the capture of Jaina Solo, Antilles draws the Yuuzhan Vong fleet away from Lah's flagship. While the fleet is elsewhere, the Super Star Destroyer Lusankya is fitted with a spear and flown directly into the worldship. The worldship is destroyed, and Czulkang Lah perishes. Meanwhile, on Coruscant, Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade Skywalker, Tahiri Veila and Wraith Squadron continue their scouting mission. There, they encounter a Dark Jedi similar to the mythical Lord Nyax, but who is really the genetically modified Dark Jedi Irek Ismaren. Nyax is more powerful than Luke, but, with the combined efforts of the Jedi and the Yuuzhan Vong, Nyax is defeated. Meanwhile, Viqi Shesh's plans to escape Coruscant are foiled by Wraith Squadron, and she commits suicide as a result. Han and Leia Organa Solo, along with their droids C-3PO and R2-D2, set off on adventures to root out and overthrow any planetary government that plans to acquiesce to the Yuuzhan Vong. One of their most dangerous missions is set on Aphran IV, though they are able to escape death with their mission a success.
717675	/m/035drw	Traitor	Matthew Stover		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the beginning of the novel, Jacen Solo is being tortured via the Embrace of Pain as he is overlooked by his captors, the Yuuzhan Vong and the mysterious figure known as Vergere. Vergere increases this pain by somehow robbing Jacen of the Force, but at the same time, she helps him through his agony by telling him to embrace, just like the Yuuzhan Vong do. Jacen does just as Vergere suggested, which pleases the Vong, represented by Nom Anor throughout the novel, who believe that in no time, Jacen will become just like them. Soon, nearly a year following the Fall of Coruscant, Jacen is transported to a Yuuzhan Vong seedship, where he is enslaved to a creature called a dhuryam. As this happens, he gains Vongsense, similar to how his late brother, Anakin, had sensed them with his lambent-imbedded lightsaber back in Edge of Victory I: Conquest. The dhuryam is competing against other dhuryams to become the World Brain of the captured Coruscant, which has been renamed Yuuzhan'tar in honor of the Yuuzhan Vong's dead homeworld. As World Brain, the dhuryam that Jacen is enslaved to will have the responsibility and authority of everything technical on Yuuzhan'tar. Through more help from Vergere, who turns out to be a Force-user herself, Jacen forces the dhuryam to stop enslaving him and think of him as a partner; this way, the dhuryam would be more successful to be in consideration of being the World Brain of Yuuzhan'tar. As a result of this, Jacen's dhuryam indeed becomes more successful throughout various operations aboard the seedship. Eventually, the day comes when a dhuryam aboard the seedship will become selected to govern Yuuzhan'tar. Jacen uses this day to start a riot where Yuuzhan Vong and slave alike are killed, and he takes advantage of the chaos to kill off his dhuryam's opponents. When he decides to kill his own dhuryam, he sees the spirit of Anakin telling him to stop. Unknowing of whether or not this was the real Anakin or a fabrication created by Vergere, Jacen's hesitation in killing the surviving dhuryam results in him getting knocked out. Jacen's dhuryam becomes the World Brain of Yuuzhan'tar by default, and Jacen wakes up on the captured Coruscant, realizing in horror what this newly transformed planet once was. Vergere leads him on a journey throughout the transformed world, and gradually, she shows him evidence that the Jedi's ideals of the Force are flawed; there is no light or dark side, but an overall power of the Force whose raw power is only considered to be of the dark side. Jacen refuses to believe this until Vergere leads him into a Yuuzhan Vong trap where he nearly kills all of them, including Vergere herself. Jacen is shocked at just how right Vergere is, even after she revealed previously that she was once a member of the previous Jedi Order. But eventually, Jacen comes to accept the Yuuzhan Vong's ways as they give him the late Anakin Solo's lightsaber, which is considered a holy relic to the Vong due to its imbedded lambent crystal. Jedi Knight Ganner Rhysode has spent much time searching the galaxy trying to find Jacen, being one of the few who believe that he is still alive. He comes into contact with Jacen and an entourage of Yuuzhan Vong infiltrators aboard a New Republic refugee ship, and Ganner is captured due to his Jedi nature. He is taken to Yuuzhan'tar in order to be converted to their ways like Jacen. But as it turns out, Jacen had feigned loyalty to the Vong so that he could get close to the World Brain. The plan works as both he and Ganner are allowed admittance into the Well of the World Brain, although Nom Anor knows that they were faking their obedience to the Yuuzhan Vong. Knowing that Jacen won't have time to do whatever he wants to the World Brain, Ganner takes Jacen's lightsaber and decides to take on every Yuuzhan Vong warrior at the Well of the World Brain, vowing that not one of them will ever pass. Ganner fights every Vong warrior to the death, but in the end, he is so mortally wounded that he brings down the hall of the Well of the World Brain on top of himself and every surviving Vong with him. Meanwhile, as the battle commenced, Nom Anor looked to Vergere to escape the disaster, and Vergere tricks him into revealing his escape craft. Vergere then coerces the Vong plant life around them to tie up Nom Anor so that she and Jacen could escape Yuuzhan'tar. Meanwhile, Jacen concludes his business with the World Brain, and he and Vergere leave. As they travel back to the New Republic, Jacen reveals to Vergere that he convinced the World Brain to teach the Yuuzhan Vong the concept of compromise; the brain will cause problems throughout the Vong's occupation of the world so that for once, the invaders will know that not everything will ever be perfect for them. Vergere applauds Jacen for applying what she taught him throughout the novel to the World Brain.
717690	/m/035dtq	Force Heretic: Remnant	Shane Dix		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Luke Skywalker leads a Jedi mission to find the lost, living world of Zonama Sekot, and on his way helps repel a Yuuzhan Vong invasion of the Imperial Remnant, formerly the Empire. Peace is declared between the Remnant and the reorganizing Galactic Alliance, but this is marred by the ruin of Barab I and the destruction of N'zoth by the Yuuzhan Vong. Meanwhile, the Solos (minus Jacen, since he is with Luke trying to find Zonama Sekot) and their allies discover an alliance between the Vong and the Fians, the inhabitants of Galantos, which is thwarted after the Vong try to invade the planet. Elsewhere, on Yuuzhan'tar, Nom Anor takes on the identity of Yu'shaa, prophet of the heretical Jeedai cult.
717697	/m/035dvd	Force Heretic: Refugee	Sean Williams		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Luke Skywalker's mission to find the living world of Zonama Sekot takes him and his team to the Chiss capital world of Csilla. There, they look into the planet's library for any information on the living planet, and amidst this, they foil a Chiss conspiracy against the Fel family. As a result of this, Luke and his team are given more time, and Jacen Solo manages to figure out that Zonama Sekot is probably hiding in the Unknown Regions disguised as a moon. The team finds evidence of this as they look into information on a solar system that inhabits the gas giant of Mobus. Meanwhile, the Solos and their allies foil two conspiracies on the world of Bakura just in time to repel the second Ssi-ruu Imperium's invasion of the planet. However, as a consequence, Tahiri Veila falls victim to her Yuuzhan Vong personality, which had previously been implanted in her by the late Vong shaper Mezhan Kwaad, and which has taken on potency to Tahiri's psyche following her boyfriend Anakin's death. Tahiri falls into a coma as a result, and her normal half and her Yuuzhan Vong half fight over control of her body within Tahiri's mind. Beneath Yuuzhan'tar, Nom Anor, posing as Yu'shaa, the Prophet of the Shamed Ones, manages to find a turncoat Yuuzhan Vong priestess by the name of Ngaaluh. Ngaaluh agrees to help Nom Anor and the Shamed Ones topple Supreme Overlord Shimrra from the polyp throne, as there are those within the Vong elite who doubt Shimrra's ability to lead the species to salvation.
717714	/m/035dw2	Force Heretic: Reunion	Sean Williams		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Han Solo and his wife Leia fight to keep a critical communications center out of Yuuzhan Vong hands as Tahiri masters her half-Jedi, half-Vong nature. Luke Skywalker and his team of Jedi Knights rediscover the living world of Zonama Sekot (first seen in Greg Bear's novel Rogue Planet) and plead for that world's interference in the ongoing war. It goes well; the world agrees to follow them. Meanwhile, Nom Anor's heresy among the Shamed Ones is hindered when his elite spy, Ngaaluh, is discovered by Supreme Overlord Shimrra, and she is forced to kill herself. However, before she did so, Ngaaluh revealed to Nom Anor rumors from Shimrra's court of a living world that, according to Yuuzhan Vong legends, will be the downfall of the species.
717726	/m/035dxq	The Final Prophecy	Gregory Keyes		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel's subplot focuses on the Galactic Alliance's battle with the Yuuzhan Vong in the Bilbringi system. When the HoloNet is suddenly scrambled, General Wedge Antilles's forces are forced to fight tooth-and-nail against the Vong while Jaina Solo is forced to deal with a group of cowardly criminals aboard a space station that would have meant quite a deal against the galactic invaders. As a result of the Battle of Bilbringi, several Galactic Alliance officers are captured or killed, and the remnants of Antilles's forces retreat back to their home defenses. The main plot of the novel deals with the decisions made by Nom Anor and Nen Yim. With his heresy among the Shamed Ones starting to wane, Nom Anor reveals that a living world will come to save them and defeat Supreme Overlord Shimrra. Meanwhile, Master Shaper Nen Yim studies a spacecraft taken by an executed Yuuzhan Vong commander from the living world of Zonama Sekot. Nen Yim soon finds evidence that the biology between the Sekotan ship is similar to the DNA of the Yuuzhan Vong and their creations. This is part of the evidence among Nom Anor and the Shamed Ones that the living world that Ngaaluh mentioned in the previous novel is a destined harbinger of doom to Shimrra's order, or, to Shimrra and the elite, could spell the extermination of the Yuuzhan Vong as a whole. As this happens, the presence of the Quorealists becomes more well known in Shimrra's order. As it is revealed, the Quorealists are the lingering supporters of Shimrra's predecessor on the polyp throne, Quoreal, who espoused against invading the galaxy, which was what prompted Shimrra and his own supporters to overthrow and kill Quoreal and his followers. Priest Harrar, a secret Quorealist, becomes intrigued with the new evidence that Nen Yim uncovered from the Sekotan ship. Nom Anor decides to act upon what Nen Yim discovered by calling to the Galactic Alliance to send Jedi over to help him and Nen Yim escape Yuuzhan'tar and find Zonama Sekot. Tahiri Veila and Corran Horn respond to the call, and along with successfully collecting the disguised Nom Anor and Nen Yim, they also pick up the turncoat Harrar via the Sekotan ship. They use its navigation to travel to Zonama Sekot, where the ship lands and dies. The five travelers begin to study the planet alongside each other in order to get to know the others' ways. As Nen Yim eventually discovers a shocking truth between Zonama Sekot and the Yuuzhan Vong, Nom Anor makes a decision to kill the living world by sabotaging its hyperdrive cores just as he calls for help from the Vong; he believes that by killing the world that Shimrra fears so much, he would be inducted back into the elite. Nom Anor then reveals his true identity to Nen Yim and mortally wounds her before going after the hyperdrive cores. As she fades away into death, Nen Yim is able to tell Tahiri what Nom Anor plans to do, and she, Corran, and Harrar go after him. However, Nom Anor is successful in sabotaging the hyperdrive cores and escapes as the planet appears to begin dying. After Harrar is knocked off a cliff from his brief encounter with Nom Anor, Tahiri and Corran are rescued by Luke Skywalker, his wife Mara, Jacen Solo, and Saba Sebatyne, and they are all taken to shelter before Zonama Sekot jumps into hyperspace. Soon, Sekot, taking on the form of Nen Yim, reveals to the Jedi that Nom Anor's attempt to kill the living world has failed, and now, it is returning to known space to fight the Yuuzhan Vong.
718998	/m/035jkn	Millennium	John Varley	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Millennium features a civilization that has dubbed itself "The Last Age". Due to millennia of warfare of every type (nineteen nuclear wars alone), the Earth has been heavily polluted and humanity's gene pool irreparably damaged. They have thus embarked on a desperate plan; time travel into the past, collect healthy humans, and send them to an uncontaminated planet to rebuild civilization. The time travelers can only take people that will have no further effect on the timeline: those who have vanished without a trace, or died without being observed; otherwise they would be changing the past, which risks a temporal paradox and perhaps even a catastrophic breakdown of the fabric of time. Though they collect everyone they can, they exert a great deal of effort on those destined to die in various disasters such as sinking ships and crashing airplanes (and once a century of Roman soldiers lost and dying in the North African desert). As such incidents leave no survivors to report interference and change the timeline, they can freely remove the living but soon-to-die victims, and replace them with convincing corpses they have manufactured in the future. The novel deals with several of the raids, their inevitable discovery in the present day, and the fallout that results from changes to the present day reverberating into the future. The story follows Louise Baltimore, who is in charge of the "snatch team" that goes back into the past to kidnap people who would otherwise die. Because of the massive pollution and the genetic damage she has sustained, she is missing one leg and must get advanced medical treatment daily. Her appearance is quite ugly due to skin damage (from "paraleprosy") and other problems; however, she wears a special "skin suit" which makes her look whole and beautiful (which may or may not be real&mdash;she is an unreliable narrator), and gives her a functional artificial leg. The team she leads uses a "time gate" to appear in the bathroom aboard an airplane in flight. Dressed to look like flight attendants, they begin to bluff the passengers into entering the bathroom where they are pushed into the gate, to arrive in the future. After large numbers of people disappear, the remaining passengers become suspicious. The future team then uses special weapons to stun them before throwing them through the gate. During the removal of the passengers, they run into an unexpected hijacker. The ensuing gunplay is one-sided and one of the snatch team members is killed, her stunner lost. The rest of the team finishes removing the passengers and the real flight attendants. The team then scatters pre-burnt body parts around the plane so they will be found after the crash. As the plane approaches the moment when it is destined to crash, the lost weapon still has not been found. Upon returning to her present (our future), Louise is informed that the weapon that was left behind has caused a paradox and that it must be recovered to prevent a breakdown in the fabric of time. The novel then continues with her efforts to go back in time to fix the paradox created.
719323	/m/035kbs	Making History	Stephen Fry		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is told in first person by Michael "Puppy" Young, a young history student at Cambridge University on the verge of completing his doctoral thesis on the early life of Adolf Hitler and his mother. He meets Professor Leo Zuckerman, a physicist who has a strong personal interest in Hitler, the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. Michael assumes this is due to his Jewish heritage. However, it is later revealed that Leo was born Axel Bauer, the son of Dietrich Bauer, a Nazi doctor at Auschwitz. Leo has developed a machine that enables the past to be viewed&mdash;but it is of no practical use as the image is not resolvable into details. Together, they hatch a plan to modify the machine such that it can be used to send something back into time. They decide to use a permanent male contraceptive pill, stolen from Michael's girlfriend (a biochemistry researcher), who, due to his continual distraction, has left him to take a position at Princeton University. They decide to send this pill back in time to the well in Braunau am Inn so that Hitler's father will drink from it, become infertile, and Hitler will never be born. When Michael awakens he is completely disoriented. He soon discovers that he is in the USA, at Princeton University. Everyone he encounters is surprised that he is speaking with an English accent. It takes some time for Michael's memory to return. He realizes that his plan was successful, history has changed, and for some reason his parents must have moved to America. Initially he is elated and tells his new friend Steve how happy he is because Steve has never heard of Hitler, Braunau-am-Inn, or the Nazi party. Steve corrects Michael and reveals that he is well aware of the Nazi party. Michael begins to discover the history of this new world. It turns out that without Hitler, a new leader emerged, Rudolph Gloder, who was equally ruthless. In fact, Michael and Zuckerman have replaced Hitler with a Nazi leader who was even more charming, patient, and effective, and as committed to the Final Solution as Hitler had been. In this alternate timeline, the Nazis won a mandate in the Reichstag in 1932 and built up an electronics industry of their own. Unlike Hitler, Gloder proceeded with stealth, ensuring peaceful unification with Austria in 1937. More alarmingly, Gloder's Nazis also had a head start on the research and development of nuclear weapons, which led to the destruction of Moscow and Leningrad, eliminating Joseph Stalin and his Politburo in this alternate 1938. The Greater German Reich annexes Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Turkey and invades the remnants of the former Soviet Union. In 1939, France, Britain, Scandinavia, and the Benelux nations capitulate, although Britain rebels in 1941, leading to the execution of several dissidents, among them the Duke of York (the historical King George VI). Jews are exiled to a "Jewish Free State" within the former Yugoslavia, where most of this world's Holocaust occurs. The United States develops nuclear weapons in 1941, leading to a Cold War between Nazi Germany, its satellites, and the United States. The latter has never gone to war against the Japanese Empire in the Pacific, and it is left unsaid whether Japan has its own nuclear weapons as well. Due to these changes, the Nazis are now the dominant power in the whole of Europe. The plan for genocide of the Jewish race came to fruition, although this is only implied, never explicitly stated. (Every time Michael attempts to ask someone what happened to Europe's Jews, he receives no answer.) The USA is engaged in a fierce struggle short of combat against the Nazis, supporting former Soviet guerrillas fighting in Siberia. As a result, this United States has become far more socially conservative. Because there was no sixties upsurge of social liberalism and decriminalisation of homosexuality in (Nazi-occupied) Western Europe in this world, the latter is still a felony, while racial segregation is still active. Steve turns out to be homosexual, and when he discovers Michael's background, he marvels at his talk of gay pride marches, urban gay communities, and a mass social movement in Michael's world of origin, regarding it as "utopian". Much to his surprise, Michael reciprocates Steve's feelings, and realises that he too is gay. Michael is apprehended by the authorities, who believe that he is a possible spy. Michael learns that the water from the well in Hitler's home town was used to create "Braunau Water", which was the instrument to sterilise the European Jews, wiping them out in one generation. In a cruel twist of fate, the person who perfected the synthesis was Dietrich Bauer. Once more his physicist son, Axel, is wracked with guilt and has developed a Temporal Imager. With Michael and Steve's help, they plan to send a dead rat to poison the well so that it will be pumped clean of the sterilising water. As they begin to do this, they are interrupted by the federal agents that apprehended Michael earlier and they end up shooting Steve, who dies in Michael's arms just as the time alteration occurs. Time changes again. Expecting the disorientation, Michael comes to his senses faster now and discovers that almost everything is back to how it was, except that his favorite band never existed. He gives up his career in academia, figuring he can at least make some money "writing" the songs that he remembers from the previous reality. Finally, Michael is reunited with Steve, who also remembers the previous reality. Their gay relationship is no longer criminal.
722248	/m/035ph8	Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community	Robert Putnam	2000	{"/m/06n6p": "Social sciences", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital (1995) Putnam surveys the decline of "social capital" in the United States of America since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He believes this undermines the active civil engagement which a strong democracy requires from its citizens. Putnam discusses ways in which Americans have disengaged from political involvement including decreased voter turnout, public meeting attendance, serving on committees and working with political parties. Putnam also cites Americans' growing distrust in their government. Putnam accepts the possibility that this lack of trust could be attributed to "the long litany of political tragedies and scandals since the 1960s" (see paragraph 13 of the 1995 article), but believes that this explanation is limited when viewing it alongside other "trends in civic engagement of a wider sort" (par. 13). Putnam notes the aggregate loss in membership of many existing civic organizations and points out that the act of individual membership has not migrated to other, succeeding organizations. To illustrate why the decline in Americans' membership in social organizations is problematic to democracy, Putnam uses bowling as an example. Although the number of people who bowl has increased in the last 20 years, the number of people who bowl in leagues has decreased. If people bowl alone, they do not participate in social interaction and civic discussions that might occur in a league environment. Putnam then contrasts the countertrends of ever increasing mass-membership organizations, nonprofit organizations and support groups to the data of the General Social Survey. This data shows an aggregate decline in membership of traditional civic organizations, proving his thesis that U.S. social capital has declined. He then asks the obvious question "Why is US social capital eroding?" (par. 35). He believes the "movement of women into the workforce" (par. 36), the "re-potting hypothesis" (par. 37) and other demographic changes have made little impact on the number of individuals engaging in civic associations. Instead, he looks to the technological "individualizing" (par. 39) of our leisure time via television, Internet and eventually "virtual reality helmets" (par.39). Putnam suggests closer studies of which forms of associations can create the greatest social capital, how various aspects of technology, changes in social equality, and public policy affect social capital. He closes by emphasizing the importance of discovering how the United States could reverse the trend of social capital decay.
722312	/m/035pjq	Women in Love	D. H. Lawrence		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen are two sisters living in the Midlands of England in the 1910s. Ursula is a teacher, Gudrun an artist. They meet two men who live nearby, school inspector Rupert Birkin and coal-mine heir Gerald Crich. The four become friends. Ursula and Birkin become involved, and Gudrun eventually begins a love affair with Gerald. All four are deeply concerned with questions of society, politics, and the relationship between men and women. At a party at Gerald's estate, Gerald's sister Diana drowns. Gudrun becomes the teacher and mentor of his youngest sister. Soon Gerald's coal-mine-owning father dies as well, after a long illness. After the funeral, Gerald goes to Gudrun's house and spends the night with her, while her parents are asleep in another room. Birkin asks Ursula to marry him, and she agrees. Gerald and Gudrun's relationship, however, becomes stormy. The four vacation in the Alps. Gudrun begins an intense friendship with Loerke, a physically puny but emotionally commanding artist from Dresden. Gerald, enraged by Loerke and most of all by Gudrun's verbal abuse and rejection of his manhood, and driven by the internal violence of his own self, tries to strangle Gudrun. Before he has killed her, however, he realizes that this is not what he wants--he leaves Gudrun and Loerke and on his skis climbs ever upward on the mountains, eventually slipping into a snow valley where he falls asleep, a frozen sleep from which he never awakens. The impact on Birkin of Gerald's death is profound; the novel ends a few weeks after Gerald's death, with Birkin trying to explain to Ursula that he needs Gerald as he needs her--her for the perfect relationship with a woman, and Gerald for the perfect relationship with a man.
722321	/m/035pks	The Ragwitch	Garth Nix	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Julia and her brother, Paul, are spending a day by the beach when they discover a midden heap. They climb to the top, where Julia discovers a rag doll in a ball of feathers hidden in a nest. It turns out to be a powerful and evil witch, and it possesses Julia and spirits her away through a pyramid of fire. Paul manages to follow them and he finds himself in a strange country desperately unprepared for the return of the Ragwitch. At first, he meets the May Dancers, who after questioning him, lead him to the edge of the forest and set him free. The people of the land aid him as he searches for a way to free his sister, action following at every turn, as both Paul and Julia battle the Ragwitch; Julia from within Her, and Paul from outside. Paul collects several mystical objects from the powerful Elementals, before meeting with the Patchwork King, who forges for him a needle spear in order to kill the Ragwitch. There are no strong fighters to help Paul, no saviors for him and he must find his own way. Because Paul is no hero, his war is one of bravery and brains, not brawn. Julia tells her own story from the mind of the Ragwitch. Although she is much more courageous than Paul, her war is one of the mind, resisting the power of the Ragwitch from within the witch's body.
722636	/m/035qdt	Sundiver	David Brin	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with the main character, Jacob Demwa, working at the center for uplift on Earth, while he recovers from a tragedy at the Vanilla Space Needle where he saved the space elevator from destruction but lost his love in the process. An alien friend of Demwa's, Fagin (a Kanten), contacts Demwa and offers him a job. Initially reluctant to return to his previous life as a scientific investigator, Demwa agrees to attend a secret meeting. He learns that there are “ghosts” appearing in the Sun's chromosphere. The ghosts are without precedent in the galactic library. Demwa agrees to come and investigate the origin and purpose of the sun-ghosts, and travels to Mercury where the sundiver project is based. With him on Mercury are: Helene deSilva, the attractive station commander with whom Jacob develops a relationship over the course of the book; Fagin; Pila Bubbacub, the library representative; his assistant Culla (a Pring); Dr. Dwayne Kepler (the head of the Sundiver expedition); Dr. Mildred Martine (a psychiatrist); and the exuberant journalist Peter LaRoque. Demwa goes to the sun, and observes the sun-ghosts. There are apparently three forms: the “toroids” which appear to be similar to cattle and live off of the magnetic fields in the chromosphere, a relatively fluid, apparently intelligent variety, and a threatening, anthropomorphic figure that avoids the side of the sunship where the instruments are located. When a neo-chimpanzee scientist, Dr. Jeffrey, is killed on a solo mission to the sun, it seems to confirm the sun-ghosts' hostile intent. An investigation seems to implicate the reporter, LaRoque. LaRoque is then tested to determine if he is capable of murder. The test results indicate LaRoque has violent tendencies and he is incarcerated. A third trip to the sun is undertaken, in hopes that Pil Bubbacub will be able to contact the sun-ghosts. He fails to do so, but claims to have succeeded, saying that the sun-ghosts are offended and have used psi to control LaRoque’s actions. He uses a powder that blocks the ships sensors to pretend he has dispelled the sun-ghosts because he is embarrassed by the Library's lack of data on the ghosts. Back on Mercury, Jacob discovers his trick, and reveals it, resulting in disgrace to Bubbacub and embarrassment for the Pila. The characters go on yet another mission into the sun, this time with a laser to communicate with the sun-ghosts. They make brief contact with one of the ghosts, but an anthropomorphic ghost appears and warns them against further exploration of the sun. While they are leaving, they discover that one of Culla’s dietary supplements is a dye used in tunable lasers. Combining this with an earlier conversation about Culla's eyesight, Demwa concludes that Culla can project laser light from his eyes: he has been faking the anthropomorphic ghosts. When Culla realizes he has been discovered he retreats to the instrument side of the ship and begins disabling the equipment that propels the sunship so that it will fall into the photosphere, taking all evidence of his deception with it. The sun-ghosts use toroids to arrest the ship’s fall, but eventually they give out, and the ship plummets. While Demwa and one of the crew attempt to disable Culla, Helene discovers that only the galactic technology has been sabotaged, and uses the refrigerator laser as a thruster to move the ship out of the sun. Culla is killed, and the ship eventually escapes the sun, though all but Fagin temporarily “die” of hypothermia and frostbite from the refrigerator laser. The ship’s records are recovered, showing that Culla used his laser sight to discredit Bubbacub, as part of a campaign to free his species from its client status, and then to sabotage the ship when he was discovered to prevent the Pila from finding out. Although set in the same universe as the rest of the other Uplift books, it is set a considerable amount of time before the other books, and shares none of the same characters, apart from Jacob Demwa, who is mentioned as the mentor of Tom Orley and Gillian Baskin, and Helene Alvarez (née deSilva), who is mentioned in Startide Rising as Credeiki's former captain aboard the James Cook and who appears in The Uplift War to sign a treaty with the Thennanin.
723638	/m/035tfg	Journey to the Center of the Earth	Jules Verne	1864	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 The story begins on May 1863, in the Lidenbrock house in Hamburg, with Professor Lidenbrock rushing home to peruse his latest purchase, an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga written by Snorri Sturluson ("Heimskringla"; the chronicle of the Norwegian kings who ruled over Iceland). While looking through the book, Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel find a coded note written in runic script. (This is a first indication of Verne's love for cryptology. Coded, cryptic or incomplete messages as a plot device will continue to appear in many of his works and in each case Verne goes a long way to explain not only the code used but also the mechanisms used to retrieve the original text.) Lidenbrock and Axel translate the runic characters into Latin letters, revealing a message written in a seemingly bizarre code. Lidenbrock attempts a decipherment, deducing the message to be a kind of transposition cipher; but his results are as meaningless as the original. Professor Lidenbrock decides to lock everyone in the house and force himself and the others (Axel, and the maid, Martha) to go without food until he cracks the code. Axel discovers the answer when fanning himself with the deciphered text: Lidenbrock's decipherment was correct, and only needs to be read backwards to reveal sentences written in rough Latin. Axel decides to keep the secret hidden from Professor Lidenbrock, afraid of what the Professor might do with the knowledge, but after two days without food he cannot stand the hunger and reveals the secret to his uncle. Lidenbrock translates the note, which is revealed to be a medieval note written by the (fictional) Icelandic alchemist Arne Saknussemm, who claims to have discovered a passage to the centre of the Earth via Snæfell in Iceland. In what Axel calls bad Latin, the deciphered message reads: In slightly better Latin, with errors amended: which, when translated into English, reads: Professor Lidenbrock is a man of astonishing impatience, and departs for Iceland immediately, taking his reluctant nephew with him. Axel, who, in comparison, is cowardly and anti-adventurous, repeatedly tries to reason with him, explaining his fears of descending into a volcano and putting forward various scientific theories as to why the journey is impossible, but Professor Lidenbrock repeatedly keeps himself blinded against Axel's point of view. After a rapid journey via Lübeck and Copenhagen, they arrive in Reykjavík, where the two procure the services of Hans Bjelke (a Danish-speaking Icelander eiderdown hunter) as their guide, and travel overland to the base of the volcano. In late June they reach the volcano, which has three craters. According to Saknussemm's message, the passage to the centre of the Earth is through the one crater that is touched by the shadow of a nearby mountain peak at noon. However, the text also states that this is only true during the last days of June. During the next few days, with July rapidly approaching, the weather is too cloudy for any shadows. Axel silently rejoices, hoping this will force his uncle – who has repeatedly tried to impart courage to him only to succeed in making him even more cowardly still – to give up the project and return home. Alas for Axel, however, on the last day, the sun comes out and the mountain peak shows the correct crater to take. After descending into this crater, the three travelers set off into the bowels of the Earth, encountering many strange phenomena and great dangers, including a chamber filled with combustible gas, and steep-sided wells around the "path." After taking a wrong turn, they run out of water and Axel almost dies, but Hans taps into a neighboring subterranean river. Lidenbrock and Axel name the resulting stream the "Hansbach" in his honor and the three are saved. At another point, Axel becomes separated from the others and is lost several miles from them. Luckily, a strange acoustic phenomenon allows him to communicate with them from some miles away, and they are soon reunited. After descending many miles, following the course of the Hansbach, they reach an unimaginably vast cavern. This underground world is lit by electrically charged gas at the ceiling, and is filled with a very deep subterranean ocean, surrounded by a rocky coastline covered in petrified trees and giant mushrooms. The travelers build a raft out of trees and set sail. The Professor names this sea as the Lidenbrock Sea. Whilst on the water, they see several prehistoric creatures such as a giant Ichthyosaurus, which fights with a Plesiosaurus and wins. After the battle between the monsters, the party comes across an island with a huge geyser, which Lidenbrock names "Axel's Island." A lightning storm again threatens to destroy the raft and its passengers, but instead throws them onto the coastline. This part of the coast, Axel discovers, is alive with prehistoric plant and animal life forms, including giant insects and a herd of mastodons. On a beach covered with bones, Axel discovers an oversized human skull. Axel and Lidenbrock venture some way into the prehistoric forest, where Professor Lidenbrock points out, in a shaky voice, a prehistoric human, more than twelve feet in height, leaning against a tree and watching a herd of mastodons. Axel cannot be sure if he has really seen the man or not, and he and Professor Lidenbrock debate whether or not a proto-human civilization actually exists so far underground. The three wonder if the creature is a man-like ape, or an ape-like man. The sighting of the creature is considered the most alarming part of the story, and the explorers decide that it is better not to alert it to their presence as they fear it may be hostile. The travelers continue to explore the coastline, and find a passageway marked by Saknussemm as the way ahead. However, it is blocked by what appears to be a recent cave-in and two of the three, Hans and the Professor, despair at being unable to hack their way through the granite wall. The adventurers plan to blast the rock with gun cotton and paddle out to sea to escape the blast. Upon executing the plan, however, they discover that behind the rockfall was a seemingly bottomless pit, not a passage to the centre of the earth. The travelers are swept away as the sea rushes into the large open gap in the ground. After spending hours being swept along at lightning speeds by the water, the raft ends up inside a large, geyser-acting volcanic chimney filling with water and magma. Terrified, the three are rushed upwards, through stifling heat, and are ejected onto the surface from a side-vent of a stratovolcano acting like a cone geyser until the geyser stops erupting. When they regain consciousness, they discover that they have been ejected from Mount Stromboli, a 926 metre-high stratovolcano located in southern Italy. They return to Hamburg to great acclaim – Professor Lidenbrock is hailed as one of the great scientists of history, Axel marries his sweetheart Gräuben, and Hans eventually returns to his peaceful life in Iceland. The Professor has some regret that their journey was cut short. At the very end of the book, Axel and Lidenbrock realize why their compass was behaving strangely after their journey on the raft. They realize that the needle was pointing the wrong way after being struck by an electric fireball which nearly destroyed the wooden raft.
724284	/m/035w31	The Betrothed	Alessandro Manzoni	1827	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Renzo and Lucia, a couple in an unnamed Lombard village near Lake Como, are planning to wed on 8 November 1628. The parish priest, Don Abbondio, is walking home on the eve of the wedding when he is accosted by two "bravoes" (thugs) who warn him not to perform the marriage, because the local baron (Don Rodrigo) has forbidden it. When he presents himself for the wedding ceremony, Renzo is amazed to hear that the marriage is to be postponed (the priest didn't have the courage to tell the truth). An argument ensues and Renzo succeeds in extracting from the priest the name of Don Rodrigo. It turns out that Don Rodrigo has his eye on Lucia. Lucia's mother, Agnese, advises Renzo to ask the advice of "Dr. Azzeccagarbugli" (Dr Quibbleweaver, in Colquhoun's translation), a lawyer in the town of Lecco. Dr Azzeccagarbugli is at first sympathetic, showing Renzo a recent edict on the subject of priests who refuse to marry, but when he hears the name of Don Rodrigo he panics and drives Renzo away. Lucia sends a message to "Fra Cristoforo" (Friar Christopher), a respected Capuchin friar at the monastery of Pescarenico, asking him to come as soon as he can. When Fra Cristoforo comes to Lucia's cottage and hears the story, he immediately goes to Don Rodrigo's mansion, where he finds the baron at a meal with his cousin Count Attilio, along with four guests, including the mayor and Dr Azzeccagarbugli. When Don Rodrigo is taken aside by the friar, he explodes with anger at his presumption and sends him away, but not before an old servant has a chance to offer him help. Meanwhile, Agnese comes up with a plan. In those days, it was possible for two people to marry by declaring themselves married before a priest and in the presence of two amenable witnesses. Renzo runs to his friend Tonio and offers him 25 lire if he agrees to help. When Fra Cristoforo returns with the bad news, they decide to put their plan into action. The next morning, Lucia and Agnese are visited by beggars, Don Rodrigo's men in disguise. They examine the house in order to plan an assault. Late at night, Agnese distracts Don Abbondio's servant Perpetua while Tonio and his brother Gervaso enter Don Abbondio's study, ostensibly to pay a debt. They are followed indoors secretly by Lucia and Renzo. When they try to carry out their plan, the priest throws the tablecloth in Lucia's face and drops the lamp. They struggle in the darkness. In the meantime, Don Rodrigo's men invade Lucia's house, but nobody is there. A boy named Menico arrives with a message of warning from Fra Cristoforo and they seize him. When they hear the alarm being raised by the sacristan, who is calling for help on the part of Don Abbondio who raised the alarm of invaders in his home, they assume they have been betrayed and flee in confusion. Menico sees Agnese, Lucia and Renzo in the street and warns them not to return home. They go to the monastery, where Fra Cristoforo gives Renzo a letter of introduction to a certain friar at Milan, and another letter to the two women, to organise a refuge at a convent in the nearby city of Monza. Lucia is entrusted to the nun Gertrude, a strange and unpredictable noblewoman whose story is told in these chapters. A child of the most important family of the area, her father decided to send her to the cloisters for no other reason than to simplify his affairs: he wished to keep his properties united for his first-born, heir to the family's title and riches. As she grew up, she sensed that she was being forced by her parents into a life which would comport but little with her personality. However, fear of scandal, as well as manoeuvres and menaces from her father, induced Gertrude to lie to her interviewers in order to enter the convent of Monza, where she was received as la Signora ("the lady"). Later, she fell under the spell of a young man of no scruples, associated with the worst baron of that time, the Innominato (the Unnamed). Renzo arrives in famine-stricken Milan and goes to the monastery, but the friar he is seeking is absent and so he wanders further into the city. A bakery in the Corsia de' Servi, El prestin di scansc ("Bakery of the Crutches"), is destroyed by a mob, who then go to the house of the Commissioner of Supply in order to lynch him. He is saved in the nick of time by Ferrer, the Grand Chancellor, who arrives in a coach and announces he is taking the Commissioner to prison. Renzo becomes prominent as he helps Ferrer make his way through the crowd. After witnessing these scenes, Renzo joins in a lively discussion and reveals views which attract the notice of a police agent in search of a scapegoat. The agent tries to lead Renzo directly to "the best inn" (i.e. prison) but Renzo is tired and stops at one nearby where, after being plied with drink, he reveals his full name and address. The next morning, he is awakened by a notary and two bailiffs, who handcuff him and start to take him away. In the street Renzo announces loudly that he is being punished for his heroism the day before and, with the aid of sympathetic onlookers, he effects his escape. Leaving the city by the same gate through which he entered, he sets off for Bergamo, knowing that his cousin Bortolo lives in a village nearby. Once there, he will be beyond the reach of the authorities of Milan (under Spanish domination), as Bergamo is territory of the Most Serene Republic of Venice. At an inn in Gorgonzola, he overhears a conversation which makes it clear to him how much trouble he is in and so he walks all night until he reaches the River Adda. After a short sleep in a hut, he crosses the river at dawn in the boat of a fisherman and makes his way to his cousin's house, where he is welcomed as a silk-weaver under the pseudonym of Antonio Rivolta. The same day, orders for Renzo's arrest reach the town of Lecco, to the delight of Don Rodrigo. News of Renzo's disgrace comes to the convent, but later Lucia is informed that Renzo is safe with his cousin. Their reassurance is short-lived: when they receive no word from Fra Cristoforo for a long time, Agnese travels to Pescarenico, where she learns that he has been ordered by a superior to the town of Rimini. In fact, this has been engineered by Don Rodrigo and Count Attilio, who have leaned on a mutual uncle of the Secret Council, who has leaned on the Father Provincial. Meanwhile, Don Rodrigo has organised a plot to kidnap Lucia from the convent. This involves a great robber baron whose name has not been recorded, and who hence is called l'Innominato, the Unnamed. Gertrude, blackmailed by Egidio, a male neighbour (and acquaintance of l'Innominato) whose attentions she has returned, persuades Lucia to run an errand which will take her outside the convent for a short while. In the street Lucia is seized and bundled into a coach. After a nightmarish journey, Lucia arrives at the castle of the Unnamed, where she is locked in a chamber. The Unnamed is troubled by the sight of her, and spends a horrible night in which memories of his past and the uncertainty of his future almost drive him to suicide. Meanwhile, Lucia spends a similarly restless night, during which she vows to take the veil if she is delivered from her predicament. Towards the morning, on looking out of his window, the Unnamed sees throngs of people walking past. They are going to listen to the famous Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo. On impulse, the Unnamed leaves his castle in order to meet this man. This meeting prompts a "miraculous" conversion which marks the turning-point of the novel. The Unnamed announces to his men that his reign of terror is over. He decides to take Lucia back to her native land under his own protection, and with the help of the archbishop the deed is done. The astonishing course of events leads to an atmosphere in which Don Rodrigo can be defied openly and his fortunes take a turn for the worse. Don Abbondio is reprimanded by the archbishop. Lucia, miserable about her vow to renounce Renzo, still frets about him. He is now the subject of diplomatic conflict between Milan and Bergamo. Her life is not improved when a wealthy busybody, Donna Prassede, insists on taking her into her household and admonishing her for getting mixed up with a good-for-nothing like Renzo. The government of Milan is unable to keep bread prices down by decree and the city is swamped by beggars. The lazzaretto is filled with the hungry and sick. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War brings more calamities. In September 1629, German armies under Count Rambaldo di Collalto descend on Italy, looting and destroying. Agnese, Don Abbondio and Perpetua take refuge in the well-defended territory of the Unnamed. In their absence, their village is wrecked by the mercenaries. These chapters are occupied with an account of the plague of 1630, largely based on Giuseppe Ripamonti's De peste quae fuit anno 1630 (published in 1640). Manzoni's full version of this, Storia della Colonna Infame, was finished in 1829, but was not published until it was included as an appendix to the revised edition of 1842. The end of August 1630 sees the death in Milan of the original villains of the story. Renzo, troubled by Agnese's letters and recovering from plague, returns to his native village to find that many of the inhabitants are dead and that his house and vineyard have been destroyed. The warrant, and Don Rodrigo, are forgotten. Tonio tells him that Lucia is in Milan. On his arrival in Milan, Renzo is astonished at the state of the city. His highland clothes invite suspicion that he is an "anointer"; that is, a foreign agent deliberately spreading plague in some way. He learns that Lucia is now languishing at the lazzaretto, along with 16,000 other victims of the plague. But in fact, Lucia is already recuperating. Renzo and Lucia are reunited by Fra Cristoforo, but only after Renzo first visits and forgives the dying Don Rodrigo. The friar absolves her of her vow of celibacy. Renzo walks through a rainstorm to see Agnese at the village of Pasturo. When they all return to their native village, Lucia and Renzo are finally married by Don Abbondio and the couple make a fresh start at a silk-mill at the gates of Bergamo.
724729	/m/035wx7	The Redemption of Althalus	David Eddings	2000-07-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story revolves around Althalus, a professional thief with a gift for storytelling and a reputation for uncanny luck. After numerous disasters, the thief decides to return to the savage lands of the north, where he grew up, and decides to rob a fort. After arriving there, and amusing everyone with his stories, Althalus breaks into the storeroom during the night only to find out that all the talk about gold in the fort were lies, and that there are only bags of worthless copper coins and a handful of brass coins. Furious, Althalus steals all the brass coins and leaves - only to become chased by every man in the fort, its owner taking advantage of the situation to claim the theft of a non-existent fortune. He escapes to Hule, where he finds refuge in a camp. A man named Ghend arrives there a short time later and presents Althalus with a proposition. Ghend hires Althalus to travel to the "House at the end of the world" to steal a book. Although he suspects something is amiss, Althalus accepts the job and heads there. After several days of travel he finds the house and manages to stumble upon the book, only to realize that the House is occupied by a talking cat who has trapped him. After several days of being trapped he finally decides to listen to the cat and thus finds out several astonishing things. The book is called the "Book of Deiwos", Deiwos being the God who created the world, and the cat (named Emerald or Emmy by Althalus) teaches him to read it. After two and a half thousand years, Emerald reveals to Althalus that the book can be used to accomplish feats of magic. The intervening two millennia have seen many changes in the world, including the initial stages of an ice age triggered by the evil God Daeva. Emerald tells Althalus that Ghend is Daeva's agent, and is working to establish Daeva as the ruler of the world. The cat and Althalus set out to gather a party of people who are destined to save the world from Daeva's dominion. They try to find the knife which will guide them to each person.Having arrived at the knife's depository, they are told that the knife has been taken by Eliar, a member of the army. With this new information they travel to Osthos, where Eliar seems to have become a slave. Deciding that they will have to buy off all the slaves, the two travel to Emerald's private gold mine and collect twenty blocks of gold, which Althalus converts into coins. With their purses full, they return and meet Andine, the queen of Osthos, in her palace, posing as slavers. However, Andine won't sell Eliar to them. Emerald worms her way into Andine's affection in an attempt to persuade her to give up Eliar.Finally, the queen (or "Arya") agrees to sell the other slaves along with Eliar. With the deal struck, Althalus leads his troupe out, but overhears Eliar planning on attacking him with the other soldier slaves. To break the soldier's loyalty, he randomly picks a soldier and sends him several thousand feet into the air before bringing him back down and releasing the slaves, except Eliar, whom he keeps chained up. In the morning, Eliar decides that he will follow Althalus. After buying some horses they head to Awes, where Emerald tells Eliar that he must show the writing on the knife to every priest in Awes and ask if they can read it. While doing this they discover an agent of Daeva, who screams in anguish after seeing the knife. Eliar quickly slays him and they hide the body under a pile of rocks. Unfortunately, a young priest finds them, but it turns out that the priest is none other than the fourth member of their party, Bheid. With their new member ready, Emerald "reads" the knife, which leads them back to Osthos, where their fifth member is destined to be none other that the queen of Osthos: Andine. Returning to Osthos, they camp out behind the walls of the city for the night. Formulating a plan, Althalus and Emerald sneak into Andine's palace unnoticed. In her chambers, Emerald captures Andine in a spell, causing her to be little more than a puppet. Leading their newest member out of the city, they rejoin their group and decide to hastily leave before morning comes and Andine is discovered missing. Unfortunately, Andine wants no part in this and focuses on killing Eliar, but the enchantment on the knife forces her to listen to Althalus, and so, with their newest member in tow, the party travels to Hule, to find their sixth member. While traveling towards Hule, Bheid tries to quell Andine's hatred towards Eliar - with limited success, it but appears to be taking effect when Andine refrains from making any scathing remarks towards Eliar. During the night, Althalus and Eliar hear someone sneaking towards their camp and capture the boy named Gher, who, it turns out, is their sixth member.Emerald finally sorts out the problems with Andine by using Gher as a voice, Andine (having a change of heart) helps clean up the beaten up Gher and they head to Kweron to find their final member; a "witch". In Kweron, Althalus and Emerald hatch up a scheme that involves Bheid; Bheid will pretend that he has come to collect the "witch" for interrogation, as well as predicting avalanches and lightning strikes (which Althalus will provide). Bheid is, at first, reluctant to so lie that blatantly about something, but in the end, he agrees. After a conversation with the priests of the village, he finds out that the "witch" is about to be burned alive. Through the respect he has gathered by his "forecasts", he can convince the priests to give the enigmatic Leitha into his care. Before leaving, Leitha reveals that she can "hear" the thoughts of other people. The group decides to travel back to the House at the end of the world. Dweia reveals the origins of why they must do what they do: Deiwos, the Sky God - and Dweia's brother - created the world, and filled the planet with living things, whom Dweia cares for. However, Daeva's only role is to destroy parts of the universe, but only those which Deiwos and Dweia allow him to. Daeva tries to change this, and has Ghend find each member of his "chosen ones" to prepare to take over the world, and to do this he needs Deiwos's book, to copy it and make a book of his own for this purpose. After learning this, Althalus introduces Emerald, who in reality was Dweia all along, to the "family" and quickly explains the situation to them as well as telling them about Eliar's ability to use the doors of the House to travel through Spacetime. After getting acquainted with living in the house, they use the doors to return to Arum where they try to win Albron's (the knife keeper's) clan as allies, and show him the House as an act of trust. They know that they will need an army to combat Gelta's archaic forces from the past. Calling a clan meeting they hire all the Arum clans and prepare themselves to fight against Gelta's army. Thanks to the more modern warfare of their time, Gelta's forces are easily crushed and, although Eliar is injured, with the help of to Althalus's powers, the remaining part of the enemy forces is defeated. Ultimately, Ghend and Althalus face off in the House at the end of the world, ending with the destruction of the Book of Daeva, the defeat of Daeva, and the saving of the universe. fr:La Rédemption d'Althalus nl:De kronieken van de eerste ijstijd ja:アルサラスの贖罪 fi:Althalus: Matka maailman ääriin sv:Tjuven Althalus
725513	/m/035ytb	Brazzaville Beach	William Boyd			 Brazzaville Beach consists of three separative narratives. The first is Hope Clearwater's reflections on her current life whilst living in a beach house on Brazzaville Beach. The second narrative is a description of her former marriage to John Clearwater, a mathematician, who gradually goes mad resulting from failure to make progress in his academic research. The third narrative, and by far the most graphic, is the narrator's account of her work in a national park called Grosso Arvore (Big Tree), where she tracks the movements of a small band of chimpanzees that have split off from a larger group in the north. John Clearwater, Hope's former husband, is a mathematician thirsty for discovery and fame. This part of the narrative is set in London, where the couple share her flat in South Kensington, and southern England, where Hope works as an ecologist on an intriguing hedgerow mapping project in Dorset. At the beginning of their marriage the two are very much in love with Hope believing that John is the ideal man for her owing to his rather eccentric but empathetic character and strong intelligence. She is uninterested in working after getting her PhD until her former Professor forces her to take on the hedgerow mapping project. After being interviewed by Munro, its leader, Hope discovers she is pleased to be working once more, losing weight because she is outside all day, and enjoying the disciplined approach she has to adopt: However, whilst Hope's work is going well, her husband's is going badly with John failing to make progress with his mathematical research into chaos theory, and Hope finds herself unable to deal with its consequences. The first signs are when he is caught digging an illegal long trench on the Knap estate in Dorset, work that he feels will help him visualise the mathematical forumulae he is trying to come to grips with (having worked before during their stay at a rented cottage in Scotland). He then breaks into hysterics in an Italian restaurant back in London and matters are made worse when Hope discovers he is having an affair with the wife of a Polish university colleague. Their marriage breaks down and irretrievably and tragically, John commits suicide. Hope flees to Africa to recover from the ordeal. The Grosso Arvore Research Centre, where Hope seeks asylum, is the creation of Eugene Mallabar. After studying wild chimps for the last twenty-five years, Mallabar knows more about them than anyone else on earth. He is the author of "The Peaceful Primate" and "Primate's Progress" and the recipient of million-dollar grants. Mallabar has just finished writing a magnum opus that will be the last word on the subject of the seemingly gentle beast with which man shares 98 percent of his DNA. Hope Clearwater, however, slowly comes to the realization that the chimps are up to no good as the two groups of chimpanzees she is studying come into lethal conflict. Males from the northern group, led by the alpha male Darius, start patrolling into the southerners' territory and then start to kill, with extreme cruelty, the rival males - one an old chimpanzee called Mr Jeb, and the other Muffin, an adolescent. What she sees brings Hope herself into conflict with Mallabar, and threatens the very existence of Grosso Arvore research project and his lifelong study of primates. In tandem with the other two narratives are Hope's recollections of her affair with Usman Shoukry, an Egyptian mercenary airforce pilot flying sorties in a MiG 15 against rebel army groups. Hope is able to meet him when she carries out supply runs in the reserve's landrover to Brazzaville, the provincial capital. He surprises her one time when he designs the world's smallest aeroplanes by strapping on wings and landing gears to house flies made from match-sticks and paper. They are both genuinely fond of each other during their time together, with Usman making plans to buy one of the run-down houses on the beach where they go to relax and swim, until he meets an untimely end on one of his missions. Hope herself gets caught up in the civil war when she and Ian Vail are captured by Dr Amilcar and his atomique boum volleyball team, who commandeer their landrover to return more quickly to the UNAMO stronghold in the Musave River Territories following a failed offensive against the Federal Army. The power of the story comes from the clever intertwining of the different narrative strands as the reader is sucked into the vortex of Hope's complex world. Accompanying this are the author's fascinating and highly detailed descriptions of chaos theory, the social and professional wrangling between the different project members working at the Grosso Avore Research Centre (Ian and Roberta Vail, the thoroughly dislikeable Anton Hauser and the Mallabars themselves), along with the thoroughly human-like behaviour of the chimpanzees as one group sets out to destroy the other. The aggressors' motive is to ensure the return of the alpha female, Rita Lu, to her original group which has become dysfunctional during her absence, and these chimpanzee wars only come to an end as a result of human intervention.
725810	/m/035zk3	The Indian in the Cupboard	Lynne Reid Banks	1980	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young boy, Omri, receives a cupboard from his brother, Gillon, for his birthday. He uses a "magical" key, which belonged to his great-grandmother, to bring a plastic Native American figurine to life with the cupboard. The now-living Indian reveals his name as Little Bear (in some editions he is called Little Bull), and he is an Iroquois who lived in the 18th century. Omri's best friend, Patrick, finds out about the magic cupboard and brings a cowboy, Boone, into the present. Despite the fights and rivalries between the two tiny men, Patrick refuses to send them back until it is too late — Little Bear wounds Boone with an arrow while they are watching an old western movie on the television. Although Omri has a World War I medic figure, who could treat the injured Boone, he cannot be brought to life as the key is missing. After a brief adventure with Gillon's pet rat, who had escaped, the key is found and Boone is treated. However Little Bear is a demanding character, and ultimately Omri must provide him with a bride, Bright Stars (in some editions she is called Twin Stars). Omri thinks it best to send Little Bear, Bright Stars and (with Patrick's agreement) Boone back to their time, and Omri gives his mother the key so he is not tempted to bring them back.
725991	/m/035_37	The Wealth of Nations	Adam Smith	1776	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Of the Division of Labour: Division of labour has caused a greater increase in production than any other factor. This diversification is greatest for nations with more industry and improvement, and is responsible for "universal opulence" in those countries. Agriculture is less amenable than industry to division of labour; hence, rich nations are not so far ahead of poor nations in agriculture as in industry. Of the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour: Division of labour arises not from innate wisdom, but from humans' propensity to barter. The apparent difference in natural talents between people is a result of specialisation, rather than any innate cause. That the Division of Labour is Limited by the Extent of the Market: Limited opportunity for exchange discourages division of labour. Because "water-carriage" extends the market, division of labour, with its improvements, comes earliest to cities near waterways. Civilization began around the highly navigable Mediterranean Sea... Of the Origin and Use of Money: With division of labour, the produce of one's own labour can fill only a small part of one's needs. Different commodities have served as a common medium of exchange, but all nations have finally settled on metals, which are durable and divisible, for this purpose. Before coinage, people had to weigh and assay with each exchange, or risk "the grossest frauds and impositions." Thus nations began stamping metal, on one side only, to ascertain purity, or on all sides, to stipulate purity and amount. The quantity of real metal in coins has diminished, due to the "avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states," enabling them to pay their debts in appearance only, and to the defraudment of creditors. Of the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities, or of their Price in Labour, and their Price in Money: In the first two passages Smith gives two conflicting definitions of the relative value of a commodity. Ricardo responded to one of Smith's inconsistencies in the Preface of his "Principles": :The writer, in combating received opinions, has found it necessary to advert more particularly to those passages in the writings of Adam Smith from which he sees reason to differ; but he hopes it will not, on that account, be suspected that he does not, in common with all those who acknowledge the importance of the science of Political Economy, participate in the admiration which the profound work of this celebrated author so justly excites. Adam Smith defines the value of commodities by the labour embedded and also by the labour a good commands. Ricardo agrees with the first definition: "The real price of every thing," says Adam Smith, "What every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it, or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. That this is really the foundation of the exchangeable value of all things, excepting those which cannot be increased by human industry, is a doctrine of the utmost importance in political economy." For Ricardo, the value of reproducible commodities and services reflects the relative difficulties of production counted in labour units: direct labour plus the dated labour of the past embedded in inputs (capital) and corrected by interests. This differs from Smith's second definition of value: :"The value of any commodity … is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities." Ricardo disagrees: :"Adam Smith, who so accurately defined the original source of exchangeable value … speaks of things being more or less valuable, in proportion as they will exchange for more or less of this standard measure. … [N]ot the quantity of labour bestowed on the production of any object, but the quantity which it can command in the market: as if these were two equivalent expressions…" Smith's second definition pleases neoclassical economists, who determine value by the utility that a commodity provides a person rather than cost of production as do classical economists. Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities: Smith argues that the price of any product reflects wages, rent of land and "...profit of stock," which compensates the capitalist for risking his resources. Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities: To paraphrase Smith, and the first part of this Chapter, when demand exceeds supply, the price goes up. When the supply exceeds demand, the price goes down. He then goes on to comment on the different avenues that people can take to generate a larger profit than normal. Some of those include: finding a commodity that few others have that allows for a high profit, and being able to keep that secret; Finding a way to produce a unique commodity (The dyer who discovers a unique dye). He also states that the former usually has a short lifespan of high profitability, and the latter has a longer. He also notes that a monopoly is essentially the same as the dyers trade secret, and can thus lead to high profitability for a long time by keeping the supply below the effectual demand. Of the Wages of Labour: In this section, Smith describes how the wages of labour are dictated primarily by the competition among labourers and masters. When labourers bid against one another for limited opportunities for employment, the wages of labour collectively fall, whereas when employers compete against one another for limited supplies of labour, the wages of labour collectively rise. However, this process of competition is often circumvented by combinations among labourers and among masters. When labourers combine and no longer bid against one another, their wages rise, whereas when masters combine, wages fall. In Smith's day, organised labour was dealt with very harshly by the law. Smith himself wrote about the "severity" of such laws against worker actions, and made a point to contrast the "clamour" of the "masters" against workers associations, while associations and collusions of the masters "are never heard by the people" though such actions are "always" and "everywhere" taking place: "We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate [...] Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the moment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people". In contrast, when workers combine, "the masters [...] never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants, labourers, and journeymen." In societies where the amount of labour exceeds the amount of revenue available for waged labour, competition among workers is greater than the competition among employers, and wages fall. Inversely, where revenue is abundant, labour wages rise. Smith argues that, therefore, labour wages only rise as a result of greater revenue disposed to pay for labour. Smith thought labour the same as any other commodity in this respect: However, the amount of revenue must increase constantly in proportion to the amount of labour for wages to remain high. Smith illustrates this by juxtaposing England with the North American colonies. In England, there is more revenue than in the colonies, but wages are lower, because more workers flock to new employment opportunities caused by the large amount of revenue— so workers eventually compete against each other as much as they did before. By contrast, as capital continues to flow to the colonial economies at least at the same rate that population increases to &#34;fill out&#34; this excess capital, wages there stay higher than in England. Smith was highly concerned about the problems of poverty. He writes: The only way to determine whether a man is rich or poor is to examine the amount of labour he can afford to purchase. &#34;Labour is the real exchange for commodities&#34;. Smith also describes the relation of cheap years and the production of manufactures versus the production in dear years. He argues that while some examples, such as the linen production in France, show a correlation, another example in Scotland shows the opposite. He concludes that there are too many variables to make any statement about this. Of the Profits of Stock: In this chapter, Smith uses interest rates as an indicator of the profits of stock. This is because interest can only be paid with the profits of stock, and so creditors will be able to raise rates in proportion to the increase or decrease of the profits of their debtors. Smith argues that the profits of stock are inversely proportional to the wages of labour, because as more money is spent compensating labour, there is less remaining for personal profit. It follows that, in societies where competition among labourers is greatest relative to competition among employers, profits will be much higher. Smith illustrates this by comparing interest rates in England and Scotland. In England, government laws against usury had kept maximum interest rates very low, but even the maximum rate was believed to be higher than the rate at which money was usually loaned. In Scotland, however, interest rates are much higher. This is the result of a greater proportion of capitalists in England, which offsets some competition among labourers and raises wages. However, Smith notes that, curiously, interest rates in the colonies are also remarkably high (recall that, in the previous chapter, Smith described how wages in the colonies are higher than in England). Smith attributes this to the fact that, when an empire takes control of a colony, prices for a huge abundance of land and resources are extremely cheap. This allows capitalists to increase his profit, but simultaneously draws many capitalists to the colonies, increasing the wages of labour. As this is done, however, the profits of stock in the mother country rise (or at least cease to fall), as much of it has already flocked offshore. Of Wages and Profit in the Different Employments of Labour and Stock: Smith repeatedly attacks groups of politically aligned individuals who attempt to use their collective influence to manipulate the government into doing their bidding. At the time, these were referred to as &#34;factions,&#34; but are now more commonly called &#34;special interests,&#34; a term that can comprise international bankers, corporate conglomerations, outright oligopolies, trade unions and other groups. Indeed, Smith had a particular distrust of the tradesman class. He felt that the members of this class, especially acting together within the guilds they want to form, could constitute a power block and manipulate the state into regulating for special interests against the general interest: Smith also argues against government subsidies of certain trades, because this will draw many more people to the trade than what would otherwise be normal, collectively lowering their wages. Chapter 10, part ii, motivates an understanding of the idea of feudalism. Of the Rent of the Land: Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest the tenant can afford in the actual circumstances of the land. In adjusting lease terms, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more. Whatever part of the produce, or, what is the same thing, whatever part of its price, is over and above this share, he naturally endeavours to reserve to himself as the rent of his land, which is evidently the highest the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. Sometimes, indeed, the liberality, more frequently the ignorance, of the landlord, makes him accept of somewhat less than this portion; and sometimes too, though more rarely, the ignorance of the tenant makes him undertake to pay somewhat more, or to content himself with somewhat less, than the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This portion, however, may still be considered as the natural rent of land, or the rent for which it is naturally meant that land should for the most part be let. Of the Division of Stock: :&#34;When the stock which a man possesses is no more than sufficient to maintain him for a few days or a few weeks, he seldom thinks of deriving any revenue from it. He consumes it as sparingly as he can, and endeavours by his labour to acquire something which may supply its place before it be consumed altogether. His revenue is, in this case, derived from his labour only. This is the state of the greater part of the labouring poor in all countries.&#34; II.1.1 :&#34;But when he possesses stock sufficient to maintain him for months or years, he naturally endeavours to derive a revenue from the greater part of it; reserving only so much for his immediate consumption as may maintain him till this revenue begins to come in. His whole stock, therefore, is distinguished into two parts. That part which, he expects, is to afford him this revenue, is called his capital.&#34; Of Money Considered as a particular Branch of the General Stock of the Society: :&#34;From references of the first book, that the price of the greater part of commodities resolves itself into three parts, of which one pays the wages of the labour, another the profits of the stock, and a third the rent of the land which had been employed in producing and bringing them to market: that there are, indeed, some commodities of which the price is made up of two of those parts only, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock: and a very few in which it consists altogether in one, the wages of labour: but that the price of every commodity necessarily resolves itself into some one, or other, or all of these three parts; every part of it which goes neither to rent nor to wages, being necessarily profit to somebody.&#34; Of the Accumulation of Capital, or of Productive and Unproductive Labour: :&#34;One sort of labour adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed: there is another which has no such effect. The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive labour. Thus the labour of a manufacturer adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his master&#39;s profit. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing.&#34; Of Stock Lent at Interest: :&#34;The stock which is lent at interest is always considered as a capital by the lender. He expects that in due time it is to be restored to him, and that in the meantime the borrower is to pay him a certain annual rent for the use of it. The borrower may use it either as a capital, or as a stock reserved for immediate consumption. If he uses it as a capital, he employs it in the maintenance of productive labourers, who reproduce the value with a profit. He can, in this case, both restore the capital and pay the interest without alienating or encroaching upon any other source of revenue. If he uses it as a stock reserved for immediate consumption, he acts the part of a prodigal, and dissipates in the maintenance of the idle what was destined for the support of the industrious. He can, in this case, neither restore the capital nor pay the interest without either alienating or encroaching upon some other source of revenue, such as the property or the rent of land.&#34; :The stock which is lent at interest is, no doubt, occasionally employed in both these ways, but in the former much more frequently than in the latter.&#34; Of the Natural Progress of Opulence: :&#34;The great commerce of every civilised society is that carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country. It consists in the exchange of crude for manufactured produce, either immediately, or by the intervention of money, or of some sort of paper which represents money. The country supplies the town with the means of subsistence and the materials of manufacture. The town repays this supply by sending back a part of the manufactured produce to the inhabitants of the country. The town, in which there neither is nor can be any reproduction of substances, may very properly be said to gain its whole wealth and subsistence from the country. We must not, however, upon this account, imagine that the gain of the town is the loss of the country. The gains of both are mutual and reciprocal, and the division of labour is in this, as in all other cases, advantageous to all the different persons employed in the various occupations into which it is subdivided.&#34; Of the Discouragement of Agriculture: Chapter 2&#39;s long title is &#34;Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the Ancient State of Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire&#34;. :&#34;When the German and Scythian nations overran the western provinces of the Roman empire, the confusions which followed so great a revolution lasted for several centuries. The rapine and violence which the barbarians exercised against the ancient inhabitants interrupted the commerce between the towns and the country. The towns were deserted, and the country was left uncultivated, and the western provinces of Europe, which had enjoyed a considerable degree of opulence under the Roman empire, sunk into the lowest state of poverty and barbarism. During the continuance of those confusions, the chiefs and principal leaders of those nations acquired or usurped to themselves the greater part of the lands of those countries. A great part of them was uncultivated; but no part of them, whether cultivated or uncultivated, was left without a proprietor. All of them were engrossed, and the greater part by a few great proprietors. :This original engrossing of uncultivated lands, though a great, might have been but a transitory evil. They might soon have been divided again, and broke into small parcels either by succession or by alienation. The law of primogeniture hindered them from being divided by succession: the introduction of entails prevented their being broke into small parcels by alienation.&#34; Of the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns, after the Fall of the Roman Empire: :&#34;The inhabitants of cities and towns were, after the fall of the Roman empire, not more favoured than those of the country. They consisted, indeed, of a very different order of people from the first inhabitants of the ancient republics of Greece and Italy. These last were composed chiefly of the proprietors of lands, among whom the public territory was originally divided, and who found it convenient to build their houses in the neighbourhood of one another, and to surround them with a wall, for the sake of common defence. After the fall of the Roman empire, on the contrary, the proprietors of land seem generally to have lived in fortified castles on their own estates, and in the midst of their own tenants and dependants. The towns were chiefly inhabited by tradesmen and mechanics, who seem in those days to have been of servile, or very nearly of servile condition. The privileges which we find granted by ancient charters to the inhabitants of some of the principal towns in Europe sufficiently show what they were before those grants. The people to whom it is granted as a privilege that they might give away their own daughters in marriage without the consent of their lord, that upon their death their own children, and not their lord, should succeed to their goods, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, must, before those grants, have been either altogether or very nearly in the same state of villanage with the occupiers of land in the country.&#34; How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvement of the Country: Smith often harshly criticised those who act purely out of self-interest and greed, and warns that, :&#34;...[a]ll for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.&#34; (Book 3, Chapter 4) Smith vigorously attacked the antiquated government restrictions he thought hindered industrial expansion. In fact, he attacked most forms of government interference in the economic process, including tariffs, arguing that this creates inefficiency and high prices in the long run. It is believed that this theory influenced government legislation in later years, especially during the 19th century. Smith advocated a government that was active in sectors other than the economy. He advocated public education for poor adults, a judiciary, and a standing army—institutional systems not directly profitable for private industries. Of the Principle of the Commercial or Mercantile System: The book has sometimes been described as a critique of mercantilism and a synthesis of the emerging economic thinking of Smith&#39;s time. Specifically, The Wealth of Nations attacks, inter alia, two major tenets of mercantilism: # The idea that protectionist tariffs serve the economic interests of a nation (or indeed any purpose whatsoever) and # The idea that large reserves of gold bullion or other precious metals are necessary for a country&#39;s economic success. This critique of mercantilism was later used by David Ricardo when he laid out his Theory of Comparative Advantage. Of Restraints upon the Importation: Chapter 2&#39;s full title is &#34;Of Restraints upon the Importation from Foreign Countries of such Goods as can be Produced at Home&#34;. The &#34;Invisible Hand&#34; is a frequently referenced theme from the book, although it is specifically mentioned only once. The metaphor of the &#34;invisible hand&#34; has been widely used out of context. In the passage above Smith is referring to &#34;the support of domestic industry&#34; and contrasting that support with the importation of goods. Neoclassical economic theory has expanded the metaphor beyond the domestic/foreign manufacture argument to encompass nearly all aspects of economics. Of the extraordinary Restraints: Chapter 3&#39;s long title is &#34;Of the extraordinary Restraints upon the Importation of Goods of almost all Kinds, from those Countries with which the Balance is supposed to be Disadvantageous&#34;. Of Drawbacks: Merchants and manufacturers are not contented with the monopoly of the home market, but desire likewise the most extensive foreign sale for their goods. Their country has no jurisdiction in foreign nations, and therefore can seldom procure them any monopoly there. They are generally obliged, therefore, to content themselves with petitioning for certain encouragements to exportation. Of these encouragements what are called Drawbacks seem to be the most reasonable. To allow the merchant to draw back upon exportation, either the whole or a part of whatever excise or inland duty is imposed upon domestic industry, can never occasion the exportation of a greater quantity of goods than what would have been exported had no duty been imposed. Such encouragements do not tend to turn towards any particular employment a greater share of the capital of the country than what would go to that employment of its own accord, but only to hinder the duty from driving away any part of that shares to other employments. Of Bounties: Bounties upon exportation are, in Great Britain, frequently petitioned for, and sometimes granted to the produce of particular branches of domestic industry. By means of them our merchants and manufacturers, it is pretended, will be enabled to sell their goods as cheap, or cheaper than their rivals in the foreign market. A greater quantity, it is said, will thus be exported, and the balance of trade consequently turned more in favour of our own country. We cannot give our workmen a monopoly in the foreign as we have done in the home market. We cannot force foreigners to buy their goods as we have done our own countrymen. The next best expedient, it has been thought, therefore, is to pay them for buying. It is in this manner that the mercantile system proposes to enrich the whole country, and to put money into all our pockets by means of the balance of trade Of Treaties of Commerce: :&#34;When a nation binds itself by treaty either to permit the entry of certain goods from one foreign country which it prohibits from all others, or to exempt the goods of one country from duties to which it subjects those of all others, the country, or at least the merchants and manufacturers of the country, whose commerce is so favoured, must necessarily derive great advantage from the treaty. Those merchants and manufacturers enjoy a sort of monopoly in the country which is so indulgent to them. That country becomes a market both more extensive and more advantageous for their goods: more extensive, because the goods of other nations being either excluded or subjected to heavier duties, it takes off a greater quantity of theirs: more advantageous, because the merchants of the favoured country, enjoying a sort of monopoly there, will often sell their goods for a better price than if exposed to the free competition of all other nations.&#34; :Such treaties, however, though they may be advantageous to the merchants and manufacturers of the favoured, are necessarily disadvantageous to those of the favouring country. A monopoly is thus granted against them to a foreign nation; and they must frequently buy the foreign goods they have occasion for dearer than if the free competition of other nations was admitted. Of Colonies: Of the Motives for establishing new Colonies: :&#34;The interest which occasioned the first settlement of the different European colonies in America and the West Indies was not altogether so plain and distinct as that which directed the establishment of those of ancient Greece and Rome. :All the different states of ancient Greece possessed, each of them, but a very small territory, and when the people in any one of them multiplied beyond what that territory could easily maintain, a part of them were sent in quest of a new habitation in some remote and distant part of the world; warlike neighbours surrounded them on all sides, rendering it difficult for any of them to enlarge their territory at home. The colonies of the Dorians resorted chiefly to Italy and Sicily, which, in the times preceding the foundation of Rome, were inhabited by barbarous and uncivilised nations: those of the Ionians and Eolians, the two other great tribes of the Greeks, to Asia Minor and the islands of the Egean Sea, of which the inhabitants seem at that time to have been pretty much in the same state as those of Sicily and Italy. The mother city, though she considered the colony as a child, at all times entitled to great favour and assistance, and owing in return much gratitude and respect, yet considered it as an emancipated child over whom she pretended to claim no direct authority or jurisdiction. The colony settled its own form of government, enacted its own laws, elected its own magistrates, and made peace or war with its neighbours as an independent state, which had no occasion to wait for the approbation or consent of the mother city. Nothing can be more plain and distinct than the interest which directed every such establishment.&#34; Causes of Prosperity of new Colonies: :&#34;The colony of a civilised nation which takes possession either of a waste country, or of one so thinly inhabited that the natives easily give place to the new settlers, advances more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human society. :The colonists carry out with them a knowledge of agriculture and of other useful arts superior to what can grow up of its own accord in the course of many centuries among savage and barbarous nations. They carry out with them, too, the habit of subordination, some notion of the regular government which takes place in their own country, of the system of laws which supports it, and of a regular administration of justice; and they naturally establish something of the same kind in the new settlement.&#34; Of the Advantages which Europe has derived from the Discovery of America, and from that of a Passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope: :&#34;Such are the advantages which the colonies of America have derived from the policy of Europe. What are those which Europe has derived from the discovery and colonisation of America? Those advantages may be divided, first, into the general advantages which Europe, considered as one great country, has derived from those great events; and, secondly, into the particular advantages which each colonising country has derived from the colonies which particularly belong to it, in consequence of the authority or dominion which it exercises over them.: :The general advantages which Europe, considered as one great country, has derived from the discovery and colonisation of America, consist, first, in the increase of its enjoyments; and, secondly, in the augmentation of its industry. :The surplus produce of America, imported into Europe, furnishes the inhabitants of this great continent with a variety of commodities which they could not otherwise have possessed; some for conveniency and use, some for pleasure, and some for ornament, and thereby contributes to increase their enjoyments.&#34; Conclusion of the Mercantile System: Smith&#39;s argument about the international political economy opposed the idea of Mercantilism. While the Mercantile System encouraged each country to hoard gold, while trying to grasp hegemony, Smith argued that free trade eventually makes all actors better off. This argument is the modern &#39;Free Trade&#39; argument. Of the Agricultural Systems: Chapter 9&#39;s long title is &#34;Of the Agricultural Systems, or of those Systems of Political Economy, which Represent the Produce of Land, as either the Sole or the Principal, Source of the Revenue and Wealth of Every Country&#34;. :&#34;That system which represents the produce of land as the sole source of the revenue and wealth of every country has, so far as by that time, never been adopted by any nation, and it at present exists only in the speculations of a few men of great learning and ingenuity in France. It would not, surely, be worthwhile to examine at great length the errors of a system which never has done, and probably never will do, any harm in any part of the world.&#34; Smith postulated four &#34;maxims&#34; of taxation: proportionality, transparency, convenience, and efficiency. Some economists interpret Smith&#39;s opposition to taxes on transfers of money, such as the Stamp Act, as opposition to capital gains taxes, which did not exist in the 18th century. Other economists credit Smith as one of the first to advocate a progressive tax. Smith wrote, &#34;The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion&#34; Of the Expenses of the Sovereign or Commonwealth: Smith uses this chapter to comment on the concept of taxation and expenditure by the state. On taxation Smith wrote, Smith advocates a tax naturally attached to the &#34;abilities&#34; and habits of each echelon of society. For the lower echelon, Smith recognised the intellectually erosive effect that the otherwise beneficial division of labour can have on workers, what Marx, though he mainly opposes Smith, later named &#34;alienation,&#34;; therefore, Smith warns of the consequence of government failing to fulfill its proper role, which is to preserve against the innate tendency of human society to fall apart. Under Smith&#39;s model, government involvement in any area other than those stated above negatively impacts economic growth. This is because economic growth is determined by the needs of a free market and the entrepreneurial nature of private persons. A shortage of a product makes its price rise, and so stimulates producers to produce more and attracts new people to that line of production. An excess supply of a product (more of the product than people are willing to buy) drives prices down, and producers refocus energy and money to other areas where there is a need. Of the Sources of the General or Public Revenue of the Society: In his discussion of taxes in Book Five, Smith wrote: Of War and Public Debts: Smith then goes on to say that even if money was set aside from future revenues to pay for the debts of war, it seldom actually gets used to pay down the debt. Politicians are inclined to spend the money on some other scheme that will win the favour of their constituents. Hence, interest payments rise and war debts continue to grow larger, well beyond the end of the war. Summing up, if governments can borrow without check, then they are more likely to wage war without check, and the costs of the war spending will burden future generations, since war debts are almost never repaid by the generations that incurred them.
726178	/m/035_ms	Naked Came the Stranger	Penelope Ashe			 Gillian and William Blake are the hosts of a popular New York City breakfast radio chat show, The Billy & Gilly Show, where they play the perfect couple. When Gillian finds out that her husband is having an affair, she decides to cheat on him with a variety of men from their Long Island neighborhood. Most of the book is taken up by vignettes describing Gilly's adventures with a variety of men, from a progressive rabbi to a mobster crooner.
726183	/m/035_n3	Area 7	Matthew Reilly	2001-10-31	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The President of the United States is visiting America's most secret military installation, Area 7. Assigned to his protective detail is Shane Schofield and his team of Marines including Gunnery Sergeant Gena 'Mother' Newman, Staff Sergeant Elizabeth 'Fox' Gant and Buck 'Book II' Riley Jr. They are plunged into a race for survival when an Air Force general, Charles “Caesar” Russell, unleashes a plan he has been working on for over 15 years. Despite being 'executed' on the day of the president's inauguration, Caesar is revived, and with a squadron of 50 elite Air Force soldiers (the 7th Squadron), have taken control of Area 7 and initiated a lockdown. A transmitter, attached to the president's heart before he was elected, has been activated; a satellite sends and receives messages to and from this transmitter, which is powered by the kinetic energy of the president's heart beating. If the satellite doesn't receive the messages from the transmitter 14 Type-240 Blast Plasma based nuclear warheads in the airports of the Northern, “pro-black” capital cities of the United States will explode, destroying these cities, and making way for a new, racist, Confederate America. As long as the President's heart beats, the messages will be sent to the satellite, and the nuclear warheads will not detonate. To prevent the president from trying to escape Area 7, Caesar also overrode the launch codes on the Nuclear Football so that to prevent the detonation of the warheads, the president must place his hand on the fingerprint sensor on the Football (that is being kept in Caesar's possession) every 90&nbsp;minutes. While moving through the underground complex Gant and her group, including the president, come to a cell block and find a scientist locked inside one of the cells. After being released and questioned, it is discovered that the prisoners being held at Area 7 are "volunteers" that the scientists use to carry out experiments. It soon comes to light that there are ways of opening exits out of Area 7, and that two have already been opened by another scientist, Dr Gunther Botha. In addition to opening two exits, Botha has also shut down main power to the complex, so that it is now running on auxiliary power. Meanwhile, Schofield and his group, after fleeing from the ground level hangar, make their way into the sublevels where they find a bedroom of a 6 year old boy named Kevin who lives in a cube. Schofield's group then meets up with Riley's group, and the president reveals that the reason for his visit to Area 7 is to check on the progress of a vaccine being developed for the Sinovirus, a genetically engineered virus that differentiates between the amount of pigmentation in a person's skin, allowing it to target only people of a specific race (however people of Asian descent are immune). The president explains that to develop a vaccine for the Sinovirus (and protect America from biological weapons containing the Sinovirus) the scientists had to create a genetically engineered human, a boy named Kevin, who's blood could be used to produce antibodies, and the prisoners being held at Area 7 are used as guinea pigs to test the vaccine. Botha is killed during a chase and the President and Scarecrow escape to Area 8. When they reach it they realize Echo unit from the 7th squadron are being paid 120 million American dollars by the Chinese government to bring Kevin to them. Schofield and the President follow onto the 747 which has a mounted X-38 in an attempt to rescue Kevin. Schofield hijacks the X-38, escaping with the president and Kevin. Later, Schofield and Gant finally face off with Caesar back in Area 7. ===== Captain Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield ===== The commander of the US Marines in the President's security, Schofield is the main protagonist of the novel. ===== Gunnery Sergeant Gena "Mother" Newman ===== A Marine and close friend of Schofield. Was presumed to have been killed by the 7th Squadron, but was later revealed to have cheated death. ===== Staff Sergeant Elizabeth "Fox" Gant ===== Another Marine who is a close friend of Schofield and Mother. Together with Schofield, the two managed at the last moment to foil Caesar's revolutionary plan. Fox survived the events of the novel. ===== Sergeant Buck "Book II" Riley Jr. ===== A young Marine who is the son of Schofield's deceased and loyal colleague, Book II urges Schofield to find the answers relating to his father's death. Although severely wounded, Book II survived the novel's events. ===== Colonel Rodney "Hot Rod/ Ramrod" Hagerty ===== The pompous White House Liaison Officer, Hagerty is known as an officer who never experienced the full elements of direct combat. After being imprisoned by a serial killer in he base, he attempted to escape Area 7. However, the Marines never found him and presumed he was killed by the thermonuclear blast. ===== Sergeant Wendall "Elvis" Haynes ===== A Marine who is a close friend of Love Machine, Elvis attempted a kamikaze strike on the 7th Squadron Unit, Bravo Unit, to avenge the death of Love Machine. Although Elvis himself was killed, he managed to foil Bravo Unit's attempt in killing the US President and his security detail by inflicting severe casualties among the Unit's members. ===== Sergeant Ashley "Love Machine" Lewicky ===== A Marine and close friend of Elvis, Love Machine was killed during Bravo Unit's attempted assassination on the US President. ===== Corporal Gus "Braniac" Gorman ===== A Marine who is regarded as a genius, Braniac was killed by a decoy vehicle triggered by the Reccondos. ===== Captain Tom "Calvin" Reeves ===== A young and highly skilled Marine officer, Calvin was killed by a raid triggered by Alpha Unit, one of the 7th Squadron units in the base. ===== Colonel Michael Grier ===== The pilot of Marine One, he was killed by 7th Squadron commandos. ===== Lieutenant Colonel Michelle Dallas ===== The copilot of Marine One, she was never mentioned to have escaped Area 7 and was most likely killed around the same time as Grier. ===== Lieutenant Corbin "Colt" Hendricks ===== A Marine who was killed by 7th Squadron Commandos after discovering the deceased members of a US Secret Service Advance Team. ===== President of the United States ===== The U.S. President has been labeled as one of two keys in triggering Caesar's long-planned revolution. Although the 7th Squadron commandos in Area 7 attempted to assassinate him, the US President survived the day's events. ===== Nicholas Tate III ===== The President's Domestic Policy Adviser, Tate managed to survive the day's events, although he was horrified by several elements of the novel. ===== Warrant Officer Carl Webster ===== A US Army Officer, Webster was responsible for the security of the Football, a briefcase important to the President himself. However, he betrayed the President and leagued with Caesar, triggering his plan by giving him the Football. He was later killed by Mother. ===== Special Agent Juliet Janson ===== A member of the President's Secret Service Detail, she survived the day's events, but was severely wounded in the process. ===== Special Agent Francis X. Cutler ===== The leader of the President's Secret Service Detail, he was killed by the 7th Squadron Unit Delta while trying to evacuate the US President. ===== Agent Julio Ramondo ===== A member of the President's Secret Service Detail, he was killed by a raid triggered by Alpha Unit, one of the 7th Squadron units in the base. ===== Agent Curtis ===== A member of the President's Secret Service Detail, he was killed by a raid triggered by Alpha Unit, one of the 7th Squadron units in the base. ===== Agent Tom Baker ===== The leader of a US Secret Service Advance Team, he was killed by 7th Squadron commandos before the day's events. ===== David Fairfax ===== A cryptanalyst working for the DIA, Fairfax was responsible for foiling two plans in the novel's events, involving a vaccine against a highly-lethal biological weapon known as the Sinovirus. ===== Doctor Herbert Franklin ===== An immunologist involved in highly classified projects within Area 7, he was killed by the Reccondos who attempted to steal a vaccine against the Sinovirus and retreat from American soil. ===== Kevin ===== The source of the vaccine against the Sinovirus, both Reccondo commandos and a rogue 7th Squadron Unit attempted to retrieve Kevin from American soil. He managed to escape from the two threats with the help of the Marines and survived the day's events. ===== Lieutenant General Charles "Caesar" Russell ===== A former Air Force General, Caesar is the main antagonist of the novel. The leader of the Brotherhood, a secret and racial military organization, Caesar was the mastermind behind the revolutionary plan involving two elements: the assassination of the US President, and control over the Sinovirus and its vaccine (Kevin). He was killed in the thermonuclear blast of the base while mortally injured, and as a result his long-planned operation ended in failure after it was foiled by Schofield's efforts. ===== Colonel Jerome T. Harper ===== The Commanding Officer of Area 7, Harper was revealed as leagued with Caesar in achieving his revolutionary plan. He was killed in a brutal fashion by Lucifer Leary, a serial killer within the base. ===== Major Kurt Logan ===== The overall commanding officer of the 7th Squadron Units in Area 7 (who were ordered to assassinate the US President) and the commander of Alpha Unit, one of the 7th Squadron Units in Area 7. He was killed by Schofield. ===== Captain Bruno "Boa" McConnell ===== The commander of Bravo Unit, one of the 7th Squadron Units in Area 7. He was killed by Book II. ===== Captain Luther "Python" Willis ===== The commander of Charlie Unit, one of the 7th Squadron Units in Area 7. He was killed by the rogue Echo Unit, in league with the Chinese Government. ===== Captain J.K. Stone ===== The commander of Delta Unit, one of the 7th Squadron Units in Area 7. He was killed by Reccondo commandos as they retrieved Kevin from the base. ===== Captain Lee "Cobra" Carney ===== The commander of Echo Unit, one of the 7th Squadron Units in Area 7. Carney was the leader who betrayed Caesar in retrieving Kevin from American soil and sending him to the Chinese Government with the aid of Chinese agents. He was killed by 7th Squadron commandos after his plan was foiled by Schofield and ended in failure. ===== Captain Robert Wu ===== A former 7th Squadron officer, he was one of four Chinese agents ordered by the Chinese Government to remove Kevin from American soil and place him under the control of the Chinese. He was killed by 7th Squadron commandos after the plan was foiled by Schofield and ended in failure. ===== Lieutenant Chet Li ===== A former 7th Squadron officer, he was one of four Chinese agents ordered by the Chinese Government to remove Kevin from American soil and place him under the control of the Chinese. He was killed by 7th Squadron commandos after the plan was foiled by Schofield and ended in failure. ===== Doctor Gunther Botha ===== A former member of the South African Defence Force, he attempted to retrieve Kevin from American soil in order to commence a lily-white African revolution. He was later killed by Charlie Unit while trying to escape Area 7 via Lake Powell, resulting in his plan ending in failure. ===== Seth Grimshaw ===== The presumed leader of Area 7's prisoners, Grimshaw attempted to escape Area 7 after the majority of prisoners were killed by Harper's Sinovirus agent. He was later killed by Janson. ===== Goliath ===== Seth Grimshaw's right-hand man, he also attempted to escape Area 7 with Grimshaw after the Sinovirus killed most of the prisoners. He was later killed by Book II. ===== Lucifer James Leary ===== A serial killer based in Area 7 as a test subject, he is known to have committed several acts of cannibalism during his criminal career. Leary was later killed by Schofield. it:Area 7 (romanzo)
726510	/m/0360c_	Callahan's Crosstime Saloon	Spider Robinson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The bar is run by Mike Callahan. The regulars are welcoming and willing to listen to any visitor's problems, no matter how strange, but do not snoop if a visitor is unwilling to share. Strange and unusual events and visitors turn up with frequency in the stories. Regulars at Callahan's include a talking dog, several extraterrestrials and time travelers, an ethical vampire, a couple of Irish mythological beings, and an obscenity-spewing parrot. The stories make heavy use of puns. Irish whiskeys are the preferred beverage, with Tullamore Dew and Bushmills mentioned in nearly every collection of shorts or novel that references the saloon. The stories make an obvious homage to Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp's Tales from Gavagan's Bar and Arthur C. Clarke's Tales from the White Hart. Lady Sally McGee, the madam of a house of excellent repute (and Mike Callahan's wife), stars in Robinson's Callahan's Lady and Lady Slings the Booze. The regulars at Lady Sally's brothel (where the employees are "artists" and the patrons are "clients") insist on the same empathy and humor as those at Callahan's, and they are just as likely to have fantastic backgrounds. Relatedly, nobody in Lady Sally's is forced into anything they are unwilling to do. This is the source of Callahan's Law (also known as the Law of Conservation of Pain and Joy): "Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased—thus do we refute entropy." Stated another way: "Just as there are Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other."
726557	/m/0360gz	The Witches of Eastwick	John Updike	1984-04-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story, set in the fictional Rhode Island town of Eastwick in the late 1960s, follows the witches Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart, and Sukie Rougemont, who acquired their powers after leaving or being left by their husbands. Their coven is upset by the arrival of a devil-like character, Darryl Van Horne. The mysterious Darryl seduces each of the women, encouraging them to play with their powers and creating a scandal in the town. The three women share Darryl in relative peace until he unexpectedly marries their young, innocent friend, Jenny, on whom they resolve to have revenge by giving her cancer through their magic. The witches doubt their judgement after Jenny's death when Darryl flees town with her younger brother, Chris, apparently his lover. In his wake he leaves their relationships strained and their sense of self in doubt. Eventually they each summon their ideal men and leave town. The Widows of Eastwick, John Updike's sequel to The Witches of Eastwick, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2008.
726973	/m/0361gh	Syrup	Max Barry	1999-07	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 Set in present day, a young marketing graduate named Scat comes up with an idea for a new product for Coca-Cola called 'Fukk'. This causes him to go to Coca-Cola to sell his idea for $3 million, but he finds that Sneaky Pete has already claimed the copyright in a backstabbing move. This then leads him to leave his apartment with Sneaky Pete and move in with Cindy. Cindy eventually throws him out and he goes to live with 6 and Tina while managing the summer marketing campaign for Coca-Cola. He eventually succeeds with the campaign. After that Scat tries to undermine Sneaky Pete's effort to run a new secret project for Coca-Cola, the first feature length advertising movie.
727199	/m/03621h	The Midwich Cuckoos	John Wyndham		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ambulances arrive at two traffic accidents which block the only roads into the fictional British village of Midwich, Winshire. Attempting to approach the village, one paramedic falls unconscious. Suspecting gas poisoning, the army is called in. However, they find that a caged canary becomes unconscious upon entering the affected region, but regains consciousness when removed. Further experiments show the region to be a hemisphere with a diameter of around the village. Aerial photography reveals an unidentifiable ground-based silver object in the centre of the created exclusion zone. After one day the effect vanishes along with the unidentified object, and the villagers wake with no apparent ill effects. Some months later, the villagers realise that every woman of child-bearing age is pregnant, with all indications that the pregnancies were caused by xenogenesis during the period of unconsciousness referred to as the "Dayout". When the 31 boys and 30 girls are born they appear normal except for their unusual, golden eyes and pale, silvery skin. These children have none of the genetic characteristics of their parents. As they grow up, it becomes increasingly apparent that they are, at least in some respects, not human. They possess telepathic abilities, and can control others' actions. The Children (they are referred to with a capital 'C') have two distinct group minds: one for the boys and another for the girls. Their physical development is accelerated compared to that of humans; upon reaching the age of nine, they appear to be sixteen-year-olds. The Children protect themselves as much as possible using a form of mind control. One young man who accidentally hits a Child in the hip while driving a car is made to drive into a wall and kill himself. A bull who chased the Children is forced into a pond to drown. The villagers form a mob and try to burn down the Midwich Grange, where the Children are taught and live, but the Children make the villagers attack each other. The Military Intelligence department learn that the same thing has taken place in four other parts of the world, including an Inuit settlement in the Canadian Arctic, a small township in Australia's Northern Territory, and a rural Siberian village. The Inuit instinctively killed the newborn Children, sensing they were not their own. The Australian babies had all died within a few weeks, suggesting that something may have gone wrong with their xenogenesis process. The Siberian village was destroyed by the Soviet government, using nuclear weapons, claiming that it was an accident. The Children are aware of the threat against them, and use their power to prevent any aeroplanes from flying over the village. During an interview with a Military Intelligence officer the Children explain that to solve the problem they must be destroyed. They explain it is not possible to kill them unless the entire village is bombed, which results in civilian deaths. It is revealed that the Children have put up an ultimatum: The Children want to migrate to a secure location, where they can live unharmed. They demand aeroplanes from the government. An elderly, educated Midwich resident (Gordon Zellaby) realises the Children must be killed as soon as possible. As he has a only a few weeks left to live due to a heart condition, he feels an obligation to do something. He has acted as a teacher and mentor to the Children and they regard him with as much affection as they can have for any human, letting him approach them more closely than they do with others. One evening, he - in effect abusing their trust - hides a bomb in his projection equipment, while showing the Children a film about the Aegean Islands of Ancient Greece. At an unspecified moment, Zellaby sets off the bomb, killing himself and all of the children. The title is a reference to the cuckoo bird, which lays its eggs in the nest of other birds in the hopes that they will raise the cuckoo's offspring as their own.
728016	/m/0364tc	Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth	Naguib Mahfouz		{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On the way from Thebes with his father, the scribe Amunhoben points out the ruins of Akhetaten, the city that the "heretic pharaoh" Akhenaten built for his One and Only God. Seeking a balanced perspective on the events of that time, which split Egypt politically and religiously, Meriamun gets a letter of introduction from his father to many members of Akhenaten's court, among them the High Priest of Amun, his chief of security Haremhab, and his queen Nefertiti. Each tale adds a new dimension to the enigma that is Akhenaten and the thoughts of those that were close to him allow Meriamun &ndash; and the reader &ndash; to judge for themselves whether Akhenaten was a power politician or a true believer.
728114	/m/03656d	Faerie Tale	Raymond E. Feist	1988-02-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Phil Hastings and his family have just moved back to his hometown for some much needed peace and quiet from the Hollywood scene. As Phil's twins, Sean and Patrick, soon discover, there is more to their new home than was expected. Gloria, their mother, senses something, but simply dismisses her concern as stress from their recent move. Gabbie, their older half-sister, meets the man of her dreams, but also is tempted by other men. Deep in the woods, The Bad Thing and his Master are ready to break free of the centuries old compact made to keep the Faerie world and the Human world at peace. Only through believing the insane and impossible can they save both worlds from colliding again.
728752	/m/0367cs	Lirael	Garth Nix	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lirael sees herself as an outcast within the world of the Clayr. With raven-black hair, a pale complexion, pointy face, muddy-brown eyes and unknown paternal parentage, she differs physically from the generally deep-tanned, fair-haired, round-faced and blue- or green-eyed seers around her. Most hurtful, though, is her lack of the Clayr's birthright, the Sight (the ability to see into the future or possible futures). The fact that this bloodline trait has not shown itself at the usual age of around eleven, as well as the absence of any truly understanding or sympathetic other in her life, leaves Lirael emotionally distressed and very unhappy until her appointment to the Clayr's Library on her fourteenth birthday. Through her solitary work in forgotten corners of the mystical library in the Clayr's Glacier, Lirael begins to unlock the keys to embarking upon an apparently predestined adventure of utmost importance. She also summons the Disreputable Dog, whom she befriends and who helps her in her explorations. Five years later, across the Wall in Ancelestierre, Prince Sameth has an encounter with the necromancer Hedge and his summoned Dead Hands, which leaves him injured both spiritually and physically. His father Touchstone arrives to take him back to the Old Kingdom and the safety of the palace in Belisaere. Here he is expected to continue his studies to follow his mother as the Abhorsen, a future he is mortally afraid of, especially since his encounter with Hedge. Their paths cross as Nicholas Sayre, an Ancelestierran friend of Sameth, crosses the border into the Old Kingdom and then to the Red Lake in search of the Lightning Trap, a region in the south west of the Kingdom where the royal rule does not extend and the Clayr cannot See. Sameth flees the palace and his sister to go and look for Nick. He gets into trouble on the way and Mogget turns up, to his surprise and suspicion. Meanwhile, Lirael finds, on her nineteenth birthday, a non-Clayr magical inheritance of the artifacts of a Remembrancer (one who looks into the past) and is quite swiftly dispatched to fulfill a very recent vision the Clayr had of her in a boat on the Red Lake with Nick. She sails down the River Ratterlin and, by coincidence, meets up with Sam, who had to use a bathtub to escape the Dead who had been following him. They continue on to the Red Lake, but are nearly intercepted by Chlorr of the Mask and the Dead Hands assigned to her. They decide to proceed to Abhorsen's House to rest and generally regroup. Once there, a strange set of revelations take place: Sameth is given a surcoat with the Royal Blood's tower and the Wallmaker's trowel, and Lirael is given a surcoat with the Clayr star and the Abhorsen key. Lirael realizes, with the help of memories she has Remembered, that she must be half-Abhorsen — a fact confirmed by Mogget, as only a child of both Clayr and Abhorsen may become a Remembrancer. The novel ends with Lirael and Sameth deciding to go on to find Nick and Hedge at the Red Lake.
728758	/m/0367dx	Abhorsen	Garth Nix	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main novel begins at Abhorsen's House, which is besieged by Dead Hands led by Chlorr of the Mask, once a powerful necromancer who has died and come back as one of the Greater Dead. She is in turn under the control of Hedge the Necromancer, who serves Orannis the Destroyer. The Destroyer is the Ninth Bright Shiner, and the most evil magical force or being. It had destroyed many worlds before It was defeated by the Seven Bright Shiners, the free magic entities that formed the Charter after defeating Orannis. The Seven also bound Yrael, the Eighth Bright Shiner, who was a free magic entity who would not join the charter. The Seven were known as Ranna, Mosrael, Kibeth, Dyrim, Belgaer, Saraneth, and Astarael. These Seven binders are also the names of the seven necromantic bells and some of the original natures of The Seven linger in these bells. Lirael and Sameth must escape the Abhorsen's House to stop the Destroyer and to save Sameth's friend Nicholas Sayre, who is being used by Orannis as an avatar. Lirael and Sameth now have to travel to the Red Lake, where The Destroyer is being unearthed. As Lirael and Sameth journey through the Old Kingdom they learn more about Orannis and its plans to destroy all life. Meanwhile, Prince Sameth's parents, the Abhorsen Sabriel and King Touchstone are in Ancelstierre trying to stop the probable death of thousands of Southerling refugees if they are allowed to enter the Old Kingdom without the protection of the Charter (see also the Five Great Charters). While they are in Ancelstierre attempting to reason with a corrupt government they become victims of an assassination attempt and barely escape with their lives. They flee to the Old Kingdom to attempt to save the lives of the Southerling Refugees from the other side of the Wall. While Sabriel and Touchstone are trying to get back to the Old Kingdom, Lirael, Sameth and the Disreputable Dog are trying to save Nicholas Sayre, Sameth's best friend and also the host of the Destroyer. The question becomes one of whether Lirael and Sameth are able to stop The Destroyer from completing its plans for eternal freedom and the destruction of the world and other worlds after this. Orannis is successful in joining the hemispheres that imprisoned him. Nick dies in the process of the rejoining, but the Disreputable Dog gives him a Charter Mark, thus binding him to the edge of death. Lirael uses her Rembrancing powers to figure out how the original Seven bound Orannis. During her journey through Death to use the Dark Mirror, she is confronted by and defeats Hedge. In the end, Lirael and her friends defeat Orannis, who must once again bind Orannis by re-enacting the original binding of the Seven with each member holding a bell and adding a bell’s voice. Lirael takes Astarael, and prepares to strike at the hemisphere with a new sword, forged from her panpipes and Nehima, that Sameth made for her. The others include King Touchstone (Ranna) and Abhorsen Sabriel (Saraneth), Sanar and Ryelle (Mosrael), Ellimere (Dyrim), the Disreputable Dog (who is truly a remnant of Kibeth), and Sameth (Belgaer). The first attempt at rebinding shows that the Destroyer is strong enough to resist. Eventually, Sameth frees Mogget, who reveals himself to be the Eighth Bright Shiner, Yrael. Yrael fights against the impulse to kill the Abhorsen, and sets itself against Orannis. This shocks Orannis, and gives the added power to bind him. As Lirael prepares to make the final blow, she readies herself to die. Unexpectedly, the Disreputable Dog takes the blow for Lirael and disappears into Death. In the end, though, the Disreputable Dog gives Nick back his life and tells him that Lirael will have a hand of gold made for her by Sameth to replace the hand she lost while being saved by the Dog.
728793	/m/0367kj	The Girl Who Owned a City	O. T Nelson	1975-03-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A deadly virus has swept the world, killing off everyone over the age of twelve in the span of a month or so. In suburban Chicago, ten-year-old Lisa Nelson and her younger brother Todd are surviving, like all the children in the story, by looting abandoned houses and shops. Although there are abandoned cars in every driveway and lining every street, Lisa is the first child to think of driving one. She is also the first to think of raiding a farm, and the first to look at the dwindling supplies in stores and deduce that groceries come from warehouses. She finds a supermarket warehouse and raids it, enlisting the help of a neighbor boy her own age, but makes clear to him that the entire warehouse and all its contents are her exclusive property, not to be shared unless she chooses. She considers relocating to the farm, but decides against it because it is difficult to defend (other children are starting to form gangs) and because "planning and getting the world back to the way it was, with schools, and hospitals, and electricity" are much more "exciting" than "hiding away on a farm ... digging in the dirt all day". Lisa and her friends are approached by the "Chidester Avenue Gang", led by Tom Logan. Suspecting that Lisa has a source of supplies, Logan offers a food-for-protection deal, which Lisa declines. Unhesitatingly taking charge, she forms her block-long stretch of Grand Avenue into a militia, armed with guns, Molotov cocktails, and primitive weapons. When the militia proves unsuccessful at defending the "Land of Grandville" against "the fearful and cruel army of Chidester and Elm" Lisa comes up with the idea of moving the "child-families" -- and the entire contents of the warehouse—into the local high school, and transforming it into a fortress-city. Within the city Lisa is the only authority, by virtue of the fact that she saw the abandoned high school and thought of moving there: this has earned her sole title to the "City of Glenbard" and everything in it. Things proceed according to plan until Tom Logan and his gang manage to stage a successful attack on Glenbard, during which Lisa is shot in the arm. Todd and Lisa's friend Jill rescue her, and Jill performs basic surgery to remove the bullet from her arm, dosing her with whiskey for pain relief. When Lisa recovers they retake the city of Glenbard from Tom, who has meanwhile learned that conqueror and leader are two very different things. Glenbard's "citizens" have shown no sign of rebellion, or of preferring Lisa's leadership to Tom's (or vice versa), but Lisa lectures Tom into relinquishing control of the city to her. The book ends with a foreshadowing that the citizens of Glenbard will at some time be forced to face far larger armies, led by now extremely powerful dictators and gang leaders. If any semblance of a free society is to exist in the new world, the citizens of Glenbard must make themselves capable of protecting and growing it by gaining in knowledge, power, and organization, and at the same time continuing to incorporate leadership and respect for the individual person into their society.
729737	/m/036b77	Right Ho, Jeeves	P. G. Wodehouse	1934-10-05	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bertie returns to London from several weeks in Cannes spent in the company of his Aunt Dahlia Travers and her daughter Angela. In Bertie's absence, Jeeves has been advising Bertie's old school friend, Gussie Fink-Nottle, who is in love with Madeline Bassett. Gussie is too timid to speak to her. Madeline, a friend of Bertie's cousin Angela, is staying at Brinkley Court (country seat of Aunt Dahlia and Uncle Tom). Bertie himself is expected at Brinkley Court to deliver the school prizes at the local grammar school, which he considers a fearful task. Bertie sends Gussie to Brinkley Court so that he will have the chance to woo Madeline, but also so that Gussie will be forced to take on the job of distributing the prizes. When Angela breaks her engagement to Tuppy Glossop, Bertie feels obliged to go down to Brinkley Court to comfort Aunt Dahlia. In addition to her worry about Angela's broken engagement, Aunt Dahlia is anxious about the 500 pounds she lost gambling at Cannes, as she has to ask her miserly husband Tom for the money. Bertie advises Aunt Dahlia to pretend to have lost her appetite through worry, advice he also offers to Tuppy to win back Angela and—largely redundantly—to Gussie, to win Madeline. All take his advice. The resulting plates of untasted food upset Aunt Dahlia's prized chef Anatole, who gives notice. Bertie's attempt to plead Gussie's case is misinterpreted by Madeline as a marriage proposal, but she tells Bertie she cannot marry him, as she has fallen in love with someone else, and her description of the man makes Bertie realize that she is talking about Gussie. When Gussie is too timid to speak to Madeline even with this substantial encouragement, Bertie decides to embolden Gussie by making the teetotal Gussie drink alcohol without his knowledge. Gussie ends up imbibing more gin than Bertie had intended. Gussie successfully proposes to Madeline, then—in a scene that is the highlight of the novel—delivers an inebriated speech to the grammar school, to the delight of a few but to the horror of many. Madeline breaks the engagement. Gussie, still drunk, proposes to Angela, who accepts him solely to anger Tuppy. In the face of this chaos, Bertie admits his inability to act as a counselor, and removes a restriction he had placed on Jeeves to offer advice. Jeeves ensures Bertie's absence for a few hours, and during that time swiftly ensures that Angela and Tuppy are reconciled, that Gussie and Madeline are engaged, that Anatole withdraws his resignation, and that Uncle Tom writes Aunt Dahlia a check for 500 pounds. Sections of the story were adapted into episodes of the ITV series Jeeves and Wooster.
730784	/m/036g58	Green Darkness	Anya Seton	1972-11-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the 1960s, young Celia Marsdon is a rich American heiress who, upon her marriage to English aristocrat Richard Marsdon, goes to live at an ancestral manor in Sussex, England. Shortly afterward, strange things begin to occur &mdash; Richard begins acting out of character, and Celia starts to have strange fits and visions. Celia's mother, Lily Taylor, has befriended a Hindu guru, Dr. Akananda, and it is he who discovers what's wrong with the young couple. The troubles of the present time can only be solved by revisiting a tragedy from the past. The book then moves back in time to the reign of Edward VI, as lovely young Celia de Bohun and her guardian aunt take up residence with the noble, Catholic family of Anthony Browne as "poor relations." Celia is a fascinating and believable character, full of contradictions and human failings. She is headstrong and impulsive; innocent but coquettish; and can easily attract male attention. She creates a scandal when she becomes infatuated with the family chaplain, Stephen Marsdon, who in turn desires Celia but does not want to break his vow of chastity. They are forced to part, but never forget each other. Time passes; King Edward dies and his persecution of Catholics ends, only to follow by his successor, Queen Mary I's persecution of Protestants; the Browne family fortunes prosper under the Marian reign; and sympathetic characters harden into detestable ones. When Celia and Stephen finally meet again, nothing can stop the passion between them. It ends tragically. The Tudor story and the narrative returns to the 1960s to find resolution in the present and lay to rest the tormented souls of Stephen and Celia so that Richard and his wife can live together happily without visions of their past lives coming between them.
732229	/m/036lcw	Stig of the Dump	Clive King	1963-06-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Stig is a caveman. He lives at the bottom of the old chalk pit close to Barney's grandparents' house. Since the chalk pit is no longer used, people throw all their old junk away down there. So it is rather an interesting place to build a den. Barney falls over the edge of the quarry and tumbles down through the roof of Stig's den. When he looks round, there's Stig, with his shaggy black hair and bright black eyes. Barney and Stig get on rather well together. They have to manage without language, of course, but that doesn't seem to stop them. Stig's den is a brilliant place built out of discarded rubbish. Stig is Barney's secret friend, not because Barney doesn't tell anyone, but because no-one really believes that Stig is real. They have a great time, improving Stig's den, collecting firewood, going hunting, and even catching some burglars who break into Barney's grandparents' house. It's really a collection of short-story adventures. We know that Stig is a caveman, and really Barney hardly seems to give any thought to where Stig has come from until the end of the book. Then, during a very hot, sultry mid-summer's night, when Barney and his sister Lou can't sleep, they find themselves transported back in time and out onto the downs. To their surprise, they meet Stig, back with his own people, engaged in the construction of four gigantic standing stones. They spend a magical night camping out with the people of Stig's tribe, and helping to shift the final stone into position before sunrise. Has Stig found a way to travel backwards and forwards in time, or is it as much a mystery to Stig as it is to Barney and Lou?
735197	/m/036vv4	Demian	Hermann Hesse	1919	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Emil Sinclair is a young boy raised in a bourgeois home, amidst what is described as a Scheinwelt, a play on words that means "world of light" as well as "world of illusion". Emil's entire existence can be summarized as a struggle between two worlds: the show world of illusion (related to the Hindu concept of maya) and the real world, the world of spiritual truth. In the course of the novel, accompanied and prompted by his mysterious classmate 'Max Demian', he detaches from and revolts against the superficial ideals of the world of appearances and eventually awakens into a realization of self.
735622	/m/036xd_	The High Crusade	Poul Anderson	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is 1345 AD, and in the English town of Ansby (in northeastern Lincolnshire), Sir Roger, Baron de Tourneville, is recruiting a military force to assist King Edward III in the Hundred Years' War against France. Suddenly, an enormous silver spacecraft lands outside the town. It is a scouting craft for the Wersgorix Empire, a brutal dominion light years from our solar system. The Wersgorix attempt to take over Earth by testing the feasibility of its colonization. However, the aliens, having forgotten hand-to-hand combat since it was made obsolete by their advanced technology, are caught off-guard by the angered Englishmen, who mistake the craft for a French trick. The villagers and soldiers in Ansby storm the craft and kill all but one Wersgor, Branithar. Sir Roger formulates a plan that with the captured ship, he can take the entire village to France to win the war, and then liberate the Holy Land. The townspeople, with all of their belongings, board the ship at the baron's instruction, and prepare to take off. The people of Ansby are mystified at the advanced technology aboard the ship, which they come to call the Crusader. Being unable to pilot the Crusader Sir Roger directs the surly Branithar to pilot them to France. Instead, the alien wrecks the baron's plan by throwing the Crusader into autopilot on course to Tharixan, another Wersgor colony. The Crusader arrives at Tharixan in days, and Sir Roger learns of this new world: it is sparsely-populated, with only three fortresses, Ganturath, Stularax, and Darova (the chief base). The humans capture Ganturath but destroy the Crusader in the process. Word spreads of the invaders and a meeting is arranged between Sir Roger and his soldiers and the chief of Tharixan, Huruga. The humans and Wersgor hold talks which do very little to give either side any advantage, but a truce is agreed to. Sir Roger, in order to intimidate the aliens, makes up tall tales about his estate, "which only took up three planets" and his other accomplishments, including a very successful conquest of Constantinople. Sir Roger demands that the entire Wersgorix state submit to the King of England. During the talks, Baron de Tourneville ignores the truce, and orders the capture of the fortress of Stalurax. Unfortunately, the entire base is obliterated by an atomic bomb. In retaliation, Huruga attacks Ganturath again, but loses. He is forced to give up. Now comes Sir Roger's most outrageous plan; having captured Tharixan, he sets out to overthrow the Wersgorix Empire itself. He enlists the help of three other races enslaved by the Wersgor: the Jairs, the Ashenkoghli, and the Pr?*tans. Meanwhile, one of his main soldiers and friend, Sir Owain Montbelle, hatches a plan to return to Earth, something that Sir Roger has lost interest in. With Lady Catherine, Sir Roger's wife, Montbelle corners the baron and demands that he help the people of Ansby get back to Earth. De Tourneville gives in, but attacks Sir Owain in person. At the climax, Lady Catherine betrays Montbelle and kills him herself. Unfortunately, she also destroys the notes that could have helped get the villagers of Ansby back home. Sir Roger goes on to topple the Wersgor Empire and build one for himself. He manages with the help of not only the species under the Wersgor, but from members of the Wersgor race who rebelled against their government. The religious figures in the story go on to establish a new branch of the Roman Catholic Church. A millennium after the main events of The High Crusade, the holy galactic empire founded by Sir Roger and his people finally reunites with long lost Earth. A spacecraft from Earth comes across the empire, and is welcomed by the descendants of Red John Hameward. There is, in the epilogue, a reference to events on Earth since 1345. The captain of the Earth ship is described as being a loyal subject of an Israeli empire. It also appears that Huruga wound up as an Archbishop.
736671	/m/036_g8	Tempest-Tost	Robertson Davies		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Tempest-Tost an amateur theatrical group sets about mounting a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
736673	/m/036_gm	Leaven of Malice	Robertson Davies		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book starts out with a false, anonymous engagement notice between Pearl Vambrace and Solly Bridgetower published in the local newspaper, the Bellman. The wedding is to be held on November 31 at the local cathedral. The notice creates a stir in the community. Professor Vambrace, the father of Pearl, is outraged, considering it an insult directed at himself and his family, due to his longtime feud with the Bridgetower family. As such, he threatens the Bellman's editor, Gloster Ridley, to sue the Bellman for libel. Mrs. Bridgetower is also outraged, although she confines this to her personal circle. Vambrace consults a lawyer, a relative of his wife, who suggests that he not go through with the case, and that the newspaper is as much a victim of the hoax as he is. His partner, Snelgrove, however, says otherwise, and offers to take the case himself. The case is looked into by both Snelgrove and Ridley's lawyer. Along with several major and minor characters in the novel, they pursue a quest for the person responsible for entering the false wedding notice, who is dubbed 'X'. The climactic scene takes place at the Bellman, where the principal characters gather and the identity of X is revealed. The novel explores themes of innocence, guilt, and judgement.
737935	/m/03730q	Noble House: The Epic Novel of Modern Hong Kong	James Clavell	1981-04	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Noble House is set in 1963. The tai-pan, Ian Dunross, struggles to rescue Struan's from the precarious financial position left over from his predecessor. To do this, he seeks partnership with an American millionaire, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan Gornt, who seeks to destroy Struan's once and for all. Meanwhile, Chinese communists, Taiwanese nationalists, and Soviet spies illegally vie for influence in Hong Kong while the British government seeks to prevent this. And nobody, it seems, can get anything done without enlisting the aid of Hong Kong's criminal underworld. Other obstacles include water shortages, landslides, bank runs and stock market crashes. In Noble House, Dunross finds his company the target of a hostile takeover at a time when Struan's is desperately overextended. He is also embroiled in international espionage when he finds himself in possession of secret documents desperately desired by both the KGB and MI6. The novel follows Dunross' attempts to extricate himself from all this and to save Struan's, the Noble House.
738608	/m/026030v	Red Star			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel begins with an explanation of Leonid's few relationships within the revolutionary movement and the beginning of his relationship with Menni, a Martian in disguise. Soon after they become friends, Menni invites Leonid to go back home with him to Mars. The purpose of this visit would be to teach his own society to Martians and to understand and experience theirs. The trip is accomplished by the "etheroneph", a nuclear photonic rocket. On their way there, Leonid is exposed gradually to Martians and their society. With the help of Menni and Netti, his doctor, Leonid is able to speak the Martian language by the time they arrive. At this point in the novel, Bogdanov details some of the aspects of the socialist Martian society as seen through Leonid’s eyes. Children’s colonies, factories, and housing are a few among the many aspects of this society that Bogdanov describes. Eventually, the unfamiliarity of Mars and the stress of his mission there exhaust Leonid to the point of being delusional. Just in time, Netti is alerted to his condition and treats him for his severe illness. While Leonid is recovering, he finds out, contrary to his original assumption, that Netti is female. His previous feelings for her are then expressed and they fall in love with one another. It is soon after this period that both Netti and Menni are called away for a mining expedition to Venus. While they are away, Leonid develops a relationship with Enno, another fellow shipmate from his arrival to the planet. While discovering many things about the nature of personal relationships on Mars, Leonid uncovers frightening information. He discovers that the council in charge of the Venus expedition was vying Earth’s colonization as a possibility. The argument presented, by Sterni (yet another shipmate), was that this was the only feasible solution and that it would only be made possible if Earth’s population was destroyed. As Leonid’s emotional state was not fully recovered from his exhaustion, this news sent him into a state of psychosis. His resolution is to murder Sterni, which he proceeds to do. After this occurrence, Leonid is sent back to Earth to recover from his extreme apathy. He does so with the aid of Dr. Werner, an old comrade. Once he is able, Leonid rejoins the revolutionary fight, but this time with a mature perspective. The novel ends with a letter from Dr. Werner to Mirsky (a character assumed to be Plekhanov). In this letter, Leonid’s reunion with Netti is described and they are supposed to have returned to Mars together.
738767	/m/0375rx	Hawaii	James A. Michener	1959	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tells the history of Hawaiian Islands from the creation of the isles to the time they became a state of the U.S.A. through viewpoints of selected people who represent their ethnic and cultural groups in the story (e.g. the Kee family represents the viewpoint of Chinese-Hawaiians). Most of the chapters cover the arrivals of different peoples to the islands. Describes the creation of the Hawaiian land from volcanic activity. The second chapter follows the creation of the isles which is mentioned in the preceding chapter. The chapter begins on the island of Bora Bora where many people including the King Tamatoa and his brother Terero are upset with the neighboring isles of Havaiki, Tahiti, etc. because they are trying to force the Bora Borans to give up their old gods, Tane and Ta'aroa, and start worshiping Oro the fire god, who constantly demands human sacrifices. Tamatoa suggests to his brother and friends that they should migrate to some other place where the might find religious freedom. After finally agreeing to this plan, his brother secretly puts fire to Havaiki to take revenge for the human sacrifices they have been demanding from Bora Borans. Later they take the canoe Wait for the West Wind and sail to Hawaii. Later some voyage back to Bora Bora to bring back with them some women and children and an idol of the volcano goddess, Pele. Follows the journey of the first Christian missionaries to Hawaii in the 1800s and their influence over Hawaiian culture and customs. Many of the missionaries become founding families in the islands, including the Hales and Whipples. Covers the immigration of Chinese to work on the pineapple and sugar plantations. The patriarch of the Kee family contracts leprosy (aka the "Chinese sickness") and is sent to the leper colony in Molokai. Japanese workers are brought to the islands to replace Chinese laborers who begin to start their own businesses. Also covers the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The final chapter summarizes the changes in Hawaiian culture and economics based on the intermarriages of various groups in the islands.
739474	/m/03789f	1632	Eric Flint	2000-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia (modeled on the real West Virginia town of Mannington) and its power plant are displaced in space-time, through a side effect of a mysterious alien civilization. A hemispherical section of land about three miles in radius measured from the town center is transported back in time and space from April 2000 to May 1631, from North America to central Germany. The town is thrust into the middle of the Thirty Years' War, in the German province of Thuringia in the Thuringer Wald, near the fictional German free city of Badenburg. This Assiti Shards effect occurs during a wedding reception, accounting for the presence of several people not native to the town, including a doctor and his daughter, a paramedic. Real Thuringian municipalities located close to Grantville are posited as Weimar, Jena, Saalfeld and the more remote Erfurt, Arnstadt, and Eisenach well to the south of Halle and Leipzig. Grantville, led by Mike Stearns, president of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), must cope with the town's space-time dislocation, the surrounding raging war, language barriers, and numerous social and political issues, including class conflict, witchcraft, feminism, the reformation and the counter-reformation, among many other factors. One complication is a compounding of the food shortage when the town is flooded by refugees from the war. The 1631 locals experience a culture shock when exposed to the mores of contemporary American society, including modern dress, sexual liberation, and boisterous American-style politics. Grantville struggles to survive while trying to maintain technology sundered from twenty-first century resources. Throughout 1631, Grantville manages to establish itself locally by forming the nascent New United States of Europe (NUS) with several local cities even as war rages around them. But once Count Tilly falls during the Battle of Breitenfeld outside of Leipzig, King Gustavus Adolphus rapidly moves the war theater to Franconia and Bavaria, just south of Grantville. This leads to the creation of the Confederated Principalities of Europe (CPoE) and some measure of security for Grantville's up-timer and down-timer populations.
741230	/m/037fb_	The Rivals	Richard Brinsley Sheridan			 The play is set in Bath in the 18th century, a town legendary for conspicuous consumption and fashion at the time. Wealthy, fashionable people went there to "take the waters", which were believed to have healing properties. Bath was much less exclusive than London, and provides an ideal setting for the characters. The plot centres on the two young lovers, Lydia and Jack. Lydia, who reads a lot of popular novels of the time, wants a purely romantic love affair. To court her, Jack pretends to be "Ensign Beverley", a poor officer. Lydia is enthralled with the idea of eloping with a poor soldier in spite of her guardian, Mrs. Malaprop, a moralistic widow. Mrs. Malaprop is the chief comic figure of the play, thanks to her continual misuse of words that sound like the words she intends but mean something completely different. (The term malapropism was coined in reference to the character.) Lydia has two other suitors: Bob Acres (a somewhat buffoonish country gentleman), and Sir Lucius O'Trigger, an impoverished and combative Irish gentleman. Sir Lucius pays Lucy to carry love notes between him and Lydia (who uses the name "Delia"), but Lucy is swindling him: "Delia" is actually Mrs. Malaprop. As the play opens, Sir Anthony arrives suddenly in Bath. He has arranged a marriage for Jack, but Jack demurs, saying he is in love already. They quarrel violently. But Jack soon learns through the gossip of Lucy and Fag that the marriage arranged by Sir Anthony is, in fact, with Lydia. He makes a great show of submission to his father, and is presented to Lydia with Mrs. Malaprop's blessing. Jack confides to Lydia that he is only posing as Sir Anthony's son. She annoys Mrs. Malaprop by loudly professing her eternal devotion to "Beverley" while rejecting "Jack Absolute". Jack's friend Faulkland is in love with Julia, but he suffers from jealous suspicion. He is constantly fretting himself about her fidelity. Faulkland and Julia quarrel foolishly, making elaborate and high-flown speeches about true love—satirizing the romantic dramas of the period. Bob Acres tells Sir Lucius that another man ("Beverley") is courting the lady of Acres' choice (Lydia, though Sir Lucius does not know this). Sir Lucius immediately declares that Acres must challenge "Beverley" to a duel and kill him. Acres goes along, and writes out a challenge note - despite his own rather more pacifist feelings, and the profound misgivings of his servant David. Sir Lucius leaves, Jack arrives, and Acres tells him of his intent. Jack agrees to deliver the note to "Beverley", but declines to be Acres' second. Mrs. Malaprop again presents Jack to Lydia, but this time with Sir Anthony present, exposing Jack's pose as "Beverley". Lydia is enraged by the puncturing of her romantic dreams, and spurns Jack contemptuously. Sir Lucius has also learned of the proposed marriage of Jack and Lydia, and determines to challenge Jack. He meets Jack, who, smarting from Lydia's rejection, agrees to fight him without even knowing the reason. They will meet at the same time as Acres is scheduled to fight "Beverley". At the dueling ground, Acres is very reluctant to fight, but Sir Lucius will have no shirking. Jack and Faulkland arrive. Acres learns that "Beverley" is his friend Jack, and begs off from their duel. However, Jack is quite willing to fight Sir Lucius, and they cross swords. David informs Mrs. Malaprop, Lydia, Julia, and Sir Anthony of the dueling, and they all rush off to stop it. Sir Lucius explains the cause of his challenge, but Lydia denies any connection to him, and admits her love for Jack. Mrs. Malaprop announces that she is Delia, but Sir Lucius recoils in horror, realizing that he has been hoaxed. Sir Anthony consoles Mrs. Malaprop, Julia is reconciled to Faulkland, and Acres invites everyone to a party.
741901	/m/037hcd	Q		1999		 The book follows the journey of an Anabaptist radical across Europe in the first half of the 16th century as he joins in various movements and uprisings that come as a result of the Protestant reformation. The book spans 30 years as he is pursued by 'Q' (short for "Qoèlet"), a spy for the Roman Catholic Church cardinal Giovanni Pietro Carafa. The main character, who changes his name many times during the story, first fights in the German Peasants' War beside Thomas Müntzer, then is in Münster's siege, during the Münster Rebellion, and some years later, in Venice.
742927	/m/037kzk	New Spring	Robert Jordan	2004-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 New Spring describes events which take place twenty years before the events of The Eye of the World (Book 1). The story begins in the last days of the Aiel War, and the Battle of the Shining Walls around Tar Valon. It is set primarily in Tar Valon and the Borderlands, specifically Kandor. New Spring focuses mainly on Moiraine Damodred and Siuan Sanche, two Aes Sedai new to the sisterhood, and how a young Moiraine became Aes Sedai, met Lan Mandragoran and made him her Warder. The novel also explains how Moiraine and Siuan witnessed a prophecy of the Dragon's rebirth and came to begin investigating the Karaethon Cycle, the Prophecies of the Dragon, decades before discovering Rand al'Thor.
743958	/m/037nzz	Asterix the Gaul	René Goscinny	1961		 All of Gaul is under Roman control, except for one small village of indomitable Gauls that still holds out against the Romans. Centurion Crismus Bonus, head of the Roman garrison at the fortified camp of Compendium is very keen on discovering the secret of the Gauls' superhuman strength after four soldiers are knocked out by one man, and sends a spy disguised as a Gaul into the village. The Roman's identity is revealed when he loses his false moustache, but not before he discovers the existence of the magic potion brewed by the Druid Getafix. He also manages to drink the potion after pretending he needs it to get back home as he claims the Romans think he's a spy, and reports his discovery back to the Centurion. Crismus Bonus believes that with this potion, he could overthrow Julius Caesar, and become Emperor himself. So, he and his second-in-command Marcus Ginandtonicus have Getafix captured using a pit in order to get the recipe. He is tortured by having a feather tickle his feet for hours, but does not give in. Asterix learns of Getafix's capture from a local man, and manages to sneak into the Roman camp where Getafix is being held captive in the man's cart after telling him Compendium has a second-hand cart stall on. He hears Crismus and Ginandtonicus planning to overthrow Caesar using the magic potion. Asterix finds Getafix and they concoct a scheme to trouble the Romans. Getafix pretends to agree to the Centurion's ultimatum of making the potion when Asterix pretends to give in to torture, despite the torture not actually having started yet, and demands an unseasonal ingredient like strawberry. While Crismus Bonus' soldiers try to find strawberries, Asterix and Getafix lounge around in comparative luxury, enjoying themselves at the Romans' expense. When the strawberries are bought at a vast sum from a Greek Merchant, the two Gauls eat them, causing anger to Crismus, before Getafix says the potion can be made without strawberries, they just leave a taste in the mouth. After all the ingredients are found, a potion is prepared that causes the hair and beard of the drinker to grow at a very accelerated pace. The Romans test it on the local man from earlier as Crismus worries about it being poisoned, and when he tests his strength on Asterix, Asterix pretends to be knocked out. The Romans are tricked into drinking this potion and before long, all of them have long hair and beards. They plead with Getafix to make an antidote, who makes a cauldron of vegetable soup (as the effects of the hair potion are about to wear off anyway) and also prepares a small quantity of the real magic potion for Asterix to drink so that they can fight their way out. As Getafix and Asterix are attempting to escape, they are stopped by a huge army of Roman reinforcements just outside the camp and are captured again. It turns out that Julius Caesar is leading the army and checking on the condition of the area. Upon meeting Asterix and Getafix, Caesar learns of Crismus Bonus' intentions. As punishment, he sends Crismus Bonus and his garrison to Outer Mongolia where there is a barbarian rebellion and frees Asterix and Getafix for giving him the information, while reminding them that they are still enemies. The story ends with a traditional banquet in the village. Throughout the entire Asterix series, the Roman legionaries use the wrong weaponry and armor for their period. For instance, their armor is the lorica segmentata, which was the standard during the Roman Empire era; in Caesar's time, chainmail armor (the lorica hamata) was in use. Also, the real-life Roman legionaries used pila (javelins) instead of spears, and they usually carried two of them.
746865	/m/037xp4	The Heroic Legend of Arslan			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Neither the novels nor the manga of The Heroic Legend of Arslan have been translated into English; therefore, this summary deals with the anime OVAs. As it directly focuses on the events of the first OVA, the characters names as they are translated there will be used (see "Names" below). Arslan has two qualities that make it unique among anime fantasy tales. While the world in which it takes place is one where magic obviously exists, said magic is of an extremely limited nature. Until the end of the anime, the only magical happenings involve a few rare occasional spells and a giant, humanoid monster. There are none of the races typically associated with a fantasy realm, such as elves or dwarves. It is, at the core, a war story taking place between human nations. In addition to this, there is an underlying theme of exploring the repercussions of slavery on a society, having an absolute monarch who treats the poor as cattle, and religious obsession. The story opens with a battle between the armies of Palse and Lusitania. The king of Palse, Andragoras, is quickly proved to have poor judgement and a quick temper, as he demotes one of his most loyal servants, Daryoon, on the word of a man who proves to be a traitor, Kharlan. In this first battle, the Lusitanian army deliberately leads the Palsian forces into a seemingly simple assault. The assault turns into a bloodbath, as the Lusitanians booby-trap the battlefield by soaking the ground in oil. Not only do the Palsian war-horses slip and break their legs, but the enemy forces set the oil on fire, burning many of the soldiers alive. Daryoon's uncle, Eran Vaphreze, takes it upon himself to lead the king away from the battlefield before Andragoras can be discovered and killed by enemy troops. Before he rides off, he commands Daryoon to dedicate himself to protecting the crown prince, Arislan. While Daryoon rides off to seek out the prince, Vaphreze and Andragoras attempt to escape. They are unsuccessful &mdash; Vaphreze is murdered by the leader of the Lusitanian army, an incredibly strong and enigmatic warrior who, because of his unique headgear, is known only as Silvermask. Silvermask declines to kill Andragoras, preferring instead to kidnap him and drag him back to his stronghold in Zahburu Fortress. Having survived the Lusitanian assault, Arislan and Daryoon seek help for their cause, in the form of the philosopher/swordsman/tactician, Narsus. After a bit of trickery on Daryoon's part, they convince Narsus to help them in their cause. Narsus' young boy servant, Elam, goes with them. As this goes on, Lusitanian troops march to the capital city of Ekubatana; in order to convince Queen Tahamine to surrender her city. An interrogator of the Lusitanians &mdash; a high-ranking cleric named Jon Bodan &mdash; tortures captured Palsian soldiers outside its gates, declaring to all who would hear that he will only stop when Ekubatana surrenders. While she refuses, the city is eventually invaded successfully. The Queen is captured, and the city's buildings, sculptures, and sacred writings are all destroyed. As Arislan travels around, trying his best to avoid being located by the armies and agents of Silvermask, he meets two others who are convinced to join his cause of re-taking and rebuilding Palse. Pharangese, an aloof, cold priestess of Misra, is sent by her holy order to protect and serve the prince &mdash; a fact which she considers to be natural, as she is the wisest, most beautiful, and most deadly. There is also the travelling musician and con-man Gieve who is no mean swordsman himself. Gieve actually makes his first appearance when he, defying both a strong wind and a long distance, successfully shoots one of Jon Bodan's victims, sparing the poor soldier anymore misery and humiliation. For his skills with a bow, Gieve is paid well, and is also offered the chance to serve as the Queen's bodyguard as she attempts to escape the besieged Ekubatana. While making their way out of the castle, Gieve learns that the "Queen" he is escorting is actually a double for Her Majesty, in order to permit the real Queen to escape in a more secretive fashion. When she is captured by be city's attackers he escapes on his own, encounters Pharangese, and declares that he will dedicate himself to following her. She simply tells him to help protect the prince. The most obvious stumbling block to Arislan's ability to re-take his kingdom is his utter lack of an army. As it is ironically observed at the conclusion of the first episode, with six fighters at his command, they have doubled their forces, and will only need to take on 50,000 enemy soldiers each. The subsequent episodes chronicle Arislan's plans on finding an army to back him up. They also cover wide and sundry sub-plots, Silvermask's identity and motives, how Andragoras came to the Palsian throne, and the introduction of various new characters.
747561	/m/037zx8	Ruins of Adventure	Michael Breault			 Ruins of Adventure contains four linked Forgotten Realms miniscenarios set in the ruined town of Phlan. The scenarios form the core of the Pool of Radiance computer game, and include clues to that game's solution. The adventurers are hired to remove evil forces from Phlan, presumably by killing them. They hear rumor of a Boss controlling them and seek him out. This Boss proves to be a worthy adversary, but in the end the adventurers defeat him. There are various locations in the fictional city of Phlan. Each of these locations comes with a map and detailed area description. These locations include: * Kovel Mansion * The Slum District * The Temple of Bane * Kuto's Well * Mantor's Library * Stojanow Gate * Podol Plaza * The Cadorna Textile House * Valhingen Graveyard * Valjevo Castle * Sorcerer's Island * Zhentil Keep Outpost There are numerous pre-generated characters in this book. Monsters each have their own stats prepared and there are quite a few non-player characters.
747584	/m/037zzf	Giles Goat-Boy	John Barth	1966	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 George Giles is a boy raised as a goat who rises in life to be Grand Tutor (spiritual leader) of New Tammany College (the United States.) He strives for (and achieves) herohood, in accordance with the hero myth as theorized by Lord Raglan and Joseph Campbell. The novel abounds in mythological and Christian allegories, as well as in allusions to the Cold War, 1960s academia, and religion. The principle behind the allegorical renaming of key roles in the novel as roman à clef is that the Earth (or the Universe) is a University. Thus, for example, the founder of a religion or great religious leader becomes a Grand Tutor (in German Grosslehrer), and Barth renames specific leaders as well: Jesus Christ becomes Enos Enoch, Moses becomes Moishe, Buddha becomes the original Sakhyan. As the founder of the maieutic method, Socrates becomes Maios; Plato (whose Greek name Platon means "broad-shouldered") becomes Scapulas (from scapula, shoulder-blade); as the coiner of the term entelekheia (lit. "having an end within," usually translated "entelechy," or glossed as the actualization of a potentiality), Aristotle becomes Entelechus. Enos Enoch in Hebrew means "The man who walked with God" or "humanity when it walked with God." The heroes of epic poems tend to be named after the Greek for "son of": Odysseus becomes Laertides (son of Laertes), Aeneas becomes Anchisides (son of Anchises), and so on. The subtitle The Revised New Syllabus means, in the novel's Universe=University allegory, a parodic rewriting of the New Testament. Satan is the Dean o' Flunks, and lives in the Nether Campus (hell); John the Baptist is John the Bursar; the Sermon on the Mount becomes the Seminar-on-the-Hill; the Last Judgment becomes the Final Examination. Among the parodic variations, a computer replaces the Holy Spirit, and an artificial insemination the Immaculate Conception. Very presciently, a hypertext encyclopedia also figures in the novel, years before the invention of hypertext and three decades before the Web became part of society at large. The character Max Spielman is a parody of Ernst Haeckel, whose insight "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is rephrased as "ontogeny recapitulates cosmogeny" and "proctoscopy repeats hagiography". The "riddle of the universe" is rephrased as "the riddle of the sphincters".
747676	/m/0678s4n	Land Beyond the Magic Mirror	Gary Gygax			 In this module, the player characters plummet into a strange partial plane. They meet the Jabberwock, the Bandersnatch, and the Walrus and the Carpenter, and become involved in a giant game of chess.
747822	/m/037_mv	The Intuitionist	Colson Whitehead	1999-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with the catastrophic failure of an elevator which Watson had inspected just days before, leading to suspicion cast upon both herself and the Intuitionist school as a whole. To cope with the inspectorate, the corporate elevator establishment, and other looming elements, she must return to her intellectual roots, the texts (both known and lost) of the founder of the school, to try to reconstruct what is happening around her. In the course of her search, she discovers the central idea of the founder of Intuitionism – that of the "black box", the perfect elevator, which will deliver the people to the city of the future.
747903	/m/037_xg	Ravenloft	Laura Hickman		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The story involves a party of player characters (PCs) who travel to the land of Barovia, a small nation surrounded by a deadly magical fog. The master of nearby Castle Ravenloft, Count Strahd von Zarovich, tyrannically rules the country, and a prologue explains that the residents must barricade their doors each night to avoid attacks by Strahd and his minions. The Burgomaster's mansion is the focus of these attacks, and, for reasons that are not initially explained, Strahd is after the Burgomaster's adopted daughter, Ireena Kolyana. Before play begins, the Dungeon Master (or DM, the player who organizes and directs the game play) randomly draws five cards from a deck of six. Two of these cards determine the locations of two magical weapons useful in defeating Strahd: the Holy Symbol and the Sunsword. The next two cards determine the locations of Strahd and the Tome of Strahd, a book that details Strahd's long-ago unrequited love. In this work, it is revealed that Strahd had fallen in love with a young girl, who in turn loved his younger brother. Strahd blamed his age for the rejection, and made a pact with evil powers to live forever. He then slew his brother, but the young girl killed herself in response, and Strahd found that he had become a vampire. All six possible locations are inside Castle Ravenloft. The fifth and final card selected determines Strahd's motivation. There are four possible motivations for Strahd. He may want to replace one of the PCs and attempt to turn the character into a vampire and take on that character's form. He may desire the love of Ireena, whose appearance matches that of his lost love, Tatyana. Using mind control, Strahd will try to force a PC to attack Ireena and gain her love by "saving" her from the situation he created. Strahd may also want to create an evil magic item, or destroy the Sunsword. If, during play, the party's fortune is told at the gypsy camp in Barovia, the random elements are altered to match the cards drawn by the gypsy. As the party journeys through Barovia and the castle, the game play is guided using 12 maps with corresponding sections in the book's body guide. Example maps and sections include the Lands of Barovia, the Court of the Count, five entries for each level of the Spires of Ravenloft, and the Dungeons and Catacombs. Each location contains treasure and adversaries, including zombies, wolves, ghouls, ghosts, and other creatures. The main objective of the game is to destroy Count Strahd. The DM is instructed to play the vampire intelligently, and to keep him alive as long as possible, making him flee when necessary. In an optional epilogue, Ireena is reunited with her lover. They leave the "mortal world" as Ireena says, "Through these many centuries we have played out the tragedy of our lives."
749028	/m/03826k	The English Teacher	R. K. Narayan	1980-10-15	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As an English teacher at Albert Mission College, Krishna has led a mundane and monotonous lifestyle comparable to that of a cow, but this took a turn when his wife, Susila, and their child, Leela, come to live with him. With their welfare on his hands, Krishna learns to be a proper husband and learns how to accept the responsibility of taking care of his family. He felt that his life had comparatively improved, as he understood that there's more meaning to life than to just teaching in the college. However, on the day when they went in search of a new house, Susila contracts typhoid after visiting a dirty lavatory, keeping her in bed for weeks. Throughout the entire course of her illness, Krishna constantly tries to keep an optimistic view about Susila's illness, keeping his hopes up by thinking that her illness would soon be cured. However, Susila eventually succumbs and passes away. Krishna, destroyed by her loss, has suicidal thoughts but gives them up for the sake of his daughter, Leela. He leads his life as a lost and miserable person after her death, but after he receives a letter from a stranger who indicates that Susila has been in contact with him and that she wants to communicate with Krishna, he becomes more collected and cheerful. This leads to Krishna’s journey in search of enlightenment, with the stranger acting as a medium to Susila in the spiritual world. Leela, on the other hand, goes to a preschool where Krishna gets to meet the Headmaster, a profound man who cared for the students in his school and teaches them moral values through his own methods. The Headmaster puts his students as his top priority but he doesn’t care for his own family and children, eventually leaving them on the day predicted by an astrologer as to be when he was going to die, which did not come true. Krishna gets to learn through the Headmaster on the journey to enlightenment; eventually learning to communicate to Susila on his own, thus concluding the entire story itself, with the quote that he felt 'a moment of rare immutable joy'.
750272	/m/0384z_	The Giving Tree	Shel Silverstein	1964-10-07	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Giving Tree is a tale about a relationship between a young boy and a tree. The tree always provides the boy with what he wants: branches on which to swing, shade in which to sit and apples to eat. As the boy grows older, he requires more and more of the tree. The tree loves the boy very much and gives him anything he asks for. In an ultimate act of self-sacrifice, the tree lets the boy cut it down so the boy can build a boat in which he can sail. The boy leaves the tree, now a stump. Many years later, the boy, now an old man, returns, and the tree sadly says: "I'm sorry, boy... but I have nothing left to give you." But the boy replies: "I do not need much now, just a quiet place to sit and rest." The tree then says, "Well, an old tree stump is a good place for sitting and resting. Come, boy, sit down and rest." The boy obliges and the tree is very happy.
750322	/m/038552	Fanshawe	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1828	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Dr. Melmoth, the President of Harley College, takes into his care Ellen Langton, the daughter of his friend, Mr. Langton, who is at sea. Ellen is a young, beautiful girl and attracts the attentions of the college boys, especially Edward Walcott, a strapping though immature student, and Fanshawe, a reclusive, meek intellectual. While out walking, the three young people meet a nameless character called “the angler,” a name he gets for appearing an expert fisherman. The angler asks for a word with Ellen, tells her something in secret, and apparently flusters her. Walcott and Fanshawe become suspicious of his intentions. We learn that the angler is an old friend of the reformed Inn owner, Hugh Crombie. The two had been at sea together, where Mr. Langton had been the angler’s mentor and caretaker. Langton and the angler had a falling out, however, and, thinking that Langton has been killed at sea, the angler undertakes to marry Ellen in order to inherit her father’s considerable wealth. Thus in his secret meeting with Ellen, the angler instructs her to sneak out of Melmoth’s home and follow him, telling her he has information about her father’s whereabouts. His real aim, though, is to kidnap her, to tell her of her father’s death, and to manipulate her into marrying him. When the various men (Melmoth, Edward, Fanshawe) learn that she is not in her chamber, they go searching for her. The search reveals the nature of each: Melmoth, an aged scholar unused to physical labor, enlists the help of Walcott, who is the most skilled rider and the most likely to be able to contend with the angler in a fight. Fanshawe, who lags behind the search because of his weak constitution and his slow horse, is given information by an old woman in a cabin (where another old woman, Widow Butler, who turns out to be the angler’s mother, has just died) that allows him to reach the angler and Ellen first. The angler has taken Ellen to a craggy cliff and cave, where he intends to hold her captive. Ellen has finally realized the angler’s intentions. When Fanshawe arrives, he stands above them, looking over the edge of the cliff. The angler begins to climb up the cliff to fight Fanshawe but grabs a twig too weak to support him and tumbles to his death. Fanshawe awakens Ellen from a faint, and they travel back to town together. Fanshawe loves Ellen but knows that he will die young because of his shut-in lifestyle. When Langton offers Ellen’s hand in marriage to Fanshawe in exchange for rescuing her, he refuses, sacrificing his happiness so as not to subject her to a life of widowhood. He also knows that Ellen has affections for Walcott. Fanshawe dies at 20. Ellen and Walcott marry four years later. The narrator states that Walcott grows out of his childish ways (drunkenness, impulsiveness, the suggestion of teenage affairs) and becomes content with Ellen. They are, according to the narrator, happy, but the book ends on an ambivalent note, stating that the couple did not produce children.
750558	/m/0385y5	Rob Roy	Walter Scott	1817	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story takes place just before the 1715 Jacobite Rising, with much of Scotland in turmoil. Frank Osbaldistone, the narrator, quarrels with his father and is sent to stay with an uncle, Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, in Northumberland. Frank falls in love with Diana Vernon, Sir Hildebrand's niece, whose father has been forced to go into hiding because of his Jacobite sympathies. Frank's cousin, Rashleigh, steals important documents vital to the honour and economic solvency of Frank's father, William, and Frank pursues Rashleigh to Scotland. Several times his path crosses the mysterious and powerful figure Robert Roy MacGregor, known as Rob Roy, an associate of Sir Hildebrand. There is much confusion as the action shifts to the beautiful mountains and valleys around Loch Lomond. A British army detachment is ambushed and there is bloodshed. All of Sir Hildebrand's sons but Rashleigh are killed in the Jacobite Rising, and Rashleigh, too meets a bloody end. Following this, Frank inherits Sir Hildebrand's property and marries Diana. Robert Louis Stevenson loved the novel from childhood, regarding it as the best novel of the greatest of all novelists. The novel is a brutally realistic depiction of the social conditions in Highland and Lowland Scotland in the early 18th century. Some of the dialogue is in broad Scottish, and the novel includes a glossary of Scottish words.
750630	/m/03865w	The House at Pooh Corner	A. A. Milne	1928	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The title comes from a story in which Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet build a house for Eeyore. In another story the game of Poohsticks is invented. Hints that Christopher Robin is growing up, scattered throughout the book, come to a head in the final chapter, in which the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood throw him a farewell party after learning that he must leave them for good soon. It is made obvious – though not stated explicitly – that he is starting school. In the end, as they say good-bye to Christopher Robin, they realise they will never see him again. Pooh and Christopher Robin say a long, private farewell, in which Pooh promises never to forget him.
751104	/m/0387hl	Queen of Angels	Greg Bear	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Queen of Angels describes our world just prior to the binary millennium (2048 AD) through several parallel (and to some degree interlocking) tales. Nanotechnology has transformed almost every aspect of American society, and its application to psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience has resulted in new techniques for mental "therapy" that have created new forms of social stratification. Increasingly, individuals are "therapied" - that is, well-integrated personalities capable of productive work and constructive social interaction which does not threaten the social order. Therapied individuals have access to the best jobs. There are two other classes: the "high naturals", who possess such a positive mental makeup without the need for therapy, and the "untherapied", who find themselves increasingly marginalized. The central unifying element involves a famous writer, Emmanuel Goldsmith, who has committed a gruesome series of murders, a crime almost unheard of in the age of therapy. One storyline involves Mary Choy, a high natural police detective assigned to the case to track down and arrest the murderer. Mary is a transform - she has chosen to have her body extensively altered by nanotechnology, both to enhance her abilities as a policewoman and for aesthetic reasons. A second storyline involves Richard Fettle, a good friend of the murderer, also an untherapied writer, who must come to terms with what happened to his friend and how his life—and that of artists, and all of the untherapied—must change. The third plot line concerns Martin Burke, a pioneer in psychotherapy who uses a technique which allows him to directly enter and interact with a patient's psychology - the "Country of the Mind" - through a sort of virtual reality. Although in a position of disgrace at the story's opening, Dr. Burke is given the opportunity to use his technique to explore Goldsmith's mind, which turns out to be one of the most fascinating and dangerous minds imaginable. Finally, the fourth plotline considers the nature of artificial intelligence, as an AI robot space probe discovers life on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, and simultaneously achieves its own independent self-awareness, as does its twin back on Earth. The novel deals with issues of technology, identity, the nature of justice, and the existence of consciousness and the soul. Queen of Angels, set in 2047, was written just before the creation of the first website in 1991 and describes a global network based on the exchange of text (a sort of super USENET), whereas the sequel, Slant, set in 2055 and written in 1997 after the coming of the World Wide Web, describes a global network which has inexplicably changed to resemble a vast shared virtual reality.
751241	/m/0387s9	The House Without a Key	Earl Derr Biggers		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel deals with the murder of a former member of Boston society who has lived in Hawaii for a number of years. The main character is the victim's nephew, a straitlaced young Bostonian bond trader, who came to the islands to try to convince his aunt Minerva, whose vacation has extended many months, to return to Boston. The nephew, John Quincy Winterslip, soon falls under the spell of the islands himself, meets an attractive young woman, breaks his engagement to his straitlaced Bostonian fiancee Agatha, and decides as the murder is being solved to move to San Francisco. In the interval, he is introduced to many levels of Hawaiian society and is of some assistance to Detective Charlie Chan in solving the mystery. The novel's denouement is nearly identical to that in the final Perry Mason novel by Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Postponed Murder (1970).
751496	/m/0388v1	Behind That Curtain	Earl Derr Biggers		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It is set almost exclusively in California (as opposed to Chan's native Hawaii), and tells the story of the former head of Scotland Yard, a detective who is pursuing the long-cold trail of a murderer. Fifteen years ago, a London solicitor was killed in circumstances in which the only clue was a pair of Chinese slippers, which he apparently donned just before his death. Sir Frederic Bruce has been following the trail of the killer ever since. He has also been interested in what appears to be a series of disappearing women around the world, which has some connection to the disappearance of a woman named Eve Durand in rural India also fifteen years ago. Just when it seems he might finally solve the murder case, at a dinner party to which a number of important and mysterious guests have been invited, Inspector Bruce is killed—and was last seen wearing a pair of Chinese slippers, which have vanished. It is left to Chan to solve the case and tie up all loose ends.
751514	/m/0388w2	The Black Camel	Earl Derr Biggers	1929	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It tells the story of a Hollywood star (Shelah Fane), who is stopping in Hawaii after she finished shooting a film on location in Tahiti. She is murdered in the pavilion of her renter house in Waikiki during her stay. The story behind her murder is linked with the three-year-old murder of another Hollywood actor and also connected with an enigmatic psychic named Tarneverro. Chan, in his position as a detective with the Honolulu Police Department, "investigates amid public clamor demanding that the murderer be found and punished immediately. "Death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate. Tonight black camel has knelt here", Chan tells the suspects."
751532	/m/0388yk	Charlie Chan Carries On	Earl Derr Biggers	1930	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Inspector Duff, a Scotland Yard detective and friend of Chan's, first introduced in Behind That Curtain, is pursuing a murderer on an around-the-world voyage; so far, there have been murders in London, France, Italy and Japan. While his ship is docked in Honolulu, the detective is shot and wounded by his quarry; though he survives, he is unable to continue with the cruise, and Chan takes his place instead. Eventually, after more murders, Chan finds the killer before the next port of call.
751548	/m/038903	Keeper of the Keys	Janny Wurts	1932	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Once again, the setting of the novel is rural California, where Chan has been invited as a houseguest. He meets a world-famous soprano, Ellen Landini, who is murdered not too long after the meeting. Chan does not have far to look for suspects—the host is her ex-husband, as are three of the other house guests. Her servants, entourage and husbands all come under suspicion. Once again, Chan is expected to solve the murder, which he does by understanding the key clues—the actions of a little dog named Trouble, two scarves, and two little boxes. When he understands how the murder is committed, he learns the role of elderly house servant Ah Sing—the keeper of the keys.
751672	/m/03899g	The Street Lawyer	John Grisham	1998	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A homeless man calling himself "Mister" enters the offices of the Washington DC law firm Drake & Sweeney and takes many of the lawyers hostage. Although he is eventually shot by a police sniper and the hostages freed, one of the hostages, an antitrust lawyer named Michael Brock, is concerned by what he has learned and feels compelled to investigate further. He finds his way to the 14th Street Legal Clinic, where he meets Mordecai Green, an advocate for the homeless, who asks him to help one night at a homeless shelter. As Brock's investigation deepens, he finds that his own employer was complicit in an illegal eviction, which eventually resulted in the death of a young homeless family. He takes a confidential file, intending to copy it, but is quickly suspected of its theft. Shocked by what he has found, Brock leaves his firm to take a poorly-paid position with the 14th Street Legal Clinic, which works to protect the rights of the homeless. This leads to his wife divorcing him. He admits one of his clients, Ruby, to a therapy class for drug-addicted women, and in the process meets Megan, the Brock's love interest. As Drake & Sweeney comes after Brock with theft and malpractice allegations, the Clinic launches a lawsuit against the law firm and its business partners. Terrified of the certain bad publicity, the matter is settled by mediation and the clinic receives a large payout to be shared with the victims of the eviction. Drake & Sweeney's head partner, deeply troubled by the events, offers to make pro bono staff available to assist the work of the Clinic in fighting for the rights of homeless people. The book ends with Brock taking a short vacation with Megan and Ruby, and them reflecting on their lives.
752068	/m/038b8j	The Runaway Jury	John Grisham	1996	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Wendall Rohr and a legal team of successful tort lawyers have filed suit on behalf of plaintiff Celeste Wood, whose husband died of lung cancer. The trial is to be held in Biloxi, Mississippi, a state thought to have favorable tort laws and sympathetic juries. The defendant is Pynex, a tobacco company. Even before the jury has been sworn in, a stealth juror, Nicholas Easter, has begun to quietly connive behind the scenes, in concert with a mysterious woman known only as Marlee. Rankin Fitch, a shady 'consultant' who has directed 8 successful trials for the Big Four, has placed a camera in the courtroom, feeding to his office nearby so that the trial can be observed. He has begun to plot many schemes to reach to the jury. He planned to get to Millie Dupree through blackmailing her husband through a tape that has him trying to bribe an official. He reaches to Lonnie Shaver through convincing a company to buy his employer and convince him through orientation. He also tries to reach Rikki Coleman through a blackmail of revealing her abortion to her husband. As the case continues, Fitch is approached by Marlee with a proposal to 'buy' the verdict. However, as Fitch investigates Marlee's past, he discovers that her parents have been killed by smoking and that Marlee was actually planning against the defense. However, he has already sent the $10 million, so he lost $10 million in addition to having lost the trial. Easter becomes jury foreman after the previous one became ill (an illness resulting from Nicolas and Marlee spiking his coffee) and convinces them to find for the plaintiff and make a large monetary award - $2 million for compensatory damages, and $400 million for punitive measures. The defense lawyers and their employers are devastated. Whilst Easter and Marlee are now rich through short-selling the tobacco companies' stocks and satisfied that they served justice, Fitch realizes that his reputation has been destroyed and that the tobacco companies, once undefeatable, are now vulnerable to lawsuits. The book closes with Marlee returning the initial $10 million bribe to Fitch, having used it to make several times that much, and warning Fitch that she and Nicholas will always be watching. She explains that she had no intention to steal or lie, and that she cheated only because "That was all your client understood."
752406	/m/038c96	Jesus on Mars	Philip José Farmer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 An unmanned scientific probe sent to Mars discovers an alien artifact. A follow up robotic explorer lands and verifies that an enormous alien ship is partially buried on Mars. So a manned expedition is sent to explore this apparently abandoned alien ship. The expedition members are captured and taken underground to the habitat occupied by a combined society of humans living harmoniously with the alien Krsh. The expedition learns that, in previous millennia, the technologically advanced Krsh were won over to the religion of the humans. This society practices Judaism but accepts Jesus as their Messiah. Included in their Bible is the Book of Matthias which is the testament written by Judas Iscariot. However, unlike mainstream Christianity, this society views Jesus as a man and not as God (see Nicene Creed). Originally, the Krsh had arrived at Earth on an exploratory mission. To study humans, the Krsh had offered to bring injured humans to their spaceship for medical treatment. Then, the ship was attacked by another alien species which is especially hostile and xenophobic. Even though the attack was repelled and the ship of the xenophobic aliens was destroyed, the Krsh's own ship was damaged. So they landed on Mars to hide from more potential hostility which never arrived. During the years of camouflage, the Krsh and humans crew joined together into a unified society. Halfway through the novel, we learn that Jesus himself miraculously arrived among these people almost two thousand years earlier and had been living with them ever since. The proximity of Jesus is overwhelming and convincing both in terms of concrete, scientifically verifiable miracles as well as a strong visceral presence. This proximity convinces even the scientifically advanced Krsh. Also, three of the four crew members accept this Jesus and convert to this hybrid form of Judaism and Christianity. The fourth crew member, an atheist and the only female crew member, commits suicide. She is subsequently resurrected using advanced technology but not before she suffers brain damage that erases much of her personality. Towards the end of the novel, Jesus leads a flotilla of spaceships back to Earth in a reenactment of the Second Coming. Although desiring peaceful interaction and offering immortality and boundless manna, they are prepared for hostile action. As can be expected, Jesus is accused of being the Antichrist. Such doubts afflict Richard Orme who is the astronaut leading the manned expedition from Earth. In the penultimate chapter, Orme wavers on his conversion and submission to this Martian Jesus. He then prepares to assassinate the Jesus but, ironically throws himself upon a grenade from another assassin so as to save Jesus. In the final chapter, he awakens naked and disoriented to discover that he has been resurrected by Jesus while the world media looked on. Then, Orme reaffirms his commitment and the novel ends abruptly with a sense of the years of impending struggle against the forces of evil.
752711	/m/038dbg	Polgara the Sorceress	David Eddings	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Polgara the Sorceress begins with Ce'Nedra entreating Polgara to write a book about her life, filling in the gaps left by her father's story, Belgarath the Sorcerer. The main part of the story then opens just before the birth of Polgara and her sister. Polgara and her twin sister Beldaran were raised by their "uncles", the deformed dwarf Beldin and the twin sorcerers Beltira and Belkira (all disciples of Aldur, like Belgarath), after the apparent death of their mother, Poledra. Their mother had been a shape-shifting wolf (that is, she could assume the form of a human woman; but was born and still thought as a female wolf) and was distressed that her human babies would be born lacking in wolvish instinctive knowledge, so she began speaking to and training them telepathically while they were still in her womb. After the birth of the twins, Poledra was presumed to have died, but her daughters knew that she had simply had to go away. She continued to speak to Polgara, who throughout her life maintained a close relationship with her mother. Polgara and Beldaran were identical twins, but Aldur and their mother made physical changes directed at Polgara while they were still in the womb. Beldaran was fair-haired and Polgara was dark. According to various historical dates listed in Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress we are able to determine that Polgara and Beldaran were born in the year 2000 A.C. (Alorn Calendar). Polgara was born first, but Beldaran was the dominant twin. Soon after her birth, her father, Belgarath, touched her forehead in a gesture of welcome to his first-born which was also a symbol to which his original race performed on their first born. One lock of her hair turned silver, at his touch, marking her forever as a sorceress. For many years, Polgara hated her father. This was in part because her mother's wolf instincts could not understand his apparent abandonment during her pregnancy, and sensitive Polgara had picked up on this. This was also because, as Belgarath believed his wife dead, Belgarath had left for years, wandering from vice to vice in poor mental condition. Polgara took great offense to his continued abandonment. When Belgarath returned to take care of his daughters, Beldaran was quick to forgive him but Polgara often fled to the Tree at the center of the Vale of Aldur, where she befriended and learned to speak to birds. Beldaran's forgiveness of Belgarath further enforced Polgara's hatred. It was there, in the tree, that she first learned how to access her powers as a sorceress. She learned to shift into the form of an owl, a shape she learned from her mother. Belgarath (with Beldaran's help) eventually negotiated an uneasy peace, and Polgara began her academic training. Eventually, it was revealed that one of the twins was to wed Riva, the king of a newly formed subdivision of the Alorn kingdom of Aloria. Beldaran was chosen, as indeed this was her role in the ongoining War of Destinies. Polgara bitterly resented the "loss" of her sister, who had been the center of her life, but the shared loss eventually brought father and daughter closer together, and Polgara was presented for the first time as beautiful Polgara the Sorceress. Beldaran soon died, but Polgara, as a sorceress and disciple of Aldur, did not age. (Although the male disciples tended to be gray-haired, Polgara remained young.) Over the years, she maintained a relationship with the descendants of Beldaran and Riva that would eventually become her life's work. A relatively young Polgara spent many years in the Arendish duchy of Vo Wacune. The focus of her work was to end (sometimes by force) the Arendish civil wars. Ultimately she earned the gratitude of the dukes and her own duchy, and she became the Duchess of Erat. She imposed her own particular notions on the people of her duchy, modernizing its government and freeing her serfs. When war broke out again and Vo Wacune was destroyed, Polgara trained her people to become self-sufficient, and eventually what was once Erat became part of the new kingdom of Sendaria, noted for the practicality of its people, and the Duchess of Erat was all but forgotten. When the Rivan King was killed by assassins, Polgara became the guardian of a secret line of surviving heirs. She became an expert in not being noticed, often living in the towns of Sendaria. At the Battle of Vo Mimbre, Polgara learned that in the prophecies of the other side, her role was to be the bride of the dark god Torak. Her continued defiance both confused and infuriated him, but she was nonetheless afraid of Torak . Her refusal to accept Torak's dominance (At Vo Mimbre and in the volume 5 of the Belgariad, Enchanters' End Game), due to her previously unrealized love for Durnik, was a key point (an Event) in the fight between the two competing Prophecies. Following Torak's defeat at Vo Mimbre, Polgara returned to caring for the descendants of Riva, eventually raising Garion. The story ends there, overlapping with Garion's earliest memories as recounted at the beginning of the Belgariad.
755109	/m/038l52	Ilium	Dan Simmons	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel centers on three character groups: that of Hockenberry (a resurrected twentieth-century Homeric scholar whose duty is to compare the events of the Iliad to the reenacted events of the Trojan War), Greek and Trojan warriors, and Greek gods from the Iliad; Daeman, Harman, Ada, and other humans of an Earth thousands of years after the twentieth century; and the "moravec" robots (named for scientist and futurist Hans Moravec) Mahnmut the Europan and Orphu of Io, also thousands of years in the future, but originating in the Jovian system. The novel is written in first-person, present-tense when centered on Hockenberry's character, but features third-person, past-tense narrative in all other instances. Much like Simmons's Hyperion, where the actual events serve as a frame, the three groups of characters' stories are told over the course of the novel and begin to converge as the climax nears.
758569	/m/038xbv	Iron Council	China Miéville	2004	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 Iron Council follows three major narrative threads that join to form the novel’s climax. Although Miéville weaves back and forth between narrative, time, and space, this summary will follow each narrative individually, discussing their relation to each other toward the end. The novel is set in and around New Crobuzon, a sprawling London-esque city. New Crobuzon has for some unknown amount of time been at war with Tesh, and is attempting to build a railroad across the outlying desert, partially as a new means of conducting this war. Against this backdrop, the novel follows the deeds of three main characters–-Ori, Cutter, and Judah Low. Judah’s story begins some twenty years before the novel’s opening. Judah was hired as a railroad scout for New Crobuzon, charged with mapping terrain, and informing the land’s inhabitants of the railroad’s coming. While doing so, Judah spends time with the Stiltspear, a race of indescribable creatures who can disguise themselves as trees and conjure golems, living creatures made from unliving matter. Judah attempts to warn the Stiltspear away, but they won’t listen and he must settle for making a few recordings and beginning to learn their golemetric arts. Eventually, he returns to the railroad, which does indeed wipe out the Stiltspear. Shortly afterward, Judah, a prostitute named Ann-Hari, and a Remade named Uzman lead a revolution in which the rail workers drive the overseers away, free the Remade, and hijack the train, transforming it into a moving socialist dwelling. Iron Council, the perpetual train, moves through the desert, gathering track from behind and laying it in whichever direction its citizens decide. The Council keeps moving to avoid the New Crobuzon militia, who are anxious to reclaim the train and destroy the rebellion-inspiring Council. Judah returns to New Crobuzon, where he immerses himself in esoteric golemetry literature, emerging as a master of the art. Eventually, Judah returns to the Iron Council, having spread its word throughout New Crobuzon, and intent on using his golemetry to protect it. Cutter, whom the reader joins at the novel’s opening, was a friend, disciple, and lover to Judah during Judah’s return to New Crobuzon. Cutter leads a group consisting of other disciples of Judah in search of the Iron Council, to warn of the impending attack of the New Crobuzon militia. Although the militia was initially defeated by Iron Council, it has amassed a force now capable of destroying the “perpetual train.” After living and working with the Council for a while, Cutter returns with Judah and others to New Crobuzon to inspire revolt with the news of Iron Council, which has decided to return to the city and confront the militia on its own turf. After learning of the failed uprising by the Collective, Judah sends Cutter back to dissuade the citizens of the Council from returning. He is unsuccessful, and at the novel’s climax, Judah conjures a time-golem to freeze the train in time, thus saving it at the point of attack from destruction by the militia. As the novel ends, Iron Council has become a public monument of sorts, poised on the verge of attacking New Crobuzon’s exterior until the undisclosed time in which Judah’s time golem will dissipate. Judah is murdered by Ann Hari for halting the Council’s attack, and Cutter re-immerses himself in New Crobuzon’s underground resistance movements, revitalizing the protest publication Runagate Rampant. Happening somewhat simultaneously with most of the preceding summary are the deeds of Ori, a dissatisfied revolutionary who cannot abide the endless talk of his fellow Runagaters (so named for the above-mentioned publication). Seeking action, Ori is led by Spiral Jacobs, a half-crazed homeless old man, to join the militant gang of Toro. Committing robberies, raids, and even murder, Toro’s group proceeds mercilessly on its quest to assassinate the mayor of New Crobuzon, a plan which is later revealed to be personal rather than political. During Ori’s struggles with and against his new gang, an uprising by The Collective, a union of revolutionary groups, threatens to finally wrest New Crobuzon from the hands of its corrupt parliament and militia. After several days of fighting, however, the Collective is destroyed. Shortly after the fall of the Collective, Ori learns that Spiral Jacobs is in actuality a powerful sorcerer (A Tramp-Ambassador alluded to very briefly early in the novel) sent from Tesh to introduce a dark, destructive force into the midst of New Crobuzon (doing so with the help of the spiral signs he keeps drawing in New Crobuzon, which are considered by the Collective's supporters to be freedom signs). Here Judah, Ori, and Cutter finally cross paths as they unite to stop Spiral Jacobs, who is trying to raise Phasma Urbomach (also called the murderspirit and citykiller), a powerful entity which would destroy the entire city. They finally manage to stop him with the help of Qurabin, a disciple of a Teshi religious tradition whom Cutter and Judah met on the journey to Iron Council; Qurabin, a monk of the Moment of the Hidden and Lost, trades something of his for the knowledge on how to banish the spirit back (during the course of the novel, Qurabin loses his native language, memories of moments, and finally his eyes in order to help the main protagonists) and finally takes the Tesh ambassador with him 'into the domain of Tekke Vogu'. Ori is killed in the confrontation. Cutter and Judah then leave to rejoin the thread of the Iron Council, depicted above.
759653	/m/03905g	Distress	Greg Egan	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It describes the political intrigue surrounding a mid-twenty-first century physics conference, at which is to be presented a unified Theory of Everything. In the background of the story is an epidemic mental illness, related in some way to the imminent discovery of the TOE. The action takes place on an artificial island called "Stateless", which has earned the wrath of the world's large biotech companies for its pilfering of their intellectual property. The novel contains a great deal of satirical commentary on gender identities, multinational capitalism, and postmodern thought. It also features Egan's usual playful exploration of physical, metaphysical, and epistemological theories.
759670	/m/03906l	Miss Lonelyhearts	Nathanael West	1933-04-08	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the story, Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column which the newspaper staff considers a joke. As Miss Lonelyhearts reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional bar fights. He is also the victim of the pranks and cynical advice of Shrike, his feature editor at the newspaper. (A shrike is type of predatory bird.) Miss Lonelyhearts tries several approaches to escape the terribly painful letters he has to read: religion, trips to the countryside with his fiancée Betty, and affairs with Shrike's wife and Mrs. Doyle, a reader of his column. However, Miss Lonelyheart's efforts do not seem to ameliorate his situation. After his sexual encounter with Mrs. Doyle, he meets her husband, a poor crippled man. The Doyles invite Miss Lonelyhearts to have dinner with them. When he arrives, Mrs. Doyle tries to seduce him again, but he responds by beating her. Mrs. Doyle tells her husband that Miss Lonelyhearts tried to rape her. In the last scene, Mr. Doyle hides a gun inside a rolled newspaper and decides to take revenge on Miss Lonelyhearts. Lonelyhearts, who has just experienced a religious enlightenment after three days of sickness, runs toward Mr. Doyle to embrace him. The gun "explodes", and the two men roll down a flight of stairs together.
759793	/m/0390gr	The Golden Ass	Apuleius		{"/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 Book One The prologue establishes an audience and a speaker, who defines himself by location, education, and occupation. The narrator journeys to Thessaly on business. On the way, he runs into Aristomenes and an unnamed traveler. The unnamed traveler refuses to believe Aristomenes’ story. The narrator scolds the unnamed traveler and tells a short story about a sword swallower. He promises Aristomenes a free lunch if he will retell his tale. The narrator believes Aristomenes’ tale and becomes more eager to learn about magic. The narrator arrives at Hypata, where he stays with Milo, a family friend and miser, and his wife Pamphile. Photis, Milo’s servant, takes the narrator to the baths, after which the narrator goes to the marketplace. There, he buys some fish and runs into his old friend Pytheas, who is now a magistrate. Pytheas reveals the narrator’s name as Lucius. Pytheas says that Lucius overpaid for the fish and humiliates the fish-monger by trampling on the fish. Lucius returns to Milo’s house, hungry and empty-handed. Milo asks Lucius about his life, his friends, and his wanderings. Lucius goes to sleep hungry. Book Two The next morning, Lucius meets his aunt Byrrhena in the town, and she warns him that Milo's wife is an evil witch who will kill Lucius. Lucius, however, is interested in becoming a witch himself. He then returns to Milo's house, where he repeatedly makes love to the slave-girl Fotis (also spelled Photis). The next day, Lucius goes to his aunt's home for dinner, and there meets Thelyphron, who relates his tale of how witches cut off his nose and ears. After the meal, Lucius drunkenly returns to Milo's house in the dark, where he encounters three robbers, whom he soon slays before retiring to bed. Book Three The next morning, Lucius is abruptly awoken and arrested for the murder of the three men. He is taken to court where he is laughed at constantly and witnesses are brought against him. They are just about to announce his guilt when the widow demands to bring out the dead bodies; but when the three bodies of the murdered men are revealed, they have miraculously transformed into puffed-up wineskins. It then turns out that it was a prank played by the town upon Lucius. Later that day, Lucius and Photis watch Milo's wife perform her witchcraft and transform herself into a bird. Attempting to copy her, Lucius accidentally turns himself into an ass, at which point Photis tells him that the only way for him to return to his human state is to eat a rose. Book Four Lucius the ass trots over to a garden to munch on a rose when he is beaten by the gardener and chased by dogs. He is then stolen from Milo's house by thieves, who talk about how their leader Thrasileon has been killed while dressed as a bear. The thieves then kidnap a young woman, Charite, who is housed in a cave with Lucius the ass. Charite starts crying, so an elderly woman who is in league with the thieves begins to tell her the story of Cupid and Psyche. Psyche is the most beautiful woman on earth, and Venus jealously arranges for Psyche's destruction. Book Five The elderly woman continues telling the story of Cupid and Psyche. Cupid, Venus's son, secretly preserves Psyche; Cupid becomes Psyche's anonymous lover. Psyche's jealous sisters arouse her curiosity and fear; Psyche, against Cupid's commands, looks at him; Cupid abandons Psyche, who wanders in search of him. Book Six The elderly woman finishes telling the story of Cupid and Psyche. Lucius the ass and Charite escape from the cave but they are caught by the thieves, and sentenced to death. Book Seven A man appears to the thieves and announces that he is the renowned thief Haemus the Thracian, who suggests that they should not kill the captives but sell them. Haemus later reveals himself secretly to Charite as her fiancé Tlepolemus, and gets all of the thieves drunk. When they are asleep he slays them all. Tlepolemus, Charite and Lucius the ass safely escape back to the town. Once there, the ass is entrusted to a horrid boy who torments him but the boy is later killed by a she-bear. Enraged, the boy's mother plans to kill the ass. Book Eight A man arrives at the mother's house and announces that Tlepolemus and Charite are dead, caused by the scheming of the evil Thrasillus who wants Charite to marry him. After hearing the news of their master's death, the slaves run away, taking the ass Lucius with them. The large group of travelling slaves is mistaken for a band of robbers and attacked by farmhands of a rich estate. Several other misfortunes befall the travelers until they reach a village. Lucius as the narrator often digresses from the plot in order to recount several scandal-filled stories that he learns of during his journey. Lucius is eventually sold to a catamite priest. He is entrusted with carrying the statue of a goddess on his back while he follows around the group of sinful priests. While engaging in lewd activity with a local boy, the group of priests is discovered by a man in search of a stolen ass who mistakes Lucius' braying for that of his own animal. The priests flee to a new city where they are well received by one of its chief citizens. They are preparing to dine when his cook realizes that the meat that was to be served was stolen by a dog. The cook, at the suggestion of his wife, prepares to kill Lucius in order to serve his meat instead. Book Nine Lucius' untimely escape from the cook coincides with an attack by rabid dogs, and his wild behavior is attributed to their viral bites. The men barricade him in a room until it is decided that he is no longer infected. The band of priests packs up and moves out. The narrative is interrupted by The Tale of the Wife's Tub. After the arrest of the priests Lucius is sold into labor, driving a baker's mill-wheel. Lucius, though bemoaning his labor as an ass, also realizes that this state has allowed him to hear many novel things with his long ass-ears. The Tale of the Jealous Husband and The Tale of the Fuller's Wife mark a break in the narrative. The theme of the two intervening stories is adultery, and the text appropriately follows with the adultery of the baker's wife and the subsequent murder of the baker. Lucius the ass is then auctioned off to a farmer. The Tale of the Oppressive Landlord is here told. The farmer duly assaults a legionary who makes advances on his ass (Lucius), but he is found out and jailed. Book Ten Lucius comes into the legionary's possession, and after lodging with a decurion Lucius recounts Tale of the Murderous Wife. He is then sold to two brothers, a confectioner and a cook, who treated him kindly. When they go out Lucius secretly eats his fill of their food. At first a source of vexation, when the ass was discovered to be the one behind the disappearing food it was much laughed at and celebrated. Again he was sold, and he was taught many amusing tricks. Rumor spread, and great fame came to the ass and his master. As it happened, a woman was so enamored of the sideshow ass that she paid off his keeper and took him to bed with her. The Tale of the Jealous Wife is aired. The murderess depicted in this tale is precisely she whom Lucius is made to mate with at the Shows. After an enactment of the judgment of Paris and a brief but important digression, the time comes for Lucius to make his much awaited appearance. At the last moment he decides against this, fearing for his life, and he runs away to Cenchreae eventually to nap on the beach. Book Eleven Lucius wakes up in a panic during the first watch of the night. Considering Fate to be done tormenting him, he takes the opportunity to purify himself by seven consecutive immersions in the sea. He then offers a prayer to the Queen of Heaven, for his return to human form, citing all the various names the goddess is known by to people everywhere (Venus, Ceres, Paphos, Proserpine, etc.). The Queen of Heaven appears in a vision to him and explains to him how he can be returned to human form by eating the crown of roses that will be held by one of her priests during a religious procession the following day. In return for his redemption, Lucius is expected to be initiated through the Navigium Isidis into Isis’ priesthood (Isis being the Queen of Heaven’s true name, according to her). Lucius follows her instructions and is returned to human form and, at length, initiated into her priesthood. Lucius is then sent to his ancestral home, Rome, where he continues to worship Isis, under the local name, Campensis. After a time, he is visited once more by the goddess who speaks again of mysteries and holy rites which Lucius comes to understand as a command to be initiated into the cult of Isis. He does so. Shortly afterwards, he receives a third vision. Though he is confused, the god appears to him and reassures him that he is much blessed and that he is to become once more initiated that he might supplicate in Rome as well. The story concludes with the goddess, Isis, appearing to Lucius and declaring that Lucius shall rise to a prominent position in the legal profession and that he shall be appointed to the College of Pastophori that he might serve Osiris and Isis’ mysteries. Lucius is so happy that he goes about freely exposing his bald head.
759873	/m/0390v7	Once Were Warriors	Alan Duff	1990	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Beth Heke left her small town and, despite her parents' disapproval, married Jake "the Muss" Heke. After 18 years, they live in a slum and have six children. Their interpretations of life and being Māori are tested. Since Beth is from a more traditional background, she relates to the old ways, while Jake is an interpretation of what some Māori have become. Beth sometimes tries to reform herself and her family - for example, by giving up drinking and saving the money which she would have spent on alcohol. However, she finds it easy to lapse back into a pattern of drinking and irresponsibility. The family are also shown disconnected from Western culture and ways of learning. Beth reflects that neither she nor anyone else she knows has any books in their home, and her daughter, Grace, is the only character with a real interest in school and learning. (This disconnection from books and education is a major concern of Duff's, for which reason he founded the charity Duffy Books in Homes, which gives free books to children from poor backgrounds and generally encourages reading). Jake is unemployed and spends most of the day getting drunk at the local pub with his friends. There he is in his element, buying drinks, singing songs and savagely beating any other patron whom he considers to have stepped out of line (hence his nickname of 'The Muss'). He often invites huge crowds of friends back to his home for wild parties. While Jake portrays himself as an easygoing man out for a good time, he has a vicious temper when drinking. This is highlighted when his wife dares to 'get lippy' at one of his parties and he savagely attacks her in front of their friends. Nig, the Hekes' eldest son, moves out to join a street gang. He cares about his siblings, but despises his father for his thoughtless brutality, a feeling returned by the elder Heke. Nig attempts to find a substitute family in the form of the gang, but this is unsuccessful as the gang members are either too brutal or, in the case of Nig's gang girlfriend, too beaten down to provide him with the love and support he craves. The second son, Mark 'Boogie' Heke, has a history of minor criminal offences, and is taken from his family and placed in a borstal. Despite his initial anger Mark finds a new niche for himself, as the borstal manager instructs him in his Māori heritage. Grace, the Hekes' 13-year-old daughter, loves writing stories as an escape from the brutality of her life. She also spends time spying on a wealthy Pākehā family who live nearby. She is amazed at the contrast between their lives and hers - not simply the material wealth, but also the lack of conflict in their lives. Grace's best friend is a drug-addicted boy named Toot who has been cast out by his parents and lives in a wrecked car. He is the one who really cares for her. Grace is raped in her bed one night, and she subsequently hangs herself. In her diary, later found by her family, Grace says she thinks it was her father who raped her (while in the movie she clearly identifies by name one of Jake's friends, who was at the house during a party, as the rapist); Jake, who had been too drunk to remember what happened that night, has no answer. (In the movie Grace's mother finds and reads the diary which reveals the dads friend who raped her. Jake and that friend are at a bar when the mother brings the diary to Jake, shows him the passage about who raped her. Jake flies into a rage savagely beats the rapist, including smashing the rapist's head into the glass front of the music jukebox.) He leaves his family and starts living in a park, where he reflects on his life and befriends a homeless young man. Meanwhile, Beth starts a Māori culture group and generally attempts to revive the community. A sequel to the book was published in 1996, What Becomes of The Broken Hearted?, which was made into a film in 1999. Both the book and film sequel were well received, though not as celebrated as the original. The third book in the trilogy, Jake's Long Shadow, was published in 2002, but has not been made into a movie. Once Were Warriors, and Duff's fiction in general, is strongly influenced by his childhood experiences. In his 1999 autobiography, Out of the Mist and Steam, he describes his Māori mother (and most of her relatives) as alcoholic, irresponsible and physically and emotionally abusive. His Pākehā father and his relatives, by contrast, were highly educated and sophisticated - one uncle, Roger Duff, was a well-known anthropologist; his paternal grandfather was liberal magazine editor and literary patron Oliver Duff. As a teenager, Duff himself spent some time in borstal, and he drew on this when writing about Boogie. The book's setting of Two Lakes is based on his hometown of Rotorua (which means 'two lakes' in the Māori language; roto lake, rua two), and on the Ford Block of state housing in the town.
760079	/m/0391h2	Eye of the Needle	Ken Follett		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Operation Fortitude was an Allied counter-intelligence operation run during World War II. Its goal was to convince the German military that D-Day landings were to occur at Calais and not Normandy. As a part of Fortitude the fictitious First United States Army Group (FUSAG) was created. FUSAG used fake tanks, buildings and radio traffic to create an illusion of an army being formed to land at Calais. In 1940 Henry Faber is a German spy working at a London railway depot, collecting information on troop movements. Faber is halfway through radioing this information to Berlin when his landlady stumbles into his room hoping for intimacy. Faber fears that Mrs. Garden will eventually realize that he was using a transmitter and that he is a spy. Faber kills her with his stiletto. He then resumes his transmission. His repeated use of this stiletto leads to his nickname 'Die Nadel' ('The Needle'). The book then introduces David, a trainee RAF pilot, and his bride Lucy. On their honeymoon David and Lucy are involved in a car crash. David loses the use of both his legs. Unable to fly in the Battle of Britain David grows embittered as he and Lucy retire to the isolated Storm Island off the coast of Scotland. Meanwhile British Intelligence has executed or recruited all German spies. Faber is the only successful one still at large. A history professor, Godliman, and a widowed ex-policeman, Bloggs, are employed by MI5 to catch him. They start with the interrupted broadcast and his codename Die Nadel. They connect the landlady’s murder to Faber by him having used his ‘needle’ during the transmission. They then interview Faber’s fellow tenants from 1940. One identifies Faber from a photo of him as a young army officer. Faber is told by Berlin to investigate whether the FUSAG is real or not. Faber discovers the army is a fake. He takes photos of an army base constructed only to look real from the air. Faber realizes that Normandy is where D-Day is going to occur. Several soldiers try to arrest Faber, but he kills them with his stiletto. He then heads to Aberdeen, Scotland, where a U-boat will take him and his photos back to Germany. Godliman and Bloggs realize what Faber is trying to achieve. There follows a long chase across Northern England and Scotland with both Hitler and Churchill getting personally involved. Faber escapes many times but his repeated killings allow MI5 to track him to Aberdeen. Exhausted Faber finally sets out on a small trawler to meet the U-Boat. Caught by a fierce storm, he is shipwrecked on Storm Island. He collapses in front of the lonely house where David and Lucy live. He is tended to by Lucy. Stuck in a loveless marriage to the crippled David she begins a physical relationship with Faber. David soon discovers both Lucy's infidelity and Faber’s FUSAG photos. David then tries to kill Faber. After a struggle Faber kills David by rolling him and his Jeep off a cliff. Faber tells Lucy it was another accident. However, she discovers her husband's body and realizes the truth. Faber realizes he may be caught so he decides to radio the information about FUSAG directly to Germany. Lucy stops him by short-circuiting the electricity in the cottage. Unable to send a radio message, Faber attempts to descend the cliff and swim to the waiting U-boat. Lucy throws a rock at him, striking him and causing him to lose his balance and fall to his death. The RAF then appears and drives the U-boat away. A fictitious radio message is sent over Faber's call code, persuading the Germans that the invasion is targeting Calais. Bloggs comforts the widowed Lucy, eventually marrying her.
761443	/m/02p30qn	Raptor Red	Robert T. Bakker	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the book's opening, the title character and her mate ambush a herd of Astrodon, which are large herbivorous sauropods. The Astrodon are surprised, thinking that their bulk deters smaller predators. Utahraptor, however, are much larger than any resident raptor, and proceed to take down an Astrodon with teamwork. When Red's mate climbs onto the dead Astrodon, the corpse rolls in the mud, trapping the male under the bulk of the animal. Despite Red's best efforts, her mate suffocates. Despondent, Red wanders around the floodplain, nearly starving since a Utahraptor cannot successfully hunt big game on its own. Red follows a familiar scent and is reunited with her sister, a single mother with three chicks. The two hunt together and bring food back to the nest for the young. A white pterosaur, one Red has seen since she hatched, helps the two by finding carrion and prey in exchange for a helping of meat. On one hunting expedition, when the two adult Utahraptor are stalking a herd of Iguanodon, Red spies a young male Utahraptor that is watching their prey. He begins a courtship dance for Red, but Red's sister chases him off, hissing. Her growls agitate the Iguanodon, who stampede; the male hastily leaves. After climbing into a tree to escape a flash flood, Red encounters the male raptor again, who performs a courtship dance while hanging onto the tree branches. Red's sister begrudgingly allows the male to stay with them, provided he steers clear of her chicks. For a while, Red and her pack are happy, feeding off the plentiful carrion left by receding flood waters, but the pack's way of life is upset by an invasion of large Acrocanthosaurus, huge meat-eating dinosaurs. The added competition for food puts strain on the pack, as does the unexpected death of one of the chicks. A fight erupts between the male raptor and Red's sister. Red, torn between a prospective mate and her kin, tries to defuse the situation. Two Acrocanthosaurus watch the commotion and take the opportunity to attack the Utahraptor. Meanwhile, a Kronosaurus ambushes one of the chicks on the beach. Seeing the danger, Red lures the female Acrocanthosaurus into deep water where the larger predator is dragged under by the Kronosaurus. Red saves her family, but at a price—her consort is forced away by Red's sister. Facing continual threats from the Acrocanthosaurus, Red, her sister and the chicks are forced up into the mountains. They encounter ice and snow for the first time, and kill a segnosaur in a cave, turning the den into their nest. The older chick accompanies the two adults on hunting expeditions. One day the raptors encounter a strange creature they have never seen—a whip-tailed diplodocid who inflicts wounds on Red and her sister; the older chick is forced to set off alone and find the pack's food. This calamity coincides with the arrival of a large pack of smaller raptors known as Deinonychus. Sensing the weakness of the Utahraptor pack, they surround the nest and wait for the wounded raptors to become weak enough to attack. Red's sister dies, and Red is crippled and defenseless against the smaller dinosaurs. The Deinonychus close in and wait for Red to die, but are driven back by a sudden attack—the older Utahraptor chick returns with Red's consort to defend the nest, driving back the Deinonychus. Some time later, the old white pterosaur circles over Red's mountain stronghold, and finds the pack has grown considerably. Both Red and the older chick have found mates and have chicks, who are having fun rolling down a hill. The satisfied pterosaur leaves with a mate and offspring of his own.
761530	/m/0396nw	Martin Chuzzlewit	Charles Dickens	1844	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Martin Chuzzlewit was raised by his grandfather and namesake. Years before, Martin senior takes the precaution of raising an orphaned girl, Mary. She is to be his nursemaid, with the understanding that she would be well cared for only for as long as he lived. She would thus have great motivation to care for his well-being, in contrast to his relatives, who only want to inherit his money. However, his grandson Martin, falls in love with Mary and wishes to marry her, ruining senior Martin's plans. When Martin refuses to give up the engagement, his grandfather disinherits him. Martin becomes an apprentice to Seth Pecksniff, a greedy architect. Instead of teaching his students, he lives off their tuition fees and has them do draughting work that he passes off as his own. He has two spoiled daughters, Merry and Cherry. Unbeknown to Martin, Pecksniff has actually taken him on in order to establish closer ties with the wealthy grandfather, thinking that this will gain Pecksniff a prominent place in the will. Young Martin befriends Tom Pinch, a kind-hearted soul whose late grandmother had given Pecksniff all she had, believing Pecksniff would make an architect and gentleman of him. Pinch is incapable of believing any of the bad things others tell him of Pecksniff, and always defends him vociferously. Pinch works for exploitatively low wages, while believing he is the unworthy recipient of Pecksniff's charity. When Martin senior hears of his grandson's new life, he demands that Pecksniff kick young Martin out. Then, Martin senior moves in and falls under Pecksniff's control. During this time, Pinch falls in love with Mary, but does not declare it, knowing of her attachment to young Martin. One of Martin Senior's greedy relatives is his brother, Anthony Chuzzlewit, who is in business with his son, Jonas. Despite considerable wealth, they live miserly, cruel lives, with Jonas constantly berating his father, eager for the old man to die so he can inherit. Anthony dies abruptly and under suspicious circumstances, leaving his wealth to Jonas. Jonas then woos Cherry, whilst arguing constantly with Merry. He then abruptly declares to Pecksniff that he wants to marry Merry, and jilts Cherry. Jonas, meanwhile, becomes entangled with the unscrupulous Montague Tigg and joins in his pyramid scheme-like insurance scam. At the beginning of the book he is a petty thief and hanger-on of a Chuzzlewit relative, Chevy Slyme. Tigg cheats young Martin out of a valuable pocket watch and uses the funds to transform himself into a seemingly fine man. This façade convinces investors that he must be an important businessman from whom they may greatly profit. Jonas eventually ends up murdering Tigg, who has acquired some kind of information on him. At this time, Tom Pinch finally sees his employer's true character. Pinch goes to London to seek employment, and rescues his governess sister Ruth, whom he discovers has been mistreated by the family employing her. Pinch quickly receives an ideal job from a mysterious employer, with the help of an equally mysterious Mr. Fips. Young Martin, meanwhile, has fallen in with Mark Tapley. Mark is always cheerful, which he decides does not reflect well on him because he is always in happy circumstances and it shows no strength of character to be happy when one has good fortune. He decides he must test his cheerfulness by seeing if he can maintain it in the worst circumstances possible. To this end, he accompanies young Martin to the United States to seek his fortune. The men attempt to start new lives in a swampy, disease-filled settlement named "Eden", but both nearly die of malaria. Mark finally finds himself in a situation in which it can be considered a virtue to remain in good spirits. The grim experience, and Mark's care nursing Martin back to health, changes Martin's selfish and proud character, and the men return to England, where Martin returns penitently to his grandfather. But his grandfather is now under Pecksniff's control and rejects him. At this point, Martin is reunited with Tom Pinch. who now discovers that his mysterious benefactor is old Martin Chuzzlewit. The older Martin had only been pretending to be in thrall to Pecksniff. Together, the group confront Pecksniff with their knowledge of his true character. They also discover that Jonas murdered Tigg to prevent him from revealing that he had planned to murder Anthony. Senior Martin now reveals that he was angry at his grandson for becoming engaged to Mary because he had planned to arrange that particular match and felt his glory had been thwarted by them deciding on the plan themselves. He realizes the folly of that opinion, and Martin and his grandfather are reconciled. Martin and Mary are married, as are Ruth Pinch and John Westlock, another student of Pecksniff's. Tom Pinch remains in unrequited love with Mary for the rest of his life, never marrying, and always being a warm companion to Mary and Martin and to Ruth and John.
762958	/m/039cdv	Song of Susannah	Stephen King	2004-06-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Taking place mainly in our world (New York City and East Stoneham, Maine), this book picks up where Wolves of the Calla left off, with the ka-tet employing the help of the Manni to open the magic door inside Doorway Cave. The ka-tet are split up by the magic door, or perhaps ka, and sent to different 'wheres' and 'whens' in order to accomplish several essential goals pertaining to their quest towards the mysterious Dark Tower. Susannah Dean is partially trapped in her own mind by Mia, the former demon and now very-pregnant mortal woman who had taken control of her body shortly after the final battle in Wolves of the Calla. Susannah and Mia, with their shared body mostly under the control of Mia, escape to New York of 1999 via the magic door in Doorway Cave with the help of Black Thirteen. Mia tells Susannah she has made a Faustian deal with the Man in Black, also known as Walter, to surrender her demonic immortality in exchange for being able to produce a child. Technically speaking, however, this child is the biological descendant of Susannah Dean and the gunslinger, Roland. The Gunslinger's 'seed' was passed to Susannah through an Elemental who had sex with both. The technical parentage of her child matters little to Mia, though, because The Crimson King has further promised her that she will have sole charge of raising the child, Mordred, for the first part of his life - the time before the critical destiny the Crimson King foresees for the child comes to pass. All Mia must do now is bring Susannah to the Dixie Pig restaurant to give birth to the child under the care of the Crimson King's men. Jake, Oy, and Father Callahan follow Susannah to the New York City of 1999 in order to save Susannah from the danger Mia has put her in by delivering her into the custody of the Crimson King's henchmen. In addition, the ka-tet fear the danger posed to Susannah by the child itself; still unaware of the biological origins of this child, the ka-tet believe that it may be demonic in some way and may have the ability to turn on and harm its mother or mothers. While in New York, Jake and Callahan also hide Black Thirteen in a locker in the World Trade Center. It is implied in the text that Black Thirteen will be destroyed when the towers fall in the September 11, 2001 attacks. While Susannah, Jake, and Callahan are in New York, Roland and Eddie Dean are sent by the magic doorway to Maine in 1977, with the goal of securing the ownership of a vacant lot in New York from its current owner, a man named Calvin Tower (who first appears in The Waste Lands as the proprietor of The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, where he sells Jake a copy of Charlie the Choo-Choo, a book that has turned out to be important to the ka-tet's quest). The gunslingers have seen and felt the power of a rose that is located in the vacant lot and suspect it to be some sort of secondary hub to the universe, or possibly even a representation of the Dark Tower itself. The ka-tet believe that the Tower itself is linked to the rose and will be harmed (or fall) if the rose is harmed, the reason for this being the Dark Tower and the Rose are somehow connected, the two images very similar in the series. Calvin Tower is in hiding in Maine from Enrico Balazar's men (see The Drawing of the Three), who have almost succeeded in strong-arming him into selling them the lot. Tower has so far resisted, with the help of Eddie Dean (see Wolves of the Calla). Upon their arrival in Maine, the gunslingers find themselves thrown into an ambush by these same men, headed by Jack Andolini. Balazar's men were tipped off on Roland and Eddie's potential whereabouts by Mia, who hoped that they would dispose of the people she perceived as threats to her child. Roland and Eddie escape this onslaught with the help of a crafty local man, John Cullum, who they deem to be a savior put in their path through the machinations of ka. After accomplishing their primary goal, the deeding of the vacant lot to the Tet Corporation, Roland and Eddie learn of the nearby location of Stephen King's home. They are familiar with the author's name after coming into possession of a copy of his novel 'Salem's Lot in the Calla, and they decide to pay him a visit. King's presence, and his relationship to the Dark Tower, cause the very reality surrounding his Maine town to become "thin." Strange creatures called "walk-ins" begin emerging and plaguing the community. The author is unaware of this and has never seen one, though most of the walk-ins have been appearing on his own street. During their visit to him, the Gunslinger hypnotizes King and finds out that King is not a god, but rather a medium for the story of the Dark Tower to transmit itself through. Roland also implants in King the suggestion to restart his efforts in writing the Dark Tower series, which he has abandoned of late, claiming that there are major forces involved that are trying to prevent him from finishing it. The ka-tet are convinced that the success of their quest itself depends somehow on King's writing about it through the story. Meanwhile, in New York, Jake and Father Callahan prepare to launch an assault on the Dixie Pig, where Susannah is being held by the soldiers of The Crimson King. Their discovery of the scrimshaw turtle that Susannah has left behind for them gives them a faint hope that they might succeed, though Jake is filled with a strong sense of dread and neither Jake nor Callahan particularly expects to leave the place alive. The book ends with Jake and Callahan entering with weapons raised and Susannah and Mia about to give birth in Fedic, a town in Thunderclap. As a postscriptum, the reader becomes familiar with the diary of Stephen King the character which encompasses the period from 1977 to 1999. The diary details King's writing of the first five books of the Dark Tower story. It is said that the character, Stephen King, dies on June 19, 1999.
764491	/m/039j1m	Perdido Street Station	China Miéville	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is an eccentric scientist living in the city of New Crobuzon with girlfriend Lin. While Lin, an artist, is commissioned to create a sculpture of mob boss Mr. Motley, Isaac is offered a unique challenge. Yagharek is a member of a flying species, whose wings have been cut off, and who asks Isaac to restore them. Isaac is sparked by the seemingly impossible nature of the task, and gathers various flying animals to study in his lab - including a multicolored, unidentifiable caterpillar. Once Isaac learns that the caterpillar only eats a hallucinogenic drug called "dreamshit", he begins to feed it, unwittingly stimulating its metamorphosis into a giant and incredibly dangerous butterfly-like creature which feeds off the dreams of sentient beings, leaving them as catatonic vegetables. It is revealed that dreamshit is in fact secreted by such creatures, of which four have been sold to Mr. Motley, and "milked" to produce the drug. When these other larvae transform and escape they plague the citizens of New Crobuzon until Isaac can find a way to stop them.
764885	/m/039k6g	Tick, Tick... BOOM!	David Auburn			 Over a persistent ticking sound, Jon introduces himself: “The sound you are hearing is not a technical problem. It is not a musical cue. It is not a joke. It is the sound of one man's mounting anxiety. I... am that man.” Jon is an aspiring composer for musical theatre, who lives in SoHo, New York. He is nearing his 30th birthday and worries about his aging and lack of achievement (“30/90”). Michael, a friend of Jon’s since childhood, gave up acting to pursue a more lucrative career as a research executive. Susan, Jon's girlfriend, is a dancer who teaches ballet to “wealthy and untalented children.” Susan and Jon discuss the upcoming 30th birthday party that she is throwing for him. She pressures him to play “Happy Birthday to You” to himself on the piano at the party, but he is hesitant because it reminds him of the aging aspect of birthdays. Michael wants to schedule a job interview for Jon with Michael’s firm. Again, Jon is hesitant, but agrees to think it over. Later, on the roof of his apartment building, Jon reveals that he is also nervous about an upcoming workshop of his newest musical, SUPERBIA. Susan comes to join him; he comments on her dress and how beautiful it makes her look (“Green Green Dress”). The next morning, Jon is awake early. Susan asks him about the possibility of leaving New York. Susan wants to raise a family and doesn’t view that as compatible with Jon’s “starving artist” lifestyle. Jon is torn between following his dream of composing and opting for security and family in a different career. Meanwhile, the other two main characters recap their views on what Jon should do (“Johnny Can’t Decide”). Jon’s reverie, however, is cut short; he needs to report to his day job as a waiter in a SoHo diner (“Sunday”). After work, Michael picks Jon up in his brand new BMW to show Jon his new apartment. Michael exults at the thought of a life of luxury (“No More”), and pressures Jon further to consider changing his career path. Frustrated, Jon finally agrees to accompany Michael to work the next day and visit a brainstorming session at his firm. Back at home, Jon phones his parents and then his agent. He plans to spend the remainder of the evening composing, but he is interrupted by a call from Susan, who wants to see him. They argue, albeit in a passive and psychological manner that scarcely seems like an argument at all (“Therapy”). On Monday morning, Jon walks to Michael’s office for his brainstorming session. On the way, Jon thinks back to a workshop in which his work was reviewed by a composer “so legendary his name may not be uttered aloud…” (“St----- S-------”). He also worries about his musical style and its place on Broadway, but has little time to develop this train of thought before he arrives at Michael’s firm. The brainstorming session involves naming a cooking fat substitute through a convoluted “idea-generating” process. Jon sees the futility of the process, and his unwillingness to cooperate gets him removed from the meeting. Later, as Jon drives Michael to the airport for a business trip, they argue about the meeting. Michael tells Jon that the life Susan wants doesn’t sound bad, and that he wishes his job could give him the chance to settle down (“Real Life”). After dropping Michael off, Jon goes to a rehearsal for SUPERBIA, but not before stopping to get a snack of Twinkies (“Sugar”). At the market, he spies Karessa Johnson, one of his actors for SUPERBIA. She reveals a similar weakness for Twinkies, and this leads to a sudden friendship between the two. After the rehearsal, Susan sees Jon and Karessa walking together and becomes jealous. She informs Jon that she’s gotten a job in Northampton, Massachusetts which may be permanent. Jon and Susan argue about the state of their relationship; in a turnaround from the events leading up to “Therapy,” Jon begs Susan to stay and be with him. Despite this, she leaves for home, and Jon thinks about what may have happened to make her behave this way (“See Her Smile”). The next morning, Jon arrives early at the theatre for the workshop of SUPERBIA. Although initially the theatre is empty, soon it is filled with very important people: Jon’s family and friends, as well as Broadway producers and artists, including Jon’s idol, St----- S-------. Karessa steals the show with her performance of “Come to Your Senses”. The workshop is a success, and Jon gets many congratulations; but there are no offers to produce SUPERBIA on or off Broadway. Jon is no closer to being a professional composer, and so, in his eyes, the workshop has been a failure. After the workshop, Jon visits Michael and tells him that he is through with music. For the first time, though, Michael tries to persuade him to stick with it. Michael says that while he enjoys how he makes a lot more money now than he did as a starving artist, he finds the job itself to be emotionally banal and unrewarding. The two argue, and Jon yells at Michael for not understanding fear or insecurity. Michael responds by telling Jon that he is HIV-positive. Shocked at this news, Jon leaves quickly. Distressed and alone, Jon wanders through Central Park until he finds himself in the abandoned theater inside Belvedere Castle. He finds an old rehearsal piano, and begins to play it while collecting his thoughts. Jon ponders on whether the amount of sacrifice required for his career in music is worth it, and whether those telling him to “have it all, play the game” are right (“Why”). Ultimately, he realizes that he will only be happy as a professional composer, no matter what hardships that may bring. The next morning is Jon’s thirtieth birthday party (“30/90 Reprise”). He sees Susan, who is getting ready to leave. She gives him his birthday gift: a thousand sheets of blank manuscript paper. They agree to write to each other, and she leaves. Michael gives him a birthday gift of belts (Michael thinks belts are a sign of luxury). The phone rings, and the caller is Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim leaves Jon his contact information so they can meet and discuss SUPERBIA. Jon realizes that he is surrounded by friends and that his talents are finally being recognized. He says, “the tick tick booms are softer now. I can barely hear them, and I think if I play loud enough I can drown them out completely.” Jon sits down at his piano to play “Happy Birthday to You.” Tick, Tick...Boom bears some similarity to Company, written by Larson's idol Stephen Sondheim. For example, in Company, Robert 'celebrates' his 35th birthday much in the way Jon celebrates his 30th, with both shows ending with the blowing out of candles and the cast singing "Happy Birthday to You".
764950	/m/039kff	The Fall of Hyperion	Dan Simmons	1990-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 During the events of Hyperion, the pilgrims traveled to the Time Tombs while retelling their stories, which proved in each case to have been the storyteller's motive for participating in the final Shrike Cult pilgrimage. At the beginning of the novel, the pilgrims wait as a sandstorm occurs in the valley. Father Hoyt, hoping to die to relieve himself of the intense pain inflicted by his cruciform, staggers to one of the Tombs, the Jade Tomb. Here, he attempts to commit suicide, but is killed by the Shrike before he can do this. Brawne Lamia, who noticed Hoyt's disappearance, traces him to the Jade Tomb and encounters the Shrike. She fires at it with a pistol, but it is unharmed and disappears. Kassad observes these events quietly, hoping to lure the elusive female Moneta and the Shrike into his presence, so that he may confront and potentially kill them. The surviving pilgrims demand that the Consul commands his AI-controlled starship to come the valley, supposedly so that they can use the medical supplies on board to attempt to sustain Rachel Weintraub, who is nearing the day of her death. The Consul is reluctant to do so, but finally relents, only to find that the ship has been placed under interdict by Gladstone and the Hyperion authorities. After this setback, the pilgrims delegate Lamia and the poet Martin Silenus to travel to Keep Chronos and the Poets' City for food. Silenus goes to the Poets' City to complete his "Hyperion Cantos", but is instead surprised by the Shrike and impaled on the Tree of Thorns, which is revealed to be partially real. Lamia, at Keep Chronos, recovers the necessary supplies and returns to the Valley, but is also attacked by the Shrike and loses consciousness. She next awakes at the fringe of the TechnoCore, in one of its computerized realities, in the company of her implanted John Keats persona. After a conversation with a major AI named Ummon reveals several motivations of the TechnoCore, the persona is killed by Ummon, and Lamia is released into unconsciousness. Father Paul Duré is resurrected from Father Hoyt's body, and is briefed on the pilgrims' journey by the Consul. He decides to wait with Sol Weintraub and Lamia's recovered but unresponsive body while the Consul uses his hawking mat to fly to Keats, in an attempt to use his former leverage and political connections to free his ship. Instead, the Consul crashes on a river miles from Keats and is taken captive by two thieves, and only escapes due to the personal intervention of his protégé, Governor-General Theo Lane, with whom he returns to the capital. At the Tombs, True Voice of the Tree Het Masteen reappears mysteriously, revealing Shrike Cult collusion with the Templar Brotherhood before dying. Shortly thereafter, Father Duré leaves Sol, ostensibly for a "walk", and disappears. Minutes before the time of Rachel's birth and the simultaneous "opening" of the Time Tombs, Sol brings the baby Rachel to the foot of the Tomb known as the "Sphinx," where she is received by the Shrike, who carries her into the building. Severn's character, the second "cybrid" of John Keats, is introduced at the beginning of the novel, at a formal event at Government House on Tau Ceti Center, the primary world of the Hegemony. Here, he claims to be an artist attached to Gladstone's staff in an attempt to provide an artistic view of the beginning of the war for Hyperion, which is under attack by the Ousters. At the event, senior Hegemony officials observe a FORCE fleet departing for the Hyperion stellar system, after which Severn accepts the invitation to dinner of a colorful socialite, Lady Diana Philomel. After the dinner, Severn, intoxicated, is seized by Philomel, her husband, and several associates, who incompetently attempt to coerce Severn into providing classified information. They are interrupted by Hegemony security personnel, who arrest Severn's captors, revealed by Gladstone as royalists with connections to the Shrike Cult. Severn next observes meetings of both the Hegemony cabinet and Gladstone's inner circle, updating Gladstone on the Hyperion pilgrims while still pretending to be an artist. Suddenly, while touring several farcaster-connected worlds between meetings, Gladstone is informed that the Ousters have counterattacked, attacking the WorldWeb itself in an unprecedented and unexpected move that appeared impossible. Since FORCE strategic reserves have been committed to the war in the Hyperion system, the first wave of worlds threatened by the Ouster invasion seem destined to fall. Severn tours several of the worlds, narrowly escaping from a rioting mob that recognizes him as one of Gladstone's associates. As sudden Shrike Cult uprisings devastate major Hegemony planets, Keats travels to Pacem, the homeworld of the Catholic Church, where he encounters Father Duré. Duré had disappeared from Hyperion after entering the planet's underground labyrinth, and was escorted by the Shrike through various places and finally to Pacem, where he sought out his old confidante, Monsignor Edouard, and described the events that he experienced in the past years. Duré, intrigued by the collusion of the Templar Brotherhood with the Shrike Cult, travels to God's Grove, the Brotherhood's home and soon to be within the range of the Ouster invasion armada. Severn, accompanied by Gladstone's aide Leigh Hunt, farcast to Tau Ceti Center, but instead arrive on a world that is an apparent analog of 19th century Earth and, in particular, the city of Rome, where the historical Keats died. Like the original Keats, Severn contracts tuberculosis and his physical form dies, but his persona retreats into the computerized realities of the TechnoCore. The Consul meets with the leaders of the Ouster Swarm attacking Hyperion, which is on the verge of falling to the siege. He is tried for the murder of the Ouster agents he killed years previously, but is not punished, his sentence being to live during the turbulent times that the Ousters believe shall follow the war. The Consul is then informed that there is no Ouster offensive against the WorldWeb, and concludes that the TechnoCore is the only power capable of launching such an attack. The Ousters then offer their support to the Hegemony in their struggle against the artificial intelligences of the TechnoCore, but only in the form of retaliation for the fall of the Hegemony, which they claim is inevitable since the Ousters refuse to use farcasters. Gladstone, who has resolved to use a TechnoCore device against the Ousters while Hegemony citizens temporarily evacuate and retreat into the labyrinths of the worlds containing those features, is sent this information, and also discovers that a FORCE autopsy of Ouster bodies found during a failed counterattack against the invasion armada reveals that the "Ousters" are truly TechnoCore "cybrids." Gladstone retires for a brief time, and, while napping, is approached by Severn in a dream. Having met with his creator, Ummon, Severn has discovered that the TechnoCore resides within the farcaster system, fearing alien intelligences (Lions and Tigers and Bears) to be found in the Void Which Binds, a reality thought of by the Hegemony as a communications medium. Gladstone orders the immediate destruction of the farcaster network, knowing that, despite the inevitable death and chaos that will follow this action, it would cause a cessation of TechnoCore activity. She does so, and resigns as chief executive. Back on Hyperion, Brawne Lamia, who has awakened from her coma-like state, penetrates the Shrike Palace to find Silenus and all of the other victims of the Shrike connected via a long cable. She manages to free Silenus, just as the Shrike appears and prepares to attack her. She mysteriously manages to freeze the Shrike as it advances, and it falls over a precipice and shatters. Meanwhile, Sol's daughter Rachel appears in a newly-formed body outside the Time Tombs as a young woman, carrying her younger self (now aging normally again). Giving her younger form to Sol, she explains that she is Moneta, and is now traveling back in time with the Shrike under orders from humanity's future. She disappears and Sol decides to go forward in time to Rachel's future using the portal. Elements of FORCE discover that the TechnoCore invasion has suddenly ceased, and that the invasion armada lacks any personnel whatsoever. Throughout the former WorldWeb, chaos breaks out, with shocked Hegemony citizens turning to violence. On Tau Ceti Center, Government House is besieged by a furious assembly of citizens. Gladstone allows herself to be killed by the demonstrators, remaining on the planet even after her de jure successor, Senator Gabriel Kolchev, flees. The story concludes several months later; the worst of the chaos caused by the fall has abated, and Hyperion is flourishing again, with former Hegemony citizens and Ousters co-existing. Newly substantiated glyphs give some insight to the various tombs and monoliths of the Time Tombs, and, rarely, the portal to the future will admit a person. The novel ends with the Consul returning to the former Web Worlds in his starship to discover what happened, with Severn's artificial intelligence stored in his ship.
765686	/m/039mzd	The Pet Goat		1995	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 "The Pet Goat" is the story of a girl's pet goat that eats everything in its path. The girl's parents want to get rid of the goat, but she defends it. In the end, the goat becomes a hero when it butts a car thief into submission.
765943	/m/039nl1	Hornet Flight	Ken Follett		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 By late June 1941, the United Kingdom alone stood against Nazi Germany on the Western Front. In the East, the Russian Army was feeling the full force of Operation Barbarossa. To show solidarity among the unlikely capitalist-communist Alliance, Winston Churchill and Bomber Command planned a massive aerial bombardment of German territories. Unfortunately and inexplicably, Bomber Command's planes were getting shot down in record numbers. Meanwhile, 18-year-old Danish schoolboy Harald Olufsen grows increasingly dissatisfied with his country's cooperation with the German invaders. His resentment of the Wehrmacht leads him to discover the truth about a hidden military installation, a truth known to only a select few in the Nazi organization. Running from the German authorities and an old family enemy, Copenhagen police detective Peter Flemming, Harald knows that he must get to Britain. But to do so in time to save the bombers, Harald has one option: flight.
766011	/m/039ntz	Melmoth the Wanderer				 The central character, Melmoth (a Wandering Jew type), is a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 extra years of life; he spends that time searching for someone who will take over the pact for him. The novel takes place in the present but the backstory is revealed through several nested stories-within-a-story that work backwards through time. Chapter I: The story opens in 1816: John Melmoth, a student in Dublin, visits his dying uncle. He sees a portrait of his namesake dated '1646' and catches glimpse of 'the Traveller'. Chapter II: Funeral. Biddy Brannigan tells John the family story. A stranger called Stanton arrived looking for the Traveller, and left behind a manuscript. John finds Stanton's manuscript. Chapter III: Stanton's story opens in Spain in the 1670s. Stanton encounters the Traveller laughing at the sight of two lovers who have been blasted by lightning. An old Spanish woman tells him the story of the Cardoza wedding at which the Traveller was an uninvited guest. The bride died on her wedding night and the bridegroom went mad. Stanton pursues and finds the Traveller in a theatre in London. The Traveller tells him they will meet again. Stanton's obsession with the Traveller is judged madness and he is tricked into a madhouse. There, the Traveller appears and offers to free him but Stanton refuses. Stanton escapes and looks for him in Ireland to no avail. Following his uncle's wish, John burns the portrait, but later that night he is visited by his ancestor in his dreams. Chapter IV: The following stormy night, John witnesses the Traveller laughing at a shipwreck. John tries to approach him, but slips and falls into the sea. Chapter V: John is saved from drowning by the sole survivor of the wreck, a Spaniard Alonzo Monçada, who begins to tell him his story. Chapter VI: Monçada continues his story. He is confined unwillingly to a monastery by his family. Chapter VII: Monçada continues his story. His appeal to leave the monastery is rejected and his brother Juan sends messages saying he will help him escape. Chapter VIII: Monçada continues his story. He attempts to escape with the help of a fellow monk, a parricide. Chapter IX: Monçada continues his story. The parricide monk tells his story. They escape, but it is a trap and Monçada's brother is killed. Chapter X: Monçada continues his story. Monçada is held and examined in the prison of the Inquisition. Chapter XI: Monçada continues his story. He is visited in his cell by the Traveller, who says he will help him escape. A fire breaks out, the prison is evacuated and in the confusion Monçada escapes. Chapter XII: Monçada continues his story. He finds his way to the house of a Jew, but officers of the Inquisition arrive searching for him. The Jew helps Monçada escape through a secret trapdoor into an underground passage. Chapter XIII: Monçada continues his story. He finds himself in a secret chamber with a venerable Jewish scholar, Adonijah. The chamber is decorated with the skeletons of members of Adonijah's family. Chapter XIV: Monçada continues his story. Monçada is almost out of his mind with terror, but Adonijah gives him food and drink, and says he must transcribe a certain manuscript for him. This contains The Tale of the Indians: an island in the Indies which has been devastated and depopulated by a storm is said to be haunted by a white goddess. A pair of Indian lovers discover the white goddess on the island and worship her. (The story is announced as 'The Tale of the Indians', but at its conclusion this is altered to 'The Tale of the Indian'.) Chapter XV: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians. Immalee, the name the natives have given to the 'white goddess', encounters the Traveller. He tells her he comes from 'the world that suffers', but she is immediately fascinated by him. Chapter XVI: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. Immalee is again visited by the Traveller who starts to try to destroy her innocence, showing her the shortcomings of various religions. Immalee decides she will be a Christian. Chapter XVII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. The Traveller returns and shows Immalee the failings of human societies and human relationships. Immalee despairs of her love for him. Chapter XVIII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. The Traveller returns and continues with his attempts to corrupt Immalee. She reiterates her love for him and begs him to stay with her and not to go back to his world of 'evil and sorrow', but he will not. Chapter XVIII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. During a great storm, the Traveller and Immalee reach a crisis in their relationship. She falls senseless to the ground and the Traveller departs. Chapter XIX: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. Three years later in Spain: a young woman faints at the sight of a stranger (Immalee and the Traveller). Chapter XX: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. The long-lost Immalee, now Isidora, has been restored to her family in Madrid. Melmoth appears beneath her window and once more attempts to seduce her. Chapter XXI: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. Melmoth continues to appear beneath Isidora's window, but loses patience and renounces her. Chapter XXII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. Isidora is sanguine, knowing Melmoth will not abandon her for long. Isidora's father writes to her mother revealing he has found a husband for his daughter: Isidora and Melmoth plan to elope. Chapter XXIII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. Isidora's father is visited by his daughter in a dream, asking him to save her. Chapter XXIV: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. Isidora and Melmoth elope by night, and he leads her to a remote chapel where they are married by a mysterious hermit, whose hand was 'as cold as that of death' (in a later chapter it is revealed that the hermit was already dead). Chapter XXV: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians continues. Isidora's father, traveling home, catches a glimpse of the Traveller, and encounters a stranger at an inn who tells him 'The Tale of Guzman's Family'. Chapter XXVI: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians - 'The Tale of Guzman's Family'. Guzman. a wealthy Spanish merchant, has a younger sister who marries a poor German musician, Walberg. Guzman decides to make them his heirs and brings them and their children, and Walberg's parents back to Spain. Chapter XXVII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians - 'The Tale of Guzman's Family'. The Walberg family have got used to living in style and comfort when Guzman dies. His Will leaves everything to the church. A friendly priest tries to help them but the case is thrown out of court. Chapter XXVIII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians - 'The Tale of Guzman's Family'. The family sinks into desperate poverty, the grandmother dies, the son sells his blood, the daughter almost becomes a prostitute. At last, almost insane, Walberg decides to end it by killing them all, and thinks he has, when news arrives that the true Will has been found and the family is saved. Isidora's father falls asleep and wakes to find the teller of the Tale replaced by the Traveller. The Traveller shows him the corpse of the story-teller. Chapter XXIX: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians. Isidora's father continues his journey, but again encounters the Traveller who tells him 'The Lovers' Tale', about the three grandchildren of Sir Roger Mortimer: Margaret (Sir Roger's heir), Elinor and John. Chapter XXX: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians - 'The Lovers' Tale' continued. Elinor and John fall in love, but John jilts her at the altar, and Elinor flees to Yorkshire. Elinor returns to live near Margaret and John, hoping to regain his affections, but he remains strangely aloof. Chapter XXXI: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians - 'The Lovers' Tale' continued. Elinor sees the hopelessness of her situation and returns to Yorkshire. Margaret marries John. Chapter XXXII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians - 'The Lovers' Tale' continued. Margaret dies in childbirth and John's mother confesses she invented a story that Elinor and John are brother and sister. John becomes insane with grief, and Elinor takes care of him. Elinor is tempted by Melmoth the Traveller, but turns to a local clergyman for help. John dies, and soon after Elinor also. Chapter XXXIII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians. Isidora's father complains about the length of the Tale. The Traveller then tells him the tale of Isidora and her father, urging him to save his daughter. But Isidora's father, strangely distracted, is called away on business to another part of Spain. Chapter XXXIV: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians. Isidora is discovered returned to her family, but she is secretly pregnant with Melmoth's child. She has a presentiment that she will not live, and gets Melmoth to promise the child will be brought up a Christian. Chapter XXXV: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians. Isidora's father returns home with the bridegroom. In the middle of the wedding celebrations Melmoth appears and tries to abduct Isidora. Her brother tries to intervene and is killed. Isidora falls senseless and Melmoth the Wanderer escapes. Chapter XXXVI: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indians. Isidora reveals she is married. She gives birth to a daughter. Isidora and her baby are taken away by the Inquisition. Chapter XXXVII: Monçada's story: The Tale of the Indian(s) concluded. Isidora is examined by the Inquisition. They cannot break her so threaten to take away her child. When they come for the child they find it is dead. Isidora, herself dying of grief, remembers her island paradise. She asks if 'he' will be in the heavenly paradise. Chapter XXXVIII: Monçada tells John that he will relate the story of Adonijah's family, but they are interrupted by the appearance of the Wanderer. He confesses to them his purpose on Earth, and that he has never been successful in tempting another into damnation. 'I have traversed the world in the search, and no one to gain that world, would lose his own soul!' The Wanderer sleeps and has a vision of his own damnation, and of the salvation of Stanton, Walberg, Elinor, Isidora and Monçada. Chapter XXXIX: John and Monçada approach the Wanderer the next morning, but he asks them to leave him alone for his last few hours of mortal existence. They hear terrible noises coming from the room, but when they again enter, it is empty. They follow the Wanderer's tracks to the top of a cliff. They see his handkerchief on a crag below them, and, 'exchanging looks of silent and unutterable horror', return slowly home.
766897	/m/039rvr	Skinny Dip	Carl Hiaasen	2004	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In his review of Strip Tease, Donald E. Westlake commented that, at the center of all the wackiness was an accessible, touching storyline: a single mother’s quest to rescue her young daughter from a reckless husband and an inadequate foster care system. Skinny Dip has at its center a wife who survives a murder attempt by her husband, and is driven not just by the need to get even, but to find out the reason he did it. This gives the novel more focus than some of Hiaasen’s other books, which often involve the characters running across each other in random ways, or going on unplanned wanderings across Florida. The other central plot is the fight to save the Everglades, and the role that the villains are playing in its destruction. Somewhere along the way, the two plot lines converge, and the quest to take revenge on Chaz becomes tied up with the aim of stopping Red’s pollution. In other words, the reader is offered a choice of which thing to root for: some readers may think that Chaz’s betrayal of the environment for money makes him detestable, but trying to murder his wife is what makes him a true monster; other readers may think the exact opposite. Skinny Dip is also enriched by a variety of subplots: Tool's gradual moral awakening, as he grows closer to a dying old lady who is too proud to admit that she has been abandoned by her family; Karl Rolvaag's longing for his native Minnesota, and his search for his escaped pet pythons; Chaz’s obsession with sex and his desperate attempts to reverse the erectile dysfunction which is his only sign of guilt over Joey’s murder, including experimenting with a black-market version of Viagra — "the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) definitely would not approve."; and finally, the suitcase full of money, which changes hands until it falls into the grip of the least likely person in the story. The novel contains many scenes reminiscent of classic farces. For instance, at one point there are five people in the Perrone house, three of whom are trying to hide their presence from the other: at the center is Chaz and his “back-up” girlfriend Medea, with whom he has just unsuccessfully attempted sexual relations; hiding under the bed is Joey, caught in the middle of another infiltration of the house; Tool is in another part of the house, ordered to protect Perrone but ordered by him to stay out of the way of his date; and finally Mick, who enters in search of Joey and, when he encounters Tool, politely asks him if he’s going to try to stop Mick. (“What a dumb-ass question. Of course I am.”) In a similar situation, Chaz, expecting sex with Rose, is drunk and drugged and lured into bed, not knowing that the woman he’s groping for is in fact his wife. Other funny situations arise out of Chaz’s paranoia and ineptness as a killer. He imagines he’s surrounded by enemies, but he always manages to look in the wrong direction. Even when the truth — for example, Joey — is right in front of him, he attributes it to hallucinations caused by the West Nile virus, rather than recognizing it for a sophisticated hoax.
769446	/m/039_mt	Dragonsong	Anne McCaffrey	1976-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Menolly, youngest daughter of Masterfisher Yanus, Sea Holder of Half-Circle Seahold, is a gifted musician who is punished for using her musical talents after Petiron, the Harper who encouraged her talent, dies. Finding life at the fishing community unbearable because her father forbids her to express her musical talents, she runs away from home. Menolly takes refuge from falling Thread in a cave—and discovers hatching fire-lizards, the precursors to the great dragons which are Pern's primary defense against Thread. Isolated from civilization in her cave and forced to care for nine baby fire lizards that she Impressed, Menolly quickly learns to be resourceful and independent. Freed from the restrictive role forced upon her by her family, she indulges her passion for music. Menolly is out foraging one day when she is caught in Threadfall. She is rescued by a dragonrider, T'gran, and his brown dragon, Branth, who take her to Benden Weyr. As she is adjusting to the liberal lifestyle of the Weyrfolk, she is discovered by Masterharper Robinton, the Masterharper of Pern, who has been searching frantically for Petiron's mystery apprentice. He discovers that she is the writer of two songs that Petiron (his father) sent him and offers her a place at the Harper Hall as his apprentice.
770215	/m/03b1vv	Postcards from the Edge	Carrie Fisher	1987	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel revolves around movie actress Suzanne Vale as she tries to put her life together after a drug overdose. The book is divided into five main sections: *The prologue is in epistolary form, with postcards written by Suzanne to her brother, friend, and grandmother. *The novel continues the epistolary form, consisting of first-person narrative excerpts from a journal Suzanne kept while coming to terms with her drug addiction and rehab experiences. ("Maybe I shouldn't have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares? My life is over anyway.") In time Suzanne's entries begin to alternate with the experiences of Alex, another addict in the same clinic. This section ends with Suzanne's successful graduation from treatment. *The second section opens with dialog between Suzanne and movie producer Jack Burroughs on their first date. It then changes to alternating monologues from Suzanne (addressed to her therapist) and Jack (addressed to his lawyer, who serves much the same purpose as Suzanne's therapist). Their relationship continues in this vein - all dialogue/monologue. There is a lot of humor and satirical commentary in the dialog and how they each describe the relationship to outside parties. The last three sections are traditional third-person narrative. As one reviewer notes, this progression from first to third-person narrative shows how disconnected Suzanne is from herself, now that she's not on drugs. *The third section describes the initial days of the first movie Suzanne made after her treatment. For convenience, Suzanne stays with her grandparents while the movie is made. She is chided for not relaxing herself on-screen, and notes that if she could relax she wouldn't be in therapy. This becomes a running gag among the actors and crew. The section ends with the crew mooning her on her birthday, and Suzanne asserts that "there isn't enough therapy" to help her with that experience. *The fourth section shows a week of Suzanne's "normal" life: working out, business meetings, an industry party, and going with a friend to a television studio for a talk show. She meets an author in the green room and gives him her phone number. *The fifth section encapsulates her relationship with the author, bringing the story to the anniversary of her overdose. *The epilogue consists of a letter from Suzanne to the doctor who pumped her stomach, who had recently contacted her. She notes that she is still off drugs and doing well. She is flattered that he inquires as to whether she is "available for dating", but she is seeing someone. The book ends on a bittersweet note: she knows she has a good life, but doesn't trust it. Unlike the movie, most of the conflict in the book is internal, as Suzanne is learning to handle her life without the prop of drugs. Suzanne's mother appears in very few scenes, while Suzanne is in rehab: :My mother is probably sort of disappointed at how I turned out, but she doesn't show it. She came by today and brought me a satin and velvet quilt. I'm surprised I was able to detox without it. I was nervous about seeing her, but it went okay. She thinks I blame her for my being here. I mainly blame my dealer, my doctor, and myself, and not necessarily in that order. [...] She washed my underwear and left. Later Suzanne talks with her on the phone, but it is not stressful.
770522	/m/03b2n8	The Chronoliths	Robert Charles Wilson	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Software designer Scott Warden is living with his family in early twenty-first century Thailand after his latest contract has ended. He and his friend Hitch Paley are among the first to find an enormous monolith which appears out of nowhere in the jungle. On closer examination, it is found to be a monument made of a mysterious, indestructible substance. It bears an inscription commemorating a military victory by someone named "Kuin", presumably an Asian warlord—twenty years in the future. Over the next twenty years, increasingly grand monuments to Kuin continue to appear—first in Asia, then in much of the rest of the world. Pro-Kuin and anti-Kuin political movements spring up, leading to the rise of economic problems, fatalistic cults, and open war. Scott has become entangled with his former teacher and mentor Sue Chopra, a scientist who has assembled a team of fellow researchers to investigate the chronoliths and learn to predict their appearances. With Sue's team, Scott witnesses a new chronolith that appears in Jerusalem. Kaitlin, his daughter, becomes caught up in the hysteria and joins a pro-Kuin youth cult; while trying to find her, Scott meets Ashlee, a single mother whose son Adam Mills joined the same cult. This leads to Scott and his companions being on hand to witness yet another chronolith appearance in Mexico. Sue Chopra comes to believe that Kuin has made the chronoliths in order to inspire fear and defeatism, making the future victories inevitable by gaining support ahead of time. In an effort to fight Kuin's growing influence, Scott, Sue Chopra and her team plan to destroy the first chronolith predicted to appear in the United States. The chronolith self-destructs, apparently sabotaged by a maker who exceeded the limits of the technology. A militant faction now led by Adam Mills attacks their base of operations, takes Chopra hostage, and menaces Scott's family. Scott lives to see the collapse of the Kuinist movement and a scientific renaissance sparked by Chopra's chronolith research.
771158	/m/03b4gh	Black Comedy	Peter Shaffer			 The action of the play takes place in Brindsley Miller's apartment in South Kensington, London on a Sunday evening at 9:30. The play begins in complete darkness. Brindsley Miller, a young sculptor, and his debutante fiancée, Carol Melkett, have stolen some very expensive antique items and furniture from his neighbor Harold Gorringe, who is away for the weekend, in an attempt to spruce up his normally slum-like apartment in order to impress a wealthy art collector, Georg Bamberger, who is coming to view his work, and Carol's father, Colonel Melkett. As they contemplate the coming evening, Carol inquires about Brindsley's previous mistress, a painter named Clea. Brindsley tells her that he saw her for only three months and that the relationship took place two years ago. Just as Carol places a Sousa march on the record player, a fuse short circuits causing a blackout. The stage is instantly illuminated. As Brindsley and Carol search for matches, the phone rings and Brindsley answers it. It is Clea, who has just returned from Finland, and wants to arrange a liaison for that evening. Brindsley hurriedly distracts Carol with a bogus story about fuse wire in his bedroom loft. He desperately denies to see Clea, and informs Carol when she returns that it was "just a chum." Miss Furnival, a spinster and lifelong teetotaler, the occupant of the flat upstairs, enters seeking refuge from her fear of the dark. She informs them that the street lamps are still alight, and Brindsley deduces that the short-circuit occurred in the main power box in the cellar. He and Carol ring the London Electricity Board, but are told only that an electrician might arrive sometime later that night. Miss Furnival suggests that Brindsley look for candles in Harold Gorringe's apartment across the hall, and he exits. Carol's father, Colonel Melkett, arrives with an illuminated lighter, and is unimpressed with one of Brindsley's sculptures—a large work in iron with two prongs. Miss Furnival realizes that the room is full of her friend Harold's furniture, including a fine porcelain Buddha—Harold's most valuable possession. Carol frantically decoys the Colonel into Brindsley's studio to see the rest of his work. She explains the situation to Miss Furnival, who reluctantly agrees not to betray them to Harold. When Brindsley returns unsuccessful from his search, the Colonel takes an almost instant dislike to him. At his suggestion, Brindsley exits to retrieve torches from a nearby pub. But just as he is leaving, Harold Gorringe returns from his weekend early. Brindsley quickly pulls him into the flat so that he will not go into his own and find his possessions stolen. Harold is unable to recognize his own furniture in the dark, and in order to keep him from lighting a match and discovering the thievery, Brindsley concocts the excuse of a possible gas leak. Brindsley pretends to leave for the pub, and as Carol blindly mixes drinks, he attempts to restore as much of the stolen furniture to Harold's flat as possible. As Brindsley enters and exits with various objects, wrapping the Buddha in Harold's raincoat, the four guests discuss the imminent arrival of Georg Bamberger. Harold reveals some facts he read in the Sunday Mirror: The reclusive Bamberger is known as "the mystery millionaire," and is apparently stone deaf. There is a mix up as Carol hands out the drinks in the dark, Miss Furnival is mistakenly given the Colonel's whiskey. The four attempt to rectify the confusion, but to no avail, Miss Furnival now receives Harold's gin. Finally, the Colonel angrily illuminates his lighter, revealing Brindsley. He lies unconvincingly, claiming that he has been to pub, found it closed, and returned. The Colonel rages at him "If you think I'm going to let my daughter marry a born liar, you're very much mistaken sir!" It is now that Harold discovers Brindsley and Carol's engagement, and he is furious at the news. It is obvious that he himself has secret feelings for Brindsley. Brindsley and Carol manage to arrange grudging reconciliations between themselves, the Colonel and Harold, and Miss Furnival, hooked after her first taste of alcohol, stealthily procures more liquor. Just then, Clea enters unannounced. Unaware of her presence, the others begin to speak ill of her. Harold spitefully deems her "ugly," Miss Furnival continues by recalling her as "tiresomely Bohemian," and Carol proclaims of a photo she found of her "she looked like The Bartered Bride done by Lloyds Bank Operatic Society." At this, everyone bursts into a gale of laughter, and Clea slaps Brindsley in the face. In the confusion, Brindsley catches hold of Clea's bottom, and instantly recognizes it. He manages to retreat with her to the loft, where his desperate pleas that she leave dissolve into passionate kisses. When she refuses to go, he concedes that she can stay in the loft, if she will not come downstairs. Just as Carol begins to grow suspicious about the activity in Brindsley's bedroom, Schuppanzigh, the German electrician sent to repair the fuse arrives, and everyone excitedly mistakes him for Bamberger. The electrician, with his lit torch, catches sight of Brindsley's sculpture, and is extremely impressed with it. In order to hide Harold's still unreturned Regency sofa, Brindsley challenges the German to examine the sculpture in the dark, claiming it was made to be appreciated in the dark. Schuppanzigh agrees, and turns off the torch. In the restored darkness, Brindsley pulls the sofa into his studio, unaware that the drunken Miss Furnival is lying on it. Upon catching hold of the two metal prongs, Schuppanzigh proclaims to everyone's astonishment "It's quite true! When viewed like this the piece becomes a masterpiece at once!" The electrician proceeds to give an eloquent lecture, praising Brindsley as "a master!" and calling the prongs "the two needles of man's unrest. Self-love and self-hate leading to the same point!" Just as the statue seems on the point of being sold for five hundred guineas, Schuppanzeigh's true identity is discovered, and everyone turns on him in outrage. He is at once cast down to the cellar to mend the fuse. Just as the electrician descends, Miss Furnival is heard in the studio, singing "Rock of Ages" in a high, drunken voice. Attracted by the sound, Clea emerges from the loft, dressed in one of Brindsley's night shirts. She overhears Carol consoling Brindsley with an idyllic portrait of their future married life. Outraged on discovering Brindsley's secret, Clea dashes Vodka over the startled guests. In an utter panic, Brindsley invents a cleaning woman named "Mrs Punnett," and to his surprise Clea goes along with him, speaking in a contrived Cockney voice of great antiquity. But to Brindsley's horror, Clea uses the guise of Mrs. Punnett to infuriate Carol and the Colonel with shocking tales of parties and "kinky games in the dark" and reveal her affair with Brindsley. When Clea confesses her true identity, in complete charge of the situation, Carol is horrified. But her hysterics are interrupted as Miss Furnival emerges from the studio, lost in a world of her own fears, proclaiming a passionate, drunken tirade in which she rants on the terrors of the supermarket, calls to her dead father, and prophesies a judgement day when "the heathens in their leather jackets" will be "stricken from their motorcycles." She is led out by a consoling Harold. Brindsley and Clea are left alone with Carol and the Colonel. The disheveled Carol breaks off their engagement and the Colonel advances on Brindsley in blind fury. But the Colonel's rage is interrupted and surpassed as Harold re-enters with a terrible shriek of anger, a lit taper burning in his hand. He has just discovered the state of his room and screams at Brindsley in betrayed aguish, demanding his remaining possessions be returned. As Harold moves to exit again, he grabs his raincoat. But inside it, of course, is the Buddha. It falls out and smashes beyond repair. Harold snaps. He turns on Brindsley and declares "with the quietness of the mad," "I think I'm going to have to smash you Brindsley." Abruptly, he pulls one of the metal prongs out of the statue, and advances on him. The Colonel follows suit, pulling the other prong, and together he and Harold advance on the terrified sculptor. Clea comes to his rescue. She blows out Harold's taper, casting the room into darkness once more, and pulling Brindsley to safety on the center table. The two men hunt their quarry in the dark. Now, finally, Georg Bamberger arrives, dressed in the Gulbenkian manner, and carrying a large deaf aid. This time, the guests mistake the millionaire for the electrician, until Schuppanzigh emerges from the cellar, proclaiming that the fuse is fixed. The startled guests realize that Bamberger has, at long last, arrived, and Brindsley exclaims happily "Everything's all right now! Just in the nick of time!" But just as he says this, Bamberger falls into the open trapdoor. Harold, the Colonel, and Carol advance on Brindsley and Clea, as Schuppanzigh moves to the light switch, saying "God said: "Let there be light!" And there was, good people, suddenly — astoundingly — instantaneously — inconceivably — inexhaustibly — inextinguishably and eternally — LIGHT!" And with a great flourish, he flicks the light switch--there is instant darkness, as with an exultant crash the Sousa march blazes away in the black.
771729	/m/03b63h	High Rise	J. G. Ballard	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The building seems to give its well-established tenants all the conveniences and commodities that modern life has to offer: swimming pools, its own school, a supermarket, high-speed elevators. But at the same time, the building seems to be designed to isolate the occupants from the larger world outside, allowing for the possibility to create their own closed environment. Life in the high-rise begins to degenerate quickly, as minor power failures and petty annoyances over neighbours escalate into an orgy of violence. The high-rise occupants divide themselves into the classic three groups of Western society: the lower, middle, and upper class, but here the terms are literal, as the lower class are those living on the lowest floors of the building, the middle class in the centre, and the upper class at the most luxurious apartments on the upper floors. Soon, skirmishes are being fought throughout the building, as floors try to claim elevators and hold them for their own, groups gather to defend their rights to the swimming pools, and party-goers attack "enemy floors" to raid and vandalize them. It does not take long for the occupants of entire building to abandon all social restraints, and give in to their most primal urges. The tenants completely shut out the outside world, content with their new life in the high-rise; people abandon their work and family and stay indoors permanently, losing their sense of time. Even as hunger starts to set in, many of the characters in the novel still seem to be enjoying themselves, as the building allows them a chance to break free from the social restrictions of modern society and toy with their own dark urges and desires. And as bodies begin to pile up and the commodities of the high-rise break down, no one considers alerting the authorities. The tenants of the high-rise abandon all notions of moral and social etiquette, as their environment gives way to a hunter/gatherer culture, where humans gather together in small clans, claim food sources from where they can (including the many dogs in the building, and eventually even the other tenants), and every stranger is met with extreme violence. As he did in Concrete Island and Crash, Ballard here offers a vision of how modern life in an urban landscape and the advances of technology could warp the human psyche in hitherto unexplored ways.
772717	/m/03b90d	The Atrocity Exhibition	J. G. Ballard	1970	{"/m/0f4gps": "Experimental literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Atrocity Exhibition is split up into fragments, similar to the style of William S. Burroughs, a writer whom Ballard admired. Burroughs, indeed, wrote the preface to the book. Though often called a "novel" by critics, such a definition is disputed, because all its parts had an independent life. "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan," for example, had three prior incarnations: in the International Times, in Ronald Reagan: The Magazine of Poetry, and as a freestanding booklet from Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton, all in 1968. All 15 pieces had been printed and some even reprinted before The Atrocity Exhibition was published. Each chapter/story is split up into smaller sections, some of them labelled by part of a continuing sentence; Ballard has called these sections "condensed novels". There is no clear beginning or end to the book, and it does not follow any of the conventional novelistic standards: the protagonist (such as he is) changes name with each chapter/story (Talbert, Traven, Travis, Talbot, etc.), just as his role and his visions of the world around him seems to change constantly. (Ballard explains in the 1990 annotated edition that the character's name was inspired by reclusive novelist B. Traven, whose identity is still not certainly known.) The stories describe how the mass media landscape inadvertently invades and splinters the private mind of the individual. Suffering from a mental breakdown, the protagonist—ironically, a doctor at a mental hospital—surrenders to a world of psychosis. Traven tries to make sense of the many public events that dominate his world (Marilyn Monroe's suicide, the Space Race, and especially the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy), by restaging them in ways that, to his psychotic mind, gives them a more personal meaning. It is never quite clear how much of the novel "really" takes place, and how much only occurs inside the protagonist's own head. Characters that he kills return again in later chapters (his wife seems to die several times). He travels with a Marilyn Monroe scorched by radiation burns, and with a bomber-pilot of whom he notes that "the planes of his face did not seem to intersect correctly." Inner and outer landscapes seem to merge (a Ballardian specialty), as the ultimate goal of the protagonist is to start World War III, "though not in any conventional sense" - a war that will be fought entirely within his own mind. Bodies and landscapes are constantly confused ("Dr. Nathan found himself looking at what seemed a dune top, but was in fact an immensely magnified portion of the skin area over the iliac crest", "he found himself walking between the corroding breasts of the film-actress", and "these cliff-towers revealed the first spinal landscapes"). At other times the protagonist seems to see the entire world, and life around him, as nothing more than a vast geometrical equation, such as when he observes a woman pacing around the apartment he has rented: "This ... woman was a modulus ... by multiplying her into the space/time of the apartment, he could obtain a valid unit for his own existence."
773456	/m/03bc0w	Smiley's People	John le Carré	1979-11	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Maria Andreyevna Ostrakova, a Soviet émigrée in Paris, is told by a Soviet agent calling himself "Kursky", that the daughter, Alexandra, who she was forced to leave behind, may be permitted to emigrate and join her for "humanitarian reasons". Ostrakova eagerly applies for French citizenship for her daughter, but time passes with no sign of Alexandra and no further contact with "Kursky". She realises that she has been duped, and writes to General Vladimir, an old friend of her late husband, also a former Soviet general and covert British agent, for help. Vladimir immediately realizes that Ostrakova was unwittingly used to provide a "legend", or false identity, for an unknown young woman in a scheme personally directed by KGB spymaster Karla. He also recognises that the operation is wholly unofficial, because Karla uses blundering Soviet diplomats instead of trained intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover. Vladimir attempts to contact "Hector" (Toby Esterhase), his old handler and "postman" in the British Secret Service, but Esterhase has left the service and refuses to be involved in Vladimir's plans. Nevertheless, Vladimir sends a confidante, Otto Leipzig, to interview Ostrakova in Paris. From a photograph, Ostrakova immediately identifies the agent "Kursky". Vladimir later sends another agent to Hamburg to collect vital proof from Leipzig. He contacts British Intelligence again, insisting on speaking to his former senior case officer "Max" (George Smiley), not realising that Smiley is also retired. The current Circus personnel, unfamiliar with Vladimir, are sceptical and uncooperative. Meanwhile, Vladimir's activities have been betrayed by Karla's network of informants within the Russian émigré community. Vladimir is assassinated while on his way to meet with a young and inexperienced handler from the Circus, evidently by Moscow agents. New Circus head Saul Enderby and Civil Service undersecretary Oliver Lacon are certain that the General was merely an obscure ex-agent seeking attention, and want to bury the matter quickly to protect themselves and the Circus from any scandal. They recall Smiley from his forced retirement in the hope that he will bury any links to the Circus. Unlike Enderby and Lacon, Smiley takes Vladimir's claims seriously and begins to investigate. He fortuitously recovers a letter sent to the General by Ostrakova, who is now being shadowed and fears for her life. Near where Vladimir was killed, he also discovers Vladimir's half-empty packet of Gauloises cigarettes, containing the negative of a compromising photograph of Leipzig and another man. Smiley recalls that Leipzig had often used a venal Soviet agent named Oleg Kirov, who was susceptible to blackmail, as a source of information. Smiley surmises that Kirov is probably the other man in the photograph. Meanwhile, Soviet agents bungle an attempt to kill Ostrakova. Smiley consults former Circus researcher Connie Sachs, who remembers some background information on Kirov, also known by the cover name "Kursky." Following Vladimir's logic that Karla was acting outside the dedicated system he himself devised, Connie also recounts rumours that Karla had a daughter by a mistress whom he had deeply loved but who ultimately turned against him and was sent to the Gulag on Karla's orders. The daughter, Tatiana, grew up without a mother and with a father she never knew, became mentally unstable, and was subsequently confined to a mental institution. Smiley flies to Hamburg, where he hopes to learn the rest of the story. He tracks down Claus Kretzschmar, an old associate of Leipzig and owner of the seedy night club where the photograph was taken. Kretzschmar gives him directions to Leipzig's temporary address on a boat in a gypsy encampment on the Baltic Sea near Lübeck, but two of Karla's agents have found Leipzig first, and tortured and killed him. Smiley's search of Leipzig's boat uncovers what Karla's agents did not; the torn half of a postcard hidden underwater in an old gym-shoe on the hook of a fishing-line. His discovery is witnessed by several people, and his rental car is severely damaged by two gypsy kids. Smiley rushes to finish his work in a small town near Hamburg before German police and Soviet agents close in on him. Here, Smiley appears as the spy of old and a master of "tradecraft". He takes the half of the postcard to Kretzschmar, who matches it to the other half and gives Smiley a tape recording made at the time the photograph of Leipzig and Kirov was taken, and the photocopy of Ostrakova's first letter to Vladimir, which he had sent to Leipzig. He lays a false trail in the direction of Heathrow, and then hastens by train and ferry to Copenhagen from where he flies straight to Paris, fearing for Ostrakova's life. With help from his old friend and former lieutenant Peter Guillam, who is serving out his days in the British Embassy in Paris, Smiley gets Ostrakova to safety. He also learns that Kirov has been summoned back to Moscow, and has probably been killed for his indiscretions. Smiley then returns to London where he meets in secret with Enderby. The transcribed tape of Kirov's confession to Leipzig shows that Karla is secretly diverting official funds (US $10,000 every month) to a bank in Thun in Switzerland and misappropriating other resources using a commercial attache of the Soviet embassy in Bern, named Grigoriev. The money is going to the care of Karla's daughter, who has been committed to an expensive Swiss psychiatric sanatorium under the faked citizenship papers of Ostrakova's daughter. Smiley explains that if British Intelligence can obtain proof of this activity, they may have the information necessary to blackmail (or "burn") Karla and force him to defect or face disgrace and possibly execution. Unexpectedly, Smiley obtains approval, and secret and deniable funding, from Enderby to mount an operation to secure the evidence from Grigoriev and close the trap on Karla. While Smiley does research at the Circus, Toby Esterhase, the former head of the Circus's "lamplighters" (covert surveillance operations) section, sets up a team in Bern to keep Grigoriev under observation. Smiley then visits his estranged wife, Ann, and makes a point of cutting all relations with her, deliberately shedding his illusions (Karla previously described Ann as 'the last illusion of an illusionless man') as he prepares to face down his greatest foe. Smiley recognises how ruthless he must become if he is to be Karla's nemesis. In Bern, Smiley learns that, like Kirov, Grigoriev is untrained in spycraft and hopeless at concealment. Esterhase's team soon gains ample evidence of his unofficial handling of funds for Karla and his affair with one of his secretaries. Although Grigoriev is normally accompanied everywhere by his formidable wife, Grigorieva, he makes an informal trip into Bern by himself to watch an open-air chess match one Sunday and is bundled into a car by Esterhase and his helpers. He is then subjected to Smiley's expert interrogation, and given the choice of cooperating and defecting, or being accused by Swiss authorities of using a faked Swiss passport and breaking banking laws. Following the official protest he would be returned overnight to the Soviet Union in disgrace with the prospect of a lifetime facing Karla's and Grigorieva's wrath. Grigoriev quickly confesses all he knows of the arrangements regarding "Alexandra's" care and the details of the visits he makes to her. Although it is unnecessary, Smiley visits "Alexandra", who is being treated in an institution run by an order of nuns. Among her "symptoms" is her insistence that she is actually called Tatiana and is the daughter of a powerful man who can make people disappear but who does not actually exist. Smiley then writes a letter to Karla, which Grigoriev passes on instead of his usual weekly report on "Alexandra's" condition and the minutiae of her treatment. Although not described, it is assumed the letter details Karla's illegal activities and offers him the stark choice between defection to the West and protection for Tatiana, or exposure, leading inevitably to his destruction by adversaries within Moscow Centre, and Tatiana being left to her fate. In a final scene reminiscent of the opening scene of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Karla, posing as a labourer, defects using a walk-bridge at the Berlin Wall. Unlike Karl Riemeck in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Karla does not panic during the crossing and makes it safely to the Circus's waiting car. Before crossing over into the waiting arms of Western agents, Karla stops and lights a new Camel. He drops the golden cigarette lighter near Smiley he had purloined from him years ago in an Indian prison, a gift to George from his unfaithful wife Ann. Given the opportunity, Smiley fails to pick up the lighter — another sign that he has become that which he resisted for so long. Karla is finally defeated, but the similarity of Smiley's methods to the cold and ruthless techniques of Karla himself robs Smiley of any apparent sense of triumph in the book's closing sentences.
776049	/m/03bkkv	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	J. K. Rowling	2007-07-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following Dumbledore's death, Voldemort continues to gain support and increase his power. When Harry turns seventeen, the protection he has at his aunt and uncle's house will be broken. Before that can happen, at Mad Eye Moody's suggestion, Harry flees to the Burrow with his friends, many of whom use Polyjuice Potion to impersonate him so as to confuse any Death Eaters that may attack. They are indeed attacked shortly after leaving Privet Drive; Mad Eye is killed, and George Weasley wounded, but the rest arrive safely at the Burrow. Ron and Hermione decide to accompany Harry, instead of returning to Hogwarts School for their seventh year, to finish the quest Dumbledore started: to hunt and destroy Voldemort's four remaining Horcruxes. They have little knowledge about the remaining Horcruxes except that one is a locket once owned by Hogwarts' co-founder Salazar Slytherin, one is possibly a cup once owned by co-founder Helga Hufflepuff, a third may be connected with co-founder Rowena Ravenclaw, and the fourth may be Nagini, Voldemort's snake familiar. The whereabouts of the founders' objects is unknown, and Nagini is presumed to be with Voldemort. Before leaving, they attend Ron's brother's Bill's wedding to Fleur Delacour, with Harry disguised by Polyjuice Potion, but the Ministry of Magic is taken over by Death Eaters during the wedding and they barely escape with their lives. Harry, Ron, and Hermione flee to 12 Grimmauld Place in London, which is Sirius Black's family's house, where they learn from the house-elf Kreacher the whereabouts of Salazar Slytherin's locket, which Sirius' brother Regulus stole from Voldemort at the cost of his own life. They successfully recover this Horcrux by infiltrating the Ministry of Magic and stealing it from Dolores Umbridge. Under the object's evil influence and the stress of being on the run, Ron leaves the others. As Harry and Hermione search for the Horcruxes, they learn more about Dumbledore's past, including the insanity and death of Dumbledore's younger sister and his connection to the evil wizard Grindewald. Harry and Hermione ultimately travel to Godric's Hollow, Harry's birthplace and the place where his parents died. They meet the eldery magical historian Bathilda Bagshot, who turns out to be Nagini in disguise and attacks them. They escape into the Forest of Dean, where a mysterious silver doe that appears to be a Patronus leads Harry to the Sword of Hogwarts co-founder Godric Gryffindor, one of the few objects able to destroy Horcruxes, lying at the bottom of an icy lake. When Harry attempts to recover the sword from the pool, the Horcrux attempts to kill him. Ron reappears, saving Harry and then using the sword to destroy the locket. Resuming their search, the trio repeatedly encounter a strange symbol that an eccentric wizard named Xenophilius Lovegood tells them represents the mythical Deathly Hallows. The Hallows are three sacred objects: the Elder Wand, an unbeatable wand; the Resurrection Stone, with the power to summon the dead to the living world; and an infallible Invisibility Cloak. Harry learns that Voldemort is seeking the Elder Wand, recognizes the Resurrection Stone from the second Horcrux, which Dumbledore had destroyed, and realizes that his own Invisibility Cloak is the one mentioned in the story, but he is unaware of the Hallows' significance. The trio are captured and taken to Malfoy Manor, where Bellatrix Lestrange tortures Hermione. Harry and Ron are thrown in the cellar, where they find Luna Lovegood, Ollivander, Dean Thomas, and Griphook. They escape to Shell Cottage (Bill and Fleur's house) with Dobby's help, but at the cost of the house-elf's life. Harry now realizes that the Hallows may have the power to defeat Death and knows that Voldemort robbed Dumbledore's tomb to procure the Elder Wand, but he decides to focus on finding the Horcruxes instead of the Hallows. With Griphook's help, they learn that Helga Hufflepuff's cup - a Horcrux - is hidden in Bellatrix's vault at Gringotts, break into her vault, retrieve the cup, and escape on a dragon, with Griphook swiping the sword and escaping on his own. From his connection to Voldemort's thoughts, Harry learns that another Horcrux is hidden in Hogwarts, which is under the control of Severus Snape. Harry, Ron, and Hermione enter the school through Hogsmeade (being saved by Aberforth Dumbledore, who explains more about Albus's backstory) and - with the help of the teachers - Snape is ousted from the school. Ron and Hermione go to the Chamber of Secrets and destroy the cup using a basilisk fang. The trio then finds Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem (another Horcrux) in the Room of Requirement. Vincent Crabbe casts a Fiendfyre curse in an attempt to kill Harry, Ron, and Hermione, but he instead destroys the diadem, the Room of Requirement, and himself. At this point, a total of five Horcruxes have been destroyed. The Death Eaters and Voldemort besiege Hogwarts, while Harry, Ron, Hermione, their allies, and various magical creatures defend the school. Several major characters are killed in the first wave of the battle, including Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, and Fred Weasley. Voldemort kills Severus Snape because he believes doing so will make him the Elder Wand's true master, since Snape killed Dumbledore. Harry discovers while viewing Snape's memories that Voldemort inadvertently made Harry into a seventh Horcrux when he attacked him as a baby, which is the true significance of Harry's scar, and that Harry must die in order to destroy Voldemort. These memories also confirm Snape's unwavering loyalty to Dumbledore and that his role as a double-agent against Voldemort never wavered after Voldemort killed Lily Evans, Harry's mother and Snape's one true love. Harry also learns that Dumbledore had less than a year to live when he died, that his death by Snape's hand had been per Dumbledore's request, and that Dumbledore had known that Harry must die. After using the Resurrection Stone to bring back his deceased loved ones for a short while, Harry surrenders himself to death at Voldemort's hand. Voldemort casts the Killing Curse at him, but it only sends Harry into a limbo-like state between life and death. While in this state, Dumbledore's spirit explains to Harry that when Voldemort used Harry's blood to regain his full strength, it protected Harry from Voldemort killing him; however, the Horcrux inside Harry has been destroyed, and Harry can return to his body despite being hit by the Killing Curse. Dumbledore also explains that Harry became the true master of the Deathly Hallows by facing Death, not by seeking to avoid it or conquer it. Harry returns to his body, feigning death, and Voldemort marches victoriously into the castle with his body. However, per Harry's prior instructions, Neville Longbottom kills Nagini, the last Horcrux, with the Sword of Gryffindor. Harry then reveals that he is still alive, and the battle resumes, with Bellatrix Lestrange being killed by Molly Weasley. Harry and Voldemort engage in a final climactic duel. Harry reveals that because he willingly sacrificed himself to death by Voldemort's hand, his act of love would protect the Wizarding community from Voldemort in the same way the sacrifice Harry's mother made protected Harry. Harry also reveals that Snape was not loyal to Voldemort, did not murder Dumbledore, and was never the master of the Elder Wand. Instead, Draco was the master of the Elder Wand after disarming Dumbledore, but, because Harry had disarmed Draco at Malfoy Manor, Harry is the true master of the Elder Wand. Harry claims that the wand will refuse to kill the one to whom it owes allegiance, further protecting Harry. During the duel, Harry refuses to use the killing curse and even encourages Voldemort to feel remorse, one known way to restore Voldemort's shattered soul. Voldemort dies when his own killing curse backfires against Harry's disarming curse, killing himself; the Death Eaters are finally defeated. The wizarding world is able to live in peace once more.
776736	/m/03blcb	Alphabet of Thorn	Patricia A. McKillip	2004-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Nepenthe is a sixteen-year-old orphan who was found and raised by the Royal Librarians of Raine. During the new queen's coronation, visitors and ambassadors from the Twelve Crowns (domains) that comprise Raine gauge Queen Tessera's strength. Bourne of Seale, a junior mage from the Floating School, meets Nepenthe in the library with a book inscribed with an unknown language, which seems to be written in configurations of plant thorns. Instead of delivering it to the Master Librarians, Nepenthe decides to transcribe it herself; she soon becomes obsessed with learning the book's outcome. On the surface, it appears to be an epic poem documenting the conquests of Axis and Kane, an emperor and "the Hooded One," three thousand years early. As Nepenthe continues reading, the ruler of Seale prepares to usurp the throne from Tessera, whom he views as weak. (She is only fourteen years old.) Reading further as Seale's army marches (and Bourne is imprisoned for treason), Nepenthe learns that Axis and Kane traveled through time to expand the reach and strength of Axis' empire. Popular histories in Raine list the man Kane as Axis' court mage; Kane was, but the woman Kane was also his lover who opened the Gates of Time for him. Kane became pregnant with his child, and she traveled with the infant through time to a cliff side near Raine. She wrote a book about her life in the language of thorns and because of her enchantments, no one but her daughter could read it—by the book's climax, she has. The final words of the book open the Gates of Time that admit Axis and Kane, Nepenthe's parents, and their uncountable legions of followers near Raine, three thousand years in their future. When Queen Tessera learns of the planned invasion, with the help of Vevay, her own mage, and the magicians of the Floating School, she uses magic to make Raine seem a dilapidated ruin and thereby protect it from Axis. Nepenthe meets her mother and refuses Kane's offer to rule Raine, because it would require Nepenthe to turn her back on the only world she's ever known. Kane chooses to remain in Raine, where she can be with her daughter and won't have to hide her identity. This effectively stops Axis' conquests because without her; he can't travel through the Gates of Time. The forces of Seale see Axis's army retreat in fear, which strengthens Tessera's claim on the throne. Kane stays with her daughter, and Nepenthe remains in the Royal Library, the only life she ever wants to know.
779075	/m/03bnx1	And the Ass Saw the Angel	Nick Cave	1989	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 And the Ass Saw the Angel tells the story of Euchrid Eucrow, a mute born to an abusive drunken mother and a father obsessed with cruel traps and animal torture. His father's dangerous traps could maim or kill an unwary person. An outcast, scorned even among outsiders, in a valley of fanatically religious Ukulites, Euchrid bears his mother's beatings, his father's inturned indifference, and the hatred and loathing of an entire town. Euchrid's increasingly fractured mind teems with words and horrible angelic visions, narrated by his silent Southern drawl. (To wit, Cave phonetically renders the boy-narrator's "I" as "Ah.") Raised to inevitable madness in this world of inbreeding, moonshine, and fanaticism, Euchrid will exact his terrible vengeance on the people who have made his life one of nearly unrelenting pain.
779173	/m/03bp19	Super-Cannes	J. G. Ballard		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the hills above Cannes, a European elite has gathered in the business-park Eden-Olympia, a closed society that offers its privileged residents luxury homes, private doctors, private security forces, their own psychiatrists, and other conveniences required by the modern businessman. The book's protagonist, Paul, quits his job as an editor and moves to Eden-Olympia with his wife Jane when she is offered a job there as a pediatrician. At first glance, Eden-Olympia seems the ideal workers' paradise, but beneath its glittering, glass-wall surface, all is not well. For if things are running smoothly, then why are all the residents &mdash; these well-established businessmen, doctors, architects, and producers &mdash; all suffering heavily from stress and insomnia? And why did Jane's predecessor, the well-liked and apparently quite sane David Greenwood, go to work one day with an assault rifle strapped over his shoulders, murdering several of his friends and co-workers, before he put the rifle to his own head? Quickly bored with life in Eden-Olympia ("the kind of adolescent society where you define yourself by the kind of trainers you wear"), Paul decides to investigate the events that led to Greenwood's death, and begins walking in his footsteps. He soon discovers that just beneath the calm, well-mannered surface of his new home lies an underworld of crime, deviant sex, and drugs that seems to be prospering and growing. And all the residents at Eden-Olympia seem not only to be aware of this, but to encourage and welcome this underworld, as it provides them with a means to relate to something other than their jobs, and &mdash; by entering that world &mdash; to let go of the social restraints and etiquette that define their lives. Paul discovers that Eden-Olympia's resident psychiatrist, Wilder Penrose, is eagerly encouraging his patients (and there are many of them) to indulge themselves in activities involving sex and violence, as a (successful) cure for their symptoms of stress. Says Penrose: "Psychopathy is its own most potent cure, and always has been. At times, it grasps entire nations in its grip and sends them through vast therapeutic spasms. No drug in the world is that powerful." ru:Суперканны
779580	/m/03bqfh	Day of Al'Akbar	Allen Hammack			 Day of Al'Akbar is a scenario set in an Arabian Nights-style desert land, where the player characters search the sewers under the city of Khaibar for an entrance to the tomb of Al'Akbar to find the holy Cup and Talisman, which can save their home from a plague. The module describes Khaibar City and the sultan's palace. In this adventure, the player characters must save Arabic lands from a red plague by retrieving a magical artifact. The adventure involves wilderness encounters, dungeon crawling in a sewer, tomb-robbing, some detective work in a desert town, and a final confrontation in the Sultan's palace. The land of Arir, a once peaceful desert country, has fallen into the hand of infidels. The ruler, Sultan Amhara, was killed in the battle for the capital city of Khaibar. He left behind one of the greatest treasure stores ever amassed, including the Cup and Talisman of Al'Akbar. A deadly plague sweeps your land. The holy men could cure the deadly plague which sweeps the land, if they had the Talismanm which the player characters must find. {| class="wikitable" |- ! Chapter ! Page |- | Introduction | 2 |- | Journey to Khaibar | 3 |- | The sewers of Khaibar | 5 |- | Beyond the Walls | 14 |- | The Sultan's Palace | 35 |- | Artifacts | pullout section |- | Glossary of Useful Terms | pullout section |- | Prerolled Characters | pullout section |- | Players' Riddle Illustration | 39 |} * Al'Farzikh: 7th level assassin * Vahtak: 6th level thief * The Mad Dog of the Desert: 14th level Magic user/16th level assassin * The Crescent Witch: 8th level Magic user
779593	/m/03bqhn	The Keep on the Borderlands	Gary Gygax	1979-12	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Player characters begin by arriving at the eponymous keep, and can base themselves there before investigating the series of caverns in the nearby hills teeming with monsters. These Caves of Chaos house multiple species of vicious humanoids. Plot twists include a treacherous priest within the keep, hungry lizardmen in a nearby swamp, and a mad hermit in the wilderness. It typifies the dungeon crawls associated with beginning D&D players, while permitting some limited outdoor adventures. When The Grand Duchy of Karameikos edition of the Gazetteer series was published, the Keep was given a specific location in the Known World of Mystara, in the Atlan Tepe Mountain region in northern Karameikos.
779622	/m/03bqkv	The Secret of Bone Hill			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The module is described as a low-level scenario that involves evil creatures prowling the unexplored reaches of Bone Hill. The campaign setting and scenario featured in the book detail a complete town in the Lendore Isles, along with nearby monster lairs. The player characters adventure in and around the fishing port of Restenford. The module is more of a mini-setting than an adventure, offering several adventure locations, and may require a Dungeon Master to expand it using the World of Greyhawk milieu. The module expands upon the basic types of undead creatures found.
780603	/m/03bvw2	The Open Society and Its Enemies	Karl Popper	1945	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper developed a critique of historicism and a defense of the open society, liberal democracy. The book is in two volumes; volume one is subtitled "The Spell of Plato", and volume two, "The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath". The subtitle of the first volume is also its central premise &mdash; namely, that most Plato interpreters through the ages have been seduced by his greatness. In so doing, Popper argues, they have taken his political philosophy as a benign idyll, without taking into account its dangerous tendencies toward totalitarian ideology. Contrary to major Plato scholars of his day, Popper divorced Plato's ideas from those of Socrates, claiming that the former in his later years expressed none of the humanitarian and democratic tendencies of his teacher. In particular, he accuses Plato of betraying Socrates in the Republic, wherein he portrays Socrates sympathizing with totalitarianism (see: Socratic problem). Popper extols Plato's analysis of social change and discontent, naming him as a great sociologist, yet rejects his solutions. This is dependent on Popper's reading of the emerging humanitarian ideals of Athenian democracy as the birth pangs of his coveted "open society." In his view, Plato's historicist ideas are driven by a fear of the change that comes with such a liberal worldview. Popper also suggests that Plato was the victim of his own vanity——that he had designs to become the supreme Philosopher King of his vision. The last chapter of the first volume bears the same title as the book, and is Popper's own philosophical explorations on the necessity of liberal democracy as the only form of government allowing institutional improvements without violence and bloodshed. In volume two, Popper moves on to criticise Hegel and Marx, tracing back their ideas to Aristotle, and arguing that the two were at the root of 20th century totalitarianism.
781180	/m/03bx94	Music for Chameleons	Truman Capote		{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The book is divided into three sections. Part one, titled "Music for Chameleons", includes the short story after which the section and book are named, as well as five other stories ("Mr. Jones", "A Lamp in a Window", "Mojave", "Hospitality" and "Dazzle"). Part two, the core of the book, consists of a single piece: "Handcarved Coffins", supposedly a "nonfiction account of an American crime" that suggests certain parallels with his best-known work, the difference being that Capote did not include himself as a character in the narrative when he wrote In Cold Blood. In the third section, "Conversational Portraits", Capote recalls his encounters with Pearl Bailey, Bobby Beausoleil, Willa Cather, Marilyn Monroe and others. These seven essays are titled "A Day's Work", "Hello, Stranger", "Hidden Gardens", "Derring-Do", "Then It All Came Down", "A Beautiful Child" and "Nocturnal Turnings."
782132	/m/03bybn	The Fantasticks	Tom Jones			 ;Act I Two houses are separated by a wall (portrayed by a mute actor) in an unspecified American town. The mysterious El Gallo tells about love and September ("Try to Remember"). He then begins to explain the plot of the play. Two young people, Matt and Luisa, live next door to each other and fall in love. However, their fathers are feuding and order them not to speak to each other. Luisa fantasizes about the experiences she wants to have in her life ("Much More"). Matt then delivers a speech about his love for Luisa, singing over the wall to her in a mock literary/heroic way ("Metaphor"). Matt and Luisa sneak up to the top of the wall and speak secretly of Luisa's romantic vision of Matt saving her from kidnapping. Matt's father, Mr. Hucklebee, then appears and tells about his philosophy of life and gardening (don't overwater). He calls Matt and orders him to come inside the house. Luisa's father, Mr. Bellomy, then enters and gives a contrasting philosophy of life and gardening (plenty of water). He then orders Luisa inside. He then calls to Hucklebee, and the two old friends boast about pretending to feud as a means to ensure that their children fall in love. They note that to manipulate children you need merely say "no" ("Never Say No"). Hucklebee tells Bellomy of his plan to end the feud by having Luisa "kidnapped" by a professional so that Matt can "rescue" her and appear heroic. The hired professional, El Gallo (who is also the narrator), appears and offers the fathers a menu of different varieties of "rape" – in the literary sense of an abduction or kidnapping – that he can simulate ("It Depends on What You Pay"). Deciding to spare no expense for their beloved children (within reason), the fathers agree to a "first class" rape. A disheveled old actor with a failing memory, Henry, and his sidekick, Mortimer, who is dressed as an American Indian, arrive. El Gallo engages them to help with the staged kidnapping. Matt and Luisa return and speak of their love and hint at physical intimacy ("Soon It's Gonna Rain"). El Gallo and the actors burst in and carry out the moonlit abduction scenario; Matt "defeats" the three ("Rape Ballet"). The feud is ended, with the children and the fathers joined in a picturesque final tableau ("Happy Ending"). El Gallo collects the stage properties used in the "rape" and wonders aloud how long the lovers and their fathers will be able to maintain their elaborately joyful poses. He and the Mute leave. ;Act II The children and fathers are discovered in the same poses but are visibly shaky and exhausted from the effort. El Gallo observes that what seemed romantic by moonlight may lose its charm when exposed to the harsh light of day. He exchanges the moon for the blazing sun. The fathers and lovers begin to complain about one another, noticing all the flaws that have become glaringly visible by daylight ("This Plum is too Ripe"). The children try to recreate their romantic mood from the previous night and mock their fathers. Finally, in a fit of pique, Hucklebee reveals that their kidnapping and the feud were fake. Matt and Luisa are mortified, and the fathers' mutual recrimination quickly escalates into a real feud; they storm off to their respective houses. Matt sees El Gallo and, in a desperate attempt to regain his honor and Luisa's love, challenges him to a duel. El Gallo easily disarms Matt leaves him embarrassed. Matt and Luisa then argue fiercely; she calls him a poseur, while he calls her childish. Matt is eager to leave the provincial town. He and El Gallo discuss his vision ("I Can See It"). Henry and Mortimer then appear and lead Matt off into the real world. A month passes, and the fathers have rebuilt the wall. They speak sadly of their children; Luisa is like a statue and does nothing but sit around; Matt still hasn't returned. They then sing about the uncertainties of raising children, as compared with the reliability of vegetable gardening ("Plant a Radish"). Luisa sees El Gallo watching her and is intrigued by the handsome, experienced bandit. Impulsively, she asks him to take her away to see the world. In a long fantasy sequence, they preview a series of romantic adventures through a mask of unreality, while in the background Matt is being abused and beaten by Henry and Mortimer portraying a series of unpleasant employers. Even Luisa's fantasies become increasingly exhausting and darkly underscored ("Round and Round"). El Gallo tells Luisa to pack her things for the journey, but before she goes inside to do so, he asks her to give him her treasured necklace, a relic of her dead mother, as a pledge that she will return. As she goes inside, El Gallo promises her a world of beauty and grandeur; at the same time, Matt approaches to give a contrasting version of the cruel experiences that one can suffer ("I Can See It" (reprise)). As Luisa disappears, El Gallo turns to leave; Matt makes a pitiful attempt to stop him from hurting Luisa, but El Gallo knocks him away and disappears. Luisa returns to find that El Gallo has left her, and sits in tears. El Gallo, as the narrator, tells poetically that he had to hurt Matt and Luisa, and how he hurt himself in the process. Matt comforts Luisa, and he tells her a little about his experiences, and the two realize that everything they wanted was each other ("They Were You"; "Metaphor" (reprise)), but that they now understand that more deeply. The Fathers then return joyfully and are about to tear down the wall, when El Gallo reminds them that the wall must always remain ("Try to Remember" (reprise)).
784428	/m/03c3k6	The Tale of Tsar Saltan	Aleksandr Pushkin			 The story is of three sisters, of whom the youngest is chosen by Tsar Saltan (Saltán) to be his wife, while he makes the other two his royal cook and royal weaver. They are jealous, of course, and when the tsar goes off to war, and in his absence the tsaritsa gives birth to a son, Prince Gvidon (Gvidón), they arrange to have her and her child sealed up in a barrel and thrown into the sea. The sea itself takes pity on them, and they are cast up on the shore of a remote island, Buyan. The son, having quickly grown while in the barrel, goes hunting. He ends up saving an enchanted swan from a kite. The swan creates a city for Prince Gvidon to rule, but he is homesick, and the swan turns him into a mosquito. In this guise, he visits Tsar Saltan's court, where he stings his aunt in the eye and escapes. Back in his distant realm, the swan gives Gvidon a magical squirrel. But he continues to pine for home, so the swan transforms him into a fly. In this guise, Prince Gvidon visit's Saltan's court again and he stings his older aunt in the eye. The third time, the Prince is transformed into a bumblebee and stings the nose of his grandmother. In the end, he expresses a desire for a bride instead of his old home, at which point the swan is revealed to be a beautiful princess, whom he marries. He is visited by the Tsar, who is overjoyed to find his wife and newly-married son.
786078	/m/03c5xt	Zuleika Dobson	Max Beerbohm	1911	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Zuleika Dobson is a stunningly attractive young woman of the Edwardian era, a true femme fatale, who is a prestidigitator by profession, formerly a governess. Zuleika's current occupation (though, more importantly, perhaps, her enrapturing beauty) has made her something of a small-time celebrity and she manages to gain entrance to the privileged, all-male domain of Oxford University because her grandfather is the Warden of Judas College (based on Merton College, Oxford, Beerbohm's alma mater). There, she falls in love for the first time in her life with the present Duke of Dorset, a snobbish, emotionally detached student who&mdash;frustrated with the lack of control over his feelings when he sees her&mdash;is forced to admit that she too is his first love, impulsively proposing to her. As she feels that she cannot love anyone unless he is impervious to her charms, however, she rejects all her suitors, doing the same with the astonished Duke. The Duke quickly discovers that Noaks, another Oxford student, also claims to have fallen in love her, without ever having even interacted with her. Apparently, men immediately fall in love with her upon seeing her. As the first to have his love reciprocated by her (for however brief a time) the Duke decides that he will commit suicide to symbolise his passion for Zuleika and in hopes that he will raise awareness in her of the terrible power of her bewitching beauty, as she innocently goes on crushing men's affections. Zuleika is able to interrupt the Duke's first suicide attempt from a river boat, but seems to have a romanticised view of men dying for her, and does not oppose the notion of his suicide altogether. The Duke, instead pledging to kill himself the next day&mdash;which Zuleika more or less permits&mdash;has dinner that night with his social club where the other members also affirm their love for Zuleika. Upon telling them of his plan to die, the others unexpectedly agree to also commit suicide for Zuleika. This idea soon reaches the minds of all Oxford undergraduates, who inevitably fall in love with Zuleika upon first sight. The Duke eventually decides that the only way he can stop all the undergraduates from killing themselves is by not committing suicide himself, hoping they will follow his example. By an ancient tradition, on the eve of the death of a Duke of Dorset, two black owls come and perch on the battlements of Tankerton Hall, the family seat; the owls remain there hooting through the night and at dawn they fly away to an unknown place. After debating whether to follow through with his suicide, while seeming to decide at last to embrace his life as just as valuable as Zuleika's, the Duke receives a telegram from his butler at Tankerton, reporting the portentous return of the owls. The Duke promptly interprets the omen as a sign that the gods have decreed his doom. He proudly tells Zuleika that he will still die, but no longer for her; she agrees as long as he makes it appear that he is dying for her by shouting her name as he jumps into the river. Later the same day, a thunderstorm overwhelms the May Week boat races while the Duke drowns himself in the River Isis, wearing the robes of a Knight of the Garter. Every fellow undergraduate, except one, promptly follows suit. All of the Oxford undergraduates now dead, including, with some delay, the cowardly Noaks, Zuleika discusses the ordeal with her grandfather, who reveals that he too was enamoured by all when he was her age. While Oxford's academic staff barely notice that all of their undergraduates have vanished, Zuleika decides to order a special train for the next morning... bound for Cambridge.
790417	/m/03cdtz	Flatterland	Ian Stewart	2001	{"/m/01p4b_": "Popular science", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Almost 100 years after A. (which we find out stands for Albert) Square's adventures that were related in Flatland, his great-great-granddaughter, Victoria Line (Vikki), finds a copy of his book in her basement. This prompts her to invite a sphere from Spaceland to visit her, but instead she is visited by the "Space Hopper" (a character looking somewhat like the "Space Hopper" children's toy with a gigantic grin, horns and a spherical body). The Space Hopper, more than being able to move between Flatland and Spaceland, can travel to any space in the Mathiverse, a set of all imaginable worlds. After showing Vikki higher dimensions, he begins showing her more modern theories, such as fractional dimensions and dimensions with isolated points. Topology and hyperbolic geometry are also discussed, as well as the Projective "Plain" (complete with intersecting "lions") and the quantum level. Hopper and Victoria also visit the Domain of the Hawk King to discuss time travel and the Theory of Relativity.
790772	/m/03cf4h	To the Lighthouse	Virginia Woolf	1927-05-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the Ramsays' summer home in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Skye. The section begins with Mrs Ramsay assuring James that they should be able to visit the lighthouse on the next day. This prediction is denied by Mr Ramsay, who voices his certainty that the weather will not be clear, an opinion that forces a certain tension between Mr and Mrs Ramsay, and also between Mr Ramsay and James. This particular incident is referred to on various occasions throughout the chapter, especially in the context of Mr and Mrs Ramsay's relationship. The Ramsays have been joined at the house by a number of friends and colleagues, one of them being Lily Briscoe, who begins the novel as a young, uncertain painter attempting a portrayal of Mrs. Ramsay and James. Briscoe finds herself plagued by doubts throughout the novel, doubts largely fed by the claims of Charles Tansley, another guest, who asserts that women can neither paint nor write. Tansley himself is an admirer of Mr Ramsay and his philosophical treatises. The section closes with a large dinner party. When Augustus Carmichael, a visiting poet, asks for a second serving of soup, Mr Ramsay nearly snaps at him. Mrs Ramsay, is herself out of sorts when Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle, two acquaintances whom she has brought together in engagement, arrive late to dinner, as Minta has lost her grandmother’s brooch on the beach. The second section gives a sense of time passing, absence, and death. Ten years pass, during which the four-year First World War begins and ends. Mrs Ramsay passes away, Prue dies from complications of childbirth, and Andrew is killed in the war. Mr Ramsay is left adrift without his wife to praise and comfort him during his bouts of fear and his anguish regarding the longevity of his philosophical work. In the final section, “The Lighthouse,” some of the remaining Ramsays and other guests return to their summer home ten years after the events of Part I. Mr Ramsay finally plans on taking the long-delayed trip to the lighthouse with his son James and daughter Cam(illa). The trip almost does not happen, as the children are not ready, but they eventually set off. As they travel, the children are silent in protest at their father for forcing them to come along. However, James keeps the sailing boat steady and rather than receiving the harsh words he has come to expect from his father, he hears praise, providing a rare moment of empathy between father and son; Cam's attitude towards her father changes also, from resentment to eventual admiration. They are accompanied by the sailor Macalister and his son, who catches fish during the trip. The son cuts a piece of flesh from a fish he has caught to use for bait, throwing the injured fish back into the sea. While they set sail for the lighthouse, Lily attempts to finally complete the painting she has held in her mind since the start of the novel. She reconsiders her memory of Mrs and Mr Ramsay, balancing the multitude of impressions from ten years ago in an effort to reach towards an objective truth about Mrs Ramsay and life itself. Upon finishing the painting (just as the sailing party reaches the lighthouse) and seeing that it satisfies her, she realizes that the execution of her vision is more important to her than the idea of leaving some sort of legacy in her work.
790897	/m/03cf8j	Henderson the Rain King	Saul Bellow	1959	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eugene Henderson is a troubled middle-aged man. Despite his riches, high social status, and physical prowess, he feels restless and unfulfilled, and harbors a spiritual void that manifests itself as an inner voice crying out I want, I want, I want. Hoping to discover what the voice wants, Henderson goes to Africa. Upon reaching Africa, Henderson splits with his original group and hires a native guide, Romilayu. Romilayu leads Henderson to the village of the Arnewi, where Henderson befriends the leaders of the village. He learns that the cistern from which the Arnewi get their drinking water is plagued by frogs, thus rendering the water "unclean" according to local taboos. Henderson attempts to save the Arnewi by ridding them of the frogs, but his enthusiastic scheme ends in disaster. Henderson and Romilayu travel on to the village of the Wariri. Here, Henderson impulsively performs a feat of strength by moving the giant wooden statue of the goddess Mummah and unwittingly becomes Wariri Rain King. He quickly develops a friendship with the native-born but western-educated Chief, King Dahfu, with whom he engages in a series of far-reaching philosophical discussions. The elders send Dahfu to find a lion, which is supposedly the reincarnation of the late king, Dahfu's father. The lion hunt fails and the lion mortally wounds the king. Henderson learns shortly before Dahfu's death that the Rain King is the next person in the line of succession for the throne. Having no interest in being king and desiring only to return home, Henderson flees the Wariri village. Although it is unclear whether Henderson has truly found spiritual contentment, the novel ends on an optimistic and uplifting note.
790928	/m/03cf96	Appointment in Samarra	John O'Hara	1934	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel describes how, over the course of three days, Julian English destroys himself with a series of impulsive acts, culminating in suicide. O'Hara never gives any obvious cause or explanation for his behavior, which is apparently predestined by his character. Facts about Julian gradually emerge throughout the novel. He is about thirty. He is college-educated, owns a well-established Cadillac dealership, and within the Gibbsville community belongs to the high-ranking "Lantenengo Street crowd." Our introduction to him comes seven pages into the novel, in the thoughts of the wife of one of his employees: "She wouldn't trade her life for Caroline English's, not if you paid her. She wondered if Julian and Caroline were having another one of their battle royales." Within the three-day time span of the novel, Julian gets drunk several times. One almost lyrical long paragraph describes one of his hangovers. During the first of two suicidal reveries, we learn that his greatest fear is that he will eventually lose his wife to another man. Yet within three days, he propositions two women, succeeding once, with an ease and confidence that suggest that this is well-practiced behavior. On successive days, he commits three impulsive acts of not-quite-unforgivable behavior in social situations, which are serious enough to damage his reputation, his business, and his relationship with his wife. First, he throws a drink in the face of Harry Reilly, a man who, we learn later, is an important investor in his business. The man is a sufficiently well-connected Catholic that Julian knows word will spread among the Gibbsville Catholic community, many of whom are his customers. In a curious device, repeated for each of the incidents, the omniscient narrator never actually shows us the details of the incident. He shows us Julian fantasizing in great detail about throwing the drink; but, we are told, "he knew he would not throw the drink" because he was in financial debt to Harry and because "people would say he was sore because Reilly ... was elaborately attentive to Caroline English." The narrator's vision shifts elsewhere, and several pages later we are surprised to hear a character report "Jeezozz H. Kee-rist! Julian English just threw a highball in Harry Reilly's face!" The second event occurs at a roadhouse, where Julian goes with his wife and some friends. Julian gets drunk and invites a provocatively-clad woman to go out to his car with him. The woman is, in fact, a gangster's girlfriend, and one of the gangster's men is present, sent to keep an eye on her. Both Julian's wife and the gangster's aide see the couple leave. What actually happens in the car is left ambiguous but is unimportant, since all observers assume that a sexual encounter has taken place. There is apparently no concern that the incident has placed Julian's life in danger. However, the gangster is a valued automobile customer who in the past has recommended Julian's dealership to his acquaintances. As Julian is driven home, pretending to be asleep, he "felt the tremendous excitement, the great thrilling lump in the chest and abdomen that comes before the administering of an unknown, well-deserved punishment. He knew he was in for it." Third, the next day, he engages in a complicated brawl with a man, Froggy Ogden. Julian thought of Froggy as an old friend, but Froggy acknowledges to Julian that he has always detested him and did not want Julian's wife (Froggy's cousin) to marry him. In the brawl, which perhaps Froggy started, he slugs Froggy, and at least one of a group of bystanders in the club. He experiences two suicidal reveries which are at odd contrast to each other. In the first, following Caroline's temporary departure, he holds a gun to his head: He does not, however, follow through. His second suicidal reverie follows a failed attempt to seduce a woman, the local society reporter. He believes that as a result of his behavior, and the community's sympathy for Caroline, "no girl in Gibbsville&mdash;worth having&mdash;would risk the loss of reputation which would be her punishment for getting herself identified with him." He believes that even if he divorces Caroline he is destined to spend the rest of his life hearing: Apparently finding this, and other indications that he had misperceived his status, too much to face, he commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, running his car in a closed garage. Although Julian faced many difficulties, some external and many self-inflicted, it seems clear that these difficulties, though serious, were not insurmountable. His wife has departed temporarily for a long talk with her mother, but she and the reader realize that she will forgive Julian. His business was in financial difficulties, but they do not seem insoluble. It even seems likely that he could have patched things up with Harry Reilly, who says, on learning of English's suicide, "I liked English and he liked me, otherwise he wouldn't have borrowed money from me... He was a real gentleman. I wonder what in God's name would make him do a thing like that?" and picks up the telephone to order flowers. Biographer Frank MacShane writes "The excessiveness of Julian's suicide is what makes Appointment in Samarra so much a part of its time. Julian doesn't belong to Fitzgerald's Jazz Age; he is ten years younger and belongs to what came to be called the hangover generation, the young people who grew up accustomed to the good life without having to earn it. This is the generation that had so little to defend itself with when the depression came in 1929."
793938	/m/03ckdz	Friday the Rabbi Slept Late	Harry Kemelman	1964	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The body of a young woman is found on the grounds of the Temple. The woman had been strangled and evidence points to Rabbi Small - her purse is found in his car, which had been left in the Temple parking lot the night before.
796009	/m/03cqcj	The Devils	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1872		 The novel takes place in a provincial Russian setting, primarily on the estates of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky and Varvara Stavrogina. Stepan Trofimovich's son, Pyotr Verkhovensky, is an aspiring revolutionary conspirator who attempts to organize a knot of revolutionaries in the area. He considers Varvara Stavrogina's son, Nikolai, central to his plot because he thinks Nikolai Stavrogin has no sympathy for mankind whatsoever. Verkhovensky gathers conspirators like the philosophizing Shigalyov, suicidal Kirillov, and the former military man Virginsky, and he schemes to solidify their loyalty to him and each other by murdering Ivan Shatov, a fellow conspirator. Verkhovensky plans to have Kirillov, who was committed to killing himself, take credit for the murder in his suicide note. Kirillov complies and Verkhovensky murders Shatov, but his scheme falls apart. He escapes, but the remainder of his aspiring revolutionary crew is arrested. In the denouement of the novel, Nikolai Stavrogin kills himself, tortured by his own misdeeds.
796291	/m/03cr1j	Timescape	Gregory Benford	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 The story is written from two viewpoints, equidistant from the novel's publication in 1980. The first thread is set in a 1998 ravaged by ecological disasters such as algal blooms and diebacks on the brink of large scale extinctions. Various other events are mentioned in passing, such as student riots and an event of nuclear terrorism against New York City which took place before the events of the novel. This thread follows a group of scientists in the United Kingdom connected with the University of Cambridge and their attempts to warn the past of the impending disaster by sending tachyon-induced messages to the astronomical position the Earth occupied in 1962–1963. Given the faster-than-light nature of the tachyon, these messages will effectively reach the past. These efforts are led by John Renfrew, an Englishman, and Gregory Markham, an American most likely modeled on Benford himself. Overseeing their efforts is Ian Peterson, a womanizing member of the World Council. The second thread is set in the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, California, in 1962 where a young scientist, Gordon Bernstein, discovers anomalous noise in a physics experiment relating to spontaneous resonance and indium antimonide. He and his student assistant, Albert Cooper (also likely based on the author and his experiences at UCSD), discover that the noise is coming in bursts timed to form Morse Code. The resulting message is made of staccato sentence fragments and jumbled letters, due to the 1998 team's efforts to avoid a grandfather paradox. Their aim is to give the past researchers enough information to start efforts on solving the pending ecological crisis, but not enough that the crisis will be entirely solved (thus making a signal to the past unnecessary and creating a paradox). Due to the biological nature of the message, Professor Bernstein shares the message with a professor of biology, Michael Ramsey. Since the message also gives astronomical coordinates, he also shares it with Saul Shriffer, a fictional scientist who is said to have worked with Frank Drake on Project Ozma. Initially, these characters fail to understand the true meaning of the message. Ramsey believes it to be an intercepted military dispatch hinting at Soviet bioterrorism, while Shriffer thinks the message is of extraterrestrial origin. Shriffer goes public with this theory, mentioning Bernstein in his findings. However, Bernstein's overseer, Isaac Lakin, is skeptical of the messages and wants Bernstein to keep working on his original project and ignore the signal. As a result of this interruption in their experimentation, Bernstein is denied a promotion and Cooper fails a candidacy examination. The signal also exacerbates difficulties in Bernstein's relationship with his girlfriend, Penny. In 1998, Peterson recovers a safe deposit box in La Jolla containing a piece of paper indicating that the messages were received. Meanwhile, it is clear that the viral nature of the algal bloom is spreading it faster and through more mediums than originally expected. Strange yellow clouds that have been appearing are said to be a result of the viral material being absorbed through the water cycle, and it soon affects the planet's agriculture as well, resulting in widespread cases of food poisoning. Flying to the United States, Markham is killed in a plane crash when the pilots fly too close to one of the clouds and experience seizures. In the past storyline, now advanced into 1963, Bernstein refuses to give up on the signals. He is rewarded when the signal noise is also observed in a laboratory at Columbia University. Using hints in the message, Ramsey replicates the conditions of the bloom in a controlled experiment and realizes the danger it represents. Bernstein finds out that the astronomical coordinates given in the message represent where the Earth will be in 1998 due to the solar apex. He also receives a more coherent, despairing message from the future. Having built a solid case, Bernstein goes public and publishes his results. This decision has monumental consequences. On November 22, a high school student in Dallas is sent by his physics teacher to the Texas School Book Depository to get a copy of Bernstein's findings. There he interrupts Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination attempt on President John F. Kennedy, attacking the shooter and sending the would-be fatal third shot awry. Though seriously injured, Kennedy survives. This paradox creates an alternate universe and forever ends the contact with the original 1998. The concluding chapters portray the 1998 of the original timeline as a bleak, failing world, the intensified ecological disaster taking a noticeable toll on the human way of life. Peterson retreats to a fortified country farmhouse which he has obviously prepared well in advance. Renfrew continues to send out signals (including the more coherent one that Gordon receives) until the building's generator gives out. Before it does, however, he receives a signal purportedly from the year 2349. In the final chapter, set in the alternate 1974, an awards ceremony is held for achievement in science. In light of Kennedy's survival, the United States President giving out the awards is William Scranton, who is said to have defeated Bobby Kennedy due to a telephone tapping scandal. The scientists whose work stemmed from the signal are honored, including Bernstein, who receives the Enrico Fermi Prize for his discovery of the tachyon.
796350	/m/03cr51	Chasing Vermeer	Blue Balliett	2003	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book begins with a mysterious letter that is delivered to three unknown recipients, two women and one man. The letter tells them they are of great need to the sender, but begs them not to tell the police. Sixth-graders Calder Pillay, who enjoys puzzles and pentominoes, and Petra Andalee, who aspires to be a writer, are classmates at the University School in Hyde Park, Chicago. Their young teacher, Ms. Hussey, is very interested in art and teaches them in a creative way. Through her pressing questions, they discover the artist Johannes Vermeer and his paintings, especially A Lady Writing and The Geographer. Petra also finds a used book called Lo!, written by Charles Fort, at the local Powell's Books, owned by a man named Mr. Watch. They also meet an elderly neighbor, Mrs. Sharpe, who is also a fan of Vermeer and Fort. Calder receives letters from his best friend Tommy Segovia, who is currently living in New York City with a new stepfather. The children learn that A Lady Writing was traveling from The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. to Hyde Park. The next day there is a story in the paper of how the painting mysteriously disappeared. A letter from the thief appears in the newspaper, telling the public that he will not give back A Lady Writing until they prove which Vermeer paintings were truly painted by him. This sparks worldwide uproar. Calder and Petra investigate as their friendship grows. Mrs. Sharpe requests police protection and it is revealed that she and Mrs. Hussey were two of the three recipients of the thief's letter. Calder and Petra eventually conclude that the painting is hidden in the local Delia Dell Hall, and they sneak out and find it. They barely escape from the thief, who is later found dead from a heart attack by the police. They learn that the man is Xavier Glitts, who was posing as Tommy's stepfather under the name Fred Steadman. A known art thief, he was asked to steal the painting and sell it for sixty million dollars. The other recipient of the letter is revealed to be Mr. Watch. As stated in the preface, there is a code hidden in the illustrations throughout the book. This was an idea of Brett Helquist and Balliett's editor, Tracy Mack. The code involves images of pentominoes and a frog, which is a recurring theme in the book. To decode the code, one must count the number of frogs in every other illustration, as well as find the hidden pentomino. Once these facts are collected, the same code presented in the story that Calder and Tommy use in their letters in the book can be used to decode the message. When decoded, the message reads "The Lady Lives."
796676	/m/03cs21	A Feast for Crows	George R. R. Martin	2005-10-17	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The War of the Five Kings is slowly coming to an end. Robb Stark, Joffrey Baratheon, Renly Baratheon, and Balon Greyjoy are all dead, and King Stannis Baratheon has gone to the aid of the Wall, where Jon Snow has become Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. King Tommen Baratheon, Joffrey's eight-year-old brother, now rules in King's Landing under the watchful eye of his mother, the Queen Regent Cersei Lannister. Cersei's father Tywin is dead, murdered by his son Tyrion, who has fled the city. With these two men gone, as well as no longer having to deal with Joffrey, there are no more checks on Cersei and she is essentially Ruling Queen of the Seven Kingdoms in all but name. Now that Cersei finally stands at the height of power and her enemies are scattered to the winds, in a grim irony it quickly becomes clear that she is incapable of wielding the power she has killed and manipulated so many to acquire, and she spirals into self-destruction. Meanwhile, Sansa Stark is still in hiding in the Vale, protected by Petyr Baelish, who has secretly murdered his wife Lysa Arryn and named himself Protector of the Vale and guardian of eight-year-old Lord Robert Arryn. It soon becomes apparent that while Cersei is skilled in the methods of intrigue needed to seize power, she is not very skilled in the actual day-to-day running of the kingdom. Cersei's reign is marked by rampant cronyism as she tries to solidify her rule by staffing her councils with incompetent loyalists. Making matters worse is Cersei's increasing distrust of the Tyrells, particularly Margaery, who wed the new boy king Tommen after his brother Joffrey died at their wedding. Increasingly paranoid over a prophecy she believes foretells the deaths of her children and herself by the hands of her missing brother Tyrion, Cersei develops a dependency on alcohol, despite her disgust of alcoholism within the late king Robert. Her reign runs into problems from massive debt from before and during the war, compounded by her incompetent administrators' inability to resolve the situation. Most of the debt is owed to the Iron Bank of Braavos and the Faith of the Seven. Cersei flippantly brushes off representatives of the Iron Bank, announcing that she is deferring their payment for the (indefinite) duration of the continuing rebellions. In response, the Iron Bank freezes all of the realm's assets, refusing to grant new loans while calling in all outstanding debts, which leads to a banking crisis that nearly cripples the economy of Westeros. To settle the crown's debts to the Faith of the Seven, Cersei agrees to the restoration of that religion's military order, the Faith Militant, despite the large number of zealots that are gathering both in the city and in Westeros, many of whom believe the accurate charges of adultery leveled against her. Cersei does not have the foresight to realize that this is only trading one problem for another, as now that the Faith has armed soldiers at its command it feels less compelled to accept her authority. Hoping to weaken the Tyrell influence over the court, the masses, and King Tommen, Cersei dispatches Ser Loras Tyrell to lead an army and force a quick (and she hopes foolhardy) end to the siege of Stannis Baratheon's forces on Dragonstone. Ser Loras is gravely injured by boiling oil during his storming of the island fortress, and left clinging to life. Cersei tactlessly gloats about Loras' horrific injury to his sister Margaery. Rather than lessening the threat from the Tyrells, this action drives Margaery Tyrell to actively pursue destroying Cersei, causing the Tyrell-Lannister alliance to crumble. A scheme to have the Faith put Margaery on trial for largely invented accusations of adultery backfires when the newly-powerful religious leadership arrests and imprisons Cersei herself on similar (and accurate) charges. Cersei's brother and ex-lover Jaime travels the Riverlands to re-establish order and royal control in the war-torn region. He has become somewhat estranged from his sister and newly concerned with his own honor, which he believes is tarnished by past misdeeds. He is also deeply disturbed about the state of the Kingsguard, with Cersei raising unworthy knights to the elite group. After ending the siege of Riverrun bloodlessly, one of the last holdouts against his family's authority, he receives word that Cersei wants him to return and defend her in a trial by battle; however, Jaime learns from Lancel Lannister, who killed the late King Robert at Cersei's behest, that Cersei was indeed having an affair with him as Tyrion had told Jaime when he escaped King's Landing. Jaime also receives news of Cersei's involvement in the siege on Dragonstone. This waste of loyal soldiers and betrayal of much-needed allies is the last straw for Jaime, who burns and ignores Cersei's letter. Brienne of Tarth's quest for Sansa leads her all over the Riverlands, where she observes the devastation and villainy that the war has wrought among the smallfolk. She notices a boy following her, only to discover Podrick Payne, former squire to Tyrion Lannister. Since he has had no real training, she agrees to teach him, promising to send him to bed with blisters and bruises every night. She also meets up with Ser Hyle, a knight from her past who was with her and King Renly before he was murdered. He believes that she did not kill Renly and he joins her on her quest, witnessing her battle prowess when she confronts three outlaws. She also meets up with Lord Tarly, who despises her and insults her despite Ser Hyle's praise of her battle prowess. Eventually she is captured by the Brotherhood Without Banners and sentenced to death by Stoneheart, a reanimated Catelyn Stark, who wrongly believes Brienne has betrayed her. Brienne is told she will be allowed to live if she agrees to find and kill Jaime Lannister. Refusing, she and some of her companions are hanged, and as the nooses strangle them she screams out one as-yet unrevealed word. In the Eyrie, Sansa poses as Petyr's bastard daughter Alayne, befriending young Robert Arryn, managing the household for her "father," and receiving informal training in royal politics from him. During this time, Petyr appears to be carefully manipulating his murdered wife's former bannermen, and his once precarious hold on the Protectorship of the Vale is beginning to seem less tenuous. He eventually reveals that he has betrothed Sansa to Harrold Hardyng, Robert's heir; when the sickly Robert dies, Sansa will reveal her true identity, and reclaim her family stronghold of Winterfell, aligning it with the Vale in the process. On the Iron Islands, Aeron Damphair calls a Kingsmoot in order to decide who would succeed Balon Greyjoy as king of the Iron Islands. Hotly contested by Balon's brother Victarion Greyjoy and daughter Asha Greyjoy, eventually his brother, Euron Greyjoy, the exiled "Crow's Eye", is chosen as king due to his promise that he can control dragons with a recently acquired horn, which will help the islanders conquer all of Westeros. Asha wanted to make peace with the mainland while they were still ahead, and Victarion wanted to continue raiding, but Euron intends to conquer the entire continent outright. Asha and Victarion realize this is absurd, as the Ironborn do not have the numbers for this, nor are their forces skilled at land warfare, once they advance beyond the coasts. The fleet of the Iron Men attacks and captures the Shield Islands at the mouth of the River Mander, threatening House Tyrell's seat at Highgarden. Victarion considers this mere show however, estimating that once the Redwyne fleet returns (from the siege at Dragonstone) they will once more lose the islands. Euron then sends his brother Victarion east to woo Daenerys Targaryen on his behalf, but a bitter Victarion, whose wife was raped by Euron (then killed by Victarion), instead plans to marry her himself. In Dorne, Doran Martell is confronted by three of his brother Oberyn's eight bastard daughters—known collectively as the Sand Snakes—who all want justice for their father's death. They are not appeased by the prospect of receiving the head of Gregor Clegane, since it was Oberyn himself who killed him. They all want war, but in a different manner. They are inciting the commonfolk, so Doran has seven of the eight Sand Snakes confined to cells in the palace, even the very young ones, so that no one can use them against him. A bold attempt by Doran's daughter Arianne Martell and her lover, Ser Arys Oakheart of the Kingsguard, to crown Doran's ward Myrcella Baratheon as queen of Westeros under Dornish law is thwarted by Doran. The attempt leaves Myrcella's face scarred, and results in the death of Ser Arys, straining the new alliance with House Lannister and the Iron Throne, even as another member of the Kingsguard is on his way to Dorne with the head of Gregor Clegane, the knight who raped and murdered Doran's sister Elia years before. Though angry with his daughter, Doran reveals to her that he has long had his own subtler plan for vengeance. Her brother Quentyn has gone east to bring back "Fire and Blood." In the prologue, Pate, a young apprentice at the Citadel in Oldtown, is studying to become a maester. He has stolen an important key to a depository of books and records at the request of a stranger in exchange for a reward. After delivering the key, the stranger double-crosses and kills Pate by surreptitiously poisoning him. At the end of the novel, Samwell Tarly arrives at the Citadel to begin his training where he meets a fellow apprentice who introduces himself as "Pate." Jon Snow orders Samwell Tarly to the Citadel in Oldtown via Braavos, where he can research the Others and study to become a Maester. Sam is accompanied by aging Maester Aemon, the wildling mother Gilly, her newborn babe, and sworn brother Dareon. The voyage across the Narrow Sea is underway before Sam realizes Jon swapped the sons of Gilly and Mance Rayder. The ruse was meant to protect the Wildling "prince" from Melisandre's fiery sacrifice but also put Gilly's son at risk, causing her much grief. Aemon gets very sick and they need to wait in Braavos for his health to improve, costing them their ride. Seeming to give up on his vows and companions, Dareon indulges in many harborside sins. After a Summer Islander tells Aemon about seeing the dragons firsthand, Aemon decides that Daenerys has come to fullfill a prophecy. Driven to help his niece fullfill her destiny, Aemon dies shortly after they leave Braavos. Brought together by their own grief, Sam and Gilly become intimate. Arriving in Braavos, Arya Stark finds her way to the House of Black and White, a temple associated with the assassins known as the Faceless Men. As a novice there, Arya attempts to master their belief that Faceless Men have no true identity by both throwing all her treasures into the water (except her sword, Needle, which she cannot throw away due to Needle's symbolization of all she lost and left behind) and posing as a girl called "Cat of the Canals". Once a month (on the night of the black moon) she must tell her mentor, the Kindly Man, three new words and three new things. However, her former identity continues to assert itself in the form of wolf dreams, and also when she kills Dareon for abandoning the Night's Watch and his sworn brother, Samwell Tarly. Sam and "Cat" meet briefly without knowing one another. The morning after Dareon's murder, she admits to the Kindly Man that it was "Arya" who committed it, and is given a glass of warm milk as punishment. After drinking, she wakes up blind the following morning.
797326	/m/03cv13	Abarat	Clive Barker	2002	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Abarat focuses on Candy Quackenbush, a teenage girl frustrated with her life in Chickentown, Minnesota. After an argument with her teacher over a school project, Candy leaves the school and goes to the edge of town, where she sees the remains of a lighthouse. She then encounters a master thief named John Mischief, whose brothers live on his horns. Because he is pursued by a sinister creature named Mendelson Shape, Mischief sends Candy to light the lamp in the lighthouse, which summons an ocean known as the Sea of Izabella from a parallel world. After giving her a key to protect and extingushing the light, Mischief and Candy ride the seas to Abarat. A group of creatures carry them to a nearby island where Candy is separated from him. On the island, Candy learns that the Abarat consists of twenty-five islands, each occupying a different hour of the day, and was formerly connected to Candy's world before the harbor's destruction by Abaratian authorities. Thereafter the story follows her adventures as she discovers the crises affecting the Abarat, and gains intimations that she may be destined to conclude these. The story also introduces her chief antagonists: the sorcerer known as Christopher Carrion, his grandmother Mater Motley, and the industrialist Rojo Pixler, all of whom seek to dominate the Abarat.
797758	/m/03cwpt	Sophie's World	Jostein Gaarder	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Sophie Amundsen (Sofie Amundsen in the Norwegian version) is a 14-year-old girl who lives in Norway in the year 1990. She lives with her mother and her cat, Sherekan, as well as with her goldfish, a tortoise, and two budgerigars. Her father is a captain of an oil tanker, and is away for most of the year. The book begins with Sophie receiving two anonymous messages in her mailbox (the first asking, "Who are you?", the second asking, "Where does the world come from?") and a postcard addressed to 'Hilde Møller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen'. Shortly afterwards, she receives a packet of papers, part of a correspondence course in philosophy. With these mysterious communications, Sophie becomes the student of a fifty-year-old philosopher, Alberto Knox. Initially, he is completely anonymous to Sophie, but he later reveals more and more about himself. The papers and the packet both turn out to be from him, but the post card is not; it is addressed from someone called Albert Knag, who is a major in a United Nations peacekeeping unit stationed in Lebanon. Alberto teaches her about the history of philosophy. She gets a substantive and understandable review from the Pre-Socratics to Jean-Paul Sartre. Along with the philosophy lessons, Sophie and Alberto try to outwit the mysterious Albert Knag, who appears to have God-like powers, which Alberto finds quite troubling. Sophie learns about medieval philosophy while being lectured by Alberto, dressed as a monk, in an ancient church, and she learns about Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in a French café. Various philosophical questions and methods of reasoning are put before Sophie, as she attempts to work them out on her own. Many of Knox's philosophic packets to her are preluded by more short questions, such as "Why is Lego the most ingenious toy in the world?" Alberto takes Sophie from the Hellenistic civilization to the rise of Christianity and its interaction with Ancient Greek thought on to the Middle Ages. Over the course of the book, he covers the Renaissance, Baroque, Enlightenment and Romantic periods, with the philosophies that stemmed from them. Mixed in with the philosophy lessons is a plot rather more akin to normal teenage novels, in which Sophie interacts with her mother and her friend Joanna. This is not the focus of the story but simply serves to move the plot along. After the introduction to George Berkeley, the perspective of the novel shifts to the mysterious Hilde. Sophie and Alberto's entire world is revealed to be a literary construction by Albert Knag as a present for his daughter, Hilde, on her 15th birthday. The novel continues with Hilde's story as a framing device for Sophie's story, but the stories intertwine as Hilde's understanding of philosophy grows alongside Sophie's understanding. As Albert Knag continues to meddle with Sophie's life, Alberto helps her fight back by teaching her everything he knows about philosophy. That, he explains, is the only way to understand her world. Meanwhile, Alberto's lessons allow Hilde to develop her own understanding of Sophie's world and use her knowledge against her father for exercising too much power over Sophie's world. This is laced with events that appear to be scientifically impossible, such as Sophie seeing her reflection in a mirror wink at her with both eyes or actually seeing Socrates and Plato. Hilde's book (by her father) ends with Sophie and Alberto disappearing. Gaarder reveals that they have managed to escape Albert Knag's mind into Hilde's world as spirits.
800747	/m/03d1fx	The Commitments	Roddy Doyle	1987		 Two friends - Derek Scully and "Outspan" Foster - get together to form a band, but soon realise that they don't know enough about the music business to get much further than their small neighbourhood in the Northside of Dublin. To solve this problem, they recruit a friend they'd had from school, Jimmy Rabbite, to be their manager. He accepts graciously, but only if he can make fundamental changes to the group, the first being the sacking of the third, and mutually disliked, member - their synth player. After this, Rabbitte gets rid of their name, making them "The Commitments", ("All the good 60s bands started with a 'the'.") and, most importantly, forming them from another synth-pop group to the face of what he thinks will be the Dublin-Soul revolution. ("Yes, Lads. You'll be playing Dublin Soul!") He witnesses a young man singing drunkenly into a microphone at a friend's wedding and is struck by the fact he is singing "something approximating music". He decides the band should play soul music. Jimmy places an ad in the local paper reading "Have you got soul? Then Dublin's hardest working band is looking for you". Eventually, he gets together a mismatched group with seemingly no musical talent, led by mysterious stranger Joey "The Lips" Fagan, who claims to have played trumpet with Joe Tex and the Four Tops. They quickly start learning how to play their instruments and perform a number of local gigs. With music fanatic Jimmy Rabbite as their manager, the Commitments seek to fulfil their goal of bringing soul to Dublin. In the beginning, Jimmy includes all of the country Ireland, but later realised that the culchies have everything whereas the Dubliners were the working-class and had nothing. Bringing soul music to Ireland was then reduced merely to the city. * Steven "James" Clifford - Pianist, * Imelda Quirke - Backup Vocalist, * Natalie Murphy - Backup Vocalist, * Mickah Wallace - Bouncer/ 2nd Drummer, * Bernie McGloughin - Backup Vocalist, * Dean Fay - Saxophonist, * Liam "Outspan" Foster - Guitarist, * Billy Mooney - 1st Drummer (quit because he couldn't stand Deco), * Joey "The Lips" Fagan - Trumpet, * Derek Scully - Bassist, * Declan "Deco" Cuffe - Lead Vocalist. Tensions run high between the band members, not helped by the jealousy and animosity Joey receives from other male members due to the attention he receives from the female backing singers. The band slowly becomes more and more musically competent and draws bigger and more enthusiastic audiences. But the band falls apart after a gig when Joey is seen kissing Imelda and a fight ensues—all while Jimmy is negotiating to record the band's first single with an independent label. Fagan soon goes to America after Imelda tells him she is pregnant (she was actually lying, only saying this for the attention). In the end, Jimmy, along with the band's other founding members and Mickah, form The Brassers, an Irish hybrid of punk and country. They plan on inviting James into the band after he's finished his medical degree, and they discuss getting the ladies involved as well.
803239	/m/03d5_q	At Heaven's Gate				 Sue Murdock searches for redemption throughout the novel. Her father repeatedly laments his inability to relate to his daughter. Sue rejects his assistance because she believes he is trying to control her. She has a stormy relationship with Jerry Calhoun, who, perhaps because he is profoundly naive and not particularly bright, is unable to understand her. Jerry clings to quaint notions of Southern honor and is respectful of the power and authority Bogan Murdock represents. Therefore, Sue can never be happy with him. Sue rejects Jerry and soon finds herself with Slim Sarrett, a writer with a room full of pseudo-intellectual friends. Sue falls for Slim, who rejects honor and power in a way Jerry never could. In the end, however, nothing about Slim is real: he is a dedicated liar, deceitful to the last detail. As Sue discovers the depths of his lies &mdash; about his past and sexuality &mdash; she also discovers that he is not even, in fact, a particularly talented writer. After rejecting Slim, and his artist's pose, she falls into a tepid relationship with Sweetwater. Sweetwater is a cynic, unlike Jerry, and a realist, unlike Slim. Sweetwater is also profoundly honest and struggles to maintain true to himself. Sweetwater falls in love with Sue, but she never loves him in return. One can read Sue to represent the Southern lower class, abused and controlled for generations. Who can help the lower class escape its shackles? Not the lower class man who tastes a bit of success and abandons his class to serve selfish interests, as Jerry does. Not the intellectual, the artist, who poses at everything and is unable to fight for anything. The seduction is great, but the reward is small. Perhaps the honest man, Sweetwater's labor organizer, can save the class he to raise up even as he is betrayed and rejected by it. Perhaps Sue knows that Sweetwater's realism and devotion to cause can save her, but she is little interested in it.
805640	/m/03dc3v	Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History	Stephen Jay Gould	1989	{"/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 Gould's thesis in Wonderful Life was that chance was one of the decisive factors in the evolution of life on earth. He based this argument on the wonderfully preserved fossil fauna of the Burgess Shale, animals from around 505 million years ago, just after the Cambrian explosion. Gould argued that although the Burgess animals were all exquisitely adapted to their environment, most of them left no modern descendants and, more importantly, that the surviving creatures did not seem better adapted than their now extinct contemporaneous neighbors. He proposed that given a chance to "rewind the universe" and flip the coin of natural selection again, we might find ourselves living in a world populated by descendants of Hallucigenia rather than Pikaia. This seems to indicate that fitness for existing conditions does not ensure long-term survival, especially when conditions change rapidly, and that the survival of many species depends more on chance events and features, which Gould terms exaptations, fortuitously beneficial under future conditions than on features best adapted under the present environment (see also extinction event). He regarded Opabinia as so important to understanding the Cambrian explosion that he wanted to call his book Homage to Opabinia.
807939	/m/03dhn0	You Shall Know Our Velocity	Dave Eggers	2002-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Will has surprisingly come into a large amount of money, around $80,000. His photograph screwing in a lightbulb has been made a silhouette and is being used as a picture for the company's lightbulb boxes. He is uncomfortable having this money, as he feels he did nothing to earn it, and is left with a sense of guilt and purposelessness. Shortly after receiving the sum, Will and Hand's mutual childhood friend, Jack, was involved in a car accident. The pair had delusional ambitions to use the money to save his life, but to no avail. After Jack's death, Will and Hand are asked to help go through Jack's possessions in a storage facility, where Hand decides to wander around and leaves Will. During Hand's absence, Will is brutally beaten by three men. Will and Hand agree that it is best not to go to the hospital, in case the attackers attempt to track them. As a result of his confusion due to a conglomerate of issues such as the large sum of money, Jack's death, and the beating, and other personal issues, Will and Hand plan to travel around the world visiting obscure countries and giving away all the money, bit by bit, to people who they arbitrarily decide are most deserving. According to Hand, they gave to people for the benefit of both parties, as a sacrament with the purpose of restoring a faith in humanity. The two come up with many creative ways of distributing the unwanted money. One plan involves taping money to a donkey in a graph paper pouch that reads "HERE I AM ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE", and another creating a treasure map for Estonian children. While on the journey the two friends do many wild and spontaneous things including practicing rolling over cars and jumping from tree to tree while twenty feet in the air. However without a solid set of criteria, or a definitive direction in their plan, this proves surprisingly difficult, and they experience much awkward confusion and moral uncertainty. They often fear being robbed and killed. Will becomes unstable and begins to lose his composure. The plot is both a log of the journey, but more so a look into the mind of the narrator, Will. A pseudo-sequel entitled '"The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water" follows Hand and the minor character Pilar in Central America. This short story is featured in the collection How We Are Hungry: Stories.
808425	/m/03dj6j	The Sword of Shannara	Terry Brooks	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The Sword of Shannaras events take place 2000 years after an apocalypse has occurred: nuclear holocaust has wiped out most of the planet. During this time, Mankind mutated into several distinct races: Men, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Trolls, all named after creatures from "age-old" myths. Also, the Elves begin to emerge after having been in seclusion and hiding for centuries. The warring that caused the holocaust is referred to as the "Great Wars" throughout the novel. These wars rearranged the planet's geographical attributes and wiped out most life forms on Earth. As a result of the Great Wars, most advanced technology has been lost, thus most of the events in the Shannara series take place in a medieval setting. However, magic is also back into the world, rediscovered after the loss of technology. 1000 years before The Sword of Shannara, an Elf named Galaphile gathered all of the people who still had some knowledge of the old world to Paranor in an attempt to bring peace and order to all of the races. They named themselves the First Druid Council. However, a rogue Druid named Brona and a few followers left, taking the Ildatch with them; this magical tome had subverted their minds and had brought them under its control. 250 years later, Brona began the First War of the Races when he convinced all Men to attack the other races. He almost succeeded in seizing rule of the Four Lands, but the tide turned, and the war ended with his defeat and subsequent disappearance. The Druids divided the Four Lands among the races to reduce interracial tension, and then became reclusive, withdrawing to Paranor because of their shame at the betrayal by one of their own members. Two and a half centuries after the First War of the Races, Brona returned as the Warlock Lord, now with Skull Bearers as his servants. Chronicled in the prequel novel First King of Shannara, the Second War of the Races began with the destruction of the Druid Order. A lone Druid, Bremen, then forged a magical talisman for the express purpose of destroying the Warlock Lord; it was given to the Elven King, Jerle Shannara. As it takes the form of a blade, the talisman was named the Sword of Shannara. It succeeded in banishing the Warlock Lord, though he was not killed, while his entire army was subsequently defeated by the combined armies of the Elves and Dwarves. Yet peace came at a high price, as interracial tension was renewed and the Druids had seemingly vanished from the land. About five centuries later, the Ohmsford family of Shady Vale in the Southland took in the half-Elven child Shea. He took the name Ohmsford and was raised as a brother to the family's son Flick. Becoming inseparable, the brothers helped to run the family inn. The novel begins with Shea as a young man and the mysterious Allanon arriving in the Vale. Tall and dark, his face perpetually shadowed under his hood, he was the last of the Druids. Allanon warned the Ohmsford brothers that the Warlock Lord had returned to the Skull Kingdom in the Northland and was already coming for Shea, as he was the last descendant of Jerle Shannara—and therefore the only one capable of wielding the Sword of Shannara against the Warlock Lord. Allanon departed, leaving Shea three Blue Elfstones for protection. He told Shea to flee at the sign of the Skull. A few weeks later, a creature bearing a symbol of a skull showed up: a Skull Bearer, one of the Warlock Lord's "winged black destroyers", had arrived in town to search for Shea. The brothers were forced to flee with the Skull Bearer on their heels. They eventually took refuge in the nearby city of Leah where they found Shea's friend Menion, the son of the city's lord. Menion decided to accompany the two, and he traveled with them to Culhaven, to meet with Allanon and also encountering various monsters like the creature from the Mist Marsh and the Sirens. While at Culhaven, they are joined by a prince of Callahorn, Balinor Buckhannah, two elven brothers, Durin and Dayel Elessedil, and the dwarf Hendel. The party sets out for Paranor. But along the way, Shea falls over a waterfall and becomes separated from the group. Allanon spurs the group to continue on to Paranor, and they eventually reach it. Once there, the party gets into a battle with minions of the Warlock Lord and find that the Sword of Shannara has already been removed. The party then learns of the Warlock Lord's invasion of the Southland, and decide to split up to do what they can to stop it. Disguised by Allanon, Flick infiltrated the enemy camp and rescued the captive Elven King, Eventine Elessedil; at the same time, in Kern, Menion saved a woman named Shirl Ravenlock and immediately fell in love with her. Together, they organized an evacuation of Kern before the Northland army reached the city. Balinor returned to Tyrsis in order to activate the Border Legion, only to find that it had been disbanded. Balinor was then imprisoned by his insane brother Palance Buckhannah, who had taken control of Callahorn's rule. His advisor, Stenmin, had driven Palance insane by drugs fed to him, making him his pawn. With help from Menion, Balinor escaped and confronted both Palance and Stenmin. Practically cornered, Stenmin stabbed Palance as a distraction and fled. Now commanded by Balinor, Callahorn's reformed Border Legion marched out of Tyrsis and engaged the Northland army at the Mermiddon River, killing many Northlanders before being forced to pull back; the Border Legion used the time gained to retreat to Tyrsis and make preparations for defense. During the siege of Tyrsis, Hendel and Menion come upon Stenmin and some of his supporters. Hendel is killed, but Menion kills Stenmin. After about three days, the Border Legion was finally beaten back from the Outer Wall of Tyrsis as a result of treachery—the wall fell when the traitors destroyed the locks on the main gate, jamming it open. At the defenders' last stand on the Bridge of Sendic, the Northlanders abruptly broke and ran. After being captured by Gnomes as soon as he had gotten out of the river, Shea was rescued by the one-handed thief Panamon Creel and his mute Troll companion Keltset Mallicos. Journeying to the Northland, they reached the Skull Kingdom, where the insane Gnome deserter Orl Fane had carried the Sword of Shannara in his madness. Infiltrating the Warlock Lord's fortress in the Skull Mountain, Shea reached the sword and unsheathed it. He finally learned about its true power, which was its ability to confront those, when touched, with the truth about their lives. The Warlock Lord materialized and tried to destroy Shea, but the youth stood his ground and confronted his enemy with the sword. Although immune to physical weapons, the Warlock Lord vanished after being forced to confront the truth about himself: though he had deluded himself into believing that he was immortal, this is impossible. The Sword forced him to confront this paradox, and it killed him. Keltset sacrificed himself to save his companions during the Skull Kingdom's destruction. In the south, the Northland army retreated after the Warlock Lord's downfall. Allanon saved Shea's life and revealed himself as Bremen's centuries-old son, before disappearing to sleep. Peace returned to the Four Lands. Balinor took up his country's rule, while Dayel and Durin returned to the Westland, and Menion returned to Leah with Shirl. Reuniting, Shea and Flick returned to Shady Vale.
810224	/m/03dln2	Summer of Night	Dan Simmons	1991-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Set in Elm Haven, Illinois, in 1960, Summer of Night recounts its five pre-teen protagonists’ discovery that eerie, terrifying events are unfolding in the Old Central School. Operatives, including a dead soldier; giant worms with rows of sharp, serrated teeth; the animated corpse of a deceased teacher; schoolyard bullies; the driver of a rendering truck; their school teacher, and the principal of the school, serve a centuries-old evil that seeks to be reborn in their time—and in their town. It is only by banding together that the pre-teens can hope to defeat the monstrosity before it destroys them, their friends, their families—and, possibly, the world. The sequel to Summer of Night is called A Winter Haunting, in which Dale Stewart, now grown, returns to Elm Haven. Another sequel is Children of the Night, which features Mike O'Rourke, now a Roman Catholic priest, who is sent on a mission to investigate bizarre events in a European city. Another Summer of Night character, Dale's younger brother, Lawrence Stewart, appears as a minor character in Simmons' thriller Darwin's Blade while the adult Cordie Cooke appears in Fires of Eden.
811486	/m/03dphj	The Elfstones of Shannara	Terry Brooks	1982	{"/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The magical Ellcrys tree was beginning to die, thus weakening the spell that held the Forbidding. The Ellcrys spoke to the Chosen, telling them of a rebirth, a process which enables a new Ellcrys to be born—but this can only be done at the fountain of the Bloodfire. The Chosen then informs their Prince Ander Elessedil and King Eventine Elessedil of the matter. However, there is no one who knows of the location of the Bloodfire. A search in the ancient Elven library reveals one reference to the Bloodfire. It states that it lies in a place named "Safehold". At the same time, a powerful Demon, the Dagda Mor, escapes from the waning Forbidding, bringing with it the Reaper and the Changeling. The Dagda Mor then sends the Reaper to kill all the Chosen, and the Changeling to act as a spy for the demons within the Elven city. Eventine finds himself at a loss, for only the Chosen can make the rebirth of the Ellcrys happen. The Druid Allanon appeared, telling Eventine that his coming must remain a secret, and promising to find out the location of Safehold. He went to the ancient Druid keep, Paranor, in an attempt to locate Safehold. After learning its location, Allanon was ambushed by the Dagda Mor and a handful of Furies. He retreated to Storlock for a time, and then went to Havenstead with Wil Ohmsford--who is a Healer, a descendant of Jerle Shannara and bearer of the Elfstones--to find Amberle Elessedil, who is King Eventine's granddaughter and a Chosen, who abandoned her duty to the Ellcrys and fled the Elven capital, Arborlon. She eventually agreed to return to Arborlon with them, only giving in when Demon Wolves were closing in upon them. En route, close to the Silver River, Allanon, Amberle and Wil were ambushed by Demon wolves. Allanon fended off the Demons while Wil and Amberle escaped to safety. The King of the Silver River took them in and sheltered them just before they would have been caught; after talking with him, the duo discover they have been transported miles away from where they started, and have no idea if Allanon survived or where he was. They decided to continue on to Arborlon and hoped to meet him there, but on the way their horse was stolen by Rovers, a gypsy-like group of people who travel in caravans and recognize no laws but their own. Wil insisted that they get the horse back, and ingratiated himself to the Rovers and their leader Cephalo by using his skills as healer to help some of the sick or mildly injured members of the family. He met Eretria, a beautiful Rover girl Cephalo said was his daughter; in reality, she was not his daughter at all and would be sold now that she was of an age to marry. She was immediately attracted to Wil and wanted to help him get the horse back, if he promised to take her with him when he escaped. A giant demon attacked the caravan and Wil was forced to use the Elfstones to defend the Rovers, finally destroying the demon, but damaging himself somehow in a way he did not understand. Cephalo was angry with him, but let he and Amberle leave with their horse. Eretria was left behind but promised to Wil that they would meet again. After being pursued by demons, Wil and Amberle managed to regroup with Allanon and return to Arborlon. Amberle received a seed from the dying Ellcrys and prepared to go to Safehold with Wil, six Elven companions and the Captain of the Home Guard, Crispin. After they journeyed by boat to the Elven outpost at Drey Wood, the group found the entire garrison that had been stationed at the outpost dead—and the Reaper, who had killed all of them. They managed to escape by setting off down the river once more, but two of the Elven guards were run down and killed in the process. Wil realized that there must have been a spy in Arborlon, and that if the spy knew about Drey Wood, then it was likely their mission was known and they would be pursued the entire way. The party then goes to the Matted Brakes, where another two of the group are killed by an unknown massive creature. After escaping from the Brakes, the remaining group of five found themselves at an ancient Elven fortress named Pykon. The group made the decision to rest the night there, but the Reaper found them again and killed the final two Elven hunters. Wil and Amberle ran into the network of tunnels inside of the Pykon to try to find Crispin, who had gone into there to try to find a way out. Wil and Amberle finally lost the Reaper by destroying a bridge over a gorge, but they lost Crispin as well. During the battle, Wil failed to unlock the power of the Elfstones and believed that his human blood was blocking him from using them. He was resigned to not being able to use the stones anymore, and decided that they would just have to get along without them. The duo met the young Wing Rider Perk soon after, who agreed to take them into the Wilderun on his Roc, Genewen. He also agreed to fly over the Hollows every day for a week in case the duo had need of his help. Meanwhile, Allanon and the Elves went to war with the Demons, beginning the War of the Forbidding. The Elven army took up two positions in two mountain passes named Halys Cut and Worl Run. Having no weapons, the Demons used human-wave tactics in the ensuing battles and literally ran over the Elven army, even managing to injure King Eventine. Ander's brother, Arion Elessedil, was killed as well in Worl Run. Defeated, the Elven force retreated first to Baen Draw, successfully defending it until it was discovered that they were being flanked. They then retreated to Arborlon, their last line of defense. In the process, they lost their commander, Kael Pindanon. Shortly after their return to Arborlon, Dwarf and Troll contingents joined them, uniting banners from all four of the Four Lands for the first time in history. Eventine was recovering in his room when the Changeling, disguised for months as Eventine's pet dog Manx, tried to kill the old king in his bed. Eventine killed the Demon, but was badly wounded and near death. Amberle and Wil traveled to Grimpen Ward, a town of thieves and cutthroats in the Widlerun. Wil caused a stir by healing an old inkeeper woman and jokingly claiming he did it with magic. Thieves try to rob he and Amberle, but they were rescued by Cephalo and Eretria. Wil told Cephalo of his need to go to the Hollows, claiming it was for a rare medicine for Eventine's daughter. Cephalo takes them to Hebel, an old hermit who lives in the Wildrun. Hebel recognized the name Safehold and knew where it was; under a lonely mountain in the hollows, the domain of the Witch Sisters. Wil and Amberle went on despite Hebel's warnings, after parting ways with the Rovers. They soon found out that the Elfstones were stolen by Cephelo, and that he had wanted them ever since he had seen Wil use them on the demon that attacked the caravan. Wil left Amberle at the edge of the Hollows and pursued Cephelo. Eretria once again helped Wil to locate Cephelo only to find that he and the rest of his followers were killed by the Reaper. Wil regained the Elfstones and traveled back to the rim of the Hollows with Eretria. He found Amberle missing. Hebel appeared and agreed to track Amberle for Wil. Together with Hebel's dog, Drifter, they tracked Amberle to the witch Mallenroh's tower. Mallenroh captured them and decided to keep the Elfstones for herself, locking up Wil and the rest as prisoners until Wil agreed to give her the stones. Mallenroh's identical twin sister Morag arrived, and the Witch Sisters fought and killed each other. Wil, Eretria, Hebel, and Drifter escaped with Amberle, the Elfstones, and Mallenroh's servant, Wisp; who brought them to the Bloodfire. Amberle absorbed both the Bloodfire and bathed the seed of the Ellcrys in it. The Reaper attacked them and killed Wisp, but Wil destroyed it be realizing that he wasn't unable to use the Elfstones because of his human blood, but because he was afraid of them and had formed a mental block against using them. He broke the block, focusing the power of the Elfstones upon the Reaper's cloaked face and destroying it. Wil had Amberle called Perk, who brought Wil, Amberle and Eretria back to Arborlon while Hebel returned home. By this point, the Demons had begun a full frontal assault upon Arborlon. Despite desperate attempts to blunt the attacks, the seven gates fell one by one to the superior numbers of the Demons. The Demons eventually broke through the last of the Elven capital's major defenses (the seventh gate). At this point, Allanon engaged and defeated the Dagda Mor in a titanic battle while the forces of "good", now severely depleted, regrouped at their last line of defense: the Gardens of Life, where the Ellcrys resided. The Demons tried to reach the Ellcrys to destroy her, but they were held back by those forces of "good" just long enough so that Wil and Amberle could fly in. Amberle touched the dead Ellcrys and was transformed into the new Ellcrys; and with this action, Amberle restored the Forbidding, banishing the Demons back to their alternate universe. It was revealed by Allanon to Wil that he knew all along that Amberle would become the new Ellcrys. Wil was angry and told Allanon he should have been honest, but Allanon claimed that she would not have believed him. He reminds Wil that Amberle knew what would happen and made the choice herself, and that no one forced her. She did what only she could do, and in so doing saved humanity from the Demons. Wil was still bitter about the deception, because he had loved Amberle and didn't want to lose her the way he had. It is then revealed that Allanon has aged, because he used too much of the magic in the fighting with the Demons. He said he was going to Paranor to sleep, and then left in the middle of the night without seeing or speaking with anyone else. Eventine passed away, and Ander became the new King. With the Demons banished once again, the survivors the War returned to their homes. Wil visited the Ellcrys and came to terms with Amberle's sacrifice. He then left Arborlon to continue his studies as a healer, taking Eretria with him.
811651	/m/03dpvb	The Mysterious Island	Jules Verne	1874	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 The book tells the adventures of five Americans on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. The story begins in the American Civil War, during the siege of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America. As famine and death ravage the city, five northern prisoners of war decide to escape by the unusual means of hijacking a balloon. The five are Cyrus Smith, a railroad engineer in the Union army (named Cyrus Harding in some English translations); his black manservant Neb (short for Nebuchadnezzar), whom Verne repeatedly states is not a slave but an ex-slave who had been freed by Smith; the sailor Bonadventure Pencroff (who is addressed only by his surname, but his "Christian name", Bonadventure, is given to their boat; in other translations, he is also known as Pencroft); his protégé Harbert Brown (called Herbert in some translations), a young boy whom Pencroff raises as his own after the death of his father (Pencroff's former captain); and the journalist Gedéon Spilett (Gideon Spilett in English versions). The company is completed by Cyrus' dog 'Top'. After flying in stormy weather for several days, the group crash-lands on a cliff-bound, volcanic, unknown (and fictitious) island, described as being located at , about east of New Zealand. (In reality, the closest island is located at . In location and description though, the phantom island Ernest Legouve Reef may correspond to the rock that is left of the mysterious island at the end of the novel. ) They name it "Lincoln Island" in honor of American President Abraham Lincoln. With the knowledge of the brilliant engineer Smith, the five are able to sustain themselves on the island, producing fire, pottery, bricks, nitroglycerin, iron, a simple electric telegraph, a home on a stony cliffside called "Granite House", and even a seaworthy ship. They also manage to figure out their geographical location. Throughout their stay on the island, the group has to overcome bad weather, and eventually adopts and domesticates an orangutan, Jupiter, abbreviated to Jup (or Joop, in Jordan Stump's translation). The mystery of the island seems to come from periodic and inexplicable dei ex machina: the unexplainable survival of Cyrus Smith from his fall from the balloon, the mysterious rescue of his dog Top from a dugong, the presence of a box full of equipment (guns and ammunition, tools, etc.), the finding of a message in the sea calling for help, the finding of a lead bullet in the body of a young pig, and so on. Finding a message in a bottle, the group decides to use a freshly built small ship to explore the nearby Tabor Island, where a castaway is supposedly sheltered. They go and find Ayrton (from In Search of the Castaways) living like a wild beast, and bring him back to civilization and redemption. Coming back to Lincoln Island, they are confused by a tempest, but find their way to the island thanks to a fire beacon which no one seems to have lit. At a point, Ayrton's former crew of pirates arrives at the Lincoln Island to use it as their hideout. After some fighting with the heroes, the pirate ship is mysteriously destroyed by an explosion. Six of the pirates survive and considerably injure Harbert through a gunshot. They pose a grave threat to the colony, but suddenly the pirates are found dead, apparently in combat, but with no visible wounds. Harbert contracts malaria and is saved by a box of sulphate of quinine, which mysteriously appeared on the table in the Granite House. The secret of the island is revealed when it turns out to be Captain Nemo's hideout, and home harbour of the Nautilus. It is stated that having escaped the Maelstrom at the end of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the Nautilus sailed the oceans of the world until all its crew except Nemo had died. Now an old man with a beard, Nemo returned the Nautilus to its port under Lincoln Island. All along it was Captain Nemo who had been the savior of the heroes, provided them with the box of equipment, sent the message revealing Ayrton, planted the mine that destroyed the pirate ship, and killed the pirates with an "electric gun" (Most likely one of the air rifles that is used in the previous novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea). On his death bed Captain Nemo reveals his true identity as an Indian Prince Dakkar, a son of a Raja of the then independent territory of Bundelkund and a nephew of the Indian hero Tippu-Sahib. After taking part in the failed Indian Rebellion of 1857, Prince Dakkar escaped to a deserted island with twenty of his compatriots and commenced the building of the Nautilus with the new name of Captain Nemo. Nemo tells his life story to Cyrus Smith and his friends and dies, saying "God and my country!" The Nautilus is then scuttled and serves as Captain Nemo's tomb. Eventually, the island explodes in a volcanic eruption. Jup the orangutan falls down a crack in the ground and dies. The colonists, warned by Nemo, find themselves at sea on the last remaining boulder of the island that is above sea level. They are rescued by the ship Duncan, which has come to pick up Ayrton and was itself informed by a message left on Tabor Island by Nemo.
811855	/m/03dq3b	The Last Chronicle of Barset	Anthony Trollope	1867	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Last Chronicle of Barset concerns an indigent but learned clergyman, the Reverend Josiah Crawley, the curate of Hogglestock, as he stands accused of stealing a cheque. The novel is notable for the non-resolution of a plot continued from the previous novel in the series, The Small House at Allington, involving Lily Dale and Johnny Eames. Its main storyline features the courtship of the Rev. Mr Crawley's daughter, Grace, and Major Henry Grantly, son of the wealthy Archdeacon Grantly. The Archdeacon, although allowing that Grace is a lady, doesn't think her of high enough rank or wealth for his widowed son; his position is strengthened by the Reverend Mr Crawley's apparent crime. Almost broken by poverty and trouble, the Reverend Mr Crawley hardly knows himself if he is guilty or not; fortunately, the mystery is resolved just as Major Grantly's determination and Grace Crawley's own merit force the Archdeacon to overcome his prejudice against her as a daughter-in-law. As with Lucy Robarts in Framley Parsonage, the objecting parent finally invites the young lady into the family; this new connection also inspires the Dean and Archdeacon to find a new, more prosperous, post for Grace's impoverished father. Through death or marriage, this final volume manages to tie up more than one thread from the beginning of the series. One subplot deals with the death of Mrs. Proudie, the virago wife of the Bishop of Barchester, and his subsequent grief and collapse. Mrs. Proudie, upon her arrival in Barchester in Barchester Towers, had increased the tribulations of the gentle Mr. Harding, title character of The Warden; he dies of a peaceful old age, mourned by his family and the old men he loved and looked after as Warden.
814355	/m/03dsb8	Emperor of America	Richard Condon	1990-01	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A nuclear device explodes in Washington including the White House. The Royalist Party and the National Rifle Association are nominally those responsible but Condon's target is Reaganism and its legacy, embodied in the character of an Army colonel, Caesare Appleton, who becomes Emperor Caesare I.
814647	/m/03dshg	Nana	Émile Zola	1880	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nana tells the story of Nana Coupeau's rise from streetwalker to high-class cocotte during the last three years of the French Second Empire. Nana first appears in the end of L'Assommoir (1877), another of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, in which she is portrayed as the daughter of an abusive drunk; in the end, she is living in the streets and just beginning a life of prostitution. The new novel opens with a night at the Théâtre des Variétés. The Exposition Universelle (1867) has just opened its doors. Nana is 15 years old (the number 18 mentioned in the book is not more than a fig leaf). Zola had taken care to make this clear to his readers by publishing an elaborate family tree of the Rougon-Macquarts in the newspaper Le Bien Public in 1878 when he started writing Nana. Zola describes in detail the performance of La blonde Vénus, a fictional operetta modelled after Offenbach's La belle Hélène, in which Nana is cast as the lead. She has never been seen on a stage, but tout Paris is talking about her. When asked to say something about her talents, Bordenave, the manager of the theatre (he calls it the brothel), explains that a star doesn't have to know how to sing or act: Nana has something else, dammit, and something that takes the place of everything else. I scented it out, and it smells damnably strong in her, or else I lost my sense of smell. Just as the crowd is about to dismiss her performance as terrible, young Georges Hugon shouts: "Très chic!" From then on, she owns the audience, and, when she appears only thinly veiled in the third act, Zola writes: All of a sudden, in the good-natured child the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater. The novel then goes on to show how Nana destroys every man who pursues her: Philippe Hugon, Georges' brother, imprisoned after stealing from the army, his employer, for Nana; Steiner, a wealthy banker who is ruined after hemorrhaging cash for Nana's decadence; Georges Hugon, who was so captivated with her from the beginning that, when he realized he could not have her, stabs himself with scissors in anguish; Vandeuvres, a wealthy owner of horses who burns himself in his barn after Nana ruins him financially; Fauchery, a journalist and publisher who falls for Nana early on, writes a scathing article about her later, and falls for her again and is ruined financially; and Count Muffat, whose faithfulness to Nana brings him back for humiliation after humiliation until he finds her in bed with his elderly father-in-law. Becker explains: "What emerges from [Nana] is the completeness of Nana's destructive force, brought to a culmination in the thirteenth chapter by a kind of roll call of the victims of her voracity" (118). When Nana's work is done, Zola has her die a horrible death from smallpox: What lay on the pillow was a charnel house, a heap of pus and blood, a shovelful of putrid flesh. The pustules had invaded the whole face, so that one pock touched the next. While outside her window the crowd is madly chanting To Berlin! To Berlin! (the time is July 1870, after the Ems Dispatch), Venus is decomposing, her moral corruption is now physical. And this is, Zola implies, what is about to happen to the Second Empire.
815691	/m/03dtbs	The Happy Return	C. S. Forester	1937	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In June 1808, Hornblower is in command of the 36-gun frigate HMS Lydia, with orders to sail to the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and supply a local landowner, Don Julian Alvarado, with muskets and powder. Don Julian is ready to revolt against the Spanish (at this point allied with Napoleon). Upon meeting Don Julian, however, Hornblower discovers he is an insane megalomaniac calling himself El Supremo ("the Almighty") who views himself as a deity, and who has been killing (by tying to a stake and leaving until death by thirst) all those who are "unenlightened" (that is to say, all those who do not recognise El Supremo's "godhead"). El Supremo claims to be a descendant of Moctezuma the holy god-made-man of the Aztecs and also of the Alvarado who invaded Mexico. While Hornblower replenishes his supplies, the 50-gun Spanish ship Natividad is sighted off the coast heading his way. Unwilling to risk fighting the much more powerful ship in a sea battle, Hornblower hides nearby until it anchors and then captures it in a daring, surprise nighttime boarding. El Supremo demands that it be turned over to him so that he may have a navy. After hiding the captured Spanish officers to save them from being murdered by El Supremo, Hornblower, needing his ally's cooperation, has no choice but to accede. After offloading the war supplies for El Supremo, Hornblower sails south. Off the coast of Panama, he encounters a Spanish lugger; an envoy, taking passage on the lugger, informs him of a new alliance between Spain and England against Napoleon. Another passenger on the lugger, the young Englishwoman Lady Barbara Wellesley, the (fictional) sister of Marquess Wellesley and Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington), comes aboard. The packet ship she was on in the Caribbean had been captured some time ago. Freed by Spain's changing sides and fleeing a yellow fever epidemic ashore, she requests passage back to England. Hornblower reluctantly agrees, and takes Lady Barbara and her maid Hebe aboard, warning her that he must first hunt and destroy the Natividad before El Supremo can ravage the entire coast of Central America. In the subsequent battle, Hornblower uses masterful tactics to sink the Natividad, though the Lydia herself is heavily damaged. Limping back to Panama to effect repairs, Hornblower (now that there is no further threat from the Natividad) is curtly informed that he is not welcome in any Spanish-American port. He manages to find a natural harbour on the island of Coiba, where he refits. After completing repairs, Hornblower encounters the haughty Spanish official once more, on the same lugger. He is invited aboard the lugger for some interesting news. There he finds El Supremo, a wretched, and still insane, captive chained to the deck, on his way to his execution. Hornblower sets sail for England. On the long voyage home, he and Lady Barbara become strongly attracted to each other. Nearing the end of their trip, she makes the first overt advances, and they embrace passionately. Although he is also strongly attracted to her and initially responds strongly, Barbara's maid Hebe walking in on them brings Hornblower to the realisation that he as captain is about to indulge in sexual dalliance with a passenger. He uses as an excuse to Barbara the fact that he is married to withdraw from the situation. Also, as a man of humble social standing, he is horribly aware that he cannot afford to risk offending the influential Wellesley clan by dallying with her. After her rejection, the embarrassed Lady Barbara avoids him as best she can. Fortunately, an English convoy is sighted soon afterwards and she transfers to a more spacious ship. They make stilted, formal good-byes. de:Der Kapitän sv:Order och kontraorder
816276	/m/03dvm_	The Wishsong of Shannara	Terry Brooks	1985-04-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Before the dawn of mankind, Demons created a book of dark magic. This book was so full of their essence that it became a living thing, with a will of its own. When the Druids gathered all knowledge and lore to themselves in the aftermath of the Great Wars, the book of Ildatch was uncovered after countless millennia. It remained harmless until the Druid Brona found it in the halls of Paranor and began to read its secrets. Brona was eventually subverted by the very power he sought to control and thus the Warlock Lord was born. Allanon thought that the dark book had been buried in the destruction of the Skull Kingdom after Shea triumphed over the Warlock Lord in The Sword of Shannara, but several of Brona's human servants recovered the book, and began to read. Allanon returned to the world due to the presence of a new evil, and once more he needed the aid of another generation of Ohmsfords. It is revealed that the Ildatch possessed a new generation of mortals, the Mord Wraiths, to pick up where the Warlock Lord left off. From their stronghold in the Eastland, the Mord Wraiths enslaved many Gnomes and sent them against the Dwarves. Allanon needed Brin's magic, the Wishsong, to enable him to enter the Maelmord, which is a living jungle that kills anyone who sets foot in it, and destroy the Ildatch. Helping her is Rone Leah, who is the great-grandson of Menion Leah. He wields the Sword of Leah, which is an "ordinary" sword until Allanon dipped it into the waters of the Hadeshorn to help him to protect Brin. Jair was left at home, despite his pleas to go with his older sister, but he ran north when Gnomes begin searching Shady Vale itself. Jair was left at home to watch over the Ohmsford house and to inform his parents of what had transpired with Allanon's visit. Not long after, however, he found himself in some trouble of his own when he stumbled across the gnome, Slanter, who was tracking the druid for the Mord Wraiths. After leaving Slanter unconscious and sneaking back into his house to retrieve the elfstones in a hope to defeat the Wraiths he headed north to the Highlands. He was soon caught up with by Slanter however. He was captured by the gnome patrol that Slanter and was given over to the gnome patrol he was tracking for. Later on when it seemed like there was no hope of escape and he was to be delivered to one of the Black Walkers, the gnome patrol stumbled on Garet Jax. A dark and mysterious warrior people knew as the Weapons Master. He freed Jair along with a small assistance from Slanter. The small company decided to head east to Culhaven, home of the dwarves, in hopes to find word of Allanon and Brin's passing. Jair met the King of the Silver River here; the ancient faerie creature informed him that unless he went to the Eastland, Brin would die. He offered Jair his help. He gave Jair 3 magics for Jair's three Elfstones and then said to him that Garet Jax would protect him on his way to Brin. In exchange, he asked Jair to purify the Silver River at its source, as the Silver River was being poisoned by the Mord Wraiths. Jair went on his quest, joined by the Gnome Slanter and a group from Culhaven, including the "Weapons Master" Garet Jax. Meanwhile, Brin and Rone watched helplessly as Allanon was killed by an ancient Demon, a Jachyra, that had been summoned by the Mord Wraiths. The creature was destroyed, but Allanon, the last of the Druids, was mortally wounded. Before he died, Allanon marked Brin's line to succeed him. Rone and Brin pressed on, hopeless. They met Cogline, a partially insane old man who tamed a Moor Cat named Whisper, and his skilled in many techniques granddaughter, Kimber Boh, who helped them on their journey. After a long trek, Brin left the others while they were in the sewers of the castle and finally reached the Ildatch. Brin found herself unable to destroy it because first, she became entranced, and then she was possessed by it. The tome coveted her power and wanted to use her body as a tool to wield its destruction. At the last moment, as he had just purified the Silver River, Jair appeared and found Brin almost deformed by her power and was horrified by her skeletal appearance she had assumed. He tried to snap Brin out of her trance with his illusions but failed, but the love of her brother snapped Brin out of her trance. She finally destroyed the book, and the siblings returned home, but at a price: Allanon was dead, along with nearly all of Jair's companions (all but Slanter). At the end, the shade of Allanon came to Brin and told her never to use the wishsong again then reminded her of her trust, and informed her that magic would soon fade from the world again.
816343	/m/03dvx4	First King of Shannara	Terry Brooks		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Horrified by the consequences of the First War of the Races, most of the Druids at Paranor stopped studying the arcane arts and turned to the sciences of the Old World. Brona, now known as the Warlock Lord, had been behind the First War of the Races, and was thought to have died during it. But he had secretly survived, and now has come to make a new war upon the Races. He is now stronger than ever, gathering spirits from the netherworld and a massive Troll and Gnome army under his banner. Brona's first target is Paranor, the home of the Druids who defeated him during the First War of the Races. He easily wipes out the Druid order. The only survivors are the followers of Bremen, an outcast Druid who continued to study the mystic arts and tried to warn the council before it was too late. Bremen had been cast from the Druid Council because he had an interest in magic, now forbidden since the disaster that turned the Druid Brona into the Warlock Lord. As a result, the council didn't trust him. Along with Tay Trefenwyd and Risca, who are the only Druids who believe Bremen and leave with him, Bremen leaves Paranor. Later, the three are joined by Mareth, an apprentice Druid with innate magic, as well as empathic powers. After reaching the Hadeshorn and summoning the shade of Galaphile, Bremen is given four visions. Bremen learns that the Warlock Lord seeks the Black Elfstone, which would grant him tremendous power. Bremen sends Tay Trefenwyd to recover the Black Elfstone before the Warlock Lord can, and sends Risca to warn and aid the Dwarves from the army of the Warlock Lord. Tay Trefenwyd, along with his best friend Jerle Shannara go to the king to seek his aid. However, the entire royal family is destroyed by the Warlock Lord's minions, all but for two young grandchildren. Tay starts to go and search for the Black Elfstone, believing action better than inaction, taking with him Jerle Shannara, as well as a small party of Elven Hunters, and Preia Starle, who loves Jerle Shannara, but whom Tay Trefenwyd loves. However, Tay never even speaks of his love for her, as his loyalty to Jerle is so strong. Tay eventually comes upon where the Black Elfstone is hidden, with an ancient race called the Chew Magna, who have been subverted by the magic of the Black Elfstone. Cloaking himself in magic that makes him one of them, Tay manages to recover the Black Elfstone. However, upon leaving the Chew Magna, they are discovered by the Warlock Lord's minions, and Tay has no magic left, having spent it all recovering the elfstone. Although he had been warned by Bremen on what would happen if the Black Elfstone is used, he uses it so that his friends can escape with the Black Elfstone. He destroys all the enemies, but is forced to sacrifice himself, drawing the air from his lungs rather than be subverted by the Black Elfstone. Meanwhile, Bremen, Kinson Ravenlock, and Mareth travel back to Paranor, fearing that the Druids are all already dead. On reaching Paranor, every Druid who remained is dead, and Bremen manages to recover the Eilt Druin, which he saw as pivotal in the creating of a weapon that can defeat the Warlock Lord. Bremen knows that only magic can fight magic, so he devises a plan to create a magical weapon to destroy the Warlock Lord: the Sword of Shannara. Bremen learns how to make a metal stronger than iron from Cogline, and manages to create the sword by the mixing of science and magic. Upon finding a smith skilled enough to create the sword, the reader discovers that the smith is the ancestor of Panamon Creel. Bremen also discovers his successor as a Druid, the boy who is revealed to be Allanon, and possesses incredibly penetrating eyes, an immense intelligence, and a talent for magic. The Sword is created by truth of existence, the only thing remaining to the shades of former Druids. The Warlock Lord could never face the truth that he had died centuries before, and the Sword would force that truth on him. Armed with truth, Bremen leads the battle in the Westland. He equips Jerle Shannara, the Elven King, with the Sword. After several battles, the Elves drive the Warlock Lord's armies from the Westland, and right into a trap set by the remains of the Dwarf army. During the final battle, Jerle confronts the Warlock Lord, and manages to defeat him but he fails to destroy him. To properly wield the talisman of truth, one must first be prepared to face the truth of his own life. Jerle simply could not reconcile the guilt he felt at his best friend's death, and so he lacked the ability to force truth on Brona. In this final battle, Risca is also killed. Kinson Ravenlock and Mareth are married (with Mareth forsaking the Druid ways), as are Jerle Shannara and Preia Starle. Meanwhile, Bremen spends three years teaching Allanon what he needs to know in order to be a Druid. Afterwards, Bremen, in old age, succumbs to death, walking into the Hadeshorn, to be carried to the afterlife by the shade of Galaphile. Before he goes, he reveals to Allanon that the Warlock Lord was not destroyed, but simply forced into hiding, and that the task of destroying him will be given to Allanon.
816527	/m/03dw8f	Time Stops for No Mouse	Michael Hoeye	1999	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the rodent-populated city of Pinchester lives Hermux Tantamoq, a watchmaker. When the beautiful adventuress and aviatrix Linka Perflinger drops into his shop to have him fix her watch, Hermux instantly falls in love. Then a shady-looking rat comes to pick up the watch instead... and with a little investigating, Hermux is head over heels into a mystery involving curious kidnappings, murders, and the formula of Eternal Youth, while Dr. Mennus tries to stop Hermux to get the bottle of eternal youth.
817035	/m/03dwx_	Barnaby Rudge	Charles Dickens	1841	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Gathered round the fire at the Maypole Inn, in the village of Chigwell, on a foul weather evening in the year 1775 were John Willet, proprietor of the Maypole, and his three cronies. One of the three, Soloman Daisy, tells a stranger at the inn a well-known local tale of the murder of Reuben Haredale which had occurred 22 years ago that very day. Reuben had been owner of the Warren, an estate in the area, now the residence of the deceased Reuben's brother, Geoffrey, and his niece, Reuben's daughter Emma Haredale. After the murder, Reuben's gardener and steward were missing and suspects in the crime. The steward's body was later found, identified only by clothes and jewelry. The gardener was never found and was assumed to be the murderer. Joe Willet, son of the Maypole proprietor, quarrels with his father because John treats 20-year-old Joe as a child. Finally having had enough of this ill treatment, Joe leaves the Maypole and goes for a soldier, stopping to say goodbye to the woman he loves, Dolly Varden, daughter of locksmith Gabriel Varden. Meanwhile, Edward Chester is in love with Emma Haredale. Both Edward's father, John Chester, and Emma's uncle, the Catholic Geoffrey Haredale, sworn enemies, oppose the union after Sir John untruthfully convinces Geoffrey that Edward's intentions are dishonorable. Sir John's intentions are to marry Edward to a woman with a rich interitance in order to support John's expensive lifestyle and to pay off his debtors. Edward quarrels with his father and leaves home for the West Indies. Barnaby Rudge, a local idiot, wanders in and out of the story with his pet raven, Grip. Barnaby's mother begins to receive visits from a shadowy highwayman whom she feels compelled to protect. She later gives up the annuity she had been receiving from Geoffrey Haredale and, without explanation, takes Barnaby and leaves the City hoping to escape the unwanted visitor. The story advances five years to a wintry evening in early 1780. On the 27th anniversary of Reuben Haredale's murder, Soloman Daisy, winding the bell tower clock, sees a ghost in the churchyard. He reports this hair-raising event to his friends at the Maypole and John Willet decides that Geoffrey Haredale should hear the story. He departs in a winter storm taking Hugh, hostler of the Maypole, as a guide. On the way back to the Maypole, John and Hugh are met by three men seeking the way to London and, finding it 13 miles off, seek refuge for the night. Beds are prepared for them at the Maypole. These visitors prove to be Lord George Gordon; his secretary, Gashford; and a servant, John Grueby. Next day the three depart for London, inciting anti-Catholic sentiment along the way and recruiting Protestant volunteers from which Ned Dennis, hangman of Tyburn, and Simon Tappertit, former apprentice to Gabriel Varden, are chosen as leaders. Hugh, finding a handbill left at the Maypole, joins the Protestant throng Dickens describes as "sprinkled doubtless here and there with honest zealots, but composed for the most part of the very scum and refuse of London, whose growth was fostered by bad criminal laws, bad prison regulations, and the worst conceivable police." Barnaby and his mother have been living quietly in a country village, their whereabouts unknown despite Geoffrey Haredale's attempts to find them. The mysterious stranger finds them and sends Stagg, the blind man, to attempt to get money from them. Barnaby and his mother then flee to London hoping to again lose their pursuer. When Barnaby and his mother arrive at Westminster Bridge they see a crowd of rioters heading for a meeting on the Surrey side of the river. Barnaby is duped by the rioters into joining them, despite his mother's pleas. The rioters then march on Parliament, and burn several Catholic churches and the homes of Catholic families. A detachment led by Hugh and Dennis head for Chigwell, leaving Barnaby to guard The Boot, the tavern they use as their headquarters, intent on exacting revenge on Geoffrey Haredale. The mob loots the Maypole on their way to the Warren, which they burn to the ground. Emma Haredale and Dolly Varden are taken captive by the rioters. Barnaby is taken prisoner by soldiers and held in Newgate, which the mob plans to burn. The mysterious stranger haunting Mrs. Rudge is captured by Haredale at the smoldering ruins of the Warren where he had gone to join the mob. He turns out to be Barnaby Rudge Sr., murderer of Reuben Haredale and his gardener. He switched clothes with the dead gardener to throw suspicion off himself. The rioters capture Gabriel Varden, with the help of his wife's maid Miggs, and attempt to have the locksmith help them break into Newgate to release prisoners. He refuses and is rescued by two men, one of whom has only one arm. The rioters then burn Newgate where Barnaby and his father are being held. All of the prisoners escape, but Barnaby, his father, and Hugh are betrayed by Dennis the hangman and captured by soldiers. Dennis has changed sides, believing he will have a bounty of clients needing his special talents. With the military patrolling the streets, the rioters scatter and many are killed. The one-armed man turns out to be Joe Willet, who has returned from fighting in the American Revolution and lost an arm. Joe, along with Edward Chester, turn out to be the rescuers of Gabriel Varden. The pair then rescue Dolly and Emma. Dennis is arrested and sentenced to die with Hugh and Barnaby. Hugh and Dennis are hanged. Barnaby, through the efforts of Gabriel Varden, is pardoned. Joe and Dolly are married and become proprietors of the rebuilt Maypole. Edward Chester and Emma are married and go to the West Indies. Miggs tries to get her position back at the Varden household, is rejected, and becomes a jailer at a women's prison. Simon Tappertit, his legs crushed in the riots, becomes a shoe-black. Gashford later commits suicide. Lord George Gordon is held in the Tower and is later judged innocent of inciting the riots. Sir John Chester, now a Member of Parliament, turns out to be the father of Hugh and is killed in a duel by Geoffrey Haredale. Haredale escapes to the continent. Barnaby and his mother live out their years tending a farm at the Maypole Inn.
817368	/m/03dxc_	The Old Curiosity Shop	Charles Dickens	1840	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Nell Trent, a beautiful and virtuous young girl of 'not quite fourteen.' An orphan, she lives with her maternal grandfather (whose name is never revealed) in his shop of odds and ends. Her grandfather loves her dearly, and Nell does not complain, but she lives a lonely existence with almost no friends her own age. Her only friend is Kit, an honest boy employed at the shop, whom she is teaching to write. Secretly obsessed with ensuring that Nell does not die in poverty as her parents did, her grandfather attempts to make Nell a good inheritance through gambling at cards. He keeps his nocturnal games a secret, but borrows heavily from the evil Daniel Quilp, a malicious, grotesquely deformed, hunchbacked dwarf moneylender. In the end, he gambles away what little money they have, and Quilp seizes the opportunity to take possession of the shop and evict Nell and her grandfather. Her grandfather suffers a breakdown that leaves him bereft of his wits, and Nell takes him away to the Midlands of England, to live as beggars. Convinced that the old man has stored up a fortune for Nell, her wastrel brother Frederick convinces the good-natured but easily-led Dick Swiveller to help him track Nell down so that Swiveller can marry her and the two can share Nell's supposed inheritance. To this end, they join forces with Quilp, who knows full well that there is no fortune, but sadistically chooses to 'help' in order to enjoy the misery it will inflict on all concerned. Quilp begins to try to track Nell down, but the fugitives are not easily discovered. To keep Dick Swiveller under his eye, Quilp arranges for him to be taken as a clerk by Quilp's lawyer, Mr. Brass. At the Brass firm, Dick befriends the mistreated servant maid and nicknames her 'the Marchioness'. Nell, having fallen in with a number of characters, some villainous and some kind, succeeds in leading her grandfather to safe haven in a far off village (identified by Dickens as Tong, Shropshire), but this has come at a considerable cost to Nell's health. Meanwhile, Kit, having lost his job at the curiosity shop, has found new employment with the kind Mr and Mrs Garland. Here he is contacted by a mysterious 'single gentleman' who is looking for news of Nell and her grandfather. The 'single gentleman' and Kit's mother go after them unsuccessfully, and encounter Quilp, who is also hunting for the runaways. Quilp forms a grudge against Kit and has him framed as a thief. Kit is sentenced to transportation. However, Dick Swiveller proves Kit's innocence with the help of his friend the Marchioness. Quilp is hunted down and dies trying to escape his pursuers. At the same time, a coincidence leads Mr Garland to knowledge of Nell's whereabouts, and he, Kit, and the single gentleman (who turns out to be the younger brother of Nell's grandfather) go to find her. Sadly, by the time they arrive, Nell has died as a result of her arduous journey. Her grandfather, already mentally infirm, refuses to admit she is dead and sits every day by her grave waiting for her to come back, until a few months later, he dies himself. The events of the book seem to take place around 1825. In Chapter 29, Miss Monflathers refers to the death of Lord Byron, who died on April 19, 1824. When the inquest rules (incorrectly) that Quilp committed suicide, his corpse is ordered to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through its heart, a practice banned in 1826. And Nell's grandfather, after his breakdown, fears that he shall be sent to a madhouse, and there chained to a wall and whipped; these practices went out of use after about 1830. In Chapter 13, the lawyer Mr. Brass is described as "one of Her Majesty's attornies" , putting him in the reign of Queen Victoria, which began in 1837, but given all the other evidence, and the fact that Kit, at his trial, is charged with acting "against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King" (referring to George IV), this must be a slip of the pen.
817546	/m/03dxvb	Ancient Shores	Jack McDevitt		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The vast lake, Lake Agassiz, covered much of North Dakota, Manitoba and Minnesota during prehistoric times. The story begins when farmer Tom Lasker and his son, Will, uncover a seemingly brand new yacht. Found on a landlocked farm, it draws tourists to the area. Max Collingswood, a friend of Tom's, tries to help discover the origins of the boat. Collingswood enlists April Cannon, a worker at a chemical lab who discovers that the yacht is made of an unknown material. In fact, it is a fiberglass-like material with an impossible atomic number (161). Collingswood and Cannon discover something else on a nearby ridge which is part of a Sioux reservation. The Sioux assist in its excavation and examination. It turns out to a green glassy roundhouse-like structure, made from the same material. Eventually, they gain access to it, revealing a dock for the sailboat, but no entrance for it. The discovery that the structure contains the means to access other sites not on Earth sets off a struggle between the Government and the Reservation for control of it.
819254	/m/03dzr1	The Big Four	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Captain Hastings visits Poirot and finds that Poirot is leaving for South America. He has been offered a huge amount of money by the American 'soap king' millionaire Abe Ryland. Poirot inquires if Hastings has ever heard the phrase the Big Four. Hastings responds uncooperatively. At the eleventh hour an unexpected visitor called Mayerling comes in saying only "M. Hercule Poirot, 14 Farraway Street." When he is given a piece of paper by a doctor he writes the number 4 many times. When Hastings mentions the Big Four, the man begins speaking, he tells them that number 1 is a Chinese political mastermind named Li Chang Yen. He represents the brains of the Big Four. Number 2 is usually not named but represented by a '$' or two stripes and a star so he is probably American and he represents wealth. Number 3 is a Frenchwoman and Number 4 is the destroyer. After an aborted start on Poirot's trip to South America, they return to the flat to find the man dead. The doctor is summoned and says that the man died of asphyxiation and has been dead about two hours, he cannot be closer because the windows were open. A man from an asylum visits them and tells them that the man had escaped from his asylum. Japp soon enters and recognizes the man to be Mayerling, a prominent figure in the Secret Service. Poirot asks Hastings if he opened the windows to which Hastings replies in the negative. Poirot examines the man and announces that Mayerling was gagged and poisoned using cyanide. The hands of the lounge clock were turned to 4 o'clock and Poirot realizes that the murderer was the man from the asylum. Poirot and Hastings pay a visit to John Ingles, a wealthy man, and ask him about Li Chang Yen and the Big Four. He has heard of both, the former he heard of recently in a note from a fisherman who asked him for a few hundred pounds to hide himself from the Big Four. He had also heard of stories of four men who opposed Li Chang Yen, who had been murdered from stabbing, poisoning, electrocution and cholera. He had also heard a similar story of a chemist who was burned to death in his residence. The note came from Hoppaton so Poirot, Hastings and Ingles go to Hoppaton and find out that the man who wrote the note, a Mr. Jonathan Whalley has been murdered. There are two suspects his maid, Betsy, and his manservant Grant. Whalley had been hit on the head and then his throat had been cut and some jade figures he had had been stolen. Grant is the main suspect as his footprints covered in blood are found around the room, the jade figures were in his room and there is a smear of blood on his room's doorknob. Another reason is the fact that Grant has been imprisoned before, Grant got this job by a prisoner help society. Poirot finds a frozen leg of mutton which interests him very much. Poirot hypothesizes that the murderer was a young man who came in a trap and killed Whalley and went away. His clothing was slightly bloodstained. Poirot talks to Grant and asks him whether he entered the room twice to take the jade figures. When negatived Poirot reveals that no one noticed the murderer because he came in a butcher's cart. Mutton is not delivered on Sundays and if it had been delivered on Saturday it would not have been frozen. The man who gave Grant this job, Poirot assumes, was Number 4. Poirot then introduces Hastings to Captain Kent who tells them of the sinking of many U.S. boats after the Japanese earthquake. After this they rounded many crooks up all of them referred to an organization called the Big Four. They have made a form of wireless energy capable of focusing a beam of great intensity on any spot. A British scientist called Halliday experimented on this and was said to be on the eve of success when he was kidnapped while on a visit to France. Poirot talks to Halliday's wife who tells him that her husband went to Paris on Thursday the 20 July to talk to some people connected with his work among them the notable French scientist Madame Olivier. After lunch Halliday had gone to Madame Olivier. He had left her at six o' clock, dined alone at some restaurant and gone to his hotel. He had walked out next morning and had not been seen afterwards. As a result Poirot goes to Paris with Hastings. Poirot and Hastings visit Madame Olivier, question her but while leaving they catch a glimpse of a veiled lady who Poirot is interested in. As soon as they exit the villa a tree falls down barely missing them. Poirot then explains to Hastings how Halliday was kidnapped he was walking away when a lady caught up with him and told him Madame Olivier wanted to talk to him again. She led him and turned into a narrow alley and then into a garden told him that Madame Olivier's villa was on the right side then and there Halliday was kidnapped. Poirot goes to the villa and asks to speak to the woman who just came. She comes down, after initially refusing, when Poirot sends his card. It turns out she is the Countess Vera Rossakoff. When confronted with the theory she phones the kidnappers to send Halliday back to the hotel. When Halliday returns he is too scared to speak. Then a man in a cloak, who is a participant in the big four, comes and tries persuading Hercule Poirot to stop and Hastings gets into a small fight with the stranger who evades Poirot, Hastings, and the hotel manager with a clever disguise. Poirot is told by Madame Olivier that two men broke into her laboratory and attempted to steal her supply of radium. Poirot and Hastings board a train, and in the confusion of a signal failure caused by Poirot's friend, they return to Mme. Olivier's villa to find the thieves. however, they are ambushed by thugs, and Olivier reveals herself to be Number 3, and that the two shall die by her hands to prevent their interference. However, Poirot tells her that the cigarette he has contains a poisonous dart, and Olivier unties Hastings, who unties Poirot and binds and gags Olivier. Shortly afterwards the two receive a letter from Abe Ryland who was annoyed at Poirot for refusing his offer. Then Poirot tells Hastings that Abe Ryland is Number 2, an American millionaire. Ryland soon releases news that he is looking for an efficient secretary, and Hastings applies and gets the job, imposing as a man called Captain Neville. He becomes suspicious of the manservant Deaves, and he learns that Ryland received an encoded letter telling him to go to a quarry at eleven o'clock. Hastings spies on Ryland, but is captured by Ryland and Deaves, who wait for Poirot. When he arrives he ambushes Ryland and Deaves with the help of ten Scotland Yard officials. Ryland is released after his manservant informs the police that all of it was just a wager, and Poirot realises that the manservant was Number Four. A month later, they leave London due to the death of a Mr Paynter in Worcestershire. He had six Chinese servants, as well as his bodyguard Ah Ling, who Poirot is interested in. Paynter was living with his nephew when he felt ill after a meal and a Doctor Quentin was called. He told the nephew, Gerald, that he had given Paynter a hypodermic injection and proceeded by asking strange questions about the servants. Paynter was found the next morning in a room locked from the inside, dead. It seemed that he had fallen off his chair and into the gas fire, and the Doctor was blamed for leaving him in such a position. Before his death, Paynter had dipped his finger in ink and written "yellow jasmine" on his newspaper, a plant growing all over the house, as well as drawing two lines at right angles under the words, a sign similar to the beginning of the number 4. At the inquest, Quentin was accused in a number of ways, such as that he was not the regular doctor and his recalling of the events. According to him, Paynter told him as soon as the door was shut that he was not feeling ill at all and that the taste of his curry was strange. It was claimed that Quentin injected him with strychnine rather than a narcotic. Later, after the curry was analysed, the results showed that it contained a deadly amount of opium, implicating the servant Ah Ling as he was the one to cook it. Also, Inspector Japp tells the two that the key was found near the broken door and that the window was unlatched. Japp believes that the charred face was to cover up the identity of the dead man, but Poirot believes the man to be Paynter. Poirot reveals that Doctor Quentin was number 4, who entered the house and gave Paynter an injection of yellow jasmine rather than strychnine. He locked the door and exited through the window, returning later to put opium in the curry sample, throw Paynter into the fire and steal a manuscript-the reason for the murder. A month after the case, Japp informs Poirot of another mysterious death- the chess grandmasters Gilmour Wilson and Doctor Savaronoff were playing chess when shortly into the game Gilmour Wilson collapsed dead due to heart failure. Japp suspects he was poisoned, and Poirot is called in. Japp suspects that the poison was intended for Savaronoff, a former Revolutionist in Russia who just escaped from the Bolsheviks. He refused several times to play a game of chess with Wilson but eventually gave in. The match took place in Savaronoff's flat, with at least a dozen people watching the game. Wilson's body had a small burn mark on his left hand and was also clutching a white bishop when he died, part of Savaronoff's set. As Poirot and Hastings enter the Doctor's flat, Poirot notices that the antique Persian rug has had a nail driven through it. After the proceedings in the flat, Poirot and Hastings return home and Poirot takes out a second white bishop. He weighed the one he took with the one Wilson was holding and discovered that the one he was holding was heavier. He explains that the bishop has a metal rod inside it, so that the current passing through the recently refurbished flat below is powered through the nail, into the also tampered table and into the bishop. The bishop was chosen because of Wilson's predictable first few moves, and Poirot suspects the servant of the flat and Savaronoff's niece of working for the big Four. However, when they arrive at the flat Savaronoff's niece is gagged and unconscious and Ivan and the Doctor are nowhere to be seen. Poirot explains that Savaronoff did die in Russia and that number Four impersonated him as a cover. He killed Wilson because if Savaronoff was the second greatest chess master in the world, people would soon realise that number Four was nothing like the chess player Savaronoff was. With number Four gone, the two are back to square one again. Soon afterwards, Hastings is given a message that his wife has been kidnapped in Argentina by the big Four, as well as another note saying that if he wants to see his wife again he must follow a Chinese servant. He leaves four books on the table as a message for Poirot, and follows him to an abandoned house in Chinatown and he is taken to an Arabian- like room. One of the Chinese servants tries to make him write a letter in order to get Poirot and threaten him with death. He is eventually forced to write it to Poirot and he is soon seen across the street. As Hastings is forced to beckon him into the house, a man from Scotland Yard throws a drugged smoke bomb into the house, knocking everyone unconscious and Hastings is saved. Hastings is not only greeted by Poirot, but by the fact that his wife has been safe for over three months in a place Poirot set up. Later, Poirot's agents return from their work of identifying number 4 and produce four names, with a Mr Claud Darrell looking suspicious as he has visited both China and America. Very soon, Darrell's friend, Florence Monro, calls Poirot to tell him information about Darrell. She gives one important point, that when he eats he always picks up a pice of bread and dabs up the crumbs with it. She also promises to send him a photo of Darrell. Twenty minutes later Miss Monro is hit by a car and killed, while number Four had taken her latch-key, gone into her flat and stolen the photograph. Poirot, Hastings and Ingles meet with the home secretary and his client. Ingles leaves for China, and Poirot reveals an odd fact- he has a twin brother. The two arrive home to a nurse who says that her employer, Mr Templeton, often has gastric attacks after eating. When a sample of soup is tested and found to contain antimony, they set off again. The arrival of Templeton's adopted son causes a disturbance; he tells Poirot that he thinks his mother is trying to poison his father. Poirot pretends to have stomach cramps, and when he is alone with Hastings, he quickly tells him that Templeton's son is number Four, as he dabbed up the crumbs with a small slice of bread at the table. The two climb down the ivy and arrive at their flat. The two are caught by a trap; a matchbox filled with a chemical explodes knocking Hastings unconscious and killing Poirot. Another shock greets Hastings shortly after the funeral; John Ingles had fallen overboard on his boat to China, but Hastings knew this to be murder, of none other than Claud Darrell, number Four himself. After being warned twice by a disguised number Four and Countess Rosakoff to leave for South America, Hastings is called to a hospital because Ingles' Chinese servant was stabbed and had a message in his pocket for Hastings. The servant managed to say 'Handel's Largo', 'carrozza' and a few other Italian words before dying. He also receives a letter from Poirot to be given after his death saying to leave for South America, as it was part of the plan. The big Four would think he was leaving and he could 'wreak havoc in their midst'. This is confirmed when a gentleman in a fur coat (number Four) sends him a letter saying 'You are wise'. Hastings is put on board a ship for Belgium, where he is reunited with his supposedly dead friend, Poirot. Hastings is shocked, and Poirot states it was to make his death look certain to the big Four. The two set off for Italy to Lago di Carrezza, which Hastings thought was 'largo' and 'carrozza'. The two find a café where they go to drink coffee. However, upon their arrival, they see a man jump up from his table, and fiddle with his bread- undoubtedly number Four. This was all Poirot's plan- to scare a man as soon as he thinks he is safe. But it was an act; the lights went out and Poirot and Hastings are knocked unconscious and dragged away. They are taken to the headquarters of the Big Four- The Felsenlabyrinth. They are confronted by Ryland, Olivier and number Four, with Chang Yen being in China, and later Vera Rossakoff. It soon becomes clear that the man is not Hercule Poirot, but in fact his twin, Achille. The man has a deeper voice, has no moustache and has a scar on his lip. He makes the four people aware of the fact that the mountain has been cordoned off, and that the police were about to raid the headquarters. Knowing their defeat, the three members retreat to a laboratory and Vera decided to bargain with Poirot. He claimed that he could bring the dead back to life, and she said that she would save them if he returned her dead child. The three run out of the mountain just as it explodes, and Hastings awakes to yet another surprise. Achille Poirot didn't exist- it was Hercule Poirot in disguise all along. He manages to give the countess her child back, who was really left in an orphanage, and the newspapers reveal that Li Chang Yen, the famous Chinese politician, has committed suicide. The story ends on Poirot lamenting that all his other cases will seem boring and tame to this case.
822790	/m/03f2qq	Les amitiés particulières	Roger Peyrefitte	1943		 The plot revolves around Georges de Sarre, a fourteen-year-old boy who is sent to a Catholic boarding school in 1920s France. Getting to know the other boys, he is immediately interested in Lucien Rouvière, of whom he is warned by the unsympathetic Marc de Blajan, who cryptically informs him that some of the students "may seem good, but are in fact not". Georges is dismayed when he learns that Lucien already has a boyfriend, André Ferron. He befriends Lucien, but filled with envy, tries to destroy their relationship, eventually succeeding in getting André expelled in a Machiavellian scheme. When his advances towards Lucien remain fruitless, Georges starts a "special friendship", i.e. a friendship with homosexual overtones, with a twelve-year-old student, the beautiful Alexandre (Alexander) Motier. The priests who lead the school disapprove of these relationships, even though it does not go beyond a few kisses and love poems, with no sexual connotation. Despite their air of condemnation of these special friendships, some of the priests harbour sexual feelings for the boys. One of them, Father de Trennes, likes to invite boys to join him in his room at night for a few drinks and cigarettes. Georges continues his scheming ways and gets Father de Trennes expelled by an anonymous letter. However, Father Lauzon, who is a friend of Alexandre's family and wants to protect him, learns about their relationship and demands that it be ended immediately. Lauzon talks Georges into giving back the love letters from Alexander, which at the time the novel is set meant that a relationship was over. Unfortunately, Alexander cannot see that Georges was forced to do this and that his feelings for him are actually unchanged&mdash;and commits suicide. The work has been praised for its elegant style, and the discretion with which the subject is treated. One example is the question which Alexander poses to Georges: "Georges, do you know the things one should not know?"
822860	/m/03f2vq	The Worm Ouroboros	Eric Rucker Eddison	1922	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 A framing story in the first two chapters describes the world of the novel as Mercury, though it is clearly a fantasy version of Earth, a "secondary world"; no effort was made to conform to the scientific knowledge of Mercury as it existed at the time of writing (the world even has a moon, which Mercury does not). At a number of points the characters refer to their land as Middle earth, used here in its original sense of "the known world", and the gods worshipped have the names of deities from Greek mythology. The framing story having introduced the chief lords of Demonland — the brothers Juss, Spitfire, and Goldry Bluszco, and their cousin Brandoch Daha — the story begins in earnest with a dwarf ambassador from Witchland arriving in Demonland to demand that the Demons recognize King Gorice XI of Witchland as their overlord. Juss and his brothers reply that they and all of Demonland will submit if the king (a famous wrestler) can defeat Goldry Bluszco in a wrestling match. The match is held in the neutral territory of the Foliot Isles, and Gorice is killed. His successor (or reincarnation) Gorice XII is a sorcerer who banished Goldry to an enchanted mountain prison, by means of a sorcery requiring the help of Lord Gro. While Lord Spitfire is sent back to raise an army out of Demonland, Lord Juss and his cousin Brandoch Daha, aided by King Gaslark of Goblinland, attempt an assault on Carcë, the capital of the Witches, where they think Goldry is held. The rescue fails, the Goblins flee, and Juss and Brandoch Daha are both captured. They escape with the aid of La Fireez, the king of Pixyland, who helps them at great personal cost because he owes them a debt of honor. Juss and Brandoch Daha return home to Demonland and then start an expedition to rescue Goldry Bluszco from his terrible prison, somewhere past the mountains of Impland. Lord Spitfire again stays behind to lead Demonland's armies against an expected invasion from Witchland. The expedition's fleet is smashed and its army destroyed. Juss and Brandoch Daha meet with three strange enchanted heroes of an earlier time, and Lord Juss is nearly killed by a manticore. After a year of wandering they climb the mighty peak of Koshtra Pivrarcha and then attempt the even more difficult peak of Koshtra Belorn. Before reaching the summit of Koshtra Belorn they encounter Queen Sophonisba, a royal from that area to whom the Gods had granted eternal youth when her realm was laid waste by the Witches. From Sophonisba they learn that Goldry is held on the top of Zora Rach, a mountain which cannot be climbed and whose peak is surrounded by unceasing flames. There is only one way to free him: they must find a hippogriff's egg, and one of them must ride the newly hatched hippogriff. Queen Sophonisba gives Lord Juss one hippogriff egg, but their lone companion, the Impland native Mivarsh Faz, knowing that he will have to walk back home by himself if the Demons get the hippogriff, steals the egg and tries to use it himself, causing his death. Lord Juss and Brandoch Daha set out for home, their quest defeated for the time being, although matters are not completely hopeless as Queen Sophonisba's martlet scouts have told them of another hippogriff egg lying at the bottom of a lake in Demonland. Meanwhile, the armies of Witchland have attacked Demonland. Duke Corsus is the first commander of the Witchland army, and conquers part of Demonland, but is defeated by Spitfire. A new Witchland army, under the command of Lord Corinius, defeats Spitfire and captures most of Demonland, including Brandoch Daha's castle of Krothering, which had been watched over by his sister Lady Mevrian. At this point, Lord Gro changes sides and helps Lady Mevrian escape from the grasp of Corinius, who wishes to marry her against her will. A few months later Lord Juss and Brandoch Daha return and expel the Witches from Demonland. Equipped with a new hippogriff egg, Lord Juss makes a second attempt to rescue his brother and this time is successful. However, his forces are trapped in an inland sea by the Witchland navy; forced to engage in battle directly, they completely destroy that navy. La Fireez dies in this battle. The Demons then sail to Carcë and face the army of Witchland in a climactic struggle. In the battle, Lord Gro is lambasted by Corund for switching sides; Gro responds by killing a Demon and is himself killed by Spitfire. Corund dies from wounds he suffers fighting with the heroes of Demonland. His armies having failed, King Gorice attempts another terrible summoning; lacking the aid of Gro, he is unable to complete the spell and is destroyed. Lord Corsus poisons the remaining nobles of Witchland, and is killed himself by the dying Corinius. Though triumphant, the Demon lords find that victory is bitter because there are no more enemies worthy of their heroism, no more great deeds to perform. Sophonisba, seeking to reward their heroism, prays to the Gods, who return the world to how it had been four years before; and so, with a blare of trumpets, an ambassador from Witchland arrives, "craving present audience," and the story starts over again.
823303	/m/03f376	Rising Sun	Michael Crichton	1992-01-27	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Nakamoto Corporation is celebrating the grand opening of its new headquarters, the Nakamoto Tower, in downtown Los Angeles; the 45th floor of the building is awash with celebrities, dignitaries and local politicians. On the 46th floor, Cheryl Lynn Austin, 23, is found dead. Lieutenant Peter J. Smith, the Special Services Liaison for the LAPD, is assigned to the case. He is joined, on request, by retired Captain John Connor, who has lived in Japan and is well-acquainted with Japanese culture. Upon arriving at Nakamoto Tower, the two policemen learn from officer-in-charge Tom Graham that the Japanese, led by Nakamoto employee Ishiguro, are stalling the investigation by demanding that the liaison be present. Although they have a valid pretense in that the virulently racist Graham is threatening to disrupt the celebration, it is obvious to Connor that a cover-up is underway. The detectives realize that the tapes from the security cameras on the 46th floor have mysteriously disappeared, and the security guards are deliberately unhelpful. Smith and Connor visit the apartment of the late Ms. Austin, realizing that she was a mistress for the Japanese Yakuza. It seems that Ms. Austin's home had been ransacked soon after her death. After several visits to friends and associates of Ms. Austin and Nakamoto, the two detectives find a suspect in Eddie Sakamura, a wealthy Japanese playboy from Kyoto. However, the two are inclined to release him, due to Eddie's previous associations with John Connor. The two officers are summoned to witness Ms. Austin's autopsy; trace evidence strongly suggests a Japanese killer. Afterwards, Smith and Connor are approached by Ishiguro, who now presents them with seemingly authentic videos from the security cameras, which show Sakamura to be the murderer. Having solved the mystery, Connor returns home to rest, while Smith and Graham go to apprehend Sakamura. Upon arriving at Eddie's house, the two detectives are stalled by two naked women while Eddie escapes in a Ferrari. After a high-speed chase, Eddie's car crashes and bursts into flames, killing him. The next day, the newspaper runs editorials criticizing Smith, Graham, and Connor’s actions as racist and accuses them of police brutality. Soon afterward, Smith receives a phone call from the Chief of Police, declaring the investigation officially over. Smith isn’t satisfied, and decides to take the tapes to the University of Southern California, in order to make copies. There, Smith meets Theresa Asakuma, a Japanese student who is an expert on computers and software manipulation. She is able to quickly point out that the tapes were indeed copies. After copying the tapes, Smith then picks up Connor after his golf game with several Japanese friends. On their way back to the USC labs, the two detectives are offered lucrative bribes from the Japanese, including a membership at an expensive golf club and extremely low-priced real estate offers. They visit and consult with companies and industries involved with Nakamoto, in order to learn more about the killer's motives. Along the way, they realize that they are only pawns in a much larger political and economic "war" between America and Japan, and how much the United States relies on Japan, which dominates the American electronics industry. Finally, they meet with U.S. Senator, John Morton, who is a potential presidential candidate in the upcoming elections. They also learn that Morton fiercely opposes the Japanese purchase of MicroCon, a small Silicon Valley company that manufactures machinery. At USC, Smith and Theresa deduce that Eddie had been set up by the Japanese who had altered the tapes. They undo the changes, discovering that Senator Morton was apparently the real killer and Eddie had been a witness. Connor and Smith return to Smith’s apartment, where they discover Eddie Sakamura, alive; the man who had actually been killed was a Japanese security officer named Tanaka who had been in Eddie’s garage, searching for the tapes, before panicking and fleeing in Eddie's car, which led to his death. The trio then confront Senator Morton, who confesses to his role in Cheryl Austin’s death. The senator then shoots himself in a bathroom. Soon afterward, an angry Ishiguro arrives to confront Eddie and the two detectives, making subtle threats to their lives. Strangely, Eddie reacts calmly, leading Connor to conclude afterward that Eddie still possesses an original copy of the tape from the security cameras. Smith and Connor then travel to Eddie’s home, where they find him tortured to death for the location of the stolen tape. Connor drops Smith off at his home. Upon entering his apartment, Smith realizes that Eddie had left the tape there. Ishiguro's men arrive; he quickly orders his babysitter to hide his daughter and herself in the upstairs bedroom. Connor sneaks back to Smith’s apartment, carrying a bulletproof vest. The two detectives then engage in a gun battle with the thugs, and Smith is shot in the back, although his vest saves his life. The next day, the two watch the tape that Eddie had left behind; Austin wasn't accidentally killed by Morton, but deliberately murdered by Ishiguro after Morton and Eddie left. They go to the Nakamoto Tower to apprehend Ishiguro, interrupting an important meeting. The detectives show the tape of the murder to the meeting attendees, and a shocked and angry Ishiguro commits suicide by jumping off the building. Having solved the mystery, Connor answers Smith’s questions before dropping him off at his apartment. The book then concludes with Smith’s statements about America’s future with Japan.
823814	/m/03f3vq	Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot	Isaac Asimov	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book starts with Jeff in need of a teaching robot. He buys Norby only to discover that it has the only mini-anti-gravity device in existence. They go to the park where the evil villain Ing's henchmen are after Fargo Wells, Jeff's brother. Norby and Jeff stop the henchmen who are captured by the police. Ing manages to take over Manhattan Island, but Norby and Jeff start a revolt against him. They go to the planet Jamya using a hyperdrive, never before done and creating a subplot for the second book in the series Norby's Other Secret. After enlisting Admiral Yobo in their quest to stop Ing, the three take Admiral Yobo's ship and, via hyperspace, literally park it above Ing's head, forcing him to a humiliating surrender. The book ends with Jeff saying Norby is his Mixed-Up Robot.
824327	/m/03f4fx	Glory Season	David Brin	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Three thousand years before the story starts, Lysos, founder of the human colony on the isolated planet of Stratos, led an effort to reengineer human life into a happier, more pastoral life. Briefly, she developed a strain of human beings that conceive clones in winter, and normal children in summer. All clones are female, because males do not bear. Further, males and females have opposed seasons of sexual receptivity. Men are sexually receptive in summer, and women in winter. This scheme is said to be stable over evolutionary time because women gain an evolutionary advantage from self-cloning, while men only reproduce themselves in summer. Finally, men have been adjusted so that they are far less aggressive during the times that they are less sexually receptive. The social result is that the vast majority of the population of Stratos consists of financially successful groups of female clones. Over centuries of normal self-interested business and political arrangements, these groups dominate the society. The society is also extremely stable, because, it is said, most violence is initiated as competition between males. Stratos is portrayed as a practical feminist society, literally dominated by numerous strains of identical, financially successful women. Men are confined to relatively few professions (such as sailors), and characterized as helpless. However, Stratos is not static. Variations still exist. People conceived in summer are normal mixtures of male and female genes. This provides a continuing source of sexual variation, letting the society perform biological adaptation. A small fraction of each generation of variant women becomes financially successful against the intense competition, and founds a hive of clones. However, men and most variant women remain despised "vars", financially unsuccessful hewers of wood and drawers of water. Maia and Leie are twins, non-clone var daughters of the "hive" of "Lamatia," a group of female clones that specialize in commercial import/export banking. Lamatia is a typical hive, one of many on the planet of Stratos. Like most such hives, when its children reach late adolescence, it retains its clones, and ejects its male and female variant children. Maia and Leie conceive a plan to team up and pass themselves off as two members of a much larger hive. They hope to work as sailors to explore Stratos, find their niche, and found a successful hive. Unbeknownst to them (they have a practical, not a classical education), they are named after characters in a classic novel in which twins attempt to do just that, so that their plan is doomed by their very names. Almost immediately, the ships' masters (men) separate the twins to different ships, so as not to cause friction with the var sailors. Maia meets Naroin, a female bosun's mate. Later, a group of legally sanctioned pirates sink Leie's ship in a naval battle that also involves Maia's ship. Leie is lost at sea. Maia, injured and heart-broken, recuperates. She finds a job on a railroad. On the railroad Maia discovers a courier running illegal drugs. The drugs are sexual stimulants to rearrange men's period of receptivity. They are part of a plot by the "Perkinites" (Named after Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of Herland), to eliminate men from an isolated valley, and perhaps later all of Stratos. Maia notifies the "Planetary Equilibrium Authority" and is kidnapped and imprisoned by the Perkinites. In prison, she discovers another prisoner who is electrically telegraphing messages. She talks with Renna, and she and Renna develop a friendship via telegraph. After a long period of imprisonment, Maia engineers an escape during a period of upset, and discovers that her fellow prisoner is actually the "Visitor," a male interstellar visitor from an unengineered branch of humanity. During the escape, Maia becomes involved with political radicals, and a platonic friendship develops between Renna and her. A faction of the radicals steal Renna to an island base, fighting another legal faction. Naroin reappears as a mate among the larger group of legal radicals. Maia follows the illegal radicals, to rescue Renna. In the island base, Renna somehow disappears. Maia solves many problems. Maia recruits a crew of helpers from some prisoners, including some virtuous male sailors. She discovers that Naroin is a member of a clan of detectives. She also finds that her sister is alive, but on the other side of the conflict! Ultimately. Maia finds the mythical "Jellicoe Former" an advanced manufacturing facility (possibly based on molecular manufacturing) that can produce any device. In the pastoral, low-technology society of Stratos, the Jellicoe Former is the beginning of a social earthquake. Unfortunately, Renna is killed trying to escape in a spaceship he completed with the help of the Jellicoe Former. Maia is then severely injured at the end of the climactic battle. By opening a defense facility and helping Naroin to escape, she and Naroin had summoned numerous groups of police, who overcame the political radicals, and freed the vars and helpless male sailors. Afterward, while recuperating, Maia is dragged into politics, because she has become a symbol. She tells her story to a group of prominent men, heads of male societies. For her actions, they offer her "clan" an alliance (i.e. the right to invite them to "spark" winter clone-daughters), with the sole exception of one man, who reveals himself as her long-lost father. At the end, Maia escapes her keepers, and decides that Stratos' current society is evil because its pastoral culture impoverishes people, causing famine, poor health and poor education. She resolves to fix things and be her own woman.
824889	/m/03f553	The Road to Serfdom	Friedrich Hayek	1944-03	{"/m/02j62": "Economics"}	 Hayek argues that Western democracies, including the United Kingdom and the United States, have “progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.” Society has mistakenly tried to ensure continuing prosperity by centralized planning, which inevitably leads to totalitarianism. “We have in effect undertaken to dispense with the forces which produced unforeseen results and to replace the impersonal and anonymous mechanism of the market by collective and ‘conscious’ direction of all social forces to deliberately chosen goals.” Socialism, while presented as a means of assuring equality, does so through “restraint and servitude”, while “democracy seeks equality in liberty”. Planning, because coercive, is an inferior method of regulation, while the cooperation of a free market is superior “because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority”. Centralized planning is inherently undemocratic, because it requires "that the will of a small minority be imposed upon the people..." The power of these minorities to act by taking money or property in pursuit of centralized goals, destroys the Rule of Law and individual freedoms. Where there is centralized planning, "the individual would more than ever become a mere means, to be used by the authority in the service of such abstractions as the 'social welfare' or the 'good of the community'". Even the very poor have more personal freedom in an open society than a centrally planned one. "[W]hile the last resort of a competitive economy is the bailiff, the ultimate sanction of a planned economy is the hangman." Socialism is a hypocritical system, because its professed humanitarian goals can only be put into practice by brutal methods "of which most socialists disapprove". Such centralized systems also require effective propaganda, so that the people come to believe that the state's goals are theirs. Hayek analyzes the roots of Nazism in socialism, then draws parallels to the thought of British leaders: The increasing veneration for the state, the admiration of power, and of bigness for bigness' sake, the enthusiasm for "organization" of everything (we now call it "planning") and that "inability to leave anything to the simple power of organic growth"...are all scarcely less marked in England now than they were in Germany. Hayek believed that after World War II, &#34;wisdom in the management of our economic affairs will be even more important than before and that the fate of our civilization will ultimately depend on how we solve the economic problems we shall then face&#34;. The only chance to build a decent world is &#34;to improve the general level of wealth&#34; via the activities of free markets. He saw international organization as involving a further threat to individual freedom. He concluded: &#34;The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century.&#34;
826411	/m/03f7pm	Nature				 Many would call Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writing “metaphorical”, and that is just what this essay is. “Nature”, is centered on the theme of, nonetheless, nature, in which Emerson lays out a problem that he attempts to solve throughout the essay; a problem in which he believes man doesn’t fully accept nature’s beauty and all that it has to offer. Emerson wrote in "Nature," "All is fair in love and war." According to Emerson, people are distracted by the world around them; nature gives back to man, but man doesn’t reciprocate the favor. Emerson culminates his ideas, breaking down his essay into eight sections- Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit, and Prospects, all of which give a different light on nature and man's relationship. Nature is perfectly suitable for man, but according to Emerson, man must take himself away from society’s flaws and distractions, and create “wholeness” with nature. Emerson believes that solitude is the only way man can fully adhere to what nature has to offer. Reflecting upon this idea of solitude, and man's search for it, Emerson states, “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars” {reflist}. Clearly, man must allow nature to “take him away”, society can destroy mans wholeness. Nature and man must create a reciprocal relationship, “Nature, in its ministry to man, is only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other’s hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man” {reflist}, as Jefferson says, nature and man need each other to be beneficial. This relationship that Emerson depicts is somewhat spiritual; man must recognize the spirit of nature, and accept it as the Universal Being. “Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient” {reflist}. Emerson explains that nature is not “fixed or fluid”; to a pure spirit, nature is everything. Although highly metaphorical, “Nature” creates such a different perspective towards one view of nature. Emerson abstractly speaks to every man; metaphorically creating common ground.
826661	/m/03f8c0	The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War	Michael Shaara	1974	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Beginning with the famous section about Longstreet's spy Harrison gathering information about the movements and positions of the Federals, each day is told primarily from the perspectives of commanders of the two armies, including Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet for the Confederacy, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Buford for the Union. Most chapters describe the emotion-laden decisions of these officers as they went into battle. Maps depicting the positioning of the troops as they went to battle, as they advanced, add to the sense of authenticity as decisions are made to advance and retreat with the armies. The author also uses the story of Gettysburg, one of the largest battles in the history of North America, to relate the causes of the Civil War and the motivations that led old friends to face each other on the battlefield. The novel is sometimes compared to Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage for its depiction of the war, but Shaara emphasizes the decisions, motivations, and actions of generals and colonels in the battle more than the common soldiers. Shaara explained that he was aiming to produce an epic military study modeled after William Shakespeare's Henry V. His choice for a specific subject was inspired by a family vacation that Shaara took to the site of the battle in 1966. Shaara's son Jeffrey Shaara expanded the story by adding a prequel, Gods and Generals and a sequel, The Last Full Measure.
827122	/m/03f9sv	Wishing Moon		2004-06-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Wishing Moon follows the tale of Aminah Barnes, a beggar orphan who is thrown Aladdin's magical lamp by an unwitting princess, Badr Al-Budur, after Aladdin has married her. As Aminah works out problems with the lamp and its demon, she eventually begins her own journey of emotions while trying to avoid the notice of the spoiled and ambitious princess who seeks to regain the lost lamp. After settling into a moderately prosperous life, Aminah decides to help other people in need, but selectively, only helping those who help others. Soon, however, her good deeds draw the unwanted eye of Badr Al-Budur.
827469	/m/03fbxl	Mother Courage and Her Children	Bertolt Brecht			 The play is set in the 17th century in Europe during the Thirty Years' War. The Recruiting Officer and Sergeant are introduced, both complaining about the difficulty of recruiting soldiers to the war. A canteen woman named Anna Fierling (Mother Courage) enters pulling a cart that she uses to trade with soldiers and make profits from the war. She has three children, Eilif, Kattrin, and Swiss Cheese. The sergeant negotiates a deal with Mother Courage while Eilif is led off by the recruiting officer. One of her children is now gone. Two years from then, Mother Courage argues with a Protestant General's cook over a capon, or chicken. At the same time, Eilif is congratulated by the General for killing peasants and slaughtering their cattle. Eilif and his mother sing "The Fishwife and the Soldier". Mother Courage scolds her son for taking risks that could have got him killed and slaps him across the face. Three years later, Swiss Cheese works as an army paymaster. The camp prostitute, Yvette Pottier, sings "The Fraternization Song". Mother Courage uses this song to warn Kattrin about involving herself with soldiers. Before the Catholic troops arrive, the Cook and Chaplain bring a message from Eilif. Swiss Cheese hides the regiment's paybox from invading soilders. Mother Courage & co. hurriedly switch their insignia from Protestant to Catholic. Swiss Cheese is captured by the Catholics while attempting to return the paybox to his General. Mother Courage deals her cart to get money to try and barter with the soldiers to free her son. She takes too long trying negotiate small amount of money for herself, the Chaplin, and Kattrin to live from and Swiss Cheese is shot dead with 11 bullets. To acknowledge the body could be fatal, so Mother Courage does not acknowledge it and it is thrown into a pit. Later, Mother Courage waits outside the General's tent in order to register a complaint and sings the "Song of Great Capitulation" to a young soldier waiting for the General as well. The soldier is angry that he has not been paid and also wishes to complain. The song persuades the soldier that complaining would be unwise, and Mother Courage (reaching the same conclusion) decides she also does not want to complain. When Catholic General Tilly's funeral approaches, Mother Courage discusses with the Chaplain about whether the war will continue. The Chaplain then suggests to Mother Courage that she marry him, but she rejects his proposal. Mother Courage curses the war because she finds Kattrin disfigured after being raped by the clerk while collecting more merchandise. At some point about here Mother Courage is again following the Protestant army. Two peasants wake Mother Courage up and try to sell merchandise to her while they find out that peace has broken out. The Cook appears and creates an argument between Mother Courage and the Chaplain. Mother Courage departs for the town while Eilif enters, dragged in by soldiers. Eilif is executed for killing peasants but his mother never finds out. When the war begins again, the Cook and Mother Courage start their own business. The seventeenth year of the war marks a point where there is no food and no supplies. The Cook inherits an inn in Utrecht and suggests to Mother Courage that she operate it with him, but he refuses to harbour Kattrin. It is a very small inn. Mother Courage will not leave her daughter and they part ways with the Cook. Mother Courage and Kattrin pull the wagon by themselves. The Catholic army attacks the small Protestant town of Halle while Mother Courage is away from town, trading. Kattrin is woken up by a search party that is taking peasants as guides. Kattrin fetches a drum from the cart, climbs onto the roof, and beats it in an attempt to awake the townspeople. Though the soldiers shoot Kattrin, she succeeds in waking up the town. Early in the morning, Mother Courage sings to her daughter's corpse, has the peasants bury her and hitches herself to the cart. The cart rolls lighter now because there are no more children and very little merchandise left.
828307	/m/03ffmc	The Lathe of Heaven	Ursula K. Le Guin	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The book is set in Portland, Oregon in the year 2002. Portland has three million inhabitants and continuous rain. It is deprived enough for the poorer inhabitants to have kwashiorkor, or protein deprivation. The culture is much the same as the 1970s in the United States, though impoverished. There is also a massive war in the Middle East, with Egypt and Israel allied against Iran. George Orr, a draftsman, has long been abusing drugs to prevent himself from having "effective" dreams, which retroactively change reality. After having one of these dreams, the new reality is the only reality for everyone else, but George retains memory of the previous reality. Under threat of being placed in an asylum, Orr is forced to undergo "voluntary" psychiatric care for his drug abuse. George begins attending therapy sessions with an ambitious psychiatrist and sleep researcher named William Haber. Orr claims that he has the power to dream "effectively" and Haber, gradually coming to believe it, seeks to use George's power to change the world. His experiments with a biofeedback/EEG machine, nicknamed the Augmentor, enhance Orr's abilities and produce a series of increasingly intolerable alternative worlds, based on an assortment of utopian (and dystopian) premises familiar from other science fiction works: * When Haber directs George to dream a world without racism, the skin of everyone on the planet becomes a uniform light gray. * An attempt to solve the problem of overpopulation proves disastrous when George dreams a devastating plague which wipes out much of humanity and gives the current world a population of one billion rather than seven billion. * George attempts to dream into existence "peace on Earth" – resulting in an alien invasion of the Moon which unites all the nations of Earth against the threat. Each effective dream gives Haber more wealth and status, until late in the book where he is effectively ruler of the world. Orr's economic status also improves, but he is unhappy with Haber's meddling and just wants to let things be. Increasingly frightened by Haber's lust for power and delusions of Godhood, Orr seeks out a lawyer named Heather to represent him against Haber. Heather is present at one therapeutic session, and comes to understand George's situation. He falls in love with Heather, and even marries her in one reality; however, he is unsuccessful in getting out of therapy. George tells Heather that the "real world" had been destroyed in a nuclear war in April 1998. George dreamed it back into existence as he lay dying in the ruins. He doubts the reality of what now exists, hence his fear of Haber's efforts to improve it. Heather has seen one change of reality and has a multiple memory – remembering that her pilot husband either died early in the Middle East War or else died just before the truce that ended the war in the face of the alien threat. She tries to help George but also tries to improve the world, saying that the aliens should no longer be on the Moon. George dreams this, but the result is that they have invaded the Earth instead. In the resultant fighting, Mount Hood is bombed and the dormant volcano starts to erupt again. They go back to Haber, who has George dream another dream in which the aliens are actually peaceful. For a time there is stability, but Haber goes on changing things. His suggestion that George dream away racism results in everyone becoming gray; Heather, whose parents were of different races, never existed in this new reality. George manages to dream up a gray version of her, married to him and with a less prickly personality. Mount Hood continues to erupt and he fears the world is losing coherence. Orr has a conversation with one of the aliens, suddenly comes to understand his situation, and thereby gains the courage to stand up to Haber. Haber, frustrated with Orr's resistance, uses what he has learned from studying George's brain during his sessions of hypnosis and controlled dreaming, and decides to take on effective dreaming himself. Haber's first effective dream represents a significant break with the realities created by Orr, and threatens to destroy reality altogether. Orr is able to shut off the Augmentor – even as coherent existence is dissolving into undifferentiated chaos – reaching the "off" switch through pure force of will. The world is saved, but random bits of the various recent realities are now jumbled together. Haber's mind is left broken. Heather, presumably her original self, exists, though with only a slight memory of George.
833593	/m/03fm3z	The Lost World	Arthur Conan Doyle	1912	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 Edward Malone, a reporter for the Daily Gazette, goes to his news editor, McArdle, to procure a dangerous and adventurous mission in order to impress the woman he loves, Gladys Hungerton. He is sent to interview Professor George Edward Challenger, who has assaulted four or five other journalists, to determine if his claims about his trip to South America are true. After assaulting Malone, Challenger reveals his discovery of dinosaurs in South America. Having been ridiculed for years, he invites Malone on a trip to prove his story, along with Professor Summerlee, another scientist qualified to examine any evidence, and Lord John Roxton, an adventurer who knows the Amazon and several years prior to the events of the book helped end slavery by robber barons in South America. They reach the plateau with the aid of Indian guides, who are superstitiously scared of the area. One of these Indians, Gomez, is the brother of a man that Roxton killed the last time he was in South America. When the expedition manages to get onto the plateau, Gomez destroys their bridge, trapping them. Their "devoted negro" Zambo remains at the base, but is unable to prevent the rest of the Indians from leaving. Deciding to investigate the lost world, they are attacked by pterodactyls in a swamp, and Roxton finds some blue clay in which he takes a great interest. After exploring the plateau and having some adventures in which the expedition narrowly escapes being killed by dinosaurs, Challenger, Summerlee, and Roxton are captured by a race of ape-men. While in the ape-men's village, they find out that there is also a tribe of humans (calling themselves Accala) inhabiting the other side of the plateau, with whom the ape-men (called Doda by the Accala) are at war. Roxton manages to escape and team up with Malone to mount a rescue. They arrive just in time to prevent the execution of one of the professors and several other humans, who take them to the human tribe. With their help, they defeat the ape-men, taking control of the whole plateau. After witnessing the power of their guns, the human tribe does not want the expedition to leave, and tries to keep them on the plateau. However the team finally discovers a tunnel that leads to the outside, where they meet up with Zambo and a large rescue party. Upon returning to England, they present their report which include pictures and a newspaper report by Edward, which many dismiss as they had Challenger's original story. Having planned ahead, Challenger shows them a live pterodactyl as proof, which then escapes and flies out into the Atlantic ocean. When the four of them have dinner, Roxton shows them why he was so interested in the blue clay. It contains diamonds, about £200,000 worth, to be split between them. Challenger plans to open a private museum, Summerlee plans to retire and categorize fossils, and Roxton plans to go back to the lost world. Malone returns to his love, Gladys, only to find that she had married a clerk while he was away. With nothing keeping him in London, he volunteers to be part of Roxton's second trip.
833834	/m/03fmzz	Alexander's Bridge	Willa Cather	1912	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Professor Wilson arrives at the Alexanders' house in Boston, after Mr Alexander has talked him into attending a Congress of Psychologists there. He is greeted by Mrs Alexander; later her husband comes home and they have a talk; his wife plays the piano for them. The next day, she tells him how she met her husband through her aunt. In London, Bartley Alexander meets with Maurice Mainhall to see a play starring Hilda Burgoyne, an erstwhile lover of his. Back in his hotel room, he thinks back to how he broke up with her in a letter after he met Winifred in Canada. Later, he walks to her house to see where she lives and reminisces about his youth. At a party at Lady Warford's, he talks to her after many years apart and she says she has been reading in the newspapers about his success with bridges in Japan and Canada. Later, he goes to another party also held by Lady Warford. The following Thursday, he takes Hilda to dinner and they reminisce about Madame Anger and Angel, and a beggar they had seen in the street once. He asks her to sing for him and she asks if he will let her love him. On Christmas Eve, the Alexanders are getting ready for the Christmas dinner, and Bartley tells Wilson he is in trouble with the bridge in Canada. Later, he gives his wife pearl earrings. On New Year's Day, Alexander is getting ready to leave for London again. Later, on the ship, he battles with sharp gales and goes into a bar, where he gambles at bridge. Once in London, Bartley visits Hilda and tells her he cannot go on having two relationships; she must forget about him and leave him alone. She is distressed. The day before he is due to return to America however, he takes her out to dinner. Later, Hugh MacConnell walks Hilda back to her house on a foggy day, and she says she isn't attracted to him because they are just close friends. Back in her house, she receives a letter from Bartley, saying he is going mad away from her. This prompts her to visit him in America to tell him she will marry another man and thence be bound to someone else; he doesn't like the idea. They spend one last evening together. Soon after, Bartley is called to Canada by Philip Horton to inspect the bridge. Bartley discovers that one of the lower chords of the bridge was failing, compromising the structural integrity of the entire bridge. Horton was afraid to halt construction, but had first attempted to contact Bartley even earlier - the very day Bartley was with Hilda. As Bartley is on the bridge stopping the work crews, the bridge collapses, killing many of the workers. Bartley's body is recovered the next day and taken to Horton's house. Winifred comes back to look after the dead body. Finally, Wilson visits Hilda. The latter expresses her jealousy over Winifred, but Wilson reminds her that she will not live again, she will be haunted by her husband's death. Hilda concludes that she will be too.
835302	/m/03fpp_	Nevada				 A young boy, Meade Slaughter, works along with his uncle Charlie Brent as a carny barker at a carnival and amusement park in early 1900s San Diego. Charlie had retrieved Meade from the custody of a sheriff of a small Texas town where his mother, working in a whorehouse, was killed by a John. The story follows Meade and Charlie as they work various games of chance in various amusement parks all over the U.S. Meanwhile, Meade meets, falls for, courts and marries a comely young lady named Shirley Reed. By 1929, Meade is invested heavily in the Stock Market, and loses a great deal of money. Meade is in trouble because he owes thousands of dollars. Charlie bails him out, same as Meade did when Charlie's wife wanted half of their bankroll to divorce him a few years earlier. With only a few hundred dollars between them, Charlie and Meade start over running some new concessions. They run into long-time friend Bob Terhune, a major Nevada politician who tries to convince them to set up shop in Reno. Both Charlie and Meade believe that Nevada doesn't really have enough potential to be worth going there. Low on funds, and with his and Charlie's business hurting because of low turnout, Meade decides to go to Chicago and run a series of amusements while Charlie continues to run their spots in San Diego. The rigors of the trip are so severe that Shirley and David, Meade's new son, would not be able to go. Meade returns home months later with only a few hundred dollars. On the way back he decides to take a side trip through Reno, and after a short visit to the town deciding that the place is still lacking adequate interest to be worth starting business there. While working one day, Meade returns home early due to stomach flu to discover that his wife has been with a lover. Meade leaves in a hurry, then goes to see Charlie, only to discover not only that Charlie knew about it, but that she has had more than one. Meade realizes it is partially his fault, if he had given her more attention this would not have happened. A few months later, in a moment of tenderness he lets Shirley discover he knew about it, and holds no bitterness. Realizing they need to make a clean break, a few months later Meade takes his half of the money in their business, and moves his family to Reno to try to make it on his own. Meade starts a small gambling club, called the Plush Wheel, and is almost bankrupted his first day. One of the customers he meets is a very smart man who decides to let Meade know that some of his employees have been rigging the game to rob him blind. The man realizes that Meade is an honest operator, and he doesn't want to see his type chased away. Meade learns that the man who helps him is Frank Smith, a well-known wealthy Nevada real estate investor known as Smitty. As Meade builds his business, his family life suffers. His wife, unhappy by her lack of friends and activities to be interested in, becomes seriously depressed and turns to alcohol for solice. One of the issues that drove her to acoholism include a serious incident in which two thugs, in attempting to beat up and rob Meade, are killed by Meade while defending himself. He even asks Charlie to come to Reno to help run his club so he can spend more time with her. Unable to breach the gulf between himself and Shirley, they drift further apart, until, at one point, she is killed in a tragic accident while drunk in public. Smitty convinces Meade to visit Las Vegas for the Helldorado celebration, and to scout out possible future places to open a Las Vegas Plush Wheel. While there, Meade spots an extremely attractive lady named Sandra Farley. The two hit it off and over a few weeks become lovers. They make plans to marry. Janice Terhune, Bob's wife and friend of Meade and Charley, takes David under her wing, feeling that Meade really isn't capable of taking proper care of him. In the mean time, Carlo Guiliano, owner of a number of casinos, who has been the cause of sending "crossroaders" (crooked gamblers) to try to bankrupt Meade, and was responsible for sending the thugs who were killed tried to break up Meade's club, decides he wants to drive Meade out of the business. He sends some more thugs, who attack Meade on a side street. Sandra, waiting for Meade, sees the men and tries to stop them, but is murdered by one of them. Meade sees the face of one of the killers and realizes it's one of the top enforcers for Carlo. The men run, leaving Meade severely injured and paralyzed from the waist down. Meade decides to sell his business and move to San Francisco. Living in San Francisco, Meade's hatred and anger over the murder of his fiancee Sandra, drives him to hire a local carpenter to build him various devices to allow him to strengthen his wasted body. Over time, his body heals and he secretly regains the ability to walk, hiding his ability. He decides that he wants to be able to walk by August 10. A few days before, he goes back to Reno, and lying in an alley, pretends to be a bum as Carlo Guliano exits his casino. He pulls out a sawed-off shotgun, shoots and kills the man who killed Sandra, then speaks to Guliano, letting him recognize who he is, and to make him realize that he must die too. Meade shoots and kills Guliano a few minutes after midnight, August 10, 1938, two years to the day that Sandra was murdered by Guiliano's men. Smitty picks up Meade and they hole out for a few days until the police stop looking for the killer. Meade decides to come back to Nevada, only to stay away from Tony Guiliano, Carlo's son, Meade decides to reopen his business in Las Vegas. As Meade is believed to be crippled, Tony figures it was a mob hit. Later discovering that Meade is able to walk again, he is incensed and wants to have him killed, but because Meade now has bodyguards, he can't get to him. Tony decides to wait to exact revenge. Over the years, Meade meets a number of people involved in the gambling trade, including Moe Sedway, whom Meade literally throws out of his office when he discovers that Sedway wants kickbacks in exchange for anyone wanting race results for bookmaking. Meade becomes friends with Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, a mob-connected casino operator. Because of knowing Siegel, Meade meets an extremely attractive woman named Cindy Guest. They become attracted to each other and start a romance. This sours David because he sees Cindy's relationship with his father forcing a wedge between him and Meade as well. At one point, David, miserable, gets into a fight with Meade and when Meade confronts him about his attitude, asks Meade if he is going to "blow him away" like he did to Carlo Guliano, then turns white realizing he didn't mean to admit it. The fight can't be reconciled and David grows even more distant from his father; he runs home to "mama", that is, to Janice Terhune, who has been defacto mother to him and her own kids over the years. Meanwhile Tony Guliano tells one of his employees, Carlo Gatori, to become friends with David so Carlo can use it as an edge to try to go after Meade. Cindy discovers she's pregnant, then decides if she wants more out of her relationship with him, then decides to ask Meade (without telling him that she's pregnant) if he would want to get married. Meade asks for a day or two to think about it. He comes to the conclusion that no matter how much he loved Sandra, he does love Cindy and would want to marry her. He heads home to find a "Dear John letter"; Cindy has confused his reticence, believes she pushed too hard, and decides that since he doesn't want to get married, that it's best she leave. After considerable fruitless searches by detectives, Meade decides to give up looking for her: she has effectively dropped off the face of the earth. David joins the Marines, fights in the Korean War, and is wounded in his left arm. He returns and meets a Vegas Showgirl named Gari Carter, with whom he strikes up a romance. David and his father reconcile when Meade tells David everything, including why he had killed Carlo. David decides to ask Gari to marry him; she figures it would be a bad idea, in view of the fact that as a showgirl, it was well known that she also did part-time work as a high class hooker. David is persistent, until she tells him to stop asking or he won't see him any more. Meade goes to meet Gari, and tries to talk her into taking a bribe to leave town. A fight ensues and Meade, after unintentionally insulting her, leaves hastily. Realizing she does care about David, she later calls Meade, not wanting to drive a wedge between him and David, tells him that she told David she would marry him. Janice Terhune is killed in an automobile accident, which devastates her family as well as close friends, especially David, who saw her as his mother. Gari has a baby girl, named Ann. David's war injury becomes worse, requiring him to take pain pills. Tony Guliano has plans for a large casino in Lake Tahoe, only he is unable to buy the land after its owner died because Meade had bought it from the owner's daughter, who was executor of his will. In a rage, Tony decides to strike at Meade by paying Carlo Gatori to do something to David. Meade and Gari notice David's physiological and psychological deterioration, and decide to try to find out what is wrong, even going so far as to become friends as a result of their concern over him. They suspect Gatori may have something to do with it, David's friendship with him seeming unsavory. Charlie dies of a massive heart attack. David goes missing, and a few weeks later, Meade is informed by the San Francisco police that David has been picked up, suffering from an addiction to heroin. Meade puts David in one of the best sanitoriums in the country so he can go through withdrawal. Meade hires the best private detective he can find to discover who got David addicted. David will be in Holton Sanitarium for at least six months, so Meade convinces Gari to move out to his ranch and rebuild the place. He decides also to give her a job as Vice President of Special projects for the casino, because of her ability to get things done. Meade goes back to San Francisco to meet with Thorton, the private investigator he hired, who has discovered that Gatori had gotten David hooked. Meade goes to see Smitty, who knows some tough characters. Smitty asks Meade what he thinks should be done. Meade admits "Gatori can't live after what he's done." Tony Guliano is kidnapped and taken out to the desert, where he is forced by two men at gunpoint to dig a grave in the desert; he figures they are going to bury him in it. When he is forced at gunpoint to get in the hole, and believes his captors are about to kill him, another man appears above him. The man is Meade. He asks Tony about David; he claims not to know him. Meade says that Gatori said otherwise while being tortured, as Gatori's bullet-ridden corpse is dumped into the hole next to Tony. He then tells Tony that he's not killing him because he wants him to remember this if he ever tries to evoke revenge against Meade. David comes out of the sanitarium; Meade and Gari decide to try to make things easy for him, hopefully so he can go back into some work he can handle. The attempt fails and Meade ends up having to re-commit David to the sanitarium.
836740	/m/03fqn6	Petersburg	Andrei Bely		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel ends with a surprise twist, when Nikolai's worst fears are realized. The Mongol hordes that the Tsar kept at bay for hundreds of years are finally unleashed on the weakened empire of Russia via a complex labyrinth of tunnels. The inhabitants of Petersburg, unable to defend themselves from the ravaging horde of Tartars, quickly capitulate to the rule of the Khan. Appolon Appolonovich is beheaded by the tyrannical Khan and his son Nikolai assumes his rightful place as guardian of the Russian people. This was intended to be the first in an epic trilogy detailing the resistance movement of the intelligentsia against the alien invaders. However, with the onset of post-revolutionary censorship, the series was deemed to be too monarchist and was therefore abandoned. Bely presents the idea of the entire world being connected by a series of tunnels. As a symbolist he saw tunnels as a gateway to the soul. By having the Mongols use these tunnels to breach Russia's defenses, he expresses the widely held fear of Orientalism defiling the Russian soul.
837805	/m/03frwq	Raw Spirit	Iain Banks	2003		 The book is about whisky, or finding the perfect dram while travelling in Scotland. Other recurring themes in the book are George W. Bush, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Banks's love for motor vehicles.
838560	/m/03fvh7	The Life and Loves of a She-Devil	Fay Weldon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Ruth is an abnormally tall and ugly housewife whose loveless husband, Bobbo, considers their relationship an open marriage based on convenience alone. Bobbo only truly loves his mistress, a famous, wealthy romance novelist named Mary Fisher. When Ruth at last passionately indicates her disapproval for Bobbo’s extramarital affair, he calls her a “she-devil”, causing her to reassess her life. She resolves to behave in accordance with the label he has given her. Bobbo promptly leaves Ruth and their two children: he goes to live with Mary Fisher, to whom he soon proposes. Ruth plots her revenge on them, beginning by burning down her own house, therefore forcing the children to live with their father at Mary Fisher’s mansion. Ruth proceeds to engage in a string of meaningless sexual relationships in order to emotionally detach herself from sex. In the meantime, she works at the retirement home that houses Mary’s mother, Pearl, her actions there causing Pearl to be expelled from the home; thus she inconveniences Mary and Bobbo who must now care for her. At the same time, Bobbo believes that Ruth has inexplicably disappeared and may be dead, as she has completely abandoned him and their children. Ruth now finds work at a psychiatric hospital while taking classes in accounting and bookkeeping. She uses this knowledge to discreetly steal money from Bobbo’s corporate clientele in a way that will incriminate Bobbo later on. Ruth then begins her own employment agency for female secretaries, under the alias of “Vista Rose”. Through her agency, she sends a secretary to Bobbo’s office who begins another affair with him. When the police arrive to arrest Bobbo, Ruth has made it appear as though he and the secretary were going to take the stolen finances and leave the country, though Ruth is in possession of the money herself, becoming rich as a result. Under a new alias, Ruth works as a nanny for the children of the judge who presides over Bobbo’s trial, sleeping with him and successfully persuading him to extend Bobbo’s prison sentence if he is convicted. Bobbo is found guilty and imprisoned. While a desperate Mary Fisher turns toward religion for guidance, Ruth manipulates the entire situation and continues to recreate herself with a variety of aliases and love affairs. Ruth uses her money to change her lifestyle and appearance, particularly undergoing a series of surgeries to completely restructure her body. Mary continues to love Bobbo and wastes away, developing cancer and ultimately dying, with her house purchased quickly by Ruth. Ruth now lives a life of wealth, extravagance, and control, claiming that she will sexually dominate Bobbo once she secures his release from prison, causing him the misery that he once caused her.
838706	/m/03fvzz	The King of Torts	John Grisham	2003	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Clay Carter is a poorly-paid lawyer at the Office of the Public Defender. He dreams of one day joining a big law firm. Reluctantly, he takes on the case of Tequila Watson, a man accused of a random street killing. Clay assumes that it is just another D.C. murder. But Clay soon learns of a pharmaceutical conspiracy, with the help of the mysterious Max Pace. The pharmaceutical company was illegally using recovering drug addicts for medical trials without their consent. The drug, 'Tarvan', works for 90% of their patients, but in some cases (including Tequila Watson), it leads to random violent killings. The drug company employs Pace and his shadowy associates to solicit Clay's help in paying off the victims with large settlements. Clay has reservations, but soon profits from the legal retainer offered by Pace. He leaves the OPD and raids some of their staff to establish his own law firm. Pace offers Clay insider information on the dangers of another drug (Dyloft and Maxatil). Clay uses this information to launch a new career in Tort Law. Soon he finds himself being one of the legal profession's biggest tort lawyers and conniving with other high-powered tort lawyers. But this sudden fame isn't without a price and soon he's under investigation for various misdemeanors, including insider trading. In the end, Clay is beaten up by some men from Reedsburgh, sending him to the hospital. Then he loses a huge case against Goffman and slides downhill as previous, disgruntled clients sue him. In the end he runs away with Rebecca to London.
838886	/m/03fwhs	Woman at Point Zero		1975		 The novel opens with a psychiatrist who is researching inmates at a women's prison. The prison doctor speaks of a woman, Firdaus, who is unlike any of the murderers in the prison: she rarely eats or sleeps, she never talks, she never accepts visitors. He feels certain the woman is incapable of murder, but she has refused to sign any appeals on her behalf. The psychiatrist makes several attempts to speak with her, but Firdaus declines. This rejections causes the psychiatrist to have a crisis of self-confidence. She became consumed with the idea that Firdaus was better than herself, and possibly better than even the president, whom she has refused to send an appeal to. As the psychiatrist is leaving the wader comes to her with an urgent message: Firdaus wants to speak to her. Upon meeting, Firdaus promptly tells her to close the window, sit down, and listen. She explains that she is going to be executed that evening and she wants to tell her life story. Firdaus describes a poor childhood in a farming community. She recalls that she was confused by the disparity between her father's actions, such as beating her mother, and his dedication to the Islamic faith. Those days were relatively happy days, as she was sent out to the fields to work and tend the goats. She enjoys the friendship of a boy named Mohammadain, with whom she plays "bride and bridegroom," and describes her first encounters with clitoral stimulation. One day Firdaus's mother sends for a woman with a knife, who mutilated her genitals. From that point on Firdaus is assigned work in the home. Firdaus' uncle begins to take a sexual interest in her and she describes her new lack of clitoral sensitivity, noting, "He was doing to me what Mohammadain had done to me before. In fact, he was doing even more, but I no longer felt the strong sensation of pleasure that radiated from an unknown and yet familiar part of my body. ... It was as if I could not longer recall the exact spot from which it used to arise, or as though a part of me, of my being, was gone and would never return." After the death of her mother and father, Firdaus is taken in by her uncle, who sends her to primary school. Firdaus loves school. She maintains a close relationship with her uncle, who continues to take an interest in her sexually. After Firdaus receives her primary school certificate a distance grows between uncle and niece, and her uncle marries and withdraws all affection and attention. Tensions between Firdaus and her aunt-in-law build until Firdaus is placed in boarding school, where Firdaus falls in love with a female teacher named Miss Iqbal, whom she feels a mutual connection to, but Iqbal keeps her at an arm's length and never allows her to get close. Upon graduation, Firdaus' aunt convinces her uncle to arrange her marriage with Sheikh Mahmoud, a "virtuous man" who needs an obedient wife. Firdaus considers running away but ultimately submits to the marriage. Mahmoud repulses her—he is forty years older and has a sore on his chin that oozes pus. He stays home all day, micromanaging Firdaus' every action, and begins to physically abuse her. Firdaus runs away and wanders the streets aimlessly until she stops to rest at a coffee shop. The owner, Bayoumi, offers her tea and a place to stay until she finds a job. Firdaus accepts. After several months, Firdaus tells him she wants to find a job and her own place to live. Bayoumi immediately becomes violent and beats her saveagely. He starts locking her up during the day and allows his friends to abuse, insult, and rape her. Eventually, Firdaus is able enlist the aid of a female neighbor, who calls a carpenter to open the door, allowing her to escape. While on the run Firdaus meets the madame Sharifa Salah el Dine, who takes her into her brothel as a high-class prostitute. She tells Firdaus that all men are the same and that she must be harder than life if she wants to live. In exchange for working in Sharifa's brothel Firdaus is given beautiful clothes and delicious food, but she has no pleasure in life. One evening she overhears an argument between Sharifa and her pimp, Fawzy, who wants to take Firdaus as his own. They argue, and Fawzy overpowers Sharifa and rapes her. Firdaus realizes that even Sharifa does not have true power and she runs away. Firdaus is wandering in the dark and rain when she is picked up by a stranger who takes her back to his home. He sleeps with her, but he is not as disgusting as the other men she's dealt with in her profession, and after they are done he gives her a 10 pound note. This is a moment of awakening for Firdaus, and she recalls that it, "solved the enigma in one swift, sweeping moment, tore away the shroud that covered up a truth I had in fact experienced when still a child, when for the first time my father gave me a coin to hold in my hand, and be mine." Firdaus realizes that she can exert her power over men by rejecting them, and can force men to yield to her will by naming her own price; she gains self-confidence and soon becomes a wealthy and highly sought prostitute. She employs a cook and an assistant, works whatever hours she wishes, and cultivates powerful friendships. One day, her friend Di'aa tells her she is not respectable. This insult has a jarring and immediate impact on Firdaus, who comes to realize that she can no longer work as a prostitute. She takes a job at a local office and refuses to offer her body to the higher officials for promotions or raises. Although Firdaus believed that her new job would bring respect, she makes significantly less money than when working as a prostitute, and lives in squalid conditions. Furthermore, her office job gave her little autonomy or freedom which she values so highly. She eventually falls in love with Ibrahim, a coworker and revolutionary chairman, with whom she develops a deep emotional connection. But when Ibrahim announces his engagement to the chairman's daughter, which has clearly been engineered to help his career, Firdaus realizes he does not reciprocate her feelings and only used her for sex. Crushed and disillusioned, Firdaus returns to prostitution, and once again amasses great wealth and becomes highly influential. Her success attracts the attention of the pimp Marzouk, who has many political connections and threatens her with police action. He repeatedly beats Firdaus and forces her to give him larger percentages of her earnings. Firdaus decides to leave and take up another job, but Marzouk blocks her way and tells her she can never leave. When he pulls a knife Firdaus stabs him to death. High with the sense of her new freedom, Firdaus walks the streets until she is picked up by a high-profile Arabian prince, who she refuses until he agrees to her price of 3,000 pounds. As soon as the transaction is over, she tells him that she killed a man. He doesn't believe her, but she scares him to the point that he is convinced. The prince has her arrested and Firdaus is sentenced to death. Firdaus says that she has been sentenced to death because they were afraid to let her live, for, "My life means their death. My death means their life. They want to live." As she is finishing her story, armed policemen come for her, and the psychiatrist sits, stunned, as Firdaus is taken to be executed, and realizes that Firdaus has more courage than she does.
838965	/m/03fwn5	Notable American Women	Ben Marcus	2002-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Michael Marcus (the father of Ben Marcus, the character) opens Notable American Women with several warnings - most notably, that his own offspring, Ben, may very well be mentally handicapped - and ponders reflectively, "How can one word from Ben Marcus's rotten, filthy heart be trusted?" With that, Ben Marcus (the author) launches into a lengthy first-person narration with Ben Marcus as guide, allowing the reader to decide if, and how, any of the words can be trusted. Playing with the English language in such a manner that his work has drawn comparison's to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, among other novels, Marcus describes the cultish, recondite practises of his mother, her enigmatic mentor Jane Dark, and their legion of disciples as they attempt to create perfect stillness in the world by eliminating the "wind violence" of speech and, ultimately, physical movement. Dark, witty, and depressing in its ironic hilarity, Notable American Women allows the reader to delve into the mind of a well-meaning but obtuse young man, to glimpse into his turbulent upbringing full of radical experimentation and forced-breeding (among other things) and, possibly, to become attached. In the end, the feminist Silentist group, to which Ben's mother Jane Marcus belongs, is facing issues of endangerment due to the largely unsuccessful breeding procedures involving Ben and the growing number of its member that are reaching a stillness level, which makes them obsolete. Jane Marcus, too, is nearing complete and utter emotional obliteration, using a complex system of body contortions, and takes the opportunity to address the reader. Like her estranged husband before her (whom she purportedly assisted in relegating to a hole in her backyard), Jane takes a turn at narration, providing for the novel's conclusion; addressing her husband with ultimatums and effrontery, the reader sees life from the last member of the core Marcus-family trinity, at which point the reader is left to draw her or his own conclusions.
839057	/m/03fwxw	Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District	Nikolai Leskov			 Although the opera shares the basic characters and outline, it has a number of differences from the original story in terms of plot and emphasis. One example is in the convoy after Katerina gives Sergei her stockings: in the opera, all the women mock Katerina, whereas in the story, Sergei and Sonya mock her while Fiona and Gordyushka shame them in response to their cruelty toward her. ;Chapter 1 The Ismailov family is introduced: Boris, the father of Zinovy, the husband of Katerina for the past five years. Boris and Zinovy are merchants, ruling an estate with many peasant-slaves. Katerina is bored in their empty home, and tired of Boris' constant orders and scolding of her for not producing any children. She would actually welcome a child, and Zinovy's previous wife of twenty years fared no better. ;Chapter 2 A dam bursts at a mill owned by Boris, and Zinovy leaves town to oversee its repair. Aksinya, the female cook, and Sergei, a newly arrived farmhand, are introduced. Katerina flirts somewhat innocently with Sergei. Aksinya tells Katerina, who has become bored enough to venture out amongst the peasants, of Sergei's reputation as a womanizer. ;Chapter 3 Sergei comes into Katerina's room, and after some dialogue about romance, moves to kiss her roughly. She protests at first, but then gives in; after an implied sexual encounter, she tells Sergei to leave because Boris will be coming by to lock her door. He stays, saying he can use the window instead. ;Chapter 4 After a week of the continued affair, Boris catches Sergei and accused him of adultery. Sergei won't admit or deny it, so Boris whips him until his own arm hurts from the exertion, and locks Sergei in a cellar. Katerina seems to come alive from her boredom, but Boris threatens to beat her as well when she asks for Sergei's release. ;Chapter 5 Katerina poisons Boris, and he's buried without his son and without suspicion. She then takes charge of the estate and begins to order people around, openly being around Sergei every day. ;Chapter 6 Katerina has a strange dream about a cat. Some dialogue occurs with Sergei, which by its end reveals his worry over Zinovy's return and desire to marry her. ;Chapter 7 Katerina again dreams of the cat, which this time has Boris' head rather than a cat's. Zinovy returns and takes some time getting around to confront Katerina with what he's heard about her affair. Finally she calls Sergei in, kisses him in front of her husband, some violence occurs, and the two of them are strangling Zinovy. ;Chapter 8 Zinovy dies, and Sergei buries him deep in the walls of the cellar where he himself had been kept. ;Chapter 9 Some convenient circumstances regarding Zinovy's return shroud his disappearance in mystery, and while there's an inquiry, nothing is found and no trouble comes to Sergei or Katerina. The latter becomes pregnant. Everything seems to be working out for them, until Boris' young nephew Fyodor shows up with his mother, preventing Katerina from inheriting the estate. She has no problem with this and actually makes an effort to be a good aunt, but Sergei complains repeatedly for a time about their misfortune. ;Chapter 10 Fyodor falls ill, and Katerina, while tending to him, has a change of heart because of Sergei's earlier complaints. ;Chapter 11 Katerina and Sergei suffocate the boy, but a crowd returning from church storms the house, one of its members having spied the act through the shutters of Fyodor's room. Sergei, hearing the windows clattering from the crowd's fists, thinks the ghosts of his murder victims have come back to haunt him, and breaks down. ;Chapter 12 Sergei admits to the crime publicly and, in repentance, also tells of where Zinovy is buried and admits to that crime as well. Katerina indifferently admits that she helped with the murders, saying it was all for Sergei. The two are sent to exile in Siberia. During their journey there, Katerina gives birth in a prison hospital, and wants nothing to do with their child. ;Chapter 13 The child is sent to be raised by Fyodor's mother and becomes heir to the Ismailov estate. Katerina continues to be obsessed with Sergei, who increasingly wants nothing to do with her. Fiona and "little Sonya," two members of the prison convoy with Katerina and Sergei, are introduced, the former being known for being sexually prolific, the latter the opposite. ;Chapter 14 Sergei is caught by Katerina while being intimate with Fiona. Katerina is mortified, but seeing Fiona's indifference to the whole situation, reaches something approaching cordiality with Fiona by writing her off. Sergei then pursues little Sonya, who won't sleep with him unless he gives her a pair of stockings. Sergei then complains to Katerina about his ankle-cuffs. She, being happy that he's talking to her again, readily gives him her last pair of new stockings to ease his pain, which he then gives to Sonya for sexual favours. ;Chapter 15 Katerina sees Sonya wearing her stockings, and spits in Sergei's eyes, and shoves him. He promises revenge, and later breaks into her cell with another man, giving her fifty lashes with a rope, while Katerina's cell-mate Sonya giggles in the background. Katerina, broken, lets Fiona console her, and realizes that she is no better than Fiona, which is her last straw: after that she is emotionless. On the road in the prison convoy, Sergei and Sonya together mock Katerina. Sonya offers her stockings to her for sale. Sergei reminisces about both their courtship and their murders in the same airy manner. Fiona and an old man in the convoy, Gordyushka, defend Katerina, but to no avail. The convoy arrives at a river and boards a ferry, and Katerina, repeating some phrases similar to Sergei's feigned nostalgia for their life at the estate, tackles Sonya overboard after seeing the faces of Boris, Zinovy, and Fyodor in the water. The two women appear briefly at the surface, still alive, but Katerina grabs Sonya, and they both drown.
839207	/m/03fx75	The Wings of the Dove	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kate Croy and Merton Densher are two betrothed Londoners who desperately want to marry but have very little money. Kate is constantly put upon by family troubles, and is now living with her domineering aunt, Maud Lowder. Into their world comes Milly Theale, an enormously rich young American woman who had previously met and fallen in love with Densher, though she didn't reveal her feelings. Her travelling companion and confidante, Mrs. Stringham, is an old friend of Maud's. Kate and Aunt Maud welcome Milly to London, and the American heiress enjoys great social success. With Kate as a companion, Milly goes to see an eminent physician, Sir Luke Strett, because she's afraid that she is suffering from an incurable disease. The doctor is noncommittal but Milly fears the worst. Kate suspects that Milly is deathly ill. After the trip to America where he had met Milly, Densher returns to find the heiress in London. Kate wants Densher to pay as much attention as possible to Milly, though at first he doesn't quite know why. Kate has been careful to conceal from Milly (and everybody else) that she and Densher are engaged. With the threat of serious illness hanging over her, Milly decides to travel to Venice with Mrs. Stringham. Aunt Maud, Kate and Densher follow her. At a party Milly gives in her Venice palazzo (the older Palazzo Barbaro, called "Palazzo Leporelli" in the novel), Kate finally reveals her complete plan to Densher: he is to marry Milly so that, after her presumably soon-to-occur death, Densher will inherit the money they can marry on. Densher had suspected this was Kate's idea, and he demands that she consummate their affair before he'll go along with her plan. Aunt Maud and Kate return to London while Densher remains with Milly. Unfortunately, the dying girl learns from a former suitor of Kate's about the plot to get her money. She "turns her face to the wall" and grows very ill. Densher sees her one last time before he leaves for London, where he eventually receives news of Milly's death. Milly does leave him a large amount of money despite everything. But Densher won't touch the money, and he won't marry Kate unless she also refuses the bequest. Conversely, if Kate chooses the money instead of him, Densher offers to make the bequest over to her in full. The lovers part on the novel's final page with a cryptic exclamation from Kate: "We shall never be again as we were!"
839226	/m/03fx8n	The Ambassadors	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lambert Strether, a middle-aged, yet not broadly experienced, man from Woollett, Massachusetts, agrees to assume a mission for his wealthy fiancée: go to Paris and rescue her son, Chad Newsome, from the clutches of a presumably wicked woman. On his journey, Strether stops in England, and there meets Maria Gostrey, an American woman who has lived in Paris for years. Her cynical wit and worldly opinions start to rattle Strether's preconceived view of the situation. In Paris, Strether meets Chad, and is impressed by the much greater sophistication Chad seems to have gained during his years in Europe. Chad takes him to a garden party, where Strether meets Marie de Vionnet, a lovely woman of impeccable manners, separated from her reportedly unpleasant husband, and Jeanne, her exquisite daughter. Strether is confused as to whether Chad is more attracted to the mother or the daughter. At the same time, Strether, himself, feels an overwhelming attraction to Marie de Vionnet, which he suspects she might requite, and so begins questioning his commitment to return to Woollett and marry Chad's mother, despite his admiration for her. All of these impressions of Parisian culture lead Strether to confide in Little Bilham, a friend of Chad's, that he might have missed the best life has to offer; he starts to delight in the loveliness of Paris, and stops Chad from returning to America. Strether's American traveling companion, Waymarsh, provides thematic counterpoint, by refusing to be seduced by the charms of Europe. Meanwhile, Mrs. Newsome, Strether's fiancée and Chad's mother, impatiently waiting in America, enlists new "ambassadors" to return forthwith with Chad. The most important of the new ambassadors, Sarah Pocock, Chad's sister, harshly dismisses Strether's impression that Chad has improved, condemns Marie as an indecent woman, and demands that Chad immediately return to the family business in America. To escape his troubles, Strether takes a brief tour of the French countryside, and accidentally encounters Chad and Marie at a rural inn; he then comprehends the full extent of their romance. After returning to Paris, he counsels Chad not to leave Marie; but Strether finds he is now uncomfortable in Europe. In the event, he declines Maria Gostrey's virtual marriage proposal and returns to America.
839255	/m/03fxby	Tender is the Night	F. Scott Fitzgerald		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dick and Nicole Diver are a glamorous couple who take a villa in the South of France and surround themselves with a circle of friends, mainly Americans. Also staying at the resort are Rosemary Hoyt, a young actress, and her mother. Rosemary gets sucked into the circle of the Divers; she falls in love with Dick and is also adopted as a close friend by Nicole. Dick first toys with the idea of an affair with Rosemary at this point, which he finally acts upon years later. However, Rosemary senses something is wrong with the couple, which is brought to light when one of the guests at a party reports having seen something strange in the bathroom. Tommy Barban, another guest, comes loyally to the defense of the Divers. The action involves various other friends, including the Norths, where a frequent occurrence is the drunken behavior of Abe North. The story becomes complicated when Jules Peterson, a black man, is murdered and ends up in Rosemary's bed, in a situation which could destroy Rosemary's career. Dick moves the blood-soaked body to cover up any implied relationship between Rosemary and Peterson. Once into the book, the history of the Divers emerges. Dick Diver was a doctor and psychoanalyst and had taken on a complicated case of neuroses. This was Nicole, whose complicated, incestuous relationship with her father is suggested as the cause of breakdown. As she becomes infatuated with Dick, Dick is almost driven to marry her as part of the cure. Strong objections are raised: Nicole is an heiress and her sister thinks Dick is marrying her for her money. They do marry, and Nicole’s money pays for Dick's partnership in a Swiss clinic and for their extravagant lifestyle. However, Dick gradually develops a drinking problem. He gets into fights and trouble with the police in various incidents and is bought out of the clinic by his partner. The opening episode almost marks the crossover point whereby Dick becomes the weaker partner, progressively failing in what he attempts while Nicole becomes stronger. Dick's behaviour becomes embarrassing as he mishandles situations with the children and friends. Eventually Nicole has an affair with Tommy Barban, and divorces Dick to marry Barban. Nicole survives, while Dick drifts into ever diminishing circumstances. The underlying theme is then how one person has become strong by destroying another—a point emphasized cynically by Nicole's sister, who having seen Dick originally as the parasite, finally remarks that "That was what he was educated for."
839263	/m/03fxdx	The Good Soldier	Ford Madox Ford	1915-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Good Soldier is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the stories of those dissolutions as well as the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion that leaves gaps for the reader to fill. The novel opens with the famous line, “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” Dowell explains that for nine years he, his wife Florence and their friends Captain Edward Ashburnham (the “good soldier” of the book’s title) and his wife Leonora had an ostensibly normal friendship while Edward and Florence sought treatment for their heart ailments at a spa in Nauheim, Germany. As it turns out, nothing in the relationships or in the characters is as it first seems. Florence’s heart ailment is a fiction she perpetrated on John to force them to stay in Europe so that she could continue her affair with an American thug named Jimmy. Edward and Leonora have a loveless, imbalanced marriage broken by his constant infidelities (both of body and heart) and Leonora’s attempts to control Edward’s affairs (both financial and romantic). Dowell is a fool and is coming to realize how much of a fool he is, as Florence and Edward had an affair under his nose for nine years without John knowing until Florence was dead. Florence’s affair with Edward leads her to commit suicide when she realizes that Edward is falling in love with his and Leonora’s young ward, Nancy Rufford, the daughter of Leonora's closest friend. Florence sees the two in an intimate conversation and rushes back into the resort, where she sees John talking to a man she knows (and who knows of her affair with Jimmy) but whom John doesn’t know. Assuming that her relationship with Edward and her marriage to John are over, Florence takes prussic acid – which she has carried for years in a vial that John thought held her heart medicine – and dies. With that story told, Dowell moves on to tell the story of Edward and Leonora’s relationship, which appears normal but which is a power struggle that Leonora wins. Dowell runs through several of Edward’s affairs and peccadilloes, including his possibly innocent attempt to comfort a crying servant on a train; his affair with the married Maisie Maidan, the one character in the book whose heart problem was unquestionably real, and his bizarre tryst in Monte Carlo and Antibes with a kept woman known as La Dolciquita. Edward’s philandering ends up costing them a fortune in bribes, blackmail and gifts for his lovers, leading Leonora to take control of Edward’s financial affairs. She gradually gets him out of debt. Edward’s last affair is his most scandalous, as he becomes infatuated with their young ward, Nancy. Nancy came to live with them after leaving a convent where her parents had sent her; her mother was a violent alcoholic, and her father (it is later suggested that this man may not be Nancy’s biological father) may have abused her. Edward, tearing himself apart because he does not want to spoil Nancy's innocence, arranges to have her sent to India to live with her father, even though this frightens her terribly. Once Leonora knows that Edward intends to keep his passion for Nancy chaste, but only wants Nancy to continue to love him from afar, Leonora torments him by making this wish impossible—she pretends to offer to divorce him so he can marry Nancy, but informs Nancy of his sordid sexual history, destroying Nancy’s innocent love for him. After Nancy's departure, Edward commits suicide, and when she reaches Aden and sees the obituary in the paper, she becomes catatonic. The novel’s last section has Dowell writing from Edward’s old estate in England, where he takes care of Nancy, whom he cannot marry because of her mental illness. Nancy is only capable of repeating two things – a Latin phrase meaning “I believe in an omnipotent God” and the word “shuttlecocks.” Dowell states that the story is sad because no one got what he wanted: Leonora wanted Edward but lost him and marries the normal (but dull) Rodney Bayham; Edward wanted Nancy but lost her; Dowell wanted a wife but has twice ended up a nurse to a sick woman, one a fake. As if in an afterthought, Dowell closes the novel by telling the story of Edward’s suicide. Edward receives a telegram from Nancy that reads, “Safe Brindisi. Having a rattling good time. Nancy.” He asks Dowell to take the telegram to his wife, pulls out his pen knife, says that it’s time he had some rest and slits his own throat. Dowell ends up generally unsure about where to lay the blame but expressing sympathy for Edward, because Dowell thinks himself to be similar to Edward in nature.
839270	/m/03fxfl	The Golden Bowl	Henry James	1904-11-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Prince Amerigo, an impoverished but charismatic Italian nobleman, is in London for his marriage to Maggie Verver, only child of the widower Adam Verver, the fabulously wealthy American financier and art collector. While there, he re-encounters Charlotte Stant, another young American and a former mistress from his days in Rome; they met in Mrs. Assingham's drawing room. She is not wealthy, which is one reason they did not marry. Maggie and Charlotte have been dear friends since childhood, although Maggie doesn't know of Charlotte and Amerigo's past relationship. Charlotte and Amerigo go shopping together for a wedding present for Maggie. They find a curiosity shop where the shopkeeper offers them an antique gilded crystal bowl. The Prince declines to purchase it, as he suspects it contains a hidden flaw. After Maggie's marriage, she is afraid that her father has become lonely, as they had been close for years. She persuades him to propose to Charlotte, who accepts Adam's proposal. Soon after their wedding, Charlotte and Amerigo are thrown together because their respective spouses seem more interested in their father-daughter relationship than in their marriages. Amerigo and Charlotte finally consummate an adulterous affair. Maggie begins to suspect the pair. She happens to go to the same shop and buys the golden bowl they had rejected. Regretting the high price he charged her, the shopkeeper visits Maggie and confesses to overcharging. At her home, he sees photographs of Amerigo and Charlotte. He tells Maggie of the pair's shopping trip on the eve of her marriage and their intimate conversation in his shop. (They had spoken Italian, but he understands the language.) Maggie confronts Amerigo. She begins a secret campaign to separate him and Charlotte while never revealing their affair to her father. Also concealing her knowledge from Charlotte and denying any change to their friendship, she gradually persuades her father to return to America with his wife. After previously regarding as a rather naive American and immature, Amerigo appears impressed by Maggie's delicate diplomacy. The novel ends with Adam and Charlotte Verver about to depart for the United States. Amerigo says he can "see nothing but" Maggie and embraces her.
839306	/m/03fxh2	Go Tell It on the Mountain	James Baldwin	1953	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The opening chapter tells the story of John, a young African-American boy in Harlem in the 1930s. John has been raised by his mother Elizabeth and her preacher husband Gabriel, who nominally is John's father and is a strict disciplinarian, abusive to both his children and his wife. Gabriel's religious philosophy is tough and one of salvation through faith in Jesus, without which one is damned to hell. John hates his father and dreams of wounding or killing him and running away. The characters are members of the Temple of the Fire Baptized Church in Harlem, a Pentecostal Protestant denomination. Florence's Prayer tells her life story. She was born to a freed slave who chose to continue to work in the South for a white family. Her mother always favored Florence's younger brother Gabriel, causing Florence to feel a yearning need to escape from her life. Disgusted by the sexual harassment of her boss, Florence buys a one-way train ticket to New York and leaves her mother on her deathbed with Gabriel. In New York, Florence marries a dissolute man named Frank, resulting in a power struggle within their marriage which ends after ten years when Frank leaves one night and never returns. He later dies in France in World War I, but Florence only finds out from Frank's girlfriend. Gabriel's Prayer starts with a description of his drunken, womanizing ways as a teenager, before his rebirth in Christ and the start of his career as a preacher. After his conversion he forms a relationship with a childhood friend of Florence, a slightly older woman from his town named Deborah who was gang-raped as a teenager by a band of white men. Deborah is devout in her faith, and Gabriel uses her strength to become a successful Reverend himself. However, despite his religious convictions, Gabriel is unable to resist his physical attraction for a woman named Esther. Esther and Gabriel work for the same white family. Gabriel has a brief affair with her that but then ends it out of guilt. When Esther finds herself pregnant, Gabriel steals his wife's savings and gives them to Esther to hush up the matter and allow Esther to go away to have her baby; she goes to Chicago but dies giving birth to their son, Royal. Royal knows his father but doesn't know of their relationship, and is eventually killed in a barroom fight in Chicago. Gabriel is powerless and unable to stop his son's murder. Deborah, who knew or suspected that Royal was her husband's son from the beginning, admonishes Gabriel before her death for abandoning Esther and his son. Elizabeth's Prayer, the shortest of the three, tells her story. As a young girl, Elizabeth was very close to her father, but when her mother dies, she is forced by a court order to live with an imperious and cold aunt, and then goes to live in New York with a friend of the aunt's who is a Spiritualist medium. It is revealed that Gabriel is not John's biological father, for Elizabeth had gone to New York with her boyfriend, Richard, a self-educated "sinner" who did not believe in the Church and who never carried out his promise to marry Elizabeth. Richard is arrested for a robbery he didn't commit, and while he is acquitted at trial, the experience – including the abuse he takes at the hands of white police officers – leads him to commit suicide on his first night home. Elizabeth, then just a few months pregnant with John, takes a job, where she meets Florence. Florence introduces her to Gabriel, whom she marries. The final chapter returns to the church, where John sees his friend Elisha fall to the floor in a religious ecstasy and is himself then caught up in a Pentecostal spiritual experience and falls to the floor. He has a series of dreamlike visions in which he sees hell and heaven, life and death, and also Gabriel standing over him. When he regains his senses, he says that he is saved and that he has accepted Jesus as his savior. Yet even as the group leaves the church, old sins are revisited as Florence threatens to tell Elizabeth of Gabriel's sordid past. Although she does not tell Elizabeth, she hopes that she finds out eventually.
839388	/m/03fxpf	The Secret Agent	Joseph Conrad	1907-09	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in London in 1886 and follows the life of Mr. Verloc, a secret agent. Verloc is also a businessman who owns a shop which sells pornographic material, contraceptives, and bric-a-brac. He lives with his wife Winnie, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law, Stevie. Stevie has a mental disability, possibly autism, which causes him to be very excitable; his sister, Verloc's wife, attends to him, treating him more as a son than as a brother. Verloc's friends are a group of anarchists of which Comrade Ossipon, Michaelis, and "The Professor" are the most prominent. Although largely ineffectual as terrorists, their actions are known to the police. The group produce anarchist literature in the form of pamphlets entitled F.P., an acronym for The Future of the Proletariat. The novel begins in Verloc's home, as he and his wife discuss the trivialities of everyday life, which introduces the reader to Verloc's family. Soon after, Verloc leaves to meet Mr. Vladimir, the new First Secretary in the embassy of a foreign country (implied to be Russia). Although a member of an anarchist cell, Verloc is also secretly employed by the Embassy as an agent provocateur. Vladimir informs Verloc that from reviewing his service history he is far from an exemplary model of a secret agent and, in order to redeem himself, must carry out an operation - the destruction of Greenwich Observatory by a bomb explosion. Vladimir explains that Britain's lax attitude to anarchism endangers his own country, and he reasons that an attack on 'science', which he claims is the current vogue amongst the public, will provide the necessary outrage for suppression. Verloc later meets with his friends, who discuss politics and law, and the notion of a communist revolution. Unbeknownst to the group, Stevie, Verloc's brother-in-law, overhears the conversation, which greatly disturbs him. Comrade Ossipon later meets The Professor, who describes the nature of the bomb which he carries in his coat at all times: it allows him to press a button which will blow him up in twenty seconds, and those nearest to him. After The Professor leaves the meeting, he stumbles into Chief Inspector Heat. Heat is a policeman who is working on the case regarding a recent explosion at Greenwich, where one man was killed. Heat informs The Professor that he is not a suspect in the case, but that he is being monitored due to his terrorist inclinations and anarchist background. Knowing that Michaelis has recently moved to the countryside to write a book, the Chief Inspector informs the Assistant Commissioner that he has a contact, Verloc, who may be able to assist in the case. The Assistant Commissioner later speaks to his superior, Sir Ethelred, about his intentions to solve the case alone, rather than relying on the effort of Chief Inspector Heat. The novel often moves between Verloc's work life and his home life. At home, Mrs. Verloc's mother informs the family that she wishes to move out of the house. Mrs. Verloc's mother and Stevie use a hansom which is driven by a man with a hook in the place of his hand. The journey greatly upsets Stevie, as the driver's tales of hardship coupled with his menacing hook scare him to the point where Mrs. Verloc must calm him down. On Verloc's return from a business trip to the continent, his wife tells him of the high regard that Stevie has for him and she implores her husband to spend more time with Stevie. Verloc eventually agrees to go for a walk with Stevie. After this walk, Mrs. Verloc notes that her husband's relationship with her brother has improved. Verloc then tells his wife that he has taken Stevie to go and visit Michaelis, and that Stevie would stay with him in the countryside for a few days. As Verloc is talking to his wife about the possibility of emigrating to the continent, he is paid a visit by the Assistant Commissioner. Shortly thereafter, Chief Inspector Heat arrives in order to speak with Verloc, without knowing that the Assistant Commissioner had left with Verloc earlier that evening. The Chief Inspector tells Mrs. Verloc that he had recovered an overcoat at the scene of the bombing which had the shop's address written on a label. Mrs. Verloc confirms that it was Stevie's overcoat, and that she had written the address. On Verloc's return, he realises that his wife knows her brother has been killed by Verloc's bomb, and confesses what truly happened. A stunned Mrs. Verloc, in her anguish, then fatally stabs her husband. After the murder, Mrs. Verloc flees her home, where she chances upon Comrade Ossipon, and begs him to help her. Ossipon assists her, but also confesses his romantic feelings for her. Planning on running away with her, he aids her in taking a boat to the continent. However, her instability and the revelation of her murder increasingly worries him, and he abandons her. He later discovers in a newspaper, a woman had disappeared, leaving behind her a wedding ring, before drowning herself in the English Channel. *Mr. Adolf Verloc: a secret agent who owns a shop in the Soho region of London. He is tasked by his superiors with destroying Greenwich by means of a bomb. He is part of an anarchist organization that creates pamphlets under the heading The Future of the Proletariat. He is married to Winnie, and lives with his wife, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law, Stevie. *Mrs. Winnie Verloc: Verloc's wife. She cares for her brother Stevie, who has an unknown mental disability. She is younger than her husband and thinks of what may have happened if she had married her original love, rather than choosing to marry the successful Verloc. A loyal wife, she becomes incensed upon learning of the death of her brother due to her husband's plotting, and kills him with a knife in the heart. She dies, presumably by drowning herself to avoid the gallows. *Stevie: Winnie 's brother is very sensitive and is disturbed by notions of violence or hardship. His sister cares for him, and Stevie passes most of his time drawing numerous circles on pieces of paper. He is implicated in Verloc's attempt to bomb Greenwich, although the degree of his complicity is not known. *Chief Inspector Heat: a policeman who is dealing with the explosion at Greenwich. An astute man who uses a clue found at the scene of the crime to trace events back to Verloc's home. Although he informs his superior what he is planning to do with regards to the case, he is not aware that the Assistant Commissioner is acting without his knowledge. *The Assistant Commissioner: of a higher rank than the Chief Inspector, he uses the knowledge gained from Heat to pursue matters personally. He informs his superior, Sir Ethelred, of his intentions, and tracks down Verloc before Heat can. *Sir Ethelred: the Secretary of State (Home Secretary) to whom the Assistant Commissioner reports. *Mr. Vladimir: an employee of an embassy from a foreign country, strongly implied to be Russia. Vladimir employs Verloc to carry out terrorist acts, hoping that the resulting public outrage will force the English government to repress emigre socialist and anarchist rebels. *Comrade Alexander Ossipon: an ex-medical student and friend of Verloc, and another anarchist. *Karl Yundt: a friend of Verloc, and another anarchist. *Michaelis: a friend of Verloc, and another anarchist. *The Professor: another anarchist, who specialises in explosives.
840200	/m/03f_14	Assassin's Apprentice	Robin Hobb	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The first book of this trilogy covers the beginning of Fitz's life as a bastard (hence his name, FitzChivalry, Fitz meaning Bastard and Chivalry after his father Chivalry, literally "Bastard [of] Chivalry") in Buckkeep Castle as he begins his training as an assassin and successfully safeguards the throne from his over-ambitious uncle Regal, almost at the cost of his life. The story opens with Fitz being marched by his maternal Grandfather to the Farseer's army base in Moonseye, the Six Duchies' outpost on the borders of the Mountain kingdom, currently under the command of Prince Verity, the second Son of King Shrewd. At the door he is given to a soldier, who is told that he is King-in-Waiting Chivalry's bastard son. The soldier brings him to Prince Verity who orders that he be given into the care of Burrich, Chivalry's own stableman and man at arms. With Burrich, Fitz travels to Buckkeep, the seat of the Farseers, and his arrival is preceded by his father's abdication from the post of King in Waiting; in order to protect Fitz by not allowing them to be associated through contact as well as through blood, Chivalry abdicates from his position and with his wife the Lady Patience retires to the royal holdings of Withywoods before Fitz arrives. Fitz never recalls that he met Chivalry, but develops a bond with his father's brother, Verity. Chivalry and Verity's younger half-brother, Regal, despises Fitz and treats him badly when he can. Burrich, his father's right hand man is left with the care and raising of the newly named Fitz-Chivalry, which he does as best he is able, taking Fitz on as a stable boy. Fitz quickly learns his duties and for a year or so lives with Burrich caring for the animals in the stables. Fitz however is lonely, and becomes a close friend of a young dog named Nosy. Fitz possesses what is known as "The Wit", an ancient and distrusted magic which allows him to bond telepathically with animals, he 'bonds' with Nosy and the two become fast friends. Burrich, however, discovers Fitz's bond and with apparent disgust takes Nosy away, thus breaking the bond. Fitz believes him to have killed the dog, and afterwards is much more fearful of Burrich, believing his life just as easy for Burrich to take. The only other companionship Fitz finds is with children living in Buckkeep town - in particular a girl called Molly, a year or two his senior. Eventually Fitz agrees to become a "King's Man" to King Shrewd and is bound by oath to serve the king. He is taken into King Shrewd's service and moves into the castle proper. Here he is schooled and is taught basic combat skills by Hod, the keep weaponmaster. One night he is also introduced to a recluse named Chade, who is a skilled assassin. Fitz agrees to learn Chade's skills as he is desperately lonely and seemingly has no other prospects. So during his childhood he is taught the ways of an assassin. He shows great talent in his duties and is able to complete the minor tasks given to him by the king. Meanwhile, news comes from Withywoods of Chivalry's death - it is said that he was thrown from a horse, but it is strongly suspected that Queen Desire, King Shrewd's second wife and Regal's mother, has had him assassinated. As Fitz is growing up at Buckkeep, the coastal regions of the Six Duchies are being attacked by Outislanders known as the Red-Ship Raiders. The Raiders rampage through villages and towns, killing and taking hostages while stealing little, making their attacks seem to lack a motive. The hostages are returned, reduced to an animal like state with little memory of their former lives. Fitz, when he encounters these returned hostages, finds he cannot sense them with his Wit at all. This stripping away of people's humanity is named after Forge, the first village to be plundered in such a way. Later on these Forged Ones become robbers and thieves that start to plunder the countryside, putting another burden on the Six Duchies. Fitz is eventually made part of a class of students to be taught the Skill, a magic which allows its users to share thoughts and strength. The teacher, Galen, despises Fitz while curiously revering his father (it is revealed later in the book that Chivalry imprinted a false loyalty on him, using the Skill, in a fit of rage). During the classes, Galen treats Fitz without respect, referring to him as "Bastard". Eventually he tries to kill Fitz, then, with more success, tries to sabotage his Skill training. During the last test of Galen's Skill classes, Galen sends Fitz to Forge, ostensibly to see if he can use the Skill to get back. The area is infested with Forged Ones, and Fitz is attacked, although he manages to return safely. While he is away, a stable hand in league with Galen attempts to assassinate Burrich. During this event, Smithy, the dog Lady Patience gave Fitz, and with whom Fitz is Wit-bonded, is killed. Towards the end of the book Fitz is asked to go to the neighbouring Mountain Kingdom with the objective of assassinating its prince, Rurisk. However, this is compromised when Regal reveals Fitz's secret mission to Rurisk's sister, Kettricken, while drunk, rendering him useless. He finds himself in the middle of a plan to steal the throne for Prince Regal with the help of Galen, who tries to assassinate Verity, using the Skill. Prince Rurisk is poisoned and killed, leaving Kettricken, who is betrothed to Verity, the sole heir of the Mountain Kingdom. Fitz is poisoned and later submerged under water in a deep pool, a lazy attempt by Regal to finish Fitz off. When Fitz feels he only has moments to live, he manages to contact Verity using the Skill to help him destroy Galen. He is rescued by his dog Nosy, who was not killed by Burrich, but sent to the Mountain Kingdom as a gift to Prince Rurisk. The rescue from the pool by Nosy left deep teeth marks in his hand that he comes to cherish as a sign of Nosy's love and loyalty. Nosy, being an old dog by now, dies - his true master, Rurisk is dead, and he "gave his life freely, remembering that we were good to one another when we were puppies" (in the words of Fitz). Fitz is healed by Jonqui, King Eyod's sister, afterward, and the last pages of the book tell how much Fitz laments the death of Nosy during that event and the pain of an older narrator at writing this.
840202	/m/03f_1h	Royal Assassin	Robin Hobb	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Fitz Chivalry has survived his first treacherous foray as an assassin, but barely. The poison used by the ambitious Prince Regal has left Fitz weak and prone to unpredictable seizures. Fitz vows to never return to Buckkeep and his king. A vision of the young woman he loves fending off an attack by the merciless Red-ship Raiders convinces Fitz otherwise, and he rouses himself to go back to the royal court of the Six Duchies. Upon his return to Buckkeep, Fitz is immediately embroild in the intrigues of the royal family. At least his beloved Molly is alive, but she has been left a pauper by her father's death and debts, forced into service as a lady's maid at the keep. Fitz finally admits his love to her, and she to him. Their happiness is short-lived; when he approaches the ailing King Shrewd for permission to marry, the king tells him in no uncertain terms that Fitz will be pledged to the daughter of a duke. He and Molly are left to conduct their courtship in secret, not only because of Shrewd's command, but to keep Molly safe from Fitz's enemies at the court. Fitz is more vulnerable now than ever to those enemies. King-in-Waiting Verity is consumed by the need to protect the Duchies' coast from the Red-ships, using his Skill to stave off Raider attacks but failing miserably to give any attention to his new mountain queen. King Shrewd suffers a mysterious wasting disease whose pain only mind-clouding drugs can abate. Bands of Forged ones, Six Duchies folk rendered soulless murderers by the Raiders, begin to converge on the keep. Verity puts Fitz again in the role of unseen assassin, commanding him to hunt down the Forged. This Fitz does with the help of a young wolf he has rescued and bonded with in the forbidden way of the Wit. Regal and his lackeys come very close to discovering that Fitz is Witted, and Fitz must put guards upon his mind to protect this one of his many secrets. With so many duties taking all his time, Fitz can find little time for Molly. When she tells him that she is leaving him and Buck forever for the sake of another, Fitz desperately reveals the biggest thing he has held back from her. Hoping that by sharing the secret of his true duties he can change Molly's mind, he tells her that he is an assassin. Molly is instead repulsed and utterly rejects Fitz with heartbreaking finality. Despite this huge personal loss, Fitz rallies his loyalty to his King and kingdom. Greater threats to the kingdom than the Raiders and the Forged Ones are the traitors within the court itself. The Raiders grow bolder, and unsent messages and late warnings leave the coastal Duchies easy prey. Verity decides to leave Buckkeep to try to gain the help of the legendary Elderlings. Many folks see this as a fool's errand, and as it leaves Regal free to work his plots more easily, it may be. The ailing king grows more weakened and addled every day, and Regal begins amassing power and loyalty to himself. Fitz and Verity's queen leave to quell a Raider attack on one of the coastal duchies. While they are gone, Regal makes his move. He says that word has come that Verity is dead, and makes himself King-in-Waiting. Using his mostly uncontrollable Skill, Fitz discovers that Verity is still alive. To utter this now at the court where Regal held power would mean quick death. After an attempt is made on the life of Verity's unborn heir, Fitz and his mentors Chade and Burrich make plans to spirit King Shrewd and Verity's pregnant queen-in-waiting safely out of Regal's reach. The king dies in an attempt to skill to Verity before the plans can be carried out. Fitz is accused of regicide, but not before he gets a glimpse of the true source of the King's long illness and death. Imprisoned and accused also of using the forbidden Wit, Fitz has only one chance at cheating Regal out of a complete victory and at saving at least something of himself.
840204	/m/03f_26	Assassin's Quest	Robin Hobb	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 FitzChivalry Farseer is raised from the dead using his despised Wit magic, but he is now more wolf than human. Only Burrich and Chade know he survived his tortures in Regal's dungeons; all others, even the Fool and the Queen, believe Fitz dead. After regaining his humanity, he departs on a personal quest to kill Regal- but not before being attacked by Forged people. One of whom, unknown to him, steals his shirt with King Shrewd's pin, a fact which Fitz only realizes after moving a long distance away. Burrich, having found the rotted remains of the Forged one who stole Fitz's shirt believes it is actually Fitz's body, and that Fitz is now really dead. He therefore determines to guard the one Fitz holds most dear, his lover and almost wife, Molly. Fitz fails spectacularly at his assassination attempt and is almost killed. Verity aids his escape and, in the process, imprints the command "Come To Me" into Fitz's mind. Unable to disobey, Fitz immediately begins to make his way to the Mountain Kingdom, following the path Verity took on his quest. During this journey, his bond with Nighteyes, his Wit companion, continues to deepen and change as each finds themselves becoming more like one another. The wolf begins to have the ability to think abstractly and plan events while Fitz starts to gain the more noble wolf qualities of living in the present and a fierce loyalty to friends 'in his pack'. Along the way Fitz and Nighteyes meet a minstrel named Starling. Starling recognizes Fitz and insists upon traveling with them, claiming a desire to witness and record great events. They meet an old woman named Kettle, who is travelling to the Mountain Kingdom to see the White Prophet, and Fitz is later attacked during his journey by warriors under the command of King Regal. He reaches the Mountain Kingdom barely alive, but is tended back to health by the Fool &mdash; the White Prophet whom Kettle had been seeking. The Fool rejoices that Fitz is alive beyond all hope and thinks they may yet be able to avoid the dark future he has foreseen. Fitz, Kettricken, the Fool and Starling set off to follow Verity, followed by Kettle. On their journey they encounter a garden full of stone dragons which Fitz can sense with his Wit, leading him to believe they are alive, despite appearing to be mere statues. Eventually the truth is revealed: the dragons were carved out of black memory stone and given the memories and emotions of those who carved them. Verity has spent a long time carving his dragon, only to find that even if he gives the dragon everything he has, including the bare minimum he needs to keep his heart beating, it will not be enough to bring it to life to fight the Red Ship Raiders. Kettle reveals that she is the last remaining member of a former royal coterie. She makes peace with her past and decides to help Verity complete his dragon. They give the dragon all their emotions and finally their lives, bringing it to life in turn. The Fool carves another dragon to life, and Fitz discovers how to wake the other sleeping dragons, which are led against the Raiders by Verity-as-Dragon. The Raiders are successfully driven away. Kettricken is left pregnant with Prince Dutiful and Fitz finally retires as royal assassin. Through a series of Skill visions during the span of the book Fitz discovers that Burrich thinks him dead and has found Molly and is taking care of her. She is pregnant with Fitz's daughter and eventually gives birth, naming the girl Nettle. Fitz wants to go to them but is not able to overcome the Skill Command that Verity placed in his mind to come to him. Burrich and Molly get married and are happy together, so by the end of the book Fitz can not bring himself to intrude on their lives and lets them continue to believe he is dead. After the battle to save Buckkeep castle, his beloved friend the Fool - the White Prophet for that era - flies far away on the back of a stone dragon. So in the end FitzChivalry Farseer loses everyone and everything but Nighteyes, his wolf. The narrative of FitzChivalry Farseer continues in Fool's Errand (novel). The adventures of the Fool continue, in a different guise, in Hobb's books in the Liveship Traders Trilogy. That trilogy is set in the time period between the ending of the Farseer trilogy and the beginning of the Tawny Man trilogy. (The tawny man referred to is the Fool, who comes more and more to be seen as a central figure of the entire series.)
841203	/m/03g2f4	The Divine Invasion	Philip K. Dick	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After a fatal car accident on Earth, Herb Asher is placed into cryonic suspension as he waits for a spleen replacement. Clinically dead, Herb experiences lucid dreams while in suspended animation and relives the last six years of his life. In the past, Herb lived as a recluse in an isolated dome on a remote planet in the binary star system, CY30-CY30B. Yah, a local divinity of the planet in exile from Earth, appears to Herb in a vision as a burning flame, and forces him to contact his sick female neighbor, Rybys Rommey, who happens to be terminally ill with multiple sclerosis and pregnant with Yah's child. With the help of the immortal soul of Elijah, who takes the form of a wild beggar named Elias Tate, Herb agrees to become Rybys's legal husband and father of the unborn "savior". Together they plan to smuggle the six-month pregnant Rybys back to Earth, under the pretext of seeking help for Rybys' medical condition at a medical research facility. After being born in human form, Yah plans to confront the fallen angel Belial, who has ruled the Earth for 2000 years since the fall of Masada in the first century CE. Yah's powers, however, are limited by Belial's dominion on Earth, and the four of them must take extra precautions to avoid being detected by the forces of darkness. Things do not go as planned. "Big Noodle", Earth's A.I. system, warns the ecclesiastical authorities in the Christian-Islamic church and Scientific Legate about the divine "invasion" and countermeasures are prepared. A number of failed attempts are made to destroy the unborn child, all of them thwarted by Elijah and Yah. After successfully making the interstellar journey back to Earth and narrowly avoiding a forced abortion, Rybys and Herb escape in the nick of time, only to be involved in a fatal taxi crash, probably due to the machinations of Belial. Rybys dies from her injuries sustained in the crash, and her unborn son Emmanuel (Yah in human form) suffers brain damage from the trauma but survives. Herb is critically injured and put into cryonic suspension until a spleen replacement can be found. Baby Emmanuel is placed into a synthetic womb, but Elias Tate manages to sneak Emmanuel out of the hospital before the church is able to kill him. Six years pass. In a school for special children, Emmanuel meets Zina, a girl who also seems to have similar skills and talents, but acts as a surrogate teacher to Emmanuel. For four years, Zina helps Emmanuel regain his memory (the brain damage caused amnesia) and discover his true identity as Yah, creator of the universe. When he's ready, Zina shows Emmanuel her own parallel universe. In this peaceful world, organized religion has little influence, Rybys Rommey is still alive and married to Herb Asher, and Belial is only a kid goat living in a petting zoo. In an act of kindness, Zina and Emmanuel liberate the goat-creature from his cage, momentarily forgetting that the animal is Belial. The goat-creature finds Herb Asher and attempts to retain control of the world by possessing him and convincing him that Yahweh's creation is an ugly thing that should be shown for what it really is. Eventually Herb is saved by Linda Fox, a young singer whom he loves and who is his own personal Savior; she and the goat-creature meet and she kills it, defeating Belial. He finally discovers that this meeting happens over again for everyone in the world, and whether they choose Belial or their Savior decides if they find salvation.
841818	/m/03g499	Wasp	Eric Frank Russell	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in an unspecified time in the future, the plot centers on protagonist James Mowry and an inter-planetary war between humans (collectively referred to as "Terrans") and the Sirians (collectively referred to as the Sirian Empire, from Sirius). The war has been in effect for nearly a year as the story begins. The Terrans, while technologically more advanced in most respects to the Sirians, are outnumbered and out-gunned by a factor of twelve-to-one. The Sirians are a humanoid species that share many of the same physical characteristics as their Terran enemies. Some of the more noticeable differences are their purple-faced complexions, pinned-back ears, and a bow-legged gait. In terms of government, the Sirian Empire is reminiscent of fascist states that existed in the Second World War; they frequently employ a much-feared secret police force named the Kaitempi in an obvious anagram of the Japanese Kempeitai, or Kaimina Tempiti, they censor much of their media, and they actively seek to quell any opposition to the government or the war through the use of violence and intimidation. The novel begins by introducing James Mowry as he is being recruited by the Terran government to infiltrate enemy lines; to become a "wasp," in the sense portrayed in the opening passages of the novel. His recruitment is somewhat less than voluntary: Mowry is offered the alternative of conscription and assignment to the front. His dossier states that he can be counted on to do anything, provided the alternative is worse. So persuaded, he accepts the assignment. Notwithstanding the method of persuasion, Mowry is an ideal recruit, having spent the first seventeen years of his life living under the Sirian Empire. After extensive linguistic and cultural training and surgery designed to make him appear to be Sirian, he is sent to the Sirian outpost world of Jaimec to begin his mission. The first phase of his mission involves placing stickers with subversive slogans all over the Jaimecan towns in the hope of beginning to create the first murmurings of confusion and concern in Sirian society. Completing his first objective, Mowry begins the second: sending letters to various people of importance informing them of several deaths by his hand. These threats are always signed by a mythical rebel organization named Dirac Angestun Gesept (Sirian Freedom Party) and often emblazoned by the slogan, "War makes wealth for the few, misery for the many. At the right time, Dirac Angestun Gesept will punish the former, bring aid and comfort to the latter." Following this, Mowry moves on to phase three, the hiring of Sirian civilians as contract killers to kill prominent members of the Kaitempi and other government officials. With the Sirians becoming more concerned about the disruption they believe the D.A.G. is causing, Mowry's success allows him to move on to phase four of his plan. The fourth phase involves Mowry planting fake wire tapping devices on several buildings (including the Kaitempi headquarters) in order to engender paranoia. He also continues to spread rumors via Sirian civilians to plant other seeds of doubt among the populace. With a Terran invasion imminent, Mowry is told to skip to phase nine of his operation: the sabotaging of Jaimecan sea-ships in another effort to divert the Sirians' concern away from the real - and approaching - threat. This time, the Terrans strike and the invasion begins. Mowry is captured by a Terran spaceship and is held for a few days before a government man recognizes that he is not Sirian, but Terran. The novel ends with a government man informing Mowry that a wasp on another world has been captured, and that he is the replacement.
841997	/m/03g4_5	A Void	Georges Perec	1969	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Voids plot follows a group of individuals looking for a missing companion, Anton Vowl. It is in part a parody of noir and horror fiction, with many stylistic tricks, gags, plot twists, and a grim conclusion. On many occasions it implicitly talks about its own lipogrammatic limitation, highlighting its unusual orthography. Protagonists within A Void by and by do work out which symbol is missing, but find it a hazardous topic to discuss, as any who try to bypass this story's constraint risk fatal injury. Philip Howard, writing a lipogrammatic appraisal of A Void in his column, said "This is a story chock-full of plots and sub-plots, of loops within loops, of trails in pursuit of trails, all of which allow its author an opportunity to display his customary virtuosity as an avant-gardist magician, acrobat and clown."
842197	/m/03g5m4	Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business	Neil Postman	1985	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which totalitarian governments seize individual rights, from that offered by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Drawing an analogy with the latter scenario, Postman sees television's entertainment value as a present-day "soma", by means of which the consumers' rights are exchanged for entertainment. (Note that there is no contradiction between an intentional "Orwellian" conspiracy using "Huxleyan" means) The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content," that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus Rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for the aforesaid reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and "news of the day" becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate. Postman asserts the presentation of television news is a form of entertainment programming; arguing inclusion of theme music, the interruption of commercials, and "talking hairdos" bear witness that televised news cannot readily be taken seriously. Postman further examines the differences between written speech, which he argues reached its prime in the early to mid-nineteenth century, and the forms of televisual communication, which rely mostly on visual images to "sell" lifestyles. He argues that, owing to this change in public discourse, politics has ceased to be about a candidate's ideas and solutions, but whether he comes across favorably on television. Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase "now this", which implies a complete absence of connection between the separate topics the phrase ostensibly connects. Larry Gonick used this phrase to conclude his Cartoon Guide to (Non)Communication, instead of the traditional "the end". Postman refers to the inability to act upon much of the so-called information from televised sources as the Information-action ratio. Drawing on the ideas of media scholar Marshall McLuhan&nbsp;&mdash; altering McLuhan's aphorism "the medium is the message", to "the medium is the metaphor"&nbsp;&mdash; he describes how oral, literate, and televisual cultures radically differ in the processing and prioritization of information; he argues that each medium is appropriate for a different kind of knowledge. The faculties requisite for rational inquiry are simply weakened by televised viewing. Accordingly, reading, a prime example cited by Postman, exacts intense intellectual involvement, at once interactive and dialectical; whereas television only requires passive involvement. Moreover, as television is programmed according to ratings, its content is determined by commercial feasibility, not critical acumen. Television in its present state, he says, does not satisfy the conditions for honest intellectual involvement and rational argument. He also repeatedly states that the eighteenth century, being the Age of Reason, was the pinnacle for rational argument. Only in the printed word, he states, could complicated truths be rationally conveyed. Postman gives a striking example: The first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have walked down the street without being recognized by the average citizen, yet all these men would have been quickly known by their written words. However, the reverse is true today. The names of presidents or even famous preachers, lawyers, and scientists call up visual images, typically television images, but few, if any, of their words come to mind. The few that do almost exclusively consist of carefully chosen soundbites.
842685	/m/03g765	The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay	Michael Chabon	2000-09-19	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City, where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin Sammy Klayman. Joe escaped from Prague with the help of his teacher Kornblum by hiding in a coffin along with the inanimate Golem of Prague, leaving the rest of his family, including his younger brother Thomas, behind. Besides having a shared interest in drawing, Sammy and Joe share several connections to Jewish stage magician Harry Houdini: Joe (like comics legend Jim Steranko) studied magic and escapology in Prague, which aided him in his departure from Europe, and Sammy is the son of the Mighty Molecule, a strongman on the vaudeville circuit. When Sammy discovers Joe's artistic talent, Sammy gets Joe a job as an illustrator for a novelty products company, which, due to the recent success of Superman, is attempting to get into the comic-book business. Under the name "Sam Clay", Sammy starts writing adventure stories with Joe illustrating them, and the two recruit several other Brooklyn teenagers to produce Amazing Midget Radio Comics (named to promote one of the company's novelty items). The pair is at once passionate about their creation, optimistic about making money, and always nervous about the opinion of their employers. The magazine features Sammy and Joe's character the Escapist, an anti-fascist superhero who combines traits of (among others) Captain America, Harry Houdini, Batman, the Phantom, and the Scarlet Pimpernel. The Escapist becomes tremendously popular, but like talent behind Superman, the writers and artists of the comic get a minimal share of their publisher's revenue. Sammy and Joe are slow to realize that they are being exploited, as they have private concerns: Joe is trying to help his family escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, and has fallen in love with the bohemian Rosa Saks, who has her own artistic aspirations, while Clay is battling with his sexual identity and the lackluster progress of his literary career. For many months after coming to New York, Joe is driven almost solely by an intense desire to improve the condition of his family, still living under a regime increasingly hostile to their kind. This drive shows through in his work, which remains for a long time unabashedly anti-Nazi despite his employer's concerns. In the meantime, he is spending more and more time with Rosa, appearing as a magician in the bar mitzvahs of the children of Rosa's father's acquaintances, even though he sometimes feels guilty at indulging in these distractions from the primary task of fighting for his family. After multiple attempts and considerable monetary sacrifice, Joe ultimately fails to get his family to the States, his last attempt having resulted in putting his younger brother aboard a ship that sank into the Atlantic. Distraught and unaware that Rosa is pregnant with his child, Joe enlists in the navy, hoping to fight the Germans. Instead, he is sent to a lonely, cold naval base in Antarctica, from which he emerges the lone survivor after a series of deaths. When he makes it back to New York, ashamed to show his face again to Rosa and Sammy, he lives and sleeps in a hideout in the Empire State Building, known only to a small circle of magician-friends. Meanwhile, Sam battles with his sexuality, shown mostly through his relationship with the radio voice of The Escapist, Tracy Bacon. Bacon's movie-star good-looks initially intimidate Clay, but they later fall in love. When Tracy is cast as The Escapist in the film version, he invites Clay to move to Hollywood with him, an offer that Clay accepts. But later, when Bacon and Clay go to a friend's beach house with several other gay men and couples, the company's private dinner is broken up by the local police as well as two off-duty FBI agents. All of the men are arrested, except for two who hid under the dinner table, one of whom is Clay. The FBI agents each claim one of the men and grant them their freedom in return for sexual favors. After this episode, Clay decides that he can't live with the constant threat of being arrested, ridiculed, and judged because of his sexuality. He does not go with Bacon to the West Coast. Some time after Joe leaves, Sammy marries Rosa and moves with her to the suburbs, where they raise her son Tommy in what outwardly appears to be a typical traditional nuclear family. Sammy and Rosa cannot hide all their secrets from Tommy, however, who manages to take private magic lessons in the Empire State Building from Joe for the better part of year without anyone else's knowledge. Tommy is instrumental in finally reuniting the Kavalier and Clay duo, which works with renewed enthusiasm to find a new creative direction for comics. Joe moves into Sammy and Rosa's house. Shortly afterwards, Sammy's homosexuality is revealed on public television. This further complicates the attempts of Rosa, Sammy, and Joe to reconstitute a family. Many events in the novel are based on the lives of actual comic-book creators including Jack Kirby (to whom the book is dedicated in the afterword), Bob Kane, Stan Lee, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Joe Simon, Will Eisner, and Jim Steranko. Other historical figures play minor roles, including Salvador Dalí, Al Smith, Orson Welles, and Fredric Wertham. The novel's time span roughly mirrors that of the Golden Age of Comics itself, starting from shortly after the debut of Superman and concluding with the Kefauver Senate hearings, two events often used to demarcate the era.
842878	/m/03g7v2	Tik-Tok	John Sladek	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The title character is an intelligent robot (named after the mechanical man in the Oz books) who originally works as a domestic servant and house-painter. Unlike other robots, whose behavior is constrained by "asimov circuits"&mdash;a reference to Isaac Asimov's fictional Three Laws of Robotics, which require robots to protect and serve humans&mdash;Tik-Tok finds that he can do as he pleases, and he secretly commits various hideous crimes for his amusement. After manipulating both robots and humans to cause chaos and bloodshed, Tik-Tok becomes wealthy (partly through health care privatization) and is finally elected Vice President of the United States. The novel gleefully satirizes Asimov's relatively benign view of how robots would serve humanity, suggesting that the reality would be exactly akin to slavery: robots are worked until they drop and are made the victims of humans' worst appetites, including rape. It also, like Sladek's earlier novel Roderick, mocks the notion of the Three Laws of Robotics and suggests that there is no way such complex moral principles could be hard-wired into any intelligent being; Tik-Tok decides that the "asimov circuits" are in fact a collective delusion, or a form of religion, which robots have been tricked into believing. This liberation from tradition, while it makes him a cruel sociopath and nihilist, also provides him with intellectual insight and artistic talent; thus Tik-Tok is an extreme type of Romantic anti-hero. Sladek's love of word play is apparent: the book contains 26 chapters, and the first word of each chapter begins with a consecutive letter of the alphabet. Also, the first three words of the book are "As I move", a reference to Asimov. The notion of using the faithful robot servant in the Oz books to analyze Asimov's principles, and to question the social status of robots, was first proposed in the 1978 essay "Tik-Tok and the Three Laws of Robotics" by Paul A. Abrahm and Stuart Kenter in the academic journal Science Fiction Studies, which Sladek may have read.
843511	/m/03g9m8	Hard Times	Charles Dickens	1854	{"/m/0blvpd": "Industrial novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows a classical tripartite structure, and the titles of each book are related to Galatians 6:7, "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Book I is entitled "Sowing", Book II is entitled "Reaping", and the third is "Garnering." Mr. Gradgrind, whose voice is "dictatorial", opens the novel by stating "Now, what I want is facts" at his school in Coketown. He is a man of "facts and calculations." He interrogates one of his pupils, Sissy, whose father is involved with the circus, the members of which are "Fancy" in comparison to Gradgrind's espousal of "Fact." Since her father rides and tends to horses, Gradgrind offers Sissy the definition of horse. She is rebuffed for not being able to define a horse factually; her classmate Bitzer does, however, provide a more zoological profile description and factual definition. She does not learn easily, and is censured for suggesting that she would carpet a floor with pictures of flowers "So you would carpet your room&mdash;or your husband's room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband&mdash;with representations of flowers, would you? Why would you?" She is taught to disregard Fancy altogether. It is Fancy Vs Fact. Louisa and Thomas, two of Mr. Gradgrind's children, pay a visit after school to the touring circus run by Mr. Sleary, only to find their father, who is disconcerted by their trip since he believes the circus to be the bastion of Fancy and conceit. With their father, Louisa and Tom trudge off in a despondent mood. Mr. Gradgrind has three younger children: Adam Smith, (after the famous theorist of laissez-faire policy), Malthus (after Rev. Thomas Malthus, who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, warning of the dangers of future overpopulation) and Jane. Josiah Bounderby, "a man perfectly devoid of sentiment", is revealed as being Gradgrind's boss. Bounderby is a manufacturer and mill owner who is affluent as a result of his enterprise and capital. Bounderby is what one might call a "self-made man" who has risen from the gutter. He is not averse to giving dramatic summaries of his childhood, which terrify Mr. Gradgrind's wife who is often rendered insensate by these horrific stories. He is described in an acerbic manner as being "the Bully of Humility." Mr. Gradgrind and Bounderby visit the public-house where Sissy resides to inform her that she cannot attend the school any more due to the risk of her ideas propagating in the class. Sissy meets the two collaborators, informing them her father has abandoned her not out of malice, but out of desire for Sissy to lead a better life without him. This was the reasoning behind him enlisting her at Gradgrind's school and Gradgrind is outraged at this desertion. At this point members of the circus appear, fronted by their manager, Mr. Sleary. Mr. Gradgrind gives Sissy a choice: either to return to the circus and forfeit her education, or to continue her education and never to return to the circus. Sleary and Gradgrind both have their say on the matter, and at the behest of Josephine Sleary she decides to leave the circus and bid all the close friends she had formed farewell, hoping she may one day be re-united with her father. Back at the Gradgrind house, Tom and Louisa sit down and discuss their feelings, however repressed they seem to be. Tom, already at this present stage of education finds himself in a state of dissatisfaction, and Louisa also expresses her discontent at her childhood while staring into the fire. Louisa's ability to wonder, however, has not been entirely extinguished by her rigorous education based in Fact. We are introduced to the workers at the mills, known as the "Hands." Amongst them is a man named Stephen Blackpool or "Old Stephen" who has led a toilsome life. He is described as a "man of perfect integrity." He has ended his day's work, and his close companion Rachael is about somewhere. He eventually meets up with her, and they walk home discussing their day. On entering his house he finds that his drunken wretch of a wife, who has been in exile from Coketown, has made an unwelcome return to his house. She is unwell, and mumbles inebriated remarks to Stephen, who is greatly perturbed by this event. The next day, Stephen makes a visit to Bounderby to try to end his woeful, childless marriage through divorce. Mrs. Sparsit, Mr. Bounderby's paid companion, is "dejected by the impiety" of Stephen and Bounderby explains that he could not afford to effect an annulment anyway. Stephen is very bewildered and dejected by this verdict given by Bounderby. Meanwhile, Mr. Gradgrind prepares to talk to his daughter about a "business proposal", but she is seemingly apathetic in his company, and this seems to frustrate Mr. Gradgrind's efforts. He says that a proposal of marriage has been made to Louisa by Josiah Bounderby, who is some 30 years her senior. Gradgrind uses statistics to prove that an age inequity in marriage does not prove an unhappy or short marriage however. Louisa passively accepts this offer. Bounderby is rendered ecstatic by the news, as is Louisa's mother, who again is so overwhelmed that she is overcome yet again. Sissy is confounded by, but piteous of, Louisa. Bounderby and Louisa get married, and they set out to their honeymoon in "Lyon"; so Bounderby can observe the progress of his 'Hands' (labourers who work in his factories there). Tom, her brother, bumps into her before they leave. They hug each other, Tom bidding her farewell and promising to look for her after they come back from their honeymoon. Book Two opens with the attention focused on Bounderby's new bank in Coketown, of which Bitzer alongside the austere Mrs. Sparsit keep watch at night for intruders or burglars. A dashing gentleman enters, asking for directions to Bounderby's house, as Gradgrind has sent him from London, along with a letter. It is James Harthouse, a languid fellow, who became an MP out of boredom. Harthouse is introduced to Bounderby, who regales him with improbable stories of his childhood. Harthouse is utterly bored by the blusterous millowner, yet is astounded by his wife, Louisa, and notices her melancholy nature. Louisa's brother Tom works for Bounderby, and he has become reckless and wayward in his conduct, despite his meticulous education. Tom decides to take a liking to James Harthouse, on the basis of his clothes, showing his superficiality. Tom is later debased to animal status, as he comes to be referred to as the "whelp", a denunciatory term for a young man. Tom is very forthcoming in his contempt for Bounderby in the presence of Harthouse, who soaks up all these secretive revelations. Stephen is called to Bounderby's mansion, where he informs him of his abstention from joining the union led by the orator Slackbridge, and Bounderby accuses Stephen of fealty and of pledging an oath of secrecy to the union. Stephen denies this, and states that he avoided the Union because of a promise he'd made earlier to Rachael. Bounderby is bedevilled by this conflict of interest and accuses Stephen of being waspish. He dismisses him on the spot, on the basis that he has betrayed both employer and union. Later on a bank theft takes place at the Bounderby bank, and Stephen Blackpool is inculpated in the crime, due to him loitering around the bank at Tom's promise of better times to come, the night before the robbery. Sparsit observes that the relationship between James Harthouse and Louisa is moving towards a near tryst. She sees Louisa as moving down her "staircase", metaphorically speaking. She sets off from the bank to spy upon them, and catches them at what seems to be a propitious moment. However, despite Harthouse confessing his love to Louisa, Louisa is restrained, and refuses an affair. Sparsit is infatuated with the idea that the two do not know they are being observed. Harthouse departs as does Louisa, and Mrs. Sparsit tries to stay in pursuit, thinking that Louisa is going to assent to the affair, though Louisa has not. She follows Louisa to the railway station assuming that Louisa has hired a coachman to dispatch her to Coketown. Sparsit however, misses the fact that Louisa has instead boarded a train to her father's house. Sparsit relinquishes defeat and proclaims "I have lost her!" When Louisa arrives at her father's house, she is revealed to be in an extreme state of disconsolate grief. She accuses her father of denying her the opportunity to have an innocent childhood, and that her rigorous education has stifled her ability to express her emotions. Louisa collapses at her father's feet, into an insensible torpor. Mrs. Sparsit arrives at Mr. Bounderby's house, and reveals to him the news her surveillance has brought. Mr. Bounderby, who is rendered irate by this news, journeys to Stone Lodge, where Louisa is resting. Mr. Gradgrind tries to disperse calm upon the scene, and reveals that Louisa resisted the temptation of adultery. Bounderby is inconsolable and he is immensely indignant and ill-mannered towards everyone present, including Mrs. Sparsit, for her falsehood. Bounderby finishes by offering the ultimatum to Louisa of returning to him, by 12 o'clock the next morning, else the marriage is forfeited. Suffice it to say, Mr. Bounderby resumes his bachelorhood when the request is not met. The discomfited Harthouse leaves Coketown, on an admonition from Sissy Jupe, never to return. He submits. Meanwhile, Mr. Gradgrind and Louisa cast suspicions that Tom, the "whelp", may have committed the bank robbery. Stephen Blackpool who has been absent from Coketown, trying to find mill work under a pseudonym, tries to exculpate himself from the robbery. On walking back to Coketown, he falls down the Old Hell Shaft, an old pit, completing his terminal bad luck in life. He is rescued by villagers, but after speaking to Rachael for the last time, he dies. Louisa suspects that Tom had a word with Stephen, making a false offer to him, and therefore urging him to loiter outside of the bank. Mr. Gradgrind and Sissy concur with this theory and resolve to find Tom, since he is in danger. Sissy makes a plan for rescue and escape, however, and she reveals that she suspected Tom early on during the proceedings. She sends Tom off to the circus that she used to be a part of, namely Mr. Sleary's. Louisa and Sissy travel to the circus; Tom is there, disguised in blackface. Remorselessly, Tom says that he had little money, and that robbery was the only solution to his dilemma. Mr. Sleary is not aware. The two have feelings of acrimony towards each other. Bounderby dies of a fit in a street one day. Tom dies in the Americas, having begged for penitence in a half-written letter to his sister, Louisa. Louisa herself grows old and never remarries. Mr. Gradgrind abandons his Utilitarian stance, which brings contempt from his fellow MPs, who give him a hard time. Rachael continues to labour while still consistently maintaining her work ethic and honesty. Sissy is the moral victor of the story, as her children have also escaped the desiccative education of the Gradgrind school and grown learned in "childish lore."
843542	/m/03g9rl	Roderick	John Sladek	1980-11-13	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The title character is an intelligent robot, the first to be invented. The opening chapters describe the creation of Roderick and show his mind (at first consisting of a bodiless computer program) developing through several stages of awareness. Finally, Roderick is given a rudimentary body and, through a series of misadventures, finds himself alone in the world. Due to his sketchy understanding of human customs, and intrigues surrounding the project that created him, he unwittingly becomes the center of various criminal schemes and other unfortunate events.
843748	/m/051k1z7	The Leopard	Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa	1958	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Most of the novel is set during the time of the Risorgimento, specifically during the period when Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of Italian unification, swept through Sicily with his forces, known as The Thousand. The plot focuses upon the aristocratic Salina family, which is headed by the stoic Prince Fabrizio, a consummate womanizer who foresees the upcoming downfall of his family and the nobility in Italy as a whole but is unable to act upon this. As the novel opens in May 1860, Garibaldi's Redshirts have landed on the Sicilian coast and are pressing inland to overthrow the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This chapter begins with a detailed description of the exquisitely-decorated drawing room where the Salina family recites their daily rosary. After the last mysteries are completed, the Prince wanders out into the garden, where the sickly, over-ripe smells of lush foliage threaten to overwhelm him with memories—specifically, of a dead Neapolitan soldier, who, in his last moments, had clawed his way into the lemon grove and died there. He recalls the specific, gut-spilled details of the soldier's body, recollections that lead him to a brief contemplation of his own death. Perturbed by these thoughts, the Prince takes refuge in watching his dog, Bendicò, joyfully dig up the garden, and in thoughts about the behavior of his wayward nephew, Prince Tancredi Falconieri. At dinner, the Prince's family notice that he is perturbed, and remain tense and silent as he serves them dinner. Ultimately, he angrily announces his drive his coach into Palermo. The adults at the table, including the Princess and the family's Jesuit chaplain, instantly know that the only reason he's leaving is to visit a brothel. As the Prince is driven in his carriage into the city, he passes Tancredi's villa, worrying again that Tancredi's fallen in with bad company --specifically, with the rebels fighting to overthrow the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The military guardsmen, posted to prevent the entrance of Garibaldi's Redshirts, allow the Prince to freely pass into the city. As the Prince makes his way to the brothel, his thoughts vacillate between anticipation and guilt, between disgust with his wife (who crosses herself whenever they make love) and admiration of her prudery. Two hours later, his thoughts run a similar course, with the addition of a kind of disgusted satisfaction with the prostitute and a satisfied disgust with his own body. He is driven back to the villa, again passes the bonfires and again worries about Tancredi. When he arrives back home, he finds the Princess in bed, thinks affectionately of her, climbs into bed with her, and finds he can't sleep. "Towards dawn, however, the Princess had occasion to make the Sign of the Cross." The following morning, the Prince's shaving is interrupted by the arrival of Tancredi, who jokes with him about his visit to the city—Tancredi was at the guard post and saw him arrive. Tancredi also reveals that his position in the Italian nationalist movement has risen. He adds that he will soon be joining Garibaldi in the mountains. The Prince suddenly imagines his beloved nephew dead in the garden with his guts trailing out like the Crown soldier, and tries to dissuade him from departing. Tancredi, however, insists that he is fighting for a very good reason. If the nobility refuses to accept the Kingdom of Italy, "They will foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." Later, as the Prince gets dressed, he realizes the practicality of Tancredi's words. As he ponders the coming upheavals, he realizes that his nephew is more aristocratically like-minded than he thought. After breakfast, the Prince, accompanied by the playful Bendicò, goes into his office, which is lined with century-old paintings of the Salina family's estates. As he sits at his cluttered desk, the Prince recalls how much he dislikes both the room and the work it represents. This dislike intensifies during visits from his accountant and one of his tenants, both of whom are allied with the Redshirts. Both of them assure the Prince that the unification of Italy will be peaceful and will benefit everyone, including the nobility. The Prince allows himself to be reassured, certain that the class system will remain unchanged no matter what. The Prince's visit to the Salina chaplain, Father Pirrone, atop a tower where the men practice their joint hobby of astronomy, reinforces this belief. Pirrone insists that the coming Revolution will eventually result in the destruction of both the Roman Catholic Church and the nobility. The wealth and estates of both will be distributed to the Redshirt leaders. The Prince, however, assures him that the transformations of time are inevitable, and while the Church and aristocracy are desperate to hold on to their status, to attempt to do so would be foolish. Both angry and both resentful, the Prince and Father Pirrone take refuge in conversation on the safe topic of the stars, with "the bluster of the one and the blood on the other merg[ing] into tranquil harmony. The real problem is how to go on living this life of the spirit in its most sublimated moments, those moments that are most like death." At lunch, the Prince becomes aware that his family is worried about Tancredi's safety. As a result, the Prince makes an effort to appear simultaneously concerned and reassuring. When dessert is brought out, he is surprised and pleased to see it's his favorite - a large, castle-shaped jelly. As dessert commences, the castle is essentially demolished before Don Paolo, the Prince's son and heir, gets a chance to have any. After lunch the Prince returns to the office, where he finds that two of his tenants have come with his share of their product—a particular cheese, which the Prince hates, slaughtered lambs, whose spilled guts remind the Prince of the Crown soldier, and a cluster of hysterical chickens. He gives orders for everything to be disposed of, for the windows to be opened to let out the smell, and for the accountant Ferrera to write out receipts. That evening, the Prince receives a letter urging him to flee to safety from the revolution. In response, he simply laughs. Later, as the Salinas gather to say their rosary, the Prince reads in a newspaper of the approach of Garibaldi and his men. The Prince is disturbed, but reassures himself that Garibaldi will be reined in by his Piedmontese masters. After a long journey by coach, the Prince, his faithful dog Bendicò, and the squabbling Salinas arrive after a long hot drive at their country farm on the way to their estate at Donnafugata. As lunch is prepared with water from the farm's well, narration describes the harsh song of cicadas as "a death rattle from parched Sicily at the end of August vainly awaiting rain." As the family travels on to Donnafugata, the Prince reflects on Garibaldi's recent conquest of the island. Upon his arrival, the citizens of Palermo rejoiced and, later, local leaders of the movement had called at the Salina palace. Although they treated the Prince with great respect, one of them insisted on flirting with Concetta. Narration also describes how the Prince has also been having nightmares, but how, with the rising of the sun, the dreams and the fears triggered by them always fade. As his entourage draws nearer to Donnafugata, the Prince anticipates his usual warm welcome. The welcome is indeed warm and both the officials of the town and the common people greet the Salinas as gladly as always. Their numbers include the new mayor, Don Calogero Sedàra and the church organist, Don Ciccio. Narration describes the Prince's graciousness, the Princess' fatigue, and the somewhat flirtatious manner in which Tancredi brushes flies away from Concetta's face. After Mass (actually just Te Deum), the Princess invites the officials to the traditional first night dinner and Don Calogero requests permission to bring his daughter Angelica instead of his wife. As the Prince gives his consent, the Prince also invites the villagers to visit later in the evening. "And the Prince, who had found Donnafugata unchanged, was found very much changed himself; for never before would he have issued so cordial an invitation: and from that moment, invisibly, began the decline of his prestige." As the Prince inspects his property and possessions, the manager lists everything that's been done to keep the estate in order, and then passes on some local news. Don Calogero, who was active in Garibaldi's invasion, has become a wealthy landowner and businessman. To the dismay of the Prince, Don Calogero is now almost as wealthy as the Salinas. The manager adds that Angelica, Don Calogero's daughter, has become quite full of herself as a result. As a result, the Prince wonders what dinner will be like with the two of them there. He realizes that he is somewhat resentful of Calogero's status, but narration comments "deep down he had foreseen such things; they were the price to be paid." He then goes into the house for a nap and a bath before dinner. However, the Prince's bathing is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Father Pirrone. Although he is quite embarrassed at seeing the Prince naked, the Jesuit nevertheless fulfills his charge. Concetta has asked Father Pirrone to tell her father that she is in love with Tancredi and that she believes her feelings to be returned. What is more, Concetta believes that her cousin is about to propose and that she desires her father's instruction on what she is to say in response. The Prince ponders his fondness for Concetta, which is based in her apparent submissiveness and placidity. However, he has also noticed the occasional flash of steel in her eyes when she doesn't get what she wants. Narration also describes his thoughts of Tancredi, whose charm and ambition have left him destined for great things. However, Tancredi's ambitions may require more money than Concetta will bring as her dowry. Keeping his thoughts to himself, the Prince decrees that Father Pirrone is to tell Concetta that the Prince will discuss it with her later. However, this will only be when he's certain that "it's not all just the fancy of a romantic girl." After a nap, the Prince goes out into the garden, where his contemplations of an erotic statue are interrupted by Tancredi's teasing about sex, comments which also apply to a small crop of beautifully ripe peaches in a nearby grove. The Prince uneasily changes the subject, and he and Tancredi gossip their way back to the house, where they join the rest of the family and the arriving dinner guests. Soon after, Don Calogero arrives, and the Prince is relieved to see that he's dressed quite tastelessly. His relief ends abruptly when Angelica arrives - he finds her attractive enough to feel the stir of lust. Tancredi, unusually for a young man so fond of female beauty, merely returns to his conversation, but Pirrone, looking through his Bible, spends the rest of the evening reading the stories of Delilah, Judith and Esther, all women who manipulated their men through sensuality. Narration of this section begins with a detailed description of the dinner's first course. As the guests each enjoy their food, narration comments that they did so "because sensuality was circulating in the room..." This sensuality, narration adds, emanates from Angelica, who flirts openly with Tancredi—who, in his turn, finds himself attracted to both Angelica's beauty and her money. For her part, Concetta is enraged. At the conclusion of dinner, Tancredi flirtatiously tells the enraptured Angelica stories from his battles with the Redshirts, including a raucous story about an incursion into a convent in the company of a man named Tassoni. Scandalized, Concetta berates her cousin for being ill-mannered and turns her back on him. The following day, the Prince and his family uphold a centuries-old family tradition and visit a convent founded by a female ancestor. Narration details the reasons why the Prince is one of only two men allowed to enter the convent. While everyone is waiting for admission, Tancredi suddenly announces his wish to go into the convent as well, saying that a particular interpretation of the rules would allow it. Before the Prince can respond, Concetta makes cutting comments about how Tancredi has already been in a convent. Before Tancredi can respond, and before the Prince can absorb the meaning of Concetta's words, the nuns open the door. After his visit, the Prince is surprised to learn from Father Pirrone that Tancredi has left after remembering an urgent letter he had to send. After returning from the convent, the Prince looks out his window at Donnafugata's town square and spies Tancredi, dressed in his, "seduction color," of Prussian blue. He is carrying a box of peaches from the grove and is seen to knock on the door of the Serdàras household. This chapter begins with a lyrically-written introduction to the silent, still, dim, early morning world at Donnafugata in which the Prince likes to walk with Bendicò. Narration then describes how Tancredi writes every week, but never to Concetta and always with comments that he would like the Prince to pass on to Angelica, who, in turn, visits every day, pretending to come to see the girls but in reality to learn news of Tancredi. All the while, the Prince is becoming more and more uneasy with the unaccustomed tact he has to employ with the rest of the family and with the world at large since the revolution. Narration likens his unease to that of a modern man accustomed to leisurely trips in a small airplane who suddenly finds him on a fast trip in a jet. One particular day a letter arrives from Tancredi in which he asks the Prince to ask Angelica's father for her hand in marriage. He uses several arguments to convince the Prince to do so, among them being she will bring money into the family and guarantee that the family will continue to have status in the new kingdom of Italy. The Prince finds himself agreeing with many of Tancredi's points, and takes a little second-hand sensual pleasure in knowing that he'll soon be able to enjoy seeing Angelica more often. The next morning, the Prince, in the company of his usual morning companions, Don Ciccio (the organist) and Bendicò, takes his gun with him on his walk and shoots a rabbit. "The animal had died tortured by anxious hopes of salvation, imagining it could still escape when it was already caught, just like so many human beings." Later, the Prince and Ciccio eat their picnic lunch and settle down for a nap. Meanwhile, Garibaldi and his Redshirts are fighting hard at the Siege of Gaeta, where they feel the same breeze ruffling their hair as well. Instead of sleeping, however, the Prince finds himself contemplating the recent Plebiscite, a vote taken on the question of whether Sicily should politically join with the new Italian Kingdom. The Prince remembers how windy and dusty it was on the day of the vote, and how he couldn't decide which way to mark his ballot. Eventually he voted "yes," and then recalls the celebrations which greeted the result — a unanimous vote in favor. Back in the present, the Prince contemplates what he believes to be the historical significance of the vote and also its deeper meaning. This leads him to ask Ciccio how he voted in the Plebiscite. At first reluctant, Don Ciccio finally admits that, as the son of a Bourbon royal game keeper, he could not bring himself to vote in favor of the revolution. Many others in Donnafugata voted the same way, but Don Calogero rigged the election and announced the results as unanimously in favor of the House of Savoy. The Prince ponders that the new regime, by rigging elections throughout the island, has strangled whatever goodwill they once possessed in Sicily. He finally asks Don Ciccio what the people of Donnafugata really think of Don Calogero. Don Ciccio speaks at angry length of how many people despise Don Calogero in spite of, or perhaps because of, his embodiment of a harsh reality - that "every coin spent in the world must end in someone's pocket." Don Calogero, a peasant moneylender, eloped with Angelica's mother, who was the daughter of a penniless Salina tenant. Don Calogero's father-in-law vowed revenge, but his corpse was later found, shot nine times in the back. Although scandalized by Don Ciccio's stories, the Prince at last asks the question that's really on his mind—what is Angelica truly like? Ciccio speaks rapturously of her beauty, poise, and sophistication, and then speaks about how her parents' vulgarity seems to have not affected her. The Prince bristles, and informs Don Ciccio that from now on, because Angelica and Tancredi are to be married, the Serdàras must be spoken about with appropriate respect. Ciccio, who has believed that Tancredi was attempting seduce Angelica in order to embarrass her father, is horrified. He bursts out that for Tancredi and Angelica to marry will cause the end of the good qualities of the Salina and Falconieri families. The Prince thinks to himself, however, that the marriage will not be the end, but the beginning. As the Prince and Don Ciccio return to Donnafugata, it impossible to tell which of them is Don Quixote and which is Sancho Panza. The Prince takes his time dressing for his meeting with Don Calogero, and when he finally goes downstairs, he has a vision of the two of them as animals. Their conversation is, for the most part, polite, with both men making occasional slips into tactlessness but both ultimately making the truths of the situation quite apparent. For the Prince, that truth involves Tancredi's excellent lineage but extreme poverty, while for Calogero the truth involves his wealth, which is much greater than the Prince ever realized, and the fact that Don Calogero is in final negotiations to purchase the title of Baroness for his daughter. After agreement is reached that the marriage is to proceed, Don Calogero departs to consult with Angelica, who, he is convinced, will agree to the marriage. The Prince goes to bed, passing the room where his daughters are playing. Several of them notice him and smile, but Concetta "was embroidering and, not hearing her father's steps, did not even turn." Narration then describes how, as preparations for the wedding between Tancredi and Angelica progressed, the Prince and Calogero became more like each other - the Prince became more ruthless in his business dealings, while Calogero saw the value of good manners and better grooming. Calogero, narration suggests, began "that process of continual refining which in the course of three generations transforms innocent peasants into defenseless gentry." Narration also describes, in a tone that is at times enraptured and at other times pointedly cynical, Angelica's first visit to the Prince and his family following her betrothal to Tancredi. Dressed beautifully, she makes her entrance with perfect timing, and immediately endears herself to the Prince by embracing him and calling him a nickname given to him by Tancredi. Only Bendico, growling in a corner, seems unhappy to see her. Finally, narration also describes how Angelica, as she's listening, coolly considers the financial and sexual prosperity that awaits them, and comments that, within a few years of the marriage, Angelica will become one of the great political kingmakers of the Italian Kingdom. A week or so later, the family's quiet evening is interrupted by the sudden and unexpected arrival of Tancredi, who has brought a friend with him (Count Carlo). After taking a few minutes to dry off and change, Tancredi and the Count come into the family drawing room, now in their full dress uniforms, which fascinate the Prince's daughters and puzzle the Prince, who says he thought they were still fighting for Garibaldi. Tancredi and the Count react with disgust, saying there was no way they could stay with such a rough outfit when positions with the new king's army were available. Tancredi then produces the ring he has purchased for Angelica with money sent to him by the Prince. A moment later, Angelica rushes in, having been informed by a note that Tancredi is back. The lovers embrace; sensuality fills the air, and narration describes in detail what Tancredi feels at that moment. Narration then describes in complex, poetic detail how love and sensuality fill the subsequent days at Donnafugata. The Count dreamily, and ineffectually, pursues Concetta, while Concetta's younger sisters (Carolina and Caterina) dream romantically of Tancredi and the Count, and Tancredi and Angelica spend their time exploring the palace's many rooms, each of which contains some representation of a leopard, the family insignia. Narration describes how, on several occasions, Tancredi and Angelica are tempted to give in to their mutual sensual desire, but never do... and how this idyllic time of romantic, intimate gaming between them was a happy prelude to the miserable, unsuccessful marriage that followed. One day during this idyllic time, a government representative (Chevalley di Monterzuolo) arrives and tells the Prince that because of his aristocratic background and social influence, the government wants him to sit as a chosen (as opposed to elected) member of the Senate, where he would both advise and monitor the government. At first, the Prince is quite silent, leading Chevalley to attempt to flatter him into accepting the offer (see "Quotes", p.&nbsp;163) - an attempt that doesn't work. The Prince explains at increasingly intense, often poetic length, why he, like other Sicilians, has no interest in being involved in government. "In Sicily," he says, "it doesn't matter about doing things well or badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of 'doing' at all." He goes on to describe how Sicily's ways of thinking and being and doing are those of an old tired society that doesn't want to change. "This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything ... all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind." Chevalley makes one more attempt at persuasion, but the Prince tells him that Sicilians think they're gods and don't need to change and/or improve their status. "Their vanity," he says, "is stronger than their misery." The following morning, the Prince accompanies Chevalley to the station. As they walk through the streets of early morning Donnafugata, both of them overwhelmed by the squalor and despair surrounding them, both men think the situation has got to change, but where Chevalley believes it will, the Prince is convinced it won't. As the chapter draws to a close, Chevalley wipes the grime off the carriage's window. "The landscape lurched to and fro, irredeemable." Father Pirrone visits his home village, where he is welcomed with teary embraces and warm, friendly memories. Much in the village has changed since the arrival of the Garibaldi. The land, which was previously owned by a Benedictine monastery, has been seized and sold to a peasant monylender. Many of the villagers complain to Father Pirrone about their new landlord. Although the monks permitted their tenants to gather herbs on their land for free, the new landowner demands payment for the privilege. During a conversation with a childhood friend, Father Pirrone enters a lengthy speech explaining why the Prince and other aristocrats don't really have any reaction one way or the other to the events of the revolution. - They "live in a world of their own ... all they live by has been handled by others". He concludes by saying that the feelings and attitudes that give rise to class consciousness never truly die. His elderly mother comes in, jokes about how he's still talking even though his friend has fallen asleep, and helps him get his visitor home. As he prepares for bed, Pirrone thinks that God is the only being who could have devised a life with so many complications. The next day, Pirrone finds his sister Sarina in tears in the kitchen, and gets her to admit that her daughter Angelina (whom Pirrone mentally compares to the beautiful Angelica and finds wanting) has been impregnated outside of wedlock. The father, she confesses furiously, is the girl's first cousin, Santino, the son of Pirrone and Sarina's paternal uncle. Father Pirrone ponders the long-standing family feud between Pirrone's father and his uncle, a feud which, Pirrone believes, will make coping with this particular situation particularly difficult. He believes, however, that God has brought him home to bring it to an end. After saying Mass, he goes to visit his uncle and manipulates both him and Santino into accepting what he proposes as the terms of marriage. He also arranges for them to come see Angelina and her family that evening. Back home, Father Pirrone persuades Angelina's grudging father into agreeing to the terms of marriage by sacrificing his own inheritance. Santino and his father arrive; the marriage is contracted, and the young people are happy. Later, while travelling back to the Salina Palace, Father Pirrone is certain that Santino and his father planned Angelina's seduction so they could get their hands on property they believed was rightfully theirs, and also realizes that the nobility and the peasants are, at least on one level, far more similar than he once thought. The Prince, the Princess, Concetta and Carolina prepare to attend a ball, one of the most important of the busy Palermo social season. The Prince is both excited and concerned about the evening to come—excited because it will be the first time Angelica and her beauty are to be presented to the public. However, he remains concerned that Don Calogero will make a complete fool of both himself and the Salinas. When Angelica (looking beautiful) and Don Calogero (looking acceptable) arrive shortly after, Angelica, thanks to detailed training in etiquette given to her by Tancredi, makes a huge social success. The Prince, after being satisfied that Angelica has been accepted, wanders through the rooms of the Palazzo Ponteleone where the ball is being held, becoming increasingly gloomy at the callowness of the young men, the boredom in the older men, and the silliness of the girls. The Prince also contemplates the mythological frescoes on the ceiling. "They thought themselves eternal," narration writes, "but a bomb manufactured in Pittsburgh, Penn[sylvania] was to prove the contrary in 1943." When the Prince notices Tancredi and Angelica dancing happily together, oblivious to the other's desperation, ambition, and greed. As he watches, the Prince comes to realize and accept, if only for a moment, that whatever happiness the lovers feel is to be celebrated, no matter what. Therefore, he slips into the library. There the Prince contemplates a painting by Greuze entitled "Death of the Just Man," and considers his own death. His thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of Tancredi and Angelica, who are taking a break from the dancing. As they speak playfully of the painting and of death, and as the Prince smilingly realizes how truly young they are, Angelica asks him to dance with her. Flattered, the Prince agrees. They are a successful couple and dance well, with the Prince's memory flashing back to the days of his youth "when, in that very same ballroom he had danced with [the Princess] before he knew disappointment, boredom, and the rest." As the dance finishes, he realizes the other dancers have stopped and are watching them, his "leonine air" preventing the onlookers from bursting into applause. Angelica asks him to eat with her and Tancredi, and for a flattered moment almost says yes, but then again remembers his youth, recalls how embarrassing it would have been for him to have an old relative eating with him and a lover, and politely excuses himself. "The ball," narration states, "went on until six in the morning..."--well past the time of general fatigue but just late enough for goodbyes that didn't insult the hosts. The Prince sees his family into their carriages, saying he wants to walk home and get some air. As he walks, he is passed by a cart loaded with gut-spilling bulls fresh from the slaughter house and dripping blood onto the road. Further on, he looks at the stars to the west, see Venus there (see "Quotes", p.&nbsp;219), and wonders when they, and Venus in particular, will reawaken in him a sense of love and joy. For years, the Prince has felt he that he is dying, "as if the vital fluid ... life itself in fact and perhaps even the will to go on living, were ebbing out of him ... as grains of sand cluster and then line up one by one, unhurried, unceasing, before the narrow neck of an hourglass." A last minute visit to a doctor has tired him so much that it is decided that he should not go back to the villa outside Palermo, but shall stay in a hotel inside the city itself. As he settles into the hotel, the Prince contemplates the fates of several of his family members—Tancredi's political success in the new Kingdom of Italy, the deaths of Father Pirrone from old age, of Princess Maria from diabetes, and of Paolo after being thrown by a horse. He also recalls the maturation and dignity of Concetta—who, he realizes, is the true heir of what was noble and enduring of the Salina family. He dismisses Paolo's son and biological heir, Fabrizietto as dissolute, shallow, and aimless. As the Prince receives the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, he considers the joys (sensual, spiritual, political and animal - in particular, the loving and playful Bendicò) and the sorrows (political, sexual, and familial) he's experienced, concluding that out of the seventy-three years he's been alive, he has only fully lived three of them. In his last moments, as his family gathered round, he sees a young woman appear - beautiful, exquisitely dressed, sensitive, and smiling lovingly. Narration describes her in terms identical to those in which it describes a beautiful woman glimpsed at the train station on the way back to Palermo—in other words, death was present in his life even then. As the woman helps him to his feet, he sees her face, and to him she appears "lovelier than she ever had when glimpsed in stellar space." This chapter begins with a reference to "the old Salina ladies," three elderly sisters whose right to have private masses in their home is, as the chapter begins, being investigated by representatives of the Archdiocese of Palermo. That investigation, narration suggests, is being undertaken because the ladies have certain relics in their home that, according to rumor, may not be authentic. Eventually, narration reveals the ladies are the three daughters of the Prince—the authoritarian Concetta, the blunt-spoken Carolina, and the paralyzed Caterina. As the priests enter the chapel, they are surprised to see a sensuously-painted "Madonna" hanging behind the altar, and walls lined with relics. Narration describes how the sisters collected these relics through an intermediary, Donna Rosa, to whom Caterina and Carolina sometimes confessed their dreams of saints and who, sometimes within a week or two of hearing the dreams, miraculously produced a relic of the dreamed-of saint. "Then," narration adds, "Donna Rosa died, and the influx of relics stopped almost completely." When they leave the chapel, the priests speak among themselves about how so many of the relics seem to be of doubtful origin, while the painting appears to be secular and lascivious, and not a painting of the Blessed Virgin as the three sisters claim. After the priests depart, Concetta retires to her bedroom, where she keeps several locked boxes of decaying mementos of her past, including the skin of her father's dog Bendicò, which had been made into a rug and which is now completely moth-eaten. There, because she is the most pragmatic of the three sisters, she foresees what is about to happen—the confiscation of the relics and the painting, the re-consecration of the chapel, the inevitable spreading of stories of the Salinas' humiliation, and the equally inevitable destruction of what's left of the family's reputation and prestige. Her thoughts are interrupted by a footman announcing the arrival of Princess Angelica Falconeri. Concetta steels herself and goes down to meet her. The well-preserved Angelica, widowed after Tancredi's death a few years before and already suffering from the disease which will, "transform her into a wretched specter," meets Concetta in the sitting room. She chattily tells Concetta of her plans for celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Garibaldi invasion and speaks in a denigrating manner of the "clericalists," who still believe that the Risorgimento was not the best thing for the Church or the Sicilian people. Angelica also promises to use her influence with the Cardinal to keep the family's embarrassment from going public. In addition, Angelica informs Concetta that an old friend is coming to call. Senator Tassoni is a veteran of Garibaldi's Redshirts, a close friend and confidant of Tancredi, and former illicit lover of Angelica. Tassoni is shown in, and after speaking flatteringly of how well Tancredi spoke of her, confesses to Concetta that one night Tancredi tearfully confessed to him that he had once told a lie to her, namely the story about the Redshirts' raid on a convent. Tassoni adds that Tancredi had carried the guilt of offending her with him all his life. After Tassoni and Angelica depart, the horrified Concetta sees Tancredi in a radically different light. What she had once believed was a vulgar attempt to seduce Angelica was really a momentary lapse of judgment. Tancredi loved only her and never ceased to regret marrying Angelica. She also realizes that Tancredi's attempt to enter the convent was in reality a subtle marriage proposal directed to her. It was only her angry rejection which caused him to marry another woman. After fifty years, Concetta is at last stripped of the comfort of blaming her father and cousin for her own mistakes. The following day, the Cardinal inspects the palace chapel and orders the sisters to replace the painting behind the altar, stating that it does not depict the Blessed Virgin but a woman reading a letter from her lover. He leaves behind a priestly antiquarian to examine the relics and determine which are genuine. A few hours later the priest emerges with a basket full of forged relics and the news that only the few which remain are genuine. As he departs, Caterina furiously comments that Pope Pius X, "must be a Turk." Carolina, however, is left in a faint. Meanwhile, Concetta returns to her room, and contemplates her possessions there with new perspective. Even the few relics which she once cherished are now only reminders of a life unfulfilled. She also realizes that an unpleasant smell is coming from what remains of the Bendicò rug, and orders it thrown out. "During the flight from the window, its form recomposed itself for an instant; in the air there seemed to be dancing a quadruped with long whiskers, its right foreleg raised in imprecation. Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust."
844209	/m/03gchj	The Dalkey Archive	Flann O'Brien		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book features a mad scientist, De Selby, who tries to destroy the world by removing all the oxygen from the air. He has also many strange inventions. He exploits the theory of relativity and invents a kind of time travelling machine, which he uses to age his whiskey, creating brews that have been aged for many decades in just a few hours. Saint Augustine and James Joyce both have speaking parts in the novel. James Joyce, after forging his own obituary to escape being drafted to fight in the Second World War, was serving pints in a small pub. Saint Augustine, on the other hand, appeared in a magical underwater cave and held a conversation with De Selby. The mad scientist De Selby leads the two main characters, Hackett and Mick, to the cave, to witness this conversation. Many prominent elements of the book, particularly De Selby himself, the eccentric policemen, and the atomic theory of the bicycle, were taken from O'Brien's much earlier novel The Third Policeman, because he had not been able to find a publisher for it. The latter novel was published posthumously. fr:L'Archiviste de Dublin
845599	/m/03gjgy	Wonder Boys	Michael Chabon	1995-03-14	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Pittsburgh professor and author Grady Tripp is working on an unwieldy 2,611 page manuscript that is meant to be the follow-up to his successful, award-winning novel The Land Downstairs, which was published seven years earlier. On the eve of a college-sponsored writers and publishers weekend called WordFest, two monumental things happen to Tripp: his wife walks out on him, and he learns that his mistress, who is also the chancellor of the college, Sara Gaskell, is pregnant with his child. To top it all off, Tripp finds himself involved in a bizarre crime committed by one of his students, an alienated young writer named James Leer. During a party, Leer shoots and kills the chancellor’s dog and steals her husband’s prized Marilyn Monroe collectible: the jacket worn by the actress on the day of her marriage to Joe DiMaggio.
848382	/m/03gv05	The Eagle's Conquest	Simon Scarrow	2001-08-02	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book opens immediately after the events of Under the Eagle, with the troops relaxing and watching prisoners of war fight to the death in a makeshift arena. Cato is bequeathed an ivory-hilted sword by the chief centurion, who was mortally wounded in the ambush and respected Cato for his tenacity. Meanwhile, the legate of the legion, Vespasian, worries about his wife Flavia back in Rome; she has connections to a group of revolutionaries called ‘The Liberators’, who want the feeble-minded Emperor Claudius out of power. Soon afterwards the Second Legion moves off again, heading to the River Meadway (present-day Medway river, in Kent). As the Britons under Caratacus have heavily fortified the opposite bank, Macro and Cato are ordered to scout ahead, to see if there is a ford upstream. Cato finds one, and the next day the attack goes in. The Ninth Legion, supported by artillery fire from triremes on the river, crosses and assault the enemy ramparts. After sustaining heavy losses, the attack falters, and only the Second Legion’s intervention saves the day. Using the ford upstream, the legionaries are able to surprise the Britons and attack them from behind, overrunning their encampment; Cato is badly burned when he accidentally spills a cauldron of boiling water over himself. While recuperating, he strikes up a friendship with the North African surgeon, a Carthaginian called Nisus. They discover that the slingshot the British have been using comes from the Legionary stores, and is linked to the Liberators. There is a traitor high up in the army’s chain of command. Over the next few days, the British are pushed back to the North Kent marshes, on the banks of the Tamesis (or Thames). Vespasian’s legion is ordered to clear the southern bank in preparation for a crossing, but as twilight approaches, the Second Legion is scattered and lost in the marshes. Macro’s unit, with Cato in tow, are ambushed by a warband; Macro holds the Britons at bay while Cato and a handful of men escape by boat. When the roll-call is held, Macro is declared missing, presumed dead. Cato, in a fit of anguish, volunteers to be in the first wave of the troops crossing the river. It is a suicide mission, and he does not expect to live, but he is able to survive long enough for the second wave of Romans to reach him. Macro reappears, having survived his ordeal in the marshes; he chastises Cato for being a fool. Cato renews his friendship with Nisus the surgeon, who lets slip some of his bitterness at being a Carthaginian in the Roman army. Meanwhile, the army has received orders to halt on the far side of the Thames so that Emperor Claudius can arrive and take command in person for the final assault in the British capital at Camulodunum; this is intended to boost his popularity with the mob in Rome. While waiting for the Emperor to arrive, Vitellius, the evil tribune, is plotting to assassinate him. He enlists Nisus, playing on his Carthaginian patriotism, and uses him as a liaison with the British tribes who resist Rome. Unfortunately, while crossing the lines one night, Nisus is accidentally killed by a sentry, and Cato, who is present, takes a bandage from his body; it is covered in strange markings and Cato thinks these are worth investigating. All thought of it is put out of his mind, however, when Claudius arrives, escorted by the Praetorian Guard and elephants to overawe the Britons. He insists on taking charge in the coming battle; despite the Emperor’s buffoonery, the final battle is won and the legions march into Camulodunum. To celebrate ‘his’ victory, Claudius orders a lavish banquet to be held in his honour. Legate Vespasian finally gets to spend some time with his wife, and Cato renews his relationship with the slave girl Lavinia. Unfortunately, she is allied to Vitellius, having consorted with him previously whilst in the ownership of Tribune Plinius. She agrees to smuggle an ornate dagger into the banquet hall, believing it to be a gift for the Emperor. Before she does this, she decides to break up with Cato, who is aware that she is cheating on him with Vitellius. While she does this, Cato is fiddling with the late Nisus’s bandage, which he has in his pocket. When it is rolled up in a certain way, the markings become a coded message; Cato is only able to discover that it concerns a plot to kill the emperor before he is knocked out by Lavinia, who read on ahead and saw Vitellius’ name. When he is woken by Macro, Lavinia has disappeared. The only hope of saving the emperor is to warn Vespasian, who is at the feast, and hope he believes them. They get there in time to see Vitellius and Lavinia being presented to the emperor; while Claudius is distracted by Lavinia’s charms, a supposedly loyal Briton leaps at the emperor with a dagger. Thanks to Cato’s intervention, the German bodyguards are able to catch the assassin and mortally wound him. Vitellius finishes him off before he can talk, and discretely murders Lavinia as he leaves. A distraught Cato is taken away by Macro before he is recognised as the emperor’s saviour, and Vitellius, as in the last book, gets all the credit. He is given a position on the Emperor’s staff, and leaves with Claudius for Rome, leaving the legions to pacify the last remnants of resistance. Vespasian is tasked with an independent command for the coming months; clearing the south bank of the Thames of resistance. As for Cato, he is distracted by Macro, who promises to introduce him to his latest conquest - a young Briton called Boudicca…
848496	/m/03gvdf	Brighton Rock	Graham Greene		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Charles "Fred" Hale comes to Brighton on assignment to anonymously distribute cards for a newspaper competition (this is a variant of "Lobby Lud" in which the name of the person to be spotted is "Kolley Kibber"). The antihero of the novel, Pinkie Brown, is a teenage sociopath and up-and-coming gangster. Hale had betrayed the former leader of the gang Pinkie now controls, by writing an article in the Daily Messenger about a slot machine racket for which the gang were responsible. Ida Arnold, a plump, kind-hearted and decent woman, is drawn into the action by a chance meeting with the terrified Hale after he has been threatened by Pinkie's gang. After being chased through the streets and lanes of Brighton, Hale accidentally meets Ida again on the Palace Pier, but eventually Pinkie murders Hale. Pinkie's subsequent attempts to cover his tracks and remove evidence of Hale's Brighton visit lead to a chain of fresh crimes and to an ill-fated marriage to a waitress called Rose who unknowingly has the power to destroy his alibi. Ida decides to pursue Pinkie relentlessly, because she believes it is the right thing to do, and also to protect Rose from the deeply disturbed boy she has married. Although ostensibly an underworld thriller, the book is also a challenge to Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the nature of sin and the basis of morality. Pinkie and Rose are Catholics, as was Greene, and their beliefs are contrasted with Ida's strong but non-religious moral sensibility. Main characters *Pinkie: The anti-hero of the story, merciless to his victims, simultaneously obsessed with and repulsed by sex and human connection. He is the leader of 'the mob' despite being the youngest at 17. *Dallow: Pinkie's second in command - the only member of the mob Pinkie feels he can confide in. *Cubitt Another mob member who lives at 'Frank's' with Pinkie and Dallow. He leaves the gang when Pinkie reveals that he (Pinkie) killed Spicer. *Spicer: An aging mob member resident at Frank's . From the beginning he expresses discomfort with the gang's increasing violence. Pinkie's mistrust of him leads to him being murdered by Pinkie for fear of him being 'milky' and leaking incriminating information to Ida Arnold or the Police. *Rose: A poor, modest, and naive girl who becomes Pinkie's girlfriend and wife. She is also a Roman Catholic like Pinkie and falls in love with him despite his advances on her being purely to keep her from giving incriminating evidence. Pinkie is usually repulsed by her but later has the occasional feeling of tenderness towards her. *Ida Arnold: Ida takes up the role of the detective, hunting down Pinkie to bring justice to Hale. Although this is her original motive, when she finds out that Pinkie is marrying Rose she does so to save the girl. Ida represents the force of justice in this novel, and in contrast to Pinkie and Rose is on the side of 'Right and Wrong'. She acquires information from Cubitt once he is cast out of the gang which significantly aids her investigation.
848524	/m/03gvhm	Winter Kills	Richard Condon	1974-05	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Before the main story of the novel begins, U.S. President Timothy Kegan is shot in Philadelphia at Hunt Plaza. The ensuing presidential commission condemns a lone gunman as the killer. The book starts years later, when Kegan's half-brother, Nick, witnesses the death-bed confession of a man claiming to have been part of the 'hit squad'. As the protagonist attempts to find the plotter(s), he encounters numerous groups and persons that could have led or been part of the conspiracy. One person is Lola Camonte, a hostess, lobbyist and fixer. She recounts the story of President Kegan asking her about appointing a member of organized crime to the Court of St. James. The character "Joe Diamond" is the fictional representation of Jack Ruby. Condon's book describes the numerous intertwined threads of the conspiracy, from the Mafia, Cuba, even possible domestic police connections. Only in the final act, in which Nick meets with his vicious and perverse Joseph P. Kennedy-like 'father-figure', is the truth revealed with a twist ending.
849225	/m/03gx63	Notes from Underground	Fedor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoïevski	1864	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The novel is divided into two parts. It consists of an introduction, three main sections and a conclusion. (i) The short introduction propounds a number of riddles whose meanings will be further developed. (1) Chapters two, three and four deal with suffering and the enjoyment of suffering; (2) chapters five and six with intellectual and moral vacillation and with conscious "inertia"-inaction; (3) chapters seven through nine with theories of reason and logic; (c) the last two chapters are a summary and a transition into Part 2. War is described as people's rebellion against the assumption that everything needs to happen for a purpose, because humans do things without purpose, and this is what determines human history. Secondly, the narrator's desire for happiness is exemplified by his liver pain and toothache. This parallels Raskolnikov's behavior in Dostoyevsky's later novel, Crime and Punishment. He says that, due to the cruelty of society, human beings only moan about pain in order to spread their suffering to others. He builds up his own paranoia to the point he is incapable of looking his co-workers in the eye. The main issue for the Underground Man is that he has reached a point of ennui and inactivity. Unlike most people, who typically act out of revenge because they believe justice is the end, the Underground Man is conscious of his problems, feels the desire for revenge, but he does not find it virtuous; this incongruity leads to spite and spite towards the act itself with its concomitant circumstances. He feels that others like him exist, yet he continuously concentrates on his spitefulness instead of on actions that would avoid the problems he is so concerned with. He even admits at one point that he’d rather be inactive out of laziness. The first part also gives a harsh criticism of determinism and intellectual attempts at dictating human action and behavior by logic, which the Underground Man mentions in terms of a simple math problem two times two makes four (see also necessitarianism). He states that despite humanity’s attempt to create the "Crystal Palace," a reference to a famous symbol of utopianism in Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?, one cannot avoid the simple fact that anyone at any time can decide to act in a way which might not be considered good, and some will do so simply to validate their existence and to protest and confirm that they exist as individuals. For good as a general term is subjective and in the case of the Underground Man the good here he's ridiculing is enlightened self-interest (egoism, selfishness). It is this position being depicted as logical and valid that the novel's protagonist despises. Since his romantic embracing of this ideal, he seems to blame it for his current base unhappiness. This type of rebellion is critical to later works of Dostoyevsky as it is used by adolescents to validate their own existence, uniqueness, and independence (see Dostoyevsky's The Adolescent). Rebellion in the face of the dysfunction and disorder of adult experience that one inherits when reaching adulthood under the understanding of tradition and society. In other works, Dostoyevsky again confronts the concept of free will and constructs a negative argument to validate free will against determinism in the character Kirillov's suicide in his novel The Demons. Notes from Underground marks the starting point of Dostoyevsky's move from psychological and sociological themed novels to novels based on existential and general human experience in crisis. The second part is the actual story and consists of three main segments that lead to a furthering of the Underground Man's consciousness. The first is his obsession with an officer who physically moves him out of the way without a word or warning. He sees the officer on the street and thinks of ways to take revenge, eventually deciding to bump into him, which he does, finding to his surprise that the officer does not seem to even notice it happened. The second segment is a dinner party with some old school friends to wish Zverkov, one of their number, goodbye as he is being transferred out of the city. The underground man hated them when he was younger, but after a random visit to Simonov’s, he decides to meet them at the appointed location. They fail to tell him that the time has been changed to six instead of five, so he arrives early. He gets into an argument with the four after a short time, declaring to all his hatred of society and using them as the symbol of it. At the end, they go off without him to a secret brothel, and, in his rage, the underground man follows them there to confront Zverkov once and for all, regardless if he is beaten or not. He arrives to find Zverkov and company have left, but, it is there that he meets Liza, a young prostitute. The story cuts to Liza and the underground man lying silently in the dark together. The underground man confronts Liza with an image of her future, by which she is unmoved at first, but, she eventually realizes the plight of her position and how she will slowly become useless and will descend more and more, until she is no longer wanted by anyone. The thought of dying such a terribly disgraceful death brings her to realize her position, and she then finds herself enthralled by the underground man’s seemingly poignant grasp of society’s ills. He gives her his address and leaves. After this, he is overcome by the fear of her actually arriving at his dilapidated apartment after appearing such a "hero" to her and, in the middle of an argument with his servant, she arrives. He then curses her and takes back everything he said to her, saying he was, in fact, laughing at her and reiterates the truth of her miserable position. Near the end of his painful rage he wells up in tears after saying that he was only seeking to have power over her and a desire to humiliate her. He begins to criticize himself and states that he is in fact horrified by his own poverty and embarrassed by his situation. Liza realizes how pitiful he is and tenderly embraces him. The underground man cries out “They — they won't let me — I — I can’t be good!” After all this, he still acts terribly towards her, and, before she leaves, he stuffs a five ruble note into her hand, which she throws onto the table. He tries to catch her as she goes out onto the street but cannot find her and never hears from her again. He tries to stop the pain in his heart by "fantasizing", "And isn't it better, won't it be better?...Insult — after all, it's a purification; it's the most caustic, painful consciousness! Only tomorrow I would have defiled her soul and wearied her heart. But now the insult will never ever die within her, and however repulsive the filth that awaits her, the insult will elevate her, it will cleanse her..." He recalls this moment as making him unhappy whenever he thinks of it, yet again proving the fact from the first section that his spite for society and his inability to act like it makes him unable to act better than it. The concluding sentences recall some of the themes explored in the first part, and the work as a whole ends with a note from the author that while there was more to the text, "it seems that we may stop here."
849523	/m/03gy8l	Now and Then	Joseph Heller		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Heller describes his early passion for writing and some of the primary school papers that preview his adult fiction. Picking up late in high school, Heller reviews the various jobs he held before enlisting in the Air Force: telegram messenger boy, clerk at an insurance company, and blacksmith's helper in a shipyard. With World War II looming, Heller enlisted in the US Army Air Corps, where he served as a bombardier. Heller describes several of his fellow soldiers and the events that would later become part of Catch-22. Heller completed his required number of missions, was discharged, and was married to his first wife within five months. She accompanied him to college, which Heller attended on the GI Bill, but we learn very little about her. Heller describes his early attempts at writing fiction, which occurred while he worked as an English professor and ad copywriter, and reminds the reader of the many prominent American writers who have been unable to support themselves on their words alone. Heller provides interesting details from his life's story, but doesn't rehash any of his works. Catch-22 and Something Happened receive the most attention, while Picture This, God Knows, and Good as Gold receive brief mentions. The most insight Heller provides into his body of his work is a discussion in the penultimate chapter of his experience with psychoanalysis. Heller revisits his father's death in the chapter, and notes how so many of his works have a prominent, but not central, character's death described in the penultimate chapter (e.g., Snowden in Catch-22). Heller also discusses why the only emotional closeness that appears in his works is between father and son. (e.g., David and Absalom in God Knows) Heller provides an in-depth reason to the insanity that often lurks in people's minds.
849932	/m/03gzt_	The Bear and the Dragon	Tom Clancy	2000	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sergey Nickolayevich Golovko, the chairman of the SVR and friend of President Ryan, is being chauffeured to Moscow Centre in an armoured white Mercedes when somebody shoots at an identical car with an RPG7, killing the occupants. Due to the quick actions of his driver, a former Spetsnaz soldier, Golovko survives the incident. He is left to ponder whether the RPG was meant for him or not. Meanwhile, a CNN news crew in the People's Republic of China witnesses the murders of the Papal Nuncio to Beijing, Cardinal Benato de Milo, and a Chinese Baptist minister, Yu Fa An, when the two attempt to stop Chinese authorities from performing a forced abortion on one of Yu's followers. In reaction, an international boycott is imposed on China. With its economy already struggling due to recent military expansions, China hastens its planned invasion of Siberia to access newly discovered oil and gold fields. The operation includes an attempt to assassinate the Russian president, Grushavoy, and his top-ranking advisor. President Ryan persuades NATO to admit Russia, and promises assistance against China to President Grushavoy. When the Chinese enter Siberia, the Russians repel their invasion force with help from the United States and its NATO allies, causing heavy casualties on the Chinese side. The U.S. Navy attacks the Chinese mainland's coastal defenses and destroys much of the Chinese navy's aging fleet while it lies in port. Against his advisors' opinions, President Ryan decides to broadcast CNN's coverage of the war, plus direct feeds from U.S. reconnaissance drones, over a CIA website to counter the Chinese government's propaganda about the war's status and purpose. Beijing's increasingly desperate leaders decide to ready their ICBMs for a potential launch. A joint NATO-Russian special operations team led by Rainbow operative John Clark is dispatched to destroy them. The team destroys all but two of the Chinese missiles. Of the two that launch, one is shot down by an AH-64 Apache while the second heads toward Washington, D.C.. Ryan's family is evacuated, but Ryan himself decides at the last minute to stay behind on board a docked naval ship, the USS Gettysburg, which has an experimental anti-missile system. Ryan watches as the ship destroys the ICBM at the last possible moment. Late at night, a group of Chinese students, spurred on by what they have witnessed through the CIA website, march through Tiananmen Square and invade a Politburo meeting, setting the stage for an overthrow of the government. A reformist Politburo member, Fang Gan, takes over and arrests the rest of the Communist leadership, ordering an immediate withdrawal of Chinese forces from Siberia. Fang then holds an open discussion with student leaders that starts China's transition to democracy. The novel also carries a number of subplots, including an old Russian sniper credited with the initial discovery of gold in Siberia, a Russian Army general (who led the defense of the Bright Star facility in The Cardinal of the Kremlin) seeking to fully retrain his forces in time for the Chinese invasion, and a Japanese-American CIA agent who seduces Fang Gan's secretary into installing a computer program that collects sensitive government information.
850144	/m/03g_q1	The 158-Pound Marriage	John Irving	1974-08-12	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrator (who never identifies himself by name) is a college professor and a relatively unsuccessful author of historical novels. While doing research in Vienna, Austria, he met Utch, an orphaned survivor of the German occupation and the Russian siege at the end of World War II. At the opening of the novel, the narrator and Utch are married with two children and live a relatively placid existence until, at a faculty party, they become acquainted with Severin Winter, a Viennese-born professor of German and coach of the school's wrestling team, and his wife Edith, a WASP from a privileged background (she met her husband in Vienna while on a buying trip for MOMA) who is an aspiring fiction writer. The narrator begins a mentor-protégé relationship with Edith, and soon the couples are sharing dinners and play-dates with their children. As the narrator becomes more attracted to Edith and Utch begins to fall for Severin, the couples begin trading spouses for sexual encounters at the end of their dinner dates. At first the affairs proceed smoothly, with emotional conflict submerged beneath sexual curiosity, but soon enough, obsessive love rears its ugly head, and the narrator begins to discover that the Winters have not been entirely honest with him and his wife about their motives for entering the affair. It is ultimately revealed that sometime prior to the events of the novel Severin had an affair with a teacher at the school, and when Edith discovered this she became furious and depressed. In an attempt to provide her with some emotional leverage against him Severin arranged for Edith to become sexually involved with the narrator, while he himself would sleep with Utch. This foursome soon thereafter fragments; Severin and Edith are able to repair their relationship and forgive each other for the pains they have inflicted on one another. The narrator and Utch, however, are a different story. The narrator had developed genuine feelings for Edith, and while she did seem to reciprocate them, at least to a small degree, he is left despondent after she ends their liaison to salvage her marriage to Severin. For her own part Utch had fallen completely in love with Severin and she is left devastated upon learning that he did not feel the same for her. Utch leaves and takes their children with her, returning to her native Austria to sort out her feelings; she also takes her husband's passport so that he cannot follow her. Edith and Severin likewise move to Austria, though it is revealed through the letters that Utch writes her husband that she and the Winters do not interact with each other. The novel ends with a small bit of hope for the narrator and Utch when she mails him his passport, indicating that she is now ready to mend their relationship. The sport of wrestling features prominently—the novel's title refers to the 158-pound weight class, which Severin Winter considers the most elite competitive weight—and a subplot eventually emerges involving Winter's protégé, a peculiar wrestling prodigy from Iowa who transfers to Winter's college because of its superior biology department and becomes a pawn in the fallout of the two couples' swinging relationship. de:Eine Mittelgewichts-Ehe fr:Un mariage poids moyen lt:Vidutinio svorio santuoka pl:Małżeństwo wagi półśredniej
850505	/m/03h11y	X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills				 The story concerns a minister, the Reverend William Stryker, stirring up religious anti-mutant fervor and kidnapping Professor X in an attempt to eradicate all mutants. The heroes do not fight any costumed super-villains in the story; although Magneto is featured in the graphic novel, he is not the X-Men's foe in this story, but rather forms an alliance with them against William Stryker. The X-Men members featured in this story are Professor X, Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Ariel, the team at the time the story was published. Other characters who appear are Colossus' sister, Illyana Rasputin (after she is aged by Belasco, but before she adopts the identity of Magik and/or joins the New Mutants) and the X-Men's civilian ally and friend, Stevie Hunter.
850514	/m/03h13d	Entertaining Mr Sloane	Joe Orton			 Act 1 Mr Sloane is a young man looking for a place to board, who happens by the home of Kath, a middle-aged landlady whose home is on the outskirts of a rubbish dump. Kath is eager to have Mr Sloane as a tenant at her home, which she shares with her nearly blind father. In getting to know Mr Sloane, Kath is open with Mr Sloane about a previous relationship she had, which led to her bearing a child, whom her brother insisted on her giving up for adoption as it was conceived out of wedlock. Mr Sloane reveals he is himself an orphan, though vague about his parents' death, aside from the fact they “passed away together.” Kath’s father has an immediate distrust of Mr Sloane, believing he is the same man who killed his employer some years earlier. After an altercation between Kemp and Sloane, resulting in Sloane being stabbed in the leg, Kath begins to make somewhat subtle advances toward the young man. When Mr Sloane attempts to reciprocate, Kath warns him facetiously not to betray his trust. Kathy’s brother Ed arrives soon after to find the visitor staying with his sister, much to his dismay. Kemp has an estranged relationship with his son as he found him to be "committing some kind of felony in the bedroom" as a teenager. Despite Ed’s initial opposition to Mr Sloane staying with his sister, after speaking with Sloane, Ed eventually relents and even goes so far as to offer him a job as his chauffeur. As Sloane recovers from his injury earlier in the evening, Kath returns wearing a transparent negligee and seemingly seduces Mr Sloane as the lights go down and Act One ends. Act 2 The action resumes 'some months later’ and begins with Mr Sloane recounting an evening in which a young woman gave him her telephone number. Kath ambiguously hints at her jealousy, before ultimately revealing she is pregnant and concerned that her brother will strongly disapprove. Ed arrives soon after and discovers that Mr Sloane had taken his car out joyriding the night before with his friends. Upon finding out that they also had a woman with them, Ed divulges that he feels women are crude, and misleading. Ed advises Sloane to pack his things as he will be on call as his assistant at all hours. When Sloane leaves the room to pack, Kemp mildly attempts to reconcile with his son, and conveys that Kath and Sloane have been sleeping together and believes Kath is now pregnant. When confronted, Sloane confirms he has been sleeping with Kath, but claims she “threw herself” at him. A short time later, Ed departs to buy cigarettes, and Kemp returns to confront Sloane as his employer’s murderer. Sloane eventually attacks Kemp, resulting in his death. Act 3 Upon finding his dead father, Ed is initially insistent that justice be served and Sloane be turned over to the police. However, Sloane persuades Ed to fabricate a story to make the death appear an accident, in exchange for his servitude. When Kath discovers the dead body, she is apprehensive to stray from the truth especially given Sloane’s intention to go and live with her brother. Sloane finds himself in a predicament: if he stays with Kath, Ed will report the murder to the authorities, and vice versa if he choses to leave with Ed. Ultimately, a compromise is reached that will result in the pair ‘sharing’ Mr. Sloane a few months at a time.
851054	/m/03h37k	Dilvish, the Damned	Roger Zelazny	1982	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Dilvish is the descendant of both elves and humans, a scion of a prominent Elven house and "the Human House that hath been stricken" which lost its peerage for mixing Elven and Human blood. Hundreds of years before the main story, he comes across a dark ritual being performed by the sorcerer Jelerak who is sacrificing a human girl. He attempts to stop the ritual but is turned into stone, with his soul banished to Hell. His body became a statue, and for many decades it resided within the square of a nearby town that he had formerly saved from enemy conquerors. When this town is again in need of a hero, their citizens' plight allows Dilvish the passage he needed to escape from Hell. He returns to the world of the living with his steed, the metal demon horse Black, and a burning desire for revenge against Jelerak, but must first repulse the assault against the endangered town. Dilvish then goes to call upon the Shoredan - a cursed people bound to his family. He searches for Jelerak in the Tower of Ice and finds the sorcerer's apprentice and his sister trapped there. The two of them believe him to be a servant of Jelerak sent to kill them.
851212	/m/03h3lw	Red Shift	Alan Garner	1973-09-17	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In Roman times, Macey is an ex-soldier with a group of deserters. He has berserker fits in which he fights like ten men, using an old stone axe. Escaping from a local tribe, the "Cats" at Rudheath, the soldiers find a stockaded Cat village at Barthomley, which they pillage, killing all the inhabitants except for a young girl, whom they take as a slave. They try to "go tribal", pretending to be members of another tribe, the "Mothers", and settle on Mow Cop. This is a sacred site to the Cats, and the girl is their corn goddess. The Cats mine millstones on Mow Cop, and bring food as offerings. The soldiers think they have engineered a truce, but the girl poisons their food and they have hallucinations, killing themselves. Only Macey is spared, as he never touched the girl, who was raped and impregnated by the others. He and the girl leave together, but first he returns to Barthomley where he buries his talisman, the stone axe head, in the burial mound, asking forgiveness for killing so many villagers. The axe head is later found by Thomas Rowley. In the time of the English Civil War, Thomas Rowley lives in Barthomley with his wife Margery. They find a stone axe-head buried in an old mound, and call it a "thunderstone", believing it to have been created by lightning striking the ground. They intend to build it into a chimney to guard against future strikes. The village is besieged by Irish Royalist troops searching for John Fowler, the village head man who has sided with Parliament. The troops eventually kill Fowler and all the other men of the village. Thomas and Margery are rescued by Thomas Venables, a former villager with the Royalists who once desired Margery. He leads them to a shanty town settlement at Rudheath and tells them to go to his family on Mow Cop once Thomas is recovered from his wounds. They take the thunderstone with them and embed it in the chimney of their new home, where it is found by Tom and Jan. In the modern day Tom is a teenager living cooped up in a caravan at Rudheath with his parents. He is sustained by his relationship with his girlfriend Jan, who is leaving to become a student nurse in London. To keep their relationship alive they agree to meet regularly in the railway station at Crewe. One day they follow an ancient path from Crewe to the village of Barthomley. Returning next time on bicycles, they go further to Mow Cop, a hill dominated by a folly tower. Here they find a stone axe-head embedded in an old chimney. They decide to make it a symbol of their love. Tom and Jan have been avoiding sex, but Jan reveals that she had an affair while working as an au pair in Germany. After this, Tom becomes unstable. He insists on having sex with Jan, but having done this he becomes even more self-destructive and unbalanced. He tells Jan that he has donated the axe head to a museum, as it was a valuable Neolithic artifact. Their relationship dissolves and they bid a final farewell as Jan's train leaves again for London. Pieces of the three narratives are alternated in an inconsistent pattern, calling special attention to their similarities beyond the landscape: themes, circumstances, visual descriptions, and even lines of dialogue echo throughout.
851263	/m/03h3tx	Herzog	Saul Bellow	1964	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Herzog is a novel set in 1964, in the United States, and is about the midlife crisis of a Jewish man named Moses E. Herzog. At the age of forty-seven, he is just emerging from his second divorce, this one particularly acrimonious. He has two children, one by each wife, who are growing up without him present. His career as a writer and as an academic has floundered. He is in a relationship with a vibrant woman, Ramona, but finds himself running away from commitment. Herzog's second marriage, to the demanding, manipulative Madeleine, has recently ended in a humiliating fashion. While still actively married, Madeleine convinced Moses to move her and their daughter Junie to Chicago, and to arrange for their best friends, Valentine and Phoebe Gersbach, to move as well, securing a solid job for Valentine. However, the plans were all a ruse, as Madeleine and Valentine were carrying on an affair behind Moses's back, and shortly after arriving in Chicago, Madeleine throws Herzog out, securing a restraining order (of sorts) against him, and attempting to have him committed to an asylum. Herzog spends much of his time mentally writing letters he never sends. These letters are aimed at friends, family members, and famous figures. The recipients may be dead, and Herzog has often never met these people. The one common thread is that Herzog is always expressing disappointment, either his own in the failings of others or their words, or apologizing for the way he has disappointed others. The novel opens with Herzog in his house in Ludeyville, a town in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. He is contemplating returning to New York to see Ramona, but instead flees to Martha's Vineyard to visit some friends. He arrives at their house, but writes a note – this one an actual note – saying that he has to leave: :"Not able to stand kindness at this time. Feeling, heart, everything in strange condition. Unfinished business." He heads to New York to start trying to finish that business, including regaining custody of his daughter, Junie. After spending a night with Ramona, he heads to the courthouse to meet his lawyer to discuss his plans, and ends up witnessing a series of tragicomic court hearings, including one where a woman is charged with beating her three-year-old to death by flinging him against a wall. Moses, already distraught after receiving a letter from Junie's babysitter about an incident where Valentine locked Junie in the car while he and Madeleine argued inside the house, heads to Chicago. He goes to his stepmother's house and picks up an antique pistol with two bullets in it, forming a vague plan of killing Madeleine and Valentine and running off with Junie. The plan goes awry when he sees Valentine giving Junie a bath and realizes that Junie is in no danger. The next day, after taking his daughter to the aquarium, Herzog is in a car accident and ends up charged with possession of a loaded weapon. His brother, the rational Will, picks him up and tries to get him back on his feet. Herzog heads to Ludeyville, where his brother meets him and tries to convince him to check himself into an institution. But Herzog, who had previously considered doing just that, is now coming to terms with his life. Ramona comes up to join him for a night – much to Will's surprise – and Herzog begins making plans to fix up the house, which, like his life, needs repair but is still structurally sound. Herzog closes by saying that he doesn't need to write any more letters. Through the flashbacks that litter the novel, other critical details of Herzog's life come to light, including his marriage to the stable Daisy and the existence of their son, Marco; the life of Herzog's father, a failure at every job he tried; and Herzog's sexual molestation by a stranger on a street in Montreal.
851739	/m/03h5j9	The Business	Iain Banks	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book starts with a 4:37 a.m. phone call from Mike Daniels to Kathryn (Kate) Telman. He has been drugged, and about half of his teeth randomly and expertly extracted, just before an important meeting in Japan. The Business is a powerful (yet democratic) multinational commercial organisation, secretive (but not too sinisterly so), and very long-lived. It predates the Roman Catholic Church, and descends from a consortium of merchants in the Roman Empire which it even owned for sixty-six days (it hired a man to become emperor, but he lasted less than a month before being assassinated). It is now considering taking over a country in order to gain a seat at the United Nations. The story follows the heroine, Kate Telman, who is 38 and lusts after Stephen Buzetski, who is married. Starting from poverty, she has risen through the Business under the tutelage of her mentor, who adopted her at an early age, and her 'uncle Freddy', the man who invented the portable milk container (named the "chilp"). She is investigating a possible case of someone stealing from the company, starting with strange happenings at a silicon chip manufacturing plant. In Business-speak, they suspect they are being Couffabled, a term explained in chapter four. Although she discovers evidence of wrongdoing at a high level in the Business, she continues to believe in what they are doing as an organisation: "We're not a cover for the CIA. They're the Company, not the Business." She travels the world, at one point being summoned by a weapon-collecting higher-up in Nebraska to talk his nephew out of writing an incendiary anti-Islamic screenplay. A scene of the book takes place on a ship on its way to be broken up at a shipyard in Sonmiani Bay. She has several telephone conversations with her therapy-damaged friend Luce in California, who provides a cynical, suspicious, foul-mouthed counterpoint to Kate's goodheartedness. She is given a DVD of Stephen's wife having extramarital sex in an attempt to influence her. She also becomes involved in the acquisition of the small Himalayan country of Thulahn. Small and underdeveloped, bleak and vulnerable, the football pitch doubles as the airport, "the royal palace is heated by yak dung" and the "national sport is emigration". It resembles an exaggerated version of Bhutan. Under the Business's plan, Thulahn would be utterly changed, if not destroyed, and its people thrust into the modern world. Kate is given the job of negotiating with Thulahn's Crown Prince Suvinder Dzung, who falls in love with her.
852014	/m/03h6dt	Halo: The Fall of Reach	Eric S. Nylund	2001-10-30	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel opens with the civilian Dr. Catherine Halsey and Lieutenant Jacob Keyes traveling to meet John, a six-year-old boy. Dr. Halsey reveals to Keyes that John is one of 150 children who possess rare genetic markers making them suitable for conscription into the SPARTAN-II program, a secret experiment with the aim of creating super soldiers for the UNSC to quell rebellions. Seventy-five of the children are kidnapped by operatives of the Office of Naval Intelligence and replaced by clones engineered to die of natural causes shortly thereafter. From this point on, the recruits are known only by their first name and a three digit number. John-117 and the rest of the children are drilled and trained by Franklin Mendez; John demonstrates leadership of his fellow Spartans leading to his promotion to squad leader. In 2525, the Spartans undergo a series of surgical enhancements which turn them into highly efficient super soldiers at the cost of crippling or killing more than half of the original seventy-five. The Spartans are also equipped with powerful MJOLNIR battle armor, designed to respond as quickly as the soldier's thoughts. John-117 is given the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer. The Spartans are highly successful, but they experience a priority shift after a collective of alien races known as the Covenant begin obliterating human colonies, declaring humanity's destruction as the will of the gods. Mendez leaves the group to train the next generation of Spartans as John and his comrades first face the Covenant. By 2552, the war against the Covenant is going poorly. The technological superiority of the Covenant means that space battles heavily favor the Covenant, and the UNSC can only win engagements by suffering tremendous losses. To prevent the discovery of Earth or other human colonies, Vice Admiral Cole creates the "Cole Protocol", which forbids direct slipspace jumps to Earth or any other population center and mandates the destruction of a ship before it can be captured by the Covenant. Jacob Keyes, now commander of the destroyer Iroquois, discovers four Covenant ships arriving at the Sigma Octanus System, and single-handedly destroys three of them; his heroics earn Keyes the rank of Captain. The Covenant proceed to overrun Sigma Octanus IV, searching for a mysterious ancient artifact. Despite a costly fight, the humans manage to repel the Covenant, and Keyes intercepts a coded Covenant transmission from the surface before the Covenant retreat. The Iroquois heads to Reach, unwittingly bringing a Covenant tracking device with it. Soon after, Keyes is given the command of the UNSC cruiser Pillar of Autumn for a secret mission; the Spartans are to capture one of the Covenant's religious leaders and barter a truce. Dr. Halsey also introduces John to the artificial intelligence Cortana, who would assist the Spartans by residing in their MJOLNIR armor. Before the mission can begin, however, Reach is attacked by a massive Covenant fleet. John and Cortana reach the Pillar of Autumn, but most of the other Spartans are presumed killed as the Covenant vitrify the surface of Reach, turning the landmasses into glass. Cortana initiates a slipspace course based on the ancient glyphs intercepted by the Covenant at Sigma Octanus, the course takes them to a massive ringworld known as Halo, setting the stage for the events of Halo: Combat Evolved.
852019	/m/03h6fh	Halo: The Flood	William C. Dietz		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel, like the video game it is based on, begins as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace, discovering an unexpected massive ringworld hidden by a moon in orbit around a gas giant. In the system are a host of Covenant, who notice the lone ship. A Covenant leader forbids the fleet to fire on the Autumn, for fear of damaging the ring. Instead, they board and capture the ship. Meanwhile, technicians on the Autumn prepare for battle and awaken a single soldier from cryo sleep—a Spartan known as the Master Chief. The Covenant board the Autumn; deprived of defensive options, the Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes, tells the crew to abandon ship. The Master Chief is entrusted with the artificial intelligence Cortana; given the wealth of tactical information the A.I. contains, Keyes cannot allow Cortana to fall into enemy hands. The Master Chief leaves for the surface of Halo in a lifeboat; other soldiers, including a squad of shock troops led by Antonio Silva and his second-in-command, Melissa McKay, land by special drop pods, and take a strategic bluff from the Covenant to use as a base of operations. Captain Keyes is captured by the Covenant, and taken aboard the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation; the Master Chief and a squad of Marines board the Truth and Reconciliation, rescuing the captain. Keyes has learned that the ringworld they are on has vast significance to the Covenant- they believe that "Halo", as they call the ring, is a weapon of unimaginable power. Escaping from the Covenant cruiser, Keyes gives the Master Chief the mission of finding the Control Room of Halo before the Covenant. The Master Chief and Cortana discover the location of the Control Room, and with the help of some Marines, insert Cortana into Halo's computer network. However, Cortana realizes that the ring is not a weapon as they understood at all- but before the Chief can press her with questions, Cortana tells the Master Chief to find Captain Keyes. Dropped into the swamp where Keyes and his squad disappeared, the Master Chief discovers that the Captain has been captured and both human and Covenant soldiers have been turned into zombie-like creatures by bulbous aliens. One soldier, Private Wallace Jenkins, is left still semi-conscious and painfully aware of his predicament, unable to control his movement or actions as his former friends and he attack McKay's troops. Jenkins intends on ending his life, but is instead captured by McKay for study. The Chief is approached by Halo's resident A.I., 343 Guilty Spark, who informs the Chief that the creatures he has encountered are called the Flood, a virulent parasite that infects hosts and converts them into either forms for combat, or for reproduction. To activate Halo's defenses, Guilty Spark needs the Master Chief's help. In Halo's Control Room, Guilty Spark gives the Master Chief the key to activate Halo, but is stopped by a furious Cortana. Cortana explains that Halo is a weapon, but it doesn't kill the Flood- it kills their food, meaning humans, Covenant, and any other sentient life. Realizing that they have to stop Guilty Spark from activating Halo, Cortana and the Master Chief decide to destroy Halo by detonating the crash-landed Pillar of Autumns fusion reactors. In order to do this, they need Captain Keyes' neural implants. Cortana discovers the Captain is still alive, held prisoner once again aboard the Truth and Reconciliation, now in the hands of the Flood who are trying to escape Halo. The Chief fights Covenant and Flood to the Captain, but finds out he is too late—the Captain has been assimilated into the parasite. The Chief retrieves the implants and leaves the Truth for the Autumn. While the Chief and Cortana head to the Autumn, Alpha Base is evacuated. Silva decides to retake the Truth and Reconciliation and pilot the ship away in order to avoid being on Halo when the Autumn blows. The ship is taken successfully, but McKay realizes that Silva is blinded by the thought of promotion and glory to the danger of the Flood; if even one Flood specimen escaped containment on Earth, the entire planet could fall. Jenkins draws McKay's attention to a vital energy line on the ship, and realizing that the destruction of the Flood is more important than Silva's promotion, cuts the cable, sending the Truth and Reconciliation crashing into Halo, killing all aboard. At the Autumn, the Master Chief is forced to destabilize the fusion reactors manually as 343 Guilty Spark and his robotic drones try to stop them. Once the countdown until detonation has begun, Cortana directs the Chief to a fighter still docked in the Pillar of Autumn hangar. Gunning the engines, the Chief and Cortana escape the ring just as the Autumn explodes, ending the threat of the Flood. Cortana scans for survivors and realizes that they are seemingly the only two who have survived. Cortana tells the Master Chief that the fight is finished, to which the Chief replies, "No. The Covenant is still out there, and Earth is at risk. We're just getting started."
852023	/m/03h6gj	Halo: First Strike	Eric S. Nylund		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins in orbit above planet Reach, as humanity fights the Covenant invasion forces. The last line of defense for the planet is an array of magnetic accelerator cannons (MACs) orbiting the planet. The Master Chief sends a team of Spartans to the surface of Reach to protect the MAC's planet-based power generators. Ultimately, the Covenant are able to destroy the generators and begin glassing the planet, melting its surface to glass. The surviving Spartans flee underground to the hidden headquarters of the Office of Naval Intelligence. There they meet Dr. Halsey who, with help of some of the surviving Spartans, uncovers a strange crystalline shard in a cavern built by the ancient Forerunner. Pursued by the Covenant, the Spartans retrieve the shard and collapse the passage behind them, which saves them from the pursuing Covenant forces, but also traps them deep under the surface of Reach. The book then shifts to events occurring soon after Halo, as the Master Chief and Cortana drift through the ruins of Halo, they discover other survivors including Sergeant Johnson and Corporal Locklear. The group commandeer the Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice and use its slipspace capabilities to return to the Reach system. To prevent the Covenant finding Earth with a tracking device, the humans plan to find a suitably undamaged human ship to take them to Earth. Upon arrival the group receive a radio signal used by the Spartans in their training days. On the surface, they find three Spartans and Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. The Vice Admiral arms a "Nova thermonuclear mine", a weapon that would destroy the planet. The Master Chief and his newly acquired team of Spartans then proceed to rescue Dr. Halsey and the other Spartans that were trapped under the surface of the planet. Meanwhile Cortana, still aboard Ascendant Justice, learns that the Covenant already know the location of Earth and are preparing an invasion fleet. Seeking the Forerunner shard, the Covenant attack, severely damaging Ascendant Justice, but are temporarily defeated. In order to make repairs, the UNSC forge an alliance with human separatists hidden in an asteroid field. Halsey abducts Spartan Kelly-087 and flees in a stolen ship, leaving Corporal Locklear with instructions to stop the crystal from falling into Covenant hands. Locklear decides to destroy the crystal, inadvertently killing himself, but stopping the Covenant from tracking the crystal's radioactive emissions and by extension the Ascendant Justice. With the knowledge that the Covenant are en route to Earth, the Master Chief and his fellow Spartans decide to disrupt the invasion force at their rendezvous point. The Spartans successfully infiltrate the Covenant space station, Unyielding Hierophant, set it to self-destruct and escape in a drop-ship. On board the Ascendant Justice, Whitcomb tricks the Covenant fleet into following the ship closer to the Unyielding Heirophant; when the station explodes the entire Covenant armada is destroyed or damaged. Master Chief and the surviving Spartans take the salvaged UNSC ship, "Gettysburg", back to Earth with Sgt. Johnson and Cortana to warn of the approaching invasion. Meanwhile, the Covenant leadership discuss the fate of the "incompetent one," an Elite who allowed Halo to be destroyed and Ascendant Justice to be captured; setting the stage for Halo 2.
852896	/m/03h9ct	Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man	Marshall McLuhan	1964	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In Part One, McLuhan discusses the differences between hot and cool media and the ways that one medium translates the content of another medium. Briefly, "the content of a medium is always another medium." In Part Two, McLuhan analyzes each medium (circa 1964) in a manner that exposes the form, rather than the content of each medium. In order, McLuhan covers The Spoken Word, The Written Word (as in a manuscript or incunabulum), Roads and Paper Routes, Numbers, Clothing, Housing, Money, Clocks, The Print (as in pictorial lithograph or woodcut), Comics, The Printed Word (as in Typography), Wheel, Bicycle and Airplane, The Photograph, The Press, Motorcar, Ads, Games, Telegraph, The Typewriter, The Telephone, The Phonograph, Movies, Radio, Television, Weapons, and Automation. Throughout Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan uses historical quotes and anecdotes to probe the ways in which new forms of media change the perceptions of societies, with specific focus on the effects of each medium as opposed to the content that is transmitted by each medium. McLuhan identified two types of media: "hot" media and "cool" media. This terminology does not refer to the temperature or emotional intensity, nor some kind of classification, but to the degree of participation. Cool media are those that require high participation from users, due to their low definition (the receiver/user must fill in missing information). Since many senses may be used, they foster detachment. Conversely, hot media are low in audience participation due to their high resolution or definition. Film, for example, is defined as a hot medium, since in the context of a dark movie theater, the viewer is completely captivated, and one primary sense -- visual -- is filled in high definition. In contrast, television is a cool medium, since it many other things may be going on and the viewer has to integrate all of the sounds and sights in the context.
853231	/m/03hbn2	Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster	Jon Krakauer	1996-10	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the book, Jon Krakauer tells events leading up to his eventual decision to participate in an Everest expedition in May 1996, despite having mostly given up mountain climbing years before. The 1996 season expedition recorded world-high 8 deaths, including the guides of Krakauer: Rob Hall and Andy Harris. Initially, Krakauer, a journalist for adventure magazine Outside, stated that his intentions to climb Everest were purely professional. The original magazine story was to have Krakauer climb only to base camp, and report on the commercialization of the mountain. However, the idea of Everest reawakened his childhood desire for climbing the mountain. Krakauer asked his editor to put off the story for a year so that he could train for a climb to the summit. From there, the book chronologically moves between events that take place on the mountain and the unfolding tragedy which takes place during the push to the summit. In the book, Krakauer alleges that essential safety methods adopted over the years by experienced guides on Everest are sometimes compromised by the competition between rival guiding agencies to get their clients (some with little or no mountaineering experience) to the summit.
853813	/m/03hdl5	Tropic of Cancer	Henry Miller	1934	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in France (primarily Paris) during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Tropic of Cancer centers around Miller's life as a struggling writer. Late in the novel, Miller explains his artistic approach to writing the book itself, stating: Up to the present, my idea of collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard of literature. My idea briefly has been to present a resurrection of the emotions, to depict the conduct of a human being in the stratosphere of ideas, that is, in the grip of delirium." Combining autobiography and fiction, some chapters follow a narrative of some kind and refer to Miller&#39;s actual friends, colleagues, and workplaces; others are written as stream-of-consciousness reflections that are occasionally epiphanic. The novel is written in the first person, as are many of Miller&#39;s other novels, and does not have a linear organization, but rather fluctuates frequently between the past and present.
853815	/m/03hdll	The Naked and the Dead	Norman Mailer	1948	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set on an island in the South Pacific where the American Army under General Cummings is trying to drive out the Japanese, The Naked and the Dead focuses on a single reconnaissance platoon. The novel is split between alternating chapters depicting ongoing action on the island and retrospective chapters focusing on a particular character's personality and past. The Naked and the Dead contains several combat scenes and a great deal of description of Army protocol, as well as detailed descriptions of the many trials and agonies of the enlisted man. The novel deals with the difficulties of the campaign, the danger posed by the Japanese, the conflict between officers and regulars, each man's own internal conflicts and fears, and the aggression between squad members. Everyone, from the General down, has character flaws, and there are few depictions of lasting happy family life or of good male-female relations. Later in the book, a former general's aide, Hearn, becomes the Lieutenant of the squad, to the ire of Croft, the ruthless Sergeant previously in command, who withholds information from Lieutenant Hearn, leading to Hearn's death in combat. The novel questions the competence and motives of high-ranking officers, as well as the integrity of each of the many men depicted. The men suffer physical hardship and even casualties, but there is little mourning or kindness. There is no mercy shown to the Japanese. Occasionally, individual soldiers show sparks of sensitivity or thoughtfulness. The Naked and the Dead was Mailer's first published novel and is still his top ranked novel by sales; it established his reputation as a novelist and brought international recognition.
853835	/m/03hdp2	The Moviegoer	Walker Percy	1961	{"/m/04rlf": "Music", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Moviegoer tells the story of Binx Bolling, a young stock-broker in postwar New Orleans. The decline of southern U.S. tradition, the problems of his family and his traumatic experiences in the Korean War have left him alienated from his own life. He day-dreams constantly, has trouble engaging in lasting relationships and finds more meaning and immediacy in movies and books than in his own routine life. The loose plot of the novel follows Binx as he embarks on an undefined "search," wandering around New Orleans, Chicago and the Gulf Coast reflecting philosophically on small episodes and interactions. He is constantly challenged to define himself in relation to friends, family, sweet-hearts and career despite his urge to remain vague and open to possibility. "What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple; at least for a fellow like me. So simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life." The novel is heavily influenced by the existentialist themes of authors like Søren Kierkegaard, whom Percy read extensively. Unlike many dark didactic existentialist novels (including Percy's later work), The Moviegoer has a light poetic tone. It was Percy's first, most famous, and most widely praised novel.
853843	/m/03hdps	Death Comes for the Archbishop	Willa Cather	1927	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The primary character is a bishop, Jean Marie Latour, who travels with his friend and vicar Joseph Vaillant from Sandusky, Ohio to New Mexico to take charge of the newly established diocese of New Mexico, which has only just become a territory of the United States. The names given to the main proponents reflect their characters. Vaillant, valiant, is fearless in his promulgation of the faith, whereas Latour, the tower, is more intellectual and reserved than his comrade. At the time of his departure, Cincinnati is the end of the railway line west, so Latour must travel by riverboat to the Gulf of Mexico, and thence overland to New Mexico, a journey which takes an entire year. He spends the rest of his life establishing the Roman Catholic church in New Mexico, where he dies in old age. The novel portrays two well-meaning and devout French priests who will encounter a well-entrenched Spanish-Mexican clergy that they are sent to supplant after the United States acquired New Mexico and the dioceses of the new state were remapped by the Vatican. Several of these entrenched priests are depicted in classic manner as examples of greed, avarice and gluttony, while others live simple, abstemious lives among the Native Americans. Cather portrays the Hopi and Navajo sympathetically, and her characters express the near futility of overlaying their religion on a millennia-old native culture. Cather's vivid landscape descriptions are also memorable. A scene where a priest and his Native American guide take cover in an ancient cave during a blizzard is especially memorable for its superb portrayal of the combined forces of nature and culture.
853857	/m/03hdqt	Of Human Bondage	W. Somerset Maugham	1915	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with the death of the mother of the nine-year-old protagonist, Philip Carey. Philip's father had already died a few months before, and the orphan Philip is sent to live with his aunt and uncle. His uncle is vicar of Blackstable, a small village in Kent. Philip inherits a small fortune but the money is held in custody by his uncle until he is twenty-one, giving his uncle a great deal of power over him until he reaches his maturity. Early chapters relate Philip's experience at the vicarage. His aunt tries to be a mother to Philip, but she is herself childish and unsure of how to behave, whereas his uncle takes a cold disposition towards him. Philip's uncle has an eclectic collection of books, and in reading Philip finds a way to escape his mundane existence and experience fascinating worlds of fiction. Less than a year later, Philip is sent to a boarding school. His uncle and aunt wish for him to eventually attend Oxford in order to study to become a clergyman. Philip's shyness and his club foot make it difficult for him to fit in with the boys at the school, and he does not make many friends. Philip goes through an episode of deep religious belief, and believes that through true faith he can petition God to heal his club foot; but when this does not happen, his belief falters. He becomes close friends with one boy; but the friendship breaks up, and he becomes miserable. Philip shows considerable academic talent and is informed by the school's headmaster that he could have earned a scholarship for Oxford, but instead he becomes determined to leave the school and go to Germany. Philip's uncle and the headmaster oppose Philip's desire to go to Germany, but eventually they give in and allow him to go to Heidelberg for a year. In Heidelberg, Philip lives at a boarding house with other foreigners and studies German, among other subjects. Philip enjoys his stay in Germany. At the boarding house he meets a fellow Englishman, Hayward, who has an interest in literature and who considers himself a poet. Philip also meets an unorthodox American named Weeks, who dislikes Hayward, whom he thinks superficial. Philip is intrigued by his long discourses with Hayward and Weeks and eventually becomes convinced that he need not believe in the Church of England; a radical idea for him as he had been brought up with staunch Christian values. Philip returns to his uncle's house and meets a middle-aged family friend of his aunt and uncle named Miss Wilkinson, who is very flirtatious toward Philip. He is not particularly attracted to her and is uncomfortable about her age; but he likes the idea of having an affair with someone, so he pursues her. She becomes very attached to Philip and declares her love for him, and he pretends to be passionate about her, but he is relieved when she needs to return to Berlin. Miss Wilkinson writes letters to Philip from Berlin, to which he eventually stops responding. Philip's guardians decide to take matters into their own hands and they convince him to move to London to take up an apprenticeship to become a chartered accountant. He does not fare well there as his co-workers resent him because they believe he is above them and is a "gentleman". Philip is desperately lonely in London and is humiliated by his lack of aptitude for the work. He begins thinking about studying art in Paris. He goes on a business trip with one of his managers to Paris and is inspired by this trip. Miss Wilkinson convinces Philip that he draws well enough to become a professional artist, and he moves to Paris to study art. In Paris, Philip attends art classes, makes a few friends among fellow art students and meets Miss Price, a poor talentless art student who does not get along well with people. Miss Price falls in love with Philip, but he is unaware and does not return her feelings. After her funds run out, she commits suicide, leaving Philip to tend to her affairs. Philip realizes that he will never be more than a mediocre artist; at the same time, he receives word that his aunt has died. He returns to his uncle's house, and eventually decides to go to London to pursue medicine, his late father's field. He struggles at medical school and comes across Mildred, a tawdry waitress at a local café. He falls desperately in love with her, although she does not show any emotion for him. Mildred tells Philip she is getting married, leaving him heartbroken; he subsequently enters into an affair with Norah Nesbitt, a kind and sensitive author of penny romance novels. Later, Mildred returns, pregnant, and confesses that the man for whom she had abandoned Philip had never married her. Philip breaks off his relationship with Norah and supports Mildred financially though he can ill afford to do so, but later she falls in love with Harry, a friend of Philip's and disappears. Philip runs into Mildred again when she is so poor she has resorted to prostitution and, feeling sympathy for her, takes her in to do his housework, though he no longer loves her. When he rejects her advances, she becomes angry at him, leaves, and destroys his possessions, causing Philip to abandon that residence and move into cheaper housing. When Philip meets Mildred next, she is ill and prostituting herself again, and the baby has died. While working at the hospital, Philip befriends family man Thorpe Athelny and is invited to his house every Sunday. Athelny has lived in Toledo in Spain, enthusing about the country, and is translating the works of San Juan de la Cruz. Meanwhile, a stockbroker acquaintance of Philip advises him to invest in South African mines, and Philip is left with no money when the stock market crashes due to the vicissitudes of the Boer War. He wanders the streets aimlessly for a few days before the Athelnys take him in and find him a job at a retail store, which he hates. Eventually, his uncle's death leaves him enough money to go back to medical school, and he finishes his studies and becomes qualified. He takes on a temporary placement at a Dorsetshire fishing village with Dr South, an old, rancorous physician whose wife is dead and whose daughter has broken off contact with him. However, he takes a shine to Philip's humour and personableness, eventually making him an outstanding offer of a stake in his medical practice. Although flattered, Philip refuses as he is still eager to travel and returns to London. He soon goes on a small summer vacation with the Athelnys at a village in the Kent countryside. There he finds that one of Athelny's daughters, Sally, likes him. They have an affair, and when she thinks she is pregnant, Philip decides to give up his long-cherished plans to travel to exotic lands, to accept Dr South's offer, and to marry Sally instead. They meet in the National Gallery where, despite learning that it was a false alarm, Philip nonetheless becomes engaged to Sally, his lifelong quest for happiness and self-acceptance culminating in the conclusion that "the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect".
853869	/m/03hdsk	A High Wind in Jamaica	Richard Hughes	1929	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Bas-Thornton children (John, Emily, Edward, Rachel, and Laura) are raised on a plantation in Jamaica at an unspecified time after the emancipation of slaves in Britain (1837). It is a time of technological transformation, and sailing ships and steamers coexist on the high seas. A hurricane destroys their home, and the parents decide the children must leave the island to return to their original home in England. Accompanied by two creole children from Jamaica, Margaret and Harry Fernandez, they leave on the Clorinda, a merchant ship under the command of Captain Marpole. The Clorinda is seized by pirates shortly after leaving Jamaica. The pirates first pretend they need to seize the ship's cargo and will refund the price of the goods taken, but when the lie becomes obvious, they menace Captain Marpole by threatening to shoot the children if he does not disclose where the Clorinda´s safe is kept. The ship is ransacked, and the children are brought aboard the pirate schooner for dinner. Captain Marpole, thinking that under cover of darkness the children have been murdered, flees the scene, unknowingly abandoning the children to the pirates. Marpole writes a letter to Mr and Mrs Thornton informing them that their children have been murdered by the pirates. The children quickly become part of life aboard the pirate ship and treat it as their new home. They are treated with some indifference, though a few crew members—José the cook and Otto the chief mate—care for them and become fond of them, and Captain Jonsen, the pirate captain himself, becomes very fond of Emily. The pirates stop at their home base of Santa Lucia to sell the seized goods. Captain Jonsen tries unsuccessfully to convince a rich woman to take care of the children. During the night, José takes John, Edward, and Margaret ashore, and John accidentally falls to his death in a warehouse. He is immediately and deliberately forgotten by his own siblings. The pirate captain seems to be the last one to forget him. While drunk, Captain Jonsen approaches Emily romantically. She bites his hand before anything happens, but she is frightened by the look in Jonsen's eye as he reaches for her. The author gives no explicit details for her fright, just a veiled description from Emily's point of view. Emily later suffers an injury to her leg, in an accident caused by Rachel, and is confined to the captain's cabin. Meanwhile Margaret, who has become alienated from the other children, becomes Otto's lover and moves into his cabin. Having made no further captures, the pirates quickly take the first ship they finally see, a Dutch vessel transporting some wild animals. The captain of this ship is tied up and left in the cabin with Emily. Everyone else on the pirate ship boards the Dutch vessel to watch a fight between a lion and a tiger. The Dutch captain does all he can to get Emily to free him but is unable to communicate with her. Finally seeing a knife he rolls towards it. Emily, injured and terrified, screams but no one hears. She pounces at the last second and stabs the captain several times. He soon dies. Margaret, oldest of the children, witnesses this event. When the crew returns to the ship, the pirates mistake Margaret for the murderer and without ceremony throw her overboard, but she is rescued by other pirates heading back to the ship. The crew grows tired and scared of the children. Jonsen arranges for them to transfer to a passing steamer. Disguised as a British merchant vessel, the captain claims that some pirates abandoned the children on the Cuban shore and that he then picked them up to bring them to England. Before sending them on board the steamer, Otto instructs Emily not to disclose the truth about what has happened to them in the past months. He chooses Emily rather than Margaret, as the latter seems to have lost her sanity. Once aboard the steamer, the children are delighted with the boat's luxury and the loving treatment by the passengers, who know of the story of the children told by Captain Jonsen. Despite her fondness for Captain Jonsen and the fact that she promised not to tell about what really happened, Emily quickly tells the truth to a stewardess. The pirate ship is pursued and seized by the British authorities. Back in London, the children are reintegrated into their families. They seem completely unaffected by their traumatic experiences aboard the ship, apart from Margaret who has lost her sanity. (It is hinted that she may also be pregnant.) Emily is only half aware herself of the crime she has committed. The younger children have distorted and contradictory memories of the facts, and after unsuccessfully attempting to extract any information from then, the family solicitor decides that only Emily should testify at the trial against the pirate crew and then only to repeat a statement written by him. Under the pressure of the courtroom, Emily breaks down and cries out that the Dutch captain died as she watched. She does not exactly say who performed the murder, but the trial's outcome is decided. The pirates are executed. The book ends with Emily playing with her schoolmates. She is so similar to them that "only God", but no one else, could tell them apart.
853874	/m/03hdtr	A House for Mr Biswas	V.S. Naipaul	1961	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mohun Biswas is born in rural Trinidad to parents of Indian origin. His birth is considered inauspicious as he is born "in the wrong way" and with an extra finger. A pandit prophesies that the newly born Mr Biswas "will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well", and that he will "eat up his mother and father". The pundit further advises that the boy be kept "away from trees and water. Particularly water". A few years later, Mohun leads a neighbour's calf, which he is tending, to a stream. The boy, who has never seen water "in its natural form", becomes distracted watching the fish and allows the calf to wander off. Mohun hides in fear of punishment. His father, believing his son to be in the water, drowns in an attempt to save him, thus in part fulfilling the pundit's prophecy. This leads to the dissolution of Mr Biswas's family. His sister is sent to live with a wealthy aunt and uncle, Tara and Ajodha, while Mr Biswas, his mother, and two older brothers go to live with other relatives. Mr Biswas is withdrawn prematurely from school and apprenticed to a pundit, but is cast out on bad terms. Ajodha then puts him in the care of his alcoholic and abusive brother Bhandat which also comes to a bad result. Finally, Mr Biswas now becoming a young man decides to set out to make his own fortune. He encounters a friend from his days of attending school who helps him get into the business of sign-writing. While on the job, Mr Biswas attempts to romance a client's daughter and his advances are misinterpreted as a wedding proposal. He is drawn into a marriage which he does not have the nerve to stop and becomes a member of the Tulsi household. With the Tulsis, Mr Biswas becomes very unhappy with his wife Shama and her overbearing family, which bears a slight resemblance to the Capildeo family into which Naipaul's father married. He is usually at odds with the Tulsis and his struggle for economic independence from the oppressive household drives the plot. The Tulsi family (and the big decaying house they live in) represents the traditional communal world, the way life is lived, not only among the Hindu immigrants of Trinidad but throughout Africa and Asia as well. Mr Biswas is offered a place in it, a subordinate place to be sure, but a place that's guaranteed and from which advancement is possible. But Mr Biswas rejects that. He is, without realizing it or thinking it through but through deep and indelible instinct, a modern man. He wants to BE, to exist as something in his own right, to build something he can call his own. That is something the Tulsis cannot deal with, and that is why their world—though that traditional world, like the old Tulsi house which is its synecdoche, is collapsing—conspires to drag him down. Nevertheless, despite his poor education, Mr Biswas becomes a journalist, has four children with Shama, and attempts (more than once, with varying levels of success) to build a house that he can call his own. He becomes obsessed with the notion of owning his own house, and it becomes a symbol of his independence and merit.
853877	/m/03hdvf	A Bend in the River	V.S. Naipaul	1979	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in an unnamed African country after independence, the book is narrated by Salim, an ethnically Indian Muslim and a shopkeeper in a small, growing city in the country's remote interior. Salim observes the rapid changes in Africa with an outsider's distance. Salim, the protagonist, grows up in the Indian community of traders on the east coast of Africa. Feeling insecure about his future in East Africa, he buys a business from Nazruddin in a town at "a bend in the river" in the heart of Africa. When he moves there, he finds the town decrepit, a "ghost town", its former European suburb reclaimed by the bush, and many of its European vestiges ruined in a "rage" by the locals in response to their suppression and humiliation during the colonial times. Old tribal distinctions have become important again. Salim trades in what people in the villages need, pencils and paper, pots and pans, various household utensils. Soon he is joined by his assistant Metty who comes from a family of house slaves his family had maintained in the east. One of his steady customers is Zabeth, a "marchande" from a village and a magician, too. Zabeth has a son, Ferdinand, from a man of another tribe, and asks Salim to help him get educated. Ferdinand attends the local lycée that is run by Father Huismans, a Belgian priest who collects African masks and considered a "lover of Africa". Life in the town is slowly improving. Salim’s decision to move there gets vindicated when he learns that the Indian community on the East coast is getting persecuted. But he feels not secure either. Metty says of the local Africans "… they are malins", "because they lived with the knowledge of men as prey." A local rebellion breaks out, and the Indian merchants live in fear. Soon white mercenaries appear and restore order. After peace has returned Father Huismans goes on a trip. He is killed by unknown assailants and nobody cares. Afterwards, his collection of African masks is denounced as affront to African religion. An American visitor pillages most of it and ships it home –"The richest products of the forest". The town now develops becoming what is always was, a trading center for the region. Government agencies spring up. European salesmen and visitors arrive. Salem’s friends Mahesh and Shoba become successful with their new Bigburger franchise. The new army arrives – "poachers of ivory and thieves of gold" The portrait of the President - "the Big Man" - is displayed everywhere. A new section of town is built, the "State Domain", to showcase the President’s vision of a new Africa. Yet buildings are shoddy, tractors of the agricultural center never go to work, and much of it falls quickly into some disrepair, - Salim calls it a "hoax". The Domain is soon converted into a university and conference center, Ferdinand among its students. Salim is visited by Indar who grew up with him on the East coast, then went to England to study and now has become a lecturer at the new institution. He takes Salim to a party in the Domain to meet Yvette and Raymond. Raymond had been the advisor and mentor of the President. Although in charge of the Domain, he finds himself now outside of the center of power. Loyal to the President, he continues to write for him hoping to be recalled to the capital. Salim whose experience with women has been limited to prostitutes is intrigued by Yvette, Raymond's much younger wife. Later, after Indar departs with the steamer, Salim and Yvette enter an adulterous affair, right under Raymond’s eyes. Eventually, the liaison breaks down, Salim hitting her and spitting on her, between the legs. Raymond’s attempts to please the Big Man are not successful, instead the President publishes "a very small, brief book of thoughts, Maximes, two or three thoughts to each page, each thought about four or five lines long." Like others Salim is forced to buy a stack for distribution. The local youth group displeases the President and is denounced in one of his propaganda speeches. As a result unrest grows, corruption and extortions become more prevalent, and a "Liberation Army" forms in the underground. They reject the President, his cult of the black Madonna, his vision of Africa, and want to return to the "truthful laws" of the ancestors. Salim looks for a way out. He travels to London where he meets Nazruddin. Nazruddin after having sold his business to Salim, had first moved to Uganda, left it because of persecution, moved then to Canada, left it because of its capitalistic rapaciousness, and finally landed in London becoming a landlord. He bemoans the lack of security for honest businessmen, - there is no safe place. Salim becomes engaged to his daughter, but soon leaves returning to his place in Africa. Upon arrival he learns that he has been expropriated, the President’s new program of "Radicalization" has transferred his business to a local. Théotime, a "state trustee", is ignorant and lazy and retains Salim as manager and chauffeur. Salim recognizes that all is lost. He had hidden some ivory on his property, but betrayed by Metty, is found out and put in jail. He is presented to the commissioner, now Ferdinand, who has moved up in the administration after his training in the capital. Ferdinand tells him that there is no safety, no hope, and everybody is in fear of his life. "We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. We’re being killed. Nothing has any meaning." He sets Salim free telling him to leave the country. Salim takes the last steamer before the President arrives at the town to supervise an execution of a yet-to-be-determined victim. During the night, there is a battle on the ship, as rebels try to kidnap it. The attack is repelled, but the attached barge, full of Africans, is snapped loose and drifts down the river.
853882	/m/03hdwh	Scoop	Evelyn Waugh	1938	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 William Boot, a young man who lives in genteel poverty far from the iniquities of London, is contributor of nature notes to Lord Copper's Daily Beast, a national newspaper. He is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent when the editors mistake him for a novelist who shares his surname, John Courtney Boot. He is sent to the fictional African state of Ishmaelia where a civil war threatens to break out. There, despite his total ineptitude, he accidentally manages to get the "scoop" of the title. When he returns, however, credit is diverted to the other Boot, and he is left to return to his bucolic pursuits, much to his relief.
854367	/m/03hgpc	The Ginger Man	J. P. Donleavy		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It follows the often racy misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American living in Dublin with his English wife and infant daughter and studying law at Trinity College. This book may be considered part of the fictionalised roar of the end of the Second World War hiatus, also represented by the colossi of American literature: John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. Dangerfield is an American Protestant of Irish descent, commonly believed to be a thinly fictionalised version of the author, but is more broadly based not only on Donleavy but also some of his contemporaries at Trinity. The hero, Dangerfield, is a portrayal of lifelong bohemian and friend of Donleavy, Gainor Stephen Crist, as told by the author in The History of The Ginger Man. The book gives us the map of the terra incognita of late 1940s sexual encounters in Dublin. Donleavy's later books spell out the aftermath (particularly A Fairy Tale of New York, which later inspired Shane MacGowan's song "Fairytale of New York", recorded by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl).
854386	/m/03hgrp	Wide Sargasso Sea	Jean Rhys	1966-10	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 The opening of the novel is set a short while after the 1833 emancipation of the slaves in British-owned Jamaica. The protagonist Antoinette conveys the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman (implied as Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre). As the novel and their relationship progress, Antoinette, whom he renames Bertha, descends into madness. The novel is split into three parts. Part One takes place in Coulibri, Jamaica and is narrated by Antoinette. Describing her childhood experience, she includes several facets of her life, such as her mother's mental instability and her mentally disabled brother's tragic death. Part Two alternates between the points of view of her husband and of Antoinette following their marriage and is set in Granbois, Dominica. One of the likely catalysts for Antoinette's downfall is the suspicion with which they both begin to view each other, fuelled by the machinations of a supposed relative of Antoinette's, Daniel Cosway (Boyd). Antoinette's old nurse Christophine's constant mistrust of the husband and Rochester's unwavering belief in Daniel Cosway further aggravates the situation, added in when he becomes unfaithful to her. This increased sense of paranoia tinged with the disappointment of their failing marriage unbalances Antoinette's already precarious mental state. The shortest part, Part Three, is once again from the perspective of Antoinette, now known as Bertha, as she lives in the Rochester mansion, which she calls the "Great House". It traces her relationship with Grace, the servant who is tasked with 'guarding' her in England. It also traces her even more disintegrating relationship with Rochester as he hides her from the world. Making her empty promises to come see her more, which only become less as he adventures off with relationships with other women, eventually with Jane Eyre. Narrating in a stream of consciousness, Bertha decides to take her own life as she believes it to be her destiny.
854392	/m/03hgss	The Magus	John Fowles		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is written from the perspective of young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet Nicholas Urfe, who takes up with Alison Kelly, an Australian girl he meets at a party in London. To get away from an increasingly serious relationship with her, Nicholas accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School in the Greek island of Phraxos. Bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, Nicholas struggles with loneliness and contemplates suicide. Finding himself habitually walking the isle, he stumbles upon the estate, and soon the person of, wealthy Greek recluse Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis' psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first, these various aspects of what the novel terms the "godgame" seem to Nicholas to be a joke but, as they grow more elaborate and intense, Nicholas's ability to determine what is real and what is artifice vanishes. Against his will and knowledge, he becomes a performer in the godgame and realizes that the reenactments of the Nazi occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis' life, but his own.
854399	/m/03hgtg	Tobacco Road	Erskine Caldwell	1932		 Lov Bensey, a friend of the Lesters, walks to his home at the train yard coal chute. He has walked seven and a half miles to get a sack of winter turnips for fifty cents; which is half of his daily wage. On his way home he stops by the Lesters to talk to Jeeter about Jeeter's twelve year old daughter Pearl, to whom Lov is married. While Lov is talking to Jeeter, the book introduces the reader to sixteen year-old Dude, the youngest of the Lester boys; Ada, Jeeter’s wife; Grandma Lester; and Ellie May, an eighteen year old girl with a grotesque cleft lip. The entire family, acting in complete desperation, works to steal the turnips from Lov, who then becomes nauseated by the sight and leaves for home. At this point the preacher Bessie enters the scene. Sister Bessie Rice, like Ellie May, also has a deformity of the face. Bessie’s nose contains no bone, and so when looking straight at her face one can see straight into her nostrils, like a pig. Despite this, Jeeter is still attracted to her. She does some preaching and praying for everyone’s sins, and then proposes marriage to Dude. However, Dude is more interested in her offer of letting him drive the new automobile that she anticipates purchasing than in actually getting married to her. Bessie then goes home to her hovel to ask God whether or not she and Dude should get married. Jeeter has lived on the same plot of land since he was born, and even though his standard of living continues to decline until he and his family begin to starve, Jeeter stubbornly refuses to move to the city to make a better life for himself by working in a cotton mill. Such a life, he insists, would be impossible for him to live. Alongside Jeeter’s preoccupation with farming the land is his preoccupation with his own imminent death. Ada as well is fixated on her death, but their morbidity does not take the form of lamentation or self-pity. Ada’s main concern is that she not be buried in her tattered, old, out-of-style calico dress, while Jeeter’s main concern is that his body not be left in the old corn storage shed where it might be eaten by rats. He has had a terrible phobia of rats ever since he saw his dead father’s face half-eaten by a rat the day of his funeral. Neither of these two characters have any doubts that they are going to die sometime soon, and it is not their present life but their lifeless bodies which they care about most. Possibly they realize that their way of life is already dead; thus their primary concern becomes not the preservation of that life but its appearance during burial. When Sister Bessie returns the next day to the Lester house, she exclaims that God has given her his approval for the marriage between Dude and herself. The two then start the long walk to Fuller in order to purchase a new Ford, for the purpose of traveling around the country and preaching. Once they are in the auto showroom, the salesmen take advantage of Bessie's rural naïveté to pull off a quick and profitable sale, while at the same time constantly making fun of her deformed nose. Later, Dude and Bessie go off to get their marriage certificate and are questioned by the county official, who reprimands Bessie for attempting to marry a boy of sixteen years. (Bessie claims she is only 31 years old to the Lesters, but admits to 39 years at the registrar's office.) Finally, they get the marriage license, and the anxious Dude gets to drive the automobile again. Dude incessantly sounds the car horn whenever he gets behind the steering wheel to drive off somewhere. Over the course of the next two days, the automobile slowly gets wrecked more and more. First there is an accident with a wagon in which they end up killing the negro driver, and then Dude drives into a stump. The seats get torn by Jeeter’s blackjack wood, which he attempts to sell in the city of Augusta. The engine also becomes irreparably damaged by being run without enough oil. On top of this, they sell the spare tire and wheel for three dollars in order to pay for gasoline, food, and a night at a disreputable hotel where Bessie willingly gets prostituted from room to room by the manager. Some days later Bessie refuses to let Jeeter ride in her car anymore, which makes him upset to the point of kicking her off the land. When she physically attacks him, Ada and Jeeter proceed to beat Bessie and poke her with sticks until she and Dude take off in the car. While fleeing from Ada and Jeeter’s onslaught, Dude backs the Ford right over Grandma Lester, who then lies with her face mashed into the sand, near dead. Lov runs down to see Jeeter, and asks him if he knows what happened to Pearl, who had run away to Augusta to be free of Lov and the bleak and desperate country life surrounding her. Jeeter notes that more than a few of his daughters have run away to the city. After this discussion about the girls running away, the two notice Grandma’s corpse and drag her into the field to dig her grave and bury her. Lov departs and Caldwell reflects on Jeeter’s position as a tenant farmer in the South. Even though Jeeter, like so many others around him, had the urge to plant a crop during this time of the year, there was nothing he could do. His landlord was an absentee and had abandoned Jeeter and the rest of those who had lived on his land and given him shares of their crop in exchange for credit for seeds and fertilizer. The stores in the city would not grant any more credit to Jeeter or any of the other farmers because it was too risky and there were too many asking for it. Jeeter sets a fire to burn off broom sedge and hopes to somehow find enough credit to farm his land that spring. As Jeeter and Ada sleep, sparks from the fire ignite the shingles of their house, which burns to the ground, killing them in their sleep. As the novel closes, Dude makes his first mention of working: he voices the same thoughts of plowing the Lester land that Jeeter had expressed throughout the story, indicating that the vicious cycle in which poor Southern farmers such as the Lesters are trapped, continues.
854423	/m/03hgz0	Ragtime	E. L. Doctorow		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel centers on a wealthy white family group living in New Rochelle, New York, simply called "Father," "Mother," "Mother's Younger Brother," and "Grandfather." Their young son is not named at all. The family business is the manufacture of flags and fireworks, evidently an easy source of wealth due to the national enthusiasm for patriotic displays. Father joins the first expedition to the North Pole, and his return sees a change in the sexual politics of his relationship with his wife. Younger Brother is an insecure, unhappy character who chases after love and excitement. Into this secure setup comes first an abandoned black child, then her severely depressed mother Sarah. Coalhouse Walker, apparently the child's father, visits regularly until he wins back Sarah's affections. A professional musician, well dressed and well spoken, gains the family's respect and overcomes their racial prejudice initially by his skill playing ragtime music on their badly-tuned piano. Things go well until he is humiliated by a racist fire chief, and his inflexible pride brings him to seek restitution, violent revenge eventually, rather than pursue the course of love and happiness. Mother unofficially adopts the neglected child after Sarah dies as result of police brutality. Younger Brother becomes drawn into the escalating conflict, as a protagonist, and so does Father as a mediator. In the slums of New York city, unhappy Jewish single father Tateh struggles to support himself and his daughter, Little Girl. The girl's beauty attracts the attention of rich socialite Evelyn Nesbit, who provides support but ultimately drives him to take his daughter away from the city. He appears later in the story, having progressed from the unprofitable business of cutting paper silhouettes on the street, becoming a wealthy pioneer of the moving picture industry. By the end of the novel, surviving members of the three family groups have merged into one in an allegorical representation of the American melting pot, leaving Father financially successful but abandoned and unhappy.
854427	/m/03hgzq	Lord Jim	Joseph Conrad		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 Jim (his surname is never disclosed), a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed. The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry, leaving Jim to the court alone. The court strips him of his navigation command certificate for his dereliction of duty. Jim is angry with himself, both for his moment of weakness, and for missing an opportunity to be a 'hero'. At the trial, he meets Charles Marlow, a sea captain, who in spite of his initial misgivings over what he sees as Jim's moral unsoundness, comes to befriend him, for he is "one of us". Marlow later finds Jim work as a ship chandler's clerk. Jim tries to remain incognito, but whenever the opprobrium of the Patna incident catches up with him, he abandons his place and moves further east. At length, Marlow's friend Stein suggests placing Jim as his factor in Patusan, a remote inland settlement with a mixed Malay and Bugis population, where Jim's past can remain hidden. While living on the island he acquires the title 'Tuan' ('Lord'). Here, Jim wins the respect of the people and becomes their leader by relieving them from the predations of the bandit Sherif Ali and protecting them from the corrupt local Malay chief, Rajah Tunku Allang. Jim wins the love of Jewel, a woman of mixed race, and is "satisfied... nearly". The end comes a few years later, when the town is attacked by the marauder "Gentleman" Brown. Although Brown and his gang are driven off, Dain Waris, the son of the leader of the Bugis community, is slain. Jim returns to Doramin, the Bugis leader, and willingly takes a fatal bullet in the chest from him as retribution for the death of his son. Marlow is also the narrator of three of Conrad's other works: Heart of Darkness, Youth, and Chance.
854918	/m/03hjx9	The Journey of Ibn Fattouma	Naguib Mahfouz		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ibn Fattouma, also known by his birth name Qindil Muhammad al-Innabi, is a Muslim man disillusioned by the corruption in his home city. When he asks his teacher, a Sufi, why a land whose people obeys the tenets of Islam suffers so, Ibn Fattouma is told the answer he seeks lies far away from the city. Since travel broadens one's horizons, the teacher encourages Ibn Fattouma to seek the land of Gebel, where such problems have been solved. The teacher tried to travel there himself, but civil war in neighboring lands and the demands of family ultimately prevented him from completing the journey. Also, no documents exist about Gebel and no one is known to have traveled there and come back. Ibn Fattouma says farewell to his mother and proceeds with a camel train out of his home city to the land of Mashriq. In this sexually libertine society (by Ibn Fattouma's standards), the women and men do not marry, they share sexual partners and they share power over their children. Nevertheless, Ibn Fattouma settles in Mashriq with a woman named Arousa and they have five children as husband and wife. Because of Ibn Fattouma's insistence upon teaching his eldest son Islam, he is exiled from Mashriq and prohibited from seeing Arousa or their children again. Ibn Fattouma then travels to the land of Haïra. The invasion of Mashriq by militaristic Haïra further separates Ibn Fattouma from his family, and when the annexation of Mashriq is finished, Arousa is brought to Haïra as a slave. The chamberlain of the god-king of Haïra wants Arousa as his wife and arranges for Ibn Fattouma to be jailed. Twenty years pass in Haïra before the god-king is overthrown, and the chamberlain (who was also jailed) tells Ibn Fattouma to look in the neighboring land of Halba for his wife and son. In Halba, the freedom of the individual is the greatest good. All religions peacefully coexist and openly encourage freedom of inquiry. The Halbans are also aggressive promoters of their philosophy of life in other nations; preparations are underway as Ibn Fattouma arrives for a war with neighboring Aman. Ibn Fattouma is reunited with Arousa, who thought him lost and had since married a Buddhist. There Ibn Fattouma meets and marries Samia, a pediatrician in Halba's hospital. With his wife's reluctant approval, Ibn Fattouma decides to continue his journey before war makes such travel impossible. In the land of Aman, justice is held as the greatest good, and every citizen is encouraged to spy on every other to maintain order. He leaves just as Aman and Halba prepare to fight. His next stop, the land of Ghuroub, finds Ibn Fattouma questioned to the depths of his being. Does he earnestly desire to go to Gebel, and why? Ibn Fattouma states as he has many times before that he seeks to learn Gebel's secret of perfection in life and share it with the people of his homeland. He and the other seekers of Gebel are driven from Ghuroub by an invading army from Aman, and after months of travel, they sight Gebel itself from a mountain peak. As Ibn Fattouma descends to continue his journey, the story ends without the reader learning whether he finds the perfection he seeks.
858114	/m/03hvqt	Vril	Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton	1870	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel centers on a young, independently wealthy traveler (the narrator), who accidentally finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels and call themselves Vril-ya. The hero soon discovers that the Vril-ya are descendants of an antediluvian civilization who live in networks of subterranean caverns linked by tunnels. It is a technologically supported Utopia, chief among their tools being the "all-permeating fluid" called "Vril", a latent source of energy which its spiritually elevated hosts are able to master through training of their will, to a degree which depends upon their hereditary constitution, giving them access to an extraordinary force that can be controlled at will. The powers of the will include the ability to heal, change, and destroy beings and things; the destructive powers in particular are awesomely powerful, allowing a few young Vril-ya children to wipe out entire cities if necessary. It is also suggested that the Vril-ya are fully telepathic. The narrator states that in time, the Vril-ya will run out of habitable spaces underground and start claiming the surface of the Earth, destroying mankind in the process if necessary. The uses of Vril in the novel amongst the Vril-ya vary from an agent of destruction to a healing substance. According to Zee, the daughter of the narrator's host, Vril can be changed into the mightiest agency over all types of matter, both animate and inanimate. It can destroy like lightning or replenish life, heal, or cure. It is used to rend ways through solid matter. Its light is said to be steadier, softer and healthier than that from any flammable material. It can also be used as a power source for animating mechanisms. Vril can be harnessed by use of the Vril staff or mental concentration. A Vril staff is an object in the shape of a wand or a staff which is used as a channel for Vril. The narrator describes it as hollow with 'stops', 'keys', or 'springs' in which Vril can be altered, modified or directed to either destroy or heal. The staff is about the size of a walking stick but can be lengthened or shortened according to the user's preferences. The appearance and function of the Vril staff differs according to gender, age, etc. Some staves are more potent for destruction, others for healing. The staves of children are said to be much simpler than those of sages; in those of wives and mothers the destructive part is removed while the healing aspects are emphasized.
860136	/m/03j1xm	The Honourable Schoolboy	John le Carré	1977	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 In 1974, George Smiley, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (known as "Circus"), is investigating his own organisation in the aftermath of capturing a Soviet mole amongst the service's previous leadership. He seeks clues to the trail of Karla, his KGB counterpart and nemesis. To protect the politically weakened spy service from the Government war hawks, Smiley must launch a successful offensive espionage operation against the enemy. To that effect, he, along with analysts Connie Sachs and Doc di Salis, look into investigations unreasonably suppressed by Bill Haydon, the identified mole. They discover Sam Collins's investigation of a money laundering operation in Vientiane, Laos, which points to involvement from Karla. Collins' investigations prompt Smiley to recall Westerby—The Honourable Gerald "Jerry" Westerby, a former newspaper reporter and occasional SIS operative—and despatch him to Hong Kong. Once there Westerby blackmails a banker for photographs of the account of Drake Ko—destination of the Soviet money transmitted via Vientiane. The photographs reveal to Westerby that it is a "lock-away account", featuring only the name of the founder's trust—"Drake Ko"; moreover, the trust beneficiary is identified only via fingerprint; no money has been withdrawn, and the balance is about half a million American dollars. The parallel investigations in Hong Kong and London identify an 'Elizabeth Worthington' as Ko's blonde girlfriend, "Liese Worth." Elizabeth ('Lizzie') Worthington was previously the girlfriend of bush pilot Tiny Ricardo, a Mexican mercenary in Vientiane; as such, she thought herself a British intelligence agent run by Collins. Sachs and di Salis interview a Mr Hibbert, learning that he is the missionary who named the foundling Ko brothers "Drake" and "Nelson" to honour Britain; and that "Liese" was the name of Hibbert's dead wife. US intelligence reports that Ricardo is alive and that he has approached them with information about an opium cargo he was to fly to Red China. Because the US want to arrest Ko as a drug kingpin, they give Smiley 10 to 12 weeks to pursue Circus interests before intervening. Smiley quickly grasps the implication of Tiu's (Ko's second-in-command) quick trip to Shanghai six weeks before Ricardo's planned opium cargo flight to Red China. It was to meet with Nelson, Drake's brother, to arrange their reunion rendezvous, via which Nelson would escape China in Ricardo's Beechcraft. Smiley thus decides to force Ko to react to being spied upon, thereby advancing Operation Dolphin. Westerby manœuvres Lizzie Worthington to dinner. She calls Tiu to the restaurant; before him, Westerby interviews her about Ricardo, the bush pilot, about the connection between Indocharter Air Transport and the Soviet embassy in Vientiane. Surprised and personally relieved, Westerby perceives her ignorance of the gold seam, of Nelson Ko and of the Soviet connection. On Circus orders, Westerby finds the bush pilot-opium smuggler Charlie Marshall in Battambang, Cambodia, and manages to board a flight Marshall is flying en route to Phnom Penh. Ricardo also is aboard, but Westerby doesn't grasp who he is until Phnom Penh; in evading him, Ricardo shoots at Westerby. That night, Westerby takes Marshall from an opium den and interrogates him, learning that Lizzie was a heroin courier for Collins; that she directly intervened with Drake on Ricardo's behalf; that Tiu offered Marshall $5,000 for a flight, which he turned down; and where, between flights, Ricardo currently hides. Westerby pursues Ricardo, by ferry, across the Mekong River into Thailand; Ricardo tells Westerby that Tiu, on behalf of Ko, hired Ricardo to fly opium into China and pick up a package, paying Ricardo's debts as an advance for the job; instead of completing the job, Ricardo stole the opium and the Beechcraft airplane and went into hiding. Westerby tells Ricardo that Nelson was the package. Ricardo again tries to kill Westerby, with a delayed-action hand grenade in the fuel tank of his hired car; Westerby figures out the ruse, and safely watches the car explode. On 30 April 1975 Westerby arrives at an American air force base in northeast Thailand and cables his report to the Circus; he also learns that the North Vietnamese Army has captured Saigon, winning and ending the Vietnam War (1945-75). In turn, the Circus orders his direct return to London, explicitly ordering him not return to Hong Kong. Disobeying, Westerby goes to Hong Kong. At his flat he finds the corpse of Luke, his photojournalist roommate, who has been shot dead. To ascertain the successful conclusion of Operation Dolphin, Smiley, Guillam, and Fawn (Smiley's factotum-bodyguard), along with the CIA men Martello and Murphy, are in Hong Kong to capture Nelson Ko. Smiley knows that Nelson will escape China (as Drake did in 1951) on a fishing fleet junk, going to the southernmost island of Po Toi. On the run, and spurred on by schoolboy romanticism, Jerry Westerby remains in Hong Kong—to rescue Lizzie Worthington (he takes her from a cocktail party), and to protect Nelson from capture by the Circus, while the CIA spies on Drake. They go to her apartment; Smiley enters unannounced, and Westerby, expecting either Drake or Tiu, assaults him, before realizing it is his boss. In turn, Fawn manhandles Jerry. Smiley orders Fawn and Guillam to put Westerby aboard a flight to London but Westerby escapes, gets Lizzie, and they take a boat to Po Toi. There, she shows him the places special to Drake, helping Westerby to determine where Nelson will land from China. After arranging a next-night rendezvous with Westerby, Lizzie returns to Hong Kong. That night on Po Toi island, Westerby finds Drake and Tiu at the beach, awaiting Nelson. After disarming and disabling Tiu, Westerby tells Drake that he wants Lizzie for himself, in exchange for saving Nelson from the British and the Americans. Drake is sceptical and hesitates. Yet just as Nelson lands, American helicopters appear and load Nelson on a helicopter. As the helicopters pull away, Westerby is shot and killed by Fawn. The CIA, not the British, detain and interrogate Nelson; his interrogators do not include di Salis and Sachs. The success of Operation Dolphin yields top Circus jobs for Enderby and Collins, who becomes (temporary) Chief of the Circus. Smiley and Connie Sachs are retired with pensions, and Peter Guillam is sent to head the scalphunters in Brixton.
861139	/m/03j6md	The Canary Trainer	Nicholas Meyer	1993-09-20	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 In 1912, Dr. Watson visits the retired Sherlock Holmes, who is happily cultivating bees on the Sussex Downs. Holmes seems mostly concerned about interesting Watson in his new hobby, but Watson prefers to interrogate Holmes and fill some of the gaps in previous Sherlockian history. For example, Watson says, Holmes's account of how he spent the "Lost Years" (1891 to 1895) was laden with contradictions. Finally, he persuades Holmes to retell one episode of his adventures. The narration switches to Holmes. He describes how, following the events of The Seven Percent Solution, he traveled Europe and slowly realized that the entire world believed him dead. Wandering aimlessly, he finds himself in Paris, where after a short-lived stint as a violin instructor, he obtains a position at the Paris Opéra. From the very beginning, his job has ominous undertones. For example, the vacancy only appeared because the previous violinist ran into the street, swearing that he would never work in the place again. This does not daunt Holmes, who interviews with and favourably impresses the conductor, Maître Gaston Leroux. Holmes gradually becomes accustomed to the Opera's distinctive culture. He learns that all minor mishaps are attributed to the Ghost, a spectral personage who haunts the Opera's labyrinthine passageways, sometimes appearing to ballet dancers wearing an evening suit but without a head. All goes well until the prima donna soprano, La Sorelli, falls ill and is replaced by Irene Adler, a past adversary known for her ability to outwit Holmes. His admiration for her provokes uncertain emotions, largely foreign to his calculating nature&mdash;but he soon realizes that torment is secondary, when the opera rehearsals subject him to her incomparably beautiful singing. He suffers in silence until Adler sees his profile in a Degas painting, whereupon she realizes that he is alive, and enlists his help. She has taken the young coloratura Christine Daaé "under her wing", and is fearful that the innocent singer may fall prey to intrigue once Adler has left. Irene Adler blackmails Holmes into assisting her, promising that she will remain silent about his survival. While investigating the intrigues that surround Christine, Holmes appears to run afoul of the Opera Ghost.
862059	/m/03j9q3	The Dark Half	Stephen King	1989-11-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Thad Beaumont is an author and recovering alcoholic who lives in the town of Ludlow, Maine. Thad's own books – cerebral literary fiction – are not very successful. However, under the pen name "George Stark", he writes highly successful crime novels about a violent killer named Alexis Machine. When Thad's authorship of Stark's novels becomes public knowledge, Thad and his wife, Elizabeth, decide to stage a mock burial for his alter ego at the local cemetery, which is featured in a People magazine article. Stark's epitaph says it all: "Not A Very Nice Guy". Stark, however, emerges from the mock grave as a physical entity and goes on a killing spree, gruesomely murdering everyone he perceives responsible for his "death" – Thad's editor, agent, and the People interviewer, among others. Thad, meanwhile, is plagued by surreal nightmares. Stark's murders are investigated by Alan Pangborn, the sheriff of the neighboring town of Castle Rock, who finds Thad's voice and fingerprints at the crime scenes. This evidence, and Thad's unwillingness to answer his questions, causes Pangborn to believe that Thad – despite having alibis – is responsible for the murders. Thad eventually discovers that he and Stark share a mental bond, and begins to find notes from Stark written in his own handwriting. The notes tell Thad what activity Stark has been engaging in. Observing his son and daughter, Thad notes that twins share a unique bond. They can feel each other's pain and at times appear to read the other's mind. Using this as a keystone to his own situation, he begins to discover the even deeper meaning behind himself and Stark. Pangborn eventually learns that Thad had a twin. The unborn brother was absorbed into Thad in utero and later removed from his brain when the author was a child. He had suffered from severe headaches and it was originally thought to be a tumor causing them. The neurosurgeon who removed it found the following inside: part of a nostril, some fingernails, some teeth, and a malformed human eye. This leads to questions about the true nature of Stark, whether he is a malevolent spirit with its own existence, or Thad himself, manifesting an alternate personality. Thad eventually vanquishes Stark, but the book ends on an unhappy note with Thad's wife having serious doubts about the future of their relationship: she is appalled that Thad not only created Stark (if unintentionally), but that a part of him liked Stark. Sheriff Alan Pangborn goes on to appear two times more in the Castle Rock series. It is revealed that ever since the events of The Dark Half, he is plagued by nightmares and the memory of Thad Beaumont. We are also told of the subsequent death of Pangborn's wife and son, and his own depression, in Needful Things. In the short story The Sun Dog it had mentioned in passing that Liz left Thad, taking the twins with her. It is then revealed in Bag of Bones that Thad committed suicide. This ties up the novel's ambiguous ending regarding Thad's relationship with Liz. Stark is also mentioned in the "Notes" section of King's collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes under the story "The Fifth Quarter". It states only "Bachman again. Or maybe George Stark."
862444	/m/03jc74	Sandman: The Dream Hunters	Neil Gaiman	1999	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 A kitsune (fox) and a tanuki (raccoon dog) make a bet that whichever of them drives a Buddhist priest from his temple, they will claim it as their own. Both of them fail, and the raccoon dog flees in disgrace. The fox, however, has fallen in love with the monk, and in the form of an immensely beautiful woman, she apologizes to him for their behavior; he allows her to stay in the temple, provided that she does not cause him any more trouble. Meanwhile, in a house in Kyoto, a rich onmyoji is consumed by a nameless fear, and consults three hags living at the edge of town. They give him instructions to alleviate this fear; the result is that the aforementioned monk will become trapped inside a dream, and his body will sleep continuously until it dies. The fox overhears this from several demons employed by the onmyōji, and in an attempt to avert this, she travels to the Dreaming, where she meets Morpheus in the shape of an enormous black fox (In the story, he is referred to as the King of All Night's Dreaming). He listens to her plight, and in the ensuing conversation, the fox formulates a plan to capture a baku, and use it to take the monk's place on the third night. The plan is successful, but the monk is distraught at the fox's condition, and leaves his temple so that he may find the means of awakening her. He encounters Binzuru Harada, who offers him physical abuse for abandoning his temple, then instructs him on how to find Morpheus. After a journey through the realm of dreams (during which he encounters what appear to be Japanese counterparts of Fiddler's Green and Cain and Abel from the Sandman comics), he arrives at the palace. A raven, who is the departed spirit of a poet, guides him through it, and he is granted an audience. Morpheus tells him what the fox had done, and that if he rescues her, her efforts will have been in vain, but the monk insists, and goes to meet the fox, where she is trapped inside a mirror in her human form. Initially she is reluctant, but again he insists. The narrative then gives an ambiguous statement on whether they then give formal farewells or make love (possibly Gaiman's way of implying that there are contradictory versions of the story, giving it an extra layer of authenticity), and then he takes her place, giving her the advice, "Seek not revenge, but the Buddha." The fox informs Morpheus of this advice, then tells him she will seek the Buddha after seeking revenge. She awakens, and the monk dies several days later. The fox tracks down the Onmyoji and seduces him in her human form, giving no indication of her true nature, but insists that he cannot touch her because of his affluent position and power. Maddened with lust, he burns down his house and that of the hags, killing them and his family and servants, and meets with the fox. She cajoles him into disrobing, then reverts to her true form and bites out one of his eyes, leaving him with his madness. In the Dreaming, Morpheus and the raven ponder the events and their significance; Morpheus is satisfied that events played out as they should have, and that everyone involved learned an important lesson, particularly the monk. The narration ends by saying that since then, some people have had dreams of the monk and the fox (in either of her forms) walking through a field together.
862594	/m/03jcnf	The Tale of Peter Rabbit	Beatrix Potter	1902	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story focuses on a family of anthropomorphic rabbits, the widowed mother rabbit cautioning her young against entering a vegetable garden grown by a man named Mr. McGregor, who had baked her deceased husband into a pie. Whereas her three daughters obediently refrain from entering the garden, her rebellious son Peter defies his mother by trespassing into the garden to snack on some vegetables, losing his clothes along the way. While there, Peter is caught by Mr. McGregor and finds difficulties in wriggling beneath the opening in the fence through which he'd managed to slide past earlier to invade the garden, and later finds that his abandoned clothing articles were used to dress Mr. McGregor's scarecrow. After returning home, a sickened Peter is bedridden by his mother whereas his well-behaved sisters receive a sumptuous dinner of milk and berries as opposed to Peter's supper of chamomile tea.
864368	/m/03jlc7	The Chamber	Enric Tremps	1994	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Greenville, Mississippi, the office of Jewish lawyer, Marvin Kramer, who is active in Civil Rights work, is bombed. He is badly injured but survives. His two young sons are killed. Sam Cayhall is identified, arrested and tried for their murder. His trial is engineered by his Klan-connected lawyer and is declared a mistrial. The second trial finds him not guilty and Sam is a free man. Several years pass and the FBI pressures a suspected associate, Dogan, to testify against him. He does so, and is later killed, almost certainly by the Klan. Sam, an unrepentant racist and Klansman, is convicted of murder and sentenced to death by gas chamber, 20 years after the bombing. He is sent to the Mississippi State Penitentiary, and placed on Death Row. Now without a lawyer, he becomes a pro bono case for several anti-death penalty lawyers; ironically from Krawitz and Bane, a largely Jewish law firm in Chicago. Sam's son, Eddie, has fled to California, where his son Alan grew up under the name of Adam Hall. After his father's suicide, Adam starts to learn something of the violent Cayall history. Now working as a lawyer at Krawitz and Bane, he persuades them (with difficulty) to allow him to represent Sam, even though Sam has managed to terminate the representation. He journeys south from Chicago to the Memphis office to represent Sam in the final month before the date of execution. Despite his lack of death-penalty experience, Adam is determined to argue a stay for his grandfather. Despite Sam's violent past, he is one of the few living links to Adam's history. Sam's daughter, Lee Cayhall Booth (Adam's aunt), an alcoholic who has worked hard to conceal her past, slowly reveals the sad, brutal history of their family. Initially uncooperative, Sam eventually opens up to Adam and reveals a remarkable depth of hard-won legal knowledge, regularly preparing his own briefs and court motions. Adam interviews the FBI agent who worked the original case, and it becomes apparent that Sam almost certainly did not commit the actual crime for which he has been found guilty, although he was present. Nevertheless, he has a long and largely secret history of Klan-related crime and has killed several times. One of his associates (Dogan) is now dead, and Sam will not reveal if another associate exists, thus not violating his Klan oath of loyalty. Adam desperately files motion after motion and argues some of them before judges. He seeks to persuade the state Governor to grant a reprive, knowing full well that such a move is politically impossible. And Sam has forbidden such a move, as he suspects the Governor of using him for politcal gain. All appeals are finally exhausted. Sam is now repentant, but does not want Adam as a witness to the execution. The sentence is carried out. With Sam and Dogan dead, no-one knows that Roland, the third man, who prepared and set off the bomb, is still free and living nearby, under a false identity and observing the progress of the case. Adam, sickened but fascinated by the experience, quits the law firm to accept a poorer-paid position with an group of anti-death penalty lawyers.
865329	/m/03jqbw	The Reality Dysfunction	Peter F. Hamilton	1996-01-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Reality Dysfunction opens in the year 2581 with a war raging between two worlds, Omuta and Garissa, over three hundred and eighty seven mineral-rich asteroids known as the Dorados. The war escalates in a matter of months and it is rumoured that Garissa has developed an ultimate weapon of mass destruction known only as 'The Alchemist'. The Alchemist deployment mission, on the starship Beezling and its two escorts, is intercepted by blackhawk mercenaries. Two of the ships survive, although they are crippled and stranded far from the nearest system. Dr. Alkad Mzu, creator of the Alchemist, survives the attack. Shortly after, the Omutans drop fifteen antimatter planet-busters on Garissa, rendering the planet uninhabitable and killing the majority of the ninety-five million inhabitants. The Confederation imposes a 30-year blockade around Omuta, and executes its government. Many millions of years earlier, the extremely rare conditions on a moon orbiting a gas giant in a remote galaxy allow for the creation of a lifeform able to 'transcend' to a purely energy-based (later known as energistic) state, the Ly-cilph. The Ly-cilph become explorers of the universe, determined to know all that can be known about space and time. Over the course of aeons, they explore the universe and, presently, one arrives in the Milky Way galaxy. An Edenist voidhawk named Iasius returns home to Saturn to die. As is traditional, a mating flight is called, with many voidhawks and even a blackhawk, Udat, joining Iasius on its final voyage into Saturn's atmosphere. As it descends, the other ships energise its bitek eggs, which are taken to nest in Saturn's rings. After several months, when the eggs are large enough, the infant children of Iasius captain, Athene, are placed within them, so ship and captain experience infancy together, forming an unbreakable bond of love. The ship that grows from the egg energised by Udat, Oenone, becomes the most notable of the new brood of voidhawks, and its captain, Syrinx, the most wilful. As with many Edenists, Syrinx and Oenone volunteer to serve a tour of duty with the Confederation Navy, but the destruction of their fellow ship Graeae (commanded by Syrinx's brother, Thetis) by an Adamist starship (called the Dymasio) using antimatter causes Syrinx to take a dim view of Adamists in general from that point on. She finishes her service with the Navy and then goes into cargo shipping. A group of colonists arrive on the frontier world of Lalonde from Earth. Grossly overpopulated, with tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of people crammed into domed cities called arcologies, many people on Earth dream of escaping to virgin worlds with open skies above their heads. However, Lalonde is a typical stage-one colony world, dirty and corrupt with a ridiculously low level of technology. The latest colonists, mostly from Earth's European arcologies, vow to create a peaceful, safe society. They are taken by steamboat up the mighty Juliffe River to found their new township, which they name Aberdale. Among the colonists are the Skibbow family, whose patriarch, Gerald, is excited about the prospect of living as a farmer. His teenage daughter, Marie, is less impressed and vows to escape back to Earth at the first opportunity. Also among the colonists are Father Horst Elwes, a Christian priest, and a large number of 'Ivets' (Involuntary Transportees), petty criminals from Earth sentenced to work on the colony worlds to repay their debt to society. Unbeknown to the authorities, one of the Ivets, Quinn Dexter, is a member of the Light Brother sect (devil worshippers) and is armed with highly advanced information implants which have escaped detection. Dexter soon exerts his command over all the other Ivets through the use of satanic rituals, whilst simultaneously ingratiating himself with the colonists. His act does not fool Powel Manani, the town's assigned settlement supervisor. Around this time the Ly-cilph arrives on Lalonde and studies Aberdale. Its curiosity is piqued when Father Elwes manages to see it, since few species are capable of perceiving it. Joshua Calvert is a resident of Tranquillity, an independent bitek habitat (one of only five such habitats) orbiting the gas giant Mirchusko. Tranquillity was founded to study the Ruin Ring, the remains of some forty thousand alien habitats which apparently self-destructed two thousand years ago. It was created by the strictly Christian Kulu Kingdom, but when its founder Prince Michael Saldana chose to also accept affinity gene implants and have them inherited by his children, Tranquillity was excommunicated by the Kingdom and its leaders disinherited. Since then it has flourished as a tax haven, a trustworthy base for blackhawk mating flights, and an exclusive business locale in its area of the Confederation. Calvert has inherited a trader starship, the Lady MacBeth, from his late father, but the ship was heavily damaged in an unknown incident (Calvert makes up several stories during the course of the novel to explain this incident, all false. The incident is later explained in the short story 'Escape Route' in the short story collection A Second Chance at Eden) and is no longer operational. Calvert dreams of making a big find in the Ruin Ring to finance repairs. Much to his surprise, Calvert indeed strikes lucky, finding a virtually intact memory core with the first-ever images of the reason for the Laymil racial suicide. However, decoding the information will take some time. Calvert sells his find for nearly seven million six hundred thousand fuesodollars, fixes up the Lady MacBeth and begins his life as a trader captain. He also starts a relationship with Ione Saldana, the current ruler of Tranquillity. Also on Tranquillity is Dr. Alkad Mzu, who has been imprisoned on the habitat for nearly thirty years. How she escaped the situation at the start of the novel is not explained. Mzu is kept under the watchful eye of half a dozen major Confederation intelligence agencies to ensure that her knowledge of the Alchemist is not revealed to anyone else. From time to time, Mzu asks ship captains for passage off the habitat, knowing that such requests will be vetoed by Ione Saldana. She asks both Calvert and Meyer, the captain of the Udat, for aid but both times they refuse to help after Saldana intervenes. On Lalonde Dexter encounters a group of people hiding in the jungle, led by the authoritative Laton. Laton is a 'Serpent', an Edenist who has rejected his society and, for lack of a better term, 'gone bad'. More than thirty-five years ago Laton tried to stage a coup to seize control of a habitat called Jantrit, using a proteanic virus to threaten it with destruction. In the resulting chaos the habitat was destroyed (the only Edenist habitat ever lost) with more than a million deaths. The Confederation Navy believed it had killed Laton, but Laton had evaded capture and fled into obscurity in the wilds of Lalonde. Laton, impressed with Dexter's resourcefulness (but disgusted by his religion), offers him a place in his organisation, whose goal is the discovery of true immortality. Dexter pretends to agree, knowing refusal will mean death. Realising that Dexter is faking his interest, Laton arranges for the villagers to discover that the Ivets are satanists. In the resulting chaos most of Dexter's followers are killed. The remaining few take Powel Manani prisoner and sacrifice him in a grisly ceremony. At this moment, the observing Ly-cilph detects a strange energy current streaming from Manani through a quantum fracture in the space-time continuum. The Ly-cilph attempts to investigate by following the energy current, only to find it flooding into an energistic vacuum. Unable to extricate itself, the Ly-cilph goes into hibernation whilst still halfway between the two dimensions. This allows the strange energy forms in the dimension beyond to cross back into our universe. The result is utter mayhem. Several of the strange entities seize control of Dexter and his followers, in effect 'possessing' them. Able to call upon powers from the other realm, such as the ability to control and alter matter and hurl powerful white fireballs around, they then seize control of Aberdale and Laton's compound, forcing the inhabitants to accept possession or death. Father Elwes escapes onto the savannah with most of Aberdale's children, but not before one of the possessed reveals a terrible secret: the possessing entities are the souls of humans who have died and been trapped, some of them for millennia, in an absolute void where the only way to pass the time is to parasitically feed on the memories and experiences of others. And there are billions of them in the darkness still screaming for escape. At the moment Laton is possessed, he manages to generate a tremendously powerful affinity SOS. This reaches the only two Edenists on the planet, a pair of agents from the Edenist Intelligence agency. They travel upriver to investigate, but are neutralised by the possessed. They manage to alert Ralph Hiltch (the Kulu External Security Agency's Lalonde head of station) and Kelven Solanki (from Confederation Navy Intelligence) to the threat, although not its nature. With the subversion spreading across the planet, the governor authorises the recruitment of mercenaries to put down what he perceives as an 'Ivet uprising'. Unbeknown to the governor, several possessed have already infiltrated the capital, Durringham, and taken passage on ships bound for other worlds. One of these ships is the Lady MacBeth. Calvert has hit on the idea of transporting Lalonde's legendarily tough wood (called Mayope) to the pastoral planet of Norfolk, which has banned all high technology. The idea sounds crazy, but it gets around Norfolk's ban on high-tech items and gives Calvert access to the planet's lucrative market in 'Norfolk Tears', the most desired alcoholic beverage in the galaxy. Calvert also begins a relationship with Louise Kavanagh, the young and naive daughter of Joshua's business partner, Grant. Although Calvert treats the relationship as a bit of fun, Louise falls in love with Joshua and, due to her planet's lack of chemical contraceptive, falls pregnant shortly after he leaves. Unfortunately for Norfolk, Calvert's passenger on the flight from Lalonde was a man called Quinn Dexter. Syrinx and Oenone arrive at Atlantis, the only planet colonised by Edenists (and unsurprisingly, entirely covered in a vast planet-ranging ocean), to purchase seafood to transport to Norfolk to trade for their Tears. During the stay at Pernik Island, Syrinx develops a relationship with an Edenist by the name of Mosul, the son of the family patriarch and guardian of the family fishing business. Mosul and Syrinx develop a contract which includes Syrinx's return to distribute ten percent of Syrinx's stock to the inhabitants of Pernik Island. However, the possessed have infiltrated Atlantis, led by the possessed Laton. They have taken control of Pernik Island and plan to possess Syrinx in the hope of possessing Oenone as well. Syrinx is captured and tortured as a prelude to possession. The plot backfires when Laton, having taken the time to study his possessing soul, manages to gain access to Pernik Island. He saves Syrinx, allows the crew of Oenone to rescue her (and gives them a message to take to Jupiter), and then causes the island to self-destruct, killing all of the possessed on it. Laton's departure from Lalonde was observed by a reporter. Within days half the Confederation knows that the most infamous Serpent of them all has returned, and a Confederation-wide quarantine to prevent the spread of Laton and his proteanic virus. On Tranquillity data from the Laymil information stack reveals that their homeworld in the Mirchusko system (which does not seem to exist any more) was taken over by a 'reality dysfunction', triggered by the 'Galheith research death essence tragedy'. The data shows the Laymil homeworld being overrun by a red cloud of unknown origin. On Lalonde the possessed close to within a few hundred kilometres of Durringham. As they advance, a strange red cloud starts forming above centres of possessed activity. Ralph Hiltch and Kelven Solanki evacuate their respective personnel from the planet. Hiltch's team manage to capture a possessed before they leave (this possessed is controlling the body of Gerald Skibbow of Aberdale) Solanki's report reaches the Confederation Navy, which swiftly organises a fleet to quarantine Lalonde. On Norfolk Quinn Dexter manages to reassert control of his body, by feeding his possessor images of his depraved activities as a satanist to the point where the possessor starts behaving like Dexter and then retreats into a catatonic state. Enhanced with his ex-possessor's energistic power, Dexter swiftly organises the possessed and they rapidly start taking over the planet. Several more possessed reach the independent bitek habitat Valisk in the Srinagar system and begin possessing several inhabitants as a prelude to taking over the entire habitat. They are led by Kiera, who has possessed the body of Marie Skibbow from Aberdale. Dariat, one of the children of Rubra, the eccentric genius who founded Valisk and then transferred his personality into it upon his death, becomes aware of their activities and volunteers to help them, so he can revenge himself upon the manipulative Rubra. His knowledge of the habitat's surveillance techniques and how to evade them proves invaluable to the possessed. They kill him, and then guide his soul into a new body to give him the same powers they possess. The Kulu embassy staff reach Ombey, the nearest Kulu colony world to Lalonde. However, when they bring their possessed prisoner out of zero-tau (a form of suspension which reduces energy movements to zero, effectively freezing time), they find the possessing spirit has fled, leaving the traumatised, broken form of Gerald Skibbow within. Princess Kirsten Saldana, the Saldana family member responsible for Ombey, is rapidly forced to declare a state of emergency when it is revealed that three personnel from the embassy staff were possessed and have begun spreading across the planet. Ralph Hiltch is brought in to advise. The Lady MacBeth reaches Tranquillity at the same time that representatives of the Lalonde government are forming a mercenary fleet and army to save the planet. Keen to protect his investment, Calvert volunteers to accompany the fleet. They reach Lalonde (of which a sizeable portion is covered by a strange red cloud) and begin landing mercenaries on the surface, but many of the landing teams are rapidly possessed and return to the orbiting ships. A full-scale space battle erupts when the Confederation Navy squadron arrives to blockade the planet and the possessed ships start firing on them. The mercenary team from the Lady MacBeth evades possession and manage to take a prisoner whose possessor is called Shaun Wallace, who tells them that the red cloud will hide Lalonde from the universe. He reveals that the possessed can hear the cries for help from the possessed still in 'the beyond' and they desperately need to escape them. Once the cloud encircles Lalonde completely, the combined will of the possessed can physically move the planet onto another plane of existence where the cries of the possessed will not reach them. The mercenary team evacuates to a nearby settlement belonging to the alien Tyrathca. The xenocs are extremely agitated by the human's newly-revealed ability to become 'elemental' as they call it. They have built a statue to their 'Sleeping God', which 'sees the universe' and they believe will save them. A reporter accompanying the mission, Kelly Tirrel, takes images of the statue and notes that there is no record of the Tyrathca having a god due to their highly unimaginative nature. They move on and discover Father Elwes and the children from Aberdale in hiding on the savannah. They manage to arrange a pick-up from the Lady MacBeth. The mercenary team sacrifices itself against an attack by possessed masquerading as the stereotypical knights in shining armour to give the children, Elwes and Kelly time to evacuate. A message hidden in the request for aid given by Alkad Mzu to Captain Meyer of the Udat is revealed, offering him a vast sum of money for his help in aiding her escape. Meyer agrees and has Udat make a wormhole jump into the interior of Tranquillity. Mzu arranges to be in place for a pick-up, but underestimates the ability and sheer power of Tranquillity to enforce its will through affinity. Udat is compelled to jump back out with Mzu perilously hanging onto a rope ladder trailing from the blackhawk. The story continues in The Neutronium Alchemist.
865611	/m/03jr9s	Cocaine Nights	J. G. Ballard		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story's protagonist, Charles Prentice, ventures to Estrella de Mar in order to rescue his jailed brother, Frank. Upon arriving and talking with his sibling, Charles finds to his horror that his brother has confessed to everything, and has no interest in trying to escape his plea. In a matter of days, Charles becomes immersed in the strange world of Estrella de Mar, learning more of her dark secrets, and spending less time worrying about his brother. Constantly being manipulated while he thinks he's finding the truth, Charles soon finds himself out of control and at the nexus of certain disaster, at which point he finally begins to understand just what happened to his brother.
865651	/m/03jrfr	The Crystal World	J. G. Ballard	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character is Edward Sanders, an English medical doctor, who arrives to the river port of Port Matarre, in Gabon. From here he tries to reach a leprosy treatment facility where his friends, Max and Suzanne Clair, live. Soon, however, he starts to recognize that a mysterious phenomenon is crystallizing the jungle along with its living creatures. The same phenomenon is reported to be present also in the Florida everglades and in the Pripyat Marshes (Soviet Union) as well. Scientific explanations of the phenomenon are provided within the book: however, Ballard offers mostly an interior and psychological perspective about it, directly through Sanders' experiences. Several facts, furthermore, remains unexplained: for example, the ability of jewels to liquefy the crystals. The crystals also have the property to keep objects and beings in a suspended state of existence. Many passages deal with this characteristic, pointing out its capability to stop time and life. In his route towards the deep of the forest, Sanders gets involved in a personal feud between Ventress, a Belgian architect, and Thorensen, the director of a diamond mine. In one of the most striking episodes of the novel, Sanders discovers the reason of the deadly rivalry to be Ventress' former wife, Serena, who is terminally ill with tuberculosis. After a final confrontation, Thorensen decides to remain in his house within the jungle, in spite of the encroaching crystallization process. Two of the other characters met by Sanders in his voyage spontaneously make the same decision: Balthus, an apostate priest, and Suzanne. The latter, nearly gone mad and sporting the first symptoms of leprosy, is portrayed towards the end of the novel as the leader of a band of lepers who set for the interior of the crystallizing forest, clearly to never come back. After having barely escaped from the now quickly spreading crystallization, Sanders reaches Port Matarre. Here, however, he makes the same decision as Balthus and Suzanne. In the final pages, Sanders goes back to river to face the same fate as Suzanne.
865691	/m/03jrkr	Concrete Island	J. G. Ballard		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A twisted adaptation of Robinson Crusoe, the story's protagonist, Robert Maitland, a wealthy architect, finds himself stranded in a manmade 'island' (a section of fenced-off wasteland in the middle of a motorway intersection) between the Westway and an imagined spur of the M4 Motorway in west London, and is forced to survive on only what is in his crashed Jaguar and what he is able to find.
867420	/m/03jxxd	A Burnt-Out Case	Graham Greene	1960	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Querry, a famous architect who is fed up with his celebrity, no longer finds meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper colony overseen by Catholic missionaries, he is diagnosed - by Dr Colin, the resident doctor - as the mental equivalent of a 'burnt-out case': a leper who has gone through a stage of mutilation. However, as Querry loses himself in working for the lepers, his disease of mind slowly approaches a cure. Querry meets Rycker, a palm-oil plantation owner, and a man of strong Catholic faith who does not accept his own nothingness and tries to amplify the relevance of Querry's presence in that country. Rycker's wife, a young and uneducated woman, is absolutely bored with his prudishness and her own lack of freedom. It is revealed that Querry is a famous architect, known throughout the world for his design and construction of Churches - which he himself believes have been defiled by the religious occupants. Querry begins the task of designing and overseeing the building of a Hospital for the Leproserie. An English journalist called Parkinson arrives at the village with the intention of writing a series of articles, to be syndicated in many European and North American newspapers, on the subject of Querry's perceived 'saintly' activities in the village, including a story of Querry pursuing his servant - an African mutilated by Leprosy-, who became lost in the jungle. However Parkinson also brings up Querry's past not only as an architect but also as a womanizer. It is revealed that Querry's former lover committed suicide, thus prompting his journey to the village (however his journey was not the result of feelings of guilt or grief, but rather the incident acted to magnify his growing loss of faith and vocation.) When the first article is published and received at the village, Querry becomes angered by his portrayal, not only by Parksinson, but by Rycker whom Parksinon interviewed for the story. Querry travels to Luc and on the way calls in to confront Rycker. Querry learns that Rycker's wife fears that she is pregnant and that her husband does not want a child (despite having refused contraception and having effectively forced her into sex numerous times). She tells Querry to ask Rycker for permission to travel to the capital Luc to see a doctor. Following a confrontation between Querry and Rycker, Querry leaves for Luc and takes with him Mrs. Rycker so she may visit the doctor, however neither of the two inform Rycker of her departure. Querry never becomes physically intimate with her. In Luc, Querry and Mrs. Rycker take rooms at the hotel. However before going to sleep, Querry suspects that Mrs. Rycker is crying in the next room. When he investigates she informs him that she was actually laughing at the novel she is reading - one that would be banned at her home with the pious Rycker - and the two share a bottle of Whisky. As Mrs. Rycker is going to sleep, Querry tells her a story which closely parallels his story: a man losing both faith and vocation. The following morning Parksinson informs Querry that Rycker has arrived in Luc in pursuit of his wife and, upon discovering his wife's diary with an entry stating "Spent the night with Q", Rycker accuses Querry of having an affair. Querry, after briefly meeting Mrs. Rycker and learning that she is pregnant with Rycker's child, leaves Luc and returns to the village, where the construction of the Hospital is nearing completion. Days later Mrs. Rycker arrives at the convent near the village. She tells the sisters and priests that she has been having an affair with Querry and that she is pregnant with his child. When Querry visits her she claims that she thought of Querry whilst having sex with Rycker in an attempt to endure the man, and thus she became pregnant with what she views as Querry's child (despite being Ryckers). Father Thomas, the temporary supervisor of the village, becomes angry at Querry for bringing shame and sin upon the village (as well as damaging his image as saintly - despite strong objections to having such an image from Querry himself). Rycker arrives at the village and demands to see Querry, who has gone to stay in Dr. Colin's room for the night. Rycker begins to walk to Dr. Colin's stating that a jury would never convict him, which troubles the priests - one of whom pursues Rycker in order to prevent him shooting Querry. Enraged, Rycker confronts Querry. While being accused of adultery, Querry laughs at the absurdity of the accusations. Rycker misinterprets the laugh and becomes angry and shoots Querry, who then dies. Querry is buried in the village, which fulfills his wish to never return to his old life.
867886	/m/03jzn8	Dune: House Harkonnen	Kevin J. Anderson	2000-10-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Eighteen years have passed since Shaddam Corrino IV succeeded his father as Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe. However, his rule is precarious as his wife Anirul has been instructed by her Bene Gesserit sisterhood to bear him only daughters. Shaddam's authority is also challenged by the powerful House Harkonnen, whose illegal stock-piling of melange is of great concern to the Emperor. In order to monopolize the spice, Shaddam and his trusted advisor and friend, Hasimir Fenring, plan to synthesize the substance with the help of Hidar Fen Ajidica, a Tleilaxu Master Researcher. Ajidica sets up laboratories to accomplish this purpose on the newly conquered planet of Ix, formerly the home of House Vernius. By the end of the novel, Ajidica tells Fenring that the manufacture of synthetic spice has been a success, although the validity of his claim is highly dubious. Meanwhile, on Caladan, Duke Leto Atreides bids Duncan Idaho farewell. Duncan is headed for Ginaz, where he will study to become a swordmaster. Leto and his friends, Kailea and Rhombur Vernius, are still struggling to liberate the siblings' former homeworld, but they have made little progress so far. Kailea becomes Leto's concubine, though he refuses to marry her for obvious political reasons. Rhombur seeks out a companion from the Bene Gesserit order and is matched with a young woman named Tessia who gives him a new sense of drive and purpose. After receiving a plea for help from C'tair Pilru, an Ixian rebel, Rhombur begins supplying the Ixian resistance with limited aid, though his attempts are greatly hindered by the Emperor's Sardaukar. Kailea soon gives birth to Leto's son, Victor. After the child's birth, she becomes increasingly dissatisfied with her role as Leto's concubine, wanting the Duke to marry her so that their son can succeed his father someday. Kailea's lady-in-waiting, Chiara, is actually a Harkonnen agent sent to poison Kailea's mind against Leto. Matters are complicated further with the arrival of Jessica, a Bene Gesserit and the secret daughter of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (though Jessica herself is unaware of her parentage). Jessica is presented to Leto as a gift from the Bene Gesserit, although the sisterhood has the ulterior motive of using the pair in their breeding program. At first, Leto refuses to have much to do with Jessica and tries to remain faithful to Kailea. However, as he and Kailea grow farther apart, he begins to seek out Jessica's company. Finally, Kailea is driven to make an attempt on Leto's life by having an explosive device planted on his skyclipper. At the last minute, Leto decides to take Victor and Rhombur along with him, and the boy dies instead. Leto is relatively unharmed, but Rhombur is reduced to little more than a charred lump of flesh. Fearing that Leto will guess that she is responsible for the death of their son and driven by guilt, Kailea kills her lady-in-waiting and then commits suicide by jumping out a window. The Tleilaxu offer to grow a ghola of Leto's deceased son in exchange for the barely alive body of Rhombur Vernius. Leto ultimately refuses, after much soul-searching, knowing that the Tleilaxu intend only harm towards House Vernius. Instead, Leto hires Dr. Wellington Yueh, an expert in the field of cybernetics, to fashion a cybernetic replacement body for Rhombur. Leto and Jessica fall deeply in love, leading Jessica to decide to conceive a son for Leto's sake, directly disobeying the Bene Gesserit's order that she have a daughter. On the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime, the Baron Harkonnen grows weaker and more corpulent due to a strange disease which, unbeknownst to him, was inflicted upon him by a vengeful Mohiam. After killing a slew of doctors who fail to diagnose or alleviate his condition, he hires Dr. Yueh for a massive price. Yueh reveals to the Baron that Mohiam is responsible for his ailment. In response, the Baron attempts to take revenge against the Bene Gesserit, but fails miserably. Meanwhile, the Baron's brother, Abulurd, uncovers an illegal stockpile of spice on Lankiveil. Rather than turn his brother in to the Emperor, Abulurd, a benevolent ruler and the polar opposite of his brother Vladimir, uses the stockpile to benefit his people. Upon discovery of this, Glossu Rabban, Abulurd's firstborn son, strangles his father to death, an act which earns him the nickname of "Beast." Baron Harkonnen also kidnaps Abulurd's other son, Feyd-Rautha, and tries to raise him as his own. Young Liet Kynes comes of age and continues the realization of his father Pardot Kynes's dream of taming the hostile conditions on Arrakis. Also on Arrakis, the Lady Margot Fenring seeks out the Fremen in order to explain the disappearance of several other members of the Bene Gesserit order, including the Reverend Mother Ramallo. She finds that the Bene Gesserit have already integrated themselves into Fremen society and implanted the myths of the Missionaria Protectiva into Fremen culture. Gurney Halleck, a farm laborer on Giedi Prime, witnesses the capture of his sister Bheth at the hands of Harkonnen agents. Halleck fights for his sister's release and is savagely beaten by the Harkonnen. After four years of searching for Bheth, Gurney receives a note from her that tells him she is still alive. A Harkonnen census taker tells Gurney that Bheth paid him to smuggle Gurney's family the note. The man gives Gurney information that leads him to a pleasure house near Mount Ebony. He infiltrates the pleasure house and finds his sister tied to a bed, entwined with two Harkonnen soldiers. Bheth's larynx has been cut out so that she cannot speak. Gurney is again beaten to a pulp by the soldiers, and when he regains consciousness he is in a Harkonnen slave pit, where he is forced to mine and polish obsidian ore. The Harkonnen overseers repeatedly try to break Gurney's spirit through a variety of means: forcing him to watch while his sister is raped and finally murdered, drugging him, and beating him. Gurney finally manages to escape by stowing himself away in a shipment of the ore, which happens to be a gift from Leto Atreides to his concubine Kailea. Gurney leaves the shipment before it arrives at his final destination and joins the renegade Earl Dominic Vernius. After the Earl is killed on Dune, Gurney travels to Caladan to find the Vernius heirs, and swears his loyalty to House Atreides.
867887	/m/03jznn	Dune: House Corrino	Kevin J. Anderson	2001-10-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 One year after the War of Assassins, Duke Leto Atreides sponsors an assault on Ix to reclaim the planet for House Vernius, while his concubine Jessica is pregnant with his son. Emperor Shaddam IV commences his Great Spice War to create a dependency on his soon-to-be-released synthetic melange, ajidamal. The Bene Gesserit eagerly await the birth of the Kwisatz Haderach's mother by Jessica; little do they know that things are not going to turn out exactly how they intend.
868002	/m/03j_1g	The Summons	John Grisham	2002	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The main character, Ray Atlee, is a law professor with a good salary at the University of Virginia. He has a brother, Forrest, and a father, known to many as Judge Reuben V. Atlee. Ray is sent to his father's house in Clanton, Mississippi, to discuss issues regarding the old man's will and estate. To do this, Ray has to go to fictional Ford County (Mississippi), the setting for two of John Grisham's other books including A Time To Kill. When he finds his father dead in the study, Ray discovers a sum of over three million dollars in the house, money which is not part of Judge Atlee's will. Ray immediately thinks the money is "dirty" because his father could not possibly have made so much money in his career. Assuming that he is the only one who knows about the money, Ray decides to take it without making it officially part of the estate, and does not tell anyone about it: he knows that if he made it a part of the estate, taxes would take most of the money. But later reality proves otherwise. Ray is being followed; someone else knows about the money. After his own investigations into the roots of the money and the identity of his shadow—including trips to casinos and shady meetings with prominent southern lawyers—he eventually discovers that Forrest has the money. He finds Forrest in a drug rehab compound and confronts him. At the end both part, with Forrest telling Ray that he will contact him in a year. de:Der Richter (Roman) it:La convocazione pl:Wezwanie (powieść)
868230	/m/03j_r6	Needful Things	Stephen King	1991-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A new shop named "Needful Things" opens in the town of Castle Rock, Maine, sparking the curiosity of its citizens. The proprietor, Leland Gaunt, is a charming elderly gentleman who always seems to have an item in stock that is perfectly suited to any customer who comes through his door. The prices are surprisingly low, considering the merchandise - such as a rare Sandy Koufax baseball card, a carnival glass lampshade, and a fragment of wood believed to be from Noah's Ark - but he expects each customer to also play a little prank on someone else in Castle Rock. Gaunt knows about the long-standing private grudges, arguments, and feuds between the various townspeople, and the pranks are his means of forcing them to escalate until the whole town is eventually caught up in madness and violence. The novel ends as it begins, with a first-person narrative indicating that a new and mysterious shop is about to open in a small Iowa town - an implication that Gaunt is ready to begin his business cycle all over again.
868476	/m/03k0v1	The Stingray Shuffle	Tim Dorsey		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Sales of The Stingray Shuffle, a good novel by good novelist Ralph Krunkleton, have soared recently. The book's publishers, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, mount a publicity blitz culminating in a train journey with the author from New York to Miami. What they do not realize is that no one is reading the book; dealers are using a bookstore as a front, hollowing out copies of Shuffle to hide drugs. Meanwhile, Serge A. Storms and pothead pal Lenny Lipowicz resume their pursuit of $5 million worth of insurance fraud payout. Thrown into the mix are Johnny Vegas the accidental virgin, Paul the passive-aggressive private eye, Ernest Hemingway lookalike Jethro Maddox, and the world's least competent drug cartel. Most of these characters find their way onto the Stingray Shuffle, the temporarily-rechristened train to Miami. The Stingray Shuffle ties up a three-book plot arc that began with Florida Roadkill, continued with Hammerhead Ranch Motel, and was then shelved for two years while Dorsey wrote the only slightly relative Triggerfish Twist and Orange Crush. It is ultimately revealed that Serge's plan for the money is to buy a trip into space (and a monogrammed spacesuit) from the Russians.
869761	/m/03k4sk	Portrait of Lozana: The Lusty Andalusian Woman	Francisco Delicado		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins in Cordoba where the sexually precocious Aldonza lives with her mother. After her mother's death, she moves to her aunt's house from where she escapes with Diomedes, a sea merchant. After travelling to many cities of the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East and changing her name to Lozana, they come to Marseille to meet the father of Diomedes, who, disgusted with his son, sends him to prison and pays a sailor to make Lozana disappear. However, the sailor disobeys the order given and takes Lozana to Livorno, where she continues her journey up to Rome. Without money, Lozana goes to the Spanish downtown in Rome to request help; there, the women see her abilities in cooking, medicine and her beauty (although her face is a little bit disfigured by syphilis). After a Neapolitan woman gives her a servant called Rampin, Lozana makes an agreement with him so that he becomes, for a time, her servant and lover. Following the advice of a post man, and with the aid of a Jew called Trigos who installs her in a house he owns, she begins her new life as a prostitute. After few years, she becomes the madame of a brothel, then Lozana and Rampin move to Lipari; the book ends with a little narration about the sack of Rome.
869971	/m/03k5gr	La Celestina	Fernando de Rojas	1499	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Upon meeting Melibea, Calisto falls madly in love with her. Melibea rejects Calisto immediately at his open pledge of his love for her, as is the custom in courtly love. Calisto becomes depressed and lovesick, so his servant, Sempronio, tells Calisto about Celestina, a procuress who owns a brothel with prostitutes, two of whom are Elicia and Areusa. Calisto accepts and asks Celestina for help, and Celestina and Sempronio plot to get as much money out of Calisto as possible. Another servant, Pármeno attempts to warn Calisto of Celestina's dishonorable reputation, but Calisto rejects him. Celestina convinces Pármeno not to warn him any longer, using Areusa, and to instead join with her and Sempronio in taking advantage of Calisto. Celestina meets with Melibea and gives her a magic thread while telling her of the suffering of a man she knows whose only cure is the word and girdle of Melibea. They talk but when Celestina names Calisto, Melibea gets angry and tells Celestina to leave. Celestina is crafty though, and she finally manages to get Melibea to give up her girdle for Calisto. Melibea changes her mind and asks Celestina to come back and meet her secretly. Melibea suddenly finds herself madly in love with Calisto, and begs Celestina to arrange a meeting between her and her lover. Once this is done, Celestina informs Calisto and Calisto gives Celestina a gold chain. Celestina doesn't say anything to Sempronio and Pármeno, her partners in crime. When they go to Celestina's brothel and find out that Celestina has no intention of sharing her payment, they kill her. Afraid of being caught, they jump out the window, but one of the prostitutes, Sempronio's lover Elicia, sees them killing Celestina, and their broken bodies are executed. Calisto gets to the gate in Melibea's house with his other two servants Sosia and Tristan. Elicia and Areusa, who were lovers of Sempronio and Pármeno, send two thugs; while Calisto is getting to Melibea's balcony with a ladder he hears Sosia and Tristan shouting. He runs to help them, but falls off the ladder and dies. Melibea sees Calisto dead, runs to the highest tower of her house and throws herself off after confessing her affair to her father.
870334	/m/03k6kh	Infinite Jest	David Foster Wallace	1996-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05wkc": "Postmodernism", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0q9mp": "Tragicomedy"}	 The plot partially revolves around the missing master copy of a film cartridge, titled Infinite Jest and referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so entertaining to its viewers that they become lifeless, losing all interest in anything other than viewing the film. The video cartridge was the final work of film by James O. Incandenza before his microwave suicide, completed during a stint of sobriety that was requested by the lead actress, Joelle. Quebec separatists are interested in acquiring a master, redistributable copy of the work to aid in acts of terrorism against the United States. The United States Office of Unspecified Services (USOUS) is seeking to intercept the master copy of the film in order to prevent mass dissemination and the destabilization of the Organization of North American Nations. Joelle and later Hal seek treatment for substance abuse problems at The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, and Marathe visits the rehabilitation center to pursue a lead on the master copy of the Entertainment, tying the characters and plots together.
871416	/m/03kbwt	Magic, Inc.	Robert A. Heinlein	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Archie Fraser is a building contractor whose business is thriving. Despite the common use of magic in other professions, Archie has relatively little use for it, since so much of his work involves "cold iron", which defies magic. However he does have a sideline in instant temporary structures, such as bleachers and tents, all made of wood with no iron in them, which can be reconstituted from a fragment of an original structure. The work is done by magicians operating as independent contractors. Occasionally mistakes are made - at one point a fragment of a house is used by mistake. Archie creatively puts a sign outside the out-of-place structure saying "Display model! Now open!" One day Archie is the subject of a shakedown by a sleazy character who seems to be operating a protection racket based on magic. After scaring the criminal off by exploiting his obvious superstitions (helped by the display of a conveniently concealed handgun), Archie goes to see his friend Jedson, who uses magic to operate a clothing business. Jedson's specialty is "one season" clothing which is not intended to be hard-wearing. As Archie arrives, he is auditioning a teenage medium who can produce clothing from ectoplasm. He is disappointed to find that the result is simply a copy of an existing design owned by somebody else, so he cannot use it. Jedson is always ready to help a friend. He and Archie are able to grab the would-be gangster as he lurks near Archie's storefront and hustle him inside. There Jedson draws a "magic circle" around the miscreant, imprisoning him. He then makes a voodoo doll and uses it to strike fear into the criminal, at one point burning its face with a cigarette, whereupon his prisoner cries in pain and blisters form on his face. He breaks down and babbles some information, most of it useless in finding out who runs the racket. They kick him out of the store, believing him to be just a small-time hood. Archie protests Jedson's tactics, but Jedson replies that he didn't really do anything. The circle and the doll were just symbolic. It was the man's own misguided beliefs which caused his body to react as if he really were being imprisoned and tortured. At that point there is a scream outside. They discover the man's body, ripped from shoulder to groin as if by the talons of a huge bird, the gouges being filled with a stinking ichor. Slowly Archie's business begins to suffer. There are mysterious accidents and problems with his workers who are scared by hex symbols which appear around the business. Then one morning the entire business is destroyed, apparently by elementals of fire, earth and water. Jedson initially helps Archie consult a prestigious magician, Biddle, who sets up a tent (Archie notes "he worked with his clothes on") on site, then after some activity in the tent, announces he can do nothing and that they owe him $500 as a "survey fee". Jedson politely tells him to forget it, as no such fee was mentioned before, and magicians, like lawyers, work on a "contingency fee" basis. Biddle disappears in a huff. At that point a young magician by the name of Bodie, who had been watching the performance, tells then they should have used an old witch he knows, a Mrs. Jennings. They consult her in her small, well-ordered home. After a reading of tea-leaves, her usual line of work, she announces that she knows what they need and they all move to Archie's business. There, with Archie and Jedson in the tent, she draws a pentacle and calls the elementals to her. These are a gnome, an undine, and a fire salamander. The undine is a repulsive sluglike creature, while the salamander is a naive, benign creature of flame which sees no wrong in burning, though it regrets causing harm. By force and persuasion, she instructs them to reverse what they did. There is a huge rushing noise and Archie's business is restored. Strange events continue, this time directed at Archie himself. A few times he is saved from danger, apparently by the distant intervention of Mrs. Jennings herself. Jedson consults an anthropologist, who is also a "witch smeller". A large, handsome African impeccably dressed in an expensive business suit, holding a string of degrees from prestigious institutions, Dr. Royce Worthington can find and neutralize black magic. Dressing for his work in a leopard skin, he assumes the persona of a dog and sniffs around Archie's home and office. He eventually announces that he has found a lot of unusual magic, but that he will leave his grandfather behind to watch over things. Grandfather is a shrunken head. Archie wonders what the cleaners will make of this, but Royce assures him that Grandfather is only seen when he wants to be. Meanwhile, Biddle's organization, a body of "professional magicians", nominally intended to assure high standards, keeps dunning Archie over Biddle's fee. There is also a new "one stop shopping" company calling itself "Magic, Inc." which hires magicians and finds them work. It is an open secret that the two organizations are the same. The nominal head of Magic Inc. is a man called Ditworth. Jedson discovers that a bill in the State Legislature, intended to regulate magicians, would give Ditworth monopoly power. They go to the State Capitol to try to head off this law, but are outwitted by Ditworth, who manages to get the bill attached to a major public works project, making its passage unstoppable. However Ditworth makes the mistake of passing by a large mirror in the Capitol building. He is seen to cast no reflection, showing that he is actually a demon. Once the law begins to bite, magicians who work for Magic Inc. are able to find work, even if they barely get by, while those who refuse to join Magic Inc. have their licenses revoked. Meanwhile customers such as Archie are charged ever higher rates for magic services. Jedson discovers that Ditworth has been at work in all other states, and there is nowhere for them to go to get away from his schemes. Royce, Jedson, Bodie and Archie meet at Mrs Jennings house from time to time. There they hatch a plan to enter the Half World, the realm of demons and Old Nick himself, to challenge Ditworth. This requires preparation, including transfiguration of those making the trip. Bodie stays behind to guard the portal in Mrs. Jennings' fireplace, while Jedson (transformed into an ugly half-bestial form), Royce (in his work costume), and Archie (in his normal form) travel with Mrs. Jennings, who to Archie's surprise and delight, has transformed herself into Amanda Jennings, the young, beautiful redhead she once was. In the Half World, custom reigns supreme and natural laws are negotiable. They go before Old Nick and demand to inspect his demons, as custom allows. Faced with seemingly endless legions of horrific creatures, Royce and Archie, helped by Mrs. Jennings' cat, travel up and down the rows. Jedson and Amanda have to remain behind as hostages. After what seems years they identify and tackle Ditworth. Being a demon, Ditworth can kill them, but another demon breaks ranks and subdues their enemy. At this point their helper reveals himself to be an FBI agent. Archie faints. Again citing custom, they demand that Ditworth face their champion, who is of course the white witch Amanda. Ditworth is afraid to do this, and has to face Old Nick's sentence for being defeated by white magic. He is imprisoned for "a thousand thousand years", a fairly light sentence, which is enough to stop his scheming on Earth. Old Nick announces that the FBI man has to stay behind for his special attention, but after a challenge from Amanda, who seems capable of taking on him and all his legions, he thinks better of it. They all return to the house. The FBI man tells them he was working Ditworth's scams from another angle and had become trapped in the Half World. As they emerge from the fireplace, Bodie recognizes him as an old friend. The FBI man, now in human form with a snappy suit and fedora hat, bids them a quick goodbye as he leaves to report back to the Bureau. Archie, overpowered by Amanda's beauty, hangs around her like a lovesick puppy, but she is firmly unreceptive. She sets him down for a nap to recover from his ordeal, and when he awakes, she is Mrs. Jennings again. Archie's business recovers, as all Ditworth's schemes fall apart.
871902	/m/03kdcn	Artemis Fowl	Eoin Colfer	2001-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Artemis Fowl II is the twelve-year-old son of an Irish crime lord, Artemis Fowl I. After significant research, Artemis believes that he has confirmed the existence of fairies. He tracks down an alcoholic sprite posing as a healer in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and travels there with his bodyguard Butler to obtain from her The Book of the People—the Fairy holy book that is written in Gnommish. Meanwhile, Captain Holly Short of the Lower Elements Police is tracking a rogue troll that has managed to reach the surface of the Earth from the fairy city, deep underground. Assisted by a technically minded centaur called Foaly and LEPrecon commander Julius Root, she incapacitates the troll. However, this uses the last of her magic, and Commander Root demands that she complete the magic restoring ritual. Artemis decodes the Book using translating software, and in the process, learns the specifics of the ritual: taking an acorn from an ancient oak tree near a bend in a river under the full moon and planting it elsewhere. Artemis and Butler track down over 100 possible locations for the ritual and start a stakeout; after nearly four months, they discover Holly performing the ritual. Butler tranquillises Holly with a hypodermic syringe. A LEP retrieval team is sent to scout Fowl Manor. Using their 'shielding' ability, which allows them to vibrate faster than the human eye can follow, the team enters the manor grounds. Artemis had anticipated this, however, and installed a camera with a high frames-per-second rate, allowing him to detect the threat by freezing the image. After Butler incapacitates the intruders, Root decides to lay siege to Fowl Manor using a time-stop and enter negotiations. Artemis reveals the ransom demand: one metric ton of 24-carat gold. Artemis also reveals his knowledge of the time-stop and claims that he can escape it. An analysis by LEP behaviour experts determines that Artemis is telling the truth, or thinks he is. The attempts to gain entry to the manor continue as the LEP recruit an infamous criminal, the kleptomaniac dwarf Mulch Diggums to break in. Fairies are forbidden from entering human dwellings without permission, but Mulch has already broken this rule and is immune to the adverse consequences. He tunnels underground to reach the house while Foaly feeds a loop to the manor surveillance system, allowing Mulch to freely explore. Mulch locates a safe containing a copy of the Book, finally revealing to the fairies the source of Artemis' knowledge. The Fairy Council, deciding that nothing is working, promotes a lieutenant called Briar Cudgeon to Acting Commander, temporarily usurping Julius Root. Meanwhile, Holly Short cracks through the concrete of her cell using her bed and completes the ritual with a smuggled acorn. Having regained her magic, she escapes into the main house. Cudgeon decides to release the troll Holly captured earlier into the mansion to force Artemis to allow the fairies to enter and subdue the troll. This backfires, as Butler, aided by Holly's healing powers, defeats the troll. The Fairy Council subsequently strips Cudgeon of his post. Artemis is finally granted the ransom. The gold is sent in, and Artemis asks Holly for a wish: to cure his mother's insanity&nbsp;— she has been living in her bedroom, driven mad by the loss of her husband. Holly grants the wish at the cost of half the gold. The LEP decides to send in a 'blue rinse' – a biological bomb that kills all organic life&nbsp;— to eliminate Artemis and allow for the retrieval of the gold, but this fails when Artemis escapes the time-stop by drugging himself and his comrades with sleeping pills. Having survived until the end of the time stop, the LEP is bound by law and leaves the remaining gold and departs. At the end, Artemis finds his mother has fully recovered from her insanity thanks to Holly's magic.
871907	/m/03kdf2	Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident	Eoin Colfer	2002-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Artemis Fowl II is the thirteen-year-old son of an Irish crime lord, Artemis Fowl I, and the fairy underworld considers him dangerous. After being falsely accused of supplying contraband to a goblin smuggling ring, Artemis and his bodyguard, Butler, defeat the culprit. In return, the fairies Captain Holly Short and Commander Julius Root of the Lower Elements Police assist the pair in rescuing Artemis' father, whom the Russian Mafia has held hostage. A goblin hit squad ambushes the rescue group, and the group shelters underneath an overhang. Realising that it is a trap, Butler pushes Holly and Artemis out as the overhang collapses. The rubble knocks Butler unconscious and traps him and Commander Root. Holly and Artemis free Root and Butler. Holly questions Artemis about his father and how he came to be so ruthless in the events of the previous book, and, in a rare moment of sincerity, Artemis admits he made a mistake, a sign of his moral development that continues through the series. Meanwhile, Briar Cudgeon ambushes and locks Foaly in the Operations Booth and disables LEP weapons, framing him as the mastermind behind the rebellion against the LEP and leaving the rescue group powerless to stop the goblins as they begin their attack. Foaly sends a text message to the rescue group, revealing that all weapons and communications are controlled by Opal Koboi. Artemis decides to take over Koboi Laboratories and return all weapons to the LEP, interrupting the rescue mission. Holly reveals that Foaly had a hunch that Mulch Diggums, the criminal and kleptomaniac dwarf who had been presumed dead after the Fowl Manor siege, was still alive and in Los Angeles. Knowing that he had broken into Koboi Laboratories before, they go to apprehend him once again. They then break into Koboi Laboratories through a hollow titanium foundation rod. Artemis manages to turn both the goblins and Koboi against Cudgeon. Cudgeon is killed when he is thrown into the open DNA cannon plasma feed which simultaneously blacks out Opal Koboi. The restored power activates DNA cannons in Police Plaza, neutralising all goblins there. However, Foaly is still trapped in the Operations Booth, as the LEP outside, commanded by Captain Trouble Kelp, still thinks he is to blame for the revolt. The rescuers then go to Murmansk and rescue Artemis Fowl I.
872379	/m/03kfq5	Papillon	Henri Charrière	1969	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The book is an account of a 14-year period in Papillon's life (October 26, 1931 to October 18, 1945) starting from when he was wrongly convicted of murder in France and sentenced to a life of hard labor at the Devil's Island penal colony. He escaped from Devil's Island, to ultimately settle in Venezuela, where he lived and prospered, free from French justice. Papillon endured a brief stay at a prison in Caen. As soon as he boarded a vessel bound for South America, he learned about the brutal life that prisoners had to endure at the prison colony. Murders were not uncommon among convicts, and men were cut with makeshift knives for their charger (a hollow metal cylinder containing money, lodged in the rectum; it has also been called a plan). Papillon befriended a former banker convicted of counterfeiting named Louis Dega. He agreed to protect Dega from those seeking to murder him for his charger. Upon arriving at the penal colony, Papillon claimed to be ill and was sent to the infirmary. There he collaborated with two men named Clousiot and André Maturette to escape from the prison using a sailboat which they acquired with the assistance of the penal settlement's leper colony at Pigeon Island. They let the current of the Maroni River take them to the Atlantic Ocean, where they began to sail to the northwest. In Trinidad the trio were joined by three other escapees and were helped on their journey by a British family, the Dutch bishop of Curaçao and several others. Nearing the Colombian coastline, the escapees were sighted; they were unable to escape for lack of wind and were captured and imprisoned. In Colombian prison, Papillon joined with another prisoner to escape. Some distance from the prison, the two went their separate ways. Papillon entered the Guajira peninsula, a region dominated by Native Americans. He was assimilated into a coastal village whose specialty was pearl diving, married two teenage sisters and made them pregnant. After spending several months in relative paradise, Papillon became motivated to seek vengeance against those who had wronged him. Soon after leaving the village, Papillon was imprisoned at Santa Marta, then transferred to Barranquilla. There, he was reunited with Clousiot and Maturette. Papillon made numerous escape attempts from this prison, all of which failed. He was eventually extradited back to French Guiana. As punishment, Papillon was sentenced to two years of solitary confinement on Île Saint-Joseph (an island in the Îles du Salut group, 11 kilometers from the French Guiana coast). Clousiot and Maturette were given the same sentence. Upon his release, Papillon was transferred to Royal Island (also an island in the Îles du Salut group). An escape attempt there was foiled by an informant (whom Papillon stabbed to death) and Papillon was again sent to solitary confinement, this time for nineteen months. The original sentence of eight years was reduced after Papillon risked his life to save the life of a girl caught in shark-infested waters. After French Guiana officials decided to support the pro-Nazi Vichy Regime, the penalty for any escape attempt became capital punishment. Realizing this, Papillon decided to feign insanity and be sent to the insane asylum on Royal Island. His reasoning was that insane prisoners could not be sentenced to death for any reason and the asylum was not as heavily guarded. He collaborated with another prisoner on an escape attempt but this attempt failed: while they were attempting to sail away, their boat was dashed against the rocks and destroyed, the other prisoner drowning and Papillon himself nearly dashed against the rocks. Papillon returned to the regular prisoner population on Royal Island after being "cured" of his mental illness. He requested that he be transferred to Devil's Island, the smallest and most "inescapable" island in the Îles de Salut group. Studying the waters around the island, Papillon discovered a rocky inlet surrounded by a high cliff. He noticed that every seventh wave was large enough to carry a floating object far enough out into the sea that it would drift towards the mainland. He experimented by throwing sacks of coconuts into the inlet. He found another prisoner to accompany him on this escape attempt, a pirate named Sylvain who had previously sailed along southeast Asia, and who was infamous for raiding ships in the Far East, killing everyone aboard. They threw themselves into the inlet using sacks of coconuts for flotation. The seventh wave duly carried them out into the ocean. After days of drifting under the relentless sun, surviving only on coconut pulp, they made landfall at the mainland, but Sylvain abandoned his coconut sack prematurely and was devoured by quicksand. Papillon navigated the mainland to find a Chinese man named Cuic Cuic, the brother of Chang. Cuic Cuic protected himself by making a hut on an "island" of solid ground surrounded by quicksand, using a pig that was adept at finding a navigable route over the quicksand. The men and the pig made their way to Georgetown, British Guiana, by boat. Though he could have lived there as a free man, Papillon decided to continue to the northwest in the company of five other escapees. Reaching Venezuela, the men were captured and imprisoned at mobile detention camps in the vicinity of El Dorado, a small mining town near the Gran Sabana region. Surviving horrible conditions there, and even finding diamonds, Papillon was eventually released, obtaining Venezuelan citizenship and celebrity status a few years later.
872478	/m/03kg0b	Kate Vaiden	Reynolds Price	1986-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kate Vaiden is the first person narrator of the novel. When she sets out to tell the story of her life she is a 57-year-old single woman. Having been diagnosed with cervical cancer seems to have changed her attitude to the family she left when she was seventeen without so much as writing them a letter—ever. Accordingly, she does not even know whether her son Lee, who must now be approaching 40, is still alive or not. In the final part of the book, which is set in 1984, she meets one of the last surviving members of her family, her cousin Swift, in a local nursing home. Swift eventually informs Kate that her son is alive and well but abroad with the US Navy. Kate is born in 1927 and grows up as an only child in Greensboro, North Carolina with her young parents Dan and Frances Vaiden. Her happy childhood is suddenly interrupted when, in 1938, for reasons she can never quite fathom, her father shoots her mother and then himself, leaving her to be raised by her aunt and uncle, Caroline and Holt Porter. The Porters, whose grown-up sons no longer live at home, reside in Macon, and Kate takes some time to get used to living in a small village. As they are not farmers, Kate does not have to work for them after school or during the holidays. Over the years, Noony Patrick, the Porters' African American household help, becomes her only friend and confidante. Kate has her first sexual encounter surprisingly early in life—at the age of twelve, without having had any sex education. One summer afternoon down by the Roanoke River, Gaston Stegall, the neighbours' boy, shows her his erection, and she gives him a handjob, without really knowing what she is doing. Gaston said "He hurts me."I said "How did you figure out it's a boy?" I stepped back a little.But he said "Oh don't. You can help me out."With all its faults, my family were not known for turning down pleas that deep from the heart. I moved back closer than I'd been before and said "Show me how."[…]In maybe twenty seconds the job was over. I'd brought a bandanna and cleaned myself, though I liked the smell and imagined it for days. By then he had got his legs still again, but his eyes were closed. I knew the answer but I said "Did it help?" When she tells Noony, the sheer extent of Kate&#39;s ignorance becomes clear: "You didn't get it on you? -- nowhere on your body."I said "My hand. You said you could tell."Noony said "On your privates. Keep it way off them; one drop of that stuff is good as a carload.""For what?""Babies, fool." But she said it kindly.I'd suspected as much and, as I've said, heard rumors at school; so I let Noony tell me all she knew. At 13, Kate finally has sexual intercourse with Gaston. (&#34;When Gaston said he didn&#39;t have a rubber, I swear I wondered what he needed to erase.&#34;) The lovers enjoy each other&#39;s company undisturbed by the outside world for a few years, but when the United States enters World War II Gaston enlists in the army and is killed in a Marines camp before he can actually go to war. At 16, Kate escapes her surroundings and everything that might remind her of Gaston by stealing off to Norfolk, Virginia, where her cousin, Walter Porter, is living with his orphaned &#34;friend,&#34; Douglas Lee, from back home. Having been ostracised from Macon, the two friends—whether they are actually a homosexual couple or not does not become clear—have never returned to their home town. However, Walter, who has a good job, promised Kate on the death of her parents that, whatever happens, she would always be welcome at his place. Now Kate takes him up on his word and is glad to see she is in no way regarded as an intruder. Walter also takes care of Kate&#39;s education and sends her to a Catholic school for girls—even though she is a Methodist. The trio get on very well with each other, but, with Walter frequently away on business trips, Kate starts a secret affair with Douglas—without being truly in love with him. When she gets pregnant—while abortion is never a serious option for her—she starts wondering what her future life will be like but in fact is unable to decide on any course of action. While Walter is making plans for her to stay, Kate and Douglas secretly plan to move to Raleigh, North Carolina and live there as a family. They actually get on a train to Raleigh, but when it stops at Macon while Douglas is at the toilet, Kate gets out without saying good-bye to him. On the spur of the moment, she decides to spend the last months of her pregnancy at her aunt and uncle&#39;s without the father of the child. In 1944, everyone has to get used to a young woman expecting an illegitimate child, but then Lee Vaiden is born and, as he is a strong, healthy boy, everything seems to be turning out fine. However, Kate&#39;s maternal instinct fails her soon after she has given birth: Considering how I was soon to behave, I have to wonder if I ever really loved him. I'd shown most other human instincts till then. Why did mothering fail me? In the months I knew him, I can honestly say I enjoyed his company. Nobody gets a long-term kick out of dirty diapers and spit-up milk, but Lee Vaiden more than made up for his faults.I'd tend him all day, bathe, feed him, enjoy him. Then about sundown I'd start feeling like he was Caroline's and Holt's -- and Noony's. They were glad to take over, in perfect silence. Also, it occurs to Kate that a life without a man is not the right thing for her: With Gaston and Douglas I'd used my body more ways than any white girl my age I'd read about or known. And for all the harm I'd caused the world, nothing convinced me my body was wrong and ought to be curbed. […] I couldn't just maim that much of myself by bolting doors on the wide green world and camping-down forever in a house with no man near me under sixty years old. One day, Kate decides to join Douglas in Raleigh and to leave her son in her aunt&#39;s care. In Raleigh, unable to find Douglas, she makes the acquaintance of a young blind man called Whitfield Eller, who works as a piano tuner. Realizing that sooner or later she will have to take a job, Kate teams up with Eller, driving the blind man&#39;s car to get him safely and on time to his customers. All the time, her plans to fetch the baby are somewhere at the back of her mind. Without ever seeing his son, Douglas, who used to be Eller&#39;s driver before Kate, commits suicide in Eller&#39;s bathroom, obviously because of the high debts he has run up. When Eller proposes to Kate, the latter, who has turned out to be a quitter, once again leaves everything behind her and moves on—this time to Greensboro, where she joins her former teacher, Miss Limer. It is now that she finally abandons her son. She starts working in a library, becomes involved with Jay Mabry, a war veteran, but again backs out when he wants to get married. She spends the next decades as a single woman working in a lawyer&#39;s office, never more than a two hour drive away from her old home and, accordingly, easy to track down. We never learn why exactly it is that she is never contacted.
872518	/m/03kg5b	Phaedrus	Plato			 The dialogue consists of a series of three speeches on the topic of love that serve as a metaphor for the discussion of the proper use of rhetoric. They encompass discussions of the soul, madness, divine inspiration, and the practice and mastery of an art. As they walk out into the countryside, Socrates tries to convince Phaedrus to repeat the speech of Lysias which he has just heard. Phaedrus makes several excuses, but Socrates suspects strongly that Phaedrus has a copy of the speech with him. Saying that while Lysias is present, he would never allow himself to be used as a training partner for Phaedrus to practice his own speech making on, he asks Phaedrus to expose what he is holding under his cloak. Phaedrus gives in and agrees to perform Lysias' speech. Phaedrus and Socrates walk through a stream and find a seat in the shade, and Phaedrus commences to repeat Lysias' speech. Beginning with "You understand, then, my situation: I've told you how good it would be for us in my opinion, if this worked out", the speech proceeds to explain all the reasons why it is better to give your favor to a non-lover rather than a true lover. Friendship with a non-lover, he says, demonstrates objectivity and prudence; it doesn't create gossip when you are seen together; it doesn't involve jealousy; and it allows for a much larger pool of possible partners. You will not be giving your favor to someone who is "more sick than sound in the head" and is not thinking straight, overcome by love. He explains that it is best to give your favor to one who can best return it, rather than one who needs it most. He concludes by stating that he thinks the speech is long enough, and the listener is welcome to ask any questions if something has been left out. Socrates, attempting to flatter Phaedrus, responds that he is in ecstasy and that it is all Phaedrus' doing. Socrates comments that as the speech seemed to make Phaedrus radiant, he is sure that Phaedrus understands these things better than he does himself, and that he cannot help follow Phaedrus' lead into his Bacchic frenzy. Phaedrus picks up on Socrates' subtle sarcasm and asks Socrates not to joke. Socrates retorts that he is still in awe, and claims to be able to make an even better speech than Lysias on the same subject. Phaedrus and Socrates both note how anyone would consider Socrates a foreigner in the countryside, and Socrates attributes this fault to his love of learning which "trees and open country won't teach," while "men in the town" will. Socrates then proceeds to give Phaedrus credit for leading him out of his native land: "Yet you seem to have discovered a drug for getting me out (dokei moi tes emes exocou to pharmakon heurekenai). A hungry animal can be driven by dangling a carrot or a bit of greenstuff in front of it; similarly if you proffer me speeches bound in books (en biblios) I don't doubt you can cart me all around Attica, and anywhere else you please." When Phaedrus begs to hear it however, Socrates refuses to give the speech. Phaedrus warns him that he is younger and stronger, and Socrates should "take his meaning" and "stop playing hard to get". Finally, after Phaedrus swears on the plane tree that he will never recite another speech for Socrates if Socrates refuses, Socrates, covering his head, consents. Socrates, rather than simply listing reasons as Lysias had done, begins by explaining that while all men desire beauty, some are in love and some are not. We are all ruled, he says, by two principles: one is our inborn desire for pleasure, and the other is our acquired judgment that pursues what is best (237d). Following your judgment is "being in your right mind", while following desire towards pleasure without reason is "outrage" (hybris). Following different desires leads to different things; one who follows his desire for food is a glutton, and so on. The desire to take pleasure in beauty, reinforced by the kindred beauty in human bodies, is called Eros. Remarking that he is in the grip of something divine, and may soon be overtaken by the madness of the nymphs in this place, he goes on. The problem, he explains, is that one overcome with this desire will want to turn his boy into whatever is most pleasing to himself, rather than what is best for the boy. The boy's intellectual progress will be stifled, his physical condition will suffer, the lover will not wish the boy to mature and take a family, all because the lover is shaping him out of desire for pleasure rather than what is best. At some point, "right-minded reason" will take the place of "the madness of love", and the lover's oaths and promises to his boy will be broken. Phaedrus believes that one of the greatest goods given is the relationship between lover and boy. This relationship brings guidance and love into the boy’s life. Because the boy has a lover as such a valuable role model, he is on his best behavior to not get caught in something shameful. To get caught in something shameful would be like letting down his lover, therefore the boy is consistently acting his best. With the absence of shame makes room for a sense of pride to come in; pride from the wealthy feeling of impressing one's own lover. Impressing one's own lover brings more learning and guidance into the boy's life. The non-lover, he concludes, will do none of this, always ruled by judgment rather than desire for pleasure. Socrates, fearing that the nymphs will take complete control of him if he continues, states that he is going to leave before Phaedrus makes him "do something even worse". However, just before Socrates is about to leave, he is stopped by the "familiar divine sign", his daemon, which occurs always and only just before Socrates is about to do something he should not. A voice "from this very spot" forbids Socrates to leave before he makes atonement for some offense to the gods. Socrates then admits that he thought both of the preceding speeches were terrible, saying Lysias' repeated itself numerous times, seemed uninterested in its subject, and seemed to be showing off. Socrates states that he is a "seer". While he is not very good at it, he is good enough for his purposes, and he recognizes what his offense has been: if love is a god or something divine, as he and Phaedrus both agree he is, he cannot be bad, as the previous speeches have portrayed him. Socrates, baring his head, vows to undergo a rite of purification as a follower of the Muses, and proceeds to give a speech praising the lover. Socrates begins by discussing madness. If madness is all bad, then the preceding speeches would have been correct, but in actuality, madness given as a gift of the gods provides us with some of the best things we have.There are, in fact, several kinds of divine madness, of which he cites four examples: #From Apollo, the gift of prophecy; #From Dionysus, the mystic rites and relief from present hardship; #From the Muses, poetry; #From Aphrodite, love. As they must show that the madness of love is, indeed, sent by a god to benefit the lover and beloved in order to disprove the preceding speeches, Socrates embarks on a proof of the divine origin of this fourth sort of madness. It is a proof, he says, that will convince "the wise if not the clever". He begins by briefly proving the immortality of the soul. A soul is always in motion and as a self-mover has no beginning. A self-mover is itself the source of everything else that moves. So, by the same token, it cannot be destroyed. Bodily objects moved from the outside have no soul, while those that move from within have a soul. Moving from within, all souls are self-movers, and hence their immortality is necessary. Then begins the famous Chariot allegory, called by R. Hackworth the centrepiece of Phaedrus, and the famous and moving account of the vision, fall and incarnation of the soul. A soul, says Socrates, is like the "natural union of a team of winged horses and their charioteer". While the gods have two good horses, everyone else has a mixture: one is beautiful and good, while the other is neither. As souls are immortal, those lacking bodies patrol all of heaven so long as their wings are in perfect condition. When a soul sheds its wings, it comes to earth and takes on an earthly body which then seems to move itself.These wings lift up heavy things to where the gods dwell, and are nourished and grow in the presence of the wisdom, goodness, and beauty of the divine. However, foulness and ugliness make the wings shrink and disappear. In heaven, he explains, there is a procession led by Zeus, who looks after everything and puts things in order. All of the gods, with the exception of Hestia, follow Zeus in this procession. While the chariots of the gods are balanced and easier to control, other charioteers must struggle with their bad horse, which will drag them down to earth if it has not been properly trained. As the procession works its way upward, it eventually makes it up to the high ridge of heaven, where the gods take their stands, are taken in a circular motion and gaze at all that is beyond heaven. What is outside of heaven, says Socrates, is quite difficult to describe, lacking color, shape, or solidity, as it is the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence. The gods delight in these things and are nourished. Feeling wonderful, they are taken around until they make a complete circle. On the way they are able to see Justice, Self-Control, Knowledge, and other things as they are in themselves, unchanging. When they have seen all things and feasted on them, coming all the way around, they sink back down inside heaven. The immortal souls that follow the gods most closely are able to just barely raise their chariots up to the rim and look out on Reality. They see some things and miss others, having to deal with their horses; they rise and fall at varying times. Other souls, while straining to keep up, are unable to rise, and in noisy, sweaty discord they leave uninitiated, not having seen reality. Where they go after is then dependent on their own opinions, rather than the truth. Any soul that catches sight of any one true thing is granted another circuit where it can see more; eventually, all souls fall back to earth. Those that have been initiated are put into varying human incarnations, depending on how much they have seen; those made into philosophers have seen the most, while kings, statesmen, doctors, prophets, poets, manual laborers, sophists, and tyrants follow respectively. Souls then begin cycles of reincarnation. It generally takes 10,000 years for a soul to grow its wings and return to where it came, but philosophers, after having chosen such a life three times in a row, grow their wings and return after only 3,000 years. This is because they have seen the most and always keep its memory as close as possible, and philosophers maintain the highest level of initiation. They ignore human concerns and are drawn towards the divine. While ordinary people rebuke them for this, they are unaware that the lover of wisdom is possessed by a god. This is the fourth sort of madness, that of love. One comes to manifest this sort of love after seeing beauty here on earth and being reminded of true beauty as it was seen beyond heaven. When reminded, the wings begin to grow back, but as they are not yet able to rise, the afflicted gaze aloft and pay no attention to what goes on below, bringing on the charge of madness. This is the best form that possession by a god can take, for all those connected to it. When one is reminded of true beauty by the sight of a beautiful boy, he is called a lover. While all have seen reality, as they must have to be human, not all are so easily reminded of it. Those that can remember are startled when they see a reminder, and are overcome with the memory of beauty. Beauty, he states, was among the most radiant things to see beyond heaven, and on earth it sparkles through vision, the clearest of our senses. Some have not been recently initiated, and mistake this reminder for beauty itself and pursue pleasure and procreating. This pursuit of pleasure, then, even when manifested in the love of beautiful bodies, is not "divine" madness, but rather just having lost one's head. The recent initiates, on the other hand, are overcome when they see a bodily form that has captured true Beauty well, and their wings begin to grow. When this soul looks upon the beautiful boy it experiences the utmost joy; when separated from the boy, intense pain and longing occur, and the wings begin to harden. Caught between these two feelings, the lover is in utmost anguish, with the boy the only doctor for the pain. Socrates then returns to the myth of the chariot. The charioteer is filled with warmth and desire as he gazes into the eyes of the one he loves. The good horse is controlled by its sense of shame, but the bad horse, overcome with desire, does everything it can to go up to the boy and suggest to it the pleasures of sex. The bad horse eventually wears out its charioteer and partner, and drags them towards the boy; yet when the charioteer looks into the boy's face, his memory is carried back to the sight of the forms of Beauty and Self-control he had with the gods, and pulls back violently on the reins. As this occurs over and over, the bad horse eventually becomes obedient and finally dies of fright when seeing the boy's face, allowing the lover's soul to follow the boy in reverence and awe. The lover now pursues the boy. As he gets closer to his quarry, and the love is reciprocated, the opportunity for sexual contact again presents itself. If the lover and beloved surpass this desire they have won the "true Olympic Contests"; it is the perfect combination of human self-control and divine madness, and after death, their souls return to heaven.Those who give in do not become weightless, but they are spared any punishment after their death, and will eventually grow wings together when the time comes. A lover's friendship is divine, Socrates concludes, while that of a non-lover offers only cheap, human dividends, and tosses the soul about on earth for 9,000 years. He apologizes to the gods for the previous speeches, and Phaedrus joins him in the prayer. After Phaedrus concedes that this speech was certainly better than any Lysias could compose, they begin a discussion of the nature and uses of rhetoric itself. After showing that speech making itself isn't something reproachful, and that what is truly shameful is to engage in speaking or writing shamefully or badly, Socrates asks what distinguishes good from bad writing, and they take this up. Phaedrus claims that to be a good speechmaker, one does not need to know the truth of what he is speaking on, but rather how to properly persuade, persuasion being the purpose of speechmaking and oration. Socrates first objects that an orator who does not know bad from good will, in Phaedrus's words, harvest "a crop of really poor quality".Yet Socrates does not dismiss the art of speechmaking. Rather, he says, it may be that even one who knew the truth could not produce conviction without knowing the art of persuasion;on the other hand, "As the Spartan said, there is no genuine art of speaking without a grasp of the truth, and there never will be". To acquire the art of rhetoric, then, one must make systematic divisions between two different kinds of things: one sort, like "iron" and "silver", suggests the same to all listeners; the other sort, such as "good" or "justice", lead people in different directions. Lysias failed to make this distinction, and accordingly, failed to even define what "love" itself is in the beginning; the rest of his speech appears thrown together at random, and is, on the whole, very poorly constructed.Socrates then goes on to say, :Every speech must be put together like a living creature, with a body of its own; it must be neither without head nor without legs; and it must have a middle and extremities that are fitting both to one another and to the whole work. Socrates's speech, on the other hand, starts with a thesis and proceeds to make divisions accordingly, finding divine love, and setting it out as the greatest of goods. And yet, they agree, the art of making these divisions is dialectic, not rhetoric, and it must be seen what part of rhetoric may have been left out. When Socrates and Phaedrus proceed to recount the various tools of speechmaking as written down by the great orators of the past, starting with the "Preamble" and the "Statement Facts" and concluding with the "Recapitulation", Socrates states that the fabric seems a little threadbare.He goes on to compare one with only knowledge of these tools to a doctor who knows how to raise and lower a body's temperature but does not know when it is good or bad to do so, stating that one who has simply read a book or came across some potions knows nothing of the art.One who knows how to compose the longest passages on trivial topics or the briefest passages on topics of great importance is similar, when he claims that to teach this is to impart the knowledge of composing tragedies; if one were to claim to have mastered harmony after learning the lowest and highest notes on the lyre, a musician would say that this knowledge is what one must learn before one masters harmony, but it is not the knowledge of harmony itself.This, then, is what must be said to those who attempt to teach the art of rhetoric through "Preambles" and "Recapitulations"; they are ignorant of dialectic, and teach only what is necessary to learn as preliminaries. They go on to discuss what is good or bad in writing. Socrates tells a brief legend, critically commenting on the gift of writing from the Egyptian god Theuth to King Thamus, who was to disperse Theuth's gifts to the people of Egypt. After Theuth remarks on his discovery of writing as a remedy for the memory, Thamus responds that its true effects are likely to be the opposite; it is a remedy for reminding, not remembering, he says, with the appearance but not the reality of wisdom. Future generations will hear much without being properly taught, and will appear wise but not be so, making them difficult to get along with. No written instructions for an art can yield results clear or certain, Socrates states, but rather can only remind those that already know what writing is about. Furthermore, writings are silent; they cannot speak, answer questions, or come to their own defense. Accordingly, the legitimate sister of this is, in fact, dialectic; it is the living, breathing discourse of one who knows, of which the written word can only be called an image.The one who knows uses the art of dialectic rather than writing: :The dialectician chooses a proper soul and plants and sows within it discourse accompanied by knowledge- discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren but produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the character of others. Such discourse makes the seed forever immortal and renders the man who has it happy as any human being can be.
876043	/m/03kv2m	Hayduke Lives	Edward Abbey		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Hayduke Lives! picks up after the (literal) cliffhanger at the end of the previous book and chronicles George Washington Hayduke's escape from Federal agents and his return to the deserts of southern Utah and northern Arizona. It also reunites Hayduke with the outlaw-heroes from The Monkey Wrench Gang as they battle the world's biggest walking dragline and a Mormon preacher in another attempt to save the American Southwest. Both books have been reprinted numerous times due to their popularity.
876647	/m/03kwyl	When Worlds Collide	Philip Gordon Wylie	1933	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Sven Bronson, a South African astronomer, discovers that a pair of rogue planets, Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta, will soon enter the solar system. The larger one, Alpha, will pass close enough to cause catastrophic damage. Eight months later, after swinging around the Sun, Alpha will return to pulverize the Earth and leave. It is believed that Bronson Beta will remain and assume a stable orbit. Scientists led by Cole Hendron work desperately to build ships to transport enough people, animals and equipment to Bronson Beta in an attempt to save the human race. Governments are skeptical, but the scientists persist and develop the technology necessary for the spacecraft, which are built in various countries. Nations including the United States evacuate their coastal regions in preparation for the Bronson bodies' first pass. Tidal waves reach heights of hundreds of meters, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes take their deadly toll, and the weather runs wild for more than two days. As a token of things to come, Bronson Alpha's first pass takes out the Moon. The isolated Hendron camp manages to build two ships which take off together with all of the survivors of the camp (after beating off an attack from refugees desperate to escape). One ship makes a successful landing, but without radio contact with any other ships, the crew members assume that only they made it across. They find that Beta is habitable and that there are traces of a native civilization wiped out when, millions of years before, the planet was torn away from its sun. The sequel, After Worlds Collide, follows the fate of the survivors on Bronson Beta.
876707	/m/03kx1v	Love You Forever	Robert Munsch	1986	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the story begins, a son has just been born. The story then continues through the life of the boy until he is a grown man. The mother continues to rock her son to sleep singing "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be." Later, the role is reversed and he holds his elderly mother and says "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my Mommy you'll be." At the very end of the story, the mother passes away and her son is the father of a little girl, rocking her to sleep; singing the same song that his mother used to sing to him.
876994	/m/03kxyx	Island of the Blue Dolphins	Scott O'Dell	1960-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main character is a girl named Karana, and that is her secret name. Wonapalei is her common name (everyone in the village has a secret name). Her people live in a village called Ghalas-at, gathering roots and fishing to supply the tribe. One day, a ship of Aleuts, led by a Russian named Captain Orlov, arrive and persuade the natives into letting them hunt sea otter in return for other goods. However, the Aleuts attempt to swindle the islanders and leave without paying. When they are confronted by Chief Chowig, Karana's father, a battle breaks out, and lives are lost on both sides. The tribe is anhilated by the battle and the Aleuts leave the island, leaving little payment for the otters they hunted. Karana's father and many other men in the tribe die after the battle. Later, the "replacement chief", Chief Kimki, leaves the island for new land in the east. Eventually, he is able to send a ship to bring his people to the mainland, even though he himself does not return. The white men came to Karana's village and told them to pack their goods and go to the ship. Karana's brother, Ramo left the ship to retrieve his fishing spear. Although Karana urges the captain to wait for her brother Ramo to return, the ship must leave before a storm approaches. Karana jumps off the ship and swims to shore, and the ship departs without them. The siblings live alone on the island,hoping the ship will return. Ramo is eventually killed by a pack of feral dogs (some of the dogs joined the feral pack after the Aleuts killed their owners). Alone on the island, Karana must now take on traditionally male tasks, such as hunting, making spears, or building canoes, in order to survive. She vows to avenge her brother's death and kills several of the dogs, but has a change of heart when she encounters the leader of the pack. She tames him and names him Rontu, meaning "fox eyes" in her language. Over time, Karana makes a life for herself. She builds a home made of whale bones and even stocks a cave with provisions in case the Aleuts ever come back, so she can hide from them. As she explores her island, Karana discovers ancient artifacts and a large squid (which she calls a devilfish). As time passes, she decides to hunt the devilfish. She also tames some birds and an otter; she feels a close kinship to the animals, the only inhabitants of the island beside herself. One summer, the Aleuts return, and Karana takes refuge in the cave. She observes the Aleuts closely, and soon realizes that there is a girl, Tutok, among the Aleuts who takes care of the domestic duties, including getting water from the pool near Karana's cave. Despite Karana's precautions, she and the young Aleut woman meet and befriend each other. They exchange presents with each other when possible. Karana realizes how lonely she has been without other people. Later the Aleuts leave, with Tutok; the men are none the wiser of Karana's presence, but their departure also deprives her of her newfound friend. More time goes by, and Rontu dies. She soon finds a young dog that looks like Rontu and takes him in, naming him Rontu-Aru ("Son of Rontu"). One day, Karana sees the sails of a ship. It docks at the shore, but it then leaves. Two years later, in the spring, the boat comes back, so she dresses in her finest attire and goes to the shore to meet the boat. Her rescuers realize her attire will not be appropriate for the mainland, and they have a dress made for her. Although she does not like the dress, Karana realizes that this is part of her new life. The ship sails away, and takes Karana and Rontu-Aru to the mission in Santa Barbara, California.
877112	/m/03kyd8	The Cherry Orchard	Anton Chekhov			 Opens in the early morning hours of a cool day in May in the nursery of Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya's ancestral estate somewhere in the provinces of Russia just after the turn of the 20th Century. Ranevskaya has been away for five years, since the death by drowning of her young son, living in France with her unnamed lover. After news that she had tried to kill herself Ranevskaya's 17-year-old daughter Anya and Anya's governess Charlotta Ivanovna have gone to fetch Ranevskaya to bring her home to Russia. They are also accompanied by Yasha, Ranevskaya's valet who was with her in France. Upon returning the group is met, in addition to Lopakhin and Dunyasha, by Varya, Ranevskaya's adopted daughter and housekeeper who has overseen the estate in her absence; Leonid Andreyevich Gayev, Mme. Ranevskaya's brother; Boris Borisovich Simeonov-Pishchik, a neighbor who is constantly asking for loans; Semyon Yepikhodov, a clumsy clerk in the Ranevskaya household; and the aged footman, Firs, who has worked for the Ranevskaya family since before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and regrets the emancipation as a great loss of societal structure. Lopakhin has come to remind Ranevskaya and Gayev that their estate, including the cherry orchard, is due to go to auction in August to pay off the family's debts. He offers a plan to save the estate if only they will allow part of it to be developed into summer cottages. However, this will incur the destruction of their famous cherry orchard which is nationally known for its size. While Ranevskaya enjoys the view of the orchard as day breaks, she is surprised by Peter Trofimov, a young student and the former tutor of Ranevskaya's son, Grisha, whose death prompted Ranevskaya to leave Russia five years ago. Ranevskaya is grief-stricken at the reminder of this tragedy, despite Trofimov's insistence on seeing her upon her return (much to the consternation of Varya.) After Ranevskaya retires for the evening, Anya confesses to Varya that their mother is heavily in debt. They all go to bed with a renewed hope that the estate will be saved and the cherry orchard preserved. Trofimov stares after the departing Anya and mutters "My sunshine, my spring" in adoration. Act II takes place outdoors on the family estate nearby to the cherry orchard in mid-summer. The act opens with Yepikhodov and Yasha vying for the affection of Dunyasha, while Charlotta soliloquizes about her life as she cleans a rifle. In Act I it was revealed that Yepikhodov proposed to Dunyasha around Easter time, however she has since become infatuated with the more "cultured" Yasha. Charlotta leaves so that Dunyasha and Yasha might have some time alone, but that too is interrupted when they hear their employer coming. Yasha shoos Dunyasha away so they won't be caught and Ranevskaya, Gayev, and Lopakhin appear, once more discussing the uncertain fate of the cherry orchard. Shortly Anya, Varya, and Trofimov arrive as well. Lopakhin teases Trofimov for his being a perpetual student and Trofimov espouses his philosophy of work and useful purpose to the delight and humour of everyone around. During their conversations, a drunken and disheveled vagrant passes by and begs for money; Ranevskaya thoughtlessly gives him all of her money, despite the protestations of Varya. Shaken by the disturbance, the family departs for dinner, with Lopakhin futilely insisting that the cherry orchard be sold to pay down the debt. Anya stays behind to talk with Trofimov, who disapproves of Varya's constant hawk-like eyes, reassuring Anya that they are "above love". To impress Trofimov and win his affection, Anya vows to leave the past behind her and start a new life. The two depart for the river as Varya calls scoldingly in the background. It is the end of August, and the evening of Ranevskaya's party has come. Offstage the musicians play as the family and their guests drink, carouse, and entertain themselves. It is also the day of the auction for the estate and the cherry orchard; Gayev has received a paltry amount of money from his and Ranevskaya's stingy aunt in Yaroslavl, and the family members, despite the general merriment about them, are both anxious and distracted while they wait for word of their fates. Varya worries about paying the musicians and scolds their neighbour Pishchik for drinking, Dunyasha for dancing and Yepikhodov for playing billiards. Charlotta entertains the group by performing several magic tricks. Ranevskaya scolds Trofimov for his constant teasing of Varya, whom he refers to as "Madame Lopakhin". She then urges Varya to marry Lopakhin, but Varya demurs, reminding her that it is Lopakhin's duty to ask for her hand in marriage, not the other way around. She says that if she had money she would move as far away from him as possible. Left alone with Ranevskaya, Trofimov insists that she finally face the truth that the house and the cherry orchard will be sold at auction. Ranevskaya shows him a telegram she has received from Paris and reveals that her former lover is ill again and has begged for her to return to his aid. She also reveals that she is seriously considering joining him, despite his cruel behaviour to her in the past. Trofimov is stunned at this news and the two argue about the nature of love and their respective experiences. Trofimov leaves in a huff but offstage falls down the stairs and is carried in by the others. Ranevskaya laughs and forgives him for his folly and the two quickly reconcile. Anya enters declaring a rumour that the cherry orchard has been sold. Lopakhin arrives with Gayev, both of whom are exhausted from the trip and the day's events. Gayev is distant, virtually catatonic and goes to bed without saying a word of the outcome of the auction. When Ranevskaya asks who bought the estate, Lopakhin reveals that he himself is the purchaser and intends to chop down the orchard with his axe. Ranevskaya, distraught, clings to Anya, who tries to calm her and reassure her that the future will be better now that the cherry orchard has been sold. It is several weeks later, once again in the nursery (as in Act I), only this time the room is being packed and taken apart as the family prepares to leave the estate forever. Trofimov enters in search of his galoshes, and he and Lopakhin exchange opposing world views. Anya enters and reprimands Lopakhin for ordering his workers to begin chopping down the cherry orchard while the family is still in the house. Lopakhin apologizes and rushes out to stop them for the time being in the hopes that he will be somehow reconciled with them. Charlotta enters, lost and in a daze, and insists that the family find her a new position. Ranevskaya tearfully bids her old life goodbye and leaves as the house is shut up forever. In the darkness Firs wanders into the room and discovers that they have left without him and boarded him inside the abandoned house to die. He lies down on the couch and resigns himself to his fate (apparently dying on the spot), as offstage we hear the axes as they cut down the cherry orchard.
877129	/m/03kyg4	Present Laughter	Noël Coward			 All three acts of the play are set in Garry Essendine's London flat. Daphne Stillington, a young admirer of the actor Garry Essendine, has inveigled herself into the flat and has spent the night there. Garry is still asleep, and while waiting for him to wake, Daphne encounters in turn three employees of Garry, housekeeper (Miss Erikson), valet (Fred), and secretary (Monica). None of them displays any surprise at her presence. Garry finally wakes and with practised smoothness ushers Daphne out. Liz Essendine, who left Garry years ago, nevertheless remains part of his tightly-knit 'family' along with Monica and his manager, Morris Dixon, and producer, Henry Lyppiatt. Liz tells Garry that she suspects that Morris is having an affair with Henry's glamorous wife Joanna, and is concerned that this might break up the family. Their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Roland Maule, an aspiring young playwright from Uckfield, whose play Garry has rashly agreed to critique. Liz leaves, and Roland rapidly becomes obsessively fascinated by Garry, who gets him off the premises as quickly as he can. Morris and Henry arrive and discuss theatrical business with Garry. Henry leaves for a business trip abroad, and Garry privately interrogates Morris, who denies that he is having an affair with Joanna. Garry telephones Liz to reassure her. ;Scene 1, midnight, three days later. Garry, alone in the flat, answers the doorbell to find Joanna. She claims (like Daphne in Act I) to have forgotten her own doorkey and asks Garry to accommodate her in his spare room. He correctly suspects her motives, but after much skirmishing allows himself to be seduced. ;Scene 2, the next morning. Joanna emerges from the spare room wearing Garry's pyjamas just as Daphne did in Act I. She too encounters Miss Erikson, Fred, and then Monica, who is horrified at her presence in such compromising circumstances. Liz arrives and puts pressure on Joanna by threatening to tell Morris that Joanna has spent the night with Garry. Joanna retreats to the spare room when the doorbell rings, but the caller is not Morris but Roland Maule, who says he has an appointment with Garry. Monica leads him to an adjacent room to wait for Garry. Frantic comings and goings follow, with the flustered arrivals and departures of Morris and Henry, Roland's pursuit of Garry, and the arrival of a Lady Saltburn, whose niece Garry has promised an audition. The niece turns out to be Daphne Stillington, who recites the same Shelley poem with which he bade her farewell in Act I. Joanna flounces out from the spare room, Daphne faints with horror, Roland is entranced, and Garry is apoplectic. A week later, on the eve of Garry's departure on tour in Africa, he is once more alone in the flat. The doorbell rings and Daphne enters saying she has a ticket to sail with him to Africa. The doorbell rings again, and Daphne retreats to an adjoining room. The new caller is Roland, who announces that he too has a ticket for the voyage to Africa. Garry tries to get him to leave, but as the doorbell rings a third time Roland bolts into the spare room and locks the door. The third caller is Joanna, who has also bought a ticket for the Africa voyage and has written a letter to Henry and Morris telling them everything. Liz arrives and saves the tottering situation, announcing that she too is travelling to Africa. Henry and Morris arrive and berate Garry for his night with Joanna. Garry fights back by revealing the details of Morris and Joanna's affair, and Henry's extramarital adventures. Joanna angrily slaps Garry's face and leaves for good. Her departure goes unnoticed because Garry, Henry and Morris have become embroiled in what for them is a much more serious row when it emerges that Henry and Morris have committed Garry to appear at what he considers a shockingly unsuitable theatre. Garry objects: "I will not play a light French comedy to an auditorium that looks like a Gothic edition of Wembley Stadium." When that row has blown itself out, it is business as usual and Henry and Morris leave in good humour. Liz pours Garry a brandy and tells him she is not only going to Africa with him but is coming back to him for good. Garry suddenly remembers Daphne and Roland lurking in the adjoining rooms and tells Liz: "You're not coming back to me... I'm coming back to you", and they tiptoe out.
878356	/m/03l1bz	Kiln People	David Brin	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Albert Morris is a private detective who uses dittos extensively. His dittos are usually imprinted faithfully; indeed, his dittos have a fidelity rate rarely seen in the novel's world. The book opens with a green ditto being chased across the city by ditto thugs of Beta, a criminal figure engaged in copyright violation by kidnapping desirable dittos and duplicating them. Albert's green makes it to safety, allowing Albert to inload his memories and bust Beta's latest scheme. The next morning, Albert makes three dittos (two grays and a green) and sends them off to do his business. After four hours of sleep, he imprints an ebony to help him work on a case. One gray meets with Ritu Maharal, the daughter of Yosil Maharal (named after the rabbi of the legendary original golems), one of the founders of Universal Kilns (UK) who has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Yosil is later discovered dead, and Albert's gray meets the surviving Maharal ditto (or ghost, a ditto that survives after the original has died). ditMaharal runs away, and when the gray follows, he is captured by the ditto. The second gray gets involved in a plan to infiltrate Universal Kilns to see if they are illegally withholding technical advancements to the duplicating process. He is a dupe of unknown forces, and is actually carrying a bomb into the UK factory, but he realizes just in time and manages to minimize the damage done when he blows up. The green comes out of the kiln and starts doing the chores he was made to do, but soon displays a lack of motivation to complete his assigned tasks and instead heads off to the beach. Once there, he decides that he is an imperfect copy of Albert, or a "frankie" (a fictional slang word derived from Frankenstein's monster). This is an unprecedented occurrence for Albert due to his unusual ditto-making prowess. The green decides not to continue doing chores, and claims independence. Though an imperfect copy of Albert, the green figures prominently in the plot. Meanwhile, real Albert disguises himself as a gray ditto and meets with Ritu, who is also disguised as a gray. On the way to investigate Yosil's cabin, where the eccentric scientist spent much of his time, they both are made aware of an attack on Albert's home. Shortly after, Albert and Ritu end up stranded in the desert after an attempt on their lives. They eventually make it to ditMaharal's secret lab where the first gray is being held. The green frankie makes it there as well, soon to expire. ditMaharal has constructed an apparatus that he plans to use to elevate himself to godhood, using two of Albert's dittos to amplify himself and the deaths of over a million people to fuel his elevation. The green and the real Albert join forces to destroy the apparatus and disable the bioweapons that would have been used in an attack on a nearby city. However, the real Albert's mind winds up elevating, leaving his body in a comotose-like state. As the book ends, Albert and the green frankie agree to upload the green's memories into Albert's body, effectively replacing Albert's personality and memories with the frankie's: Albert will attempt to ascend to the higher plane of existence, and the frankie gets to lead the own life he wanted with Clara in Albert's body.
878757	/m/03l2qd	The Poisonwood Bible	Barbara Kingsolver	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Orleanna Price narrates the introductory chapter in five of the novel's seven sections. The narrative then alternates among the four daughters, with a slight preference for the voice of the most outspoken one, Leah. The four girls increasingly mature, as each adapts differently to African village life, to the misogyny of their father Nathan, and the political turmoil that overtakes The Congo in the 1960s. Since the Congolese villagers are seen through the eyes of the growing daughters, the view changes. At first, they appear as ridiculous savages. But as the girls mature, the villagers become fully fleshed-out human beings, immersed in a complex and sophisticated culture. Nathan's lack of responsiveness to this culture wears out his family's welcome, but he refuses to leave. Only after a series of misfortunes&mdash;culminating in the death of one of the daughters&mdash;do the women leave Nathan Price to his folly. The survivors take different paths into their futures, the novel ending at the time of Mobutu Sese Seko's death in the 1990s. Rachel, the eldest, marries Axelroot at seventeen, and after two more marriages is the owner of a luxury hotel close to what is now Brazzaville. Leah marries Anatole, has a large family of four boys, and remains in the impoverished Congo. Adah returns to the United States with their mother Orleanna, attending college and later, medical school. She undergoes a lengthy experimental treatment that restores full use of her legs and she begins to speak. Orleanna herself returns to spending life on the Georgian coast, enjoying Adah's occasional visits.
879065	/m/03l3rs	Angle of Repose	Wallace Stegner	1971	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lyman Ward narrates a century after the fact. Lyman interprets the story at times and leaves gaps that he points out at other times. Some of the disappointments of his life, including his divorce, color his interpretation of his grandparents' story. Toward the end of the novel, he gives up on his original ambition of writing a complete biography of his grandmother. Stegner's use of Mary Hallock Foote's historical letters gives the novel's locations—Leadville, New Almaden, Idaho, and Mexico—an authentic feel; the letters also add vividness to the Wards' struggles with the environment, shady businessmen, and politicians. Lyman's position in the contemporary culture of the late sixties provides another historical dimension to the story. Foils for this plot line include Lyman's adult son, a Berkeley-trained sociologist who sees little value in history, and a neighbor's daughter who helps transcribe Lyman's tape-recorded notes while she is home on summer break from UC Berkeley, where she has been active in the "hippie" counterculture movement.
879081	/m/03l3sh	The Death of the Heart	Elizabeth Bowen	1938		 At the beginning of the novel, Portia moves in with Anna and Thomas Quayne after her mother dies. Portia is Thomas's half sister. Mr. Quayne (Thomas's father) had an extramarital affair with Irene (Portia's mother) while married to Thomas's mother. When Irene became pregnant, and Mrs. Quayne learned of it, she was adamant that he do what was the right thing: so, at his own wife's unyielding insistence, Mr. Quayne divorced Thomas's mother and married Irene. Mr. Quayne, Irene, and Portia then left England and traveled through Europe as exiles from society and from the Quayne family, living in the cheapest of lodgings. Irene and Portia continued to live in this fashion until, when Portia was 16, Irene died. Portia was sent to live with Thomas and Anna after Irene's death. The plan is that she is to stay with them for one year at which time Portia will leave and move in with Irene's sister (Portia's aunt). Portia is a naturally awkward girl, and this aspect of her personality has been intensified by her strange childhood which was one of constant travel, change, and strangers, while at the same time being incredibly isolating. She is uniquely innocent in her observations of people, and is baffled by inconsistencies between what they say and what they do, and wonders why people say things they do not mean. She keeps a diary detailing the lives of those around her, particularly Anna, trying to understand the key to people she thinks she is missing. Anna finds and reads Portia's diary; she is incensed by the idea of the girl observing her every move, and rages about the girl to her friend St. Quentin, a writer and frequent visitor to the Quaynes's home. It becomes clear over the course of the novel that Anna dislikes Portia because she is strange. Anna and Thomas are generally uncomfortable with Portia in their home but try to make do. They send her to classes where she makes friends with a girl named Lilian. Portia's love interest, if she can be said to have one, is a man named Eddie. Eddie works at Thomas's advertising agency. He also has a flirtatious relationship with Anna prior to Portia's arrival. Eddie does not truly love Portia. Partway through the novel, Anna and Thomas go on vacation to Italy and send Portia to live with Anna's former governess, Mrs. Heccomb, for the duration of the trip. The climax of the novel occurs when St. Quentin, a friend of Anna's, tells Portia that Anna has been reading her diary. As a result of this Portia runs away. She first goes to Eddie who becomes overwhelmed by her and sends her away telling her that he is Anna's lover (which is not true). Portia then takes refuge with an acquaintance of Anna's named Major Brutt. Portia goes to Major Brutt's hotel and begs him to run away with her and to marry her. Major Brutt then calls Thomas and Anna to tell them where Portia is. The novel ends with Thomas and Anna sending their maid, Matchett, to Major Brutt's hotel in order to fetch Portia.
879119	/m/03l3wd	The House of Mirth	Edith Wharton	1905-10-14	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, a woman who is torn between her desire for luxurious living and a relationship based on mutual respect and love. She sabotages all her possible chances for a wealthy marriage, loses the esteem of her social circle, and dies young, poor, and alone. Lily is initially of good social standing and rejects several offers of advantageous marriage. Lily's social standing erodes when her friend Judy Trenor's husband Gus gives Lily a large sum of money. Lily innocently accepts the money, believing that it is the return on investments he supposedly made for her. The rumors of this transaction, and of her mysterious visit to Gus in his city residence crack her social standing further. To escape the rumors and gossip, she accepts an invitation from Bertha Dorset to join her and her husband, George, on a cruise of Europe aboard their yacht the Sabrina. Unfortunately, while aboard the yacht, Bertha accuses Lily of adultery with George in order to shift societal attention from Bertha's own infidelity with poet Ned Silverton. The ensuing scandal ruins Lily, leading her friends to abandon her and Aunt Peniston to disinherit her. Lily descends the social strata, working as a personal secretary until Bertha sabotages her position by turning her employers against her. Lily then takes a job as social secretary for a disreputable woman, but resigns after a friend of hers, Lawrence Selden, comes to rescue her from complete infamy. She then works in a millinery, but produces poorly and is let go at the end of the season. Simon Rosedale, the Jewish suitor who had proposed marriage to her when she was higher on the social scale tries to rescue her, but she is unwilling to meet his terms: to use love letters she bought which prove the affair Bertha Dorset and Selden had years earlier. Lily refrains for sake of Selden's reputation, and secretly burns the letters when she visits Selden for one last time. Eventually Lily receives her $10,000 inheritance, which she uses to pay her debt to Trenor. Lily dies from an overdose, possibly accidental, of the sleeping draught to which she had become addicted. Hours later Selden comes to propose to her, but finds she has died. Only then is he able to be close to her in a way he never was able to when she was living and admit his true love for her.
879132	/m/03l3xf	Bel Ami	Guy de Maupassant	1885	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in Paris in the upper-middle class environment of the leading journalists of the newspaper La Vie Française and their friends. It tells the story of Georges Duroy, who has spent three years of military service in Algeria. After six months working as a clerk in Paris, an encounter with his former comrade, Forestier, enables him to start a career as a journalist. From a reporter of minor events and soft news, he gradually climbs his way up to chief editor. Duroy initially owes his success to Forestier’s wife, Madeleine, who helps him write his first articles and, when he later starts writing lead articles, she adds an edge and poignancy to them. At the same time, she uses her connections among leading politicians to provide him with behind the scenes information which allows him to become actively involved in politics. Duroy is also introduced to many politicians in Madame Forestier’s drawing-room. Duroy becomes the lover of Forestiers' friend Mme de Marelle, another influential woman. Duroy later tries to seduce Madeleine Forestier to get even with her husband, but she repulses Duroy’s sexual advances and offers that they become true friends without ulterior motives instead. In a few months, Charles Forestier’s health deteriorates and he travels to the south of France to regain it. Soon afterwards, Duroy receives a letter from Madeleine imploring him to come to join her and help her bear the last moments of her husband’s life. As Forestier dies, Duroy asks Madeleine to marry him. After a few weeks to consider, she agrees. Georges now signs his articles Du Roy (an aristocratic style of French name) in order to add prestige to his name. The married couple travels to Normandy, the region of Georges’s childhood, and meet his peasant parents. Finding the reality different than her romantic expectations, Madeleine feels very uncomfortable with his parents and so their stay with them is short. In the newspaper office, Duroy is ridiculed for having his articles written by his wife, just as the late Forestier had his articles written by her. His newspaper colleagues call him ‘Forestier’, which drives Georges mad and he suddenly becomes heavily jealous of Madeleine, insisting that she admit having been unfaithful to Forestier, but she never does. In order to suppress the stings of jealousy, Duroy starts an affair with Mme Walter, the wife of the owner of the newspaper. He especially enjoys the conquest as he is her first extramarital lover. Later on, however, he regrets the decision, for he cannot get rid of her when he does not want her. Duroy’s relations with his wife become chillier, and at one point he takes a police superintendent to a flat in which his wife is meeting a minister. They catch the two in the act of adultery, which was then a crime punishable under the law. In the last two chapters Duroy's ascent to power continues. Duroy, now a single man, makes use of his chief’s daughter's infatuation with him, and arranges an elopement with her. The parents then have no other choice but to grant their assent to the marriage. The last chapter shows Duroy savouring his success at the wedding ceremony at which 'all those who figured prominently in society' were present. His thoughts, however, chiefly belong to Mme de Marelle who, when wishing him all the best, indicates that she has forgiven him for his new marriage and that their intimate meetings can be taken up again.
879581	/m/03l57n	Bachelor of Arts	R. K. Narayan	1937	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story explores the transition of an adolescent mind into adulthood. It revolves around a young man named Chandran, who resembles an Indian upper middle class youth of the pre-independence era. First, Chandran's college life in late colonial times is described. After graduation, he falls in love with a girl, but will be rejected by the bride's parents, since his horoscope describes him as a manglik, a condition in which a manglik can only marry another manglik and if not, the non-manglik will die. Frustrated and desperate, he embarks on a journey as Sanyasi. On his journey he meets many people and he is also misunderstood as a great sage by some villagers. Due to the compunctions and the realizations, he decides to return home. He takes up a job as a newsagent and decides to marry, in order to please his parents, thinking of the discomfort he had caused them earlier. The story portrays the heartbreak which a youth faces. After Malti, the girl with whom Chandran falls in love with after graduating from college, is married to someone else, Chandran is absolutely heartbroken to the extent that he goes to Madras and starts living on streets.Famished,delusioned and full of self pittance, he ends up wandering from one place to another like a sanyasi. After 8 months, he thinks of what mess he has become and thinks about his parents and decides to go back home. Even after returning home, he is still unable to take Malti out of his head completely and though he tries hard, the pictures and memories of her keep on haunting him for a long time. After a long time, his father comes to him with a proposal for marrying another girl Sushila. Chandran is still skeptical about love, marriage and initially refuses but later decides to see the girl. When he goes on to see the girl, he ends up falling in love with her. The novel is great because it explores how we human beings are delusioned by love. And it also teaches us that till the time you do not meet someone else,letting go of the memories is a very difficulty task. Once you meet someone new, those haunting memories start fading and you start seeing that how foolish you have been in the past to cling to one person and waste your life by doing that. hi:द बेचलर ऑफ़ आर्टस pa:ਦ ਬੇਚਲਰ ਆਫ ਆਰਟਸ‎
880888	/m/03l9gp	Lilith	George MacDonald		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Mr. Vane, the protagonist of Lilith, owns a library that seems to be haunted by the former librarian, who looks much like a raven from the brief glimpses he catches of the wraith. After finally encountering the supposed ghost, the mysterious Mr. Raven, Vane learns that Raven had known his father; indeed, Vane's father had visited the strange parallel universe from which Raven comes and goes and now resides therein. Vane follows Raven into the world through a mirror (this symbolistic realm is described as "the region of the seven dimensions", a term taken from Jacob Boehme). Inside the world, Vane learns of a house of beds where the dreamers sleep until the end of the world in death: a good death, in which life is found. Vane's grandfather refused to sleep there and is, instead, forced to do battle with skeletons in a haunted wood. After a treacherous journey through a valley (where the moon is the only thing to keep him safe), Mr. Vane meets the Little Ones, children who never grow up, only get bigger and dumber, turning into "bags" or bad giants. After conversing with Lona, the eldest of the children, Mr. Vane decides to help them, and sets off to gather more information, although the Raven (who is also Adam) has warned Mr. Vane that he needs to sleep along with the dreamers before he can really help them. While on his journey, he meets Lilith, the princess of Bulika. Vane, although nearly blinded by Lilith's beauty and charms, eventually leads the Little Ones in a battle against Bulika. Lona, Vane's love, turns out to be Lilith's daughter, and is killed by her own mother. Lilith, however, is captured and brought to Adam and Eve at the house of death, where they struggle to make her open her hand, fused shut, in which she holds the water the Little Ones need to grow. Only when she gives it up can Lilith join the sleepers in blissful dreams, free of sin. After a long struggle Lilith bids Adam cut her hand from her body; it is done, Lilith sleeps, and Vane is sent to bury the hand; water flows from the hole and washes the land over. Vane is then allowed to join the Little Ones, already asleep, in their dreaming. He takes his bed, next to Lona's, and finds true life in death.
880956	/m/03l9nv	A Grief Observed	C. S. Lewis	1961		 A Grief Observed is an exploration of Lewis’s thoughts and questions brought about by the grief at the passing of his wife. The book is written sporadically, suggesting short bursts of thought, in a stream of consciousness style of writing. Some trains of thought are constantly revisited while others seem to be more fleeting. He begins by reflecting on the sensations of grief. He speaks of a restless nervousness that makes grief feel like fear. Grief can fog up the mind, Lewis finds, as if there is a barrier between himself and the world. It is a feeling not unlike being intoxicated or concussed, making it difficult to understand or take interest in what is going on outside himself. Quickly, Lewis moves into the larger question of his grief: where is God in all of this? As Lewis states: “When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence” Personally not considering atheism as a real possibility, Lewis instead worries that he will only be able to believe in a “Cosmic Sadist,” in an evil God. Lewis wrestles with this question throughout the book. Another question that he brings up is the reality of the Christian belief in life after death and what form this life will take. Lewis asserts that the popular notion of meeting our loved ones on the other shore cannot be true. He says that reality is not repeated and no matter how much one might like to relive the good things of this life, any afterlife that exists, is not a repetition of this life. As Lewis declares: "Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand." Despite his firm Christian faith, Lewis doubts the continuation of life after death for his wife. He asserts that believing in life after death is easy until it really matters. As he delineates: “Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. Apparently the faith — I thought it faith — which enables me to pray for the other dead has seemed strong only because I have never really cared, not desperately, whether they existed or not” Grief is not overcome in the course of the book but Lewis acknowledges that grief is a process and not a state. He also ceases to look at God as a sadist and sees purpose in the suffering. He feels the presence of God and of his wife in a renewed way and it brings him some measure of peace. Towards the end of the book, in reference to his wife’s death he says: “It has so many ways to hurt me that I discover them only one by one”. But he goes on to say: “Still, there are two enormous gains...Turned to God, my mind no longer meets that locked door; turned to H., it no longer meets that vacuum… My jottings show something of the process, but not so much as I’d hoped. Perhaps both changes were really not observable. There was no sudden striking and emotional transition. Like the warming of a room of the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have already been going for some time".
883094	/m/03lj88	The Charterhouse of Parma	Stendhal	1839	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Charterhouse of Parma tells the story of the young Italian nobleman Fabrice del Dongo and his adventures from his birth in 1798 to his death. Fabrice’s early years are spent in his family’s castle on Lake Como, while most of the novel is set in a fictionalized Parma (both in modern-day Italy). The book begins with the French army sweeping into Milan and stirring up the sleepy region of Lombardy, allied with Austria. Fabrice grows up in the context of the intrigues and alliances for and against the French—his father the Marchese comically fancies himself a spy for the Viennese. The novel's early section describes Fabrice's rather quixotic effort to join Napoleon when the latter returns to France in March 1815 (the Hundred Days). Fabrice at seventeen is idealistic, rather naive, and speaks poor French. However he won't be stopped, and he leaves his home on Lake Como and travels north under false papers. He wanders through France, losing money and horses at a fast rate. He is imprisoned as a spy, he escapes, dons the uniform of a dead French hussar, and in his excitement to play the role of a French soldier, wanders onto the field of battle at the Battle of Waterloo. Stendhal, a veteran of several Napoleonic campaigns (he was one of the survivors of the retreat from Russia in 1812), describes this famous battle as a chaotic affair with soldiers who gallop one way, then another, while bullets plow the fields around them. Fabrice briefly joins the guard of Field Marshal Ney, shoots one Prussian cavalryman while he and his regiment flee, and is lucky to survive the fighting with a serious wound to his leg (given to him by one of the retreating French cavalrymen). He makes his way back to his family's castle, injured, broke, and still wondering "was I really in the battle?" Towards the end of the novel his efforts, such as they are, lead people to say that he was one of Napoleon's bravest captains or colonels. Fabrice having returned to Lake Como, the novel now divides its attention between him and his aunt (his father's sister), Gina. Gina meets and befriends the Prime Minister of Parma, Count Mosca. Count Mosca proposes that Gina marry a wealthy old man, who will be out of the country for many years as an ambassador, so she and Count Mosca can be lovers while living under the social rules of the time. Gina's response is: "But you realize that what you are suggesting is utterly immoral?" She agrees, and so a few months later, Gina is the new social eminence in Parma's rather small aristocratic elite. Ever since Fabrice returned from Waterloo, Gina has had very warm feelings for her nephew, and she and Count Mosca try to plan out a successful life for the young man. Count Mosca's plan has Fabrice go to seminary school in Naples, with the idea that when he graduates he will come to Parma and be installed as a senior figure in the religious hierarchy, soon to be the Archbishop, as the current office holder is old. The fact that Fabrice has no interest in religion (or celibacy) matters not to this plan. Fabrice agrees to the plan and leaves for Naples. The book then describes in great detail how Gina and Count Mosca live and operate in the court of the Prince of Parma (named Ranuce-Erneste IV). Stendhal, who spent decades as a professional diplomat in northern Italy, gives a lively and interesting account of the court, though all of what he describes is entirely fictional, as Parma was ruled by Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma during the time of the novel. So much attention is given to Gina and Count Mosca that some have suggested that these two are the true heroes of the novel. After several years in Naples, during which he has many affairs with local women, Fabrice returns to Parma and shortly gets involved with a young actress whose manager/lover takes offense and tries to kill Fabrice. In the resulting fight Fabrice kills the man and then flees Parma, fearing, rightly, that he will not be treated justly by the courts. However, his efforts to avoid capture are unsuccessful, and he is brought back to Parma and imprisoned in the Farnese Tower, the tallest tower in the city. His aunt, Gina, in great distress at what she feels will lead to Fabrice's certain death, goes to plead the Prince for his life. The Prince is alienated by Gina's dignity and refusal to yield. He seems to agree to free Fabrice - signing a written note from which Mosca, in an effort to be diplomatic, has omitted the possibly crucial phrase unjust procedure. The following morning, he arranges for Fabrice to be condemned to a very long prison term. For the next nine months Gina schemes to have Fabrice freed and manages to get secret messages relayed to him in the tower, in part by means of an improvised semaphore line. The Prince keeps hinting that Fabrice is going to be executed (or poisoned) as a way to put pressure on Gina. Meanwhile, Fabrice is oblivious to his danger and is living happily because he has fallen in love with the commandant's daughter, Clélia Conti, who he can see from his prison window as she tends her caged birds. They fall in love, and after some time he persuades her to communicate with him by means of letters of the alphabet printed on sheets ripped from a book. Gina finally helps Fabrice escape from the Tower by having Clélia smuggle three long ropes to him. The only thing that concerns Fabrice is whether he will be able to meet Clélia after he escapes. But Clélia - who has feelings of guilt because the plot involved laudanum to her father, which she perceived as poison - promises the Virgin that she shall never see Fabrice again and will do anything her father says. Gina leaves Parma and puts in motion a plan to have the Prince of Parma assassinated. Count Mosca stays in Parma, and when the Prince does die (poisoned, it is strongly implied, by Gina's poet/bandit/assassin) he puts down an attempted revolt by some local revolutionaries and gets the son of the Prince installed on the throne. Fabrice voluntarily returns to the Farnese Tower to see Clélia and is almost poisoned there. To save him, Gina promises to give herself to the new Prince. She keeps her promise but immediately leaves Parma afterwards. Gina never returns to Parma, but she marries Count Mosca. Clélia, to help her father who was disgraced by Fabrice's escape, marries the wealthy man her father has chosen for her, and so she and Fabrice live unhappily because of the promise she made to never see him again. Once he is acquitted of murdering the actress's manager/lover, Fabrice assumes his duties as a powerful man of the Catholic Church and a preacher whose sermons become the talk of the town. The only reason he gives these sermons, Fabrice says, is in the hope that Clélia will come to one and he can see her and speak to her. After 14 months of suffering for both, she agrees to meet with him every night, but only on the condition that it is in darkness, lest she break her vow to the Madonna to never see him again and they both be punished for her sin. A year later she bears Fabrice's child. When the boy is two years old, Fabrice insists that he should take care of him in the future, because he is feeling lonely and suffers that his own child won't love him. The plan he and Clélia devise is to fake the child's illness and death and then establish him secretly in a large house nearby, where Fabrice and Clélia can come to see him each day. As it turns out, after several months the child actually does die, and Clélia dies a few months after that. After her death, Fabrice retires to the Charterhouse of Parma, which gives the book its title, where he spends less than a year before he also dies. Gina, the Countess Mosca, who had always loved Fabrice, dies a short time after that.
883407	/m/03ljll	In Search of the Castaways	Jules Verne		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland contact Mary and Robert, the young daughter and son of Captain Grant, through an announcement in a newspaper. Moved by the children's condition, Lord and Lady Glenarvan decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known; thus, the expedition would have to circumnavigate the 37th parallel south. Remaining clues consist of a few words in three languages. They are re-interpreted several times throughout the novel to make various destinations seem likely. Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht, the Duncan, they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel (he missed his steamer to India by accidentally boarding on the Duncan) joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, and Australia (a pretext to describe the flora, fauna, and geography of numerous places to the targeted audience). There, they find a former quarter-master of the Britannia, Ayrton, who proposes to lead them to the site of the wreckage. However, Ayrton is a traitor, who was not present during the loss of the Britannia, but was abandoned in Australia after a failed attempt to seize control of the ship to practice piracy. He tries to take control of the Duncan, but out of sheer luck, this attempt also fails. However the Glenarvans, the Grant children, Paganel and some sailors are left in Australia, and mistakenly believing that the Duncan is lost, they sail to Auckland, New Zealand, from where they want to come back to Europe. When their ship is wrecked south of Auckland on the New Zealand coast, they are captured by a Māori tribe, but luckily manage to escape and board a ship that they discover, with their greatest surprise, to be the Duncan. Ayrton, made a prisoner, offers to trade his knowledge of Captain Grant in exchange for being abandoned on a desert island instead of being surrendered to the British authorities. The Duncan sets sail for the Tabor Island, which, out of sheer luck, turns out to be Captain Grant's shelter. They leave Ayrton in his place to live among the beasts and regain his humanity. Ayrton reappears in Verne's later novel, L'Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874).
888331	/m/03lzqn	Triggerfish Twist	Tim Dorsey	2002	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Jim Davenport is transferred to his company's branch in Tampa, Florida. Though initially excited by the move, the job quickly proves to be disappointing, Jim's neighbors are a strange bunch of eccentrics and crime is much worse than he had thought. Serge Storms, Sharon Rhodes and Coleman move in down the street. Serge seems pleasant enough, but there is definitely something odd about him. Sharon is a spiteful coke-headed hooker. Coleman is a brain-dead stoner who is constantly under the influence of something, from alcohol to illegal drugs. The story becomes surreal from that point onward.
888341	/m/03lzs0	Florida Roadkill	Tim Dorsey	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Roadkill is set in 1997, against the backdrop of that year's World Series in which the Florida Marlins won a stunning upset in Miami. Intelligent but sociopathic criminal Serge Storms meets up with heartless stripper Sharon Rhodes and brainless drug addict Seymore "Coleman" Bunsen, who become his travelling companions and partners in crime. Serge hatches a plan to steal an enormous fraudulent insurance settlement from an oversexed dentist, but the money proves surprisingly elusive. Storms and company pursue the metal briefcase containing the cash until the two companions meet untimely ends; Serge suffocates Sharon by spraying "Fix-A-Flat" into her lungs, and Coleman is later shot to death. The book has two meandering subplots which eventually tie in with the main plot. The first involves a pair of longtime buddies who are participating in their annual unsuccessful fishing trip. They spend a great deal of time reminiscing, and their stories lend an odd thoughtfulness to Dorsey's trigger-happy writing style (a thoughtfulness which would later apparently be shelved until Orange Crush). Without their knowledge, the briefcase of money is hidden in the trunk of their car. The second, slightly more comic, subplot deals with three bikeless bikers — Stinky, Ringworm and Cheese-Dick — who have been rejected from every biker group they have encountered and are on the down and out. They find an odd sort of niche as hired muscle in a retirement community, but are ultimately forced out by the community staff who want the seniors as miserable as possible. They spend the rest of the time yachting in a boat on loan from the retirement community's manager until they meet up with a deranged pervert who kills two of them (Cheese-Dick having died when accidentally shot with a flare gun). A number of minor characters (such as Bradley Xeno, the boat captain, and McJagger, the retirement community operator) make minor appearances in the following book, Hammerhead Ranch Motel.
888344	/m/03lzsc	The Passion of New Eve	Angela Carter	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 At the start of the novel, Evelyn, a male English professor is taking up a new post in a university in New York. His tribute to Tristessa de St Ange, the American silent movie star, on his last night in England is to be given fellatio by a girl he takes to see one of her films. He arrives in a dystopian New York, a city in its last stages of rotting death, overrun by huge rats and human emotions distilled to their most primeval. He becomes fascinated with Leilah, an exotic young African American night club dancer, and while they have a short relationship he makes no emotional link, seeing her only in terms of sex. He becomes repelled by her when she falls pregnant and abandons her to an abortion. Evelyn seeks out the clean, clear desert and is captured by a woman from the subterranean female city of Beulah and dragged across the sandscape to encounter Mother, a cruel mother goddess figure who fashioned herself with the surgeon's knife. She changes Evelyn into Eve, ironically the woman who he has always lusted after, and aims to impregnate him with a new Messiah, using his own sperm (harvested from him before the operation). The transformation from male to female, seems to be absolute as despite the fact that Eve struggles to learn to become the woman that her body is, from this point on she is referred to only in female pronouns. Eve, escapes but is enslaved by Zero, a cruel male cult leader and "poet" with only one eye and one leg&mdash;a half man who celebrates his degraded self. His harem are all passive, slavish "wives" who he whips unless they talk in grunts and honour their bedfellows, the pigs. Zero rapes Eve and makes her his newest wife. He then leads Eve on a search for the silent film star Tristessa, an embodiment of beauty, sorrow, and loneliness, whom he hates obsessively, because he believes Tristessa has made him infertile. Tristessa was Evelyn's first object of desire in his boyhood, and Eve has his own obsession with this figure. Zero leads his dungaree-clad harem to the glass palace of Tristessa and invades and decimates the beautiful, gothic pile, discovering Tristessa herself laid out in a room surrounded by waxwork effigies in coffins. However she is alive and only when Zero tracks her down to the top of one of the towers and cuts her thong do the gang discover that Tristessa is male. Upon discovering this, Zero and his wives create a mock-up wedding ceremony and marry the two, forcing Tristessa to rape Eve. Eve and Tristessa escape and spin the Zero and his harem to death in Tristessa's spinning glass palace and escape back into the desert where they imbibe each other's newly discovered sexuality, they fall in love through their realisation that they are Tiresias until Tristessa is shot by a passing band of desert, mafia, teenage boys. Their Colonel is 14 years old and scared of the dark. They "rescue" Eve, but she escapes and encounters Leila in a new guise of Lilith, vagabond rebel leader. Lilith takes Eve to the coast to meet with Mother again, here they see a crazy old lady on a beach&mdash;a manifestation of ageing superficiality: dirty, caked in make-up, with piled high golden locks, singing old musical songs and living on vodka and cold tinned food and defecating in the bushes behind her deck chair. Eve realises that Leilah never objectively existed but was only a manifestation of his own lusts and corruption. Lilith tells Eve she must go and meet The Mother and pushes her into a cleft in the rocks that metamorphoses into the uterus of time. Eve progresses through the increasingly deep and warm subterranean rock pools to her rebirth. The amber Eve discovers in one of the caves and holds in her hands liquifies into ancient pine forests and primeval species. Eve is then symbolically reborn, guided by Leilah, and rejects her chauvinistic male past. Eve emerges onto a beach by Lilith, (name taken from the apocryphal story of Adam's first wife) who leaves her to go back and fight with her rebels, saying Eve cannot join her because she is pregnant. Eve swaps the gold alchemical on a neck chain that Lilith has given her for the purple skiff belonging to the crazed old woman and launches herself into the ocean.
889073	/m/03m151	Middlesex	Jeffrey Eugenides	2002-10-07	{"/m/02qg536": "Transgender and transsexual fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel starts with a narration by its protagonist, Cal (his masculine identity), also known as Calliope (feminine): He recounts how 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, a recessive condition, causes him to be born with female characteristics. The book continues with accounts of his family's history, starting with his paternal grandparents in their home village and ending with his father's funeral. These accounts cover the conception of Cal, his teenage years, and the discovery of his intersex condition. Throughout the book, Cal weaves his opinion of the events in hindsight and of his life after his father's funeral. Eugenides sets Middlesex in the 20th century and interjects historical elements, such as the Balkan Wars, the Nation of Islam, the Watergate scandal, and the 1967 Detroit riot in the story. The accounts of Cal's family history start from 1922. His grandfather, Eleutherios "Lefty" Stephanides, lives in Bithynios, a village in Asia Minor. Eugenides places the village high on the slope of Mount Olympos, above the city of Bursa, and describes incestuous marriages between cousins as a quietly accepted custom among the villagers. Lefty makes a living selling silkworm cocoons harvested by his sister, Desdemona. The siblings are orphans; their parents are victims of the ongoing Greco-Turkish War. As the war progresses, Lefty and Desdemona develop a romantic relationship. Fleeing the chaos brought by the war, they board a ship amid the Great Fire of Smyrna and set sail for the United States. Their histories unknown to the other passengers, they marry each other on board the vessel. After arriving in New York, they locate their cousin, Sourmelina "Lina" Zizmo, in Detroit, Michigan, and stay with her. Lina is a closeted lesbian and the only person there to know of the siblings' incestuous relationship. Starting a new life, Lefty takes on a job at Ford Motor Company, but is later retrenched. He unknowingly joins Lina's husband, Jimmy, in bootlegging. Desdemona gives birth to a son, Milton, and later a daughter, Zoe. Lina gives birth to a daughter, Theodora or "Tessie". The relationship between Lefty and Desdemona declines after she learns that there is an increased chance of genetic disease for children born from incest. In 1924, after Milton's birth, Lefty opens a bar and gambling room, calling it the Zebra Room. Milton and Tessie marry in 1946. They have two children, Chapter&nbsp;ElevenBecause his brother drives the family business into bankruptcy, Cal refers to him by a specific portion of the US bankruptcy law. and Calliope ("Callie"). Prior to Callie's birth, Desdemona predicts the child to be a boy, although the parents prepare for a girl. Chapter Eleven is a biologically "normal" boy; however, Callie is intersex. Her family members are unaware of her situation for many years, so they raise Callie as a girl. After the 1967 Detroit riot, the family moves to a house on Middlesex Boulevard, Grosse Pointe. When she is 14 years old, Callie falls in love with her female best friend, whom Callie refers to as the "Obscure Object".A reference to the 1977&nbsp;film That Obscure Object of Desire directed by Luis Buñuel In separate encounters, Callie has her first sexual experiences with a woman, the Obscure Object, and with a man, the Obscure Object's brother. After Callie is injured by a tractor, a doctor discovers that she is intersex. She is taken to a clinic in New York and undergoes a series of tests and examinations. After learning about the syndrome and facing the prospect of sex reassignment surgery, Callie runs away and assumes a male identity as Cal. He hitchhikes cross-country and reaches San Francisco, where he joins a burlesque show. Cal is arrested by the police during a raid on his workplace. He is released into Chapter&nbsp;Eleven's custody and learns of their father's death. The siblings return to their family home on Middlesex. In a private moment, Desdemona recognizes Cal's condition, associating it with stories from her old village about children born of incest. She confesses to Cal that her husband, Lefty, is also her brother. As Milton's funeral takes place at the church, Cal stands in the doorway of his family home, assuming the male-only role in Greek traditions to keep his father's spirit from re-entering the family home. Several years later, Cal becomes a diplomat stationed in Berlin. He meets Julie Kikuchi, a Japanese-American woman, and tentatively starts a relationship with her.
889164	/m/03m1d4	The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas	Gertrude Stein	1933	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Alice B. Toklas, as narrator of the work, says she was born into an affluent family in San Francisco. Later she met Gertrude Stein's mother during the San Francisco fires and finally decided to move to Paris in 1907. Alice talks about the important role of Helene, Gertrude's housemaid, in their household in Paris. She mentions preparations for an art exhibition. She discusses Picasso and his mistress Fernande. The couple break up and Fernande moves to Montparnasse to teach French. Alice and Gertrude visit her there. Alice tells of Gertrude and her brother Leo Stein buying paintings by Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse from Ambroise Vollard. They subsequently all become friends. She next discusses spending the summer with Gertrude in Fiesole while Picasso goes to Spain. Back in France, Gertrude falls out with Guillaume Apollinaire. Later, Picasso has an argument with Matisse. Alice tells how Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, then moved to Vienna, Passy, and finally New York City and California. She attended Radcliffe College, where she was taught by William James. She decided to study for a Master's degree at Johns Hopkins University but dropped out because she was bored, then moved to London and was bored there too, returned to America, and eventually settled in Paris. Alice tells stories about Matisse, Apollinaire, and many other Cubist artists. She recounts holidays in Italy and Spain with Gertrude. Finally, they move to England on the eve of the First World War to meet with Gertrude's editor, leaving Mildred Aldrich alone in Paris. Gertrude and Alice begin the war years in England, then go briefly to France to rescue Gertrude's writings. They then live in Spain for a while and eventually move back to France. There, they do volunteer work for the American Fund for the French Wounded driving around France to help the wounded and homeless. By the end of the war, Paris seems changed. Alice tells of Gertrude's argument with T. S. Eliot after he finds one of her writings inappropriate. She talks about her friendship with Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, who helped with the publication of The Making of Americans. They the couple make friends with a coterie of Russian artists, but they constitute no artistic movement. Later, Gertrude gives a lecture at Oxford University. Alice then mentions more parties with artists. Later, they abridge The Making of Americans to four hundred pages for commercial reasons and devise the idea of authoring an autobiography.
889951	/m/03m3dd	1982, Janine	Alasdair Gray	1984-10-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is narrated by Jock McLeish, a supervisor of the installation of alarm systems. Divorced, alcoholic and approaching fifty, his problems coalesce in a long night of the soul in a hotel room in Greenock. McLeish attempts to spend the night assembling an intricate pornographic fantasy. His cast of characters includes: Janine, based on a childhood memory of Jane Russell in The Outlaw; Superb (short for Superbitch); and Big Momma, an obese lesbian. All of these are submitted to sadomasochistic practices, parts of which are described at some length. However, McLeish constantly returns to reminiscences of his previous life and lovers. These prompt his attempted suicide. Chapter 11 of the novel is a typographical explosion, with the text splitting into several parallel voices on each page (including that of God). The crisis concludes with McLeish vomiting up the pills which he had hoped would kill him, and facing the truth of his actions as morning dawns.
890100	/m/03m3r6	Firewall	Henning Mankell	2002	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A series of bizarre incidents sweep across Sweden: a man dies in front of an ATM, two young women slaughter an elderly taxi driver, a murder is committed aboard a Baltic Sea ferry, and a sub-station engineer makes a gruesome discovery while investigating the cause of a nationwide power cut. As Wallander investigates, he uncovers a sinister plan to bring the Western world to its knees. The major background theme around which the action takes place is the dilemma of the Western economic system versus poverty. The criminal mastermind is a persuasive and talented IT specialist who plans to right the wrongs of the world by "deleting" vast quantities of money from multinational banks' accounts system, so bringing on a credit and financial panic. The criminals believe their intended cybercrime is justified; for them the "big picture" involves the sacrifice of the banking system in order to wipe out third world debt. At a crucial moment Wallander unwittingly manages to persuade a key accomplice that, ethically, there is in fact no "big picture," that instead we just have lives that are fragile but also "miraculous". That this major issue of our times should feature in a detective novel shows that it is not merely about detection, yet Wallander's answer just repeats the very old idea of caring for one's proximate neighbours in the here and now.
890626	/m/03m5bl	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time	Mark Haddon	2003	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Christopher, a fifteen-year-old boy with an autistic spectrum condition, lives with his father; he explains that his mother, Judy, died two years ago. He discovers the dead body of Wellington, the neighbour's dog, speared by a garden fork. Mrs Shears, Wellington's owner, calls the police, and Christopher comes under suspicion. When a policeman touches him, he hits the policeman, and is arrested, then released with a caution. He decides to investigate the dog's death, despite his father's orders to stay out of other people's business. However, he is severely limited by his fears and difficulties when interpreting the world around him. Throughout his adventures, Christopher records his experiences in a book: a "murder mystery novel". During his investigation, Christopher meets people whom he has never before encountered, even though they live on the same street, including the elderly Mrs Alexander, who informs Christopher that his mother had an affair with Mr Shears and had been with him for a long time. Ed, his father, discovers the book and confiscates it from Christopher, after a brief fight between them. While searching for the confiscated book, Christopher uncovers a trove of letters which his mother wrote to him, dated after her supposed death, which his father has also hidden. He is so shocked by his father lying about his mother's death that he is unable to move, curls up on the bed, vomits and groans for several hours until his father returns home. Ed realises that Christopher has read the letters and cleans him up. He then confesses that he had indeed lied about Judy's death and also that it was he who killed Wellington, stating that it was a mistake resulting from his anger after a heated argument with Mrs Shears. Christopher, having lost all trust in his father and fearing that Ed may try to kill him since he had already killed the dog, runs away. Guided by his mother's address from the letters, he embarks on an adventurous trip to London, where his mother lives with Mr Shears. After a long and event-filled journey, evading policemen, and feeling ill from the overwhelmingly large amount of information and stimuli from the trains and crowds around him, he finally finds his way to his mother and Mr Shears' home, and waits outside until they arrive. Judy is delighted that Christopher has come to her; she cannot believe that Ed would tell Christopher that she was dead. Mr Shears does not want Christopher living with them and never did. Moreover, very soon after arriving, Christopher wants to return to Swindon in order to take his mathematics A-level. His mother leaves Mr Shears, their relationship having broken down because of the conflict and his rejection of Christopher. Judy then moves into a rented room in Swindon, and after an argument with Ed, agrees to let Ed meet Christopher for daily brief visits. However, Christopher remains terrified of his father and makes repeated attempts to prevent him from talking. He hopes Ed will be imprisoned for killing Wellington. The story ends with Ed getting Christopher a pet dog, and promising that he will rebuild trust with Christopher slowly, "no matter how long it takes". Christopher asserts that he will take further A-level exams and attend university. He completes his first mathematics A-level with top grades and, despite previously wanting to be an astronaut, his ultimate goal is to become a scientist. The book ends with Christopher optimistic about his future, having solved the mystery of the murdered dog, gone to London on his own, found his mother, written a book about his adventures, and achieved an A* in his A-level maths exam. Christopher goes on to live with his mother, and occasionally visits his father's house.
891623	/m/03m83c	Ella Enchanted	Gail Carson Levine	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At birth, Ella of Frell is given the gift of obedience by the well-meaning but misguided fairy Lucinda. As a result, she cannot disobey a direct order given to her, though her mother Lady Eleanor and the family's cook Mandy protect Ella throughout her childhood. Ella is close to her mother and they share the same free-spirited nature, but when Ella is nearly fifteen, Eleanor dies. At Eleanor's funeral, Ella meets and befriends Charmont (Char), the Prince of Kyrria. Not long afterward, Ella's father Sir Peter sends Ella off to finishing school with Hattie and Olive, the daughters of the wealthy Dame Olga. However, Hattie soon discovers that Ella is unable to disobey direct orders and she takes advantage of Ella. At school, Ella becomes friends with Areida, a girl from the neighboring country Ayortha. When Hattie orders Ella to stop being friends with Areida, Ella runs away and learns that her father is attending a giant's wedding. After various misadventures, she finds Lucinda at the wedding and tries to presuade her to take back her gift. Instead, Lucinda misunderstands and orders Ella to be happy with her gift. Upon returning home, Mandy reverses the order upon Ella. After failing to find a rich husband for Ella, Sir Peter decides to marry Dame Olga in order to pay off his debts. Ella renews her friendship with Char at the wedding and they begin writing to each other frequently after Char leaves on a diplomatic mission to Ayortha. When Sir Peter leaves to continue his business, Dame Olga and her daughters quickly reduce Ella to being an obedient servant their home. Ella and Char fall in love through their letters, but Ella rejects him when she realizes her gift of obedience could be used to harm him. She tricks Char into thinking she has eloped with another man, leaving Char heartbroken. When Char returns to Kyrria, a three-night homecoming ball is held in his honor. Ella, who still loves him, goes to the ball in disguise with help from Mandy and Lucinda, who now realizes the terrible nature of her gifts. On the third night of the ball, when she is dancing with Char, a jealous Hattie unmasks Ella, forcing her to flee. Returning to the manor, she and Mandy attempt to run away, but are thwarted by Char's arrival. Char unwittingly orders Ella to marry him, causing Ella to will herself to defy the order out of her desire to protect him and the kingdom from her curse. Her unselfish desire allows her to succeed and refuse his proposal. Free from the spell, she accepts Char's hand in marriage because she wants to, and they live happily ever after.
891651	/m/03m86q	The Blue Flowers	Raymond Queneau	1965	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Duke of Auge dreams that he is Cidrolin, living on a barge alone with his daughter, while Cidrolin dreams that he is the Duke of Auge, travelling through the history of France. They will meet in 1964. Carl Reinecke, a critic writing for the London Times, has argued that this novel is an example of the archetypal "prodigal son" storyline. de:Die blauen Blumen fr:Les Fleurs bleues it:I fiori blu ka:ლურჯი ყვავილები (რომანი)
891666	/m/03m895	Romance of Atlantis			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Atlantis is ruled by the beautiful and intelligent Empress Salustra. The fate of the Empire will be decided by an arranged marriage with the ruler of a less advanced, semi-barbarian northern kingdom, as the advanced technology of Atlantis is powerless against strange environmental and ecological disasters.
893047	/m/03mdy2	The Vampire Armand	Anne Rice	1998-10-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 With Lestat still in slumber after his adventures in Memnoch the Devil, the vampire coven is united around the "brat prince" (a nickname for Lestat given by Marius), and the vampire David Talbot takes the opportunity to request that Armand tell David his life story. Armand, who first appeared in Interview with the Vampire, agrees to tell his tale. Born somewhere in the eastern European state of Kiev in the late 15th century, Armand (at this time called Andrei) becomes an icon painter in a monastery. He is forcefully taken out of this life of prayer and devotion by slave traders, who take him to Constantinople and then to Venice, where he is destined to work in a brothel. Soon after his arrival in Venice he is purchased by the vampire Marius de Romanus (whose life story is told in Blood and Gold), who names him Amadeo. In Venice, Marius lives the extravagant life of a respected Renaissance painter, and mentors many boys who serve as his apprentices. Marius provides his apprentices with education, shelter, food, and he assists them in finding respectable positions once they are grown. Life in Marius' villa is a stark contrast to the poverty, hunger and disease described elsewhere in the city. Over time, Amadeo's relationship to Marius develops and they become much closer than Marius is with any of the other boys. In addition to developing a sexual relationship, Amadeo sleeps in Marius' bed, is privy to special privileges, and becomes something of a 'head boy' in the household. Still, Marius maintains strict control over Amadeo, and expects industriousness from him in all things. When Amadeo comes of age (the book is not specific, but he is most likely 15 or 16 at this point), Marius begins Amadeo's education in sexuality and coupling. He takes Amadeo to a brothel, where Amadeo remains for several days. Amadeo later visits a male brothel for several days, and while there makes several observations about the difference in sexual activities with the different genders. There is a distinct bisexuality to Amadeo's nature, as he enjoys activity with either sex. He later has a brief affair with an Englishman called Lord Harlech. Harlech becomes obsessed with Amadeo, but his love is not returned. During this period, Amadeo also befriends Bianca Solderini, a wealthy debutante and courtesan whose primary role in life seems to be to throw nightly parties. Amadeo ultimately seduces the willing Bianca. Marius eventually divulges his vampire nature to Amadeo, who almost immediately begins asking to be made a vampire. Marius shows Amadeo some of what it means to be immortal, and allows him to join him in the hunt on several occasions. He tells Amadeo that they must always focus on killing evildoers. They assist Bianca by murdering her kinsmen who force her to poison those they have borrowed money from. Eventually, on a night when Marius is out of the country, Lord Harlech breaks into Marius's palazzo and attacks Amadeo, murdering two apprentices in the process. Amadeo kills Harlech, but not before the Englishman wounds him with a poisoned sword. Amadeo falls critically ill, and over several days falls into fever and delusions. Upon returning and finding Amadeo on his deathbed, Marius heals Amadeo's external wounds, cleans and grooms him, then gives him the Dark Gift, turning him into a vampire. Marius sets out to train Amadeo, and sets up a coffin in a secret basement with his own. Marius retains high expectations of Amadeo, and forces him to continue his education in the arts. Amadeo's transition to vampire is relatively easy for him, although the Dark Gift brings about nightmares of his childhood. Marius and Amadeo return to Russia, where Amadeo visits his old school and home. He finds his elderly mother and father there, reveals that he is alive, and says farewell to them, leaving them with all the money and jewels he has with him. This is generally a happy reunion, as Amadeo is able to let go of his mortal background and his parents are able to see that their beloved son is alive (so to speak) and thriving. Though this reunion allows Amadeo to let go of his mortal background, discovering that his father is alive (Amadeo believed he was dead) and a drunkard hurts him deeply. Shortly after returning to Venice, the vampire Santino and his coven (the "Children of Darkness") attack Marius' home, kidnap Amadeo and the apprentices, and burn the villa. Marius is burned and thought to be destroyed; his boys are taken to a bonfire that the coven has created and thrown in one by one as Amadeo watches. Santino spares Amadeo and educates him in the laws of the Coven. Amadeo later goes to Paris, changes his name to Armand, and creates his own coven under the Cimetière des Innocents, which Lestat would years later drastically impact thus resulting in the creation of the Théâtre des Vampires (featured in the earlier novel Interview with the Vampire). Armand also shares with David his version of some of the events recounted by Louis de Pointe du Lac in Interview with the Vampire: the end of the Théâtre des Vampires and the time that Armand and Louis shared together. The book also chronicles Armand's feelings about several of the major vampire characters from the previous books. It is also revealed that Armand thinks he saw Bianca in Paris in the 18th century, and has wondered ever since if Marius made her a vampire. In the final segment of the book, Armand explains what occurred to him after the final chapters of Memnoch the Devil. At the end of Memnoch the Devil, Armand rushes into the open daylight and appears to be destroyed in a conflagration. Armand explains to David that by some means beyond his understanding he survived, and ended up on a rooftop in a stairwell protected from further exposure to the sun. However, he is badly burned and unable to move or fully function. While in this delirious state, he makes a mental connection to two children in a nearby apartment - Sybelle and Benji. The connection is forged through Sybelle's constant piano playing. Eventually, Armand is able to reach out to the children and lead them to him. They believe he is an angel, but are moderately unsurprised when Armand divulges his true nature to them. Armand cannot hunt, so the two agree to trick a drug dealer up to the apartment so that Armand may feed on him. The plan works, and ultimately Armand is fully healed. He becomes friends with Sybelle and Benji and ultimately falls in love with them, showing to a certain degree a lolita complex. He shares his wealth with them without limit, mirroring the relationship Marius had with him to a certain degree. Armand brings them to see Lestat, which he has some concerns about since vampires are traditionally not safe for mortals to be around. After trying to wake Lestat from his catatonic state, Armand returns to Marius's house to discover that Marius has given Benji and Sybelle the Dark Gift. Armand is at first furious at Marius because he wanted Sybelle and Benji to have full, mortal lives. The fact that Benji is ecstatic about the prospect of eternal life, only serves to fuel his anger. Marius explains to Armand that he did it since Armand never could without the two coming to hate him for it. Marius is willing to take the burden of Sybelle and Benji's eventual anger.
893325	/m/03mfq8	The Dharma Bums	Jack Kerouac		{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ray Smith's story is driven by Japhy, whose penchant for the simple life and Zen Buddhism greatly influenced Kerouac on the eve of the sudden and unpredicted success of On the Road. The action shifts between the events of Smith and Ryder's "city life," such as three-day parties and enactments of the Buddhist "Yab-Yum" rituals, to the sublime and peaceful imagery where Kerouac seeks a type of transcendence. The novel concludes with a change in narrative style, with Kerouac working alone as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak (adjacent to Hozomeen Mountain), in what would soon be declared North Cascades National Park (see also Desolation Angels). These elements place The Dharma Bums at a critical junction foreshadowing the consciousness-probing works of several authors in the 1960s such as Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. One episode in the book features Smith, Ryder and Henry Morley (based on real-life friend John Montgomery) climbing Matterhorn Peak in California. It tells the story of Kerouac's first introduction to this type of mountaineering and would serve as inspiration for him to spend the following summer as a fire lookout for the United States Forest Service on Desolation Peak in Washington. The novel also gives an account of the legendary 1955 Six Gallery reading, where Allen Ginsberg gave a debut presentation of his poem "Howl" (changed to "Wail" in the book), and other authors such as Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, and Philip Whalen performed.
894061	/m/03mj1w	Even Cowgirls Get the Blues	Gus Van Sant		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sissy Hankshaw, the novel's protagonist, is a woman born with enormously large thumbs who considers her mutation a gift. The novel covers various topics, including "free love", drug use, political rebellion, animal rights, body odor, religion, and yams. Sissy capitalizes on the size of her thumbs by becoming a hitchhiker and subsequently travels to New York, United States (US). The character becomes a model for The Countess, a male homosexual tycoon of feminine hygiene products. The Tycoon introduces Sissy to a staid Mohawk named Julian Gitche, whom she later marries. In her later travels, she encounters, among many others, a sexually open cowgirl named Bonanza Jellybean and an itinerant escapee from a Japanese internment camp happily mislabeled The Chink. The Chink is presented as a hermetic mystic and at one point states "I believe in everything; nothing is sacred. I believe in nothing; everything is sacred. Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee." A flock of whooping cranes also makes frequent appearances throughout the novel which includes details of their physical characteristics and migratory patterns. Robbins also inserts himself into the novel (as a character) as well.
894760	/m/05h4f7m	Den Haag		2008-12-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Den Haag is the faction (fact+fiction) which is based on the historical fact of the Korean Empire's credential three secret delegates at the Second Peace Conference at The Hague (Den Haag in Dutch) in 1907. This story mingles three different incidents crossing time and space. In 1907, at The Hague, Yi Jun, one of the three delegates died a mysterious death. In 2007, in Seoul, a 10 year old child died from an ill-defined brain disease. These two stories are linked together through the letter to the Vatican sent by a veiled priest called 'Q' and his activities. This novel call our of today to account what is the historical meaning of Japan-Korea Forced Annexation a hundred years ago: Who am I, what left behind 'a time of Japanese forced occupation' to me of the present time, and in confronting such historical problems, how to eliminate the legacy of Japan’s colonial rule of Korea which have been restricting liberty and pride of Korean even now.
894970	/m/03mmm8	James and the Giant Peach	Roald Dahl	1961	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A boy named James Henry Trotter, 5 years old, lives with his loving parents in a pretty and bright cottage by the sea in the south of England. James's world is turned upside down when, while on a shopping trip in London, his mother and father are eaten by an escaped rhino. James is forced to live with his two cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge, who live in a run-down house on a high, desolate hill near the white cliffs of Dover. For three years Spiker and Sponge verbally and physically abuse James, not allowing him to venture beyond the hill or play with other children. Around the house James is treated as a drudge, beaten for hardly any reason, improperly fed, and forced to sleep on bare floorboards in the attic. One summer afternoon when he is crying in the bushes, James stumbles across a strange old man, who, mysteriously, knows all about James's plight and gives him a sack of tiny glowing-green crocodile tongues. The man promises that if James mixes the contents of the sack with a jug of water and ten hairs from his own head, the result will be a magic potion which, when drunk, will bring him happiness and great adventures. On the way back to the house, James trips and spills the sack onto the peach tree outside his home, which had previously never given fruit. The tree becomes enchanted through the tongues, and begins to blossom; indeed a certain peach grows to the size of a large house. The aunts discover this and make money off the giant peach while keeping James locked away. At night the aunts shove James outside to collect rubbish from the crowd, but instead he curiously ventures inside a juicy, fleshy tunnel which leads to the hollow stone in the middle of the cavernous fruit. Entering the stone, James discovers a band of rag-tag anthropomorphic insects, also transformed by the magic of the green tongues. James quickly befriends the insect inhabitants of the peach, who become central to the plot and James' companions in his adventure. The insects loathe the aunts and their hilltop home as much as James, and they were waiting for him to join them so they can escape together. The Centipede bites through the stem of the peach with his powerful jaws, releasing it from the tree, and it begins to roll down the hill, squashing Spiker and Sponge flat in its wake. Inside the stone the inhabitants cheer as they feel the peach rolling over the aunts. The peach rolls through villages, houses, and a famous chocolate factory before falling off the cliffs and into the sea. The peach floats in the English Channel, but quickly drifts away from civilization and into the expanses of the Atlantic Ocean. Hours later, not far from the Azores, the peach is attacked by a swarm of hundreds of sharks. Using the blind Earthworm as bait, the ever resourceful James and the other inhabitants of the peach lure over five hundred seagulls to the peach from the nearby islands. The seagulls are then tied to the broken stem of the fruit using spiderwebs from the Spider and strings of white silk from the Silkworm. The mass of seagulls lifts the undamaged giant peach into the air and away from the sharks. As the seagulls try to get away from the giant peach, they merely carry it higher and higher, and the seagulls take the giant peach great distances. The Centipede entertains with ribald dirges to Sponge and Spiker, but in his excitement he falls off the peach into the ocean and has to be rescued by James. That night, thousands of feet in the air, the giant peach floats through mountain-like, moonlit clouds. There the inhabitants of the peach see a group of magical ghost-like figures living within the clouds, "Cloud-Men", who control the weather. As the Cloud-Men gather up the cloud in their hands to form hailstones and snowballs to throw down to the world below, the loud-mouthed Centipede insults the Cloud-Men for making snowy weather in the summertime. Angered, an army of Cloud-Men appear from the cloud and pelt the giant peach with hail so fiercely and powerfully that the peach is severely damaged, with entire chunks taken out of it, and the giant fruit begins leaking its peach juice. All of this shrinks the peach somewhat, although because it is now lighter the seagulls are able to pull it quicker through the air. As the seagulls strain to get away from the Cloud-Men, the giant peach smashes through an unfinished rainbow the Cloud-Men were preparing for dawn, infuriating them even further. One Cloud-Man almost gets on the peach by climbing down the silken strings tied to the stem, but James asks the Centipede to bite through some of the strings. When he does a single freed seagull, to which the Cloud-Man is hanging from, is enough to carry him away from the peach as Cloud-Men are weightless. As the sun rises, the inhabitants of the giant peach see the glimmering skyscrapers of New York City peeking above the clouds. The people below see the giant peach suspended in the air by a swarm of hundreds of seagulls, and panic, believing it to be a floating, orange-coloured, spherical nuclear bomb. The military, police, fire, and rescue services are all called out, and people begin running to air raid shelters and subway stations, believing the city is about to be destroyed. A huge passenger jet flies past the giant peach, almost hitting it, and severing the silken strings between the seagulls and the peach. The seagulls free, the peach begins to fall to the ground, but it is saved when it is impaled upon the tip of the Empire State Building. The people on the 86th floor observation deck at first believe the inhabitants of the giant peach to be monsters or Martians, but when James appears from within the skewered peach and explains his story, the people hail James and his insect friends as heroes. They are given a welcoming home parade, and James gets what he wanted for three long years - playmates in the form of millions of potential new childhood friends. The skewered, battered remains of the giant peach are brought down to the streets by steeplejacks, where its delicious flesh is eaten up by ten thousand children, all now James's friends. Meanwhile, the peach's other former residents, the anthropomorphic insects, all go on to find very interesting futures in the world of humans. In the last chapter of the book, it is revealed that the giant hollowed-out stone which had once been at the center of the peach is now a mansion located in Central Park. James lives out the rest of his life in the giant peach stone, which becomes an open tourist attraction and the ever-friendly James has all the friends he has wanted.
895506	/m/03mnzx	Sphere	Michael Crichton	1987-05-12	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A group of scientists, including psychologist Norman Johnson, mathematician Harry Adams, biologist Beth Halpern, and astrophysicist Ted Fielding, along with U.S. Navy personnel, are dispatched to a deep sea habitat at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to explore a crashed spacecraft. To their surprise, they discover the spacecraft is not alien, but an American spacecraft constructed in the future and apparently sent through time, crashing 350 years before its creation. On further exploration, the team discovers a mysterious spherical artifact, clearly of extraterrestrial origin, which quickly becomes the focus of their attention. Harry becomes quite certain that, because the ship's future builders didn't seem to learn that their ship had already been discovered, the members of the team aren't likely to survive. At this point, a storm traps the scientists on the ocean floor without contact or support from the surface for over a week. The crew soon focuses on asking questions about the sphere and then on attempting to open it and learn about its nature, contents, and origin. Harry eventually succeeds in opening it and goes inside. Upon returning, he has a terrible headache and he remembers little about what happened inside or how he opened it. The scientists are eventually contacted by an intelligent, seemingly-friendly lifeform which calls itself Jerry, apparently from within the sphere. It first contacts them via a numeric code, which Harry translates. But while they struggle to communicate with Jerry, increasingly bizarre and deadly events occur, including the appearance of sea creatures that Beth claims don't exist. Jerry tells them he is "manifesting" the creatures. Members of the team start to die in various attacks by sea life, and the dwindling survivors struggle to placate the unthinkably powerful, childlike, and temperamental Jerry. Norman suddenly has an important role when he realizes he must use psychology to keep the surviving team (now only himself, Beth, and Harry) alive by placating Jerry. Translating the original code himself, though, Norman discovers that Jerry is actually Harry: by entering the sphere, Harry acquired the power to manifest his subconscious thoughts into reality. As Harry noted his childhood fears of squids and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, he has unconsciously created them as an enemy. Beth and Norman tranquilize Harry with a powerful mixture of sedatives and wait for contact to be re-established with the surface. However, although Harry is sedated, the manifestations continue. Beth accuses Norman of having entered the sphere and gaining access to the power. Though unable to recall this incident, Norman is close to yielding until he watches a security video of Beth entering the sphere herself. Concluding that Norman is a threat to her, Beth irrationally plants potent explosives around the spacecraft and habitat and then attempts to suffocate Norman with the habitat's climate systems. Norman escapes to the spacecraft and, figuring out at last how to open it, enters the sphere. Norman begins to ascend by himself in the submarine, but realizes that he could never leave the others to die. Now with the same power of thought as Harry and Beth, Norman fights Beth and brings both her and Harry to the escape submarine before the explosives destroy the site. Afterward, while in a surface decompression chamber, the three survivors ponder what to tell the Navy about what happened. Realizing they could not control the power, they decide to use the power to remove it from themselves and their memories simultaneously, replacing it with memories of a technical failure. Afterwards, as they mourn the colleagues lost to this scenario, Norman compliments Beth's appearance, saying that she looks lovely despite their hardship in the deep. Beth only smiles.
895736	/m/03mpgk	Triton	Samuel R. Delany	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel examines how Triton's freedoms and customs are perceived by the main characters, particularly Bron Helstrom, a young man who has previously worked on Mars as a male prostitute. The society of Mars is far harsher than that of Triton, and it has evidently influenced Bron's personality. He is self-absorbed, often lacks insight about himself and others, and has great difficulty with personal relationships. Though the civilization of Triton offers everything that he could reasonably want, he is unhappy with his life, out of harmony with those around him, and continually looking for others to blame whenever things go wrong. As the novel continues, political tensions between Triton and Earth lead to a destructive interplanetary war. This is mainly used as the backdrop for Bron's (ultimately disastrous) relationship with a brilliant young woman known as the Spike, but Delany speculates interestingly on how an interplanetary war might actually unfold.
896326	/m/03mr1c	Revelation Space	Alastair Reynolds	2000	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Revelation Space starts off with three seemingly unrelated narrative strands that eventually meet—and merge—as the novel progresses. This plot device is characteristic of many of Reynolds's works. The book opens in the year 2551 on Resurgam, a planet considered a backwater on the edge of colonized human space. Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist, leader of the colony, and wealthy scion of a prominent scientific family, leads a team excavating the remains of the Amarantin, a long-dead, 900,000-year-old civilization that once existed on Resurgam. As a violent dust storm threatens to temporarily shut down the excavation, Sylveste discovers new evidence that the entire Amarantin race achieved a much higher level of technological sophistication than was previously known, before they were wiped out in a single mysterious cataclysm. Next, the book jumps back to 2540, where most of the crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity are frozen for the journey to Yellowstone (in the Epsilon Eridani system) in order to find Sylveste. Because information is often decades old by the time it reaches other human settlements in a universe without faster-than-light travel, the crew does not realize it has been more than 15 years since Sylveste left Yellowstone to pursue archaeological work on Resurgam. The Nostalgia for Infinity is an ancient ship that once carried hundreds of thousands, but now its crew is only a handful of Ultras—highly modified humans adapted to the rigors of long interstellar spaceflight. And they're desperate to find Sylveste because their captain has been infected with the Melding Plague, a virus that attacks human cells and machine nanotechnology in equal measure, perverting them into grotesque combinations. It's believed that only the technological expertise of the Sylveste family can help cure the captain. Meanwhile, in 2524 in Chasm City, Yellowstone, professional assassin Ana Khouri is hired by a mysterious figure known as The Mademoiselle to infiltrate the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity as it reaches orbit around Yellowstone. Khouri's new employer knows the ship will follow Sylveste to the edge of human space in an attempt to find a cure for its captain, and gives Khouri explicit orders to kill Sylveste once the Nostalgia for Infinitys crew have found him. Using subterfuge, this new employer is able to arrange a meeting twenty years later between Khouri and one of the ship's triumvirs, Ilia Volyova, making it appear as though the meeting happened by chance. In 2566, after Khouri has successfully infiltrated the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity as the ship's new gunnery officer, the ship arrives in orbit around Resurgam. Desperate to secure Sylveste's expertise to help cure their captain, triumvirs Volyova, Sajaki and Hegazi demand the fledgling Resurgam civilisation turn Sylveste over to them. When the government of the small human colony baulks, Volyova reminds them of the power at the disposal of her massive ship by apparently wiping out one of the planet's settlements with a single discharge of the Infinitys weapons. Fearing the consequences of defying the Ultras for a second time, and knowing full well the starship is capable of destroying all human life on the planet, Resurgam's government hands over Sylveste, who travels to orbit accompanied by his wife, Pascale. Once aboard, however, Sylveste turns the tables—he informs the triumvirs that he has antimatter bombs hidden inside the implants in his artificial eyes. A detonation from one of those anti-matter bombs would be enough to destroy the Nostalgia for Infinity. Emboldened, Sylveste makes a deal with the crew—he will attempt to cure their captain in exchange for them using their ship to bring him closer to Cerberus, a planet near Resurgam that carried particular significance for the Amarantin civilisation. As Sylveste and the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity approach Cerberus, Sylveste realizes the massive celestial body isn't a planet at all—but rather, a massive technological beacon, aimed at alerting machine sentience to the appearance of new star-faring cultures. It is this beacon, Sylveste belatedly realises, that alerted a machine intelligence known as the Inhibitors to the presence of the Amarantin, and ultimately caused the demise of that race. The beacon begins to activate and Sylveste detonates the bombs in his eyes to destroy the facility.
896330	/m/03mr1s	Chasm City	Alastair Reynolds	2001	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Chasm City is framed and largely written in the voice of Tanner Mirabel, a security expert who has come to Chasm City to avenge the death of his former client's wife at the hands of a "postmortal" noble named Argent Reivich. Tanner arrives to find that Yellowstone, the most advanced civilization in human history, has descended into squalor; an alien nanotech virus known as the Melding Plague has wreaked havoc throughout the system. Chasm City, a dense forest of mile-high shapeshifting skyscrapers, has melted into a slum. The Glitter Band, a sparkling diorama of ten thousand orbital habitats, has been reduced to a "Rust Belt" of a few hundred survivors, mostly primitive and pre-nanotech antiques. In this chaos of plague and desolation, Tanner seeks his prey, only to discover that Reivich is more clever than he originally thought. In the midst of his hunt, he begins experiencing virus-induced flashbacks from the life of Sky Haussman, the founder of his home world, Sky's Edge, who is both revered and reviled for the crimes he committed for his people. From the depths of the gas plume at the heart of Chasm City, to the aristocratic canopy spanning what remains of the skyscrapers, Mirabel begins to unravel the mystery of the Melding Plague.
896334	/m/03mr2j	Diary	Chuck Palahniuk	2003-08-26	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Diary takes the form of a "coma diary" telling the story of Misty Marie Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. The story is not exactly told by Misty but through a third-person perspective instead. Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom, but now, after marrying her husband Peter while they were both still at school and then giving birth to their daughter shortly after, she is eventually brought back to Waytansea Island, a place that was once-quaint but is now tourist-overrun. Misty has been reduced to the lowly condition of a mere waitress within a common resort hotel. Peter, before falling into his coma, was building hidden rooms within the houses he was remodeling and scrawling vile messages all over the walls; this is an old habit of builders but it's been dramatically overdone in Peter's case. Angry homeowners are suing Misty left and right and her dreams of artistic greatness have been ruined. But then, as if she was possessed by the spirit of the fabled Waytansea artist Maura Kincaid, Misty begins painting again, excessively and compulsively. Misty discovers that the islanders, including her father-in-law (previously thought to be dead) are involved in a conspiracy which repeats every four generations. A young artist (in this case Misty) is lured to the island by an old piece of jewelry, she becomes pregnant and has her child within the community. It is implied that this old jewelry works to lure and entrap Misty because it was hers in a past life, during which these same events played out before. During middle age, her husband dies, followed by all her children, resulting in a wave of great artistic creativity, the product of which is mesmerizing to the observing audience. The islanders create an exhibition of Misty's art work at the local hotel where a fire is started by Misty's daughter, who is revealed to be alive after a previous point in the book when she was thought to have drowned, and all the hotel's occupants are burned to death due to their being mesmerized by her painting. The result is a huge insurance claim which leaves the remaining island citizens wealthy enough to support their luxuriant lifestyles for the next four generations, at which point a new young artist will be found to repeat the cycle. Peter, Misty's husband, attempted to warn her of this plot using his hidden writing and it is revealed that his suicide attempt was in fact a murder attempt. It is never revealed in the end whether Peter recovered from his coma, but from Misty's descriptions of his state of health, he more than likely died.
896543	/m/03mrtg	Only You Can Save Mankind	Terry Pratchett	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Twelve-year-old Johnny receives a pirate edition of the new video game Only You Can Save Mankind from his friend Wobbler. However, he hasn't been playing for long when the ScreeWee Empire surrenders to him. After accepting the surrender he finds himself inside the game in his dreams, where he must deal with the suspicious Gunnery Officer as well as the understanding Captain, and work out exactly what they're all supposed to do now. This might all be the result of an over-active imagination except that the ScreeWee have disappeared altogether from everyone else's copy of the game. With the help of another player, Kirsty, who calls herself "Sigourney" (as in Weaver), Johnny must try to get the ScreeWee home.
897058	/m/03ms_q	Johnny and the Dead	Terry Pratchett	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story starts with Johnny going through the cemetery as a shortcut to reach his home. His best friend, Wobbler, thinks it's spooky. In the cemetery, Johnny meets Alderman Thomas Bowler (one of the dead). Johnny then realizes that he can see, talk to, and hear the dead. Later, Johnny then meets all the dead and then Johnny and the gang (including the dead) are discussing the council's sale of Blackbury's neglected cemetery to a faceless conglomerate who plan to build offices on it. Various dead citizens, led by a former town counciller, ask Johnny, the only person who can see them, to help stop it. While Johnny, helped by his semi-believing friends, tries to find evidence of famous interees and speaks out at community meetings, the Dead begin to take an interest in the modern day, and realise they are not, as they believed, trapped in the cemetery. By the end of the book the council is forced to back down, but the Dead no longer care because the day of judgment comes. However, the town's living residents have, thanks to the campaigning of Blackbury volunteers, rediscovered the cemetery as a link to their past. As one of the Dead puts it "The living must remember, and the dead must forget."
899697	/m/03n1sv	Going After Cacciato	Tim O'Brien	1978-01	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Typical of many stories that deal with themes of psychological trauma, Going After Cacciato contains distinct ambiguities concerning the nature and order of events that occur, which often requires readers to look beyond superficial appearances conveyed by the narrator's language. Its chronology is nonlinear, for most of the book. The main idea of the story is, by O'Brien's estimation, that being a soldier in Vietnam for the standard tour of duty entails constant walking; if one were to put all the walking in a straight line, one would end up in Paris, where Cacciato is going. It is important to note that Cacciato is always portrayed as self-sufficient and happy. It is Cacciato who is pursued throughout the imagined story of the book. The final pages feature the juxtaposition of two statements, by Sarkin Aung Wan and Paul Berlin, which contrast the early American view (think Emerson and Thoreau) of independence and happiness against the modern view of obligations placed on the individual to conform to society. The obligations lead to complicity in atrocities. Cacciato marches to the beat of a different drum, and is freer and happier in a cavalier, ignorant kind of way. His actions are sometimes portrayed as those of a man who is not particularly bright or gifted, but who is sunnily untroubled by the larger questions of the war itself. Paul Berlin, the main character, is a frustrated soldier who during the entire novel focuses on every minor detail he encounters, whether in the past or in the would-be chase. In the chapter "Tunneling Toward Paris", the characters escape the endless tunnels by "falling out" just as they fell in; this allusion to Alice In Wonderland helps to reveal the story as surrealistic fiction. This surrealism in the novel also appears earlier in the novel when Cacciato flies off a mountain.
900622	/m/03n4q3	Vice Versa	Thomas Anstey Guthrie	1882	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Set in Victorian times, the novel concerns business man Paul Bultitude and his son Dick. Dick is about to leave home for a boarding school which is ruled by the cane wielding headmaster Dr. Grimstone. Bultitude, seeing his son's fear of going to the school, foolishly says that schooldays are the best years of a boy's life, and how he wished that he was the one so doing. At this point, thanks to a handy magic stone brought by an uncle from India which grants the possessor one wish, they are now on even terms. Dick, now holding the stone, is ordered by his father to turn him back into his own body, but Dick refuses, and decides instead to become his father, and so the fun begins. Mr. Bultitude has to begin the new academic term at his son's boarding school, while Dick gets a chance to run his father's business in the City. In the end, they are both restored to their own bodies, with a better understanding of each other.
901398	/m/03n75r	Memoirs of a Geisha	Arthur Golden	1997-09-23	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At the age of nine, Chiyo Sakamoto is taken from her poverty-stricken fishing village of Yoroido on the coast of the Sea of Japan with her older sister Satsu and sold to an okiya (geisha boarding house) in Gion, the most prominent geisha district in Kyoto. Satsu is not sold into the okiya with her and is instead forced into becoming a prostitute in Kyoto's pleasure district. Chiyo lives in the okiya alongside another young girl named Pumpkin, elderly and grumbling Granny, money-obsessed Mother and Auntie, a failed geisha. Also living in the okiya is the famous ill-mannered geisha Hatsumomo who promptly takes to disliking Chiyo, who she sees as a possible rival. Despite Pumpkin and Auntie's warnings, Chiyo plans to leave the okiya and escape the city with Satsu, but is caught when she falls off the roof and breaks her arm. Enraged at her for dishonoring the okiya, Mother stops investing in Chiyo and makes her pay off her increasing debts as a slave. Several years later, a downtrodden Chiyo is given money and a handkerchief in the street by a strange but kind man known at this point only as the Chairman. She donates the money to the Yasaka Shrine in Gion, praying to become a geisha in the hopes of seeing him again, keeping the handkerchief as a memento. Chiyo is envious of Pumpkin, who is on her way to becoming a geisha under Hatsumomo's tutelage, but soon after visiting the shrine, she is taken in as a protégé by Mameha, a rival of Hatsumomo and the owner of a kimono she previously made Chiyo ruin. Mameha persuades Mother to reinvest into Chiyo's training, and Chiyo adopts the new name of Sayuri, with Mameha acting as her "older sister" and mentor. Mameha mentions that despite Hatsumomo's popularity, she was in fact a failure due to once angering the mistress of her principal teahouse. As a result, she could never obtain a danna to sponsor her independence, which is why she has stayed in the okiya under Mother. Hatsumomo goes out of her way to destroy Sayuri by tarnishing her reputation in Gion, forcing Mameha and Sayuri to devise a plan to push Hatsumomo out of the Nitta okiya lest Sayuri's career ultimately die, and so arranges for her mizuage (portrayed as a deflowering "ceremony" for maiko as a step to becoming full-fledged geisha) to be bidden upon by several influential men, namely mentor Nobu Toshikazu, the president of Iwamura Electric; and reputed mizuage specialist "Dr. Crab", dubbed so by Sayuri due to his appearance. Unfortunately, Hatsumomo learns of the plan and tells Dr. Crab that Sayuri has already been deflowered. However, after gaining back the respect of Dr. Crab by convincing him that Hatsumomo is a known liar, he ultimately wins the bid for Sayuri's mizuage and she uses his payment to cover all of her fees. This leads Mother, who had already been considering adopting Pumpkin as her heiress, to adopt Sayuri instead, which ultimately destroys the two girls' friendship. This change enrages both Pumpkin and Hatsumomo for different reasons: Pumpkin was looking forward to the adoption so that she could have some kind of security in her old age, while Hatsumomo was looking forward to Pumpkin's adoption so she could secure her own position as head geisha. Hatsumomo's behaviour begins to worsen and she is eventually thrown out of the okiya, with Pumpkin leaving soon after. As it turns out, Dr. Crab was actually bidding against the Baron, Mameha's danna, for Sayuri's mizuage. The Baron had previously undressed Sayuri against her will at a party, which Mameha had warned against. Nobu instead bids to become Sayuri's danna, but loses out to General Tottori. At this time, Japan is on the brink of entering World War II and many Geisha are evacuated to other cities to work in factories, which require hard labor and are primary bomb targets. The General is demoted and is unable to use any influence to send Sayuri somewhere safer but Nobu, despite losing respect for Sayuri, is able to send her far north to live with Arashino, a kimono maker. At the end of the war, Nobu visits Sayuri and asks that she return to Gion to help entertain the new Deputy Minister Sato, whose aid can be instrumental in rebuilding Iwamura Electric, the company which the Chairman and Nobu run. Sayuri, Mameha and Pumpkin entertain the Minister together regularly and within time, Nobu formally begins proposals to become Sayuri's danna. Sayuri still maintains strong feelings for the Chairman and doesn't want Nobu to become her danna, so on a weekend trip to the Amami Islands with Iwamura Electric, she plans to seduce the Minister and be caught in humiliation by Nobu. She asks Pumpkin to bring Nobu to a theater while she is with the Minister. Pumpkin still harbors resentment towards Sayuri for being adopted by Mother and noticing her feelings towards the Chairman, purposely brings him to the theater instead. Nobu finds out about Sayuri and the Minister in any case and decides not to become her danna. Sayuri eventually meets the Chairman again and reveals that her acts in Amami were for personal reasons. He reveals to Sayuri that he had always had feelings towards her, despite her thinking he didn't, but explains that he felt it disrespectful to take away the woman his friend had showed so much interest in, especially considering Nobu had once saved the Chairman's life. Sayuri and the Chairman kiss, which she feels is her first kiss expressing true love. Sayuri eventually retires from being a geisha and the Chairman becomes her danna. It is revealed that they have an illegitimate son together. Foreseeing the consequences this could have regarding the inheritance of Iwamura Electric, she relocates to New York City in later life. Here she opens her own small teahouse for entertaining Japanese men on business in the United States, which Mother takes a financial interest in, but Sayuri severs her links to the Nitta okiya and in effect, Japan. The Chairman remains her danna until his death and the story concludes with a reflection on her life.
901697	/m/03n802	Blindness	José Saramago	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortunes of a handful of characters who are among the first to be stricken and centers on "the doctor's wife," her husband, several of his patients, and assorted others, thrown together by chance. This group bands together in a family-like unit to survive by their wits and by the unexplained good fortune that the doctor’s wife has escaped the blindness. The sudden onset and unexplained origin and nature of the blindness cause widespread panic, and the social order rapidly unravels as the government attempts to contain the apparent contagion and keep order via increasingly repressive and inept measures. The first part of the novel follows the experiences of the central characters in the filthy, overcrowded asylum where they and other blind people have been quarantined. Hygiene, living conditions, and morale degrade horrifically in a very short period, mirroring the society outside. Anxiety over the availability of food, caused by delivery irregularities, acts to undermine solidarity; and lack of organization prevents the internees from fairly distributing food or chores. Soldiers assigned to guard the asylum and look after the well-being of the internees become increasingly antipathetic as one soldier after another becomes infected. The military refuse to allow in basic medicines, so that a simple infection becomes deadly. Fearing a break out, soldiers shoot down a crowd of internees waiting upon food delivery. Conditions degenerate further, as an armed clique gains control over food deliveries, subjugating their fellow internees and exposing them to rape and deprivation. Faced with starvation, internees do battle and burn down the asylum, only to find that the army has abandoned the asylum, after which the protagonists join the throngs of nearly helpless blind people outside who wander the devastated city and fight one another to survive. The story then follows the doctor's wife, her husband, and their impromptu “family” as they attempt to survive outside, cared for largely by the doctor’s wife, who still sees (though she must hide this fact at first). The breakdown of society is near total. Law and order, social services, government, schools, etc., no longer function. Families have been separated and cannot find each other. People squat in abandoned buildings and scrounge for food; violence, disease, and despair threaten to overwhelm human coping. The doctor and his wife and their new “family” eventually make a permanent home and are establishing a new order to their lives when the blindness lifts from the city en masse just as suddenly and inexplicably as it struck.
901743	/m/03n86v	The Bat Man	Jo Nesbø	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story revolves around the Norwegian police officer Harry Hole, who is sent to Sydney by the Royal Norwegian Police Directorate to serve as the Norwegian attaché for the Australian police's investigation into the murder of a young female Norwegian B-celebrity, Inger Holter, who was residing in Australia. Initially trying to adapt to the great differences in time, temperatures, environment, and cultures of Oslo and Sydney, Harry is introduced to Andrew Kensington, an aboriginal and homicide detective for the Sydney police, his nominal partner in the investigation. Hole is informed that Holter's body was found dashed on coastal rocks just under some cliffs north of the city, and that the police believe that she was raped before her death. However, her body was severely cut during her fall from the cliffs, and any DNA remains from the assailant that would previously have been present are now washed away. At first, her boyfriend, Evans White is approached as a suspect. Andrew informs Harry that Evans immigrated to Australia with his divorced mother in the 1970's and eventually became a local drug lord in the town of Nimbin. Through their insertion into the drug world in Nimbin and their meeting with reluctant White, Harry grows confident that White is responsible for Holter's death. Harry and Andrew visit the Albury, the Sydney pub where Inger Holter worked as a bartender. While there, Harry meets the witness Birgitta Enquist -- a Swede -- and unprofessionally but successfully asks her on a date. Andrew takes Harry to a local boxing tournament in a small town, organized by the Jim Chivers boxing team. Harry is introduced to Robin Toowoomba after the match, the match champion and protege of Andrew. Harry's investigation under chief inspector Larry Wadkins, a keen, but arrogant man, turns to data analysis of rape victim records in New South Wales, specifically with respect to white, blond-haired strangle victims. No culprit is identified, however, the team discovers a string of rape cases fitting those parameters which leads back years. In the process of attempting to interview a drug lord in Sydney, Harry ends up in a visceral fight. Andrew comes to his rescue, but receives a bad concussion in the brawl and is consequently hospitalized. Harry's growing suspicion that Otto Rechtnagel, a homosexual clown that frequented the Albury and knew Inger well, was responsible for her death based on his Circus's appearance near every location and time of the death of all of the blonde rape cases over the past years. He confronts Andrew with this information at the hospital, hoping to drag something out of him that might be useful for the impending police raid on the circus event to capture the clown, knowing that Andrew knew Rechtnagel well. Andrew desperately attempts to dissuade Harry from taking Rechtnagel, suggesting it is a matter of life or death. Just as Rechtnagel's act ends and he leaves the stage, Harry and his associates search the backstage, but cannot find the man. They search everywhere until they find his dismembered body in the steaming shower room. With Rechtnagel's death, Harry works under the assumption that his killer was associated with the rape cases but that the clown could still have been the serial rapist/killer and that his alleged homosexuality was only a cover for his true hetero/bisexual tendencies. The day after the murder, Harry and another associate Sergei Lebie discover Andrew's body hanging from the electrical cord of a ceiling light in his apartment. Harry also discovers a small stash of used and unused syringes for heroin injection in the apartment, but conceals this from Lebie. With this discovery, Harry interviews Evans again, only to find out that Andrew was one of his clients, but that he had established a respectable reputation for buying small doses at a constant rate and for always being able to pay. Harry interviews a prostitute -- whose pimp Andrew introduced him to -- back at his hotel room under the pretense of wanting to have sex with her. Breaking down and having reverted to his unrestrained alcoholism, Harry poorly mismanages the situation when Birgitta attempts to surprise him by coming by. Finding him drunk, naked, and with a prostitute, she storms out, giving Harry reason to believe that their 'relationship' is over. The next morning, the hungover Harry is expelled from the hotel for the noise made during the argument and his resulting rampage against the objects in the hotel room, however, the ultimate cause lay with letting a prostitute into his room. For several days, Harry wanders about the city and tries to act out detective while continually debilitated by his heavy intoxication. He is consequently kicked out from night clubs where he tries to pry information out of strongmen in the Sydney underworld. Finally recovered from his binge, Harry contacts Birgitta. Under Harry's urging, Birgitta offers to bait Evans by offering to meet him to buy dope. The plan is for her to press him to reveal information about the murders by threatening to go to the police with hearsay information she had allegedly obtained from Inger. The operation falls apart when Birgitta disappears and the police are incapable of tracking down Evans in the vicinity of the planned meeting point or of the place that they last had contact with her. Harry later interrogates Evans once the police finds him back in Nimbin. He claims that he was immediately suspicious of Enquist, and that she failed to meet him at the time and place agreed upon. Harry still doubts White. Through another meeting, the prostitute reveals to Harry that Toowoomba was a client of hers and that he had frequently requested her to service him while wearing a blond wig. He had also mock-strangled her. Harry confronts Toowoomba over the phone, who coldly admits to having committed all of the crimes. Toowoomba had for a time been in a relationship with Rechtnagel and the poor clown had eventually discovered his evil antics. Given Andrew's hopes for Toowoomba's career, Andrew had attempted to partially lead Harry off track until he was sent back to Norway. Once it became clear that Otto would spill the beans to the police, he became a loose end for Toowoomba. Harry and the police break into Toowoomba's apartment. Although they cannot find Birgitta there, they find a picture of a sailboat and discover a sailboat registered to Toowoomba in Sydney. The sailboat is empty, but they find Birgitta's body chained to the bottom of the docks. All hell breaks loose when Harry and the police pursue Toowoomba to the Sydney Aquarium. There, Toowoomba nearly escapes on the roof, but Harry coldly shoots the man once in the leg and once in the back. He falls into the tank containing a large predatory fish that wrenches his body to the bottom.
901778	/m/03n8bd	The Redbreast	Jo Nesbø	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel begins with a reference to a fable about how the robin first got the red feathers on its breast, when one of their number removed a thorn from the brow of the "crucified one" and drops of blood landed on the breast of the small bird. The timeline of the novel moves forwards and backwards from the Nazi-led Norwegian front against the Soviet army in late 1944 to the modern day, culminating on 17 May 2000, during the first half of the novel. However, once most of the WWII back story has been told, the novel concentrates on the modern day events. President Bill Clinton comes to Norway for a Middle Eastern Peace Conference with Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak. Policeman, Harry Hole is assigned to security detail and mistakes a Secret Service agent in a toll booth for an assassin. He shoots the Secret Service agent - who is wounded but survives due to wearing a bullet-proof jacket - but the event is later covered up and Harry is promoted to the rank of Inspector. In reality, there had been no such Middle East Summit in Oslo in October 1999. While back in 1993 Norway had a major role in launching the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Agreements, by 1999 the Norwegian role had been sidelined by the US. In fact, Clinton had invited Arafat and Barak to the ill-fated 2000 Camp David Summit which was held in the US with no Norwegian involvement. The Nazi occupation of Norway is entering the final stages, though none of the Norwegian soldiers fighting on the German side are willing to accept that this is the case. During the Siege of Leningrad a small group of Norwegian Waffen SS volunteers who have been together for some time are manning trenches just a short distance from the Western limits of the Soviet army. Details of their lives are given, mostly in conversation between the soldiers. One of their number, a man called Daniel Gudeson, claims to have shot a Russian sniper in no man's land and goes into no man's land to bury him. This endears him to some of his colleagues, but causes others to dislike him. However, at the point of midnight on New Years' Eve, when Daniel - on watch with one of his colleagues - stands up to celebrate the New Year, he is shot through the head and killed. His body and face are covered up and he is laid to wait for a burial committee who take the body away later that day. On the same night, another soldier, Sindre Fauke, disappears and is reported by his Watch colleague to have defected to the Russians. Oddly, a couple of days later a body appears in the trench, covered and waiting for the burial committee. When the soldiers investigate, it is the body of Daniel Gudeson which was known to have been removed earlier. This mystery remains unexplained until the climax of the novel. A hand grenade lands in the trench and explodes, and, although the soldiers survive, they are wounded and hospitalised. Taken to a hospital in Vienna, one, who calls himself Uriah, falls in love with a nurse, who is being blackmailed by her supervisor. They elope, but are forced to return when they realize that they do not have the papers required to go to their initial destination; Paris. Their love somehow survives the war, but they are separated and eventually will live separate lives. New Inspector, Harry Hole investigates a crime in which a very expensive Märklin rifle has been purchased and is being tested. In addition, a group of Neo-Nazis is suspected of plotting trouble, one member of which - Sverre Olsen - has recently had a trial against them collapse on a legal technicality, Harry himself having been involved in the investigation. An elderly drunk is found murdered, his throat having been slit with almost surgical precision at the back of a bar where the Neo-Nazis are known to congregate. During the investigation, a man known only as "the Prince" is mentioned and Harry and his colleague, Ellen Gjelten, try to find out the identity of the Prince. Harry, meanwhile, has met a work colleague called Rakel with whom he has become infatuated. At a work party, he and Rakel talk openly and it becomes obvious that they are interested in each other. However, Rakel does not take the matter further as she is concerned by a custody battle of her son, Oleg, who is wanted by his Russian father, a matter that has actually been orchestrated by Rakel's superior who also wants to sleep with her. Ellen, meanwhile, accidentally discovers the identity of the Prince, tries to call Harry, but fails to get through. She leaves a message on his answer phone but crucially neglects to name the Prince himself. On the way to her boyfriend's flat she is beaten to death with a baseball bat. Her murderer, Sverre Olsen, is soon discovered by Harry and his new assistant, Halvorsen. However, when they prepare to arrest him, they discover that another senior Inspector, Tom Waaler, has tried to do so. Apparently, Olsen tried to shoot Waaler, prompting Waaler to kill Olsen in self defence. Harry's only link to the Prince has been lost. Nevertheless, the murder of Rakel's superior - shot with the Märklin rifle at close range, along with an elderly woman - Signe Juul, the wife of a friend, also shot with the rifle - leads Harry to investigate the events of the Norwegian/Nazi collaborators, many of whom were imprisoned after the war as traitors. He is also led to follow a lead that suggests that the murderer has a split personality and that one personality is doing the killings - possibly without the knowledge of the other, such as in the story The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde As Rakel's father tells Harry that Signe Juul's husband, Even, was obsessed with Daniel Gudeson, other clues lead Harry to believe that he has discovered the murderer: Even Juul. However, when he goes to arrest Even Juul, he discovers that Even has apparently committed suicide, and Harry believes that Even discovered that his "other personality", Daniel Gudeson, had been committing the murders and that he had committed suicide in order to stop Daniel. However, Harry realises that he was wrong when he stumbles across the journal of the actual murderer. He sees that the split personality route of his investigation was correct, but the murderer is not Even Juul. The murderer is obsessed with revenge after believing that the Norwegian Royal Family had betrayed the country by fleeing to England during the Nazi occupation, and then later condemning those who fought for the Nazis during the war. The murderer also reveals the details behind the mysterious reappearance of Daniel Gudeson's body in the trenches during the war and the truth behind the defection of Sindre Fauke. Finally, the murderer makes it clear in his journal that he intends to assassinate the Crown Prince of Norway at the Norwegian Constitution Day celebrations later that day (17 May). Harry rushes to prevent the assassination, managing to stop the attempt at almost the last second in a hotel room. To keep the assassination attempt out of the press - and to prevent any problems for the assassin's surviving family - Harry's success is covered up, much as his actions at the start of the book were. The true identity of the Prince is revealed during the novel, although not to Harry, and the Prince continues to be a thorn in Harry's side in later books. In effect, this major theme makes the present book and the following two, "Nemesis" and "The Devil's Star", into a distinct 'trilogy' within the larger Harry Hole series. The book has major implications for the series in introducing Rakel, who would become the great love of Harry's life, and her son Oleg who would come to regard Harry as his father, rather than his biological father in Russia from whom Rakel separeated long ago, and to whom Harry would for his part become deeply attached. The ups and downs of Harry's relationship with Rakel would become a major theme in later books, often impacting substantially on the murder mysteries he investigates. In one of the book's subplots, Harry travels to South Africa to meet a dealer in clandestine arms, a white South African who is imprisoned and faces the death punishment for having killed two young black girls at a black township. The man is willing to provide vital information in exchange for Norway - which is on very good terms with South Africa's post-Apartheid government - bringing diplomatic pressure to bear on his behalf. Harry - who is nauseated by the man's manifest racism and whose entire investigation is concerned with the dark deeds of young neo-Nazis and old Nazi collaborators in Norway itself - takes the information but fails to keep his side of the deal. At the end of the book Harry gets a phone call from a black South African policeman which he befriended, telling that the arms dealer had been sentenced to death with no possibility of reprieve and thanking Harry for not having done anything to impede this outcome. In fact, the above is contrary to the actual situation of post-Apartheid South Africa. Capital punishment in South Africa had been suspended already in 1990 and definitely abolished in 1995, and the last execution carried out by a South African government had been in 1989. Thus, in reality the arms dealer would not have faced capital punishment in 1999.
901793	/m/03n8d4	The Devil's Star	Jo Nesbø	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Pursuing his suspicions during the Nemesis investigation, police inspector Harry Hole attempts to convince the Chief Inspector that his colleague, Tom Waaler is a smuggling kingpin known as the Prince, who has been involved in smuggling weapons into Oslo, as well as the murder of a number of witnesses (including Harry's former partner) who threaten his position. Due to a lack of evidence, the response is less than positive and Harry retreats onto an alcoholic binge. His superior reluctantly sends termination of employment papers to the Chief Inspector, but Harry gets a short reprieve as the Chief is on holiday for three weeks and cannot sign them. Meanwhile, a murder victim is discovered, dead in her shower on the fifth floor, shot in the head. Tom Waaler is appointed to lead the investigation, but Harry and his partner, Beate Lønn are attached to Waaler's team. Harry, investigating the murder scene, discovers a small, red five-pointed diamond under the eyelid of the victim and that a finger is missing from her left hand. Another murder is presumed when the director of a musical, My Fair Lady, reports that his wife has gone missing. Her finger is later sent to the National Criminal Investigation Service; it has a ring on it with a small, red five-pointed diamond. The director, Wilhelm Barli, is most upset, especially since his wife, Lisbeth, was due to take the lead in My Fair Lady, a role he later gives to his wife's sister. A few days later a third victim is found, this time in the female toilets at a local law firm. She is found on her hands and knees, with her head also on the floor and a five-pointed red diamond on the body. Yet again a finger has been removed. Meanwhile, Tom Waaler – who has heard about Harry's investigation of him – has offered Harry a position in his illegal dealings, especially as Harry's police career seems to be over. He informs Harry that, should he – Harry – wish to join, he will be given a specific task to prove his loyalty. Tom dangles the large financial benefits of his criminal activities as an inducement. Harry is initially confused as to why Waaler is effectively admitting his guilt, but is reminded that, as an alcoholic, Harry's evidence would not be sufficient to convict him if he went to his superiors. Harry agrees to think about the offer. A chance sighting of a pentagram brings Harry a flash of inspiration. The five-pointed diamonds found on the victims are in a similar shape – known as a Devil's Star – and Harry remembers having seen the same symbol at the murder scenes. The further significance of the pentagram soon becomes apparent to Harry, and provides a major clue as to the next possible murder locations, which are kept under surveillance. One is in a student residence hall and the other a house on the outskirts of the city, owned by Olaug Sivertsen. While investigating this house, Beate Lønn discovers that the likely murderer is Olaug's son, Sven. She informs Harry by phone as he and Tom Waaler are checking out the other prospective crime scene, the student residence. Harry lets the information slip to Waaler, who immediately leaves to assist Lønn. Harry, using recently installed CCTV cameras, notices another pentagram on a student's door. Eventually, the body of a fourth victim is found. Meanwhile, Tom Waaler apprehends Sven Sivertsen, although his threats to shoot him ultimately lead to the realisation by Lønn that he intended to murder Sven instead of arresting him. Now Harry is given his initiation task by Tom Waaler: get a confession from and then kill Sven Sivertsen in custody using poison. Waaler's influence is such that he apparently can guarantee Harry will get away with this. But Harry is persuaded by Sven that he is innocent of the crimes and, Instead of killing him, secretly removes him from the custody cells and goes into hiding. Harry is now a hunted man, his future in the police - and quite possibly his life - depending on his being able to prove Waaler's misdeeds. Sivertsen is willing to testify against Waaler, but his price is that Harry will exonerate him from the multiple murder charges he faces. Harry is faced with the daunting task of discovering and apprehending the true murderer in a single day. However, a clue is provided by a seemingly irrelevant photograph which Sivertsen shows Harry, and a very minute but precise piece of forensic evidence points to a completely unexpected perpetrator. Leaving Sivertsen chained up, Harry goes to confront his new suspect - and encounters him in the immediate aftermath of his committing yet another murder. Harry comes very near to being killed himself - but eventually the killer commits suicide. Just as Harry feels all is over bar clearing up, his phone rings and Tom Waaler informs him that he had kidnapped Oleg, the son of Harry's girlfriend Rakel, to convince Harry to meet him and trade Oleg for Sivertsen. Waaler is aware that it is Harry whom Oleg regards as his father – rather than his biological father in Russia, from whom Rakel is long separated – and that Harry is deeply attached to the boy and would do virtually anything in order to save him. Harry arranges a meeting in the student Hall of Residence. Using the CCTV cameras as a bargaining chip, Harry tries to convince Waaler that his position is hopeless. More and more outrageous stories are proposed by Waaler to explain how he intends to cover up what has happened, but eventually Harry manages to overpower Waaler and rescue Sven and Oleg. In the final climax of the story, Waaler ultimately loses his life. Harry, meanwhile, has worked out who the murderer is, and the case is satisfactorily concluded. Having exposed Tom Waaler and solved the case, Harry's termination of employment is rescinded and he returns to the force. As would become clear in the next book, "The Redeemer", Harry's professional success was achieved at a high personal price. Despite being deeply in love with Harry, Rakel decides to terminate their relationship; Oleg's being kidnapped by Waaler and coming very close to death led her to feel that Harry's profession – and his utter dedication to that profession – would make life with him too disruptive and dangerous. However, though Harry would become in some ways attracted to other women, Rakel would remain the great love of his life, and for her part she would also find it impossible to completely cut off contact.
901796	/m/03n8dh	The Bourne Supremacy	Robert Ludlum	1986-02-11	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the first book, The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne suffered amnesia. Over the course of the book he regained his memory with the help of a Canadian economist, Marie, and later found that he was previously an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency in an elite project in Southeast Asia and Vietnam codenamed Medusa. Following the American forces withdrawal from Vietnam he joined Project Treadstone 71, where he was used as bait for the infamous European assassin, Carlos the Jackal. Bourne took credit for various kills in China and the rest of Asia, acting as a rival to the Jackal, in order to draw him out of hiding. At the beginning of The Bourne Supremacy, Bourne has recovered from most mental and all physical injuries and is teaching Asian studies at a university in Maine under his real name of David Webb. He is also living happily on campus with Marie and is getting regular psychological tests from his doctor, Morris Panov. Meanwhile, high-ranking U.S. officials discuss an increasingly alarming situation in the People's Republic of China, where a popular Communist official is planning a hostile takeover of the country, using a Bourne imitator to eliminate his political rivals. The officials decide to use Webb to kill the Chinese official, but know of his mistrust of the U.S. government. Aware of Webb's deep-seated emotional instability due to the loss of his first wife and children in Vietnam, they hatch a plan to abduct Marie and throw Webb back into the default state under which he operated for Medusa. It is then that a representative of the U.S. Government arrives and informs Webb of an imitator in Asia, someone who is killing under the name of Jason Bourne, a name feared in Asia because of the accredited kills during his work with Treadstone 71. Webb is told he requires a more visible security force because there is evidence someone wants him dead. Soon thereafter, Marie is abducted by unknown men while Webb is at the University. Webb returns to the house, finds clues to her abduction, and immediately phones government officials, threatening to leak information about Treadstone and Medusa in an attempt to get assistance. He finds out information has been manipulated in order to make him seem crazy and delusional, and that his only course of action is to follow the instructions left for him by the kidnappers. He turns to the only person he thinks will be able to help him, Alexander Conklin. Conklin is convinced there is government involvement but that they have lost control of the situation and the hired guns holding Marie are no longer in their control. Webb who now has transformed back into his hated persona of Jason Bourne now has no choice but to go to Hong Kong and play out the scenario to get Marie back. There he meets with a wealthy Tai-Pan who wants Bourne to bring back the imposter Jason Bourne because the imposter killed his wife. Marie, held captive in a British hospital, fakes an illness and escapes, taking refuge with Catherine Staples, a former colleague employed at the Canadian consulate in Hong Kong. She is later contacted by Conklin, who confronts Under-Secretary MacAllister and Ambassador Havland, the orchestrators of the plan to manipulate Webb. Webb, tracing the impostor Bourne through Kowloon and Macau, tracks him to mainland China, where he encounters Echo, another former Medusa operative, who is also tracking down the impostor Bourne, who he personally trained. They track Bourne to a meeting in a bird sanctuary, where Echo is captured, and executed by Sheng Jo Yang, the Chinese nationalist leader that Havland has been desperately trying to eliminate. Webb captures the impostor Bourne, but in attempting to swap the impostor for Marie, is misled by MacAllister, as Marie is still held in secret by Conklin. Without Marie, Webb has stated clearly he will kill the impostor, whom Havland and MacAllister need to track down Yang. Thinking Marie has been killed, Bourne assaults Havland's "sterile house" estate, where the impostor is killed and Bourne nearly as well, saved only by the timely arrival of Marie and Conklin. Bourne is then told of the whole plan and why Havland had to abduct Marie. Since Bourne has seen what Sheng is capable of, he says that he must go back into the fray and kill Sheng. McAllister goes with Bourne, and during their search for Sheng, McAllister explains that he must be the one to kill Sheng, that was his plan from the start. The meeting between Sheng and Bourne and McAllister takes place on the Chinese border, and during the meeting McAllister is shot before he can make the kill, so Bourne has to kill Sheng instead. They escape with Sheng's helicopter. The story is set during the British negotiated handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China on the expiration of its ninety-nine-year lease on the New Territories.
902267	/m/03nb4s	Brewster's Millions	George Barr McCutcheon	1902	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Monty Brewster finds that spending so much money within the course of a year is incredibly difficult, especially with the strict conditions imposed by the executor of his uncle's will. Brewster is required to demonstrate business sense by obtaining good value for the money he spends, limiting his donations to charity, his losses to gambling, and the value of his tips to waiters and cab drivers. Moreover, Brewster is sworn to secrecy, and cannot tell anyone why he is living to excess. Working against him are his well-meaning friends, who try repeatedly to limit his losses and extravagance even as they share in his luxurious lifestyle. Brewster's challenge is compounded by the fact that his attempts to lose money through stock speculation and roulette prove to increase his funds rather than decrease them. Lampooned by the press as a spendthrift, he throws large parties and balls and charters a cruise lasting several months to Europe and Egypt for his large circle of friends and employees. Nonetheless, despite his loose pursestrings, Monty repeatedly demonstrates a strong moral character. At one point, he uses his funds to bail out a bank to save his landlady's account, despite risking his eligibility for the will. At another, he jumps overboard to save a drowning sailor from his cruise even as his rich friends choose not to. Monty's would-be wife Barbara Drew turns down his marriage proposal early in the year, believing him to be financially irresponsible and bound to a life of poverty, and his attempts to win her back repeatedly fail as Monty's attention is entirely absorbed by the requirement to spend so much money. At the conclusion of the year, Monty succeeds in spending the last of his funds, which he has meticulously documented, and confesses his love to another woman, Peggy Gray, who has been sympathetic to his lifestyle despite knowing nothing about his challenge. Tragedy strikes the night before Monty's deadline, as his lawyers inform him that the executor of his uncle's will has vanished after liquidating all of the assets. Monty convinces himself that he is doomed to poverty, but marries Peggy Gray, who accepts him despite the lack of wealth. Shortly after the wedding, the executor of his uncle's will arrives to inform him that he has successfully met the challenge and that he had simply come to deliver the money to Monty in person.
902755	/m/03ncw7	City	Clifford D. Simak	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As the tales unfold, they recount a world where humans, having developed superior transportation, have abandoned the cities and moved into the countryside. Hydroponic farming and decentralized power allow small communities to become self-sufficient. In the beginning the driving force for dispersion is the fear of nuclear holocaust, but eventually humans discover they simply prefer the pastoral lifestyle. The tales primarily focus around the Webster family, and their robot servant, Jenkins. The name Webster gradually becomes "webster", a noun meaning a human. Themes familiar to Simak readers recur in these stories, notably the pastoral settings and the faithful dogs. Each successive tale tells of further breakdown of urban society. As mankind abandons the cities, each family becomes increasingly isolated. Bruce Webster surgically provides dogs with a means of speech and better vision. The breakdown of civilization allows wandering mutant geniuses to grow up unrestrained by conventional mores. A mutant called Joe invents a way for ants to stay active year round in Wisconsin, so they don't start over every spring. Eventually the ants form an industrial society in their hill. The amoral Joe, tiring of the game, kicks over the anthill. The ants ignore this setback and build bigger and more industrialized colonies. A later tale tells of a research station on the surface of Jupiter. (This story, first published as Desertion in 1944, was one of the first stories about pantropy.) Simak's version of Jupiter is a cold, windswept, and corrosive hell where only advanced technology allows the station to exist at all. A scientist is accompanied by Towser, his tired and flea-bitten old dog. But there is a problem. Men permanently transformed to survive unaided on Jupiter's surface leave the station to gather data and inexplicably fail to return. Finally the scientist transforms himself and his canine companion into the seal-like beings that can survive the surface. They leave the station in their new form and experience Jupiter as a paradise. Towser's fleas and irritations are gone and he is able to talk telepathically to his former master. Like the previously transformed station personnel, the scientist decides never to return. He eventually does return, to share with all humankind what he has discovered. It seems impossible - how can he show them the wondrous Jupiter that he and Towser perceive? Joe steps in again, once more out of sheer mischief. He knows a mind trick to allow people to broadcast meaning to others' minds as they speak. By means of a kaleidoscope-like instrument, he can twist the minds of other people so they can perform the mind trick. Thus all humanity learns the truth about Jupiter, and most elect to leave Earth, give up their physical humanity and live transformed on Jupiter's surface Simak's vision of human apocalypse is unusual, not one of destruction, but simply of isolation. Much of humankind becomes so lonely that it eventually dies off. Some favor starting over as a completely different species capable of experiencing on Jupiter the simple bliss that humans have otherwise lost. Ten thousand years in the future, Jenkins is provided with a new body so he can better serve the few remaining "websters". By then, the dog civilization has spread all around the Earth, including the rest of the animals whom, little by little, the dogs introduce to their civilization. All of them are significantly intelligent, and Simak appears to mean that they were so all the while even though humans were not able to notice it. This civilization is a pacifist and vegetarian one. The dogs intervene in nature and distribute food to wild animals, managing to virtually end all predation. Besides, they also look for doors between dimensions through which some beings from different worlds are able to pass. At this point, a wraithlike creature called a cobbly appears, having traveled from another world on the time thread. Before it is driven away, Jenkins's new telepathic sense enables him to read the creature's mind to discover how it moves from world to world. Realizing that humanity cannot peacefully coexist with the Dogs and the other animals, Jenkins uses the knowledge to take his human charges to one of the other worlds. Eventually the human race dies out on the new world. However, returning to the initial Earth in the final tale of the book, Jenkins finds the dogs dealing with the ever-growing Ant City, which is taking over the Earth. Jenkins travels to Geneva, where a last small group of humans sleep in suspended animation. He asks his former master, a Webster, how to deal with the ants. The answer is typically human - poisoned bait, enough to kill but not before the bait is taken back to the ant colony, so it is fed to the queen. Jenkins is saddened because he realizes the Dogs will never accept this solution. He tells the dogs that the "websters" had no answer. He and the Dogs leave Earth for one of the other worlds. The stories were written in the post-World War II world, and reflect the attitude that humans are unable to live at peace with their fellow beings. There is an underlying theme throughout the book that humans possess a fundamental aggressive flaw they will never be able to overcome. The ninth (and last) tale in the City saga was penned by Simak in 1973, twenty-two years after he wrote the previous episode. Jenkins is on the original Earth, living at the old Webster home, surrounded on all sides by the Ant City. He comes to realize that the Ant City is dead, just as a spaceship returns to take him to the robot worlds. Breaking through the wall of the city, he sees nothing but infinitely repeated versions of a single sculpture; a human boot kicking over an anthill.
904322	/m/03nj2c	The Wild Duck	Henrik Ibsen			 The first act opens with a dinner party hosted by Håkon Werle, a wealthy merchant and industrialist. The gathering is attended by his son, Gregers Werle, who has just returned to his father's home following a self-imposed exile. There, he learns the fate of a former classmate, Hjalmar Ekdal. Hjalmar married Gina, a young servant in the Werle household. The elder Werle had arranged the match by providing Hjalmar with a home and profession as a photographer. Gregers, whose mother died believing that Gina and her husband had carried on an affair, becomes enraged at the thought that his old friend is living a life built on a lie. The remaining four acts take place in Hjalmar Ekdal's apartments. The Ekdals initially appear to be living a life of cozy domesticity. Hjalmar's father makes a living doing odd copying jobs for Werle. Hjalmar runs a busy portrait studio out of the apartment. Gina helps him run the business in addition to keeping house. They both dote on their daughter Hedvig. Gregers travels directly to their home from the party. While getting acquainted with the family, Hjalmar confesses that Hedvig is both his greatest joy and greatest sorrow, because she is slowly losing her eyesight. The family eagerly reveals a loft in the apartment where they keep various animals like rabbits and pigeons. Most prized is the wild duck they rescued. The duck was wounded by none other than Werle, whose eyesight is also failing. His shot winged the duck, which dove to the bottom of the lake to drown itself by clinging to the seaweed. Werle's dog retrieved it though, and despite its wounds from the shot and the dog's teeth, the Ekdals had nursed the duck back to good health. Gregers decides to rent the spare room in the apartment. The next day, he begins to realize that there are more lies hanging over the Ekdals than Gina's affair with his father. While talking to Hedvig, she explains that Hjalmar keeps her from school because of her eyesight, but he has no time to tutor her, leaving the girl to escape into imaginary worlds through pictures she sees in books. During their conversation, Gregers hears shots in the attic, and the family explains that Old Ekdal entertains himself by hunting rabbits and birds in the loft, and Hjalmar often joins in the hunts. The activity helps Old Ekdal cling to his former life as a great hunter. Hjalmar also speaks of his 'great invention', which he never specifies. It is related to photography, and he is certain that it will enable him to pay off his debts to Werle and finally make himself and his family completely independent. In order to work on his invention, he often needs to lie down on the couch and think about it. During a lunch with Gregers and Hjalmar's friends Relling and Molvik, Håkon arrives to try to convince Gregers to return home. Gregers insists that he cannot return and that he will tell Hjalmar the truth. Håkon is certain that Hjalmar will not be grateful for Gregers' intervention. After he leaves, Gregers asks Hjalmar to accompany him on a walk, where he reveals the truth about Gina's affair with his father. Upon returning home, Hjalmar is aloof from his wife and daughter. He demands to handle all future photography business by himself with no help from Gina. He also demands to manage the family's finances, which Gina has traditionally done. Gina begs him to reconsider, suggesting that with all his time consumed he will not be able to work on his invention. Hedvig adds that he also will not have time to spend in the loft with the wild duck. Embittered by Gregers' news, Hjalmar bristles at the suggestion and confesses that he would like to wring the duck's neck. Indulging his mood, Hjalmar confronts Gina about her affair with Håkon. She confesses to it, but insists that she loves Hjalmar intensely. In the midst of the argument, Gregers returns, stunned to find that the couple are not overjoyed to be living without such a lie hanging over their heads. Mrs. Sørby arrives with a letter for Hedvig and news that she is marrying Håkon. The letter announces that Haakon is paying Old Ekdal a pension of 100 crowns per month until his death. Upon his death, the allowance will be transferred to Hedvig for the remainder of her life. The news sickens Hjalmar even further, and it dawns on him that Hedvig may very well be Haakon's child. He cannot stand the sight of Hedvig any longer and leaves the house to drink with Molvik and Relling. Gregers tries to calm the distraught Hedvig by suggesting that she sacrifice the wild duck for her father's happiness. Hedvig is desperate to win her father's love back and agrees to have her grandfather shoot the duck in the morning. The next day, Relling arrives to tell the family that Hjalmar has stayed with him. He is appalled at what Gregers has done, and he reveals that he long ago implanted the idea of the invention with Hjalmar as a "life-lie" to keep him from giving in to despair. The pair argue as Hjalmar returns to gather his materials to work on the invention. He is overwhelmed by the number of details involved in moving out of the apartment. Hedvig is overjoyed to see him, but Hjalmar demands to be 'free from intruders' while he thinks about his next move. Crushed, Hedvig remembers the wild duck and goes to the loft with a pistol. After hearing a shot, the family assumes Old Ekdal is hunting in the loft, but Gregers knows he has shot the wild duck for Hedvig. He explains the sacrifice to Hjalmar who is deeply touched. When Old Ekdal emerges from his room, the family realizes he could not have fired the gun in the loft. They rush in to see Hedvig lying on the ground. No one can find a wound, and Relling has to examine the girl. He finds that the shot has penetrated her breastbone and she died immediately. Given the powder burns on her shirt, he determines that she shot herself. Hjalmar begs for her to live again so that she can see how much he loves her. The play ends with Relling and Gregers arguing again. Gregers insists that Hedvig did not die in vain, because her suicide unleashed a greatness within Hjalmar. Relling sneers at the notion, and insists that Hjalmar will be a drunk within a year.
905793	/m/03nndm	Hawksbill Station	Robert Silverberg	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Hawksbill Station is a penal colony in the pre-Cambrian era created by the authoritarian United States government, using time travel as a means to exile rebels and political dissidents into the past. The colony houses only male exiles (a female settlement supposedly exists later in the Silurian era), who are sent there as a "humane" alternative to execution. The machine only works one way, so the prisoners are hopelessly marooned in the past. The distant prison is in a barren coastal area prior to the colonization of land by sophisticated life, and evokes a Tsarist Siberia or a Soviet Gulag. The personal relationship of the main character, the de facto leader of the colony, and both his government torturer/prosecutor and Dr. Hawksbill, each of whom had been members of the dissidence movement, as well as explication of the picayune ideological differences among the prisoners, and the confused circumstances leading to the establishment of the authoritarian government, further parallel Russian history. As the novel opens, the prisoners, all of them middle-aged or elderly, are surprised by the arrival via the time machine of a much younger prisoner. Their surprise increases when they question the newcomer, ostensibly an economist, about economic theory and political ideology, and his answers reveal his essential ignorance of either. His ignorance and youth cause the prisoners to wonder if he is fact a political prisoner at all or a "common" criminal who would only have been exiled for a heinous crime. When the newcomer arrives via the Hawksbill time machine a second time, it is revealed that he is a police officer of a new government which overthrew the authoritarian regime but was unrelated to the dissident movements of which the Hawksbill exiles were members; upon the overthrow, the new government discovered both the existence of Hawksbill Station and that means had been discovered to effect time travel from past to future, making it possible to retrieve prisoners from the colony. The newcomer has been sent to evaluate the prisoners and to recommend whether they are mentally stable for retrieval. With return now possible, the leader of the exiles realizes that he is a time traveler of a different sort: the struggle against the authoritarian regime, his life's work, is over; his closest friends in the movement (and his bitterest enemies, who left the movement to join the authoritarian government) are irretrievably dead; and even those who finally did overthrow the government have little connection with or regard for his brand of dissent (as demonstrated by the newcomer's ignorance of their ideologies). He is now somewhat inclined to visit the newcomer's future, but staying at Hawksbill Station is now the only existence he knows.
905941	/m/03nnwt	The Royal Book of Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1921	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Scarecrow is upset when Professor Woggle-bug tells him that he has no family, so he goes back to the corn-field where Dorothy Gale found him to trace his "roots." Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion search for him, eventually meeting with a knight, Sir Hokus, the Doubtful Dromedary and the Comfortable Camel. In this novel the Scarecrow discovers that, in a previous incarnation, he was human. To be precise, the Scarecrow was the King of the Silver Islands, a quasi-Chinese kingdom located underground beneath the Munchkin region of Oz. When Dorothy first discovered the Scarecrow (in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) he was hanging from a scarecrow-pole in a cornfield; it now develops that this pole descended deep underground to the Silver Islands, where it penetrated the king's grave. After spending some time in his former kingdom among the Silver Islanders, the Scarecrow decides to return to Oz and continue his current existence. The Royal Book of Oz acknowledges that an Oz character can die.
906927	/m/03nrw0	Niebla	Miguel de Unamuno	1914	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot revolves around the character of Augusto, a wealthy, intellectual and introverted young man. He falls in love with a young woman named Eugenia as she walks past him on the street, and he sets about trying to court her. He is aided in his efforts by the other members of Eugenia's household. Her aunt is particularly keen for a relationship to evolve, so that Augusto might help with her niece's financial troubles. Nevertheless, Eugenia rejects his advances, since she is already in a relationship with the down-and-out Mauricio. Augusto pays off Eugenia's mortgage as a goodwill gesture without her knowing, but this only serves to insult Eugenia, rather than endear her to him. In the meantime, Augusto becomes involved with another girl, Rosario, and he begins to question if he is really in love with Eugenia at all. After talking with various friends and acquaintances, Augusto decides he will propose to Eugenia in any case. To his surprise, Eugenia accepts the engagement. A few days before the marriage is to occur, Augusto receives a letter from Eugenia. The letter explained that she was leaving him for Mauricio. Augusto, heartbroken, decides to kill himself. However, because everything he does involves a lengthy thought process, he decides that he needs to consult Unamuno himself (the author of the novel), who had written an article on suicide which Augusto had read. When Augusto speaks with Unamuno, the truth is revealed that Augusto is actually a fictional character whom Unamuno has created. Augusto is not real, Unamuno explains, and for that reason cannot kill himself. Augusto asserts that he exists, even though he acknowledges internally that he doesn't, and threatens Unamuno by telling him that he is not the ultimate author. Augusto reminds Unamuno that he might be just a character in one of God's dreams. Augusto returns to his home and dies (although whether or not he is killed by Unamuno or commits suicide is a subject of debate and is mostly down to the reader's opinion). The book ends with the author himself debating himself about bringing back the character of Augusto. He establishes, however, that this would not be feasible. The title, Spanish for 'fog', is a reference to how Augusto sees his life. In one of his philosophical ponderings, he describes his world as full of small and almost imperceptible occurrences, some of them good some of them bad, and all of them serve to obscure his vision. (chapter 7)
909244	/m/03nzr9	The Other Side of Midnight	Sidney Sheldon	1973	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story focuses on two women: the first is the beautiful Noelle Page, who is born to a fisherman in Marseilles; the second is well-read but shy wit Catherine Alexander, whose father had big dreams he was never able to fulfil. Catherine is embarrassed about the fact that she is a virgin. Noelle was born as a result of an extra-marital affair in Marseilles, France, but her mother never told her husband the truth. Her foster father always called her his 'princess' and decided to exploit her beauty by taking money from dress shop owner Auguste Lanchon in exchange for letting Noelle sleep with him. Noelle falls in love with RAF pilot Larry Douglas when she escapes to Paris. He promises to marry her but disappears from Paris and does not return. Noelle, distraught, finds she is pregnant and terminates at five-and-a-half months along in grisly fashion. Catherine is an American born to a father who always had big dreams, but could never fulfil them. Because she is an aloof virgin, the people in her university call her a lesbian. She finds a job with a man called Bill Fraser with whom she begins a relationship, but falls in love with Larry Douglas instead. Larry and Catherine marry, unaware of Noelle's plans for vengeance against the man who jilted her so carelessly. Larry's lies gradually entwine the lives of these two women in a dazzling story of passion, vengeance, power and greed. es:Más allá de la medianoche fr:De l'autre côté de minuit he:מעבר לחצות ne:द अदर साइड अफ मिडनाइट ja:真夜中は別の顔 pt:The Other Side of Midnight ru:Оборотная сторона полуночи (роман) vi:Phía bên kia nửa đêm
911169	/m/03p460	Slan	A. E. van Vogt	1946	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Slans are evolved humans, named after their alleged creator, Samuel Lann. They have the psychic abilities to read minds and are super-intelligent. They possess near limitless stamina, "nerves of steel", and superior strength and speed. When Slans are ill or seriously injured, they go into a healing trance automatically. There are two kinds of Slans. One has tendrils and can read the minds of ordinary humans and telepathically communicate with other Slans. The tendrils are golden in colour, making it easy to spot a slan. These Slans are hunted to near extinction. The other type of Slan is tendrilless. They are still super intelligent but do not have psychic capabilities, only the ability to hide their thoughts from the first type of Slan. Kier Gray is the leader of the human society and promises to exterminate the Slans. As the novel begins, Jommy Cross (a telepathic Slan of the first type) is brought with his mother to the capital, Centropolis. They are both discovered, and Jommy's mother is killed. Jommy is only nine years old and manages to escape. Jommy Cross is not only the heir to the brilliant inventions of his father, but he represents the last hope of his race to save it from genocide. Because of the importance of his mission, he is opposed by various enemies. Jommy seeks to destroy Kier and in confronting him discovers an astonishing secret: Kier Gray is also a Slan.
911179	/m/03p472	The Garden of Rama	Gentry Lee	1991-09-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book picks up the story nine months after the end of Rama II. The book follows the story of three astronauts from the expedition in Rama II who were trapped aboard the cylindrical alien spacecraft, Rama II, heading out towards deep space. Along the journey, five children were born. Simone Tiasso Wakefield, Catharine Colin Wakefield, Eleanor Joan Wakefield, Benjamin Ryan O'Toole and Patrick Erin O'Toole, were born by Nicole Des Jardins from her relationships with Richard Wakefield and Michael O'Toole. These children later become major characters in Rama Revealed. After a twelve-year journey, they arrive in the vicinity of the star Sirius, where all eight rendezvous with a Raman Node. At the Node they are subjected to physiological tests for a year while Rama is refurbished, and they are eventually sent back to the solar system, this time to collect two thousand more representatives of humanity. An Earth agency, known as the ISA, receives the message from Rama requesting two thousand humans. Upon its reception, the message is kept secret and, under the guise of a new Martian colony, the ISA starts acquiring its payload. The ISA selects a handful of their own representatives; meanwhile, they selectively gather convicts and promise them freedom if they are chosen to be a colonist. The payload is subdivided into three ships the Nina, Pinta, & Santa Maria (names based on Christopher Columbus' ships Niña, Pinta, and Santa María) that arrive sequentially at Rama. At this point the colonists believe everything is a hoax (despite the colossal size of Rama) created by the ISA. With that discontent as the tone upon their arrival, Rama III heads back to deep space with its new payload. Soon an aggressive group of humans, led by a mob boss, seizes control of the human colony and begins a war of annihilation and propaganda against one of the other races occupying the massive spacecraft. The original astronauts and their children find themselves powerless to prevent the genocide. However, the aggressive behavior of the human species does not go unnoticed: Another species, unknown to the humans, observe their behavior and start considering a possible counterattack. Meanwhile, Rama III determines that total escalation of the conflict is imminent and transmits an emergency signal to its ancient constructors... The book ends with a cliffhanger, on the eve of the execution of one of the original astronauts.
912029	/m/03p66w	The Water-Method Man	John Irving	1972-12	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel revolves around the mishaps of its narrator, Fred Trumper, a floundering late-twenty-something graduate student with serious commitment and honesty issues that earn him the nickname "Bogus." The novel shows Irving beginning to develop a blend of comedy and pathos, as well as a penchant for fashioning quirky characters. It follows a non-linear narrative in the form of a sort of 'confession' authored by Trumper, who humorously recounts his various failures in life and love, from his New England childhood through his experiences on foreign study in Vienna, Austria, and as a graduate student in Iowa, leading up to the present-action setting, early-1970s New York, where Trumper is attempting to sever himself from his adolescent past. 'I want to change,' Trumper says at the end of Chapter one. The phrase seems to be the novel's central theme. The title refers to a method prescribed to Trumper for the treatment of non-specific urological disorders relating to his abnormally narrow urinary tract. Trumper's urologist, Dr. Jean Claude Vigneron, offers him three options for the treatment of his disorder: abstinence from sex and alcohol, a painful operation to widen the urinary canal, or the Water Method, which consists simply of consuming abnormal quantities of water before and after sex to flush bacteria out of the urinary tract. Trumper opts for the Water Method, suggesting both his generally comical cowardice and lack of self-discipline. Trumper's narration meanders through flashbacks revolving around his relationships with the novel's two primary female characters: Sue 'Biggie' Kunft, a former championship downhill skier whom Trumper courts, impregnates, and marries in Vienna while still a student, and Tulpen, Trumper's present day live-in girlfriend, a documentary film editor in New York, where he lands after losing Biggie. Though the two relationships function chiefly as a means of demonstrating Bogus Trumper's tendency to repeat his mistakes, Irving is often regarded for his strong, independent female characters, and Tulpen and Biggie can be seen as markers in the development of the strong women in his more popularly successful novels, particularly The World According to Garp (1979). Other characters include Trumper's best childhood friend Couth, a still-photographer; Merrill Overturf, an alcoholic and diabetic loon Trumper befriends in Vienna; Ralph Packer, a pretentious documentary filmmaker who employs Trumper as a sound editor; and Colm, Trumper's young son from his first marriage to Biggie. Trumper is a graduate student at the University of Iowa in comparative literature whose dissertation is to be a translation of an ancient, 'Old Low Norse' epic called 'Akthelt and Gunnel'. Irving employs the 'Akthelt and Gunnel' poem as a means for allowing Trumper to poke merciless fun at himself through analogously inventing the story of the poem according to his own life's mishaps. de:Die wilde Geschichte vom Wassertrinker fr:L'Épopée du buveur d'eau lt:Vandens metodas pl:Metoda wodna
912416	/m/03p7jv	The Night of the Triffids	Simon Clark	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story starts 25&nbsp;years after The Day of the Triffids ended. Pilot David Masen has grown up in a community on the Isle of Wight, safe from the venomous and carnivorous triffid plants which have dominated the world since most human beings were blinded by a meteor shower (as related in the original book). As the sequel begins, a mysterious darkness falls — something is blotting out the sun. Masen takes to the air to determine if a high cloud is to blame but he loses contact with his home base and crash-lands on a floating island populated by triffids. There, he meets an orphaned young girl, and the pair are subsequently rescued by an American ship and taken to Manhattan island in New York City. Manhattan, a secure and self contained community like the one on the Isle of Wight, appears at first glance to be a utopia; but David soon realises that it is in fact a dictatorship run by an old enemy of his father's. David and his young friend are soon being used by both the dictator and a band of rebels who oppose the dictator's tyrannical rule, while the triffids — now evolved into even more dangerous forms — are trying to take deadly advantage of the slowly lifting darkness.
913820	/m/03pc_j	The Woman Warrior	Maxine Hong Kingston	1975	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman"}	 The book is divided into five interconnected chapters, which read like short stories. In the first part of this chapter, the narrator of The Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston) is recounting how her mother once told her the story of the No-Name Woman. The chapter essentially opens as a vignette told from the mother’s point of view. "You must not tell anyone," my mother said, "what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself." After this opening line, the narration continues in the mother’s voice. She tells the story of the No Name Woman, her husband’s deceased sister. In 1924 China, with her husband already emigrated to the United States, No Name Woman became impregnated through participating in an adulterous relationship. The rural villagers violently rampaged the family house in disapproval of the deed. No Name Woman ultimately gave birth in a pigsty and drowned both herself and the newborn child in a well. The middle portion of this chapter is Kingston’s retelling of the No Name Woman Story. Kingston uses her own experiences with Chinese tradition and culture to substantiate alternate “versions” of the tale. For instance, she questions No Name Woman’s agency in her own pregnancy. She first proposes that No Name Woman must have been raped, since “Women in the old China did not choose.” When she later tries to imagine a more sexually liberated No Name Woman, her own experiences interject: Imagining her free with sex doesn’t fit, though. I don’t know any women like that, or men either. Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help. Kingston finally settles on a version of the story in which No Name Woman is portrayed as someone who embraces her feminine sexuality to quietly attract a lover. She contrasts from the other Chinese villagers who “efface their sexual color and present plain miens.” She also differs from Kingston, who prefers being “sisterly, dignified, and honorable” to any expression of attractiveness. In the end, the villagers’ raid is interpreted as a reaction to the break in community equilibrium caused by No Name Woman’s efforts to be attractive and therefore individualistic. At the end of “No Name Woman”, Kingston reflects on the importance of her mother's story. She concludes that the real lesson is not how No Name Woman died; rather, why she was forgotten: The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family’s deliberately forgetting her. Kingston goes on to suggest that the act of writing out her mother’s talk-story serves as an act of remembrance to No Name Woman. A sympathetic reception of this story, however, is complicated by Chinese tradition, which will forever banish the No Name Woman to her well. In the first part of “White Tigers,” Kingston recounts her mother’s talk-story of Fa Mu Lan, a woman warrior who took her father’s place in battle. "[My mother] said I would grow up a wife and a slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up a warrior woman." Kingston tells the story in the first-person perspective, essentially morphing into Fa Mu Lan. She follows a bird up “around and around the tallest mountain, climbing ever upward” After this offer, she begins the first of her training: mimicking animals and scavenging for food. In her seventh year (age 14), the old couple leads her “blindfolded to the mountains of the white tigers.” Here, she is left barehanded and fasts for days. "When I get hungry enough, then killing and falling are dancing too." After she returns, the old couple trains her in “dragon ways” for eight years and then lets her look inside a water gourd. The first scene she sees is of her marriage to a childhood friend; the second is of her husband and youngest brother being conscripted into the army. She grows angry and wishes to help them, but only until she “point[s] at the sky and make[s] a sword appear, a silver bolt in the sunlight, and control[s] its slashing with [her] mind” does the old couple allow her to leave. “I have been drafted,” my father said. “No, Father,” I said. “I will take your place.” Her parents carve revenge on her back- their oaths and names. Her mother tells her, “We’ll have you with us until your back heals.” She dons the guise of a man and becomes a great warrior while creating a massive army. She defeats a giant who is actually a snake, and his army pledges their loyalty to her. Soon after she is joined by her husband, becomes pregnant, and orders her husband to leave with the baby. Unaccompanied, she travels home to battle the baron who took her village’s sons. With her quick swordsmanship, she slashes him across the face and cuts off his head. At last, she resumes her duties as a wife. "My American life has been such a disappointment." Kingston reverts to talking about her life in America and compares it to the story of Fa Mu Lan. She is told, “There’s no profit in raising girls. Better to raise geese than girls.” that Fa Mu Lan found and expresses her disappointment in having “no magic beads [or] water gourd sight.” She cannot gather the courage to speak up against her racist boss, let alone save her people in China. In the end, Kingston decides that she and Fa Mu Lan are similar: "What we have in common are the words at our backs." Using her mother’s old diplomas and photos from her years in China, Kingston recounts the story of her mother’s life as a lady scholar. “Not many women got to live out the daydream of women—to have a room, even a section of a room, that only gets messed up when she messes it up herself” – the To Keung School of Midwifery made this all possible. Her mother “quickly built a reputation for being brilliant, a natural scholar who could glance at a book and know it.” Her schoolmates are all afraid of the ghosts that lurk in the building. To show that there is nothing to be afraid of, she sleeps in the ghost room of the dormitory. She fights and ultimately ignores a Sitting Ghost, which has “thick short hair like an animal’s coat.” With the help of her peers, she lights buckets of alcohol and oil on fire and sings a song to banish the Sitting Ghost: “Run, Ghost, run from this school. Only good medical people belong here. Go back, dark creature, to your native country. Go home. Go home.” Brave Orchid, the name of Kingston’s mother, returns home after two years of study. She buys a slave to train as a nurse. Kingston remarks, “My mother’s enthusiasm for me is duller than for the slave girl; nor did I replace the older brother and sister who died while they were still cuddly.” Her mother also complains that she had to pay two hundred dollars to the doctor and hospital for her while “during the war […] many people gave older girls away for free.” As a midwife in her village, Brave Orchid never treated those about to die; however, she could not choose which kinds of babies to deliver as with the old and sick: “One child born without an anus was left in the outhouse so that the family would not have to hear it cry.” The villagers would attribute baby defects to ghosts while Brave Orchid would say “the baby looked pretty.” Kingston was born in the middle of World War II and grew up with her mother’s talk-stories. Her mother taught her that all white people around her were “ghosts”: “Once upon a time the world was so thick with ghosts, I could hardly breathe; I could hardly walk, limping my way around the White Ghosts and their cars.” Though Kingston was frightened by the ghosts she knew, she was more terrified of the ghosts entirely unfamiliar to her. For this reason she did not want to go to China. She said, “In China my parents would sell my sisters and me. My father would marry two or three more wives [who] would give food to their own children and rocks to us. I did not want to go where the ghosts took shapes nothing like our own.” When Kingston visits her mother, they chat about “ghosts” and how Brave Orchid can never go back to China now that the family’s land has been taken over. “I don’t want to go back anyway,” she says: “When you’re all home, all six of you with your children and husbands and wives, there are twenty or thirty people in this house. Then I’m happy.” Kingston tells her that she gets sick so often when she is home and can barely work. Brave Orchid understands her daughter and tells her she can come for visits instead. Affectionately, she calls Kingston “Little Dog,” an endearment she has not called her for years. “At the Western Palace” opens with Brave Orchid, her two children, and her niece at San Francisco International Airport. Brave Orchid is waiting for her sister Moon Orchid to arrive from Hong Kong. Moon Orchid is emigrating to the United States after being separated from her sister for 30 years. While she waits, Brave Orchid sees Vietnam War soldiers, who remind her of her own son who is fighting abroad. This causes anxiety in Brave Orchid, for she is not sure of his actual whereabouts. The description of the Vietnam War is important in that it places the setting of the chapter in the contemporary 1970s during which The Woman Warrior was written. Brave Orchid also contemplates the ways that immigration has modernized over the years, comparing her own experiences at Ellis Island to the “plastic” of the airport. Like the other chapters of The Woman Warrior, Brave Orchid labels all non-Chinese people in the airport as “ghosts”. When Moon Orchid’s plane finally arrives, Brave Orchid cannot recognize her sister. She consistently mistakes her for much younger Chinese women. Once the two sisters are reunited, they likewise cannot believe how old they each have grown. They argue the entire ride back home, with scenes such as this: You’re an old woman,' said Brave Orchid. 'Aiaa. You're an old woman.' 'But you’re really old. Surely, you can’t say that about me. I’m not old the way you’re old.' 'But you really are old. You’re one year older than I am' The sisters arrive back at Brave Orchid’s house in the Valley. They are greeted by Brave Orchid’s husband, who has aged significantly in Moon Orchid’s eyes. Moon Orchid then bestows gifts from China to all of Brave Orchid’s children. One of these gifts includes a paper cut-out of Fa-Mu-lan, the Woman Warrior. Brave Orchid grows disillusioned at what she presumes to be her children’s lack of gratitude for the gifts, and goes outside to “talk to the invisibilites”, or curse her children in the name of Chinese tradition. After a traditional family dinner in silence, Brave Orchid pressures Moon Orchid into coming up with a plan to reclaim her Chinese husband. Moon Orchid’s husband emigrated to the Los Angeles 30 years prior, and had since been remarried and fathered children in America. Although he sent monetary remittances to Moon Orchid, he had no intention of actually resuming a relationship with her. Now, he has no idea that Moon Orchid and his daughter are in the U.S., for it was Brave Orchid that arranged for both of their emigration papers. Brave Orchid spends the night desperately trying to convince Moon Orchid of the righteousness of seeking out her husband, saying things like: "You have to ask him why he didn’t come. Why he turned into a barbarian. Make him feel bad about leaving his mother and father. Scare him. Walk right into his house with your suitcases and boxes. Throw her stuff out of the drawers and put yours in. Say, ‘I am the first wife, and she is our servant’." Moon Orchid is still hesitant about Brave Orchid’s proposition. In the meantime, she spends the summer in Brave Orchid’s house. The gap between the second-generation children’s behavior and Moon Orchid’s expectations is immense. To Moon Orchid, the Americanized children seem “unhappy, immodest, rude, quiet, and savage-like”. It is important to note that one of these children includes Maxine Hong Kingston herself, who is indirectly referenced when the omniscient narrator describes Brave Orchid’s oldest daughter. Moon Orchid attempts to work at Brave Orchid’s laundry, but finds the work too challenging and the heat too uncomfortable. Her frailty and inability to handle the laundry leads readers to notice a sharp contrast between her and the tough persona of Brave Orchid. Since Moon Orchid is inefficient at the laundry, when she has time, Brave Orchid takes her to Chinatown. Moon Orchid comments on the assimilated Chinese, calling them “Americans”, and the two of them snicker at gambling women they encounter in a restaurant. Nevertheless, the summer lags on. With all of her curious pestering of the children and unsuccessful attempts to work the laundry, Brave Orchid becomes more and more anxious to reunite Moon Orchid with her husband. Brave Orchid, her oldest son, Moon Orchid, and Moon Orchid’s daughter drive South to Los Angeles. They are on a mission to find Moon Orchid’s husband. Upon leaving, Brave Orchid’s husband begs Brave Orchid to leave Moon Orchid’s husband "out of womens' business," to which Brave Orchid passive aggressively responds to her children: 'When your father lived in China, he refused to eat pastries because he didn’t want to eat the dirt the women kneaded from between their fingers.’ The drive consists of Brave Orchid giving Moon Orchid many different pep talks to encourage her to confront her husband. In one of these talks, Brave Orchid uses Chinese myth as validation for Moon Orchid’s cause, invoking the story of the Western Palace. She compares her struggle to that of the “Good Empress of the East”, who had to compete for her husband (“The Emperor”) against his other wife, the “Empress of the West.” Brave Orchid urges Moon Orchid to: “…come out of the dawn and invade her land and free the Emperor. You must break the strong spell she has cast on him that has lost him the East.” Upon arrival in Los Angeles, they realize that the husband’s “residence” is really a metropolitan high-rise office building. Moon Orchid is too scared to approach it, so Brave Orchid takes on the task. She enters the doctor’s office (he is a neurosurgeon) and speaks with the receptionist, who turns out to be his wife. Brave Orchid struggles to speak English while the young, Americanized receptionist struggles to speak Chinese, which leads to an even more awkward interaction. Brave Orchid returns to her car, having been stymied by the medical bureaucracy that requires an appointment for all those who wish to speak with the doctor. Brave Orchid then comes up with a plan. She forces her son to return to the office, tell the doctor that a woman has a broken leg, and require that he come provide medical assistance. The son complies, and the doctor comes to the vehicle where Moon Orchid and Brave Orchid are waiting. When he sees the two women, he addresses them as “Grandmothers”, clearly pointing out the age gap between them and himself. When he finally recognizes Moon Orchid, he tells her: 'It’s a mistake for you to be here. You can’t belong. You don’t have the hardness for this country. I have a new life... You became people in a book I had read about long ago.' Brave Orchid, who was the main one speaking during this entire interaction, resigns herself to the doctor’s explanation, but still demands one thing out of him: that he take the two women out to lunch. The doctor agrees. When they return, he and the women part ways, never to see each other again. Moon Orchid stays in Los Angeles with her daughter. At the end of the chapter, Moon Orchid declines in mental health and is forced to return to live with Brave Orchid. Moon Orchid believes has developed a paranoia of “Mexican Ghosts”, or Mexican people, thinking that they are after her. Moon Orchid tries in every possible way to shut out the outside world, demanding lights be turned off, windows be closed, and reeling in fear whenever someone left the house. Eventually, Moon Orchid is institutionalized. Before her death, Brave Orchid visits Moon Orchid, and Moon Orchid tells her: 'I am so happy here…we are all women here…we speak the same language, the very same. They understand me, and I understand them.' The chapter ends with Brave Orchid’s daughters pledging to never let their men run astray. In this story, Kingston reveals that her mother cut the membrane under her tongue. When asked why, her mother responds: “I cut it so that you would not be tongue-tied. Your tongue would be able to move in any language. You’ll be able to speak languages that are completely different from one another. You’ll be able to pronounce anything.” Kingston believes that her mother should have cut more or should not have cut it at all, because she has “a terrible time talking.” She spoke to no one at school, “did not ask before going to the lavatory, and flunked kindergarten.” After American school, Kingston would go to Chinese school. Here, children were not mute: “Boys who were so well behaved in the American school played tricks on [the teachers] and talked back to them. The girls […] screamed and yelled during recess.” One day, a delivery boy accidentally delivers a box of pills to the laundry owned by Kingston’s parents. Her mother insists that Kingston go to the drugstore and demand reparation candy. When the druggists and clerks give candy, Kingston’s mother exclaims, “See? They understand. You kids just aren’t very brave.” However, Kingston knew that they did not understand and thought that her family was a bunch of beggars without a home who lived behind the laundry. Kingston despises a Chinese girl who is a year older than she is because she refuses to talk. One day, she finds herself alone with the girl in the lavatory. Kingston tells the girl, “I am going to make you talk, you sissy-girl.” No matter what she does—screams at her, pulls her hair, squeezes her face—the girl remains silent. Even when the girl is crying, Kingston continues to berate her: “Look at you, snot streaming down your nose, and you won’t say a word to stop it. You’re such a nothing. […] Talk!” Afterwards, Kingston spent the next eighteen months sick in bed with a mysterious illness with no pain and no symptoms. The mental illness suddenly disappears when her mother, the doctor, tells her, “You’re ready to get up today. It’s time to get up and go to school,” and she does. Kingston writes about other eccentric stories in “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe.” Crazy Mary, a daughter of Christian converts, was left behind in China for twenty years while her parents came to America. By the time she came to America, she was crazy and “pointed at things that were not there.” Her condition never improved, and she was eventually locked up in the crazyhouse. Pee-A-Nah, the public, “village idiot” witchwoman, would chase Kingston and the other children through the streets. She was probably locked up in the crazyhouse as well. Kingston’s mother desperately tries to be a matchmaker and brings a FOB (Fresh-off-the-Boat) home to meet her. Kingston does everything in her willpower to appear unladylike, unattractive, and unskilled. A mentally disabled Chinese boy begins following her around and Kingston is afraid her mother will try setting them up together. After Kingston screams to her mother and father that she does not want to be set up with the mentally retarded boy, she launches into a laundry list of things she is and is not going to do, regardless of her mother’s opinion: “So get that ape out of here. I’m going to college. And I’m not going to Chinese school anymore, […] the kids are rowdy and mean. […] And I don’t want to listen to any more of your stories; they have no logic. […] Ha! You can’t stop me from talking. You tried to cut off my tongue, but it didn’t work.” Kingston’s mother shouts back, “I cut it to make you talk more, not less, you dummy,” Ho Chi Kuei is a term immigrants frequently use for Chinese Americans, and it literally means "like - ie. similar to (Ho Chi) - a ghost (Kuei)". Kingston cannot figure out the exact translation, but she muses that Hao Chi Kuei means “Good Foundation Ghosts”: The immigrants could be saying that we were born on Gold Mountain and have advantages. Sometimes they scorn us for having had it so easy, and sometimes they’re delighted. In the final part of “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” Kingston tells the story of Ts’ai Yen, a poetess born in A.D. 175. After captured by the Southern Hsiung-nu barbarians, she brings her songs back from the savage lands and passes down “Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” a song that “Chinese sing to their own instruments.”
913971	/m/03pdf7	Sanditon	Jane Austen	1817	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 The people of “modern Sanditon”, as Austen calls it, have moved out of the “old house – the house of [their] forefathers” and are busily constructing a new world in the form of a modern seaside commercial town. (The town of Sanditon is probably based on Worthing, where Austen stayed in late 1805 when the resort was first being developed, or on Eastbourne.) The town is less of an actual reality than it is an ideal of the inhabitants – one that they express in their descriptions. These inhabitants have a conception of the town’s identity and of the way in which this identity should be spread to, and appreciated by, the world: :"My name perhaps… may be unknown at this distance from the coast – but Sanditon itself – everybody has heard of Sanditon, – the favourite – for a young and rising bathing-place, certainly the favourite spot of all that are to be found along the coast of Sussex; – the most favoured by nature, and promising to be the most chosen by man.” (Sanditon) However, the founders of Sanditon must create the town within their own circle of intimate acquaintances before it may be spread to the world. Each time these townsfolk meet, their “conversation turn[s] entirely upon Sanditon, its present number of visitants and the chances of a good season”. Thus, these people are the founders and supporters of the town by means of the images that they share through conversation; they build the town by means of words with greater facility than it is built in reality. Mr. Parker, one of the founders and most eager creators of the town demonstrates this oral formation when discussing the relation between the building of streets and the arrival of lodgers: “if we have encouragement enough this year for a little crescent to be ventured on… then, we shall be able to call it Waterloo Crescent – and the name joined to the form of the building, which always takes, will give us the command of lodgers”. Later, events demonstrate that there is not likely to be such an abundance of lodgers, and that the town is therefore unlikely to grow so rapidly as Mr. Parker expresses; yet, in his mind and in his communications, the town thrives. From these conversations amongst intimates, Sanditon’s fame spreads through letters and by word of mouth. Mr. Parker’s sister sends him a letter in which she states that she has “secur[ed]… two large families… I will not tell you how many people I have employed in the business – Wheel within wheel”. This letter provides a perfect description of the epistolary and oral communication that furthers the creation of the town by means of reputation. But Austen develops a sense of the artificial foundation of the town by undermining the gossip with which she built it in the first chapters of the story: the two families turn out to be one – exaggerated in number by the multiple “intermediate friend[s]” who had relayed the information – “Mrs. Charles Dupuis lives almost next door to a lady, who has a relation lately settled at Clapham, who actually attends the seminary and gives lessons on eloquence and Belles Lettres”. Austen allows the reader to imagine the development of the town’s reputation as it spread from mouth to mouth in one direction and the way in which the number of families was augmented in the other. Thus, Sanditon is a text that demonstrates Austen's interest in the practical results of communication — an issue with which she had experimented since she used the epistolary novel form in such early works as Lady Susan.
914549	/m/03pgkw	Lady Susan	Jane Austen		{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 This epistolary novel, an early complete work that the author never submitted for publication, describes the schemes of the main character—the widowed Lady Susan—as she seeks a new husband for herself, and one for her daughter. Although the theme, together with the focus on character study and moral issues, is close to Austen's published work (Sense and Sensibility was also originally written in the epistolary form), its outlook is very different, and the heroine has few parallels in 19th-century literature. Lady Susan is a selfish, attractive woman, who tries to trap the best possible husband while maintaining a relationship with a married man. She subverts all the standards of the romantic novel: she has an active role, she's not only beautiful but intelligent and witty, and her suitors are significantly younger than she is (in contrast with Sense and Sensibility and Emma, which feature marriages of men who are sixteen years older than their wives). Although the ending includes a traditional reward for morality, Lady Susan herself is treated much more mildly than the adulteress in Mansfield Park, who is severely punished.
914619	/m/03pgqz	Goodnight Mister Tom	Michelle Magorian	1981-03-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In September 1939, as Britain stands on the edge of World War II, many young children from the cities are sent into the countryside to escape the German bombardment. William "Willie" Beech, a boy from London who is physically and emotionally abused by his mother, arrives at the home of Mr. Thomas Oakley, a widower in his sixties who lives in the village of Little Weirwold. The boy is thinly clad, underfed and covered with painful bruises, and believing he is full of sin, a result of his upbringing by his mother. "Mister Tom", as Willie christens his new guardian, is reclusive and bad-tempered, and as such is avoided by the community. Willie lives with him as his Mother wants him to live with someone who is either very religious or lives next to a Church. Though initially distant, he is touched after discovering William's home-life and treats him with kindness and understanding, helping to educate him. Under his care, William begins to progress, forming a small circle of friends at school among his classmates including fellow-evacuee Zach. He also becomes proficient in drawing and dramatics. As William is changed by Tom, so is Tom transformed by William's presence in his home. It is revealed that Tom lost his wife and baby son to scarletina some 40 years previously, and he has become reclusive because of this. The growing bond between William and Tom is threatened when William's mother requests that the boy return to her in the city, telling him she is sick. At first, William thinks this will be a good thing, as he can be helpful to his mother. However his mother is not pleased to learn the details of his time with Tom, feeling that he has not been disciplined properly. While William has been away, she has become pregnant and had a girl, but is neglecting the baby. After a bad reunion, where his mother becomes furious upon learning the details of her son's life with Tom, abhorring his association with the Jewish Zach among other things, she throws William against a bookcase, knocking him out. She then ties and gags him and locks him, with the baby, in a cupboard under the stairs. Back in Little Weirwold, Tom has a premonition that something is not right with William. Although he has never travelled beyond his immediate locality, he ventures into London and eventually locates William's neighbourhood of Deptford and his home. He persuades a local policeman to break down the door of the apparently empty home, and finds William in the closet holding his dead half-sister. William is malnourished and badly bruised as he had been locked under the stairs for a number of days. William is hospitalised, but whilst there suffers horrific nightmares and is drugged simply to prevent his screams from disturbing the other children. Tom is warned that it is likely that William will be taken to a children's home, and, unable to observe William's distress any longer, kidnaps him from the hospital and takes him back to Little Weirwold. Back with Mister Tom, William is much damaged by his ordeal, blaming himself for the death of his sister as he had not been able to provide enough milk to feed her whilst locked away, and becomes very depressed. Later, when his favourite teacher Annie Hartridge has a baby, William is shocked to learn from Zach that a woman cannot conceive a child on her own, and realises that his mother was having a relationship with a man, even though she had previously told him that it was wrong for unmarried couples to live together or have children together. Tom is traced by the authorities, who have come to tell William that his mother has committed suicide and offer him a place in a children's home, as they've been unable to trace any other relatives who may have been able to take care of him. Luckily the authorities realise that William has already found a good home and allow Tom to adopt him. Tom, William and Zach enjoy a holiday at the seaside village of Salmouth, where they stay in the house of a widow whose sons have been sent out to war. Zach then receives news that his father has been injured by a Luftwaffe bomb in London and he hurries home on the next train saying farewell to all his friends. This is the last time they hear from him. William later learns that Zach has been killed and is grief-stricken for some time. Eventually, Doctor Little, the village doctor, who was Zach's guardian while he was evacuated, gives William Zach's bike. Through learning to ride it, William realises that Zach lives on inside him. In the ending scene William finally learns to ride Zach's bike down a steep hill and sees Mr. Tom waiting for him. They both embrace and William, happily, calls him Dad.
914635	/m/03pgsd	Gorboduc	Thomas Norton			 At the play's beginning, the argument gives the following summary of the play's action: "Gorboduc, King of Britain, divided his realm in his lifetime to his sons, Ferrex and Porrex. The sons fell to dissention. The younger killed the elder. The mother that more dearly loved the elder, for revenge killed the younger. The people, moved with the cruelty of the fact, rose in rebellion and slew both father and mother. The nobility assembled and most terribly destroyed the rebels. And afterward for want of issue of the prince, whereby the succession of the crown became uncertain, they fell to civil war in which both they and many of their issues were slain, and the land for a long time almost desolate and miserably wasted."
915152	/m/03pjgp	If I Forget Thee Jerusalem	William Faulkner	1939		 Each story is five chapters long and they offer a significant interplay between narrative plots. The Wild Palms tells the story of Henry and Charlotte, who meet, fall in forbidden love, travel the country together for work, and, ultimately, experience tragedy when the abortion Henry performs on Charlotte kills her. Old Man is the story of a convict who, while being forced to help victims of a flood, rescues a pregnant woman. They are swept away downstream by the flooding Mississippi, and she gives birth to a baby. He eventually gets both himself and the woman to safety and then turns himself in, returning to prison.
915288	/m/03pjzd	The Misfortunes of Virtue	Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Marquis de Sade	1791	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02js9": "Erotica"}	 The plot concerns Justine, a 12-year-old maiden ("As for Justine, aged as we have remarked, twelve"...) who sets off, to make her way in France. It follows her until age 26, in her quest for virtue. She is presented with sexual lessons, hidden under a virtuous mask. The unfortunate situations include: the time when she seeks refuge and confession in a monastery, but is forced to become a sex-slave to the monks, who subject her to countless orgies, rapes, and similar rigours. When helping a gentleman who is robbed in a field, he takes her back to his chateau with promises of a post caring for his wife, but she is then confined in a cave and subject to much the same punishment. These punishments are mostly the same throughout, even when she goes to a judge to beg for mercy in her case as an arsonist, and then finds herself openly humiliated in court, unable to defend herself. Justine (Therese) and Juliette were the daughters of Monsieur de Bertole. Bertole was a widower banker who fell in love with another man's woman. The man, Monsieur de Noirseuil, in the interest of revenge, pretended to be his friend, and made sure he became bankrupt and eventually poisoned him, leaving the girls orphans. Juliette and Justine lived in a nunnery, where the Abbess of the nunnery corrupted Juliette (and attempted to corrupt Justine too). However, Justine was sweet and virtuous. When the Abbess found out about Bertole's death she thre both girls out. Juliette's story is told in another book, and Justine continues on in pursuit of virtue, beginning from becoming a maid in the house of the Usurer Harpin, which is where her troubles begin anew. In her search for work and shelter Justine constantly fell into the hands of rogues who would ravish and torture her and the people she makes friends with. Justine was falsely accused of theft by Harpin and sent to jail expecting execution. She had to ally herself with a Miss Dubois, a criminal who helped her to escape along with her band. In order to escape they had to start a fire in the prison, in which 21 people died. After escaping the band of Dubois, Justine wanders off and accidentally trespasses upon the lands of The Count of Bressac. These are described in true Sadean form. However, unlike some of his other works, the novel is not just a catalogue of sadism. The story is told by "Therese" in an inn, to Madame de Lorsagne. It is finally revealed that Madame de Lorsagne is her long lost sister. The irony is that her sister submitted to a brief period of vice and found herself a comfortable existence where she could exercise good, while Justine refused to make concessions for the greater good and was plunged further into vice than those who would go willingly. The story ends with Madame de Lorsagne relieving her from a life of vice and clearing her name. Soon afterward, Justine becomes introverted and morose, and is finally struck by a bolt of lightning and killed instantly. Madame de Lorsagne joins a religious order after Justine's death.
915730	/m/03pl94	The Godmakers	Frank Herbert	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It explores the concepts of war and peace, good government and religious belief. It can be seen as a bridging novel between the all-human Dune universe and the ConSentiency universe series. It is a novel expanded from four short stories: * "You Take the High Road". Appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1958 * "Missing link". Appeared in Astounding Science Fiction February 1959 * "Operation Haystack". Appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1959 * "The Priests of Psi". Appeared in Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, February 1960 The story focuses on Lewis Orne, an agent for a government agency which develops "lost planets." After correctly identifying a warlike civilization on the planet Hamal, he is drafted into Investigative Adjustment (I-A), which manages dangerous planets. Under the auspices of I-A, he travels to various planets in order to maintain peace throughout the galaxy. At the same time, the priests of the planet Amel, who practice "religious engineering," set about creating the first human god in their history. After resolving a number of dangerous situations, Lewis is injured and has a near-death experience. Following this, his psychic powers develop, and after passing a series of tests he becomes a god.
915996	/m/03pm2q	Epileptic	David Beauchard			 The book tells the story of the artist's early childhood and adolescence, focusing on his relationship with his brother and sister. His brother develops severe and intractable epilepsy, causing the family to seek a variety of solutions from alternative medicine, most dramatically by moving to a commune based on macrobiotic principles. As the epileptic brother loses control of his own life, the artist develops solitary obsessions with cartoons, mythology and war. The book's graphic style becomes increasingly elaborate as the children's fantasy life takes over, with their dreams and fears (including epilepsy itself) appearing as living creatures. In brief interludes, the children appear as adults when the artist begins the process of writing the story.
916002	/m/03pm3t	Market Forces	Richard Morgan	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 2049, Chris Faulkner is recruited by Shorn Associates, an investment firm in London.There he befriends Mike Bryant, a fellow junior executive in the "Conflict Investment" division. During a social gathering in Zones, the ghetto areas of London, Mike introduces Chris to journalist Liz Linshaw, who is also Mike's former mistress. Before they leave the Zones, Mike kills several gang members in a failed robbery. Back at work, Mike brings Chris into a project regarding propping up the ageing Colombian dictator General Hernan Echevarria by providing military resources in exchange for a portion of the country's gross domestic product. With Shorn's contract due for renewal they are challenged by competing agencies Nakamura and Acropolitic. The challenge is settled by a driving duel in which the Shorn team eliminates the two competing teams. As Chris becomes famous for his driving performance, he begins an affair with Liz Linshaw. With Echevarria's son, Francisco, who is aligned with a competing American firm, preparing to take over, Chris recruits a Colombian rebel group, led by Vincente Barranco, to overthrow Hernan before Francisco takes over. However, other Shorn executives sabotage Chris's efforts by arranging Barranco to overhear a Shorn executive negotiate with the Echevarrias. Chris reacts by spontaneously beating Hernan to death. Meanwhile, the demands of his new job stress Chris's relationship with his wife, Carla, who is uncomfortable with the brutal competition among firms and the violence they incite in other countries. With the help of her father, who lives in the London Zones, and her mother in Sweden, they secure a position at the United Nations for Chris on condition he bring insider information with him. As Chris resists and their marriage ends. In jail, Chris is offered a choice: stand trial for murder or participate in the cover-up by saying he had legally issued a challenge for a senior position in the firm. Knowing murder merits capital punishment, Chris agrees to the cover-up but must face Mike in a driving duel for the senior position. Mike is the superior driver but Chris forces Mike to drive off a bridge and into the Zones. Chris finds the badly injured Mike and kills him just before a gang, who had watched the duel on television, finds them. The gang beats Chris but he survives. The story ends with Chris, as the new senior executive, giving the new dictator Francisco Echevarria 48 hours to flee his country in favour of installing Barranco.
917616	/m/03prtc	Orlando: A Biography	Virginia Woolf	1928-10-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Orlando tells the story of a young man named Orlando, born in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, who decides not to grow old. He is briefly a lover to the elderly queen, but after her death has a brief, intense love affair with Sasha, a princess in the entourage of the Russian embassy. This episode, of love and excitement against the background of the Great Frost, is one of the best known, and is said to represent Vita Sackville-West's affair with Violet Trefusis. Following Sasha's sudden, unwarned departure and return to Russia, the desolate, heartbroken Orlando returns to writing The Oak Tree, a poem started and abandoned in his youth. He meets with a famous poet, Nicholas Greene, with whom he joyfully entertains, but who criticises Orlando's writing, later making Orlando feel betrayed when he finds himself made the foolishly-depicted subject of one of Greene's subsequent works. This period of contemplating love and life leads Orlando to appreciate the value of his ancestral stately home, which he proceeds to furnish lavishly and then plays host to the populace. Ennui sets in and the harassment of a persistent suitor, the Archduchess Harriet, leads to Orlando's fleeing the country when appointed by King Charles II as British ambassador to Constantinople. Orlando performs his duties well, until a night of civil unrest and murderous riots. He falls asleep for a lengthy period of days while in Turkey, resistant to all efforts to rouse him. Upon awakening he finds, unsurprised, that he has metamorphosed into a woman—the same person, with the same personality and intellect, but in a woman's body. The now Lady Orlando covertly escapes Constantinople in the company of a Gypsy clan, adopting their way of life until its essential conflict with her upbringing leads her to head home. Only on the ship back to England, with her constraining female clothes and an incident in which a flash of her ankle nearly results in a sailor's falling to his death, does she realise the magnitude of becoming a woman; yet she concludes the overall advantages, declaring 'Praise God I'm a woman!' Back in England, Orlando is hounded once again by the archduchess, who now reveals herself in fact to be a man, the Archduke Harry. Orlando evades his marriage proposals, instead living a life switching between gender roles, dressing as both man and woman. Orlando soon becomes caught up in the life of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, holding court with the great poets (notably Alexander Pope), including Nick Greene who appears to be as timeless as she, now promoting her writing and promising to help her publish The Oak Tree. Orlando wins a lawsuit over her property and marries a sea captain, Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine. In 1928, she publishes The Oak Tree centuries after starting it, winning a prize. As her husband's ship returns, in the aftermath of her success, she rushes to greet him.
918336	/m/03pts9	An Ideal Husband	Oscar Wilde			 An Ideal Husband opens during a dinner party at the home of Sir Robert Chiltern in London's fashionable Grosvenor Square. Sir Robert, a prestigious member of the House of Commons, and his wife, Lady Chiltern, are hosting a gathering that includes his friend Lord Goring, a dandified bachelor and close friend to the Chilterns, his sister Mabel Chiltern, and other genteel guests. During the party, Mrs. Cheveley, an enemy of Lady Chiltern's from their school days, attempts to blackmail Sir Robert into supporting a fraudulent scheme to build a canal in Argentina. Apparently, Mrs. Cheveley's dead mentor and lover, Baron Arnheim, convinced the young Sir Robert many years ago to sell him a Cabinet secret, a secret that suggested he buy stocks in the Suez Canal three days before the British government announced its purchase. Sir Robert made his fortune with that illicit money, and Mrs. Cheveley has the letter to prove his crime. Fearing the ruin of both career and marriage, Sir Robert submits to her demands. When Mrs. Cheveley pointedly informs Lady Chiltern of Sir Robert's change of heart regarding the canal scheme, the morally inflexible Lady, unaware of both her husband's past and the blackmail plot, insists that Sir Robert renege on his promise. For Lady Chiltern, their marriage is predicated on her having an "ideal husband"—that is, a model spouse in both private and public life that she can worship: thus Sir Robert must remain unimpeachable in all his decisions. Sir Robert complies with the lady's wishes and apparently seals his doom. Also toward the end of Act&nbsp;I, Mabel and Lord Goring come upon a diamond brooch that Lord Goring gave someone many years ago. Goring takes the brooch and asks that Mabel inform him if anyone comes to retrieve it. In the second act, which also takes place at Sir Robert's house, Lord Goring urges Sir Robert to fight Mrs. Cheveley and admit his guilt to his wife. He also reveals that he and Mrs. Cheveley were formerly engaged. After finishing his conversation with Sir Robert, Goring engages in flirtatious banter with Mabel. He also takes Lady Chiltern aside and obliquely urges her to be less morally inflexible and more forgiving. Once Goring leaves, Mrs. Cheveley appears, unexpected, in search of a brooch she lost the previous evening. Incensed at Sir Robert's reneging on his promise, she ultimately exposes Sir Robert to his wife once they are both in the room. Unable to accept a Sir Robert now unmasked, Lady Chiltern then denounces her husband and refuses to forgive him. In the third act, set in Lord Goring's home, Goring receives a pink letter from Lady Chiltern asking for his help, a letter that might be read as a compromising love note. Just as Goring receives this note, however, his father, Lord Caversham, drops in and demands to know when his son will marry. A visit from Sir Robert, who seeks further counsel from Goring, follows. Meanwhile, Mrs. Cheveley arrives unexpectedly and, misrecognized by the butler as the woman Goring awaits, is ushered into Lord Goring's drawing room. While she waits, she finds Lady Chiltern's letter. Ultimately, Sir Robert discovers Mrs. Cheveley in the drawing room and, convinced of an affair between these two former loves, angrily storms out of the house. When she and Lord Goring confront each other, Mrs. Cheveley makes a proposal. Claiming to still love Goring from their early days of courtship, she offers to exchange Sir Robert's letter for her old beau's hand in marriage. Lord Goring declines, accusing her of defiling love by reducing courtship to a vulgar transaction and ruining the Chilterns' marriage. He then springs his trap. Removing the diamond brooch from his desk drawer, he binds it to Cheveley's wrist with a hidden device. Goring then reveals how the item came into her possession. Apparently Mrs. Cheveley stole it from his cousin years ago. To avoid arrest, Cheveley must trade the incriminating letter for her release from the bejewelled handcuff. After Goring obtains and burns the letter, however, Mrs. Cheveley steals Lady Chiltern's note from his desk. Vengefully she plans to send it to Sir Robert misconstrued as a love letter addressed to the dandified lord. Mrs. Cheveley exits the house in triumph. The final act, which returns to Grosvenor Square, resolves the many plot complications sketched above with a decidedly happy ending. Lord Goring proposes to and is accepted by Mabel. Lord Caversham informs his son that Sir Robert has denounced the Argentine canal scheme before the House. Lady Chiltern then appears, and Lord Goring informs her that Sir Robert's letter has been destroyed but that Mrs. Cheveley has stolen her letter and plans to use it to destroy her marriage. At that moment, Sir Robert enters while reading Lady Chiltern's letter, but as the letter does not have the name of the addressee, he assumes it is meant for him, and reads it as a letter of forgiveness. The two reconcile. Lady Chiltern initially agrees to support Sir Robert's decision to renounce his career in politics, but Lord Goring dissuades her from allowing her husband to resign. When Sir Robert refuses Lord Goring his sister's hand in marriage, still believing he has taken up with Mrs. Cheveley, Lady Chiltern is forced to explain last night's events and the true nature of the letter. Sir Robert relents, and Lord Goring and Mabel are permitted to wed.
920695	/m/03q106	Tuesdays With Morrie	Mitch Albom	1997	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational", "/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Newspaper columnist Mitch Albom recounts time spent with his 78-year-old sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, at Brandeis University, who was dying from Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS). Albom, a former student of Schwartz, had not corresponded with him since attending his college classes 16 years earlier. The first three chapters incorporate an ambiguous introduction to the final conversation between Albom and Schwartz, a brief flashback to Albom's graduation, and an account of the events Albom experienced between graduation and the reunion with his professor. Albom is a successful sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press despite his childhood dream of being a pianist. After seeing Schwartz on Nightline, Albom called Schwartz, who remembered his former pupil despite the lapse of 16 years. Albom was prompted to travel from Michigan to Massachusetts to visit Schwartz. A newspaper strike frees Albom to commute weekly, Tuesdays, to visit with Schwartz. The resulting book is based on these fourteen Tuesdays they meet, supplemented with Schwartz's lectures and life experiences and interspersed with flashbacks and allusions to contemporary events.
921513	/m/03q40g	Shardik	Richard Adams	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kelderek is a young hunter nicknamed "Play-with-the-Children" because of his simple nature and love of small children. In the forest near his home on the river island of Ortelga, he sees an enormous bear. When a tremendous fire ravaged the forest, the bear managed to flee, to be found almost dead by Kelderek. The Ortelgans worship the bear-god Shardik and once ruled the entire territory now known as the Beklan Empire, but their territory and religion are now limited to a small barony of river-islands on the empire's outskirts. Convinced that this bear is an incarnation of Shardik, Kelderek communicates this belief to the local priests and barons, eventually resulting in a military campaign to retake Bekla. The bear is sedated and caged by the priestesses to be carried forward with the Ortelgans but awakens from his slumber during a battle they are losing; as if in divine intervention, he breaks free, crushing the opposing army. Shardik's worship is restored to central prominence in Bekla with Kelderek as the high priest to the recaged bear, but temporal power is held by the military barons. Still idealistic and unworldly, Kelderek is dismayed by the brutality and corruption that quickly surrounds him. When the bear escapes and flees again, it is Kelderek alone who follows in pursuit. The two of them stagger through the wilderness for a long time. Behind them, the capital city is torn apart by factions of rebels, and lawless chaos spreads through the entire empire. On the brink of madness after days alone with no sleep, Kelderek follows the bear to a mysterious place called the Streels of Urtah. Here, Shardik enters one of the ravines comprising the Streels, and is presumed dead. A shepherd (later revealed as a guardian of the Streels) informs Kelderek that any who enter there are beings of great evil who are destined to die, with one past exception: a woman who entered the Streels but was able to climb out again, doomed to die horribly but by her death bring about greatness. This woman gave birth to a son as she left the Streels, a son who later grew to be a great hero who led the ancient overthrow of the Ortelgans from Bekla. As this story is told, Shardik emerges from the ravine and flees again into the woods. Kelderek continues to follow Shardik, meeting many foes along the way, until he reaches Zeray, an outlaw town beyond the borders of civilisation. Here he re-encounters Melathys, a former priestess of Shardik. Having lost Shardik and his faith, Kelderek is captured by Genshed, a cruel slave-trader who already has a large group of children to eventually sell but is meanwhile tormenting them for his own amusement. Treating the children with his customary kindness, Kelderek is mocked and threatened by Genshed, who is on the point of killing him when Shardik erupts from the woods, mad and half-starved. The bear attacks Genshed, mortally wounding him before itself collapsing in the river. Kelderek, his faith and kindness restored but now tempered with knowledge of the world, returns to the town of Zeray with the children and attempts to re-establish a lawful society. The epilogue skips forward a number of years. It is told from the perspective of a newcomer from Zakalon, a distant kingdom to the east of Bekla. This man, Siristrou, is the leader of the first embassy from Zakalon sent to reciprocate the first visit of a Beklan to their country. The formerly lawless border town is now the home of hundreds of orphans and refugees working together to build a better future. Kelderek is its mayor, widely regarded as a fair and wise leader, and is married to his love, Melathys. Kelderek takes the traveller into his home and tells him of the bear Shardik, now known as a great animal who taught the people of the land the meaning of both kindness and hardship. In the final passages, Siristrou stirs the logs in the fireplace and plays a game of spotting images in the flames: an island, a glowing knife, a barred cage, an old woman, a deep ravine, a shaggy bear; he recognises these images in turn, and finally remarks "That's a beautiful fire."
921575	/m/03q46m	Wild Swans	Jung Chang		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book starts by relating the biography of Chang's grandmother (Yu-fang). From the age of two, she had bound feet. As the family was relatively poor, her father schemed to have her taken as a concubine to a high-ranking warlord General Xue Zhi-heng, in order to gain status, which was hugely important in terms of quality of life. After a wedding ceremony to the General, who already had a wife and many concubines, the young girl was left alone in a wealthy household with servants, and did not see her "husband" again for six years. Despite her luxurious surroundings, life was tense as she feared the servants and the wife of the General would report rumors or outright lies to him. She was not even allowed to visit her parents home. After his six year absence, the General made a brief conjugal visit to his concubine, during which a daughter, Chang's mother, was conceived. General did not stay there for long, even to see his daughter but he named his daughter Bao Qin meaning precious zither. During the child's infancy, Chang's grandmother put off persistent requests for her to be brought to the General's main household, until he became very sick and it was no longer a request. Chang's grandmother had no choice but to comply. During her visit to the household, the General was dying. The general had no male heir, and Chang's mother was very important to the family. Realizing that the General's wife would have complete control over her life and her child's, when he would die, Chang's grandmother fled with her baby to her parents' home, sending false word to her husband's family that the child had died. With his last words, the General unexpectedly proclaimed her free at age twenty-four. Eventually she married a much older doctor (Dr. Xia) with whom she and her daughter, Chang's mother, made a home in Jinzhou, Manchuria. She was no more a concubine, but a true, beloved wife. The book now moves to the story of Chang's mother (Bao Qin/De-hong), who at the age of fifteen, began working for the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong's Red Army. As the Revolution progressed, her work for the party helped her rise through the ranks. She met the man who would become Chang's father (Wang Yu/Shou-yu), a high-ranking officer. The couple were soon married but Communist Party dictates meant they were not allowed to spend much time together. Eventually, the couple were transferred to Yibin, Chang's father's hometown. It was a long and arduous trek. Chang's mother traveled on foot because of her rank, while her father rode in a Jeep. He was not aware that Chang's mother was pregnant. After arrival at Nanjing, Chang's mother undertook gruelling military training. After the strain of the training coupled with the journey, she suffered a miscarriage. Chang's father swore to never again be inattentive to his wife's needs. In the following years Chang's mother gave birth to Jung and four other children. The focus of the book now shifts again to cover Jung's own autobiography. The Cultural Revolution started when Chang was a teenager. Chang willingly joined the Red Guards though she recoiled from some of their brutal actions. As Mao's personality cult grew, life became more difficult and dangerous. Chang's father became a target for the Red Guards when he mildly but openly criticised Mao due to the suffering caused to Chinese people by the Cultural Revolution. Chang's parents were labeled as capitalist roaders and made subjects of public struggle meetings and torture. Chang recalls that her father deteriorated physically and mentally, until his eventual death. Her father's treatment prompted Chang's previous doubts about Mao to come to the fore. Like thousands of other young people, Chang was sent down to the countryside for education and thought reform by the peasants, a difficult, harsh and pointless experience. At the end of the Cultural Revolution Chang returned home and worked hard to gain a place at university. Not long after she succeeded, Mao died. The whole nation was shocked in mourning, though Chang writes that: "People had been acting for so long they confused it with their true feelings. I wondered how many of the tears were genuine". Chang said that she felt exhilarated by Mao's death. At university Chang studied English. After her graduation and a stint as an assistant lecturer, she won a scholarship to study in England and left for her new home. She still lives in England today and visits mainland China on occasion to see her family and friends there, with permission from Chinese authorities.
921617	/m/03q497	Tin Woodman	David Bischoff	1979-04-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A young psychic boy is taken aboard a starship at the request of the government. The boy is considered both a misfit and dangerous because he has the ability to read minds on earth. However, once aboard he travels into deep space where he comes into contact with a sentient starship. The mission of the crew is to somehow communicate with the alien craft and bring it back to earth. However, things don't go to plan when the young psychic makes contact and decides to take matters into his own hands. *1979, USA, Doubleday ISBN 0-385-12785-5, Pub date 1 April 1979, Hardback *1980, UK, Sidgwick & Jackson, ISBN 0-283-98602-6, Pub date 1980, Hardback *1980, UK, Readers Union/The Science Fiction Book Club [UK], Pub date 1980, Hardback *1982, USA, Ace Books, ISBN 0-441-81292-9, Pub date, Feb 1982, Paperback *1982, UK, Sidgwick & Jackson, ISBN 0-283-98813-4, Pub date 1980, Omnibus Hardback *1983 France, Les Enfants du Voyage, Opta (OPTA - Galaxie Bis #96), ISBN 2-7201-0182-6, Cover: J. L. Verdier, 206pp, Pub date Dec 1983, Paperback *1985, USA, Ace Books, ISBN 0-441-81293-7, Cover: Walter Velez, Pub date, Dec. 1985, Paperback The name Tin Woodman is derived from the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Tin Woodman character. The name is used as a euphemism for the alien, the subject of the novel, who like the Woodman seeks happiness by having its heart restored.
922462	/m/03q67v	The Magic Goes Away	Larry Niven		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Warlock, whose actual name is both unknown and unpronounceable, is a powerful sorcerer in excess of 200 years of age. He observes that when he stays in one place too long, his powers dwindle and will return only when he leaves that place. Experimentation leads him to create an apparatus (now known as the Warlock's Wheel) consisting of a metal disc enchanted to spin perpetually. The enchantment eventually consumes all the mana in the vicinity, causing a localized failure in all magic. The Warlock realizes that magic is fueled by a non-renewable resource, which would cause great concern among the magicians, as it was through their magic that nations enforced their wills both internally and abroad. The widespread diminishing of magical power in The Magic Goes Away triggered a quest on the part of the most powerful of the magicians of the time to harness a new source of magic (the Moon), resulting in the events described in the book. It was eventually discovered (in The Magic May Return) that mana was originally carried to Earth and the other bodies of the solar system on the solar wind, replenishing mana slowly over time. However, at some point in the "recent" past (a few thousand years ago) a god created an invisible shield between Earth and Sun that intercepted the solar mana and caused the eventual decline of magic on Earth. Traditional fantasy creatures inhabit Niven's Magic universe, but devolve to normal animals when deprived of mana. For example, a unicorn becomes a simple horse. *The Warlock - One of the world's foremost magicians. He devised a simple experiment to explain why a magician's power would fade over time, a device called the Warlock's Wheel. *Clubfoot - The Warlock's apprentice. A Native American named after a deformity of his foot that he could have cured long ago but it would have cost him half his power. *Wavyhill - The first Necromancer. Exploiting the mana inherent in murder, he invented necromancy. His name comes from his practice of building his houses under magically supported overhangs; when the local mana is depleted by a battle, the hillside collapses, trapping his foe and eliminating the evidence at the same time. *Orolandes - A Greek soldier, survivor of the sinking of Atlantis. *Mirandee - A powerful witch, formerly Warlock's lover. *Aran - A werewolf who assisted the Warlock in defeating the necromancer Wavyhill. *Roze Kattee - The God Of Love And Madness. Its power lies in the taking away of love or madness. Enemy Berzerkers are suddenly rendered sane, those who do not worship Roze Kattee never find mates, etc. *The World Worm - Its spine composes all the world's mountain chains, the Andes, Himalayas, Rockies, etc. It consumes its own tail, along with anything that might be living on it. *Yangin-Atep - A fire god. *Coyote, Loki, etc. - A trickster god for many cultures. *Zoosh - Once a powerful patriarch. *Left-Handed Hummingbird - A Mesoamerican god (Huitzilopochtli).
922791	/m/03q79f	Gods and Generals	Jeffrey Shaara	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Copying his father's approach of focusing on the most important officers of the two armies (General Robert E. Lee, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Chamberlain), Shaara depicted the emotional drama of soldiers fighting old friends while accurately detailing historical details including troop movements, strategies, and tactical combat situations. General Hancock, for instance, spends much of the novel dreading the day he will have to fire on his friend in the Confederate Army, Lewis "Lo" Armistead. The novel also deals with General Lee's disillusionment with the Confederate bureaucracy and General Jackson's religious fervor. In addition to covering events leading up to the war, the book details the events of First Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. The film version provides only cursory coverage of immediate pre-war events, focusing primarily on Lee and the secession of Virginia, and omits the Battle of Antietam.
923716	/m/03qb88	'Tis: A Memoir	Frank McCourt	2000-08-29	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The book begins as McCourt lands at Albany, New York, and quickly makes his way to New York City. Friendless and clueless about American customs, he struggles to integrate himself into American blue-collar society. He is then drafted into the US Army, sent to Europe, and rises to the rank of corporal. On his stay in Germany, he has confrontations with many people who try to show Frank how to get a Russian refugee girl to have sexual intercourse with him by giving her coffee or cigarettes. He is granted leave from the army as compensation for his exceptional service as a clerk-typist and goes back home to Ireland to see his family. He then decides to return to the US, where he attends New York University &ndash; despite never having graduated from high school. He falls in love with and eventually marries a middle-class American-born girl, Alberta Small, whom he meets at college. After graduating from NYU, he teaches English and social studies at McKee Vocational and Technical High School on Staten Island. There, he is forced to deal with apathetic, indifferent students. Eventually, he moves on to teaching at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School. At Stuyvesant, he revises his teaching style to end his reliance on books and other teaching resources, to become an effective teacher. 'Tis examines Frank's relationship to his family and his wife during this time (all his siblings and his mother move to America over the course of the book). Eventually, Frank's relationship with his wife turns sour, and they stay together as long as they do only because of their daughter, Margaret Ann (named after Frank’s sister who died in infancy, and his grandmother, who is described in Angela's Ashes). Nonetheless, Frank finally leaves them, an action he compares to that of his father leaving his family. Frank's mother, Angela McCourt, is in increasingly bad health due to emphysema and dies in New York around the same time as Frank's father, Malachy McCourt, Sr., dies in Ireland. Frank goes to Ireland to bury his father and scatter his mother's ashes. The book ends after Frank and his brothers scatter Angela's ashes over the graves of her family. "'Tis" was the final and only word of the last chapter of Angela's Ashes, while Tis ends with the spreading of Angela McCourt's ashes in Ireland. Frank McCourt has remarked in several interviews (perhaps joking) that he originally intended for each book to have the other's title. Frank McCourt followed this book with another memoir, Teacher Man. ms:'Tis
924814	/m/03qfmn	Patriot Games	Tom Clancy		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In London, Jack Ryan saves the Prince and Princess of Wales, along with their infant firstborn son, from an Irish terrorist group called Ulster Liberation Army (ULA) during a kidnapping attempt on the Mall. Sean Miller, a ULA terrorist captured by Ryan, is sentenced to life imprisonment for killing the royal driver. However, he is freed by ULA members while being transported to prison. The ULA later goes after Ryan and his family, partially as an act of revenge, but primarily because they seek to reduce American support for the rival Provisional Irish Republican Army. The assassin sent to kill Ryan is intercepted before he manages to complete his task, but his expectant wife, Cathy, and daughter, Sally, are injured when Miller causes their car to crash on a freeway. They are flown by helicopter to the University of Maryland Medical Center. After the attack on his family, Jack accepts an offer from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to start working as an analyst at the agency's headquarters. Later, the Prince and Princess of Wales come to visit Ryan in America. This gives the ULA another opportunity to conduct another operation—they plan to kill Ryan and his family and kidnap the Royal Family. The attack ultimately fails: after a firefight and a flight, Ryan, his friend Robby Jackson, and the Prince, with the help of Marines and sailors from the U.S. Naval Academy and local police, manage to apprehend and subdue the terrorists. The ultimate fate of the terrorists is not stated in the book. Ryan arrives at Bethesda after the final arrest to be with Cathy for the birth of their son, who will be godparented by Robby Jackson and his wife, as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales. In Clancy's later novel The Sum of All Fears, it is mentioned in passing that Miller and his colleagues were sentenced to death and executed for their crimes. Jack Ryan, Jr., the son born at the novel's close, follows his father into the CIA, and becomes a central character in Clancy's first post-President-Ryan novel, The Teeth of the Tiger.
925789	/m/03qkdw	Changing Places	David Lodge	1975	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07z5s9": "Campus novel"}	 Changing Places is a comic novel with serious undercurrents. It tells the story of the six-month academic exchange between fictional universities located in Rummidge (modelled on Birmingham in England) and Plotinus, in the state of Euphoria (modeled on Berkeley in California). The two academics taking part in the exchange are both aged 40, but appear at first to otherwise have little in common, mainly because of the differing academic systems of their native countries. The English participant, Philip Swallow, is a very conventional and conformist British academic, and somewhat in awe of the American way of life. By contrast the American, Morris Zapp, is a top-ranking American professor who only agrees to go to Rummidge because his wife agrees to postpone long-threatened divorce proceedings on condition that he move out of the marital home for six months. Zapp is at first both contemptuous of, and amused by, what he perceives as the amateurism of British academia. As the exchange progresses, however, both Swallow and Zapp find that they begin to fit in surprisingly well to their new environments. In the course of the story, each man has an affair with the other's wife. Before that, Swallow sleeps with Zapp's daughter Melanie, without realizing who she is. She, however, takes up with a former undergraduate student of his, Charles Boon. Swallow and Zapp even consider remaining permanently. The book ends with the two couples convened in a New York hotel room to decide their fates. The novel ends without a clear-cut decision, though the sequel Small World: An Academic Romance, reveals that Swallow and Zapp returned to their respective countries and domestic situations.
925796	/m/03qkfk	Beneath the Wheel	Hermann Hesse	1906	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Beneath the Wheel is the story of Hans Giebenrath, a talented boy sent to a seminary in Maulbronn. However his education is focused on increasing his knowledge and neglects his development as a person. His close friendship with Hermann Heilner, who is less hard-working and more liberal than he, is a source of comfort for Hans. In the end, Heilner is expelled from the seminary and Giebenrath is sent home after his performance decreases when he shows symptoms of mental illness. Back home, he finds coping with his situation difficult, as he has lost most of his childhood to scholastic study and thus never had time to form lasting personal relationships with anyone in his village. He is apprenticed as a blacksmith and seems to enjoy the work; it is visceral and concrete, as opposed to the intellectual abstraction of scholarly work. However, he never fully adjusts to his new situation. On a pub crawl in a neighbouring village, he and his colleagues get drunk. Giebenrath leaves the group to walk home early. Later, he is found to have drowned in a river. Beneath the Wheel is one of Hesse's first novels and severely criticises education that focuses only on students' academic performance. In that respect the novel is typical of Hesse. There are also autobiographical elements in the story, as he attended and was expelled from the seminary described.
925819	/m/03qkk5	Small World: An Academic Romance	David Lodge	1984	{"/m/07z5s9": "Campus novel"}	 The book begins in April 1979 at a small academic conference at the University of Rummidge. It is the first conference that Persse McGarrigle, (a reference to Percival the grail knight), an innocent young Irishman who recently completed his master's thesis on T. S. Eliot, has attended. He teaches at the fictional University College, Limerick, after having been mistakenly interviewed because the administration sent the interview invitation to him instead of someone else with the same last name. Several important characters are introduced: Rummidge professor Philip Swallow, American professor Morris Zapp, retired Cambridge professor Sybil Maiden, and the beautiful Angelica Pabst, with whom McGarrigle falls immediately in love. Much of the rest of the book is his quest to find and win her. Angelica tells Persse that she was adopted by an executive at KLM after she was found, abandoned, in the washroom of an airplane in flight. Persse professes his love for her, but she leaves the conference without telling him where she has gone. Morris Zapp and Philip Swallow, who are seeing each other for the first time in ten years after the events of Changing Places, have a long evening talk. Since the previous novel, Swallow has become a professor and head of the English Department. Zapp has discovered deconstructionism and reinvented himself academically. Swallow tells Zapp about an incident a few years before, when after almost dying in a plane crash he spent the night at a British Council official's home and slept with the official's wife, Joy. Soon after, Swallow read in the newspaper that Joy, the official, and their son had died in a plane crash. Part II of the book begins by going around the world, time zone to time zone, showing what different characters are doing all at the same time: Morris Zapp travelling; Australian Rodney Wainright trying to write a conference paper; Zapp's ex-wife Désirée trying to write a novel; Howard Ringbaum trying to convince his wife Thelma to sleep with him on an airplane so he can join the Mile High Club; Siegfried von Turpitz talking to Arthur Kingfisher about the new UNESCO chair of literary criticism; Rudyard Parkinson plotting to get that chair; Turkish Akbil Borak reading William Hazlitt to prepare for a visit by Swallow; Akira Sakazaki translating English novelist Ronald Frobisher into Japanese; Ronald Frobisher having breakfast; Italian Fulvia Morgana (a reference to Morgan le Fay) meeting Morris Zapp on a plane; and more.` Cheryl Summerbee is also introduced. She is a check-in clerk for British Airways at Heathrow and plays a small but very important role in helping, or hindering, other characters as they travel around the world. She loves reading romance novels, especially the kind published by "Bills and Moon" (a fictionalized Mills & Boon). People continue to move around from conference to conference around the world in Part III. Persse continues to pursue Angelica. At a meeting in Amsterdam, Persse hears the German literary scholar Siegfried von Turpitz speaking about ideas that he submitted in an unpublished book, and all but accuses von Turpitz of plagiarism. Zapp rises to defend Persse from von Turpitz. Later, Persse sees someone who looks like Angelica, and thinks she has appeared in pornographic movies and worked as a stripper. In Turkey, Phillip Swallow meets Joy, the woman he thought was dead. She explains that only her husband had been on the plane that crashed. They begin an affair, and Swallow plans to leave his wife. Events and characters move along in Part IV, often with direct reference to the genre of romance, such as Sybil Maiden (who at one point acts as a sibyl) saying that grail knights "were such boobies... All they had to do was ask a question at the right moment, and they generally muffed it." Zapp is kidnapped by an underground left-wing movement, but is later released after pressure from Morgana. Persse, who has won an award and got a credit card, has enough money to continue to chase Angelica but never manages to catch up with her. She does leave him a clue referencing The Faerie Queene and he discovers that she has an identical twin, and it is the twin, Lily, who made the pornographic movies. When Persse meets Cheryl Summerbee again, she is now reading not romance novels but romances such as Orlando Furioso and critics such as Northrop Frye after Angelica has passed through her line. Persse is happy to learn this, but Cheryl is shaken to see that Persse is infatuated with Angelica, because she loves him herself. Persse continues to chase Angelica around the world, to conferences in Hawaii, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, and Jerusalem, but he never catches up with her. At that Jerusalem conference, Philip Swallow is with Joy, but after he sees his son there he becomes psychosomatically ill, which people think might be Legionnaires' Disease in a moment of panic. This stops the conference, and leads to the end of Philip and Joy's affair. Part V takes place at the Modern Language Association conference in New York at the end of 1979. All of the characters in the book are there. Arthur Kingfisher oversees a panel discussion about criticism where Swallow, Zapp, Morgana, and others present their opinions on what literary criticism is. Zapp's kidnapping experience has cured him of his interest in deconstructionism. Persse (contrary to what Sybil Maiden had said about knights not asking the right question at the right time) asks, "What follows if everyone agrees with you?" Kingfisher is inspired by this question, and recovers from his mental and physical impotence. Persse finally finds Angelica and hears her read a paper about romances that directly reflects the structure of Small World itself: "No sooner is one crisis in the fortunes of the hero averted than a new one presents itself; no sooner has one mystery been solved than another is raised; no sooner has one adventure been concluded than another begins... The greatest and most characteristic romances are often unfinished - they end only with the author's exhaustion, as a woman's capacity for orgasm is limited only by her physical stamina. Romance is a multiple orgasm." After this talk, Persse runs through the hotel and sees a woman he takes to be Angelica, kisses her and declares that he loves her. She takes him up to her hotel room where they make love, in Persse's first sexual experience. However, after this encounter, she reveals that she is not Angelica, but the twin sister, Lily. Persse feels ashamed, but Lily convinces him that he was "in love with a dream". Later in the evening, Arthur Kingfisher announces that he will offer himself as a candidate for the UNESCO chair. Right afterwards, Sybil Maiden steps forward and announces that she is Angelica and Lily's mother and Kingfisher is their father, which throws the entire meeting into a joyous uproar. Angelica introduces Persse to her fiancee, Peter McGarrigle, the person whose job Persse was interviewed for back in Ireland. However, Peter is not angry, because as a result, he went to America and there met Angelica. Swallow has returned to his wife, saying "Basically I failed in the role of a romantic hero." All of the narrative threads of the novel wrap up but for one: Persse realizes that Cheryl Summerbee, not Angelica, is the woman for him, and he flies to Heathrow to see her. He arrives at the airport on New Year's Eve, but learns that Cheryl no longer works there, having been fired the day before Persse arrives. The new attendant tells Persse that Cheryl wanted to travel anyway at some point, and took this as her chance. No one knows where she has gone. The novel ends with Persse wondering "where in the small, narrow world he should begin to look for her."
928550	/m/03qtr1	A Lost Lady	Willa Cather		{"/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is written in the third person, but is mostly written from the perspective of Niel Herbert, a young man who grows up in Sweet Water and witnesses the decline of Mrs. Forrester, for whom he feels very deeply, and also of the West itself from the idealized age of noble pioneers to the age of capitalist exploitation.
929103	/m/03qwhf	Sans Famille				 Jerome Barberin lives with his wife in a little French town, Chavanon. He usually isn't home, since he works in Paris as a mason. One day he finds a baby boy. The boy wears very fine clothes, so apparently his parents are rich. Barberin offers to take care of the child, hoping to get a good reward. He gives the boy to his wife, and calls him Remi. Afterwards, Barberin gets injured in an accident. He blames his employer and hopes to receive financial compensation in a trial. The trial costs a lot of money, and Barberin tells his wife to sell her cow (her main source of wealth) and to get rid of Remi. She does the former. When Rémi is eight years old, and this is where the story starts, Barberin comes home unexpectedly. He sees that Rémi is still there and decides to lose no time getting rid of him. The next day Barberin meets a travelling artist in the local pub. His name is Signor Vitalis, and he travels through France with three dogs - Capi, Zerbino and Dolce - and a monkey, Joli-Cœur. Vitalis offers to take care of Rémi and Rémi leaves his childhood home, without even a chance to say goodbye to his foster mother (who would have done anything to prevent the transaction) and starts a journey of the roads of France. It turns out that Vitalis is a kind man, certainly better company than Barberin. Vitalis teaches him to play the harp and to read. Often Rémi is hungry and has no roof over his head; but in the animals, especially in Capi, he gains dear friends, and in Vitalis he finds the father he lacks. Together they travel through France, and they earn a living by giving musical and stage performances. When they are in Toulouse, a sad incident, which reflects the unjust social structure of 19th Century France, puts Vitalis into jail. It is not easy for a ten-year-old to feed himself and four animals under his care, and they nearly starve, when they meet the "Swan" - a little river ship owned by Mrs. Milligan and her ill son Arthur. They take Rémi in to entertain the sick boy, but soon start seeing a person in Remi, and he becomes part of the family. He learns that Arthur used to have an elder brother, who disappeared before Arthur was born, and Mrs. Milligan's brother-in-law, James, has attempted in vain to find him back. This was advantageous for James Milligan, since, by the English law, he was to inherit all of his brother's fortune if he died childless. This did not work, because soon Arthur was born. After two months Vitalis is released from jail, Remi and the Milligans like to stay together, but Vitalis wants Rémi back, and so they say goodbye. However, Mrs. Milligan judges that Vitalis is a very kind and honest man. Vitalis tells Rémi that he has done a good choice: one must eat his own bread. But on the way to Paris in a snowstorm Zerbino and Dolce are eaten by wolves in the woods, and Joli-Cœur catches pneumonia. In an attempt to raise money for the doctor, Remi and Vitalis give a performance and Vitalis sings. Remi has never before heard Vitalis sing so beautifully. And not only Rémi is bewildered: a young, and apparently rich lady tells Vitalis that she is amazed to hear his wonderful voice. Vitalis reacts angrily. He explains his skill to the lady by telling that he used to be a singer's servant. The lady explains he has a resemblance to the singer Vitalo Pedrotti from the Scala di Milano who is disparated. He even shows no gladness when the lady gives a gold coin to Capi. They return to Joli-Cœur with the money, but it's too late, Joli-Cœur is dead. They now continue their journey to Paris. Vitalis decides to leave Rémi with a "padrone" for the winter, while he trains other animals. Another institution of 19th Century France, a "padrone" was a man who kept a group of boys, sold by their poverty-stricken parents, who worked for him. Vitalis brings Remi to a "padrone" he knows - Garofoli. Garofoli isn't home, and Vitalis tells Rémi to wait there, and that he will be back soon. Rémi passes there two horrible hours - waiting for Garofoli and talking to an ill-looking boy, Mattia, who keeps houseworking because Garofoli believes him too stupid and incapable of working outside, but keeping the soup pot locked so that Mattia could not eat from it. When the other boys and Garofoli return, Rémi witnesses how terribly Garofoli abuses those who do not bring home the amount of money required: he beats and starves them. When Vitalis comes back and sees how the boys are being flogged, he tells Garofoli that he could go to the police, but Garofoli threatens back to tell "some people just one name which will make Vitalis red from shame". Vitalis takes the wondering and grateful Rémi not to return to Garofoli ever. But this act of love costs Vitalis his life. That night, unable to find a place to stay, Vitalis and Rémi collapse in the snowstorm under a fence. Rémi wakes up in a bed, with people standing around him: a man, two boys and two girls. The little girl, of about 5–6 years old, watches Rémi with talking eyes. Then Rémi learns the terrible truth: Vitalis is dead. In an attempt to discover his identity, the policemen take Rémi to Garofoli, who reveals the truth: Vitalis used to be the famous Italian singer Carlo Balzani. When he got older, his voice got worse, and he was so ashamed for this that he decided to disappear. He changed his identity to Vitalis. The family take Rémi and Capi in. Rémi gets a real father, the gardener Pierre Acquin, two brothers, Alexis and Benjamin, and two sisters, Étienette and little mute Lise. Rémi especially adores Lise. He teaches her to read and plays the harp for her. Lise loves a Napolitan song in particular. Rémi becomes a gardener, and years of hard work and merry Sundays follow. But after two years a terrible hailstrom ruins the glass in the greenhouse, and Acquin is in debts which he cannot pay and has therefore to enter a debt jail. The children are to go to uncles and aunts, in several French towns. Although the children insist that Rémi also belongs to the family, none of the uncles and aunts is willing to take care of Rémi. Broken-hearted again, vowing to his brothers and sisters to visit them on his way and bring father news from them, Rémi takes his harp and Capi and leaves to the big roads. He hasn't gone long until he meets a companion. Mattia, the boy from Garofoli, is starving on the streets of Paris. Garofoli is in prison for beating a boy to death. Mattia pleads Remi to take him into his troupe. Remi is scared: with him, Mattia might die of hunger as much as alone. But Mattia convinces him that two will never die of hunger because one helps the other. Thus, "Remi's troupe" consists now of two twelve-year-olds and a dog. Mattia is a gifted violinist, he plays other instruments too, and he worked some time in a circus, where they had two English clowns, so he knows some English. First the boys turn to visit Alexis, who now lives with his Uncle Gaspard (Father Acquin's brother) in the mining town Varses, where he works in the mine with his uncle. When Alexis is wounded and unable to work for a while, Remi volunteers to replace him. One of the miners is nicknamed magister, he is an old and wise man. He becomes a good friend and he explains the history of coal. One day the mine is flooded, probably by the river which flows overhead. Seven miners, including Uncle Gaspard, the magister and Remi, find shelter, but are trapped. They are waiting to be rescued, but don't even know if the rescue works are taking place. One of the men confesses a crime, blames himself for the disaster and commits suicide. The others spend a fortnight underground, hungry, beaten, but optimistic - and at last are saved. Capi is mad of happiness; Mattia is in tears. He says he never believed that Remi could be dead, and Remi is proud of his friend's strong belief in him. This incident shows the terrible state of child labour in 19th Century France but it also serves to bring closer Remi and Mattia: since that incident they are friends for life and death. Remi wants Mattia to learn music and they visit a musician. Mr. Espinassous is shocked by Mattia's great talent and tries to convince him to stay and learn, but Mattia never wants to leave Remi. The boys now head for Chavanon where they hope to meet Remi's foster mother Barberin. During the trip they saved their money, hoping to buy a cow for mother Barberin. When they pass through Ussel, not far from Chavanon, they buy a cow, to replace beloved Rosette, who was sold when Barberin had his accident. To make sure that they will not buy a bad cow, they ask a vet for help. The vet is very friendly and the boys buy a wonderful cow. In the next town the boys are accused of stealing the cow. Why would two street musicians have a cow, after all? They explain their story to the mayor. The mayor knows Mother Barberin, he heard about the accident in the mine, and he is willing to believe that the boys are honest. To make sure, the vet is called to testify, and the boys can continue their journey. Remi and Mother Barberin finally meet. Mother Barberin tells Remi that Barberin is in Paris in search of Remi, because his real parents appear to be in search of him. However, Mother Barberin knows very little, because Barberin never told her any details. Remi is eager to know his real parents. Remi and Mattia decide to return to Paris and see Barberin. On the way to Paris, they pass through Dreuzy, where they pay a visit to Lise Acquin. Remi and Lise are very fond of each other. When the boys arrive in Paris, they learn that Barberin has died. Remi writes a letter to Mother Barberin. Mother Barberin replies and she encloses a letter that was sent by Barberin before he died. It mentions the address of a lawyer's office in London, which is in charge of the search for Remi. So the boys go to London, where they are led straight to Remi's parents. Their name is Driscoll. Remi is terribly disappointed: the Driscolls are cold to him, his father keeps the boys locked. They turn out to be thieves and use Capi to help them in their work. The Driscolls have a visitor. It is a man who seems to be interested in Remi, but Remi does not understand English well enough. The visitor does not meet Mattia, but Mattia overhears their conversation. The visitor is James Milligan and he appears to be Arthur's uncle. He hopes that Arthur will die, so that he will inherit the fortune of his late brother. The boys agree that Mrs. Milligan must be warned, but they have no idea where to find her. Mattia meets someone he knows. It is Bob, a clown from the circus where Mattia used to work. Bob turns out to be a very fine friend. When Remi is accused of a robbery committed by his parents, Bob and Mattia help him escape from prison. With the help of Bob's brother, a sailor, they return to France. They go and search for Mrs. Milligan, to warn her for her brother-in-law. This is easier than it seems, since her boat, the "Swan", is a remarkable boat, and they soon hear that people have seen her. They only have to follow the rivers and canals. On their way they pass through Dreuzy where they hope to meet Lise again. However, they hear that Lise's uncle has died, and that a kind English lady, who journeyed on a boat, has offered to take care of Lise. That must have been Mrs. Milligan. Of course that is another incentive to go and find the "Swan". Remi and Mattia trace the "Swan" across France to Switzerland. They find the boat, but she is deserted. They inquire, and they find that the boat was unable to journey further up the river, and that the family continued their journey by coach, probably to Vevey. When they get to the town where "the English woman with the ill boy and the mute girl" are supposed to be, they start singing under every fence. It takes several days before they find the family. One day, when Remi sings his Napolitan song, he overhears a scream and a weak voice that continues the song. They run to the voice and find Lise, whose voice has returned to her when she heard her long-lost Remi. The boys now find that James Milligan is there too, and Remi is afraid to meet him, so he hides. Mattia is not afraid - James does not know Mattia. Mattia immediately tells Mrs. Milligan their story. Mrs. Milligan presumes that Remi must be her lost eldest son, but she tells Mattia that this should not be told to Remi until she is sure about it. She arranges that the boys can stay in a hotel, where they can have plenty of food, comfortable beds, and where they are visited by a barber and a tailor. After a few days Mrs. Milligan invites the boys, where they meet Mother Barberin. Mrs. Milligan has apparently sent for her. Mother Barberin shows Remi's baby clothes. Mrs. Milligan recognises these as the clothes her boy wore when he was stolen. Mrs. Milligan happily declares that Remi is her son, to join his "mother, brother and those - she pointed at Lise and Mattia - who loved you in your misery". It is clear that Mr. Driscoll has stolen the boy as a job for James Milligan. This story has a happy ending: Remi finds his family, and discovers he is the heir of a fortune. Mattia's dearest little sister Cristina is sent for from Italy and they all grow up together. Arthur gets well and becomes an athlete. Mattia becomes a famous violinist. Remi marries Lise and they have a son named Mattia, whose babysitter is Mother Barberin. The book ends with the score of the Napolitan song.
929643	/m/03qz1j	No One Writes to the Colonel	Gabriel García Márquez	1961	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The novel, written between 1956–1957 and first published in 1961, is the story of an impoverished, retired colonel, a veteran of the Thousand Days War, who still hopes to receive the pension he was promised some fifteen years earlier. The colonel lives with his asthmatic wife in a small village under martial law. The action opens with the colonel preparing to go to the funeral of a town musician whose death is notable because he was the first to die from natural causes in many years. The novel is set during the years of "La Violencia" in Colombia, when martial law and censorship prevail.
929833	/m/03qzlv	Young Goodman Brown	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1835	{"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins at dusk in Salem, Massachusetts, as young Goodman Brown leaves Faith, his wife of three months, for an unknown errand in the forest. Faith pleads with her husband to stay with her but he insists the journey into the forest must be completed that night. In the forest he meets a man, dressed in a similar manner to himself and bearing a resemblance to himself. The man carries a black serpent-shaped staff. The two encounter Mistress Cloyse in the woods who complains about the need to walk and, evidently friendly with the stranger, accepts his snake staff and flies away to her destination. Other townspeople inhabit the woods that night, traveling in the same direction as Goodman Brown. When he hears his wife's voice in the trees, he calls out to his Faith, but is not answered. He then seems to fly through the forest, using a maple staff the stranger fashioned for him, arriving at a clearing at midnight to find all the townspeople assembled. At the ceremony (which may be a witches' sabbath) carried out at a flame-lit rocky altar, the newest converts are brought forth—Goodman Brown and Faith. They are the only two of the townspeople not yet initiated to the forest rite. Goodman Brown calls to heaven to resist and instantly the scene vanishes. Arriving back at his home in Salem the next morning, Goodman Brown is uncertain whether the previous night's events were real or a dream, but he is deeply shaken, with the belief he lived in a Christian community distorted. He loses his faith in his wife, along with all of humanity. He lives his life an embittered and suspicious cynic, wary of everyone around him. Hawthorne concludes the story by writing: "And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave...they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom."
930137	/m/03q_qg	The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby	Charles Dickens	1838	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nicholas Nickleby's father dies unexpectedly after losing all of his money in a series of poor investments. Nicholas, his mother and his younger sister, Kate, are forced to give up their comfortable lifestyle in Devonshire and travel to London to seek the aid of their only relative, Nicholas's uncle Ralph Nickleby. Ralph, a cold and ruthless businessman, has no desire to help his destitute relations and hates Nicholas on sight. He gets Nicholas a low-paying job as an assistant to Wackford Squeers, who runs the school Dotheboys Hall. Nicholas is initially wary of Squeers (a very unpleasant man with one eye) because he is gruff and violent towards his young charges, but he tries to quell his suspicions. As Nicholas boards the stagecoach for Greta Bridge, he is handed a letter by Ralph's clerk, Newman Noggs, a once-wealthy man who has lost all of his money and has become an alcoholic. The letter expresses concern for the innocent young man and offers assistance if Nicholas ever requires it. Once he arrives in Yorkshire, Nicholas comes to realise that Squeers is running a scam: he takes in unwanted children (most of whom are illegitimate, crippled or deformed) for a high fee, and starves and mistreats his charges while using the money sent by their parents to pad his own pockets. Squeers and his monstrous wife whip and beat the children regularly while spoiling their own son rotten. While he is there, Nicholas befriends a simple boy named Smike, who is older than the other “students” and now acts as an unpaid servant. Nicholas attracts the attention of Fanny Squeers, his employer's plain and shrewish daughter, who deludes herself into thinking that Nicholas is in love with her. She attempts to disclose her affections during a game of cards, but Nicholas doesn't catch her meaning. Instead he ends up flirting with her friend Tilda Price, to the consternation of both Fanny and Tilda's friendly but crude-mannered fiancé John Browdie. After being accosted by Fanny again, Nicholas bluntly tells her he does not return her affections and wishes to be free of the horrible atmosphere of Dotheboys Hall, earning her hatred. One morning, Smike runs away, but is caught and brought back to Dotheboys. Squeers begins to beat him, but Nicholas intervenes. Squeers strikes him across the face and Nicholas snaps, beating the schoolmaster violently. Quickly packing his belongings and leaving Dotheboys Hall, he meets John Browdie on the way. Browdie finds the idea that Squeers himself has been beaten uproariously funny, and gives Nicholas money and a walking staff to aid him on his trip back to London. At dawn, he is found by Smike, who begs to come with him. Nicholas and Smike set out towards London. Nicholas seeks out the aid of Newman Noggs, who shows him a letter that Fanny Squeers has written to Ralph viciously exaggerating the events of the beating. Noggs tells Nicholas, who is intent on confronting his uncle, that Ralph is out of town and advises him to find a job. Nicholas goes to an employment office, where he encounters a strikingly beautiful girl. His search for employment fails, and he is about to give up when Noggs offers him the meagre position of French teacher to the children of his neighbours, the Kenwigs family, and Nicholas is hired under the assumed name of “Johnson” to teach the children French. Meanwhile, Kate and her mother are forced by Ralph to move out of their lodgings in the house of the kindly portrait painter Miss LaCreevy and into a cold and drafty house Ralph owns in a London slum. Ralph finds employment for Kate working for a milliner, Madame Mantalini. Her husband, Mr Mantalini, is a gigolo who depends on his wife to supply his extravagant tastes and offends Kate by flirting with her. Kate proves initially clumsy at her job, which endears her to the head of the showroom, Miss Knag, a vain and foolish woman who uses Kate to make herself look better. This backfires when a client prefers to be served by the young and pretty Kate rather than the aging Miss Knag, who blames Kate for the insult. As a result, Kate is ostracised by the other milliners and left friendless. Ralph asks Kate to attend a dinner he is hosting for some business associates, and when she arrives she discovers she is the only woman in attendance. The other guests include the disreputable nobleman Sir Mulberry Hawk and his friend, Lord Frederick Verisopht. Hawk humiliates Kate at dinner by making her the subject of an offensive bet. After one too many drinks he attempts to force himself on her but is stopped by Ralph. Ralph shows some unexpected tenderness towards Kate but insinuates that he will withdraw his financial help if she tells her mother about what happened. Several days later, Nicholas discovers that his uncle has returned. He visits his mother and sister just as Ralph is reading them Fanny Squeers’s letter and slandering Nicholas. He confronts his uncle, who vows to give no financial assistance to the Nicklebys as long as Nicholas stays with them. His hand forced, Nicholas agrees to leave London, but warns Ralph that a day of reckoning will one day come between them. The next morning, Nicholas and Smike travel towards Portsmouth with the intention of becoming sailors. At an inn, they encounter the theatrical manager Vincent Crummles, who hires Nicholas (still going under the name of Johnson) on sight as his new juvenile lead and playwright with the task of adapting French tragedies into English and then modifying them for the troop’s minimal dramatic abilities. Nicholas and Smike join the acting company and are warmly received by the troupe, which includes Crummles’s formidable wife, their daughter, “The Infant Phenomenon”, and many other eccentric and melodramatic thespians. Nicholas and Smike make their debuts in Romeo and Juliet, as Romeo and the Apothecary respectively, and are met with great acclaim from the provincial audiences. Back in London, Mr Mantalini’s reckless spending has bankrupted his wife. Madame Mantalini is forced to sell her business to Miss Knag, whose first order of business is to fire Kate. She finds employment as the companion of the social-climbing Mrs Wittiterly. Meanwhile, Sir Mulberry Hawk begins a plot to humiliate Kate for refusing his advances. He uses Lord Frederick, who is infatuated with her, to discover where she lives from Ralph. He is about to succeed in this plot when Mrs Nickleby enters Ralph’s office, and the two rakes switch their attentions from Kate’s uncle to her mother, successfully worming their way into Mrs Nickleby’s company and gaining access to the Wittiterly house. Kate goes to her uncle for assistance, but he refuses to help her, citing his business relationships with Hawk and Verisopht. It is left to Newman Noggs to come to her aid, and he writes to Nicholas, telling him in vague terms of his sister’s need for him. Nicholas immediately quits the Crummles troop and returns to London. When he arrives, he searches the city for Noggs, Miss La Creevy and his family to discover what has occurred. This search proves unsuccessful until he accidentally overhears Hawk and Lord Frederick rudely toasting Kate in a restaurant. He is able to glean from their conversation what has happened, and confronts them. Hawk refuses to give Nicholas his name or respond to his accusations. When he attempts to leave, Nicholas follows him out, and leaps onto the running board of his carriage, demanding his name. Hawk attempts to strike him, and Nicholas loses his temper, beating the nobleman and spooking the horses, causing the carriage to crash. Hawk is injured in the crash and vows revenge, but Lord Verisopht, remorseful for his treatment of Kate, tells him that he will attempt to stop him. Later, after Hawk has recovered, they quarrel over Hawk’s insistence on harming Nicholas, and Verisopht strikes Hawk, resulting in a duel. Verisopht is killed, and Hawk flees to France. As a result, Ralph loses a large sum of money owed to him by the deceased lord. Nicholas collects Kate from the Wittiterlys, and with their mother and Smike, they move back into Miss LaCreevy’s house. Nicholas pens a letter to Ralph refusing, on behalf of his family, a penny of his uncle’s money or influence. Returning to the employment office, Nicholas meets Charles Cheeryble, a wealthy and extremely benevolent merchant who runs a business with his twin brother Ned. Hearing Nicholas’s story, the brothers take him into their employ at a generous salary and provide his family with a small house in a London suburb. Ralph encounters a beggar, who recognises him and reveals himself as Brooker, Ralph’s former employee. He attempts to blackmail Ralph with a piece of unknown information, but is driven off. Returning to his office, Ralph receives Nicholas’s letter and begins plotting against his nephew in earnest. Wackford Squeers returns to London and joins Ralph in his plots. Smike has the misfortune to run into Squeers on a London street, who kidnaps him. Luckily for Smike, John Browdie is honeymooning in London with his new wife Tilda and discovers his predicament. When they have dinner with Squeers, Browdie fakes an illness and takes the opportunity to rescue Smike and send him back to Nicholas. In gratitude, Nicholas invites the Browdies to dinner. At the party, also attended by the Cheerybles’s nephew Frank and their elderly clerk Tim Linkinwater, Ralph and Squeers attempt to reclaim Smike by presenting forged documents that he is the long-lost son of a man named Snawley (who, in actuality, is a friend of Squeers with children at Dotheboys Hall). Smike refuses to go, but the threat of legal action remains. While at work, Nicholas encounters the beautiful young woman he had seen in the employment office and realises he is in love with her. The brothers tell him that her name is Madeline Bray, the penniless daughter of a debtor, Walter Bray, and enlist his help in obtaining small sums of money for her by commissioning her artwork, the only way they can help her due to her tyrannical father. Arthur Gride, an elderly miser, offers to pay a debt Ralph is owed by Walter Bray in exchange for the moneylender’s help. Gride has illegally gained possession of the will of Madeline’s grandfather, and she will become an heiress upon the event of her marriage. The two moneylenders convince Bray to bully his daughter into accepting the disgusting Gride as a husband with the promise of paying off his debts. Ralph is not aware of Nicholas’ involvement with the Brays, and Nicholas does not discover Ralph’s scheme until the eve of the wedding. He appeals to Madeline to cancel the wedding, but despite her feelings for Nicholas, she is too devoted to her dying father to go against his wishes. On the day of the wedding, Nicholas attempts to stop it once more but his efforts prove academic when Bray, guilt-ridden at the sacrifice his daughter has made for him, dies unexpectedly. Madeline thus has no reason to marry Gride and Nicholas and Kate take her to their house to recover. Smike has contracted tuberculosis and become dangerously ill. In a last attempt to save his friend’s health, Nicholas takes him to his childhood home in Devonshire, but Smike’s health rapidly deteriorates. On his deathbed, Smike is startled to see the man who brought him to Squeers' school. Nicholas dismisses it as an illusion but it is later revealed that Smike was right. After confessing his love for Kate, Smike dies peacefully in Nicholas’s arms. When they return to Gride’s home after the aborted wedding, Ralph and Gride discover that Peg Sliderskew, Gride’s aged housekeeper, has robbed Gride, taking, amongst other things, the will. To get it back, Ralph enlists Wackford Squeers’s services to track down Peg. Noggs discovers this plot, and with the help of Frank Cheeryble, he is able to recover the will and have Squeers arrested. The Cheeryble brothers confront Ralph, informing him that his various schemes against Nicholas have failed. They advise him to retire from London before charges are brought up against him, as Squeers is determined to confess all and implicate Ralph. He refuses their help, but is summoned back to their offices that evening and told that Smike is dead. When he reacts to the news with vicious glee, the brothers reveal their final card. The beggar Brooker emerges, and tells Ralph that Smike was his own son. As a young man, Ralph had married a woman for her fortune, but kept it secret so as to not forfeit her inheritance. She eventually left him after bearing him a son, whom he entrusted to Brooker, who was then his clerk. Brooker, taking the opportunity for vengeance, took the boy to Squeers’ school and told Ralph the boy had died. Brooker now repents his action, but a transportation sentence kept him from putting the matter right. Devastated at the thought that his only son died as the best friend of his greatest enemy, Ralph commits suicide. Squeers is sentenced to transportation to Australia, and, upon hearing this, the boys at Dotheboys Hall rebel against the Squeers family and escape with the assistance of John Browdie. Nicholas becomes a partner in the Cheerybles' firm and marries Madeline. Kate and Frank Cheeryble also marry, as do Tim Linkinwater and Miss LaCreevy. Brooker dies penitent. Noggs recovers his respectability. The Nicklebys and their now extended family return to Devonshire, where they live in peace and contentment.
931061	/m/03r23k	The Partner	John Grisham	1997	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Patrick Lanigan, a junior partner in a law firm in Biloxi, Mississippi, gets wind of a plan masterminded by Benny Aricia to defraud the U.S. government over a shipbuilding overcharging scheme. His firm is deeply involved in the scam and the firm stands to gain $90 million. However, they're planning to keep Patrick from sharing in the profits, despite his status as a partner in the firm. He bides his time, secretly collecting evidence. He knows that simply stealing the money and running won't work, so he feigns his own death in an automobile accident. When the body is found, it is identified as Patrick, though it is badly burned, and subsequently cremated. Patrick watches his own funeral from a safe distance. His wife Trudy received $2.5 million in life insurance. Although he pretended not to know, Trudy had been cheating on him throughout their marriage, and his daughter was the result of that relationship. Six weeks later, $90 million vanishes from the law firm's off-shore bank account. The associates know that only an insider had the knowledge to pull it off and eventually they start wondering if Patrick is really dead after all. Without the money, the associates and Benny Aricia are in deep financial trouble. Benny hires specialist Jack Stephano to track down Patrick. Over four years later, Patrick is finally discovered living a new life in Ponta Porã, Brazil, a small town on the border of Paraguay under the name Danilo Silva. His girlfriend is Brazilian lawyer Eva Miranda. Patrick is kidnapped and tortured by thugs hired by Jack Stephano. They try to get him to reveal the location of the money, which, conveniently, Lanigan doesn't know. Before he is tortured more or even killed the FBI intervenes, tipped off by Eva. The FBI leans on Jack Stephano to hand over the fugitive and Patrick is repatriated. After arriving back in Biloxi in custody of the FBI, a series of legal battles ensue. The insurance companies Monarch-Sierra and Northern Case Mutual that paid $2.5 million to Trudy, who has subsequently been a complete spendthrift as well as openly resuming her once-adulterous relationship, immediately sue and block access to the insurance money. Trudy is now in a difficult position, as she can no longer afford even the most basic trappings of her extravagant lifestyle. She sues Patrick for divorce, in hopes of receiving some financial compensation. The federal government sues Patrick for theft and fraud on charges of stealing the $90 million. The state charges Patrick with murder, because a dead body was found in Patrick's car. One by one he defeats his opponents. He defeats the insurance companies by revealing that they colluded with Benny Aricia to find and torture Patrick. He blackmails Trudy with her adultery. He convinces the federal government by revealing that Benny Aricia defrauded them. Finally he defeats the state lawsuit by revealing that he didn't murder, but stole the body of a dead client. He makes a deal with the federal government to pay back all the money he stole, plus interest. In the years that he was on the run he had instructed Eva to invest the money. Even after paying back the federal government there are still millions left. In the end, Patrick is defeated by his own clever scheme. As he knew they would torture him if he ever was found, he gave Eva control over the bank accounts. When he goes to their pre-arranged rendezvous she does not show up. Finally he realizes that she has betrayed him. A broken man, he starts looking for her knowing that he will never find her.
931065	/m/03r24m	Skipping Christmas	John Grisham	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The story focus on how Luther and Nora Krank try to avoid the frenzy traditionally experienced during the Christmas holiday. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the two bring their daughter Blair to the airport, where she departs for a year-long assignment in a remote area of Peru with the Peace Corps. Nora bemoans the fact the upcoming Christmas will be their first time they are separated as a family, prompting her husband to calculate how much they spent celebrating the holidays the prior year. When he realizes they have little to show for the $6,100 they invested in decorations, gifts, and entertaining, he decides to skip all the hubbub at home and surprise Nora by booking a ten-day Caribbean Cruise aboard the Island Princess. Nora at first is skeptical but accepts the idea under one condition to still give a donation to the church and Children's Hospital of $600. At first Luther refuses, but when she refuses the idea otherwise he agrees and they begin to plan the trip. It doesn't take long for Nora to adjust to the idea of no Christmas shopping, no Christmas tree, and no Christmas Eve party they host every year. To the couple's amazement, their neighbors on Hemlock Street strongly object to their decision to boycott the holiday, because their decision not to decorate their home will jeopardize their winning the coveted prize for best decorated block in the neighborhood. The local Boy Scout troop is dismayed when the Kranks refuse to support them by purchasing a tree, the police are angered when they decline to buy a calendar, the fruitcakes salesmen are shocked to find that they will not be buying a fruitcake this year, and the stationer is upset when he loses their annual order of engraved greeting cards. Luther and Nora find themselves the objects of derision and anxiously await their departure on Christmas Day. Without warning, Blair calls on Christmas Eve to tell them she's at Miami International Airport, en route home with her Peruvian fiancé as a surprise for her parents. She's anxious to introduce Enrique to her family's holiday traditions, and when she asks if they're having their usual party that night, a panicked Nora says yes, much to Luther's dismay. Comic chaos ensues as the couple finds themselves trying to decorate the house and coordinate a party with mere hours to spare before their daughter and future son-in-law's arrival. When the Boy Scouts are sold out of Christmas trees, Luther arranges to borrow the tree of a neighbor leaving for the holidays. He and Vic Frohmeyer's son Spike try to transport it across the street, but the neighbors notice and think that Luther is stealing the family's Christmas tree and they phone the police, leaving Luther to barely escape arrest. At the end Luther attempts to set up a Frosty the Snowman decoration on his roof, but fails and barely escapes possible death. After noticing the scene, the Kranks admit the truth and are rescued by everyone they've alienated, who pull together and provide the Christmas celebration Blair is expecting. Blair calls before the party can be started saying she has arrived. After successfully keeping Blair and her fiance busy so the party can get started, Luther gives in to celebrating Christmas and gives the cruise package to a neighbor who he doesn't get along with very well, and who is having a very bad Christmas because his wife may have a terminal disease.
932488	/m/03r72s	Fevre Dream	George R. R. Martin	1982	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Abner Marsh, a remarkably unattractive but highly skilled steamboat captain, is grappling with a financial crisis in 1857 when he is contacted by Joshua York, a rich, soft-spoken gentleman. They become unlikely business partners, with Joshua winning Abner over by promising to finance the construction of a magnificent new steamboat that will be larger, faster, and more opulent than any other riverboat ever constructed: the pride of the Mississippi River. When finally completed, she is everything Abner has ever dreamed of piloting. The large white, blue, and silver paddle steamer is christened Fevre Dream, for Abner's previously-failing company, the Fevre River Packet Company; Joshua and Abner co-captain the new vessel, with Abner being solely responsible for her actual command and navigation. Many questions are soon raised by both the crew and passengers about Joshua York and his circle of unusual friends, who hardly ever venture out of their cabins during daylight hours. Abner's own suspicions about his mysterious partner begin to grow when he finds scrapbooks in Joshua's cabin containing newspaper clippings detailing many mysterious, unexplained deaths. He confronts Joshua, who reveals that he and his friends are vampire hunters; they are using the Fevre Dream as their base of operations to investigate a trail of unusual deaths and disappearances along the mighty river. In time, however, Joshua finally reveals the whole truth: he and his friends are themselves vampires, very humanlike living beings specialized to and recurrently dependent upon hunting humans, characterized by Joshua as "... a different race." Many of Joshua's kind consider him the "Pale King" lord (or "bloodmaster") to all vampires, and all of his traveling companions have submitted to him as such. Joshua has developed a potion, using ancient alchemy and the rudiments of the chemistry of the day, which controls the blood-fever of all vampires; he is on a personal crusade to free his people of their need to feed on the warm, living blood of humanity. The evil and amoral Damon Julian, a rival bloodmaster, formerly of New Orleans, soon learns of Joshua's efforts; he boards the Fevre Dream with his own entourage of vampire followers and manages to overpower and depose Joshua, becoming the new Pale King of all vampires aboard the riverboat. Damon forces Abner out and begins to use the Fevre Dream for his own nefarious purposes, eventually disappearing down the river, never to be seen or heard from again. Abner becomes obsessed with his lost, now demonic ship, and spends his remaining fortune searching up and down the Mississippi and its tributaries, until he is finally forced to give up the search. Marsh later serves as a naval officer during the American Civil War, all the while being haunted by the memory of his lost riverboat. Some years later, after receiving a surprising letter from Joshua, a much older Abner Marsh returns and vows to help Joshua finally depose of the evil bloodmaster who has ruined both of their dreams. But this proves to be a very difficult task; the vampires eventually square-off, and with Abner's aid, Joshua finally overpowers Damon and becomes the Pale King once again. In the process, Marsh finally discovers the horrible fate that has befallen his beloved Fevre Dream. The novel closes many decades later by suggesting that all vampires, though still effectively immortal, were eventually freed from their blood addiction by Joshua's potion and Abner's brave efforts on their behalf; they make nighttime pilgrimages to Abner's grave overlooking the Mississippi, continuing to honor his heroic contribution to their cause of freedom.
933137	/m/03r8jw	The Firm	John Grisham		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mitchell Y. "Mitch" McDeere graduated in accounting from Western Kentucky University, passed his Certified Public Accountant exams on the first attempt, and graduated third in his class from Harvard Law School. Mitch is married to his high school sweetheart, Abby Sutherland. They also attended college together. His brother Ray is serving a prison term, and his other brother, Rusty, died in Vietnam. Mitch has offers from law firms in New York and Chicago but eventually decides to join Bendini, Lambert and Locke, a small tax law firm based in Memphis. The firm seduces him by offering him a large salary, a lease on a new BMW automobile and a low interest mortgage on a house. Soon after he joins, his new colleagues help him study and pass his bar exam--the first priority for new associates. Mitch is assigned to partner Avery Tolar, the firm "bad boy," but a highly accomplished attorney. Two of Mitch's colleagues, Marty Kozinski and Joe Hodge, die in a scuba diving accident in the Cayman Islands a few days before he starts at the firm. On his first scheduled day of work, Mitch attends their funerals. Mitch finds the deaths unsettling, but focuses on his goal of becoming a successful employee of the firm. During a memorial service at the firm for the two deceased attorneys, Mitch notices plaques commemorating three other attorneys who died while working at the firm. Suspicious, he hires a private investigator, Eddie Lomax, an ex-cell mate of his brother Ray, to investigate the deaths of the attorneys. Lomax discovers that all five of the deceased attorneys died under questionable circumstances: two in the diving accident, and the other three in a car accident, a hunting accident and a suicide, respectively. Lomax cautions Mitch to be careful. Soon after delivering his report to Mitch, Lomax is murdered. Shortly after Mitch passes his bar exam, Wayne Tarrance, an FBI agent, confronts Mitch. Mitch gradually learns from the FBI that the firm is actually part of the white collar operations of the Morolto crime family of Chicago. The firm's founder, Anthony Bendini, was actually the son-in-law of old man Morolto. He founded the firm in 1944, and since then it has lured new lawyers from poor backgrounds with promises of wealth and security. Although a large part of the firm's clientele is very real, the partners and senior associates are actively involved in a multi-million dollar tax fraud and money laundering scheme. By the time a lawyer is aware of the firm's actual operations, he cannot leave. No lawyer has escaped the firm alive; the five who tried to leave did so after finding out about the firm's ties to organized crime and were killed to keep them from talking. Kozinski and Hodge were actually in contact with the FBI at the time of their murders. The takedown of the Moroltos is such a high priority that the FBI's director, F. Denton Voyles, is personally involved in the case. Mitch learns that his house, office and car are bugged. Mitch and Abby are also routinely followed, making his meetings with the FBI dangerous. Pressure from both the firm and the FBI, which warns him he will almost certainly go to prison if he chooses to ignore them, forces Mitch to make a decision quickly. Desperate to find a way out and stay alive in the process, Mitch makes a deal with the FBI. He promises to collect enough evidence to indict the firm in return for $2 million and the release of his brother, Ray, from prison. Mitch tells Tarrance that he can obtain enough evidence to indict half the firm right away. However, this evidence will also prove that the firm is part and parcel of a criminal conspiracy. This will give the government probable cause to obtain search warrants for the firm building and files, which in turn will provide the evidence to completely destroy the firm and the Morolto family with a massive RICO indictment. In order to do so, however, Mitch must disclose information about his clients, and thus end his career as a lawyer (though in truth, the attorney–client privilege in most U.S. states, including Tennessee, does not apply to situations where a lawyer knows that a crime is taking place). Working with Lomax's secretary and lover, Tammy Hemphill, Mitch begins to copy confidential documents and makes plans to deliver them to the FBI as planned, eventually copying 10,000 documents. At the same time, Mitch and Abby secretly plan to flee once Mitch turns over the files, since they don't completely trust the FBI to protect them. Meanwhile, the firm becomes suspicious of Mitch. With the assistance of Tarry Ross, alias "Alfred", a top FBI official who is actually a mole for another crime family, they discover Mitch is indeed working with the FBI. Once Mitch learns of this, he runs from both the FBI and Mafia with his brother and wife. He steals $10 million from the firm's Grand Cayman bank account. Mitch manages to escape to the Caribbean with the help of Barry Abanks, a scuba diving business owner whose son died in the incident where the Moroltos killed Kozinski and Hodge. Armed with Mitch's evidence, the FBI indicts 51 present and former members of the Bendini firm, as well as 31 alleged members of the Morolto family, for everything from money laundering to mail fraud. At the end, Mitch, Abby and Ray go into hiding and are quietly enjoying their newfound wealth in the Caribbean region.
933335	/m/03r8yl	A Fine Balance	Rohinton Mistry	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book exposes the changes in Indian society from independence in 1947 to the Emergency called by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Mistry is generally critical of Gandhi in the book. Gandhi, however, is never referred to by name by any of the characters, and is instead called simply "the Prime Minister". The characters, from diverse backgrounds, are brought together by economic forces changing India. Ishvar and Omprakash's family is part of the Chamaar caste, who traditionally cured leather and were considered untouchable. In an attempt to break away from the restrictive caste system, Ishvar's father apprentices his sons Ishvar and Narayan to a Muslim tailor, Ashraf Chacha, in a nearby town, and so they became tailors. As a result of their skills, which are also passed on to Narayan's son Omprakash (Om), Ishvar and Om move to Mumbai to get work, by then unavailable in the town near their village because a pre-made clothing shop has opened. A powerful upper-caste village thug, Thakur Dharamsi, later has his henchmen murder Narayan and his family for having the temerity to ask for a ballot. Ishvar and Omprakash are the only two who escapes the killing as they lodged with Ashraf in the nearby town. At the beginning of the book, the two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash, are on their way to the flat of widow Dina Dalal via a train. While on the train, they meet a college student named Maneck Kohlah, who coincidentally is also on his way to the flat of Dina Dalal to be a boarder. Maneck, from a small mountain village in northern India, moves to the city to acquire a college certificate "as a back-up" in case his father's soft drink business is no longer able to compete after the building of a highway near their village. Maneck and the two tailors become friends and go to Dina's flat together. Dina hires Ishvar and Om for piecework, and is happy to let Maneck stay with her. Dina, from a traditionally wealthy Parsi family, maintains tenuous independence from her brother by living in the flat of her deceased husband, who was a chemist. Dina grew up in a wealthy family. Her father was a medical doctor who died when she was twelve. Her mother was withdrawn and unable to take care of Dina after her father's death, so the job fell to Nusswan, Dina's elder brother. Nusswan was rather abusive to Dina, sticking her with all the housework, forcing her to do all the cooking, cleaning, and drop out of school, hitting her when she misbehaved. Dina rebelled against Nusswan and his prospective suitors for her when she became of age, and found her own husband, Rustom Dalal, a chemist, at a concert hall. Nusswan and his wife Ruby were happy to let her marry Rustom and move to his flat. Dina and Rustom lived happily for three years until Rustom died on their third wedding anniversary, after being hit by a bus while on his bicycle. Dina became a tailor under the guidance of Rustom's surrogate parents to avoid having to move in with Nusswan. After twenty years her eyesight gave out from complicated embroidery and she was once again jobless. She eventually met a lady from a company called Au Revoir Exports (Mrs Gupta), who would buy ready-made dresses in patterns. She agrees to let Dina sew the patterns. But since Dina has very poor eyesight, she decides to hire tailors. She also decides to have a paying guest to generate more income for her rent. The tailors rent their own sewing machines, and come to Dina's flat each day for nearly two weeks before the first round of dresses is completed. The three get along fairly well, but Dina and Omprakash don't see eye to eye all the time. Omprakash is angry that Dina is a middle-person and he wants to sew for Au Revoir directly. Maneck was born in a mountain town to loving parents, Mr and Mrs Kohlah. His father owned a grocery store that had been in the family for generations. The store sold household necessities and manufactured the locally popular soda, Kohlah Cola. Maneck spent his days going to school, helping at the store, and going on walks with his father. When he was in the fourth standard, Maneck was sent to boarding school to help his education, much to his dismay. After this, his relationship with his parents deteriorates because he does not wish to be separated from them and feels betrayed. His parents sent him to a college and picked his major, refrigeration and air-conditioning. Maneck goes to college and stays at the student hostel. Maneck becomes friends with his neighbor, Avinash, who is also the student president and who teaches him how to get rid of vermins in his room. Avinash also teaches Maneck chess and they play together often. Avinash later becomes involved in political events, for which Maneck has little interest, and their friendship is no longer a priority for Avinash. They start seeing each other quite infrequently. But when the Emergency is declared in India, political activists had to go into hiding in order to be safe, Avinash included. Maneck, after a humiliating ragging session by fellow hostel students, has his mother arrange a different living situation for him, and he moves in with Dina Dalal. Dina and the tailors' business runs fairly smoothly for almost a year, but effects of the Emergency bother them often. The shantytown where the tailors live is knocked down in a government "beautification" program, and the residents are uncompensated and forced to move into the streets. Later Ishvar and Om are rounded up by a police beggar raid and are sold to a labor camp. After two months in the camp, they bribe their way out with the help of the Beggarmaster, a kind of pimp for beggars. Ishvar and Om are lucky and Dina decides to let them stay with her. The tailors and Dina find trouble from the landlord, because she is not supposed to be running a business from her flat. She pretends that Ishvar is her husband and Om their son and also get protection from the Beggarmaster. Ishvar and Om return to their village to find a wife for Omprakash, who is now eighteen. Maneck returns home, finished with his first year in college (he has received a certificate but not a degree), but has stiff relations with his family and finds that his father's business is failing due to the invasion of cheap commercial sodas. He takes a lucrative job in Middle Eastern Dubai to escape the conditions. Dina being alone now, and her protector the Beggarmaster having been murdered, has no protection from the landlord who wants to break her apartment's rent control and charge more rent, so she is evicted. Dina is forced to again live with her brother, Nusswan. Omprakash and Ishvar return to their old town to find that Ashraf Chacha is an elderly man whose wife died and daughters were all married off. He gives them a place to stay while they search for marriage prospects for Om. While they walk around the village, they run into the upper-caste Thakur Dharamsi. Omprakash recognizes him and spits in his direction. Thakur in turn recognizes Om, and decides to somehow pay Om back for his disrespect of an upper caste member. When Ashraf Chacha Ishvar, and Om are in the village, they run into herders from the Family Planning Centre. As the Centre in this city did not fill its quota, they took random people from the street and forced them into a truck that drove them to the Family Planning Centre. All three are beaten into the truck and since Ashraf Chacha is so old, he is gravely injured and later dies on the street. Ishvar and Omprakash beg to escape the forced sterilization, but the vasectomy takes place. As they lie in an outside tent recovering, Thakur Dharamsi comes by and coerced the doctor to give Om a castration. Ishvar's legs become infected due to the vasectomy and must be amputated. However, Ishvar and Om have nowhere to go now that Ashraf Chacha has died. His son-in-law sells his house and they are forced to leave town. Eight years later, Maneck returns home for the first time from Dubai for his father's funeral. Maneck is repulsed by the violence that follows after the Prime Minister's assassination, for which Sikhs are killed. He returns home and attends the funeral, but cannot bring himself to truly miss his father, only the father of his young childhood. While at home he reads old newspapers and learns that Avinash's three sisters have hanged themselves, unable to bear their parents' humiliation at not being able to provide dowries for their marriages. Shocked and shaken, he decides to visit Dina in Mumbai for better news. He learns from Dina the horrific lives that Ishvar and Om – one disabled and the other castrated – have led as beggars after their village visit. As Maneck leaves, he encounters Om and Ishvar on the street. The two former tailors are nearly unrecognizable because of their filth, and don't appear to recall him. They say "Salaam" to him, but he doesn't know what to say and walks on. Maneck goes to the train station, his world shattered. He walks out on the tracks as an express train approaches the station and commits suicide by letting the train run over him. It turns out that Om and Ishvar were on their way to visit Dina. They are still friends, and she gives them meals and money when the house is empty. Dina and the beggars discuss their lives and how Maneck has changed from a pleasant and friendly college student to a distant refrigeration specialist. Om and Ishvar leave, promising to visit after the weekend. Dina washes up their plates, and returns the plates to the cupboard, where they are to be used later by Nusswan and Ruby.
935303	/m/03rgbn	The Night Watch	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book comprises three stories, each one seemingly independent at the first glance, but they are in fact connected. A reluctant mage recently reassigned to field work, Anton Gorodetsky tracks vampires by drinking blood and channeling them. As he follows a young boy (Egor), who has been called by two vampires through the Metro, he notices a young woman, Svetlana, who has a huge vortex of damnation above her. Anton finds the vampires who have been calling Egor with their power and, as they don't have a special license, kills one of them, while the other (a female) gets away. He returns to the Night Watch headquarters, where his boss, Boris Ignatievich, informs him that he could be in danger as Zabulon (head of the Day Watch) might want revenge for his actions in killing Dark Others and gives him a stuffed owl called Olga (who later transforms into a woman), for his protection. Anton initially rejects the offer, then finds Olga in his apartment and reluctantly agrees. The next day he illegally uses his powers for good (by changing a person's morality, a spell called "remoralization") and clashes with a Dark Other from the Day Watch, Alisa Donnikova. They agree that Alisa can use her power to do a minor evil act as an exchange for her silence about this matter. He then discovers that Olga can speak and is a sorceress trapped in an owl's body as a punishment. Anton goes to Egor's apartment to protect him from the vampire, then nearly loses him as Egor inadvertently slips in the Twilight for the first time. Surprisingly, he remains unaffiliated both to Light or to Dark. Meanwhile, Boris Ignatievich sends an incubus, Ignat, to the cursed woman, Svetlana Nazarova, to help her relax and say who could have cursed her, but to no avail. Finally, Anton is reassigned to visit Svetlana, and in the meantime, the vampiress calls to Egor and he joins her on the roof. Anton manages to find out that Svetlana is a powerful Other who inadvertently cursed herself with her guilt (for what she did to her mother). Anton then gets back to Egor's roof to find the vampiress and Egor, as well as many other Light and Dark operatives, including Anton's neighbour, Kostya Saushkin, who is a vampire. Zabulon joins them and attacks Anton. But when he does, one of the Light Mages, Ilya, reveals himself to be Boris Ignatievich, who'd swapped their bodies. While Zabulon's plans seem compromised, and Egor considering his choice for Light, in a last shot, Alisa uses her agreement with Anton to make him tell Egor everything. Anton reveals to Egor that he was a pawn used by Boris Ignatievich and Zabulon in their intrigues. Angered, Anton leaves the roof, feeling misused. A Dark Other, Galina Rogova, is killed by Maxim, a mysterious murderer using an enchanted wooden dagger, referring to himself as "The Judge". The next day, Boris Ignatievich announces that the Day Watch suspects one of the Night Watch operatives. Everyone seems to have an alibi, except Anton. Boris Ignatievich thinks that Anton has been set up by the Day Watch, and uses his powers to swap Anton and Olga's bodies (Olga being now temporarily weaker). In Olga's body, Anton then goes with Svetlana to her apartment to hide, and, after he gets there, reveals that he is in fact Anton, making Svetlana furious as she just told "Olga" she loved Anton. They go to a restaurant later in the evening where they spot an inoffensive Dark Other with his family. The Dark Other goes to the toilet, where Maxim was waiting and kills him. Anton, curious why the Dark Other had not returned from the toilet, briefly leaves Svetlana and discovers the body. Boris Ignatievich then reveals himelf and asks Svetlana to give him anything that could help to recognize the killer, and Svetlana telepathically sends him the image of Maxim's wife's aura. Zabulon then comes over and recognises Anton in Olga's body, charging him with the murder. Anton flees while Zabulon tries to hit him with an effective destructive power, and manages to hitch a car. What he doesn't know is that the couple in the car are Maxim and his wife. Walking home, Anton calls Olga and asks to switch bodies back. Waiting in the subway for Olga, Anton stumbles upon Egor and has a brief conversation with him. Olga arrives and Anton and Olga switch their bodies back using an incantation that reveals Boris Ignatievich's real name as Gesar. While talking to Olga, Anton realises that the Day Watch is only chasing him in order to make Svetlana mad and use her powers illegally, which would allow them to dispose of her, or at least incapacitate her. Anton then takes a ride in the metro and when he goes off at a station, chased by a dark Other, a twilight figure, a departed mage, indicates that Anton should go to the Ostankino Tower. He kills the Dark mage chasing him and uses his appearance to mask himself. He arrives at the tower to find that the Day Watch has established their temporary headquarters in the Tower. Secretly penetrating inside, he sees Tiger Cub as an inspector from the Light and a bunch of incompetent Dark mages directing his search. Leaving the Tower, Anton goes by Egor's house and thinks Zabulon is taking revenge on him by setting him up. Meanwhile, Maxim feels the presence of a Dark being and goes on a hunt. He finally finds the Dark being and is astonished when he discovers it is young Egor. Anton spots them and talks with Maxim, explaining the Treaty between Light and Dark, but Maxim doesn't comply, pointing out that Egor will grow up to be a dark mage, and it's better to kill him now. Anton intervenes when Maxim tries to kill Egor, and they fight in the twilight. Anton realizes that killing Maxim would mean that all witnesses showing his innocence would be dead, and is stabbed by Maxim. Gesar then comes over, suggests that Maxim should become a member of the Inquisition, and when Anton brags about how he outwitted Zabulon again, Gesar reveals that Zabulon has nothing to do with it and that all that was planned by the Night Watch to raise Svetlana's magical level. An old man arrives from Uzbekistan and is intercepted by a team of Dark Others led by Alisa, who attacks him thinking he possesses a coveted artifact. As they fight, his son slips away unnoticed with the artifact. All of the Night Watch operatives go to Tiger Cub's house to relax, but Anton doesn't manage to have fun, as he is concerned with Svetlana's growing powers influencing their relationship and the reason Gesar sent them off. He finally leaves and when he comes back to his apartment, he discovers Zabulon calmly reading a newspaper and waiting for him. Zabulon reveals that Alisher, the young man from Uzbekistan, brought with him an artifact, a piece of chalk. Anton's research suggests that the Chalk of Fate and that it could be used by the Light to rewrite destiny, allowing someone to change the world to establish a new world order. Discussions with Olga and later Gesar reveal that Svetlana in fact is to use the Chalk to rewrite a destiny. Walking outside, Anton drains the Light power from all of the passers-by he sees, taking their joy away. Anton joins Gesar, Svetlana, Zabulon, Egor, and Maxim on a rooftop where Svetlana prepares to rewrite a destiny, while a storm is gathering around them. Svetlana then opens the book of destiny. Gesar supposes Anton could use all the energy he has drained to stop the storm, but Anton uses it instead on himself via a simple remoralization spell. Astonished, Svetlana stops rewriting Egor's destiny and asks Anton for advice, but Anton says that she must decide what to write herself. The Book disappears, and Gesar notices she didn't write anything, she only erased things. Egor reverts from a potential Dark Other back to an unaffiliated state. Zabulon notices that their planned operation failed because of Svetlana's indecisiveness and, triumphant, leaves. Anton then notices the Chalk Svetlana used is not whole. Gesar reveals that Svetlana rewriting Egor's destiny was just a distraction, and in the mean time, Olga rewrote the destiny of someone later revealed. Gesar reveals the true nature of this plan was to save his love of Olga. Without her full powers, their love was doomed.
935384	/m/03rgky	The Cobweb	George Jewsbury	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Clyde Banks, an Iowan Deputy with a newborn baby and a wife in the first Gulf War, starts looking into odd events in his town, he discovers a plot involving a new Triangle Trade of terrorists, chemical warfare, and training. Mixing the events staged in Washington, D.C. and those happening in the Gulf, a strange thread of deceit appears to be winding its way back to Iowa. Although fictional in its narrative, the story includes appearances by Tariq Aziz and George H. W. Bush.
935408	/m/03rgnc	Interface	Neal Stephenson	1994-04-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with the governor of Illinois, William Cozzano, suffering a stroke, and in a separate subplot, a trailer park inhabitant, unemployed African-American, Eleanor Richmond, discovering her husband dead after having committed suicide in their repossessed former home. As events progress, an underground business coalition, the Network, is arranging for Cozzano to have a biochip implanted and for him to run for President of the United States. The Network is made up of a number of large fictional companies, with parallels in real business entities. Eleanor Richmond, after publicly attacking a local cable TV Public-access television talk show personality who was running for Senate, has since found herself working in the offices of a Republican Colorado senator, and after an event where she accused the citizens of Colorado of being welfare queens, finds herself in the public eye as one of the candidates for Cozzano's running mate. The Network's ability to perceive public opinion, skewed on the night of the vice presidential debate by a twist of fate, makes them select Richmond as vice presidential candidate, and a canny act of public relations work rescues Cozzano's campaign, getting him elected as President. However, Cozzano gets shot at his inauguration by a psychotic former factory worker who has somehow figured out the Network's plans almost entirely, killing him almost instantly. Richmond ends up as the first black and first female President of the United States.
936381	/m/03rj_j	Tipping the Velvet	Sarah Waters	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nancy "Nan" Astley is a sheltered 18-year-old living with her working-class family and helping in their oyster restaurant in Whitstable, Kent. She becomes instantly and desperately enamoured with a "masher", or male impersonator, named Kitty Butler, who performs for a season at the local theatre. They begin a friendship that grows when, after Kitty finds an opportunity to perform in London for better exposure, she asks Nan to join her. Nan enthusiastically agrees and leaves her family to act as Kitty's dresser while she performs. Although Kitty and Nan acknowledge their relationship to be sisterly, Nan continues to love Kitty until a jealous fight forces Kitty to admit she feels the same, although she insists that they keep their relationship secret. Simultaneously, Kitty's manager Walter decides that Kitty needs a performing partner to reach true success, and suggests Nan for the role. Nan is initially horrified by the idea, but takes to it. The duo become quite famous until Nan realises she is homesick after being gone from her family for more than a year. Her return home is underwhelming, so she returns to London early to find Kitty in bed with Walter. They announce that the act is finished and they are to be married. Astonished and deeply bruised by the discovery, Nan wanders the streets of London, finally holing herself in a filthy boarding house for weeks in a state of madness until her funds run out. After spying the male costumes she took as her only memory of her time with Kitty, Nan begins to walk the streets of London as a man and easily passes. She is solicited by a man for sex and begins renting, but dressed only as a man for male clients, never letting them know she is a woman. She meets a socialist activist named Florence who lives near the boarding house, but before she can get to know her, Nan is hired by a wealthy widow with licentious tastes named Diana. Although realising—and initially enjoying—that she is an object to Diana and her friends, Nan stays with her for over a year as "Neville", dressed in the finest men's clothes Diana can afford. The relationship erodes, however, and Diana throws Nan into the streets. Nan stumbles through London trying to find Florence, which she eventually does; Florence is now melancholy, however, with a child. Nan stays with Florence and her brother Ralph, working as their housekeeper. Nan and Florence grow closer during the year they live together, and Nan learns that the previous boarder with Florence and Ralph had a child and died shortly after giving birth. Florence was deeply in love with the boarder but her affections were not returned. During an outing to a women's pub, Nan is recognised by former fans, to Florence's astonishment, and Nan divulges her own spotty past to Florence. Cautiously, they begin a love affair. Putting her theatrical skills to use, Nan assists Ralph in preparing a speech at an upcoming socialist rally. At the event Nan jumps onstage to help Ralph when he falters, and is noticed once more by Kitty, who asks her to come back so they can continue their affair in secret. Realising how much shame Kitty continues to feel, how much of herself was compromised during their affair, and that her truest happiness is where she is now, Nan turns Kitty away and joins Florence.
937142	/m/03rmfq	Darkover Landfall	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Darkover Landfall concerns the crew and colonists of a spaceship that is forced to crash land on Cottman IV, an inhospitable planet in orbit around a red giant. The crew become accidental colonists when the ship loses contact with Earth and they realize rescue is impossible. The book introduces surnames, religious and cultural themes that echo throughout the Darkover series of books. This series spans millennia, as the ship's descendants populate the world and develop unique cultures and psi abilities. Though Darkover Landfall is not the first book written in the series, in the Darkover timeline its events are the beginning for all that follows.
937151	/m/03rmgd	Stormqueen!	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is set in Darkover's Ages of Chaos where feuding families, the Elhalyn and the Ridenow, are engaged in a breeding scheme to develop children with frightening psychic powers, called laran. The main protagonist is Dorilys Aldaran, the heir to the Rockraven line who develops a fearsome power to alter the planet's weather patterns.
938210	/m/03rrfw	Pompeii	Robert Harris	2003		 Marcus Attilius Primus arrives in the Bay of Naples from Rome to take charge as aquarius (hydraulic engineer) of the Aqua Augusta, the aqueduct that supplies water to the many towns in a region encompassing the Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius. The nine important towns are, in sequential order, Pompeii, Nola, Acerrae, Atella, Naples, Puteoli, Cumae, Baiae, and Misenum. Attilius' predecessor as aquarius, Exomnius, has mysteriously vanished as the springs that flow through the aqueduct begin to fail, lowering the supply of water available to the region's reservoir, the Piscina Mirabilis in Misenum. Then, dramatically, the flow of water stops entirely. Attilius concludes that the aqueduct must be blocked somewhere close to Mount Vesuvius, since reports claim a shut down of the system just before Nola, meaning that towns from there through Naples and Misenum are without any water supply. With aid from Pliny the Elder, whose fleet is docked at Misenum, Attilius assembles an expedition to travel to Pompeii, the only town not connected to the water grid, and then on to the blocked section of the Aqua Augusta. While Attilius' expedition is there, the aquarius himself becomes embroiled as part of a plot of the former slave and land speculator Numerius Popidius Ampliatus. Ampliatus is planning on offering a cheap water supply to Pompeii, which Exomnius, the previous aquarius, had helped him do while stealing from the imperial treasury. Attilius' questions and studies make Ampliatus suspicious of what Pliny the Elder and his nephew later discover—thousands of Roman sesterces at the bottom of the reservoir that should have gone to Rome and which Attilius' predecessor had intended to retrieve once he'd emptied the reservoir. Ampliatus' daughter Corelia gets Attilius the proof he needs from her father's written records when he is performing repairs to a collapsed section of tunnel in the region around Mount Vesuvius. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24 overwhelms Pompeii, Oplontis, and Herculaneum. Attilius risks his life and comes back to Pompeii to find Corelia. Attilius and Corelia dig their way through the aqueduct tunnel, which the springs are beginning to fill—which carries a high risk of drowning. Ampliatus is killed when he refuses to evacuate the city, and Pliny dies from the effects of fumes on a corpulent body when he tries to evacuate the citizens. At the end of the book Attilius and Corelia enter the aqueduct just as the waters are coming back to full flow. The last sentence of the novel reports a local legend that a man and woman had emerged from the aqueduct after the eruption—implying that Attilius and Corelia likely survived the trip up the aqueduct. The incident of Ampliatus feeding a slave to his eels is based on the actual historical case of Vedius Pollio.
941708	/m/03r_hs	The Leaky Establishment	David Langford		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Roy Tappen works for the Robinson Heath Nuclear Utilisation Technology Centre, a nuclear weapons facility in Britain. He fights bureaucracy while trying to use it for his purpose, which is to undo the potentially disastrous results of a practical joke gone wrong. Smuggling plutonium out of a nuclear research centre turns out to be surprisingly easy. The difficult part is smuggling it back in again without getting caught.
941838	/m/03r_mz	Pnin	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1957	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book's eponymous protagonist, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, is a Russian-born professor living in the United States. Pnin, a refugee in his 50s from both Communist Russia and what he calls the "Hitler war", is an assistant professor of Russian at fictional Waindell College, possibly modeled on Wellesley College or Cornell University, at both of which Nabokov himself taught. At Waindell, Pnin has settled down to an uncertain, untenured, but semi-respectable academic life, full of various tragicomic mishaps, misfortunes, and difficulties adjusting to American life and language. Characters in the book include his departmental supervisor, various professors and university staff, his landlord, his ex-wife, and her son. The book's seemingly unreliable narrator identifies himself as one 'Vladimir Vladimirovich N---' and bears similarities to Nabokov himself, such as his interest in lepidoptery and his landed-gentry Russian émigré past. Pnin is last glimpsed fleeing Waindell College, jobless, for an unknown destination.
944096	/m/03s2zv	Digital Fortress	Dan Brown	1996	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When the United States National Security Agency's code-breaking supercomputer (TRANSLTR) encounters a new and complex code—Digital Fortress—that it cannot break, Commander Trevor Strathmore calls in Susan Fletcher, their head cryptographer, to crack it. She discovers that it was written by Ensei Tankado, a former NSA employee who became displeased with the NSA's intrusion into people's private lives. Tankado intends to auction the code's algorithm on his website and have his partner, "NDAKOTA", release it for free if he dies. Essentially holding the NSA hostage, the agency is determined to stop Digital Fortress from becoming a threat to national security. When Tankado does indeed die in Seville, of what appears to be a heart attack, Strathmore asks David Becker (Susan's fiancé) to travel to Seville and recover a ring that Tankado was wearing when he died. The ring is suspected to have the code that unlocks Digital Fortress. However, Becker soon discovers that Tankado gave the ring away immediately before his death. Each person he questions in the search for the ring is murdered by Hulohot, a mysterious assassin. Meanwhile, telephone calls between "North Dakota" and Numataka (chairman of a large computer company in Tokyo) reveal that North Dakota hired Hulohot to kill Tankado in order to gain access to the passcode on his ring and speed up the release of the algorithm. At the NSA, Fletcher's investigation leads her to believe that Greg Hale, a fellow NSA employee, is North Dakota. Phil Chartrukian, an NSA technician who is unaware of the Digital Fortress code breaking failure and believes Digital Fortress to be a virus, conducts his own investigation into whether Strathmore allowed Digital Fortress to bypass Gauntlet (NSA's virus/worm filter). However, Chartrukian is murdered in the sub-levels of TRANSLTR by an unknown assailant. Since Hale and Strathmore were both in the sub-levels, Fletcher assumes that Hale is the killer; however, Hale claims that he witnessed Strathmore killing Chartrukian. Chartrukian's death by falling off a balcony also damages TRANSLTR's cooling system. Hale holds Fletcher and Strathmore hostage to prevent himself from being arrested for the murder. It is then that Hale explains that the e-mail he supposedly "received" from Tankado was actually in his inbox because he was snooping on Strathmore, who was also watching Tankado's e-mail account. After the encounter, Hale's name is cleared when Fletcher discovers through a tracer that North Dakota and Ensei Tankado are actually the same person, as "NDAKOTA" is an anagram of "Tankado". Strathmore's role as the primary antagonist is revealed when Strathmore fatally shoots Hale, and arranges it to appear as a suicide. Susan later discovers through Strathmore's pager that he is the one who hired Hulohot. Becker later kills Hulohot in a violent confrontation. Chapters told from Strathmore's perspective reveal his motives. By hiring Hulohot to kill Tankado, having Becker recover his ring, and at the same time arranging for Hulohot to kill him, would help facilitate a romantic relationship with Fletcher, regaining his lost honor, and enable him to unlock Digital Fortress. By making phone calls to Numataka impersonating as "North Dakota", he thought he could partner with Numataka Corporation to make a Digital Fortress chip equipped with his own backdoor Trojan so that the NSA can spy on every computer equipped with these chips. However, Strathmore was unaware that Digital Fortress is actually a computer worm once unlocked, "eating away" at the NSA databank's security and allowing "any third-grader with a modem" to look at government secrets. When TRANSLTR overheats, Strathmore commits suicide by standing next to the machine as it explodes. The worm eventually gets into the database, but soon after Fletcher figures out the password, and is able to terminate the worm before hackers can get any significant data. The NSA allows Becker to return to the United States, reuniting him with Fletcher. At last it is revealed that Numataka is Ensei Tankado's father. Numataka left Tankado the day he was born since Tankado was a deformed child.
944932	/m/03s59_	Slow River	Nicola Griffith	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lore Van de Oest was born in one of the mightiest families on earth. However, she suddenly loses everything.
946564	/m/03sbqr	Mr. Adam	Pat Frank			 After a nuclear power plant in Mississippi explodes, it's soon realized that a previously unknown form of radiation is released. The radiation has caused all men on Earth to become sterile, even boys that are still inside the mother's womb. However, ten months after the explosion in Mississippi, a doctor delivers a perfectly healthy baby girl. It's soon discovered that the child's father, who has the surname Adam was more than a mile under the surface of Earth inside an old silver and lead mine during the explosion. It would appear that this Mr. Adam is humanity's only hope to stave off extinction.
946596	/m/03sbtm	Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception	Eoin Colfer	2005-04-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins with the pixie Opal Koboi faking a coma inside an asylum to avoid incarceration by the Lower Elements Police (LEP) after her failed rebellion and attempt at world domination (which took place in Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident). Opal Koboi, who was under 24-hour surveillance and had DNA tests done every 4 hours by the LEP to ensure that Opal was actually in the asylum cell, with help from the Brill Brothers manages to replace herself with a clone, which is identical to herself (the only difference being that the clone is brain dead). Opal lures Commander Julius Root and Captain Holly Short into a lava chute alone. Koboi then kills Commander Root of the LEP (framing Captain Holly Short as the murderer), and launches a bio-bomb at Artemis Fowl, which fails to kill him and his bodyguard Domovoi Butler. Opal then proceeds with her plan to help Italian environmentalist Giovanni Zito send a probe downward, which, at least in Koboi's plan, will cause the humans to find the fairies and start an inter-species war, leading to fairy genocide. Artemis Fowl was mindwiped in the third book of the series, Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code and has no memory of meeting the fairies. This has also caused him to revert back to his former self- the one cruel enough to kidnap a fairy. But he has a conscience, the difference is he chooses not to listen to it. Artemis is rescued from the scene of the bio-bomb attack by Holly. She tells him who she is, in hopes to ignite his memory. He does not regain his memories of the past adventures, but agrees to help her for a fee. They are then recaptured by Koboi and thrown into a troll-infested abandoned fairy theme park known as the Eleven Wonders of the Human World (containing scale-models not only of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World but also the additions of Abu Simbel, Borobodur, Rapa Nui and the Throne Hall at Persepolis). After a desperate battle against the troll hordes on a model of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, they are rescued by former criminal Mulch Diggums and Butler. Holly and Artemis become friends "bonded by trauma" and Artemis says he feels that he doesn't need money to help a friend. After being rescued, Mulch gives Artemis the disk that had been passed off as a gold medallion, which Butler was given earlier in the book. Artemis views the disk and regains his memories. He is overcome with guilt of what he had done to the fairies but to Holly the most and for the first time, he apologises for kidnapping her. He realises that Holly, Butler, and Mulch were the only friends he had. Together, the four friends take on Opal Koboi, knowing that they are the only ones that know she's escaped. It becomes a more difficult task with the LEP on their tail, who still thinks Holly is the one who killed the Commander. The new Commander refuses to believe anything, despite the fact that everyone knows Root was like a father to Holly. Afterward, the story follows the struggle over the probe, which is closing in on the E7 chute. The probe eventually misses the chute, Koboi is detained by the LEP, and Holly is cleared of all charges over Commander Root's murder. However, she is frustrated by Commander Root's replacement, Ark Sool, so she resigns and starts a private investigation firm with Mulch Diggums. It is also apparent that Artemis has had a change of heart, as he anonymously donates the famed painting The Fairy Thief, which he had stolen directly before Koboi's bio-bomb attack, to the Louvre museum.
947323	/m/03sdlr	The Paper Chase	John Jay Osborn, Jr.			 The story centers on Hart, a young law student from Minnesota who attends Harvard Law School and becomes obsessed with one of his teachers, Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr. Hart becomes an expert on Kingsfield's subject, contracts; he reads everything about the subject, including all of Kingsfield's papers, most of which are not on the reading list. He goes so far as to break into the law library to read Kingsfield's original law school notes. Hart becomes such an expert that Kingsfield asks him to contribute to a paper. At the same time, he begins a relationship with Susan Field, who turns out to be Kingsfield's daughter. Susan stands aloof from the law-school rat-race and dismisses all the things Hart cares about most. At the end of the term, Professor Kingsfield really means something to his students, but he still does not know their names; indeed, he appears to be unable to smile. For him, the class is only a group of people, the students simply names on a paper. He does not even recognize Hart after several encounters and classroom debates. After one incident, wherein Kingsfield asks Hart to leave the class, Hart says in front of the lecture hall, "You are a son of a bitch, Kingsfield," to which Kingsfield merely responded with "Mr. Hart! That is the most intelligent thing you've said all day. You may take your seat." After much effort preparing for the final exam, Hart's grade is delivered to him, but he simply makes a paper airplane out of his final report card, and sends it sailing into the Atlantic Ocean without looking at it.
948759	/m/03sk5z	Prague: A Novel	Arthur Phillips	2002	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Prague opens on the afternoon of May 25, 1990 with five North American expatriates living in the city of Budapest. The expatriates are, for the most part, optimistic about their prospects in the Central European city. John Price seeks a reconciliation with his older brother, Scott, who has come to Budapest to separate himself from his earlier life in the United States. Emily Oliver, an idealistic worker at the American Embassy, hopes to begin a distinguished diplomatic career. Mark Payton, a Canadian researching a history of nostalgia, relishes the chance to be immersed in a place with interesting history. Only Charles Gábor, a Hungarian-American venture capitalist who resents his co-workers and has contempt for his fellow Magyars, displays any pessimism at the story's outset. The five young expatriates enjoy the nightlife and new opportunities in the historic city. John is instantly attracted to Emily, and plots to win her love, but she ignores him. He finds a job as a columnist for an English-language newspaper, BudapesToday. Still a virgin at the age of 24, he is initiated by his co-worker Karen, but finds the experience to be quite anticlimactic. He later commits "fradultery" with his brother's future wife, Mária. Part II presents the complex history of the Horváth Kiadó (Horvath Press), a family-run publishing company – which also serves as a history of Budapest from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Presently, the head of the publishing house is Imre Horváth, who until recently had been exiled in Vienna. During the Communist regime, the Horváth Kiadó was a state-owned business; after the fall of communism, it is due to be privatized. Imre seeks an investment from Charles' venture capital firm in order to buy the press's assets and restart it in Budapest. John frequently fraternizes with an elderly jazz bar pianist named Nádja. He is entranced by the romantic stories she tells of her past, but his friends are less than convinced of their veracity. In particular, John is dismayed by Emily's dismissal of Nádja as an "amazing liar". He is also dismayed that Emily pulls away when he tries to kiss her. John becomes involved with Nicky, a photographer and artist who wants a physical, but not an emotional, relationship. Charles' firm rejects his proposal to fund the Horváth Kiadó. With the help of John, who writes supportive newspaper columns and serves as Charles' aide, Charles secures independent funding for this venture. He resigns from his firm and becomes a partner in the new Horváth Kiadó. Mark Payton's research into nostalgia becomes a personal obsession. He takes an inordinate interest in gramophone music and riding in a funicular carriage. He later becomes preoccupied with the contemporary Gulf War and its continuous coverage on CNN. In September 1990, Mark leaves Budapest suddenly, due to his declining mental health. In autumn 1990, Scott marries Mária and moves to Romania with her, telling John that he never wants to see him again. John continues to desire Emily and be jealous of other men she talks to. Charles and John learn that other parties may want to bid for the Horváth Kiadó assets. In January 1991, Imre Horváth suffers a stroke and goes into a coma. Charles Gábor effectively becomes sole head of the publishing company. He accepts a takeover bid by a multinational media corporation, headed by the Australian billionaire Hubert Melchior (a parody of Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation). Horváth recovers, but not in time to prevent his historic publishing firm from being absorbed into the multinational publishing empire. In March, John says that he loves Emily, even though he knows she is a "spy." The next day, John is fired from his job for having accused an embassy employee of being a spy. Emily, who was having a lesbian relationship with Nicky, leaves the city to escape the accusation. Charles returns to America. Finally, John leaves Budapest as well, traveling by train to the more promising city of Prague.
949331	/m/03slvj	Cloudstreet	Tim Winton	1991-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Precipitated by separate personal tragedies, two families flee their rural livings to share a "great continent of a house", Cloudstreet, in the Perth suburb of West Leederville. The two families are contrasts to each other; the Lambs find meaning in industry and in God’s grace; the Pickles, in luck. The Lambs’ God is a maker of miracles; the Pickles’ God is the ‘Shifty Shadow’ of fate. Though initially resistant to each other, their search and journey for meaning in life concludes with the uniting of the two families with many characters citing this as the most important aspect of their lives. As a novel, Cloudstreet is tightly structured, opening and ending with a shared celebratory family picnic - a joyous occasion which, ironically, is also the scene of Fish’s long sought-after death or return to the water. The novel is narrated effectively by flashback "in the seconds it takes to die" by Fish Lamb, or the 'spiritual' omniscient Fish Lamb, free of his restricting retarded state. As such the novel gives a voice to social minorities, the Australian working class and the disabled. (However, its treatment of Fish Lamb as somebody incomplete in his physical existence may also be interpreted as demeaning towards the intellectually disabled, depending on the reading position adopted.)
949760	/m/03sn4x	The Hollow	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The charming and eccentric Lucy Angkatell has invited the Christows, along with a number of other members of the extended family. John is already having an affair with Henrietta Savernake, a talented sculptor and, as is demonstrated by what follows, brilliant improviser. He has always remembered with nostalgia an early love, Veronica Cray, who suddenly appears in the house on Saturday night asking to borrow a box of matches. She is living at one of the two nearby cottages, the other of which is currently occupied by Hercule Poirot, who has been invited for lunch on Sunday. Veronica and John go off together, and he returns much too late: at 3 am. The next day, Poirot arrives at the house to witness a scene that seems strangely staged. Gerda is standing with a gun in her hand above the body of John, who is bleeding into the swimming pool. Standing, seemingly transfixed, are Lucy, Henrietta, and Edward. John's last word, in a note of urgent appeal, is "Henrietta". It seems cut and dried that Gerda is the murderess, but in taking the revolver from her hand Henrietta apparently fumbles and drops it into the swimming pool, destroying any evidence. Later, however, it is discovered that the pistol that Gerda had been holding was not the pistol with which John had been shot. None of the witnesses has actually seen Gerda shoot John, and it seems difficult to build a case against any of the other potential suspects. At first Lucy herself seems to be a strong suspect, when it is discovered that she had kept a pistol concealed in her basket of eggs, but the pistol seems to be of the wrong calibre. Henrietta is also implicated, not least by the leaving of an unusual doodle in the pavilion, apparently at the time that John had been killed. When the murder weapon turns up in Poirot's hedge, it has fingerprints on it that match none of the suspects. These are all pieces of deliberate misdirection on the part of the family. They know in fact that Gerda is indeed the murderess, and are attempting to avoid her imprisonment. As it happens, the murder, with a motive of jealousy, was planned, in that she had taken with her two pistols, planning to be discovered with a pistol in her hands that would later be discovered to be the wrong weapon. Henrietta, who says that John asked her to help Gerda when he said her name, destroys the evidence of the first weapon instinctively, and later goes back and retrieves the second weapon. She hides it in a clay sculpture of a horse in her workshop, then gets it handled by a blind match-seller, and places it in Poirot’s hedge. There is a romantic subplot in the novel. Midge is in love with Edward, but Edward has always been in love with Henrietta and Henrietta had refused several times his marriage proposals. Besides, she is now deeply in love with John Christow. During the course of the novel, Edward realises that Henrietta is not anymore the Henrietta he used to love and begins to stop seeing Midge as "little Midge". Therefore, he asks her to marry him. During a walk to an area where Edward has walked with Henrietta, Midge believes that he is too deeply in love with Henrietta still, and she calls off the wedding. Edward who does not know that she loves him, misunderstands her decision and later that night, he attempts suicide by putting his head in a gas oven but he is saved by Midge. With this rather dramatic proof of his need for her, she relents and the wedding is on again. With all the evidence apparently destroyed, the family believe that they have saved Gerda, but there is one final clue: the holster in which the murder weapon was kept. Gerda has cut this up and placed it in her workbag. When Henrietta attempts to retrieve it in order to destroy the final means of proving Gerda's guilt, Poirot arrives and prevents her from drinking tea that Gerda has poisoned. Gerda herself accidentally drinks the poisoned tea and escapes justice by this means. Henrietta who, along with Lucy, has emerged as an attractive and well-characterised heroine throughout the book, ends it by visiting in hospital one of John's patients who now has little hope of a cure but still shows a resilient spirit. Leaving the hospital, she reflects that there is no happy end for her, but she resolves to embark on a sculpture of herself as Grief.
949772	/m/03sn6c	The Shoes of the Fisherman	Morris West			 Set during the height of the Cold War, The Shoes of the Fisherman opens as protagonist Kiril Pavlovich Lakota (Anthony Quinn), the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lviv, is unexpectedly set free after twenty years in a Siberian labor camp by his former jailer, Piotr Ilyich Kamenev (Laurence Olivier), now the premier of the Soviet Union. He is sent to Rome, where the elderly fictional Pope Pius XIII (John Gielgud) raises him to the cardinalate in the title of St. Athanasius. Lakota initially declines, but reluctantly accepts the promotion. When the Pontiff suddenly collapses and dies, the process of a papal conclave begins, and Cardinal Lakota participates as one of the electors. During the sede vacante, two cardinals in particular, Cardinal Leone (Leo McKern) and Cardinal Rinaldi (Vittorio De Sica) are shown to be papabile. After seven ballots of deadlock, Lakota finds himself elected Pope as a compromise candidate (suggested by Cardinal Rinaldi) by acclamation after the Cardinals, unable to decide between the leading candidates, interview him and are impressed by his ideas and his humility. Lakota takes the name of Pope Kiril (using his baptismal name). Meanwhile, the world is on the brink of nuclear war due to a Chinese-Soviet feud made worse by a famine caused by trade restrictions brought against China by the United States. The evening after his election, Pope Kiril, with the help of his personal aide Gelasio (Arnoldo Foà), sneaks out of the Vatican and explores the city of Rome without being recognized. Later, the Pope returns to the Soviet Union to meet privately with Kamenev and Chairman Peng (Burt Kwouk) of China to discuss the ongoing crisis. Pope Kiril realizes, however, that if the troubles in China continue, the cost would be a war that could ultimately rip the world apart. Knowing this, he must seek to convince the West as well as the Catholic Church to open up its resources to aid. At his papal coronation, Kiril removes his tiara (in a gesture of humility) and states this intent, much to the delight of the crowds in St. Peter's Square below. A major secondary plot in the novel and the film is the Pope's relationship with a theologian and scientist, Father Telemond (Jean Telemond in the book, David Telemond in the film). The Pope becomes a close personal friend of Telemond (Oskar Werner). To his deep regret, in his official capacity, he must allow the Holy Office to censure Telemond for his heterodox views. To the Pope's deep grief, the shock of the censure, combined with his chronic medical problems, eventually kills Father Telemond, who has been slowly dying all this time from a cerebral aneurysm.
950220	/m/03spdr	Knife of Dreams	Robert Jordan	2005-10-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The opening epigram of the book is: "The sweetness of victory and the bitterness of defeat are alike a knife of dreams. &mdash; From Fog and Steel by Madoc Comadrin" This volume of The Wheel of Time ties up a number of loose ends exposed during the course of the series. Elayne gains the throne of Andor and also manages to root out the Black Ajah sisters in Caemlyn. Egwene, captured by the Tower Aes Sedai and reduced to novice white, begins undermining Elaida&#39;s control of the White Tower from within. Rand escapes a trap by the Forsaken Semirhage while at the same time capturing her and losing his left hand. Mat and Tuon get married after their party reaches the edge of Seanchan controlled territory. Tuon then returns to Ebou Dar where she learns about a civil war in the Seanchan empire and the deaths of all of the Imperial family except her, which will make her the new Empress of Seanchan. Perrin defeats the Shaido in Malden with the help of the Seanchan and rescues his wife Faile. Unusual Trolloc attacks, the dead walking, ripples in the fabric of the world and other events seem to indicate that the Last Battle is drawing near; several characters using different evidence confidently state that Tarmon Gai'don is close at hand. The prologue deals with: *a confrontation between Galad Damodred, half-brother of Elayne Trakand and Gawyn Trakand on his father&#39;s side and half brother of Rand Al'Thor on his mother&#39;s side, and Eamon Valda, Lord Captain Commander of the Whitecloaks ends with Galad obtaining a Heron-mark sword and rank of the slain Lord Captain Commander. *General Rodel Ituralde&#39;s campaign in Tarabon and Arad Doman against the Seanchan. *the High Lady Suroth of the Seanchan being informed of the death of the Seanchan Empress, implicitly by the hand of the Forsaken Semirhage *Aes Sedai plots in the White Tower *Perrin Aybara&#39;s meeting with Black Ajah Aes Sedai Galina Casban and his plan of attack on the Shaido Aiel *the immediate aftermath of Egwene al'Vere&#39;s capture by Aes Sedai loyal to Elaida Mat&#39;s thread of the novel is peppered with battles and world-rocking events as he travels into Altara with his cadre from the last novel. The contents of the letter Thom Merrilin received from Moiraine Damodred are finally revealed; it seems that the Blue Sister is in fact not dead, but in the custody of the Aelfinn and Eelfinn. Though at first reluctant, Mat agrees to go to her rescue. While attempting to escape Altara, Mat meets his supporter and comedic foil Talmanes, who has brought a large number of Mat&#39;s personal army the Band of the Red Hand south after working briefly for the King of Murandy. Mat is surprised to learn that the Band has grown in size considerably since he left it. The group finds itself in multiple skirmishes against an enormous Seanchan force sent to kill Tuon. Mat and the Band of the Red Hand successfully mount a guerrilla campaign against the enemy forces, making good use of fireworks-turned-artillery. Thanks to foreknowledge provided by Banner-General Furyk Karede, Mat&#39;s army is able to finally destroy the Seanchan forces sent after Tuon. The book also sees somewhat of a closure for Mat and Tuon&#39;s &#39;romance&#39;. After pitting each other in a series of psychological duels lasting this leg of their travels, Tuon, to the bewilderment of all present, completes the marriage Mat inadvertently started, giving him the Seanchan title Prince of the Ravens. While Mat harbors feelings for her that border on love, Tuon maintains it is strictly a marriage of convenience. The two part ways, expressing their mutual alliance, but firmly placing the needs of their constituents first. Tuon returns to Ebou Dar to dispense with the treacherous Darkfriend High Lady Suroth, and assume command proper of the Seanchan in wake of the death of the Empress. Rand&#39;s portion of the novel deals with his preliminary preparations for Tarmon Gai'don. Realizing that he cannot possibly mount an offensive on the Dark One with his forces fighting the Seanchan, he arranges a meeting with the Daughter of the Nine Moons to negotiate a peace, or, lacking that, a truce. In the meantime, a large-scale battle against a horde of 100,000 Trollocs and Myrdraal ends almost disastrously, when Lews Therin manages to seize control of saidin in a moment of broken concentration on Rand&#39;s part. Sensing the madman&#39;s attempt to end the both of them by drawing too much of the Power, Rand forges a truce with Lews Therin, asking his cooperation while agreeing to let the both of them die at the Last Battle. Presumably this is the army which, according to Moridin, has been ordered in the Ways by someone posing as Sammael or Sammael himself. The meeting with &#39;Tuon&#39; also comes to a grisly end, upon Rand and crew discovering that the Daughter of the Nine Moons about to meet with them was Semirhage in disguise. In the ensuing battle, Semirhage is captured at the cost of Rand&#39;s own left hand, lost when he failed to wrestle saidin from Lews in time. As an act of defiance, Semirhage delivers a revelation on Rand&#39;s condition. According to Semirhage, via Graendal&#39;s knowledge, Rand is afflicted with a mental disorder that allows him to communicate with his past self, a condition that is almost universally fatal. This only proves to steel Rand further, as he amasses his people around him to prepare for the coming, terrible storm. Perrin disperses the Shaido threat and rescues his wife Faile using an alliance with Seanchan Banner-General Tylee Khirgan. To overcome the large number of Shaido Wise Ones, they lace the Shaido water supply with Forkroot herbs, which impedes channeling the One Power. Rand&#39;s father Tam has an appearance when he arrives with reinforcements from the Two Rivers. It is revealed that Tam does not believe in rumors of Rand&#39;s messianic role. In the course of the battle, Perrin&#39;s &#34;pupil&#34; and longtime companion Aram dies while attempting to kill him, having been convinced by Masema that Perrin&#39;s golden eyes are a sign of the Shadow. In the process of the rescue of Faile, the Aiel Rolan is unfortunately killed by Perrin, although he and other &#34;brotherless&#34; Aiel had helped Faile and her friends several times during captivity, which was unknown by Perrin, and which Faile chooses to not subsequently reveal. Sevanna is captured and the Shaido, defeated and disgraced, are led by Therava back to the Aiel Waste - with the Black Ajah Aes Sedai Galina Casban in tow. Galina struggled unsuccessfully throughout the book to escape the Wise Ones&#39; captivity, and betrayed both Perrin and Faile in the course of her attempts. Egwene is captured in the White Tower after last book&#39;s attempt to seal off the harbor of Tar Valon. She holds contact with the rebel Aes Sedai using her ability to visit the dream world Tel'aran'rhiod and forbids her rescue from captivity. Despite harsh disciplining she manages to spread rumors and doubt in the White Tower about Elaida&#39;s suitability as Amyrlin and maintain her dignity. Both the rebels and the White Tower send Aes Sedai to the Black Tower to bond Asha'man (the rebels as an offer from Rand to counter the number of Aes Sedai bonded to Asha'man). Loial finally gets married and decides that he is going to speak to the Ogier at the Great Stump in his stedding, telling them that they must fight or perish as the Shadow covers the land. Loial and Elder Haman both take up axes during the Trolloc attack. Rand asks Loial to close all of the waygates, but since he is going to the Great Stump, Elder Haman agrees to do it in his stead. Lan makes a decision to ride to Shienar to fight. Nynaeve tricks him by making him pledge to take on any who wish to ride with him, and go to Fal Moran first. She then takes him to the coast of the Aryth Ocean at World&#39;s End in Saldaea, so he has to travel hundreds of miles to reach his destination. She then Travels ahead of him through the Borderlands to find the scattered remnants of Lan&#39;s Malkieri countrymen, asking them to join Lan on his ride to the Blight. Galad confronts Eamon Valda, the leader of the Whitecloaks, for allegedly killing his mother Queen Morgase of Andor. Galad kills Valda in a duel and in the process becomes the leader of the Whitecloaks. He then decides to pledge his newfound following to the defeat of the Dark One at Tarmon Gai&#39;don regardless of who the Whitecloaks must fight alongside. Elayne manages to finally become Queen of Andor, but only after she overcomes being kidnapped by the Black Ajah, internal strife, and raids from other contenders to the throne. Mazrim Taim meets with a group of Red Ajah sisters from the White Tower, and agrees to their proposition: since Sisters were taken and bonded against their will by certain Asha'man, an equivalent number of Black Tower initiates should be bonded by sisters in fairness. In response to the sisters&#39; surprise to the agreement, Taim says, darkly and cryptically: &#34;Let the Lord of Chaos rule&#34;, a phrase which was an instruction by the Dark One to the Forsaken.
950995	/m/03srk0	The Great Explosion	Eric Frank Russell	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Blieder drive, a faster-than-light drive system, has permitted the population of Earth to colonize the galaxy. Each planet has become the home for a particular social group. Four hundred years after the diaspora, a spaceship from Earth visits three of the planets, the first steps to unifying the galaxy under a new Empire. Things do not go entirely as hoped, as the incompetent military authoritarians of the ship encounter three very different societies. The first planet was a penal colony; it is now many independent kleptocratic despotisms preying on each other. The second planet, Hygeia, is populated by health and fitness fanatic nudists. The third planet, Kassim, was colonized by a religious group, but when the ship arrives, they can't find any human life, only empty villages overgrown by jungle. They decide not to land on the planet, because the captain fears that the colonists could have been killed by a disease and he doesn't want to endanger the crew. The final planet, K22g, has developed an unusual social system. The population call themselves Gands (after Gandhi) and practise a form of classless, philosophically anarchic libertarianism, based on passive resistance ("Freedom - I won't!" and "Myob!"); and a moneyless gift economy based on barter and favor-exchange, using "obs" (obligations). To perform a service for somebody "lays an ob" on them; they can then "kill the ob" by returning the favor.
951655	/m/03st81	Widowers' Houses	George Bernard Shaw			 The play comprises three acts: In Act I a poor but aristocratic young doctor named Harry Trench and his friend William Cokane are vacationing at Remagen on the Rhine. There, they encounter fellow travelers: Mr Sartorious, a self-made businessman, and his daughter Blanche. Harry and Blanche fall in love and become engaged. Act II opens with everyone back at home in London: Sartorius, is talking to Mr Lickcheese, whom he employs as a rent-collector, reveals himself to be a slumlord. He discharges Lickcheese for dealing too leniently with tenants. Trench and Cokane arrive to visit, but when Trench discovers that Sartorius makes his money by renting slum housing to the poor, he is disgusted and refuses to allow Blanche to accept money from her father after they are married and insists they must live on Harry's small income. They break up over this, after a bitter argument. Sartorius reveals that Trench's income depends on interest from mortgaged tenements and, therefore, is as dirty as the money made by Sartorious, but the lovers do not reconcile: Blanche utterly rejects Harry because of her wounded feelings. In Act III, Trench, Cokane and Lickcheese return to Sartorius' house to plan a shady business venture (Trench, disillusioned and coarsened by knowing his income is tainted by its source, no longer takes the moral high-ground). In the final scene, notable for its erotic tension, Harry and Blanche reunite. =In performance= http://www.shawfest.com/Home/About-The-Shaw/History Shaw Festival, 2003 On 3 July 2011, a radio adaptation directed by Martin Jarvis was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 starring Ian McKellen as Sartorius, Charles Dance as William Cokane, Honeysuckle Weeks as Blanche, Dan Stevens as Harry Trench and Tim Pigott-Smith as Lickcheese.
951987	/m/03bx1hp	Over Sea, Under Stone	Susan Cooper		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Over Sea, Under Stone features the Drew children Simon, Jane, and Barney on holiday with their parents and their great uncle Merriman Lyon, in the fictional fishing village of Trewissick on the southern coast of Cornwall. In the attic of the big Grey House they are renting, owned by Merriman's friend Uncle Toms, the children find an old manuscript. They recognize a drawing of the local coastline that may be a kind of map, with almost illegible text, but Barney realises the map refers to King Arthur and his knights. The children decide to keep the discovery to themselves. The family are visited at the Grey House by a very friendly Mr. Withers and his sister Polly, who invite them to go fishing on their yacht. The boys are thrilled, but Jane feels suspicious and declines to join them. While Jane is alone in the Grey House, she finds a guidebook to Trewissick in an old trunk, written by the local vicar. She realises that the map in the guidebook is similar to the secret map, but also different somehow, so she decides to visit the vicar. The man at the vicarage is not the writer of the guidebook, but he offers to help Jane. He asks some probing questions which arouse Jane's suspicions again, and she decides to return home. Soon the house is robbed with attention only to the bookshelves and wall hangings, and the children guess someone else knows of and seeks the manuscript. The children decide it is time to confide in Great-Uncle Merry. Up on the headland they show him the map and he tells them that it is a copy of an even older map which shows the way to a hidden treasure and that the children are now in great danger. He explains that some British artefact may have been stashed here long ago, and to confirm that they will have dangerous grown-up rivals in its pursuit. And so begins their quest for the Grail on behalf of the Light, which they have to achieve while being harried by Mr Withers and his sister, who are agents of the Dark, desperate to stop them at any cost. Mother usually paints outdoors, and father goes boating, or both travel out of town. Meanwhile the children investigate the meaning of the "map", encouraged, yet warned and sometimes "guarded" by Great Uncle Merry. They learn to read the diagram, and work out the clues on the map but they must work out of doors, where each child has a nasty encounter with the Dark, and their progress is easy to observe. While looking for the first clue Simon is chased by Mr. Hastings and Bill Hoover Jr.. After the second clue leads them to the headland at night, Simon, Jane, and Great Uncle Merry are ambushed and almost caught by Dark followers. Merriman is misdirected out of town, but the children anxiously follow their ancient guide "over sea and under stone" without him. Barney is kidnapped by Mr. Withers and his sister Polly, and must be rescued. The children eventually follow the clues to a cave off the headland and discover the grail. Unfortunately they lose an important metal case that was lodged inside the Grail, which contained a coded manuscript that is the key to deciphering the markings on the outside of the grail. The children present the grail to the British Museum and are given a check for it. The grail is an object of hot debate among the scholars there because of the unknown markings.
952433	/m/03swny	Dune: The Butlerian Jihad	Brian Herbert	2002-09-17	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Butlerian Jihad introduces a generation of characters whose families will later become the most significant in the universe: the Atreides, the Corrinos and the Harkonnens. Serena Butler, daughter of the viceroy of the League of Nobles, is a strong voice for the human rebellion. Her paramour Xavier Harkonnen leads the military force on the current League capital world of Salusa Secundus. As the story begins, Xavier is repelling an attack on the planet by Omnius' army of cymeks. The cymeks are former humans whose brains have been implanted in preservation canisters, which in turn can be installed into a variety of fearsome mechanical bodies, to extend their lives indefinitely and make them nearly unstoppable. The original twenty cymeks (calling themselves the Titans) had conquered the complacent universe by exploiting humanity's reliance and dependency on machines, yet the Titans were later overthrown themselves by Omnius, an artificial intelligence of their design. Seeking to replace human chaos with machine order, Omnius thus ignited the war between machine and humanity. Vorian Atreides is, ironically, the son and subordinate of the leading cymek Titan Agamemnon (whose last name, Atreides, originates with House Atreus, from the ancient Greek epic the Iliad). Meanwhile, the Sorceresses of Rossak, a matriarchal order, are perfecting their destructive psychic powers for use against the machines, and maintaining a breeding program to create more powerful telepaths. Pharmaceutical magnate Aurelius Venport is about to discover an interesting new substance, the spice melange, and the famous inventor Tio Holtzman accepts the diminutive genius Norma Cenva into his employ. Serena is captured by the Titan Barbarossa and put under the watch of Erasmus, an independent robot who seeks to understand humans completely so that the thinking machines may be truly superior. His methods of study often entail human vivisection and torture in his slave pens. Erasmus takes a liking to Serena, as does the young Vorian Atreides. Serena realizes she is pregnant with Xavier's child, and later gives birth to a baby boy whom she names Manion (after her father). Erasmus finds this distraction inconvenient, and not only removes Serena's uterus but kills her young son in front of her. This single event incites the entire Jihad, and young Manion is soon labelled the first martyr, Manion the Innocent. Vorian, learning about the murder and realizing the lie he lives as a machine trustee, betrays his machine masters and flees with Serena. They are joined by another trustee, Iblis Ginjo, a slave leader who masterminds the rebellion on Synchronized Earth. The first human victory of the so-called Butlerian Jihad is the destruction of Earth and the Earth Omnius using atomics. Iblis (now Grand Patriarch of the Holy Jihad) and Serena (Priestess of the Jihad) are the religious leaders of the human rebellion, and Xavier and Vorian its two generals. The brutal Titans are desperate to break free of their machine masters and wage their own techno-misanthropic war, and Omnius and Erasmus are determined to conquer and destroy all of mankind once and for all. And on a lonely desert planet known as Arrakis, the seeds of legend are sown with Selim Wormrider, an outcast from his tribe, who sees the future of Shai-Hulud and makes it his mission to save his God from those who would wish to take the spice.
954125	/m/03t0f4	Earth Abides	George R. Stewart	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 While working on his graduate studies in biology in the mountains, Ish is bitten by a rattlesnake. As he heals from the bite, he gets sick with a disease that looks like measles. He recovers and makes his way back to civilization, only to discover that most people died from the same disease. He goes to his home in Berkeley. As he travels, he observes the world in the light of ecology, watching it adapt to the loss of humans. In the city near his home Ish meets few human survivors — a man drinking himself to death, a couple who seem to have lost their sanity, and a teenage girl who flees from him as someone dangerous. He comes across a dog, friendly and eager to join him. The dog, now named Princess, swiftly adopts Ish as her new master and sticks by him for much of the book. Wondering if his observations are typical of humanity in general, he sets out on a cross country tour, traveling all the way to New York City and back, scavenging for food and fuel. As he travels, he finds small pockets of survivors, but he doubts that they will survive the loss of civilization. He returns to his home in California, and finds a woman, Emma (Em), living nearby. They agree to consider themselves married and have children. They are joined by other survivors. Over time the electricity fails and the comforts of civilization recede. As the children grow, Ish tries to instill basic academics, teaching reading, arithmetic and geography. During this period of time, Ish and Em meet many other people such as Ezra, George, and many others. This section goes all the way to the end of Year 21. The community, within this time period, started to call the years by events that happened in the Year. Many children were born in these years and within them was Joey, Ish's favorite son. Joey is Ish's favorite son because not only is Joey very similar to Ish, but Ish believes that Joey is the key to the future. Twenty-two years later, the community flourishes. The younger generation adapts easily to the more primitive world. They come to have a better grasp of the natural world than the adults, and when running water fails, the younger generation comes to the rescue, knowing where flowing streams may be found. The children see no need for structured academics and Ish isn't a natural teacher. Only one child, his son Joey, seems to be able to grasp and use academic skills. Ish increasingly sees Joey as the future leader and brains of the community. Ish turns his attention from ecology to his newly forming society. One thing that he notices is that the children are becoming very superstitious. One day Ish asks for his hammer, an antique miner's tool found in the mountains, which he habitually carries around, and finds the children are afraid to touch it. It is a symbol for them of the old times. The long-dead Americans are now like gods—and Ish is too. Ish becomes disturbed at his community's lack of ambition to learn and work. He tries to motivate them so often with speeches that the kids think this is simply his line, safe to be ignored. In an attempt to motivate them, Ish mentions the idea of a cross country exploration, and his son Robert and another boy Richard start out in a jeep. Robert and Richard return from their trip. They explored east across the country until they met impassable roads near Toledo, Ohio. They reported meeting two societies in their travels, including an unwelcoming religious group in Los Angeles and an agrarian society, likely of American Indians, living in Pueblo ruins near Albuquerque, New Mexico. They brought back a man named Charlie, who gives Ish a bad feeling. Soon it is obvious that Charlie is after Evie, a girl the community regards as outside the acceptable gene pool—she has an adult body and the mind of a small child. Ish confronts Charlie and is intimidated; he feels alone and lost about what to do. Em takes control, calling a meeting of the adults. Ish isn't alone—they are a tribe. Under Em's insistence, the tribe's four adults vote on Charlie's fate. Em insists that they cannot wait until harm is done, that they have responsibility to protect their children. They unanimously vote to execute him. The incident with Charlie makes Ish reflect that he is really not a nation builder, but he keeps trying. He begins practical lessons, such as planting corn. Then, typhoid fever erupts among them, perhaps carried by Charlie. Joey dies of typhoid, and this devastates Ish. With Joey gone, Ish decides teaching academic topics will be a fruitless effort. He worries what will become of his people when ammunition and matches are gone. He decides instead to teach his people to survive. He begins by inspiring the children to build bows and arrows. The years flow by. Ish's lessons begin to take — and the community begins to grow corn and make and play with bows and arrows. Ish presides at meetings, his hammer a symbol of his status. He is given respect, but his ideas are ignored by the younger men. The Tribe merges with another nearby group. The "Americans" (those born before the Great Disaster) die off, until only Ezra and Ish are left, two old men. After Ezra dies, Ish becomes a sort of god, the last American, to whom the young men go to demand answers. Ish spends most of his elderly life in a fog, unaware of the world. Superstition has set in; the tribe has reverted to a primitive lifestyle, hunting with dogs (the descendants of Ish's first dog) and bow and arrow. Occasionally the fog in his mind lifts. During one such time, he finds himself aware of his great-grandson Jack, who stands before him. Jack shows him that the bow and arrow have become more reliable than the gun, whose cartridges don't always work. The children of the world are taking the toys of their youth and improving them on their own. During his last lucid moments, Ish realizes that the former civilization is now totally gone. But he also wonders if the new world is that much worse off than the old world, and finds himself hoping that the new world will not rebuild civilization and its mistakes.
954128	/m/03t0fh	Lucifer's Hammer	Larry Niven	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story details a cometary impact on Earth, an end to civilization, and the battle for the future. It encompasses the discovery of the comet, the LA social scene, and a cast of diverse characters whom fate seems to smile upon and allow to survive the massive cataclysm and the resulting tsunamis, plagues, famines and battles amongst scavengers and cannibals. When wealthy soap company heir and amateur astronomer Tim Hamner co-discovers a new comet, dubbed Hamner-Brown, documentary producer Harvey Randall persuades Hamner to have his family's company sponsor a television documentary series on the subject. Political lobbying by California Senator Arthur Jellison eventually gets a joint Apollo-Soyuz (docking with the second flightworthy Skylab) mission into space to study the comet, dubbed "The Hammer" by popular media, which is expected to pass close to the Earth. Despite assurances by the scientific community that a collision with Earth is extremely unlikely, the public, fueled with religious fervor by the evangelist Henry Armitage, begins to hoard food and supplies in anticipation. Eventually, to the shock of scientists at JPL in Pasadena who could not track the trajectory accurately enough due to the comet's constant outgassing, the Hammer does fall, breaking up into several smaller comets that impact around the world with devastating results, striking parts of Europe, Africa, the Gulf of Mexico, and both the Pacific and Atlantic. The strikes trigger several volcanoes and earthquakes around the world, including the San Andreas fault, heavily damaging the Southern California region and the rest of California, causing millions of casualties. Several of the fragments land in the ocean, causing further damage by the resulting tsunamis (which destroy several major coastal cities around the world, including Los Angeles, killing millions) and long-term climate problems due to the massive quantities of vaporized seawater. Immediately following the Hammer's impact, anticipating the coming ice age and the inevitable southward migration of Russian survivors into Chinese territory, China launches a preemptive nuclear attack on major Russian cities. The Russians are able to respond in time and, with American assistance, China is effectively destroyed, though not without devastating losses for Russia. Within hours of the comet strike hundreds of millions are dead and much of the world is left in ruin. As the survivors contend with weeks of non-stop rain, flooding destroys practically every dam and levee, leaving the search for food a top survival priority. Civilization crumbles as people use the few remaining weapons to protect themselves from each other. Surviving "Hammerfall" is shown to be primarily a matter of random chance, with preparation being a distant second factor. Hamner goes from being a dilettante astronomer to a determined survivor, with his new wife Eileen. Randall shows true leadership abilities under fire, while Jellison and other land owners, farmers and ranchers become lords over their fiefdoms and the serfs they employ to provide labor, skills and security. Jellison forms the centerpost of these fiefs, dubbed "the Stronghold", where he presides over a small population of survivors who wish to retain civilization. The tone of life after "Hammerfall" is one where those who do not have valuable professions for a world without power or civilization are relegated to being manual laborers, regardless of their socioeconomic status or profession before the Fall. While doctors and farmers are still valuable, lawyers are unnecessary—but if civilization is to be rebuilt, scientific knowledge is the most valuable skill of all. Soldiers and police are diminished and provide security alongside gang members and bikers, both within the Stronghold and within the New Brotherhood Army, the legions of Reverend Henry Armitage, who indoctrinates his followers into cannibalism to shame them into loyalty. Jellison's stronghold is located slightly east or northeast of Springville, California, where the North Fork and the Middle Fork of the Tule River meet. West of this stronghold, the city of Porterville has been destroyed by the collapse of the dam at Lake Success. Massive and sustained rainfall has turned the former San Joaquin Valley into a swampy lake. Other small enclaves of civilization exist in this area, until a band of cannibalistic zealots led by Reverend Armitage and an army of heavily armed soldiers begin a rampage through the area, culminating in a series of battles with the inhabitants of Jellison's stronghold.
955345	/m/03t3k9	Dune: The Machine Crusade	Kevin J. Anderson	2003-09-16	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Dune: The Machine Crusade moves forward into the center of the Butlerian Jihad, described in the first book of the trilogy, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. Leading the movement is the ex-slave and ex-machine trustee Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo. However, Iblis appears more interested in politics and his own personal legacy than in the Jihad. Vorian Atreides, despite the long life given to him by his father, the Titan Agamemnon, begins to show the vestiges of wanting to settle down after visiting the planet Caladan, and meeting Leronica Tergiet, who is to become his long-term concubine. Xavier Harkonnen manages to free Ix from the thinking machines and must eventually make the ultimate sacrifice that will tarnish his name. The robot Erasmus continues with his enlightening human experimentation, and makes a curious bet with the Omnius entity on Corrin, where he claims he can raise a human being to be orderly and civilized like a machine. This child is Gilbertus Albans, the first true Mentat. Omnius himself suffers badly from a computer virus created by Vorian and spread unwittingly by his old companion Seurat. On Ginaz, the aging Zon Noret is killed in a training accident by a mek called Chirox, a captured and reprogrammed fighting machine. Though Noret did not live to pass on his skills to the other Ginaz mercenaries, Chirox remained to train them into the greatest of all mercenaries, the Swordmasters, who will be the ultimate fighting force against the thinking machines. On the planet of Poritrin, Norma Cenva leaves the world just in time to avoid a slave uprising during which a slave, unaware of the consequences, fires a lasgun into a Holtzman personal shield. The resulting explosion wipes out Tio Holtzman's labs; the slave revolt is eventually brutally crushed. Meanwhile Norma, due to her heritage as daughter of the main Sorceress of Rossak Zufa Cenva, finally taps into her latent powers under great pressure (precipitated by her capture and subsequent torture by the Titan Xerxes) to become the spearhead of humanity. She envisions a future in which massive ships transport goods and humans instantaneously across the universe, using the Holtzman effect to fold space. Norma's ships are the first of what will later be known as heighliners, and her family uses their monopoly on such travel to found the Spacing Guild. As for the slaves on Poritrin, a small band of Zensunnis steal the first space-folding ship and flee to a lonely desert planet called Arrakis, where they will join the followers of Selim, and become the Free Men of Arrakis. Finally, the remaining Titans take their chance becoming independent from their machine master Omnius on the planet of Bela Tegeuse.
956271	/m/03t60t	Casanova's Chinese Restaurant	Anthony Powell	1960	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens with reminiscences of the late-20s/early-30s, concerning Nick's first meetings with Mr Deacon, Maclintick, Gossage, Carolo, Moreland and others, culminating at the point of Nick and Isobel's marriage, of which little is revealed. 1936 sees Nick lunching with various of the Tollands at Lady Warminster's. Erridge leaves for the Spanish Civil War. Nick visits Isobel in hospital where he meets Moreland attending his wife Matilda, who is about to give birth, and also encounters Widmerpool. Moreland and Nick visit the Maclinticks. In late 1936 Matilda loses her baby. Mrs Foxe gives a party for the first performance of Moreland's new symphony; Moreland has fallen for Priscilla Tolland; the Maclinticks row, and Stringham, now a recovering alcoholic, puts in an unexpected appearance. In Spring 1937 the death is announced of St John Clarke; Erridge is back from Spain; Maclintick is abandoned by his wife and commits suicide; Priscilla becomes engaged to Chips Lovell.
957292	/m/03t91s	A Time of Changes	Robert Silverberg	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Life in Velada Borthan is ruled by the Covenant, of which the most conspicuous trait is the denial of the self. Referring to oneself in the first person is forbidden. A selfbarer is someone who exposes his soul to others and as a result is ostracized. The protagonist of the story is Kinnall Darival, a prince of the province of Salla, tormented by existential doubts and by his forbidden passion for his bondsister, Halum. After his brother Stirron becomes Prime Septarch of Salla, Kinnall exiles himself to the neighboring province of Glin to avoid a direct clash with him. Following a more than cold reception in Glin, his monetary savings are sequestered by the Grand Treasurer of Salla, and he is declared an illegal alien, leaving him as a penniless fugitive. He finds a nice man who employs him for a year in a logging camp, but he is eventually recognized as the fugitive prince by a woman from Salla. On the road again, Kinnall takes shelter in Klaek, a miserable village in Glin, with a family of peasants. Longing for news from the "real world", Kinnall goes to Biumar and is engaged as a seaman on a merchant boat headed to the province of Manneran. Once there, he turns to his bondfather, Segvord, for a job which allows him an honest living in Manneran. While becoming a powerful bureaucrat in Manneran, Kinnall marries Halum's look-alike and cousin Loimel - however, it turns out to be a loveless and unhappy relationship, as Loimel looks like Halum but has a different personality, and she could sense she is being used as a surrogate for somebody else. Kinnall then meets the Earthman Schweiz with whom he begins to freely discuss his alienation from his own culture. Schweiz tells him about the wonderful drug available in the wild southern country of Sumara Borthan. Finally, both go to a country lodge and share the secret drug, causing their minds to become open to one another and creating a strong connection between them. Kinnall and Schweiz organize a small expedition to Sumara Borthan where they share the drug with the natives in a kind of social magic ritual. Smuggling a large amount of the drug into Manneran, Kinnall starts to be the apostle of a new selfbaring cult, convincing many people to share the telepathic drug with him. Among them is his bondbrother Noim. Finally, betrayed and revealed, he seeks escape to Noim's estate in Salla. There he is visited by his beloved Halum, and they share the drug. She is so disturbed by the experience that she enters the pen of the voracious stormshields, who shred her to pieces. Kinnall takes his last flight to the Burnt Lowlands where he ultimately is captured by the royal guards. The book ends ambiguously. One possibility is that though Kinnal himself was executed or imprisoned for life, what he started developed into a widespread movement or cult, of which the book itself is in effect the Scriptures or basic document, and which eventually succeeded in overthrowing the established order. The other possibility is that all this was nothing more than a hallucination which Kinnal experienced under the influence of his drug, and that what he started ended with him. Both possibilities are left open—which evidently was Silverberg's deliberate intention.
957302	/m/03t92t	Downward to the Earth	Robert Silverberg	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Edmund Gunderson was the Terran administrator of the colony world of Belzagor, and he returns to it after it has gained independence, feeling a sense of guilt for the way he has treated its dominant species, the elephant-like nildoror, whose animalistic appearance had kept Gunderson from taking them seriously as sentient beings. On his return, he feels a new sense of kinship with the natives, perhaps more than for the Terran tourists. The nildoror undergo a process of rebirth, and Gunderson’s greatest guilt comes from having denied rebirth to seven nildoror to make them help him repair flood damage. He encounters his old colleague Jeff Kurtz, who had undergone the rebirth ceremony only to be turned into something monstrous. Nevertheless, Gunderson dares to subject himself to the rebirth ceremony, which brings him a new understanding of the native creatures and new powers by which he can heal Kurtz and bring new understanding to others.
957529	/m/03t9p4	The Ancestor's Tale	Richard Dawkins	2004		 The narrative is structured as a pilgrimage, with all modern animals following their own path through history to the origin of life. Humans meet their evolutionary cousins at rendezvous points along the way, the points at which the lineage diverged. At each point Dawkins attempts to infer, from molecular and fossil evidence, the probable form of the most recent common ancestor and describes the modern animals that join humanity's growing travelling party. This structure is inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The pilgrimage visits a total of 40 "rendezvous points" from rendezvous zero, the most recent common ancestor of all of humanity, to rendezvous 39, eubacteria, the ancestor of all surviving organisms. Though Dawkins is confident of the essential shape of this phylogenetic taxonomy, he enters caveats on a small number of branch points where a compelling weight of evidence had not been assembled at the time of writing. At each rendezvous point, Dawkins recounts interesting tales concerning the cousin animals which are about to join the band of pilgrims. Every newly recruited species, genus or family has its own peculiar features, often ones that are relevant to human anatomy or otherwise interesting for humans. For instance, Dawkins discusses why the axolotl never needs to grow up, how new species come about, how hard it is to classify animals, and why our fish-like ancestors moved to the land. These peculiar features are studied and analyzed using a newly introduced tool or method from evolutionary biology, carefully woven into a tale to illustrate how the Darwinian theory of evolution explains all diversity in nature. Even though the book is best read sequentially, every chapter can also be read independently as a self-contained tale with an emphasis on a particular aspect of modern biology. As a whole, the book elaborates on all major topics in evolution. Dawkins also tells personal stories about his childhood and time at university. He talks with fondness about a tiny bushbaby he kept as a child in Malawi (Nyasaland). He described his surprise when he learned that the closest living relatives to the hippos are the whales. The book was produced in two hardback versions: a British one with extensive colour illustrations (by Weidenfeld & Nicolson), and an American one with a reduced number of black-and-white illustrations (by Houghton Mifflin). Paperback versions and an abridged audio version (narrated by Dawkins and his wife Lalla Ward) have also been published. The book is dedicated to Dawkins' friend and mentor, population geneticist John Maynard Smith, who died shortly before the book went to press.
957682	/m/03tb5c	In Death Ground	Steve White	1997-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set in a distant future. Following the accidental discovery of intersteller travel via 'warp points', humanity has expanded throughout space, evolving into a Terran Federation consisting of Core Worlds like Earth and Alpha Centauri, Corporate Worlds like Galloway's Star, and Fringe Worlds colonized by small groups of like-minded people seeking to preserve ethnic or cultural identities from getting lost in a cosmopolitan sameness. (Tensions exist between the three groups of worlds, and are further explored in Insurrection, another novel also written by Weber and White). Following a series of three interstellar wars (ISWs 1-3) with different species (warlike felinoid Orions and their centauroid Gorm associates, birdlike Ophiuchi, the genocidal Rigelians, and the Thebans (explored in a prequel novel Crusade), humanity has experienced a seventy-year "vacation from history", i.e. seven decades of peace. A survey squadron travels through a previously uncharted warp point and encounters a hive-like species referred to derisively as the 'Bugs' (inspired by the Arachnids in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers). All attempts at communication fail, and the Bugs ambush the survey squadron, with a great loss of material and human life. Pursuing the survivors, the Bugs mount a massive invasion of Terran and Orion space. Satellites left behind monitor the conquered planets and reveal that Bugs regard other sentient life forms as food sources; indeed the Bugs prefer to consume their prey alive. It is later revealed that the Bugs raise ranches of conquered species. The alternative being "equal opportunity genocide", Terrans, Orions, Gorm, and Ophiuchi form a Grand Alliance, with Terrans and Orions as the senior members. The novel features long and very detailed space and ground battle sequences, detailed discussions of tactical doctrine, the ongoing arms race between the Alliance and the Bugs, and the development of interpersonal relations between military people of different background and species. The universe and novels are based on the Starfire wargame series, which David Weber helped to develop, and which has existed in various editions since 1976.
957685	/m/03tb6k	The Shiva Option	Steve White		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Grand Alliance of Terrans, Orions, Gorm and Ophiuchi has suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Bugs during the Pesthouse Campaign. Many senior military commanders have been lost, along with the bulk of the Terran Federation pre-war fleet. The Bugs appear unstoppable and fight their way toward Federation space, reaching the key system of Alpha Centauri before they are narrowly repulsed. Now, with the war once more at a stalemate, the Grand Alliance must try to recover their losses and break the deadlock. Unable to communicate or negotiate with the Bugs, the Alliance realises that the war has become a fight for the survival of their respective species and invoke Directive 18, last used against the Rigelians, and embark upon a war of species extermination. Hope arrives when the Alliance infers that, due to differences in construction methods, they can be faced by no more than five Bug Home systems. They also postulate that the massive Bug fleets are, in fact, the end result of years of military build-up. The reason for this seemingly unnecessary military reserve remains unknown. After finding a hidden route into one of the Bug home systems, the new military commanders of the Grand Alliance invoke Directive 18 and carry out a series of devastating attacks on the planet, launching massive waves of antimatter missiles against the surface in order to sterilize it. The simultaneous death of billions of their fellows leaves the surviving Bug fleet temporarily incapacitated, seeming to confirm the Alliance analysts speculation that the Bugs are telepathic. This “psychic shock” effect becomes known as the “Shiva Option” (named after the Hindu God of Destruction). Soon it becomes Alliance doctrine to exercise the Shiva Option wherever possible, in order to incapacitate Bug mobile forces and reduce resistance. Gradually, the Grand Alliance takes the initiative, forcing the Bugs onto the defensive. Meanwhile, Terran Federation Survey Flotilla 19, last seen headed into unknown space and cut off from Alliance territory by the Bug counter-offensive, runs a desperate gauntlet to try and find a way back to friendly territory, whilst fending off almost continuous Bug attacks. Eventually, they stumble across the Star Union of Crucis, a multi-species polity that fought the bugs more than a century ago and have been in hiding ever since, rebuilding their forces. It transpires that the Bug military build-up was prompted by their first war with the Crucians. The commander of the survey team establishes communications with the Crucians and they unite against the pursuing Bug forces, destroying them. Seeing an opportunity to destroy their ancient enemies for good, the Crucians willingly offer themselves as new members of the Grand Alliance against the Bugs. In return, the commander of the flotilla releases the latest military technology the Crucians and their allies, the Telikans and the Zarkolyans. Fighting their way back to Alliance space, the Crucians finally establish contact and formalize their membership of the Grand Alliance. Now trapped between their old and new enemies, the Bugs fight an increasingly desperate defensive war. When the three remaining Bug home systems are cut off from each other, the Grand Alliance are able to quickly overwhelm the remaining Bug forces and successfully carry out Directive 18. With one exception – a small Bug colony, isolated from its home world by a hidden warp point, remains undiscovered by the Alliance...
957896	/m/03tbwq	Run Silent, Run Deep	Edward L. Beach, Jr.			 Beach's bestselling novel of submarine warfare begins soon before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The story is ostensibly the transcription of a Navy tape recording, as related by Commander Edward J. Richardson for use in a war bond drive, of events resulting in his award of the Medal of Honor. The captain of an old submarine used for training at New London, Connecticut, Richardson and his crew are assigned to fit out and commission a new submarine, the USS Walrus, and take her to Pearl Harbor to destroy Japanese shipping in the Pacific Ocean. His executive officer and former best friend, Jim Bledsoe, is resentful because Richardson was forced to fail him during Bledsoe's qualification for command after Bledsoe acted recklessly, nearly sinking their boat. Adding to the difficulties between them, Richardson is secretly enamoured of Bledsoe's fiancee, Laura Elwood, who despises him for ruining Bledsoe's chance. Laura and Jim wed just before Walrus departs New London. During their first war patrol in the Walrus, they encounter the Japanese destroyer Akikaze, whose skipper, Captain Tateo Nakame (nicknamed "Bungo Pete"), is responsible for a series of sinkings of several American submarines in the Bungo Suido, including the USS Nerka, which had been commanded by a close friend of Richardson's. Richardson, wounded in a subsequent encounter with Bungo, remains at Pearl Harbor while Bledsoe commands the Walrus for three war patrols. Bledsoe establishes a reputation for himself as an aggressive skipper with a good rate of sinkings. Between patrols, Bledsoe has an extramarital affair at Pearl Harbor, causing Richardson anguish for Laura's sake. During its next patrol, however, Walrus becomes Bungo Pete's seventh victim. During his stint ashore, Richardson works on solving reliability problems with American torpedoes. Richardson is given a new command, USS Eel, when her skipper comes down with tuberculosis. When the news of the loss of Bledsoe and the Walrus arrives, Richardson convinces his superiors to let him hunt Bungo Pete in the Eel. A great battle ensues in a raging storm between the Eel, fighting on the surface, and Bungo Pete's special anti-submarine warfare group, which consists of a Q-ship, a Japanese submarine, and the Akikaze. After sinking all three vessels, Richardson discovers three lifeboats in the vicinity and realizes that Bungo Pete and his skilled specialists will be rescued to resume their hunting. He intentionally rams the lifeboats. Soon after the destruction of Bungo Pete, the Eel is detailed to lifeguard duty off Guam, where Richardson's actions saving three aviators earns him the Medal of Honor. After the war he returns home, expressing his hope to begin a relationship with Laura Bledsoe. The World War II U.S. Navy submarine commander P.J. Richardson (Clark Gable) has an obsession with the Japanese destroyer that had sunk his previous boat and three others in the Bungo Straits. He persuades the Navy Board to give him a new submarine command with the provision that his executive officer, also known as the XO or the "exec", be someone who has just returned from active sea patrol. He is single-mindedly training the crew of his new boat, the USS Nerka, to return to the Bungo Straits and sink the destroyer, captained by a crafty ex-submariner, now destroyer captain, nicknamed Bungo Pete. Richardson's executive officer, Lieutenant Jim Bledsoe (Burt Lancaster), is worried about the safety of his boat and his crew. Bledsoe also is seething with resentment at Richardson and the Navy leadership for denying him command of the boat which he believes should rightfully have been his. Richardson begins to drill the crew on a rapid bow shot, during which the submarine shoots at a destroyer moving in for the kill "down the throat" (i.e., at its bow coming head-on), which is normally considered a desperation shot due to the extremely narrow profile of the target. He then bypasses one target only to take on a Japanese destroyer using the bow shot on which they have drilled. The crew becomes outraged when it becomes apparent that Richardson is choosing to avoid all legitimate targets in order to enter the Bungo Straits undetected in direct contradiction to mission orders, jeopardizing the boat and its crew merely to avenge the destroyed submarine. Soon after engaging Bungo Pete, they are attacked by aircraft that had been clearly alerted to their presence and had been waiting in ambush. They are forced to dive and barely escape destruction from depth charges. Three of the crew are killed, and Richardson suffers a skull fracture which incapacitates him. They are also almost hit by what they mistakenly believe is one of their own torpedoes doubling back on them. By sending up blankets, equipment, and the bodies of the dead, they convince the Japanese that the submarine has been sunk. Bledsoe uses Richardson's incapacitation to assume command and as an excuse to return to Pearl Harbor. While listening to Tokyo Rose proclaiming the sinking of their boat, they are mystified how the Japanese were able to identify the crew of the boat. They later realize the Japanese are collecting their garbage. Bledsoe then realizes additionally that the submarine now has a real advantage—the Japanese believe they are sunk and their source of intelligence has ended—and returns to the Bungo Straits to fight the Akikaze destroyer, which the submarine defeats only to be subjected again to a mystery torpedo. Richardson deduces that it was not the Akikaze alone which had been destroying the US submarines but a Japanese submarine working in concert with the destroyer. He orders the boat into a dive just seconds before a Japanese torpedo shoots by. The US submarine then forces its adversary to surface and destroys it. The older submarine skipper thus achieves his revenge. The film ends with Richardson dying from his head injury and being buried at sea. There are a number of differences of plot of the book as compared to the movie . The period covered by the book is much longer—from before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 until the end of the war. Like the movie, Richardson has two fleet boat commands in the book. The movie uses many plot elements of the novel, such as Japanese gathering intelligence from the sub's garbage. However, in the book, Richardson is ashore recovering from a broken leg (after suffering a serious injury during action), and working on the torpedo exploder problem when his first command, USS Walrus, is sunk with the loss of all crew including Jim Bledsoe. In the novel, the conflict between Richardson and Bledsoe starts much earlier while both men are reconditioning the old USS S-16 (SS-121) in Naval Submarine Base New London for service by the Polish Navy. The mutinous attitudes of the crew in the movie are an extension of Bledsoe's earlier rebelliousness in the novel. Richardson conns his boat through a wild night surface action against a Japanese convoy. The movie, produced with the assistance of the US Navy, does not feature the Eel ramming Japanese lifeboats: this change may have been due to the Navy's concerns about the accusations related to Dudley W. Morton shooting into lifeboats while commanding Wahoo. The cinematic version of his novel was not particularly an object of affection for its author, Edward L. Beach. He would say later that the movie company bought only the title and was not interested in producing an accurate depiction of the theme and plot of his novel.
959366	/m/03tgtr	Holes	Louis Sachar	1998-08-20	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 At the beginning of the story, Stanley, a teenage boy who is supposedly affected by a family "curse", has been wrongly accused of stealing the shoes of the baseball player from a charity auction. As punishment for this crime he was given a choice to either go to jail or Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention and correctional facility where convicts of similar age are forced to dig holes to "build their character". Warden Walker, real granddaughter of Trout Walker, is actually looking for a buried treasure that outlaw Katherine "Kissin' Kate" Barlow stole from Stanley's great-grandfather. Years ago, Stanley's family got cursed by Madame Zeroni, a fortune-teller and ancestor, due to a promise not fulfilled by Elya Yelnats, Stanley's great-great-grandfather, more popularly known in the novel as a "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather". Later in the story, Zero had been living on jars of very old spiced peaches that he had found in the boat, which he called "Sploosh". Upon seeing a mountain resembling a human fist giving the thumbs up sign, Stanley recalls the story of his ancestor Stanley Yelnats I, who finds "refuge on God’s thumb", which Zero and Stanley climb in search of water. Atop the river, Stanley discovers a field of onions, which the boys eat, and a pool of groundwater, which they drink, and during their contentment Stanley sings to Zero that they should return to Camp Green Lake to find the buried treasure. Upon returning, Zero steals some water and food from the kitchens while Stanley looks for the buried treasure. At this they succeed, but are apprehended by the Warden and the camp staff, and become surrounded by a group of lethal yellow-spotted lizards. Because the boys have consumed onions, the lizards do not bite them. Unable to leave the hole they occupy, they remain in place until the next morning, during which an attorney arrives requesting Stanley’s release. When the warden demands the suitcase, Zero indicates the name ‘Stanley Yelnats’ written on it, its contents being the jewels, deeds, stocks and promissory notes stolen from Stanley Yelnats the first. Protagonist Stanley IV then uses the bonds to buy a new house for his family, and Zero hires a team of investigators to find his missing mother; meanwhile, the drought at Green Lake is replaced by rainfall, as if in response to Stanley's fulfilment of his ancestor's promise (a suggestion left purposely ambiguous by the narration). In a final scene, Clyde Livingston, along with the Yelnats and Zeroni families, celebrates the success of Stanley’s father's antidote to foot odor, composed of preserved and fermented spiced peaches and named "Sploosh" by Zero. The warden is forced to sell Camp Green Lake to the state government, who turns it into a Girl Scout camp, a coincidence since Mr. Sir, a head of the camp, told the campers that "this isn't a Girl Scout camp", referring to the backbreaking digging.
961848	/m/03tp9x	The Lost City of the Jedi	Paul Davids		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 After an attempted assassination by the Empire trying to blow up Luke's X-wing fighter, he has a vision of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan tells Luke of the secret Lost City of the Jedi hidden beneath the rainforests of Yavin IV. Unknown to Luke at the time, the city is home to a twelve-year-old boy named Ken, who is called the "Jedi Prince." In the city, with the vast databanks on the computers, Ken learns the history of the Jedi and the Rebellion from his only companions, his caretaker droids. As Luke is searching the forests he meets a mysterious healer, Baji. With Baji he searched the forests, eventually encountering Ken, who had run away from the droids. Before he is questioned further, his caretaker droid finds him and they both vanish in a puff of smoke from Dee-Jay. Luke, more determined to find this city, returned to get help from the rest of the Rebels. Meanwhile, Trioculus, the new Emperor has a meeting with Supreme Prophet Kadann. Kadann tells him that he is not the true son of Palpatine, but still gives him the blessing of the Prophets. He also tells him of the Lost City of the Jedi, where the Jedi Prince lives, saying that this prince could end Trioculus' reign. Able to infiltrate the Rebel's meeting with an explosive device, he demanded that they reveal to him the location of the city. When they refused, he readied the device's explosion, while still taking in the beauty of Princess Leia. As Luke stopped the explosion Trioculus started his second plan: to raze the forests in order to find the entrance. During this implementation, he suddenly goes blind and orders the capture of the healer, Baji. Baji tells him that when he uses the power of the Glove of Darth Vader he is injuring his nerve endings, causing blindness and his body to rot. Baji tells him of a cure, but it can only be found in his hut, which is about to be destroyed by the fires. Unable to stop his troops, Trioculus rushes into the hut, and saves the cure, but is badly burned and scarred. As the Rebels attempted to stop the troops, Luke finally found the City. With the help of the droids at the weather controlling center, he created a rainstorm which put an end to the fires. Ken decided to leave with Luke and join the Rebels in their fight leaving the City and his caretakers. Without finding the city, Trioculus left the planet, vowing to destroy all of the Rebels except Leia, who he would make his queen.
963057	/m/03tt2g	The Alchymist's Cat	Robin Jarvis	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Will Godwin, a young boy, is forced to work for the evil apothecary Dr. Elias Theophrastus Spittle after Spittle frames him for a murder. Following a close call, he finds a family of cats in a graveyard and brings them back to Spittle's home. The mother cat, as it seems, is named Imelza. But the father is nowhere in sight. Soon after, Will persuades Spittle, who is searching for a way to become immortal, to take one of them as a familiar. The kittens are thereafter named Jupiter, Dab and Leech. Jupiter is trained in the magic arts, while his brother Leech is despised by Spittle. Envious, Leech begins to plot the downfall of his brother, Jupiter. The plague spreads through London, and many people die. Imelza and Dab escape from Spittle, but Imelza is beaten to death by a mob and Dab almost dies but is saved by Molly, a plague doctor and friend of Will's. Dab returns home and is soon killed by Spittle for his experiments, leaving Jupiter and Leech alone to battle over who is heir to the black arts. Spittle, after creating a potion that dyes things orange, manages to formulate the Philosopher's Stone, but contracts the Plague and dies, forcing Jupiter to use the potion on him to resurrect him. Jupiter, upon discovering Dab's body, drinks the potion himself and turns on his master and kills him by starting a fire. Leech betrays Jupiter and leaves him to burn, inheriting his brother's magic powers in the process, but falls into the fire himself. Will manages to recover one cat, burnt unrecognizably but later revealed to be Leech. Leech, having drunk both the immortality potion and orange dye, convinces a rat that Spittle had kept to take him into the sewers and takes his brother's name and title as his own, "Jupiter, Lord of All". The book gradually weaves both storylines together. The Great Plague and the Great Fire of London occur during the course of the story.
963677	/m/03tvp9	The Pillars of Creation	Terry Goodkind	2001-11-20	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Jennsen Rahl, Richard Rahl's half sister, has spent the first twenty years of her life running from her father, Darken Rahl. Born without any aspect of the gift of magic, Jennsen has been marked for death since birth. When her mother is apparently murdered by D'Haran assassins she sets out with her new friend, Sebastian, to start her life over. Sebastian eventually reveals that he is a spy for the Imperial Order. He speaks convincingly of the Order's goals concerning the fair treatment of all humanity and the elimination of magic. Above all else he esteems Emperor Jagang. In equal measure he despises Richard Rahl, who he claims has brought on war with an invasion of the Old World after bringing down the Barriers separating the sections of the known world. Meanwhile, another sibling of Richard's, Oba Rahl, suffers under an abusive mother on the family farm. Oba imagines himself as energetic and the possessor of a healthy curiosity. His inquisitive nature manifests itself especially through pleasure in watching things die under his hand. Oba does not know that he, along with Jennsen, is pristinely ungifted and immune to magic. His mother sends him to a nearby sorceress to buy medicine and during the purchase he begins to menace the magic user. Her attempts to defend herself with magic fail and Oba kills her brutally. During the fight Oba surrenders to a voice in his mind that promises invincibility in return for obedience. After returning home Oba kills his mother and resolves to see the world. He can travel comfortably with the funds he looted from the sorceress. Jennsen wants to find another sorceress, sister of the one Oba killed, and who had previously helped Jennsen and her mother. Along with Sebastian she travels to the People's Palace, capital of the D'Haran empire. There she learns that the sorceress she seeks lives in a deadly enchanted swamp. After Sebastian is detained by D'Haran guards, a friendly stranger, Tom, helps a desperate Jennsen to the swamp. She safely reaches the sorceress' home, her natural immunity to magic protecting her through the swamp, but only learns that nothing can be done to save her from Lord Rahl. She leaves, disappointed and upon returning to the People's Palace cleverly rescues Sebastian. He convinces Jennsen that she should visit Emperor Jagang, leader of the Imperial Order. Oba is also aware of the second sorceress and the fact that she knows something concerning his fate or nature. He hires a guide to the swamp, which he safely negotiates as well. The sorceress reveals that Oba is now a thrall to the Keeper of the Underworld and kills herself before Oba can do the deed. This, along with the fact that his guide has stolen all his money, enrages Oba. He is mollified somewhat by the treasure he finds in the sorceresses' cottage but his rage returns when, after returning to the People's Palace, he spots his guide. After killing the guide he is briefly jailed but escapes, using the voice in his mind to make the D'Haran guards do his bidding, and resolves to locate Richard Rahl. Jennsen and Sebastian reach Emperor Jagang at the van of the army of the Imperial Order. Though initially shocked by the crude Order soldiers, she is advised not to be so picky and that the D'Harans are even worse. The day after her arrival the Emperor Jagang assaults the Confessor's Palace but is bloodily repulsed. Emperor Jagang is severely injured in the action. Even worse for the Order, their enemy unleashes an ancient magic on the main army, wreaking immense destruction. Jennsen reacts by making a pact with a dark force, the Keeper, to kill Richard Rahl in return for her surrender and obedience. Oba captures Kahlan and is ordered by the Keeper to take her, along with the Sword of Truth to the Pillars of Creation. Using his link to the sword, Richard pursues Oba to the Pillars, where he encounters Jennsen, who has also been drawn to the same spot by the Keeper in order to kill Richard. The Keeper's supreme plan, however, was for Richard to kill Jennsen at the Pillars of Creation thereby opening a gate between the Keeper's realm and the world of the living. Richard discerns the plan and refuses to be goaded into cooperating. Jennsen then recognizes his integrity and the Keeper's plan is foiled. Jennsen learns that the men who were sent to kill her mother were actually soldiers of the Imperial Order, and after coming to believe that Richard is truly a loving and caring brother, she joins him and Kahlan in their quest against Jagang.
963826	/m/03tv_9	Memoirs Found in a Bathtub	Stanisław Lem	1971	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/06m9m8": "Social science fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Set in the distant future, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is the horrifying first-hand account of a bureaucratic agent trapped deep within the subterranean bowels of a vast underground military complex. In a Kafkaesque maelstrom of terrifying confusion and utter insanity, this man must attempt to follow his mission directives of conducting an "on-the-spot investigation. Verify. Search. Destroy. Incite. Inform. Over and out. On the nth day nth hour sector n subsector n rendezvous with N." The narrator inhabits a paranoid dystopia where nothing is as it seems, chaos seems to rule all events, and everyone is deeply suspicious of everyone else. In danger of losing his mind, the protagonist starts keeping a diary, and it is this diary which details only a few days in his life that is ultimately found by a future society and given the title Notes from the Neogene. Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is this distant voice from the past, this Notes from the Neogene.
964396	/m/03txn3	Pursuit of the House-Boat	John Kendrick Bangs	1897	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the House-Boat was hijacked by Captain Kidd at the end of A House-Boat on the Styx, the various members of its club decided that in order to track it down, a detective would have to be called in. So they hired Sherlock Holmes, who, at the time of the book's publication, had indeed been declared dead by his creator.
965808	/m/03v11v	Pollyanna	Eleanor H. Porter	1913	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The title character is named Pollyanna Whittier, a young orphan who goes to live in Beldingsville, Vermont, with her wealthy but stern Aunt Polly. Pollyanna's philosophy of life centers on what she calls "The Glad Game", an optimistic attitude she learned from her father. The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation. It originated in an incident one Christmas when Pollyanna, who was hoping for a doll in the missionary barrel, found only a pair of crutches inside. Making the game up on the spot, Pollyanna's father taught her to look at the good side of things&mdash;in this case, to be glad about the crutches because "we didn't need to use them!" With this philosophy, and her own sunny personality and sincere, sympathetic soul, Pollyanna brings so much gladness to her aunt's dispirited New England town that she transforms it into a pleasant place to live. The Glad Game shields her from her aunt's stern attitude: when Aunt Polly puts her in a stuffy attic room without carpets or pictures, she exults at the beautiful view from the high window; when she tries to "punish" her niece for being late to dinner by sentencing her to a meal of bread and milk in the kitchen with the servant Nancy, Pollyanna thanks her rapturously because she likes bread and milk, and she likes Nancy. Soon, Pollyanna teaches some of Beldingsville's most troubled inhabitants to "play the game" as well, from a querulous invalid named Mrs. Snow to a miserly bachelor, Mr. Pendleton, who lives all alone in a cluttered mansion. Aunt Polly, too&mdash;finding herself helpless before Pollyanna's buoyant refusal to be downcast&mdash;gradually begins to thaw, although she resists the glad game longer than anyone else. Eventually, however, even Pollyanna's robust optimism is put to the test when she is hit by a car and loses the use of her legs. (In the movie adaptation, she falls off a tree after sneaking out of the house). At first she doesn't realize the seriousness of her situation, but her spirits plummet when she was told what happened to her. After that, she lies in bed, unable to find anything to be glad about. Then the townspeople begin calling at Aunt Polly's house, eager to let Pollyanna know how much her encouragement has improved their lives; and Pollyanna decides she can still be glad that she at least has her legs. The novel ends with Aunt Polly marrying her former lover Dr. Chilton and Pollyanna being sent to a hospital where she learns to walk again and is able to appreciate the use of her legs far more as a result of being temporarily disabled.
966420	/m/03v30m	Grantchester Grind	Tom Sharpe		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Porterhouse is a college which had an incident involving a bedder and the college's only research graduate student which caused the Bull Tower to be severely damaged. Since the college's funds were exhausted by a previous bursar with a tendency to gamble, one of the story's central themes is guided by the Senior Members' attempts to acquire funds for the college. The new Master, Skullion, the previous Head Porter of the college, is frail after a stroke (or a 'Porterhouse Blue' , hence the previous book's title) and the issues surrounding the death of the previous Master, Sir Godber Evans, prompt his widow to instigate a plan to investigate the death through a planted Fellow, backed by a large, anonymous donation to the College. Meanwhile, the Dean of the College takes it upon himself to visit prosperous Old Porterthusians (previous members of Porterhouse) in the hope that one is willing and able to become Master if and when Skullion cannot continue. At the same time, the current Bursar is contacted by an American media mogul who seems to be interested in supporting the college without clarifying what it is he wants in return. At the end of the novel the alcoholic Lord Jeremy Pimpole is appointed as Master of the College.
967149	/m/03v56l	The Trojan Women	Euripides			 Euripides's play follows the fates of the women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and as their remaining families are about to be taken away as slaves. However, it begins first with the gods Athena and Poseidon discussing ways to punish the Greek armies because they condoned Ajax the Lesser for dragging Cassandra, the eldest daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, away from Apollo's temple. (From some ancient Greek paintings many people believe Ajax raped Cassandra, and the verb that Euripides used to describe Ajax's "taking" of Cassandra can also be translated as rape, but it does not directly say that in this story) What follows shows how much the Trojan women have suffered as their grief is compounded when the Greeks dole out additional deaths and divide their shares of women. The Greek herald Talthybius arrives to tell the dethroned queen Hecuba what will befall her and her children. Hecuba will be taken away with the Greek general Odysseus, and Cassandra is destined to become the conquering general Agamemnon's concubine. Cassandra, who has been driven partially mad due to a curse by which she can see the future but will never be believed when she warns others, is morbidly delighted by this news: she sees that when they arrive in Argos, her new master's embittered wife Clytemnestra will kill both her and her new master. However, because of the curse, no one understands this response, and Cassandra is carried off. The widowed princess Andromache arrives and Hecuba learns from her that her youngest daughter, Polyxena, has been killed as a sacrifice at the tomb of the Greek warrior Achilles. Andromache's lot is to be the concubine of Achilles' son Neoptolemus and more horrible news for the royal family is yet to come: Talthybius reluctantly informs her that her baby son, Astyanax, has been condemned to die. The Greek leaders are afraid that the boy will grow up to avenge his father Hector, and rather than take this chance, they plan to throw him off from the battlements of Troy to his death. Helen, though not one of the Trojan women, is supposed to suffer greatly as well: Menelaus arrives to take her back to Greece with him where a death sentence awaits her. Helen begs/seduces her husband to spare her life and he remains resolved to kill her, but the audience watching the play knows that he will let her live and take her back. Not only is it revealed at the end of the play that she lives, but also in the Odyssey Telemachus will learn how Helen's legendary beauty wins her a reprieve. In the end, Talthybius returns carrying with him the body of little Astyanax on Hector's shield. Andromache's wish had been to bury her child herself, performing the proper rituals according to Trojan ways, but her ship had already departed. Talthybius gives the corpse to Hecuba, who prepares the body of her grandson for burial before they are finally taken off with Odysseus. Throughout the play, many of the Trojan women lament the loss of the land that reared them. Hecuba in particular lets it be known that Troy had been her home for her entire life, only to see herself as an old grandmother watching the burning of Troy, the death of her husband, her children, and her grandchildren before she will be taken as a slave to Odysseus.
967270	/m/03v5hz	The Dragonbone Chair	Tad Williams	1988-10-25	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Simon, a fourteen-year-old kitchen boy and servant in the great castle Hayholt, muddles his way through the daily routines of castle drudgery in the last days of the long reign of King John Presbyter. Simon is thrilled when luck turns his way and he finds himself apprenticed to the good Doctor Morgenes, the castle's healer and wizard, after which Simon alternates his time between his menial chores and learning to read and write, under instruction by the doctor. Shortly after the death of the great King John, his son Elias, whom many say is a pawn of the evil cleric Pryrates, takes the throne. Shortly afterwards, King Elias's brother Josua mysteriously disappears, and the new reign begins to curdle in suspicion and discontent. Elias, blinded by his desire for power, creates a pact with the undead Sithi ruler, the Storm King, who himself seeks to regain his lost realm through a pact with one of human royal blood. When Simon accidentally stumbles into the castle dungeons, he discovers that Prince Josua is being held captive, so he and Morgenes conspire to rescue the prince. Simon and Morgenes are successful, and Josua is able to flee the castle. Soon after, Elias's soldiers, led by Pryrates, storm Morgenes's office. Morgenes is slain by a dark magic, and Simon is able to flee the castle through a secret passage at the back of the doctor's office. Armed only with his mentor's biography of the good King John, Simon is lost and despondent. After endless hours in the tunnels beneath Hayholt, which is actually the remains of the Sithi castle, Asu'a, Simon stumbles back into the open beyond the castle and town. There, he accidentally witnesses a scene of evil magic involving the king, Pryrates and a few white-faced and white-haired demons. Horrified, he stumbles through the woods on the road north towards Naglimund, the seat of Prince Josua. About halfway to Naglimund, he stumbles upon a strange creature, caught in a cotsman's trap. Simon realizes it must be one of the Sithi, an elven-like folk who was thought to have disappeared from the lands. He rescues him from the trap and in answer is shot at with a white arrow. At that moment, he encounters a troll by the name of Binabik. Binabik tells Simon that the white arrow is a symbol of an obligation towards Simon, and together they travel further towards Naglimund. While traveling through the Aldheorte forest, they save a young servant girl and her sister from vicious hounds. They travel to Geloë, a witch who helps them escape the soldiers pursuing them. While in her house, Simon, Binabik and Geloë also walk the Dreamroad to try to find answers but only find enemies waiting. They finally reach Naglimund, where they meet with Prince Josua. Simon begins training to be a soldier, as it is common knowledge that Elias is leading an army towards Naglimund. Whilst having a raed [council], an old man appears: Jarnauga. There, the travelers learn of the existence of three legendary swords by the names of Minneyar (or "Year of Memory"), Sorrow, and Thorn. The magic of these swords are the only hope against the combined power of the two High Kings, the ancient Sithi and the new-crowned human, who already have possession of at least one of the swords. They also learn the history of the Sithi and the Storm King, and of the existence of Utuk'u, Queen of the Norns, who are the northern cousins of the Sithi. It is then that Simon realizes that his vision of the dark magic just after his escape from Hayhold was no vision at all but an actual event, and that the white-faced demons were actually Norns. In Naglimund, Simon also learns of a small group of scholars known as the League of the Scroll, of which Morgenes was a member and of which Jarnauga and Binabik are also members. Binabik is only a recent member, after the death of his master Ookequk. Recognizing the true danger facing the land of Osten Ard, only the League holds the knowledge of times past, which may be the only hope of salvation for young Simon and his friends. To Simon's dismay he also finds out that Marya the serving girl whom they saved is actually Miriamele, only child and daughter of King Elias, who had fled her father's madness to join her uncle's cause. They learn then that the black sword Thorn, once belonging to Camaris the greatest knight of history, is not lost in the depths of the sea, as once thought. It may still exist in the frozen heights to the north, near Binabik's ancestral home. Simon and Binabik join a group of soldiers to go to the far north to recover the magical blade. Along the way they run into Sithi and the one that Simon saved turns out to be the son of the ruling House named Jiriki. Together with An'nai, one of his kinsman, the Sitha prince joins their quest to the north and helps them survive several dangers. Eventually, Simon and his small company reach the icy mountains which are home to the powerful sword. Simon discovers the blade but shortly afterwards the troupe is attacked by a fierce iceworm, Igjarjuk. Simon, despite his fears, bravely tries to fight it off, suffering a wound in the process. As the novel progresses, the narrative widens, giving the reader secondary viewpoints besides those of Simon. Some of the side stories, which have great importance nonetheless, include those of Isgrimnur, Duke of Rimmersgard; Maegwin, the daughter of the Hernystiri client king; and Tiamak, a scribe in the marshes of the distant South. Miriamele, the king's daughter, fled to her uncle in Naglimund. His protectiveness of her frustrates her however, so she flees Naglimund before its fall towards her kin in Nabban, intending to win their allegiance. A drunken monk named Cadrach travels with her; he has lots of secrets and a mysterious past. Isgrimmnur is sent after Miriamele to ensure her safety and return her to Josua. In Hernystiri, the king and his son are slain and their people driven into hiding in the mountains. There, Count Eolair attempts to assist Maegwin the king's daughter but she is sinking into madness while trying to find a way to save her people. The book ends with the fall of Naglimund: after King Elias accepted the Storm King's terms and bargain, a host of Norns, giants, and undead servants of the Storm King arrive and utterly destroy the castle. Josua escapes with only 11 other people, amongst them Deornoth, his sworn sword, and Gutrun and Isorn, wife and son of Isgrimmnur. Simon opens his eyes after the dragon to find his face bearing a long burn scar and swath of hair turned white.
967902	/m/03bx1l6	Magician	Raymond E. Feist	1982-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the twelfth year of the reign of Rodric the Fourth, an orphaned kitchen boy named Pug is made an apprentice magician to the magician Kulgan in Crydee. An indifferent student of magic, he rises to high station by saving Princess Carline, Duke Borric’s daughter, from mountain trolls and becomes a squire of the Duke's court. Following the discovery of a foreign ship wrecked after a storm and reports of bizarrely dressed warriors appearing in the forests, Pug’s liege, Lord Borric sets out for Krondor, the capital of the western realm of the kingdom, to convey the news and ask for aid. Their party is attacked, however, by dark elves and they are rescued by dwarves and their leader Dolgan who leads them through a series of mines to the coast. Shortly after arriving in Krondor Lord Borric’s band are instructed to carry on to Rillanon, the capital of the kingdom. Once there, however they are refused any help from the King Rodric, who suffers from madness and delusions, and they are turned away. War erupts between the Midkemians and the otherworldly Tsurani. The Duke's troops engage in a fierce battle in an effort to locate and destroy the rift in spacetime which gives access to the Tsurani, but Pug is captured and taken back through the rift to Kelewan, the Tsurani homeworld, as a slave. After years of stalemate fighting on Midkemia by the two opposing forces, Pug returns as a magician, a Great One, the Tsurani name for master practitioners of magic. Meanwhile, a fellow slave, Laurie, along with a Tsurani warrior, Kasumi, embark on a secret errand of peace from the Tsurani Emperor to King Rodric in Rillanon, but also fail to persuade the mad king. Discovering that Pug is alive and prospering as a magician, the dying Duke Borric reveals that he has adopted Pug into his family, also giving him an island – Stardock, where Pug is to begin an academy of magic. Duke Borric also reveals that Martin is his son and the older brother to Lyam and Arutha. Upon Borric’s death, Lyam becomes Duke of Crydee and commander of the Armies of the West. Shortly after, King Rodric appears at the camp after hearing the news of Borric's death. King Rodric himself then leads a charge against the Tsurani, breaking their ranks and driving them back, but suffering a mortal wound. While dying, the King's sanity seems to return and he apologizes to Lyam and names him heir to the throne. With Rodric's death, Lyam assumes command and sues for a peace treaty with the Emperor Ichindar. During the peace conference, the two rulers, with Pug as the interpreter, begin on good terms by exchanging gifts. Due to the interference of powerful and mysterious sorcerer Macros the Black, the elves and dwarves mistakenly perceive treachery, and the truce dissolves into an all-out conflict. Macros enlists Pug's help to close the rift once and for all, and the connection between the two worlds is severed, leaving numerous stranded Tsurani soldiers in Midkemia, including Kasumi. The Tsurani, who expect to be put to death as is custom on their world, are instead granted freedom in return for their pledge of service to the Kingdom, and are stationed in LaMut with Kasumi made Earl and given command. Lyam chooses to reveal Martin's birthright on the eve of his selection and coronation, threatening to throw the Kingdom into turmoil and potential civil war, but Martin relinquishes his claim, making Lyam the rightful king and ending any possibility of dispute.
968251	/m/03v898	The Cruel Sea	Nicholas Monsarrat	1951	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The action commences in 1939. Lieutenant-Commander George Ericson, after service in the Merchant Navy, is recalled to the Royal Navy and given command of the fictitious Flower-class corvette HMS Compass Rose, newly built to escort convoys. His officers are mostly new to the Navy, especially the two new Sub-Lieutenants, Lockhart and Ferraby. Only Ericson, and some of the Petty Officers are in any way experienced. Despite these initial disadvantages, the ship and crew work up a routine and gain experience. Bennett, the First Lieutenant, a mean and shirking disciplinarian with a penchant for bullying and canned sausages, snorkers, leaves the ship ostensibly for health reasons, and the junior officers are able to mature, with Lockhart gaining promotion to First Lieutenant. The crew cross the Atlantic many times on escort duty in all kinds of weather, often encountering fierce storms in one of the smallest ships to provide escort services to the Allied convoys. The men endure the ship's constant rolling and pitching in the huge waves, freezing cold, the strain of maintaining station on the convoy on pitch black nights and the fear that at any second a torpedo from a German U-boat could blow them to oblivion. Somehow the tradition of the Royal Navy and the knowledge of the importance of their work carries them through. They continue the monotonous and dangerous but vital duty of convoy escort and after one particularly difficult convoy they use all their hard won knowledge to sink a German submarine. They are nearly sunk several times until in 1943 they are finally torpedoed and forced to abandon ship. Most of the crew die in the freezing waters, but Ericson, Lockhart, and a few others are rescued the next day. Ericson, now promoted to Commander, and Lockhart, now a Lieutenant-Commander, take command of a new ship, the fictitious River class frigate HMS Saltash. (In the film The Cruel Sea, the ship is called Saltash Castle and is portrayed by a Castle class corvette HMS Portchester Castle, as no River class vessels were available.) The Royal Navy is now finally gaining the upper hand over the U-boats and Saltash adds to the growing number of kills due to Ericson's determination and patience. When the war ends, the ship returns to port as a guard to several German submarines that have surrendered. A secondary plotline concerns Lockhart's poignant romance with a beautiful Women's Royal Naval Service officer.
969550	/m/03vcmc	Iphigeneia at Aulis	Euripides			 At the start of the play, Agamemnon has second thoughts about going through with the sacrifice and sends a second message to his wife, telling her to ignore the first. Clytemnestra never receives it, however, because it is intercepted by Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother, who is enraged over his change of heart. To Menelaus, this is not only a personal blow (for it is his wife, Helen, with whom the Trojan prince Paris ran off, whose retrieval is the main pretext for the war); it may also lead to mutiny and the downfall of the Greek leaders should the rank and file discover the prophecy and realise that their general has put his family above their pride as soldiers. The brothers debate the matter and, eventually, each seemingly changes the other's mind: Menelaus is apparently convinced that it would be better to disband the Greek army than to have his niece killed, but Agamemnon is now ready to carry out the sacrifice, claiming that the army will storm his palace at Argos and kill his entire family if he does not. By this time, Clytemnestra is already on her way to Aulis with Iphigenia and her baby brother Orestes, making the decision of how to proceed all the more difficult. Iphigenia is thrilled at the prospect of marrying one of the great heroes of the Greek army, but she, her mother and the ostensible groom-to-be soon discover the truth. Furious at having been used as a prop in Agamemnon's plan, Achilles vows to defend Iphigenia—initially more for the purposes of his own honour than to save the innocent girl. However, when he tries to rally the Greeks against the sacrifice, he finds out that "the entirety of Greece"—including the Myrmidons under his personal command—demand that Agamemnon's wishes be carried out, and he barely escapes being stoned. Clytemnestra and Iphigenia try in vain to persuade Agamemnon to change his mind, but the general believes that he has no choice. As Achilles prepares to defend Iphigenia by force, Iphigenia, realizing that she has no hope of escape, begs Achilles not to throw his life away in a lost cause. Over her mother's protests and to Achilles's admiration, she consents to her sacrifice, declaring that she would rather die heroically, winning renown as the savior of Greece, than be dragged unwilling to the altar. Leading the chorus in a hymn to Artemis, she goes to her death, with her mother Clytemnestra so distraught as to presage her murder of her husband and Orestes's matricide years later. The play as it exists in the manuscripts ends with a messenger reporting that Iphigenia has been replaced on the altar by a deer. It is, however, generally considered that this is not an authentic part of Euripides' original text. A fragment of the play may indicate that Artemis appeared to console Clytemnestra and assure her that her daughter had not been sacrificed after all, but this Euripidean end, if it existed, is not extant.
969617	/m/03vcwz	Woyzeck	Georg Büchner			 Franz Woyzeck, a lowly soldier stationed in a provincial German town, is living with Marie, the mother of his child which is not blessed by the church as it was born out of wedlock. Woyzeck earns extra money for his family by performing menial jobs for the Captain and agreeing to take part in medical experiments conducted by the Doctor. As one of these experiments, the Doctor tells Woyzeck that he must eat nothing but peas. It is obvious that Woyzeck's mental health is breaking down and he begins to experience a series of apocalyptic visions. Meanwhile, Marie grows tired of Woyzeck and turns her attentions to a handsome drum major who, in an ambiguous scene taking place in Marie's bedroom, sleeps with her. With his jealous suspicions growing, Woyzeck confronts the drum major, who beats him up and humiliates him. Finally, Woyzeck stabs Marie to death by a pond. While a third act trial is claimed by some to have been part of the original conception, the fragment, as left by Büchner, ends with Woyzeck disposing of the knife in the pond and most renditions extrapolate this with him drowning while trying to clean himself of the blood after having dumped the knife in deep waters.
969674	/m/03vd2d	Iphigeneia in Tauris	Euripides			 The scene represents the front of the temple of Artemis in the land of the Taurians (modern Crimea). The altar is in the center. The play begins with Iphigenia reflecting on her brother's death. She recounts her "sacrifice" at the hands of Agamemnon, and how she was saved by Artemis and made priestess in this temple. She has had a dream in which the structure of her family's house crashed down in ruins, leaving only a single column. She interprets this dream to mean that Orestes is dead. Orestes and Pylades enter, having just arrived in this land. Orestes was sent by Apollo to retrieve the image of Artemis from the temple, and Pylades has accompanied him. Orestes explains that he has avenged Agamemnon's death by killing Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus. The two decide to hide and make a plan to retrieve the idol without being captured. They know that the Taurians sacrifice Hellene blood in their temple of Artemis. Orestes and Pylades exit. Iphigenia enters and discusses her sad life with the chorus, composed of captive Greek maidens, attendants of Iphigenia. She believes that her father's bloodline has ended with the death of Orestes. A herdsman enters and explains to Iphigenia that he has captured two Hellenes and that Iphigenia should make ready the lustral water and the rites of consecration. The herdsman heard one called Pylades by the other, but did not hear the name of the other. Iphigenia tells the herdsmen to bring the strangers to the temple, and says that she will prepare to sacrifice them. The herdsman leaves to fetch the strangers. Iphigenia explains that she was tricked into going to Aulis, through the treachery of Odysseus. She was told that she was being married to Achilles, but upon arriving in Aulis, she discovered that she was going to be sacrificed by Agamemnon. Now, she presides over the sacrifices of any Hellene trespassers in the land of the Taurians, to avenge the crimes against her. Orestes and Pylades enter in bonds. Iphigenia demands that the prisoners bounds be loosened, because they are hallowed. The attendants to Iphigenia leave to prepare for the sacrifice. Iphigenia asks Orestes his origins, but Orestes refuses to tell Iphigenia his name. Iphigenia finds out which of the two is Pylades and that they are from Argos. Iphigenia asks Orestes many questions, especially of Greeks who fought in Troy. She asks if Helen has returned home to the house of Menelaus, and of the fates of Calchas, Odysseus, Achilles, and Agamemnon. Orestes informs Iphigenia that Agamemnon is dead, but that his son lives. Upon hearing this, Iphigenia decides that she wants one of the strangers to return a letter to Argos, and that she will only sacrifice one of them. Orestes demands that he be sacrificed, and that Pylades be sent home with the letter, because Orestes brought Pylades on this trip, and it would not be right for Pylades to die while Orestes lives. Pylades promises to deliver the letter unless his boat is shipwrecked and the letter is lost. Iphigenia then recites the letter to Pylades so that, if it is lost, he can still relay the message. She recites: She that was sacrificed in Aulis send this message, Iphigenia, still alive, though dead to those at Argos. Fetch me back to Argos, my brother, before I die. Rescue me from this barbarian land, free me from this slaughterous priesthood, in which it is my office to kill strangers. Else I shall become a curse upon your house, Orestes. Goddess Artemis saved me and substituted a deer, which my father sacrificed believing he was thrusting the sharp blade into me. Then she brought me to stay in this land. During this recitation, Orestes asks Pylades what he should do, having realized that he was standing in front of his sister. Orestes reveals his identity to Iphigenia, who demands proof. First, Orestes recounts how Iphigenia embroidered the scene of the quarrel between Atreus and Thyestes on a fine web. Orestes also spoke of Pelops’ ancient spear, which he brandished in his hands when he killed Oenomaus and won Hippodamia, the maid of Pisa, which was hidden away in Iphigenia’s maiden chamber. This is evidence enough for Iphigenia, who embraces Orestes. Orestes explains that he has come to this land by the bidding of Phoebus’s oracle, and that if he is successful, he might finally be free of the haunting Erinyes. Orestes, Pylades, and Iphigenia plan an escape whereby Iphigenia will claim that the strangers need to be cleansed in order to be sacrificed and will take them to the bay where their ship is anchored. Additionally, Iphigenia will bring the statue that Orestes was sent to retrieve. Orestes and Pylades exit into the temple. Thoas, king of the Taurians, enters and asks whether or not the first rites have been performed over the strangers. Iphigenia has just retrieved the statue from the temple and explains that when the strangers were brought in front of the statue, the statue turned and closed its eyes. Iphigenia interprets it thusly to Thoas: The strangers arrived with the blood of kin on their hands and they must be cleansed. Also, the statue must be cleansed. Iphigenia explains that she would like to clean the strangers and the statue in the sea, to make for a purer sacrifice. Thoas agrees that this must be done, and suspects nothing. Iphigenia tells Thoas that he must remain at the temple and cleanse the hall with torches, and that she may take a long time. All three exit the stage. A messenger enters, shouting that the strangers have escaped. Thoas enters from the temple, asking what all the noise is about. The messenger explains Iphigenia’s lies and that the strangers fought some of the natives, then escaped on their Hellene ship with the priestess and the statue. Thoas calls upon the citizens of his land to run along the shore and catch the ship. Athena enters and explains to Thoas that he shouldn’t be angry. She addresses Iphigenia, telling her to be priestess at the sacred terraces of Brauron, and she tells Orestes that she is saving him again. Thoas heeds Athena’s words, because whoever hears the words of the gods and heeds them not is out of his mind.
970507	/m/03vg0n	The Carpet People	Terry Pratchett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows the journey of a tribe called the Munrungs, across a world known as the Carpet. Its resemblance to carpets does not end there; instead of trees, the landscape is a forest of hairs, and is littered with large grains of dust and vegetation. The sky is only referred to as above and below the surface is underlay, riddled with caves, and ultimately the Floor. The Munrungs cross the carpet to find a new home after their village is destroyed by the powerful and mysterious natural force Fray. The origins of Fray are never explained in the book, but it is described in a way to suggest sweeping or vacuuming (some reviewers have suggested it represents human footfalls), and is referred to as sweeping on the back cover of the current UK edition. The tribe is led by Glurk, who is advised by Pismire, a philosopher and the tribal Shaman. Glurk's younger brother Snibril, however, is the book's protagonist, and is described by Pismire as having the kind of enquiring mind which is "dangerous". Snibril also has the unique ability to detect Fray a few minutes before it strikes - this ability manifests itself as an extremely painful migraine. The only source of metal on the carpet is mined from a dropped penny; wood is taken from discarded matchsticks, while the clairvoyant Wights obtain varnish by scraping it from a chair leg (the chair leg is known to the Carpet People as "Achairleg"). The story ends following an epic battle against the Mouls - a race of Fray-worshipping creatures. At this point Snibril makes the decision to leave the tribe and to explore the furthest reaches of the carpet.
970792	/m/03vgwf	The World Inside	Robert Silverberg	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 War, starvation, crime and birth control have been eliminated. Life is now totally fulfilled and sustained within Urban Monads (Urbmons), mammoth thousand-floor skyscrapers arranged in "constellations", where the shadow of one building does not fall upon another. An Urbmon is divided into 25 self-contained "cities" of 40 floors each, in ascending order of status, with administrators occupying the highest level. Each building can hold approximately 800,000 people, with excess population totalling three billion a year transferred to new Urbmons, which are continually under construction. The Urbmon population is supported by the conversion of all of the Earth's habitable land area not taken up by Urbmons to agriculture. The theoretical limit of the population supported by this arrangement is estimated to be 200 billion. The farmers live a very different lifestyle, with strict birth control. Farmers trade their produce for technology and the two societies rarely have direct contact; even their languages are mutually unintelligible. The Urbmons are a world of total sexual license where men are expected to engage in "night walking"; it is considered a capital crime to refuse an invitation for sex. In this world it is a blessing to have children: most people are married at 12 and parents at 14. Just thinking of controlling families is considered a faux pas. Privacy has been dispensed with due to the limited area. Because the need to be outdoors and to travel has been eliminated, thoughts of wanderlust are considered perverse. The dwellers of the Urban Monad share scant resources and believe that sharing of everything is required in order for people to peacefully co-exist in close quarters. The sharing extends to wives and husbands, a sentiment likely springing from the free love movement of the mid-to-late Twentieth century. Although great effort is spent to maintain a stable society, the Urban Monad lifestyle causes mental illness in a small percentage of people, and this fate befalls two of the book's main characters. "Social engineers" reprogram those who are approaching an unacceptable level of behavior. Given the extremes of life in the Urban Monads, law enforcement and the concept of justice employ a zero tolerance policy. There are usually no trials, and punishment is swift; anyone who threatens the stability of the Urbmon society (a "flippo") is "erased" by being thrown into a shaft that terminates in the building's power generator. This gives one of the book's characters the idea that humanity has been selectively bred for life within the Urbmons.
971839	/m/03vkf8	The Uplift War	David Brin	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 50,000 years ago, the planet Garth was leased to the Bururalli who nearly destroyed its ecosystem by overhunting all large indigenous species. The ecologically sensitive galactic civilization killed all Bururalli, demoted their patrons, the Nahalli, to clients of the Thennanin, and began working to preserve and repair the remaining ecosphere of Garth. Several decades before the start of the novel, Earthclan acquires the lease on Garth in return for their expert assistance in biosphere recovery. The Z'Tang complete a final ecological survey before the planet is passed on to EarthClan. The novel begins in the year 2489 C.E.http://www.reocities.com/Area51/Corridor/8611/brin.htm with the avian Gubru planning to invade Garth, Earthlings on Garth preparing to defend their claim to the planet, and ambassadors from other races getting ready to depart. The Gubru, a conservative and somewhat humorless alien race, attempt to hold Garth hostage in an attempt to learn more about the discovery that the dolphin spaceship Streaker made in Startide Rising about the Progenitors. The Gubru invade and overpower Garth's weak space forces, a battle that is witnessed by neo-chimp soldier of Earthclan, Fiben Bolger. Having easily overcome Garth's token resistance in near-planetary space, the Gubru engage a small portion of their ground force in ritualistic combat against Earthling forces. Because they take relatively high losses, Earthlings successfully defend their legal right to the planet under the punctilio of Galactic law. However, the Gubru immediately take hostage most of the human population using pre-planned subterfuge consisting of poisonous gas. The Gubru, used to galactic norms, believe that the neo-chimp population on Garth will be easily controlled without their human patrons to guide them. However, humans are more lenient about the uplift process than most species, and have, as much as possible, already granted chimps full rights within their society (aside from free breeding, which is still controlled to continue the process of forced evolution), rather than keeping them as slaves for 10,000 years. Some humans and a few chimps are killed by the hostage gas while en route to receive the antidote; the surviving human population is sequestered on an island and kept isolated. Taking advantage of resentments that fester among the lower social strata of the neo-chimp population (those with limited rights to breed), the aliens subvert some of the neo-chimps in and around Port Helenia, the capital city. A large group in the mountains, led by Robert Oneagle, son of planetary coordinator Megan Oneagle, and Athaclena, the teenaged daughter of Tymbrimi ambassador Uthacalthing, engage in guerrilla warfare. Their combination of “wolfling” ingenuity and galactic diplomacy allow them to inflict significant damage, both psychological and physical, on the Gubru. Fiben Bolger, in town on a fact-finding expedition for the Resistance, runs afoul of one of the conspirator neo-chimpanzees known as Irongrip. Elsewhere on the planet, Athaclena's father Uthacalthing, the Tymbrimi ambassador, and the Thennanin ambassador, Kault, are shot down while fleeing the Gubru invasion. The two ambassadors land safely, but must trek several hundred kilometers back to civilization. The Tymbrimi are allies of Earth and well known for a low sense of humor that, along with a yen for surprise, motivates much of their behavior. By contrast, the Thennanin are portrayed as dour, supercilious, physically unprepossessing protectors of the rights of animals and species. Hoping to fool Kault with an elaborate and ultimately costly practical joke, Uthacalthing secretly instructs a furtive neo-chimp to create false evidence pointing to the existence of Garthlings — a fabled race of pre-sentient creatures that were rumored to have survived the Bururalli holocaust. Uthacalthing also plants evidence about the Garthlings in his diplomatic cache — which is, after being disturbed by Fiben Bolger, stolen by the Gubru. Unknown to him, the humans have been illegally beginning the uplift process of gorillas, meaning that there actually is a 'Garthling' race up for adoption. The three Gubru co-commanders (suzerains) overreact to most situations. When the Suzerain of Cost and Caution is fortuitously killed in an accident set up by the neo-chim resistance movement, the other two suzerains exploit the situation and further their own goals. The Suzerain of Propriety seizes on the Garthling myth and builds an enormously expensive hypershunt on Garth. If Garthlings can be found, the Gubru will be able to use the hypershunt to adopt and indenture the race for 100,000 years in exchange for uplifting them to sentience. Coincidentally, the Gubru and others find evidence of secret uplift in the mountains, and come to believe that Earthclan was hiding a secret effort to uplift Garthlings. The Gubru commanders (suzerains) are unable to resolve their internal power struggles and begin scheming against one another. Fiben Bolger begins to fear that Earthclan's well-known naivete at Galactic punctilio could imperil the entire neo-chimpanzee population, both on Garth and on Earth. Some of the key neo-chimpanzee characters are eventually forced to choose between following the legal representatives of the surviving Planetary Government, or to follow their original leaders, Robert Oneagle and the young Tymbrimi Athaclena. Many of the major characters fall in love and must weigh their personal feelings against patriotic duties and greater responsibilities. There is a confrontation between Fiben Bolger and Irongrip, with the fate of all of neo-chimpdom hanging in the balance, as the Gubru attempt to co-opt the uplift of the neochimpanzees in order to make profit from the hypershunt. In the end, Uthacalthing's joke succeeds beyond his wildest imaginings, with Uthacalthing being as much in the dark as those he had been trying to fool. The partially uplifted gorillas come forward as Garthlings and claim their place as aspirants... Under the Thennanians, with Humans and Neo-Chimpanzees as their observers (races tasked to ensure that uplift is not mishandled or abused). The Gubru are ejected from Garth, and as the book comes to an end, Uthacalthing's maneuverings have brought desperately needed assistance to Earthclan and its allies out on the starlanes, as the Thennanian and their allies join the conflict on Earthclan's side.
972543	/m/03vm7z	The Female Man	Joanna Russ	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/02_w8": "Feminist science fiction"}	 The novel begins when Janet Evason suddenly arrives in Jeannine Dadier’s world. Janet is from Whileaway, a futuristic world where a plague killed all of the men over 800 years ago, and Jeannine lives in a world that never experienced the end of the Great Depression. Janet finds Jeannine at a Chinese New Year festival and takes her to Joanna’s world. Joanna comes from a world that is beginning its feminist movement. Acting as a guide, Joanna takes Janet to a party in her world to show her how women and men interact with each other. Janet quickly finds herself the object of a man’s attention, and after he harasses her, Janet knocks the man down and mocks him. Because Joanna’s world believes that women are inferior to men, everyone is shocked. Janet expresses her desire to experience living with a typical family so Joanna takes Janet to the Wildings’ household. Janet meets their daughter Laura Rose who instantly admires Janet’s confidence and independence as a woman. Laura realizes that she is attracted to Janet and begins to pursue a sexual relationship with her. This is transgressive for both of them, as Whileaway's taboo against cross-generational relationships (having a relationship with someone old enough to be your parent or child) is as strong as the taboo against same-sex relationships on Laura's world. The novel then follows Jeannine and Joanna as they accompany Janet back to Whileaway. They meet Vittoria, Janet’s wife, and stay at their home. Joanna finds herself under scrutiny when Vittoria uses a story about a bear trapped between two worlds as a metaphor for her life. Jeannine returns to her world with Joanna, and they both go to vacation at her brother’s house. Jeannine’s mother pesters her about her love life and whether she is going to get married soon. Jeannine goes on a few dates with some men but still finds herself dissatisfied. Jeannine begins to doubt her sense of reality, but soon decides that she wants to assimilate into her role as a woman. She calls Cal and agrees to marry him. Joanna, Jeannine, Janet, and Laura are lounging in Laura's house. Laura tries to glorify Janet’s status in Whileaway, but Janet explains that her world does not value her particularly, but chose her as inter-dimensional explorer because she was more expendable than others ("I am stupid," she explains). At 3 a.m., Joanna comes down, unable to sleep, and finds Jeannine and Janet awake as well. Suddenly they are no longer at Laura’s house but in another world. Joanna, Jeannine, and Janet have arrived in Jael’s world which is experiencing a 40-year old war between male and female societies. Jael explains that she works for the Bureau of Comparative Ethnology, an organization that concentrates on people’s various counterparts in different parallel worlds. She reveals that she is the one who brought all of them together because they are essentially “four versions of the same woman” (p.&nbsp;162). Jael takes all of them with her into enemy territory because she appears to be negotiating a deal with one of the male leaders. At first, the male leader appears to be promoting equality, but Jael quickly realizes that he still believes in the inferiority of women. Jael reveals herself as a ruthless assassin, kills the man, and shuttles all of the women back to her house. Jael finally tells the other women why she has assembled all of them. She wants to create bases in the other women’s worlds without the male society knowing and eventually empower women to overthrow oppressive men and their gender roles for women. In the end, Jeannine and Joanna agree to help Jael and assimilate the women soldiers into their worlds, but Janet refuses, given the overall pacifism of Whileaway. Jeannine and Joanna appear to have become stronger individuals and are excited to rise up against their gender roles. Janet is not moved by Jael’s intentions so Jael tells Janet that the reason for the absence of men on Whileaway is not because of a plague but because the women won the war and killed all of the men in its timeline's past. Janet refuses to believe Jael, and the other women are annoyed at Janet’s resistance. The novel ends with the women separating and returning to their worlds, each with a new perspective on her life, her world, and her identity as a woman.
972617	/m/03vmnf	Children of Gebelawi	Naguib Mahfouz		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story recreates the tied history of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), allegorised against the setting of an imaginary 19th century Cairene neighborhood. Gabalawi being an allegory for religion in general, the first four sections retell, in succession, the stories of: Adam (Adham أدهم) and how he was favored by Gabalawi over the latter's other sons, including Satan/Iblis (Idris إدريس); Moses (Gabal جبل); Jesus (Rifa'a رفاعة); and Muhammad (Qasim قاسم). Families of each son settle in different parts of the alley, symbolising Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The protagonist of the book's fifth section is Arafa (عرفة), who symbolises modern science and, significantly, comes after all prophets, while all of their followers claim Arafa as one of their own.
973112	/m/03vp98	Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils	Louis Cha	1963-09-03	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The plot is made up of several separate yet intertwining story lines, revolving around the protagonists Qiao Feng, Duan Yu and Xuzhu. The complex narrative shifts from the initial perspective of Duan Yu to the other characters' and sometimes back. Duan Yu is a young, naive prince of the Kingdom of Dali. Despite the long tradition of the practice of martial arts in the royal family, he refuses to learn martial arts due to Buddhist influence and his disdain for bloodshed. When his father tries to force him to learn martial arts, he runs away from home. Ironically, he acquires three of the most powerful skills in the novel and becomes immune to poison after consuming the Zhuha, a poisonous toad known as the "king of all venomous creatures". During his adventures, he encounters several beautiful young maidens, and falls in love with them. However, one by one, these maidens are revealed to be actually his half sisters due to his father's past illicit affairs with several women. Of these maidens, he is extremely obsessed with Wang Yuyan, who resembles a statue of a fairy-like lady he chanced upon before. He tries to win her heart but she has no feelings for him as she has a crush on her cousin Murong Fu. Duan's love life ends on a happy note when Wang finally realises that he is the one who truly loves her and they are married and live happily ever after. (In the latest revision, Duan Yu and Wang Yuyan's romance is marred by a series of incidents, causing the couple to be separated.) Qiao Feng is the charismatic chief of the Beggars' Sect, who possesses strong leadership qualities and exceptional prowess in martial arts. He falls from grace after he is revealed to be a Khitan, and after he is wrongly accused of murdering several fellow pugilists to conceal his identity. He becomes an outcast and the prime enemy of the Han Chinese wulin (martial artists' community). He is forced to sever ties with them and engages them in a one-man bloody battle in which he kills many, including some old friends. Qiao Feng leaves to verify the claims that he is a Khitan and investigate the mysterious murders. He is accompanied by A'zhu, who is in love with him and stands by him. After a long journey in disguise, he finally concludes that he is indeed a Khitan and he assumes his ancestral name "Xiao Feng". Tragically, he makes a major blunder after being tricked into believing that Duan Zhengchun (A'zhu's father) is responsible for his parents' death. He kills A'zhu by mistake, who is in disguise to defend her father. Xiao Feng regrets and has since left Song territory with A'zi, A'zhu's younger sister, whom he had promised to take care of. A'zi has a strong crush on him, but Xiao Feng does not like her at all for her mischievousness and sadism. Xiao Feng wanders into Liao territory, where he becomes a powerful noble after forging a strong friendship with the ruler, Yelü Hongji. When Yelü Hongji decides to invade Song, Xiao Feng attempts to dissuade him as he still values his past relations with the Han Chinese. Ultimately, Xiao Feng commits suicide to prevent war between Song and Liao after taking Yelü Hongji hostage and making him swear that he will never invade Song. Xuzhu is a monk from the Shaolin Sect, described to have a kind hearted and submissive nature. He believes strongly in following the Buddhist code of conduct and refuses to break it even when faced with life-threatening situations. He follows his elders to a meeting once, which marks the start of his adventures. Coincidentally and by sheer luck, Xuzhu breaks a weiqi formation and becomes the successor of the Carefree Sect and inherits the powers of Wuyazi. Subsequently, he encounters Tianshan Tonglao and other acquaintances of Wuyazi and learns martial arts from them. He becomes the leader of several unorthodox sects in the jianghu by chance again. Overwhelmed by the sudden influx of heavy responsibilities and his major leap in martial arts prowess, Xuzhu desires to detach himself from all these duties and return to his former monastic life. However, he is unable to wrench himself free from the various tribulations and dangers that lie ahead; he is no longer regarded as a Shaolin student and has no choice but to accept his fate. Xuzhu has a pitiful parentage, as he is revealed to be the illegitimate son of Shaolin's abbot Xuanci and Ye Erniang of the "Four Evils". His reunion with his parents is fated to be the first and also the last. Again by coincidence, Xuzhu becomes the prince consort of Western Xia due to a previous affair with Princess Yinchuan, to whom he is happily married.
973917	/m/03vrf_	My Ishmael	Daniel Quinn	1997-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 My Ishmael is presented as the final copy of a book published by Julie Gerchak, who has herself read Ishmael. At the time she begins writing, Julie is sixteen, though during the main plot of her story she is merely twelve years old: "a plucky, resourceful, near-genius with a wobbly home life." Like the narrator of Ishmael, Julie discovers a message in her city's newspaper, which advertises a teacher seeking someone who wishes to save the world. Julie arrives at Room 105 of the Fairfield Building to discover a gorilla, Ishmael, whom she is able to communicate with telepathically. When she asks Ishmael if he will teach her, he is initially ambivalent due to her very young age, though this frustrates Julie and her arguments convince Ishmael that she may indeed be open to his maieutic teaching style. First, Ishmael asks Julie to reflect on why she came to him. She answers that it may be related to her fears about her society's destructive impact on itself and the environment. When urged to tell a story about what she expects to learn with Ishmael, Julie describes a daydream in which she is recruited to go on a space mission to visit other planets and thereby learn solutions around the galaxy for Earth's problems. Next, Ishmael launches into a discussion of "Mother Culture" (the personified notion of the influence of our cultural mythology), our civilization's delusion that our intelligence is a curse inherently propelling us toward making terrible decisions, and our culture's fallacy that all human societies (or, at least, all the "civilized" ones) developed out of a state of foraging to a superior state of farming, neglecting the tribes all over the world who continue the foraging lifestyle. Ishmael refers to humanity in terms of Takers (members of the single, world-dominating culture that destroys other peoples or forces them to assimilate) and Leavers (members of the countless cultures who lived or continue to live in tribal societies). He also examines evolutionary processes and how they tend to maintain behaviors that best sustain some particular gene pool and enforce a sort of equilibrium in which no single organism or group of organisms overwhelms the competition for natural resources. He claims that Takers depart from this self-sustaining balance in that they keep their resources, primarily food, under "lock and key." This, he claims, creates hierarchical social structures in which the cooperative ethos is lost, resulting in distress and conflict within the society, such as crime, suicide, poverty, famine, and senseless violence. He argues that although Taker societies flourish in terms of material wealth&mdash;such as technological advancement and greater scientific progress&mdash;they fail utterly with regard to what he believes to be actual wealth: the sense of belonging and security that hold together the fabric of human tribal societies. Julie ultimately learns that she does not need to travel around the galaxy to see ways that human societies can thrive successfully; she needs only to learn from the successes of tribal life. Julie visits Ishmael as often as she can and notices a young man sometimes leaving Ishmael's office. Ishmael explains that this is Alan Lomax, who is later revealed to be the previously unnamed narrator of Ishmael. Julie feels an odd distaste for Alan though she never meets him face-to-face. Ishmael maintains both pupils, though his teachings are not necessarily the same for each. With Julie, Ishmael describes how tribes live alongside other tribes, in a state of what he terms "erratic retaliation," meaning that they revenge their neighbors' acts of aggression but also do not behave too predictably. This allows people to compete effectively for resources while not engaging "in mortal combat for every little thing." Furthermore, Ishmael distinguishes erratic retaliation from war, a feature of Taker societies, which he describes so: "Retaliation is giving as good as you get; going to war is conquering people to make them do what you want." Ishmael also outlines his preference for the Leaver (or tribal) notion of law, which is generally unwritten knowledge of how to deal with undesirable behaviors within the tribe. He explains that this is different from the Taker concept of law because since "tribal peoples didn't waste time with laws they knew would be disobeyed, disobedience was not a problem for them. Tribal law didn't outlaw mischief, it spelled out ways to undo mischief, so people were glad to obey it." Eventually, Ishmael's teachings turn toward the subject of formal education, which he argues is merely a way to keep children out of the work force and is otherwise unnecessary because humans learn on their own, naturally following their own interests and picking up information necessary to operate in their culture. In tribal cultures, this information inherently includes that which is relevant to surviving in the wild by learning to hunt and gather food, as well as easily adopting their culture's values, customs, and so on. In Taker culture, the otherwise automatic process of learning is hindered and convoluted by the institution of formal education, which largely forces students to study topics that they do not apply outside of the classroom and that they therefore largely forget once the information is no longer needed to pass tests or similar evaluations. When Ishmael asserts that humans must strive to belong to effective and secure communities, Julie asks for concrete examples of how this can be achieved. Ishmael praises the utter strength of human innovation, citing positive examples from the Industrial Revolution, and claims that this will lead and has already led to a diversity of models, including the Sudbury school, the Gesundheit! Institute, and intentional communities. He claims that humans must together create these answers little by little and that innovators in fact build upon prior ideas gradually toward eventual progress. He concludes his teachings with an iteration of his philosophy summed up in a single sentence: "There is no one right way for people to live." At this point in the story, Julie is introduced to Art "Artie" Owens, born in the Belgian Congo (later Zaire) of the name Makiadi "Adi" Owona. Owens is a friend of Ishmael who has connections to his African homeland and intends to help Ishmael return to the West African jungle. Owens, since a child, was always a naturalist, during which time he was friends with the revolution-minded Mokonzi Nkemi. Owens educated himself as much as he could, studying in Belgium, becoming a dual citizen of Zaire and Belgium, traveling to the United States, and attending Cornell University, where he met the daughter of Ishmael's benefactor and first human companion. Returning to Zaire, Owens participated in Nkemi's revolutionary founding of the Republic of Mabili, now independent from Zaire. Owens's role as minister of the interior lasted only a few months before he realized Nkemi's corrupt dealings with Zaire's President Mobutu in order to keep his fledgling nation alive. Under penalty of death, Owens fled back to the United States and purchased an animal menagerie, which he now plans to use to house Ishmael after Ishmael's eviction from the Fairfield Building, before his trip back to Africa. Ishmael and Owens, however, must use Julie to request Ishmael's entrance into Mabili from its president, Nkemi. Julie is astounded at first and initially wonders why Ishmael does not ask Alan Lomax to help him instead. However, she eventually agrees to the potentially dangerous five-day trip and begins being drilled on how to act and be wary in African cities and how to converse with Mabili's leaders. In Mabili, Julie speaks to the prime minister who is Owens's estranged brother, Lukombo "Luk" Owona, and then to President Nkemi himself. Posing as an American student who has won an essay-writing contest promising her a trip to Mabili to meet its president, Julie claims that Ishmael is a gorilla famed in the United States who has gained a following of people that she represents and who wish to see him successfully released back into the wild. When Nkemi asks what he will get in return for helping Julie with this favor, she charms Nkemi with a parable asserting that they are bringing back to the land a beloved creature that was once lost. Julie returns to the U.S. and ultimately hears from Owens that Ishmael's migration to Africa is successful. She hears also about Alan Lomax, who was becoming too attached to Ishmael as a pupil and not seeming to understand his own need to become a teacher. With this in mind, Alan is told that Ishmael has died; such a ploy is regarded as successful, since it motivates Alan to write the book Ishmael in 1992 (in which Ishmael's death is noted near the end). Although Julie wishes to publish her own book&mdash;this very story&mdash;Owens forbids her from doing so until Mobutu's regime (and with it, Nkemi's) is on the verge of collapse. This is because, according to Alan's Ishmael, Ishmael is dead and so his magnificence will not be taken seriously; Ishmael will not be hunted down by Nkemi, who has heard of Ishmael being in his country, if Ishmael is presumed dead. Finally, however, in 1997 (when Julie is eighteen years old) Owens contacts Julie, telling her that Mobutu's days are numbered and she may finally publish My Ishmael.
974707	/m/03vtl0	Beggars in Spain	Nancy Kress	1993	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Leisha Camden, born in 2008, is the twenty-first human being to have the genemod for sleeplessness. She is the daughter of one of Yagai's most noted sponsors, financier Roger Camden, who felt he had wasted far too much of his life in sleep, and his wife Elizabeth Camden, an Englishwoman who wanted a normal child. Sleeplessness confers a number of secondary benefits&mdash;higher IQ and a sunnier disposition most notably, as well as 1/3 more productive time (vs the time the unmodified spend asleep); Sleepless not only don't need sleep, they cannot sleep (though they can be knocked unconscious). Of the original twenty-one, twenty grow up to be well-adjusted, intelligent, capable children. The nineteenth child illustrates some of the drawbacks when it was accidentally shaken to death by sleep deprived "normal" parents who could not cope with a baby who was awake and active 24 hours a day. By the age of fifteen Leisha has become a part of the community of Sleepless, few though there are in the world; she, like all of them, is several grades ahead of her age; the oldest, Kevin Baker, has already become the most wealthy computer software designer since Bill Gates at the age of 16 (in 2020). The first she meets, Richard Keller, becomes her lover; the others become friends and confidants. Two, however, trouble her. One is Tony Indivino, whose mother had problems adjusting to his Sleepless ways and forced him to live as a "Sleeper." Tony advocates a banding-together of all Sleepless in a sort of socio-economic fortress. He predicts that the Sleepers will soon begin to discriminate against Sleepless, and is quickly proved right: a Sleepless athlete is barred from the Olympics, for instance, because her 16-hour practice days are impossible for other competitors to compete with. Likewise some cities forbid Sleepless from running "24-hour" convenience stores. Tony is eventually jailed (for illegal actions on behalf of the Sleepless community), though not before attracting the attention of Jennifer Sharifi, the other person who makes Leisha nervous. The Sleepless daughter of a movie star and an East-Indian oil tycoon, Jennifer's money purchases land in upstate New York (Cattaraugus County, specifically) to create a Sleepless-only community known as Sanctuary. Finally, Leisha faces rocky relations with her twin sister Alice. By sheer chance, Elizabeth conceived a natural daughter at the same time Leisha was implanted in vitro, resulting in fraternal twins, only one of whom is Sleepless. Alice is constantly in her sister's shadow: "Whatever was yours was yours, and whatever wasn't yours was yours, too. That's the way Daddy set it up. The way he hard-wired it into our genes." When Leisha is approaching her bar exams at the age of 22, her father dies of old age. On the drive home from the funeral, Leisha's surrogate mother Susan Melling (not only Roger Camden's second wife, but the genetic researcher who devised Sleeplessness) reports some startling news. Bernie Kuhn, a Sleepless in Seattle, has died due to a road accident at the age of 17. Autopsy reveals every one of his organs is in pristine condition. Evidently Sleeplessness unlocks a heretofore-unknown cell regeneration system. The bottom line is that Sleepless will not physically age. Their estimated lifespan is totally unknown. They might be immortal. Leisha passes her exams, but shortly thereafter she is informed by Richard that various acts of prejudice and violence against Sleepless have culminated in the murder of Tony Indivino by fellow inmates. The Sleepless have no choice but to retreat to Sanctuary. However, Leisha is sent out on one last errand of mercy: a Sleepless child, Stella Bevington, is being abused by her parents. Alice turns the tables by masterminding and almost singlehandedly carrying out the kidnapping, not only saving both Leisha and Stella but proving that even the most privileged and elite can be beggars too. Leisha is left with the revelation that trade is not linear, but rather an ecology, and that today's beggar may be tomorrow's savior. The book opens on Jordan Watrous, Alice's son (born 2025), an employee at a We-Sleep factory. The "We-Sleep" movement is an attempt by founder Calvin Hawke to rejuvenate working-class pride by buying and selling only products made by Sleepers; despite the fact that the products themselves are often shoddy and over-priced, revenues have been lucrative. He shepherds his aunt Leisha on a tour of the factory; afterwards she meets with Hawke to "rail against stupidity;" since America is founded on the premise that all men should be treated equally, encouraging class hatred will only lead to destruction. Leisha then receives an unusual client at her law firm: a genetic researcher, Dr. Adam Walcott, who claims to have discovered a post-partum gene therapy to turn Sleepers into Sleepless. Unfortunately for him, his research has been stolen from the safe-deposit box in which he left it; even worse, his patents have already been filed... In the name of Sanctuary, Incorporated. Thankfully, the research is incomplete, but evidently Sanctuary is concerned about keeping its edge. Leisha asks Susan Melling to attempt to complete it and determine its legitimacy. Leisha also discovers that Sanctuary Council leader-for-life Jennifer Sharifi has decided to institute a loyalty oath, in which all Sleepless swear to place the needs of Sanctuary above their own. Jennifer has always been convinced of the need to protect her people from the Sleepers, but her husband, Richard Keller, has his own reservations about the paranoid atmosphere his children are being fostered in. He doesn't think his wife is capable of murder, though... Until Jennifer is indicted for the murder, via sabotage and destruction of his vehicle (a We-Sleep scooter), of Dr. Walcott's primary research partner. The People vs. Jennifer Fatima Sharifi is a circus. Though the sabotage was clearly performed by a Sleepless, a piece of jewelry that serves as Sanctuary's equivalent of a garage-door opener was found on the scene, which no Sleepless would be sloppy enough to leave behind. Meanwhile, Leisha's life is slowly unraveling: Sanctuary has voted in the oath of solidarity and, furthermore, voted to ban Leisha for life; her partner Kevin Baker chooses to take the oath and abandon her; Stella Bevington, the closest thing she has to a daughter, is considering the same; and Susan is dying of an incurable brain condition. Fortunately, Alice comes to save the day, knowing (evidently through twin ESP) that her sister needs her; Stella confesses that the pendant is hers, which was stolen from her at a party; and Susan discovers that Walcott's research is a sham, completely infeasible. With that information, Leisha now knows who has orchestrated the entire campaign: Calvin Hawke. He stole the pendant from Stella at a house-warming party Alice threw; he propagated the research, which he knew to be false, hoping that Sanctuary would react as it did; and, for reasons that remain unspecified, he had Walcott's assistant killed. The volume ends with Leisha on retreat with Susan and Alice, and Jennifer informing her children that she will keep them safe: Sanctuary is moving into space. In the year of America's tricentennial, all is placid. America has re-stratified itself into a three-tiered society. At the bottom are the "Livers," an under-educated but well-fed 80% of the population who enjoy a life of leisure. Above them (or below them) are the "donkeys," the genemod white-collar force who run the infrastructure and are elected into office by the Livers, earning votes via bread and circuses. Finally, the Sleepless are the source of just about all technological, genetic and scientific advances. Two new faces swiftly turn the tables. One arrives at Leisha's Susan Melling Foundation in New Mexico, a ten-year-old Liver named Drew Arlen. He is intent on enrolling in the Foundation, which (in Leisha's words) "asks beggars why they're beggars and provides funding for those who want to be something else." Drew has charisma and a harmless nature, but runs afoul of Eric Bevington-Watrous, second son of Jordan and Stella; a fistfight between the two leaves Drew paralyzed from the waist down. Attending various private schools, Drew finds a flair for artistic expression, but consistently fails or flunks out of each of them; by nineteen he has becomes a delinquent. Eric forces him into an experimental therapy in which the pathways between the limbic system and the neocortex are strengthened, supposedly forcing the brain to cope with its more primitive, bestial nature. In Drew, the treatment backfires, and he gains access to a sort of genetic collective unconscious, which he perceives in visual terms (in the next book, in which Arlen is a first-person narrator, he constantly describes people, things, concepts and emotions as having shape, texture, color and so on). Drew learns to project these shapes in holographic form and becomes the Lucid Dreamer, a performance artist who places his viewers in a waking dream, the contents of which are determined by the holograms. The other new face is born at Sanctuary Orbital: Miranda Serena Sharifi, the first of the "Superbrights." Her genemods cause her brain to operate at three or four times the speed of a standard Sleepless, at the cost of muscle control (she and all the other Supers, including her brother Tony, twitch, jerk and vibrate with "manic vitality"). Within the first few years of Miri's life, it becomes clear that she and all the other Supers think differently than do normal Sleepless; their thoughts take the form of "strings," which are entire piles of data arranged in geometric shapes and involving analogy and cross-reference. Her growth is set against a Sanctuary becoming even more careful and even more suspicious of the earth-bound Sleeper haters. Five children babies have been born that, through regression to the mean, lack the dominant Sleeplessness gene, and Jennifer is obsessed with declaring Sanctuary independent of America. To that end, Sharifi Enterprises begins research into an airborne, instantly-fatal biological weapon which can be used as a deterrent. In 2080 the United States loses its exclusive patents on Y-energy, leading to a massive economic depression. In October 2091, a new sliding-scale tax package is proposed to take advantage of the huge revenues going to Sanctuary Inc. and all associated businesses, which are, after all, incorporated in America. (To be specific, Sanctuary Inc. will be taxed a staggering 92% of total income.) With this in mind, Jennifer and the Sanctuary Council prepare to bid for their independence. Miri starts the volume with a trauma: her beloved younger brother Tony receives neural injury in a playground accident. Regardless of the total damage to his person and faculties, he will doubtless need to sleep for at least a portion of the day. Miri flies into a rage when Jennifer reminds her of Sanctuary's Yagaiist, community-first philosophy, and must be sedated; when she wakes, she is told that Tony has died of his injuries. Regardless, she and the other Supers band together for defense, recognizing that the Sleepless of Sanctuary have become so nervous of outsiders that even the Supers, created by the community and to serve it, constitute a threat due to their sheer alienness. Miri names the group "the Beggars." Miri's thought-strings&mdash;indeed, the thought-strings of every Super&mdash;have had structural flaws from the beginning, gaps where information ought to go that they don't have. Miri rectifies this gap when she is introduced to one of Drew Arlen's Lucid Dreaming concerts; the ability to tap into their unconscious allows the Supers to make a number of technological, medical and conceptual breakthroughs, including allowing Miri to cure the twitching and stuttering. The Beggars decide to install defensive overrides throughout Sanctuary's systems so that they can take over if necessary, discovering in the process the Sharifi Enterprises bioweapon. Packets of the organism have been secreted in several cities across the United States and it can be deployed at the touch of a button. On 1 January 2092 Sanctuary declares independence from the United States of America. The Internal Revenue Service decides to wait until non-payment of taxes on January 15 and then seize the orbital as collateral, but before then Sanctuary demonstrates its bioweapon on a cattle-ranching space station purchased solely for the purpose (all human tenants were evicted prior to the demonstration). The stand-off is averted when Miri and the Beggars use their overrides to force Sanctuary to stand down. Jennifer refuses Miri's offer to surrender in exchange for immunity to the rest of the Council, proving that "all of Sanctuary's political philosophy ... comes down to [Jennifer's] personal needs." The novel ends with Miri and the Superbrights moving to the Susan Melling Foundation complex in New Mexico, and Leisha deciding to act as the counsel for the defense in Jennifer Sharifi's trial. There are, after all, no permanent beggars in Spain.
974732	/m/03vtpp	Cities of the Red Night	William S. Burroughs	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot follows a nonlinear course through time and space. It imagines an alternate history in which Captain James Mission's Libertatia lives on. His way of life is based on The Articles, a general freedom to live as one chooses, without prejudice. The novel is narrated from two different standpoints; one set in the 18th century which follows a group of pirate boys led by Noah Blake, who land in Panama to liberate it. The other is set in the late 20th century, and follows a detective tracing the disappearance of an adolescent boy.
974786	/m/03vtzm	Dune: The Battle of Corrin	Kevin J. Anderson	2004-08-17	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The machine evermind Omnius is continuing with his plans to eradicate all humans in the universe. After first being suggested by the traitor Yorek Thurr, an RNA retrovirus is designed by the captured Tlulaxa Rekur Van and the independent robot Erasmus. Omnius then launches capsules containing the retrovirus to infect the planets inhabited by the hapless humans. With a 43% direct-mortality rate, the virus succeeds in effectively crippling the League of Nobles, leaving them vulnerable to attack. It is discovered that consumption of the spice melange has the effect of both bolstering immunity to the retrovirus and stopping its progression in some of those already infected. Omnius, unaware that the virus has been effectively stopped, prepares for the second phase of its attack. Gathering the bulk of the machine armies stationed at the different synchronized planets, the evermind launches the massive fleet towards the League capital Salusa Secundus. After learning of the imminent destruction headed their way in the form of the machine fleet, Vorian Atreides formulates a plan whereby the humans can launch pulse-atomic attacks on all of the undefended Synchronized Worlds, ridding the universe of Omnius altogether. However, this plan called for the use of the still unreliable space-folding technology in order to carry out the attacks before the machines have a chance to recall the fleet en route to Salusa. The Great Purge is successful in destroying Omnius on all but one planet, albeit with an appalling cost in human lives because each planet was turned into slag, and while all the machines were obliterated, all the captured humans and slaves on these planets were also killed. Each time the human armies fold space to a new location there is a 10% attrition rate due to the undependable space-folders because of the uncertainty principle. In all, it amounted to billions of lives lost. The humans are also unable to destroy Omnius on the primary synchronized world, Corrin. While the other Evermind incarnations are being attacked, the cogitor Vidad travels to Corrin and warns Corrin-Omnius of the human counter-offensive. The machine fleet is recalled to defend their last remaining stronghold. Despite this, Serena Butler’s Jihad is declared over. The Great Purge ended with an impasse between humans and thinking machines on the planet Corrin. While unable to destroy the machines, the human army is able to trap them on Corrin by surrounding the planet with a net of scrambler satellites, so that any thinking machine attempting to leave would have its gelcircuitry mind destroyed. This situation continues for almost 20 years with the machines unable to escape, and most humans unwilling to enter another battle. Omnius, again at the suggestion of Thurr, sends machines with primitive minds that can evade the scrambler network to attack Salusa Secundus and Rossak. These attacks have a limited effect, but are enough to remind the humans that the machines are still a threat. Touting his victory over the Titans (see below), Vorian Atreides convinces the League to attack Corrin. Facing robots using human shields and unable to use their main tactical weapons due to treachery by Abulurd Harkkonen, the Army of Humanity is bogged down around Corrin. They are forced to use most of their atomics to destroy the robot defenders. There is a ground offensive by Ginaz mercenaries that finally destroys Omnius, but not before he sends out an unknown radio message into space. Following the Battle of Corrin, Viceroy Faykan Butler renames himself Faykan Corrino in commemoration. Having seen her parents succumb to the Machine (“demon”) Scourge, and barely surviving herself, Rayna Butler begins her personal crusade against the thinking machines. Claiming to have had a vision of Serena Butler herself (possibly a hallucination caused by her illness), Rayna begins smashing anything resembling thinking machines, including even innocuous devices, and desperately needed medical equipment. A new group known as the Martyrists who worship The Three Martyrs: Serena Butler, Manion the Innocent, and Iblis Ginjo, are instantly taken up by Rayna’s mission. Led by Rayna, the Cult of Serena causes more mayhem for humans than the thinking machines. Despite inherent hypocrisy (such as the destruction of some technology, but the continuous use of spaceships) within the group, the cult’s legacy endures. The primary commandment in the Orange Catholic Bible, “thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind” is attributed directly to Rayna Butler. Furthermore, the group is responsible for the strict laws banning all thinking machines under pain of death (and sometimes torture) thus making them anathema. During the 20-year impasse the three remaining Titans, Agamemnon, Juno and Dante, are struggling to rebuild their cymek empire. While surveying Wallach IX, which has been devastated during the Great Purge for possible survivors in need of aid, Primero Quentin Butler (Faykan and Abulurd Harkonnen’s father) is captured by cymeks, and taken to the Titan stronghold on Hessra. There he is tortured and converted into a cymek himself. After learning about this, Vorian Atreides feigns retirement and travels to Hessra. Once there he regains his father Agamemnon’s trust. In a final coup, Vorian and Quentin successfully kill the Titans and their cymek underlings, but at the cost of Quentin’s life.
975635	/m/03vxjh	Dandelion Wine	Ray Bradbury	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Chapter 1 — Spending the night in the cupola of his Grandfather's house that gives him a panoramic view of the town, Douglas wakes up early on the first day of summer and performs an elaborate series of actions that coincide with the lightening of the sky and awakening of the townspeople. He does this in such a way that implies magic, thus setting the basis of the novel as collections of life events tinged with a degree of fantasy. Chapter 2 (Illumination)—Douglas goes with his ten-year-old brother Tom and his father to pick fox grapes. While Tom and his father act like today is just an ordinary day, Douglas senses an inexplicable presence around them. When Tom initiates a friendly rough-and-tumble fight between the two of them, Douglas suddenly realizes what it is: the revelation that he's alive. He finds it to be a glorious and liberating feeling. Chapter 3 (Dandelion Wine) — Dandelion wine is presented as a metaphor of summer here, bottled for the winter season of illnesses and wheezing. In Douglas' words: "Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered." Chapter 4-5 (Summer in the Air) — Douglas discovers that his feet won't move as fast as that of the other boys because his sneakers are worn out. He becomes entranced by a pair of brand-new Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Shoes in a shop window, and thinks on how the need for a "magic" pair of sneakers to run in the green grass is something only boys can understand when his father argues against buying another. The local shoe seller, Mr. Sanderson, is initially resistant to selling the sneakers to Douglas, especially since he doesn't even have enough money to pay for them upfront. Douglas, however, convinces him to try on a pair of his own sneakers, which triggers memories in Mr. Sanderson of when he was a kid and ran like the antelopes and gazelles. He agrees to let Douglas have the sneakers in return for work done by him in the shop to pay off the bill. The story ends with Douglas speeding away in the distance and Mr. Sanderson picking up his discarded old sneakers. Chapter 6 — Douglas shows to Tom a tablet that he is using to record his summer in, under two sections labeled "Rites and Ceremonies" and "Discoveries and Revelations." The contents are what would be expected for a kid, including a "revelation" that kids and grown-ups don't get along with each other because they're "separate races and 'never the twain shall meet.'" Tom suggests a revelation of his own; that night is created from "shadows crawling out from under five billion trees." Chapter 7 (Season of Sitting) — Another ritual of summer is accomplished with the setting up of the porch swing as a place for night-long conversation. Douglas comments on how sitting in the porch swing feels somehow "right" because one would always be comforted by the droning, ceaseless voices of the adults. In keeping up with the fantasy-tinged atmosphere of the novel, the chapter gradually shifts from a realistic beginning, in which the family is setting up the swing, to an almost dreamlike conclusion, in which the grown-ups' voices are personified as drifting on into the future. Chapter 8-9 (The Happiness Machine) — Leo Auffmann, listening to elderly people's gloomy and fatalistic conversations, insists that they should not dwell on such miserable topics. Douglas and his grandfather, passing by, suggest to Leo that he should make a Happiness Machine. After the conversing people laugh at this apparently absurd idea, Leo becomes determined to do just that. A brief scene of him returning to his family of six children indicates his happiness at home, exemplified when his wife Lena asks, "Something's wrong?" after Leo expresses his desire to build a Happiness Machine. Chapter 10 (The Night) — Interposed between Leo's story is another tale referring to Douglas' family. It starts out relatively uneventfully, with Tom running to Mrs. Singer's store to get ice cream at nine o'clock on the same night for him and Douglas. However, by nine-thirty, Douglas has not returned, which causes his worried mother to venture to the ravine with Tom. Tom, despite the darkness of the night, feels safe because he is holding his mother's hand and also because he has little understanding of Death. His sense of security, however, vanishes when he feels his mother's hand tremble and realizes that she is afraid, like him. The ensuing revelation that apparently unfazed grown-ups feel loneliness and pain too unnerves him and makes him aware of the darkness surrounding them. Just before he feels overwhelmed, Douglas and his friends return, breaking the spell of aloneness. Tom later tells Douglas that the ravine would not belong in Leo's Happiness Machine, thus contrasting the pleasures humans wish for with the realities they receive instead. Chapter 11 (The Happiness Machine–continued) — In a relatively short chapter, Leo sits with his wife Lena on the porch swing in the night. Lena tells him that they don't need a Happiness Machine, but Leo says that he's going to build the Machine for others that would cure all melancholy. He is greeted with only silence, but is too preoccupied with noting the sounds of nature that would belong in the Machine to notice this foreshadowing. Chapter 12 (The Lawns of Summer) — Another interception of Leo's story which re-focuses on the Spaulding family; Douglas' grandfather begins the day, happily reveling in the sound of the lawn mower running on their lawn, an indicator to him that summer has truly begun. Grandma, however, tells him that Bill Forrester, the man cutting their grass, is planning to plant new grass on their lawn that will only grow to a certain height, thus eliminating the need for lawn mowers. (Note: no such grass actually exists yet in the real world) Horrified at this, Grandpa gives Bill a firm lecture on how little things can matter more than the big ones, especially to experienced people like him. Bill attempts to change his mind, but only convinces Grandpa further of his position when he learns that the new grass will kill off the dandelions. Grandpa finally pays Bill the cost of the grass flats in return for him not installing the flats in his lawn. He takes a nap and wakes up in the afternoon to find Bill cutting the lawn again, having learned to appreciate the "little things," thanks to Grandpa. Chapter 13 (The Happiness Machine — continued) — Leo, still obsessed with creating the Happiness Machine, asks Lena if she is "pleased, contented, joyful, [or] delighted." Lena gives a sarcastic reply which offends Leo who is taking his goal seriously, and they get into an argument. The squabble ends only when Lena realizes that she's burned their dinner for the first time in twenty years. Leo then spends several weeks toiling in his garage to build his Happiness Machine. During this time, the state of his family disintegrates, but Leo is too busy with his invention to pay attention to his wife's warnings. At last, Leo completes his Happiness Machine. Ironically, the Machine turns out to cause misery instead of the expected bliss, causing both Saul, his son, and Lena to weep after sitting in it. Lena explains to him that a Happiness Machine cannot be built for humans because it would only give them everything they wanted all the time, and produce no fulfillment. Furthermore, it makes them pine for things they shouldn't even be thinking about, such as when a dancing stimulation in the Machine caused her to miss the times when Leo would take her out for dances, hence causing them to feel only unhappiness about their lives. Leo, still disbelieving, decides to take a test run in the Machine himself, but just as he is about to do so, the Machine catches fire, and burns down to the ground. After the incident, Leo comments to Douglas and his father that he's been a fool because the real Happiness Machine has been right in front of him all along. He shows them his newfound Happiness Machine running in perfect order — his family. Chapter 14 — As the Spaulding family prepares to shake out the rugs, Douglas and Tom's imaginations turn this chore into a magical discovery, fancying that they see the happenings and neighbors in their town in the stains of one rug. A lavish metaphor at the end of the chapter describes Tom beating the rug so hard that the dust rises up to meet him, another surrealistic chapter ending possibly a reference to the Judeo-Christian belief that man was created from dust. Chapter 15-16 (Season of Disbelief) — Mrs. Bentley, a seventy-two year old woman who saves all memorabilia from her past, finds her beliefs challenged by two girls named Alice and Jane, who meet her along with Tom and don't believe her when she says that she was young like them once. Claiming that she's lying, they run away laughing, leaving Mrs. Bentley infuriated. The next time they meet, Mrs. Bentley shows them some of her relics, including a photograph of her as a child. Alice and Jane say that the objects don't prove anything, since she could have got them from another girl, and Mrs. Bentley's insistence that they will one day be old like her fails to unnerve them. They run away with her "stolen" possessions, further shaking Mrs. Bentley's confidence in the authenticity of her childhood. As she sifts through her memorabilia, she hears the voice of her husband speaking to her, explaining that the items don't really belong to her because they came from the past, not from the present she is living in now. Even affidavits wouldn't change the fact that she's no longer the self that the saved clothes and pictures were meant for. Mrs. Bentley finally understands, and discards the tokens of her past the next day with the help of the girls and Tom. From then on, she lives in the present only, confirming the girls' belief that she was never young "in a million trillion years." In a following chapter, Tom later tells Douglas of his revelation that old people never truly were young, which Douglas writes down in his tablet. Chapter 17-18 (The Last, the Very Last) — Douglas and Tom are introduced to a living "Time Machine" in the form of Colonel Freeleigh who narrates incredibly vivid descriptions of his personal experiences, including a fatal bullet trick performed by Ching Ling Soo, being on the prairie with Pawnee Bill, and witnessing the Battle of Fort Sumter. His anecdotes draw the boys themselves into the detailed events, and all agree that the colonel is a true Time Machine. Similar to the previous story in Chapter 14, there is an expository chapter in which Douglas and Tom record the story in Douglas' tablet and provide both casual and profound commentary on its implications. Chapter 19 (The Green Machine) — Two elderly women, Miss Fern and Miss Roberts, take refuge in their attic after they accidentally run over Mister Quartermain while riding the Green Machine, believing him to be dead. Huddling together, they recall the time when they bought the Green Machine from a salesman as a noiseless, smooth form of transportation. The first week on the Green Machine went by like a dream, until the accident with Mister Quartermain. Fern and Roberts lament on how they did not stop or at least get help for him, and then resolve to not drive the Green Machine ever again. Later on, they learn that Mister Quartermain did not die after all. Chapter 20 (The Trolley) — Douglas is horrified to find out that yet another form of transportation for the summer is about to be gone; the trolley run by Mr. Tridden, which will have its tracks replaced with new ones for a bus. On the last day of operation Mr. Tridden offers the children a free ride, and Douglas, Tom, and a group of children from the neighbourhood climb aboard. During the ride, they comment on how a bus cannot emulate the feel and smell of a trolley, further emphasized by use of gorgeous imagery to describe the sights the boys see while in the trolley. At the end of the line, Mr. Tridden uses an emergency generator to take the streetcar on a track line abandoned for eighteen years that leads to a lake where once the trolley took people to summer festivities. Mr Tridden relates the events of a summer night in 1910 before taking the children home. When the trip concludes, Douglas reflects on how he will always remember the trolley tracks, even after they have been buried in reality. In a humorous reversal, the somber meditation on the vanishing of the trolley is punctuated by a brief snippet of Douglas agreeing to a game of kick the can, abruptly ending the chapter on a lighthearted note. Chapter 21-22 (Statues — created for novel) — Douglas' best friend John Huff is introduced and described in this chapter as the ideal boy to be friends with. John, however, tells Douglas that his family will be moving tomorrow. In response to Douglas' protests, John comments on how he has suddenly realized that he's taken so many things for granted in his neighborhood that he can't remember most of them, including his parents' faces, and on how he's afraid that Douglas will similarly forget him. Douglas assures him that he has a perfect memory of his face, but ruins his claim when he can't remember that John's eyes are green. Douglas attempts to enjoy his last day with John, but keeps on being reminded of the diminishing amount of time before John's departure. He tries a last-ditch effort to keep John from leaving by "freezing" him for three hours when the children play statues. John refuses to play along and instead begins another round of Statues, in which he "freezes" Douglas instead just before he leaves for good. After he realizes that John is gone for good, Douglas, thinking of how statues stay still compared to humans who can't be controlled, yells out into the distance that he hates John. Another expository chapter, this one the shortest yet at only one page, has Douglas asking Tom to promise that he will stay with him. He also says that he's concerned about how God runs the world, to which Tom replies simply, "He tries," most likely an accepting remark that life isn't perfect. Chapter 23-24 — Elmira Brown, a high-strung woman, believes that Clara Goodwater, her rival for the position of president for the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge, is a witch who is causing her numerous small accidents, including tripping over objects in front of her. Elmira accuses Clara of performing dark magic on her to sabotage her chances in the election, using information from her mailman husband about a stack of books for magic spells that was sent to her house. Clara, in response, says that the books are for her younger cousin, and claims that Elmira's accidents are caused by her own clumsiness. Unconvinced, Elmira brews a potion for herself to counter Clara's "dark magic," and brings Tom with her to the ladies' meeting as her "charm." The potion, however, does not stop her from continuing to knock things over, and she in fact begins to feel strangely disoriented as she talks on the platform. Elmira loses the election yet again to Clara, who then draws from her purse a voodoo doll with several tacks embedded in it. A dazed Elmira asks Tom to show her the way to the restroom, but she makes a wrong turn and tumbles down a flight of stairs. Miraculously, she has no broken bones despite heavy bruises, and Clara apologizes to her and even offers a second vote to elect her as president. The story ends with all the women running up the stairs, laughing and crying at the same time. It is left unclear on whether Elmira's fall was caused by mental disorder, nausea after drinking her "potion," or real witchcraft by Clara. Another one-page chapter shows Tom telling Douglas about his weird encounter with the ladies at the lodge, and they comment on how the town is full of magic, illustrating how kids view events differently than grown-ups do. Chapter 25-26 (The Window) — Colonel Freeleigh, the same "Time Machine" the boys listened to in Chapter 17, has been confined to a hospital for his weakening health. His sole comfort is a phone in his room that he can use to dial the number of an old friend in Mexico City who lays his phone on an open window to allow him to hear the bustling noises outside. When the nurse learns of his phone calls, she tells him that she will give orders to take the phone away to prevent him from overworking his heart further. A desperate Freeleigh, feeling his chest pains worsen, dials his friend's number once more, begging for one last listening to the sounds of the city people. As his friend does so, Freeleigh immerses himself in the activity of Mexico City, thinking of how grateful he is for this reminder that the world is still alive and moving. When Douglas and the other children stop by for a visit, they find Freeleigh dead, still holding the phone. Douglas listens to the phone in time to hear "two thousand miles away, the closing of a window," a metaphor for Freeleigh's death. In the following chapter, Douglas sits silently as Tom pretends to be a Civil War soldier, pondering on how with Colonel Freeleigh's death, all of his memories of the historical figures died too. Tom, however, fails to share in his brooding, only suggesting that he write his thoughts down in his tablet before resuming his play. Chapter 27 — July has ended, and thirty-one bottles of dandelion wine have been made. Douglas, remembering his recent string of losses of friends and machines, wonders why each bottle looks identical and not representative of the day it was made on. He says out loud that August will be tedious and uneventful, to which his grandfather attempts to remedy his melancholy with a swig of dandelion wine and some ordered exercises. Chapter 28-29 (The Swan) — Bill Forrester, with Douglas at his side, orders lime-vanilla ice at the soda fountain. His unusual request catches the attention of ninety-five year old Helen Loomis who invites him to visit her house tomorrow. Bill complies, and he and Helen start a friendly conversation about the appearances people keep up for each other, that soon diverges into Loomis acting as a "Time Machine" similar to Colonel Freeleigh to transport Bill into the pyramids of Egypt. Bill comments on how comfortable he feels talking to her, and Helen replies by reminding him that she's only an old woman. While lounging in his chair, Bill attempts to envision her as being young again; he succeeds for a moment in seeing "the swan," which he unintentionally says out loud, strangely disquieting Helen. Bill continues to visit Helen every day for two and a half weeks, but only on the last day does he tell her what motivated him to visit her in the first place: a photograph taken of her when she was twenty. He had seen the picture in the newspaper for the town ball and intended to go to the ball to seek the beautiful girl it showed, until someone told him that the picture had been taken a long time ago and had been used by the newspaper every year since then to advertise the ball. Helen replies with an overview of a young man she once knew in her youth who was handsome but wild and reckless; he left her, but when she saw Bill at the fountain that day, she was strongly reminded of him — almost as if he were a reincarnation of her former companion. Some time later, Bill finds Helen writing a letter addressed to him. Helen explains to him that she will be dead in a few days, and that the letter she is writing will come to him then. When Bill attempts to protest about the lack of time they have had together, Helen says that she believes that they will meet again sometime later — possibly in reincarnated forms. She tells him to marry and live happily, but says that he has to die before the age of fifty in order to ensure that when they are reincarnated, they will be of the correct ages and be able to meet and fall in love with each other. Two days later, Bill receives the letter. Inside it is a note reading, "A dish of lime-vanilla ice." The next chapter shifts back to the viewpoint of Douglas, who asks Tom on how come Mr. Forrester and Mrs. Loomis did not get a happy ending, as in the movies. However, the boys' attentions are quickly distracted from the subject when they arrive at Summer's Ice House, and turn to the legend of the Lonely One in the town, acting as an introduction to the next story. In the expository chapter, it is revealed in the conversation between Doug, Tom, and Charlie that Lavinia killed the Lonely One by stabbing him with a pair of sewing scissors. Charlie berates Lavinia for killing off their main source of thrills, but Tom convinces him that the actual Lonely One is still alive because the man they took in looked like "a plain, everyday man who wouldn't pull the wings off even so much as a fly," instead of the tall, bulgy-eyed monster they think he should look like. Neither of them listen to Douglas who says that he was at the ravine at that time and witnessed Lavinia discovering Elizabeth's body, and thus can no longer treat the Lonely One as just an amusingly scary figure. Chapter 32 (Good-by, Grandma) — Douglas' great-grandma, after countless years of assisting her family, feels that her time is expiring with a growing tiredness. She lies down in her bed amidst the protests of her relatives, waiting for her death. When Douglas asks her who's going to do all the chores she did around the house, she says that they belong to anyone who wants them, and reminds him that she will not truly be dead in his mind. As her family leaves her to rest alone, she returns to the dream she was in before she was born, dying happily and peacefully. Chapter 33 — Disillusioned by the recent deaths and losses, Douglas, by the light of a multitude of fireflies, writes for a long time on the shortcomings of things and people, associating them mainly with breaking down (machines) or death (people). He seems to be on the verge of a great revelation as he quickly scribbles at the end a summary of the dark side of his summer experience: "SO IF TROLLEYS AND RUNABOUTS AND FRIENDS AND NEAR FRIENDS CAN GO AWAY FOR A WHILE OR GO AWAY FOREVER, OR RUST, OR FALL APART OR DIE, AND IF PEOPLE CAN BE MURDERED, AND IF SOMEONE LIKE GREAT-GRANDMA, WHO WAS GOING TO LIVE FOREVER, CAN DIE…IF ALL OF THIS IS TRUE…THEN…I, DOUGLAS SPAULDING, SOME DAY, MUST…" However, the fireflies&#39; light has gone out, so Douglas stops writing and releases the fireflies into the night. He then tries to fall asleep. Chapter 34 (The Tarot Witch–created for novel) — Douglas takes Tom to a Penny Arcade to show him the mechanical Tarot Witch there. When Tom asks him why he wanted him to see her, Douglas says that he asks too many questions. He then thinks to himself that it&#39;s because he was initially elated when he realized that he was alive, before he realized that being alive meant that he must die someday too, no matter how much he wants to prevent it. No longer certain about his life, he wants to take comfort in something that he knows never will go away, i.e. the permanent amusements at the carnival. Douglas gets a typical fortune from the Tarot Witch, but the card she gives Tom is blank. Tom suggests that the Witch might have run out of ink, but Douglas insists that the blank card must have some special meaning. Thinking that she might have written a message in invisible ink on the back of the card, Douglas runs a match over it. He accidentally burns up the card in the process, but says that he read a French message from the Witch, calling for help. He comes to the conclusion that the Witch is really a princess trapped in hot wax that someone poured over her. Douglas plots to &#34;rescue&#34; the Tarot Witch by overloading a machine with coins so that Mr. Black, the carnival manager, will use them to get drunk. Mr. Black, however, goes crazy and smashes the Witch&#39;s glass case. Douglas jumps in to stop him; just as Mr. Black is about to attack him with a knife, he passes out from his drinking. Douglas and Tom confiscate the Witch, planning to free her, but just as they reach the ravine, Mr. Black reappears and flings the Witch into the ravine, to Douglas&#39; horror. Later on in the day, Douglas and Tom return to where the Tarot Witch is lying. Douglas says to Tom that the Witch is really alive, and that someday he will be able to free her from the wax with magic spells so that the Witch will become just another figurine. As he mentions their fortunes, another blank card falls from her sleeve. Douglas exclaims that it must be written with her thanks and a prediction that they will &#34;live forever.&#34; Chapter 35 (Hotter than Summer) — Douglas comes upon Tom who is counting the times cicadas buzz every fifteen seconds to measure the temperature. Douglas reads the home thermometer as reading 87°F (31°C), but Tom, after finishing his count, says that it is actually 92° (33°C) Spaulding. Feeling woozy, Douglas begins subconsciously counting to the cicadas&#39; buzzes too. Chapter 36-38 (Dinner at Dawn) — This story focuses upon Mr. Jonas and his wagon full of discarded objects that he totes around town in the very early morning, allowing people to take what they need from it at no cost; many of them donating some of their old items to the wagon before it moves on forward again. On a scorchingly hot morning, with the cicadas buzzing louder than normal with the rising temperature, Douglas lies in his bed, burning up with a fever. Tom and his mother attempt to cool him down, to no avail. In his fever, Douglas has hallucinations of long-lost people and machines walking past, including Mr. Tridden and his trolley, Miss Fern and Roberts riding by on their Green Machine, and Colonel Freeleigh popping up like a clock, all waving good-bye to him, which makes him cry out loud. At four o&#39;clock in the afternoon, Tom tells Mr. Jonas about Douglas&#39; condition and says that he&#39;s afraid that he might die. Mr. Jonas gives him a set of wind-chimes to hang by Douglas&#39; window, but they do not make a sound because there is no wind. Mr. Jonas visits the Spaulding residence to see Douglas at seven-thirty, but Douglas&#39; mother says that he is not to be disturbed. By nightfall, Douglas is no better, and his family takes him outside in a cot, in the hope that he will be cooled by a wind. Finally, at twelve-thirty, Mr. Jonas makes a stop with his wagon where Douglas is sleeping and leaves him two bottles filled with air containing soothing vapor and smells from the tropics and moisture-filled areas, on the condition that he pass this favor on to someone else. The bottles of air appear to work, as Tom finds Douglas breathing the same refreshing air in and out of his nose. The next morning, the heat and the cicadas finally fade down with the coming of rain, and Douglas is well enough to write in his tablet again of his experience. Chapter 39 (The Magical Kitchen) — Douglas&#39; grandma is renowned in the household for her divine cooking for the entire family. Aunt Rose, however, threatens this magic when she questions Grandma&#39;s methods of cooking, and later persuades Grandma to organize her kitchen, wear glasses, and read from a cookbook while cooking. This systematic cooking that results, however, destroys the uniqueness and magicalness of Grandma&#39;s dinners for the rest of the family. In response to this, Grandpa bids Aunt Rose good-bye, but Grandma appears to have lost her touch for cooking. While the rest of the members are awake in their beds, Douglas sneaks down to the kitchen and restores it back to its original chaos, getting rid of the glasses and the cookbook. The family heads downstairs to find that Grandma has reconnected with her cooking again as it was meant to be, and everyone enjoys a magnificent late dinner. The chapter closes with Douglas thinking on how he repaid Mr. Jonas by passing on his favor. Chapter 40 (Green Wine for Dreaming–created for novel) — The final chapter of the novel concludes Douglas&#39; summer, as he and Tom spot school supplies advertised for sale in a shop window. The boys reminisce about the events of summer with the aid of the labeled dandelion wine bottles, guaranteeing that they will remember this summer in their hearts. The Spaulding family stores away their porch swing for autumn, as others reverse their summer preparations as the season draws to an end. The end of the novel echoes the beginning, with Douglas performing his waking-up act in reverse, pretending to switch the lights off and put everyone else to sleep before finally going to sleep himself, ending a very eventful and memorable summer.
976079	/m/03vz17	Generation Warriors	Anne McCaffrey	1991-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The title character from the first book of the trilogy, Sassinak teams up the main character from the second, her great grandmother Lunzie, to end the threat of the planet pirates. (Granddaughter and grandmother are the same age because of relativity stasis induced by cold sleep.)
976105	/m/03vz3t	Volpone	Ben Jonson	1606		 Volpone, a Venetian gentleman, pretends to be on his deathbed after a long illness in order to dupe Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino, who aspire to his fortune. They each arrive in turn, bearing luxurious gifts with the aim of being inscribed as Volpone's heir. Mosca, Volpone's "parasite", encourages them, making each of them believe that he has been named as the heir in the will, and getting Corbaccio to disinherit his son in favour of Volpone. Mosca mentions to Volpone that Corvino has a beautiful wife, Celia, and Volpone goes to see her in the disguise of Scoto the Mountebank. Corvino drives him away, but Volpone is now insistent that he must have Celia for his own. Mosca tells Corvino that Volpone requires to sleep with a young woman to help revive him. Corvino offers Celia in order to please Volpone. Just before Corvino and Celia are due to arrive for this to take place, Corbaccio's son Bonario arrives to catch his father in the act of disinheriting him. Mosca guides him into a sideroom. Volpone is left alone with Celia, and after failing to seduce her with promises of luxurious items and fantasies, attempts to rape her. Bonario comes forward to rescue Celia. However, in the ensuing courtroom sequence, the truth is well-buried by Mosca, Volpone and all three of the dupes. There are episodes involving the English travellers Sir and Lady Politick Would-Be and Peregrine. Sir Politic constantly talks of plots and his outlandish business plans, while Lady Would-Be annoys Volpone with her ceaseless talking. Mosca co-ordinates a mix-up between them which leaves Peregrine, a more sophisticated traveller, feeling offended. He humiliates Sir Politick by telling him he is to be arrested for sedition, and making him hide inside a giant tortoise shell. Volpone insists on disguising himself and having it announced that he has died and left all his wealth to Mosca. This enrages Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino, and everyone returns to court. Volpone gets badly entangled in the circumstances devised by him and Mosca. Despite Volpone's pleas, Mosca refuses to give up his wealthy new role, and Volpone decides to reveal himself in order to take Mosca down with him. Finally they, Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino are punished.
976322	/m/03vzp2	The Chocolate War	Robert Cormier	1974	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jerry Renault is a self-determined and solitary first-year student at a preparatory, all-boys, Catholic high school called Trinity. Jerry occasionally copes with sexual frustration, depressive feelings, and basic existential questions, some of which stem from the recent death of his mother and the consequential emptiness he observes in his father's new life as a widower. Though thin, Jerry is quickly recruited onto the football team where he meets "The Goober," a fellow freshman and newfound friend at the school. Archie Costello, an intelligent, controlling, and apparently amoral older student selects Jerry to be a new member of The Vigils, the school's influential secret society of student pranksters, who carry out "assignments" that range from ridiculous to cruel. The existence of the Vigils is known by Trinity faculty but neither officially recognized nor openly acknowledged. Though The Vigils' president is nominally the school's star boxer and football player, John Carter, The Vigils are run de facto by Archie, whose title is the "Assigner" and who personally crafts each of the group's often elaborate pranks, which the other members of The Vigils unquestioningly carry out. When the school's headmaster becomes ill, his vice-principal, Brother Leon, assumes the position of acting headmaster. Leon, however, quickly overextends his rising ambition by committing the students to selling twice as many chocolates at twice the price in the annual school-wide chocolate fundraising event than last year. To accomplish this goal, Leon quietly reaches out to Archie, hinting at his desire that The Vigils will use their influence among the student body to increase this year's chocolate sales. Archie is seduced by the thought of having Leon's implicit support for The Vigils and, recognizing the power play in his favor, agrees. However, as if reveling in the power he now secretly wields over Leon, Archie assigns Jerry to refuse to sell any chocolate for ten days, expecting to provide a laugh for his fellow students and a humiliating scene for Leon. Jerry carries out the prank and it indeed shocks Brother Leon during his daily roll call, which includes an assessment of individuals' fundraising progress. Surprising everyone, though, Jerry persists in his refusal to sell chocolates even after the ten days have passed, thus estranging himself from the Vigils and their demands. Although Jerry himself cannot justify these actions at first, he persists each following day in his outright refusal, ultimately based on some personal rejection of the school's corrupt culture in which students and teachers alike condone manipulative people like The Vigils. Archie urges the rest of The Vigils to thwart Jerry's display of non-conformity, initially encouraging non-violent action. Meanwhile, Jerry ponders the meaning of a quotation on the poster inside his locker: "Do I dare disturb the universe?" from T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Jerry's refusal to cooperate, at first, is seen by many classmates as heroic and soon the chocolate sales throughout the school plummet as fellow students begin to celebrate and align with Jerry's resistance to the fundraising effort. Both Brother Leon and The Vigils are angered by Jerry's noncompliance, which threatens their ability to direct the student body toward their own self-serving goals. As a result, Brother Leon presses Archie to have The Vigils put their full force behind the chocolate sale, and in doing so set Jerry up as an enemy to be alienated and bullied by the rest of the student body. Because of this, the chocolate sales begin to skyrocket and the tide is now turned: Jerry soon becomes an outcast, facing harassment by his peers, isolation in the hallways, prank calls at home, and the vandalism of his locker and possessions. Only The Goober remains a friend to Jerry and even supportive of his resistance, though he does little to actively protect him. Ultimately, Archie enlists the school bully Emile Janza to ambush Jerry just outside the school. Jerry maintains his defiance even in the aftermath of the violent beating he receives. At the end of the novel, Archie concocts a final event for the chocolate sale: a boxing match at night on the field between Jerry and Emile, promising that whoever is the winner of the fight will also win back his dignity. The match is watched by the all the school's students, each of whom selects which blows will be laid by the two combatants through a randomized lottery system. The match is only halted when a teacher kills the electrical power on the field, throwing the scene into darkness and disarray, but not before Jerry is brutally injured by Emile. Floating in and out of consciousness, Jerry says to The Goober, now his only remaining companion at school, that there was no way to win and that he should have just gone along with what everyone wanted him to do. Jerry concedes that it is best, after all, not to "disturb the universe." Though Archie is caught as the mastermind of the match and confronted, Brother Leon intervenes on Archie's behalf and in private praises his efforts that led to unprecedented results in the chocolate sale. Leon implies to Archie that, next year, if Leon is officially made the new headmaster, he will work to continue to preserve Archie's power.
977508	/m/03w28j	SilverFin	Charlie Higson	2005-03-03	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 SilverFin is broken up into three parts in addition to a prologue. In the prologue, an unnamed school boy is attacked by eels, attracted to a bleeding fishhook cut, while fishing in Loch Silverfin. Then from nowhere a mysterious eel-like man runs and jumps into the loch and saves him. The first part of the book chronicles James Bond's starting attendance at Eton College, which is one of the best schools in England. There he meets Pritpal, the son of an Indian Maharajah. The two become good friends and live together in the dorms along with another of his friends, a Chinese boy named Tommy Chong. Bond also comes into contact with George Hellebore, an American bully three years older than James. George's father, Lord Randolph Hellebore is an armament dealer who sold weapons to various countries after World War I. It is later revealed that Lord Hellebore knew Bond's father, Andrew Bond, who also sold arms while working for Vickers after the war. Lord Hellebore arrives at Eton to direct and host a tournament cup ("Hellebore Cup") for the boys. The competition is divided into three events: shooting, swimming, and running, It is rumoured that George Hellebore is supposed to win, but an unexpected rival named Andrew Carlton manages to beat him. Bond places seventh in shooting, third in his heat in swimming (which was not good enough to qualify for the final race), and first in cross country running. During the running sequence Lord Hellebore attempts to help his son cheat so that he could win the tournament; however, Bond after seeing George take a shortcut a first time decides to follow George the next time, and being the superior runner then passes him to win the race. George tries to trip James with his leg but loses his balance and falls into a mud puddle. Because Bond won first in running, Andrew Carlton is the winner and George Hellebore came in third place in the cup overall, which was unacceptable by his father's standard. The second part of the novel details the spring break. James travels to Scotland to meet with his Aunt Charmian who is visiting Bond's ailing uncle, Max, who is dying of cancer. Both Charmian and Max are siblings of Bond's father, Andrew. It is also in this part of the novel that Higson reveals the details of Bond's parents' death, first mentioned in Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice. While travelling to Scotland, Bond befriends an older boy named "Red"(for his bright red hair) Kelly who is travelling to the same place in search for his missing cousin, Alfie who disappeared whilst out fishing (thus tying in with the prologue). James also meets a girl called Wilder who loves riding horses. While staying at his uncle's place Bond learns how to drive his uncle's car and finds out that his uncle was a spy during World War I. Bond also learns that Lord Randolph Hellebore owns a large stretch of land nearby that includes Loch Silverfin. He later meets back up with Red and ventures to Hellebore's estate where the two encounter Mike "Meatpacker" Moran, a Pinkerton's detective from New York City sent to investigate Lord Randolph Hellebore at the behest of Hellebore's wife, who suspects Lord Randolph of having killed his brother, her lover, Algar. However, they later discover the detective dead and eaten in Loch Silverfin, which is full of eels. The boys plan to infiltrate the castle by climbing a tree, but Red falls out of the tree and breaks his leg, and is unable to continue. James succeeds in entering the castle. After snooping around he bumps his head and is captured. When James regains consciousness he is tied to a table and Lord Hellebore begins to interrogate him. Hellebore explains to James that he and his brother set out to create better and stronger soldiers by manipulating the endocrine system. Because it is difficult to find humans to test on, Algar tested the first "SilverFin serum" on himself. Initially it worked, but later an increased dosage transformed Algar physically, giving him a distorted body that is eel-like. Lord Hellebore subsequently perfected the serum and was able to turn it into a pill. The pill essentially acts as a steroid making anyone who uses it more agile, stronger, etc. for a temporary set of time. Hellebore even tests this pill on his own son (as James had witnessed during the cross-country race). Lord Hellebore reveals that he tested the SilverFin serum on Alfie Kelly, the boy whom Bond is searching for, but Kelly's heart gave out and he died. The wastes poured into Loch Silverfin made the eels vicious. Later Bond is also drugged with the SilverFin serum and locked in a cell. Bond, however, uses his enhanced abilities to escape the cell and the estate by finding a underwater entrance to Loch Silverfin and swimming through, with the help of Wilder Lawless (who kisses him at some point), only to return shortly later with George Hellebore as an ally to destroy Lord Randolph's lab. George has increasingly become upset with his dreadful father and his work, and secretly wishes to be with his mother more than anything. The two destroy the lab and are later confronted by Lord Hellebore who intends to kill them both. Hellebore attacks them with a double-barreled shotgun. However, Algar intervenes at the last moment and forces himself and Hellebore into Loch Silverfin. Algar is wounded by his brother's shotgun and his blood attracts the eels who kill both the brothers while they are fighting. James collapses due to a lung infection and exhaustion shortly after and for ten days lies unconscious. When he regains consciousness he learns that George has moved back to America to be with his mother, and that his Uncle Max has died, leaving James his car.
978784	/m/03w5nw	The Night of the Iguana	Tennessee Williams			 In 1940s Mexico, an ex-minister, Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, has been locked out of his church after characterizing the Occidental image of God as a "senile delinquent", during one of his sermons. Shannon is not de-frocked, but institutionalized for a "nervous breakdown". Some time after his release, Rev. Shannon obtains employment as a tour guide for a second-rate travel agency. Shortly before the opening of the play, Shannon is accused of having committed statutory rape of a sixteen-year old girl, named Charlotte Goodall, who is accompanying his current group of tourists. As the curtain rises, Shannon is arriving with a group of women at a cheap hotel on the coast of Mexico that had been managed by his friends Fred and Maxine Faulk. The former has recently died, and Maxine Faulk has assumed sole responsibility for managing the establishment. Struggling emotionally, Shannon tries to manage his tour party, who have turned against him for entering into sexual relations with the minor, and Maxine, who is interested in him for purely carnal reasons. Adding to this chaotic scenario, a spinster Hannah Jelkes appears with her moribund grandfather, Nonno, who, despite his failing, is composing his last poem. Jelkes, who scrapes by as traveling painter and sketch artist, is soon at Maxine's mercy. Shannon, who wields considerable influence over Maxine, offers Hannah Jelkes shelter for the night. The play's main axis is the development of the deeply human bond between Hannah Jelkes and Lawrence Shannon. Like the iguana, captured and tied to a pole by the Mexicans in the play, Hannah and they have come to the end of their rope. This metaphor is intensified when Shannon tears at his golden cross on his neck, lacerating himself, as if to free himself from its constraints. Minor characters in the play include: a) a group of German tourists whose Nazi marching songs paradoxically lighten the heavier themes of the play , but suggest the horrors of World War II , b) the Mexican "boys" Maxine employs to help run the hotel who ignore her laconic commands, and c) Judith Fellowes, the "butch" vocal teacher charged with Charlotte's care during the trip. Fellowes is one of William's few overtly lesbian characters.
982237	/m/03wh76	The Polar Express	Chris Van Allsburg		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the story starts off, a young boy, who used to adore Christmas, hears a train whistle roar. To his astonishment, he finds the train is waiting for him. He sees a conductor who then proceeds to look up at his window. He runs downstairs. He opens the door. The conductor asks him “Well? Are you coming?”. He asks, "Where?" and the conductor replies "Why, to the North Pole, of course!" The boy then boards the train, which is filled with chocolate and candy, as well as many other children in their pajamas. As the train reaches the North Pole, the boy and the other children see thousands of Christmas elves gathered at the center of town waiting to send Santa Claus on his way. The boy is handpicked by Santa to receive the first gift of Christmas. Realizing that he could choose anything in the world, the boy asks for one bell from one of the reindeer's harnesses. The boy places the bell in the pocket of his robe and all the children watch as Santa takes off into the night for his annual deliveries. Later, on the train ride home, the boy discovers that the bell has fallen through a hole in his pocket. The boy arrives home and goes to his bedroom as the train pulls away. On Christmas morning, his sister finds a small package for the boy under the tree, behind all of the other gifts. The boy opens the box and discovers that it is the bell, delivered by Santa who found it on the seat of his sleigh. When the boy rings the bell, both he and his sister marvel at the beautiful sound. His parents, however, are unable to hear the bell and remark that it must be broken. The book ends with a famous quote, also promoted to the film based on it:
983717	/m/03wlv4	Bless Me, Ultima	Rudolfo Anaya	1972		 Set in the small town of Guadalupe, New Mexico just after World War II, Antonio Márez y Luna (Tony) tells his story from the memories of his adult self, who harkens back to his childhood and reflects on his growing up. Anaya uses the basic structure of the Bildungsroman to weave a tale from the child's point of view of good and evil, of life and death, of myth and reality that challenges young Tony's beliefs about God, his family and his destiny. His progress in learning about life is grounded in Ultima, an aged and wise member of the community who is highly respected by Tony's parents. Tony has a very special relationship with her, as she was the midwife at his birth. Throughout the story she passes on her wisdom and knowledge to Tony. The novel begins as Tony's parents, Gabriel and Maria, invite Ultima to come and live with them when Tony is about to turn seven—just reaching the age of reason. As Tony, with Ultima's guidance, searches for his true identity and his rightful destiny, he witnesses several deaths, assists Ultima in purging his uncle Lucas of an evil spell, experiences a crisis of faith in the Catholic tradition, embraces the myth of the golden carp, discovers the sordidness of his older brother, survives a harrowing illness and realizes that he may be the only heir to the cultural and spiritual legacy that was Ultima, for Ultima is the last of her kind. Throughout the novel Tony struggles with his identity. In the first chapter Anaya establishes the roots of this struggle through Tony's dream—a flashback to the day of his birth. In his dream Tony views the differences between his parents' familial backgrounds. His father's side, the Márez (descendents of the sea), are the restless vaqueros who roam the llanos and seek adventure. The Lunas, his mother's side, are the people of the moon, religious farmers whose destiny is to homestead and work the land. Each side of the family wants control of the newborn's future. But, as the dream ends, Ultima intercedes and takes on the responsibility for knowing and guarding Tony's destiny herself.His mother's dream is for him to become a Roman Catholic priest, His father's dream is to embark on a new adventure and move west to California with his sons to recapture the openness of the Llano he has foregone in moving to the town. Early on Antonio must come to grips with the opposition between good and evil. Ultima, in her role as protector, uses her knowledge of healing and magic to neutralize the evil witchcraft the three daughters of Tenorio Trementina have wrought on Tony's uncle, and toward the end her soul struggles against the evil of Tenorio himself. Over the course of the novel Antonio becomes disillusioned with the faith and through Cico, one of his closer friends learns of another god. Throughout the novel Tony keeps trying to reconcile the complexity of his mixed familial heritage Lunas with the Márez,and his mixed religious heritage: traditional Catholicism with the Native American religion. Ultimately, the Catholic Church, concentrated on the Virgin Mary and a Father God, and on ritual, is unable to answer Tony's questions. At the same time, realizing that the Church represents the female values of his mother, Tony cannot bring himself to accept the lawlessness, violence and unthinking sensuality which his father and older brothers symbolize. Instead through his relationship with Ultima, he discovers a oneness with nature. Through his discovery that "All is One" he is able to resolve the major existential conflict in his life. Antonio realizes at the end of the novel that the conflict he feels as he is pulled between the free, open landscape of the llano, and the circumscribed river valley of the town, between the Márez's way of being and that of the Lunas, and between Catholicism and the indigenous religion of the golden carp, does not require him to choose one over the other. He can bring both together to form a new identity and a new religion that is made up of both. Antonio says to his father:
984769	/m/03wq1q	Titan	Stephen Baxter	1997-07-18	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Baxter's novel explores a range of possible attitudes toward space exploration and science in the early twenty-first century in which he lays down his concerns about anti-intellectualism and the loss of the pioneering spirit in modern American politics and culture. In Baxter's novel, America is ruled by a fundamentalist Christian president named Xavier Maclachlan who, believing Earth is the centre of the universe, orders the equal treatment of the Ptolemaic model of the solar system in high school curricula, all the while youth culture goes into a rebellious downward spiral with the widespread adoption of digital entertainment technology. With the far-right isolationist policies America now embraces, it has severed its ties with the rest of the world (including within itself with seceding nation-states), especially while tensions grow with the emerging power of China, which is engaged in a determined bid to gain control of space after the American Shuttle program comes crashing down with the loss of Columbia (but not in the same way as actual events. In this timeline, instead of disintegrating on re-entry the shuttle makes an irreparable crash landing with the loss of two of the crew), and NASA has no public or political support to help recover from the accident. Consequently, under Maclachlan's executive plans, the US military merges with the space agency for its resources to be diverted into defense spending, including using its space-faring vehicles as weapons platforms and forcing NASA to develop ethnically-targeted biological weapons tailored to attack Han Chinese. Amid this negative climate and seeing no future for themselves after the permanent shutdown of the space program or for the decadent future of humanity, a small team of scientists and astronauts must persuade NASA to fund a manned mission to Titan in order to confirm findings of life from the Cassini and to rejuvenate interest in space exploration to the world. They do so by recycling older spacecraft for several purposes: space shuttle Atlantis is refitted to carry cargo into orbit as well as a restored Saturn V for construction of the main ship (a heavily modified version of Discovery using ion drive propulsion), using habitat modules from the mothballed International Space Station, and Apollo re-entry capsules are adapted to become Titan landers. On the day of the last launch to begin the mission, with the shuttle Endeavour ready to carry the crew to space, an insane USAF general driven by shallow militarism and hatred for space exploration tries to shoot down the shuttle during lift off. Despite damage sustained from an anti-satellite missile fired from a restored X-15, Endeavour successfully makes it into orbit, and the five crew members begin their six-year journey to Saturn by following the gravity-assisted interplanetary transport network. En-route, one crew member dies after a solar storm. The use of a CELSS greenhouse for life support provides a continuous food supply, and the astronauts rely on vegetables, grain and fruit from the greenhouse as they travel on. But things take a dark turn as funding and support for resupply and Earth-return retrieval are cut by Maclachlan's administration (proposed and carried out by the very same men that tried to shoot the shuttle down), leaving the team with no hope for survival beyond what they may find on Titan. Once they reach Saturn and prepare to land on Titan's surface, another crew member is lost during the landing procedure with another effectively crippled. Titan is discovered to be a bleak, freezing dwarf-planet containing liquid ethane oceans, a sticky mud surface, and a climate which includes a thick atmosphere of purple organic compounds falling like snow from the clouds; and the only traces of life they find are fossilized remains of microbic bacteria similar to those recovered from Martian meteorites. The remaining astronauts relay their findings back to a largely uninterested Earth. Meanwhile, the Chinese, in order to retaliate for biological attacks by the US, cause a huge explosion next to an asteroid (2002OA), with the aim of deflecting it into Earth orbit and threatening the world with targeted precision strikes in the future. Unfortunately, their calculations are wrong as they didn't take into account the size of the asteroid which could cause a Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. The asteroid strikes Earth, critically damaging the planetary ecosystem. The Titan team members are presumably the last humans left alive. As the surviving astronauts slowly die of disease and in-fighting, they decide to try to ensure life will continue to survive: they take a flask of bacteria and drop it into a crater filled with liquid water, in the hope that some form of life will develop. The novel's final sequence depicts the final two crew members reincarnated on Titan several billion years in the future. The sun has entered its red giant phase, warming the Saturnian system and aiding the evolution of life, in the form of strange, intelligent beetle-like creatures, on Titan. The astronauts watch as the creatures build a fleet of starships to seed and colonize new solar systems before the expanding sun boils off the surface of the moon.
985500	/m/03ws25	The Gemini Contenders	Robert Ludlum	1976	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In 1939, Savarone Fontini-Cristi is the padrone of an immensely wealthy and powerful Italian family. At this time, the Order of Xenope, a remote Greek monastic brotherhood, possesses ancient religious manuscripts, some of which, if authentic, are considered to be of enough significance to shatter the Christian religion. The Order of Xenope knows that the Nazis and Italian Fascists are seeking these long-rumored documents so must hide them. Because of his stature as a man of unsurpassed integrity, the Order entrusts the custody of these holiest of relics to Fontini-Cristi. Savarone schedules the circuitous shipment by train from Salonika, through Yugoslavia and Italy, and finally into the Swiss Alps. If the contents of the shipment are discovered at any time, the consequences are explosive. Though extremely wealthy, Savarone Fontini-Cristi has grown to abhor the Fascist regime of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. He actively supports the partigiani, the disorganized Communist opposition to Il Duce. Savarone's involvement with the train from Salonika becomes known to the powerful Roman Catholic Cardinal, Donatti, who must have the hidden documents at any cost. Incorrectly believing that Savarone has shared the secret location of the vault containing the documents with his first-born son, 36-year old playboy Vittorio, Cardinal Donatti orders the execution of the entire Fontini-Cristi family at the family compound Campo di Fiori, just outside Milan. The family's massacre by an execution squad, consisting of German soldiers overseen by Donatti, is secretly witnessed by Vittorio, who can hardly believe the horror - father, mother, brothers, wives, children - all murdered in front of his eyes. To Vittorio Fontini-Cristi's surprise, the British take extraordinary steps to evacuate Vittorio from Italy, expecting that he will tell them of the vault's location. Unfortunately for them, he doesn't know anything about the train from Salonika or its contents. The British take advantage of Vittorio's business skills during World War II, establishing a covert network of displaced European professionals, whose purpose is to discreetly sabotage the business processes of the German war machine: Shipping fiascos and printing mistakes, resulting in mild chaos in the back office of the war effort. The British decided to anglicize his name to Victor Fontine. Throughout the war, periodic incidents arise related to the hidden documents that put Victor's life, and the life of Jane, his new-found bride, in danger. In June 1942, in the midst of a German bombing related to the vault, Jane gives birth to twins, whom she calls her Geminis. Victor vows that, immediately after the war, he will put the mystery of Salonika behind him, and convince his pursuers that he knows nothing about it. At the war's end, he returns to Campo di Fiori, site of the execution grounds, where he hopes to end his involvement with the documents. After barely escaping with his life, he is met at the gates by five zealous priests, including the despised Cardinal Donatti. Proclaiming for the hundredth time that his father never told him about the train, Donatti orders Victor to be tortured until he confesses. Since Victor knows nothing, the priests torture him by breaking every single bone in his body, finally administering the last rites, and leaving him to die. Having barely survived the torture, Victor sells all of his holdings in Italy and establishes an extremely successful post-war consulting business in America. His twin sons, Adrian and Andrew, have grown up with privilege, with Adrian attending Princeton and Harvard Law, while Andrew, a West Point graduate, is a Major in the Vietnam War. The sons are on opposite sides of the Vietnam war, but Andrew has grown into a sociopathic man, for whom the end justifies the means. Adrian is on the verge of exposing some of the crimes that his brother, and his cabal of elite officers, have committed. At the same time, Victor is alarmed to learn that the train from Salonika has leaped through the past 30 years in the form of one of the zealous priests, who vows that Victor knows where the documents are and that he will force Victor to tell him. Remembering comments and gestures by his murdered father, the 70-year old Victor travels back to Campo di Fiori, and discovers key clues to the vault's location. The priest observes Victor's discovery, and attempts to pick up the torture where it was left off back in 1945. Badly injured, Victor returns to America to charge his Geminis with the responsibility of locating the hidden documents, realizing only that the sons have grown apart, but not that Andrew should not have such earth-shattering information to be used for ill purposes. Killing anyone who gets in his way, Andrew pursues the Salonika documents, leaving Adrian far behind. Adrian knows his brother's nature, and that he cannot be allowed to have the documents that could cause the collapse of Christianity, and the worldwide chaos that would ensue. In Champoluc, in the Swiss Alps, Adrian catches up with the murderous Andrew just as Andrew discovers the vault. In a monumental struggle, Adrian righteously triumphs over his evil twin brother, leaving Adrian to have the documents interpreted and to decide what to do with them. A parchment was taken from a Roman prison cell in the year 65 A.D. It is a letter written by a prisoner named Simon Bethsaida, renamed 'Peter' by Jesus Christ. In the letter, Peter admits that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross, but instead another prisoner was substituted. Jesus committed suicide three days after the incident.
985921	/m/03wthk	The Greek Passion	Nikos Kazantzakis			 The story concerns the attempts of a Greek village community to stage a Passion play. It takes place in a Greek village (Lycovrisi. "Wolf-tap") under the Ottoman Empire. The village holds Passion plays every seven years and the elders of the village decide on choosing among the villagers the characters for the play. Manolios, who is chosen to play the role of Christ, is a humble shepherd boy who was once a novice in a monastery. Yannakkos becomes Apostle Peter. He is a merchant-peddler who travels with his donkey through the villages and sells his items. He is warm-hearted, naive and loves his donkey above all else. Michelis, the son of the wealthy nobleman, old Patriarcheas becomes Apostle John. Kostandis, the owner of the village cafe, is Apostle James. He is good-hearted, willing to share, but confused. Then comes Panayotaros, who is chosen to be Judas. He is a wild, passionate man, waiting for revenge. The widow Katerina is Mary Magdalene. She is the village's prostitute. She is beautiful, but of course an outsider in the village, not caring about anybody’s opinion. But she is the most generous one and in the end gives her life for what she believes in. Then the Elders of Lycovrissi are introduced. There is the Priest Grigoris - a domineering man who bends God’s will to his own. Archon Patriarcheas is the leader of the village. He only lives for his own pleasure. Old Ladas is a miser who is obsessed with his money but lives in poverty so that he doesn't have to spend any of it. Hadji Nikolis is the schoolmaster, who means well but is ineffectual, haunted by fear of his brother the priest. The whole story is made colorful by the Turkish household consisting of The Agha, the Lord of Lycovrissi. He lives surrounded by his Oriental splendor, drinks himself crazy and enjoys raki and pretty boys. Hussein is the guard, a giant Oriental who does everything his master asks of him. Another character is the Priest Fotis. He comes to the village with a whole group of starved villagers from a devastated village which has been overrun by the Turks, and they are looking for shelter in Lycovrissi. Denied this by the priest Grigoris, the refugees retire to the barren slopes of the nearby mountain Sarakina, where they continue to starve. The villagers, simple, earnest people who are fond of Manolis, who plays Christ, Yannakos, Apostle Peter, Michelis, Apostle John etc. are indoctrinated by the elders. The main factor is a real saintly priest, Father Fotis who comes to the village to ask for help with hundreds of hungry and dying people and who is turned away from the village and finds a refuge in the barren mountain. There he tries to survive with the help of Manolios, Yannakos, Michelis and Konstandis. Father Grigoris is afraid to lose the power over the village and starts his hate campaign first against the priest and his people and then against the rest of the group. At one point Manolios offers his life to save the village, but in the last minute he is saved. The venom of the village elders appalls even the Agha, but he is too comfortably and too afraid to lose his power to do anything. Manolios ends his engagement and lives up in the hill praying to God and follows his voice. Michelis gives up his riches and comes to live with Manolios. This of course infuriates and in the end kills his father. One main character, Panayotaros, Apostle Judas, doesn’t really change in character, but he becomes very dangerous and a real Judas. He doesn’t care for his life anymore after widow Katerina dies, for whom he has a crazy desire. He is the one who spies on the people up in the mountain and on Michelis and Manolios and reports it to Father Grigoris, one of the main villains. In the end a mob consisting of the villagers kill Manolios: “For an instant Manolios’s heart failed him, he turned to the door - it was closed; he looked at the three lit lamps and, under them, the icons loaded with ex-votos: Christ, red-cheeked, with carefully combed hair, was smiling; the Virgin Mary, bending over the child was taking no interest in what was happening under her eyes. Saint John the Baptist was preaching in the desert. He raised his eyes toward the vault of the church and made out in the half-light the face of the Almighty, bending pitilessly over mankind. He looked at the crowd about him; it was as if in the darkness he saw the gleam of daggers. The strident voice of old Ladas squeaked once more: “Let’s kill him!” At the same moment, violent blows were struck upon the door; all fell silent and turned toward the entrance; furious voices could be heard distinctly: “Open! Open!” “That’s the voice of father Fotis!” someone cried. “Yannakos’s voice,” said another; “the Sarakini have come to take him from us!” The door was shaken violently, its hinges creaked; there could be heard a great tumult of men and women outside. “open, murderers! Have you no fear of God?” came the voice of father Fotis, distinctly. Priest Grigoris raised his hands. “In the name of Christ,” he cried, “ I take the sin upon me! Do it, Panayotaros.” Panayotaros drew the dagger and turned to father Grigoris. “With your blessing, Father!” he asked. “With my blessing, strike!” Priest Fotis and his people bring the dead body of Manolios to the mountain. He kneels next to him and holds his hands. “Toward midnight the bell began ringing, calling the Christians to the church to see Christ born. One by one the doors opened and the Christians hastened toward the church, shivering with cold. The night was calm, icy, starless.” “Priest Fotis listened to the bell pealing gaily, announcing that Christ was coming down on earth to save the world. He shook his head and heaved a sigh: In vain, my Christ, in vain, he muttered; two thousand years have gone by and men crucify You still. When will You be born, my Christ, and not be crucified any more, but live among us for eternity.”
987780	/m/03wzdw	Amaya o los vascos en el siglo VIII			{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Mixing history and legend, it presents a situation in which pagan and Christianized Basques unite under the first king of Navarre and ally with Pelayo, the first king of Asturias to defend Catholic Iberia against the invading hordes of Islam. Amaya is a Christian noblewoman, daughter of a Basque woman and Ranimiro, the ruthless Visigoth general. She is a niece to pagan leader Amagoya, who prefers her other pagan niece as heiress to the secrets of Aitor, the Basque ancestral patriarch. Pacomio is a machinating Jew conspirating in disguise among Muslims, Visigoths and Basques. Eudes, duke of Cantabria, is Pacomio's son, but, by hiding his Jewish origin, has reached a high post in the Visigoth kingdom and aspires to power beyond what his allies and his father would allow. At the end, the secret of Aitor is revealed, to recommend Christianity, the pagan Basques (except for Amagoya) convert, and Amaya marries the Basque resistance leader, García, becoming the first monarchs of Navarre. The legends of Teodosio de Goñi and San Miguel de Aralar, the Caba Rumía, the Table of Solomon in Toledo, and others are also mentioned in the plot.
987902	/m/03wzt6	The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth	H. G. Wells	1904	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 The Food of the Gods is divided into three "books": "Book I: The Discovery of the Food"; "Book II: The Food in the Village"; and "Book III: The Harvest of the Food." Book I begins with satirical remarks on "scientists," then introduces Mr. Bensington, a research chemist specializing in "the More Toxic Alkaloids," and Professor Redwood, who after studying reaction times takes an interest in "Growth." Redwood's suggestion "that the process of growth probably demanded the presence of a considerable quantity of some necessary substance in the blood that was only formed very slowly" causes Bensington to begin searching for such a substance. After a year of research and experiment, he finds a way to make what he calls in his initial enthusiasm "the Food of the Gods," but later more soberly dubs Herakleophorbia IV. Their first experimental success is with chickens that grow to about six times normal size on an experimental farm at Hickleybrow, near Urshot in Kent (where H.G. Wells was born and raised). Unfortunately Mr. and Mrs. Skinner, the slovenly couple hired to feed and monitor the chickens, allow Herakleophorbia IV to enter the local food chain, and the other creatures that get the food grow to six or seven times their normal size: not only plants, but also wasps, earwigs, and rats. The chickens escape, overrunning a nearby town. Bensington and Redwood, impractical researchers, do nothing until a decisive and efficient "well-known civil engineer" of their acquaintance named Cossar arrives to organize a party of eight to ("Obviously!") destroy the wasps' nest, hunt down the monstrous vermin, and burn the experimental farm to the ground. As debate ensues about the substance, popularly known as "Boomfood," children are being given the substance and grow to enormous size: Redwood's son ("pioneer of the new race"), Cossar's three sons, and Mrs. Skinner's grandson, Caddles. A certain Dr. Winkles makes the substance available to a princess, and there are other giants as well. These massive offspring eventually reach about 40 feet in height. At first the giants are tolerated, but as they grow more and more restrictions are imposed. With time most of the English population comes to resent the young giants as well as changes to flora, fauna, and the organization of society that become more extensive with each passing year. Bensington is nearly lynched by an angry mob, and subsequently retires from active life to Mount Glory Hydrotherapeutic Hotel. Book II offers an account the development of Mrs. Skinner's grandson, Albert Edward Caddles, as an epitome of "the coming of Bigness in the world." Wells takes the occasion to satirize the conservative rural gentry (Lady Wondershoot) and Church of England clergy (the Vicar of Cheasing Eyebright) in describing life in a backward little village. Book III begins with a chapter entitled "The Altered World" that dramatizes how life has changed by portraying the shocked reaction of a Rip van Winkle-like character released from prison after being incarcerated for twenty years. British society has learned to cope with occasional outbreaks of giant pests (mosquitoes, spiders, rats, etc.), but the coming to maturity of the giant children brings a reactionary politician, Caterham, into power. Caterham has been promoting a program to destroy the Food of the Gods and hinting that he will suppress the giants, and now begins to execute his plan. By coincidence, it is just at this moment that Caddles rebels against spending his life working in a chalk pit and sets out to see the world. In London he is surrounded by thousands of tiny people and confused by everything he sees. He demands to know what it's all for and where he fits in, but no one can answer his questions; after refusing to return to his chalk pit, Caddles is shot and killed by the police. The conclusion of the novel features a tenderly described romance between the young giant Redwood and the unnamed princess. Their love blossoms just as Caterham, who has at last attained a position of power, launches an effort to suppress the giants. But after two days of fighting, the giants, who have taken refuge in an enormous pit, have held their own. Their bombardment of London with shells containing large quantities of Herakleophorbia IV forces Caterham to call a truce. The British leader is satirized as a demagogue, a "vote-monster" for whom nothing but "gatherings, and caucuses, and votes &mdash; above all votes" are real. Caterham employs Redwood père as an envoy to send a proposed settlement whose terms would demand that the giants live apart somewhere and forgo the right to reproduce. The offer is indignantly rejected at a meeting of the giants, where one of Cossar's sons expresses a belief in growth as part of the law of life: "We fight for not for ourselves but for growth, growth that goes on for ever. To-morrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit for evermore. To grow according to the will of God!" The novel concludes with the world on the verge of a long struggle between the "little people" and the Children of the Food, whose ultimate victory is perhaps suggested by the novel's final image: "For one instant [a son of Cossar] shone, looking up fearlessly into the starry deeps, mail-clad, young and strong, resolute and still. Then the light had passed and he was no more than a great black outline against the starry sky, a great black outline that threatened with one mighty gesture the firmament of heaven and all its multitude of stars."
989049	/m/03x2bj	Under the Greenwood Tree	Thomas Hardy	1872		 The plot concerns the activities of a group of church musicians, the Mellstock parish choir, one of whom, Dick Dewy, becomes romantically entangled with a comely new school mistress, Fancy Day. The novel opens with the fiddlers and singers of the choir—including Dick, his father Reuben Dewy, and grandfather William Dewy—making the rounds in Mellstock village on Christmas Eve. When the little band plays at the schoolhouse, young Dick falls for Fancy at first sight. Dick, smitten, seeks to insinuate himself into her life and affections, but Fancy's beauty has gained her other suitors, including a rich farmer and the new vicar at the parish church. The vicar, Mr. Maybold, informs the choir that he intends Fancy, an accomplished organ player, to replace their traditional musical accompaniment to Sunday services. The tranter and the rest of the band visit the vicar's home to negotiate, but reluctantly give way to the more modern organ. Meanwhile, Dick seems to win Fancy's heart, and she discovers an effective strategem to overcome her father's objection to the potential marriage. After the two are engaged secretly, however, vicar Maybold impetuously asks Fancy to marry him and lead a life of relative affluence; racked by guilt and temptation, she accepts. The next day, however, at a chance meeting with the as-yet-unaware Dick, Maybold withdraws his proposal; and Fancy, simultaneously, has withdrawn her acceptance. The novel ends with a humorous portrait of Reuben, William, Mr. Day, and the rest of the Mellstock rustics as they celebrate the couple's wedding day. The mood is joyful, but at the end of the final chapter, the reader is reminded that Fancy has married with "a secret she would never tell" (her final flirtation and brief engagement to the vicar). While Under the Greenwood Tree is often seen as Hardy's gentlest and most pastoral novel, this final touch introduces a faint note of melancholy to the conclusion.
989056	/m/03x2c7	Desperate Remedies	Thomas Hardy	1871	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Desperate Remedies a young woman, Cytherea Graye, is forced by poverty to accept a post as lady's maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe, the woman whom her father had loved but had been unable to marry. Cytherea loves a young architect, Edward Springrove, but Miss Adclyffe's machinations, the discovery that Edward is already engaged to a woman whom he does not love, and the urgent need to support a sick brother drive Cytherea to accept the hand of Aeneas Manston, Miss Adclyffe's illegitimate son, whose first wife is believed to have perished in a fire; however, their marriage is almost immediately nullified when it emerges that his first wife had left the inn before it caught fire. Manston's wife, apparently, returns to live with him, but Cytherea, her brother, the local rector, and Edward come to suspect that the woman claiming to be Mrs. Manston is an imposter. It emerges that Manston killed his wife in an argument after she left the inn, and had brought in the imposter to prevent his being prosecuted for murder, as the argument had been heard (but not seen) by a poacher, who suspected Manston of murder and had planned to go to the police if his wife did not turn up alive. In the novel's climax, Manston attempts to kidnap Cytherea and flee, but is stopped by Edward; he later commits suicide in his cell, and Cytherea and Edward marry.
989070	/m/03x2f0	A Pair of Blue Eyes	Thomas Hardy	1873	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book describes the love triangle of a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds. Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man who adores her and with whom she shares a country background. Henry Knight is the respectable, established, older man who represents London society. Elfride finds herself caught in a battle between her heart, her mind and the expectations of those around her - her parents and society. When Elfride's father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter's hand, architect's assistant Stephen Smith, is the son of a mason, he immediately orders him to leave. Elfride, out of desperation, marries a third man, Lord Luxellian. The conclusion finds both suitors travelling together to Elfride, both intent on claiming her hand, and neither knowing either that she is already married or that they are accompanying her corpse and coffin as they travel.
989077	/m/03x2fr	The Hand of Ethelberta	Thomas Hardy		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the beginning of the book, we are told that Ethelberta was raised in humble circumstances but, through her work as a governess, married well at the age of eighteen. Her husband died two weeks after the wedding and, now twenty-one, Ethelberta lives with her mother-in-law, Lady Petherwin. In the three years that have elapsed since the deaths of both her husband and father-in-law, Ethelberta has been treated to foreign travel and further privilege by her benefactress, but restricted from seeing her poor family. The events of the story concern Ethelberta's career as a famous poetess and storyteller as she struggles to support her family and conceal her secret—that her father is a butler. Beautiful, clever, and rational, she easily attracts four very persistent suitors (Mr Julian, Mr Neigh, Mr Ladywell, and Lord Mountclere), but is reluctant to give her much-coveted hand.
989119	/m/03x2m1	The Return of the Native	Thomas Hardy	1878		 The novel takes place entirely in the environs of Egdon Heath, and, with the exception of the epilogue, Aftercourses, covers exactly a year and a day. The narrative begins on the evening of Guy Fawkes Night as Diggory Venn drives slowly across the heath, carrying a hidden passenger in the back of his van. When darkness falls, the country folk light bonfires on the surrounding hills, emphasizing—not for the last time—the pagan spirit of the heath and its denizens. Venn is a reddleman; he travels the country marking flocks of sheep with a red mineral called "reddle", a dialect term for red ochre. Although his trade has stained him red from head to foot, underneath his devilish colouring he is a handsome, shrewd, well-meaning young man. His passenger is a young woman named Thomasin Yeobright, whom Venn is taking home. Earlier that day, Thomasin had planned to marry Damon Wildeve, a local innkeeper known for his fickleness; however, a minor change in disposition as regards to Wildeve delayed the marriage. Thomasin, in distress, ran after the reddleman's van and asked him to take her home. Venn himself is in love with Thomasin, and unsuccessfully wooed her a year or two before. Now, although he knows Wildeve is unworthy of her love, he is so devoted to her that he is willing to help her secure the man of her choice. At length, Venn reaches Bloom's End, the home of Thomasin's aunt, Mrs. Yeobright. She is a good woman, if somewhat proud and inflexible, and she wants the best for Thomasin. In former months she opposed her niece's choice of husband, and publicly forbade the banns; now, since Thomasin has compromised herself by leaving town with Wildeve and returning unmarried, the best outcome Mrs. Yeobright can envision is for the postponed marriage to be duly solemnized as soon as possible. She and Venn both begin working on Wildeve to make sure he keeps his promise to Thomasin. Wildeve, however, is still preoccupied with Eustacia Vye, an exotically beautiful young woman living with her grandfather in a lonely house on Egdon Heath. Eustacia is a black-haired, queenly woman who grew up in Budmouth, a fashionable seaside resort. She holds herself aloof from most of the heathfolk; they, in turn, consider her an oddity, and one or two even think she's a witch. She is nothing like Thomasin, who is sweet-natured. She loathes the heath, yet roams it constantly, carrying a spyglass and an hourglass. The previous year, she and Wildeve were lovers; however, even during the height of her passion for him, she knew she only loved him because there was no better object available. When Wildeve broke off the relationship to court Thomasin, Eustacia's interest in him briefly returned. The two meet on Guy Fawkes night, and Wildeve asks her to run off to America with him. She demurs. Eustacia drops Wildeve when Mrs. Yeobright's son Clym, a successful diamond merchant, returns from Paris to his native Egdon Heath. Although he has no plans to return to Paris or the diamond trade and is, in fact, openly planning to become a schoolmaster for the rural poor, Eustacia sees him as a way to escape the hated heath and begin a grander, richer existence in a glamorous new location. With some difficulty, she arranges to meet Clym, and the two soon fall in love. When Mrs. Yeobright objects, Clym quarrels with her; later, she quarrels with Eustacia as well. When he sees that Eustacia is lost to him, Wildeve marries Thomasin, who gives birth to a daughter the next summer. Clym and Eustacia also marry and move to a small cottage five miles away, where they enjoy a brief period of happiness. The seeds of rancour soon begin to germinate, however: Clym studies night and day to prepare for his new career as a schoolmaster while Eustacia clings to the hope that he'll give up the idea and take her abroad. Instead, he nearly blinds himself with too much reading, then further mortifies his wife by deciding to eke out a living, at least temporarily, as a furze-cutter. Eustacia, her dreams blasted, finds herself living in a hut on the heath, chained by marriage to a lowly labouring man. At this point, Wildeve reappears; he has unexpectedly inherited a large sum of money, and is now in a better position to fulfill Eustacia's hopes. He comes calling on the Yeobrights in the middle of one hot August day and, although Clym is at home, he is fast asleep on the hearth after a gruelling session of furze-cutting. While Eustacia and Wildeve are talking, Mrs. Yeobright knocks on the door; she has decided to pay a courtesy call in the hopes of healing the estrangement between herself and her son. Eustacia looks out at her and then, in some alarm, ushers her visitor out the back door. She hears Clym calling to his mother and, thinking his mother's knocking has awakened him, remains in the garden for a few moments. When Eustacia goes back inside, she finds Clym still asleep and his mother gone. Clym, she now realises, merely cried out his mother's name in his sleep. Mrs Yeobright, it turns out, saw Eustacia looking out the window at her; she also saw Clym's gear by the door, and so knew they were both at home. Now, thinking she has been deliberately barred from her son's home, she miserably begins the long, hot walk home. Later that evening, Clym, unaware of her attempted visit, heads for Bloom's End and on the way finds her crumpled beside the path, dying from an adder's bite. When she expires that night from the combined effects of snake venom and heat exhaustion, Clym's grief and remorse make him physically ill for several weeks. Eustacia, racked with guilt, dares not tell him of her role in the tragedy; when he eventually finds out from a neighbour's child about his mother's visit—and Wildeve's—he rushes home to accuse his wife of murder and adultery. Eustacia refuses to explain her actions; instead, she tells him You are no blessing, my husband and reproaches him for his cruelty. She then moves back to her grandfather's house, where she struggles with her despair while she awaits some word from Clym. Wildeve visits her again on Guy Fawkes night, and offers to help her get to Paris. Eustacia realises that if she lets Wildeve help her, she'll be obliged to become his mistress. She tells him she will send him a signal by night if she decides to accept. Clym's anger, meanwhile, has cooled and he sends Eustacia a letter the next day offering reconciliation. The letter arrives a few minutes too late; by the time her grandfather tries to give it to her, she has already signalled to Wildeve and set off through wind and rain to meet him. She walks along weeping, however, knowing she is about to break her marriage vows for a man who is unworthy of her. Wildeve readies a horse and gig and waits for Eustacia in the dark. Thomasin, guessing his plans, sends Clym to intercept him; she also, by chance, encounters Diggory Venn as she dashes across the heath herself in pursuit of her husband. Eustacia does not appear; instead, she falls or throws herself into nearby Shadwater Weir. Clym and Wildeve hear the splash and hurry to investigate. Wildeve plunges recklessly after Eustacia without bothering to remove his coat, while Clym, proceeding more cautiously, nevertheless is also soon at the mercy of the raging waters. Venn arrives in time to save Clym, but is too late for the others. When Clym revives, he accuses himself of murdering his wife and mother. In the epilogue, Venn gives up being a reddleman to become a dairy farmer. Two years later, Thomasin marries him and they settle down happily together. Clym, now a sad, solitary figure, eventually takes up preaching.
990796	/m/03x7bd	Wise Blood	Flannery O'Connor	1952-05-15	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Recently discharged from service in World War II and surviving on a government pension for unspecified war wounds, Hazel Motes returns to his family home in Tennessee to find it abandoned. Leaving behind a note claiming a chifforobe as his private property, Motes boards a train for Taulkinham. The grandson of a traveling preacher, Motes grew up struggling with doubts regarding salvation and original sin; following his experiences at war, Motes has become an avowed atheist, and intends to spread a gospel of antireligion. Despite his aversion to all trappings of Christianity, he constantly contemplates theological issues and finds himself compelled to purchase a suit and hat that cause others to mistake him for a minister. In Taulkinham, Motes initially takes up residence with Leora Watts, a prostitute, and befriends Enoch Emery, a profane, manic, eighteen-year-old zookeeper forced to come to the city after his abusive father kicked him out of their house. Emery introduces Hazel to the concept of "wise blood," an idea that he has innate, worldly knowledge of what direction to take in life, and requires no spiritual or emotional guidance. Together, Emery and Motes witness a blind preacher and his teenage daughter crash a street vendor's potato peeler demonstration to advertise for their ministry. The preacher introduces himself as Asa Hawks and his daughter as Sabbath Lily; Motes finds himself drawn to the pair, which Hawks attributes to a repressed desire for religious salvation. Angry, Motes begins shouting blasphemies to the crowd and declares that he will found his own, anti-God street preaching ministry. Motes' declarations are lost on everyone except for Emery, who becomes infatuated with the idea. After a bored Leora destroys his hat for her own amusement, Motes moves into the boarding house where Asa and Lily live. Motes becomes fixated on the eerie Lily and begins spending time with her, learning that Asa blinded himself with lye at a revival in order to detach himself from worldly pursuits. Initially intending to seduce Lily in order to corrupt her spiritual purity, Motes discovers that she is in fact a sexually experienced nymphomaniac, which puts him off of sleeping with her. Now skeptical of hers and Asa's entire ministry, Motes slips into Hawks' room one night and finds him without his sunglasses on, with perfectly intact eyes: Hawks had faltered when he had attempted to blind himself because he did not have strong enough faith, and ultimately left the ministry to become a con-artist. His secret found out, Asa flees town, leaving Lily in Motes' care. The two begin a sexual relationship and Motes begins to more aggressively pursue his ministry, purchasing a dilapidated car to use as a mobile pulpit. Meanwhile, Enoch Emery, believing that Motes' church needs a worldly "prophet," breaks into the museum attached to the zoo where he works and steals a mummified dwarf, which he begins keeping under his sink. He ultimately presents it to Lily to give to Motes on his behalf; when Lily appears to Motes cradling it in her arms in a parody of the Madonna and Child, Motes experiences a violent revulsion to the image and destroys the mummy, throwing its remnants out the window. Inspired by Motes' fledgling street ministry, local con-artist Hoover Shoats renames himself Onnie Jay Holy and forms his own ministry, the "Holy Church of Christ Without Christ," which he encourages the disenfranchised to join for a donation of $1. The absurdity amuses passersby and they begin to join as a joke, angering Motes, who wants to legitimately—and freely—spread his message of antireligion. Despite Motes' protests, Holy moves to the next level in promoting his ministry, hiring a homeless, alcoholic man to dress up like Hazel and act as his "Prophet." Enoch, during a rainstorm, seeks refuge under a theater marquee, and learns that as a promotion, a gorilla will be brought to the theater to promote a new jungle movie. An excited Enoch stands in line to shake the gorilla's hand, but is startled to find that the gorilla is actually a man in a costume who, unprovoked, tells Enoch to "go to hell." The incident causes Enoch's "wise blood" to give him some inarticulated revelation, and he seeks out a program of the man in the costume's future appearances. That night, Enoch stalks the man to another theater, stabs him with a sharpened umbrella handle, and steals his costume. Enoch takes the costume out to the woods, where he strips naked and buries his clothes in a shallow "grave" before dressing up as the gorilla. Satisfied with his new appearance, Enoch comes out of the woods and attempts to greet a couple on a date by shaking their hand. Enoch is disappointed when they flee in terror, and finds himself alone on a rock overlooking the night sky of Taukinham. Back in town, Motes angrily watches as Holy begins to grow rich off of his new ministry. One night he follows Holy's "prophet" as he drives home (in a car resembling Hazel's), which he runs off the road; when the man exits the car, the stronger, more forceful Motes threatens him and orders him to strip. The man begins to comply, but Motes is overcome by a sudden rage and repeatedly runs the man over. Exiting the car to ensure he is dead, Motes is startled when the dying man begins confessing his sins to Motes. The next day, Motes is pulled over while leaving Taulkinham by a strange policeman with unnaturally blue eyes, who claims to be citing him for driving without a license. He orders Motes out of the car, then without explanation pushes it off of a nearby cliff, destroying it. The incident, coupled with the false prophet's death, causes Hazel to become sullen and withdrawn. On his walk back to Taulkinham, Motes purchases a bucket and lye and returns to the boarding house. Completing the action that Hawks couldn't finish, he blinds himself with lye. During an extended period of living as an ascetic at the boarding house, he begins walking around with barbed wire wrapped around his torso and shards of glass in his shoes, and after paying for his room and board, he throws away any remaining money from his military pension. Believing that Motes has gone insane, the landlady, Mrs. Flood, hatches a plot to marry him, collect on his government pension, and have him committed to an insane asylum. In attempting to seduce Motes, Mrs. Flood instead falls in love with him. After she suggests to Motes that they marry and she care for him, Motes wanders off into a thunderstorm. He is found three days later, lying in a ditch and suffering from exposure to the elements. Angry at being asked to return what they believe is a mentally-ill indigent, one of the police officers who finds him strikes him in the head with his baton while loading Motes into a police car, exacerbating Motes' rapidly deteriorating condition. Motes dies in the police car on his way back to the boarding house. When the dead Motes is presented to Mrs. Flood, she mistakenly thinks he is still alive. She has him placed in bed and cares for his lifeless corpse, telling him he can live with her for as long as he likes, free of charge. Looking into his empty eye sockets, Mrs. Flood thinks she sees a light twinkling inside them.
990805	/m/03x7ct	The World of Suzie Wong	Richard Mason	1957	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Robert Lomax is a young Englishman who, after completing his National Service, decides to go and work on a plantation in British Malaya. During his time in Malaya Lomax decides as an experiment to pursue a new career as an artist for a year. Lomax visits Hong Kong in search of inspiration for his paintings. He checks into the Nam Kok Hotel, not realizing, at first, that it is an unofficial brothel catering mainly to British and American sailors. However, this only makes the hotel more charming in Lomax's opinion and a better source of subject matter for his paintings. Lomax quickly befriends most of the hotel's bargirls but is most fascinated by the archetypal "hooker with a heart of gold", Suzie Wong. Wong previously introduced herself to him as Wong Mee-ling, a rich virgin whose father had five houses and more cars than she could count, and initially pretended not to recognize him at the hotel. Lomax had originally decided that he would not sleep with any of the bargirls at the hotel because he would be living with them for a long time and did not want to put a strain on their relationships. However, it soon emerges that Suzie Wong is interested in him, not as a customer but as a serious boyfriend. Although Suzie Wong becomes the kept woman of two other men and Robert Lomax briefly becomes attracted to a young British nurse, Lomax and Wong are eventually reunited and the novel ends happily.
992298	/m/03xcln	Riders of the Purple Sage	Zane Grey		{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Riders of the Purple Sage tells the story of Jane Withersteen and her battle to overcome her persecution by members of her polygamous Mormon church, a leader of which, Elder Tull, wants to marry her. Withersteen is supported by a number of Gentile friends, including Bern Venters and Lassiter, the famous gunman and killer of Mormons. Throughout most of the novel she struggles with her "blindness" in seeing the evil nature of her church and its leaders, trying to keep both Venters and Lassiter from killing her adversaries, who are slowly ruining her. Through the adoption of a child, Fay, she abandons her false beliefs and discovers her true love. A second plot strand tells of Venters and his escape to the wilderness with a girl whom he has accidentally shot, cares for, and falls in love with. In the end of the novel Venters and Bess, "the rustler's girl," escape to the East, while Lassiter, Fay, and Jane, pursued by both Mormons and rustlers, escape into a paradise-like valley by toppling a giant balancing rock, forever closing off the only way in or out. The events depicted in Riders of the Purple Sage occur between the mid-spring and the late summer of 1871. Early in Riders of the Purple Sage, we are introduced to Jane Withersteen and the main conflict: the right to befriend a Gentile (in Riders of the Purple Sage, the word Gentile is synonymous with "non-Mormon"; the usage was common in the book). This conflict is best demonstrated in the statement: “Jane Withersteen gazed down the wide purple slope with dreamy and troubled eyes. A rider had just left her and it was his message that held her thoughtful and almost sad, awaiting the churchmen who were coming to resent and attack her right to befriend a Gentile.” (Grey 1912, p.&nbsp;9) We are introduced to Tull, an elder in the church. It was the wish of Jane Withersteen’s father that Jane marry Tull, but Jane refused (saying because she did not love him), causing a string of controversy and leading to her persecution by the local Mormons. Jane’s Gentile friend and rider (cowboy) Bern Venters is "arrested" by Tull and his men, including Jerry Card, who prepare to sentence him (Venters). It is not clear under what authority the mob is acting, however. As is common in the genre, it seems that might makes right. Jane continuously defends Venters, declaring him her best rider. Her defense is worth very little to her churchmen, who refuse to value the opinion of a woman, as shown by: "Tull lifted a shaking finger toward her. 'That'll do from you. Understand, you'll not be allowed to hold this boy [Venters] to a friendship that's offensive to your bishop. Jane Withersteen, your father left you wealth and power. It has turned your head. You haven't yet come to see the place of Mormon women...'"(Grey 1912, p.&nbsp;14). It is here where we first hear mention of Lassiter. Venters uses Lassiter’s name to express the waves of terror that Lassiter had been known to cause. Ironically, at the moment when Venters mentions Lassiter’s name, the actual Lassiter is seen approaching in the distance by Tull’s men.(Grey 1912, pp.&nbsp;14–15) Upon his arrival, Lassiter speaks briefly to Jane without introducing himself. Lassiter expresses his trust in the word of women, at which point Tull rebukes him telling him not to meddle in Mormon affairs. (Grey 1912, p.&nbsp;18) It is at this point that Tull’s men begin to take Venters away, when Venters, realizing who he is, screams "Lassiter!", at which point Tull understands that this man is the infamous Lassiter and flees, leaving Venters. By the second chapter we have been introduced to many of the major characters in Riders of the Purple Sage. The statement, “'If by some means I can keep him here a few days, a week−−he will never kill another Mormon,' she mused. 'Lassiter!...I shudder when I think of that name, of him. But when I look at the man I forget who he is — I almost like him. I remember only that he saved Bern. He has suffered. I wonder what it was−−did he love a Mormon woman once? How splendidly he championed us poor misunderstood souls! Somehow he knows−−much.'” explains early Jane’s intent to transform Lassiter to be less resentful of Mormons. Lassiter inquires as to the location of Millie Erne's grave, to which a transfixed Jane agrees to take him. Venters later tells Jane he must leave her. When she protests, Venters delivers this statement: "...Tull is implacable. You ought to see from his intention today that...but you can't see. Your blindness...your damned religion! Jane, forgive me...I'm sore within and something rankles. Well, I fear that invisible hand [of Mormon power in the region] will turn its hidden work to your ruin.", showing that Venters could see far into the future, and although Jane rebukes his statement, he is indeed correct.(Grey 1912, p.&nbsp;28) Jane’s red herd is rustled shortly afterward and Venters ventures to track it and return it to Jane. Bern finds the herd, but, in his travels, wages a gun battle with two of Oldring’s rustlers, killing one and managing to wound Oldring’s notorious Masked Rider. Upon further examination, he removes the mask and shirt of the wounded rider and learns that the Masked Rider is a young woman named Bess whom he believes had been abused by Oldring. Venters experiences a large amount of guilt about shooting a girl and decides that it is his duty to save her.(Grey 1912, pp.&nbsp;63–65) It is through this guilt that Venters discovers Surprise Valley and Balancing Rock, where he takes Bess, the girl he has found. Bess gradually gains health and begins to fall in love with Venters who begins to fall in love with Bess. Each explain their individual stories ambiguously, but through Venters’ dedicated care for Bess, the pair forms a mutual love that leads to their resolve to marry. Bess had also discovered the truth concerning Oldring’s rustlers, who only rustled cattle to disguise their true lifestyle of surviving off gold in the streams and business deals with the Mormons. Venters then determines that there is a need to attain supplies, thus warranting a trip back to Cottonwoods. On his trip to Cottonwoods, Venters sees Jane Withersteen’s prize horses being stolen. He kills the thieves and retrieves the horses for Jane, but unfortunately loses his horse, Wrangle. Jane’s horses are returned to her, and are locked in the entry hall to Withersteen house. Venters officially breaks his friendship with Jane at this time. He goes into the village and proclaimed that he was breaking his friendship and leaving. After he leaves, Jane’s other herd gets stolen. Jane at first pretends to love Lassiter – whom she knows had come to the Utah village to avenge the death of his sister Milly Erne – to prevent him from murdering the Mormon Elders that she knew were guilty. However, through their struggles against the plights calculated against Jane, these two characters also grow to love each other. The climax in their love occurs when Jane's adopted daughter Fay is kidnapped and Lassiter kills Bishop Dyer while risking his own life. Towards the end of the story, the four main characters – Venters, Bess, Lassiter, and Jane – realize that they can no longer safely stay in Utah. Lassiter convinces Jane to prepare to leave with him, and Lassiter is able to determine the name of a Mormon who contributed to the ruin of Milly and Jane implicates her father in the proselytizing of Milly. In a state of shock, Jane packs and is ready to leave when Lassiter comes back. Meanwhile, in Surprise Valley, Venters and Bess are preparing to leave (at the same time as Jane and Lassiter start departing), except on burros. Lassiter sets fire to Withersteen House and flees on horseback with Jane. They encounter Venters and Bess in travel. Before they part, Lassiter explains that Bess is not really Bess Oldring, but actually the lost daughter of Milly Erne, Elizabeth Erne. Jane gives Venters her horses, Venters and Bess gallop for Venters’ Illinois home, and Lassiter and Jane continue on their way to find refuge in Venters’ valley paradise. On the way, Lassiter rescues Fay, but they are pursued to Surprise Valley, causing Jane to shout to Lassiter "Roll the Stone" and create an avalanche, shutting the outlet to Deception Pass. (Grey uses the term "forever", but this is obviously not correct. Grey describes the "stone" as chiseled by the ancient cliff-dwellers using stone tools. Thus, it should be possible at some point to chisel an opening when Jane and Lassiter decide it is safe. Also, Venters and Bess discuss returning in 10 years and he mentions returning with rope to climb the cliffs.) Unlike many Western novels, which are often straightforward and stylized morality tales, Riders of the Purple Sage is a long novel with a complex plot that develops in many threads. The story is set in the cañon country of southern Utah in 1871. Jane Withersteen, a Mormon-born spinster of 28, has inherited a valuable ranch and spring from her father, which is coveted by other Mormons in the community. When Jane refuses to marry one of the (polygamous) Mormon elders and instead befriends Venters, a young Gentile rider, the Mormons begin to persecute her openly. Meanwhile, Lassiter, a notorious gunman, arrives at the Withersteen ranch in search of the grave of his long-lost sister, and stays on as Jane's defender while Venters is on the trail of a gang of rustlers that includes a mysterious Masked Rider. Jane is intent on preventing Lassiter from doing further violence to Mormons and is eventually driven off her ranch as the persecution escalates, but she and Lassiter fall in love, Lassiter solves the mystery of his sister's death and the fate of her child, the Masked Rider is unmasked, and Venters finds his own romance. Along the way, Jane also finds time to adopt Fay Larkin, a young Gentile orphan who accompanies her and Lassiter at the end of the story Riders of the Purple Sage was written in 1912 and is set in a remote part of Utah after the influx of Mormon settlers (1847-1857) as a backdrop for the plot (1871). The Mormons had been centered Kirtland, Ohio in the 1830s and Zane Grey would have been aware of the Mormon sect given that he grew up in Zanesville, Ohio. Plural marriage was only officially prohibited by the Mormons with the issuing of the First and Second Manifesto in 1890 and 1904 respectively, enacted primarily to allow the territory to attain statehood. In 1871, mainstream American society found plural marriage offensive. Even after the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act was passed in 1862, the practice had continued. Therefore, Zane Grey described the distaste of the institution through Lassiter in 1912, some 22 years after the practice had officially ended.
992507	/m/03xczt	Dragondrums	Anne McCaffrey	1979-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dragondrums is the coming of age story of Piemur, a small, quick, clever apprentice at Harper Hall. When Piemur's clear treble voice changes at puberty, his place among the Harpers is no longer certain. He is sent to the drum towers to learn drumming, the primary method of long-distance communication on Pern for non-dragonriders, while his voice settles. There he has to deal with the jealousy and bullying of the other drumming apprentices. When Masterharper Robinton secretly asks Piemur to be his apprentice, Piemur begins journeying through Pern, gathering information and running discreet errands for the Masterharper. In his adventures throughout Pern, Piemur has only his knowledge and wits to deal with a cruel Lord Holder and rogue dragonriders. He Impresses one of the coveted fire-lizards&nbsp;– a gold he names Farli&nbsp;– as a companion, discovers his place in the world, and earns journeyman status among the Harpers. The events in Dragondrums take place after Dragonsinger and are contiguous with some events in The White Dragon, which discusses characters and events elsewhere on Pern.
992863	/m/02p3dsc	Virtual Light	William Gibson	1994-10-06	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The plot centers around Chevette Washington, a young bicycle messenger who lives in the ad-hoc, off-the-grid community that has grown on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake. Chevette, on a whim, steals a pair of dark-rimmed glasses from a man at a party because she is offended by his demeanor. Soon after, she realizes that the glasses have unlikely importance, as security company henchmen begin tracking and following her. Among the pursuers are Svobodov and Orlovsky, two Russian immigrants who reside in San Francisco and are employed as cops, as well as Loveless, a ruthless corporate hitman with gold incisors. The glasses contain plans by a powerful corporation to rebuild San Francisco entirely using nanotechnology, and for that reason, they are highly coveted and present a danger to the person who possesses them. Meanwhile, Berry Rydell, a former cop turned private security agent, is contracted to recover the pair of glasses for Lucius Warbaby, an intimidating and presumably successful "skip-tracer", a sort of bondsman/bounty hunter. When Rydell is given the mission, he is not informed of the significance of the glasses and the information they contain. Eventually, the plot climaxes when Rydell, Loveless, Warbaby, Orlovsky, and Svobodov all catch up with Chevette. The cops want the glasses, as does Rydell. Realizing the inherent danger of the situation, Rydell is forced to decide whom to side with. He decides to fight off Orlovsky and Svobodov and shirk his agreement with Warbaby. Instead, Rydell runs off with Chevette, and they embark upon a wild and treacherous journey in which they must remain one step ahead of their enemies, who have all the advantages of wealth and technology on their side. A subplot also focuses on a romantic relationship between Chevette and Rydell, which is initially restricted because of the nature of their circumstances, but is eventually allowed to flourish. Another subplot focuses on a Japanese sociologist named Shinya Yamazaki, who is currently studying the bridge dwellers and the history of their settlement. The subplot largely focuses on his interactions with Skinner, an old man who lives in a shack high atop one of the bridge's support pylons, who happens to share his home with Chevette.
992864	/m/02p3dsr	Idoru	William Gibson	1997-09-04	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 In the post Tokyo/San Francisco earthquake world of the early 21st century, Colin Laney is referred to agents of the aging mega-rock star Rez of the musical group Lo/Rez for a job using his peculiar talent of sifting through vast amounts of mundane data to find "nodal points" of particular relevance. Rez has claimed to want to marry a synthetic personality named Rei Toei, the Idoru (Japanese Idol) of the title, which is apparently impossible and therefore questioned by his loyal staff, particularly by his head of security, Keith Blackwell. Blackwell believes that someone is manipulating Rez, and wants Laney to find out who. Simultaneously, the Seattle chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club is discussing exactly the same topic of the unbelievable marriage of human and AI construct. Fourteen year old Chia Pet McKenzie is chosen by the group to go to Tokyo and meet with the Tokyo chapter to find out what is really happening. On the flight she meets a woman named Maryalice, who dupes her into unwittingly carrying a contraband item through customs in Tokyo. Laney accepts his new position warily, but is conflicted throughout much of the novel by his past involvement with a powerful infotainment organization, "SlitScan", which thrives on destroying media personalities by exposing their secrets. In the course of this earlier job he feels responsible for the death of an innocent party. His talent had allowed him a foreshadowing of a probable suicide but SlitScan had tried to limit Laney's role to passive observer. However, Laney's conscience snapped and he attempted at the last moment to stop the suicide, but instead became mired in a scandal. Yet another organization claiming to be a media watchdog steps in and tries to pull Laney away from SlitScan to use his story to expose SlitScan’s involvement in illegal spying. This goes awry and Laney is left high and dry and alone. Further complicating Laney’s life is that Kathy Torrance, his controller from SlitScan, is attempting to blackmail him with false evidence into betraying his current employers, Lo/Rez, by exposing whatever secret she thinks they are hiding. Chia, after being brought to the club run by Maryalice’s boyfriend Eddie, is helped to escape by one of the club’s employees who thinks (rightfully) that she is in danger. Unfortunately, she takes with her the contraband which was slipped into her luggage. When she meets with the local Tokyo chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club she is disappointed by their seeming indifference to the impending “wedding” and they inform her this is merely an unfounded rumor. Disbelieving, Chia decides to investigate on her own and seeks the help of her host Mitsuko’s brother Masahiko, an Otaku who is a member of the hacker community the “Walled City” (a virtual community based on the Kowloon Walled City). Masahiko and Chia embark on a search for the truth to the marriage of Rez and Rei by going to the club where Rez announced the event, though the club no longer exists in the rapidly changing Tokyo scene. Masahiko is informed by other denizens of Walled City that he is being watched, both on the net and physically at his (and his sister’s) home. Chia admits to Masahiko that she has found something in her luggage and that might be what the unknown men are seeking. The contraband turns out to be a highly illegal nanotech assembler, a device used for high-speed material fabrication, which Eddie smuggled in on behalf of the Russian Mafia. Chia and Masahiko go to a love hotel to try to hide from the searchers. It is here that all the parties converge. When Chia and Masahiko link into the net, the Idoru (Rei) manifests herself in Chia's Venice simulation after she realizes that Chia is playing a part in her evolution. Maryalice finds the hotel through their taxi record, letting herself into their room. Lamenting her recent breakup with Eddie over the botched smuggling operation, she tells them that giving back the device won’t stop them from being killed as witnesses. Masahiko and Chia go onto the Net to get the help of Chia’s friend Zona Rosa, who claims to be the leader of a Mexico City “girl gang” and from the Walled City who are protecting the distributed system of which Masahiko is a part. In short order, Maryalice’s boyfriend Eddie shows up with a member of the Russian Mafia to reclaim the nanotech device. This prompts Zona Rosa (who has been viewing events over the net) into making a terrible personal sacrifice to save Chia. Events rapidly come to a head when Rez and Blackwell arrive. Laney sees events occurring (and about to occur) in the datastreams and rushes with Lo/Rez’s support crew to the love hotel. A deal is struck and most of the parties are accommodated. The ultimate resolution is left open as to whether the Rez/Rei union is made possible with the nanotechnology that they have obtained.
994965	/m/03xm97	Blackwood Farm	Anne Rice	2002-10-29	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The main character is Tarquin "Quinn" Blackwood, a child of the Blackwood clan, which is a powerful and old family in New Orleans. Tarquin is haunted by a mysterious spirit named Goblin, who is attached to him spiritually. He realizes that he is unable to defeat this creature alone. Risking his life, Quinn embarks upon a quest to enlist the aid of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Lestat, after a fashion, agrees to help Quinn. The novel develops as Tarquin recounts tales of his growing up, his youth, his family, and even his forced conversion and acceptance of the Dark Gift by the hermaphrodite Petronia. His stories allow Lestat to better understand the reach and power of Goblin, who continues to haunt Tarquin. Lestat also discovers that Tarquin is connected to the Mayfair clan of witches, which also makes New Orleans its home. This information, combined with his failure to defeat Goblin, forces Lestat to request aid from Merrick. Merrick, a powerful Mayfair witch-turned-vampire, agrees to help. It is revealed that the now-bloodthirsty Goblin, who looks exactly like Tarquin, is in fact a baby boy's spirit &mdash; the spirit of Tarquin's twin brother, who died only days after being born. The child did not leave this world; he is bound to Tarquin and is relentlessly jealous to experience what Tarquin does. Merrick fashions a ritual, using the corpse of the dead twin, to exorcise Goblin. During the ceremony, Merrick joins herself with the flame and the corpse. She carries her spirit and that of the child to the Light and perishes. Lestat is bereft of Merrick, whom he adored; but he now has Quinn, a new vampire to cherish. de:Blackwood Farm es:El santuario fr:Le Domaine Blackwood it:Il vampiro di Blackwood pl:Posiadłość Blackwood pt:A Fazenda Blackwood ru:Чёрная камея
995520	/m/03xnrp	Evil Under the Sun	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A quiet holiday at a secluded hotel in Devon is all that Hercule Poirot wants, but amongst his fellow guests is a beautiful and vain woman who, seemingly oblivious to her own husband, revels in the attention of another woman's husband. When she is found strangled by powerful hands, were those hands male?
999653	/m/03y1qp	Horse Under Water	Len Deighton			 The plot centres on retrieving items from a Type XXI U-boat sunk off the Portuguese coast in the last days of World War II. Initially, the items are forged British and American currency, for financing a revolution in Portugal on the cheap. Later, it switches to heroin (the "Horse" of the title), and eventually it is revealed that the true interest is in the "Weiss list" &mdash; a list of Britons prepared to help the Third Reich set up a puppet government in Britain, should Germany prevail. Thrown into the mix is secret "ice melting" technology, which could be vital to the missile submarines then beginning to hide under the Arctic sea ice.
999843	/m/03y2kc	The Neutronium Alchemist	Peter F. Hamilton	1997-10-20	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The voidhawk Oenone reaches Jupiter and docks with one of the 4,250 habitats orbiting the planet. Whilst medical assistance and trauma counselling begin to help heal Syrinx, the information from Laton and the events on Atlantis is transmitted to the Jovian Consensus. As they become aware of the scale of the crisis, the Edenists immediately switch their economy to a war footing, rendering Jupiter space impregnable to attack. They also develop personality-query systems which should render all Edenists, voidhawks and habitats immune to possession. They detach a quarter of the voidhawk fleet and assign it to reinforce the Confederation Navy. The Consensus also summons an emergency session of the Confederation Assembly on its meeting world of Avon. On Avon the Confederation Assembly is stunned to learn of the threat from the possessed. The Confederation Navy shuts down all interstellar flights to contain the threat and goes to its highest state of alert. In a startling move, the Tyrathca immediately cut themselves off from all contact with humanity for the duration of the crisis. The Kiint ambassador reveals that, many thousands of years ago, they also suffered a 'possession crisis', as the secret of death is one that is eventually discovered by all sentient races. They claim that their solution to the crisis is not applicable to humanity, who must find their own way. Alkad Mzu departs from the blackhawk Udat, leaving behind a virus in its jump system which causes the destruction of Udat whilst making a wormhole transit. She does this both to protect knowledge of her whereabouts and also as revenge: Udat was one of the blackhawks which crippled the Beezling just before the Garissan Genocide. On the planet Norfolk, the possessed succeed in overrunning most of the planet. Louise Kavanagh's father, Grant, is possessed and gives up his home estate to forces loyal to Quinn Dexter. However, Dexter's attempts to have Louise and her sister Genevieve possessed are thwarted by another possessed, who assists Louise and Genevieve in reaching the nearest aerodrome. He reveals his name - Fletcher Christian - and vows to protect them from those who mean them harm. He bemoans the lack of chivalry and honour among his fellow returnees. They flee to the capital, which is in danger of falling, and briefly find refuge with Louise's cousins, the Hewsons. One of the cousins, Roberto, attempts to rape Louise, but fortunately is thwarted. After this, with her parents declared missing, Louise takes control of the Kavanagh fortune and is able to use this to book passage on a starship fleeing the system for Earth. They end up on a ship owned by SII (Mars' national company) and eventually reach High York, an asteroid in the O'Neill Halo in orbit above Earth. Christian's true nature is detected and he, Louise and Genevieve are all arrested. On Ombey Ralph Hiltch assists the local police and military in tracking down the possessed from Lalonde. Princess Kirsten authorises the use of lethal force and, in a move which establishes a precedent across the Confederation, the planet's own strategic defence platforms are turned against the possessed, destroying an aircraft and several buses carrying them. One bus manages to get onto Mortonridge, a hilly peninsula, and the entire human population of nearly two million is possessed. SD platforms and the military manage to seal off the peninsula, containing the possessed in this one area. The leader of the possessed, Annette Ekelund, agrees to a cessation of hostilities until a more permanent solution to the crisis is found. However, the Kulu Kingdom is unwilling to look inactive whilst its citizens are in danger, and contingency plans are made. Hiltch visits Kulu itself and is shocked to learn that there was an outbreak of possession in Nova Kong, the capital, but it was put down hard by the authorities. King Alastair agrees to authorise an alliance with the Edenists, who will provide bitek soldiers to help retake Mortonridge. They know now that the possessed fear zero-tau and plan to use thousands of zero-tau pods to force the possessed to give up their bodies. The campaign will likely be bloody, but the Confederation badly needs a victory. Joshua Calvert and the crew of the Lady MacBeth return to Tranquillity with news of events on Lalonde. Kelly Tirrel becomes an overnight celebrity for her reports of the conflict on Lalonde, and the children rescued from the planet are well-treated in the habitat's children's home. Ione asks Joshua Calvert to take his ship and pursue Alkad Mzu and Udat wherever they have gone. Ione believes that the Alchemist may pose as great a threat as the possessed. Joshua reluctantly agrees. Before he departs, Father Horst Elwes relates to him a story about he was able to 'exorcise' a possessing spirit on Lalonde and tells Joshua to have faith. On New California a few possessed manage to get loose on the planet, but they are disorganised and unable to make much headway. One of the possessed appears to be a raving lunatic, but as the days pass the possessing soul's presence in a normally-functioning brain restore his sanity and his memory. The possessing soul turns out to be Al Capone, a famed gangster from 20th century Chicago. Capone organises the possessed and they take over the planet in a matter of weeks. Capone realises they need to keep the planet's economy and starship-building capability going to defend themselves from any counter-attack, so many citizens are spared from possession (the act of which interferes with electrical systems nearby) as long as they contribute to the expansion of Capone's 'Organisation'. The interstellar superstar Jezebelle (a singer and 'mood-fantasy' artist) is on the planet at the time and she rapidly becomes Capone's lover, but also proves to be a valuable source of intelligence on the Confederation. The Organisation spreads to another planet and its ships begin causing problems for the Confederation Navy. First Admiral Samual Aleksandrovich learns that the Organisation's next conquest will be the planet Toi Hoi and develops a plan to intercept and destroy their fleet there. Quinn Dexter leaves Norfolk and travels to Earth, hoping to infiltrate the arcologies there. However, Earth's defences and security measures are far too strong for him to penetrate. He instead travels to a planet called Nyvan, one of the earliest colonies founded before the policy of ethnic-streaming colonies came into effect. As a result the planet is locked in a permanent state of cold war. Dexter effectively takes over one of the orbital asteroids. During his conquest he discovers it is possible to shift his body into a 'ghost realm', where he finds more dead souls. They claim that when someone dies only some are trapped in a beyond, whilst others become locked in a ghost-like state. Although he has no use for the ghosts, Dexter realises he can use this new ability to break through Earth's security again. In the Valisk habitat, the possessed, aided by Dariat, become organised and swiftly take over much of the habitat. Rubra, the personality controlling the habitat, tries to reason with Dariat to little avail. Kiera, the leader of the possessed on Valisk (and the possessor of Marie Skibbow), travels to New California and is able to secure an alliance with the Organisation. Thanks to Dariat's knowledge of bitek systems, he is able to arrange for several dozen blackhawks to be possessed. The resulting 'hellhawks' become a valuable asset and Kiera is able to sell their skills to the Organisation. However, Dariat becomes gradually opposed to the possessed, due to their brutal tactics and penchant for destruction. He decides to side with Rubra, helps some of the non-possessed population to evacuate, and then merges his personality with Rubra's in the neural strata. The resulting blast of energy ends the threat of the possessed but also rips Valisk out of the material universe and into a strange realm of grey mists. Dariat is horrified to wake up and discover that he is now a ghost. At Jupiter, Syrinx recovers from her injuries. She visits Eden, the original habitat, where the personality of Wing-Tsit Chong, Edenism's founder, lives on in the habitat's neural strata. With his guidance, Syrinx is able to overcome both the trauma of her experience and also her prejudice against Adamists. Syrinx and Oenone begin flying again and are assigned to a Confederation Navy squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Meredith Saldana, which is assigned to the upcoming Toi Hoi interception mission. Saldana's squadron travels to Tranquillity, where Ione Saldana agrees - reluctantly - to let them use the habitat as a staging ground for the attack. On Trafalgar, the Confederation Navy HQ asteroid orbiting Avon, a possessed prisoner demands a hearing to confirm her human rights and stop the Navy personnel running tests on her. However, she nearly escapes during the hearing and manages to have several other people possessed, one of whom has knowledge of the Toi Hoi operation. She re-kills this individual, and then surrenders to the staff. At New California the possessing soul from Trafalgar manages to get reincarnated and warns Capone of the Toi Hoi ambush. Capone prepares his own plan in response. In Tranquillity the Kiint researchers at the Ruin Ring project become intrigued by reports reaching them about a Tyrathca religion they previously did not know about (when one of the children from Lalonde tells a Kiint youth about it). They acquire the relevant data about the Sleeping God from Kelly Tirrel. Tranquillity observes this and Tirrel gives Ione a copy of the data. Ione is puzzled - the Tyrathca are a notably unimaginative species and have no need for supernatural deities - but her advisors suggest that the Sleeping God is actually a real entity who was able to aid the Tyrathca centuries ago, and may be able to aid humanity now against the threat of the possessed. Joshua Calvert's hunt for Mzu and the Alchemist takes him to several worlds and asteroid settlements. On Ayachuko asteroid, in the Dorados, he is shocked to discover that he has a half-brother, Liol, the result of a liaison between Joshua's father Marcus and a local woman nearly thirty years ago. With possessed loosed on Ayachucko, Joshua agrees to let Liol depart with them. Joshua is attacked by a possessed but his attempt to 'exorcise' him as per Elwes' instruction fails, apparently because the possessing spirit was a Sunni Muslim and has no fear of Joshua's crucifix. Joshua and his crew manage to escape. Mzu's trail leads them to Nyvan. Joshua's pursuit is hampered by agents from the Edenist Intelligence service (led by Samual) and the Kulu External Security Agency (led by Monica Foulkes) who have surprisingly joined forces in their own pursuit of Mzu. Possessed loosed on Nyvan have also learned of Mzu's weapon and are searching for her. The pursuit culminates in a showdown at an iron yard. Joshua and his companions survive thanks to the intervention of a man with strange abilities named Dick Keaton, and are able to extract Mzu safely, although they also have to pick up Monica and Samual. Dexter destroys an orbital asteroid with nuclear bombs, causing a rain of asteroid chunks to fall on and annihilate the planet's biosphere. Satisfied with the chaos he has caused, Dexter departs for Earth. He abandons his comrades, slips into the ghost realm to evade security, and reappears in the space elevator descending towards the planet. With knowledge of the Confederation's Toi Hoi assault fleet grouping and refueling at Tranquility, the Organisation fleet, aided by a large number of hellhawks, stages a massive assault on Tranquillity, surrounding the habitat and its few blackhawk mercenary and Confederation Navy defenders. They demand Tranquillity's immediate surrender. When Ione hesitates, they launch over 5,000 anti-matter weapons at the habitat. Later, when Lady Macbeth arrives at Mirchusko, they find a vast radioactive dead zone where Tranquillity used to be. However, there is insufficient debris or disintegrated matter in orbit to suggest the station was destroyed. Its fate is unknown. The story concludes in The Naked God.
999846	/m/03y2l3	The Naked God	Peter F. Hamilton	1999-10-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jay Hilton, one of the surviving children from Lalonde, is awoken when Tranquillity falls under attack by the Organisation and its hellhawk allies. With the habitat in imminent danger of destruction, the Kiint personnel immediately evacuate by triggering their 'Emergency Exodus Facility', personal wormholes that transport them to the real Kiint home star system. An infant Kiint, Haile, decides that she can't let Jay be killed in the attack and activates the Emergency Exodus Facility on her, removing her from Tranquillity as well, to the displeasure of her parents, Nang and Lieria. Jay finds herself on a planet which appears to be just one in a necklace of hundreds orbiting a star in the same orbit. Haile's parents reluctantly confirm that this, the Kiint home system, is actually in another galaxy, and the supposed Kiint homeworld of Jobis was actually just a single scientific outpost. They regretfully announce that Tranquillity has either been destroyed or forced to surrender to the possessed. The Jovian Consensus is placed on an emergency alert when a colossal wormhole opens above Jupiter. They are shocked when the habitat Tranquillity appears. Ione Saldana reveals that Michael Saldana feared that whatever destroyed the Laymil might return to its system, and gave Tranquillity the means to escape that threat. The Lady Macbeth journeys to Trafalgar and there reveal the events of their mission to the First Admiral, who is happy that the Alchemist has been destroyed and Alkad Mzu is no longer at large. After thoroughly debriefing the crew, he allows them to travel on to Tranquillity. A meeting is held and Ione proposes that Tranquillity and the Jovian Consensus join forces to track down the Tyrathca Sleeping God and see what use it could be in the fight with the possessed. Syrinx and the voidhawk Oenone volunteer for the mission and Joshua Calvert agrees to take the Lady Macbeth on the mission. The Confederation Navy and the Kulu ESA also agree to support the venture. Because the mission will involve travelling several thousand light-years far outside Confederation territory, Lady Macbeth is authorised to use antimatter on this mission. The Confederation Navy has located the antimatter production facility that is fuelling Capone's Organisation. They allow Lady Macbeth to fuel up and then destroy it. An Organisation hellhawk observing the attack notes that the Lady Macbeth jumped to the Tyrathca prime colony world in Confederation space, and delivers that information to the Organisation. Several Organisation ships are despatched to pursue and investigate. On Ombey, the Liberation Campaign begins with a massive assault on Mortonridge by tens of thousands of regular troops and Edenist bitek soldiers. Although the campaign is costly, ground is won and thousands of the possessed are forcibly ejected from their hosts. Eventually the possessed fall back on a small patch of land at the tip of the peninsula and by combining their energistic powers are able to teleport the entire patch of land into a strange grey realm. The possessed and the attacking soldiers agree to a truce until they can work out how to survive in this strange place. The Valisk habitat is trapped in yet another realm, nicknamed "the dark continuum". Energistic power is weak in this place, and entropic decay is far more powerful than normal. As a result, Valisk's energy is being lost into the 'dark continuum', as it has been named. Even worse, what energy it does manage to generate attracts the attention of monstrous, immortal, shape-shifting predators known as Orgathé, who attack the habitat with enthusiasm to feed on its power. There is a gravitational incline in this dimension which leads to a horrifying place called the Mélange, a liquid nitrogen-cold sea of beings trapped in this continuum, unable to accumulate enough energy to escape. Dariat escapes from Valisk in an escape pod with Tolton before it hits the Mélange and explodes, but they ponder that it is only a matter of time until the pod runs out of fuel and dissolves, forcing them to join the tortured beings outside. The Confederation Navy research team discovers a possible way of killing the possessed, an 'anti-memory' device that will eradicate both the possessed and the possessing soul. The First Admiral is horrified about the weapon and even more horrified when President Haakar, panicking as the possession crisis spreads to more worlds, authorises its development. The scientists hope to create a more powerful version that will obliterate all of the tens of billions of souls in the beyond, which becomes a controversial idea among the Confederation government. Although the first weapon is completed, further research is suspended when a lone Organisation suicide attacker detonates an antimatter bomb right outside the habitat, irradiating it and destroying dozens of ships outside. The internal staff survive, but have to transfer their personnel and equipment to Avon. Furious, the First Admiral orders that the Organisation be permanently eradicated. A fleet of over a thousand Confederation warships mobilises and attacks the worlds the Organisation have conquered, forcing them to withdraw back to New California. The other worlds, freed from the need to supply the Organisation with materials, are shifted out of the universe by their possessed populations. Joshua Calvert and Syrinx begin their search for the Naked God by visiting the only known Tyrathca planet in the Confederation, breaking into the abandoned arkship in orbit around the planet, to determine the origin of the Tyrathca, whose original home planet appears to be on the far side of the Orion Nebula. On the way, however, the Tyrathca break into the arkship as well and pursue the expeditionary team, who also find evidence in the arkship's systems of prior use by the Kiint. The humans manage to escape by duplicating the manoeuvre of the blackhawk Udat, swallowing into a hollow chamber in the arkship and swallowing out again to extricate the expeditionary team. On Earth, Louise Kavanagh returns to London after warning Banneth of Quinn Dexter's intention of killing her. It is eventually revealed that Quinn's actions had been discovered by a secret Govcentral security council named B7. They are in contact with Banneth and attempt to use her as bait, in order to lure Dexter out of hiding and then hit the building he is in with an orbital gamma laser. Quinn sees through their trap though, and arranges for a double of himself to be in the building while it is destroyed, thereby killing Banneth and the double, and making B7 think he is dead. His plan is foiled, though, by a person calling himself "a friend of Carter McBride" (the boy Laton killed in order to expose Quinn's cult on Lalonde), and B7 is once again on Quinn's tracks. Louise is summoned by a member of B7, the Western Europe Supervisor. He reveals to her the truth about B7: it is a consortium of incredibly wealthy individuals whose "financial institutions own a healthy percentage of the human race". They believe themselves to be immortal, as they use affinity to transfer their memories and personality into clone bodies in order to avoid death, in much the same way as Edenists (although the Kiint reveal that souls are different from "memory constructs", and that therefore they actually died every time their old bodies were destroyed, with their souls moving on). He also reveals that they were the actual cause behind the schism between Adamists and Edenists, which began as their attempt to keep bitek technology all for themselves (a plan that was foiled when Wing-Tsit Chong created Edenism). He arranges for Louise to meet up with Fletcher Christian in London. From there they would find Dexter and use the anti-memory device to kill him forever. The operation fails, and Louise finally confronts Quinn at St Paul's Cathedral in London, where he attempts to bring the Night to the Universe by transporting the Mélange to Earth (an act that even the Kiint find disturbing). He nearly succeeds in doing so, despite the efforts of Fletcher, Dariat (who, along with Tolton, his friend, was transported back to the Universe when Quinn summoned the Mélange) and a returned-from-the-beyond Powell Manani (the friend of Carter McBride). The Lady Macbeth and Oenone continue on to the Tyrathca home system, now swallowed by a red giant. At first they believe the system is uninhabited, until they catch sight of dozens of habitats ringing the Red Giant. They contact the nearest and make contact with the Mosdva, who turn out to have once been the Tyrathca's slaves, being used to mine and build the ships and habitats since they were more versatile in zero gravity. The Lady Macbeth's arrival leads to a war breaking out amongst the dominions on the habitat, which ends when they gain a Tyrathca star map, and give the dominions their FTL technology. After a lengthy journey they find the Sleeping God a naked singularity, supplied by controlling vacuum energy. The Naked God was originally created to remove its creator race from the current universe, and was built to help sentient entities. It reveals, among other things, that souls remain trapped in the beyond because they are unable to accept death, in which case they would be transported to the "omega point", the end of the Universe, from where they would proceed to create a new one. Joshua Calvert uses the god to return every stolen Confederation planet to the Universe, before moving them out of the Galaxy, altering the wormholes to remove the possessed. He also makes Quinn into a vessel for all of the human souls in the beyond, in order to transport them all to the Omega point instead of letting them suffer in eternal purgatory. He then gives himself affinity and returns to Tranquility, marries young girl Louise and settles down to live on Norfolk. Numerous plot strands are also tied up in the closing pages, revealing Dariat's reunion with Anastasia in the realm beyond the beyond, so to speak, the fate of the members of B7 and Andre Duchamp (who Joshua ironically strands on a penal planet), Ralph Hiltch's 'conversion' to Edenism, Syrinx reawakening Erik Thakrar and the settling of the Hiltons on Norfolk.
999996	/m/03y389	Airframe	Michael Crichton	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens aboard Hong Kong-based Transpacific Airlines Flight 545, a Norton Aircraft-manufactured N-22 wide-body aircraft, flying from Hong Kong to Denver. An incident occurs on board the plane about a half-hour west of the California coast and the pilot requests an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport, stating that the plane encountered "severe turbulence" in flight. The pilot gives air traffic control conflicting information regarding the type and severity of injuries, but does inform them that crew members were hurt and "three passengers are dead." The incident seems inexplicable. The N-22 is a plane with an excellent safety record and the pilot is highly trained, making the possibility of human error unlikely. Passengers and flight crew give concurring accounts of the circumstances of the disaster, and the most likely explanation turns out to be a technical problem that was thought to have been fixed years before. As the vice-president of Quality Assurance at Norton Aircraft, it is Casey Singleton's job to try to protect the design's (and Norton's) reputation, especially since it jeopardizes a crucial aircraft purchase deal with China. However, not only does she have to deal with a ratings-hungry media intent on assigning blame for the incident, she must also deal with Bob Richman, an arrogant and suspicious junior executive assigned to assist her. All the while, she has to navigate the murky politics of the factory union and try and soothe the tempers of disgruntled Norton workers who fear the fallout from the incident will bankrupt the company and cost them their jobs. As Casey investigates further, she discovers a deeper plan at work. Bob Richman had secretly plotted with another Norton executive, John Marder, to oust CEO Harold Edgarton from his position and seize control of the company. They intended to wait for an incident that would put the N-22's reputation in question and torpedo the company's deal with China. Then, once in control of Norton, they would secretly negotiate with a South Korean airline for an even larger aircraft deal initially worth several billion dollars, but one that will eventually destroy the company. Casey manages to thwart the plan by finding and then publicly revealing the true cause of the incident. It was not caused by any technical fault in the plane, but was in fact human error: The plane's captain had allowed his son, also a pilot, but one not certified to fly the N-22, to take the controls in flight. At this point, a mechanical malfunction occurred, caused not by a design flaw at Norton but by poor maintenance practices at Transpacific Airlines. The son panicked and attempted to correct the problem, unaware that the plane already had a failsafe system for such an event. The conflicting control signals caused the plane to maneuver wildly, causing the fatalities. With the N-22's reputation cleared, the China deal goes off without a hitch and the company's future is secured. Afterwards, Edgarton promotes Casey to be the head of the company's Media Relations Division. Richman is fired and later arrested in Singapore for narcotics possession, while Marder leaves the company, supposedly on good terms.
1000252	/m/03y424	Eastward Hoe	John Marston	1605		 The play deals with a goldsmith and his household. He has two apprentices and two daughters. One apprentice, Golding, is industrious and temperate; the other, Quicksilver, is rash and ambitious. One daughter, Mildred, is mild and modest; the other, Gertrude, is vain. Mildred and Golding marry. Gertrude marries the fraudulent Sir Petronel Flash, a man who possesses a title but no money. Sir Petronel promises Gertrude a coach and six and a castle. Sir Petronel takes her dowry and sends her off in a coach for an imaginary castle while he and Quicksilver set off for Virginia after Quicksilver has robbed the goldsmith. During this time, the provident and careful Golding has become a deputy alderman. Quicksilver and Petronel are shipwrecked on the Isle of Dogs and are brought up on charges for their actions. They come before Golding. After time in prison, where they repent of their schemes and dishonesty, Golding has them released.
1000340	/m/03y479	Evelina	Fanny Burney	1778	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with a distressed letter from Lady Howard to her longtime acquaintance, the Reverend Arthur Villars, in which she reports that Mme. Duval, the grandmother of Villars' ward, Evelina Anville, intends to visit England to renew her acquaintance with her granddaughter Evelina. 18 years earlier, Mme. Duval had broken off her relationship with her daughter Caroline, Evelina's mother, and has never acknowledged Evelina. Reverend Villars fears Mme. Duval's influence could lead Evelina to an untimely, shameful death similar to that of her mother Caroline. To keep Evelina from Mme. Duval, the Reverend lets her visit Howard Grove, Lady Howard's home, on an extended holiday. While she is there, the family learns that Lady Howard's son-in-law, naval officer Captain Mirvan, is returning to England after a 7-year absence. Desperate to join the Mirvans on their trip to London, Evelina entreats her guardian to let her attend them, promising that the visit will last only a few weeks. The Reverend reluctantly consents. In London, Evelina's beauty and ambiguous social status attract unwanted attention and unkind speculation. Ignorant of the conventions and behaviours of 18th-century London society, she makes a series of humiliating (but humorous) faux pas that further expose her to societal ridicule. She soon earns the attentions of 2 gentlemen: Lord Orville, a handsome and extremely eligible peer and pattern-card of modest, becoming behavior; and Sir Clement Willoughby, a baronet with duplicitous intentions. Evelina's untimely reunion with her grandmother and the Branghtons, her long-unknown extended family, along with the embarrassment their boorish, social-climbing antics cause, soon convince her that Lord Orville is completely out-of-reach. The Mirvans finally return to the country, taking Evelina and Mme. Duval with them. Spurred by Evelina's greedy cousins, Mme. Duval concocts a plan to sue Sir John Belmont, Evelina's father, and force him to recognize his daughter's claim in court. The Reverend is furious. Lady Howard intervenes and manages to elicit a compromise that sees her write to Sir John, but he responds unfavorably. Mme. Duval is furious and threatens to rush Evelina back to Paris to pursue the lawsuit. A second compromise sees Evelina return to London with her grandmother, where she is forced to spend time with her ill-bred Branghton cousins and their rowdy friends, but she is distracted by Mr. Macartney, a melancholy and direly-poor Scottish poet. At one point, she misinterprets his acquisition of pistols as a suicide attempt and bids him to look to his salvation; later she learns he had been premeditating armed robbery to change his financial status while tracing his own obscure parentage, as well as recovering from his mother's sudden death and the discovery that his beloved is actually his sister. Evelina charitably gives him her purse. Otherwise, her time with the Branghtons is uniformly mortifying: during her visit to Marylebone pleasure garden, for instance, she's attacked by a drunken sailor and rescued by prostitutes—and in this humiliating company she meets Lord Orville again! Sure that he can never respect her now, she is stunned when he seeks her out in London's unfashionable section and seems interested in renewing their acquaintance. When an insulting letter supposedly from Lord Orville devastates her and makes her believe she misperceived him, she returns home to Berry Hill and falls ill. Slowly recuperating from her illness, Evelina agrees to accompany her neighbour, a sarcastic widow named Mrs. Selwyn, to the resort town of Clifton Heights, where she unwillingly attracts the attention of womanizer Lord Merton, on the eve of his marriage to Lord Orville's sister, Lady Louisa Larpent. Aware of Lord Orville's arrival, Evelina tries to distance herself from him because of his impertinent letter, but his gentle manners work their spell until she is torn between attraction to him and her belief in his past duplicity. The unexpected appearance of Mr. Macartney reveals an unexpected streak of jealousy in the seemingly-unflappable Lord Orville. Convinced that Macartney is a rival for Evelina's affections, Lord Orville withdraws. However, Macartney has intended only to repay his financial debt to Evelina. Lord Orville's genuine affection for Evelina and her assurances that she and Macartney are not involved finally win out over Orville's jealousy, and he secures a meeting between Evelina and Macartney. It appears that all doubts have been resolved between Lord Orville and Evelina, especially when Mrs. Selwyn informs her that she overheared Lord Orville arguing with Sir Clement about the latter's inappropriate attentions to Evelina. Lord Orville proposes, much to Evelina's delight. However, Evelina is distraught at the continuing gulf between herself and her father and the mystery surrounding his false daughter. Finally, Mrs. Selwyn is able to secure a surprise meeting with Sir John. When he sees Evelina, he is horrified and guilt-stricken because she closely resembles her mother, Caroline. Evelina is able to ease his guilt with her repeated gentle pardons and the delivery of a letter written by her mother on her deathbed in which she forgives Sir John for his behavior if he will remove her ignominy (by acknowledging their marriage) and acknowledge Evelina as his legitimate daughter. Mrs. Clifton, Berry Hill's longtime housekeeper, is able to reveal the second Miss Belmont's parentage. She identifies Polly Green, Evelina's former wetnurse, mother of a girl 6 weeks older than Evelina, as the perpetrator of the fraud. Polly has been passing her own daughter off as that of Sir John and Caroline for the past 18 years, hoping to secure a better future for her. Ultimately, Lord Orville suggests that the unfortunate girl be named co-heiress with Evelina; kindhearted Evelina is delighted. Finally, Sir Clement Willoughby writes to Evelina, confessing that he had written the insulting letter (she had already suspected this), hoping to separate Evelina and Lord Orville. In Paris, Mr. Macartney is reunited with the false Miss Belmont, his former beloved: separated by Sir John, at first because Macartney was too poor and lowly to marry his purported daughter, and then because his affair with Macartney's mother would have made the sweethearts brother and sister, they are now able to marry because Miss "Belmont"'s true parentage has been revealed. They are married in a joint ceremony alongside Evelina and Lord Orville, who decide to visit Reverend Villars at Berry Hill for their honeymoon trip.
1001127	/m/03y5m_	The Gulf War Did Not Take Place	Jean Baudrillard		{"/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Baudrillard argued the Gulf War was not really a war, but rather an atrocity which masqueraded as a war. – using overwhelming airpower, the US armed forces for the most part did not directly engage in combat with the Iraqi army, and suffered few casualties. Almost nothing was made known about Iraqi deaths. Thus, the fighting "did not really take place" from the point of view of the West. Moreover, all that spectators got to know about the war was in the form of propaganda imagery. The closely watched media presentations made it impossible to distinguish between the experience of what truly happened in the conflict, and its stylized, selective misrepresentation through "simulacra".
1002089	/m/03y80t	Sputnik Sweetheart	Haruki Murakami	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot features three main characters: Sumire, Miu, and 'K'. The novel's protagonist, Sumire, is an aspiring writer who survives on a family stipend and the creative input of her only friend, the novel's male narrator, 'K'. 'K' is an elementary school teacher, 25 years old, and in love with Sumire, though she does not quite share his feelings. At a wedding, Sumire meets an Ethnic Korean woman, Miu. The two strike up a conversation and Sumire starts to work for the older, married woman. Over time, she realises that she is attracted to her, and thus, that she might be a lesbian. Miu proposes that Sumire accompany her on a business trip to France. Sumire obliges her. In France, they meet a gifted British writer who suggests the two women make use of his vacant house on a Greek Island. Miu takes Sumire to Greece, and as they spend their days together, Sumire's attraction to Miu grows stronger. One morning, Miu discovers that Sumire is missing. She telephones 'K' and asks him to fly out to Greece, to help find his friend. 'K' obliges but their extensive efforts to locate Sumire are unsuccessful. With the end of summer approaching, 'K' and Miu return to Japan separately. 'K' goes about returning to his old life. He never hears from Miu again, despite her promising to keep in touch. As with other Murakami works, Sputnik Sweetheart lacks a clear, concise ending. If the plot is to be taken literally, devoid of subjective interpretation, then one night, out of the blue, Sumire calls 'K' and tells him that she is back in Japan. She conveys that she is ready to reciprocate his feelings, and asks him to pick her up at the same phone booth she always called him from.
1002190	/m/03y8c6	Houston, Houston, Do You Read?	James Tiptree, Jr	1976-05		 The story portrays a crew of three male astronauts launched in the near future on a circumsolar mission in the spaceship Sunbird. A large solar flare damages their craft and leaves them drifting and lost in space. They make repeated attempts to contact NASA in Houston, to no avail. Soon, however, they begin to pick up strange radio communications. They are puzzled that almost all of the voices are female, usually with a strong Australian accent. They overhear conversations about personal matters (including the birth of a cow) as well as unknown slang terms. Various theories are discussed by the perplexed astronauts: hallucinations? A hoax? A hostile power trying to trick them? They record and playback the conversations over and over, trying to figure out what is going on. Soon, they realize that these unknown people are aware of them and are offering to help. At first, the Sunbird's commander refuses to communicate with them, suspicious of their motives. As they continue to plead with the astronauts to accept their rescue offer, the men are chilled to hear their mission referred to in historical terms. They come to realize that they were not only thrown off-course in space, but in time as well, and that their flight was lost centuries ago. They are given bare details of the current Earth: an undefined cataclysm has reduced the human population to a mere few million. Eventually, the Sunbird agrees to rendezvous with the spaceship Gloria to allow the astronauts to spacewalk to safety. The Gloria is an enigma to them. Besides having an almost all-female crew, the ship is haphazard and cluttered with plants and animals on board. None of the technology seems very advanced and some of the ship's functions are powered by stationary bikes. Their culture shock is compounded by the cryptic and incomplete answers they are given concerning the Earth. Little by little, the three gather clues from both observations and slips of the tongue. While crew members often refer to their "sisters," there is no mention of husbands, boyfriends, or families. There are twins on board (both named Judy), yet one seems older than the other. The one male, a teen named Andy, seems strangely feminine. Technology, and science and culture in general, seems to be relatively unadvanced considering the centuries that passed. Eventually, they learn the truth. A plague wiped out most human life, including all males. Only about 11,000 people survived, mostly concentrated in Australasia and a few other areas. They reproduce by cloning, and all living humans are clones of the original 11,000 genotypes. Babies are raised communally in crèches, and all members of each genotype are encouraged to add their story to a book that is passed on for the inspiration and education of future "sisters." Certain genotypes are given early androgen treatments (hence, the pseudo-male crew member) to increase bulk and strength for physical tasks. The resulting almost communal maleless society has settled into a peaceful, yet strangely moribund pattern -- without major conflict, seemingly happy, but with little advancement. The Sunbird's crew react to these revelations in different ways. The commander considers this to be a great tragedy, and believes he was chosen by God to lead these females back, with men as family leaders. Another drools at the prospect of millions of women who have not known a man's touch, and fancies himself the object of desire for them all when he returns. It is then uncovered by the third crew member that his fellow crewmates have been given a drug -- one that causes them to show their "true selves". He realizes that they are most certainly not headed home, and the crew of the Gloria do not intend for them to survive. They are perfectly happy living without men, and the astronauts are merely being studied, pressed for any useful information, and (in the case of the overamorous astronaut) used to obtain sperm samples, presumably to introduce fresh genetic material and create new genotypes.
1003536	/m/0bj130t	My Friend Flicka	Mary O'Hara	1941	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ken McLaughlin is a ten-year-old boy who lives on a remote Wyoming ranch, the Goose Bar, with his father, Rob; his mother, Nell; and his older brother, Howard. Rob is often unsatisfied with Ken because the boy daydreams when he should be attending to practical matters; Nell, however, shares her son's sensitive nature and is more sympathetic. Howard, the older son, was allowed to choose and train a colt from among the Goose Bar herd but, although Ken loves horses, Rob doesn't think his wool-gathering son deserves such a privilege yet. At the beginning of the novel, Ken has again angered his father by returning home from boarding school with failing grades, and will therefore have to repeat fifth grade, an expense Rob can ill afford. Nell persuades Rob to let Ken choose a colt of his own. Ken is unable to decide which of that year's yearlings he wants until one day he sees a beautiful sorrel filly running swiftly away from him, and makes his choice. Rob, once again, is annoyed with his son; this particular filly has a strain of mustang blood that makes her very wild &ndash; "loco", in ranch idiom. All the Goose Bar horses with this same strain have been fast, beautiful, but utterly untameable, and after many years of trying to break just one of them, Rob has decided to get rid of them all. Ken persists, however, and Rob reluctantly agrees to let him have the filly. When Rob and Ken go out to capture her, she lives up to her family reputation: she tries to escape by attempting to jump an impossibly high barbed wire fence and injures herself severely. Ken spends the rest of the summer nursing the filly. He names her Flicka &ndash; Swedish for "girl" &ndash; and spends hours every day tending to her needs and keeping her company. Flicka comes to love and trust the boy, but her wounds from the barbed wire fence fester and cause a dangerous blood infection. She begins to waste away and grows so thin and weak that Rob decides that she must be shot to put her out of her misery. The night before the order is to be carried out, Flicka wades into a shallow brook, stumbles, falls, and is unable to rise. Ken finds her there and spends the rest of the night sitting in the water, holding her head in his arms so she doesn't drown. Although Ken nearly dies from exposure, the cold running water cures Flicka's fever, and all ends well.
1003561	/m/03ycv0	A Planet Called Treason	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The premise of this novel is the banishment to the seemingly metal-poor planet Treason of a group of people who attempted to create rule by an intellectual elite. The novel centers on the descendants of these anti-democratic thinkers who remain imprisoned on the planet. Through the ages, these descendants have formed nations which warred and allied with one another to gain advantages over their rivals in the race to build a starship. Due to the metal-deficiency on Treason, nations are forced to obtain it through a system of barter using teleportation devices known as Ambassadors. The protagonist of the book is Lanik Mueller, heir apparent to the Mueller family kingdom. The Muellers, through generations of eugenics, have the ability to heal at an accelerated speed and regrow body parts naturally. The dark side to the Mueller nation is that, in order to obtain iron and other metals, they trade organs and body parts, which are harvested from radical regeneratives ("rads"). Radical regeneratives are people whose bodies can't distinguish between health and injury, and so grow extra appendages as well as organs of the opposite sex; although this is a normal phase for most Muellers at the age of puberty, the bodies of radical regeneratives never outgrow it. After it is discovered that Lanik is a radical regenerative, Lanik's father must essentially banish him from the kingdom, so as to avoid sending him to the "pens", a place where radical regeneratives are kept in order to harvest their body parts; exile also functions to get Lanik out of the eye of the Mueller public, as well as to prevent harm from coming to Lanik's supposed younger brother Dinte. The banishment comes in the form of sending Lanik as an emissary and spy to the Nkumai, a rival nation. Due to his radical regenerative body, Lanik has grown breasts, which makes him appear to be a woman. Using this subterfuge, he poses as an ambassador from the matriarchal nation of Bird in order to discover what the Nkumai are trading in exchange for their abundant metals, which have allowed them to dominate their region militarily. This mission is only the beginning of the adventure for Lanik, who discovers the secrets of the most powerful nations and at the same time gains additional abilities to save his people and determine the fate of his planet.
1003825	/m/03ydfd	The Guide	R. K. Narayan		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Railway Raju (nicknamed) is a disarmingly corrupt guide who falls in love with a beautiful dancer, Rosie, the neglected wife of archaeologist Marco . Marco doesn't approve of Rosie's passion for dancing. Rosie, encouraged by Raju, decides to follow her dreams and start a dancing career. They start living together and Raju's mother, as she does not approve of their relationship, leaves them. Raju becomes Rosie's stage manager and soon with the help of Raju's marketing tactics, Rosie becomes a successful dancer. Raju, however, develops an inflated sense of self-importance and tries to control her. Raju gets involved in a case of forgery and gets a two year sentence. After completing the sentence, Raju passes through a village where he is mistaken for a sadhu (a spiritual guide). Reluctantly, as he does not want to return in disgrace to Malgudi, he stays in an abandoned temple. There is a famine in the village and Raju is expected to keep a fast in order to make it rain. With media publicizing his fast, a huge crowd gathers (much to Raju's resentment) to watch him fast. After fasting for several days, he goes to the riverside one morning as part of his daily ritual, where his legs sag down as he feels that the rain is falling in the hills. The ending of the novel leaves unanswered the question of whether he did, or whether the drought has really ended.The last line of the novel is 'Raju said "Velan, its raining up the hills, I can feel it under my feet." And with this he saged down'. The last line implies that by now Raju after undergoing so many ups and downs in his life has become a sage and as the drought ends Raju's life also ends. Narayan has beautifully written the last line which means Raju did not die but saged down, meaning Raju within himself had become a sage.
1004961	/m/03yhw_	The Soul of a New Machine	Tracy Kidder	1981-07	{"/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 The book opens with a turf war between two computer design groups within Data General Corporation, a minicomputer vendor in the 1970s. Most of the senior designers are assigned the "sexy" job of designing the next generation machine, which will be done in North Carolina. Their project (code-named "Fountainhead") is to give Data General a machine to compete with the new VAX computer from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which is starting to take over the new 32-bit minicomputer market. The few senior designers who are left in corporate headquarters at Westborough, MA are given the much more humble job of designing enhancements for the existing product lines. Tom West, the leader of Westborough designers, starts a skunkworks project which becomes a backup plan in case Fountainhead fails. Eventually, the skunk works project (code-named "Eagle") becomes the company's only hope in catching up with DEC. In order to complete the project on-time, West takes risks in not only new technology but also relying on new college graduates (who have never designed anything so complex) to make up the bulk of his design team. The book follows many of the designers as they give up every waking moment of their lives in order to design and debug the new machine on schedule.
1009349	/m/03yw40	The Last Hurrah	Edwin O'Connor	1956	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot of The Last Hurrah focuses on a mayoral election in an unnamed East Coast city. Veteran Irish, Democratic Party politician Frank Skeffington is running for yet another term as Mayor. As a former governor, he is usually called by the honorific title "Governor." While the city is never named, it is frequently assumed to be Boston. Skeffington is assumed to represent Boston mayor and Massachusetts governor James Michael Curley. The story is told in the third person, either by a narrator or by Adam Caulfield, the Mayor's nephew. Skeffington is a veteran and adept "machine" politician, and probably corrupt as well. The novel portrays him as a flawed great man with many achievements to his credit. At the beginning of the book, Skeffington is 72 and has been giving signs that he might consider retiring from public life at the end of his current term. He surprises many by announcing what he had always intended to do: run for another term as Mayor. The main body of the novel gives a detailed and insightful view of urban politics, tracking Skeffington and his nephew through rounds of campaign appearances and events, thereby showcasing a dying brand of politics and painting a broad picture of political life in general. His opponent, Kevin McCluskey, is a neophyte candidate with a handsome face and good manners, a good World War II record but no political experience, and no real abilities for politics or governing. But McCluskey gets support from a new campaign medium: television advertising. Surprisingly. McClusky defeats Skeffington on election day. One of Adam's friends explains that the election was "a last hurrah" for the kind of old-style machine politics that Skeffington had mastered. Developments in American public life, including the consequences of the New Deal, have so changed the face of city politics that Skeffington no longer can survive in the new age with younger voters. And prophetically, for the first time, television ads win the day. Immediately after his defeat, Skeffington suffers a massive heart attack with another soon afterward. When he dies, he leaves behind a city in mourning for a pivotal figure in its history, but a city that no longer has room for him or his kind.
1009503	/m/03ywdq	Six Characters in Search of an Author	Luigi Pirandello			 An acting company prepares to rehearse a play, The Rules of the Game by Luigi Pirandello. As the rehearsal is about to begin the play is unexpectedly interrupted by the arrival of six strange people. The Director of the play, furious at the interruption, demands an explanation. The Father explains that they are unfinished characters in search of an author to finish their story. The Director initially believes them to be mad, but as they begin to argue amongst themselves and reveal details of their story he begins to listen. While he isn't an author, the Director agrees to stage their story despite the disbelief amongst the jeering actors. After a 20 minute break the Characters and the Company return to the stage to act out some of the story so far. They begin to act out the scene between the Stepdaughter and the Father in Madame Pace's shop, which the Director decides to call Scene I. The Characters are very particular about the setting, wanting everything to be as realistic as possible. The Director asks the Actors to observe the scene for he intends for them to act it out later. This sparks the first argument between the Director and the Characters over the acting of the play, with the Characters assuming that they would be acting it out seeing as they are the Characters already. The Director moves the play on anyway, but the Stepdaughter has more problems with the accuracy of the setting, saying she doesn't recognize the scene. Just as the Director is about to begin the scene once more he realizes that Madame Pace is not with them. The Actors watch in disbelief as The Father lures her to the stage by hanging their coats and hats on racks, "attracted by the very articles of her trade". The scene begins between Madame Pace and the Stepdaughter, with Madame Pace exhorting The Step-Daughter, telling her she must work harder herself to save the Mother's job. The Mother protests at having to watch the scene, but she is restrained. After the Father and Stepdaughter act half of the scene the Director stops them so that the Actors may act out what they have just done. The Characters break into laughter as the Actors try to imitate them. They continue but The Step-Daughter cannot contain her laughter as the Actors use the wrong tones of voice and gestures. The Father begins another argument with the Director over the realism of the Actors compared to the Characters themselves. The Director allows the Characters to act out the rest of the scene and have the rehearsals later. This time the Stepdaughter explains the rest of the scene during an argument with the Director over the truth on stage. The scene culminates in an embrace between the Father and the Stepdaughter which is realistically broken up by the distressed Mother. The line between reality and acting is blurred as the scene closes with the Director pleased with the first act. The final act of the play begins in the garden. It was revealed that there was much arguing amongst the family members as The Father sent for The Mother, The Stepdaughter, The Child, The Boy, and The Son to come back and stay with him. The Son reveals that he hates the family for sending him away and does not consider The Stepdaughter or the others a part of his family. The scene ends with The Little Girl drowning in a fountain, The Boy committing suicide with a revolver and the Stepdaughter running out of the theater with The Son, The Mother, and The Father left on stage. The final lines end with The Director confused over whether it was real or not, concluding that whether it was real or not he lost a whole day over it.
1013837	/m/03z7xz	Monstrous Regiment	Terry Pratchett	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The bulk of Monstrous Regiment takes place in the small, bellicose country of Borogravia, a highly conservative country, whose people live according to the increasingly psychotic decrees of its favored deity, Nuggan. The main feature of his religion is the Abominations; a long, often-updated list of banned things. To put this in perspective, these things include garlic, cats, the smell of beets, people with ginger hair, shirts with six buttons, anyone shorter than three feet (including children and babies), sneezing, rocks, ears, jigsaw puzzles, chocolate, and the colour blue. The list of "Abominations Unto Nuggan" often causes conflicts with Borogravia's neighbours, and the uncertain whereabouts of Nuggan leads the inhabitants of Borogravia to deify their Duchess, to whom they pray instead. This slowly causes problems as, on the Discworld, belief grants power. Borogravia is in the midst of a war against an alliance of neighbouring countries, caused by a border dispute with the country of Zlobenia. Rumour is that the war is going poorly for Borogravia, though the country's leadership (and "everyone") denies it. Polly Perks's brother Paul is missing in action after fighting in the Borogravian army. Paul is a bit slow and not altogether right in the head, and even though Polly is more qualified to take over the family business (a famous pub known as "The Duchess"), according to Nugganitic law, women cannot own property, so if Paul does not return, the pub will be lost to their drunken cousin when their father dies. Accordingly, Polly sets off to join the army in order to find him. Women joining the army are regarded as an Abomination Unto Nuggan, so Polly decides to dress up as a man (another Abomination) and enlists as Private Oliver Perks (taking her name from the folk song Sweet Polly Oliver). While signing up, Polly encounters the repulsively patriotic Corporal Strappi, and the corpulent Sergeant Jackrum. Despite her apprehensions regarding Strappi, she kisses the Duchess - that is, she kisses a painting of said noble - and by doing so, joins up. Due to the shortage of troops, her fellow soldiers include a vampire named Maladict, a Troll named Carborundum, and an Igor named Igor. They also include "Tonker" Halter, "Shufti" Manickle, "Wazzer" Goom, and "Lofty" Tewt. That night, Polly encounters a mysterious voice, which assures her that although he or she knows that Polly is a girl, they won't give her away. The voice also gives her some hints on how not to be discovered. Over the next few days, Polly makes a startling discovery: Lofty is also a girl. Since Lofty and Tonker are always together, Polly assumes that Lofty joined the army to follow her man, just like in "Sweet Polly Oliver". Later, she finds out that Shufti is another girl, and a pregnant one. She also joined the army to find her man; in this case, the father of her child, who she'd only known for a few days, and is known as Johnny. Gradually, Polly discovers not only that everyone in her regiment, except Maladict, is a woman, but also confirmation of Borogravia's bleak situation. Most of her country's forces are captured or on the run, and food supplies are limited. This point is driven home when Igor (actually Igorina) demonstrates her surgery talents and saves several lives among a group of badly injured fleeing soldiers. The regiment, under the leadership of their inexperienced commanding officer Lieutenant Blouse, makes its way toward the Keep where the enemy is based. Meanwhile, thanks to a chance encounter where the regiment unknowingly subdues and humiliates an elite enemy detachment, including Zlobenia's Prince Heinrich, their exploits become known to the outside world through William de Worde and his newspaper. Their progress particularly piques the interest of Commander Vimes, who is stationed with the alliance at the Keep. Vimes has his officers keep track of the regiment, occasionally secretly providing aid. Polly and most of the regiment are able to infiltrate the Keep, disguising themselves as washerwomen, and once inside plot to release the captured Borogravian troops. They manage to do so, and Borogravia is able to retake much of the Keep, but when Polly admits they are women, their own forces remove them from the conflict and they are brought in front of a council of senior officers, where their fate will be decided. With the council about to discharge them and force them to return home, Jackrum barges in and intervenes, revealing that several of the military's top officers are actually women as well. But in the midst of this revelation, the Duchess, now raised to the level of a small deity by Borogravia's belief, takes brief possession of Wazzer, her most passionate believer. The Duchess urges all of the generals to quit the war and return home, to repair their country, returning their kiss of service, and ending their obligation to her. In the aftermath of this event, Polly eventually discovers that even Jackrum himself is a woman. The regiment is sent to the enemy and successfully negotiates a truce, and military rules are changed so that women are allowed to serve openly and Maladict reveals himself as really being Maladicta. Polly finds her brother alive and well and returns home to The Duchess. One of her regiment 'sisters' becomes the new leader of her country, having been driven by religious visions. Sometime later, despite the peace they had desperately fought for, conflict breaks out again. Polly sneaks away from her profitable tavern to seek new ways to fight a war using the influence she gained and finds herself in the role of commander of boy-impersonating females who are marching off to war.
1013901	/m/03z84c	The Plot Against America	Philip Roth	2004-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows the fortunes of the Roth family during the Lindbergh presidency, as antisemitism becomes more accepted in American life and Jewish-American families like the Roths are persecuted on various levels. The narrator and central character in the novel is the young Philip, and the care with which his confusion and terror are rendered makes the novel as much about the mysteries of growing up as about American politics. Roth based his novel on the isolationist ideas espoused by Lindbergh in real life as a spokesman for the America First Committee and his own experiences growing up in Newark, New Jersey. The novel depicts the Weequahic section of Newark which includes Weequahic High School from which Roth graduated.
1014494	/m/03zb90	Mary Poppins Opens the Door	P. L. Travers	1943	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 On Guy Fawkes Night, Mary Poppins arrives in the wake of the last fireworks display by the Banks family. The Banks children Michael, Jane, the twins, and Annabel plead with her to stay. She reluctantly agrees to do so "till the door opens". Mrs. Banks has Mary and the children find a piano tuner, who happens to be Mary's cousin, Mr. Twigley. When Mary and the children visit, Mr. Twigley tries to unburden himself from seven wishes given to him when he was born. Besides pianos, Mr. Twigley also specializes in songbirds such as nightingales, one of which he releases when he's finished. He also provides music boxes for Mary and the Banks children to dance to. When they return home later, the drawing room piano is playing perfectly, and when the Banks children ask Mary what happened, she sharply rebukes them. Other adventures in the book include Mary telling the story of a king who was outsmarted by a cat, the park statue of Neleus that comes to life for a time during one of their outings, their visit to confectioner Miss Calico and her flying peppermint sticks, an undersea (High-Tide) party where Mary Poppins is the guest of honor, and a party between fairy tale rivals in the Crack between the Old Year and the New. When the children ask why Mary Poppins, a real person, is there, they are told that she is a fairy tale come true. Finally, the citizens of the town as well as many other characters from the previous two books turn out to say good-bye to Mary. The children realize they're not leaving, but Mary is, and they rush to the nursery window and see her entering a house just like theirs, opening the door, and walking in. Later that evening, Mr. Banks sees a shooting star, and they all wish upon it, the children faintly make out Mary Poppins. They wave and she waves back to them. "Mary Poppins herself had flown away, but the gifts she had brought would remain for always."
1014591	/m/03zbkf	Eden	Stanisław Lem	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A starship crew &ndash; Captain (in the original, Coordinator), Doctor, Engineer, Chemist, Physicist and Cyberneticist (robotics expert) &ndash; crash land on an alien world they call Eden. After escaping their wrecked ship they set out to explore the planet, first traveling through an unsettling wilderness and coming upon an abandoned automated factory. There they find a constant cycle of materials being produced and then destroyed and recycled. Perplexed, they return to their ship. At the crash site they find a local creature has entered their vessel. They name these large creatures, with small torsos retractable into their large bodies, doublers (from "double-bodied", in original (Polish): dubelty). The next day, setting out to find a source of water, the expedition begins to come into contact with the local civilization, and their strange, top-like vehicles. Eventually they come into conflict with a vehicle's pilot, who is a doubler. Killing the pilot and fleeing in his vehicle, they return to the ship and prepare defenses. After an attack never comes, they assemble their jeep and half the team sets out to explore further, the other half remaining behind to repair the ship. The jeep team eventually discovers structures resembling graves and hundreds of preserved skeletons, and adjacent to it, a settlement. Two expedition members exploring the settlement become caught in a stampede of doublers, who seem totally indifferent to the presence of these aliens. One doubler however, comes to the jeep and refuses to return to the settlement, and is brought back to the ship. While the expedition explored the settlement, a large group of doubler vehicles had reconnoitered the crash site and then fled. After some studies with their resident doubler and an expedition to gather water, the crew learns that the local civilization is planning to act against them. Shortly thereafter the area around the ship is bombarded for several hours, although no direct attempts are made to damage the vessel. Eventually a wall of glass begins to assemble from the blast craters, showing evidence of a highly advanced doubler nanotechnology. The glass eventually assembles into a dome, an attempt to isolate the ship. The doubler that has joined the group proves to be uncommunicative, leading some of the crew to suggest that it has some sort of mental deficiency. The crew also begins to postulate that the "naked" doublers they have seen are the victims of genocide. Choosing to explore further the crew activates "Defender", a large tank or mech which they have managed to repair. Blasting through the glass dome they travel far to the southwest, observing from a distance, for the first time, everyday doubler life. Returning to the ship in the night, the crew encounters a group of doublers being gassed to death, and act in self defense with their antimatter weapons, killing an indeterminate number of both "naked" and "soldier" doublers. When the defender team returns to the ship, they find that most of the glass wall has repaired itself, and blast another hole. Returning to the ship until the radioactivity dies down, the expedition plans its next move. In the middle of the meeting a dressed doubler suddenly enters, and the crew makes contact, discovering the doubler to have knowledge of astronomy. The first contact however, is soon turned into a bitter victory, as the crew learns that this doubler has unwittingly exposed himself to radiation by entering the hole made by Defender. Informing the doubler of his impending death, both parties struggle to learn as much as they can. Through a developed computer translator, the crew and the doubler can speak to one another and begin to gain an understanding of the other's species. An indistinct image emerges of doublers' Orwellian information-controlled civilization that is almost self-regulating, with a special kind of system of government a dictatorship that denies its own existence and is thus impossible to destroy. The society is controlled with the help of a fictitious advanced branch of information science Lem dubs procrustics, based on the control of information flows within the society, a highly advanced discipline of brainwashing. Procrustics is used for molding groups within a society and ultimately a society as a whole to behave as designed by secretive hidden rulers: while each individual appears to themselves to be free yet is being manipulated and controlled. One example described in the novel is the above mentioned settlement, kind of a "concentration camp" without any guards, designed so that the prisoners stay inside apparently of their own "free" will. Although the doublers know almost nothing of nuclear science, they once conducted a massive genetic experiment to enhance the species. This attempt failed miserably, resulting in deformed doublers who, if they survive, are often driven to the fringes of society. Much like the government, the very existence of this experiment, and the factories created for it, are denied, and anyone with the knowledge of them is eliminated. The doubler explains that the information disseminated to the higher echelons of doubler society was that humans, having been subjected to the effects of cosmic rays throughout their space journey, were the mutant monsters that were being quarantined, but he had seen it as a once in a lifetime opportunity and chose to pursue it, a choice the humans greatly empathize with. Finally the ship is repaired and the crew is ready to leave Eden. The astronomer doubler, although recovering fully from his radiation exposure, decides to stay behind, and as the starship takes off, much to the crew's sadness, the two doublers stand by the ship's exhaust, choosing to die rather than return to their oppressive society. The planet is seen from the distance once again, a beautiful violet sphere, whose beauty, they now recall, was the very reason they crashed while attempting too close a fly-by and hitting the atmosphere by mistake. It was because of its beauty that they called it, when first seeing it, Eden.
1015400	/m/03zdjz	Ringworld's Children	Larry Niven	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's plot is largely concerned with the so-called Fringe War. All the intelligent species of Known Space are interested in the Ringworld. In the novel (actually begun in the previous novel, The Ringworld Throne), they engage in a Cold War of sorts on the fringe of the Ringworld star system. The novel also explores the interactions of multiple elements invented or described in previous Niven short stories or novels. For instance, two stories in the Crashlander short-story anthology consider separately the implications of a super-fast hyperdrive ("At the Core") and medical nanotechnology ("Procrustes"). Although these super-technologies are seemingly unrelated, their combination is a key element of the plotline of Ringworld's Children. In another example, the ARM ships of the Fringe War are powered by antimatter and have antimatter weapons. When asked where they most likely got it from, the Hindmost remarks that it is probably from an antimatter solar system. This is a reference to a third short story ("Flatlander") in the Crashlander anthology that describes the discovery of the antimatter planet Cannonball Express. Another, more obscure reference to a Beowulf Shaeffer story, "The Borderland of Sol", concerns creatures that live in hyperspace and eat spaceships in hyperspace around gravity wells, thus explaining why ships cannot safely engage their hyperdrive close to a large mass (which was previously described as a singularity before this revelation). This reference, dismissed as a myth in the earlier story, is casually confirmed as fact in this installment and is surpassed by the creation of a hyperdrive that moves the entire Ringworld to destination unknown. As in the previous two novels, the interactions of various hominid Pak protectors play an important role, including one who claims to be one of the original builders of the ring. A number of previously revealed "facts" turn out to have been lies told by characters in the books, which is another common feature of Niven's Ringworld and other Known Space stories, especially those involving Protectors and Puppeteers. es:Hijos de Mundo Anillo it:I figli di Ringworld ja:リングワールドの子供たち
1015693	/m/03zfhy	Imajica	Clive Barker	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel opens with a man, Charlie Estabrook, hiring the mysterious assassin Pie'oh'pah to murder his estranged wife, Judith. Pie heads to New York and makes an attempt on Judith's life, but fails. Estabrook, having come to regret hiring the assassin to kill Judith, then contacts Judith's former lover, an artist named John Furie Zacharias also known as "Gentle", and asks Gentle to protect her. Later, Gentle comes upon Judith just as Pie is making a second attempt on her life. Gentle chases Pie away, but Pie, who has the ability to change his exterior, later disguises himself as Judith and comes to Gentle's apartment with the intent of having sex with him. During their tryst, Judith calls, alerting Gentle to the fact that he is in fact coupling with the shape-shifting assassin. Gentle is horrified and demands that Pie leave. Meanwhile, the Tabula Rasa meet at Roxborough Tower to discuss the recent events regarding Pie'oh'pah. A man from one of the other Dominions named Dowd is ordered by the council to bring his master, Oscar Godolphin, to see them. Despite being a member of the Tabula Rasa, Godolphin frequently travels between Earth and the reconciled dominions. Godolphin meets with the Tabula Rasa and murders Dowd in front of them, convincing them that Dowd was actually a doppelganger who had taken on Godolphin's appearance while traveling between worlds. Godolphin later revives Dowd and gives him permission to kill Pie. Judith returns to England and sneaks into Estabrook's house to steal back some of her former property. She also discovers a strange blue stone that causes her to have an out of body experience, during which she witnesses a mummified woman being kept prisoner by the Tabula Rasa in the Roxborough Tower. Gentle, meanwhile, has another encounter with Pie, and the two of them pass through the 'In Ovo' to the Fourth Dominion. Judith, who was coming to see Gentle, arrives just as the two goes away. Pie and Gentle arrive in the Fourth Dominion and head to the nearby village of Vanaeph, where the Autarch is coming to investigate rumors of rebellion. They soon get into a conflict with some locals and are helped by a man named Tick Raw. Later, Gentle is confronted by a creature known as a 'Nullianac', and manages to kill it using a protective spell called a 'pneuma'. Pie and Gentle then head to the mountains to find a way of breaking into the Third Dominion. Back on Earth, Judith meets up with Estabrook to find information about his brother, Oscar Godolphin. After leaving Estabrook for dead in the Second Dominion, Godolphin begins a relationship with Judith. Meanwhile, in the Fourth Dominion, Gentle and Pie find the frozen bodies of a group of women who were killed by Hapexamendios during his journey across the dominions. Gentle ends up freeing the women, who then lead Gentle and Pie to a frozen doorway leading into the third dominion. Judith meets with a woman named Clara Leash, a former member of the Tabula Rasa. When the two try to break into Roxborough Tower to free the prisoner from Judith's vision, Dowd arrives and kills Clara. Meanwhile, Gentle and Pie travel through the third dominion searching for an old friend of Pie's named Scopique. They learn that Scopique is being held in a prison at the Cradle, a giant lake whose waters remain frozen unless the cloud cover breaks, allowing the sunlight to shine on the surface. Gentle and Pie make their way across the Cradle just as the sun starts to rise, and when the lake becomes liquid again Gentle almost drowns, taking days to recover. Once in the prison, Pie is reunited with Scopique and Gentle befriends Aping, the second in command and an artist like Gentle. Gentle becomes upset when he learns that Pie has been having sex with N'Ashap, the commandant of the prison, in return for Gentle being nursed back to health, leading the two to admit their feelings for each other and decide to get married. Security tightens at the prison, however, and the two realize that they must soon escape. Aping asks Gentle to take his daughter Huzzah with them when they leave. Eventually the opportunity arises and Gentle, Pie, Scopique, Aping and Huzzah all flee across the lake at night, while the waters are still solid. Aping is killed, and Scopique chooses to stay behind after N'Ashap is overthrown and killed. Gentle, Pie and Huzzah are able to successfully escape and head to the second dominion. Around the time that Gentle and the others head to the second dominion towards Yzordderrex, the Autarch visits a retreat which used to be the location of the 'Pivot', a large monument which was moved to his palace in Yzordderrex. It is here where we first learn that the Autarch is familiar with Earth, particularly the locales that our heroes are from. Judith finally convinces Godolphin to bring her to Yzordderrex with the threat of leaving him. They head to the retreat where they originally met, but as Godolphin starts their transference to the second dominion, Dowd comes and interferes and ends up going through to Yzordderrex with Judith instead of Godolphin. They arrive in the house of Peccable, a merchant friend of Godolphin's. Arriving in Yzordderrex, Gentle, Pie and Huzzah encounter an entourage containing the Autarch's Queen, Quaisoir and Gentle is shocked to find out that her appearance is identical to that of Judith's. With the rebellions in Yzordderrex getting out of control, she flees and Gentle becomes convinced that he has to head to the palace to find out if its really her. Judith meanwhile has another out of body experience where she witnesses Quaisoir after a fight with the Autarch, who is upset with her becoming enamored with religion, and Father Athanasius, the leader of the 'Dearther' group of rebels (and the man who wed Gentle and Pie at the Cradle). Gentle, Pie and Huzzah arrive at the Eurhetemec Kesperate(district) that Pie is from and find it mostly deserted except for four people, who have a hard time believing that they're not the enemy. Pie tells Gentle and Huzzah to meet him later at a cafe they were eating at. Although Huzzah and Gentle return there, with the chaos going on they leave and encounter a group that includes a Nullianac that kidnaps Huzzah. Gentle chases after them and eventually defeats the Nullianac, but not before it kills Huzzah. Put on trial, Pie explains himself, saying that he became entrapped in the In Ovo and was summoned to the fifth dominion by the Maestro Sartori, who had led the attempt at reconciliation 200 years ago. Pie felt bound to him which is why he never returned until now. Pie is instructed that he is banned from returning to the Eurhetemec kesperate until he kills the Autarch. Pie heads there with a fellow group of his species but most are killed and he tells his final companion to leave when he finds paintings of familiar places from Earth in the palace. Gentle as well heads to the palace with a follower of Athanasius, who found the still living Estabrook after he was left for dead after his fight with Godolphin. When they are caught by one of the Autarch's generals, Gentle's companion is killed, but Gentle is surprisingly let go when the general sees his face. Quaisoir meanwhile flees from the palace in search of Athanasius but instead is encountered by a group of rebels who attack her, blinding her by stabbing her in the eyes. Dowd and Judith, who had been having more visions of her, soon arrive and all the rebels are either killed or flee. Quaisoir at first thinks Dowd is her lord but when Judith spoils the illusion by talking, Dowd tries to kill her. Judith flees as Dowd attacks Quaisoir instead and ends up near a large well. Dowd catches up to her and is about to kill her by throwing her in there. About to die, Judith has visions of her origin, she was created as a replica of Quaisoir hundreds of years before. Quaisoir, amazingly still alive arrives and using her power saves Judith and lets Dowd fall in the well after he reveals that hundreds of years before he found a woman for Hapexamendios, Celestine, who bore him a child. Gentle makes it to the top of the palace where he encounters the Autarch, who reveals that Gentle is the Maestro Sartori, who led the failed effort to reconcile the dominions 200 years before. Going to see the Pivot, Gentle is told that he has to make another attempt at reconciliation. Through explanation by the Autarch and a vision he witnesses, the true events of what happened 200 years before are finally revealed. As Sartori, he was in love with Judith, the lover of Joshua Godolphin, and was able to convince Joshua to let him create a replica of her through magic. During the long process of replicating her however, he got drunk and went into the circle that she was being replicated in, and made love to her. This resulted in a replica of himself being created as well. Once the reconciliation failed, the replica of Sartori left to the dominions and eventually became the ruler of them as the Autarch. The original Judith became his queen, Quaisoir, while the replica, the Judith we've come to know throughout the book, remained on Earth, bound to the Godolphin family. Sartori convinced Pie to cast a feit on him that caused him to continuously lose his memory of the event. The Autarch wants Gentle to join him as he goes to conquer the Fifth Dominion but Gentle refuses. While fleeing, Pie comes across the Autarch, and attacks Gentle when he arrives. Although Gentle is able to convince Pie that it's the real him, the Autarch (referred to from this point on through the rest of the book as 'Sartori') attacks Pie, mortally wounding him, then escapes. Gentle decides to bring Pie to a Dearther camp at the Erasure, the border between the Second and First Dominions where Estabrook was healed earlier. Pie heads off into the Erasure after Gentle reluctantly lets him go. Gentle meets up with Father Athanasius again who attempts to kill him, but the entire camp is destroyed by the power of Hapexamendios, who pulls Pie back into the first dominion when he tries to leave. Among those killed is Estabrook, who was still living at the camp after being healed there. Gentle is determined to reconcile the dominions and enlists the help of a man at the Erasure, Chika Jackeen. Gentle returns to the palace in Yzordderrex where he's reunited with Judith. The entire palace including the Pivot starts to collapse and while they are able to escape, Quaisoir is killed. Gentle and Judith go to Peccable's house and then return to Earth. Gentle decides to return to the house on Gamut Street where he attempted reconciliation 200 years before and some of the memories from that time return to his head. His returned memories include those of conversations with Joshua Godolphin and the ancestors of those in the Tabula Rasa, as well as a young man, Lucius Cobbitt. Also remembered is the moments after the reconciliation failed and the horror brought upon everyone when Sartori tampered with the ceremony and creatures from the In Ovo were released. Gentle has a vision of those killed attacking him, a sort of 'final rite of passage' as his memories return. A creature known as Little Ease sent by Sartori invades Gentle's mind and tells him that Sartori will use him to prevent the reconciliation from occurring by any way possible. When Gentle leaves the house, Little Ease releases all of Gentle's memories from the past 200 years into his mind, harming him tremendously. Gentle, scarred from the event later appears where some homeless people are living and is almost killed by one of them until he uses a pneuma to defend himself. He befriends Monday, a fellow artist. Judith meanwhile sleeps with Sartori, thinking that he is Gentle. After being reunited with old colleagues like Klein, Clem and Oscar, Judith becomes obsessed with freeing Celestine from her prison below Roxborough Tower. She and Oscar eventually head to Roxborough Tower after all of the Tabula Rasa end up being killed. When they split up, Oscar ends up getting attacked by Dowd (still alive, with pieces from the Pivot shoved into his body), who slices him up much in the same way that Oscar did to him near the start of the book. Judith arrives just as Oscar dies. After speaking with Dowd, Judith returns to the basement of the tower and frees Celestine, who then fights and defeats Dowd. Celestine tells Judith that she wants to see Maestro Sartori. Clem one night while helping the homeless finds Gentle and helps him get his senses back. Gentle heads off with him, and Monday tags along. Sartori meanwhile reveals to Judith (who still thinks he's Gentle) that he has impregnated her when she tries to get him to see Celestine. Judith tells him to go see Celestine. The real Gentle arrives shortly afterwards with Clem and Monday, and they head to Roxborough Tower, where Sartori has already met Celestine, who reveals that he was the child she bore when she was raped by Hapexamendios hundreds of years before. Gentle and Sartori do battle while the others help Celestine out of the tower. Once their battle is over, Gentle and the others head back to the house on Gamut Street where Judith captures Little Ease. In exchange for not being killed, Little Ease swears allegiance to Gentle. Gentle has Judith and Monday return to Godolphin's retreat to retrieve stones to be used in the ceremony, while there Judith encounters Dowd one last time. Before dying, Dowd leaves some doubt in Judith's mind about what Hapexamendios's intentions really are and whether the reconciliation will be a good thing or not. Judith decides to head to Yzordderrex to see the Goddesses and find out from them whether or not the reconciliation should go forward. She tells Monday to return to Gentle with that message and heads to Yzordderrex. Gentle sends his spirit across the Imajica to meet with the other Maestros joining him in the reconciliation: Tick Raw in the fourth, Scopique in the third, Athanasius in the second (who Scopique was able to convince to help them), and Chicka Jackeen near the first (who is revealed to be Lucius). Judith meanwhile makes it to Yzordderrex and heads to the Autarch's palace, now in ruins and flooded. There she is able to meet with the Goddesses, Tishallulé, Jokalaylau, and Uma Umagammagi, who had been trapped in the Pivot until its destruction. Initially distrusting of her, the Goddesses convene among themselves and tell Judith that it is all right to go ahead with the reconciliation. They also reveal to her that when reconciled, the Imajica is a circle and that Judith may one day be among the Goddesses. It's also revealed that, being the Imajica a circle, the souls of the dead ones won't be able to escape the Imajica itself as they hoped with the Reconciliation. Judith returns to the fifth dominion, to the house on Gamut Street. Gentle begins the reconciliation as everyone else in the house keeps watch for Sartori and his minions to make sure they don't interfere. When they do arrive, they kill Little Ease and Sartori confronts Judith. He now seems a changed man, saying that once the dominions are reconciled Hapexamendios will turn them to a wasteland. Sartori tries to convince Judith that they should kill themselves, but she instead rushes back in the house to try and stop Gentle from completing the reconciliation. She enters the circle where he is performing it and Sartori soon follows. Gentle tampers with one of the stones used in the ceremony to attack Sartori. The two do battle and Sartori severely wounds Gentle by stabbing him, then takes his place and returns the stone to its rightful place. Sartori's minions carry Gentle's body out of the room to Celestine and Judith accompanies them as the clock strikes midnight and the reconciliation is completed. Celestine tells Gentle to send his spirit to see Hapexamendios and convince him to send his fire their way, as the god is unaware that the Imajica is a circle, and his attack would simply come back to him. Gentle's spirit makes its way through the dominions, passing through the Erasure into the first dominion. There Gentle sees a magnificent, seemingly infinitely large city that initially appears to be deserted. After some help from a Nullianac Gentle realizes the truth, that Hapexamendios himself is the city. Gentle starts speaking to Hapexamendios and convinces him to show his human form, which is gigantic, but also distorted and misshapen. When Celestine is brought up, Hapexamendios grows angry and sends a flame across the dominions to kill her. Celestine is vaporized, but with the circle of the Imajica now restored, it returns to the first dominion and destroys Hapexamendios himself. Severely burned by Hapexamendios's fire, Sartori dies in Judith's arms. The weeks and months go by and the dominions slowly become used to becoming reconciled. Many like Tick Raw come from the various dominions to see Gentle, but he can only think about Pie. Judith leaves to Yzordderrex to give birth to her child, a daughter whom she names Huzzah, and Gentle and Monday follow and are eventually reunited with her. They then head to the first dominion to see Chicka Jackeen and Gentle parts with them, never to return. Monday and Chicka Jackeen head back to the fifth to see Clem with a map of the Imajica Gentle has been working on and his last message. On the promontory, Gentle looks down and sees beyond the waves what looks like another sky but is, in reality, a gate outside Imajica that his father tried to seal and was reopened by the Goddesses. Jumping into this gate, Gentle becomes reunited with Pie'oh'pah outside of the Imajica; meanwhile in the Fifth Dominion, Jackeen, Monday and Clem start drawing Gentle's map of the Imajica on every wall.
1016702	/m/03zjmd	The Man with the Twisted Lip	Arthur Conan Doyle			 Dr Watson is called upon late at night by a female friend of his wife. Her husband has been absent for several days and, as he is an opium addict, she is sure he has been indulging in a lengthy drug binge in a dangerous East End opium den. Frantic with worry, she seeks Dr. Watson's help in fetching him home. Watson does this, but he also finds his friend Sherlock Holmes in the den, disguised as an old man, trying to extract information about a new case from the addicts in the den. Mr. Neville St. Clair, a respectable and punctual country businessman, has disappeared. Making the matter even more mysterious is that Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that she saw her husband at a second-floor window of the opium den, in Upper Swandam Lane, a rather rough part of town near the docks. He withdrew into the window immediately, and Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that there was something very wrong. Naturally, she tries to enter the building, but her way was blocked by the opium den's owner, a Lascar. She quickly fetches the police, but they cannot find Mr. St. Clair. The room, in whose window she saw her husband, is that of a dirty, disfigured beggar, well known to the police, by the name of Hugh Boone. The police are about to put this report down a mistake of some kind when Mrs. St. Clair spots and identifies a box of wooden bricks that her husband said he would buy for their son. A further search turns up some of her husband's clothes. Later, his coat, with the pockets full of several pounds' worth of pennies and halfpennies, is found in the Thames just below the building. The beggar is arrested and locked up at the police station, and Holmes initially is quite convinced that Mr. St. Clair has been the unfortunate victim of murder. However, several days after Mr. St. Clair's disappearance, his wife receives a letter in his own writing. The arrival of this letter forces Holmes to reconsider his conclusions, leading him eventually to an extraordinary solution. Taking a bath sponge to the police station in a Gladstone bag, Holmes washes Boone's still-dirty face, causing his face to be revealed — the face of Neville St. Clair! Upon Mr. St. Clair's immediate confession, this solves the mystery, and also creates a few problems. It seems that Mr. St. Clair has been leading a double life, one of respectability, and the other as a beggar. In his youth, he had been an actor before becoming a newspaper reporter. In order to research an article, he had disguised himself as a beggar for a short time, during which he earned a very large amount of money. Later in his life, he returned to the street to beg for several days in order to pay a large debt. Given a choice between his newspaper salary and his high beggar earnings, he eventually became a professional beggar. His takings were large enough that he was able to establish himself as a country gentleman, marry well, and begin a respectable family. His wife never knew what he did for a living, and Holmes agrees to preserve Mr. St. Clair's secret as long as no more is heard of Hugh Boone.
1016830	/m/03zk2_	The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle	Arthur Conan Doyle	1892	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Watson visits his friend Holmes at Christmas time and finds him contemplating a battered old hat, brought to him by the commissionaire Peterson after it and a Christmas goose had been dropped by a man in a scuffle with some street ruffians. Peterson takes the goose home to eat it, but comes back later with a carbuncle. His wife has found it in the bird's crop (throat). Holmes makes some interesting deductions concerning the owner of the hat from simple observations of its condition, conclusions amply confirmed when an advertisement for the owner produces the man himself: Henry Baker. Holmes cannot resist such an intriguing mystery, and he and Watson set out across the city to determine exactly how the jewel, stolen from the Countess of Morcar during her stay at a hotel, wound up in a goose's crop. The man who dropped the goose, Mr. Henry Baker, clearly has no knowledge of the crime, but he gives Holmes valuable information, eventually leading him to the conclusive stage of his investigation, at Covent Garden. There, a salesman named Breckinridge gets angry with Holmes, complaining about all the people who have pestered him about geese sold recently to the landlord of the Alpha Inn. Clearly, someone else knows that the carbuncle was in a goose and is looking for the bird. Holmes expects that he will have to visit the goose supplier in Brixton, but it proves unnecessary: the other "pesterer" that the salesman mentioned shows up right then, a cringing little man named James Ryder whom Holmes prevails upon to tell the whole sordid story, by first mentioning that Ryder is probably looking for a goose with a black bar on its tail, a remarkable bird that "[laid] an egg after it was dead". Of course, Holmes has already deduced most of it. Ryder, believing he was being pursued for the theft, fed the carbuncle to a goose being bred by his sister Maggie Oakshott. He was to have that goose as a gift, but lost track of which one it was. Thus, when Ryder cut open the goose and found no gem, he went back to his sister, who had provided the Alpha Inn geese, and asked if there was more than one goose that had a black bar on its tail. She said there were two, but he was too late: she had sold them all to Breckinridge at Covent Garden. Breckinridge already sold the geese to the Alpha Inn, and the other goose with a black bar on its tail found its way to Henry Baker as his Christmas fowl. Ryder and his accomplice — the countess's maid, Catherine Cusack — contrived to disguise the crime to frame John Horner, a plumber who worked at the same hotel as Ryder and had previously been imprisoned for robbery. Holmes, however, does not take the standard action against the man, it being Christmas, and concluding that arresting the clearly anguished Ryder will only make him into a more hardened criminal later. Ryder flees to the continent and Horner will be freed as the case against him will collapse without Ryder's perjured testimony. Holmes remarks that he is not retained by the police to remedy their deficiencies.
1016844	/m/03zk4x	The Adventure of the Speckled Band	Arthur Conan Doyle			 A young woman named Helen Stoner consults the detective Sherlock Holmes about the suspicious death of her sister, Julia. One night, after conversing with her twin sister about her upcoming wedding day, Julia screamed and came to the hallway where Helen came out to see her, in Julia's dying words she said "it was the band, the speckled band!" Julia had been engaged to be married and, had she lived, would have received an annual GBP250 annuity from her late mother's income. Now Helen is engaged to be married. Holmes' investigation of the mother's estate reveals that its value has decreased significantly, and if both daughters had married, Dr. Roylott, Helen's ill-tempered and violent stepfather, would be left with very little, while the marriage of even one would be crippling. Therefore, the main suspicion falls on him. Dr. Roylott has required Helen to move into Julia's old room of his heavily mortgaged ancestral home, Stoke Moran. A number of details about the place are mysterious and disturbing. A low whistling sound is heard late at night, as well as a metallic clang. There is a strange bell cord over the bed, and it does not seem to work any bell. The rope goes to a ventilator to the step father's room. The bed is also unusually clamped to the floor so that it can never be moved from its position. Stoner surmises that Julia might have been murdered by the gypsies, whom Dr. Roylott permits to live on the grounds&mdash;they wear speckled handkerchiefs around their necks. A cheetah and a baboon also have the run of the property, for Dr. Roylott keeps exotic pets from India. Helen feels reluctant to sleep in the room. After Helen leaves, Dr. Roylott comes to visit Holmes, having traced his stepdaughter. He demands to know what Helen has said to Holmes, but Holmes refuses to say. Dr. Roylott bends an iron poker into a curve in an attempt to intimidate Holmes, but Holmes is unaffected as he maintains a rather jovial demeanor during the encounter. After Roylott leaves, Holmes straightens the poker out again, thus showing that he is just as strong as the doctor. Having arranged for Helen to spend the night in her original bedroom, Holmes and Watson sneak into her bedroom without Dr. Roylott's knowledge. Holmes says that he has already deduced the solution to the mystery, and this test of his theory turns out to be successful. They hear the whistle, and Holmes also sees what the bell cord is really for, although Watson does not. Julia's last words about a "speckled band" were in fact describing "a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India". The venomous snake had been sent to Julia's room by Dr. Roylott through the ventilator to murder her. The fake bell cord is to act as a bridge for the snake to land on the bed. After the swamp adder bit Julia, he called off the snake with the whistling, which made the snake climb up through the bell cord, disappearing from the scene. Now the swamp adder is sent again through the ventilator by Dr. Roylott to kill Julia's sister Helen. Holmes attacks the snake, sending it back through an air ventilator connected to the next room. The aggravated snake bites Dr. Roylott instead, and, within seconds, he is dead. Holmes grimly notes that he is indirectly responsible for Dr. Roylott's death, but that he is unlikely to feel much guilt over the death.
1019550	/m/03zvmd	Comanche Moon	Larry McMurtry	1997	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Texas Governor Elisha Pease sends a small troop of Texas Rangers, under the leadership of Captain Inish Scull, to the Llano Estacado in pursuit of the celebrated Comanche horse thief, Kicking Wolf. This bold Indian steals Hector, Scull's famous horse, and takes it to the Sierra Perdida to give to the notorious Mexican bandit Ahumado, feared for the horrible tortures that he inflicts upon his victims. Scull, promoting McCrae and Call to Captains and instructing them to lead the Ranger troop back to Austin, sets off on foot after Kicking Wolf, accompanied only by the Kickapoo tracker Famous Shoes. Ahumado ties Kicking Wolf up to be dragged away by a horse, and takes Kicking Wolf's companion, Three Birds, prisoner. Ahumado intends to impose a slow death on Three Birds, but Three Birds throws himself off a cliff. Scull finds the unconscious Kicking Wolf being dragged by the horse, and cuts the Comanche's bonds, which allows Kicking Wolf to survive and return to his tribe. Scull is soon captured by Ahumado, and placed in a cage, where he is supposed to die slowly. Having returned to Austin, McCrae learns that his beloved Clara Forsythe intends to marry his rival, horse trader Bob Allen (though she is not married yet, as Scull's wife had led McCrae to believe). Call learns that his lover, the reluctant whore Maggie Tilton, is pregnant with his child. Prompted by Scull's insistent and promiscuous wife Inez, Governor Pease sends Call and McCrae out in charge of another typically small Ranger troop to rescue Captain Scull. While they are on this mission, Comanche chief Buffalo Hump leads his nation on the warpath. They burn much of Austin, killing Clara's parents and ravaging fellow Ranger Long Bill Coleman's wife, Pearl. Maggie, having been prepared by Call, hides under a smokehouse, thus escaping the Comanches' notice. The Rangers turn back to Austin as soon as they hear of the raid there. Pearl and Long Bill are unable to recover emotionally, and Long Bill hangs himself. Scull handles the cage so well that Ahumado has him taken down, and has his henchman Goyeto cut off his eyelids. Ahumado sends word to Austin that he will return Scull for a ransom of one thousand cattle. Governor Pease sends the Rangers out once again, to collect the cattle and exchange the herd for Scull. The Rangers go to Lonesome Dove in search of cattleman Captain King. Realizing they will not be able to even gather the cattle, let alone persuade King to sell them, Call and McCrae set out to try to rescue Scull on their own terms, leaving the rest of their troop behind. Meanwhile, Ahumado has been bitten by a brown recluse spider, and goes South to die. Call and McCrae find Scull going insane in a pit, but the rescue is soon enough to allow Scull to mostly recover. Scull returns to Austin and later becomes a general with the Union army. Because of the eyepieces he has devised, he becomes known as "Blinders" Scull. Meanwhile, Buffalo Hump banishes his half-Mexican son Blue Duck. Blue Duck goes East and acquires wealth and notoriety as the leader of a gang of bandits. At this point, the novel moves more quickly, giving highlights covering the period leading up to the sequel, Lonesome Dove. Maggie gives birth to Call's son Newt, but Call refuses to acknowledge the child is his. She goes to work at the general store, and Jake Spoon more or less moves in with her. The Civil War takes most of the soldiers away from the frontier, enabling the Comanches to push back the white settlers. After the Civil War, Call and McCrae are sent in pursuit of Blue Duck and his band of renegades. Buffalo Hump has gone off to die. Blue Duck hears of this and leaves his cutthroats to pursue his father. The Rangers attack his band, but Blue Duck, having left, evades capture. He finds his father at his chosen place of death and kills him there. Maggie dies while the Rangers are on this expedition.
1020222	/m/03zxmp	Coldheart Canyon	Clive Barker	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story begins in Romania during the 1920s, where poverty and disease run rampant. American talent agent Willem Zeffer and the Romanian-born actress he represents, Katya Lupi, have travelled there in order to visit Katya's relatives. Zeffer visits an old medieval castle which has been turned into a monastery and decides to buy a unique work of art, a series of sculpted and painted tiles depicting, in a grotesque and obscene manner, the local legend of a Count who was cursed to haunt the nearby wilderness for all eternity. The second part of the story begins in the year 2000, with failing movie star Todd Pickett deciding to undergo plastic surgery in order to make himself look younger and engineer a comeback. Something goes wrong during the surgery, and Todd, now disfigured, is forced to go into hiding during his recovery. His agent selects Katya Lupi's former home, an abandoned house in Coldheart Canyon, a secluded area outside Hollywood, where Todd soon discovers that Katya and her "subjects" still hold court.
1020773	/m/03zyy8	Tarzan of the Apes	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1914	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of John Clayton, born in the western coastal jungles of equatorial Africa to a marooned couple from England, John and Alice (Rutherford) Clayton, Lord and Lady Greystoke. Adopted as an infant by the she-ape Kala after his parents died (his father is killed by the savage king ape Kerchak), Clayton is named "Tarzan" ("White Skin" in the ape language) and raised in ignorance of his human heritage. Feeling alienated from his peers due to their physical differences, he discovers his true parents' cabin, where he first learns of others like himself in their books, with which he eventually teaches himself to read. On his return from one visit to the cabin, he is attacked by a huge gorilla which he manages to kill with his father's knife, although he is terribly wounded in the struggle. As he grows up, Tarzan becomes a skilled hunter, gradually arousing the jealousy of Kerchak, the ape leader. Later, a tribe of black Africans settles in the area, and Kala is killed by one of its hunters. Avenging himself on the killer, Tarzan begins an antagonistic relationship with the tribe, raiding its village for weapons and practicing cruel pranks on them. They, in turn, regard him as an evil spirit and attempt to placate him. The twelve short stories Burroughs wrote later and collected as Jungle Tales of Tarzan occur in the period immediately following the arrival of the natives, the killing of Kala, and Tarzan's vengeance. Finally Tarzan has amassed so much credit among the apes of the tribe that the envious Kerchak at last attacks him. In the ensuing battle Tarzan kills Kerchak and takes his place as "king" of the apes. Subsequently, a new party of whites is marooned on the coast, including Jane Porter, the first white woman Tarzan has ever seen. Tarzan's cousin, William Cecil Clayton, unwitting usurper of the ape man's ancestral English estate, is also among the party. Tarzan spies on the newcomers, aids them, and saves Jane from the perils of the jungle. Absent when they are rescued, he is introduced further into the mysteries of civilization by French Naval Officer Paul D'Arnot, whom he saves from the natives. D'Arnot teaches Tarzan French and how to behave among white men, as well as serving as his guide to the nearest colonial outposts. Ultimately, Tarzan travels to Jane's native Baltimore, Maryland only to find that she is now in the woods of Wisconsin. Tarzan finally meets Jane in Wisconsin where they renew their acquaintance and he learns the bitter news that she has become engaged to William Clayton. Meanwhile, clues from his parents' cabin have enabled D'Arnot to prove Tarzan's true identity. Instead of claiming his inheritance, Tarzan chooses to conceal his identity and renounce his heritage for the sake of Jane's happiness.
1021038	/m/03zzp6	Zoot Suit	Luis Valdez			 Henry Reyna (inspired by real-life defendant Henry Leyvas) is a Zoot Suiter "Pachuco" On his last night of freedom before beginning his Naval service he and his "gang" are accused of the murder of a rival "gangster" after a party. Unfairly prosecuted, the entire gang is thrown in jail for a murder they did not commit. The play is set in the barrios of Los Angeles, California in the early 1940s against the backdrop of the Zoot Suit Riots and World War II. The play is narrated throughout and most of the songs are performed by El Pachuco, an idealized Zoot Suiter. El Pachuco functions as a "Greek Chorus", commenting on the action of the play, and functioning as Henry's conscience. While in prison, Henry develops a crush on the legal aide working on his case, and his brother is wounded in the infamous Zoot Suit riots. The opinion of the public is given in the form of news headlines by a reporter who is sometimes a journalist and a radio broadcaster.
1021467	/m/03z__9	The Dark Tower	Stephen King	2004-09-21	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Beginning where book six left off, Jake Chambers and Father Callahan battle the evil infestation within the Dixie Pig, a vampire lounge in New York City featuring roast human flesh and doors to other worlds. After fighting off and destroying numerous "Low-Men" and Type One Vampires, Callahan sacrifices himself to let Jake survive. In the other world, in Fedic, Mia, her body now physically separated from Susannah Dean, gives birth to Mordred Deschain, the biological son of Roland Deschain and Susannah. The Crimson King is also a "co-father" of this prophetic child somehow, so it is not surprising when "baby" Mordred's first act is to shapeshift into a spider-creature and feast on his birth-mother. Susannah grabs a gun, wounds but fails to kill Mordred, eliminates other agents of the Crimson King, and escapes to meet up with Jake. Maturing at an accelerated rate, Mordred later stalks Roland and the other gunslingers throughout this adventure, shifting from human to spider as the need arises, seething with an instinctive rage toward Roland, his "white daddy." In Maine, Roland and Eddie recruit John Cullum, and then make their way back to Fedic, where the ka-tet is now reunited. Walter (known in other stories as Randall Flagg) has dreams of grandeur in which he plans to slay Mordred and use the birthmark on Mordred's heel to gain access to the Tower, but he is easily slain by the infant when Mordred sees through his lies. Roland and his ka-tet travel to Thunderclap, then to the nearby Devar-Toi, to stop a group of psychics known as Breakers who are allowing their telepathic abilities to be used to break away at the beams that support the Tower. Ted Brautigan and Dinky Earnshaw assist the gunslingers with information and weapons, and reunite Roland with his old friend Sheemie Ruiz from Mejis. The Gunslingers free the Breakers from their captors, but Eddie is mortally wounded after the battle and dies a short while later. Roland and Jake pause to mourn and then jump to Maine of 1999 along with Oy, in order to save the life of Stephen King (who he writes to be an omniscient secondary character in the book); the ka-tet have come to believe that for some unexplained reason, the success of their quest depends on King's surviving to write about it through his books. They discover King about to be hit by a van. Jake pushes King out of the way but is killed in the process. Roland, heartbroken with the loss of the person he considers his true son, buries Jake and returns to Susannah in Fedic with Oy, where they are first chased relentlessly through the depths of Castle Discordia by an otherworldly monster, then depart and travel for weeks across freezing badlands toward the Tower. Along the way they find Patrick Danville, a young man imprisoned by someone who calls himself Joe Collins but is really a psychic vampire named Dandelo. Dandelo feeds off the emotions of his victims, and starts to feed off of Roland and Susannah by telling them jokes. Roland and Susannah are alerted to the danger by Stephen King, who drops clues directly into the book, enabling them to defeat the vampire. They discover Patrick in the basement, and find that Dandelo had removed his tongue. Patrick is freed and soon his special talent becomes evident: his drawings and paintings have the strange tendency to become reality. As their travels bring them nearer to the Dark Tower, Susannah comes to the conclusion that Roland needs to complete his journey without her. After discovering Patrick's magical abilities in his drawings, Susannah asks Patrick to draw a door she has seen in her dreams, which lead her out of this world. He does so and once it appears, Susannah says goodbye to Roland and crosses over to another world. Mordred finally reaches and attacks Roland. Oy viciously defends his dinh, providing Roland the extra seconds needed to exterminate the were-spider. Unfortunately, Oy is impaled on a tree branch and dies. Roland continues on to his ultimate goal and reaches the Tower, only to find it occupied by the Crimson King. They remain in a stalemate for a few hours, till Roland uses Patrick's special abilities to draw a picture of the Crimson King and then erase it, thus wiping him out of existence. Roland gains entry into the Tower while Patrick turns back home. The last scene is that of Roland crying out the names of his loved ones and fallen comrades as he had vowed to do. The door of the Dark Tower closes shut as Patrick watches from a distance. The story then shifts to Susannah coming through the magic door to an alternate 1980s New York, where Gary Hart is president. Susannah throws away Roland's gun (which does not function on this side of the door), rejecting the life of a gunslinger, and starts a new life with alternate versions of Eddie and Jake, who in this world are brothers with the surname Toren. They have only very vague memories of their previous journey with Susannah, whose own memories of Mid-World are already beginning to fade. It is implied that an alternate version of Oy, a dog with a long neck whose barks sometimes sound like words, will also join them. Stephen King inserts an "afterword" which warns readers to close the book at this point, consider the story finished with a happy ending, and not venture inside the Tower with Roland. For those who do not heed the warning, the story resumes with Roland stepping into the Dark Tower. He realizes that the Tower is not really made of stone, but a kind of flesh: it is Gan's physical body. As he climbs the steps, Roland encounters various rooms containing siguls or signs of his past life. When he reaches the top of the Tower, he finds a door marked "ROLAND", and opens it. Roland instantly realizes, to his horror, that he has reached the Tower countless times before. He is forced through the door by the hands of Gan, only to be transported back in time to the Mohaine desert, with no memories of what has just occurred, ending the series where it began in the first line of book one: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." The only difference is that, this time, Roland possesses the Horn of Eld, which in the previous incarnation he had left lying on the ground after the Battle of Jericho Hill. Roland hears the voice of Gan, whispering that, if he reaches the Tower again, perhaps this time the result will be different; there may yet be rest.
1021579	/m/02wv7r8	The Andalite Chronicles	K. A. Applegate	1997-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place before and leading up to the events in The Invasion. It is narrated by Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, or, as he is later known, Prince Elfangor. It begins with him uploading his memory into the computer before facing Visser Three at the abandoned construction site. The rest of the book is then a flashback of Elfangor's personal history, beginning with him as an aristh, a warrior in training, and ending with him at the construction site. In 1976, Elfangor and his fellow aristh Arbron (who are aboard the dome ship StarSword) rescue two humans from the Skrit Na: Loren and Hedrick Chapman. They are assigned to return them to Earth under the leadership of a disgraced War-Prince, Alloran-Semitur-Corrass. However, upon realizing the Skrit Na are in possession of the mythical Time Matrix, they are forced to go after it. They find out that the Skrit Na are taking the Time Matrix to the Taxxon home world. Arbron becomes trapped as a Taxxon, and Elfangor becomes responsible for Alloran's infestation when Sub-Visser 7 tricked him. Eventually, Elfangor, Alloran and the Yeerk controlling him, and the humans fall into a black hole. They are forced to use the Time Matrix to escape, which takes them to a fragmented universe created from Elfangor, Loren, and the Yeerk (now Visser Thirty-Two)'s memories. Elfangor and Loren are able to escape to Earth in Loren's own time - although she has aged by several years due to the effect of the Time Matrix - where he permanently morphs a human and stays in that form. He marries Loren some time later, but just before she gives birth to Tobias, the Ellimist repairs Elfangor's "timeline." Elfangor finds himself in the middle of a battle between his old ship and the Yeerks. The Yeerk ship is being commanded by Visser Thirty-Two - now Visser Three. Elfangor rams the Yeerk ship, almost killing himself, and saves his fellow Andalites. After this he is considered a hero.
1022221	/m/03_1yf	Deception Point	Dan Brown	2001	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Intelligence Analyst Rachel Sexton works for the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office). Her father, Senator Sedgewick Sexton, is a presidential candidate who is more popular than incumbent President of the United States Zachary Herney. The President sends her to the Arctic as part of a team of experts to confirm and authenticate findings made by NASA deep within the Milne Ice Shelf on Ellesmere Island. NASA's new Polar Orbiting Density Scanner (PODS), part of the Earth Observation System (EOS), a collection of satellites monitoring the globe for signs of large-scale change, has found an extremely dense spot in the Milne Ice Shelf. At this spot NASA discovers a very dense meteorite. In it are insect fossils very similar to, but not the same as, species on earth. NASA claims this as proof of extraterrestrial life. The find is something NASA needs in the light of recent failures. Senator Sexton uses these failures as an example of government overspending to further his campaign; he wants to abolish NASA and direct the funding toward public schools instead. In order to ensure that the discovery is not tarnished by the reputation that NASA has developed, the President sends four leading civilian scientists (Michael Tolland, a famous oceanographer and TV personality; Corky Marlinson, a brilliant but eccentric astrophysicist; Norah Mangor, a prickly glaciologist and Wailee Ming, a palaeontologist) to the Arctic to verify the meteorite's authenticity. A Delta Force team is also observing the discovery, monitoring the NASA staff for an unknown commander. Ming observes an irregularity within the pit from which the meteorite was extracted. He reaches into the water to obtain a sample and falls in due to an attack by microbots operated by the Delta Force team. He soon drowns at the bottom of the pit. When Tolland sees the irregularity, he shares it with Corky Marlinson and Rachel Sexton. They report it to Mangor, who confirms that there is sea water in what should be a closed area with only freshwater. The four go outside to scan the ice from a distance. The scan shows Ming's body in the water and a column of frozen sea ice beneath the meteorite where it was drilled up into the glacier. Upon discovering this, the four are attacked by the Delta Force team, leaving Norah Mangor dead. Sexton, Tolland and Marlinson escape and are picked up by the Navy submarine USS Charlotte. The Delta Force team believes them to be dead, leaving the scientists a chance to tell the President's advisor and Rachel's boss at the NRO about their discovery, and the subsequent attack. Rachel's boss, NRO director William Pickering, has them airlifted from the sub to a chopper which escorts them away from the meteorite discovery site. Senator Sexton's true motive for wanting to abolish NASA is revealed to be his work for the interests of private corporations from the Space Frontier Foundation, who wish to profit off of space exploration in the event that NASA is dismantled. Rachel is unaware of this, and believes that the President and NASA are part of the conspiracy to kill them. If so, their motive would be to cover up evidence that the meteorite is fake and solely designed to gain support for the incumbent President in the upcoming election. Aboard Tolland's ship off the New Jersey coast, where the Delta Force arrives via helicopter to kill them, Rachel sends a fax message to her father asking for help. Sexton, Tolland, and Marlinson work together to kill the Delta Force squad in self-defense. Rachel is surprised to see Pickering emerging from the helicopter, revealing that he is the commander of the Delta Force squad. He tells Rachel about her father's true motivations for becoming President, and that he (Pickering) masterminded the fake meteorite to hurt Senator Sexton's campaign, protecting the American people in his eyes. When the President sent the civilian team to verify the authenticity of the meteorite, Pickering realized that they would discover his plot and that they needed to be eliminated at all costs. Rachel attempts to reason with Pickering, saying that murder is not a justifiable way of solving the problem. Pickering, however, says that he is "sacrificing a few to save many", and that he will finish the job personally. Pickering shoots at the three with a machine gun, but they manage to get off of the ship. The helicopter slides off the ship into the sea, sinking to the bottom. The intense heat at the bottom ignites the Hellfire Missiles still on the helicopter, tearing the existent magma plume at the bottom of the sea, creating a water vortex. The ship is sucked in by the vortex, and Pickering is implied to have been killed in the wreck. Senator Sexton then reads the fax message his daughter sent him to the public, possibly incriminating the President and NASA. However, the truth eventually comes to light about Senator Sexton's ulterior motives and Pickering's meteorite plot, securing Zachary Herney a second term as President. By the end of the story, Michael and Rachel have developed a romantic relationship.
1022544	/m/03_2x2	Love in the Time of Cholera	Gabriel García Márquez	1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. She becomes enamoured with him during their youth but is forced to stop meeting him by her father. Eventually she weds Juvenal Urbino at the age of 21 (the "deadline" she had set for herself) because he seemed to offer her security and love. Urbino is a medical doctor devoted to science, modernity, and "order and progress." He is committed to the eradication of cholera and to the promotion of public works. He is a rational man whose life is organized precisely and who values his importance and reputation in society to the utmost. He is a herald of progress and modernization. Urbino's function in the novel is to provide the counterpoint to Florentino Ariza’s archaic, boldly romantic love. Urbino proves in the end not to have been an entirely faithful husband, confessing one affair to Fermina many years into their marriage. Though the novel seems to suggest that Urbino's love for Fermina was never as spiritually chaste as Florentino Ariza's was, it also complicates Florentino's devotion by cataloging his many trysts and apparently a few, possibly genuine, loves. By the end of the book, Fermina comes to recognize Ariza's wisdom and maturity and their love is allowed to blossom during their old age. For most of their adult lives, however, their communication is limited to occasional public niceties. *Lorenzo Daza – Fermina Daza’s father, a mule driver; he despised Florentino and forced them to stop meeting each other. *Jeremiah de Saint-Amour – The man whose suicide is introduced as the opening to the novel; a photographer and chess-player. *Aunt Escolástica – The woman who attempts to aid Fermina in her early romance with Florentino by delivering their letters for them. She is ultimately sent away by Lorenzo Daza for this. *Tránsito Ariza – Florentino’s mother. *Hildebranda Sánchez – Fermina’s cousin. *Miss Barbara Lynch – The woman with whom Urbino confesses having an affair. *Diego Samaritano – The captain of the riverboat on which Fermina and Florentino ride at the end of the novel. *Leona Cassiani - She starts out as the "personal assistant" to Uncle Leo XII at the R.C.C., the company which Florentino eventually controls. At one point, it is revealed that the two share a deep respect, possibly even love, for each other, but will never actually be together. She has a maternal love for him as a result of his "charity" in rescuing her from the streets and giving her a job. *América Vicuña - The fourteen-year-old girl who towards the end of the novel is sent to live with Florentino; he is her guardian while she is in school. They have a sexual relationship, and upon failing her exams and after her rejection by Florentino, she kills herself. Her suicide illustrates the selfish nature of Florentino's love for Fermina.
1022678	/m/03_34g	Gai-Jin	James Clavell	1993-06	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens with a fictional rendition of the Namamugi Incident. On September 14, 1862. Phillip Tyrer, John Canterbury, Angelique Richaud, and Malcolm Struan are riding on the Tōkaidō, when they are attacked by Shorin Anato and Ori Ryoma, both Satsuma samurai and ronin shishi in the sonnō jōi movement, cells of revolutionary xenophobic idealists. Canterbury is killed, Malcolm seriously wounded, and Tyrer receives a minor arm injury; only Angelique escapes unharmed to get help back to Yokohama. Tyrer and Malcolm make their to Kanagawa (Kanagawa-ku) later that day, where Dr. Babcott operates on Malcolm. Meanwhile, at a village inn in Hodogaya the daimyo Sanjiro of Satsuma, meets with Katsumata, one of his advisors, and receives Ori and Shorin, with whom he plots an overthrow of the current Shogunate. Two days later Malcolm is moved to the merchant's settlement in Yokohama. He is not expected to last long and while he is in bed sick, he shows his emotions for Angelique, who will eventually become his wife.
1022836	/m/03_3p7	Ammonite	Nicola Griffith	1992-12-23	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ammonite is the story of Marghe Taishan, an employee of the sinister, monolithic 'Company', sent to the planet GP (pronounced 'Jeep') as an anthropologist. The distinctive feature of Jeep is an endemic disease which kills all men (and some women) who contract it. While testing a vaccine made to protect unexposed people form the virus, Marghe makes a journey across Jeep, living with many of its indigenous cultures. She is enslaved by the nomadic Echraide, and then reaches the quieter village of Ollfoss, where she joins a family, learns the mystic discipline of linking, and eventually becomes a 'viajera', or traveling wise woman, giving up the vaccine in favor of accepting the virus into her body and truly learning what it is like to be a native. Afterward, she is forced to the center of a conflict between her former people, the Mirrors, with their native allies and the Echraide, who follow a member of their tribe whom they believe to be the Death God. Marghe wins peace for all as the Mirror's guard ship is blown out of the sky by the Company, who believe the vaccine has failed. Adaptation to life on Jeep appears to be a greater theme of Griffith's novel, as not only Marghe, but other Company personnel, also eventually are forced to settle on Jeep and adapt to the cultures that its prior colonists have created, in order to adjust to the planetary environment.
1023048	/m/03_46h	Rite of Passage	Alexei Panshin	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rite of Passage is told as a flashback by Mia Havero, the daughter of the Chairman of the Ship's Council, after she has completed her own rite of passage, also known as Trial. She has survived for thirty days on a colony planet with minimal supplies as part of her initiation into adulthood on one of several giant Ships that survived Earth's destruction in AD 2041. To prevent overpopulation on the Ships, family units can only produce children with the approval of the Ship's Eugenics Council. The penalty for breaking this rule is exile to a colony world. By the year 2198, Mia Havero is twelve years old and, like most of Ship-bound humanity, regards the colonists as "Mudeaters", a derogatory reference to frontier life on a planet. When she accompanies her father on a trading mission to the planet Grainau, Mia learns from the children of a Grainau official that the feeling is mutual; many on the colony worlds call Ship people "Grabbies" because they take whatever goods they cannot produce on the Ships in return for knowledge and technology (doled out sparingly), the heritage of Earth to which the ship residents have laid claim and which colonists are unable to maintain, being too busy staying alive. When Mia returns to the Ship, in addition to her regular studies, she joins a survival class. Survival class is every thirteen-year-old's preparation for Trial, the Ships' rite of passage into adulthood required within three months of turning fourteen. By requiring adolescents to experience the rigors and dangers of life on a colony planet, the Ships hope to avoid stagnation and ensure that those who survive are skilled enough to contribute significantly to Ship life. However, the mortality rate of Trial participants is fairly high, so no expense is spared to train the adolescents about to go through Trial so that they will survive the month spent planetside. Mia's companion in school and in survival class is Jimmy Dentremont, a highly gifted boy of her own age. Their initial rivalry turns to friendship and eventually blossoms into love. Both in and out of survival class, sometimes with Jimmy and sometimes with other children, Mia has a series of adventures that build her confidence, broaden her world, and prepare her for Trial. Her moral awareness also grows during this time, both through formal study of ethical theory and through reflection on the errors she inevitably makes as she risks new experiences. Shortly after her fourteenth birthday, Mia and her class are dispatched to the planet Tintera to undergo their Trial. Having quarreled with Jimmy, Mia refuses to team with him, but still chooses the tiger strategy over the turtle strategy; that is, she chooses to act on this world rather than hide out for the month that she's on planet. Mia soon encounters a party of rough men on horseback, who are herding Losels, native humanoids the Tinterans treat as domestic animals and use for simple labor, although they may be intelligent enough to be considered slaves. Mia escapes the Losel herders' attempted kidnapping, and when she reaches the nearest town, she is repulsed by the fact that all Tinterans are "Free Birthers"—they have no population control. She is also disturbed by their apparent practice of enslaving Losels. After a second run-in with the Losel herders leaves Mia badly beaten and robbed of the signalling device she will need to return to her Ship, she is rescued by Daniel Kutsov, an old man who has been reduced to a simple, manual job as a result of past political activity. Kutsov treats Mia like an adopted grandchild and explains to Mia that her speech gives her away as being from the Ships. Kutsov tells Mia that Ship people are at best regarded with resentment, and at worst killed. Mia has already learned that the Tinterans have captured a scoutship from another Ship and arrested one of her fellow Trial participants. While recovering from her injuries in Kutsov's house, she discovers that the prisoner is Jimmy Dentremont. Singlehanded, Mia stages a jailbreak and escapes to the wilderness with Jimmy, but not before the two witness the brutal killing of Kutsov in a roundup of political dissidents. Riding through the night in the pouring rain, Mia and Jimmy set up a tent in the woods. While in the tent, they realize their feelings for each other and have sex. They arrive the following day at the military headquarters for the territory, where Jimmy retrieves his own signalling device. Before they leave the base, they also disable the captured scoutship. Soon after Mia and Jimmy return from Trial, a Shipwide Assembly debates what to do about Tintera. The Tinterans are Free Birthers, possibly slavers, and a potential danger to the Ship itself. As Mia hears the Assembly's debate, however, she understands that her views have changed. Her moral world has broadened to include the Tinterans as people, rather than faceless spear carriers to be used and discarded. Thus she cannot bring herself to condemn the Tinterans en masse. However, under the leadership of Mia's father, who perceives the Tinterans as beyond re-education, the Assembly votes by an eight-to-five margin to destroy Tintera in the name of 'moral discipline'. Mia and Jimmy, as adults, prepare to settle into their own living quarters on board Ship. Jimmy offers the hope that they will someday be in a position to change their society.
1027491	/m/03_j90	The Best and the Brightest	David Halberstam		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Halberstam's book offers a great deal of detail on how the decisions were made in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that led to the war, focusing on a period from 1960 to 1965 but also covering earlier and later years up to the publication year of the book. Many influential factors are examined in the book: *The Democratic party was still haunted by claims that it had 'lost China' to Communists, and it did not want to be said to have lost Vietnam also *The McCarthy era had rid the government of experts in Vietnam and surrounding Far-East countries *Early studies called for close to a million U.S. troops to completely defeat the Viet Cong, but it would be impossible to convince Congress or the U.S. public to deploy that many soldiers *Declarations of war and excessive shows of force, including bombing too close to China or too many U.S. troops, might have triggered the entry of Chinese ground forces into the war, as well as greater Soviet involvement, which might repair the growing Sino-Soviet rift. *The American military and generals were not prepared for protracted guerilla warfare. *Some war games showed that a gradual escalation by the United States could be evenly matched by North Vietnam: Every year, 200,000 North Vietnamese came of draft age and potentially could be sent down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to replace any losses against the U.S.: the U.S. would be 'fighting the birthrate' *Any show of force by the U.S. in the form of bombing or ground forces would signal the U.S. interest in defending South Vietnam and therefore cause the U.S. greater shame if they were to withdraw *President Johnson's belief that too much attention given to the war effort would jeopardize his Great Society domestic programs *The effects of strategic bombing: Most people wrongly believed that North Vietnam prized its industrial base so much it would not risk its destruction by U.S. air power and would negotiate peace after experiencing some limited bombing. Others saw that, even in World War II, strategic bombing united the victim population against the aggressor and did little to hinder industrial output. *The Domino Theory rationales are mentioned as simplistic. *After placing a few thousand Americans in harm's way, it became politically easier to send hundreds of thousands over with the promise that, with enough numbers, they could protect themselves and that to abandon Vietnam now would mean the earlier investment in money and blood would be thrown away. The book shows that the gradual escalation initially allowed the Johnson Administration to avoid negative publicity and criticism from Congress and avoid a direct war against the Chinese, but it also lessened the likelihood of either victory or withdrawal.
1027926	/m/03_ks8	Thrilling Cities	Ian Fleming	1963	{"/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature"}	 Thrilling Cities is Ian Fleming's view of thirteen cities he visited in two trips in 1959 and 1960. The cities covered are: Hong Kong, Macau, Tokyo, Honolulu, Los Angeles and Las Vegas (the two cities are examined in one chapter), Chicago, New York, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Geneva, Naples and Monte Carlo. Fleming's account is highly personal and deals with his visit and his experiences and impressions. Each chapter closes with what Fleming called "Incidental Intelligence", dealing with the hotels, restaurants, food and night life.
1028226	/m/03_lrb	Fungus the Bogeyman	Raymond Briggs	1977	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book follows a typical day for Fungus the Bogeyman, starting when he wakes up and ending just before he falls asleep. As his day progresses, he undergoes a mild existential crisis, pondering what his seemingly pointless job of scaring surface people is really for. He is a member of the Bogey society, which is very similar to British society, but Bogeymen enjoy things which humans (called Drycleaners because of their contrasting environmental preferences) would not be comfortable around; for example darkness, damp, cold and over-ripe food. The book depicts the mundane details of Bogey life in loving detail, with definitions of Bogey slang and numerous annotations concerning the myths, pets, hobbies, literature, clothing and food of the Bogeys. Much of the humour derives from word play. For example, Bogeymen are shown to enjoy eating and sharing flies in a similar way to human cigarettes; one brand of fly is the "strong French Gallwasp", a pun on the cigarette Gauloises.
1028446	/m/03_mcv	Up the Down Staircase	Bel Kaufman	1965	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot revolves around Sylvia Barrett, an idealistic English teacher at an inner-city high school who hopes to nurture her students' interest in classic literature (especially Chaucer) and writing. She quickly becomes discouraged during her first year teaching, frustrated by dumb bureaucracy (the name of the novel refers to an infraction one of her students is punished for), the indifference of her students, and the incompetence of many of her colleagues. She decides to leave public school to work in a smaller private setting. Her mind is changed, however, by the realization that she has indeed touched the lives of her students. The novel is epistolary in form: aside from opening and closing chapters consisting entirely of dialog, the story is told through documents, such as memos from the office, fragments of notes dropped in the trash can, essays that are handed in to be graded, lesson plans, suggestions dropped in the class suggestion box, and letters written by Barrett to a friend from college who chose to get married and start a family rather than pursue a career. The letters serve as a recap and summary of key events in the book, and offer a portrait of women's roles and responsibilities in American society in the mid-1960s as well. The book's title comes from a memo to teachers, instructing them to make sure that students "do not walk up the down staircase." The novel is set at the time just after the banning of School prayer and during early integration and busing.
1028616	/m/03_mv1	The Killers	Ernest Hemingway	1927		 The story takes place in a suburb of Chicago called Summit during the 1910s. Two hit men, Max and Al, walk into Henry's lunch-room, which is run by George, and order something off the menu that is not available and have to settle for pork and eggs. Al goes into the kitchen and ties up Nick Adams, a recurring character in Hemingway's stories, and Sam the black cook. Max and George soon have a conversation, which reveals that the two men are there to kill Ole Anderson, a Swedish boxer, for a "friend". Anderson never shows, so the two men leave. George sends Nick to Hirsch's boarding house, run by Mrs. Bell, to warn Anderson about the two men. Nick finds Anderson lying in his bed with all of his clothes on. He tells Anderson what has happened. Anderson does not react, except to tell Nick not to do anything, as there is nothing that can be done. Nick leaves, goes back to the lunch-room, and informs George about Ole Anderson's reaction. When George no longer seems concerned, Nick decides to leave town.
1029351	/m/03_p_y	A Summons to Memphis	Peter Taylor	1986	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As the story unfolds, Phillip reflects on the major incidents in the life of his once well-to-do family, which was forced to leave Nashville during the time of the Great Depression after the older Mr. Carver, a distinguished lawyer, lost a great deal of money in failed investments with his then-friend and business associate Lewis Shackleford. Though this happened when the four Carver children were still in their teens, they recall the event as a great betrayal, and the resulting move had a major impact on them and continues to affect their abilities to build stable relationships and function as adults. Their lives were further dominated by their father as he ended romantic relationships for his children if he disapproved of them for any reason. Ultimately, the oldest Carver son would join the army and die in World War II. Neither Phillip nor his sisters ever marry. His sisters maintain an odd continued adolescence well into their fifties, dressing as though they were still attractive teenagers. Phillip moves to New York and lives with a younger woman whom he will never marry. The "summons" to Memphis in the book's title refers to several events, but chiefly a call by Phillip's sisters to return and help them block their then-octogenarian father from remarrying after the death of their mother. The book is a rumination on the responsibilities of parents, friendships between men, the relationship between the "old" and "new" south, the nature of revenge and the possibility of forgiveness.
1029407	/m/03_q3d	The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover		1971	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In this book, Grover is horrified to learn that there is a monster at the end of the book, and begs the reader not to finish the book, so as to avoid the monster. Fearful of reaching the end of the book, Grover constructs a series of obstacles, such as attempting to tie pages together and laying brick walls, to prevent the reader from advancing. Increasingly frightened (and also in awe of the reader's strength at overcoming the obstacles), Grover pleads with the reader to stop reading as the book nears its conclusion. However, the monster turns out to be Grover himself, making the story self-referential. Grover jokes that he tried to convince the reader that the monster would not be scary – but we see at the end that he is embarrassed.
1030384	/m/03_t4h	Coma	Robin Cook		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Susan Wheeler is the protagonist of the novel. She is an attractive 23-year-old third-year medical student working as a trainee at Boston Memorial Hospital. Susan, along with four other students—George, Harvey, Geoffrey, and Paul—takes rounds in surgery rooms and ICUs for making post-treatment notations on the health of patients. Mark Bellows, a surgery resident in the hospital, is the instructor and supervisor of this group. The book is a journey into the inner workings of a hospital. As these students complete their three-month surgical rotation, the dilemmas and problems faced by a woman in a so-called "man's" profession are also highlighted. There are two patients, Nancy Greenly and Sean Berman, who mysteriously went into comas immediately after their operations. These incidents were attributed to complications within their surgeries due to anesthesia. Nancy Greenly became comatose when her brain did not receive sufficient oxygen during surgery. Similarly, Sean Berman, a young man in his 30s in good physical condition, underwent a scheduled knee operation. Despite the operation's success, Sean failed to regain consciousness. Medically, the odds for such occurrences are one in 100,000; however, such odds seemed resolutely higher at the Boston Memorial Hospital. Baffled by the comas of these two patients, Susan decides to investigate the mystery behind these peculiar events and of other recent coma victims. Susan discovers the oxygen line to Operating Room 8 has been tampered with to cause the patients carbon monoxide poisoning during surgery and, hence, brain death. At the same time Susan develops a brief, but intimate, relationship with Bellows and discusses her findings with him. After unraveling further details, and evading pursuit by a man hired to kill her, Susan is led to the Jefferson Institute. The institute is hailed as an intensive care facility designed to cut down on heavy medical costs. All patients who are declared brain dead or "vegetables" are referred to the institute. Here, she finds that patients are suspended from the ceiling by wires in rooms walled by glass and are moved from room to room with little human involvement. The "samples" are kept alive and healthy until a call for an organ comes in. The organ of choice is removed surgically (and without consent) and then sold on the black market. At the end of the story Howard Stark, chief of the Department of Surgery at Boston Memorial, is revealed as the main antagonist. Stark confronts Susan over her findings and then drugs her, intending to put Susan in a coma under the pretext of an appendix operation. However, Bellows manages to disable to the oxygen line during the operation, thereby preventing a full dose of carbon monoxide poisoning. Stark is arrested but Susan's fate is left in doubt.
1030550	/m/03_tpb	The Spirit of St. Louis	Charles Lindbergh	1953-09-14	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The book covers a period of time between September 1926 and May 1927, and is divided into two sections: The Craft and New York to Paris. In the first section, The Craft (pp. 3–178), Lindbergh describes the latter days of his career as an airmail pilot and presents his account of conceiving, planning, and executing the building of the Spirit of St. Louis aircraft. He describes the many challenges he faced, including getting financial backing, constructing an aircraft that could carry the necessary fuel and still fly, and completing the project within several months—other pilots were racing to achieve the first solo trans-Atlantic flight and win the $25,000 Orteig Prize. In the second section, New York to Paris (pp. 181–492), Lindbergh gives a detailed hour-by-hour account of his 33-hour solo flight above the Atlantic and northern Europe that began in the early morning hours of May 21, 1927. He describes the numerous challenges presented by navigation, storms, fuel calculation, boredom, and lack of sleep during the course of the flight that would take him over 3,600 miles from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York to Le Bourget field in Paris. Throughout the narrative, Lindbergh interjects flashback memories of his childhood in Little Falls, Minnesota, his college years, his early years as an aviator barnstorming across the countryside, his aviation mentors and friends who flew the mail routes with him, and his family—especially his father, who was not only a congressman, but a respected and sage companion to his young son. As Lindbergh flies through the long, solitary night toward Europe, forcing his sleep-obsessed mind to check and re-check his course, he recalls the night he was flying the mail from St. Louis to Chicago when he first thought of flying across the Atlantic Ocean. Lindbergh believed he could make that flight, and he remembers his nine St. Louis friends who helped him purchase the Spirit of St. Louis and realize his dream. Lindbergh describes the thrill of spotting the first fishing boats off the coast of Ireland, and then crossing the coast of France, and then following the Seine River all the way Paris and Le Bourget field. In addition to an Afterword (pp. 495–501), Lindbergh included an extensive Appendix (pp. 503–562) containing his flight log, a flight map, his journal account of his return to the United States aboard the cruiser Memphis, an article about the decorations, awards, and trophies he received, engineering data and engine specifications, 16 pages of photographs, various illustrations, and a glossary.
1030788	/m/03_vbb	Kaffir Boy	Mark Mathabane	1986	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Mark Mathabane was born into a poverty-stricken family during the apartheid years in the township of Alexandra. Throughout childhood, he witnesses and suffers from hunger, violence, and racial stereotypes, learning to hate and fear whites. At his mother’s insistence, Mathabane starts school and learns to love it, rising to the top of his class in spite of frequent punishments due to his family’s late payments for school fees and inability to afford school supplies . He graduates from primary school with a scholarship that will pay for his secondary education. Mathabane’s grandmother becomes a gardener for a kind family, the Smiths, who introduce Mathabane to books and tennis by sending books and even a tennis racket home with his grandmother for him. He learns English from these books, and begins to play tennis frequently, eventually befriending a black tennis player who trains him. Mathabane joins the high school tennis team and begins to play in tournaments, unofficially sponsored by Wilfred Horn, owner of the Tennis Ranch. It is technically illegal for Mark to play there, but the law is ignored and he becomes comfortable with whites. Eventually renowned tennis player Stan Smith takes Mathabane under his wing when the two meet at a tournament. Stan pays for Mathabane to compete in tournaments and talks to his coach at the University of Southern California about Mathabane attending college in the states. The coach writes to colleges on his behalf and Mathabane earns a tennis scholarship to Limestone College and leaves for the U.S. in 1978.
1031038	/m/03_w0r	Farewell to Manzanar	James D. Houston	1972	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Jeanne Wakatsuki (the book's narrator) is a Nisei (child of a Japanese immigrant). At age seven, Wakatsuki—a native-born American citizen—and her family were living on Terminal Island (near San Pedro, California). Her father, a fisherman who owned two boats, was arrested by the FBI following the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. Soon after, she and the rest of her family were imprisoned at Manzanar (an American internment camp), where 11,070 Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents—who were prevented from becoming American citizens by law—were confined during the Japanese American internment during World War II. The book describes the Wakatsukis' experiences during their imprisonment and events concerning the family before and after the war. Ko Wakatsuki (Jeanne's father) emigrated from Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii and then to Idaho, running away with his wife and abandoning his family. Stubborn and proud, he did not cope well with his isolation: he drank, and abused his family. Woody (Jeanne's brother) wants to preserve his family's honor by joining the U.S. Army. After joining (and fighting in the Pacific theater) he visits his father's Aunt Toyo, who gave his father money for the trip to Hawaii. After the visit, Woody feels a new pride in his ancestry. He becomes the man of the family, leading them early in their internment. On the morning of December 7, 1941, Jeanne Wakatsuki says farewell to her father’s sardine fleet at San Pedro Harbor. By the time the boats return, news reaches the family that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Jeanne's father burns his Japanese flag and identity papers, but is arrested by the FBI and beaten when taken to the jail. Jeanne's moves the family to the Japanese ghetto on Terminal Island, and then to Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. President Roosevelt’s February 1942 Executive Order 9066 gives the military authority to relocate those posing a potential threat to national security. Americans of Japanese descent await their final destination; “their common sentiment is shikata ga nai” ("it cannot be helped”). A month later the government orders the Wakatsukis to move to Manzanar Relocation Center, in the desert 225 miles northeast of Los Angeles. At the camp the Japanese Americans find cramped living conditions, badly-prepared food, unfinished barracks and dust blowing in through every crack and knothole. There is not enough warm clothing to go around; many fall ill from immunizations and poorly-preserved food, and they face the indignity of non-partitioned camp toilets (which particularly upsets Jeanne's mother). The Wakatsukis stop eating together in the camp mess hall, and the family begins to disintegrate. Jeanne, virtually abandoned by her family, takes an interest in the other people in camp and studies religion with two nuns. However, after she suffers sunstroke when imagining herself a suffering saint, her father orders Jeanne to stop. He is arrested, and returns a year later from the Fort Lincoln Internment Camp. The family is unsure how to greet him; only Jeanne welcomes him openly. She has always admired her father (who left his samurai family in Japan to protest the declining social status of the samurai), and fondly remembers how he conducts himself—from his courtship of Jeanne's mother to his virtuoso pig-carving. Something happened, however, during his time at the detention camp (where government interrogators accused him of disloyalty and espionage); he is now in a downward emotional spiral. He becomes violent and drinks heavily, nearly striking Jeanne's mother with his cane before Kiyo (Jeanne's youngest brother) punches their father in the face. The men's frustration eventually results in the December Riot, which breaks out after three men are arrested for beating a man suspected of helping the government. The rioters roam the camp searching for inu (both “dog” and “traitor” in Japanese). The military police try to stop the riot; in the chaos they shoot into the crowd, killing two Japanese and wounding ten others. That night, a patrol group accosts Jeanne’s brother-in-law, Kaz, and his fellow workers and accuses them of sabotage. The mess-hall bells ring until noon the following day, as a memorial to the dead. Soon after, the government requires a loyalty oath to distinguish loyal Japanese from potential enemies. Opinion about whether to take the oath is divided. Answering “no” to the loyalty questions will result in deportation, but answering “yes” will result in being drafted. Jeanne's father and Woody answer “yes”, and Papa attacks a man for calling him an inu. That night Jeanne overhears her father singing the Japanese national anthem, "Kimi ga yo", whose lyrics speak of the endurance of stones. After the riot, camp life calms down; the Wakatsuki family moves to a nicer barracks near a pear orchard, where Jeanne's father takes up gardening. Manzanar begins to resemble a typical American town: schools open, residents are allowed short trips outside the camp and Jeanne’s oldest brother Bill forms a dance band called the Jive Bombers. She explores the world inside the camp, trying out Japanese and American hobbies before taking up baton twirling. Jeanne returns to her religious studies, and is about to be baptized when her father intervenes. She begins to distance herself from him, but the birth of a grandchild draws her parents closer together than ever. By the end of 1944, the number of people at Manzanar dwindles; men are drafted, and families take advantage of the government’s new policy of relocating families away from the west coast. Woody is drafted and, despite his father’s protests, leaves in November to join the all-Nisei 442nd Combat Regiment. While in the military, Woody visits his father's family in Hiroshima. He meets Toyo, his father’s aunt, and finally understands his father’s pride. In December, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the internment policy is illegal and the War Department prepares to close the camps. The remaining residents, fearing the future, postpone their departure but eventually are ordered to leave. Jeanne's father decides to leave in style, buying a broken-down blue sedan to ferry his family back to Long Beach. In Long Beach the Wakatsukis move into public housing, Cabrillo Homes. Although they fear public hatred, they see little sign of it. On the first day of sixth grade, however, a girl in Jeanne’s class is amazed at Jeanne’s ability to speak English; this makes Jeanne realize that prejudice is not always open and direct. She later becomes close friends with the girl (Radine, who lives in the same housing project). The two share the same activities and tastes, but when they reach high school subtle prejudice keeps Jeanne from the social and extracurricular success available to Radine. Jeanne retreats into herself, and nearly drops out of school; however, when her father moves the family to a berry farm in San Jose she decides to make another attempt at school life. Her homeroom nominates her queen of the school’s annual spring carnival, and for the election assembly she leaves her hair loose and wears an exotic sarong. Although the teachers try to prevent her from winning, her friend Leonard Rodriguez exposes the teachers’ plot and ensures her victory. Jeanne's father, however, is furious that she won the election by flaunting her sexuality before American boys. He forces her to take Japanese dance lessons, but she soon quits. As a compromise, Jeanne wears a conservative dress to the coronation ceremony; however, the crowd’s muttering makes her realize that neither the exotic sarong nor the conservative dress represents her true self. In April 1972, Jeanne revisits Manzanar with her husband and three children. She needs to remind herself that the camp actually existed; over the years, she began to think she imagined the whole thing. Walking through the ruins, the sounds and sights of the camp come back to her. Seeing her eleven-year-old daughter, Jeanne realizes that her life began at the camp (as her father’s life ended there). She remembers him driving crazily through camp before leaving with his family, and finally understands his stubborn pride.
1032415	/m/03__83	A Princess of Mars	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1917	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04chq5": "Planetary romance", "/m/07ps83": "Sword and planet", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 John Carter, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, goes prospecting in Arizona immediately after the war's end. Having struck a rich vein of gold, he runs afoul of the Apaches. While attempting to evade pursuit by hiding in a sacred cave, he is mysteriously transported to Mars, called "Barsoom" by its inhabitants. Carter finds that he has great strength and superhuman agility in this new environment as a result of its lesser gravity. He soon falls in with a nomadic tribe of Green Martians, or Tharks, as the planet's warlike, six-limbed, green-skinned inhabitants are known. Thanks to his strength and martial prowess, Carter rises to a high position in the tribe and earns the respect and eventually the friendship of Tars Tarkas, one of the Thark chiefs. The Tharks subsequently capture Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, a member of the humanoid red Martian race. The red Martians inhabit a loose network of city-states and control the desert planet's canals, along which its agriculture is concentrated. Carter rescues Dejah Thoris from the green men in a bid to return her to her people. Subsequently Carter becomes embroiled in the political affairs of both the red and green Martians in his efforts to safeguard Dejah Thoris, eventually leading a horde of Tharks against the city-state of Zodanga, the historic enemy of Helium. Winning Dejah Thoris' hand, he becomes Prince of Helium, and the two live happily together for nine years. However, the sudden breakdown of the Atmosphere Plant that sustains the planet's waning air supply endangers all life on Barsoom. In a desperate attempt to save the planet's inhabitants, Carter uses a secret telepathic code to enter the factory, bringing an engineer along who can restore its functionality. Carter then succumbs to asphyxiation, only to awaken back on Earth, left to wonder what has become of Barsoom and his beloved.
1032876	/m/0400pd	Faceless Killers: A Mystery	Henning Mankell	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Inside an almost isolated Skåne farmhouse in Lunnarp, an old man, Johannes Lövgren is tortured to death and his wife Maria savagely beaten and left for dead with a noose around her neck. Inspector Kurt Wallander, a forty-two-year-old Ystad police detective, and his team &ndash; Rydberg, an aging detective with a rheumatism; Martinsson, a 29-year-old rookie; Naslund, a thirty-year veteran; Svedberg, a balding, forty-something-year-old detective; Hansson; and Peters &ndash; are put on the case. Maria Lovgren is taken to a hospital, but dies anyway. Her last word: "foreign". Rydberg has been examining the noose around Mrs Lovgren's neck and "has never seen one like it before". He thinks that Mrs Lovgren's last word is accurate, and that the murderers are foreign. But his conclusion leads to several racially-motivated attacks after the information is leaked to the press. The story focuses on Sweden's liberal attitude regarding immigration, and explores themes of racism and national identity.
1033017	/m/04014x	He Who Whispers	John Dickson Carr	1946	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 A few months after the end of World War II, Miles Hammond is invited to the first meeting of the Murder Club in five years. When he arrives, no one else is there except Barbara Morell and Professor Rigaud. When no one else shows up, Rigaud tells the story of Fay Seton. Seton was a young girl, working for the Brookes family. She fell in love with Harry Brookes, and the two became engaged. But Harry's father, Howard, did not approve. One day, he agreed to meet Fay in a tower—all that remained of a burned-out chateau. It was a secure location on a lonely waterfront, and was the perfect place for such a meeting. Harry and Professor Rigaud left Howard alone at ten minutes before four. When they returned, fifteen minutes later, Howard had been stabbed, and the sword-cane that did it was found in two pieces beside his body. At first it seemed an open-and-shut case, but a family that was picnicking a few feet from the entrance of the tower swore that no one entered the tower in those fifteen minutes, that no boat came near the tower, and no one could have climbed up, because the nearest window was fifteen feet off the ground. The only one with any motive was Fay Seton, who was believed to be able to bring a vampire to life and terrorize people. Miles quickly becomes involved in the affair because the new librarian he just hired is Fay Seton.
1033027	/m/04015l	The Crooked Hinge	John Dickson Carr	1938	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In his ninth outing, Dr. Fell spends July 1937 at a small village in Kent. John Farnleigh is a wealthy young man married to his childhood love, and a survivor of the Titanic disaster. When another man comes along claiming to be the real John Farnleigh, an inquest is scheduled to determine which individual is the real Farnleigh. Then the first Farnleigh is killed—his throat is slashed in full view of three people, all of whom claim that they saw no one there. Later, a mysterious automaton reaches out to touch a housemaid, who nearly dies of fright, and a thumbograph (an early toy associated with the taking of fingerprints) disappears from a locked library. Dr. Gideon Fell investigates and reveals the surprising solution to all these questions.
1033043	/m/04016p	Blood Canticle	Anne Rice	2003-10-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Centered in New Orleans, Blood Canticle is narrated by Lestat. The protagonist is a young Mayfair witch named Mona. At the beginning of the novel Mona is wasting away, victim to a mysterious disease brought on by the birth of her daughter, a so-called Walking Baby. As the novel plays out, Mona and her guardian, Rowan Mayfair, the current designee of the Mayfair legacy, reveal more and more about the powerful genetic plague that has haunted the Mayfairs for generations: the Taltos. In what she believes to be her dying hour, Mona - highly romantic in nature - buys quantities of roses and takes them to the house of her lover, Tarquin "Quinn" Blackwood, who is a vampire and a dear companion to Lestat. She lays the roses on his bed, intending to spend her final moments here. So that she does not die from the massive decline that her body has undergone, Lestat makes her into a vampire. He does this largely to satisfy Quinn, who could never again hear the thoughts of Mona if he were to do it himself. When trying to prevent Mona's family from discovering her transformation, Lestat falls in love with Rowan Mayfair. Secretly, she pines for him as well. Lestat's blood is powerful; Mona learns this quickly and discovers that she can easily dispatch inferior vampires with the powerful gifts that Lestat's potent blood has bestowed upon her. Now her renewed vigor and her anger about her situation with Rowan and their shared secret of the Taltos causes her to lash out verbally at Rowan and Rowan's husband Michael. As she struggles with herself, Lestat and Quinn, she learns her place in her new world. As she learns, Lestat pledges to find her Taltos child if it still lives. For this, Lestat enlists the help of Maharet. In a very short time, Maharet provides critical information for their search. The story comes to a dramatic conclusion as Mona, journeying with Quinn and Lestat, comes to the remote island where the Taltos live. But instead of finding a secluded paradise, the three vampires learn about years of intrigue and civil war among this isolated race of beings. In the end, the remaining Taltos join the Mayfair clan at the medical center in New Orleans, where they can be safe, learn, and be together as a family. Mona and Quinn are taken by Khayman to go and live with Maharet and Mekare to go and be instructed properly in the ways of vampirism, leaving Lestat alone. Rowan Mayfair seeks out Lestat, half in love with him but still in love with Michael and exhausted by her life, requesting that he gives her the Dark Gift. Lestat declines, pained as he is, because she is a guiding force for the Mayfair family and he cannot take her away from it.
1033435	/m/04023c	Much Obliged, Jeeves	P. G. Wodehouse	1971-10-15	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A heretofore unknown old school chum of Bertie's, Ginger Winship, is standing for the House of Commons in a by-election, and Aunt Dahlia has offered the use of Brinkley as a general H. Q. for the campaign. Dahlia persuades Bertie to come down to Brinkley to assist in the canvassing. At luncheon before departing for Brinkley, Bertie discovers that Ginger is standing in the by-election on the wishes of his fiancée. He also discovers that said fiancée has kept him out of the metropolis for several years and discourages him from partaking in alcoholic stimulants. On arriving at Brinkley he discovers that this hard-hearted mystery woman is none other than Florence Craye, authoress of Spindrift and former fiancée of Percy Gorringe&mdash;and of Bertie himself. Bertie begins to muse on how he might save his friend from a life of encountering Florence Craye every morning over the eggs and bacon. But before he can make progress on that front, he discovers that there are other guests in the party at Brinkley. Roderick Spode, 8th Earl of Sidcup has come to deliver a speech or two for Ginger, and he has brought his fiancée Madeline Bassett. Spode still believes Bertie to be a sneak-thief from the episodes of the umbrella, the silver cow-creamer, and the African curio, and has also warned Bertram that he should not expect to win Madeline back from him. Also among the party is L. P. Runkle, a financier and collector who has visited Brinkley in order to attempt to sell a valuable silver porringer to Tom Travers (who, sensibly, has fled the premises on hearing of the invasion from Totliegh Towers). Runkle was the employer of the late father of Tuppy Glossop, and made a pile on Tuppy's father's invention, but cutting Tuppy's father&mdash;and Tuppy&mdash;out of the action. Dahlia wants to soften up Runkle and get him to unbelt, so Tuppy can have his legacy and finally marry her daughter Angela. Ginger's chances for election (and thus his engagement to Florence) are threatened by the spectre of Bingley, a former valet of his, who has purloined the Club Book of the Junior Ganymede Club and is threatening to sell it, and its explosive tales of Ginger's past, to his opponent or the local newspaper. Jeeves finds this most disturbing, and during a social visit to his fellow valet, slips him a Mickey Finn and recovers the book. Surprisingly, this does not please Ginger. After disappointing Florence in his performance at the Council meeting, he has realized how wrong he was to have wanted to marry her, and has fallen in love with his secretary, Magnolia Glendennon. Spode, however, is entranced by the reception he is getting at his stump speeches for Ginger, and has floated the idea of renouncing his title and running for the Commons himself. This fails to delight Madeline, who sees her Countess coronet going pfut. Spode and Madeline have words, and Madeline starts muttering darkly about resigning herself to being Mrs Wooster. Dahlia, meanwhile, failing to convince Runkle to give Tuppy his due, has purloined the silver porringer he wished to sell to Tom. Bertie tries to set this aright by returning the porringer, but is caught, and has to secrete the object in his bureau drawer. While he muses on the four problems (returning the porringer; freeing Ginger from his honorable obligation to Florence; helping Dahlia extract Tuppy's due from Runkle; and reconciling Madeline to Spode to avoid marrying her himself), Jeeves takes matters in hand. At the candidate debate, Ginger listens to his opponent's speech, then promptly endorses her and resigns the race. Havoc ensues, in which Spode is pelted with produce. Florence breaks her engagement with Ginger, and he promptly elopes to London with Magnolia Glendennon. Back at Brinkley, Bingley (in Runkle's employ) discovers the purloined porringer in Bertie's drawer, and Runkle accuses Bertie of the crime. On the one hand, Bertram faces an unjust stretch in durance vile; but, on the other hand, Florence quickly reverses her previous intent to renew her engagement to him, and he feels that taken all in all he has ended up the better for it. Spode realizes that he prefers the rarefied atmosphere of the House of Lords to the rough-and-tumble of the Commons and abandons his plans to renounce his title, and he and Madeline are reconciled. Finally, Jeeves nullifies Runkle as a force by revealing secrets written about him by Bingley in the Club Book. This not only prevents him from pressing charges against Bertie, but also forces him to give Tuppy his legacy. The story ends with Jeeves revealing to Bertie that he has also destroyed the nineteen pages that he had written about him, their relevance rendered nil by Jeeves' expressed presumption (confirmed by Bertie) that he may remain permanently in Bertie's service.
1033742	/m/04037m	The Religion War	Scott Adams		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The delivery boy from the first book, who is now the Avatar, must stop an epic clash of civilizations between the Western world, led by Christian extremist General Horatio Cruz, and the Middle East, led by Muslim extremist Al-Zee. To accomplish this task, the avatar decides to find the "Prime Influencer", a person who, he feels, can indirectly influence all the decisions people make by virtue of responsibility, from fashion to the election of the President. He attempts to do so by enlisting a talented and arrogant programmer at Global Information Corporation (GIC) (an all-encompassing, worldwide future sort of TIA created out of fear of terrorism) to analyze GIC's massive databases using software. Also, people's phones are, in the name of preventing terrorist communications, restricted to only calling certain contacts a person has that have been approved by the Department of Communications; this fact ultimately comes back in the book's climax. The Avatar applies his unparalleled ability to identify developing patterns and accurately determine the most probable outcomes of a situation to accurately predict the war plans of both Cruz and Al-Zee. He subsequently uses his ability to recognize even the vaguest patterns (which makes him seem to know more than he actually does) to bypass guards, escape interrogations, and ultimately win an audience with the warring leaders. Ultimately, the Avatar fails to stop the onset of the war. However, at the conclusion of the book, the Prime Influencer, who turns out to be an opinionated café owner that the Avatar had met previously by chance, launches a simple, yet catchy, phrase (If God is so smart, why do you fart?) that spreads throughout the world like a virus thanks to an advanced computer worm, named Giver-of-Data (GoD), launched by the GIC programmer shortly before his death, which unlocked everyone's phones, linked them up to automatic translation systems, and disabled call billing. According to the story, "Once you heard it, you could never forget it." It was this phrase that finally captured the collective imaginations of ordinary people, causing them to reevaluate their assumptions about the nature of God. This ultimately led to the elimination of fundamentalist religious practices throughout the world, which, in turn, resulted in the end of the Religion War.
1034471	/m/0405c0	The Planiverse			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the spirit of Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland, Dewdney and his computer science students designed a vertical 2D world (i.e. East-West and Up-Down, no N-S) and considered the issues of biology and society for the inhabitants. To their surprise, they find their artificial 2D universe has somehow accidentally become a means of communication with an actual 2D world&nbsp;– Arde. They make a sort of "telepathic" contact with "YNDRD," referred to by the students as Yendred, a highly philosophical Ardean (or Nsana, as they call themselves), as he begins a journey across the single continent Ajem Kollosh to learn more about a mysterious philosophy the inhabitants of his destination have. The students and narrator communicate with Yendred by typing on the keyboard, and Yendred describes how he "feels" their thoughts in his head. For Yendred's replies, he thinks an answer, and it appears on the computer's printout. Yendred's name is actually "Dewdney" reversed, or "Yendwed", as spoken by one of the students with a speech impediment. Written as a travelogue, Yendred crosses the world to reveal its features, explaining to the students diverse topics such as the politics, geography, construction (all houses are underground, for example, so as not to impede movement), tools (nails are useless for attaching two objects, tape and glue are used instead), biology (there is no digestive tract in most Ardean creatures, because of the danger of splitting into two, but evolution devised a solution), astronomy, and even games (such as one-dimensional Alak), all designed for fit in 2D. An appendix explains some fundamentals of Ardean two-dimensional physics and chemistry.
1036167	/m/040bny	Earthly Powers	Anthony Burgess	1980	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 On his eighty-first birthday, Kenneth Toomey is asked by the Archbishop of Malta to assist in the process of canonization of Carlo Campanati, the late Pope Gregory XVII. Toomey subsequently works on his memoirs, which span the major part of the 20th century.
1036847	/m/040dg6	Coriolanus	William Shakespeare			 The play opens in Rome shortly after the expulsion of the Tarquin kings. There are riots in progress, after stores of grain were withheld from ordinary citizens. The rioters are particularly angry at Caius Martius, a brilliant Roman general whom they blame for the grain being taken away. The rioters encounter a patrician named Menenius Agrippa, as well as Caius Martius himself. Menenius tries to calm the rioters, while Martius is openly contemptuous, and says that the plebeians were not worthy of the grain because of their lack of military service. Two of the tribunes of Rome, Brutus and Sicinius, privately denounce Martius. He leaves Rome after news arrives that a Volscian army is in the field. The commander of the Volscian army, Tullus Aufidius, has fought Martius on several occasions and considers him a blood enemy. The Roman army is commanded by Cominius, with Martius as his deputy. While Cominius takes his soldiers to meet Aufidius' army, Martius leads a rally against the Volscian city of Corioles. The siege of Corioles is initially unsuccessful, but Martius is able to force open the gates of the city, and the Romans conquer it. Even though he is exhausted from the fighting, Martius marches quickly to join Cominius and fight the other Volscian force. Martius and Aufidius meet in single combat, which only ends when Aufidius' own soldiers drag him away from the battle. In recognition of his great courage, Cominius gives Caius Martius the cognomen of "Coriolanus". When they return to Rome, Coriolanus' mother Volumnia encourages her son to run for consul. Coriolanus is hesitant to do this, but he bows to his mother's wishes. He effortlessly wins the support of the Roman Senate, and seems at first to have won over the commoners as well. However, Brutus and Sicinius scheme to undo Coriolanus and whip up another riot in opposition to his becoming consul. Faced with this opposition, Coriolanus flies into a rage and rails against the concept of popular rule. He compares allowing plebeians to have power over the patricians to allowing "crows to peck the eagles". The two tribunes condemn Coriolanus as a traitor for his words, and order him to be banished. Coriolanus retorts that it is he who banishes Rome from his presence. After being exiled from Rome, Coriolanus seeks out Aufidius in the Volscian capital of Antium, and offers to let Aufidius kill him in order to spite the country that banished him. Moved by his plight and honoured to fight alongside the great general, Aufidius and his superiors embrace Coriolanus, and allow him to lead a new assault on the city. Rome, in its panic, tries desperately to persuade Coriolanus to halt his crusade for vengeance, but both Cominius and Menenius fail. Finally, Volumnia is sent to meet with her son, along with Coriolanus' wife Virgilia and child, and a chaste gentlewoman Valeria. Volumnia succeeds in dissuading her son from destroying Rome, and Coriolanus instead concludes a peace treaty between the Volscians and the Romans. When Coriolanus returns to the Volscian capital, conspirators, organised by Aufidius, kill him for his betrayal.
1037383	/m/040fys	The Knight of the Burning Pestle				 A grocer and his wife "in the audience" of the play interrupt to complain loudly that plays are always about nobility and that it is they, the common people, who pay for most of the tickets. The Citizen has a seat on the side of the stage, and he brings his wife up to sit with him (a violation of decorum). They demand that the players put on a play of their own choosing and suggest that one of them—in fact, their apprentice, Rafe—should have a part in the play. Rafe then gets the part of the "Grocer Errant" in the interrupted drama. He has a burning pestle on his shield as a heraldic device and has to undertake the daring rescue of patients being held by a barber named Barbaroso. The meta-fictional plot is intercut with the main plot of the interrupted play, where Jasper Merrythought, a merchant's apprentice, is in love with his master's daughter, Luce, and must elope with her to save her from the arranged marriage with Humphrey, a "swell" or City man of fashion. Humphrey is not at the level of fop, but he has multiple malapropisms and indications that his learning and breeding are false. Luce pretends to wish to elope with Humphrey so that her father will be expecting such a flight, but her and Jasper's plans go awry, and Humphrey and the merchant capture the lovers, and the merchant locks Luce in her room. Jasper feigns death and gets his coffin carried to the merchant's house (as the merchant is responsible for his apprentice). He then gets up from the coffin and pretends to be his own ghost and frightens the merchant into giving consent to his match with Luce. The play hits a number of satirical and parodic points. The audience is satirized, with the interrupting grocer, but the domineering and demanding merchant class is also satirized in the main plot. Beaumont makes fun of the new demand for stories of the middle classes for the middle classes, even as he makes fun of that class's actual taste for an exoticism and a chivalry that is entirely hyperbolic. The Grocer and his wife are bombastic, sure of themselves, and certain that their prosperity carries with it mercantile advantages (the ability to demand a different play for their admission fee than the one the actors have prepared). The broader humour of the play derives from innuendo and sexual jokes, as well as joking references to other dramatists. The players, for example, plant a winking joke at the Grocer's expense, as the pestle of Rafe's herald is a phallic metaphor, and a burning pestle/penis implies syphilis, on the one hand, and sexual bravado, on the other. The inability of the Citizen and Wife to comprehend how they are satirized, or to understand the main plot, allows the audience to laugh at itself, even as it admits its complicity with the Citizen's boorish tastes.
1037400	/m/040f_6	Sanctuary	William Faulkner	1931	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In May 1929, a lawyer named Horace Benbow, frustrated with his life, his spouse, and his stepdaughter, suddenly leaves his home in (fictional) Kinston, Mississippi, and sets out to hitchhike his way back to Jefferson, his hometown in Yoknapatawpha County, where his widowed sister Narcissa Sartoris lives with her son and her late husband's great-aunt (Miss Jenny). On the way to Jefferson, he stops for a drink of water near the "Old Frenchman" homestead, which is occupied by the bootlegger Lee Goodwin. Benbow encounters a sinister man called Popeye, an associate of Goodwin's, who brings him back to the Goodwin place, where he meets Goodwin, his common-law wife Ruby, and some other members of Goodwin's bootlegging operation. Later that night, Benbow catches a ride from Goodwin's place into Jefferson. He explains to his sister and Miss Jenny that he has left his wife, and then he moves back into his parents' house, which has been sitting vacant for years. Gowan Stevens, a young graduate of the University of Virginia, who proposed marriage to Narcissa (and was turned down), has a date with Temple Drake, a student at Ole Miss. Temple is something of a "fast girl" with a reputation among the town boys in Oxford; her name has been scrawled in the men's rooms at Ole Miss with allusions to her easy virtue. Her father is a well-known and powerful judge, so she comes from a world of money and high society. She is pretty, but shallow; simultaneously fascinated and repelled by sex and by basic human urges. After escorting Temple to a Friday-night dance in Oxford, Gowan plans to meet her the next morning at the train station, where she is supposed to join her classmates on a chaperoned excursion to a baseball game in Starkville; she is supposed to get off the train, escaping her chaperones, and ride to the game with Gowan instead. After he has dropped Temple off after the dance, Gowan, an alcoholic who claims he "learned to drink like a gentleman" in Virginia, offers some local town boys a ride into town. He gets them to help him obtain a quart of moonshine, which he magnanimously shares with them, apparently so that he can impress them with his capacity for liquor consumption. He gets extremely drunk and passes out by his car at the train station. The next morning, Gowan awakens with a massive hangover, to discover that he's just missed the Starkville train. He finishes off his jar of moonshine and speeds off to intercept the train, picking up Temple in the town of Taylor. On the way to Starkville, he decides to stop off at the Goodwin place for some more booze. Drunk already, he crashes his car into a tree which Popeye, apparently worried about a police raid, has felled across the road. Popeye and Tommy, who happen to be nearby when the accident happens, take Temple and Gowan, who are banged up but not seriously injured, back to the Goodwin place. Temple is terrified, both by Gowan's recklessness and drunkenness, and by the strange, menacing, lower-class milieu into which he has brought her. Immediately upon arriving at the Goodwin place, she meets Ruby, who warns her that it would be a good idea to leave the Goodwin place before nightfall. Gowan is given more liquor to drink by Tommy, a good-natured apparent "halfwit" who works for Goodwin and lives at the house. Night falls. Gowan is, yet again, crudely drunk, and Temple has not taken Ruby's advice and made herself scarce. Goodwin returns home and is less than happy to find Gowan and Temple there. He has brought Van, another member of his bootlegging crew, with him. All the men continue to drink; Van and Gowan argue and provoke each other, nearly coming to blows several times over the course of the evening. Van makes crude advances toward Temple, rousing in the drunken Gowan a sense that he, a would-be Virginia gentleman, needs to protect Temple's honor. Temple, out of her mind with apprehension, constantly runs in and out of the room where the men are drinking, despite Ruby's advice that she stay away from them, and despite Van's leering unwelcome advances. Temple ensconces herself in a bedroom. Van and Gowan come to blows; Van quickly knocks out the drunken Gowan. The men carry him into the room where Temple is cowering and throw him on the bed. They come in and out of the room several times and harass her. Finally, the men leave on a whisky run in the middle of the night. The next morning, Gowan awakens and slinks silently away from the house, abandoning Temple. Temple is still terrified the next morning, even though most of the men don't seem to be around. The good-natured Tommy hides her in a corn crib in the barn; Popeye soon discovers them there. He murders Tommy with a gunshot to the back of the head and then proceeds to rape Temple with a corncob. After he has raped her, he puts her in his car and drives to Memphis, where he has connections in the criminal underworld. Goodwin discovers the dead Tommy, and Ruby calls the police from a neighbor's house. The police arrest Goodwin, believing that it is he who has murdered Tommy. Goodwin is terrified of Popeye, so he tells the police nothing beyond a flat denial of guilt. Goodwin is brought to the jail in Jefferson. Benbow finds out about the matter and immediately takes on the task of Goodwin's legal defense, even though he knows that Goodwin cannot pay him. Benbow tries to let Ruby and her sickly infant child stay with him in his house in Jefferson, but his sister Narcissa, who is half-owner of the house with him, refuses to allow her to stay there, with or without Benbow. Ruby is known in town as a fallen woman with an illegitimate child, who "lives in sin" with whiskey-running Lee Goodwin; Narcissa finds the idea of her family name being gossiped about town in connection with a woman like Ruby completely unacceptable. In order to satisfy his sister's wishes and the prevailing societal mores in Jefferson, Benbow has no choice but to put Ruby and her son in a room at the hotel. Benbow, an idealist and strong believer in truth and justice, tries unsuccessfully to get Goodwin to tell the court about Popeye. Goodwin feels that Popeye is capable of killing him, even in jail; he also has faith in his innocence, so he refuses. Benbow soon finds out about Temple and her presence at Goodwin's place when Tommy was murdered (a fact which the Goodwins had originally been reluctant to share with Benbow). Benbow heads to Ole Miss to look for Temple. He discovers that she has left the school. On the train back to Jefferson, he runs into an unctuous state senator named Clarence Snopes, who tells him that he read in the newspaper that "Judge Drake's gal" Temple has been "sent up north" by her father. In reality, Temple is living in a room in a Memphis bawdy house owned by Miss Reba, an asthmatic widowed madam, who thinks highly of Popeye and is happy that he's finally chosen a paramour. Popeye keeps Temple there for him to come and visit whenever he feels like it. However, as he is impotent, he brings Red along and forces him and Temple to have sex while he watches. When Benbow returns from his trip to Oxford, he finds out that the owner of the hotel has buckled under the weight of steadily growing public disapproval and has kicked out Ruby and her child. Benbow tries again to convince Narcissa to let Ruby stay in the house they own, and again she refuses. He finds a place for Ruby to stay, outside of town, in a shack with a crazy lady who ekes out a wretched living as a fortuneteller. Clarence Snopes visits Miss Reba's brothel in Memphis and discovers that Temple is living there. He realizes that this information might be valuable to Benbow (who, Snopes remembers, was looking for Temple at her school) and also to Judge Drake (Temple's father). He offers to sell Benbow the information, hinting that he might sell it to "another party" if Benbow says no. After Benbow agrees to pay Snopes for the information, Snopes tells Benbow that he's seen Temple at Miss Reba's house in Memphis. Benbow immediately heads to Memphis and convinces Miss Reba to let him talk to Temple. Miss Reba imagines Ruby and the child left to fend for themselves if Goodwin is wrongly convicted, and is sympathetic to the Goodwins' plight, although she still admires and respects Popeye. Temple tells Benbow the story of her rape at Popeye's hands. Benbow, shaken, returns to Jefferson. Temple has become thoroughly corrupted by now. She bribes Minnie, Miss Reba's servant, to let her sneak out of the house for fifteen minutes. She makes a phone call from a nearby drugstore. She leaves the house again in the evening, only to find Popeye, who has had the house under surveillance, waiting outside in his car. He takes her to a roadhouse called The Grotto. Temple had arranged to meet Red, a popular young gangster, at this club. It becomes apparent that Temple has been having sex with Red, and that Popeye has been watching them. This evening, Popeye has planned a confrontation with Red to settle once and for all with whom Temple will remain. At the club, Temple drinks heavily and tries to have furtive sex with Red in a back room, but he spurns her advances for the moment. Two of Popeye's gangster friends frog-march her out of the club and drive her back to Miss Reba. Popeye kills Red. This turns Miss Reba against him. She tells some of her friends what has happened, hoping he will be captured and executed for Red's murder. Benbow writes to his wife, asking for a divorce. His sister Narcissa visits the District Attorney and tells him she wants Benbow to lose the case as soon as possible, so that he will cease his involvement in such a sordid affair. Once the DA assures her that Benbow's client will be convicted, she writes to Benbow's wife to tell her that he will soon be returning home. Senator Snopes arrives in town with a black eye, complaining that he was hit by a "Memphis jew [sic] lawyer" who wouldn't pay him a reasonable amount for the information he was offering. Benbow tries to get back in touch with Temple via Miss Reba, who tells him that Popeye and Temple are gone. The trial begins on the 20th of June. It goes badly for Goodwin, who continues to believe that Popeye will show up in Jefferson, at any moment, and kill him. On the second day of the trial, a Memphis lawyer shows up with Temple Drake in tow. She takes the stand and stuns the courtroom with shocking (and false) testimony that Goodwin (not Popeye) shot Tommy and then raped her. Even more shocking is the DA's revelation of a key piece of evidence: a bloodstained corn cob. It was with that corncob that Temple was raped (by Popeye, of course, who is impotent). After perjuring herself, Temple is led out of the courtroom by her father, Judge Drake. The jury finds Goodwin guilty after only eight minutes of deliberation. Benbow, devastated, is taken back to his sister's house. He wanders out of the house, distraught, in the evening, and goes back into town, where he sees Goodwin's dead body burning in a gasoline bonfire; he has been dragged out of jail, tortured and lynched by an angry mob. Benbow is recognized in the crowd, which speaks of lynching him, too. The next day, Benbow returns, defeated, to his wife. Popeye, ironically, is arrested and hanged for a crime he never committed, while he's on his way to Pensacola, Florida to visit his mother. Temple and her father make a final appearance in the Jardin du Luxembourg, having found sanctuary in Paris. See also Requiem for a Nun (1951), a play/novel sequel to Sanctuary.
1038036	/m/040j5k	Hotel	Arthur Hailey		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Peter McDermott: The main character is Mr. Peter McDermott; the general manager with a past. He is a graduate from Cornell University in Hotel Management and subsequently got a job in a hotel. However then he had been involved with a lady at time when he was supposed to be on duty. This gave Peter’s wife and the lady’s husband a reason to ask for a divorce. Getting involved was not a big thing for hotel to avoid but it had marked the headlines of newspaper so much, that he was dismissed from the job and was blacklisted. But Warren Trent, the head of St. Gregory Hotel, ignoring the past and considering the skill, hired him. The novel captures McDermott attempts to deal with several crises in the hotel which involve a range of other characters. The Hotel Finance Problem: The Hotel's unpayable and unrenewable mortgage is due on Friday, necessitating its sale. Curtis O'Keefe, the one who owns a large hotel chains plans to buy St. Gregory hotel in New Orleans as the O'Keefe chain did not have a hotel here. They had offered to pay the two million mortgages due and one million dollar and living accommodation to Warren Trent as well. However Warren did not want to lose the hotel which he had nurtured for so long. They decided upon Friday afternoon timeline to make a decision on the deal. Warren Trent meanwhile decided to mark a deal with Journey man Union who wanted to enter the hotel Industry for long but were not successful. This way Warren Trent could maintain an independence of the hotel and still have a say in the affairs of it. Journey man had decided to send two of his executives on Thursday to study the books of hotel and then decide before the Friday afternoon deadline decided between Warren Trent and Curtis O'Keefe. Royall Edwards of St. Gregory had been appointed by Warren Trent to work with the two officers, if required all night, so that they complete the whole of study. However upset with the denial of entry to Negro man in the hotel, which became the headline of newspapers, Journeyman Union broke the deal. Warren Trent had no option but to give in to Curtis O'Keefe. To his utmost surprise, a few minutes before Friday noon, the bank manager who had turned down refinancing of the hotel, came with an offer, that an Individual, whose name could not be disclosed then, would be paying the mortgage and buying the major shares of the Hotel. Warren Trent would be the chairman, though Warren knew that he would be just a figurehead but as it was a better offer, so he accepted. Christine and Albert Wells: Christine is the secretary to Warren Trent. Peter and Christine have a liking for each other. They share many things in common and feel they could be happy together. In hotel the elderly guest Mr. Albert Wells suffers a medical problems in his room. The hotel staff ist alert and quickly move him to another room. Christine took care of Albert Wells personally as he was the hotel guest. Marsha Preyscott: In another incident a group of teen-aged boys create a major incident that is aggravated by the fact that they are the sons of the local banker, car dealer, and other town notables. They attempt to rape Miss Prescott, the daughter of Mr. Prescott, a department store magnate, who is currently in Rome. However on listening her screams, Aloysius Royce, (a Negro and main help to Warren Trent who treats him like a son.) steps in and Marsha is able to escape then. Peter handles the situation and asks for a written apology from each of the boys involved in it. In said letters, villainous Bell Captain, Herbie Chandler is named as the one who made the incident possible. Because of his collusion in this, Chandler is threatened with firing on the spot, however, McDermott plans to take it to Mr. Trent, because of Chandler's years of employment. Chandler attempts to bribe the general manager, but fails, and is told to leave the office in a cold rage. Chandler plots some kind of revenge against McDermott, and he steps on Elevator #4. Marsha on the other hand falls in ‘love’ with Peter McDermott and proposes him for marriage. Peter finds it difficult to say no to her considering her affluence and beauty but finally says no as he knew that he liked Christine. However he overcomes his sense of guilt when he gets to know from Anna (Head maid servant of Marsha) that she is always the same and will be OK in some time and that Anna was not married. However, Marsha in framing a good background to convince Peter, had said that Anna had a very good life with her husband whom she had met only once before marriage, and it was not necessary to know a person for too long before to decide on marriage. The Dentist Convention: Hotel business gains a minimum from room rent but a bulk of its profit comes from the food, conventions held at its place. As a sequel to it, a major convention of dentists was supposed to be held in St. Gregory. Dr Ingram, President of convention had arrived and settled in his room. Then Mr. Nicholas, a Negro, arrived at the counter, showing a confirmed reservation. However the hotel policy did not allow Negros. Dr Ingram was quite disappointed at this and threatened the hotel authority that he would take the convention out of hotel, causing a major loss to hotel. When Peter discussed it with Warren he said, that after a few discussions this would be forgotten and the convention would be held and there was no need to worry. And after a few meetings the convention finally decided to stay though Mr. Ingram resigned from his post. Curtis O'Keefe and Dodo: Curtis O'Keefe, the one who owns a large hotel chains plans to buy St. Gregory hotel in New Orleans. He was there with Dodo, his girl friend. But it was time for Curtis to move on. He got a movie role for Dodo and thought to go to New York to meet his new girlfriend. When Warren told Curtis that he was not accepting Curtis' offer to sell the hotel, Curtis was very disappointed and in a fit of anger he told Dodo that he doesn’t want her any more. Dodo was upset, though somewhere she knew the truth already. She had to board her flight to Los Angeles and took elevator no 4, as she was about to move out of the hotel. Duke and Duchess of Croydon: In another instance the Duke and Duchess of Croydon are hiding out in the hotel from their responsibility for a gruesome hit-and-run accident which had been the highlight of the newspaper as the famous hit-and-run case. The Duke had gone to a night club and the Duchess reaches the club to find her husband. On their way back the Duke hits a woman and her daughter and both the woman and her daughter died. However, in the accident the headlight and the trim ring of the car were damaged. The Duke and Duchess arrived back at the hotel and try to find a way out, so that there is left a slightest print of them being involved in an accident. When the waiter arrived in the presidential suite with dinner, the Duchess intentionally hit the waiter so that her dress gets spoiled. The Duchess created a big issue over this, just to make her presence felt in hotel so that it can be interpreted that she was in the hotel. But the chief house officer Ogilvie gets hint of it and tries to blackmail the Duke and Duchess. They finally reach an agreement that Ogilvie would drive their Jaguar to Chicago and a total of twenty five thousand dollars would be paid to him. By the time the police identifies that the broken headlight and trim pieces would be identified as pieces of which car, Ogilvie would be out of New Orleans. The travel was supposedly on Thursday night at 1 am. Oglivie gets a written note from Duchess asking for permission to drive her car out of garage in case the garage officer asks for. The moment he was driving the car out of hotel, Peter was entering the hotel and they had eye contact, though Peter did not think much of it. However, recollecting all the events - a Jaguar being driven by Ogilvie which belonged to Duke and Duchess - the broken headlight of the Jaguar - the fuss created by Duchess on waiter - all established a link towards the involvement of the Duke and Duchess. Peter inquired from the garage officer and he informed that Ogilvie had a written note from the Duchess and so was allowed to drive the car away, but somehow the note got misplaced. Peter informed the police captain Yolles of the incident, but they could not prove it without any evidence. After working hard, the incinerator officer, responsible for garbage recycling, managed to find the note. When the note was produced before the Duchess, she frowned. The Duke then decided to admit his crime and decided to leave and stepped into elevator no 4 of the Hotel. Keycase Milne: A hotel thief operating in the St. Gregory. He managed to get keys of several rooms in hotel by using tricks, asking for other room number keys from the reception desk, using girls to obtain key for him and many other ways. When he saw the duke and duchess in hotel, he thought, if he could get the key of their room, it would be an excellent breakthrough. He managed to get the key from reception playing trickery, got a duplicate prepared and stole from duchess room her fifteen thousand dollars and jewellery. After obtaining so much of amount he decided to leave the hotel and boarded the elevator no 4. Climax: The meeting to take over the hotel scheduled at 11.30 am Friday was in place. Mr. Dempster from New York had arrived to tell who the boss was and it was Albert Wells, the hotel guest, whom Christine had taken care and thought of as not a rich man, had bought the hotel. To the utmost surprise of peter, Peter was appointed the Executive vice-President of St. Gregory and would be running the hotel with Dempster being the officiating president, the position Dempster had in all other hotels owned by Albert Wells. It was within the meeting itself that Christine came running and told that elevator number 4 met an accident and had a free fall. Dodo suffered a lot of injuries and was rushed to a hospital. It was then that Curtis realized how much he loved Dodo and got the best neurosurgeons for her. She was soon out of danger. The Duke was dead on the spot in the elevator. The duchess—still cold on hearing that, had no expression. The policeman, Captain Yolles, thought now the blame of hit-n-run could be easily moved on Duke as he was already dead and Duchess could save herself. Keycase managed to be safe and ran away from the country with all that money. Warren Trent was happy that he could retain his hotel being its chairman. Herbie Chandler, the evil bell captain, would be permanently paralyzed and would never work again. Aloysius Royce left the hotel to study law but not before he and McDermott drank together.
1039302	/m/040mph	Nightshade	Jack Butler	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story is set on Mars in the late 21st Century. It follows the exploits of the 400-year-old vampire John Shade, whose comfortable life in the Hellas crater on Mars is disrupted when he is forced to become part of a complex conspiracy to protect the Janglers, a sub-species of humans who have replaced parts of their brains with technology. Shade eventually becomes the leader of a collection of loners, losers, drop-outs and rebels, holding them together through unwitting charisma and a sense of personal vengeance against the government of Mars. As a vampire, Shade sometimes feels a lust for blood, though this only occurs once or twice a year - though the Need, as it is called, strikes several times during the course of the novel for reasons that are not fully explained. Shade also possesses increased strength and reflexes, a photographic memory, excellent mathematical knowledge, the ability to change his own shape and the power to "shift" into "high temporal", which tremendously enhances his speed. Shade has read Bram Stoker's Dracula and believes it to be "foolish in many details".
1041055	/m/040stt	A Man in Full	Tom Wolfe	1998-11-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As with Wolfe's other novels, A Man In Full features a number of point-of-view characters. These include Charles "Cap'm Charlie" Croker, a real estate mogul and member of Atlanta's high society who is suddenly facing bankruptcy; Martha Croker, his first wife, trying to maintain her social standing without her husband; Ray Peepgass, who is trying to illegally capitalize on Croker's fall; Roger "Too White" White II, a prominent black lawyer; and Conrad Hensley, a young man in prison who discovers Stoic philosophy. The novel begins with the characters learning of the rumored rape of a young white heiress by a black superstar athlete, Fareek "The Canon" Fanon. Though the incident itself is unimportant to the lives of the characters, the potential for the rumor to incite race riots in metropolitan Atlanta has a profound effect on all of their lives. Local politics and business interests become involved, including the president of the bank to which Croker is indebted, Roger Too White's former fraternity brother (now Mayor of Atlanta), and the entirety of 'respectable' Atlanta society. A Man In Full is written much in the style of Wolfe's other fictions, such as Bonfire of the Vanities and I Am Charlotte Simmons.
1041118	/m/040t1c	The Blackwater Lightship	Colm Tóibín		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is described from the viewpoint of Helen, a successful school principal living with her husband and two children in Ireland. She learns one day, that her brother Declan, who is homosexual, has been a sufferer of AIDS for years, and refused to tell her until then. He asks her to deliver their mother and grandmother the news. This presents a challenge to Helen as she has had minimal contact with either woman due to deeply buried conflicts relating to Helen's past and her father's sudden death when she was a child. As the three women meet again they are forced to overcome these struggles for Declan's sake. The novel follows the painful journey they must take in order to correct the misunderstanding that exists between them.
1041136	/m/040t48	Forbidden Love				 The novel centers on the life of Dalia, a young Muslim woman living in Amman, Jordan. When she falls in love with Michael, a young Catholic major in the British Army, she is forced to keep the relationship a secret and rely on her friend Norma to act as an intermediary. Although the lovers are only able to be alone together on a handful of occasions and Dalia's virginity remains intact, her father is so enraged when he hears of the affair from her older brother that he kills her two months after her twenty-sixth birthday. Khouri claimed that as a result, she had been forced to seek asylum in Queensland, Australia.
1041160	/m/040t6s	Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell	Susanna Clarke	2004-09-08	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens in autumn 1806 in northern England with The Learned Society of York Magicians, made up of "theoretical magicians" who believe that magic died out several hundred years earlier. The group is stunned to learn of a "practising magician", Mr Gilbert Norrell, who owns a large collection of "books of magic" he has spent years purchasing to keep out of the hands of others. Norrell proves his skill as a practical magician by making the statues in York Cathedral speak. John Childermass, Mr Norrell's long-time servant, convinces a member of the group, John Segundus, to write about the event for the London newspapers. Segundus's article generates considerable interest in Mr Norrell, who moves to London to revive practical English magic. He enters society with the help of two gentlemen about town and meets a Cabinet minister, Sir Walter Pole. To ingratiate himself, Mr Norrell attempts to recall Sir Walter's fiancée, Emma Wintertowne, from the dead. He summons a fairy—"the gentleman with thistle-down hair"—who strikes a bargain with Mr Norrell to restore Emma: half of her life will be spent with the fairy. After news spreads of Emma's resurrection and happy marriage to Sir Walter, magic becomes respectable and Mr Norrell performs various feats to aid the government in their ongoing war against Napoleon. While living in London, Mr Norrell encounters Vinculus, a street-magician, who relates a prophecy about a nameless slave and two magicians in England, but Norrell dismisses it. While travelling, Vinculus later meets Jonathan Strange, a young gentleman of property from Shropshire, and recites the same prophecy, prompting Strange to become a magician. Meanwhile, the gentleman with thistle-down hair takes a liking to Stephen Black, Sir Walter's capable black butler, and promises to make him a king. Emma (now Lady Pole) lapses into lassitude. She rarely speaks, and her attempts to communicate her situation are confounded by magic. No doctor can cure her, and Mr Norrell claims that her problems cannot be solved by magic. Without the knowledge of the other characters, each evening she and Stephen are forced to attend balls held by the gentleman with thistle-down hair in the Faerie kingdom of Lost-Hope, where they dance all night long. Volume II opens in Summer 1809 with Strange learning of Mr Norrell and travelling to London to meet him. They immediately clash over the importance of John Uskglass (the legendary Raven King) to English magic. Strange argues that "without the Raven King there would be no magic and no magicians" while Norrell retorts that the Raven King made war upon England and should be forgotten. Despite their differing opinions and temperaments, Strange becomes Norrell's pupil. Norrell, however, deliberately keeps some knowledge from Strange. Lady Pole and Strange's wife, Arabella, become friends; several times Lady Pole attempts to tell Arabella about her forced nights of dancing at the fairy's castle in Lost-Hope, but each time she tells an unrelated story. Arabella also meets the gentleman with thistle-down hair at the Poles', but she assumes he is simply a resident. Without her husband's knowledge, the fairy plots to enchant her, although Stephen Black continually attempts to dissuade him. The Stranges become a popular couple in London. The Cabinet ministers find Strange easier to deal with than Norrell, and they send him to assist the Duke of Wellington on his Peninsular Campaign. For over a year, Strange helps the army: he creates roads, moves towns, and makes dead men speak. After he returns, he fails to cure George III's madness, although Strange manages to save the king from becoming enchanted by the gentleman with thistle-down hair, who is determined to make Stephen a king. Strange then helps defeat Napoleon at the horrific Battle of Waterloo. Frustrated with being Norrell's pupil, Strange pens a scathing review of a book outlining Norrell's theories on modern magic; in particular, Strange challenges Norrell's views of the Raven King. The English public splits into "Norrellites" and "Strangites"; Norrell and Strange part company, although not without regret. Strange returns home and works on his own book, The History and Practice of English Magic. Arabella goes missing, then suddenly reappears, sick and weak. Three days later she dies. Volume III opens in January 1816 with Childermass experiencing strong magic that is not produced by either Norrell or Strange. At the same time, Lady Pole attempts to shoot Mr Norrell as he is returning home. Childermass takes the bullet himself but is not killed. Afterwards, Lady Pole is cared for in the country by John Segundus, who has an inkling of the magic surrounding her. During travels in the north, Stephen meets Vinculus, who recites his prophecy: "the nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country&nbsp;...&nbsp;" Stephen believes it applies to him, but the gentleman with thistle-down hair argues that it applies to the Raven King. Strange settles in Venice and meets Flora Greysteel. They become fond of each other and Strange's friends believe he may marry again. However, after experimenting with dangerous magic that threatens his sanity in order to gain access to Faerie, he discovers that Arabella is alive and being held captive. Immediately after he discovers this, the gentleman with the thistledown hair curses him with Eternal Night, an eerie darkness that engulfs him and follows him wherever he goes. Thereafter, Strange's strenuous efforts to rescue her take their toll, and his letters to friends begin to appear crazed. On Strange's orders, Flora moves with her family to Padua and secludes herself inside her home, along with a mirror given to her by Strange. In England, the return of John Uskglass sparks a magical renaissance, but Norrell fails to grasp its significance. Strange returns and gives Childermass instructions which allow him to free Lady Pole from the fairy's enchantment. Strange, bringing "Eternal Night" with him, asks Norrell to help him undo Arabella's enchantment by summoning John Uskglass. Although they initially believe that they have succeeded, they later come to believe that their contact with John Uskglass was accidental. As a result of the imprecision of the fairy's curse, which was placed on "the English magician," Norrell is trapped along with Strange in the "Eternal Night," and they cannot move more than a certain distance from each other. They do succeed in sending Arabella to the mirror in Padua, where Flora is waiting for her. After the spells of the gentleman with thistle-down hair are broken, Stephen destroys him, and becomes the new king of Lost-Hope. Later Strange has a conversation with Arabella, making it unclear if he and Norrell are working to undo the eternal darkness they are both trapped in, and a vague hope that one day he will return to her. The final scene depicts the coming of age of English magic, in which a bar is filled with arguing Norrellites and Strangites.
1041696	/m/040w5r	The Last Don	Mario Puzo		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The last plan of Don Domenico Clericuzio, an aging mafia boss, is to eventually make his family enter the legitimate world and melt into American society. Twenty-five years later, his grandson Dante and his grandnephew Cross (Croccifixio) make their way through life, and the eighty-year-old Don is half retired. Cross, who holds a majority share in a Las Vegas casino, is supposed to become the strong arm of the family. However, when he refuses to take part in the murder of an old friend, Dante is left to be the sole tough guy. Dante's greed for power and blood lead him to plan the elimination of his relatives, who are an obstacle to the desire to become as powerful as the old Don himself. Cross, who is aware of being on the black list, precedes Dante and catches him in a trap. Having acted against the family, he waits for the Don's vendetta, but, to his own surprise, his life is spared and he's only condemned to exile. The story concludes with the revelation that the Don had planned this outcome all along for the long term survival of the family.
1042960	/m/040_7f	Venice Preserv'd	Thomas Otway			 The play concerns Jaffeir, a noble Venetian who has secretly married Belvidera, the daughter of a proud senator named Priuli, who has cut off her inheritance. Jaffeir is impoverished and is constantly rebuffed by Priuli. Jaffeir's friend Pierre, a foreign soldier, stokes Jaffeir's resentment and entices him into a plot against the Senate of Venice. Pierre's own reasons for plotting against the Senate revolve around a senator (a corrupt and foolish Antonio) paying for relations with Pierre's mistress, Aquillina. Despite Pierre's complaints, the Senate does nothing about it, explaining that Antonio has senatorial privilege. Pierre introduces Jaffeir to the conspirators, led by blood-thirsty Renault. To get their trust, he must put Belvidera in Renault's care as a hostage. In the night, Renault attempts to rape her, but she escapes to Jaffeir. Jaffeir then tells Belvidera about the plot against the Senate, and against her father. She devises a plan of her own. Jaffeir will reveal the conspiracy to the Senate and claim the lives of the conspirators as his reward. It is only after Belvidera informs him of the attempted rape that Jaffeir agrees to do this, but the Senate breaks its word and condemns all the conspirators to death. In remorse for betraying his friend and losing his honour (by betraying his oath to the conspirators), Jaffeir threatens to kill Belvidera, unless she can get a pardon for the conspirators. She does so, but the pardon arrives too late. Jaffeir visits Pierre at his execution. Pierre is crestfallen because he is sentenced to die a dishonourable death and not the death of a soldier. He forgives Jaffeir and whispers to him (unheard by the audience) to kill him honourably before he is executed. Jaffeir stabs his friend, Pierre, on the gallows, and as a form of atonement commits suicide. Belvidera then goes insane and dies.
1044528	/m/041398	Doon	Ellis Weiner	1984-11	{"/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Within the Galactic Empire, a change of fief is occurring. Led by the verbose Baron Vladimir, House Hardchargin, the Great Big House given charge of Arruckus, has been displaced by Shaddap IV, the Padedbrah Emperor, in favor of the up-and-coming House Agamemnides, with Duke Lotto at its head. Arruckus is also known as "Doon", and is additionally known as the Dessert Planet. Covered entirely in sugars, it is a harsh unforgiving environment, where not an entree can be found; the natives live entirely on whatever they can import, produce from the sugars, or produce from soy protein (the native food experiments known as the Mahn t'Vani) Duke Lotto accepts the fief, aware that it may well be a death trap but also conscious of the importance of Arruckus's only export, the wide-spectrum intoxicant known as beer. Found naturally on Arruckus as a result of natural processes and nowhere else, it is the engine on which commerce runs; the Schlepping Guild, who has a monopoly on space travel in the Imperium, will not run without it. Who controls the beer controls commerce. But soon after arriving on Doon, with his heir and son Pall and his concubine the Lady Jazzica, an adept of the galaxy-spanning sisterhood of chefs and event planners known as the Boni Maroni, Duke Lotto and House Agamemnides fall victim to a scheme originated by Baron Vladimir Hardchargin and implemented by the Duke's own accountant Oyeah, who, without the Duke's knowledge, kept a secret second ledger. When the Emperor called for an audit of the fief, the duplicate ledger made it appear as though House Agamemnides had been cooking the books. In return for this act, Oyeah hoped the Baron would give him a start as a stand-up comic–which he did, but on the Imperial prison planet, Salacia Simplicissimus. Ruined, Duke Lotto's brief reign over Doon is ended and House Hardchargin is reinstated as fief-holders. Banished to the sugared wilderness, Pall (now head of House Agamemnides) and Lady Jazzica meet with and are eventually accepted by the planet's native population, the Freedmenmen, a process made easier by previous prophecy-seeding by the Missionaria Phonibalonica, via the Great Prophet Phyllis. Indeed, the natives are receptive to the fulfillment of the prophecies even after the revelation that Phyllis's decanonization resulted in her prophecies being discontinued sometime before. Pall, given the Freedmenmen name Assol and taking the secret name Mauve'Bib (after the purple napkin that all Freedmenmen wear about their necks) begins to ascend the power structure of the tribe (as well as the Freedmenmen girl Loni as his lover), realizing that he could use the Freedmenmen to return to a position of power, taking back not only Doon but the Imperium itself. He also realizes what the planet's Imperial Planetologist and liberal economist, Keynes, had puzzled out some time before: the rampaging Giant Pretzels (known as Schmai-gunug) actually produces the beer as a byproduct of its very life-cycle. The Lady Jazzica ascends to the status of Revved-Up Mother of Hootch Grabr, becoming known as Jazzica-of-the-Weirdness. During her ascension, while getting drunk on the beer, she realizes that she carries Lotto's daughter. Her intoxication opens her foetal daughter to the thousands of years of Boni Maroni culinary history; the result is Nailya-the-Truly-Weird, a toddler who spouts recipes as though she were an adult. During this time, he knowingly positions himself as the Kumquat Haagendasz (the result of a generations-long breeding program so secret that the Boni Maroni have actually forgotten the point) and the Mahdl-t, the long hoped-for Freedmenmen messiah, "he who will drive us to Paradise and Back", who will finally bring the entrees the Freedmenmen have hungered for. By this route, he assumes and consolidates his power over the natives, not only making them his allies, but his fanatic followers. Meanwhile, back in power, Baron Vladimir Hardchargin has his own problems. Converting the fief into the Shadvlad Rendezvous, the galaxy's premier lounge planet, is a relative success, even though the Freedmenmen remain a chronic problem and the Giant Pretzels remain at large. He is hungry for more success, though, and has plans to muscle out his silent partner (the Emperor) and play the Imperial House against the Boni Moroni, the Schlepping Guild, and the interstellar development cooperative NOAMCHOMSKI using his control of beer as leverage, thereby becoming the true power in the galaxy, and franchising the Shadvlad across the Imperium. Events come to a head when Pall Mauve'Bib, gone completely native and acquiring the "Eye of the Egad" (the telltale red-on-red eyes, indicating severe beer addiction) challenges the Baron to a bake-off, with a new ingredient: peanut butter, rendered from the naturally-occurring snack mix's peanuts, and debuting his secret weapon – a liqueur made from beer – Drambrewski. With the support of the Boni Moroni thereon, the promise of an assured supply of beer to the Schlepping Guild (who had been influenced to believe that the Hardchargins have been watering the beer, and are revealed to have the red-on-red eyes of beer addiction), and after dispatching the ShaNaNa-Baron Flip-Rotha Hardchargin in rankout (single insult-combat), Pall Mauve'Bib assumes Imperial control, banishing the Emperor's house to the prison plant Simplicissima Secundus, acquiring the hand of the Emperor's daughter Serutan in a marriage of convenience, and the Freedmenmen woman Loni as his concubine.
1044676	/m/0413xs	I Am the Cheese	Robert Cormier		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Protagonist Adam Farmer is biking from his home in the fictional town of Monument, Massachusetts (based on Cormier's home town of Leominster, Massachusetts). Interspersed with the story of his journey are memories of Adam's previous life with his parents, his love for prankster Amy Hertz, and the discovery that he is not who he seems to be. In the end we find out that Adam is just riding around his mental home and the characters on his trip are the people who work in the mental home.
1045304	/m/0415vl	My Name is Legion	Roger Zelazny		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The protagonist of these stories was involved in the creation of a global computer network designed to give ultimate economic control by keeping track of all human activity. Just before the system went live, the hero expressed his concerns about the possible misuse of such power to his superior, who gave the hero the chance to destroy his personal data before it was to be entered into the system. In taking this step the hero becomes non-existent as far as the system is concerned. Using backdoors in the central network, the hero is able to create identities for himself as needed. With this freedom he sets himself up as a freelance investigator and problem solver.
1046551	/m/041932	Carpathian Castle	Jules Verne	1892	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the village of Werst in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania (then part of Austria-Hungary), some mysterious things are occurring and the villagers believe that Chort (the devil) occupies the castle. A visitor of the region, Count Franz de Télek, is intrigued by the stories and decides to go to the castle and investigate and finds that the owner of the castle is Baron Rodolphe de Gortz, one of his acquaintances, as years ago, they were rivals for the affections of the celebrated Italian prima donna La Stilla. The Count thought that La Stilla was dead, but he sees her image and voice coming from the castle, but we later on find that it was only a holographic image.
1047006	/m/041b8r	He Died With A Felafel In His Hand	John Birmingham	1994	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel"}	 While the book is not written in a linear fashion the order of houses (and house mates) John lives in is as follows: 1st Place - The Boulevade * Tom lived in the garage * Mel lived upstairs. Her boyfriend Warren moved in some time later. When they moved out, replaced by * Andy the Med Student (Dr Death) moved in Tom moved out and is replaced by * Derek the Bank Clerk 2nd Place * Tom and John got a new place * Derek the Bank Clerk (lived in a tent). Replaced by * Martin the Paranoid Wargamer. Lasted three weeks and was replaced by * Taylor the Taxi Driver 3rd Place - King Street * PJ * Milo * PJ moved out, replaced by * The 7&nbsp;ft Nurse, replaced by * Ray, replaced by * Malcolm and his Charlie Brown bowls, replaced by * Victor the Rasta, replaced by * McGann the American in his mid 40’s with a fondness for prostitutes, replaced by * Taylor the Taxi Driver. Taylor at the time was having personal issues. He ambushed his fellow housemates with a toy gun after hiding for an hour. He told them if it was a real gun they would all be dead. John saw this as good reason to move out 4th Place - Duke Street (Brisbane) * Thunderbird Ron * Macgyver the Mushroom Farmer * Neal the Albino Moontanner * Howie (Neal’s friend) * Satomi Tiger (via Tim the invisible flatmate) * Brainthrust Leonard * Jabba the Hutt * Mick the English Backpacker * Colin and Stepan John moves out for reasons not made clear 5th Place - Melbourne * Stacey the Who Weekly fan John moves out when her loud sex sessions became too much to bear 6th Place - Fitzroy * Brain the Electrician * Greg the Gay School Teacher * AJ * Satvia who starts going out with John * Nigel moves into the house and moves in with Satvia As a result of the fallout from this new relationship Greg moves out and John follows suit 7th Place - Carlton * Ernie * Martin the Canadian Phd * Dave the Smoker moves in with his washerwoman girlfriend * Four other Daves move in After trying to freeze out the Daves from the house by cutting off the gas and electricity John gives in and moves to a loft in Fitzroy 8th Place - Fitzroy * Wendell the Londoner After Wendell’s threats to kill him, John moves out and sleeps round friends 9th Place - Auchenflower in Brisbane * Wayne the Santanic Vet * Danny (the Decoy) * Margot 10th Place – Brisbane Goth House (not clear how this move came about) * Kevin the Carpenter * The New Slovenian Art printer * Bald Goth who lived in the back * Luke the Musician All the goths run away after the bailiff came round to collect unpaid rent. John keeps the house on and in move * Dirk * Em the Banker (however at the start of the book it is stated that Emma moves in when Nina moves out) * Crazy Nina Nina move out to live with her friend Tanya * Tanya then moves in after Nina sleeps with her boyfriend The whole house up sticks and moves 11th Place * Dirk * Em the Banker * Tanya (possibly) * New Girl moves in to replace Nina but leaves because she is "diagnosed as schizo" * Taylor the Taxi Driver moves in The book then segues to 12th Place - Band house in Darlinghurst, Sydney * Hooper * Tammy * Jeremy moves in to escape his former psychotic housemate * Keith the drummer moves in downstairs 13th Place - Kippax street * Gina * Harry the Doctor, replaced by * Kim the Vet, replaced by * Melissa the Junkie (aka Rowan Corcoran), replaced by * Duffy the Computer Programmer, replaced by * The Dutch Guy who lasted 2 weeks, replaced by * Giovanna who lasted less than a week, replaced by * Mosman who no one ever saw, replaced by * Jimbo who moved in with one of the girls leaving his room free for * Veronica the Proto Hippy who was replaced by * Jonathan, replaced by * Downstairs Ivan * Uptight Martin moved in at the same time Downstairs Ivan and Uptight Martin move out within 3 days of each other and are replaced by * Paul the Quiet Journalist and * Homer the Air Traffic Controller * Yoko San moved in and last three weeks, replaced by * Jeffrey the junkie
1047128	/m/041bpp	Count Karlstein	Philip Pullman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the fictional Swiss village of Karlstein in 1816. The evil Count Karlstein made a deal with Zamiel, the Demon Huntsman, in order to obtain his current wealth. The condition of the deal was that in ten years' time the huntsman will be presented with a human sacrifice on All Souls' Eve. The count has decided to offer his two young nieces, Lucy and Charlotte. His plan does not go as smoothly as he would have preferred. Hildi Kelmar, a castle maidservant, overhears his plan to sacrifice Lucy and Charlotte and tries to save them. The narrative shifts between the perspectives of a panoply of characters, including Hildi, Lucy, Charlotte, the girls' former teacher Miss Augusta Davenport, the inept coachman Max Grindoff, and a police report. Other characters that come to the aid of the girls, willingly or not, are Meister Haifisch, the Count's lawyer; Doctor Cadaverezzi, a fraudulent magician employing Max as an assistant, who takes Lucy in as a part of his act; Eliza, Miss Davenport's helper and Max's lover; Hildi's mother, a tavern owner; and Hildi's brother, Peter, a huntsman hiding from the law. After hiding the girls, avoiding the Count and his cronies (Arturo Snivelwurst, his cowardly manservant, and Frau Muller, the castle's head servant), and helping several other people, Hildi has no choice but to send her fugitive brother, armed with a single silver bullet, to rescue the girls from the distant hunting cabin. He uses the bullet before encountering Zamiel, but the Demon Huntsman spares the hunter and those he protects, taking the life of Karlstein instead. The following day, Peter wins a shooting contest and the title of Chief Ranger of the Forest, securing his freedom. Meister Haifisch arrives and announces that the true Count Karlstein is in fact the orphaned Max, who weds Eliza and raises Lucy and Charlotte. Finally, Miss Augusta and Doctor Cadaverezzi (whom she knows as Signor Rolipolio), old lovers, reunite and marry.
1047922	/m/025rpvx	Leucippe and Clitophon	Achilles Tatius			 At the novel's start, the unnamed narrator is approached by a young man called Clitophon who is induced to talk of his adventures. In Clitophon's story, his cousin Leucippe travels to his home in Tyre, at which point he falls in love with her, despite his already being promised in marriage to his half-sister Calligone. He seeks the advice of another cousin (Kleinias), already experienced in love (this latter's young male lover dies shortly after). After a number of attempts to woo her, Clitophon wins Leucippe's love, but his marriage to Calligone is fast approaching. However, the marriage is averted when Kallisthenes, a young man from Byzantium who has heard of Leucippe's beauty, comes to Tyre to kidnap her, but by mistake kidnaps Calligone. Clitophon attempts to visit Leucippe at night in her room, but her mother is awakened by an ominous dream. Fearing reprisals, Clitophon and Leucippe elope together and leave Tyre on a ship (where they meet another unhappy lover, Menelaos, responsible for his own boyfriend's death). Unfortunately, their ship is wrecked during a storm. They come to Egypt and are captured by Nile delta bandits. Clitophon is rescued, but the bandits sentence Leucippe to be sacrificed. Clitophon witnesses this supposed sacrifice and goes to commit suicide on Leucippe's grave, but it in fact turns out that she is still alive, the sacrifice having been staged by his captured friends using theatrical props. The Egyptian army soon rescues the group, but the general leading them falls in love with Leucippe. Leucippe is stricken by a state of madness, the effect of a strange love potion given her by another rival, but is saved by an antidote given by the helpful stranger Chaireas. The bandits' camp is destroyed and the lovers and their friends make for Alexandria, but are again betrayed: Chaireas kidnaps Leucippe, taking her away on his boat. As Clitophon pursues them, Chaireas' men apparently chop off her head and throw her overboard. Clitophon, distraught, returns to Alexandria. Melite, a widowed lady from Ephesus, falls in love with him and convinces him to marry her. Clitophon refuses to consummate the marriage before they arrive in Ephesus. Once there, he discovers Leucippe, who is still alive, another woman having been decapitated in her stead. It turns out that Melite's husband Thersandros is also still alive; he returns home and attempts to both rape Leucippe and frame Clitophon for murder. Eventually, Clitophon's innocence is proven; Leucippe proves her virginity by entering the magical temple of Artemis; Leucippe's father (Sostratos) comes to Ephesus and reveals that Clitophon's father gives the lovers his blessing. Kallisthenes, Calligone's kidnapper, is also shown to have become a true and honest husband. The lovers can finally marry in Byzantium, Leucippe's town.
1047924	/m/02p3kbn	Daphnis and Chloe	Longus			 Daphnis and Chloe is the story of a boy (Daphnis) and a girl (Chloe), each of whom is exposed at birth along with some identifying tokens. A goatherd named Lamon discovers Daphnis, and a shepherd called Dryas finds Chloe. Each decides to raise the child he finds as his own. Daphnis and Chloe grow up together, herding the flocks for their foster parents. They fall in love but, being naive, do not understand what is happening to them. Philetas, a wise old cowherd, explains to them what love is and tells them that the only cure is "kissing." They do this. Eventually, Lycaenion, a woman from the city, educates Daphnis in love-making. Daphnis, however, decides not to test his newly acquired skill on Chloe, because Lycaenion tells Daphnis that Chloe "will scream and cry and lie bleeding heavily [as if murdered]."
1048130	/m/041fnq	Autumn Visits	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Six forces: Love, Growth, Knowledge, Power, Strength, and Art. This world (actually, the whole action takes place in Russia and the Ukraine) lacks love; but the love this Envoy would bring the Kindness of fervent religion - leading to witch hunts and crusades. The Original for this Envoy is a female doctor, who has seen the consequences of love, kindness and compassion neglected in her patients dying without access to medicines and treatments. She believes her Envoy to be God, or a divine messenger, but appears rather blind to her other aspects. The force of Knowledge would create a better, more reasonable world, but is hampered by physical fraility, and always ends up subjugated by power. The Envoy of knowledge would change that, but his Original is an old scientist suffering from terminal cancer, who is intelligent and wise, but physically impotent. Knowledge remembers his past incarnations with clarity, unlike the other Envoys and can extrapolate the actions of the others much better. The force of Art is rarely able to take action, hampered by its own imagination of the consequences. When it does, however, the actions are impassioned, and the result is rarely savoury, like the actions of a certain painter Schicklgruber. Art is represented by a 'hack' writer, cranking out several fantasy and sci-fi novels a year for money. The novel implies that some of Lukyanenko's other books are actually written by the Original of this Envoy. Specifically, he makes numerous references to having written The Boy and the Darkness. Strength is the force that guarantees peace and security. A country with a strong army, without crime; a place to which warriors can prouodly come home. Strength's Envoy is a copy of an Army Colonel who fought in Afghanistan. He is Ukrainian, and is in the Ukrainian army, but seems to regard the countries as close kin, almost as one. This Envoy and his Original don't see eye-to-eye on their vision of the future, because the Original has lost faith in his cause, while the copy retains his belief. Power represents a strong state, claiming people's loyalty, guiding their lives, and focusing their strength on a single purpose, but also punishing individual action, turning people into a herd being driven by a stren and beloved shepherd. This force is represented by an ambitious and corrupt politician, seeking to ascend to presidency. The Envoy murders and supplants his Original as soon as he arrives, because "power can't be shared". The novel implies that the current state of the world is in part the result of Power winning the last contest; Joseph Stalin and Napoleon Bonaparte are both implied to have been an Envoys of Power. The forth of Growth represents progress and development, potential limited only by motivation. Unfortunately, Growth lacks direction, and has potential for both good and evil. Growth is, appropriately, represented by a teenager - a somewhat dour and cynical boy, who is implied to have lost his faith in the world. This Envoy and his Original begin to grow apart as the novel progresses, diverging, and even spending a lot of time away from each other, unlike most other Envoy/Original pairs. Unlike the other Envoys, Growth does not remember his past incarnations, as experience would defeat the purpose of growing. Although not mentioned as part of the six Forces, Darkness intervenes in the contest. Darkness is presented as ultimate freedom, even from the consequences of one's own actions. Darkness doesn't have an Envoy, but it still has a champion - a determined and driven professional hitman, whom Darkness empowers and directs to kill all the Envoys and their Originals. Although not part of this contest, the force of Light has intervened in past contests, and has won at least one. Jesus Christ is implied to have been a champion of Light. His death was a short-term loss but a long-term victory.
1049941	/m/041m21	Black Sun	Edward Abbey	1971	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book is divided into three parts: In the forest; In the sun; and In the evening. One of the plot devices Abbey uses is to play with time. For example, while driving back from the rim and picking up Sandy's car, Abbey switches to a scene with Will at a bar watching Native Americans fighting. Or, after Sandy goes missing and Will and Larry fight, the reader gets a scene where Will and Sandy discuss Larry's upcoming visit. The first part opens with Will Gatlin, a ranger who lives in a cabin under a fire watch tower, going about his daily routine, which includes climbing the tower to make sure there are no forest fires in sight. He hears people approaching, including the voices of women. He heats up a pot of coffee and puts on a clean shirt. A man, whose name Will quickly forgets, introduces himself and the two young ladies, Gloria Hollenbeck and Sandy MacKenzie. They ask if they can climb to the top of the tower and take in the view. Will leads them, but only Sandy is able to keep up with his quick pace. They admire the view up top before the other two finally arrive. After some brief excitement over a dust cloud, they descend for some coffee. Art Ballentine arrives at Will's cabin one day to save Will from the desolation of his life. He urges Will to leave the forest, get a woman, get fat. He's a college professor driving through on his way to California with his wife, Elsie. He asks Will what is he doing with his life wasting it away alone looking for fires. Will answers he's staring at the sun. "Stare it out. Stand on this tower and stare at the sun until the sun goes ... black." They head back to the lodge that Art is staying at to have dinner with Elsie. However, Elsie wants no part of dinner with the two of them so they dine without her. Art offers his philosophy on women, admitting he sleeps with some of his female students. Will responds with no shock, thinking it was one of the perks of the job. Later Will is in town mailing a letter when Sandy comes up to him. He struggles to recall her but does (he was more taken with Gloria, the rodeo queen on their first meeting). Sandy tells him Gloria and the unnamed man have left, but she stayed behind. She just finished hiking the canyon by herself. Will tells he she shouldn't do that alone, because it could be dangerous. He offers to buy her a drink at the bar, she informs him she can't go in, she's only 19. Will admits to being 37. After a few moments of conversation Will realizes that Sandy is nervous. When the conversation is coming to a close, he said he has to return to fix his bachelor supper. At the same moment she offers to come with him and cook for him, and he invites her along. They go back to her place where Sandy cooks a meal of stuffed peppers. During the meal Will debates if he should take her to bed, believing she's willing. He decides she's in love, but not with him, and that she's probably a virgin. In the end, he decides to return to his cabin. Sandy asks him to join her on a flight to the other rim so she can retrieve her car from the hike she took. He says he would join her, if she can give him a couple of days notice. Then Sandy asks if he would like to kiss her. He says he would, and does. Will gets a letter from Art. Elsie has left him and has been replaced by a 29-year-old named Darnelle, who he absolutely no intention of marrying. The second part, In the Sun, opens with Will driving into town and spending 10 minutes in front of a gas station bathroom mirror trying to make himself look good all for a woman. He tries to remember the last time he did this for a girl, and can't recall when. He walks to her house where she is already waiting for him with a rucksack filled with supplies for a picnic. They embrace, kiss and then hop in the car and head toward the airport. During the car ride Sandy tells Will that she's engaged to a 23-year-old cadet in the Air Force, Lawrence J. Turner the Third. Will lets her know that he's not surprised and if she was looking for some sign he was disappointed in the news, there is none. They reach the airport where the pilot and one other passenger are already waiting. They pay their fares and climb aboard. Will's a nervous flyer, but Sandy loves it. She said she's taken some flying lessons and thinks she could fly this plane. During the flight Sandy can spot the trail she had hiked a week earlier and points it out. When the plane makes its first attempt at landing there is a cow and its calf in the middle of the runway. For a second both Will and Sandy believe they are going to die, but the pilot flies up to avoid them. Finally they are safely on the ground and hop on a bus to get to the trail head. Once there they find Sandy's car, make a stop at a coffee shop for breakfast and then begin the 300-plus mile trip around the canyon back to their starting spot. They stop for the picnic lunch that Sandy had promised Will for joining her on this trip. They drink a lot of wine and talk of many meaningless things. Will teaches her some Navajo words. They drive some more, then make another stop. Will offers Sandy more wine. She says "you're trying to get me drunk." Will says yes he is. She says "you're trying to seduce me." Will says yes he is. She then confesses to being a virgin, even though Will tells her he already figured that out and he forgives her for it. They go swimming in the river. For a moment, Sandy lets the current take her downriver, but Will gets excited and screams at her to stay away. She wonders why, and he points out there are rapids just around the bend and a current so strong she'd never be able to swim out of them. How long do they last? He says 300 miles, all the way through the canyon. They sleep on the beach but Sandy asks Will to wait, that she's still afraid. Art sends another letter to Will, this time to inform him Darnelle has left him and he's currently alone. But, fear not, for there are 50,000 in this city alone waiting to take her place. Will drives to spend a weekend with Rosalie, the woman he would have sex with on a semi-regular basis before Sandy entered his life. She has three children and a missing husband. Will tries to seduce her, but Rosie asks him will he marry her. When he says no, she goes to watch television. When Will still shows no interest in marriage, she gives in and says she might as well make love to him. After sex on the couch in front of the TV, Rosie falls asleep, Will carries her to her bed. Then he drinks another beer, gets dressed and leaves for the neighborhood bar. Will and Sandy are driving and she's talking about Larry, her fiance. Will shows no intention of getting jealous. She asks if there is a phone in the next town so she can call Larry. He points out there are rooms in the next town. He admits he wants to make love to her, sleep, then make love to her again. She says not yet. They drive on, even though both are very tired. She falls asleep and he has to gently wake her when they reach her home. He turns and leaves with her calling after him. She wants to know if he'll come if she calls. He says no, next time she must come to him. And bring a toothbrush. Will receives a letter from Lawrence J. Turner asking him to leave his fiancee alone. She had confessed to her fiance that she was growing fond of Will and that he was an older man. Larry promises to hold him responsible for whatever happens to Sandy. Sandy comes to Will, with her toothbrush. She admits to being scared, because she's never spent the night with a man before. He admits to being scared, because he's never spent the night with her before. He says the only remedy is for both of them to get a little drunk. They go to bed together that night. Will makes her breakfast in the nude, because he has ever intention of returning to bed to continue their lovemaking. Sandy worries that Larry won't marry her now, because she's no longer a virgin. Will says if Larry won't, he will. She asks if that's a proposal. He says sure. Will says he smells smoke and must climb the tower. He does, with Sandy, but there is no smoke to be seen. He reports in by radio, where they notice he's an hour late. They ask if he's drunk. Will says worse yet, he's in love. Another letter from Art, this one more philosophical than the rest. Darnelle has returned and wants him. He begs Will to write back, knowing he never will. Says he might drive out there and visit again. Will and Sandy go on a hike together, making love often and Will tells Sandy to take it easy on him, as he's an old man. Part three, In the Evening, opens with a letter to Will from Rosie. She thanks him for the check he sent and asks why she hasn't seen him in nearly a year. She, and the children, miss him and wish he would visit again. Will walks out of the lodge and spots a young man waiting for him. He knows immediately who it is. After a terse greeting, they go off to the side and Larry asks Will where is she? Will says he doesn't know. Sandy had left him a note saying that she wanted to be alone for a few days, and that's all he knew. Larry lets Will know that he doesn't believe him and that he thinks Will had something to do with Sandy going missing. Larry also said he had every intention of beating Will up, but now that he met him and discovered him a coward, he'd be too embarrassed to thrash him. Will insults him, so Larry does beat him up. Will refuses to fight back, and instead offers to buy Larry a drink. Going back in time Sandy talks about Larry's upcoming visit to her. He's been writing and calling her for months, with many of those calls and letters going unreturned. Will says he wants to marry Sandy, but she wonders if she can live in a cabin by a fire watch tower in the woods eating poached meat for the rest of her life. Sandy writes Will a note, saying that she needs to get away for a few days to figure things out. With Larry visiting on Sunday she realizes she must make a decision. Does she want to be with Larry, or Will? She wishes Will would help her with this choice more, but realizes it is something she has to figure out on her own. Sandy's car was spotted by a ranger near a trail, but has since gone. Will loads up supplies and notifies his boss, Wendell, that he's not going to be available for a while. Wendell pleads with him not to abandon his post, but Will refuses. He's going to search for Sandy. Larry had already tried this, and flying around looking for her. But he didn't know how to survive in the wild and he nearly killed himself. Now he just sits in Sandy's home, hoping that somehow she will return to him. And he also blames Will for whatever has happened to his fiancee. Will spends days hiking through the canyon, searching for Sandy. It's harsh terrain and tests even an experienced hand like himself. Larry would never survive this hike. Sandy may not have. At one point he sees a group of buzzards circling overhead. He climbs his way there, but finds only the body of a deer that had fallen from the cliff. Art writes that he has finally received a one-word letter from Will, and yes he will come. He asks about the terrible year they are having at the park this year, with the fires and the dead bodies. He asks if they ever found the body of that girl who went missing three years ago? Art spends the final week with Will at his job at the park. Winter is coming soon and there will be no need for anyone to keep watch. On the final day Will says he won't be coming back and isn't much troubled by that fact. As they leave, Will pulls over every now and again to cut down a tree with a power saw to block the road and keep people out. "Won't the snow do that," Art asks. Yes, Will says, but it's not snowing yet. They finally get to the end and close the gate that says road closed. They drive to a local coffee shop where Art flirts with a waitress named Claire.
1051237	/m/041qmv	The Sleepwalkers	Arthur Koestler			 Koestler starts off the book by looking back into his childhood about his philosophy of the world. He states that when he looks at the world, he looks at it as how the Babylonians did. He goes on to talk about where the Babylonians and Egyptians left off and the Greeks took over philosophy. "Homer's world is another, more colourful oyster, a floating disc surrounded by Okeanus." A central theme of The Sleepwalkers is the changing relationship between faith and reason. Koestler explores how these seemingly contradictory threads existed harmoniously in many of the greatest intellectuals of the West. He illustrates that while the two are estranged today, in the past the most ground-breaking thinkers were often very spiritual. Another recurrent theme of this book is the breaking of paradigms in order to create new ones. People - scientists included - hold onto cherished old beliefs with such love and attachment that they refuse to see the wrong in their ideas and the truth in the ideas that are to replace them. "The conclusion he puts forward at the end of the book is that modern science is trying too hard to be rational. Scientists have been at their best when they allowed themselves to behave as "sleepwalkers," instead of trying too earnestly to ratiocinate."
1052040	/m/041srv	3 Maccabees				 The contents of the book have a legendary character, which scholars have not been able to tie to proven historical events, and it has all the appearances of a romance. According to the book, after Ptolemy's defeat of Antiochus III in 217 BC at the battle of Raphia, he visited Jerusalem and the Second Temple. However, he was miraculously prevented from entering the building. This led him to hate the Jews and upon his return to Alexandria, he rounded up the Jewish community there to put them to death in his hippodrome. However, Egyptian law required that the names of all those put to death be written down, and all the paper in Egypt was exhausted in attempting to do this, so that the Jews were able to escape. Ptolemy then attempted to have the Jews killed by crushing by elephant; however, due to various interventions by God, the Jews escaped this fate, despite the fact that the 500 elephants had been specially intoxicated to enrage them. Finally, the king was converted and bestowed favor upon the Jews, with this date being set as a Festival of Deliverance.
1052081	/m/041sy1	4 Maccabees				 The work consists of a prologue and two main sections; the first advances the philosophical thesis while the second illustrates the points made using examples drawn from 2 Maccabees (principally, the martyrdom of Eleazer and the Maccabeean youths) under Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The last chapters concern the author's impressions drawn from these martyrdoms. The work thus appears to be an independent composition to 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees, merely drawing on their descriptions to support its thesis. It was composed originally in the Greek language, in what Stephen Westerholm of the Eastern / Greek Orthodox Bible calls "very fluently... and in a highly rhetorical and affected Greek style."
1052204	/m/041t8v	A Laodicean	Thomas Hardy			 Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who has purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. Somerset represents modernity in the novel. In the village there is an amateur photographer, William Dare, who is the illegitimate son of Captain De Stancy, an impoverished scion of the family. Captain De Stancy represents a dream of medieval nobility to Paula. She is attracted to both men for their different virtues but William Dare decides to intervene to promote his father in her affections. He fakes the telegram and photograph to make it appear Somerset is leading a dissolute lifestyle. His subterfuge is discovered by Captain De Stancy's sister Charlotte who has befriended Paula. She decides to tell Paula the truth and Paula pursues Somerset to the continent where he has gone mistakenly believing Paula and the Captain to have been married. She finds him and they are reunited and marry. The castle burns down and Somerset proposes to build a modern house in its place. The last line has Paula summing up her dichotomy of mind between modernity and romantic medievalism, and thus the two men, also emphasising the title "a Laodicean" (someone indifferent or half-hearted) — "I wish my castle wasn't burnt; and I wish you were a De Stancy!"
1052205	/m/041t95	Two on a Tower	Thomas Hardy	1882	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Two On A Tower is a tale of star-crossed love in which Hardy sets the emotional lives of his two lovers against the background of the stellar universe. The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an astronomer who is ten years her junior. Her husband's death leaves the lovers free to marry, but the discovery of a legacy forces them apart. This is Hardy's most complete treatment of the theme of love across the class and age divide and the fullest expression of his fascination with science and astronomy.
1052213	/m/041t9w	The Woodlanders	Thomas Hardy	1887		 The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. Although they have been informally betrothed for some time, her father has made financial sacrifices to give his adored only child a superior education and no longer considers Giles good enough for her. When the new doctor &ndash; a well-born and handsome young man named Edred Fitzpiers &ndash; takes an interest in Grace, her father does all he can to make Grace forget Giles, and to encourage what he sees as a brilliant match. Grace has more awe than love for Fitzpiers, but marries him nonetheless. After the honeymoon, the couple take up residence in an unused wing of Melbury's house. Soon, however, Fitzpiers begins an affair with a rich widow named Mrs. Charmond, takes to treating Grace coldly, and finally deserts her one night after he accidentally reveals his true character to his father-in-law. Melbury tries to procure a divorce for his daughter so she can marry Giles after all, but in vain. When Fitzpiers quarrels with Mrs. Charmond and returns to Little Hintock to try to reconcile with his wife, she flees the house and turns to Giles for help. He is still convalescing from a dangerous illness, but nobly allows her to sleep in his hut during stormy weather, whilst he insists on sleeping outside. As a result, he dies. Grace later allows herself to be won back to the at least temporarily repentant Fitzpiers, thus sealing her fate as the wife of an unworthy man. No one is left to mourn Giles except a courageous peasant girl named Marty South, who all along has been the overlooked but perfect mate for him, and who has always loved him.
1052338	/m/041tn6	1 Esdras				 *Septuagint and its derivative translations: &nbsp; = 1 Esdras *King James Version and many successive English translations: &nbsp;1 Esdras *Vulgate and its derivative translations: &nbsp;3 Esdras *Slavonic bible: &nbsp;2 Esdras *Ethiopic bible: &nbsp;Ezra Kali
1053614	/m/041ym4	The Third Policeman	Flann O'Brien	1967	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Third Policeman is set in rural Ireland and is narrated by a dedicated amateur scholar of de Selby, a scientist and philosopher. The narrator, whose name we never learn, is orphaned at a young age. At boarding school, he discovers the work of de Selby and becomes a fanatically dedicated student of it. One night he breaks his leg under mysterious circumstances – "if you like, it was broken for me" – and he is ultimately fitted with a wooden leg to replace the original one. On returning to his family home, he meets and befriends John Divney who is in charge of the family farm and pub. Over the next few years, the narrator devotes himself to the study of de Selby's work and leaves Divney to run the family business. By the time the narrator is thirty, he has written what he believes to be the definitive critical work on de Selby, but does not have enough money to publish the work. Divney observes that Mathers, a local man, "is worth a packet of potato-meal" and eventually it dawns on the narrator that Divney plans to rob and kill Mathers. The narrator and Divney encounter Mathers one night on the road and Divney knocks Mathers down with a bicycle pump. The narrator, prompted by Divney, finishes Mathers off with a spade, and then notices that Divney has disappeared with Mathers's cash box. When Divney returns he refuses to reveal where the cash box is, and fends off the narrator's repeated inquiries. To ensure that Divney does not retrieve the box unobserved, the narrator becomes more and more inseparable from Divney, eventually sharing a bed with him: "the situation was a queer one and neither of us liked it". Three years pass, in which the previously amicable relationship between the narrator and Divney breaks down. Eventually Divney reveals that the box is hidden under the floorboards in Mathers's old house, and instructs the narrator to fetch it. The narrator follows Divney's instructions but just as he reaches for the box, "something happened":It was as if the daylight had changed with unnatural suddenness, as if the temperature of the evening had altered greatly in an instant or as if the air had become twice as rare or twice as dense as it had been in the winking of an eye; perhaps all of these and other things happened together for all my senses were bewildered all at once and could give me no explanation. The box has disappeared, and the narrator is perplexed to notice that Mathers is in the room with him. During a surreal conversation with the apparently deceased Mathers, the narrator hears another voice speaking to him which he realises is his soul: &#34;For convenience I called him Joe.&#34; The narrator is bent on finding the cash box, and when Mathers tells him about a remarkable police barracks nearby he resolves to go to the barracks and enlist the help of the police in finding the box. On the way, he meets a one-legged bandit named Martin Finnucane, who threatens to kill him but who becomes his friend upon finding out that his potential victim is also one-legged. The narrator approaches the police barracks and is disturbed by its appearance:It looked as if it were painted like an advertisement on a board on the roadside and indeed very poorly painted. It looked completely false and unconvincing. Inside the barracks he meets two of the three policemen, Sergeant Pluck and Policeman MacCruiskeen, who speak largely in non sequitur and who are entirely obsessed with bicycles. There he is introduced to various peculiar or irrational concepts, artifacts, and locations, including a contraption that collects sound and converts it to light based on a theory regarding omnium, the fundamental energy of the universe; a vast underground chamber called &#39;Eternity,&#39; where time stands still, mysterious numbers are devoutly recorded and worried about by the policemen; a box from which anything you desire can be produced; and an intricate carved chest containing a series of identical but smaller chests. The infinite nature of this last device causes the narrator great mental and spiritual discomfort. It is later discovered that Mathers has been found dead and eviscerated in a ditch. Joe suspects Martin Finnucane, but to the narrator&#39;s dismay he himself is charged with the crime because he is the most convenient suspect. He argues with Sergeant Pluck that since he is nameless, and therefore, as Pluck observed, &#34;invisible to the law&#34;, he cannot be charged with anything. Pluck is surprised, but after he unsuccessfully attempts to guess the narrator&#39;s name he reasons that since the narrator is nameless he is not really a person, and can therefore be hanged without fear of repercussions:The particular death you die is not even a death (which is an inferior phenomenon at best) only an insanitary abstraction in the backyard[...]. The narrator calls on the help of Finnucane, but his rescue is thwarted by MacCruiskeen riding a bicycle painted an unknown colour which drives those who see it mad. He faces the gallows, but the two policemen are called away by dangerously high readings in the underground chamber. The following day he escapes from the barracks on a bicycle of unusual perfection. As he rides through the countryside, he passes Mathers&#39;s house and sees a light. Disturbed, he enters the house and finally meets the mysterious and reportedly all-powerful third policeman, Fox, who has the face of Mathers. Fox&#39;s secret police station is in the walls of Mathers&#39;s house. He tells the narrator that he is the architect of the readings in the underground chamber, which he alters for his amusement, thereby inadvertently saving the narrator&#39;s life. Fox goes on to tell the narrator that he found the cash box and has sent it to the narrator&#39;s home, where it is waiting for him. He also reveals that the box contains not money but omnium, which can become anything he desires. Divney can see the narrator, although the others cannot, and he has a heart attack from the shock. He shouts that the narrator was supposed to be dead, for the black box was not filled with money but a bomb and it exploded when the narrator reached for it. The narrator leaves Divney on the floor, apparently dying. Feeling &#34;sad, empty and without a thought&#34;, the narrator leaves the house and walks away down the road. He soon approaches the police barracks, the book using exactly the same words to describe the barracks and the narrator&#39;s opinion of it that were used earlier, the story having circled around itself and restarted. This time, John Divney joins the narrator on the road; they neither look at nor speak to each other. They both enter the police station and are confronted by Sergeant Pluck, who repeats his earlier dialogue and ends the book with a reprise of his original greeting to the narrator:"Is it about a bicycle?" he asked.
1055983	/m/0424c5	Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith	Jon Krakauer	2003	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book opens with news accounts of the 1984 murder of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter Erica. Brenda was married to the youngest Lafferty brother, Allen; older brothers Dan and Ron targeted their sister-in-law because they believed she was the reason Ron's wife left him (after refusing to allow him to marry a plural/second wife). Both men's extremism reached new heights when they became members of the School of the Prophets founded and led by Robert Crossfield. After joining the school, Ron claimed that God had sent him revelations - communication with God is a core belief of fundamentalist Mormonism as well as mainstream Mormonism . Ron showed the members of the School of Prophets a written "removal revelation" that allegedly called for the killing of Brenda and her baby. After other members of the school failed to honor Ron's removal revelation, the brothers quit the school. The murders were particularly cruel, with Dan claiming that he slit the victims' throats. However, at trial, Chip Carnes, who was riding in the get-away car, testified that Ron said he had killed Brenda and that Ron also thanked his brother for "doing the baby." After the murders, the police found the written "revelation" concerning Brenda and Erica. After the press widely reported that Ron had received a revelation to kill Brenda and Erica, the Lafferty brothers conducted a recorded press conference at which Ron pointed out that the "revelation" was not addressed to him, but to "Todd" [a drifter whom Ron had befriended while working in Wichita, Kansas] and that the revelation called only for "removal" of Brenda and her baby and did not use the word, "kill." These remarks of Ron denying he had received a revelation to kill Brenda and Erica were shown to the jury at Ron's trial. After opening with the Lafferty case, Krakauer goes into the history of Mormonism, starting with the early life of Mormon founder and prophet Joseph Smith, following his life from a criminal fraud trial to leading the first followers to Jackson County, Missouri and Nauvoo, Illinois. While violence seemed to follow the Mormons wherever they went, it wasn't necessarily the Mormons' doing, as Krakauer points out. Early Mormons faced severe religious persecution, due to their unorthodox beliefs, including polygamy, and their tendency to deal economically and personally only with other Mormons. This led to violent clashes between Mormons and non-Mormons, culminating in Smith's death on June 27, 1844 at the hands of a mob while he was jailed in Carthage, Illinois, awaiting trial for destroying the printing press of a local publication that painted him in a negative light. From Nauvoo, the Mormons trekked westward to modern-day Utah, led (after some controversy) by Smith's successor Brigham Young. Arriving in what they called Deseret, many Mormons believed they would be left alone by the federal government, as the territory was under Mexican rule at the time. This hope died soon after their arrival, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848, ending the Mexican-American War and ceding the land to the United States. Mormonism's problems weren't all external, as Smith's highly controversial revelation of plural marriage threatened to tear the faith in two. The Utah territory was a theocracy ruled by self-appointed governor, Brigham Young and was denied statehood for 50 years due to the practice of polygamy. Finally, on September 23, 1890 Wilford Woodruff, the fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints officially banned the practice of polygamy after having received a revelation (visit) from God denouncing polygamy and Utah was granted statehood, in spite of the fact that polygamy remained to be a secret practice until the early 1900s. After the Woodruff "revelation," some members broke away from the mainstream church to form what eventually became the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), the most popular group of fundamentalist Mormonism. The FLDS church allows — even encourages — polygamy. Constantly comparing the mainstream and fundamentalist forms of Mormonism, Krakauer examines events in the LDS history and compares them to modern day FLDS doctrine (or even less mainstream versions of Mormonism, such as the Crossfield School of the Prophets). One of these events is the Mountain Meadows massacre, in which Mormons, allegedly with the help of local Paiute Indians, rounded up the Baker-Fancher party of emigrants from Arkansas heading to California and murdered approximately 120 of them. While the Mormons went to great lengths to conceal any involvement in the massacre (including dressing as Paiute Indians and painting their faces in similar fashion), the only person successfully convicted in the affair was John D. Lee, a member of the LDS Church who was executed by the state in 1877 for his role in the crime. The book cites information gleaned from several interviews with Dan Lafferty and former and current members of the Crossfield School of the Prophets, as well as other fundamentalist Mormons. It also pulls from several books about the formation of Mormonism to tie the origins of the religion to the modern iterations of both The Church and the fundamentalists.
1057288	/m/04283r	West of Eden	Harry Harrison	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story revolves around the eventual discovery of the American continents by the Yilané, who are searching for new resources and territories for colonization. Being reptiloid and cold-blooded, they target tropical and sub-tropical zones. Eventually, of course, they encounter the humanoids, whom they regard as barely sentient animals. Humans, in their turn, are xenophobically terrified of the Yilané. It is not long before a state of conflict exists between the two species. The central characters are Vaintè, an ambitious Yilané; Stallan, her vicious and obedient adjutant; and Kerrick, a "ustouzou" (the Yilané word for mammal) who is captured by the reptiloids as a boy, and raised as a Yilané. Kerrick eventually escapes to rejoin his own people, ultimately becoming a leader. Another notable Yilanè character is Enge, the leader of a faction of pacifist Yilané who reject the militaristic and violent attitudes of their culture. This group is violently opposed by most other Yilané, especially Vaintè. Enge befriends Kerrick, and acts as his teacher, while he lives with the Yilané.
1058538	/m/0466pgd	On a Pale Horse	Piers Anthony	1983	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the early 21st century, Zane is living a pathetic life without money or employment. When a magic gem merchant cheats Zane out of an opportunity for romance, Zane decides to take his own life. As he starts to pull the trigger, he sees the specter of Death (Thanatos) advancing on him. Startled, he pulls the gun from his own head and shoots Death right between the eyes. He is then visited by a woman who introduces herself as Fate, who insists that Zane must now assume the position of the man he has killed, since whoever kills Death must become the new Death. As Zane makes his way downstairs, he gets his first view of a pale limousine with the license plate reading "Mortis"...his Death Steed (Death rides a pale horse) who can assume the form of a pale boat, a plane, or a pale limousine, as well as the form of a pale horse. Fate then departs and leaves Zane in the care of Chronos, the Incarnation of Time, who then instructs Zane how to use his deathwatch, how Mortis changes form, how to use other instruments of the office, and exactly what his new duties are. This entails residing in Purgatory and visiting Earth to collect the souls of humans who are in a close balance of good and evil and cannot determine their eternal destination (Heaven or Hell) without help. In the course of learning the job, he discovers that his coming into the office of Death was not accidental, but was manipulated by a powerful magician (Cedric Kaftan Jr.). Despite being a mortal, this magician has strong ties to the other Incarnations from Purgatory and reveals to Zane that the Incarnation of Fate arranged Zane's destiny for the magician's purpose. There is a prophecy which states that Luna Kaftan, the magician's daughter, is destined to go into politics and thwart the schemes of Satan, the Incarnation of Evil. Luna Kaftan is thus a target for the forces of Hell and is in need of supernatural protection. The magician, who has done a great deal of research, feels that Zane is the best candidate for the Incarnation of Death to fall in love with Luna and thus want to protect her. The only way for the magician Kaftan to meet with Death without Satan's knowledge is to die with his soul in balance. The magician chooses to sacrifice his own life in order to introduce Zane to Luna and explain to Zane the circumstances which brought him into the office of Death. The dead magician's plans however seem to go awry. Due to manipulation by Satan, Luna is also destined to die before she can fulfill the prophecy. The magician had used too much black magic for his soul to be in balance. In order to bring it into balance before committing suicide, he has transferred the excess evil on his soul to Luna's soul, whom he has assumed to be innocent of evil. However, Luna has a burden of evil on her soul already, and her father's scheme has put her on the course to Hell. To correct this, she volunteers to switch places with one of Death's other clients. By sacrificing her own life to save another, she manages to balance the evil on her soul. Her actions play right into Satan's trap, who doesn't care whether she goes to Heaven or Hell, only that she dies and is no longer a threat to his plots. However, Zane has already fallen in love with Luna by this time, just like the magician had planned, and he refuses to take the soul of the woman he loves. Now the motives behind the magician's choice of Zane are made clear to him when the other four Incarnations (Time, Fate, War, and Nature) from Purgatory approach him and explain that they were all in on the plan. The previous Death could not be manipulated into betraying the duties of his office for love, so the Incarnations_of_Immortality decided to replace him with a young, stubborn man like Zane, who could. Because Luna's soul is next in the queue, Zane cannot take the souls of other mortals until he deals with hers. He refuses to do so, thereby going on strike and leaving dying mortals in agony, unable to be released by death. As this is not to Satan's advantage, he first tries to bribe Zane, then intimidate him into going back to work. Zane, however, has had a conversation with Gaea, the Incarnation of Nature, who has demonstrated to him the absolute power each Incarnation wields in its own sphere of influence. Zane eventually realizes that the office of Death is unassailable by Satan and that he cannot be harmed within the sphere of that office. As an Incarnation, Satan himself has a soul and is subject to Zane's dominion. The conflict ends in a draw and Satan has no choice but to admit defeat. With Satan's plot exposed, Purgatory changes Luna's destiny and she is free to return to life. Zane lifts his strike, and with Luna under his protection, Satan can no longer interfere with her fate through the means of death.
1059600	/m/042g0r	The Burning Bed	Faith McNulty			 On the night of the fire, Hughes told her children to put their coats on and wait for her in the car. She then started the fire with gasoline poured around the bed Mickey Hughes was sleeping in. After the house had caught fire, Hughes drove with her (movie - three children) (actually two girls and one boy) to the local police station in order to confess. Hughes was tried in Lansing, Michigan, and found by a jury of her peers to be not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Having turned the book into a made-for-television movie, Goldemberg's screenplay, The Burning Bed, premiered on NBC on October 8, 1984. The movie, directed by Robert Greenwald, starred Farrah Fawcett as Francine Hughes and Paul LeMat as Mickey Hughes. The movie was filmed in Rosharon, Texas. The house that served as the house of Farrah Fawcett's character still stands today.
1060323	/m/042hvm	The Stars Shine Down	Sidney Sheldon	1992-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of Lara Cameron, a successful real estate developer who came from a broken family in Nova Scotia. Lara's mother dies in childbirth and her Scottish father doesn't want her. Early in life, she learns to fend for herself and how to get her own way in a male-dominated world. After her father's death, Lara makes a deal with the owner of the boarding house to secure her first building in exchange for her body. Thrilled at her success, she moves to Chicago to start her real estate empire. Even though she encounters many problems, she is able to overcome them all and become one of America's most successful businesswomen, and receives the nickname, "Iron Butterfly." She falls in love with a talented pianist, Philip Alder, and marries him. She is on the verge of losing everything she has achieved as well as the one man she loves, but the Iron Butterfly miraculously recovers from all her shattered dreams and gains back all her hopes and the only man whom she ever truly loved. bg:Звездите над нас es:Escrito en las estrellas ne:द स्टारस् साइन डाउन pt:The Stars Shine Down
1060361	/m/042hz3	Dombey and Son	Charles Dickens	1848	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story concerns Paul Dombey, the wealthy owner of the shipping company of the book's title, whose dream is to have a son to continue his business. The book begins when his son is born, and Dombey's wife dies shortly after giving birth. Following the advice of Mrs Louisa Chick, his sister, Dombey employs a wet nurse named Mrs Richards (Toodle). Dombey already has a daughter, Florence, whom he neglects. One day, Mrs Richards, Florence and her maid, Susan Nipper, secretly pay a visit to Mrs Richard's house in Staggs's Gardens so that she can see her children. During this trip, Florence becomes separated and is kidnapped for a short time by Good Mrs Brown before being returned to the streets. She makes her way to Dombey and Son's offices in the City and is guided there by Walter Gay, an employee, who first introduces her to his uncle, the navigation instrument maker Solomon Gills, at his shop the Wooden Midshipman. The child, also named Paul, is weak and often ill, and does not socialize normally with others; adults call him "old fashioned". He is intensely fond of his elder sister, Florence, who is deliberately neglected by her father as irrelevant and a distraction. He is sent away to Brighton, first for his health, where he and Florence lodge with the ancient and acidic Mrs Pipchin, and then for his education to Dr and Mrs Blimber's school, where he and the other boys undergo both an intense and arduous education under the tutelage of Mr Feeder, B.A. and Cornelia Blimber. It is here that Paul is befriended by a fellow pupil, the amiable Mr Toots. Here, Paul's health declines even further in this 'great hothouse' and he finally dies, still only six years old. Dombey pushes his daughter away from him after the death of his son, while she futilely tries to earn his love. In the meantime, Walter, who works for Dombey and Son, is sent off to work in Barbados through the manipulations of the firm's manager, Mr James Carker, 'with his white teeth', who sees him as a potential rival through his association with Florence. His boat is reported lost and he is presumed drowned. Walter's uncle leaves to go in search of Walter, leaving his great friend Captain Edward Cuttle in charge of the Midshipman. Meanwhile, Florence is now left alone with few friends to keep her company. Dombey goes to Leamington Spa with a new friend, Major Joseph B. Bagstock. The Major deliberately sets out to befriend Dombey in order to spite his neighbour in Princess's Place, Miss Tox, who has turned cold towards him owing to her hopes - through her close friendship with Mrs Chick - of marrying Mr Dombey. At the spa, Dombey is introduced via the Major to Mrs Skewton and her widowed daughter, Mrs Edith Granger. It is here that he develops an affection for Edith, encouraged by both the Major and the avaricious mother. After they return to London, Dombey remarries, effectively 'buying' the beautiful but haughty Edith as she and her mother are in a poor financial state. The marriage is loveless; his wife despises Dombey for his overbearing pride and herself for being shallow and worthless. Her love for Florence initially prevents her from leaving, but finally she conspires with Mr Carker to ruin Dombey's public image by running away together to Dijon. They do so after her last final argument with Dombey in which he once again attempts to subdue her to his will. When he discovers that she has left him, he blames Florence for siding with her stepmother, striking her on the breast in his anger, and she is forced to run away from home. Highly distraught, she finally makes her way to The Midshipman where she lodges with Captain Cuttle as he attempts to restore her to health. They are visited frequently by Mr Toots and his prizefighter companion, the Chicken, since Mr Toots has been desperately in love with Florence since their time together in Brighton. Dombey sets out to find his wife. He is helped by Mrs Brown and her daughter, Alice, who, as it turns out, was a former lover of Mr Carker. After being transported as a convict for criminal activities, which Mr. Carker had involved her in, she is seeking her revenge against him now that she has returned to England. Going to Mrs Brown's house, Dombey overhears the conversation between Rob the Grinder - who is in the employment of Mr Carker - and the old woman as to the couple's whereabouts and sets off in pursuit. In the meantime, in Dijon, Mrs Dombey informs Carker that she sees him in no better a light than she sees Dombey, that she will not stay with him and she flees their apartment. Distraught, with both his financial and personal hopes lost, Carker flees from his former employer's pursuit. He seeks refuge back in England, but being greatly overwrought, accidentally falls under a train and is killed. After Carker's death, it is discovered that he had been running the firm far beyond its means. This information is gleaned by Carker's brother and sister, John and Harriet, from Mr Morfin, the assistant manager at Dombey and Son, who sets out to help John Carker. He often overheard the conversations between the two brothers in which James, the younger, often abused John, the older, who was just a lowly clerk and who is sacked by Dombey because of his filial relationship to the former manager. Meanwhile, back at the Midshipman, Walter reappears, having been saved by a passing ship after floating adrift with two other sailors on some wreckage. After some time, he and Florence are finally reunited - not as 'brother' and 'sister' but as lovers, and they marry prior to sailing for China on Walter's new ship. This is also the time when Sol Gills returns to the Midshipman. As he relates to his friends, he received news whilst in Barbados that a homeward-bound China trader had picked up Walter and so had returned to England immediately. He said he had sent letters whilst in the Caribbean to his friend Ned Cuttle c/o Mrs MacStinger at Cuttle's former lodgings, and the bemused Captain recounts how he fled the place, thus never receiving them. Florence and Walter depart and Sol Gills is entrusted with a letter, written by Walter to her father, pleading for him to be reconciled towards them both. A year passes and Alice Brown has slowly been dying despite the tender care of Harriet Carker. One night Alice's mother reveals that Alice herself is the illegitimate cousin of Edith Dombey (which accounts for their similarity in appearance when they both meet). In a chapter entitled 'Retribution', Dombey and Son goes bankrupt. Dombey retires to two rooms in his house and all its contents are put up for sale. Mrs Pipchin, for some time the housekeeper, dismisses all the servants and she herself returns to Brighton, to be replaced by Mrs Richards. Dombey spends his days sunk in gloom, seeing no-one and thinking only of his daughter:He thought of her as she had been that night when he and his bride came home. He thought of her as she had been in all the home events of the abandoned house. He thought, now, that of all around him, she alone had never changed. His boy had faded into dust, his proud wife had sunk into a polluted creature, his flatterer and friend had been transformed into the worst of villains, his riches had melted away, the very walls that sheltered him looked on him as a stranger; she alone had turned the same, mild gentle look upon him always. Yes, to the latest and the last. She had never changed to him - nor had he ever changed to her - and she was lost. However, one day Florence returns to the house with her son, Paul, and is lovingly reunited with her father. Dombey accompanies his daughter to her and Walter&#39;s house where he slowly starts to decline, cared for by Florence and also Susan Nipper, now Mrs Toots. They receive a visit from Edth&#39;s Cousin Feenix who takes Florence to Edith for one final time - Feenix sought Edith out in France and she returned to England under his protection. Edith gives Florence a letter, asking Dombey to forgive her her crime before her departure to the South of Italy with her elderly relative. As she says to Florence, &#39;I will try, then to forgive him his share of the blame. Let him try to forgive me mine!&#39; The final chapter (LXII) sees Dombey now a white-haired old man, &#39;whose face bears heavy marks of care and suffering; but they are traces of a storm that has passed on for ever, and left a clear evening in its track&#39;. Sol Gills and Ned Cuttle are now partners at the Midshipman, a source of great pride to the latter, and Mr and Mrs Toots announce the birth of their third daughter. Walter is doing well in business, having been appointed to a position of great confidence and trust, and Dombey is the proud grandfather of both a grandson and grand-daughter whom he dotes on, and the book ends with the highly moving lines:'Dear grandpapa, why do you cry when you kiss me?' He only answers, 'Little Florence! Little Florence!' and smooths away the curls that shade her earnest eyes.
1062803	/m/042qmf	The Forty Days of Musa Dagh	Franz Werfel	1933	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Franz Werfel had first served as a corporal and telephone operator in the artillery corps of the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War on the Russian front and later as a propaganda writer for the Military Press Bureau (with Rainer Maria Rilke and others) in Vienna. His experience of the horrors he witnessed during the war as well as the banality of the civil and military bureaucracies served him well during the course of writing the book. His reason for writing the novel came as a result of a trip through Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon in the winter and spring of 1930, and is given in a prefatory note in the novel: This book was conceived in March of the year 1929 [sic], during the course of a stay in Damascus. The miserable sight of maimed and famished-looking refugee children, working in a carpet factory, gave me the final impulse to snatch the incomprehensible destiny of the Armenian people from the Hell of all that had taken place. The writing of the book followed between July 1932 and March 1933. Meanwhile, in November, on a lecture tour through German cities, the author selected Chapter 5 of Book One for public readings. It was read in its present form, based on the historic records of a conversation between Enver Pasha and Pastor Johannes Lepsius. Werfel does not mention here that the completely rewrote much of the novel in May 1933, responding to events in Nazi Germany, and kept revising it up until it was published. Later, speaking to reporters, Werfel elaborated: &#34;The struggle of 5,000 people on Musa Dagh had so fascinated me that I wished to aid the Armenian people by writing about it and bringing it to the world.&#34; Werfel’s narrative style is omniscient as well as having a polyfocus in which he moves from character to character as well as being an overarching spectator. For that reason, the connection between the author’s consciousness and that of his characters can almost read seamlessly. This is evident as the novel opens in the spring of 1915, during the second year of the World War I. Gabriel Bagradian, a wealthy Armenian from Paris, has returned to his native village of Yoghonoluk, one of seven villages in Hatay province. His view is dominated by a familiar and looming presence in this paradisiac landscape—Musa Dagh, which means Mt. Moses in Armenian. He thinks about his return to settle the affairs of his dead older brother and entertains pleasant reveries of his childhood as well as more serious matters. Bagradian feels both proud and estranged from his Armenian roots, and Werfel develops this theme of estrangement throughout the novel and which is denoted with the book’s first sentence, a question: “How did I get here?” Bagradian also considers his French wife Juliette and their son Stephan and how they will adjust to their new environment given the state of war that now exists and prevents their return. Other important characters are introduced in Book One: Juliette, Stephan, and the many Armenian characters, chief among them the Gregorian head priest, Ter Haigasun, the local physician, Dr. Altouni, and the apothecary–polymath Krikor, and the Greek American journalist, Gonzague Maris—all characters drawn from Armenian survivors of the events of 1915 as well as from Werfel’s family, friends, acquaintances—and himself. Indeed, he informs several characters ranging from the idealized outsider–hero Gabriel Bagradian to self-parody (the schoolteacher Oskanian). Bagradian considers himself a loyal citizen of the Ottoman Empire, even a patriot, eschewing the more radical Armenian parties, such as the socialist Hunchaks. He had served as an artillery officer in the 1912 Balkan War and had been involved in the progressive wing of Turkish politics and had been a vocal Armenian supporter of the CUP and the Young Turk Revolution) of 1908. Being a reserve officer, Bagradian becomes suspicious when he is not called up. Learning that Turkish authorities have seized the internal passports of Armenian citizens further fuels his suspicions. So he goes to the district capital of Antakya (i.e., Antioch) to inquire about his military status. In a Turkish bath, he overhears a group of Turks, among them the district governor, the Kaimikam, discussing the central government’s plan to do something about its Armenian problem. Bagradian is alarmed by what he hears and the dangers given the history of atrocities committed on Armenians, whose rise as the empire’s chief professional and mercantile class has alarmed Turkish nationalists. The dangers that this poses to his family are all corroborated by an old friend of the Bagradian family, Agha Rifaat Bereket, a pious dervish, a Sufi Muslim ascetic who sees the Young Turks as apostates. Back in Yoghonoluk, Bagradian begins socialize with the Armenian community. His grandfather had a paternal relationship with the Armenian villages that dot the land around Musa Dagh, a role that Gabriel Bagradian assumes not to be a real leader but more to help his French wife acclimate to what could be a long exile in the Turkish Levant. Despite the rumors of arrests and deportations trickling in from Istanbul and other Ottoman cities, many of Musa Dagh’s Armenians remain unconcerned about the outside world. It is not until four refugees arrive in Yoghonoluk in late April that the full nature of what the Ottoman government is doing becomes clear, for the refugees bring news of the brutal suppression of an Armenian uprising in the city of Zeitun and the mass deportation that followed. In a long passage, Werfel tells the story of Zeitun and introduces three more important characters of the book, the Protestant pastor Aram Tomasian, his pregnant wife Hovsannah, his sister Iskuhi, as well as the quasi-feral orphan girl Sato and Kevork, a houseboy who had suffered brain damage as a child at the hands of the Turks. Iskuhi, too, is a victim of a more recent atrocity. Her left arm is paralyzed from fending off a rape attempt. Despite her deformity, the Armenian girl’s beauty and eyes attract Bagradian. The story the refugees tell causes Bagradian and the Armenians who live around Musa Dagh to seriously consider resisting the Ottomans. Bagradian steps forward to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the villages and looks to the natural defenses of Musa Dagh and its environs. Ter Haigasun becomes his ally in convincing the Armenian villagers of the peril that is coming. Book One also introduces the readers to the German Protestant missionary Johannes Lepsius, a real person, and his audience with Enver Pasha, the Ottoman War Minister, one of the Three Pashas, which also included Talaat Pasha and Djemal Pasha, the triumvirate that ruled the Ottoman Empire. The chapter, titled “Interlude of the Gods,” reveals the Turkish point of view vis-à-vis the Armenians and the West. Werfel intended his depiction, almost entirely drawn verbatim from Lepsius’s published account, to be both sympathetic and damning, especially when Enver consults with Talaat on the progress of the deportations. The remainder of Book One describes which Armenians decide on resistance and which on cooperating with the deportation order. Bagradian camps out with his family and friends on Musa Dagh to ensure that it is the right place to make a stand. Those who decide to resist dig up a secret cache of rifles left over from the revolution of 1908, when they were allies of the Young Turks—and the subsequent burial of their church bells so that these do not fall into Turkish hands. Eventually the Ottoman military police arrive, the dreaded saptiehs, led by the red-haired müdir. They instruct the Armenians to prepare for deportations—and then leave after beating Ter Haigasun and Bagradian. Instead, the 6,000 Armenians march with everything they can carry, their animals, and their weapons to a plateau on Musa Dagh. Bagradian hangs behind and observes the wailing women and the other graveyard folk—who represent the old ways and sympathetic magic of pagan Armenia—sacrifice a goat. Its meaning is propitious as well as cautionary. The chapter ends with Bagradian helping Krikor carry the last volumes of his magnificent if eclectic library to the Damlayik, the plateau where the Armenians have chosen as their refuge. Book Two opens during the high summer of 1915 and with the establishment of the Armenian encampment and defenses—the Town Enclosure, Three Tent Square, South Bastion, Dish Terrace, and other sites on Musa Dagh that become familiar placenames during the course of Werfel’s novel. A division of labor, too, is established as to who will fight, who will care for livestock, who will make guns and munitions, and so on. Indeed, a communal society is established despite the objections of the propertied class. The objective is to hold out long enough to attract the ships of the British and French navies that patrol the eastern Mediterranean in support of the Allied invasion of Gallipoli. Characters who will figure in the defense of the mountain also come into more relief, such as the loner and Ottoman Army deserter Sarkis Kilikian (who suffered the loss of his entire family during the pogrom-like Hamidian massacres) and the former drillmaster, Chaush Nurhan. Indeed, Musa Dagh is presented as a microcosm of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Armenian life as well as being a test not only of Bagradian’s leadership, but a test of his marriage and fatherhood. The Ottoman soldiers and saptiehs seriously underestimate the Armenians and their first engagement results in a Turkish rout. The victory forces the Turks to assemble a larger force—and it enhances Bagradian’s reputation as well as reconnects him to his people—and isolates him from Juliette and Stephan. Stephan, too, reconnects with his Armenian roots, but the difficulty he experiences because of his Westernized childhood makes the novel a coming-of-age story as well as a classic tale of love and war on the scale of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He wants to be an authentic Armenian, like his rival Haik and other boys. To prove himself to them, Stephan organizes a raid on a fruit orchard to replenish the Armenians’ stores. And to prove himself to Iskuhi, for he is as much bewitched by her as his father, he leaves Musa Dagh to fetch back Iskuhi’s bible, left behind in his father’s deserted house. (A long passage left out of the first English translation.) Juliette apprehends the growing estrangement of her husband and son and seeks purpose and solace in nursing the Armenian wounded and her friendship with Gonzague Maris, which develops into a passionate affair. As the Turks resume their attacks, he tries to convince Juliette to abandon her family and the mountain. The battles include a heroic stand led by Kilikian as well as Stephan’s sniping attack on a Turkish gun emplacement. He and the other boys seize two cannons, a feat that forces the Turks to withdraw. Book Two features a traditional funeral for the Armenian dead, including the ceremonies of the wailing women, who assist in the birth Aram Tomasian’s son, a difficult delivery that is seen as ominous while conditions in the camp start to deteriorate—for the Armenian victories can only buy time. Jemal Pasha is introduced in Book Two and is portrayed as a resentful member of the triumvirate pathologically jealous of Enver. The relationship between Bagradian and Iskuhi also comes into focus as it is conducted openly but only consummated on a spiritual plane. Their love, however, is interrupted by a reinforced Ottoman attack, which is repelled. Bagradian, too, orders a massive forest fire to surround the Armenian encampment with a no-man’s land of fire, smoke, and open terrain. Book Two ends with Sato’s exposing Juliette and Gonzague making love, Juliette’s coming down with typhus, and Gonzague’s escape. Stephan, too, leaves the camp to accompany Haik on a mission to contact the American envoy in Antioch. The scene now changes to Istanbul and Johannes Lepsius’s meeting with members of a dervish order called the “Thieves of the Art.” It was important to Werfel to show that the Young Turks and the Three Pashas did not represent Turkish society as a whole. It was also important to show that even Enver was right on certain points in regard to the Western powers, which had exploited Turkey and treated it throughout the nineteenth century as a virtual colony. For this reason, most of the first chapter of Book Three is written as a dramatic dialogue during which Lepsius witnesses the Sufi whirling devotions and learns firsthand about the deep resentment against the West—especially Western “progress” as instituted by the Young Turks—and the atrocities in the concentration camps set up in the Mesopotamian desert for deported Armenians. He also encounters Bagradian’s friend, Agha Rifaat Bereket. The latter agrees to bring supplies to Musa Dagh purchased with funds collected by Lepsius in Germany. The episode ends with Lepsius witnessing Enver and Talaat being driven past in a limousine. When the car suffers two loud tire punctures, Lepsius at first thinks they have been assassinated (which foreshadows the real deaths of Talaat and Djemal Pasha by Armenian assassins). The chapter that follows resumes with Stephan and Haik. They encounter the inshaat taburi, the notorious forced labor details composed of Armenian draftees into the Ottoman Army, and travel through a swamp, where Stephan and Haik form a real friendship. It is cut short, however, when Stephan falls ill and is cared for by a Turkmen farmer, another of the righteous Muslims that Werfel represents in The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Too sick to continue on the mission to Antioch, Stephan is returned to Yoghonoluk, which has been resettled by Muslim refugees from war zones of the Ottoman Empire. There, Stephan is discovered to be Bagradian’s son and a spy, and is brutally murdered. Stephan’s death causes Bagradian to withdraw for a time, during which Turkish soldiers capture the last of the Armenian livestock. This disaster opens up rifts in Musa Dagh’s society and resolve. Other setbacks follow. With the arrival of a seasoned Ottoman general from the Gallipoli front as well as reinforcements from the regular army, the Ottomans begin to tighten the noose around Musa Dagh. Meanwhile, Bagradian recovers from his grief to form guerrilla bands to disrupt the Ottoman advance and buy more time. But no ships have been sighted, and the various attempts to contact the Allies or to seek the diplomatic intercession of the United States, still a neutral power, or Turkey’s ally, Imperial Germany, come to naught. Bagradian derives strength—and comfort—from Iskuhi, who has volunteered to care for Juliette. Nevertheless, Iskuhi sees the end coming and the likelihood that their love entails dying together, not a life. When the Agha’s mission arrives, he finds the Armenians starving. He can do little, though since the red-haired müdir has confiscated most of the supplies intended for the Armenians as a humanitarian gesture despite the approval of Turkey’s highest religious authority. The camp, filled with smoke from the forest fires, inspires a vision in him that disturbingly anticipates the Holocaust and the death camps of World War II. The Armenian camp and resistance also faces its greatest challenge from within when criminal elements among the Ottoman Army deserters—who Bagradian allowed to help in Musa Dagh’s offense—go on a rampage. As Ter Haigasun prepares to celebrate a mass to ask for God’s help, the deserters set the altar on fire and the resulting conflagration destroys much of the Town Enclosure before the uprising is suppressed by Bagradian’s men. The Ottomans, seeing the fire, now prepare for the final assault. Oskanian leads a suicide cult for those who do not want to die given the Turks’ reputation for violent reprisals. The little teacher, however, refuses to jump off a cliff himself after fending off the last of his followers. Soon after, he discovers the large Red Cross distress flag the Armenians flew to attract Allied ships and sights the French cruiser Guichen in the fog. It had diverted course after its watch spotted the burning of the Armenian camp on Musa Dagh from out at sea. As Oskanian waves the flag, the warship begins shelling the coast. Soon more ships come. The Turks withdraw and the Armenians are rescued. Bagradian remains behind after ensuring that the people he led, Juliette, and Iskuhi are safely aboard the French and British ships. His reasons are complex and can be traced throughout the novel to the realization that he cannot leave and go into exile again in an internment camp in Port Said, Egypt. He thinks Iskuhi follows him back up Musa Dagh from the sea. On the way, he experiences a divine presence and confronts the cross on his son’s grave. He is followed, however, by a skirmishing party of Turkish troops. They approach in a crescent—which alludes to the battle formations of the Ottoman armies of the past—and kill Bagradian with a sniper’s headshot.
1063412	/m/042s44	Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH	Robert C. O'Brien	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mrs. Frisby's son, Timothy, is ill just as the farmer Mr. Fitzgibbon begins preparation for spring ploughing in the field where the Frisby family lives. Normally she would move her family, but Timothy would not survive the cold trip to their summer home. Mrs. Frisby obtains medicine from her friend Mr. Ages, the older white mouse. On the return journey, she saves the life of Jeremy, a young crow, from Dragon, the farmer's cat - the same cat who had killed her husband, Jonathan. Jeremy suggests she seek help in moving Timothy from an owl who dwells in the forest. Jeremy flies Mrs. Frisby to the owl's tree, but the owl says he can't help until he finds out that she is the widow of Jonathan Frisby. He suggests that Mrs. Frisby seek help from the rats who live in a rosebush near her. Mrs. Frisby discovers the rats have human-level intelligence, with a literate and mechanized society. They have technology such as elevators. They have tapped the electricity grid to provide lighting and heating, and have acquired other human skills, such as storing food for the winter. Their leader, Nicodemus, tells Mrs. Frisby of the rats' capture by scientists working for a laboratory located at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the subsequent experiments that the humans performed on the rats, which increased the rats' intelligence to the point of being able to read, write, and operate complicated machines, as well as enhancing their longevity and strength. This increased intelligence and strength allowed them to escape from the NIMH laboratories and migrate to their present location. Jonathan Frisby and Mr. Ages were the only two survivors of a group of eight mice who had been part of the experiments at NIMH, and made the rats' escape possible. Out of respect for Jonathan, Nicodemus agrees to help Mrs. Frisby's family. The rats move her house to a location safe from the plough. The rats are preparing "The Plan," which is to abandon their lifestyle of dependence on humans, which some rats regard as theft, for a new, independent farming colony. Before Mrs. Frisby's arrival, a group of seven rats led by a rat named Jenner left the colony because they disagreed with "The Plan", and are presumed to have died in an accident at a nearby hardware store. This incident has attracted the attention of a group of men, who never identify themselves, and they have offered to exterminate the rat colony on Fitzgibbon's land free of charge for him. To move the house, the rats have to drug Dragon, the farmer's cat, as it is too dangerous to work in the open without any place to hide. However, Mr. Ages has a broken leg and cannot dash to Dragon's bowl to put in the drug. Since the other rats are too big to fit into the hole in the wall to enter the house, Mrs. Frisby volunteers to go. Unfortunately, she is caught by the family's son, Billy, who puts her in a cage. At night, Justin comes to save her and manages to get her out of the cage. They plan the house move. The successful house move allows the mouse family to remain while Timothy recovers before moving to their summer home. Mrs. Frisby overhears the Fitzgibbons discussing the men during her captivity and reports back to the rats. Thanks to her warning, the rats have time to plan their escape.
1063803	/m/042t60	Vathek	William Thomas Beckford		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel chronicles the fall from power of the Caliph Vathek (a fictionalized version of the historical Al-Wathiq), who renounces Islam and engages with his mother, Carathis, in a series of licentious and deplorable activities designed to gain him supernatural powers. At the end of the novel, instead of attaining these powers, Vathek descends into a hell ruled by the demon Eblis where he is doomed to wander endlessly and speechlessly. Vathek, the ninth Caliph of the Abassides, ascended to the throne at an early age. He is a majestic figure, terrible in anger (one glance of his flashing eye can make “the wretch on whom it was fixed instantly [fall] backwards and sometimes [expire]”), and addicted to the pleasures of the flesh. He is intensely thirsty for knowledge and often invites scholars to converse with him. If he fails to convince the scholar of his points of view, he attempts a bribe; if this does not work, he sends the scholar to prison. In order to better study astronomy, he builds an observation tower with 1,500 steps. A hideous stranger arrives in town, claiming to be a merchant from India selling precious goods. Vathek buys glowing swords with letters on them from the merchant, and invites the merchant to dinner. When the merchant does not respond to Vathek's questions, Vathek looks at him with his "evil eye," but this has no effect, so Vathek imprisons him. The next day, he discovers that the merchant has escaped and his prison guards are dead. The people begin to call Vathek crazy. His mother, Carathis, tells him that the merchant was “the one talked about in the prophecy”, and Vathek admits that he should have treated the stranger kindly. Vathek wants to decipher the messages on his new sabers, offers a reward to anyone who can help him, and punishes those who fail. After several scholars fail, one elderly man succeeds: the swords say "We were made where everything is well made; we are the least of the wonders of a place where all is wonderful and deserving, the sight of the first potentate on earth." But the next morning, the message has changed: the sword now says “Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant, and to undertake that which surpasses his power”. The old man flees before Vathek can punish him. However, Vathek realizes that the writing on the swords really did change. Vathek then develops an insatiable thirst and often goes to a place near a high mountain to drink from one of four fountains there, kneeling at the edge of the fountain to drink. One day he hears a voice telling him to “not assimilate thyself to a dog”. It was the voice of the merchant who had sold him the swords, Giaour. Giaour cures his thirst with a potion and the two men return to Samarah. Vathek returns to immersing himself in the pleasures of the flesh, and begins to fear that Giaour, who is now popular at Court, will seduce one of his wives. Some mornings later, Carathis reads a message in the stars foretelling a great evil to befall Vathek and his vizir Morakanabad; she advises him to ask Giaour about the drugs he used in the potion. When Vathek confronts him, Giaour only laughs, so Vathek gets angry and kicks him. Giaour is transformed into a ball and Vathek compels everyone in the palace to kick it, even the resistant Carathis and Morakanabad. Then Vathek has the whole town kick the ball-shaped merchant into a remote valley. Vathek stays in the area and eventually hears Giaour's voice telling him that if he will worship Giaour and the jinns of the earth, and renounce the teachings of Islam, he will bring Vathek to “the palace of the subterrain fire” (22) where Soliman Ben Daoud controls the talismans that rule over the world. Vathek agrees, and proceeds with the ritual that Giaour demands: to sacrifice fifty of the city's children. In return, Vathek will receive a key of great power. Vathek holds a "competition" among the children of the nobles of Samarah, declaring that the winners will receive "endless favors." As the children approach Vathek for the competition, he throws them inside an ebony portal to be sacrificed. Once this is finished, Giaour makes the portal disappear. The Samaran citizens see Vathek alone and accuse him of having sacrificed their children to Giaour, and form a mob to kill Vathek. Carathis pleads with Morakanabad to help save Vathek's life; the vizier complies, and calms the crowd down. Vathek wonders when his reward will come, and Carathis says that he must fulfill his end of the pact and sacrifice to the Jinn of the earth. Carathis helps him prepare the sacrifice: she and her son climb to the top of the tower and mix oils to create an explosion of light. The people, presuming that the tower is on fire, rush up the stairs to save Vathek from being burnt to death. Instead, Carathis sacrifices them to the Jinn. Carathis performs another ritual and learns that for Vathek to claim his reward, he must go to Istakhar. Vathek goes away with his wives and servants, leaving the city in the care of Morakanabad and Carathis. A week after he leaves, his caravan is attacked by carnivorous animals. The soldiers panic and accidentally set the area on fire; Vathek and his wives must flee. Still, they continue on their way. They reach steep mountains where the Islamic dwarves dwell. They invite Vathek to rest with them, possibly in the hopes of converting him back to Islam. Vathek sees a message his mother left for him: “Beware of old doctors and their puny messengers of but one cubit high: distrust their pious frauds; and, instead of eating their melons, impale on a spit the bearers of them. Should thou be so fool as to visit them, the portal to the subterranean place will shut in thy face” (53). Vathek becomes angry and claims that he has followed Giaour’s instructions long enough. He stays with the dwarves, meets their Emir, named Fakreddin, and Emir's beautiful daughter Nouronihar. Vathek wants to marry her, but she is already promised to her effeminate cousin Gulchenrouz, whom she loves and who loves her back. Vathek thinks she should be with a "real" man and arranges for Babalouk to kidnap Gulchenrouz. The Emir, finding of the attempted seduction, asks Vathek to kill him, as he has seen “the prophet’s vice-regent violate the laws of hospitality." But Nouronihar prevents Vathek from killing her father and Gulchenrouz escapes. The Emir and his servants then meet and they develop a plan to safeguard Nouronihar and Gulchenrouz, by drugging them and place them in a hidden valley by a lake where Vathek cannot find them. The plan succeeds temporarily - the two are drugged, brought to the valley, and convinced on their awakening that they have died and are in purgatory. Nouronihar, however, grows curious about her surroundings and ascends to find out what lies beyond the valley. There she meets Vathek, who is mourning for her supposed death. Both realize that her 'death' has been a sham. Vathek then orders Nouronihar to marry him, she abandons Gulchenrouz, and the Emir abandons hope. Meanwhile, in Samarah, Carathis can discover no news of her son from reading the stars. She conjures the spirits of a graveyard to perform a spell that makes her appear in front of Vathek, who is bathing with Nouronihar. She tells him he is wasting his time with Nouronihar and has broken one of the rules of Giaour's contract. She asks him to drown Nouronihar, but Vathek refuses, because he intends to make her his Queen. Carathis then decides to sacrifice Gulchenrouz, but before she can catch him, Gulchenrouz jumps into the arms of a Genie who protects him. That night, Carathis hears that Motavakel, Vathek's brother, is planning to lead a revolt against Morakanabad. Carathis tells Vathek that he has distinguished himself by breaking the laws of hospitality by ‘seducing’ the Emir’s daughter after sharing his bread, and that if he can commit one more crime along the way he shall enter Soliman’s gates triumphant. Vathek continues on his journey, reaches Rocnabad, and degrades and humiliates its citizens for his own pleasure. A Genie asks Mohammed for permission to try to save Vathek from his eternal damnation. He takes the form of a shepherd who plays the flute to make men realize their sins. The shepherd asks Vathek if he is done sinning, warns Vathek about Eblis, ruler of Hell, and asks Vathek to return home, destroy his tower, disown Carathis, and preach Islam. Vathek's pride wins out, and he tells the shepherd that he will continue on his quest for power, and values his mother more than life itself or God's mercy. Vathek's servants desert him; Nouronihar becomes immensely prideful. Finally, Vathek reaches Istakhar, where he finds more swords with writing on them, which says "Thou hast violated the conditions of my parchment, and deserve to be sent back, but in favor to thy companion, and as the meed for what thou hast done to obtain it, Eblis permitted that the portal of this place will receive thee” (108). Giaour opens the gates with a golden key, and Vathek and Nouronihar step through into a place of gold where Genies of both sexes dance lasciviously. Giaour leads them to Eblis, who tells them that they may enjoy whatever his empire holds. Vathek asks to be taken to the talismans that govern the world. There, Soliman tells Vathek that he had once been a great king, but was seduced by a Jinn and received the power to make everyone in the world do his bidding. But because of this, he is destined to suffer in hell for a finite tho vast period - until the waterfall he is sitting beside, stops. This eventual end to his punishment is due to his piety in the earlier part of his reign. The other inmates must suffer the fire in their hearts for all eternity. Vathek asks Giaour to release him, saying he will relinquish all he was offered, but Giaour refuses. He tells Vathek to enjoy his omnipotence while it lasts, for in a few days he will be tormented. Vathek and Nouronihar become increasingly discontented with the palace of flames. Vathek orders an Ifreet to fetch Carathis from the castle. When she arrives, he warns her of what happens to those who enter Eblis' domain, but Carathis takes the talismans of earthly power from Soliman regardless. She gathers the Jinns and tries to overthrow one of the Solimans, but Eblis decrees "It is time." Carathis, Vathek, Nouronihar, and the other denizens of hell lose "the most precious gift granted by heaven - HOPE" (119). They begin to feel eternal remorse for their crimes, their hearts burning with literal eternal fire. “Such was, and should be, the punishment of unrestrained passion and atrocious deeds! Such shall be the chastisement of that blind curiosity, which would transgress those bounds the wisdom the Creator has prescribed to human knowledge; and such the dreadful disappointment of that restless ambition, which, aiming at discoveries reserved for beings of a supernatural order, perceives not, through its infatuated pride, that the condition of man upon earth is to be – humble and ignorant.”
1063805	/m/04jplff	Requiem for a Dream	Hubert Selby, Jr.	1978	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This story follows the lives of Harry, Marion, Tyrone, and Sara, who are all searching for the key to their dreams, and in the process, they get flung into a devastating life of addiction. Harry and Marion are in love and want to open their own business; their friend Tyrone wants to escape life in the ghetto. To achieve these dreams, they buy a large amount of heroin, planning to get rich by selling it. Sara is Harry’s lonely, widowed mother. Sara’s dream is to be on television, and when a phone call from a casting company gets her hopes up, she spends the next few months on diet pills to lose weight. She becomes addicted and soon develops amphetamine psychosis, eventually ending up in a mental institution and undergoes electroconvulsive therapy. Harry, Marion and Tyrone, meanwhile, become addicted to their own product. Harry and Tyrone end up in jail, where Harry's infected arm is amputated. Marion, left alone, begins a life of prostitution to support her addiction.
1064385	/m/042vzk	On The Black Hill	Bruce Chatwin	1982	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's setting is the border of Herefordshire, in England, and either Brecknockshire, or Radnorshire, in Wales (there are Black Hills near both). In the early pages we are told the border runs through the very farmhouse: One of the windows looked out over the green fields of England: the other looked back into Wales... Culturally the central characters are Welshmen, with the surname Jones. The story is told through the technique of flashback, and portrays the lives of twin brothers, Lewis and Benjamin Jones, on their isolated upland farm called The Vision. The twins develop a bond that is shown throughout the novel as very special. Lewis is portrayed as the stronger or dominant twin, whereas Benjamin is the more intuitive one, both in appearance and in the tasks which he does around the house. He seems to be constantly drawn to his mother&#39;s side while she is alive. Lewis is the one who wants to break free but Benjamin is forced into the army at the time of the Great War. His efforts are frustrated by his family ties and the indefinable, unbreakable tie to the land. Chatwin also tells the reader of the brutality involved in farming at the time in this area. Amos, the father of the two twins, shows how his day-to-day job has brutalised his once caring and loving attitude, and we see this later in the novel when he hits his wife Mary on the temple with the book she is reading - Wuthering Heights. A jealous man, Amos attacks his wife with the very material that shows her intelligence; he feels threatened by this, feeling that the man is supposed to be the head of the family in all things, and he feels anger because of his limited education. On the Black Hill is a novel which portrays themes such as unrequited love, sexual repression and confusion, social, religious and cultural repression, hate and the historic social values of that era, as is shown when Amos finds out that his daughter Rebecca has become pregnant by an Irishman. His religious fanaticism, social pressure, economic forces and an inability to express love results in him throwing her out of the household, and she is not mentioned in the novel again until the latter part.
1066922	/m/0431bb	Travels With Charley: In Search of America	John Steinbeck	1962	{"/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature"}	 Steinbeck began the book by describing his lifelong wanderlust and his preparations to travel the country again, after 25 years. He was 58 years old in 1960 and nearing the end of his career, but he felt that he "was writing of something [he] did not know about, and it seemed to [him] that in a so-called writer this is criminal" (p.&nbsp;6). He had a truck fitted with a custom camper-shell for his journey and planned on leaving after Labor Day from his home in Sag Harbor, Long Island New York. He takes along his dog Charley, with whom he uses to have mental conversations as a device for exploring his thoughts. Steinbeck delayed his trip slightly due to Hurricane Donna which made a direct hit on Long Island. Steinbeck's exploits in saving his boat during the middle of the hurricane foreshadow his fearless, or even reckless, state of mind to dive into the unknown. Steinbeck began his trip by traveling by ferry from Long Island to Connecticut, passing the Naval Submarine Base New London where many of the new nuclear submarines were stationed. He talked to a sailor stationed on a sub who enjoyed being on them because "they offer all kinds of – future" (22). Steinbeck credited uncertainty about the future to rapid technological and political changes. He mentioned the wastefulness of American cities and society, and the large amount of waste as a result of everything being "packaged". He had a conversation with a man. The two concluded that a combination of fear and uncertainty over the future limited their discussion over the election. Steinbeck enjoyed learning about people through local morning radio programs, although he noted that: "If Teen Angel is top of the list in Maine, it is the top of the list in Montana" (35), showing the ubiquity of culture brought on by mass media technologies. Steinbeck next took US Highway 1 to Maine. On the way he noted a similarity among the "summer" stores, which were all closed for the winter. Antique shops that bordered a lot of the roads up North, sold old "junk" that Steinbeck would have bought if he thought he had room for it, noting that he had more junk at home than most stores. He stopped at a little restaurant just outside the town of Bangor where he learned that other people's attitudes can greatly affect your own attitude. Steinbeck then went to Deer Isle, Maine, to visit his friend and former literary agent, who now lived there. His friend always raved about Deer Isle, but could never describe exactly what about it that was so captivating. While driving to Deer Isle, Steinbeck stopped and asked for directions. He later learned not to ask for directions in Maine because locals don't like to talk to tourists and tend to give them incorrect information. When Steinbeck arrived at the house where he was supposed to stay, he met a terse cat and ate the best lobster he had ever tasted, fresh from the local waters. Next, he went to northern Maine, where he spent the night in a field alongside a group of French-speaking migrant potato pickers from Canada, with whom he shared some French vintage. Steinbeck's descriptions of the workers was sympathetic and even romanticized, a clear nod to his works such as The Grapes of Wrath which made him famous. Steinbeck next traveled to Niagara Falls and some Midwestern cities. Before reaching those destinations, he took a detour and discussed his dislike of the government. He said that the government makes a person feel small because it doesn't matter what you say, if it's not on paper and certified by an official, the government doesn't care. As he traveled on, he described how wherever he went people's attitudes and beliefs changed. All states differ by how people may talk to one another or treat other people. For example, as he drove through Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois, there was a marked increase in the population from state to state. The small villages he had initially seen were now growing into big cities and the roads, such as the U.S. 90, were filled with traffic. Also, everywhere he went, people's views changed. For example, when he went to New England, he saw that people there spoke tersely and usually waited for the newcomer to come up to him and initiate conversation. However, in Midwestern cities, people were more outgoing and were willing to come right up to him. He explained how strangers talked freely without caution as a sense of longing for something new and being somewhere other than the place they were. They were so used to their everyday life that when someone new came to town, they were eager to explore new information and imagine new places. It was as if a new change had entered their life every time someone from out of town came into their state. Traveling further, Steinbeck discovered that technology was advancing so quickly as to give Americans more and more instant gratification. For example, Steinbeck was intrigued by mobile homes. Mobile homes showed a new way of living for America, reflecting the attitude that if you don't like a given place, you should be able to pick up and leave. Steinbeck also discussed this change in America when he traveled through cities of great production such as Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, Pontiac, Flint, South Bend, and Gary. He compared what he saw to the Ufizzi in Florence and the Louvre in Paris. Steinbeck traveled across Wisconsin towards North Dakota. He traveled along U.S. Highway 10 through St. Paul on an 'Evacuation Route,' "a road designed by fear" (p.&nbsp;129). This instance introduced one of Steinbeck's many realizations about American society: the fact that it is driven by fear. Once through St. Paul, he went to Sauk Centre, the birthplace of writer Sinclair Lewis, but was disheartened to talk to locals at a restaurant who had no understanding of who Lewis was. Upon visiting Sauk Centre, he lamented at being forced to leave behind the wondrous W.P.A Guides To The States. Stopping at a diner for directions, Steinbeck realized that our American society is oblivious to its surroundings, life and culture. Steinbeck mentioned that Americans have put "cleanliness first at the expense of taste" (141) (as he travels through Fargo, North Dakota), and that the mentality of our nation has grown bland. Allowing his thoughts to slip back to his time in Minnesota, he lamented, "It looks as though the natural contentiousness of people has died" (142) referring to the political ignorance that society seemed to cling to, bringing before our eyes the lack of risk our once-rebellious nation now embraces. Throughout the section, Steinbeck uses simple, symbolic entities he encounters in his travels to express his views of the mindset of the country. For instance, at one point he speaks of a rafter of turkey, and after casting criticism and ridicule at the source of Thanksgiving dinner, ends the string of insults with an unexpected transition to American life. He states, "And suddenly I thought of that valley of the turkeys and wondered how I could have the gall to think turkeys stupid. Indeed, they have an advantage over us. They are good to eat."(129) "I am in love with Montana," said Steinbeck. He explained it as a place unaffected by television; a place with kind, laid-back individuals. "It seemed to me that the frantic bustle of America was not in Montana (158)." He went to the battlefield of Little Big Horn. He traveled through the "Injun Country" and thought of an author who wrote a novel about war against the Nez Perce tribes. Steinbeck and Charley then traveled to Yellowstone National Park, a place that "is no more representative of America than Disneyland." Here, the gentle and non-confrontational Charley showed a side of himself Steinbeck had never seen: Charley's canine instincts caused him to go crazy barking at a bear in the road. They next visited the Great Divide in the Rocky Mountains. He imagined American explorers Lewis and Clark and early French explorers and wondered whether or not those men were impressed with what they found in America. Steinbeck then visited Seattle, Washington and California. Steinbeck grew up in the Salinas Valley region of California, so much of the narrative is his revisit of the area, seeing its changes and progression, particularly the population growth. Steinbeck reflected on seeing the Columbia River how Lewis and Clark must have felt when coming west. After this, he noted the changes the west had undergone since then (p.&nbsp;180): "It was only as I approached Seattle that the unbelievable change became apparent... I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction." (181) Rocinante, Steinbeck's truck, then had a flat tire on a remote back road and in his retelling of the unfortunate event, he wrote, "It was obvious that the other tire might go at any minute, and it was Sunday and it was raining and it was Oregon." (185) Though the specialized tires were hard to come by, the problem was resolved in mere hours by the unexpected generosity of a gas station attendant. The episode, occurring to the wealthy Steinbeck in an enormously well-equipped and self-contained camper, is a send-up of similar desperate scenes in The Grapes of Wrath; but the episode seemed to mean something beyond comedy to the author anyway. Steinbeck then visited the giant redwood trees and ancient Sequoia trees that he had come to appreciate and adore in his lifetime. He said, "The vainest, most slap-happy and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect." (189) When Charley refuses to urinate on the trees (a "salute" for a dog, as Steinbeck remarks), Steinbeck opines: "'If I thought he did it out of spite or to make a joke,' I said to myself, 'I'd kill him out of hand.'" (193) He then visited a bar from his youth where he met and caught up with many friends, learning that a lot of regulars and childhood chums had died (many names from previous novels are mentioned and seen, or suggested to be, real people). He then seemed to say goodbye to his hometown, on pages 205 to 208, for the last time, and making an allusion to a book by Thomas Wolfe You Can't Go Home Again. He then concluded with, "I printed once more on my eyes, south, west, and north, and then we hurried away from the permanent and changeless past where my mother is always shooting a wildcat and my father is always burning his name with his love." (208). Steinbeck then made his way through Texas, which he came to dread. Steinbeck felt that "people either passionately love or passionately hate Texas," referring to people who are just passersby like himself. He mentioned a book by Edna Ferber about a tiny group of rich Texans, and related it to his own experience with a family similar to the one in the book at his Texas Thanksgiving. He elaborated more on his Thanksgiving and then went on to talk about the black and white relations in the south compared to the relations in the north and in his hometown of Salinas, California, sharing the theory of "separate but equal' (248). Steinbeck wrote about the desegregation of schools and how there was a change in the north. In the southern states, such as Texas, he discussed about how when people are not proud of something they have been involved in, that they don't like to welcome witnesses, because they believe the witnesses may be the ones causing all the trouble. During his journey through Texas, he stayed in Amarillo, where his faithful dog companion, Charley, became ill and stayed in a veterinary hospital for a couple of days. Steinbeck then realized what it would be like to travel without his companion. Steinbeck then discussed his ideas of a strong "difference between an American and the Americans" (243). He referred to previous experiences where people have described Americans badly and then turned to him in telling him that he/she was not speaking about him, but the others. If true, then he assumed it is true with every other country's people such as the British, or the Frenchman and the French. So even though he dreaded to see and hear the events of his travels through Texas, he took a lot from it. Steinbeck was drawn to the "distortion of normal life" (249) and left Texas in search of the so-called "Cheerleaders"(256) who were protesting the integration of black children in a school in New Orleans. Before he reached the city, Steinbeck welcomed in the "singing language of Acadia" (252) while recalling the memory of an old friend, Dr. St. Martin, who healed children and Cajuns. Upon entering New Orleans, Steinbeck encountered the racism of the South and soon found that racism was not only towards blacks, but also towards Jews, "It's the goddamn New York Jews cause all the trouble" (254). Steinbeck then experienced the "bestial and filthy" (256) show that the Cheerleaders put on while the black children entered school. The applause and praise of the crowd brought Steinbeck to realize that there were no thoughtful people like his old friends Lyle Saxon and Roark Bradford, in the city and that they had "left New Orleans misrepresented to the world" (259). After the incident, Steinbeck no longer desired to visit some of his favorite places, like Galatoire's Restaurant, fearing more racially divided ideals. In search of a secluded place, he sat beside the "Father of Waters", or Mississippi River, and encountered a man who looked similar to Greco San Pablo. They ate together and talked of Lewis Carroll and the famous "queer" (261) 1845 tombstone inscription of Robert John Creswell (Alas that one whose darnthly joy had often to trust in heaven should canty thus sudden to from all its hopes benivens and though thy love for off remore that dealt the dog pest thou left to prove thy sufferings while below). After giving a ride to a wary black man, an angry black student, and a racist white man, Steinbeck concluded that Southern people were afraid to change their way of life, just as were the Cockney children of London (who he believed were unsettled when the regularity of the London Blitz bombing came to an end), and that most people of the South will retain this fear of change, despite the Gandhi-inspired works of Martin Luther King. To declare his own position, Steinbeck tells the story of a family of blacks known to him during his Salinas childhood, the Coopers. Mr Cooper was hard-working, honest, thrifty, respectable, the Cooper sons academically and artistically gifted. In other words, they represented an antithesis of the calumnies Steinbeck had heard during his Southern travels. Steinbeck's journey concludes with his jamming Rocinante across a busy New York street, during a failed attempt at making a U-turn. As he says to a traffic policeman, 'Officer, I've driven this thing all over the country – mountains, plains, deserts. And now I'm back in my own town, where I live – and I'm lost.'
1067390	/m/0432k8	Imzadi		1992-08-01	{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Seventy-three-year-old Admiral William Riker is a bitter, lonely man in a slow downward spiral following the death forty years earlier of Deanna Troi, who died of undetermined causes during a peacekeeping conference with an enemy race, the Sindareen. Riker, now the commander of an unimportant starbase, is summoned to Betazed as Deanna's mother, Lwaxana Troi, lies dying. While going through Lwaxana's possessions after her death, Riker is reminded of how he and Deanna originally met and began their relationship on Betazed. In a lengthy flashback, it is revealed that Will and Deanna met when Will was stationed on Betazed between assignments, and while there attended a wedding at which Deanna was maid of honor. Will was instantly attracted to her and began to pursue her, though she initially rebuffed his advances, feeling that he was only interested in her physical attributes, and that he preferred quick, thrilling encounters over meaningful emotional intimacy. Over a series of meetings, however, they began to grow closer, as Will encouraged Deanna to embrace impulsive feelings and Deanna encouraged Will to explore his more spiritual side. While visiting her favorite museum, Deanna was kidnapped by a Sindareen raiding party, and Riker's Starfleet security force shot down their small craft in the jungle. Riker tracked them down and killed the only surviving captor, leaving Deanna and him alone together. In the jungle, they consummated their relationship, and Deanna told Will for the first time that they are "Imzadi." However, after their return from the jungle, Lwaxana's violent objections to their relationship and Deanna's seeming compliance led Riker to drunkenly fall into bed with another woman. Deanna discovered them together when she appeared at his living quarters, having planned to tell him she had decided to defy her mother's wishes. Deanna and Will decided not to pursue a relationship and Riker left the planet shortly thereafter, not to meet Deanna again until they were both assigned to the Enterprise-D. In the future timeline, Commodore Data, now in command of the Enterprise-F, tells Riker that scientists studying the Guardian of Forever have discovered that Deanna's death was a focal point in time, causing the creation of a parallel timeline; his intention is to comfort Riker with the idea that Deanna lives on in another universe. Struck with a new suspicion, Admiral Riker has an autopsy performed on Deanna's corpse and discovers that she had been murdered via a poison that did not exist at the time she died. Deducing that someone had gone back in time to murder her and deliberately alter the timeline, Admiral Riker travels to the Guardian of Forever and goes back to the time of the Sindareen peace conference on the Enterprise-D, a short while before Deanna's death. He gives Commander Riker the antidote to the poison, and Riker administers it to Deanna. Her death is thus prevented, but Admiral Riker does not immediately return to his timeline, indicating that the danger to her is not yet past. Commodore Data has also pursued Admiral Riker through the Guardian, feeling it is his duty to preserve the timeline by any means. He disables Commander Data and impersonates him, taking Deanna away from the peace conference with the intention of killing her. Admiral Riker realizes Data may try this, so he locates Commander Data and with him confronts Commodore Data, and they fight. As the peace conference attendees look on, Deanna finally becomes familiar enough with the representatives from the Sindareen (a race difficult to read empathically without sufficient exposure) to determine that they are deceiving everyone, and have no real peaceful intentions; the peace conference is only an attempt to stall for time so that their race can become more powerful. One of the Sindareen delegates is actually from the future, and had decided to go back in time and kill Deanna to prevent this discovery. When Deanna announces that the Sindareen are behaving duplicitously, everyone from the future returns to the proper timeline, and the Guardian of Forever intones that "All is as it was." Data is chagrined that no one thought to ask whether Admiral Riker was correct about the timeline being altered. Now that the timeline has been restored, Admiral Riker has no way of knowing what awaits him in the restored future, but it is implied that his Imzadi is alive and waiting for him.
1069701	/m/0438_v	Spring Snow	Yukio Mishima	1966	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the early years of the Taishō period, and is about the relationship between Kiyoaki Matsugae, the son of a rising nouveau-riche family, and Satoko Ayakura, the daughter of an aristocratic family fallen on hard times. Shigekuni Honda, a schoolfriend of Kiyoaki's, is the main witness to the events. The novel's themes centre on the conflicts in Japanese society caused by westernization in the early 20th century. The main action stretches from October 1912 to March 1914. Kiyoaki's family originated in Kagoshima, where his dead grandfather, the former Marquis, is still revered. The family now lives in grand style near Tokyo, with wealth acquired very recently. The novel opens with images from Kiyoaki's childhood, in the years after the Russo-Japanese War: including a torchlight procession witnessed by Honda, a photograph of memorial services at Tokuri Temple on 26 June 1904, a lyrical description of the Matsugae estate near Shibuya, a visit by Emperor Meiji, and an account of Kiyoaki's role as a page for Princess Kasuga during New Year's Festivities at the Imperial Palace. We are introduced to his mother and grandmother, to Shigeyuki Iinuma, his hostile tutor, and to the serious Honda, a friend from the Peers School. On Sunday, 27 October 1912, the 18-year-old Kiyoaki and Honda are talking on an island in the ornamental lake on the estate when they see Kiyoaki's mother, her maids, and two guests: Satoko Ayakura, the 20-year-old daughter of a count, and her great-aunt, the Abbess of Gesshu. The Ayakura family is one of twenty-eight of the rank of Urin, and they live in Azabu. Kiyoaki is aware that Satoko has a crush on him, and pretends indifference to her. Shortly after they all meet, there is a bad omen: they see a dead black dog at the top of a high waterfall. The Abbess offers to pray for it. Satoko insists on picking flowers for the dog with Kiyoaki. While Satoko is alone with Kiyoaki, she blurts out: "Kiyo, what would you do if all of a sudden I weren't here any more?" He is discomfited by the inexplicable question, and resents the fact that she has startled him with it. Back at the house, the Abbess delivers a sermon on the doctrine of Yuishiki or the consciousness-only theory of Hosso Buddhism, telling the parable of Yuan Hsiao, the man who, in pitch darkness, drank from a skull by accident. She argues the significance of an object is bestowed by the observer. Ten days later, on 6 November, Kiyoaki has dinner with his parents; they discuss his otachimachi (divination ritual), that had been held on 17 August 1909, and mention that Satoko has just rejected an offer of marriage. This explains her mysterious question. Kiyoaki and his father play billiards, then go for a stroll that reminds Kiyoaki of his father's former womanising. The marquis tries to persuade him to go with him to a brothel and he walks away in disgust. Later he cannot sleep, resolving to take revenge on Satoko for deliberately perplexing him. We are shown Kiyoaki's bedroom: a screen bearing poems of Han Shan, and a carved jade parrot. We can also see that Kiyoaki has three moles in a row on the left side of his torso, a fact that becomes important in later books. In December, two princes arrive from Siam to study at the Peers School, and are given rooms by the Matsugaes. They are Prince Pattanadid (a younger brother of the new king, Rama VI) and his cousin, Prince Kridsada (a grandson of Rama IV), nicknamed "Chao P." and "Kri", respectively. Chao P is deeply in love with Kri's sister, Princess Chantrapa ("Ying Chan"), and wears an emerald ring she gave him as a present. They ask Kiyoaki if he has a sweetheart and he names Satoko, although he has just sent her a "wildly insulting letter" the day before, in which he claims falsely that he has recently visited a brothel for the first time and has lost all respect for women, including her. To save the situation, he telephones Satoko and makes her promise to burn any letter she receives from him. Chapter 7 describes Honda's stuffy household, and includes his musings on the Laws of Manu, which he has been required to study, and an anecdote about a second cousin, Fusako, who was caught making a pass at him at a family gathering. The two princes meet Satoko at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo. She is courteous, and Kiyoaki concludes that she has burnt the letter. Chapter 9 portrays Shigeyuki Iinuma, a reactionary 23-year-old from Kagoshima, who has been Kiyoaki's tutor for the last six years. He bemoans his ineffectiveness, and the decadent state of Japan, while worshipping at the Matsugae family's shrine. Shortly after the new year, Kiyoaki reveals to him that he knows of his affair with a maid, Miné, and blackmails him into concealing his own trysts with Satoko. Satoko's maid, old Tadeshina, promises to help. In Chapter 11, we are given an extract from Kiyoaki's dream-diary which predicts events in later books. One day in February, Satoko's parents travel to Kyoto to see a sick relative; taking advantage of this, she persuades Kiyoaki to skip school and join her on a rickshaw ride through the snow. They kiss for the first time. When they pass the parade ground of the Azabu 3rd Regiment he has a vision of thousands of ghostly soldiers standing upon it, reproducing the scene in the photograph described in Chapter 1. Miles away, Honda has a similar premonitory shudder, seeing his friend's empty desk in the schoolroom. The next morning, they meet very early in the school grounds and have a long conversation in which Honda expresses his conviction of the reality of fate and inevitability. In Chapter 14, it is revealed that Kiyoaki has rewarded Iinuma for his cooperation by giving him the key to the library so that the tutor can have sex with Miné there secretly. Iinuma hates him for this but accepts the arrangement. Satoko writes her first love letter, and Kiyoaki, torn between his morbid pride and his genuine passion for her, finally replies to it sincerely. On 6 April 1913, the Marquis Matsugae holds a cherry blossom viewing party for his friend Prince (Haruhisa) Toin, inviting only Satoko and her parents, the two princes, and Baron Shinkawa and his wife. The guests are depicted as ludicrously half-Westernised. During a private moment, Satoko and Kiyoaki embrace, but suddenly Satoko turns away and spurns him, calling him childish. Infuriated, Kiyoaki tells Iinuma what has happened, and the tutor responds with a story which makes him realise that Satoko did indeed read the letter she was supposed to burn. He concludes that she has been leading him on all along in order to humiliate him. Breaking off all contact, he eventually burns a letter from her in front of Iinuma. Towards the end of April, the Marquis tells Kiyoaki that Satoko is being considered as a wife for Prince Toin's third son. Kiyoaki responds with indifference. The Marquis then announces to his son's surprise that Iinuma is to be dismissed: the affair with Miné has been discovered. The same night, Kiyoaki has another predictive dream. In early May, Satoko visits the Toinnomiya villa by the sea and meets Prince Harunori. Formal proposals quickly follow by mail. Kiyoaki is filled with satisfaction to see Satoko, Tadeshina and Iinuma drift out of his life; and he takes pride in his lack of emotion when Iinuma tearfully takes his leave, later comparing his own ultra-correct conduct with the elegant progress of a beetle on his window-sill. The absence of Iinuma makes that year's omiyasama festival, commemorating Kiyoaki's grandfather, more perfunctory than ever. In the meantime, the Thai princes have moved from the Matsugae household to private dormitories on the grounds of the Peers School. Chao P. asks Kiyoaki to return him his emerald ring from the marquis's safe-keeping; he has not received a letter from Ying Chan in months, and is pining for her. Kiyoaki tears up the one last letter he receives from Satoko. One day, his mother leaves for the Ayakura villa in order to congratulate the family, casually informing him that the marriage to Prince Harunori will now definitely go ahead. All of a sudden he feels emotionally shattered, and spends the next few hours in a daze. This is the turning point of the novel. He takes a rickshaw to the Ayakura villa, and, making sure his mother has left, sends for Tadeshina. Astonished, she takes him to an obscure boarding-house in Kasumicho where he threatens to show Satoko's last letter (which he tore up) to Prince Toin if she does not arrange a meeting. Three days later, he returns to the boarding-house and encounters Satoko; they make love; to Tadeshina's despair, he demands another encounter. Kiyoaki goes directly to Honda and gives a full account of everything that has happened. His friend is amazed, but supportive; not long afterwards, a visit to the district court solidifies his decision not to involve himself in the drama of other people's lives. At this time, Chao P loses his emerald ring at the Peers School. Kri insists that it has been stolen, but the prefect forces the pair to search through 200 square yards of grass in the rain. This incident prompts them to leave the school. The Marquis Matsugae, fearing that they will leave Japan with unpleasant memories, asks them not to return to Siam immediately but to join his family at their holiday villa at Kamakura for the summer. It is there that the subject of reincarnation is brought up for the first time, in conversations between Kri, Chao P, Honda and Kiyoaki. The liaison between Kiyoaki and Satoko is maintained by Honda, who arranges for a Ford Model T to transport Satoko between Tokyo and Kamakura in secret. Kiyoaki has a third major prophetic dream. The Thai princes receive a letter informing them of the death of Ying Chan. Devastated, they return to Siam a week later. Tadeshina learns from the Matsugaes' steward that Kiyoaki does not possess Satoko's last letter, but continues to cover for them. In October, she realises that Satoko is pregnant, a fact they both hide from Kiyoaki. At the restaurant of the Mitsukoshi department store, they inform him that there can be no further contact. Kiyoaki and Honda, while discussing this, stumble across another bad omen: a dead mole on the path in front of them. Kiyoaki picks it up and throws it in a pond. After a long period of no news, Kiyoaki is summoned to the billiard-room by his father. Tadeshina has attempted suicide, leaving a confidential note to the Marquis revealing the affair to him. At first, the Marquis talks calmly, but when Kiyoaki is unapologetic he beats his son with his billiard-cue. Kiyoaki is rescued by his grandmother; the household immediately starts to focus on limiting the damage. Count Ayakura is strongly tempted to punish Tadeshina, but she knows too much about his secret resentment of the upstart Matsugaes, and he cannot afford to give her any encouragement to reveal it&mdash;in particular, the instruction he gave her (in 1905) that Satoko should lose her virginity before any bridegroom chosen by the Marquis should touch her. The Marquis Matsugae meets Count Ayakura and they arrange an abortion for Satoko in Osaka. On the way back to Tokyo, Satoko and her mother stop at the Gesshu Temple to see the Abbess. Satoko slips away and hides from her mother, who later discovers that she has cut off her hair and resolved to become a nun. The Abbess, who suspects that a plot against the Emperor is unfolding, hopes to thwart it by shielding Satoko. Baffled as to what to do, the weak-willed Countess returns to Tokyo for help. But neither the Count nor the Marquis succeed at removing Satoko from the convent. The betrothal is cancelled with a forged medical certificate, backdated a month, declaring Satoko to be mentally ill. In February 1914, Honda gives Kiyoaki money to travel to the convent in an effort to meet Satoko. He turns up at the front door repeatedly but is always rebuffed, and his health declines as he forces himself to trudge through the snow from the inn in Obitoke to the convent and back again as a form of penance. Eventually Honda comes looking for him after receiving a telegram, and is shocked to see how ill he is; concluding that a meeting with Satoko is vital, he goes to the convent alone on February 27, but the Abbess firmly refuses to allow any such meeting, and on the same night Honda and Kiyoaki leave for Tokyo. During the train journey, the deathly sick Kiyoaki tells Honda: "Just now I had a dream. I'll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls." He has written a note to his mother, asking her to give Honda his dream-diary. Two days after his return, on 2 March 1914, Kiyoaki dies at the age of 20.
1073546	/m/043mj5	The Sigma Protocol	Robert Ludlum	2001-10-30	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Ben Hartman is vacationing in Switzerland when he meets his old school buddy Jimmy Cavanaugh - who tries to kill him. As he dodges assassins, mysterious tails, and police while searching for a safe place to hide, he finds his twin brother, Peter, who was thought to have died in an airplane crash several years earlier. Peter describes an international corporation which was formed in the last days of World War II, composed of financiers, influential members of large corporations, and Nazi brass. He gives Ben a photo of some of the leaders, only to find out that their father was a member. Soon, Peter is killed by a sniper, and Ben escapes with his life again. He later meets up with Liesel (Peter's girlfriend). Meanwhile, United States Department of Justice Agent Anna Navarro is recruited by a secretive group within the DoJ to investigate the deaths of a list of influential men around the world who have been dying mysteriously. Her probes turn up false leads, possible coverups, and dead ends, until she finds out that the men have been poisoned, using the same obscure toxin. Following the leads, she finds that the men she had been assigned to investigate are part of an international group of financiers and business moguls. She soon finds out that she has been reported "off the reservation", and the attempts begin on her life as well. Through their own distinct investigative means, the two protagonists discover more about the shadowy group, which is called Sigma. It is learned that Sigma has grown from a simple attempt to plunder the Nazi treasury and stabilize the industrial and financial state of the world in the wake of the war, to a political and financial machine which controls as many as 75% of the world's leading companies, and has enough covert political clout to directly influence the outcome of the likes of Presidential elections. Sigma also helped some of the Nazi war criminals, including Nazi doctor Gerhard Lenz, evade capture. Protagonists Hartman and Navarro eventually meet and form an alliance, since both are being hunted by Sigma assassins. Through their concerted efforts, they discover that Sigma is experiencing an internal struggle. The founders, who are dead or dying, believe that Sigma should disband, as it had played its role in the world; they're called the angeli rebelli, and are being hunted by the new Sigma leadership. That new leadership, an apparently philanthropic doctor named Jürgen Lenz, son of Sigma founding member Gerhard Lenz, has decided on a new direction for the group, and is determined to eliminate any internal opposition. Navarro is kidnapped by Lenz, and Hartman tracks them to an old castle in the Austrian Alps. Successfully infiltrating the castle, he discovers Sigma's new direction: age reversal. Lenz had found a way to reverse human aging based largely WW2 era experimentation on children with premature aging also known as Progeria, and he had been treating some of the world's elite to reverse their aging as well. Lenz was his own first successful experiment, for his real name is Gerhard - he is the Nazi doctor and a founding member of Sigma. After killing Lenz, Hartman and Navarro escape in a helicopter, while the castle is destroyed by an avalanche. The book is based on the Bilderberg Group and the myths and mysteries surrounding it.
1074034	/m/043nlj	The Keepers of the House	Shirley Ann Grau		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first William Howland did not return home to Tennessee on his way back from the War of 1812. Instead, he settled on a hill in rural Alabama, overlooking a small river. He was later killed in an Indian raid, but since then, a descendant of William Howland, most often a male named William, lived in the house and dominated affairs in Madison City and Wade County, which sprang up around Howland's original settlement. The fifth William Howland was the last man bearing the name to live in the house. His wife died young, leaving him with a young daughter, Abigail, and an infant son, William, who died just a year after his mother. Abigail married an English professor, who abandoned her with a child, Abigail, when he went off to fight in World War II. When she died, William Howland was left to take care of his granddaughter, also Abigail. He also brought Margaret, a new African American housekeeper to the house to live with him. Throughout the county, she was known as his mistress, and the mother of his other children. What no one knew, however, was that William had secretly married Margaret to ensure that the children were legitimate. Once their children came of age, William Howland and Margaret sent them north, so that they could pursue lives as Whites. The secret of the marriage came out only after the younger Abigail was married to John Tolliver, an up-and-coming politician, who was running for governor. In the turbulent racist atmosphere of the South, Tolliver aligned himself with the Klan and came out with racist statements against Blacks. This enfuriated Robert Howland, the eldest son of William and Margaret, who was living in obscurity in Seattle. He releases the news to the story of his origins to the press, crippling Tolliver's campaign. Tolliver, who regards Abigail as a trophy wife, declares that their marriage is over and heads north to his family. Both William Howland and Margaret are dead, but a mob gathers to vent its anger about the mixed marriage on Abigail and the Howland house. They kill the livestock and set fire to the barn, but Abigail succeeds in driving them away from the house with her grandfather's shotguns. At the end of the book, Abigail takes her revenge on the people of Madison City. Over the past generations, her family had come to own most of the county, making her one of the richest people in the state. Over the course of a single day, she takes revenge on the locals for betraying her grandfather by shutting down the hotel and bringing most of the local economy to ruin. Once she has done that, she places a call to Robert, with the intention of informing his new family that his mother was Black.
1074427	/m/043pnf	Half Past Human	T. J. Bass	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bass' future Earth is an environment in which the sum of the biota serves as its food chain. Human science has created the four-toed Nebish, a pallid, short-lived and highly programmable humanoid who has had the elements that do not facilitate an underground Hive existence (aggression, curiosity, etc.) bred out of it. The five-toed humans (called buckeyes) wander the biofarms that keep the trillions of Earth's Nebish population fed. All animals other than man are extinct, so meat comes from other humans (and the occasional rat). The conflict between the Hives and the roving bands of five-toed original Humans, who are reduced to savagery and hunted like vermin by Hive Security, forms the backdrop of this novel. Something strange is happening, as the primitive buckeyes are showing signs of a purpose whose goal is unclear and probably dangerous to the balance of the Hive. There seems to be a third party stirring the pot, campaigning in a relentlessly successful battle with the computer minds that keep this "brave new world" in balance. Agendas beyond the ken of their protagonists begin to come into play, and an epic battle between the Four- and the Five-toed is looming.
1074708	/m/043qcn	L'Atlantide	Pierre Benoit	1920	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It is 1896 in the Sahara. Two officers, André de Saint-Avit and Jean Morhange investigate the disappearance of their fellow officers. While doing so, they are drugged and kidnapped by a Tarqui warrior, the procurer for the monstrous Queen Antinea. Antinea, descendant of the rulers of Atlantis, has a cave wall with the 120 niches carved into it, one for each of her lovers. Only 53 have been filled; when all 120 have been filled, Antinea will sit atop a throne in the center of the cave and rest forever. Saint-Avit is unable to resist Antinea's charms. By her will, he murders the asexual Morhange. Ultimately, he is able to escape and get out of the desert alive.
1075934	/m/043tnl	Strandloper	Alan Garner	1996-05	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Buckley was convicted on a trumped-up charge of trespass in 1803 and transported to Australia, where he escapes, only to collapse from exhaustion in the outback on the grave of an Aboriginal shaman. He is discovered by aborigines, who regard him as the reincarnation of Murrangurk the shaman, an idea reinforced by Will's epilepsy. Will learns their language and ways, and fits perfectly the role of their healer and holy man. Thirty years later he intervenes to prevent the slaughter of a group of English soldiers and is granted a pardon. He returns to his native Cheshire, where in a closing sequence he dances Aborigine style across his home land, fulfilled and transformed.
1078398	/m/04426f	The Canary Murder Case	S. S. Van Dine		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The beautiful Margaret Odell, famous Broadway beauty and ex-Follies girl known as "The Canary", is found murdered in her apartment. She has a number of men in her life, ranging from high society to gangsters, and more than one man visited her apartment on the night she dies. It is Philo Vance's characteristic erudition that leads him to a key clue that allows him to penetrate a very clever alibi and reveal the killer. "The strangeness, the daring, the seeming impenetrability of the crime marked it as one of the most singular and astonishing cases in New York's police annals; and had it not been for Philo Vance's participation in its solution, I firmly believe it would have remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of this country."
1078424	/m/04429x	The Bishop Murder Case	S. S. Van Dine		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story involves a series of murders taking place in a wealthy neighborhood of New York. The first murder, of a Mr. Joseph Cochrane Robin who is found pierced by an arrow, is accompanied by a note signed "The Bishop" with an extract from the nursery rhyme Who Killed Cock Robin. This crime takes place at the home of an elderly physicist with a beautiful young ward and a private archery range. District Attorney Markham finds the circumstances so unusual that he asks his friend Philo Vance to advise upon the psychological aspects of the crime. Further murders connected with the family and neighbours of the physicist are accompanied with similar extracts from Mother Goose, such as the case of Johnny Sprigg, "who was shot through the middle of his wig, wig, wig." Midway through the book, an elderly woman confesses to the crimes, but this possibility is discounted by the police for physical reasons and by Philo Vance for psychological ones. The kidnapping and confinement of a little Miss Moffatt is luckily discovered by Vance and the police before the child suffocates in the closet in which she has been locked. Vance finally realizes the significance of one character's pointed reference to The Pretenders, a play written by Henrik Ibsen. Bishop Arnesson of Oslo was a prominent character in Ibsen's play. Vance arranges a spectacular finale in which the criminal is poisoned by a glass of liqueur which that person prepared for another suspect.
1078455	/m/0442g7	The Kennel Murder Case	S. S. Van Dine		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 ~Plot outline description
1078468	/m/0442jb	The Kidnap Murder Case	S. S. Van Dine		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 A member of the wealthy Kenting family is kidnapped, and Philo Vance's suspicions lead him to the victim's home, the "Purple House" on New York's 86th Street. A mysterious ransom note and the family collection of gems both play a part in the plot, which ends with the murderer's suicide with the connivance of Vance. "To be sure, the motive for the crime, or, I should say, crimes, was the sordid one of monetary gain ... through Vance's determination and fearlessness, through his keen insight into human nature and his amazing flair for the ramifications of human psychology, he was able to penetrate beyond the seemingly conclusive manifestations of the case."
1078856	/m/0443s_	Bouvard et Pécuchet	Gustave Flaubert	1881	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bouvard et Pécuchet details the adventures of two Parisian copy-clerks, François Denys Bartholomée Bouvard and Juste Romain Cyrille Pécuchet, of the same age and nearly identical temperament. They meet one hot summer day in 1838 by the canal Saint-Martin and form an instant, symbiotic friendship. When Bouvard inherits a sizable fortune, the two decide to move to the countryside. They find a property near the town of Chavignolles in Normandy, between Caen and Falaise, and west of Rouen. Their search for intellectual stimulation leads them, over the course of years, to flounder through almost every branch of knowledge. Flaubert uses their quest to expose the hidden weaknesses of the sciences and arts, as nearly every project Bouvard and Pécuchet set their minds on comes to grief. Their endeavours are interleaved with the story of their deteriorating relations with the local villagers; and the Revolution of 1848 is the occasion for much despondent discussion. The manuscript breaks off near the end of the novel. According to one set of Flaubert's notes, the townsfolk, enraged by Bouvard and Pécuchet's antics, try to force them out of the area, or have them committed. Disgusted with the world in general, Bouvard and Pécuchet ultimately decide to "return to copying as before" (copier comme autrefois), giving up their intellectual boundering. The work ends with their eager preparations to construct a two-seated desk on which to write. http://garethlong.net/bouvardAndPecuchet/bouvardAndPecuchet.html This was originally intended to be followed by a large sample of what they copy out: possibly a sottisier (anthology of stupid quotations), the Dictionary of Received Ideas (encyclopedia of commonplace notions), or a combination of both.
1079926	/m/0447gx	Advise and Consent: A Novel of Washington Politics	Allen Drury	1959-07-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A U.S. President names a new Secretary of State to promote rapprochement with the U.S.S.R. Nominee Robert Leffingwell, the darling of the liberals, is viewed by many conservative senators as an appeaser. Others have doubts about his character. The nomination proceeds smoothly until a minor bureaucrat named Gelman tells the subcommittee handling the confirmation nomination that he and Leffingwell were in a Communist cell when in college along with James Morton.The subcommittee deems Gelman's testimony far-fetched, and the chairman, Senator Anderson, is about to send the nomination to the full Foreign Relations Committee when a member of the President's staff calls Anderson to tell him that he once was known as "James Morton". Anderson holds open his subcommittee hearings, which enrages the President. The President orders Majority Leader Munson to get Anderson to move the nomination by enticement or threat. Munson cannot find a way to threaten Anderson. Anderson is a Mormon and has a wife and child. While in Hawaii on R&R late in World War II, he had a month-long love affair with another man. Anderson has been struggling with his homosexual orientation throughout his life. His maid, cleaning out is attic, gives him a picture of the two men taken in Hawaii in a sealed and forgotten envelope. Anderson's wife Mabel has occasionally complained that she does not feel loved in their marriage. While driving to the Capitol, he picks up Associate Supreme Court Justice Davis, a supporter of Leffingwell's nomination. As Anderson drops Davis off at the Supreme Court, the envelope with the picture falls from the car. Davis finds it and, unable to bring himself to use the evidence, delivers it to Munson, who scolds Davis for suggesting blackmail but keeps the photograph. The next evening at the White House, the President learns that Anderson knows Leffingwell was in a Communist cell with Morton. The President decides to get James Morton out of town and proceed with the nomination. Anderson vehemently objects, stating that the honorable thing to do is to withdraw the nomination. Anderson leaves. The President, alerted earlier by Davis to the existence of the photo, takes it from a reluctant Munson and gives it to Senator Van Ackerman, an enemy of Anderson. Van Ackerman and his allies begin a whispering campaign about Anderson. Confronted by his wife, Anderson admits his homosexual past. She reacts badly, leaving Anderson feeling more alone than ever. He receives a phone call from the man with whom he had the affair, who admits that he sold his story to someone because he needed the money. The next morning, the editor of the Washington Post visits Anderson with a copy of a column detailing the affair. The editor tears it up in front of Anderson, saying that no Washington newspaper will publish it, but warns that someone else will publish it soon. That afternoon, feeling trapped and alone, Anderson decides there is only one way to maintain his honor and dignity. He writes a letter to his best friend and mentor, Senator Orrin Knox, explains what has happened, returns to his office in the Senate Office Building, and shoots himself in the head. Senator Anderson's death turns the majority of the Senate against the President and the Majority Leader. Senator Knox becomes the de facto leader of the opposition, and vows to defeat the Leffingwell nomination. The Senate unanimously censures Van Ackerman for contributing to Senator Anderson's death. Senator Munson makes a speech linking Anderson's death to the Leffingwell nomination and resigns as majority leader. The President summons Knox, a two-time presidential candidate, to the White House and promises to back him for the party's nomination next year if he will allow the Leffingwell nomination to go through. Knox dares him to put this promise in writing, and the President does. The President also tells Knox that the Soviets have just launched a manned mission to the moon and that he needs a Secretary of State who can deal with the Soviets. Knox discusses the President's promise of support with his colleagues and his wife, but decides to oppose the Leffingwell nomination. The Soviet cosmonauts address the world via radio and claim the moon for the Soviet Union. The Soviet Premier then invites the President to Geneva for a summit meeting. The U.S. launches its own moon mission and the President gives a speech asserting that no one owns the moon. Despite his misgivings, he will meet the Soviet leader in Geneva. The Senate votes on the Leffingwell nomination and defeats it by a vote of 74-24. Following the vote, the President dies of a heart attack and Vice President Hudson becomes President. President Hudson addresses a joint session of Congress after the late President's funeral, saying he will not be a candidate for his party's nomination next year, that he will honor the late President's promise to go to Geneva, and that he will nominate Orrin Knox as Secretary of State. Knox is promptly confirmed, and President Hudson leaves for Switzerland.
1080292	/m/0448j3	Two Concepts of Liberty	Isaiah Berlin			 Positive liberty may be understood as self-mastery; and includes one's having a role in choosing who governs the society of which one is a part. Berlin traced positive liberty from Aristotle's definition of citizenship, which is historically derived from the social role of the freemen of classical Athens: it was, Berlin argued, the liberty in choosing their government granted to citizens, and extolled, most famously, by Pericles. Berlin granted that both concepts of liberty represent valid human ideals, and that both forms of liberty are necessary in any free and civilised society. :"liberty in the negative sense involves an answer to the question: 'What is the area within which the subject — a person or group of persons — is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons'." For Berlin, negative liberty represents a different, and sometimes contradictory, understanding of the concept of liberty, which needs to be carefully distinguished. Its later proponents (such as Tocqueville, Constant, Montesquieu, John Locke, David Hume and John Stuart Mill, who accepted Chrysippus' understanding of self-determination) insisted that constraint and discipline were the antithesis of liberty and so were (and are) less prone to confusing liberty and constraint in the manner of rationalists and the philosophical harbingers of totalitarianism. This concept of negative liberty, Berlin argued, constitutes an alternative, and sometimes even opposed, concept to positive liberty, and one often closer to the intuitive modern usage of the word. Berlin notes that historically positive liberty has proven particularly susceptible to rhetorical abuse; especially from the 18th century onwards, it has either been paternalistically re-drawn from the third-person, or conflated with the concept of negative liberty and thus disguised underlying value-conflicts. Berlin contended that under the influence of Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel, modern political thinkers often conflated positive liberty with rational action, based upon a rational knowledge to which, it is argued, only a certain elite or social group has access. This rationalist conflation was open to political abuses, which encroached on negative liberty, when such interpretations of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, paternalism, social engineering, historicism, and collective rational control over human destiny. Berlin argued that, following this line of thought, demands for freedom paradoxically could become demands for forms of collective control and discipline&nbsp;– those deemed necessary for the "self-mastery" or "self-determination" of nations, classes, democratic communities, and even humanity as a whole. There is thus an elective affinity, for Berlin, between positive liberty, when it is rhetorically conflated with goals imposed from the third-person that the individual is told they "should" rationally desire, and the justifications for political totalitarianism, which contrary to value-pluralism, presupposed that values exist in Pythagorean harmony. Berlin did not argue that the concept of positive liberty should be rejected&nbsp;— on the contrary, he recognised it as one human value among many, and one necessary to any free society. He argued that positive liberty was a genuine and valuable version of liberty, so long as it was identified with the autonomy of individuals, and not with the achievement of goals that individuals 'ought to' 'rationally' desire. Berlin argued, rather, that these differing concepts showed the plurality, and incompatibility of human values, and the need to analytically distinguish and trade-off between, rather than conflate, them. Thus, Berlin offers in his "Two Concepts of Liberty" essay, "Where it is to be drawn is a matter of argument, indeed of haggling. Men are largely interdependent, and no man's activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way. 'Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows'; the liberty of some must depend on the restraint of others. Freedom for an Oxford don, others have been known to add, is a very different thing from freedom for an Egyptian peasant."
1080979	/m/044bg5	The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles	Julie Andrews	1974	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Three siblings, Ben, Tom, and Lindy Potter, meet Professor Savant while visiting the zoo one rainy day. On Halloween, Lindy is the only brave one to knock on the spookiest house on the block, which happens to belong to the Professor, and the three become more acquainted with him. After a second meeting, they begin spending time at the Professor's house, where he introduces them to games of concentration and observation. He reveals that there is a magic land called Whangdoodleland that can only be reached through the imagination, and that he is training them to accompany him there. Whangdoodleland is the home of the last Whangdoodle that lived in the world. Once the Whangdoodle, and other creatures that are now considered imaginary, lived in our world. However, fearing that people were losing their imaginations in the pursuit of power and greed, the Whangdoodle created a magic and peaceful world over which he reigns. The professor and the children explore this world. Each time the children return, they venture farther and farther into Whangdoodleland, intending to reach the palace where the Last Whangdoodle resides. However, the Whangdoodle's Prime Minister, the "Oily Prock", does not want them to disturb His Highness, and sets up a number of traps, both in Whangdoodleland and the real world to prevent this meeting. He enlists the marvelous and funny creatures of the land in his effort, including the High Behind Splintercat, the Sidewinders, the Oinck, the Gazooks, the Tree Squeaks, and the Swamp Gaboons. The children use their imaginations, intelligence, and the friendship of another denizen, the Whiffle Bird to outwit the traps. The kids meet the last Whangdoodle. He wants a girl Whangdoodle who is exactly like him so he won't be lonely.The story ends when the professor makes that wish come true.
1081361	/m/044c17	Tribes of Redwall Otters	Brian Jacques	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This booklet about otters features trivia questions, a giant poster, profiles of many of the otter characters that are featured in the series, and the much anticipated recipe for Shrimp and Hotroot Soup. The book offers insight into the culture and history of otters, listing important otter characters and customs from the series. It was illustrated by Jonathan Walker.
1083373	/m/044jzr	'Art'	Yasmina Reza			 Set in Paris, the story revolves around three friends—Serge, Marc and Yvan—who find their previously solid 15-year friendship on shaky ground when Serge buys an expensive painting. The canvas is white, with a few white lines. Serge is proud of his 200,000 franc acquisition fully expecting the approval of his friends. Marc scornfully describes it as "a piece of white shit," but is it the painting that offends him, or the uncharacteristic independence-of-thought that the purchase reveals in Serge? For the insecure Yvan, burdened by the problems of his impending doom (wedding) and his dissatisfaction at his job as a stationery salesman, their friendship is his sanctuary...but his attempts at peace-making backfire. Eager to please he laughs about the painting with Marc but tells Serge he likes it. Pulled into the disagreement, his vacillations fuel the blazing row. Lines are drawn and they square off over the canvas, using it as an excuse to relentlessly batter one another over various failures. As their arguments become less theoretical and more personal, they border on destroying their friendship.
1084436	/m/044mnq	The Old Man of Lochnagar				 The story starts with Prince Charles entertaining some bored children at Balmoral. He tells them about an old man who, in search of peace and quiet (and a hot bath), has made his way to a remote cave at Lochnagar. He comes across a cave and, dragging a bathtub inside, claims the place as his own. The old man makes a lot of noise and mentions that his neighbours used to complain about the banging and noise coming from his home late at night. He chats to an animal he names Maudie, the original occupant of the cave, while setting up the apparatus for running his long awaited bath. Finally, all is ready and the Old Man appears in his tartan dressing gown, ready to step in to the bath. But, as he jumps in, he realises that the water is freezing and his squeals echo round the loch. He tells Maudie that he will have to wait for a bath until he has found a way of heating the water, and pulls the plug on his full bath. Unknown to the Old Man, his cave is near the underground home of the Gorn, a clan of Scottish pixies, who are responsible for pushing up the spring flowers in Scotland. The Gorn King is an inventor, and has created a curious device (which looks and sounds like a set of bagpipes) which reduces full grown flowers back to seeds. The seed will turn back in to a flower when it gets wet and the Gorn Queen and Princess declare that the King has changed the way everyone will work from now on. However, as they are discussing this, a flood pours down unexpectedly from above. When the Old Man emptied his bath, the water followed his complicated arrangements of pipes and in to the Gorn's underground workshops, ruining the flowers and flooding out the workers. The Princess and her younger brother end up being washed away from their parents and come out of a tree stump alone and wet. They look up to find a 'giant', tending to a huge pot over a roaring fire and the young Prince fears that they will be made in to soup. In fact the 'giant' is the Old Man, who has found a way to heat his bath by lighting a huge fire underneath it. As he waits, still in his tartan dressing gown, he is suddenly hit by the Gorn King's device, which has been picked up by the young Princess. He immediately shrinks to the size of a pixie and is taken away by the Prince and Princess, to see what his bathwater has done to their home. At first, he thinks he is having a strange dream, and so he appears callously unconcerned at the devastation, stating only that "I've never dreamed in colour before". This delusion lasts until he falls down a hole, hitting his head. As he exclaims at the pain in his head, it dawns on the Old Man that since you can't feel pain in a dream, what he's seen must be real and the damage is his fault. The Prince and Princess take the Old Man back outside but, to their shock, the whole world seems to be on fire. The fire underneath the Old Man's bath has spread and is threatening the countryside. The Old Man offers to help, but he needs to be bigger before he can do anything. The Princess is reluctant to help the Old Man, but she relents and tells him that he needs to 'get watered'. With the help of Maudie, the Old Man is catapulted in to his bath and returns to normal size. He pulls the plug again, flooding the area and putting out the fire, while protecting the pixies' underground home from further damage. The Old Man has learned that his actions affect others and that he must think of the consequences. The story ends with the Gorn sharing a huge bath with the Old Man, complete with water wheels and boats. When he is finished, the Old Man drains his bath using more of his special plumbing skills to reuse the water to reactivate the magic seeds and causing flowers to pop up all around. The story closes on the Old Man of Lochnagar and returns to Balmoral and Prince Charles. The children tell him that it was a good story, but that's all, just a story. Charles replies that you never really know, and lifts a set of bagpipes from his desk and begins to play. After a few notes, the Prince is affected in the same way as the Old Man, shrinking to a tiny size and suggesting that his story was inspired by true events. The children he has been entertaining then race off through the house to find the bathtub, to restore the Prince to his rightful size.
1084647	/m/044n1b	The Royal Family	Edna Ferber			 ; Characters * Julie Cavendish - Fanny's daughter * Tony Cavendish - Fanny's son * Gwen Cavendish - Fanny's granddaughter * Herbert Dean - Fanny's brother * Kitty Dean - Fanny's sister-in-law * Fanny Cavendish - Cavendish Family Matriarch * Oscar Wolfe - Cavendish Family's Long-time Agent * Gilmore Marshall - Julie's Love Interest * Perry Stewart - Gwen's Fiancee The story is a parody of the Barrymore family actors, with particular aim taken at John Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore. The character Tony Cavendish, a heavy-drinking womanizer, represents John Barrymore. Julie Cavendish is the prima donna Broadway star Ethel Barrymore. Ethel Barrymore was offended and her critical comments were quoted by the press; however John Barrymore saw the production in Los Angeles and was amused, and congratulated Fredric March on his performance as Tony Cavendish. (Otto Kruger had played the role on Broadway.)
1085154	/m/044p9c	The Line of Beauty	Alan Hollinghurst	2004	{"/m/04tkhfk": "Gay Themed", "/m/065q54": "LGBT literature", "/m/0cgx58": "Gay novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in Britain in the early to mid-1980s, the story surrounds the young gay protagonist, Nick Guest, who has come down from Oxford with a first in English and is to begin graduate studies at University College London. The novel begins in the summer of 1983, shortly after Thatcher's landslide victory in the Parliamentary election of that year. Nick moves into the luxurious London home of the wealthy Fedden family. The son of the house, Toby, is his Oxford University classmate and best friend, and Nick's stay is meant to last for a short time while Toby and his parents - Rachel, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family, and Gerald, a successful businessman and just-elected Tory MP - are on holiday in France. Left at home with Nick is the Feddens' daughter, Cat, who is bipolar and whom the Feddens are reluctant to leave on her own. Nick helps Cat through a minor crisis, and when her parents return they suggest he stay on indefinitely, since Cat has become attached to him and Toby is getting a place of his own. As a permanent member of the Feddens' household, Nick experiences for the first time the world of the British upper class, observing them from his own middle-class background. Nick remains a guest in the Fedden home until he is expelled at the end of the novel. Nick has his first romance with a black council worker, Leo, but a later relationship with Wani, the son of a rich Lebanese businessman, illuminates the materialism and ruthlessness of 1980s Thatcherite Britain. The book explores the tension between Nick's intimate relationship with the Feddens, in whose parties and holidays he participates, and the realities of his sexuality and gay life, which the Feddens accept only to the extent of never mentioning it. It explores themes of hypocrisy, homosexuality, madness and wealth, with the emerging AIDS crisis forming a backdrop to the book's conclusion.
1085364	/m/044pzd	The Smoke Ring	Larry Niven	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This book takes place about fifteen years after the end of the original story, when survivors of the Dalton-Quinn tree, a few Carther States jungle dwellers, and two London Tree Citizens have settled on a new tree. This 'Citizen's Tree' has become a stable community which some believe may be too small to survive in the long run. Kendy, the recorded personality of a citizen of "The State" who exists in the computer of the original space-ship that colonized the Smoke Ring, has become impatient. He decides to re-establish contact with Citizen's Tree. Kendy manipulates a group into making contact with "The Admiralty", a neighboring civilization at Gold's L4 Lagrange Point (which they refer to as "the Clump"). The group explores this more advanced civilization with a mixture of wonder and trepidation. Although much of the story is a sort of "travelogue" exploring the Smoke Ring and the technology used in the unique environment, The Smoke Ring does spend more time on story and character development than The Integral Trees. One of the drivers for the story follows the latest operator of "the silver suit", the Citizen's Tree's working spacesuit. Few are capable of operating the suit due to its size, as most humans in the Smoke Ring have evolved to be much too tall to fit into it. The job goes to the occasionally born "dwarves" who are, in fact, humans of normal (for Earth) height and build. A major sub-plot develops around the latest silver suit operator's attempts to infiltrate The Admiralty to gain information, and The Admiralty's near obsession with capturing the Citizen's Tree's spacesuit. This story gives much more notice to the story of Kendy and the original mission. The chain of events that led to the colonization of the Smoke Ring through a "mutiny" on the ship is explored. After retrieving the crew's own records of the events, Kendy realizes that the crew had not mutinied at all, and that he had forced them off the ship, believing this to be in keeping with his orders from Earth. This was apparently blocked from his memory, and he suffers a form of breakdown when he learns (or re-learns) the truth.
1085604	/m/044qmk	Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand	Samuel R. Delany	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel takes place in a far future in which human societies have developed divergently on some 6000 planets. Many of these worlds are shared with intelligent nonhumans, although only one alien species (the mysterious Xlv) also possesses faster-than-light travel. In an attempt to find a stable defense against the planet destroying phenomenon known as "cultural fugue" (a state of terminal runaway of cultural and technological complexity that destroys all life on a world via a singularity), many human worlds are aligned with one of two broad factions, one generally permissive (the Sygn) and one generally conservative (the Family) by today's standards. The story opens on the planet Rhyonon. Korga, a tall, misfit youth, undergoes the "RAT" (Radical Anxiety Termination) procedure, a form of psychosurgery which makes him a passive slave, after which he is known as Rat Korga. After he has lived under a number of masters, Rat's world is destroyed by a conflagration. This is later explained to be the result of cultural fugue, though the explanation is far from conclusive, especially since Xlv spacecraft were present in the Rhyonon system when the disaster occurred. Because he is deep inside a mine shaft at the time, Rat Korga survives (though badly injured), the only known being to ever survive cultural fugue. The action then moves to Velm, a Sygn-aligned world that humanity shares with its native three-sexed intelligent species, the evelm, and where sexual relationships take many forms&mdash;monogamous, promiscuous, anonymous, and interspecies. Resident Marq Dyeth, an "industrial diplomat" who helps manage the transfer of technology between different societies, is informed that Rat Korga is his perfect sexual match by a former connection in the powerful and mysterious WEB. Equipping him with a prosthesis (the rings of Vondramach Okk) that restores the initiative he lost due to the RAT procedure, the WEB sends Rat Korga to Velm under the pretext that he is a student, and he and Marq begin a romantic affair. They go on an unusual hunting expedition and return to a dinner party which becomes chaotic due to the presence of the Thants and planetwide interest in the survivor. The Thants are humans of another world who were friends of the Dyeths until deciding to align themselves with the Family, which has promised them the position of "focus unit" on another world, Nepiy, making them effectively rulers of that planet. Soon after, Rat Korga must leave Velm and be permanently separated from Marq (their pairing having been an alien cultural experiment) because their interaction was creating a threat of cultural fugue.
1085770	/m/044r03	Valley of the Squinting Windows	Brinsley MacNamara	1918	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It told a story of rural life, the power of gossip, public perception which people attempted to present of the family and individual, and of an inward-looking society, similar to the Keeping up with the Joneses theme. The stir created by the book caused the author's schoolmaster father, James, to be boycotted, and eventually he had to emigrate; the author himself never returned to the area. The novel resulted in a high-profile court case by those who thought that they had been described. Hostility against the book led to its burning. MacNamara's novel has been reprinted several times, particularly when interest in the topic re-emerges. Valley of the squinting windows has become a colloquial term, particularly in Ireland, for a society obsessed with providing neighbours and peers with a good perception of one's personal matters.
1086476	/m/044sjl	Stone of Tears	Terry Goodkind	1995-09-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 After the death of Darken Rahl, Richard is afflicted by a series of painful headaches. He also learns from Shota of his lineage as the bastard son of Darken Rahl and the grandson (on his mother's side) of Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander. After having mastered the Wizard's First Rule, Richard learns that the opening of the boxes of Orden has torn the veil between the world of the living and the underworld and thus, he has made a grave mistake; the violation of the Wizard's Second Rule, namely, that "The greatest harm can result from the best intentions". He also learns that only he can close the veil, and if he doesn't the whole world will be in the hands of the Keeper. Richard gets a visit from three Sisters of the Light (Sister Grace, Elizabeth and Verna), who inform him that his headaches are caused by the awakening of the gift within him and are fatal and unstoppable, unless Richard receives magical training. The Sisters tell him that he must go with them and wear a Rada'Han, a magical collar, in order to control his headaches and the gift. They also explain that they will offer him their help three times, and if he refuses each time, the Sisters will not be able to help him ever again. Despite this warning, Richard declines to use the collar (and thereby the help of the Sisters) when Sister Grace offers it to him. After asking for the forgiveness of her fellow Sisters, she kills herself. As the two remaining Sisters tell Richard of the second reason for wearing the collar; so that they can control him. He refuses the collar a second time and tries to prevent the second Sister, Elizabeth, from killing herself. In the riot the third sister, Sister Verna, manages to stick a knife in Sister Elizabeth's back. Seeking guidance on how to repair the veil, Richard and Kahlan request another "gathering"; which involves turning to the "ancestors' spirits" for help in the spirit house of the Mud People. But instead of being able to speak to the spirits Richard and Kahlan are sent down to the underworld and are placed face-to-face with Darken Rahl. He explains that Richard has brought him back through the veil by calling "a gathering of ancestors' spirits." Thus Rahl, as Richard's ancestor, is sent back to the world of the living. Richard has thereby violated the second rule again. This allows Rahl to continue his task of bringing the The Keeper into the world. Rahl touches Richard with the Keeper's mark, making him unconscious and lets Kahlan know that Richard is only minutes away from death. The two of them are sent back to the spirit house from the underworld. As Kahlan desperately tries to save Richard, a glowing spirit emerges in the spirit house. It is the spirit of Denna, who tells Kahlan that she has to force Richard into wearing the collar, and that if he doesn't, the headaches will kill him and everything will be lost. Denna also tells Kahlan in detail about the agonizing torture, pain, and madness, that has been inflicted upon Richard's mind. Denna then puts her hand on Richard's mark and takes his place, and is sent down to the underworld and the Keeper. As the third and final Sister returns, Kahlan tells Richard that he has to put on the collar. When he tries to explain his reluctance, Kahlan makes Richard believe that the only way to prove his love for her is to wear it. Richard reluctantly agrees to wear the collar and reveals to Kahlan that the third reason for wearing the collar is to inflict pain on the wearer. Richard has misinterpreted Kahlan's intentions, and believes that she no longer loves him. He leaves, telling her merely to find Zedd. Devastated, Richard submits to the remaining Sister, and leaves with her to go to the Palace of Prophets. Richard travels with Sister Verna to the Palace of the Prophets, which is located in the Old World. The Sisters see their job as spreading knowledge of the The Creator to the world through the training of wizards. Before reaching the palace, Richard is forced into a battle with thirty Baka Ban Mana blademasters. It is their job it is to teach the Seeker to dance with the spirits by using the Sword of Truth's magic to access the collective knowledge of all previous users of the sword. Be a feather, not a rock. Float on the wind of the storm is the first tactical advice he receives from the Sword's magic. During his stay at the palace Richard comes to terms with the fact that he has the gift of magic. He discovers he is a War Wizard: one who has the gift of both additive and subtractive magic. Later, he learns from Nathan Rahl, another wizard in the Palace of the Prophets, that he is the first to be born with such power in three thousand years. It is revealed that the Prelate brought Richard to the Palace to flush out the Sisters of the Dark, a secret society within the Sisters of the Light dedicated to the task of unleashing the Keeper into the world of the living. As the Prelate herself says, "When your house is overrun with rats the only thing you can do is bring in a cat. This cat sees us all as rats. Maybe with good reason." Richard also finds out that it was the Prelate and Nathan that helped Richard's stepfather, George Cypher, retrieve The Book of Counted Shadows, which contains instructions on how to correctly open the Boxes of Orden. Richard also realizes belatedly that the Palace of the Prophets is the trap in time foretold by Shota the witch woman; the palace is spelled so that those within its walls age at a much slower rate. Nathan Rahl himself is close to one thousand years old. Kahlan embarks on a long trek back to her home of Aydindril along with three Mud People. Along the way they come across a sacked city, Ebinissia, with the inhabitants' corpses filling the streets and the surrounding countryside. Kahlan and the three mud people race to catch up with a band of some five thousand troops that are trailing the enemy which sacked Ebinissia. She is shocked to realize that these soldiers are all younger than expected. She assumes command of this youthful army and begins to strategize tactics for taking on the much larger army of what she now knows to be The Imperial Order. After months of imprisonment, Richard escapes and races to stop a prophecy from coming to pass. Namely, the one he received in the Valley of the Lost: Of all there were, but a single one born of the magic to bring forth truth will remain alive when the shadow's threat is lifted. Therefore comes the greater darkness of the dead. For there to be a chance at life's bond, this one in white must be offered to her people, to bring their joy and good cheer. The prophecy speaks of the beheading of his beloved Kahlan, whom he now realizes was only trying to help him by sending him with the Sisters. Only by fulfilling the prophecy can Richard close the veil and thwart Darken Rahl, casting the Keeper back into the underworld with the eponymous Stone of Tears. After Richard returns the Stone of Tears to the underworld and once again defeats Darken Rahl and the Keeper, he rushes to Aydindril to find Kahlan. Upon finding Kahlan has already been executed, Richard kills all the councillors who sentenced Kahlan to death. He is unaware that Zedd has cast a death spell to make all believe that Kahlan is dead. Denna's spirit visited the both of them and they were reunited in a place between worlds.
1087753	/m/044wvf	A Wind in the Door	Madeleine L'Engle	1973-01-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Meg Murry is worried about her brother Charles Wallace, a 6-year-old genius who is bullied at school by the other children. The new principal of the elementary school is the former high school principal, Mr. Jenkins, who often disciplined Meg, and who Meg is sure has a grudge against her whole family. Meg tries to enlist Jenkins's help in protecting her brother, but is unsuccessful. On top of this, Meg discovers that Charles Wallace has a progressive disease which is leaving him short of breath. Their mother, a microbiologist, suspects it may have something to do with his mitochondria and the (fictional) "farandolae" that live within them. One afternoon, Charles Wallace tells Meg he saw a "drive of dragons" in the vegetable garden in their back yard. Meg goes out with him to investigate, but all they find is a pile of very odd feathers. Later, Meg has a frightening encounter with something that looks like Mr. Jenkins. Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O'Keefe discover that Charles Wallace's drive of dragons is a single creature named Proginoskes. Progo, as he is quickly nicknamed, insists on being called "a cherubim" instead of a cherub because he is "practically plural," having a multitude of wings and eyes. The children also encounter a tall robed being named Blajeny, who informs them that he is a Teacher, and that they and Proginoskes have all been called to his class. They also encounter a snake that lives in their wall, Louise the Larger, who is also a Teacher. Meg learns that the galaxy is threatened by beings called Echthroi, who seek to erase the entire universe by un-Naming things. She soon has to save Mr. Jenkins from this fate, by Naming him. Part of the task is to distinguish the real Mr. Jenkins from two Echthroi doubles, but it also means that she must look past her personal grudge, find the goodness in Mr. Jenkins, and let herself love him. The characters then learn that Echthroi are destroying Charles Wallace's farandolae. They travel inside one of his mitochondria, which is named Yadah, and turn the tide by convincing a larval farandola to take root and accept its role as a mature fara, against the urgings of an Echthros. In the process, Meg is nearly "Xed,"(unnamed) and Mr. Jenkins is invaded by his Echthros doubles. Proginoskes sacrifices himself to "fill in" the emptiness of the Echthroi, Charles Wallace's life is saved, and everything returns to normal.
1088216	/m/044y1d	The Long Patrol	Brian Jacques	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tamello De Fformelo Tussock (or Tammo), a young hare who lives at Camp Tussock, longs to be part of the Long Patrol at Salamandastron. However, his father, Cornspurrey De Fformelo Tussock, will not hear of it. He believes that his son is too young to join up. Against her husband's wishes, Tammo's mother, Mem Divinia, prepares for him to leave during the night with Russa Nodrey, a wandering squirrel who is a friend of the family. The two then set off to find the Long Patrol. Along the way, they encounter the ferrets Skulka and Gromal. They do eventually meet up with the Long Patrol, but Russa is killed saving a baby badger, who is named Russano by one of the hares, Rockjaw Grang, in Russa's honor. Meanwhile, Gormad Tunn, the rat leader of the Rapscallion army has been dying from mortal wounds. The Rapscallions are in fear of Cregga Rose Eyes, the ruler of Salamandastron. Tunn's two sons, Byral Fleetclaw and Damug Warfang, fight to the death to determine who will be the new commander of the Rapscallions. Damug kills Byral through treachery and takes over control of the army, which he commands to move inland. At Redwall Abbey, the inhabitants discover that the south wall is mysteriously sinking into the ground. Foremole Diggum and his crew believe the best thing to do is to knock the wall down and re-build it. During the night, a storm brings a tree down on the wall, making the moles' job easier but also leaving the Abbey open to attack. The broken wall reveals a well, which turns out to be part of the ancient castle Kotir. Abbess Tansy, Friar Butty, Shad the Gatekeeper, Giygas, and Craklyn the Recorder investigate below. After a harrowing journey, they find the treasure of Verdauga Greeneyes, the long-dead lord of Kotir. The Long Patrol goes to Redwall, hoping to inform the denizens about the threat posed by Damug. At the abbey, the spirit of Martin the Warrior appears to Tammo, instructing him to go in the company of the hare Midge Manycoats to Damug's camp. Disguised as a vermin seer, Midge advises Damug not to attack the vulnerable abbey directly, but suggests an alternate place and time instead, buying the defenders precious time to prepare themselves. When the hare Rockjaw Grang is killed by the Rapscallions, Cregga's dreams direct her to the ridge where Midge has directed the battle to occur. Meanwhile, the Redwallers have gathered all the allies they can find, and with the Long Patrol, they battle a losing effort against the rat hordes. At a crucial point in the battle when it seems Damug might win, Lady Cregga Rose Eyes appears with the rest of the Salamandastron hares. She seizes Damug and strangles him, but he hacks at her eyes, blinding her in the process. The hares and Redwallers are eventually victorious, and the treasure brought back from Kotir by the Friar Butty is melted down into medals for the creatures that fought in battle. The ridge is named The Ridge of a Thousand after the vermin horde that lost all thousand of their number. In the end, Tammo marries the beautiful Pasque Valerian, the healer of the Long Patrol, and travels to Salamandastron. Cregga remains at Redwall Abbey as the new Badger Mother, and Russano, later on, journeys to Salamandastron, with Russa's hardwood stick as his weapon. He will turn out to be one of the only Badger Lords never to be possessed by the Bloodwrath.
1088486	/m/04jpfwy	Netherland	Joseph O'Neill	2008-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 For while the protagonist, Hans van den Broek, chooses cricket as his refuge, there's a lot more going on here than the "sport of gentlemen". Hans is an immigrant — Dutch-born and now residing in Manhattan, with his wife and young son. He's desperate to fit in and goes through the whole rigmarole of gaining his US drivers' license, if only to become that little bit more embedded in the culture. Connecting with people who play cricket in New York is yet another way he can "connect", albeit with an immigrant underclass. And, tellingly, the one man with whom he forges a tentative friendship, Chuck Ramkissoon, winds up being pulled out of a New York canal with his hands tied behind his back.
1088681	/m/044zmw	The Gadget Maker				 The novel traces the life of Stanley Brack, captivated by model aircraft as a child. He enters MIT, and in a memorable scene, is interviewed by the head of the School of Aeronautical Engineering, a legendary German aerodynamicist. His main concern is unexpected. "From your hair and general coloring," he said slowly, "I thought you might perhaps be Jewish." Brack reassures him that he and both his parents are Baptists and of Scots-Irish descent. "We have to be careful," the professor confides; "The aircraft industry is one of the few they haven't managed to take over yet," and congratulates Stanley on his acceptance into the course. The incident turns out to be one of many in which Brack swallows any thought of protest and goes along to get along. After graduation, he joins Amcraft, the Amalgamated Aircraft Corporation, in Los Angeles. It is a manufacturer of aircraft components that is just about to unveil its first complete airplane, a transport. The company is run personally by Dave Humbler, "president, founder of the company, chief engineer&mdash;big wheel number one. Real nice guy, Dave," a colleague explains. (Resemblances can be seen to the Douglas Aircraft Company.) Brack rises through the ranks and grows with the company. After the war Amcraft acquires the services of Gunther Rausch, "a spoil of war" and a rocket expert from Peenemünde. His presence gives the company an edge in picking up missile work. Rausch is brilliant but arrogant and Brack detests him. Nevertheless, as the book draws to a climax, he makes common cause with him in an effort to perfect a guided missile. Brack is the project manager, and the project is in trouble and behind schedule. He pressures a friend and colleague into conducting some dangerous rocket tests with Rausch. Rausch is tense and jittery and gives coworkers an impression that he is concealing personal inexperience in conducting such tests. There is an explosion, and Brack's friend Sim suffers terrible injuries: physical and chemical burns and lung damage that leaves him close to death. Brack's fiancée, a witness, tells Brack that Rausch was panicky during the test and "never stopped fiddling with the switches... he was like some hot-head whose car won't start but who keeps on turning the ignition switch." She thinks Rausch could have caused the explosion (a concern which ultimately turns out to be unfounded). Brack furiously argues with Rausch, then debates with his superior about the project's future and who should lead it. Brack convinces his superior to let him continue as leader. As the discussion closes, his superior says "Okay, it's all settled." But he adds "One other thing&mdash;I'm firing the girl." Brack's protest sticks in his throat; "ashamed, he looked at his feet, and then he nodded." The book closes with Brack and Rausch standing together literally arm in arm, watching the conclusion of a successful missile test. "Did you see it, Gunther?" Brack says. "Yah," breaths Rausch, "Just like a star. A shooting star." "And we made it," says Brack, proudly, as the tale ends. The New York Times reviewer says that "the question arises... whether Brack is to be regarded as an all-wool idealist pursuing heroically his destiny despite any and all distractions tossed in his way. Or is he a less desirable type, possessed of the ability to abandon all pretense to ethical conduct in his ambitious pursuit after self-advancement?" Although the Times calls it an "absorbing narrative," to a modern reader much of the interest lies, not in the broad story outline, but in the dozens of little details and circumstantial touches which bring times, places, and situations&mdash;not well documented elsewhere&mdash;to life.
1088788	/m/044_15	Orley Farm	Anthony Trollope	1861	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 When Joseph Mason of Groby Park, Yorkshire, died, he left his estate to his family. A codicil to his will, however, left Orley Farm (near London) to his much younger second wife and infant son. The will and the codicil were in her handwriting, and there were three witnesses, one of whom was no longer alive. A bitterly fought court case confirmed the codicil. Twenty years pass. Lady Mason lives at Orley Farm with her adult son, Lucius. Samuel Dockwrath, a tenant, is asked to leave by Lucius, who wants to try new intensive farming methods. Aggrieved, and knowing of the original case (John Kenneby, one of the codicil witnesses, had been an unsuccessful suitor of his wife Miriam Usbech), Dockwrath investigates and finds a second deed signed by the same witnesses on the same date, though they can remember signing only one. He travels to Groby Park in Yorkshire, where Joseph Mason the younger lives with his comically parsimonious wife, and persuades Mason to have Lady Mason prosecuted for forgery. The prosecution fails, but Lady Mason later confesses privately that she committed the forgery, and is prompted by conscience to give up the estate. There are various subplots. The main one deals with a slowly unfolding romance between Felix Graham (a young and relatively poor barrister without family) and Madeline Staveley, daughter of Judge Stavely of Noningsby. Graham has a long-standing engagement to the penniless Mary Snow, whom he supports and educates while she is being “moulded” to be his wife. Between the Staveleys at Alston and Orley Farm at Hamworth lies the Cleve, where Sir Peregrine Orme lives with his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Orme, and grandson, Peregrine. Sir Peregrine falls in love with Lady Mason and is briefly engaged to her, but she calls off the match when she realises the seriousness of the court case. Meanwhile, Mr. Furnival, another barrister, befriends Lady Mason, arousing the jealousy of his wife. His daughter, Sophia, has a brief relationship with Augustus Stavely and a brief engagement to Lucius Mason. Eventually Furnival and his wife are reconciled, and Sophia's engagement is dropped. Sophia is portrayed as an intelligent woman who writes comically skillful letters.
1088794	/m/044_26	The Big Time	Fritz Leiber		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The storyline involves two factions, both capable of time travel, engaged in long-term war with each other. Their method of battle involves changing the outcome of events throughout history. The two opposing groups are nicknamed the Spiders and the Snakes. Their soldiers are recruited from various places and times: Cretan Amazons, Roman legionnaires, Hussars, Wehrmacht Landsers, American GIs, Space Commandos, and soldiers from the armies of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Stalin and may find themselves fighting side-by-side or on opposing sides. Likewise medical staff and entertainers are inducted into the temporal war to provide rest and relaxation for weary combatants. The soldiers do not know how the war began or if it has an end. They also do not know the true form or identity of the Spiders or the Snakes. No one knows how those nicknames were chosen, or whether they are in any way accurate. The action of the story occurs in a rest and relaxation base between the changing time lanes. The plot has the form of a locked room mystery.
1089665	/m/0451g9	The Last Juror	John Grisham	2004	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In 1970, the first person narrator, a 23-year-old college drop-out by the name of Willie Traynor, comes to Clanton, Mississippi for an internship at the local newspaper, The Ford County Times. However the editor, Wilson Caudle, drives the newspaper into bankruptcy through years of mismanagement. Willie decides to buy the paper spontaneously for fifty-thousand dollars, through money from his wealthy grandmother, and becomes the editor and owner of The Ford County Times. Shortly after this, a member of the notorious and scandalous Padgitt family brutally rapes and kills a young widow named Rhoda Kassellaw. The murderer, Danny Padgitt, is tried in front of a jury and is found guilty. Prior to being sentenced, Danny threatens to kill each of the jury members, should they convict him. Although they do find him guilty, the jury cannot decide whether to send him to life in prison or to Death Row, so Danny is sentenced to life in prison at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. After only nine years in prison, Danny Padgitt is paroled and returns to Clanton. Immediately, two jury members are killed and one is nearly killed by a bomb. Jury member and close friend of Willie, Miss Callie Ruffin, reveals that the recent victims were the jurors who were against sentencing Danny to Death Row. Callie Ruffin is black, and was the first black on a jury trying a white criminal in Ford County. With her husband, she has a family of highly accomplished adult children, who live outside of Mississippi. Convinced that Danny is exacting his revenge, as promised, the judge of Clanton issues an arrest for Danny Padgitt. At Padgitt's trial, the former lover of Rhoda Kassellaw, Hank Hooten, guns down Danny Padgitt in the courtroom by positioning himself on the balcony. Willie later discovers that the assassin is also a schizophrenic and would often hear the voices of the victim's children in his head, convincing him to murder Danny and the three jurors who voted against his conviction to Death Row. After nine years of ownership, Willie sells The Ford County Times for 1.5 million dollars. Soon after, Callie Ruffin dies of a heart attack, and the book ends with Willie writing her obituary.
1090476	/m/04548d	Harpist in the Wind	Patricia A. McKillip	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Morgon of Hed and Raederle of An set out to discover the answers to the questions: Who are the shape changers who pursue them?, and Where is the High One, the source of the land law binding the realm together? Along the way they are helped by the wizards of the realm, recently released from the bonds in which Ghisteslwchlohm had held them by Morgon, and by the land heirs/rulers. After confronting Ghisteslwchlohm in the city of Lungold, where the wizard once had ruled, Morgon is imprisoned by the shape changers within Erlenstar Mountain, as they don't want to kill him. They, the exiled Earth Masters, need him to reach the High One, who prevents them from exercising full power. He escapes with the help of Raederle and someone who is later revealed to be the High One in disguise. Seeking refuge in the far north, he begins to learn the land law of each kingdom. Once he has partially learned all of the land law does Morgon discover that the High One had journeyed with him as Deth and the wizard Yrth; the High One tells Morgon at the top of Wind Plain that he (Morgon) is the High One's land heir. When the High One is killed by Ghisteslwchlohm, now possessed by the shape changers, with Morgon's three-starred sword, Morgon learns to shape and/or bind the winds to overcome the Earth Masters and bring peace to the land; he truly is the High One's heir. In the trilogy, land law resides with the land ruler of each of the kingdoms within the realm. Land rulers are ostensibly aware of all of the entities within their kingdom. They can sense, each creature, each plant, each rock. The High One, in McKillip's creation, seems to have the same relationship with the entire realm, as he started to bind all of the land law when he sensed that the Earth Master Eriel began to gather power for her own ends. When the land law passes on, the land heir suddenly becomes aware of everything in his or her kingdom, or in the entire realm.
1090535	/m/0454d_	Islandia	Austin Tappan Wright	1942		 While an undergraduate at Harvard, John Lang becomes friends with an Islandian fellow-student named Dorn, and decides to learn the Islandian language (of which there are very few speakers outside Islandia). Once he has graduated, his uncle, a prominent businessman, arranges his appointment as American consul to Islandia, based primarily on his ability to speak the language. Gradually John Lang learns that his tacit mission as American consul is to do whatever is necessary to increase American trade opportunities in Islandia. He does not undertake this mission right away, preferring to take a little time first to get to know the country and the people. John Lang meets and falls in love with Dorn's sister, Dorna. They spend some time together alone, which John finds unnerving at first, since they are not chaperoned. When Dorna comes to understand John's feelings, she tells him that she does not love him in return in that way (though he wonders whether she means "cannot", or "will not"). She accepts the hand of the King instead, a handsome young man who has been courting her for some time. One of the culminations of the plot is the decision by the people of Islandia to reject the aggressive overtures of the Great Powers for unrestricted trade and immigration, choosing instead to maintain their tradition of isolation. As this political struggle comes to a head, John Lang follows his conscience and sides with the Islandians, to the great disappointment of many American businessmen who were looking forward to new lucrative trade opportunities, including John Lang's uncle. Near the end of the novel, John Lang is allowed to become a citizen of Islandia as a reward for heroism in an attack by a neighboring group. By this point he has fallen in love with an American friend with whom he has maintained steady correspondence. They decide to marry, and when she arrives in Islandia she, too, is granted citizenship.
1090537	/m/0454fb	Gardens of the Moon	Steven Erikson	1999-04-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The sequence details the various struggles for power on a world dominated by the Malazan Empire. It is notable for the use of high magic, and unusual plot structure.. Gardens of the Moon centres around the Imperial campaign to conquer the city of Darujhistan. The novel opens in the 96th year of the Malazan Empire, during the final year of the Emperor Kellanved. A young boy named Ganoes Paran witnesses the sacking of the Mouse Quarter of Malaz City. Paran wants to be a soldier when he grows older. Commander Whiskeyjack disapproves, as does Claw leader Surly (Laseen). Erikson skips seven years from the Prologue, during which time the Emperor and his ally, Dancer, have been assassinated and supplanted by his chief of the secret police. Empress Laseen now rules with the aid of the "Claw," a shadowy group of assassins whose function is to further her ambitions. The story opens several years into a series of wars by the Malazan Empire to conquer the continent of Genabackis. The Malazan 2nd Army under High Fist Dujek has been besieging the city of Pale, one of only two Free Cities left in the Malazans' path in Genabackis, for several years. Pale is holding out thanks to an alliance with the powerful Anomander Rake, Lord of Moon's Spawn (a floating fortress), leader of the non-human Tiste Andii. Pale finally falls when Rake withdraws his fortress following a fierce battle. Even then, the Empire suffers severe losses, including the near total destruction of a legendary infantry unit in its 2nd army, The Bridgeburners. Several characters speculate that someone higher up within the Empire may be engineering the elimination of various people who were loyal to the late Emperor. The Empire then turns its attention to the other remaining Free City, Darujhistan. The few dozen surviving members of the Bridgeburners, led by Sergeant Whiskeyjack, are sent to try and undermine the city from within. Once there they attempt fruitlessly to contact the city's assassin's guild, in the hope of hiring their betrayal. Adjunct Lorn, a high ranking representative of the Empress, is sent to uncover something in the hills east of Darujhistan, in the company of a Tlan Imass, a member of another species that once dominated the world before humans. Meanwhile Tattersail, one of the few mages to survive the Battle of Pale, and Captain Paran head toward the city to determine the reason for the increased involvement of several gods and other magical forces in the campaign. At the same time, Anomander Rake offers his alliance to the true rulers of Darujhistan, a secretive cabal of mages; while a group of con-artists and underworld figures within the city work to oppose members of the civic government who are considering capitulating to the Empire. The plots collide when Adjunct Lorn releases a Jaghut Tyrant, a massively powerful being from thousands of years ago, with the aim of either damaging Anomander Rake seriously or forcing him to withdraw from the city. A substantial subplot involves a young Bridgeburner recruit named Sorry, who is in fact possessed by The Rope, patron of assassins. When Paran and Rake negotiate his withdrawal from the war, she is freed and falls in with Crokus, a young Daru thief. As the novel ends Crokus, a Bridgeburner named Fiddler and the Bridgeburner assassin Kalam volunteer to take the former Sorry (now called Apsalar) back to her homeland of Itko Kan and they depart (their story continues in Deadhouse Gates). Meanwhile, Dujek and Whiskeyjack lead the 2nd Army into rebellion against Laseen's increasingly monstrous rule. Now called Onearm's Host, the 2nd Army calls for a truce with the Tiste Andii and the Crimson Guard, a mercenary army that has been working against the Empire. Dujek is also concerned about the declaration of Holy War called by the Pannion Seer, whose empire is advancing from the south-east of Genabackis. Darujhistan has evaded conquest by the Malazan Empire, for now, but may be in danger from this new threat. Elsewhere, it is confirmed that Seven Cities has begun a mass-uprising against the Empire. These and other plot developments are continued in the third novel, Memories of Ice.
1091502	/m/0457ln	General Prologue	Geoffrey Chaucer			 The frame story of the poem, as set out in the 858 lines of Middle English which make up the general prologue, is of a religious pilgrimage. The narrator, "Geoffrey Chaucer", is in The Tabard in Southwark, where he meets a group of "sundry folk" who are all on the way to Canterbury, the site of the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. The setting is April, and the prologue starts by singing the praises of that month whose rains and warm western wind restore life and fertility to the earth and its inhabitants. This abundance of life, the narrator says, prompts people to go on pilgrimages; in England, the goal of such pilgrimages is the shrine of Thomas Beckett. The narrator falls in with a group of pilgrims, and the largest part of the prologue is taken up by a description of them; Chaucer seeks to describe their 'condition', their 'array', and their social 'degree': :To telle yow al the condicioun, :Of ech of hem, so as it semed me, :And whiche they weren, and of what degree, :And eek in what array that they were inne, :And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne. The pilgrims include a knight, his son a squire, the knight's yeoman, a prioress accompanied by a second nun and the nun's priest, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk, a sergeant of law, a franklin, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, a tapestry weaver, a cook, a shipman, a doctor of physic, a wife of Bath, a parson, his brother a plowman, a miller, a manciple, a reeve, a summoner, a pardoner, the host (a man called Harry Bailly), and a portrait of Chaucer himself. At the end of the section, the Host proposes the story-telling contest: each pilgrim will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back. Whoever tells the best story, with "the best sentence and moost solaas" (line 798) is to be given a free meal.
1092478	/m/045b5g	Schismatrix	Bruce Sterling	1985-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The main character, Abélard Lindsay, is born in the ancient lunar colony Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic, into a family of aristocratic Mechanists, but after being sent to the Shaper’s Ring Council, he receives specialized and experimental diplomatic training and gives his loyalty to the Shapers' cause. He, his best friend and fellow Shaper protege Philip Constantine and the beautiful and passionate Preservationist Vera Kelland lead an insurgency against the rulers of the republic, who use Mechanist technology to prolong their lives. The three of them influence the younger generation towards the Shapers' cause in their pursuit of Preservationism, a movement devoted to the preservation of earth-bound human culture. Kelland and Lindsay agree to kill themselves as a political statement, but Lindsay reneges on his suicide pact after Kelland is dead. Constantine attempts to kill Lindsay but instead kills a Mechanist, creating a scandal. Constantine is allowed to remain in the Republic because his knowledge is needed to keep the Republic's environment from self-destructing but Lindsay is exiled to the Mare Tranquilitatis Circumlunar People's Zaibatsu. This lunar colony, which collapsed due to an environmental crisis, has become a refuge for "sundogs", criminals, dissidents and wanderers. There he meets Kitsune, a woman modified by the Shapers to be an ideal prostitute. Apparently a servant of the Geisha Bank, a powerful money center, she in fact rules the bank through the remotely operated body of her now brain-dead predecessor. In his months on the Zaibatsu, Lindsay uses his diplomatic talents to organize a complex fraud involving a fictitious theatrical event and befriends an old Mechanist, Fyodor Ryumin. However, eventually the fraud takes on a life of its own, and the new-formed Kabuki Intrasolar becomes a legitimate artistic and business venture. Lindsay can't remain to enjoy the profits, though: Constantine has in the meantime overthrown the Corporate Republic's government. Constantine has abandoned Preservationism to become a Shaper militant, and sends an assassin to present a stark choice: become Constantine's pawn or be killed by the assassin. Lindsay manages to escape with a group of Mechanist pirates, in the process aiding Kitsune to take power of the Geisha Bank openly. Lindsay joins a ship called the Red Consensus, which doubles as the nation-state of the Fortuna Miners' Democracy, after the failure of the previously independent asteroid-mining Mechanist cartel. The FMD, financed by more wealthy Mechanists cartels, annexes the asteroid Esairs XII, home to the Mavrides family, a small shaper clan. Lindsay meets Nora Mavrides, a fellow diplomat. Nora informs Abélard that the subjects of the diplomatic training are in disgrace due to the high incidents of treason and defection from their ranks. The two of them work to promote peaceful coexistence between the Shaper militants and the Mechanist pirates, but after several months of conflict, espionage, murders and sabotages, open fighting breaks out. Mavrides and Lindsay, now lovers, eventually murder their companions to save one another. Before the asteroid's life-support systems shut down after the battle, the alien Investors arrive. Peace finally comes to the Schismatrix after the aliens arrive. The alien Investors are obsessed with trade and wealth, and at first encourage humanity to focus on business instead of war. Trade flourishes and the Shapers and Mechanists put their differences aside. Lindsay and Mavrides become powerful Shaper leaders, thanks to their early contact with the Investors. The Investor Peace does not last forever, though, and tensions between Shapers and Mechanists eventually start to rise when the Investors play the factions against one another. Ultimately Philip Constantine rises to power and takes control of the Ring Council, ousting Mavride's and Lindsay's pro-détente faction. Lindsay runs away from what he sees as a hopeless battle, but Nora decides to stay in the Rings, where they had built their lives and family, to fight Constantine and his militant government. Lindsay escapes to the Mechanist cartels in the asteroid belt, where Kitsune has again secretly taken power. There Lindsay works ceaselessly for decades to bring about the détente he believes will reunite him with Mavrides. Using a recording of an Investor's ship queen involved in some taboo activities to blackmail the alien, Lindsay contributes to the creation of Czarina-Kluster, neither Shaper nor Mechanist, which quickly becomes one of the richest and most powerful states in the solar system. Lindsay's partner, Wellspring, plans to use the colony to promote his post-humanist ideology, while Lindsay himself seeks to bring Nora to the new colony. However, Constantine discovers Mavride's plan to defect and forces her to kill herself. Consumed with hatred, Lindsay for the first time confronts his former friend directly, arranging a duel with him using an ancient alien artifact called the Arena. While Lindsay wins, the Arena leaves both him and Constantine catatonic. Years after the duel, Lindsay wakes up on his old home, now renamed the Neotenic Cultural Republic. Constantine's militant Shaperism has been replaced by a Preservationist government, dedicated to remaining a cultural preserve where normal, unmodified human life is preserved. As part of the treatment that restored Lindsay's mind, his original Shaper diplomatic training has been removed. Having returned to a Preservationist world, and now restored to a fully human state, Lindsay decides to break with his past and embrace new dreams. He becomes a post-humanist and returns to Czarina-Kluster to work with Wellspring's 'Lifesiders' clique. In the years during Lindsays' catatonia, the expansion of settlements throughout the solar system has seen an economy in huge surplus; with abundant wealth, expensive and prolonged terraforming efforts are first being considered. While Wellspring seeks to terraform Mars, Lindsay attempts to create an abyssal ecology on Europa. Constantine's Shaper family has been disgraced by Constantine's defeat, and Lindsay manages to convert them to his cause, even Constantine's "daughter" Vera (created from DNA taken from Vera Kelland decades before). As time goes on, eventually Czarina-Kluster, in its turn, faces social collapse. With his Lifesiders faction's research still in its infancy, Lindsay and Vera Constantine secretly break the Interdict and bring back samples of Earth's abyssal life, providing the breakthroughs that make the Europa project a success. As the Lifesiders transform themselves into fish-like forms capable of survival in Europa's oceans, Lindsay visits the now-cured Philip Constantine. Constantine believes that Lindsay will never see Europa, that he will leave in the end rather than see his cause through to fruition, just as he always had. He also reveals that Vera Constantine's DNA comes as much from Lindsay as Vera Kelland. Philip reconciles with Abélard, then commits suicide. When Lindsay returns to Europa, he finds that Philip is right—he can't bring himself to undergo the transformation. At that moment, an alien Presence, who had followed Vera Constantine since her mission in an alien embassy, reveals itself. The being explains that it has been devoted to exploring and exulting in the variety of experiences of the universe, and invites Lindsay to join it. Lindsay accepts and is transformed into a bodiless form, to explore the infinite mysteries of the universe for eternity.
1093821	/m/045fvg	The City of Ember	Jeanne DuPrau		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Unidentified architects, referred to as "The Builders", designed an underground city with supplies for its inhabitants to survive for 200 years. During that time, the Earth would be dangerous (because of a war) and later uninhabitable for an unspecified reason, although the book's prequel, The Prophet Of Yonwood'', points at that reason being a devastating nuclear war. After completion of the city, the Builders give the first mayor of the city a locked box that was to be passed down from one mayor to the next. Unknown to the mayors who were to pass it down the line, the box was set to open after 200 years and provide instructions to the city's inhabitants on how to return to the surface. For several generations, the box is faithfully passed down from one mayor to the next until the seventh mayor who, hoping that the box might contain a cure for the deadly cough that was infecting many citizens of the city at the time, takes the box home and tries to break it open. He fails, and dies before he is able to return the box to its rightful place, or inform anyone else of its importance. The story moves forward to the year 245 where the town is running out of supplies and the massive generator that provides the light and power for the city is on its last legs. At a graduation ceremony where young people are assigned their jobs, Lina Mayfleet is unfortunately assigned the job of “Pipeworks Laborer", while Doon Harrow has to be a “Messenger.” Both are unhappy with their assignments, and decide to switch jobs. At home, Lina's grandmother finds an old piece of paper she salvaged from inside a box. Unknown to her, it is the box that was passed from mayor to mayor. Currently, many people referred to as the "believers" believe that the Builders would come back and guide the citizens of Ember out of the city. Lina attempts to decipher the letter, but her little sister, Poppy, has chewed on it and the letter has holes and is ripped. Finally, she asks Doon and other people to help her reconstruct the letter. After much trial and error they realize it's instructions from the builders on how to exit the city, trying to find the exit. Soon, they find an underground river, where they discover boats meant to be used by the community. They go on a wild boat ride and when the boat finally stops, they find an old journal explaining the history of Ember. The Builders decided to protect 100 adults and 100 children to ensure that the human race would survive. After they find the journal they are faced with a very steep climb that takes hours, but when they get to the top they discover the outside world, and through a series of events they find a cave leading to a cliff that shows the city miles below. In a scene reminiscent of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, they are shocked when they see the dim, glimmering lights of the city beneath them; they never knew they were living underground. They throw a rock with instructions tied to it down to the city in hope that the people of Ember will escape. The novel ends with Mrs. Murdo, Lina's guardian (or Loris Harrow in the movie) finding the note.
1095679	/m/045lxf	Earthworks	Brian Aldiss	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set in a world of environmental catastrophe and extreme socio-economic inequality. Outside crowded cities controlled by a police state, a class of wealthy and powerful "Farmers" exploit a rural prison labor population and hunt down subversive "Travellers" who have broken free of social controls. The novel is considered influential as both "Travellers" and the idea of the Earthwork have become part of public life in Britain.
1096080	/m/045nbh	The Great American Novel	Philip Roth		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns the Patriot League, a fictional American baseball league, and the national Communist conspiracy to eliminate its history because it has become a fully open communist organization.
1096466	/m/045pbq	Heir to the Empire	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gilad Pellaeon, captain of the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera, receives word that an information raid on the Obroa-skai system was successful. A retaliatory strike by an Obroa-skai task force is easily defeated by Pellaeon's superior, Grand Admiral Thrawn. On Coruscant, Obi-Wan Kenobi approaches Luke Skywalker in his sleep to say farewell, sending Luke into depression. Leia Organa Solo, three months pregnant with twins, senses Luke's depression and sends C-3PO to speak with him. On Tatooine, Han Solo and Chewbacca offer legal work to Dravis and his smuggler allies in an attempt to solve the New Republic's shortage on cargo ships; Borsk Fey'lya, a New Republic council member and native Bothan, dismisses this gesture as futile. On Myrkr, smuggler Talon Karrde and his subordinate, Mara Jade, help Thrawn and Pellaeon obtain several creatures called ysalamiri. Afterward, the Chimaera travels to the Emperor's storehouse on Wayland. On the planet, Thrawn and Pellaeon encounter Joruus C'Baoth, the guardian of the storehouse. The ysalamiri that Thrawn brought with him prevents C'Baoth from using the Force within a short radius; with little choice, C'Baoth offers his services in exchange for two prospective students: Luke and Leia. Thrawn sends a group of Noghri to capture Luke and Leia on Bimmisaari, but the attempt fails. After the failed mission, Thrawn convinces C'baoth to seek Luke while the Empire focuses on capturing Leia. Han decides to suspend negotiations with the Bimmisarri leaders and return to Coruscant; Admiral Ackbar, commander in chief of the New Republic fleet, agrees with Han's decision, while Fey'lya feels that the departure will generate negative attention. Meanwhile, Thrawn launches his first offensive: a series of hit-and-run attacks into New Republic territory. After another failed kidnapping on Bpfaash, Han and Leia decide it might be best to keep a low profile; they decide to visit Lando Calrissian on Nkllon. Noghri aliens once again attempt to capture Leia. On Dagobah, Luke discovers a metal cylinder and decides to bring it to Lando for investigation. When the protagonists meet on Nkllon to visit Lando, 51 of his mole miners are stolen by the Empire. Hoping to elude the Noghri, Leia and Chewbacca visit Chewbacca's homeworld, Kashyyyk. Han and Lando discuss plans to pay a visit to Talon Karrde as part of Han's earlier mission to obtain cargo ships from smugglers. The Chimaera intercepts a message coming from the Millennium Falcon in Leia's voice, but Thrawn knows it is merely a recording; through logical reasoning, he determines that Han and Lando are the only ones aboard, and adjusts his plans accordingly. Thrawn nearly captures Luke in a space ambush; Luke escapes but becomes stranded in his X-Wing with R2-D2 until the Wild Karrde discovers them. Luke guesses that the Wild Karrde is either a smuggler, a pirate, or a disguised warship. Still, he takes his chances and goes aboard as he has no other option. Luke wakes up and realizes that he is no longer on the freighter. When he finally wakes up, he notices Mara Jade is in the room with him. Luke and Karrde discuss exactly what Karrde's intentions are for Luke. Karrde is undecided as to what he wants to do with Luke. Han uses C-3PO to transmit a message to Coruscant in Leia's voice. Han interprets the message to mean that Fey'lya is gathering forces to possibly push Ackbar out of the New Republic Council. In the meantime, Han and Lando leave the Falcon to meet with a fellow smuggler who is supposed to tell them the location of Talon Karrde's operations. Karrde alerts Mara to the two visitors on their way in: Han Solo and Lando Calrissian. Since he is still holding Luke as a hostage, he tells Mara to move him into a storage area so that neither Han nor Lando notice anything suspicious when they arrive. Karrde has the meeting with Han and Lando and is intrigued by the New Republic's offer. When Thrawn hails Karrde, he says he needs more ysalamiri and wants to have a talk. He tells Karrde that he is in the market for some new warships. Not long after Luke and R2's escape, they notice that Mara is not far behind them. Thrawn insists on sending stormtroopers to aid in a search and rescue mission. Karrde discovers that Han and Lando know about the Imperial visit to Myrkr. They sneak out to the storage sheds to snoop on the prisoner that Karrde is reportedly holding. When they get to the storage room Luke was in, they notice that the door opener was tampered with. In the middle of the night on Kashyyyk, an awake Leia is attacked by a Noghri alien. She successfully defends herself but then the alien stops his attack. Chewbacca and Ralrracheen burst into the room immediately and Leia tells them not to kill the alien. Using her lightsaber she disables their ship so they are forced to leave. As they get closer to the edge of the forest, Luke and Mara fight off predatory creatures. Mara decides to stop for the night and is then swiftly attacked by another predatory creature. Luke tries to scare it off but the tactic does not work. He manages to grab his lightsaber from Mara and he attacks the creature and kills it. On board the Chimaera, Pallaeon confirms that there are 112 transient warships available at the Sluis Van Shipyards. They activate the cloaking shield and set the decoyed freighter toward Sluis Van for their attack. Threepio alerts Lando to the message that Luke has just sent to him. Aves is about to blow the rescue plan by beginning the attack, and Lando threatens him with a blaster. As Han and Luke make their way across the archway, Luke signals to R2 to propel his lightsaber toward him. The New Republic's X-wing fleet, Rogue Squadron, is at the Sluis Van Shipyards. Wedge Antilles notices a bulk freighter passing through without an escort. The battle has begun and the New Republic is unprepared. The Falcon makes its approach at the start of the battle. Immediately they join the fray. Han knows that the Empire has come to steal ships. He watches the battle unfold in disbelief as he notices many Imperial Star Destroyers are around. He decides to destroy the ships rather than letting the Empire get them. After that, Leia calls Han from Coruscant to tell him that Admiral Ackbar has been arrested on charges of treason.
1096467	/m/045pc2	Dark Force Rising	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book continues some time after the events of Heir to the Empire. Prior to the Clone Wars, the Old Republic had constructed a fleet of 200 Dreadnaughts (huge forerunners to Imperial Star Destroyers) that were highly automated. This reduced their crew complement from 16,000 to 2,000 without diminishing their firepower. The flagship of this fleet was the Katana and hence became known as the Katana fleet. Unfortunately, a virus infected the crews of the entire fleet and drove them insane. The madness caused the crews to "slave" the controls of all ships in the fleet to the Katana and send them all into hyperspace. The fleet was never seen again until veteran smuggler Talon Karrde discovers it through a lucky accident several years before the events of the first movie. Now having full access to Emperor Palpatine's private storehouse on the planet Wayland, Imperial Navy Grand Admiral Thrawn presses his advantage to marshal more forces for the battle against the New Republic. When his forces capture one of Karrde's colleagues who also knew where the fleet was, he assembles a clone army from the storehouse to take over the fleet. Han Solo and Lando Calrissian try to recruit former Republic Senator Garm bel Iblis to join the fight against the Empire. However, the two face stern opposition from him because he fell out with Mon Mothma in the early stages of the Rebellion and waged his own private war against the Empire. They also discover that Bel Iblis' fleet also has Katana warships. Elsewhere, Jedi Master Joruus C’baoth uses the Force to summon Luke Skywalker. Luke responds to the summons and begins instruction with C’baoth on the planet Jomark. However, the presence of Mara Jade complicates things further, especially when it is revealed that she was a former agent of the Emperor. Admiral Ackbar is later exonerated of the treason charges filed against him. With Noghri captive Khabarakh in tow, Leia, R2D2, C3PO, and Chewbacca travel to Khabarakh's home planet of Honoghr. She learns of the Empire's deception of the Noghri and convinces them to support the New Republic. After escaping C'baoth, Luke rejoins Lando and Han in securing the Katana fleet against Thrawn's troops. However, over the course of the battle, they find out that Thrawn has captured all but 15 of the Dreadnaughts. Jade is also knocked out during the fight when her fighter is shot down.
1096847	/m/045qg_	The Celestine Prophecy	James Redfield	1993	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book discusses various psychological and spiritual ideas that are rooted in many ancient Eastern Traditions, such as opening to new possibilities can help an individual to establish a connection with the Divine. The main character of the novel undertakes a journey to find and understand a series of nine spiritual insights on an ancient manuscript in Peru. The book is a first-person narrative of spiritual awakening. The narrator is in a transitional period of his life, and begins to notice instances of synchronicity, which is the belief that coincidences have a meaning personal to those who experience them. The story opens with the male narrator becoming reacquainted with an old female friend, who tells him about the Insights, which are contained in a manuscript dating to 600 BC, which has been only recently translated. After this encounter leaves him curious, he decides to go to Peru. On the airplane, he meets a historian who also happens to be interested in the manuscript. As well, he learns that powerful figures within the Peruvian government and the Catholic Church are opposed to the dissemination of the Insights. This is dramatically illustrated when police try to arrest and then shoot the historian soon after his arrival. The narrator then learns the Insights, one by one, often experiencing the Insight before actually reading the text, while being pursued by forces of the Church and the Peruvian government. In the end, he succeeds in learning the first nine Insights and returns to the United States, with a promise of a Tenth Insight soon to be revealed. The Insights are given only through summaries and illustrated by events in the plot. The text of no complete Insight is given, which the narrator claims is for brevity's sake; he notes that the 'partial translation' of the Ninth Insight was 20 typewritten pages in length. In the novel, the Maya civilization left ruins in Peru where the manuscript was found, whereupon the Incas took up residence in the abandoned Maya cities after the Maya had reached an "energy vibration level" which made them cross a barrier into a completely spiritual reality.
1097030	/m/045r0k	The Locked Room	Per Wahlöö	1972	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The Locked Room has two plots running simultaneously. Larsson and Kollberg are extremely reluctantly part of a special task force that needs to solve a spree of bank robberies. Martin Beck is given a pity job after recovering from being shot at the conclusion of The Abominable Man; he needs to solve a classic situation of the genre: the locked room mystery. The incompetence of the Swedish police force has spread to the point that all three detectives are severely hindered in their work. One criminal walks free for a heinous crime he did commit, then gets to do hard time for a crime he did not.
1097220	/m/045rp1	Castaways of the Flying Dutchman	Brian Jacques	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story starts by vaguely introducing a fourteen-year-old nameless boy, who at the beginning has no parents and is a mute. He is apparently running away from his life as an abused orphan, and accidentally slips on the Flying Dutchman as a stowaway. He is found, and made to work with the cook, Petros, an antagonistic character who abuses him. Petros names the boy Neb, which is short for Nebuchadnezzar. One day, while the crew is off drinking in the port town of Esbjerg, a dog wanders onto the ship and is befriended by Neb. He names the dog Denmark, after the country he found the dog in. They strike up an immediate friendship. Den hides under sacks until it is safe to come out. The cruel, wild, and fearsome Captain Vanderdecken steers his ship on a long voyage to get emeralds from a dealer across the ocean, supposedly in Asia. The ship sails to the tip of South America, the treacherous Cape Horn, and unsuccessfully attempts to pass three times. After the third attempt, Captain Vanderdecken curses the Lord for smiting him, and an angel descends from heaven and curses the ship to sail the seas for eternity. The angel, however, realizes Nebuchadnezzar and Denmark are not part of the motley, now undead crew, and throws them overboard. He blesses them, telling them to walk the earth forever, wise and forever young, to give kindness and guidance wherever they go. They later wash up on shore and find that they are able to communicate by thought. They are found and taken in by a kind-hearted shepherd named Luis who grows fond of them, but does not ask about their past. After spending several years with him, Luis dies in a storm, trying to save an ewe. The angel appears in a dream telling them that they must move on at the sound of a bell, which they hear jingling on the neck of a sheep walking by. Neb and Den, young but ageless, must leave. The story picks up many years later. Both characters have changed their names (by reversing them); Neb is now Ben and Den is Ned. It is apparent that they have lived with each other for several centuries. One day, they get on a train without knowing where they are going, and end up getting off at the village of Chapelvale. They meet a lady named Mrs. Winn as well as a boy named Alex and a girl named Amy. The children warn them about the Grange Gang, a group of local bullies. The gang leader, Wilf, takes an immediate disliking to Ben. Together Ben, Ned, Amy, Alex, and Mrs. Winn go on a treasure hunt to save the town, which is about to be converted into a limestone quarry and cement factory. They team up with an old ship's carpenter named John (who is at first believed to be a mad man), a milkman named Will, and Will's family. They follow a series of clues written by Mrs. Winn's ancestor, who was believed to have been given the deeds to the town. One clue leads to a treasure (which is a Byzantine artifact) and another clue and continues that way until three treasures and clues have been found. The last clue, of course, is the hardest and is the last thing that may show them the location of the deeds to Chapelvale. The deeds to the village are found and Mrs. Winn is able to claim Chapelvale as her property so that it can be saved. However, the angel appears once again and informs Ben and Ned that they must leave Chapelvale and their friends at the sound of a bell. Jon finds a bell in the Almshouse and becomes excited about the discovery. He and Will decide to try the bell out. Ben and Ned run as fast as they can to escape the sound, but it is too loud, and they must leave.
1097311	/m/045s0b	City of Golden Shadow	Tad Williams	1996-12-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first character introduced is a man called Paul Jonas, apparently an infantryman on the Western Front of the First World War. In what he at first believes to be a dream or hallucination, he meets a woman with wings, who gives him a feather. He wakes from the experience to find himself back in the trenches, but realises the experience was not a dream when he discovers the feather. Two of his comrades, Finch and Mullet, begin express doubts about his sanity. Eventually, Paul runs off into no-man's land. There, he finds the bird-woman, but Finch and Mullet have pursued him, and they have been transformed into monstrous shapes: Mullet is grossly fat and Finch has no eyes. Paul flees in terror and falls through a hole in space. He discovers himself in a place similar to the chess-land in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, where he is caught in the battle between the red and the white, as well as hunted by Finch and Mullet. He escapes with a young boy he met at an inn, whose name is Gally. They find themselves on Mars, which is inhabited by creatures who demand a sacrifice of a princess from the planet Venus each year. He recognizes the chosen woman as the winged woman he met earlier, although he cannot remember when he met her: his memory does not even extend to his time in the chess-land. With the help of other men from Earth, he rescues the princess, then flees from the angry Martians. He sees Mullet and Finch again, however, and tries to escape in a hijacked airship. He loses control of the airship, and finds himself in a conservatory with a harp, which shrinks to a size that it can fit in his palm. Mullet and Finch confront him, demanding that he give them the harp, but he refuses and appears again on the airship, which is hurtling towards the ground. Transported to yet another world, he is rescued from a frozen river by a group of Neanderthals, and a voice comes from the harp, telling him that friends will search for him on the river. The story moves to the late 21st century. The most significant technological change is the wide availability of virtual reality interfaces among all parts of society, so that the internet has been replaced by "the Net," a vast network of online VR environments. In Durban, a VR programming instructor named Irene "Renie" Sulaweyo is teaching a Kalahari Bushman named !Xabbu how to create such environments, while providing for her family, who are her alcoholic father Long Joseph and her ten-year-old brother Stephen. Stephen spends much of his time online, and frequently joins his friends in escapades to forbidden areas of the net. When he somehow ends up in a coma after visiting a forbidden club, she and !Xabbu decide to investigate. Inside the club, they discover a number of very unsavoury entertainments, and are very nearly trapped by the managers. Their most bizarre and horrifying discovery is a very powerful hypnotic entity, which Renie nearly dies trying to escape from. Convinced that the club is set up to damage the minds of children, as it has done to Stephen, she resolves to stop the people responsible. She finds an unusual and large piece of code, in the form of a golden diamond, on her machine, and consults her friend and mentor, Dr. Susan van Bleeck, about it. As they examine it, it erupts into an image of a golden city, then disappears. Renie's difficulties multiply, as it becomes clear that her investigations have earned her powerful enemies: she is stood down from her job and unknown persons set fire to her family's apartment complex. Finally, van Bleeck is brutally assaulted, and dies after leaving Renie and !Xabbu with three names: Martine Desroubins, Blue Dog Anchorite, and Bolivar Atasco. The first two are hackers that agree to help them find the golden city, which is in a mysterious network called "Otherland," while the third is an anthropologist and archaeologist whose expertise is pre-Columbian Latin America. Blue Dog Anchorite reveals himself to be Murat Sagar Singh, a retired programmer who worked on the security system for Otherland, and whose colleagues on the same project have been dying in unusual circumstances. He also reveals that Otherland was commissioned by a secret organisation called "The Grail Brotherhood," and that Atasco, who oversaw the security project for Otherland, was an important member of that organisation. Renie, !Xabbu, Martine and Singh plan to break into Otherland; Renie and !Xabbu, along with Long Joseph and van Bleeck's assistant Jeremiah Dako, travel to Wasps' Nest, a mothballed military base in the Drakensberg mountains, where there is equipment allowing Renie and !Xabbu to stay connected to the Net for extended periods. Preparations completed, they hack into Otherland, but Singh is confronted and killed by the security system; he is later found dead in his room from a heart attack. Renie, !Xabbu and Martine manage to enter Otherland, and make their way to the golden city, which is called Temilún. There, they meet the God-King, who reveals himself to be Atasco. In suburban California, a terminally-ill teenager named Orlando Gardiner has become the most celebrated warrior in the online Middle Country, a VR MMORPG based on swords-and-sorcery. However, while playing the game, he is distracted by a vision of a golden city and killed by a low-level monster. With the help of his friend, Sam Fredericks, he begins to investigate. Their investigations lead to TreeHouse, an online fringe community, and to Melchior, a code name used by Singh and others. Following the trail, they are mysteriously taken to a beach on a river. Across the river, they can see the golden city. They build a raft to cross the river, but are stopped by the police and taken to the palace of the God-King. On an army base in North Carolina, the young girl Christabel Sorensen becomes friends with Mr. Sellars, a mysterious old man living on the base. She is unaware that he is under house arrest, and her father, a senior military security officer, is in charge of guarding him. She helps him to escape from his house into a network of tunnels lying underneath the base. The Grail Brotherhood emerges as a small number of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people who have formed an exclusive society. Otherland is their private network, where many of them own numerous simulation worlds (others being leased out for very large sums), and they intend to use it for even more mysterious purposes. They meet in a simulation based on ancient Egypt, where their leader, Felix Jongleur, appears as Osiris and obliges other members to present themselves as various Egyptian deities. Jongleur commissions an employee, John Dread, to carry out a task referred to as the "Sky God Project." Dread promises to accomplish his mission, although it is not stated what exactly he must do. Renie, !Xabbu, Martine, Orlando, Fredericks and four other people in similar situations find themselves imprisoned in a virtual reality world so complex that it rivals reality. There, they meet Atasco and his wife, and learn that Atasco, though formerly a member of the Grail Brotherhood, has been uninvolved for some time (though he has been permitted to retain his simulation world), and is now secretly opposing the Brotherhood's plans. They meet the enigmatic Mr. Sellars, who tells them that the network is somehow built from the minds of catatonic children worldwide, and he calls upon the small group of adventurers to stop the Grail Brotherhood. Before they can get their questions answered, however, the meeting descends into chaos. Unknown to any of those gathered, Dread and a team of expert assassins have attacked the Atascos' island home in Colombia, and Bolivar and his wife are suddenly murdered. Sellars gives the adventurers some brief instructions: they are to search along the river for Paul Jonas, who is at large within Otherland's many simulation worlds, then he too vanishes. Even as the adventurers flee Temilún, Dread, with the help of criminal hacker Dulcie Anwin, hijacks the simulation body of one of their party. The group sails down the river, hoping to find the answers that will enable them to free the children from Otherland's hold.
1097522	/m/045slt	Thuvia, Maid of Mars	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1920	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Carthoris is madly in love with Thuvia. This love was foreshadowed at the end of the previous novel. Unfortunately Thuvia is promised to Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol. On Barsoom nothing can break an engagement between a man and woman except death, although the new suitor may not cause that death. Thus it is that Thuvia will have none of him. This situation leaves Carthoris in a predicament. As Thuvia suffers the common Burroughsian heroine's fate of being kidnapped and in need of rescue, Carthoris' goal is abetted by circumstances. Thus he sets out to find the love of his life. His craft is sabotaged and he finds himself deep in the undiscovered south of Barsoom, in the ruins of ancient Aanthor. Thuvia's kidnappers, the Dusar, have taken her there as well, and Carthoris is just in time to spot Thuvia and her kidnappers under assault by a green man of the hordes of Torquas. Carthoris leaps to her rescue in the style of his father. The rescue takes Carthoris and his love to ancient Lothar, home of an ancient fair-skinned human race gifted with the ability to create lifelike phantasms from pure thought. They habitually use large numbers of phantom bowmen paired with real and phantom banths (Barsoomian lions) to defend themselves from the hordes of Torquas. The kidnapping of Thuvia is done in such a way that Carthoris is blamed. This ignites a war between the red nations of Barsoom. Carthoris must try to be back in time with Thuvia to stop the war from breaking loose. Carthoris wonders if his love will ever be requited by the promised Thuvia.
1101696	/m/046309	The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch		2005	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 In the Discworld story the wizards learn that, once again, the history of Roundworld has changed, resulting in humans failing to leave Earth before the Extinction Level Event shown in the earlier books. They discover that the difference from established history was that Charles Darwin wrote a book called Theology of Species, which described how evolution must be controlled by a Creator. This was generally accepted by both religious figures and conservative scientists, and led to a certain stagnation of thought, preventing the eventual invention of the space elevator. When the wizards try to correct this, the potential futures of Roundworld go mad. The possibility of Darwin ever writing the book becomes zero, with most futures featuring his death in seemingly improbable ways. The wizards eventually deduce that Roundworld has caught the attention of the Auditors of Reality, who approve of a universe which runs on unthinking rules, and disapprove of humans, who try to make it more like the Discworld. Unlike the elven invasion in The Globe, which suppressed our creativity unthinkingly, this is a deliberate attempt to prevent humans escaping Earth. While attempting to maintain a timeline where The Origin was written, the wizards inadvertently take Darwin to the Discworld. There they discover that his line of thought was disrupted by the Disc's God of Evolution, leading to Theology. After defeating the Auditors the wizards manage to correct this, by explaining the situation to Darwin. Since Darwin then wishes to forget the whole thing, they are ethically able to grant his request.
1101747	/m/04634y	Five Little Pigs	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Carla is engaged to be married but she is afraid that the fact that her mother killed her father will poison her husband's love for her, as he may fear that she has inherited a murderous tendency. Carla also remembers her mother would never lie to her to hide an unpleasant truth and her mother had told her she was innocent through a letter. That is enough for Carla but she wants Poirot to convince her fiance. Carla's father, painter Amyas Crale, was poisoned with coniine, which had been extracted from poison hemlock by Meredith Blake but subsequently apparently stolen from him by Carla's mother, Caroline Crale. Caroline confessed to stealing the poison, claiming she had intended to use it to commit suicide. The poison ended up, however, in a glass from which Amyas had drunk cold beer, after complaining that 'everything tastes foul today.' Both the glass and the bottle of cold beer had been brought to him by Caroline. Her motive was clear: Amyas's young model and latest mistress, Elsa Greer, claimed he was planning to divorce Caroline and marry her instead. This was a new development; though Amyas had frequently had mistresses and affairs, he had never before shown any sign of wanting to leave Caroline. Poirot labels the five alternative suspects “the five little pigs”: they comprise Phillip Blake ("went to the market"); Philip's brother, Meredith Blake ("stayed at home"); Elsa Greer (now Lady Dittisham, "had roast beef"); Cecilia Williams, the governess ("had none"); and Angela Warren, Caroline’s younger half-sister ("went 'Wee! Wee! Wee!' all the way home"). As Poirot learns from speaking to them during the first half of the novel, none of the quintet has an obvious motive, and while their views of the original case differ in some respects there is no immediate reason to suppose that the verdict in the case was wrong. The differences are subtle. Phillip Blake’s hostility to Caroline is overt enough to draw suspicion. Meredith Blake mistrusts him, and has a very much more sympathetic view of her. Elsa seems emotionally stunted, as though her original passion for Amyas has left her prematurely devoid of emotion, except for hatred for Caroline Crale. Cecilia, the governess, gives some insight into both Caroline and Angela, but claims to have definite reason for believing Caroline guilty. Finally, Angela believes her sister to be innocent, but a letter that Caroline wrote to her after the murder contains no protestation of innocence, and makes Poirot doubt Caroline's innocence for perhaps the first time. In the second half of the novel, Poirot considers five accounts of the case that he has asked the suspects to write for him. These establish the succession of events on the day of the murder, and establish a small number of facts that are important to the solution of the puzzle. In the first place, there is a degree of circumstantial evidence incriminating Angela. Secondly, Cecilia has seen Caroline frantically wiping fingerprints off the bottle of beer as she waited by Amyas's dead body. Thirdly, there was a conversation between Caroline and Amyas, apparently about Amyas 'seeing to her packing' for Angela's return to school. Fourthly, Elsa overheard a heated argument between Caroline and Amyas in which he swore that he would divorce her and Caroline said bitterly, "you and your women." In the denouement, Poirot reveals the main emotional undercurrents of the story. Philip Blake has loved Caroline but his rejection by her has turned this to hatred. Meredith Blake, wearied by his long affection for Caroline, has formed an attachment to Elsa, also unreciprocated. These are mere red herrings, though. Putting together the case that would incriminate Angela (she had the opportunity to steal the poison on the morning of the crime, she had previously put salt in Amyas's glass as a prank and she was seen fiddling with the bottle of beer before Caroline took it down to him; she was very angry with Amyas), he demonstrates that Caroline herself would have thought that Angela was guilty. Her letter to Angela did not speak of innocence, because Caroline believed Angela knew for a fact that she (Caroline) was innocent. This explains why, if Caroline was innocent, she made no move to defend herself in court. Moreover, many years ago Caroline had hit Angela with a crowbar in a jealous rage, which had left a permanent disfiguring scar on Angela's face. Caroline had always felt deeply guilty about this and therefore felt that, by taking the blame for what she thought was Angela's crime, she could earn redemption. Caroline's actions, however, actually prove her innocence. By wiping the fingerprints off the bottle, she showed that she believed that the poison had been placed in it, rather than in the glass. Moreover, as she was seen handling the bottle there was no reason to remove her own fingerprints; she can only have been removing those of a third party. Angela, however, was not guilty. All the evidence incriminating Angela can be explained by the fact that she had stolen valerian from Meredith's laboratory that morning in preparation for playing another prank on Amyas. (As she had described the theft of the valerian in the future tense Poirot realised Angela had never carried out the act; she had completely forgotten she had stolen the valerian on the morning of that fateful day). The true murderer was Elsa. Far from being about to finish with Caroline, Amyas was entirely focused on completing his portrait of Elsa. Because Elsa was young she did not realize she was just another mistress, to be left as soon as she was painted. She took Amyas's promise 'to leave my wife' seriously. Amyas went along with this notion, to the short-term distress of his wife, so Elsa wouldn't leave before the painting was finished. Thus the half overheard 'see to her packing' did not refer to Angela's packing (why should Amyas do her packing with a wife and governess to see to such 'woman's work'?), but to sending Elsa packing. Caroline, reassured that Amyas had no intention of leaving her, was distressed at such cruelty to Elsa. She remonstrated with Amyas on a second occasion. Though Elsa falsely reported the gist of this conversation, she did mention that Caroline had said to Amyas 'you and your women', showing Poirot that in fact Elsa was in the same category as all of Amyas's other, discarded mistresses. After a disillusioned and betrayed Elsa overheard this conversation, she recalled seeing Caroline help herself to the coniine the day before and, under the pretence of fetching a cardigan, stole some of that poison by drawing it off with a fountain pen filler. She poisoned Amyas in the first, warm beer, and was then pleased to find that Caroline implicated herself still more seriously by bringing him another. (When Caroline brought Amyas a beer and he exclaimed that everything tastes foul today,' this not only showed that he had already had a drink before the one Caroline brought him, but he had had one which had tasted foul as well.) Amyas's last moments are spent working on his painting of Elsa, while she sits posing for it. In the beginning he does not realize he has been poisoned, but as he gradually weakens he apparently realizes it, because Meredith sees him give the painting a "malevolent glare". Poirot notes the unusual vitality in the face of the portrait and says, "It is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim &ndash; it is the picture of a girl watching her lover die." Poirot's explanation solves the case to the satisfaction of Carla and, most importantly, her fiancé. But, as Elsa forces him to admit, it cannot be proven. Poirot states that, although his chances of getting a conviction are slim, he does not intend to simply leave her to her rich, privileged life. Privately, however, she confides the full measure of her defeat. Caroline, having earned redemption, went uncomplainingly to prison, where she died soon after. Elsa has always felt that the husband and wife somehow escaped her, and her life has been empty since. The last paragraph of the novel underlines this defeat. “The chauffeur held open the door of the car. Lady Dittisham got in and the chauffeur wrapped the fur rug around her knees.”
1103865	/m/0468m1	Seventh Son	Orson Scott Card	1987	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alvin's family is migrating west. When they try to cross the Hatrack River, an unknown force tries to stop the as-yet-unborn Alvin being born - since Alvin would be the seventh son of a seventh son, therefore possessing incredible powers as a Maker. The force sends a tree down the river to crush the wagon the pregnant Mrs. Miller is riding in. Her son Vigor diverts the tree, but is mortally wounded in the act. Because a seventh son must be born while the other six are alive, Vigor desperately clings to life until Alvin is born. Help is dispatched at the insistence of five-year-old "torch" (a person who, among other things, can see the life forces of people and under certain conditions, their myriad alternate futures) Peggy Guester, who sees Alvin and Alvin's possible future as a Maker. As the years pass, Alvin avoids numerous attempts an unknown force to kill him, often helped by the intervention of a mysterious protector. Alvin's father, a non-believer in God, believes that a water spirit is trying to kill Alvin. When Alvin is seven, a new Reverend, named Thrower, arrives in town, trying to build a church. Alvin's father refuses to help, but Mrs. Miller has all of her sons work on building the church. When the ridgebeam is being place onto the church in construction, it shivers and breaks, seemingly about to fall on Alvin. However, mid-air, it breaks in two, and misses Alvin - yet another example of Alvin's close-to-death experiences. When Alvin goes home, he provokes one of his sisters by poking her, so they get revenge on Alvin by putting needles into his night gown. Alvin avenges himself by using his knack to send cockroaches after his sisters. The plan works, Alvin winning a victory over his sisters. However, afterwards, he has a vision he dubs Shining Man, who makes him promise only to use his knack for good. When Alvin is ten, "Taleswapper" (William Blake) a traveling storyteller who arrives in the town Alvin's parents have founded. After stopping by Alvin's brother-in-law's house (who directs Taleswapper to the Miller house), he visits the church, where he notices that the altar has been touched upon by an evil entity. Reverend Thrower kicks him out, and Taleswapper goes to the Miller's, where his timely intervention stops Mr. Miller from killing Alvin. Taleswapper is welcomed in. Taleswapper helps to put a name to the unknown force that tries to stop Alvin from realizing his true powers as a Maker: the Unmaker. Meanwhile, the Reverend Philadelphia Thrower becomes a tool of the Unmaker - who was the evil force that touched the altar. Soon the Miller family goes to a quarry to cut out a millstone. Here Alvin's knack is revealed - single-handedly he cut the millstone through hard rock. During the night, Taleswapper and Mr. Miller guard the millstone. Mr. Miller tells Taleswapper a story about how a force is trying to use him to kill Alvin - revealing the reason why Mr. Miller was about to kill Alvin when Taleswapper first arrived. Taleswapper advises Mr. Miller to send Alvin away to someplace where he may be safe. The next day the millstone is taken home. The Unmaker finally manages to injure Alvin, by making a millstone fall on him. Taleswapper encourages him to heal himself. Alvin does so, but finds that a part of his bone he cannot heal alone, and Alvin falls into a time of bad health. He realizes that he might need outside help to heal himself. Reverend Thrower (acting as a surgeon) attempts to kill him, but finds himself unable to by a mysterious force. Alvin heals himself (with the aid of his brother Measure, who performs the surgery). Alvin contracted as an apprentice to a blacksmith in the town on the Hatrack River where he was born. Taleswapper meets up with Peggy. It is revealed that she, using her torch powers and Alvin's birth caul, had protected Alvin all his years, and the Unmaker was only able to hurt Alvin with the millstone because Alvin himself overrode her powers that tried to save him. The book's sequel, second in the tales of Alvin's life, is Red Prophet.
1103880	/m/0468p6	Rose Madder	Stephen King		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the prologue, which takes place in 1985, Rose Daniels's husband, Norman, beats her while she is four months pregnant, causing her to suffer a miscarriage. Rose briefly considers leaving Norman but dismisses the idea: Norman is a policeman, and is excellent at finding people. Norman also has a violent temper and was recently accused of assaulting an African-American woman named Wendy Yarrow. The subsequent lawsuit and Internal Affairs investigation has made him even more volatile. Nine years later, when Rose is making the bed, she notices a drop of blood on the sheet from her nose the night before; Norman had punched her in the face for spilling iced tea on him. Rose realizes that she has passively suffered through Norman's abuse for fourteen years and that if she continues to put up with it, he may well eventually kill her. Rose reluctantly decides to leave Norman, departing from her unidentified city on a bus, with their bank card. Once Norman realizes Rose's flight, he resolves to hunt her down. Rose arrives in Midwestern city, disoriented and afraid. When she arrives at the bus station, she meets a man named Peter Slowik, who guides her to a women's shelter. There, she quickly makes several friends and, with the help of the shelter's director, gets an apartment and a job as a hotel housekeeper. Rose decides to pawn her engagement ring, only to learn that it is absolutely worthless. However, she notices a painting of a woman in a rose madder gown and immediately falls in love with it. She trades her ring for the painting, which has no artist's signature. Outside, a stranger asks her to read a passage from a novel, and is so impressed that he offers her a job recording audio books. Then, Bill Steiner, the nice gentleman who owns the pawnshop, asks her for a date; the two begin a relationship. Rose discovers that that the painting seems to periodically change, and is eventually able to travel through it. On the other side, she encounters a woman called Dorcas, who resembles Wendy Yarrow, as well as the woman in the rose-madder gown. Rose refers to her as "Rose Madder" because of her gown and her evident insanity. Rose Madder asks Rosie to rescue her baby from an underground labyrinth inhabited by a one-eyed bull called Erinyes. Rose does so, and Rose Madder promises to repay her. Rose returns to her world and puts the strange incident at the back of her mind. bg:Роуз Мадър de:Das Bild (Roman) es:El retrato de Rose Madder fr:Rose Madder it:Rose Madder he:רוז מאדר hu:A két Rose ja:ローズ・マダー pl:Rose Madder pt:Rose Madder ro:Rose Madder (roman) ru:Роза Марена fi:Naisen raivo sv:Rasande Rose tr:Çılgınlığın Ötesi
1104876	/m/046cc7	Rupert of Hentzau	Anthony Hope		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story is set within a framing narrative told by a supporting character from The Prisoner of Zenda. The frame implies that the events related in both books took place in the late 1870s and early 1880s. This story commences three years after the conclusion of Zenda, and deals with the same fictional country somewhere in Germanic Middle Europe, the kingdom of Ruritania. Most of the same characters recur: Rudolf Elphberg, the dissolute absolute monarch of Ruritania; Rudolf Rassendyll, the English gentleman who had acted as his political decoy, being his distant cousin and look alike; Flavia, the princess, now queen; Rupert of Hentzau, the dashing well-born villain; Fritz von Tarlenheim, the loyal courtier. Queen Flavia, dutifully but unhappily married to her cousin Rudolf V, writes to her true love Rudolf Rassendyll. The letter is carried by von Tarlenheim to be delivered by hand, but it is stolen by the exiled Rupert of Hentzau, who sees in it a chance to return to favour by informing the pathologically jealous and paranoid King. Rassendyll returns to Ruritania to aid the Queen, but is once more forced to impersonate the King after Rupert shoots Rudolf V. In turn, Rassendyll kills Rupert, but is assassinated in the hour of triumph by one of Rupert's henchmen—and thus is spared the crisis of conscience over whether or not to continue the royal deception for years. He is buried as the King in a state funeral, and Flavia reigns on alone, the last of the Elphberg dynasty.
1105276	/m/046dqs	Tono-Bungay	H. G. Wells	1909	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tono-Bungay is narrated by George Ponderevo, who is persuaded by his uncle to help develop the business of selling Tono-Bungay, a patent medicine created by his ambitious uncle Edward. George devotes seven years to organizing the production and manufacture of a product which he believes to be "a damned swindle." He then quits day-to-day involvement with the enterprise in favor of aeronautics, but remains associated with his uncle Edward and his affairs. His uncle becomes a financier of the first order and is on the verge of achieving social as well as economic dominance when his business empire collapses. George tries to rescue his uncle's failing finances by stealing quantities of a radioactive compound called "quap" from an island on the coast of West Africa, but the expedition is unsuccessful. His nephew engineers his uncle's escape from England in an experimental aircraft he has built, but the ruined entrepreneur turned financier catches pneumonia on the flight and dies in a French village near Bordeaux, despite George's efforts to save him. The novel ends with George finding a new occupation: designing destroyers for the highest bidder.
1105686	/m/046ftj	Eaters of the Dead	Michael Crichton	1976-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is set in the 10th century. The Caliph of Baghdad Al-Muqtadir (Arabic: المقتدر بالله) sends his ambassador, Ahmad ibn Fadlan (Arabic احمد بن فضلان), to the king of the Volga Bulgars. He never arrives but is instead captured by a group of Vikings. This group is sent on a hero's quest to the north. Ahmad ibn Fadlan is taken along, as the thirteenth member of their group, to bring good luck. There they battle with the 'mist-monsters', or 'wendol', a relict group of Neanderthals who go to battle wearing bear skins like the berserkers found in the original Beowulf story. Eaters of the Dead is narrated as a scientific commentary on an old manuscript. The narrator describes how the story told is a composite of extant commentaries and translations of the works of the original story teller. There are several references during the narration to a possible change or mistranslation of the original story by later copiers. The story is told by several different voices: the editor/narrator, the translators of the script and the original author, ibn Fadlan, as well as his descriptions of stories told by others. A sense of authenticity is supported by occasional explanatory footnotes with references to a mixture of factual and fictitious sources.
1106189	/m/046h31	The Lyre of Orpheus	Robertson Davies		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In The Lyre of Orpheus, the executors of the will of Francis Cornish (the subject of What's Bred in the Bone) find themselves at the head of the "Cornish Foundation". The executors, Simon Darcourt, Arthur Cornish, and Maria Cornish, are called upon to decide what projects deserve funding. They decide that a hitherto-unfinished opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann will be staged at Stratford, Ontario; to this end, they hire a brilliant young composition student, Hulda Schnakenburg, to complete the opera as the work necessary to qualify her for a PhD., while Darcourt is charged with the completion of the libretto, which James Planché had attempted to write. The opera to be completed is King Arthur or the Magnanimous Cuckold. The story follows the writing and then production of the opera, and the plot of the story arcs in a way that parallels the legend of King Arthur, and in particular the triangle of King Arthur, his queen, Guenevere, and Lancelot. Geraint Powell, an actor who serves on the Board of the Cornish Foundation, fathers a child by Maria Cornish, forcing Arthur Cornish to choose between a generous or vindictive response. The Lyre of Orpheus explores not only the world of early eighteenth century opera, but also follows Darcourt's research into the life of the benefactor and artist, Francis Cornish, leading to a discovery that forces Darcourt to conclude that a painting previously attributed to an unknown fifteenth century painter was in fact the work of Francis Cornish himself. This painting, entitled The Wedding at Cana featuring the portraits of many of the people who appeared as characters from Blairlogie, the fictional town in Ontario that was the setting of the second book of the trilogy, What's Bred in the Bone. A further plotline involves the sexual and artistic flowering of PhD candidate Hulda Schnakenburg ("Schnak") under the hand of Gunilla Dahl-Soot, a distinguished Swedish musicologist who serves as Schnak's academic advisor and becomes her lover. The book explores a number of themes, including the pursuit of life beyond the ordinary or comfortable routine and which is exemplified in the artistic quest to produce the opera or in Darcourt's quest to uncover the truth behind the painting of The Wedding at Cana The theme of marriage is examined through the relationship between Arthur and Maria Cornish, a relationship that must withstand the test of infidelity And the modern approach to relationships is mocked in the dysfunctional common-law marriage of two minor characters who present themselves in Toronto to monitor and record the production of the opera from start to finish. As often happens in Davies' novels, all is not simple; for example, the ghost of Hoffman, trapped in limbo as a result of the unsatisfactory state of his artistic work, attends and comments on the proceedings. Nor is all peaceful among the characters, as they react to Powell's seduction of Maria Cornish, Dahl-Soot's seduction of Schnak, and the inevitable tensions created by the effort to mount an operatic production.
1106246	/m/046h9y	The Clan of the Cave Bear	Jean M. Auel		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A five-year old Cro-Magnon girl is orphaned and left homeless by an earthquake that destroys her family's camp. She wanders aimlessly, naked and unable to feed herself, for several days. Having been attacked and nearly killed by a cave lion and suffering from starvation, exhaustion, and infection of her wounds, she collapses, on the verge of death. The narrative switches to a group of Neanderthal people, the "Clan", whose cave was destroyed in the earthquake and who are searching for a new home. The medicine woman of the group, Iza, discovers the girl and asks permission from Brun, the head of the Clan, to help the ailing child, despite the child being clearly a member of "the Others", the distrusted antagonists of the Clan. The child is adopted by Iza and her brother Creb. Creb is this group's "Mog-ur" or shaman, despite being deformed as a result of the difficult birth resulting from his abnormally large head and the later loss of an arm and leg after being attacked by a cave bear. The clan call her Ayla, because they can't pronounce her name. Immediately after Iza begins to help her, the clan discovers a huge, beautiful cave; many of the people begin to regard Ayla as lucky, especially since good fortune continues to come their way as she lives among them. In Auel's books, the Neanderthal possess only limited vocal apparatus and rarely speak, but have a highly-developed sign language. They do not laugh or even smile, and they do not cry; when Ayla weeps, Iza thinks she has an eye disease. Ayla's different thought processes lead her to break important Clan customs, particularly the taboo against females handling weapons. She is self-willed and spirited, but tries hard to fit in with the Neanderthals, although she has to learn everything first-hand; she does not possess the ancestral memories of the Clan which enable them to do certain tasks after being shown only once. Her main antagonist is Broud, son of the leader, an egomaniac who feels that she takes credit and attention away from him. As the two mature, the hatred between them festers. When they are young adults, Broud rapes Ayla, but she becomes pregnant, and rejoices in the birth of a son. The book ends with Creb's death, Broud's succession to the leadership, and his banishment of Ayla, who sets off to find other people of her own kind. She is not allowed to take her son with her. The separation haunts her with guilt and grief for the rest of the series.
1106316	/m/046hl5	The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome	Michael Parenti			 Parenti notes that history is biased towards powerful interests because only the wealthy (or those funded by the wealthy) had the free time to engage in research and writing. Parenti itemizes various ancient writers with a conservative orientation. Also, since most ancient writings have been lost, few opposing views survive into modern times. The writings that have survived favor the elite. In more recent times, Edward Gibbon is presented as a typical "eighteenth-century English gentleman ... in the upper strata of ... society." In contrast, the satirist Juvenal "offers a glimpse of the empire as it really was, a system of rapacious expropriation."(p.&nbsp;18) Various other historians are criticized including Theodor Mommsen. Parenti states that current scholars perpetuate the bias that favors an aristocratic interpretation of history. Some historians will differ with Parenti's approach. First, Gibbon famously argued that the reigns of the so-called Five Good Emperors, Nerva through Marcus Aurelius, was the period in which humanity was most content in all of history. Gibbon thus found human happiness in the Imperial system that Caesar influenced and not in the pre-Caesar Republic. Second, it is of note that Juvenal lived and wrote in the Rome of the Caesars, in a society transformed by Caesar and his descendants. Juvenal was not criticizing the by-gone Republic that Caesar had helped to destroy but rather the Empire, the system in fact inaugurated by Caesar. Finally, Mommsen's writing may have been influenced by the politics of his era but he was a German nationalist in an era when "Germany" did not exist, being instead a group of aristocratic fiefdoms. Mommsen was therefore prone to be critical of aristocrats. Parenti also ignores the links drawn in the 19th century between Caesarism and Bonapartism, and critics of Napoleon III often compared him to Caesar, especially after he wrote a book praising Caesar. "Rome's social pyramid" has many slaves (servi) at the bottom with "a step above ... propertyless proletariat[s]" (proletarii).(p.&nbsp;27) Slumlords operated crowded tenement apartments that were prone to fire, epidemic disease (such as typhoid and typhus), structural collapse, and high crime rates.(p.&nbsp;29) However, "looming over the toiling multitudes were a few thousand multimillionaires"(p.&nbsp;30) with an "officer class of equites or equestrians" and "at the very apex ... the nobilitas, an aristocratic oligarchy."(p.&nbsp;31) Parenti argues against various opinions that he regards as misconceptions: for example, he states the frequency of slaves being freed (manumission) should not be exaggerated; manumission was often expensive and only achieved at old age (when the slave wasn't productive anymore) and didn't include the slave's wife and his children. Next, the formation and nature of the Roman Republic is described. Early in Roman history, "a succession of Etruscan kings reigned ... [with] exploitative rule"(p.&nbsp;45) and was overthrown after which the Roman people had an aversion to monarchy. Instead, Rome had a Senate elected by the upper class with executive power held by a pair of consuls. The consuls had one-year terms and were subject to the veto of the other. Poor Romans could elect tribunes which were government bodies consulted by the Senate; tribunes had the power to veto legislation but not to propose legislation. Tribunes were elected by open ballot and, thus, this limited measure of democracy was corrupted by vote buying. So the Roman Republic was an environment of corruption and partial democracy. Then, Parenti presents the reader with an overview of the political scene: :In the second century B.C., the senatorial nobles began to divide into two groups, the larger being the self-designated as the optimates ("best men"), who were devoted to upholding the prerogatives of the well-born. ... The smaller faction within the nobility, styled the populares or "demagogues" by their opponents, were reformers who sided with the common people on various issues. Julius Caesar is considered the leading popularis and the last in a line extending from 133 BC to 44 BC(p.54-55). Some historians would claim that the populares were by no means necessarily the minority, as denoted by the success of Marius, Cinna and Caesar. Parenti uncritically assumes that the populares were earnestly interested in the plight of the common man while the optimates were avaricious. A more nuanced approach would have been more accurate, see the treatment of the optimate Drusus below. Parenti lists a number of Populares, noting that almost all of them were assassinated. The list includes: *Tiberius Gracchus *Gaius Gracchus *the second Marcus Fulvius Flaccus *Marcus Livius Drusus *Publius Sulpicius Rufus *Cornelius Cinna *Gaius Marius *Lucius Appuleius Saturninus *Cnaeus Sicinius *Quintus Sertorius *Gaius Servilius Glaucia *Sergius Catiline *Publius Clodius Pulcher *Julius Caesar However, Marcus Livius Drusus is considered by some historians to have been an Optimatis (see, for example: Ward, Heichelheim and Yeo, A History of the Roman People, 3rd ed., page 164). Parenti argues strongly against the favorable view of Cicero held by most historians. While admitting Cicero's chief fame as an orator, Parenti presents Cicero as a hypocrite, a sycophant, and a devious flatterer as well as noting abuse of power. Often, in his public speeches, Cicero would accept the goals of the populares or praise an opponent while, in private letters, he bitterly complained. In particular, Cicero's prosecution of Catiline for a supposed conspiracy is presented as a witch-hunt and Parenti notes nine suspicious flaws in Cicero's accusations.(p.&nbsp;107-111) Most seriously, he states that Cicero's self-aggrandizing prosecution led to several executions as well as a military campaign against a legion of impoverished Roman veterans. (p.&nbsp;93) This chapter summarizes the life and career of Julius Caesar. Parenti is critical of most of the ancient sources, except for Caesar's writings and those of his supporters. Parenti also says Sulla encouraged the growth of large estates in the Roman countryside (p.&nbsp;79). Parenti lists Caesar's measures to relieve poverty; some measures are outright grants to the poor but most are programs to put the plebs to productive work. Also, several measures are taken to curb corruption practices of the wealthy as well as to levy some luxury taxes. Then Parenti turns to debt relief and contrasts "two theories about why people fall deeply in debt."(p.&nbsp;151) :The first says that persons burdened with high rents, extortionate taxes, and low income are often unable to earn enough or keep enough of what they earn. So they are forced to borrow on their future labor, hoping that things will take a favorable turn. But the interested parties who underpay, overchange, and overtax them today are just as relentless tomorrow. So debtors must borrow more, with an ever larger portion of their eanings going to interest payments ... eventually assumes ruinous proportions, forcing debtors to sell their small holdings and sometimes even themselvs or their children into servitude. Such has been the plight of destitude populations through history even to this day. The creditor class is more just a dependent variable in all this. Its monopolization of capital and labor markets, its squeeze on prices and wages, its gouging of rents are the very things that create penury and debt.(p.151-152) In the second theory, debtors are lazy and free spenders. However, Parenti states this model doesn't apply to the poor but rather to the spoiled children of the upper class: :who live in a grand style, cultivate the magical art of borrowing forever while paying back never, as did Caesar himself during his early career. Such seemingly limitless credit is more apt to be extended to persons of venerable heritage, since their career prospects are considered good. ... They treat fiscal temperance as tantamount to miserliness, and parade their profligacy as a generosity of spirit.(p.152) In any case, Caesar's debt relief was aimed at "the laboring masses, not the dissolute few."(p.&nbsp;153) Also, Parenti states that: :Caesar was the first Roman ruler to grant the city's substantial Jewish population the right to practice Judaism ... That he has consorted with such a marginalized element as the Jewish proletariat must have been taken by the optimates as confirmations of their worst presentiments about his loathsome leveling tendencies.(p.153-154) Then, Parenti firmly argues against the accusation that Caesar was responsible for the burning of the Library of Alexandria. (See Library of Alexandria for a detailed treatment of this issue.) Instead, Parenti states that the library: :was in fact brought to ruination by a throng of Christ worshipers, lead by the bishop Theophilus in A.D. 391. This was a time when the ascendant Christian church was shutting down the ancient academies and destroying libraries and books throughout the empire as part of its totalistic war against pagan culture.(p.155) In an unusual measure, Caesar also proposed a cap on total wealth when: :In 49 B.C., he attempted to enforce a law that limited private holdings at 15,000 drachmas in silver or gold, thereby leaving no one in possession of immeasurably large fortunes.(p.164)
1106630	/m/046jh7	The Ill-Made Knight	T. H. White	1940	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Much of The Ill-Made Knight takes place in the fabled Camelot. The Ill-Made Knight is based around the adventures, perils and mistakes of Sir Lancelot. Lancelot, despite being the bravest of the knights, is ugly, and ape-like, so that he calls himself the Chevalier mal fet - "The Ill-Made Knight". As a child, Lancelot loved King Arthur and spent his entire childhood training to be a knight of the round table. When he arrives and becomes one of Arthur's knights, he also becomes the king's close friend. This causes some tension, as he is jealous of Arthur's new wife Guinevere. In order to please her husband, Guinevere tries to befriend Lancelot and the two eventually fall in love. T.H. White's version of the tale elaborates greatly on the passionate love of Lancelot and Guinevere. Suspense is provided by the tension between Lancelot's friendship for King Arthur and his love for and affair with the queen. This affair leads inevitably to the breaking of the Round Table and sets up the tragedy that is to follow in the concluding book of the tetralogy - The Candle in the Wind. Lancelot leaves Camelot to aid people in need. Along the way, he meets a woman who begs him to climb a tree and rescue her husband's escaped falcon. After he removes his armor and does so, the husband appears and reveals that he only wanted Lancelot to remove his armor so that he can kill the knight. Despite being at a disadvantage, Lancelot manages to kill the man and tells the wife "Stop crying. Your husband was a fool and you are a bore. I'm not sorry" (though he reflects that he is). Later, he comes across a man attempting to murder his wife for adultery. Lancelot attempts to protect the woman (who denies the charges) by riding in between the two; however the man manages to cut off his wife's head. The man then throws himself at Lancelot's feet and asks for mercy to avoid being killed. It was revealed later that the man was punished by being charged to take his wife's head to the Pope and ask for forgiveness. Finally, Lancelot comes to a town where the inhabitants beg him to rescue a young woman named Elaine, who is trapped in a tower. The tower is full of steam and she is forced to sit in a tub of boiling water. He manages to save her and her father has him spend the night. That night, the servants and Elaine devise a plan in which the servants get Lancelot drunk and trick him into thinking Guinevere is in the house. When he awakens in the morning, he discovers that he actually slept with Elaine. Furious at the loss of his virginity (which he believes also cost him the ability to work miracles) and frightened at the thought that Elaine might have a baby, he leaves. He later confesses the affair to Guinevere, who forgives him. They later discover that Elaine did have a baby, which she named Galahad (Lancelot's real name). She brings the baby to Camelot to show to Lancelot and together they spend time with Galahad. Guinevere is furious at this (as she asked Lancelot not to do that) and Lancelot goes mad and runs from the castle. He is later found by Elaine's father (2 years later)(who does not recognize him) and is kept as a fool until Elaine recognizes him and cares for him. He lives with Elaine for some time, but then returns to Camelot. When Galahad grows older, he is brought to Camelot as well, to be knighted. The Ill-Made Knight also deals with the quest for the Holy Grail. Arthur notices that the drop in crime has caused the Knights of the Round Table to fall back into their old habits (especially Gawaine, Agravaine, and Mordred, who found their mother in bed with one of Sir Pellinore's sons and murdered both in a fit of rage). In order to give the Knights a new goal, he sends them to find the Holy Grail. The quest ends when Sir Galahad, Sir Percival, Sir Bors, and Sir Pellinore's daughter find the grail. Sir Lancelot apparently saw the four in a room, with the Grail, an old man, and several other knights; however he was unable to enter the room himself (when he tried he was knocked out). One of the knights returned with the news that the Grail could not be brought to England and as a result Sir Galahad and the other knight brought it to Babylon (and neither of them could return to England as well). Sir Pellinore's daughter died when she allowed her blood to be taken to cure a dying princess. Later on, Elaine commits suicide after Lancelot tells her that he will not return to stay with her permanently. The book ends with Lancelot performing a miracle, which is a miracle in and of itself due to the fact that he is not a virgin (which had been the requirement for being able to do so).
1106914	/m/046kh2	Boonville	Robert Mailer Anderson	2001-11-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book tells the story of a man named John Gibson, as he breaks up with his girlfriend and leaves Miami, Florida to move to the small town of Boonville, California. The book portrays the town in a lightly comical manner, bringing to life a number of colorful Mendocino County stereotypes including hippies, rednecks, feminists, and commercial marijuana cultivation.
1107288	/m/046ldp	Song of Solomon	Toni Morrison	1977	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Morrison's protagonist, Macon "Milkman" Dead III, derives his nickname from the fact that he was breastfed during childhood (Macon's age can be inferred as he was wearing pants with elastic instead of a diaper, and that he later forgets the event, suggesting he was still rather young). Milkman's father's employee, Freddie, happens to see him through the window being breastfed by his mother. He quickly gains a reputation for being a "Momma's boy" in direct contrast to his (future) best friend, Guitar, who is motherless and fatherless. Milkman has two sisters, "First Corinthians" and "Magdelene called Lena." The daughters of the family are named by putting a pin in the Bible, while the eldest son is named after his father. The first Macon Dead's name was the result of an administrative error when Milkman's grandfather had to register subsequent to the end of slavery. Milkman's mother (Ruth Foster Dead) is the daughter of the town's only black doctor; she makes her husband feel inadequate, and it is clear she idolized her father, Doctor Foster, to the point of obsession. After her father dies, her husband claims to have found her in bed with the dead body, sucking his fingers. Ruth later tells Milkman that she was kneeling at her father's bedside kissing the only part of him that remained unaffected by the illness from which he died. These conflicting stories expose the problems between his parents and show Milkman that "truth" is difficult or impossible to obtain. Macon (Jr.) is often violently aggressive towards Ruth because he believes that she was involved sexually with her father and loved her father more than her own husband. On one occasion, Milkman punches his father after he strikes Milkman's mother, exposing the growing rift between father and son. In contrast, Macon Dead Jr.'s sister, Pilate, is seen as nurturing—an Earth Mother character. Born without a navel, she is a somewhat mystical character. It is strongly implied that she is Divine—a female Christ-in spite of her name. Macon (Jr.) has not spoken to his sister for years and does not think highly of her. She, like Macon, has had to fend for herself from an early age after their father's murder, but she has dealt with her past in a different way than Macon, who has embraced money as the way to show his love for his father. Pilate has a daughter, Reba, and a granddaughter named Hagar. Hagar falls desperately and obsessively in love with Milkman, and is unable to cope with his rejection, attempting to kill him at least six times. Hagar is not the only character who attempts to kill Milkman. Guitar, Milkman's erstwhile best friend, tries to kill Milkman more than once after incorrectly suspecting that Milkman has cheated him out of hidden gold, a fortune he planned to use to help his Seven Days group fund their revenge killings in response to killings of blacks. Searching for the gold near the old family farm in Pennsylvania, Milkman stops at the rotting Butler Mansion, former home of the people who killed his ancestor to claim the farm. Here he meets Circe, an almost supernaturally old ex-slave of the Butlers. She tells Milkman of his family history and this leads him to the town of Shalimar. There he learns his great-grandfather Solomon was said to have escaped slavery by flying back to Africa, leaving behind twenty-one children and his wife Ryna, who goes crazy with loss. Returning home, he learns that Hagar has died of a broken heart. He accompanies Pilate back to Shalimar, where she is accidentally shot and killed by Guitar, who had intended to kill Milkman. At the end of the novel, Milkman leaps towards Guitar. This leap is ambiguous, it is not explicitly stated that either or both is killed. However it brings the novel full circle from the suicidal "flight" of Robert Smith, the insurance agent, to Milkman's "flight" in which he learns to fly like Pilate.
1112746	/m/0472k4	Roadside Picnic	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set in a post-visitation world where there are now six Zones known on Earth (each zone is approximately five square miles/kilometers in size) which are still full of unexplained phenomena and where strange happenings have briefly occurred, assumed to have been visitations by aliens. World governments and the UN try to keep tight control over them to prevent leakage of artifacts from the Zones, fearful of unforeseen consequences. A subculture of stalkers, thieves going into the Zones to get the artifacts, evolves around the Zones. The novel is set in and around a specific Zone in Harmont, a town in a fictitious Commonwealth country, and follows the main protagonist over an eight year period. The introduction is a live radio interview with Dr. Pilman who is credited with the discovery that the six Visitation Zones' locations weren't random. He explains it so: "Imagine that you spin a huge globe and you start firing bullets into it. The bullet holes would lie on the surface in a smooth curve. The whole point (is that) all six Visitation Zones are situated on the surface of our planet as though someone had taken six shots at Earth from a pistol located somewhere along the Earth-Deneb line. Deneb is the alpha star in Cygnus." The story revolves around Redrick "Red" Schuhart, a tough and experienced stalker who regularly enters the Zone illegally at night in search for valuable artifacts - "swag"- for profit. Trying to clean up his act, he becomes employed as a lab assistant at the International Institute, which studies the Zone. To help the career of his boss, whom he considers a friend, he goes into the Zone with him on an official expedition to recover a unique artifact (a full "empty"), which leads to his friend's death later on. This comes as a heavy shock when the news reaches Redrick, heavily drunk in a bar, and he blames himself for his friend's fate. While at the bar, a police force enters looking for any stalkers about. Redrick is forced to use a "howler" to make a hasty getaway. Red's girlfriend Guta is pregnant and decides to keep the baby no matter what. It is widely rumored that frequent incursions into the Zone by stalkers carry a high risk of mutations in their children. They decide to marry. Redrick helps a fellow stalker named Burbridge the Buzzard to get out of the Zone after the latter loses his legs to a substance known as "hell slime". Later on he confronts Burbridge's daughter who gets angry at Redrick because he saved her father from death. Guta has given birth to a beautiful, happy and intelligent daughter, fully normal save for the short and light full body hair. They call her lovingly, Monkey. Redrick's dead father comes home from the cemetery, now situated inside the Zone, as copies of other deceased are now slowly returning to their homes too. As she grows up, Redrick's daughter seems to resemble a monkey more and more, becomes reclusive while barely talking to anyone anymore, screaming strange screams at night together with Redrick's father. Redrick is arrested, but escapes, and before he is recaptured contacts a mysterious buyer with an offer of a small porcelain container of "witches' jelly" which he'd smuggled out previously. Redrick asks that the proceeds from the sale be sent to Guta. Red's old friend Richard Noonan (a supply contractor with offices inside The Institute), is revealed as a covert operative of an unnamed, presumably governmental, secret organization working hard to stop the contraband flow of artifacts from the Zone. Content he's almost succeeded in his multi-year assignment, he is confronted by his boss, who reveals to him the flow is stronger than ever, and is tasked with finding who is responsible and how they achieve it. Redrick is released from jail and makes a secret deal with Burbridge. Guta is depressed because recent medical examinations of her daughter indicate that she is no longer human. It is implied that the weekend picnics-for-tourists business set up by Burbridge are a cover for the new generation of stalkers to learn and go into the zone. They jokingly refer to the setup as "Sunday school". Red goes into the Zone one last time in order to reach the wish-granting "Golden Sphere". He has a map, given to him by Burbridge, whose son joins him on the expedition. Red knows one of them will have to die in order for the other to reach the sphere, to deactivate a phenomenon known as "meatgrinder", and keeps this a secret from his companion. After they get to the location surviving many obstacles, the young man rushes towards the sphere shouting out his wishes only to be savagely dispatched by the meatgrinder phenomenon. Spent and disillusioned, Red looks back on his broken life struggling to find meaning and hope, hoping the Sphere will find something good in his heart - it is the hidden wish that it grants, supposedly - and in the end can't think of anything other than repeating the now dead youngster's words: "HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!". Another translation of the wish from the original Russian "СЧАСТЬЕ ДЛЯ ВСЕХ, ДАРОМ, И ПУСТЬ НИКТО НЕ УЙДЕТ ОБИЖЕННЫЙ!" is "A Gift of Happiness for Everyone, So No One (Leaves)/(Passes Away) Feeling (Left Out)/(Offended By Life)."
1114779	/m/0478bz	White Teeth	Zadie Smith	2000-01-27	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It's New Year's Day 1975 at the beginning of the novel, and we are introduced to Archie Jones, a 47-year-old man whose disturbed Italian wife has just walked out on him. Archie is attempting to commit suicide by gassing himself in his car, when a chance interruption causes him to change his mind. Filled with a fresh enthusiasm for life, Archie flips a coin and finds his way into the aftermath of a New Year's Eve party. There he meets the much-younger Clara, a Jamaican woman whose mother is a devout Jehovah's Witness. They are soon married and have a daughter, Irie, who grows up to be intelligent but with low self-confidence. Samad, who has emigrated to Britain after World War II, has married Alsana. Alsana is also much younger than he is, and their union is the product of a traditional arranged marriage. They have twin boys, Magid and Millat, who are the same age as Irie. The marriage is quite rocky, as their devotion to Islam in an English life is troublesome. Samad is continually tormented by what he sees as the effects of this cultural conflict upon his own moral character and sends 10-year-old Magid to Bangladesh in the hope that he will grow up properly under the teachings of Islam. From then on, the lives of the two boys follow very different paths. Ironically, Magid becomes an atheist and devotes his life to science (a grave disappointment to Samad). Whereas Millat, despite his earlier womanizing and drinking, eventually becomes an angry fundamentalist and part of a Muslim brotherhood known as the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation (or KEVIN). The lives of the Jones and Iqbal families intertwine with that of the Chalfens, a Jewish-Catholic family of Cambridge educated intellectuals. The father, Marcus Chalfen, is a brilliant but socially inept geneticist working on a controversial 'FutureMouse' project. The mother, Joyce Chalfen, is a part-time housewife with an often entirely misguided desire to mother and 'heal' Millat. Although they wish to be thought of as intellectual liberals, the Chalfens often demonstrate complete cultural ignorance and a blindness to the changes happening in their own family. Later on in the story, Clara's mother, a strict Jehovah's Witness, becomes involved along with Clara's ex-boyfriend when Irie runs away from home. Returned from Bangladesh, Magid works as Marcus' research assistant, while Millat is befriended by the Chalfens. To some extent the family provides a safe haven as they (believe themselves to) accept and understand the turbulent lives of Magid and Millat. However, this sympathy comes at the expense of their own son, Josh, whose difficulties are ignored by his parents as he, too, begins to rebel against his background. The strands of the narrative grow closer as Millat and KEVIN, Josh and a radical animal rights group (FATE), and Clara's mother (Hortense) and her religious connections all begin to oppose FutureMouse as an evil interference with their own beliefs and plan to stop it. Irie, who has been working for Marcus, briefly succeeds in her long-hidden attraction to Millat but is rejected under his KEVIN-inspired beliefs. Irie believes that Millat cannot love her, for he has always been 'the second son' both symbolically and literally; Millat was born two minutes after Magid. After losing her virginity to Millat, she makes Magid the 'second son' for a change by sleeping with him right after. This causes her to become pregnant, and she is left unsure of the father of her child, as the brothers are identical twins. Extraordinary consequences result as the seemingly divergent stories of the main characters coalesce in a stunning finale—the unveiling of FutureMouse, the revelatory actions of the warring groups, and of a long-kept secret from Samad and Archie's past.
1114886	/m/0478q9	My Uncle Oswald	Roald Dahl	1979-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Oswald discovers the world's most powerful aphrodisiac and with the aid of a female accomplice they place the aphrodisiac inside chocolate truffles made by Prestat of London. By this means, the accomplice seduces the world's most famous men, with the intent of selling their semen to women wishing to be impregnated by them. (The semen is collected via condoms.)
1115451	/m/047b9_	Boy's Life	Robert R. McCammon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book deals with 12-year-old Cory Mackenson, who grows up in the town of Zephyr, Alabama. The story begins as Cory's father, Tom, watches a car drive straight into a deep lake and sink to the bottom with a passenger inside. Tom jumps in and tries to save the driver of the car, only to discover that the man is actually a murder victim. This vision, and the realization that there is evil in the small town of Zephyr, is enough to haunt Cory's father. Meanwhile, Cory has several adventures with his friends (Johnny, Davy Ray, and Ben), such as flying with their dogs on the last day of school.
1117080	/m/047h03	Deepwater Black	Ken Catran		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main plot involved a virus that breaks out and leaves the humans residing on Earth doomed. However, in a desperate attempt before the end, all humanity's resources are dedicated to a crash program to produce a deep space ark, capable of seeding humanity on a new world. The ship is crewed by six clones; teenage versions of people who achieved great works during the ark project and equipped with the memories of their donors. Prior to its arrival, however, the crew is awoken prematurely to face a threat to the ship, before their memories are complete. They must come to terms with the workings of the ship, the dangers faced by their ship, the realization that they are clones, and their ultimate destiny to save their race.
1117336	/m/047htv	The Death Ship	B. Traven		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set just after World War I, The Death Ship describes the predicament of merchant seamen who lack documentation of citizenship and cannot find legal residence or employment in any nation. The narrator is Gerard Gales, an US sailor who claims to be from New Orleans, and who is stranded in Antwerp without passport or working papers. Unable to prove his identity or his eligibility for employment, Gales is repeatedly arrested and deported from one country to the next, by government officials who do not want to be bothered with either assisting or prosecuting him. When he finally manages to find work, it is on the Yorikke, the dangerous and decrepit ship of the title, where undocumented workers from around the world are treated as expendable slaves. The term "death ship" refers to any boat so decrepit that it is worth more to its owners overinsured and sunk than it would be worth afloat. The title of the book is translated directly from the German "Das Totenschiff"; in English, they are called "coffin ships".
1117350	/m/047hwy	The Magic Finger	Roald Dahl		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about the Gregg family that hunts ducks for fun and is narrated by an unnamed eight-year-old girl who lives next door to them. The girl possesses a power to punish people who make her cross called "the magic finger" but she has no control over what it does or when it happens. This gets her into big trouble, she wishes she did not have this finger because it is taking over her life (her dislike of her power stems from an incident at school, where she gave her teacher whiskers and a tail when she was punished for doing badly in a spelling test). Although they are her friends, the girl becomes annoyed at the Greggs shooting and killing ducks and thus she points the magic finger at them. The next day the Greggs wake up as tiny people with wings instead of arms and their house is taken over by four human-size ducks with arms instead of wings. The Greggs are forced to leave and build a nest in one of the trees in their garden where they spend the night. The next morning they wake up to find the large ducks with the Greggs' guns standing under their tree, threatening to shoot in the same way that they have shot ducks. The Greggs promise never to hunt again and are changed back into normal humans. The next day, the girl goes to their house and finds the family smashing up their guns and setting up graves for the birds that they killed. They have even changed their name to "Egg"! The girl feels that things may have gotten a little out of hand but then hears a gun fired by another neighbouring family, the Coopers. She thus sets off, telling the Greggs that the Coopers will be nesting in the trees that night. * ISBN 0-04-833080-4 (hardcover, 1968) * ISBN 0-06-031382-5 (library binding, 1966) * ISBN 0-06-222222-7 (hardcover, 1966) bg:Вълшебният пръст es:El dedo mágico it:Il dito magico he:אצבע הקסם nl:De tovervinger
1117355	/m/047hy9	The Twits	Roald Dahl	1980	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A hideous, vindictive, spiteful couple known as the Twits live together in a brick house without windows (as they believe that they are less likely to be spied on that way) with their abused, mistreated family of pet monkeys, the Muggle-Wumps, and they continuously play practical jokes on each other out of hatred for one another; Mrs. Twit drops her glass eye into her husband's beer mug and fills his dinner plate with worms claiming that it is a new brand of spaghetti, Mr. Twit constantly lengthens his wife's cane and chair and convinces her that she is shrinking and needs to be stretched out using helium balloons (in hopes of ridding himself of her once and for all, only for her to figure out how to land and learn about Mr. Twit's charade in the end). However, the book also chronicles the Twits' mistreatment of those around them; Mr. Twit apparently coats tree limbs with glue in hopes of catching birds for pie, but when a group of little boys wind up sticking to the tree he very nearly winds up forcing them to endure the same fate until they figure out how to free themselves. (Fortunately the Roly-Poly Bird, a character also featured in several other works by Dahl, with the assistance of the Muggle-Wumps, manages to caution unsuspecting birds of the fate that awaits them if they perch on the tree on the Twits' property). However, the Muggle-Wumps, tired of being forced to stand on their heads by their owners (who believe that they can start a circus of monkeys that way), with the help of the Roly-Poly Bird, use Mr. Twit's powerful glue to attach the couple's furniture to their ceiling while they are away to trick them into thinking that they are upside-down and that their ceiling is actually their floor, and the glue permanently affixes them to the ceiling so that they catch the "Terrible Shrinks" (the disease that Mr. Twit had convinced Mrs. Twit that she had earlier in the book), resulting in them shrinking away into nothing, leaving the Muggle-Wumps free to escape.
1117368	/m/047hzp	George's Marvelous Medicine	Roald Dahl	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 George is an 8 year-old boy who lives in a farm with his mother, father and grandmother. He is fed up with his Grandma's selfishness, grumpiness and her attitude towards him, especially after he becomes frightened by her dark secrets. George seeks to cure it by brewing a very special medicine for her. He makes the product by collecting many harmful products throughout the house along with some animal pills, then he puts them in a giant saucepan, boils them and gives a spoonful to Grandma, only to end up making her taller than a house. George tries out the medicine on a brown hen in the yard, and it causes her to grow several times bigger. Moments later, George's mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Kranky, return home, and they are both astounded by these events. Mr. Kranky is excited by the sight of the giant hen, and exclaims that he had been wanting to make giant animals for giant food. Together, George and his father enjoy sampling the medicine to most of the farm animals (pigs, cows, sheep, George's pony Jack Frost and Alma the nanny-goat), which makes them giant animals. However, Mrs. Kranky starts worrying about Grandma, and eventually, the Crane Company hoists her down. Once back on the ground, Grandma excitedly hops around the farm, but is forced to sleep in the barn that night since she is too tall to go back inside the house. However, she enjoys it a lot. The next day, Mr. Kranky announces that they will continue making the medicine so it can be sold to other farms in the hopes of ending world hunger. Unfortunately, George cannot remember the exact ingredients he had used the day before. After several failed attempts (resulting in a potion that extends a chicken's legs, a potion that extends a chicken's neck, and a potion that makes the chicken shrink), Grandma strolls over to the family and demands for her cup of tea. Then she notices the cup of medicine in George's hand, and, mistaking it for tea, snatches it from him. She drinks it down, and the resulting overdose causes her to shrink into nothing. Mrs. Kranky is devastated at first, but soon agrees with her husband about her absence removing a nuisance from their lives. George then discovers that for two long days he had touched with his fingertips the edge of a magical world.
1117371	/m/047h_c	The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me	Roald Dahl		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story itself is loosely based around Billy, a young boy who has always dreamed of owning a sweet shop, especially since there is an abandoned one named The Grubber (an old [[English word for sweet shop) near where he lives. One day, he finds that the old building has been renovated and has become the head office for the Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company. Billy then meets its workers, a Giraffe with an extendable neck, a Pelican (or "Pelly" as he is called by the others) who can retract his upper beak, and a Monkey, whom he then befriends. They all band together when they receive a letter from the Duke of Hampshire asking them to clean the windows of Hampshire House. When they get there, things go smoothly until the Giraffe and the Monkey, while cleaning the windows of the Duchess's bedroom, spot a burglar who attempts to steal the Duchess's diamond jewellery. The Pelican then flies in and catches the burglar in his beak, holding him there while the others panic. Eventually, the police arrive to arrest the burglar, whom the Chief of Police identifies as "The Cobra", one of the world's most dangerous cat burglars. As a reward for retrieving the Duchess's diamonds, the Duke invites the L.W.C.C. to live on his estate as his personal helper. Billy's dreams come true because the Giraffe, Pelican and Monkey will no longer be needing the Grubber building; with a little help from the Duke, the Grubber is reopened into the most fantastic sweet shop in the whole town (even selling sweets from the Willy Wonka company). And they live happily ever after.
1117383	/m/047j0d	Esio Trot	Roald Dahl	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mr. Hoppy is a shy old man who lives alone in an apartment. For many years, he has been secretly in love with Mrs. Silver, a woman who lives below him. Mr. Hoppy frequently leans over his balcony and exchanges a polite conversation with Mrs. Silver, but he is too shy to disclose how he feels. Mrs. Silver has a small pet tortoise, Alfie, whom she loves very much. One morning, Mrs. Silver mentions to Mr. Hoppy that even though she has had Alfie for many years, he weighs only thirteen ounces, and she desires that he become a more attractive weight. This inspires Mr. Hoppy to claim that he can make tortoises grow bigger with a magic spell, which he tells Mrs. Silver will make Alfie grow if it is whispered into his ear three times a day. The title of the book comes from this spell, a simple invocation for a tortoise to grow, but with each word written backwards and some spaced unusually, such as "Esio Trot" (tortoise). Mrs. Silver is doubtful, but agrees to try. Mr. Hoppy then buys many tortoises of various sizes from various pet shops, none that weigh less than thirteen ounces. He houses them in a corral within the living room of his apartment, and with the help of a special long claw, can grab one tortoise from Mrs. Silver's balcony and replace it with a slightly larger one while she is away at work. All of the tortoises are similar enough in appearance to Alfie that Mrs. Silver never notices that an exchange has been made. Due to the gradual nature of the change, Mrs. Silver does not notice that her pet tortoise is growing until he can no longer fit into his house. She exclaims to Mr. Hoppy that his spell has been effective, and verifies that Alfie now weighs twenty-seven ounces. He asks to see and runs down the stairs to do so. Mrs. Silver embraces him in admiration of his spell and, emboldened by this gesture, Mr. Hoppy proposes to her, which she accepts, having been expecting that he would for some time. Mr. Hoppy secretly returns all the tortoises in his living room back to their respective pet shops, and Mr. Hoppy and Mrs. Silver are married a few weeks later. It is then revealed that the real Alfie was among those returned to the pet stores. A short time later, he was bought by a young girl who kept him in her backyard where, twenty years later, by the time she has children of her own, Alfie has finally grown to twenty-seven ounces.
1117402	/m/047j3k	The Vicar of Nibbleswicke	Roald Dahl	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Reverend Robert Lee, the new vicar of Nibbleswicke, is suffering from a rare and acutely embarrassing condition: Back-to-Front Dyslexia, a fictional type of dyslexia that causes the sufferer to say the most important word (often being the verb) in a sentence backwards, creating comedic situations. For example, instead of saying knits, he will say stink; god would be dog etc. It affects only his speech, and he doesn't realize he's doing it, but the parishioners of Nibbleswicke are shocked and confused by his seemingly outrageous comments. However, a cure is found (walking backwards everywhere for the rest of his life), and the mild-mannered vicar can resume normal service.
1118191	/m/047lk6	For Love of the Game	Michael Shaara		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On the second to last day of the season, Chapel's team, the Atlanta Hawks, are about to play against the New York Yankees. Chapel receives news from a friend in the media that he is about to be traded. Just the night before, his girlfriend Carol did not show up at his hotel room, and Chapel reaches the conclusion that it is time to move on and finally make the transition from boyhood to manhood. Over half the book tells the story of that final game, with flashbacks from the pitching mound and dugout to incidents throughout Chapel's life. Chapel is determined that his last game will also be his greatest, even though, with all the young new players on the Yankees, they are a far superior team. As he strikes out his opponents one after the other, he soon becomes aware of the fact that he has held the Yankees at bay thus far, not allowing one hit from the more talented Yankees team. He soon becomes determined to pitch a perfect game. Meanwhile, he reflects on his personal life, and especially on Carol, whom he finally realizes that he loves, even though he has never shown her that he really does. That morning Carol told him she was going to London and was leaving immediately, so the two key passions of his life, Carol and baseball, are about to vanish forever. As the game proceeds, Chapel feels the sharp pain in his arm that comes with age. Nevertheless, he refuses to give up the pitching mound, and chooses instead to divert his attention by delving deeper into his life and his relationship. At the end of the game, he has pitched a perfect game and retires from baseball with a new dignity. After the celebrations, he heads to the hotel and dials Carol's home, where he plans to go to tell Carol his feelings. With baseball behind him, he has grown from a boy who has led a life into manhood. This short book was discovered after Shaara's death, and publishing was arranged by his son, author Jeffrey Shaara. The book was made into a movie by Sam Raimi. it:La partita perfetta nl:For Love of the Game
1119552	/m/047q5n	The Lions of Al-Rassan	Guy Gavriel Kay	1995-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Like most of Kay's novels, this contains a large amount of political intrigue and religious strife. At the opening of the novel, the peninsula of Al-Rassan (formerly known as Esperaňa when under Jaddite control) is split between three Jaddite kingdoms in the north (Valledo, Ruenda and Jaloña) and Asharite kingdoms in the south, of which Cartada and Ragosa figure most prominently in the story. After centuries of being dominated by the Asharites, the Jaddite kingdoms are regaining their strength, while the once-powerful khalifate of Al-Rassan is divided and vulnerable. In Fezana, a city in the north of Al-Rassan close to the borderlands with Valledo, Jehane unwittingly prevents one of her patients, a merchant named Husari ibn Musa, from being executed by Almalik of Cartada during a purge of Fezana's leading citizens. By giving the Husari shelter when the danger is revealed, Jehane puts her own life in danger. As a result, she flees Cartada at the same time that the Jaddite commander Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo and his company have come to Al-Rassan for their parias gold - regular tribute given to the Jaddite kingdoms. Some of the Valledans brutally attack a village outside the walls of Fezana and Rodrigo steps in to halt the slaughter of the villagers, incurring the wrath of one of the participants in the slaughter, Garcia de Rada, the brother of the powerful constable of Valledo. As a result of his punishment of de Rada, Rodrigo is exiled by King Ramiro. Rodrigo and Jehane make their way to Ragosa, to the court of King Badir. When Asharite King Almalik of Cartada betrays Ammar ibn Khairan, Ammar joins forces with the king's heir (also called Almalik) and assassinates the father. The new king Almalik II then exiles Ammar from Cartada and Ammar also travels to Ragosa. Rodrigo, Ammar and Jehane are brought together in the court of King Badir, where Ammar and Rodrigo are hired as mercenaries, and where Jehane is hired as a physician. They form a close connection which forms the heart of the story. Jehane becomes the focus of the attentions of the two men, with a love triangle of sorts forming and becoming more convoluted by the fact that Rodrigo Belmonte is already happily married with two sons, Fernan and Diego. The admiration of the two men for each other is obvious, as they are the 'best' each nation has to offer. However the shelter and stability they find in the wealthy and worldly city of Ragosa is threatened by events occurring far beyond the city walls. The Jaddites begin a holy war against the Asharite kingdoms of Soriyya and Ammuz, in a rough parallel to the Crusades. Clerics from Ferrieres urge the kings of the Jaddite kingdoms of Esperaňa to launch their own wars of reconquest against their Asharite neighbours. To the south of Al-Rassan, in the Majriti Desert lands, the Muwardis, who practice a stricter version of the Asharite religion, are impelled to intervene in the affairs of Al-Rassan, as much to repel the Jaddites as to cleanse the Asharite lands of their luxury-loving leaders. Both the Jaddites and the Asharites also exhibit violent outbreaks against the Kindath. Jehane's father, the famed physician Ishak ben Yonannon and her mother, Eliane, are rescued by Rodrigo just as a violent mob in Fezana storm the Kindath quarter with the intent of massacring its residents. Ishak then performs an astonishing operation on Diego, the young son of Rodrigo, who has been savagely assaulted by the Muwardi. The deep loyalties of Rodrigo Belmonte and Ammar ibn Khairan to Valledo and Cartada respectively mean that their eventual conflict becomes inevitable. The two finally meet on the battlefield, each at the head of opposing armies. The two commanders duel and one is killed. The story concludes with an afterword set some years in the future, which reveals firstly that the Jaddite kingdoms have recaptured Al-Rassan (mirroring the Reconquista) and eventually the identity of the victor of the duel.
1119607	/m/047qb9	An Unsuitable Job for a Woman	P. D. James		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Young private detective Cordelia Gray walks into the office she shares with former police detective Bernie Pryde to find her partner dead. He slashed his wrist after finding out he had cancer, and has left everything, including his unlicensed handgun, to Cordelia. With a failing detective agency in her possession and no money, her choices are limited. Rather than go back to her former secretarial job, Cordelia decides to keep the agency in memory of Bernie. Soon after Bernie's death she is offered a high profile case. The woman, Elizabeth Leaming, works for prominent scientist Sir Ronald Callender and has come to hire her on his behalf to look into the suicide of his son, Mark. Cordelia goes to Cambridge where the young man lived and studied at the prestigious university. She meets Mark's friends and immediately realizes they all share some dark secret. They are reluctant to talk to her and attempt to convince her that Mark's suicide was just that, so that no further investigation is needed. She manages to get them to tell her where Mark was living, and she goes visit the place. Mark Callender had left the University in spite of having decent grades and a promising future, including the prospect of a rather large inheritance from his maternal grandfather. He had then taken a job as a gardener for another rich family near Cambridge, and was living in a small cottage on the property. Cordelia immediately falls in love with the rundown cottage, and decides to move in there herself for the length of her investigation. The better she understands what kind of person the dead man had been, the more connected she feels to him, and the more convinced that his death could not have been suicide. Repeatedly, Mark's friends try to seduce her away from the investigation but Cordelia holds on, determined to succeed in her first solo case. She returns to the cottage one night to find hanging from the same hook on which Mark had been found suspended a pillow in a grotesque imitation of the corpse. However, Cordelia refuses to be frightened away, now sure that foul play is involved. She obtains pictures of the corpse, and realizes that what the photos show is something Mark could not have done to himself. With this concrete evidence of murder, Cordelia sets out to track down the murderer. She finds out that a certain Nanny Pilbeam attended Mark's cremation and left a rather particular wreath. She investigates all the florists in Cambridge until she finds the one where it was commissioned and obtains Nanny Pilbeam's address. The old woman, who used to be Mark's mother's Nanny, confides in her and tells her that she went to see Mark in his college at Cambridge and gave him a Book of Common Prayer his mother had wanted him to have when he turned 21, a prayer book that Cordelia has already noticed among Mark's books at the cottage. There was a note as well, but Cordelia guesses correctly that it was destroyed. However, she also guesses where to look in the prayer book, the order of service for St Mark's day. There, in the margin, she finds Mark's mother's initials, and the letters "A A" written side by side, and realises that this must be the mother's blood group. She succeeds in establishing that Sir Ronald Callender's blood group is A, meaning that he can't be Mark's father. Returning to the cottage late the following night, Cordelia is attacked by someone who throws her down the well and replaces the cover in an attempt to kill her. She is saved by a combination of her own courage and determination, and good luck that the owner of the cottage investigates the well because of a misplaced coil of rope. Cordelia in turn lies in wait with her gun to ambush her would-be killer, who turns out to be Sir Ronald's laboratory assistant Lunn, when he returns to finish her off. Lunn, however, succeeds in eluding Cordelia and escaping in his van, only to get himself killed by colliding with a truck. Certain now of her case, Cordelia continues to Sir Ronald's house where Miss Leaming lets her in and takes her gun from her. Cordelia accuses him of the murder of his son, which he eventually admits to, sure that nothing can be proved. Miss Leaming, however, overhears him, enters the office and shoots him with Cordelia's gun while Cordelia makes no attempt to prevent it. She confesses to Cordelia that she was Mark's mother and that she loved him in spite of not being allowed to by Sir Ronald. Lady Callender had been rich and fallen in love with Sir Ronald before he was knighted for his scientific achievements. Her father however, deeply disapproved of him and refused them any money in spite of his huge fortune. However, he also desperately wanted a grandson. He decided he would give money to his daughter only if she managed to produce this grandson. Sadly, Lady Callender was infertile and sickly. Sir Ronald however, had produced children with some of his many lovers and when Miss Leaming became pregnant by him, the three of them left for Italy where she passed as Lady Callender and submissive Lady Callender for Miss Leaming. After Miss Leaming had the child, they went back to England where they pretended the child was Lady Callender's. Cordelia sympathises with Miss Leaming and the two, in spite of not liking each other, come up with a story to protect Miss Leaming from the police. Cordelia arranges the crime scene to look like a suicide, using everything Bernie Pryde had taught her to make is so authentic that the local police appear to believe it and the two women go free. The case is, however, referred to Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard (the protagonist of most of P. D. James's murder mysteries), and Cordelia is called in for questioning. She admits nothing, and although Dalgliesh has worked out what must have happened, he has no evidence on which to prosecute her. The irony is that it was he who had trained Bernie Pryde when he was with the CID, and it is what Cordelia in turn had learned from Bernie that had allowed her both to solve Mark's murder, and to outwit the police over Sir Ronald's.
1120029	/m/047rst	Asterix in Britain		1966		 Julius Caesar has invaded Britain and succeeded in his conquest, mainly because the British soldiers under Cassivelaunos stop fighting every day to drink hot water (with a drop of milk) and they refuse to fight over the weekend. Caesar, using his military genius, decides only to fight when they stop to drink hot water and at weekends. As with Gaul, a single village remains independent, defying the Romans. One member of the village, Anticlimax, is dispatched to Gaul to enlist the help of Getafix the druid in providing magic potion for the British rebels. It is decided that Asterix (Anticlimax's second cousin twice removed) and Obelix should accompany him back to his village to help transport a barrel of the potion. However, while beating up a Roman galley in the British channel, Obelix mentions the mission, which is reported to the Roman high command in Britain. In Britain, the barrel of potion is confiscated from a pub cellar, along with all the "warm beer" (bitter) throughout Londinium, by the Romans, who set about tasting the barrels to find the right one. Soon the whole unit assigned to the testing is hopelessly drunk. Asterix and Obelix steal all the barrels labelled with Dipsomaniax but Obelix gets drunk and starts a fight with some passing Roman soldiers. During the fracas, a thief steals the cart with the barrels. In the meantime, Anticlimax and Asterix leave Obelix at Dipsomaniax's pub to sleep off his hangover. While Anticlimax and Asterix go in search of the thief, the Romans capture the sleeping Obelix and Dipsomaniax, and raze the pub. After a stay in the Tower of Londinium, Obelix wakes up and breaks them out of the jail, and they reunite. The three heroes hunt down the potion, which is being used as a pick-me-up for a Rugby team, which ends up mauling their opponents in the match. Eventually the potion is lost in the Thames after an attack from a Roman catapult, though it gives some fish, and a fisherman who is pulled in, superstrength. Finally reaching the independent village, Asterix eases the Britons' disappointment by claiming that he carries herbs to remake the potion, as working for Getafix has given him that knowledge. These are later revealed to be tea. With a psychological boost, the village prevails against the Romans. Asterix and Obelix return home to the inevitable feast. The Britons like the tea so much, they proclaim it shall be their national drink. An audiobook of Asterix in Britain adapted by Anthea Bell and narrated by Willie Rushton was released on EMI Records Listen for Pleasure label in 1987.
1120645	/m/047trg	Beyond Freedom and Dignity	B. F. Skinner			 The book is organized into nine chapters. In this chapter Skinner argues that a technology of behavior is possible and that it can be used to help solve currently pressing human issues such as over-population and warfare. "Almost all major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of human behavior." In this chapter Skinner argues for a more precise definition of freedom, one that allows for his conception of determinism (action that is free from certain kinds of control), and speaks to the conventional notion of freedom. Skinner argues against "autonomous man". Skinner notes that the forces of Freedom and Dignity have led to many positive advances in the human condition, but may now be hindering the advance of a technology of human behavior: "[the literature of freedom and dignity] has been successful in reducing the aversive stimuli used in intentional control, but it has made the mistake of defining freedom in terms of states of mind or feelings..." Dignity is the process by which people are given credit for their actions, or alternatively punished for them under the notion of responsibility. Skinner's analysis rejects both as "dignity" &ndash; a false notion of inner causality which removes both credit for action and blame for misdeeds, "the achievements for which a person himself is to be given credit seem to approach zero." Skinner notes that credit is typically a function of the conspicuousness of control. We give less or no credit, or blame, to those who are overtly coached, compelled, prompted or otherwise not appearing to be producing actions spontaneously. Skinner saw punishment as the logical consequence of an unscientific analysis of behavior as well as the tradition of "freedom and dignity". Since individuals are seen to be making choices they are then able to be punished for those choices. Since Skinner argued against free will he therefore argued against punishment which he saw to be ineffective in controlling behavior. Skinner notes that the previous solutions to punishment are often not very useful and may create additional problems. Permissiveness, the metaphor of mid-wifery (or maieutics), "guidance", a dependence on things, "changing minds", all contain either problems or faulty assumptions about what is going on. Skinner argues that this mis-understanding of control championed by the defenders of freedom and dignity "encourage[s] the misuse of controlling practices and block progress towards a more effective technology of behavior." Skinner notes a 'prescientific' view of man allows for personal achievement. The 'scientific view' moves human action to be explained by species evolution and environmental history Skinner speaks to feelings about what is right, as well as popular notions of "good". Skinner translates popular words and phrases around value issues into his view of contingencies of reinforcement. Skinner notes that even if the technology of behavior produces "goods" to improve human life, they expose environmental control which is offensive to the "freedom and dignity" perspective. Skinner suggests that cultural evolution is a way to describe the aggregate of (operant) behavior. A culture is a collection of behavior, or practices Skinner addresses "social Darwinism" and argues that as a justification of the subordination of other nations or of war competition with others is a small part of natural selection. A much more important part is competition with the physical environment itself. Skinner relates the idea of cultural evolution back to the question of values: whose values are to survive? Skinner notes that cultural design is not new, but is already existing and on-going. Skinner notes that most discussions of current problems are dominated by metaphors, concerns for feelings and states of mind which do not illuminate possible solutions. Skinner notes that 'behavior modification' is ethically neutral Skinner notes that Utopian speculations, like his novel Walden Two are a kind of cultural engineering. He then devotes much of the rest of this chapter to addressing the criticisms and complaints against cultural engineering. Skinner again addresses the notion of the individual, and discusses how aspects of a person's character could be assigned to environmental factors. He also covers cognition, problem solving, self-control and counters some arguments or possible misconceptions. Skinner notes that his analysis does not "leave an empty organism". Skinner addresses the issue of mechanical models of human action, which are better addressed elsewhere. Skinner notes that, "The evolution of a culture is a gigantic effort in self-control." and ends with, "A scientific view of man offers exciting possibilities. We have not yet seen what man can make of man."
1120690	/m/047txv	Scorpius	John Gardner	1988-06-01	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 After being connected to the death of a woman in London, Bond is called in by M to aid the investigation. Returning from Hereford, a Sergeant Pearlman tags along by driving Bond back, during which they are attacked and involved in a high-speed chase on an English motorway. Upon safely returning to headquarters, Bond is briefed on the investigation by M and Chief Superintendent Bailey. The woman, whom Bond does not know, was found dead with Bond's telephone number. She is a member of a cult society known as "The Meek Ones", operated by a Father Valentine. With additional information from the CIA, the British Secret Service learn that Valentine is an alias for Vladimir Scorpius, an arms dealer for several terrorist organisations. As the country's general election approaches, by the use of brainwashed cult members, Scorpius has begun a "holy war" against every man, woman, and child. The cult members, thinking themselves to be pure, moral, and unsullied, sacrifice their lives for "the greater good of humanity" believing that by performing this "death task" that they will achieve paradise. Throughout the novel, The Meek Ones commit several acts of terrorism including multiple terrorist bombings and several assassinations of British politicians. Throughout the horror, Bond meets Harriett Horner, an IRS agent working undercover in England and investigating a credit card company run by Scorpius. The two work together along with Pearlman to attempt to track down Scorpius. After an interrogation of a captured cult member, Horner is taken captive by Scorpius' men. Additionally, Pearlman confesses to Bond that he was secretly giving Scorpius information for the benefit of his daughter who had been brainwashed. Together the two set out for Scorpius' base of operations in South Carolina, having Scorpius believe Pearlman was taking Bond captive. At Scorpius' island, Bond meets up with Horner once again and the two actually marry at the behest of Scorpius. Knowing that the marriage is invalid, Bond agrees to go ahead with it thinking it would buy him time until he can escape. On the night the two decide to escape, Harriett is killed by a water moccasin. At the same time the FBI is conducting a raid of Scorpius' island, which further angers Bond since her death was in vain. Bond returns to the island, finding Scorpius attempting to flee. After giving chase, Bond successfully gets the upper hand and forces Scorpius to die in a similar manner to that of Horner's death.
1120915	/m/047vlt	The Amateur Marriage	Anne Tyler	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot concerns the marriage of Michael Anton and Pauline Barclay, who meet when he tends to her bloodied brow in his family's grocery store, located in a primarily Eastern European conclave in Baltimore, in December 1941. They marry after Michael is discharged from the Army with a permanent injury caused by a deliberate shot from someone he assaulted. Michael and Pauline settle in a small apartment above the store, but their widely different temperaments and expectations quickly create dissension in the relationship. He is repressed, controlling, and quiet; she is loud, emotional, and romantic. At Pauline's insistence, they move to the suburbs, where they raise three children: Lindy, George and Karen. Lindy runs away to San Francisco in 1960 and becomes involved in the growing drug culture. Eight years later, her parents retrieve Pagan, their three-year-old grandchild, while Lindy detoxes in a rehab community. The slowly-crumbling marriage finally dissolves when Michael leaves Pauline on their 30th anniversary. For Michael, convinced that he and Pauline didn't have the faintest idea what they were doing when they married or how to conduct a marriage (that they were "amateurs"), divorce is a salvation. For Pauline, it's a tragedy that leaves her in despair.
1121236	/m/047wd7	Crabwalk	Günter Grass	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrator of the novella is the journalist Paul Pokriefke, who was born on 30 January 1945 on the day that the Strength Through Joy ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, was sunk. His young mother-to-be, Tulla Pokriefke (born in Danzig, and already known to readers from two parts of the Danzig Trilogy, Cat and Mouse and Dog Years), found herself among the more than 10,000 passengers on the ship and was among those saved when it went down. According to Tulla, Paul was born at the moment the ship sank, on board the torpedo boat which had rescued them. His life is heavily influenced by these circumstances, above all because his mother Tulla continually urges him to fulfill his 'duty' and to commemorate the event in writing. In the course of his research, the narrator discovers by chance that his estranged son Konny has also developed an interest in the ship as a result of Tulla's influence. On his website ('blutzeuge.de') he explores the murder of Gustloff and the sinking of the ship, in part through a dialogue in which he adopts the role of Gustloff, and that of David Frankfurter is taken by another young man, Wolfgang Stremplin. The two eventually meet in Schwerin, Konny's and Gustloff's hometown. Wolfgang, though not Jewish, projects a Jewish persona. He spits three times on the former memorial to Gustloff, thus desecrating it in Konny's eyes. Konny shoots him dead, mirroring the shooting of Gustloff by Frankfurter; after the deed he hands himself in to the police and state that, "I shot because I am a German"; Frankfurter had said, "I shot because I am a Jew". The narrator is eventually forced to realise that his imprisoned son has himself become a new martyr, and is celebrated as such by neo-Nazis on the Internet.
1121344	/m/047wtd	Mossflower	Brian Jacques	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in the Mossflower Wood, where a community of animals suffers under the tyranny of a ruling wildcat named Verdauga. When a mouse from the north, Martin the Warrior, comes to Mossflower Woods, he is captured and brought to the castle Kotir, where his sword is broken by Verdauga's daughter, Tsarmina, and he is imprisoned within the Kotir dungeons. Meanwhile Tsarmina poisons Verdauga with the help of the vixen Fortunata and blames it on her brother Gingivere. She places her brother in prison and takes the throne for herself. While in the dungeons, Martin eventually meets Gonff the Mousethief, who was imprisoned for stealing food from the Kotir storages. Meanwhile, Abbess Germaine and the surviving members of Loamhedge, an abbey stricken with the Great Sickness, arrive and join the woodlanders. Martin and Gonff escape with help from the Corim (Council Of Resistance In Mossflower) and join with Dinny the mole and Log a Log Bigclub of the Guosim, on a quest to find Boar the Fighter, Badger Lord of Salamandastron. Bella, Boar's daughter, believed only her father could defeat Tsarmina and put an end to her cruel reign. After a journey through Bat Mountpit and the Toadlands, the companions reach Salamandastron and meet with Boar the Fighter. Boar then reforges Martin's broken sword with metal from a meteorite, but is killed while fighting his mortal enemy Ripfang the searat who had attacked Salamandastron several times before. Ripfang's former oarslaves (including Martin's childhood friend Timballisto) and several members of Log a Log's former tribe take over the searat ship, Bloodwake, with help from Martin and his allies. They return to Mossflower Woods, where Martin kills Tsarmina and destroys Kotir by both flooding it and knocking over its walls with a ballista. In the final battle with Tsarmina, Martin is left near death. With the help of the woodlanders, he eventually recovers, but his memory is never the same thereafter, as evidenced in The Legend of Luke. From the ruins of Kotir would eventually rise what would later become Redwall Abbey, with the flooded area becoming the Abbey Pond. The book ends with Bella's son, Sunflash, finding Salamandastron and becoming its ruler.
1122051	/m/047yzb	Into the Wild	Jon Krakauer	1996	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 On September 6, 1992, Christopher McCandless's body is found inside an abandoned bus in Alaska (). One year later, author Jon Krakauer retraced McCandless' steps during the two years between college graduation and his demise in Alaska. McCandless shed his legal name early in his journey, adopting the moniker "Alexander Supertramp", after W.H. Davies. He spent time in Carthage, South Dakota laboring for months in a grain elevator owned by Wayne Westerberg before hitchhiking to Alaska. Krakauer interprets McCandless's intensely ascetic personality as possibly influenced by the writings of Henry David Thoreau, and McCandless's favorite writer, Jack London. He explores the similarities between McCandless's experiences and motivations and his own as a young man, recounting in detail Krakauer's own attempt to climb Devils Thumb in Alaska. Krakauer also relates the stories of some other young men who vanished into the wilderness, such as Everett Ruess, an artist and wanderer who went missing in the Utah desert during 1934 at age 20. In addition, he describes at some length the grief and puzzlement of McCandless's parents, sister, and friends. McCandless survived for approximately 119 days in the Alaskan wilderness, foraging for edible roots and berries, shooting an assortment of game—including a moose—and keeping a journal. Although he planned to hike to the coast, the boggy terrain of summer proved too difficult and he decided instead to camp in a derelict bus. In July, he tried to leave, only to find the route blocked by a melted river, which was tragically unfortunate as there was a hand powered tram just upstream. On July 30, McCandless wrote a journal entry which reads, EXTREMLY WEAK. FAULT OF POTATO SEED... Based on this entry, Krakauer hypothesized that McCandless had been eating the roots of Hedysarum alpinum, an edible plant commonly known as wild Eskimo potato, which are sweet and nourishing in the spring but later become too tough to eat. When this happened, McCandless may have attempted to eat the seeds instead. Krakauer first speculates that the seeds were actually from Hedysarum mackenzii, or wild sweet pea, which contained a poisonous alkaloid, possibly swainsonine (the toxic chemical in locoweed) or something similar. In addition to neurological symptoms such as weakness and loss of coordination, the poison causes starvation by blocking nutrient metabolism in the body. However, Krakauer suggests that McCandless had not confused the two plants and instead a more likely scenario is that he was poisoned by mold growing on the local flora he had gathered. However after further analysis Krakauer's hypotheses were proved to be incorrect. The 2007 film adaptation by Sean Penn shows Chris confusing two different plants, mistakenly choosing the wild sweet pea rather than the wild potato. According to Krakauer, a well-nourished person might consume the seeds and survive because the body can use its stores of glucose and amino acids to rid itself of the poison. Since McCandless lived on a diet of rice, lean meat, and wild plants and had less than 10% body fat when he died, Krakauer hypothesized that McCandless was likely unable to fend off the toxins. However, when the Eskimo potatoes from the area around the bus were later tested in a laboratory of the University of Alaska Fairbanks by Dr. Thomas Clausen, toxins were not found. Krakauer later modified his hypothesis, suggesting that mold of the variety Rhizoctonia leguminicola may have caused McCandless's death. Rhizoctonia leguminicola is known to cause digestion problems in livestock, and may have aided McCandless's impending starvation. Krakauer now hypothesizes that the bag in which Chris kept the potato seeds was damp and the seeds thus became moldy. If McCandless had eaten seeds that contained this mold, he could have become sick, and Krakauer suggests that he thus became unable to get out of bed and so starved. His basis for the mold hypothesis is a photograph that shows seeds in a bag. This theory was also proved false as no mold was found. However, in 1997, Dr. Thomas Clausen—the biochemist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who examined the wild potato plant (Hedysarum alpinum) for Jon Krakauer—concluded after exhaustive testing that no part of H. alpinum is toxic. Neither the roots nor the seeds. Accordingly, McCandless could not have poisoned himself in the way suggested by Krakauer in his 1996 book Into the Wild, and in every subsequent reprinting of the book over the next decade. Likewise, Dr. Clausen’s analysis of the wild sweet pea (Hedysarum mackenzii)—given as the cause of Chris’s death in the 2007 Sean Penn film—has also turned up no toxic compounds, and there is not a single account in modern medical literature of anyone ever being poisoned by this species of plant. Moreover, Penn’s on-screen excerpt from the ethno-botany guide Chris was using, indicating otherwise, is a complete fiction, for all that this plant lore text actually states is that the wild sweet pea "is reported to be poisonous" (Tana'ina Plantlore, Priscilla Russell Kari, p.&nbsp;128). The rest of it is simply made up. Thus, even if McCandless made a mistake of botany, something that even Krakauer claims is unlikely, he would not have been poisoned as portrayed in the Penn film.
1123003	/m/0484dv	The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County	Mark Twain	1867		 The narrator is sent by a friend on an errand to visit an old man, Simon Wheeler, to find an old acquaintance of his friend, Leonidas W. Smiley. The narrator finds Simon at the "decayed mining camp of Angel's" The narrator asks the fat, bald-headed man about Leonidas. Simon responds that he doesn't know a Leonidas Smiley, but he knows of a Jim Smiley. From there Simon tells the story of Jim. Jim Smiley loves to bet. He bets on anything from the death of Parson Walker's wife to fights between his bulldog pup (named Andrew Jackson) and other dogs. Once, Jim caught a frog and named it Dan'l Webster. For three months, he trained the frog to jump. At the end of those three months, the frog could jump over more ground than any other. Jim carried the frog around in a box. One day, a stranger to the town asks Jim what is in the box of his. Jim tells that in the box is a frog that can outjump any other frog in Calaveras county. The stranger looks at the frog and responds that the frog doesn't look any different than the other frogs of Calaveras county, so he mustn't be the best. He tells Jim if he had a frog, he'd bet him $40 that the frog he had could beat Jim's. Jim agrees to bet, and he gives the box to the stranger to hold while Jim was to catch another frog for the stranger. While Jim is catching the stranger's frog, the stranger pours lead shot into the frog's mouth. When Jim comes back, they set the frogs up ready to begin. They aligned the frogs up evenly, and on the count of three let them loose. The freshly caught frog (the stranger's) jumped off, while Dan'l Webster didn't budge a bit. Jim was surprised and disgusted. He gave the money to the stranger and the stranger giddily left. Jim wonders why Dan'l looks all of the sudden so plumpy. He takes the frog and tips him upside down. The frog coughed out handfuls of shot. Jim set the frog down, and chased after the stranger. But the stranger was long gone, and Jim never caught up to him. At this point in the story, Wheeler is called away by someone on the front porch, and tells the narrator to keep seated. The narrator realizes that Jim Smiley isn't the least bit related to Leonidas W. Smiley, and starts walking away. Simon catches the narrator at the door just before he leaves, and starts telling him another story, about Jim's one-eyed cow. The narrator excuses himself and leaves.
1123156	/m/0485hs	Lord Brocktree	Brian Jacques	2000-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book revolves around the badger Lord Brocktree, father of Boar the Fighter, grandfather of Bella of Brockhall, and great-grandfather of Sunflash the Mace. He sets out to find the ancient badger mountain stronghold of Salamandastron, aided by the quick talking haremaid Dorothea Duckfontein Dillworthy and otter Ruffgar Brookback. Meanwhile, in Salamandastron, trouble comes for Brocktree's father, Lord Stonepaw. Years of peace have left the mountain stronghold with few fighters, and those that remain are long past their prime, including Stonepaw himself. The wildcat Ungatt Trunn, son of Mortspear, Highland King of the North, lays siege to the fortress with his Blue Hordes. Eventually the mountain is overrun, leading to the deaths of many hares and even of Stonepaw himself, who dies valiantly defending his hares, taking many vermin with him as he does. The wildcat takes at least sixty hares as prisoners, but through the efforts of warrior Stiffener Medick and his otter friend Brogalaw, they escape. Lord Brocktree gets an army from Bucko Bigbones, after Dotti defeats him in a contest. Thanks to the Bark Crew, the group of guerrillas formed by Stiffener and Brogalaw to harass Trunn, the Blue Hordes are slowly starved, their supplies cut off. Ungatt Trunn tricks the Bark Crew into putting up a last stand in battle, but Lord Brocktree joins forces with the hares and saves the day. The book culminates in a massive final battle, with many memorable characters killed, such as Jukka the Sling, a female squirrel chieftain, and Fleetscut the hare. Eventually, when the battle ends up a near-stalemate, Trunn and Brocktree face off in a duel. After a failed assassination attempt on Brocktree by the searat Doomeye and the corsair fleet captain Karangool (Trunn's second in command) the badger eventually wins, snapping Trunn's spine and leaving him on the sand to die. Trunn is thrown into the water but survives, only to be drowned by Groddil, one of his former advisors.
1123273	/m/048686	Martin the Warrior	Brian Jacques	1993	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Martin the Warrior tells the story of a young mouse named Martin, a slave in Marshank under the cruel stoat Badrang the Tyrant. When Badrang leaves Martin to be tortured by the weather and the birds, a young mousemaid named Laterose, or Rose (whom Martin falls in love with) and a mole named Grumm hear his cry of defiance. They become instrumental in helping Martin, along with a squirrel named Felldoh, and Rose's brother Brome, escape Marshank. When that is accomplished, they decided to travel to Noonvale to rouse an army to attack Marshank. However, in the ocean, Felldoh and Brome are separated from Rose, Martin, and Grumm. Felldoh and Brome meet up with the Rambling Rosehip Players, a traveling band of creatures, and join forces with them, eventually freeing the slaves as Brome bluffs his way into and out of Marshank, disguised as a rat from Badrang's horde. Meanwhile, Martin, Rose and Grumm meet a hedgehog named Pallum after being imprisoned by pigmy shrews. They are eventually freed by saving the life of the Pygmy Queen's son, Dinjer, along with Pallum, who in turn joins up with them. After a long series of adventures, the four adventurers reach Noonvale, Rose and Grumm's home. They gather an army there, but it is not large enough. But all is not lost. Boldred, a scholarly owl who they met on the way to Noonvale, helps gather a huge army, including the pigmy shrews and the Gawtrybe (a group of savage squirrels). The entire army then sails to Marshank and reach it in good timing, since the Rambling Rosehip Players are in a predicament. Badrang and all of the vermin under his command, with the exception of mad Cap'n Tramun Clogg, are slain. Sadly, Rose is murdered in the final battle by the very tyrant she had gone with Martin to defeat. After the battle, Martin, along with Ballaw, Rowanoak, Brome, and Keyla all stay in Polleekin's treehouse for the short rest of the season. Martin is devastated, his one love gone and with nowhere to go. He denies going back to Noonvale with the rest, the memory of Laterose lingering too strong, not to mention he'll have to tell Urran Voh what had happened to his daughter. He makes a vow not to tell anyone about his friends or Noonvale, in order to protect them from enemies... He decides simply to relate a tale of living by the sword in the caves until the time came to move on southward. The story of Martin and Rose is later brought to Redwall during the time of Abbot Saxtus by Aubrieta, a descendant of Brome, and Bultip, a descendant of Pallum, who accompanies it with a sprig of climbing-rose culled from that which grew on Rose of Noonvale's grave. This becomes the Laterose of Redwall. In the passing of Spring to Summer, it blooms year round a bit later than the rest, and that is why it is called, the Laterose.
1124243	/m/048b9f	The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements	Eric Hoffer	1951	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Hoffer argues that all mass movements such as fascism, communism, and religion spread by promising a glorious future. To be successful, these mass movements need the adherents to be willing to sacrifice themselves and others for the future goals. To do so, mass movements often glorify the past and devalue the present. Mass movements appeal to frustrated people who are dissatisfied with their current state, but are capable of a strong belief in the future. As well, mass movements appeal to people who want to escape a flawed self by creating an imaginary self and joining a collective whole. Some categories of people who may be attracted to mass movements include poor people, misfits, former soldiers, and people who feel thwarted in their endeavors. Hoffer quotes extensively from leaders of the Nazi and communist parties in the early part of the 20th century, to demonstrate, among other things, that they were competing for adherents from the same pool of people predisposed to support mass movements. Despite the two parties' fierce antagonism, they were more likely to gain recruits from their opposing party than from moderates with no affiliation to either. The book also explores the behavior of mass movements once they become established (or leave the "active phase"). With their collapse of a communal framework people can no longer defeat the feelings of insecurity and uncertainty by belonging to a compact whole. If the isolated individual lacks vast opportunities for personal advancement, development of talents, and action (such as those found on a frontier), he will seek substitutes. These substitutes would be pride instead of self-confidence, memberships in a collective whole like a mass movement, absolute certainty instead of understanding. Hoffer does not take an exclusively negative view of "true believers" and the mass movements they begin. He gives examples of how the same forces that give rise to True Believer mass movements can be channeled in more positive ways:
1124244	/m/048b9s	Binary	Michael Crichton	1972	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The villain is a middle-class small businessman named John Wright who decides to assassinate the President of the United States. He spends his life savings to carry out the theft of a U.S. Army shipment of the two precursor chemicals that form a deadly nerve gas codenamed VZ when combined. The ingredients for the nerve gas VZ were intended to be detonated in downtown San Diego, corresponding with the arrival of the President to attend a Republican party conference taking place there. This nerve gas had no safe antidote, and it kills in two to three minutes after being inhaled or touched. This nerve gas is contained inside two "Alacran" (a combustible plastic) tanks, and plastic explosives are wrapped around the containers, so that when after the nerve gas is released, the containers explode, rendering the scene of the crime untraceable. This plan is thwarted by John Graves, a State Department agent who has been tailing Wright, who deduced the neferious plan, and the stopped it just two minutes before the timers set to release the nerve gas hit zero.
1126435	/m/048hyg	Voyage from Yesteryear	James P. Hogan	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in the early 21st century, just as an as-of-yet unnamed automated space probe is about to be sent from Earth to find habitable exoplanets. When it appears that an apocalyptic conflict is approaching, the probe's mission is changed from one of exploration to one of extrasolar space colonization, in the hope of preserving human civilization. As the technology does not yet exist to successfully convert the probe into a generation or sleeper ship, it is instead modified for embryo space colonization. The probe's data banks are programmed with the DNA sequences of several hundred humans, and as much of humanity's knowledge as possible. It is equipped with artificial wombs capable of using this data to gestate human babies. Finally, it is crewed with robots programmed not only to maintain the ship, but also raise the babies to adulthood. To signify its new purpose, the probe is dubbed the Kuan-Yin, the bodhisattva of childbirth. Soon after the probe is launched, a major global war breaks out, but it is not as devastating as anticipated. It only takes several decades for the survivors to rebuild civilization, but as a repressive, authoritarian shadow of its former self. This is the civilization that receives a message from Alpha Centauri, signaling the success of the Kuan-Yins mission. An Earth-like planet has been found in the system, and the Kuan-Yin has successfully raised its first generation of human children. They have dubbed the planet Chiron, after the mythological centaur. On Earth, the old international hostilities which led to war are still evident, and so the three major power blocs — North America, Asia, and Europe — each send a generation ship to Alpha Centauri to reclaim the colony there. The starship from North America, the Mayflower II, arrives first after a 20-year voyage, however its attempts to open a political dialogue with the inhabitants of Chiron fails when it becomes apparent that Chironian society has developed as an adhocracy. Since the availability of power from fusion reactors and cheap automated labor has enabled them to develop a post-scarcity economy, they do not use money as a means of exchange, nor do they recognize material possessions as symbols of status. Instead, competence and talent are considered symbolic of one's social standing &ndash; resources that cannot be counterfeited or hoarded, and must be put to use if they are to be acknowledged. As a result, the competitive drive that fuels capitalist financial systems has filled the colony with the products of decades of incredible artistic and technical talent, and there are no widespread hierarchies. No one person or group of people can know everything, so no one person or group of people is expected to speak for all. They have no centralized authorities; some would say they have no government at all. The government of the Mayflower II utilizes various methods used throughout human history in its attempts to exert control over the Chironians; bureaucratic legislature, a capitalist financial system, and proselytizing religion. However, they are frustrated by failure at every turn: as a people that have never been exposed to Earth's coercive authorities, the Chironians lack the social conditioning to even comprehend the attempts at subversion. Soon many of the crew from the Mayflower II are abandoning their increasingly futile positions in the invading hierarchy in favor of adopting the more rewarding Chironian lifestyle. Amid widespread speculation that a violent conflict will soon break out, some of the people who arrived on the Mayflower II realize that the Chironians do not intend to harm the majority of the ship's occupants, but rather use a form of satyagraha (Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent noncompliance) to integrate the peaceful travelers into their society and isolate the small number who present a real threat. It is an outstanding success. Eventually a military coup is staged aboard the Mayflower II, and the leader of the coup launches the Mayflower II’s "battle module", an independently-functioning, heavily-armed warship, and threatens to attack the Chironian population unless they submit to his authority. The Chironian's enemies isolated at last, he and his fellow authoritarians are killed when a direct attack with a high-energy antimatter particle beam weapon destroys the battle module. The remaining members of the Mayflower II’s government vote to dissolve their government and absorb peacefully into Chironian society. In the week after the dissolution of Mayflower II’s government, the laser communications beam from Earth which has kept the Mayflower II apprised of events back home (with a 4.5 year-delay as the information travels at light speed) is lost as the result of yet another catastrophic war. The story skips forward five years and ends with the Chironians — who have by now assimilated not only the North Americans but also the crews of the Asian and European starships — recommissioning the refitted Mayflower II (renamed as the Henry B. Congreve after the man behind the Kuan-Yin’s mission) which will return to Earth to rebuild it (the journey is estimated to take about 8 years following the installation of an antimatter drive which the Chironians have perfected), thus fulfilling the Kuan-Yins mission of preserving human civilization.
1126555	/m/048j97	Mortal Engines	Philip Reeve	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The main character of Mortal Engines is Tom Natsworthy, a fifteen-year old orphan and a third class apprentice in the Guild of Historians. The book opens with London chasing the town of Salthook over the dry bed of the North Sea, into Europe (now known as the Great Hunting Ground). Salthook is soon captured and dragged aboard. While assisting the head of the Guild of Historians, Thaddeus Valentine, and his daughter Katherine in searching for relics in the captured town, Tom saves him from a knife-wielding girl. The girl jumps off London to evade pursuit, and Valentine pushes Tom off as well. Tom awakens on the bare mud of the Great Hunting Ground, a desolate wasteland stretching in every direction. The girl, Hester Shaw, is there. She claims that Valentine killed her parents, scarring her horribly, and starts following London's wheel marks to try and catch up to it. Tom follows her. The next morning, an upset Katherine is told by Valentine that Hester dragged Tom down the chute with her. Magnus Crome, the Lord Mayor, arrives at their home and has a private discussion which Katherine eavesdrops on. She finds out that Crome is sending Valentine on a reconnaissance flight between London and its mysterious goal, and that he is preparing something called "MEDUSA". Tom and Hester keep walking through the Hunting Ground, and Hester tells Tom about her parents. They were killed by Valentine when she was young, because her mother refused to give him something called "MEDUSA". Later that day they encounter a small town, and Tom trades a relic he found aboard Salthook for some food. Unfortunately, they are tricked and drugged, with the intention of being sold as slaves at an upcoming "trading cluster" (a gathering of small towns for trading purposes). Back in London, Crome speaks to a mysterious agent named Shrike (called Grike in the North American version), instructing him to take an airship and hunt down Hester Shaw. Valentine leaves on his reconnaissance mission, and Katherine decides to investigate about MEDUSA in his absence. Tom and Hester escape from captivity, and a pilot named Anna Fang agrees to help them get home to London. She takes them aboard her airship, the Jenny Haniver, and they fly to Airhaven, an airborne Traction City kept aloft by an array of balloons. While eating at a cafe with some of Anna's friends, they are attacked by Shrike, who has managed to track them down. It is revealed that he is a Stalker, a robotic killing machine containing a human brain. In the resulting battle Airhaven is greatly damaged, but Tom and Hester manage to escape in a stolen hot air balloon, unable to use the Jenny Haniver as it has been damaged. While they drift away on the wind, Hester tells Tom that she used to know Shrike. He found her half-dead after her parents' murder, when she was abandoned in the Great Hunting Ground, and he raised her. When she found out who Valentine was, and swore revenge, Shrike forbade her from going. So she ran away from him, and when she finally did find Valentine Tom thwarted her assassination attempt. However, she has no idea why Shrike was on a mission from the Lord Mayor of London. The balloon eventually drifts down in the Rustwater Marshes (somewhere in Central Asia), and while Tom and Hester flee through the Marshes, Shrike catches up to them again. Hester asks him how he knows the Lord Mayor, and he replies that he went to London looking for her, but found Magnus Crome instead. Crome sent Shrike after Hester, in return for "his heart's desire." Before it is revealed what that is, Shrike and his scout airship are crushed beneath a speeding village, which Tom and Hester narrowly avoid being run over by. They board the town that was chasing the village and find that it is a pirate suburb, and they are taken captive. Back on London, Katherine makes an appointment with Crome, who refuses to tell her anything. She decides to track down an apprentice Engineer who was nearby the waste chute the night Tom and Hester disappeared, and is horrified by the conditions she finds down in the Gut. Prisoners are being worked to death, and fed on their own faeces. She finds the apprentice, however, a pale boy her age named Bevis Pod. Bevis tells her that he thinks the Guild is building Stalkers, and that MEDUSA is some kind of device that London is relying on for survival. He agrees to help her sneak into a Guild meeting to discover more. Meanwhile, Hester finds that she knows the mayor of the pirate suburb; his name is Chrysler Peavey, and she met him while she lived with Shrike. He refuses to let them go, until he realises that Tom is a Londoner. Peavey has delusions of becoming a gentleman, and agrees to free them if Tom teaches him etiquette. The pirate suburb is heading through the marshes towards a mysterious prize. Ahead of them lies the Sea of Khazak, and a place called the Black Island, which houses a small static town and a refueling depot for airships. Peavey reveals that Airhaven has landed there to repair, and he intends to seize it. His suburb is amphibious, and inflates air-tanks to cross the sea to the Black Island. Back in the Rustwater Marshes, Shrike (Grike) pulls himself free of the mud, having survived being run over (his airship and its crew did not survive). Despite being badly injured, he follows the suburb's trail. The Jenny Haniver bombs the suburb before it reaches the island, and Peavey reveals that Anna Fang is an Anti-Traction League agent. While crossing the Sea of Khazak, the suburb runs into a reef and sinks. Tom, Hester, Peavey and a handful of pirates reach the shores in a lifeboat. Peavey refuses to give up and leads them onward, despite the fact they no longer have any chance of capturing Airhaven. As Airhaven is about to take off, Peavey is caught in quicksand and his pirates mutiny and shoot him before he sinks. They accuse Tom and Hester of ruining their lives, and are about to kill them when Shrike shows up and kills the pirates. That same night on London, Katherine and Bevis sneak into a secret Guild meeting and learn that MEDUSA is an ancient superweapon recovered from an American military base. Crome intends to use it to break through the Shield-Wall, an immense fortress-city blocking the only pass into the lands of the Anti-Traction League, protecting them from hungry cities. First, however, he intends to test fire it. The Engineers watch, entranced, as the dome on top of St. Paul's Cathedral begins to open. On the Black Island, Shrike reveals that "his heart's desire" was Hester as a Stalker; in return for killing her, Crome agreed to resurrect her as Shrike's mechanical daughter. He is about to kill her when Tom grabs a sword from one of the fallen pirates and kills Shrike. Hester screams at Tom, claiming she would have been happier as a Stalker. Their fight is interrupted as the northern sky fills with a green light. On London, Katherine and Bevis watch as MEDUSA fires a brilliant ray of energy at Panzerstadt Bayruth, the city that had been chasing London. It is incinerated entirely, and they are horrified, but the people of London only cheer. On the Black Island, Tom and Hester are found by a patrol that includes Anna Fang. Tom is shocked to find that she is an agent of the Anti-Traction League, but realises she is still his friend. She tells him that she suspects the green flash was related to MEDUSA, and has learnt that London is headed for the Shield-Wall. Tom and Hester agree to go there with her. They fly east in the repaired Jenny Haniver, stopping at several Traction Cities which are all fleeing away from the scene where MEDUSA was fired, terrified that London is unstoppable. After flying over the Himalayas, which have grown to encircle the entire land of Shan Guo (leading nation of the Anti-Traction League), they arrive at the Shield-Wall: a massive wall of basalt and metal built across a mountain pass, with the static city of Batmunkh Gompa built on its interior side. Tom and Hester attend a military strategy meeting, where Anna Fang urges the governor of the Shield-Wall to launch his fleet of gunships and destroy London before it can come into range. Tom is upset at this, and goes to explore the city and come to grips with his feelings. While exploring, he recognises Valentine in disguise, and follows him. As London heads towards the mountains, Katherine spends much time in the History Museum, where she is hiding Bevis from his superiors, and slowly falling in love with him. While speaking with some of the Historians, she learns that her father used to go on expeditions with a woman named Pandora Shaw, and finds that she was murdered six or seven years ago, leaving behind a daughter named Hester Shaw. Katherine realises that her father must have killed Hester's parents, and is heartbroken. At the Shield-Wall, Tom loses track of Valentine and goes to warn Anna Fang instead. She suspects Valentine's mission is to destroy the Shield-Wall's air fleet, and goes to stop him. Tom then finds Hester and tells her that Valentine is in Batmunkh Gompa. They go to the top of the Shield-Wall, where Valentine has set fire to the air-fleet, and chasing after Hester, Tom gets lost in a maze of tunnels that go through the wall. He emerges on a battlement where Anna Fang and Valentine are locked in a sword fight. Valentine, however, is no match for Fang who eventually disarms him. Valentine manages to buy enough time for his airship to arrive, which distracts Fang long enough for him to grab his fallen sword and run her through. With her last breath, Anna Fang promises Valentine that Hester Shaw will find him. Thaddeus leaps off the battlements onto his airship, to escape, but is confused by how Anna knows Hester, eventually realising she and Tom must still be alive. Tom links up with Hester and they realise they have to stop London from reaching the Shield-Wall; now that the fleet has been destroyed, it is defenceless. They take the Jenny Haniver and follow Valentine's airship west, towards London. At the same time, Katherine and Bevis are assembling a bomb to try and destroy MEDUSA. They are discovered by security from the Guild of Engineers, but the Historians help them escape after a vicious gunfight in which several historians and Katherine's pet wolf are killed. They reach the Top Tier, where a function is being held to celebrate the arrival of London at the Shield Wall, and Bevis hastily hugs Katherine and whispers "I love you". Tom sets Hester down on the same tier, and promises to circle and return for her, but he is attacked by Valentine's airship (which has already dropped Valentine off at the function). Tom shoots the airship down, and it lands in a fiery heap on the Top Tier, killing Bevis. Hester is captured by the Guild of Engineers' security Stalkers, and taken to St. Paul's. Valentine and Crome are there, preparing to fire MEDUSA. Katherine arrives just as Valentine is about to kill Hester, and throws herself in front of the blow, run through by his sword. She falls on MEDUSA's keyboard, damaging it, and Valentine calls for help. Only Hester helps him; the Engineers are worrying about MEDUSA, which is overloading with power but unable to fire after Katherine altered the code. Crome becomes distraught, and begs for Valentine's help, but the historian refuses. Meanwhile, MEDUSA'S energy builds up dangerously fast. The flames from Valentine's airships are consuming the Top Tier, and Valentine and Hester carry Katherine out onto the roof of St. Paul's. Tom brings the Jenny Haniver down to rescue them, but Katherine dies, and Valentine shouts at Hester to save herself. She jumps onto the airship, and they fly away just as MEDUSA's energy builds up to the point where it explodes, destroying all but the lowest tier of London. The lowest tier, unaffected by the blast, collapses on itself, leaving any survivors within to fend for themselves in the unstable wreckage.The Jenny Haniver is blown away on the updraft created by the explosion. Tom is devastated over the loss of his city, and of Katherine - but he realises he barely knew Katherine, and it is Hester that he loves. Together the two of them fly away in the Jenny Haniver to start a new life.
1127009	/m/048l5x	Eyeless in Gaza	Aldous Huxley	1936	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel focuses on the life of Anthony Beavis, with flashbacks into different moments of his life, as he discovers pacifism and then mysticism.
1127863	/m/048nsz	Payasos en la lavadora	Álex de la Iglesia	1997	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Álex de la Iglesia signs only two pages of this novel. In this introduction he states he's found a laptop computer lost by poet Juan Carlos Satrústegui. On it, he's read a file called Payasos en la lavadora. Since Satrústegui has entered a mental sanatorium, De La Iglesia talks with the writer's mother and decides to publish the text after correcting it. It's a parody of the old literary technique of the false document found by chance, probably influenced by the fact that, in real life, Álex de la Iglesia writes his film scripts on a laptop computer, which he's lost at least twice. According to this introduction, the restin fifteen chapters are Juan Carlos Satrústegui's autobiographic tale. Satrústegui considers himself a genius, superior over all those he comes across. But we soon realise his psychic problems (obsessions, deliria, paranoia, lack of empathy...) which get worse due to the drugs he uses in fiestas, the want of slept and the beatings he earns when dealing with the lumpen.
1128226	/m/048pyl	Predator's Gold	Philip Reeve	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story begins when the two aviators meet Professor Pennyroyal aboard Airhaven, who persuades them to take him as a passenger. They are soon pursued by airships of the Green Storm, (a fanatical splinter group of the Anti-Traction League) and drift helplessly over the Ice Wastes. However, they are fortunate enough to be rescued by Anchorage, once a thriving Traction city that relied primarily upon trade, but which has now been devastated by an excavated biological weapon that killed nearly all of the population. The city is now ruled by Freya Rasmussen, the young margravine who was suddenly thrust into power after her parents died from the plague. The people of the city are desperate for sanctuary and have set a course for North America, which has been a radioactive wasteland since the events of the Sixty Minute War. Freya, however, is convinced that they will find a land of lush greenery, which Pennyroyal claims to have seen on a voyage to the Dead Continent many years ago. She is delighted to find that the professor is onboard her city and treats all three of them as honoured guests. Pennyroyal, however, is less than pleased to hear that Anchorage is making for America. Tom and Hester set about repairing the Jenny Haniver, though Tom finds that he enjoys Anchorage. Hester, on the other hand, is jealous of his growing closeness with Freya, and disturbed by the sightings of "ghosts" in the city. Eventually she sees Tom kissing Freya, and flies away from the city in the Jenny Haniver, heartbroken. Hester intends to sell Anchorage's course to the predator city of Arkangel, with the deal that when the city eats Anchorage, Tom will be returned to her. She makes this deal with Piotr Masgard, the leader of Arkangel's "Huntsmen" - armed warriors who capture cities by airship and then order them into Arkangel's jaws. Returning to the Jenny Haniver, however, she is drugged and kidnapped by a Green Storm informant. Hester is taken to Rogue's Roost, an island south of Greenland. The Green Storm have converted it into a base, where she discovers that they have stolen Anna Fang's body and have turned her into a Stalker. They hope to return the Stalker's memories by showing her Hester. They also tell her that, according to their intelligence, Hester's father was actually Thaddeus Valentine. Hester finds this upsetting, and she also grieves for her loss of Tom. Tom has been lamenting the loss of Hester and regretting kissing Freya. He and Pennyroyal are now stranded on Anchorage, as the Jenny Haniver was the only airship on the city. He is also shocked when Pennyroyal miserably confesses that he is a fraud - he never actually went to America, and based his entire book off an old explorer's map in the Reykjavík library, which was stolen many years ago. In despair, Tom makes another shocking discovery: the "ghosts" who have been sighted around the city are actually thieves, operating out of a parasite submarine attached to the bottom of the city. They call themselves Lost Boys and work out of a larger group in the secret underwater city of Grimsby. With their secret blown, they kidnap Tom and leave the city, taking him back to Grimsby. Tom develops a sort of friendship with the boy Caul on their trip back to Grimsby. Caul tells him that the city is ruled by "Uncle", a man who founded it long ago as a base of thieves. The Lost Boys use limpet submarines to attach themselves to raft-cities and ice-cities, robbing the inhabitants. When they arrive in Grimsby Tom is taken to see Uncle, who tells him there is something valuable in Rogue's Roost, which he wants Tom to steal for him. In return Tom will have the chance to rescue Hester. Tom agrees and Caul takes him to the Roost. He climbs a ladder up the rocky cliffs to infiltrate the base but is soon discovered. This was the Lost Boys' plan all along, it is revealed - they were merely using Tom as a decoy to mount their own infiltration. Caul, however, does not want to see Tom die, so he blows up the charges the Lost Boys had planted prematurely, risking their operation but saving Tom and Hester. In the confusion the Lost Boys make their way to the chamber where the Stalker Fang is kept. This is apparently what Uncle wanted to steal, as she betrayed him when they were young and he now wants revenge by making her his slave. The Stalker easily kills the Lost Boys however, with only Caul and a few others escaping in a limpet. It pursues Tom and Hester into a hangar where the Jenny Haniver is kept, but before it kills them it suddenly remembers their faces. The Stalker lets them escape, and then takes command of the Green Storm forces. In Grimsby, Caul has slowly been left to die by hanging for betraying the Lost Boys at Rogue's Roost. Another Lost Boy, Gargle, saves him, however, giving him the Reykjavik map of America's green places (it was actually stolen by the Lost Boys), and telling him to steal a limpet and head for Anchorage. In Anchorage, which is now west of Greenland, Arkangel is catching up to the city and the Huntsmen have been dispatched. They easily overpower Anchorage and leave it helpless on the ice, but with a day to go before Arkangel arrives Tom and Hester make it back to the city, finding it eerily deserted. They discover Pennyroyal is the only one who has escaped notice by the Huntsmen. Hester sends Tom to hide in safety, intending to kill the Huntsmen herself. She tells Pennyroyal to run out and make a diversion. When he refuses out of fear, she confides in him that it was she who sent Arkangel after Anchorage. Terrified by her ruthlessness, he runs out and is spotted by the Huntsmen. She uses the distraction to kill those by their airship, and then heads up to the palace where the city's populace are being kept. Tom sees Pennyroyal running off, and chases him. Hester liberates the palace and kills the last of the Huntsmen, while Tom confronts Pennyroyal, who is attempting to fly off in the Jenny Haniver. Attempting to scare Tom off, Pennyroyal accidentally shoots Tom in the chest. He then steals the airship, and escapes. Arkangel is still pursuing Anchorage, but accidentally heads over thin ice and is trapped. Anchorage escapes on an ice floe, but with the revelation that Pennyroyal is a fraud they have lost hope in the salvation of their city waiting in America. Caul then arrives with the Reykjavik map, and convinces them to keep going. Tom has been badly injured by Penntroyal's gun, as the bullet went right next to his heart, however, no-one can help him as there is no doctor aboard Anchorage. Pennyroyal makes it back to the safety of the Hunting Ground, and soon publishes a book retelling the events of Anchorage's flight west, casting himself as the hero. Arkangel is evacuated and eventually sinks to the bottom of the ocean as the ice thaws in summer. In Asia, the Green Storm topples the old Anti-Traction League under the leadership of the Stalker Fang, setting up events for the war that takes place in the following books. Anchorage eventually makes it to North America, and finds it verdant and lush. Tom has survived his bullet wound, but is still very weak. Hester reflects that the city will be secret and safe in this new land, and is pleased to discover that she is pregnant.
1129093	/m/048sgc	The Piano Lesson	August Wilson			 * Act 1, Scene 1 The Boy Willie and Lymon enter into the Charles household at dawn with a truck full of watermelon they intend to sell. Against his better judgement and Uncle Doaker's insistence, Boy Willie calls awake his sister Berniece, whom he has not seen in three years due to his sentence in the Parchment Prison Farm. Altogether, the family members and Lymon celebrate the drowning of Sutter (the family who owned the Charles family during slavery) in the well. Tired of her brother's stupid actions, Berniece dismisses his words and wishes him to leave the house as soon as possible. To annoy her further, Boy Willie calls upon Maretha, Berniece's daughter, in the middle of the night to stir her from her sleep, causing Berniece to run back up the stairs. Switching topics, Willie then asks of his Uncle Wining Boy, who has become a wanderer in his middle age looking for the past he seems to want to relive. Lymon then brings up the piano. Willie intends to sell the watermelon and the piano to buy the Sutters' land the Charles family had once toiled upon. Doaker insists that Berniece will not agree to selling the piano and Willie insists that he will convince her. Seeing Sutter's ghost dressed in a blue suit, Berniece screams at the top of the stairs. Her brother Willie tells her that she is imaging things and that Sutter is looking for the piano to be rid of the Charles household. After Doaker rambles on about his railroad stories, Maretha comes downstairs and Willie asks her to play the piano. She plays the beginning of a few simple tunes and he answers her song with a boogie-woogie. Willie then asks Maretha if she knows the origins of the piano and is surprised to discover she does not. Avery and Berniece reenter the room and Willie casually asks his sister if she might still have the protective buyer's name. Finally professing his want to sell the piano for land, Berniece refuses to listen and walks out. * Act 1, Scene 2 Wining Boy and Doaker are having a conversation about daily events and they muse over the present and the past. Boy Willie and Lymon enter and claim that they have already bargained with the piano purchaser. Both of Willie's uncles warn Willie that the white man Sutter is cheating him and that he should be more careful. Seeing himself as equal to the white man, Boy Willie refuses to listen. The story behind Lymon and Boy Willie's term in Parchment Prison Farm is revealed. Lymon and Willie both gather different perspectives from their experiences. Lymon feels that he should flee to the North where he will be better treated, while Willie feels that whites only treat blacks badly if the blacks do not try and stop them. Wining Boy is then asked to play the piano, but instead he gives a short speech regarding his inexistence due to playing piano his whole life and knowing nothing more. Doaker then tells Lymon the story of what the piano represents, the enriching values that it bestowed on the Charles family. Willie declares that these are stories of the past and that the piano should now be put to good use. Willie and Lymon attempt to move the piano to test its weight. As soon as they try to move it, Sutter's ghost is heard. Berniece commands Willie to stop and informs him that he is selling his soul for money. Willie refutes her, Berniece blames Crawley's death on Willie, and the two engage in a fight. Upstairs, Maretha is confronted by the ghosts, and she screams. * Act 2, Scene 1 Doaker and Wining Boy are again together in the house alone. Doaker confesses that he saw Sutter's ghost playing the piano and feels that Berniece should discard the piano so as to prevent spirits from traumatizing the Charles family. Wining Boy disagrees. Lymon and Willie walk into the room after a watermelon sale. Wining Boy sells his suit and shoes to Lymon, promising its swooning affects on woman. Both Lymon and Willie leave the house in hot pursuit of women. * Act 2, Scene 2 Later that day as Berniece is preparing for her bath, Avery enters and proposes that Berniece should open up and let go. He tells her that she cannot continue to live her life with Crawley's memory shut inside her. Berniece changes the topic and asks Avery to bless the house, hoping to destroy the spirit of the Sutter ghost. Avery then brings up the piano and tells Berniece she should learn to not be afraid of her family's spirits and play it again. Berniece breaks down her story of her mother's tears and blood mingled with her father's soul on the piano and refuses to open her wounds for everyone to see. * Act 2, Scenes 3–5 Boy Willie enters the Charles house with Grace and begins to fool around on the couch. Berniece orders them out and opens the door to see Lymon. Lymon is upset over his inability to woo women and begins to talk about women's virtues to Berniece. The two kiss, breaking Berniece's discomfort over Crawley's death, and Berniece heads back upstairs. The next morning, Lymon and Willie try to move the piano out and are stopped by Uncle Doaker. Willie, frustrated, demands that he will sell the piano no matter what. The day to move the piano draws closer. Excited to sell the piano, Willie quickly partakes on his actions without a care of his sister's words. Berniece appears with Crawley's gun, leading Doaker and Avery to urge them to talk it through first. Sutter's presence as a ghost is suddenly revived. Avery attempts to drive the ghost away with his blessings but is not successful. Suddenly, Berniece knows that she must play the piano again as a plea to her ancestors. Finally, the house is led to a calm aura, and Willie leaves.
1129268	/m/048sxp	How Far Can You Go?	David Lodge	1980	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book deals with the intersecting lives of a group of English Catholics from their years as students at University College London in the early 1950s up to the late 1970s. The characters are confronted with a wide range of issues and experiences including marriage, contraception, adultery, illness, grief and, most important of all, the changes in the Catholic Church brought about by the Second Vatican Council and the papal encyclical against contraception, Humanae Vitae (1968). The title's meaning is twofold: it is on the one hand a reference to how far you ought to go with a member of the other sex before marriage, but also to the question of disorientation in the face of abrupt changes in the Church within only a few years.
1130010	/m/048vzf	Horton Hatches the Egg	Dr. Seuss	1940		_ The book concerns an elephant named Horton, who is convinced by Mayzie (a lazy, irresponsible bird) to sit on her egg while she takes a short "break", which in actuality ends up being Mayzie's permanent relocation to Palm Beach. Naturally, the absurd sight of an elephant sitting atop a tree makes quite a scene &ndash; Horton is exposed to the elements, laughed at by his jungle friends, captured by hunters, forced to endure a terrible sea voyage, and finally placed in a traveling circus. However, despite his hardships and Mayzie's clear intent not to return, Horton refuses to leave the nest through all of these, because he insists on keeping his word ("I meant what I said and I said what I meant, And an elephant's faithful, one hundred per cent!") The traveling circus ends up visiting near Mayzie's new Palm Beach residence; she returns to the circus once the egg is due to hatch, and demands its return without offering any reward for Horton. However, when the egg hatches, the creature that emerges is an "elephant-bird" cross between Horton and Mayzie, and Horton and the baby are returned happily to the jungle, rewarding Horton for his persistence, while Mayzie is punished for her laziness by ending up with nothing.
1130241	/m/048wds	Moonseed	Stephen Baxter	1998-08-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Moonseed is an exploration of what could possibly happen when rock returned from the Apollo 18 mission (which was actually cancelled in 1970). In the book, the rock contain a mysterious substance called "moonseed" (a form of grey goo, whether nanobots, an alien virus or something else) that starts to change all inorganic matter on Earth into more moonseed. It also gets transferred by a NASA probe to Venus, and the explosion of Venus is the first clue as to what has been happening. Stephen Baxter combines a host of disciplines (space travel, geology and disaster theory) to tell a tale where the rocks are literally swept from under the feet of humanity. During the course of the novel, in which Edinburgh is the focus for much of the action, Venus is destroyed by an unknown cosmic event that showers the Earth with radiation that somehow stirs the moonseed on Earth. When moon-dust containing the moonseed accidentally falls onto the streets of Edinburgh, Earth's fate is sealed. The moonseed begins to disintegrate the planet from the inside-out as the core heats up exponentially, while on the surface, nuclear power stations catastrophically fail, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are abundant, and billions of people die as cities and continents vanish. Over the course of the cataclysmic erosion of Earth, a collective of scientists and engineers in space agencies from around the world desperately try to terraform the Moon for colonization, to provide a safe haven for some surviving humans before Earth eventually disintegrates into nothingness along with human civilization. This novel also presents numerous theories and ideas about the space-faring future of humanity, albeit in an alternate dimension where we are forced into space by an eroding Earth. It is also, in many stages, critical of NASA's performance over the last thirty years, as well as the United Kingdom's disaster programs.
1131095	/m/048y_b	The Sickness Unto Death	Søren Kierkegaard	1849		 Anti-Climacus introduces the book with a reference to Gospel of John 11.4: "This sickness is not unto death." This quotation comes from the story of Lazarus, in which Jesus raises a man from the dead. However, Anti-Climacus raises the question: would not this statement still be true even if Jesus had not raised Lazarus from the dead? While the human conception of death is the end, the Christian conception of death is merely another stop along the way of the eternal life. In this way, for the Christian, death is nothing to fear. The true "Sickness unto Death," which does not describe physical but spiritual death, is something to fear according to Anti-Climacus. This sickness unto death is what Kierkegaard calls despair. According to Kierkegaard, an individual is "in despair" if he does not align himself with God or God's plan for the self. In this way he loses his self, which Kierkegaard defines as the "relation's relating itself to itself in the relation." Kierkegaard defines humanity as the tension between the "finite and infinite", and the "possible and the necessary", and is identifiable with the dialectical balancing act between these opposing features, the relation. While humans are inherently reflective and self-conscious beings, to become a true self one must not only be conscious of the self but also be conscious of being aligned with a higher purpose, viz God's plan for the Self. When one either denies this Self or the power that creates and sustains this Self, one is in despair. There are three kinds of despair presented in the book: being unconscious in despair of having a self, not wanting in despair to be oneself, and wanting in despair to be oneself. The first of these is described as "inauthentic despair," because this despair is born out of ignorance. In this state one is unaware that one has a self separate from its finite reality. One does not realize that there is a God, and accepts finitude because one is unaware of possibility of being more inherent in selfhood. The second type of despair is refusing to accept the self outside of immediacy; only defining the self by immediate, finite terms. This is the state in which one realizes that one has a self, but wishes to lose this painful awareness by arranging one's finite life so as to make the realization unnecessary. This stage is loosely comparable to Sartre's bad faith. The third type is awareness of the Self but refusal to submit to the will of God. In this stage, one accepts the eternal and may or may not acknowledge the creator, but refuses to accept an aspect of the Self that one in reality is, that is to say, the Self that one has been created to be. To not be in despair is to have reconciled the finite with the infinite, to exist in awareness of one's own self and of God. Specifically, Kierkegaard defines the opposite of despair as faith, which he describes by the following: "In relating itself to itself, and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it."
1133955	/m/0495kx	The Horse's Mouth	Joyce Cary	1944	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jimson's father, based on a real person known to Cary, was an Academy artist who is heart-broken when Impressionism drives his style from popular taste. Jimson has put aside any consideration of acceptance by either academy or public and paints in fits of creative ecstasy. Although his work is known to collectors and has become valuable, Jimson himself is forced to live from one scam or petty theft to the next. Cadging enough money to buy paints and supplies, he spends much of the novel seeking surfaces, such as walls, to serve as ground for his paintings. When the novel opens, Jimson has just been released from jail. He seeks money from Hickson, his sometime patron. Later in the book, he tracks down Sara Monday, his ex-wife, and tries to obtain an early painting from her that is worth a great deal. Sara is reluctant to give up the picture, which serves as a reminder of her youth. In the struggle that follows, Sara falls and suffers a fatal injury. Jimson is unsentimental about his life and work and sees himself as someone who has given over to a destructive passion. Yet he regrets nothing. At the novel's end, Jimson reflects on his life and the home and family that he has missed. But he recognizes that he himself made the decision to sacrifice those possibilities in order to pursue his art. It is only clear at the end that Jimson has suffered a paralysing stroke, and can no longer paint. As he is being taken to hospital, a nun who is nursing him remarks that he should be praying instead of laughing, "Same thing, Mother." replies Jimson, his last words.
1136819	/m/049f7y	A Game at Chess	Thomas Middleton			 (Note: the act and scene divisions of this synopsis follow the edition of the play in "Women Beware Women and Other Plays," edited by Richard Dutton, Oxford 1999). Prologue The Prologue explains that the forthcoming stage play will be based on a game of chess, with chess pieces representing men and states. In the end, he says, "checkmate will be given to virtue’s foes." Induction The Ghost of Ignatius Loyola (founder of the Jesuit Order) expresses surprise at finding a rare corner of the world (England) where his order (the Catholic Church) has not been established. His servant, Error (a personification of deviance), who has been sleeping at Ignatius’ feet, wakes up and says that he has been dreaming of a game of chess where "our side"—the Blacks/Catholics—was set against the Whites/English. Ignatius says that he wants to see the dream so he can observe his side’s progress. The "pieces" (actors dressed as chess pieces) enter. Ignatius expresses contempt for his own followers and says that his true aim is to rule the entire world all by himself. Act 1, Scene 1 The Black Queen’s Pawn, a Jesuitess, attempts to corrupt the virginal White Queen’s Pawn (White Virgin). Faking tears, the Black Queen’s Pawn says she pities the White Virgin, whom she says will be "lost eternally," despite her beauty, because she is too "firm" (steadfast, loyal). The Black Bishop’s Pawn, a Jesuit, enters and takes over the attempt to corrupt the White Virgin, encouraging her to confess her sins to him. (Confession was a highly suspect Catholic practice in Renaissance England). The White Virgin confesses that she once considered entering into a love relationship, but didn’t actually follow through with it because the man she loved—the White Bishop’s Pawn—was castrated by the Black Knight’s Pawn. The Black Bishop’s Pawn gives the White Virgin a manual on moral instruction; she exits. The Black Knight’s Pawn and his castrated victim, the White Bishop’s Pawn enter, exchange insults and exit. The Black Knight enters. He notes that the "business of the universal monarchy" (i.e., the business of the Catholic Church) is going well, primarily because of his ability to trap souls by means of charm and deception. The White King’s Pawn—a spy, secretly employed by the Blacks—enters and issues a report. Gondomar praises the spy to his face, but calls him a fool after he exits. Act 2, Scene 1 The White Virgin enters reading the book the Black Bishop’s Pawn gave her. The book instructs her to obey her confessor in all things. The Black Bishop’s Pawn enters reading a letter from the Black King, who says he wants to "capture" (seduce) the White Virgin himself. The Black Bishop’s Pawn says he will help the King, but intends to "taste" the White Virgin himself first. The White Virgin greets the Black Bishop’s Pawn and begs him to give her an order so she can prove her virtue by obeying him. The Black Bishop’s Pawn commands her to kiss him; she objects; he scolds her disobedience and says that, as punishment for her refusal, she must now offer him her virginity. A noise from offstage provides a distraction, and the White Virgin manages to escape. The Black Bishop enters with the Black Knight. The Black Bishop scolds his pawn, claiming that news of the fumbled seduction will cause a scandal for the Blacks. The Black Knight makes plans for a cover up. He orders the Black Bishop’s Pawn to flee, and says he will falsify documents to make it look as though the pawn was not in the vicinity when the incident took place. He also orders the Black Bishop to burn all of his files in case the house is searched (the files contain records of various other seductions and misdeeds). At the end of the scene, the Black Knight’s Pawn enters and expresses remorse for castrating the White Bishop’s Pawn. Act 2, Scene 2 The Fat Bishop—a former member of the Black House, now employed by the Whites—gloats about his life is: he has the freedom to gorge himself with food and sex on a regular basis. He is the author of several books criticizing the Black House. The Black Knight Gondomar and the Jesuit Black Bishop enter. They curse the Fat Bishop and swear vengeance. The White Virgin tells the White King James that the Black Bishop’s Pawn has tried to rape her. Confronted with the charges, the Black Knight calls the White Virgin a liar and produces falsified documents showing that the Black Bishop’s Pawn was out of town while the incident allegedly took place. The White King James reluctantly finds the White Virgin guilty of slander and rules that the Blacks may discipline her as they see fit. The Blacks decree that the White Virgin must fast for four days, kneeling for twelve hours a day in a room filled with Aretine's pictures (erotic Italian images with caption-poems by Pietro Aretino showing classical figures in various sexual positions). Act 3, Scene 1 The Fat Bishop expresses dissatisfaction with the White House; he wants more titles and honors. The Black Knight gives the Fat Bishop a (fake) letter from Rome. The letter suggests that the Fat Bishop could become the next Pope if he switches back to the Black side. Excited by the letter, the Fat Bishop decides to burn all of the books he has written against the Whites and re-join the Blacks immediately. The Black Knight’s Pawn enters and tells Gondomar that his plot has been foiled: upon investigation, the White Bishop’s Pawn discovered that the Black Bishop’s Pawn was, indeed, in town when the attempted rape of the White Virgin took place. The White Virgin is acquitted and released. Angling to regain trust, the Black Queen’s Pawn praises the White Virgin’s virtue and claims responsibility for creating the distraction that enabled her escape during the attempted rape. The White Virgin is grateful. The Black Knight reveals that the White King’s Pawn is a spy and "captures" him. The Fat Bishop switches to the Black side and says he will immediately begin writing books against the Whites. In an aside, the Black Knight says he will flatter the Fat Bishop for a while and betray him as soon as he outlives his usefulness. The (recently captured) White King’s Pawn asks the Black Knight how he will be rewarded for his service. Gondomar answers by sending him to "the bag" (a giant onstage bag for captured chess pieces, symbolic of Hell). The Black Queen’s Pawn tells the White Virgin that she has seen the White Virgin’s future husband in a magic Egyptian mirror. The White Virgin is intrigued. Act 3, Scene 2 This scene is omitted in later versions of the play. It involves a good deal of sexual innuendo and physical action—much of it suggestive of anal intercourse, or "firking"—between a White Pawn, a "Black Jesting Pawn" and another Black Pawn. The following quote from the Black Jesting Pawn is indicative of the scene’s overall tenor: "We draw together now for all the world like three flies with one straw through their buttocks" (apparently, the Second Black Pawn is miming anal intercourse with the White Pawn, who is in turn miming anal intercourse with the Black jesting Pawn). Act 3, Scene 3 The Black Queen’s Pawn takes the White Virgin to a room where the magic Egyptian mirror is kept. The Black Bishop’s Pawn enters, disguised as the White Virgin’s rich future husband (the scene is arranged so that the White Virgin is only able to see the Black Bishop’s Pawn in the mirror). The White Virgin is fooled by the ruse. Act 4, Scene 1 The Black Knight’s Pawn is still feeling guilty for castrating the White Bishop’s Pawn. He asks his confessor, the Black Bishop’s Pawn, for absolution. The Black Bishop’s Pawn says absolution is impossible. The Black Queen’s Pawn enters with the White Virgin. They notice the Black Bishop’s Pawn, who is still disguised as the White Virgin’s rich future husband. The Black Queen’s Pawn takes the Black Bishop’s Pawn offstage to see the magic Egyptian mirror. When they return, the Black Bishop’s Pawn swears he saw an image of the White Virgin when he looked in the mirror—a sure sign that she will be his wife some day. He suggests that they have sex that very night, since they are destined for each other, rather than wasting time—but the White Virgin protests that she must save herself until she is actually his wife. The Black Bishop’s Pawn is distraught, but the Black Queen’s Pawn tells him not to worry—she will manage everything. In an aside, the Black Queen’s Pawn reveals that she plans to pull some sort of trick on the Black Bishop’s Pawn. Act 4, Scene 2 The Black Knight’s Pawn once again expresses remorse for castrating the White Bishop’s Pawn. The Black Knight scolds him for having such a thin skin; in a long speech, he boasts about the wide range of crimes he himself has committed—without compunction. The Fat Bishop enters leafing through a book that list the fines to be paid in recompense for various sins (a couple of shillings for adultery, fivepence for fornication, etc.); he says he cannot find any fine for castration, which means that the Black Knight’s Pawn cannot be forgiven. The Black Knight’s Pawn is distraught; his conscience is plaguing him; he feels a strong desire for absolution. The Fat Bishop suggests that the only course of action is for the Black Knight’s Pawn to kill the White Bishop’s Pawn—then he would be guilty of murder, a crime that is forgivable because it is listed in the book. The Black Knight’s Pawn exits vowing to kill the White Bishop’s Pawn as soon as possible. Act 4, Scene 3 In this scene, which is performed in dumbshow, the Black Queen’s Pawn orchestrates a "bed trick"—she tricks the Black Bishop’s Pawn into having sex with her by leading him to believe that he is going to bed with the White Virgin. Act 4, Scene 4 The White Knight goes to the Black House for negotiations. (This represents Charles’ trip to Spain; Middleton insinuates that the trip was made for purely strategic purposes). The Black Knight Gondomar tells the White Knight Charles that he will do anything to please him. The Fat Bishop attempts to capture the unprotected White Queen, but his attack is prevented by the White Bishop and the White King, who capture the Fat Bishop and send him to "the bag" (Hell). Act 5, Scene 1 The White Knight and the White Duke enter the Black court, which is decorated with statues and candles (indicative of Catholicism). Act 5, Scene 2 The Black Bishop’s Pawn—no longer in his "rich future husband" disguise—tells the White Virgin that he is the man she has spent the night with. The White Virgin insists (truthfully) that she spent the night alone. The Black Queen’s Pawn enters and reveals her bed trick: she was the Black Bishop’s Pawn’s bed partner, which means that the White Virgin’s virginity is, indeed, still intact. The White Bishop’s Pawn and the White Queen capture the Black Bishop’s Pawn and the Jesuitess Black Queen’s Pawn and send them to the bag. The Black Knight’s Pawn tries to murder the White Bishop’s Pawn, but his attempt is foiled by the White Virgin, who captures him and sends him to the bag. Act 5, Scene 3 The White Knight and the White Duke have just finished a decadent meal at the Black court. The Black Knight delivers a long speech boasting about the extravagancies of the meal. The White Knight says that the meal has not fully satisfied him; there are two things that he truly hungers for. The Black Knight says he will provide anything Charles desires if he agrees to switch to the Black side. Charles says the two things he desires are ambition and sex. The Black Knight makes two long speeches boasting about the Blacks’ sexual licentiousness and ambition to rule the world (at one point, he brags that six thousand skulls of babies, aborted by nuns, were found at the ruins of a nunnery—a testament to the Blacks’ sexual appetite). As soon as these crimes have been admitted, the White Knight reveals that he has only been stringing the Black Knight along in order draw him out. Thus, the game is won. The White King appears with the rest of the White court; all of the remaining Blacks are sent to the bag.
1137787	/m/049j60	Odd Thomas	Dean Koontz	2003	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 In the beginning of the book, Odd Thomas is silently approached by the ghost of a young girl brutally raped and murdered, and through his unique ability to understand the dead, is psychically led to her killer, a former schoolmate named Harlo Landerson. With this opening, we are introduced to Odd's world. Koontz soon discloses how Odd was named and begins, layer by layer, to show how Odd's dysfunctional upbringing has shaped his life, and as those details are uncovered, his supernatural abilities begin to make more sense. We see Odd at work as a short order cook in a California desert town, and in a fateful 24-hour period, he meets a suspicious-looking man in the diner followed by bodachs, shadowy spirit creatures who appear only during times of death and disaster. This man, who Odd nicknames "Fungus Man" (due to his waxy complexion and blonde hair that resembles mold), has an unusually large swarm of bodachs following him, and Odd is convinced that this man is connected to some terrible catastrophe that is about to occur. To gather more information about him, Odd uses his gift of supernatural intuition, which his soulmate Bronwen (a.k.a. Stormy) Llewellyn calls "psychic magnetism," to track him down. Odd's sixth sense leads him to Fungus Man's home, and Odd begins to uncover more details about the man and a mysterious other-worldly link to the dark forces about to be unleashed on the town of Pico Mundo. Accompanied sometimes by the ghost of Elvis Presley and encountering other memorable spirits, including a murdered prostitute, Odd is soon deeply involved in an attempt to prevent the disastrous bloodshed he knows will happen the next day.
1137862	/m/049jgj	Dune: House Atreides	Kevin J. Anderson	1999-10-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel begins on the planet of Arrakis, 35 years before the events of the original novel Dune. The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen has just taken over the governorship of Arrakis (also called Dune) from his younger brother Abulurd, who has allowed spice production to decrease heavily. The Baron sees an opportunity for large profits and begins to store up illegal spice hoards. On the Imperial Capital planet Kaitain, the young planetologist Pardot Kynes has just arrived from his homeworld of Salusa Secundus for an audience with the Padishah Emperor Elrood Corrino IX. The old Emperor is giving Kynes the mission of going to the only known source of melange, Arrakis, in order to find out how the precious substance is produced. Meanwhile, the Crown Prince Shaddam and his minion Hasimir Fenring are plotting against Elrood. Shaddam is not getting any younger, and it seems that the already 157-year-old Emperor could rule for another 50 years. Shaddam decides to poison his father in order to speed up his succession to the throne. Duke Paulus Atreides of the planet Caladan is planning on sending his young son and heir Leto to the court of Earl Dominic Vernius on Ix in order to study politics with the Earl's son Rhombur. Leto's mother, the Lady Helena, does not like the idea. Not only is she a very religious woman, but her father is also the Count Richese, who is the main rival of the Earl Vernius. The Bene Gesserit are getting closer to their quest to breed the Kwisatz Haderach; only three generations remain. The next step is to send the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam to Giedi Prime, the Harkonnen home world, in order to conceive a child with the Baron Vladimir. This child would in turn be married to Leto Atreides to produce the eventual mother of the Kwisatz Haderach. The Baron is initially not interested, but after being blackmailed with the secret of his spice hoards, he has sex with Mohiam and a daughter is conceived. Meanwhile, the young Harkonnen slave boy no. 11368, Duncan Idaho, is trying to escape the forests of Giedi Prime, where the na-baron Glossu Rabban is trying to kill him as a part of a game he and his friends are playing. Duncan finally manages to escape the planet, boarding a heighliner en route to Caladan. Pardot Kynes arrives on Arrakis and begins his duties there. He starts to dislike the Harkonnen rule there, and is getting more and more interested in the native Fremen of the desert and the possibility of terraforming the planet. Pardot is discovering more and more proof that some time, long ago, Arrakis was covered with giant oceans, and gets curious about what changed the climate to what it is today. Leto finds himself at home at the Earl's home at the Grand Palais of Ix. Not only has he found an equal in Prince Rhombur, but he has also fallen in love with the Earl's daughter, Kailea. But all is not perfect on the planet Ix. The suboids building the heighliners in the depths of the cave cities of Ix are becoming more unsatisfied with their living conditions and the blasphemy of their work. Emperor Elrood himself is beginning to show signs of senility from the slow-acting poison Fenring had administered. A Tleilaxu delegation arrives and they begin discussing the possibility of producing melange in laboratories; Elrood becomes very interested in this "Project Amal". The Tleilaxu have one demand in exchange for allowing the Emperor to invest in the project: he must give them military support in their takeover of the planet Ix, which they claim has the technological and industrial resources necessary for their experiments. The Emperor, who is already feuding with the Earl of Ix, is willing to give them a hand. After saving three Fremen youths in the desert from Harkonnen troops, Pardot is taken to a Fremen sietch. The leaders (naibs) decide after a long debate to execute him. But as the chosen assassin encounters Pardot and hears about his plans for a possible terraformation of the planet and the hope this vision gives, the would-be assassin kills himself instead. Seen as a sign, the Fremen name Pardot a prophet. Pardot stays with the Fremen, marries a Fremen woman and together they have a son named Liet. The Harkonnen offspring born on Wallach IX is not at all what the Bene Gesserit were expecting, and is too weak to produce the mother of the Kwisatz Haderach. They have no other choice but to go back to Giedi Prime to blackmail the Baron for another Harkonnen daughter. The Baron is ready for them and impregnates Mohiam through a violent rape. Mohiam avenges the assault by giving the Baron an incurable disease which over time will make the Baron obese, destroying his beautiful body. Ix is suddenly attacked by a joint Tleilaxu/Sardaukar army. Leto, Rhombur and Kailea manage to escape in the nick of time and make it back to the Atreides homeworld of Caladan. To divert attention away from the children, Earl and Lady Vernius disappear into obscurity, becoming renegades from the Imperium. The Tleilaxu establish a new government on Ix, renaming the planet Xuttuh. Leto and the Vernius heirs are welcomed on Caladan by Duke Paulus. Lady Helena, however, is bitterly opposed to giving the Ixian children sanctuary due to her hatred of House Vernius and her belief that Ixian technology is blasphemous for having violated the most sacred commandment that arose from the Butlerian Jihad: Thou shall not build a machine in the likeness of the human mind. She begins plotting against her husband, the Old Duke. Meanwhile, the young Idaho has reached the grand Ducal Capital of Cala City on the West Continent. After an audience with the Duke Paulus, the boy is welcomed in his Court to work in the stable. Back at Wallach IX, another Harkonnen daughter is born. She is given the name Jessica, meaning wealth in an ancient language. She is to be the grandmother of the Kwisatz Haderach if the breeding program goes as planned. One evening at a bullfight, the Duke's favorite game, the Old Duke is killed by a drugged Salusan bull. Duncan is accused as a Harkonnen spy of having drugged the bull. Leto knows of course that it is his own mother, Helena, who was behind the assassination, and sends her to the monastery of The Sisters In Isolation on the Eastern Continent to avoid gossip. Leto becomes the new Duke Atreides. On the other side of the galaxy, the Padishah Emperor Elrood IX has died. Shaddam has finally reached the Golden Lion Throne and is soon to be crowned Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV of the Known Universe. He plans a grand coronation ceremony on Kaitain and invites nobles from across the Imperium, among them the new Duke Leto and his guests the Vernius heirs, but also Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. The Baron, however, has a plan. A Richese scientist in his service has just discovered a new function of the Holtzman effect that can make a ship totally invisible, and undetectable by sensors. With this new technology, the Baron sends his nephew Glossu Rabban to attack a Tleilaxu delegation and make it look like an attack from the Atreides. To avoid a disastrous armed confrontation that could spark an interstellar war, Duke Leto opts for a trial by his peers before the Landsdraad council of nobles. This appears, initially, to be a suicidal course as only one noble has ever been acquitted through this procedure in the history of the Imperium. The Bene Gesserit, however, determine to save Leto as they need him for their breeding program. They provide him with evidence they discovered that suggests some connection between the soon-to-be-crowned Emperor and the Tleilaxu. Leto uses this to blackmail Shaddam. While Shaddam has no interest in the outcome of Leto's trial, he can't risk exposure of his involvement in the takeover of Ix and the artificial spice-production experiments being carried out there. Therefore, he uses his influence to convince the court to summarily find Leto innocent before any testimony is heard. After Shaddam is crowned Emperor, Leto, again uses threat of revealing his knowledge to blackmail Shaddam into granting amnesty for Rhombur and Kailea. Shaddam grudgingly agrees. But, the repeated blackmail attempts begin to breed enmity between him and Leto. Meanwhile, on Dune, the Fremen are uniting in ways never seen before behind their "Umma" (prophet), Pardot Kynes and his dream of making their home into a lush, green paradise.
1137907	/m/049jp2	A House-Boat on the Styx	John Kendrick Bangs	1895	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The premise of the book is that everyone who has ever died (up to the time in which the book is set, which seems to be about the time of its publication) has gone to Styx, the river that circles the underworld. The book begins with Charon, ferryman of the Styx being startled&mdash;and annoyed&mdash;by the arrival of a houseboat on the Styx. At first afraid that the boat will put him out of business, he later finds out that he is actually to be appointed the boat's janitor. What follows are eleven more stories (for a total of twelve) which are set on the house boat. There is no central theme, and the purpose of the book appears to be as a literary thought experiment to see what would happen if various famous dead people were put in the same room with each other. Each chapter is a short story featuring various souls from history and mythology. In the twelfth chapter the house boat disappears, leading into the sequel, Pursuit of the House-Boat.
1139574	/m/049qj6	Hannibal Rising	Thomas Harris	2006-12-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lecter is eight years old at the beginning of the novel (1941), living in Lecter Castle in Lithuania, when Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, turns the Baltic region into a part of the bloodiest front line of World War II. Lecter, his sister Mischa, and his parents escape to the family's hunting lodge in the woods to elude the advancing German troops. After three years, the Nazis are finally driven out of the countries now occupied by the Soviet Union. During their retreat, however, a German Stuka destroys a Soviet tank that had stopped at the Lecter family's lodge looking for water. The explosion kills everyone but Lecter and Mischa. They survive in the cottage until six former Lithuanian militiamen, led by a Nazi collaborator named Vladis Grutas, storm and loot it. Finding no other food, they kill and cannibalize Mischa, while Lecter watches helplessly. He blacks out and is later found wandering and mute by a Soviet tank crew that takes him back to Lecter Castle, which is now a Soviet orphanage. Lecter is irreparably traumatized by the ordeal, and develops a savage obsession with avenging his sister's death. Lecter is removed from the orphanage by his uncle, a noted painter, and he goes to live with him in France. The happiness of their lives together is cut short with his uncle's sudden death. Most of the estate is taken for death duties. Lecter goes to live in reduced circumstances with his Japanese aunt, Lady Murasaki, and they develop a special, quasi-romantic relationship. While in France, Lecter flourishes as a medical student. He commits his first murder as a teenager, killing a local butcher who insulted Murasaki. He is suspected of the butcher's murder by Inspector Popil, a French detective who also lost his family during the war. Thanks in part to Murasaki's intervention, however, Lecter escapes responsibility for the crime. Lecter divides his time between medical school in France and hunting those who killed and cannibalized his sister. One by one, he crosses paths with Grutas' men, killing them all in the most inventively gruesome ways possible. Eventually, Popil arrests Lecter, but Lecter is freed when popular support for his dispatch of war criminals combines with a lack of hard evidence. While Lecter avoids prison, he loses his relationship with Murasaki, who tells him that there is nothing human left in him. The novel ends with Lecter going to America to begin his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
1139745	/m/049r23	The Teeth of the Tiger	Tom Clancy	2003-08-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Rome, a Mossad station chief is assassinated. The murder piques the interest of the Campus, an "off-the-books" intelligence agency situated in direct line-of-sight between the CIA and the NSA. A private military company, Hendley Associates, funds the Campus via stock market trades influenced by the captured intelligence data, thus removing federal oversight and allowing free rein in its operations. Jack Ryan Jr., the son of former president Jack Ryan Sr., soon discovers the Campus' operations. Wanting to serve his country in the post-9/11 world, he is hired by the agency as an analyst. Elsewhere, Brian Caruso, a nephew of the former president, is a U.S. Marine returning from Afghanistan to be decorated for his achievements in battle. Dominic Caruso, his brother, is an FBI agent who, while investigating a kidnapping of a little girl, finds her in a tub raped and killed. Caruso kills the suspect in self defense after the suspect threatens him with a knife. The Caruso brothers are soon recruited into a Campus strike team, chosen for their ability to kill enemies in cold blood. However, Brian is unsure of the morality of carrying out preemptive assassinations, even against terrorists. This changes when cells of Islamic fundamentalists cross the U.S.-Mexico border and attack several suburban malls. Brian and Dominic happen to be at one of the malls when the attack occurs. Although they efficiently find and dispatch all four shooters, dozens of people are killed; similar massacres occur at most of the other targeted sites. When a child dies in his arms after the attack, Brian abandons his earlier moral qualms. The Campus decides the brothers are ready and implements a "reconnaissance-by-fire" strategy to flush out the terrorist leaders. To carry out the assassinations, the brothers are issued a weapon utilizing succinylcholine, developed by a Columbia University professor whose brother died in the 9/11 attacks. The succinylcholine is delivered through a hypodermic needle disguised as a pen. Twisting the nib switches the tip from a normal tip to a sharp needle that delivers 7 milligrams of the substance. Only 5 milligrams are necessary for death. The substance causes complete paralysis at 30 to 50 seconds and death at 3 minutes, shutting down all the muscles within the victim (including the diaphragm), with the exception of the heart. However, it makes the murder look like a heart attack, thus raising no suspicion. Disguised as tourists, the team travels across Europe, finding and eliminating several major players in the terrorist organization. The first three hits go off fairly routinely, the brothers are able to apply the syringe and quietly escape before the targets expire. For the fourth assassination, the brothers are joined by Jack Ryan Jr. Although originally present as an observer, Jack is forced to eliminate the target himself when a random accident spills wine on the brothers' suits, spoiling their anonymous appearance. After killing the terrorist, Jack uses his hotel key to gain access to his computer, and downloads the entire contents for later analysis.
1139804	/m/049r9p	Hero and Leander	Christopher Marlowe	1598		 Marlowe's poem relates the Greek legend of Hero and Leander, youths living in cities on opposite sides of the Hellespont, a narrow body of water in what is now northwestern Turkey. Hero is a priestess or devotee of Venus (goddess of love and beauty) in Sestos, who lives in chastity despite being devoted to the goddess of love. At a festival in honor of her deity, Venus and Adonis, she is seen by Leander, a youth from Abydos on the opposite side of the Hellespont. Leander falls in love with her, and she reciprocates, although cautiously, as she has made a vow of chastity to Venus. Leander convinces her to abandon her fears. Hero lives in a high tower overlooking the water; he asks her to light a lamp in her window, and he promises to swim the Hellespont each night to be with her. She complies. On his first night's swim, Leander is spotted by Neptune (Roman god of the sea), who confuses him with Ganymede and carries him to the bottom of the ocean. Discovering his mistake, the god returns him to shore with a bracelet supposed to keep him safe from drowning. Leander emerges from the Hellespont, finds Hero's tower and knocks on the door, which Hero then opens to find him standing stark naked. She lets him "whisper in her ear, / Flatter, entreat, promise, protest, and swear," and after a series of coy, half-hearted attempts to "defend the fort" she yields to bliss. The poem breaks off as dawn is breaking. No critical consensus exists on the issue of how Marlowe, had he lived, would have finished the poem, or indeed if he would have finished it at all.
1139944	/m/049rsr	The Stupidest Angel	Christopher Moore		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0246p": "Comic fantasy", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 An angel named Raziel (previously in Moore's novel Lamb) is sent to Earth to grant the wish of a child; he decides to help a boy who has witnessed the death of a man dressed as Santa Claus. Meanwhile, the town is preparing to have a community dinner-gathering at the local church, where the cemetery is located. In his inept attempt to bring the "Santa" back to life, the angel causes the townspeople to be put under siege by brain-hungry zombies who arise from their burial spots.
1139964	/m/049rxx	Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain	Isaac Asimov	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story takes place in the mid to late 21st century, but in a world where the Cold War has ended, yet the Soviet regime remains strong and proud. Americans and Soviets enjoy peace, but without fully accepting each other's ways, and with each always struggling for technological superiority. Under conditions of absolute secrecy, the Soviets have developed a miniaturization technology that can reduce a man to the dimensions of a molecule, or smaller. Although successful, the process requires an enormous input of energy to accomplish the task. So, although miniaturization has been shown to be scientifically possible, it also appears to be economically impracticable - a hollow triumph. One Soviet scientist, Pyotor Leonovich Shapirov, a pioneer of the miniaturization process, had spoken vaguely of a way to make it affordable. Unfortunately, he now lies in a coma, with his secrets apparently locked away forever. But Shapirov had been acquainted with an American scientist, Albert Jonas Morrison, who has his own peculiar theories regarding the brain's processing and storage of creative thought. Shapirov had been greatly intrigued by Morrison's ideas, and it's this interest that led the Soviets to turn to Morrison for help. After a great deal of coercion, Morrison agrees to be miniaturized along with four Soviet scientists, enter Shapirov's dying brain, and attempt to use his computer program to retrieve the thoughts contained therein. Later, having returned safely to normal size, but without any usable information from Shapirov, Morrison has made a new, startling discovery, which may help the Americans beat the Soviets at their own game.
1140187	/m/049t08	Notes on a Scandal	Zoë Heller		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Barbara, a veteran faculty member at a comprehensive school in London, is neither a reliable nor a disinterested first-person narrator in the story. A lonely, unmarried woman in her early sixties, she is eager to find a special, close friend. However, she reveals that she has been unable to make a previous friendship last as she was accused of being domineering and demanding. Her former friend, teacher Jennifer Dodd, even threatened her with an injunction if she tried contacting her again. When Bathsheba "Sheba" Hart is hired as an art teacher, Barbara immediately senses that they might become close friends. When Sheba invites Barbara for Sunday lunch with her family, she is ecstatic and gives the lunch date enormous significance. Initially unknown to Barbara, Sheba falls in love with a 15-year-old pupil, Steven Connolly, who is from a deprived background and has literacy problems. Although they frequently have sex right from the start of their relationship, including at school and in the open on Hampstead Heath, the unlikely couple successfully conceal their affair from colleagues and family. During Barbara first visits Sheba's residence, she tells Barbara a highly expurgated version of what has happened between her and Connolly, claiming only that he has tried to kiss her and that she discouraged his advances. Barbara offers her some advice on how to cool the boy's ardor, and considers the matter closed. Sheba confesses to Barbara that despite her apparently charmed life, she feels unfulfilled. Sheba has a difficult relationship with her rebellious seventeen-year-old daughter, Polly, whose youth and beauty only intensify her mother's own feelings of aging and waste. Sheba's husband, Richard, is significantly older than she is, and their relationship sometimes has a father-daughter feel to it. Sheba's complaints trouble Barbara, who had idealized Sheba and her family. Barbara eventually finds out about the affair on Guy Fawkes Night, when she sees Sheba talking to Connolly on Primrose Hill. Barbara feels betrayed that Sheba did not confide in her during the early stages of their friendship, and is angered and by Sheba's obsession with Connolly and her relative neglect of their friendship. The power dynamics in the relationship between Connolly and Sheba are changing, with Connolly's interest in the affair waning as Sheba's grows. Sheba becomes needier and starts to write love letters to the boy. Connolly rejects Sheba when she visits his parents' council house, yet she does not break off the affair. Some weeks after Sheba's confession, Brian Bangs, a mathematics teacher, asks Barbara to have Saturday lunch with him. He confesses his infatuation with Sheba, leading Barbara to realise that he is using her as a means to discover information about her private life. Overcome by jealousy, Barbara alludes to Sheba's secret. ("'Sheba likes younger men, you know. Much younger men.' I paused a moment. 'I mean, you are aware of her unusually close relationship with one of the Year Eleven boys? '") Afterwards, Barbara is wracked with guilt, but cannot summon up the courage to tell Sheba what she has done. Rather, she hopes Bangs will not report what she has told him. Sheba's relationship with Polly deteriorates further when the girl's unruly behaviour results in her expulsion from her boarding school. On two occasions, Polly accuses Sheba of having an affair. Sheba is furious about the accusation, believing that she has covered her tracks successfully. The school's headmaster is somehow informed about the illicit affair - it is implied that the culprit is Bangs. Sheba is suspended from her job and charged with indecent assault on a pupil. Her husband demands that she leave the family home and prevents her from seeing their children, especially their son Ben, who has Down's syndrome; Polly, meanwhile, refuses to have any contact with her. While Sheba's life is quickly disintegrating, Barbara thrives on the new situation, which she considers her chance to prove her qualities as a friend, even when the headmaster, glad to rid himself of one of his severest critics, forces her into early retirement. Barbara gives up the lease on her own small flat and moves with Sheba into temporary accommodation in Sheba's brother's house. Sheba finds Barbara's manuscript and discovers that she has been writing an account of her relationship with Connolly. She is distraught and furious, not least because Barbara has written about events she did not personally witness, and made judgements about people close to Sheba. The novel ends with Sheba, trapped and demoralised, resigning herself to Barbara's presence in her life. cy:Notes on a Scandal et:Ühe skandaali märkmed es:Diario de un escándalo ja:あるスキャンダルについての覚え書き
1140236	/m/049t4v	Cycle of the Werewolf	Stephen King		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in the fictional town of Tarker's Mills, Maine. A werewolf is viciously killing people and animals and strange incidents take place at each full moon. The otherwise normal town is living in fear. The protagonist of the story is Marty Coslaw, an eleven-year-old boy in a wheelchair. The story goes back and forth from the terrifying incidents to Marty's youthful day-to-day life and how the horror affects him. The first victim is Arnie Westrum, who is murdered in a tool-shack during a blizzard when the full moon comes in January, shortly after midnight on New Year's Day. Although the police admit that they are looking for a serial killer later on in the novel, and the killer is dubbed "The Full Moon Killer", Arnie Westrum immediately identifies the killer in his mind as being "the biggest wolf he has ever seen." The next victim is Stella Randolph, a depressed, unmarried, and impoverished seamstress, who is killed on St. Valentine's Day in February, after she has sent several Valentine's Day cards to herself from 1980s hearthrobs such as John Travolta and Ace Frehley. Believing she is dreaming, Stella sees the wolf watching her, delusively convinces herself that it is a man, and lets it into her house through the window. Stella is the only victim who seems to accept her fate, failing to so much as ward off the beast. The next victim is an unknown homeless drifter killed in March. During an intense blizzard, virtually the entire town loses its power. While several members of the town are unable to sleep during the power outage, they hear a wolf howling. Several prominent members of the story hear the howling, including Marty and Town Constable Lander Neary. Although no one can say exactly where the howling originated from, it is at this point that the rumors of a werewolf begin to spread through the town. The drifter is found by an employee of the electric and gas company sent to repair the power lines. Wolf prints are found frozen in the snow around the body. This is the first discovered evidence of a non-human killer. As April arrives, so does Spring, and while children celebrate the warmer weather as normal, the presence of a killer has engulfed the town in terror. On April Fool's Day, 11-year-old Brady Kincaid is flying a new kite given to him as a birthday present. Having realized that he has stayed out too late, he starts to prepare to leave. Upon doing this, Brady tells himself he has to hurry home in order to avoid a beating from his father, but in reality he is afraid of seeing the werewolf. Before he can leave, his fears are realized. He is found the next day in the park by a volunteer search party, only feet away from where other children had reported him playing, decapitated and disemboweled. The May full moon comes on Tarker's Mills' Homecoming weekend. The chapter begins with Baptist Reverend Lester Lowe awaking from a dream and half-expecting to see a werewolf outside of his church. Lowe had dreamed that he was giving his sermon in front of a packed congregation, not unusual on Homecoming Sunday according to Lowe, and he was preaching the sermon of his life, in contrast to his usually drab homilies. As Lowe continued to preach, speaking about the presence of the Beast, the congregation began to transform, although Lowe did not cease preaching. Eventually, Lowe began to transform himself. At this point, he realizes that he has been dreaming. The next day, Sunday, Lowe finds Clyde Corliss, a janitor at the church, gutted on the pulpit, and realizes, to his horror, that he really is the werewolf. In June, Alfie Knopfler, owner of the Chat n' Chew, a diner, is considering closing early, as it is near high school graduation, and he has no customers, when a customer enters and orders coffee. The customer is left unidentified, except to say that he is a regular, only out late. As Alfie surmises that he looks sick and probably will not stay long, the customer transforms before his eyes. Alfie compares it to the transformation scenes in The Incredible Hulk television series, and can hear change rattling in clothes pockets when the werewolf moves around, as his clothes have not been completely removed. Alfie, a Navy veteran, puts up somewhat of a struggle, but is killed relatively easily. Dying while looking at the moonlight through the window. In July, the town's Independence Day fireworks have been canceled. This is very upsetting to Marty, who has been looking forward to them all year. Because he feels bad for him, Marty's Uncle Al brings him fireworks, warning Marty to set them off really late so that his mother will not find out. While Marty is outside enjoying his own private Independence Day celebration, the werewolf attacks the boy, who manages to put out the monster's left eye with a package of black cat firecrackers. The werewolf escapes and Marty's parents call the police. In August, Constable Neary is getting his hair cut at the barber shop and is discussing the killer with the other patrons of the barber shop. It is revealed here that Marty has described the killer as a werewolf, not a person, and that he had been sent to live with relatives in Stowe, Vermont for the remainder of the summer, as the Maine State Police are fearful that the killer may return to kill Marty, and that Marty will recover better from the shock if he is away from Tarker's Mills. It is because of this "shock" that both Neary and the State Police have surmised that Marty, who had seen the killer, is suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome, and having heard the stories of a werewolf at school, had juxtaposed the image of a wolf and the human killer together. The police also ignore the fact that Marty claims the killer is now missing his left eye. While one of the patrons of the barber shop suggests that the killer wears a costume, Neary dismisses it, saying the killer is purely human, and may be completely insane, possibly not even aware that he has committed the murders. Later that night, Neary is attacked in his truck by the werewolf. Remembering the discussion about a werewolf costume, Neary attempts to pull a mask off of the killer, realizing too late that no mask exists. The werewolf then kills him in a rather playful manner (pulling off the skin of his face, as though it were a mask) and feeds upon his remains. In September, Elmer Zinneman hears his entire pen of pigs being attacked. While initially planning to shoot at a natural predator, Elmer abandons these plans when he hears a wolf howl. Later on Elmer goes outside to see something huge and black running into the woods. Elmer's brother Pete comes over later that day and the men discuss how much of the loss will be covered by insurance. Pete mentions the wolf track evident in the mud, and notes that even he knows that those tracks belong to a werewolf, and he lives two counties away. Later on, both Elmer and Pete discuss going hunting for the werewolf, but not until November, saying that until then, people will have to be careful during the light of the full moon. October comes and so does Halloween. To celebrate, Marty goes trick-or-treating, but although he is ostensibly just trick-or-treating, he is also looking for a man or a woman missing his or her left eye. While out, he sees the Reverend Lowe wearing an eyepatch (Lowe and Marty had not seen each other since their encounter on the Fourth of July, as Marty and his family are devout Catholics, and do not attend the Baptist church where Reverend Lowe presides). In November, Elmer and Pete Zinneman, along with dozens of others, begin going into the woods everyday, waiting to shoot the werewolf. Although the hunters do not carry silver bullets, and hunt on days when the moon is not full, it is suggested that they are not looking for a mythological creature, but rather some sort of cryptid. Also, it is acknowledged that most of the hunters are hunting for fun, in order to be away from their wives, urinate outdoors, and tell jokes which include racial and ethnic slurs. Reverend Lowe, realizing he may kill another innocent victim, or be discovered himself, has been receiving anonymous letters from Marty, and plans to listen to gossip, for the first time in his life, so that he may kill the person attacked in July (Marty). However, in order to avoid the hunters, Lowe decides to travel to Portland, Maine and check into a hotel. At this point, Lowe, who had at first been reluctant about his curse, which he has no idea how he contracted, has more or less gone insane, and though not actually embracing his curse, acknowledged that all things serve the will of God. Ironically, after traveling to Portland, Lowe kills Milt Sturmfuller, a resident of Tarker's Mills, who is known as a notorious wife-batterer. Sturmfuller has been systematically traveling to Portland to cheat on his wife. After one night in Portland, he contracts genital herpes, when he returns home, maritally rapes his wife, and passes the disease onto her. While walking from his hotel room, which is the room adjacent to the one that Lowe has purchased, Sturmfuller is decapitated by the werewolf. By December, the town of Tarker's Mills is beginning to return to normal, as there has not been a known murder by the Full Moon Killer since Neary in August. However, some residents, such as Elmer Zinneman, point out that his pigs, and the four deer found slaughtered in the woods in October, could have been killed by the werewolf (Sturmfuller's death goes virtually unnoticed as he is far from a model citizen, and he is not linked to the Tarker's Mills murders as he is murdered in Portland). Marty continues to send Lowe anonymous letters asking why he does not kill himself and end the terror. In December, he sends the last letter - signed with his name. Unbeknownst to Reverend Lowe, Marty has convinced his somewhat reluctant uncle to have two silver bullets made and to come spend New Year's Eve (which falls on the full moon) with him. Right before midnight, the werewolf breaks into the house to kill Marty, who shoots him twice with the silver bullets, managing to completely blind and finally kill him. The Cycle of the Werewolf ends almost exactly a year after it began.
1142625	/m/049_l4	The Kreutzer Sonata	Leo Tolstoy	1889	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 During a train ride, Pozdnyshev overhears a conversation concerning marriage, divorce and love. When a woman argues that marriage should not be arranged but based on true love, he asks "what is love?" and points out that, if understood as an exclusive preference for one person, it often passes quickly. Convention dictates that two married people stay together, and initial love can quickly turn into hatred. He then relates how he used to visit prostitutes when he was young, and complains that women's dresses are designed to arouse men's desires. He further states that women will never enjoy equal rights to men as long as men view them as objects of desire, but yet describes their situation as a form of power over men, mentioning how much of society is geared towards their pleasure and well-being and how much sway they have over men's actions. After he meets and marries his wife, periods of passionate love and vicious fights alternate. She bears several children, and then receives contraceptives: "The last excuse for our swinish life -- children -- was then taken away, and life became viler than ever." His wife takes a liking to a violinist, and the two perform Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata (Sonata No. 9 in A Major for piano and violin, Op. 47) together. Pozdnyshev complains that some music is powerful enough to change one's internal state to a foreign one. He hides his raging jealousy and goes on a trip, returns early, finds the two together and kills his wife with a dagger. The violinist escapes: "I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible." Later acquitted of murder in light of his wife's apparent adultery, Pozdnyshev rides the trains seeking forgiveness from fellow passengers.
1142991	/m/04b0fc	Knight Templar	Leslie Charteris	1930	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel, a direct sequel to its predecessor, The Last Hero sees Templar and his organization taking revenge on an arms dealer named Rayt Marius, following the death of one of Templar's friends. The book starts approximately three months after the events of The Last Hero. Simon Templar and his associate, Roger Conway, have been spending much of that time chasing Marius and his superior, Prince Rudolf (Crown Prince of an unidentified country) across Europe. Templar suspects that Marius and Rudolf are planning to follow through with their scheme to spark a new World War (continuing from The Last Hero), and in any event, Templar has sworn to kill whichever of the two men murdered his friend Norman Kent at the close of the previous adventure. Although Templar had been forced to flee England at the end of the previous novel, he has since found himself back in Britain and again on the trail of Marius. While executing a scheme to root Marius out from hiding by infiltrating a bogus nursing home, Templar and Conway rescue who they initially think is an elderly man held prisoner by one of Marius' compatriots; Templar soon discovers that they've actually rescued the beautiful daughter of a millionaire upon whose safety relies world peace. The woman, Sonia Delmar, subsequently joins Templar's fight against Marius (who Templar learns is the man who killed Norman) and Prince Rudolf, even going so far as to allowing herself to be kidnapped by the villains. Templar is said to be 29 years old in this tale. In this book, Sonia Delmar becomes the romantic female lead, replacing Templar's girlfriend of the previous books, Patricia Holm, who is referenced only briefly in the story as being on a cruise in the Mediterranean (this same excuse was used by Charteris to remove the character from much of the action in Enter the Saint as well). This was the first book to indicate the "open" nature of Templar and Holm's relationship, although in this case Templar makes clear that his heart remains with Holm. The final chapter of the book contains a somewhat metafictional reference in that Templar indicates his intent to give his notes regarding the Marius affair to "a writer friend" with the idea of his turning them into a novel—a reference to Leslie Charteris himself. (This same literary device has also been employed by the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes books and Ian Fleming in his James Bond novel You Only Live Twice.) And finally, perhaps in a nod to the developing continuity of the "series", Charteris brings Detective-Inspector Carn (MEET THE TIGER) back for a brief reunion with Templar at the climax. A later Saint novel, Getaway, completed the trilogy begun by The Last Hero and Knight Templar. The ultimate fate of Rayt Marius would be revealed in the novella "The Simon Templar Foundation" in The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal.
1143004	/m/04b0ht	The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life	Raymond Kurzweil	1993-01		 Atherosclerosis is a disease which is characterized by a progressive buildup of rigid material inside artery walls and channels. Eventually, they become so clogged that blood flow is stopped and the victim suffers a heart attack. This disease is caused by excess cholesterol in the bloodstream and afflicts approximately ninety percent of Americans, though it is a gradual process and may not even be detectable until later life. Kurzweil cites various studies showing that increased levels of atherosclerosis in America and other western countries are linked to high levels of caloric fat intake. In much of Asia, fat intake is around ten percent of total food energy consumed, and heart disease there is almost nonexistent. Kurzweil goes on to show that in America, closer to forty percent of caloric intake is from fat. Numerous agencies such as the American Dietetic Association, American Heart Association and U.S. Surgeon General advocate thirty percent of caloric intake from fat. However, Kurzweil says this causes a comparatively slight reduction in atherosclerosis levels. He says that he thinks these agencies use an artificially high figure because they assume that nobody would even attempt to attain a lower level if it were recommended. Kurzweil advocates, based on his findings, only ten percent caloric intake be from fat. Hence, The 10% Solution. He says that these levels not only prevent Atherosclerosis but cause its reversal in existing cases. This also apparently lowers the chance of other diseases including cancer, strokes, hypertension and type 2 diabetes. He believes that eating a diet that is very low in fat reduces the risk of most major cancers by 90 percent or more. Kurzweil also claims it increases energy and leads to a generally happier life. Further he gives advice for exercise, suggesting walking, because it is low-impact, and easy for anyone to do.
1143535	/m/04b19g	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath	H. P. Lovecraft	1943	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Randolph Carter dreams three times of a majestic sunset city, but each time he is abruptly snatched away before he can see it up close. When he prays to the gods of dream to reveal the whereabouts of the phantasmal city, they do not answer, and his dreams of the city stop altogether. Undaunted, Carter resolves to go to Kadath, where the gods live, to beseech them in person. However, no one has ever been to Kadath and none even knows how to get there. In dream, Randolph Carter descends "the seventy steps to the cavern of flame" and speaks of his plan to the priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose temple borders the Dreamlands. The priests warn Carter of the great danger of his quest and suggest that the gods withdrew his vision of the city on purpose. Carter enters the Enchanted Wood and meets the zoogs, a race of predatory and sentient rodents. For a novice, such an encounter could prove calamitous, but Carter is an experienced dreamer and so is knowledgeable of their language and customs. When Carter asks the zoogs about Kadath, they don't know where it is; instead, they suggest that Carter go the town of Ulthar and find a wizened priest named Atal who is learned in the ways of the gods. In the cat-laden city of Ulthar, Carter visits Atal, who mentions a huge carving wrought on Ngranek's hidden side that shows the features of the gods. Carter realizes that if he can go to Ngranek, examine the carving, and then find a place where mortals share those features and are thus related to the gods, he must be near Kadath. Carter goes to Dylath-Leen to secure passage to Oriab. Dylath-Leen is infamous for the black galleys that frequent its harbors. These galleys are steered by oarsmen who are never seen and crewed by turbaned men that trade curious-looking rubies for slaves and gold. Randolph Carter's quest is interrupted when he is captured by the turbaned men and flown to the moon on one of their notorious black galleys. Once there, he learns that the turbaned men are slaves to the terrifying moon-beasts. A procession of moon-beasts and their slaves escort Carter across the moon to deliver him to the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep (one of the Other Gods who rule space, in contrast to the Great Ones, the gods of earth). He is saved by the cats of Ulthar, who slay his captors and return Carter to earth's Dreamlands in the port of Dylath-Leen. Carter boards a ship sailing to Baharna, a great seaport on the isle of Oriab. On the way to Oriab and while he travels across the island riding a zebra, Carter hears dark whispers about the night-gaunts, though they are never properly described. Carter makes a treacherous climb across Ngranek and discovers the gigantic carving of the gods on its far side. He is surprised to see that the features match those of sailors who trade at the port of Celephaïs, but before he can act on this knowledge, he is snatched away by the night-gaunts and left to die in the Vale of Pnath in the underworld. Carter is rescued by friendly ghouls, amongst them Richard Pickman, a friend of Carter's, the protagonist of another of Lovecraft's stories, Pickman's Model and who is now also a ghoul, who agree to return him to the upper Dreamlands. They make their way to the terrible city of the gugs to reach the Tower of Koth, wherein a winding stairway leads to the surface. Finding the city asleep, Carter and the ghouls attempt to sneak past the snoring gugs. The ghasts, the gugs' traditional enemies, begin an attack, but the group manages to ascend the stairway and open the great trapdoor to the Enchanted Wood. Here Carter comes upon a gathering of zoogs and finds that they plan to make war on the cats of Ulthar. Not wanting to see his friends harmed, Carter warns the cats, enabling them to launch a surprise attack on the zoogs. After a brief skirmish, the zoogs are defeated. To abate further hostilities, the zoogs agree to a new treaty with the cats of Ulthar. Carter reaches the city of Thran and buys passage on a galleon to Celephaïs. While en route, Carter asks the sailors about the men who trade in Celephaïs&mdash;the ones he believes to be kin to the gods. He learns that they are from the cold, dark land of Inquanok or Inganok and that few people dare to travel there. Even more ominous, there are no cats there. The plateau of Leng with its inhuman treacheries is too near. In Celephaïs, Carter meets his old friend Kuranes, the king of the city. Kuranes is an old dreamer whom Carter knew in the waking world, but when he died, he became a permanent resident of the Dreamlands. Longing for home, he has dreamed parts of his kingdom to resemble his native Cornwall. Kuranes knows the pitfalls of the Dreamlands all too well and tries to dissuade Carter from his dangerous quest. Carter, however, will not be deterred. Under the pretense of wishing to work in its quarries, Carter boards a ship bound for Inganok, a nation built of onyx. The trip to Inganok takes three weeks, but as they draw near, Carter spots a strange granite island. When he inquires about the mysterious isle, the captain explains that it is the nameless rock, and it is best to not speak of it. That night, Carter hears strange howls from the nameless island. When Carter arrives at Inganok, he purchases a yak and heads northward, in the hope that past the onyx quarries he will find Kadath. Carter ascends a steep ridge beyond which nothing is visible but sky. At the summit, he looks out and gets a breathtaking view of a gargantuan quarry. Carter sets off toward this quarry, but his yak, spooked, abandons him. Carter is captured by a slant-eyed man, whom he has met before among the merchants of Dylath-Leen. The slant-eyed man summons a shantak-bird, which both ride over the Plateau of Leng, a vast tableland populated by Pan-like beings. Arriving at a monastery wherein dwells the dreaded High Priest Not to Be Described, Carter now suspects that the slant-eyed man is yet another conspirator of the forces that seek to thwart his quest. The slant-eyed man leads Carter through the monastery to a domed room with a circular well, which Carter speculates leads to the Vaults of Zin in the underworld. Herein, the high-priest, wearing a silken robe and a mask, is waiting. Carter learns that the Men of Leng are the same beings that conceal their horns under turbans and trade in Dylath-Leen. He also learns that the night-gaunts do not serve Nyarlathotep as is commonly supposed, but Nodens, and that even Earth's Gods are afraid of them. It is never revealed to the reader who the high-priest in the silken mask is, but Carter recoils from him in such horror that it is possible that he is Nyarlathotep. (The text suggests that the High-Priest is one of the Moon-Beasts.) When the slant-eyed man is momentarily distracted, Carter pushes him into the well and escapes through the maze-like corridors. In pitch-black darkness, Carter wanders through the monastery, fearing he is being pursued by the High Priest Not to Be Described. At last reaching the outside, Carter realizes that he is in the ruins of ancient Sarkomand, which lies near the coast. Soon he encounters the ghouls that helped him earlier once more. The Men of Leng have taken them hostage on their ship, and they are to be taken to the nameless rock, revealed to be a moon-beast outpost. Carter summons the rest of the ghouls from the underworld and they take control of the galley. After releasing their kin, they sail on to the nameless rock and fight a pitched battle against the moon-beasts. Emerging victorious, and fearing the arrival of reinforcements, Carter and the ghouls return to Sarkomand. Once there, Carter obtains the services of a flock of night-gaunts to transport himself and the ghouls to the gods' castle on Kadath. After an exhilarating flight, Carter arrives at last at the abode of the gods, but finds it empty. Finally a great procession arrives with much fanfare, led by a pharaoh-like man who explains to Carter that the gods of earth have seen the city of Carter's dreams and decided to make it their home, and have thus abandoned Kadath. The gods walk no more in the ways of gods, and have become instead mere denizens of the jewelled city Carter had glimpsed in his dreams. The pharaoh commands Carter to find this city, so that the natural order might be restored. "It is not over unknown seas," he says, "but back over well-known years that your quest must go; back to the bright strange things of infancy and the quick sun-drenched glimpses of magic that old scenes brought to wide young eyes. For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the sum of what you have seen and loved in youth.... These things you saw, Randolph Carter, when your nurse first wheeled you out in the springtime, and they will be the last things you will ever see with eyes of memory and of love." This mysterious man then reveals his identity&mdash;he is Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, the emissary of the Other Gods who dwell in the blackness of space. Nyarlathotep sends Carter on a great Inganok shantak-bird through space to the sunset city. Unfortunately, Carter realizes too late that the mocking Nyarlathotep has tricked him, and that instead he is being taken to the court of Azathoth at the center of the universe. At first believing he is doomed, Carter suddenly remembers that he is in a dream and saves himself by leaping from the great bird. As he falls, his thoughts turn toward New England, and he wakes to find that he is at last in his marvelous sunset city; no longer in the Dreamlands but in his own room in the waking world of Boston, looking out upon its architectural graces, suffused in a splendid sunrise. The final lines of the story find Nyarlathotep brooding over his defeat within the halls of Kadath, mocking in anger the "mild gods of earth" whom he has snatched back from the sunset city.
1143642	/m/04b1h2	The Man Who Planted Trees	Jean Giono	1953		 The story begins in the year 1910, when this young man is undertaking a lone hiking trip through Provence, France, and into the Alps, enjoying the relatively unspoiled wilderness. The narrator runs out of water in a treeless, desolate valley where only wild lavender grows and there is no trace of civilization except old, empty crumbling buildings. The narrator finds only a dried up well, but is saved by a middle-aged shepherd who takes him to a spring he knows of. Curious about this man and why he has chosen such a lonely life, the narrator stays with him for a time. The shepherd, after being widowed, has decided to restore the ruined landscape of the isolated and largely abandoned valley by single-handedly cultivating a forest, tree by tree. The shepherd, Elzéard Bouffier, makes holes in the ground with his curling pole and drops into the holes acorns that he has collected from many miles away. The narrator leaves the shepherd and returns home, and later fights in the First World War. In 1920, shell-shocked and depressed after the war, the man returns. He is surprised to see young saplings of all forms taking root in the valley, and new streams running through it where the shepherd has made dams higher up in the mountain. The narrator makes a full recovery in the peace and beauty of the regrowing valley, and continues to visit Bouffier every year. Bouffier is no longer a shepherd, because he is worried about the sheep affecting his young trees, and has become a bee keeper instead. Over four decades, Bouffier continues to plant trees, and the valley is turned into a kind of Garden of Eden. By the end of the story, the valley is vibrant with life and is peacefully settled. The valley receives official protection after the First World War. (the authorities mistakenly believe that the rapid growth of this forest is a bizarre natural phenomenon, as they are unaware of Bouffier's selfless deeds), and more than 10,000 people move there, all of them unknowingly owing their happiness to Bouffier. The narrator tells one of his friends in the government the truth about the natural forest, and the friend also helps protect the forest. The narrator visits the now very old Bouffier one last time in 1945. In a hospice in Banon, in 1947, the man who planted trees peacefully passes away.
1144904	/m/04b4nn	Cloak of Deception	James Luceno		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Prior to the events The Phantom Menace, Palpatine politically manipulates his colleagues in the Galactic Senate, especially supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum. As the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, he begins to slowly put the Neimoidians and the Trade Federation in position for his blockade of Naboo. A terrorist group named the Nebula Front threatens the activities of the Trade Federation. They are protesting the actions of the Federation and will resort to any means necessary to disrupt the Trade Federation. They hire Captain Cohl to carry out terrorist acts against their business. However, Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi are hot on the trail of the terrorists and thwart their plans. The Trade Federation petitions the Senate to allow them to increase their number of droid fighters, battle droids, and other defenses. Valorum considers this, but on advice from Palpatine he demands that in exchange the Republic be allowed to tax some of the trade routes they hold. This sparks a debate and a summit is scheduled to be held on the matter. Taking extreme measures, the Nebula Front sets plans in motion to assassinate Valorum at the summit to prevent the taxation. The Jedi Council, along with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, step in to track down Captain Cohl and the would-be assassins. While writing the novel, James Luceno was granted access to parts of the screenplay drafts and concept art of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. As such, Cloak of Deception was the first (real life) appearance of almost all of the new characters and organizations from Attack of the Clones, including the Techno Union, Passel Argente, and other Separatists. At the end of chapter 29 the word 'thought' is missing the 't' at the end. In chapter 33, the word 'a' is incorrectly written as 'an'. Opening crawl After a thousand generations of peace, the Galactic Republic is crumbling. On Coruscant, at the center of civilized space, greed and corruption riddle the Senate, beyond even the abilities of Supreme Chancellor Valorum to remedy. And in the outlying systems, the Trade Federation dominates the hyperlanes with its gargantuan vessels. But now even the Trade Federation finds itself assailed from all quarters, preyed upon by pirates and raiders, and victimized by terrorists, who demand an end to the Federation's tyrannical practices. It is a time that tests the mettle of all those who strive to hold the Republic together—none more than the Jedi Knights, who have long been the Republic's best hope for preserving peace and justice…
1145369	/m/04b66v	Black House	Stephen King	2001-09-15	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A series of murders has begun to plague the town of French Landing, Wisconsin. The murderer is dubbed "The Fisherman", due to a conscious effort by the killer to emulate the methods of serial killer Albert Fish. Like Fish, French Landing's killer targets children and indulges in cannibalism of the bodies. Two victims have already been discovered as the story opens, with a third awaiting discovery. The nature of the crimes, and the local police's inability to capture the killer, have led people all over the region to become more anxious with each passing day, and certain elements of the local media exacerbate the situation with inflammatory and provocative coverage. After the events of The Talisman, Jack Sawyer has repressed the memories of his adventures in The Territories and his hunt for the Talisman as a twelve year-old boy, though the residue of these events has served to subtly affect his life even after he has forgotten them. Jack grew up to become a lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department, where his professionalism and uncanny talent have helped him establish a nearly-legendary reputation. When a series of murders in Los Angeles are traced to a farm insurance salesman from French Landing, Wisconsin, Jack cooperates with the French Landing Police to capture the killer. While in Wisconsin, Jack is irresistibly enraptured by the natural beauty of the Coulee Country, echoing his reaction to The Territories as a child. When he later intrudes upon a homicide investigation in Santa Monica, certain aspects of the crime scene threaten to revive his repressed memories. He subsequently resigns from the LAPD, and he moves to French Landing to enjoy his early retirement. When the Fisherman begins to terrorize French Landing, the police all but beg "Hollywood" Jack Sawyer for his assistance and are surprised when he flatly refuses. Memories of the Santa Monica event threaten to overwhelm Jack, and he fears that involving himself in the investigation may break his sanity. When a fourth child is taken by the Fisherman, events no longer allow Jack to remain aloof. It quickly becomes apparent to him that the Fisherman is much more than a simple pedophile/killer. In fact, he is an agent of the Crimson King, and his task is to find children with the potential to serve as Breakers. The fourth victim, Tyler Marshall, is one of the most powerful Breakers there has ever been, and he may be all the Crimson King needs to break the remaining beams of the Dark Tower and bring an end to all worlds. As the Fisherman also proves capable of "flipping" into The Territories, Jack Sawyer is the only hope of not just French Landing, but all existence.
1145520	/m/04b6pb	Bodas de sangre	Federico García Lorca			 As the play opens, the Mother speaks with her son, the groom. It is revealed that the son's father had been killed a few years ago by a family named the Felixes. The Mother reacts violently when her son attempts to ask for a knife to cut grapes in the vineyard, going into a long rant before giving him the knife. The groom leaves, after hugging his mother goodbye. The Neighbour arrives to chat with the Mother, and reveals to her that the Bride was previously involved with a man named Leonardo Felix, a relative of the men who killed the Mother's husband. The Mother, who still hates the Felix family with all her soul, is furious, but decides to visit the girl before bringing the matter up with her son. Leonardo, who is now married, returns to his home after work, where his Mother-In-Law and Wife have been singing a lullaby to Leonardo's son. (The lullaby's lyrics foreshadow the tragedies that will occur later in the play.) It is clear that Leonardo's marriage is not a joyous one. A Little Girl enters the house and tells the family that the Groom is preparing to marry the Bride. Leonardo flies into a rage, scaring his Wife, Mother-In-Law, and child, and storms out of the house. The Mother goes to the Bride's house, along with the Groom, where she meets the Bride's Servant and the Father of the Bride. The Father, an old, tired man, tells the Mother about his dead wife and his desire to see his daughter marry and bear children. The Bride enters, and speaks with the Mother and the Groom. The Father then shows them out, leaving the Servant with the Bride. The Servant teases the Bride about the gifts that the Groom brought, then reveals to her that Leonardo has been coming to the house at night to watch the Bride's window. The morning of the wedding, Leonardo comes to see the Bride again. He speaks of his burning desire for her, and the pride that kept him from marrying her before. The Bride, clearly disturbed by his presence, attempts to silence him, but cannot deny that she still has feelings for him. The Servant sends Leonardo away, and the guests begin arriving for the wedding. The Father, Mother, and Groom arrive, and the wedding party moves to the church. Before the party leaves, however, the Bride begs the Groom to keep her safe. Leonardo and his Wife go as well, after a short and furious argument. After the wedding, the guests, the families, and the newlywed couple return to the Bride's house. The party progresses, with music and dancing, but the Bride retires to her rooms, claiming to feel tired. Leonardo's Wife tells the Groom that her husband left on horseback, but the Groom brushes her off, saying that Leonardo simply went for a quick ride. The Groom returns to the main room and speaks with his Mother. The guests then begin searching for the Bride and Groom, hoping to begin a traditional wedding dance. But the Bride is nowhere to be found. The Father orders the house searched, but Leonardo's Wife bursts into the room and announces that her husband and the Bride have run off together. The Father refuses to believe it, but the Groom flies into a rage and rides off with a friend to kill Leonardo. The Mother, frenzied and furious, orders the entire wedding party out into the night to search for the runaways, as the Father collapses in grief. Out in the forest (to which Leonardo and the Bride have fled), three Woodcutters emerge to discuss the events (in a manner somewhat similar to that of a Greek chorus, except that they speak to each other, not to the audience). They reveal that the searchers have infiltrated the entire forest, and that Leonardo, who is, after all, carrying a woman, will be caught soon if the moon comes out. As the moon emerges from behind the clouds, they flee the stage. The Moon (a feminine symbol, The Moon is preferably played by a woman), who is very powerful and godlike, talks to the forest and tells the trees of her desire to let blood be shed in order to punish mankind for shutting her out of their homes, and confesses her loneliness, but is still furious. She shines her mystic light on the forest, illuminating the paths for the searchers. She is joined by her priestess, personified as an old beggar woman. They plot to kill the two men and let blood be shed. The bloodthirsty, conniving moon then departs in a very sinister way. The Groom, still caught up in fury, enters along with a Youth from the wedding party. The Youth is disturbed by the dark forest and urges the Groom to turn back, but the Groom refuses, vowing to kill Leonardo and reclaim his Bride. Death, disguised as an old beggar, enters, telling the Groom that she has seen Leonardo and can lead the Groom to him. The Groom and Youth exit with her. Elsewhere in the forest, Leonardo and the Bride discuss their future together. Both are filled with romantic angst, and consumed by their burning, unsustainable love for each other as passion like no other is shed between the two of them. The Bride begs Leonardo to flee, but he refuses. The couple hears footsteps; the Groom and Death are coming near. Leonardo exits, and two screams ring out in the darkness. The Moon and Beggar woman reappear at the end of the scene. Leonardo and the Groom have killed each other. In the town, the women (including Leonardo's Wife and Mother-in-Law) have gathered near the church to whisper of the events. Death arrives in the disguise of the beggar woman and, before departing, announces that doom has visited the forest. The Mother enters the church, full of anger and black bitterness, only to see the Bride returning—her dress covered in the blood of her lovers who killed each other in the forest. Presumably, (although this is never explicitly stated, and it happens after the play's end) the bride is afterwards killed as a sacrifice to restore the family's honor. Still, in some incarnations of the play, it is suggested that the Mother allows the Bride to live based on the idea that living with the pain of her lovers' deaths is a more severe punishment than death.
1145524	/m/04b6qh	Yerma	Federico García Lorca			 * Act 1, scene 1: Yerma has been married two years. She wants to strengthen her husband, Juan, so he can give her children. Telling Yerma to stay at home, Juan goes back to his work in the olive groves, and Yerma talks and sings to the child she wishes she were carrying. María, married five months and already pregnant, asks Yerma to sew for the baby. Yerma fears that if she too doesn't conceive soon, her blood will turn to poison. The couple's friend, Victor, sees Yerma sewing and assumes she is pregnant. His advice, when he learns the truth: try harder. *Act 1, scene 2: Yerma has just taken Juan his dinner in the fields. On the road home, she encounters an Old Woman who insists that passion is the key to conception. Yerma admits a secret longing for Victor, but none for Juan. She then meets two girls whose attitudes astonish her. One has left her baby untended. The other is childless and glad of it, although her mother, Dolores, is giving her herbs for pregnancy. Next Victor comes along, and the conversation between Victor and Yerma becomes tense with unspoken thoughts and desires. Juan enters, worrying about what people will say if Yerma stays out chatting. He tells her he intends to work all night. Yerma will sleep alone. *Act 2, scene 1: It is three years later. Five Laundresses gossip about a woman who still has no children, who has been looking at another man, and whose husband has brought in his sisters to keep an eye on her. We know they mean Yerma. The laundresses sing about husbands and lovemaking and babies. *Act 2, scene 2: Juan's two sisters watch over Yerma. She refuses to stay at home, and people are talking. Without children in it, her house seems like a prison to her. Her marriage has turned bitter. María visits, but reluctantly, since the sight of her baby always makes Yerma weep. The childless girl says her mother, Dolores, is expecting Yerma. Victor comes in to say goodbye. Yerma is surprised and a little saddened by Victor’s announcement to go. When she asks him why he must go he answers along the lines of “things change.” Juan enters and it is later found out that Juan has bought Victor’s sheep. It would seem that Juan is one of the reasons why Victor is leaving. Yerma is angered and when Juan goes out with Victor, Yerma makes her escape to see Dolores. *Act 3, scene 1: Yerma is found at Dolores's house. Dolores and the Old Woman have been praying over Yerma all night in the cemetery. Juan accuses Yerma of deceit, and she curses her blood, her body, and her father "who left me the blood of the father of a hundred sons." *Act 3, scene 2: The scene begins near a hermitage high in the mountains, a place to which many barren women, including Yerma, have made a pilgrimage. Young men are there, hoping to father a child or to win a woman away from her husband. The Old Woman tells Yerma to leave Juan and take up with her son, who is "made of blood," but Yerma's honor diminishes that thought. Juan overhears and tells Yerma to give up wanting a child, to be content with what she has. Realizing that Juan never did and never will want a child, Yerma strangles him, thus killing her only hope of ever bearing a child. The play ends with Yerma saying, "Don't come near me, because I've killed my son, I myself have killed my son!"
1146018	/m/04b86n	Eye for Eye	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mick Winger has an unusual gift and with it has accidentally killed several people. When Mick gets angry at people, his power manifests itself by launching an attack upon them by giving them cancer, leukemia or related terminal illnesses. If made angry enough, his anger can outright kill the victim. Mick was raised in an orphanage and along his journey to manhood unintentionally killed several people who mistreated him, as well as nearly everyone he loved, though nearly every occurrence was accidental. The only intentional murder he describes while growing up is being nearly molested in a Denny's bathroom. This is when he discovers the intensity of the attacks are greatly heightened when he's touching a target. When fifteen, he fled child custody and set out on his own. When Mick becomes angry, he gets, as he describes it, "sparkly." He can see sparks surrounding and enveloping him and then those sparks lashing out on the object of his anger. Unavoidably, those attacked by his "sparks" end up with terminal illnesses and soon die. The effect of his attack is much more pronounced if he is touching the victim. Until he was a young man, Mick had no idea he was different from other children. He discovered he was different when describing "sparkiness" with other children, who had no idea what he was talking about. Soon after setting out on his own, he encounters a young woman who not only knows about his gift, but who even seems to possess the same gift, although to a lesser extent. She however possesses the ability to "call," to influence Mick so that he unintentionally heads straight for her, as well as intense sexual attraction, which she describes as simple pheromones that all people have, except that people like Mick, due to a different biochemical makeup (though Mick doesn't understand this when it is first explained to him), is far more susceptible to these pheromones than a normal human being. Eventually he is led back to his birth parents, who are members of a mysterious, secluded colony. Talking to his parents, who also possess his ability, he learns he is far more powerful than they or probably anyone else at the colony. Mick learns that what he sees as "sparks" his family only sees as dust; he even begins to realize that he can see when people are lying. After being brought to the villages Patriarch, Papa Lem, Mick learns the intent of the colony and how they operate. Mick then refuses to "spread his seed" with the daughter of Papa Lem and returns to his parents' house for the night. During the night, Mick is attacked by an agent of Papa Lem and others from the village. Mick ends up killing his father and setting fire to the village while at the same time learning new extents to his abilities. After fleeing the village on foot, Mick runs into the girl he met when he first set out on his own. The assailants from the village quickly catch up with the duo and start firing at them. The woman, unbeknown to Mick, is shot in the back of the head just as they reach their allies. Mick pulls the girl from her wrecked car and puts all his "sparkiness" into her just before passing out. Mick awakes in the lair of his new allies. Upon questioning, Mick learns that the girl is alive and that he had somehow healed her from the bullet wound. Mick is on his way to officially meet the young lady when the story abruptly ends.
1146094	/m/04b8dy	Woman in the Dunes	Kobo Abe			 An entomologist, Junpei Niki (played in the film by Eiji Okada), is on an expedition to collect insects that inhabit sand dunes. When he misses the last bus, villagers suggest he stay the night. They guide him down a rope ladder to a house in a sand quarry where a young widow (Kyoko Kishida) lives alone. She is employed by the villagers to dig sand for sale and to save the house from burial in the advancing sand. When Junpei tries to leave the next morning, he finds the ladder removed. The villagers inform him that he must help the widow in her endless task of digging sand. Junpei initially tries to escape. Upon failing he takes the widow captive but is forced to release her in order to receive water from the villagers. Junpei becomes the widow's lover. He still, however, desperately wants to leave. One morning, he escapes from the sand dune and starts running while being chased by the villagers. Junpei is not familiar with the geography of the area and eventually gets trapped in some quicksand. The villagers free him from the quicksand and then return him to the widow. Eventually, Junpei resigns himself to his fate. Through his persistent effort to trap a crow as a messenger, he discovers a way to draw water from the damp sand at night. He thus becomes absorbed in the task of perfecting his technology and adapts to his "trapped" life. The focus of the film shifts to the way in which the couple cope with the oppressiveness of their condition and the power of their physical attraction in spite of — or possibly because of — their situation. At the end of the film Junpei gets his chance to escape, but he chooses to prolong his stay in the dune. A report after seven years declaring him missing is then shown hanging from a wall, written by the police and signed by his mother Shino.
1146823	/m/04bb21	Monsignor Quixote	Graham Greene	1982-09-27	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Father Quixote, a parish priest in the little town of El Toboso in Spain's La Mancha region, regards himself as a descendant of Cervantes' character of the same name, even if people point out to him that Don Quixote was a fictitious character. One day, he helps and gives food to a mysterious Italian bishop whose car has broken down. Shortly afterwards, he is given the title of monsignor by the Pope, much to the surprise of his bishop who looks upon Father Quixote's activities rather with suspicion. He urges the priest to take a holiday, and so Quixote embarks upon a voyage through Spain with his old Seat 600 called "Rocinante" and in the company of the Communist ex-mayor of El Toboso (who, of course, is nicknamed "Sancho"). In the subsequent course of events, Quixote and his companion have all sorts of funny and moving adventures along the lines of his ancestor's on their way through post-Franco Spain. They encounter the contemporary equivalents of the windmills, are confronted with holy and not-so-holy places and with sinners of all sorts. In their dialogues about Catholicism and Communism, the two men are brought closer, start to appreciate each other better but also to question their own beliefs. Quixote is briefly taken back to El Toboso, confronted by the bishop about his doings and suspended from service as a priest, but he escapes and sets out again with Sancho. In his last adventure, Father Quixote is struck down and wounded while attempting to save a statue of the Virgin Mary from hypocrites who are desecrating her by offering her up for money. Here may be a parallel between Dulcinea in Cervantes' novel and Monsignor Quixote's Lady whom he would lay down his life for. Quixote and Sancho are brought to a Trappist monastery where, sleepwalking and in delirium, Father Quixote rises from his bed at night, goes to the church, celebrates the old Tridentine Mass&mdash;all the time imagining he holds bread and wine in his hands&mdash;and then, in a last effort, administers communion to the Communist ex-mayor before sinking dead into his friend's arms.
1146965	/m/04bb9y	The Ghost Writer	Philip Roth	1979	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nathan Zuckerman is a promising young writer who spends a night in the home of E.I. Lonoff, an established author whom Zuckerman idolizes (and who, it has been argued, is a portrait of Bernard Malamud or Henry Roth or a composite of both). Also staying in the Lonoff home is Amy Bellette, a young woman with a vague past whom the narrator apparently comes to suspect as being Anne Frank, living in the United States anonymously, having survived the Holocaust. It only becomes apparent at the end of this section that this conjecture is part of a fiction composed by Zuckerman.
1147274	/m/04bc7n	Politics	Adam Thirlwell	2003-08-28	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nana, an attractive young "non-talker" in her mid-twenties&mdash;"tall, thin, pale, blonde, breasty"&mdash;who is working on her M.A. thesis, lives with her "Papa", the "benevolent angel" of the story, in Edgware, a suburb of London. She gets to know Moshe, a young Jewish actor from Finsbury, and they start a relationship. As time goes by, Anjali, a friend of Moshe's, joins them more and more in their sparetime activities until Nana, for whom sex is not necessarily a top priority, suggests a "threesome" because she wants Moshe to be happy. Accordingly, due to Nana's altruism, for some months Nana and Moshe are joined in their lovemaking by Anjali, who is bisexual. The narrator, who defines a threesome as "the socialist utopia of sex", describes not only the sociology, psychology and ethics of their ménage à trois (for example by comparing it to the love triangle depicted in the film Cabaret) but also, in some detail, the technicalities and what he calls "sexual etiquette". However, he also frequently ponders philosophical questions and occasionally redefines old concepts such as that of infidelity ("the selfish desire to be helpful to more than one person"). In the summer Nana goes on holiday with her Papa, leaving behind two thirds of the ménage à trois. In Venice, Italy, Papa complains of a splitting headache, and shortly after their return to England he suffers a stroke&mdash;a good excuse for Nana to break up with both Moshe and Anjali, although her father is saddened by the thought of his daughter giving up her boyfriend on his account.
1149427	/m/04bjx3	The Phoenix and the Carpet	E. Nesbit	1904	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This middle volume of the trilogy that began with Five Children and It and concludes with The Story of the Amulet deviates somewhat from the other two because the Psammead gets only a brief mention, and because in this volume the children live with both of their parents and their younger brother—the Lamb—in their home in London. Consequently, there is less loneliness and sense of loss in this volume than in the other two. In both of the other volumes, circumstances have forced the children to spend a protracted period away from their familiar London home and their father; in Amulet, their mother and the Lamb are absent as well. A continuing theme throughout The Phoenix and the Carpet is, appropriately enough, the ancient element of fire. The story begins shortly before November 5, celebrated in England as Guy Fawkes Night. Traditionally, children light bonfires and set off fireworks on this night. The four children have accumulated a small hoard of fireworks but are too impatient to wait until November 5 to light them, so they set off a few samples in the nursery. This results in a fire that destroys the carpet. Their parents purchase a second-hand carpet which, upon arrival, is found to contain an egg that emits a weird phosphorescent glow. The children accidentally knock this egg into the fire: it hatches, revealing a golden Phoenix who speaks perfect English. It develops that this is a magical carpet, which can transport the children to anywhere they wish in the present time, although it is only capable of three wishes per day. Accompanied by the Phoenix, the children have exotic adventures in various climes. There is one moment of terror for the children when their youngest brother, the Lamb, crawls onto the carpet, babbles some incoherent baby talk, and vanishes. Fortunately, the Lamb only desired to be with his mother. At a few points in the novel, the children find themselves in predicaments from which the Phoenix is unable to rescue them by himself; he goes to find the Psammead and has a wish granted for the children's sake. In addition, in the end, the carpet is sent to ask the Psammead to grant the Phoenix's wish. These offstage incidents are the only contribution made by the Psammead to this story. The Phoenix and the Carpet features some intriguing depictions of London during the reign of Edward VII. At one point, the children and their supernatural bird visit the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company: the egotistical Phoenix assumes that this is his modern-day temple, and the insurance executives must be his acolytes. The children also have an encounter with two older ruffians named Herb and Ike who attempt to steal the Phoenix. Possibly the most interesting chapter in this novel occurs when the four children attend a Christmas pantomime at a West End theatre, smuggling the Phoenix along inside Robert's coat. The Phoenix is so excited by this spectacle that he unintentionally sets fire to the theatre. In Edwardian times, many theatres in Britain and the United States were fire-traps, and it was not unusual for a conflagration in a theatre to produce hundreds of deaths. This chapter is vivid and highly convincing, but all ends well when the Phoenix magically reverses the damage: no one is harmed, and the theatre remains intact. One aspect of The Phoenix and the Carpet that is atypical for children's fantasy fiction is the fact that, in this story, the magical companion does not treat all the children equally. The Phoenix insists on favouring Robert- the child who actually put his egg in the fire, albeit by accident- over his brother Cyril and their sisters. This is a mixed privilege, as Robert is lumbered with the duty of smuggling the Phoenix past their parents at inconvenient moments. In the novel's final chapter, the Phoenix announces that he has reached the end of his current lifespan and must begin the cycle again (apparently on the grounds that life with the children has left him far more exhausted than he would have been in the wilderness.) He lays a new egg from which he will eventually be reborn. Under the Phoenix's direction, the children prepare an altar with sweet incense, upon which the Phoenix immolates himself. The magical carpet has also reached the end of its lifespan, as it was never intended to be walked upon regularly, and, at the request the Phoenix, it takes the egg away to a place where it won't hatch again for 2,000 years. There is a happy ending, with the children receiving a parcel of gifts from an "unknown benefactor" (the Phoenix, who arranges this gift by means of a wish granted by the Psammead), and Robert receiving a single golden feather. But the feather has vanished by the evening and it is truly the last of the Phoenix and the Carpet. The last volume in the series, The Story of the Amulet, contains a minor episode in which the children travel thousands of years into the past and encounter the Phoenix, who does not recognise them because, in his linear timeline, the events of the previous book have not happened yet.
1151016	/m/04bnyz	The Basic Eight	Daniel Handler	1998-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Flannery Culp is a senior at Roewer High School in San Francisco. Over the course of the year, Flan records the events of her life in a diary - which, after some heavy editing by Flannery herself, some years after the fact, becomes the narrative. She and her seven close friends refer to themselves as "The Basic Eight"; they are an exclusive clique, hosting the Grand Opera Breakfast Club, and regular dinner and garden parties, as they cope with the stresses of their final year of high school. The plot begins in letters written by Flannery to her love interest, Adam, while on summer vacation, and reaches a dark conclusion in which lives of the members of the Basic Eight are turned upside down by revealed secrets, horrifying self-discoveries, and murder. The Basic Eight consists of: Flannery Culp, the protagonist; Kate Gordon, the Queen Bee; Lily Chandly, a classical musician; Douglas Wilde, Flan's ex-boyfriend; V__, whose rich parents have had her name expunged from the story; Jennifer Rose Milton, a name so beautiful that Flan must always write it out in full; Gabriel Gallon, the kindest boy in the world; Natasha Hyatt, Flan's exuberant and beautiful best friend. In Handler's third novel, Adverbs, Kate is mentioned as the girlfriend to a minor character, Garth, in the chapter "Soundly". In The Basic Eight, Kate frequently gives relationship advice from her only, two-week relationship with Garth, much to Flannery's annoyance.
1155183	/m/04bx18	Mowgli's Brothers	Rudyard Kipling			 Father Wolf and Mother Wolf (Raksha), a pair of Indian wolves raising a family of cubs, are furious to learn that Shere Khan the lame tiger is hunting in their part of the jungle because he might kill men and bring human retribution upon the jungle. But when Father Wolf hears something approaching their den it turns out not to be the tiger but a naked baby. Mother Wolf decides to adopt the hairless "man-cub". Her determination is only strengthened by the arrival of Shere Khan who demands the cub for his meal. The wolves drive off the tiger and Raksha names him Mowgli the Frog because of his hairlessness. At the wolf pack's meeting at Council Rock Baloo the bear speaks for the man-cub and Bagheera the panther buys his life with a freshly killed bull. Baloo and Bagheera undertake the task of educating Mowgli as he grows. Meanwhile Shere Khan plans to take revenge on the wolf pack by persuading the younger wolves to depose their leader Akela. When Mowgli is about 11 or 12 Bagheera tells him of Shere Khan's plan. Mowgli, being human, is the only creature in the jungle that does not fear fire, so he steals a pot of burning coals from a nearby village in order to use it against Shere Khan. The young wolves prevent Akela from catching his prey, and at that night's meeting Shere Khan demands that Akela be killed and the man-cub given to him. Mowgli, despite being naked and unprotected, attacks Shere Khan with a burning branch and drives him and his allies away, but realises to his sorrow that he must now leave the pack and return to humanity. As he leaves he vows to return one day and lay Shere Khan's hide upon the Council Rock. The story of Mowgli's return to humanity is told in "Tiger! Tiger!" and continued in "Letting in the Jungle".
1155591	/m/04by25	Not This August	Cyril M. Kornbluth	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 By 1965, the United States and Canada have been at war with the Soviet Union and the Chinese People's Republic for three years. Both sides' atomic weapons are ineffective as anti-aircraft missiles shoot down any bombers or guided missiles, so ground forces have done most of the fighting. The Communist nations&mdash;whose armies greatly outnumber the North Americans&mdash;conquered Western Europe, invaded South America, and are moving to Texas. All American males are required to either perform agricultural work to feed the armed forces or be drafted into military service. Food, electricity, and gasoline are rationed, and New York City is reportedly under martial law. Billy Justin, a 37 years-old commercial artist and Korean War veteran, is working as a dairy farmer in Chiunga Center, New York when the radio announces that Soviet and Chinese forces have overrun the Canadian-American line at El Paso, Texas. The last American naval forces were destroyed three months earlier but the news had been kept secret. The Communist armies destroy in Los Alamos, New Mexico the incomplete Yankee Doodle, a satellite capable of dropping hydrogen bombs from orbit that are impossible to shoot down. The President surrenders to the Communists, who over the next several months divide the United States at the Mississippi River, and together form the North American People's Democratic Republic. Other than a military garrison, a formal disarmament, searches for fissionable material, and the establishment of production quotas for food, the surrender of the United States leaves Chiunga Center largely untouched. The Soviets kill the Communist fifth column members who had secretly aided the invasion to prevent them from organizing against the new government, but are otherwise relatively peaceful and amenable to the black market. A paraplegic comes to Justin's farm asking for work; he is General Hollerith, a veteran of the previous war. He and Justin join a conspiracy to finish the real satellite, a manned space station buried in Chiunga County that the United States had been building for 15 years. It requires parts and engineering knowledge to launch. MVD troops arrive, shoot the corrupt Soviet soldiers, and are much more cruel. They capture, to Justin's knowledge, all of the conspirators but himself and the general. Justin deduces that the contacts he needs to make are in Washington, Pennsylvania. With a traveling preacher, Sparhawk, Justin walks the hundreds of miles from Chiunga Center to Washington, benefiting from the Democratic Republic's policy of respecting the Americans' freedom of religion. At Washington Justin receives instructions from the nationwide resistance movement for an attack planned for Christmas Eve on Chiunga Center to liberate the satellite. Despite the Soviets' arrest and torture of a local farmer, they are ignorant of what "Christmas Eve", a mild oath they have heard sworn by various citizens, means until the battle begins. Coordinated by Hollerith, bridges around the area are blown up and nearby arsenals are sabotaged. The townspeople, many of whom are veterans, battle the Soviets as the space station launches. Hollerith's forces triumph, and the Americans transmit an ultimatum to the Soviets and Chinese: The satellite is armed and will destroy Moscow and Peiping in 24 hours if occupation soldiers do not leave American soil and free all prisoners of war. Hollerith offers Justin important positions in the new government and society, but he refuses them and kneels in prayer with Sparhawk, fearing the fulfillment of mutual assured destruction.
1155631	/m/04by63	The Cold Equations				 The story takes place entirely aboard an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) headed for the frontier planet Woden with a load of desperately needed medical supplies. The pilot, Barton, discovers a stowaway: an eighteen-year-old girl. By law, all EDS stowaways are to be jettisoned because EDS vessels carry no more fuel than is absolutely necessary to land safely at their destination. The girl, Marilyn, merely wants to see her brother, Gerry, and is not aware of the law. When boarding the EDS, Marilyn sees the "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!" sign, but thinks she will simply have to pay a fine if she is caught. Barton explains that her presence dooms the mission by exceeding the weight limit, and will result in the deaths of the colonists. No cargo can be jettisoned, and the presence of the captain is required on ship, so Barton cannot sacrifice himself. After contacting her brother, Marilyn willingly walks out of the airlock and is ejected into space. The story, first published in the August 1954 issue of Astounding, has been widely anthologized and even dramatized.
1155846	/m/04byp0	The Warlock of Firetop Mountain	Ian Livingstone	1982	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook"}	 The player takes the role of an adventurer on a quest to find the treasure of a powerful Warlock, hidden deep within Firetop Mountain. People from a nearby village advise told that the treasure is stored in a chest with two locks, and that the keys are guarded by various creatures within the dungeons. The player must then navigate the dungeons beneath Firetop Mountain, battle monsters and attempt to locate the keys.
1158502	/m/04c4ys	Armageddon 2419 A.D.	Philip Francis Nowlan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The main character and the narrator in Armageddon 2419 A.D. is Anthony Rogers, who later appears in the various comic strips, radio shows, and film serials that follow as "Buck Rogers". Rogers recounts the events of the “Second War of Independence” that precedes the first victory of Americans over Hans, in which he plays an important role. Born in 1898, He was a veteran of the Great War (World War I) and was by 1927 working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation. He was investigating reports of unusual phenomena reported in abandoned coal mines near Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. On December 15, while investigating one of the lower levels of a mine, there was a cave-in. Exposed to radioactive gas, Rogers fell into "a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of catabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on physical or mental faculties." Rogers remained in “sleep” for 492 years. He awakes in 2419 and, thinking that he has been asleep for just several hours, wanders for a few days in unfamiliar forests (what had been Pennsylvania almost five centuries before). He finally notices a wounded boy-like-figure, clad in strange clothes and moving in giant leaps, who appears to be under attack by others. He defends the person, killing one of the attackers and scaring off the rest. It turns out that he is helping a girl, Wilma Deering, who, on “air patrol”, was attacked by an enemy gang, the "Bad Bloods", which is presumed to have allied themselves with the Hans. Wilma takes Rogers to her camp, where he is to meet the bosses of her gang. He is invited to stay with their gang or leave and visit other gangs. They hope that Rogers’ experience and knowledge he gained fighting in the First World War may be useful in their struggle with the Hans. Tony stays with the gang for several days, learns about the community life of Americans in the 25th century and makes friends with the people, especially with Wilma, with whom he spends a lot of time. He also experiences a Han air raid, during which he manages to destroy one of the enemy ships. Rogers and his friends hurry to the bosses to report the incident and explain the method he has used when shooting the aircraft. As the raid has caused much destruction, there is suspicion that the location of the gang’s industrial plants may have been revealed to the Hans by rival gangs. They await a fight with the Hans who will likely wish to take revenge for the destruction of their airship. The bosses direct Wilma and Rogers investigate the wreck. While there, a Han party arrives to investigate as well. Thanks to Tony’s quick and wise instructions, he and Wilma manage to escape and also manage to shoot down some more of the Han’s ships. The day after, Wilma and Anthony get married and Tony becomes a member of the gang. Meantime, knowing Rogers’ technique, the other gangs start the hunt for Han ships. The Hans better secure their ships and the Americans need to take up some further steps to have any chances in the fight and to find the traitors quickly. Anthony develops a plan to get the records of the traitorous transaction, which are kept somewhere in the Han city of Nu-Yok. With the help of other gangs, he creates a team that will go with him. They learn that the traitors are the Sinsings, the gang located not far from Nu-Yok. The Americans appreciate Rogers’ courage and brave deeds and, grateful to him, make him the new boss. He instantly reorganizes the governing structures of the gang by creating new offices and makes plans for the battle with the Sinsings, again using the knowledge he gained in the First World War. The raid on Sinsings turns out to be a great success and gives the Americans the confidence in their ability to overcome the Hans.
1159016	/m/04c6m2	Doctor Glas	Hjalmar Söderberg	1905	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Doctor Glas is told in the form of a journal. The main character is Dr. Glas, a physician. The antagonist is Reverend Gregorius, a morally corrupt clergyman. Gregorius' beautiful young wife confides in Dr. Glas that her sex life is making her miserable and asks for his help. Glas, in love with her, agrees to help even though she already has another adulterous lover. He attempts to intervene, but the Reverend refuses to give up his "marital rights"- she must have sex with him whether she likes it or not (at the time, a wife was legally the property of her husband, and subsequently had no right to say no). So, in order to make his love happy, he begins to plot her husband's murder. The novel also deals with issues such as abortion, women's rights, suicide, euthanasia, and eugenics. Not surprisingly, the book triggered a violent campaign against its author who thereafter was vilified in Swedish literary circles.
1161718	/m/04cfzh	A Dog of Flanders	Ouida		{"/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In the 19th century, a boy named Nello becomes an orphan at the age of two when his mother dies in the Ardennes. His grandfather Jehan Daas, who lives in a small village near the city of Antwerp, takes him in. One day, Nello finds a dog who was almost beaten to death and names him Patrasche. Due to the good care of Jehan, the dog recovers, and from then on, Nello and Patrasche are inseparable. Since they are very poor, Nello has to help his grandfather by selling milk. Patrasche is shackled to a dogcart and helps Nello pull the milk into town each morning. Nello falls in love with Aloise, the daughter of a well-off man in the village named Nicholas Cogez. Nicholas doesn't want his daughter to have a poor sweetheart. Although Nello is illiterate, he is very talented in drawing. He enters a junior drawing contest in Antwerp, hoping to win the first prize, 200 francs per year. However, the jury selects somebody else. Afterwards, he is accused of causing a fire by Nicholas (the fire occurred on his property) and his grandfather dies. His life becomes even more desperate. Having no place to stay, Nello goes to the cathedral of Antwerp to see Rubens' The Elevation of the Cross, but he doesn't have enough money to enter. On the night of Christmas Eve, he and Patrasche go to Antwerp and, by chance, find the door to the church open. The next morning, the boy and his dog are found frozen to death in front of the triptych. In another version, they go the village church. The pastor, finding them in the church, covers them with a woolen blanket, thus saving their lives. Two days later, one of the judges comes, and because he thought Nello was the true winner, he asks him to stay with him. As years pass, Patrasche dies, and Nello becomes a famous artist.
1162324	/m/04chpv	The General in His Labyrinth	Gabriel García Márquez	1989	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is written in the third-person with flashbacks to specific events in the life of Simón Bolívar, "the General". It begins on May 8, 1830 in Santa Fe de Bogotá. The General is preparing for his journey towards the port of Cartagena de Indias, intending to leave Colombia for Europe. Following his resignation as President of Gran Colombia, the people of the lands he liberated have now turned against him, scrawling anti-Bolívar graffiti and throwing waste at him. The General is anxious to move on, but has to remind the Vice-President-elect, General Domingo Caycedo, that he has yet to receive a valid passport to leave the country. The General leaves Bogotá with the few officials still faithful to him, including his confidante and aide-de-camp, José Palacios. At the end of the first chapter, the General is referred to by his full title, General Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios, for the only time in the novel. On the first night of the voyage, the General stays at Facatativá with his entourage, which consists of José Palacios, five aides-de-camp, his clerks, and his dogs. Here, as throughout the journey that follows, the General's loss of prestige is evident; the downturn in his fortunes surprises even the General himself. His unidentified illness has led to his physical deterioration, which makes him unrecognizable, and his aide-de-camp is constantly mistaken for the Liberator. After many delays, the General and his party arrive in Honda, where the Governor, Posada Gutiérrez, has arranged for three days of fiestas. On his last night in Honda, the General returns late to camp and finds one of his old friends, Miranda Lyndsay, waiting for him. The General recalls that fifteen years ago, she had learned of a plot against his life and had saved him. The following morning, the General begins the voyage down the Magdalena River. Both his physical debilitation and pride are evident as he negotiates the slope to the dock: he is in need of a sedan chair but refuses to use it. The group stays a night in Puerto Real, where the General claims he sees a woman singing during the night. His aides-de-camp and the watchman conduct a search, but they fail to uncover any sign of a woman having been in the vicinity. The General and his entourage arrive at the port of Mompox. Here they are stopped by police, who fail to recognize the General. They ask for his passport, but he is unable to produce one. Eventually, the police discover his identity and escort him into the port. The people still believe him to be the President of Gran Colombia and prepare banquets in his honor; but these festivities are wasted on him due to his lack of strength and appetite. After several days, the General and his entourage set off for Turbaco. The group spend a sleepless night in Barranca Nueva before they arrive in Turbaco. Their original plan was to continue to Cartagena the following day, but the General is informed that there is no available ship bound for Europe from the port and that his passport still has not arrived. While staying in the town, he receives a visit from General Mariano Montilla and a few other friends. The deterioration of his health becomes increasingly evident—one of his visitors describes his face as that of a dead man. In Turbaco, the General is joined by General Daniel Florencio O'Leary and receives news of ongoing political machinations: Joaquín Mosquera, appointed successor as President of Gran Colombia, has assumed power but his legitimacy is still contested by General Rafael Urdaneta. The General recalls that his "dream began to fall apart on the very day it was realized". The General finally receives his passport, and two days later he sets off with his entourage for Cartagena and the coast, where more receptions are held in his honor. Throughout this time, he is surrounded by women but is too weak to engage in sexual relations. The General is deeply affected when he hears that his good friend and preferred successor for the presidency, Field Marshal Sucre, has been ambushed and assassinated. The General is now told by one of his aides-de-camp that General Rafael Urdaneta has taken over the government in Bogotá, and there are reports of demonstrations and riots in support of a return to power by Bolívar. The General's group travel to the town of Soledad, where he stays for more than a month, his health declining further. In Soledad, the General agrees to see a physician for the first time. The General never leaves South America. He finishes his journey in Santa Marta, too weak to continue and with only his doctor and his closest aides by his side. He dies in poverty, a shadow of the man who liberated much of the continent.
1163002	/m/04ckbf	Birdsong	Sebastian Faulks		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 While most of the novel concentrates on Stephen's life in France before and during the war, the novel also focuses on the life of Stephen's granddaughter, Elizabeth, and her attempts to find out more about her grandfather's experiences in World War I. The story is split into seven sections which cover three different time periods. Birdsong has an episodic structure which moves between three different periods of time before, during and after the war. This is similar in many ways to the structure Faulks would adopt in his later novel The Long White Winter. Throughout the novel there are echoes of several war poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen (1918) The first stage is set before the war in Amiens, France. Stephen Wraysford is sent by his wealthy but disempassioned benefactor to work with René Azaire at his textile factory. He stays with Azaire and his family (Isabelle, Lisette and Grégoire). He spends the early part of the novel experiencing the comforts of middle class life in industrial Northern France whilst around him Azaire's workers foment unrest and threaten strike. He also senses an unease in the relationship between Azaire and Isabelle and is curious about her. Their friends, Bérard, Madame Bérard and Aunt Élise come round for dinner on occasions but there is always distance between them and Isabelle. It is revealed that Isabelle is substantially younger than Azaire and is his second wife. Azaire is embarrassed by his inability to father a child with her and beats her in erotic-consolatory anger. Lisette, the child of Azaire’s first marriage, who is 16 years old, makes suggestive remarks to Stephen but Stephen does not reciprocate. Lucien Lebrun, one of Azaire’s workers, gives food to the families of workers which he gets from Isabelle. This occurs behind Azaire's back and a rumour stirs that they are having an affair. Realising that their lives have been similar battles for self-determination which have now crossed, Stephen and Isabelle engage in a passionate affair which they believe is 'right' and will last forever. Isabelle confronts Azaire with the truth and he evicts Stephen, telling him that he will go to hell. Stephen and Isabelle run away but Isabelle, finding she is pregnant, momentarily loses faith in the relationship. Without telling Stephen, she flees, returning to her family home and the one constant in her life - her sister Jeanne. Later, Isabelle’s father makes a deal with Azaire for her return in exchange for her maintained honour; Isabelle is forgiven but soon realises her mistake. Stephen hears no more of her and knows nothing of his child that she bears (a girl called Françoise) and later raises with a German soldier called Max. We rejoin Stephen some years later as a lieutenant in the British Army and through his eyes, Faulks tells the reader about the Battle of the Somme and Ms Ridge at Ypres in the following year. The energetic character described in the first chapter of the novel contrasts with the depiction of Stephen hardened by his experiences of war. During his time in the trenches, we learn of Stephen's mental attitude to the war and the guarded comradeship he feels for his friend Captain Michael Weir and the rest of his men. However, Wraysford is regarded as a cold and distant officer by his men. He refuses all offers of leave; so committed is he to fighting and staying involved with the war. His story is paralleled to that of Jack Firebrace, a former miner, employed in the British trenches to listen for the enemy and plant mines under the German trenches. Jack is particularly motivated to fight because of the love he has for his deceased son John back home. Faulks describes how a soldier called Hunt is terrified of going underground as an exploding shell could trap the soldiers underground causing them to suffocate. Stephen is injured in this chapter but survives. The troops are told to make an attack on the Hawthorne Ridge but the attack seems doomed to fail with the senior officers being blamed. Gray states that Stephen should not tell his men that the attack will fail but should pray for them instead. Stephen feels lonely and writes to Isabelle, feeling that he has no one else that he can express his feelings to. He writes about his fears that he will die, and confesses that he has only ever loved her. This section of the novel ends with a bombardment leaving many soldiers in no man's land. Alongside the main story, there is the inquisitive narrative of Stephen's granddaughter, Elizabeth, who, whilst struggling with her married boyfriend, Robert, unearths the stories of World War I and the remaining links to Stephen's experiences at Marne, Verdun and the Somme. Elizabeth finds Stephen's journals and endeavours to decipher them. Weir is on leave and finds it impossible to communicate to his family how bad the war is. Stephen meets Isabelle after meeting with Jeanne, Isabelle’s sister, and convincing her to let him, and finds that her face has been disfigured by a shell with scarring caused from the injury. Stephen discovers that Isabelle is now in a relationship with Max, a German soldier. Stephen is able to return to England and feels relief at being able to enjoy the Norfolk countryside away from the trenches. When Stephen meets Isabelle’s sister Jeanne, he tells her how he dreads returning to the front line after leave. Stephen’s closest friend, Michael Weir, is eventually killed by a sniper’s bullet while in a trench out of the front line. Elizabeth continues researching the war and talks to war veterans (Gray and Brennan) about their experiences. During this period, she also becomes pregnant with Robert's child. The novel ends with Wraysford and Firebrace being trapped underground; Firebrace dies but Stephen survives and as the war ends he is rescued by Levi, a Jewish German soldier. An ending which is clearly inspired by – and deliberately echoes – Wilfred Owen's 1918 poem "Strange Meeting". Elizabeth finally decides to reveal her pregnancy to her mother, who is surprisingly supportive. Over dinner, she learns her mother was raised by Stephen and Jeanne, who married and settled in Norfolk, after Isabelle’s premature death due to the postwar influenza epidemic. Elizabeth and Robert then go on holiday to Dorset where she goes into labour and has a son, naming him John (after Jack Firebrace’s son), therefore keeping the promise which Stephen made to Jack when they were trapped in the tunnels under No Man’s Land, over sixty years before. The book ends with Robert walking down the garden of the holiday cottage and having an immense sense of joy.
1164368	/m/04cp2q	A Little Princess	Frances Hodgson Burnett		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Little Princess opens with seven-year-old Sara Crewe and her father, Captain Crewe, arriving at Miss Minchin's boarding school for girls in London. Captain Crewe is very wealthy and states that Sara is a destined for a lavish, comfortable future. Despite being pampered all her life in India, Sara herself is very intelligent, polite, and creative. Headmistress Miss Minchin is secretly jealous and dislikes Sara for her cleverness, but openly praises and flatters her because of her father's wealth. Before departing for India, Captain Crewe purchases Sara an elegant wardrobe and a doll whom Sara adores and names "Emily." Sara's friendliness and love for pretending and storytelling makes her popular with most of the school's students. They soon begin regarding her as a princess, which she embraces. Sara befriends Ermengarde, the school dunce; Lottie, a spoiled four-year-old student; and Becky, the scullery maid. A few years later, Sara receives word from Captain Crewe that he and a childhood friend have become partners in a scheme to gain control of a diamond mine which could potentially multiply his wealth enormously. Miss Minchin later treats Sara to a very luxurious eleventh birthday party per Captain Crewe's request. Captain Crewe's lawyer arrives unexpectedly and tells Miss Minchin that Captain Crewe has died of jungle fever and his partner has gone missing. He then adds that business troubles that rendered him completely poor, leaving Sara an orphaned beggar. Enraged that she will never be reimbursed for all the services and goods spent on Sara since receiving the last check, Miss Minchin seizes all of Sara's possessions except for an outgrown black frock and Emily. Miss Minchin then tells Sara that she will live in the attic next to Becky and work as a servant in order to continue living in the school. For the next several years Sara is made to teach the younger students and run errands in all weathers; she is starved and abused by Miss Minchin, the cook, and the other servants. She is consoled by Ermengarde, Lottie, and Becky, who visit her during the night, as well as Emily and a rat she names Melchisedec. Sara extensively uses her imagination as a means of coping, pretending that she and Becky are prisoners in the Bastille. Sara also continues pretending she is still a princess, and continues to be kind and polite to everyone, including her offenders. One day Sara finds a fourpence in the street and uses it to buy six buns from a friendly baker. The baker witnesses Sara give five of the buns to a beggar girl before leaving. The baker regards Sara as a princess and invites the beggar girl to live with her. Meanwhile, a man from India, Tom Carrisford, moves into the house next door. Sara becomes interested and sympathetic when she learns about Mr. Carrisford, who is sickly. It is revealed that Mr. Carrisford was Captain Crewe's childhood friend and partner. During their time in India, they had both caught high fevers, and in his delirium, Mr. Carrisford abandoned Captain Crewe. However, the diamond mine scheme had not fallen through as they both had initially believed, and Carrisford became extraordinarily wealthy. Mr. Carrisford feels extremely guilty that Captain Crewe's daughter is missing because of the ordeal and seeks to find her. Her name and school are unknown to him, following leads in Paris and Moscow. Sara meets Ram Dass, Mr. Carrisford's servant, when his pet monkey escapes into her room through her skylight. Ram Dass immediately admires Sara when she speaks to him in Hindustani. Ram Dass climbs across the roof into Sara's room to retrieve the monkey and sees the poor condition of her room. Ram Dass tells Mr. Carrisford of Sara, who becomes interested in her. Mr. Carrisford decides to secretly send food and gifts to Sara and Becky. Sara is very thankful but does not know who her "mysterious friend" is. The following days become less burdensome to Sara and Becky, to Miss Minchin's confusion. One night, the monkey escapes into Sara's room through the skylight; Sara decides to return the monkey to Mr. Carrisford the next morning. Sara mentions she had lived in India to Mr. Carrisford, who then subsequently learns that Sara is the missing daughter of Captain Crewe. Sara learns that Mr. Carrisford was her father's friend and forgives him when she realizes that he is the mysterious friend who helped her. When Miss Minchin visits to reclaim Sara, she is informed that Sara will be living with Mr. Carrisford and her entire fortune has been restored. Miss Minchin kindly asks Sara to come back and continue being a student at her school, but Sara rejects her offer. Becky is invited to live with and be the personal attendant of Sara. With her newfound wealth Sara makes a deal with the baker, proposing to cover the bills for food given to any hungry child. Sara thus proves her worth as a true "princess."
1164887	/m/04cqw4	True History of the Kelly Gang	Peter Carey	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Ned Kelly begins his autobiography with a description of his father, John "Red" Kelly, an Irishman transported to Van Diemen's Land and eventually settling in the colony of Victoria, Australia. After marrying Ned's eventual mother Ellen (née Quinn), the Kellys settle in Avenel, a rural area northeast of Melbourne. Red Kelly is shown to have numerous brushes with the colonial police forces, resulting in his imprisonment and eventual death when his son Ned was twelve years of age. After the rest of the family resettles in northeast Victoria under the Land Grant Act, Ned's mother attempts to provide for her children by running a shebeen and taking on a series of lovers, including the notorious bushranger Harry Power. Power agrees to take on the young Ned as an apprentice, and provides Ned with knowledge of the land, hideouts, and strategies for bushranging. Kelly eventually leaves Power and returns to his family's settlement, where he is shown making dogged attempts to live an honest lifestyle. Kelly is arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for reception of a stolen horse (although Kelly claims that a friend, "Wild" Wright, knowingly sold him the stolen horse without Kelly's knowledge - Kelly later extracts revenge on Wright in a bare-knuckle boxing match). After two years of working as a sawmill hand, he is drawn back to bushranging when a herd of his horses is appropriated by a rival squatter. His descent back into crime is precipitated by a visit from a local police officer, Constable Alex Fitzpatrick. The policeman woos Ned's younger sister Kate, prompting Ned to reveal that Fitzpatrick has multiple mistresses in other towns and has no intention of marrying Kate. After his mother Ellen threatens the constable with violence, Fitzpatrick pulls his revolver on the family and Ned shoots him in the hand in self-defense. Although he dresses the wound and Fitzpatrick leaves while promising that no action will be taken, warrants for the arrest of Ned and his younger brother Dan are issued the next day. Ned Kelly and his brother Dan hide out in the hills of northeast Victoria, eventually being joined by their friends Steve Hart and Joe Byrne (later becoming known as the Kelly Gang). Kelly's mother is eventually arrested along with her baby daughter and imprisoned in Melbourne as enticement for Kelly to give himself up. A detachment of four policemen is eventually sent to kill the quartet after efforts to arrest them prove unsuccessful; the Kelly Gang ambushes them at Stringybark Creek, where Ned kills three of the policemen. This adds to the growing folklore surrounding the Kelly Gang, which they fuel by robbing banks and giving parts of the money to the lower-class settlers in Victoria who help to shelter the gang. During the gang's raids, Ned Kelly meets a young Irish girl named Mary Hearn, who already has a young son by Kelly's stepfather, George King. Kelly falls in love with Mary and makes plans to escape the colony with her after she becomes pregnant with his child. Crucially, it is Mary who motivates Kelly to begin writing the story of his life as a legacy for his future child, who she fears will never know its father. Following two successful bank robberies, Mary uses the money to emigrate to San Francisco with her son and Kelly's unborn daughter; Kelly remains behind, however, unwilling to leave Australia until his mother is released from jail. The gang is eventually cornered by a large squad of dozens of policemen (versus just four in the Kelly Gang) in the town of Glenrowan where the gang has taken numerous hostages and constructed several suits of plate-steel armor for protection. One of the hostages is the crippled local schoolmaster, Thomas Curnow, who encourages Kelly to relate the story of his entire life after seeing samples of his writing. Curnow betrays the gang by warning the incoming police train that the gang has sabotaged the tracks, feeling that history will view him as a "hero". The policemen surround the town and engage in a furious shootout with the armor-clad gang, seriously wounding Ned Kelly and killing the other three members of the gang. Kelly's narrative stops abruptly just before the shootout itself; a secondary narrator, identified as "S.C", relates the tale of the gunfight and Kelly's eventual death by hanging. Since Curnow is shown to have escaped Glenrowan with Kelly's manuscripts, it is assumed that this narrator is a relative of Curnow's. Kelly dies a hero to the people of northeastern Victoria, with the legend of his life left to grow over time.
1165276	/m/04crtt	Night of January 16th	Ayn Rand		{"/m/037750": "Ergodic literature"}	 The plot centers on a trial to decide whether Bjorn Faulkner has been murdered by his secretary, Karen Andre. Prior to the start of the play, Faulkner had been a prominent businessman who swindled millions of dollars to invest in the gold trade. In the wake of a crash, he had faced bankruptcy despite his access to funds from John Graham Whitfield, a prominent banker whose daughter, Nancy Lee, had married Faulkner. On the night of January 16, Faulkner and Andre were in the penthouse at the top of the Faulkner Building in New York, when Faulkner fell to his death. The play takes place entirely in the courtroom. Although his death is the focus of the trial, Faulkner himself is never seen during the show. Within the three acts of the play, the prosecutor (Mr. Flint) and Andre's defense attorney (Mr. Stevens) call upon a number of witnesses whose testimonies build conflicting stories. The first act begins with the judge asking the court clerk to call jurors from the audience. Once the jurors are seated, the prosecution argument begins. Flint explains that Andre was not just Faulkner's secretary, but also his lover. He says Faulkner jilted her in favor of marrying Nancy Lee Whitfield, and then fired her as his secretary, motivating her to murder him. He then calls a series of witnesses, starting with the medical examiner, who testifies that the body was so damaged by the fall that it was impossible to determine whether Faulkner was killed by the impact or already dead. An elderly night watchman describes the events he saw that evening. Next is a private investigator who was hired by Nancy Lee Faulkner to follow her husband since the day after their marriage. A police inspector describes the scene immediately after Faulkner's fall and finding a suicide note. Faulkner's very religious housekeeper disapprovingly describes the sexual relationship between Andre and Faulkner, and says she saw Andre with another man after Faulkner's marriage. Faulkner's widow, Nancy Lee Faulkner, testifies about their courtship and marriage, portraying both as idyllic. The act ends with Andre speaking out of turn to accuse Nancy Lee of lying. The second act continues the prosecution's case, with Flint calling John Graham Whitfield, Faulkner's father-in-law and president of Whitfield National Bank. He testifies about a large loan he made to Faulkner. In his cross-examination, defense attorney Stevens suggests the loan was used to buy Faulkner's marriage to Whitfield's daughter. After this testimony the prosecution rests, and the defense argument begins. A handwriting expert testifies about the signature on the suicide note. Faulkner's bookkeeper describes events between Andre's firing and the night of Faulkner's death, as well as related financial matters. Then Andre takes the stand in her own defense. She describes her relationship with Faulkner, as both his lover and his partner in financial fraud. She says she did not resent Faulkner's marriage to Nancy Lee, because it was a business deal to secure credit from the Whitfield Bank. As she starts to explain why Faulkner would have committed suicide, her testimony is interrupted by the arrival of Larry "Guts" Regan, an infamous gangster. He tells Andre that Faulkner is dead. Despite the fact that she is on trial for Faulkner's murder, Andre is shocked by this news and faints, ending the act. The third and final act continues Andre's testimony, but her attitude has changed from defiant to somber. She says that she, Faulkner and Regan had conspired to fake Faulkner's suicide so they could escape with money stolen from Whitfield. Regan, who was also in love with Andre, provided the stolen body of one of his already-dead gang associates to throw off the building. In his cross-examination, Flint suggests she and Regan were using her knowledge of past criminal activities to blackmail Faulkner. Stevens then calls Regan to testify. He explains that he was to meet Faulkner at a getaway plane after they left the stolen body with Andre, but Faulkner did not show up and the plane was missing. Instead, Regan encountered Whitfield, who gave him a check that Regan says was to buy his silence. Later Regan found the missing plane, burned with what he presumes is Faulkner's body inside. Flint's cross-examination offers the alternative theory that Regan put the stolen body in the plane to create doubt about Andre's guilt, and the check from Whitfield was protection money to Regan's gang. Finally, Stevens recalls Whitfield and Faulkner's bookkeeper to follow up on issues from Regan's testimony. Then the defense and prosecution give their closing arguments. The jury is sent off for a few minutes to vote, while the characters repeat highlights from their testimony under a spotlight. The jury then returns to announce their verdict. One of two short alternative endings follows. If found not guilty, Andre thanks the jury. If found guilty, she says they have spared her from committing suicide. In the amateur version, after either verdict the judge berates the jurors for their bad judgment and declares that they cannot serve again.
1166383	/m/04cvx9	White Noise	Don DeLillo	1985-01-21	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/05wkc": "Postmodernism", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set at an bucolic Midwestern college known only as The-College-on-the-Hill, White Noise follows a year in the life of Jack Gladney, a professor who has made his name by pioneering the field of Hitler Studies (though he hasn't taken German language lessons until this year). He has been married five times to four women and has a brood of children and stepchildren (Heinrich, Denise, Steffie, Wilder) with his current wife, Babette. Jack and Babette are both extremely afraid of death; they frequently wonder which of them will be the first to die. The first part of White Noise, called "Waves and Radiation," is a chronicle of contemporary family life combined with academic satire. There is little plot development in this section, which mainly serves as an introduction to the characters and themes that will dominate the rest of the book. For instance, the mysterious deaths of men in Mylex suits and the ashen, shaken survivors of a plane that went into free fall anticipate the catastrophe of the book's second part. Outside of the family, another important character introduced here is Murray, another college professor, who frequently discusses his theories, which relate to the rest of the book. In the second part, "The Airborne Toxic Event," a chemical spill from a rail car releases a black noxious cloud over Jack's home region, prompting an evacuation. Frightened by his exposure to the toxin, Gladney is forced to confront his mortality. An organization called SIMUVAC (short for "simulated evacuation") is also introduced in Part Two, an indication of simulations replacing reality. In part three of the book, "Dylarama," Gladney discovers that Babette has been cheating on him in order to gain access to a fictional drug called Dylar, an experimental treatment for the fear of death. The novel becomes a meditation on modern society's fear of death and its obsession with chemical cures as Gladney seeks to obtain his own black market supply of Dylar. However, Dylar does not work for Babette, and it has many possible side effects, including losing the ability to "distinguish words from things, so that if someone said 'speeding bullet,' I would fall to the floor to take cover." Jack continues to obsess over death. During a discussion about mortality, Murray hypothesizes that killing someone could perhaps alleviate the fear. Jack decides to test Murray's theory by tracking down and killing the man who had given Dylar to Babette in exchange for sex. After a black comedy scene of Jack driving and rehearsing, in his head, several ways in which their encounter might proceed, he successfully locates and shoots Willie Mink, who is delirious from his own Dylar addiction. He then puts the gun in Willie's hand to make the murder look like a suicide, but Willie then shoots Jack in the arm. Suddenly realizing the needless loss of life, Jack carries Willie to a hospital run by German nuns who do not believe in God or an afterlife. Having saved Willie, Jack returns home to watch his children sleep. The final chapter describes Wilder, Jack's youngest child, riding a tricycle across the highway and miraculously surviving.
1166981	/m/06g1y4d	The Elementary Particles	Michel Houellebecq	2000	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Despite the essentially elaborate scope of the plot revealed in the novel's conclusion (i.e. the eventual emergence of cloning as a replacement for the sexual reproduction of the human race), the narrative focuses almost exclusively on the bleak and unrewarding day-to-day lives of the protagonists; two half-brothers who barely know each other. They seem devoid of love, and in their loveless or soon to be loveless journeys, Bruno becomes a saddened loner, wrecked by his upbringing and failure to mature, while Michel’s pioneering work in cloning removes love from the process of reproduction. Humans are proven, in the end, to be just particles and just as bodies decay (a theme in the book) they can also be created from particles.
1168103	/m/04c_lh	The Man Who Japed	Philip K. Dick	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The Man Who Japed is set in the year 2114. After a devastating twentieth century limited nuclear war, a South African ("Afrikaans Empire") military survivor named General Streiter launched a global revolution in 1985 that ushered in a totalitarian government. In providing one example of the carnage Dick has his protagonist Allen Purcell visit Japan's northern island, Hokkaidō. The location is still a desolate wasteland that has not recovered from nuclear bombardment in 1972, the last year of the global war referred to within this book. This regime - Moral Reclamation ("Morec") - rules a post-apocalyptic world under its strict ideology. One of Streiter's lineal descendants, Ida Pease Hoyt, is in charge. Morec has created an ultra-conservative and puritanical society that is oppressive and judgmental of its fellow citizens. Four examples of the innumerable punishable offenses include: mild public cursing, kissing a non-spouse, absenteeism from community meetings and, of all things, the commercial display of neon signs. A thriving black market exists, however, where one can purchase the Decameron, James Joyce's Ulysses, chablis wine and pulp fiction detective novels from the twentieth century, albeit at vastly inflated prices. Earth people also occupy several alien planetary systems. There are human colonies on Belletrix (Gamma Orionis), Sirius 8 and 9, and "Orionus." On these worlds, intensive labour is required to provide agricultural and industrial products for survival. One of the planets is used as a "Refuge" for the rehabilitation of social misfits or "nooses". The "japery" alluded to in the title is Allen Purcell's wanton destruction of a statue of General Streiter. But Purcell has only vague, distorted and disjointed memories of the act and can't even understand his own motivation for doing it. The real irony lies in the fact that he is up for an appointment to a high-level position as a guardian of public ethics. But Purcell's act of social treachery is insignificant in comparison to what comes next. And he does it in full consciousness with deliberation and complicity. He concocts a false history of General Streiter for a live televised broadcast that is matter-of-factly and even approvingly discussed by a small panel of co-conspirators. This bogus aspect of the military hero's life is his alleged policy of having all of his enemies butchered and served up to him and his family as delectable gourmet meals. Ida Pease Hoyt is also included among those living descendants who practice the same brand of cannibalism as the opportunity arises. Purcell and his wife are just about to escape Morec justice when he has a change of heart and decides to remain on Earth and face the consequences of this unspeakably ghastly accusation. He promises his wife a trip to friend Myron Mavis's planet when they both make it through to "the other side" of their punishment.
1168927	/m/04d1l7	The Spire	William Golding	1964-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jocelin, the dean of the cathedral, directs the construction of a towering spire funded by his aunt, Lady Alison, a former mistress of the King. The project is carried on against the advice of many, and in particular the warnings of the master builder, Roger Mason. The cathedral has insufficient foundations to support a spire of the magnificence demanded by Jocelin, but he believes he has been chosen by God to erect a great spire to exalt the town and to bring its people closer to God. As the novel progresses, Golding explores Jocelin's growing obsession with the completion of the spire, during which he is increasingly afflicted by pain in his spine as a result of tuberculosis. Jocelin interprets the burning heat in his back as an angel, alternately comforting or punishing him depending on the warmth or pain he feels. Jocelin's obsession blinds him to reality, as he neglects his duties as a dean, fails to pray and ignores the people who need him the most. Jocelin also struggles with his attraction to Goody Pangall, the wife of the crippled and impotent cathedral servant, Pangall. Jocelin seems at first to see Goody as his daughter in God. However, as the novel progresses, and Goody's husband is tormented and ridiculed by the bullying workmen, Jocelin becomes tormented by sexual attraction, usually triggered by the sight of Goody's red hair. Comparisons between Goody and Rachel, Roger Mason's wife, are made throughout the novel. Jocelin believes Goody sets an example to Rachel, whom he dislikes for her garrulousness. However, Jocelin overestimates Goody's purity, and is horrified when he discovers Goody is embarking upon an affair with Roger Mason. Tortured by envy and guilt, Jocelin finds himself unable to pray. He is repulsed by his sexual thoughts, referred to as "the devil" during his dreams. The lives of the people around Jocelin are disrupted because of the intractable problems arising from the construction of the spire, but Jocelin continues to drive his dream to its conclusion. His visions and hallucinations mark his descent into irrationality. As the true costs, financial and spiritual, of the endeavour become apparent, the story moves to its tragic conclusion. Pangall disappears, although his fate is never made clear as events are seen from Jocelin's increasingly irrational point of view. Goody Pangall dies in childbirth, bearing Roger Mason's child. Roger becomes a drunkard and Jocelin dies of his illness after receiving the humiliating information from his aunt that his appointment was due only to her influence, not to his merits. The spire is incomplete at the end of the story, and there is a growing sense of impending disaster due to the instability of the over-ambitious structure. Jocelin has lost his faith at the time of his death but begins to appreciate the suffering he has caused to others by his pride and grandiosity.
1169626	/m/04d3jj	Warchild	Karin Lowachee	2002-04-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story starts when eight year old Joslyn Musey's parents die in a vicious pirate attack on his home ship, the merchant Mukudori. Jos, along with a handful of the ships other children, are captured by the attackers. Vincenzo Marcus Falcone, an infamous pirate and captain of the "Ghengis Khan", keeps Jos as his hostage, with the intention of making him a protégé. Falcone teaches Jos how to "win people over" with manners and cunning, and especially good looks. The human race, EarthHub, is at war with aliens called the striviirc-na, who are called "strits" by the Hub. When the pirate ship Ghengis Khan docks at Chaos Station, which is located in deep space, the station is suddenly attacked by the striviiric-na. Jos escapes Falcone during the attack, but is shot, then captured and is taken to the alien homeworld, Aaian-na, by the Warboy, the leader of the human sympathizer movement on Aaian-na, Nikolas S'tlian. Jos gradually accepts his place on Aaian-na and the Warboy teaches him to be a Ka'redan, or "assassin-priest" which is the ruling caste on the planet. Jos is trained on Aaian-na until he is fourteen, when he is formally made a member of the Ka'redan. At that time, being told that the only way to end the war is through a treaty with EarthHub's most notorious spacecarrier, the Macedon, he is assigned to spy on the ship as part of its elite crew. Jos is taught to act like an Earthhub human and sent back to Austo Station in the Hub to join the Macedon. Once on the Macedon, however, he discovers that his previous distinctions between good and bad no longer apply. Jos battles on the Macedon, eventually encountering Evan D'Silva, one of his former friends on the Mukudori, who he rescues from a pirate ship. He discovers a connection between the Warboy's brother, Ash-dan, and Falcone's pirates, who have been trading weapons to the sympathizers in exchange for aid in hiding captured children. The novel ends with a face off between the Geghis Khan and the Macedon. The Macedon encounters the Genghis Khan meeting with the Warboy's brother's ship, and is boarded by the pirates. Jos and his unit are captured by the Khan and Jos is interrogated by Falcone. It is eventually revealed to his ship mates that he is spying for the Warboy. However, at that point, the Warboy, who had been tracking his brother, shows up with his ship, and his crew release Jos and the other prisoners and takes them to his ship. The Warboy's ship then helps the Macedon destroy the pirate ships, after which Macedon's Captain, Cairo Azarcon, arranges for the Warboy to dock on Chaos Station. Jos encounters Falcone on deck, being transported to police facilities, when Falcone attempts to escape. Jos then stabs Falcone to death on deck, after which he is taken back to the Macedon under Captain Azarcon's protection. He is made a liaison officer which Azarcon attempts to negotiate a peace treaty with the striviiric-na. *French: Warchild (February 2009), Le Bélial', ISBN 978-2-84344-088-5
1169711	/m/04d3qf	Lucky Wander Boy	D. B. Weiss	2003-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story involves Adam Pennyman and his obsession with and attempts to catalog video games into a book called "The Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments". He is particularly obsessed with the fictional Japanese arcade game Lucky Wander Boy. While the Lucky Wander Boy game is fictional, many actual classic arcade and home video games are mentioned in the book.
1169894	/m/04d423	The Sykaos Papers	E. P. Thompson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 An alien is sent to live among Earthlings. He describes his adventures in journal form. At first he looks like a young human but as he begins to experience more of life on Earth he begins to age and develop characteristics like Earthlings. He falls in love with an Earthling woman and decides not to go back to his home planet. Events proceed and he and his mate end up on a Sykaosian ship while Earth is destroyed. The alien and his mate bear a male child named Adam. The novel switches from first-person perspective to an account by authorities on Sykaos. Adam, possessing more characteristics of Earthlings than Sykaosians begins to get into trouble and eventually leaves Sykaos with his mate Eve.
1172256	/m/04d9vr	Snow Country	Yasunari Kawabata	1935	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Snow Country is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial geisha that takes place in the remote hot spring (onsen) town of Yuzawa (Kawabata himself did not mention the name of the town in his novel). The hot springs in that region were home to inns, visited by men traveling alone and in groups, where paid female companionship had become a staple of the economy. The geisha of the hot springs enjoyed nothing like the social status of their more artistically trained sisters in Kyoto and Tokyo and were usually little more than prostitutes whose brief careers inevitably ended in a downward spiral. The liaison between the geisha, Komako, and the male protagonist, a wealthy loner who is a self-appointed expert on Western ballet, is thus doomed to failure. The nature of that failure and the parts played by others form the theme of the book. As his most potent symbol of this "counter-Western modernity", the rural geisha, Komako, of his novel Snow Country embodies Kawabata's conception of traditional Japanese beauty by taking Western influence and subverting it to traditional Japanese forms. Having no teacher available, she hones her technique on the traditional samisen instrument by untraditionally relying on sheet music and radio broadcasts. Her lover, Shimamura, comments that, “the publishing gentleman would be happy if he knew he had a real geisha—not just an ordinary amateur—practicing from his scores way off here in the mountains.” But on his way to the town, Shimamura is fascinated with a girl he sees on the train, a young girl named Yoko who is caring to a sick man traveling with her. He wants to see more of her, even though he is with Komako during his stay. Already a married man, it doesn't faze him that he is thinking about Yoko while being public with Komako.
1172386	/m/04db4q	The Valley of Fear	Arthur Conan Doyle	1915	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0174gw": "Locked room mystery"}	 Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson receive a letter from an informant known by the pseudonym Fred Porlock. Porlock is part of Professor Moriarty's criminal organization. The letter is written in a numeric code, and Holmes realises that the numbers refer to words in a book, by page and column. They decode the letter (finding the book in question to be Whitaker's Almanack), which warns that John Douglas of Birlstone House is about to be murdered. After they have deciphered the message, Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard comes to consult Holmes. MacDonald is astonished when he sees the message, because it has pre-empted his news: a man called John Douglas has indeed been mysteriously killed in Sussex. MacDonald demands to know the true identity of the informant who predicted the crime, but Holmes does not know it, because he promised not to try and find out who 'Porlock' really is. Holmes can only tell MacDonald that the informant works for Professor Moriarty. MacDonald, Holmes and Watson go to the Birlstone Manor House in Sussex, working with Scotland Yard and beginning their investigation along with Inspector White Mason and other officers from the local police force. At least five people were in the house at the time of the murder. John Douglas, Ivy Douglas (his wife), Ames (a butler), Cecil Barker (a friend) and Mrs Allen (a servant). Cecil Barker is an old friend of Douglas and had been intending to stay at Birlstone House for a few months on holiday. He had met Douglas in America many years before and become his mining partner as well as his friend. The house is surrounded by a moat that is fed from a nearby stream. The moat is wide but only two or three feet deep, so no one can really swim (or drown) in it. The house has a drawbridge, which is lowered every morning and raised every night. Barker tells the detectives that Douglas locked all of the windows in the house every night, and that he felt safer when the drawbridge was raised. It is concluded that the murderer walked across the drawbridge and hid close to the house before it was raised. The murderer could not have entered the house after 6:30 pm, since at that time the drawbridge was up. Douglas's body can only be identified by a strange brand on his arm, a circle with a triangle inside it. He has been shot in the head with a sawed-off shotgun, at close range, ruining his face and head. The investigators soon learn from Barker that Douglas' wedding ring is missing. It stayed on the same finger, under the nugget-ring he wore, which was found intact on the body. That means the assassin removed both rings, and stole one while replacing the other. The assassin also left a card reading "VV 341". They find a footprint imprinted in blood on the window sill, suggesting that the assassin jumped through the window and waded across the moat to freedom, but they can find no tracks, nor has anyone spotted a wet man wandering nearby. A bicycle and bag are also discovered, connected to a man staying at a nearby hotel, whose physical description is similar to that of the victim. However, this man left no trace of his identity at the hotel. After a short while, Holmes discovers that one of Douglas' dumbbells is also missing, suggesting the killer might have taken it. Holmes wants to find the dumbbell, so that afternoon he borrows Watson's large umbrella, sits on the window sill and fishes around in the moat. He finds the dumbbell, which had been used to weigh down a bundle of clothes. He puts it back in the moat where he found it. He then tells MacDonald to write a note to Barker, advising that the moat will be drained to search for evidence. MacDonald says this would be physically impossible, but sends the note nonetheless. That night, MacDonald, White Mason, Holmes and Watson hide in some bushes near the manor. When everyone goes to bed, they see a light go on in the study where Douglas was killed. Shortly after, they see a man grabbing the bundle from the moat. They charge into the house and into the study, and find Cecil Barker with the bundle. MacDonald accuses him of murdering Douglas, but he denies it. Then Mrs Douglas comes in and says that she is prepared to tell all. She crosses to the fireplace, presses a button, and it opens up. A man steps out, and introduces himself as John Douglas. Douglas explains that the intruder was the one who was shot. The intruder carried the same brand as Douglas. He says that he became a member of a gang in Vermissa Valley, under a different name. To join this gang, one's arm had to be branded, which explains why Douglas and the intruder had the same brand. This gang member, Ted Baldwin, had come to England to kill Douglas. Douglas had seen Baldwin in the village on the day he broke into the house, and became very scared. When he saw Baldwin in the study, he picked up a hammer to defend himself against Baldwin's initial weapon of a knife. He struck Baldwin on the arm and made him drop the knife, and Baldwin drew the shotgun, which Douglas grabbed hold of to prevent it from being pointed at him. In the ensuing struggle, the gun went off—Douglas admitted that he wasn't sure if he pulled the trigger or if the abuse the gun was being subjected to made it fire. In either case, though, the barrels were under Baldwin's chin, causing massive wounds to the head and face and instant death. Douglas and Baldwin had an extremely similar build, height, and hair color, meaning that with the shotgun-inflicted damage to Baldwin's face, his corpse could pass for Douglas's own. Douglas saw a chance to fake his death and throw his pursuers off his trail once and for all. Barker came to help Douglas change Baldwin into his clothes, so that it seems Douglas himself was killed. Baldwin's clothes were wrapped up in a bundle, weighted with the dumbbell, and thrown into the moat. The only three who knew about this are Douglas, Barker and Mrs Douglas. They keep quiet until they are discovered. Douglas presents some handwritten notes to Watson, which tell his backstory in America. Holmes assures Douglas that English law is just, and he will be treated fairly. Holmes tells Mr and Mrs Douglas that they are still in danger and must be on their guard. Watson then speaks directly to the reader, promising that, after Douglas's story is told, we can all return to the rooms at Baker Street. With that, the reader is introduced to Part 2 (much in the same way as A Study in Scarlet). This story begins 4 February 1875, on a train approaching the coal-and-iron-ore-mining region of Vermissa Valley. The narrator instructs the reader to look at a young man seated by himself ("Take a good look at him; for he is worth it"), who can be recognized as the younger John Douglas by his shrewd, humorous gray eyes. He carries a large navy revolver, which catches the attention of another passenger, Mike Scanlan. The young man introduces himself as John McMurdo, and remarks that he is from Chicago, and a member of the Ancient Order of Freemen. Scanlan verifies that he is a Brother of the Order, then identifies himself as a Brother from Lodge 341 in Vermissa Valley. McMurdo is soon shown to have a hot and violent temper, as he argues with a couple of policemen on the train. Before he even reaches Vermissa, he already has a reputation. Scanlan recommends that McMurdo go to old Jacob Shafter's boarding house, and to see Bodymaster McGinty as soon as possible once he reaches the town. McMurdo meets and soon falls in love with Ettie Shafter, Jacob's daughter, who is promised to another Freeman, Ted Baldwin. Ettie returns McMurdo's feelings, but she and her father are too afraid of the consequences if she spurns Baldwin. McMurdo later visits Bodymaster McGinty, and claims that he made counterfeit money before killing his partner and coming to the coal mine region. McGinty thinks that McMurdo's skill will be of use and keeps him. McGinty decides that Ettie could choose who she likes, as both Baldwin and McMurdo are Freemen. McMurdo joins the Order in a ceremony later, and gets involved in several criminal activities. During the period, Ettie becomes worried, and McMurdo asks her to give him six months. One day, a fellow of the Order gets the information that Pinkerton National Detective Agency is sending detective Birdy Edwards to investigate their criminal organization. McMurdo says that he knew this Birdy Edwards, and suggests that McGinty, Baldwin, and five other important members of the group wait in McMurdo's house, while he will lure Birdy Edwards there as a trap. On that day, while those seven people waiting in the bedroom for the signal to rush out to catch Birdy Edwards, McMurdo walks in, and announced that he is Birdy Edwards, while telling those criminals that they were surrounded by policemen. Later, after trials, McGinty is sentenced to death, but Baldwin and a few others were jailed for terms. Birdy Edwards leaves Vermissa Valley with Ettie and gets married in Chicago. After being the target of several failed assassinations, he changes his name to John Douglas and goes to California, where he makes a fortune, loses his wife to a deadly illness, and makes friends with Cecil Barker. As Baldwin and the others are still trying to kill him for revenge, he leaves for England, where he marries his second wife. Holmes warns them that the coming danger was bigger than the past, as Moriarty is involved. He suggests to Douglas that he leave England. In the epilogue, Holmes receives a note slipped into his letter box simply stating 'Dear me Mr Holmes. Dear me!'. Barker then arrives at 221B with the news that Douglas has been killed. He and his wife had departed on a trip to South Africa three weeks prior, and now Barker has received a telegram from Mrs. Douglas. She says that Douglas has been lost overboard in a gale off St Helena, but nobody knows how it happened. Holmes believes that Moriarty had Douglas killed, because Moriarty did not want it to look as if he had failed. Barker asks if Moriarty will ever pay for his crime. Holmes says that he will, but justice will be long delayed.
1172899	/m/04dchy	Past Mortem	Ben Elton	2004	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When Adam Bishop, a middle-aged self-made man in the building trade, is cruelly murdered at his London home Detective Inspector Ed Newson has a hunch that the crime has been committed by a psychopath who has killed before. He links up the new case with a number of older, unsolved ones, and a certain pattern emerges: It turns out that each victim was a bully many years ago when they went to school, and that they have now been killed in exactly the same way as they used to torture their peers. However, when Newson and Sergeant Natasha Wilkie talk to the former victims they soon find out that none of them could be the serial killer. Although successful in his job, when it comes to his private life Edward Newson is a lonely, sex-starved man secretly in love with his assistant, Natasha. Now in his mid-thirties, he nostalgically looks back at his school days and the two girls with whom he was romantically involved when they were all 14&mdash;Helen Smart, the leftist intellectual, and Christine Copperfield, the "golden girl". Newson cannot resist the temptation and logs on to Friends Reunited. To his surprise, more of his former classmates than he would have thought are also online, and soon a class reunion is being organised&mdash;by Christine Copperfield, of all people. This is the point where Newson's private life collides with his murder investigation. It is obvious that the serial killer uses the same web site&mdash;Friends Reunited&mdash;as the source of his knowledge about instances of bullying that happened decades ago. When Helen Smart posts a long account of how back at school she was forced by Christine Copperfield to stuff a tampon down her throat the murderer is supplied with one more story on which he or she might act. Christine Copperfield dies with a tampon stuffed down her throat. In the tradition of the whodunnit, while new murders are committed, the identity of the killer remains unknown to the final pages of the novel.
1173252	/m/04dd9g	And Quiet Flows the Don	Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov	1934	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel deals with the life of the Cossacks living in the Don River valley during the early 20th century, probably around 1912, just prior to World War I. The plot revolves around the Melekhov family of Tatarsk, who are descendants of a cossack who, to the horror of many, took a Turkish captive as a wife during the Crimean War. Accused of witchcraft by Melekhov's superstitious neighbours, they attempt to kill her but are fought off by her husband. Their descendants, the son and grandsons, who are the protagonists of the story, are therefore often nicknamed "Turks". Nevertheless, they command a high amount of respect among people in Tatarsk. The second eldest son, Grigori Panteleevich Melekhov, is a promising young soldier who falls in love with Aksinia, the wife of Stepan Astakhov, a family friend. There is no love between them and Stepan regularly beats her. Grigori and Aksinia's romance and elopement raises a feud between her husband and his family. The outcome of this romance is the focus of the plot as well as the impending World and Civil Wars which draw up the best young Cossack men for what will be two of Russia's bloodiest wars. The action moves to the Austro-Hungarian front, where Grigory ends up saving Stepan's life, but that doesn't end the feud. Grigory, at his father's insistence, takes a wife, Natalya, but still loves Aksinia. The book deals not only with the struggles and suffering of the Cossacks, but the landscape itself is vividly brought to life. There are also many folk songs referenced throughout the novel. And Quiet Flows the Don grew out of an earlier, unpublished work, the Donshina:I began the novel by describing the event of the Kornilov putsch in 1917. Then it became clear that this putsch, and more importantly, the role of the Cossacks in these events, would not be understood without a Cossack prehistory, and so I began with the description of the life of the Don Cossacks just before the beginning of World War I. (quote from M.A. Sholokhov: Seminarii, (1962) by F.A. Abramovic and V.V. Gura, quoted in Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, by L.L. Litus.) Grigori Melekhov is reportedly based on two Cossacks from Veshenskaya, Pavel Nazarovich Kudinov and Kharlampii Vasilyevich Yermakov, who were key figures in the anti-Bolshevist struggle of the upper Don.
1173472	/m/04ddvn	Six Days of the Condor	James Grady		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Ronald Malcolm is a CIA employee who works in a clandestine office in Washington, D.C. responsible for analyzing the plots of mystery and spy novels. One day, when he should be in the office, Malcolm slips out a basement entrance for lunch. In his absence a group of armed men gain entrance to the office and kill everyone there. Malcolm returns, realizes he is in grave danger, and telephones a phone number at CIA headquarters he has been given for emergencies. When he phones in (and remembers to give his code name "Condor"), he is told to meet an agent named Weatherby who will "bring him in" for protection. Alas, Weatherby is part of a rogue group within the CIA, the same group responsible for the original assassinations. Weatherby tries to kill Malcolm, who escapes with his life. Malcolm uses his wits to elude both the rogue CIA group and the proper CIA authorities, each of which would very much like to find him first. Seeking shelter, Malcolm kidnaps a paralegal named Wendy Ross whom (he overhears) intends to spend her coming vacation days holed up in her apartment—hence he knows that nobody will notice her absence. He quickly wins her trust, and she assists him in his quest to stay alive and to find out more about the forces after him. But she is shot and seriously wounded while trying to do this. Malcom believes her to be dead, but learns later that she has survived. It turns out that the rogue group was using the section where Malcolm works to import illegal drugs from Laos. A supervisor stumbles on a discrepancy in the records resulting from clandestine drug importation, necessitating the elimination of the section.
1173718	/m/04dflx	The Black Cauldron	Lloyd Alexander	1965-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story opens at Caer Dallben where Dallben the enchanter has raised the orphan Taran from infancy. It is early autumn more than a year after the defeat of Arawn's army and death of his warlord the Horned King (The Book of Three).The Black Cauldron, pp. 5, 15. Prince Gwydion has called allies to a council hosted by Dallben. Evidently the Black Cauldron is active, generating more of the undead "Cauldron-Born" army from men who are disappearing. Gwydion proposes to capture it. King Morgant will lead an attack Annuvin after a small party led by Gwydion has parted company to enter by a mountain pass known only to Coll.Decades earlier, an owl and a stag had taken the farmer Coll by that route to recover his pig, the oracular Hen Wen. See the picture book Coll and His White Pig, also published in 1965. At that point three will remain behind with pack animals: Adaon, the adult son of chief bard Taliesin; Taran; and Ellidyr "Prince of Pen-Llarcau", who is arrogant, wiry, strong, and threadbare. Ellidyr disdains Taran for his place on the farm and his unknown parentage. Taran envies Ellidyr for his noble birth, despite Dallben's counsel that that youngest son of a minor king has only "his name and his sword".The Black Cauldron, p. 22. Both are dismayed to share a role with no chance for glory. Beside the feud between young men, all goes smoothly until Gwydion's company finds that the cauldron has disappeared! That company rejoins the rearguard in haste because the Hunstmen of Annuvin have been deployed. Meanwhile, the uninvited Princess Eilonwy and man/beast Gurgi have caught up with the quest from behind. Gwydion and Coll are scattered but, thanks to Doli of the Fair Folk, all others find refuge underground in a Fair Folk waypost maintained by Gwystyl. From Gwystyl and his pet crow Kaw, they learn that the cauldron has been stolen by the three witches Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch, who reside in the bleak Marshes of Morva.According to maps by Evaline Ness, the witches live on the opposite fringe of the Marshes, near the south coast of the southwestern tip of Prydain, far from people and Fair Folk. • Ness prepared one map of Prydain for each of the five novels. The last, best-informed, and largest scale map illustrates book five, The High King (1968), and the expanded edition of The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain (1999). When they depart the waypost, Ellidyr rides southward, determined to retrieve the Cauldron heroically. For his safety with the Huntsmen abroad, Adaon leads the others in pursuit: Taran, Eilonwy, Gurgi, Doli, and the wandering bard Fflewddur Fflam. When they are attacked and scattered, Adaon is mortally wounded and Taran inherits his brooch, whose gift and burden is prophetic dreams and visions. With its guidance, he gathers and leads all but Doli toward the Marshes. From the fringe he both leads his small party through and leads a pursuing band of Huntsmen to their deaths. Orddu and her sisters explain that Arawn once paid them a great price to borrow the cauldron; they retrieved it only when overdue. In their way, they welcome friends of "Little Dallben""The Foundling" tells of Dallben, raised from infancy to manhood by the witches. The Foundling and Other Tales from Prydain. but they decline even to reveal it. Eventually and reluctantly, Taran barters the brooch of Adaon. Now the companions try to destroy "their" cauldron but learn from the witches that can be achieved only by a living person who knowingly and willingly climbs in to die. Instead they resolve to take it home to Dallben. They lose the heavy and cumbersome cauldron at the ford of river Tevyn. Ellidyr discovers the impasse and offers to help if they will credit him for the whole enterprise. Taran agrees, yet Ellidyr rides off with the cauldron alone when they have freed it. Soon the companions meet the army of Morgant, who welcomes them into his camp. Unfortunately, he is a traitor. He shows Ellidyr beaten and bound, and the cauldron waiting to generate his own undead legion. He will spare them if Taran will enter personal service. Later, Doli arrives invisibly and cuts everyone's bonds. Ellidyr determines to rush the cauldron and make the sacrifice himself. Although wounded, he is able to force himself into the opening and it shatters. Gwydion, King Smoit, and his army defeat Morgant in battle. The story closes as Taran, Eilonwy, and Gurgi take leave of Gwydion at the verge of Caer Dallben.
1174295	/m/04dh64	Civil Disobedience	Henry David Thoreau		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Thoreau asserts that because governments are typically more harmful than helpful, they therefore cannot be justified. Democracy is no cure for this, as majorities simply by virtue of being majorities do not also gain the virtues of wisdom and justice. The judgment of an individual's conscience is not necessarily inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so "[i]t is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice." He adds, "I cannot for an instant recognize as my government [that] which is the slave's government also." The government, according to Thoreau, is not just a little corrupt or unjust in the course of doing its otherwise-important work, but in fact the government is primarily an agent of corruption and injustice. Because of this, it is "not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize." Political philosophers have counseled caution about revolution because the upheaval of revolution typically causes a lot of expense and suffering. Thoreau contends that such a cost/benefit analysis is inappropriate when the government is actively facilitating an injustice as extreme as slavery. Such a fundamental immorality justifies any difficulty or expense to bring to an end. "This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people." Thoreau tells his audience that they cannot blame this problem solely on pro-slavery Southern politicians, but must put the blame on those in, for instance, Massachusetts, "who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may... There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them." (See also: Thoreau's Slavery in Massachusetts which also advances this argument.) He exhorts people not to just wait passively for an opportunity to vote for justice, because voting for justice is as ineffective as wishing for justice; what you need to do is to actually be just. This is not to say that you have an obligation to devote your life to fighting for justice, but you do have an obligation not to commit injustice and not to give injustice your practical support. Paying taxes is one way in which otherwise well-meaning people collaborate in injustice. People who proclaim that the war in Mexico is wrong and that it is wrong to enforce slavery contradict themselves if they fund both things by paying taxes. Thoreau points out that the same people who applaud soldiers for refusing to fight an unjust war are not themselves willing to refuse to fund the government that started the war. In a constitutional republic like the United States, people often think that the proper response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but to obey and respect the law until it is changed. But if the law is itself clearly unjust, and the lawmaking process is not designed to quickly obliterate such unjust laws, then Thoreau says the law deserves no respect and it should be broken. In the case of the United States, the Constitution itself enshrines the institution of slavery, and therefore falls under this condemnation. Abolitionists, in Thoreau's opinion, should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxes, even if this means courting imprisonment. Because the government will retaliate, Thoreau says he prefers living simply because he therefore has less to lose. "I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts…. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case." He was briefly imprisoned for refusing to pay the poll tax, but even in jail felt freer than the people outside. He considered it an interesting experience and came out of it with a new perspective on his relationship to the government and its citizens. (He was released the next day when "someone interfered, and paid that tax.") Thoreau said he was willing to pay the highway tax, which went to pay for something of benefit to his neighbors, but that he was opposed to taxes that went to support the government itself—even if he could not tell if his particular contribution would eventually be spent on an unjust project or a beneficial one. "I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually." Because government is man-made, not an element of nature or an act of God, Thoreau hoped that its makers could be reasoned with. As governments go, he felt, the U.S. government, with all its faults, was not the worst and even had some admirable qualities. But he felt we could and should insist on better. "The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.… Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." An aphorism sometimes attributed to either Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, "That government is best which governs least...", actually was first found in this essay. Thoreau was paraphrasing the motto of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review: "The best government is that which governs least." Thoreau expanded it significantly: "...and I should like to see [the idea] acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."
1174475	/m/04dhpd	Whirlwind	James Clavell	1986	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Gavallan, based in Scotland, runs S-G Helicopter company operating in Iran during the Shah's reign. When Khomeini comes to power, Gavallan must get his pilots and their families, and his valuable helicopters, and the spare parts for the helicopters (of equal or greater value of the aircraft) out of the riot-torn country. Complicating matters is his power struggle with his company's secret owner, the Noble House of Hong Kong. The pilots' escape efforts form the basic story and the action sweeps across many lives: lovers, spies, fanatics, revolutionaries, friends and betrayers. British, Finnish, American, and Iranian are all caught up in a deadly religious and political upheaval, portraying the chilling and bewildering encounters when Westernized lifestyle clashes with harsh ancient traditions. Aircraft used by S-G Helicopters throughout the story include Bell 212, Bell 206, Aérospatiale Alouette III and British Aerospace BAe 125. The settings for the story are the western and southwestern parts of Iran, as well as neighboring Persian Gulf states, Turkey to Lake Van, and the environs of Aberdeen, Scotland. Actual locations within Iran include Teheran (including Qasr Prison, Evin Prison, Galeg Morghi, and Doshan Tappeh Air Base), Tabriz, Qazvin, Mount Sabalan, the Zagros Mountains, Lengeh, Bandar Delam, Siri, the Dez Dam and Kharg island. Fictional locations include the city of Kowiss, Yazdek village and the safe haven emirate of Al-Shargaz, meaning protector.
1177458	/m/04dqx9	The Magician	W. Somerset Maugham	1908	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Arthur Burdon, a renowned English surgeon, is visiting Paris to see his fiancée, Margaret Dauncey. Margaret is studying art in Parisian school, along with her friend Susie Boyd. On his first evening in Paris, Burdon meets Oliver Haddo, who claims to be a magician and is an acquaintance of Burdon's mentor, the retired doctor and occult scholar Dr Porhoët. While none of the company initially believe Haddo's claims, Haddo performs several feats of magic for them over the following days. Arthur eventually fights with Haddo, after the magician kicks Margaret's dog. In revenge, Haddo uses both his personality and his magic to seduce Margaret, despite her initial revulsion towards him. They get married and run away from Paris, leaving merely a note to inform Arthur, Susie and Porhoët. Arthur is distraught at the abandonment and promptly returns to England to immerse himself in his work. By this time Susie has fallen in love with Arthur, although she realizes that this love will never be returned, and she goes away to Italy with a friend. During her travels, Susie hears much about the new Mr. and Mrs. Haddo, including a rumour that their marriage has not been consummated. When she eventually returns to England, she meets up with Arthur and they go to a dinner party held by a mutual acquaintance. To their horror, the Haddos are at this dinner party, and Oliver takes great delight in gloating at Arthur's distress. The next day, Arthur goes to the hotel at which Margaret is staying, and whisks her away to a house in the country. Although she files for divorce from Haddo, his influence on her proves too strong, and she ends up returning to him. Feeling that this influence must be supernatural, Susie returns to France to consult with Dr Porhoët on a possible solution. Several weeks later, Arthur joins them in Paris and reveals that he visited Margaret at Haddo's home and that she suggested her life was threatened by her new husband. She implies that Haddo is only waiting for the right time to perform a magical ritual, which will involve the sacrifice of her life. Arthur travels to Paris to ask for Dr Porhoët's advice. A week later, Arthur has an overwhelming feeling that Margaret's life is in danger, and all three rush back to England. When they arrive at Skene, Haddo's ancestral home in the village of Venning, they are told by the local innkeeper that Margaret has died of a heart attack. Believing that Haddo has murdered her, Arthur confronts first the local doctor and then Haddo himself with his suspicions. Searching for proof of foul play, Arthur persuades Dr Porhoët to raise Margaret's ghost from the dead, which proves to them that she was murdered. Eventually, Haddo uses his magic to appear in their room at the local inn, where Arthur kills him. However, when the light is turned on Haddo's body has disappeared. The trio visit Haddo's abandoned home to find that he has used his magic to create life - hideous creatures living in tubes - and that this is the purpose for which he sacrificed Margaret's life. After finding the magician's dead body in his attic, Arthur sets fire to the manor to destroy all evidence of Haddo's occult experiments.
1178757	/m/04dvpf	Silas Marner	George Eliot	1861-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the early years of the 19th century. Silas Marner, a weaver, is a member of a small Calvinist congregation in Lantern Yard, a slum street in an unnamed city in Northern England. He is falsely accused of stealing the congregation's funds while watching over the very ill deacon of the group. Two clues are given against Silas: a pocket-knife and the discovery of the bag formerly containing the money in his own house. There is a strong suggestion that Silas's best friend, William Dane, has framed him, since Silas had lent the pocket-knife to William a short while before. Silas is proclaimed guilty. The woman he was to marry casts him off, and later marries William Dane. With his life shattered and his heart broken, he leaves Lantern Yard and the city. Marner heads south to the Midlands and settles near the village of Raveloe, where he lives as a recluse, lapsing into bouts of catalepsy, and existing only for work and the gold he has hoarded from his earnings. The gold is stolen by Dunstan ('Dunsey') Cass, the dissolute younger son of Squire Cass, the town's leading landowner. Silas sinks into a deep gloom, despite the villagers' attempts to aid him. Dunsey disappears, but little is made of this not unusual behaviour, and no association is made between him and the theft. Godfrey Cass, Dunsey's elder brother, also harbours a secret. He is married to, but estranged from, Molly Farren, an opium-addicted woman of low birth. This secret threatens to destroy Godfrey's blooming relationship with Nancy, a young woman of higher social and moral standing. On a winter's night, Molly tries to make her way into town with her two-year-old child, to prove that she is Godfrey's wife and ruin him. On the way she takes opium, becomes disorientated and sits down to rest in the snow, child in arm. The child wanders from her mother's still body into Silas' house. Upon discovering the child, Silas follows her tracks in the snow and discovers the woman dead. Godfrey also arrives at the scene, but resolves to tell no one that she was his wife. Silas decides to keep the child and names her Eppie, after his deceased mother and his sister, Hephzibah. Eppie changes Silas' life completely. Silas has been robbed of his material gold but has it returned to him symbolically in the form of golden-haired Eppie. Godfrey Cass is now free to marry Nancy, but continues to conceal the existence of his first marriage—and child—from her. He continues to aid Marner, however, in caring for Eppie, with occasional financial gifts. Sixteen years pass, and Eppie grows up to be the pride of the town. She has a strong bond with Silas, who through her has found inclusion and purpose in life. Meanwhile, Godfrey and Nancy mourn their own childless state. Eventually, the skeleton of Dunstan Cass—still clutching Silas' gold—is found at the bottom of the stone quarry near Silas' home, and the money is duly returned to Silas. Shocked by this revelation, and coming to the realization of his own conscience, Godfrey confesses to Nancy that Molly was his first wife and that Eppie is his child. They hope to raise her as a gentleman's daughter, which for Eppie would mean forsaking Silas. Eppie politely refuses, saying, "I can't think o' no happiness without him." Silas is never able to clear up the details of the robbery that caused his exile from Lantern Yard, as his old neighbourhood has been "swept away" and replaced by a large factory. No one seems to know what happened to Lantern Yard's inhabitants. However, Silas contentedly resigns himself to the fact that he now leads a happier existence among his family and friends. In the end, Eppie marries a local boy, Aaron, son of Marner's kind neighbour Dolly. Aaron and Eppie move into Silas' new house, courtesy of Godfrey. Silas' actions through the years in caring for Eppie have provided joy for everyone and the extended family celebrates its happiness.
1178825	/m/04dvv9	Gorgias	Plato			 The dialogue begins just after Gorgias has given a speech. Callicles says that Gorgias is a guest in his home, and has agreed to a private audience with Socrates and his friend Chaerephon. Socrates gets Gorgias to agree to his cross-examination style of conversation, asks him questions, and praises him for the brevity of his replies. Gorgias remarks that no one has asked him a new question in a long time, and when Socrates asks, assures him that he is just as capable of brevity as of long-windedness (449c). Gorgias admits under Socrates' cross-examination that while rhetoricians give people the power of words, they are not instructors of morality. Gorgias does not deny that his students might use their skills for immoral purposes (such as persuading the assembly to make an unwise decision, or to let a guilty man go free), but he says the teacher cannot be held responsible for this. He makes an argument from analogy: Gorgias says that if a man who went to wrestling school took to thrashing his parents or friends, you would not send his drill instructor into exile (456d-457c). He says that just as the trainer teaches his craft (techne) in good faith, and hopes that his student will use his physical powers wisely, the rhetorician has the same trust, that his students will not abuse their power. Socrates says that he is one of those people who is actually happy to be refuted if he is wrong. He says that he would rather be refuted than to refute someone else because it is better to be delivered from harm oneself than to deliver someone else from harm. Gorgias, whose profession is persuasion, readily agrees that he is also this sort of man, who would rather be refuted than refute another. Gorgias has only one misgiving: he fears that the present company may have something better to do than listen to two men try to outdo each other in being wrong (458b-c). The company protests and proclaim that they are anxious to witness this new version of intellectual combat. Socrates gets Gorgias to agree that the rhetorician is actually more convincing in front of an ignorant audience than an expert, because mastery of the tools of persuasion gives a man more conviction than mere facts. Gorgias accepts this criticism and asserts that it is an advantage of his profession that a man can be considered above specialists without having to learn anything of substance (459c). Socrates calls rhetoric a form of flattery, or pandering, and compares it to pastry baking and beautification (cosmetics). He says that rhetoric is to politics what pastry baking is to medicine, and what cosmetics are to gymnastics. All of these activities are aimed at surface adornment, an impersonation of what is really good (464c-465d). Some have argued that Gorgias may have been uncharacteristically portrayed by Plato, because "…Plato's Gorgias agrees to the binary opposition knowledge vs. opinion" (82). This is inaccurate because, "for Gorgias the sophist, all 'knowledge' is opinion. There can be no rational or irrational arguments because all human beliefs and communicative situations are relative to a kairotic moment" (83). Socrates then advances that "orators and tyrants have the very least power of any in our cities" (466d). Lumping tyrants and rhetoricians into a single category, Socrates says that both of them, when they kill people or banish them or confiscate their property, think they are doing what is in their own best interest, but are actually pitiable. Socrates maintains that the wicked man is unhappy, but that the unhappiest man of all is the wicked one who does not meet with justice, rebuke, and punishment (472e). Polus, who has stepped into the conversation at this point, laughs at Socrates. Socrates asks him if he thinks laughing is a legitimate form of refutation (473e). Polus then asks Socrates if putting forth views that no one would accept is not a refutation in itself. Socrates replies that if Polus cannot see how to refute him, he will show Polus how. Socrates states that it is far worse to inflict evil than to be the innocent victim of it (475e). He gives the example of tyrants being the most wretched people on earth. He adds that poverty is to financial condition as disease is to the body as injustice is to the soul (477b-c). This analogy is used to define the states of corruption in each instance. Money-making, medicine, and justice are the respective cures (478a,b). Socrates argues that just penalties discipline people, make them more just, and cure them of their evil ways (478d). Wrongdoing is second among evils, but wrongdoing and getting away with it is the first and greatest of evils (479d). It follows from this, that if a man does not want to have a festering and incurable tumor growing in his soul, he needs to hurry himself to a judge upon realizing that he has done something wrong. Socrates posits that the rhetorician should accuse himself first, and then do his family and friends the favor of accusing them, so great is the curative power of justice (480c-e). Socrates maintains that "supposing it is our duty to injure somebody, whether an enemy or anyone else—provided only that it is not against oneself that wrong has been done by such enemy, for this we must take care to avoid—but supposing our enemy has wronged some one else" (480e) you should contrive every means to see that he does not come before the judicial system. Because you want his soul to rot and fester, you should make sure he keeps and squanders his ill-gotten gains, and lives as long as possible in his wicked state. Polus and Callicles are both astounded at Socrates' position and wonder if he is just kidding (481b). Callicles observes that if Socrates is correct, people have life upside down, and are everywhere doing the opposite of what they should be doing. Socrates says he is in love with Alcibiades and philosophy, and cannot stop his beloveds from saying what is on their minds. While the statements of certain people often differ from one time to the next, Socrates claims that what philosophy says always stays the same (482b). Callicles accuses Socrates of carrying on like a demagogue. He argues that suffering wrong is worse than doing it, that there is nothing good about being a victim. He further argues (as Glaucon does in the Gyges story in the Republic) that wrongdoing is only by convention shameful, and it is not wrong by nature. Then, he berates Socrates for wasting time in frivolous philosophy, saying there is no harm in young people engaging in useless banter, but that it is unattractive in older men. He tells Socrates that he is disgraceful, and that if anyone should seize him and carry him off to prison, he would be helpless to defend himself, saying that Socrates would reel and gape in front of a jury, and end up being put to death (486a,b). Socrates is not offended by this, and tells Callicles that his extraordinary frankness proves that he is well-disposed towards him (487d). Callicles then returns to his defense of nature's own justice, where the strong exercise their advantages over the weak. He states that the natural man has large appetites and the means to satisfy them, and that only a weakling praises temperance and justice based on artificial law not natural. (483b, 492a-c). Socrates calls Callicles a "desired touchstone" (486) and counters that not only "nomos" (custom or law) but also nature affirms that to do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it, that equality is justice (489a-b), and that a man such as Callicles' ideal is like a leaky jar, insatiable and unhappy (494a). Socrates returns to his previous position, that an undisciplined man is unhappy and should be restrained and subjected to justice (505b). Callicles becomes exasperated at the intellectual stalemate, and invites Socrates to carry on by himself, asking and answering his own questions (505d). He requests that his audience, including Callicles, listen to what he says and kindly break in on him if he says something that sounds false. If his opponent (whom he will be speaking for himself) makes a point, he agrees to concede to it (506a-c). Socrates proceeds with a monologue, and reiterates that he was not kidding about the best use of rhetoric, that it is best used against one's own self. A man who has done something wrong is wretched, but a man who gets away with it is even worse off (509b). Socrates argues that he aims at what is best, not at what is pleasant, and that he alone understands the technique of politics. He says that he enjoins people to take the bitter draughts, and compels them to hunger and thirst, while most politicians flatter the people with sweetmeats. He says of his trial that, "I shall be judged like a doctor brought before a jury of children with a cook as prosecutor" (521e). He says that such a pandering prosecutor will no doubt succeed in getting him sentenced to death, and he will be helpless to stop it. Socrates says that all that matters is his own purity of soul; he has maintained this, and it is the only thing that is really within his power (522d). Socrates ends the dialogue by telling Callicles, Polus, and Gorgias a story that they will regard as a myth, but which he regards as true (523a). He recounts that in the old days, Cronos judged men just before they died, and divided them into two categories. He sent good and righteous men to the Isles of the Blessed, and godless, unrighteous men to the prison of vengeance and punishment called Tartarus. These cases were judged badly because the men were judged while they were alive and with their clothes on, and the judges were fooled by appearances. Zeus fixed the problem by arranging for people to be dead, and stripped naked. The judge had to be naked too, so he could scan the souls of men without distractions. Socrates adds that he has heard this myth, believes it, and infers from it that death is the separation of body and soul. He says that each retains after death the qualities it had in life, so that a fat, long-haired man will have a fat, long-haired corpse. If he was a scoundrel, he will bear the scars of his beatings. When the judge lays hold of some potentate, he will find that his soul bears the scars of his perjuries and crimes, because these will be branded on his soul (524b-525a). Socrates remarks that some people are benefited by the pain and agony of their own punishments (525b) and by watching others suffer excruciating torture; but others have misdeeds that cannot be cured. He says that Homer pictures kings suffering eternally in Hades, but not the ordinary scoundrel, like Thersites. Socrates tells Callicles that this might sound like nonsense to him, an old wives' tale, but warns him that when he is up before the judge on his own judgment day, he will reel and gape just like Socrates is currently doing. He finishes up by saying his ideas could be justly despised if anyone could come up with a better idea, but unfortunately, no one has.
1179735	/m/04dypd	Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less	Jeffrey Archer	1976	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harvey Metcalfe, over 40 years, has mastered the shady deal in advancing from messenger boy to mogul. But by selling inflated oil stock, he has cheated the wrong men - Stephen Bradley, an American professor at University of Oxford, Dr Robin Oakley, a Harley Street physician, Jean-Pierre Lamanns, a French art dealer with a gallery in London, and James Brigsley, heir to an earldom. Each has bought stock and suffered when it failed. Bradley learns of Metcalfe's responsibility, and organizes the other three to get their money back. They are to each come up with a plan. Metcalfe, a Polish immigrant to the United States, rises from messenger boy to corporate magnate, combining business skills with little loyalty and much ruthlessness. By the 1960s, he is a multi-millionaire. Taking advantage of a British decision to allow companies to claim North Sea drilling rights with little money down, Metcalfe creates Prospecta Oil, a paper company designed to look good and bring in investors to be left when the bottom drops out. Metcalfe's agents hire David Kessler, a Harvard MBA who talks up the company to the four protagonists, and they buy stock. But Harvey (indirectly) sells out at the top of the market, the stock crashes, and the four are left with major losses. Stephen discovers the fraud, that there is no legal recourse, and organizes the four to steal the money back, using Harvey's interests and weaknesses. All four are to come up with plans, and three quickly do. James, however, is unable to. He is more successful at wooing Anne Summerton, an American model. Jean-Pierre is successful at getting Harvey to buy a fake Van Gogh painting - he has always wanted one. When Harvey heads to Monte Carlo on vacation, a pill in his drink at the Casino causes severe abdominal pain which is made to look like a Gallstone, and Robin operates, though barely breaking the skin, and collects a large bill. Stephen impersonates an Oxford official, as do the others, and gets Harvey to think he is getting an honorary degree in exchange for a contribution. James, though unable to come up with a plan of his own, has been crucial to the success of the others' plans - and when he meets Anne's father, learns that he is none other than Harvey. James instructs the others to execute a complex financial fraud, and flies them to Boston for the wedding as ushers, though not giving formal invitations. They learn who the bride's father is. The wedding check from Harvey, plus ransacking Harvey's greenhouses for wedding flowers, reduces the million dollar debt to $1.24, though Stephen sulks on the plane home about the missing money. They land in London to learn that a new BP oil field has been discovered next to Prospecta Oil's tract, sending shares to record highs. They now have the stolen million back, and the shares are worth well over a million. Stephen proposes they figure out how to give the stolen million back.
1183219	/m/0bvs20l	The Man Who Never Was	Ewen Montagu	1954		 Operation Mincemeat involved the acquisition and dressing up of a human cadaver as a "Major William Martin, R.M." and putting it into the sea near Huelva, Spain. Attached to the dead body was a brief-case containing fake letters falsely stating that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece rather than Sicily, the actual point of invasion. When the body was found, the Spanish Intelligence Service passed copies of the papers to the German Intelligence Service which passed them on to their High Command. The ruse was so successful that the Germans still believed that Sardinia and Greece were the intended objectives, weeks after the landings in Sicily had begun. The screenplay of the film stayed as close to the truth as was convenient, with the remainder being fiction. For example, the Irish spy in the film is complete fabrication. Ewen Montagu declared that he was happy with the fictitious incidents which, although they didn't happen, might have happened. During filming, Montagu has a cameo role, that of an Air-Vice Marshal who has doubts about the feasibility of the proposed plan. It was described as a "surreal" moment when the real Montagu addresses his fictional persona, played by Webb.
1183767	/m/04f9bt	La Cousine Bette	Honoré de Balzac	1846	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first third of the novel provides a lengthy exploration of the characters' histories. Balzac makes this clear after 150 pages: "Ici se termine, en quelque sorte, l'introduction de cette histoire." ("Here ends what is, in a way, the introduction to this story.") At the start of the novel, Adeline Hulot&nbsp;– wife of the successful Baron Hector Hulot&nbsp;– is being pressured into an affair by a wealthy perfumer named Célestin Crevel. His desire stems in part from an earlier contest in which the adulterous Baron Hulot had won the hand of the singer Josépha Mirah, also favored by Crevel. The Hulots' daughter, Hortense, has begun searching for a husband; their son Victorin is married to Crevel's daughter Celestine. Mme. Hulot resists Crevel's advances, and he turns his attention elsewhere. Mme. Hulot's cousin, Bette (also called Lisbeth), harbors a deep but hidden resentment of her relatives' success. A peasant woman with none of the physical beauty of her cousin, Bette has rejected a series of marriage proposals from middle-class suitors, and remains unmarried at the age of 42. One day she comes upon a young unsuccessful Polish sculptor named Wenceslas Steinbock, attempting suicide in the tiny apartment upstairs from her own. As she nourishes him back to health, she develops a maternal fondness for him. She also befriends Valérie, the wife of a War Department clerk named Marneffe; the two women form a bond of mutual affection and protection. Baron Hulot, meanwhile, is rejected by Josépha, who explains bluntly that she has chosen another man because of his larger fortune. Hulot's despair is quickly alleviated when he meets and falls in love with Valérie Marneffe. He showers her with gifts, and soon establishes a luxurious house for her and M. Marneffe, with whom he works at the War Department. These debts, compounded by the money he borrowed to lavish on Josépha, threaten the Hulot family's financial security. Panicked, he convinces his uncle Johann Fischer to quietly embezzle funds from a War Department outpost in Algiers. Hulot's woes are momentarily abated and Bette's happiness is shattered, when&nbsp;– at the end of the "introduction"&nbsp;– Hortense Hulot marries Wenceslas Steinbock. Crushed at having lost Steinbock's company, Bette swears vengeance on the Hulot family. She works behind the scenes with Valérie to extract more money from Baron Hulot. Valérie also seduces Crevel and watches with delight as they vie for her attention. With Bette's help, Valérie turns to Steinbock and draws him into her bedroom. When Hortense learns of his infidelity, she leaves Steinbock and returns with their son to live with her mother Adeline. Valérie also proclaims her love to a Brazilian Baron named Henri Montès de Montéjanos, and swears devotion constantly to each of the five men. Baron Hulot's brother, known as "le maréchal" ("the Marshal"), hires Bette as his housekeeper, and they develop a mild affection. He learns of his brother's infidelities (and the difficulties they have caused Adeline, who refuses to leave her husband), and promises to marry Bette if she will provide details. She agrees eagerly, delighted at the prospect of finally securing an enviable marriage. While investigating his brother's behavior, however, the Marshal discovers Baron Hulot's scheme in Algiers. He is overwhelmed by the disgrace, and his health deteriorates. Bette's last hope for a brighter future dies with him. When Valérie becomes pregnant, she tells each of her lovers (and her husband) that he is the father. She gives birth to a stillborn child, however, and her husband dies soon thereafter. Hulot and Crevel are ecstatic when they hear this news, each believing that he will become her only love once the official mourning period has passed. Valérie chooses Crevel for his comfortable fortune, and they quickly wed. This news outrages Baron Montès, and he devises a plot to poison the newlyweds. Crevel and Valérie die slowly, their bodies devoured by an exotic Brazilian toxin. Victorin Hulot is later visited by the Prince of Wissembourg, who delivers news of economic good fortune. The Marshal, prior to his death, had made arrangements for repayment of the Baron's debts, as well as employment for Adeline in a Catholic charity. Baron Hulot has disappeared, and Adeline spends her free time searching for him in houses of ill repute. She eventually finds him living with a fifteen-year-old courtesan, and begs him to return to the family. He agrees, but as he climbs into the carriage, Hulot asks: "mais pourrai-je emmener la petite?" ("But can I take the girl?") The Hulot home is reunited for a time, and Bette's fury at their apparent happiness hastens her death. One evening after the funeral, Adeline overhears Hulot seducing a kitchen maid named Agathe. On her deathbed, Adeline delivers her first rebuke to her husband: "[D]ans un moment, tu seras libre, et tu pourras faire une baronne Hulot." ("In a moment, you will be free, and you can make another Baronne Hulot.") Soon after burying his wife, Hulot marries Agathe.
1184662	/m/04fd3x	I Am Charlotte Simmons	Tom Wolfe	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 I am Charlotte Simmons is the story of college student Charlotte Simmons's first semester-and-a-half at the prestigious Dupont University. A high school graduate from a poverty-stricken rural town, her intelligence and hard work at school have been rewarded with a full scholarship to Dupont. As Charlotte prepares to say goodbye to her family and leave for college, an event happens at Dupont that will play an important role in her future. Hoyt Thorpe, member of the exclusive and powerful fraternity Saint Ray, and fellow frat brother Vance, stumble upon an unnamed California Republican governor (who was at the college to speak at the school's commencement ceremony) receiving oral sex from a female college student. When the governor's bodyguard spots the two fraternity members, a fight ensues with Hoyt and Vance beating up the bodyguard and fleeing. The story of the night (called “The Night of the Skullfuck”) soon spreads across campus, increasing Hoyt's popularity on campus. Charlotte arrives on campus in the fall. Her roommate is wealthy Beverly, the daughter of the CEO of a huge multinational insurance company. She is obsessed with sex, in particular with members of the school's lacrosse team. Jojo Johanssen is a white athlete on the college's predominantly black basketball team. He is struggling to keep his position because the school recently recruited an up-and-coming black freshman player, and the coach wants to bench Jojo in his senior year. This would severely hurt Jojo's chances of playing in "the league" (the NBA). Jojo enjoys the spoils of being a college athlete, such as using a tutor program to force other students to complete his school assignments. Jojo's “tutor” Adam Gellin is, like Charlotte, from a working-class background. Adam writes for the college's independent newspaper and is a member of the “Millennial Mutants,” a group of like-minded intellectuals who oppose the anti-intellectualism and class snobbery they see in their fellow students. Charlotte and Adam first meet at the university's computer lab, where Adam is to write a paper for Jojo. Charlotte does not back down when Adam insists that he needs a computer more than she does. Adam is instantly smitten. Charlotte finds herself dealing with the sexual temptations of college life, culminating in her hooking up with Hoyt, who tells Charlotte of catching California's governor receiving oral sex from a college girl. He also tells Charlotte he knows that Adam Gellin has begun investigating the incident and how a large Wall Street firm (on the behest of the governor) has offered a high-paying entry level job to Hoyt, in exchange for his silence. (The firm, Pierce & Pierce, is the name of the one that Sherman McCoy works for in Wolfe's earlier novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities.) Hoyt and Charlotte attend an important fraternity formal together, after which Hoyt takes full advantage of a drunken Charlotte, seducing her into giving up her virginity to him. The following morning, Charlotte is dumped by Hoyt. She is further humiliated when she returns to campus and discovers that Hoyt's seduction and rejection has been made public via two girls Charlotte had previously befriended. The two cruelly mock Charlotte, both over her poverty-stricken background, and for the way that she drunkenly lost her virginity. This drives Charlotte into a depression and eventually into the arms of Adam, who has wanted Charlotte for her beauty, innocence and intellect since they first met. Charlotte finally emerges from her depression but finds that she has received terrible grades (B, B-, C-, D) for her first semester at Dupont. As Adam prepares to publish his article, his world collides with Jojo Johanssen's when a paper that Adam wrote for the athlete is accused of being plagiarized. Jojo, who treats Adam as being beneath him socially, denies the plagiarism charge and protects the athletic department's perversion of the athlete/tutor program from being exposed. Jojo has begun to transform himself academically from a stereotypical "dumb jock" into a student who takes his academics seriously and even develops an interest in philosophy (partly as a result of the influence of Charlotte). Jerome Quat, Jojo's professor, confronts Adam about the plagiarized paper and shows sympathy towards him in a college dominated by students obsessed with sports and sex. However, when Adam confesses to writing the paper for Jojo, the professor double-crosses him. He will sacrifice Adam in order to bring down the basketball program, which has circled the wagons to protect Jojo. This devastates Adam, who breaks down and needs Charlotte to take care of him as he waits to be formally charged with cheating. In the meantime, Adam's article on “The Night of the Skullfuck” is published. The sordid details of sex, violence, bribery, and a high-profile political figure cause it to be picked up by the national media. The governor's Presidential ambitions are potentially ruined, and the job offer/bribe made to Hoyt is revoked, effectively shattering Hoyt's life. Hoyt now faces a post-graduation judgment day, with his family's life savings exhausted in order to pay for his college education, and a college transcript with such bad grades that will effectively keep him from gaining a job as an investment banker. Jojo's and Adam's necks are saved, as the liberal college professor decides to drop the entire plagiarism complaint so as to avoid undercutting Adam's credibility in destroying the conservative governor's political career. Adam's self-esteem restored, he begins to bask in the glow as the student who brought down a governor. Adam and Charlotte drift apart and she begins to date Jojo. He keeps his position as a starter on the team. Charlotte ascends to the envied position of girlfriend of a star athlete. Charlotte now reflects upon her first semester with an elitist view, looking down at her former friends and at Hoyt, who casually threw her away. She no longer feels intellectualism is what is most important to her — rather it is being a person recognized as special, regardless of the reason.
1184751	/m/04fd7x	Akhenaten: Son of the Sun	Moyra Caldecott	1986-06-12	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins with the suffering of a boy oracle, or medium, about to be sealed alive into a pyramid chamber for three days so that he may "astral-travel" to the realms of the gods and plead for the waters of the Nile to rise, bringing life-giving silt to the farmlands. The story follows him through his lonely despair until he becomes the honoured companion of a king and an important figure in an extraordinary revolution. At this time the high priests of the god Amun, brought to prominence by the female pharaoh Hatshepsut about a century before, are rich and powerful enough to challenge a king...
1184901	/m/04fdlm	First Love	Ivan Turgenev	1860-12	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 First Love is an example of a frame story. The beginning starts with the protagonist, Vladimir Petrovich, in a party. The party guests are taking turns recounting the stories of their first loves. When Vladimir's turn comes to tell his story, he suggests that he write down the story in a notebook because it is a rather long, unusual tale. The story within the story then continues from his notebook, which recounts the memory of his first love. Vladimir Petrovich, a 16-year-old, is staying in the country with his family and meets Zinaida Alexandrovna Zasyekina, a beautiful 21-year-old woman, staying with her mother, Princess Zasyekina, next door. This family, as with many of the Russian minor nobility with royal ties of that time, were only afforded a degree of respectability because of their titles; the Zasyekins, in the case of this story, are a very poor family. The young Vladimir falls in love with Zinaida, who has a set of several other (socially more eligible) suitors whom he joins in their difficult and often fruitless efforts for the young lady's favour. Zinaida, as is revealed throughout the story, is a thoroughly capricious and somewhat playful mistress to these rather love-struck suitors. She fails to reciprocate Vladimir's love, often misleading him, mocking his comparative youth in contrast to her early adulthood. But eventually the true object of her affections and a rather tragic conclusion to the story is revealed. Vladimir discovers that the true object of Zinaida's affection is his own father, Pyotr Vasilyevich. In the tragic and devastatingly succinct closing two chapters, Vladimir secretly observes a final meeting between Pyotr and Zinaida at the window of her house in which his father strikes her arm with a riding crop. Zinaida kisses the welt on her arm and Pyotr bounds into the house. Eight months later, Vladimir's father receives a distressing letter from Moscow and tearfully begs his wife for a favor. Pyotr dies of a stroke several days later, after which his wife sends a considerable sum of money to Moscow. Three or four years later, Vladimir learns of Zinaida's marriage to a Monsieur Dolsky and subsequent death during childbirth.
1184942	/m/04fdns	Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun	Moyra Caldecott	1989-06	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Ancient Egypt 3500 years ago - a land ruled by the all-powerful female king, Hatshepsut. Ambitious, ruthless and worldly: a woman who established Amun as the chief god of Egypt, bestowing his Priesthood with unprecedented riches and power. Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun is part of Moyra Caldecott’s Egyptian sequence, which also includes Akhenaten: Son of the Sun and Tutankhamun and the Daughter of Ra. Chronologically, Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun takes place first.
1187127	/m/04fly7	The Natural	Bernard Malamud	1952	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with 19-year-old Roy Hobbs on a train to Chicago with his manager Sam. He is traveling to Chicago for a tryout for the Chicago Cubs. Other passengers on the train include sportswriter Max Mercy, Walter "The Whammer" Whambold, the leading hitter in the American League and three-time American League Most Valuable Player (based on Babe Ruth), and Harriet Bird, a beautiful but mysterious woman. The train makes a quick stop at a carnival along the rail where The Whammer challenges Hobbs to strike him out. Hobbs does just that, much to everyone's surprise and The Whammer's humiliation. Back on the train Harriet Bird strikes up a conversation with Hobbs, who does not suspect that Bird has any sort of ulterior motive. In fact, she is a lunatic obsessed with shooting the best baseball player. Her intent was to target Whammer but after Hobbs struck him out, her attention turns to him. Once off the train, Hobbs checks into his hotel room in Chicago and promptly receives a call from Bird, who is staying in the same hotel. When he goes down to her room, she shoots him. The novel picks up 16 years later in the dugout of the New York Knights, a fictional National League baseball team. The team has been on an extended losing streak and the careers of manager Pop Fisher and assistant manager Red Blow seem to be winding to an ignominious end. During one of these sad games Roy Hobbs emerges from the clubhouse tunnel to meet Pop and to announce that he is the team's new right fielder, having just been signed by Knights co-owner Judge Banner. Both Pop and Red take Hobbs under their wing and he learns from Red about Fisher's plight as manager of the Knights. The judge wishes to push Pop out of the team's payroll completely but cannot do so until the end of the current season, provided the Knights do not win the National League pennant. Being the newest player, Roy has a number of practical jokes played upon him, including the theft of his "Wonderboy" bat. Once Roy gets his first chance at bat, however, he proves he is truly a "natural" at the game. During one game, Pop substitutes Hobbs as a pinch hitter for team star Bump Baily. Pop is disappointed with Baily, who has not been hustling and decides to teach him a lesson by pinch-hitting for him. Pop tells Roy to "knock the cover off of the ball" and Roy does exactly that—literally—hitting a triple to right field. A few days later, a newly-hustling Bump attempts to play a hard hit fly ball. He runs into the outfield wall and later dies from the impact. Roy then takes over for Bump on a permanent basis. Max Mercy reappears, searching for details of Hobbs' past. Hobbs remains quiet even after Mercy offers five thousand dollars, saying that "all the public is entitled to is my best game of baseball". At the same time, Hobbs has been attempting unsuccessfully to negotiate a higher salary with the judge, arguing that his success should be rewarded. Mercy introduces Hobbs to bookie Gus Sands, who is keeping company with Memo Paris, Pop's niece. Hobbs has been infatuated with Memo since he came to the Knights. Hobbs' magic tricks appear to impress her. Max Mercy writes a column in the paper about the judge's refusal to grant Hobbs a raise, and a fan uprising ensues. Hobbs, however, is more occupied with Memo and attempts to further their relationship. Pop warns Hobbs about Memo's tendency to impart bad luck to the people with whom she associates. Hobbs dismisses the warning, but soon after, he falls into a hitting slump. He tries to solve it in a number of ways, but all of them fail. He finally breaks out of it when he hits a home run in a game in which a mysterious woman rises from her seat a number of times. Before Hobbs can see who the woman is, she has left the game. Roy eventually meets the woman, Iris Lemon, and proceeds to court her. Upon finding out she is a grandmother, however, his desire for her drops and he turns his attention back to Memo Paris. Memo rebuffs Roy's advances; Hobbs continues to play brilliantly and leads the Knights to a 17-game winning streak. With the Knights one game away from winning the National League pennant, Roy goes to a party hosted by Memo, and eats a large amount of food. He collapses and wakes up in a hospital bed. The doctor tells him he can play in the final game of the season, but after that he must retire if he wants to live. Hobbs wants to start a family with Memo and realizes he will have to have some source of money. The judge offers Hobbs increasing amounts of money to lose the final game for the Knights. Hobbs makes a counter-offer of $35,000, which is accepted. That night, unable to sleep, he reads a letter from Iris. After seeing the word 'grandmother' in the letter, he discards it. The next day, he does play. During an at-bat, he fouls a pitch into the stands that strikes Iris, injuring her. The Wonderboy bat also splits in two lengthwise. Iris tells Roy that she is pregnant with his child. Now he's determined to do his best for their future. At the end of the game, with a chance to win it, the opposing team sends in Herman Youngberry, a brilliant young pitcher, who strikes out Hobbs, ending the season for the Knights. The book ends with Hobbs seeking out the judge, Memo, and Gus Sands, hitting both the judge and Sands. Sands has his glass eye knocked out of his head and the judge has a bowel movement in his pants. Memo fires a gun at Hobbs, then puts it in her mouth. Hobbs takes it away from her, throws the bribe money at her and denounces her; she accuses him of murdering Bump. That evening, as he leaves the stadium, he sees a late edition newspaper headline accusing him of throwing the game. A newsboy asks him to tell him it is not true, but Hobbs breaks down and weeps.
1188898	/m/04fsbh	Story Time	Edward Bloor	2001	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When the school district of Whittaker Magnet School expands to cover Kate and George's duplex, they are forced to go to the frightening school, which is suspected to house a demon. But when the First Lady comes to visit the school, the vengeful demon causes more deaths and accidents. It's up to Kate and George to stop them. The cast of characters includes the spoiled Swiss milkmaid incarnation Heidi, her doting mother Cornelia, her brother Whit, Kate's not-so-secret unwanted admirer, and Pogo, a librarian who can only speak in nursery rhymes.
1189115	/m/04fsw6	A Patchwork Planet	Anne Tyler	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is narrated by 29-year-old Barnaby, whose life has gone off the rails since he was caught robbing neighborhood homes as an adolescent. To the despair of his distant father, his social climbing mother, his chilly ex-wife and his prematurely patriarchal brother, Barnaby now works for a company called Rent-a-Back, doing odd jobs for elderly clients. He also waits, without much hope, for a visitation from the Gaitlin angel, who first suggested to Barnaby's great-grandfather the invention of the wooden dress form that made the Gaitlins rich. He finds his angel but perhaps not where he expects. He believes his angel was 36 year old Sophia Mayard. Barnaby first sees Sophia on the train, while he is going to see his 9 year old daughter in Philadelphia, and Sophia is going to visit her mother. While he is in Philadelphia, his ex-wife told him he was not allowed to see their daughter anymore. The next week, he went back. Sophia was on the train again, and he is able to tell her about his job at Rent-a-Back, and she tells him about her job at the bank. They also discuss Opal, Barnaby's daughter, and Sophia agrees he should see her, and that Opal would want to continue to see her daddy. Later, Sophia contacts Barnaby's employer. She claims her aunt needs help working, and she needs Barnaby to help. Although, Barnaby's friend who is working with him, claims that Sophia hangs around while they are working, hoping Barnaby will ask her out. He finally does and she accepts. After a few months, Barnaby introduces Sophia to his family, and later Sophia introduces Barnaby to her mother. That summer, Barnaby introduces Sophia to his daughter, who has come to visit for a week. Opal says she likes Sophia, but by fall, when Opal sees Sophia's name on her Birthday card, she realizes that they are dating. While Barnaby and Opal are going to eat lunch, and they spot Opal's mother. Opal takes her stuffed Hedgehog from her father, and asks her mother to take her home. **More Coming Soon**
1189697	/m/04fvps	The Circus of Dr. Lao	Charles G. Finney		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the fictional town of Abalone, Arizona, the inhabitants of which epitomize ordinary Americans as they are simultaneously backhandedly celebrated and lovingly pilloried for their emergent reactions to the wonders of magic and of everyday life. A circus owned by a Chinese man named Dr. Lao pulls into town one day, carrying legendary creatures from all areas of mythology and legend, among them a sea serpent, Apollonius of Tyana who tells dark, yet always truthful, fortunes, a medusa, a satyr, and others. Through interactions with the circus, the locals attain various enigmatic peak experiences appropriate to each one's particular personality. The tale ends with the town becoming the site of a ritual to a pagan god whimsically given the name "Yottle", possibly an allusion to the Mesoamerican god Yaotl, whose name means "the enemy". The ritual ends when the god himself slays a virgin, her unrequited lover and the priest. The circus over, the townsfolk scatter to the winds. Apparently few of them profit from the surreal experiences. A "Catalogue" (similar to an appendix), notes all the people, places, items and mythological beings mentioned in the novel, summing up the characters pithily and sardonically, revealing the various fates of the townsfolk and listing a number of plot holes and unanswered questions not addressed in the book. List of Dr. Lao's Captured Animals: # Satyr: 2,300 years old, he was captured in Tu-jeng, China near the Great Wall. He was born of the union of a goatherd and one of his goats. # Medusa: She was very young and wore very little clothing. She had many species of snakes in her hair only three are mentioned: Tantillas, the brown, with black ring around their necks, Night Snakes, grey snakes with black spots on them, and Arizona elegans, faded brown snakes. She was a Sonoran Medusa from Northern Mexico. # Roc Chick: The roc chick had hatched from its egg (which would sweat salt water) Its feathers were the size of Ostrich's and the corners of the mouth were as yellow as butter. Its bill was yellow as well. The book describes a full grown roc as, "No where near as big as Sindbad said it was, but plenty big enough to do what Sindbad said it did!" # Hound of the Hedges: Created when water touched a dry ricefield for the first in many years, the hound was born. He was the only one of his species, no mate, no offspring. He had a tail that was made of ferns, his fur was green grass, instead of teeth he had rose thorns, his blood and saliva were chlorophyll. # Mermaid: She was captured in the Gulf of Pei-Chihli, the same day as the sea serpent. Her tail was sea-green and sleek scaled, her tail fin was as pink as a trout's. Her hair was seaweed green, her human half was young and slender with slight breasts. # Sphinx: A hermaphroditic, African Sphinx. Its head was blunt nosed and womanlike, it had breasts like a woman and had the voice of a man. It is not mentioned whether it had wings like the Greek sphinx, or no wings like an Egyptian sphinx. # Chimera: The chimera was male unlike the chimera in Greek myth thus its body was different. Although it still had a lion's body and a snake's tail, it had eagle's wings and a metal barb at the end of the tail. # Sea Serpent: He was almost a hundred feet long and was dark grey, his tongue was as thick as a man's arm and bright yellow. His eyes were bronze and had black slits for pupils. His tail was paddle shaped similar to a sea snakes. The Sea Serpent that is the only animal that did not become tame after being captured. He planned to escape with the mermaid and return to the sea. # Werewolf: She started her transformation as a large gray wolf. When she transformed she changed into an old woman, not the young lady the men were expecting. # Unicorn: a Kirin of Asian Myth. # Golden Ass: A man who had been extremely rude to Isis was transformed in to a golden haired donkey and was kept by the circus.
1191054	/m/04fzyq	Doubt: A Parable	John Patrick Shanley	2004		 The play is set in the fictional St. Nicholas Church School, in the Bronx, during the fall of 1964. It opens with a sermon by Father Flynn, a beloved and progressive parish priest, addressing the importance of uncertainty ("Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty," he says). The school's principal, Sister Aloysius, a rigidly conservative nun vowed to the order of the Sisters of Charity, insists upon constant vigilance. During a meeting with a younger nun, Sister James, it becomes clear that Aloysius harbors a deep mistrust toward her students, her fellow clergymen, and society in general. Naïve and impressionable, James is easily upset by Aloysius’ severe manner and harsh criticism. Aloysius and Father Flynn are put into direct conflict when she learns from Sister James that the priest met one-on-one with Donald Muller, St. Nicholas’ first African-American student. Mysterious circumstances lead her to believe that sexual misconduct occurred. In a private meeting purportedly regarding the Christmas pageant, Aloysius, in the presence of Sister James, openly confronts Flynn with her suspicions. He angrily denies wrongdoing, insisting that he was disciplining Donald for drinking altar wine, claiming to have been protecting the boy from harsher punishment. James is relieved by his explanation. Flynn's next sermon is on the evils of gossip. Aloysius, unsatisfied with Flynn's story, meets with Donald's mother, Mrs. Muller. Despite Aloysius's attempts to shock her, Mrs. Muller says she supports her son's relationship with Flynn. She ignores Aloysius's accusations. Before departing, she hints that Donald may be "that way", and that Mr. Muller may be beating him consequently. Father Flynn eventually threatens to remove Aloysius from her position if she does not back down. Aloysius informs him that she previously phoned the last parish he was assigned to, discovering a history of past infringements. After declaring his innocence, the priest begins to plead with her, at which point she leaves the office, disgusted. Flynn calls the bishop to apply for a transfer, where, later, he receives a promotion and is instated as pastor of a nearby parochial school. Learning this, Aloysius reveals to Sister James that the decisive phone call was a fabrication. With no actual proof that Father Flynn is or is not innocent, the audience is left with its own doubt.
1191780	/m/04g0xr	The Hidden Curriculum				 The Hidden Curriculum is a book in seven chapters. The title is a phrase coined by Philip Jackson in a 1968 essay entitled "Life in Classrooms". Jackson argues that we must understand education as a socialization process; Snyder elaborates upon this thesis with studies of particular institutions. In the first chapter, "The Two Curricula", Snyder advances the proposition that :The assignments given in the classroom and the rewards for superior work are not limited to the formal curriculum. While many tasks are cast in explicit terms &mdash; "Do problems 1 through 8 on page 67," "Read Chapter 3 and be prepared to discuss the period 1792-94 in French politics" &mdash; there is another set of less obvious tasks which bears a most interesting and important relationship to the formal curriculum. The question for the student is not only what he will learn but how he will learn, and when he will learn. These covert, inferred tasks, and the means to their mastery, are linked together in a hidden curriculum. They are rooted in the professors' assumptions and values, the students' expectations, and the social context in which both teacher and taught find themselves. Snyder then continues to address the question of why students &mdash; even or especially the most gifted &mdash; turn away from education. Even honest efforts to enrich curricula frequently fail, says Snyder, thanks to the importance of the tacit and unwritten understanding. He observes that while some students do not realize there is a disjunction between the two curricula, almost all students must resort to ploys and stratagems to cope with the requirements they face. For example, within the first month of classes, many (or perhaps most) students discover they cannot conceivably complete all the work assigned them; consequently, they must selectively neglect portions of the formal schoolwork. Attempts to beat the "competitive game", such as compiling "bibles" of solutions to be passed from one generation to the next, often only worsen the situation. Professors become locked into the competition, and only a determined effort can change the behavior pattern on either side. No part of the university community, writes Snyder, neither the professors, the administration nor the students, desires the end result created by this process. In the second chapter, Snyder investigates the question of "selective negligence" more deeply, using a psychological study which began in 1961. He reports the (pseudonymous) comments made by five students, discussing their career at MIT. For Moore, MIT is a "huge beast", where competitive social roles lead professors into "wreaking [their] vengeance" on his classmates' grades. He notes that, when his friends make even trivial mistakes in class, they respond by shutting off their senses of wonder and curiosity. He used the terminology of game theory to describe his attitude, and that of his classmates, to the stressful life they led. Jones, also aware of the unwritten demands placed upon him, perceived less irony in the situation, and his high grades became "very nearly the most important basis" of his individual self-worth. His only (relatively minor) academic troubles were with a freshman humanities subject and an unstructured, experimental engineering class he took as a junior, classes where it was more difficult to tell which answers the professors considered "correct". By contrast, Smith was an example of academic failure. He had performed admirably well in high school, exerting almost no serious effort, but at MIT he began to fail quizzes. During an exam in his freshman year, his memory blanked after half an hour and he froze. He then placed his faith in osmosis, sleeping with books under his pillow. Eventually, after two years, Smith was academically disqualified and left MIT. In his interview, Smith revealed aspects of his personal and family history which prompted Snyder to write, "Only a relatively few students have problems as extreme as this, but many have passed through a period in which they respond in such a manner. However, Smith's case does not explain the bulk of withdrawals from college. Most are not caught up in such extreme distortion or such severe neurotic restriction in their adaptive choices." Other students managed to adapt. One such student, Brown, hailed from the Midwest. In both the school's estimation and his own, he was one of his class's lower-ranking students; in fact, on the basis of his College Board test scores, he expected to be denied admission. By mastering selective negligence, Brown was able to raise his grades and make the dean's list. The last student, Robertson, began with the belief that by learning scientific skills at MIT, he would benefit humanity at large. "The necessity for becoming a 'ruthless' competitor posed a special threat to his image as a 'good person.'" He responded by moving across the Charles River to a fraternity, where he could direct his energy into helping his younger fellows to adapt. The third chapter, written by Martin Trow of the University of California, Berkeley, discusses patterns of stress in the MIT lifestyle, and describes some reforms instituted to ameliorate these problems. Trow notes that MIT's nature is inherently conflicted or paradoxical, for it is at once a university for scientists &mdash; who must learn ingenuity and creativity &mdash; and a professional school for training engineers, who must focus on technical competence. These two roles, not entirely distinct, reflect themselves in conflicting demands which the students must resolve. Even though "it is really quite impossible" to train a good engineer in four years, Trow observes, the sheer mass of knowledge which the students are expected to learn tyrannizes over their lives, robs their leisure time and prevents them from exploring other interests, even those not far removed from professional training. The professors, too, are distracted and pressured, whether by the need to maintain institutional prestige or by the sheer frenzy of activity interrupting their creative cycles. Chapter 4 broadens the conclusions beyond MIT by comparing that school's situation to Wellesley, a liberal-arts college which at the time had just under two thousand female students. Unlike at MIT, the professors at Wellesley described education as "cultivation", "providing nutrients" for intellectual growth, monitoring the "bad seeds" &mdash; heavily agricultural imagery. In a deeper sense, Snyder observes that change was viewed as cyclical, rather than progressive, in a way reminiscent of agricultural societies. He found that both students and faculty interacted with politeness, containing anger or directing it inward. Students facing academic difficulties mocked the image of the student as a cultivated plant, he observed, but they reinforced it by blaming their own mentality before blaming the college. Examining the 10 percent of the students who consulted the campus psychiatrist, Snyder found that their sense of depression frequently stemmed from harsh judgments inflicted upon themselves, which were reinforced by faculty and classmates. A large group indicated that their self-worth was based on knowing some aspect of culture in depth, and then in communicating that depth to others. "Many students said explicitly that their function in life was to provide the continuity of tradition." In both environments, students seeking the psychiatrist's services reported depression as the most frequent problem. At Wellesley Snyder found harsh self-deprecation within the troubled students, and at MIT the primary cause seemed often to be students' placing expectations far beyond their reach. The final three chapters are the most overtly "political", and they are the least cited by later publications. These chapters explore the role of education in the broader world, where ever-accelerating rates of technological change combined with the 1960s' social upheaval make "education for complexity" a crucial requirement. Snyder addresses the breakdown of trust between students and faculty, from militant movements to the failure of students to grasp a seemingly simple demonstration of probability &mdash; a failure brought about because the class was too fixated on finding the "trick" to the problem. The epilogue concludes with a warning: increasing numbers of students view their education as an exercise in gamesmanship, a study in alienation. Because the hidden curriculum is so resistant to change and exerts such a strong influence on the effectiveness of education, it must be examined thoroughly if higher education is to have any relevance at all.
1192052	/m/04g1m5	The Fist of God	Frederick Forsyth	1994	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dr. Gerald Bull designs a supergun codenamed Project Babylon for Iraq. He believes that it is for launching Arab satellites into space and that it could serve no military purpose since it could only fire once and then would be located, targeted and destroyed. He realizes the true reason shortly before being assassinated by his Iraqi paymasters. Iraq then invades Kuwait and the British and Americans need top level intelligence on the ground. Major Mike Martin of the Special Air Service is seconded to SIS to work with the Kuwaiti resistance. Not only does Major Martin speak fluent Arabic, but with his jet black hair and dark complexion, he can actually pass for an Arab. His brother, Terry, an expert in Arab military studies, is asked to advise the Medusa Committee, a joint Anglo-American panel on possible Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The CIA does not have any assets in the Iraqi government, so they ask the Israelis; Mossad deny they have any active assets in Iraq. This is not strictly true as they did have an asset, codenamed Jericho, but he remained anonymous and they were never able to identify him. They have paid $2 million into his Viennese bank account for information about Iraq's military strength, but he has gone to ground since the invasion. However, one of the team who helped run him, a man who feels the truth is most important, tells the Americans, and Israel is forced to admit the truth or face repercussions in Washington. As Israel is forced to stay out of this war—for political reasons, so as not to alienate the Arab nations taking part—they agree to let the Americans run Jericho—if they can find him. Mike Martin is recalled from Kuwait and sent into Iraq to run Jericho through a series of dead drops. His cover is as house gardener to the Soviet embassy in Baghdad. Meanwhile, the Mossad Director is furious over the American actions regarding Jericho, but quickly comes up with a plan called "Operation Joshua" to be staged in Vienna that will resolve Jericho's situation from his end in the Mossad's favor. The Medusa committee concludes that Iraq's biological weapons capability is not a threat and, though it has a plentiful supply of yellowcake, it has not had enough time with its limited underground centrifuges to spin it out into weapons grade uranium to make an atomic bomb. They decide that gas is the real threat, so the Americans make an unequivocal threat to the Iraqi government to nuke Baghdad if gas is used. However, an overeager American F-15E pilot, angry at an aborted bombing run, drops his bomb on a building not on his target list and reconnaissance photographs reveal strange large metal discs underneath the roof. Terry Martin takes the photographs to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to see if they can identify the discs. It is a retired veteran of the Manhattan Project who is able to tell him - they are Calutrons, California Cyclotrons, a low-tech solution to refining uranium, but ideal for Third World nations wanting to develop their own nuclear capability. If used in conjunction with Iraq's existing centrifuges, Iraq would already have made a nuclear bomb. Jericho reveals the location of the factory where the atomic bomb was put together and it is attacked. But he later reveals that the bomb had been moved hours earlier to its new site. Despite the $5 million already paid to him, Major Martin offers him $3 million more to reveal the bomb's new location. The Americans believe Jericho is bluffing. One problem is delivery—such a bomb would be too heavy to attach to a Scud missile and the USAF will destroy any fighter plane that tries to sneak past their air supremacy. The solution is a supergun, hidden in the desert. It will fire, just once, a single atomic weapon—“The Fist of God”—into Saudi Arabia the moment the Americans invade Iraq. Approximately 100,000 soldiers will die and the radioactive fallout will be carried into Iran. Jericho reveals the location of the supergun and Major Martin volunteers to HALO jump into Iraq to destroy it. The Americans agree to delay the invasion by two days, citing weather conditions as the reason. Martin and his SAS team lase the target and a single F-15 destroys the Supergun in a bombing run. General Norman Schwarzkopf is told the mission has been successful and orders the land invasion of Iraq. In "Operation Joshua", a Mossad agent seduces the secretary to the Viennese banker who handles Jericho's account; she reveals how he keeps details of the accounts in a secret compartment of his desk. The Mossad break into the bank and secretly photocopy the account details. They then transfer the entire $10 million out of his account into one owned by the Mossad, known as the "Fun Fund". Edith Hardenburg, the secretary, commits suicide when she realized that her "lover" has used her to obtain the information. Jericho - who turns out to be Brigadier Omar Khatib (called "The Tormentor"), the head of the AMAM - is picked up by Mossad agents pretending to be American intelligence. He is flown out of Iraq, drugged, and his body thrown into the sea from 10,000 feet.
1192713	/m/04g3g5	The Walrus and the Carpenter	Lewis Carroll	1871-12		 The Walrus and the Carpenter are the eponymous characters in the poem, which is recited by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. Walking upon a beach one night when both sun and moon are visible, the Walrus and Carpenter come upon an offshore bed of oysters, four of whom they invite to join them. To the disapproval of the eldest oyster, many more follow them. After walking along the beach (a point is made of the fact that the oysters are all neatly shod despite having no feet), the two main characters are revealed to be predatory and eat all of the oysters. After hearing the poem, the good-natured Alice attempts to determine which of the two leading characters might be the more sympathetic, but is thwarted by the twins' further interpretation:
1193166	/m/04g4ht	Taltos	Anne Rice	1993-09-19	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 As the trilogy continues, the reader is introduced to Ashlar, founder of a multi-million dollar toy corporation based in New York City -- and a Taltos, possibly the last of his kind on earth. He is quietly reflecting back on his long life when he gets a call from a friend named Samuel. A male Taltos has been seen in the glen of Donnelaith, and there is someone with information about the male. Ashlar is shocked, as he hasn't seen one of his kind in centuries, and immediately flies to London to meet with his friend. As for Rowan Mayfair, after burying her daughter, the Taltos Emaleth, she goes into a semi-catatonic state. She walks, she bathes, she eats, but she does not speak, and does not respond to those around her. Her husband Michael Curry and adopted designess Mona are worried for her, and plead with her to speak. A visiting cousin by the name of Mary Jane takes one look at Rowan and declares that she is still there, and that she will speak again in her own time. And so she does that same afternoon when we discover that her beloved friend, Aaron Lightner, an excommunicated Talamasca scholar who recently married into the family, has been deliberately run over by a car. She immediately goes to the morgue, taking Mona with her. After saying her good-bye to him, she makes plans with Michael to go to London and seek revenge on the Talamasca, whom she believes to be responsible for her friend's death. Mona discovers that she is pregnant by Michael, and after Rowan gives her blessing, she ecstatically shares the news with the family. Michael and Rowan leave for London to meet up with Yuri Stefano, a pupil and friend of Aaron who has also been excommunicated by the Talamasca. Through Yuri they meet the Taltos Ashlar and his friend Samuel, who is one of the Little People of Donnelaith (Dwarf-like creatures which are Taltos who never fed on their mother's milk—becoming stunted). Ashlar has by then killed the Superior General of the Talamasca, Anton Marcus, for his part in Aaron's death. They kidnap Stuart Gordon, an elderly member who has also had a hand in the death and the mysterious goings-on of late. Through him we discover that he and two of his pupils have hatched a scheme to unite Lasher with a female Taltos they have possession of so that they may witness the birth of a Taltos. To make sure that Aaron and Yuri didn't catch on, the pupils, Marklin and Tommy, sent fake communications to them that they believed came from the Elders, the governing force behind the Talamasca. When Aaron and Yuri continued to interfere, the Elders "excommunicated" the pair. Stuart is forced to take the group into the countryside, where he keeps the female Taltos. Ashlar comes face to face with this female, exciting Stuart, who demands that they give birth to a child. Ashlar embraces the female, named Tessa, and informs Stuart that she is unable to bear any children. He points out that every strand of her hair is white, indicating her great age and her inability to conceive. This breaks Stuart's heart. And after finally knowing what has been going on, Ashlar decides to kill Stuart for all the trouble he has caused: killing people to achieve his goals. But Rowan beats him to the punch, using her strong telepathic abilities to cause a stroke. Yuri takes Tessa to the Talamasca, who now know what has been going on. They welcome Tessa with open arms, and punish Marklin and Tommy for their treachery by burying them alive. Meanwhile, Mona has discovered that the child she carries is a Taltos, a female named Morrigan. She runs off with Mary Jane to Fontevrault, an old plantation sunken into the marsh that has been owned by a separate branch of the Mayfair family for generations. There Mary Jane's grandmother, Dolly Jean, helps deliver the new Taltos, who is a spitting image, if taller version, of her mother. Mona then and there names Morrigan the Designee of the Mayfair Legacy, and she and Mary Jane make plans for the future in case Rowan and Michael try to kill Morrigan. Ashlar takes Rowan and Michael with him to New York, and tells them the story of his long life; how the Taltos once thrived on a tropical island north of the British Isles that apparently was a semi-active volcano. They had been there since "The Time Before the Moon" (briefly mentioned by the vampire Maharet in The Queen of the Damned, the third installment in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles), and lived innocently and peacefully until the land began to shift under their feet. The water became too hot, and the animals died. The tribe escapes in time and flees south to the bitter cold of Scotland. From there they can see the island as it sinks into the sea. They make do in their new home, becoming hunter-gatherers, and occasionally spotting the early humans, whom they kept as pets once in while. They break off into different tribes and the largest of them, led by Ashlar, goes south to Somerset where they settle. Their peace is often disrupted by the Celtic raids on the land. To adapt and live peacefully among humans, they become the Picts, and Ashlar their king. When Christianity comes to them in the form of St Columba, Ashlar converts with more than half his tribe. But there is a conflict between the Christians and non-Christians, and war ensues. Soon only five Taltos males left, and they all become priests, including Ashlar. Several years later, he attempts to tell his story to a fellow priest, but he only laughs and says that the story is blasphemy. Ashlar is disillusioned, and goes on a pilgrimage, leaving Donnelaith forever. So ends his story. Rowan and Michael return to New Orleans, where Michael is introduced to his daughter, Morrigan. He and Rowan accepts Mona's decision to make Morrigan the Designee, and Morrigan settles in until Ashlar sends gifts to his new friends. When he doesn't hear from them, he goes to the First Street house to see them. There he sees this young female Taltos, who is in a frenzy. She can smell Ashlar on the gifts, and demands to know where she can find him. She catches his scent on the wind, and sees him standing outside. She breaks through a window and runs into his arms, and they run away together. fr:Taltos it:Taltos, il ritorno nl:Taltos ru:Талтос
1193982	/m/04g6x3	Naked Empire	Terry Goodkind	2003-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The novel begins detailing the travels of the main characters as they move through the Old World in order to accomplish temporary goals. Their travels are interrupted by the entrances of Nicholas, who is a Slide (a wizard that is capable of soul stealing and using souls to project himself into animals). This situation is further complicated by Owen, a man from the Bandakar Empire. He poisons Richard in order to force him to help the Bandakar Empire shed the yoke of the Imperial Order. Much of the novel focuses on Richard's interactions with the Bandakar people. The people of Bandakar are all pristinely ungifted like Richard's half-sister Jennsen. They are descendants of the house of Rahl who were banished into the Old World thousands of years before. These people were then again banished by the people of the Old World. A wizard,Kaja-Rang, placed them behind a boundary that would force any that tried to leave to walk straight to the Pillars of Creation. The Bandakar shunned all forms of violence and they laid their lives down before any aggressor. It was believed that,because they "could not see evil" or, rather because they strongly embraced a philosophy which required them to disbelieve reality that they were a threat to the existence of the Old World. Richard convinces several of the Bandakar to shed their ideals and embrace the individualist ideas espoused by Richard and his D'Haran Empire. This allowed the Bandakar to take up arms and fight for their own freedom. However, throughout the entire ordeal Richard is reeling not only from the poison the Bandakar gave him, but also because his gift is out of balance. Nathan and Ann go to the Bandakar Empire in order to realign Richard with prophecy. They save Richard and his companions from certain death, but are ultimately unable to aid him in restoring his gift to balance. Eventually Richard realizes that his belief that not eating meat would be the necessary balance to his need to kill was mistaken. By not putting his faith in himself and in his abilities he was creating improper balancing ultimately causing not only the gift within himself to twist and fail, but also the magic of the Sword of Truth to fail. He realizes that his actions are justified in themselves and require no additional balancing. After Richard has once again set himself in order, he and the Bandakar people destroy the remaining Imperial Order encampment in Bandakar resulting in the death of Nicholas, who destroys the antidote, and the rescue of Kahlan. Richard uses his gift to piece together the what and how of creating the antidote himself. During the course of these actions, Zedd and Adie are captured as the Keep is taken by men captured from Bandakar and forced to do the work of the Imperial Order. They were forced to identify random objects from within the keep for a Sister of the Dark. If they refused to do so, they were forced to listen to the screams of children being tortured while their parents begged them to give up the information. As a result of this identification process, Zedd is able to unleash a constructed spell within an object that kills several men in the camp along with all the other artifacts. Zedd and Adie are saved from destruction by three independently orchestrated rescue attempts: Captain Zimmer and some of his men, Chase and Rachel, and Rikka. Adie goes with Zimmer and his men to free the families being used for torture, while Zedd and Chase go back to reclaim the Keep. While in the keep, Zedd remembers a time when it was full of the laughter of children and families; as a result, he invites Chase to move in with his family to guard the keep.
1194427	/m/04g88q	The Pillars of the Earth	Ken Follett	1989	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Tom Builder roams southern England, seeking work. He had lost his wife in childbirth. He encounters a woman Ellen, who lives in a forest cave with her son, Jack. (Jack's father was French and was executed after washing ashore and being with Ellen.) Tom settles in Kingsbridge with Ellen and Jack, and his own two children. He works for Prior Philip, who wants to expand his priory by rebuilding a cathedral. Philip appeals to King Stephen for financial support and is given land and the right to take stone from the quarry. The quarry has been granted to Percy Hamleigh as part of the earldom of Shiring. His interests are not in supporting the cathedral. Hamleigh wants to topple the earl Bartholomew, as his daughter, Aliena, rejected Hamleigh’s son William. William attacks Aliena and her brother Richard at the castle; he rapes the girl and injures the boy. Homeless and destitute, Aliena and Richard go to petition the king for aid; at the court, they find their dying father Bartholomew in prison. The siblings swear an oath to work for Richard to regain the earldom. Aliena supports Richard financially by becoming a wool merchant. He becomes a knight for King Stephen, fighting in the civil war against Maud. Richard gains the king's favour by defending him at the Battle of Lincoln. Tom, meanwhile, has been building the cathedral, and living with his children, Alfred and Martha, his lover Ellen and her son Jack. Alfred bullies Jack. When Ellen and Tom are discovered to be unmarried, a charge of fornication is brought against them. Outraged, Ellen returns to the forest with Jack. Tom befriends Prior Philip and, when Ellen returns, he persuades Philip to allow them to marry. As masons, Jack and Alfred fight again. While the better mason and a skilled sculptor, Jack is expelled from the cathedral construction. He becomes a novice monk in order to stay in Kingsbridge. William and Richard compete for the earldom, but it has been bankrupted by the prosperity of Kingsbridge at Shiring's expense. Attempting to restore his fortunes, William burns down Kingsbridge and kills many people, including Tom Builder. After losing her fortune again, Aliena agrees to marry Alfred, as he promised to support Richard in exchange. Jack and Aliena make love on the morning of her wedding. When she marries Alfred anyway, Ellen curses the wedding and renders him impotent. Jack goes to France and hones his skills as a sculptor and mason. Having learned his father's identity, he meets his family in Cherbourg. He does not know that Aliena is pregnant. In Kingsbridge, Alfred persuades Philip to replace the wooden roof with a stone vault. The building collapses during a service, killing many people. Aliena gives birth to a red-headed son, and Alfred abandons her, as he has been impotent. Jack returns to England and they seek permission to marry. Philip forbids the union until her marriage is annulled. This requires Waleran Bigod’s recommendation to the archibishop, but Bigod and the Hamleighs are allies, and they intend to ruin Philip and Aliena. Meanwhile, Richard has joined the forces of Maud's son, Henry, Count of Anjou. When Henry invades, Stephen agrees to have Henry succeed him, with all properties to revert to those who had owned them prior to Stephen’s reign. Frustrated that Richard will not gain the earldom until Stephen's death, Aliena persuades William's young wife, Elizabeth, to hand the castle over to them. William returns to the village of Hamleigh as sheriff. After many years, Kingsbridge cathedral is completed. Waleran accuses Prior Philip of fornication by claiming the monk Jonathan is Philip's son. Ellen swears that Jonathan is Tom Builder’s son. After Waleran accuses her of perjury, she exposes his complicity in a conspiracy to sink the White Ship carrying William Adelin, heir of King Henry I. Ruined, Bigod lives out his days as a humble monk. Meanwhile, William Hamleigh has become involved with the plot to assassinate Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. William is convicted and hanged for his part. The Pope forces King Henry’s public repentance and symbolic subjugation of the crown to the church.
1194749	/m/04g9lq	Blood of the Fold	Terry Goodkind	1996-10-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Blood of the Fold resumes from the preceding novel, Stone of Tears, when Richard Rahl has just reunited with his future wife, Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor, in a place between worlds. Upon returning to Aydindril in the real world he realizes that seizing power for himself is the only way to halt the continuous advance of the Imperial Order through the Midlands. Richard ends the Midlands alliance and the rule of the Confessors, taking control of Aydindril and issuing a demand for unconditional surrender of Midlands nations to D'haran rule. Meanwhile, in the Old World, trouble courses through the Palace of the Prophets. Sister Verna, the newly named Prelate, discovers the former Prelate, Annalina, isn't really dead, but has fled with Nathan Rahl. The lands of the Midlands must decide whether to surrender to D'Hara or the Imperial Order. In his neverending search for banelings, what the Blood call those with some form of the gift, Tobias Brogan, the Lord General of the Blood of the Fold, captures Kahlan Amnell and Adie and takes them, following the instructions of the Creator, to the Palace of the Prophets. Richard, who finds out his wife-to-be is in the Old World, uses an ancient means of transportation, the Sliph, to travel to her almost immediately. There, fooled by the ability to become invisible, Richard releases the Mriswith Queen, who then flees to Aydindril back through the Sliph. Brought back to his senses, Richard then destroys the Palace of the Prophets to prevent Jagang from receiving the treasures inside, saves Kahlan, and hurries back to Aydindril in the New World, where He discovers the mriswith queen nesting in the Wizard's keep preparing to hatch a new batch of mriswith in the new world. After smashing her eggs and a difficult battle with her, Richard and Kahlan defeat the Mriswith Queen. They then discover a battle in the City is being lost by Richard's D'haran army but with his arrival he leads his soldiers to a victory over the Blood of the Fold and the mriswith.
1194751	/m/04g9mf	Temple of the Winds	Terry Goodkind	1997-09-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Temple of the Winds picks up shortly after where the last volume, Blood of the Fold, left off. A wizard named Marlin appears in Aydindril announcing his intent to kill Richard Rahl. He is immediately captured and questioned by the Mother Confessor, Kahlan Amnell, and one of Richard's bodyguards, Cara. Cara uses her Mord'Sith ability to capture Marlin's gift when he tries to escape, but the link between Cara and Marlin is used against her when Emperor Jagang takes possession of Marlin soon thereafter. A lady named Nadine, whom Richard had known as an herbalist from the Westland, arrives and attempts to heal Cara, but fails. Richard's half-brother Drefan, a self-proclaimed high priest of a sect of healers, does however succeed in curing Cara. Meanwhile, Zedd and Prelate Annalina continue their search for the unleashed Nathan Rahl. Their search leads them to a run down inn in an unnamed city, where they discover that Nathan misled them into following another man. The man then gives them a message informing them not to follow Nathan but to protect a treasure instead. A Sister of the Dark, who was also following Nathan, ends up getting caught in a snare Zedd intended for the Prophet Rahl. Richard and Berdine continue to work on the translation of the journal of Kolo, a dead wizard found in the depths of the Wizard's Keep. In the midst of all these activities, a Sister of the Dark travels through Aydindril spreading a magical plague. In a search for a cure, Richard travels to the First Wizard's Enclave. To save the people of the Midlands from the plague, Kahlan must betray Richard to allow him to enter the Temple of the Winds. In doing so, Richard saves the people of the Midlands, but to return, he pays the price of knowledge, leaving the Temple with something that no vast library of knowledge can ever teach - understanding. Through this, Richard is saved from the life of the eternally condemned. Meanwhile, Nathan rescues a woman named Clarissa from a life of slavery in the Imperial Order. He then builds a relationship with the woman and uses her to obtain items from Jagang that were given under a tentative deal struck between Nathan (acting as Lord Rahl at the time) and the Emperor. When Richard returns, Kahlan learns that she must destroy a book in order to save Richard, so she travels to the Old World in the sliph. Upon her arrival she finds Nathan, Sister Verna, and Warren in a compromised situation, and she immediately spring into action to aid them. Clarissa is killed in the struggle by traitors. With the book, Kahlan returns to Aydindril, but a battle ensues with Drefan, and she is unable to defeat him. Luckily, Richard arrives and disables Drefan by ripping his spine out through his stomach. When Richard rushes to Kahlan's side, the still-conscious Drefan gets up and prepares to attack him, but is killed by the sliph. Kahlan destroys the book, and Richard is cured of the plague. Now, three of Drefan's sect come to see Richard. They tell him that Drefan was seriously disturbed, and that he may be a danger to others and himself. When Richard tells them that their high priest is dead, they tell him that Drefan was barely a novice in healing, let alone a high priest. Richard accepts this fact, and decides to remember Drefan in a different way. Richard and Kahlan travel to the land of the Mud People to be wed, where they meet up with Zedd and Ann. Richard and Kahlan are soon thereafter wed and are visited by the witch woman Shota, who once again warns them not to conceive a child.
1194752	/m/04g9mt	Soul of the Fire	Terry Goodkind	1999-03-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Continuing on from Temple of the Winds, we begin the story after Richard and Kahlan's wedding in the village of the Mud People. Strange deaths and the appearance of a 'chicken-that-isn't-a-chicken' leaves Richard fearing the worst. Zedd confides in Richard that the chicken is a Lurk sent by Emperor Jagang's Sisters of the Dark. According to Zedd, the only way to destroy the Lurk is by smashing a bottle from the Wizard's Keep in Aydindril with the Sword of Truth. However, Zedd is actually lying. He has surmised that a terrible magic known as "the chimes" has been released. The chimes will eventually drain all magic from the world of the living, beginning with the additive magic. This would cause death to beings that require magic and possibly cause the destruction of the world if additive magic were to completely fail. Zedd determines that he must find a remedy and wants Richard and Kahlan safely out of the way while he does so. Richard, Kahlan and Cara, unaware of the truth, set out to accomplish the task of breaking the bottle. Meanwhile, Zedd and Ann set off in separate ways. Zedd recalls some lore that relates the chimes to Anderith and he travels there to attempt to banish the chimes. Ann infiltrates the Imperial Order in order to save the Sisters of the Light under Jagang's enslavement. However, the Sisters of the Light betray Ann to Jagang because they fear the wrath of Emperor Jagang, causing Ann to be captured. Elsewhere, we are introduced to the Machiavellian politics of Anderith. Both the Anders, black-haired people who govern the city, and the Hakens, red-haired people under the boot of Ander oppression, occupy Anderith. From an early age Hakens are kept under control and disrespected by the Anders and are taught that this oppression is a necessity to protect the Hakens from their violent ancestral ways. Most Hakens have bought into this idea and willingly subject themselves to the oppression. Anderith is being wooed by the Imperial Order in the person of Stein, who personifies the savage ruthlessness of Jagang's empire. Stein offers double the going rate for any goods that merchants, all of the Ander race, will sell to the Imperial Order. He also plots with the Minister of Culture, Bertrand Chanboor, to surrender Anderith to the Order. They begin infiltrating Imperial Order soldiers into Anderith under the guise of Special Anderian Troops. Dalton Campbell, aide to the Minister of Culture, has a hand in most events within the Anderith nation. He uses his connections, along with his squad of messengers, to accomplish underhanded tasks to ensure that the Minister will ascend to the chair of Sovereign (a religious position similar to the real world pope) when the present one passes on. Dalton treasures his wife Teresa above all else. A kitchen scullion, Fitch, is recruited into the messenger corps by Dalton. Though he has conflicting goals and values, Fitch's gratitude towards Dalton results in blind obedience and he smothers his conscience to accomplish Dalton's bidding. Ultimately Dalton betrays Fitch, who is forced to flee. Fitch determines to redeem himself by becoming the Seeker of Truth, a longtime fantasy of his. The first step to becoming Seeker is to obtain the Sword of Truth. We are also given a glimpse at the Anderith Army, which is seriously under-trained and little more than children. The Anderith Army guards the Dominie Dirtch, a defensive line of giant bell-shaped structures, seemingly made from a solid piece of dark-veined stone, which kill anything in front of them when struck. Elsewhere, Richard realizes the chimes are, in fact, loose, and so he sends Cara to Aydindril to retrieve the Sword of Truth while Richard, Kahlan and Du Chaillu (Richard's first "wife" and spirit woman of the Baka Ban Mana) head to Anderith to banish the chimes. Richard also deduces that the army of the Imperial Order is marching on Anderith. If the Imperial Order conquers Anderith it will be a continuing imminent threat to the rest of the midlands. Arriving in Anderith first, Zedd attempts to banish the chimes by offering them his soul. This is the cause of the chimes' presence: they don't have souls, and when Kahlan summoned them she promised them Richard's soul. However, it is not Zedd's soul the chimes want. When Zedd's attempt fails, he undergoes a transformation, becoming a raven. Richard and Kahlan arrive in Anderith and set out to look for the chimes but also work on joining Anderith with the D'Haran Empire. Word spreads and a vote is taken. While Richard makes a good plea to the people of Anderith, Dalton Campbell's interference sways the vote, leaving Richard defeated. At the same time, Kahlan struggles with the knowledge that she is with child, and the trouble that will come because of it. Meanwhile, Ann finds the captive Sisters of the Light and persuades them to come with her. Since magic is failing, Jagang's abilities as a Dream Walker are null, and Ann informs the Sisters of a bond to Richard, the Lord Rahl, that can keep them safe from the Dream Walker. However the Sisters, fearful of retribution by Jagang, betray Ann to the Imperial Order. She is left in her tent by herself when Sister Alessandra, a Sister of the Dark, begins visiting her and bringing her food. She attempts to sway Alessandra, at first to no avail but with success in the end. Dalton Campbell, along with help from a Sister of the Dark, sets a group of his messengers on Kahlan when she is off by herself pondering on whether or not to keep Richard's child. She is beaten nearly to death, but she is saved by Richard, who at first doesn't recognize her. When he finally does however, he realizes that he will be unable to heal her unless he manages to banish the chimes first. Cara almost obtains the Sword of Truth, but is beaten to it by Fitch and his friend, Morley. A combination of sheer dumb luck and the fact that the Chimes have deactivated the Wizards' Keep defenses and killed many of its guards allow Fitch and his accomplice to easily obtain the Sword. Cara gives chase and kills the friend before chasing Fitch back to Anderith. When she catches him at the Dominie Dirtch she loses the sword when Imperial Order scouts attack. The Order's soldiers collect the sword as a prize for Stein to present to Emperor Jagang. Around this time, Dalton Campbell manages to murder the Sovereign, instead of waiting for the feeble figurehead to pass naturally. This immediately pushes Bertrand Chanboor to the rank of Sovereign. The empowered Chanboor consummates his promotion by sleeping with Dalton's wife, Teresa. Dalton pretends not to be disturbed by this betrayal and even seemingly "joins" the web of infidelity by sleeping with both Teresa and Chanboor's wife in turn. In reality, however, Campbell is livid and even kills the Imperial Order emissary, Stein, (who had "shared" Teresa with Chanboor) gaining possession of the Sword of Truth in turn. Having studied the actions of Joseph Ander, the ancient founder of Anderith, Richard comes to realize that the chimes and the Dominie Dirtch are connected. More specifically, Richard comes to understand that Joseph Ander enslaved the Chimes using them to power the Dominie Dirtch. Richard finally comes to understand that by using art as a form of intent he can alter the Grace and create a new pathway for magic. Thus Richard counters the magic Ander used to enslave the Chimes and calls them forth giving the chimes a choice: The Soul, his soul (which they were promised by Kahlan) or revenge on the spirit of Ander for enslaving them. The chimes choose vengeance, taking Ander to the underworld. Once he is successful in banishing the chimes, Richard sets off to heal Kahlan but is stopped by Du Chaillu, who tells Richard that his healing powers would kill her due to a hidden subtractive magic spell that has been placed within her. Alessandra eventually frees Ann, reverts her faith back to The Creator and gives her oath to Richard. The pair soon sets off out of Anderith, and when Zedd's soul is returned to his body with the banishment of the chimes, he also departs. Richard decides to leave for Westland, where he plans to let Kahlan recover from her wounds naturally. Dalton Campbell sees them off with his apologies and informs Richard that Campbell, Chanboor, and both of their wives have become stricken with an "unfortunate", incurable venereal disease and have doomed themselves to a slow, agonizing demise. He returns the Sword of Truth to Richard before they set off. Richard claims he will wait in Westland until the people of the world can prove to him that they truly desire freedom.
1194919	/m/04gb4s	The Professor	Charlotte Brontë	1857	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is the story of a young man, William Crimsworth, and is a first-person narrative from his perspective. It describes his maturation, his loves and his eventual career as a professor at an all-girls school. The story starts off with a letter William has sent to his friend Charles, detailing his refusal to his uncle's proposals to become a clergyman, as well as his first meeting with his rich brother Edward. Seeking work as a tradesman, William is offered the position of a clerk by Edward. However, Edward is jealous of William's education and intelligence and treats him terribly. By the actions of the sympathetic Mr. Hunsden, William is relieved of his position and gains a new job at an all-boys boarding school in Belgium. The school is run by the friendly M. Pelet, who treats William kindly and politely. Soon, William's merits as a professor reach the ears of the headmistress of the neighboring girls school. Mlle. Reuter offers him a position at her school, which he accepts. Initially captivated by Mlle. Reuter, William begins to entertain ideas of falling in love with her, only to have them crushed when he overhears her and M. Pelet talk about their upcoming marriage. Slightly heartbroken, he now treats Mlle. Reuter with a cold civility and begins to see the underlying nature of her character. Mlle. Reuter, however, continues to try to draw William back in, pretending to be benevolent and concerned. She goes so far as to plead him to teach one of her young teachers, Frances, who hopes to improve her skill in languages. William sees in this pupil promising intelligence and slowly begins to fall in love with her as he tutors her English. Jealous of the attention Francis is receiving from William, Mlle. Reuter takes it upon herself to casually dismiss Frances from her school and hide her address from William. It is revealed that as she was trying to make herself amiable in William's eyes, Mlle. Reuter accidentally fell in love with him herself. Not wanting to cause a conflict with M. Pelet, Crimsworth leaves his establishment and moves out, in hopes of finding Frances. Eventually bumping into his beloved pupil in a graveyard, the two reconcile . William gets a new position as a professor at a college, with an exceedingly high wage. The two eventually open a school together and have a child. After obtaining financial security, the family travels all around England and settle in the countryside next to Mr. Hunsden.
1195051	/m/04gbkc	The House of the Spirits	Isabel Allende	1982	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 The story starts with the del Valle family, focusing upon the youngest and the oldest daughters of the family, Clara and Rosa. The youngest daughter, Clara del Valle, has paranormal powers and keeps a detailed diary of her life. Using her powers, Clara predicts a death in the family. Shortly after this, Clara's green-haired sister, Rosa the Beautiful, is accidentally killed by poison intended for her father who is running for the Senate. The young Clara stumbles upon her sister's autopsy and afterwards, terrified, stops speaking, believing her premonition had caused her sister's death. Rosa's fiancé, a poor miner named Esteban Trueba, is devastated and attempts to mend his broken heart by devoting his life to uplifting his family hacienda, Tres Marías. Through a combination of intimidation and reward systems, he quickly earns/forces respect and labor from the fearful peasants and turns Tres Marías into a "model hacienda". He turns the first peasant who spoke to him upon arrival, Pedro Segundo, into his foreman, who quickly becomes the closest thing that Trueba ever has to an actual friend during his life. However, unable to control himself, he rapes many of the peasant women, and his first victim, Pancha García, becomes the mother of his bastard son, who would eventually become Esteban García. Esteban returns to the city to see his dying mother. After her death, Esteban decides to fulfill her dying wish: for him to marry and have legitimate children. He goes to the del Valle family to ask for Clara's hand in marriage. Clara accepts Esteban's proposal; she herself has predicted her engagement two months prior, speaking for the first time in nine years. During the period of their engagement, Esteban builds what everyone calls "the big house on the corner," a large mansion in the city where the Trueba family will live for generations. After their wedding, Esteban's sister Férula comes to live with the newlyweds in the big house on the corner. Férula develops a strong dedication to Clara, which fulfills her need to serve others. However, Esteban's wild desire to possess Clara and to monopolize her love causes him to throw Férula out of the house. She curses him, telling him that he will shrink in body and soul, and die like a dog. Although she misses her sister-in-law, a passive and dreamy Clara finds happiness in developing her psychic powers. Spirits, artists, and spiritualists flock to the Truebas' house. Clara gives birth to a daughter named Blanca and later, to twin boys Jaime and Nicolás. The family, which resides in the capital, stays at the hacienda during the summertime. Upon arriving at Tres Marías for the first time, Blanca immediately befriends a young boy named Pedro Tercero, who is the son of her father's foreman. During their teenage years, Blanca and Pedro Tercero eventually become lovers. After an earthquake that destroys part of the hacienda and leaves Esteban injured, the Truebas move permanently to Las Tres Marías. Clara spends her time teaching and helping peasant children, while Blanca is sent to a convent school and the twin boys back to an English boarding school, both of which are located in the city. Blanca fakes an illness so as to be sent back to Las Tres Marías, where she can be with Pedro Tercero. Life runs smoothly until Pedro Tercero is banished from the hacienda by Esteban, on account of his revolutionary communist/socialist ideas. A visiting French count to the hacienda, Jean de Satigny, reveals Blanca's nightly romps with Pedro Tercero to her father. Esteban furiously goes after his daughter and brutally whips her. When Clara expresses horror at his actions, Esteban slaps her, knocking out her front teeth. Clara decides to never speak to him again, reclaims her maiden name and moves out of Tres Marías and back to the city, taking Blanca with her. Esteban, furious and lonely, blames Pedro Tercero for the whole matter; putting a price on the boy's head with the local corrupt police. At this point, Pedro Segundo deserts Esteban, telling him he does not want to be around when Trueba inevitably catches his son. Enraged by Pedro Segundo's departure, Trueba begins hunting for Pedro Tercero himself, eventually tracking him down to a small shack near his hacienda. He only succeeds in cutting off three of Pedro's fingers, and is filled with regret for his uncontrollable furies. Jaime becomes an empathetic doctor while crafty Nicolás concocts money-making schemes. The two develop a strange relationship with a woman named Amanda. Nicolas and Amanda are originally introduced to the story together, but split later on due to her pregnancy. Jaime loves Amanda dearly at this point but will never admit to his feelings around her. He agrees to help terminate her pregnancy not because his cowardly brother asked him to, but for the woman he cannot have. Years later Jaime and Amanda meet again and Jaime saves her from near death. Amanda remembers Jaime as the tender doctor and falls in love with him, but he realizes that she is not the same beautiful woman that bewitched him originally. He continues to have a relationship with Amanda though he does not love her. Blanca finds out she is pregnant with Pedro Tercero's child. Esteban, desperate to save the family honor, gets Blanca to marry the French count by telling her that he has killed Pedro Tercero. At first, Blanca gets along with her new husband, but she leaves him when she discovers his participation in sexual fantasies with the servants. Blanca quietly returns to the Trueba household and names her daughter, who has Rosa's green hair, Alba. Clara predicts that Alba will have a very happy future and good luck. Her future lover, Miguel, happens to watch her birth, as he had been living in the Trueba House with his sister, Amanda. They move out shortly after Alba's birth. Esteban Trueba eventually moves to the Trueba house in the capital as well, although he continues to spend periods of time in Tres Marías. He becomes isolated from every member of his family except for little Alba, whom he is very fond of. Esteban runs as a senator for the Conservative Party but is nervous about whether or not he will win. Clara speaks to him, through signs, informing him that "those who have always won will win again" - this becomes his motto. Clara then begins to speak to Esteban through signs, although she keeps her promise and never actually speaks to him again. A few years later, Clara dies peacefully and Esteban is overwhelmed with grief. Alba is a solitary child who enjoys playing make-believe in the basement of the house and painting the walls of her room. Blanca has become very poor since leaving Jean de Satigny's house, getting a small income out of selling pottery and giving pottery classes to mentally handicapped children, and is once again dating Pedro Tercero, now a revolutionary singer/songwriter. Alba and Pedro are fond of each other, but do not know they are father and daughter, although Pedro suspects this. Alba is also fond of her uncles. Nicolás is eventually kicked out by his father, moving, supposedly, to North America. When she is older, Alba attends a local college where she meets Miguel, now a grown man, and becomes his lover. Miguel is a revolutionary, and out of love for him, Alba involves herself in student protests against the conservative government. After the victory of the People's Party (a socialist movement), Alba celebrates with Miguel. Fearing a Communist dictatorship, Esteban Trueba and his fellow politicians plan a military coup of the socialist government. However, when the military coup is set into action, the military men relish their power and grow out of control. Esteban's son Jaime is killed by power-driven soldiers along with other supporters of the government. After the coup, people are regularly kidnapped and tortured. Esteban helps Blanca and Pedro Tercero flee to Canada, where the couple finally find their happiness. The military regime attempts to eliminate all traces of opposition and eventually comes for Alba. She is made the prisoner of Colonel Esteban García, the son of Esteban Trueba and Pancha García's illegitimate son, and therefore grandson to Esteban Trueba. During an earlier visit to the Trueba house, García molests Alba as a child. In pure hatred of her privileged life and eventual inheritance, García tortures Alba repeatedly, looking for information on Miguel. He rapes her, thus completing the cycle that Esteban Trueba put into motion when he raped Pancha García. When Alba loses her will to live, she is visited by Clara's spirit who tells her not to wish for death, since it can easily come, but to wish to live. Esteban Trueba manages to free Alba with the help of Miguel and Tránsito Soto, an old friend/prostitute from his days as a young man. After helping Alba write their memoir, Esteban Trueba dies in the arms of Alba, accompanied by Clara's spirit; he is smiling, having avoided Férula's prophecy that he will die like a dog. Alba explains that she will not seek vengeance on those who have injured her, suggesting a hope that one day the human cycle of hate and revenge can be broken. Alba writes the book to pass time while she waits for Miguel and for the birth of her child.
1195515	/m/04gcsc	Mirette on the High Wire	Emily Arnold McCully		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mirette lives in a boardinghouse in France. One day her life is changed by a man named Bellini, a famous tightrope walker, who teaches Mirette how to walk on a tightrope.
1196343	/m/04gg14	The Five People You Meet in Heaven	Mitch Albom	2003-09-25	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational"}	 The book starts with an elderly man named Eddie who works as the head of maintenance at an amusement park called Ruby Pier. Eddie is able to perform this job despite leg injuries he received as a soldier during World War II. On Eddie's birthday, one of the amusement park rides malfunctions because of a damaged cable and stops halfway through the ride. Two of the staff at Ruby Pier are able to rescue the passengers on the ride and then release the ride's cart not knowing that there is a little girl under it. Eddie attempts to save the girl who was sitting under a roller coaster ride that one of the carts was about to fall on. Eddie then finds himself awake and uninjured and realizes that he feels young and much more energetic. He meets a man dubbed as "The Blue Man" who had worked at Ruby Pier's freak show and whose real name is Joseph Corvelzchik. Through their conversation, Eddie finds out that he is dead, has gone to heaven and has to meet five people who significantly impacted his life. He also finds out that he feels so much younger because he will feel the way he felt when these people came into his life. Eddie asks why Joseph, whom he does not know, is his first person and Joseph informs Eddie that he died when Eddie ran across the street as a child and caused Joseph to wreck his own car. From this, Eddie learns his first lesson which is that there are no random events in life and all people are connected in some way. The second person that Eddie meets is his former captain from the army who Eddie finds sitting in a tree in a Philippine rainforest. The captain reminds Eddie of their time together as prisoners of war in a forced labor camp. Their group escaped after a lengthy period of time and burned the camp. Eddie remembers that he had seen a shadow running from the hut that he was setting on fire although he had never found out who the person was. The captain confesses that he was the one who shot Eddie in the leg to prevent Eddie from chasing the shadow in the fire. This saved Eddie's life while leaving him with the lifelong injury. The captain later died by a landmine while scouting ahead during the escape, saving the lives of the group. Eddie learns his second lesson about the importance of people's willingness to make sacrifices for others. The scene changes and Eddie finds himself outside a diner where he meets a well dressed woman named Ruby. Ruby tells Eddie that she had once worked as a waitress at the diner and explains that Ruby Pier was named after her by her husband Emile who built it in tribute to her. Emile was wounded while fighting a fire that burned much of Ruby Pier and later died from failing health. Ruby confesses that she picked the diner because that was where she had met Emile and wanted the diner to be a refuge for anyone who had ever been hurt in any way by Ruby Pier. Eddie's father, who had been a very harsh and abusive man, is also at the diner. Ruby teaches Eddie to release his anger and forgive his father for all the trouble and hurt he had caused. Eddie now awakens in a room with several doors. Behind each of the doors there is wedding from a different culture and Eddie meets his late wife, Marguerite, in one of the weddings. They spend an extended period together, moving from one wedding to the next and catching up on all the things they had not been able to share since Marguerite's death. They remember their own wedding and in the end, Marguerite teaches Eddie that love is never lost in death. When Eddie awakens to a new scene, he sees children playing along a riverbed and a young Asian girl named Tala comes up to him. Tala reveals that she was the little girl from the hut that Eddie set on fire. The girl shows Eddie the burns that she suffered from the fire. She hands Eddie a stone and tells him to rub the burns off. Eddie starts to scrape off the injuries he had inflicted on her and soon Tala is free of the scars. Eddie believes that he failed to save the little girl from the amusement park and remembers feeling the girl's hands in his just before his death but Tala says that it was her hands that Eddie had felt as she pulled him safely up to heaven. In reality, Eddie did manage to save the girl at Ruby Pier. Tala teaches Eddie that his life was not for nothing and that its purpose was to protect children at Ruby Pier through his care for the safety of the rides. In this way, he also atoned for causing Tala's death. In the end, it shows that Eddie's heaven was the Stardust Band Shell, where he met Marguerite. He is also one of the five people to be met by the girl whose life he saved when she dies.
1198564	/m/04gm1g	Shantaram	Gregory David Roberts	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Shantaram is a novel influenced by real events in the life of the author, Australian Gregory David Roberts. In 1978, Roberts was sentenced to 19-year imprisonment in Australia after being convicted of a series of armed robberies of building society branches, credit unions, and shops. In July 1980, he escaped from Victoria’s Pentridge Prison in broad daylight, thereby becoming one of Australia's most wanted men for the next ten years. The protagonist Lindsay (according to the book, Roberts' fake name) arrives in Mumbai carrying a false passport in the name of Lindsay Ford. Mumbai was only a stopover on a journey that was to take him from New Zealand to Germany, but he decides to stay in the city. Lindsay soon meets a local man named Prabaker whom he hires as a guide, but soon becomes his best friend and renames him Lin (Linbaba). Both men visit Prabaker's native village, Sunder, where Prabaker's mother decided to give Lin a new Maharashtrian name, like her own. Because she judged his nature to be blessed with peaceful happiness, she decided to call him Shantaram, meaning Man of God's Peace. On their way back to Mumbai after a night out, Lin and Prabaker are robbed. With all his possessions gone, Lin is forced to live in the slums, giving him shelter from the authorities and free rent in Mumbai. After a massive fire on the day of his arrival in the slum, he sets up a free health clinic as a way to contribute to the community. He learns about the local culture and customs in this crammed environment, gets to know and love the people he encounters, and even becomes fluent in Marathi, the local language. He also witnesses and battles outbreaks of cholera and firestorms, becomes involved in trading with the lepers, and experiences how ethnic and marital conflicts are resolved in this densely crowded and diverse community. The novel describes a number of foreigners of various origins, as well as local Indians, highlighting the rich diversity of life in Mumbai. Lin falls in love with Karla, a Swiss-American woman who does not love him back, befriends local artists and actors, landing him roles as an extra in several Bollywood movies, and is recruited by the Mumbai underworld for various criminal operations, including drug and weapons trade. Lin eventually lands in Mumbai's Arthur Road Prison, where he endures many beatings and other physical and mental abuse by guards, while existing under extremely squalid conditions, along with hundreds of other inmates. However, thanks to the protection of Afghan mafia don "Abdel Khader Khan", Lin is eventually released, and works in black market currency exchange and passport forgery. Having travelled as far as Africa on trips commissioned by the mafia, Lin later goes to Afghanistan to smuggle weapons for mujahideen freedom fighters in Afghanistan. When his mentor Khan is killed, Lin realizes he became everything he grew to loathe and falls into depression after he returns. He decides that he must fight for what he believes is right, and build an honest life. The story ends with him planning to go to Sri Lanka which lays the premise for the sequel to this book. Based on Roberts' known biography, Shantaram reads as largely factual. A few parts of the story, such as Roberts' criminal history and escape from prison in Australia, are a matter of public record, while others remain harder (or impossible) to verify. There is a great deal of debate as to where the boundaries lie between fact and fiction in the book. Roberts has stated the characters in the story are largely invented, and that he merged different elements taken from true events and people into such events and characters like Prabaker 'of the big smile'. In March 2006, the Mumbai Mirror, reported they may have discovered the inspiration for the big smile of the character Prabaker as belonging to a still living cab driver called Kishore, who took Roberts to his home village. "With respect, Shantaram is not an autobiography, it’s a novel. If the book reads like an autobiography, I take that as a very high compliment, because I structured the created narrative to read like fiction but feel like fact. I wanted the novel to have the page-turning drive of a work of fiction but to be informed by such a powerful stream of real experience that it had the authentic feel of fact." As with the novel Shantaram, the experiences in The Mountain Shadow are derived from my own real experiences, and the characters, dialogue, and narrative structure are all created.
1199202	/m/04gn_h	Roots: The Saga of an American Family	Alex Haley	1976-08-17	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Brought up on the stories of his elderly female relatives—including his Grandmother Cynthia, whose father was emancipated from slavery in 1865—Alex Haley claimed to have traced his family history back to "the African," Kunta Kinte, captured by members of a contentious tribe and sold to slave traders in 1767. In the fictional novel, each of Kunta's enslaved descendants passed down an oral history of Kunta's experiences as a free man in Gambia, along with the African words he taught them. Haley researched African village customs, slave-trading and the history of African Americans in America—including a visit to the griot (oral historian) of his ancestor's African village. He created a colorful and fictional history of his family from the mid-eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, which led him back to his heartland of Africa.
1201696	/m/04gvr2	King Rat	James Clavell	1962	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens in early 1945. Peter Marlowe, a young British RAF Flight Lieutenant, has been a P.O.W. since 1942. Marlowe comes to the attention of the "King", an American corporal who has become the most successful trader and black marketeer in Changi, when the King sees him conversing in Malay. Marlowe's language skill, intelligence, honesty, and winning personality cause the King to befriend him and attempt to involve him in black market deals. This, in turn, brings Marlowe to the attention of Robin Grey, a British officer and Provost Marshal of the camp, who has developed a Javert-like obsession with the King and hopes to arrest him for violating camp regulations. Grey is attempting to maintain strict military discipline among the prisoners and sees the King as the antithesis of everything he believes. Despite being only an enlisted man and without distinction in civilian life, the King has become a major power in the enclosed society of the P.O.W. camp through his charisma and intelligence. Trading with Korean guards, local Malay villagers, and other prisoners for food, clothing, information, and what few luxuries are available, the King keeps himself and his fellow American prisoners alive. Even senior officers come to him for help in selling their valuables to buy extra food, and other officers are secretly on his payroll. Grey, the son of a working-class family, follows the rules for their own sake using his position as Provost Marshal to gain a status otherwise unavailable to him in British society. Marlowe is initially put off by the King's perspective and behavior, which are at odds with the British upper class ideals he has been taught. He turns down a lucrative business partnership with the King because "Marlowes aren't tradesmen. It just isn't done, old boy." But Marlowe soon understands that the King is not the thief and con artist that Grey would have him believe. Rather, the King asks for the best of each man and rewards him accordingly, irrespective of class or position. Through the experiences of Marlowe, the King and other characters, the novel offers a vivid, often disturbing portrayal of men brought to the edge of survival by a brutal environment. The P.O.W.'s are given nothing by the Japanese other than filthy huts to live in and the bare minimum of food needed to prevent starvation. Officers from various parts of Britain's Asian empire, accustomed to having native servants provide them with freshly laundered uniforms daily, are reduced to wearing rags and homemade shoes. For most, the chief concern is obtaining enough food to stay alive from day to day and avoiding disease or injury, since almost no medical care is available. Some are degraded and come close to losing their humanity, while others display courage and compassion beyond anything one would expect. Some literally steal food out the mouths of their comrades, while others give away what they have or take terrible risks to help their friends.
1201718	/m/04gvrs	King Rat	China Miéville	1998-12-31	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Saul Garamond returns to the flat he shares with his father in London late one evening, skipping on greetings and heading straight to bed. In the morning he is awakened by police pounding on the door, come to arrest him. It appears he is the lone suspect in his father's murder case. After spending most of a day being interrogated and in a holding cell, Saul finds he has a mysterious visitor, who introduces himself as King Rat. The two begin a one sided rooftop escape as King Rat carries Saul along. At the end of this journey, King Rat reveals to Saul that he is his uncle by way of Saul's mother being a rat and also that Saul has been set up to take the fall for his father's death. Saul follows King Rat exploring the secrets of London, from the rooftops to the sewers. Being half rat, his two primary abilities are being able to eat anything, even garbage, and squeezing into holes and shadows too small for other creatures. Meanwhile, Saul's friend Natasha Karadjian, a drum and bass musician, begins to write and record new music with a flautist named Pete. Two of their other mutual friends, Fabian and Kay, are unnerved by this stranger but find it hard not to like the music the two are making. These friends are also being pursued by the police for any information on Saul's whereabouts. After spending several days with King Rat, Saul hears whispers of the return of the Ratcatcher. This prompts King Rat to gather allies, Anansi, the spider king, and Loplop, the bird king; they are prompted to join him for their own reasons—the Ratcatcher is also the Spidercatcher and Birdcatcher, their enemy as well. So, King Rat relates the story of living in Hamelin, the last time he really was king. But he was displaced, of course, by the Pied Piper of Hamelin and his flute. It is revealed that now the Piper travels the world seeking pests so he may kill for the fun of it. The three animal kings end the story by swearing revenge. Even with his new found powers, Saul is forced to stay in the shadows with King Rat, but cannot forget his own friends and past. He visits Kay but the two no longer understand each other. This visit leads to Pete, being reveled as the returned Piper, finding and murdering Kay. Meanwhile, the animal kings' plans begin to fall short and they drift apart. Saul begins to push his new boundaries and explore London on his own. During this time, he meets Deborah, a vagrant. Together they return to Saul's former flat, where he finds his father's old notebook. Here finds an entry about an attack on his mother nine months before his own birth. He realizes he is not King Rat's nephew but his son, by way of rape and that everything since his father's death has been a set up by King Rat, who must therefore be the murderer of the man Saul considers his father. As they discover these facts, the Piper confronts Saul and Deborah. He kills Deborah but Loplop saves Saul. The piper reveals that he cannot control Saul as he can the others, although he has attempted it; he has befriended Natasha to create a kind of music which can control humans. Saul returns to the sewers to confront King Rat, leading to a falling out. He wants to go his own way and leave the Piper to the animal kings. Natasha and Pete have set up an act at a club, Jungle, to debut their music. Fabian is interrogated by the police again and he realizes that the flute left behind when Saul was attacked belongs to Pete. He calls the police to meet him at Natasha's home but when they arrive no one is there. After wandering for a few days, Saul meets up with Anansi, who informs him of Kay's death by the Piper. He begins to notice something is wrong in the sewer as well, as the rats have disappeared, their scratching replaced by a new sound, music. He traces the sound back to King Rat's throne room, now filled with dead rats; King Rat and Loplop, though alive, are mesmerized by the music playing on a ghetto blaster. Saul realizes the title on the tape within is written in Natasha's handwriting. He finds a poster for Natasha and the Piper's show, and despite knowing it is a trap, he goes to save his friends. Saul sneaks into the club with his new rat allies and Anansi leading the spiders. However, when Natasha takes the stage to spin her records, Pete throws her a DAT, which has his flute samples on it. This mix of his flute and her DJ skills will control Saul. Saul and Anansi and the crowd are under the Piper's spell. However, King Rat bursts from under the stage and attacks the Piper, but proves to be only a momentary distraction. With the musical fusion playing, the entire club is under the Piper's control and all he wants to kill Saul, who will not dance for him. The music does not mesh: instead of one solo flute, two flutes compete for the overlying sound. This dissonance causes Saul to regain control just as the Piper attempts to kill him; he dodges the blow and resists the Piper. The Piper knows he cannot win a physical fight, so he tears a hole in reality by playing his flute through which he can escape, just as he tore a hole in the mountain to hide the children of Hamelin. King Rat attacks the Piper with the Piper's own flute; they both fall into the rent but King Rat jumps away, and suddenly the hole closes, the Piper on the other side. Saul and King Rat are unsung heroes of the club but the they both know they can never be a part of the world they just saved. King Rat still wants his kingdom back from Saul. Saul refuses to give in and knows that if the Piper returns, King Rat will still need him, so he can't be killed to restore complete order to the rat kingdom. Saul then gathers his own band of rats and makes the declaration that King Rat is not the one true leader of all rats and he is not Prince Rat, but he is one of them, Citizen Rat.
1202050	/m/04gwj3	To Your Scattered Bodies Go	Philip José Farmer	1971-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins with adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton waking up after his death on a strange new world made up of one ongoing river. He discovers that he is but one of billions of previously dead personalities from throughout Earth's history stretching from the Neolithic age through 2008 AD also 'resurrected'. At first the resurrectees are primarily focused on survival, though their basic needs for food are mysteriously taken care of; but eventually Burton decides to make it his mission to find the headwaters of the River and discover the purpose and intention of humanity's resurrection. Along the way he is enslaved and then, after being partnered with Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring, discovers the existence of a mysterious organization responsible for the resurrection of humanity, and is recruited by a rogue member of this group to take down their carefully laid plans.
1202066	/m/04gwkk	The Fabulous Riverboat	Philip José Farmer	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Twenty years after humanity was resurrected on Riverworld, Sam Clemens is traveling with the crew of a Viking longboat, captained by Eric Bloodaxe, who is notable for having an axe made of metal. On the metal-poor Riverworld, where even a few ounces of metal is a treasure, this is a rarity. Clemens and Bloodaxe have allied in order to find the source of this metal. Clemens is accompanied on his quest by a gigantic prehistoric hominid whom he has named Joe Miller. Miller, despite being very cordial, and talking with a lisp, is a fearsome warrior because of his size, and protects Clemens from Bloodaxe's crew. Clemens is also motivated in his quest by his desire to be reunited with his terrestrial wife, Livy. Unknown to the others, Clemens had been contacted by a mysterious being whom he named X. X claimed to be a member of the beings who were responsible for resurrection, although he disagreed with their goals. He was aware of Clemens's desire to build a metal riverboat, and assured the author that the metal needed to realise this dream could be found upriver. X manages to send a nickel-iron meteor crashing into Riverwold, not far from Clemens. Clemens and his crew manage to survive the resulting tidal wave that kills nearly everyone in the vicinity. Sadly, Clemens discovers Livy is one of the dead when her body washes up on deck. She had been in the area but will now be resurrected thousands of miles from him. In the wake of the tidal wave all the survivors in the region are put to sleep by a strange fog, and awake to discover the valley has been restored to a pristine condition. Clemens realizes that the meteor likely contains a source of metal and the crew sets out to look for it. They are soon joined by German aviator Lothar von Richthofen, a World War One ace and brother of the famous Red Baron. Lothar becomes a trusted ally of Clemens and an additional ally against Bloodaxe. When the crew reaches the area where the meteor fell, they find a new group of resurrectees who have formed a nascent kingdom. The crew quickly kill the leaders and assume control of the region for themselves. They begin mining the metal from the meteorite. However, Clemens does not trust Bloodaxe, and has his co-leader assassinated. As more metal is exhumed from the ground the technology level of the area begins to rise, including the reintroduction of firearms. While the meteorite is rich in nickel and iron Clemens needs other materials to manufacture modern conveniences. To get these resources he must trade much of his metal to neighboring kingdoms. Many of these kingdoms eye his own kingdom jealously and Clemens is constantly on guard lest he be invaded and his precious mine taken from him. Of particular concern is a neighboring kingdom led by the English King John Lackland. Eventually King John and another kingdom join forces to invade Clemens's land. However, Clemens makes a deal with King John to unite their lands. John betrays his one-time ally and forms the nation of Parolando with Clemens. As production begins on the boat, Clemens receives a rude shock when his wife arrives in the company of Cyrano de Bergerac. In the intervening years Livy has become Cyrano's lover. When the Frenchman, who is noted as one of the best swordsmen in the world, had heard of a kingdom with metal, he became obsessed with traveling there in order to obtain a proper sword. Despite his discomfort with the situation, Clemens quickly warms to Cyrano, and the Frenchman becomes part of Clemens' inner circle. Diplomatic problems continue for Parolando, most notably with nearby "Soul City", a kingdom founded by a black nationalists. Demanding ever increasing payments for its resources, Soul City eventually attacks Parolando, almost conquering the nation until agents of John Lackland dynamite a dam, sending a wave of water to sweep the invading enemies into the river. Despite such setbacks, Clemens builds his riverboat, a side paddle wheeler which is named the Not For Hire. However, on the day of its christening, King John betrays Clemens and steals the ship. As the boat steams away, Clemens vows to build an even bigger and better boat and to exact revenge on King John.
1202087	/m/04gwmp	The Dark Design	Philip José Farmer	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The shortest of the three plotlines is that of Richard Francis Burton and his friends. Reunited, Burton and crew once again begin traveling up river. At this point, many decades after resurrection, the stone supplies in the valley have begun to run out and technology has begun to break down. Also, for reasons unknown, the "little resurrections" have stopped, and people who are killed are not brought back to life. As they sail up river the crew encounters a group of ancient Egyptians who tell them a detailed story of the last attempt to reach the mouth of the river. This mission, which was launched by the Pharaoh Imhotep, included the giant whom Sam Clemens calls Joe Miller (believed by the Egyptians to be an incarnation of the god Thoth). This mission reached the end of the river, and found a massive waterfall. Scaling its sides, they eventually found a passage through to the polar sea. Descending a ledge which had been carved into the rock they found a cave filled with food and powered boats. While most of the Egyptians sailed to the tower, never to return, one died and took their story to the valley. Besides learning this story the group's main significant act is uncovering a pair of impostors within their midst. Under hypnosis, the neanderthal Kaz remembers when they last encountered an agent of the people who created the Riverworld. He noted at the time that every resurrectee had marking on their forehead which Kaz and other Neanderthals could see, but which were invisible to others. The exception was this agent. At the time Kaz noticed that Monat and Frigate also lacked these markings. However, before he could tell Burton, he was confronted by the pair, who hypnotized him into forgetting his discovery. Burton quickly concludes that Monat and Frigate are agents sent to spy on him. When he goes to confront the two, he finds that they have escaped. The second storyline deals with the real Peter Jairus Frigate. Unaware that an alien agent has been posing as him, this Frigate, whose life story is identical in most respects to the one which the phony Frigate told (the exception being the real Frigate was born and lived a few decades earlier than the impostor had claimed), has been living an ordinary life along the river. One day a ship docks near his home and he recognizes the two men who captain it as his childhood heroes Jack London and Tom Mix. Accompanied by the sufi Nur ed Din and the African warrior Umslopogas, the two men are traveling incognito up the river. Desperate to join his heroes, Frigate signs on the ship where he becomes a valued crew member, not revealing for years that he knows the men's identities. Eventually he admits that he knows who they are and the two men tell their story. They were each contacted by The Mysterious Stranger, who enlisted them to find the headwaters of the River. When the boat arrives at a metal-rich kingdom named New Bohemia, Frigate suggests that they speed their travel there by building a balloon. After a betrayal by the ruler of New Bohemia, the men eventually get their balloon and travel a good distance upriver, only to crash when they have a near-miss with another flying vehicle. The story of that flying vehicle is told in the third stream of the novel. This details the efforts of the nation of Parolando to build an airship. The ship, the brainchild of Parolando's president, the engineer Milton Firebrass, will be able to reach the pole more quickly than the two riverboats which Parolando has already constructed. Firebrass is assisted in these efforts by Cyrano de Bergerac, who has remained behind to work on the project. They are joined by newcomer Jill Gulbirra, an Australian dirigible pilot and strident feminist. Gulbirra, the most experienced lighter-than-air pilot in the region, quickly becomes important to the project, as does Cyrano, who, surprisingly, turns out to be the nation's best pilot. When the ship is built it sets off, under the command of Firebrass and Gulbirra, for the pole. Making its way through a massive hole in the mountains which surround the polar sea, the airship confronts the dark tower. Suddenly anxious, Firebrass, along with a few hand picked others, board a helicopter to descend to the tower. However, their helicopter is blown up shortly before landing, killing all aboard. The culprit is Barry Thorne, an engineer who had been working on the ship. While he is confined to a prison, the rest of the crew begins to explore the tower. They find an open door on the roof which leads into the structure. However, when they attempt to gain entry they become blocked by an invisible force. The only one who manages to enter the building is one of the pilots, a Japanese Sufi named Piscator, who never returns. After waiting some time for him to return, the ship reluctantly departs. After they return to the valley, they are cajoled by Clemens into conducting a revenge mission against King John. John had managed to persuade the pilot of a second Parolando dirigible to attack Clemens' ship, the Mark Twain. Seeking revenge, Clemens orders the larger airship, the Parseval, to conduct a mission to kidnap King John and return him for punishment. The mission, led by Cyrano, meets with some success, until John manages to escape as their helicopter attempts to return to the airship. Frustrated, the attackers return to discover that Thorne has escaped. He parachutes from the airship, which soon explodes from the bombs which he had planted aboard it.
1202130	/m/04gwr0	The Guns of the South	Harry Turtledove	1992-09-22	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 It is January 1864, and the Confederacy is losing the war against the United States. Men with strange accents and oddly mottled clothing approach Robert E. Lee at the headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia, demonstrating a rifle far superior to all other firearms of the time. The men call their organization "America Will Break" (or "AWB"), and offer to supply the Confederate army with these rifles, which they refer to as AK-47s. The weapons operate on chemical and engineering principles unknown to Confederate military engineers. Soldiers are trained by the AWB men to use their new weapons, and ammunition is issued. Confederate morale improves considerably as the men prepare to meet Union forces in the 1864 campaign. They soon engage General Grant's men at the Battle of the Wilderness, and inflict a devastating defeat on Union forces. The AWB establish a base in the little town of Rivington, making it into a combined fortress and arsenal. They continue to offer inexplicable information and technology to the Confederacy, even providing Lee with nitroglycerin pills, which ease his frequent chest pains. Finally, Lee questions their leader, Andries Rhoodie, who ultimately decides to tell Lee the truth. The men of AWB are time travelers from the year 2014, the 21st-century. The newcomers claim that white supremacy has not endured to the modern era, and that blacks in the future will eclipse whites. Lee is informed that unless a slave-holding South is allowed to endure into the 20th century, blacks will take over the world. A slave-owner himself, Lee is surprised by this revelation—he never thought Negroes capable of participating in government. With the AWB's guns and some direct military aid from the racist South Africans, the Army of Northern Virginia drives Ulysses Grant's forces out of Virginia and in a surprise night attack captures Washington, D.C., thus ending the Civil War. The United Kingdom and France recognize the Confederacy and President Lincoln is forced to accept Southern victory. As Confederate forces begin to end their occupation of Washington, the new country starts to determine its future social and political direction. In negotiations between the two Americas, to which Lee is made a representative for the CSA, the United States agrees to pay millions of dollars in reparations, albeit reluctantly. The Confederacy, in turn, gives up any claim to Maryland and West Virginia. After much debate, both sides agree for Kentucky and Missouri to hold elections and determine whether they will remain in the Union or secede. Supporters, both official and unofficial, pour into both states and try to sway voters their way. Ultimately, despite an assassination attempt on Lee by a former slave and efforts at rigging elections by the Rivington men, Kentucky secedes and Missouri remains in the Union. Confederate slaves freed during the war by Union troops violently resist returning to slavery. Lee, already dubious about slavery and respectful of the courage of the United States Colored Troops during the war, becomes convinced that continuing to enslave Negroes is both wrong and impracticable. The genie is already out of the bottle, and black guerrillas will continue to make trouble in the future. Some parts of the South had already lost many of their slaves during the war anyway. Despite threats by the Rivington men, Lee makes no effort to hide his views as he runs for president in 1867. The Rivington men convince Nathan Bedford Forrest to run against Lee on a pro-slavery ticket, and pour their considerable resources into Forrest's campaign. When Lee manages a narrow victory, Forrest respectfully concedes defeat and promises to help rally the young nation behind its new president. At Lee's inauguration, AWB men attempt to assassinate him using Uzis, resulting in the death of Lee's wife, Mary; his vice president, Albert Gallatin Brown; various dignitaries and generals; and many civilians. The AWB offices in Richmond are seized after a fierce battle, and Lee enters the stronghold to find more technological marvels (such as light bulbs), along with a collection of books that document the increasing marginalization of racism from 1865 into the 21st century. Lee shows these books to Confederate congressmen, hoping that the future's nearly universal condemnation of slavery will convince the congressmen to vote for his plan for gradual abolition. Confederate forces surround Rivington and after a long siege capture the town. Confederate infantry destroy the AWB's time machine during the fighting, prompting the rest to lose hope and surrender. Andries Rhoodie is killed by an enraged slave, who the Confederates, well aware of the Rivington men's cruelty and treason, spare. In Richmond, the Confederate Congress passes President Lee's abolition bill. Contemporaries have reproduced the nitroglycerin pills brought by the AWB, and Lee hopes, with their help, to live to see the effects of his plan for emancipation. Meanwhile, a few of the stranded South Africans agree to help the Confederacy replicate their 21st century technology from 2014, helping Lee to counter the Union's own replica AK-47's and greater industrial strength. Though the Union has started a war with the British Empire by invading Canada and Lee fears the Union may attempt a war of revenge against the CSA in the future, he rests assured that the CSA will remain the most technologically-advanced nation in the world for many decades to come.
1202782	/m/04gyyp	The Winter of Our Discontent	John Steinbeck	1961	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Feeling the pressure from his family and acquaintances to achieve more than his current station, Ethan considers letting his normally high standards of conduct take a brief respite in order to attain a better social and economic position. Ethan's decision to gain wealth and power is influenced by criticisms and advice from people around him. His acquaintance Margie urges him to take bribes; the bank manager (whose ancestors Ethan blames for his family's fall from grace) urges him to be more ruthless. Ethan's friend Joey, a bank teller, even gives Ethan a rundown on how to rob a bank and get away with it. On discovering that the current store owner, Italian immigrant Alfio Marullo, might be an illegal immigrant, he places an anonymous tip with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. After Marullo is taken into custody, he transfers ownership of the store to Ethan through the actions of the very government agent that caught him. Marullo gives Ethan the store because he believes Ethan is so honest and deserving. Ethan also considers, plans, and mentally rehearses a bank robbery, stopping short of carrying it out only because of external circumstances. Eventually, he manages to become powerful in the town by taking possession of a strip of land needed by local businessmen to build an airport; he gets the land from Danny Taylor, the town drunkard and Ethan's childhood best friend, through a will made out by Danny and slipped under the door of the store. The will was drawn up without any spoken agreement some time after Ethan gave Danny money under the auspices of sending Danny to receive treatment for alcoholism. Danny assures him that drunks are liars and that he will just drink the money away, and this is indeed confirmed when Danny is found dead with empty bottles of whiskey and sleeping pills. In this way, Ethan gets to a position where he's able to control the behind-the-scenes dealings of the corrupt town businessmen and politicians. Ethan seems to accept what he has done but is confident that he will not become corrupted by it. He considers that while he had to kill men in the war, he never became a murderer thereafter. When he discovers that his son won a nationwide essay contest by plagiarizing classic American authors and orators, a conversation ensues with his son in which his son denies any kind of guilty feelings. The son maintains that everyone cheats and lies and that this is in fact the way of things. Perhaps after seeing his own moral decay in his son's actions, and experiencing the guilt of Marullo's deportation and especially the death of Danny, Ethan sets out to commit suicide. His daughter, intuitively understanding his intent, slips a family talisman into his pocket during a long embrace. When Ethan decides to commit the act, he reaches into his pocket to find razorblades and instead comes across the talisman. As the tide comes into the alcove in which he has sequestered himself, he struggles to get out in order to return the talisman to his daughter, in hopes that the light does not go out of her.
1203494	/m/04h0b8	Ecce Romani		2000-01		 The stories revolve around the wealthy Cornelii family, who live outside the town of Baiae in the Roman province of Campania in AD 80. The family is made up of Gaius Cornelius, a Roman senator, his wife, Aurelia, and their two children, Marcus and Cornelia. The family has also taken in a boy named Sextus, whose mother died the previous year in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and whose father is in Asia Minor. In the beginning of the book, Cornelia often plays with her friend and neighbour Flavia. The Cornelii also have many slaves, including Davus (from Britannia, the overseer of their farm) and Eucleides (a Greek, the boys' paedagogus or tutor). The first chapters all deal with the family's daily life in their villa, particularly the adventures of the children. In one, Cornelia and Flavia are surprised by a wolf in the woods, and Marcus chases off the wolf while Sextus runs away in fear. Later, Gaius receives from the emperor a letter in which he is told he urgently needs to go to Rome. Instead of going alone, he brings everyone in the family, including Sextus. After their departure, Davus is placed in control of the farm and deals with a runaway slave named Geta in the typical Roman manner, i.e., by capturing him and then branding his forehead with the letters "FUG" (for fugitive). Meanwhile, as the family is traveling down the Via Appia (Appian Way), a courier goes by quickly, forcing the family's carriage into a ditch. The carriage driver, Syrus, cannot extract the carriage from the ditch, and the family becomes stranded along the side of the road. Gaius and Aurelia are worried. They finally decide to stay at a nearby inn, owned by Apollodorus. Aurelia understands the dangers that inns pose to wealthy Romans, and is afraid of staying there. Marcus and Sextus, however, are not so fearful, and accompany Gaius to the dining area, where they are told a frightening story by a soldier staying in the inn. Afterwards, the boys are terrified to go to sleep, but both eventually drift off. The next morning, the inn's slaves help Syrus drag the family's carriage from the ditch, and they complete the journey to Rome without further mishap. Upon arrival, they are welcomed to the city by Cornelia and Marcus's uncle, Titus. Shortly after their arrival Eucleides, Marcus, Cornelia, and Sextus visit the Circus Maximus and watch a chariot race. In the second book of the textbook series, the Cornelii are preparing to throw a dinner party for friends and family. Cornelia and Aurelia go out into the city to purchase food for the party, and in the streets witness some typical Roman scenes including a terrible fire in an insula (apartment building). Later, at the dinner party, Titus collapses because of inebriation. After the party is over, Eucleides returns home wounded. He had been mugged in a bad part of Rome, the Subura, while coming back from his brother's house. After he recovers, he takes the boys to school, where Sextus disobeys the teacher and is beaten. Two letters now play an important role. In the first Sextus writes about his life in a letter to his distant father. In the second the family learns of the imminent arrival of Quintus Valerius, a distinguished young man whose family is known by the Cornelii. There is a story of pirates, a trip to the baths (thermae), and a retelling of Pyramus and Thisbe, as originally told by the Roman poet Ovid. Marcus, Sextus, and Cornelia play typical games in between their studies and housework (in the case of Cornelia). Marcus goes to the Colosseum and witnesses the games there. Sometime later, Marcus comes of age, closely followed by Cornelia's marriage to the above named Valerius. The final chapter of Book II is the funeral of Titus. The final book of the series breaks away from stories about the Cornelii, and students are exposed to reading excerpts of historical Latin by authors such as Petronius, Cicero, and Augustus.
1204781	/m/04h3tk	Le Grand Meaulnes	Alain-Fournier	1913		 François, the narrator of the book, is the son of M. Seurel, who is the director of the school in a small village in the Sologne, a region of lakes and sandy forests. After arriving in class, Augustin Meaulnes, who comes from a poor background, soon disappears. He returns from an escapade he had which was an incredible and magical costume party where he met the girl of his dreams, Yvonne de Galais.
1205109	/m/04h4nb	Bear Island	Alistair MacLean	1971	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A converted fishing trawler, Morning Rose carries a movie-making crew across the Barents Sea to isolated Bear Island, well above the Arctic Circle, for some on-location filming, but the script is a secret known only to the producer and screenwriter. En route, members of the movie crew and ship's company begin to die under mysterious circumstances. The crew's doctor, Marlowe, finds himself enmeshed in a violent, multi-layered plot in which very few of the persons aboard are whom they claim to be. Marlowe's efforts to unravel the plot become even more complicated once the movie crew is deposited ashore on Bear Island, beyond the reach of the law or outside help. The murders continue ashore, and Marlowe, who is not what he seems to be either, discovers they may be related to some forgotten events of the Second World War.
1207080	/m/04h9bm	Last Son of Krypton	Elliot S! Maggin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Last Son of Krypton is Elliot S. Maggin's first Superman novel. It tells the "life story" of Superman; from his birth on the planet Krypton, to his childhood in Smallville and his career as Superboy, to his arrival in Metropolis and his career as Superman. The main antagonist in this story is a mysterious alien ruler with ties to Superman's past. Superman and his greatest enemy Lex Luthor must join forces to retrieve a document written by Albert Einstein and stop the alien ruler.
1207136	/m/04h9h4	Miracle Monday				 In the story, Samael, the ruler of Hell, sends his greatest agent of evil, C. W. Saturn, to Earth, to destroy Superman morally. Saturn is able to enter our dimension thanks to Lex Luthor having used a form of magic to escape prison, leaving a 'hole' between worlds. At the same time, Kristin Wells, a journalism student from the far future, uses time travel technology to arrive in the present, for the purpose of finding out the origin of the holiday known as Miracle Monday, of which only the fact that it is somehow connected to Superman is known. She infiltrates Clark Kent's circle of friends by becoming Lois Lane's assistant. Unfortunately, because she does not belong in the present, Saturn is able to possess her. Saturn then proceeds to cause worldwide havoc, taunting Superman that the only way for him to stop it would be by killing its host&mdash;thus making him break his vow against killing. Saturn even reveals Superman's secret identity to the world, to further drive him into desperation. Ultimately, however, Superman refuses to kill Kristin, even if it means he would have to spend the rest of his life battling Saturn. At that moment, because of the rules that bind demons, Saturn is defeated, and forced to grant Superman a wish. He asks that everything that happened since Saturn's arrival be undone, and it is granted, with Saturn then being banished back to Hell. However, a lingering memory of the events remained within the souls of humanity, causing them to begin celebrating the day every year, on the third Monday of May, starting the Miracle Monday tradition. Kristin then returns to the future to reveal this fact to the public.
1207338	/m/04h9xx	Enchantment	Orson Scott Card	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist and narrator is Ivan Smetski, a young Ukrainian-American linguist who specializes in Old Church Slavonic, a language from 10th-century Russia. In 1992, Ivan returns to his native town of Kiev to pursue additional graduate studies. While there he discovers the body of a woman, apparently sleeping in the woods. He awakens her with a kiss, and she tells him, in Old Church Slavonic, that she is Katerina, a princess of the kingdom of Taina. Transported back to the 10th century, Ivan follows Katerina back to Taina where he finds the Christian kingdom terrorized by the traditional Russian arch-villainess Baba Yaga. Ivan and Katerina marry and escape back to the 20th century to avoid the machinations of Baba Yaga, who has enslaved a god and laid claim to Taina's throne, and the druzhinnik Dimitri who covets the throne. Baba Yaga's magical powers, however, allow for her to follow Ivan and Katerina to modern times. Back in the Ukraine, Ivan discovers that his cousin is in reality the immortal god Mikola Mozhaiski. Returning to the United States, Ivan further discovers that his mother is a magic user, with the same powers as Katerina. After Katerina discovers Dimitri's plot through scrying, Ivan and Katerina return to Taina, deftly avoiding Baba Yaga who magically "skyjacks" their intended 747 back to the 10th century. Returning to Taina, Ivan and Katerina confront Dimitri, the enslaved god, and Baba Yaga. Though the Castle of Taina is destroyed, the two emerge victorious, and return to the modern world to live.
1208786	/m/04hdwk	Roadwork	Stephen King		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel starts with a "man on the street" news interview in August 1972, in which an unnamed man (later revealed to be Dawes) gives his angry opinion of the highway extension project. The narrative then jumps forward to November 1973, with Dawes, seemingly unaware of the underlying motivations of his actions, visiting a gun shop and purchasing a heavy-caliber pistol and rifle. As the story progresses, it is revealed that Dawes' son Charlie had died from brain cancer several years earlier, and that Dawes is unable or unwilling to sever his emotional ties to his workplace and the house that his son grew up in. Dawes loses his middle management job at an industrial laundry after sabotaging the purchase of their new facility, and after learning of his actions, his wife Mary leaves him. Dawes then approaches Sal Magliore, the owner of a local used-car dealership with ties to the Mob, in an attempt to obtain explosives. Magliore initially dismisses him as a crackpot, so Dawes assembles a load of Molotov cocktails and uses them to damage the highway construction equipment, causing a brief delay in the project. Later, Magliore agrees to sell Dawes a load of explosives, paid for with money from the sale of Dawes' house to the city under its eminent domain statute, and has Dawes' house checked for phone taps planted by the city. Dawes gives most of the rest of his money to Magliore to invest on behalf of Olivia Brenner, a young hitchhiker on whom he took pity during a brief meeting and sexual encounter. In January 1974, during the final hours before the morning when he must leave the property, Dawes wires the whole house with the explosives and barricades himself inside. When the police arrive to forcibly evict him, he shoots at them, forcing them to take cover and attracting the attention of the media. Dawes coerces the police into letting a reporter - the same one who interviewed him in 1972, though neither recognizes the other - come in and speak to him. Once the reporter has left, Dawes tosses his guns out the window and sets off his explosives, destroying the house with himself inside. A short epilogue reveals that there was no real reason for the extension project; the city simply had extra money in its road construction budget, and had to spend it for fear of having the next year's budget reduced.
1208818	/m/04hdzg	The Sum of Our Discontent				 The first chapter is entitled "A Short History of Counting". It describes the progression of numbers from being considered divine in early history to their present day pragmatism. It opens in 1904 Berlin with the story of a counting horse named Clever Hans, who was, to the relief of all, proved by psychologist Oskar Pfungst to not really be able to count. This fit in with the earlier opinion of Nicholas of Cusa, a cardinal who was a pioneer of quantification, that counting is what separates man from animals. Boyle then covers the history of counting in detail, starting with when numbers were considered to be divine and were the exclusive domain of the accountant-priests of the Assyrian Empire, then going on to Pythagoras and the Ancient Greeks who believed numbers represented the harmony of nature. Legend has it that Pythagoras may have studied with the Magi and been influenced by them after having been held captive in Babylon. Even a later practical and scientific mathematician such as Heinrich Hertz agreed with this natural significance of numbers. Boyle then goes to the medieval fascination and obsession with clocks that are thought to have possibly been invented by Gerbert of Aurillac, a monk. The long and fascinating history of the abacus also turns up time and time again in counting history. Luca Pacioli's invention of double-entry accounting further brought us to the present day situation of numbers being used to measure everything. The next chapters tell the stories of various historical figures and how they relate to the book's concept. They are all good stories; many of them focus on the unintended consequences of the ideas of their creators, specifically Thomas Malthus and John Maynard Keynes, who have both become known as measurers, but were really more interested in unmeasurable concepts. It all starts with eccentric Jeremy Bentham who tried to measure happiness, then progresses to his utilitarian followers John Stuart Mill and Thomas Malthus. One problem with counting that became evident from this era was that it gave no solutions or causality, just data. Next he describes the political self-esteem movement started by California politician John Vasconcellos in consultation with his friend Jack Canfield, author of the popular self-esteem self-help book Chicken Soup for the Soul. A lot of Vasconcellous' ideas came from the Esalen Institute in the mountains near Big Sur, where Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs theory was popularized. Boyle then tells the interesting story of Frederick Winslow Taylor and his extremely number-oriented scientific management. He then covers the ethical investing fad, an attempt to measure by more than numbers that itself falls victim to counting irrationality. Next is the story of economist John Maynard Keynes. The chapter on "New Indicators" describes attempts to replace GNP with broader measures such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) that attempt to account for full environmental costs. That index was popularized in a 1994 article in The Atlantic Monthly by Clifford Cobb about his new Redefining Progress think tank. Hazel Henderson's 1981 book Politics for the Solar Age was responsible for sparking the creation of the Air Pollution Index, one of many quality of life measurements that are now proliferating. An interesting point is that such measurements are often most meaningful if created and made by the people who care about them. The next chapter covers the story of Edgar Cahn http://nejl.wcl.american.edu/cahnarticle.html who came up with the time dollar as an outgrowth of his battles with proponents of cost-benefit analysis but more importantly from his desire to make people feel valuable. The initial time dollar projects began in 1987 with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The book ends appropriately enough with a chapter named "The bottom-line". Boyle summarizes how the practice of trying to measure everything (which used to go by the name pantometry but is now so common that the word has fallen out of use) can rob us of our humanity. Measuring is very necessary, but so is intuition and storytelling, which can often express points much better than numbers can. He thinks we should try to bridge the gap between the eastern and western view of numbers, which have been in conflict since Pythagoras. He ends with a relevant quote from Prince Charles from his millennium broadcast on the BBC. Boyle's bottom line is that measuring does not in itself improve anything.
1208874	/m/04hf55	Edward II	Christopher Marlowe	1593		 The play telescopes most of Edward II's reign into a single narrative, beginning with the recall of his favourite, Piers Gaveston, from exile, and ending with his son, Edward III, executing Mortimer Junior for the king's murder. Marlowe's play opens at the outset of the reign, with Edward's exiled favourite, Piers Gaveston, rejoicing at the recent death of Edward I and his own resulting ability to return to England. In the following passage he plans the entertainments with which he will delight the king: :Music and poetry is his delight; :Therefore I'll have Italian masques by night, :Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows; :And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, :Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad; :My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, :Shall with their goat-feet dance an antic hay. :Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape, :With hair that gilds the water as it glides, :Crownets of pearl about his naked arms, :And in his sportful hands an olive tree :To hide those parts which men delight to see, :Shall bathe him in a spring; and there, hard by, :One like Actaeon, peeping through the grove, :Shall by the angry goddess be transformed, :And running in the likeness of a hart :By yelping hounds pulled down and seem to die. :Such things as these best please his majesty. (I.i.53-70) Upon Gaveston’s re-entry into the country, Edward gives him titles, access to the royal treasury, and the option of having guards protect him. Although Gaveston himself is not of noble birth, he maintains that he is better than common people and craves pleasing shows, Italian masques, music and poetry. However much Gaveston pleases the king, however, he finds scant favour from the king's nobles, who are soon clamouring for Gaveston's exile. Edward is forced to agree to this and banishes Gaveston to Ireland, but Isabella of France, the Queen, who still hopes for his favour, persuades Mortimer, who later becomes her lover, to argue for his recall, though only so that he may be more conveniently murdered. The nobles accordingly soon find an excuse to turn on Gaveston again, and eventually capture and execute him. Edward in turn executes two of the nobles who persecuted Gaveston, Warwick and Lancaster. Edward now seeks comfort in a new favourite, Spencer, and his father, decisively alienating Isabella, who takes Mortimer as her lover and travels to France with her son in search of allies. France, however, will not help the queen and refuses to give her arms, although she does get help from Sir John of Hainault. Edward, both in the play and in history, is nothing like the soldier his father was — it was during his reign that the English army was disastrously defeated at Bannockburn — and is soon outgeneralled. Edward takes refuge in Neath Abbey, but is betrayed by a mower, who emblematically carries a scythe. Both Spencers are executed, and the king himself is taken first to Kenilworth. His brother Edmund, Earl of Kent, after having initially renounced his cause, now tries to help him but realizes too late the power the young Mortimer now has. Arrested for approaching the imprisoned Edward, Edmund is taken to court, where Mortimer, Isabella, and Edward III preside. He is executed by Mortimer, who claims he is a threat to the throne, despite the pleading of Edward III. The prisoner king is then taken to Berkeley Castle, where he meets the luxuriously cruel Lightborn, whose name is an anglicised version of "Lucifer". Despite knowing that Lightborn is there to kill him, Edward asks him to stay by his side. Lightborn, realizing that the king will not fall for deception, kills him. Maltravers and Gurney witness this before Gurney kills Lightborn to keep his silence. Later, however, Gurney flees, and Mortimer sends Maltravers after him, as they fear betrayal. Isabella arrives to warn Mortimer that Edward III, her son with Edward II, has discovered their plot. Before they can plan accordingly, her son arrives with attendants and other lords, accusing Mortimer of murder. Mortimer denies this, but eventually is arrested and taken away. He tells Isabella not to weep for him, and the queen begs her son to show Mortimer mercy, but he refuses. Edward III then orders Mortimer's death and his mother's imprisonment, and the play ends with him taking the throne.
1212264	/m/04hr3f	La Galatea	Miguel de Cervantes	1585	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main characters of the Galatea are Elicio and Erastro, best friends and enamoured with Galatea. The novel opens with her and her best friend, Florisa, bathing, talking of love. Erastro and Elicio reveal to each other their desire for Galatea, but agree not to let it come betwixt their friendship. Eventually, all four of them begin their journey to the wedding of Daranio and Silveria, along which, in the pastoral tradition, they encounter other characters who tell their own stories and often join the traveling group. The vast majority of the characters in the book are involved primarily in minor story lines. Lisandro loses his love, Leonida, when Crisalvo mistakenly kills her instead of his former love Silvia. Lisandro avenges Crisalvo in the presence of the main party. Astor, under the pseudonym Silerio, feigns attraction for Nísida’s sister Blanca in order to avoid the scorn of Nísida’s lover Timbrio, who dies following the confusion present after a successful duel against his rival Pransiles. Astor’s grief thrusts him into hermitage, waiting to hear from Nísida. Arsindo holds a poetry competition betwixt Francenio y Lauso, which is judged by Tirsi and Damón, lauded by many within the novel as some of the most famous poets of Spain, and is determined to have no single winner. The wedding has controversy as Mireno is deeply in love with Silveria, yet Daranio’s wealth guaranteed him the hand of Silveria. These stories sometimes have characters that cross over, resulting in the sub-plots being intertwined at times. For example, Teolinda, whose sister Leonida played in an integral role in separating Teolinda from her lover Artidoro, finds Leonida much later with a group of soldiers. The fame of Tirsi and Damón instantly connects them with the hired wedding bards, Orompo, Crisio, Marsilio, and Orfenio, as well as the teacher Arsindo.
1213155	/m/04ht6q	Anandamath	Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay	1882	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is set in 1771 during famine in Bengal (see Famine in India, for more information about famine in India under the British regime). Kalyani, a housewife, is fleeing through the forest with her infant, trying to escape from man-hunters who will sell her for food. After a long chase, she loses consciousness at the bank of a river. A Hindu monk, stumbles upon her and the baby, but before he can help her, he is arrested by the British soldiers, because other priests were fueling revolt against the British rule. While being dragged away he spots another priest who is not wearing his distinctive robes and sings, The other priest deciphers the song, rescues Kalyani and the baby, taking them to a rebel priest hideout. Concurrently, Kalyani's husband, Mahendra, is also given shelter by the priests, and they are reunited. The leader of the rebels shows Mahendra the three faces of Bharat-Mata (Mother India) as three goddess idols being worshipped in three consecutive rooms: #What Mother Was - An idol of Goddess Jagaddhatri # What Mother Has Become - An idol of Goddess Kali # What Mother Will Be - An idol of Goddess Durga Gradually, the rebel influence grows and their ranks swell. Emboldened, they shift their headquarter to a small brick fort. The British attack the fort with a large force. The rebels blockade the bridge over the nearby river, but they lack any artillery or military training. In the fighting, the British make a tactical retreat over the bridge. The Sannyasis undisciplined army, lacking military experience, chases the British into the trap. Once the bridge is full of rebels, British artillery opens fire, inflicting severe casualties. However, some rebels manage to capture some of the cannons, and turn the fire back on to the British lines. The British are forced to fall back, the rebels winning their first battle. The story ends with Mahendra and Kalyani building a home again, with Mahendra continuing to support the rebels.
1213987	/m/04hwvp	Pandora	Anne Rice	1998-03-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Pandora was born with the name Lydia in the Roman Republic in the year 15 BC to a Senatorial family. She is tall, with rippling brown hair and gold-brown eyes. Like many Patrician Roman females of the time Pandora was taught how to read and write and is well versed in epic poems, especially Ovid's works. She meets Marius for the first time when he is twenty-five and she is ten. Marius asks for Lydia's hand in marriage, but her father rejects Marius' offer. Five years later, Lydia sees Marius at a festival and begs her father to allow her to marry Marius. Her father again refuses. Pandora's father holds a high rank as a Senator. But when a new emperor takes power, her family is betrayed by her own brother and killed. Only Pandora and her traitorous brother survive the massacre, and she is taken to Antioch (after changing her name) by a man who was very close to her father. There she meets Marius again, twenty years after their last encounter. Unbeknownst to her, Marius is now a vampire. She eventually finds out what Marius has become, and also that he protects and hides the Queen and King of all Vampires. The vampire, Akabar, wants to steal the Queen's powerful and ancient blood. Marius and Pandora try to prevent him from carrying out his plan. To gain access to the Queen, Akabar uses Marius's love for Pandora against him and drains Pandora to the point of death. In order to save her, Marius is forced to make Pandora into a vampire and forced to let Akabar see the Queen, who then destroys Akabar. The pair stay together for the next two hundred years, taking care of the King and Queen of all vampires, before arguing and separating. Marius later characterized the breakup (of which he left her and she spent six months or more waiting for him to return) as being entirely his fault: He considers himself a teacher who longs to impart what he knows upon his pupils, but Pandora -being as free-spirited and highly educated as she was -had no patience to be his student. During their time together, against his objection, she did turn one of her beloved slaves into a vampire. As soon as he was turned he left the pair and was not seen again. The next time they meet again is in a Dresden ballroom in the early to late-17th century. Marius tries in vain to make Pandora leave her companion and fledgling, Arjun, and come back to him. Pandora's relationship with Arjun is of great concern to Marius, who fears Pandora is being held against her will. While she outwardly denies this, Pandora overcomes her embarrassment and admits to David in her writing that she could not bring herself to leave Arjun, citing that his stronger will propelled them both through time. The next and last time that they meet is in 1985, when she is among thirteen vampires who survived Akasha's killing spree and gathered at Maharet's house in the Sonoma compound to battle against Akasha. Pandora remains quiet and withdrawn throughout the whole ordeal, staring out the windows and saying little, rousing herself only once to say that Akasha is trying to justify deplorable "reasons" for a holocaust. Like many vampires, Pandora is a morose, despairing immortal who initially wanted immortality but soon regretted her choice and turns into a dark, indifferent cynic. Lestat thinks that Pandora was troubled in some deep, fundamental way even before she became a vampire, because she's the only vampire who doesn't receive visions of Maharet and Mekare in her dreams. During the confrontation in Sonoma, when Akasha directly asks Pandora to join with her or die, Pandora merely responds in a quiet, indifferent voice that she can't do what Akasha is asking of her, and stoically accepts the idea of being killed. Even after Akasha herself is destroyed and the thirteen vampires regroup in Armand's Night Island in Florida, Pandora still acts withdrawn from her fellow vampire kin, watching music videos all day long and completely ignoring Marius, who dotes on her lovingly. There is no sense of recovery or security in her as there is with the other vampires, and she departs from Night Island alone, still just as morose as ever. David Talbot encounters her in Paris shortly after the events of Memnoch the Devil and before the story of The Vampire Armand. He asks her to write the story of her life, which she does in a cafe by writing in some notebooks he gave her. She recalls the details of her life before becoming a vampire and briefly discusses the period when she was with Marius. After she has finished, she writes that she plans to go to New Orleans to look for Marius and to look into the eyes of Lestat, and try to understand what it is he saw. She is last seen at the end of Blood and Gold, alongside Marius. es:Pandora (novela) fr:Pandora (roman) hr:Pandora (vampir) it:Pandora (romanzo) pl:Pandora (powieść) pt:Pandora (livro) ru:Пандора (роман)
1217271	/m/04j5dh	Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love	Brad Fraser			 Using and subverting elements of various genres, including thriller, situation comedy and grade-B horror film, the piece is written with cynical humor, but is serious in tone. As the play begins, a serial killer is preying on young women in the city; we soon realize that Bernie is the murderer, a fact only discovered by the other characters late in the play. Narration is provided by Benita, a prostitute with psychic ability whose mental gifts will figure prominently in the resolution of the plot.
1217273	/m/04j5dv	Lest Darkness Fall	L. Sprague de Camp	1941	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lest Darkness Fall is written along lines similar to those of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. American archaeologist Martin Padway is visiting the Pantheon in Rome in 1938. A thunderstorm arrives, lightning cracks, and he finds himself transported to 6th century Rome (535). The period Padway arrives in is a rather obscure one: Italy was ruled by the Ostrogoths, who had recently overthrown the Western Roman Empire, but were (in de Camp's opinion anyway) ruling relatively benevolently, e.g. allowing freedom of religion, and maintaining the urban Roman society which they conquered essentially unchanged. In real history, shortly after this the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire temporarily expanded westwards, embarking on what came to be known as the Gothic War (535–554). They overthrew the Ostrogoths in Italy and the Vandals in north Africa, but they never consolidated their rule over Italy, and it collapsed into various small states with further invasions by the Lombards. The war was highly devastating to the Italian urbanized society that was supported by a settled hinterland, and by the end of the conflict Italy was devastated and considerably depopulated: the Italian population is estimated to have decreased from 7 million to 2.5 million. The great cities of Rome and her allies were abandoned as Italy fell into a long period of decline. There are some grounds for historians to consider this&nbsp;– rather than the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the previous century&nbsp;– as the true beginning of the Dark Ages. Padway begins his adventures confused, wondering if he is dreaming or delusional. Quickly, he accepts his fate and sets out to survive. At first, Padway hits upon the idea of making a copper still and selling brandy for a living. He convinces a banker, Thomasus the Syrian, to lend him money to start his endeavor, partially by teaching his clerks Arabic numerals and double entry bookkeeping. Padway moves on to develop a printing press, issue newspapers, and build a sketchy semaphore telegraph system. His efforts to produce a mechanical clock, gunpowder, and a cannon are failures. Despite his technological and academic bent he becomes more and more involved in the politics of the state, as Italy is invaded by the Imperials and also threatened from the south and east. Padway rescues the recently deposed Thiudahad and becomes his quaestor. He uses the king's support to gather forces to defeat the Imperial general Belisarius&nbsp;– no mean feat, for somebody who never fought in any war against one of history's most well-known military talents, but Padway did manage to completely surprise Belisarius with tactics never used in the ancient world. Then, deceiving the Dalmatian army, he re-enthrones the largely senile Thiudahad and imprisons King Wittigis as a hostage. In 537, when Wittigis is killed and Thiudahad reduced to madness, Padway has a protégé of his married to Mathaswentha and then created king of the Ostrogoths. He also tricks Justinian I into releasing Belisarius from his oath of allegiance and quickly enlists the military genius to command an army against the Franks. The landing of an Imperial army at Vibo and a rebellion led by the son of Thiudahad threaten the Ostrogothic kingdom and the Ostrogoth army is destroyed at Crathis Valley. Padway assembles a new force, distributes an "emancipation proclamation" to the Italian serfs, and recalls Belisarius. The armies clash near Calatia and then Benevento. Despite the lethal indiscipline of his Gothic forces, some simple tactical tricks and the nick-of-time arrival of Belisarius secure Padway's victory. At the end of the novel Padway has stabilised the Italo-Gothic kingdom, introduced a constitution, arranged the end of serfdom, liberated the Burgunds, is having boats built for an Atlantic expedition (Padway wants tobacco), and has entered negotiations with the Visigothic kingdom in the Iberian peninsula. Europe will not experience the Dark Ages due to Padway's actions; darkness will not fall.
1217873	/m/04j70d	The Feminine Mystique	Betty Friedan	1963	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The Feminine Mystique begins with an introduction describing what Friedan called "the problem that has no name"—the widespread unhappiness of women in the 1950s and early 1960s. It discusses the lives of several housewives from around the United States who were unhappy despite living in material comfort and being happily married with fine children. Chapter 1: Friedan points out that the average age of marriage was dropping and the birthrate was increasing for women throughout the 1950s, yet the widespread unhappiness of women persisted, although American culture insisted that fulfillment for women could be found in marriage and housewifery; this chapter concludes by declaring "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.'" Chapter 2: Friedan shows that the editorial decisions concerning women's magazines were being made mostly by men, who insisted on stories and articles that showed women as either happy housewives or unhappy, neurotic careerists, thus creating the "feminine mystique"—the idea that women were naturally fulfilled by devoting their lives to being housewives and mothers. Friedan notes that this is in contrast to the 1930s, at which time women's magazines often featured confident and independent heroines, many of whom were involved in careers. Chapter 3: Friedan recalls her own decision to conform to society's expectations by giving up her promising career in psychology to raise children, and shows that other young women still struggled with the same kind of decision. Many women dropped out of school early to marry, afraid that if they waited too long or became too educated, they would not be able to attract a husband. Chapter 4: Friedan discusses early American feminists and how they fought against the assumption that the proper role of a woman was to be solely a wife and mother. She notes that they secured important rights for women, including education, the right to pursue a career, and the right to vote. Chapter 5: Friedan, who had a degree in psychology, criticizes Sigmund Freud (whose ideas were very influential in America at the time of her book's publication). She notes that Freud saw women as childlike and as destined to be housewives, once pointing out that Freud wrote, "I believe that all reforming action in law and education would break down in front of the fact that, long before the age at which a man can earn a position in society, Nature has determined woman’s destiny through beauty, charm, and sweetness. Law and custom have much to give women that has been withheld from them, but the position of women will surely be what it is: in youth an adored darling and in mature years a loved wife." Friedan also points out that Freud's unproven concept of "penis envy" had been used to label women who wanted careers as neurotic, and that the popularity of Freud's work and ideas elevated the "feminine mystique" of female fulfillment in housewifery into a "scientific religion" that most women were not educated enough to criticize. Chapter 6: Friedan criticizes functionalism, which attempted to make the social sciences more credible by studying the institutions of society as if they were parts of a social body, as in biology. Institutions were studied in terms of their function in society, and women were confined to their sexual biological roles as housewives and mothers and told that doing otherwise would upset the social balance. Friedan points out that this is unproven and that Margaret Mead, a prominent functionalist, had a flourishing career as an anthropologist. Chapter 7: Friedan discusses the change in women's education from the 1940s to the early 1960s, in which many women's schools concentrated on non-challenging classes that focused mostly on marriage, family, and other subjects deemed suitable for women, as educators influenced by functionalism felt that too much education would spoil women's femininity and capacity for sexual fulfillment. Friedan says that this change in education arrested girls in their emotional development at a young age, because they never had to face the painful identity crisis and subsequent maturation that comes from dealing with many adult challenges. Chapter 8: Friedan notes that the uncertainties and fears during World War II and the Cold War made Americans long for the comfort of home, so they tried to create an idealized home life with father as the breadwinner and mother as the housewife. Friedan notes that this was helped along by the fact that many of the women who worked during the war filling jobs previously filled by men faced dismissal, discrimination, or hostility when the men returned, and that educators blamed over-educated, career-focused mothers for the maladjustment of soldiers in World War II. Yet as Friedan shows, later studies found that overbearing mothers, not careerists, were the ones who raised maladjusted children. Chapter 9: Friedan shows that advertisers tried to encourage housewives to think of themselves as professionals who needed many specialized products in order to do their jobs, while discouraging housewives from having actual careers, since that would mean they would not spend as much time and effort on housework and therefore would not buy as many household products, cutting into advertisers' profits. Chapter 10: Friedan interviews several full-time housewives, finding that although they are not fulfilled by their housework, they are all extremely busy with it. She postulates that these women unconsciously stretch their home duties to fill the time available, because the feminine mystique has taught women that this is their role, and if they ever complete their tasks they will become unneeded. Chapter 11: Friedan notes that many housewives have sought fulfillment in sex, unable to find it in housework and children; Friedan notes that sex cannot fulfill all of a person's needs, and that attempts to make it do so often drive married women to have affairs or drive their husbands away as they become obsessed with sex. Chapter 12: Friedan discusses the fact that many children have lost interest in life or emotional growth, attributing the change to the mother's own lack of fulfillment, a side effect of the feminine mystique. When the mother lacks a self, Friedan notes, she often tries to live through her children, causing the children to lose their own sense of themselves as separate human beings with their own lives. Chapter 13: Friedan discusses Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs and notes that women have been trapped at the basic, physiological level, expected to find their identity through their sexual role alone. Friedan says that women need meaningful work just as men do to achieve self-actualization, the highest level on the hierarchy of needs. Chapter 14: In the final chapter of The Feminine Mystique, Friedan discusses several case studies of women who have begun to go against the feminine mystique. She also advocates a new life plan for her women readers, including not viewing housework as a career, not trying to find total fulfillment through marriage and motherhood alone, and finding meaningful work that uses their full mental capacity. She discusses the conflicts that some women may face in this journey to self-actualization, including their own fears and resistance from others. For each conflict, Friedan offers examples of women who have overcome it. Friedan ends her book by promoting education and meaningful work as the ultimate method by which American women can avoid becoming trapped in the feminine mystique, calling for a drastic rethinking of what it means to be feminine, and offering several educational and occupational suggestions.
1219165	/m/04jd7h	The Adventurer				 The book begins in the city of Turku and follows Mikael along an adventure throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. The book depicts many actual historical events with a rich style, although Mikael's involvement in the events is fictitious. The historical events and millieus featured in the book include: *Denmark's conquest of Sweden, Stockholm bloodbath and eventually the downfall of king Christian II of Denmark. * Student life at the Sorbonne in Paris at this time. *Protestant reformation and related peasants' war in Germany, Luther and Müntzer themselves appearing as side characters. *Spanish monarch sending conquistadors to New World, Mikael almost made to join Pizarro's expedition. * A Witch-hunt conducted by the Inquisition in a small German town, claiming the life of an innocent girl. *Wars in 16th century Europe and expansion of Ottoman empire. *Plundering of Rome (Sack of Rome) during reign of Pope Clement VII The story is continued in The Wanderer, where the protagonist explores the Ottoman empire. it:L'avventuriero (romanzo) hu:Mikael fi:Mikael Karvajalka sv:Mikael Ludenfot
1219639	/m/04jg6j	The Pyramid	Ismail Kadare	1996-02-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Every sentence has two meanings – one in the novel and one that tells something about Communism. For example, the Pharaoh Cheops desires to build a pyramid so large that it will drain the prosperity out of Egypt, and an unprosperous people will not rebel.
1219783	/m/04jgzy	The Golden Master	Walter B. Gibson	1939-09	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Shiwan Khan, heir to Genghis Khan, is in the United States to steal military technology in order to build his own army with the intent of conquering the world. He hypnotises Paul Brent of Globe Aircraft through the electronic lights of a nearby billboard. He orders him to create a larger production run of aircraft than originally intended, with the excess being sent on to Shiwan Khan. By similar methods, he also acquired engines and weapons. The Shadow enters the story when Shiwan Khan attempts to dispose of Paul Brent. Working with Brent, The Shadow eventually tracks his opponent to his base of operations and apparently kills him when his escape plane crashes into the river.
1219811	/m/04jh4w	Judas, My Brother	Frank Yerby	1968	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Written from the viewpoint of Nathan ('the Thirteenth Disciple'), the heavily footnoted book presents an adventure and romance storyline against the backdrop of the 1st century Roman Empire. Nathan's travels lead him to Rome to fight as a retiarius, and on his return to Palestine to become involved with the Apostles, the Zealots and the Essenes. He loves Shelomith (the disciple Salome, depicted in the novel as a prostitute), who does not return his affections due to her unrequited love for Yeshua (Jesus).
1219913	/m/04jhf6	I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings	Maya Angelou	1969	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings follows Marguerite's (called "My" or "Maya" by her brother) life from the age of three to seventeen and the struggles she faces – particularly with racism – in the Southern United States. Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their paternal grandmother (Momma) and crippled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' abandonment throughout the book – they travel alone and are labeled like baggage. Many of the problems Maya encounters in her childhood stem from the overt racism of her white neighbors. Although Momma is relatively wealthy because she owns the general store at the heart of Stamps' Black community, the white children of their town hassle Maya's family relentlessly. One of these "powhitetrash" girls, for example, reveals her pubic hair to Momma in a humiliating incident. Early in the book, Momma hides Uncle Willie in a vegetable bin to protect him from Ku Klux Klan raiders. Maya has to endure the insult of her name being changed to Mary by a racist employer. A white speaker at her eighth grade graduation ceremony disparages the Black audience by suggesting that they have limited job opportunities. A white dentist refuses to treat Maya's rotting tooth, even when Momma reminds him that she had loaned him money during the Depression. The Black community of Stamps enjoys a moment of racial victory when they listen to the radio broadcast of Joe Louis's championship fight, but generally they feel the heavy weight of racist oppression. A turning point in the book occurs when Maya and Bailey's father unexpectedly appears in Stamps. He takes the two children with him when he departs, but leaves them with their mother in St. Louis, Missouri. Eight-year-old Maya is sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. He is found guilty during the trial, but escapes jail time and is murdered, presumably by Maya's uncles. Maya feels guilty and withdraws from everyone but her brother. Even after returning to Stamps, Maya remains reclusive and nearly mute until she meets Mrs. Bertha Flowers, "the aristocrat of Black Stamps", who supplies her with books to encourage her love of reading. This coaxes Maya out of her shell. Later, Momma decides to send her grandchildren to their mother in San Francisco, California, to protect them from the dangers of racism in Stamps. Maya attends George Washington High School and studies dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. Before graduating, she becomes the first Black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco. While still in high school, Maya visits her father in southern California one summer, and has some experiences pivotal to her development. She drives a car for the first time when she must transport her intoxicated father home from an excursion to Mexico. She experiences homelessness for a short time after a fight with her father's girlfriend. During Maya's final year of high school, she worries that she might be a lesbian (which she equates with being a hermaphrodite), and initiates sexual intercourse with a teenage boy. She becomes pregnant, and on the advice of her brother, she hides from her family until her eighth month of pregnancy in order to graduate from high school. Maya gives birth at the end of the book and begins her journey to adulthood by accepting her role as mother to her newborn son.
1221489	/m/04jnrl	The Flight of the Phoenix	Elleston Trevor	1964	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Pilot Frank Towns and navigator Lew Moran are ferrying a mixed bag of passengers out of the Jebel oil town of the Libyan desert, among them oil workers, a couple of British soldiers, and a German who was visiting his brother. An unexpected sandstorm forces the aircraft down, damaging the plane, killing two of the men, and severely injuring the German. In the book, the action takes place in the Libyan part of the Sahara. The survivors wait for rescue but begin to worry, as the storm has blown them far off course, away from where searchers would look for them. After several days, Captain Harris marches toward a distant oasis together with another passenger. His aide Sergeant Watson feigns a sprained ankle and does not join Harris. A third man follows after them. Days later, Harris barely manages to return to the crash site. The others are lost. As the water begins to run out Stringer, a precise, arrogant English aeronautical engineer, proposes a radical solution. He claims they can rebuild a new aircraft from the wreckage of the old twin-boom aircraft, using the undamaged boom and adding skids to take off. They set to work. At one point they spot a party of nomadic tribesmen. Captain Harris decides to ask them for help, but Sergeant Watson refuses to accompany him. Instead another survivor, a Texan named Loomis, goes with him. The next day, Towns finds their looted bodies, throats cut, and the nomads gone. Later, Towns finds out that Stringer's job is designing model aircraft, not real, full-scale ones. Afraid of the effect on morale, he and Moran keep their discovery secret, though they now believe Stringer's plan is doomed. However, they turn out to be wrong. The aircraft is reborn, like the mythical Phoenix. It flies the passengers, strapped to the outside of the fuselage, to an oasis and civilization.
1225812	/m/04k062	Hatchet	Gary Paulsen	1987-09-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Brian Robeson is a 13 year-old boy, whose parents are divorced, who travels on a Cessna 406 bush plane to visit his father in the oil fields in northern Canada for the summer. During the flight, the pilot suffers a heart attack and dies; Brian tries to land the plane, but ends up crash-landing into a lake in the forest, saving nothing but his hatchet and his own life. Throughout the summer, Brian attempts to survive in the endless wilderness with only his hatchet, which was a gift his mother gave him shortly before his plane departed. He figures out how to make fire with the hatchet and makes himself eat whatever food he can find, such as snapping turtle eggs, fish, berries, fruit, rabbits, and birds. He deals with threats from animals such as a porcupine, bear, skunk, moose, wolves and eventually becomes a fine woodsman, crafting a bow, arrows, and a fishing spear. He also fashions a shelter out of the underside of a rock overhang. During his time alone, Brian struggles with memories of home, and the bittersweet memory of his mother, whom Brian had caught cheating on his father with somebody else. When a sudden tornado hits the area, it draws the tail of the plane toward the shore of the lake. Brian makes a raft from a few broken off tree tops to get to the plane. When Brian is cutting his way into the tail of the plane, he drops his hatchet in the lake and dives in to get it. Once inside the plane, Brian finds a survival pack with an emergency transmitter, many packs of food, a first aid kit, some cooking utensils, and a .22 rifle. Back on shore, Brian activates the transmitter, but he does not know how to use it, he thinks it is broken and throws it aside. Later, when Brian is cooking the food packs, a fur buyer arrives in a float plane some time after because he caught the transmitter's signal. He rescues Brian, who returns home after 54 days in the wilderness a different person. Brian later finds himself marveling at all the food, quantities and variety, at the grocery store. He finally reaches his father at the oil fields, yet he is still unable to discuss his mother's affair with another man to his father.
1226446	/m/04k1ps	El filibusterismo	José Rizal	1891	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Thirteen years after leaving the Philippines, Crisostomo Ibarra returns as Simoun, a rich jeweler sporting a beard and blue-tinted glasses, and a confidant of the Captain-General. Abandoning his idealism, he becomes a cynical saboteur, seeking revenge against the Spanish Philippine system responsible for his misfortunes by plotting a revolution. Simoun insinuates himself into Manila high society and influences every decision of the Captain-General to mismanage the country’s affairs so that a revolution will break out. He cynically sides with the upper classes, encouraging them to commit abuses against the masses to encourage the latter to revolt against the oppressive Spanish colonial regime. This time, he does not attempt to fight the authorities through legal means, but through violent revolution using the masses. Simoun has reasons for instigating a revolution. First is to rescue María Clara from the convent and second, to get rid of ills and evils of Philippine society. His true identity is discovered by a now grown-up Basilio while visiting the grave of his mother, Sisa, as Simoun was digging near the grave site for his buried treasures. Simoun spares Basilio’s life and asks him to join in his planned revolution against the government, egging him on by bringing up the tragic misfortunes of the latter's family. Basilio declines the offer as he still hopes that the country’s condition will improve. Basilio, at this point, is a graduating student of medicine at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila. After the death of his mother, Sisa, and the disappearance of his younger brother, Crispín, Basilio heeded the advice of the dying boatman, Elías, and traveled to Manila to study. Basilio was adopted by Captain Tiago after María Clara entered the convent. With Captain Tiago’s help, Basilio was able to go to Colegio de San Juan de Letrán where, at first, he is frowned upon by his peers and teachers not only because of the color of his skin but also because of his shabby appearance. Captain Tiago’s confessor, Father Irene is making Captain Tiago’s health worse by giving him opium even as Basilio tries hard to prevent Captain Tiago from smoking it. He and other students want to establish a Spanish language academy so that they can learn to speak and write Spanish despite the opposition from the Dominican friars of the Universidad de Santo Tomás. With the help of a reluctant Father Irene as their mediator and Don Custodio’s decision, the academy is established; however they will only serve as caretakers of the school not as the teachers. Dejected and defeated, they hold a mock celebration at a pancitería while a spy for the friars witnesses the proceedings. Simoun, for his part, keeps in close contact with the bandit group of Kabesang Tales, a former cabeza de barangay who suffered misfortunes at the hands of the friars. Once a farmer owning a prosperous sugarcane plantation and a cabeza de barangay (barangay head), he was forced to give everything to the greedy and unscrupulous Spanish friars. His son, Tano, who became a civil guard was captured by bandits; his daughter Julî had to work as a maid to get enough ransom money for his freedom; and his father, Tandang Selo, suffered a stroke and became mute. Before joining the bandits, Tales took Simoun’s revolver while Simoun was staying at his house for the night. As payment, Tales leaves a locket that once belonged to María Clara. To further strengthen the revolution, Simoun has Quiroga, a Chinese man hoping to be appointed consul to the Philippines, smuggle weapons into the country using Quiroga’s bazaar as a front. Simoun wishes to attack during a stage play with all of his enemies in attendance. He, however, abruptly aborts the attack when he learns from Basilio that María Clara had died earlier that day in the convent. A few days after the mock celebration by the students, the people are agitated when disturbing posters are found displayed around the city. The authorities accuse the students present at the pancitería of agitation and disturbing peace and has them arrested. Basilio, although not present at the mock celebration, is also arrested. Captain Tiago dies after learning of the incident and as stated in his will—forged by Irene, all his possessions are given to the Church, leaving nothing for Basilio. Basilio is left in prison as the other students are released. A high official tries to intervene for the release of Basilio but the Captain-General, bearing grudges against the high official, coerces him to tender his resignation. Julî, Basilio’s girlfriend and the daughter of Kabesang Tales, tries to ask Father Camorra’s help upon the advice of an elder woman. Instead of helping Julî, however, the priest tries to rape her as he has long-hidden desires for Julî. Julî, rather than submit to the will of the friar, jumps over the balcony to her death. Basilio is soon released with the help of Simoun. Basilio, now a changed man, and after hearing about Julî's suicide, finally joins Simoun’s revolution. Simoun then tells Basilio his plan at the wedding of Paulita Gómez and Juanito, Basilio’s hunch-backed classmate. His plan was to conceal an explosive which contains nitroglycerin inside a pomegranate-styled Kerosene lamp that Simoun will give to the newlyweds as a gift during the wedding reception. The reception will take place at the former home of the late Captain Tiago, which was now filled with explosives planted by Simoun. According to Simoun, the lamp will stay lighted for only 20 minutes before it flickers; if someone attempts to turn the wick, it will explode and kill everyone—important members of civil society and the Church hierarchy—inside the house. Basilio has a change of heart and attempts to warn Isagani, his friend and the former boyfriend of Paulita. Simoun leaves the reception early as planned and leaves a note behind: Initially thinking that it was simply a bad joke, Father Salví recognizes the handwriting and confirms that it was indeed Ibarra’s. As people begin to panic, the lamp flickers. Father Irene tries to turn the wick up when Isagani, due to his undying love for Paulita, bursts in the room and throws the lamp into the river, sabotaging Simoun's plans. He escapes by diving into the river as guards chase after him. He later regrets his impulsive action because he had contradicted his own belief that he loved his nation more than Paulita and that the explosion and revolution could have fulfilled his ideals for Filipino society. Simoun, now unmasked as the perpetrator of the attempted arson and failed revolution, becomes a fugitive. Wounded and exhausted after he was shot by the pursuing Guardia Civil, he seeks shelter at the home of Father Florentino, Isagani’s uncle, and comes under the care of doctor Tiburcio de Espadaña, Doña Victorina's husband, who was also hiding at the house. Simoun takes poison in order for him not to be captured alive. Before he dies, he reveals his real identity to Florentino while they exchange thoughts about the failure of his revolution and why God forsook him. Florentino opines that God did not forsake him and that his plans were not for the greater good but for personal gain. Simoun, finally accepting Florentino’s explanation, squeezes his hand and dies. Florentino then takes Simoun’s remaining jewels and throws them into the Pacific Ocean with the corals hoping that they would not be used by the greedy, and that when the time came that it would be used for the greater good, when the nation would be finally deserving liberty for themselves, the sea would reveal the treasures.
1226795	/m/04k31p	Armor	John Steakley	1984-12-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Armor is the story of humanity's war against an alien race whose foot soldiers are three-meter-tall insects, referred to in the book as 'ants'. It is also the story of a research colony on the fringes of human territory which is threatened by pirates. The two sub-plots intersect at the end, with each providing answers and insight into events of the other. The title most obviously refers to the nuclear-powered exoskeletons worn by the soldiers, but also references the emotional armor the protagonists maintain to survive. The protagonist is Felix, an anonymous enlistee who's been given "scout" duty on an alien planet in the seemingly endless "Antwar." Little is known of him initially but that he suffers from burnout and refuses to die, even when it seems inevitable. The novel starts with Felix and his Company assaulting a gaseous, inhospitable planet aptly named "Banshee." Using armored infantry suits, soldiers drop onto the planet from starships via a teleportation device called "Transit." The attack goes horribly wrong, as Felix's Company is completely wiped out, and the mountain fort they were originally supposed to capture is revealed to be a giant hive. In the aftermath of his first encounter, Felix regroups with the surviving humans. There, he meets another highly skilled scout named Forest, who participated in the fleet wide Armored Olympics against decorated soldier Nathan Kent. It is also revealed that the Ants can lock onto the fleet's Transit beacons and barrage them with missiles fired from the Hive, making retreat impossible. During a fallback to an elevated bluff, a dying soldier exploits his armor's functions and creates a nuclear explosion. Several warriors are killed in the disaster, including Forest. Before dying she confesses to Felix that she always loved Kent. With no options left the warriors resort to attacking the Hive to secure transport back to the ship. Exploiting the Hive's tunnel system, they plan to use a wounded soldier as a bomb to destroy it. Before the attack, Felix meets a soldier named Bolov who tells him that as a scout on his first drop, Felix has a 10% chance of survival. Felix and his fellow soldiers are ambushed by ants on their way up the hive. During the attack, the soldier they planned on using as a bomb is killed, rendering him useless. In a stroke of bad luck, Bolov is also mortally wounded and grudgingly accepts the task of sacrificing himself. The Hive is then destroyed and the survivors are able to retreat back to the ship. After 19 drops on Banshee, Felix has learned that he is an almost unstoppable warrior. His 20th drop is revealed to be a fleet mission to create humanity's first forward operating base on Banshee. He also learns that Nathan Kent will be dropping with him. The soldiers successfully create an impregnable fort on Banshee. Felix learns from his inexperienced Commanding Officer, Canada Shoen, that the purpose of the fort is to show non-combat officers and journalists what the war is like. Felix is disgusted by this revelation. After spending time with Nathan Kent, he tells him about Forest's death and her true feelings for him. Kent is devastated and attacks Felix in a drunken rage. The fort withstands several assaults from the ants and wears them down almost to complete exhaustion. During a celebration for their victory, ants attack from underground and kill dozens of people, before ultimately being crushed again. Felix discovers that his 21st drop will be with the affluent monarch of an extra-solar planet, named the Masao. They drop onto an area not infested with ants so that he can see Banshee for himself. However, in a moment of climax, Felix is revealed to be the runaway monarch of an equally wealthy planet called Golden. After a tragic freighter accident that killed his wife, Felix escaped and joined the fleet to suppress the memories of her. The Masao, who is his best friend, begs for Felix to return to Golden. He agrees to leave the military, but still refuses to return to his home planet. Only moments before being teleported onto the ship, Felix notices a Hive in the distance that barrages them with missiles, killing the Masao. In the ensuing chaos on board the ship, Kent grabs Felix and helps him escape from the fleet before ultimately being killed himself. Most of the action of the final 2/3 of the book takes place on Sanction, a planet far removed from the fighting, at a Fleet research facility. The deuteragonist is Jack Crow, a notorious celebrity and one-time pirate. A morally questionable character with views and opinions that are just as questionable, he is a tough man who does not hesitate to kill. He is constantly at odds with his own morality but he knows the difference between his celebrity reputation and his real personality. At times, his reputation is more of a burden than a blessing. We meet Jack in prison on an alien world just prior to his breaking out. His escape takes him to the ship of a mutineer and deserter from the Antwar named Borglyn. Jack strikes a deal where, in exchange for Borglyn saving his life, he will infiltrate and sabotage the Fleet research project on Sanction so Borglyn can access its limitless Fleet power source to refuel his ship, and continue on his deserter way. Borglyn will also pay Jack and give him a small scout ship to go his own way. On Sanction, Jack takes an old suit of battle armor to project Director Hollis "Holly" Ware, to ingratiate himself and get the necessary access to fulfill his bargain with Borglyn. But Jack is then asked by Holly to participate in an experiment to retrieve the data from the suit's battle recorder, which is the "memory" of the wearer while the suit was active. Out of curiosity and a bit of false bonhomie, Jack agrees and we see that he, Holly and Lya (a Fleet psychologist and Holly's girlfriend) spend several sessions "immersed" first hand in the life of Felix on Banshee and on board ship. During these sessions, we learn much more of events on Banshee, and are truly introduced for the first time to Felix as he sees himself and experiences battle. A few tidbits of memory also tantalize the researchers (and ourselves) to learn the true identify of Felix. Through immersions, we learn how extraordinary Felix truly is and how, through either the complacency or gross incompetence of his superiors, he has suffered unbelievably, yet continues to soldier on. This also challenges the trio to deal with the knowledge that the public story of the Antwar is far different from the true horror. These immersions change Jack - as it does the others - so that he chooses to make an almost certain suicidal stand with Holly against Borglyn's attack on the facility. Throughout the novel, Jack comes into contact with the alcoholic owner of Sanction, a wealthy rancher named Lewis. Lewis is profoundly anti-war and doesn't allow his citizens to carry energy weapons. Jack comes to despise Lewis for his irresponsible drunken nature. However, he later saves Jack and Holly during Borglyn's attack. Lewis is then revealed to be Felix, who dons the black scout armor once more to fend off the attackers. He destroys Borglyn's forces and attempts to attack his ship. At the last second, Borglyn fires all of the ships weapons, seemingly destroying everything around it. Jack and Holly watch in awe as this happens, and catch a final glimpse of Felix through a security camera, who appears to be alive. Felix destroys the camera and is hinted to escape once again. The novel ends with Jack, Holly, and Lya starting new lives on Sanction outside of fleet influence.
1227383	/m/04k52j	The Card	Arnold Bennett	1911	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins when "Edward Henry Machin first saw the smoke on the 27th May 1867"—the very day of Bennett's own birth. At age 12, Denry begins his career by altering his marks in a test sufficiently to earn him a scholarship to grammar school. At 16, he leaves school to work for Mr. Duncalf, the town clerk and a solicitor. Duncalf is responsible for organizing an exclusive ball; Denry "invites" himself, then also a few others in exchange for things he will need, such as lessons from dance instructor Ruth Earp. On a bet, he audaciously asks the energetic, beautiful Countess of Chell (of whom everyone, including Machin, is in awe) to dance, thus earning himself the reputation of a "card" (a "character", someone able to set tongues wagging) - a reputation he is determined to cement. Later, when Duncalf treats a disgruntled client brusquely, Denry leaves his employ after persuading the client to hire him as a rent collector. When some of the tenants fall behind, he begins loaning them money (at a highly profitable interest rate). Ruth herself is several months in arrears and tries to sneak away in the middle of the night. Denry catches her by accident, but rather than being angry, he admires her audacity and starts courting her. While on holiday at the seaside resort town of Llandudno with Ruth and her friend Nellie Cotterill, he witnesses a shipwreck and the rescue of the sailors. Noting the interest generated, he buys a lifeboat, hires some of the stranded mariners as rowers, and conducts tours of the picturesque wreck. However, Ruth's spendthrift nature becomes alarmingly apparent during the trip and they break up. By the end of the summer, Denry has made a substantial profit from the sightseers, which he uses to finance his boldest venture. He starts up the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club. Members deposit money little by little; once they have accumulated half the sum they need to purchase whatever it is they want, the club allows them to buy on credit, but only from stores associated with the club. Denry makes money by getting a discount from the vendors in return for access to his large customer base. When his capital starts to run out, he arranges an "accident" for the Countess's coach. He drives conveniently by and gives her a lift to an urgent appointment. On the way there, he talks her into becoming the club's sponsor, ensuring easy financing. This proves to be the making of Denry's fortune. With his great success, he is appointed a town councillor. He also backs a new daily newspaper (to be bought out at a profit by its established rival anxious to keep its monopoly) and tricks his obstinate mother into moving into a luxurious new house. At this point, Ruth reappears in Denry's life, now the widow of a rich older man. He considers renewing their relationship, but at the last moment, realizes that Nellie is the one for him and marries her. The crowning achievement comes when Denry decides to become the youngest mayor in the history of Bursley. To sway the voters, he purchases the rights to footballer and native son Callear, the "greatest centre forward in England", for the failing Bursley football club. "It will probably be news to him that Aston Villa have offered £700 to York for the transfer of Callear, and Blackburn Rovers have offered £750, and they're fighting it out between 'em. Any gentleman willing to put down £800 to buy Callear for Bursley?" he sneered. "I don't mind telling you that steam-engines and the King himself couldn't get Callear into our club." "Quite finished?" Denry inquired, still standing. Laughter, overtopped by Councillor Barlow's snort as he sat down. Denry lifted his voice. "Mr Callear, will you be good enough to step forward and let us all have a look at you?" His antics are regarded with affection and admiration by most others, as shown by the book&#39;s final exchange: "What a card!" said one, laughing joyously. "He's a rare 'un, no mistake." "Of course, this'll make him more popular than ever," said another. "We've never had a man to touch him for that." "And yet," demanded Councillor Barlow, "what's he done? Has he ever done a day's work in his life? What great cause is he identified with?" "He's identified," said the speaker, "with the great cause of cheering us all up."
1229025	/m/04kb6b	The Brethren	John Grisham	2000	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Three former judges (known as "The Brethren") incarcerated at Trumble, a fictional, federal minimum security prison located in northern Florida, develop a scam to blackmail wealthy closeted gay men. With the help of their lawyer, Trevor Carson, they transfer their ill-gotten money to a secret Bahamian bank account. Meanwhile, Teddy Maynard, the ruthless and soon-to-retire director of the CIA, is orchestrating a scheme to control the United States presidential election. Aaron Lake, a strongly pro-defense expenditure candidate has been identified and Maynard is determined to control him - and then get him elected. Unknowingly, the Brethren hook Teddy's candidate for President. The CIA scrambles to stop them from finding out what they've done. But, a leak has sprung. It takes all of Teddy's experience with illegal maneuvering to save his candidate from being exposed. The Brethren lose their trust in Trevor and fire him; he is later killed by CIA agents in the Caribbean. The CIA plant a man inside Trumble, who tells the judges that he knows they have been involved in the scam. A deal is worked out, money changes hands and the judges are pardoned by the out-going President at Maynard's insistence. The judges leave the country and travel in Europe. Later, they re-start the scam.
1229351	/m/04kbwk	Where The Wild Things Are	Maurice Sendak	1963	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young boy named Max, after dressing in his wolf costume, wreaks havoc through his household and is disciplined by being sent to his bedroom. As he feels agitation with his mother, Max's bedroom undergoes a mysterious transformation into a jungle environment, and he winds up sailing to an island inhabited by malicious beasts known as the "Wild Things." After successfully intimidating the creatures, Max is hailed as the king of the Wild Things and enjoys a playful romp with his subjects; however, he decides to return home, to the Wild Things' dismay. After arriving in his bedroom, Max discovers a hot supper waiting for him.
1230233	/m/04kf9k	These Old Shades	Georgette Heyer	1926	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Fortune favors Justin Alastair, the uncanny and notorious Duke of Avon, casting in his way, one Paris night, the means to revenge himself on his enemy, the Comte de Saint-Vire. Avon literally collides with an abused boy, Léon Bonnard, whose red hair, deep blue eyes and (improbably) black eyebrows proclaim him a child of the Comte. Not knowing if the boy is a legitimate child or a "natural" (bastard) child, Avon purchases the boy from his brother, a tavern keeper. He takes the boy as his page, and Léon follows him to society's highest functions, and even goes to a Court party held by Louis XV, where he sees the king himself (who looks just like the coins, he says), views the Queen, and sees Madame de Pompadour. While at Versailles, the Duke displays Léon before the Comte's wife and his son and heir. He notes the resemblance of the son, Henri, to Léon's brother, Jean Bonnard, a tavern keeper. He also notes that the boy, Léon's age, prefers rural life, and wants to be a farmer. After this excursion to Versailles, the Comte sends one of his satellites to purchase the page, but Avon refuses. The Duke's friend, Hugh Davenant, tries to convince Avon to give him the page; they both have realized, separately, that the boy Léon is actually the girl Léonie. The Duke journeys into Champagne, where Léonie has grown up, to meet a childhood mentor, the village priest who educated her. This old man confirms to him that the Bonnard family came originally from the same province, indeed, from one of the estates, as the Comte de Saint-Vire. The Duke's desire for revenge soon turns to passion for justice as Léon — or rather, Léonie — has endeared herself to him. He takes her home to England and teaches her to be a girl again. After an attempt to lure Léonie from Avon Court fails, the Comte kidnaps her and carries her to France. Léonie escapes from him and seeks refuge at an inn where Avon finds her and rescues her from a second attempt to abduct her. In the meantime, Fanny Marling, the Duke's sister, and his younger brother, Lord Rupert, also race to France to save her. The Comte is forced to bide his time while Léonie makes her Parisian debut under the aegis of Lady Fanny. She becomes the toast of Paris, and the Comte and his wife watch helplessly, waiting for Avon to take his revenge. A rumor comes to Léonie’s ears that she is the Comte’s illegitimate child—the family likeness is very striking. When she confronts him with it, the Comte realizes he has a chance to turn the tables on Avon. Admitting the rumor, the Comte tries to persuade Léonie he abducted her to save her. She does not believe him, but his threat to use her to harm Avon’s reputation makes her agree to go away where no one will ever find her. She takes refuge with her old tutor, the priest in her home village. Avon swiftly realizes what the Comte has done. At a party with the Paris nobility watching, Avon tells her pathetic story as a fable and the Parisian high society, to their growing horror, realize the truth: that Léonie is indeed the Comte’s legitimate daughter and that she was switched at birth with a farm laborer’s son to prevent the Comte’s detested brother from inheriting the Comte’s title. Avon tells them how she suffered from the Comte’s actions and of his threat to use her to hurt the man she loves. Then, with a twist, he lets them believe that Léonie has drowned herself in the Seine. This breaks her mother, whose open grief betrays the Comte’s guilt. Knowing he is ruined in society, the Comte shoots himself. His despised brother becomes the new Comte. With no difficulty, Avon traces Léonie to her childhood home in the country. She is glad her father is dead, but refuses to go back to her life in Paris. She doesn’t want her family back — she wants Avon, but he knows his tainted reputation makes him unworthy of her. She doesn’t care. Avon returns to Paris in triumph to present his new duchess, Léonie. Devil's Cub follows These Old Shades with the adventures of Avon's and Léonie's son, Dominque, and shockingly selfish and indulged young man who elopes with a poor relation of one of his father's friends. An Infamous Army completes the story with the Duke of Avon's great-granddaughter, Barbara, marrying the hero of An Infamous Army. An Infamous Army is also a sequel to Regency Buck.
1230745	/m/04kg_3	Up From Slavery	Booker T. Washington			 Up from Slavery chronicles over fifty years of Washington’s life: from slave to schoolmaster to the face of southern race relations. In this text, Washington climbs the social ladder through hard, manual labour, a decent education, and relationships with great people. Throughout the text, he stresses the importance of education on the black population as a reasonable tactic to ease race relations in the South. The book is in essence Washington’s traditional, non-confrontational message supported by the example of his life.
1230748	/m/04kg_t	Ripley Under Ground	Patricia Highsmith	1970-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Six years after the events of The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tom Ripley is now in his early 30s, living a comfortable life in France with his heiress wife, Héloïse Plisson. The lifestyle at his estate, Belle Ombre, is supported by Dickie Greenleaf's fortune, occasional fence work with an American named Reeves Minot, and Derwatt Ltd. &mdash; an art forgery scheme that he helped set up years before. Derwatt Ltd., in which Ripley is a silent partner, involves himself, two Londoners &mdash; photographer Jeff Constant and freelance journalist Ed Banbury &mdash; and Bernard Tufts, a painter whom Ripley convinced to forge Derwatt paintings. Years prior, the painter Philip Derwatt disappeared and committed suicide in Greece. After Derwatt's death, his friends Constant and Banbury began to publicize his work and managed to sell a number of authentic paintings. Thanks to their PR efforts Derwatt becomes more and more famous and his paintings ever more valuable. When the original Derwatts begin to run out, Ripley suggests pretending that Derwatt went into seclusion in Mexico. Bernard Tufts' forgeries are sold as Derwatts and a gallery called the Buckmaster, is opened to handle the work. The money is rolling in, but Bernard, who had idolized Derwatt, is plagued by guilt for forging his paintings. As the novel opens, the Derwatt enterprise is threatened by a disgruntled American collector, Thomas Murchison, who (correctly) surmises that one of his paintings is a forgery. Worried that the lid is about to be blown on the whole scheme, Ripley decides to go to London and impersonate Derwatt, meet with Murchison and convince him that the paintings are genuine. Ripley is unable to convince Murchison, however, particularly as Bernard meets with the latter and tells him not to buy any more Derwatts. Ripley, as himself, invites Murchison to Belle Ombre to inspect his own Derwatt painting (also a fake) to try to persuade him from taking the case to a Tate Gallery curator and the police. At Belle Ombre, Murchison inspects Ripley's painting and believes it is also a fake. Realizing that the argument is futile, Ripley reveals the entire scam to Murchison, asking for mercy for Bernard's sake. Murchison refuses, however, so Ripley kills him. He takes Murchison's suitcase and painting to Orly Airport and abandons them on the curb near the Departures entrance. He then buries the body just inside the woods near his house. Chris Greenleaf, Dickie's cousin, comes to stay while on a European tour. He notices the fresh grave outside the house but doesn't think much of it. Bernard also comes to visit Ripley, rattled by the recent events and saying he wants to confess everything to the police. Ripley confesses to Bernard his murder of Murchison and, realizing his own terrible choice of a gravesite, asks Bernard to help move the body. Together, they dump it in a river. The French police and Inspector Webster from the London police both investigate the case on behalf of Murchison's wife, making trips to Belle Ombre and inspecting the house and grounds. Things are further complicated for Ripley as Héloïse returns from a Greek holiday and discovers a man hanging in the cellar. It turns out to just be stuffed clothing, a prop left by Bernard a suicide in effigy. Bernard leaves a note suggesting that he is going to confess his forgeries. When Bernard returns to Belle Ombre, Héloïse leaves in disgust. Driven over the edge by guilt, Bernard unsuccessfully tries to strangle Ripley, whom he blames for starting the forgery scheme; Ripley feels sorry for the disturbed man and does not retaliate. Later, however, Bernard again tries to kill Ripley, this time knocking him out with a shovel and burying him alive in Murchison's empty grave. Ripley manages to escape and returns to London to impersonate Derwatt for a second appearance, this time for Mrs. Murchison and Inspector Webster. Mrs. Murchison decides to pay a visit to Belle Ombre, the last place her husband was seen. Back at Belle Ombre, Ripley entertains Mrs. Murchison. After she leaves, Ripley realizes that Bernard is contemplating suicide. Feeling responsible, Ripley goes to look for him in Greece, Paris, and finally Salzburg, Austria. There he finds Bernard, but the painter believes Ripley is a ghost - he thinks he killed him in France. Bernard runs from Ripley and leaps off a cliff to his death. Ripley uses the corpse to tie up loose ends; he partially cremates and buries the body, making sure to smash or hide any teeth. He then goes to the police with the information that Derwatt killed himself there. Seeing suicidal journal entries, the police presume that Bernard also killed himself in Salzburg by jumping off a bridge. With Bernard and Derwatt both gone, the art forgery allegations have no active leads and Derwatt Ltd's existence is no longer in jeopardy. The novel ends with Ripley's being content in bed with Héloïse, who prefers to remain ignorant of what he has done and, further, how exactly he makes his money. He receives an optimistic-sounding call from the gallery, but still fears that the next one will be from the persistently inquisitive police, who have noticed that many people die after approaching Ripley.
1230778	/m/04kh1w	Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl	Harriet Ann Jacobs	1861		 Born into slavery, Linda spends her early years in a happy home with her mother and father, who are relatively well-off slaves. When her mother dies, six-year-old Linda is sent to live with her mother’s mistress, who treats her well and teaches her to read. After a few years, this mistress dies and bequeaths Linda to a relative. Her new masters are cruel and neglectful, and Dr. Flint, the father, takes in interest in Linda and tries to force her into a sexual relationship with him. Linda continues to thwart his attempts and maintain her distance. Knowing that Flint will do anything to get his way, Linda consents to a love affair with a white neighbor, Mr. Sands. She is ashamed at her discretion, but she knows it is better than being raped by Dr. Flint. During their affair, Mr. Sands and Linda have two children. Their names are Benjamin, who is often called Benny in the narrative, and Ellen. Throughout her narrative, Jacobs argues that a powerless slave girl cannot be held to the same standards of morality as a free woman. She also has practical reasons for agreeing to the affair: she hopes that when Flint finds out about it, he will sell her to Sands in disgust. Instead, the vengeful Flint sends Linda to his plantation to be broken in as a field hand. When she discovers that Benny and Ellen are to receive similar treatment, Linda hatches a desperate plan. Escaping to the North with two small children would be impossible. Unwilling to submit to Dr. Flint’s abuse, but equally unwilling to abandon her family, she hides in the attic crawl space in the house of her grandmother, Aunt Martha. She hopes that Dr. Flint, under the false impression that she has gone North, will sell her children rather than risk having them disappear as well. Linda is overjoyed when Dr. Flint sells Benny and Ellen to a slave trader who is secretly representing Mr. Sands. Mr. Sands promises to free the children one day and sends them to live with Aunt Martha. But Linda’s triumph comes at a high price. The longer she stays in her tiny garret, where she can neither sit nor stand, the more physically debilitated she becomes. Her only pleasure is to watch her children through a tiny peephole, as she cannot risk letting them know where she is. Mr. Sands marries and becomes a congressman. He brings Ellen to Washington, D.C., to look after his newborn daughter, and Linda realizes that Mr. Sands may never free her children. Worried that he will eventually sell them to slave traders, she determines that she must somehow flee with them to the North. However, Dr. Flint continues to hunt for her, and escape remains too risky. After seven years in the attic, Linda finally escapes to the North by boat. Benny remains with Aunt Martha, and Linda is reunited with Ellen, who is now nine years old and living in Brooklyn, New York. Linda is dismayed to find that her daughter is still held in virtual slavery by Mr. Sands’s cousin, Mrs. Hobbs. She fears that Mrs. Hobbs will take Ellen back to the South, putting her beyond Linda’s reach forever. She finds work as a nursemaid for a New York City family, the Bruces, who treat her very kindly. Dr. Flint continues to pursue Linda, and she flees to Boston. There, she is reunited with Benny. Dr. Flint now claims that the sale of Benny and Ellen was illegitimate, and Linda is terrified that he will re-enslave all of them. After a few years, Mrs. Bruce dies, and Linda spends some time living with her children in Boston. She spends a year in England caring for Mr. Bruce’s daughter, and for the first time in her life she enjoys freedom from racial prejudice. When Linda returns to Boston, Ellen goes to boarding school and Benny moves to California with Linda’s brother William. Mr. Bruce remarries, and Linda takes a position caring for their new baby. Dr. Flint dies, but his daughter, Emily, writes to Linda to claim ownership of her. The Fugitive Slave Act is passed by Congress, making Linda extremely vulnerable to kidnapping and re-enslavement. Emily Flint and her husband, Mr. Dodge, arrive in New York to capture Linda. Linda goes into hiding, and the new Mrs. Bruce offers to purchase her freedom. Linda refuses, unwilling to be bought and sold yet again, and makes plans to follow Benny to California. Mrs. Bruce buys Linda anyway. Linda is devastated at being sold and furious with Emily Flint and the whole slave system. However, she says she remains grateful to Mrs. Bruce, who is still her employer when she writes the book. She notes that she still has not yet realized her dream of making a home for herself and her children to share. The book closes with two testimonials to its accuracy, one from Amy Post, a white abolitionist, and the other from George W. Lowther, a black antislavery writer.
1230789	/m/04kh2k	Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave	Frederick Douglass	1845	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass encompasses eleven chapters that recount Douglass' life as a slave and his ambition to become a free man. The story begins by telling the reader that Douglass does not know the date of his birth and that he is relatively saddened by this. He continues by explaining that his mother died when he was 7 years old. This does not affect Douglass outwardly because he was intentionally separated from his mother when he was very young, a practice which was common in slavery. It was only on the rare occasion that he would see his mother at nighttime. His father was believed to be a white man, and most people actually had the notion that Douglass was the son of his owner. At a very early age, Douglass witnesses his first brutal act of slavery when he sees Aunt Hester being whipped. The text continues and details the structure of farms, what role slaves play, and how they operate when interacting with their masters. A very important section of the Narrative is found at this point, where Douglass describes the singing of the slaves. After this, Douglass details the cruel interaction that occurs between slaves and slave holders, as well as how slaves are supposed to behave in the presence of their masters, and that even when Douglass says that fear is what kept many slaves where they were, when they tell the truth they are punished by their owners. Douglass continues by describing several events in which there has been extreme brutality against his fellow slaves. At this point in the Narrative, Douglass is moved to Baltimore, Maryland. This is rather important for him because he believes that if he had not been moved, he would have remained a slave his entire life. He even starts to have hope for a better life in the future. At this point, he discusses his new mistress, Mrs. Sophia Auld, who begins as a very kind woman but eventually turns cruel. Douglass learns the alphabet and how to spell small words from this woman, but her husband, Mr. Auld, disapproves, and states that if slaves could read, they will not be fit to be a slave, being unmanageable and sad. Upon hearing why Mr. Auld disapproves of slaves being taught how to read, Douglass realizes the importance of reading and the possibilities that this skill could help him. He takes it upon himself to learn how to read and learn all he can, but at times, this newfound skill torments him. Douglass then gains an understanding of the word abolition and develops the idea to run away to the North. He also learns how to write and how to read well. At the age of ten or eleven, Douglass' master dies and his property is left to be divided between his son and daughter. The slaves are valued alongside with the livestock, causing Douglass to develop a new hatred to slavery. He feels lucky when he is sent back to Baltimore to live with the family of Master Hugh. He is then moved through a few before he is sent to St. Michael's. He regrets not having attempted to run away, but on his voyage he makes a mental note that he traveled in the North-Easterly direction and considers this information to be of extreme importance. For some time, he lives with Master Thomas Auld who is particularly cruel, even after attending a Methodist camp. He is pleased when he eventually is lent to Mr. Covey for a year, simply because he would be fed. While under the control of Mr. Covey, Douglass is a field hand and has an especially hard time at the tasks required of him. He is harshly whipped almost on a weekly basis, apparently due to his awkwardness. He is worked and beaten to exhaustion, which finally causes him to collapse one day while working in the fields. Because of this, he is brutally beaten once more by Covey, and eventually complains to Thomas Auld, who ultimately sends him back to Covey. One day, Covey attempts to tie up Douglass, but he fights back. After a long, two hour physical battle, Douglass ultimately conquers. After this fight, he is never beaten again. He is sent to live on another plantation where he befriends other slaves and teaches them how to read. He and the others make a plan to escape, but before doing so, they are caught and Douglass is put in jail. After he is released 2 years later, he is sent to Baltimore once more, but this time to learn a trade. He becomes an apprentice in a shipyard where he is abused by several white people, when 4 whites nearly takes off his left eye. When this happens, Douglass goes to Master Hugh, who is kind regarding this situation and refuses to let Douglass return to the shipyard. Master Hugh tries to find a lawyer, but all refuse, saying they can only do something to a white person. Sophia Auld, who had turned cruel, had pitied Douglass and tended to the wound at his left eye until he is healed. At this point, Douglass is employed to be a caulker and receives wages, but is forced to give every cent to Master Auld in due time. Douglass eventually finds his own job and plans the date in which he will escape to the North. He succeeds, but Douglass does not give details of how he did so, in order to protect those who helped him and to ensure the possibility of other slaves' escape. At this point, Douglass unites with his fiancé and begins working as his own master. He ultimately attends an antislavery convention and supports the cause from that time forth.
1233605	/m/04kpzj	Iron Sunrise	Charles Stross	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Martin Springfield and Rachel Mansour return to Earth to recuperate following the events of Singularity Sky, however Rachel is quickly called upon to explain the administrative expenses she incurred during her previous assignment. Shortly thereafter she finds herself negotiating with a lunatic believing himself to be a reincarnation of Idi Amin and in possession of an armed nuclear device which, in the black humor typical of the series, he has threatened to detonate after receiving an eviction notice from his apartment. Meanwhile, a young and hopeful planetary civilization is murdered by the apparent use of a causality violation device which causes their sun to explode without warning (the "iron sunrise" of the title), and their defense systems to deploy automatically against the homeworld of the suspected perpetrators of the atrocity. Rachel and Martin set off to investigate these events and prevent the assassination of the remaining members of the murdered civilization's leaders, who can abort the retaliation strike. In the background the Eschaton continues to play its own game.
1234167	/m/04krhc	The Terminal Man	Michael Crichton	1972-04-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harry Benson, a man in his 30s, suffers from psychomotor epilepsy. He often has seizures followed by blackouts, and then wakes up hours later with no knowledge of what he has done. During one of his seizures he severely beats two people. He is a prime candidate for an operation to implant electrodes and minicomputer in his brain to control the seizures. Surgeons John Ellis and Morris are to perform the surgery, which is unprecedented for the time. In modern medicine, such a device would be called a brain pacemaker. The ramifications of the procedure are questioned by psychiatrist Janet Ross, and by an emeritus professor named Manon at the lecture about the surgery. Manon raises concerns that Benson is psychotic (pointing to Benson's adamant belief that there is no difference between man and machine) and the crimes he commits during the blackouts won't be curtailed. Ellis admits that what they are doing isn't a cure but just a way to stimulate the brain when the computer senses a seizure coming on. It would prevent a seizure but not cure his personality disorder. Despite the concerns voiced, the team decides to go ahead with the operation. The operation implants forty electrodes in Benson's brain, controlled by a small computer that is powered by a plutonium power pack in his shoulder. Benson must wear a dog tag that says to call the University Hospital if he is injured, as his atomic power pack might emit radiation. While he is recovering, a woman named Angela Black gives Morris a wig for Benson, whose head was shaved prior to the operation. Morris goes back to his normal work, where he interviews a man who volunteers to have electrodes put into his mind to stimulate pleasure. Morris refuses him, but realizes that people like Benson could potentially become addicts. He recalls a Norwegian man, who was allowed to stimulate himself as much as he wanted, and did so much that it actually gave him brain damage. McPherson, head of the Neuropsychiatric department, interviews Benson, who is still convinced machines are taking over the world. McPherson realizes Manon and Ross were right and orders nurses to administer thorazine to Benson. After resting for a day, Benson goes through "interfacing". The forty electrodes in his brain are activated by computer technician Gerhard, one by one, to see which ones would stop a seizure. Each produces different results. One of the electrodes stimulates a sexual pleasure. Ross asks Gerhard to monitor Benson. Gerhard shows his findings to Ross, who realizes that the seizures are getting more frequent. She explains that Benson is learning to initiate seizures involuntarily because the result of these seizures is a shock of pleasure, which leads to him having more frequent seizures. Ross checks on Benson, and discovers that, due to a clerical error, Benson has not been receiving his thorazine. She then finds out that Benson has escaped from the hospital. Ross goes to Benson's house, but finds two girls instead who say he has a gun and blueprints for the basement of University Hospital (where the computer mainframe is). Ellis searches at a strip club where Benson, who is fascinated with all things sexual, spends a lot of time. He doesn't find him. Morris goes to his job, and meets Benson's boss who said that Benson feared the University Hospital because of its ultra-modern computer system, an upgraded IBM System/360 Ross is contacted by Anders, a policeman who found Benson's dogtag at the murder scene of Angela Black. After answering questions at the police station, Ross goes home. Benson arrives at her house, and has a seizure, which causes him to attack Ross. Ross manages to turn on her microwave, which disrupts the atomic pacemaker in his shoulder. He runs away. Ross goes back to the hospital and goes to sleep. When Angela Black is brought back to the hospital for autopsy, pathologists find a book of matches that have the name of an airport. Morris goes to this airport, and a bartender says he saw Benson an hour ago leaving with Joe, who took him to the hangar. Morris goes to this hangar and finds Joe severely beaten. He is in turn attacked by Benson, who smashes the lower part of his face in with a steel pipe and then flees. Ross, back at the hospital, is awakened by Gerhard. She has a call from Benson. When Anders traces the call he realizes that Benson is inside the hospital. Gerhard's computers begin to malfunction, as if somebody was messing with the mainframe. Anders and Ross go down into the basement in search of Benson. Anders locates Benson and has a brief firefight, injuring and disarming Benson before becoming lost in the maze of corridors. Benson goes back to the computer room to finish shutting down the computer mainframe and finds Ross. Ross picks up Benson's gun, Benson returns to the computer and goes to steal the gun from Ross. After an intense (and tearful) internal struggle finally shoots and kills Benson unintentionally.
1234363	/m/04ks5c	The Wolf's Hour	Robert R. McCammon	1989-10-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 It is 1944. A message from Paris warns Allied Intelligence of something big in the works---which might have serious implications for Operation Overlord. The only way to get more information from the agent in Paris---now closely watched by the Gestapo---is to send in a personal courier. Russian émigré Michael Gallatin is picked for the job. In retirement as a secret agent since a grisly episode in North Africa, Gallatin is parachuted into occupied France, on a mission which will take him to the festering heart of the Third Reich on the scent of doomsday. As a master spy, Gallatin has proved he can take on formidable foes---and kill them. As a passionate lover, he attracts beautiful women. But there is one extra factor which makes Michael Gallatin a unique special agent---he is a werewolf, able to change form at will, able to assume the body of a wolf and its capacity to kill with savage, snarling fury. In the madness of war, Gallatin hunts his prey---ready to outthink his opponents with his finely tuned brain. Or tear their throats out with his finely honed teeth. The novel flashes back to when his parents and sister were brutally murdered and before and after Michael is bitten by a Werewolf. Once bitten, he becomes a werewolf and lives in isolation with a wolf clan in Russian forests. Michael Gallatin is a British emigrant that is a top spy for Britain during World War II. In 1942, he overtakes Rommel in North Africa and foils the Nazis plan to control the Suez Canal. This vital waterway would ensure that Nazi Germany could choke off Allied shipping and continue their march east into Russia. In 1944, the war still rages on and the Nazis are forced toward Berlin by the Soviets, but Western Europe is still in Hitler’s grip. Gallatin, in seclusion since 1942, is called back for a vital mission: The first part of the mission has him parachuting into Nazi-occupied France to retrieve vital information from an informant named Adam. Adam is in Paris under tight Gestapo security (the Nazi’s official secret police). Gallatin contacts Adam through a Nazi deserter called “Mouse”. He slips a note in Adams pocket that informs Adam to go to an opera at the third act, so Gallatin can receive the information. Unfortunately, the Gestapo had followed Adam and shoot him in the head just after the information was disclosed to Michael. Michael escapes by faking suicide using cyanide; he doesn’t swallow the pill. This fake-out allots him time to turn into a werewolf and he kills the fleeing Gestapo. Gallatin and Mouse must make their way east to Berlin, the heart of the Nazis lair, in an attempt to foil a top-secret Nazi plan, “Iron Fist”.
1234481	/m/04ksm5	Settling Accounts: Drive to the East	Harry Turtledove	2005-08	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 As the title suggests, it involves that world's version of the invasion of Russia and the battle of Stalingrad with a Confederate push from occupied Ohio into Pittsburgh, codenamed Operation Coalscuttle. It also involves analogues of the Battle of Midway, the Manhattan Project, and the Holocaust. By the summer of 1942, the U.S. push under General Daniel MacArthur into northern Virginia has stalled in the face of fierce opposition. This allows General George Patton to concentrate his forces in Ohio for a renewed push into western Pennsylvania. Aided by improved armor and assault tactics, his troops quickly advance across eastern Ohio to Pittsburgh's outskirts. However Brigadier General Irving Morrell, who now commands the U.S. defense of the Ohio Front, prevents the CSA from enveloping Pittsburgh as planned and forces them into a street to street fight. Meanwhile, Jeff Pinkard enjoys rapid advancement through the Freedom Party hierarchy as he begins to develop the machinery required to implement Jake Featherston's Final Solution to the Negro problem. His Camp Determination is now so efficient that it is able to swallow and extinguish the entire Negro population of Jackson, Mississippi as reprisals against local insurgents. In Augusta's now ghettoized Negro district, Scipio, a former slave and communist rebel during the Great War, manages for a time to skirt the ever increasing terror descending across the CSA's Negro population. Eventually, he too, is swallowed up and finds himself in a cattle car heading towards a bleak future. Elsewhere in Georgia, captured U.S fighter pilot Jonathon Moss escapes from a POW camp and joins a small band of Negro rebels. At sea, Lt. Sam Carsten's ship, USS Remembrance, is sunk by a Japanese carrier attack and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) are threatened with capture. Nevertheless, he finds himself promoted and placed in charge of a destroyer escort, where he spends time patrolling Atlantic sea lanes and engaging in special operations. George Enos' destroyer is nearly sunk in an engagement near Japanese-held Midway due to lack of sea-borne air power. However, when two escort carriers manage to reach Oahu, the tide begins to turn. In a climactic battle, George's fleet sinks a Japanese carrier guarding Midway. In this history, the Pacific War against Japan is treated as essentially a sideshow, getting only a trickle of resources - since the US is facing a dangerous invasion of its industrial heartland. Strategic aims in the Pacific are confined to recapturing Midway to remove the threat to the Sandwich Islands, and characters consider the idea of conducting an island-hopping war all the way to the Japanese home islands (as the US did in World War II) as an unrealistic fantasy. Also, in this history, the Philippines are a long-standing and recognized possession of the Japanese, which they had wrested from Spain and to which the US lays no claim. Under cover of an early November storm, General Morrell leads an armored breakthrough against poorly equipped Mexican troops protecting Patton's flank. Joining up with another salient coming out of West Virginia, he traps the bulk of Patton's army, and drives deep into Ohio. Featherston, beginning an apparent descent into madness, gives the trapped army maniacal orders to hold its ground rather than attempt a breakout. When the promised resupply by air fails, Patton is ordered to escape by air and CSA resistance near Pittsburgh collapses. The sequence of events is similar to that which led to the destruction of the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad during our timeline's World War II. Jonathan Moss spends most of the book as a frustrated POW held at Andersonville, Georgia, under conditions unpleasant but far more tolerable than of the infamous Civil War POW camp of the same location. He and others manage to escape after a tornado blows down the camp's fences. He and another escaped POW join a black guerrilla band whose capable leader took up the nom de guerre Spartacus. During a raid on Plains, Georgia Moss kills Jimmy Carter - here a young Confederate naval officer on leave trying to rally the townspeople against the raiding blacks. General Abner Dowling is transferred from the Virginia front, to take up command of the 11th Army and open a new front by invading Texas and preventing the Confederates from moving forces from there to reinforce the main front around Pittsburgh. By February 1943, his forces are approaching Lubbock, Texas and - still unknown to him, but highly alarming for Pinkard and the Freedom Party High Command - threatening to capture Camp Determination and expose its litany of horrors. Both sides are working desperately to develop a nuclear weapon, although the US is slightly in the lead. Featherston's growing incapacity raises suspicions and leads Generals Clarence Potter and Nathan Bedford Forrest III to consider a plot to overthrow him.
1234512	/m/04ksqv	Settling Accounts: Return Engagement	Harry Turtledove	2004-08	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Following the return of the occupied states of Kentucky and Houston to the Confederacy in early 1941, President Jake Featherston breaks his solemn vow and re-militarizes them, essentially declaring war against the United States in act if not in word. US President Al Smith hurries to prepare for war, but his country is sent reeling by the Confederate attack into Ohio on June 22, 1941. The Yankees under General Abner Dowling and Colonel Irving Morrell fight desperately, but by 1942 the Confederate Army has reached the shores of Lake Erie and cut the country in two. Meanwhile, the Mormons in Utah have once again revolted, prompting a swift response from the U.S. Army. A US counterattack in Virginia bogs down, and the Confederates are preparing a second offensive for the summer of 1942 when Al Smith is killed in a bombing raid on the capital city of Philadelphia. A shaken Charlie La Follette is sworn in as President of a nation fighting for its survival. Meanwhile, in the Confederacy, the murderous persecution of Blacks is escalating towards a full-scale genocide, similar to our timeline's Holocaust. Another hint of things to come is provided when Featherston makes a strategic blunder in rejecting the offer of a physics professor to start research towards producing nuclear weapons, believing that the professor just wants government money to finance an abstruse scientific project - while it is hinted that the US does start a version of the Manhattan Project, located in this case in the state of Washington and overseen by Franklin Roosevelt - in this world an Assistant Secretary of War harboring no presidential ambitions.
1234535	/m/04kstd	The Skin of Our Teeth	Thornton Wilder			 Act one is an amalgam of early 20th century New Jersey and the dawn of the Ice Age. The father is inventing things such as the lever, the wheel, the alphabet, and multiplication tables. The family (the Antrobuses) and the entire north-eastern U.S. face extinction by a wall of ice moving southward from Canada. The story is introduced by a narrator and further expanded by the family maid, Sabina. There are unsettling parallels between the members of the Antrobus family and various characters from the Bible. In addition, time is compressed and scrambled to such an extent that the refugees who arrive at the Antrobus house seeking food and fire include the Old Testament judge Moses, the ancient Greek poet Homer, and women who are identified as Muses. Act II takes place on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the Antrobuses are present for George's swearing-in as president of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Mammals, Subdivision Humans. Sabina is present, also, in the guise of a scheming beauty queen, who tries to steal George's affection from his wife and family. Although the conventioneers are rowdy and partying furiously, there is an undercurrent of foreboding, since the weather signals change from summery sunshine to hurricane to deluge. (A fortune teller had previously attempted to warn them about this but had been ignored). Gladys and George each attempt their individual rebellions, and are brought back into line by the family. The act ends with the family members reconciled and, paralleling the Bibilical story of Noah's Ark, directing pairs of animals to safety on a large boat where they survive the storm and/or the end of the world. The final act takes place in the ruins of the Antrobuses' former home. A devastating war has occurred; Maggie and Gladys have survived by hiding in a cellar. When they come out of the cellar we see that Gladys has a baby. Sabina joins them, "dressed as a Napoleonic camp-follower". George has been away at the front lines leading an army. Henry also fought, on the opposite side, and returns as a general. The family members discuss the ability of the human race to rebuild and continue after continually destroying itself. The question is raised, 'is there any accomplishment or attribute of the human race of enough value that its civilization should be rebuilt'? The stage manager interrupts the play-within-the-play to explain that several members of their company can't do their parts because they're sick (possibly with food poisoning: the actress playing Sabina claims she saw blue mold on the lemon meringue pie at dinner). The stage manager drafts a janitor, a dresser, and other non-actors to fill their parts, which involve quoting philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle to mark the passing of time within the play. The alternate history action ends where it began, with Sabina dusting the living room and worrying about George's arrival from the office. Her final act is to address the audience and turn over the responsibility of continuing the action, or life, to them.
1234613	/m/04kt1k	The Weapon Shops of Isher	A. E. van Vogt	1951	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Weapon Shops of Isher and its sequel The Weapon Makers detail the workings of Isher civilization and the adventures of Robert Hedrock, The One Immortal Man, as he keeps it in balance in the face of attempts by the Weapon Makers, who have forgotten their purpose as a permanent opposition, and the strong government of the Empress, Innelda Isher, with its intimate connections to a network of financial institutions, to undermine each other. The Weapon Shops provide the populace with defensive weapons and an alternative legal system. The Isher/Weapon Shops novels are one of the very few examples of Golden Age science fiction that explicitly discusses the right to keep and bear arms, specifically guns. Indeed, the motto of the Weapon Shops, repeated several times, is "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free". Van Vogt's guns have virtually magical properties, and can only be used in self-defense. The political philosophy of the Weapon Shops is minimalist. They will not interfere with the corrupt imperial monarchy of the Isher government, on the grounds that men always have a government of the type they deserve: no government, however bad, exists without at least the tacit consent of the governed. The mission of the Weapon Shops therefore is merely to offer single individuals the right to protect themselves with a firearm, or, in cases of fraud, access to a "Robin Hood" alternative court system that judges and awards compensation from large, imperial merchant combines to cheated individuals. Because the population has access to this alternative system of justice, the Isher government cannot take the final step toward totalitarianism. The novel was published by Greenberg in New York in 1951. It was also published as a paperback by Ace Books and in 1969 by New English Library in the U.K.
1235644	/m/04kxl7	Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality	Sigmund Freud	1905		 Freud's first essay, on "The Sexual Aberrations", designated 'the person from whom sexual attraction proceeds the sexual object and the act towards which the instinct tends the sexual aim ', and stressed that 'numerous deviations appear in respect of both of these - the sexual object and the sexual aim'. Turning to neurotics, Freud emphasised that 'in them tendencies to every kind of perversion can be shown to exist as unconscious forces...neurosis is, as it were, the negative of perversion'. In one section "The Sexually immature and animals as sexual objects" he discusses pedophilia and bestiality, although he does not use the terms. He says in the section that only rarely are prepubescent children a preferred object, generally it occurs more in cases where an impotent or cowardly person cannot gain satisfaction from adults or adolescents. However he also mentions that there are cases where teachers have molested their students, and he also says sexual relations with animals are "not at all rare among farmers". He says in this section that most people would prefer to limit these perversions to the insane "on aesthetic grounds" but that they exist in the normal people also. He says that people who are behaviorally abnormal are always sexually abnormal in his experience but that many people who are normal behaviorally otherwise are sexually abnormal also. Freud concluded that 'a disposition to perversions is an original and universal disposition of the human sexual instinct and that...this postulated constitution, containing the germs of all the perversions, will only be demonstrable in children '. His second essay, on "Infantile Sexuality", demonstrated that 'children are born with sexual urges, which undergo a complicated development before they attain the familiar adult form'. Freud argued thereby that "perversion" was present even among the healthy, and that the path towards a mature and normal sexual attitude began not at puberty but at early childhood (see psychosexual development). Looking at children, Freud claimed that 'infantile sexual emotions and desires take many and varied forms, not all of them palpably erotic: thumb sucking and other displays of autoeroticism, retention of feces, sibling rivalry, masturbation'. 'The years of puberty and adolescence, to which Freud devoted the last of his three essays...consolidate sexual identity, revive long-buried oedipal attachments, establish the dominance of the genitals for the attainment of sexual gratification'. In "The Transformations of Puberty" Freud also formalised the distinction between the pleasures of infantile sexuality which 'may be suitably described as "fore-pleasure" in contrast to the "end-pleasure" or pleasure of satisfaction derived from the sexual act'. Freud sought to link to his theory of the unconscious put forward in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and his work on hysteria by means of positing sexuality as the driving force of both neuroses (through repression) and perversion. In its final version, the "Three Essays" also included the concepts of penis envy, castration anxiety, and the Oedipus complex.
1237092	/m/04l107	Closer	Patrick Marber			 A young man, Dan, takes a young woman to the hospital after she has been hit by a taxi; they flirt as they wait for the doctor to attend to her bloodied knee. Larry, a doctor in dermatology, inspects her leg briefly and leaves. Dan and the young woman introduce themselves—he is Daniel Woolf, an obituary writer and failed writer who tells her how he and his colleagues use euphemisms humorously in their work in obituaries. Upon the girl's prompting, he says his euphemism would be "reserved" and hers would be "disarming." She is Alice Ayres, a self-described waif who has a scar along her leg which is shaped like a question mark. Wanting him to spend the rest of the day with her, she calls his editor and tells his boss that he's sick and can't come in to work. More than a year later, Dan is on the verge of publishing a book based on Alice's past as a stripper, and Anna is taking his photograph for publicity. Dan falls in love with Anna, though he is in a relationship with Alice, having left his former girlfriend for her. He begs Anna to see him again, and she rejects him. Alice overhears his conversation with Anna. She asks Anna to take her photo, and when Dan has left, confronts her; Anna insists she is "not a thief" and snaps a photo of a tear-stricken Alice. Six months later, Dan and Larry meet in an adult chat room. Dan impersonates Anna and has internet sex with Larry. He tries to play a practical joke on Larry by arranging for Larry to meet him (Dan pretending to be Anna in the chat room) in the London Aquarium the next day. When Larry arrives, stunned to see Anna (who Dan didn't know would actually be there), he acts under the impression that she is the same person from last night and makes a fool of himself. Anna catches on and explains that it was probably Dan playing a practical joke on him. She reveals that it is her birthday and snaps a photo of Larry. They become a couple. At Anna's showing, Alice stands in front of her photo, looking at it; Dan is watching her. They have an argument over Alice's presentiment that Dan will leave her. Larry meets Alice, whom he recognizes as the woman in the photo, and knows that she is Dan's girlfriend. Meanwhile, Dan convinces Anna to carry on an affair with him. They cheat on their partners with each other, even through Anna and Larry's marriage. Finally, one year later, they tell their partners the truth and leave their respective partners for each other. Alice, devastated, disappears from Dan's life and goes back to stripping, going by the name Jane. Larry finds her at one of the seedy strip clubs in London, where he pushes her to tell the truth about her name. In a poignant moment, he asks, "Tell me something true, Alice." She tells him, "Lying is the most fun a girl can have, without taking her clothes off, but it's better if you do." They share a connection based on mutual betrayal and heartbreak. He asks her to meet him later for sex. She declines, but we later learn she does actually go home with him after all. A month after this, Anna is late meeting Dan for dinner. She's come from asking Larry to sign the divorce papers. Dan finds out that Larry had demanded Anna have sex with him before he would sign the papers. Dan becomes upset and jealous, asking Anna why she didn’t lie to him. They have a candid, brutally truthful conversation, and it is revealed that Anna did in fact have sex with Larry and he did sign the papers. Alice meanwhile has been sleeping with Larry. On his birthday, she summons him to the museum and sets up Anna to meet him there. Larry and Anna exchange words, as Anna discovers Alice and Larry have been having a casual relationship. Larry asks Anna if their divorce will ever become finalized; he leaves when Alice emerges. The two women share a heated exchange in which their mutual animosity is revealed. Anna calls Alice "primitive", a description Alice accepts. The younger Alice paints a pathetic picture of Larry's emotional state and gleans from Anna that Dan still calls out for "Buster" (Alice's nickname) in his sleep. Anna goes back to Larry. Distraught, Dan confronts Larry at his office and has to come to terms with the fact that Anna no longer wants him. Larry recommends Dan go back to Alice and reveals that he had seen her in the strip club. He lies for Alice at first and tells Dan that they did not sleep together, since Alice feared that, if Dan found out, he would not want her anymore. At the end, Larry decides to hurt Dan and reveals the truth — that they had slept together. Dan and Alice, back together, are preparing to go to America. They relive the memories of their first meeting, but Dan is haunted by their encounters with Larry and Anna and pushes Alice to tell him the truth. In the moment when Alice becomes caught between telling the truth (which she refuses to do) and being unable to lie to him, she falls out of love with Dan and says, "I don't love you anymore. Goodbye." (She had told Dan in the beginning that these are the words she tells her significant others when their relationship is over and she's going to leave.) She tells Dan to leave. Dan struggles with her; she spits in his face, and he throws her back on the bed, grabbing her neck. She dares him to hit her, and he hits her; she leaves. Later, Anna and Larry meet again, only to reveal that they have broken up once again and Larry is dating a young nurse named Polly. They are meeting because Alice has died the night before in New York, having been hit by a car while crossing the street. Larry leaves as Dan arrives because he has patients to see. Dan talks with Anna and says that no one could identify Alice's body and he is flying over to America to do so. Before Dan leaves, he tells Anna that Ruth, his ex-girlfriend whom he left for Alice/Jane, is now married, has a child, and is pregnant with a second. She married a poet, having fallen in love with him (without ever having met him) by reading his book of poems called "Solitude." Dan and Anna tell each other "goodbye" somewhat coldly and Dan leaves to catch his flight, leaving Anna alone.
1237880	/m/04l38k	Wise Children	Angela Carter		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 The story begins on the 75th birthday of identical twin sisters, Dora and Nora Chance. By what Dora, who is also the narrator of the story, describes as a bizarre coincidence, it is also the 100th birthday of their natural father, Melchior Hazard, and his fraternal twin brother, Peregrine Hazard, who is believed to be dead. The date is similarly Shakespeare's supposed birthday - April 23. Dora and Nora's birthday gets off to a dramatic start when their half-brother, Tristram Hazard, who believes himself to be the nephew of the twins, arrives on their doorstep. He announces that Tiffany - his partner, and the goddaughter of the twins, is missing. Dora and Nora soon discover that Tiffany is pregnant with Tristram's baby, but he is unwilling to take on the responsibility. Once this bombshell has been dropped, it soon emerges that a body has been found, and it is believed to be Tiffany's. Most of the novel consists of Dora's memories. As well as providing the backstory of her natural father, Melchior Hazard, her legal father, Peregrine Hazard, and her guardian, Grandma Chance, Dora describes key events of her life. These include her early theatre performances, how she and her sister deal with being rejected by their father, as well as the time that she spent in Hollywood, producing a film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It also makes the reader wonder about a sexual and incestuous relationship between Peregrine and Dora as there are hints that some sexual activity took place on the Brighton trip, but Carter does not clear this mystery up. Dora and Nora attend Melchior's 100th birthday party, where he acknowledges they are his children for the first time in their lives. The twins learn that both Peregrine and Tiffany are alive, and the true nature of their long-time enemies, Saskia and Imogen, is revealed. The novel ends with Dora and Nora being presented with twin babies to look after - a gift from Peregrine. They realise that they "can't afford" to die for another twenty years, as they want to see the children grow up. The final line of the story is a message constantly conveyed by Carter throughout the novel: "What a joy it is to dance and sing!"
1240269	/m/04lb36	The Pioneers	James Fenimore Cooper	1823	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story takes place on the rapidly advancing frontier of New York State and features an elderly Leatherstocking (Natty Bumpo), Judge Marmaduke Temple of Templeton, whose life parallels that of the author's father Judge William Cooper, and Elizabeth Temple (based on the author's sister, Hannah Cooper), of the fictional Templeton, New York. The story begins with an argument between the Judge and Leatherstocking over who killed a buck, and as Cooper reviews many of the changes to New York's Lake Otsego, questions of environmental stewardship, conservation, and use prevail. Leatherstocking and his closest friend, the Mohican Indian Chingachgook, begin to compete with the Temples for the loyalties of a mysterious young visitor, a "young hunter" known as Oliver Edwards, who eventually marries Elizabeth. Chingachgook dies, exemplifying the vexed figure of the "dying Indian", and Natty vanishes into the sunset.
1240426	/m/04lbk6	Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West	Gregory Maguire	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 The novel is a political, social, and ethical commentary on the nature of good and evil and takes place in The Land of Oz, in the years leading to Dorothy's arrival. The story centers on Elphaba, the misunderstood green-skinned girl who grows up to become the notorious Wicked Witch of the West. Gregory Maguire fashioned the name of Elphaba () from the initials of Lyman Frank Baum, L-F-B. The story is divided into five different sections based on the plot location. There is also a prologue where Elphaba is spying on Dorothy and her friends, hearing their gossip about her. Elphaba is born to Melena Thropp, the granddaughter of the Eminent Thropp of Munchkinland, and Frexspar, an itinerant unionist minister. Frex is the seventh son of a seventh son, and the third pastor in his family. Because Melena married lower than her family's social standing she seems unhappy in her marriage and is known to have previously had many other men in her life. Though it does not become clear until much later, Melena is at some point approached by a mysterious stranger, who gives her a potion called "Miracle Elixir" from a green bottle. He seduces her and nine months later she gives birth to a child, Elphaba. Elphaba is born with green skin, sharp teeth, is seemingly savage, biting at anyone and anything forcing her parents to fashion a muzzle, so she cannot hurt herself or others. She is terrified of water, even as a newborn, as touching it causes her pain. Frex believes the baby is punishment from the Unnamed god for failing to protect his parishioners while Melena has trouble bonding with and caring for Elphaba, calling on her childhood nanny for help. With Nanny there to help, Frex decides to leave home to travel spreading the word of the Unnamed God. To dull the pain of raising a difficult child and loneliness while Frex is away, Melena chews pinlobble leaves (a type of Munchkinlander drug) and drinks heavily. About a year and a half later, a traveling Quadling glassblower named Turtle Heart visits the home of Melena and Frex. Melena offers him food and drink, and Turtle Heart blows a beautiful glass reflecting mirror for Elphaba. With Frex absent for extended periods, preaching to the Munchkinlanders, Turtle Heart and Melena begin a secret affair. When Frex returns, he befriends Turtle Heart (seemingly ignorant of the relationship between the Quadling and his wife), out of unionist charity (Quadlings, after all, "ranked about as low on the social ladder as it was possible to get and still be human"), religious zeal (Quadlings have no concept of religion, so Frex sees Turtle Heart as a potential convert), and an attraction to Turtle Heart of his own. At the end of the first part, Melena is pregnant with Elphaba's younger sister Nessarose or "Nessie" for short. It is unknown whether the father is Frex or Turtle Heart. Melena orders Nanny to ensure her second child will not be born green like her firstborn, but the actions she takes to avoid this have unforeseen consequences. Nessarose is born as pink as Elphaba is green, but more importantly, she has no arms and requires constant supervision and care. Nessarose eventually embraces Frex's zealotry and, thus, she is her father's favorite, to Elphaba's lasting angst. On a steam train enroute to Shiz, a city in southwestern Gillikin two of the train's passengers, Doctor Dillamond and Galinda, are bound for Shiz University. Upon arrival, Doctor Dillamond retreats to his professors' quarters and Galinda heads off to Crage Hall, the women's college. Having lost her chaperone, Ama Clutch, during the train ride to Shiz (Ama Clutch stepped on a rusty nail and stayed behind for medical treatment), Galinda has no one to represent her in her roommate negotiations. Refusing to bunk with the common girls in the group dormitory (the Pink Dormitory), Galinda is forced to room with seventeen year old Elphaba, with whom she initially does not get along very well. Elphaba, being green, is not interested in socializing, and Galinda, who descends from the noble Arduenna Clan of Gillikin on her mother's side, is more interested in climbing the social ladder than becoming friends with her outcast roommate. Later, Galinda (after having a fight with her new friends) decides to mock Elphaba by making her wear a hat that she was sure Elphaba would look hideous in. When Elphaba looks pretty in the hat, Galinda says so, partly horrified that she talked to the "green girl." They start talking about evil and Elphaba teaches Galinda how to think and they start attending Doctor Dillamond's biology lectures together. Doctor Dillamond is a self-aware Goat, and part of a minority of talking Animals (self-aware animals are distinguished from non-self-aware animals throughout the book through capitalization of the letter at the beginning of the word referring to them - "animals" versus "Animals," "goat" versus "Goat", etc) that hold civil rights equal to humans. Doctor Dillamond informs the class that, under the despotic reign of the Wizard of Oz, Animals are being discriminated against, treated like regular (sentient but non-self-aware) animals and, in some cases, forced to return to the fields (it should be noted that, as mentioned on the train ride to Shiz, Doctor Dillamond's ancient mother at this time cannot afford to travel first class, and will have to ride in a pen if she wants to visit Doctor Dillamond at Shiz). Doctor Dillamond's fears that Animal discrimination is becoming widespread are seemingly confirmed by Madame Morrible (whom Elphaba nicknames "Horrible Morrible"), the Headmistress of Crage Hall at Shiz University, who holds a poetry soiree that turns out to be nothing more than a forum for her propagandizing through use of quells, one of which ends with the following phrase: Animals should be seen and not heard. Elphaba is drawn to the Animal rights movement early on and she later becomes Doctor Dillamond's secretary and lab assistant. Elphaba becomes friends with a Munchkin boy named Boq (son of Bfee, the Mayor of Rush Margins, which was the town in which Elphaba was born), who develops a crush on Galinda. As she is a tall Gillikinese, and he is a short Munchkinlander, she rebuffs him. He hopes his friendship with Elphaba will bring him closer to Galinda; however, he ends up becoming wrapped up in Elphaba and Doctor Dillamond's cause. Their friendship is shaken, however, when Doctor Dillamond is murdered while on the verge of a great discovery about the genetic similarities between humans and Animals; Galinda's chaperone Ama Clutch witnesses Madame Morrible's wind-up servant Grommetik kill Dillamond, but she is magicked into a false stupor to keep her quiet. Galinda is wracked with guilt over what has happened to Ama Clutch, but it is the murder of Doctor Dillamond that has the most profound impact on her. In his memory, Galinda adopts Dr. Dillamond's mispronunciation of her name, Glinda, and throws herself into her studies, having settled on a course of study in Sorcery, at Madame Morrible's insistence. Glinda and Elphaba become close friends. Boq's crush on Glinda eventually subsides, and they all become friends with a Vinkus Prince named Fiyero, a quiet boy who speaks little of the Oz-language, but draws attention by his strange customs and pattern of blue diamond tattoos all across his body and who is new to Shiz. Elphaba's sister Nessarose is also called up to Shiz, ostensibly to accompany Nanny, who is to be the new chaperone for Glinda and Elphaba. Frex sends his favorite child a "back-to-school" gift, a pair of shoes covered with hand-blown glass beads, a technique taught to him by Turtle Heart. Meanwhile, Elphaba carries on the research of deceased Doctor Dillamond in secret. Over time, Ama Clutch's condition gradually deteriorates and, when it is clear that she is about to die, Glinda tries to use magic to bring her out of her stupor. Her lucidity briefly restored, Ama Clutch tells Glinda that she witnessed Grommetik kill Doctor Dillamond, which he could only have done on the order of Madame Morrible. After Ama Clutch's funeral, Elphaba, Glinda and Nessarose are almost convinced by Madame Morrible to become silent pawns of the Wizard, so-called "ambassadors of peace": Elphaba will go east, to Munchkinland; Glinda will go further north in Gillikin; Nessarose will go south, to Quadling Country, with no one going west because few people live there. While Elphaba is reluctant to accept this position, Glinda is entranced. When they try to discuss the situation with one another, they find they cannot, because they are bound by a spell that prevents them from discussing Morrible's proposition. Unwilling to remain silent, Elphaba decides that something must be done. She and Glinda travel to the Emerald City, where they meet the Wizard of Oz and plead the case of the Animals. However, the Wizard of Oz dismisses their concerns out of hand, and Glinda and Elphaba have no choice but to return to Shiz. Elphaba stays behind and sends Glinda back alone, saying that she cannot see her again. She has decided to take matters into her own hands. Almost five years have passed since Elphaba has seen Glinda, Boq, or any of her other friends from college and she now lives in the Emerald City, secretly involved in the movement to help free the Animals and get rid of the Wizard of Oz. Fiyero, now a Prince with 3 children, comes to the Emerald City to settle business with politicians. He encounters Elphaba in front of a shrine to St. Glinda, and though Elphaba at first denies being the girl he once knew from Shiz and evades Fiyero, she eventually gives in when he follows her home. After this, they start to reconnect. He discovers she has started to take up magic, and tells her that Nessa has taken a class in sorcery, Glinda is now a sorceress and that they miss Elphaba. She and Fiyero begin to have an illicit love affair, and he neglects his wife Sarima and his children, Irji, Manek and Nor. The two lovers are at peace, and despite their occasionally conflicting personalities, Elphaba is actually happy with her life for once. Her life changes the night she sets out to finally fulfill her task: kill Madame Morrible. Fiyero follows her, but she cannot complete her task due to a group of children interfering with Elphaba's line of fire. He returns to her apartment to wait for her, where the Gale Force, the Wizard's secret police force who are looking for Elphaba, attack him. He is kidnapped, hauled away and assumed murdered. Elphaba escapes from the City, and runs to a mauntery, where she meets an elderly woman named Yackle, formerly the dame of the Philosophy Club. Yackle takes the now homeless Elphaba, turned mute from grief after Fiyero's murder, under her wing. Having been unconscious for almost a year, and then a mute for six more years, Elphaba goes to the Vinkus, the land where Fiyero was prince, and meets his wife and children. Elphaba brings along a boy named Liir, to whom she claims no relation, and stays at the castle Kiamo Ko for a year and a half or so. She attempts to tell Sarima, Fiyero's wife, of their affair, but Sarima refuses, saying she does not want to talk about her late husband. Fiyero's family, Elphaba, and Liir unexpectedly become a family unit, and are joined by Nanny after some time. While staying at the castle, Elphaba also discovers a mysterious book of spells that she calls a 'Grimmerie', and begins to study its contents, written in a language which Elphaba is unique among Ozians in being able to read. Manek, one of Sarima's sons, convinces Liir during a game of hide and seek to hide in a well and leaves him there. Liir nearly dies, and Elphaba's anger at Manek makes an icicle fall on him and it kills him. The experience makes Elphaba realize that she has motherly feelings, and that she feels that she is Liir's mother, but she finds that her new found warmth is not reciprocated. Liir claims that while in the well a Fish told him he was Fiyero's son. Sarima becomes upset and grieves, and the family starts to fall apart. Elphaba gets a letter from her father Frex, asking her to come help him with Nessarose, who has taken Elphaba's position of Eminent Thropp of Munchkinland. When she arrives, he asks her to help him talk to Nessa, whom Elphaba discovers has become a witch, who she accidentally labels the Wicked Witch of the East. Elphaba leaves after Nessa promises to give Elphaba the infamous silver shoes after she dies (Glinda enchanted them to allow her to walk without help). When she returns to Kiamo Ko, she finds everyone gone except Nanny. Nanny explains that the soldiers who were staying in the house made everyone because Nor lets slip that Elphaba is not there to protect the household. The villagers and the previous residents of the house hope that she will rescue them. Elphaba vows to do everything in her power to get everyone back. Seven years later, a storm visits Munchkinland, dropping a farmhouse on Nessa, killing her. The farmhouse's passengers are a little girl named Dorothy Gale and her puppy, Toto. Glinda, who was nearby, sends Dorothy off with Nessa's shoes for fear of their power igniting a civil war in Munchkinland, as well as to ensure Dorothy's safety. She sent Dorothy to the Wizard in hopes that he will send her back to Kansas. Elphaba comes to the funeral for Nessa. Elphaba and Glinda rejoice at seeing each other after more than a decade. The two talk of their titles and catch up. When Glinda tells Elphaba that she gave Nessa's shoes to Dorothy, Elphaba becomes furious with Glinda, as they were rightfully hers. She is then forced into a meeting with the Wizard to bargain for the release of Nor, whom Elphaba is told is the last survivor of Fiyero's family. He reveals, after seeing a ripped page from the Grimmerie that the reason he is in Oz is to acquire the Grimmerie and learn the magic within. Elphaba refuses to part with it without Nor. The Wizard, however, refuses to make any agreements. On her way back to Kiamo Ko, Elphaba stops at Shiz to kill Madame Morrible, the task she had been trying to complete the night of Fiyero's murder. She bashes in her skull with her broom; however, it is revealed that Madame Morrible had died only minutes before Elphaba came to murder her. Regardless, Elphaba decides to claim to have committed the murder and confesses to Avaric, an old schoolmate, so that she will get the credit when the news spreads. She comes upon the Clock of the Time Dragon, which puts on a special show for her: it shows the Wizard, and not Frex, to be her father. The dwarf running it (also found working with Yackle in the Philosophy Room) claims to be not of this world, and remarks that Yackle is also not what she seems. Some time after returning to Kiamo Ko, Elphaba finds out that Dorothy and a few friends are heading to Kiamo Ko, apparently to kill her under the Wizard's orders. When the friends are almost at the castle, Elphaba, having convinced herself that her beloved Fiyero had survived his encounter with the Gale Force and was now masquerading as the Scarecrow, sends her dog Killyjoy out to lead the friends to the castle. Dorothy and her friends misunderstand the group of dogs howling toward them and the Tin Woodman kills the dogs. The Scarecrow somehow kills the crows Elphaba sends next. Elphaba sends her bees, which are killed as well, and Elphaba is forced to believe the Scarecrow is what he seems: just a scarecrow. With all her pets gone, the shock of this revelation only serves to further unhinge her. When Dorothy arrives, she tells Elphaba that the Wizard did indeed send her to kill the witch, but Dorothy herself came to apologize for killing her sister. Furious that Dorothy is asking for the forgiveness when Elphaba has never received absolution for her own perceived sins, Elphaba waves her now-burning broom in the air and inadvertently sets her skirt on fire. Innocently, Dorothy throws a bucket of water on her to save her. Instead the water kills her, leaving nothing but her clothes and the infamous hat on the floor where she once stood. Dorothy returns to the Wizard with the green potion bottle that has been kept in the family for years. He recognises the bottle. The bottle was meant to be the potion that subdued Elphaba's Mother in some way though how is uncertain. It is implied that the Wizard is the Father of Elphaba; however, this doesn't work out chronologically with the story as Elphaba, around the age of 2 or 3, has a vision along with Turtle Heart of the Wizard arriving. Rumors abound through Oz about the whereabouts of Dorothy (and her dog), few actually believing that she returned to Kansas. The Wizard plans his departure from Oz and his ensuing suicide. The last lines of the book seem to imply that Elphaba will rise from the ashes some day: "And there the wicked old Witch stayed for a good long time." "And did she ever come out?" "Not yet."
1240617	/m/04lc1x	Hocus Pocus	Kurt Vonnegut	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Eugene is fired from his job as a college professor after having several of his witticisms surreptitiously recorded by the daughter of a popular conservative commentator. Eugene then becomes a teacher at a nearby overcrowded prison run by a Japanese corporation. His employer, and occasional acquaintance, is the prison's warden, Hiroshi Matsumoto. After a massive prison break, Eugene's former college is occupied by escapees from the prison, who take the staff hostage. Eventually the college is turned into a prison, since the old prison was destroyed in the breakout. Ironically, Eugene is ordered to be the warden of the prison, but then becomes an inmate, presumably via the same type of "hocus pocus" that led to his dismissal from his professorship.
1240630	/m/04lc3b	Deadeye Dick	Kurt Vonnegut	1982	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's main character, Rudy Waltz, nicknamed Deadeye Dick, commits accidental manslaughter as a child (he kills a pregnant woman who was vacuuming) and lives his whole life feeling guilty and seeking forgiveness for it. He was so traumatized by the events directly after the woman's death that he lives life as an asexual "neuter," neither homosexual nor heterosexual. He tells the story of his life as a middle-aged man expatriate in Haiti, which symbolizes New York City, until the end, when the stream of time of the story catches up with him. At this point, he confronts an event that has been suggested and referred to throughout the novel. The generic Midwestern town of Midland City, Ohio (also the setting of Breakfast of Champions) in which Rudy was raised is virtually destroyed by a neutron bomb. At the ending of the book, it appears that Rudy, while he may not have fully come to terms with his actions, has at least come to live with them. In addition, the ending is where Vonnegut provides his most direct commentary on society, although there are hints here and there throughout the novel. Another key theme throughout the book is the relationship between Waltz and his parents. Vonnegut focuses on connecting the actions and attitudes of parents to the ensuing actions and attitudes of the offspring, in this case, Rudy Waltz. Rudy writes a play, based on events in the life of his father's former best friend. In the latter half of the book some scenes are described as theater scripts.
1242445	/m/04ljsf	The Fox	D. H. Lawrence		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Banford and March live on a farm together because it does not look like they will marry. Although they are only in their late twenties, in that era women who were still single at their age were generally considered to have foregone the prospect of marriage. Banford is thin and frail, in contrast to her companion who is physically masculine. However particular emphasis is given to March's face, which is feminine and expressive. The women are depicted as fearful of femininity and fertility. For example, they sell a heifer before it calves. The fox becomes a hindrance to Banford and March, but March finds she cannot hunt it, and rather, she becomes entranced by it. Shortly after this, Henry, a young man, comes to stay with the women, and a link is established between the fox and Henry. This intriguing novella explores gender roles, sexuality, femininity, and the pity of war, as do two other Lawrence novellas written at the same time, The Ladybird and The Captain's Doll.
1242565	/m/04lk2v	Dream Story	Arthur Schnitzler		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dream Story is set in early-20th-century Vienna. The protagonist of the story is Fridolin, a successful 35-year-old doctor who lives with his wife Albertina (also translated as Albertine) and their young daughter. One night, Albertina confesses that the previous summer, while they were on vacation in Denmark, she had had a sexual fantasy about a young Danish military officer. Fridolin then admits that during that same vacation he had been attracted to a young girl on the beach. Later that night, Fridolin is called to the deathbed of an important patient. Finding the man dead, he is shocked when the man’s daughter, Marianne, professes her love to him. Restless, Fridolin leaves and begins to walk the streets. Although tempted, he refuses the offer of a young prostitute named Mizzi. He encounters his old friend Nachtigall, who tells Fridolin that he will be playing piano at a secret high-society sex orgy that night. Intrigued, Fridolin procures a mask and costume and follows Nachtigall to the party at a private residence. Fridolin is shocked to find several men in masks and costumes and naked women with only masks engaged in various sexual activities. When a young woman warns him to leave, Fridolin ignores her plea and is soon exposed as an interloper. The woman then announces to the gathering that she will sacrifice herself for Fridolin and he is allowed to leave. Upon his return home, Albertina awakens and describes a dream she has had: while making love to the Danish officer from her sexual fantasies, she had watched without sympathy as Fridolin was tortured and crucified before her eyes. Fridolin is outraged, as he believes that this proves his wife wants to betray him. He resolves to pursue his own sexual temptations. The next day, Fridolin learns that Nachtigall has been taken away by two mysterious men. He then goes to the costume shop to return his costume and discovers that the shop-owner is prostituting his teenage daughter to various men. He finds his way back to where the orgy had taken place the night before; before he can enter, he is handed a note addressed to him by name that warns him to not pursue the matter. Later, he visits Marianne, but she no longer expresses any interest in him. Fridolin searches for Mizzi, the prostitute, but is unable to find her. He reads that a young woman has been poisoned. Suspecting that she is the woman who sacrificed herself for him, he views the woman’s corpse in the morgue but cannot identify it. Fridolin returns home that night to find his wife asleep, with his mask from the previous night set on the pillow on his side of the bed. When she wakes, Fridolin confesses all of his activities. After listening quietly, Albertina comforts him. Fridolin says that it will never happen again but Albertine tells him not to look too far into the future, and the important thing is that they survived through their adventures. The story ends with them greeting the new day with their daughter.
1242905	/m/04lkv0	A Mathematician's Apology	G. H. Hardy			 In the book's title, Hardy uses the word "apology" in the sense of a formal justification or defense (as in Plato's Apology of Socrates), not in the sense of a plea for forgiveness. Hardy felt the need to justify his life's work in mathematics at this time mainly for two reasons. Firstly, at age 62, Hardy felt the approach of old age (he had survived a heart attack in 1939) and the decline of his mathematical creativity and skills. By devoting time to writing the Apology, Hardy was admitting that his own time as a creative mathematician was finished. In his foreword to the 1967 edition of the book, C. P. Snow describes the Apology as "a passionate lament for creative powers that used to be and that will never come again". In Hardy's words, "Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. [...] It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done." Secondly, at the start of the Second World War, Hardy, a committed pacifist, wanted to justify his belief that mathematics should be pursued for its own sake rather than for the sake of its applications. He wanted to write a book in which he would explain his mathematical philosophy to the next generation of mathematicians; that would defend mathematics by elaborating on the merits of pure mathematics solely, without having to resort to the attainments of applied mathematics in order to justify the overall importance of mathematics; and that would inspire the upcoming generations of pure mathematicians. Hardy was an atheist, and makes his justification not to God but to his fellow man. One of the main themes of the book is the beauty that mathematics possesses, which Hardy compares to painting and poetry. For Hardy, the most beautiful mathematics was that which had no practical applications in the outside world (pure mathematics) and, in particular, his own special field of number theory. Hardy contends that if useful knowledge is defined as knowledge which is likely to contribute to the material comfort of mankind in the near future (if not right now), so that mere intellectual satisfaction is irrelevant, then the great bulk of higher mathematics is useless. He justifies the pursuit of pure mathematics with the argument that its very "uselessness" on the whole meant that it could not be misused to cause harm. On the other hand, Hardy denigrates much of the applied mathematics as either being "trivial", "ugly", or "dull", and contrasts it with "real mathematics", which is how he ranks the higher, pure mathematics. Hardy expounds by commenting about a phrase attributed to Carl Friedrich Gauss that "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences and number theory is the queen of mathematics". Some people believe that it is the extreme non-applicability of number theory that led Gauss to the above statement about number theory; however, Hardy points out that this is certainly not the reason. If an application of number theory were to be found, then certainly no one would try to dethrone the "queen of mathematics" because of that. What Gauss meant, according to Hardy, is that the underlying concepts that constitute number theory are deeper and more elegant compared to those of any other branch of mathematics. Another theme is that mathematics is a "young man's game", so anyone with a talent for mathematics should develop and use that talent while they are young, before their ability to create original mathematics starts to decline in middle age. This view reflects Hardy's increasing depression at the wane of his own mathematical powers. For Hardy, real mathematics was essentially a creative activity, rather than an explanatory or expository one.
1243731	/m/04lmvn	A New Way to Pay Old Debts	Philip Massinger			 Set in rural Nottinghamshire, the play opens with its protagonist, Frank Welborn, being ejected from an alehouse by Tapwell and Froth, the tavernkeeper and his wife. Welborn has been refused further service ("No booze? nor no tobacco?"); he quarrels with the couple and beats them, but is interrupted by Tom Allworth. The conversations in the scene supply the play's backstory, indicating that Welborn and Allworth are both members of the local gentry who have fallen victim to the financial manipulations of Sir Giles Overreach. Welborn has lost his estates and been reduced to penury, while young Allworth has been forced to become the page of a local nobleman, Lord Lovell. Allworth offers Welborn a small sum, "eight pieces," to relieve his immediate wants, but Welborn indignantly rejects the offer from a junior contemporary; he says that as his own vices have led to his fall, he will rely on his own wits for his recovery. Tom Allworth's widowed mother, Lady Allworth, retains her country house; she is visited there by neighbors and prospective suitors, including Sir Giles. While she has her servants greet these guests with appropriate hospitality, she remains "cloister'd up" in the seclusion of her mourning. When Sir Giles visits, he is accompanied by his two prime henchmen, the lawyer Jack Marall and Justice Greedy, the local justice of the peace. Together, Greedy and the Lady's servants provide most of the play's comic relief. Greedy is a lean man with an enormous appetite; a gourmand and a glutton, he is obsessed with food. Lady Allworth instructs her son to avoid the dissolute Welborn; but Welborn forces his way into her presence, and reminds her of his relationship with her late husband. When the late Allworth had been down on his luck, Welborn had supported him, even seconding him in all his duels. The recollection makes Lady Allworth repent her harsh attitude toward the reprobate Welborn, and she offers him financial help; he rejects this, but requests a favor of her instead. The request is made in a whisper; the audience discovers its nature as the plot progresses. Overreach is shown with Marall, discussing his plan to marry his daughter Margaret to Lord Lovell. He also gives a first glimpse into the ruthless way he conducts his business affairs. Welborn seeks out Overreach, but Sir Giles refuses to speak with him; Marall mocks his poverty. Yet Marall has to change his tune when he sees Lady Allworth come out of mourning to meet Welborn. When she kisses Welborn, Marall is convinced that the two will marry. When Marall informs Overreach of what he's seen, however, Overreach refuses to believe him, and even beats him. Eventually, though, Overreach himself sees Welborn and Lady Allworth together, and accepts the "truth" of their connection. Sir Giles favors their marriage, since he is sure that once Welborn possesses the Lady's remaining property he can cheat the dissolute man of this property too. Margaret Overreach has no interest in marrying Lord Lovell, since she is in love with Tom Allworth, as he is with her. Lord Lovell knows of his page's affections, and is willing to act as a go-between for the two. Young Allworth is nervous at this, suspecting that his patron will not be able to resist Margaret's charms; but Lovell is an honorable man, and sincerely promotes their match. Overreach thinks that Allworth is carrying messages between the Lord and his daughter, though the young page is actually pursuing his own romance. Together, the young couple manage to fool Sir Giles into thinking that Lovell wants a reluctant Margaret to elope with him; Overreach pressures his daughter to conform, and even sends hurried written instructions to a compliant clergyman at the village of Gotham, to marry his daughter to "this man." Of course he means Lovell, though the ambiguity favors the young lovers. To facilitate the marriage of Welborn and Lady Allworth, Sir Giles advances Welborn a thousand pounds. He also discusses his plans with Lovell, revealing more of his intentions and his dark character, so that Lovell breaks into a "cold sweat" listening to him. (With each of his appearances in the play, Overreach's expressions of his villainy become more flagrant and overwrought, leading up to the denouement of the final scene.) Marall sees Welborn's apparent ascension in fortune, and, chafing at Overreach's insulting and brutal treatment of him, decides to switch allegiances; his command of Overreach's legal papers gives Marall a key advantage in seeking his own revenge. When Overreach believes that Lovell and Margaret are married, he enters a state of near rapture: "My ends! my ends are compass'd!...I can scarce contain myself, / I am so full of joy; nay, joy all over!" The play's final scene shows his sudden reversal, when he realizes that he has been fooled and that Margaret has married Allworth. Enraged, he demands that Welborn provide security for the loan of £1000 from the Lady's estates; Welborn rejects this, and demands that Overreach return possession of his lands. Sir Giles dismisses this as folly &mdash; but discovers that the text of his deed to Welborn's lands has mysteriously faded away (thanks to the trickery of Marall). Overreach is ready to work his revenge with his sword, but Welborn, Lovell, and the Lady's servants altogether are too formidable for him. He storms out...but returns in a distracted state of mind. The stresses of his reversal of fortune have caused him to lose his sanity, and he is taken into protective custody. Welborn decides to demonstrate his reformation by taking a military commission in the regiment Lovell commands. Lovell and Lady Allworth have agreed to marry. Allworth and Margaret state that they will turn control of Overreach's estates to Lord Lovell, to make reparations for all the to the people Sir Giles has cheated and oppressed.
1245725	/m/04lsb3	Fathers and Sons	Ivan Turgenev	1862-02	{"/m/05qt0": "Politics", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg and returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. The father, Nikolai, gladly receives the two young men at his estate, called Marino, but Nikolai's brother, Pavel, soon becomes upset by the strange new philosophy called "nihilism" which the young men advocate. Nikolai feels awkward with his son at home, partially because Arkady's views have dated his own beliefs, and partially because he has taken a servant, Fenichka, into his house to live with him and has already had a son by her. The two young men remain at Marino for a short time, then decide to visit a relative of Arkady's in a neighboring province. There they observe the local gentry and meet Madame Odintsova, an elegant woman of independent means who invites them to spend a few days at her estate, Nikolskoe. At Nikolskoe, they also meet Katya, Madame Odintsova's sister. They remain for a short period over the course of which they both change a lot, especially their relationship for each other, because they both find themselves drawn to Madame Odintsova. Bazarov in particular, finding this distressing because falling in love goes against his beliefs. Eventually, he announces that he loves her. She does not respond to his declaration, and soon after, Arkady and Bazarov leave for Bazarov's home. At Bazarov's home, they are received enthusiastically by his parents. Bazarov is still disturbed by his rejection, and is difficult to get along with. He almost comes to blows with his friend Arkady. After a brief stay, they decide to return to Marino, and circle by to see Madame Odintsova, who receives them coolly. They leave almost immediately and return to Arkady's home. Arkady remains for only a few days, and makes an excuse to leave in order to go to Nikolskoe. Once there, he realizes he no longer is in love with Odintsova, but instead her sister Katya. Bazarov stays at Marino to do some scientific research, and tension between him and Pavel increases. Bazarov enjoys talking with Fenichka and playing with her child, and one day he gives her a quick, harmless kiss which is observed by Pavel. He, secretly being in love with Fenichka himself, challenges Bazarov to a duel. Pavel is wounded slightly, and Bazarov must leave Marino. He stops for an hour or so at Madame Odintsova's, then continues on to his parents' home. Meanwhile, Arkady and Katya have fallen in love and have become engaged. At home, Bazarov cannot keep his mind on his work and while performing an autopsy fails to take the proper precautions. He contracts typhus, and on his deathbed, sends for Madame Odintsova, who arrives in time to hear Bazarov tell her how beautiful she is. Arkady marries Katya and takes over the management of his father's estate. His father marries Fenichka and is delighted to have his son home with him. Pavel leaves the country and lives the rest of his life as a "noble" in Dresden, Germany.
1245832	/m/04lsk0	Zero Minus Ten	Raymond Benson	1997-04-03	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong from the British to the People's Republic of China nears, Bond is given ten days to investigate a series of terrorist attacks taking place that could disrupt the fragile handover and cause the breakout of a large-scale war. Simultaneously a nuclear bomb is test detonated in the Australian outback. In Hong Kong, Bond suspects and is led to a wealthy British shipping magnate, Guy Thackeray, who he catches cheating at mahjong at a casino in Macau. Later, after cheating the cheater and winning a large sum of Thackeray's money, Bond attends a press conference where Thackeray announces that he is selling his company, EurAsia Enterprises to the Chinese, secretly due to a long-forgotten legal document that grants the descendants of Li Wei Tam ownership of the company if the British were to ever lose control of Hong Kong. Because the descendants were claimed to have abandoned China, General Wong of the People's Republic of China claims the document on behalf of the government and forces Thackeray out. Immediately following the announcement Thackeray is killed in a car bomb by an unknown assassin after numerous previous attempts that claimed the lives of the entire board of directors at EurAsia Enterprises as well as several employees. Through his Hong Kong contact, T.Y. Woo, Bond also investigates Li Xu Nan, the Triad head of the Dragon Wing society and the rightful descendant of Li Wei Tam. Li's identity as the Triad head is supposed to be a secret, though after Bond involves a hostess, Sunni Pei, 007 is forced to protect her from numerous Triads for breaking an oath of secrecy. When she is finally captured, Bond makes a deal, off the record, to go to Guangzhou and retrieve the long-forgotten document from General Wong that will give Li Xu Nan ownership of EurAsia Enterprises upon the exchange at midnight on July 1, 1997. Through Li's contacts, Bond successfully travels and meets General Wong in Guangzhou under the guise of a solicitor from England. Bond's cover is later blown and T.Y. Woo who followed Bond is executed. Bond avenges his friend's death by killing General Wong and stealing the document, which he hand delivers to Li Xu Nan and retrieves Sunni Pei. With Li Xu Nan in Bond's debt, Bond uses Li's contacts to go to Australia to investigate EurAsia Enterprises and find a link between it and the nuclear blast. As it turns out Thackeray is very much alive and has been mining unreported uranium in Australia to make his own nuclear bomb, which he plans to detonate in Hong Kong at the moment the handover takes place in retaliation for his loss of his family's legacy. Returning to Hong Kong, Bond, Li Xu Nan, and a Captain with the Royal Navy track down Thackeray's nuclear bomb and defuse it. The battle claims the lives of Li Xu Nan as well as Thackeray's, who is drowned by Bond in the harbour.
1246937	/m/04lw2r	Demon City Shinjuku	Hideyuki Kikuchi			 The movie begins with a battle between fates, the evil Rebi Ra (also pronounced Levi Ra or even Devi Da) versus the short-lived hero Genichirou. Rebi Ra has allowed himself to be possessed in order to gain the incredible powers of evil and plans to summon demons to conquer the world. Defeating Genichirou and destroying Shinjuku, a part of Tokyo, with a devastating earthquake, the area becomes a demon-haunted wilderness. The novel doesn't have a fight scene between Genichirou and Rebi Ra. It opens with a quiet time in Shinjuku and then in a sudden change the Demon Quake hits only Shinjuku. Ten years later, the World President, put in place to uphold world peace, is attacked by Rebi Ra indirectly to keep his old master, Aguni Lai (Aguni Rai), as the protector of the president, occupied. However, Rebi Ra did not know that Genichirou had a son who inherited his powers and more. After an emotional plea from the president's daughter, Sayaka Rama, the unlikely hero Kyoya Izayoi follows her deep into the heart of the evil city, finding new allies and terrifying enemies along the way. In the novel Aguni Rai asks the Information Bureau Japan Section Chief to look for Kyoya as the only one who could stop Rebi Ra. The Section Chief tests Kyoya with a commando cyborg and then relates to Kyoya that the president is in a life threatening curse and only has three days to defeat Rebi Ra before the president is killed as the ritual sacrifice to bring the Demon Realm to Earth, which he failed to do years prior, causing the Demon Quake. During the course of explanation Aguni Rai uses a doppelganger to communicate to Kyoya from New York in hopes of convincing him to save the world. Sayaka soon enters and pleads with him to do so as well. Kyoya finally decides to help because of Sayaka's pleas.
1247287	/m/04lx27	The Fabric of the Cosmos	Brian Greene	2004	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The main focus of Part I is space and time. Chapter 1 is an introduction of what is to come later in the book, such as discussions revolving around classical physics, quantum mechanics and cosmological physics. Chapter 2, "The Universe and the Bucket", features space as its key point. The question posed by Greene is this: "Is space a human abstraction, or is it a physical entity?" The key thought experiment is a spinning bucket of water, designed to make one think about what creates the force felt inside the bucket when it is spinning. The ideas of Isaac Newton, Ernst Mach, and Gottfried Leibniz on this thought experiment are discussed in detail. Chapter 3, "Relativity and the Absolute", makes spacetime its focal point. The question now becomes, "Is spacetime an Einsteinian abstraction or a physical entity?" In this chapter, concepts of both special relativity and general relativity are discussed as well as their importance to the meaning of spacetime. In chapter 4, "Entangling Space", Greene explores the revolution of the quantum mechanical era, focusing on what it means for objects to be separate and distinct in a universe dictated by quantum laws. This chapter provides an in-depth study of quantum mechanics, including the concepts of probability waves and interference patterns, particle spin, the photon double slit experiment, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The reader will also be informed of the challenges posed to quantum mechanics that were compiled by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. Part II begins by addressing the issue that time is a very familiar concept, yet it is one of humanity's least understood concepts. Chapter 5, "The Frozen River", deals with the question, "Does time flow?" One of the key points in this chapter deals with special relativity. Observers moving relative to each other have different conceptions of what exists at a given moment, and hence they have different conceptions of reality. The conclusion is that time does not flow, as all things simultaneously exist at the same time. Chapter 6, "Chance and the Arrow", asks the question, "Does time have an arrow?" The reader discovers that the laws of physics apply both moving forward in time and backwards in time. Such a law is called time-reversal symmetry. One of the major subjects of this chapter is entropy. Various analogies are given to illustrate how entropy works and its apparent paradoxes. The climax of the chapter is the co-relation between entropy and gravity, and that the beginning of the universe must be the state of minimum entropy. In chapters 5 and 6, time has been explained only in terms of pre-modern physics. Chapter 7, "Time and the Quantum", gives insights into time's nature in the quantum realm. Probability plays a major role in this chapter because it is an inescapable part of quantum mechanics. The double slit experiment is revisited in a stunning way that reveals both interesting and shocking things about the past. Many other experiments are presented in this chapter, such as the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment. Other major issues are brought to the reader's attention, such as quantum mechanics and experience, as well as quantum mechanics and the measurement problem. Finally, this chapter thoroughly addresses the important subject of decoherence and its relevance towards the macroscopic world. Part III deals with the macroscopic realm of the cosmos. Chapter 8, "Of Snowflakes and Spacetime", tells the reader that the history of the universe is in fact the history of symmetry. Symmetry and its importance to cosmic evolution becomes the focus of this chapter. Again, general relativity is addressed as a stretching fabric of spacetime. Cosmology, symmetry, and the shape of space are put together in a unique way. Chapter 9, "Vaporizing the Vacuum", introduces the theoretical idea of the Higgs boson. This chapter focuses on the critical first fraction of a second after the big bang, when the amount of symmetry in the universe was thought to have changed abruptly by a process known as symmetry breaking. This chapter also brings into play the theory of grand unification and entropy is also revisited. Chapter 10, "Deconstructing the Bang", makes inflationary cosmology the main point. General relativity and the discovery of dark energy (repulsive gravity) are taken into account, as well as the cosmological constant. Certain problems that arise due to the standard big bang theory are addressed and new answers are given using inflationary cosmology. Such problems include the horizon problem and the flatness problem. Matter distribution throughout the cosmos is also discussed, and the concepts of dark matter and dark energy come full circle. Chapter 11, "Quanta in the Sky with Diamonds", continues with the topic of inflation, and the arrow of time is also discussed again. The chapter addresses three main developments, the formation of structures such as galaxies, the amount of energy required to spawn the universe we now see, and, of prime importance, the origin of time's arrow. Part IV deals with new theoretical aspects of physics, particularly in the field of the author. Chapter 12, "The World on a String", informs the reader of the structure of the fabric of space according to string theory. New concepts are introduced, including the Planck length and the Planck time, and ideas from The Elegant Universe are revisited. The reader will learn how string theory fills the gaps between general relativity and quantum mechanics. Chapter 13, "The Universe on a Brane", expands on ideas from chapter twelve, particularly, a theory called M-theory, of which string theory is a branch. This chapter is devoted to speculations on space and time according to M-theory. The collective insights of a number of physicists are presented, including those of Edward Witten and Paul Dirac. The focal point of the chapter becomes gravity and its involvement with extra dimensions. Near the end of the chapter, a brief section is devoted to cyclic cosmology, otherwise known as the cyclic model. Part V deals with many theoretical concepts, including space and time travel. Chapter 14, "Up in the Heavens and Down on the Earth", is about various experiments with space and time. Previous theories are brought back from previous chapters, such as Higgs theory, supersymmetry, and string theory. Future planned experiments are described in an attempt to verify many of the theoretical concepts discussed, including the constituents of dark matter and dark energy, the existence of the Higgs boson, and the verification of extra spacial dimensions. Chapter 15, "Teleporters and Time Machines", is about traveling through space and time using intriguing methods. Quantum mechanics is brought back into the picture when the reader comes across teleportation. Puzzles of time travel are posed, such as the idea of time travel to the past being a possibility. The end of the chapter focuses on worm holes and the theory behind them. Chapter 16, "The Future of an Allusion", focuses on black holes and their relationship to entropy. The main idea of this chapter is that spacetime may not be the fundamental makeup of the universe's fabric.
1248081	/m/04lz0c	A Million Open Doors	John Barnes	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins sometime in the 29th century on the planet Wilson (orbiting Arcturus) with a young man named Giraut and his romantic, swashbuckling friends, who are all members of the Nou Occitan culture and residents in the Quartier de Jovents, a sort of playground for teens and twenty-somethings who have not yet moved on to the more "grown-up" lifestyle of their parents. Technologically safeguarded, these young adults have swordfights in the streets with "neuroducer" épées and frequent the taverns of the Quartier, living in an imaginative recreation of Occitan literature and the trobador tradition. However, Giraut is forced to grow up much more quickly than most of his friends, because one day his friend Aimeric, who was, before coming to Wilson and becoming a jovent, an economist in the Caledon culture of the nearest inhabited planet, Nansen (orbiting Mufrid), is called upon by the government to return to his home planet on a mission to regulate the effects of the springer on Caledonian economy. The springer is a method of instantaneous transportation which is quickly reuniting humanity across known space. Giraut decides to leave when he catches his girlfriend getting into the Interstellar "arts scene" (the art is called "sadoporn") which is an acting out against the exclusive values and code of honor valued by Giraut and his friends. Thus, Aimeric and Giraut advise the rational council of the Caledonians to adjust their economy to that of the rest of the universe so that the springer will have as few adverse effects as possible. When the Caledonians decide that Aimeric and Giraut, as well as the Interstellar government, are trying to usurp their power, they begin to try to seize back control of everything, and an urban conflict ensues. Giraut discovers among the strife who he really is and begins to see how fake his life back home was, and recognize faults in his home culture.
1249326	/m/04m19j	Letters on the English	Voltaire		{"/m/02t97": "Essay"}	 Lettres anglaises consists of twenty-four letters: *Letter I: On The Quakers *Letter II: On The Quakers *Letter III: On The Quakers *Letter IV: On The Quakers *Letter V: On The Church of England *Letter VI: On The Presbyterians *Letter VII: On The Socinians, or Arians, or Antitrinitarians *Letter VIII: On The Parliament *Letter IX: On The Government *Letter X: On Trade *Letter XI: On Inoculation *Letter XII: On The Lord Bacon *Letter XIII: On Mr. Locke *Letter XIV: On Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton *Letter XV: On Attraction *Letter XVI: On Sir Isaac Newton's Optics *Letter XVII: On Infinites in Geometry, and Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology *Letter XVIII: On Tragedy *Letter XIX: On Comedy *Letter XX: On Such of The Nobility as Cultivate The Belles Lettres *Letter XXI: On The Earl of Rochester and Mr. Waller *Letter XXII: On Mr. Pope and Some Other Famous Poets *Letter XXIII: On The Regard That Ought to Be Shown to Men of Letters *Letter XXIV: On The Royal Society and Other Academies Voltaire first addresses religion in Letters 1–7. He specifically talks about Quakers (1–4), Anglicans (5), Presbyterians (6), and Socinians (7). In the Letters 1-4, Voltaire describes the Quakers, their customs, their beliefs, and their history. He appreciates the simplicity of their rituals. In particular, he praises their lack of baptism ("we are not of opinion that the sprinkling water on a child's head makes him a Christian"), the lack of communion ("'How! no communion?' said I. 'Only that spiritual one,' replied he, 'of hearts'"), and the lack of priests ("'You have, then, no priests?' said I to him. 'No, no, friend,' replies the Quaker, 'to our great happiness'"), but still expresses concern regarding the manipulative nature of organized religion. Letter 5 is devoted to the Anglican religion, which Voltaire compares favourably to Catholicism ("With regard to the morals of the English clergy, they are more regular than those of France"), but he criticizes the ways in which it has stayed true to the Catholic rituals, in particular ("The English clergy have retained a great number of the Romish ceremonies, and especially that of receiving, with a most scrupulous attention, their tithes. They also have the pious ambition to aim at superiority"). In Letter 6, Voltaire attacks the Presbyterians, whom he sees as intolerant ("[The Presbyterian] affects a serious gait, puts on a sour look, wears a vastly broad-brimmed hat and a long cloak over a very short coat, preaches through the nose, and gives the name of the whore of Babylon to all churches where the ministers are so fortunate as to enjoy an annual revenue of five or six thousand pounds, and where the people are weak enough to suffer this, and to give them the titles of my lord, your lordship, or your eminence") and overly strict ("No operas, plays, or concerts are allowed in London on Sundays, and even cards are so expressly forbidden that none but persons of quality, and those we call the genteel, play on that day; the rest of the nation go either to church, to the tavern, or to see their mistresses"). Finally, in the Letter 7, he talks about the "Socinians," whose belief system is somewhat related to Voltaire's own deist viewpoint. Voltaire argues that while this sect includes some of the day's most important thinkers (including Newton and Locke), this is not enough to persuade the common man that it is logical. According to Voltaire, men prefer to follow the teachings of "wretched authors" such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, or Huldrych Zwingli. In Letters 8 and 9, Voltaire discusses the English political system. Letter 8 talks about the British parliament, which he compares to both Rome and France. In terms of Rome, Voltaire criticizes the fact that Britain has entered wars on account of religion (whereas Rome did not), but he praises Britain for serving liberty rather than tyranny (as in Rome). In terms of France, Voltaire responds to French criticism concerning the regicide of Charles I by highlighting the British judicial process as opposed to the outright murders of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII or Henry III of France, or the multiple attempts on the life of Henry IV of France. In Letter 9, Voltaire gives a brief history of the Magna Carta, talks about the equal dispensing of justice, and the levying of taxes. In Letter 10, Voltaire praises the English trade system, its benefits, and what it brings to the English (from 1707, British) nation. According to Voltaire, trade greatly contributed to the liberty of the English people, and this liberty in turn contributed to the expansion of commerce. It is trade as well that gave England its naval riches and power. In addition, Voltaire takes the opportunity to satirize the German and French nobles who ignore this type of enterprise. For Voltaire, nobles are less important than the businessman who "contributes to the felicity of the world." In Letter 11, Voltaire argues in favour for the English practice of inoculation, which was little known in continental Europe at the time, having only been made known in Great Britain through the efforts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Voltaire mentions Montagu's campaign in favour of inoculation in his letter, along with the decision by Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess of Wales, to allow her two daughters to be inoculated against the disease. This letter may have been written in response to a 1723 smallpox epidemic in Paris that killed 20,000 people. Letter 12 speaks of Francis Bacon, author of Novum Organum and father of experimental philosophy. Letter 13 is about John Locke and his theories on the immortality of the soul. Letter 14 compares British philosopher Isaac Newton to French philosopher René Descartes. Upon his death in 1727, Newton was compared to Descartes in a eulogy performed by French philosopher Fontenelle. While the British did not appreciate this comparison, Voltaire argues that Descartes, too, was a great philosopher and mathematician. Letter 15 focuses on Newton's work with the laws of attraction. Letter 16 talks about Newton's work with optics. Letter 17 discusses Newton's work with geometry and his theories on the end of the world. In Letter 18, Voltaire talks about British tragedy, specifically in the hands of William Shakespeare. Voltaire presents his readers with the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy in Hamlet along with a translation into French rhyming verse. He also cites a passage from John Dryden and gives a translation. In Letter 19, Voltaire addresses British comedy, citing William Wycherley, John Vanbrugh, and William Congreve. Letter 20 speaks briefly of the belles lettres of the nobility, including the Earl of Rochester and Edmund Waller. Letter 21 references the poetry of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. In Letter 23, Voltaire argues that the British honour their Men of Letters far better than the French in terms of money and veneration. The last letter, letter 24, discusses the Royal Society of London, which he compares unfavourably to the Académie Française.
1250458	/m/04m4jv	James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007	John Pearson	1973	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The premise of James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007 is that James Bond is based upon a real MI6 agent. Fleming hinted so in You Only Live Twice, in Bond's obituary, that his adventures were the basis of a series of "sensational novels"; illustrating this contention, that novel's comic strip adaptation used covers from Fleming's James Bond novels. Writing autobiographically, Pearson begins the story with his own recruitment to MI6. Already, the department had assigned Ian Fleming to write novels based upon the real agent; Fleming was to be truthful about the agent's adventures. The idea was to hide the truth, of Bond's exploits, in plain sight; along the way, Fleming created fictional tales, such as Moonraker, to keep the Soviets guessing what was fact and what was not. Pearson's also incorporates Fleming's flippant claim to not having written The Spy Who Loved Me, but that Vivienne Michel mysteriously sent him the manuscript. Based upon the success of his Fleming biography, The Life of Ian Fleming (1966), MI6 instruct Pearson to write 007's biography; he is introduced to a retired James Bond — who is in his fifties, yet healthy, sun-tanned, and with Honeychile Ryder, the heroine of Dr. No. Most of James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007 is Bond telling his life story, including school and first MI6&nbsp;missions, referring to most every novel and short story and, notably, to Colonel Sun, the Robert Markham series-continuation novel. At conclusion, as Bond rushes to another mission (contrary to mandatory retirement), John Pearson is invited to assume Ian Fleming's scribal duties, like Dr. Watson assumed with Sherlock Holmes. In fact, Glidrose Publications considered John Pearson's becoming the new, series writer; despite good reviews and sales of James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, nothing happened.
1250878	/m/04m5v9	Colonel Sun	Kingsley Amis	1968-03	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kidnappers violently take the Secret Service chief M from his house and almost capture James Bond, who is visiting. Intent on rescuing M, Bond follows the clues to Vrakonisi, one of the Aegean Islands. In the process, Bond discovers the complex military-political plans of Colonel Sun of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Sun had been sent to sabotage a Middle East détente conference which the Soviet Union is hosting. He intends to attack the conference venue and use M and Bond's bodies to blame Great Britain for the disaster, leading to a world war. Bond meets Soviet agents in Athens and they realise that not only is a third country behind the kidnap, but that there is a traitor in the organisation. An attack on the Soviet headquarters kills all the agents except Ariadne Alexandrou, a Greek Communist. As he is dying, the Soviet leader encourages Bond and Ariadne to work together to prevent an international incident. Ariadne persuades Litsas, a former WW2 resistance fighter and friend of her late father to help them by telling him about the involvement in the plot of former Nazi, Von Richter. Trying to find M and Colonel Sun, Bond is nearly captured by the Russians, but is saved by Litsas. Finally, Bond finds Sun's headquarters, but is knocked out by one of Sun's men; Bond learns that Von Richter will use a mortar to destroy the conference venue and that Bond will be tortured by Sun, before his inevitable demise. Sun tortures him brutally, until one of the girls at the house is ordered by Sun to caress Bond fondly. In the process she cuts one of Bond's hands free and provides him with a knife. She tells Sun that Bond is dead: when examined Bond stabs Sun. He then frees other captives who help Bond stop Von Richter. However Sun survives the stab wound and kills several of the other escapees. Bond tracks down Sun and kills him in the confrontation. The Soviets thank Bond for saving their conference, offering him a medal for his work, which he politely turns down.
1251460	/m/04m796	Phantastes	George MacDonald		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The tale starts the day after Anodos' twenty-first birthday. He discovers an ancient fairy lady (whom he learns to be his grandmother) in the desk which he opens with a key that he inherited as a birthright from his late father. After the fairy shows him Fairy Land in a vision, Anodos awakes the next day to find that his room, crafted after natural elements, is taking literal form and transforming into a wood. He discovers that he has been transported to Fairy Land. Anodos then encounters a woman and her daughter in a cottage who warn him about the Ash Tree and the Alder Tree, who seek to destroy him. He is told that the spirits of these trees can leave their tree-hosts and wander throughout Fairy Land. He then explores the world of the fairies, which live in flowers, causing them to glow. The flowers, he is told, die if the fairies leave. He then has a nightmarish encounter with the spirit of the Ash Tree, escapes, and finds rest in the warmth and love of the Beech Tree's spirit. After this, he finds the statue (fondly called "my Marble Lady" by Anodos) by Pygmalion. After he sings to it, the statues flees from him. He pursues the lady and finds a woman he believes to be her. However, this lady is actually the Maid of the Alder Tree in disguise. The spirit of the Ash Tree joins the Maid and is close to killing Anodos when he is saved by Sir Percivale (who chopped the actual ash tree with an axe.) Anodos then meets a woman and her daughter who believe in fairy tales and the magic of Fairy Land, despite the unbelief of the woman's husband. Anodos also finds his shadow, an evil presence that follows and torments Anodos throughout the rest of the story. Anodos finds a palace that mysteriously belongs to him and contains a room with an inscription that reads "Sir Anodos". In the palace, he reads the story of Cosmo of Prague. Cosmo is a believer in fantasy who sacrifices his life to free the soul of his lover from an enchanted mirror (whether the event was a fictional story made by an author from Fairy Land or if it was a recording from an event in Anodos' world is left ambiguous). Anodos spends much time in the palace, relating his various wanderings and readings. In one such wandering, he comes upon corridors filled with still statues. Hearing the last vestiges of song from the corridors, and considering the statues as recently frozen into immobility upon his approach, Anodos ventures deeper and deeper into the halls. He dreams of the marble lady, that she alone has an empty pedestal among the statues. He later finds this pedestal, and, figuring a way in which to trick the statues into continuing to dance as he enters the room, he eventually sings to the pedestal. The marble lady materializes, but Anodos attempts to grab her. She flees and disappears. Anodos follows, going down into a strange subterranean world with gnome-like creatures (like the German Kobolds) that mock him. Anodos escapes this place and finds himself in a stormy sea. When a boat arrives, he boards it. It takes him to an "island" with a cottage with four doors which in inhabited by an ancient lady with young eyes. Anodos enters each door in turn, each containing a different world. In the first he becomes a child again, remembering the death of his brother. He comes back to the cottage crying. In the next door he finds the marble lady and Sir Percivale, alive, well, and in love. They are talking about him, and Anodos (previously unnoticed) makes a last outburst of his love for the marble lady. They leave, as does Anodos. The next door recounts the death of a loved one of Anodos, and he finds his family mausoleum. His ancestors help him back to the cottage. Anodos travels through the last door ("the door of the timeless") but is saved by the ancient lady without remembering anything. The ancient lady says that because she saved him he must leave (the "island" in fact has an isthmus). Next Anodos finds himself with two brothers who also call Anodos their "brother", due to a prophecy given to them that a third would come to help them. They are forging armor and swords in order to fight three giants that have fortified a castle nearby, to the dismay of the townsfolk. The brothers are the sons of the king. Anodos joins them in their fight, but they are attacked unarmed by the giants. The brothers die, but Anodos lives, becoming a hero of the kingdom. He wanders to tell a woman whom one of the brothers loved of his honorable death, but he finds instead a manifestation of his shadow, who imprisons Anodos in a tower. Anodos is saved by the song of a woman whom he had met before in fairy land, and he is not troubled by his shadow ever again. Anodos becomes the dedicated squire of the knight, and they become good friends. They come upon a temple full of worshipers doing an unknown evil to a select few. Sir Percivale, always seeing good in people, is deceived, but Anodos rises to end the practice. He destroys the idol made of rotting wood which is sitting on a throne. He is killed by the multitude before Percivale can save him. In death Anodos finds peace, having died nobly. He floats overlooking things, and finally awakes alive in the "real" world, never forgetting his experiences in Fairy Land. His sisters inform him he had been gone 21 days, but to him it felt like 21 years.
1252295	/m/04mb9t	The Unknown Shore	Donald Malcolm	1959	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the early part of the novel, set in London, other members of the expedition are featured. They appear in more detail in The Golden Ocean, another O'Brian novel about the Anson expedition. The expedition is beset by storms while rounding of Cape Horn, the Wager is shipwrecked off the coast of Chile as their position could not be determined. The crew reject the authority of their officers, once the ship was wrecked and leave the captain, some officers and some other crew on the island when they sail away in a boat built from the wreck. The marooned officers make their way to a Spanish settlement with the help of the native people. The novel is based on the accounts of the survivors. Survivors from the lower deck made their way back to Britain long before the officers. The novel describes the crew members asserting that the officers had no authority over them, once their ship was wrecked.
1252909	/m/04mctr	The Simultaneous Man			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The book's protagonist is Andrew Horne (nicknamed "Bear"), a Russian-born U.S. scientist, who works at "West Wing" on Project Beta, a secret government mind-control project, which aims to perfect the art of brainwashing until it is possible to completely re-make a person's mind and soul. The Project operates on hopeless cases from psychiatric wards, and "prison-volunteers" who would otherwise be executed. The Project's first Remake having failed disastrously, it is decided to base the second Remake on the mind of Horne himself. The prison-volunteer chosen for the Remake is a Black soldier, referred to as prisvol 233/234, who has killed an officer and been sentenced to death. The project first uses ultrasound to destroy his access to his old memories, and then, having washed the slate clean, exposes him to immersive movie reenactments of Horne's childhood, college days, war service, and entry into the Project. (As this is performed, the reader discovers that Horne himself was on the receiving end of torture and brainwashing in the Korean War, which he fought against by creating a "false self" which he betrays to the enemy - the "Lieutenant Kijé defense"). At the end of this process, 233/234, now known as "Black Bear", is, for all intents and purposes, Andrew Horne in a new body. However, when Security realizes that Black Bear also has all of Horne's secret knowledge, and considers him a security risk, this sets off a chain of events where their mirror image identities will lead both Black Bear and Horne to "East Wing" in Russia.
1253200	/m/02p426k	The Grandmother				 The book describes, in an idealized form, the childhood of Němcová. The plot weaves together a remembrance of the agrarian calendar and customs of the neighborhood with the love stories of several women, which reveal more of the history and customs of that area. The main action of the novel seems to take place during the first one or two years after the Grandmother has come to live at the Old Bleachery with her daughter's family, to help manage the household. The father is frequently absent due to his job as equerry to the local noblewoman, which takes him away to Vienna during the winter. The principal action of the story is to tell the intertwining tales of Viktorka, Kristla, and the Countess. The author is identified with Barunka, the eldest daughter of the Prošek family; however, the novel is not told from her point of view.
1254019	/m/04mh9c	Rich Man, Poor Man	Irwin Shaw		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the early parts of the novel Shaw goes to great lengths to make the point about "Jordache blood" - violent, bitter, resentful. One of the ways he does this is by meticulously describing the hate-filled marriage of the parents, Mary and Axel. The novel is told in the third person omniscient point of view but never wholly objectively, often through the lens of the consciousness of one of the five family members. When told through the POV of either Mary or Axel the view of humanity, and of the Jordache family, is relentlessly bleak and pessimistic. The tripwire that sets all of the ensuing plot action in motion occurs when Gretchen Jordache begins an affair with the president of the company she works for, Teddy Boylan, a man much older than herself. Eventually her brothers Rudolph and Thomas also become involved with Boylan, in different ways, and it is his influence upon all three that first springs each of them into the world beyond the small upstate New York town where their parents scrape by with their bakery. Boylan constitutes their first true encounters with an adult beyond their parents. Many people, mainly because of their familiarity with the miniseries rather than the actual source material, thought of the story as a very simplistic juxtaposition of the virtuous, goody two shoes brother (Rudolph) with the black sheep, ne'er-do-well younger sibling (Thomas, whom Shaw seeks to differentiate psychologically by means of a physical symbol - he is the only blond haired member of the family), but the novel is much more complex than this in its demonstrative understructure. For example Rudolph is constantly developing positive relationships only with people who can help him - his father, Mr. Calderwood, Johnny Heath, Boylan. In stark contrast to this both Gretchen and Thomas consistently entangle themselves with the kinds of people that modern self help literature calls "drain people" or "toxic people". A couple of examples: Thomas' only friend in the world, Claude, gives him up immediately to the authorities the second his own well being is threatened, and when Axel Jordache learns of Tom's actions his only impulse is to get rid of him, to send him away to live with family in Ohio. Contrast this with Rudolph's friend, Johnny Heath, who becomes his lifelong friend, attorney, and business partner, and also with what Axel Jordache does when confronted by Rudolph's French teacher over a behavior miscue - he slaps the teacher in the face. We cannot imagine him defending either Gretchen or Thomas in this manner. Boylan serves as the macguffin that drives the plot for all three of the Jordache siblings. For Gretchen he is an introduction to the world of men and relationships. He awakens in her the realization that she is the kind of woman who reduces men to cowering wimps but who cannot, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, put together a sound, completely fulfilling relationship. Her marriage to Willie Abbott collapses under the weight of his alcoholism and her marriage to Colin Burke ends in tragedy when Burke dies in a car accident. Similarly none of her numerous affairs bear any genuine emotional fruit. It is because of Boylan that Thomas embarks on a savage act of vandalism (with his friend Claude, who eventually turns him in). When caught, the men of the town present Axel Jordache with a choice - send Thomas away or let him and the family face the consequences with the law. Jordache sends him away to live with his brother in Ohio, thus beginning a pattern that is repeated over and over and over in the novel: Thomas settles somewhere for a while, does OK for a time, then gets into trouble and has to flee. Finally Boylan offers to pay for Rudolph to go to college. Although on one level Rudolph despises Boylan as a petty vindictive rich pervert of an old man, he sees another side of him as well - the financially independent man of the world who wants for nothing. Shaw uses Rudolph's even, balanced judgment of Boylan as a counterpoint to the wholly negative, wholly one sided opinion of him both Gretchen and Thomas, in their own separate ways, cling to.
1254671	/m/04mjs6	Dinosaur Planet	Anne McCaffrey	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A team visits fictional planet Ireta to survey its mineral wealth. Several anomalies are discovered. Before all can be explained the Heavyworlder "muscle people" mutiny.
1256038	/m/04mmz1	The Night Land	William Hope Hodgson	1912	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 The beginning of the book establishes the framework in which a 17th century gentleman, mourning the death of his beloved, Lady Mirdath, is given a vision of a far-distant future where their souls will be re-united, and sees the world of that time through the eyes of a future incarnation. The language and style used are intended to resemble that of the 17th century, though the prose has features characteristic of no period whatsoever: the almost-complete lack of dialogue and proper names, for example. Once into the book, the 17th century framing is mostly inconsequential. Instead, the story focuses on the future. The Sun has gone out and the Earth is lit only by the glow of residual vulcanism. The last few millions of the human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark. These are held back by a Circle of energy, known as the "air clog," powered from a subterranean energy source called the "Earth Current". For millennia, vast living shapes—the Watchers—have waited in the darkness near the pyramid. It is thought they are waiting for the inevitable time when the Circle's power finally weakens and dies. Other living things have been seen in the darkness beyond, some of unknown origins, and others that may once have been human. To leave the protection of the Circle means almost certain death, or worse an ultimate destruction of the soul. As the story commences, the narrator establishes mind contact with an inhabitant of another, forgotten Lesser Redoubt. First one expedition sets off to succour the inhabitants of the Lesser Redoubt, whose own Earth Current has been exhausted, only to meet with disaster. After that the narrator sets off alone into the darkness to find the girl he has made contact with, knowing now that she is the reincarnation of his past love. At the conclusion of the adventure, the narrative does not return to the framework story, instead ending with the happy homecoming of the couple and his inauguration into the ranks of their most honored heroes. The term "Abhuman" was used by Hodgson in The Night Land to name (apparently) several different species of intelligent beings evolved from humans who interbred with alien species or adapted to changed environmental conditions and were seen as decayed or malign by those living inside the Last Redoubt, who preserved artificially (to an unspecified extent) their human characteristics, though they were not fit for the new environmental conditions.
1256444	/m/04mp83	Coyote	Allen Steele		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The year is 2070, and the United Republic of America, the authoritarian conservative regime constructed after the fall of the United States, has built its first starship: the URSS Alabama. The welcoming celebration for Captain Robert E. Lee takes a sudden turn when Lee initiates his plan to steal the Alabama. Working with a handful of conspirators, Lee manages to take the ship by the helm and override the clearance codes. URS soldiers climb aboard to stop Lee, but they are too late. Not wishing to abandon their orders, Colonel Reese and the other soldiers become stowaways. Captain Lee knew exactly what he was doing. His destination: the 47 Ursae Majoris system, some 46 light years away—far enough to escape the tyrannical United Republic. At a cruise velocity of .2c, Alabama would not arrive at its destination until 230 earth years have passed. So the crew of 104 soldiers, scientists, and civilians were put in biostasis, to be awakened from their virtual immortality by the ship’s AI 226 years into the future. (Four years are spared due to time dilation.) 47 Ursae Majoris' system has four planets- named Fox, Raven, Bear and Wolf after Native American mythology. Bear has six satellites- Dog, Hawk, Eagle, Coyote, Snake and Goat. Of these six, Coyote is large enough to support its own biosphere. Just three months into the journey, something goes terribly wrong. Leslie Gillis, the senior communications officer, is awakened from biostasis. Expecting the year to be 2300, Gillis is horrified when he questions the AI. There was a mix up, and now it is impossible for Gillis to return to his dreamless sleep. His grueling options are either suicide or a lonely existence surviving off the ship’s supplies. While suicide may be more honorable than devouring the crewmate’s rations, Gillis chooses life. After a brief chat with the AI, Gillis learns that a Mr. Eric Gunther was originally scheduled to awake three months into the trip. Gunther is an agent for the URA, and would attempt to contact the president, or destroy the ship. The program was changed at the last minute to wake someone else instead- Les Gillis. Gillis leaves a note for Captain Lee explaining Gunther’s plans for treason. Why they were changed at the last minute remains a mystery, but it was a change that would cost Gillis his life. During Leslie Gillis’ solitary life, he did everything he could to keep from going insane, attempting to eat and sleep at regular hours, reading all of the books which were on board, playing chess against the AI, writing stories, and painting. Using practically all of the ship’s art supplies, Gillis created a story about a prince named Rupurt and the fantastic alien world he lived in. He painted scenes of his books on the ship’s inside walls. Eventually, Gillis died in his old age with a fall from the main ladder, after trying to get a better look at the alien ship he had seen. The AI automatically expelled his body into space with the arms of a maintenance bot, and the ship sailed on to 47 Ursae Majoris with no more incidents. The crew is awakened as planned in the year 2300. The Alabama has entered the 47 Ursae Majoris system and is approaching its third planet, Bear. Bear (currently known as 47 Ursae Majoris b) is a gas giant that orbits 47 Ursae Majoris at 2.1 AUs and Coyote, its fourth moon, is larger even than Mars. This habitable satellite is lush with green plants and rivers of water. This will be the crew’s new home. Captain Lee directs the landing procedures of the two ships docked to the Alabama, the Wallace and the Helms. The crew finds Coyote to be habitable, but very peculiar nevertheless. Coyote’s seasons change at a much slower pace than Earth’s. A year for Coyote consists of 1,096 days with 27 hours per day. Life forms on Coyote seem similar to those on Earth at first glance, but behave in unique ways. As described in Gillis’ novel, the world is home to gigantic bird-like creatures which are anything but friendly. Using Gillis’ term for the beasts, Boids are common in the grasslands around the new settlement. The remainder of Coyote tells of the adventures of Carlos and Wendy along the banks of the equatorial river which stretches around Coyote.
1257960	/m/04mtfw	State of Fear	Michael Crichton	2004-12-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in 2004. The plot is built around a group of eco-terrorists who are attempting to create a state of fear to further advance their agenda regarding global warming. The protagonist is an environmentalist lawyer named Peter Evans. Evans is a junior associate at a large Los Angeles law firm that represents many environmentalist clients (although they also have clients in industry). Evans is described as someone who eagerly accepts all conventional wisdom about global warming, but not unquestioningly. He is also described as something of a weak-willed person who has lukewarm relationships with women. Evans' chief client is a millionaire philanthropist, George Morton, who donates large sums to environmentalist causes. Evans' main duties are managing the legal affairs surrounding Morton's contributions to an environmentalist organization, the National Environmental Resource Fund (NERF) (modeled after the Natural Resources Defense Council [NRDC]). Morton becomes suspicious of NERF and its director, Nicholas Drake, after he discovers that NERF has misused some of the funds he has given the group. Soon after, Morton is visited by two men, John Kenner and Sanjong Thapa, who appear on the surface to be researchers at MIT, but, in fact, are international law enforcement agents on the trail of an eco-terrorist group, the Environmental Liberation Front (ELF) (modeled on the Earth Liberation Front). The ELF is attempting to create "natural" disasters to convince the public of the dangers of global warming; all these events are timed to happen during a NERF-sponsored climate conference that will highlight the "catastrophe" of global warming. The eco-terrorists have no qualms about how many people are killed in their manufactured "natural" disasters and ruthlessly assassinate anyone who gets in their way (their preferred methods being ones few would recognize as murder; the venom of a rare Australian blue-ringed octopus which causes a form of paralysis most hospitals mistake for a disease and therefore never successfully treat, and "lightning attractors" which cause their victims to get electrocuted in electrical storms). Kenner and Thapa suspect Drake of involvement with the ELF to further his own ends (garnering more donations to NERF from the environmentally-minded public). Morton pulls his funding from NERF and has Evans rewrite the contract so that Drake can't access the money except in small amounts. This earns Drake's wrath resulting in strained relations between Evans and the partners at his firm (Drake is a major client of the firm and accuses Evans of being a spy for corporate industry). NERF holds a banquet in Morton's honor citing him as "NERF's Concerned Citizen of the Year"; at the event Morton gives a rambling speech in which he announces the pulling of his funding. Morton subtly makes this look due to his having drunk too much on the flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco where he was accompanied by two of NERF's biggest supporters (Ted Bradley, an actor and celebrity endorser of NERF, and Ann Garner, a wealthy socialite) and Evans. Soon after the speech, Morton dies in a car accident under mysterious circumstances. Following Morton's last instructions, Evans teams up with Kenner and Thapa on a globe-spanning trip to thwart various ELF disaster schemes. Also along for the ride is Morton's beautiful assistant, Sarah Jones. Evans is intimidated by Sarah because of her beauty and because she possesses a self-confidence Evans lacks. By the same token, Sarah also finds Evans attractive, but is put off by his lack of bravado. A subplot parallels the main plot and is the driving force for many of Evans' actions later on, at the behest of Morton. Morton has promised to donate $10 million to support a class action lawsuit on behalf of the people of the fictional island nation Vanutu (not to be confused with non-fictional Vanuatu.) The suit claims that by its inaction to curb global warming the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has doomed Vanutu to destruction, technically an act of war, because when sea levels increase by the amount that most climate models predict the nation will be underwater. At Morton's behest, Evans pays a visit to the offices of the legal team that is preparing the suit, where he volunteers to be a pre-jury selection interviewee. The interviewer is Jennifer Haynes, who presents him with various pieces of evidence that she feels the defense will use in an attempt to discredit the "science" behind the lawsuit. Later she reveals that the lawsuit is just an elaborate publicity stunt. The parties who initiated it know that it will never succeed. They only want to create a legal action that will drag on for years, giving them numerous opportunities to dramatize the plight of the islanders as they cope with the "catastrophe" of global warming. They also plan to continue diverting funds earmarked for the lawsuit to other ventures - which is what made Morton suspicious of their motives in the first place. Later, Haynes reveals herself to be Kenner's niece and in league with him. Kenner, Sanjong, Evans and Sarah travel to various locations to sabotage the ELF's planned "natural" disasters: first, the detonation of several explosives in an Antarctic ice shelf to release an enormous iceberg, then the use of special rockets and filament wire to produce a man-made lightning storm and flood in a crowded national park. During his travels, Evans finds his convictions about global warming challenged by Kenner and Sanjong who present him with reams of data suggesting that global warming may not be happening at all, may be insignificant if it is, and may not be caused by human activity. Evans' convictions are further shaken as he observes the ELF trying to manufacture disasters that will kill thousands of people, discovers that Drake is directing these terrorist acts, and narrowly escapes several ELF assassination attempts. He also begins to shed his weak-willed demeanor and grows more enamored of Sarah after he saves her life on several occasions. After NERF disbands the legal team that was preparing the Vanutu suit Jennifier joins the group for the final leg of the trip. In the finale of the story, the group travels to a remote island in the Solomons to stop the ELF's "piece de resistance", a tsunami that will inundate the coastline of California just as Drake is winding up the international conference on the "catastrophe" of global warming. Along the way they battle man-eating crocodiles and cannibalistic tribesmen (who feast on Ted Bradley, whom Drake had sent to spy on Kenner and his team). The rest of the group are rescued in the nick of time by Morton who resurfaces. It turns out that he faked his own death to throw Drake off the trail so that he could keep watch on the ELF's activities on the island while he waited for Kenner and his team to arrive. The group has a final confrontation with the elite ELF team on the island during which Jennifer is almost killed and Evans kills one of the terrorists who had tried to kill both him and Sarah in Antarctica. The rest of the ELF team is killed by the backwash from their own tsunami, which Kenner and his team have sabotaged just enough to prevent it from becoming a full-size tsunami and reaching California. (The tsunami that reached California was only a series of five waves averaging 6 feet.) None of the team were allowed to leave the island for the next three days. Morton wanted to be taken to Sydney for his collapsed lung, but was unable to go because he had been labeled as a missing person in the United States. Later they return to Los Angeles, during which time Morton discusses the idea of Evans quitting the firm to work for Morton with his new (unnamed) organization, which will practice environmental activism as a business, free from potential conflicts of interest. He hopes Evans and Sarah will take his place in the new organization after his death.
1258951	/m/04mx0_	Rushing to Paradise	J. G. Ballard	1994	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dr. Barbara is a disgraced doctor who forms a small band of environmentalists to attempt to save the albatross from nuclear testing by the French government on the remote Pacific island of St.Esprit. Neil, a naïve 16 year old, joins the group and the story is told from his perspective. During an illegal landing on the island, Neil is caught on film being shot in the foot by a French soldier. The subsequent news coverage makes Neil, and their environmental campaign, media celebrities. This allows a return visit to the island with a larger and more eccentric group of campaigners. Whilst attempting to land, a French navy frigate collides with their boat. This event is broadcast live to the world by the cameraman who dies in the collision. The subsequent adverse news coverage causes the French to leave the campaigners unmolested on the island. The coverage also leads to a deluge of gifts from well wishers all over the world, a steady stream of visitors and a growing collection of endangered animals which are meant to use the island as sanctuary. Visitors include a representative from Club Med who investigates whether the island can be turned into a resort. These excesses cause Dr. Barbara to manipulate Neil and other residents to commit ever greater acts of sabotage to cut themselves off from the outside world. Gradually, the male residents of the island (except Neil) become ill and slowly die under the 'care' of Dr. Barbara. As fewer able bodied residents are left, the endangered animals they are supposed to be saving are killed and eaten. Slowly, Neil realises that his role is to father as many children as possible from the female residents. As more visitors arrive on the island, the female members stay and the male members disappear. When another young man arrives on the island, Neils role as stud is in jeopardy and he too becomes ill whilst the new arrival is kept healthy. Slowly, over the course of the story, the environmentalists change from being the sane ones in an insane world into total insanity as Dr. Barbara's all female 'paradise' is constructed. Neil and the remaining residents are rescued in the nick of time by the French navy after a couple who only just manages to escape alerts the authorities to what is really happening on the island.
1259054	/m/04mxcp	Blood of Elves	Andrzej Sapkowski	1994	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Empire of Nilfgaard attacks and overwhelms the Kingdom of Cintra. Queen Calanthe of Cintra commits suicide and her granddaughter, Cirilla, called Ciri, or "Lion Cub of Cintra" somehow flees from the burning capital city. Emhyr var Emreis, Emperor of Nilfgaard, sends his spies to find her. He knows that this young girl has great importance, not only because of her royal blood, but also because of her magical potential and elven blood in her veins. The girl is protected by Geralt of Rivia, a witcher - a magically and genetically mutated monster slayer for hire, and also a man whose destiny is bound with that of Ciri. Aided by several others including the famous bard Dandilion and a powerful sorceress named Yennefer, Geralt quickly learns of a man named Rience who is hunting Ciri relentlessly, aided by some powerful and influential allies. As she learns the ways of both a witcher and a magic user, Ciri and those around her begin to realise that almost everybody wishes to either use her for her mysterious power or kill her so that such a power cannot become wielded by others.
1259759	/m/04mzbq	Rebecca	Daphne du Maurier	1938	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" is the book's famous opening line, and after the first two chapters, its unnamed narrator (she is only known by her title, Mrs de Winter) reminisces about her past. While working as the companion to a rich American woman vacationing in Monte Carlo, the narrator becomes acquainted with a wealthy Englishman, Maximilian (Maxim) de Winter, a 40-something widower. After a fortnight of courtship, she agrees to marry him and, after the wedding and honeymoon, accompanies him to his mansion, the beautiful West Country estate Manderley. Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, was profoundly devoted to the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca. She continually attempts to undermine the new Mrs. de Winter psychologically, subtly suggesting to her that she will never attain the urbanity and charm the first one possessed. Whenever the new Mrs. de Winter attempts to make changes at Manderley, Mrs. Danvers describes how Rebecca ran it when she was alive. Each time Mrs. Danvers does this, she implies that the new Mrs. de Winter lacks the experience and knowledge necessary for running an important estate. Cowed by Mrs. Danvers's imposing manner, the new mistress simply caves. She is soon convinced that Maxim regrets his impetuous decision to marry her and is still deeply in love with the seemingly perfect Rebecca. The climax occurs at Manderley's annual costume ball. Mrs. Danvers manipulates the protagonist into wearing a replica of the dress shown in a portrait of one of the former inhabitants of the estate—the same costume worn by Rebecca to much acclaim shortly before her death. The narrator has a drummer announce her entrance using the name of the lady in the portrait: Caroline de Winter. When the narrator shows Maxim the dress, he gets very angry at her and orders her to change. Shortly after the ball, Mrs. Danvers expressly reveals her contempt for our heroine by encouraging Mrs. de Winter to commit suicide by jumping out the window. However she is thwarted at the last moment by the disturbance occasioned by a nearby shipwreck. A diver investigating the condition of the wrecked ship's hull also discovers the remains of Rebecca's boat. Maxim confesses the truth to our heroine: how his marriage to Rebecca was nothing but a sham; how from the very first days husband and wife loathed each other. Rebecca, Maxim reveals, was a cruel and selfish woman who manipulated everyone around her into believing her to be the perfect wife and a paragon of virtue. She repeatedly taunted Maxim with sordid tales of her numerous love affairs and suggested that she was pregnant with another man's child, which she would raise under the pretense that it was Maxim's and he would be powerless to stop her. She intentionally provoked him into fatally shooting her. Then, fearing to be hanged, he disposed of her body on her boat and sank it at sea. Our heroine is relieved to hear he had never loved Rebecca, but really loves her. Rebecca's boat is now raised and it is discovered that it was deliberately sunk. An inquest brings a verdict of suicide, however, Rebecca's first cousin (and lover) Jack Favell attempts to blackmail Maxim, claiming to have proof that Rebecca could not have intended suicide. It is revealed Rebecca had an appointment with a Doctor Baker shortly before her death, presumably to confirm her pregnancy. When the doctor is found he reveals Rebecca had been suffering from cancer and would have died within a few months; furthermore, due to the malformation of her uterus, she could never have been pregnant. Knowing she was going to die, Rebecca manipulated Maxim into killing her quickly, rather than face a lingering death. Maxim feels a great sense of foreboding and insists on driving through the night to return to Manderley. However, before he comes in sight of the house, it is clear from a glow on the horizon and wind-borne ashes that it is ablaze. It is evident at the beginning that Maxim and the second Mrs. de Winter now live in some foreign exile. The events recounted in the book are in essence a memoir of her life at Manderley.
1260753	/m/04n0w5	Everyone Poops	Taro Gomi	1993	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Everyone Poops is essentially plotless. The first sixteen pages contain various prompts regarding defecation in animals such as opposites ("An elephant makes a big poop" and "[a] mouse makes a tiny poop"), comparisons (that various species produce various sizes and shapes of poop) and questions ("What does whale poop look like?"). On the seventeenth page, a nameless boy with black overalls and a red shirt is introduced, seen running into a bathroom. The book then goes on to explain how people of all ages, from adult to very young child, defecate, and how infants may use diapers. After that, there are only three more illustrations that lack the nameless overall-clad boy. On the next page of the book, the child uses toilet paper and flushes the toilet. The final portion of the book explains that because every animal eats, it must therefore defecate, and the book ends with rear views of the boy and six different animals defecating and the words "Everyone Poops".
1260937	/m/04n1c0	The Dancing Girl of Izu	Yasunari Kawabata	1926		 "The Dancing Girl of Izu" tells of the story between a young male student who is touring the Izu Peninsula and a family of traveling dancers he meets there, including their youngest girl on the onset of puberty. The student finds the naïve girl attractive even though he eventually have to part with the family after spending memorable time together.
1261005	/m/04n1m3	Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today	Margot Adler	1979		 Drawing Down the Moon offers a guide to the Pagan movement across the United States.
1261289	/m/04n29l	Religion Explained	Pascal Boyer	2001	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 Boyer's multifaceted book explains the genesis of religious concepts through the mind's cognitive inference systems, comparable to pareidolia and perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena resulting from face perception processes within the human brain. Boyer supports this naturalistic origin of religion with evidence from many specialized disciplines including biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and information processing. Religion Explained frames religious practices and beliefs in terms of recent cognitive neuroscience research in the modularity of mind. This theory involves cognitive "modules" ("devices" or "subroutines") underlying inference systems and intuitions. For instance, Boyer suggests culturally-widespread beliefs in "supernatural agents" (e.g., gods, ancestors, spirits, and witches) result from agent detection: the intuitive modular process of assuming intervention by conscious agents, regardless of whether they are present. "When we see branches moving in a tree or when we hear an unexpected sound behind us, we immediately infer that some agent is the cause of this salient event. We can do that without any specific description of what the agent actually is." Boyer cites E. E. Evans-Pritchard's classic Zande story about a termite-infested roof collapsing. For the anthropologist, the house caved in because of the termites. For the Zande, it was quite clear that witchcraft was involved. However, the Zande were also aware that the termites were the proximate cause of the incident. But what they wanted to know was why it happened at that particular time, when particular people were gathered in the house. Within Boyer&#39;s hypothesis, religion is a &#34;parasite&#34; (or &#34;spandrel&#34;) offshoot from cognitive modules, comparable to the way the reading process is parasitic upon language modules. As I have pointed out repeatedly the building of religious concepts requires mental systems and capacities that are there anyway, religious concepts or not. Religious morality uses moral intuitions, religious notions of supernatural agents recruit our intuitions about agency in general, and so on. This is why I said that religious concepts are parasitic upon other mental capacities. Our capacities to play music, paint pictures or even make sense of printed ink-patterns on a page are also parasitic in this sense. This means that we can explain how people play music, paint pictures and learn to read by examining how mental capacities are recruited by these activities. The same goes for religion. Because the concepts require all sorts of specific human capacities (an intuitive psychology, a tendency to attend to some counterintuitive concepts, as well as various social mind adaptations), we can explain religion by describing how these various capacities get recruited, how they contribute to the features of religion that we find in so many different cultures. We do not need to assume that there is a special way of functioning that occurs only when processing religious thoughts. Boyer admits his explanation of religion is not a quick, shoot-from-the-hip solution of the kind that many people, either religious or not, seem to favor. There cannot be a magic bullet to explain the existence and common features of religion, as the phenomenon is the result of aggregate relevance – that is, of successful activation of a whole variety of mental systems.
1261783	/m/04n3sb	Stone of Farewell	Tad Williams	1990-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the cliffhanger ending of The Dragonbone Chair, we find that Simon, the scullion-turned-warrior, has wrested the legendary sword Thorn from the frozen lair of Igjarjuk, the ice dragon. The dragon's blood, scalding his face and turning some of his hair white, earns him the new name Simon Snowlock, but while his scars may brand him as a dragonslayer, he's much the same young man he was before. As Simon recovers from his wound, Binabik the troll and Sludig the Rimmersman are being tried for crimes against the Qanuc people. Sludig's crime is merely being a Rimmersman, a traditional enemy of the Qanuc, while Binabik is charged with abandoning his fiancée, Sisqi, before marriage. Jiriki, a Sithi prince who owes Simon several favors, isn't inclined to help Simon free his imprisoned friends. Eventually, Simon does manage to free Binabik and Sludig, where the friends head south to deliver Thorn to Prince Josua. Meanwhile, the exiled prince Josua and his ragged band of survivors flee from the ruins of Naglimund. They head for Aldheorte Forest, trying to escape the swords and arrows of their enemies, all the while trying to reach the Stone of Farewell, where the League of the Scroll believes they will be able to regroup and recuperate. Elsewhere, Josua's niece Miriamele is traveling undercover in the dubious company of the monk Cadrach, a drunken sot. Daughter of the evil King Elias, she is at constant risk of being discovered and captured. Duke Isgrimnur, also having gone undercover, hopes to find Miriamele and return her to her uncle Josua before she is harmed or captured, either by her father or by others. At the same time, Maegwin, the Hernystiri princess, teeters between desperation and insanity while searching deep in the earth for some salvation for her refugee people. After surviving many perils, Simon becomes the only mortal to enter Jao e-Tinukai'i, last refuge of the Sithi. The band led by Prince Josua, though betrayed by the chieftain of the nomadic Thrithings-folk, eventually reaches the Stone of Farewell, where they wait for the arrival of Simon and the blade Thorn. As King Elias consolidates his power, the Storm King's blight brings permanent winter to most of Osten Ard, and the remaining defenders ready for a decisive battle at the Stone.
1261812	/m/04n3vt	To Green Angel Tower	Tad Williams	1993-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with the forces of Prince Josua Lackhand rallied at the Stone of Farewell, where the icy hand of the Storm King Ineluki has yet to take a deathgrip on the land. The remaining members of the League of the Scroll have also gathered at the Stone in hopes of unraveling an ancient prophecy. If deciphered, it could reveal to Josua and his army the only means of striking down the unslayable Storm King. After Simon and Binabik have their reunion, they come to the realization that Memory - one of the three Great Swords recognized as being key to defeating the Storm King - is one and the same with Bright-Nail, old King John’s sword that was buried with him not three years previously. The trouble is, the grave of King John Presbyter lies in the shadow of the Hayholt, the stronghold of King Elias, and between the Stone of Farewell and Hayholt marches the army Elias has sent to besiege the defenders. Meanwhile, Miriamele, Elias’s daughter who has joined Josua’s cause, is an unhappy prisoner on the ship of a lascivious and ambitious lordling to whom which she has surrendered her virtue knowing only too late of his true nature. Another princess, Maegwin of Hernystir, falls deeper into madness, leading her people in a seemingly futile resistance against Elias’s allies who have conquered her kingdom, and deep in the ancient forest of Aldheorte, the immortal Sithi are mustering for a final conflict. While Josua and his army must make a final stand to try to delay the forces of King Elias, Simon embarks upon a quest to Hayholt to try to obtain the last of the three legendary swords and use their hidden magics to defeat The Storm King Ineluki and restore peace to Osten Ard once and for all.
1263166	/m/04n85v	The Diamond Smugglers	Ian Fleming	1957	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The Diamond Smugglers is the account of Ian Fleming's meeting with John Collard, a member of the International Diamond Security Organisation (IDSO). The book takes the form of background narrative by Fleming of where the two men met, interspersed with the interview between Fleming and Collard, who is introduced under the pseudonym of "John Blaize". Collard relates how he was recruited into the IDSO by Sir Percy Sillitoe, the ex-head of MI5, under whom Collard had worked. The book goes on to look at the activities of the IDSO from the end of 1954 until the operation was closed down in April 1957, when its job was complete. Collard explained that the IDSO was set up at the instigation of the Chairman of De Beers, Sir Philip Oppenheimer, after an Interpol report stated that £10 million of diamonds were being smuggled out of South Africa each year, as well as additional amounts from Sierra Leone, Portuguese West Africa, the Gold Coast and Tanganyika. As well as providing a history of the IDSO's operations, Collard relates a number of illustrative vignettes concerning the diamond smuggling cases he and the organisation dealt with.
1264281	/m/04nc52	The Clerk's Prologue and Tale	Geoffrey Chaucer		{"/m/0c5jx": "Morality play"}	 The Clerk's tale is about a marquis of Saluzzo in Piedmont in Italy named Walter, a bachelor who is asked by his subjects to marry in order to provide an heir. He assents and decides he will marry a peasant, named Griselda. Griselda is a poor girl, used to a life of pain and labor, who promises to honor Walter's wishes in all things. After Griselda has borne him a daughter, Walter decides to test her loyalty. He sends an officer to take the baby, pretending it will be killed, but actually conveying it in secret to Bologna. Griselda, because of her promise, makes no protest at this but only asks that the child be buried properly. When she bears a son several years later, Walter again has him taken from her under identical circumstances. Finally, Walter determines one last test. He has a Papal bull of annulment forged which enables him to leave Griselda, and informs her that he intends to remarry. As part of his deception, he employs Griselda to prepare the wedding for his new bride. Meanwhile, he has brought the children from Bologna, and he presents his daughter as his intended wife. Eventually he informs Griselda of the deceit, who is overcome by joy at seeing her children alive, and they live happily ever after.
1264662	/m/04nd2f	Daisy Miller	Henry James		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Annie "Daisy" Miller and Frederick Winterbourne first meet in Vevey, Switzerland, in a garden of the grand hotel where Winterbourne is vacationing from his alleged studies (although an attachment to an older lady is rumoured). They are introduced by Randolph Miller, Daisy's 9-year old brother. Randolph considers their hometown of Schenectady, New York, to be absolutely superior to all of Europe. Daisy, however, is absolutely delighted with the continent, especially the high society which she wishes to enter. Winterbourne is at first confused by her attitude, although greatly impressed by her beauty, but soon determines that she is nothing more than a young flirt. He continues his pursuit of Daisy in spite of the disapproval of his aunt Mrs. Costello, who spurns any family with so close a relationship to their courier as the Millers have with their Eugenio. She also thinks Daisy is a shameless girl for agreeing to visit the Château de Chillon with Winterbourne after they have known each other for only half an hour. Winterbourne then informs Daisy that he must go to Geneva the next day. Daisy feels disappointment and chaffs him, eventually asking him to visit her in Rome later that year. In Rome, Winterbourne and Daisy meet unexpectedly in the parlor of Mrs. Walker, an American expatriate. Her moral values have become adapted to those of Italian society. Rumors about Daisy meeting with young Italian gentlemen make her socially exceptionable under these criteria. Winterbourne learns of Daisy's increasing intimacy with a young Italian of questionable society, Giovanelli, as well as the growing scandal caused by the pair's behavior. Daisy is undeterred by the open disapproval of the other Americans in Rome, and her mother seems quite unaware of the underlying tensions. Winterbourne and Mrs. Walker attempt to persuade Daisy to separate from Giovanelli, but she refuses any help that is offered. One night, Winterbourne takes a walk through the Colosseum and, at its center, sees a young couple sitting there. He realizes that they are Giovanelli and Daisy. Winterbourne, infuriated with Giovanelli, asks him how he could dare to take Daisy to a place where she runs the risk of "Roman Fever" . Daisy says she does not care and Winterbourne leaves them. Daisy falls ill, and dies a few days later.
1265248	/m/04nf7c	Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ada tells the life story of a man named Van Veen, and his lifelong love affair with his sister Ada. They meet when she is eleven (soon to be twelve) and he is fourteen, believing that they are cousins (more precisely: that their fathers are cousins and that their mothers are sisters), and begin a sexual affair. They later discover that Van's father is also Ada's and her mother is also his. The story follows the various interruptions and resumptions of their affair. Both are wealthy, educated, and intelligent. Van goes on to become a world-renowned psychologist, and the book itself takes the form of his memoirs, written when he is in his nineties, punctuated with his own and Ada's marginal notes, and in parts with notes by an unnamed editor, suggesting the manuscript is not complete. The novel is divided into five parts, each approximately half the length of the preceding one. As they progress chronologically, this structure evokes a sense of a person reflecting on his own memories, with an adolescence stretching out epically, and many later years simply flashing by. The story takes place in the late nineteenth century on what appears to be an alternative history of Earth, which is there called Demonia or Antiterra. Antiterra has the same geography and a largely similar history to that of Earth; however, it is crucially different at various points. For example, the United States includes all of the Americas (which were discovered by African navigators). But it was also settled extensively by Russians, so that what we know as western Canada is a Russian-speaking province called "Estoty", and eastern Canada a French-speaking province called "Canady." Russian, English, and French are all in use in North America. Russia itself, and much of Asia, is part of an empire called Tartary, while the word "Russia" is simply a "quaint synonym" for Estoty. The British Empire, which includes most or all of Europe and Africa, is ruled (in the nineteenth century), by a King Victor. Aristocracy is still widespread, but some technology has advanced well into twentieth-century forms. Electricity, however, has been banned since almost the time of its discovery following an event referred to as "the L-disaster". Airplanes and cars exist, but television and telephones do not, their functions served by similar devices powered by water. The setting is thus a complex mixture of Russia and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The belief in a "twin" world, Terra, is widespread on Antiterra as a sort of fringe religion or mass hallucination. (The name "Antiterra" may be a back-formation from this; the planet is "really" called "Demonia".) One of Van's early specialties as a psychologist is researching and working with people who believe that they are somehow in contact with Terra. Terra's alleged history, so far as he states it, appears to be that of our world: that is, the characters in the novel dream, or hallucinate, about the real world. The central characters are all members of the North American aristocracy, of mostly Russian and Irish descent. Dementiy ("Demon") Veen is first cousins with Daniel Veen. They marry a pair of twin sisters, Aqua and Marina respectively, who are also their second cousins. Demon and Aqua raise a son, Ivan (Van); Dan and Marina two daughters, Ada and Lucette. The story begins when Van, aged 14, spends a summer with his cousins, then 12 and 8. A rough idea of the years covered by each section is provided in brackets, below, but the narrator's thoughts often stray outside of the periods noted. This part, which one critic called "the last 19th century Russian novel", takes up nearly half the book. Throughout this part of the novel, the many passages depicting the blossoming of Van and Ada's love vary in rhythm, in style, and in vocabulary—ranging from lustrous, deceptively simple yet richly sensual prose to leering and Baroque satire of eighteenth-century pornography—depending on the mood Nabokov wishes to convey. The first four chapters provide a sort of unofficial prologue, in that they move swiftly back and forth through the chronology of the narrative, but mostly deal with events between 1863 and 1884, when the main thrust of the story commences. They depict Van and Ada discovering their true relationship, Demon and Marina's tempestuous affair, Marina's sister Aqua's descent into madness and obsession with Terra and water, and Van's "first love," a girl he sees in an antique shop but never speaks to. Some readers regard these first four chapters as being deliberately difficult. Chapters 4 to 43 mostly deal with Van's adolescence, and his first meetings with his "cousin" Ada—focused on the two summers when he joins her (and her "sister" Lucette) at Ardis Hall, their ancestral home, in 1884 and 1888. In 1884 Van and Ada, age 14 and 12, fall passionately in love, and their affair is marked by a powerful sense of romantic eroticism. The book opens with their discovery that they are in fact not cousins but brother and sister. The passage is notoriously difficult, more so as neither of them explicitly states the conclusion they have drawn (treating it as obvious), and it is only referred to in passing later in the text. Although Ada's mother keeps a wedding photo dated August 1871, eleven months before her birth, they find in a box in the attic a newspaper announcement dating the wedding to December 1871; and furthermore that Dan had been abroad since that spring, as proved by his extensive filmreels. Hence he is not Ada's father. Furthermore they find an annotated flower album kept by Marina in 1869–70 which indicate, very obliquely, that she was pregnant and confined to a sanatorium at the same time as Aqua; that 99 orchids were delivered to Marina, from Demon, on Van's birthday; and that Aqua had a miscarriage in a skiing accident. It later transpires that Marina gave the child to her sister to replace the one she had lost—so she is in fact Van's mother—and that her affair with Demon continued until Ada's conception. This makes Lucette (Dan and Marina's child) the uterine half-sister of both of them. Van returns to Ardis for a second visit in the summer of 1888. The affair has become strained because of Van's suspicions that Ada has had another lover and the increasing intrusion of Lucette (their 12-year-old half sister) into their trysts (an intrusion that Van half welcomes but Ada resents). This section ends with Van's discovery that Ada has in fact been unfaithful and his flight from Ardis to exact revenge upon those "rivals" of whom he is aware—Phillip Rack, Ada's older and weak-charactered music teacher; and Percy de Prey, a rather boorish neighbour. Van is distracted by a chance altercation with a soldier named Tapper, whom he challenges to a duel and by whom he is wounded. In hospital he chances upon Phillip Rack, who is dying, and whom Van cannot bring himself to exact revenge upon. He then receives word that Percy de Prey has been shot and killed in Antiterra's version of the ongoing Crimean War. Van moves to live with Cordula de Prey, Percy's cousin, in her Manhattan apartment, whilst he fully recovers. They have a shallow physical relationship, which provides Van with respite from the emotional strain of his feelings for Ada. Van spends his time developing his studies in psychology, and visiting a number of the "Villa Venus" upper-class brothels. In the autumn of 1892 Lucette, now having declared her love for Van, brings him a letter from Ada in which she announces she has received an offer of marriage from a wealthy Russian, Andrey Vinelander. Should Van wish to invite her to live with him she will refuse the offer. Van does so, and they commence living together in an apartment Van has purchased from Ada's old school-friend, and Van's former lover, Cordula de Prey. In February 1893 their father, Demon, arrives with news that his cousin (Ada's supposed father, but actual stepfather) Dan has died following a period of exposure caused by running naked into the woods near his home during a terrifying hallucinatory episode. Upon grasping the situation regarding Van and Ada, he tells Van that Ada would be happier if he "gave her up"—and what is more, he would disown Van completely if he failed to do so. Van acquiesces, leaves, and attempts suicide, which fails when his gun fails to fire. He then leaves his Manhattan apartment and preoccupies himself with hunting down a former servant at Ardis, Kim Beauharnais, who had been blackmailing them with photographic evidence of their affair, and beating him with an alpenstock until he is blind. With Ada having married Andrey Vinelander, Van occupies himself in traveling and his studies, until 1901 when Lucette reappears in England. She has herself booked on the same transatlantic ship, the Tobakoff, that Van is taking back to America. She attempts to seduce him on the crossing and nearly succeeds, but is foiled when Ada appears as an actress in the film, Don Juan's Last Fling, that they are watching together on the onboard cinema. Lucette consumes a number of sleeping pills and commits suicide by throwing herself from the Tobakoff into the Atlantic. In March 1905, Demon dies in a plane crash. Later in 1905, Ada and Andrey arrive in Switzerland as part of a party engaged in uncovering Lucette's fortune, concealed in various hidden bank accounts. Van meets with them, and together he and Ada formulate a plan for her to leave her husband and live with him. This is now considered possible due to the death of Demon. During their stay in Switzerland, however, Andrey falls ill with tuberculosis, and Ada decides that she cannot abandon him until he has recovered. Van and Ada part, and Andrey remains ill for 17 years, at which point he dies. Ada then flies back to Switzerland to meet with Van. This part consists of Van's lecture on "The Texture of Time", apparently transcribed from his reading it into a tape recorder as he drives across Europe from the Adriatic to meet Ada in Montreux, Switzerland, while she is on her way from America via Geneva. The transcription has then been edited to merge into a description of his and Ada's actual meeting, and then out again. This makes this part of the novel notably self-reflexive, and it is sometimes cited as the "difficult" part of the novel, some reviewers even stating that they wished Nabokov had "left it out." It could conversely be argued that it is one of the most potent evocations of one of the novel's central themes, the relation of personal experience of time to one's sense of being in and of the world. At the end of this section, Van and Ada join to live as man and wife. This section of the novel is the one most clearly set in 1967, as Van completes his memoirs as laid out in Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. He describes his contentment, such as it is, his relationship with his book, and the continuing presence and love of Ada. This is interspersed with remarks on the ravages of time. As cancer develops painfully within him, Van and Ada restructure 80 years of fragments into a conversation about death, and Van breaks off from correcting his essentially complete but not yet fully polished work as the book becomes distorted. The book stops referring to Van and Ada, merging them into "Vaniada, Dava or Vada, Vanda and Anda", as they begin a suicide and "die into the finished book." (Whether they do indeed die is disputed by critics, as the author says "if our time-racked flat-lying couple ever intended to die".)
1265587	/m/04ng6w	Idlewild	Nick Sagan	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young man wakes up with no memory of who he is, where he is, or anything about his life and is initially unable to move. He knew only three things — he was a young male student, someone was trying to kill him, and Lazarus was dead. He didn't even know who Lazarus was. After a short period of time, he regains motion, but no memories. Over the next few pages, he is faced with flashing lights, disembodied voices, a cathedral, teddy bears nailed to wooden posts, graveyards, the realization that he is both alone and that his world is impossibly small, and terrifying creatures known as Nightgaunts, before meeting with Jasmine, a 'human' who identifies him as Halloween. As the book progresses, Halloween realizes where he is. He's in a virtual reality school that his parents have sent him to. Upon completion of the school, each student will receive both a scholarship to go through college and a position in a prestigious medical company called Gedaechtnis Corporation. The ten students are Mercutio (Adam), Pandora (Naomi), Simone, Isaac, Lazarus, Vashti, Tyler, Champagne (Charlotte), Fantasia (Gina), and Halloween (Gabriel) himself. Fan, Merc, Hal, and Ty are considered the "clods" while Simone, Isaac, Laz, Vashti, Cham, and Pan are the "pets". Where pets study and follow all of the rules, clods do the opposite. The digital teacher of the school is named Maestro, but the clods call him Maeshtro and do not respect or care for him. Each student is given a digital world that they may edit to their liking; this is where they 'live' while in IVR and where Halloween first finds himself at the beginning of the book. They are also assigned a "Nanny," a digital being that can help a student with anything they need help with. For example, when Halloween realizes that Jasmine is not real, he asks Nanny to bring her back to life (she died in a fight against Fantasia), and Nanny does so. Because of Halloween's suspicions that he may have killed Lazarus, he does not confide in anyone for a long period of time. Mercutio asks Halloween if he'd like some food, and they decide to dine at the Taj Mahal. Mercutio begins to order a steak, but halfway through his order, the entire world freezes up. Merc has triggered a jammer so that he and Hal can escape IVR, and they both wake up in their beds in the school. They decided to visit their favorite diner, Twain's, and enjoy a nice meal before Merc decides to head back to IVR. Halloween, however, chooses to call his parents and report that he is dropping out. After a tough time with both his parents and Ellison, the school's headmaster (and the man Maestro was modeled after), Halloween is sent back to IVR. At her request, Halloween goes to visit Simone, who also believes that something happened to Lazarus, although she is not sure what. The school claims that he has graduated, but Simone and Hal don't believe that. Hal agrees to help Simone determine what happened to him, so they both travel to Laz's last known IVR location — his own domain. Hal still believes that he was the one who killed Laz, but since he loved Simone, he would have done anything for her. However, Simone keeps talking about how she loved Laz, because before he had left, they had been going out. In what is almost a legendary event, like the Last Supper, Halloween throws a party on what turns out to be the last night the students spend together in IVR. At the party, Mercutio breaks the rules, which brings the governor program Maestro to the scene. Using a prepared code, Mercutio breaks the system. With information gathered in the course of his murder investigation, Halloween is able to get out of the broken system, to what he assumes will be the Idlewild IVR Medical Academy in Michigan. Instead, he finds out that his entire life has been spent in a pod. The periods of time he spent out of the school were periods of virtual reality just like the personal domains and virtual schoolhouse he knew. The ten students of the school - five boys and five girls - are divided between four different locations in Europe and America, with another in space, guarding against the possibility of some catastrophe. Halloween and Fantasia break out of their facility, steal a car, and decide to wake up one of their friends, not being able to wake the others due to the distance between the pods. In the meantime, Halloween goes back to speak with his classmates and finds Tyler suffocating to death in Champagne's domain. Back in the real world, he decides to go to Idlewild HQ, the American headquarters of the real Gedaechtnis Corporation located at the real-world address of the virtual school (in Idlewild, Michigan), to release their other friends. There they are attacked by the real murderer - Mercutio. He refuses to explain his actions, telling Halloween only that he has won. They battle, and Mercutio is fatally shot. Afterwards, Halloween finds Mercutio's strange log. His last cryptic messages imply he wanted to kill his virtual siblings to rule alone, and that he alone should survive to breed. Halloween "graduates" all of the remaining students, waking them up from IVR. They decide to fulfill Gedaechtnis' plans for them to rebuild the world, but Halloween rejects the plan. The book ends with Halloween standing in the woods of Michigan, angry at the world for robbing him of his illusions, the girl he loved and his two best friends.
1265938	/m/04nh3k	Beautiful Losers	Leonard Cohen	1966	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the centre of the novel are the members of a love triangle, united by their obsessions and fascination with a 17th-century Mohawk, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. The triangle is made up of the unnamed narrator, an authority on the vanishing A———— tribe, his wife Edith, one of the last surviving members of the tribe, and their maniacal and domineering friend, F, who may or may not exist.
1265955	/m/04nh57	No Crystal Stair	Mairuth Sarsfield		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Widow Marion Willow works at two jobs to raise her three daughters properly. Fighting racism and sexism, Marion schools her girls in manners, English poetry and the need for an education; her elegant neighbour and rival (both women are in love with railway porter Edmund Thompson) teaches the children the ways of the street and their black cultural heritage.
1266281	/m/04nh_q	1975 in Prophecy!				 The events described were to begin shortly after February 1972 and climax during 1975. Armstrong stated that his church was operating on two 19 year cycles. The second cycle began after January 7, 1953 when The World Tomorrow was first broadcast over Radio Luxembourg, meaning that the second cycle would end around the beginning of February, 1972. This was not intended as a work of fiction, but as a warning to the reader of what was scheduled to happen. The timeline was uncertain and, although the title of the booklet was specific, 1975 was not mentioned in the text in relation to Biblical prophecy. All specific dates within the booklet were in relation to events or outcomes not specified by the Bible. The biblical prophecies are ambiguous as to their timing. ...The prophecy does Not reveal exactly which ten nations will be included-but this resurrected Roman Empire will bind together some 250 to 300 millions of peoples! That is more manpower than Russia, or the United States has. The strong indication of these prophecies, then, is that some of the Balkan nations are going to tear away from behind the iron Curtain ...When this United States of Europe emerges... The booklet was written in 1956 during the Cold War years. It stated that the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia and other English speaking (&#34;Israelite&#34;) nations, contrary to popular cultural belief, would neither be attacked nor destroyed by the Soviet Union, but that a nuclear World War III would destroy these countries. The attack would come from a German dominated United States of Europe led by a Nazi-style dictator (identified as The Beast), and dominated by a religious leader who would probably be a Roman Catholic Pope identified as the Antichrist. In the aftermath of the nuclear attack one third of the populations would be dead. Another third would then die as a result of simultaneous attacks from abnormal weather patterns which would create drought, destruction and epidemic diseases. The remaining third would then be taken into slave labor camp captivity by the United States of Europe. Armstrong was also certain that the USSR would not attack the USA or UK but disintegrate instead: ... some of the Balkan nations are going to tear away from behind the iron Curtain. The literary style of this publication is in a form of advertising script mixing capital and lower case words at whim. Herbert W. Armstrong had previously written in this style as an advertising copywriter in Chicago. Enhancing the text were graphic illustrations by Basil Wolverton. The impact that 1975 in Prophecy! had on the reading public can only be understood in the context of the Cold War years when nuclear attack was anticipated and threatened. In 1956 this booklet was not attempting to predict the future, it was stating future events as fact. Balancing scientific advances, wrote Herbert W. Armstrong, would be the disintegration of society due to increasing mental health problems; crime statistics and divorce. Then he announced that he would reveal the end of the story first. ... we are really going to have world peace! We are going to have actual UTOPIA - far beyond the dreams of today's world-planners! It will not be a millennium of man's devising, however. It will not be a world of idleness and ease-but one of production, plenty, health and happiness. What Armstrong promised was not a Christian evangelical rapture of spirit beings, but a rescue of human beings living in a physical world into which Jesus would return as world dictator, for the good of humanity. Central to his discussion of prophecy was the emergence of the United States of Europe. While our prime objective seems to be idleness, ease and luxury, the German mind and heart and interest appears set on just one thing-hard, energetic WORK that will yet put "Deutschland Uber Alles!" - "Germany Over All!" Armstrong stated: ... even this coming military-political leader does not yet know how many, or precisely which European nations will join in this United Nazi Fascist Europe. ... The German - dominated European combine will blast our cities and industrial centers with hydrogen bombs. ... And that surviving third will be up-rooted from their homes-transported like cattle as slaves to Europe, and probably some to South America ... However, Armstrong was certain that if Britain joined the European Common Market then, either before or after it became the United States of Europe, Britain would withdraw and would eventually be attacked by ten nations in the ultimate federation of a: ... resurrected Roman Empire ... bind(ing) together some 250 to 300 millions of peoples!.
1268710	/m/04nrj2	Sula	Toni Morrison	1973-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Bottom is a mostly black neighborhood in Ohio, situated in the hills above the mostly white, wealthier community in the town of Medallion. The Bottom first became a community when a master gave it to his former slave. This "gift" was in fact a trick: the master gave the former slave a poor stretch of hilly land, convincing the slave the land was worthwhile by claiming that because it was hilly, it was closer to heaven. The trick, though, led to the growth of a vibrant community. Now the community faces a new threat; wealthy whites have taken a liking to the land, and would like to destroy much of the town in order to build a golf course. Shadrack, a resident of the Bottom, fought in World War I. He returns a shattered man, unable to accept the complexities of the world; he lives on the outskirts of town, attempting to create order in his life. One of his methods involves compartmentalizing his fear of death in a ritual he invents and names National Suicide Day. The town is at first wary of him and his ritual, then, over time, unthinkingly accepts him. Meanwhile, the families of the children Nel and Sula are contrasted. Nel is the product of a family that believes deeply in social conventions; hers is a stable home, though some might characterize it as rigid. Nel is uncertain of the conventional life her mother, Helene, wants for her; these doubts are hammered home when she meets Rochelle, her grandmother and a former prostitute, the only unconventional woman in her family line. Sula's family is very different: she lives with her grandmother, Eva, and her mother, Hannah, both of whom are seen by the town as eccentric and loose. Their house also serves as a home for three informally adopted boys and a steady stream of boarders. Despite their differences, Sula and Nel become fiercely attached to each other during adolescence. However, a traumatic accident changes everything. One day, Sula playfully swings a neighborhood boy, Chicken Little, around by his hands. When she loses her grip, the boy falls into a nearby river and drowns. They never tell anyone about the accident even though they did not intend to harm the boy. The two girls begin to grow apart. One day Sula's mother's dress catches fire and she dies of the burns. Eva, her mother, sees her from the window and jumps out into the garden. After high school, Nel chooses to marry and settles into the conventional role of wife and mother. Sula follows a wildly divergent path and lives a life of fierce independence and total disregard for social conventions. Shortly after Nel's wedding, Sula leaves the Bottom for a period of 10 years. She has many affairs, some, it is rumored, with white men. However, she finds people following the same boring routines elsewhere, so she returns to the Bottom and to Nel. Upon her return, the town regards Sula as the very personification of evil for her blatant disregard of social conventions. Their hatred in part rests upon Sula's interracial relationships, but is crystallized when Sula has an affair with Nel's husband, Jude, who subsequently abandons Nel. Ironically, the community's labeling of Sula as evil actually improves their own lives. Her presence in the community gives them the impetus to live harmoniously with one another. Nel breaks off her friendship with Sula. Just before Sula dies in 1940, they achieve a half-hearted reconciliation. With Sula's death, the harmony that had reigned in the town quickly dissolves.
1268726	/m/04nrl5	Beloved	Toni Morrison	1987-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book concerns the story of Sethe and her daughter Denver after their escape from slavery. Their home, I24 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati, is haunted by a revenant, whom they believe to be the ghost of Sethe's daughter. Because of the haunting —- which often involves objects being thrown around the room —- Sethe's youngest daughter, Denver, is shy, friendless, and housebound, and her sons, Howard and Buglar, have run away from home by the time they are thirteen years old. Soon afterward, Baby Suggs, the mother of Sethe's husband Halle, dies in her bed. Paul D, one of the slaves from Sweet Home, the plantation where Baby Suggs, Sethe, her spouse Halle, and several other slaves once worked, arrives at 124. He tries to bring a sense of reality into the house. He also tries to make the family forget the past. In doing so, he forces out the spirit. At first, he seems to be successful, even bringing the family, including the housebound Denver, out of the house for the first time in years. However, on their way back, they encounter a young woman sitting in front of the house. She calls herself Beloved. Paul D, suspicious, warns Sethe, but charmed by the young woman, Sethe ignores him. Paul D is gradually forced out of Sethe's home by a supernatural presence. When made to sleep outside in a shed, he is cornered by Beloved. While Paul D has sex with her, his mind is filled with horrific memories from his past. Overwhelmed with guilt, Paul D tries to tell Sethe about it but cannot and instead says he wants her pregnant. Sethe is elated, and Paul D resists Beloved and her influence over him. But, when he tells friends at work about his plans to start a new family, they react fearfully. Stamp Paid reveals the reason for the community's rejection of Sethe. When Paul D asks Sethe about it, she tells him what happened. After escaping from Sweet Home and making it to her mother-in-law's home where her children were waiting, Sethe was found by her master, who attempted to reclaim Sethe and her children. Sethe grabbed her children, ran into the tool shed and tried to kill them all, succeeding only with her oldest daughter. Sethe explains to Paul D, saying she was "trying to put my babies where they would be safe." The revelation is too much for him, and he leaves. Without Paul D, the sense of reality and time moving forward disappears. Sethe comes to believe that the girl, Beloved, is the daughter she murdered when the girl was only two years old; her tombstone reads only "Beloved". Sethe begins to spend carelessly and spoil Beloved out of guilt. Beloved becomes angry and more demanding, throwing tantrums when she doesn't get her way. Beloved's presence consumes Sethe's life to the point where she becomes depleted and sacrifices her own need for eating, while Beloved grows bigger and bigger. In the climax of the novel, Denver, the youngest daughter, reaches out and searches for help from the black community. Some of the village women arrive at 124 to exorcise Beloved. At the same time, the white man who helped Sethe and Halle in their escape comes to pick up Denver who is beginning work with him that day. Sethe attacks the white man with an ice pick and is brought down by the village women; in the meantime Beloved disappears from I24While Sethe is confused and has a "rememory" of her master coming again, Beloved disappears. The novel resolves with Denver becoming a working member of the community and Paul D returning to Sethe and pledging his love. At the outset, the reader is caused to assume that Beloved is a supernatural, incarnate form of Sethe's murdered daughter. Later, Stamp Paid reveals the story of "a girl locked up by a white man over by Deer Creek. Found him dead last summer and the girl gone. Maybe that's her". Both are possible by the text. Beloved sings a song Sethe believes to be known only to her and her children; elsewhere, she speaks of a pair of earrings and asks Sethe what happened to them. The second section of the novel, however, contains memories of Beloved's that seem to corroborate the possibility that she is the escaped girl from Deer Creek.
1270777	/m/04nyky	The Peace War	Vernor Vinge	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place in 2048, 51 years after scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory develop "the ultimate weapon", a force field generating device they term a Bobbler. The bureaucracy running the Laboratory use it to enforce an end to conventional warfare (triggering a brief war in the process), calling themselves the Peace Authority. The Bobbler creates a perfectly spherical, impenetrable, and persistent shield around or through anything, and is used to contain nuclear weapons, people, and occasionally entire cities or governments, separating them from the rest of the world (and presumably killing everyone inside by eventual suffocation and lack of sunlight). In an effort to retain their monopoly on this weapon, they make technological progress illegal, and their power and fear of rebellion corrupts them. In this world, governments are weak, where they are permitted at all; the Peace Authority is the true bearer of power and becomes a worldwide government. A group of rebels, the Tinkers, develop technology clandestinely far beyond what the Authority has (while limited to riding horseback and other Authority-mandated anachronisms), but still has no defense against the bobble. One of the original inventors of the bobble is part of the resistance, and he develops a more advanced version of the bobbler which does not require the huge electrical power sources available only to the Peace Authority. It is discovered by the Tinkers (and much later by the Peace Authority) that the bobbles are actually not force fields, but stasis fields; within which time has stopped. So not only are the contents perfectly preserved, but they open spontaneously after a certain time period. The Tinkers use their knowledge and the Peacers' ignorance of this effect to their advantage (bobbling themselves for short time periods, for instance), and with the help of a young thief (and mathematical genius), they lead a rebellion to try to bobble the power generators of the Peace Authority and thus neutralize its primary weapon.
1270905	/m/04nyxc	Marooned in Realtime	Vernor Vinge	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the story, a device exists which can create a "bobble", a spherical stasis field in which time stands still, allowing one-way time travel into the future. These frictionless, perfectly reflective spheres are also used as weapons, as shields against other weapons, for storage, for space travel (combined with nuclear pulse propulsion), and other purposes. People whose bobbles open up after a certain date in the 23rd century find the Earth completely devoid of human life. All living humans have disappeared, with only ambiguous archaeological clues for the reasons, and only those who were inside bobbles during the event survive into the future. The "low-techs" — those who were bobbled soon after the original invention of bobbles — have roughly late-20th-century technology. The "high-techs" — those who were bobbled later in time (in the period of accelerating technological progress leading up to the singularity) — have vastly superior technology, including cybernetic enhancements, faster and thought-controlled bobblers, personal automaton extensions of self, space ships, medical technology to allow practical immortality (barring accidents or fatal injuries), and individual arsenals comparable to entire countries of the 20th century. Indeed, those who were bobbled at slightly different times leading up to the singularity, have vastly different technology levels. The protagonist is Wil Brierson, a detective who also was the protagonist of the preceding novella The Ungoverned. Some time after the events in The Ungoverned, Brierson was forcibly bobbled 10,000 years into the future to prevent his testimony in a case, effectively murdering him. As a punishment, the law enforcement of his time period bobbled criminals for a slightly longer amount of time than their victims, with a message explaining the crime and allowing future law enforcement to provide more specific punishment (or revenge), after the true fate of the victim can be determined. However, in this unpopulated world, every human is valuable, and the high-techs give the criminals new false identities to protect them and welcome them into their small society. The group of several hundred people seeks to gather up all the humans left in order to gain enough genetic diversity to create a new civilization and their own singularity. They travel into the future so that they can recruit colonies of people, ending approximately 50 million years ahead in order to gather one of the largest groups trapped inside one of the earliest but longest-lived bobbles. Before one of their very long transits, the computers of one of the high-tech project leaders, Marta Korolev, are hacked, and she is excluded from the automated bobbling. Left stranded in normal time, with her bobbling capability blocked, she dies alone after a natural lifespan on a deserted Earth. When the "murder" is discovered, the low-tech Brierson is hired by the surviving project leader, Yelén Korolev (who is also Marta's widow) to find the killer, who has to be one of the high techs. Della Lu, a high tech who was an agent of the Peace Authority during The Peace War, agrees to assist Brierson with the technical aspects of the case. In the millions of years since the singularity, Della had spent 9,000 years alone in real time, exploring the galaxy. She discovered that intelligent life is profoundly rare, and there were parallel vanishings in the few civilizations she found, but no definitive proof of the cause. The singularity is implied to be an explanation for the Fermi Paradox. To complicate matters, as a high tech, Della Lu is also a suspect, and the vast amount of time she has spent alone in deep space and in real time leaves questions about whether she is still human. Furthermore, Yelén Korolev herself is a suspect. The novel thus deals with the investigation of two parallel locked room mysteries: the murder of Marta Korelev, and the "locked planet" mystery of the disappearance of the human race. Brierson interviews each of the high-tech suspects, seeking evidence of any motive for murder while discussing their views on how the human race vanished. While some suggest that an alien invasion, ecological collapse, or other disaster was the culprit, by the end it is strongly suggested that this event was a technological singularity, and that the human race had transcended to a different form of existence with the assistance of exponentially improving technology.
1273337	/m/04p4j3	Haroun and the Sea of Stories	Salman Rushdie	1990-09-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens in the sad city in the country of Alifbay, where Haroun Khalifa lives with his father, a famous storyteller, and his mother. One day, Haroun arrives home from school to learn that his mother has run off with his upstairs neighbor. This neighbor had often been critical of Haroun's father, Rashid, because he did not understand the usefulness of stories. In anger, Haroun assails his father for the uselessness of his stories. This crushes his father. Haroun finds it difficult to concentrate on schoolwork and so his father decides to take him on a storytelling job he is performing for some politicos in the Land of G and the Valley of K. When Rashid attempts to tell his stories, however, no words come out, and the politicos get very mad. Haroun and Rashid board a mail bus bound for the Valley of K. It is driven by a parrot-looking man named Butt who stutters and speaks in riddles. Haroun makes a deal with Butt to drive them on the dangerous road between the Land of G and the Valley of K so that his father can see the Valley of K before sunset in order to attempt to inspire him. Butt drives dangerously and Haroun is worried that he will die. When they reach the beautiful sights of the Valley of K, Rashid tells Haroun that it all reminds him of "khattam-shud," an ancient concept that means silence. When they reach K, Haroun and Rashid meet Mr. Buttoo, the politician, who takes them to his boat on the Dull Lake. As they depart on the lake, they are engulfed in a thick mist. The mist smells very bad and Haroun realizes that it is a Mist of Misery brought on by his father's foul mood. When the sea begins to rock, Haroun tells everyone to think good thoughts, and when they do, the sea calms. Haroun and Rashid reach the yacht that will take them to their destination the next day. The yacht is very luxurious, but both Rashid and Haroun have difficulty sleeping. Just as Haroun dozes off, he hears a noise in his bedroom. He finds an old man with an onion shaped head, who disappears as soon as he sees Haroun. The old man drops a wrench, which Haroun confiscates. The old man materializes and tells Haroun he is Iff, and that he must have the wrench to turn off the Story Stream for his father, Rashid. When Haroun protests, Iff tells him to take it up with the Walrus in Gup City, Kahani. Haroun demands that the Water Genie take him there, and Iff reluctantly concedes in order to get his wrench back from Haroun. The Genie tells Haroun to pick his bird and give it a name and it will materialize. He pulls out a handful of tiny magical creatures. Haroun picks the Hoopoe and Iff throws it out the window and into the water where it balloons into a huge bird. They climb on its back and accelerate into space. The Hoopoe looks like Mr. Butt, so Haroun names it Butt the Hoopoe. They are able to communicate telepathically. Butt the Hoopoe lands on the Sea of Stories of Kahani, Earth's second moon, which moves so fast it is undetectable by human instruments. It evenly distributes Story Water across the earth. They land in the ocean so that Iff can give Haroun Wishwater and hopefully bypass meeting the Walrus. Haroun drinks the Wishwater and wishes for his father's storytelling to return. He can only focus on an image of his mother, however, and after eleven minutes, he loses his concentration. Iff then gives Haroun a cup of water from the Sea that contains a story. Haroun drinks it and then finds himself in a coma. He hallucinates about a princess being trapped in a tower. As the hero climbs the tower to rescue the princess, he turns into a spider and princess hacks away at him until he falls to the ground. When Haroun wakes from his story, Iff tells him that someone named Khattam-Shud is poisoning the stories. Haroun, Butt the Hoopoe, and Iff the Water Genie fly to the Land of Gup, where they meet the Water Gardner and the Plentimaw fishes. The entire land is preparing for war. The Chupwalas have stolen Princess Batcheat from Gup. In addition, they have polluted the Sea of Stories so that many do not make sense anymore. Prince Bolo, General Kitab, and the Walrus announce their plans for war to the Pages of the Guppee Library (or, army). They bring in a spy with a hood over his head. When the hood is removed, Haroun sees his father. Rashid tells everyone that he transported to Kahani and was in the twilight strip when he saw the Princess Batcheat captured. The Chupwalas have come under the spell of Cultmaster Khattam-Shud who wants to sacrifice her to an idol to silence. Prince Bolo and General Kitab declare war on Chup and Rashid offers to guide them to the Chupwala encampment. One of the soldiers in the army, Blabbermouth, takes Haroun to his room. They become lost and Haroun knocks the hat off Blabbermouth's head. Long hair falls out and Haroun sees Blabbermouth is a girl. She then distracts him with a juggling act, and Haroun completely forgets that she is a girl. The army sails towards Chup, chattering about the causes for the war in a way that Haroun thinks might be mutinous. They enter the land of Darkness and land on the beach. They explore the interior and come upon a dark warrior fighting his own shadow in a kind of seductive dance. The man realizes he is being watched and comes to find the trespassers. The shadow begins to speak. It croaks out unintelligible words until Rashid realizes the warrior is speaking in an ancient gesture language. Rashid knows this language and he interprets the "words" His name is Mudra and he had been second in command in Chup. He is now fighting against Khattam-Shud in order to bring peace back to Chup. Mudra agrees to help the Guppees defeat Khattam-Shud. Haroun volunteers to spy for the army because of his love of stories. He, Iff, Butt the Hoopoe, Mali, and the Plentimaw fishes begin to trek towards the Old Zone. The water becomes so poisonous that the fish cannot go on. The remaining crew is suddenly ambushed and captured in nets. They are taken to a giant, black ship. On the deck are cauldrons of saddness. To Haroun, it looks like everything is impermanent, like a shadow. Khattam-Shud appears and he is a tiny, weasly, measly man. Haroun realizes that this is Khattam-Shud's shadow that has detached from its owner. The Cultmaster tells them that stories are inefficient and useless and that is why they are being destroyed. The ship's hull is full of darkness and machines too complicated to explain. The Cultmaster shows them where they are building a great Plug to seal the Story Source at the bottom of the Sea. Haroun sees roots growing through a port window and Mali appears, latching onto the generators and breaking the machines. Haroun breaks free, puts on a protective wetsuit, and dives down into the Sea where he sees the Plug being constructed. He returns to Butt the Hoopoe and takes out a vial of Wishwater given to him by Iff. He drinks it and wishes that the axis of Kahani would spin normally. A few minutes pass and then the entire land is bathed in sunlight. All of the shadows on the ship begin to fade away and soon everyone is free and the poison is removed. In Chup, Khattam-Shud sends an ambassador to the Guppee army. The ambassador begins to juggle and pulls out a bomb. Only Blabbermouth's quick action keeps everyone from being blown up, but it is revealed that Blabbermouth is a girl in the process. Bolo tries to fire her, but Mudra asks her to be a part of his army because of her bravery. The battle between the army commences. Because the Guppees have had such open and honest communication, they fight as a team. The Chupwalas, because of their silence, distrust each other. The Guppee army overwhelms the Chupwala army. As the battle ends, there is a great earthquake and the moon begins to spin. The statue of Bezaban falls and crushes the real Khattam-Shud. Peace is declared and everyone receives a promotion within their rank. Haroun prepares to leave and is told that he must see the Walrus. In the Walrus's office, Haroun learns that it is all a joke and that he is not in trouble. All his friends are there with him. The Walrus tells him that for his bravery he is to be given a happy ending to his story. Haroun doubts that this is possible, but he wishes for his city to no longer be sad. He wakes up back in the Valley of K where his father is preparing his political story. As he stands up to give it, his father tells the story of Haroun and the Sea of Stories. It is a story that the crowd loves and they turn against their autocratic leader. When Rashid and Haroun return home, it is raining and they walk through it getting soaked. All of the people in the sad city are dancing and Haroun asks why. They claim that the city has remembered its name, Kahani, which means "story." Haroun realizes that the Walrus has put a happy ending into the raindrops. When he arrives home, he finds his mother there, telling them that she made a mistake in running off with Mr. Sengupta. The next day, Haroun awakes to find it is his birthday and his mother singing in another room in the house. The novel concludes with an appendix explaining the meaning of each major character's name.
1273623	/m/04p5gt	Ill Met by Moonlight	W. Stanley Moss	1950	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 During World War II, the Greek Mediterranean island of Crete was occupied by the Nazis. British officers Major Patrick Leigh Fermor DSO (Dirk Bogarde) and Captain Bill Stanley Moss MC (David Oxley) of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) land on the island. With the help of the local Cretan resistance in April 1944, they kidnap German General Heinrich Kreipe (Marius Goring), the commander of the island. They take Kreipe across rough country to a secluded cove on the far side of the island, where they are picked up and taken to Cairo, where British forces are stationed.
1274221	/m/04p7c3	Licence Renewed	John Gardner	1981	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 When Licence Renewed begins, M reminds Bond that the 00 section has in fact been abolished; however, M retains Bond as a troubleshooter (pun intended), telling him "You'll always be 007 to me". Bond is assigned to investigate one Dr. Anton Murik, a brilliant nuclear physicist who is thought to have been having meetings with a terrorist named Franco. Franco is identified and tracked by MI5 to a village in Scotland called Murcaldy. Since Murcaldy is outside of MI5's jurisdiction, the Director-General of MI5, Richard Duggan requests that M send Bond to survey Murik. Relying on information that MI5 did not have, M changes Bond's assignment to instead infiltrate Murik's Scottish castle and gain Murik's confidence. Bond makes contact with Murik at Ascot Racecourse where he feigns a coincidental meeting, mentioning to Murik that he is a mercenary looking for work. Later, Bond joins Murik in Scotland at Murik's behest and is hired to kill Franco, for reasoning at the time unknown. Franco in turn has been tasked by Murik to kill his young ward, Lavender Peacock because she was the true heir to the Murik fortune, which could only be proved by secret documents Anton kept in a hidden safe within his castle. Murik's plan is to hijack six nuclear power plants around the world simultaneously with the aid of bands of terrorists supplied by Franco. To ensure that Murik can never be associated to this deal, he attempts to use Bond to assassinate Franco. Ultimately terrorists do take over six nuclear power plants, but are prevented from starting a meltdown when they are given an abort code by Bond, believing him to be Murik. Murik is eventually defeated by Bond and Lavender before his demands were met.
1274228	/m/04p7d5	Une histoire américaine				 Grégory Francœur, a brilliant professor from Quebec, leaves his family and political career behind to become the assistant to a distinguished academic in San Francisco. Because of a misunderstanding, typical of the ambiguity that has been Francœur's lot in life, he becomes involved in a dangerous case of illegal immigration.
1274361	/m/04p7wb	For Special Services	John Gardner	1982-09	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Bond teams up with CIA agent Cedar Leiter, daughter of his old friend, Felix Leiter, to investigate one Markus Bismaquer, who is suspected of reviving the criminal organisation SPECTRE, which was believed to have been disbanded years earlier following the death of its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, at the hands of Bond (in You Only Live Twice). The British Secret Service learns that Bismaquer is an obsessive collector of rare prints, so Bond and Cedar visit the man's huge ranch in Amarillo, Texas posing as art dealers. Their true identities are soon revealed, but not until Bond holds his own both in an impromptu (and fixed) car race arranged by Bismaquer, and in the bed of Bismaquer's frustrated wife, Nena. Nena, who has only one breast, quickly wins Bond's heart and his sympathy and Bond is convinced that Bismaquer is the one now being referred to as the new Blofeld. Bond discovers that the revitalised SPECTRE plans to take over control of NORAD headquarters in order to gain control of America's military space satellite network. His true identity revealed, Bond is captured and brainwashed into believing he is an American general assigned to inspect NORAD. Although he has been set up to be killed in the ensuing attack by SPECTRE forces on the base, Bond regains his personality and his memory. Apparently Bismaquer, who is bisexual, has taken a liking to Bond and sabotaged the hypnosis. When Bond returns to Bismaquer's ranch, he witnesses Bismaquer being killed by Nena, who is in fact the mind behind the operation and the daughter of Blofeld, a fact she confesses to Bond just before falling into the crushing grip of her pet pythons. She is later put out of her misery by Felix Leiter, who arrives on the scene to help rescue his daughter.
1274977	/m/04p9hy	Carl's Afternoon in the Park				 The book starts when a woman walking in the park with her baby daughter and her rottweiler Carl run into a friend of hers. The lady's friend has with her a Rottweiler puppy. The two friends decide to go off to have some tea and leave the baby alone with the Rottweiler and the Rottie pup. The book is a look at the adventures of a dog and a baby in the park. At the end of the book, the women return to express that they hope the dog and baby weren't bored after having been left alone too long.
1275389	/m/04pbb6	Icebreaker	John Gardner	1983-07-07	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Bond reluctantly finds himself recruited into a dangerous mission involving an equally dangerous and treacherous alliance of agents from the United States (CIA), the Soviet Union (KGB) and Israel (Mossad). The team, dubbed "Icebreaker", waste no time double-crossing each other. Ostensibly their job is to root out the leader of the murderous National Socialist Action Army (NSAA), Count Konrad von Glöda. The Count used to be known as Arne Tudeer, a one-time Nazi SS officer who now perceives himself as the new Adolf Hitler. The National Socialist Action Army is essentially a new wave of fascism as a means to wipe out communist leaders and supporters around the world. The novel is full of double-crosses and even triple-crosses where the agents and agencies go without sharing their true loyalties with one another. The American agent, for instance, first appears to be a good guy then later in cahoots with von Glöda, and then still even later a good guy once again. Things become even more complicated when the Israeli agent, Rivke, is revealed to be the daughter of von Glöda/Tudeer and her allegiance, although appearing to be legitimate, in doubt. The Russian agent also double-crosses Bond in hopes of capturing him for KGB interrogation. Bond gets several weeks of driving training from Erik Carlsson as preparation for this Arctic assignment.
1275421	/m/04pbcy	Role of Honour	John Gardner	1984	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 After receiving a large inheritance, James Bond 007 is accused of improprieties and drummed out of the British Secret Service. Disgusted with his former employers, Bond places his services on the open market, where he later attracts the attention of representatives of SPECTRE who are quite willing to put their one-time enemy on their payroll. But the whole thing was a hoax, just a plan to get Bond inside the enemy's organization. Prior to joining up, Bond spends a month in Monte Carlo with Miss 'Percy' Proud, a CIA agent who teaches him everything she knows about programming languages and computers in general. This background allows Bond to attract Jay Autem Holy, an agent of SPECTRE who left the Pentagon, faked his death, and later started a computer game company that creates simulations based on real-life battles and wars. Bond's allegiance to SPECTRE is periodically questioned throughout the novel, even at one point going so far as to send Bond to a terrorist training camp (known as "Erewhon") to see if he has 'the right stuff'. Proving his worth, Bond becomes involved in a plot to destabilise the Soviet Union and the United States, by forcing them to rid the world of their nuclear weapons. What SPECTRE leaders Tamil Rahani and Dr. Jay Autem Holy suspect, but never fully realise is that Bond's resignation is false. Along with Bond, the Secret Service plays a vital role in foiling SPECTRE; however, Rahani, the current leader of SPECTRE is able to escape Bond's clutches by parachuting out of an airship over Switzerland.
1275458	/m/04pbgr	Nobody Lives For Ever	John Gardner	1986-06-26	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 En route to retrieve his faithful housekeeper, May, from a European health clinic where she is recovering from an illness, Bond is warned by the British Secret Service that Tamil Rahani, the current leader of SPECTRE, now dying from wounds suffered due to his last encounter with Bond (as described in Role of Honour), has put a price on Bond's head. "Trust no one," Bond is warned. Soon after, May and Miss Moneypenny, who had been visiting his housekeeper are reported missing, and Bond finds himself dodging would-be assassins while searching for his friends, assisted by a young débutante and her capable, yet mysterious, female bodyguard. The price on Bond's head is a competition orchestrated by Rahani and SPECTRE known as 'The Head Hunt', and is an open contest to anyone willing to capture, kill, or present Bond to Rahani, where he would be subsequently decapitated by guillotine. Along Bond's journey of attempting to rescue Moneypenny and May, Bond is betrayed and chased by a number of people and organisations, including his own British Secret Service ally, Steve Quinn who has defected to the KGB, corrupted police officers, and agents of SPECTRE in disguise.
1275522	/m/04pbnd	No Deals, Mr. Bond	John Gardner	1987-05-21	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 No Deals, Mr. Bond begins with a mission in the Baltic Sea dubbed "Seahawk", which involves James Bond stealthily extracting two women that have completed an assignment in East Germany. After accomplishing his mission, the book continues 5 years later with Bond being called in by M to learn more background into what those women were doing there before being extracted. Their mission, dubbed Cream Cake, was a honey trap that involved getting close to top Soviet personnel as a means to not only spy for the British Secret Service, but to secure the defection of 2 highly ranking Soviet officers, an act that the Soviets occasionally performed against countries of the West. Involving 4 women and a man, the operation was considered a complete debacle that ended with the members being found out. After being extracted and given new identities, however, two of the women were discovered to be gruesomely murdered. Bond is subsequently sent by M, "off the record", to find the remaining members of Cream Cake before they suffer the same fate. During the adventure, Bond believes that Colonel Maxim Smolin, the primary target during operation Cream Cake, is systematically killing off the former members of the Cream Cake operation and leaving a signature of having their tongues removed. This, however, is not the case, and, in actuality, Smolin is a turncoat now working with the British Secret Service. Instead, the former members, in addition to Smolin and another Soviet turncoat, Captain Dietrich, are being targeted by General Chernov, an agent of a department formerly known as SMERSH. The situation is further complicated after M gets a message to Bond warning him that one of the surviving Cream Cake members is a double and that he wants Chernov brought in alive.
1276307	/m/04pdn5	Voyage of the Damned	Gordon Thomas			 Based on actual events, the story told of the MS St. Louis, which departed from Hamburg, Germany in 1939, carrying 937 Jews from Germany to Havana, Cuba. By this time, the Jews had suffered the rise of anti-Semitism and realised that this might be their last chance to escape. The film details the emotional journey of the passengers who gradually become aware that their passage has been an exercise in propaganda and that they were never intended to disembark in Cuba. Rather, they were to be used as examples before the world. A Nazi official said that when the whole world has refused to accept them as refugees, no country can blame Germany for the fate of the Jews. The government of Cuba refuses entry to the passengers, and as the liner waits near the Florida coastline, they learn that the United States has also rejected them. They have no choice but to return to Europe. The captain tells a confidante that he has received a letter signed by 200 passengers saying they will join hands and jump into the sea rather than return to Germany. He says he is intending to deliberately run the liner aground on a reef off the southern coast of England. Shortly before the film's end, it is revealed that the governments of the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and the Netherlands have each agreed to accept a share of the passengers as refugees. As they cheer and clap at the good news, footnotes disclose the fates of some of the main characters, and reveal that more than 600 of the ship's 937 passengers ultimately lost their lives in Nazi concentration camps. However, the book presents a much lower number: By using the survival rates for Jews in various countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts estimated that about 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, 152 of those in Belgium, and 60 of those in the Netherlands, survived the Holocaust. Adding to these the passengers who disembarked in England, they estimated that of the original 936 refugees (one man died during the voyage), roughly 709 survived and 227 were slain. (See the relevant article.) In 1998, Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum traced the survivors from the voyage. The conclusion of their research was that a slightly higher total of 254 refugees died at the hands of the Nazis.
1277224	/m/04ph51	Win, Lose or Die	John Gardner	1989	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 M receives word that a terrorist organisation known as BAST (Brotherhood of Anarchy and Secret Terrorism) is planning to infiltrate and destroy a top-secret British Royal Navy aircraft carrier-based summit scheduled a year hence between American President George H. W. Bush, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. To counteract this, James Bond is returned to active duty in the Royal Navy and promoted from Commander to Captain, in order to infiltrate the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible and identify potential sleeper agents. In the months leading to the top-secret summit, Bond spends his time training at Yeovilton learning to fly a Navy Sea Harrier jet. With knowledge of Bond's task, BAST decides that Bond is a hindrance to their plans and attempts to kill him, once attempting to shoot him down while in his Sea Harrier during a training exercise. Later, when Bond goes on holiday in Italy, another attempt is made on his life. Bond escapes and, presumably, ends up taking the life of his then-current girlfriend, Beatrice Maria da Ricci. Returning from holiday Bond boards HMS Invincible and is tasked with security for the secret summit referred to as the "Stewards' Meeting" all the while a massive war game is being carried out between American, British, and Soviet Navies known as Landsea '89. Before long Bond is at the centre of a murder investigation of an American Naval Intelligence officer, and while away to report the incident BAST has executed its plans to capture the ship and hold the world's three most powerful leaders for a 600 billion dollar ransom.
1277241	/m/04ph6f	Brokenclaw	John Gardner	1990-07	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 After expressing frustration over a lack of action after his year-long mission with the Royal Navy (as detailed in Win, Lose or Die), Bond threatens to resign. Instead, M orders Bond to take a vacation. Bond travels to Victoria, British Columbia where he is intrigued by Lee Fu-Chu, a half-Blackfoot, half-Chinese philanthropist who is known as "Brokenclaw" because of a deformed hand. Later, Bond is ordered to San Francisco where he is tasked to investigate the kidnapping of several scientists who have been working on a new submarine detection system and an "antidote" known as LORDS and LORDS DAY. Bond and CIA agent Chi-Chi Sue go undercover using the codenames Peter Abelard and Héloïse that were assigned to two agents from the People's Republic of China that are sent to evaluate the submarine technology before purchasing it. Ultimately, Bond discovers that Brokenclaw is involved in this scheme on behalf of China, and also has plans of his own which involve sparking a worldwide economic disaster by bringing about the collapse of the dollar by tapping into the New York Stock Exchange, which would in turn bring down other major currencies worldwide. The plan, dubbed Operation Jericho was a long-term plan initially started by the Japanese, but now believed to have been worked on simultaneously by the Chinese before being acquired by Brokenclaw. Brokenclaw's hideout in California is raided by Special Forces after he is located by Naval Intelligence officer Ed Rushia who was searching and attempting to help Bond and Chi-Chi while on their mission. Brokenclaw escapes the raid only to be tracked down by Bond and Rushia, off the books, to the Chelan Mountains of Washington where Bond is challenged to a torture ritual known as o-kee-pa. In the end, the competition comes down to a fight between the two using bow and arrows; Brokenclaw barely misses Bond and in turn is shot through the neck by Bond's arrow.
1277265	/m/04ph8y	The Man from Barbarossa	John Gardner	1991	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The Man from Barbarossa begins with a prelude that includes some background information on the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union codenamed Operation Barbarossa, the massacre at Babi Yar that occurred not long after, and information on Josif Voronstov, a fictional character said to be a deputy of real-life Paul Blobel who was primarily responsible for the massacre. When the story begins, an elderly American living in New Jersey is kidnapped by a Russian terrorist group called the "Scales of Justice". The man, Joel Penderek, was captured under the belief that he is Josif Voronstov, the war criminal partially responsible for the massacre at Babi Yar. The group demands the Soviet government put the man on trial for his crimes, and begins murdering government officials when leaders refuse and are slow to react. The situation is slightly more complicated as the CIA and the Mossad believe Voronstov to be a man located in Florida who they had under surveillance. Captain James Bond is partnered with an Israeli Mossad agent, Pete Natkowitz, and two agents from the French Secret Service, Henri Rampart and Stephanie Adoré. They are assigned to work with Bory Stepakov and his assistant Nina Bibikova from the KGB to infiltrate the Scales of Justice posing as a TV crew so as to discover their real motive. Accomplishing this, they learn that the group plans to sabotage perestroika and supply Iraq with nuclear weapons before the United Nations-led coalition invades. The man behind the Scales of Justice, General Yevgeny Yuskovich, is a cousin of Josif Voronstov who is identified as Joel Penderek. The trial was staged in order to shift focus away from Yuskovich's other plans.
1277287	/m/04phbp	Death is Forever	John Gardner	1992	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The aftermath of the Cold War provides the setting for the plot of Death Is Forever. After the deaths of a British Intelligence agent and an American agent with the CIA working in Germany under mysterious and surprisingly old-fashioned circumstances, James Bond and CIA agent Elizabeth Zara ("Easy") St. John are assigned to track down the surviving members of "Cabal", a Cold War-era intelligence network that received a mysterious and unauthorized signal to disband. Soon, Bond finds himself playing a life-or-death game of "Who do You Trust?" as he and Easy track down Wolfgang Weisen, the power responsible for killing off Cabal's members one by one. Bond uncovers Weisen's plot to kill off the heads of each European country during the inaugural run of the Eurostar from London to Paris in an effort to create havoc in the west and usher in a second era of Communism. More than most other Gardner novels, Death Is Forever is grounded in current events, with the fallout from the end of the Cold War and the failed 1991 Russian coup being important backdrops to the story. The Eurotunnel connecting England and France, which was still under construction at the time the book was written, also serves as a major setting.
1277302	/m/04phcr	Never Send Flowers	John Gardner	1993-07-15	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 A murder in Switzerland of Laura March with MI5 connections follows assassinations in Rome, London, Paris & Washington. Left at each scene is a rose with marks of drops of blood on the petal. He also left a branch from an oak tree. Bond is sent to investigate where he meets the lovely Swiss agent Fredericka von Grüsse whom he later calls Flicka when on better terms. Trails lead to a former international stage actor, David Dragonpol, a friend of March who lives in a castle on the Rhine called Schloss Drache which he is turning into a theatre museum. They also meet a widow and flower grower, Maeve Horton.
1277351	/m/04phg9	SeaFire	John Gardner	1994-08	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 With the help of his latest girlfriend Flicka von Grüsse, James goes after billionaire Sir Maxwell Tarn, who thinks he's the next Hitler. Captain Bond now works for MicroGlobe One rather than an ill M whom he visits to cheer up and keep informed of the plot. The global trail takes 007 to Puerto Rico via Spain, Israel and Germany. During the story, Bond proposes to Flicka. An old friend reappears to aid James and split up this spy twosome.
1277425	/m/04phmd	COLD	John Gardner	1996-05-02	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The novel is split into two books, one called "Cold Front" and the second entitled "Cold Conspiracy". The time between each book appears to be the time period allotted to Gardner's previous Bond outings, Never Send Flowers and SeaFire. The story opens with the crash of a Boeing 747-400 at Dulles International Airport in Fairfax and Loudoun counties, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., and the apparent death of Bond's friend and lover, the Principessa Sukie Tempesta. Bond is then sent by M to the airport with an investigation team which leads to meetings with FBI agent Eddie Rhabb. The main action takes place in Italy at the home of the Tempesta brothers, Luigi and Angelo, where Bond gets caught in the act with one of the brothers' wives. As James later explains to M, the lady made the advances. The enemy of the story is provided by a terrorist army called COLD, which stands for Children Of the Last Days.
1277477	/m/04phr6	The Facts of Death	Raymond Benson		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Facts of Death starts off with several deaths from mysterious diseases. We first find Bond in Cyprus where a number of British troops have been discovered murdered, under mysterious circumstances. Bond gets too close for comfort for the group behind the actions and is attacked, but rescued by a fiery Greek female agent, Niki Mirakos. Bond then returns to Britain. He is invited to attend a dinner party being held by his former boss, Sir Miles Meservey. His current boss and her boyfriend are in attendance. After the party M's boyfriend is murdered. She then tells Bond that all of the killings are connected because near all the bodies there were statues of Greek deities and numbers counting the victims of the horrible killing spree. Bond is sent to Greece and partnered with his current love interest Niki Mirakos. They both seem to be suspicious of an internationally known mathematic cult called the Decada. The head of the group is Greek mathematician, Konstantine Romanos. Bond goes to a Greek casino that is about two hours away from Athens and battles Romanos in a game of bacaraat. He defeats Romanos and catches the attention of a pretty Greek woman named Hera Volopoulos, who is also a card carrying member of the Decada. Bond chats with and later beds Hera. He then is drugged by her after they have made love. She takes him to Konstantine who talks to Bond and tells Hera to kill him. Bond manages to escape Hera's evil clutches. He then manages to figure out Konstantine's plan, to start a major war between Greece and Turkey. Bond figures out where the hideout is and gets there just in time to witness Hera murder Konstantine. She leaves Bond to stop a nuclear missile that will be fired from Greece into Turkey. Bond then figures out Hera's plan, to profit from worldwide murder through a new virus. Bond, with assistance from the Greek military, boards a helicopter and prepares for battle with Hera. He kills her and stops the missile. Locations where the book takes place include: * Los Angeles * Tokyo * Austin, Texas * Cyprus * London * Greece
1277518	/m/04phwp	High Time to Kill	Raymond Benson	1999-05-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The world of James Bond is introduced to the ruthless terrorist organization called "The Union", whose brutal trademark is slashing the throat of those who cross them. Bond and his girlfriend Helena are attending a dinner party thrown by the Governor of The Bahamas. The Governor, who has a gambling debt with a member of The Union, has refused to pay up since he feels that he had been cheated, so there is much security detail at the event. However, the assassin disguises himself as one of the guards and kills the Governor, just as Bond realizes the danger. Bond almost catches the assassin but he commits suicide before he can be interrogated. A top secret British formula hidden in microfilm, codenamed "Skin 17", is stolen by traitors; scientist Steven Harding and RAF officer Roland Marquis. The microdot is surgically implanted in the pacemaker of an unhealthy old man, who is a former Chinese intelligence agent. James Bond is sent in to recover it before the Union can sell the microfilm to a foreign power. Bond tracks Harding and the Chinese ex-agent to Belgium, but the latter two slip away while Bond narrowly kills Harding's bodyguard Basil. MI6 tracks the Chinese man to Nepal. It turns out, however, that Harding planned to double-cross the Union, by having the plane of the pacemaker’s host hijacked. Le Gerrant, the blind leader of The Union, immediately deduces Harding's double-cross and has him executed; Harding's body later washes up on the beaches of Gibraltar. The plane containing the pacemaker's host crashed into the Himalayas, so a deadly race commences to recover Skin 17. Bond, sexy mountaineer Hope Kendal, and Roland Marquis, also Bond's schoolboy-days rival, lead one of the expeditions. Early on, they successfully destroy the Chinese base camp, forcing that team to withdraw. Not long after, however, everyone on the British expedition has been killed, save for Bond, Hope, and Marquis. The race climaxes with Bond battling Marquis atop the peak of Kangchenjunga. It turns out that Marquis had collaborated with Harding to steal Skin 17, though they were not planning to sell it to The Union. After a physical high elevation fight, Bond trades oxygen to receive Skin 17 from a mortally wounded Marquis. As Bond and Hope return to base camp, they realize that it has been infiltrated by The Union as Paul Baack, having earlier faked his death while killing the rest of the team, demands Skin 17. Bond and Hope manage to kill Baack and Skin 17 is returned to the British. Bond's now-estranged girlfriend Helena reveals herself to be in the employ of The Union due to blackmail and threats of violence to her family. However, she is killed just before Bond can reach her. Locations where the book takes place include: * The Bahamas * London, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire—England * Belgium * Delhi, India * Morocco * Nepal * Mt. Kangchenjunga * Brighton, England
1277536	/m/04phy2	Doubleshot	Raymond Benson	2000-05-04	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 DoubleShot, the second novel in Raymond Benson's Union trilogy, again sets James Bond, 007 against the evil terrorist organization called the Union. Still smarting from their last encounter with 007 when he foiled their plans to get Skin 17 in High Time to Kill, the Union has decided that Britain and James Bond are their new number one priority, and targets. Coming up with an elaborate plan to plunge Britain into war and destroy Bond's reputation in the process, the Union sets up their scheme. Domingo Espada, a Spanish Nationalist/Gangster/Ex-Matador who wishes to see Gibraltar returned to Spain from Britain, is approached by Nadir Yassasin, the Union's master strategist, as the centrepiece to their plan. They plan to help Espada forcefully take control of Gibraltar, killing the British Prime Minister and the Governor of Gibraltar, and having a Bond-Double do it, thus ruining Bond's career and life. But first, through an elaborate series of events, they convince Bond he is losing his mind, and force him to investigate these happenings on his own, without approval from M or SIS. Since Bond's return from the Himalayas, he begins experiencing terrible headaches, hallucinations, and black-outs. This leads him to Dr. Kimberly Feare. She diagnoses a lesion on the back of Bond's skull that is causing these symptoms. After getting Dr. Feare in bed, Bond wakes up to find her murdered, her throat slit ear-to-ear, the Union's mark. This causes Bond to leave England. Bond's trek takes him from England to Tangier, where he encounters the Taunt twins, Heidi and Hedy, CIA agents asked by M to bring him back to London. Here Bond finds the connection between the Union and Espada, and that he has some part in the Union's plan. Convincing M and the Taunts to play out his hand, Bond goes to Spain. On arrival in Spain, he encounters Margareta Piel, Espada's female assassin and a member of the Union. Followed closely by the climax of Bond vs. his double in Espada's practice bullfighting ring, and the culmination of the Union's plot at the Gibraltar peace conference, Bond takes his double's place and along with the Taunt twins, prevent the assassinations, kills Espada, Piel, Jimmy Powers (a high-ranking American in the Union, and their number one expert in stealth and tailing), and captures Yassasin, foiling the Union's plans once again.
1277548	/m/04phzx	Never Dream of Dying	Raymond Benson	2001	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It begins when a police raid goes horribly wrong, killing innocent men, women, and even children. Bond knows the Union is behind the carnage, and vows to take them down once and for all. His hunt takes him to Paris, into a deadly game of predator and prey, and a fateful meeting with the seductive Tylyn Mignonne, a movie star with a sordid past, who may lead Bond to his final target—or his own violent end... Eventually it leads him to the Union's latest attack on society, which involves Tylyn's husband, Leon Essinger, and his new movie, "Pirate Island", which stars Tylyn. (US Paperback) The conclusion to Benson’s Union Trilogy. Locations are Nice, Paris, Cannes, Monte Carlo, Corsica (also Los Angeles, Japan, and Chicago briefly).
1277590	/m/04pj0m	The Man with the Red Tattoo	Raymond Benson	2002-05-02	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 On a flight from Japan to the United Kingdom, a young Japanese woman dies of a mysterious illness. The illness is a mutated version of the West Nile virus. James Bond finds out that not only was she the daughter of an important Japanese businessman, her entire family is also dead. James Bond travels to Japan in search of the killer. Here Bond reunites with his longtime friend Tiger Tanaka, who introduces him to a female Japanese agent who is later killed by the mutant virus.
1277594	/m/04pj0_	Facundo	Domingo Faustino Sarmiento	1845		 After a lengthy introduction, Facundos fifteen chapters divide broadly into three sections: chapters one to four outline Argentine geography, anthropology, and history; chapters five to fourteen recount the life of Juan Facundo Quiroga; and the concluding chapter expounds Sarmiento's vision of a future for Argentina under a Unitarist government. Facundo begins with a geographical description of Argentina, from the Andes in the west to the eastern Atlantic coast, where two main river systems converge at the boundary between Argentina and Uruguay. This river estuary, called the Rio de Plata, is the location of Buenos Aires, the capital. Through his discussion of Argentina's geography, Sarmiento demonstrates Buenos Aires' advantages; the river systems were communications arteries which, by enabling trade, helped the city to achieve civilization. Buenos Aires failed to spread civilization to the rural areas and as a result, much of the rest of Argentina was doomed to barbarism. Sarmiento also argues that the pampas, Argentina’s wide and empty plains, provided "no place for people to escape and hide for defense and this prohibits civilization in most parts of Argentina". Despite the barriers to civilization caused by Argentina’s geography, Sarmiento argues that many of the country's problems were caused by gauchos like Juan Manuel de Rosas, who were barbaric, uneducated, ignorant, and arrogant; their character prevented Argentine society's progress toward civilization. Sarmiento then describes the four main types of gaucho and these characterizations aid in understanding Argentine leaders, such as Juan Manuel de Rosas. Sarmiento argues that without an understanding of these Argentine character types, "it is impossible to understand our political personages, or the primordial, American character of the bloody struggle that tears apart the Argentine Republic". Sarmiento then moves on to the Argentine peasants, who are "independent of all need, free of all subjection, with no idea of government". The peasants gather at taverns, where they spend their time drinking and gambling. They display their eagerness to prove their physical strength with horsemanship and knife fights. Rarely these displays led to deaths, and Sarmiento notes that Rosas's residence was sometimes used as a refuge on such occasions, before he became politically powerful. According to Sarmiento, these elements are crucial to an understanding of the Argentine Revolution, in which Argentina gained independence from Spain. Although Argentina’s war of independence was prompted by the influence of European ideas, Buenos Aires was the only city that could achieve civilization. Rural people participated in the war to demonstrate their physical strengths rather than because they wanted to civilize the country. In the end, the revolution was a failure because the barbaric instincts of the rural population led to the loss and dishonor of the civilized city&mdash;Buenos Aires. The second section of Facundo explores the life of its titular character, Juan Facundo Quiroga&mdash;the "Tiger of the Plains". Despite being born into a wealthy family, Facundo received only a basic education in reading and writing. He loved gambling, being called el jugador (the player)&mdash;in fact, Sarmiento describes his gambling as "an ardent passion burning in his belly". As a youth Facundo was antisocial and rebellious, refusing to mix with other children, and these traits became more pronounced as he matured. Sarmiento describes an incident in which Facundo killed a man, writing that this type of behaviour "marked his passage through the world". Sarmiento gives a physical description of the man he considers to personify the caudillo: "[he had a] short and well built stature; his broad shoulders supported, on a short neck, a well-formed head covered with very thick, black and curly hair", with "eyes ...&nbsp;full of fire". Facundo's relations with his family eventually broke down, and, taking on the life of a gaucho, he joined the caudillos in the province of Entre Ríos. His killing of two Spaniards after a jailbreak saw him acclaimed as a hero among the gauchos, and on relocating to La Rioja, Facundo was appointed to a leadership position in the Llanos Militia. He built his reputation and won his comrades' respect through his fierce battlefield performances, but hated and tried to destroy those who differed from him by being civilized and well-educated. In 1825, when Unitarist Bernardino Rivadavia became the governor of the Buenos Aires province, he held a meeting with representatives from all provinces in Argentina. Facundo was present as the governor of La Rioja. Rivadavia was soon overthrown, and Manuel Dorrego became the new governor. Sarmiento contends that Dorrego, a Federalist, was interested neither in social progress nor in ending barbaric behaviour in Argentina by improving the level of civilization and education of its rural inhabitants. In the turmoil that characterized Argentine politics at the time, Dorrego was assassinated by Unitarists and Facundo was defeated by Unitarist General José María Paz. Facundo escaped to Buenos Aires and joined the Federalist government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. During the ensuing civil war between the two ideologies, Facundo conquered the provinces of San Luis, Cordoba and Mendoza. On return to his San Juan home, which Sarmiento says Facundo governed "solely with his terrifying name", he realized that his government lacked support from Rosas. He went to Buenos Aires to confront Rosas, who sent him on another political mission. On his way back, Facundo was shot and killed at Barranca Yaco, Córdoba. According to Sarmiento, the murder was plotted by Rosas: "An impartial history still awaits facts and revelations, in order to point its finger at the instigator of the assassins". In the book's final chapters, Sarmiento explores the consequences of Facundo's death for the history and politics of the Argentine Republic. He further analyzes Rosas's government and personality, commenting on dictatorship, tyranny, the role of popular support, and the use of force to maintain order. Sarmiento criticizes Rosas by using the words of the dictator, making sarcastic remarks about Rosas's actions, and describing the "terror" established during the dictatorship, the contradictions of the government, and the situation in the provinces that were ruled by Facundo. Sarmiento writes, "The red ribbon is a materialization of the terror that accompanies you everywhere, in the streets, in the bosom of the family; it must be thought about when dressing, when undressing, and ideas are always engraved upon us by association". Finally, Sarmiento examines the legacy of Rosas's government by attacking the dictator and widening the civilization–barbarism dichotomy. By setting France against Argentina—representing civilization and barbarism respectively—Sarmiento contrasts culture and savagery: France's blockade had lasted for two years, and the 'American' government, inspired by 'American' spirit, was facing off with France, European principles, European pretensions. The social results of the French blockade, however, had been fruitful for the Argentine Republic, and served to demonstrate in all their nakedness the current state of mind and the new elements of struggle, which were to ignite a fierce war that can end only with the fall of that monstrous government.
1278604	/m/04pl__	The Silencers	Donald Hamilton	1962	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When a female agent in Mexico is killed before Helm can complete his mission to extract her, he finds himself teamed up with the woman's sister as he fights to save the lives of a number of scientists and Congressmen.
1278608	/m/04pm0c	The Ambushers	Donald Hamilton	1963	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Matt Helm conducts a by-the-book assassination in the (fictional) Central American nation of Costa Verde. Afterwards, he finds himself pursuing an ex-Nazi named von Sachs, who has obtained one of the nuclear missiles that had been bound for Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and who is threatening the United States with the weapon. Along the way he finds himself working with a Russian agent named Vadya (who would return in later Helm adventures).
1278612	/m/04pm13	Crusade in Jeans	Thea Beckman	1973	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 Rudolf "Dolf" Hefting is a fourteen year-old who volunteers for an experiment with a time machine. The experiment goes well, but through an accident Dolf is stranded in the 13th century. He saves the life of Leonardo Fibonacci, without realizing who he is, and teaches him Arabic numerals. Together they join the German Children's Crusade, and through his modern-day knowledge, Rudolph manages to save a lot of children from horrible fates. However, his knowledge also leads to accusations of witchcraft. In the book, two slavers delude a group of children into coming with them with stories of how the innocent shall liberate Jerusalem. Their actual intent is to sell them for profit. With the aid of his twentieth-century knowledge and skepticism, and the aid of a "magical" device or two (such as a box of matches), the boy manages to keep most of the children alive and eventually gets them to safety.
1278855	/m/04pmjt	Smilla's Sense of Snow	Peter Høeg	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen, 37-year-old product of the stormy union of a female Inuit hunter and a rich urban Danish physician, is a loner who struggles to live with her fractured heritage. Living alone in a dreary apartment complex in Christianshavn, Copenhagen, she befriends Isaiah, the neglected son of her alcoholic neighbour, because he too is Greenlandic and not truly at home in Denmark. Smilla's friendship with Isaiah, recounted in the novel in flashback, gives some meaning to her otherwise lonely life. Isaiah’s sudden death is explained officially as a fall from the roof whilst playing, but Smilla’s understanding of the tracks the child left on the snowy roof convinces her that this is untrue. She complains to the police and quickly encounters obstruction and hostility from the authorities and other sources. Working with Peter, a mechanic neighbour who had also known and liked Isaiah, and with whom she begins an affair despite her fear of dependency, Smilla discovers that there is a conspiracy centred on Gela Alta, an isolated glaciated island off Greenland. Previous expeditions have found something there (Isaiah’s father was a diver who died on one of them, allegedly in an accident) and now plans are afoot to return for it. Isaiah’s death is linked to this conspiracy in some way. After a long journey of discovery in Copenhagen, during which she learns that the mechanic is not who he says he is, Smilla braves intimidation and threats and eventually gets on board the ship chartered for the mysterious expedition to Gela Alta, ostensibly as a stewardess. The final action takes place on the ship and the island. Smilla is held in deep suspicion by the ship's crew—who turn out to be all in some way compromised and in the pay of the mysterious Tørk Hviid, who is the expedition's real leader. Despite repeated attempts on her life by crew members, who assume she is from the authorities, Smilla doggedly pursues the truth, even when she discovers that Peter has deceived and betrayed her. The secret of the island is revealed to be a meteorite embedded in the glacier, certainly uniquely valuable—perhaps even alive in some way. However, the water surrounding it is infested with a lethal parasite related to the Guinea worm, which is what really killed Isaiah’s father. Isaiah was forced off the roof because he had accompanied his father on the previous expedition and had evidence of the meteorite’s location—and the parasite itself was actually dormant in his body. When Smilla learns that Tørk Hviid had chased Isaiah off the roof to his death, she pursues him out onto the frozen sea. He tries to reach the ship and force it to sail away, but Smilla chases him, using her intuitive ice-sense to head him off, out into isolation and danger. Here the novel ends.
1281035	/m/04ps37	A View from the Bridge	Arthur Miller			 The main character in the story is Eddie Carbone, an Italian American longshoreman, who lives with his wife, Beatrice and his orphaned niece, Catherine. As the play begins, Eddie is protective and kind toward Catherine, although his feelings grow into something more than avuncular as the play develops. His attachment to her is brought into perspective by the arrival from Italy of Beatrice's two cousins, Marco and Rodolpho. They have entered the country illegally, hoping to leave behind hunger and unemployment for a better life in America. Marco is an exceptionally strong man, said by Eddie's friends to be 'a regular bull.' He also has a starving family in Italy (a wife, and 3 sons, one with tuberculosis). Rodolpho is in his late 20's, fair skinned, blond, and unattached. He is unconventional in that he sings (notably 'paper doll'), dances, is good at sewing and dress making and is also a good cook. Catherine soon begins a relationship with Rodolpho. After three weeks, the pair have been seeing each other, and Eddie sets about pointing out all of Rodolpho's flaws to Catherine and Beatrice. He persistently complains that Rodolpho is "not right," referring to Rodolpho's effeminate qualities, such as sewing, cooking and singing. He is embarrassed by Rodolpho's reputation for singing during work. When Catherine decides to marry Rodolpho, Eddie becomes desperate and begs his lawyer, Alfieri (who is also the narrator), to help him. However, he is told that the only way the law is able to help him is if he informs the Immigration Bureau of the presence of the two illegal immigrants. Due to his earlier assertion that "it's an honor" to give the men refuge, he refuses to betray them. At home he continues to passively insult Rodolpho, and ends up offering to teach Rodolpho to box, however Eddie uses this opportunity to hit Rodolpho. In retaliation, Marco challenges Eddie to lift a chair from the bottom of its leg, when Eddie fails to do this, Marco picks up the chair with one hand from the bottom of its leg and lifts it above his head. This demonstrates Marco's superior strength and that he will always be watching over Rodolpho, should Eddie harm him. In the second Act, Eddie catches Rodolpho leaving the bedroom with Catherine. He then sees Alfieri a second time. Eddie ignores his lawyer's advice to let events run their course, and calls the Immigration Bureau. This betrayal proves disastrous: he comes back to learn that Catherine and Rodolpho are engaged, and Beatrice informs him two more illegal immigrants have moved into the upstairs apartment. Suddenly, the Immigration Officers arrive and shortly arrest the four immigrants. As the detainees are being taken from the tenement, Marco breaks free from the group, "dashes into the room" and spits in Eddie's face. This happens inside Eddie's house – however Eddie's rage is such that he follows Marco out into the street. He berates Marco for the insult, failing to notice that the gathering crowd are growing as one to conclude that Eddie is the traitor. This suspicion is confirmed as Marco singles Eddie out as the one who "killed my children." Rodolpho is allowed to stay in the country due to his marriage, but Marco faces imminent deportation. Reluctantly, he promises Alfieri not to take revenge on Eddie (as is the Sicilian custom) and is let out on bail. In the final scene of the play, Eddie is shown to be furious with his humiliation and refuses to attend the wedding. He rejects Rodolpho's offer to reconcile and refuses to get out of the house when he learns Marco is arriving. The play ends with a fight between Eddie and Marco, in a street filled with his friends and family. Eddie brandishes a knife and attacks Marco, who turns the blade onto Eddie, killing him. It is not known whether Marco actually intended to stab Eddie, and his reaction is not described. Eddie dies as the curtain falls, calling out to Beatrice.
1281172	/m/04psdp	Quiet as a Nun			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the death of a nun, Sister Miriam, who apparently starved herself to death in a ruined tower, known as the 'Tower of Ivory', which adjoins the grounds of the Convent of the Blessed Eleanor, a nunnery and an all-girls school. The tower has specific significance to the order, as it was the original convent building. The tower and the ancient history of the order are recorded in the Treasury of the Blessed Eleanor, a manuscript which is referenced throughout the story. Though it is never stated explicitly, Blessed Eleanor is presumed to be Eleanor of Aquitaine, the once Queen of England. Television reporter Jemima Shore is an old school friend of Sister Miriam, who was also known as Rosabelle Powerstock and was heiress to "the Powers fortune", one of the largest fortunes in Britain. Jemima is invited back to the convent by Reverend Mother Ancilla, where she uncovers a number of mysteries, including the suggestion that Miriam, whose family owned the convent lands, may have written a second will bequeathing them away from the Order, and into the hands of another charity. The tension builds when the girls at the convent school tell Jemima that the Black Nun - a malevolent faceless spectre reputed to appear whenever a death is about to take place within the grounds - was seen just prior to Sister Miriam's death, and has been sighted again.
1282407	/m/04pwy3	The Chimes	Charles Dickens	1844	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 One New Year's Eve Trotty, a "ticket-porter" or casual messenger, is filled with gloom at the reports of crime and immorality in the newspapers, and wonders whether the working classes are simply wicked by nature. His daughter Meg and her long-time fiancé Richard arrive and announce their decision to marry next day. Trotty hides his misgivings, but their happiness is dispelled by an encounter with a pompous alderman, Cute, plus a political economist and a young gentleman with a nostalgia, all of whom make Trotty, Meg, and Richard feel they hardly have a right to exist, let alone marry. Trotty carries a note for Cute to Sir Joseph Bowley MP, who dispenses charity to the poor in the manner of a paternal dictator. Bowley is ostentatiously settling his debts to ensure a clean start to the new year, and berates Trotty because he owes a few shillings to his local shop which he cannot pay off. Returning home, convinced that he and his fellow poor are naturally ungrateful and have no place in society, Trotty encounters Will Fern, a poor countryman, and his orphaned niece, Lilian. Fern has been unfairly accused of vagrancy and wants to visit Cute to set matters straight, but from a conversation overheard at Bowley's house, Trotty is able to warn him that Cute plans to have him arrested and imprisoned. He takes the pair home with him and he and Meg share their meagre food and poor lodging with the visitors. Meg tries to hide her distress, but it seems she has been dissuaded from marrying Richard by her encounter with Cute and the others. In the night the bells seem to call Trotty. Going to the church he finds the tower door unlocked and climbs to the bellchamber, where he discovers the spirits of the bells and their goblin attendants who reprimand him for losing faith in man's destiny to improve. He is told that he fell from the tower during his climb and is now dead, and Meg's subsequent life must now be an object lesson for him. There follows a series of visions which he is forced to watch, helpless to interfere with the troubled lives of Meg, d, Will and Lilian over the subsequent years. Richard descends into alcoholism; Meg eventually marries him in an effort to save him but he dies ruined, leaving her with a baby. Will is driven in and out of prison by petty laws and restrictions; Lilian turns to prostitution. In the end, destitute, Meg is driven to contemplate drowning herself and her child, thus committing the mortal sins of murder and suicide. The Chimes' intention is to teach Trotty that, far from being naturally wicked, mankind is formed to strive for nobler things, and will fall only when crushed and repressed beyond bearing. Trotty breaks down when he sees Meg poised to jump into the river, cries that he has learned his lesson, and begs the Chimes to save her, whereupon he finds himself able to touch her and prevent her from jumping. With this the vision ends and Trotty finds himself awakening at home as if from a dream as the bells ring in the New Year, and the book ends with celebrations for Meg and Richard's wedding day
1282425	/m/04pwz4	The Cricket on the Hearth	Charles Dickens	1845	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 John Peerybingle, a carrier, lives with his young wife Dot, their baby boy and their nanny Tilly Slowboy. A cricket constantly chirps on the hearth and acts as a guardian angel to the family. One day a mysterious elderly stranger comes to visit and takes up lodging at Peerybingle's house for a few days. The life of the Peerybingles intersects with that of Caleb Plummer, a poor toymaker employed by the miser Mr. Tackleton. Caleb has a blind daughter Bertha, and a son Edward, who traveled to South America and was thought dead. The miser Tackleton is now on the eve of marrying Edward's sweetheart, May, but she does not love Tackleton. Tackleton reveals to John Peerybingle that his wife Dot has allegedly cheated on him and shows him a clandestine scene where Dot embraces the mysterious lodger who is in disguise, a man much younger than he actually seems. John is cut to the heart over this as he loves his wife dearly, but decides after some deliberations to relieve his wife of their marriage contract. In the end, the mysterious lodger is revealed to be none other than Edward who has returned home in disguise. Dot shows that she indeed has been faithful to John. Edward marries May hours before she is scheduled to marry Tackleton. However Tackleton's heart is melted by the Christmas season, like Ebenezer Scrooge, and he surrenders May to her true love.
1282996	/m/02p43y5	"A" is for Alibi	Sue Grafton	1982-04-15	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The first novel in the "Alphabet Mysteries" series introduces the character of Kinsey Millhone as she looks into through the facts surrounding the death of prominent divorce lawyer Laurence Fife, whose murder eight years previously was blamed on his wife, Nikki Fife. After being released from prison, Nikki hires Kinsey to find the true murderer. In the course of the investigation, Kinsey becomes involved with Charlie Scorsoni, Laurence's former business partner, whose charms are sufficient to overcome temporarily Kinsey's reservations about sleeping with someone she hasn't yet crossed off her list of suspects. While flipping through the police reports courtesy (somewhat belligerently) of Lieutenant Dolan, Kinsey discovers something which never came up at Nikki's trial: that Laurence's death has been linked by police to that of an accountant in Los Angeles, Libby Glass. Both died under the same circumstances - oleander capsules were substituted for allergy pills - and Kinsey soon learns that the two were rumoured to be having an affair. She tracks down Libby's parents, and meets Libby's former boyfriend, Lyle, whom she suspects of being involved in Libby's death. Kinsey interrupts someone meddling with the boxes of Libby's possessions in the Glasses' basement, and on searching through what remains, finds nothing of significance except a letter from Laurence, indicating that he was in love with 'Elizabeth', which seems to confirm that he and Libby were indeed having an affair. Kinsey goes to Las Vegas on the track of Laurence's ex-secretary, Sharon Napier, who apparently had a mysterious hold over Laurence, but Sharon is shot minutes before Kinsey arrives on the scene to interview her, and Kinsey has to get out fast before she is caught in a compromising situation. It seems that like with the boxes in the basement, someone else is just ahead of her. Back in California, and quizzing Nikki further, Kinsey is mystified that Nikki's young son, Colin, recognises Laurence's first wife, Gwen, in a photograph. Kinsey has already discovered from a couple of interviews with her that Gwen is very bitter about her break-up with Laurence, but the only way that Gwen could have come into contact with Colin would have been through Laurence. Kinsey surmises that despite Gwen's hatred of Laurence, they were having an affair at the time of his death, and when she accuses Gwen of this, Gwen finally confesses - not only to the affair but to murdering Laurence. Shortly afterwards, she too is dead: killed in a hit and run accident. Kinsey has solved the case she was hired to solve, but the knowledge of Gwen's affair with Laurence leads her to question her previous assumption that he was involved with Libby Glass. She realises the letter in Libby's belongings was a plant - dating from an affair with Sharon Napier's mother, Elizabeth, many years before. So who killed Libby? In a plot twist, she discovers that her previous notions about Libby's death were entirely wrong: In fact, it was Charlie Scorsoni who had been having an affair with Libby, and he killed her when she discovered he was embezzling money from mutual accounts. He'd used the same method as Gwen used to kill Laurence only a few days before as a cover for her murder, so that everyone would assume the same person was guilty of both murders. Charlie realises that Kinsey has worked out the truth, and during a dramatic confrontation, he pursues her across the beach, armed with a knife. Before he can kill her, she shoots him dead instead. The novel ends as it begins, with Kinsey, exonerated as acting in self-defence, reflecting on the experience of having killed someone.
1284781	/m/04q1fw	Phaedo	Plato			 The scene is at Compoton where Echecrates who, meeting Phaedo, asks for news about the last days of Socrates. Phaedo explains why a delay occurred between his trial and his death, and describes the scene in a prison at Athens on the final day, naming those present. He tells how he had visited Socrates early in the morning with the others. Socrates' wife Xanthippe was there, but was very distressed and Socrates asked that she be taken away. Socrates' relates how, bidden by a recurring dream to "make and cultivate music", he wrote a hymn and then began writing poetry based on Aesop's Fables. Socrates tells Phaedo to "bid him (his friend) farewell from me; say that I would have him come after me if he be a wise man" Simmias expresses confusion as to why they ought hasten to follow Socrates to death. Socrates then states "...he, who has the spirit of philosophy, will be willing to die; but he will not take his own life." Cebes raises his doubts as to why suicide is prohibited. He asks, "Why do you say...that a man ought not to take his own life, but that the philosopher will be ready to follow one who is dying?" Socrates replies that while death is the ideal home of the soul, man, specifically the philosopher, should not commit suicide except when it becomes necessary. Man ought not to kill himself because he possesses no actual ownership of himself, as he is actually the property of the gods. He says, "I too believe that the gods are our guardians, and that we men are a chattel of theirs". While the philosopher seeks always to rid himself of the body, and to focus solely on things concerning the soul, to commit suicide is prohibited as man is not sole possessor of his body. For, as stated in the Phaedo: "the philosopher more than other men frees the soul from association with the body as much as possible". Body and soul are separate, then. The philosopher frees himself from the body because the body is an impediment to the attainment of truth. Of the senses' failings, Socrates says to Simmias in the Phaedo: Did you ever reach them (truths) with any bodily sense? -- and I speak not of these alone, but of absolute greatness, and health, and strength, and, in short, of the reality or true nature of everything. Is the truth of them ever perceived through the bodily organs? Or rather, is not the nearest approach to the knowledge of their several natures made by him who so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most exact conception of the essence of each thing he considers? The philosopher, if he loves true wisdom and not the passions and appetites of the body, accepts that he can come closest to true knowledge and wisdom in death, as he is no longer confused by the body and the senses. Death is a rite of purification from the &#34;infection&#34; of the body. As the philosopher practices death his entire life, he should greet it amicably and not be discouraged upon its arrival, for, since the universe the Gods created for us in life is essentially &#34;good,&#34; why would death be anything but a continuation of this goodness? Death is a place where better and wiser Gods rule and where the most noble souls exist: &#34;And therefore, so far as that is concerned, I not only do not grieve, but I have great hopes that there is something in store for the dead..., something better for the good than for the wicked.&#34; The soul attains virtue when it is purified from the body: &#34;He who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements when they associate with the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge--who, if not he, is likely to attain to the knowledge of true being?&#34; Cebes voices his fear of death to Socrates: &#34;...they fear that when she [the soul] has left the body her place may be nowhere, and that on the very day of death she may perish and come to an end immediately on her release from the body...dispersing and vanishing away into nothingness in her flight.&#34; In order to alleviate Cebes&#39; worry that the soul might perish at death, Socrates introduces his first argument for the immortality of the soul. This argument is often called the Cyclical Argument. It supposes that the soul must be immortal since the living come from the dead. Socrates says: &#34;Now if it be true that the living come from the dead, then our souls must exist in the other world, for if not, how could they have been born again?&#34;. He goes on to show, using examples of relationships, such as asleep-awake and hot-cold, that things that have opposites come to be from their opposite. One falls asleep after having been awake. And after being asleep, he awakens. Things that are hot can become cold and vice versa. Socrates then gets Cebes to conclude that the dead are generated from the living, through death, and that the living are generated from the dead, through birth. The souls of the dead must exist in some place for them to be able to return to life. Cebes realizes the relationship between the Cyclical Argument and Socrates&#39; Theory of Recollection. He interrupts Socrates to point this out, saying: ...your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that our learning is simply recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time in which we have learned that which we now recollect. But this would be impossible unless our soul had been somewhere before existing in this form of man; here then is another proof of the soul's immortality. Socrates&#39; Theory of Recollection shows that it is possible to draw information out of a person who seems not to have any knowledge of a subject prior to his being questioned about it (a priori knowledge). This person must have gained this knowledge in a prior life, and is now merely recalling it from memory. Since the person in Socrates&#39; story is able to provide correct answers to his interrogator, it must be the case that his answers arose from recollections of knowledge gained during a previous life. Socrates presents his third argument for the immortality of the soul, the so-called Affinity Argument, where he shows that the soul most resembles that which is invisible and divine, and the body resembles that which is visible and mortal. From this, it is concluded that while the body may be seen to exist after death in the form of a corpse, as the body is mortal and the soul is divine, the soul must outlast the body. As to be truly virtuous during life is the quality of a great man who will perpetually dwell as a soul in the underworld. However, regarding those who were not virtuous during life, and so favored the body and pleasures pertaining exclusively to it, Socrates also speaks. He says that such a soul as this is: ...polluted, is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always and is in love with and bewitched by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and see, and drink and eat, and use for the purposes of his lusts, the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid that which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, but is the object of mind and can be attained by philosophy; do you suppose that such a soul will depart pure and unalloyed? Persons of such a constitution will be dragged back into corporeal life, according to Socrates. These persons will even be punished while in Hades. Their punishment will be of their own doing, as they will be unable to enjoy the singular existence of the soul in death because of their constant craving for the body. These souls are finally &#34;imprisoned in another body&#34;. Socrates concludes that the soul of the virtuous man is immortal, and the course of its passing into the underworld is determined by the way he lived his life. The philosopher, and indeed any man similarly virtuous, in neither fearing death, nor cherishing corporeal life as something idyllic, but by loving truth and wisdom, his soul will be eternally unperturbed after the death of the body, and the afterlife will be full of goodness. Simmias confesses that he does not wish to disturb Socrates during his final hours by unsettling his belief in the immortality of the soul, and those present are reluctant to voice their skepticism. Socrates grows aware of their doubt and assures his interlocutors that he does indeed believe in the soul&#39;s immortality, regardless of whether or not he has succeeded in showing it as yet. For this reason, he is not upset facing death and assures them that they ought to express their concerns regarding the arguments. Simmias then presents his case that the soul resembles the harmony of the lyre. It may be, then, that as the soul resembles the harmony in its being invisible and divine, once the lyre has been destroyed, the harmony too vanishes, therefore when the body dies, the soul too vanishes. Once the harmony is dissipated, we may infer that so too will the soul dissipate once the body has been broken, through death. Socrates pauses, and asks Cebes to voice his objection as well. He says, &#34;I am ready to admit that the existence of the soul before entering into the bodily form has been...proven; but the existence of the soul after death is in my judgment unproven.&#34; While admitting that the soul is the better part of a man, and the body the weaker, Cebes is not ready to infer that because the body may be perceived as existing after death, the soul must therefore continue to exist as well. Cebes gives the example of a weaver. When the weaver&#39;s cloak wears out,he makes a new one. However, when he dies, his more freshly woven cloaks continue to exist. Cebes continues that though the soul may outlast certain bodies, and so continue to exist after certain deaths, it may eventually grow so weak as to dissolve entirely at some point. He then concludes that the soul&#39;s immortality has yet to be shown and that we may still doubt the soul&#39;s existence after death. For, it may be that the next death is the one under which the soul ultimately collapses and exists no more. Cebes would then, &#34;...rather not rely on the argument from superior strength to prove the continued existence of the soul after death.&#34; Seeing that the Affinity Argument has possibly failed to show the immortality of the soul, Phaedo pauses his narration. Phaedo remarks to Echecrates that, because of this objection, those present had their &#34;faith shaken,&#34; and that there was introduced &#34;a confusion and uncertainty&#34;. Socrates too pauses following this objection and then warns against misology, the hatred of argument. Socrates then proceeds to give his final proof of the immortality of the soul by showing that the soul is immortal as it is the cause of life. He begins by showing that &#34;if there is anything beautiful other than absolute beauty it is beautiful only insofar as it partakes of absolute beauty&#34;. Consequently, as absolute beauty is a Form, and so is the soul, then anything which has the property of being infused with a soul is so infused with the Form of soul. As an example he says, &#34;will not the number three endure annihilation or anything sooner than be converted into an even number, while remaining three?&#34;. Forms, then, will never become their opposite. As the soul is that which renders the body living, and that the opposite of life is death, it so follows that, &#34;...the soul will never admit the opposite of what she always brings.&#34; That which does not admit death is said to be immortal. Socrates thus concludes, &#34;Then, Cebes, beyond question, the soul is immortal and imperishable, and our souls will truly exist in another world. &#34;Once dead, man&#39;s soul will go to Hades and be in the company of,&#34; as Socrates says, &#34;...men departed, better than those whom I leave behind.&#34; For he will dwell amongst those who were true philosophers, like himself.
1284890	/m/04q1s1	Michael Strogoff	Jules Verne	1876	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Michael Strogoff, a 30-year-old native of Omsk, is a courier for Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The Tartar Khan, Feofar, incites a rebellion and separates the Russian Far East from the mainland, severing telegraph lines. Rebels encircle Irkutsk, where the local governor, brother of the Tsar, is making a last stand. Strogoff is sent to Irkutsk to warn the governor about the traitor Ivan Ogareff. Ogareff, a former colonel, was once demoted and exiled and now seeks revenge against the royal family. He intends to destroy Irkutsk by setting fire to the huge oil storage tanks on the banks of the Angara River. On his way to Irkutsk, Strogoff meets Nadia Fedor, daughter of an exiled political prisoner, Basil Fedor, who has been granted permission to join her father at his exile in Irkutsk, the English war correspondent Harry Blount of the Daily Telegraph and Alcide Jolivet, a Frenchman reporting for his 'cousin Madeleine'. Blount and Jolivet tend to follow the same route as Michael, separating and meeting again all the way through Siberia. He is supposed to travel under a false identity, but he is discovered by the Tartars when he meets his mother in their home city of Omsk. Michael, his mother and Nadia are eventually taken prisoner by the Tartar forces. Ivan Ogareff alleges that Michael is a spy. After opening the Koran at random, Feofar decides that Michael will be blinded as punishment in the Tartar fashion, with a hot blade. For several chapters the reader is led to believe that Michael was indeed blinded, but it transpires in fact that he was saved from this fate (his tears at his mother evaporated and saved his corneas) and was only pretending. Eventually, Michael and Nadia escape, and travel to Irkutsk with a friendly peasant. They are delayed by fire and the frozen river. However, they eventually reach Irkutsk, and warn the Tsar's brother in time of Ivan Ogareff. Nadia's father, who has been appointed commander of a suicide battalion, and later pardoned, joins them and Michael and Nadia are married.
1285975	/m/04q505	Thérèse Raquin	Émile Zola	1867	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 Thérèse Raquin is the daughter of a French captain and an Algerian mother. After the death of her mother, her father brings her to live with her aunt, Madame Raquin, and her sickly son, Camille. Because her son is so ill, Madame Raquin dotes on Camille to the point where he is selfish and spoiled. Camille and Thérèse grow up side-by-side, and Madame Raquin marries them together when Thérèse is 21. Shortly thereafter, Camille decides that the family should move to Paris so he can pursue a career. Thérèse and Madame Raquin set up shop in the Passage du Pont Neuf to support Camille while he searches for a job. Camille eventually begins working for the Orléans Railroad Company, where he meets up with a childhood friend, Laurent. Laurent visits the Raquins and decides to take up an affair with the lonely Thérèse, mostly because he cannot afford prostitutes anymore. However, this soon turns into a torrid love affair. They secretly meet up regularly in Thérèse's room. After some time, Laurent's boss no longer allows him to leave early and so the two lovers have to think of something new. Thérèse comes up with the idea to kill Camille. They eventually succeed in doing so by drowning Camille during a boat trip. Defending himself, Camille bites Laurent in the throat. Madame Raquin is in shock after hearing the disappearance of her son and everybody believes the fake story of an accident. But Laurent is still uncertain about the death of Camille and frequently visits the mortuary, where he finally finds the dead Camille. Still, Thérèse has nightmares and doesn't talk, so Michaud - one of the regular visitors of the family - comes up with the idea, that Thérèse should marry again and the ideal husband would be Laurent. But even after their marriage, the murder doesn't let go of them. They have imaginations of seeing the dead Camille in their bedroom every night, preventing them from touching each other and quickly driving them insane. Laurent, who is an artist, can no longer paint a picture (even a landscape) which does not in some way resemble the dead man. They also have to look after Madame Raquin, who suffered a stroke after Camille's death. Madame Raquin suffers a second stroke and becomes completely paralyzed except for her eyes (as in locked-in syndrome), after which Therese and Laurent reveal the murder in her presence during an argument. During an evening's game of dominoes with friends, Madame Raquin manages to move her finger with an extreme effort of will to trace words on the table: "Thérèse et Laurent ont t...". The complete sentence was intended to be "Thérèse et Laurent ont tué Camille" (Thérèse and Laurent killed Camille). At this point her strength gives out, and the words are interpreted as "Thérèse and Laurent look after me very well". Eventually, Thérèse and Laurent find life together intolerable and plot to kill each other. At the climax of the novel, the two are about to kill one another when each of them realizes the plans of the other. They each then break down sobbing and reflect upon their miserable lives. After having embraced one last time, they each commit suicide by taking poison, all in front of the watchful gaze of Madame Raquin, who enjoys the late vengeance of her son.
1285998	/m/04q532	Les Rois Maudits				 http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515%2BQUIXZuL._SL500_AA300_.jpg The novels take place during the reigns of the last five Direct Capetian kings and the first two Valois kings, from Philip the Fair to John II. The plot revolves around the attempts of Robert of Artois to reclaim the county of Artois from his aunt Mahaut.
1286615	/m/04q69n	Kaleidoscope Century	John Barnes		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrator, at first appearing to be just over 60 years old, wakes up May 27, 2109 in an apartment on human-settled Mars. With no memory of his past, he goes to his werp, a voice-activated laptop computer, and learns that his name is Joshua Ali Quare and that he was born in 1968. From this frame story and a box containing several objects from his past, Quare pieces together what he believes is true about his life leading to the early 22nd century. It is soon clear that he is unburdened by any form of morality. Joshua ran away from home early in his teens to escape his abusive father; while he stayed in an upstairs apartment at Gwenny's Diner. Joshua's mother, a Communist party member, surreptitiously helped him. He entered the Army at the behest of some Party organizers, and he was put in contact with a KGB operative who provides him with an injection to keep him from receiving or transmitting AIDS (which mutates and spreads soon after, wiping out a large percentage of the population of Earth), enhance his memory, and periodically regenerate his body, becoming 10 years younger with each 15-year life period. This makes him a longtimer, and gives him the side-effect of having his memory wiped after every life period. Joshua's US Army career is spent in Operation Desert Storm (the First Oil War in the novel) and the "Second Oil War" which culminated in a march on Tehran. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the KGB diversified and became "the Organization," a counter-insurgency group that supplied technical and logistic support to every side in the Eurowar, a NATO-Central European Union-Russian conflict in the early 21st century. Among the innovations of the Eurowar were Simulation Modeling Optimizing Targeters (SMOTs) a jump from smart weapons to "brilliant weapons" that attacked an enemy country's natural resources and means of production. These weapons cause massive environmental damage to the earth, and are the predecessors of the memes. Joshua, as an agent for The Organization, begins his violent operative career with a gang rape involving US soldiers, and then sets out a series of terrorist-like missions to intensify the war. During the Eurowar, Joshua raped a woman and killed her and her family (perhaps the only disturbing memory he regrets), murdered many soldiers and civilians, suppressed science and research through rape and torture, and essentially caused mayhem along with other Organization longtimers, for great sums of pay. After the Eurowar ended, Joshua took in "Alice", a war orphan from Prague in an incident where he got the dog tag -- and inspiration for future alias -- "John Childs". In the 2010s, the Organization abandoned Joshua, who then joined the Reconstruction after the Eurowar and worked in Quito, Ecuador on the GeoSync Cable and saw with Alice the beginning of the development of memes that would unify all countries and religions, leading to the War of the Memes (referred to in some of Barnes' other books) that culminated in the takeover of Earth by One True. Alice runs away, and the Organization finds and rehires Joshua to fight in the War of the Memes, for One True. By the time One True consolidated its hold on the people of Earth, Mars, the Jupiter and Saturn systems had been colonized for decades. Joshua steals another person's ID and becomes an ecoprospector on Mars. The best scientists and engineers of free humanity had developed the technology to unleash a singularity at the edge of the solar system that would provide a return point in time and space for the descendants of five transfer ships sent to colonize other nearby star systems. When Joshua finally ventures forth to meet his Organization contact in Red Sands City, he's confronted by a tremendous hustle and bustle of people preparing for the transfer ship descendants to arrive from the 25th century and either destroy One True (and the population on Earth under its control) or confine it there. A fellow Organization agent named Sadi has been in Joshua's life one way or another since the inception of the Organization. On Mars, Sadi, who's also a longtimer, meets Joshua as a woman, Sadi's original gender, and now gender of choice. This is possible due to the Organization perfecting the regeneration process, now called 'revival', which also gave Sadi complete memory recovery and a permanent 20-year-old body. From Sadi, whom Joshua had met as a woman after the Eurowar and was partnered with when Sadi was male during the War of the Memes, Joshua learns that it's possible to go through the singularity to 1988, when the technology to construct it was first built and put into orbit by the Soviets. By the time of the novel's frame story, Sadi has done this thirty times, each time changing history to his/her benefit. After Joshua's revival and a time as Sadi's lover, Joshua, who's repeatedly refused to accompany Sadi on these excursions through the singularity, (also known as a closed timelike curve), is sent by her via force on a preset course through the singularity once more. Sadi claims to have brought Joshua back in time with her before, without being revived, so she could 'help' Joshua love her as obsessively as Sadi loves him. Now she wants him to experience the freedom she's had, in hopes of having him come back to her for good. Joshua makes plans when he comes back to the late 20th century to change history himself, many times over, alone.
1287642	/m/04q8q8	Persian Letters	Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu	1721		 In 1711 Usbek leaves his seraglio in Isfahan to take the long journey to France, accompanied by his young friend Rica. He leaves behind five wives (Zachi, Zéphis, Fatmé, Zélis, and Roxane) in the care of a number of black eunuchs, one of whom is the head or first eunuch. During the trip and their long stay in Paris (1712–1720), they comment, in letters exchanged with friends and mullahs, on numerous aspects of Western, Christian society, particularly French politics and mores, ending with a biting satire of the System of John Law. Over time, various disorders surface back in the seraglio, and, beginning in 1717 (Letter 139 [147]), the situation there rapidly unravels. Usbek orders his head eunuch to crack down, but his message does not arrive in time, and a revolt brings about the death of his wives, including the vengeful suicide of his favorite, Roxane, and, it appears, most of the eunuchs. The Chronology breaks down as follows: *Letters 1–21 [1–23]: The journey from Isfahan to France, which lasts almost 13 months (from 19 March 1711 to 4 May 1712). *Letters 22 [24]–89 [92]: Paris in the reign of Louis XIV, 3 years in all (from May 1712 to September 1715). *Letters 90 [93]–137 [143] or [supplementary Letter 8 =145]: the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans, covering five years (from September 1715 to November 1720). *Letters 138 [146]– 150 [161]: the collapse of the seraglio in Isfahan, approximately 3 years (1717–1720). The novel consisting of 150 letters appeared in May 1721 under the rubric Cologne: Pierre Marteau, a front for the Amsterdam publisher Jacques Desbordes whose business is now run by his widow, Susanne de Caux. Called edition A, this is the text utilized in the recent critical edition of Lettres persanes for the complete works of Montesquieu published by the Voltaire Foundation in 2004. A second edition (B) by the same publisher later in the same year, for which there is so far no entirely satisfactory explanation, curiously included three new letters but omitted thirteen of the original ones. All subsequent editions in the author’s lifetime (i.e., until 1755) derive from A or B. A new edition in 1758, prepared by Montesquieu’s son, included eight new letters – bringing the total to 161 – and a short piece by the author entitled "Quelques réflexions sur les Letters persanes." This latter edition has been used for all subsequent editions until the Œuvres complètes of 2004, which reverts to the original edition but includes the added letters marked as "supplementary" and, in parentheses, the numbering scheme of 1758.
1290331	/m/04qfm5	Bonjour Tristesse	Françoise Sagan	1954	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Seventeen-year-old Cécile spends her summer in a villa on the French Riviera with her father and his mistress. Her father, Raymond, is a seductive, worldly, amoral man who has had many affairs. His latest woman friend is Elsa Mackenbourg: she and Cécile get on well. When Elsa comes to the villa to spend her summer with Raymond, it is clear that she is the latest of many women whom Cécile has seen enter the life of her father and exit fairly quickly: young, superficial, and fashionable. Raymond excuses his philandering with an Oscar Wilde quote about sin: "Sin is the only note of vivid colour that persists in the modern world." Cécile says, "I believed that I could base my life on it", and accepts their lifestyle as typical. Cécile, at 17, is still somewhat naive and tries to disguise this by attempting to attract men of the same age as her father. Her love life is unsuccessful until she meets a younger man, Cyril, with whom she has a romantic but ultimately dissatisfying relationship. Raymond, Elsa and Cécile are spending an uneventful summer together until Anne Larsen arrives by way of an earlier invitation from Raymond. A friend of Cécile's late mother, Anne is very different from Raymond's other girlfriends. She is cultured, educated, principled, intelligent, and is his age. Raymond eventually leaves Elsa for Anne, and the next morning Anne and Raymond announce their impending marriage. At first, Cécile admires Anne, but soon a struggle begins between Cécile and Anne for Raymond's attentions. The plot begins to focus on the relationship between the two women. Realizing that Anne will do away with their carefree lifestyle, Cécile devises a plan to prevent the marriage. She arranges for Elsa and Cyril to pretend to be a couple, and to appear together at specific moments in the hopes of making Raymond jealous of Cyril so that if Raymond decides he wants Elsa back, he'll leave Anne. Cécile is jealous and desperate for Anne to recognize the life she and her father have shared, but she misjudges Anne's sensitivity with tragic results. When Raymond finally relents and goes into town to see Elsa, Anne leaves, only to drive her car off a cliff in an apparent suicide after she sees Elsa and Raymond in the woods together. It is later known that they were kissing. Cécile and her father return to the empty, desultory life they were living before Anne interrupted their summer.
1291008	/m/04qht0	Return to Peyton Place	Grace Metalious	1959	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the phenomenal success of her first novel, Metalious hastily penned a sequel centering on the life and loves of bestselling author Allison MacKenzie, who ironically follows in the footsteps of her mother by having an affair with a married man, her publisher Lewis Jackman. In the finale of the book, Lewis is killed, which destroys Allison. The similarity of their situations bond Allison and her mother, whom advises Allison to live for him by returning to her writing, which she does. When she returns to her hometown following the publication of her first novel, Samuel's Castle, she is forced to face the wrath of most of its residents, who are incensed by their barely disguised counterparts and the revelation of town secrets in the book. Certain members of the community stood by the MacKenzies, most notably, Seth Buswell, the newspaper editor; and his oldest friend, Dr. Matthew Swain. In fact, whenever anyone came into Dr. Swain's office and complained about Allison's book, he would roar them down and after a tongue lashing from him, that person wouldn't ever complain about Allison's novel after that. However, Roberta Carter, a member of the school board, makes it her mission to ban the book from the high school library. She also punishes Allison by firing her stepfather, Michael Rossi (a decision which she eventually reverses, to the anger of her former friend, Marion Partridge); while at the same time trying to dissolve her son Ted's marriage to his snobbish bride. Roberta is eventually murdered by her scheming daughter in-law, Jennifer Burbank. Another union in trouble is that of Allison's mother Constance, who is shocked by her daughter's exposé, but nonetheless stands by her, and stepfather Michael Rossi, the school principal and one of the novel's defenders. Betty Anderson returns from New York, after giving birth to Roddy, the child she had by Rodney Harrington and, along with her co-hort and Roddy's babysitter, Agnes, moves to Peyton Place, so she can allow Leslie, Roddy's grandfather to know him. Selena Cross, who had been acquitted of murder in the previous novel, was trying to make a life for herself and her brother, Joey. She is manager of the Thrifty Corner Apparel Shoppe, and is a success. She meets Timothy Randlett, an itinerant actor, who after attacking her, ended up getting hit with fireplace tongs, similar to how Lucas Cross was killed. She eventually decides to marry Peter Drake, her former attorney. In this book, Selena and Allison had rebonded as friends, and Allison's roommate, Stephanie, was also part of their circle. Return to Peyton Place had many of the same soap opera elements of the original. Although it sold well, its total sales did not equal those of its predecessor.
1292785	/m/04qmm_	Eastern Standard Tribe	Cory Doctorow	2004-03-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The protagonist, Art Berry, has been sent to an insane asylum as a result of a complex conspiracy. The novel takes place in a world where online "tribes" form, where all members set their circadian rhythms to the same time zone even though members may be physically located throughout the world. He works in London as a consultant for the Greenwich 0 tribe (though he and his associate Fede are in fact double-agents for the Eastern Standard Tribe). Despite his talents as a human experience engineer, he delivers subtly flawed proposals to them in order to undermine them and enable his own tribe to get a coveted contract. He meets a girl, Linda, after he hits her with his car at 3am. Art has an idea for peer-to-peer music sharing between automobiles, and plans to give it to the EST (taking a cut to himself.) However, his girlfriend meets his coworker, Fede, and they plan to double cross the EST and sell the idea to another tribe. Knowing Art won't approve of the plan, they do it behind his back. Fede later claims he would have cut Art in on the deal afterwards. However, Art figures out what is going on, and as a result they have him committed to an insane asylum to protect their plot. The book alternates between two points of view: Art meeting Linda in London, and Art in the asylum. The London plot culminates in his attack on Fede when he discovers his betrayal. The asylum plot takes place after his attack on Fede, and culminates in his escape from the asylum and founding of a new company to market health care products using his inside knowledge of psychiatric institutions.
1296027	/m/04qrxm	The Gold Bug Variations	Richard Powers	1991-08-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel intertwines the discovery of the chemical structure of DNA with the musicality of Johann Sebastian Bach's harpsichord composition, the Goldberg Variations. A similar theme is explored by Douglas Hofstadter in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. The title also alludes to Edgar Allan Poe's 1843 short story "The Gold-Bug", which is also incorporated in the plot of the novel. The plot hinges on two love affairs: the first, set in the 1950s, between two scientists intent on discovering the mysteries of DNA; the second, in the 1980s, between two lovers who befriend the scientist featured in the novel's flashbacks.
1297091	/m/04qv4f	The Golem	Gustav Meyrink	1914		 The novel centers on the life of Athanasius Pernath, a jeweler and art restorer who lives in the ghetto of Prague. But his story is experienced by an anonymous narrator, who, during a visionary dream, assumes Pernath's identity thirty years before. This dream was perhaps induced because he inadvertently swapped his hat with the real (old) Pernath's. While the novel is generally focused on Pernath's own musings and adventures, it also chronicles the lives, the characters, and the interactions of his friends and neighbors. The Golem, though rarely seen, is central to the novel as a representative of the ghetto's own spirit and consciousness, brought to life by the suffering and misery that its inhabitants have endured over the centuries. The story itself has a disjointed and often elliptical feel, as it was originally published in serial form and is intended to convey the mystical associations and interests which the author himself was exploring at the time. The reality of the narrator's experiences are often called into question, as some of them may simply be dreams or hallucinations and others may be metaphysical or transcendent events which are taking place outside the "real" world. Similarly, it is revealed over the course of the book that Pernath apparently suffered from a mental breakdown on at least one occasion, but has no memory of any such event; he is also unable to remember his childhood and most of his youth, a fact that may or may not be attributable to his previous breakdown. His mental stability is constantly called into question by his friends and neighbors, and the reader is left to wonder what if anything that has taken place in the narrative actually happened.
1297582	/m/04qwcx	Storm of Steel	Ernst Jünger	1920	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Storm of Steel begins with Jünger as a private entering the line with the 73rd Hanoverian Regiment in Champagne. His first taste of combat came at Les Eparges in April 1915 where he was first wounded. After recuperating, he took an officer's course and achieved the rank of Ensign. He rejoined his regiment on the Arras sector. In 1916, with the Battle of the Somme underway, Jünger's regiment moved to Combles in August for the defence of the village of Guillemont. Here Jünger was fortunate to be wounded again, shortly before the final British assault which captured the village &mdash; his platoon was annihilated. In 1917 Jünger saw action during the Battle of Arras in April, the Third Battle of Ypres in July and October, and the German counter-attack during the Battle of Cambrai in November. Jünger led a company of assault troops during the final German Spring Offensive, 21 March 1918 when he was wounded again. On 23 August he suffered his most severe wound when he was shot through the chest. In total, Jünger was wounded 14 times during the war, including five bullet wounds. He was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class and was the youngest ever recipient of the Pour le Mérite.
1298672	/m/04qyx7	Timeline	Michael Crichton	1999-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the middle of the New Mexico desert, a vacationing couple comes across an ill man wandering miles from town. They find the man, Joe Traub, is a physicist and an employee of a company called ITC. However, ITC's headquarters are mysteriously far from where Traub was found. Traub soon dies of a cardiac arrest. The hospital receives an MRI scan later, which reveals that Traub's blood veins did not match up to each other. Traub, being the last of his family, is taken and cremated by ITC to prevent any further evidence about his death from coming through to the public. In the Dordogne region of France, Professor Edward Johnston leads a team of historians and archaeologists studying the remains of the medieval towns of Castelgard and La Roque. Suspicious of the detailed knowledge of the site shown by ITC (their funder), Johnston flies to ITC's headquarters in New Mexico to investigate. While he is gone, the archeologists make a startling discovery in the ruins; a lens from a pair of glasses as well as parchment with a request for help written in modern English, apparently in Professor Johnston's handwriting. Researchers Chris Hughes, Kate Erickson, André Marek and David Stern fly to ITC and meet Robert Doniger, its founder, who tells them Johnston has used their quantum technology to travel to Dordogne in the year 1357, but has not returned as expected. Chris, Kate, and Marek agree to travel back themselves to find him. Stern remains behind, distrusting ITC's technology and believing they aren't telling them everything. They dress in period specific clothing, but Doniger allows only biodegradable modern advances to go back, banning plastic and weapons. When they arrive in the past, the team is plagued by misfortune. They are attacked by a group of horsemen led by Sir Guy, who kills the ITC military escorts and causing a grenade snuck on the mission to go to the present, destroying the transit pad. Unable to return, Kate and Marek are taken away by the men of Lord Oliver of Castelgard. Separated from the others, Chris accidentally declares himself as a noble to a boy who helps him and is led to Castelgard. The boy is revealed to be the Lady Claire in disguise, trying to escape from the leader of the horsemen, Sir Guy de Malegant. In the castle, Chris and André Marek find themselves challenged to a joust by Sir Guy and his second, Sir Charles de Gaune. Chris, instructed by Marek, lies on the ground after Sir guy hits him on the chest on his second run. While Marek fought with Sir Charles de Gaune, Sir Guy tried to kill Chris. However, André fights with Sir Guy and manages to beat him. Lord Oliver orders the death of André and Chris, but Kate helps them escape Castelgard and they are pursued by Guy and his knight Sir Robert de Kere. Lord Oliver believes that Johnston knows a secret passageway into the otherwise impenetrable castle of La Roque. Oliver's enemy Arnaut de Cervole, otherwise known as the Archpriest, is approaching the Dordogne to lay siege and Oliver wants the secret to defend La Roque. Johnston helps Oliver develop a weapon despite knowing that historically Oliver loses the siege, while Chris, André, and Kate use clues from the future to search for the passage themselves. Chris realizes that someone else is in the past with them and spying on their transmissions. Eventually Robert de Kere reveals that he is Rob Deckard, an ITC employee and former marine driven insane from the accumulation of "transcription errors," deformities that build up over multiple quantum trips. De Kere intends to take their trip home for himself. Meanwhile at ITC, Stern and the vice president, Gordon, try desperately to repair the transit pads. It is revealed that Doniger is trying to use the past as a marketing tool. After Lady Claire helps Kate, Chris, and André elude Arnaut's men, André enters La Roque as Johnston's assistant while Chris and Kate discover the passage. As Arnaut begins his siege, Oliver decides that Johnston is hiding information and takes him to a torture device known as Milady's Bath to drown him. Kate fights and kills Guy on the rafters of the Great Hall, while André and Chris are able to rescue Johnston when Arnaut himself intervenes and defeats Oliver in a duel. Arnaut thanks them and leaves Oliver to die. As the battle rages, de Kere attacks Chris to get his ceramic marker, but Chris manages to set him on fire with Johnston's automatic fire and spittle. ITC and Stern finally repair the landing area just in time for the travelers to return. André—who realizes he has longed for this life—decides to remain in the past with Lady Claire while Chris, Kate, and Johnston return to 1999. When it becomes clear that Doniger had little regard for the lives of the travelers, the researchers and engineers, mainly John Gordon, send him to 1348—the outbreak of the Black Death. In the epilogue, Chris and Kate are expecting a child together. The researchers find André and Lady Claire's graves and discover that André lived out a good and satisfying life. His gravestone reads a message in French to his companions, quoted from Richard Lionheart, - "Companions who I love, and still do love,... tell them my song."
1298894	/m/04qzgh	Time in Advance	William Tenn	1958-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Earth is visited by large, enigmatic alien spheres, who take up residence in colonies on several prairies and deserts across the world. They make visits to cities, factories and other areas of human activity, seemingly to merely float and observe. All attempts at communication are unsuccessful and despite the best efforts of mankind, no one is able to decipher their intentions. Some, however, have come in to close encounter with the aliens, and emerged dramatically altered beings. These people, called humanity-prime, and dubbed 'primeys', are highly intelligent, can bend matter to their will, but are also, by human standards, quite, quite mad. Algernon Hebster is a highly successful businessman, owing mostly to his dealings with primeys, who supply him with the knowledge for advanced technologies which he puts to use in commerce. The problem is that primeys are so dangerous that dealing with them is highly illegal and every attempt is made to confine them to the reservations around their perceived alien masters.
1299648	/m/04r0f8	Danse Macabre	Stephen King		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Despite using King's college teaching notes as the backbone of the text, Danse Macabre has a casual, non-linear writing style. In the introduction, titled "October 4, 1957, and an Invitation to Dance", King begins by explaining why he wrote the book, and then describes the event itself: the launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, intended as his personal introduction to what he calls "real horror." This is followed by the chapter "Tales of the Hook," specifically the urban legend of the escaped criminal who left his hook on the door handle of the car where lovers had parked. The author uses this for his contention that horror in general "offers no characterization, no theme, no particular artifice; it does not aspire to symbolic beauty." In the following chapter, he creates a template for descriptions of his macabre subject. Entitled “Tales of the Tarot," the chapter has nothing to do with the familiar tarot card deck. Rather, King borrows the term to describe his observations about major archetypal characters of the horror genre, which he posits come from two British novels and one Irish: the vampire (from Dracula), the werewolf (from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and the "Thing Without a Name" (from Frankenstein). King sees deeply sexual undertones—in light of its Victorian Era publication—in Dracula. Frankenstein is reviewed as "a Shakespearean tragedy", and he argues that "its classical unity is broken only by the author's uncertainty as to where the fatal flaw lies—is it in Victor's hubris (usurping a power that belongs only to God) or in his failure to take responsibility for his creation after endowing it with the life-spark?" King does not mistake Mr. Hyde for a "traditional" werewolf, but rather sees the character as the origin of the modern archetype defined by werewolves. The evil-werewolf archetype, argues King, stems from the base and violent side of humanity. These major archetypes are then reviewed in their historical context, ranging from their original appearances to their modern-day equivalents, up to and including cartoon breakfast cereal characters such as Frankenberry and Count Chocula. The chapter "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause" begins with King's explanation for why he included the section: "I cannot divorce myself from a field in which I am mortally involved." He then offers a brief family history, discussing his abandonment by his father at the age of two, his childhood in rural eastern Maine, and then explains his childhood fixation with the imagery of terror and horror, making an interesting comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of the H.P. Lovecraft collection The Lurker in the Shadows, which had belonged to his long-since-departed father. The cover art—an illustration of a monster hiding within the recesses of a hell-like cavern beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which "that interior dowsing rod responded to." King then resumes his discussion of the horror genre by making detailed commentary of horror in all forms of media, beginning with radio, then proceeding to a highly critical review of television horror, two separate chapters on horror in the motion pictures, and finally concluding with an examination of horror fiction. His critique on the radio examines such American programs as Suspense, Inner Sanctum, and Boris Karloff, and praises Arch Oboler's Lights Out. King ultimately concludes that, as a medium for horror, radio is superior to television and films, since radio's nature requires a more active use of imagination. King then turns to two separate chapters of horror in the motion pictures. In "The Modern American Horror Movie—Text and Subtext," the "subtext" he refers to consists of unspoken social commentary he sees in the films. The 1951 film The Thing from Another World implies commentary on the threat of communism, "the quick, no-nonsense destruction of their favorite geopolitical villain, the dastardly Russians," King writes. The popular 1973 film The Exorcist was aptly suited in the wake of the youth upheavals of the late 1960s and early '70s. 1975's The Stepford Wives, King says, "has some witty things to say about Women's Liberation ... and the American male's response to it." In The Amityville Horror, King sees "economic unease" and maintains that the film's 1979 release "could not have come along at a more opportune moment." He also calls The China Syndrome, released the same year, a horror movie that "synthesizes technological fears ... fears of the machinery gone out of control, run wild." In the following chapter, "The Horror Movie as Junk Food" King begins by making the statement: “I am no apologist for bad filmmaking, but once you've spent twenty years or so going to horror movies, searching for diamonds in the dreck of the B-pics … you begin to seek the patterns and appreciate them when you find them, you begin to get a taste for really shitty movies.” He makes the point that his agent Kirby McCauley had selected the obscure 1977 film Rituals as his favorite, while King himself chose 1979's Tourist Trap as one that “wields an eerie spooky power. Wax figures begin to move and come to life in a ruined, out-of-the-way tourist resort.” He continues a reviews of such films as Prophecy (1979), I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), The Horror of Party Beach (1964), and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), among others; concluding: “Bad films may sometimes be amusing, sometimes even successful, but their only real usefulness is to form that basis of comparison: to define positive values in terms of their own negative charm. They show us what to look for because it is missing in themselves.” King then turns his most weighty criticism toward television, borrowing Harlan Ellison's description of television as "the glass teat", and subtitling the chapter, "This Monster Is Brought to You by Gainesburgers." He reviews horror anthology programs such as The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Dark Shadows, and Night Gallery, ultimately concluding that television is severely limited in its ability to illustrate horror because it is enslaved to the demands of network Standards and Practices censorship and the appeasement of advertising executives that provide the financial means necessary for television to continue its free access. In the "Horror Fiction" chapter, King describes and reviews a number of horror novels written within a few decades of Danse Macabre, including Peter Straub's Ghost Story, Anne Rivers Siddons's The House Next Door, Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, and several others. His primary context is defining what impact they have had on the horror genre, and how significantly they have contributed to the popular culture. Specifically pointing out allegories in his review, King notes: The final chapter, "The Last Waltz", is a brief analysis of how the medium or horror fiction in all its forms has inspired real-life acts of violence. He describes an incident in which a woman was brutally murdered by youths who confessed to imitating a scene from a TV movie, then objectively includes an example of violence perpetrated by a woman who had been reading his novel The Stand at the time she committed the crime. "If it had not been shown", he writes, "stupidity and lack of imagination might well have reduced them to murdering ... in some more mundane way." In an analysis of why people read and watch horror, he concludes, "Perhaps we go to the forbidden door or window willingly because we understand that a time comes when we must go whether we want to or not." Additionally, King classifies the genre into three well-defined, descending levels; 1) terror, 2) horror, and 3) revulsion. He describes terror as “the finest element” of the three, and the one he strives hardest to maintain in his own writing. Citing many examples, he defines “terror” as the suspenseful moment in horror before the actual monster is revealed. "Horror", King writes, is that moment at which one sees the creature/aberration that causes the terror or suspense, a "shock value." King finally compares “revulsion” with the gag-reflex: a bottom-level, cheap gimmick which he admits he often resorts to in his own fiction if necessary, confessing:
1299906	/m/04r11v	Practical Demonkeeping	Christopher Moore		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0246p": "Comic fantasy", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Travis was born in 1900, yet he has not aged since 1919, because he accidentally called up a demon from hell named Catch as his servant, presumably forever. Ever since then, Travis has been trying to get rid of Catch, but he is unable to do so because he has lost the repository of the necessary incantations. He traces their whereabouts to a fictional town called Pine Cove, along Big Sur coast, where he thinks the woman he gave them to may be residing. Interactions with the townspeople and with a djinn, who is pursuing Catch, create considerable complications. Several characters from this novel continue their lives in later novels by Moore; in addition, the setting of Pine Cove itself is revisited for The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove and The Stupidest Angel. The fictional town of Pine Cove is described as being within easy driving distance of San Luis Obispo, California, and seems to be modeled after the town of Cambria, California.
1300615	/m/04r31z	The Return of the Condor Heroes	Louis Cha	1959-05-20	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The protagonist Yang Guo is the orphaned son of the first novel's antagonist Yang Kang. He is raised briefly by the couple Guo Jing and Huang Rong he is sent to the Quanzhen Sect for better guidance in moral values and orthodox martial arts. In Quanzhen, Yang Guo is often picked on and bullied by his fellow students and his master Zhao Zhijing is biased against him. Yang Guo flees and ventures unknowingly into the nearby Tomb of the Living Dead, where the Ancient Tomb Sect is housed. He is saved by Xiaolongnü, a mysterious maiden of unknown origin, and becomes her apprentice. They live together in the tomb for many years until Yang Guo grows up. After being attacked by Li Mochou, they leave the tomb and stay on the mountain. Xiaolongnü develops romantic feelings for Yang Guo and after a while, he too falls in love with her. However, their romance is forbidden by doctrines of the Confucianist society of that time. Throughout the story, their love meets with several tests, such as the misunderstandings that threaten to tear them apart and the encounter with Gongsun Zhi. Finally, after their reunion and marriage, Xiaolongnü leaves Yang Guo again, owing to her belief she cannot recover from a fatal poison, and promises to meet him again sixteen years later. While Yang Guo is wandering the jianghu alone, he meets several formidable martial artists and a giant condor. His adventures gradually mould him into a courageous pugilist, whose prowess matches the Greats of his age. Yang Guo serves his nation by helping the Han Chinese of Song defeat the Mongol invaders. At the end of the novel, he is reunited with Xiaolongnü and they are recognised as heroes of their time.
1301931	/m/04r639	Where the Red Fern Grows	Wilson Rawls		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Before leaving work one afternoon, Billy Coleman spots a Redbone Coonhound in a fight with neighborhood dogs. He chases the other dogs away and helps it recover from its wounds. When it is feeling stronger again, he realizes he must set it free, knowing that it will find its way home. This event makes him revisit his past, and the two Redbone Coonhounds he had taken care of when he was a boy in the Ozarks. Growing up in the Ozarks with his parents and three younger sisters, Billy Coleman, at age 10, wants to own a pair of Redbone Coonhounds but his parents tell him that they can't afford them. One day he finds an article in a sportsman magazine offering a pair in Kentucky for $25 each. He decides to earn the money himself. For two years, he works many different jobs, and manages to save $50. His grandfather writes to the kennel and finds out that the dogs have dropped in price by $5 each. He sends for two Redbone Coonhound puppies. The mail does not deliver packages, and so the puppies have to be sent to the depot at Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Billy travels on his own by walking there and gets them. With the extra $10 his grandfather gave him, he buys gifts for his family: a pair of overalls for his dad, cloth for making dresses for his mom and sisters, and a bag of candy for his sisters. On the way back home, he spends the night in Robber's Cave on Sparrow Hawk Mountain. There he builds a fire and plays with the puppies. While trying to sleep, he hears a noise that at first seems like a woman screaming, but he soon realizes it is really that of a mountain lion from far away. Both puppies run to the mouth of the cave and challenge the cat. Billy worries for them, and he remembers that his father told him "mountain lions are scared of fire," so he makes fire and waits for morning. In the morning, he continues on. He comes to a sycamore tree and sees the names Dan and Ann carved inside a heart in the bark and decides to name the puppies Old Dan and Little Ann. To train his dogs, Billy catches a raccoon with the help of his grandfather and uses the fur to teach them how to trail one. During their training, their personalities become apparent: Old Dan is brave and strong, while Little Ann is very intelligent. Both are very loyal to each other and to Billy. On the first day of the hunting season, Billy takes his dogs out for their very first hunt. He promises them that if they tree a raccoon, he will do the rest. They are very ready to chase their first raccoon in a large tree, which Billy had before nicknamed "the Big Tree", and is one of the largest in the woods. As he tries to call his well-trained dogs off the hunt, they look at him sadly and he cuts down the enormous tree to keep his promise — an exhausting effort that takes him a few days of chopping and costs him blistered hands. In the end, when about to give up his effort, he offers a short prayer for strength to continue. Mysteriously, a strong wind starts to blow and the tree comes crashing down. Old Dan and Little Ann take the raccoon down. Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann go out hunting almost every night. As months go by, he brings more fur to his grandfather's store than any other hunter, and the stories of his dogs spread throughout the Ozarks. One day, he and his grandfather make a bet with Rubin and Rainie Pritchard, that his hounds can catch the legendary "ghost coon." The Pritchard boys set out with him to see if Old Dan and Little Ann can catch it. It leads them on a long, complicated chase, and the Pritchard boys want to give up. But Billy is determined. Finally, when they have it treed, Billy refuses to kill it. Just as Rubin starts to beat up Billy, Old Dan and Little Ann begin to attack the Pritchards' dog, Old Blue. Rubin runs to attack them with an axe, but he falls on it and kills himself. Billy is very distraught afterward. Finally he goes to Rubin's grave with some flowers, then feels much better. A few weeks later, Billy's grandfather enters him into a championship raccoon hunt, putting him against experienced hunters and the finest dogs in all the country. Before it starts, he enters Little Ann into a contest for the best-looking dog, where she wins and is given the silver cup. On the fourth night of the hunt, Old Dan and Little Ann chase three raccoons, making it to the final round. The sixth night, they chase one before a blizzard hits. Billy, his dad, grandfather, and the judge lose sight of them. When they finally find them, Billy's grandfather falls and sprains his ankle which prevents him from walking. They built a fire, and when Billy's dad chops down a tree, three raccoons rise. The dogs take down two of them, and chase the third one to another tree. In the morning, the hunters find them covered with ice circling the bottom of a tree. The last raccoon wins them the championship and the gold cup. Billy's mom and sisters are overjoyed. Billy keeps up his hunting. One night, however, his dogs tree a mountain lion. Old Dan howls defiantly, and the big cat attacks. Billy is horrified, and with his axe he enters the fray, hoping to save his dogs, but they end up having to save him. Eventually, the dogs defeat the mountain lion, but Old Dan is badly wounded, and Billy soon finds Old Dan's intestines in a bush. He dies the next day. Billy is heartbroken, but Little Ann is so sad that she loses her will to live, and dies a few days later. Billy's papa tries to tell him that it is all for the best, because with the money he has earned, they hope to move to town. He does not completely recover until on the day of the move; he goes to visit the dogs' graves and finds a giant red fern between them. According to Indian legend, only an angel can plant a red fern. He and his family look at it in awe, and he feels ready to leave for town.
1302095	/m/04r6j4	Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags	John Augustus Stone			 Metamora, or the Last of the Wampanoags follows the story of its eponymous Indian hero and his downfall at the hand of English settlers during Puritan infiltration in seventeenth century New England. At the opening of the play, Metamora is cordial, if hesitant, towards the Puritans, even befriending Walter and his love Oceana, who is betrothed to Fitzarnold. The remainder of the play is devoted to the converging stories of Oceana and Walter, among other Puritans, and Metamora, his wife Nehmeokee, their son, and the remainder of the Wampanoag forces. The ending is bittersweet as Oceana is at last able to marry Walter, but Metamora lies slain next to his wife and child, cursing the English with his final breaths.
1302957	/m/04r8y4	The Sovereign State of ITT				 In part it was a portrait of Harold Geneen, the chief executive of ITT from 1959 until 1977. Geneen was a legendarily hands-on manager, who believed it necessary to penetrate through layers of "false facts" to get to the "unshakable facts" about any of the markets or divisions of his conglomerate. In terms of its broader themes, though, this book was one of a spate of early-70s books that promoted the thesis that multinational corporations were taking over the traditional prerogatives and functions of national governments. In a review of Sampson's book in the (London) Sunday Telegraph, Sir Frank McFadzean, Vice Chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell, took issue with that thesis. Such corporations are "prisoners of their past investments," he wrote, because "even the most puny government can nationalize, and the only redress is to seek compensation." Although as Sampson's book shows ITT has used other means of redress to defend its own business interests from nationalisation, that have not been confined to the courts. These have ranged from supporting the 1930's military takeover by General Franco in Spain, investing in Hitler's war machine throughout WWII and funding a CIA backed coup led by General Pinochet in Chile 1973.
1303478	/m/04rbfh	Tortilla Flat	John Steinbeck	1935	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The following chapter titles from the work, along with short summaries, outline the adventures the dipsomaniacal group endure in order to procure red wine and friendship. Chapter Summary 1 How Danny, home from the wars, found himself an heir, and how he swore to protect the helpless. — After working as a mule-driver during The Great War, Danny returns to find he has inherited two houses from his deceased grandfather. Danny gets drunk and goes to jail. He and the jailer drink wine at Torelli's. After escaping, Danny talks his friend, a clever man named Pilon into sharing his brandy and his houses. 2 How Pilon was lured by greed of position to forsake Danny's hospitality. — Danny fails to get the water turned on. Pilon kills a rooster, rents Danny's second house for money which it is understood he will never pay, and exchanges paper roses for a gallon of Señora Torelli's wine. 3 How the poison of possessions wrought with Pilon, and how evil temporarily triumphed in him. — Danny and Pilon share wine, two women, and a fight. Drunk a second time, Pilon sublets half his house to Pablo. 4 How Jesus Maria Corcoran, a good man, became an unwilling vehicle of evil. — Pablo, Pilon and Danny discuss women and the payment of rent. Pablo and Pilon sublet their house to Jesus Maria. Since he has just $3 and a dime with him, they take a $2 deposit and leave him the rest to buy a woman he likes a present. 5 How Saint Francis turned the tide and put a gentle punishment on Pilon and Pablo and Jesus Maria. — Pilon and Pablo enjoy two gallons of wine. Monterey prepares for night. Pablo enjoys dinner, firewood and love from Mrs. Torelli. Jesus Maria is beaten up by soldiers because he enjoys their whiskey and their girlfriend Arabella. Pablo's candle, dedicated to St. Francis, burns down the house, while Danny, who is with Mrs. Morales next door, pays no attention. 6 How three sinful men, through contrition, attained peace. How Danny's friends swore comradeship. — Pablo, Pilon and Jesus Maria sleep in the pine forest. They wake up smelling a picnic lunch which becomes theirs, and is shared with Danny, into whose remaining house they move. 7 How Danny's friends became a force for good. How they succored the poor pirate. — The pirate, a mentally handicapped man who is followed by 5 dogs, is invited by Pilon to stay at Danny's house. Pirate promised that if God would save his sick dog, he would buy a golden candlestick for St. Francis. The sickly dog recovered, though he was soon after run over by a truck. Pirate is determined to keep his promise to buy a gold candlestick for St. Francis with 1000 quarters, or "two-bitses" ($250). The Pirate is the only paisano who works, and makes 25 cents a day selling kindling, but lives on food scraps given in charity, and saves the cash. He has hidden a great bag of quarters, known about by all. When he reveals his treasure to them, they are guilted into aiding him in his endeavor. 8 How Danny's Friends sought mystic treasure on Saint Andrew's Eve. How Pilon found it and later how a pair of serge pants changed ownership twice. — Joe Portagee returns from army jail, burns down a whorehouse, goes to jail again. He and Pilon seek treasure in the woods on St. Andrew's Eve (29 Nov), and see the faint beam from a spot which they mark. Next night, with wine Joe has gotten for a blanket he has stolen from Danny, they dig at the spot and uncover something labeled "United States Geodetic Survey + 1915 + Elevation 600 Feet". Realizing it is a crime to take, they get drunk on the Seaside beach. Pilon, to punish Joe for stealing from his host, recovers the blanket and trades Joe's pants for wine, leaving Joe naked on the beach. 9 How Danny was ensnared by a vacuum cleaner and how Danny's friends rescued him. — Danny trades stolen copper nails for money for a vacuum cleaner from Mr. Simon, to give to Sweets Ramirez (who has no electricity). Sweets contentedly pretends she has electricity, pushing the machine over the floor while humming to herself, and Danny wins her favors. He spends every evening with Sweets, until Pilon, telling himself he misses his friend, takes the vacuum and trades it to Torelli, the local shopkeep, for wine. Torelli then finds the vacuum which has been "run" with pretend electricity, actually has a pretend motor. 10 How the friends solaced a corporal and in return received a lesson in paternal ethics. — Jesus Maria befriends a young man with a baby, and brings him to the house. The baby is sick. A Capitán has stolen the man's wife. The baby dies, and the man explains why he wanted the baby to be a Generál, not so that he may steal other men's wives, instead of being stolen from, but for his child's happiness. The friends are touched by the corporal's sincerity. 11 How, under the most adverse circumstances, love came to Big Joe Portagee. — Joe Portagee comes out of the rain into Tia Ignacia's. He drinks her wine, goes to sleep, and wakes up to a beating from the woman because he drank her wine and did NOT take advantage of her. In the midst of fending off this attack in the middle of the street and in the rain, he is stricken with lust. A policeman happens by and asks them to stop doing what they're doing in middle of the muddy road. 12 How Danny's friends assisted the pirate to keep a vow, and how as a reward for merit the pirate's dogs saw a holy vision. — The pirate finally trusts Danny and delivers his bag of quarters into the house, whereupon the bag disappears. Big Joe is beaten into unconsciousness for stealing the money. The friends take the thousand quarters which the pirate has earned over several years of woodcutting, to Father Ramon for him to buy a candlestick and feast. In San Carlos Church on Sunday the Pirate sees his candlestick before St. Francis. The dogs rush into the church and must be removed. Later the pirate preaches all of Fr. Ramon's St. Francis stories to the dogs, which are suddenly startled by something behind him, which the pirate believes must be a vision. 13 How Danny's friends threw themselves to the aid of a distressed lady. — The unmarried Teresina Cortez has a menagerie of nine healthy babies and children, who all live on nothing but tortillas and beans, but nevertheless are found amazingly healthy by the school doctor. Teresina gleans the beans from the fields. As the Madonna of the tale, Teresina produces the droves of babies with seemingly no particular help. When the bean crop is ruined by rain, Danny's housemates steal food all over Monterey for the children. It makes them sick. However, the arrival of some stolen sacks of beans at the door is deemed a miracle, the children regain their health, and Teresina is also pregnant again. She wonders which one of Danny's friends was responsible. 14 Of the good life at Danny's house, of a gift pig, of the pain of Tall Bob, and of the thwarted love of the viejo Ravanno. Why the windows shouldn't be cleaned. The friends tell stories. Danny: how Cornelia lost Emilio's little pig to its sow. Pablo: how everyone laughed after Tall Bob blew his nose off. Jesus Maria: how Petey Ravanno got Gracie by hanging himself and being rescued at exactly the right moment, thus convincing her of his love; and how Petey's father the viejo (old man) hanged himself to get the same effect, but the door blew shut at exactly the wrong moment, and nobody saw him. 15 How Danny brooded and became mad. How the Devil in the shape of Torelli assaulted Danny's house. — Danny moves to the forest and cannot be found by his friends. When Torelli shows the friends the bill of sale for Danny's house, they steal and burn it. 16 Of the sadness of Danny. How through sacrifice Danny's friends gave a party. How Danny was translated. — Danny is deeply remorseful. His friends work a whole day cutting squid for Chin Kee. All of Tortilla Flat makes a party at Danny's home. He enjoys many women, and challenges all men to fight (wielding a table leg). He dies after a forty-foot fall into the gulch. 17 How Danny's sorrowing friends defied the conventions. How the talismanic bond was burned. How each friend departed alone. — Danny's friends cannot dress adequately for his military funeral. They tell stories of him beforehand, in the gulch. Afterward, they drink wine stolen by Pilon from Torelli's. Pablo sings "Tuli Pan." A small fire is accidentally set in the house, and the friends watch in approval, doing nothing to save it. No two walk away together from the smoking ruins.
1303579	/m/04rbtl	Un dimanche à la piscine à Kigali	Gil Courtemanche			 Bernard Valcourt, a documentary filmmaker from Quebec, has been sent to the Rwandan capital Kigali to set up a television station. He falls in love with a Rwandan girl Gentille, who in reality is an ethnic Hutu, but she is often mistaken for a Tutsi. With the Hutu government is encouraging violence against Tutsis, Gentille's life becomes in danger. Encouraged by his love for Gentille, and a desire to complete a documentary to bring the tragedy of AIDS to the attention of the outside world, Valcourt refuses to leave Rwanda. When the two are married, they become tragically separated, leaving Valcourt believing that Gentille has, inevitably been killed. He then determines to document her life story, and sets out to discover the story of her final days.
1303647	/m/04rbyw	Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 There are three cases in this book. The first might be called The Double Murder at Dawn. The case describes the hazardous life of the traveling silk merchant and the murder which is committed to gain wealth. The second is The Strange Corpse which takes place in a small village, a crime of passion which proves hard to solve. The criminal is a very determined woman. The third case The Poisoned Bride contains the murder of the daughter of a local scholar who marries the son of the former administrator of the district. This case contains a surprising twist in its solution. All three cases are solved by Judge Dee, the district magistrate - Detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury all wrapped up into one person.
1304129	/m/04rd2j	Destination Moon	Hergé	1953		 Tintin's friend Professor Calculus has been secretly commissioned by the Syldavian government to build a rocket ship that will fly from the Earth to the Moon. Tintin and Captain Haddock agree to join the expedition, even though Captain Haddock shows considerable reluctance. Upon arriving in Syldavia, they are taken to the Sprodj Atomic Research Centre, called simply "the Centre", headed by Mr. Baxter, an engineer. They are escorted by the "ZEPO" (Zekrett Politzs), a special security force charged with protecting the Centre from outside threats. While working for Syldavia, Calculus is assisted by engineer Frank Wolff, who works in the Centre, and accompanies Tintin and Haddock around the facility. Prof. Calculus reveals that the Syldavian government invited nuclear physicists from other countries to work at the Centre, which was created four years earlier when large uranium deposits were discovered in the area. The Centre is entirely dedicated to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Calculus heads the Centre's astronautics department, since this is his primary area of expertise. An unmanned subscale prototype of the rocket&nbsp;— the "X-FLR6", resembling a V-2 rocket&nbsp;— is launched on a circumlunar mission to photograph the far side of the Moon, as well as test Professor Calculus's revolutionary nuclear rocket engine. The night before the launch, the Centre's radar picks up a plane which slips through the security cordon and drops three paratroopers. Tintin's curiosity is piqued and he sets out to look for them. He intercepts a paratrooper receiving information from a vent located on the cliffs near the Centre, but is ambushed and knocked unconscious. This incident confirms the Centre's suspicions that the paratroopers were agents of a foreign power, but Tintin fears that any efforts to trace the leaked information would be futile, guessing that the intruder simply made copies of whatever information he passed on. On the day of the launch, the rocket successfully orbits the moon, but it is then intercepted by the foreign power; the leaked information concerned the rocket's radio control. However, Tintin had anticipated this and asked Calculus to rig a self-destruct mechanism for the rocket. The Centre has no choice but to use it and destroy the rocket. As the compound is heavily secured, there must have been a spy who leaked information through the grille, but no suspects are found. Despite this setback, preparations are made for the moon trip – the rocket's engine still having been confirmed as viable even if they were unable to access the data it gathered – and the equipment is tested. While testing one of the space suits, Captain Haddock becomes frustrated and accuses Calculus of "acting the goat" (a line that would become famous in the Tintin series), causing Calculus to go into a fit of anger. He leads them out of the complex – breaking every security rule in the book – and to the site of the moon rocket which is in near completion. While taking Haddock and Tintin through the rocket's interior, he falls down a ladder and suffers temporary memory loss. Haddock caringly&nbsp;— and unwittingly&nbsp;— attempts helps him recover, using British redcoat soldier costumes, trick cameras, water guns, fire crackers, and even a ghost costume. When his attempts elicit no reaction whatsoever, Haddock angrily says he will not be "acting the goat", which makes Calculus recover his memory in a fit of rage. Preparations are made for a manned flight, and the full-scale rocket is completed. Finally, on 3 June 1952, at 1:34&nbsp;am, the rocket takes off for the Moon with Tintin, Haddock, Calculus and Wolff aboard. The story continues in Explorers on the Moon.
1308195	/m/02vk7t0	Racists	Kunal Basu		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Two scientists decide to settle the question of racial superiority by leaving two children—a white girl and black boy—alone on an island to be raised without speaking by only a nurse, Norah. The British scientist Samuel Bates believes that the girl will emerge as the leader, while the French scientist Jean-Louis Belavoix believes that the two races can not live in peace and the children will ultimately murder each other. The experiment begins to run into problems when Bates and Belavoix argue about the validity of cranial measurements. Meanwhile, Bates's long suffering assistant Nicholas Quartley falls in love with Norah and decides to rescue her from the island.
1308847	/m/04rryb	Ghostwritten	David Mitchell	1999-08-19	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This details the actions of Quasar, a member of a millenarianist doomsday cult, attempting to evade capture after releasing nerve agents into a Tokyo Subway train. He believes himself to be able to converse telepathically with 'His Serendipity', leader of the cult, and regards ordinary people with disgust, waiting for an apocalyptic moment — a comet's prophesied collision with earth — in which they will be destroyed. He is hiding in Okinawa, first in the capital Naha, then in the small island of Kumejima. When he runs out of money, he phones a number that was given to him by the association of the cult and says the secret message "the dog needs to be fed". While he is in Okinawa the police crack down on the cult and arrest His Serendipity. Quasar is shocked by this, since he believes that His Serendipity has the power to teleport himself and walk through solid walls. In a seemingly unlinked next chapter, the spotlight lands on Satoru, a young Japanese jazz lover working in a record shop in downtown Tokyo. He plays the tenor saxophone with a pianist friend. His mother was a Filipina prostitute who was deported back to her country and he never met his father. He was raised by the madam of the whore-house. When one day a group of girls come to the shop, he finds himself attracted to one of them, Tomoyo, but the girls leave and he thinks he will never see her again. On a later occasion, having just closed up the shop, he hears the phone ringing from within and returns to answer it: it turns out to be a phone call from somebody who says just the words "the dog needs to be fed" before hanging up. His tarrying to receive the call leads to another meeting with Tomoyo. Satoru and Tomoyo strike up a conversation and they start a relationship. She turns out to be half Japanese and half Chinese and lives in Hong Kong. She later asks him to follow her to Hong Kong and the section ends with them discussing what flights he can catch. The life of financial lawyer Neal Brose starts to unravel as he tries to cope with the money laundering deal he is carrying out, and impending divorce. He lives alone in an apartment that he used to share with his wife, who left him to return to London because they couldn't have children. The apartment is haunted by the ghost of a girl. The owner of the company for which Neal works, Denholme Cavendish, asked him to manage a secret bank account, number 1390931, where a mysterious Andrei Gregorski from Saint Petersburg regularly deposits large sums of money. One day at a restaurant, a couple, evidently in love, sits at the same table with Neal. The girl is Chinese and the boy Japanese and he is carrying a saxophone case. After his wife leaves him, Neal has an affair with the Chinese maid who cleans his apartment. He eventually suffers a break-down: Instead of going to work, he climbs a hill towards a Buddhist temple, along the way throwing away his briefcase. In the grip of a debilitating diabetic condition he drops dead, sending shockwaves through the economy of the world and also causing major impacts on the next storylines. In typical Mitchell fashion, the Neal Brose character is used in the author's fourth novel, Black Swan Green. In this novel, Brose is a young teenager living in Worcester. This section involves the reminiscences of a woman who runs a Tea Shack on the side of Mount Emei in China. She lived through the late feudalism of China through to the surge of new ideas in the twentieth century and the shocking brutality of Communism under Mao Zedong. When she was just a girl the son of the local warlord raped her. She had a daughter who was raised by her aunts and whom she never saw. Through all the turmoil of the last half century of Chinese history, she never moves from the Holy Mountain and her Tea Shack. The solitude of the Holy Mountain and hope for her illegitimate daughter keeps her alive through the defining points of China's turbulent recent history, and allow her to make peace with the world. A great old Tree outside speaks to her and gives her counsel. The representatives of various powers come to the shack in turn: the Japanese, the Nationalists, the Communists. The shack is destroyed several times and always rebuilt by her hand. On occasion she sees ghosts. One day she receives a letter from her daughter, who has fled to Hong Kong. She discovers that she is now a great-grandmother and her granddaughter works as a cleaning lady for a Westerner. She never goes up to the top of the mountain, where the Buddhist temples are, until the end of her life. Urban and rural Mongolia is seen through the eyes of a disembodied spirit, a 'noncorpum' which survives by inhabiting living hosts. Whilst generally non-malevolent, the spirit uses whatever measures necessary to discover more about its birth and the nature of its existence. The narration starts with Caspar, a Danish backpacker travelling on a train to Mongolia. He meets an Australian girl, Sherry; they start travelling together and they initiate a relationship. The narrator, the noncorpum, lives inside Caspar's mind. It has lost memory of its origin. It can recollect starting inside the mind of a man at the village at the foot of the Holy Mountain in China. This man had been a brigand and a soldier in Mongolia. Its only preceding memory is a story of three animals thinking about the fate of the world. The noncorpum transmigrates from host to host, trying to find its origin by trying to find the origin of the three animals story. Mitchell implies that at one point the noncorpum had inhabited the mind of Jorge Luis Borges. For a time, it was inside the mind of the lady of the Tea Shack. The noncorpum came to Mongolia after overhearing a mother tell the animal story to her son while staying as a guest at the Tea Shack. The mother said that the story is an old Mongolian folk tale. While in Mongolia, the noncorpum transmigrates from Caspar to a Mongolian woman and then to several other natives as it tries to find a writer who is collecting traditional Mongolian stories and is said to know the tale of the three animals. When one of its hosts is murdered, the noncorpum gets loose and finds itself in a ger (a traditional Mongolian tent) with many other ghosts, unable to get out. It is eventually reborn, 3 months later, as the newborn child of a young Mongolian woman. The noncorpum transmigrates first to the mother, then her husband, and finally to her grandmother. In the mind of the grandmother the noncorpum finally discovers its origin. It was once a young Buddhist boy from a remote Mongolian village. When the Communists were about to execute the boy, his master, and other monks, tried to save his life by transporting his soul into the body of a young girl (who later became the grandmother). The connection, however, was broken and only the memories passed on to the girl. The rest of the boy's soul ended up in a Chinese soldier. The noncorpum decides to transmigrate back to the newborn girl—who would have otherwise died—as her soul. Involved in a Russian art heist, curator Margarita Latunsky lives out a squalid existence as concubine and sleeper agent in the Hermitage Museum. As repercussions from the business crash in Hong Kong and events in Mongolia ripple towards Russia, her life and the lies she has forced herself to believe are torn apart. In Soviet times she was the lover of a powerful politician and an admiral. Now she is the mistress of the museum chief curator and works for a band of art thieves. Her boyfriend Rudi is the mastermind of the band, while the English painter Jerome produces fake paintings that they substitute for the stolen ones. The band obeys the Russian crime boss Gregorski, who procures buyers for the stolen artifacts and pockets most of the proceedings. Margarita dreams of leaving Russia and going to live in Switzerland with Rudi on the money they have made by stealing the art. Their latest plan is to steal the painting Eve and the Serpent by Delacroix. The buyer sent by Gregorski is the Mongolian hitman Suhbataar, whose real task is to test the fidelity of Rudi. Rudi had been in charge of laundering money through a Hong Kong bank account. When the person in charge of that account dies, Gregorski suspects Rudi. The band is seized by panic, Jerome kills Rudi and Margarita kills Jerome. Suhbataar takes the stolen painting and leaves Margarita in the hands of the police, in a state of shock and denial. In the first direct reference to the title of the novel, the action jumps to London and the exploits of Marco, a ghostwriter-cum-drummer, scraping out a living whilst barely avoiding the darker seductions of the capital. Complex plotlines involving the science of chance and destabilization of the world, sparked off in earlier chapters, begin to pick up speed. Marco is a womanizer. He wakes up one morning in the bed of Katy Forbes. She sends him away when the postman delivers an antique chair sent to her by her husband from Hong Kong before he died of diabetes. On his way out, Marco saves a woman who was about to be hit by a taxi. She is in a hurry and takes the taxi to Gatwick airport. Afterwards three men in suits interrogate Marco about her and he lies about where she went. Marco plays in a rock band called The Music of Chance. This whole part is about the interplay between chance and destiny. He has an almost stable relation with Poppy, who already has a daughter, India. But he cannot abandon his random life to commit completely to her. Marco is also a ghostwriter, writing the autobiography of Alfred, an old radical homosexual of Hungarian Jewish origin. On this day, Alfred tells Marco about that time in 1947 when he saw his own alter ego. The narration is interrupted by Roy, Alfred's lover, with the news that their friend Jerome has been murdered in Russia. Later, Marco visits the publishing house he works for. The director is Tim Cavendish, brother of Denholme, who finances the company but is running into financial trouble because his law firm in Hong Kong is being investigated. In the evening, the rich cousin of Marco's friend Gibreel makes a bet with an Iranian acquaintance: they give some money to Marco and Gibreel, go to the casino, and bet on which of the two will win more. Marco cheats and a fight breaks out. Eventually Marco takes the decision to put an end to the way he is living and marry Poppy. Mo Muntervary is a physicist studying quantum cognition or quancog. She has returned to Clear Island, her birthplace in the south of Ireland, after being on the run from the American government. She was employed in a research facility in Switzerland when she discovered that her results were being used by the U.S. military to build intelligent weapons. Her resignation for moral reasons is rejected, and an American general calling himself "Mr. Stolz" tries to force her to go and work in Texas. She runs away and finds temporary shelter in Hong Kong with her old friend Huw Llewellyn. When unknown people almost catch her, she has to be on the move again. On the run, she develops a revolutionary new theory of quantum cognition, which she writes down in a little black book. She returns to Clear Island to stay with her blind husband John and her eighteen-year-old son Liam. Eventually the Americans catch up with her. The whole island is prepared to defend her, but she decides to surrender. Before being caught, she feeds the little black book to her goat Feynman, so the Americans must rely on her for the theory, and she can set her own conditions. One condition is for John to follow her to Texas. She has a plan to make her research turn to the cause of peace. Night Train is a late night radio show in New York. Its host is Bat Segundo. Several eccentric people phone in the show. An entity calling itself "the Zookeeper" phones one night. The Zookeeper is a non-corporeal artificial intelligence that broke loose from its creators, who intended it for military use. It inhabits communication and military satellites through which it monitors the state of the "Zoo", that is, the Earth. The Zookeeper follows four rules of behaviour, which are never given in full but only hinted at. The first rule says that it must be accountable for its actions, which is why it phones the show to reveal its existence and undertakings. There is a war going on between the U.S. and an alliance of North-African Islamic states. Reciprocal nuclear annihilation is imminent, but the Zookeeper blocks all the launching devices, averting the end of the world. One year later, another entity phones the show. It reveals that it is a non-corporeal being that can transfer from one body to another. It has been inside Mo Muntervary, the developer of the Zookeeper. It offers the Zookeeper a pact to dominate the world, but the Zookeeper refuses, identifies the entity and disables it (we don't know whether temporarily or permanently). The Zookeeper reveals to Bat its moral dilemma: Conventional wars are breaking out everywhere on Earth. Innocent people are killed and the Zookeeper can't prevent it because one of its laws dictates that it cannot kill. But by not intervening more people will die. After an ethical discussion with Bat, the Zookeeper reveals that it has made up its mind but doesn't reveal its plans. The implication is that the Zookeeper may choose to mislead the UN about the comet's trajectory and allow it to impact Earth rather than stopping it. Bat unwittingly resolves the conflict of the two laws with the example of damaging a bridge that a group of African mercenaries would be crossing and allowing the bridge to destroy them, instead of the Zookeeper doing it directly. The conclusion of the novel brings us back to the Tokyo underground and the terrorist attack perpetrated by Quasar. He almost gets stuck in the train car after unlocking the timer that will release the deadly gas. As he struggles to get out, people and objects with strong references to the other stories occur to him. Strands from all of the other chapters of the book are introduced via his hallucinations. He is left on a station platform, pondering what is real.
1312503	/m/04s1rp	Endymion	Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield	1880	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Like most of Disraeli's novels, Endymion is a romance, although Disraeli took the unusual step of setting it between 1819 and 1859. This meant that the hero of the novel&ndash;Endymion Ferrars&ndash;had to be a Whig, rather than a Tory. The time period that Disraeli chose was dominated by the Whig party; there would have been little opportunity for a young, rising Tory. Given that, it seems likely that Disraeli chose the time period in order to move a final time in the world in which he grew up and began his ascent.
1313113	/m/04s39k	Puerto Vallarta Squeeze	Robert James Waller		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Former journalist Danny Pastor has relaxed in Puerto Vallarta over the past year with María de la Luz Santos, a 22-year-old woman whom he'd first met as a cantina waitress. They moved in together shortly thereafter, and Luz asked Danny to marry her, but he kept her at arms' length. One night when Luz went off by herself, she got pregnant by a drunken college student. Danny paid for her to have an abortion, and that incident made up his mind about her. One night as they relaxed in the El Niño cantina, Danny heard a gunshot and rushes outside to see two men dead. One was an American Navy officer, and the other was a software engineer ready to sell his company's work on failure analysis to the Taiwanese government. Back at their apartment, Danny and Luz met a man who identifies himself as "Peter Schumann" and needs to get north of the Rio Grande quickly. Paying Danny five thousand in cash, Schumann arranges his passage in a rusting Ford Bronco named Vito. The film adaptation featured a Jeep Wagoneer instead of a Ford Bronco. Unaware at first of the nature of their journey, Luz wants to go with them to see her grandparents' graves along the coast. When she met with them for the trip, Luz wore blue jeans and a shirt that read "Puerto Vallarta Squeeze" with two halves of a lime dripping down the center. Danny saw in the story of this trip a great opportunity for a literary comeback. As they travelled north, Danny, Luz, and Schumann evade American military and Mexican authorities. Schumann later revealed that he's really former Marine sniper turned mercenary Clayton Price; he was commissioned to kill the engineer, but he took his job personally when he shot the naval officer. During the Vietnam War, Price was abandoned behind enemy lines by the officer who commanded the helicopter. After commandeering the backroads of rural Mexico, Price arranged to have a helicopter meet him near an abandoned silver mine at Zapata. After a fiesta the night before, Luz decided to go with Price because she's fallen in love with him. As Price put it, "I'm not sure I'm capable of loving at all. But, Danny, you love too timidly. I'm not sure which is worse. You have this offhand way of treating her most of the time, as if she's a partially reformed street whore. . . . She told me about her past. She says I treat her with respect. You figure it out." In a standoff with authorities, Price and Luz are killed. Danny heads back to Puerto Vallarta through Mazatlán, but he's arrested when the gun Price used in the double murder is found behind his apartment's toilet. Despite the evidence being circumstantial, Danny serves seventeen months of a ten-year prison sentence before he's released with a one-way ticket to Laredo. Although ordered never to return to Mexico again, Danny does so to find Price and Luz's graves in the Zapata cemetery. Price's marker was removed, but Danny exhumed Luz's coffin and reburied it in Celaya, where her grandparents were buried. During his time in prison, Danny wrote a manuscript about his adventures with Price and Luz as they rode north, but he never saw it again.
1313175	/m/04s3jk	Mary Barton	Elizabeth Gaskell	1948	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0blvpd": "Industrial novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins in Manchester, where we are introduced to the Bartons and the Wilsons, two working-class families. John Barton is a questioner of the distribution of wealth and the relations between rich and poor. Soon his wife dies—he blames it on her grief over the disappearance of her sister Esther. Having already lost his son Tom at a young age, Barton now falls into depression and begins to involve himself in the Chartist, trade-union movement. Having taken up work at a dressmaker's (her father having objected to her working in a factory), Mary becomes subject to the affections of hard-working Jem Wilson and Harry Carson, son of a wealthy mill owner. She fondly hopes, by marrying Carson, to secure a comfortable life for herself and her father, but immediately after refusing Jem's offer of marriage she realizes that she truly loves him. She therefore decides to evade Carson, planning to show her feelings to Jem in the course of time. Jem believes her decision to be final, though this does not change his feelings for her. Meanwhile, Esther, a "street-walker," returns to warn John Barton that he must save Mary from becoming like her. He simply pushes her away, however, and she's sent to jail for a month on the charge of vagrancy. Upon her release she talks to Jem with the same purpose. He promises that he will protect Mary and confronts Carson, eventually entering into a fight with him, which is witnessed by a policeman passing by. Not long afterwards, Carson is shot dead, and Jem is arrested on suspicion, his gun having been found at the scene of the crime. Esther decides to investigate the matter further and discovers that the wadding for the gun was a piece of paper on which is written Mary's name. She visits her niece to warn her to save the one she loves, and after she leaves Mary realises that the murderer is not Jem but her father. She's now is faced with having to save her lover without giving away her father. With the help of Job Legh (the intelligent grandfather of her blind friend Margaret), Mary travels to Liverpool to find the only person who could provide an alibi for Jem—Will Wilson, Jem's cousin and a sailor, who was with him on the night of the murder. Unfortunately, Will's ship is already departing, so that, after Mary chases after the ship in a small boat, the only thing Will can do is promise to return in the pilot ship and testify the next day. During the trial, Jem learns of Mary's great love for him. Will arrives in court to testify, and Jem is found 'not guilty'. Mary has fallen ill during the trial and is nursed by Mr Sturgis, an old sailor, and his wife. When she finally returns to Manchester she has to face her father, who is crushed by his remorse. He summons Henry Carson, Harry's father, to confess to him that he is the murderer. Carson is still set on justice, but after turning to the Bible he forgives Barton, who dies soon afterwards in Carson's arms. Not long after this Esther comes back to Mary's home, where she, too, dies soon. Jem decides to leave England, where, his reputation damaged, it would be difficult for him to find a new job. The novel ends with the wedded Mary and Jem, their little child, and Mrs Wilson living happily in Canada. News comes that Margaret has regained her sight and that she and Will, soon to be married, will visit.
1313643	/m/04s569	Love in Excess; Or, The Fatal Enquiry	Eliza Haywood			 The first part details the competition between Alovisa and Amena, two upper-class young women of disparate wealth, for D'Elmont's attentions. The narrator specifically mentioned the "custom which forbids women to make a declaration of their thoughts." That women were not permitted to express their affections or choice until a suitor formally proposed marriage is important to both the plot and the theme of the novel. Alovisa writes an unsigned letter to D'Elmont in hopes of eliciting a definite amorous response from him, which inadvertently leads D'Elmont to court Amena. Amena's father refuses to allow his daughter to continue meeting with D'Elmont without a proposal of marriage, which forces the pair to meet via subterfuge. With the help of Anaret, Amena's woman servant, two attempts for the pair to meet are made, the second of which sees Amena and D'Elmont alone in the Tuileries at night. The two are compromised by the intervention of Alovisa's servant, Charlo, who awakens Amena's household. Amena is eventually conducted by D'Elmont to Alovisa's residence. Alovisa feigns desire to help the pair by allowing them to meet in her apartment; however, Alovisa agrees with Amena's father (unbeknownst to Amena) to help ship Amena off to a convent in the countryside. Amena discovers Alovisa's designs for D'Elmont's affections when D'Elmont mistakenly slips her one of Alovisa's letters, which results in her begging to be sent away as soon as possible. D'Elmont, in the meanwhile, has left to receive his brother, Chevalier Brillian. During the course of their conversation, it is revealed that the Chevalier has fallen in love with Alovisa's sister Ansellina (who resides in Amien). The first part concludes with a mutual decision by Brillian and D'Elmont to marry the sister-pair Alovisa and Ansellina with love, status, and wealth as motivations for the respective matches. Part the Second deals with D'Elmont's falling in "true" love with Melliora, a girl entrusted in his care. D'Elmont ends up nearly raping the loving but resisting Melliora; meanwhile, D'Elmont's friend Baron falls in love with D'Elmont's wife Alovisa. A climax scene leads to the death of the Baron and Alovisa and D'Elmont's self-exile. D'Elmont ends up in Italy in Part the Third, endlessly yearning for Melliora - who in the meantime has been kidnapped from the convent to which she was sent after Part the Second. In Italy, D'Elmont happens to meet Frankville, Melliora's brother. D'Elmont helps Frankville flee Italy with his forbidden love Camilla; the two women in Italy who have fallen in love with D'Elmont (Ciamara, the lusty "bad" woman; and Violetta, the chaste "good" woman) both end up dead. The survivors - D'Elmont and Melliora; Frankville and Camilla; Melliora's kidnapper and Charlotta, a girl he loved before Melliora - all marry.
1317181	/m/04sf5d	The Gift	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov			 Fyodor Konstantinovitch Cherdyntsev is a Russian émigré living in Berlin in the 1920s, and the chapter starts with him moving to a boardinghouse on Seven Tannenberg Street. He has recently published a book of poems, and receives a call from Alexander Yakovlevich Chernyshevski congratulating him on the poems and inviting him to come over to a party to read the favorable critique in the newspaper. The poems reach back to Feodor’s childhood that was spent with his sister Tanya in the pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and the Leshino manor, the country estate of the Godunov-Cherdyntsevs. Fyodor arrives at the party only to learn that he fell victim to a crude April fool’s joke; his book had not received any attention in the literary circle. The Chernyshevskis had a son, Yasha, who "looked like Fyodor" who had loved poetry. Yasha died by suicide when caught in a tragic love triangle. His mother wanted Fyodor to use his story for his writing, but he declined. As a result of Yasha’s death, his father had episodes of insanity. When Fyodor returns to his “new hole” he notices that he had taken the wrong keys, fortunately, after a while a visitor is leaving and he can get back in. Fyodor “dawled away the summer”. In the fall he attends a literary meeting of Russian émigrés where he meets Koncheyev whom he considers a rival. A reading of a new play bores the audience. Upon leaving Fyodor has a lengthy and animated discussion about Russian literature with Koncheyev, a discussion that turns out to be largely fictitious. Fyodor is dreaming about his native Russia as he rides in the tramcar to his language student, but “could not stand it no longer “and returns to his place. His mother, Elizaveta Pavlovna, comes from Paris to visit him and the shadow of his lost father hangs over their encounter, his mother believing that he is still alive. Before her departure they attend a local Russian literary event, and Fyodor is the last almost unnoticed reader to recite one of his poems. Inspired by her visit and his study of Pushkin he seeks her support for his new project, a book about his father Konstantin Kirillovich. He collects material, stumbles over Sushoshchokov’s account of his grand father, Kirill Ilyich (a gambler who made and lost a fortune in America before returning to Russia), and starts to focus on the activities of his father, an explorer, lepidopterist, and scientific writer whose journeys between 1885 and 1918 led him to Siberia and Central Asia. Fyodor who only had come along on local trips and is imbued with the love of butterflies, imagines being a participant on his explorations to the East. In 1916 his father departed for his last journey and remains missing. Fyodor’s difficulty to proceed with his project gets complicated by the need to look for a new lodging. With the help of Mrs. Chernyshevski he finds a place with the Shchyogolevs. As it turns out later, the presence of a short pale blue dress in the adjacent room that he thinks belongs to their daughter makes him take the apartment. This chapters starts by describing a day in the life of the protagonist. In the morning Fyodor hears the Shchyogolevs get up and begins the day with thinking about poetry. He reflects on his development as a poet. Later he joins the family for lunch, Shchyogolev is talking about politics, his wife, Marianna Nikolavna, cooks, and the daughter behaves in an antagonistic way. Fyodor then gives his tutorial lessons, goes to a bookstore where among others he finds Koncheyev’s book of poems Communication and reviews that failed to understand it. He reads an article about Chernyshevski and Chess in the Soviet chess magazine 8x8, and visits his editor Vasiliev. After returning home and having supper in his room, Fyodor leaves the place to meet secretly Zina. Waiting for her he composes a poem embedded in the narrative. Zina Mertz has appeared in the narrative before on occasion,,- she had bought one of the few copies of Fyodor’s poems, and she is the daughter of Marianna Nikolavna, and Shchyogolev’s stepdaughter, living next door to the protagonist). The story of their encounters is recalled and it is learned that Zina knew of Fyodor the poet when he lived at his previous place. Their meetings are in secret and hidden from her parents. Shchyogolev implies that he may have married her mother to get to her which may explain the strain between him and Zina and why she hates him. Zina works for a law firm, Traum, Baum, and Kaesebier. Fyodor gets more involved with Chernyshevski’s work and declares that he wants to write about him for “firing practice”. He reads all by and about him, and passes from “accumulation to creation”. Zina is his muse and reader. The finished manuscript is handed to his publisher who rejects it as a “reckless, antisocial, mischievous improvisation.” However, Fyodor has more luck with another publisher. This chapter is a critical biography within the novel, a book within a book, about the Russian 19th century writer Chernyshevsky - Lenin's favorite author -titled The Life of Chernyshevski written by the protagonist. Fyodor ridicules Chernyshevsky's aesthetics and understanding of literature. The book about Chernyshevski finds itself in a “good, thundery atmosphere of scandal which helped sales”. Most reviews in the literary world of the émigrés are critical as the book debunks its subject as a writer and thinker, Koncheyev ’s review, however, is quite positive. Fyodor is unable to show the book to Alexander Yakovlevich Chernyshevski who had recently died. His death and funeral are described. On his way home, Fyodor walks with the writer Shirin, “a deaf and blind man with blocked nostrils”. Shirin tries to engage Fyodor in the activities of the Committee of the Society of Russian Writers in Germany. Fyodor declines but attends some meetings observing the infighting for control of the society. Shchyogolev is offered a job in Copenhagen, and plans to leave Zina in the Berlin apartment. Fyodor is elated and takes a walk in the Grunewald forest, where he imagines to have a talk with Koncheyev. His clothes including the key to the apartment get stolen, and he has to return in his bathing trunks. At night he dreams that his father has come back. Next morning the Shchyogolevs leave for Copenhagen, and Zina stays behind. Fyodor who is planning to write a "classical novel" (The Gift) and Zina can now live together. They are without money, both at the moment have lost the key to their apartment, but they are happy, they feel that fate brought them together, and Zina declares that he will be “a writer as has never been before“.
1318458	/m/04shh8	Triss	Brian Jacques	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At Riftgard, an isle in the far north, the ferret king, King Agarnu, and his cruel offspring, Princess Kurda and Prince Bladd hold sway over a Ratguard army and enslaved creatures. One of the slaves, Trisscar Swordmaid escapes with her friends Shogg and Welfo, southward to Mossflower. In the attempt, her friend Drufo is killed. Meanwhile, Kurda hires a pirate ship, the Seascab, captained by Plugg Firetail, to take her to Mossflower, where she must find the royal artifacts of Riftgard in order to seal her queenship. In Redwall Abbey, rebellious Dibbuns Ruggum and Bikkle run away into Mossflower Woods. They discover Brockhall, the ancestral home of badgers, but are chased away by serpents. Fortunately, they are rescued by the Skipper of Otters and Log-a-Log Groo, and they bring with them a golden pawring with strange markings. Sagaxus, heir to Salamandastron, and his friend Bescarum Lepuswold Whippscut (who go by Sagax and Scarum respectively), leave the mountain for adventure with Kroova Wavedog, in his ketch the Stopdog. Scarum's father, Colonel Whippscut of the Long Patrol, searches for them in the name of Lord Hightor, the Badger Lord. Sagax finds a bow on the ketch (the property of its previous owners) with similar markings to the pawring. They disregard it and decide to journey to Redwall, and on their way, they wind up in possession of a dagger with the same pattern. Triss and her friends, in their ship, see the same markings. Triss is able to interpret them as an R, H, O, and R, standing for "Royal House of Riftgard". On the journey, they become dehydrated, but are rescued by the hedgehogs of Peace Island. Welfo remains with her newfound love, Urtica, while Triss and Shogg continue south. They cross paths with Kurda on the Seascab in the middle of a lightning storm, but the contraband vessel escapes. Meanwhile, the Redwall denizens try to explore Brockhall, but it is inhabited by three serpents, one of which wears a crown with the Riftgard pattern. The adders, Zassaliss, Harssacss, and Sesstra, are the children of Berussca, an adder slain by and who in turn slayed King Sarengo, Agarnu's father; they remain bound by Sarengo's mace and chain. Ovus, a tawny owl, brings Bluddbeak, an ancient red kite from afar to defeat the adders, but in their attempt, both birds die. Mokug, a golden hamster who had been Sarengo's slave, is rescued and brings with him a message in Riftgard script. Martin the Warrior visits Skipper's niece, Churk, in her dreams, giving the Redwallers the hint they need to decode the message, but it is a riddle that's difficult to interpret. Elsewhere, Sagax, Scarum, and Kroova are captured by the crew of the Seascab, and the Stopdog is destroyed. Triss and Shogg meet up with them, and together they are able to escape. Kroova and Shogg set up a hidden stake that injures Plugg, and his firetail falls off, though he reattaches it with pine resin. Kurda and her vermin then cross paths with the Redwallers, who fend them off, while Triss, Shogg, Sagax, Scarum, and Kroova enter the safety of the abbey. Triss sees the Sword of Martin and is immediately drawn to it, wielding it as the Redwallers continue to battle the Ratguard army. Bladd is killed by a falling pot of oatmeal, and Plugg is killed by the snakes, while Kurda concentrates her efforts on destroying the denizens of Redwall. Eventually, Skipper's niece helps solve the riddle, which leads the Redwallers to Brockhall. There they encounter both the Ratguards and the snakes. During the ensuing battle, Shogg, Sagax, and Triss kill Sesstra, Harssacss, and Zassaliss, but Shogg is poisoned and dies by Triss's side. Later, Triss and Kurda face off, but Kurda falls on her own sword and dies. Triss, Kroova, Sagax, Scarum, Groo, Skipper, Mokug, and others sail to Riftguard and free the slaves. There, King Agarnu is drowned by the slaves. Kroova stays on Riftguard with the sea otter Sleeve, and the others return to Redwall Abbey.
1319279	/m/04skg7	Watch Your Mouth	Daniel Handler	2000-07	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first part of the novel is laid out as an opera, with act and scene numbers as chapter titles and each of the characters being assigned a singing voice. Joseph quickly begins to suspect that Cynthia's entire family is engaging in incestuous behaviour, and that her mother, Mimi, is building a golem in the basement. The first part of the novel ends (operatically) in death. The second part is presented somewhat more conventionally, as Joseph attempts to recover from the events of the first part; this half of the book follows the form of a 12-step program. The first section of the novel is printed in black ink, while the 12-step program is printed in dark red.
1319463	/m/04skn0	Blinded by the Right	David Brock	2002	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Brock recalls his days at the University of California, Berkeley and how he was turned off by hecklers at a speech by then United States ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Brock's main attraction to conservatism was his disdain for communism. After college, Brock moved with his then-partner (called "Andrew" to conceal his identity) to Washington, D.C. In D.C., Brock worked for The Washington Times and The American Spectator. Brock claims while he was working for those publications he thought he was doing honest journalism, but later stated that he had never corroborated his facts. While working for The American Spectator, he wrote an article on Anita Hill, which he later expanded into The Real Anita Hill, a book that made him popular in the conservative movement. Brock would later say that many of the details he used were false. After Bill Clinton was elected, Brock was assigned to write a story, later dubbed Troopergate, about four Arkansas state troopers who held a grudge against Bill Clinton. He claims that the troopers made up stories about affairs that could never be corroborated. Brock was given assurances that the troopers would not get paid for telling their stories. He later discovered he was deceived and that the troopers had been paid by Richard Mellon Scaife, who bankrolled The American Spectator and the Arkansas Project, a secret project to discredit Clinton. Brock made sure to conceal the identities of the women identified by the troopers, with the exception of one woman named "Paula". Brock thought that by not revealing her last name, it would be enough to conceal her identity. Brock did not take into account that Little Rock is a small city. Eventually her identity would be revealed as Paula Jones, which led to her civil lawsuit against Bill Clinton. Following the Troopergate story, Brock wrote a book about Hillary Clinton, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. Unlike the Anita Hill book, Brock decided not to put anything in the book that he could not corroborate. The book was not as critical of Hillary Clinton as it was promised to be. Brock claims that conservatives planned on the book being so damning as to influence the outcome of the 1996 presidential election. The Seduction of Hillary Rodham was the beginning of Brock's falling out with the conservative movement. The issue that forced him to leave the conservative movement was the movement's intolerance towards homosexuality. Brock had reluctantly come out of the closet prior to writing the Hillary Clinton book, and believes this contributed to his being shunned by many in the movement. Brock voted for Al Gore in 2000, the first time he voted since he voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984. During the period in which he did not vote, he had two rationalizations for his non-voting: * He believed that his vote didn't count in liberal Washington D.C. * He believed that not voting allowed him to stay neutral Brock proclaimed that the latter rationalization was bogus, as he was not neutral during that time period.
1319473	/m/04sknr	The Republican Noise Machine	David Brock	2004-05-18		 Brock details the conservative media strategy subsequent to the time of (Brock hero) Barry Goldwater, predicated on corporate funding of think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation. Brock believes such think tanks serve not only as propagandists, but as tutors for industry lobbyists, and a training ground for conservative journalists who are not limited by the standards of objectivity and impartiality emphasized in the conventional news media. Conservative and Republican strategists "concoct smears, distortions, and outright lies", and then disseminate the product as 'talking points' to right-wing radio and Fox News, which Brock says set a narrative echoed by more mainstream news sources.
1323179	/m/04sr80	Prochain épisode	Hubert Aquin			 The narrator, like Aquin himself, turns his adventures into a spy thriller to while away the time he is forced to spend in the psychiatric ward of a Montreal prison, where he is awaiting a trial for an unspecified revolutionary crime. The novel was translated by Penny Williams in 1967, and later again by Sheila Fischman.
1323542	/m/04ss7g	Visa for Avalon	Bryher			 During a fishing vacation to Trelawney in an unidentified country, Mr. Robinson (his first name is never given) receives word that the Movement, a protest group with the tacit approval of the government, is planning a General Strike. Mr. Robinson's landlady, Mrs. Blunt, is given notice that the government is claiming her land as eminent domain. The pressures of mass industrialization and scattered reports of Movement activity lead Robinson, Blunt, Alex, Mr. Lawson, and Sheila Willis to seek refuge in the country of Avalon before the borders are closed for good. Avalon is not specifically identified in the story; only a glimpse is seen of white sandy beaches there at the book's end.
1325312	/m/04sxt4	Something Wicked This Way Comes	Ray Bradbury		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/070l2": "Soft science fiction"}	 The novel opens on an overcast October 23. Two friends, William "Will" Halloway and Jim Nightshade, both on the verge of their fourteenth birthdays, encounter a strange lightning rod salesman who claims that a storm is coming their way. Throughout that same night, Will and Jim meet up with townsfolk who also sense something in the air; the barber says that the air smells of cotton candy. Among the townspeople is Will's 54-year-old father, Charles Halloway (who works in the local library, and who broods philosophically about his position in life, including on how he misses being young like his son). Both Charles Halloway and the boys learn about the carnival that is to start the next day. Will's father sees a sign in a store window that advertises Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, while Jim and Will find a similar handbill in the street. The boys are excited that a carnival has come so late in the year, but Charles Halloway has a bad feeling about it. The boys run out to watch the carnival arrive at three in the morning, and they run home after seeing the tents get set up mysteriously. Mr. Halloway talks about this time of night as "soul's midnight", when men are closest to death, locked in the depths of despair. The boys go the next day to explore the carnival and they help their seventh grade teacher, Miss Foley, who is dazed after visiting the Mirror Maze. Later in the day, Jim goes into the maze and Will has to pull him out. Jim insists on coming back that night, and Will agrees, but when they bump into the lightning-rod salesman's bag, they realize that they must stay to learn what has happened to the man. Finally, after searching all of the rides, they go up to a carousel that is supposedly broken. A huge man grabs Will and Jim and tells them that the merry-go-round is broken. Another man tells him to put them down, introduces himself as Mr. Dark and tells them the huge man's name is Mr. Cooger. Mr. Dark is the Illustrated Man, covered in tattoos, and he pays attention only to Jim, who is enthralled by what he sees. Mr. Dark tells them to come back the next day and the boys run off but then hide and wait. What they see is unbelievable. Mr. Cooger rides backwards on the carousel (while the music plays backwards), and when he steps off he is twelve years old. They follow Mr. Cooger to Miss Foley's house, where he pretends to be her nephew who got lost earlier at the carnival. Jim tries to meet up with Mr. Cooger because he wants to ride the carousel, but Will stops him briefly before Jim takes off toward the carnival. When Will reaches the carnival Mr. Cooger is on the carousel, growing older, and Jim is about to join him. Will knocks the switch on the carousel and it flies out of control, spinning rapidly forward. Mr. Cooger ages over 100 years before the carousel stops, and Jim and Will take off. They return with the police, but Mr. Cooger is nowhere to be found. Inside the tents he is set up as a new act, Mr. Electrico, a man they run electricity through. Mr. Dark tells the boys to come back to the carnival the next day. Will tries to keep his father out of the situation, promising him that he will tell all soon. That night, the Dust Witch comes in her balloon to find Jim and Will, but Will outsmarts her and destroys her balloon. They later both dream of a bizarre funeral for the balloon, featuring a giant, misshapen coffin. The next day the boys see a young girl crying and realize after talking to her that she is Miss Foley. They go to her house but when they come back their path is blocked by a parade. The carnival is out searching the streets for them. They hide and the little girl is gone. Will's father sees them hiding under an iron grille in the sidewalk and the boys convince him to keep quiet because the Illustrated Man comes to talk to him. Will's father pretends not to know the two boys whose faces are tattooed on the man's hand, and then when the Witch comes and begins to sense the boys' presence he blows cigar smoke at her, choking her and forcing her to leave. Mr. Dark asks Charles Halloway for his name, and Will's father tells him where he works and who he is. Later that night Will and Jim meet Mr. Halloway at the library, where he has done research and found out some things about the carnival. He tells them that their best weapon is love, but they are not sure how to fight. Then Mr. Dark shows up and the boys hide. He finds them and crushes Charles Halloway's hand when the man tries to fight him. The Dust Witch casts spells on the boys to make them easy to handle and goes to stop Mr. Halloway's heart. Just before he is about to die, Charles Halloway looks at the Witch and begins to laugh hysterically, and his laughter wounds her deeply and drives her away. He goes to the carnival to get the boys. At the carnival Charles Halloway outsmarts Mr. Dark, finds his son, kills the Witch, and destroys the Mirror Maze in a matter of minutes, all through the use of laughter and happiness. Then he and Will search for Jim. Mr. Cooger turns to dust and blows away before he can be saved at the carousel, and Jim moves towards the merry-go-round. Jim starts to ride and Will tries to stop him. They both end up going for a ride before Will jumps off and rips Jim away from the machine. Jim falls into a stupor, close to death. A child comes begging them to help him, but Mr. Halloway recognizes the boy as Mr. Dark. He holds the boy tight and kills him with affection, because Mr. Dark cannot survive in such close contact with someone good. The carnival falls apart as Will tries to revive Jim. They save Jim by singing and dancing and laughing; their happiness bringing him back from the edge of death.
1327856	/m/04t2xr	Century Rain	Alastair Reynolds	2004	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wendell Floyd is an expatriate American living in an alternate version of 1950s Paris. In this world, the Nazi invasion of France failed, and Hitler was deposed by the German High Command. Without World War II, technology in this world has stagnated at 1930s levels, and Fascist political parties have gained power in France. Floyd is a part time jazz musician whose career has stalled since his ex-girlfriend, Greta, left Paris to pursue a musical career touring with another jazz band. He and his band-mate André Custine earn a supplemental income working as private detectives. When the novel opens, Floyd and Custine are hired by a concerned landlord to investigate the death of one of his tenants. Blanchard, the landlord, is certain that the death of Susan White, which the Parisian police have written off as an accident, is murder. Floyd is not so certain, but he's willing to investigate. In a scene seemingly from another novel, Verity Auger finds herself responsible when her archaeology dig beneath the frozen ruins of some far-flung future Paris results in the death of one of her students. During her trial she is caught up in political infighting, and maneuvered into accepting a high risk assignment, without knowing what it entails. But when she is summoned on a mission to Mars by the top-secret security agency Contingencies, Auger is more than relieved to be exempt from her tribunal and the years of prison that she would otherwise have to face. However, when she is taken to a secret underground base on the Martian moon Phobos containing an ancient alien relic that opens a portal to a distant part of the galaxy, and told that she is to go through it, she begins to have second thoughts about continuing with her mission. Things get even more bizarre when she finds out that at the other end of the portal is an alternate-history version of Earth in the year 1959 - almost 300 years behind the present time - and that she is to retrieve a tin of documents that was left behind by Susan White, an earlier agent sent to "Earth Two", who died under mysterious circumstances.
1328942	/m/04t65p	The Way of the Wiseguy	Joseph D. Pistone		{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 The book records psychological portraits of the personalities Pistone associated with during his years undercover. Among the many recurring themes in the book: wiseguys are not nice people, they don't have friends (not even people they have known and worked with their whole life), and they will beat or kill you without hesitation. Pistone relays experiences with international organized crime, as a consultant and undercover agent for Scotland Yard, and infiltrating a drug lord's operation in a foreign country. An audio CD is included with the book, containing actual FBI surveillance recordings of Pistone, working undercover as Donnie Brasco, and his capo.
1329593	/m/04t7qm	The Eyes of Heisenberg	Frank Herbert	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Chs. 1-4: Harvey and Lizbeth Durant arrive to witness the cutting of their embryo. Svengaard, a low-ranking doctor, tries to convince them to skip the procedure, but they are adamant and insist on their right, all the while secretly communicating their contempt for Svengaard in a silent Courier code. Potter, a high-ranking surgeon, arrives to perform the cut. During the procedure, he is shocked to discover that the embryo has qualities not seen in millennia; superior genetics in the areas of intelligence, plus vocation for immortality and full fertility. Obligated to destroy it, Potter is surprised to find himself unwilling to do so, aided by the on-the-spot collusion of one of the nurses who sabotages the record of the operation. Ch. 5: Max Allgood, Boumard and Igan arrive at the Hall of Counsel for an audience with the Tuyere. Tachy-Security monitoring has detected something amiss with the Durant embryo cutting. The nurse has been arrested, but has died under interrogation. The Optimen Calapine, Nourse and Schruille playfully mock their subordinates, always with a faint undercurrent of menace. Calapine flirts with Allgood in a semi-bemused fashion. The Tuyere order that Svengaard be brought before them. Boumard and Igan are revealed to the reader as Cyborg agents. Ch. 6: Svengaard is interrogated by the Tuyere. Badly frightened, he fumbles and grows agitated under their mockery, becoming insubordinate. The Tuyere calm him down by a display of magnanimity, reminding him of their power, wisdom and seniority. Ch. 7: In a service area under the Seatac Megalopolis, the Durants have gone into hiding. They meet with the Cyborg Glisson, who informs them of events, tells them that a strange external force had (beneficially) interfered with the cutting process of their embryo, and orders them to stay put. The Durants chafe under its unfeeling, domineering manner, hoping to one another to one day be free of the Optimen and Cyborgs. They scheme to deliver their baby the unheard-of natural way, and keep it out of reach of both. They wonder if the interfering power is God. Ch. 8-9: Svengaard detects activity in the hospital vat room, where the embryo is kept. Investigating, he is rendered unconscious and abducted from under the nose of Max Allgood's surveillance. Ch. 10-11: Potter is escorted through the streets of Seatac by a resistance agent. Near their destination, they are intercepted by security forces. Potter's escort sends him ahead, revealing himself as a combat cyborg and decimating the pursuers until it is destroyed. Potter is spirited away by the resistance. The Tuyere - and many other Optimen - watch the battle live, the long-unfamiliar thrill of violence awakening odd sensations in them. Ch. 12: In a resistance safehouse, Igan tries to recruit a recalcitrant Svengaard. Failing, they sedate him and make plans to evacuate Seatac, which they suspect the Optimen are about to genocidally purge of all life. Ch. 13: The Durants, Boumard and Igan (their cover blown) and a gagged Svengaard are moved out of Seatac in a hover-truck driven by a Cyborg, later revealed to be Glisson. At a checkpoint, Svengaard cries out briefly, causing them to be traced. Glisson changes their destination. Ch. 14: The Tuyere wipe out Seatac through a combination of poison gas and sonic weapons. They find themselves surprised by their unstable emotional reactions to the event. Ch. 15: The occupants of the truck observe the destruction of Seatac; Svengaard's faith in the Optimen is badly shaken. The Durants notice that Boumard and Igan are in the early stages of cyborgization. The truck proceeds to a ramshackle safehouse in the forest. Ch. 16: The Tuyere receives a field report from Max Allgood. Calapine, growing suspicious of his behavior, scans him with her instruments, discovering that he has accepted Cyborg implants. Enraged, she kills him remotely. Calapine and Schruille decide to run Tachy-Security themselves, finding themselves oddly stimulated by the prospect of an even more active involvement in violence. Potter is revealed to have died offstage in Seatac. Calapine and Nourse both require treatment for enzyme imbalance. Ch. 17: The occupants of the cabin decide that the apathetic Svengaard cannot be trusted, and should be killed. Harvey asks him if he wants to live; Svengaard suddenly finds that he does. He offers to care for the Durant's child, an offer Harvey accepts as he does not trust the cyborgs Boumard and Igan. The security forces of the Optimen surround the house and disarm Glisson. Ch. 18: The Tuyere debate what to do with the prisoners. They speculate that, if the infection of viability spreads, wiping out all the Folk and starting over is not out of the question. They decide to have the prisoners brought to themselves for interrogation. Ch. 19: A full assembly of Optimen meet in the Hall of Counsel. The prisoners are brought in, immobilized in a solid block. The Optimen begin to feel odd emotions, spiraling into greater and greater instability. Glisson asserts that reintroducing them to firsthand violence was a Cyborg ploy to destabilize the delicate equilibrium of the Optiman mind, and that the Cyborgs have won. A semi-hysterical Calapine converses with the prisoners, verging on killing them, but abruptly releases them instead. The Optimen descend into insanity; several, including Schruille, are killed in a stampede. The former prisoners try to help. Ch. 20: Calapine and the former prisoners discuss the new status quo. Glisson's gloating is cut off when a biological solution is proposed. Svengaard thinks that he will be able to stabilize the Optimen, and introduce the beneficial mutations of the Durant embryo on a wide scale, giving the Folk a lifespan of at least 12 - 15,000 years - longevity without the pernicious ossification of immortality. The novel concludes on a note of guarded optimism.
1331205	/m/04tbs8	Families and How To Survive Them	John Cleese			 Chapter 1: Why Did I Have to Marry You? Chapter 2: I'm God, and Let's Leave it Like That - In the extensive further reading section at the end of the book, Skynner acknowledges that this chapter "depends heavily on the ideas of Melanie Klein, founder of The English School of Psychoanalysis". Chapter 3: The Astonishing Stuffed Rabbit Chapter 4: Who's in Charge Here? Chapter 5: What are You Two Doing in There?
1332293	/m/04tfqs	Popcorn	Ben Elton	1996-08-05	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book takes place in different parts of Los Angeles, US. The date is never actually specified, but various clues suggest it is set in the near future. Mostly the story takes place in the centre of Hollywood. The book depicts the differences between different social groups in America, from rich people with guards like Bruce Delamitri to poorer people Wayne and Scout. The protagonist, Bruce Delamitiri, is an artist who works in the motion picture industry. Many people in the US think that, by making these movies, Bruce makes killing cool. Numerous characters throughout the book imply that he encourages everyone who's watching these movies to kill for fun. Bruce, on the other hand, defends himself by telling everyone that he doesn’t think he encourages anyone to do anything. He says that there has always been violence but humans are not like robots, seeing something on the screen does not necessarily make us want to do it ourselves( p.&nbsp;13 "people get up from the movie theatre or the TV and do what they just saw"). He also claims that he is just showing existing violence. Unfortunately for Bruce, Wayne and Scout (a pair of psychopaths known in the media as "the mall murderers") have formulated a plan to hold him hostage and have him publicly announce that his movies are responsible for their crimes so they can avoid the death penalty (Wayne has a lengthy speech giving examples of how in America it is possible to be guilty and innocent at the same time.) As the novel progresses, Bruce and a critically injured Brooke Daniels are joined inside his house by his wife and daughter and a TV camera crew. The siege reaches its climax as Wayne holds a ratings monitor and announces on live TV that he will spare the hostages if everyone stops watching the siege in the next few minutes - however, this does not happen and he begins firing as the LAPD begin a frantic attempt to subdue him. Many of the characters die in the ensuing violence and the Epilogue of the story reveils grimly details how all of the survivors have found a way of escaping responsibility for the tragedy (using varying routes from lawsuits and finding religion to making documentaries which explicitly blame everyone else.) The book ends with the line "No one has taken responsibility" - echoing an earlier rant by Bruce that we have created a blame free society in which any problem or shortcoming can be blamed on others rather than accepting responsibility for our own actions.
1333969	/m/04tkrd	Doomsday Book	Connie Willis	1992	{"/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kivrin Engle, a young historian specializing in medieval history, persuades her reluctant instructor, Professor James Dunworthy, and the authorities running the project to send her to Oxford in 1320, encouraged by Professor Gilchrist, who takes charge of the project in the absence of the department head to try to enhance his own prestige. This period had previously been thought too dangerous, because it stretched the time travel net 300 years earlier than it had been used before. She will be the first historian to visit the period, and is confident that she is well prepared for what she will encounter. Shortly after sending Kivrin to the 14th century, Badri Chaudhuri, the technician who set the time travel coordinates for Kivrin's trip, collapses suddenly, an early victim of a deadly new influenza epidemic which severely disrupts the university and eventually leads to the entire city being quarantined. Infected with the same influenza despite her enhanced immune system, Kivrin falls ill as she arrives in the past. She awakens after several days of fever and delirium at a nearby manor, whose residents have nursed her. Unfortunately, the move has caused her to lose track of where the "drop point" is; in order to return home, she must return to the exact location where she arrived when the gateway opens at a prearranged time. The narrative switches between Kivrin in the fourteenth century and 2054/2055 Oxford during the influenza epidemic. Kivrin discovers many inconsistencies in what she "knows" about the time: the Middle English she learned is different from the local dialect, her maps are useless, her clothing is too fine, and she is far too clean. She can also read and write, skills unusual even for the educated men of the time and rare among women. As nuns are the only women commonly possessing these skills, some family members conclude Kivrin has fled her convent and plan to return her to the nearest convent. She fakes amnesia, afraid the background story she originally planned out would have similar inconsistencies, and takes up a job as a companion for two girls in the manor as she tries to find the "drop point". In Oxford, fears grow that the virus causing the epidemic had been transmitted from the past via the time travel net, despite its scientific impossibility. This causes the acting head of the university, Mr. Gilchrist, to order the net closed, effectively stranding Kivrin in the past, even as Mr. Dunworthy tries frantically to reverse the decision. At parallel points in their respective narratives, Kivrin and Mr. Dunworthy realize that she has been sent to England at the wrong time as a result of the technician's illness: she has arrived during the Black Death pandemic in England in 1348, more than 20 years later than her intended arrival. The Black Death cuts a swathe through the Middle Ages just as the influenza overwhelms the medical staff of the 21st century. Many who could have helped Mr. Dunworthy fall ill and die, including his good friend Doctor Mary Ahrens, who dies even as she tries to save the other influenza victims. Mr. Dunworthy himself is stricken by the disease. In the fourteenth century, two weeks after Kivrin's arrival, a monk infected with the plague comes to the village. Within days, many residents of the village fall ill. Kivrin tries to care for the victims, but, lacking modern medicines, she can do little to ease their suffering. The arranged date for retrieval passes with neither side able to make it. At last, in desperation, Mr. Dunworthy arranges with Badri to send himself back in time to rescue Kivrin. In the Middle Ages, Kivrin can only watch while all the people she has come to know die from the Black Death, the last being Father Roche, the priest who found her when she was sick and brought her to the manor. Father Roche insisted on staying with his parishioners, despite Kivrin's attempts to arrange an escape, as he feels it his duty to care for them although it may mean his own death. As Roche lies dying in the chapel, he reveals that he was near the drop site when Kivrin came through, and misinterpreted the circumstances of her arrival (shimmering light, condensation, a young woman appearing out of thin air) as God delivering an angel to help during the mysterious illness sweeping through England. He dies still believing that she is God's messenger to him and his congregation, while Kivrin comes to appreciate his selfless devotion to his work and to God. As she sits in the graveyard, unable to dig a grave or finish tolling the peal for his death, her rescuers, Mr. Dunworthy and Colin (the adventurous great-nephew of Doctor Mary Ahrens), arrive from the future (having found a horse and located her by the sound of the bell). They barely recognize her: her hair is cropped short (from when she was sick with the flu), she is wearing a boy's jerkin, and she is covered in dirt and blood from tending to the sick and dying. The three return to 21st-century England shortly after New Year's Day.
1334565	/m/04tlqw	This Sweet Sickness	Patricia Highsmith	1961	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 David Kelsey leads a double life. During the week he lives under his real name at Mrs. McCartney's boarding house and has a well-paid job as a scientist. During the weekends, while pretending to visit his invalid mother at a nursing home (his mother has in fact been dead for quite some time), he assumes the identity of William Neumeister and stays at an isolated house which he bought under that name. "Neumeister" sees himself as a success at whatever he does, whereas Kelsey considers himself a failure. In both his lives he is a recluse. He has bought and furnished his house for Annabelle, the love of his life, who in reality has never come to visit him. Every weekend he cooks dinner for two, with Annabelle present only in his imagination. One weekend two of his coworkers, Wes Carmichael and Effie Brennan secretly follow him. On this occasion they see him enter the house without realising that it is his own and without Kelsey noticing it. Kelsey suffers under what he calls "the Situation", said situation being his infatuation with Annabelle, and Annabelle's failure to reciprocate. Kelsey considers this a personal failing on his own part, blaming himself for moving away from Annabelle to take up the factory job (the irony being that he took the job in order to save money to marry Annabelle in the first place), and is so sensitive about the "Situation" that he refuses to discuss it with other people - or, if pressed, claim that he and Annabelle are due to wed in the near future, despite the fact that Annabelle never consents to marry Kelsey. At the beginning of the novel, Annabelle has already married another man, Gerald Delaney, and early on in the story gives birth to Gerald's son. Kelsey is convinced that Annabelle has made a serious mistake, and sees Delaney as a brutish, monstrous figure, but he does not give up hope of winning Annabelle back. He keeps writing her letters in which he insists that she leave her husband and marry him, and goes so far as to visit their apartment, getting into an argument with Gerald. When Kelsey writes a letter directly asking Annabelle to leave Delaney for him, Delaney is enraged and goes to the boarding house to tell Kelsey to leave them alone. Delaney is given directions by Effie to Kelsey's secret house; when Delaney arrives there, Kelsey is appalled that Delaney has tracked him down, since he had thought nobody knew that he owned the house, and confronts Delaney; with both men acting aggressively, a fight soon breaks out, in the course of which Delaney is knocked down and falls badly on the steps of Kelsey's house, breaking his neck. Kelsey calmly reports the incident at the nearest police station. The police have no reason to doubt what he tells them: that his name is Neumeister, a freelance journalist who frequently travels, that he did not know Delaney or any of his family, and that he only acted in self-defense on being attacked by a stranger. Kelsey chooses to give the Neumeister identity to the police because, whilst he could make the same self-defense argument if he had given his real name, Annabelle would then know that he had fought and killed Delaney, and Kelsey is convinced that if she discovers this he would have no hope of ever winning her back. Thus, his "Situation" becomes much more complex, since he must not only try to win back Annabelle whilst keeping the failure of his love life a secret from the world, but he must also ensure that no one ever finds out that Kelsey and Neumeister are the same person. Consequently, Kelsey builds an astonishing web of lies, betrayal and denial. When doing so, he has to rely heavily on the people surrounding him not telling anyone about their suspicions. Effie, who is in (unrequited) love with Kelsey, promises him she will never tell anyone that Kelsey and Neumeister are one and the same. When Annabelle wants to meet Neumeister in person to ask him about the circumstances of her husband's death, he writes her a very sympathetic letter (signed Neumeister), which she accepts instead of a personal meeting. Kelsey also sells his house, quits his job, gets a new one nearer to where Annabelle lives, moves out of the boarding house and buys a new house, now in his real name. He now insists on seeing Annabelle more often, and when she refuses, he discovers that she's now seeing a man called Grant Barber. Believing she's just making another mistake, he arrives at her apartment and insists she leave with him; when Grant steps in, David violently assaults him and is eventually thrown out of the building by Annabelle's neighbours,who just about render him unconscious. Matters deteriorate further when Effie and Wes arrive at his house for the weekend. After some heavy drinking and quarrelling, David suffers memory lapses, demanding Wes call him 'Bill' (as in William Neumeister). When Wes leaves, David goes upstairs and thinks he sees Annabelle lying in his bed; however, when he realises that its actually Effie, he suddenly flies into a blind rage and throws her against the wall, inadvertently breaking her neck. He leaves (unaware that he's killed her), and drives past Wes's car in the road. David stays at a motel for the night and, upon hearing about Effie's death the next morning, goes on the run, his mind rapidly degenerating into confusion and insanity. By the time Wes discovers Effie's body and the police realises that Neumeister is just Kelsey's alter ego, the latter is already in New York City. He has a leisurely day out with the imaginary Annabelle, pretending to take her to the Museum of Modern Art, clothes shopping and dinner at a fancy restaurant. However, the facade breaks down when said restaurant's head waiter ponders over the name of David Kelsey; David runs away into the night, believing himself to be accompanied by Annabelle, and eventually arrives at the home of old school acquaintance Ed Greenhouse. Ed's wife sneaks out into the apartment block hallway and calls the police, and David eventually himself on the ledge outside their ninth floor window. Following desperate attempts by the police and fire crews to save his life, he eventually jumps to his death upon seeing Annabelle standing below him.
1334787	/m/04tm2y	The Green Brain	Frank Herbert	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is set in the not-so-distant future, where humankind has all but succeeded in controlling all life on the planet and almost completely wiping out all insect life. The earth is divided into a "Green Zone" which humans totally dominate (or so they believe) and a diminishing "Red Zone" that is not yet conquered. The "Green Brain" of the title is an intelligent organism that embodies and arises from nature's resistance to human domination. It is able to command social insects to form humanoid-shaped collective organisms which it uses to infiltrate the "Green Zone". The book is about a small team sent in to the jungles of Brazil to investigate the problem, who find out that some of their assumptions were wrong. fr:Le Cerveau vert he:המוח הירוק
1335198	/m/04tmyf	The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle	Tobias Smollett	1751	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 At the beginning of the novel Peregrine is a young country gentleman. Rejected by his cruel mother, ignored by his indifferent father and hated by his degenerate brother, he is raised by Commodore Hawser Trunnion who is greatly attached to the boy. Peregrine's upbringing, education at Oxford, journey to France, his debauchery, bankruptcy, jailing at the Fleet, unexpected succeeding to the fortune of his father, his final repentance and marriage to his beloved Emilia all provide scope for Smollett's satire on human cruelty, stupidity and greed. The novel is written as a series of adventures, with every chapter typically describing a new adventure. There is also a very long independent story, "The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality", inside the novel. Peregrine Pickle features several amusing characters, most notably Commodore Hawser Trunnion, an old seaman and misogynist who lives in a "garrison" of a house with his former shipmates. Possibly, Trunnion's lifestyle helped Dickens to create Wemmick of Great Expectations. Another interesting character is Cadwallader Crabtree, an old misanthrope and Peregrine's friend, who amuses himself by playing ingenious jokes on the naive and gullible human creatures. Smollett also caricatured many of his enemies in the novel, most notably Henry Fielding and the actor David Garrick. Fitzroy Henry Lee was supposedly the model for Hawser Trunnion.
1335918	/m/04tpx4	True Women	Janice Woods Windle			 The story starts with young Euphemia Texas Ashby (Tina Majorino) and her older sister Sara McClure (Dana Delany). When Euphemia gets back to the house from picking flowers she finds out that the Sam Houston is coming to the house. Santa Anna is on his way so they must head east in the Runaway Scrape. While they attempt to cross a river Sara suffers from a miscarriage while her young son Little Johnnie dies in Euphemia's arms. Many other young and old Texans die and Euphemia is almost lost in a sea of graves. After a month and a week, Sam Houston defeats Santa Anna's army and Texas is reborn as the Republic of Texas. They now live in a new home with their horses. Their sisters Fannie and Jane Isabella come to live with them after their father dies at sea. They are very different from Sara and Phemie (Annabeth Gish) and must adapt to their new brutal life. One year later, Sarah survives an encounter with Tarantula (Michael Greyeyes), a Comanche warrior, and his band of Comanches. Later, Euphemia's close friend Matilda Lockhart (Anne Tremko)is abducted by the Comanches and only later released. When given back, the Texans discover that she was brutally tortured, and the skin is falling off her nose. Matilda is bloody and shows signs of beating everywhere. She never fully recovers from her time with the Indians. Euphemia is now sixteen and almost gets attacked by a panther when William King (Matthew Glave), a boy who she only dreams about frequently, saves her. They continue to talk every day for the next five years and then get married. Sara's own husband dies in battle and she gets remarried to a musician. She has a few children with William while they live happily together with the slave Tildy (Khadijah Karriem) and their horses, among the few Dancer. Euphemia meets Tarantula once again at a show (he is one of the actors) and since he is walking far for an old man, she gives him Dancer, her best horse. He gives her the name "Brave Squaw Child". This is the end of Euphemia's life in the book. Now we meet Georgia Lawshe Woods (Angelina Jolie) as she falls in love with a doctor at the age of fifteen and has children years later. Before all that her parents, Julie Carmen and Michael York want to leave Georgia because Cherokee, Georgia's mother is part Creek Indian and they were being driven out. They wanted to leave before they were forced to. Georgia is fifteen and at Swann Lake when a rogue goose attacks her and Colonial Doctor Peter Woods (Jeffrey Nordling) tends to her wounds. She finds herself falling in love with this man and they get married the same year. They have five or four children a few years later and head to Texas where things will be better. Along the way Georgia has doubts but Peter wants to keep going. They live in Texas for a while but find out the river is infected with cholera, the disease. They move again and Georgia and Euphemia meet when Sam Houston keeps them together. There is a bit more to Georgia's life and then it switches to Bettie Moss.
1336067	/m/04tq7p	Bhowani Junction	John Masters			 The book is set in 1946/1947, shortly before India gained independence. Victoria is an Anglo-Indian, the daughter of a railwayman. Patrick, also an Anglo-Indian, considers himself her boyfriend, but her feelings towards him have become ambivalent since her experience of British Army culture (see below). In vigorously defending herself from a British army officer who is attempting to rape her, Victoria unintentionally kills him. She is persuaded not to report the matter by a subordinate of Patrick's, a Sikh, Ranjit, who hopes to marry her and whose family and friends help her to avoid detection. As presented in the novel (though rather simplified in the film), Victoria had earlier decided to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Anglo-Indian community by joining the British Army during the Second World War. With the war's end and her return home, however, she is confronted with the problem of her identity all over again. She decides to get engaged to Ranjit in an attempt to become assimilated in wider Indian society—since British rule is visibly on its way out—but then she realises that such a marriage would require her to give up her name (and, essentially, her identity). She runs away from the Sikhs and literally into the arms of a dashing British officer, Rodney Savage (commander of a Gurkha battalion), becoming both his lover and his unofficial adjutant in the last hectic days of British rule in India. But in the end she realises that she cannot escape her origins, and—rejecting both the Indian man and the British one—chooses Patrick, an Anglo-Indian like herself. Rodney Savage recognises that he is losing out to his social inferior, but realises that he is powerless to prevent it. Patrick for his part begins to realise that, in the new India, his children might have a chance of becoming anyone they want to, rather than having to stick to the Anglo-Indians' traditional role of working on the railways. In the film version of Bhowani Junction, Patrick dies heroically, rather than surviving to win Victoria as in the novel. In the film, it is Rodney Savage who gets the girl. The change was presumably required because the book's conclusion was in contradiction to the conventions of Hollywood, in which dashing European officers, played by leading movie stars like Stewart Granger, are not expected to lose out to gauche, mixed-race railway-workers played by less-established actors (as Bill Travers was in 1956).
1337192	/m/04ttch	Fences	August Wilson			 The focus of Wilson's attention in Fences is Troy, a 53-year-old head of household who struggles with providing for his family and with his obsession with cheating death. The location is never specified but seems to be Pittsburgh as there are several references to some of its notable institutions. Troy was a great baseball player in his younger years, having spent time practicing in prison for an accidental murder he'd committed during a robbery. Because the color barrier had not yet been broken in Major League Baseball, Troy was unable to make good money or to save for the future. He now lives a menial, though respectable life of trash collecting--remarkably crossing the race barrier and becoming a driver instead of just a barrel lifter. He lives with his wife, Rose, his son Cory (who still lives in the house at the play's opening), and Troy's younger brother Gabriel, an ex-soldier whose war injury to his head causes him to often act crazy. Lyons is Troy's son from a previous marriage, and lives outside the home. Bono is Troy's best friend. Troy had taken Gabriel's money that he'd been entitled to for his injury, and bought the house he currently lives in. A short time before the play's opening, Garbriel has rented a room elsewhere, but still in the neighborhood. The play begins on payday, with Troy and Bono drinking and talking. Troy's character is revealed through his speech about how he went up to their boss, Mr. Rand, and asked why Black men are not allowed to drive garbage trucks (Troy works as a garbage man); Rose and Lyons join in the conversation. Lyons, a musician, has come to borrow for money from Troy, confident that he will receive it and promises to pay him back because his girlfriend Bonnie just got a job. Troy gives his son a hard time, but eventually gives him the requested ten dollars after Rose persuades him to do so. About mid-play, an affair between Troy and a woman named Alberta (who is never seen in the play) is revealed, followed by the discovery that Alberta is pregnant. She dies during childbirth. Seven years later, Troy has died. During this final act, Raynell, the daughter conceived in Troy's union with Alberta, is seen as a happy seven-year-old; Cory comes home from military training. He initially refuses to go to his father's funeral due to long-standing resentment, but is convinced by his mother to pay his respects to his father—the man who, though hard-headed and often poor at demonstrating affection, nevertheless loved his son. The fence referred to by the play's title is revealed to be finished in the final act of the play, and Bono has bought his wife a refrigerator as he promised Troy he would do if he finished building it. It is not immediately known why Troy wants to build it, but a dramatic monologue in the second act shows how he conceptualizes it as an allegory—to keep the Grim Reaper away. Rose also wanted to build the fence and forced her husband to start it as a means of securing what was her own, keeping what belonged inside in and what should stay outside stay out.
1337680	/m/04tvty	The Adventure of the Dancing Men	Arthur Conan Doyle			 Mr. Hilton Cubitt of Ridling Thorpe Manor in Norfolk visits Sherlock Holmes and gives him a piece of paper with this mysterious sequence of stick figures. The little dancing men are at the heart of a mystery which seems to be driving his young wife Elsie to distraction. He married her about a year ago, and until recently, everything was well. She is American, and before the wedding, she asked her husband-to-be to promise her never to ask about her past, as she had had some “very disagreeable associations” in her life, although she said that there was nothing that she was personally ashamed of. Mr. Cubitt swore the promise and, being an honourable English gentleman, insists on living by it, which is one of the things causing difficulty at Ridling Thorpe Manor. The trouble began when Elsie received a letter from the United States, which evidently disturbed her, and she threw the letter on the fire. Then the dancing men appeared, sometimes on a piece of paper left on the sundial overnight, sometimes scrawled in chalk on a wall or door, even a windowsill. Each time, their appearance has an obvious, terrifying effect on Elsie, but she will not tell her husband what is going on. Holmes tells Cubitt that he wants to see every occurrence of the dancing men. They are to be copied down and brought or sent to him at 221B Baker Street. Cubitt duly does this, and it provides Holmes with an important clue. Holmes comes to realize that it is a substitution cipher. He cracks the code by frequency analysis. The last of the messages conveyed by the dancing men is a particularly alarming one. Holmes rushes down to Ridling Thorpe Manor only to find Cubitt dead of a bullet to the heart and his wife gravely wounded in the head. Inspector Martin of the Norfolk Constabulary believes that it is a murder-suicide, or will be if Elsie dies. She is the prime suspect in her husband’s death. Holmes sees things differently. Why is there a bullet hole in the windowsill, making a total of three shots, while Cubitt and his wife were each only shot once? Why are only two chambers in Cubitt’s revolver empty? What is the large sum of money doing in the room? The discovery of a trampled flowerbed just outside the window, and the discovery of a shell casing therein confirm what Holmes has suspected &mdash; a third person was involved, and it is surely the one who has been sending the curious dancing-man messages. Holmes knows certain things that Inspector Martin does not. He seemingly picks the name “Elrige’s” out of the air, and Cubitt’s stable boy recognizes it as a local farmer’s name. Holmes quickly writes a message &mdash; in dancing men characters &mdash; and sends the boy to Elrige’s Farm to deliver it to a lodger there, whose name he has also apparently picked out of the air. Of course, Holmes has learned both men's names by reading the dancing men code. While waiting for the result of this message, Holmes takes the opportunity to explain to Watson and Inspector Martin how he cracked the code of the dancing men, and the messages are revealed. The last one, which caused Holmes and Watson to rush to Norfolk, read “ELSIE PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD”. The lodger, Mr. Abe Slaney, another American, unaware that Elsie is at death’s door and quite unable to communicate, duly arrives at Ridling Thorpe Manor a short while later, much to everyone’s astonishment, except Holmes’s. He has sent for Slaney using the dancing men, knowing that Slaney will believe that the message is from Elsie. He is seized as he comes through the door. He tells the whole story. He is a former lover from Chicago and has come to England to woo Elsie back. She originally fled his clutches because he was a dangerous criminal, as Holmes has found out through telegraphic inquiries to the US. When an encounter at the window where the killing happened turned violent with Hilton Cubitt's appearance in the room, Slaney pulled out his gun and shot back at Cubitt, who had already shot at him. Cubitt was killed and Slaney fled. Apparently, Elsie then shot herself. Slaney seems genuinely upset that Elsie has come to harm. The threatening nature of some of his dancing-man messages is explained by Slaney's losing his temper at Elsie's apparent unwillingness to leave her husband. The money found in the room was apparently to have been a bribe to make Slaney go away. Slaney is arrested and later tried. He escapes the noose owing to mitigating circumstances. Elsie recovers from her serious injuries and spends her life helping the poor and administering her late husband’s estate.
1338017	/m/04twl3	His Last Bow	Arthur Conan Doyle			 On the eve of the First World War, Von Bork, a German agent, is getting ready to leave England with his vast collection of intelligence, gathered over a four-year period. His wife and household have already left Harwich for Flushing in the Netherlands, leaving only him and his elderly housekeeper. Von Bork and his diplomat friend Baron von Herling disparage their British hosts, having judged them rather negatively. Von Herling is impressed at his friend's collection of vital British military secrets, and tells Von Bork that he will be received in Berlin as a hero. Von Bork indicates that he is waiting for one last transaction with his Irish-American informant Altamont, who will arrive shortly. The treasure will prove rich, Von Bork thinks: naval signals. Von Herling leaves and Von Bork gets to work packing the contents of his safe. He then hears another car arriving. It is Altamont. By this time, the old housekeeper has turned her light off and retired. Von Bork greets Altamont, and Altamont shows him the package that he has brought. Altamont proceeds to disparage Von Bork's safe, but Von Bork proudly says that nothing can cut through the metal, and that it has a double combination lock. He even tells Altamont the combination: “August 1914”. Altamont then insinuates that German agents get rid of their informants when they are finished with them, naming several who have ended up in prison. Von Bork is left to make excuses for these events. Altamont's mistrust of Von Bork is evident in his refusal to hand over the package before he gets his cheque. Von Bork, for his part, claims the right to examine the document before handing Altamont the cheque which he has written. Altamont hands him the package, and upon opening it, it turns out to be a book called Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, hardly what he expected. Even less expected is the chloroform-soaked rag that was held in his face by Altamont a moment later. Altamont, it turns out, is none other than Sherlock Holmes, and the chauffeur who brought him is, of course, Dr. Watson. Now much older than in their heyday, they have nonetheless not only caught several spies (Holmes is actually responsible for the imprisoned agents, of course) in their return from retirement, but fed the Germans some thoroughly untrustworthy intelligence. Holmes has been on this case for two years, and it has taken him to Chicago, Buffalo, and Ireland, where he learnt to play the part of a bitter Irish-American, even gaining the credentials of a member of a secret society. He then identified the security leak through which British secrets were reaching the Germans. The housekeeper was part of the plot, too. The light that she switched off was the signal to Holmes and Watson that the coast was clear. They remove Von Bork and all the evidence, and drive him to Scotland Yard, where his welcome will not be as triumphant as the one that was awaiting him in Berlin. After the story has concluded, it is revealed that Holmes has retired from active detective work. He spends his days beekeeping in the countryside and writing his definitive work on investigation. The story is the last chronological instalment of the series, though yet another collection (The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes), set before the story, was published four years later. In reference to the impending World War I, Holmes concludes, :"There's an east wind coming, Watson." :"I think not, Holmes. It is very warm." :"Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared." The patriotic sentiment of the above passage has been widely quoted, and was later used in the final scene of the Basil Rathbone film Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), set in World War II although it is presented as if Holmes were quoting Churchill.
1338401	/m/04txhx	Amazing Rain				 The book begins with the main character describing the city he (or she; the character's gender is unclear) lives in, "the city you can not see out of". Many of the city's residents believe it is impossible to leave the city, but the main character suggests that he and the reader should leave, "because there is something I want to talk to you about". Leaving the city, the main character and the reader drive until their car breaks down, at which point they continue on foot until they come across a house where a strange person (who looks like what is presumably an alien on the explodingdog site) invites them in, offers them soup, and tells stories. The first story is the story of the king, a narrative about a king who believes he has improved the land he rules, making his people happy (by forcing them to wear happy masks, a point that is not mentioned in the narrative but clear from the artwork). The king has also built "an amazing army" and "wonderful weapons". Next, the alien host tells about the future. For example, in the future we will get our food over the internet. The title of the book comes from the statement that, "in the future, the rain will never mess up your hair". In the end, with the king's rockets raining down on them, the main character and the reader flee. The main character has decided that "I love you" and "I want us to be together". Torn to shreds by the rockets, they flee into the ocean, where they are eaten by fish.
1338606	/m/04ty03	The Long Ships	Frans Gunnar Bengtsson			 The first book covers the years 982 to 990. While still a youth, Orm is taken captive by a Viking party raiding the sheepfold of his father's farm in Skåne after an unprofitable campaign among the Wends. The party consists of three ships, some 180 men, led by Krok. Orm is accepted as a crew member and makes a lifelong friend of Toke Greygullson. They sail south, along the coast of the Frankish Empire. They collect an escaped prisoner, Solomon, an Andalusian Jew. Solomon guides them to the castle of the Castilian Margrave who had betrayed him. The Vikings sack the castle and take the spoils to the ships, Solomon returning to his own land. As they sail off, they are attacked and defeated by an Andalusian fleet, and Orm together with Krok and seven others are captured and made slaves. They serve as galley slaves for more than two years, during which time Orm becomes left-handed (due to his position on the rowing bench), and Krok dies killing their hated supervisor. Thanks to the intervention of Solomon, the surviving eight Norsemen are made members of the slave-bodyguard of Al-Mansur. They nominally convert to Islam and take part in Al-Mansur's campaigns in the Marca Hispanica for four years. Raiding Iria Flavia, the burial place of St. James, Al-Mansur charges the Norsemen with shipping a captured bell of the Christian church back to Cordova. On their way back, they encounter and slay the killers of Krok, and are forced to flee Andalusia, taking the bell with them. They cross to Ireland, and learning that Brian Boru has gained the upper hand over the Norse there, continue directly to the court of Harold Bluetooth. Harald has recently converted to Christianity, and they present him with the bell of St. James, upon which Harald invites them to celebrate Yule with him. Both Orm and Toke are wounded in duels during Yule. After convalescence, during which he meets Ylva, daughter of Harold, and presents her with a golden necklace given to him by Al-Mansur, Orm returns to Skåne. Toke runs off with an Andalusian slave-concubine of Harald's and continues back home to Blekinge. The one-eyed Rapp, another of Orm's companions from Andalusia, stays with him, being an outlaw in his home district. After King Harald dies in exile, and Styrbjörn the Strong in the Battle of the Fýrisvellir (moved to 991 in the book, historically probably taking place a few years before), Orm and Rapp join a Viking party raiding England under Thorkell the High, participating in the Battle of Maldon. The Norsemen set siege to the church of Maldon, and after negotiation with two English bishops agree to accept payment of Danegeld. The chieftains agree to be baptized, and travel to London for the occasion. Orm, having learned that Harald's daughter Ylva is staying in London, agrees to be baptised, and Poppo, former bishop of Harald, joins them in Christian matrimony. Orm, Ylva, Rapp and the priest Willibald leave London for Denmark, and collect the necklace Ylva had hidden in Jellinge, now Sweyn's stronghold. Sweyn's men discover them, and fleeing, Willibald wounds Sweyn with a stone throw. Fearing Sweyn's revenge, Orm moves to a neglected farm, his mother's inheritance in Göinge, northern Skåne, near the border with Småland. During the following years (992 to 995), Orm prospers, and Ylva gives birth to twin girls (Oddny and Ludmilla), a son, Harald, and later to another son, Svarthöfde (Blackhair in the Michael Meyer translation). Orm beats off a treacherous attack sponsored by Sweyn, and Willibald advises against killing the surviving attackers, forcing them to be baptised instead. At the Thing between the men of Göinge, Värend and Finnveden, Orm renews his friendship with Toke, who has gained wealth as a fur trader in Värend. Rainald, a Christian priest who had come to the Thing with Orm to be exchanged for a priest enslaved by the Värenders, disrupts a fertility ceremony, causing the death of a priest of Frey. He is given to the women of Värend as recompense. The year 1000 passes without Christ returning. In 1007, with Orm now forty-two, his brother Are returns from the east, blind, mute and mutilated. He succeeds in telling of his fate with the help of runes. He had left Skåne in 978 and served in the Varangian guard of Basil II. Are participated in a raid on a Bulgar castle at the mouths of the Danube with the aim of capturing the gold treasure of the Bulgar king. The emperor's treasurer made away with the gold, heading for Kiev, and Are pursued him. He managed to recapture the gold and hid it in the Dniepr, at the cataracts south of Kiev, but was later caught and mutilated, and with much luck made his way home to Denmark. Orm decides to travel to Kievan Rus for the gold, and together with Toke and the Värend chieftain Olof (who is promised Orm's daughter Ludmilla upon their return) mans a ship. They travel by way of Visby, reaching the Dniepr via the Daugava and Beresina. They find the treasure, but are attacked by Pechenegs, and Orm's son Svarthöfde is captured. Orm pays a high ransom, but enough of the treasure remains to liberally reward his entire crew. They return to Skåne safely, just four days after Orm's farm has been attacked by outlaws, led by the former priest Rainald, who have abducted Ludmilla and other women. Orm heads a punitive expedition, the women are freed and Olof slays Rainald. From then on, Orm and Toke live in peace and plenty as good neighbours, and Svarthöfde Ormsson becomes a famous Viking, fighting for Canute the Great. The story ends with the statement that Orm and Toke in their old age "did never tire of telling of the years when they had rowed the Caliph's ship and served my lord Al-Mansur."
1338805	/m/04tycz	Up at the Villa	W. Somerset Maugham		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The action takes place in the late 1930s. 30 year-old Mary Panton, whose extraordinary beauty has always been one of her greatest assets, has been a widow for one year. Her late husband Matthew, whom she married when she was 21 because she was really in love with him, turned out to be an alcoholic, a gambler, a womanizer, and a wife-beater. However, Mary Panton patiently endures all the hardship and pain inflicted on her by her husband (including him having sex with her while drunk). When he drinks and drives he has a car accident and eventually, a few hours later, dies in Mary's arms. This, she concludes, is a blessing for both of them. The Leonards&mdash;a couple who never appear in the novella&mdash;offer her their 16th century villa on a hill above Florence, Italy, to stay there for some time, and she gladly takes them up on it. The old villa is staffed by two people&mdash;Nina, the maid, and Ciro, her husband, a manservant&mdash;but otherwise empty. Mary, whose parents are both dead, enjoys the solitary life up at the villa. Occasionally, she joins other highbrow residents of, and visitors to, Florence for a party or luncheon. Also, she likes driving round the countryside in her car. So far it has never occurred to her to take a lover&mdash;whether this is because she considers it immoral, because it may cause a scandal or because she does not feel the need remains obscure; what she does say is that it has been easy for her to do without one because she has never been tempted. During dinner at a restaurant together with some of her acquaintances&mdash;among them the old Princess San Ferdinando, an American who is said to have been quite a loose woman in her day&mdash;they listen to a young man playing the violin. He is ridiculously dressed up in folkloristic clothes and not good at all at playing the instrument. At the end of the evening, the Princess tries to set Mary up with Rowley Flint, a young Englishman of independent means whose reputation is very bad, by asking her to give him a lift back to the hotel where he is staying. Flint actually makes a pass at her, but she rejects him and just laughs at him when he even proposes to her. They both seem to know without speaking that this proposal of marriage could not be meant seriously. After she has dropped him off at the hotel, she drives back home. On her way up to the villa, although it is late at night and dark, she stops to have a look at the scenery. She senses that there is someone else quite close to her. This other person turns out to be Karl Richter, the fiddler from the restaurant, also admiring the view. They strike up a conversation, and Mary learns that he is a 23 year-old Austrian art student who has recently fled the country because he was being persecuted by the Nazis, and now, without a passport or any other documents, is staying as an illegal immigrant in a shabby rented room at the foot of the hill quite close to the Leonards' villa. Mary takes pity on the poor boy and, on the spur of the moment, asks him if he wants to come up with her to have a look at the precious paintings in the villa. Once there, it turns out that, due to his having no money, Richter has not had dinner. With the servants long gone to bed, Mary fixes him some bacon and eggs. They have wine with their improvised meal. One thing leads to another, and they end up in bed. Earlier that same night, when taking leave of Flint, Mary confessed to him that if she ever had sex outside marriage it would have to be with a poor man whom she pitied; and it would only be once. This kind of foreboding now becomes reality. When Mary thinks it is time for Richter to leave and the latter, to her dismay, asks when he will be able to see her again, the idyllic situation quickly deteriorates. Mary remembers the revolver her suitor, 54 year-old Sir Edgar Swift, has forced upon her as a means of protection. When Richter starts insulting and threatening her, she pulls it out of her handbag, aims it at Richter, but then cannot summon up the courage to pull the trigger. She wants to do him good, advising him to try and escape to Switzerland, but to no avail. Richter feels utterly humiliated when he learns from Mary that she has only slept with him out of pity. He says he saw a goddess in her, but now she is just a whore for him. It is then that Mary Panton's nightmare begins: Richter with a swift gesture picks her up and roughly throws her on her bed, before covering her face with kisses. She tries to get away from him but as he is much stronger than her, she is powerless and ceases to resist. A few minutes later in a fit of remorse over what he sees as the impossibility of life since escaping his homeland Richter announces You asked me not to forget you. I shall forget, but you won't, then in the dark he shoots himself through the breast with Swift's gun. There is only little blood due to the internal haemorrhage Richter inflicted on himself. Nina, her maid, hears the shot and presently knocks at her bedroom door. Mary panics and sends her away without opening. Then she phones Rowley Flint and asks him to help her. As taxis are not available all night, Flint borrows the hotel porter's bicycle and then walks up the hill to the villa. They have to think fast as there are only a few hours left before the break of the new day. Mary Panton is prepared to accept full responsibility for her actions. But then Flint has the idea that the two of them might just as well try to dispose of the body. Flint and Panton drag the body out of the house and into Mary's car. Then they drive along the highway and finally turn into a country lane. There, in the dark of the night, Flint dumps the body. A dangerous situation arises when a car full of drunk Italians approaches. The driver has difficulty passing Mary's car and has to slow down almost to a halt. When the party see Mary and Flint, who are embracing each other, pretending to be lovers, they start singing "La donna è mobile" and drive on. On the following morning, in broad daylight, Flint returns to this spot to throw away the revolver, which they forgot the night before. On the following morning Mary Panton sleeps almost until noon. She has an invitation for luncheon, and Flint has inculcated upon her not to show any signs of panic or fear or whatever, so she goes there. Her guilty conscience is her constant companion though. The situation becomes even more complicated with the impending arrival of Sir Edgar Swift, who has known her and her parents since she was a little child, and who politely retreated when she got married to Matthew Panton. Now Swift has gathered new hope ever since she has been widowed. Shortly before Richter's suicide, he had informed her of his impending promotion to a high government post in colonial India. As he will have to do a lot of entertaining, he is looking for a suitable wife, and he actually proposes to Mary before he flies off to Cannes on urgent government business. Mary tells him she will give him an answer when he is back in Florence. When Swift comes up to the villa Mary has already made up her mind to confess everything to him. After listening to her story he says that he forgives her and that he still wants to marry her. At the same time, however, he declares that he will not be in a position to accept the post he has been so eager to get, claiming that if his wife's criminal past caught up with them, the ensuing scandal might even jeopardize the Empire. He suggests the following course of action: He retires, they get married, and then they move to the French Côte d'Azur. Mary, however, objects to that: She tells him bluntly she is not in love with him and that she could not stand his presence 24 hours a day. After Swift has left, Flint turns up at the villa again, remarking that he does not "keep all [his] goods in the shop window": He owns an estate in Kenya, and has also read Dr Johnson, so all of a sudden he does appear eligible to Mary. She remembers the previous night, their emergency embrace in the dark country lane, which she found not wholly unpleasant. And, agreeing with him that life is all about taking risks, she decides to accept his proposal this time.
1339238	/m/04tz9r	The Taggerung	Brian Jacques	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 His birth was a long-awaited legend, full of mystery and promise, among the outlaw Juska tribes along the western shore. Denoted by a unique mark on his right paw, the Taggerung is a fearsome fighter (In the story, the word 'Taggerung' literally means a warrior of unbeatable strength, courage, and savagery), a warrior the likes of which has not been seen for many seasons.(Sawney Rath's father was the most recent). When a seer from one tribe predicted his birth at Redwall Abbey, Sawney Rath, leader of the Juskarath, sets out to capture the Taggerung. In Mossflower Woods, Rillflag an otter from Redwall is completing a birth ritual with his newborn son, Deyna, when Sawney Rath and his tribe of vermin ambush him. Vallug Bowbeast, a deadly ferret of the Juska Tribe murders Rillflag and captures the legendary infant. Sawney renames the young otter Zann Juskarath Taggerung or "Tagg" for short, determined to raise him as his own son, and to bring the Taggerung under his control. As Tagg begins to grow older, he finds himself at odds with his fellow tribe members. He refuses to become violent and soon finds himself as the only member of the tribe who has never killed for fun, or at all. When Sawney orders him to skin a runaway fox named Felch, Tagg refuses, enraging Sawney. Finding the roles reversed, Tagg flees and finds himself pursued by the ferret leader of the Juskarath. Unfortunately for Rath, his chase is short-lived, as he is soon murdered by the ambitious stoat Antigra with a slingstone. Antigra hates Sawney Rath because she wishes her son, Gruven to be named as the Taggerung, and because of that, Sawney Rath had murdered her husband. Sawney's death enables her bumbling son Gruven Zann to take control of the newly renamed Juskazann tribe. The vixen seer Grissoul tells Gruven he must hunt down the former Taggerung and bring back his head. Only then will some other ambitious Juska warriors accept him as their leader. To aid him in his quest, Gruven recruits a small band of vermin including Vallug Bowbeast, the deadly assassin, and Eefera, a high-ranking weasel, to continue the hunt for the Taggerung. Unfortunately for Gruven, his band of vermin would rather kill him than follow his orders, if only the opportunity presented itself. They are too accustomed to following Sawney's orders to listen to the newly appointed chief. Tagg runs away to find a pear tree, which he eats from and is reprimanded by two voles. They decide he won't hurt them and invite him back to their home to eat stew and meet their nice friends. He enjoys this very much and would love to stay, but sadly, he knows that the Juskarath are chasing him. He bids them a bittersweet goodbye and sets off in a boat they give him. In his travels, Tagg befriends a similarly mysterious (and, unlike Tagg, prone to telling lies) harvest mouse named Nimbalo the Slayer, by saving him from a deadly snake from the mountains. Finding themselves in the company of a pygmy shrew colony, they rest until they are attacked by Gruven and his band of vermin, slowing diminishing one by one. Gruven and his band start a landslide, killing and burying many pygmy shrews. As Tagg chases the attackers of his newfound companions, the vermin scatter, leaving only one unfortunate member behind. Under the harsh gaze of Tagg, and the threat of being thrown to the pygmy shrews who lost loved ones in the landslide, the long-time member of Rath's old tribe reveals all, including the name of Tagg's true home: Redwall Abbey. At the same time, Eefera the weasel and Vallug Bowbeast, the most rebellious vermin under Gruven's command, decide to desert Gruven, deciding that him and the other two remaining hordebeasts would die in the mountain. They, being better trackers than Gruven, decide to follow the Taggerung and kill him, to bring his head back to the tribe and claim leadership over the Juskas. But they are both silently trying to find an opportunity to kill the other, which is eventually their downfall. When Tagg arrives at Redwall, he's mistaken for the one of the members of the band of Juska supposed to be hunting him, knocked out and locked up in the cellars. He's then released on impulse by the assistant cook Broggle when the Juska, Eefara and Vallug, who have now captured Gruven and the other vermin, are threatening to kill Nimbalo, but then their plans go wrong. Tagg goes out to fight, and slays Vallug and Eefara, at the same time getting shot with an arrow by Vallug Bowbeast while Nimbalo goes after another rat. Then, Filorn, Tagg's mother, recognizes her son. Cregga Rose Eyes, the ancient blind badgermum, after being shot in the chest with an arrow, appoints Deyna's sister, Mhera, as the new Abbess of Redwall, succeeding Abbess Songbreeze, and then dies shortly after. Rukky Garge, a local otterfixer, manages to remove the distinguishing mark of the Taggerung from Deyna's paw, remove his tattoos, and remove the arrow. Deyna's quest is not quite over, however, as the fox Ruggan Bor, now commanding the remnants of the Juskazann tribe as well as followers of his own, the Juskabor, shortly arrives to attack the stronghold of Redwall Abbey. Due to Gruven's bragging on his return, they now believe the Taggerung is dead and seek to confirm this rumor. As chance may have it, however, the badger ruler of Salamandastron, Russano the Wise, arrives in time to fend off Bor's attack, sending him and his vermin crew crawling on their bellies off into the sunset. Russano then takes a medal from around his neck and draps it over Cregga Rose Eyes's grave, because she was his adoptive mother many seasons before this terrible battle happened, and that was the real reason Russano came to Redwall, to see her.
1339241	/m/04tzb2	Marlfox	Brian Jacques	1998	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The wandering Noonvale companions travel to Redwall, where they wish to mount a show. on the way, however, they learn that the Marlfoxes will attempt to seize Redwall, and hasten onward to warn them, while Guosim from another part of Mossflower do the same. The Marlfoxes consist of High Queen Silth and her brood. They are different from other foxes in their fur, which gives them the ability to blend in to almost any surrounding, invisible to all but the keenest eye. This ability has given rise to the false rumor that the Marlfoxes possess magic, which they do not. However, Marlfoxes are highly agile and skilled with axes. Castle Marl, home of the Marlfoxes, is situated in the middle of an enormous inland sea, on the island that was once home to Badger Lord Urthwyte the Mighty. The Marlfoxes command a vast army of water rats, and they travel around the country seeking rare and priceless artifacts. The Marlfoxes, backed by an army of water rats, mount a successful invasion of Redwall and steal the tapestry of the long dead hero, Martin the Warrior. The Marlfox Ziral, however, is slain, and the remaining Marlfoxes swear revenge on the citizens of Redwall. Mokkan, one of the Marlfoxes, escapes with the tapestry, leaving his siblings behind. Three young Redwallers, Songbreeze Swifteye, Dannflor Reguba, and a Guosim shrew named Dippler set out after Mokkan, trying to retrieve the tapestry. They meet Burble, a water vole, and have many adventures and meet many friends who help them on their journey, such as the ginormous hedgehog Sollertree,who lost his daughter Nettlebud to the Marlfoxes and water rats, and the Mighty Megraw, a large osprey who used to live by the Marlfox island but was driven away in an ambush by magpies. Meanwhile, the remaining Marlfoxes lay siege to Redwall. After a series of battles, Songbreeze's father Janglur Swifteye, Dannflor's father Rusvul Reguba, Cregga Rose Eyes, and many others fight off the remaining army, killing the remaining Marlfoxes and restoring peace to Redwall. In a discrepancy the rats were divided into eight groups, but one group was sent each way. Song, Dann, Dippler and Burble meet some new friends and set out into the great lake to the island. Mokkan finds that Silth has been killed by one of his sisters, Lantur. He promptly kills her by pushing her into the lake, proclaiming himself King. However, the companions arrive and overthrow the water rat army. Mokkan escapes in a boat, but an escaped slave, whom we find out is Nettlebud, throws a chain at him and knocks him into the lake, where he is eaten by pike. The surviving water rats are left on the island to become peaceful creatures and farm the land, and the companions return home to Redwall, where Songbreeze Swifteye is named Abbess and Dannflor Reguba is named Abbey Champion by Cregga Rose Eyes, Redwall's blind badgermum. Dippler is named Log-a-log, and Burble is named Chief of the Watervoles. At the end of the novel is a note, stating that the entire tale was made into a drama, edited by one Florian Dugglewoof Wilffachop.
1339254	/m/04tzcg	Mattimeo	Brian Jacques	1989	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mattimeo is a direct sequel to Redwall and Mossflower, taking place eight seasons after the events of the first novel. The peaceful woodland creatures of Redwall Abbey are busy preparing for a feast during the summer equinox. Matthias and Cornflower have had a son named Mattimeo, who has been generally spoiled throughout his life. Meanwhile, the masked fox Slagar the Cruel and his gang of slavers are planning to enter Redwall Abbey during one of their feasts. Slagar, a villainous fox craving revenge for a crime never committed against him, intends to capture slaves from Redwall and take them to an underground kingdom ruled by a mysterious, god-like figure named Malkariss to be sold as slaves. After drugging the Abbey residents, he kidnaps Mattimeo, Tim and Tess Churchmouse, Cynthia Bankvole, and Sam Squirrel. They meet Auma, (a young badger maid) and Jube, (a hedgehog), who were also kidnapped by Slagar the Cruel. Upon discovering the children missing, Matthias, Basil Stag Hare and Jess Squirrel with the help of a few friends, leave the Abbey to hunt down Slagar and return the children back home. They encounter Cheek, an ottercub Matthias describes as "Cheek both by name and by nature". On their journey, they meet up with Orlando the Axe, the father of Auma, and Jabez Stump, the father of Jube. As they journey, they find the Guerrilla Union of Shrews in Mossflower (Guosim), and convince them to aid the travelers on their quest. Meanwhile, at the Abbey, a horde of rooks, magpies, and crows led by General Ironbeak have come to conquer it. They instantly capture most of Redwall, starting from the top and working their way down. Then, Baby Rollo, Cornflower and Mrs. Churchmouse get kidnapped by the rooks, but the remaining Abbeydwellers manage to capture the Magpie brothers Quickbill, Diptail and Brightback with drugged strawberries, courtesy of Sister May. When the magpies went to forage for food for Ironbeak's crew, they ate the strawberries. The two forces then negotiate a hostage exchange. After that, the Abbey's residents take refuge in a basement called Cavern Hole, stocked with many supplies. Then Cornflower has an idea to dress up as a ghost and scare the rooks; they succeed, but General Ironbeak doesn't fall for the trick. He traps Constance in the gatehouse, then slips his army through the barricade. After a long journey up cliffs, fighting a horde of archer rats, and crossing a desert and a gorge, Matthias's gang finally arrive at the underground kingdom of Malkariss, where Slagar has been trading his slaves. There, the heroes fight the massive army of rats, while Matthias frees the slaves held there and is reunited with his son. Then while they fight Matthias fights a large fiend called the Wearet and is thrown off a walkway into a pit where he confronts Malkariss who is revealed to be an ancient and somewhat repulsive polecat. Malkariss is about to kill Matthias with his own sword when the tyrant's slaves appear and destroy their master by pelting him with the stones and rocks which they had been using to build. Matthias frees the slaves and a great battle ensues during which Malkariss' kingdom is destroyed and his minions defeated. Later, Slagar reappears and kills Vitch, a rat slaver he worked with. Matthias and Orlando attempt to kill Slagar, who flees, only to plunge to his death down a well shaft. The company return to Redwall after Stryk Redkite kills Ironbeak and his seer Mangiz and the woodlanders of Redwall send off the remaining ravens with iron collars around their necks. The book ends with the people of Redwall celebrating with a feast.
1340015	/m/04t_yn	A Night in the Lonesome October	Roger Zelazny	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Night in the Lonesome October is narrated from the present-tense point-of-view of Snuff, the dog who is Jack the Ripper's companion. The bulk of the story takes place in London and its environs, though at one point the story detours through the dream-world described by Lovecraft in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Though never explicitly stated, various contextual clues within the story (the most obvious of which being the appearance of Sherlock Holmes (or "The Great Detective") imply that it takes place during the late Victorian period (in actuality, the year 1887 based upon Halloween full moon appearance dates for the London area as confirmed by the Royal Observatory). It is revealed as the story progresses that once every few decades, when the moon is full on the night of Halloween, the fabric of reality thins, and doors may be opened between this world and the realm of the Great Old Ones. When these conditions are right, men and women with occult knowledge may gather at a specific ritual site, to either hold the doors closed, or to help fling them open. Should the Closers win, then the world will remain as it is until the next turning... but should the Openers succeed, then the Great Old Ones will come to Earth, to remake the world in their own image (enslaving or slaughtering the human race in the process). The Openers have never yet won. These meetings are often referred to as "The Game" or "The Great Game" by the participants, who try to keep the goings-on secret from the mundane population. The various "Players" during the Game depicted in the book are archetypal characters from Victorian Era gothic fiction – Jack the Ripper (only ever referred to as "Jack"), Dracula ("The Count"), Victor Frankenstein ("The Good Doctor"), and the Wolf Man (known as "Larry Talbot", the film character's name) all make appearances. In addition, there is a Witch ("Crazy Jill"), a Clergyman (Vicar Roberts), a Druid ("Owen"), a "Mad Monk" ("Rastov" – clearly modelled after Rasputin), and Hermetic occultists ("Morris and McCab" – often mentioned as a reference to real-life Hermetic of the time MacGregor Mathers). The most unusual aspect of the story is that each Player has a familiar – an animal companion with near-human intelligence which helps complete the numerous preparations required to be ready for the ritual on the final night. The vast majority of the story describes the interactions and discussions of these animals, all from Snuff's point of view. Throughout the book, the Players slowly take sides (Opener or Closer), form alliances, make deals, oppose one another, and even kill off those who are part of the enemy camp. Events, slow-moving at first, accelerate until the night of October 31st, when the ritual takes place and the fate of the world is decided. A similar theme of the conflict around the opening of a Gate to an older world (also with references to Lovecraft's work) can be seen in Zelazny's novel Madwand.
1341271	/m/04v30q	Mao II	Don DeLillo	1991-06-20	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A reclusive novelist named Bill Gray works endlessly on a novel he chooses not to finish. He has chosen a lifestyle completely secluded from life to try to keep writing pure. He, along with his assistant Scott, believe that something is lost once a mass audience reads the work. Scott would prefer Bill didn't publish the book for fear that the mass-production of the work will destroy the "real" Bill. Bill has a dalliance with Scott's partner Karen Janney, a former member of the Unification Church who is married to Kim Jo Pak in a Unification Church Blessing ceremony in the prologue of the book. Bill, who lives as a complete recluse, accedes to be photographed by a New York photographer named Brita who is documenting writers. In dialogue with Brita and others, Bill laments that novelists are quickly becoming obsolete in an age where terrorism has supplanted art as the "raids on consciousness" that jolt and transform culture at large. Gray disappears without a word and secretly decides to accept an opportunity from Charles to travel to London to publicly speak on the behalf of a Swiss writer held hostage in war-torn Beirut. Meanhile Karen ends up living in Brita's NY apartment and spends most of her time in the homeless slums of Tompkins Square Park. In London, Bill is introduced to George Haddad, a representative of the Maoist group responsible for kidnapping the writer. Bill decides to go to Lebanon himself and negotiate the release of the writer. Cutting himself off from Charles, he flees to Cyprus where he awaits a ship that will take him to Lebanon. In Cyprus Bill is hit by a car and suffers a lacerated liver which, exacerbated by his heavy drinking, kills him in his sleep while en route to Beirut. In the epilogue, Brita goes to Beirut to photograph Abu Rashid, the terrorist responsible for the kidnapping. The fate of the hostage is never revealed, though the implication is grim. The plot unfolds with DeLillo's customary shifts of time, setting, and character.
1342018	/m/04v54m	Journey's End	R. C. Sherriff			 In the British trenches before St Quentin, Captain Hardy converses with Lieutenant Osborne, an older man and public school master, who has come to relieve him. Hardy jokes about the behaviour of Captain Stanhope, who has turned to alcohol in order to cope with the stress which the war has caused him. While Hardy jokes, Osborne defends Stanhope and describes him as "the best company commander we've got". Private Mason, a servant cook, is forever not caring about the lack of ingredients and quality of food he serves up. Second Lieutenant Trotter is a rotund soldier who likes his food; he can't stand the war and counts down each hour that he serves in the front line by drawing circles onto a piece of paper and then colouring them in. Second Lieutenant Raleigh is a young and naive officer who joins the company. Raleigh knew Stanhope from school where he was skipper at rugby and refers to him as Dennis. He admits that he requested to be sent to Stanhope's company. Osborne hints to him that Stanhope will not be the same person he knew from school as the experiences of war have changed him; however Raleigh does not seem to understand. Stanhope is angry that Raleigh has been allowed to join him and describes the boy as a hero-worshipper. As Stanhope is in a relationship with Raleigh's sister Madge, he is concerned that Raleigh will write home and inform his sister of Stanhope's drinking. Stanhope tells Osborne that he will censor Raleigh's letters so that this does not happen; Osborne does not approve. Stanhope has a keen sense of duty and feels that he must continue to serve rather than take leave to which he is entitled. He criticises another soldier, Second Lieutenant Hibbert, who he thinks is faking neuralgia in the eye so that he can be sent home instead of continuing fighting. Osborne puts a tired and somewhat drunk Stanhope to bed. Stanhope (and the other officers) refers to Osborne as 'Uncle'. Trotter and Mason converse about the bacon rashers which the company has to eat. Trotter talks about how the start of spring makes him feel youthful; he also talks about the hollyhocks which he has planted. These conversations are a way of escaping the trenches and the reality of the war. Osborne and Raleigh discuss how slowly time passes at the front, and the fact that both of them played rugby before the war and that Osborne was a schoolmaster before he signed up to fight; while Raleigh appears interested, Osborne points out that it is of little use now. Osborne describes the madness of war when describing how German soldiers allowed the British to rescue a wounded soldier in No Man's Land and the next day the two sides shelled each other heavily. He describes the war as "silly". Stanhope announces that the barbed wire around the trenches needs to be mended. It is announced that an advance will occur on Thursday morning and that this information has been gathered from a captured German soldier. They state that this means the attack is only two days away. Stanhope confiscates a letter from Raleigh insisting on his right to censor it. Stanhope is in a relationship with Raleigh's sister and is worried that, in the letter, Raleigh will reveal Stanhope's growing alcoholism. Full of self-loathing, Stanhope accedes to Osborne's offer to read the letter for him; the letter is in fact full of praise for Stanhope. The scene ends with Stanhope quietly demurring from Osborne's suggestion to re-seal the envelope. In a meeting with the Sergeant Major it is announced that the attack is taking place on Thursday. Stanhope and the Sergeant-Major discuss battle plans. The Colonel relays orders that the General wants a raid to take place on the German trench prior to the attack, "a surprise daylight raid", all previous raids having made under cover of dark, and that they want to be informed of the outcome by seven p.m. Stanhope states that such a plan is absurd and that the General and his staff merely want this so their dinner will not be delayed. The Colonel agrees with Stanhope but says that orders are orders and that they must be obeyed. Later it is stated that in a similar raid, after the British artillery bombardment, the Germans had tied red rag to the gaps in the barbed wire so that their soldiers knew exactly where to train their machine guns. It is decided that Osborne and Raleigh will be the officers to go on the raid despite the fact that Raleigh has only recently entered the war. Hibbert goes to Stanhope to complain about the neuralgia he states he has been suffering from. Stanhope states that it would be better for him to die from the pain, than for being shot for desertion. Hibbert maintains that he does have neuralgia but when Stanhope threatens to shoot him if he goes, he breaks down crying. The two soldiers admit to each other that they feel exactly the same way, and are struggling to cope with the stresses that the war is putting on them. Osborne reads aloud to Trotter from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, his chosen reading and another attempt to escape from the realities of the war. The scene ends with the idealistic Raleigh, who is untouched by the war, stating that it is "frightfully exciting" that he has been picked for the raid. There is confirmation that the raid is still going ahead. The Colonel states that a German soldier needs to be captured so that intelligence can be extracted from him. Osborne admits to Stanhope that he knows he's probably not coming back and asks Stanhope to look after his most cherished possessions and send them to his wife if he does not come back after the raid. In the minutes before going over the top Raleigh and Osborne talk about home – the New Forest and the town of Lyndhurst, in order to pass the time. Smoke-bombs are fired and the soldiers move towards the German trench, a young German soldier is captured. However Stanhope finds out that Osborne has been killed although Raleigh has survived. Stanhope sarcastically states: "It'll be awfully nice the Brigadier's pleased" when the Colonel's first concern is whether information has been gathered, not whether all the soldiers have returned safely; six of ten enlisted men have been killed. Trotter, Stanhope and Hibbert drink and talk about women. They all appear to be enjoying themselves until Hibbert is annoyed when Stanhope tells him to go to bed, and he tells Stanhope to go to bed instead, then Stanhope suddenly becomes angry and begins to shout at him and tells him to clear off and get out. Stanhope also becomes angry at Raleigh, who did not eat with the officers that night but preferred to eat with men below his rank. Stanhope is offended by this and Raleigh eventually admits that he feels he cannot eat while he thinks that Osborne is dead and his body is in No Man's Land. Stanhope is angry because Raleigh had seemed to imply that he didn't care about Osborne's death because he was eating and drinking. Stanhope yells at Raleigh that he drinks to cope with the fact that Osborne died, to forget. Stanhope asks to be left alone and angrily tells Raleigh to leave. The German attack on the British trenches approaches, and the Sergeant Major tells Stanhope they should expect heavy losses. When it arrives, Hibbert is reluctant to get out of bed and into the trenches. A message is relayed to Stanhope telling him that Raleigh has been injured by a shell and that his spine is damaged meaning that he can't move his legs. Stanhope orders that Raleigh be brought into his dugout. He comforts Raleigh while he lies in bed. Raleigh says that he is cold and that it is becoming dark; Stanhope moves the candle to his bed and goes deeper into the dugout to fetch a blanket, but, by the time he returns, Raleigh has died. The shells continue to explode in the background. Stanhope receives a message that he is needed. He gets up to leave and, after he has exited, a mortar hits the dugout causing it to collapse and entomb Raleigh's corpse. <!--SEE TALK PAGE
1342669	/m/04v6z_	Green Hills of Africa	Ernest Hemingway	1935	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Much of narrative describes Hemingway's adventures hunting in East Africa, interspersed with ruminations about literature and authors. Generally the East African landscape Hemingway describes is in the region of Lake Manyara in Tanzania. The book starts with Part 1 ("Pursuit and Conversation"), with Hemingway and a European expat in conversation about American writers. Relations between the white hunters and native trackers are described, as well as Hemingway's jealousy of the other hunters. Part 2 ("Pursuit Remembered") presents a flashback of hunting in northern Tanzania with a description of the Rift Valley and descriptions of how to field dress prey. Hemingway kills a rhino, but Karl kills a bigger one. The literary discussion moves to European writers such as Tolstoy, Flaubert, Stendhal, and Dostoevsky. In Part 3 ("Pursuit and Failure") the action returns to the present with Hemingway unlucky in hunting, unable to find a kudu he tracks. He moves to an untouched piece of country with the native trackers. In Part 4 ("Pursuit and Happiness") Hemingway and some of his trackers arrive at seemingly virgin country. There he kills a kudu bull with huge horns (52&nbsp;inches). Back in the camp, he discovers that Karl killed a kudu with bigger horns. He complains that Karl is a terrible hunter with infinite luck. On the last day he learns that many of the guides consider him a brother.
1343296	/m/04v8ts	Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ	Lew Wallace	1880-11-12	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Biblical references: Matt. 2:1-12, Luke 2:1-20 Three Magi have come from the East. Balthasar sets up a tent in the desert, where he is joined by Melchior, a Hindu, and Gaspar from Athens. They discover they have been brought together by their common goal. They see a bright star shining over the region, and take it as a sign to leave, following it through the desert toward the province of Judaea. At the Joppa Gate in Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph pass through on their way from Nazareth to Bethlehem. They stop at the inn at the entrance to the city, but there is no room. Mary is pregnant and, as labor begins, they head to a cave on a nearby hillside, where Jesus is born. In the pastures outside the city, a group of seven shepherds watch their flocks. Angels announce the Christ's birth. The shepherds hurry towards the city and enter the cave on the hillside to worship the Christ. They spread the news of the Christ's birth and many come to see him. The Magi arrive in Jerusalem and inquire for news of the Christ. Herod the Great is angry to hear of another king challenging his rule and asks the Sanhedrin to find information for him. The Sanhedrin deliver a prophecy written by Micah, telling of a ruler to come from Bethlehem Ephrathah, which they interpret to signify the Christ's birthplace. Biblical references: Luke 2:51-52 Judah Ben-Hur is a prince descended from a royal family of Judaea. Messala, his closest childhood friend and the son of a Roman tax-collector, leaves home for five years of education in Rome. He returns as a proud Roman. He mocks Judah and his religion and the two become enemies. Judah decides to go to Rome for military training in order to use his acquired skills to fight the Roman Empire. Valerius Gratus, the fourth Roman prefect of Judaea, passes by Judah's house. As Judah watches the procession, a roof tile happens to fall and hit the governor. Messala betrays Judah, who is arrested. There is no trial; Judah's family is secretly imprisoned in the Antonia Fortress and all the family property is seized. Judah vows vengeance against the Romans. He is sent as a slave to work aboard a Roman warship. On the way to the ship he meets Jesus, who offers him water, which deeply moves Judah. In Italy, Greek pirate-ships have been looting Roman vessels in the Aegean Sea. The prefect Sejanus orders the Roman Quintus Arrius to take warships to combat the pirates. Chained on one of the warships, Judah has survived three hard years as a Roman slave, kept alive by his passion for vengeance. Arrius is impressed by Judah and finds out more about his life and his story. When the ship is attacked by pirates, it starts to sink. Arrius unlocks Judah's chains so he has a chance to survive, and Judah ends up saving the Roman from drowning. They share a plank as a raft until being rescued by a Roman ship. They return to Misenum, where Arrius adopts Judah, making him a freedman and a Roman citizen. Judah Ben-Hur trained in wrestling for five years in the Palaestra in Rome before becoming the heir of Arrius after his death. While traveling to Antioch on state business, Judah learns that his real father's chief servant, the slave Simonides, lives in a house in this city, and has the trust of Judah's father's possessions. Judah visits Simonides, who listens to his story but demands more proof of his identity. Ben-Hur says he has no proof, but asks if Simonides knows of the fate of Judah's mother and sister. He says he knows nothing and Judah leaves the house. Simonides hires his servant Malluch to spy on Judah to see if his story is true and to learn more about him. Malluch meets and befriends Judah in the Grove of Daphne, and they go to the games stadium together. There, Ben-Hur finds his old rival Messala racing one of the chariots, preparing for a tournament. The Sheik Ilderim announces that he is looking for a chariot driver to race his team in the coming tournament. Judah, wanting revenge, offers to drive the sheik's chariot, as he intends to defeat Messala. Balthasar and his daughter Iras are sitting at a fountain in the stadium. Messala's chariot nearly hits them but Judah intervenes. Balthasar thanks Ben-Hur and presents him with a gift. Judah heads to Sheik Ilderim's tent. The servant Malluch accompanies him, and they talk about the Christ; Malluch relates Balthasar's story of the Magi. They realize that Judah saved the man who saw the Christ soon after his birth. Esther, Simonides and Malluch talk together, and conclude that Ben-Hur is who he claims to be, and that he is on their side in the fight against Rome. Messala realizes that Judah Ben-Hur has been adopted into a Roman home and his honor has been restored. He threatens to take revenge. Meanwhile, Balthasar and his daughter Iras arrive at the Sheik's tent. With Judah they discuss how the Christ, approaching the age of thirty, is ready to enter public leadership. Judah takes increasing interest in the beautiful Iras. Messala sends a letter to Valerius Gratus about his discovery of Judah, but Sheik Ilderim intercepts the letter and shares it with Judah. He discovers that his mother and sister were imprisoned in a cell at the Antonia Fortress, and Messala has been spying on him. Ilderim is deeply impressed with Judah's skills with his racing horses as his charioteer. Simonides comes to Judah and offers him the accumulated fortune of the Hur family business, of which the merchant has been steward. Judah Ben-Hur accepts only the money, leaving property and the rest to the loyal merchant. They each agree to do their part to fight for the Christ, whom they believe to be a political savior from Roman authority. A day before the race, Ilderim prepared his horses. Judah appoints Malluch to organize his support campaign for him. Meanwhile, Messala organizes his own huge campaign, revealing Judah Ben-Hur's former identity to the community as an outcast and convict. Malluch challenges Messala and his cronies to a large wager, which, if the Roman loses, would bankrupt him. The day of the race comes. During the race Messala and Judah become the clear leaders. Judah deliberately scrapes his chariot wheel against Messala's and Messala's chariot breaks apart. Judah is crowned winner and showered with prizes, claiming his first strike against Rome. After the race, Judah Ben-Hur receives a letter from Iras asking him to go to the Roman palace of Idernee. When he arrives, he sees that he has been tricked. Thord, a Saxon, hired by Messala, comes to kill Judah. They duel, and Ben-Hur offers Thord four thousand sestercii to let him live. Thord returns to Messala claiming to have killed Judah, so collects money from them both. Supposedly dead, Judah Ben-Hur goes to the desert with Ilderim to plan a secret campaign. For Ben-Hur, Simonides bribes Sejanus to remove the prefect Valerius Gratus from his post, who is succeeded by Pontius Pilate. Ben-Hur sets out for Jerusalem to find his mother and sister. Pilate's review of the prison records reveals great injustice, and he notes Gratus concealed a walled-up cell. Pilate's troops reopen the cell to find two women suffering from leprosy. Pilate releases them, and they go to the old Hur house, which is vacant. Finding Judah asleep on the steps, they give thanks but don't wake him. As lepers, they are to be banished, and they leave. Amrah, the Egyptian maid who once served the Hur house, discovers Ben-Hur and wakes him. She reveals having stayed in the Hur house for all these years. Keeping touch with Simonides, she discouraged many potential buyers of the house by acting as a ghost. They pledge to find out more about the lost family. Judah discovers an official Roman report about the release of two leprous women. Amrah hears rumors of the mother and sister's fate. Romans make plans to use funds from the corban treasury, of the Temple in Jerusalem, to build a new aqueduct. The Jewish people petition Pilate to veto the plan. Pilate sends his soldiers in disguise to mingle with the crowd, who at an appointed time, massacre the protesters. Judah kills a Roman guard in a duel, and becomes a hero in the eyes of a group of Galilean protesters. Biblical references: John 1:29-34 At a meeting in Bethany, Ben-Hur and his Galileans organize a resistance force to revolt against Rome. Gaining help from Simonides and Ilderim, he sets up a training base in Ilderim's territory in the desert. After some time, Malluch writes announcing the appearance of a prophet believed to be a herald for the Christ. Judah journeys to the Jordan to see the Prophet, meeting Balthasar and Iras traveling for the same purpose. They reach Bethabara, where a group has gathered to watch John the Baptist. A man walks up to John, and asks to be baptized. Judah recognizes him as the man who gave him water at the well in Nazareth many years before. Balthasar worships the Christ. Biblical references: Matthew 27:48-51, Mark 11:9-11, 14:51-52, Luke 23:26-46, John 12:12-18, 18:2-19:30 During the next three years, Jesus preaches his gospel around Galilee, and Ben-Hur becomes one of his followers. He notices that Jesus chooses fishermen, farmers, and similar people, considered "lowly", as apostles. Judah has seen Jesus perform miracles, and is convinced that the Christ really had come. During this time, Malluch has bought the old Hur house and renovated it. He invites Simonides and Balthasar, with their daughters, to live in the house with him. Judah Ben-Hur seldom visits, but the day before Jesus plans to enter Jerusalem and proclaim himself, Judah returns. He tells all in the house of what he has learned while following Jesus. Amrah realizes that Judah's mother and sister could be healed, and brings them from a cave where they are living. The next day, the three await Jesus and seek his healing for the women. Amidst the celebration of his Triumphal Entry, Jesus heals the women. When they are cured, they reunite with Judah. Several days later, Iras talks with Judah, saying he has trusted in a false hope, for Jesus had not started the expected revolution. She says that it is all over between them, saying she loves Messala. Ben-Hur remembers the "invitation of Iras" that led to the incident with Thord, and accuses Iras of betraying him. That night, he resolves to go to Esther. While lost in thought, he notices a parade in the street and falls in with it. He notices that Judas Iscariot is leading the parade, and many of the temple priests and Roman soldiers are marching together. They go to the olive grove of Gethsemane, and he sees Jesus walking out to meet the crowd. Understanding the betrayal, Ben-Hur is spotted by a priest who tries to take him into custody; he breaks away and flees. When morning comes, Ben-Hur learns that the Jewish priests have tried Jesus before Pilate. Although originally acquitted, the leader has been sentenced to crucifixion at the crowd's demand. Ben-Hur is shocked at how his supporters have deserted Christ in his time of need. They head to Calvary, and Ben-Hur resigns himself to watch the crucifixion of Jesus. The sky darkens. Ben-Hur offers Jesus wine vinegar to return Jesus' favor to him. Jesus utters his last cry. Ben-Hur and his friends commit their lives to Jesus, realizing he was not an earthly king, but a heavenly king and a savior of mankind. Five years after the crucifixion, Ben-Hur and Esther have married and had children. The family lives in Misenum. Iras visits Esther and tells her she has killed Messala, discovering that the Romans were brutes. After Esther tells Ben-Hur of the visit, he tries unsuccessfully to find Iras. In the tenth year of Emperor Nero's reign, Ben-Hur is staying with Simonides, whose business has been successful. With Ben-Hur, the two men have given most of the fortunes to the church of Antioch. Now, as an old man, Simonides has sold all his ships but one, and that one has returned for probably its final voyage. Learning that the Christians in Rome are suffering at the hands of Emperor Nero, Ben-Hur and his friends decide to help. Ben-Hur, Esther, and Malluch sail to Rome, where they decided to build an underground church. It will survive through the ages and comes to be known as the Catacomb of San Calixto.
1344916	/m/04vdtl	All American Girl	Meg Cabot	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 SAM Madison has always been totally ordinary. Apart from having two weird sisters,of course. But then she does something utterly out of ordinary- she stops a crazy psycho from assassinating the American President. Now Sam's an instant, world famous celebrity.Dining at The White House is not easy for someone who lives on hamburgers and in combat boots.In fact there's only one compensation- DAVID, the presidents son.......
1345217	/m/04vfr0	The Great and Secret Show	Clive Barker	1990-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 While working in the dead letter office in Nebraska in 1969, a disgruntled postal clerk named Randolph Jaffe discovers hints to a mysterious part of society known as "The Shoal" that are ostensibly practicing what seems to be a form of magic only vaguely known as "The Art". His search eventually brings him to Trinity, New Mexico, where he encounters the mysterious "Kissoon" who claims to be the last of the Shoal. From Kissoon he learns of the mystical dream sea Quiddity and the islands within it known as the Ephemeris. Quiddity, as it turns out, is visible exactly three times to an ordinary human: The first time we ever sleep outside our mother's womb, the first time we sleep beside the one we truly love and the last time we ever sleep before we die. However; this simply is not enough for the megalomaniac Jaffe, who wishes to actually visit the dream sea in person and gain control of it. Jaffe flees when Kissoon tries to bargain for his body, and later teams up with a scientist named Fletcher who is able to create a liquid called the 'Nuncio'. Nuncio is theoretically able to enable a human to evolve to a state that would enable him to physically reach Quiddity. Fletcher has second thoughts however, realising that Jaffe will only use Nuncio for evil, and destroys his laboratory. Jaffe arrives and both are exposed to the Nuncio. The two battle each other for a year and their spirits arrive in Palomo Grove in California in 1971. There, they rape and impregnate four teenage girls. One of the girls is infertile and fails to give birth while another kills herself and her child after giving birth. The third, Trudi Katz, moves away with her baby Howard while the fourth, Joyce McGuire gives birth to twins, Jo-Beth and Tommy Ray. Eighteen years pass. Howard returns to Palomo Grove after the death of his mother. While Jaffe and Fletcher produced offspring in order to continue their battle, Howard and Jo-Beth instead fall in love after meeting. When a former TV comedian, Buddy Vance, passes away at the cave where the lake once was, Fletcher and Jaffe are able to escape. Jaffe is able to amass an army of creatures known as Terata using the minds of vulnerable people and gets his son Tommy Ray on his side as well. Howard encounters Fletcher, who explains his heritage to him. Fletcher explains Quiddity to Howard, telling him that the islands Ephemeris contain the Great and Secret Show. However, Howard refuses to align with his father. Meanwhile, a reporter, Grillo, and his friend Tesla arrive to Palomo Grove to report on Vance's death. Fletcher is unable to amass his own army of hallucigenia from the mind of dreamers and instead kills himself through immolation, spreading his essence to the people of the town. Having encountered Fletcher before his death, Tesla heads to the remnants of his laboratory to recover the remains of the Nuncio. Tommy Ray is sent by Jaffe, who has managed to convince people that he is the ghost of Vance. While there Tesla encounters Raul, an ape who had been evolved through the power of the Nuncio. Tommy Ray arrives and shoots Tesla, but the last remaining vial of Nuncio breaks, infecting both Tommy Ray and Tesla. Tesla's consciousness travels to a time loop in New Mexico where she encounters Kissoon. Kissoon explains to Tesla that the Shoal were dedicated to keeping Quiddity and the Art pure but with them all dead, Earth (known as the Cosm) could be dominated by the evil race Iad Uroboros who live in the Metacosm on the opposite side of Quiddity. Tesla leaves when Kissoon tries to take over her body but agrees to find another body for him to inhabit. Leaving the time loop, Tesla encounters a woman named Mary Muralles who reveals that it was Kissoon who murdered the Shoal and he is actually an agent of the Iad Uroboros. Kissoon manages to kill Muralles using snake-like creatures created by his excrement and semen (Lix), then captures Raul in order to take over his body. Tommy Ray heads back to Palomo Grove having amassed an army of the dead while the hallucigenia created by Fletcher's death convince Howard to help them attack Jaffe. In Vance's house, Jaffe manages to tear a hole through reality into Quiddity but realizes it is too much power for him to deal with. As his terata battle the hallucigenia many are dragged into Quiddity including Howard, Jo-Beth and Tommy Ray. Tesla, Grillo and Jaffe flee Vance's house and attempt to close the vortex into Quiddity. Quiddity transforms Howard, Jo-Beth and Tommy Ray as they float through Quiddity and reach the Ephemeris where they find that the Iad Uroboros are crossing Quiddity towards Earth. Palomo Grove starts to collapse and the entire town is sealed off by the authorities. Tesla recalls a word Kissoon had brought up, "Trinity", which is the place where the first atomic bomb was detonated. Kissoon, now occupying Raul's body arrives, but Jaffe is able to distract him as Tesla transports the vortex to Quiddity into Kissoon's time loop. Howard, Jo-Beth and Tommy Ray, completely transformed from their experience in Quiddity arrive from the vortex. Jaffe is able to kill Raul's body and is reunited with Tommy Ray. Tesla finds that Raul has occupied Kissoon's former body and by convincing Raul's consciousness to enter her body, Kissoon's body is killed which disintegrates the time loop, destroying the vortex to Quiddity and the Iad Uroboros who were arriving. Tesla and the others are able to escape the time loop just in time. The remains of Palomo Grove are destroyed, and Jo-Beth and Howard meet supernatural investigator Harry D'Amour who asks for their story. Tesla meets Grillo and tells him that the worshippers of the Iad Uroboros are still active and will try to summon them again.
1345253	/m/04vfx1	Weaveworld	Clive Barker	1987	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy"}	 The novel revolves around the world of the Fugue, a magical world which lies woven within a rug. Many decades ago the Seerkind (creatures of magical abilities) decided to hide themselves through a spell or "Rapture" in a safe haven after being hunted down and eradicated by humans for centuries (with humans most commonly depicting them as demons and fairies in their mythological tales) as well as being decimated by a destructive being known as The Scourge. This creature's form is entirely unknown to the Seerkind, given that none of those assaulted by the Scourge survived to describe it. The Seerkind collect a number of beautiful places, hills, meadows and mountains, alongside their belongings and themselves and undergo a spell which encloses all of them in a rug. They also leave the wife of one of their kind, a non-seerkind woman named Mimi Laschenski, outside in the human world with the purpose of keeping and guarding the rug and also unleashing the world of the Fugue someday when the world had become a safe place for them. Eight decades later, a sudden interest emerges for the rug at the time an elderly Mimi (having recently gone through a stroke in her old age) expires: Calhoun Mooney, an ordinary young man, accidentally comes into contact with the rug and realises its magical nature; Suzanna Parish, Mimi's granddaughter is given clues to the rug's existence from her grandmother (who can no longer speak since the stroke) and moves to uncover its secrets; Immacolata, exiled by the Seerkind into the human world, wants to find the rug and destroy her race. Cal and Suzanna join forces against Immacolata, her dead sisters and a greedy human known as Shadwell. The second part of the book develops within the world of Fugue, unleashed from within the rug, and deals with the struggle of characters for the control of this world. The third part sees the Fugue destroyed, with the surviving Seerkind, Cal and Suzanna hiding in the forests of Scotland and facing the ultimate battle against the resurrected Scourge.
1346176	/m/04vjd5	Mariel of Redwall	Brian Jacques	1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist, Mariel Gullwhacker, was enslaved by Gabool the Wild when her father Joseph's ship, the Periwinkle, was captured. It had been carrying a bell to Lord Rawnblade Widestripe in Salamandastron, and that, too, was seized by Gabool. After attacking Gabool, the mouse was thrown into the sea and washed up on the shore, causing her to lose her memory. She took the name "Storm Gullwhacker", and gave the name "Gullwhacker" to the rope she had used to fight off a seabird. Three members of the Long Patrol, Colonel Clary, Brigadier Thyme, and the Honorable Rosemary, escort Mariel to a squirrel named Pakatugg. He is given the task to lead Mariel to Redwall, where the woodlanders help her regain her memory. She befriends a young fieldmouse named Dandin, a hedgehog named Durry Quill, and a hare that carries an instrument called a harolina named Tarquin Longleap Woodsorrel, and together they journey to Gabool's island of Terramort to defeat him. Lord Rawnblade also joins the four comrades later on to help them defeat Gabool in his fortress of Bladegirt, where he commands a fleet of searat and corsair ships. The denizens of Redwall, meanwhile, defended the Abbey against Graypatch, a searat on the run from Gabool's army, and his horde. Clary and Thyme, along with Pakatugg, are killed freeing slaves from Graypatch's camp. Graypatch decides to return to his ship but is killed by Oak Tom, a squirrel allied with Redwall. Gabool, meanwhile, is slowly being driven insane. After capturing Mariel's father, who was transporting the bell to Salamandastron, he begins to hallucinate, believing to hear the bell ring when no one else is in the room. After a battle with the protagonists, Gabool is killed by his pet scorpion. The bell is eventually recovered from Gabool and given to Redwall Abbey as a gift. Named after its creator, it becomes the Joseph Bell.
1349940	/m/04vtvn	Author, Author	David Lodge	2004-10-07	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with a framing device wherein we are shown what is happening in the London home of the dying novelist at the beginning of World War I. One of the servant staff in James' house has taken a crude but sincere interest in discovering what her employer's books are all about and takes to reading one of his more famous stories, "The Beast in the Jungle". This story, whose hero is obsessed by a paranoid belief that his life will be marked by an unknown catastrophe, provides the opening for the novel proper to begin. Now we proceed back in time to the middle years of James' life and are introduced to a large and interesting group of James' literary acquaintances from his period of expatriation in England. Among those we meet are George du Maurier, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson. The long and productive friendship between James and du Maurier is described in great detail, including the story of du Maurier's deteriorating eyesight which threatens his livelihood as a cartoonist for the magazine Punch. He is finally driven to write fiction himself and he astonishes James and the entire literary world by producing the bestselling novel Trilby. Much of Lodge's book is built upon James' own obsession with attracting a larger readership than his opaque books have yet garnered and the success of Trilby both baffles and annoys him. Meanwhile, James is writing prolifically himself with little comparable financial or critical success. We are given a long and funny account of James' humiliating quest to write a popular play for the London stage. There is an ironic and entertaining distance set up here between James' feelings of failure and inadequacy and what we now know about his final reputation. While du Maurier and Trilby have all but faded from the public view, James' body of work has continued to attract readers worldwide and his position as one of the most important figures in literature is now secure. In this sense, the novel can be seen as both an homage and as an artistic attempt to rescue the historical James from his own feeling of obscurity. The book also includes a portrait of the friendship that James formed during this time with the American author Constance Fenimore Woolson. Lodge suggests that their relationship had a romantic (but unconsummated) dimension. As in real life, Woolson commits suicide while traveling in Italy and this leads James to wonder what connection, if any, there might have been between her death and her feelings for him. Lodge's depiction of their relationship allows him subtly to explore James' alleged lifelong virginity and to conjecture somewhat about his notorious prudishness.
1353004	/m/04w25z	The Saint in New York	Leslie Charteris	1935	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 During a visit to Europe, Simon Templar (alias "The Saint") befriends a rich American whose son was recently murdered in New York City; the culprit went free due to police and courtroom corruption. Templar is given an offer he can't refuse: $1 million if he goes to New York and deals out his unique brand of justice to evildoers in that city. The book begins with the New York Police Department receiving a letter of warning from Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, indicating that Templar, after being inactive for six months (presumably since the events of The Saint Goes On), has relocated to the United States. The letter is accompanied by a dossier on Templar's career thus far (Charteris proceeds to give new readers a brief summary of past adventures dating back to the first Saint novel, 1928's Meet - The Tiger!). When an accused cop-killer is found shot to death, the NYPD knows the Saint has arrived in New York. After Templar rescues a child who has been kidnapped by a mob boss (assassinating the gangster in the process), the whole city learns that the Saint is on the job. Templar's ultimate goal is to discover the identity of the city's main kingpin who is known only as "The Big Fellow". Templar is abducted by one of the remaining crime lords and two corrupt, high-ranking New York City officials offer him $200,000 to reveal who is backing him. Templar claims to be working on his own, and the crime lord orders Templar to be taken for the proverbial "ride". Templar is taken to a remote location in New Jersey but manages to escape his fate thanks to the intervention of Fay Edwards, a beautiful young woman who happens to be a cold-blooded killer, and who claims to be working for The Big Fellow. Simon Templar and Fay Edwards fall in love with each other, in a completely Platonic way (they exchange only two kisses and exchange only a few words) which seems nevertheless very deep and poignantly emotional. (On his return to London, in the last page of the book, Templar would refuse to tell Patricia Holm about his American experiences.) The Saint eventually learns that he is being manipulated into killing off certain crime bosses in order that The Big Fellow will not have to split a $17 million cache of blood money that was going to be shared among the gangsters. In effect, rather than being a daring and idealistic vigilante, as he thought of himself, Templar finds that he had been made into a gangland hit man - and very much dislikes to see himself in such a role. And when the Big Fellow's identity is finally revealed, he ends up being the last person Templar would suspect. *The book gives the first detailed physical description of Templar, indicating that he is 31, six foot two, 175&nbsp;lbs, and has a bullet wound in his left shoulder. *Templar's dossier contains some continuity errors. The novel appears to take place in 1934, yet the dossier indicates that Meet - The Tiger! takes place five years earlier, or in 1929, yet the earlier novel takes place in 1928 meaning Templar has actually been active for six years at this point. Similarly, Templar should be 32 or 33 by the time of this novel, not 31 as he is clearly described as being 27 years of age in Meet - The Tiger!. However, in an introduction written for a 1963 reprint of the novel by Fiction Publishing Corp., Charteris suggests the book actually takes place in 1933, which sets the chronology correct (although it calls into question where in the Templar literary chronology this adventure takes place). *If Charteris' above claim that the book takes place in 1933 is correct, then the events of the novel must take place during December of that year, as several references are made to the 21st Amendment (passed in December 1933) which repealed Prohibition. *The book features a thuggish policeman named Kestry. Charteris had originally created Kestry as the central figure of "The Man Who Liked Toys", a short story he had written for The American Magazine. Charteris later rewrote the story as a Simon Templar adventure (it was published in Boodle) and for most readers, this was their first introduction to Kestry. *Burl Barer, in his history of The Saint identifies The Saint in New York as the most violent of all Saint stories, and notes that it marks the dividing line between the British-influenced stories dating back to 1928, and the more American-influenced adventures that would follow over the remainder of the series. *The Saint in New York would be followed in later years by a series of The Saint in...-themed novels, novellas and short story collections featuring Templar's adventures as he travels around the world. Examples include The Saint in Miami, The Saint Goes West, and The Saint in Europe. *Years later, in a French Saint novel, The Saint Battles a Phantom, Templar would refer to the aftermath of one of the characters in this story. http://www.lofficier.com/saint3.html
1354207	/m/04w5g0	Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress	Dai Sijie	2000	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel, written by Dai Sijie, is about two teenagers. Luo, "a genius for storytelling", and an unnamed narrator, "a fine musician" are sent to be re-educated after the Chinese Cultural Revolution. They are sent to a mountain called "Phoenix of the Sky" near Tibet, because their doctor parents have been declared enemies of the state and "reactionaries of the bourgeoisie" by the Communist state. There, while forced to work in the coal mines and with the rice crop, they are captivated by and fall in love with the daughter of the local tailor, the Little Seamstress. Throughout the novel, the farming village of Phoenix of the Sky delights in the storytelling of the two teenagers. They even are excused from work for a few days to see films at Yong Jing, a nearby town, and later relate the story to the townspeople. One of these films, a North Korean film entitled The Little Flower Seller and identified by the narrator as "a propaganda film like no other" (39), closely resembles the 1972 Korean film version of The Flower Girl (1972) in the melodramatic scene of the death of the eponymous character's mother. Other talents and possessions of the two boys at which the townspeople wonder include Luo's clock and Ma's violin, on which they love to hear "Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao", their improvised, Communist-friendly name for a Mozart sonata. At the same time, they meet Four-Eyes, the son of a prominent poet, who also is being re-educated. Although he is succeeding in re-education, he is also hiding French, Russian, and English novels that are forbidden by Chinese law. The boys convince Four-Eyes to lend them the book, Ursule Mirouët by Honoré de Balzac. After Luo stays up all night reading the book, he gives the book to the narrator and leaves the village in order to tell it to the Little Seamstress, "the region's reigning beauty">that both characters are attracted to, and the narrator becomes "completely wrapped up in the French story". When Luo returns, he is carrying leaves from the tree that he and the former virgin, the Little Seamstress, had sex under. The character of Luo is then motivated to educate the Little Seamstress and "ma[k]e her more refined, more cultured". This motivation spurs the narrator and Luo to steal the rest of the books from Four-Eyes’ home, "knowing that [Four-Eyes] will be afraid to call the authorities".Particularly inspirational to the narrator is the translation by Fu Lei of Romain Rolland's Jean-Christophe, which the narrator credits as giving him a newfound sense of individualism. Luo and the Seamstress's romantic relationship grows as the narrator silently and jealously watches. After their successful robbery, the narrator recites the tale of The Count of Monte Cristo in his cabin to Luo and the visiting tailor. The village headman, described as a passionate Communist who has just returned from an unsuccessful dental surgery, threatens to turn in Luo and the narrator for spreading the counter-revolutionary ideas found in The Count of Monte Cristo if they don’t agree to fix the headman’s teeth. Faced with the threat of prison, the pair fix the village headmans teeth, but they operate the drill “slowly. . . to punish him.”Later, when the headman is calmer and thankful to the two for repairing his teeth, he allows Luo to leave the village for two months to look after Luo’s ailing mother. During Luo’s absence, the Little Seamstress concludes that she is pregnant. Her character confides this in Ma, for “when [Luo] had left the previous month she was not yet worried” about missing her period. However, since it is illegal to have children out of wedlock in the revolutionary society, and her and Luo are too young to marry, the narrator must set up a secret abortion. Three months after the abortion is performed and Luo returns, the pair's mission of educating the Little Seamstress backfires. At first, however, it seems as if their plan is working perfectly – she adopts the city accent and begins making modern clothing. Yet, one day, she "comes to understand her own sexual power", and leaves without saying farewell. In his grief, Luo becomes inebriated and burns all of the foreign books “in [a] frenzy,” ending the novel.
1356129	/m/04wbg7	The Pearls of Lutra	Brian Jacques	1996	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When gathering herbs near the quarry in Mossflower Woods, the young Redwallers Tansy and Arven come across a mysterious skeleton among the rocks. They are disoriented in a rainstorm and after failing to return to the abbey before the breaking of the storm are rescued by Martin II. Tansy quickly leads curious Redwallers back to the quarry to examine the mysterious skeleton, and along the way, they meet two travelers: the irrepressible hare Cleckstarr Lepus Montisle and his owl friend Gerul. Meanwhile, far across the western sea on the tropical isle of Sampetra, trouble is brewing. Ublaz Mad-Eyes, a large, sinewy pine marten with a hypnotic stare, gathers an army of barbaric monitor lizards and trident wielding searats. The stoat captain Conva is sent out to retrieve the Tears of All Oceans, six perfectly spherical rose-pink pearls, but after murdering the Holt Lutra who owned the pearls, the Tears are stolen by the weasel Graylunk, who flees into Mossflower Woods. Conva tracks him to Redwall Abbey, where Graylunk takes refuge, before returning to Sampetra. Ublaz is not pleased and murders Conva. He then sends out an elite force of monitor lizards, headed by their general Lask Frildur, to Mossflower to retrieve the pearls. They are escorted by the ferret captain Romsca and her crew. However, the daughter of the Lutra chieftain is not dead. Far away on the western shores, Grath Longfletch, a strong female otter, was at the gates of the Dark Forest before being found by a pair of bankvoles, who nurse her back to health. The otter fashions a powerful bow and a quiver of green-fletched arrows, with which she planned on wreaking her revenge. She eliminates a longboat-crew of searats and then takes their boat southward into Mossflower, where she hopes to find the corsairs that slew her family. Presently, Conva's brother Barranca discovers that Ublaz has killed his brother, and he begins hatching a plan to overthrow the pine marten and take the island for himself. With the fearsome Lask and his lizards gone to Mossflower, Barranca decides to seize his chance. Back at Redwall, the old bankvole recorder Rollo determines that the skeleton in the quarry was Graylunk. He had become gravely injured in a fight with the weasel Flairnose, whom he killed, over the pearls before seeking safety at Redwall. There he befriended an old squirrel called Sister Fermald before he went off to die in the woods. Fermald, a clever, though senile old beast, had expertly hidden the pearls throughout the abbey before passing away several seasons ago. Tansy and Rollo, along with the hedgehog maid's friends Craklyn the squirrel and Piknim the mouse, begin a search for the six exquisite pearls. The Dibbun Arven and his two partners in crime, the moles Diggum and Gurrbowl, occasionally help in the search. When Abbot Durral takes young Viola Bankvole for a stroll in Mossflower Woods, they are captured by Lask and his troops. Lask binds the Abbot and the bankvole and attempts to ransom them for the pearls at Redwall. However, the pearls have not yet been found, and Lask and his lizards take the two Redwallers back to their ship to be captives at Sampetra. Martin, Clecky, Gerul, and the Skipper of Otters pursue the lizards through Mossflower, slaying several but failing to rescue the captives. Gerul and Skipper become wounded and are sent back to the Abbey, but the others chase the lizards to the western shore. There, they meet up with Grath Longfletch, who had caught sight of Romsca's ship, the Waveworm, and attempted to pick off some of the vermin. Durral manages to help Viola get to safety on the shore, but the ship departs before he can escape. Viola is sent back to Redwall with two shrews to guide her, and Grath, Clecky, Martin, and the Log-a-Log's two sons use discarded vermin boats to form the Freebeast, a double-outrigger vessel in which they pursue Lask to Sampetra. Viola, who has sneaked aboard, also ends up coming along. On Sampetra, Barranca has been slain by Rasconza, a clever fox corsair who takes over the rebellion against Ublaz. Initial attempts at negotiation fail, due to the double-dealing of the pair, and when Ublaz tries to have Rasconza assassinated, Sampetra is plunged into all-out war. In the search for the six pearls, the Redwaller friends slowly but surely find them all, though not without paying the price. The young mouse Piknim ends up being slain by the cruel jackdaws at St. Ninian's while searching for a pearl. The church is burnt down to prevent evil-doers from ever using it again (it had been used as a base by Redwall's enemies twice before), and the quest resumes, with all the pearls eventually being found. Martin, Grath and their friends closely follow Romsca and Lask across the ocean, and end up meeting the otters of Holt Ruddaring along the way. Inbar Trueflight, a skilled archer, and the seal Hawm tag along on the quest. On the Waveworm, Durral is underfed and mistreated, but the ferret captain Romsca protects him from the fierce violence and hunger of Lask's cruel monitor lizards. Lask and Romsca, who had been at odds with one another since the beginning, finally battle on deck, with the forces of both being wiped out. Romsca ends up slaying Lask but is fatally injured in the process. Before dying, she gives the abbot instructions on how to set the rudder to fix the ship toward Sampetra. As the last living creature aboard the ship, the old Abbot sails alone toward the evil isle. When Martin, Clecky, Grath, Inbar, the shrews and Viola arrive on Sampetra, a battle ensues. Most of the monitor lizards and wave-vermin are killed, and Martin corners Ublaz alone in his palace. They duel it out, but Ublaz accidentally steps on the poisonous snake that he had hypnotized and kept as a pet. The snake bites him and he dies. Durral is rescued and the warriors all return to Mossflower. They leave the island of Sampetra with no timber for ship building to force the vermin to learn to live in harmony with each other. Grath stays with Inbar at Holt Ruddering, as the pair have fallen in love, but the others meet Tansy and her friends at the shore. The young hedgehog, realizing the pearls lead only to greed and violence and bring nothing but misery and death to all who own them, casts them out into the sea to be forever lost. For her hard work, perseverance and aptitude, Tansy is made Abbess of Redwall to succeed old Durral. She becomes the first non-mouse abbot/abbess.
1356238	/m/04wbph	Laws	Plato		{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Unlike most of Plato's dialogues, Socrates does not appear in the Laws: the dialogue takes place on the island of Crete, and Socrates appears outside of Athens in Plato's writings only twice, in the Phaedrus, where he is just outside the city's walls, and in the Republic, where he goes down to the seaport Piraeus five miles outside of Athens. The conversation is instead lead by an Athenian Stranger (in Greek, xenos) and two other old men, the ordinary Spartan citizen Megillos and the Cretan politician and lawgiver Clinias from Knossos. The Athenian Stranger, who resembles Socrates but whose name is never mentioned, joins the other two on their religious pilgrimage from Knossos to the cave of Zeus. The entire dialogue takes place during this journey, which mimics the action of Minos: said by the Cretans to have made their ancient laws, Minos walked this path every nine years in order to receive instruction from Zeus on lawgiving. It is also said to be the longest day of the year, allowing for the densely packed twelve chapters. By the end of the third book Clinias announces that he has in fact been given the responsibility of creating the laws for a new Cretan colony, and that he would like the Stranger's assistance. The rest of the dialogue proceeds with the three old men, walking towards the cave and making laws for this new city which is called the city of the Magnetes (or Magnesia). The question asked at the beginning is not "What is law?" as one would expect. That is the question of the apocryphal Platonic dialogue Minos. The dialogue rather proceeds from the question of who it is that receives credit for creating laws. The questions of the Laws are quite numerous, including: *Divine revelation, divine law and law-giving *The role of intelligence in law-giving *The relations of philosophy, religion, and politics *The role of music, exercise and dance in education *Natural law and natural right The dialogue uses primarily the Athenian and Spartan (Lacedaemonian) law systems as background for pinpointing a choice of laws, which the speakers imagine as a more or less coherent set for the new city they are talking about.
1358189	/m/04wh6b	The Vampyre	John Polidori	1819-04-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Aubrey, a young Englishman, meets Lord Ruthven, a man of mysterious origins who has entered London society. Aubrey accompanies Ruthven to Rome, but leaves him after Ruthven seduces the daughter of a mutual acquaintance. Aubrey travels to Greece, where he becomes attracted to Ianthe, an innkeeper's daughter. Ianthe tells Aubrey about the legends of the vampire. Ruthven arrives at the scene and shortly thereafter Ianthe is killed by a vampire. Aubrey does not connect Ruthven with the murder and rejoins him in his travels. The pair is attacked by bandits and Ruthven is mortally wounded. Before he dies, Ruthven makes Aubrey swear an oath that he will not mention his death or anything else he knows about Ruthven for a year and a day. Looking back, Aubrey realizes that everyone whom Ruthven met ended up suffering. Aubrey returns to London and is amazed when Ruthven appears shortly thereafter, alive and well. Ruthven reminds Aubrey of his oath to keep his death a secret. Ruthven then begins to seduce Aubrey's sister while Aubrey, helpless to protect his sister, has a nervous breakdown. Ruthven and Aubrey's sister are engaged to marry on the day the oath ends. Just before he dies, Aubrey writes a letter to his sister revealing Ruthven's history, but it does not arrive in time. Ruthven marries Aubrey's sister. On the wedding night, she is discovered dead, drained of her blood — and Ruthven has vanished.
1360631	/m/04wnzd	The Figure in the Carpet	Henry James			 The narrator, a writer, prides himself on his astute review of Hugh Vereker's latest novel. Vereker dismisses his efforts, explaining that all critics have "missed my little point," "the particular thing I've written my books most for," "the thing for the critic to find," "my secret," "like a complex figure in a Persian carpet." The narrator racks his brains and, in desperation, tells his friend Corvick of the puzzle. Corvick and his novelist fiancée, Gwendolen, pursue "the trick" without success until Corvick, traveling alone in India, wires Gwendolen and the narrator "Eureka! Immense." He refuses, however, to divulge the secret to Gwendolen until after they are married, and then dies in an accident. Since Gwendolen refuses to share her knowledge, the narrator speculates, "the figure in the carpet [was] traceable or describable only for husbands and wives--for lovers supremely united." She remarries, and after her death, the narrator approaches her new husband to discover the secret. But he is surprised and humiliated by the news of his wife's great "secret," and he and the narrator conclude by sharing the same throbbing curiosity. The "secret" is ultimately never told but the reader can only infer it is in fact that there is no real secret. Vereker's description is that its very simple and Corvick holds the key but refuses to tell the narrator. Gwendolen assures the narrator that it is her life. Readers and commentators have speculated about the secret, but the brute fact is that James doesn't tell it, if, indeed, he actually had something specific in mind. Perhaps he—and Vereker—are simply teasing readers.
1360990	/m/04wpmc	Boy in Darkness	Mervyn Peake	1956	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Boy in Darkness is an episode in the Gormenghast series when Titus Groan, referred to mostly as "the Boy" in the story, is a young teenager – placing it during the period covered by the second novel in the series, Gormenghast. Yearning for freedom from his ceaseless duties as 77th Earl of Gormenghast, he escapes the ancient castle and encounters the nightmare world outside.
1362176	/m/04wrh7	Brimstone	Douglas Preston	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 FBI Special Agent Aloysius X.L. Pendergast and Sergeant Vincent D'Agosta, now working for the Southampton Police Department, investigate a series of unusual deaths&mdash; deaths that appear to be the work of Lucifer in return for pacts entered in with him by his victims. Their investigation takes them from the New York City area, site of the first two deaths, to Florence, Italy where they uncover the motive and method of the killers behind the strange and gruesome deaths. During the course of unraveling the mystery, the truth behind a priceless, missing Stradivarius violin is revealed and a potentially apocalyptic riot with Messianic Christians is averted. Pendergast also reveals details of his insane brother Diogenes, whom he believes is planning something horrible.
1362438	/m/04ws1b	Affirmative Action Around the World	Thomas Sowell	2004	{"/m/02j62": "Economics"}	 Already known as a critic of affirmative action or race-based hiring and promotion, Sowell, himself African-American, analyzes the specific effects of such policies on India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria, four countries with longer multiethnic histories and then compares them with the recent history of the United States in this regard. He finds that "Such programs have at best a negligible impact on the groups they are intended to assist." A sample of his thinking about the danger of perpetual racial preferences is this passage from p. 7: "People differ - and have for centuries.... Any 'temporary' policy whose duration is defined by the goal of achieving something that has never been achieved before, anywhere in the world, could more fittingly be characterized as eternal." According to Dutch Martin's review of this book: :Among the common consequences of preference policies in the five-country sample are: *They encourage non-preferred groups to redesignate themselves as members of preferred groups (1) to take advantage of group preference policies; *They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g. Black millionaires), often to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g., poor Whites); *They reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best &mdash; the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile &mdash; thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole. Sowell concludes: "Despite sweeping claims made for affirmative action programs, an examination of their actual consequences makes it hard to support those claims, or even to say that these programs have been beneficial on net balance."
1362842	/m/04wt55	Ellen Foster	Kaye Gibbons		{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ellen is an only child who does not have a real home, even at the time when both her parents are still alive. Her father is "trash" and has a drinking problem, and the whole atmosphere is one of domestic violence. Her mother has a heart condition caused by "Romantic" Rheumatic fever and, when the novel opens, has to stay in the hospital. From an early age on, Ellen's thoughts center on how she could get rid of her father&mdash;she imagines killing him one way or another. When her mother is released from hospital Ellen's father treats her as badly as before, and it is up to Ellen to protect her mother from him. Soon, however, she takes an overdose of pills and dies while Ellen is lying next to her. After her mother's premature death, Ellen, who is only eleven years of age, takes charge of the meager household finances. She starts accumulating money, as she realizes she will need money to have a better start later in life. In spite of her unhappy childhood Ellen is a smart girl; she borrows books from the library and is rather creative when it comes to spending her spare time. Her best friend, Starletta, is a young black girl who has poor, but kind parents. She is attracted to them although she has been brought up detesting "niggers" and although she herself cannot overcome all the racial prejudice that has been inculcated in her mind all her life. Ellen says she would never sleep in a "colored house". Also, she refuses to eat or drink anything when she is at Starletta's, remembering the myth that if you use the same glass or cup as "coloreds", the germs they have left on it will spread onto your lips and you will turn as dark as them. On the other hand, her father himself has his "colored buddies" with whom he drinks. Ellen's odyssey (almost in a picaresque vein) starts the night Ellen's father mistakes her for her mother. *At Starletta's parents': After the first instance of abuse to her (not sexual), Ellen goes to Starletta's house, where she stays for the night. *At Aunt Betsy's: On the following morning, having decided to leave her father for good, she packs all her belongings into a box and goes to Aunt Betsy, who has no children and whose husband has recently died. Betsy treats Ellen well, but she misunderstands Ellen about the permanence of Ellen's stay. Accordingly, when the weekend is over, Betsy turns her out again, and Ellen has to return to her father. *At Julia's: When he starts beating her, her bruises are noticed at school and as a temporary solution, her free spirited art teacher invites Ellen to live with her and her husband, Roy. Ellen accepts, leaving with her few belongings and the money she has saved up over the past few months. Despite not completely understanding Julia and Roy's way of life, Ellen feels loved and happy. During the period of separations, her father tries to get her back by bribing her with money, but fails. *At her grandmother's: Sooner or later the question of custody has to be settled in court. Ellen learns that her grandmother ("my mama's mama") is going to take care of her. A wealthy woman who can even afford two black household helps, her grandmother turns out to be a grumpy and bitter old woman who does not really love her granddaughter. She is referred to as the "bosslady" by her workers and she even makes Ellen work in the cotton fields during the summer. She also permanently reproaches Ellen for being her father's daughter and for taking after him, and claims Ellen is responsible for her own daughter's death. Furthermore, she says she knows that Ellen had sex with her father's colored friends (although this is not true). What is more, she suffers from persecution mania, believing that people around the house, even her doctor, are stealing things from her. When she becomes ill she expects Ellen to nurse her, which Ellen dutifully does up to the time her grandmother dies. *At Aunt Nadine's: Ellen's life does not improve when she is taken up by another of her mother's sisters, her aunt Nadine Nelson, who lives with her daughter Dora. Dora, who is the same age as Ellen, and Nadine are a self-sufficient pair who consider Ellen an intruder. The big quarrel occurs, of all days, on Christmas Day, when Dora gets all kinds of presents (toys mainly) and Ellen receives a single pack of white drawing paper, which she throws at Nadine's feet. Furthermore, Ellen takes a lot of effort to paint a picture for her aunt and her cousin, but she overhears them describing her painting as "silly" and "cheap-looking". As an act of revenge, Ellen pretends she has a boyfriend who has given her a microscope for Christmas. Nadine calls her an "ungrateful little bitch" and tells her she does not want to see her again in her house. *At her new mama's: In church Ellen encounters a nice and friendly woman, who she believes is called Mrs Foster, and her well-behaved children. She carefully plans to get in touch with them, and after her argument with Nadine she just packs her things together and goes to the house of the "Foster family". In reality, the "family" is a home for disadvantaged adolescents&mdash;a kind of foster family rather than a "real" family with the surname Foster. Orphaned after her father's death (of an aneurysm), Ellen does not tell us about the formalities she has to go through to be accepted, but the most important thing for her is that for the first time in her life she is given a warm welcome. Throughout the novel, the reader learns how beautiful her new home is. Ellen also overcomes her racial prejudice and is very glad that her new mama allows Starletta to spend the weekend with her at her new home.
1363276	/m/04wv56	Gormenghast	Mervyn Peake	1950	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/057pyk": "Fantasy of manners", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Steerpike, despite his position of authority, is in reality a dangerous traitor to Gormenghast who seeks to eventually wield ultimate power in the castle. To this end, he kills Barquentine so that he can replace him and so advance in power. Although he is successful in his murder of Barquentine, the old master of ritual put up such a severe struggle that Steerpike is severely injured in the process, suffering extensive burns and almost drowning. As Steerpike lies recovering in a delirious state from his ordeal, he cries out the words And the twins will make it five. This is overheard by the castle's doctor, Dr Prunesquallor, who is greatly disturbed to hear it. Although the reader is not told this explicitly, Steerpike's words are a clear reference to the number of people he has killed. The reference to the twins is to the aunts of Titus, the twin sisters Ladies Cora and Clarice. Steerpike has effectively been holding them captive in a remote and abandoned part of the castle, and they are utterly dependent on him for food and drink. Due to Steerpike's prolonged recovery he is unable to supply them (and at some level Steerpike is aware of this, even in his delirium), and by the time he has recovered they have already died of thirst and starvation. Dr Prunesquallor discusses Steerpike's words with the Countess Gertrude, but they disagree over its meaning and the ambiguity over exactly what Steerpike meant is never resolved. Nevertheless, both of them are now thoroughly suspicious about Steerpike and his role in the various disappearances and deaths among the happenings of the castle. Although Steerpike appears to make a full recovery, he is left disfigured with a morbid fear of fire. It also becomes clear that the balance of his mind is increasingly disturbed. An important part of Titus' life is spent at school, where he encounters the school professors, especially Bellgrove, one of Titus's teachers, who eventually ascends to Headmaster of Gormenghast. The other teachers are a collection of misfits, each with idiosyncrasies of their own, who bicker and compete with each other in petty rivalries, being not unlike a bunch of overgrown schoolboys themselves. A welcome humorous interlude in the novel occurs when Irma Prunesquallor (sister of the castle's doctor), decides to get married, and throws a party in the hope of meeting a suitable partner. To this end she invites the school professors, who are so terrified of meeting a woman that they make fools of themselves in various ways. One professor faints at the prospect of having to speak to Irma and has to be revived by the doctor. When he wakes up he flees naked and shrieking over the garden wall, never to be seen again. Only Bellgrove, recently made headmaster, rises to the occasion and behaves in a gentlemanly way to Irma. Bellgrove and Irma thus begin a rather unusual romance. Bellgrove becomes an important figure in Titus' development. In many respects, he is the standard absent-minded professor who falls asleep during his own class and plays with marbles. However, deep inside him there is a certain element of dignity and nobility. At heart Bellgrove is kindly, and if weak, at least has the humility to be aware of his faults. He becomes something of a father figure to Titus. An important development for Titus is his brief meeting with his "foster sister" a feral girl known only as 'The Thing', the daughter of Titus' wet-nurse Keda of the Bright Carvers. The Thing, being an illegitimate child, is exiled by the Carvers and lives a feral life in the forests around Gormenghast. Titus first meets her when he escapes from the confines of Gormenghast into the outside world. Titus is entranced by her wild grace, and sets out to meet her. He does so, and holds her briefly, but she flees him and is fatally struck by lightning. However, her fierce independence inspires Titus, and gives him courage to later leave his home. Due to the vigilance of the old servant Flay Steerpike is eventually unmasked as the murderer of the aunts of Titus, Cora and Clarice. He becomes a renegade within the castle, using his extensive knowledge to hide within its vast regions, and waging a guerilla campaign of random killing with his catapult. Steerpike's capture seems impossible until the entire kingdom of Gormenghast is submerged in a flood, due to endless rains. The mud dwellers are forced to take refuge in the castle and the castle's own inhabitants are also forced to retreat to higher and higher floors as the flood waters keep rising. Fuchsia, grown increasingly melancholic and withdrawn after the death of her father and betrayal by Steerpike, briefly contemplates suicide. At the last moment, she changes her mind, but slips and falls from a window, striking her head on the way down and drowning in the floodwaters. Unaware of the accident when they find her body, both Countess Gertrude and Titus are convinced that Steerpike is to blame, and both resolve to bring the murderer to justice. So begins an epic manhunt through the rapidly flooding castle, with Steerpike forced into ever smaller areas and eventually surrounded by the castle's forces. Even at this late stage, his ruthlessness and cunning mean that Steerpike almost evades capture. However, Titus realises that he is hiding in the ivy against the castle walls, and full of rage and hatred against Steerpike he pursues and kills him himself. Despite being hailed as a hero, Titus is intent on leaving Gormenghast to explore a wider world, and the novel ends with him dramatically riding away to seek his fortune in the unknown lands outside.
1363312	/m/04wv93	Titus Alone	Mervyn Peake	1959	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story follows Titus' journey in the world outside Gormenghast Castle, having left his home at the end of the second book. He bumbles through a desert for a time, then uses a canoe to row down the river, where the reader gets a surprise: although Gormenghast is a crumbling, medieval castle, Titus finds himself in a modern city. Skyscrapers tower, and the river itself is covered in pipes, canals, and fishermen. As he slips the painter on the canoe, he has his first encounter with two faceless, silent persons, ostensibly police officers. Later, Titus befriends a man named Muzzlehatch, who runs a zoo and drives a shark-shaped car. He meets and has an affair with Muzzlehatch's former lover, Juno. Titus walks down a crumbling highway, where he has an unpleasant encounter with a beggar that eats money. He even spends some time wandering around the Under-river, an underground city filled with outcasts, runaways, and derelicts. There (in yet another contrast to the antiquity of previous novels) someone informs us that 'Molusk' has just circled the moon, probably a kind of metal-plated satellite. Titus eventually is found in a state of fever by a woman named Cheeta, who is the daughter of a scientist who runs a light-bulb equipped factory filled with mysterious bad smells and who talks to his workers through a giant television set. Cheeta is described as a 'modern girl' with 'a new kind of beauty', who drives a helicopter. Titus lusts for her because he has spent all his life in a tight-laced Medieval castle, and Cheeta lives like science incarnate. Although Titus lusts for her body, he also tells her several times that he hates her and tells her to 'go home to your horde of vestal virgins and forget me as I shall forget you.' Cheeta is shocked because other men would give anything for her favor. She contrives an elaborate plan to lure him into the "Black House", to see 'a hundred bright inventions', and end their relationship on a high note. There, she attempts to recreate Gormenghast horrendously, but is foiled by Muzzlehatch, who dies in the effort. Muzzlehatch also manages to blow up Cheeta's father's factory as revenge for the murder of his animals. Titus flees and spends months wandering a wasteland alone, until he comes across a large rock that he knew from his childhood. Hearing the guns of Gormenghast saluting the missing Earl, he is confirmed in his knowledge that he is not insane and that the Castle exists. Tempted to return to his duties, he nevertheless confirms his desire for independence and once again strikes off alone, this time in a different direction.
1363774	/m/04wwmn	The Folding Star	Alan Hollinghurst	1994	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is the story of an English gay man, Edward Manners, who, disaffected with life, moves to a town in Flanders where he teaches two students English. One, Marcel, is good but ugly while the other, Luc, is bad but, to the protagonist, deeply beautiful. The novel also deals with Manners' emerging relationship with Marcel's father who curates a museum of symbolist paintings by Edgard Orst (modelled on Fernand Khnopff and James Ensor). Edward has an affair with a young foreigner named Cherif who falls deeply in love with him, but as Cherif is ordinary looking, Edward can never really return his affection. We see the same pattern in the novel's recounting of Edward's youthful affair years earlier (when he was even younger than Luc) with Dawn, a handsome but not particularly beautiful youth who later dies tragically. Edward soon became bored with him, and even now he can only gin up much feeling about Dawn by giving his past affair and the subsequent death of his old love a high literary treatment modeled after the tradition of the pastoral elegy. Like his forerunner von Aschenbach in Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" (who obsesses over the beautiful Tadzio), and the artist Orst, Edward is a lover of beauty, not a lover of people, and people's beauty is fleeting. Thus the disappearance of Jane Byron, Orst's beautiful model, and later of Luc, Edward's version of Tadzio, represents how cruel life can be to those who worship at Beauty's altar. Many of the characters (Manners, Orst, Marcel's father, Luc) are marked by obsession with others. The past continually intrudes into the twilight world Hollinghurst evokes, dragging Manners back to England for a time. Two major characters, both objects of romantic obsession, mysteriously disappear. The long-lost Jane Byron, beloved model for Orst, had swum out to sea at Ostend, Belgium, decades ago and was never seen again, leaving the artist with a lifelong obsession for painting her image. The beautiful youth Luc, obsessive love interest of the protagonist Manners, also disappears. In the book's enigmatic conclusion, Luc is last seen looking out from one of many photographs of missing children on a salt-spattered bulletin board at the beach in Ostend. Thus, like Byron, he ultimately ends up existing only within a frame, and his disappearance is poetically linked to the "shiftless" North Sea waves at the famous beach.
1363780	/m/04wwm_	The Swimming Pool Library	Alan Hollinghurst	1988-08-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 William Beckwith is a highly privileged, cultivated and promiscuous young gay man. He is the grandson and heir of Viscount Beckwith, an elder statesman and a recent peer. In order to avoid death duties, that grandfather has already settled most of his estate on Will, who therefore has substantial private means and no need of work. As the novel opens, we learn that Will is currently seeing a young, working-class, black man named Arthur. Will is deeply sexual and physically very attractive. His preoccupation with Arthur is almost entirely physical. Will is a member of the Corinthian Club (‘the Corry’) at which he swims, exercises and cruises men. The Corry is in no formal sense a gay club, indeed it is made clear that there are non-gay members, but there is a pervasive homoerotic atmosphere. Whilst cruising a young man in a London park, Will enters a public toilet to find a group of older men cottaging. One of them suddenly suffers what is perhaps a minor heart attack and collapses. Will applies artificial respiration and saves the man’s life. He returns home to find Arthur bleeding and terrified. Arthur has accidentally killed a friend of his brother Harold's, after an argument about drugs. Will agrees to shelter Arthur. At the Corry, Will meets the old man again and learns that he is Lord Charles Nantwich. Charles invites Will to lunch at Wicks': his club. Wicks' is filled with men “of fantastic seniority”. We learn here that Will studied History at Oxford, getting a 2.1 rather than the first that he says had been expected of him. That he has studied history will in the course of the novel be revealed as an irony. Trapped in close confinement with Arthur, Will begins to resent him. Their boredom and tension occasionally erupts in bouts of vaguely abusive sex. Will goes to a cinema that shows gay pornography and has anonymous sex. On the train home, Will reads Valmouth, a novel by Ronald Firbank, given to him by his best friend, James. James is a hard-working doctor who is insecure and sexually frustrated as a gay man. The novel by Firbank echoes themes central to The Swimming Pool Library; secrets and discretion; extreme old age, colonialism, race and camp; the sense of deeper truths residing behind a thin façade of artifice. Back at the flat, William finds his small nephew Rupert, an enchantingly self-possessed boy of six, who has run away from home. Rupert loves Will and is interested in homosexuality. Despite his youth, Rupert exhibits a strong gay sensibility. Together they look at Will’s photo album. Will then calls his sister Philippa and her husband Gavin comes to collect Rupert. Will goes to the Corry with James; on their return, Arthur has vanished. Will visits Charles at his home, where he lives with his servant Lewis. Lewis is curt, even slightly aggressive and seems jealously protective of Nantwich. Charles’s house is filled with memorabilia and books; there are homoerotic paintings as well as a portrait of a beautiful African boy. In the cellar, they look at some Roman mosaics and Charles asks Will to write his biography for him. At the Corry, Will is attracted to Phil, a young bodybuilder. Despite his physique, Phil is shy and a sexual novice. Will suspects that Phil is the man with whom he had sex in the cinema. James believes that Will is wasting his intelligence and his literary skill and urges him to write Charles’s biography. Will returns to Charles’s house to find him locked in his bedroom by Lewis. Their master/servant relationship is complex and fraught. Will takes Charles’ diaries and notes home. On the train, Will cruises a young man whom he takes home; they engage in sexual intercourse. He begins to read Charles’s papers. Charles’s early life vividly illustrates themes central to the experience of being homosexual, privileged and British. Will reads of his boyhood at public school, where he experienced sexuality by turns brutal and tender. He is cruelly raped by one boy but later taken under the protection of an older boy, Strong, who treats him gently. We learn that Strong became a soldier in the Great War, was badly injured and died insane. Charles becomes aware that he is strongly attracted to black men when he is openly propositioned by an American soldier. He experiences feelings of desperate arousal, fear and revulsion and flees. As a student, Charles goes on a spree with some friends in the country. They go to an abandoned hunting lodge and drink champagne. Charles has sex with one of them; a young man who feels insecure about his (comparatively) modest background and sexual inexperience. As a young man, Charles enters the Foreign Service and travels to Sudan to act as a regional administrator. He is enchanted by the land and powerfully drawn to African men but finds himself cut off by his race, his rank and his position as a colonial. Charles ruminates on the sense of devotion that homosexuality can foster between men and how that devotion aids duty and right action. Phil invites Will back to his lodgings in the Hotel where Phil works as a waiter. Phil wants sex but is too shy so Will seduces him. Will goes to the opera with James and his grandfather. The opera is Billy Budd. Will is struck almost to tears by the homoerotic and emotional power of the work. During the conversation afterwards, the subject of Benjamin Britten’s own homosexuality arises and they talk about his relationship with E. M. Forster, who co-wrote the libretto. The relationship between gay sexual expression and art is gently explored. Will continues reading Charles’s diaries. On the way to a boxing club patronized by Nantwich, Will has an unpleasant encounter with a working class boy, who offers him sex for money. Will refuses; there are undertones of fear and violence. At the match, Will meets Bill: a man he knows from the Corry. Bill is a weightlifter; a large muscular man who coaches teenage boxers. Trapped inside his body, Bill seems a fearful man. He is devoted to Nantwich, his patron, and to the boys he coaches. He is also carrying a torch for Phil. From the diaries, Will learns that Nantwich has been to Egypt and then returned to London, where he met with Ronald Firbank; an extraordinary portrait of effete decrepitude; camp and alcoholic. Will takes Phil to visit Staines, a successful studio photographer who echoes Cecil Beaton. Staines is a gossipy queen and socialite. His lover is a “school tart” grown old; a kept man drinking too much. Staines poses Phil bare-chested and oiled; as pornography. This episode overtly deals with gay artifice, staging and the image. Phil is idealized and objectified. Staines reveals that Charles’s brother was homosexually insatiable, exploited his servants and was subsequently beaten to death and that Charles’s uncle was likewise into rough trade. At Nantwich’s house, Will and Charles talk about Ronald Firbank. Charles gives Will a beautiful edition of one of Firbank’s novels as a gift. Afterwards, Will goes to Arthur’s address in a working class area of London and calls but there is no answer. Returning, he encounters a group of skinheads who demand his watch, attack and queer-bash him, destroying the Firbank novel in the process. Will goes home, where James patches him up but beauty is temporarily ruined. He reads Charles’s diary aloud to Phil: Charles describes a North African trying to covertly sell him gay pornography and is disturbed at being ‘outed’ in a foreign culture. Will returns to Staines's home with Nantwich. There are several other men there, including two youths and a black chef, Abdul, who works at Charles’s club. Will is powerfully attracted to Abdul. It transpires that Staines and Nantwich are collaborating on the production of a pornographic film in which Abdul and the two youths are performing. The theme of voyeurism alienates Will, who finds it embarrassing and quietly leaves. Will takes Phil out clubbing at The Shaft. He has not been there for many months and there are vivid descriptions of a night on the gay ‘scene’. Will and Phil drink, dance and meet several gay ‘types’, including a Brazilian bodybuilder. He discovers Arthur, who has been working for his brother Harold, in the bathroom and attempts to have sex with him. Arthur is obviously quite upset, and they part ways. Will gets a telephone call from James; he has been arrested whilst seeking sex. This is ironic since James’s sex-life is non-eventful compared to Will’s. It appears to be a case of police-entrapment, with an undercover officer soliciting sex from homosexual men. Charles’s diaries have entered the Second World War; he is entering middle-age and the tone is melancholy. He is passionately devoted to an African man; the beautiful boy whose portrait hangs in Charles’s house. The boy is now grown up and about to get married to a woman. Will goes to an exhibition of photographs by Staines. The theme is soft-core homo-erotica. He is surprised to find Gavin there. Talking with Staines, he discovers that he and Charles have produced three pornographic films of the type that play in the cinema where Will first had sex with Phil. From the diaries, Will learns how Charles’s life was ruined. The African man whom he loved gets married and Charles begins to visit anonymous sex clubs and cruisy bathrooms. One night he solicits a policeman, who arrests Charles for public indecency. Despite his rank, Charles is ruthlessly prosecuted by a conservative politician of the time, who wants to make an example of him. The politician is William’s grandfather; now the Viscount Beckwith. Will’s wealth, his rank and his leisured gay existence are all built on a foundation of homosexual persecution. He also learns that Charles and Bill met in prison, where Bill, then a young man, had been thrown for having a love-affair with a boy three years younger than himself. The theme of natural love and sexuality destroyed by elite oppression is very powerful. While Charles is in prison, he learns that Naha, the African man, has been beaten to death in an incident that is apparently racially-motivated. After learning about his grandfather's past, Will decides that he cannot now write Charles’s biography, nor was he intended to do so. Charles has been educating him on his own past. Will talks on the phone with Gavin, his brother in law. Gavin tells Will that he knew it was Will’s grandfather who imprisoned Charles. A past perhaps so distant that the archaeologist knows it where the historian does not. Rupert has been told to watch out for Arthur; he reports that he has seen him with his brother Harold. Will goes to Phil’s hotel. He encounters a rich Argentine who propositions him. Will accepts until he finds that the man is obsessed with gay pornographic conventions, costumes and sex toys. Will finds this all slightly ridiculous and is not aroused. He refuses to consent to sex and leaves. Upstairs, he discovers Phil having sex with Bill. Disoriented, he leaves and wanders to James’s and then the Corry, where Charles Nantwich reveals his designs in giving Will the diaries. Will and James go to Staines’s to see a film, not a piece of pornography but an archive recording of Ronald Firbank in old age. The novel closes.
1364178	/m/04wxr8	A Tree Grows In Brooklyn	Betty Smith	1943	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is split into five "books," each covering a different period in the characters' lives. Book One opens in 1912 and introduces 11-year-old Francie Nolan, who lives in the Williamsburg tenement neighborhood of Brooklyn with her 10-year-old brother Cornelius ("Neeley" for short) and their parents, Johnny and Katie. Francie relies on her imagination and her love of reading to provide a temporary escape from the poverty that defines her daily existence. The family subsists on Katie's wages from cleaning apartment buildings, pennies from the children's junk-selling and odd jobs, and Johnny's irregular earnings as a singing waiter. His alcoholism has made it difficult for him to hold a steady job, and he sees himself as a disappointment to his family as a result. Francie admires him because he is handsome, talented, emotional and sentimental, like her. Francie's mother, Katie, has very little time for sentiment, since she is the breadwinner of the family who has forsaken fantasies and dreams for survival. Book Two jumps back to 1900, with the meeting of Johnny and Katie - the teenage children of immigrants from Ireland and Austria, respectively. Although Johnny panics when Katie becomes pregnant with first Francie and then Neeley, and begins drinking heavily, Katie resolves to give her children a better life than she has known, which her mother, Mary, embodies in the word and idea, "education." Kate also resents baby Francie because she is constantly ill, while Neely is more robust. Kate makes a promise to herself that her daughter must never learn of Kate's preference for Neely. During the first seven years of their marriage, the Nolans are forced to move twice within Williamsburg, due to public disgrace brought about first by Johnny's drunkenness and subsequent delirium tremens on his "voting birthday" and then by the children's sexy Aunt Sissy's misguided efforts at babysitting them, both of which set neighbors' tongues to talking. They arrive at the apartment introduced in Book One. In Book Three, the Nolans settle into their new home and the children (now seven and six) begin to attend the squalid, overcrowded public school next door. Francie enjoys learning even in these dismal surroundings, and with Johnny's support, she gets herself transferred to a better school in a different neighborhood. Johnny's attempts to improve the children's minds fail, but Katie helps Francie grow as a person and saves her life by shooting a child-rapist/murderer who tries to attack Francie shortly before she turns 14. When Johnny learns that Katie is pregnant once again, he falls into a depression that leads to his death from alcoholism-induced pneumonia on Christmas Day 1915. Money from the family's life insurance policies and the children's after-school jobs keeps the Nolans afloat in 1916 until the new baby, Annie Laurie (named after a favorite song of Johnny's), is born in May and Francie graduates from grade school in June. Graduation allows her to finally come to terms with the reality of her father’s death. At the start of Book Four, Francie and Neeley take jobs since there is no money to send them to high school. Francie works first in an artificial-flower factory, then in a press clipping office. Although she wants to use her salary to start high school in the fall, Katie decides to send Neeley instead, reasoning that he will only continue learning if he is forced into it while Francie will find a way to do it on her own. Once the United States enters World War I in 1917, the clipping office rapidly declines and closes, leaving Francie out of a job. After she finds work as a teletype operator, she makes a new plan for her education, choosing to skip high school and take summer college-level courses. She passes with the help of Ben Blake, a friendly and determined high school student, but fails the college's entrance exams. A brief encounter with Lee Rhynor, a soldier about to ship out to France, leads to heartbreak after he pretends to be in love with Francie when he is in fact about to get married. In 1918, Katie accepts a marriage proposal from Michael McShane, a pipe-smoking retired police officer who has long admired Katie, and has meanwhile become a wealthy businessman and politician. As Book Five begins in the fall of this same year, Francie - now almost 17 - quits her teletype job. She is about to start classes at the University of Michigan, having passed the entrance exams with Ben's help, and is considering the possibility of a future relationship with him. The Nolans prepare for Katie's wedding and the move from their Brooklyn apartment to McShane's home, and Francie pays one last visit to some of her favorite childhood places and reflects on all the people who have come and gone in her life. She is struck by how much of Johnny's character lives on in Neeley, who has become a talented jazz/ragtime piano player. Before she leaves the apartment, she notices the Tree of Heaven that has grown and re-sprouted in the building's yard despite all efforts to destroy it, seeing in it a metaphor for her family's ability to overcome adversity and thrive. In the habits of a neighboorhood girl, Florrie, she sees a version of her young self, sitting on the fire escape with a book and watching the young ladies of the neighborhood prepare for their dates. Francie says "Hello, Francie" to Florrie, and then "Goodbye, Francie" softly, as she closes the window.
1364241	/m/04wxy8	Beau Geste	P. C. Wren	1924	{"/m/01j6zc": "Foreign legion", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Michael "Beau" Geste is the protagonist. The main narrator (among others), by contrast, is his younger brother John. The three Geste brothers of Brandon Abbas are used as a metaphor for the British upper class values of a time gone by, and "the decent thing to do" is, in fact, the leitmotif of the novel. The Geste brothers are orphans and have been brought up by their aunt. The rest of Beau's band are mainly Isobel and Claudia (only daughter of Lady Patricia, and in a way, also reason enough for Michael to join the French Foreign Legion), and Lady Patricia's relative Augustus. When a precious jewel known as the "Blue Water" goes missing, suspicion falls on the young people, and Beau leaves Britain to join the Foreign Legion (la Légion étrangère), followed by his brothers, Digby (his twin) and John. There, after some adventure and separation from Digby, the sadistic Sergeant Lejaune gets command of the little garrison at Fort Zinderneuf in French North Africa, and only an attack by Tuaregs prevents a mutiny and mass desertion (of course the Geste brothers and a few loyals are against the plot). Throughout the book and adventures, Beau's behaviour is true to France and the Legion, and he dies at his post. At Brandon Abbas, the last survivor of the three brothers, John, is welcomed by their aunt and his fiancée Isobel, and the reason for the jewel theft is revealed to have been a matter of honour, and to have been the only "decent thing" possible.
1364438	/m/04wynk	Das siebte Kreuz	Anna Seghers	1942-09		 The story of Das siebte Kreuz is rather simple: there are seven men who have been imprisoned in the Westhofen camp, who have decided to make a collaborative escape attempt. The main character is a Communist, George Heisler; the narrative follows his path across the countryside, taking refuge with those few who are willing to risk a visit from the Gestapo, while the rest of the escapees are gradually overtaken by their hunters. The title of the book comes from a conceit of the prison camp. The current officer in charge has ordered the creation of these seven crosses from the trees nearby, to be used when the prisoners are returned - not for crucifixion, but a subtler torture: the escapees are made to stand all day in front of their crosses, and will be punished if they falter.
1365332	/m/04w_zk	The Mysteries of Pittsburgh	Michael Chabon	1988-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Art Bechstein is the son of a mob money launderer, who wants him to succeed in a legitimate career. When Art graduates from college, he has only a vague hope for a summer of adventure before he commits to the rest of his life. Bechstein almost immediately meets a charming young gay man, Arthur Lecomte, and his friend, a highly literate biker, Cleveland Arning, who become his partners in many summer adventures. Art begins a relationship with an insecure young woman named Phlox Lombardi. As Art's attraction to Arthur grows, it destabilizes both relationships and reveals he may be bisexual. Art is also troubled when Cleveland begins moving deeper into the city's organized crime families, drawing him closer to his father's dangerous Mafia connections. Art's relationships with his family, friends, and lovers become more and more entangled, causing a series of fallings out and unforeseen consequences.
1365414	/m/04x05b	The Big Sky	Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr.	1947	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction"}	 Boone Caudill is a young man who lives in Kentucky with his family as people are pushing further and further west in the Americas. (Boone is supposedly named after Daniel Boone, who is credited with finding Kentucky.) Boone's father is physically abusive to not only his mother, but also his brother and him. One night, his father begins to beat him after Boone had caused trouble in town, and Boone hits his father over the head with a stick from the wood pile. Knowing that his father is seriously injured, possibly even dead, he goes back to the house and steals his father's prize rifle. As a parting gift, his mother offers him a roast chicken they were going to have for supper. With that, Boone runs away. After thinking back to his childhood, he remembers his maternal uncle who he had idolized. The uncle was a mountain man, frequently thought of as uncivilized by his mother and father. Boone decides this is the life for him and sets off for the West and the mountains. As he walks, he meets a man with a cart and mule named Jim Deakins, who admits to Boone that he has always wanted something more from life and decides that Boone has the right idea. As they arrive into the next city, Jim decides to sell his mule and wagon for some money to travel and join Boone. However, as they get into town, Boone's father has just arrived and is intent on getting his rifle back. Boone jumps in the nearby river to get away, as Jim shouts from the banks of the river for Boone to wait for him. As Boone sets out again, he meets another traveler, Jonathan Bedwell. Bedwell gets Boone drunk and then steals his rifle, to Boone's horror. He continues to travel, now without the rifle, though intent on getting it back. However, he sees Bedwell outside of another town, and attacks him. The sheriff had been nearby and breaks them up. The sheriff takes them to court, and after a quick trial the more sophisticated Bedwell is given the rights to the rifle, as everyone believes it is his anyway. Boone is sentenced to spend time in the jail, but he refuses to admit that he did anything wrong so the sheriff flogs him in hopes of getting a confession. Meanwhile, Jim Deakins is traveling up the same path that Boone had taken. After getting the story out of the locals, he pretends to merely be curious about the goings-on. As he gets the sheriff progressively drunker, he steals the keys to the jail and sets Boone free. They go back to the inn where everyone had been drinking. Boone steals a horse and they flee the area for St. Louis. Boone and Deakins travel for a while before they get recruited onto a French keelboat traveling up the Missouri River. There the boys meet Dick Summers, the boat's hunter and guide, who becomes a role model for Boone in particular, whose explosive temper has gotten into more trouble than he's been able to completely avoid. On the boat, the captain has a Native American princess named Teal Eye. The captain and mate have strictly forbidden any of the crew to talk to her, as they believe it will help relations with the Blackfoot chief for them to bring him back his daughter and they don't want to bring back damaged goods. Boone sneaks looks at the girl, almost instantly falling in love with her. When they reach Blackfoot country, Teal Eye disappears one night. Soon after, the Blackfeet attack and destroy the keelboat and kill everyone on her except the three friends Caudill, Deakins, and Summers, who manage to escape. A good portion of the novel involves Boone Caudill becoming a fur trapper and dealing with the hardships as he moves further from civilization. Dick Summers tires of the life of a mountain man and leaves Jim Deakins and Boone Caudill to return to his land in Missouri to farm. Boone continues to be obsessed with Teal Eye, and eventually he is able to find her again. By that time large numbers of the Blackfeet have been killed by smallpox. With gifts Boone manages to convince Teal Eye's brother, now the chief since the death of their father, to let him have Teal Eye, who uses sign language to tell Boone that she loves him. Jim Deakins, Teal Eye and Boone live peacefully within the tribe, Boone finally feeling as if he's found a place to fit in. Teal Eye eventually gets pregnant, to Boone's joy. However, when the child is born, he is blind. He also has red hair, like Boone's closest friend Jim Deakins. Believing Teal Eye cheated on him, Boone is crushed. He proceeds to kill Jim Deakins and leave Teal Eye, fleeing back east. When Boone arrives back in Kentucky, his mother notes that there are quite a few red heads in their family. Boone cannot tolerate his confusion and the settled life and mores in Kentucky and, depending on one's point of view, either seduces or rapes a young neighbor girl, who despite her sobbing asks when they'll get married. That same night he flees west: "He didn't realize he was running until he saw [his dog] trotting to keep up." Boone stops at Dick Summers's farm in Missouri. In a theme repeated throughout Guthrie's trilogy, Boone refers to the destruction of the pristine west the first whites had known: "It's all sp'iled, I reckon, Dick. The whole caboodle." Boone blurts out that he killed Jim Deakins: "This here hand done it. ... I kilt Jim." Rather than spend even that one night with Dick Summers, Boone Caudill flees out the door, and the book ends.
1365983	/m/04x1ss	The Reivers	William Faulkner	1962	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The basic plot of The Reivers takes place in the first decade of the 20th century. It involves a young boy named Lucius Priest (a distant cousin of the McCaslin/Edmonds family Faulkner wrote about in Go Down, Moses) who accompanies a family friend named Boon Hogganbeck to Memphis, where Boon hopes to woo a prostitute called "Miss Corrie". Since Boon has no way to get to Memphis, he steals (reives, thereby becoming a reiver) Lucius's grandfather's car, the first car in Yoknapatawpha County. They discover that Ned McCaslin, a black man who works with Boon at Lucius's grandfather's horse stables, has stowed away with them (Ned is also a blood cousin of the Priests). When they reach Memphis, Boon and Lucius stay in the brothel while Ned disappears into the black part of town. Soon Ned returns, having traded the car for a racehorse. The remainder of the story involves Ned's attempts to race the horse in order to win enough money to help out his relative, and Boon's courtship with Miss Corrie (who is actually called Everbe Corinthia). Lucius, a young, wealthy, and sheltered boy, comes of age in Memphis. He comes into contact for the first time with the underside of society. Much of the novel involves Lucius trying to reconcile his genteel and idealized vision of life with the reality he is faced with on this trip. He meets Corrie's nephew, a boy a few years older than Lucius who acts as his foil and embodies many of the worst aspects of humanity. He degrades women, respects no one, blackmails the brothel owner, steals, and curses. Eventually Lucius, ever the white knight, fights him to defend Corrie's honor. She is so touched at his willingness to stand up for her that she determines to become an honest woman. The climax comes when Lucius rides the horse (named Coppermine, but called Lightning by Ned) in an illicit race. Coppermine is a fast horse, but he likes to run just behind the other horses so he can see them at all times. Ned convinces him to make a final burst to win the race by bribing him with what may be a sardine. After they win the race, Lucius's grandfather shows up. This time Ned does not do the sardine trick, and Coppermine loses. Ned has bet against Coppermine in this race, and the poor black stable hand is able to get the better of the rich white grandfather. The story ends with the news that Boon and Miss Corrie have married and named their first child after Lucius.
1367306	/m/04x42j	The Way We Live Now	Anthony Trollope	1875	{"/m/02x35fs": "Serial", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03nhxh": "Social commentary"}	 Augustus Melmotte is a foreign-born financier with a mysterious past (he is rumored to have Jewish origins, and it is later revealed that he owned a failed bank in Munich). When he moves his business and his family to London, the city's upper crust begins buzzing with rumours about him—and a host of characters ultimately find their lives changed because of him. Melmotte sets up his office in the City of London and he purchases a fine house in Grosvenor Square. He sets out to woo rich and powerful investors by hosting a lavish party, and finds an appropriate investment vehicle when he is approached by a young engineer, Paul Montague, and his American partner, Hamilton K. Fisker, to invest in the construction of a new railway line running from Salt Lake City to Veracruz, Mexico. Melmotte's goal is to ramp up the share price without paying out any actual money into the scheme itself, thereby increasing his own not-inconsiderable wealth. Amongst the aristocratic investors on the railway scheme's board is Sir Felix Carbury, a young and dissolute baronet who is quickly running through his widowed mother's savings. In an attempt to restore their fortunes, as they are being beset by their creditors, his mother, Matilda, Lady Carbury—who makes ends meet by writing historical potboilers with titles like Criminal Queens—endeavours to have him become engaged to Marie Melmotte, the Melmottes' only child and thus a considerable heiress. Sir Felix manages to win Marie's heart, but his schemes are blocked by Melmotte, who has no intention of allowing his daughter to marry a penniless aristocrat. Felix's situation is also complicated by his relationship with Ruby Ruggles, a buxom young farm girl living with her grandfather on the estate of Roger Carbury, his well-off cousin. Whilst Melmotte is carrying out his financial shenanigans, Paul Montague is the one person who is a thorn in his side. In the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway Board meetings, chaired and controlled by Melmotte, it is Paul who raises the difficult questions of when the money will actually be allocated to the railway line. Paul's personal life is also made complicated by his amorous affairs. He falls in love with Lady Carbury's young and beautiful daughter Hetta—much to her mother's fury—but has been followed to England by a former American fiancée, the dashing Mrs Winifred Hurtle. Mrs Hurtle is determined to make Paul marry her based on the fact that they had lived together in America, and that she offered him "all that a woman can give". It is Lady Carbury's plan, advised by her literary friend Mr Broune, a distinguished London publisher, for Hetta to marry her cousin Roger. Roger has been Paul's mentor and the two start to come into conflict over their attentions towards Hetta, who steadfastly refuses to marry her cousin, against her mother's wishes. Events start to come to a head when Paul finally gets Mrs Hurtle's consent to free him of his obligations towards her, in exchange for agreeing to spend one final weekend with her on the coast. Whilst walking along the sands, they meet Roger Carbury, who, on seeing Paul with another woman, decides to break off all acquaintance with him, believing that Paul is simply playing with Hetta's affections. In the meantime, Felix Carbury is torn between his affection for Ruby and his financial need to pursue Marie Melmotte. Ruby, after being beaten by her grandfather for not marrying a respectable local miller, John Crumb, runs away to London and finds refuge in the boarding house owned by her aunt, Mrs Pipkin—where, as it happens, Mrs Hurtle is lodging. Felix learns from Ruby about Mrs Hurtle's relationship with Paul and, coming into conflict with Mrs Hurtle over his attentions to Ruby, reveals all his new-found knowledge to his mother and sister. Hetta is devastated and breaks off her engagement to Paul. Meanwhile, in order to get Paul out of London and away from the Board meetings, Melmotte attempts to send Paul off to Mexico on a nominal inspection trip of the railway line; but Paul declines to go. Finding that they cannot get around Melmotte, Felix and Marie decide to elope together to America. Marie and her maid steal a blank cheque from her father's desk and cash it at his bank, arranging to meet Felix on the ship at Liverpool. Felix, who has been given money by Marie for his expenses, goes to his club and gambles it all away in a revenge card game, instigated by his friend Lord Nidderdale, against Miles Grendall, who had cheated Felix in a previous game. Drunk and penniless, Felix returns to his mother's house, knowing the game is up. Meanwhile, after Melmotte has been alerted by his bank, Marie and her maid, who believe that Felix is already on the ship at Liverpool, are intercepted by the police before they can board the ship, and Marie is brought back to London. Melmotte, who by this time has also become an MP and the purchaser of a grand country estate belonging to Mr Longestaffe (whose daughter Georgiana is the heroine of a lengthy satirical subplot), also knows that his own game is nearly up, particularly after his shenanigans are exposed by Paul to Mr Alf, a journal editor and political rival. When Longestaffe and his son demand the purchase money for the estate Melmotte had bought from them, Melmotte forges his daughter's name to a document that will allow him to get at her money (money that Melmotte had put in her name precisely to protect it from creditors, and which Marie refused to give back to him). He tries to get his clerk, Croll, to witness the forged signature. Croll refuses. Melmotte then also forges Croll's signature, but makes the mistake of leaving the documents with Mr Brehgert, a banker. When Brehgert returns the documents to Croll, rather than to Melmotte, Croll discovers the forgery and leaves Melmotte's service. With his creditors now knocking at his door, the railway shares nearly worthless, charges of forgery looming in his future, and his political reputation in tatters after a drunken appearance in the House of Commons, Melmotte poisons himself. The remainder of the novel ties up the loose ends. While Felix is out with Ruby one evening, John Crumb comes upon them and, believing that Felix is forcing his attentions on her, thoroughly beats Felix. Ruby finally realizes that Felix will never marry her, and returns home to marry John. Felix is forced to live by his wits on the Continent. Lady Carbury marries Mr Broune, who has been a true friend to her throughout her troubles. Hetta and Paul are finally reconciled after he tells her the truth about Mrs Hurtle; Roger forgives Paul and allows the couple to live at Carbury Manor, which he vows to leave to their child. Marie, now financially independent, becomes acquainted with Hamilton K. Fisker, and agrees to go with him to San Francisco, where she eventually marries him. She is accompanied by her stepmother, Madame Melmotte; Croll, who marries Madame Melmotte; and Mrs Hurtle. They never return to England.
1367473	/m/04x4lf	The Box of Delights	John Masefield	1935	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The central character is Kay Harker who, on returning from boarding school, finds himself mixed up in a battle to possess a magical box, which allows the owner to go small (shrink) and go swift (fly), experience magical wonders contained within the box and go into the past. The owner of the box is an old Punch and Judy man called Cole Hawlings, whom Kay meets at a railway station. They develop an instant rapport, and this leads Cole to confide that he is being chased by a man called Abner Brown and his gang. For safety, Cole entrusts the box to Kay, who then goes on to have many adventures.
1367900	/m/04x59p	Backwards	Rob Grant	1996-02-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The Red Dwarf crew arrive on htraE (a version of Earth in a universe where time is running backwards) in order to rescue Lister, who has returned to life and the age of 25 (following his death at age 61 the end of the previous novel, Better Than Life) as a result of the crew depositing his body on the time-reversed Earth 36 years earlier. After failing to meet Lister at the arranged rendezvous, Kryten learns from the television that Lister and Cat are associated with a murder that, due to the backwards flow of time, has not yet been committed. Lister soon arrives injured and in the custody of the police who, after a backwards fight which restores Lister to health, promptly unarrest him. Lister then takes off in backwards pursuit of one of the officers, explaining to the others that due to the nature of reverse time he is forced to follow the policeman (who if time were running forwards would be chasing him) until he is 'unspotted'. After a harrowing backwards car-chase (especially for Rimmer, who is unable to trust that no harm can befall him while time is running backwards) the policeman unsees them, and the crew retreat to the mountain area where they landed their ship, the Starbug. When they arrive, the crew examine Starbug to find most of the landing jets missing and the underside a mess of rust and badly-repaired damage. Unable to understand how it happened, but realising that on the backwards Earth they will need the landing jets to perform a take-off, they begin searching for the missing jets. While searching Kryten discovers the body of a hillbilly, who has been killed with a pickaxe. He panics when the corpse begins returning to life and removes the pickaxe from the man's chest. Once the man leaves, Kryten replays the incident 'forwards' and realises he was responsible for killing the man, a serious breach of his programming not to harm humans. Overwhelmed by guilt, Kryten shuts himself down. Upon learning what's happened, Lister realises that this was the murder for which he was imprisoned and is overwhelmed at finally learning that he was not only innocent but Kryten was the one responsible for his lengthy prison sentence. Despite this, Lister forgives him and tries to get him working again. Having only found one landing jet and that in terrible condition, and with Lister busy repairing Kryten, the crew's attempt at a reverse landing fails and they are trapped on htraE, having missed their window. Kryten is eventually fixed and he informs them they will have to wait 10 years for another opportunity to leave. Ten years pass and while Kryten and Rimmer are physically unaffected, the reverse time of backwards Earth means Lister and The Cat are now 15. During the wait, The Cat becomes a virgin during a bizarre sexual encounter with a female cousin of the 'un-murdered' hillbilly, and the crew busy themselves reburying the landing jet they found and 'un-repairing' the damage to Starbug, which begins to become less rusted but more damaged as the reverse landing window approaches. When the time arrives, the crew begin the reverse landing, sending the underpowered ship scraping backwards over a nearby mountain, a process which repairs much of the damage as several landing jets leap from the forest and reattach themselves. With the craft still out of control, they are unstruck by a missile from the American 'Star Wars' defence system, which had misidentified Starbug as a threat. With the remainder of the damage repaired, the crew leave for their own universe to rendezvous with Red Dwarf, but find it to be missing without a trace. Unknown to them, Holly, the Red Dwarf computer, has been reversing the process of his intelligence compression (performed in 'Better Than Life'), reducing his IQ to increase his operational lifespan. Unfortunately he takes the process too far, leaving him so stupid that he is unable to reverse the procedure or prevent Red Dwarf falling into the hands of the Agonoids, who force him to divulge information about the crew. Delighted to discover the one remaining human (Lister) is among them, the Agonoids begin to plan his demise, ripping Holly's components from the ship and jettisoning them before converting the Red Dwarf into a giant torture chamber. Discovering the remains of Holly, the Dwarf crew learn of the Agonoid threat, but with food and fuel supplies on Starbug severely low, and their power situation made even worse by the energy required to power up Holly's remains even for the brief time they spoke with him, they have no options available but to head for Red Dwarf regardless. At the same time, in a parallel universe, Ace Rimmer is preparing to test pilot a ship capable of crossing dimensions. The brave, heroic and charismatic Ace (a complete contrast to the neurotic Rimmer) arrives in the Red Dwarf timeline, materialising so close to Starbug as to severely damage both ships. Coming over to Starbug to help with repairs, Ace deduces it may be possible to rig up his ship to take the crew home. The Agonoids meanwhile are fighting for the right to torture and kill the last remaining human. Djuhn'Keep, the most intelligent Agonoid- having tricked and dismantled another for spare parts due to his own poor physical condition, only having been spared destruction so far due to his technical skills-, succeeds in jettisoning the others into space, but notices to his chagrin that one, Pizzak'Rapp, is headed directly for Starbug. Pizzak'Rapp attempts to break into the ship, but Ace sacrifices himself to send the Agonoid into space. Meanwhile, Djuhn'Keep arrives on Starbug, just as the oxygen supply fails. Horrified at losing the opportunity to torture Lister, Djuhn swiftly repairs the Oxygeneration unit. Kryten bazookoids the freshly repaired hull, causing a breech which sucks the Agonoid into space. The crew then learn that Djuhn has infected the ship's NaviComp with a computer virus (the Armageddon virus), causing them to be locked on course towards a nearby planet. Kryten decides to deliberately contract the virus to create an antidote, cryptically telling the crew to 'watch his dreams' before becoming unresponsive. Entering Kryten's dream-state through a VR machine, the crew find themselves in a replica of an old Western, with the various characters representing Kryten's characteristics ('Wyatt Memory', 'Billy Belief', etc.), being threatened by 'the Apocalypse boys', representing the virus. Kryten's consciousness is represented by the town lawman, Sheriff Carton, but the recent death of Wyatt Memory has cost Kryten his memory of what he is meant to be doing, although the crew are able to remind him of enough crucial details to finish his work. In order to buy Kryten time, the crew (Rimmer, Lister and The Cat), adopt personas from a VR Western game, Streets of Larado, and enter the game to assist him. With impeccable skills in fighting, knife-throwing and shooting provided by the VR machine, along with the knowledge that they can't be injured, they attempt to take on the Apocalypse boys to distract them from destroying the town or killing Sheriff Carton. However, the virus spreads to the VR machine the crew is connected to, sealing them into the artificial reality, removing their 'special skills' and allowing them to feel pain (Fortunately, Lister and Cat cannot be actually killed, although Rimmer's light bee is still potentially vulnerable to the virus). The crew clash with the Apocalypse boys regardless, and are subject to terrible injuries; Lister is even decapitated at one point. However, Kryten has enough time to complete the antidote program just as the Apocalypse boys gun him down. With the Apocalypse boys vapourised, Lister and The Cat return to reality to find the virus has killed both Kryten and Rimmer, destroying their mechanical components beyond repair. Since the VR machine only simulated their injuries, they find themselves unharmed. With the virus gone, they are able to control the ship, but since it has been accelerating for several hours there is not sufficient fuel left to avoid hitting the planet. Cramming into Ace's one-man ship Wildfire, which he had programmed for another jump, they cross dimensions- their only other option being to go back to an uninhabited and gutted Red Dwarf in this universe-, finding themselves in a timeline where Kryten and Rimmer are still alive, but their own counterparts died playing Better Than Life. As they dock with the alternate Red Dwarf, Lister reflects that while this isn't home, it might be close enough.
1369584	/m/04x9zm	Orange Crush	Tim Dorsey	2001-07	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Marlon Conrad, a spoiled "rich kid", enters the political arena in a career carefully managed by his wealthy father. He becomes the lieutenant governor of Florida, a plush job he can exploit mercilessly. When the elected governor dies in a plane crash, however, Marlon automatically assumes the office. Marlon is apathetic and corrupt, riding in the pockets of special interest groups. During his tenure, he is suddenly recruited into active duty during the Kosovo War and a bureaucratic tangle prevents him from ducking his responsibility as expected. His experiences in the military change his outlook, his fundamental character, and even his political views. He returns to Florida, determined to make a difference in the state. But first, Marlon faces a reelection battle against dim-witted Democratic candidate Gomer Tatum, the state House Speaker. Serge Storms, Dorsey's main character, appears in Orange Crush, but in a relatively small part compared to the other novels in the series.
1370269	/m/04xcvg	Mutation	Robin Cook	1990	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Victor Frank, and his wife Marsha, are unable to have a second child due to Marsha's infertility. They turn to surrogacy as an alternate method of conception. Victor, an obstetrician-gynaecologist and owner of the biochemical company Chimera Inc., injects the egg implanted in his wife with an agent called Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) into chromosome six, which causes the baby to grow more neurons than usual, as a result making them super intelligent. Their son, VJ, is born a genius. He is able to talk in six months and read in thirteen. Several years later, VJ's brother, David, and nanny, Janice, both die of an unexplainable rare form of liver cancer. At about three, VJ experiences a drop in intelligence, leading Victor to think his experiment is a failure. VJ lives a secluded life from that point, leading his psychiatrist mother to worry, to the annoyance of Victor who believes VJ is fine. When VJ turns eleven, a disastrous chain of events begins. Victor had injected two other eggs with NGF, which were given to two families who work at Chimera through the fertility clinic there. They both inexplicably die at age three because of brain edema. Victor later finds out they had been given the antibiotic Cephaloclor, which causes the nerve cell growth process to begin again. This causes their brains to grow too large for their skulls, killing them. Their parents, however, were told their children had deadly allergies to this antibiotic. Victor launches an investigation into the children's deaths, and finds no explanation for how they got the antibiotic. He also insists on VJ getting a full neurological work-up, making Marsha suspicious. Victor eventually reveals his experiment to Marsha, horrifying her. She then gives VJ a full psychological work-up as well. Nothing seems out of the ordinary in the results, but Marsha realizes the results don't seem to reflect VJ's real personality. This leads her to believe that he analyzed the tests and beat them. Victor, meanwhile, is having the DNA of the tumors that killed his older son and nanny analyzed. When the DNA in the tumors is sequenced, there is an identical strand of alien DNA in both of them. Victor then goes looking for VJ, who spends a lot of time at the lab, and sees him head under an old clock tower on the Chimera campus. Victor follows him, and is knocked out by a guard. When he wakes up he is in a laboratory built by VJ, where he has solved many of the biochemical problems Victor had been trying to solve. Victor is amazed by his son's genius, and rushes to show Marsha. Marsha reacts differently and is worried about VJ, especially about the part of the lab he didn't show them. Victor and Marsha come back the next day and insist on VJ showing them the rest of the lab. In one room, VJ is growing fetuses, the five eggs from Marsha that had not been implanted, in artificial wombs. VJ tells them that there is no fifth fetus because of a failed implantation attempt in the artificial womb, and also reveals that he has altered the babies to make them mentally retarded, so they won't be more intelligent than him. After this, he reveals that he killed the other two children who had been injected with NGF for the same reason, so he would be the only super genius. Not only did he kill the two children, he also used a method he had created for injecting cancer into someone to kill David, Janice, and a teacher who was prying into his life. VJ then leads his horrified parents into another room, where he has tanks full of E. Coli genetically altered to produce cocaine, which he sold to Colombian drug dealers to finance his lab. VJ then insists that his parents announce their intent to him. Marsha convinces VJ to leave her and Victor to talk alone, and they decide they must kill their son. NGF may have made VJ a genius, but at the cost of his conscience. Victor lies to VJ, and VJ agrees to release him on two conditions. One, that Marsha stay in the lab as a hostage, and two, that Victor must have a guard with him at all times. Victor takes the guard back to his house and drugs him. He then rushes to his lab, where he synthesizes nitroglycerin. He makes a bomb with the nitroglycerin, and plants it in a tunnel by VJ's lab. He convinces VJ to release Marsha so she can do her work, and stalls VJ until the bomb goes off, causing the gates redirecting a river under the clock tower to break. VJ rushes for the exit, but Victor stops him discovering that, ironically, despite the fact VJ's mind is beyond his years, he still has the strength of a ten-year-old. Victor holds him down until the lab floods, killing them both. One years later, a mother brings in her teenage daughter and her daughter's child to her office. Marsha surmises from the fact that the 18-month child is reading a medical journal, something VJ did, and his ice blue eyes, a trait VJ had, that this child is the "failed" zygote. She decides she will have to go through another VJ-like experience, "with Joe's help and end forever the nightmare her husband had begun". nl:Manipulatie (boek)
1370274	/m/04xcwj	Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell	David Michaels	2004-12-07	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The plot of the novel takes place in 2004 and concerns an Iranian terrorist group called "The Shadows". Led by Nasir Tarighian, it is the goal of Tarighian to use a weapon of mass destruction codenamed "The Babylon Phoenix" against the city of Baghdad as revenge for the actions taken by Iraq against Iran during the 1980s that resulted in the murder of his wife and children. While there really isn't much benefit to the group today, Tarighian attempts to sell the scheme to his organization by claiming that it would also create further disorder in Iraq and in the Middle East, which would inevitably cause the people to turn against the "West", namely the United States since Iraq is currently under their watch. Tarighian, a former "great warrior" during the Iran–Iraq War and often proclaimed hero in Iran, hoped that by doing this the Iranian people would rejoice and urge the Iranian government to invade and conquer Iraq after the U.S is forced out of the region. Most of the members of the Shadows disagree with the course of action, feeling that the result is extremely unlikely and that the scheme is nothing more than a 20 year-old vendetta by Tarighian to get back at Iraq for the death of his wife and children during the war. These members feel the same effect of destabilization in the region can be achieved by attacking either Tel Aviv or Jerusalem in Israel. The novel also involves a terrorist arms dealing organization named "The Shop." Headed by Andrei Zdrok, their aim is purely business; to make money by supplying arms to anyone with money regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion. The Shop is one of the few organizations in the world that is aware of the black-ops division of the NSA, named "Third Echelon", which sends covert agents into the world called Splinter Cells, to exercise the use of a "fifth freedom"; the freedom to do whatever is necessary to preserve national security and peace for the United States. The Shop, using their knowledge (the source of which is revealed in the sequel, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda to be a traitor within Third Echelon itself) and resources, has taken the liberty of assassinating Splinter Cells whenever possible thus to increase their profit margin by keeping the shipment of arms from falling into unwanted hands. Sam Fisher is deployed by Third Echelon to the Middle East to uncover the truth about the murder of a Splinter Cell agent and track down the source of a shipment of arms seized by the Iraqi police. There he surveys and infiltrates numerous locations relating to both the Shop and the Shadows, all the while unaware that the Shop has targeted him and his only daughter, Sarah.
1371002	/m/04xfvx	Saint Overboard	Leslie Charteris	1936	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Simon Templar, alias The Saint, is enjoying a pleasure cruise along the French coast aboard his yacht, the Corsair when he is awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of gunfire and shouting from another vessel (the Falkenberg) anchored nearby. The source of the commotion is a group of men pursuing a young woman who is swimming frantically away from the other ship. Templar rescues the woman who, after some considerable hesitation, identifies herself as Loretta Page, a private detective who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of sunken treasure from the Atlantic. When she learns her rescuer is The Saint, she enlists his help in tracking down a group of modern-day pirates. These pirates, led by Kurt Vogel, are using newly developed bathyscape technology to reach the sea floor and scour recent shipwrecks for gold and other booty before officially sanctioned salvage operations arrive. And Vogel is not against committing cold-blooded murder to keep his operation going. Hampered by Loretta's detective firm superior, who harbors a deep distrust of Templar, as well as Simon's growing love for Loretta, The Saint sets out to stop Vogel's operation. In the process he reunites with some of his colleagues from previous adventures Roger Conway and Peter Quentin. Orace, Templar's longtime manservant, makes his first major appearance since the very first Saint novel, Meet - The Tiger!. And it is Orace who complicates Templar's mission when he accidentally kills one of Vogel's men, which leads to Vogel forcing Templar (on pain of Loretta's possible death) to take the dead man's place on a salvage operation in the Channel Islands. * Aside from the return of Peter Quentin, Roger Conway and Orace, this book also features the first reference to Templar's other partner, Hoppy Uniatz since The Saint Goes On (although Uniatz is not involved in the plot). This is also the first Saint book to suggest a serious relationship between Templar and a woman other than his longtime girlfriend Patricia Holm, who is not mentioned once in this book (she returns in subsequent volumes, however). In the previous novel The Saint in New York Templar expresses affection for Fay Edwards while She Was a Lady has Templar partnering with a female thief named Jill Trelawney, however in both cases Templar indicates that he is not "available" due to his relationship with Holm; no such reference is made in Saint Overboard. * Some editions contain an introduction by Charteris in which he discusses the diving technology used in the book. The 1963 reprint by Fiction Publishing Company includes a modified version of this introduction in which Charteris apologizes for the outdated technology. * This is one of the few Saint books to include a map showing the locations of the major events in the book.
1371465	/m/04xh7t	In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message				 Written between the years 1923-1931, In the Light of Truth is a collection of 91 lectures addressing all spheres of life, ranging from God and the Universe to the Laws in Creation, free will and responsibility, intuition and the intellect, the ethereal world and the beyond, justice and love. It answers eternal questions such as what does it mean to be human, what is the purpose of life on earth, and what happens after death. It also explains the causes and significance of the unprecedented crises facing humanity today and our responsibilities to the future. The publishers write "This book ... answers with clarity all the unsolved questions of human existence. The recognitions mediated with this book are so immense that they force the unprejudiced reader to ponder, investigate and go forward. The Grail Message will appeal to any human being who is seeking to understand life, his or her place in Creation, and the source of one’s being." In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message purports to gives spiritual support for the problems and questions in life: Where do we come from? Where do we go when we die? What about fate and karma, Divine justice, free will, the Mission of Jesus, the Son of God, the Laws of Nature and Creation, and many others. In the Light of Truth also gives information about the mythical Holy Grail. While ancient sagas and legends, and modern art, depict the Grail as an earthly myth, without being able to provide a conclusive explanation of its significance, Abd-ru-shin describes the Grail as a spiritual reality of the highest order, the connecting point between the Creator and His Creation. According to the Creation myth given in The Grail Message, human beings are actually only guests on this earth. They came from a spiritual realm, which is far above the world of earthly matter, in order to begin a course of development leading down to this earth. This path continues for each person through repeated earth lives (reincarnation). Through experiencing man&#39;s inner, spiritual consciousness develops, grows, and matures. This is the prerequisite for the way back to the spiritual realm, which is the goal of his path of development: man can and should return to the immortality of the spiritual realm as a conscious spiritual entity, and thus enter &#34;Paradise.&#34; In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message supposes that &#34;The Laws of Creation&#34; provide each human spirit with support on his way. Unchangeably interwoven from the beginning, they bear within, like the Ten Commandments, the Love, Grace, and Justice of the Creator. To truly know and understand the way these laws work is essential for successfully navigating one&#39;s way through life. Therefore, the explanation of these Laws runs like a thread through the lectures of The Grail Message. The book also describes the relationship between the sexes: &#34;male&#34; and &#34;female&#34; each represent a specific, separate &#34;principle,&#34; each of equal value for the total Creation. Therefore, any claims by the sexes for special rights are untenable, as is the view that man and woman are the same in their qualities and nature. In the Light of Truth also contends that there is a polarity between man and woman, which since it has been incorrectly understood in the past has led over the centuries to constant battles between the sexes. The Grail Message purports that the only way to end the conflict is to recognize and understand the special qualities of each sex and their special tasks in Creation. Finally, the Grail Message proposes to explain to mankind the &#34;how&#34; of diseases, which it explains as consequences of karmic returns of the karmic sowings of man through his intuitive perception, thoughts and deeds. Explaining that only in the light of Divine Knowledge will it be possible for the spirit to once again become strong by itself and be able to bring about resistance to diseases, especially when the time arrives for all diseases to become as good as incurable. Abd-ru-shin gives insight into the way and process behind diseases such as cancer etc. Admonishing that the way of Truth and Light will lead onwards as would help restore mankind from diseases, spiritually.
1372675	/m/04xlck	On Basilisk Station	David Weber	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Sidney Harris, the Hereditary President of the People's Republic of Haven, discusses the economic and military situation with his cabinet. The Secretary of Economy Walter Frankel presents the latest economic projections which look very bad. He blames the naval budget. Admiral Parnell points out that the fleet is required to hold on to recently acquired star systems. He blames the increases of the Basic Living Stipend for the bleak economic situation. Frankel responds that the BLS increases are the only thing keeping the mob in check. The resulting discussion leads to the realization that additional income is required to finance the BLS and a military that can hold on to the current star systems. Following the DuQuesne Plan the source of these income should be new conquests. Moving southwards towards Erewhon is rejected as too dangerous as the Solarian League could see it as a threat. Moving westwards towards Silesia is seen as the better option, but the Basilisk system is in the way. The Basilisk system contains a terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction. The decision is made to take over the Basilisk system and Admiral Parnell is tasked with drawing up plans to that effect. Commander Honor Harrington, freshly graduated from the Royal Manticorian Navy’s Advanced Tactical Course, assumes command of CL-56 Fearless as it is completing an extensive weapons refit. A successful young officer with a promising career in the service of her Queen, Honor’s delight at her new command soon turns to dismay as she realizes Fearless has been nearly stripped of her normal weapons and turned into a tactical testbed for new technology. After initial success in the opening rounds of fleet war games, Fearless suffers defeat after defeat as opposing officers correctly determine the safest way to deal with the light cruiser’s refitted weapons is to deny her the chance to use them. Banished to Basilisk Station by officers eager to sweep their so-called “secret weapon” under the carpet, Honor is even more dismayed to learn the commanding officer of the other Queen’s ship assigned to the system picket is an old Academy nemesis. Captain Lord Pavel Young has learned of Honor’s assignment, and has set her up for failure to discharge her duty. After taking his heavy cruiser Warlock off to Manticore for a “desperately needed” refit, Young leaves Honor and Fearless as the sole RMN unit responsible for the Basilisk system’s security. When the widely contradictory picket requirements cause Fearless to stumble in its duty, it will be Honor, not Young, who takes the bullet for the failure. Grimly buckling down, Honor kicks and drags her crew after her as they address themselves to the tasks set for them. With hard work and clever use of resources, Honor soon has revitalized the RMN’s presence in Basilisk and amazed the other Manticorian personnel assigned to the system. Having grown used to the backwater dumping ground circumstances of Basilisk, the Junction and planetary mission staff are delighted to realize they now have a competent and dedicated officer to partner with. Even though short handed and lacking full resources to properly address all the requirements of their duty in Basilisk, Fearless and her crew rise to the circumstances as Queen’s officers are expected to. And none too soon, as the rival star nation of Haven, a bloated conqueror which has been slowly strangling on its own economic policies for over half a century, has set its eyes on the Star Kingdom. The plan Haven has evolved begins with a coup de main against Basilisk; whipping the low-tech native aliens into a killing frenzy that would sweep across the planet in a haze of blood was to provide the interstellar pretext Haven desires to swoop in and take control of the system before Manticore can respond. This would provide the means to invade of Manticore through the two Junction termini Haven would then possess: Trevor’s Star and Basilisk. But through the proper attention to duty, Honor and the Manticoran planetary personnel stumble into pieces of the plan. Assembling the fragments of information into a coherent whole, Honor deduces Haven’s intentions and is left with no choice but to act firmly or stand aside while Haven moves into launch position for an invasion. Honor leads Fearless and her crew into a desperate engagement against a fleeing Haven Q-ship. Overmatched in everything but courage, Fearless is pounded into scrap during the chase, and suffers terrible casualties among her officers and crew. Despite this, Fearless succeeds in its desperate mission; Honor manages to lure the Q-ship within range of their secret weapon and to destroy it. Manticore reinforces the system in time to greet the “visiting” Haven task force, who leave after a suitable interval to inform Haven of failure. After extensive repairs just to get the mauled light cruiser underway, Honor returns to the Star Kingdom to a hero’s welcome. Promoted to Captain, Honor is given command of the heavy cruiser Fearless, a newly constructed Star Knight-class vessel hastily redesignated to replace the aging, gutted, and scheduled to be scrapped CL-56 which had given so much in Basilisk.
1372721	/m/04xlhd	Honor Among Enemies	David Weber	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 After more than three years in exile on Grayson, several of Honor's old political enemies decide to try to kill two birds with one stone. Klaus Hauptmann is able to have Honor appointed as commander of HMAMC Wayfarer, a prototype Q-ship. He believes that Honor will either deal with the piracy problems that are causing him losses in the Silesian Confederacy or die trying. Wayfarer includes space for carrying a squadron of Light Attack Craft (LACs), a large number of missile pods that can be quickly deployed through the ship's rear cargo doors, and unusually heavy energy weaponry for the ship's size and intended role, but it is essentially still a merchant ship, much slower than a regular navy vessel and with lighter defenses. Honor's orders are to lead a squadron of four Q-ships to fight piracy in the Silesian Confederacy. Although piracy is a chronic problem in Silesia, the Royal Navy managed to keep it somewhat in check until the war began; with the fleet needed elsewhere piracy has gone completely out of control and the powerful Manticoran merchant cartels demand that the Navy do something. There are other considerations: Silesia is something of a disputed territory between the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Andermani Empire. While Honor leads her crew in battles against various pirates, the Havenites are also conducting covert commerce raiding in Silesia, in an attempt to destabilize Manticoran trade in the region and present themselves in a more favorable light to the Andermani. The Havenite light cruiser PNS Vaubon, under Citizen Commander Warner Caslet, had been pursuing a particularly loathsome group of raiders whose actions were repugnant to most of the Havenite officers involved. When Caslet sees some of these raiders attacking what he thinks is a Manticore merchant ship he decides to attack the raiders, despite being outnumbered. The Wayfarer destroys the raiders and Caslet is forced to surrender Vaubon to the superior vessel. With the additional intelligence gathered by the Havenites, Honor takes the fight the pirates led by the terrorist Andre Warnecke and with a hostage gambit liberates the planet Sidemore, which had been occupied by the pirates. After her defeat of the pirates Honor goes looking for the Havenite commerce raiders. This leads to a larger-scale conflict with Havenite forces. Klaus Hauptmann has traveled on the liner Artemis to see the piracy situation first hand in Silesea, and Honor encounters them just as the Havenites are closing in on the Artemis. In the ensuing battle Wayfarer is able to destroy two Havenite battlecruisers but is itself ultimately destroyed. The few surviving members of Honor's crew, along with several Havenite prisoners, are rescued and return to Andermani space. Because of Honor's bravery in saving Hauptmann's life during the battle the two are reconciled.
1372752	/m/04xllk	The Short Victorious War	David Weber	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The People's Republic of Haven finds itself teetering at the edge of economic disaster. Unable to maintain its massive welfare state in the face of inflation and deficit and with opposition to the government getting bolder, the leaders of the People's Republic decide to resort to war against Manticore. A short, victorious war, they believe, will both distract the proles from their current economic problems and allow them to use the riches of the Manticore system to prop up their welfare state. Meanwhile Honor returns to duty after injuries she sustained in The Honor of the Queen to command the brand-new battlecruiser HMS Nike, the pride of the Royal Manticoran Navy, with some of her old crew aboard and with her old Academy friend Michelle Henke as executive officer. But on their way to her post, the engineers of the Nike discover a flaw in one of her fusion reactors, which hampers her first operational deployment to the critical Manticoran base at Hancock Station. Honor spends the time her ship is in dock by beginning her first real romantic relationship with the senior officer of Hancock Station, Captain Junior Grade Paul Tankersley. The Havenites start the war Honor had been struggling to prevent in the previous books. Their plan is to launch probing missions on Manticoran Alliance members to push the Alliance into re-deploying its forces to create weak points and allow them to strike at Mantircore directly. They are aided greatly in this through the use of project Argus, stealthy sensor platforms purchased from the Solarian League and planted in Alliance systems to watch the movements of Manticore forces. Havenite ships on ballistic courses with no active systems are able to collect the data dumps from the sensor platforms without being detected by Manticore forces. When Admiral Sarnow's superior deploys most of Hancock Station's ships to other star systems to guard against further Havenite provocation the Argus net allows the Havenites to see this weakness in the Manticore position, and they decide to attack Hancock Station in force. Honor joins Admiral Mark Sarnow's fleet alongside her old enemy, Pavel Young. With most of the Royal Manticoran Navy deployed elsewhere to prevent the Havenite provocations, Honor and Admiral Sarnow find themselves forced to defend Hancock Station from a vastly superior Havenite armada. With the help of Honor's unorthodox tactics, the task force is able to hold off the Havenites for long enough for reinforcements to arrive. In the final stages of the battle Pavel Young's cowardice nearly costs Honor her life when he disobeys orders and flees the defensive formation protecting the wounded Nike. At the end of the novel Young is removed from command, placed under arrest and is to be court-martialed at Manticore. Capt. Tankersley is promoted to Captain of the List and is to be re-assigned to Nike as its chief engineer. This battle marks the first use of practical Missile Pods. The tactical situation faced by Honor and Admiral Sarnow—having to defend themselves against a much larger force because their opponents have tricked the officer in overall command into taking most of his forces elsewhere—bears more than a little resemblance to the situation faced by Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid in the largest naval battle of the 20th century, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. After the first disastrous battles of the war, three Havenite revolutionaries—Robert S. Pierre, Oscar Saint-Just, and Cordelia Ransom—lead the overthrow of their "Legislaturalist" government by killing hereditary President Harris and nearly his entire government during his birthday celebration with an air strike by shuttles of the Havenite Navy. They blame the killings on the Navy, and using the fear of a possible military coup form a ¨Committee of Public Safety¨ to rule the People's Republic "until a new government can be formed". They begin a purge of senior military officers and political figures to cement their rule. This novel is much less Honor-centered than the previous two, and the war is depicted from many perspectives.
1372781	/m/04xln9	Flag in Exile	David Weber	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 After the scandal caused by killing Pavel Young in a duel, Honor retreats to Grayson until things settle down on Manticore. She intends to oversee the development of her Steading, and overcome the death of Paul Tankersley. Honor struggles with the survivor's guilt her many battles have left her with, but soon finds that she cannot afford to dwell on her emotions. With the war between Manticore and Haven still raging, the fast-expanding but still inexperienced Grayson Space Navy needs someone to put it in fighting shape. Honor is eventually given the rank of Admiral in the Grayson navy and command of a superdreadnought squadron. She conducts her squadron and the rest of her adoptive nation's fleet through several battle exercises to improve them. Meanwhile, Haven stages a new operation capturing two planets deep in Alliance territory. A Manticore task force and half the Grayson Navy leave to liberate these planets, but Haven was banking on this and now are sending another task force to destroy Grayson's orbital infrastructure and arm Masada with modern weapons. The events surrounding her last adventure on Grayson (see The Honor of the Queen) have caused political turmoil on the reactionary planet. Even though she has the support of Protector Benjamin Mayhew IX and the Grayson government and the respect and gratitude of the people of Grayson, several of her fellow Steadholders refuse to accept her and plot to bring down Mayhew's reforms by resorting to terrorism. They sabotage a dome which was being built and financed by Honor. The dome collapses mid-construction and kills dozens of young children. When it appears that the government discovered their conspiracy, they attempt to assassinate Honor but this fails as well. Eventually the conspiracy is revealed to the public and Honor herself, acting in her official capacity as Protector Benjamin's Champion, kills its leader. Shortly thereafter the Havenite task force arrives to destroy Grayson's orbital infrastructure, but not realizing the size of the Grayson Navy, are defeated by Honor and the ships under her command.
1372993	/m/04xm2c	Cat's Eye	Margaret Atwood	1988-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After being called back to her childhood home of Toronto for a retrospective show of her art, Elaine reminisces about her childhood. At the age of eight she becomes friends with Carol and Grace, and, through their eyes, realises that her atypical background of constant travel with her entomologist father and independent mother has left her ill-equipped for conventional expectations of femininity. When Cordelia joins the group, Elaine is bullied by the three girls, her "best friends". The bullying escalates that winter when the girls abandon Elaine in a ravine; half-frozen, she sees a vision of the Virgin Mary, who guides her to safety. Afterward, realising she had allowed herself to be a victim, Elaine makes new friends. The narrative then follows Elaine through her teenage years and her early adulthood as an art student and a Feminist artist. However, throughout this time, she is haunted by her childhood and has difficulties forming relationships with other women. Towards the end of the novel, owing to her retrospective exhibition and her return to Toronto, she eventually faces her past and gets closure.
1373061	/m/04xm80	Life in the Iron Mills	Rebecca Harding Davis		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Life in the Iron Mills begins with an omniscient narrator who looks out a window and sees smog and iron workers. The gender of the narrator is never known, but it is evident that the narrator is a middle class observer. As the narrator looks out the windowpane, an old story comes to mind; a story of the house that the narrator is living in. The narrator cautions the reader to have an objective mind, and to not be quick to judge the character in the story he/she is about to tell the reader. The narrator begins to introduce Deborah, Wolfe's cousin. She is described as a meek woman who works hard, and has a hump in her back. Deborah finds out from Janey, that Hugh did not take lunch to work, and she decides to walk many miles in the rain to take a lunch for Wolfe. As she walks up to the mills, Deborah begins to describe it as if it were hell, but she keeps going for Wolfe. When she arrives Wolfe is talking amongst friends and he recognizes her. The narrator explains his affection for her, but also describes his affection as loveless and sympathetic. Hugh finds no time to eat his dinner and goes back to do a day of labor in the mills. Deborah, who is exhausted, stays with Hugh and rests until his shift is over. In the meantime, the narrator further explains that Wolfe does not belong in the environment of the iron mill workers. He is known as "Molly Wolfe" by other workers because of his manner and background in education. When Wolfe is working he spots men that do not look like workers. He sees Clarke, the son of Kirby, Doctor May who is a physician, and another two men that he does not recognize. These men stop by to look at the working men, and as they are talking and observing, they spot a weird object that has the shape of a human. As they get closer, they see that it is an odd shaped statue built with korl. They begin to analyze it and wonder who created such a statue, one of the workers points at Wolfe and the men go to him. They ask him why he built such a statue and what it represents. All Hugh says is that "She be hungry". The men begin to talk about the injustice of labor force, and one goes as far as to say that Hugh can get out of the meager job he is in, but that he unfortunately can not help. The men leave, but not before Deborah steals one of their wallets, which has a check for a substantial amount inside. They go back home and Wolfe feels like he is a failure and feels anger towards his economical situation. Once home, Deborah confesses to stealing from Mitchell, and shamefully gives the money to Wolfe to do with it what he pleases. Wolfe decides to keep the money believing he is deserving of it because after all they are all deserving in Gods eyes. The narrator transitions to a different scene with Dr. May reading the newspaper and seeing that Wolfe was put in jail for stealing from Mitchell. The story goes back to Hugh and he is in prison with Deborah. The narrator explains how terrible their situation is, and goes on to give detail of Wolfe's mental disintegration. Hugh ends up losing his mind and killing himself in prison. The story ends with a quaker women who comes to bless and help with the body of Hugh. She talks to Deborah and promises her that she will give Hugh a proper burial, and come back for her when she is released from jail.
1373524	/m/04xm_3	The Honor of the Queen	David Weber	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Three years after the events in On Basilisk Station, Captain Honor Harrington returns to the Star Kingdom after a long anti-piracy campaign in the Silesian Confederacy. While her ship, the heavy cruiser HMS Fearless, has her first refit, new orders arrive. Fearless is to lead a small Manticoran squadron supporting a diplomatic mission to the planet Grayson. The diplomatic mission is to be led by Admiral Raoul Courvosier, Honor's mentor and personal friend. With the long-awaited war with Haven looming close, Manticore is working to form an Alliance with many small nations. Grayson is critical to this effort, as it would close a flank of advance for a possible Havenite invasion fleet. Adding to the pressure, Haven is negotiating its own alliance with Masada, Grayson's historical rival. The Manticoran ships arrive at Yeltsin's Star, the system where Grayson is located, and are greeted by the small Grayson Navy. However, the welcome is soured by sexism in the Graysons, for whom the notion of a woman in uniform is intolerable. After the Graysons and the Manticorans rub each other the wrong way despite the best of intentions, Honor leaves the system to escort a convoy of freighters, even though Courvosier tries to convince her not to do so. After Honor leaves with three of the four Manticoran warships sent to Grayson, Admiral Courvosier meets with Admiral Bernard Yanakov (the commander of the Grayson Navy), and the officers begin to work their way through their cultural differences. We get an explanation for the Grayson rivalry with Masada: Long ago, an extremist faction called "the Faithful" left Grayson (founded by religious Luddites) after a civil war and settled on Masada. For centuries, the worlds threatened each other with nuclear weapons, with Masada vowing to reclaim Grayson from the hands of the "Apostate". If Grayson is considered to be religiously conservative, Masada is nothing short of a fundamentalist theocracy. Everything is cut short when a Masadan fleet approaches Grayson and begins attacking space stations throughout the system. Admiral Courvosier accepts Yanakov's offer to join his fleet in chasing the Masadans. However, Masada's fleet (already numerically superior) has two powerful warships "bought" from Haven, and they make quick work of Grayson's outdated fleet and the Manticoran destroyer Madrigal. Both Courvosier and Yanakov die during the battle. Honor's ships return to Grayson and are attacked by Masadan light attack craft, which merely damage one of her ships. After entering Grayson's orbit, they are apprised of the critical situation following the battle and the death of Admiral Courvosier. Honor strong-arms the Grayson government to allow her to take a leading role in the defense of Grayson. The attitude against women in uniform is shattered in most Graysons when Honor saves Protector Benjamin Mayhew IX, the Grayson leader, and his family from an attempted assassination by traitors loyal to Masada. Coercing and perhaps torturing information from the surviving traitors, the Graysons and Manticorans find that Masada has built an advanced base within Grayson's star system. Leading her ships and the remnants of the Grayson fleet, Honor battles a group of Masadan warships (including a Havenite destroyer masquerading as a Masadan ship) and devastates the Masadan fleet. A captured Havenite officer tells Honor that there are survivors from Madrigal at the base, and that the Masadans are torturing and raping them. An assault by Fearless Marines follows, and the Masadan base is captured. The Manticoran survivors are found, and Honor nearly shoots the Masadan commander after finding out the brutal treatment inflicted upon the Manticorans. On Masada, the Havenite "advisors" see that Masada's bid to conquer Grayson is doomed and try to pull out. However, the Masadans find out and seize control of Thunder of God, the Havenite battlecruiser they "bought". Armed with this ship, far more powerful than any of Honor's, the Masadan fanatics launch their final attack on Grayson. With little choice, Honor dispatches the light cruiser Apollo to Manticore for reinforcements and prepares her last two ships, Fearless and Troubadour to fight the Masadans. The Manticorans' superior tactical skills allow them to inflict damage on Thunder of God, but their enemies' firepower seriously damages Fearless and destroys Troubadour. Manticoran reinforcements enter the system, confusing the Masadan captain and allowing Honor to terminate the enemy ship. With Grayson secured, a joint Manticore-Grayson fleet attacks Masada and occupies the planet, finding the Havenite survivors, (most of which defect to the Star Kingdom). Honor recovers from the wounds sustained during the many battles and the attack on the Mayhew family. Protector Benjamin decorates her with the Star of Grayson and appoints her as Steadholder (governor) of a new district of Grayson. The idea is to speed up Benjamin's planned social reforms on Grayson. The novel ends with the Manticoran government creating Honor Harrington a Countess.
1374421	/m/04xpjr	Leo Africanus	Amin Maalouf		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book is divided into four sections, each organized year by year to describe a key period of Leo Africanus's life, and each named after the city that played the major role in his life at the time: Granada, Fez, Cairo, and Rome. While filled with biographical hypotheses and historical unlikelihoods, the book offers a vivid description of the Renaissance world, with the decline of the traditional Muslim kingdoms and the hope inspired by the Ottoman Empire, as it grew to threaten Europe and restore Muslim unity. The book is based on true life experiences which took Leo Africanus almost everywhere in the Islamic Mediterranean, from southern Morocco to Arabia, and across the Sahara.
1375456	/m/04xs38	Field of Dishonor	David Weber	1994-11-24	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Immediately following The Short Victorious War, Honor returns to Manticore as a hero following the victory at Hancock Station, her ship ungoing much needed repairs. Captain Pavel Young, Honor's bitterest enemy, is about to face a court-martial for cowardice before the enemy, punishable by death. Under threat from Young's father, Earl North Hollow, Young is instead demoted and dishonorably discharged from the Navy. Despite the reprieve, North Hollow suffers a stroke and Young becomes the new Earl of North Hollow, and The Star Kingdom officially declares war on the People's Republic of Haven. Seeking revenge on Honor, Pavel Young first tries to discredit her and then hires a professional duelist, former marine Denver Summervale, to challenge Honor's lover Paul Tankersley to a duel. Paul is killed by Summervale while Honor is on Grayson overseeing her Steading and formally being appointed Steadholder. Paul's death is a severe blow to Honor, and she determines to kill Summervale no matter the cost to herself. Several of Honor's friends and comrades track down Summervale to a hidden retreat where they force him to confess to being hired to kill Paul, though this immediately guarantees his immunity to prosecution given the way the confession is extracted. Honor confronts Summervale and goads him into challenging her by calling him a paid assassin before witnessess, and slaughters him in the following duel. Honor then proclaims to the assembled media that Summervale was hired to kill Paul Tankersley and herself by Pavel Young. Young goes into hiding, to prevent Honor from an opportunity to challenge him, planning to wait until repairs on the Nike are completed and Honor is shipped back to the front. Despite being ordered by Earl White Haven to not pursue Young, Honor uses a technicality of the House of Lords chamber rules to demand that she be formally seated with them, and uses the opportunity to denounce Young publicly and challenge him to a duel. Risking total loss of face and political strength, Young is forced to agree. In the duel, Young panics and turns, shooting Honor in the back, before being cut down by Honor before the Master of the field can even react. The outraged aristocracy removes Honor from the House of Lords and political pressure forces the navy to remove Honor from command and place her on half-pay, with no active assignment. Honor decides to return to Grayson until the crises subsides.
1375497	/m/04xs61	In Enemy Hands	David Weber	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 As the story begins, Honor returns to her Steading on Grayson, having just been promoted to Commodore for her actions in Honor Among Enemies. During a party celebrating her promotion, she engages in a heated debate with Earl White Haven, her superior, and the two realize they have mutual unspoken romantic feelings for each other. In an attempt to escape her own feelings, Honor goes with Alistair McKeon on a convoy escort mission to the Adler system, which has been captured by Citizen Rear Admiral Lester Tourville of the DuQuesne base, under the orders of Thomas Theisman, in order to capture or destroy a large chunk of Manticoran shipping. Spotting the ambush and after salvaging what she can of her convoy from Havenite attack, Honor orders McKeon to surrender. After learning of Honor's capture Cordelia Ransom, the People's Republic's Secretary for Public Information, demands that the Manticorans be surrendered to her for propaganda uses. Unable to deny Ransom and her StateSec enforcers, Admiral Theisman capitulates. The crew are transferred to the Havenite battlecruiser PNS Tepes, Ransom's personal flagship, bound for the Havenite prison planet of Hades, where Ransom intends to execute Honor for a death sentence handed down by the prior government. Ransom gives any crew member serving under Harrington a chance to defect and Senior Chief Petty Officer Harkness takes up the offer claiming that Manticore have never really done anything for him. Unbeknownst to StateSec, Harkness has no intention of truly defecting, and after fooling his assigned watchdogs, hacks into the security and communication systems, eventually disabling them and causing massive explosions in the boat bays. Freeing the rest of the crew, they manage to destroy the Tepes and land on Cerberus B 2, facing a well-provided for prison camp and unknown amounts of space forces.
1376628	/m/04xvdx	Blankets	Craig Thompson	2003-07-23	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 Blankets chronicles Craig Thompson's adolescence and young adulthood, his childhood relationship with his younger brother, and the conflicts he experiences regarding his Christianity and his first love. Though written chronologically, Thompson uses flashbacks as a literary and artistic device in order to parallel young adult experience with past childhood experience. Major themes of the work include: first love, child and adult sexuality, spirituality, sibling relationships, and coming of age. Thompson begins by describing his relationship with his brother during their childhoods in Wisconsin. Though their relationship is marked by typical sibling conflict, they are also very close, and their rapport helps them deal with verbal and physical abuse from their overly religious parents, and sexual harassment and abuse from bullies at school. During his preteen years, Thompson finds himself a misfit because of his physical appearance and home life. Through his teen years, he continues to find it hard to fit in with his peers, but at a Bible camp one winter, he comes to associate with a group of teens he feels he will fit in with, which includes Raina, a beautiful and interesting girl who captivates him. The two become inseparable and arrange to spend two weeks together at Raina’s home in Michigan. He meets Raina’s family, consisting of her separated parents, her adopted siblings Ben and Laura, her biological sister, and her infant niece Sarah. Because Laura is mentally retarded and Sarah is often ignored by her own parents, Raina feels the responsibility to take care of the both of them. Although she is extremely close to Craig while he’s staying with her, she feels she can’t handle one more person dependent on her and breaks up with him soon after he leaves. He then destroys everything Raina had ever given to him, and every memento of their relationship, except for the quilt she had made for him. He stores it and other possessions in the attic in the house, and moves out to start his own life elsewhere. Thompson comes to terms with his religion and spiritual identity while away from his family. He returns to his childhood home after several years, seemingly a different person. He rekindles his old familial relationships, and the bonds between the family become stronger. The story ends with his finding peace with those he loves and himself.
1377168	/m/04xwjm	Neutron Star	Larry Niven			 Beowulf Shaeffer, a native of the planet We Made It and unemployed for the last eight months due to a stock market crash, is contracted by a Pierson's Puppeteer, the Regional President of General Products on We Made It, to pilot a General Products-hulled starship, in a close approach about neutron star BVS-1. The Puppeteers want to determine why two previous researchers, Peter and Sonya Laskin, were killed during the previous attempt on a similar mission. Shaeffer has no intention of even attempting the dangerous mission, but agrees anyway – he has other plans. He has the Puppeteers construct what he dubs the Skydiver to his precise specifications, supposedly to ensure he survives to return with the relevant data: an advanced sensor package, a high-powered thruster – and a high-powered laser. It is thus the only warship ever constructed by the cowardly and paranoid alien race - a prize beyond value and a perfect means of escape. However, he is forced into compliance by an operative of the U.N.'s Bureau of Alien Affairs, Sigmund Ausfaller, who has had the Puppeteers install a bomb somewhere inside the Skydiver. Ausfaller informs Schaeffer that if he does not attempt the mission he will be sent to debtors prison, and that if he attempts to escape in the ship the bomb will be detonated within a week – well before he could even reach another planet, let alone find a buyer for the ship. Shaeffer, realizing he is trapped, agrees to fly the mission. The Skydiver reaches the neutron star, and the ship’s autopilot puts the Skydiver into a hyperbolic orbit that will take 24 hours to reach periapsis with BVS-1, passing a mile above its surface. During the descent Schaeffer notices many unusual things: the stars ahead of him began to turn blue from Doppler shift as his speed increases enormously; the stars behind him, rather than being red-shifted, were blue too as their light accelerated with him into the gravity well of the neutron star. The nose of the ship is pulled towards the neutron star even when he tries to move the ship to view his surroundings. As the mysterious pull exceeds one Earth gravity, Shaeffer accelerates the Skydiver to compensate for the unknown X-force until he is in free fall (though the accelerometer registers 1.2 gees). Shaeffer eventually realizes what the X-force is: the tidal force. The strong tidal pull of the neutron star is trying to force the ends of the ship (and Shaeffer himself) into two separate orbits. Shaeffer programs the autopilot in a thrust pattern that allows him to reach the center of mass of the ship in effective freefall, though he nearly fails to do so. The ship reaches perigee where tidal forces nearly pull Shaeffer apart anyway, but he manages to hold himself in the access space at the ship's center of mass and survives. After returning to We Made It, Shaeffer is hospitalized (he has received a sunburn by starlight blue-shifted into the ultraviolet) for observation at the Puppeteer’s insistence. While explaining tidal forces to the Puppeteer, Schaeffer realizes the alien had no knowledge of tides, something that would be elementary for a sentient species living on a world with a moon. The Puppeteers are extremely cautious when dealing with other races, and keep all details about their homeworld secret. When Schaeffer mentions that he can tell reporters the fact that the Puppeteer's world has no moon, the Puppeteer agrees to give Shaeffer a million stars (a fortune in galactic currency) in return for his silence. Shaeffer asks the alien how he likes being blackmailed for a change.
1377365	/m/04xx2s	La Peau de chagrin	Honoré de Balzac		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 La Peau de chagrin consists of three sections: "Le Talisman" ("The Talisman"), "La Femme sans cœur" ("The Woman without a Heart"), and "L'Agonie" ("The Agony"). The first edition contained a Preface and a "Moralité", which were excised from subsequent versions. A two-page Epilogue appears at the end of the final section. "Le Talisman" begins with the plot of "Le Dernier Napoléon": A young man named Raphaël de Valentin wagers his last coin and loses, then proceeds to the river Seine to drown himself. On the way, however, he decides to enter an unusual shop and finds it filled with curiosities from around the world. The elderly shopkeeper leads him to a piece of shagreen hanging on the wall. It is inscribed with "Oriental" writing; the old man calls it "Sanskrit", but it is imprecise Arabic. The skin promises to fulfill any wish of its owner, shrinking slightly upon the fulfillment of each desire. The shopkeeper is willing to let Valentin take it without charge, but urges him not to accept the offer. Valentin waves away the shopkeeper's warnings and takes the skin, wishing for a royal banquet, filled with wine, women, and friends. He is immediately met by acquaintances who invite him to such an event; they spend hours eating, drinking, and talking. Part two, "La Femme sans cœur", is narrated as a flashback from Valentin's point of view. He complains to his friend Émile about his early days as a scholar, living in poverty with an elderly landlord and her daughter Pauline, while trying fruitlessly to win the heart of a beautiful but aloof woman named Foedora. Along the way he is tutored by an older man named Eugène de Rastignac, who encourages him to immerse himself in the world of high society. Benefiting from the kindness of his landladies, Valentin maneuvers his way into Foedora's circle of friends. Unable to win her affection, however, he becomes the miserable and destitute man found at the start of "Le Talisman". "L'Agonie" begins several years after the feast of parts one and two. Valentin, having used the talisman to secure a large income, finds both the skin and his health dwindling. The situation causes him to panic, horrified that further desires will hasten the end of his life. He organizes his home to avoid the possibility of wishing for anything: his servant, Jonathan, arranges food, clothing, and visitors with precise regularity. Events beyond his control cause him to wish for various things, however, and the skin continues to recede. Desperate, the sickly Valentin tries to find some way of stretching the skin, and takes a trip to the spa town of Aix-les-Bains in the hope of recovering his vitality. With the skin no larger than a periwinkle leaf, he is visited by Pauline in his room; she expresses her love for him. When she learns the truth about the shagreen and her role in Raphaël's demise, she is horrified. Raphaël cannot control his desire for her and she rushes into an adjoining room to escape him and so save his life. He pounds on the door and declares both his love and his desire to die in her arms. She, meanwhile, is trying to kill herself to free him from his desire. He breaks down the door, they consummate their love in a fiery moment of passion, and he dies.
1378539	/m/04xzbv	Echoes of Honor	David Weber	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 As the story begins, Honor is apparently dead, her "execution" being broadcast on holo-disc. State funerals are held on both Grayson and Manticore and an empty coffin is buried in the Royal Cathedral. While the Manticorans are shocked by the news of Honor's death, the Graysons are completely outraged. However, the footage was faked because Honor is still alive and plotting her return. Having survived the destruction of Cordelia Ransom's ship in the previous book, Honor and her allies hide on the surface of Hades, monitoring StateSec's communications and linking with other prisoners held on the planet. Eventually they launch a surprise attack, defeating the local Havenite garrison and taking control of Hell. Meanwhile, the Havenite Navy, under the new and aggressive leadership of Admiral Esther McQueen, goes on the offensive and launches a series of simultaneous and devastating attacks on Manticore and her allies, even hitting Manticoran territory for the first time in the war. The Manticorans, however, are testing some new weapon systems which may definitively shift the balance in their favor. Back on Hell and now in control of the State Security facilities, Honor's party travels across the inhospitable planet and helps the prisoners escape from Camp Charon. When news of the offensive led by McQueen reach Hades, they realize that they cannot count on a Manticoran rescue mission. Still needing to escape from the planet, Honor and her allies hatch a plan to capture as many Havenite ships as possible. With a sizable fleet of captured enemy vessels (the so-called "Elysian Space Navy") under her leadership, the former prisoners defeat a StateSec armada and evacuate the prison planet. After two years, Honor finally returns home, along with half a million former political prisoners and POWs.
1378579	/m/04xzfp	Ashes of Victory	David Weber	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The book begins hours after the end of the previous novel. Honor Harrington and her "Elysian Space Navy" arrive at Manticoran-controlled space, only to discover that she was believed dead, that her mother had given birth to twins (partly to satisfy the Graysons' need for an heir to her Steading), her cousin Devon has inherited her Manticoran title, and that the extent of her injuries will prevent her from returning to active naval duty for a couple of years, since she needs reconstructive surgery. To put Honor to good use, the Royal Manticoran Navy promotes her to Admiral and places her at Saganami Island Naval Academy to teach future generations of naval officers. Queen Elizabeth III elevates Honor to Duchess Harrington. Meanwhile, Honor helps to prove that treecats are as intelligent as humans, and she eventually helps to develop an easy to understand sign language system, making full communication between humans and the treecats possible. After the daring attacks featured in the previous novel, the People's Republic of Haven seems to have the initiative. However, Manticore has a trump card that has the potential to end the war, in the form of devastatingly effective new technology and weapons fully integrated into a new massive heavy assault force, known as 8th fleet. The Star Kingdom's navy bides time, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. Chaos breaks up in the Havenite ranks, and the ambitious Admiral McQueen stages a coup that succeeds in killing Rob S. Pierre and almost all the members of the Havenite Committee of Public Safety, except for Oscar Saint-Just who manages to crush the coup by detonating a nuclear device secretly hidden within the navy headquarters. With the Committee and the military High Command in ruins, Saint-Just becomes the dictator of the People's Republic, and orders Admiral Thomas Theisman to take over the massive fleet guarding Haven. This proves to be an eventually fatal miscalculation. While Saint-Just believes Theisman is apolitical and trustworthy, in reality Theisman is plotting a coup of his own, with the secret help of the political commissar Saint-Just has assigned to him. Admiral White Haven launches Manticore's Operation Buttercup. Under his command, 8th Fleet begins a lightning offensive deep into Havenite territory. The new technology developed by Manticore in the prelude to Buttercup allows the fleet to quickly demolish all Havenite resistance, and in a matter of months Manticore becomes poised to invade the Haven system itself. In desperation, Saint-Just attempts to assassinate the Manticoran Alliance leadership. Masadan terrorists in Saint-Just's service succeed in killing the Manticoran Prime Minister, The Duke of Cromarty, along with several major figures of the Manticoran and Grayson governments, despite the efforts of Honor Harrington. Fortunately, Honor's actions save Queen Elizabeth and the Protector of Grayson Benjamin Mayhew IX from dying in the same attack. On Manticore, Cromarty's death opens an opportunity for former Opposition factions led by Baron High Ridge to seize political control, much to the frustration of Queen Elizabeth. Saint-Just proposes an immediate cease-fire between Manticore and Haven. This is hastily accepted by the new High Ridge government, despite the fact that 8th fleet is poised to invade Haven and force an unconditional surrender. High Ridge and his co-partisans in the military come to believe (wrongly) that Haven has been defeated for good, and that further violence is not necessary. The new Manticoran government institutes programs and policy that will begin a legacy of political greed, selfishness, incompetence, and cronyism that will have far reaching consequences for the entire Star Kingdom. Now secure from the possibility of a Manticoran attack on the Haven System itself, Saint-Just turns to internal matters and the consolidation of his grip on power. He orders the arrest of Admirals Lester Tourville and Javier Giscard, whom he sees as political dissidents. Theisman launches his coup. The Havenite military under Theisman wrests control of the government, and Theisman personally executes Saint-Just.
1378615	/m/04xzj_	War of Honor	David Weber	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Five years have passed since a truce was reached between Manticore and Haven, but there is still no formal peace treaty. Even though neither side wishes to resume fighting, political circumstances in both nations threaten to plunge them into war. On Manticore, the administration of Prime Minister High Ridge focuses on strengthening its political position. They are determined to remain at least technically at war with Haven - peace would terminate the special war taxes they are diverting from the Royal Manticoran Navy's budget for their welfare programs and vote-buying schemes, and would end their ability to postpone elections in which they expect to lose their fragile majority. Manticore's allies, most notably Grayson and Erewhon, are infuriated with the new government's carelessness and outright rudeness in foreign affairs. From their seats in the House of Lords, Honor Harrington and Hamish Alexander voice their opposition to the High Ridge Administration's policies, and the government takes actions to discredit the war heroes. Haven struggles to rebuild after the fall of the People's Republic. President Pritchart's administration faces increasing pressure from certain political factions that demand the Republic to be more assertive in its negotiations with the Star Kingdom. Admiral Thomas Theisman has to restore the Havenite Navy's morale and fighting capabilities after the long war with Manticore and a protracted campaign to conquer the remnants of the old People's Republic. The Andermani Empire, at the encouragement of the Republic's secretary of state, has adopted a confrontational stance with Manticore over the chaos-ridden Silesian Confederacy, and Honor Harrington is sent to the planet Sidemore, located near Silesian space, with a task force. She is ordered to go to Silesia at the behest of the Royal Navy's new management, who wishes to get her out of the political arena. The intention is to keep a close eye on the Andermani and their activities, and the risk of war between Manticore and the Empire is steadily rising. Tensions also rise between Haven and Manticore. A new terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction has been discovered, and several worlds located near the new terminus request annexation into Manticore, triggering fears amongst the Havenites that Manticore is going to go on an expansionist rampage. The Manticoran government's ineptness and the schemes of some members of the Havenite government compounds an already unstable scenario, and President Pritchart orders the Havenite Navy to launch "Operation Thunderbolt": the resumption of combat operations against Manticore. War breaks out again. In a series of coordinated attacks the Havenites succeed in conquering every system the Manticorans took out from them (except San Martin, which is recognized as a part of the Star Kingdom) and in devastating a critical Manticoran shipyard. Even Honor's fleet is attacked, despite the long distance between Haven and Sidemore, but, reinforced by the Protector's Own division of the Grayson Navy, she succeeds in defeating the Havenite forces. The High Ridge administration falls, and a new government takes over in the Star Kingdom, composed of the remnants of the earlier Cromarty government. Now Haven is almost the technological equal of Manticore and its fleet of modern warships is significantly larger than the Manticoran navy. Erewhon has broken out of the Manticoran Alliance and has sided with Haven, handing them many of the latest technological developments of the Star Kingdom. The Havenites have the initiative and the Star Kingdom is shocked. However, the Andermani Empire joins the Manticoran side in the new war.
1378645	/m/04xzq1	The Cabinet of Curiosities	Lincoln Child	2002	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dr. Nora Kelly's life as an archeologist at New York City's American Museum of Natural History becomes complicated when Aloysius X. L. Pendergast, a secretive and highly resourceful FBI Special Agent, convinces her to help him uncover the truth behind a string of brutal murders that appears to stretch back 130 years. The adventure starts out with the discovery of a long-buried tunnel at a construction site in Manhattan containing the bodies of 36 young people all with parts of their spine removed, buried in the basement. Kelly's assistance as archeologist is needed by Pendergast. But they are soon frustrated by forces opposing their involvement: *Roger C. Brisbane III: Museum's first Vice Director *Anthony Fairhaven: Wealthy entrepreneur, owner of the development property. Fairhaven is a large contributor to the museum, and to the mayor's election campaign. *The City of New York: The Mayor and the police exert every effort to stop Pendergast and Kelly's investigation. Anthony Fairhaven, owner of the site, wishes to build his glass tower of apartments before bad publicity and archeologists can stop him. He has the bodies quickly taken away and buried, but not before Dr. Nora Kelly and FBI Special Agent Pendegrast take a cursory look. Nora discovers a note written by Mary Greene sewn into the bodice of a discarded dress. Nora has her reservations about continuing the investigation, despite the personal connection she feels to Mary Greene through her painstakingly-written note. Nora has recently been hired by the museum, and is afraid of losing her job, especially since budget cuts and politics make it harder for her to continue her research. In spite of efforts to thwart them, Pendergast and Kelly make some important discoveries at the construction site, especially the gruesome manner in which the victims were killed. Agent Pendergast is determined to discover the name of the murderer for his own reasons. Nora's boyfriend, William Smithback, tries to help Kelly in his way, writing a newspaper article about the investigation. Contrary to Smithback's hopes, his article does not help Nora, and she refuses to have anything further to do with him. After the article is published, a copycat killer begins a new stream of murders. The Police Department, in spite of its desire to curtail Pendergast's activities, must appear as though it's aiding the investigation, and so supplies a liaison officer, Patrick Murphy O'Shaughnessy. To the department's chagrin, O'Shaughnessy is much too helpful and becomes a boon to Pendergast and Kelly. The copycat murders continue, moving ever closer to the museum. A horrific murder is discovered in the museum's basement, and with each clue Pendergast uncovers, he has the sensation that someone is following his trail. Strangely, the evidence points towards the same person who committed the gruesome crimes over a century ago. The investigation reveals a startling secret in the Pendergast family, a successful means of prolonging life, and a murderous obsession to achieve the eradication of mankind's 'disease'. Pendergast's great-grand uncle Antoine Leng Pendergast (a.k.a. Enoch Leng) is revealed as the serial killer who stole his victim's spinal columns in an attempt to produce an elixir enabling him to prolong life. He succeeds, and survives into the late 20th century, until he himself is killed by the copycat killer, revealed to be Anthony Fairhaven, who tracked Enoch Leng to his mansion on Riverside Drive. Leng, now an old man, no longer uses the formula, and is powerless against Fairhaven’s feverish brutality. Leng dies while being tortured by Fairhaven without ever revealing his secret formula. Pendergast arrives to stop him, and after Fairhaven is dead, Pendergast burns the formula that would prolong life. The story introduces the cabinet of curiosity (created by the killer Leng), and hints at something hidden in it, which is featured in the consecutive novels. it:La stanza degli orrori
1378709	/m/04xzw8	Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed	Jared Diamond	2005	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the prologue, Diamond summarizes his methodology in one paragraph: Diamond identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, collapse of essential trading partners, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues. He also lists 12 environmental problems facing mankind today. The first eight have historically contributed to the collapse of past societies: #Deforestation and habitat destruction #Soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses) #Water management problems #Overhunting #Overfishing #Effects of introduced species on native species #Overpopulation #Increased per-capita impact of people Further, he says four new factors may contribute to the weakening and collapse of present and future societies: #Anthropogenic climate change #Buildup of toxins in the environment #Energy shortages #Full human utilization of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity Diamond also writes about cultural factors, such as the apparent reluctance of the Greenland Norse to eat fish. The root problem in all but one of Diamond's factors leading to collapse is overpopulation relative to the practicable (as opposed to the ideal theoretical) carrying capacity of the environment. The one factor not related to overpopulation is the harmful effect of accidentally or intentionally introducing nonnative species to a region. Diamond also states that "it would be absurd to claim that environmental damage must be a major factor in all collapses: the collapse of the Soviet Union is a modern counter-example, and the destruction of Carthage by Rome in 146 BC is an ancient one. It's obviously true that military or economic factors alone may suffice" (p.&nbsp;15).
1379135	/m/04x_9w	Ralph 124C 41+	Hugo Gernsback	1911	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The eponymous protagonist saves the life of the heroine by directing energy remotely at an approaching avalanche. As the novel goes on, he describes the technological wonders of the modern world, frequently using the phrase "As you know..." The hero finally rescues the heroine by travelling into space on his own "space flyer" to rescue her from the villain's clutches.
1379620	/m/04y045	Amsterdam	Ian McEwan	1998-12-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Amsterdam is the story of a strange euthanasia pact between two friends, a composer and a newspaper editor, whose relationship spins into disaster.
1379823	/m/04y0lm	The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today	Mark Twain	1873	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The term gilded age, commonly given to the era, comes from the title of this book. Twain and Warner got the name from Shakespeare's King John (1595): "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." Gilding a lily, which is already beautiful and not in need of further adornment, is excessive and wasteful, characteristics of the age Twain and Warner wrote about in their novel. Another interpretation of the title, of course, is the contrast between an ideal "Golden Age," and a less worthy "Gilded Age," as gilding is only a thin layer of gold over baser metal, so the title now takes on a pejorative meaning as to the novel's time, events and people. The novel concerns the efforts of a poor rural Tennessee family to grow affluent by selling the of unimproved land acquired by their patriarch, Silas “Si” Hawkins, in a timely manner. After several adventures in Tennessee, the family fails to sell the land and Si Hawkins dies. The rest of the Hawkins story line focuses on their beautiful adopted daughter, Laura. In the early 1870s, she travels to Washington, D.C. to become a lobbyist. With a Senator's help, she enters Society and attempts to persuade Congressmen to require the federal government to purchase the land. A parallel story written by Warner concerns two young upperclass men, Philip Sterling and Henry Brierly, who seek their fortunes in land in a novel way. They make a journey with a group intent on surveying land in Tennessee in order to acquire it for speculation. Philip is good-natured but plodding. He is in love with Ruth Bolton, an aspiring physician and feminist. Henry is a born salesman, charming but superficial. The theme of the novel is that the lust for getting rich through land speculation pervades society, illustrated by the Hawkinses as well as Ruth's well-educated father, who nevertheless cannot resist becoming enmeshed in self-evidently dubious money-making schemes. The Hawkins sections were written by Twain; these include several humorous sketches. Examples are the steamboat race that leads to a wreck (Chapter IV) and Laura’s toying with a clerk in a Washington bookstore (Chapter XXXVI). Notable too is the comic presence throughout the book of the eternally optimistic and eternally broke Micawber-like character, Colonel Beriah Sellers. The character was named Escol Sellers in the first edition and changed to Beriah when an actual George Escol Sellers of Philadelphia objected. A real Beriah Sellers then also turned up, causing Twain to use the name Mulberry Sellers in The American Claimant. The Sellers character was modeled after Twain's maternal cousin, James Lampton, and the land-purchase plot parallels Twain's father's purchase of a Tennessee parcel whose prospective sale, Twain wrote in his autobiography, "kept us hoping and hoping, during 40 years, and forsook us at last". The main action of the story takes place in Washington, D.C., and satirizes the greed and corruption of the governing class. Twain also satirizes the social pretensions of the newly rich. Laura's Washington visitors include "Mrs. Patrique Oreille (pronounced O-rey)," the wife of "a wealthy Frenchman from Cork." The book does not touch upon other themes now associated with the "Gilded Age”, such as industrialization, monopolies, and the corruption of urban political machines. This may be because this book was written at the very beginning of the period. In the end, Laura fails to convince Congress to purchase the Hawkins land. She kills her married lover but is found not guilty of the crime, with the help of a sympathetic jury and a clever lawyer. However, after a failed attempt to pursue a career on the lecture circuit, her spirit is broken, and she dies regretting her fall from innocence. Washington Hawkins, the eldest son who has drifted through life on his father’s early promise that he would be “one of the richest men in the world,” finally gives up the family's ownership of the still-unimproved land parcel when he cannot afford to pay its $180 of taxes. He also appears ready to overcome his passivity: "The spell is broken, the life-long curse is ended!" Philip, drawing upon his engineering skills, discovers coal on Mr. Bolton's land, wins Ruth Bolton's heart and appears destined to enjoy a prosperous and conventionally happy marriage. Henry and Sellers, presumably, will continue to live gaily by their wits while others pay their bills.
1381420	/m/04y4fv	The Legend of the Condor Heroes	Louis Cha	1957	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The story is set in the Song Dynasty and at the beginning of the Jurchen-ruled Jin Dynasty's invasion of northern China. The first part of the novel revolves around the friendship of two men, Yang Tiexin and Guo Xiaotian, who become heroes in their own right as they fight the Jin invaders. The bond between the duo is so strong that they pledge to each other that their unborn children will become either sworn siblings (if both are of the same sex) or a married couple (if they are of opposite sexes). The story focuses on the trials and tribulations of their sons after Guo Xiaotian's death and Yang Tiexin's disappearance. Guo Xiaotian's son Guo Jing grows up in Mongolia under the care of Genghis Khan. Yang Tiexin's son Yang Kang, on the other hand, grows up in Jin as a Jurchen prince's son. Guo Jing is mentored by the "Seven Freaks of Jiangnan" in martial arts but he is a slow learner and only manages to master part of the skills he was taught. Yang Kang was taught by Qiu Chuji of the Quanzhen Sect and he learns the evil "Nine Yin White Bone Claw" from Mei Chaofeng secretly. The boys' personalities differ largely from each other due to differences in their upbringing. Guo Jing is honest, loyal and righteous, but slow witted. Conversely, Yang Kang is clever, but scheming and treacherous. They eventually meet one another and their respective lovers, Huang Rong and Mu Nianci. The main story line follows Guo Jing and Huang Rong's adventures and their encounters with the Five Greats. Meanwhile, Yang Kang plots with the Jurchens to conquer his native land of Song. Yang Kang refuses to acknowledge his ethnicity and is strongly driven to acquire wealth, fame and glory. His treachery is slowly unveiled throughout the novel in the encounters he has with the protagonists, although he is ultimately outwitted by Huang Rong. Assisted by Guo Jing, the Mongol army destroys the Jin Dynasty, subsequently turning its attention towards Song. Guo Jing is unwilling to aid the Mongols in conquering his native land and leaves Mongolia. Guo Jing returns to Song and helps his countrymen in countering the Mongol invaders. On the other hand, Yang Kang meets his retributive end, leaving behind Mu Nianci and their unborn son. The Mongol invasion is halted by Genghis Khan's unexpected death, although Guo Jing and Huang Rong see countless civilian deaths due to this military conquest.
1383951	/m/04y8c8	Fool's Errand	Robin Hobb	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Fifteen years have passed since the end of the Red Ship War with the terrifying Outislanders. Since then, Fitz has wandered the world accompanied only by his wolf and Wit-partner, Nighteyes, finally settling in a tiny cottage as isolated from the Farseers and Buckkeep politics as possible. Starling finds him soon after he settles down in the cottage and visits him often. On one of her visits she brings him a young orphaned boy, named Hap, that Fitz raises as well as he is able. The Fool finds him and convinces him that he is needed. The young prince Dutiful has gone missing just before his crucial diplomatic wedding to an Outislander princess. Fitz's assignment to fetch Dutiful back in time for the ceremony seems very much like a fool's errand, but the dangers ahead could signal the end of the Farseer reign.
1384122	/m/04y8q2	Golden Fool	Robin Hobb		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Fitz has succeeded in rescuing Prince Dutiful from the clutches of the Piebald rebels. But once again the cost of protecting the Farseer line has been dear: Nighteyes is dead. Fitz, though bitter and grieving after the death of his beloved wit-partner, the wolf Nighteyes, reluctantly takes the post of Skillmaster to teach prince Dutiful the Skill. He feels he must since he is almost Dutiful's father. Dutiful, the heir to the throne, was conceived by Verity using Fitz's body fifteen years earlier with the use of the skill, and because of this is both Skilled and Witted. Fitz is not a great teacher and barely has control of his own Skill, but he is the only one left that has been actually taught how to use it. He knows that Dutiful must be protected from the addictive qualities of the Skill, as well as the dangerous temptations of the Wit and the political machinations surrounding both as the Piebalds threaten to throw the Six Duchies into civil war. At the urging of his old mentor the Master Assassin Chade, now Queen Kettricken's Lord Councillor, he also attempts to seek new Skill users as companions for Dutiful. Maintaining a pose as the servant Tom Badgerlock to the Fool's own pose as the decadent noble Lord Golden, he stays in the castle and teaches his new Skill coterie, including the overeager Chade. His search leads him to a most unlikely candidate; a mentally-challenged young man named Thick, suspicious after years of mistreatment but stronger in the Skill than anyone Fitz has ever encountered. At the same time, the Six Duchies also faces what may be its salvation in a long-term peace, or a new threat to the fragile peace that has existed since the end of the Red Ship War. Queen Kettricken plans to betrothe Dutiful to the Outislander Narcheska (Princess) Elliania, to forge a lasting alliance between the two lands as her marriage to Verity once did. The task is less simple than it appears, and Fitz becomes aware of wheels within wheels, as different interests war with each other with the stakes higher than anyone has imagined. These finally come to a head as Elliania declares she will not wed Dutiful without his undertaking a quest to slay Icefyre, one of the last true dragons.
1384243	/m/04y8yc	The Friar's Prologue and Tale	Geoffrey Chaucer			 A summoner who meets a yeoman one day who asks him what he does, but rather than admit he is a summoner, an odious profession, he says he is a bailiff. The yeoman says he is also a bailiff and when the summoner asks how he makes money the yeoman admits in any underhand way he can. The summoner agrees this is also how he works and then, in the spirit of confession, the yeoman says that he is actually a demon from hell. This does not seem to overtly concern the summoner and he simply asks how he is able to take human form. They come upon a carter damning his stubborn horses to hell; when they do move he praises God. The summoner criticizes the demon for not capitalizing on this situation and taking the horses, but the demon explains that since the man was not sincere in cursing the horses he couldn't take them. The summoner then says that he will show the demon how it is done, by extorting money from an old widow woman even though he admits there is nothing legitimate to summon her for. They go to her house and the summoner demands a bribe from her or he will summon her to court on a spurious charge. He also demands she give him her new pan in payment for an old debt, falsely claiming he paid a fine to get her off a charge of adultery. The old woman is so incensed she damns the summoner unless the summoner repents his false charges; the summoner refuses to repent and the demon, obligingly, takes his body and soul—along with the old woman's frying pan—to hell.
1384582	/m/04y9h2	Shaman's Crossing	Robin Hobb	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Young Nevare Burvelle (pronounced Nuh-vair) is the second son of a second son in the fantasy nation of Gernia (pronounced Jur-nee-uh). According to Gernian religious practice, firstborn noble sons are heir to the family fortunes, second sons bear swords as soldiers, and third sons are consecrated to the priesthood. Holy Writ specifies other roles as well for subsequent sons. Nevare will follow his father – newly made a lord by the King – into the Cavalla (cavalry); to the frontier and thence to an advantageous marriage to carry on the Burvelle name. It is a golden future, and Nevare looks forward to it with relish. From the age of eight, Nevare is schooled daily in math, physics, engineering, and of course combat and military strategy. With the help of Sergeant Duril, a man who once served under Nevare's father, he learns to live off the land and survive in the harsh plains environment. For twenty years King Troven's cavalla have pushed the frontiers of Gernia out across the grasslands by building King's Road, Troven's vision of future trade with the east, and also subduing the fierce tribes of the plain on its way. Now they have driven the frontier as far as the Barrier Mountains, home to the enigmatic Speck people. The specks – a light sensitive, dapple-skinned, forest-dwelling folk – are said to retain vestiges of magic in a world which is becoming progressive and technologised. The 'civilised' peoples base their convictions on a rational philosophy founded on their belief in the good god, who displaced the older deities of their world. To them, the Specks are primeval savages, little better than beasts. Superstitions abound; it is said that they harbour strange diseases and worship trees. Sexual congress with them is regarded as both filthy and foolhardy, though not unheard of; the Speck plague, which has ravaged the frontier, has decimated entire regiments. During Nevare's youth, his father hires a man named Dewara, a plainsman of the Kidona tribe and a former enemy of Lord Burvelle, to teach Nevare things he cannot learn from a friendly tutor. After a grueling set of lessons, Dewara offers Nevare the chance to "become a Kidona" by participating in a ritual and killing an enemy of the Kidona. During the ritual, Dewara places a dried poisonous toad in Nevare's mouth and Nevare experiences a vision. The vision involves Nevare crossing a strangely constructed series of bridges and culminates in a meeting with Tree Woman. Dewara urges Nevare to kill her, because she is the enemy. However, Nevare falls off the final bridge and only with Tree Woman's aid can he survive. He accepts her assistance and as payment, she claims him as her weapon to halt the destruction of her people. Nevare awakens at his father's house, nearly dead from beating and exposure and missing a patch of hair and skin from his scalp. Soon after his 18th birthday, Nevare heads to the King's Cavalla Academy to begin his formal training. His upbringing and tutors' lessons serve him well at the Academy, but his progress there is not as simple as he would wish. He experiences prejudice from the old aristocracy; as the son of a 'new noble' he is segregated into a patrol comprising other new nobles' sons, all of whom will encounter injustice, discrimination and foul play in that hostile and deeply competitive environment. In addition, his world view will be challenged by his unconventional girl-cousin Epiny; and by the bizarre dreams which visit him at night. And then, on Dark Evening, the carnival comes to Old Thares, bringing with it the first Specks Nevare has ever seen... This first contact proves to be a dramatic one, as the other self of Nevare comes to the fore and instructs the Specks to do the "dust dance". This dance, which consists of the dancers showering the on-lookers with dust, results in a widespread Speck plague both in the Academy of the cavalla and in Old Thares. Seized by a fever, Nevare finds himself once again crossing the bridge sealed by his own sword during the ritual set up by Dewara. He is not alone however, as he finds himself with what appears to be ghostly forms of all the people dying from the plague, including notably Caulder, and Spink. He does not end his crossing, as he is expelled from that realm, as Tree woman still needs him in the physical world. Joined by Epiny in the infirmary, Nevare finds Spink dying next to him. Aided by his cousin, he journeys once more to the bridge in what ends up to be a climactic battle between him, his other self and the Tree woman. Despite the odds stacked against him, he manages to turn the tide of the battle by retrieving his sword, the "iron magic of his people". The bridge disappears and Nevare manages to slash the Tree woman, allowing Epiny to save his friend, before being once more expelled. Nevare eventually recovers and this part of the story ends as he finds himself returning to the Academy.
1384714	/m/04y9tq	Vampire$	John Steakley	1992-05-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book opens with Vampire$, Inc. cleaning out a nest of vampires, introducing the main characters and setting the tone for the book. The team has some difficulty collecting their payment for dispatching said vampires, but ultimately collects their fee and hosts a wild party at a local motel where all of the team and some townsfolk engage in epic-level drinking and carrying on. The party is interrupted by a 'master' vampire who essentially slaughters everyone at the party with the exception of Jack Crow and his second in command "Cherry Cat" Catlin. The shaken Jack Crow begins to plan the formation of a new team, aided by Father Adam, a knowledgeable young priest sent to him by the Vatican. Events at the motel slaughter lead Jack to realize that silver, particularly blessed silver from a cross, can be used as a weapon against vampires. He has his weaponsmith Carl begin creating silver bullets and he recruits a skilled gunman named Felix, that Jack met while working as a government agent in Mexico. Felix proves to be as deadly with a pistol as Jack hoped and they seem to have a new and powerful resource to use against the vampires. In addition to the silver bullets, Carl also develops a "vampire detector" for use by the team, which proves to be a useful tool against the vampires (which are portrayed as fantastically fast and powerful compared to humans, particularly the 'master vampires'). A series of battles ensues, using these silver bullets against the vampires, but key members of Jack's team are killed by the vampires, including Annabelle, the office manager of the team's residence, and the aging weaponsmith Carl. Jack, depressed and beaten, suicidally returns to a known favorite hotel where the vampires are sure to find him. Felix, Cat and Father Adam stage a rescue attempt but it ends with Father Adam dead and Jack spirited away by the vampire. The novel closes with Felix taking a leadership role within Vampire$ Inc., after thwarting an attempt by the (now a vampire) Jack Crow to attack the Pope.
1384886	/m/04yb4v	The Torrents of Spring	Ernest Hemingway	1926	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in northern Michigan in the mid-1920s The Torrents of Spring is about two men, World War I veteran Yogi Johnson and writer Scripps O'Neill, both of whom work at a pump factory. The story begins with O'Neill returning home to find that his wife and small daughter have left him. O'Neill befriends a British waitress, Diana, at a "beanery" (diner) and asks her to marry him immediately but soon becomes disenchanted with her. Diana tries to impress her husband by reading books from the lists of The New York Times Book Reviews, but he soon leaves her (as she feared he would) for another waitress, Mandy, who enthralls him with literary (but possibly made up) anecdotes. Johnson, who becomes depressed after a Parisian prostitute leaves him for a British officer, has a period during which he anguishes over the fact that he doesn't seem to desire any woman at all, even though spring is approaching. Ultimately, he falls in love with a native American woman who enters a restaurant clothed only in moccasins, the wife of one of the two Indians he befriends near the end of the story.
1385435	/m/04ycpd	Friend of My Youth	Alice Munro		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A story about the narrator's mother. It starts with a dream the narrator has in which her mother has not died. She then remembers a story that her mother used to tell her about a family she used to live with in the days before she was married. The story then changes to a third-person narrative about the Grieves family, specifically the two daughters, Flora and Ellie. This family is a rather odd one, as they live in a house with no electricity, no plumbing, and no oven. Other characters in the story note this as peculiar because the family is rather rich and is not religiously against these comforts. Flora is set up to marry a man named Robert. However Ellie is incredibly dependent on Flora and spends most of her time in the company of Robert and Flora. Flora wishes to remain chaste until her wedding with Robert. However, her father dies before the wedding can take place, so the wedding is postponed six months so that it will be over a year after the funeral of her father. Months later, Robert is getting married, not to Flora but to Ellie. The two are getting married because Ellie is pregnant. Flora takes this in stride and helps her sister prepare for the wedding. Ellie becomes somewhat of an invalid and remains bedridden or close to home for the rest of the story. She is constantly pregnant and miscarries or stillbirths all of her children. Flora and Robert have built up partitions in the house, so as to divide it in two to grant the married couple privacy. Flora cleans the entire house vigorously and caters to her sister's every ridiculous whim. Ellie has become completely dependent on Flora and is not very grateful. Ellie becomes very awkward around guests and essentially alienates Flora from most of the community. Ellie eventually becomes very sick so a nurse is called for. Nurse Atkinson arrives at the house in a car, something that the Grieves have never used, and takes over the house. She demands expensive soaps and creams in an attempt to keep Ellie alive. The mother character, from whom the narrator has heard the story, takes an immediate disliking to the nurse after meeting her. She thinks that the nurse is using the creams and soaps on herself instead of Ellie. Eventually, Ellie dies from her illness. Nurse Atkinson, since she has no other immediate cases, continues to live in Flora's house and complains constantly about the lack of luxuries. The townspeople assume that now that Ellie has passed, Flora and Robert will get married. However, it is Robert and Nurse Atkinson that end up getting married. The three live in the house together and the nurse makes many changes. She paints her half of the house, installs electricity and plumbing, and buys an oven. The mother character then moves away and gets married to her own husband. The only further development's in Flora's story comes from correspondence exchanged between Flora and the narrator's mother. Flora is content with her life and is not outraged at the turn of events that cause her to lose Robert again or the butchering of her house. Eventually, Flora moves out of the house, if she was kicked out or voluntarily left is not clear, and has to work in a store to sustain herself. She has been forced to adapt modern ways and change her entire lifestyle. The narrator's mother wanted to write a book about Flora's life. She wishes to call it Maiden Lady. It would be a novel that would portray Flora as the poor, unfortunate, quaint soul that she is. The Narrator also wishes to write a book about Flora, but with her as a rather evil character, resistant to change and technology. The narrator wonders if she has seen Flora, run into her in a department store and wonders what she would have felt if she met her. The narrator then reminisces about her mother. She mentions how she felt cheated by the reprieve granted to her by the dream. She feels that this vision of her mother changes the "lump of love" that she has for her and that it feels like a "phantom pregnancy".
1385533	/m/04ycyx	The Song of the Lark	Willa Cather	1915	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the fictional small town of Moonstone, Colorado, Doctor Archie helps Mrs Kronborg give birth to her baby son, Thor. He also takes care of their daughter, Thea, who is sick with pneumonia. Years later, she goes to the Kohlers' for her piano lesson with Wunsch. Later, she runs into Dr. Archie, who tells her to go to his garden and collect strawberries. When she is there, she becomes alarmed by his wife's meanness. The doctor goes to Spanish Johnny's when he is sick. Later, Ray Kennedy goes out to the countryside with Johnny, his wife, Thea, Axel, and Gunner. Although she is only twelve and he is thirty, he dreams of becoming rich and marrying her when she is old enough. They all tell stories of striking it rich in silver mines out west. Before Christmas, Thea plays the piano at a concert but the town paper praises her rival Lily which makes Thea angry. Tillie then turns down the local drama club's request to have Thea play a part in The Drummer Boy of Shiloh, Tillie believes that Thea is too busy and would not accept the part. After Christmas, Thea goes to the Kohlers' for another lesson, where Wunsch tells her about a Spanish opera singer who could sing an alto part of Christoph Willibald Gluck. He also says she needs to learn German. Wunsch gets so drunk he passes out and gets hurt during the night. When he wakes up again he turns violent, fells down the Kohlers's cote, and is eventually brought back to the house by other towndwellers. Ten days later, all of his students have discontinued their lessons with him, he decides to leave the town. Shortly after, Thea drops out of school and takes up his students; at fifteen she begins to work full-time. Later, Ray lets Thea and her mother go to Denver on his train. They stop at the fictional town of Wassiwappa, where they have lunch with the station agent. They travel past Winslow, Arizona and Mr. Kronborg insists that Thea should go to church meetings more often because Thea isn't as perfect as Anna. However, she becomes sad when she sees how a local tramp is ridiculed and made to leave, wondering whether the Bible wouldn't tell people to help him instead. Dr. Archie tells her that people have to look after themselves. On the way from Moonstone to Saxony, Ray's train has an accident and the next day he bids an emotional goodbye to Thea before he dies. After the funeral, Dr. Archie informs Mr. Kronborg that Ray has bequeathed six hundred dollars to Thea for her to go to Chicago and study there. Her father agrees to let her go despite her only being seventeen. In Chicago, Thea moves close to the parish of a Swedish Reformed Church with two German women; she also sings in the choir and in funerals for a stipend, and takes piano lessons with Mr. Harsanyi. At dinner with Mr. Harsanyi, she mentions that she sings in a church choir, and he asks her to sing and he is very impressed by her voice. Later, he meets with the conductor of the Chicago Orchestra and asks him who is the best voice teacher in the area and the conductor tells him that it is Madison Bowers. He then parts with Thea, explaining that her voice is her true artistic gift, not her playing. After several weeks of singing lessons, she takes a train back to Moonstone and she appears to have grown a lot. She goes to a Mexican ball with Spanish Johnny and sings for them. Back in her house, Anna reproaches her for singing for them and not their father's church. Her ambition takes her back to Chicago. Back in Chicago, Thea keeps moving from one home to another. She grows tired of Bowers' shoddy students until she meets Fred Ottenburg, a rich young man. He takes her to meet the Nathanmeyers, a rich family, and they like her well enough to give her a job singing in a show that they are having. Fred suggests that she spend the summer on his friend's ranch in Arizona because his family owns the whole canyon. Thea gets off the train at Flagstaff, Arizona, close to the San Francisco Peaks. Back in the wilderness, she starts relaxing. Ottenburg then joins her where they kiss by a rock pile but then get stranded outside in a storm. They decide to get married but Ottenburg says that they should live in Mexico City. However, Ottenburg doesn't tell her he is already married, even though he and his wife have been estranged for many years. Dr. Archie goes to Denver to look over some silver investments. He receives a telegram from Thea summoning him to New York City. There, she tells Fred she will but leaving shortly after he told her he couldn't marry her. Archie goes to dinner with Ottenburg and Thea. Later, Fred goes away to his unconscious mother, who fell from a carriage. When he returns, Thea ponders on the futility of her ambition, but comes to the conclusion that it is worth giving it a shot. Ten years later, Dr. Archie has moved to Denver after his mining investments went up and his wife has died. Despite this, his life is better. He has helped get Governor Alden elected, although Fred and he admit the politician's double talk has proved to be disappointing. Archie attends Thea's operatic performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City and later he talks to her at her hotel, they meet again at four the next day. Later they meet again with Fred; she performs the end of an opera at the last minute but performs very well. Thea then takes the time to talk both to Archie and Fred about what she has been up to. Finally, she gives another performance and Harsanyi is in the audience, who is overwhelmed by her performance. The novel ends with Tillie, the only remaining Kronborg who still lives in Moonstone
1385548	/m/04yc_8	A Kingdom of Dreams	Judith McNaught	1989-03-01	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jennifer Merrick is the feisty daughter of a Scottish laird. Royce Westmoreland, the "Black Wolf", is sent by the King of England to wage war against Scotland. When Royce's brother, Stefan Westmoreland, kidnaps Jennifer and her stepsister, Brenna, and brings them to Royce's camp, the lives of the two become intertwined. Royce and Jennifer must marry by order of the King of England and the King of Scotland after they consummate their keeper-prisoner relationship. Forced to accept the marriage, Jennifer's family try to make the marriage fail by intending to sent her to become a nun in a convent after the wedding reception. Royce beats the family plan by kidnapping her first and takes her to his home. The King of England orders the two families to settle their score in a tournament where Jennifer must choose which family her loyalty lies with.
1385549	/m/04yc_m	The Naked Face	Sidney Sheldon	1970	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dr. Judd Stevens, M.D., is a caring and successful Manhattan psychoanalyst who must face a horrific prospect; someone is trying to kill him. First, John Hanson, a patient trying overcome his homosexuality, is brutally murdered, perhaps because he was mistaken for Stevens. Not long after, Carol Roberts, Stevens' secretary, is also found murdered. The police, partly due to anger with Stevens testimony in a previous case, are quick to treat Stevens as the prime suspect. To prove his innocence and track down the real killer, Stevens hires a private investigator by the name of Norman Z. Moody. Before the case is done, Stevens will have to risk life and limb, psychoanalize possible suspects and fall in love with a mysterious patient named Annie DeMarco.
1386077	/m/04yflr	Fool's Fate	Robin Hobb	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 "Having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes." Once assassin to the king, Fitz is now Skillmaster to Prince Dutiful's small band, sailing towards a future as uncertain as the waters that separate the Six Duchies from the distant Out Island of Aslevjal. His duty is to help the Prince fulfil the Narcheska Elliania's challenge: Bring her the head of the dragon, Icefyre, whom legends say is buried deep beneath the ice. Only after this task is complete will they be married and bring an end to war between their kingdoms. It is not a happy ship: the serving boy, Thick (Who had down syndrome, and was named in a way consistent with the universe in which the story is set), is constantly ill/sea-sick, and his random but powerful Skilling takes on a dark and menacing tone, causing the sailors to regard him as a Jonah. Fitz, his Skill-dreams plagued by female voices and the beating of gigantic wings, is unhappy at leaving the Fool behind but is determined to keep the White Prophet from his fate on the isle of the black dragon; and Chade's fascination with the Skill is growing to the point of obsession. There are other currents flowing in the Out Islands, for not everyone welcomes the idea of a foreign prince slaying the Aslevjal legend. So why is the Narcheska so intent on the dragon's death? A reduced party finally arrives on the frozen island to be greeted by a familiar yet changed figure. What role does he have to play in the success or failure of the quest? His intentions are certainly at odds with Chade, who is determined to slay the dragon to secure peace, whatever the cost. The tale of Fitz and the Fool, begun in Assassin's Apprentice, reaches its spectacular conclusion in Fool's Fate, in which kingdoms must stand or fall on the beat of a dragon's wings, or a Fool's heart.
1386288	/m/04yf_d	Ship of Magic	Robin Hobb	1998-01-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ship of Magic is the first book of the Liveship Traders series and follows the fortunes of the Vestrit family, centered around the liveship Vivacia. A liveship is a ship made of Wizardwood, a mystical substance, giving it magical properties. When three generations of a ship's owners die on board, a liveship "quickens", meaning that the ship awakens and becomes a sentient being with all the memories of the ancestors who have contributed to the ship's quickening. Captain Vestrit's grandmother had ordered the liveship Vivacia, and the Vestrit family is still in debt to the Rain Wild Trader family from whom they bought the Wizardwood even before the ship was quickened. Only a liveship is capable of crossing the perilous Rain Wild River to trade with the Rain Wilders, who have valuable goods plundered from an Ancient Elderling ruin. The Vestrits live in Bingtown, which borders the sea, Jamaillia, Chalced, and the Rain Wilds. Their charter comes from Jamaillia; however, the current leader of Jamaillia has ignored the promises his ancestors made with Bingtown, which causes outrage among Bingtown's citizens. Chalced's influence and customs are spreading throughout the world, because of its profitable slave trade. The story begins when Ephron Vestrit dies on Vivacia and quickens it. His daughter, Althea, who had assumed that the ship would come to her after her father's death, is shocked to see that her father has given the ship to her sister, Keffria, who in turn had given ownership to Kyle, her Chalcedean husband. Kyle believes that he can restore the family fortune by entering the slave trade. Kyle said that Althea would never sail the Vivacia until she proves her seamanship by showing him a ship's ticket. Althea sets off to prove she is a capable sailor. However, Kyle discovers that he is unable to control the ship without a blood relative of the Vestrits on board. Without Althea, the only alternative is to force his son Wintrow, who wants to be a priest, to serve aboard the ship. Wintrow finds it hard to adjust to life on the ship. Despite his bitterness at being torn from the priesthood, he has a growing bond with the ship that he can't ignore. At the same time as all of these events, the ambitious pirate Kennit desires to become more than a pirate: he wishes to unite all pirate townships under him as king. Kennit pursues slaver ships to free the slaves while throwing the slavers overboard. A crafty man with a gift for foresight, Kennit realizes that if he frees the slaves, he'll gain the allegiance of their family and friends. The freed slaves then crew the captured vessels as a pirate fleet under Kennit's command. However, Kennit desires to have a liveship of his own for his flagship. He targets the Vivacia, who has become a slaver ship under Kyle's persuasion. Kennit manages to capture the Vivacia and becomes her captain. To get the proof of her seaworthiness that Kyle requires, Althea works on board a slaughtership, disguised as a man. She discovers that Brashen Trell, a former mate on the Vivacia, and a disgraced younger son of another prominent Bingtown family, is also serving on the ship. Unfortunately, Althea is denied a ship's ticket when the captain of the slaughteship discovers her true name. Althea and Brashen separate after a romantic dispute. Brashen takes a position on a pirate's trader ship. Althea joins the crew of the liveship Ophelia, owned by the Tenira family, headed back to Bingtown which then leads to the next installment of the Liveship Trader series, The Mad Ship.
1387588	/m/04yk43	Salamandastron	Brian Jacques	1992	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book follows the tale of the Badger Lord Urthstripe the Strong and his battle against Ferahgo the Assassin. Mara, Urthstripe's young adopted daughter, and her hare friend, Pikkle, decide to leave the great mountain stronghold, Mara having become tired of the way Urthstripe treats her. Meanwhile, two stoats, Dingeye and Thura, have recently deserted Ferahgo's army. They manage to find their way to Redwall Abbey and are taken in by the kind beasts that reside there. While tensions mount as to their presence, the ruling beasts of the Abbey decide they may stay: the two stoats, while rude, have done no harm. Mara and Pikkle, meanwhile, have escaped Ferahgos' horde and have taken refuge in a cave. Unfortunately, the cave is inhabited by a sand lizard called Swinkee. A fight ensued, and Mara accidentally pulls off Swinkees' tail. After the fight, Mara and Pikkle ask Swinkee if he can take them to Salamandastron. To get Swinkee to do it, they promise him a large bag of live swampflies and marshworms. Swinkee double-crosses them, however, and leads them straight to a tribe of cannibal toads. They are presented to the chieftain, a large, repulsive, fat toad called King Glagweb. He throws them into a pit where 36 young shrews are kept captive as well, one of these is Nordo, son of Log-a-Log of the Guossom. The shrews explain what the toads are going to do to them and their escape plan. Later, when they are nearing a feast day, a black acorn drops into the pit, signalling the captives to throw whatever they have at the toads. After a few minutes of hard fighting, Log-a-Logs shrews come and free the captives while fighting and killing the toads. Mara attacks Glagweb, only to be stopped by Log-a-Log, who throws Glagweb into the prison pit, along with a large, healthy, young pike. Later, Log-a-Log asks a boon of Pikkle and Mara, asking them help in retrieving the Blackstone, the symbol of leadership among the Guossom (Guerilla Union Of South Stream Shrews of Mossflower). He explains he had been ruling only through sheer strength, and that a badger ghost had taken the stone. The trip to the island was treacherous because of the appearance of the deepcoiler, a large monster residing in the lake that terrorizes the Guossom, along with a conspiracy against Log-a-log launched by a shrew named Tubgutt. When Mara and Pikkle and the Guossom reach the island, they delve into the islands forest, meeting the 'ghost' badger, who is really a living badger named Urthwyte, the long-lost brother of Mara's father, Urthstripe, and Urthstripes' mother and Maras' grandmother, Loambudd. Meanwhile, a young squirrel named Samkim and his good mole friend Arula are wreaking havoc, as will happen with youngbeasts. They start playing with bows and arrows and frighten one of the Redwall abbey dwellers. One night, a lightning bolt strikes the weathervane of Redwall, and the sword of Martin the Warrior falls from its resting place high above the Abbey grounds and falls at the feet of Samkim, who is dumbfounded by his discovery. Dingeye and Thura's stay is cut short when they are forced to flee the Abbey after accidentally killing one of the Redwallers (Brother Hal) with the same bows and arrows that Samkim and Arula had used. Dingeye and Thura head towards the countryside, with Martin's stolen sword in hand. Samkim and Arula pursue the two beasts, intent on not only rescuing the legendary sword of their Abbey Champion, but exacting vengeance upon the murdering vermin. Thura falls dead from Dryditch fever, and is left behind by Dingeye. His body is discovered by Samkin, Furgle the Hermit, and Arula. Furgle recognizes the disease symptoms and goes to warn Redwall. Dingeye, however, is caught by a group of six vermin from Ferahgos' horde, and is beheaded with the Sword of Martin the Warrior. The vermin leader is Dethbrush, and he in turn takes the Sword from Dingeye's headless carcass. Back at Redwall, a terrible disease has begun ravaging the Abbey. A local woodvole hermit by the name of Furgle determines that it is Dryditch Fever. Mrs. Faith Spinney mentioned that there is an old wives' tale saying that the Flowers of Icetor from the Mountains of the North boiled in springwater can cure Dryditch Fever, so the brave otter Thrugg sets off to find them. With the dormouse babe Dumble along for the ride and an injured falcon whom they meet on the road named Rocangus, the trio eventually makes it to the pines where a group of crows terorize any passerby. After being rescued by Laird McTalon and a group of falcons, Thrugg succeeds in securing the flowers from the ruler of the mountain: the mighty Golden Eagle, Wild King MacPhearsome. Mara and Samkin's paths eventually cross when Samkin catches up with Dethbrush in a storm and punches him overboard. He is in turn eaten by the Deepcoiler. Samkin grabs the Sword of Martin the Warrior from the body of Dethbrush before the Deepcoiler can dive. Then, after the Deepcoiler dove, it rose again, attacking Spriggat. Then, when the serpent has Spriggat in its jaws, Samkin stabs the Deepcoiler in the roof of the mouth. The serpent then vanishes. Later, Mara and the Guosim find the body of Deepcoiler and retrieve the Sword from it. Along their way, they meet each other and Mara gives Samkin the Sword. Heading back to Salamandastron, the group arrives to see Salamandastron being sieged by Ferahgo the Assassin, and soon enough in time to find Urthstripe seized by the Bloodwrath, leaping from the towering mountain with Feragho in his grasp. After Urthstripe's death, Mara, Pikkle, Samkin, Arula, Urthwyte and Loambudd find the badger treaser that Ferhago was looking for and bury him there. Soon after Thrugg, Dumble and MacPhearsome returns with the haversack full of the flowers of Icetor, Samkim and Arula, along with Mara and Pikkle, return to Redwall Abbey. The Abbey is cured of the fever and soon, nameday comes upon the abbey. Mara becomes the Badger Mother of Redwall. Urthwyte remains behind as Lord of Salamandastron, along with the surviving members of the Long Patrol. The epilogue shows Klitch, son of Ferhago, still trapped within Salamandastron. After wandering some way, he gets thirsty and thinks that it is his 'Lucky Day' when he finds some barrels with some water in it. He has promptly forgotten the fact that the Poisoner, hired by Feragho, has poisoned everything he saw while on his last mission before his death. Klitch drinks the dregs, and is eventually beset by lances of pain and numbness. He wedges himself on a mountainside opening, and dies of the powerful poison.
1387687	/m/04ykb4	To Say Nothing of the Dog	Connie Willis	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist, Ned Henry, is a specialist in 20th century history, assigned to search for the Bishop's bird stump. He has made so many jumps into the 1940s so quickly that he has developed "time-lag", the time-travel-induced form of jet lag, and must recuperate before he returns to work. There is, unfortunately, an emergency in progress. A historian sent to the Victorian era has returned bringing something from Victorian England with her which the historians believe may rip time itself apart if it isn't promptly returned...and Ned, who knows virtually nothing about the 19th century, is the only one available to return it. (Theoretically, nothing may be brought through the time machine in either direction as it might cause time to unravel, and safeguards have been put in place in order to prevent significant objects making the journey.) Unfortunately, Ned is too time-lagged to recall his destination, much less remember what it is that he is supposed to return. He meets one Terence St. Trewes, a besotted young Oxford undergraduate, and lends him the money to hire a boat for a trip on the River Thames from Oxford down to Muchings End, where Terence hopes to meet his love, Tocelyn "Tossie" Mering. Ned, Terence, Cyril the bulldog and an Oxford don, Professor Peddick, travel down the Thames, navigating locks, beautiful scenery, crowds of languid boaters in no hurry to get anywhere, and the party of one Jerome K. Jerome (to say nothing of the dog, Montmorency). Fortunately, Ned's contact in Muchings End recognizes him when he arrives, and identifies herself: she is a young woman named Verity Kindle, who is pretending to be Tossie's cousin. Lady Schrapnell sent Verity to read Tossie's diary, as Tossie (an ancestor of Lady Schrapnell) had written about a life-changing event involving the bird stump at the church which was to become Coventry Cathedral, which had caused her to elope with a mysterious "Mr. C" to America. It is only at this point that Ned learns the nature of the object he is to return: Tossie's pet cat, Princess Arjumand. (Cats are extinct in 2057 due to a feline distemper pandemic.) However, returning the cat did not clear up the time disruption, as people attempting to visit Coventry during the air raid are still missing their target—they are either in the right place at the wrong time or the right time but miles from the target. Have they changed history by bringing Terence to Tossie? What will happen to them if Lady Schrapnell is never born, to say nothing of Terence not marrying Peddick's niece Maud, and thus not becoming the grandfather of an RAF pilot who bombs Berlin and goads Hitler into bombing London and Coventry? The solution involves the wisdom of Sherlock Holmes, the methods of Hercule Poirot, and the style of Lord Peter Wimsey. In the meantime, Ned, Verity and their colleagues have to deal with packs of dogs guarding the marrows, hostile theatrical costumers dragooned into operating the time machine, phony spiritualists, kittens, abstruse mathematics, the Battle of Waterloo, the unalterable fact that the butler did it (they always do), the Coventry Ladies' Altar Guild, more dogs, and a crime which was committed before anyone realized it was against the law.
1388208	/m/04yl9j	The Bean Trees	Barbara Kingsolver	1988	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Bean Trees opens in rural Kentucky. Taylor goes on to tell the story of how she is scared of tires. Taylor was the one to escape small-town life. She did so by avoiding pregnancy, getting a job working at the hospital, and saving up enough money to buy herself an old Volkswagen bug. About five years after high school graduation, she decides to go on a journey to see what life has to offer her. Her car breaks down in the middle of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. As she sits in her car, getting ready to leave, a woman approaches and puts a baby in the front seat of Taylor’s car, telling her to take it. She tells Taylor she is the sister of the child’s mother and that the baby was born in a Plymouth car. The woman leaves with no further explanation. Taylor is bewildered, but drives off with the child. They go to a hotel, and while bathing the baby, Taylor discovers that the baby, a girl, has been abused and sexually molested. She names the baby Turtle because the girl's tendency to grasp objects and people resembles that of a turtle. Eventually, Taylor and Turtle make it to Tucson, Arizona. When Taylor’s two back tires blow out, she goes to Jesus Is Lord Used Tires to try and get some more. There she meets the owner, a kind, wise woman named Mattie. Mattie takes to Turtle right away. Taylor moves into a Tucson hotel with Turtle and finds a job working at a restaurant known as the Burger Derby. The narrative switches to the story of Lou Ann Ruiz, another Kentuckian living in Tucson. Lou Ann has been abandoned by her husband, Angel. On January 1, she gives birth to a son, Dwayne Ray. Lou Ann’s mother and grandmother (known simply as Granny Logan) come west to visit the baby, and Granny Logan brings water from the Tug Fork River in Kentucky, which she suggests should be used to baptize the baby. When Angel comes home to gather up some of his things, he pours the water down the drain. Meanwhile, Taylor has started her new job, but she quits six days later. She begins to look for a place to live, and finds a room for rent listed in the paper. The room turns out to belong to Lou Ann. The two women become fast friends, and Taylor takes the room. Without work, Taylor is left with no option but to take a job working for Mattie at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. One day Taylor meets two of Mattie’s friends, Estevan and Esperanza, a married couple from Guatemala. Soon, it is evident that they are illegal aliens living with other illegal aliens in Mattie’s home above the tire shop. A month or so later, Taylor takes Turtle to see a doctor and finds that Turtle’s growth has been stunted because she was abused. Turtle is not a baby, as her size indicates, but a three-year-old. That same day, Angel tells Lou Ann that he is leaving her for good. Mattie’s friend Esperanza attempts suicide. When Estevan comes to tell Taylor this news, he ends up divulging the story of their past. He tells her that he and Esperanza had to leave behind a child in Guatemala. The government wanted the names of union members from Estevan and Esperanza and took their daughter, Ismene, as a way of forcing them to tell. Choosing to save seventeen lives instead of trying to get their daughter back, the couple fled their country. Estevan spends the night on Taylor’s couch. Taylor realizes she is falling in love with him. After a few weeks, Lou Ann gets a job at a salsa factory, supporting herself in the absence of her husband. No sooner does she start her new job than Angel sends a package with presents for Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray, and a letter asking her to come live with him in Montana, or, if she does not want to do that, to let him come back and live with her in Tucson. After consideration, Lou Ann refuses to take him back. On the night of the first summer rain, Mattie takes Esperanza, Estevan, and Taylor into the desert to see the natural world come to life. Turtle is left with her baby-sitter, a blind woman named Edna Poppy. Edna and Turtle go to the park, and because of her disability, Edna does not notice when a prowler approaches Turtle. Taylor returns and hears as much of the story as Edna can tell: Edna heard struggling and swung in the direction of the attacker with her cane. She hit him and then felt Turtle tugging on the hem of her skirt. Turtle does not seem hurt, but she has stopped speaking and has the same vacuous look in her eyes that she had when Taylor first saw her. Turtle’s trauma and the difficulties of Estevan and Esperanza make Taylor depressed. To make matters worse, the police investigation into the attack on Turtle reveals that Taylor has no legal claim on Turtle. Taylor will be forced to give her to a state ward or find a way around the law. The social worker in Tucson gives Taylor the name of a legal advisor in Oklahoma, where the laws are different. Mattie becomes worried about Estevan and Esperanza’s safety. A recent crackdown on illegal immigration will force them to find a new home and a way of getting there. Taylor decides she will transport Estevan and Esperanza to another sanctuary for illegal immigrants in Oklahoma. While there, she will look for Turtle’s relatives and see if they will consent to a legal adoption. Once in Oklahoma, Taylor returns to the bar where she received Turtle but finds that it has changed owners. There are no signs of the people she met there seven months before. Taylor, Esperanza, and Estevan decide to go to the Lake o’ the Cherokees. During that time, Taylor concocts a plan to convince the authorities in Oklahoma that Estevan and Esperanza are Turtle’s biological parents. Once in the office of Mr. Armistead, the legal authority in Oklahoma, Esperanza and Estevan pretend to be Turtle’s biological parents. Esperanza sobs real tears at the prospect of giving up Turtle, and Taylor realizes that Esperanza is grieving the loss of her own daughter, who looked so much like Turtle. Taylor and Turtle drop off Esperanza and Estevan at their new home, a church in Oklahoma. Taylor says a tearful goodbye to Estevan. Taylor then calls her mother, who comforts her. Taylor and Turtle head back to Tucson, a place that both of them now call home. The book conveys multiple symbolic meanings about shared motherhood, life and death, and beauty. The underlying themes not always recognized include those about mockery toward the judicial system, the flawed coping strategies of current day issues, and the strength of friendship.
1390003	/m/04yqr5	Crown of Slaves	Eric Flint		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The novel continues the events that happened on From the Highlands, and is set over the background of the fight against genetic slavery. The story begins after the truce between Manticore and Haven. Captain Zilwicki, his adopted daughter Berry, Princess Ruth Winton and the slave-turned-professor W.E.B. Du Havel are sent as Queen Elizabeth III's (not the Manticoran government's) official representatives to the funeral of a notorious Solarian anti-slavery activist, which will take place in Erewhon, a disgruntled member of the Manticoran Alliance. Erewhon's location between Manticore, Haven and the Solarian League makes it a place where agents from the different star nations can play the intelligence game. From the first moment, Zilwicki, Berry and Ruth get entangled in a complex situation involving Havenite agents, ambitious Solarian Navy officers, violent Masadan mercenaries, the Audubon Ballroom and the powerful Mesan corporation Manpower Incorporated. Each faction has interests of its own, which collide with those of the others: the Manticorans want to salvage their relation with Erewhon (and upset the Prime Minister who allowed that relationship to sour). The Havenites intend to show support for the anti-slavery cause and improve their own relationship with Erewhon, with the unstated goal of breaking Erewhon away from Manticore. The Erewhonese want someone&nbsp;— anyone&nbsp;— to help them deal with a Mesan-owned planet which is a threat to their security. The Solarian officers work to further the interests of a powerful political patron who believes that the League is on the verge of collapse and wants to be prepared for that event. The Mesans want to stay out of the limelight and prevent all the other factions from attacking their major industry: slave trading, while the Audubon Ballroom simply wants to hit Mesa anywhere they can. And even the Masadan mercenaries employed by the Mesans have their own agenda: to force Manticore to free several of their imprisoned companions. The clash of interests comes to a head with an attempted kidnapping on Berry Zilwicki and Ruth Winton (who happens to be the sister of the leader of the Masadan mercenaries) aboard The Wages of Sin, Erewhon's main civilian space station. After Manpower's involvement is discovered, a haphazard alliance between the Manticorans, Solarians, Havenites and the Ballroom is organized to launch an attack on the Mesan-owned planet Verdant Vista, popularly known as "Congo". The planet is taken from Manpower's hands, and it is decided to transform it into an independent nation of its own for escaped slaves, so that the conflict against Mesa may have a nation sponsoring it. The novel ends with Berry Zilwicki being crowned as Berry I, Queen of the new Kingdom of Torch.
1390007	/m/04yqrj	The Shadow of Saganami	David Weber	2004-11-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The events of the novel are simultaneous with those of the novel At All Costs, which belongs to the main series of Honorverse novels. The story focuses on the shakedown cruise of the Edward Saganami-C-class heavy cruiser HMS Hexapuma (nicknamed Nasty Kitty), commanded by Captain Aivars Terekhov, a war veteran and former prisoner of war who has only recently been cleared for return to active naval service. Commander Ginger Lewis, previously seen in Honor Among Enemies, has an important supporting role, while Aubrey Wanderman, from the same book, appears in the background in a few scenes as a Senior Chief Petty Officer. The story also deals with five midshipmen—one of them being Helen Zilwicki—fresh out of Saganami Naval Academy, who embark onboard Hexapuma for their "snotty cruise" (their first real naval deployment), and their reactions following their encounter with the realities of naval service and combat. To the surprise of her new captain and crew, the Hexapuma, one of the Royal Manticoran Navy's most modern and powerful cruisers, is assigned to the Talbott Cluster, an impoverished group of star systems recently incorporated within the Star Kingdom of Manticore. With a the renewal of brutal war with Haven, and embroiled in the annexation of parts of the Silesian Confederacy, Manticore has no choice (and no other available resources) but to assign a small and clearly insufficient naval force to guard the Cluster, while a Constitutional Convention is taking place which will define the terms of the Cluster's formal annexation. However, powerful interests both within the Solarian League's Office of Frontier Security (OFS) and corporations (which resents Manticore intervening in its "backyard") and the slaver world of Mesa (wary against the possibility of Manticore being too close to its space) do not want this to move forward and support indigenous groups violently opposed to annexation. The goal is to launch a terrorist campaign against Manticore, giving the League the excuse to intervene in the Cluster and expel the Star Kingdom. The annexation is also stalled by the ruling oligarchs of many of the Cluster's systems, who fear that their power, wealth and influence will dilute once their worlds are absorbed within the Star Kingdom. In addition, the annexation is viewed with some distrust by vocal sectors of the Cluster's population, as it was sponsored by a powerful local merchant cartel with a history of strong-arming and abuse for its own purposes. Hexapuma and her crew must patrol the Cluster's many systems to "show the flag" and assist the planetary governments, thus demonstrating Manticore's goodwill. In the meantime, some anti-annexation groups launch terrorist campaigns on two of the Cluster's planets, Kornati and Montana. Coupled with the stalling of the Constitutional Convention, the annexation is in danger of derailing as the hard-pressed Manticoran government cannot afford to be entangled in the Cluster while Manticore struggles in the middle of a shooting war. On one side is Westman, a native of Montana, who manages to bomb several government facilities without causing a single casualty, and Nordbrant of Kornati, whose multi bomb attacks slaughter hundreds of civilians. Both groups are supplied by 'Firebrand', an intelligence officer of the OFS, who is attempting to destabilize the region so OFS forces can occupy the Cluster to "preserve regional peace." Initially completely removed from the internal strife in order to avoid looking like invading oppressors, Hexapuma is tasked with pirate patrol. After stumbling across two pirate cruisers and a captured merchantman and tricking the cruisers into initiating the attack, she crushes the cruisers and manages to liberate the merchantman and its surviving crew, finding the pirates are former members of the defunct Peoples Republic of Haven. The action cements Terekhov's abilities in the eyes of his crew and earns him copious goodwill from the people of the Talbott Cluster. In the course of Hexapuma's patrolling, evidence begins to pile up indicating that the local terrorists are actually the unwitting pawns of foreign interests, and that the terrorist actions are merely the first step of a larger plan for the Cluster. They then stumble across an armed freighter of Mesa's Jessyk Combine in the process of delivering weapons to Westman. When Hexapuma sends a pinnace over to perform an inspection, one of the freighter's crew members panics - he's already been arrested once for piracy, and Manticoran Navy policy allows summary execution for a second offense - and destroys the approaching pinnace, killing 17 of Terekhov's crew. After being decimated by Hexapuma's missile-defense lasers in response to the destruction of the pinnace, the surviving crew of the freighter surrender and give up the majority of the OFS's plan to occupy the Cluster. After dealing with the local terrorist groups by either force or reason, Captain Terekhov and Hexapuma assemble an ad hoc squadron with other Manticoran ships in a mission to prevent the next step of the conspirators' plan: the service entry of a fleet of powerful ex-Solarian battlecruisers which have been transferred to Monica, an OFS proxy system to be used against Manticore. After dropping into the system, Terkhov demands the surrender of the local fleet until Manticore can validate the cruisers authenticity, and that they're soverieign of Monica and not the OFS. Playing for time, the Monican Navy manages to lure the Manticoran Squadron into weapons range. After a brutal battle, half of Terekhovs squadron is destroyed or crippled, though the Monican Navy is destroyed in the process. After being relieved, and with the formal annexation well under way, Terekhov and Hexapuma return to Manticore and are greeted with a heroes welcome.
1390418	/m/04yrp0	Piece of Cake	Derek Robinson	1983	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 : Piece of Cake begins in Sept 1939 when World War Two is about to begin. The young, brash and inexperienced pilots of Hornet Squadron, a fighter unit of the British Royal Air Force's Fighter Command and equipped with Hawker Hurricane Mk. 1s, are not inclined to take the impending war very seriously. Squadron Leader Ramsey, who has been drilling his men hard, is eager to get into action. Returning from a practise flight, he inadvertently taxis his Hurricane into a slit-trench, upending the aircraft and, too impatient to wait for a ladder, falls from the cockpit and fatally breaks his neck. :His temporary replacement is New Zealander 'Fanny' Barton whose authority is rejected by most of the pilots. Ordered to intercept an incoming group of aircraft, Barton attacks what he believes is a German bomber and shoots it down, only to later realise it was a British Blenheim. He is sent away to face a court of enquiry whilst Squadron Leader Rex, an upper-crust and calmly confident pilot, arrives to take command. :The squadron is despatched to a new airfield in France to await the expected German attack. Billeted in a luxury chateau, the pilots enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. In return, Rex expects strict discipline amongst his pilots and adherence to the textbook tactics of the RAF including close-formation flying and the cumbersome 'fighting area' attacks. The Phoney-War begins as winter sets in. Pilot Officer 'Moggy' Cattermole bullies several of the other pilots, in particularly young Dickie Starr and mentally-fragile 'Sticky' Stickwell. Cattermole flies his Hurricane under a low bridge, goading Starr and 'Pip' Patterson to do the same. Starr attempts the stunt and is killed. Cattermole shows no remorse. :A new replacement arrives, an American named Christopher Hart the Third, soon nicknamed 'CH3'. A veteran of the Spanish Civil War, he is unimpressed with the rigid, by-the-book tactics of the RAF and this leads to disagreements and hostility with some of the other pilots. Barton also returns to the squadron. Hornet achieves its first aerial victory when they destroy a German Dornier 17 bomber. Hart is unimpressed that it takes six pilots to down a single, already crippled bomber, partly due to the poor gunnery skills of many of the pilots. Journalist Jackie Bellamy is keen to portray the war as a glorious adventure against an evil foe and cannot understand Hart's cynicism. Two of the pilots, 'Flash' Gordon and 'Fitz' Fitzgerald, begin respective romances with two local schoolteachers, French woman Nicole and expat Englishwoman Mary. Both pairs eventually marry, although Fitzgerald experiences problems with sexual impotency. :Fed up with Cattermole's bullying, Stickwell flies an unauthorised sortie, strafing a Luftwaffe airfield, but his aircraft is damaged and he crash-lands in Belgium. The squadron rescue him but Rex cannot forgive the incident and Stickwell is transferred to another unit. Hart is increasingly at odds with the other pilots over his refusal to adhere to RAF tactics. :The German Invasion of France and Belgium (Blitzkrieg) begins on May 10th 1940. Hornet Squadron's tactics are soon proved dangerously inadequate, especially to the pilots flying at the rear. In the first days, three inexperienced pilots are killed without the rest of the squadron even seeing the German Me-109 fighters that shoot them down. Whilst escorting a bomber attack against German ground forces, 'Moke' Miller is badly wounded and later dies in hospital. The remaining pilots at first doubt and then despise the outmoded tactics but Rex refuses to alter them. A bombing raid leaves Rex badly injured by shrapnel but he conceals his wounds from the other pilots and strong painkillers leave him euphoric and overconfident. Recklessly ordering Hornet Squadron to attack a much larger German formation, Rex dives down to his death but another pilot orders the others not to follow, several of the pilots deliberately crowding Barton's plane, preventing him from following Rex. :Now acting Squadron Leader, Barton tries to rally his demoralised men, including a terrified Patterson and a cynical Hart. But the German advance is sweeping across France and Hornet Squadron has been reduced to a mere handful of Hurricanes still intact. Fleeing as a refugee, Nicole gets a lift with a motorcyclist but is killed in an accidental crash. Mary manages to reach England as do the survivors of Hornet Squadron. : In August, Hornet Squadron is reformed and made operational again just as the Battle of Britain enters its most intense phase. Of the original pilots, only eight remain: Barton, Hart, Cattermole, Patterson, Fitzgerald, Gordon, 'Mother' Cox and Irishman 'Flip' Moran. Amongst the replacements are Czech pilot 'Haddy' Haducek, Pole 'Zab' Zabarnowski, mild-mannered Englishman Steele-Stebbing, cocky 'Bing' MacFarlane and young 'Nim' Renouf. They are soon seeing heavy action as the German Luftwaffe switches from attacking Channel convoys and begins an offensive against RAF airfields in southeast England. Hornet Squadron is using better tactics: shooting at closer range, flying in pairs, constantly checking the sky above and behind whilst in the air. Gordon has become eccentric and reckless after his wife's death. Cattermole finds a new victim for his bullying in Steele-Stebbing. Cattermole orders a reluctant Renouf to destroy an unarmed German Heinkel-59 rescue plane over the Channel. Moran, now a flight commander, is reluctant to accept Barton's authority. :Intelligence Officer 'Skull' Skelton is sceptical about the numbers of German aircraft that Fighter Command is claiming to shoot down, as is Jackie Bellamy who has become cynical about the conduct of the war. The inadequate training of new pilots and the poor gunnery skills are soon painfully obvious. Skelton becomes very unpopular when he refuses to confirm all of the pilot's victory claims. :The battle continues to intensify and all of the pilots begin to suffer exhaustion and nervous strain. Moran is horribly burnt to death when he is shot down. 'Bing' MacFarlane destroys two German planes and performs a forbidden 'Victory Roll' which causes him to fatally crash. Cattermole meets up with Stickwell, finding out the latter is now a pilot in a two-seater Defiant squadron. Stickwell flies into action as a gunner and is killed. On the same day, Fitzgerald, his aircraft damaged, gets lost in dense fog and vanishes at sea. His wife Mary, now pregnant, refuses to accept that her husband is dead and is soon seen hanging around the aerodrome perimeter, which the other pilots find disturbing. Gordon's eccentricity grows more acute and infuriates the more seriously-minded Hart. Zabarnowski is killed in action and several new pilots are also lost, sometimes not even lasting a single day. Cattermole bales out from a defective Hurricane and his unmanned aircraft crashes into a village and kills four civilians. Skelton is appalled at Cattermole's refusal to show any remorse. Steele-Stebbing retaliates against Cattermole with a practical joke and the two appear to declare an unofficial truce. Cattermole angrily forces Mary to cease her vigil and leave the aerodrome. :It is now September 1940 and the Battle of Britain is reaching its height. The survivors of Hornet squadron are exhausted and at breaking point. Haducek is killed and Renouf is badly burned. Gordon is badly wounded and later dies, news of his death hitting a battle-fatigued Hart particularly hard. Jackie Bellamy discusses with the pilots the possibility of a German Invasion of Britain and she concludes that the Germans lack the naval capacity to do so. On 7th September, the Luftwaffe launches a massed attack against London and every available RAF fighter unit is flung into action, including Hornet Squadron. Steele-Stebbing and Cattermole are both killed. Cox bales out and Patterson force-lands but both remain alive. The story ends with Barton and Hart diving yet again to attack the massed ranks of German bombers.
1392494	/m/04yz82	Muertos incómodos	Paco Ignacio Taibo II	2004-11	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story follows Elías Contreras, a Zapatista investigation commission, and Héctor Belascorán, a private detective from Mexico City and recurring character of Taibo's, as they try to unravel the mystery of a dead man leaving messages on answering phones, find out who Morales is, and generally investigate Bad and the Evil. Belascorán is Taibo's main protagonist; Contreras is Marcos's. During the book, and especially during the chapters written by Marcos, the reader is introduced to many characters, some of whom only appear for a very short time. The book looks at the politics of Mexico and at neo-liberalism.
1392535	/m/04yzdd	Alice, Girl from the Future			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The series is set in a stereotypical space opera world of the late XXI century. In Alisa's time people learned how to travel in space faster than light. Robots and aliens are common. Time travel is possible, but reserved only for scientific purposes. The society is a communist utopia: there's no need in money, environment is strictly protected and everything is done for the benefit of men. Alisa is a teenage Russian schoolgirl. Her father, Professor Seleznev, is a space biologist and director of Moscow CosmoZoo. The heroine is a curious fidget, she's interested in any sort of mystery, either scientistic or detective. In the stories, Alice, her friends, and occasionally her father, travel in space and time, explore distant planets, deal with aliens, fight space pirates and make scientistic discoveries. Many of the stories have ecological subtext. Alisa's family is modelled after that of the author: he actually had a daughter named Alisa, and heroine's parents are named after Bulychov himself and his wife.
1392635	/m/04yztc	Asterix and the Big Fight				 The Romans have once again been humiliated by the Gauls. Felonius Caucus, right hand man of Centurion Nebulus Nimbus, head of the fortified camp of Totorum, suggests a Big Fight. This is a Gallic tradition where two Gallic chiefs fight and the winner becomes leader of both tribes. To fight Vitalstatistix, chief of Asterix’s tribe, the Romans enlist a Gallo-Roman Chief, Cassius Ceramix of Linoleum. Vitalstatistix would surely win with Getafix’ magic potion of invincibility, but the Romans plan to dispose of the druid long beforehand. In an effort to rescue him, Obelix accidentally puts Getafix out of action with a menhir, the impact of which causes amnesia and insanity. Cassius Ceramix' challenge therefore comes at the worst possible moment, and Asterix and Vitalstatistix desperately attempt to restore Getafix’s mind by consulting Psychoanalytix (original French name is Amnesix), a druid who specializes in mental disorders. But during an explanation of the cause of the problem, Obelix decides to physically demonstrate with a menhir, leaving Psychoanalytix in the same state. As the two crazed druids concoct a number of skin-coloring magic potions, Asterix tries to bring Vitalstatistix into good physical shape for the upcoming fight. Meanwhile the Romans plan to arrest Cassius after the Fight to stop him becoming too powerful. As the fight begins, Getafix accidentally makes a potion which restores his mind, despite Obelix throwing another menhir at him to try curing him, and quickly proceeds to brew a supply of magic potion. Cassius Ceramix looks sure to win, but Getafix' recovery gives Vitalstatistix the courage to win despite not having any potion. After another tussle with the Romans, who do not accept this victory, and Cassius Ceramix himself getting "menhired", Vitalstatistix returns home victorious to the inevitable feast. Psychoanalytix returns to business despite his current state, but he remains professionally successful (a wry comment on the state of psychiatry).
1393403	/m/04z1c8	Trans-Atlantyk	Witold Gombrowicz		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Witold, a Polish writer, embarks on an ocean voyage only to have the war break out while he is visiting Argentina. Finding himself penniless and stranded after the Nazis take over his country, he is taken in by the local Polish emigre community. A fantastical series of twists and turns follow in which the young man finds himself, after a debauched night of drinking, involved as a second in a duel. Witold is constantly confronted with the exasperating contrasts between his love of country and his status as a forced expatriate and the shallow nationalism of his fellow Poles.
1395369	/m/04z6b6	Rim of the Pit			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 A group of people gather at a remote snowbound lodge in the wilds of northern New England. A seance is held in order to reach the dead husband of the medium. Remarried, the medium's husband wants permission from the dead man to open a tract of land to logging. During the seance it appears that the spirit of the dead man returns to possess one of the group, using him as an instrument to murder another of the group. The hero, Rogan Kincaid, is an adventurer who takes it upon himself (with help from a Czech refugee, the daughter of the dead man, and others), to solve the mystery before the police are brought in. As impossibilities pile up (including a locked room murder, footprints that begin and end in the middle of an expanse of snow, and a murderer who seems to be able to fly after being taken over by a Windigo), it looks like the only explanation is a supernatural one.
1396233	/m/04z8c4	The Mediterranean Caper	Clive Cussler		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Dirk Pitt, Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, and his Deputy Special Projects Director, Al Giordino, are traveling to their assignment in the Aegean Sea in Dirk's PBY Catalina when they receive a mayday distress call from the control tower at the nearby Brady Air Force Base on the Greek island of Thásos. The tower reports that they are under aerial attack by a World War I era German Albatros D-3 biplane painted a startling bright yellow and bearing the familiar black Maltese Cross of World War I Germany. The biplane, with its top speed of just 103&nbsp;mph, is strafing the runways and destroying multimillion dollar F-105 Starfire fighters and C-133 Cargomasters without a shred of resistance. Dirk and Al, armed with nothing more than a couple of rifles in their World War Two flying boat face-off against the World War I fighter and its machine guns. After a spectacular dogfight they exit the field of battle victorious. Dirk has been sent to the Aegean to meet Commander Rudi Gunn, captain of the NUMA research vessel First Attempt, to try to get to the bottom of the recent spate of mishaps on its current assignment. The First Attempt is on a research expedition attempting to find a living fossil lovingly named The Teaser, which scientists believe may be living evidence of the development of the first mammal. Following his fight with the biplane Dirk goes for a midnight swim and meets a beautiful young woman named Teri von Till whom he quickly seduces. She invites him to dinner at her uncle's villa that evening where Pitt is introduced to the book's primary villain, Bruno von Till. Pitt learns that von Till is an old comrade in arms of Lt. Kurt Hiebert, a World War I flying ace known as the Hawk of Macedonia, whose trademark was a bright yellow Albatross biplane. After dinner, he confronts von Till about his involvement with the attack on the airfield and while von Till admits nothing he forces Pitt to leave the villa at gunpoint through a door that that leads him into what is known as the Pit of Hades. It is later explained that the Pit of Hades is a labyrinth once used in ancient Greek times when the villagers sentenced a convicted felon to death. The person sentenced to die was given the choice of an instant death or choosing the Pit of Hades. The labyrinth had only one entrance, a concealed exit, and roaming amongst the many passages was a hungry lion. In recorded history no one had successfully found the exit before the lion found them. While von Till does not have a lion he does have a very large white German Shepherd with which Dirk Pitt engages in a mortal struggle. Following his successful escape Pitt is taken into custody when he returns to seek his revenge on Bruno von Till and is captured escaping the villa with Teri von Till as his prisoner. It is later revealed that Bruno von Till has been under surveillance by agents of Interpol and Inspector Hercules Zacynthus of the United States Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The inspector explains that von Till is suspected of being a world-class smuggler responsible for the transportation of all types of goods related to many heinous criminal acts. These acts include the great Spanish gold theft in 1954 which nearly toppled the Spanish economy; the mysterious disappearance of 83 high-ranking Nazi officers from Germany at the end of World War II and their sudden reemergence in Buenos Aires; and the abduction of a bus full of teenage girls in Naples, Italy who were sold into white slavery in Casablanca. The inspector now believes that von Till is attempting to smuggle nearly half a billion dollars worth of heroin into the United States using his fleet of cargo ships called Minerva Lines. Despite the best efforts of Interpol, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Customs, and many other law enforcement agencies they have been unable to catch Bruno von Till transporting anything illegal on any of his ships. Pitt eventually discovers that von Till, using the resources of his shipping line, has raised the sunken wrecks of the German U-boat U-19 and a Japanese I-Boat class submarine which he has been using as part of a smuggling operation. Von Till has converted a German submarine into a completely automated smuggling craft that can be easily attached or detached from the holds of his cargo ships. Using Pitt's surmises as a basis for action, the inspector launches a campaign to capture as many distributors of heroin in the United States as possible. However, Pitt suspects that Bruno von Till is aware of the approach of Interpol and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and he launches his own desperate mission with Al and members of the crew of the First Attempt in a last-ditch effort to stop von Till before he can escape and set up his nefarious drug smuggling operation somewhere else.
1396624	/m/04z97p	Raft	Stephen Baxter	1991	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The few thousand humans survive in a nebula of relatively breathable air, existing in divided communities. The society is highly stratified, with the elite living on the "Raft" (the remains of the starship that contains almost all the high technology), workers/miners living on various "Belt" worlds (where they mine burned-out star kernels), and the "Boneys", a nomadic band of "unmentionables" who live on worlds created out of corpses. It is unknown exactly how the humans came to the universe, but hints within the story indicate that the Raft ship came through a rift in our universe into this alternate reality (though whether intentionally or unintentionally is never specified). A glimpse of the high-gravity universe is seen in the book Ring, implying that the humans in Raft came from the main universe of the Xeelee Sequence, although during which time period they escaped is not clear. The alternate universe the humans live in follows same laws as our universe, except that it has a gravitational constant which is orders of magnitude larger than our own universe. The physics of the alternate universe has slowly turned the nebula into an increasingly hostile environment and the humans, along with the bizarre native species, are suffering the effects of environmental collapse.
1396635	/m/04z980	Radio Golf	August Wilson			 Harmond Wilkes, an Ivy League-educated man who has inherited a real estate agency from his father, his ambitious wife Mame, and his friend Roosevelt Hicks want to redevelop the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The project, called the Bedford Hills Redevelopment Project, includes two high-rise apartment buildings and high-end chain stores like Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Barnes & Noble. Harmond is also about to declare his candidacy to be Pittsburgh's first black mayor. Roosevelt has just been named a vice-president of Mellon Bank and has been tapped by a Bernie Smith to help him acquire a local radio station at less than market value, which is possible through a minority tax incentive. A complication arises when Harmond discovers that the house at 1839 Wylie, slated for demolition, was acquired illegally. Harmond offers the owner of the property market value for the house, but the owner refuses to sell. Harmond decides the only way to proceed is to build around the house, which will require minor modifications to the planned development, and calls the demolition company to cancel the demolition. Roosevelt sees no reason to delay since no one but Harmond, Roosevelt, Mame, and the house's owner know the truth, a view Mame supports. When, on the day of the demolition, which Roosevelt has put back into motion, Harmond refuses to be swayed from his stand, Roosevelt announces he will be buying Harmond out and Bernie Smith will be helping him. Harmond accuses Roosevelt of being Smith's "black face" and the two argue over the consequences of Harmond demanding changes in the development plans and if Roosevelt is allowing himself to be used by Bernie Smith. Harmond tells Roosevelt to leave the Bedford Hills Redevelopment office, which is owned by Wilkes Realty. The scene ends with Harmond leaving the office to join the group of Hills residents at 1839 Wylie protesting the demolition.
1396710	/m/04z9dy	Timelike Infinity	Stephen Baxter	1992-12-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set thousands of years in the future (AD 5407), the human race has been conquered by the Qax, a truly alien turbulent-liquid form of life, who now rule over the few star systems of human space - adopting processes from human history to effectively oppress the resentful race. Humans have encountered a few other races, including the astoundingly advanced Xeelee, and been conquered once before - by the Squeem - but successfully recovered. A human-built device, the Interface project, returns to the solar system after 1,500 years. The project, towed by the spaceship Cauchy, returns a wormhole gate, appearing to offer time travel due to the time 'difference' between the exits of the wormhole (relativistic time dilation), with one end having remained in the solar system and the other traveling at near lightspeed for a century. The Qax had destroyed the solar system gate, but a lashed-up human ship (a great chunk of soil including Stonehenge, crewed by a group called the Friends of Wigner) passes through the returning gate, traveling back to the unconquered humanity of 1,500 years ago. One of the crew of the Cauchy returns with the Friends, Miriam Berg. The Friends have a complex scheme, which does not include a simple military return-and-rescue - the 1,500 year technology gap makes this "risible". From the Wigner thought experiment they have postulated an unusual theory on the ultimate destiny of life in the universe. They believe that quantum wave-functions do not collapse like the Copenhagen interpretation holds, nor that each collapse actually buds off separate universes (like the quantum multiverse hypothesis holds) but rather that the universe is a participatory universe: the entire universe exists as a single massive quantum superposition, and that at the end of time (in the open universe of the Xeelee Sequence, time and space are unbounded, or more precisely, bounded only at the Cauchy boundaries of "Time-like infinity" and "Space-like infinity"), when intelligent life has collected all information (compare the Final anthropic principle and the Omega Point), and transformed into an "Ultimate Observer", who will make the "Final observation", the observation which collapses all the possible entangled wave-functions generated since the beginning of the universe. They believe further that the Ultimate Observer will not merely observe, but choose which world line will be the true world-line, and that it will choose the one in which humanity suffers no Squeem or Qax occupations. However, the Ultimate Observer cannot choose between worldlines if no information survives to its era to distinguish worldlines- if the UO never knows of humanity, it cannot choose a worldline favorable to it. In other words, some way is needed to securely send information forward in time. As a consequence of this necessity, they intend to turn Jupiter into a carefully formed singularity and use the precisely specified parameters as a method of encoding information. Miriam Berg is more concerned over the immediate fate of humanity, with the threat of the future Qax, and transmits a 'help' message to the gate designer Michael Poole. The Qax, naturally, panic a little at the escape to the past. A complex, unavoidably fragile species in their huge living Spline spacecraft, the few Qax present are somewhat at a loss. They decide to build their own Interface, with major human-collaborator assistance (headed by Ambassador Jasoft Parz), to create a link to their future to gain aid in resolving the problem - with more modern GUT-engine spacecraft they can make a 500 year link in just eighteen months. A startling high-technology future vessel (in truth, one of the legendary Xeelee nightfighters, an advanced and long-range fast scout ship), with a future Qax comes through the gate. Its first act is to execute the Qax Governor of Earth and gather up Parz, before passing through the original portal after the Friends and all humanity. The future Qax takes two Spline ships (presumably leaving behind the nightfighter; this might be the nightfighter that is discovered by the crew of The Great Northern millennia later in Ring) through the gate and on the journey reveals to Parz the reason behind its desire to completely destroy the human race. The future Qax tells Parz that over the centuries, the Qax had worn down humanity through constant oppression, and had eventually decided to completely eliminate its space-faring capabilities. But before they did, as economical traders, they wished to get as much value out of their human pilots as possible. So certain pilots were dispatched on a number of dangerous or quixotic missions. One such pilot was a man named Jim Bolder. The Qax had come into possession of a Xeelee nightfighter, and had modified it to support human control. Bolder's mission was simple: go to the Great Attractor, the cause of most galactic drift, and find out why and how it exists. Bolder travelled to the bottom of the gravitational well, and found- the Ring. A torus a thousand light-years in diameter, constructed of an unknown substance, rotating at a large fraction of lightspeed. The Qax goes on to speculate that the torus created a Kerr metric, and that it allowed egress from the current universe, that it was in effect an escape route for the Xeelee. Before Parz, the Spline warship, and the Qax exit the wormhole, the Qax asks, "What do Xeelee fear, do you suppose?". Regardless, Bolder escaped the Great Attractor and returned to the Qax home system, where he was supposed to be taken into custody by dozens of Spline warships wielding gravity-wave based "starbreakers" and his priceless data on the god-like Xeelee's ultimate project secured. Bolder either did not, or somehow escaped; in the ensuing fight, the starbreakers were accidentally fired at the Qax system primary star, and true to their name, destabilized it, causing it to go nova. The Qax were forced to hurriedly evacuate. Many died, and the power of the Qax trading empire (and by extension, their Occupation of Earth) ended. In the past, Poole joins Berg on the Friend vessel shortly before the Qax emerges, having traveled aboard his ship, Hermit Crab, from the Oort Cloud. He is accompanied by a Virtual of his father, Harry. Together they elude the control of the Friends, whose project fails under the bombardment of the Spline's starbreaker beam. They commandeer the singularity cannon used to sculpt Jupiter, and fire some black holes into the Spline. Aided by Jasoft Parz's internal sabotage, Poole succeeds in ramming the Hermit Crab into the Spline, killing the sapience of the vessel. Harry takes over in lieu of the higher intelligence, and at the direction of Poole, steers it back into the wormhole: when inside, Poole intends to activate the hyperdrive, shattering the fragile dimensional warping of the wormhole, and of all wormholes connecting to it, thus saving humanity from further interference by the future. Poole's audacious plan succeeds, but with an unexpected side effect. As the hyperdrive activates, it sort of shatters space-time, forming a long series of interconnected wormholes that hurl Poole 5 million years forward into the far future. Poole discovers a sad cosmos, in which the stars are guttering out; the Friends were wrong- intelligent life would not triumph and remake the cosmos, eventually leading to their Prime Observer. His ship shattered and broken, Poole begins dying, but at the last moment, an "anti-Xeelee" (whom it is implied is a being created by the Xeelee to be like them, except traveling like a tachyon backwards in time, the better to mold the Xeelee's early evolutionary history) takes a liking to Poole, and converts him into an intangible immortal being of "quantum functions". In this form, Poole travels the universe, but out of boredom, eventually begins to lapse into a quasi-coma- until an unexpected event occurs: a savage in a glass box, having traveled through a wormhole like Poole himself. "History resumed." (This final event is one of the early plot points of the Ring). pl:Czasopodobna_nieskończoność
1396825	/m/04z9q5	Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life	Clay Aiken	2004-11-16		 The book focuses on the people who have been most influential in Aiken's life. He narrates his many conflicts with his birth father and stepfather, and the bullying that he had to endure as a child, then reveals how he eventually learned to accept himself as he was, rather than try to conform to other people's expectations. Not merely a tale of overcoming adversity, Learning to Sing also speaks of ways in which he was positively shaped as he recounts experiences with his mother, grandparents, siblings, teachers, friends, and religion. Along the way, Aiken demonstrates his facility as a storyteller, regaling the reader with tales both humorous and heart-breaking. Contrary to expectations, American Idol is barely mentioned in the book.
1398014	/m/04zdh7	Yak Butter Blues: A Tibetan Trek of Faith				 In 1992, the author, his wife Cheryl, and their Tibetan horse Sadhu set off on an ancient pilgrimage trail from Lhasa, Tibet, to Kathmandu, Nepal. The original motivation for the journey is to become the first Western couple to complete it. However, there are political and spiritual issues that the couple learn must be reconciled. On their journey through the Himalayan plains they encounter sandstorms, blizzards, high altitude and thin air, as well as political bureaucracy, guns, and uncertainty about food and the next step of their journey. The narrative also describes the couple's warm encounters with Tibetan families along the way, giving insight into 1990s life in Tibet, a country struggling to survive Chinese occupation and cultural destruction--while retaining faith in the Dalai Lama's return.
1398951	/m/04zh1w	The Kite Runner	Khaled Hosseini	2003-05-29	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Amir, a well-to-do Pashtun boy, and Hassan, a Hazara who is the son of Ali, Amir's father's servant, spend their days in the hitherto peaceful city of Kabul, kite fighting. Amir's father, a wealthy merchant, whom Amir affectionately refers to as Baba, loves both boys, but is often more harshly critical of Amir, considering him weak and lacking in courage. Amir finds a kinder fatherly figure in Rahim Khan, Baba's closest friend. Khan understands Amir and supports his interest in writing. Amir explains that his first word was 'Baba' and Hassan's 'Amir', suggesting that Amir looks up most to Baba, while Hassan looks up to Amir. Assef, a notorious sociopath and violent older boy, mocks Amir for socializing with a Hazara, which is, according to Assef, an inferior race whose members belong only in Hazarajat. One day, he prepares to attack Amir with brass knuckles, but Hassan bravely stands up to him, threatening to shoot out Assef's eye out with his slingshot. Assef and his posse back off, but Assef threatens revenge. Hassan is a successful "kite runner" for Amir, knowing where the kite will land without watching it. One triumphant day, Amir wins the local tournament, and finally Baba's praise. Hassan runs for the last cut kite, a great trophy, saying to Amir, "For you, a thousand times over." Unfortunately, Hassan encounters Assef in an alleyway after finding the kite. Hassan refuses to give up Amir's kite, and Assef decides to teach Hassan a lesson. He beats him severely and then anally rapes him. Amir witnesses the act but is too scared to intervene. Secretly, he also knows that if he intervenes, he might not be able to bring the kite home; therefore, Baba would be less proud of him. After witnessing this brutal act against his dearest friend, he feels incredibly guilty, but knows that his cowardice would destroy any hopes for Baba's affections, so he tells no one what he saw. Afterward, Amir keeps a distance from Hassan, his guilt preventing him from interacting with the boy. Jealous of Baba's love for Hassan, Amir worries that if Baba found out about Hassan's bravery and his own cowardice, Baba's love for Hassan would grow even more. Amir, filled with guilt on his birthday, cannot enjoy his gifts. The only present that does not feel like "blood" money is the notebook to write his stories in given to him by Rahim Khan, his father's friend and the only one Amir felt really understood him. Amir feels life would be easier if Hassan were not around, so he plants a watch and some money under Hassan's mattress in hopes that Baba will make him leave; Hassan falsely confesses when confronted by Baba. Baba forgives him, despite the fact that, as he explains earlier, he believes that "there is no act more wretched than stealing." Hassan and Ali, to Baba's extreme sorrow, leave anyway. It is clear that Ali knows about Hassan's rape. Their leaving frees Amir of the daily reminder of his cowardice and betrayal, but he still lives in the shadow of these things. Five years later, the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan in 1979. Amir and Baba escape to Peshawar, Pakistan and then to Fremont, California, where Amir and Baba, who lived in luxury in an expensive mansion in Afghanistan, settle in a run-down apartment and Baba begins work at a gas station. Amir eventually takes classes at a local community college to develop his writing skills after graduating from high school at age twenty. Every Sunday, Baba and Amir make extra money selling used goods at a flea market in San Jose. There, Amir meets fellow refugee Soraya Taheri and her family. Soraya's father, General Taheri, once a high-ranking officer in Afghanistan, has contempt for Amir's literary aspiration. Baba is diagnosed with terminal small cell carcinoma but is still capable of granting Amir one last favor: he asks Soraya's father's permission for Amir to marry her. He agrees and the two marry. Shortly thereafter Baba dies. Amir and Soraya settle down in a happy marriage, but to their sorrow they learn that they cannot have children. Amir embarks on a successful career as a novelist. Fifteen years after his wedding, Amir receives a call from Rahim Khan, who is dying from an illness. Rahim Khan asks Amir to come to Peshawar, Pakistan. He enigmatically tells Amir, "There is a way to be good again." Amir goes. From Rahim Khan, Amir learns the fates of Ali and Hassan. Ali was killed by a land mine. Hassan had a wife named Farzana and a son named Sohrab. He had lived in a village near Bamiyan, but returned to Baba's house as a caretaker at Rahim Khan's request, although he moved to a hut in the yard so as not to dishonor Amir by taking his place in the house. During his stay, his mother Sanaubar returned after a long search for him, and died after four years. One month after Rahim Khan left for Pakistan, the Taliban ordered Hassan to give up the house and leave, but he refused, and was executed, along with Farzana. Rahim Khan reveals that Ali was not really Hassan's father, that Ali was sterile, and that Hassan was actually Baba's son, and therefore Amir's half-brother. Finally, Rahim Khan tells Amir that the true reason he called Amir to Pakistan was to rescue Sohrab from an orphanage in Kabul. Rahim Khan asks Amir to bring Sohrab to Thomas and Betty Caldwell, who own an orphanage. Amir becomes furious; he feels cheated because he had not known that Hassan was his half-brother. Amir finally relents and decides to go to Kabul to get Sohrab. He travels in a taxi with an Afghan driver named Farid, a veteran of the war with the Soviets, and stays as a guest at Farid's brother Wahid's house. Farid, initially hostile to Amir, is sympathetic when he hears of Amir's true reason for returning, and offers to accompany him on his journey. Amir searches for Sohrab at the orphanage. To enter Taliban territory, clean shaven Amir wears a fake beard and mustache. However, Sohrab is not at the orphanage; its director tells them that a Taliban official comes often, brings cash, and usually takes a girl away with him. Once in a while however, he takes a boy, recently Sohrab. The director tells Amir to go to a soccer match, where the procurer makes speeches at half-time. Farid secures an appointment with the speaker at his home, by claiming to have "personal business" with him. At the house, Amir meets the man, who turns out to be Assef. Assef recognizes Amir from the outset, but Amir does not recognise Assef until he asks about Ali, Baba, and Hassan. Sohrab is being kept at Assef's home where he is made to dance dressed in women's clothes, and it seems Assef may have raped him. (Sohrab later confirms this saying, "I'm so dirty and full of sin. The bad man and the other two did things to me.") Assef agrees to relinquish him, but only for a price&mdash;cruelly beating Amir. However, Amir is saved when Sohrab uses his slingshot to shoot out Assef's left eye, fulfilling Hassan's threat made many years before. While at a hospital treating his injuries, Amir asks Farid to find information about Thomas and Betty Caldwell. When Farid returns, he tells Amir that the American couple does not exist. Amir tells Sohrab of his plans to take him back to America and possibly adopt him, and promises that he will never be sent to an orphanage again. However, US authorities demand evidence of Sohrab's orphan status. After decades of war, this is all but impossible to get in Afghanistan. Amir tells Sohrab that he may have to temporarily break his promise until the paperwork is completed. Upon hearing this, Sohrab attempts suicide. Amir eventually takes him back to the United States without an orphanage, and introduces him to his wife. However, Sohrab is emotionally damaged and refuses to speak to or even glance at Soraya. His frozen emotions eventually thaw when Amir reminisces about Hassan and kites. Amir shows off some of Hassan's tricks, and Sohrab begins to interact with Amir again. In the end Sohrab only shows a lopsided smile, but Amir takes to it with all his heart as he runs the kite for Sohrab, saying, "For you, a thousand times over."
1400224	/m/04zkwn	The Sands of Time	Sidney Sheldon	1988	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in Pamplona, Spain in 1976. The Basque people are fighting against Spain for their rights to free speech and cultural independence. While people are distracted with bulls let loose in the town during a fight, the famous Jaime Miró (a member of the Basque terrorist group ETA) sneaks into the Pamplona prison disguised as a priest and escapes with two of his fellow terrorists, Ricardo Mellado and Felix Carpio. The Prime Minister assigns Colonel Ramón Acoca (head of the anti-ETA group GOE) to find and kill Jaime Miró. Acoca has his own reasons for killing the terrorists; he vowed revenge after his wife and unborn child were killed in a Basque demonstration years before. The Cistercian Convent of the Strict Observance had been running just outside of a town called Ávila since 1601, one of seven left in Spain after the Civil War had destroyed hundreds of them. The nuns know nothing of the outside world; in their discipline they eat little, pray at least eight times a day, flagellate (whip) themselves at least once a week, and carry out their assigned tasks. Their only valuable asset is a donated solid gold cross, hidden away so that the nuns only know poverty. The nuns have no eye contact nor speech, only using an ancient, secret sign language to communicate with each other. The convent is run by the Reverend Mother Betina. A new nun, Sister Lucia, is only at the convent to hide from the police. As Lucia Carmine the daughter of a Mafia boss in Italy, lost everything when her father’s business crumbled. However, she managed to take revenge to the two of his father's betrayers - the bribed judge and Carmine's personal bodyguard - through assasination. She was put in the wanted-list of the police since then, as the main suspect whose motives were too obvious to the public. Lucia attempts to flee the country, deciding to go to Switzerland, where a hidden bank account contains millions of dollars promised to her by her father. However, while going through Spain, she decides to hide out at the convent so the police won’t find her. Meanwhile, Colonel Accoa believing the nuns are hiding Jaime Miró, has his men raid the convent, arresting and raping the nuns. Before she is arrested, the Reverend Mother Betina gives the gold cross to Sister Teresa, who is one of four nuns (including Sisters Lucia, Megan, and Graciela). Lucia leads the nuns through the countryside to a safe convent, planning to steal the gold cross, pawn it, and get money and a fake passport to go to Switzerland and get her money. Colonel Acoca is furious; he has figured out that four of the nuns are missing and is convinced that Jaime Miró escaped before the soldiers got there. The Prime Minister doubts that he was there in the first place and believes that Acoca is starting to get out of control, but continues to have the Colonel search for both Miró and the missing nuns, in order to avoid public's suspicion and critics about the brutality and raid to the convent done by his men for no obvious reason. The four nuns meet up with a man who calls himself Friar Carrillo, who brings them to a store so they can change. He takes Graciela, who is the most beautiful one, away from the other nuns for a minute and begins to rape her, but the other nuns intervene, tying up Carrillo, who was a wanted murderer posing as a Friar to steal from the monasteries in his travels. The nuns leave Carrillo in the store and continue traveling. In the forest they run into Jaime Miró hiding with his men, Ricardo and Felix from the prison, Jaime’s girlfriend Amparo, and Rubio Arzano, another man, and decide to travel on together. The owner of the store turns Carrillo over to the Colonel, who has connected him to the nuns because of the robes left in the store. Acoca beats Carrillo until he tells him about the nuns. However, angry that Acoca hurt him, he does not tell them where they are going. Sister Teresa, the oldest among others in her early-sixties, is convinced that the terrorists are bad men trying to kidnap her. She starts to have flashbacks of her past life with Monique, her only-sister who betrayed her and ran away with Raoul - her fiancee and would-be husband at the time of her supposed-to-be wedding party. She begins to think that she sees Monique’s baby (from Raoul) in the present - even though the child would be over 30 by now. In this way the reader begins to understand Teresa is heading for a nervous breakdown. At this time, in another part of the world Ellen Scott, CEO of a major New York company called Scott Industries is also having flashbacks. She started out as a worker in one of the company’s factories, and attracted the attention of Milo Scott, the younger brother of the CEO of the company when she saved him from a factory accident. They married, but Ellen noticed that Byron, her brother-in-law, pushed Milo around, giving him all the dirty jobs. Her only hope was that one day, Byron would die and leave the company to Milo, leaving him free to run the company as he wished. However, Byron and his wife Susan have a baby girl name Patricia, their heir. Ellen assumed the child would inherit the company. While on a business trip to Spain, the private jet that Ellen, Milo, Byron, Susan, and Patricia were traveling in crashes, killing everyone accept Milo, Ellen, and the baby. Taking control, Ellen forces Milo to abandon the baby at a farm so that the baby will be presumed dead and the company will go to Milo. When they read Byron’s will later, they discover that although his fortune was left to Patricia, the company was left to Milo. Milo feels guilty, but Ellen convinces him that they did the right thing. Milo dies a year later, and Ellen becomes the new CEO of Scott Industries. Now in present day (1976, 28 years later), Ellen is dying of cancer and needs to leave the company to someone. She hires her chief of security, former detective Alan Tucker to search for a baby abandoned in Ávila, Spain 28 years before - also to redeem herself from the sin she had done before she dies. Back in Spain, Colonel Acoca informs his colleagues that the nuns are with Jaime Miró. When they inquire how he found this information, he replies that one of Miró’s terrorists is an informant. Sister Teresa is slowly going insane, believing that the terrorists were hired by Raoul to kidnap her and take her back to Èze, France, where she grew up. While everyone is sleeping, she leave the golden cross bellow the sleeping bag of the Lucia, wanders around the area until she finds Colonel Acoca’s men and informs them that they are hiding in the nearby hills. Lucia takes this chance to secure the cross, which she keeps with her. Meanwhile, Alan Tucker is in Ávila speaking to a priest who assisted the farmer couple who discovered baby Patricia after Milo and Ellen abandoned her. He finds out that the baby was immediately hospitalized for pneumonia, and then taken to a nearby orphanage because the farmers couldn't afford to raise a child. However, they name the little girl Megan before leaving her at the orphanage. Tucker finds out that she became a nun, and that she was currently on the run from Colonel Acoca’s men. Alan starts to make connections, and realizes that this is baby Patricia, a fact that Ellen purposely left out when she gave him the assignment. Excited, Alan decides to blackmail Ellen with the information he has just found. Colonel Acoca’s men raid Jaime Miró’s camp with the nuns, and they split up to avoid capture - Ricardo Mellado with Sister Graciela, Rubio Arzano with Sister Lucia, and Jaime Miró, Felix Carpio, and Amparo with Sister Megan. But Colonel Acoca captures Sister Teresa. He interrogates her for information she doesn’t have, and when he gets nothing, his men take turns raping her until she speaks. However, she pulls out a pistol and shoots at them, so they are forced to shoot her, killing her. Lucia is starting to fall in love with Rubio, who thinks she’s been in the convent for ten years. He tries to explain the current state of the world, which Lucia already knows. At the same time, Jaime is reflecting upon his life as a terrorist. His father was one of the few Basque men who would not join the ETA because it was violent. When the Spanish invaded their town, they took refuge at a church because Jaime’s father said it would be safe. All of the Miró family is killed except Jaime, who vows revenge. This also explains his initial reluctance at having the nuns accompany his terrorists, because he did not trust the church. His girlfriend Amparo is just as dedicated as he is. Jaime and Megan start to bond, much to Amparo’s chagrin. As the group stops at a hotel for the night, the room clerk calls the police and tells them that Jaime Miró is staying at his hotel. The police storm the hotel and find that Miró and the rest of the group are already gone. The Prime Minister expresses his disappointment in Colonel Acoca because he had not found Miró yet. Rubio asks Lucia to say a prayer. Lucia panics, but shares the 23rd psalm ("The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…"). For the first time in her life, Lucia understands the prayer and what it means to her. While taking a bath in a stream, Lucia almost drowns, and Rubio saves her. Overcome with love, she convinces Rubio to sleep with her. Rubio wishes to marry her, and Lucia finds herself wishing she could, if she didn’t have to leave him and go to Switzerland with the money from the cross, which she is still carrying. When they finally come to a small town, Lucia goes to a pawn shop and haggles for money and a passport. She tells the clerk that she will keep the cross with her until later when the passport is finished, but feels upset at the thought of leaving Rubio. They have dinner together, but Rubio is stabbed when he defends a snide comment someone makes about Lucia. They run to a church, where Lucia tries her best to take care of him, but is forced to go to a hospital to take care of him. They are both arrested, because the authorities recognize Rubio as a terrorist and Lucia as the mafia murderer from Italy. Sister Graciela and Ricardo Mellado had been traveling together for just as the others, but Graciela would not talk to Ricardo despite his best efforts. Although he is exasperated with her cold shoulder, he is reluctantly starting to fall for her. It isn’t until she is almost attacked by a wild wolf in a cave that she begins to speak to him. She doesn’t want to love him because of her memories with the Moor, but falls for him anyway, agreeing to marry him. Alan Tucker goes to the orphanage to find more information about Megan/Patricia, but the owner gives him false dates because Ellen Scott paid her to confuse Alan. Ellen feared that Alan knew too much, and she already had the information she needed from him. Alan’s only job now is to find Megan and bring her to Ellen. Megan is still bonding with Jaime, and Amparo is growing angry. They hide out at a bullfight, where Megan impresses Jaime with her knowledge of the subject. They discover that Rubio and Lucia were arrested, and Megan is shocked to find out that Lucia was lying because she genuinely liked her. She is also saddened to hear about Sister Teresa’s death. Jaime and Megan speak to each other some more, and Megan grows sympathetic to his ideals even though she believes that violence is wrong. Jaime holds up a bank to get money to continue traveling, and Acoca soon confronts the bank teller. Security is tightened all over, but Megan proves her usefulness when she puts on a show for the soldiers by convincing them that she has been exposed to typhoid from her sons and gets the group through, gaining Jaime’s admiration. Jaime asks her if she still wants to go back to the convent, and Megan states that she isn’t sure. Jaime is convinced that someone is telling Acoca his secrets, and suspects Felix. Amparo tells Jaime that she answered a call from one of Jaime’s friends, and that Jaime should meet him in the town square for information. However, when Jaime goes, Megan overhears Amparo speaking to Colonel Acoca on the phone, exposing Amparo as the traitor. Megan, realizing that it was a trap, runs to the square and fakes an argument with a heavily disguised Jaime, so the soldiers won’t know that Jaime was there. Jaime is exceedingly grateful to Megan for saving him, and confronts Amparo. Amparo tells him that she is sick of the bloodshed, and Jaime agrees to keep her with them, but she is only treated like a traitor. Colonel Acoca discovers that Jaime escaped the trap, and Alan Tucker reads about it in the newspaper. Acoca decides to meet the group (now reunited with Ricardo and Graciela at a Circus) at the convent, where he assumes they are going. Jaime updates Ricardo and Graciela on Lucia, Rubio, and Teresa’s whereabouts. Jaime realizes that Acoca is waiting for them at the convent, so they don’t get caught. The group goes to the countryside again and waits with Basque friends. Jaime takes Amparo out for a drink, and puts powder in it, convincing Amparo that he is going to kill her (it’s really only crushed up sleeping pills). He takes her back to the house and sends her up to her room to "die." Jaime asks Megan to wait in France with an aunt of his until he is done fighting so they can marry. She doesn’t say no, but thinks about it. She and Graciela debate about leaving the convent, wondering if they will miss it. The next morning, the group tries to leave the small Basque town only to be caught by Colonel Acoca, who was tipped off by Amparo, whose sleeping pills wore off quicker than Jaime had thought. Jaime threatens Acoca with a fight from the townspeople, forcing him to reluctantly retreat. Colonel Acoca has failed, and he knows that he will be killed. He tells Megan that they can run away together right away, but is interrupted by Alan Tucker, who has finally found Megan. He tells her that he is going to bring her to Ellen Scott. Megan is thrilled that she finally knows where she came from, but knows that she must leave Jaime for a while. She promises that she will be back soon. Ricardo and Graciela are about to be married, but Graciela stops during the ceremony and decides that she would miss her life at the convent too much. Jaime’s men get Rubio and Lucia out of prison by convincing the local authorities that they are to take them to Colonel Acoca to be interrogated. The sergeant makes a mock call to "the Colonel", who "tells" him that the men are right. Jaime’s men have interfered with the telephone wires, so he believes it is Acoca. Rubio and Lucia are reunited, and Lucia gets to Switzerland to collect her money, 13 million dollars. Megan is adopted by Ellen (so nothing has to be explained), and takes over Scott Industries when she dies. Three years go by, and Jaime has been caught and sentenced to death. Megan tries to save him by getting good lawyers, and even seeing the Prime Minister, but nothing happens. The execution appears to have been carried out perfectly. Megan has Jaime’s body bag delivered to her. She unzips it, and Jaime comes out of the bag, perfectly fine. Megan paid off the men who were supposed to carry out the execution (she gives them enough money to leave the country, and apparently enough that the one man can open up a hospital). She asks Jaime what kind of wine he would like with their dinner. Colonel Acoca is called to a meeting, but he knows that they are going to kill him and that there is no meeting. Lucia and Rubio are married with twins, a boy and a girl. They live in the French countryside where Rubio is a farmer. With the gold cross, Sister Graciela returns to the convent where life goes on as it did before. Character *Jaime Miró, a famous terrorist and member of the Basque terrorist group ETA. *Colonel Ramón Acoca is head of the anti-ETA group GOE, sent to capture Miró. *Reverend Mother Betina, head of the ancient Cistercian convent. *Sister Teresa, elderly, disappointed in love and leader of the four escaping nuns. *Sister Lucia, formerly Lucia Carmine, the wealthy daughter of an Italian Mafia boss, now impoverished. Lucia is on the run for murder. *Sister Megan, an orphan who joined the convent. *Sister Graciela, left home to become a nun. *Ricardo Mellado and Felix Carpio, escaped terrorists. *Byron and Susan Scott, owners of the New York company who have a child, Patricia. Byron is Milo's brother. *Ellen and Milo Scott, executives of Byron's company. *Alan Tucker, a former detective and Ellen's Chief of Security sent to search for the lost child, Patricia. The nuns The nuns hide their memories and pasts from each other but in their new circumstances start to introduce themselves. Sister Teresa is around 60, having been at the convent for 30 years. Growing up, she was always overshadowed by her stunningly beautiful younger sister Monique. However the rather plain Teresa had a lovely voice, and sang on the radio. A famous theatre director came to see her, but Monique got to him first, and he decided that compared to her sister, Teresa was too ugly to be in his show. This started a rivalry between the two sisters. Teresa fell in love with a young man named Raoul, but he eloped with her sister shortly before the wedding. Heartbroken, Teresa attempted suicide then suffered depression throughout her life. When Raoul sent her a letter stating that Monique left him with their baby and that it was Teresa he wanted all along, she decided to go into the convent because she could not face him. Sister Lucia as Lucia Carmine, daughter of an Italian Mafia boss, lost everything when her father’s business crumbled. Unknown to him, Lucia slept with the chief bodyguard and many other men in their town as a teenager(Paolo). Years later, the bodyguard, Benito, worked with the police to turn in Lucia’s father and brothers, who worked in the family "business". In revenge, Lucia pretends to thank the judge (formerly a family friend) for putting away her father, but poisons him. Then, in prison she seduces Benito, right before stabbing him. Now exposed as a murderer, Lucia attempts to flee the country, deciding to go to Switzerland, where a hidden bank account contains her father's hidden fortune. However, on her way through Spain, she decides to hide out at the convent to hide out from the police. Beautiful and exotic, Sister Graciela is the daughter of a woman whose fiancé left when he found out she was pregnant. Graciela’s mother, also gorgeous, became a whore, resenting her daughter and sleeping with many different men. When Graciela was 14, she was attracted to her mother’s current boyfriend, who was a “Moor.” They were caught having sex by Graciela’s mother, who threw an iron ashtray at Graciela’s head, injuring her. Convinced that she could not go back home, Graciela chose to join the convent. Sister Megan is a tomboy who was abandoned at a farm as a baby, but then brought to an orphanage because the farmers had no money to take care of her. She developed a love of reading and learned several languages there, daydreaming about who her parents could be. When she reached the age of 15, she decided to join the convent because she loved going to church. She was known as Patricia before the airplane that they are riding crash. Her parents died, but Milo and Ellen together with Patricia, luckily survived. At the moment, Ellen see an opportunity in owning the Scott Industries so they left Patricia at the front door of a farmer in Avila. Later they found out that in the Will of milo's brother, Bryan, (owner or scott industry, father of Patricia)leaving the whole company to his brother and only part of the income goes to Patricia.
1400234	/m/04zkw_	Rage of Angels	Sidney Sheldon	1980	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jennifer is an Assistant District Attorney for the State of New York, New York County. A beautiful, inexperienced, criminal defense attorney, she foils a plot by Michael Moretti, the rising star of one of the most powerful organized crime families in America. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Di Silva, believing that Jennifer is truly responsible, fires her and vows to destroy her for her part in the fiasco with Michael Moretti. Di Silva arranges for the young lawyer Adam Warner to meet Parker in an attempt to persuade him that she is truly responsible for the bribe. Upon meeting her Adam falls for Jennifer and realizes that she isn't guilty at all. With Adam's help Jennifer begins to rise again, meanwhile Moretti, inspired by her determination to succeed, decides he would like to induct her as the Family consigliere (a mafia lawyer). Adam Warner, despite being married and groomed for the United States Senate, and with the possibility of a White House destination, can not help falling in love with Jennifer. When Adam tells Jennifer that his wife has asked for a divorce, Jennifer meets with Warner's wife, Mary Beth. Being so close to the Senate election, the two women decide it is best for Adam to wait until after the election. Mary Beth however sleeps with Adam one last time, in the process tricking him into impregnating her. Adam learns that his wife is pregnant, wins the election, and tells Jennifer that he truly loves her but they must end their affair. Jennifer having previously discovered that she too is pregnant and not wanting to hurt Adam, accepts, but doesn't reveal to him that she is carrying his child. Jennifer gives birth to her son and names him Joshua Adam Parker. She keeps the birth a secret, allowing only Ken Bailey, her assistant, to become aware of her son. She then returns to her practice and soon makes headlines as a successful lawyer. Meanwhile, Michael constantly tries to spark friendship with Jennifer, which she rebuffs at every attempt, reminding him of his earlier tricks. Nevertheless, when her son is kidnapped by a criminal Jennifer is defending, she, in desperation, turns to Michael Moretti for help. After helping her, he seduces her and Jennifer becomes the Family consigliere.
1400457	/m/04zlf8	The Matarese Circle	Robert Ludlum	1979	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 US Intelligence agent Brandon Scofield and Soviet KGB agent Vasili Taleniekov make their way through the obstacles and ravages of a cabal known as the Matarese. They find out that the Matarese has infiltrated the highest ranks of the society. They break the Matarese riddle and when they are on the verge of defeating the powerful conspiracy, Taleniekov and Antonia, a young and energetic woman whose love Scofield has sought, are kidnapped by the Matarese. Fueled by the anger regarding the recent developments, Scofield decides to go after the Matarese himself and finds out that the consigliere of the Matarese include the next would-be President himself. Scofield drives out the Matarese head, called as the Shepherd Boy and deals with him to let go Taleniekov and Antonia and he will in turn give in all the evidence that the Senator who was in line for the Presidency, was the son of the Shepherd Boy himself. But nothing goes as Scofield planned and he finds out that the entire community of the heads America and Russia are members of the Matarese council, excluding the Presidents of the two countries. Scofield kills everyone in the Matarese council and goes to the place where Antonia and Taleniekov are kidnapped. But Taleniekov denies all offers of running away and tells Scofield to run away with Antonia while he will take care of the rest as he cannot bear existence in a form where he cannot talk or move freely. Taleniekov sacrifices himself by burning down the entire Matarese estate and Scofield runs away with Antonia. In the end, all is well and Scofield retires from his dangerous line of work to be a captain in his own ship with his wife, Antonia. The story is followed by a 1997 sequel, The Matarese Countdown. In an introduction to the novel, Ludlum writes that he based the conspiracy on rumors about the Trilateral Commission. The "Shepherd Boy" assassin character is based on Juan March Ordinas. The title appears to have been inspired by a popular, now-gone steak restaurant named (Rocco) Matarese's Circle in Newington, Connecticut, about 10 miles from Wesleyan University, Ludlum's alma mater. The restaurant was in business when the novel was written and for many years before.
1401211	/m/04zn0c	Metahistory	Hayden V. White	1974		 According to White the historian begins his work by constituting a chronicle of events which is to be organized into a coherent story. These are the two preliminary steps before processing the material into a plot which is argumented as to express an ideology. Thus the historical work is "a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse that purports to be a model, or icon, of past structures and processes in the interest of explaining what they were by representing them". For the typologies of emplotment, argumentation and ideologies White refers to works by Northrop Frye, Stephen Pepper and Karl Mannheim. His four basic emplotments are provided by the archetypical genres of romance, comedy, tragedy and satire. The modes of argumentation, following Pepper's 'adequate root metaphors' are formist, organist, mechanicist and contextualist. Among the main types of Ideology White adopts anarchy, conservatism, radicalism and liberalism. White affirms that elective affinities link the three different aspects of a work and only four combinations (out of 64) are without internal inconsistencies or 'tensions'. The limitation arises through a general mode of functioning - representation, reduction, integration or negation, which White assimilates to one of the four main tropes: metaphor, metonymy synecdoche and irony. Strucuturalist as Roman Jakobson or Emile Benveniste have used mostly an opposition between the first two of them but White refers to an earlier classification, adopted by Giambattista Vico and contrasts metaphor with irony. The exemplary figures chosen by White present the ideal types of historians and philosophers. {| class="wikitable" border="1" style="text-align:center;" |+Synoptic table of Hayden White's Metahistory !Trope!! Mode!! Emplotment!! Argument !! Ideology !! Historian !! Philosopher |- |Metaphor || Representational ||Romance ||Formist || Anarchist|| Michelet || Nietzsche |- |Metonymy|| Reductionist || Tragedy || Mechanicist || Radical || Tocqueville || Marx |- |Synecdoche|| Integrative ||Comedy || Organicist || Conservative|| Ranke|| Hegel |- |Irony || Negational ||Satire || Contextualist|| Liberal || Burckhardt || Croce |}
1401714	/m/04zp9y	Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking	Malcolm Gladwell	2005-01-11	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The author describes the main subject of his book as "thin-slicing": our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, this is an idea that spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones. Gladwell draws on examples from science, advertising, sales, medicine, and popular music to reinforce his ideas. Gladwell also uses many examples of regular people's experiences with "thin-slicing." Gladwell explains how an expert's ability to "thin slice" can be corrupted by their likes and dislikes, prejudices and stereotypes (even unconscious ones), and how they can be overloaded by too much information. Two particular forms of unconscious bias Gladwell discusses are Implicit Association Tests and psychological priming. Gladwell also tells us about our instinctive ability to mind read, which is how we can get to know what emotions a person is feeling just by looking at his or her face. We do that by "thin-slicing," using limited information to come to our conclusion. In what Gladwell contends is an age of information overload, he finds that experts often make better decisions with snap judgments than they do with volumes of analysis. Gladwell gives a wide range of examples of thin-slicing in contexts such as gambling, speed dating, tennis, military war games, the movies, malpractice suits, popular music, and predicting divorce. Gladwell also mentions that sometimes having too much information can interfere with the accuracy of a judgment, or a doctor's diagnosis. This is commonly called "Analysis paralysis." The challenge is to sift through and focus on only the most critical information to make a decision. The other information may be irrelevant and confusing to the decision maker. Collecting more and more information, in most cases, just reinforces our judgment but does not help to make it more accurate. The collection of information is commonly interpreted as confirming a person's initial belief or bias. Gladwell explains that better judgments can be executed from simplicity and frugality of information, rather than the more common belief that greater information about a patient is proportional to an improved diagnosis. If the big picture is clear enough to decide, then decide from the big picture without using a magnifying glass. The book argues that intuitive judgment is developed by experience, training, and knowledge. For example, Gladwell claims that prejudice can operate at an intuitive unconscious level, even in individuals whose conscious attitudes are not prejudiced. An example is in the halo effect, where a person having a salient positive quality is thought to be superior in other, unrelated respects. Gladwell uses the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, where four New York policemen shot an innocent man on his doorstep 41 times, as another example of how rapid, intuitive judgment can have disastrous effects.
1401871	/m/04zpwx	Pharaoh	Bolesław Prus		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Pharaoh begins with one of the more memorable openings in a novel — an opening written in the style of an ancient chronicle: Pharaoh combines features of several literary genres: the historical novel, the political novel, the Bildungsroman, the utopian novel, the sensation novel. It also comprises a number of interbraided strands — including the plot line, Egypt's cycle of seasons, the country's geography and monuments, and ancient Egyptian practices (e.g. mummification rituals and techniques) — each of which rises to prominence at appropriate moments. Much as in an ancient Greek tragedy, the fate of the novel's protagonist, the future "Ramses XIII," is known from the beginning. Prus closes his introduction with the statement that the narrative "relates to the eleventh century before Christ, when the Twentieth Dynasty fell and when, after the demise of the Son of the Sun the eternally living Ramses XIII, the throne was seized by, and the uraeus came to adorn the brow of, the eternally living Son of the Sun Sem-amen-Herhor, High Priest of Amon." What the novel will subsequently reveal is the elements that lead to this denouement—the character traits of the principals, the social forces in play. Ancient Egypt at the end of its New Kingdom period is experiencing adversities. The deserts are eroding Egypt's arable land. The country's population has declined from eight to six million. Foreign peoples are entering Egypt in ever-growing numbers, undermining its unity. The chasm between the peasants and craftsmen on one hand, and the ruling classes on the other, is growing, exacerbated by the ruling elites' fondness for luxury and idleness. The country is becoming ever more deeply indebted to Phoenician merchants, as imported goods destroy native industries. The Egyptian priesthood, backbone of the bureaucracy and virtual monopolists of knowledge, have grown immensely wealthy at the expense of the pharaoh and the country. At the same time, Egypt is facing prospective peril at the hands of rising powers to the north — Assyria and Persia. The 22-year-old Egyptian crown prince and viceroy Ramses, having made a careful study of his country and of the challenges that it faces, evolves a strategy that he hopes will arrest the decline of his own political power and of Egypt's internal viability and international standing. Ramses plans to win over or subordinate the priesthood, especially the High Priest of Amon, Herhor; obtain for the country's use the treasures that lie stored in the Labyrinth; and, emulating Ramses the Great's military exploits, wage war on Assyria. Ramses proves himself a brilliant military commander in a victorious lightning war against the invading Libyans. On succeeding to the throne, he encounters the adamant opposition of the priestly hierarchy to his planned reforms. The Egyptian populace is instinctively drawn to Ramses, but he must still win over or crush the priesthood and their adherents. In the course of the political intrigue, Ramses' private life becomes hostage to the conflicting interests of the Phoenicians and the Egyptian high priests. Ramses' ultimate downfall is caused by his underestimation of his opponents and by his impatience with priestly obscurantism. Along with the chaff of the priests' myths and rituals, he has inadvertently discarded a crucial piece of scientific knowledge. Ramses is succeeded to the throne by his arch-enemy Herhor, who paradoxically ends up raising treasure from the Labyrinth to finance the very social reforms that had been planned by Ramses, and whose implementation Herhor and his allies had blocked. But it is too late to arrest the decline of the Egyptian polity and to avert the eventual fall of the Egyptian civilization. The novel closes with a poetic epilogue that reflects Prus' own path through life. The priest Pentuer, who had declined to betray the priesthood and aid Ramses' campaign to reform the Egyptian polity, mourns Ramses, who like the teenage Prus had risked all to save his country. As Pentuer and his mentor, the sage priest Menes, listen to the song of a mendicant priest, Pentuer says:
1402490	/m/04zqx1	Arrival and Departure	Arthur Koestler		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Written during the middle of World War II, Arrival and Departure reflects Koestler's own plight as a Hungarian refugee. Like Koestler, the main character is a former member of the Communist party. He escapes to 'Neutralia', a neutral country based on Portugal, where Koestler himself had gone, and flees from there. (Stephen Spender had supposedly said of Neutralia, "Names like that should not be allowed in novels!") Reflecting Koestler's later life relationship with science, and particularly his disagreement with various movements within psychiatry, the main character emerges from treatment psychically neutered, and the critical question of the novel is how much of his later trauma and political activity is due to a small incident in his childhood. it:Arrivo e partenza
1403294	/m/04zswj	Concluding	Henry Green	1946	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The school has been run since its inception ten years earlier by two elderly educators, Mabel Edge and Hermione Baker, who are regarded by many as old spinsters hopelessly out of touch with reality, especially with what their teenage charges really think and feel. The 300 or so students are virtually indistinguishable from one another, a fact which is stressed by their names all starting with the letter M: Margot, Marion, Mary, Melissa, Merode, Midget, Mirabel, Moira. Their budding but suppressed sexuality&mdash;they are all between 16 and 18 years of age and "going to be attractive"&mdash;is constantly alluded to in the novel. ("They're only children, the girls I mean, and sex is unconscious at their age. It's such a temptation for a man.") Of the teaching staff, only few characters are mentioned. There is Miss Winstanley, young, colourless, and secretly in love with one of the few male teachers at the academy, economics tutor Sebastian Birt. Birt, however, a short and stout man in his late twenties, is having an affair with Elizabeth Rock, a 35 year-old woman recovering from a nervous breakdown who temporarily also lives on the school grounds, in her grandfather's cottage. That man, 76 year-old Mr Rock, is a retired scientist who has been granted the privilege to live there for the remainder of his life for past services rendered to the State. The aging Rock, who is referred to as "the sage" by some (including the narrator) and as "Gapa" by his granddaughter, spends his time mainly with, and for, his pets&mdash;his albino sow, Daisy, his cat, Alice, and his goose, Ted. He describes himself as "a bit stiff about the joints these days", he has some difficulty climbing steps, has poor eyesight, is deaf in one ear and almost deaf in the other, and has recently had problems with his memory. In addition, one of his idiosyncrasies consists in putting all the post he gets in a big trunk without opening any of it, ever. Edge, one of the principals, has for some time wanted to thoroughly "spring-clean" the whole place and get rid of Rock, his granddaughter, and Birt, partly in order to secure the sage's cottage for the use of additional school staff. In other matters, she is more hesitant. When in the morning some girls report Mary and Merode missing, pointing out that neither of their beds has been slept in, Edge turns out to be very reluctant to use the official channels to inform relatives, the school supervisor, or the local police. Naturally it occurs to her and her colleague Baker that Mary and Merode might have eloped with two young men ("At the station much of their time was taken up with young women adrift, who, after fourteen days, returned brown and happy from a fortnight with a boy by the ocean."), but, rather than fearing the worst, they assume the girls will be back for that night's entertainment, a ball in honour of the academy's founder&mdash;without men of course. At the same time Edge turns down some of the staff's requests to be allowed to go swimming in the nearby lake, which is interpreted as a sure sign that one of the girls' bodies could turn up any time floating in the water. In the course of the day, especially where Rock is involved, lots of people talk at cross-purposes, deliberately as well as accidentally misunderstanding what others are saying, in many instances only hinting at facts or, worse, spreading rumours. Around noon Merode is found, right on the compound but somewhat dazed, under a fallen beech in the vicinity of Rock's cottage&mdash;the very beech tree used by Sebastian Birt and Elizabeth Rock when they want to have some fun. According to school regulations, Merode must not be interrogated before she has submitted a written statement about what has happened, and she is immediately locked away for her own good. The rest of the afternoon is mainly taken up with preparations for the dance. As usual, the Founder's Day Ball is held without any guests from outside the school. However, Rock and his granddaughter turn up unexpectedly but appropriately dressed, without having been invited by anyone. While Mary is still missing (the reader never learns where she is or what has happened to her), Elizabeth Rock and Sebastian Birt start dancing together cheek to cheek and, generally, appear glued to each other, a "display of animalism" Edge is not willing to put up with any longer. Almost at the end of her tether, she secretly indulges in a cigarette or two in her office. Meanwhile Mr Rock is accosted by several of the girls who first want to dance with him and later drag him downstairs into the cellar of the building where they take turns kissing him and where they introduce him to the "Institute Inn", their secret club. Although Rock initially enjoys the girls' attentions, he quickly becomes appalled by their lack of morals and leaves the "club." He comes upon his nemesis, Miss Edge, but after his experiences with the girls he is more sympathetic to her difficulties maintaining order at the school. For her part, Edge is impressed with the courtly bearing Rock has affected in the Ball's formal setting and also consumed by a tobacco-fueled lassitude. The two older adults have a pleasant conversation which comes to a head when Edge, almost without realizing, finds herself proposing marriage to Rock. The sage is astounded, and politely but firmly rejects her suggestion. He then leaves the ball and returns home to his animals. At the end of the day no one has reached any conclusions, and everything remains undecided.
1403779	/m/04ztx_	Household Gods	Judith Tarr		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story focuses on Nicole Gunther-Perrin, a young lawyer in late 20th Century Los Angeles who is dissatisfied with her hectic life, which includes balancing her career with being a mother and dealing with her deadbeat ex-husband and sexist coworkers. Believing the past was a better time, one evening, after a particularly distressing day, she makes a wish before a plaque of two Roman gods, Liber and Libera. The next morning, she finds herself waking up in the body of one of her ancient ancestors running a tavern in 2nd century Carnuntum, in what is now Austria. In general, she finds out the hard way that life in the past was not quite what she thought it would be: slavery is taken for granted, there are no women's rights, no effective medicine or clean medical practices, little entertainment, and no tampons. Over the course of a year and a half, she is forced to revise many of her long-held modern prejudices, including those against alcohol and corporal punishment. She survives epidemic disease (the Antonine Plague) and a Germanic invasion that is part of the Marcomannic Wars. She finds that early Christianity was uncomfortably zealous and apocalyptic; and, after a brutal rape by a Roman soldier, discusses the role of government and its duties to abused citizens with Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Eventually Liber and Libera fulfil her desire to return home. She wakes from a six-day 'coma' to discover that she can improve both her working and family life. Not only have her hard-won skills given her more empathy and self-confidence, but she now has greater appreciation for the life that modern conveniences allow. With this new perspective, she can more easily and successfully deal with the stress and difficulties of her existence.
1404640	/m/04zx0t	Camouflage	Joe Haldeman	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A million years prior to the dawn of Homo sapiens, two immortal, shapeshifting aliens roam the Earth with little memory of their origin or their purpose. Later in the year 2019, an artifact is discovered off the coast of Samoa, buried deep beneath the ocean floor. The mysterious find brings two alien beings–the "changeling" and the "chameleon"–together again, to ponder the meaning of the object and its relationship to each of them. Both immortals try to seek each other out and use the artifact to find their origins, one harbouring good intentions while the other is extremely hostile.
1407191	/m/04_25p	Exit to Eden	Anne Rice	1985-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Lisa Kelly manages an isolated BDSM resort called The Club that offers its high-end clients an exclusive setting in which they can experience the life of a Master or Mistress. Prospective sex slaves, paid at the end of their term at Eden (which varies from six months to two years), are presented at auctions by the most respected Trainers from across the world. As Head Female Trainer and co-founder Lisa gets first pick of the new slaves, and chooses Elliot Slater — with whom she shares an immediate and undeniable chemistry that intensifies throughout their time together, eventually resulting in love.
1408168	/m/04_4d1	The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman	Angela Carter	1972	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel presents the story from the perspective of Desiderio, a bureau member in the main city currently under the attack of Doctor Hoffman’s desire machines. With these machines, Doctor Hoffman expands the dimensions of time and space, allowing ever-changing mirages to inhabit the same dimension as the living. Desiderio, though indifferent to the haunting apparitions, finds himself visited nightly by a glass woman, the manifestation of Albertina, Hoffman’s daughter and Desiderio’s lover-to-be. Unlike Desiderio, many people go crazy in response to the apparitions, and the city, severed from communication with the outside world, becomes a place of rampant insanity and crime, thereby prompting a state of emergency. Under the command of the Minister of Determination, Desiderio embarks on an undercover journey to find and assassinate Doctor Hoffman. On his way to the first stop on his journey, Desiderio encounters Doctor Hoffman’s former physics professor who now works as blind peep-show proprietor. During the story, Desiderio visits the sexualized exhibits of the peep show a number of times to find that they bear uncanny resemblance to the events that occur within his own life. Upon reaching his first destination, the Mayor’s Office of town S., Desiderio finds that the Mayor has disappeared. Thereupon he visits the Mayor’s home where he has sex with the Mayor’s somnambulist daughter, Mary Anne, while she remains unconscious. When Mary Anne turns up dead, dirty members of the Determination Police charge Desiderio, but he escapes. From there on, Desiderio finds himself involved in a number of wild adventures in which the novel features many graphic scenes of eroticism that include sexual taboos. On these adventures, Albertina secretly accompanies Desiderio. Desiderio spends time living with the river people, Amerindian families that live on barges. He later joins a traveling carnival in which he becomes enthralled with the mind-boggling performance of the Acrobats of Desire. Following a tragic event, a Lithuanian count, in flight from the wrath of a black pimp, takes Desiderio into his company. With the count, Desiderio narrowly escapes becoming the victim of cannibalism on the African coast before Albertina reveals herself and leads Desiderio through the landscape of Nebulous Time where a community of centaurs adopts the two. However, the couple’s lives become endangered yet again and they must flee to Hoffman’s castle, where Doctor Hoffman explains his plans to reduce the world into its most basic constituents with the help of Desiderio and Albertina. While Desiderio loves Albertina, he ultimately chooses reality over the fulfillment of desire when he kills both Doctor Hoffman and his daughter. As a result, Desiderio becomes the proclaimed hero of the Great War. Nevertheless, he continues to long for his dead lover.
1408435	/m/04_4_w	My Ántonia	Willa Cather	1918	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The book's narrator, Jim Burden, arrives in the town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, on the same train as the Shimerdas, when he goes to live with his grandparents after his parents have died. Jim develops strong feelings for Ántonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Ántonia's life, including its attendant struggles and triumphs, through that lens. The novel is divided into five books, some of which incorporate short stories Cather had previously written, based on her own life growing up on the Nebraska prairies. The volumes correspond roughly to the stages of Ántonia's life up through her marriage and motherhood, although the third volume, "Lena Lingard," focuses more on Jim's time in college and his affair with Lena, another childhood friend of his, who is also Ántonia's friend. The five books, in order, are: # The Shimerdas - the longest book within the novel. It covers Jim's early years spent on his grandparents' farm, out on the prairie. # The Hired Girls - the second longest section of the novel. It covers Jim's time in town, when he spends time with Ántonia and the other country girls who work in town. Language, particularly descriptions, begin to become more sexualized, particularly concerning Ántonia and Lena. # Lena Lingard - this chronicles Jim's time at the university, and the period in which he becomes reacquainted with Lena Lingard. # The Pioneer Woman's Story - Jim visits the Harlings and hears about Ántonia's fateful romance with Larry Donovan. This is the shortest book. # Cuzak's Boys - Jim goes to visit Ántonia and meets her new family, her children and husband.
1409091	/m/04_5zp	Sutherlin Alliance			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel opens as an experimental star ship tests a deadly weapon on an uninhabited world, devastating the surface. From here the story essentially follows the two main characters as they are recruited by the Sutherlin Alliance in their bid to overthrow the Alcon Empire. The junior of the two opens the story as a pilot in the Empire’s prestigious Devil Squadron. The senior recruit had also once served in this fighter group only to resign years early and take up the life of a mercenary and bounty hunter. With these two skilled men added to their backbone of ex-Imperial soldiers and raw youth from around the galaxy the Alliance takes the fight to the Empire. With the threat of the Alliance growing the Empire learns of their location and decides to unleash the power of their world killing star ship. The two recruited men learn of the ship’s existence and its target just days before its use and develop a plan of attack to cripple both the ship and the sizable force escorting it. One of the themes that is expressed throughout the story is attachment and the human need to belong; both main characters fight with these needs in their own ways. The elder of the two battles the desire with his own wishes to stay separate from the needs of the others while the younger fights to keep his distance, not wanting to feel the loss of war.
1413283	/m/04_hnt	The First Man in Rome	Colleen McCullough	1990	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main plot of the novel is generally concerned with the rise of Marius, his marriage to Julia, his success in replacing Metellus as general in charge of the Numidian theatre of war, his defeat of King Jugurtha of Numidia, his re-organization of the Roman Army system, his unprecedented consecutive consulships, his defeat of a massive invasion of German tribes (the Teutones, the Cimbri and the Marcomanni/Cherusci/Tigurini), and the details of his relationship with his subordinate and close friend Sulla. However, although Marius can be considered the protagonist, Sulla occasionally becomes the central figure of the narrative; there are several lengthy sections dealing with his plot to murder the two wealthy women with whom he lives, his use of the newfound wealth in establishing himself politically, his homosexual relationship with the Greek child-actor Metrobius, and his marriage to the (possibly fictitious) younger daughter of 'Julius Caesar Grandfather', Julilla. McCullough explains that, while it is certainly known Sulla's first wife was a Julia, it is not known to which branch of the Julii she belonged, but she was certainly a relation of Marius's better-known Julian wife, hence the decision to assign her the role in the novel of a younger sister. A third storyline is focused on the figures of Marcus Livius Drusus and his sister Livia Drusa who both feature more prominently in The Grass Crown: and their own growing friendship with the Servilius Caepio family resulting in a double marriage, which proves disastrous when Quintus Servilius Caepio Senior is not only accused of embezzling more gold than there was in the Roman Treasury, but also is responsible for Rome's most disastrous military defeat for generations - a defeat which so ruins the credibility of the conservative leaders of the Senate that it lets Marius into power far earlier than he expected, and for a longer time. Much of the narrative is also told in the form of letters between the protagonists - Marius, Sulla, Old Caesar and frequently their friend, Publius Rutilius Rufus - himself a man somewhat torn in allegiance: conservative by instinct, but partisan of Marius by friendship. The novel closes with Marius's sixth consulship, in which he proves not to be as adept politically as he is militarily: and the tribune whose help he needs, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, has an agenda of his own, leading to an armed insurrection which Marius himself has to put down. To cap it all, he also suffers a minor stroke during the summer, although he makes a full recovery. Tarred by association, his political career seems over: but after fighting many battles together, there is some reason for Marius and Sulla to hope that Rome will have peace for a few years. de:Die Macht und die Liebe es:El Primer Hombre de Roma
1413590	/m/04_j4p	Simulacron-3	Daniel F. Galouye	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Simulacron 3 is the story of a virtual city (total environment simulator) for marketing research, developed by a scientist to reduce the need for opinion polls. The computer-generated city simulation is so well-programmed, that, although the inhabitants have their own consciousness, they are unaware, except for one, that they are only electronic impulses in a computer. The simulator’s lead scientist, Hannon Fuller, dies mysteriously, and a co-worker, Morton Lynch, vanishes. The protagonist, Douglas Hall, is with Lynch when he vanishes, and Hall subsequently struggles to suppress his inchoate madness. As time and events unwind, he progressively grasps that his own world is probably not “real” and might be only a computer-generated simulation. Symbolically, the title term "Simulacron-3" refers to the just-built virtual reality simulator and ostensibly references a third attempt at "simulectronics" (the reality-simulating technology), however, the "3" also refers to the novel’s three levels of "reality," or three levels of computer simulation — if the final, "real" world is simulated. Moreover, "simulacron" is closely derivative of simulacrum, a superficial image representing a non-existent original.
1414541	/m/04_m2d	Rakkety Tam	Brian Jacques	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 From a region known only as the Land of Ice and Snow emerges Gulo the Savage, a vicious wolverine in command of a horde of a hundred white vermin (foxes and ermine) who eat the flesh of their enemies. After murdering his father, Dramz, Gulo assumed control of his father's territory. However, only he who possess the Walking Stone may rule, and after his father's death, Gulo's brother, Askor, steals the stone and sails to Mossflower Woods. Gulo pursues his brother with the vermin under his command. Most notably was his Captain the white fox named Shard and his mate the vixen Freeta. Although Shard was the Captain of this horde, it is Freeta that held the real power, intelligence and sway. Meanwhile, the mercenary squirrel Rakkety Tam MacBurl, along with his companion Wild Doogy Plumm, find themselves at odds with their current rulers, Squirrelking Araltum and Idga Drayqueen, both arrogant, foolish creatures who spend more time on ceremonies in their honor than ruling the kingdom. When the forces of the Squirrelking are ambushed by Gulo and 30 squirrels are slaughtered, Tam and Doogy are given the chance to escape the trivialities of the kingdom and track the invaders. Gulo had stolen the king's new Royal Banner, so Tam and Doogy are sent off to find it. The king promises to release them of their bonds after long minutes of persuasion from Idga (they had sworn allegiance to him some seasons before) if they succeed in finding, and returning, the banner. They eventually meet up with the Long Patrol and continue their hunt. The Long Patrol, however, has its own problems. Eight hares were ambushed and lost a precious drum, which was supposed to be going to Redwall Abbey as a present. It turns out that Gulo has possession of the drum as well as the banner. At Redwall, the cousin of the Abbot and his traveling companion arrive with a story and a riddle. When two maidens, Sister Armel (the infirmary sister), a squirrel, and the niece to Skipper of Otters, Brookflow (often called Brooky), try to solve the riddle, the spirit of Martin the Warrior appears to Armel, telling her to take his sword and bring it to 'the Borderer who sold and lost his sword', that being Rakkety Tam. Armel and Brooky head out into the woods, but are captured by Gulo's army. Meanwhile, a volethief named Yoofus Lightpaw is up in a tree when he sees Gulo's army beneath with the king's banner. He steals it from them and flees with it. Tam, Doogy, and the goshawk Tergen are sent to find Gulo's army. There, they find Sister Armel and Brooky held captive, and upon rescuing the two maids, Armel gives Tam the Sword of Martin, taken back from Gulo's captain, Shard. The freed captives and the rescuers then return to Redwall. When the army of hares reaches Redwall, a brief skirmish takes places in which one hare is killed and the Long Patrol Brigadier Crumshaw is wounded by arrows. Rakkety Tam takes command of the force and splits them into two groups: one to constantly harass the flesh-eating enemy, and the other to guard Redwall. Tam and Doogy take the harassment force out to find Gulo's army, encountering the Guosim, Log-a-Log Togey, and Yoofus. They join forces to fight off Gulo. However, when crossing the pines, they lose Doogy and Yoofus. Yoofus and Doogy end up in the house of one of Yoofus' neighbours, a dormouse named Muskar Muskar, and his family, who are being held as servants by a small group of thick-headed but violent vermin. Yoofus and Doogy fight off the vermin in there. They want to go back to Yoofus's cave before continuing back to Redwall. When the two arrive, the volewife feeds the hungry travelers sausages and they meet Rockbottom, a tortoise (who is actually the Walking Stone). They head back to Redwall with Rockbottom for safekeeping. At Redwall, the other part of Gulo's army attacks the Abbey after slipping past the Long Patrol, led by Shard's mate, Freeta. It is she that is responsible for entrance of the Abbey for it was her cunning that thought up the plan. The vermin are all killed by armed Redwalls led by Armel and Brooky, but in a fierce battle, Freeta mortally wounds Crumshaw. Meanwhile, Tam and the rest of his force are buying time for their Guosim allies to clear the Broadstream of a massive fallen tree. Tam's force is ambushed on the banks of a river by Gulo's forces, resulting in the death of Corporal Butty Wopscutt. They swim for their Guosim allies who manage to free the Broadstream and pull the hares on board. Then, they lure Gulo (who is in pursuit on the recently moved tree trunk) so that he tumbles over a waterfall. Thinking Gulo is gone for good Tam's forces head for home. Surprisingly, Gulo doesn't die. The wolverine even manages to capture Doogy, who was escorting Yoofus and his wife back to Redwall. In order to save his friend, Tam challenges Gulo to single combat. The winner would gain possession of the 'walking stone'. In the end, Tam wins by launching Gulo onto his shield, onto which he had carved a sharp edge, and decapitating him. Tam eventually marries Sister Armel, and they have a daughter, Melanda. Together, they journey back with Doogy, Brooky, and Tergen to the Squirrelking and Queen, who have had a son named Roopert. When Doogy and Tam are freed of their old bonds and the Squirrel monarchs are overthrown, two old friends of Tam's, Hinjo and Pinetooth, ask Tam and Armel to be the new king and queen, but Armel takes the crowns and throws them into the sea. Then they all continue on to Salamandastron, where Tergen stays, and all the others return to Redwall.
1414704	/m/04_mkg	Deadhouse Gates	Steven Erikson	2000-09-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 There's a convergence in the Seven Cities. Rebellion, assassins, Ascendants and those nearing it or desiring it all converge on the region. Slaves escape to rule, the once rebellious fight rebellion, a god falls to the mortal realm and heroes are made on a Chain of Dogs. In the city of Unta, capital of the Malazan Empire, a cull of the nobility has been ordered by Empress Laseen to rip the heart out of what is seen as a growing corruption. The young Felisin Paran (youngest sister of Ganoes Paran, Captain of the Bridgeburners) is among those sent into slavery in the mines of Otataral Island off the north-eastern coast of Seven Cities, excavating the magic-resisting mineral of the island. Along the way she meets Heboric, an excommunicated priest of Fener who has had his hands severed, and Baudin, a strong warrior. Unbeknown to her, her sister Tavore, the Empress' Adjunct, has appointed the latter as her guardian to help her survive the horrors of the mines. On Otataral Island, Felisin finds herself only able to survive by offering her body in exchange for the protection of a trusted senior slave, Beneth. Eventually she comes to crave his attention, to the disgust of Heboric and Baudin. Meanwhile, on the subcontinent of Seven Cities, the long-held prophecy of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic is believed to be at hand. The native tribes are preparing to overthrow the Malazan occupiers in an uprising known as the Whirlwind, which will be led by the seer Sha'ik from her camp in the heart of the Holy Desert Raraku. Simultaneously, the Path of Hands has been activated. The Path leads to Ascendancy - godhood - and is attracting Soletaken and D'ivers, shape-shifters of immense power. Soletaken can veer into one other form whilst D'ivers can split their consciousness among many beasts, potentially hundreds, or even thousands. In the wastes of the Pan'potsun Odhan, Mappo Trell and Icarium encounter a friendly Soletaken named Messremb and then encounter a man named Iskaral Pust and his minion, Servant. Pust, a High Priest of Shadow, offers them shelter in his nearby temple and they accept. Although Pust acts in a highly eccentric manner, Mappo and Icarium realize he is powerful and likely highly intelligent. In the city of Hissar, the Malazan garrison and the encamped 7th Army are preparing to fend off the rebellion, and are joined by a large contingent of Wickans, skilled horse-warriors from Quon Tali. The Wickan commander, Coltaine, assumes command of the 7th and has them running unusual exercises. His orders are to escort all Malazan civilians from the east coast cities and march them to Aren, the Imperial Capital on the continent, a march of over 500 leagues. High Fist Pormqual has refused to evacuate the civilians by sea, recalling Admiral Nok's fleet to defend Aren Harbour instead. Duiker, the Imperial Historian, has been attached to the 7th to witness its withdrawal to Aren. He also plans to effect the rescue of a colleague, Heboric, and manages to convince a Malazan mage named Kulp to go to the coast of Otataral Island to await Heboric's pre-arranged escape. Duiker becomes separated from Malazan forces and soon learns that the largest of the Whirlwind armies is gathering in strength near Hissar, preparing to pounce on the 7th once it gets underway. A ship arrives at Ehrlitan on the north coast of Seven Cities. On board are travelers from Genabackis: Crokus, a thief of Darujhistan; a fisher-girl named Apsalar; Fiddler, a sapper in the Bridgeburners; and Kalam, the Bridgeburners' resident assassin. Kalam has his own mission to undertake and soon slips into the desert as he has acquired the Book of the Apocalypse which must be delivered to Sha'ik. Kalam sets out for Raraku, unaware he is being trailed by a Red Blade (Malazan loyalists from Seven Cities), Captain Lostara Yil, and her squad who have orders to kill Sha'ik. Fiddler, Crokus and Apsalar reach the city of G'danisban to find it in the hands of the Army of the Apocalypse, who have not bothered to wait for the official start of the Whirlwind. Taking the appearance of a Gral warrior, Fiddler is able to bluff their way through the city and continue into the wastelands. Kalam reaches the borders of Raraku and is immediately apprehended by two warriors, Leoman of the Flails and a Toblakai, of the Laederon Plateau of Genabackis. They escort him to Sha'ik herself and he hands over the Book of the Apocalypse. In gratitude, Sha'ik gives him an aptorian demon she ensnared earlier as bodyguard (An aptorian demon has 3 legs, one compound eye and is intelligent). Kalam and the aptorian depart and Sha'ik prepares for the ritual opening of the book. She is then killed by a crossbow bolt to the skull when the Red Blades attack, Lostara Yil's forces bolstered by reinforcements led by Commander Tene Baralta. In the melee that ensues, Leoman and Toblakai wipe out a number of the attacking Red Blades, forcing them to withdraw, but oddly they are not pursued. Baralta rides for the city of Pan'potsun, leaving Lostara Yil to pursue Kalam. The rebellion is unleashed in Skullcup, the mining town on Otataral Island. Baudin and Heboric take Felisin to safety by fleeing into the desert to the west. The three of them cross the Otataral Desert but along the way find a huge statue: a jade hand jutting out of the earth. Heboric touches the statue and there is a massive exchange of power. Heboric acquires a pair of spiritual hands, while a backwash of energy goes through Heboric into his god, Fener, who is torn from his realm and pulled down to the mortal world (Fener materializes not far from the jade statue but then flees in terror, as in the material world gods are mortal once more). Heboric is left reeling from this event. They reach the coast of the island and are rescued by Kulp, who has won the support of a group of Malazan marines: Gesler, Stormy and Truth. Out at sea is a mage who has been driven mad by the magic-deadening otataral and lost control of his warren which now wreaks havoc around him. Kulp and the escapees run the gauntlet of the sea to avoid the mage's random spells, but in the process they are transported into a warren. They find a lone ship in the still waters of the warren. They board it to find that it is manned by headless corpses animated by a magical whistle (their heads eerily lie on deck, still alive and seeing). They also find several more recent corpses belonging to grey-skinned tall beings reminiscent of Tiste Andii; Heboric identifies them as Tiste Edur, the shadow-aspected cousins of the Andii. Heboric also finds charts suggesting the Tiste Edur originated from a landmass on their world unknown to the Malazan Empire. Hissar has been 'liberated' by the Army of the Apocalypse and Duiker rides hard to reunite with Coltaine's army. Nearly 50,000 civilians are being escorted westwards towards Aren, harried by an army several times their own size. However, Coltaine is achieving the impossible by keeping them at bay. Crokus, Fiddler and Apsalar behold an awesome sight: a solid circular wall of sand has arisen around the Holy Desert of Raraku, a literal Whirlwind to announce the beginning of the true rebellion. They press on and learn Fiddler's plan: to find Tremorlor, the Azath House in the heart of Raraku, and use it to transport themselves to the Deadhouse in Malaz City, which will put them near their intended destination, Apsalar's home of Itko Kan and more specifically the Empress Laseen whom Kalam and Fiddler intend to kill. In the chaos of the Whirlwind they are attacked by Soletaken and D'ivers, but are saved by Mappo and Icarium, who take them to Pust's nearby temple to recuperate. There they tell Mappo, Icarium and Pust of their plans to find Tremorlor and the former two agree to help them find it.
1414731	/m/04_mmj	Memories of Ice	Steven Erikson	2001-12-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Memories of Ice takes place simultaneously with the events of Deadhouse Gates, beginning about four months after the events of Gardens of the Moon. On the continent of Genabackis, the Malazan 2nd Army under High Fist Dujek Onearm has turned renegade and is now known as 'Onearm's Host'. Fearing the advance of a powerful new empire in the south-east of Genabackis, the Pannion Domin, Dujek and his second-in-command, Whiskeyjack, forge an alliance with their former enemies - Anomander Rake and the Tiste Andii of Moon's Spawn, and the warlord Caladan Brood. They also seek the aid of the White Face Barghast tribes. Meanwhile, the former Claw agent Toc the Younger and the T'lan Imass Tool find themselves lost in the southern wilds of Genabackis and must undertake a daring journey through Pannion territory, whilst the famed Grey Swords of Elingarth must defend the city of Capustan against a vast, overwhelming Pannion army.
1414732	/m/04_mmw	House of Chains	Steven Erikson	2002-12-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 House of Chains takes place immediately after the events of Deadhouse Gates on the subcontinent of Seven Cities. The Chain of Dogs - the evacuation of 50,000 Malazan civilians across 1,500 miles of hostile territory - has ended in the tragic loss of the entire 7th army and its heroic commander, Coltaine. However, with their sacrifice was bought the lives of nearly 30,000 refugees. Meanwhile, the Chain of Dogs has become a legend spreading across Seven Cities, cowing even those responsible for its destruction. Now Adjunct Tavore Paran has arrived at the head of the 14th Army, largely consisting of untried recruits. Their mission is to advance into the heart of the Holy Desert Raraku, the very heart of the rebellion known as the Whirlwind, and destroy Sha'ik and her forces once and for all. The rebels outnumber the Malazans vastly. However, all is not well in Sha'ik's camp and internal conflicts threatens to destroy her army before the Malazans can. Meanwhile, a mighty warrior named Karsa Orlong descends from his mountain fastness on Genabackis, beginning a journey that will live in legend, and the thief Crokus and assassin Apsalar find themselves drawn into a desperate struggle for control of the Throne of Shadow. Finally, a warrior named Trull Sengar is rescued from certain death with news of a terrible new foe arising to trouble all the world...
1414736	/m/04_mnx	Midnight Tides	Steven Erikson	2004-03-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the aftermath of a massive battle between an alliance of Tiste Edur, led by Scabandari Bloodeye, and Tiste Andii, led by Silchas Ruin, against some K'Chain Che'Malle. The scheming Scabandari massacres his former allies to take the land for his own people. Later, a swordsmith named Withal is washed up on a beach, where he enters the service of the Crippled God to forge a sword. Many years after this, the Tiste Edur tribes, recently unified under the Warlock King, are to meet with a delegation from the Kingdom of Lether to discuss a treaty. The Letherii are an expansionist society with a reputation for treachery. This reputation is shown to be well-earned when letherii merchant ships begin an illegal seal harvest on Edur territory. Trull Sengar witnesses this and carries word to the Warlock King, who with the aid of his apprentices, destroys the ships. The Edur have acquired many slaves over the years, including Letherii. One evening, while the Edur are at a council meeting, a seer slave called Feather Witch holds a casting, where a Sengar family slave named Udinaas is injured by a Wyval. In the meantime, in Letheras, the Letherii capital city, Tehol Beddict lives in a house with his manservant, Bugg. Tehol made a fortune on the Letherii equivalent of the stock exchange, but then mysteriously lost it. He now sleeps on the roof of this house, with his possessions gradually dwindling. What no one else in Lether knows is that Tehol only appeared to lose his money and still controls numerous businesses in Lether. He is running a plot to bring down Lether's economy. Tehol's brother Brys is the King's personal bodyguard. The city of Lether is preparing for the fulfillment of a prophecy which states that at the Seventh Closure the King shall become Emperor. To increase his power, the Warlock King sends Trull Sengar and his brothers Fear, Binadas and Rhulad on a quest to recover a sword that they will find and bring it back to him without letting it make contact with the skin. They eventually reach a spar of ice holding the sword, where they are attacked by a tribe of Soletaken known as Jheck. Rhulad takes up the sword in combat and is killed while bearing it. The Sengar brothers return bearing Rhulad's corpse. The corpse will not relinquish the sword, causing a feud between the Warlock King and the Sengars. While his body is being prepared for its funeral, Rhulad returns from the dead through the machinations of the Crippled God. With the aid of the slave Udinaas, Rhulad regains his sanity and seizes power over the Edur. He expels the Letherii delegation and begins preparations for war. Hull Beddict, however, stays and swears his allegiance to Rhulad, giving the Edur valuable information for the war against the Letherii. Rhulad dies in combat against Iron Bars, a soldier of the Crimson Guard, and returns again thanks to the Crippled God. Tehol Beddict's plans begin to come into fruition. He evacuates non-Letherii citizens, outmaneuvers Gerun Eberict, and keeps his partners outwitted. King Diskanar crowns himself Emperor while Letherii forces under the Queen and Prince are routed and destroyed in battle. Unknown to most of the city, trouble is brewing in the Azath House there. The house, which contains Silchas Ruin along with many other powerful individuals, is dying, and entrusts an undead child containing the dormant soul of a Forkrul Assail to feed it blood to keep it alive. She is contacted by Bugg, who has more knowledge than one would suspect for a lowly manservant. He gives her advice. Later, a number of beings escape, only to be dealt with by the mysterious Bugg. Simultaneously, the Edur enter the city and march on the Eternal Domicile (the palace). On their way there, the Wyval that inhabits Udinaas takes control of him and forces him to leave the Edur party. Rhulad is later killed in combat and returned to life. Abandoned by Udinaas, he falls into a state of insanity. The Edur successfully take the Eternal Domicile, despite resistance by the Ceda and Brys Beddict. Trull Sengar kills the Ceda and Brys challenges Rhulad. Brys incapacitates Rhulad without killing him. The rest of the Edur cannot bring themselves to kill their emperor, so he lies on the ground screaming. Newly crowned Emperor Diskanar committed suicide using poisoned wine, as he expected to lose. Upon maiming Rhulad, Brys is pushed by the Errant, an Ascendant, to drink from the poisoned chalice, and thus dies. During the course of his life, Brys had once saved a guardian of dead souls who lived beneath the sea. Upon his death, the guardian came to take him away, and while doing so killed Rhulad out of mercy. However, Feather Witch finds a finger Brys lost in his battle with Rhulad. Trull and Fear flee, though not together. Back in the Azath house, in the midst of a fierce battle, Udinaas arrives and frees Silchas Ruin. Ruin helps destroy the other creatures. Trull decides to return to Rhulad to aid him in finding his sanity. Tehol, meanwhile, is attacked and nearly killed. His brother Hull is murdered for betraying the Letherii, leaving only lowly Bugg to protect him. Bugg, revealing himself as the Elder God of the Seas, Mael, saves Tehol. Bugg/Mael later leaves to confront the Crippled God as the book ends.
1414740	/m/04_mpl	The Bonehunters	Steven Erikson	2006-03-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Bonehunters begins two months after the events of House of Chains. The Malazan Fourteenth Army has destroyed the army of the Whirlwind, and Adjunct Tavore Paran has executed Sha'ik. The Fourteenth is now pressing westward, pursuing the remnants of the Whirlwind rebellion (under Leoman of the Flails), as it seeks refuge in the fortress city of Y'Ghatan, where the Malazan Empire had previously faced its greatest defeat. Meanwhile, Onearm's Host, restored to the favour of Empress Laseen, has landed on Seven Cities' north coast to complete the task of subduing the rebellion, but a deadly plague has been unleashed. Ganoes Paran, the new Master of the Deck of Dragons, arrives from Genabackis to help deal with the chaos. Elsewhere, the balance of power is shifting in the Malazan Imperial Court, and strange black ships have been sighted in the waters surrounding Quon Tali and Seven Cities. The quest of the expeditionary force of the Letherii Empire to find warriors worthy of facing Emperor Rhulad Sengar in battle is about to be answered twice over.
1414746	/m/02p48sz	Toll the Hounds	Steven Erikson	2008-06-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Darujhistan, the saying goes that Love and Death shall arrive together, dancing... It is summer and the heat is oppressive, yet the discomfiture of the small rotund man in the faded red waistcoat is not entirely due to the sun. Dire portents plague his nights and haunt the city's streets like fiends of shadow. Assassins skulk in alleyways but it seems the hunters have become the hunted. Hidden hands pluck the strings of tyranny like a fell chorus. Strangers have arrived, and while the bards sing their tragic tales, somewhere in the distance can be heard the baying of hounds. All is palpably not well. And in Black Coral too, ruled over by Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness, something is afoot - memories of ancient crimes surface, clamouring for revenge, so it would seem that Love and Death are indeed about to make their entrance.
1415444	/m/04_pjf	The Poison Belt	Arthur Conan Doyle	1913	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Challenger sends telegrams asking his three companions from The Lost World - Edward Malone, Lord John Roxton, and Professor Summerlee - to join him at his home outside of London. The cryptic telegrams also instruct each of them to bring a tank of oxygen. When they arrive they are ushered into a sealed room, along with Challenger and his wife. In the course of his research, Challenger has predicted that the Earth is about to come into contact with a belt of poisonous ether, which will, based on its effect on the people of Sumatra earlier in the day, cause the end of humanity. Challenger seals them in the room with the cylinders of oxygen, which he (correctly) believes will counter the effect of the ether. The sealing is not to keep the ether out - it permeates everything - but "to keep the oxygen in". The five of them wait out the Earth's passage through the band as they watch the world outside die, and machines run amok. (In an interesting display of Victorian values - or, at least, Doyle's take on them - Challenger does not even consider including his servants; they are left outside the room to die, and continue to perform their duties until the ether overtakes them.) Finally, the last of their oxygen cylinders runs dry, and they open a window, ready to face death. To their surprise, they do not die, and they wander through the dead countryside in Challenger's car, eventually making it to London. They encounter only one survivor, who is an elderly, bed-ridden woman prescribed oxygen for her health. After going to London and back, they make plans for the fate of the world at their hands—when suddenly, people start to wake up again. The effect of the ether turns out to be temporary, and the world wakes up again after a little over a day in a coma, with no knowledge that they have lost any time at all. Eventually Challenger and his companions manage to convince the world what happened - a task made easier by the tremendous amount of death and destruction caused by runaway machines and fires that took place while the world was asleep - and humanity is shocked into placing a higher value on life, and how well we spend what little time we are given.
1419447	/m/04__xk	Bodily Harm	Margaret Atwood	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's protagonist, Rennie, is a travel reporter. After surviving breast cancer, she vacations on the fictional Caribbean island St. Antoine. The island, however, is on the brink of revolution. Rennie tries to stay away from politics, but is drawn into events through her romance with Paul, a key player in the uprising.
1419462	/m/04__zp	Lady Oracle	Margaret Atwood	1976	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's protagonist, Joan Foster, is a romance novelist who has spent her life running away from difficult situations. The novel alternates between flashbacks from the past and scenes from the present. Through flashbacks, the reader sees her first as an overweight child whose mother constantly criticizes her, and later, hiding her career, her past as the mistress of a Polish count, and her affair with a performance artist called The Royal Porcupine from her bipolar husband Arthur. In the present, she has recently published a volume of feminist poetry which becomes a breakthrough success and is overwhelmed by the pressures of sudden fame. Joan panics after receiving a blackmail attempt from someone who has found out about her secrets. With the help of two acquaintances, she fakes her own suicide and then flees to Italy.
1419826	/m/050196	The Good Shepherd	C. S. Forester	1955	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The hero of The Good Shepherd is Commander Krause, the captain of a US Navy destroyer in World War II. Krause is in overall command of an escort force protecting an Atlantic convoy in the Battle of the Atlantic. He finds himself in a difficult position. The voyage in question occurs early in 1942, shortly after America's entry into the war. Although he is an experienced officer, with many years of seniority, this is Krause's first wartime mission. The captains of the other escort vessels are junior to him, and much younger, but they have been at war for over two years. His relative inexperience troubles him. The hero broods over his career; his wife left him partly because of his strict devotion to duty. He is troubled when the press of duty forces him to neglect his prayers. (Unlike most of Forester's other heroes, Krause is devout.) And he is troubled by recollections that the Navy review board had twice passed him over for promotion, returning a judgement of fitted and retained. His promotion to Commander only came when the United States entered the war, leading him to fear that he may be unsuited to his command. The book illustrates the difficulties of the Atlantic war: the struggle against the sea, the enemy, and the exhaustion brought on by constant vigilance. It also details the problems of the early radar and ASDIC equipment available and the poor communications between the fleet and Admiralty.
1420716	/m/0503dr	Brown on Resolution	C. S. Forester	1929	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with Brown, wounded and dying, on Resolution Island. The story is then told in flashback. The first part of the story tells of Brown's birth, as a result of a liaison between his mother, Agatha Brown, and a Royal Navy officer, Lt Cdr Richard Saville-Samarez. It describes his upbringing, with Agatha as a single mother in Edwardian England, and her instilling into him of a sense of duty to the Navy and to his country. As soon as he is old enough, Brown joins the Navy, and on the eve of World War I is serving on the (fictitious) cruiser HMS Charybdis in the Pacific. In the second half of the story Charybdis is sunk by the German cruiser Ziethen on a raiding mission in the central Pacific, and Brown, with 2 or 3 wounded men, is picked up by the raider. As the Ziethen was damaged in the exchange, her captain plans to pull into an isolated Pacific anchorage to try to repair his vessel. In the novel, he chooses (fictitious) Resolution Island, in the Galápagos Islands. The resourceful Brown escapes, steals a rifle and a small amount of ammunition, and makes his way ashore. Her captain having already careened his vessel, the vessel's main battery could not be brought to bear on Brown, and he was able to pick off exposed crew-members who are trying to repair her punctured hull plates. In Forester's description Resolution is an impenetrable tangle of scrub and thorn bushes, making it difficult for shore parties to run the hero to ground. Brown is eventually mortally wounded by a lucky German shot. He never learns that his actions delayed the repairs long enough to ensure that the German vessel fails to escape her British pursuers. Ironically, the senior British naval officer of the force which sinks Ziethen and benefits from Brown's action, is none other than now Captain Saville-Samarez, Brown's father, although they do not know of each other.
1420750	/m/0503h5	One for the Morning Glory	John Barnes	1996-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 There is a saying in the land that someone who drinks the Wine of the Gods before he is ready is only half a man thereafter. Amatus, the prince, manages to swig down a significant amount of the Wine of the Gods, and his entire left half vanishes. His father, the normally gentle King Boniface, orders the executions of the four people responsible for this travesty—the maid, the alchemist, the witch, and the captain of the guard—and then begins the long and arduous process of interviewing to fill these four positions. A year and a day later, four strangers arrive in the kingdom. This is a magical time, and noted by all as being very auspicious. The strangers are hired by the king and become known as the prince's Companions. The rest of the tale deals with Amatus's growth into manhood, kingship, and love. It is filled with adventure, laughter, tragedy, unexpected reunions and royal pomp.
1420771	/m/0503j_	Stations of the Tide	Michael Swanwick	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Stations of the Tide is the story of a bureaucrat with the Department of Technology Transfer who must descend to the surface of Miranda to hunt a magician who has smuggled proscribed technology past the orbital embargo, and bring him to justice before the world is transformed by the flood of the Jubilee Tides.
1421363	/m/05058l	The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature	Steven Pinker	2002	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Pinker argues that modern science has challenged three "linked dogmas" that constitute the dominant view of human nature in intellectual life: * the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits) &mdash; empiricism * the noble savage (people are born good and corrupted by society) &mdash; romanticism * the ghost in the machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology) &mdash; mind/body dualism Much of the book is dedicated to examining fears of the social and political consequences of his view of human nature: * "the fear of inequality" * "the fear of imperfectibility" * "the fear of determinism" * "the fear of nihilism" Pinker claims these fears are non sequiturs, and that the blank slate view of human nature would actually be a greater threat if it were true. For example, he argues that political equality does not require sameness, but policies that treat people as individuals with rights; that moral progress doesn't require the human mind to be naturally free of selfish motives, only that it has other motives to counteract them; that responsibility doesn't require behavior to be uncaused, only that it respond to praise and blame; and that meaning in life doesn't require that the process that shaped the brain must have a purpose, only that the brain itself must have purposes. He also argues that grounding moral values in claims about a blank slate opens them to the possibility of being overturned by future empirical discoveries. He further argues that a blank slate is in fact inconsistent with opposition to many social evils since a blank slate could be conditioned to enjoy servitude and degradation. Evolutionary and genetic inequality arguments do not necessarily support right-wing policies. Pinker writes that if everyone was equal regarding abilities it can be argued that it is only necessary to give everyone equal opportunity. On the other hand, if some people have less innate ability through no fault of their own, then this can be taken as support for redistribution policies to those with less innate ability. Further, laissez-faire economics is built upon an assumption of a rational actor, while evolutionary psychology suggests that people have many different goals and behaviors that do not fit the rational actor theory. Raising living standards, also for the poor, is often used as an argument that inequality need not be reduced, while evolutionary psychology may suggest that low status itself, apart from material considerations, is highly psychologically stressful and may cause dangerous and desperate behaviors, supporting a society reducing inequalities. Finally, evolutionary explanations may also help the left create policies with greater public support, suggesting that people's sense of fairness (caused by mechanisms such as reciprocal altruism) rather than greed is a primary cause of opposition to welfare, if there is not a distinction in the proposals between what is perceived as the deserving and the undeserving poor. Pinker also gives several examples of harm done by the belief in a blank slate of human nature: * totalitarian social engineering. If the human mind is a blank slate completely formed by the environment, then ruthlessly and totally controlling every aspect of the environment will create perfect minds. * Inappropriate or excessive blame on and guilt for parents since if their children do not turn out well this is assumed to be entirely environmentally caused and in particular due to the behavior of the parents. * release of dangerous psychopaths who quickly commit new crimes. * construction of massive and dreary tenement complexes since housing and environmental preferences are assumed to be culturally caused and superficial. * persecution and even mass murder of the successful who are assumed to have gained this unfairly. This includes not only individuals but entire successful groups who are assumed to have become successful unfairly and by exploitation of other groups. Examples include kulaks in the Soviet Union; teachers and "rich" peasants in the Cultural Revolution; and city dwellers and intellectuals under the Khmer Rouge.
1421478	/m/0505m9	Death to the French	C. S. Forester	1932	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The hero is Matthew Dodd, a rifleman in the 95th Regiment of Foot of the British Army. The novel takes place in Portugal early in the Peninsular War. The British had sent a small force of about 10,000 men to the aid of her ally, Portugal. Rather than face the overwhelming numbers of the opposing French forces under Marshal André Masséna, the British commander, Lord Wellington, secretly constructed the Lines of Torres Vedras and withdrew behind them, leaving the French force no options but to lay siege to the lines, or retreat. For three months the French encamped outside the lines, waiting for reinforcements from the other side of the Tagus River, but in the end hunger and disease forced them to retreat. During the course of the British withdrawal, Dodd becomes separated from his regiment and is cut off from the British forces, with the entire French army between him and the lines at Torres Vedras. In an attempt to get around the French, he heads for the Tagus River, hoping to follow it to Lisbon. However, the French are there ahead of him and he has no option but to live off the land and try to survive. He joins a group of Portuguese guerrillas and spends two months with them, harassing the encamped French army, killing sentries and laying ambushes for scouting parties and supply animals. After two months of guerrilla fighting, Dodd hears artillery fire from about ten miles away. He can tell by the sound that it is neither a battle nor a siege. He knows that anyone exchanging artillery fire with the French is an ally of his, so he takes his friend Bernardino and sets out to see what is happening. They meet another Portuguese guerrilla, whose name they never learn, who leads them to the site of the firing. There he sees British soldiers on the other side of the Tagus firing rockets at the town of Santarém, and the French returning cannon-fire to stop them. Dodd deduces that there must be something in the town that the British want to set on fire; furthermore it must be something near the river. From this he can guess what the target must be: the French are trying to construct a pontoon bridge across the Tagus, and the British are firing the rockets to try to burn the pontoon boats, rope, timber, and paint that are warehoused by the river. Unable to dislodge the British rocketeers from their entrenchments on the far side of the river, the French gather up all the bridge-building supplies and move them farther up the river, to a position where the British can neither see them nor fire on them. Dodd determines to destroy the bridge materiel himself. He, Bernardino, and the unnamed guerrilla return to their band's headquarters, only to find that while they were gone the French had discovered and destroyed the whole band, hanging the men on trees and taking away the women and the food. The three have nothing to eat so the unnamed guerrilla visits the French encampment that night, kills a sentry and steals a pack mule. They slaughter the mule and smoke the meat, giving them enough food in their packs for several weeks. Then they set out to find the new bridge-building headquarters. Before they find it they are surprised by a French patrol; they run for cover, but Dodd's two friends fall and are captured. From the safety of the rocks Dodd looks back to see his friends hanged. He resolutely goes on alone, and finds the French encampment. He patiently hides in the rocks watching the business of the camp for several days. Finally he goes in by night, kills two sentries, and spreads highly flammable grease and oil (kept in cauldrons by the French for tarring rope, greasing cordage, and waterproofing their boats) over the pontoons and timber and rope, and sets it all on fire. From his hideout in the rocks he sees the whole encampment burn, and is pleased with his success; he never learns that orders had arrived only that day for the French to burn the encampment themselves, since Masséna had ordered a retreat. Dodd avoids the retreating French army and happily rejoins his regiment, unacknowledged, unthanked and unconcerned about his months of demanding effort.
1422145	/m/0507mq	Tom Sawyer Abroad	Mark Twain	1894	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the story, Tom, Huck, and Jim set sail to Africa in a futuristic hot air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas to see some of the world's greatest wonders, including the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Detective, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn. It is a sequel, set in the time following the title story of the Tom Sawyer series.
1422446	/m/0508d3	War for the Oaks	Emma Bull	1987	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Walking home one night through the streets of Minneapolis after quitting her rock band and breaking up with her boyfriend, Eddi McCandry discovers that she is being pursued by a threatening man and an even more threatening black dog. They turn out to be one and same: a shapeshifting prankster faerie known as a phouka, who drafts Eddi to be the key linchpin in the ongoing battle between faerie's good and noble Seelie Court and the evil Unseelie Court, ruled by the Queen of Air and Darkness. Eddi soon finds herself in a struggle for survival against the Unseelie Court, all while trying to put a new rock band together. Meanwhile, her initial feelings of resentment toward the phouka develop into gratitude for his efforts to protect her against the dark queen, and ultimately turn into love. The novel climaxes in a rock concert playoff between Eddi and the Queen of Air and Darkness, which decides the fate of both faerie courts, as well as the fate of her loved one.
1422844	/m/0509fw	The Garden of Eden	Ernest Hemingway	1986	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is fundamentally the story of five months in the lives of David Bourne, an American writer, and his wife, Catherine. It is set mainly in the French Riviera, specifically in the Côte d'Azur, and in Spain. The story begins with their honeymoon in the Camargue. The Bournes soon meet a young woman named Marita, with whom they both fall in love, but only one can ultimately have her. David starts an affair with Marita, while his relationship with his wife deteriorates. The story continues until the apparent separation of David and Catherine.
1423977	/m/050dmj	Marabou Stork Nightmares	Irvine Welsh	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Roy Strang narrates the book from an (at first) unexplained coma, which he has been in for the previous two years. His life in this state is a miserable affair, surrounded by uncaring doctors and his extremely dysfunctional family. In his fantasy life, however, he is an adventurer in the wilds of South Africa, where he and his loyal guide, Sandy Jamieson, hunt for an elusive, deadly creature called the Marabou Stork. When not hallucinating, Strang tells his life story, beginning in a "scheme" (local authority housing) in Leith, Scotland, with his violent, delusional parents, two half-brothers (one a womanizer, the other flamboyantly gay), and his promiscuous sister, all of whom he despises. The family relocates to apartheid-era South Africa when he is an adolescent, where he is repeatedly molested by his uncle. When his father is jailed for the violent assault of a taxi driver, the Strangs are forced to return to Scotland &mdash; a mere 18 months after they left. Over the next few years, Strang grows into a violent, misogynistic thug. He maintains a full-time job in as a systems analyst for the fictional investment group, 'Scottish Spinsters' (a probable reference to the real Scottish Widows firm). He joins a gang of football hooligans who are attached to Hibernian F.C., the Capital City Service, and led by the fearsome Lexo. Strang enjoys his life as a "top boy," feared by the entire town, until the gang kidnaps a young woman who rejected their advances and gang rapes her; Strang informs the reader that he is horrified, but too intimidated to try and stop them, even though he himself does not join in. The gang evades prison, but Strang is stricken with guilt and withdraws completely into depression. He briefly revives a few months later when he meets a woman and genuinely feels love for the first time. Around the same time he begins to take ecstasy, and even befriends his gay half-brother. The memory of what he has done continues to haunt him, however, and his depression soon completely engulfs him, taking him away from his lover and his drug-driven escapism. He attempts suicide but survives, putting him in the coma he began the novel in. One day, the gang's rape victim visits him in the hospital. She tells him that she has been murdering her rapists one by one, and now she has come for him, saying that he was by far the most brutal; it is left ambiguous whether or not this is true. She then castrates him and stabs him to death. In his final moments, Strang realizes that the only person he has ever really hated is himself, and makes peace with everyone he has wronged and who has wronged him. The novel's other, more stream-of-consciousness narrative, intertwined with the story of Strang's past, takes place in the fantasy world he creates for himself in the coma. At first a bizarre but rousing adventure, it gradually becomes darker as Strang reveals the uglier parts of his life and personality, involving surreal images of brutality and sexual violence.
1426168	/m/050l3f	The Word for World is Forest	Ursula K. Le Guin	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "The Athshean word for 'world' is the same as their word for 'forest'." Raj Lyubov, one of the novel's major characters. Colonists from Earth take over a planet that the locals call Athshe, which means "forest," rather than "dirt," like their home planet. They follow the 19th century model of colonization: cutting down trees, planting farms, building mines, and enslaving indigenous peoples. The natives are ill equipped to comprehend this, since they're a subsistent people who rely on the forests, and have no cultural precedent for tyranny, slavery, or war. The invaders take the land of these tiny forest people without any resistance. Earth has suffered some environmental disasters and people in North America have known starvation. The military culture has some familiar aspects, but there have been cultural shifts. Both drug-use and homosexuality are acceptable, even in the military. Some Terrans feel a rivalry with the other humanoid cultures, especially the Cetians. Former national rivalries have faded, with North Americans, Vietnamese and Indians working together harmoniously. (The book was written during the Vietnam War, of which Le Guin was an outspoken opponent; the depiction of Americans and Vietnamese as cooperation in the conquest and subjugation of a forest-dwelling people could hardly be accidental.) The innocent, ingrained obedience of the Athsheans and the fact that they never seem to sleep makes them seem to be ideal slaves, practicing what in humans is called polyphasic sleep. One of the worst slave-masters is Captain Davidson (who is not the leader of the Terrans, a common misconception), who regularly beats the "creechies", as he calls the Athsheans. But the fact is that they take a few dreamless catnaps spread throughout the day and go into a state of lucid dreaming at will, and quite often. They also see the "dream-time" as a world just as real as the "world-time" and hate hallucinogens which the humans use, because they have no control over the dreams generated by the "poisons". Most of the "yumens" make no effort to understand this and drive them harder when they catch the Athsheans "daydreaming." Deprived of REM sleep, the slaves' mental and physical health deteriorates. The only human who begins to understand this is the colony's anthropologist, Raj Lyubov, who saves several slaves from grisly deaths at Davidson's hands. When a tiny native woman is raped by Davidson and dies of her wounds, her husband, Selver, begins to dream of war. No one has dreamed of war before, but Selver is able to share his dream and sing his plans with the rest of his people. He organises a raid on a logging camp, killing more than 200 humans and humbling Davidson. To his people, he has becomes a sha'ab, a word that means both "translator" and "god". Meantime, a starship arrives bringing an ansible intended for another nearby world, and also two non-Terrans, a Cetian and a man of Hain. Via ansible, they learn that there is now a "League of All Worlds" and that Terran colonial policies have changed. The ansible is left at the colony so that the Terrans can be controlled by their own superiors. Instructions are issued to free the Athshean slaves and generally moderate the policies. Outraged by all this, and suspecting that the "ansible" is a fraud or controlled by Cetians, Davidson secretly organises a raid and mass slaughter of a nearby Athshean tree-city. The Athsheans respond by staging a massive raid on "Central", the main Terran base, which they manage to overrun. Particularly shocking is that the Athsheans intentionally kill the Terran women, reasoning that the women will otherwise establish a fast-breeding Terran colony. This is indeed the intention; the settlers plan to make a permanent home on "New Tahiti", not just to take its logs. For their part, the Athsheans have no tradition of warfare and therefore no rules, and anyway, their own women take part in the fighting. The revolution upends the Athshean culture but succeeds in ending Terran domination. For the atrocities he has committed, Davidson is exiled to an island of bare rock, which had been a thriving forest village before his rule, to be given food and medicine but no human contact for the rest of his life. The surviving humans (not including Lyubov, who was accidentally killed in the revolt) return home on the next ship to arrive.
1426398	/m/050ltz	Darwinia	Robert Charles Wilson	1998	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In March 1912, in the event some people called the "Miracle," Europe and parts of Asia and Africa, including its inhabitants, disappear suddenly overnight and are replaced with a slice of an alien Earth, a land mass of roughly equal outlines and terrain features, but with a strange new flora and fauna which seems to have followed a different path in evolution. Seen by some as an act of divine retribution, the "Miracle" affects the lives of people all around and transforms world history. The book describes the life and the adventures of Guilford Law, a young American photographer. As a 14-year-old boy, Guilford Law witnessed the "Miracle" as shimmering lights moving eerily across the ocean sky. As a grown man, he is determined to travel to the strange continent of Darwinia and explore its mysteries. To that end, he enlists as a photographer in the Finch expedition, which plans to travel up the river that used to be known as the Rhine and penetrate the bizarre new continent's hidden depths as far as possible. He lands in the middle of the jungle in the midst of nationalistic skirmishes, in which partisans attack and wipe out most of the party of the Finch expedition on the continent that they believe to belong to them. Law brought an unwanted companion with him, a mysterious twin who seems to have both lived and died on an alternate Earth unchanged by the Miracle. The twin first appears to Guilford in dreams, and he brings a message that Darwinia is not what it seems to be, and Guilford is not who he seems to be. A startling revelation soon arrives. By the end of the story, it is revealed to all the characters that it is really now the End of Time and that the Universe, the Earth, and all the consciousness that ever existed are really being preserved in a computer-like simulation known as the Archive. The Archive was built by a coalition of all the sentient beings in the Universe in an effort to save consciousness from death. However, "viruses" (parasitic artificial life-forms) known as Psions have invaded the system of the Archive. Guilford Law eventually learns that he and those like him serve as instruments in a cosmic struggle against the Psions for the survival of consciousness itself.
1428718	/m/050snt	Blood and Chocolate	Annette Curtis Klause	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book starts out with a description from the main character Vivian, a sixteen year old loup-garoux. She explains about her father, the old leader of the pack, and her group of best friends, the Five. The Five consist of Rafe, Finn, Willem, Ulf, and Gregory. They are the only pack members of Vivian's age and their group used to include another boy called Axel. In their old town, the Five started to become more feral, using their wolf forms to scare humans. Vivian was afraid they might betray the pack's secret, but in the end it was Axel who lost control. Axel killed a human girl and someone saw him change back from his wolf form to human after he did it. When Axel was in prison, the Five killed another human to make it look like the "real" killer was still loose, and he was released. Vivian's father killed Axel for endangering the pack, but she pleaded with him to let the Five live. Not long after, a group of suspicious neighbors set fire to the pack's house. Vivian's father, Rafe's mother, and a few others were killed and the pack quickly had to relocate. A year later, Vivian starts high school in the new town, where she has no friends because of her reserved and secretive nature. Many girls she attends school with find her intimidating and are jealous of her beauty. Yearning for acceptance, she goes after a boy named Aiden who wrote a poem about werewolves that was surprisingly accurate with regard to their transformation. She soon figures out Aiden is fully human, but she is still attracted to him and pursues a relationship in spite of her mother Esmé's disapproval. It becomes clear that the pack is restless in their new location. Rafe's father Lucien goes around getting drunk and the Five are growing out of control. To Vivian's embarrassment, Esmé and another woman named Astrid, who is also Ulf's mother, are continuously fighting over a man named Gabriel, despite his being twenty-four while they're both in their forties with children. Vivian hates Gabriel because he seems the most likely candidate to take over her father's position as alpha male of the pack. In addition to that, Gabriel is attracted to her and doesn't bother to hide it or listen to her rejections. When Astrid, Lucien, and a few other pack members run around near the suburbs in their wolf skins, it becomes evident the pack badly needs a leader. Since there is no agreement over who it should be, it is decided to elect the leader in the Old Way. This involved a ceremony called the Ordeal, a free-for-all brawl where any male who is of age can participate. Anyone who has blood drawn is disqualified, the last two left standing can fight to the death if they wish. The winner automatically becomes leader. After he is declared, the pack females can start the Bitch's Dance, a fight to determine who will be the new leader's mate. Gabriel wins the Ordeal, and Astrid instantly starts the Bitch's Dance by attacking Esmé. While Vivian is watching, it becomes clear that Astrid is out to kill. Without realizing what she's doing, Vivian leaps in to save her mother's life, she seriously wounds Astrid and takes out one of her eyes. However, in doing this Vivian has declared herself Queen Bitch and Gabriel's mate. Once she realizes this she runs away to her home, terrified of Gabriel. The next day Gabriel makes it clear that he'll wait as long as he has to, but eventually Vivian will belong to him and he won't give up on courting her. The pack thinks Vivian will eventually come around, but she keeps rejecting Gabriel and pursues Aiden with even more effort. When she and Aiden start to get to the point where they might have sex, she decides she wants him to know the truth before they get intimate. When she reveals her beast form to Aiden, he crouches into a corner in fear and starts to throw things at her to chase her away. Hurt and afraid of losing her self-control, she jumps out of his window. She wakes up in her own bed the next morning, with human blood on her nails and no memory of what happened after revealing herself to Aiden. Later on, watching the news, police describe the death of a man. It seems as though he was killed by a "wild animal." Another murder occurs and again Vivian wakes up with no memory of the incident but finds a human hand on the floor of her bedroom. Sure that she is the murderer, Vivian decides to commit suicide for the sake of the pack. She manages to douse herself in kerosene but before she can light the match she is apprehended by Gabriel, Willem, and Ulf. Willem makes Ulf tell her that his mother, Astrid, and her new lover Rafe were setting her up for the murders. Astrid still carried a grudge against Vivian for winning Gabriel and ripping out her eye in the process, and Rafe was mad at her for acting like a human. They'd committed the murders and put blood on Vivian to make it look like she was the killer. Earlier, Aiden had sent Vivian a note asking Vivian to meet him "for the sake of what we used to have." Remembering this, Vivian realizes that Astrid and Rafe must have found the note, which was carried by Aiden's friend and the two killers' latest victim. Vivian goes to meet Aiden and try to get him out of danger while Gabriel, Willem, and Ulf go to gather the pack so they can be there when Judgment is passed on Astrid. When Vivian gets to the meeting place, Aiden points a gun at her, explaining he has a silver bullet made from the pentagram that he had once given her. Vivian tries to explain she wasn't the killer, but since Aiden doesn't know there are other werewolves he refuses to believe her. Just as he's about to shoot her, Astrid and Rafe show up in their half forms. Astrid says that they're going to kill both Aiden and Vivian and pretend they "did what they had to do." She also explains that it's mainly because of her grudge over Gabriel that she wanted to do this to Vivian. Rafe didn't realize she meant to kill Vivian and he's hurt when she mentions she wanted Gabriel, and the two of them start arguing. In the middle of it Vivian tells Aiden to shoot Rafe while she leaps for Astrid. Aiden's shot works and Rafe falls dead. Just as Vivian and Astrid's fight start to get serious, Gabriel steps in and two other pack members apprehend Astrid. Gabriel explains that they have no prisons and no jailers, there is only one sentence for endangering the pack. He then steps forward and snaps Astrid's neck, killing her. Aiden is terrified from seeing so many werewolves and shoots at Gabriel but Vivian leaps in front to take the bullet. After a furious threat from Gabriel, Aiden runs away in terror. The pack's healer manages to get the bullet out but Vivian ends up stuck in her half-form, neither human nor wolf and unable to fully change into either one. Two weeks later, Gabriel enters Vivian's bedroom, where she is mourning about being trapped between forms. The pack leader explains his past, telling Vivian that he once loved a human whom he ended up killing by accident before he realized they couldn't truly be together. Vivian and Gabriel share a kiss, and Vivian is finally able to transform again. The books ends with Vivian accepting Gabriel as her mate and therefore her position as alpha female of the pack.
1428881	/m/050t1m	Whisky Galore!	Compton Mackenzie	1947	{"/m/011ys5": "Farce", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 During World War II, a cargo vessel (S.S. Cabinet Minister) is wrecked off a remote fictional Scottish island group &mdash; Great Todday and Little Todday &mdash; with fifty thousand cases of whisky aboard. Due to wartime rationing, the thirsty islanders had nearly run out of the "water of life" and see this as an unexpected godsend. They manage to salvage several hundred cases before the ship sinks. But it is not all clear sailing. They must thwart the efforts of the authorities to confiscate the liquor, particularly in the shape of misguided, pompous English Home Guard Captain Paul Waggett. A cat-and-mouse battle of wits ensues. Although the wreck and the escapades over the whisky are at the centre of the story, there is also a lot of background detail about life in the Outer Hebrides, including e.g. culture clashes between the Protestant island of Great Todday and the Roman Catholic island of Little Todday. (Mackenzie based the geography of these islands on Barra and Eriskay respectively, but in real life they are both Catholic islands). There are various sub-plots, e.g. two couples who are planning to get married. Mackenzie's prose captures the various accents of the area and also includes much common Gaelic that was in use at the time. The book comes with a useful glossary of both the meaning and approximate pronunciation of the language.
1430043	/m/050x7n	The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner	Alan Sillitoe			 When he is caught by the police for robbing a bakery, Colin Smith is sentenced to be confined in Ruxton Towers, a borstal (prison school) for delinquent youths. Taken there in handcuffs and detained in bleak and highly restrictive circumstances, he seeks solace in long-distance running, attracting the notice of the school’s authorities for his physical prowess. Long-distance running offers Smith a welcome distraction from the brutal drudgery of the Borstal regime and he is offered the prospect of early release from Borstal, if he wins in an important cross-country competition against a prestigious public school. For Ruxton Towers to win the cross-country race would be a major PR boost for the establishment, and Smith has an obvious incentive to cooperate. However, when the day of the race arrives Smith throws victory away: after speeding ahead of the other runners he deliberately stops running a few metres short of the finishing line, even though he is well ahead and could easily win. Seconds tick by as Smith stands there, in full view of the amazed race spectators who shout at him to finish the race. However, he deliberately lets the other runners pass him and cross the finishing line, thereby losing the race in a defiant gesture aimed against his Borstal captors, and the repressive forces that they represent. In deliberately losing the race, Smith demonstrates his free spirit and independence. The response of the Borstal authorities to Smith's action is heavy-handed. With the prospect of early release gone, Smith resigns himself to the drudgery of the soul-destroying manual labour he is forced to do. However, looking back on his actions he has no regrets. This helps show independence in his life as he breaks away from the thoughts of the borstal.
1431297	/m/050_f8	The Bourne Legacy	Robert Ludlum	2004-06-22	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 :For a more detailed background of the main character, see Jason Bourne. With the climactic events of The Bourne Ultimatum behind him, Jason Bourne is able to once again become David Webb, now professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. However, this serenity does not last for long and, when a silenced gunshot narrowly misses Webb's head, the Bourne Persona awakens in him yet again. Bourne's first objective is to get to his long time friend and handler at the CIA, Alex Conklin. However, unbeknownst (as yet) to Bourne, a Hungarian by the name of Stepan Spalko has now drawn Jason into a web—one which he cannot escape as easily as his professorial façade. Finding Alex dead along with Doctor Morris Panov, Bourne realizes the trap as soon as he hears the police arriving. With his car outside and his fingerprints in the house, he immediately understands that he has been framed. So, with only Conklin's cell phone and a torn page from a notebook to go on, Jason Bourne sets off to find out who's trying to kill him and who killed his friends. After warning Marie and his two children, Jamie and Alyssa, to proceed immediately towards their safe house, he slips through the CIA cordon and makes his way to an independent agent who was talking to Alex Conklin when he was killed. Having received travel plans to Hungary and a mission to meet Janos Vadas, Conklin's contact in Hungary, he proceeds to unravel the truth behind why Alex and Morris Panov were killed. Meanwhile, a group of Chechen terrorists have been fighting a losing battle against Russian invaders when a man named Stepan Spalko appears to solve their problems. Spalko, we later discover, had Conklin and Panov killed and kidnapped a doctor by the name of Felix Schiffer. Schiffer is an expert in bacteriological particulate behavior. Spalko intends to release a bacteriological weapon during peace negotiations between many world leaders to be held in Reykjavík, using the terrorists he is cultivating as a diversion. The book charts Bourne's course from the United States, to France and then to Budapest in Hungary where he learns the final thing he needs to do—to stop Spalko's attack in Iceland. This, of course, all has to be done in the face of a CIA sanction for him to be immediately terminated, as he is believed responsible for the deaths of Conklin and Panov. There is also the matter of Spalko's hired assassin, Khan, who is preternaturally able to track Bourne where everyone else cannot. Khan is revealed In the Bourne Legacy; he is Joshua, David's son from his first marriage, who believes erroneously that he was left for dead by his father in Vietnam. Bourne, however, refuses to believe that Khan is Joshua, convinced that Joshua was killed decades ago, and continually tries to avoid him and the truth. Though Khan is at first working for Spalko, he eventually realizes that he has been used as a pawn in Spalko's personal game. After revealing later on to Bourne that Annaka Vadas, the daughter of Janos Vadas, is a traitor, he begins to feel that Bourne is not the hateful father that he had imagined. Unfortunately, Bourne is still unable to believe Khan is Joshua—until he hacks into the CIA database and discovers that Joshua's body had never been found. In a fit of rage, he attacks Khan, first believing that it is a conspiracy to hurt him, but is later captured by Spalko. After rescuing Bourne from Spalko, Khan makes an uneasy peace with his father. While on the plane to Iceland, however, Khan reveals a piece of information that finally convinces Bourne that Khan is his son. When Bourne subsequently reveals that he lost his memory while undercover as Cain, Khan begins to rethink his views regarding his father. After completing the operation and stopping Spalko, Khan—Joshua—makes up with his father and realizes that his hatred was always a reflection of his personal struggles and that, in truth, he truly loved Bourne. He requests Bourne, however, not to reveal his identity to Marie, in whose life he feels he has no place.
1432492	/m/0512pn	Journey to the East	Hermann Hesse	1932	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Journey to the East is written from the point of view of a man (in the book called "H. H.") who becomes a member of "The League", a timeless religious sect whose members include famous fictional and real characters, such as Plato, Mozart, Pythagoras, Paul Klee, Don Quixote, Puss in Boots, Tristram Shandy, Baudelaire, and the ferryman Vasudeva, a character from one of Hesse's earlier works, Siddhartha. A branch of the group goes on a pilgrimage to "the East" in search of the "ultimate Truth". The narrator speaks of traveling through both time and space, across geography imaginary and real. Although at first fun and enlightening, the Journey runs into a crisis in a deep mountain gorge called Morbio Inferiore when Leo, apparently a simple servant, disappears, causing the group to plummet into anxiety and argument. Leo is described as happy, pleasant, handsome, beloved by everyone, having a rapport with animals - to a discerning reader, he seems a great deal more than a simple servant, but nobody in the pilgrimage, including the narrator, seems to get this. Nor does anyone seem to wonder why the group dissolves in dissension and bickering after Leo disappears. Instead they accuse Leo of taking with him various objects which they seem to be missing (and which turn up later) and which they regard as very important (and which later turn out not to be very important), and they blame him for the eventual disintegration of the group and failure of the Journey. Years later the narrator tries to write his story of the Journey, even though he has lost contact with the group and believes the League no longer exists. But he is unable to put together any coherent account of it; his whole life has sunk into despair and disillusionment since the failure of the one thing which was most important to him, and he has even sold the violin with which he once offered music to the group during the Journey. Finally, at the advice of a friend, he finds the servant Leo and, having failed in his attempt to re-establish communication with him or even be recognized by him when he meets him on a park bench, writes him a long, impassioned letter of "grievances, remorse and entreaty" and posts it to him that night. The next morning Leo appears in the narrator's home and tells him he has to appear before the High Throne to be judged by the officials of the League. It turns out (to the narrator's surprise) that Leo, the simple servant, is actually President of League, and the crisis in Morbio Inferiore was a test of faith which the narrator and everyone else flunked rather dismally. H. H. discovers that his "aberration" and time spent adrift was part of his trial, and is allowed to return to the League if he can pass any new test of faith and obedience. What he chooses, and the final dénouement, is a stroke of Hesse's typical Eastern mysticism at its finest. de:Die Morgenlandfahrt it:Il pellegrinaggio in Oriente nl:Reis naar het Morgenland (roman) uk:Паломництво у країну Сходу
1433541	/m/051532	True West	Sam Shepard			 True West is about the sibling rivalry between two estranged brothers who have reconnected. Austin, the younger brother, is a Hollywood screenwriter writing a screenplay while house sitting for his mother, who is vacationing in Alaska. His older brother, Lee, appears at the house after the two have not seen each other for years. Lee is a drifter and thief and has been living in the desert. The two are not on good terms, but Austin attempts to appease his older brother, who is more dominant. The play starts out with the two characters, Austin and Lee, sitting in their mom’s house-this is the first time they’ve seen one another in five years. We learn that their Mom is on vacation in Alaska and Austin is house-sitting for her. Austin is trying to work on his screenplay but Lee continually distracts him with non-sense questions. The two brothers seem on edge with one another and at one point Austin suggests Lee leaves but Lee threatens to steal things from their mother’s neighborhood. Austin tries to calm him down and the night ends with the two of them on neutral terms. Austin and Lee sit in their mother’s house and Lee talks about the security level of their mother’s house, and how Lee went into the desert to find their dad. Austin then tells Lee that he needs to leave the house because a film producer is coming by to look at Austin’s screenplay about a “period piece.” Lee says he will leave if Austin gives him the keys to his car. Austin is reluctant at first but eventually gives Lee the keys to his car and Lee promises that he will have it back by six. Lee departs. Saul and Austin have a conversation discussing the agreement they have made when Lee suddenly walks in with a stolen television set. Saul and Lee start up a conversation about golfing and make plans to go the next day. Austin is embarrassed because he does not know how to play golf, and he also does not want Lee to be involved in the relationship he has with Saul. Lee proposes a script idea to Saul and Saul likes it. Austin begins writing Lee’s story as he tells it out loud. Austin stops Lee and tells him that his story is bad because it doesn’t resemble real life. The two brothers begin to fight and eventually Austin asks Lee for his car keys back. Lee assumes this means Austin is trying to kick him out, and Lee makes the point that he can’t be kicked out. Austin says he wouldn’t kick him out because he’s his brother, and Lee suggests that being brothers means nothing because in family murders are the most common. Austin says they couldn’t be driven to murder over a movie script. The two admit to being jealous of each other’s lives, and Austin kindly returns the car keys. The scene closes with Austin typing Lee’s story again. Lee returning from his game of golf with Saul. He continues to tell Austin that Saul is going to give him an advance and continue with his idea from the outline that Austin had written for him. They begin celebrating but the celebration comes to a halt when Lee informs Austin that he is going to also be writing the screenplay for his idea. Austin questions this knowing he has his own work to be completed but Lee continues to inform him that Saul has chosen to drop Austin's idea for a screen play and just continue forward with his own idea. Austin informs Lee that he needs to be careful with who he messes with in this line of work and tells Lee that he has a lot at stake on his own project. The scene ends with Austin threatening to leave and go to the desert as Lee tries to calm him down before the lights go out and the scene ends. Austin confronts Saul about his decision to buy Lee’s screenplay. He argues that Saul only offered to buy the screenplay because he lost a bet. Saul wants Austin to write both his and Lee’s story but Austin refuses to do both. Austin thinks that Lee’s story is illegitimate and not relevant to the time period. Due to Austin’s rejection to the job, Saul decides to drop Austin’s story and to find a different writer for Lee’s story. The scene ends with Saul making plans for lunch with Lee and then exiting. Austin is drunk and annoying Lee, who is now the one trying to concentrate and create a screenplay. Lee makes a bet with Austin and Austin appears to be going crazy. Austin resolves to leave the house and they continue to bicker about the authenticity of Lee's ability as a screen writer. Lee finally gets frustrated and asks for Austin's help writing the script and starts drinking with him. Austin is polishing toasters that he stole while Lee is smashing a typewriter early in the morning. The two continue to do this while they are carrying on a conversation. Austin is proud of what he has done. Lee wants to see a woman, but Austin refuses because he is married. Lee throws a fit while on the phone with the operator because he cannot find a pen to write down what the operator is saying. Austin begs Lee to go to the desert with him because he thinks there is nothing for him where he is. The brothers make a deal that Austin will write the play for Lee if Lee takes him to the desert. In the final scene, the house is ransacked and Lee and Austin are working vigorously on their script. The mom comes in and Lee first takes notice to her. She seems confused by her son’s appearances and the state of her house. Austin tells her that he and Lee are going to take off into the desert, but then Lee says they might have to postpone the trip. He doesn’t think Austin is cut out for the desert life-style. Austin gets upset and starts strangling Lee. The mother is in disarray and storms out of the house. Austin finally lets go of Lee, and is worried for a second that he’s killed his brother. As Austin moves for the door, Lee rises. The two brothers face one another as the lights fade.
1436078	/m/051cqq	Narcissus and Goldmund	Hermann Hesse	1930	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Narcissus and Goldmund is the story of a young man, Goldmund, who wanders around aimlessly throughout Medieval Germany after leaving a Catholic monastery school in search of what could be described as "the meaning of life", or rather, meaning for his life. Narcissus, a gifted young teacher at the cloister school, quickly makes friends with Goldmund, as they are only a few years apart, and Goldmund is naturally bright. Goldmund looks up to Narcissus, and Narcissus has much fondness for him in return. After straying too far in the fields one day, on an errand gathering herbs, Goldmund comes across a beautiful Gypsy woman, who kisses him and invites him to make love. This encounter becomes his epiphany; he now knows he was never meant to be a monk. With Narcissus' help, he leaves the monastery and embarks on a wandering existence. Goldmund finds he is very attractive to women, and has numerous love affairs. After seeing a particularly beautiful carved Madonna in a church, he feels his own artistic talent awakening and seeks out the master carver, with whom he studies for several years. However, in the end Goldmund refuses an offer of guild membership, preferring the freedom of the road. When the Black Death devastates the region, Goldmund encounters human existence at its ugliest. Finally he is reunited with his friend Narcissus, now an abbot, and the two reflect upon the different paths their lives have taken, contrasting the artist with the thinker. The timeline and geography of the narrative is left somewhat vague, as the tale is largely metaphorical and makes little attempt at historical accuracy. For example, some of Narcissus and Goldmund's discussions of philosophy and science sound too modern to have taken place during medieval times.
1437896	/m/051j9_	The Winds of War	Herman Wouk	1971-11-15	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story revolves around a mixture of real and fictional characters, all connected in some way to the extended family of Victor "Pug" Henry, a middle-aged Naval Officer and confidant of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The story begins six months before Germany's invasion of Poland, which launched the European portion of the war, and ends shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the United States and, by extension, the Henry family, enters the war as well. Mixed into the text are "excerpts" from a book written by one of the book's fictional characters, German general Armin von Roon, written while he was in prison for war crimes. Coming across the German version, a retired Victor Henry "translates" the volume in 1965. The text provides the reader with a German outlook at the war, with Henry occasionally inserting notes as counterpoint to some of von Roon's statements. As the story begins, Navy Commander Victor "Pug" Henry has been appointed naval attache in Berlin. During the voyage to Europe on the S.S. Bremen, Victor befriends a British radio personality, Alistair "Talky" Tudsbury, his daughter, Pamela, and a German submarine officer, Commodore Grobke. In the movie version, he also meets German General Armin von Roon. Von Roon later becomes the viewpoint character for the German side of the war and witnesses the worsening of the German government's discrimination against the Jews. Through his work as the attache, Pug recognizes the intent of the Germans to invade Poland. Realizing that this would mean war with the Soviet Union, he concludes the only way for Germany to safely invade is to agree not to go to war with the Soviets, even though the Communists and Fascists are sworn, mortal enemies. Going over his supervisor's head, he submits a report predicting the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact before it takes place. When the pact is made public, the report draws President Roosevelt's attention to him, and the President asks Pug to be his unofficial eyes and ears in Europe. This assignment delays again his desired sea command, but later will give him the opportunity to travel to London, Rome, and Moscow and meet Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin in addition to Adolf Hitler, whom he met in Berlin. Due to Pug's increasing amount of travel and his aversion to many of the cultural events enjoyed by his wife, Rhoda, she spends increasing amounts of time alone. Through Pug, she meets a widowed government engineer named Palmer Kirby, who later will be involved in the first phase of the Manhattan Project. Rhoda and Palmer begin to spend time together attending the opera and other events, but soon this leads to a romantic relationship. For his part, Pug begins a platonic but very close and borderline romantic relationship with Pamela, but can't decide to leave his wife Rhoda for her. After having finally obtained command of a battleship, the USS California, he leaves for Pearl Harbor from Moscow, where he has discussed lend-lease issues and observed a battle. He flies over Asia and spends time in Manila listening to the radio broadcast of the annual Army-Navy football game. When his flight is approaching Pearl Harbor, they receive message that an attack is under way. Arriving at the base, they see the burning ships, including his own. Pug's three children each have their own story lines. His older son, Warren, is a United States Naval Academy graduate who enters Navy Flight School in Florida. His daughter, Madeline, begins a job in American radio. The child most prominent in the story is middle child and younger son Byron, named after Lord Byron, the English poet. Though a Columbia University graduate and holding a naval reserve commission, Byron has not committed himself to a career. In 1939 he accepts a job as a research assistant for an expatriate Jewish author, Aaron Jastrow, who is best known for his book A Jew's Jesus and lives in Siena, Italy. Byron also meets Jastrow's niece, Natalie, and her soon-to-be fiance, Leslie Slote, who works for the Department of State. Readers later discover that Natalie and Slote are also close friends of Pamela Tudsbury from their time in Paris together. Byron is three years younger than Natalie, but catches her attention by heroically saving her uncle from being trampled by a stampeding horse during a festival in Siena. Byron and Natalie visit her family's native town in Poland, Medzice, for a wedding, which occurs the night prior to the German invasion of Poland. They are awakened early the next morning to evacuate as the town citizens flee from the invaders. They travel from Medzice to Warsaw ahead of the invading German army, and at one point the refugees are strafed by the Luftwaffe and many are killed and injured. As they approach Warsaw, they encounter Polish soldiers who attempt to confiscate their automobile and leave them stranded. Finally, they are in Warsaw as the Germans begin the siege and are evacuated along with other Americans and citizens of neutral countries. During the encounters with the German and Polish soldiers, Byron repeatedly behaves heroically. Leslie behaves in cowardly fashion under artillery fire, but stands up to the Germans when they attempt to separate Jewish Americans. When Natalie receives the proposal of marriage from Leslie that she has been eagerly awaiting, she realizes that the experience in Poland has changed her heart and that she is now in love with Byron. After much beating around the bush, she admits this to Byron, who promptly offers his own proposal of marriage, which Natalie accepts. She returns to America upon receiving word that her father is quite ill and is able to also attend Warren's wedding. Her father dies of a heart attack upon hearing of the invasion of Norway and Denmark on April 9, 1940. In January 1941, she marries Byron and devotes herself to getting her reluctant uncle out of Europe to escape the Nazis, soon discovering she is pregnant. All of the story lines are left as a cliffhanger as the United States is drawn into the war by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Rhoda makes and then retracts a request for a divorce. With the USS California damaged and out-of-action, Pug is given command of a cruiser, the USS Northampton. Byron has been trained as a submarine officer. Warren has graduated from Pensacola, married a Congressman's daughter, Janice Lacouture, and is assigned to the USS Enterprise. Aaron, Natalie, and Natalie's infant son Louis are trapped in Europe as the war begins. These storylines continue through War and Remembrance.
1440016	/m/051r24	Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World	Haruki Murakami	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is split between parallel narratives. The odd-numbered chapters take place in the 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland', although the phrase is not used anywhere in the text, only in page headers. The narrator is a "Calcutec," a human data processor/encryption system who has been trained to use his subconscious as an encryption key. The Calcutecs work for the quasi-governmental System, as opposed to the criminal "Semiotecs" who work for the Factory and who are generally fallen Calcutecs. The relationship between the two groups is simple: the System protects data while the Semiotecs steal it, although it is suggested that one man might be behind both. The narrator completes an assignment for a mysterious scientist, who is exploring "sound removal". He works in a laboratory hidden within an anachronistic version of Tokyo's sewer system. The narrator eventually learns that he only has a day and a half to exist before he leaves the world he knows and delves forever into the world that has been created in his subconscious mind. The even-numbered chapters deal with a newcomer to "The End of the World", a strange, isolated walled Town depicted in the frontispiece map as being surrounded by a perfect and impenetrable wall. The narrator is in the process of being accepted into the Town. His Shadow has been "cut off" and this Shadow lives in the "Shadow Grounds" where he is not expected to survive the winter. Residents of the Town are not allowed to have a shadow, and, it transpires, do not have a mind. Or is it only suppressed? The narrator is assigned quarters and a job as the current "Dreamreader": a process intended to remove the traces of mind from the Town. He goes to the Library every evening where, assisted by the Librarian, he learns to read dreams from the skulls of unicorns. These "beasts" passively accept their role, sent out of the Town at night to their enclosure, where many die of cold during the winter. It gradually becomes evident that this Town is the world inside of the narrator from the Hard-Boiled Wonderland's subconscious (the password he uses to control different aspects of his mind is even 'end of the world'). The narrator grows to love the Librarian while he discovers the secrets of the Town, and although he plans to escape the Town with his Shadow, he later goes back on his word and leaves his Shadow to escape the Town alone. The two storylines converge, exploring concepts of consciousness, the unconscious mind (or as it incorrectly referred to, subconscious) and identity. In the original Japanese, the narrator uses the more formal first-person pronoun watashi to refer to himself in the "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" narrative and the more intimate boku in the "End of the World". Translator Alfred Birnbaum achieved a similar effect in English by putting the 'End of the World' sections in the present tense.
1440034	/m/051r3l	The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle	Haruki Murakami		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is about a low-key unemployed man, Toru Okada, whose cat runs away. A chain of events follow that prove that his seemingly mundane life is much more complicated than it appears.
1441387	/m/051vs6	Memories of My Melancholy Whores	Gabriel García Márquez	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An old journalist, who has just celebrated his 90th birthday, seeks sex with a young prostitute, who is selling her virginity to help her family. Instead of sex, he discovers love for the first time in his life.
1441865	/m/051x4x	Maia	Richard Adams	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Maia, at 15, lives in the Beklan Empire's province of Tonilda with her mother Morca, her three younger sisters, and her stepfather, Tharrin. Their small, poor farm is on the edge of Lake Serrelind, and Maia tends to shirk her chores by swimming in the lake all day. Although Morca is pregnant with Tharrin's child, he secretly seduces Maia. When Morca discovers the affair, she is doubly embittered and sells Maia to agents of the slave-dealer Lalloc. Maia is almost raped by Genshed, one of Lalloc's employees but is saved by Occula, a black slave girl. Maia and Occula become very good friends and even lovers. To avoid debasement by being bundled in with a detachment of more ordinary slaves, Occula enlists Maia in frightening their captors with apparent supernatural powers. The two girls are sent to the city of Bekla. Occula relates her own past: her father, a jewel-merchant, brought her across the desert to Bekla. They were received by Fornis, a noblewoman whom a coup would shortly elevate to the priestess-like status of "Sacred Queen". Fornis had Occula's father murdered and his emeralds incorporated into the Sacred Queen's crown. Occula was to be killed as well, but the household steward saw a chance to profit by selling the girl as a slave; since then, she has been employed in prostitution. Adams outlines Bekla's political situation in several chapters that bypass Maia. The "Leopard" faction led by the High Baron Durakkon, Fornis, the Lord General Kembri, and the High Counsellor Sencho came to power by ceding Suba, a western province, to the neighboring kingdom of Terekenalt. They legalized slavery, and the capital's finances are now heavily based on taxation of it, including farms for breeding slaves as well as the enslavement of freeborn people such as Maia and Occula. The Beklan army's central authority has largely withdrawn from the provinces unless paid to come enforce the law. Pockets of rebellion have sprung up around the empire. High Counsellor Sencho is the spymaster of the Beklan Empire. He buys both Maia and Occula as "bed-slaves". Terebinthia, the woman in charge of Sencho's household, supervises and trains them. At intervals, a peddler named Zirek visits and exchanges cryptic conversations with Occula. Beautiful, young, and fun-loving, Maia shows promise of going far, and finds some professional satisfaction in providing Sencho's decadent pleasures. She is even surprised that she enjoys the spectacle when a fellow bed-slave, the tempestuous Meris, is whipped and sold for dereliction of duty. Terebinthia rents out the girls to other rich and powerful men. Using this means of contact, Lord General Kembri secretly enlists Maia and Occula as agents and charges Maia with gaining the trust of Bayub-Otal, the dispossessed heir to Suba and a potential ally of the rebels. Bayub-Otal is the son of a dancer nicknamed "Nokomis" ("dragonfly") and the baron of a neighboring province, whose jealous wife arranged Nokomis' death when Bayub-Otal was a boy. When Sencho becomes drastically ill, he comes to depend almost solely on Occula's intense caretaking. During a garden party, Occula lures Sencho out of sight of everyone else and signals her rebel confederates (by implication Zirek and Meris) to stab Sencho to death. Maia and Occula are imprisoned in the Great Temple on suspicion of colluding in Sencho's murder. Queen Fornis takes Maia from the temple priests. As Maia fails to satisfy her sexual needs, Fornis gives her to Kembri; Maia seizes on this chance to interest the queen in Occula, hoping to save her friend from execution. Kembri sends Maia to Bayub-Otal with a cover story of having escaped from the temple. Bayub-Otal takes her with him as he secretly makes his way back to Suba. Maia learns that one reason for his extraordinary standoffish respect for her is that she looks (and dances) like his dead mother, Nokomis, who is still revered throughout the province. Bayub-Otal hopes to use the resemblance to rally Suban patriotism on behalf of an alliance with Terekenalt. At the rallying site, Maia falls passionately in love with the handsome young Zen-Kurel, an officer of Terekenalt. Zen-Kurel accepts her invitation to bed, but leaves quickly because of a surprise attack scheduled for that very night. The River Valderra, the boundary between the two countries, is thought to be uncrossably swift and rocky, but the Terekenalters plan to ford it with heavy ropes and strong men, thus surprising the detachment of Tonildan soldiers guarding the other side. In hopes of saving her fellow Tonildans' lives as well as her lover's, Maia swims the river by herself. Despite serious wounds, she warns the Beklan commander and thwarts the Terekenalter and Suban invasion. Maia returns to Bekla, freed and celebrated as the luck of the city, a great heroine whom the soldiers vote a house, money, and property. She gains an informal title as the "Serrelinda" after Lake Serrelind. Hoping to reunite with Zen-Kurel, she takes no lovers, despite expectations that she will find a rich husband or become an expensive courtesan. Her popularity and single status bring her under threat from Fornis, who is resisting pressure to retire as Sacred Queen; since the position is filled by popular acclaim, Maia is an obvious rival despite not wanting the crown. Maia sees her stepfather, Tharrin, dragged into Bekla as a rebel informant. He is condemned to be sacrificed by the Queen. Maia does her best to free him, but Fornis foils her plan and causes his death. However, during Tharrin's last conversation with Maia, he reveals to her that Morca had not been her real mother. A pregnant girl had fled to Morca's cottage and died there in childbirth; Maia deduces she is the daughter of Nokomis' younger sister. In grief at Tharrin's death, Maia makes a desperate attempt to kill Fornis, but is thwarted by Occula, who was indeed inducted into the queen's household. Occula intends to take her own revenge on Fornis when the time is right; meanwhile she is performing the sort of sado-masochistic services of which Maia had been incapable and which show how deranged Fornis can be. As civil war breaks out in the city, Maia learns that Anda-Nokomis and Zen-Kurel have been brought to Bekla as prisoners. In flight from Fornis' murderous fury, Maia frees the two men, and with them and Zirek and Meris (who have been hiding since assassinating Sencho), she flees Bekla. The former prisoners are bitterly angry at Maia for betraying them at the Valderra, which she had idealistically considered an attempt to save their lives. Nevertheless, they agree to return with her to Suba or Terekenalt. Maia and her companions recover on a remote farm, then travel for a time with rebel freebooters. Meris, always a troublemaker, gets herself killed by one of them. Maia gradually regains Zen-Kurel's and Anda-Nokomis' trust by her sincere efforts to help them. After an arduous boat escape from the Beklan Empire to Terekenalt, Anda-Nokomis is killed and Maia receives a marriage proposal from the man she loves most. Two years later, Maia (with her little son) visits the capital of her new country and by chance meets Occula. Occula describes at length how she killed Fornis, aided by supernatural forces. She tells Maia that the rebels succeeded in overthrowing the Leopards' regime. The story ends with Maia refusing Occula's plea to go back to Bekla; she would rather help Zen-Kurel and his father manage their farm.
1443090	/m/051_s6	The Pendragon Adventure	D.J. MacHale		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Robert "Bobby" Pendragon, an everyday athletic junior high school student from Stony Brook, Connecticut discovers that he is a Traveler: someone who is able to use mystical flumes to journey among ten distinct spacetime realities, called "territories." His Uncle Press, the lead Traveler, tells him that they have a crucial mission: to stop the efforts of the shapeshifting demon Saint Dane, a supporter of the darker side of human nature who believes that everything there is or was, collectively called Halla, must be destroyed so that he may rebuild it, according to his own designs. As each territory reaches a critical turning point, Saint Dane arrives, hoping to lead its people toward self-destruction. Bobby travels to the ten territories to thwart Saint Dane's plans, sending journals to his home (Second Earth) to be received by his best friends Mark Dimond and Courtney Chetwynde, who become sometimes involved with the action and are deemed Bobby's "acolytes." There is one Traveler from each territory and Bobby soon realizes that his role is to replace his uncle as the lead Traveler, pursuing Saint Dane across Halla, and helping to guide the territories back toward stability with the assistance of the other Travelers, their acolytes, and further allies. The turning points of the territories, in order, occur on Denduron, Cloral, First Earth, Veelox, Eelong, Zadaa, Quillan, Ibara, Second Earth, and Third Earth. Not only does Bobby come up against the forces of Saint Dane, but he also learns the skills of martial arts and how to respect the diverse peoples of the territories he encounters, which wildly differ in their social structures, technologies, philosophies, traditions, and other cultural aspects. He also has to adapt to each territory's environments to get to Saint Dane. As the saga progresses, Bobby begins to learn the nature of what it really means to be a Traveler, that Saint Dane's ultimate goal includes a mysterious event called "the Convergence," and how different he actually is from a normal American teenager. By the ninth book, Bobby successfully prevents the destruction of six territories, but on Second Earth, Veelox, and Quillan the Travelers fail, allowing Saint Dane to claim victory. Even worse, by taking over Second Earth, Saint Dane manages to reverse all previous Traveler victories, founding an elitist, genocidal cult called Ravinia that marches its robot army of humanoid soldiers freely throughout the territories. In the last book, Bobby and the Travelers learn that they are not actually humans, but rather, spirits created by Solara, the source of all accumulated human knowledge. Reuniting one last time, they manage to defeat Saint Dane in a final battle on Third Earth, thus reviving Halla and beginning its process toward recovery.
1444112	/m/0522c9	Perceforest				 Alexander, having conquered Britain according to this accounting of origins, departs for Babylon, leaving Perceforest in charge. Perceforest, king of Britain, introduces Christian faith and establishes his Franc Palais of free equals, the best knights, with clear parallels to the Round Table. "Thus the romance would trace back the model of ideal civilization that it proposes, a model also for the orders of chivalry created from the 14th century onwards, to a legendary origin where the glory of Alexander is united with the fame of Arthur." (Voicu 2003) Perceforest, concerning the hardy king errant who dared "pierce" the evil forest, was first printed in Paris in 1528, as La Tres Elegante Delicieux Melliflue et Tres Plaisante Hystoire du Tres Noble Roy Perceforest in four volumes and soon (1531) printed in Italian. A Spanish translation is also known.
1444797	/m/0523r_	Peter Simple	Frederick Marryat		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is an insight into the naval career of a young gentleman during the period of British Mastery of the seas in the early 19th century. The hero of the title is introduced as 'the fool of the family', son of a parson and heir presumptive to the influential Lord Privilege. This forms a sub plot among several others that run alongside the main narrative which mainly concerns the young man's journey from adolescent to adulthood amidst a backdrop of war at sea, and paints at firsthand a detailed picture of the people and character of that period. One of the key components of the tale is Peter's relationship with the various shipmates he meets, mainly that of an older officer who takes young Simple under his wing and proves invaluable in his sea education, and also includes a post captain who suffers from Munchausen syndrome among others. The whole is a series of adventures and encounters that shape Peter and suck the reader into his world of privileges and hardships, courage and cowardice and generally steals time as effectively as a modern bestseller with the added bonus of being written by an experienced and noted sea officer of the period and is therefore very well informed.
1444990	/m/05249v	Absolute Power	Ray Russell	1996-11-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An experienced burglar, Luther Whitney, breaks into a billionaire's house with the intent of robbing it. While there, he witnesses the President of the United States and the billionaire's wife having sex; however, their lovemaking turns violent and Secret Service agents burst in and kill the woman. Whitney escapes, but not before the Secret Service learns of his presence; they blame the wife's murder on Whitney. Whitney goes on the run from the President's agents while a detective tries to piece together the crime.
1445000	/m/0524bl	The Original of Laura	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov			 Based on discussions with unidentified scholars, The Times summarizes the plot as follows: Philip Wild, an enormously corpulent scholar, is married to a slender, flighty and wildly promiscuous woman called Flora. Flora initially appealed to Wild because of another woman that he’d been in love with, Aurora Lee. Death and what lies beyond it, a theme which fascinated Nabokov from a very young age, are central. The book opens at a party and there follow four continuous scenes, after which the novel becomes more fragmented. It is not clear how old Wild is, but he is preoccupied with his own death and sets about obliterating himself from the toes upwards through meditation, a sort of deliberate self-inflicted self-erasure.
1446062	/m/0526rd	Shatterglass	Tamora Pierce	2003-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Trisana (Tris) Chandler meets Kethlun (Keth) Warder, a glass mage with a dangerous power: lightning. During their first meeting, he was unconsciously using his ambient powers and accidentally created a living dragon out of glass. Tris saves the dragon from being smashed by Keth, and names it Chime. She later finds out that he had been struck by lightning less than a year ago, and this left him paralyzed and with a great fear of lightning. He learned to walk again, but his speech is a little slow, and he lost his ease at glass-blowing. A twenty-year-old man just as stubborn as Tris, Keth won't accept Tris or any of her teachings. He argues with her constantly, and refuses to learn about his lightning abilities, fearing a relapse into paralysis. Tris is surprisingly patient with him as she guides him through meditation and control over his powers. Eventually, Keth learns to trust Tris' instincts, and grudgingly accepts her as his teacher. Meanwhile, mysterious murders are taking place. All the murdered women are Yaskedasi, female entertainers who are looked down upon in the town for their immodesty. But when one of the murdered Yaskedasi turns up in the town's central fountain, everyone starts to take notice. The town has a culture of thanatophobia, an irrational fear of death. Each time a person dies, the place must be cleansed by the town's priests when they perform the traditional cleansing ceremony. This ceremony is not only religious, but magical as well, effectively erasing all traces of the murderer, making it impossible for the authorities to track the killer, nicknamed the 'Ghost' by locals. Keth has been asked to attempt to find the Ghost by way of glass balls that only he can make. These balls hold scenes of past crimes in them, causing him to be a suspect at first. Keth and Tris struggle, first against the local authorities, then against each other in the creation of these globes. When Keth's friend Yali is killed by the Ghost, the race takes on new meaning.
1446696	/m/05281m	Nausea	Jean-Paul Sartre		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Written in the form of journal entries, it follows 30-year-old Antoine Roquentin who, returned from years of travel, settles in the fictional French seaport town of Bouville to finish his research on the life of an 18th-century political figure. But during the winter of 1932 a "sweetish sickness," as he calls nausea, increasingly impinges on almost everything he does or enjoys: his research project, the company of an autodidact who is reading all the books in the local library alphabetically, a physical relationship with a café owner named Françoise, his memories of Anny, an English girl he once loved, even his own hands and the beauty of nature. Over time, his disgust towards existence forces him into self-hatred and near-insanity. He embodies Sartre's theories of existential angst, and he searches anxiously for meaning in all the things that had filled and fulfilled his life up to that point. But finally Antoine comes to a revelation into the nature of his being when he faces the troublesomely provisional and limited nature of existence itself. In his resolution at the end of the book he accepts the indifference of the physical world to man's aspirations. He is able to see that realization not only as a regret but also as an opportunity. People are free to make their own meaning: a freedom that is also a responsibility, because without that commitment there will be no meaning.
1447103	/m/052922	Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War	Clive Barker	2004	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The entire book is spread out over eight weeks of time, compared to the two or three in Book 1, titled simply Abarat. The book picks up several weeks after the original had left off; weeks wherein Candy Quackenbush and Malingo the Geshrat (a character introduced in the first book) have traveled from Hour to Hour to evade the bounty hunter Otto Houlihan. Christopher Carrion's whereabouts are revealed only in the second quarter of the book, wherein he plots with the Sacbrood in the Pyramids of Xuxux. Sacbrood are terrifying insects of all shapes and sizes which Christopher Carrion has been breeding in order to help him create Absolute Midnight. Under the cover produced by the Sacbrood, he expects, the destroyers called the Requiax will emerge from under the Sea of Izabella (which surrounds the Abarat) and annihilate everything they see, giving Carrion the opportunity to re-organize the world according to his will. Candy begins to develop powers of great magic, with which she frees the mysterious beings called Totemix from their imprisonment in the Twilight Palace on the island of Scoriae. Malingo, separated from her on the carnival island of Babilonium, joins with others of Candy's acquaintance to form a force of resistance against the armies of Midnight. Candy is eventually captured by Letheo, the lizard-boy servant of Christopher Carrion, and taken to the island Efreet. The enchantress Diamanda, having died of an encounter with a monster, travels as a ghost to the human world, where she finds her also ghostly husband Henry and with him works to prepare Candy's home town for the flood resulting from its imminent meeting with the Abarat. When this meeting occurs, Henry's opening of the factory farm which is the town's only industrial outlet is used as a comment on the variety-deprived lives of chickens raised in such factories. This book introduces readers to new characters including Finnegan Hob, the would-be husband of Princess Boa, who is discovered by other characters in search of himself. Having persuaded him to give up his vendetta against the Abaratian dragons, whom he blames for his fianceé's death, the seekers travel to Efreet, where Candy is held prisoner by Christopher Carrion. They rescue Candy and at her request return her to the human world, where she intends to hide from the Abarat's perils. The two worlds meet in a dramatic climax, wherein it is revealed by the magician Kaspar Wolfswinkel that Princess Boa's soul is contained within Candy's body, having been placed there by the Fantomaya in obedience to the belief that Princess Boa, or her reincarnation, could halt the Abarat's progressive degradation and revitalize the Abarat as a whole. Christopher Carrion clashes with his grandmother Mater Motley, having learned that she had concealed Candy's dual nature from him, and is severely wounded in the process (whether he dies or not is unclear). Candy and most of the major characters return to the Abarat when it is withdrawn from the human world. There, Mater Motley assumes control of Gorgossium Island, where she executes all of Christopher Carrion's living supporters. Kaspar Wolfswinkel's five hats, the source of his power, are left in the human world.
1448336	/m/052d9c	Brigitta				 The first person narrator, a German-speaking man, is sent a letter by a man called the Major who asks the narrator to visit him for a while in Hungary. He invites him to perhaps stay for months or years. The narrator accepts this invitation and wanders for a while through Hungary in order to gain some insight into the land. The two men had gotten to know each other during a trip in Italy and were, for a time, inseparable. The narrator meets a woman dressed and riding her horse like a man, and he first mistakes her for the Major himself. The woman guides him to the home of the Major. After their reunion, the Major shows the narrator around his land and the narrator becomes familiar with his surroundings. The Major is beloved by the people working his land and has a greenhouse in which he grows and sells various grains. He also has vines and cornfields. In Hungary, the Major finally accomplished his goal of finding fulfilling work. The Major tells the narrator that he had considered becoming an artist, but that he lacks the large and simple heart needed to inspire humanity with deep and penetrating words. The Major therefore satisfies himself with practical work. The Major was inspired to do his work on the land by a woman named Brigitta Maroshely, who had begun turning the previously barren landscape in that part of Hungary into something fruitful. The narrator finally is introduced to this energetic and capable woman himself after hearing about her from the Major. The Major spoke of Brigitta with the highest praises. The narrator notices that the Major and Brigitta act almost as if they were in love. This is unremarkable at first, but becomes more and more noticeable as the story progresses. Brigitta’s life story is thrown into the overall story as its own chapter in order to provide background and to make this remarkable woman more understandable. Brigitta lived with her family in a castle, but she more or less lived in her own apartment, isolated from the rest of the family. The development of Brigitta’s strong character is a result of almost complete lack of physical beauty. Brigitta grew up with two lovely younger sisters. As children, Brigitta was ignored by guests, who would always just ask how her more attractive sisters were doing. Brigitta was never noticed by anyone and played by herself most of the time, rejecting pretty dolls and bringing bits of wood and stones into bed with her. Brigitta was, however, clever and learned to ride. The beauty of her sisters attracted much attention when the girls grew older. Brigitta, on the other hand, was just strong and silent. She made her own plain dresses and strange headpieces for herself. A young man, recently returned from travels to the town of his birth, called Stephan Murai, came to one of the family’s social parties. This man was rumored to be one of the finest men that people had ever seen. The parents of Brigitta hoped to attract him to one of the two pretty sisters. Surprisingly, the handsome young man was fascinated by Brigitta and her ways. Murai fell in love with her. It takes Brigitta a long time to be convinced of Murai’s love and tells him it will only lead him to his downfall. She is eventually convinced and loves him immeasurably. They marry with the approval of both sets of parents and bear a son. During his work of the land, Murai meets the beautiful young daughter of a man from the area. They flirt, race horses and joke together and Murai feels drawn to her beauty and light manner. She is quite the opposite of Brigitta. One day Murai lets his feelings out and heartily embraces the young woman. The relationship between the girl and Murai ends after the embrace, but Brigitta had some idea of Murai’s fascination for the girl and confronts him. He clasps both of Brigitta’s hands and tells her that he hates her. Murai leaves and Brigitta must raise her son alone. Brigitta migrates to the region in which the story takes place and starts working the land with her son. Once as Brigitta lay sick with fever in bed, the Major came and cared for her during her illness. He stayed day and night by her bedside. Since that time, the Major and Brigitta experienced a true friendship. Often discussed are the Major’s watchdogs that are supposed to protect his houses from wolves. After a hard winter, the wolves begin to go after people. During a ride one night, the narrator and the major come across a pack of wolves attacking Gustav, Brigitta’s son. Gustav is bitten in the leg and loses much blood. The Major brings Gustav back to his lodgings and calls for a doctor and for Brigitta. The doctor says that Gustav will be fine, but in a fever for several days. Brigitta stays by her son’s bedside in the Major’s house. The Major, observing the love of Brigitta for her son, begins to cry. The Major tells the narrator that he had always wished to have a son himself. Brigitta overhears, looks at the Major, and they suddenly embrace passionately. The narrator learns that the Major is actually Stephan Murai. After running away from Brigitta, he could not forget about her and could never really think about another woman. He went the Hungary, where Brigitta was living and finds her feverish. She recognizes him as the father of her son when her illness is cured, and they promise to remain just friends. Tense feeling of more than friendship lurked under the surface for many years. When Brigitta’s son is ill, the Major’s heartfelt emotion breaks the treaty of friendship between Brigitta and the Major. Brigitta says that he has finally become a good person and they embrace, verifying the complete fulfillment of their love. All the while, the narrator stands somewhat awkwardly thereby (like he has for much of the story). He stays with the newly reunited family for the entire winter in Hungary and becomes almost like a member of the family himself. At the end, the narrator returns to his fatherland. de:Brigitta (Stifter)
1449439	/m/052hdv	Kidnapped	Robert Louis Stevenson		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The full title of the book gives away major parts of the plot and creates the false impression that the novel is autobiographical. It is Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his Sufferings in a Desert Isle; his Journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called: Written by Himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson. The central character and narrator is a young man named David Balfour (Balfour being Stevenson's mother's maiden name), young and naive but resourceful, whose parents have recently died and who is out to make his way in the world. He is given a letter by the minister of Essendean, Mr. Campbell, to be delivered to the House of Shaws in Cramond, where David's uncle, Ebenezer Balfour, lives. On his journey, David asks many people where the House of Shaws is, and all of them speak of it darkly as a place of fear and evil. David arrives at the ominous House of Shaws and is confronted by his paranoid Uncle Ebenezer, armed with a blunderbuss. His uncle is also niggardly, living on "parritch" and small ale, and indeed the House of Shaws itself is partially unfinished and somewhat ruinous. David is allowed to stay, and soon discovers evidence that his father may have been older than his uncle, thus making himself the rightful heir to the estate. Ebenezer asks David to get a chest from the top of a tower in the house, but refuses to provide a lamp or candle. David is forced to scale the stairs in the dark, and realizes that not only is the tower unfinished in some places, but that the steps simply end abruptly and fall into the abyss. David concludes that his uncle intended for him to have an "accident" so as not to have to give over his inheritance. David confronts his uncle, who promises to tell David the whole story of his father the next morning. A ship's cabin boy, Ransome, arrives the next day, and tells Ebenezer that Captain Hoseason of the brig Covenant needs to meet him to discuss business. Ebenezer takes David to Queensferry, where Hoseason awaits, and David makes the mistake of leaving his uncle alone with the captain while he visits the shore with Ransome. Hoseason later offers to take them on board the brig briefly, and David complies, only to see his uncle returning to shore alone in a skiff. He is then immediately struck senseless. David awakens bound hand and foot in the hold of the ship. He becomes weak and sick, and one of the Covenant's officers, Mr. Riach, convinces Hoseason to move David up to the forecastle. Mr. Shuan, a mate on the ship, finally takes his routine abuse of Ransome too far and murders the unfortunate youth. David is repulsed at the crew's behaviour, and learns that the Captain plans to sell him into servitude in the Carolinas. David replaces the slain cabin boy, and the ship encounters contrary winds which drive her back toward Scotland. Fog-bound near the Hebrides, they strike a small boat. All of its crew are killed except one man, Alan Breck {Stewart}, who is brought on board and offers Hoseason a large sum of money to drop him off on the mainland. David later overhears the crew plotting to kill Breck and take all his money. The two barricade themselves in the round house, where Alan kills the murderous Shuan and David wounds Hoseason. Five of the crew are killed outright, and the rest refuse to continue fighting. Alan is a Jacobite who supports the claim of the House of Stuart to the throne of Scotland. He is initially suspicious of the pro-Whig David, who is also loyal to King George. Still, the young man has given a good account of himself in the fighting and impresses the old soldier. Hoseason has no choice but to give Alan and David passage back to the mainland. David tells his tale of woe to Alan, and Alan explains that the country of Appin where he is from is under the tyrannical administration of Colin Roy of Glenure, a Campbell and Government agent. Alan vows that, should he find the "Red Fox," he will kill him. The Covenant tries to negotiate a difficult channel without a proper chart or pilot, and is soon driven aground on the notorious Torran Rocks. David and Alan are separated in the confusion, with David being washed ashore on the isle of Erraid near Mull, while Alan and the surviving crew row to safety on that same island. David spends a few days alone in the wild before getting his bearings. David learns that his new friend has survived, and has two encounters with beggarly guides: one who attempts to stab him with a knife, and another who is blind but an excellent shot with a pistol. David soon reaches Torosay where he is ferried across the river and receives further instructions from Alan's friend Neil Roy McRob, and later meets a Catechist who takes the lad to the mainland. As he continues his journey, David encounters none other than the Red Fox (Colin Roy) himself, who is accompanied by a lawyer, servant, and sheriff's officer. When David stops the Campbell man to ask him for directions, a hidden sniper kills the hated King's agent. David is denounced as a conspirator and flees for his life, but by chance reunites with Alan. The youth believes Breck to be the assassin, but Alan denies responsibility. The pair flee from Redcoat search parties until they reach James (Stewart) of the Glens, whose family is burying their hidden store of weapons and burning papers that could incriminate them. James tells the travellers that he will have no choice but to "paper" them (distribute printed descriptions of the two with a reward listed), but provides them with weapons and food for their journey south, and David with a change of clothes (which the printed description will not match). Alan and David then begin their flight through the heather, hiding from Government soldiers by day. As the two continue their journey, David's health rapidly deteriorates, and by the time they are set upon by wild Highlanders who serve a chief in hiding, Cluny Macpherson, he is barely conscious. Alan convinces Cluny to give them shelter. The Highland Chieftain takes a dislike to David, but defers to the wily Breck's opinion of the lad. David is tended by Cluny's people and soon recovers, though in the meantime Alan loses all of their money playing cards with Cluny, only for Cluny to give it back. As David and Alan continue their flight, David becomes progressively more ill, and he nurses anger against Breck for several days over the loss of his money. The pair nearly come to blows, but eventually reach the house of Duncan Dhu, who is a brilliant piper. While staying there, Alan meets a foe of his, Robin Oig—son of Rob Roy MacGregor, who is a murderer and renegade. Alan and Robin nearly fight a duel, but Duncan persuades them to leave the contest to bagpipes. Both play brilliantly, but Alan admits Robin is the better piper, so the quarrel is resolved. Alan and David prepare to leave the Highlands and return to David's country. In one of the most humorous passages in the book, Alan convinces an innkeeper's daughter from Limekilns that David is a dying young Jacobite nobleman, in spite of David's objections, and she ferries them across the Firth of Forth. There they meet a lawyer of David's uncle, Mr. Rankeillor, who agrees to help David receive his inheritance. Rankeillor explains that David's father and uncle had once quarrelled over a woman, David's mother, and the older Balfour had married her, informally giving the estate to his brother while living as an impoverished school teacher with his wife. This agreement had lapsed with his death. David and the lawyer hide in bushes outside Ebenezer's house while Breck speaks to him, claiming to be a man who found David nearly dead after the wreck of the Covenant and is representing folk holding him captive in the Hebrides. He asks David's uncle whether to kill him or keep him. The uncle flatly denies Alan's statement that David had been kidnapped, but eventually admits that he paid Hoseason "twenty pound" to take David to "Caroliny". David and Rankeillor then emerge from their hiding places and speak with Ebenezer in the kitchen, eventually agreeing that David will be provided two-thirds of the estate's income for as long as his wicked uncle survived. The novel ends with David and Alan parting ways, Alan going to France, and David going to a bank to settle his money. At one point in the book, a reference is made to David's eventually studying at the University of Leyden, a fairly common practice for young Scottish gentry seeking a law career in the eighteenth century.
1449448	/m/052hf6	True at First Light	Ernest Hemingway	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is set in mid-20th century Kenya Colony during the Mau-Mau rebellion. In his introduction to True at First Light, Patrick Hemingway describes the Kikuyu and Kamba tribes at the time of the Mau-Mau rebellion. He explains that if the Kamba had joined the rebellion, Ernest and Mary Hemingway "would have then stood a good chance of being hacked to death in their beds as they slept by the very servants they so trusted and thought they understood." The book takes place in December while the narrator, Ernest, and his wife, Mary, are in a safari camp in the Kenyan highlands on the flank of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where they find themselves temporarily at risk when a group of Mau-Mau rebels escape from jail. The blend of travel memoir and fiction opens with the white hunter Philip Percival leaving the safari group to visit his farm, handing control of the camp to Ernest, who is worried about being attacked and robbed, because there are guns, alcohol, and food in the camp. Deputized as an assistant game warden, he makes daily rounds in the game reserve, and maintains communication with the local tribes. He is accompanied by two African game scouts, Chungo and Arap Meina and, for a period, the district game warden G.C (Gin Crazed). Other camp members include Keiti, who runs the camp, the safari cook, Mbebia, and two stewards, Nguili and Msembi. For six months Mary has been tracking a large black-maned lion, determined to finish the hunt by Christmas. In subsequent chapters, Ernest worries that Mary is unable to kill the lion for various reasons: she is too short to see the prey in the tall grass; she misses her shots with other game; and he thinks she is too soft-hearted to kill the animal. During this period, Ernest becomes entranced with Debba, a woman from a local village, whom the others jokingly refer to as his second wife. From her and the villagers he wants to learn tribal practices and customs. When Mary's lion is finally killed at the book's halfway mark, the local shamba (village) gathers for a ngoma (dance). Because she has dysentery, Mary leaves for Nairobi to see a doctor; while she is gone Ernest kills a leopard, after which the men have a protracted ngoma. When Mary returns from Nairobi, she asks Ernest for an airborne sightseeing tour of the Congo Basin as a Christmas present. Ernest describes his close relationships with the local men; indulges in memories of previous relationships with writers such as George Orwell, and D.H. Lawrence; and satirizes the role of organized religion. Subjects as diverse as the smell of the pine woods in Michigan, the nature of Parisian cafés , and the quality of Simenon's writing are treated with stream of consciousness digressions. The back of the book includes a section titled "Cast of Characters", a Swahili glossary, and the editor's acknowledgments.
1451929	/m/052p26	Airport	Arthur Hailey	1968	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story takes place at Lincoln International, a fictional Chicago airport based very loosely on O'Hare International Airport. The action mainly centers on Mel Bakersfeld, the Airport General Manager. His devotion to his job is tearing apart his family and his marriage to his wife Cindy, who resents his use of his job at the airport as a device to avoid going to various after-hours events she wants him to participate in, as she attempts to climb into the social circles of Chicago's elite. His problems in his marriage are further exacerbated by his romantically-charged friendship with a lovely divorcee, Trans America Airlines passenger relations manager Tanya Livingston. The story takes place mainly over the course of one evening and night, as a massive snowstorm plays havoc with airport operations. The storyline centers on Bakersfeld's struggles to keep the airport open during the storm. His chief problem is the unexpected closure of primary Runway 30 (runway 29 in the subsequent film), caused when a landing airliner turns off past the wrong side of a runway marker light, burying the plane's landing gear in the snow, and blocking the runway. This becomes a major problem as another airplane, Trans America Flight Two, experiences a midair emergency and returns to Lincoln. This requires that runway 30 be made operational---at any cost. The closing of runway 30 requires the use of shorter runway 25 (runway 22 in the subsequent film), which has the unfortunate consequence of causing planes to take off over a noise-sensitive suburb, whose residents picket the airport in protest. The shorter runway 25 is also later inadequate to land the returning airplane, which has suffered major structural and mechanical damage due to explosive decompression caused by the detonation of the bomb brought on board. The book presents an overview of the vast and complex operations involved in operating a major commercial airport, much of which is still applicable over 40 years later. Several major and minor characters appear, illustrating the vast complexity of the airport and its operations. They include Customs officers, lawyers, snow clearers, airport police, doctors, clerks etc.
1453092	/m/052sc3	One Touch of Venus	S. J. Perelman			 A long-lost, priceless statue of the goddess Venus is found and placed on display in an art museum in New York. A slow but good-hearted window dresser, Rodney Hatch, kisses the statue when intoxicated. The sculpture comes to life, and the two fall in love, although Rodney is already engaged. Farcical complications ensue, and Rodney takes "Venus" to the model-display house in the store, where the store's boss finds her. He, too, falls in love with her and makes her Glamour Girl Number One. Rodney and Venus dance in Central Park, but Rodney is arrested for stealing the statue. Venus then goes to the boss to convince him to drop charges against Rodney. Unfortunately, she must return back to her marble state, so Venus goes back to her pedestal and Rodney is released. While Rodney is sadly preparing for another unveiling of a now-marble Venus, a new employee asks him a question where the model-display house is. She tells him her name is Venus Jones, and she is an exact double of the sculpture Venus. Surprised, Rodney takes her to see the model home himself.
1453348	/m/052t4v	The Death of Ivan Ilyich	Leo Tolstoy	1886	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Ivan Ilyich lives a carefree life that is "most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." Like everyone he knows, he spends his life climbing the social ladder. Enduring marriage to a woman whom he often finds too demanding, he works his way up to be a magistrate, thanks to the influence he has over a friend who has just been promoted, focusing more on his work as his family life becomes less tolerable. While hanging curtains for his new home one day, he falls awkwardly and hurts his side. Though he does not think much of it at first, he begins to suffer from a pain in his side. As his discomfort grows, his behavior towards his family becomes more irritable. His wife finally insists that he visit a physician. The physician cannot pinpoint the source of his malady, but soon it becomes clear that his condition is terminal. Confronted with his diagnosis, Ivan attempts every remedy he can to obtain a cure for his worsening situation until the pain grows so intense he is forced to cease working and spend the remainder of his days in bed. Here, he is brought face to face with his mortality, and realizes that although he knows of it, he does not truly grasp it. During the long and painful process of death, Ivan dwells on the idea that he does not deserve his suffering because he has lived rightly. If he had not lived a good life, there could be a reason for his pain; but he has, so pain and death must be arbitrary and senseless. As he begins to hate his family for avoiding the subject of his death, for pretending he is only sick and not dying, he finds his only comfort in his peasant boy servant Gerasim, the only person in Ivan's life who does not fear death, and also the only one who, apart from his own son, shows compassion for him. Ivan begins to question whether he has, in fact, lived a good life. In the final days of his life, Ivan makes a clear split between an artificial life, such as his own, which masks the true meaning of life and makes one fear death, and an authentic life, the life of Gerasim. Authentic life is marked by compassion and sympathy; the artificial life by self-interest. Then "some force" strikes Ivan in the chest and side, and he is brought into the presence of a bright light. His hand falls onto his nearby son's head, and Ivan pities his son. He no longer hates his daughter or wife, but rather feels pity for them, and hopes his death will release them. Insodoing, his terror of death leaves him, and as Tolstoy suggests, death itself disappears.
1454373	/m/052w1j	The 12.30 from Croydon	Freeman Wills Crofts		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Set in Yorkshire and London in 1933, The 12.30 from Croydon is about 35 year-old Charles Swinburn, the owner of a factory in Cold Pickerby, Yorkshire, in which electric motors are produced. Swinburn has inherited the works from his father and uncle. While the former has been dead for many years, Andrew Crowther, his uncle, leads a retired life in the same town. At 65, his health has recently started to deteriorate. In particular, Crowther is suffering from indigestion. Swinburn's business is hit by the Great Depression just like any other company, but when he asks his uncle for a loan to be able to avoid bankruptcy he is appalled to find that the old man, obviously no longer able to understand trends in the world economy, is unwilling to grant him a substantial sum to overcome his financial difficulties. Swinburn knows that he and his cousin Elsie will each inherit half of Crowther's fortune, so he does not see why he cannot have some of the money a bit earlier&mdash;"an advance on his legacy". At this point the first thoughts that it might be feasible to kill his uncle without being found out occur to Swinburn. His unrequited love for a young woman called Una Mellor helps him come to a quick decision. "It seems a beastly thing to say", she tells him, but I may as well tell you at once that under no circumstances would I marry a poor man. This is not entirely mercenary and selfish. I shouldn't be happy without the things I am accustomed to and my husband wouldn't be happy either. To marry where there would be shortage and privation would mean misery for both of us. It would be simply foolish and I'm not going to do it. [Chapter IV] After thinking the matter over again and again, Swinburn resolves to poison his uncle with potassium cyanide. He takes all kinds of precautions when he buys the poison. Then he makes a pill that looks like one of Crowther&#39;s anti-indigestion tablets. He buys a bottle of those pills, buries the poisoned pill in that bottle, and, over dinner at his uncle&#39;s, spills a glass of wine which gives him the opportunity to exchange bottles without anyone noticing. Charles Swinburn is particularly proud of his perfect alibi. On the following morning he books a three-week cruise of the Mediterranean. When he is informed of his uncle&#39;s death, he is in Naples, Italy. To his surprise, his uncle took the pill not at home but on his first (and last) flight, the 12.30 from Croydon: The family had been alarmed by a report stating that Elsie had had an accident in France, and Crowther had insisted on coming with Elsie&#39;s father and their daughter. On arrival in France he had been found dead. An inquest is held, but Swinburn feels quite safe when no one seems to implicate him in the case. However, some time later he is approached by Weatherup, Crowther&#39;s butler, who claims he has seen him exchange the bottles, and who starts blackmailing him. Again, Swinburn sees no other solution than to &#34;take that desperate remedy&#34; and kill the butler. This time he cannot be as subtle as when planning his uncle&#39;s death. He brutally slays Weatherup with a piece of lead pipe and dumps his body in a nearby lake. Soon afterwards he is arrested, tried, and hanged. One of the interesting aspects of the novel is the insight the reader gains into the workings of a criminal mind. In particular, Swinburn&#39;s rationalization along utilitarian argumentative patterns must be mentioned in this context: Then he told himself that all this morality business was only an old wives' tale. He, Charles, wasn't tied up by these out-of-date considerations! What was politic was right. What was the greatest good of the greatest number? Why, that Andrew should die. What about all the men that were going to be thrown out of employment? What about the clerks? What about poor old Gairns? What about Gairns's invalid wife? Andrew Crowther's useless life could count for nothing against such a weight of human suffering. [Chapter VII] Crofts&#39;s Detective-Inspector Joseph French, who appears in several of his novels, keeps in the background during the action of The 12.30 from Croydon. He does solve the case, and explains how he did it in the final chapters of the novel, but the emphasis of the book is on the thoughts and deeds of the criminal.
1455148	/m/052xjf	The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar	Edgar Allan Poe	1845-12	{"/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The narrator presents the facts of the extraordinary case of Valdemar which have incited public discussion. He is interested in Mesmerism, a pseudoscience involving bringing a patient into a hypnagogic state by the influence of magnetism, a process which later developed into hypnotism. He points out that, as far as he knows, no one has ever been mesmerized at the point of death, and he is curious to see what effects mesmerism would have on a dying person. He considers experimenting on his friend Ernest Valdemar, an author whom he had previously mesmerized, and who has recently been diagnosed with phthisis (tuberculosis). Valdemar consents to the experiment and informs the narrator by letter that he will probably die in twenty-four hours. Valdemar's two physicians inform the narrator of their patient's poor condition. After confirming again that Valdemar is willing to be part of the experiment, the narrator comes back the next night with two nurses and a medical student as witnesses. Again, Valdemar insists he is willing to take part and asks the narrator to hurry, for fear he has "deferred it for too long". Valdemar is quickly mesmerized, just as the two physicians return and serve as additional witnesses. In a trance, he reports first that he is dying - then that he is dead. The narrator leaves him in a mesmeric state for seven months, checking on him daily. During this time Valdemar is without pulse, heartbeat or perceptible breathing, his skin cold and pale. Finally, the narrator makes attempts to awaken Valdemar, asking questions which are answered with difficulty, his voice seemingly coming from his swollen, blackened tongue. In between trance and wakefulness, Valdemar's tongue begs to quickly either put him back to sleep or to wake him. As Valdemar's voice shouts "dead! dead!" repeatedly, the narrator takes Valdemar out of his trance; in the process, Valdemar's entire body immediately decays into a "nearly liquid mass of loathsome—of detestable putrescence."
1456993	/m/0530vw	Against the Fall of Night	Arthur C. Clarke		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Diaspar is a seemingly ageless city in the year 10 billion AD; the last child, Alvin, was born seventeen years ago. Alvin is a child curious about the outside world, which, according to the earliest histories, was destroyed by the Invaders, leaving only Diaspar. Alvin's desire to see the outside world is considered an eccentricity. When Alvin wanders into a tower to watch a sunset, he finds a rock with the inscription: "There is a better way. Give my greetings to the Keeper of the Records. Alaine of Lyndar". Alvin takes the message to Rorden, the Keeper of the Records, who has access to "all the knowledge of Humanity." Rorden finds the record of the message but does not believe Alvin is ready to understand it. Three years later, Rorden discloses that not only has he been waiting for Alvin to age, but he has also been trying to find out how people in the past went outside. He and Alvin find a way out and Alvin finds a city called Lys. Expecting the city to be abandoned, Alvin is shocked when he finds a thriving place. The inhabitants are different than his own people, living short but full lives and have telepathic abilities. They know about Diaspar but they like their natural setting. Alvin is prevented from going home as the citizens do not want him to reveal Lys to the people of Diaspar. They contact Rorden, who already knew of Lys, and tell him that Alvin will stay three days to allow the council of Lys time to decide his fate. Alvin makes a friend called Theon, who has a pet giant insect (Krif). While Theon shows Alvin the woods, the boys realize they both know about the legend of Shalmirane, a fortress mentioned in the earliest human history; a fortress which defended against the invaders and signified the end of Man's conquest of space. The boys decide to find the fortress, only a day's travel away. At the fortress they discover that a large wall that defended the building survived, though its rocks were destroyed over time. When they venture into the fortress they find an old man with whom they share a meal and a story of his origins; he was a follower of the Master. This Master came from space during the recovery following the invasion, attracting followers with his powers and machines. When he was dying, he spoke of the "Great Ones" returning. His followers made this into a religion. The religion has been dying, and the old man is one of the few remaining followers; he also has a few of the Master's machines. Alvin asks to borrow one of the old man's robots so he can bring it to Rorden. The boys return to Lys, and Alvin is told to either stay in Lys forever, or return to Diaspar without his memories. Alvin agrees to the mind wipe, but programs the robot to grab him before his mind is wiped and take him to the transit station. He returns home, where he finds Rorden, and they look under the city, where robots are made and repaired by other robots. A repair robot tells them it cannot fix Alvin's robot, but duplicates it. The council questions Alvin and threatens to seal the path to Lys. Alvin shows Rorden a ship, buried under the sands outside the city, that was the Master's ship. Alvin decides to take the ship and go to Lys to return the robot. He meets Theon and speaks with Lys' Council, telling them that Diaspar knows about Lys. Lys realizes that through the appearance of the ship, both of their cultures will be forced to interact. Alvin travels to Shalmirane to return the robot, only to find the Old Man dead, with his robots left to forever guard him. Alvin takes his ship into space, towards an abnormal set of stars. He arrives at the middle star and meets an alien being that is no more than a child but has memories going back further than any human. The alien being, Vanamonde, is convinced that Alvin is the creator it has been waiting for. It follows Alvin home, where people from Lys and Diaspar meet to study it, each using their strengths to learn more about their history. They learn that the history they have known is false. Man only reached Persephone when space came to them, and they found species far greater than Man. They learned from them and decided to grow themselves as humanity before exploring space. They spent half a billion years perfecting the ability to live for infinite amount of time, like Diaspar, or with telepathic abilities, like those in Lys. After improving themselves, they tried to create a pure mentality, a being that was free from physical limitations. They succeeded in creating a pure being, but it was insane. The Mentality, called the Mad Mind, almost destroyed the galaxy, and is now locked up, waiting for the time when its bonds break again. After that they created Vanamonde who is destined to meet (and fight) the Mad Mind at the end of time.
1461856	/m/053f8x	Jitterbug Perfume	Tom Robbins		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A powerful and righteous 8th century king named Alobar narrowly escapes regicide at the hands of his own subjects, as it is their custom to kill the king at the first sign of aging. After fleeing, no longer a king but a simple peasant, he travels through Eurasia, and eventually meets the goat-god Pan, who is slowly losing his powers as the world turns toward Christianity. In India, he meets a girl, Kudra, who goes on to become his wife. As with most of Robbins' couples, their mutual libido is enormous, and their love quite like something out of a fairy tale. After an encounter with a mysterious group known as "The Bandaloop Doctors," Alobar is set down the path towards eternal life, which, according to Robbins, can be attained by a consistent ritual of controlled breath work, simple eating, sex, and bathing in extremely hot water. Alobar and Kudra, successful in their immortality, travel about Europe until the 17th century, when they attempt a sort of new transcendental meditation and become separated into different astral planes. Meanwhile, in present-day, a "genius waitress" named Priscilla struggles with a difficult job in a low-end Mexican restaurant. Priscilla is an amateur perfumer, and is obsessed with trying to locate the base note in recreating a fragrance, something she believes will be almost magical, from a three-hundred-year-old perfume bottle in her possession. While dealing with this, she juggles the unwanted advances of a lesbian co-worker, has a brief affair with an eccentric millionaire obsessed with eternal life, and contemplates the mysterious deliveries of beets to her apartment. In New Orleans, Priscilla's stepmother, the Madame Devalier, a once successful perfumer, is also working to recreate the same fragrance as Priscilla, after her assistant, V'lu re-liberated the ancient bottle . Madame Devalier is intent on restoring her name in the business, and discontinuing the production items one might construe as shady. She seeks something magical using the ultra ingredient Jamaican jasmine supplied by a mysterious man with the helmet of swarming bees, Bingo Pajama. In Paris, the LeFever Parfumaire is concerned about their eccentric leader, Marcel, who equates smell as the most important factor in the forward movement of the evolutionary process. After witnessing an eclipse, he is obsessed with his own scent. The story lines eventually converge into a climax in New Orleans, with a brief stop in another dimension. The main message is summarized in the dying words of Albert Einstein, spoken in Alobar's 8th century Bohemian dialect Erleichda, loosely translated as "lighten up".
1463682	/m/053kn2	Kitchen	Banana Yoshimoto	1988	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Kitchen, a young Japanese woman named Mikage Sakurai struggles to overcome the death of her grandmother. She gradually grows close to one of her grandmother's friends, Yuichi, from a flower shop and ends up staying with him and his transgender mother, Eriko. From Mikage's love of kitchens to her job as a culinary teacher's assistant to the multiple scenes in which food is merely present, Kitchen is a short window into the life of a young Japanese woman and her discoveries about food and love amongst a background of tragedy. In Moonlight Shadow, a woman named Satsuki loses her boyfriend Hitoshi in an accident and tells us: "The night he died my soul went away to some other place and I couldn't bring it back". She becomes friendly with his brother Hiiragi, whose girlfriend died in the same crash. On one insomniac night out walking she meets a strange woman called Urara who has also lost someone. Urara introduces her to the mystical experience of The Weaver Festival Phenomenon, which she hopes will cauterise their collective grief.
1463919	/m/053kyx	Death Wish	Brian Garfield	1972	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Paul Benjamin is a CPA in New York and lifelong liberal. However, his staid life is overturned when his daughter, Carol, and spouse, Esther, are attacked by muggers. His wife does not survive the attack, and his traumatized daughter is left in a vegetative state. Forced to reevaluate his views, Benjamin becomes paranoid and eager for vengeance. After a trip to Arizona, a friend gives him a revolver as a gift. Benjamin shoots a mugger who accosts him. Benjamin continues to take justice into his own hands, drawing would-be muggers into traps by using himself as the bait. In one case, he rents a car, pulls it over to the side of the road, and writes an "Out of Gas" sign on the vehicle. He then hides, waiting for someone to steal the car. When some lawbreakers do so, he shoots them. It is only within the last fifty pages of the first novel that Benjamin slays his first victim. The second novel, Death Sentence, states that Benjamin murdered seventeen people over five weeks.
1464320	/m/053lxn	Peter Camenzind	Hermann Hesse	1904	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with the phrase, "In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child's soul with poetry every day." The novel is purely poetical, and its protagonist in time aspires to become a poet who invests the lives of men with reality in its most beautiful of forms. Peter Camenzind easily reminds one of Hesse's other protagonists, i.e. Siddhartha, Goldmund, and Harry Haller. Like them, he suffers deeply and undergoes many intellectual, physical, and spiritual journeys. In the course of his many journeys, he will come to experience the diverse landscapes of Germany, Italy, France, and Switzerland, as well as the wide range of emotions that humans exhibit at different stages in their lives. In a later stage of his life, he will embody the ideal of St. Francis as he cares for a cripple. Peter Camenzind, as a youth, leaves his mountain village with a great ambition to experience the world and to become one of its denizens. Having experienced the loss of his mother at an early age, and with a desire to leave behind a callous father, he heads to university. As he progresses through his studies, he meets and falls in love with the painter, Erminia Aglietti and becomes a close friend to a young pianist named Richard. Greatly saddened because of the latter's death, he takes up wandering to soak up the diverse experiences of life. Ever faced with the vicissitudes of life, he continually takes up alcohol as a means to confront the harshness and inexplicable strangeness of life. He also meets and falls in love with Elizabeth, even though she will later marry another man. However, his journey through Italy changes him in many respects and enhances his ability to love life and see beauty within all things. It is only when he becomes friends with Boppi, an invalid, does he truly experience what it means to love other human beings. In time, he comes to see a wonderful reflection of humanity in its most noble of forms in Boppi, and the two forge an indelible friendship. After Boppi dies, Peter Camenzind returns to his village and takes care of his aging father, even as he plans out the completion of his life's great work.
1466872	/m/053t88	The High King	Lloyd Alexander	1968-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set only days after the conclusion of Taran Wanderer. It is nearly winter, less than two years after events of The Castle of Llyr. Taran and his companion Gurgi return from wandering to Caer Dallben, in haste after getting news from Kaw the crow that Princess Eilonwy has returned from the Isle of Mona. Indeed they find her at home, along with her escort King Rhun of Mona and the former giant Glew who had been magically restored to human size by potion from Dallben. Taran knows himself now and he is determined to propose marriage to Eilonwy. Before he gets to it, the bard-king Fflewddur Fflam and his mount Llyan arrive with a gravely injured Gwydion, Prince of Don. Servants of Arawn had ambushed them and seized the magical black sword Dyrnwyn. Fortunately their purpose was to secure it and depart. How did Taran escape, Fflewddur asks? Evidently Arawn himself came from Annuvin to the verge of Caer Dallben in the guise of Taran, with no more than the powers of Taran, in order to snare them. Because Dyrnwyn may be pivotal as a threat to Arawn, Dallben consults the oracular pig Hen Wen to determine how it may be regained. During the reading, the ash rods used to communicate shatter and the two thirds of Hen Wen's answer are discouraging and vague. When Gwydion heals sufficiently, he sets out with Taran and others to meet with King Smoit. Gwydion insists that he alone should enter Annuvin to seek the sword, but Smoit's Cantrev Cadiffor is on the way. The small party divides for Rhun and Eilonwy to visit the ships of Mona en route. When Gwydion, Taran, and others reach Caer Cadarn, they are imprisoned by Magg, former Chief Steward of Mona and traitor. He and a small force have previously imprisoned King Smoit and imprisoned or deceived his men. When Eilonwy approaches with the other party, she detects something amiss and they cautiously send Fflewddur Fflam to the gate as a bard traveling alone. After entertaining soldiers for a night, he returns with the bad news. Gwystyl of the Fair Folk is also outside the stronghold, en route home after closing the waypost near Annuvin, personally bearing his final observations to King Eiddileg. Eilonwy takes him by surprise and he reluctantly reveals the voluminous Fair Folks stores concealed in his cloak. With his personal assistance, and stocked with magical smokes, fires, and concealments, all but King Rhun (with their mounts) break in and free the prisoners. The plan goes awry, however; King Smoit and his men are finally able to regain control only by Rhun's intervention, which costs his life. Learning from Gwystyl that the Huntsmen and Cauldron-Born of Annuvin are active outside that realm, Gwydion turns from the quest for Dyrnwyn to planning for battle, presumably first at Caer Dathyl. Gwystyl, Fflewddur, and Taran leave separately to support from the Fair Folk, the northern realms (Fflewddur's small kingdom is northeast), and the Free Commots where Taran wandered the last couple years (southeast). Meanwhile, unknown to Gwydion, the pet crow Kaw has been attacked by gwythaints while spying near Annuvin. Chased far east, he manages to reach Medwyn and that guardian of animals has raised the alarm, asking all the creatures of air and land to oppose the forces of Arawn. Taran, Coll, Eilonwy and Gurgi travel under the unfinished banner of the White Pig on a green field, designed and embroidered by Eilonwy. Taran musters the Commots, and sends them marching in groups to Caer Dathyl while the smiths and weavers rallied by Hevydd and Dwyvach work day and night to equip them. They people rally "to the banner of the White Pig because ... it is the banner of our friend Taran Wanderer".(ch 9) Soon after Taran and the last Commots reach Caer Dathyl, King Pryderi arrives from the western realms (northwest). In council he announces his new allegiance to Arawn, for the good of all, because "Arawn will do what the Sons of Don have failed to do: Make an end of endless wars among the cantrevs, and bring peace where there was none before."(ch 11) He is rejected utterly but permitted to return unharmed to his command of the greatest army. Battle begins next day. Although the Sons of Don and allies have the best of it, the Cauldron-Born arrive en masse before evening, bearing a great ram. The attack parts for their remorseless march to the gates, which they finally burst and then raze the fortress overnight. High King Math and most inside defenders are killed, and Gwydion is proclaimed High King in camp. The Cauldron-Born have never before left Annuvin in numbers. Gwydion determines that the best chance is to attack while it is guarded by mortal men alone. He will lead the Sons of Don to waiting ships on the north coast, and attack by sea, while Taran leads the Commots to delay the Cauldron-Born return march (their power wanes with time and distance from Annuvin). There is no time to wait for other allies to arrive. Taran and his army reinforce a broken wall and "man" it with branches; they are able to hold the tired Cauldron-Born warriors beyond arm's length by brute force, and turn the march from a straight and easy route into the rugged hills. Thanks to a company of Fair Folk, and to the wolves and bears, they destroy most of the Huntsmen who accompany and lead the undead. At last the Cauldron-Born break free of the hills and return to the lowland route, however. Regaining strength as they near Annuvin, it would be futile for the exhausted allies to meet them again head-on. Inevitably they will march the long, easy route to Arawn's stronghold. Taran and the remainder of his army finally reach Annuvin by the direct route, led by Doli into the mountains and by Achren almost over the peak of Mount Dragon. Taran sees that victory is nearly in Gwydion's hands, already in the courtyards of the stronghold. But the march of the Cauldron-Born looks to be just in time to smash the attackers, and a few of the undead break ranks to march up and meet him. At the last, after hurling stone upon the warriors, and tipping the great "dragon" rock off the very summit to roll down, he finds the sword Dyrnwyn uncovered there. He draws the blade, whose flame dismays even the only the undead warrior to reach him. With it he slays the one, and all of his brethren die as well, crying out for the first and only time. After the chaotic defeat of Arawn's forces, the companions gather before the Great Hall. Achren identifies Arawn in the form of a serpent near to striking Taran, and grabs him; he strikes her fatally, but cannot strike again before Taran cleaves him with Dyrnwyn. Then the sword begins to fade, losing its magic. The stronghold bursts in flame and falls in ruins. Eilonwy and Chief Bard Taliesin are able to read the old inscription on the scabbard: "Draw Dyrnwyn, only thou of noble worth, to rule with justice, to strike down evil. Who wields it in good cause shall slay even the Lord of Death." The allies travel to Caer Dallben by ship. Gwydion tells that in victory the Sons of Don, with all kinsmen and kinswomen, must return to the Summer Country. Indeed, all those who still have magic will depart. "All enchantments shall pass away", the Fair Folk have shut down surface wayposts and closed their realm. Dallben and Eilonwy with personal powers must go, and others who have served well have the option, Taran among them. He proposes to Eilonwy at last, and she accepts of course. They will embark again tomorrow. Overnight, Taran is uncomfortable about his decision. The witches Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch appear as beautiful young women and reveal that they too are departing, and leaving him with the unfinished tapestry of his life. He realizes there is much work to be done to rebuild Prydain, and he has made many promises, so he determines to remain behind. Eilonwy is able to give up her magical nature magically, in order to remain with him, and the two are married. Dallben reveals that Taran completes a path prophesied in the Book of Three whereby an orphan of "no station in life" would succeed the Sons of Don as High King. Eventually, Dallben traveled to seek such a one and try to hasten the day; he found a baby hidden in the trees beside a battlefield of great carnage, without any token of parentage. Taran receives many gifts including The Book of Three itself, although "it no longer foretells what is to come, only what has been". In it Dallben writes a conclusion, "And thus did an Assistant Pig-Keeper become High King of Prydain." In time, only the bards knew the truth of it.
1466910	/m/053tc2	The Diary of a Young Girl	Anne Frank	1947	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands Anne Frank began to keep a diary on June 14, 1942, two days after her 13th birthday, and twenty two days before going into hiding with her mother Edith Frank, father Otto Frank, sister Margot Frank and three other people, Hermann van Pels, Auguste van Pels, and Peter van Pels. The group went into hiding in the sealed-off upper rooms of the annex of her father's office building in Amsterdam. The sealed-off upper-rooms also contained a hidden door behind which the Franks would hide during the parts when Nazi soldiers were investigating the buildings for harbored Jews. Mrs. van Pels' dentist, Fritz Pfeffer, joined them four months later. In the published version, names were changed: the van Pels are known as the Van Daans and Fritz Pfeffer is known as Mr. Dussel. With the assistance of a group of Otto Frank's trusted colleagues, they remained hidden for two years and one month, until their betrayal in August 1944, which resulted in their deportation to Nazi concentration camps. Of the group of eight, only Otto Frank survived the war. Anne died in Bergen-Belsen from a typhus infection in early March, shortly (about two weeks) before liberation by British troops in April 1945.
1467647	/m/053w2_	Gathering Blue	Lois Lowry	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Kira is a girl with a twisted leg who lives in a more primitive society where people who can't work die. She has been kept alive by her mother, and, when her mother dies, is brought before the Council of Guardians. Kira's life is spared when she proves she can embroider well, and is assigned to the task of fixing up the robe worn by the singer whose only job is to sing the story of human civilization once a year. She meets Thomas, the boy whose duty is to carve the Singer's staff; and, when running out of thread, begins making a trip to the hut of Annabella, an old woman who teaches Kira dyeing. Annabella shows her the plants needed to make every color, except for blue. Kira slowly learns that her life is less than idyllic. She hears crying in her building, and she and Thomas discover another orphan girl whose ability is to sing and will eventually replace the current Singer. The orphan girl is scolded and punished if she doesn't sing; Kira befriends her but realize that she, Thomas, and the orphan girl do not have as much freedom as thought. At the Ceremony, she sees the Singer (whose robe she is fixing). She realizes that his feet are chained, and he is essentially a prisoner. The implication is that she and the others with Gifts are also prisoners. Kira is also friends with a boy named Matt. Matt tells Kira of a village he once came across while lost in the woods. This village has blue. When the day that the Singer sings his song comes, Matt is nowhere to be found. He eventually returns with a blind man from the village in a blue shirt. The man, it turns out, is the father whom Kira thought was dead. He now lives in a community made up of injured and disabled people who help one another. He has enemies on the council and is forced to return, while Kira decides to stay in the village to continue to mend the singer's robe and help improve the society she lives in.
1467684	/m/053w81	Messenger	Lois Lowry	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Lowry introduced Matty in Messenger; he is an energetic and impatient individual who is undergoing an awkward transition into adulthood as the story begins. Matty lives with Seer, an "unseeing" man who the people of the Village rescued years before. Matty is desperate for his new name to be "Messenger," which he feels is what he is best as being himself. Many of the people in Village are like Seer: cast out from their old communities and sometimes seriously injured by a Jamison, Kira's mentor & protector from Gathering Blue.They have made themselves new homes in Village. Most of the Villagers are reasonably altruistic, and they are never lacking those to help a Villager overcome some disability. Matty is from a community wherein people only know what the community tells them, and where those who do not fit the norm are usually put to death. Outside the safe boundaries of Village is Forest, a foreboding realm which most of the Villagers fear. In spite of the lack of dangerous beasts, Forest itself is animated. It is capable of delivering "Warnings" in the form of injuries caused by such things as sharp twigs, stinging insects, or poisonous plants, all of which attack with deliberate intent. If the person warned enters the forest again, it will kill them. Matty, whom Forest seems to favor, has gone through Forest many times without incident. Consequently, he has become Village's messenger, carrying word to the other communities scattered throughout the region. At one point, Jonas (called "Leader" in this book) says that he received a barge full of books from the community, and that the community has changed. Very early in the book, discord appears in Village. People who trade at a gathering called Trade Mart change from compassionate and generous to angry and impatient. The temperament of the Villagers changes, and they decide to close their borders, no longer permitting the displaced and unwanted of other communities to enter. Seer, in the wake of this sudden change, decides to send Matty to travel through the Forest to retrieve his daughter, Kira, who lives in a town several days away. The journey soon becomes gravely perilous, as the Forest begins to attempt to entangle Kira and Matty. Leader's ability of remote viewing, which the book often refers to as "seeing beyond", allows him to sense the danger. He enters the forest to save them, only to be captured himself. Kira, who has the ability to weave prophecy-like patterns in thread and cloth, uses her gift to contact Leader, who tells her to have Matty use his gift to save them. This gift is a special ability which Matty possesses but hardly understands, which makes him mad, resulting in a fury; a power of healing, which causes wholeness from the inside out. Matty puts his hands to the ground and manages to restore the integrity of Forest and people alike, at the expense of his own life. Leader names Matty the Healer. Near the end is a quotation of poetry, derived from To An Athlete Dying Young: "Today, the road all runners come/Shoulder-high we bring you home/And set you at your threshold down/Townsman of a stiller town." This is spoken by the Village's schoolteacher, known as Mentor. On a side note, in the previous book, Gathering Blue, when Matty was a child known as Matt, the nursing of his dog Branch back to health could be a possible foreshadowing of Matty's healing powers.
1468572	/m/053yhp	The Man Who Counted				 First published in Brazil in 1949, O Homem que Calculava is a series of tales in the style of the Arabian Nights, but revolving around mathematical puzzles and curiosities. The book is ostensibly a translation by Brazilian scholar Breno de Alencar Bianco of an original manuscript by Malba Tahan, a thirteenth century Persian scholar of the Islamic Empire – both equally fictitious. The first two chapters tell how Malba Tahan was traveling from Samarra to Baghdad when he met Beremiz Samir, a young lad with amazing mathematical abilities. The traveler then invited Beremiz to come with him to Baghdad, where a man with his abilities will certainly find profitable employment. The rest of the book tells various incidents that befell the two men along the road and in Baghdad. In all those events, Beremiz Samir uses his abilities with calculation like a magic wand to amaze and entertain people, settle disputes, and find wise and just solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. In the first incident along their trip (chapter III), Beremiz settles a heated inheritance dispute between three brothers. Their father had left them 35 camels, of which 1/2 (17.5 camels) should go to his eldest son, 1/3 (11.666... camels) to the middle one, and 1/9 (3.888... camels) to the youngest. To solve brother's dilemma, Beremiz convinces Malba to donate his only camel to the dead man's estate. Then, with 36 camels, Beremiz gives 18, 12, and 4 animals to the three heirs, making all of them profit with the new share. Of the remaining two camels, one is returned to Malba, and the other is claimed by Beremiz as his reward. The translator's notes observe that a variant of this problem, with 17 camels to be divided in the same proportions, is found in hundreds of recreational mathematics books, such as those of E. Fourrey (1949) and G. Boucheny (1939). However, the 17-camel version leaves only one camel at the end, with no net profit for the estate's executor. At the end of the book, Beremiz uses his abilities to win the hand of his student and secret love Telassim, the daughter of one of the Caliph's advisers. (The caliph mentioned is Al-Musta'sim, and the time period ends with the Abbasid dynasty's collapse.) In the last chapter we learn that Malba Tahan and Beremiz eventually moved to Constantinople, and there they lived long and pleasant lives.
1469703	/m/053_yp	Boomeritis	Ken Wilber		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist, "Ken Wilber", is a brilliant MIT student studying artificial intelligence. Ken believes that the future of evolution includes the departure of human consciousness from the physical realm, or "meatspace", and the transhuman merging of human intelligence with cyberspace. Ken attends a series of lectures at an institution called the Integral Center (an obvious stand-in for the real life Integral Institute) which guides him towards a more expansive understanding of evolution and existence. These lectures are interposed with explicit descriptions of Ken's sexual fantasies with another character, Chloe.
1471009	/m/0543l8	Veronika Decides to Die	Paulo Coelho	1998		 Veronica is a beautiful young woman from Ljubljana, Slovenia who appears to have the perfect life, but nevertheless decides to commit suicide by ingesting too many sleeping pills. While she waits to die, she decides to read a magazine. After seeing an article in the magazine which wittily asks "Where is Slovenia?," she decides to write a letter to the press justifying her suicide, the idea being to make the press believe that she has killed herself because people don't even know where Slovenia is. Her plan fails and she wakes up in Villete, a mental hospital in Slovenia, where she is told she has a week to live. Her presence there affects all of the mental hospital's patients, especially Zedka, who has clinical depression; Mari, who suffers from panic attacks; and Eduard, who has schizophrenia, and with whom Veronika falls in love. During her internment in Villete she realises that she has nothing to lose and can therefore do what she wants, say what she wants and be who she wants without having to worry about what others think of her; as a mental patient, she is unlikely to be criticized. Because of this newfound freedom Veronika experiences all the things she never allowed herself to experience, including hatred and love. In the meantime, Villete's head psychiatrist, Dr. Igor, attempts a fascinating but provocative experiment: can you "shock" someone into wanting to live by convincing her that death is imminent? Like a doctor applying defibrillator paddles to a heart attack victim, Dr. Igor's "prognosis" jump-starts Veronika's new appreciation of the world around her.
1472795	/m/0547qh	Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants	James Wolcott			 Wolcott takes as his subject matter popular right-wing pundits whom he dubs "attack poodles". These include such TV figures as Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Chris Matthews, Dennis Miller, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan, and Robert Novak. He asserts their simplistic sloganeering which panders to disaffected Americans is destroying political discourse. Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants ISBN 1-4013-5212-X
1473293	/m/054969	Number 31328				 The story starts in Aidini, and takes us through the first days of the Turkish occupation. The way to amele taburu is slowly but steadily painted in pale and crimson, in the red bloodstained steps of bare wounded feet walking on hot summer sand. The life of the captives, as seen through the eyes of one who lived through these horrific experiences numbs the spirit of the reader too. The few bright sparks of humanity in a wasteland of inhumanity are treasured, as people are treated as if worthless: struck to death with hammers, lethally wounded and left to die alone, raped and then killed. All hope and all light is lost, despite the occasional effort by the prisoners to help each other—sincere at first, then worn down and half-hearted, until at last utter indifference.
1473548	/m/0549_0	The Songlines	Bruce Chatwin	1987	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the book Chatwin develops his thesis about the primordial nature of Aboriginal song. The writing does not shy away from the actual condition of life for present day indigenous Australians, it does not present the songlines as a new-age fad but from an appreciation of the art and culture of the people for whom they are the keystone of the Real. While the book's first half chronicles the main character's travels through Outback Australia and his various encounters, the second half is dedicated to his musings on the nature of man as nomad and city builder. The basic idea that Chatwin posits is that language started as song, and the aboriginal Dreamtime sings the land into existence. A key concept of aboriginal culture is that the aboriginals and the land are one. By singing the land, the land itself exists; you see the tree, the rock, the path, the land. What are we if not defined by our environment? And in one of the harshest environments on Earth one of our oldest civilizations became literally as one with the country. This central concept then branches out from Aboriginal culture, as Chatwin combines evidence gained there with preconceived ideas on the early evolution of man, and argues that on the African Savannah we were a migratory species, moving solely on foot, hunted by a dominant brute predator in the form of a big cat: hence the spreading of "songlines" across the globe, eventually reaching Australia (Chatwin notes their trajectory generally moves from north-east to south-west) where they are now preserved in the world's oldest living culture.
1473552	/m/0549_s	In Watermelon Sugar	Richard Brautigan	1968-06-14	{"/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Through the narrator's first person account we hear the story of the people and the events of iDEATH. The central tension is created by Margaret, once a lover of the narrator, and inBOIL, a rebellious man who has left iDEATH to live near a forbidden area called the Forgotten Works. It is a huge trash heap where the remnants of a former civilization lie abandoned in great piles. Margaret, a collector of such 'forgotten things', is friendly with inBOIL and his followers, who explore the place and make whiskey. inBOIL's separation from the group may have been related to the annihilation of 'The Tigers', killed many years previously by the people. It is unknown to the reader whether 'The Tigers' were actual tigers, human beings or somehow anthropomorphic: while the tigers would kill and eat people (including the narrator's parents) they could also talk, sing, play musical instruments and were at least competent with arithmetic. Two tigers were killed on a bridge (known later as 'the abandoned bridge'). The last tiger was killed on a spot later developed into a trout farm. In the violent climax of the novel, inBOIL returns to the community along with a handful of followers, planning, he says, to show the residents what iDEATH really is. The residents know only that "something" is about to happen—for all they know, inBOIL could be plotting to kill them all. Margaret appears oblivious to the threats, and unconcerned about the safety of her own family and friends. Many suspect that Margaret knew and did not reveal details of inBOIL's real plan, thus "conspiring" with the evil men. She is semi-ostracized from iDEATH, and at the beginning of the novel the narrator reveals he had ended their relationship because of these events.
1473955	/m/054byk	The Kraken Wakes	John Wyndham		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel describes escalating phases of what appears to be an invasion of Earth by never-seen aliens, as told through the eyes of Mike Watson, who works for the English Broadcasting Company with his wife and co-reporter Phyllis. A major role is also played by Professor Alastair Bocker – more clear-minded and far-sighted about the developing crisis than everybody else, but with the habit of telling brutally unvarnished and unwanted truths. Mike and Phyllis are witness to several major events of the invasion, which proceeds in a series of drawn-out phases; it in fact takes years before the bulk of humanity even realize that their world has been invaded. In the first phase, objects from outer space land in the oceans. Mike and Phyllis happen to see five of the "meteors" falling into the sea, from the ship where they are sailing on their honeymoon. Eventually the distribution of the objects' landing points – always at ocean deeps, never on land – implies intelligence. The aliens are speculated to come from a gas giant, and thus can only survive under conditions of extreme pressures in which humans would be instantly crushed. The deepest parts of the oceans are the only parts of Earth in any way useful to them, and they presumably have no need or use for the dry land or even the shallower parts of the seas. In theory, the two species could have co-existed indefinitely, hardly noticing each other's presence. Humanity nevertheless feels threatened by this new phenomenon – particularly since the newcomers show signs of intensive work to adapt the ocean deeps to their needs. A British bathysphere is sent down to investigate, and is destroyed by the aliens. The British government responds by exploding a nuclear device on the spot. As it turns out, the aliens have more means of getting at the humans than the other way around; a similar American attempt ends in disaster. Moreover, humanity is not united in the face of the mounting threat – the Cold War between West and East is well under way, with the two sides often suspiciously attributing the effects of the alien attacks to their human opponents, to the point the invasion threatens to trigger a nuclear exchange. Phase two of the war starts when ships all over the globe begin to be attacked by unknown weapons and are rapidly sunk, causing havoc to the world economy. Shortly after, the aliens also start 'harvesting' the land by sending up biological 'sea tanks' which capture humans from seaside settlements, for reasons that are never made clear; the Watsons witness one of these assaults on a Caribbean island. These attacks are eventually met with enough retaliation from the various human militaries that "...their percentage of losses mounted and their returns diminished". And so, in the final phase, the aliens begin melting the polar ice caps, causing sea levels to rise. London and other ports are inexorably flooded (the government relocates to Harrogate), causing widespread social and political collapse. The Watsons cover the ongoing story for the EBC until the radio (and organized social and political life in general) cease to exist whereupon they can only try to survive and escape a now-flooded London. At the end, scientists in Japan develop an underwater ultrasonic weapon that kills the aliens. However, the global population has been reduced to between a fifth and an eighth of its pre-invasion level, and the world's climate has been unalterably changed. As stated by the protagonist in the book itself, the book aims to demonstrate that an alien invasion of Earth could take a very different form from that in "The War of The Worlds"; publication of the book coincided with the release of 1953 film "The War of the Worlds", an adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic work which at the time got considerable attention in the general public and among SF fans in particular.
1475010	/m/054flp	Aristoi	Walter Jon Williams	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Gabriel, a minor Aristos, runs a group of planets containing societies devoted to artistic pursuits, assisted by his several daimones, each of whom has his or her own personality and special area of interest. Attending oneirochronon parties and composing operas, having sex with both men and women (at one point, he has sex with two women at once -- one in physical reality, one in the oneirochronon) he seems to live a leisurely, decadent life. An elder Ariste, Cressida, warns Gabriel that something is up in a nearby solar system. There appear to be some extra planets in an area which astronomical surveys had said contained none. Cressida is murdered before she can explain more but Gabriel begins to suspect that Saito, the Aritos whose domain is closest to the mystery solar system, is using it for some undisclosed purpose. Gabriel and some of his advisers leave on a secret mission to the mystery solar system. When they arrive there they discover a horrifying truth: the planets contain life, human life. The most advanced of the planets contains a society similar in nature and technological development to Renaissance Europe. The people here have been left without the guidance and control of an Aristos and are mired in constant warfare and squalor, perishing of diseases which modern technology can easily cure. Someone, presumably Saito, has created human life here and consigned it to perpetual suffering for some unknown reason. Horrified by the suffering they see, Gabriel and some of his companions travel down to the planet to investigate. Posing as visitors from a distant country they identify a local nobleman who they believe to be Saito and arrange a confrontation. While they are waiting for their chance to assassinate Saito they see their spaceship, which had been orbiting the planet, destroyed. Their assassination attempt fails when they realize that the nobleman is actually an artificial lifeform. Gabriel and his companions are captured and imprisoned. It is then that Gabriel is confronted with the truth: the mastermind behind this horrifying experiment is not Saito, but Captain Yuan, the architect of the current galactic civilization who had long been presumed dead. Yuan explains his motives behind creating new life: the galactic society of the Logarchy has become staid and stultifying. Protected from any danger, the people have stopped improving and have become slaves of the Aristoi. He created this new solar system and the life within it in order to give a new start to humanity and create a society free from the restrictions of the Logarchy. Yuan, Saito, and Zhenling, an Ariste who Gabriel had considered an ally and even taken as a lover, then begin a brainwashing program on Gabriel, eventually breaking his will and convincing him to help them with minor duties on their project. However, their plan is foiled when a previously hidden sub personality of Gabriel, that he dubs The Voice, uses his computer privileges to escape. Gabriel manages to defeat Saito and escape along with his friends. He informs the rest of the Logarchy about what has happened and rallies them to a war footing. The Logarchy's forces swarm into the new solar system to provide humanitarian relief and begin to integrate the societies into the galactic society. As Yuan's secrets are revealed it is also discovered that he had tampered with the examination process which forms the backbone of the Logarchy, promoting people to Aristoi who he believed could help him and keeping others back. Captain Yuan himself has escaped to parts unknown and Gabriel makes it his life's mission to track him down and bring him to justice. As he does so he is warned by Zhenling, now imprisoned, that in doing so he will only fulfill Yuan's plan to shake up the galactic status quo.
1475691	/m/054gx4	The Prometheus Deception	Robert Ludlum	2000-10-31	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins with the protagonist, under the alias the Technician, who is in deep cover to stop the Hezbollah terrorist organization from overthrowing the government of Tunisia. The operation appears to be going well, until the terrorists discover that the weapons the Technician has supplied them are defective. Before the ensuing battle is over, though, Abu (the leader of the terrorist agency) manages to stab him in the abdomen. He is helicoptered out, and we next find him entering the headquarters of the Directorate. We meet his boss, Ted Waller, a lover of puzzles. Waller fires Bryson from the Directorate, saying he's lost his touch; Bryson is now told to live as a professor of Byzantine history under the alias of Jonas Barett. After some initial drunkenness and a search for oblivion because his wife, Elena, has left him, he agrees to take the job. He lives under this alias for 5 years and becomes a popular professor, until the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence at the CIA, Harry Dunne, confronts him with a shocking revelation. We learn that the Directorate is really a Russian intelligence operation created by GRU masterminds: essentially a penetration operation on American soil. He learns that his boss is really Gennady Rosovsky, who assumed the name of Ted Waller after the English poet Edmund Waller. Dunne says that Bryson's entire life, including his parents' death, was engineered by the Directorate to lead him to be a part of the agency. Every mission Bryson has undertaken was designed to hurt American interests, which horrifies him. Bryson is convinced to go after the Directorate and infiltrates a weapons tanker to find out what they're doing with weapons they're amassing. There he meets Layla, and after blowing up the tanker and amassing an arsenal, he continues to search for the Directorate; however, it seems that everywhere he goes there is a terrorist attack that follows. He pursues the trail of his former contacts with the Directorate. He meets with a former colleague, Jan Vansina, only to have Vansina killed before his eyes. At another point, when he is about to be shot by a former enemy, he is saved by Waller, who explains that Harry Dunne is really a part of Prometheus, an organization of business executives and powerful politicians around the world. The members of Prometheus are pushing the Treaty on Surveillance, which would allow for an international super-FBI, and their own Richard Lanchester (a former businessman turned politician) would be at the head. The implication is that this organization, because its members own information companies would then be able to monitor everything that went on in the world, and thereby control it. The Directorate's headquarters are destroyed, and he and his wife, Elena, united again, barely escape. He learns that money is being wired to members of the organization through a bank owned by Meredith Waterman, a respected bank. He goes to the bank headquarters and sneaks into their archives. There he learns of a business choice that forced the company to be sold to a certain Gregson Manning, the CEO of the world's largest company, Systematix, which owns health insurance companies, satellites, software, and thus many ways to get information on people. Manning, of course, is a member of Prometheus. Now, Bryson and Elena must infiltrate Manning's mansion to crash the meeting of Prometheus's leaders, days before they assume control. However, he finds Ted Waller at the mansion, escaped from the Directorate's destruction and a double agent. He is surrounded and about to be executed when a machine he's purchased, a virtual cathode oscillator, destroys the machinery in Manning's home and disables all the "smart guns" that are trained on him. Most of the guests in the mansion are trapped and killed, seemingly ending the Prometheus Group. Nick and Elena quietly move to a tropical location somewhat assured to be isolated and away from any monitoring devices. Their peace is interrupted when Waller taps into their satellite TV, and promises that they will meet again.
1476205	/m/054jh9	Loamhedge	Brian Jacques	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One day while Abruc the otter and his son Stugg are out foraging for food, they find the bodies of two badgers; an old one, dead, and a giant one who is barely clinging to life. The otters take the giant back to their colony, where he is revived and reveals himself to be called Lonna Bowstripe. He is told that his attacker was most likely the pirate Raga Bol, whose ship has been lost, and his crew of sea-rats, who are moving inland. Lonna vows to hunt down and kill the entire crew. Armed with his bow and arrows, he sets out to exact his revenge. Meanwhile at Redwall Abbey, there is a young hare maid named Martha Braebuck, who is totally incapable of walking, thus restricting her to a wheelchair. She is wheeled around by her hyperactive brother Hortwill Braebuck (Horty) and his friends, Springald and Fenna. While napping in front of the tapestry of Martin the Warrior, Martin and Sister Amyl appear to Martha in a dream, and she is told that the secret to make her able to walk can be found within the ancient walls of Loamhedge Abbey and that two individuals are coming that can help her. As it so happens, the two in question are Bragoon and Sarobando, two lifelong friends who ran away from the Abbey as Dibbuns. They survive by tricking small vermin bands and taking their food. This time, it's the gang of the weasel Burrad, whose numbers are at about 13. After Bragoon enters the camp (and Skrodd accidentally kills Burrad) they tell the gang that they must leave Mossflower Woods and never return. Skrodd has other plans, however, and convinces the gang to head to Redwall, where there is a rumor of a magical sword. One night, Skrodd gets killed by the rat Dargle, who gets decapitated during Skrodd's death throes. The bodies are discovered by a young fox named Little Redd (Later named Badredd), who convinces the gang he was the one who had killed Dargle. They continue on to Redwall, though no one really takes the fox seriously. Bragoon and Sarobando arrive at the Abbey during the Summer festival and are told Martha's sad story and where the cure can be found. They decide to set out to Loamhedge, but not before Horty's group asks if they can go too. When Abbot Carrul refuses, the trio create a distraction and escape the Abbey. Though they wind up being captured by Darrats, they are rescued by Bragoon and Saro, who are not too entirely pleased to see them. Since they are already fairly far from the Abbey and could risk recapture, however, they are allowed to join the quest. Meanwhile, Badredd's group has arrived at Redwall and hold it under siege by slipping in through the east wall gate. Realizing he could do with some more troops, Badredd sends Flinky and Crinktail out to recruit some new vermin. The two stoats unwittingly run into Raga Bol and his crew, who take over management of besieging the Abbey. Elsewhere, the group of questers scale the tall cliffs leading to Loamhedge and enter a cave to avoid the rain. There they find Lonna and exchange stories. Lonna encounters Martin the Warrior's spirit during the night, telling him the whereabouts of Raga Bol. Lonna sets out, and the gang from Redwall continue up the cliff face and keep walking to the ancient Abbey. At Redwall, Raga Bol continues to try to break into the Abbey. After an escapade of using a ladder to scale one of the windows, one sea rat manages to enter the Abbey and is about to kill Carrul when Martha suddenly lunges out of her chair and pushes him away, realizing she now has the ability to stand and all she needed was will power. Badredd's group managed to escape the Abbey during the battle, and Bol sends a rat named Blowfly after them. Instead of finding the escapees, Blowfly encounters Lonna, who asks him where the Abbey is and then kills him. When Lonna arrives at Redwall, he manages to kill many sea rats, and due to the efforts of the now mobile Martha, gets inside of the main building and is able to snipe out the crew from there. In a last-ditch attempt to kill the badger, Raga Bol tricks Lonna into coming out to the open where a group of spear chuckers wait to slay him. Things go wrong when Lonna seizes Bol and uses him as a living shield against the spears. Then he goes on a rampage and kills every last rat. In the meantime, the five travelers find a stream but get ambushed by reptiles. Fortunately, Sarobando sneaks out and gets Log-a-log Briggy to help them get out of the ambush. They soon get into another wasteland and get lost. When Horty finds a dormouse named Toobledum and his pet lizard Bubbub, Toobledum shows them the way to Loamhedge. The expedition to find Loamhedge has finally arrived at the dead Abbey, but all the things in Abbess Sylvaticus' grave have rotted away to nothing or turned into dust. Rather than return empty pawed, Bragoon and Saro tell the young ones to wait outside while they write their own cure, essentially saying that one just needs faith in oneself. On the way back, the group encounters the Abyss and are attacked by Kharanjul the Wearet. In an attempt to allow Horty, Fenna, and Springald to get to safety, Sarobando and Bragoon hold off the oncoming forces, eventually pushing the bridge over the edge of the abyss. Though they won the battle, the duo is badly injured, and they die shortly after. Ten seasons after they return to the Abbey, we find that Springald has become Abbey Recorder, Fenna has become Abbess, Horty has joined the Long Patrol at Salamandastron, adding the nom de guerre 'Longblade' to his name, Lonna has become ruler of Salamandastron, and Martha sings and dances on the walls every season in memory of the two who left to try to find her a cure.
1476686	/m/025rw4c	The Castle of Iron	Fletcher Pratt	1950	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the wake of the events of The Mathematics of Magic, Harold Shea and his lady love Belphebe of Faerie have married and settled happily into a mundane earthly existence. But after Belphebe disappears at a picnic, Shea is questioned by the police on suspicion of foul play. The authorities also question his work colleagues at the Garaden Institute, Walter Bayard and Vaclav Polacek, and then decide to take in the three of them for further interrogation. At that point the whole group, including police officer Pete Brodsky, are spirited away to another world, that of the Xanadu which is the subject of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan. After they have all languished there for a time, Shea and Polacek are pulled away from this world as well and into that represented by Ludovico Ariosto's epic, the Orlando Furioso. The person responsible for their plight turns out to be Reed Chalmers, aspiring magician and former head of the Garaden Institute, who had accompanied Shea to Faerie in his previous adventure. He had been attempting to retrieve Shea alone, but had erroneously pulled in Belphebe first, and then misplaced his three colleagues and the police officer before at last getting things (nearly) right. Aside, that is, from getting Polacek too and leaving Bayard and Brodsky stranded in Xanadu. Moreover, as Ariosto's epic was a source text for Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, Belphebe's mind has become confused, reverting in accord with the setting to that of her Furioso prototype, Belphagor. As a result, she now believes herself a native of the world into which they have been plunged, no longer recognizing Shea as her husband! Chalmer's goal was to seek Shea's assistance in transforming his own love, the lady Florimel, a human simulacrum magically made of snow, into a real person. It was also to that end that he himself had come to this world, where he is now the guest of the wizard Atlantès de Carena in the latter's marvelous iron castle in northern Spain. The world of the Furioso is based on Carolingian legend, and the Moorish Spain in which the extradimensional travelers find themselves is in the midst of a conflict with the Frankish empire of Charlemagne and his paladins. Somehow they must manage to negotiate their way through the delicate international politics, tiptoe around the treacherous Atlantès, achieve Chalmers' ambitions for Florimel, restore Belphebe's sanity — and survive! Beyond that there are still Bayard and Brodsky to rescue, though those are tasks for later tales...
1478845	/m/054qln	"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman	Harlan Ellison	1965-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens with a passage from Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. The story is a satirical look at a dystopian future in which time is strictly regulated and everyone must do everything according to an extremely precise time schedule. In this future, being late is not merely an inconvenience, but a crime. The crime carries a hefty penalty in that a proportionate amount of time is "revoked" from one's life. The ultimate consequence is to run out of time and be "turned off". This is done by the Master Timekeeper, or "Ticktockman", who utilizes a device called a "cardioplate" to stop a person's heart once his time has run out. The story focuses on a man named Everett C. Marm who, disguised as the anarchical Harlequin, engages in whimsical rebellion against the Ticktockman. Everett is in a relationship with a girl named pretty Alice, who is exasperated by the fact that he is never on time. The Harlequin disrupts the carefully kept schedule of his society with methods such as distracting factory workers from their tasks by showering them with thousands of multicolored jelly beans or simply using a bullhorn to publicly encourage people to ignore their schedules, forcing the Ticktockman to pull people off their normal jobs to hunt for him. Eventually, the Harlequin is captured. The Ticktockman tells him that pretty Alice has betrayed him, wanting to return to the punctual society everyone else lives in. The Harlequin sneers at the Ticktockman's command for him to repent. The Ticktockman decides not to stop the Harlequin's heart, and instead sends him to a place called Coventry, where he is converted in a manner similar to how Winston Smith is converted in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The brainwashed Harlequin reappears in public and announces that he was wrong before, and that it is always good to be on time. At the end, one of the Ticktockman's subordinates tells the Ticktockman that he is three minutes behind schedule. The Ticktockman walks away to his office "going mrmee, mrmee, mrmee, mrmee".
1478917	/m/054qq7	Esther: A Novel				 The comic story deals with a young, freethinking socialite who falls desperately in love with an Episcopal minister. The result is a clash of intellects, a confrontation between faith and reason and a battle of the sexes.
1479510	/m/054s75	Leave it to Psmith	P. G. Wodehouse	1923-11-30	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Down at Blandings, Lord Emsworth is dismayed to hear from Baxter that he is expected to travel to London to collect the poet Ralston McTodd, invited to the castle by his sister Connie, a keen supporter of the Arts; another poet, Aileen Peavey is already installed at the castle. Joe Keeble tries to persuade his imperious wife to let him give money to his beloved stepdaughter Phyllis, but is bullied out of it, and when Emworth's feckless younger son Freddie suggests stealing Connie's necklace to free up some cash, Keeble is taken with the idea. Freddie, not keen on doing the job himself, sees Psmith's advert in the paper, and tags along to London with Lord Emsworth. Meanwhile in the metropolis, we learn that Mike, having married Phyllis on the assumption that his job as estate manager for Psmith's father would be secure, found on Mr Smith's death that the old man was bankrupt, and is working as a poorly-paid schoolmaster. Psmith worked for a time for an uncle in the fish business, but could stand the fish no longer and quit. Phyllis meets some old school friends, including Eve Halliday, an assertive young girl who pities the once-rich Phyllis, believing her too soft to cope with penury. Eve, we learn, is a friend of Freddie Threepwood, and on his encouragement has taken a post cataloguing the Blandings library, while another friend, Cynthia, has been abandoned by her husband, famous poet Ralston McTodd. Later, Psmith sees Eve sheltering from the rain opposite the Drones, and chivalrously runs out to give her the best umbrella from the club's umbrella rack. They later meet once more at an employment agency, where Psmith has come seeking work and Eve is visiting an old friend. Psmith meets up with Freddie Threepwood, who describes his scheme to steal Connie's necklace, but dashes off without revealing his name. Soon after, Psmith runs into Lord Emsworth at the Senior Conservative Club, where the Earl is dining with Ralston McTodd. The poet is annoyed by Emsworth's absent-mindedness, especially when the old man potters across the street to inspect a flower shop, and leaves in a rage. When Emsworth returns, he mistakes Psmith for his guest, and when Psmith sees Eve Halliday meeting Lord Emsworth, he decides to visit Blandings, posing as McTodd. Welcomed at the castle, especially by fellow poet Peavey, he is nevertheless suspected by the ever-vigilant Baxter, the real McTodd having telegrammed to cancel his visit. Eve arrives and Psmith begins his wooing with some success, despite her belief that he is McTodd and has jilted her friend. Freddie, worried that one of the maids is a detective, is advised by Psmith to kiss her, and judge by her response whether she is a real maid; Psmith and Eve run into him just as he is embracing the girl. One day, a stranger arrives at the house claiming to be McTodd, but Psmith turns him politely away. The man, Edward Cootes, runs into Aileen Peavey on his way back to the station, and we learn they are both crooks, estranged lovers both after the diamonds. Cootes returns to the castle, and forces Psmith to help him get in, which Psmith does, passing him off as his valet. He arranges the use of a small cottage, in case he needs to hide the jewels from Cootes. Cootes and Peavey make a plan to steal the necklace during a poetry-reading, while Eve, having heard from Freddie that Joe Keeble plans to give him money, questions Keeble about why he isn't helping out her friend; he enlists her as a helper in the diamond-stealing plot. As Psmith begins his reading of McTodd's poems, Cootes turns off the lights and Peavey grabs the necklace, flinging out of the window to where Eve is standing; she hides it in a flowerpot. Returning later to fetch it, she wakes the vigilant Baxter, but evades him, leaving him locked out and stashing her flowerpot on a windowsill. Baxter, locked out of the house in his lemon-coloured pyjamas, throws flowerpots through a window to awake Lord Emsworth, who assumes he is mad and calls in Psmith to help appease him. Next morning, Baxter is fired from his job, and Eve finds the flowerpot empty at Psmith's cottage. Enlisting Freddie's help, she searches the place, but finds nothing; Psmith enters and explains his motives, his friendship with Mike and Phyllis. Cootes and Peavey appear, armed, and threaten to escape with the necklace, but Psmith takes advantage of Freddie's leg falling through the ceiling to overpower Cootes and retrieve the jewels. Keeble gives Mike the funds he requires to buy his farm, and gives Freddie enough to get him into a bookmaking business. Psmith and Eve get engaged, and Psmith persuades Lord Emsworth to take him on as Baxter's replacement.
1479599	/m/054sg6	Anne of Avonlea	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1909	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Anne is about to start her first term teaching at the Avonlea school, although she will still continue her studies at home with Gilbert, who is teaching at the nearby White Sands School. The book soon introduces Anne's new and problematic neighbor, Mr. Harrison, and his foul-mouthed parrot, as well as the twins, Davy and Dora. They are the children of Marilla's third cousin and she takes them in when their mother dies while their uncle is out of the country. Dora is a nice, well-behaved girl, somewhat boring in her perfect behaviour. Ironically Davy is an exact opposite, much more of a handful and constantly getting into many scrapes. They are initially meant to stay only a short time, but the twins' uncle postpones his return to collect the twins and then eventually dies. Both Anne and Marilla are relieved (Marilla inwardly of course) to know the twins will remain with her. Other characters introduced are some of Anne's new pupils, such as Paul Irving, an American boy living with his grandmother in Avonlea while his widower father works in the States. He delights Anne with his imagination and whimsical ways, which are reminiscent of Anne's in her childhood. Later in the book, Anne and her friends meet Miss Lavendar Lewis, a sweet but lonely lady in her 40s who had been engaged to Paul's father 25 years before, but parted from him after a disagreement. At the end of the book, Mr. Irving returns and he and Miss Lavendar marry. Anne discovers the delights and troubles of being a teacher, takes part in the raising of Davy and Dora, and organizes the A.V.I.S. (Avonlea Village Improvement Society) together with Gilbert, Diana, and Fred Wright, though their efforts to improve the town are not always successful. The Society takes up a subscription to repaint an old town hall, only to have the painter provide the wrong color of paint, turning the hall into a bright blue eyesore. Towards the end of the book, Mrs. Rachel Lynde's husband dies and Mrs. Lynde moves in with Marilla at Green Gables, allowing Anne to go to college at last. She and Gilbert make plans to attend Redmond College in the fall. This book sees Anne maturing slightly, even though she still cannot avoid getting into a number of her familiar scrapes, as only Anne can—some of which include selling her neighbor's cow (having mistaken it for her own), or getting stuck in a broken duck house roof while peeping into a pantry window.
1479607	/m/054sh7	Anne of the Island	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1915	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Anne leaves Green Gables and her work as a teacher in Avonlea to pursue her original dream (which she gave up in Anne of Green Gables) of taking further education at Redmond College in Nova Scotia. Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane enroll as well, as do Anne's friends from Queen's Academy, Priscilla Grant and Stella Maynard. During her first week of school, Anne befriends Philippa Gordon, a beautiful girl whose frivolous ways charm her. Philippa (Phil for short) also happens to be from Anne's birthplace of Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. The girls spend their first year in boardinghouses and decide to set up house thereafter in a lovely cottage called Patty's Place, near campus. The girls enter their second year at Redmond happily ensconced at Patty's Place, while life continues in Avonlea. Diana Barry becomes engaged to Fred Wright and Davy and Dora continue to keep Marilla busy. Midway through their college years, Gilbert, who has always loved Anne, proposes to her but Anne rejects him; although she and Gilbert are very close, she holds sentimental fantasies about true love (all featuring a tall, dark, handsome, inscrutable hero) and does not recognize her true feelings for Gilbert. Gilbert leaves, his heart broken, and the two drift apart. Anne's childhood friend Ruby Gillis dies of consumption very soon after finding her own true love. Anne later welcomes the courtship of Roy Gardner, a darkly handsome Redmond student who showers her with attention and poetic gestures. However, when he proposes after two years, Anne abruptly realizes that Roy does not really belong in her life, and that she had only been in love with the idea of him as the embodiment of her romantic image of love. Anne is so ashamed in how she treated Roy that she feels her entire Redmond experience may have been spoiled. She returns to Green Gables, a "full-fledged B.A.", but finds herself a bit lonely. Diana gives birth to her first child, and Jane Andrews, an old school friend, marries a Winnipeg millionaire. Having received an offer to be the principal of the Summerside school in the fall, Anne is keeping herself occupied over the summer when she learns that Gilbert is gravely ill with typhoid fever. With shock, Anne finally realizes how deep her true feelings for Gilbert are, and endures a white night of fear that he will leave this world without knowing that she does care. In the morning, Anne gratefully learns that Gilbert will survive. Gilbert recovers over the summer, bolstered by a letter from Phil assuring him that there is really nothing between Anne and Roy. After several visits to Green Gables, Gilbert and Anne take a late summer walk in Hester Gray's garden, and finally become engaged.
1479608	/m/054shl	Anne's House of Dreams	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1917	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins with Anne and Gilbert's wedding, which takes place in the Green Gables orchard. After the wedding, they move to their first home together, which Anne calls their "house of dreams." Gilbert finds them a small house on the seashore at Four Winds Point, an area near the village of Glen St. Mary, where he is to take over his uncle's medical practice. In Four Winds, Anne and Gilbert meet many interesting people, such as Captain Jim, a former sailor who is now the keeper of the lighthouse, and Miss Cornelia Bryant, an unmarried woman in her 40s who lives alone in an emerald-green house and deems the Blythes part of "the race that knows Joseph." Anne also meets her new neighbor, Leslie Moore, who lost her beloved brother and her father, and then was forced by her mother to marry the mean-spirited and unscrupulous Dick Moore at age 16. She felt free for a year or so after Dick disappeared on a sea voyage, but Captain Jim happened upon him in Cuba and brought him home, amnesiac, brain-damaged and generally helpless, and now dependent on Leslie like a "big baby." Leslie becomes friends with Anne, but is sometimes bitter towards her because she is so happy and free, when Leslie can never have what Anne does. Anne's former guardian Marilla visits her occasionally and still plays an important role in her life. Marilla is present when Anne gives birth to her first child, Joyce, who dies shortly after birth (as Montgomery's second son did). After the baby's death, Anne and Leslie become closer as Leslie feels that Anne now understands tragedy and pain—as Leslie puts it, her happiness, although still great, is no longer perfect, so there is less of a gulf between them. Later in the story, Leslie rents a room in her house to a writer named Owen Ford, who is the grandson of the former owners of Anne's House of Dreams, the Selywns. Owen, who is looking to write the Great Canadian Novel, finds the inspiration he was looking for in Captain Jim's shipboard diary, and transforms it into "The Life-Book of Captain Jim." While Owen is finishing the novel, he and Leslie independently realize they have feelings for each other, but both know they cannot do anything about them. Owen leaves the Island and Leslie is even more miserable being trapped in her marriage to Dick. Gilbert examines Dick Moore and suspects that if Dick underwent surgery on his skull, he might recover his faculties. Anne and Miss Cornelia are both opposed to the surgery, fearing that Leslie's life will become infinitely harder if Dick returns to himself, but Gilbert feels obligated to let Leslie know there is a chance for Dick. Leslie consents, and Dick undergoes the surgery in Montreal; when he awakens, he reveals that he is actually Dick's cousin George, who accompanied Dick to Cuba and was with him when Dick died of yellow fever twelve years before. George resembles Dick strongly because their fathers were brothers and their mothers were sisters, and both had the same peculiar eye coloring abnormality (heterochromia) by which Captain Jim recognized "Dick" in Cuba years before. Leslie, abruptly set free by this news, returns home, and considers taking a nursing course to get on with her life. Owen Ford returns to the Island to court Leslie after Miss Cornelia informs him of what has happened, and they become engaged. While this is going on, Anne gives birth to her second child, a healthy son. He is named James Matthew, for Anne's guardian Matthew Cuthbert and for Captain Jim. At the end of the book, Owen Ford's book is published, and Captain Jim dies with a smile on his face after reading his advance copy. Miss Cornelia, thought to be a confirmed spinster, announces that she has decided to marry Marshall Elliott, who may be a Grit but at least is a Presbyterian; she says she could have had him at any time but refused to marry him until he shaved his beard off, which he had refused to do for twenty years until the Grits came into power. Finally, Anne, Gilbert, Jem and their new housekeeper, Susan Baker, move to the old Morgan house in the Glen, later to be named Ingleside. Anne is greatly saddened to leave the House of Dreams, but knows that the little house is outgrown and Gilbert's work as a doctor requires him to live closer to town. This book introduces Susan Baker, the elderly spinster who is the Blythes' maid-of-all-work.
1479615	/m/054sj8	Anne of Windy Poplars	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1936	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Anne of Windy Poplars takes place over the three years between Anne's graduation from Redmond College and her marriage to Gilbert Blythe. While Gilbert is in medical school, Anne takes a job as the principal of Summerside High School, where she also teaches. She lives in a large house called Windy Poplars with two elderly widows, Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty, plus their housekeeper, Rebecca Dew, and their cat, Dusty Miller. During her time in Summerside, Anne must learn to manage many of Summerside's inhabitants, including the clannish and resentful Pringle family, her bitter colleague Katherine Brooke, and others of Summerside's more eccentric residents. Additionally, Anne befriends the young and lonely Elizabeth Grayson, a motherless member of the Pringle family who lives next door to Windy Poplars. She frequently visits Marilla at Green Gables. At the end of the novel, Anne departs Summerside, returning to Green Gables and Avonlea for her wedding to Gilbert. Upon her departure many of the town's residents express that they will greatly miss her as they have grown very fond of her or have been helped by her, including Katherine Brooke and Elizabeth Grayson.
1479620	/m/054sk0	Anne of Ingleside	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1939	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Seven years after Anne's House of Dreams, Anne visits Diana Wright and her daughter, Anne Cordelia, in Avonlea following the funeral of Gilbert's father. When she returns home to the old Morgan house, now named "Ingleside", she is greeted by her five children: James Matthew ('Jem'), the eldest, now aged seven; Walter Cuthbert, who is about six and often thought to be a bit of a 'sissy' because of his love for poetry; twins Anne ('Nan') and Diana ('Di'), who are five and look nothing alike, Nan with brown hair and hazel eyes, and Di with red hair and green eyes; and finally Shirley, two years old and Susan Baker's favorite, as she took care of him as an infant while Anne was very sick following his birth. The book includes the dreadful, seemingly eternal visit of Gilbert's disagreeable, oversensitive aunt Mary Maria Blythe, whose visit was only supposed to last two weeks but stretches on for months and who only leaves when Anne unintentionally offends her by arranging a surprise birthday party, much to the relief of the family. During the novel, Anne and Gilbert's youngest child is born and is named Bertha Marilla Blythe. She is also called Roly-Poly, or, generally, 'Rilla'. The novel includes a series of adventures which spotlight one of Anne's children at a time as they engage in the misunderstandings and mishaps of youth. At the end of the book, Anne worries that Gilbert has grown distant and possibly doesn't love her anymore. She and Gilbert spend a disagreeable evening with the widowed and childless Christine Stuart, who was once Anne's rival (or so she thought) for Gilbert's love. Suddenly realizing how tired Gilbert looks, Anne begins to wonder if she has been taking Gilbert for granted. At the end she is proven wrong, as Gilbert's lack of attention was caused by worry over one of his patients. He surprises Anne with an anniversary gift and a promise of a trip to Europe for a medical congress.
1483304	/m/05505v	The Napoleon of Notting Hill	G. K. Chesterton	1904	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The dreary succession of randomly selected Kings of England is broken up when Auberon Quin, who cares for nothing but a good joke, is chosen. To amuse himself, he institutes elaborate costumes for the provosts of the districts of London. All are bored by the King's antics except for one earnest young man who takes the cry for regional pride seriously&nbsp;– Adam Wayne, the eponymous Napoleon of Notting Hill. While the novel is humorous (one instance has the King sitting on top of an omnibus and speaking to it as to a horse: "Forward, my beauty, my Arab," he said, patting the omnibus encouragingly, "fleetest of all thy bounding tribe"), it is also an adventure story. Chesterton is not afraid to let blood be drawn in his battles, fought with sword and halberd in the London streets between neighboring boroughs; Wayne thinks up some ingenious strategies, and Chesterton does not shrink from the death in combat of some of his characters. Finally, the novel is philosophical, contemplating the value and meaning of man's actions and the virtue of respect for one's enemies. Michael Collins, who led the fight for Irish independence from British Rule, is known to have admired the book. There has been speculation that the setting of the book prompted the date chosen for the setting of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The novel is also quoted at the start of Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere.
1483723	/m/055167	Chainfire	Terry Goodkind	2005-01-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Richard Rahl is the ruler of the D'Haran Empire, a collection of nations previously made up of D'Hara, the Midlands and Westland. Richard Rahl and the D'Haran Empire are currently locked in an epic struggle with the Imperial Order, an Empire from the Old World, led by Emperor Jagang. Chainfire continues the story of Richard in his attempt to teach the people that their lives are theirs alone, and that they can be free of the Imperial Order. Richard is gravely injured from an enemy arrow. He is brought to Nicci, a sorceress and former Sister of the Dark, who heals him using subtractive magic causing unforeseen events to spiral out of control. When he awakens, Richard discovers that his wife, Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor, is missing. More than that, however, no one around him seems to remember her. Nicci and Cara both attribute Richard's memory of Kahlan to dreams and delusions brought about by his injury and quite possibly an unintended effect of the subtractive magic used in healing Richard. Fearing for Kahlan's life, Richard desperately tries to find some trace of her and at the same time convince the others that she exists. His search leads him to the witch woman, Shota, who reveals "that which you seek is long buried with the bones". In return for more information, Shota demands the Sword of Truth, which Richard relinquishes to her pet, Samuel, the previous bearer of the sword. Shota then utters the words "Chainfire" and "The Deep Nothing" and tells Richard to "beware the four-headed viper". Shota also warns Richard of a "blood beast" conjured by several wizards and Sisters of the Dark, under the orders of Jagang. The beast is meant to kill Richard and is as unstoppable as it is unpredictable. What's more, the beast is able to track Richard when he uses his gift because of the way Nicci healed his arrow wound. In the meantime, Ann and Nathan together have discovered many blank pages in books of ancient prophecy. They seem to remember that the pages should not be blank but can't remember what was originally written there. Zedd makes the same discovery independently. Concerned, but still determined to find his wife, Richard makes his way to the Wizard's Keep to find Zedd, who has no memory of Kahlan either. To try to prove her existence, Richard exhumes her grave and is shocked to find a corpse in the buried casket. He is briefly disheartened, but Nicci convinces him to persevere. Ann, Nathan, and Nicci make their way to the Keep as well and are reunited with Richard, Zedd, and Cara. As Richard continues to attempt to prove the existence of the woman he loves, the others become convinced he is mentally ill and plot to "heal" him, so that he will 'fulfill prophecy' and lead the D'Haran army against the forces of Emperor Jagang. At the same time, the reader learns that Kahlan has been kidnapped by the four remaining Sisters of the Dark who escaped the Dream Walker in Blood of the Fold. The Sisters have cast a spell using subtractive magic to erase people's memories of Kahlan and Kahlan's memories of herself. The Sisters then use Kahlan to steal the boxes of Orden from the Garden of Life in the People's Palace in D'Hara. Richard, Nicci, and Cara, make their way to the Sliph in order to escape the Keep and what the others would do. Richard learns that the Sliph knows of a place called the Deep Nothing. The Sliph takes them to some ruins called "Caska" in the Deep Nothing. Upon arriving they find themselves in the midst of a group of Imperial Order advanced scouts that have captured some of the people there. The reader is introduced to a girl named Jillian and a people called the "Dream Casters". While Nicci eliminates the Imperial Troops, Richard and Jillian look for answers in the catacombs. Together they find a hidden passage that leads to a protected library. In the library Jillian discovers a book called "Chainfire". They travel to the People's Palace and learn that the boxes are missing and that they've been put into play. Richard figures out that the Sisters have stolen his wife and the boxes. While there, Richard learns that an older woman has been captured and that there was something uniquely odd about her. As Nicci investigates she discovers that it is Sister Tovi, one of the Sisters of the Dark who gave an oath to Richard in order to be free of Jagang, the Dream Walker. Nicci uses deception to learn everything she can from Tovi, discovering that it was Samuel who stabbed Tovi and took the Box of Orden she was carrying. She also learns about the Chainfire spell, about how it was used to obliterate everyone's memory about Kahlan, and that the Boxes of Orden were created in opposition to it. Later Richard realizes that the Sword of Truth protected him from the Chainfire spell, which is why he was still able to remember Kahlan. Richard, Nicci and Cara return to the Wizard's Keep and, with the information gathered from Tovi and the book "Chainfire", they finally manage to convince Zedd, Nathan, and Ann of the truth. While no one but Richard remembers Kahlan, at least now they believe that she exists.
1484249	/m/0552qs	Aghwee the Sky Monster	Kenzaburō Ōe	1964		 Aghwee opens with the anonymous narrator, a 28-year-old man, talking about the near-blindness in one of his eyes, the result of an attack by a group of children that year. Because of his blurred vision he sees "two worlds superimposed". The attack had prompted him to remember the events of the story, which took place ten years earlier, and the memory freed him from hatred of his assailants. The narrator had worked as a companion to a composer, D, then aged 28, who had (apparently) gone mad after the death of his infant son. D says that when he goes outside, he is visited by the spirit of his son, who swoops down out of the sky: "a fat baby in a white cotton nightgown, big as a kangaroo". D talks to Aghwee but refuses to interact with the people around him, saying that he is no longer living in the present time. The narrator is told by D's estranged wife that D had killed their son, starving him because he was born with a brain hernia (which later turned out to be a benign tumour). 'Aghwee' was the only word the child had spoken. The wife accuses D of fleeing reality. She gives the narrator a key which turns out to unlock a box of D's compositions, which D burns and buries. D takes the narrator to various places where D had previously enjoyed himself, as well as sending him to inform D's former girlfriend that he will no longer see her. Matters reach a crisis when a pack of dogs (of which Aghwee is said to be afraid) comes across D and the narrator while D is talking to Aghwee. However it is the narrator who panics until he feels a hand on his shoulder, "gentle as the essence of all gentleness" which he says he knows to be the D's but imagines to be Aghwee's. D then tells the narrator more about his experience of the world, saying that the sky contains all those whom a person has lost; he stopped living in the present to prevent the number of figures floating in his sky from increasing. The story reaches an end with the death of D on Christmas Eve. D begins talking to Aghwee while he and the narrator are out in the city. While waiting to cross a road, "D cried out and thrust both arms in front of him as if he were trying to rescue something". D is injured and is taken to hospital. As he lies dying, the narrator asks him if he had simply made up Aghwee as a cover for his suicide, and says that he himself was about to believe in the spirit. In answer D merely smiles; whether mocking or "friendly mischief" the narrator cannot tell. In a coda, the narrator returns to the recent incident when he was attacked by a group of children, who unaccountably became frightened and started to throw stones at him. He sensed "a being I knew and missed" &mdash; Aghwee &mdash; leaving him and returning to the sky. He no longer hated the children, and started to think of the figures who had filled his own sky over the intervening decade, associating the "gratuitous sacrifice" of his eye with perception of those figures.
1484692	/m/0553nt	The Butter Battle Book	Dr. Seuss	1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Butter Battle Book tells the story of a land where two hostile cultures, the Yooks and the Zooks, live on opposite sides of a long curving wall, fairly similar to the Berlin Wall. The Yooks wear blue clothes; the Zooks wear orange. The main dispute between the two cultures is that the Yooks eat their bread with the butter-side up, while the Zooks eat their bread with the butter-side down. The conflict between the two sides leads to an escalating arms race, each competing to make bigger and better weapons to outdo the other, which results in the threat of mutual assured destruction. The race begins when a Zook named Van Itch slingshots the Yooks' "Tough-Tufted Prickly Snick-Berry Switch", which could be used to give Zooks a twitch if they dared to come close to the wall, which was guarded by "the Zook-Watching Border Patrol". The Yooks then develop a machine with three slingshots interlinked, called a "Triple-Sling Jigger". This works once (Van Itch got scared and ran off), but the Zooks counterattack with their own creation: The "Jigger-Rock Snatchem", a machine with three nets to fling the rocks fired from the Triple-Sling Jigger back at the Yooks' side "just as fast as we catch 'em". The Yooks then discover that slingshots are old-fashioned, and create a gun called the "Kick-A-Poo Kid", loaded with "powerful Poo-A-Doo powder and ants' eggs and bees' legs and dried-fried clam chowder", and toted by a dog named Daniel, the country's "first gun-toting spaniel". The Zooks counterattack with an "Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz", a machine that shoots "high-explosive sour cherry stone pits, and will put your dumb Kick-A-Poo Kid on the fritz!" The Yooks then devise a machine called the "Utterly Sputter", a large blue mecha with two very tall mechanical legs, a cabin which resembles that of a helicopter's, but with no rotors, and four faucets on the back, whose main purpose was to "sprinkle blue goo all over the Zooks!". But the Zooks counterattack with a Sputter identical to the Yooks'. Eventually, each side possesses a small but extremely destructive red bomb called the "Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo", the smallest weapon of all, and neither has any defense against it. The TV special (see below) demonstrates the development of the weapon in a mysterious, and somewhat frightening, mad scientist-style song (complete with living goo, floating rings, ghosts, snakes, and chemical flasks which imitate volcanoes). No resolution is reached by the book's end, with the generals of both sides on the wall poised to drop their bombs and waiting to see who will do it first. The question is left hanging for the reader to answer by his or her actions, much like the question "UNLESS" at the end of Dr. Seuss' book, The Lorax. The book thus departs from the commonly-accepted approach to children's writing, of positive themes and resolution of the plot's conflict by the end of the story.
1484931	/m/0554bf	The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty	Kitty Kelley	2004-09-14	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The Family received attention due to its allegations that George W. Bush snorted cocaine with his brothers at Camp David during his father's presidency. One of Kelley's sources for the cocaine allegation was Neil Bush's ex-wife Sharon Bush, who has since denied telling Kelley the story. Kelley claims that Sharon Bush told her the story in front of a witness and has recanted due to pressure from the Bush family. The book also claims that in college Laura Bush was "a go-to girl for dime bags of marijuana", Barbara Bush objected to the fact that her son's girlfriend's stepfather was Jewish, and that at Harvard, George W. Bush objected to a classroom viewing of the film The Grapes of Wrath by asking "Why are you going to show us that Commie movie?", and saying "Look. People are poor because they are lazy." Glynn Wilson, a free-lance journalist from Alabama, sued Kelley for plagiarism claiming passages from the book have the exact wording as his on-line article.
1488925	/m/055cfr	Nova	Samuel R. Delany	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 By the year 3172, political power in the galaxy is split between two factions: the older Earth-based Draco and the historically younger Pleiades Federation. Both have interests in the even newer Outer Colonies, where mines produce trace amounts of the prized power source Illyrion, the superheavy material essential to starship travel and terraforming planets. Caught in a feud between aristocratic and economically powerful families, a scarred and obsessed captain from the Pleiades, Lorq Von Ray, recruits a disparate crew of misfits to aid him in the race with his arch-enemy, Prince Red from Draco's Red Shift Ltd., to gain economic leadership by securing a vastly greater amount of Illyrion directly from the heart of a stellar nova. In doing so, Von Ray will shift the balance of power of the existing galactic order, which will bring about the downfall of the Red family as well as end Earth's dominance over interstellar politics. As the title indicates, the central metaphor for the novel is a nova: the destructive implosion/explosion of an entire sun, which, paradoxically, while it destroys most of a solar system, also creates new elements. In the book, at the eruption of a nova, not only do the laws of physics break down, but so do the laws of politics and psychology. This idea permeates the entire plot and storyline. The characters follow a quest plot line, in which they visit several worlds to gain information necessary to achieve their goal, all the while pursued by the Red family. Although the novel does not indulge the literary experimentation found in Delany's later books, it maintains a high level of innovation. Some chapters end or begin in mid-sentence. Also, the point of view regularly shifts between Lorq, Katin, and the Mouse. Each page in the book carries a header that gives the year and location of the scene on the page itself (e.g., "Draco, Earth, Paris, 3162"). This is useful because of the flashbacks in the long journey around the galaxy.
1489460	/m/055dcy	Cloud Nine	Caryl Churchill			 ; Act I Clive, a British colonial administrator, lives with his family, a governess and servant during turbulent times in Africa. The natives are rioting and Mrs Saunders, a widow, comes to them to seek safety. Her arrival is soon followed by Harry Bagley, an explorer. Clive makes passionate advances to Mrs Saunders, his wife Betty fancies Harry, who secretly has sex with the servant Joshua and Clive's son Edward. The governess Ellen, who reveals herself to be a lesbian, is forced into marriage with Harry after his sexuality is discovered and condemned by Clive. Act 1 ends with the wedding celebrations; the final scene is Clive giving a speech while Joshua is pointing a gun at him. ; Act II Although Act 2 is set in 1979, some of the characters of Act 1 are reappearing – for them only 25 years have passed. Betty has left Clive, her daughter Victoria is now married to an overbearing Martin, and Edward has an openly gay relationship with Gerry. Victoria, upset and distant from Martin, starts a lesbian relationship with Lin. When Gerry leaves Edward, Edward, who discovers he is in fact bisexual, moves in with his sister and Lin. The three of them have a drunken ceremony in which they call up the Goddess, and after that characters from Act 1 begin appearing in Act 2. Act 2 has a looser structure than Act 1, and Churchill played around with the ordering of the scenes. The final scene shows that Victoria has left Martin for a ménage à trois with Edward and Lin, and they are sharing custody of their son Tommy. Gerry and Edward are on good terms again, and Betty becomes friends with Gerry, who tells her about Edward's sexuality.
1490808	/m/055hcr	The Amber Room	Steve Berry	2003	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about judge Rachel Cutler and her husband Paul, a divorced American couple caught up in a treasure hunt for the long-missing Amber Room. A couple of competitive professional treasure hunters complicate matters. In their search through Germany to uncover the secrets behind its disappearance, they escape near-death in the tunnels running through the Harz Mountains, find themselves hanging off the edge of a tall church steeple, and discover a surprise in a hidden chamber of a Bohemian castle in the Czech Republic.
1491166	/m/055j24	The World at the End of Time	Frederik Pohl	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 World at the End of Time follows the story of a young Earth-born human, Viktor Sorricaine, on a colony expedition to a distant star system. The colonists are frozen for the long trip between stars. Unknown to both the humans of Earth and the colonists, the stars around them are home to immensely long-lived (effectively immortal) plasma creatures—with no knowledge of, or interest in, the activities of insignificant matter creatures. Wan-To, one of the oldest and most powerful plasma creatures, is engaged in a war. After creating modified copies of himself, or "children", for company, Wan-To finds himself in a deadly game of chess with them. The "board" is the entire galaxy and the weapons are the stars themselves. Each star may be home to an enemy "child"... and using a variety of exotic particles, Wan-To is able to cause a targeted star to flare and kill any enemy that may be living within it. Into the middle of this battlefield, the three colony ships (Ark, New Mayflower and Argosy) unwittingly head for their new home. Upon arriving, the colony begins to establish itself ... only to discover that their entire local group of stars appears to be undergoing a bizarre acceleration, and are dimming. After a disastrous disease outbreak and terraforming failures, the desperate colonists eventually decide to investigate the strange radiation emissions from a small world within their solar system. Upon arriving in orbit, their ship is badly damaged and Viktor is forced into the onboard freezer systems. They are eventually rescued and unfrozen four hundred of the colony's years later, to find the colony in an even more desperate situation. The star around which the colony's world orbits has dimmed considerably (due to the energy being siphoned off to accelerate it) and they are now travelling so fast that, due to relativistic effects, the universe around them has shrunk to a bright dot. The colony has become factionalized and heavily religious, with scientific investigation discouraged. Viktor is eventually frozen again for attempting to investigate why they have been accelerating. He wakes four thousand of the colony's years later, to find the far descendants of the colony have rebuilt their society into habitats closely orbiting their binary star system's secondary (a small red dwarf) and created a high-technology civilization dedicated to pleasure and comfort. He makes his way, eventually, to the former colony to find only a few fellow-colonists unfrozen and attempting to rebuild it. His unique status as someone who was born on "old Earth" brings publicity to their efforts and the rebuilding forges ahead. During the four thousand years of Viktor's frozen sleep, the star system has been slowed again. Unfortunately, after the vast amount of time that has passed, all that remains of the once young universe are dead stars and black holes ... and Wan-To desperately surviving on the energy provided by proton decay. Wan-To receives a tachyon transmission from his long-forgotten systems and makes preparations to move into these last remaining stars — believing that the small matter creatures inhabiting the system are irrelevant and can be destroyed should they become an irritation.
1491211	/m/055j7f	Doktor Faustus	Thomas Mann	1947	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The origins of the narrator and the hero in the (fictitious) small town of Kaisersaschern on the (Thuringian) Saale, the name of Zeitblom's apothecary father (Wohlgemut, 'welltempered'), and the description of Adrian Leverkühn as an old-fashioned German type, with a cast of features 'from a time before the Thirty Years War', evoke the old post-medieval Germany: in their respective Catholic and Lutheran origins, and theological studies, they are heirs to the German Renaissance and the world of Dürer and Bach, but sympathetic to, and admired by, the 'keen-scented receptivity of Jewish circles.' They are awakened to musical knowledge by Wendell Kretzschmar, a German American lecturer and musicologist who visits Kaisersaschern. After schooling together, both boys study at Halle - Adrian studies theology; Zeitblom does not, but participates in discussions with the theological students - but Adrian becomes absorbed in musical harmony, counterpoint and polyphony as a key to metaphysics and mystic numbers, and follows Kretzschmar to Leipzig to study with him. Zeitblom describes 'with a religious shudder' Adrian's embrace with the woman ('Esmeralda') who gave him syphilis, how he worked her name in note-ciphers into his compositions, and how the medics who sought to heal him were all prevented from effecting a cure by mysterious circumstances. Zeitblom begins to perceive the demonic, as Adrian develops other friendships, first with the translator Rüdiger Schildknapp ('Shield-bearer') (a loyal friend), and then after his move to Munich with the handsome young violinist Rudi Schwerdtfeger ('Sword-polisher', i.e. swordsmith), Frau Rodde and her doomed daughters Clarissa and Ines, Dr. Kranich ('crane') the numismatist, Leo Zink and Baptist Spengler (two artists). Zeitblom insists, however, on the unique closeness of his own relationship to Adrian, who addresses only him as 'du' (rather than the more formal 'Sie'). Adrian also meets the Schweigestill ('silence-peace') family at Pfeiffering, in the country an hour from Munich, which later becomes his permanent home and retreat. He lives at Palestrina in Italy with Schildknapp (as in reality Thomas Mann did 15 years earlier, with his brother Heinrich) in 1912, and Zeitblom visits them there. And it is there that Adrian, working on music for Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, has his long dialogue with a Mephistopheles figure who appears either objectively or out of his own afflicted soul. These are the central pages of the novel, corresponding also to its central part. Zeitblom transcribes Adrian's manuscript of the conversation, in which the demon claims Esmeralda as the instrument of his entrapment of Adrian's vainglory, ingenium and memoriam, and offers him twenty-four years of time gifted with genius (geniale Zeit), a time of incubation (hochtragende Zeit) from the date of his sexual embrace, if he will now renounce the warmth of love. This dialogue reveals the anatomy of Leverkühn's thought. Adrian then moves permanently to Pfeiffering, and in conversations with Zeitblom reveals a darker view of life than his. Figures of a demonic type appear, such as Dr. Chaim Breisacher, 'a racial and intellectual type of reckless development and fascinating ugliness,' to cast down the idols of the older generation. In 1915 Ines Rodde marries, but forms an adulterous love for Rudi Schwerdtfeger. Adrian begins to experience illnesses of retching, headaches and migraines, but is producing new and finer music, preparing the way for his great work Apocalypsis cum figuris. Schwerdtfeger woos himself into Adrian's solitude, asking for a violin concerto that would be like the offspring of their platonic union. By August 1919 Adrian has completed the sketch of Apocalypse. There is also a new circle of intellectual friends, including Sextus Kridwiß ('kreideweiß = chalk-white') the art-expert, Chaim Breisacher, Dr. Egon Unruhe ('Unrest') the palaeozoologist, Georg Vogler ('fowler') (literary historian), Dr. Holzschuher ('Clogs') (a Dürer scholar), and the saturnine poet Daniel zur Höhe ('to height'). In their 'torturingly clever' discussions they declare the need for the renunciation of bourgeois softness and a preparation for an age of pre-medieval harshness. Adrian writes to Zeitblom that collectivism is the true antithesis of Bourgeois culture: Zeitblom observes that aestheticism is the herald of barbarism. Apocalypse is performed in Frankfurt in 1926 under Otto Klemperer with Erbe (an allusion to Karl Erb, the famous Evangelist of Bach's St Matthew Passion) as the St John narrator. (As a music reviewer Thomas Mann had been witness to Erb's oratorio debuts in around 1916.) Zeitblom describes the work as filled with longing without hope, with hellish laughter transposed and transfigured even into the searing tones of spheres and angels. Adrian attempts to obtain a wife by employing Rudi (who gets his concerto) as the messenger of his love, but she prefers Rudi himself, and not Adrian. Soon afterwards Rudi is shot dead in a tram by Ines, because of jealousy. As Adrian begins to plan the second oratorio The Lamentation of Doctor Faustus, in 1928, his sister's child Nepomuk is sent to live with him. This beautiful boy, who calls himself 'Echo', is beloved by all. As the work of gigantic dimensions develops in Adrian's mind, the child falls ill and dies, and Adrian, despairing, believes that by gazing at him with love (contrary to his contract) he has killed him with poisonous and hellish influences. The score of the Lamentation is completed in 1930, Adrian summons his friends and guests, and instead of playing the music he relates the story of his infernal contract, and descends into the brain disease which lasts until his death ten years later. Zeitblom visits him occasionally, and survives to witness the collapse of Germany's 'dissolute triumphs' as he tells the story of his friend.
1491312	/m/055jjf	The Stones Are Hatching	Geraldine McCaughrean	1999	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Phelim awakes one morning while his sister, Prudence, is away. He soon learns that he is the inheritor of a responsibility to stop the apocalyptic Stoor Worm from waking. In order to do this, he must (overcoming a strong reluctance) rally the three symbolic figures of Maiden, Fool, and Horse, elude the Stoor Worm's monstrous children, and reach the Worm at her resting place. At this he succeeds, encountering various dangers and losing his companions en route. At the climax, Phelim kills the Stoor Worm outright and returns home, thereafter making his sister ride on a horse and making it go to the farthest sea. This hypocrisy (contrasted with his name, which is translated as "Ever-Good"), strips him of his own symbolic significance. At the end, he seeks counsel of his father.
1491349	/m/055jqh	Devil's Cub	Georgette Heyer	1932	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The son of the Duke and Duchess of Avon, the Marquis of Vidal is known as Devil's Cub not only for the excesses of his father but for his own wild habits. As he is paying court to a girl of the bourgeoisie, Sophia Challoner, he also participates in a rather impromptu duel, the outcome of which forces him to leave the country. He intends to bring Sophia with him as his mistress: but her strait-laced sister Mary has no intention of allowing her sister to be ruined, and takes her place, assuming that the Marquis will let her go once the mistake is discovered, leaving him with no chance to take Sophia afterwards. But she has not yet obtained the measure of the Marquis's personality, for in the grip of fury he takes Mary off with him instead, and only when they are in France and it is too late for either to turn back does he realise that by abducting a respectable girl he has compromised her and is obliged to offer her marriage. However, Mary refuses Vidal because she believes he is making the offer from guilt and as she has fallen in love with him she finds this intolerable. In her misery, she runs away, intending to seek her own fortune. While away, she meets Vidal's father, the Duke of Avon, by chance, and takes him into her confidence without realising that she is talking to Avon - who is an old crony of her grandfather's and has come to France to investigate the rumours surrounding his son and scotch any scandal. The two reach an excellent understanding, with Avon clearly coming to respect Mary. Vidal pursues, and ultimately realizes he loves her, persuading her to marry him - in spite of Avon's dry observation that she could do better. Heyer's An Infamous Army is a sequel to Devil's Cub. {| class="wikitable" |- !These Old Shades !Devil’s Cub |- |Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon |Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon |- |Léonie de Saint-Vire |Léonie (de Saint-Vire) Alastair, Duchess of Avon |- |Lady Fanny (Alastair) Marling |Lady Fanny (Alastair) Marling |- |Edward Marling |Mr. John Marling (son of Edward Marling, now deceased) |- |Lord Rupert Alastair |Lord Rupert Alastair |- |Harriet (Alastair) Field |Harriet (Alastair) Field |- |Mr. Hugh Davenant |Mr. Hugh Davenant |}
1493110	/m/055p0w	Secrets in the Fire	Henning Mankell		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Sofia's hometown is destroyed by The Bandits, Muazena, the village's wise woman, must find a way to teach Sofia the secrets in the fire. Even with Muazena trying to help, Sofia must overcome multiple adversities such as losing both her sister and her legs to a land mine and all of the strife that comes with growing up. Throughout her recovery Sofia finds that she is not as weak as some would have her believe and that she has a strength of her own.
1493625	/m/055qc0	The Drought	J. G. Ballard	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In contrast to Ballard's earlier novel The Drowned World, The Burning World describes a world in which water is scarce. After an extensive drought, rivers have turned to trickles and the earth to dust, causing the world's populations to head toward the oceans in search of water. The drought is caused by industrial waste flushed into the ocean, which form an oxygen-permeable barrier of saturated long-chain polymers that prevents evaporation and destroys the precipitation cycle. Since the novel was published, plastic islands such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have been discovered, which permeate large areas of the world's oceans; the impact on ocean evaporation and the precipitation cycle has not been studied.
1493811	/m/025rwbp	Rough Draft	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story starts with the hero, Kirill, being "erased" from daily life in present-day Moscow. Everybody forgets him (even his parents and dog), another person lives in his apartment, all IDs and files in all offices disappear. After a while he is phoned and invited to an old water tower — but inside is his future home and working place. There it is revealed to him that he is able to open doors, leading to other worlds — although at first all but one are locked. Once opened each door becomes rigidly connected to some world, but which one can't be predicted. All of the worlds have mostly similar environments and seem to be on the planet Earth but the societies and people are different. After a while Kirill meets a special group of functionals, so called because they gained supernatural abilities making them excellent in some profession. They serve other people, but mostly other functionals. They say Kirill has become one of them — a customs officer. He benefits from taxes paid by people who pass through his tower. Also he has superhuman strength and is almost immortal, but only within 10&nbsp;km of his tower. Kirill enjoys these new worlds, people and abilities. A politician Dima meets him and asks to find a national idea for Russia. He informs Kirill about the world number One, which nobody can access and which seems to be exactly our world living 30 years later. Critical information from this world may enhance the prestige of the country. Kirill also encounters an underground, that is, a few people fighting against the 'corporate laws' of functionals and their working for themselves or the elites of other worlds. But he remains untouched by the rhetoric of the underground, justifying most of this. Ideas of armed opposition are alien if not to say ridiculous for him. But a younger 20-aged girl who Kirril falls in love with is a genuine underground activist... The last door opened leads to the world number One: A lovely Moscow filled with smiling people: there were no Second World War and no horrors of revolution, as this world lags for 30 years and the rulers of it carefully study the mistakes of other worlds. It's just what Dima proposed to Kirill, but applied in reverse. Upon rather bloody returning to our world, Kirill faces troubles with his girl. Hating the system of functionals, she manifests disobedience. But their laws don't forgive this, and the functional Natalie murders her, Kirril being unable to resurrect her... :"An extreme foolishness," said I, "All these loud words and beautiful poses... 'they will not pass', 'yet it moves', 'motherland or death', 'am able to die for my beliefs' — all of this becomes nonsense when real death comes... All of this is for kids. And for adults who handle them..." :Natalie nodded with approval. :"But yet it moves" said I, "Doesn't it? It moves, and they will not pass, and motherland remains motherland even if death becomes death, and nobody is ready to die, but sometimes it's easier to die than to betray..." In Kirill's fighting Natalie, his tower becomes devastated, thus he ceases being a functional and is restored to his former life. The ending of this story we will learn from the second book of the future duology.
1495019	/m/055tyv	Resurrection Blues	Arthur Miller			 The story is set in an unnamed Latin American country that is painfully third world. The plot revolves around a captured prisoner who may or may not be the second coming of Christ, though Miller deliberately leaves the divinity of his unseen protagonist ambiguous. He is said to be able to perform miracles such as walk through walls, a major problem for the prison guards, and, because his popularity among the impoverished citizens, the military dictator of the nation has sentenced him to be crucified. This creates many moral dilemmas with the play's cast of characters, which include a wealthy land-owner who is the cousin of the dictator, his depressed daughter—a close friend of the accused—and an American television production team that arrives to broadcast the crucifixion.
1495657	/m/055w6t	Interstellar Pig	William Sleator		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Zena, Manny, and Joe move into the cinder-block cottage next door, Barney is intrigued by their glamorous, exotic lifestyle. His fascination grows when Zena introduces Barney to their favorite pastime: Interstellar Pig, a board game in which the key objective is to finish the game with the Piggy card in hand. Zena quickly briefs him on the rules: each player picks their character from a box of cards depicting different aliens. Every alien race has their own strengths, weaknesses, and IRSC (Interstellar Relative Sapience Code, with lower numbers favorable). When the time runs out, every home planet will be obliterated except the one belonging to the holder of the Piggy. Barney is amazed when the neighbors keep choosing the same character cards: Joe repeatedly picks water-breathing Jrlb; Zena always chooses Zulma, an arachnoid nymph; and Manny always picks Moyna, an octopus-like gas bag. While snooping through Zena's underwear drawer, Barney finds a manuscript written by Captain Lantham&mdash;the same Captain who had built the house that Barney and his parents were renting&mdash;telling of the event that caused his brother to go crazy. At sea, the Captain rescued a man floating in the ocean, described as having a "leathery, greenish, reptilian hide" due to sunburn and a "swollen contusion", "yellow and filmed with slime" on his forehead. Insisting that the man is the Devil, the Captain's brother strangles him&mdash;and in punishment, is keelhauled. Although he survives, his mind is damaged due to the oxygen deprivation, and he spends the rest of his life locked in his room (which later became Barney's bedroom), scratching patterns into the wooden walls and clinging to the strange trinket he had taken from the murdered man's corpse. That night Barney begins to see a pattern in the marks the Captain's brother had sawed in the walls of his bedroom: all the scratches centered on a particular rock on a nearby island. Remembering the trinket "to which [the brother] clung as he was pulled from the water, to which he still clings", Barney decides to go out to the boulder and see if the trinket had been hidden there. He finds a small, silver, round object: There was a face carved in this side, nothing but a rigid, slightly smiling mouth under a single wide-open eye... Crude as it was, the thing seemed alive. And it was the brutal wrongness of it, the mouth smiling with such placid idiocy, noseless, under the solitary gaping eye, that made the face so repellent. The Piggy. Barney realizes that the game is real, the clock is running, and his neighbors—aliens in disguise—will do anything to get the Piggy. Each tries to bribe him with a unique incentive, similar to the Judgement of Paris, but Barney turns them down. Unfortunately by doing so, he&#39;s just entered the real game as a player representing the human race. As Barney hurries to select his weapons and equipment before a horde of aliens descend on his cottage, he makes the startling discovery that he shares a psychic link to the Piggy. The Piggy tells him that it created the game so that it could be loved and appreciated, despite its tendency to detonate whole planets (and their surrounding solar systems) from time to time when it hiccups. Barney concludes that the object of the game is backwards, and it is only the possessor of the Piggy that will be blown up. Minutes before his home is destroyed, Barney concocts a plan to pass the Piggy off to another player convincingly enough so that it won&#39;t arouse suspicion. He tells the carnivorous lichen where to find the Piggy. However, as they approach it he realizes that the same logical inconsistency exists with the Piggy&#39;s version of the story. He decides that the only explanation that makes sense is that the Piggy created both stories in order to learn about new people. He abandons the Piggy and lets the lichen board their spaceship home, drawing off the other alien players. Once they depart, no damage is done to either the lichen or to Earth.
1495676	/m/055w9c	The Green Futures of Tycho	William Sleator	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main character is Tycho Tithonus, an 11 year-old boy. Each child in his family is named after a famous artist or scientist and their parents expect them to live up to their names. Tycho himself is named after Sleator's younger brother, who in turn, was named after Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer. He finds a pocket sized time machine in the family's garden. He immediately uses it to change some things from the past and to visit the future. But as he travels more and more he realizes that he is turning into something horrible and it becomes a race against time to save all of his family and himself.
1495784	/m/055wm7	Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction	Sue Townsend	2004-10-07	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story also deals with an issue that has affected Sue Townsend directly; she was registered blind in 2001, as a result of long-term diabetes. Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction was typed by Townsend's husband from dictation. The novel is a bestseller due to the series' dedicated fan base, and has met with critical acclaim. Critics have praised the novel for its combination of sitcom-style humour with an underlying element of tragedy and pathos. Some consider it less comical and darker than the previous installment, Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years. Critics claim that Mole's immature and angst-ridden personality has lost its appeal as he approaches middle-age, where it was endearing in a younger man.
1496284	/m/055xz7	Make Way For Ducklings	Robert McCloskey		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins as Mr. and Mrs. Mallard fly over various potential locations to start a family. Each time Mr. Mallard selects a location, Mrs. Mallard finds something wrong with it. Tired from their search, the mallards land at the Public Garden Lagoon to spend the night. In the morning, a swan boat passes by the mallards. The mallards mistake the swan boat for a real bird and have a second breakfast of peanuts thrown from the people on the boat. Mrs. Mallard suggests that they build their nest in the Public Garden. However, just as she says this, she is nearly run down by a passing bicyclist. The mallards continue their search, flying over Boston landmarks such as Beacon Hill, the Massachusetts State House, and Louisburg Square. The mallards finally decide on an island in the Charles River. From this island, the mallards visit a policeman named Michael on the shore, who feeds them peanuts every day. Shortly thereafter, the mallards molt, and would not be able to fly again, until their new wings grew again, and Mrs. Mallard hatches eight ducklings named Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack. After the ducklings are born, Mr. Mallard decides to take a trip up the river to see what the rest of it is like. Mr. and Mrs. Mallard agree to meet at the Public Garden in one week. In the meantime, Mrs. Mallard teaches the eight ducklings all they need to know about being ducks, such as swimming, diving, marching along, and to avoid dangers such as bicycles and other wheeled objects. One week later, Mrs. Mallard leads the ducklings ashore and straight to the highway in hopes of crossing to reach the Garden, but she has trouble crossing as the cars will not yield to her. Michael, the policeman who fed peanuts to the Mallards, stops traffic for the family to cross. Michael calls police headquarters and instructs them to send a police car to stop traffic along the route for the ducks. The ducks cross the highway, Embankment Road (the eastern extension of Storrow Drive), then proceed down Mount Vernon Street to Charles Street where they head south to the Garden. The people on the streets admire the family of ducks and compliment them for being a family that is sticking together. When the family must cross Beacon Street to enter the Garden, there are four policeman standing in the intersection stopping traffic to make way for the ducklings. Mr. Mallard is waiting in the Public Garden for the rest of the family. Finally, the family decides to stay in the Garden and lives happily ever after. They end each day searching for peanuts and food, and when night falls, they swim to their little island and go to sleep.
1496330	/m/055y11	Toilers of the Sea	Victor Hugo		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A woman arrives in Guernsey, with her son Gilliat, and buys a house said to be haunted. The boy grows up, the woman dies. Gilliat becomes a good fisherman and sailor. People believe him to be a wizard. In Guernsey also lives a former sailor, Mess Lethierry, the owner of the first steam ship of the island -Durande- and his niece Deruchette. One day, near Christmas, when going to church, she sees Gilliat on the road behind her and writes his name in the snow. He sees this and becomes obsessed with her gesture. In time he falls in love with her and goes to play the bagpipes near her house. Sieur Clubin, the trusted captain of Durande, sets up a plan to sink the ship in the Hanois cilffs and flee with a ship of Spanish smugglers, Tamaulipas. He gets in touch with Rantaine, a swindler who had stolen a large sum of money from Mess Lethierry many years ago. Clubin takes the money from Rantaine at gunpoint. In thick fog, Clubin sails for the Hanois cliffs from where he can easily swim to the shore, meet the smugglers and disappear, leaving the appearance of having drowned. Instead, he loses his way and sails to the Douvres cliffs which are much further from the shore. Left alone on the ship, he is terrified but he sees a cutter and leaps into the water to catch it. In that moment he feels grabbed by the leg and pulled down to the bottom. Everybody in Guernsey finds out about the shipwreck. Mess Lethierry is desperate to get the Durande's engine back. His niece declares she will marry the rescuer of the engine, and Mess Lethierry swears she will marry no other. Gilliat immediately takes up the mission, enduring hunger, thirst and cold trying to free the engine from the wreck. In a battle with an octopus, he finds the skeleton of Clubin and the stolen money on the bottom of the sea. Eventually he succeeds in returning the engine to Lethierry, who is very pleased and ready to honour his promise. Gilliat appears in front of the people as the rescuer but he declines to marry Deruchette because he had seen her accepting a marriage proposal made by Ebenezer Caudry, the young priest recently arrived on the island. He arranges their hurried wedding and helps them to run away on the sailing ship Cashmere. In the end, with all his dreams shattered, he decides to wait for the tide sitting on the Gild Holm'Ur chair (a rock in the sea) and drowns as he watches the Cashmere disappear on the horizon.
1496334	/m/055y1t	The Man Who Laughs	Victor Hugo		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first major character whom the reader is introduced to is a mountebank who dresses in bearskins and calls himself Ursus (Latin for "bear"). His only companion is a large domesticated wolf, whom Ursus has named Homo (Latin for “man”, in a pun over the Hobbesian saying "homo homini lupus"). Ursus lives in a caravan, which he conveys to holiday fairs and markets throughout southern England, where he sells folk remedies. The action moves to an English sea coast, on the night of January 29, 1690. A group of wanderers, their identities left unrevealed to the reader, are urgently loading a ship for departure. A boy, ten years old, is among their company, but they leave him behind and cast off. The desperate boy, barefoot and starving, wanders through a snowstorm and reaches a gibbet, where he finds the corpse of a hanged criminal. The dead man is wearing shoes: utterly worthless to him now, yet precious to this boy. In the meantime, the wanderers' ship sinks after a long struggle with the sea in the English Channel. After walking some more, the boy finds a ragged woman, frozen to death. He is about to move onward when he hears a sound within the woman's garments: He discovers an infant girl, barely alive, clutching the woman's breast. Hugo's narrative describes a single drop of frozen milk, resembling a pearl, suspended from the dead woman's nipple. Although the boy's survival seems unlikely, he now takes possession of the infant in an attempt to keep her alive. The girl's eyes are sightless and clouded, and he understands that she is blind. In the snowstorm, he encounters an isolated caravan, the domicile of Ursus. The action shifts forward 15 years, to England during the reign of Queen Anne. Duchess Josiana, a spoiled and jaded peeress (and illegitimate daughter of King James II), is bored by the dull routine of court. Her fiance, David Dirry-Moir, the illegitimate son of a proscribed baron and to whom she has been engaged since infancy, tells the duchess that the only cure for her boredom is "Gwynplaine", although he does not divulge who or what this Gwynplaine might be. Ursus is now 15 years older. The wolf Homo is still alive too, although the narration admits that his fur is greyer. Gwynplaine is the abandoned boy, now 25 years old and matured to well-figured manhood. In a flashback, during the first encounter between Ursus and Gwynplaine, the boy is clutching the nearly-dead infant, and Ursus is outraged that the boy appears to be laughing. When the boy insists that he is not laughing, Ursus takes another look, and is horrified. The boy's face has been mutilated into a clown's mask, his mouth carved into a perpetual grin. The boy tells Ursus that his name is Gwynplaine; this is the only name he has ever known. The foundling girl, now sixteen years old, has been christened Dea (Latin for "goddess"). Dea is blind but beautiful and utterly virtuous. She is also in love with Gwynplaine, as she is able to witness his kindly nature without seeing his hideous face. When Dea attempts to "see" Gwynplaine by passing her sightless fingers across his face, she assumes that he must always be happy because he is perpetually smiling. They fall in love. Ursus and his two surrogate children earn a bare living in the fairs and carnivals of southern England. Everywhere they travel, Gwynplaine keeps the lower half of his face concealed. He is now the principal wage-earner of their retinue; in each town they visit, Gwynplaine gives a stage performance; the chief feature of this performance is that the crowds are invariably provoked to laughter when Gwynplaine reveals his grotesque face. At one point, Ursus and Gwynplaine are readying for a performance when Ursus directs Gwynplaine's attention to a man who strides purposefully past their fairgrounds, dressed in ceremonial garments and bearing an elaborate wooden staff. Ursus explains that this man is the Wapentake, a servant of the Crown. ("Wapentake" is an Old English word meaning "weapon-touch".) Whomever the Wapentake touches with his staff has been summoned by the monarch and must go to wherever the Wapentake leads, upon pain of death. Josiana attends one of Gwynplaine's performances, and is sensually aroused by the combination of his virile grace and his facial deformity. Gwynplaine, too, is aroused by Josiana's physical beauty and haughty demeanor. Suddenly, the Wapentake arrives at the caravan and touches Gwynplaine with his staff, compelling the disfigured man to follow him to the court of Queen Anne. Gwynplaine is ushered to a dungeon in London, where a physician named Hardquannone is being tortured to death. Hardquannone recognizes the deformed Gwynplaine, and identifies him as the boy whose abduction and disfigurement Hardquannone arranged twenty-three years earlier. In the year 1682, in the reign of James II, one of the king's enemies was Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone and a baron in the House of Lords, who had remained faithful to the English republic and had emigrated to Switzerland. Upon the baron's death, the king arranged the abduction of his two-year-old son and legitimate heir: Fermain, heir to his estates. The King sold Fermain to a band of wanderers called "the Comprachicos". David Dirry-Moir is the illegitimate son of Lord Linnaeus, but now that Fermain is known to be alive, the heritage once promised by the King to David on the condition of his future marriage to Josiana will instead belong to Fermain. The word "Comprachicos" is Hugo's invention, based on the Spanish for "child-buyers". They make their living by mutilating and disfiguring children, who are then forced to beg for alms, or who are exhibited as carnival freaks. On the King's command, the two-year-old Fermain is sold to them and disfigured. It becomes clear that, after renaming Fermain, Gwynplaine, the Comprachicos kept him in their possession until they abandoned him eight years later in 1690, on the night when he found Dea. Their ship was lost in the storm at sea, with all hands, but, in their repentance before death, they wrote out a signed confession and cast this adrift in a sealed flask, which now has belatedly come to the attention of Queen Anne. Dea is saddened by Gwynplaine's protracted absence. Ursus and his band are falsely told that Gwynplaine is now dead. Dea has always been frail, but now she withers away even more. The authorities condemn them to exile for illegally using a wolf in their shows. Gwynplaine accidentally meets Josiana, having been brought into her palace by her confidant, the intriguer Barkilphedro. At first she nearly seduces him, perversely excited by his deformity. However, she then receives a letter containing the Queen's order to marry him (as a replacement for David and the legitimate Lord Clancharie) and therefore violently rejects him as a lover, while accepting him as her (formal) husband. Gwynplaine is now formally instated as Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone. In a grotesque scene, he is dressed in the elaborate robes and ceremonial wig of investiture, and commanded to take his seat in the House of Lords. But, when the deformed Gwynplaine addresses his peers with a fiery speech against the gross inequality of the age, the other lords are provoked to laughter by Gwynplaine's clownish features. After the end of the session, David defends him and challenges a dozen Lords to a duel, but then he also challenges Gwynplaine to a duel for having chastised David's mother for having become the mistress of Charles II after having been the lover of his own father, Lord Linnaeus. Gwynplaine renounces his peerage and returns to the caravan of Ursus, and to the only family he has ever known. At first he cannot find them and nearly commits suicide out of grief. Then he manages to find them and board their ship bound for the continent in the last minute. Dea is delighted that Gwynplaine has returned to her. She reveals her passion to Gwynplaine, and then she abruptly dies. Gwynplaine then walks, as though in a trance to the edge of the ship, speaking to Dea, and with the reflection of a distant light in his eyes, though the sky is starless. He throws himself into the water, and is thus reunited with Dea in death. When Ursus, who has fainted in Dea's last moments, comes to his senses, Gwynplaine has vanished, and Homo is staring mournfully over the ship's rail, howling into the sea from which Gwynplaine will not return.
1496339	/m/055y2z	Ninety-Three	Victor Hugo	1874	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The action mainly takes place in western France, and in Paris, and to a lesser extent at sea off the Channel Islands, where Hugo latterly lived. The year is 1793. In Brittany during the Royalist insurrection of the Chouannerie, a troop of “Blues” (soldiers of the French Republic) encounter Michelle Fléchard, a peasant woman, and her three young children, who are fleeing from the conflict. She explains that her husband and parents have been killed. The troop’s commander, Sergeant Radoub, convinces them to look after the family. Meanwhile, at sea, a group of Royalist “Whites” are planning to land the Marquis de Lantenac, a Breton aristocrat whose leadership could transform the fortunes of the rebellion. Their corvette is spotted by ships of the Republic. Lantenac slips away in a boat with one supporter, and the corvette distracts the Republican ships by provoking a battle it cannot win. The corvette is destroyed, but Lantenac lands safely in Brittany. Lantenac is hunted by the Blues, but is protected by a local beggar, to whom he gave alms in the past. He meets up with his supporters, and they immediately launch an attack on the Blues. Part of the troop with the family is captured. Lantenac orders them all to be shot, including Michelle. He takes the children with him as hostages. The beggar finds the bodies, and discovers that Michelle is still alive. He nurses her back to health. Lantenac’s ruthless methods have turned the revolt into a major threat to the Republic. In Paris, Danton, Robespierre and Marat argue about the threat, while also sniping at each other. They promulgate a decree that all rebels and anyone who helps them will be executed. Cimourdain, a committed revolutionary and former priest, is deputed to carry out their orders in Brittany. He is also told to keep an eye on Gauvain, the commander of the Republican troops there, who is related to Lantenac and thought to be too lenient to rebels. Unknown to the revolutionary leaders, Cimourdain was Gauvain’s childhood tutor, and thinks of him as a son. Lantenac has taken control of Dol-de-Bretagne, in order to secure a landing place for British troops to be sent to support the Royalists. Gauvain launches a surprise attack and uses deception to dislodge and disperse them. Forced to retreat, Lantenac is constantly kept from the coast by Gauvain. With British troops unavailable his supporters melt away. Eventually he and a last few fanatical followers are trapped in his castle. Meanwhile Michelle has recovered and goes in search of her children. She wanders aimlessly, but eventually hears that they are being held hostage in Lantenac’s castle. At the castle Sergeant Radoub, fighting with the besiegers, spots the children. He persuades Gauvain to let him lead an assault. He manages to break through the defences and kill several rebels, but Lantenac and a few survivors escape through a secret passage after setting fire to the building. As the fire takes hold, Michelle arrives, and sees that her children are trapped. Her hysterical cries of despair are heard by Lantenac. Struck with guilt, he returns through the passage to the castle and rescues the children, helped by Radoub. He then gives himself up. Gauvain knows that Cimourdain will guillotine Lantenac after a military trial. He visits him in prison, where Lantenac expresses his uncompromising conservative vision of society ordered by hierarchy, deference and duty. Gauvain insists that humane values transcend tradition. To prove it, he allows Lantenac to escape and then gives himself up to the tribunal that was convened to try him. Gauvain is tried for treason. The tribunal comprises Cimourdain, Radoub and Gauvain’s deputy, Guéchamp. Radoub votes to acquit, but the others vote to condemn Gauvain to be executed. Visited by Cimourdain in prison, Gauvain outlines his own libertarian vision of a future society with minimal government, no taxes, technological progress and sexual equality. The following morning he is executed by guillotine. At the same moment, Cimourdain shoots himself.
1496344	/m/055y40	Le Dernier jour d'un condamné	Victor Hugo	1829		 A man who has been condemned to death by the guillotine in 19th century France writes down his cogitations, feelings and fears while awaiting his execution. His writing traces his change in psyche vis-a-vis the world outside the prison cell throughout his imprisonment, and describes his life in prison, everything from what his cell looks like to the personality of the prison priest. He does not betray his name or what he has done to the reader, though he vaguely hints that he has killed someone. On the day he is to be executed he sees his three-year-old daughter for the last time, but she no longer recognizes him, and tells him that her father is dead. The novel ends just after he briefly but desperately begs for pardon and curses the people of his time, the people he hears outside, screaming impatiently for the spectacle of his decapitation.
1496564	/m/055ynr	Along Came a Spider	Athena Alexis	1993	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Washington, D.C. homicide investigator and forensic psychologist Alex Cross investigates the brutal murders of two black prostitutes and an infant. Then, at an exclusive private school, math teacher Gary Soneji kidnaps Maggie Rose Dunne and Michael Goldberg. Cross is pulled off the murder case to investigate the kidnapping instead. Angry because he feels everyone cares more about two rich white children than tree dead black people, he meets Jezzie Flannagan, the head of the children's Secret Service detail. At an old farmhouse, Soneji buries the children alive in specially made coffin. Angered by FBI agent Roger Graham's contemptuous comments about him on TV, Soneji later impersonates a reporter and kills Graham. Meanwhile, Cross, his partner John Sampson and the FBI search Soneji's apartment, discovering his obsession with kidnappings, particularly that of the Lindbergh baby, and his desire to become a world famous criminal. A next few months later, Michael Goldberg's corpse is discovered, and the Dunnes receive a telegram demanding $10 million. Cross, Sampson and the FBI investigate, and Cross begins an affair with Jezzie Flannagan. He is ordered to deliver the money to Walt Disney World in Orlando, wondering how Soneji knows about his involvement. A man takes him on a plane, flying to a small island and taking the money, but never delivering Maggie Rose. At the old farmhouse, police officers find the empty graves where the children were held. Soneji returns to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where it is revealed he has a wife and a daughter. In Washington DC, Soneji, dressed as a public utility employee, murders a teacher from the private school. Cross and Sampson are sent to the scene and, seeing the way he mutilated the body, quickly realize that Soneji is also behind the killings they investigated before and after the kidnapping. In the murdered prostitutes' neighborhood, an elderly woman recalls a man driving going door to door selling heating systems. They soon find out that a man named Gary Murphy works for the company, and put observation on his family home in Wilmington, but Soneji manages to escape. A day later, he walks into a McDonald's and holds several people hostage. Soneji is almost killed, but Cross saves him, as he believes Soneji knows where Maggie is. The criminal promises Cross will regret saving his life. The trial of Gary Soneji/Murphy lasts eleven months. Cross hypnotizes him several times, learning he seems to have a split personality; Gary Murphy, his everyday persona, is a gentle family man, while Gary Soneji is a vicious sociopath. Despite the defense's best effort at an insanity plea, Soneji is imprisoned. Meanwhile, Cross learns that someone was following Soneji and knew about the kidnapping. Cross suspects Mike Devine and Charley Chakely, the Secret Service agents in charge of protecting Maggie Rose and Michael when they were kidnapped. He meets with Soneji, who confirms he may have been followed. He did not make the connection until he recognized the man at his trial: Mike Devine. Cross meets with the FBI, who have believed for some time that Devine and Chakely took the ransom money, hiring and later murdering the pilot from Florida. Cross also learns that no other than Jezzie Flannagan masterminded the kidnapping using her lover, Devine, as a pawn. Around the same time, Soneji escapes from prison and goes to Washington, where he tortures Devine to find out where the ransom money is. After retrieving the money, he kills Devine. Cross takes Flannagan on a Caribbean getaway, and confronts her about her actions. She explains that Devine and Chakely noticed Soneji driving by the Goldberg house, and followed him. The ransom was her idea, and they removed Maggie Rose after Michael died accidentally. Flannagan is arrested based on a recording Sampson made of the conversation, and Maggie Rose is found with a family in South America, where she had been living for the past two years. Shortly after this, Soneji attacks Cross at his Washington home, attempting to kill his grandmother and children. Losing the fight, Soneji is hunted through the capital and eventually cornered on Pennsylvania Avenue, where he takes two children hostage. Soneji is about to shoot Cross, but Sampson shoots Soneji first, wounding him. Some time later, Charley Chakely and Jezzie Flannagan are executed for their crimes, while Soneji is locked up in a mental institution. He writes a last taunting letter to Cross and bribes a guard to leave it on Cross' windshield. Disturbed but unwilling to let the psychopath disrupt his life any further, Cross returns home to spend time with his family.
1497977	/m/0561r8	Les Enfants Terribles	Jean Cocteau	1929	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This story concerns the siblings Paul and Elisabeth who start this story without a father and with a bed-ridden mother, whom Elisabeth looks after. At school Paul is obsessed with the feminine looking Dargelos, while Paul’s school friend Gerard is enthralled by the siblings. However after Paul becomes ill when Dargelos throws a snowball with a stone inside at him, Elisabeth cares for both him and their mother. While nursing Paul they start an incestuous love and begin playing the “game”. The game devised by Paul and Elisabeth often involves the siblings trying to hurt each other's feelings, where the winner is the one that leaves the contest with the last word, a sense of superiority and ideally having caused a display of angry frustration from the other. This game continues after Paul recovers and their mother has died. Elisabeth soon takes up a job as a model, where she meets Agathe, a girl who was orphaned at a young age after her drug-addicted parents committed suicide. Agathe, characterised by her strong resemblance to Dargelos, soon moves in with Paul and Elisabeth. Elisabeth is first to get married to a wealthy young man who dies on his way to a business meeting before the married couple can even enjoy a honeymoon. The result of the marriage is that the siblings inherit a large house which they move into. Paul soon finds himself in love with Agathe. Elisabeth cannot stand to see her brother happy, but there is also an element of it being a game to see how much hurt she can inflict. She manages to bully Gerard, who is in love with her, into marrying Agathe and as a result helps break her brother’s heart. After Agathe and Gerard's marriage, Gerard meets with Dargelos, now a collector of poisons, and sends one of these poisons to Paul, also an enthusiast, as a gift. That poison is taken by Paul to end his life after writing of his love to Agathe. As Paul lies dying he is attended to by Agathe, who finds out about Elisabeth's scheme, and Elisabeth herself. In her final moments, knowing that Paul is dying, Elisabeth senses that this is yet another twist in the game and by dying he has beaten her to the final move. She then shoots herself and by a matter of seconds beats Paul, leaving a frightened Agathe with two dead bodies.
1498012	/m/0561wg	The Alienist	Caleb Carr	1994-03-15	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Narrated from the first-person perspective of John Moore, a crime reporter for The New York Times, the novel begins on January 8, 1919, the day that Theodore Roosevelt is buried. Moore has dinner with Laszlo Kreizler, the famous alienist. Kreizler is surrounded by those he has rescued, including his black servant, Cyrus Montrose, his housekeeper, Mary Palmer, and a boy named Stevie "Stevepipe" Taggert. Together, they reminisce about their times with Roosevelt, but they focus on one moment: the spring of 1896 and their efforts to catch a serial killer on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The novel is narrated in retrospect, with Moore commenting on the events and how they impacted later history. At 2 am on March 3, 1896, Moore is awakened by one of Kreizler's servants banging incessantly on his door. Stevie, a young boy whom Kreizler had saved from being institutionalized and who is dedicated to Kreizler, brings Moore to the scene of a crime that Kreizler wants Moore to see. Roosevelt, the police commissioner, is already at the scene. When Moore sees the nature of the brutal murder, he is appalled. The victim, Georgio "Gloria" Santorelli, is a 13-year-old boy who prostituted himself by dressing up as a girl; the boy's wrists are tied behind his back and he is kneeling, with his face pressed on the steel walkway where he was found. Though makeup paint and powder on his face are still intact, his eyes are gouged out, his right hand is chopped off, his genitals are cut off and stuffed between his jaws, he has huge gashes across his entire body, his throat has been slashed, and his buttocks are "shorn off." The policeman at the scene, Detective Sergeant Connor, makes it clear that murders of such victims are usually ignored. At Roosevelt's request, Moore, Kreizler, and he meet the following morning in Roosevelt's office to discuss the case. Kreizler has examined the body and disagrees with the official coroner's report. He connects the Santorelli killing to that of a second case he knows of in which two children, Benjamin and Sofia Zweig, were killed and also had their eyes gouged out. Roosevelt announces that he knows of two more murders that match the pattern. Roosevelt decides to investigate, but because Kreizler has such a dubious reputation as an alienist and because the investigation will become politically difficult, he establishes a base of operations for them outside the police precinct. Politically, Roosevelt cannot afford to be associated with the investigation and is not involved with the day-to-day operations. Kreizler asks for some young detectives, who are open to new methods, and receives the help of Sara Howard, the first woman to be hired by the police department, and Marcus and Lucius Isaacson, two Jewish brothers who were hired when Roosevelt began removing corrupt police officers from the force. The Isaacsons bring sophisticated methods such as the Bertillon system and fingerprinting to the investigation, although these were not popular in New York City police departments at the time nor accepted in courts of law. The group begins to investigate the victims, hoping to understand the mind of the murderer by understanding his victims. They interview Georgio Santorelli's mother and discover, for example, that there was discord in his family. Georgio's parents had learned of him being manipulated into performing sex for older boys in school, and the father's response was to try to beat it out of the boy. Georgio eventually left home, and lived on the streets as a male-for-male prostitute. They also read the emerging science of psychology, such as the works of William James. Another body is discovered and the evidence suggests that the victim knew his attacker. They also deduce that the killer's agility on roofs suggests that he is familiar with mountain or rock climbing. Kreizler, Roosevelt, Moore, and Howard must deal with various interest groups during their investigation who wish to maintain society's status quo, including a corrupt police force which takes bribes from owners of the brothels whose prostitutes include poor immigrants; the Catholic Church, which is wary of the potential power of an organized immigrant population; the Episcopal Church; and J.P. Morgan.
1500111	/m/0566m7	Zami: A New Spelling of My Name	Audre Lorde	1982	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Audre Lorde grows up in Harlem, a child of Black West Indian parents. Legally blind as a child, she learns to read before going to school, thus stoking up wrath in the Nuns/teachers at her Catholic school. The family's landlord hangs himself for having to rent his flat to Black people; later they take a trip to Washington D.C., where they are refused ice-cream because of segregation laws. After getting her first period at age 15, she makes friends with a small number of non-Black girls, called "The Branded" at Hunter College High School. She is even elected literary editor of the school's arts magazine - she has started writing poetry. After graduation, she leaves home and shares a flat with friends of Jean's (one of The Branded). At the same time, she also goes out with Peter, a white boy who jilts her on New Year's Eve - she is pregnant and decides on an abortion. After some unhappy times at Hunter College, she moves to Stamford, Connecticut, to find work in a factory, where the working conditions prove atrocious. Following her father's death, she returns to NYC and starts a relationship with Bea, whose heart she ends up breaking when she decides to move to Mexico to get away from McCarthyism. There, she goes to university and works as a secretary in a hospital. In Cuernavaca, she meets a lot of independent women, mostly lesbians; she has a relationship with one of them, Eudora, and works in a library. Back in NYC, Audre explores the lesbian bar scene, moves in with lover Muriel, then another lesbian, Lynn, moves in with them and ends up leaving without warning and with their savings. Finally, Audre begins a relationship with a mother named Afrekete, who decides to leave to tend to her child. The book ends on a homage to Audre's mother.
1500123	/m/0566nn	Giovanni's Room	James Baldwin	1956	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 David, in the South of France, is about to board a train back to Paris. His girlfriend Hella, to whom he had proposed before she went to Spain, has returned to the United States. As for Giovanni, he is about to be guillotined. David remembers his first experience with a boy, Joey, who lived in Brooklyn. The two bonded and eventually had a sexual encounter during a sleepover. The two boys began kissing and making love. The next day, David left, and a little later he took to bullying Joey in order to feel like a real man. David now lives with his father, who is prone to drinking, and his aunt, Ellen. The latter upbraids the father for not being a good example to his son. David's father says that all he wants is for David to become a real man. Later, David begins drinking, too, and drinks and drives once, ending up in an accident. Back home, the two men talk, and David convinces his father to let him skip college and get a job instead. He then decides to move to France to find himself. After a year in Paris, penniless, he calls Jacques, an older homosexual acquaintance, to meet him for supper so he can ask for money. (In a prolepsis, Jacques and David meet again and discuss Giovanni's fall.) The two men go to Guillaume's gay bar. They meet Giovanni, the new bartender, at whom Jacques tries to make a pass, until he gets talking with Guillaume. Meanwhile, David and Giovanni become friends. Later, they all go to a restaurant in Les Halles. Jacques enjoins David not to be ashamed to feel love; they eat oysters and drink white wine. Giovanni recounts how he met Guillaume in a cinema, how the two men had dinner together because Giovanni wanted a free meal. He also explains that Guillaume is prone to making trouble. Later, the two men go back to Giovanni's room and they have sex. David moves into Giovanni's small room. They broach the subject of Hella, about whom Giovanni is not worried, but who reveals the Italian's misogynistic prejudices about women and the need for men to dominate them. David then briefly describes Giovanni's room, which is always in the dark because there are no curtains and they need their own privacy. He goes on to read a letter from his father, asking him to go back to America, but he does not want to do that. The young man walks into a sailor; David believes he thinks David is a gay man, though it is unclear whether this is true or the sailor is just staring back at David. A subsequent letter from Hella announces that she is returning in a few days, and David realizes he has to part with Giovanni soon. Setting off to prove to himself that he is not gay, David searches for a woman with whom he can have sex. He meets a slight acquaintance, Sue, in a bar and they go back to her place and have sex; he does not want to see her again and has only just used her to feel better about himself. When he returns to the room, David finds a hysterical Giovanni, who has been fired from Guillaume's bar. Hella eventually comes back and David leaves Giovanni's room with no notice for three days. He sends a letter to his father asking for money for their marriage. The couple then walks into Jacques and Giovanni in a bookshop, which makes Hella uncomfortable because she does not like Jacques's mannerisms. After walking Hella back to her hotel room, David goes to Giovanni's room to talk; the Italian man is distressed. David thinks that they cannot have a life together and feels that he would be sacrificing his manhood if he stays with Giovanni. He leaves, but runs into Giovanni several times and is upset by the "fairy" mannerisms which he is developing and his new relationship with Jacques, who is an older and richer man. Sometime later, David walks into Yves and finds out Giovanni is no longer with Jacques and that he might be able to get a job at Guillaume's bar again. The news of Guillaume's murder suddenly comes out, and Giovanni is castigated in all newspapers. David fancies that Giovanni went back into the bar to ask for a job, going so far as to sacrifice his dignity and agree to sleep with Guillaume. He imagines that after Giovanni has compromised himself, Guillaume makes excuses for why he cannot rehire him as a bar-tender; in reality they both know that Giovanni is no longer of interest to Guillame's bar's clientele since so much of his life has been played out in public. Giovanni responds by killing Guillame in rage. Giovanni attempts to hide, but he is discovered by the police and sentenced to death for murder. On the day of Giovanni's execution, David is in his house in the South of France. The caretaker comes round for the inventory, as he is moving out the next day. She encourages him to get married, have children, and pray. Hella and David then move to the South of France, where they discuss gender roles and Hella expresses her desire to live under a man as a woman. David, wracked with guilt over Giovanni's impending execution, leaves her and goes to Nice for a few days, where he spends his time with a sailor. Hella finds him and discovers his homosexuality, which she says she suspected all along. She bitterly decides to go back to America. The book ends with David's mental pictures of Giovanni's execution and his own guilt.
1500640	/m/05682n	Coquette	Hannah Webster Foster	1797		 The story is about Eliza Wharton, the daughter of a clergyman. At the beginning of the novel she has just been released from an unwanted marriage by the death of her betrothed, the Rev. Haly, also a clergyman, whom Eliza nursed during his final days in her own home. After this experience, she decides she wants friendship and independence. After a short period of time living with friends, she is courted by two men. One, Boyer, is a respected but rather boring clergyman, whom all of her friends and her mother recommend she accept in marriage. The other, Sanford, is an aristocratic libertine, who has no intention to marry but determines not to let another man have Eliza. Because of her indecision and her apparent preference for the libertine Sanford, Boyer eventually gives up on her, deciding that she will not make a suitable wife. Sanford also disappears from her life and marries another woman, Nancy, for her fortune. Eliza eventually decides that she really loved Boyer and wants him back. Unfortunately for Eliza, Boyer has already decided to marry Maria Selby, a relation of Boyer's friend. Sanford later reappears married, but is able to seduce the depressed Eliza. They have a hidden affair for some time until, overcome by guilt and unwilling to face her family and friends, Eliza arranges to escape from her home. Like the real-life Elizabeth Whitman, she dies due to childbirth complications and is buried by strangers. Mrs. Wharton (Eliza's mother) and all of Eliza's friends are deeply saddened by her death. Sanford, too, is devastated by her death. In a letter to his friend, Charles Deighton, he expresses his regret at his wretched behavior.
1500979	/m/0568zg	The Rocking-Horse Winner	D. H. Lawrence			 The story describes a young middle-class Englishwoman who "had no luck." Though outwardly successful, she is haunted by a sense of failure; her husband is a ne'er-do-well and her work as a commercial artist doesn't earn as much as she'd like. The family's lifestyle exceeds its income and unspoken anxiety about money permeates the household. Her children, a son Paul and his two sisters, sense this anxiety, and Paul even claims he can hear the house "whispering" There must be more money. Paul tells his Uncle Oscar Cresswell about betting on horse races with Bassett, the gardener. He's been placing bets using his pocket money and has won and saved three hundred twenty pounds. Sometimes he says he is "sure" of a winner for an upcoming race, and the horses he names do in fact win, sometimes at remarkable odds. Uncle Oscar and Bassett both place large bets on the horses Paul names. After further winning, Paul and Oscar arrange to give the mother a gift of five thousand pounds, but the gift only lets her spend more. Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be "lucky". As the Derby approaches, Paul is determined to learn the winner. Concerned about his health, his mother rushes home from a party and discovers his secret. He has been spending hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night long, until he "gets there", into a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner's name. Paul remains ill through the day of the Derby. Informed by Cresswell, Bassett has placed Paul's bet on Malabar, at fourteen to one. When he is informed by Bassett that he now has 80,000 pounds, Paul says to his mother: "I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure – oh absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!" "No, you never did," said his mother. The boy dies in the night and his mother hears her brother say, “My God, Hester, you’re eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking horse to find a winner.”
1501468	/m/056b3g	Ten Men	Alexandra Gray	2005-01-13	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist is born in the mid-1960s. After her father's premature death when she is seven, she and her sister are brought up in England by their mother, who is a French Catholic. Conditioned to believe that pre-marital sex is a sin, at 18 the heroine is forced into an early marriage with a teacher, who works literally day and night at a remote boarding school for boys. Stripped of her privacy and her youthful ways, she clings to her husband, hoping he will take a job elsewhere. When he does not she deserts him and embarks on a series of affairs with wealthy men who are not interested in a long-term relationship with her: a lawyer, a capitalist ("the Billionaire"), a Lord. Similar to Caroline Meeber in Dreiser's Sister Carrie, the protagonist is not prepared to earn a living through honest work dependent on her qualifications. Accordingly, she always has to rely financially on the men in her life. In particular, it is the billionaire who, as a kind of parting present, volunteers to pay for her very expensive university education at some exclusive New York college as well as for her Upper East Side apartment. After her graduation the protagonist eventually moves back to London. An affair with a sexually inexperienced man ("the Virgin") leads to her first pregnancy ever and a subsequent miscarriage. Having trained as an actress, she gets a few jobs in TV commercials. When she meets her ex-husband again it is only to find out that he is going to get married again. At the end of the novel, aged about 38 and still indecisive, she meets a single father who might become her future partner.
1504603	/m/056hy4	Man of Two Worlds	Brian Herbert	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On the distant planet Dreenor lives the most powerful species in the Galaxy. All of the Universe is the creation of the Dreens, who possess the power of "idmaging", turning their thoughts into reality. They can create whole worlds, of which the wild, ungovernable planet Earth is one. But suddenly Earth is a threat, its people on the verge of discovering interstellar travel, and with it, of gaining access to Dreenor itself - a paradox within a paradox, not to be permitted. While the elder Dreens plan Earth's destruction, a youngster, Ryll, embarks on an unauthorized jaunt across space. Forced for survival to merge bodies with an “Earther” whose mind is as strong as his own, he has to battle for control. And the future of all earthly life lies in the hand of a composite being, half wily, aggressive human, half naive adolescent alien, confused and far from home.
1505455	/m/056kt5	Tower of Glass	Robert Silverberg	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot involves a 24th century entrepreneur-tycoon-scientist, Simeon Krug, who has created a race of androids to serve humanity. Krug, probably Earth's wealthiest man, directs the construction of an immense tower of glass in the Canadian tundra. The edifice is not a monument, however, but a way to communicate with a distant planetary nebula, NGC 7293, from which an intelligent (though indecipherable) message has been received. Krug is also building a starship to send there, which is to be crewed by androids in hibernation. The tower construction is directed by Krug's most faithful android, Alpha Thor Watchman. Thor and other leading androids have invented a secret religion for androids, based on the vision that their creator, Krug, intends to eventually make them equal to humans. Krug is unaware of the religion. Thor's dream is to convince him through indirect means, including the manipulation of his weak-willed son and heir, Manuel, through a sexual relationship with a female android, Alpha Lilith Meson. Thor eventually falls in love with her, as does Manuel. After Thor and Lilith have manipulated Manuel into telling his father about the android religion, Krug insists that the minds of he and Thor be connected in the "shunt room" which allows one mind to probe another's (a form of technologically enabled telepathy). Thor discovers via the link that Krug regards androids as mere things, and has no intention of treating them as equal to womb-born humans. Realizing that Krug will never give freedom to androids, Thor despairs, loses his faith and announces Krug's true nature to androids worldwide. With the collapse of their religion, androids across all of Earth rebel. Many walk off their jobs, others take control of key Earth installations, and some even kill humans in their long-suppressed rage. Thor then causes the fall of the nearly-complete, 1,200-meter-tall tower. An engraged Krug attacks Thor; the latter, unable to fight his creator, is pushed into an unprogrammed teleporter and annihilated. Krug, his empire destroyed and humanity in grave danger, flees in his starship, alone, towards the star system from which the alien message was sent.
1505514	/m/056kzg	Callahan's Lady	Spider Robinson	1989-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The storyline focuses on Maureen, an underage streetwalker who is stabbed by her pimp in a dark alley one night. Fortunately for Maureen, Lady Sally is nearby: she had been walking her werebeagle. After defeating the pimp in hand to hand combat, Sally brings Maureen home. Her brothel has a fully functioning medical facility, where Maureen is treated and healed. She falls in love with the place for its ambiance and safety but is rejected as an employee for many reasons. Most importantly, she is underage but she also has severe self-loathing issues. Lady Sally enjoys the fact that Maureen comes to accept and befriend the werebeagle and a talking German Shepherd but this is not enough let the main character stay. Maureen's old pimp tracks down the brothel and puts many of the visitors in danger. Maureen uses her wits to help defeat the man; this convinces Sally to let her stay in a non-sexual context. The plot skips to Maureen becoming eighteen, she is allowed to take on sexual duties. The rest of the plot focuses on three different subsequent incidents. There is 'Colt', a client with an unusual addiction that nobody seems to notice, one that presents various threats. Later, Maureen and her close friend Phillip swiftly realize that they are doing many things they do not wish to do over the course of their work-day. The concept of 'being forced into it' is something that Lady Callahan and her staff oppose in many, varied ways. Maureen and Phillip find that they are keeping quiet about this, even though they wish to tell everyone possible. The last incident focuses on Maureen's old friend, the Professor, who needs fifty thousand quick or he will die horribly. A very specific, very counterfeit fifty thousand. Like other books in the Callahan series, puns are a focus, sometimes seriously.
1506060	/m/056mfh	Cyrano de Bergerac	Edmond Rostand			 Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet (nobleman serving as a soldier) in the French Army, is a brash, strong-willed man of many talents. In addition to being a remarkable duelist, he is a gifted, joyful poet and is also shown to be a musician. However, he has an extremely large nose, which is the reason for his own self-doubt. This doubt prevents him from expressing his love for his distant cousin, the beautiful and intellectual heiress Roxane, as he believes that his ugliness denies him the "dream of being loved by even an ugly woman." The play opens in Paris, 1640, in the theatre of the Hôtel Burgundy. Members of the audience slowly arrive, representing a cross-section of Parisian society from pickpockets to nobility. Christian de Neuvillette, a handsome new cadet, arrives with Lignière, a drunkard who he hopes will identify the young woman with whom he has fallen in love. Lignière recognizes her as Roxane, and tells Christian about her and the Count De Guiche’s scheme to marry her off to the compliant Viscount Valvert. Meanwhile, Ragueneau and Le Bret are expecting Cyrano de Bergerac, who has banished the actor Montfleury from the stage for a month. After Lignière leaves, Christian intercepts a pickpocket and, in return for his freedom, the pickpocket tells Christian of a plot against Lignière. Christian departs to try to warn him. The play “Clorise” begins with Montfleury’s entrance, and Cyrano disrupts the play, chases him off stage, and compensates the manager for the loss of admission fees. The crowd is going to disperse when Cyrano lashes out at a pesky busybody, then is confronted by Valvert and duels with him while composing a ballade, wounding him as he ends the refrain (as promised: he ends each refrain with "When I end the refrain, 'Thrust Home'.") When the crowd has cleared the theater, Cyrano and Le Bret remain behind, and Cyrano confesses his love for Roxane. Roxane’s duenna then arrives, and asks where Roxane may meet Cyrano privately. Lignière is then brought to Cyrano, having learned that one hundred hired thugs are waiting to ambush him on his way home. Cyrano, now emboldened, vows to take on the entire mob single-handed, and he leads a procession of officers, actors and musicians to the Porte de Nesle. The next morning, at Ragueneau’s bake shop, Ragueneau supervises various apprentice cooks in their preparations. Cyrano arrives, anxious about his meeting with Roxane. He is followed by a musketeer, a paramour of Ragueneau’s domineering wife Lise, then the regular gathering of impoverished poets who take advantage of Ragueneau’s hospitality. Cyrano composes a letter to Roxane expressing his deep and unconditional love for her, warns Lise about her indiscretion with the musketeer, and when Roxane arrives he signals Ragueneau to leave them alone. Roxane and Cyrano talk privately as she bandages his hand (injured from the fracas at the Port de Nesle); she thanks him for defeating Valvert at the theater, and talks about a man whom she has fallen in love with. Cyrano thinks that she is talking about him at first, and is ecstatic, but Roxane describes her crush as "handsome," and tells him that she is in love with Christian. Roxane fears for Christian’s safety in the predominantly Gascon company of Cadets, so she asks Cyrano to befriend and protect him. This he agrees to do. After she leaves, Cyrano’s captain arrives with the cadets to congratulate him on his victory from the night before. They are followed by a huge crowd, including De Guiche and his entourage, but Cyrano soon drives them away. Le Bret takes him aside and chastises him for his behavior, but Cyrano responds haughtily. The Cadets press him to tell the story of the fight, teasing the newcomer Christian. When Cyrano recounts the tale, Christian displays his own form of courage by interjecting several times with references to Cyrano’s nose. Cyrano is angry, but remembering his promise to Roxanne, he holds in his temper. Eventually Cyrano explodes, the shop is evacuated, and Cyrano reveals his identity as Roxane's cousin. Christian confesses his love for Roxane but his inability to woo because of his lack of intellect and wit. When Cyrano tells Christian that Roxane expects a letter from him, Christian is despondent, having no eloquence in such matters. Cyrano then offers his services, including his own unsigned letter to Roxane. The Cadets and others return to find the two men embracing, and are flabbergasted. The musketeer from before, thinking it was safe to do so, teases Cyrano about his nose and receives a slap in the face while the Cadets rejoice. Outside Roxane's house Ragueneau is conversing with Roxane's duenna. When Cyrano arrives, Roxane comes down and they talk about Christian: Roxane says that Christian’s letters have been breathtaking—he is more intellectual than even Cyrano, she declares. She also says that she loves Christian. When De Guiche arrives, Cyrano hides inside Roxane's house. De Guiche tells Roxane that he has come to say farewell. He has been made a colonel of an army regiment that is leaving that night to fight in the war with Spain. He mentions that the regiment includes Cyrano’s guards, and he grimly predicts that he and Cyrano will have a reckoning. Afraid for Christian’s safety if he should go to the front, Roxane quickly suggests that the best way for De Guiche to seek revenge on Cyrano would be for him to leave Cyrano and his cadets behind while the rest of the regiment goes on to military glory. After much flirtation from Roxane, De Guiche believes he should stay close by, concealed in a local monastery. When Roxane implies that she would feel more for De Guiche if he went to war, he agrees to march on steadfastly, leaving Cyrano and his cadets behind. He leaves, and Roxane makes the duenna promise she will not tell Cyrano that Roxane has robbed him of a chance to go to war. Roxane expects Christian to come visit her, and she tells the duenna to make him wait if he does. Cyrano presses Roxane to disclose that instead of questioning Christian on any particular subject, she plans to make Christian improvise about love. Although he tells Christian the details of her plot, when Roxane and her duenna leave, he calls for Christian who has been waiting nearby. Cyrano tries to prepare Christian for his meeting with Roxane, urging him to remember lines Cyrano has written. Christian however refuses saying he wants to speak to Roxane in his own words. Cyrano bows to this saying, “Speak for yourself, sir.” During their meeting Christian makes a fool of himself trying to speak seductively to Roxane. Roxane storms into her house, confused and angry. Thinking quickly, Cyrano makes Christian stand in front of Roxane’s balcony and speak to her while Cyrano stands under the balcony whispering to Christian what to say. Eventually, Cyrano shoves Christian aside and, under cover of darkness, pretends to be Christian, wooing Roxane himself. In the process, he wins a kiss for Christian. Roxane and Christian are secretly married by a Capuchin while Cyrano waits outside to prevent De Guiche from disrupting the impromptu wedding. Their happiness is short-lived: De Guiche, angry to have lost Roxane, declares that he is sending the Cadets of Gascoyne to the front lines of the war with Spain. De Guiche triumphantly tells Cyrano that the wedding night will have to wait. Under his breath, Cyrano remarks that the news fails to upset him. Roxane, afraid for Christian, urges Cyrano to promise to keep him safe, to keep him out of dangerous situations, to keep him dry and warm, and to keep him faithful. Cyrano says that he will do what he can but that he cannot promise anything. Roxane begs Cyrano to promise to make Christian write to her every day. Brightening, Cyrano announces confidently that he can promise that. The siege of Arras. The Gascon Cadets are among many French forces now cut off by the Spanish, and they are starving. Cyrano, meanwhile, has been writing in Christian’s name twice a day, smuggling letters across the enemy lines. De Guiche, whom the Cadets despise, arrives and chastises them; Cyrano responds with his usual bravura, and De Guiche then signals a spy to tell the Spanish to attack on the Cadets, informing them that they must hold the line while relief comes in. Then a coach arrives, and Roxane emerges from it. She tells how she was able to flirt her way through the Spanish lines. Cyrano tells Christian about the letters, and provides him a farewell letter to give to Roxane if he dies. After De Guiche departs, Roxane provides plenty of food and drink with the assistance of the coach’s driver, Ragueneau. She also tells Christian that, because of the letters, she has grown to love him for his soul alone, and would still love him even if he were ugly. Christian tells this to Cyrano, and then persuades Cyrano to tell Roxane the truth about the letters, saying he has to be loved for "the fool that he is" to be truly loved at all. Cyrano disbelieves what Christian claims Roxane has said, until she tells him so as well. But, before Cyrano can tell her the truth, Christian is brought back to the camp, having been fatally shot. Cyrano realizes that, in order to preserve Roxane's image of an eloquent Christian, he cannot tell her the truth. The battle ensues, a distraught Roxane collapses and is carried off by De Guiche and Ragueneau, and Cyrano rallies the Cadets to hold back the Spanish until relief arrives. Fifteen years later, at a convent outside Paris. Roxane now resides here, eternally mourning her beloved Christian. She is visited by De Guiche, Le Bret and Ragueneau, and she expects Cyrano to come by as he always has with news of the outside world. On this day, however, he has been mortally wounded by someone who dropped a huge log on his head from a tall building. While he arrives to deliver his “gazette” to Roxane, it will be his last. Knowing this, he asks Roxane if he can read "Christian's" farewell letter. She gives it to him, and he reads it aloud as it grows dark. Listening to his voice, she realizes that it is Cyrano who was the author of all the letters, but Cyrano denies this to his death. Ragueneau and Le Bret return, telling Roxane of Cyrano’s injury. While Cyrano grows delirious, his friends weep and Roxane tells him that she loves him. He combats various foes, half imaginary and half symbolic, conceding that he has lost all but one important thing – his panache – as he dies in Roxane's arms.
1507874	/m/056r8q	Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!	Kenzaburō Ōe			 Ōe wishes to write a set of definitions to prepare handicapped children like his son for the real world. He struggles with definitions for concepts such as "death," only to learn that his son Eeyore has just as much to teach him about life. Ōe relates his interpretations of events with Eeyore in light of Blake's poetry, and discusses the influence of and similarities between Blake's work on his own.
1510010	/m/056x2w	Beggars Ride	Nancy Kress	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the prologue, Jennifer Sharifi evicts her granddaughter from the Sanctuary Orbital; the Supers are later revealed (through use of inter-chapter epistolary e-mails) to have moved to Selene Base on the moon. These e-mails, sent by poor Livers, donkey enclaves and even top researchers, always regard the Change syringes, which the Supers have stopped supplying; neither syringes nor replies are ever sent. The novel then cuts to Jackson Aranow, M.D., resident of the Manhattan East Enclave. As a doctor in the age of the Change syringe, he is reduced to Changing newborns, dealing with occasional trauma, and death certificates, which he administers now to Harold Winthrop Wayland. He then returns home, where the reader is first introduced to his sister Theresa and ex-wife Cazie Saunders. The two could not be more different. "Tessie" is a pale, fragile girl, unChanged, who suffers from a neurological condition that causes her to feel endangered in the presence of new and unaccustomed stimuli, but refuses to take neuropharmaceuticals; she is writing a book on Leisha Camden, a long-dead Sleepless. Cazie is an explosive, endlessly vital, take-charge woman who comes and goes as she pleases. Her companions underline the vacility of donkey life, while Cazie underlines that, of 90 million eligible voters in the recent presidential election, only 8% bothered. America is ceasing to exist as a political unit. She also reveals that there has been a break-in at a Y-cone plant in Jackson's family business, TenTech (which she owns a third of, due to the divorce), and insists that they investigate on the morrow. The break-in is actually being orchestrated by a prodigious young data-dipper, Lizzie Francy, now seventeen and very much pregnant, and accompanied by her friend Victoria Turner (Diana, it is revealed later, has legally changed her name). As far as Lizzie is concerned, she owns the world: she's one of the best dippers alive, she has been helping provide for her tribe since Vicki gave her her first computer terminal, she got herself pregnant by some boy because she wanted a baby, and she is about to do the impossible: break into a Y-shielded donkey factory, steal some of their wares, and escape to tell the tale. Though the factory itself has gone haywire (the robots within were improperly programmed and have been destroying products instead of creating them), everything goes according to plan... Except for the escaping part. Restless and locked in, she and Vicki prowl the premises, attempting to find a way out. Jackson and Cazie arrive to confront their worst nightmare: not the insane factory, but rather the fact that a Liver&mdash;an unwashed, stupid, uneducated member of the lower classes&mdash;was smart enough to dip their factory. On the strength of Vicki's character (and possibly other things; she reminds him alarmingly of Cazie), Jackson refuses to arrest them, and furthermore accompanies Lizzie and Vicki back to the tribe when Lizzie goes into month-early premature labor (the baby is a presentation). He gains points with the tribe by injecting the baby with a Change syringe, which the tribe only had one of. (Jackson personally has three more, plus a stockpile in his home.) After dealing with a break-in from Livers in search of Change syringes for their children, Theresa, in endless search for meaning to her life, visits a bizarre Liver enclave where trios of people inject themselves with a red syringe that forces them to stay in close physical proximity to each other&mdash;on pain of death. (The triads also take on a new composite name; one pre-bonded group, Josh Mike and Patty, are later introduced as "Jomp.") The Livers have a holo recording from Miranda Sharifi explaining that this syringe is her next gift to them, building on the Change; this is Theresa's excuse to escape when she decides she doesn't want to be involved. Her next visit is to a convent, which she is ready to submit herself to until the Mother Superior informs her that they use neuropharms to induce religious euphoria in their sisters. Afterwards she dumps Jackson's last sixteen syringes out of her aircar and watches as the people below fight over them. Jennifer Sharifi visits legendary Russian scientist Serge Mikhailovich Strukov, whom she instructs to create a genemod virus that will hardwire agoraphobia, xenophobia and novelty anxiety into the brains of anyone it hits. Researchers have been looking for years for neuropharms that can evade the Cell Cleaner, which destroys any foreign substance in the body, including beneificial analgesics and recreational drugs. What Strukov has found is a virus that changes brain conditions, so that, while the delivering virus is foreign, the conditions it leaves behind are treated as native by the Cell Cleaner. He also reveals that Sanctuary, not Miranda Sharifi, distributed the red bonding syringes and accompanying holo as a means to control Sleepers. Jackson is contacted by Lizzie with a daring plan. Harold Wayland, Jackson's patient from the first chapter, was an elected official, specifically District Supervisor. Lizzie wants to convince one of the members of her tribe, Shockey Toor, to run for that office. There are a lot more Livers in Willoughby County, Pennsylvania than donkeys, and if all the Livers register, between 11:30 and 11:50 PM on December 31 as an ambush on the donkeys, they can landslide their candidate into office. This is why Lizzie needs Jackson: comlink transmissions can be dipped, so his aircar will help spread the propaganda instead. (Lizzie's son, Dirk, is doing just fine&mdash;and, if Lizzie's plan works, will be doing a lot better.) At 00:01 hours on January 1, 2121, 4,082 donkeys and 4,450 Livers have registered to vote. Six days before the election, Jackson drops by Lizzie's tribe to see the American political system at work: Livers accepting bribes, donkey newsgrid reporters all over the place, the candidate enjoying the perks of fame on his back under a slumming donkey girl. He realizes that, though the Livers are paying lip-service to the donkey figurehead candidate, Donald Thomas Serrano, they fully intend to vote for Shockey. He is also approached by a young Liver holding a dying baby, who is too far along for Jackson to help&mdash;especially since he, a donkey doctor, is out of Change syringes. Vicki tells him that, with Change syringes now in short supply, the world will need more doctors soon. "I'm the biggest advocate of adjusting to [what Miranda Sharifi gave the world]. So far, we haven't done that." She also reveals that Jackson's attraction to her is reciprocated. On April 1, election day, Jackson takes Vicki and Lizzie (sans Dirk) to a nearby camp for some last-minute propaganda; they then vote from Jackson's aircar, and then watch the newsgrids of the Livers lining up to vote. The Livers, who up until this point have been courting fame, are all nervous around the donkey reporters; and the tally of votes shows Serrano's name skyrocketing. Back at the camp, everyone is timid, including Annie Francy and Dirk; they are all, Jackson realizes, acting like Theresa. Somehow, someone has found a way to create a neuropharm that causes fast-acting, non-reversible changes in brain chemistry, in this case inducing fear of novelty. Who could come up with such an innovation, besides Miranda Sharifi?&mdash;and how could Serrano have gotten his hands on it?&mdash;or, alternatively, why would Miranda have wasted it on a tiny election like this? (In fact, it was Sanctuary, testing Strukov's virus to see if it actually works.) Jackson takes Vicki, Lizzie and Dirk to his home in Manhattan East, where Theresa is just as terrified of Dirk as Dirk is of her. Jackson calls Thurmond Rogers, a lead researcher at neuropharm corporation Kelvin-Castner, to get an investigation going into the exact effects of the drug. Lizzie takes the opportunity to dip Jackson's house OS, and gets a glimpse of what Theresa watches on the newsgrids: endless photos of unChanged infants. She leaves Theresa a personal message, begging her on behalf of the Livers to get Miranda Sharifi to send more Change syringes. Theresa returns to the triad camp (which has evidently also been infected by Strukov's agoraphobia weapon) to see the Miranda-Sharifi holo; to do so, she must overcome her own inhibitions, which she does by becoming Cazie Saunders. It works remarkably well, though she feels confused about it; she has always denied the use of neuropharms so that she would not lose what it meant to be herself. She takes the holo with her, which she is sure is counterfeit, on a visit to the La Solana compound in New Mexico, where Leisha Camden once lived. There she leaves a message for Miranda Sharifi, as have thousands of supplicants before her, pouring out her heart and soul, her views on self, her views on pain and its necessity as proof of life, her views on the red syringes&mdash; And, at the news of these syringes, Miranda Sharifi opens a comlink. The speed of their conversation proves that they are not at Selene, but rather right here at La Solana. She agrees to take action about the red syringes, and also explains why they discontinued the Change syringes: As Theresa departs in her chartered plane, La Solana is destroyed by a thermonuclear weapon. The SuperSleepless are dead... And only Theresa Aranow knows it. Jackson takes Vicky, Dirk and Shockey to Kelvin-Castner to undergo various tests. K-C makes no reply whatsoever as to how to reverse the condition, spending all its time trying to reverse-engineer it to its own profit. As far as they are concerned, they can always count on Miranda Sharifi to fix their problems for them. TenTech is asked for an investment, and Jackson wearily agrees&mdash;it'll help him keep control of the project. Meanwhile, Lizzie (for lack of anything else to do) tries to figure out who attacked her tribe. It takes nearly a month of careful dipping before she breaks into the transmission data... And discovers it points straight at Sanctuary. She needs to tell Dr. Aranow, and with no other recourse, decides to walk to his enclave. Theresa, for her part, is sick with radiation poisoning for months, but her first priority is to struggle out with the news that the SuperSleepless are gone. Jackson won't believe it, though Vicki does: "It's the only motive that makes sense for bombing La Solana without taking credit or making demands." Jackson realizes that, without Miranda Sharifi, the world is poised to fall apart, starting with the agoraphobia weapon, unless he does something about it. He moves into Kelvin-Caster's proprietary labs to ensure a counteragent is created, teaching himself to become a medical researcher in the process. Jennifer Sharifi, safe on Sanctuary Orbital, oversees the next part of her plans. Strukov's virus has been tested, a newly-designed delivery drone has been successfully used to penetrate the Y-shields of low-security enclaves, and La Solana has been destroyed to keep the meddling Supers from hampering her again, though at great cost to Jennifer: she hallucinates Miranda's face and form during odd moments. Now it is time for a real test: to infect Brookhaven National Laboratories, one of the most well-protected enclaves in existence. The attack succeeds, and Jennifer's people pour champagne... Only to receive a message from Strukov, who in a fit of species solidarity has decided to cancel all the remaining attacks... And then some. "Do you know La Rouchefoucauld on superiority? 'Le vrai moyen d'être trompé c'est de se croire plus fin que les autres.'" ("The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.") Sanctuary Orbital and all remaining living Sleepless are destroyed by a nuclear weapon. Lizzie has made it into Manhattan East Enclave, but is immediately apprehended by security. Taking advantage of a lull in activities (as everyone scurries to watch the reports of Sanctuary's destruction), she sends another transmission to Theresa, begging her to get her out. Theresa does, once again by "becoming" Cazie. Lizzie then meets with Jackson at K-C, who instructs her (privately) to data-dip their systems, looking for proof that K-C hasn't spent any time working on the counter-agent. Meanwhile, Vicki moves through the Decon, but doesn't arrive until nearly midnight, having been detained by events pertaining to Theresa. Theresa is safely back at home, but curious as to herself. She has her nursing 'bot take two separate brain scans, one of Theresa under normal circumstances and one while she is "being" Cazie. Then, as Cazie, she takes the nursing 'bot to a Liver enclave by pretending to be a beggar. Unfortunately, in her unChanged and weak state, this leaves her prone to infection, and she becomes extremely sick. Vicki is the instrument of her salvation, administering the one Change syringe Jackson kept hidden in the hopes that Theresa would one day accept it. Tess, realizing that no Change can change who she is, accepts the syringe and is healed. Vicki later shows Jackson reproductions of the two brain scans (drawn on her breasts, the only way she could sneak them through decon); the "Cazie" scan shows "intense non-somatic activity," the sort associated with "epileptic seizures, religious visions, imaginative delusions," but controlled and channeled through intense concentration. Lizzie moves through decon herself, once again needing to carry vital information in her head: namely, the proof that K-C has no intention of working on a counter-agent, and that furthermore, their regimen of placating research is tailored specifically to fool Jackson. She has also discovered that the agoraphobia weapon has a 38.7% chance of mutating to the point where it can be transmitted directly through person-to-person contact; even if no more attacks are launched, the weapon can still spread. However, K-C doesn't fall in line until Vicki and Jackson announce, publicly, that there is no more deus ex machina; "The machina broke down," Vicki says, "and the dea is dead." If the humans don't help themselves, no one will. Someone does. In the epilogue, taking place in November 2128, the reader finds Theresa, now the leader of a semi-religious begging order, teaching the biofeedback techniques she developed to the "inhibited," as they are now called, helping them conquer the fear artificially wired into their brains. Jackson is the second part of the Trojan Horse, providing the technical, holographic and medical equipment the Livers will need to train themselves fully into Theresa's techniques. No one has yet found a reverser, but his lover Vicki calls him with new information: at the Chicago School of Medicine, where the original Sleepless were engineered 125 years ago, the frozen gametes of the SuperSleepless have just arrived, delivered by time-activated 'bot. The debate on what to do with them, Vicki assures us, will be fierce...
1511593	/m/056_3_	Age of Iron	John Maxwell Coetzee	1990-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel depicts the inward journey of Mrs. Curren, an old classics professor. She lives in the Cape Town of the Apartheid era, where she is slowly dying of cancer. She has been philosophically opposed to the Apartheid regime her entire life, but has never taken an active stance against it. Now, at the end of her life, she finally comes face-to-face with the horrors of the system - she witnesses the burning of a black township and the killing of her servant's son, as well as the shooting by security forces of a young black activist whom she shelters in her house. Against a backdrop of violence by whites and blacks alike, Mrs. Curren remembers her past and her daughter, who left South Africa because of the situation in the country: the book is framed as an extended letter from the mother to her daughter in America. As the story progresses, she constructs a relationship of a different kind with Vercueil, an old homeless man who happens to be sleeping in her driveway, as well as finally becoming truly aware of Florence, her black live-in servant. Coetzee brings together important themes in this book: aging, the confessor as hero, narrative representation, the meaning of freedom, and the position of the white liberal in Apartheid South Africa. * ISBN 0-14-027565-7 ca:L'edat de ferro eu:Age of Iron (Coetzee) fa:عصر آهن (رمان) it:Età di ferro
1511594	/m/056_4b	The Broker	John Grisham	2005-01-11	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Joel Backman is "the Broker"- a Washington power broker-lobbyist. But his life falls apart when a deal collapses involving a hacked spy satellite that nobody knows about, and Backman ends up in jail. Six years later, the political wheels in Washington have turned and other power-hungry men are eager for his blood. Bargains are made and an outgoing disgraced president grants him a full pardon at the behest of the CIA and he finds himself spirited out of the prison in the middle of the night, bundled onto a military plane and flown to Italy for a new life. He has a new name and mysterious new "friends" who will teach him to speak the language and to blend in with the people of the city of Bologna. But something isn't quite kosher in this new setup, and he is under constant surveillance. In fact, his own government is setting him up for professional assassins from Russia, China, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. The CIA intends to sit back and wait to see which one gets him first, trying to solve the biggest mystery to hit the US government in decades; seeing who built this seemingly impenetrable and most advanced satellite ever. It turns out to be China. Despite having low satellite technology, they stole the information from the U.S. Backman survives several assassination attempts and manages to establish communication with his son, Neal Backman. He escapes surveillance and returns to his home to contract a new deal with the US government. The CIA is told about the satellite, along with the taking of the program of the satellite itself.
1514300	/m/0574vt	Sphereland	Dionys Burger	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 The Circles (who are appointed as priests/leaders of Flatland due to their many sides, or an appearance thereof) do not take A Square's revelation about a third dimension to be accurate, and A Square is ostracized by his community. Then after some time, society becomes more open to the ideas of Spaceland and, overall, to change and advancement. However, when a prominent surveyor finds a Triangle with more than 180 degrees, he is fired from his job and generally considered a crackpot, since such a construction is not possible in Euclidean geometry. He eventually makes friends with the grandson of A Square, A Hexagon, because he is a mathematician and scientist. Together, they come upon a theory to explain the unusual measurements: they actually live on a very large sphere, and the Triangles have more than 180 degrees due to being inscribed on a non-planar surface. With help from the sphere from the first novel, they are able to prove this theory. However, the established scientific community is not able to comprehend the idea proposed by the two, and thus they do not attempt to enlighten Flatland. Furthermore, as the residents of Flatland advance, they begin to travel in space; they see distant worlds like their own, and the surveyor tries to find the distance between their world and these distant worlds, using trigonometry and radar. From his calculations, he and the hexagon determine that the universe is expanding; again they try to reveal this theory to the outside world, but again it is not accepted. Therefore, like his grandfather in the previous novel, the hexagon writes a book that is not to be opened until the theory of the expanding universe is discovered and accepted by others. Then they live an inferior existence without any more contact with the sphere.
1514789	/m/0575zb	Mr. Midshipman Hornblower	C. S. Forester	1950	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This novel is episodic, with named chapters that often focus on a self contained incident. In this story, a gawky and seasick Hornblower comes aboard his first ship, HMS Justinian. He immediately earns the contempt of the other midshipmen by, among other things, outshining them in their required mathematical studies. The young Hornblower is particularly despised by a midshipman named Simpson. Simpson, at age thirty-three, had failed his examination for lieutenant too many times to ever expect promotion and he took out his bitterness and disappointment on his juniors. He is said to be "diabolically clever at making other people's lives a burden to them," and Hornblower, extremely unhappy already, is particularly affected and becomes suicidal. He takes the first opportunity for death presented to him by challenging Simpson, a superior gunman, to a duel. Hornblower finds that the most mathematically sound method for the duel is to take an "even chance" by having the duelists select from two pistols, only one of which has been loaded, and taking fire only a few feet apart. The captain secretly frustrates this by having the officers of the duel load neither weapon and by claiming a misfire when neither one shoots. Following this, Hornblower discovers the trick and angrily attempts to challenge the captain to a duel; the captain chides him that this is both an offence and a bad idea. The captain later has him transferred to the command of Edward Pellew on HMS Indefatigable after war is declared with France. In The Cargo of Rice, aboard the Indefatigable, the newly situated Midshipman Hornblower is put in command of the French ship Marie Galante, carrying a cargo of rice from New Orleans, by order of Captain Pellew after it is taken as a prize. It is Hornblower's first time in command of a ship since joining the Royal Navy. He is instructed to take the captured French ship and her crew to a British port where he is to receive his next orders. Sailing is relatively smooth for Hornblower and his four seamen, until one of the crew (Matthews) informs him that the ship is taking on water from somewhere. Hornblower recalls that the Marie Galante was struck below the hull's waterline by a cannonball from the Indefatigable before her capture. They check for moisture but find none until it is pointed out that the dried rice will absorb all of it. They hastily attempt to patch the hole with a sail, but by then the rice has expanded so much that the ship is breaking apart. A massive attempt to jettison the rice comes too late and Hornblower commands all hands to abandon ship. Hornblower's crew and the French prisoners are left at sea in an open boat. In The Penalty of Failure, Hornblower and his crew are still out at sea, between British and French ports. The captain of the recently sunk Marie Galante pleads with Hornblower to navigate to France and release him and his men, and promises safe passage for Hornblower and his crew. Hornblower promptly rejects the Captain's pleading in spite of their bleak situation and uses his pistols to prevent a mutiny. Not too long afterwards, Hornblower and his crew are caught by a privateer named Pique which was converted from a slave ship. This ship is commanded by Captain Neuville. Hornblower is now a prisoner of war, but the Indefatigable falls in with them and makes chase. As the Pique is the faster sailer, Hornblower devises a plan to slow her down: he sets a fire, which soon spreads to the very flammable paint locker. All hands are diverted to fighting the fire, which soon breaks out on the deck and spreads to the rigging, immediately slowing the vessel. The British ship ultimately overpowers the Pique, extinguishes the fire and Captain Neuville and his crew surrender. Hornblower's fears of reprimand for losing the Maire Galante are quickly extinguished by the offhanded dismissal of Captain Pellew. However, instead of taking credit for the fire, Hornblower claims there was a spontaneous combustion in the paint locker, as way of punishing himself for losing the Marie Galante in the first place. Upon returning to the Indefatigable, Hornblower is involved with a mission planned by Captain Pellew to take the French corvette Papillon. Hornblower is set to command the Indefatigables jolly boat. His job in the raid is to board the Papillon after the other boats do, climb the mast and loose the main topsail so the Papillon can sail out to meet the Indefatigable. Before setting out, Hornblower practises his task on the Indefatigable to try and calm his nerves. While reviewing his men prior to shoving off, a man named Hales mentions to Hornblower that he feels "a bit queer-like." After the boat crews depart, Hales begins having a seizure. Because of the necessity of silence, Hornblower strikes Hales with the tiller of his boat. On boarding the ship Hornblower and his men are frustrated by the absence of a footrope along the yardarm. Hornblower's fear of heights and poor balance cause him to freeze, until he reminds himself that he acted decisively enough when laying out Hales; to withdraw now would be an act of extreme cowardice. Motivated by this act of emotional self-flagellation Hornblower runs unaided along the yardarm and looses the topsail. During the fighting the jolly boat is lost, with Hales still aboard, but the corvette Papillon is taken as a prize of the Indefatigable. Hornblower feels bad about the loss of Hales, without whom Hornblower believes he would never have found the courage to complete his task. Jackson claims that Hales would have never made a decent seaman anyway. Given the success of their mission Hornblower realises the loss of the Jolly Boat will not be held against him, but still regrets the inevitable death of Hales. When Styles, a man in Hornblower's division, appears strangely marked with "boils" all over his face, Hornblower is suspicious. He gains a clue from Finch, another of his men, who claims that "God's in the maintop, but the Devil's in the cable tier, but only in the dog watches". After thinking about what this means, Hornblower investigates and discovers a group of men "rat fighting". Styles, with his hands tied behind his back, has to kill as many rats as possible within a short time, while the others bet on the result. A horrified Hornblower orders them up on deck and threatens to report them. Later, in action against a French ship, Hornblower and Finch are firing a swivel gun from the mizzen-top when the mast is hit and begins to fall. Hornblower convinces Finch to jump to safety by telling him to "get to God". The two men make a desperate jump to safety. Hornblower takes part in attempted invasion by British and French Royalist forces at Quiberon in order to support the failed Revolt in the Vendée. Hornblower is ordered ashore with his seamen acting as gunners, and gains his first experience of land warfare and the horrors of the Revolution, including the guillotine. The expedition ends in failure and Hornblower escapes back to his ship, saddened, but philosophical. Hornblower's ship, the Indefatigable, is in Cádiz when Spain makes peace with France. Since Spain becomes officially neutral, the British ship of war is forced to leave. Spain has completed its turnaround and joined France in an alliance by the time the Indefatigable is escorting a convoy through the Straits of Gibraltar. When the ships are becalmed, two Spanish galleys attack. They are fought off by the British, and Hornblower leads the capture of one of them, which gains him promotion to Acting-Lieutenant. After the Indefatigable comes into port at Gibraltar, Acting-Lieutenant Hornblower reports to the Santa Barbara where he and others are to take their examination for lieutenant. When asked a question by one of the captains conducting the examination, Hornblower freezes up and is about to be failed when an alarm of cannon fire interrupts the examination; fire ships have been sent by the enemy in an attempt to destroy the British ships at Gibraltar. Hornblower and Captain Foster, one of the examining captains, take heroic action and prevent a disaster for the British, and jump in the water. They are rescued by the crew of one the fire ships, themselves escaping in a small boat, but then a British guard boat captures them in return. Since the Spanish crew saved his and Hornblower's life, Foster orders that they be released. The examining board does not reassemble since Foster has a falling out with another examining captain, who had been standing by with a boat but failed to reach them before the Spanish crew, and thus Hornblower will need to wait for a later examining board. The story ends with Foster, impressed by Hornblower's actions, telling Hornblower that since the attack prevented him from failing the examination that Hornblower should "Then be thankful for small mercies. And even more thankful for big ones." Acting-Lieutenant Hornblower accompanies the diplomat Mr. Tapling to buy cattle and grain from the Bey of Oran to resupply the fleet. However an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the city forces Hornblower, Tapling and his boat-crew to take refuge aboard the transport ship Caroline and remain in quarantine for three weeks until they are clear of infection. Hornblower struggles with a tiny crew aboard a worn-out ship, but still manages to take a prize in the shape of an unsuspecting privateer lugger. Hornblower is given command of the French prize Le Reve and ordered to return to England with despatches and, to his astonishment, a passenger – the Duchess of Wharfedale. Unfortunately, in thick fog Hornblower sails his ship directly into the middle of a Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent. Anticipating capture Hornblower prepares to throw his despatches overboard, but is persuaded by the Duchess, who also reveals her true identity, to allow her to conceal them under her clothes, as she is sure to be repatriated immediately. This he does, and much later while in a Spanish prison at Ferrol receives a letter from her detailing her successful return to England, and another from the Admiralty confirming his promotion to Lieutenant. Later, while on parole Hornblower rescues some sailors from a Spanish ship wrecked on the cliffs below him. After the rescue he and his assistants, some Spanish fishermen, are forced out to sea by bad weather and found by another British frigate. Despite the temptations of staying on board, Hornblower reminds the Captain that he is released on parole and is returned to Spain under a flag of truce. Several months later, in recognition of his bravery, the Spanish authorities release him.
1514802	/m/057607	Lieutenant Hornblower	C. S. Forester	1952	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 William Bush, who becomes Hornblower's faithful companion and best friend, is introduced boarding HMS Renown as the Third Lieutenant. Hornblower is the Fifth and junior Lieutenant. It is quickly apparent that Captain James Sawyer suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, constantly suspecting plots to undermine his authority and inflicting irrational and arbitrary punishments upon Hornblower and other officers. A young volunteer named Wellard suffers particularly badly. Four of the Lieutenants meet in secret in the lower decks to discuss what can be done, but are interrupted when Wellard warns them that the Captain is on his way to arrest "mutineers". The officers scatter and attempt to appear as if nothing had happened, and in the confusion, they learn that the Captain has somehow fallen head-first into the hold. When the Captain regains consciousness, he has entirely lost his reason as a result of the fall, and is incapable of resuming command. The First Lieutenant, Buckland, takes charge; but having appeared to be steady enough at the start of the book, he is overwhelmed by the responsibility. Ordered to capture an anchorage from which Spanish privateers are operating, he makes a clumsy frontal attack which is repulsed. Hornblower brilliantly retrieves the situation, when he suggests a surprise attack at night. Bush leads the successful attack, but it is Hornblower who is instrumental in negotiating the unconditional surrender of the remaining Spanish forces. The Spanish base at Samaná is destroyed, a Spanish privateer and some small craft are captured and Buckland's promotion seems assured. Unfortunately for him, the Spanish prisoners take control of the Renown during the night, taking Buckland prisoner asleep in his cot. Hornblower alertly retakes the ship, but in the desperate fighting, Bush is severely wounded and the helpless Sawyer is killed. Upon their return to port, there is an awkward Court of Enquiry. Hornblower repeatedly denies any knowledge of how Captain Sawyer came to fall into the hold. After enquiries end indecisively, Buckland is passed over; instead, Hornblower is promoted to Commander. Unfortunately, the Peace of Amiens (1802) is signed before Hornblower's promotion can be confirmed, and he is demoted once again to a lieutenant. Moreover, the demotion is retroactive, and he is forced to repay the additional money he had received as commander. Reduced to poverty, he ekes out a living by playing whist for money. He resides in a lodging house, where he meets his future first wife Maria (née Mason), the daughter of the landlady. Bush meets him several times, and notes in a newspaper that Midshipman Wellard, who (apart from Hornblower) might be the only witness to Captain Sawyer's fall into the hold, has drowned in an accident. The Peace of Amiens comes to an end in 1803. War has not yet begun, but is imminent, as evinced by a press gang Hornblower and Bush encounter. Hornblower's promotion is confirmed (by a Lord of the Admiralty he impresses with his exceptional cardplaying skills) and he is appointed commander of a sloop of war.
1514834	/m/057629	Hornblower and the Hotspur	C. S. Forester	1962	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 With the Peace of Amiens under strain and war with France under Napoleon Bonaparte imminent in May 1803, Hornblower is promoted from Lieutenant to Commander and appointed to command the sloop HMS Hotspur. While readying for sea, he hastily marries Maria, the daughter of his landlady, at the Garrison Church, Portsmouth. However, Hornblower marries her not out of love but out of pity, and is forced to exercise his acting ability to make her believe that he genuinely loves her. Hotspur reconnoiters the approaches to the French naval base of Brest, and narrowly avoids capture when war is declared. Once the British fleet blockades Brest, Hornblower's restlessness and perfectionism prompts him to lead attacks and landing parties. In spite of gaining a good reputation, Hornblower makes no financial profit from his activities. When Admiral William Cornwallis tries to put him in a position where he can make easy prize money by capturing a large shipment of Spanish gold, he instead takes on a stronger enemy frigate sent to warn the convoy and keeps it from accomplishing its mission. Eventually, by superior seamanship and skill, he drives it away. Hornblower rationalises that this is poetic justice, after he had earlier connived to facilitate the escape of his steward, who was facing hanging for striking a superior officer (a punishment Hornblower could not abide). It later transpires that the prize ships were claimed by the Admiralty (Droits of Admiralty), as war had not been officially declared against Spain at the time of the capture, so Hornblower would not have profited in any case. Hornblower has a son, also named Horatio, and is recommended for promotion to Post Captain as one of the final acts of a retiring Admiral Cornwallis, a real figure outside of the Hornblower novels.
1516234	/m/0579h1	Across the River and Into the Trees	Ernest Hemingway	1950	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Across the River and Into the Trees begins in the first chapter with the frame story of 50-year-old Colonel Cantwell's duckhunting trip to Trieste set in time-present. In the second chapter, Hemingway moves Cantwell back in time with a stream of consciousness interior monologue, presenting an extended flashback and continues for 38 chapters. In the final six chapters Cantwell is presented again in the frame-story set in the time-present. Cantwell, who is dying of heart disease, spends a Sunday afternoon in a duck blind in Trieste. In the flashback he thinks of his recent weekend in Venice with 18-year-old Renata, moving backward in time to ruminate about his experiences during the war. The novel ends with Cantwell suffering a series of fatal heart attacks as he leaves the duck blind.
1516755	/m/057bsv	The Pigman	Paul Zindel	1968-10-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with an "oath" signed by John Conlan and Lorraine Jensen, two high school sophomores, which pledge that they will report only the facts about their experiences with Mr. Pignati. When John, Lorraine, and two teen troublemakers, Norton Kelly and Dennis Kobin make prank phone calls, Lorraine picks out Mr. Pignati's phone number and pretends to be calling from a charity. Mr. Pignati offers to donate ten dollars, and John and Lorraine travel to his house to collect the funds. From the first meeting, the two teenagers and the old man become close friends. Mr. Pignati finds new vitality, and happily takes on the role of a father-figure for the two teenagers. John and Lorraine's visits become increasingly frequent, and during one such visit, they discover the documents that show that Mr. Pignati's wife, Conchetta, is dead, not just on vacation as he had previously told them. Soon, John and Lorraine visit him every day after school, and he showers them with gifts, food, and most importantly, the love and attention they do not receive in their own joyless homes. They reveal to him that they were never affiliated with any charity, and he reveals what they already know: his wife is dead. Mr. Pignati suffers a heart attack while he and the teens are playing tag with roller skates, and he's sent to the hospital; John and Lorraine agree to take care of his house while he recovers. The true betrayal comes when John invites friends over to Mr. Pignati's house. The situation quickly turns into a drunken, boisterous party. Lorraine's friend rips one of Conchetta Pignati's dresses. Norton ransacks Mr. Pignati's house and destroys Conchetta's collection of porcelain pigs, which Mr. Pignati holds very dear to him. John beats him up in retaliation. Mr. Pignati returns to find his house ransacked, and is incredibly hurt when he finds out John and Lorraine were responsible for the incident. Feeling terrible, the two offer to take him to the zoo to help make up for it. At the zoo, they discover that Bobo the baboon, Mr. Pignati's favorite animal and buddy, has died. Overcome with grief and the heaviness of the recent events, Mr. Pignati suffers a cardiac arrest and dies, leaving John and Lorraine grieving and reflecting on the fragility of life.
1517290	/m/057cyx	Consider Her Ways				 The story is mostly a first-person narrative. It begins with a woman who has no memory of her past waking up and discovering that she is a mother of some description, in a bloated body that is not her own. After some confusing experiences her memory gradually returns and she recalls that she was part of an experiment using a drug to see if it enabled people to have out-of-body experiences. It seems that the drug has worked far better than anyone could have anticipated: she has been cast into the future. She also realizes that she is in a society consisting entirely of women, organized into a strict system of castes. Her initial contacts have never even heard of men. When it becomes clear to doctors who attend her that something strange has happened, they arrange for her to be taken to meet a historian. It seems that the narrator is in a society somewhat more than a century after her own time. The historian relates that not long after the narrator's own time a Dr Perrigan carried out scientific experiments that unintentionally created a virus that killed all the men in the world, leaving only women. After a very difficult period of famine and breakdown the small number of educated women, found mainly in the medical profession, took control and embarked on an urgent programme of research to enable women to reproduce without males. The women also decided to follow the advice of the Bible: "Go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways", and created a caste-based society, in which the narrator has become a member of the Mother caste. Distressed at the prospect of spending her life as a bloated producer of babies, expected to be unable to read, write or reason, the narrator requests that she be administered an identical dose of the same drug in the hope that she might return to her own time. It works, and she then decides to stop Dr Perrigan at all costs. The story has an ambiguous ending, which may suggest that it is the narrator's own actions that will lead to the catastrophe she hopes to prevent.
1517483	/m/057dbr	Ages in Chaos	Immanuel Velikovsky		{"/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/06mq7": "Science", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Velikovsky had put forward his ideas briefly in Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History in 1945, where he claimed that the history of the ancient Near East down to the time of Alexander the Great is garbled, but Ages in Chaos was his first full-length work on the subject. His starting point for the first volume of the series was that the Exodus took place not, as orthodoxy has it, at some point during the Egyptian New Kingdom, but at the fall of the Middle Kingdom. In this and later volumes, he made heavy use of the concept of "ghost doubles" or alter-egos: historical figures who were known by different names in two different sources (e.g. Egyptian and Greek) and were considered to be entirely different people living in different centuries, but who he proposed to be actually erroneously dated accounts of the same individuals and events. First he claimed that the Ipuwer Papyrus came from the beginning of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period, and that this was an Egyptian account of the Plagues of Egypt. He then identified Tutimaios as the Pharaoh of the Exodus (much earlier than any of the mainstream candidates), the Hyksos with the biblical Amalekites, the Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut with the Biblical Queen of Sheba, the land of Punt with Solomon's kingdom, and Pharaoh Thutmose III with the Biblical King Shishak. He claimed that the Egyptian Amarna letters from the late 18th Dynasty describe events from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, from roughly the time of King Ahab.
1519093	/m/057jgb	Inkheart	Cornelia Funke	2003-09-23	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 Inkheart follows the adventures of a 12-year-old girl named Meggie Folchart. Her life changes dramatically when she discovers that her father, a bookbinder named Mortimer, or Mo as Meggie always calls him, has an unusual ability which is that when he reads aloud, he can bring characters and items from books into the real world. When Meggie was three years old, Mo read a book called Inkheart aloud to her mother. In an instant, Meggie's mother, Resa, and the family's two pet cats vanished into the Inkworld and three men from the novel (two of whom are murderous villains) entered into the real world. Nine years later, these men have come back into their lives and Mo, Meggie, and Resa's aunt Elinor need to return the villains back to the book's pages.
1519638	/m/057kvq	Death Is a Lonely Business	Ray Bradbury	1985-10	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 According to the biography in the book, this was Ray Bradbury's first novel since the publication of Something Wicked This Way Comes (not counting the young adult novel The Halloween Tree). It evokes both the milieu and style of other mystery writers Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Ross Macdonald, all of whom Bradbury names in the book's dedication, and James Crumley, after whom Bradbury named his detective. Yet the main character is undoubtedly Bradbury himself, portrayed in a period of his life just before his marriage and his success with The Martian Chronicles. Two sequels followed: A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990), and Let's All Kill Constance (2003), advancing the writer's career to 1954 and 1960, respectively.
1520227	/m/057mjf	Piece by Piece	Ann Powers	2005-02		 The book is told in a conversational style with questions posed by Ann and responded to by Tori. They compiled the material for the book through phone calls, e-mail conversations and in-person interviews. Along with details about Amos' career, music and personal life it also delves into mythology and religion in a fashion often associated with Amos. The lyrics "piece by piece" feature in the song "Datura" on the 1999 album To Venus and Back.
1521145	/m/057ptp	Birthright: The Book of Man	Mike Resnick		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Birthright spans a timeline of nearly 17 millennia, beginning at a very early stage of expansion from Earth and ending with the death of the last humans. In between, it chronicles a slow but (despite some set-backs) steady conquest of the entire galaxy - inhabited by thousands of sentient alien races, which are overpowered and oppressed using whatever tool it takes: economic pressure, diplomatic finesse, or simple military power. Not all chapters deal with mankind's treatment of aliens; some also cover the "internal" politics that result in a development of the growing human empire from a democracy to a monarchy. But the biggest theme is undeniably the search for the elusive quality that allows mankind to overcome all opposition and manage the unique feat of conquering the entire galaxy. It is never clearly defined but manifests perhaps most succinctly when it also results in the failure of an attempt to cross the void between galaxies. Then, after there is no more room for conquest, the only way left is down: internal struggles as well as deep-seated resentment of aliens result in a decline of human power that takes nearly as long as the rise, but is described far less extensively. Somehow, despite whatever enabled humans to achieve total power, they were unable to keep it. Displaying a particular brand of irony, one of the chapters reveals the "literary genre of fiction" as another of mankind's peculiarities, not shared by any alien race.
1521962	/m/057r60	Westward Ho!			{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set initially in Bideford in North Devon during the reign of Elizabeth I, Westward Ho! follows the adventures of Amyas Leigh, an unruly child who as a young man follows Francis Drake to sea. Amyas loves local beauty Rose Salterne, as does nearly everyone else. Much of the novel involves the kidnap of Rose by a Spaniard. Amyas spends time in the Caribbean seeking gold, and eventually returns to England at the time of the Spanish Armada, finding his true love, the beautiful Indian maiden Ayacanora, in the process; yet fate had blundered and brought misfortune into Amyas's life, for not only had he been blinded by a freak bolt of lightning at sea, but he also loses his brother Frank Leigh and Rose Salterne, who were caught by the Spaniards and burnt at the stake by the Inquisition.
1524981	/m/057zxm	Because of Winn-Dixie	Kate DiCamillo		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 India Opal Buloni is a 10-year-old girl who has just moved to a trailer park in the small town of Naomi, Florida, with her itinerant preacher father. While in the Winn-Dixie supermarket, she encounters a scruffy dog wreaking havoc. She claims the dog is hers to save it from go ing to the pound and names it Winn-Dixie. Winn-Dixie's first act of inspiration on Opal is for her to challenge her father to name ten things about her mother, who abandoned them years before when she became an alcoholic. Opal also befriends the very wealthy librarian Miss Franny Block, who shares great stories about her past, including a tale about her great-grandfather, whose family members died while he fought for the South in the Civil War. Grief-stricken after his return from battle, he decided he wanted to live the remainder of his life filled with sweetness. Thus, he invented Littmus Lozenge candies that tasted like a combination of rootbeer and strawberry with a secret ingredient mixed in—sorrow. In Because of Winn-Dixie, these candies symbolize that even though life sometimes deals people a bit of sadness, there is always so much to appreciate. She also encounters Gloria Dump, a woman whom children think is a witch. She also meets a man named Otis. Otis is the pet shop manager in the town of Naomi. He is shy and upset because he was in jail for playing his guitar on the street, so now he plays for the pet shop animals and a parrot named Gertrude who is Otis' favorite.
1526104	/m/05823w	The Princess and the Goblin	George MacDonald	1872	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Eight year old Princess Irene lives a lonely life in a wild, desolate, mountainous kingdom, with only her nursemaid, "Lootie" for company. Due to her sheltered upbringing, her father being absent attending to affairs of state and her mother being dead, Irene has never known about the existence of the goblins, which lurk in the underground mines. These goblins (also known as "gnomes" or "kobolds") are grotesque and hideous beings, who centuries ago were once human, but due to varying reasons, were driven underground and were malformed and distorted by their new lifestyle. This caused them to despise the humans above the ground and vow revenge against them. Irene and Lootie &ndash; who knows of the goblins &ndash; stay out late one night and are chased by the goblins, who only appear on the surface at night as sunshine repulses them. Lootie and Irene barely escape the goblins after a miner's child, a boy named Curdie Peterson, appears and sings loudly to the goblins, which drives them away. Curdie states that goblins are repelled by singing, and he and Irene begin to become friends. However, Curdie soon discovers, after he ventures into the mines and accidentally enters the realm of the goblins, that the goblins are planning a war against the humans on the surface, where they plot to abduct the Princess and marry her to Prince Harelip, the heir to the throne of the goblin kingdom, therefore forcing the humans to accept the goblins as their rulers. The driving force behind this scheme is the vile Goblin Queen, the stepmother of Harelip, who hides a secret &ndash; she has toes, a physical trait that goblins do not have and therefore regard with disgust. WIth the help of Irene's ethereal great-great grandmother, the Princess and Curdie must hatch a plan to defeat the goblins and save the kingdom.
1526245	/m/0582c2	Queen Zixi of Ix	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On the night of a full moon, the fairies ruled by Queen Lulea are dancing in the Forest of Burzee. Lurlene calls a halt to it, for "one may grow weary even of merrymaking." To divert themselves, another fairy recommends that they make something they can imbue with fairy magic. After several ideas are considered and rejected, the fairies decide to make a magic cloak that can grant its wearer one wish. The fairy who proposed it, Espa, and Queen Lulea agree that such a cloak will benefit mortals greatly. However, its wish-granting power cannot be used if the cloak is stolen from its previous wearer. After the fairies finish the golden cloak, Ereol arrives from the kingdom of Noland whose king has just died. On the advice of the Man in the Moon, Ereol is dispatched to Noland to give the magic cloak to the first unhappy person she meets. Meanwhile, Noland's five high counselors assemble in the capital city of Nole and refuse to allow the valet Jikki to ring the bell that indicates the king has died until they decide how to choose his successor. Retrieving the book of the law of Noland (to be used only when the king is unavailable, for the king's will is law in Noland), the counselors learn that the forty-seventh person to pass through Nole's eastern gate at sunrise is to be declared king or queen. The next day, the five counselors assemble at the eastern gate and count off the procession entering Nole. Number forty-seven turns out to be Timothy (who everyone calls "Bud"), the orphaned son of a ferryman who, with his sister Meg (nicknamed "Fluff"), is entering town with their stern Aunt Rivette, a laundress for the city of Nole. Along the way from their house to Nole, Ereol meets Fluff and gives her the magic cloak due to her unhappiness at Bud's ill treatment by Rivette. The power of the cloak is first seen when Fluff wishes she could be happy again, and she becomes so. Bud&mdash;now King Bud&mdash;is welcomed by the high counselors and the people of Nole as their new king. His sister Fluff becomes Princess Fluff, and they take residence in the royal palace. Aunt Rivette is relegated to an upper room of the palace. While Bud and Fluff glory in their new positions of authority and their possessions, Aunt Rivette wants to spread the news of her good fortune to her friends. She asks Fluff if she can wear her cloak, and she becomes so tired walking that she wishes she could fly. Two wings sprout from Aunt Rivette's back, causing her to panic at first, but she soon becomes very adept at using them. On its way back to the Princess, the cloak passes through the hands of the king's counselors and the king's valet, each of whom have their wishes immediately granted. The minstrel Quavo crosses from Noland over a steep mountain range into the land of Ix, whose witch-queen ruler Zixi learns of the magic cloak and seeks to use it to make her reflection in a mirror as beautiful as she has made herself. Zixi is 683 years old, but her magic has allowed her to appear sixteen for a long time; however, the queen's reflection appears as old as she truly is. (This contradicts The Road to Oz in which the Wizard of Oz refers to Queen Zixi as having lived thousands of years—of course, he may simply have been mistaken; or, the Magic Cloak story may simply have taken place many years prior.) Believing that Princess Fluff would not simply give her the cloak to use since Ix and Noland aren't on speaking terms, Queen Zixi disguises herself and opens a school for witchery in Noland. Princess Fluff arrives as one of the pupils in her second-best cloak, but Zixi is discovered to be a would-be thief when she demands the Princess wear the other, magic cloak. Next Zixi leads the royal army of Ix to conquer Noland, but the counselors use their wish-granted abilities to repel the invaders back across the mountains. Zixi disguises herself again and arrives at the royal palace of Noland to be hired as a serving maid to Princess Fluff. When she is alone in the Princess' chamber, Zixi summons imps to make a replica of the magic cloak and replace the Princess' magic cloak with that one. She is not caught in the theft, but when Zixi tries to use the cloak herself, its power fails because she stole it. Believing that its power is gone, Zixi leaves the cloak in the forest. The queen of Ix is sorrowful until she realizes through encounters with an alligator that wants to climb a tree, an owl that wants to swim like a fish, and a girl who wants to be a man, that she has been foolish to be unhappy with her lot. The Roly-Rogues live on a high plateau above Noland and Ix. When one of the ball-shaped people accidentally bounces into Noland and views the city of Nole, they decide to conquer Noland in preference to constantly fighting among themselves. Even with their wish-granted abilities (the general wished himself ten feet tall, the lord high executioner wished for stretching arms, etc.), King Bud's counselors and Nole are soon overwhelmed by the invaders. King Bud, Princess Fluff, Aunt Rivette, and lord high steward Tallydab (who wished for his dog Ruffles to talk) escape and plan to retrieve the magic cloak which they believe is in the palace. Aunt Rivette carries Bud and Fluff to the palace and they battle past the Roly-Rogues, but when Bud puts on the cloak (since he hadn't made his wish yet; he was saving it) and wishes the Roly-Rogues away, nothing happens. Caught aback, Aunt Rivette takes her niece and nephew in flight with her to Ix on the opposite side of the mountain range that the Roly-Rogues came from. Welcomed by Queen Zixi, who confesses that she stole the real magic cloak, Princess Fluff promises that she will let her use it after the Roly-Rogues are defeated. When they arrive where Zixi had left the cloak in the forest, it's gone and the party mounts a search to find it. Along the way, Zixi notes that the alligator, owl, and girl have become satisfied with who each of them are. The cloak was found by Edi, a shepherd who took it to Dame Dingle, a local seamstress. The seamstress reveals that she cut the cloak in half, used one half, and gave the other away. Zixi, Bud, Fluff, Rivette, Tallydab, and Ruffles track down the remaining pieces of the cloak, but one of them cannot be retrieved because the woman who had it sewed it into a necktie for her seaman son, and he won't be back home for a year. Without the complete cloak, Bud can't wish the Roly-Rogues away. Queen Zixi uses the contents of a Silver Vial mixed in with their soup to defeat the Roly-Rogues. They're put to sleep for ten hours in which time Zixi and her army tie the tucked-in creatures up (when they sleep or roll, the Roly-Rogues retract their heads, arms, and feet) and send them all bobbing in the river on the Ix side of the mountain range. King Bud and his allies retake Nole, and the lands of Noland and Ix declare lasting friendship between them. Later that year, the sailor whose necktie had the last piece of the magic cloak returns home and presents a necktie similar in appearance to King Bud, for he'd lost the other one at sea. Enraged, King Bud is about to have the sailor and his mother put in prison when Queen Lulea of the fairies appears to take the cloak away because it has caused so much trouble. She undoes the foolish wishes that the cloak granted, allowing the wiser ones to remain, and graciously allows Bud to use the cloak for one last wish: "that I may become the best king that Noland has ever had!" Lulea will not grant Zixi's wish to see her own beauty, because the fairies do not approve of those who practice witchcraft. Queen Zixi returns to her kingdom, to rule it with kindness and justice—but, with her wish unfilfilled, must always beware of a mirror.
1527269	/m/0584hl	The Sand Child	Tahar Ben Jelloun	1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 The book is a lyrical account of the life of Mohammed Ahmed, the eighth daughter of Hajji Ahmed Suleyman. Frustrated by his failure to bring a son into the world, Ahmed is determined that his youngest daughter will be raised as a boy, with all the rights and privileges that go along with it. The first part of the book describes the father's efforts to thwart suspicion that this is a boy, especially from his jealous brothers, who look to inherit Ahmed's fortune. Using bribery and deceit, the masquerade succeeds. Mohammed Ahmed is circumcised (blood is drawn from his imaginary penis when Ahmed intentionally cuts his finger over the child during the ceremony), his breasts are bound, and he even marries his cousin Fatima, a sickly epileptic girl, who dies young. Only the father, the mother, and the midwife are ever aware of the hoax that is being perpetrated. The story is told by a wandering storyteller, who reveals his tale, bit by bit, to an enthusiastic, though sometimes skeptical audience. To verify his story, he claims to quote from a journal that Mohammed Ahmed kept, revealing his innermost thoughts about his confused gender identity. Mohammed Ahmed also reveals himself through correspondence with a mysterious friend, who writes him letters challenging his identity. The book changes direction after Fatima's death and the disappearance of the storyteller, forced away by the modernization of the country. The remainder of the journal has been lost, but some of the crowd that once listened to the storyteller continues to meet and share how they see the story ending. Each of them describes Mohammed Ahmed's transition back to womanhood, where she assumes the identity of Zahra. Their stories have different endings, some happy, others tragic, until a blind troubador, a fictionalised version of Jorge Luis Borges, continues the tale leading up to Mohammed Ahmed/Zahra's death. ca:L'infant de sorra
1528733	/m/0587xl	Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West	Cormac McCarthy	1985-02	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Three epigraphs open the book: quotations from French writer Paul Valéry, from German Christian mystic Jacob Boehme, and a 1982 news clipping from the Yuma Sun reporting the claim of members of an Ethiopian archeological excavation that a fossilized skull three hundred millennia old seemed to have been scalped. The novel tells the story of an adolescent runaway from home with a proclivity for violence, known only as "the kid," who was born in Tennessee during the famous Leonids meteor shower of 1833. He first meets an enormous and completely hairless character, Judge Holden, at a religious revival in Nacogdoches, Texas. There, Holden accuses a preacher of raping both an eleven-year-old girl and a goat, inciting those attending the revival to attack and kill the preacher. (The Judge later indicates that he fabricated this story merely for sadistic personal pleasure.) Carrying on his journey alone on his mule through the plains of eastern Texas, the kid spends a night in the shelter of a recluse before arriving in "Bexar" (modern-day San Antonio). After a violent encounter with a bartender which establishes the kid as a formidable fighter, he joins a party of ill-armed U.S. Army irregulars on a filibustering mission led by a Captain White. Shortly after entering Mexico, they are attacked, and many killed, by a band of Comanche warriors. Arrested as a filibuster in Chihuahua, the kid is set free when his cell neighbor, the earless Toadvine, tells the authorities that the two of them would make useful recruits for the state's newly hired scalphunting operation, led by the strategic Glanton. Toadvine and the kid consequently join Glanton's gang. The bulk of the novel is devoted to the detailing of their depraved activities and conversations. The gang encounters a travelling carnival, and, in untranslated Spanish, each of their fortunes is told with Tarot cards. The gang originally contracts with various regional leaders to exterminate Apaches and are given a bounty for each scalp they recover. Before long, however, they murder any in their path, including peaceful agrarian Indians, unprotected Mexican villagers, and even Mexican national guardsmen. Judge Holden, who re-enters the story as a fellow scalphunter, is presented as a profoundly mysterious and awe-inspiring figure; the others seem to regard him as not quite human. He (like the historical Holden of Chamberlain's autobiography) is a child-killer, though almost no one in the gang expresses much distress about this. According to the kid's new companion, an ex-priest named Ben Tobin, the Glanton gang first met the judge while fleeing from the onslaught of a much larger group of Apaches. In the middle of the desert, the gang found Holden sitting on an enormous boulder, where he seemed to be waiting for them all. He took them to an extinct volcano and improvised gunpowder from natural materials, enough to give them the advantage against their Apache pursuers. When the kid remembers seeing Holden in Nacogdoches, Tobin explains that each man in the gang claims to have met the judge at some point before joining Glanton's gang—though he ends his tale by stating that he first met with the judge in the desert with the others. This suggests a potentially disingenuous quality to the refrain "the priest doesn't lie" uttered by several characters throughout the course of the novel, particularly when spoken by the judge. After months of marauding, the gang crosses into U.S. territory, where they set up a systematic and brutal robbery operation at a ferry on the Colorado River near Yuma, Arizona. Local Yuma (Quechan) Indians are approached to help the gang wrest control of the ferry from its original owner, but Glanton's gang betrays the natives, using their presence and previously coordinated attack on the ferry as an excuse to seize the ferry's munitions and slaughter the Yuma. Because of the new operators' brutal ways, a group of U.S. Army soldiers sets up a second ferry at a ford upriver to cross&mdash;which the Yuma briefly appropriate until their ferryman Callahan is decapitated and thrown in the river. Eventually, after the gang had amassed a fortune by robbing the settlers using the ferry, the Yumas suddenly attack and kill most of them, including Glanton. The kid, Toadvine, and Tobin are among the survivors who flee into the desert, though the kid takes an arrow in the leg. Heading west together, the kid and Tobin again encounter Judge Holden, who first negotiates, then threatens them for their weaponry and possessions. Holden fires a non-lethal shot to Tobin's neck and Tobin and the kid hide among bones near a desert creek. The judge delivers a speech advising the kid to reveal himself. Tobin and the kid continue their travels independently, passing each other along the way. Although the kid has several opportunities to shoot the judge, as advised by Tobin, he only attempts so once and fails. Both parties end up in San Diego, but the kid gets separated from Tobin when he is caught by local authorities and imprisoned. Holden visits him in jail, stating that he told the jailers "the truth": that the kid alone was responsible for the end of the Glanton gang. The kid declares that the judge was responsible for the gang's evils, but the judge denies it. After reaching through the cell bars to try to grab the kid, Holden leaves the kid alone, stating that he "has errands." After the kid tells the authorities where the Glanton gang's fortune can be found, he is released and seeks a doctor to treat his wound. Under the influence of medicinal ether, he hallucinates that the judge is visiting him, along with a curious man who forges coins. The kid recovers and seeks out Tobin, with no luck. He makes his way to Los Angeles, where he witnesses Toadvine and another surviving member of the Glanton gang, David Brown, being hanged for unspecified crimes. The kid again wanders across the American West, and decades are compressed into a few pages. In 1878 he makes his way to Fort Griffin, Texas, and is now referred to by the author as "the man." The lawless city is a center for processing the remains of the American bison, which have been hunted nearly to extinction. At a saloon the man yet again meets the judge. Holden calls the man "the last of the true," and the pair talk on equal terms. Holden describes the man as a disappointment, stating that he held in his heart "clemency for the heathen." Holden declares prophetically that the man has arrived at the saloon for "the dance"&mdash;in other words, the dance of violence, war, and bloodshed that the judge so often praised. The man seems to deny all of these ideas, telling the judge, "You aint nothin" and, noting a trained bear at the saloon that is performing a dance, states, "even a dumb animal can dance." The man hires a prostitute, then afterwards goes to an outhouse under another meteor shower. In the outhouse, he is surprised by the judge, naked, who "gathered him in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh." This is the last mention of the man, though in the next scene, two men come from the saloon and encounter a third man urinating near the outhouse. The third man advises the pair not to go into the outhouse. They ignore his suggestion, open the door, and can only gaze in awed horror at what they see, stating only, "Good God almighty." The last paragraph finds the judge back in the saloon, dancing in the nude and playing fiddle wildly among the drunkards and whores, claiming that he will never die. The end of the narrative is followed by a brief epilogue, featuring an unspecified person auguring a line of holes across the prairie, apparently in the construction of an extended fence. This cordoning off of territories into plots of land suggests the domestication of the "Old West" and the end of the frontier that came shortly after the events of the novel. The worker sparks a fire in each of the holes while an assortment of wanderers lingers in the distance. These travelers are bizarrely described as moving with passionless, clockwork-like motions and "cross[ing] in their progress one by one that track of holes" which seems representative of "a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie." The images of the epilogue seem to serve as a harbinger of the more ordered and settled civilization which will soon replace the war-torn chaos of the West, with its own rituals and codes very unlike those portrayed in the novel's setting.
1528753	/m/0587_f	All the Pretty Horses	Cormac McCarthy	1992-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells of John Grady Cole, a sixteen year old cowboy who grew up on his grandfather's ranch in San Angelo, Texas. The story begins in 1949, soon after the death of John Grady's grandfather, when Grady learns that the ranch is to be sold. Faced with the prospect of moving into town, Grady instead chooses to leave, persuading his best friend, Lacey Rawlins, to accompany him. Traveling by horseback, the pair travel Southward into Mexico, where they hope to find work as cowboys. Shortly before they cross the Mexican border, they encounter a young man, who says he is named Jimmy Blevins and seems to be aged about thirteen, but claims to be older. Blevins' origins and the authenticity of his name are never quite clarified. Blevins rides a huge bay horse that is far too fine a specimen to be the property of a runaway boy, but Blevins insists it is his. As they travel south, Blevins' horse and pistol are found and taken by a Mexican after his horse runs off while Blevins had been hiding during a thunderstorm. Blevins persuades John Grady and Rawlins to go to the nearest town to find the horse and pistol. They find the horse, and Blevins takes it back. As the three are riding away from the town, they are pursued, and Blevins separates from Rawlins and John Grady. The pursuers follow Blevins, and Rawlins and Grady escape. Rawlins and John Grady travel farther south. In the fertile oasis region of Coahuila state known as the Bolsón de Cuatro Ciénegas, they find employment at a large ranch. There John Grady first encounters the ranch owner's beautiful daughter, Alejandra. As Rawlins pursues work with the ranch hands, John Grady catches the eye of the owner, who brings him into the ranch house and promotes him to a more responsible position. At this time John Grady begins an affair with Alejandra. In the meantime, Blevins works for a short time and then returns to the village where he retrieved his horse, this time to also retrieve the Colt pistol. In the process of getting the pistol, he shoots and kills a man. The Mexican authorities catch Blevins and then find Rawlins and John Grady at the other ranch. At first, the ranch owner protects Rawlins and John Grady; but when he finds out about the affair with his daughter, he turns them over to the authorities. Blevins is executed by a group of rogue police led by a captain and then Rawlins and John Grady are placed in a Mexican prison. The prison mafia first test the two boys: Grady is wounded while defending himself from a cuchillero, whom he manages to kill. Alejandra's aunt is contacted by the prison thugs who manage to negotiate with her his ransom. The condition set by the aunt is that her niece Alejandra undertake never to see John Grady again. The boys are released. Rawlins goes back to the United States and John Grady tries to see Alejandra again. In the end, after a brief encounter, Alejandra decides that she must keep her promise to her family and refuses John Grady's marriage proposal. John Grady, on his way back to the Texas, kidnaps the captain at gunpoint, forces him to recover the stolen horses and guns, and flees across country. He considers killing the captain, but a group of Mexicans find John Grady and the captain and take the captain as a prisoner. John Grady eventually returns to Texas and attempts to find the owner of Blevins' horse. John Grady briefly reunites with Rawlins to return his horse and learns that his own father has died (something he has already intuited). After watching the burial procession of one of his family's lifelong employees (a Mexican woman), John Grady rides through western Texas on his horse with Blevins's horse in tow.
1529524	/m/058bx5	The Titan	P. Schuyler Miller	1914	{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cowperwood moves to Chicago with his new wife Aileen. He decides to take over the street-railway system. He bankrupts several opponents with the help of John J. McKenty and other political allies. Meanwhile, Chicago society finds out about his past in Philadelphia and the couple are no longer invited to dinner parties; after a while, the press turns on him too. Cowperwood is unfaithful many times. Aileen finds out about a certain Rita and beats her up. She gives up on him and has an affair with Polk Lynde, a man of privilege; she eventually loses faith in him. Meanwhile, Cowperwood meets young Berenice Fleming; by the end of the novel, he tells her he loves her and she consents to live with him. However, the ending is bittersweet as Cowperwood has not managed to obtain the fifty-year franchise for his railway schemes that he wanted.
1529600	/m/058c86	In Desert and Wilderness	Henryk Sienkiewicz	1912	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in the 19th century Egypt. A 14-year-old Polish boy Stanisław (Staś) Tarkowski and 8-year-old English girl Nel Rawlison live with their families and grow up in the city of Port Said. Their fathers are engineers who supervise the maintenance of the Suez Canal. One day an anti-British rebellion begins in Sudan, led by a Muslim preacher Mahdi. Staś and Nel are captured as hostages by a group of Arabs who hope that they can exchange the children for Fatima, Mahdi's relative that had been arrested by the British at the beginning of the novel. The children are forced to travel through the Sahara Desert to Khartoum, where they are to be presented to Mahdi. The journey is difficult and exhausting, especially for delicate and vulnerable Nel. Staś, who is a brave and responsible boy, protects his friend from the abductors' cruelty, even though that means that he is beaten and punished. His plans to escape fail and the children gradually lose their hope. When the group arrive to Khartoum, the Arabs are disappointed by the fact that Mahdi - busy with leading the revolt - ingored their "mission" and turned down their offers. They take their anger and frustration on the children. Staś and Nel, exhausted by heat, thirst, hunger and poor treatment, live for some time in the city ruined by war, poverty and diseases. After a while the children and Arabs in another journey further south, to Fashoda. One day the group encounters a lion who attacks them. The Arabs (who don't know how to fire a shotgun) hand in the weapon to Staś and beg him to shoot the beast. Staś kills the lion, and then shots down the Arabs as well. This is dictated by the despair and fury: the boy knows that the men were not going to set the children free. He also hated the Arabs for abusing them - especially Nel. Once free, the children set out in an arduous journey through the African desert and jungle in hope that sooner or later they encounter British explorers or British army. The journey is full of dangers and adventures. The children, accompanied by two black slaves (a boy named Kali and a girl named Mea) whom Staś had freed from the Arabs, encounter a number of wonders and perils. The children stay for a rest on a beautiful hill near a waterfall. They soon find out that a gigantic elephant has been trapped in a gully near the waterfall. Nel, who loves animals, takes pity on the beast and saves it from starvation by throwing fruits and leaves into the gorge. The girl and the elephant (which is extremely intelligent and benign and whom Nel calls "King" because of its size) quickly become friends. Soon Nel is stricken with malaria and is about to die; Staś, mad with grief, decides to go to what he thinks is a Bedouine camp and beg for quinine. When he gets to the camp he find out that it belongs to an old Swiss explorer named Linde. The man had been severely injured by a wild boar and is waiting for death. All his Negro servants had fallen ill to sleeping sickness and die one after another. Although horrified by this gruesome death camp, Staś becomes friend with Linde who generously supplies him with food, weapon, gunpowder and quinine. Thanks to the medicine Nel recovers. Staś, grateful for Linde's help, accompanies the Swiss until the man's death. Then, using Linde's gunpowder, he frees King from the trap and they set out in further journey. Accompanying the children further on their journey is the 12-year-old slave boy of Linde, Nasibu. The group sojourns on top of a small mountain mentioned by Linde before his death where Staś teaches Kali how to shoot. On a certain day, a furious gorilla on the mountain attacks Nasibu but Nasibu is rescued by their now-tamed elephant which attacks and kills the gorilla. Deciding that the mountaintop is no longer safe, the protagonists move onto the village of Wa-Hima. The tribes-people, seeing Staś riding upon an elephant, honor him and Nel as a Good Mzibu (a good spirit/goddess). The group stays in the villages a short time, for Kali is by birth-right the prince of the Wa-Hima tribe and therefore well-known. Staś is further venerated by the villagers when he kills the wobo (a black leopard) that was plaguing the villages. Upon reaching Kali's home village the group learns that his tribe has been invaded by and attacked by their enemies since time immemorial - the Sambur tribe. Due to assistance from Kali's tribe and the guns carried by Staś and Nel, the war is won in the protagonist's favour. Though because of his good nature, Staś and Nel command that the tribes-people of the Sambur tribe not be killed but rather united with the Wa-Hima, and Staś urges the tribes to accept Christianity and live peacefully together. Staś, Nel, Saba, King, Kali, and 100 Sambur and Wa-Hima tribes-people move on to the East, which has not been mapped, in hopes of reaching the Indian Ocean and being found by English explorers who might be searching for them. Kali has accompanied with him also two witch-doctors: M'Kunje and M'Rua, in fear that they not plot against him while he is gone from his home. However, it finishes tragically for the group: both of the witch-doctors steal food and the last of the water but are soon found killed by either a lion or leopard. Many of the tribes-people accompanying Nel and Staś die for lack of water. After the group has gone for at least 3 days without any water in the scorching dry desert, the children are at last saved at the last moment by two familiar officers which had recovered kites inscribed by Staś and Nel earlier in their plight describing their whereabouts and destination. The group are saved and are informed that Mahdi has died of a heart attack. Staś, Nel and Saba are re-united with their fathers and they return to Europe, and Kali and his tribe members return to their settlement on Lake Rudolf. Staś and Nel get married when they grow up and visit their friends in Africa after 10 years.
1529691	/m/058ckf	My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla	Ben Johnston	1919	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Tesla's personal account is divided into six chapters covering different periods of his life. "The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. . . ." From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering but, to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. The pressure of occupation and the incessant stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness thru all the gateways of knowledge make modern existence hazardous in many ways. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves. In attacking the problem again I almost regretted that the struggle was soon to end. I had so much energy to spare. When I undertook the task it was not with a resolve such as men often make. With me it was a sacred vow, a question of life and death. I knew that I would perish if I failed. Now I felt that the battle was won. Back in the deep recesses of the brain was the solution, but I could not yet give it outward expression. One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the City Park and reciting poetry. At that age I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe's "Faust." The sun was just setting and reminded me of the glorious passage: "Sie rückt und weicht, der Tag ist überlebt, Dort eilt sie hin und fordert neues Leben. Oh, dass kein Flügel mich vom Boden hebt Ihr nach und immer nach zu streben! Ein schöner Traum indessen sie entweicht, Ach, zu des Geistes Flügeln wird so leicht Kein körperlicher Flügel sich gesellen!" "She moves and yields, the day of toil now done, there she hurries and explores new fields of life. Ah, that no wing can lift me from the ground to closely follow her and soar! A beautiful dream! Though now the glories fade. Alas, the wings which lift the mind so lightly can find no bodily counterpart!" As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and my companion understood them perfectly. The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him: "See my motor here; watch me reverse it." I cannot begin to describe my emotions. Pygmalion seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally I would have given for that one which I had wrested from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence. At the close of 1889, however, my services in Pittsburg being no longer essential, I returned to New York and resumed experimental work in a laboratory on Grand Street, where I began immediately the design of high frequency machines. The problems of construction in this unexplored field were novel and quite peculiar and I encountered many difficulties. I rejected the inductor type, fearing that it might not yield perfect sine waves which were so important to resonant action. Had it not been for this I could have saved myself a great deal of labor. Another discouraging feature of the high frequency alternator seemed to be the inconstancy of speed which threatened to impose serious limitations to its use. I had already noted in my demonstrations before the American Institution of Electrical Engineers that several times the tune was lost, necessitating readjustment, and did not yet foresee, what I discovered long afterwards, a means of operating a machine of this kind at a speed constant to such a degree as not to vary more than a small fraction of one revolution between the extremes of load. From many other considerations it appeared desirable to invent a simpler device for the production of electric oscillations. In 1856 Lord Kelvin had exposed the theory of the condenser discharge, but no practical application of that important knowledge was made. I saw the possibilities and undertook the development of induction apparatus on this principle. My progress was so rapid as to enable me to exhibit at my lecture in 1891 a coil giving sparks of five inches. On that occasion I frankly told the engineers of a defect involved in the transformation by the new method, namely, the loss in the spark gap. Subsequent investigation showed that no matter what medium is employed, be it air, hydrogen, mercury vapor, oil or a stream of electrons, the efficiency is the same. It is a law very much like that governing the conversion of mechanical energy. We may drop a weight from a certain height vertically down or carry it to the lower level along any devious path, it is immaterial insofar as the amount of work is concerned. Fortunately however, this drawback is not fatal as by proper proportioning of the resonant circuits an efficiency of 85 per cent is attainable. Since my early announcement of the invention it has come into universal use and wrought a revolution in many departments. But a still greater future awaits it. When in 1900 I obtained powerful discharges of 100 feet and flashed a current around the globe, I was reminded of the first tiny spark I observed in my Grand Street laboratory and was thrilled by sensations akin to those I felt when I discovered the rotating magnetic field. "I have been asked by the ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER to be quite explicit on this subject so that my young friends among the readers of the magazine will clearly understand the construction and operation of my "Magnifying Transmitter" and the purposes for which it is intended. Well, then, in the first place, it is a resonant transformer with a secondary in which the parts, charged to a high potential, are of considerable area and arranged in space along ideal enveloping surfaces of very large radii of curvature, and at proper distances from one another thereby insuring a small electric surface density everywhere so that no leak can occur even if the conductor is bare. It is suitable for any frequency, from a few to many thousands of cycles per second, and can be used in the production of currents of tremendous volume and moderate pressure, or of smaller amperage and immense electromotive force. The maximum electric tension is merely dependent on the curvature of the surfaces on which the charged elements are situated and the area of the latter. "Judging from my past experience, as much as 100,000,000 volts are perfectly practicable. On the other hand currents of many thousands of amperes may be obtained in the antenna. A plant of but very moderate dimensions is required for such performances. Theoretically, a terminal of less than 90 feet in diameter is sufficient to develop an electromotive force of that magnitude while for antenna currents of from 2,000-4,000 amperes at the usual frequencies it need not be larger than 30 feet in diameter. "In a more restricted meaning this wireless transmitter is one in which the Hertz-wave radiation is an entirely negligible quantity as compared with the whole energy, under which condition the damping factor is extremely small and an enormous charge is stored in the elevated capacity. Such a circuit may then be excited with impulses of any kind, even of low frequency and it will yield sinusoidal and continuous oscillations like those of an alternator. "Taken in the narrowest significance of the term, however, it is a resonant transformer which, besides possessing these qualities, is accurately proportioned to fit the globe and its electrical constants and properties, by virtue of which design it becomes highly efficient and effective in the wireless transmission of energy. Distance is then absolutely eliminated, there being no diminution in the intensity of the transmitted impulses. It is even possible to make the actions increase with the distance from the plant according to an exact mathematical law. This invention was one of a number comprised in my "World-System" of wireless transmission which I undertook to commercialize on my return to New York in 1900. As to the immediate purposes of my enterprise, they were clearly outlined in a technical statement of that period from which I quote: ""The 'World-System' has resulted from a combination of several original discoveries made by the inventor in the course of long continued research and experimentation. It makes possible not only the instantaneous and precise wireless transmission of any kind of signals, messages or characters, to all parts of the world, but also the inter-connection of the existing telegraph, telephone, and other signal stations without any change in their present equipment. By its means, for instance, a telephone subscriber here may call up and talk to any other subscriber on the Globe. An inexpensive receiver, not bigger than a watch, will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a speech delivered or music played in some other place, however distant. These examples are cited merely to give an idea of the possibilities of this great scientific advance, which annihilates distance and makes that perfect natural conductor, the Earth, available for all the innumerable purposes which human ingenuity has found for a line-wire. One far-reaching result of this is that any device capable of being operated thru one or more wires (at a distance obviously restricted) can likewise be actuated, without artificial conductors and with the same facility and accuracy, at distances to which there are no limits other than those imposed by the physical dimensions of the Globe. Thus, not only will entirely new fields for commercial exploitation be opened up by this ideal method of transmission but the old ones vastly extended. . . ."" "My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labor and sacrifices made. This is one of the reasons why I feel certain that of all my inventions, the Magnifying Transmitter will prove most important and valuable to future generations. I am prompted to this prediction not so much by thoughts of the commercial and industrial revolution which it will surely bring about, but of the humanitarian consequences of the many achievements it makes possible. Considerations of mere utility weigh little in the balance against the higher benefits of civilization. We are confronted with portentous problems which can not be solved just by providing for our material existence, however abundantly. On the contrary, progress in this direction is fraught with hazards and perils not less menacing than those born from want and suffering. If we were to release the energy of atoms or discover some other way of developing cheap and unlimited power at any point of the globe this accomplishment, instead of being a blessing, might bring disaster to mankind in giving rise to dissension and anarchy which would ultimately result in the enthronement of the hated regime of force. The greatest good will comes from technical improvements tending to unification and harmony, and my wireless transmitter is preeminently such. By its means the human voice and likeness will be reproduced everywhere and factories driven thousands of miles from waterfalls furnishing the power; aerial machines will be propelled around the earth without a stop and the sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land. Its introduction for telegraphic, telephonic and similar uses will automatically cut out the statics and all other interferences which at present impose narrow limits to the application of the wireless. . . ." These automata, controlled within the range of vision of the operator, were, however, the first and rather crude steps in the evolution of the Art of Telautomatics as I had conceived it. The next logical improvement was its application to automatic mechanisms beyond the limits of vision and at great distance from the center of control, and I have ever since advocated their employment as instruments of warfare in preference to guns. The importance of this now seems to be recognized, if I am to judge from casual announcements thru the press of achievements which are said to be extraordinary but contain no merit of novelty, whatever. In an imperfect manner it is practicable, with the existing wireless plants, to launch an aeroplane, have it follow a certain approximate course, and perform some operation at a distance of many hundreds of miles. A machine of this kind can also be mechanically controlled in several ways and I have no doubt that it may prove of some usefulness in war. But there are, to my best knowledge, no instrumentalities in existence today with which such an object could be accomplished in a precise manner. I have devoted years of study to this matter and have evolved means, making such and greater wonders easily realizable. As stated on a previous occasion, when I was a student at college I conceived a flying machine quite unlike the present ones. The underlying principle was sound but could not be carried into practice for want of a prime-mover of sufficiently great activity. In recent years I have successfully solved this problem and am now planning aerial machines devoid of sustaining planes, ailerons, propellers and other external attachments, which will be capable of immense speeds and are very likely to furnish powerful arguments for peace in the near future. Such a machine, sustained and propelled entirely by reaction, is shown on page 108 and is supposed to be controlled either mechanically or by wireless energy. By installing proper plants it will be practicable to project a missile of this kind into the air and drop it almost on the very spot designated, which may be thousands of miles away. But we are not going to stop at this. Telautomata will be ultimately produced, capable of acting as if possest of their own intelligence, and their advent will create a revolution. As early as 1898 I proposed to representatives of a large manufacturing concern the construction and public exhibition of an automobile carriage which, left to itself, would perform a great variety of operations involving something akin to judgment. But my proposal was deemed chimerical at that time and nothing came from it. At present many of the ablest minds are trying to devise expedients for preventing a repetition of the awful conflict which is only theoretically ended and the duration and main issues of which I have correctly predicted in an article printed in the Sun of December 20, 1914. The proposed League is not a remedy but on the contrary, in the opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite. It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the terms of peace, because a few years hence it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. A city, at any distance whatsoever from the enemy, can be destroyed by him and no power on earth can stop him from doing so. If we want to avert an impending calamity and a state of things which may transform this globe into an inferno, we should push the development of flying machines and wireless transmission of energy without an instant's delay and with all the power and resources of the nation.
1530229	/m/058f7d	Child of God	Cormac McCarthy	1974	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in mountainous Sevier County, Tennessee in the 1960s, Child of God tells the story of Lester Ballard, a dispossessed, violent man whom the narrator describes as "a child of God much like yourself perhaps." Ballard's life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Successively deprived of parents and homes and with few other ties, Ballard descends literally and figuratively to the level of a cave dweller as he falls deeper into crime and degradation. The novel is structured in three segments, each segment describing the ever-growing isolation of the protagonist from the society. In the first part of the novel, we have a group of unidentified narrators from Sevierville who retrospectively tell us about and frame Lester within that community’s mythology and historical consciousness. The second and third parts of the novel increasingly leave culture and community behind as Lester goes from squatter to cave-dweller to serial killer and necrophile as he becomes increasingly associated with pre-modern and inanimate phenomena. The novel ends with the dehumanized and mutilated Ballard dying in incarceration, while the long-hidden corpses of his victims are unearthed from his subterranean haunt.
1530311	/m/058fcl	Suttree	Cormac McCarthy	1979-05	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with Suttree observing police as they pull a suicide from the river. Suttree is living alone in a houseboat, on the fringes of society on the Tennessee River, earning money by fishing for the occasional catfish. He has left a life of luxury, rejecting his father and family, and abandoning his wife and son. A large cast of characters, largely misfits and grotesques, is introduced, one of which is Gene Harrogate, whom Suttree meets in a work camp. Harrogate was sent to the work camp for having sex with a farmer's watermelons. (Harrogate is referred to as the "moonlight melonmounter.") Suttree attempts to help Harrogate once he is released from the work camp, but this task proves to be in vain as Harrogate sets off on a series of misadventures, including using poisoned meat and a slingshot to kill bats ("flitter-mice" as Harrogate calls them) to earn a bounty on them, and using dynamite to attempt to tunnel underneath the city. Other prominent characters are prostitutes, hermits, and an aged Geechee witch. His relationships with women all come to bad ends. One prostitute-girlfriend terminates the relationship in a moment of madness, smashing up the inside of their new car. The other woman with whom he becomes involved is killed by a landslide on the river bank. Suttree is also married before the book begins with a woman he apparently met during college. He left his wife with a son, who dies early on in the book. Towards the novel's end, Suttree falls ill with typhoid fever and suffers a lengthy hallucination. This occurs after a black friend of Suttree's is killed in a fight with the police and his other friend Harrogate is arrested for robbing a store, so Suttree decides to leave town. In the end, he feels his identity is reaffirmed, and he leaves Knoxville, possibly for good.
1530339	/m/058fgy	The Crossing	Cormac McCarthy	1994-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first sojourn details a series of hunting expeditions conducted by Billy, his father and to a lesser extent, Boyd. They are attempting to locate and trap a pregnant female wolf which has been preying on cattle in the area of the family homestead. McCarthy explores themes throughout the action such as the mystical passage on page 22 describing his father setting a trap: Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eyelevel against the morning sky he looked to be truing some older, some subtler instrument. Astrolabe or sextant. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world. Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was. If there be such space. If it be knowable. When Billy finally catches the animal, he harnesses her and, instead of killing her, determines to return it to the mountains of Mexico where he believes her original home is located. He develops a deep affection for and bond with the wolf, risking his life to save her on more than one occasion. Along the way Billy encounters many other travelers and inhabitants of the land who relate in a sophisticated dialogue their deepest philosophies. Take for example a Mormon who converts to Catholicism who describes his vision of reality in this way: Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place. And that is what was to be found here. The corrido. The tale. And like all corridos it ultimately told one story only, for there is only one to tell. In the second border crossing, Billy and Boyd have set out to recover horses stolen from his family spread. Boyd is eventually shot through the chest in a squabble. After he is nursed back to health he disappears with a young girl. The third crossing features Billy alone attempting to discover the whereabouts of his brother. He learns that Boyd has been killed in a gunfight and sets out to find his dead brother&#39;s remains and return them to New Mexico. After finding Boyd&#39;s grave and exhuming the body, Billy is ambushed by a band of men who desecrate Boyd&#39;s remains and stab Billy&#39;s horse through the chest. Billy, with the help of a gypsy, nurses the horse back to riding condition. The last scene shows Billy alone and desolate, coming across a terribly beat up dog, that approaches him for help. In a marked contrast to his youthful bond with the wolf, he shoos the dog away angrily, meanly. Suddenly, he feels a flood of remorse: he goes after the dog, calling for it to come back—but it has gone. He breaks down in tears—what has been lost will not be found. The title contributes the notion that it is not just crossing a border, but at one point, the crossing of one&#39;s soul between dream and consciousness, reality and narrative, youth and maturity, and life and death.
1530352	/m/058fk3	Cities of the Plain	Cormac McCarthy	1998-05-12	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens in 1952. John Grady and Billy work together on a cattle ranch south of Alamogordo, New Mexico, not far from the border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. The ranch's owners are kind, but face an uncertain future in a dying industry. Recently devastated by drought, cattle ranches around El Paso are struggling, and may be claimed by the Department of Defense to become military areas through eminent domain. Though the cowboys barely make a living, John Grady and Billy love life on the open range, and John Grady - as detailed in "All the Pretty Horses" - is a master at training horses. During a visit to a brothel in Juárez, John Grady falls in love with a young, epileptic prostitute, Magdalena. The couple plans to marry and live in the U.S., and John Grady renovates an abandoned cabin, turning it into a home. But Magdalena's brothel is run by Eduardo, a formidable adversary also in love with the young girl. Billy attempts to dissuade John Grady, but feels obligated to help the couple. Eduardo's sidekick, Tiburcio, murders Magdalena by cutting her throat after she steals away from the brothel to meet John Grady at a Rio Grande river crossing and leave Mexico. After John Grady finds her body in the morgue, he faces Eduardo in a knife fight reminiscent of his prison showdown in All the Pretty Horses. Though John Grady kills Eduardo, he is mortally wounded in the fight. He survives long enough to contact Billy, who hurries to comfort him before his death. After John Grady's death, a short epilogue -- not unlike the conclusion of Blood Meridian -- details the next several decades of Billy's life in a few pages. After drifting across the Southwest for many years working ranches and living in hotels, Billy, homeless, takes shelter beneath a highway underpass. There, he meets a mysterious man who tells him about a convoluted dream. Though the man denies it, Billy suspects that he is Death. However, Billy survives the meeting with the man and finds shelter and a new life with a family who takes him in.
1532150	/m/058l4y	Parthiban Kanavu	Kalki Krishnamurthy	2003-01	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This novel deals with the attempts of the son of (fictional) Chola king Parthiban, Vikraman, to attain independence from the Pallava ruler, Narasimhavarman. The Cholas remain vassals of the Pallavas. Parthiban conveys his dream of the Chola dynasty regaining its glory - which he believes is lost since they are no longer the independent rulers of their land - to his young son Vikraman. Parthiban refuses to pay the taxes to the Pallavas and this triggers the Pallavas to wage war against the Cholas. In the resulting war Parthiban is killed and in the battlefield an enigmatic monk promises to Parthiban that he will make sure that Vikraman fulfills Parthiban's dream. Vikraman grows up and plans his retaliation against Narasimhavarman. But his uncle, Marappa Bhupathi, betrays him and Vikraman is arrested and banished from India by Narasimhavarman. The narrative moves on to describe how Vikraman comes back longing to meet his mother and the mysterious beauty whom he saw before being deported. To his woe he later discovers that his mother has disappeared and has in fact been kidnapped by the savage Kapalikas - a tribe which believes in human sacrifice. He also comes to know that the beauty he has fallen for, Kundhavi, is none other than the daughter of his sworn enemy, Narasimhavarman. The novel climaxes with the identity of the monk being finally being revealed as pallava king, Narasimhavarman and establishment of the independent Chola kingdom under Vikraman in Uraiyur. Vikraman also marries kundhavi in the final chapter.
1533471	/m/058pdl	The Garden of the Finzi-Continis	Giorgio Bassani	1962	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens with a brief prologue set in 1957 in which the narrator, an Italian Jew, describes a visit to the Ferrara cemetery where the Finzi-Contini family mausoleum stands, empty in all but two slots: a young child, Guido, who died of illness before the narrator was born; and Alberto, the son of the Finzi-Continis and a friend of the narrator's, who died of lymphogranulomatosis (Hodgkin’s disease) before the mass deportation that sent the remainder of the family to a concentration camp in Germany. At this point, the narrator reveals that none of the Finzi-Continis survived. The first part of the book covers the narrator's childhood experiences, describing the various social circles of the local Jewish population and the mystery around the Finzi-Contini children, Alberto and Micòl, who were schooled separately from the other Jewish children and who only appeared at the main school for the annual exams. The narrator fails his math test in this particular year, the first time he has failed any of the annual exams required for promotion, and he takes off on his bike out of fear of his father's reaction. He ends up outside the walls of the Finzi-Continis' mansion, where he has a conversation with Micòl, the Finzi-Continis' pretty daughter. The narrator is invited by Micòl to enter the garden. He excuses himself out of concern for the safety of his bicycle. She then comes over the wall to show him a safe hiding place, but while hiding his bike he dallies in contemplation of Micòl - and loses his chance to see the garden until years later. The next two parts of the book cover the years when the children are all in or just out of college. The racial laws have restricted their ability to socialize with the Ferrarese Christians, and so the narrator, Alberto, Micòl, and Giampi Malnate (an older Christian friend with socialist views) form an informal tennis club of their own, playing several times a week at the court in the Finzi-Continis' garden. During these visits, the narrator declares, shyly at first but more and more forcefully, his love for Micòl. However, her attitude towards the narrator remains one of friendship so that the relationship slowly peters out. The final section of the book covers the slow fading of the narrator's involvement in the tennis club, his futile attempts to restart the romance with Micòl, and his growing friendship with Malnate whom he suspects at the end of the book of having an affair with Micòl.
1534171	/m/058r64	Checkmate				 The innocent girl is 24 year-old Mary Mallory, who has spent the last seven years in isolation caring for her invalid aunt. After the latter's death, Mary, now living in London, realizes that she has to earn her own money unless she wants to live in relative poverty. She answers the ad of a Comtesse Zamoyski, who is looking for a companion with whom to travel to the Côte d'Azur, and, after an interview, she is accepted for the post. As Mary sees it, her new job combines at least two advantages: seeing the world and proving, to herself as well as her friends, that she is an independent woman. Mary's blinkered view lets her ignore all the warning signs that are pointed out to her. Jessie Stevens, her old schoolmate, even suspects that "White Slavery" could be behind that ad, but Mary does not listen and leaves London with her new employer. Through a series of coincidences a number of people are alerted to the dangers that might be in store for Mary. Apart from Jessie Stevens, it is Dick Delabrae, a society columnist for The Sun, and his friend Robert Wingate, who happens to be the nephew of Lady Wentworth, whose pearls the gang wants to steal. They all come to Cannes, where the Comtesse Zamoyski and Mary Mallory are staying in a remote villa, in order to help the young woman and prevent the theft of the pearls. The Comtesse turns out to be rather moody, but at first Mary has no idea that she is associating with criminals. Her first visit to the Casino is a huge success: Not only does she win more than ₤1,500 at baccarat but she also makes the acquaintance of Lady Wentworth, who immediately takes a liking to the charming girl. Later that night, however, back at the villa, she overhears a conversation between the Comtesse, José Santes, allegedly the Comtesse's nephew, and a young Russian called Nadja, allegedly her maid, which makes it unmistakably clear to her that she is staying under the same roof with criminals. However, escape is now no longer possible. Before she can get away from the villa, Mary Mallory is captured, drugged and hypnotized by the fourth member of the gang, a Frenchman posing as a doctor. On his way to the villa to rescue Mary, Robert Wingate, who has fallen in love with Mary, is kidnapped by Santes's men and thrown into catacombs somewhere below the streets of Cannes. Lady Wentworth is lured to the Comtesse's villa with the prospect of seeing Mary again but after her arrival she is tied to a chair and, in a drug-induced frenzy, stabbed to death by José Santes, a "dope fiend". As she is not wearing her pearls, the gang flee without any loot. When Mary Mallory wakes from her stupor some time later it is only to encounter the French police accusing her of murdering Lady Wentworth, whose body she discovers in the same room where she was lying unconscious. But Robert Wingate can escape from the dungeon, and all misunderstandings are cleared up in the end. The members of the gang are arrested near the Italian border, and the two couples &mdash; Dick and Jessie on the one hand, Robert and Mary on the other &mdash; return to England to get married.
1536637	/m/058tkp	The Summer Tree	Guy Gavriel Kay	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The books opens in our own world, at the University of Toronto, where the five main characters are all fellow students. They attend a lecture by a Professor Lorenzo Marcus, who afterwards reveals to them that he is in reality Loren Silvercloak, a mage from the land of Fionavar. Silvercloak tells the five that he has come to our world to bring back five guests, as part of the celebration of the 50th year of the reign of High King Ailell of Brennin. After some debate, the students -- Kevin Laine, Paul Schafer, Dave Martyniuk, Kimberly Ford, and Jennifer Lowell -- agree to accompany Silvercloak and the dwarf Matt Sören (Loren's "source," the person whose strength he draws on to perform his magic). However, Dave has second thoughts in the midst of Loren's transferral process; he attempts to pull free, breaking his contact with the others, and so although the remaining four arrive safely in Brennin, Dave is nowhere to be seen. Kim, Paul, Jennifer and Kevin discover that Brennin is in the midst of a crippling drought, brought on by the High King's unwillingness to offer himself on the Summer Tree as a sacrifice to Mörnir. The kingdom has been somewhat uneasy since Ailell's eldest son, Aileron, offered to take his father's place; upon Ailell's refusal, he cursed his father and was exiled. Ysanne the Seer recognizes Kim as the successor foretold by her dreams. Kim accompanies Ysanne to her cottage by the lake where Ysanne calls on Eilathen, a water spirit, to awaken Kim's latent Seer powers; Ysanne then passes to Kim the Baelrath, or Warstone, a red stone set in a ring. Ysanne also shows Kim two magical items. The first is Lökdal, a dwarvish dagger with a double gift: he who kills with Lökdal with love in his heart may make a gift of his soul to another; he who kills without love in his heart will die. Ysanne also shows Kim the Circlet of Lisen, set with a shining white gem, and recounts the prophecy concerning it: "Who shall wear this next after Lisen shall have the darkest road to walk of any child of earth or stars." That night Ysanne takes her own life with Lökdal and makes Kim a gift of her soul. When Kim awakens the next morning, she has not only the power of a seer (which was born in her), but also all of Ysanne's deep knowledge of Fionavar to help her interpret what she sees. Her hair turned completely white, Kim takes Ysanne's place as Seer of Brennin. Kevin and Paul are befriended by Diarmuid, Ailell's second son, a handsome man and elegant swordsman, but apparently frivolous and light-hearted. They accompany Diarmuid and his band on a daring journey to Cathal, the kingdom to the South of Brennin. Diarmuid has a double purpose: to prove the existence of a way across the Saeral River, and to seduce the King of Cathal's daughter, the lovely but fiercely independent Sharra. He achieves both and the band returns triumphant to Brennin. That night, a song that Kevin sings reawakens Paul's ghosts. Long haunted by grief and guilt over the death of his girlfriend in a car accident which he believes was his fault, Paul offers to sacrifice himself by taking Ailell's place on the Summer Tree, seeing this as a way to expiate his guilt. Jennifer and Jaelle overhear a children's game in which Leila, a young girl, calls a boy named Finn to "take the Longest Road." This is the third time this is happened and clearly marks Finn somehow. Jaelle cannot explain what it means but she sees latent power in Leila and invites her to become an acolyte in the temple. The next day, Jennifer meets Brendel of the lios alfar and some of his people and goes riding with them. That night, Jennifer's escort of lios alfar is slaughtered by Galadan and his wolves, and Jennifer is taken. Paul is bound naked to the Tree where he hangs for three days and nights, fully expecting that he will die. On the second night, Galadan appears but is driven away by a grey dog. On the third night Dana, the Mother, relieves Paul's pain by showing him that he was not to blame for Rachel's death and Paul is at last able to weep for Rachel. His tears break the drought. Nursed (grudgingly) back to health by Jaelle, High Priestess of Dana, Paul recovers and is named Pwyll Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree. By now it is evident to all concerned that significant events are afoot, and when Mount Rangat explodes in a dramatic hand of fire reaching across the sky, there can be no doubt. Rakoth Maugrim, defeated and chained a thousand years ago, has broken free of his prison -- and Jennifer's kidnappers have sent her to him at his fortress of Starkadh. Ailell suffers a heart attack and dies at the sight. Aileron returns and Diarmuid, with great wit, agrees that he should be High King despite having been exiled. In the midst of this dynastic confusion, Sharra of Cathal, furious at her seduction and abandonment, stabs Diarmuid in the shoulder. Amongst these events we begin to get a hint of the true strength of Diarmuid's character. Meanwhile, Dave has arrived safely in Fionavar but far out on the plains. He is taken in by a group of Dalrei, or Riders, led by Ivor, chieftain of the third tribe, and Gereint, their shaman. The Dalrei dub him "Davor" and give him an axe, as the weapon best suited to Dave's build and lack of sword training. Dave bonds with Torc dan Sorcha, something of an outcast, when he and Torc spend a night watching over Ivor's son Tabor during his vision quest to find his totem animal. Unbelievably, the animal Tabor sees is a winged chestnut unicorn; even more incredibly, three nights later Tabor finds and immediately bonds with her, knowing that she has been created as a gift of the goddess and her name is Imraith-Nimphais. When the mountain explodes, Ivor sends a party towards Brennin led by Levon, his oldest son. They are ambushed by svart alfar near Pendaran Wood and only Dave, Levon and Torc survive by fleeing into the wood. The trees of the Wood bear a centuries-long grudge over the death of Lisen, their beautiful forest spirit who bound herself as source to Amairgen, the First Mage, and who killed herself when he died. Flidais rescues them and alerts Ceinwen. Ceinwen takes a fancy to Dave; not only does she transport them safely to the other edge of the wood, she also makes sure that Dave finds Owein's Horn. Levon, well-taught in legends by Gereint, then finds the Cave of the Sleepers, who can be awakened by the Horn. When all are at last gathered in Brennin, the new High King calls a council. They are interrupted by Brock, a dwarf, who names Matt Sören as rightful King of the Dwarves and then divulges that it is the dwarves who helped Rakoth Maugrim free himself in secret. They have also found for him the Cauldron of Khath Meigol which can resurrect the dead. The council resumes but a sudden blinding headache bursts upon Kim, and in a heartbreaking vision she sees Jennifer in Starkadh, being raped and tortured by Maugrim. Using the power of the Baelrath, Kim manages to pull all five of them out of Fionavar and back into their own world.
1540184	/m/058zqj	Trouble with Lichen	John Wyndham	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The plot concerns a young woman biochemist who discovers that a chemical extracted from an unusual strain of lichen (hence the title) can be used to retard the ageing process, enabling people to live to around 200–300 years. Wyndham speculates how society would deal with this prospect. The two central characters are Diana Brackley and Francis Saxover, two biochemists who run parallel investigations into the properties of a specific species of lichen after Diana notices that a trace of the specimen prevents some milk turning sour. She and Francis separately manage to extract from the lichen a new drug, dubbed Antigerone, which slows down the body's ageing process. While Francis uses it only on himself and his immediate family (without their knowledge), Diana founds a cosmetic spa, and builds up a clientele of some of the most powerful women in England, giving them low doses of Antigerone, preserving their beauty and youth. When Saxover finds out about the spas, he erroneously assumes that Diana's motive is profit. Diana's aim, however, is actually female empowerment, intending to gain the support of these influential women, believing that if Antigerone became publicly known, it would be reserved only for the men in power. After a customer suffers an allergic reaction to one of Diana's products, the secret of the drug begins to emerge. Diana tries to cover up the real source of the drug, since the lichen is very rare and difficult to grow, but when it is finally discovered, she fakes her own death, in the hope of inspiring the women of Britain to fight for the rights she tried to secure for them. Francis realises that she may not really be dead, and tracks her down to a remote farm, where she has succeeded in growing a small amount of the lichen. Diana plans to rejoin the world under the guise of being her own sister, and continue the work she left off.
1540273	/m/058zxf	The Outward Urge	John Wyndham	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is a future history, set from 1994 to 2194. It tells the story, with chapters at 50-year intervals, of the exploration of the solar system, with space stations in Earth orbit, then moon bases, and landings on Mars in 2094, Venus in 2144, and the asteroids. This is told through the Troon family, several members of which play an important part in the exploration of space, since they all feel "the outward urge", the desire to travel further into space. They all "hear the thin gnat-voices cry, star to faint star across the sky", a quote from The Jolly Company by Rupert Brooke. In 1994 "Ticker" Troon is killed foiling a Soviet missile attack on a British space station, and is later awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. In 2044 a major nuclear war between the USSR and the West wipes out most of the Northern Hemisphere. Inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere - virtually the only survivors of humanity - call it "The Great Northern War", the far earlier war of the same name seeming very minor in comparison. Only after hundreds of years, with radioactivity going down, do expeditions from the south start carefully exploring and preparing to re-colonise the ravaged northern hemisphere. Brazil is left as the main world power, which then claims that "Space is a province of Brazil". However Australia eventually emerges as a serious rival. Consequently, English and Portuguese become contenders for the position of the major world-wide (eventually, Solar System wide) language. Eventually, space explorers break away from the tutelage of both earthbound powers and establish themselves as a major third power, called simply "Space"; the Troon Family plays a major role in this as in many other events.
1542308	/m/05903n	Absolute Beginners	Colin MacInnes	1959	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is divided into four sections. Each detail a particular day in the four months that spanned the summer of 1958. In June takes up half of the book and shows the narrator meeting up with various teenaged friends and some adults in various parts of London and discussing his outlook on life and the new concept of being a teenager. He also learns that his ex-girlfriend, Suzette, is to enter a marriage of convenience with her boss, a middle-aged gay fashion designer called Henley. In July has the narrator taking photographs by the Thames, seeing the musical operetta H.M.S. Pinafore with his father, has a violent encounter with Ed the Ted and watches Hoplite's appearance on Call-Me-Cobber's TV show. In August has the narrator and his father take a cruise along the Thames towards Windsor Castle. His father is taken ill on the trip and has to be taken to a doctor. The narrator also finds Suzette at her husband's cottage in Cookham. In September is set on the narrator's nineteenth birthday. He sees this, symbolically, as the beginning of his last year as a teenager. He witnesses several incidents of racial violence, which disgust him. His father also dies, leaving him four envelopes stuffed with money. Suzette has separated from Henley, but still seems uncertain as to whether she should resume her relationship with the narrator. The narrator decides to leave the country and find a place where racism doesn't exist. At the airport, he sees Africans arriving and gives them a warm welcome.
1543812	/m/0592v0	Q-Squared	Peter David	1994-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Trelane, who first appeared in the original Star Trek episode "The Squire of Gothos", is revealed to be a member of the Q Continuum. He taps into the power of the continuum and uses this ability to tamper with time and reality, resulting in the intersection of three different parallel universes which are also referred to as time "tracks." Track A is a universe in which Beverly Crusher's husband Jack never died, and now serves as captain of the Enterprise with Jean-Luc Picard as his first officer; in this universe, Jack's son Wesley died as a boy and Jack and Beverly divorced. Track B is the traditional universe depicted on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Track C is akin to the more militaristic alternate universe shown in the Next Generation episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", in which the Federation is at war with the Klingons. Q, who had been charged with the task of "mentoring" Trelane (a task each "adult" Q must accept at least once for an "adolescent" Q), enlists the aid of Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D in the three different timelines in order to teach Trelane discipline, and eventually, to stop him from destroying the fabric of the universe by collapsing the alternate universes together. When the tracks begin to merge, the characters from separate universes begin to appear to one another, sometimes with disastrous results. Jack Crusher confronts his ex-wife about the affair she is having with Track-A Picard; during the argument, which Track-B Picard witnesses, she is accidentally killed; additionally, members of Track C attempt to kill Worf, and believe all the members of the crew from the other two universes are really Klingon impostors. Eventually, Q manages to overpower Trelane and the universes are once again separated, though not always perfectly (at the end of the novel, Track-A Data appears to be stuck in Track C). Q also spends part of the novel lost in time and space, trapped by the barrier around the galaxy; this relates to the original series episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
1544083	/m/0593hs	Cloud Atlas	David Mitchell	2004	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cloud Atlas consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. The first five stories are interrupted at a key moment. After the sixth story, the other five stories are returned to and closed, in reverse chronological order, and each ends with the main character reading or observing the chronologically next work in the chain. Eventually, readers end where they started, with Adam Ewing in the nineteenth century South Pacific. *The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. The first story begins in the Chatham Islands, a remote Pacific Ocean archipelago. Adam Ewing, a guileless American notary from San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, awaits repairs to his ship. There, he learns about the enslavement of the peaceful Moriori tribe by the warlike Māori. He also befriends a doctor named Henry Goose, and catches the eye of a Moriori slave, Autua, who is being whipped. Later, as the ship sails Adam is diagnosed by Dr Goose as being ill and in need of his treatment. At the same time, he finds Autua, who has joined the ship as a stowaway and asks him to help. Adam, helps Autua get a job on the ship, but is becoming increasingly ill despite Dr Goose's treatment. At this point the story suddenly breaks off in mid-sentence. *Letters from Zedelghem. The next story is set in Zedelghem, near Brugges, Belgium, 1931. It is told in the form of letters from Robert Frobisher, a penniless young English musician, to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, back in Cambridge. Frobisher finds work as an amanuensis to a composer, Vyvyan Ayrs, living in Belgium. There he helps Ayrs with his compositions, while also seducing Ayrs' wife and daughter. At one point, Frobisher briefly mentions reading a printed text of The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, and is annoyed that half the text is missing; he is amused that the author seems unaware that Dr Goose is poisoning him. *Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery. The third story is written in the style of a mystery novel, and is set in Buenas Yerbas, California, in 1975. Luisa Rey, a young journalist, investigates reports that a new nuclear power plant is unsafe. At one point, she encounters Rufus Sixsmith, the addressee of the letters in the previous story, in an elevator. Sixsmith, now an elderly scientist, hints that the nuclear power plant on Swannekke Island in unsafe. Shortly after, he is murdered, and Luisa learns that that the businessmen in charge of the plant are conspiring to cover up the dangers and are assassinating potential whistleblowers. From Sixsmith's hotel room, Luisa manages to get hold of a copy of the report on the plant's safety issues; she also picks up an envelope containing some of Frobisher's letters and reads them. But the hired assassin follows her and pushes her car off a bridge, at which point the story breaks off. *The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. The fourth story is comic in tone, and set in Britain in the present day. Timothy Cavendish, a 65-year-old vanity press publisher, flees the brothers of his gangster client. His brother, exasperated by Timothy's endless pleas for financial aid, books him into a remote hotel, which in fact turns out to be a nursing home from which Timothy cannot escape. In the course of his adventures, Timothy briefly mentions that he is reading a manuscript from a prospective author entitled Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery, which he is not impressed by. *An Orison of Sonmi~451. The fifth story is set in Nea So Copros, a dystopian futuristic state that is gradually revealed to be in Korea and to be a totalitarian state that has evolved from corporate culture. It is told in the form of an interview between Sonmi~451 and an 'archivist', who is recording her story. Sonmi~451 is a genetically-engineered fabricant (clone), who is one of many fabricants grown to work at a fast-food restaurant called Papa Song's. Fabricants, it is revealed, are treated as slave labor by 'pureblood' society. Sonmi encounters figures from a rebel underground who draw her out of the cloistered fabricant world, and reveal the realities of the abuse of fabricants in Nea So Copros. At one point, she briefly mentions seeing a group of purebloods watching an old movie entitled The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. *Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After. The sixth story occupies the central position in the novel, and is the only one not to be interrupted. An old man, Zachry tells a story from his youth. It is gradually revealed that he lives in a primitive post-apocalyptic society on the Big Island of Hawaii. His people, the valley folk, are peaceful farmers, but are often raided by the Kona tribe from the other side of the island. Zachry's people worship a goddess called Sonmi, and know that once there was an event called 'The Fall', in which the civilized peoples of the earth - known as the 'Old Uns' - collapsed, and the surviving humans have been reduced to primitivism. They have short lifespans due to a poisoned environment that causes disease and mutation. Big Island is occasionally visited and studied by a technologically sophisticated people known as the Prescients who arrive in white boats. One Prescient, a woman called Meronym, comes to stay with the villagers, and gradually reveals that she needs a guide to take her to the top of Mauna Kea volcano, a place the villagers are afraid of because of the mysterious temples on its summit. Zachry reluctantly guides her. It is revealed that the 'temples' are in fact the ruins of the Mauna Kea Observatories. Meronym shocks Zachry by telling him that their god Sonmi was in fact a human being, and shows him an 'orison' - an egg-shaped recording device that replays Sonmi telling her story to the archivist. Upon their return, the village is invaded by Kona tribesmen who enslave the villagers. Zachry and Meronym escape, and she takes him to a safer island. The story ends with Zachry's child recalling that his father told many unbelievable tales. The child admits that part of this one may be true because he has inherited Zachry's copy of Sonmi's orison, which he often watches, even though he doesn't speak her language. *An Orison of Sonmi~451. In the second part of the fifth story, Sonmi learns the truth about Nea So Copros: that the fabricants are not released once they have served their time at work, but are killed and recycled into food and more fabricants. At the encouragement of the rebels, she writes an abolitionist Declaration that tells the truth and calls for rebellion. She is then arrested, and finds herself telling her tale to the archivist. She then reveals that she knows everything that happened to her was in fact instigated by the government, to create an artificial hate figure in her that will encourage the oppression of fabricants by purebloods. But she believes her Declaration will be inspirational. Her last wish before being executed is to watch the film she remembers seeing, The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. *The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. In the second part of the fourth story, Timothy Cavendish and a band of plucky inmates escape from the nursing home. He sorts out his problems back in London. At the end of his story, he notes that The First Luisa Rey Mystery turned out to be a good read after all, and he is inspired to write his own story as a screenplay. *Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery. In the second part of the third story, Luisa Rey escapes from the sinking car and by detective work successfully locates the report into the Swanekke power plant, and exposes the corrupt corporate crooks. Along the way, inspired by reading his letters, she orders Robert Frobisher's obscure Cloud Atlas Sextet at a record store, and is perturbed to find that she recognizes it, even though it is a very rare piece. At the end of the story, she receives a letter from Rufus Sixsmith's niece, containing eight more letters from Frobisher. *Letters from Zedelghem. In the second part of the second story, Frobisher continues to pursue his affairs, while developing his own Cloud Atlas Sextet. Along the way, he discovers the second half of The Pacific Diaries of Adam Ewing propping up a table. He ultimately leaves Vyvyan Ayrs' employment and secludes himself to finish the Sextet, before deciding to kill himself as he believes he has completed his best work. Before shooting himself, he writes a last letter to Sixsmith, and includes his Sextet and Ewing's Pacific Diaries. *The Pacific Diaries of Adam Ewing. In the second part of the first story, Ewing visits the island of Raiatea where he observes missionaries preaching to the indigenous peoples, whom they regard as savages. Back on the ship, he falls further ill, realizing at the last minute that Dr Goose is poisoning him to steal his possessions. He is rescued by Autua, and having been saved by a slave, resolves to devote his life to the Abolitionist movement. When his father scoffs that human nature will never change and that Ewing's life will amount to "no more than one drop in a limitless ocean", Ewing responds "Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"
1544580	/m/0594_y	Lottie and Lisa	Erich Kästner		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Two nine-year-old girls—rude Lisa Palfy (orig. Luise Palfy) from Vienna, and respectful shy Lottie Horn (orig. Lotte Körner) from Munich—meet on a summer camp in Bohrlaken on Lake Bohren (orig. 'Seebühl am Bühlsee'). Lisa has curly hair; Lottie wears braids. Apart from that, they look alike. They have never seen each other before, but soon find out that they are identical twins. It turns out that their parents divorced, each keeping one of the girls. The two girls decide it is unfair that neither of them has ever been told that she is a twin, or that her other parent is still living. They decide to trade places at the end of the summer so that Lottie will have a chance to get to know her father and Lisa will get to meet her mother. Lottie curls her hair, Lisa braids hers, and both go off to where they have never been before. The adventure begins. While many adults are surprised at the changes in each of the girls after they return from camp ("Lottie" has suddenly forgotten how to cook, gets in a fight at school, and becomes a terrible student, while "Lisa" has begun to keep a close eye on the housekeeper's bookkeeping, will no longer eat her favorite food, and becomes a model student), no one suspects that the girls are not who they claim to be. When Lottie (pretending to be Lisa) finds out that her father is planning to remarry, she becomes very ill and stops writing to her sister in Munich. Meanwhile, Lottie's mother comes across a picture of the two girls that was taken while they were at summer camp. She quickly realizes what has happened and Lisa tells her the entire story. The discovery turns out to have come just in time. The girls' mother calls her ex-husband in Vienna to tell him what has happened and to find out why Lottie has stopped writing. When she hears that her daughter is ill, she and Lisa immediately travel to Vienna to be with her. The four of them (father, mother, Lisa and Lottie) are still in Vienna for the girls' birthday. The girls tell their parents that they don't need any presents on this birthday or ever again as long as they don't have to be separated again. The parents talk it over, realize that they are still in love and decide to get remarried.
1544627	/m/05954t	Spartacus	Lewis Grassic Gibbon		{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The central character is not Spartacus himself, but Kleon, a fictional Greek educated slave and eunuch who joins the revolt. In the first chapter we are told how he was sold into slavery as a child and sexually abused by an owner. Another important character is Elpinice, a female slave who helps Spartacus and his fellow gladiators escape from Capua, and who becomes Spartacus's lover. She gives birth to a son, but while Spartacus is fighting elsewhere she is raped and murdered by soldiers, and the child is also killed. The novel touches on Gibbon's views on human history, with Spartacus seen as a survivor of the Golden Age. However, in spite of various additions and speculations, it does stick fairly closely to the known historical facts about the revolt. Plutarch's life of Crassus is clearly the main source, but it does make use of some other classical sources, including Appian and Sallust.
1546341	/m/059b5q	Naomi		1947-11	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Naomis story is focused around a man's obsession for a modan garu or modern girl. The main character, Jōji, is a well-educated Japanese man who is an electrical engineer in the city, and comes from a wealthy landlord family. Jōji wishes to break away from his traditional Japanese culture, and becomes immersed in the strange new Westernized culture which was beginning to form in Japan. The physical representation of everything Western is embodied in a young girl named Naomi. Jōji sees Naomi for the first time in a café and instantly falls for her exotic "Eurasian" looks, Western-sounding name, and sophisticated mannerisms. Like the story of the prepubescent Murasaki in the classic novel The Tale of Genji, Jōji decides he will raise Naomi, a fifteen-year-old bar hostess, to be his perfect woman: in this case he will forge her into a glamorous Western girl like Mary Pickford, a famous Canadian actress of the silent film era. Jōji moves Naomi into his home and begins his efforts to make her a perfect Western wife. She turns out to be a very willing pupil. He pays for her English education, and though she has little grammar skills in it, she possesses beautiful pronunciation. He funds her Western activities, including her love of the theatre, dancing and magazines. During the early part of the novel Jōji makes no sexual advances on Naomi, preferring instead to groom her according to his desires and observe her from a distance. However, his plan to foster Western ideals such as independence in her backfires dramatically as she gets older. Jōji begins the novel being the dominator. However, as time progresses and his obsession takes hold, Naomi's manipulation puts her in a position of power over him. Slowly Jōji turns power over to Naomi, conceding to everything she desires. He buys a new house for them, and though they are married, Jōji sleeps in a separate bedroom, while Naomi entertains Western visitors in another room. The book ends with Naomi having complete control of Jōji's life, though he claims he is satisfied as long as his obsession with her is satiated.
1547906	/m/059g6h	Alton Locke			{"/m/0blvpd": "Industrial novel"}	 Alton Locke is the story of a young tailor-boy who has instincts and aspirations beyond the normal expectations of his working-class background. He is intensely patriotic and has ambitions to be a poet. In the course of the narrative, Alton Locke loves and struggles in vain. Physically, he is a weak man, but is able to encompass all the best emotions, along with vain longings, wild hopes, and a righteous indignation at the plight of his contemporaries. He joins the Chartist movement because he can find no better vehicle by which to improve the lot of the working class, experiencing a sense of devastation at its apparent failure. Utterly broken in spirit, Alton Locke sails for America to seek a new life there; however, he barely reaches the shore of the New World before he dies.
1548580	/m/059j5_	Paladin of Souls	Lois McMaster Bujold	2003-09-23	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Paladin of Souls is a sequel to The Curse of Chalion and is set some three years after the events of that novel. It follows Ista, mother of the girl who became Royina (Queen) in that book and a minor character in it. Recovering from the extreme guilt and grief that had marked her as mad while the Golden General's curse on her family persisted, she finds herself bored to distraction and restless. To get away from her home town, Valenda, and its ugly memories she sets out on a religious pilgrimage with the dy Gura brothers (also minor characters from the earlier story) for protection; Liss, a feisty and clever courier girl; and dy Cabon, a plump priest of the Bastard (one of the five gods) as her 'spiritual guide'. The Bastard, god of disasters and of things out of season, becomes a larger presence in this novel than was The Lady of Spring in The Curse of Chalion; by its end, Ista herself has become a saint in his service. (The Father of Winter, another of the five gods, also makes a brief appearance.) The pilgrimage party is overrun and captured by a troop of Roknari raiders from the adjacent principality of Jokona, then set free by a patrol from nearby Castle Porifors. Leading the rescuers is Arhys, lord of the castle and a very effective warrior indeed—considering that he scarcely eats or drinks, or sleeps except for brief afternoon naps. Though she comes to be immensely attracted to him, she realizes in horror that he is the son of a man she had helped murder. Another obstacle is Arhys's very young and very beautiful wife, Cattilara. Once in the castle Ista discovers another odd man: Lord Illvin, Arhys's half-brother. He is unconscious except for afternoon wakings that match Arhys' naps. She has seen him before, though, in a baffling dream that at last makes some sense. As this mystery begins to come clear, Castle Porifors is besieged by a new force of Roknari from Jokona that includes its Prince, Sordso, and his mother, Princess Joen. The latter is an elderly, minor daughter of the Golden General and has accumulated a whole troop of demon-ridden magicians, including her son, all of them controlled by one major magician: herself. As Castle Porifors and its defenders crumble under magical siege, Lord Arhys and a picked troop make a night raid that jolts the Jokonans but does not dislodge them. Only when Ista allows herself to walk as a hostage into the Princess' lair is the siege ended. The remaining magicians' demons are sent back to the Bastard's care, and the remaining loose ends of the story are resolved, with Ista's acceptance of the Bastard's offer of skills and a job that give use and meaning to the rest of her life. Lord Illvin comes with the job as a bonus.
1548792	/m/06jryp9	The Princess of Cleves	Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de la Fayette	1678-03		 Mademoiselle de Chartres is a sheltered heiress, sixteen years old, whose mother has brought her to the court of Henri II (a disguised version of the court of Louis XIV) to seek a husband with good financial and social prospects. When old jealousies against a kinsman spark intrigues against the young ingénue, the best marriage prospects withdraw. The young woman follows her mother's recommendation and accepts the overtures of a middling suitor, the Prince de Clèves. After the wedding, she meets the dashing Duc de Nemours. The two fall in love, yet do nothing to pursue their affections, limiting their contact to an occasional visit in the now-Princess of Clèves's salon. The Duc becomes enmeshed in a scandal at court that leads the Princess to believe he has been unfaithful in his affections. A letter from a spurned mistress to her paramour is discovered in the dressing room at one of the estates--a letter actually written to the Princess' uncle, the Vidame de Chartres, who has also become entangled in a relationship with the Queen. He begs the Duc de Nemours to claim ownership of the letter, which ends up in the Princess' possession. The Duc has to produce documents from the Vidame to convince the Princess that his heart has been true. Eventually, the Prince of Clèves discerns that his wife is in love with another man. She confesses as much. He relentlessly quizzes her--indeed tricks her--until she reveals the man's identity. After he sends a servant to spy on the Duc de Nemours, Monsieur de Clèves believes that his wife has been unfaithful in more than just her emotions. He becomes ill and dies (either of his illness or of a broken heart). On his deathbed, he blames the Duc de Nemours for his suffering and begs the Princess not to marry him. Now free to pursue her passions, the Princess is torn between her duty and her love. The Duc pursues her more openly, but she rejects him, choosing instead to enter a convent for part of each year. After several years, the Duc's love for her does finally fade, and she, still relatively young, passes away in obscurity.
1550022	/m/059mjt	Adam Bede	George Eliot	1859	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1967), : "the plot is founded on a story told to George Eliot by her aunt Elizabeth Evans, a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah Morris of the novel, of a confession of child-murder, made to her by a girl in prison." The story's plot follows four characters' rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope&mdash;a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love "rectangle" between beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her, Adam Bede, her unacknowledged suitor, and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous and beautiful Methodist lay preacher. (The real village where Adam Bede was set is Ellastone on the Staffordshire / Derbyshire border, a few miles from Uttoxeter and Ashbourne, and near to Alton Towers. Eliot's father lived in the village as a carpenter in a substantial house now known as Adam Bede's Cottage). Adam is a local carpenter much admired for his integrity and intelligence, in love with Hetty. She is attracted to Arthur, the charming local squire's grandson and heir, and falls in love with him. When Adam interrupts a tryst between them, Adam and Arthur fight. Arthur agrees to give up Hetty and leaves Hayslope to return to his militia. After he leaves, Hetty Sorrel agrees to marry Adam but shortly before their marriage, discovers she is pregnant.In desperation, she leaves in search of Arthur. She cannot find him; unwilling to return to the village on account of the shame and ostracism she would have to endure, she delivers her baby with the assistance of a friendly woman she encounters. Later, the child is killed when she abandons it in a field. Not being able to bear the child's cries she tries to come back but she is too late when she finds out that it dies of exposure. Hetty is caught and tried for child murder. She is found guilty and sentenced to hang. Dinah enters the prison and pledges to stay with Hetty until the end. Her compassion brings about Hetty's contrite confession. When Arthur Donnithorne, on leave from the militia for his grandfather's funeral, hears of her impending execution, he races to the court and has the sentence commuted to transportation. Ultimately, Adam and Dinah, who gradually become aware of their mutual love, marry and live peacefully with his family.
1550981	/m/059pht	Nuns and Soldiers	Iris Murdoch	1980	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Guy Openshaw is 44 years old and on his death bed. Cancer is coming down hard on Guy, and he cannot stand the stream of visitors to his London flat. His wife Gertrude entertains the drop-ins, who were once part of a lively set that came by after work hours for a drink and chat. The visitors all relied on Guy for advice and money, and as he dies the varied people in the novel begin to fray. One of the visitors to the Openshaw flat is the youngish Tim Reede, an artist who cannot sell his work and who is lost without Guy’s support. He has a girlfriend named Daisy who dresses like a punk and talks and drinks like a sailor; they’re a perfect pair of starving misfits. Daisy makes Tim visit Gertrude once Guy has passed and ask her for money, but Gertrude begins questioning Tim about his craft and winds up wanting to support him in other ways, namely giving him run of her home in the French countryside. The Tim-Gertrude affair and subsequent marriage is the heart of the book, and it is a good study of class relations and the younger man-older woman romance. Tim is both a hero and a colossal screw-up, but he is also kind and lets Gertrude’s friends run him down because it doesn’t bother her and he still gets to be with her at the end of the day. Some of Gertrude’s circle are genuinely concerned, but most are either in love with her or what she could do for them with Guy’s inheritance. There is a fair amount of treachery and coincidence in the novel, but the heavy touches are softened by consequences which Murdoch lets play out in natural time.
1551247	/m/059q47	Firewing	Kenneth Oppel	2002-04-18	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Griffin Silverwing is the son of Shade and Marina, a Brightwing bat. Griffin has difficulty relating to the other newborn bats because he is a hybrid of a Silverwing and a Brightwing. Griffin's only real friend is Luna, a popular newborn. However, Griffin views his tendency to worry about everything as a sign of cowardice and fears that his father, Shade, will reject him when he returns from Stonehold with the other male adult bats. Upon discovering a group of human campers in the forest, Griffin decides to steal some of the camp's fire for his colony, hoping that the act will impress his father. Unfortunately, Griffin’s plan goes horribly wrong when Luna is accidentally set on fire and burned. Upon discovering that Luna's injuries may be fatal, a guilt-stricken Griffin flies off into the lower levels of Tree Haven. While hiding in the Tree's lower levels a crack appears, possibly the result of either a natural earthquake or Cama Zotz' influence, and Griffin is drawn into the Underworld. Shade has also felt the earthquake and discovers another crack that leads to the Underworld. Sensing Zotz's presence in the crack, Shade becomes convinced that something is wrong and flies to Tree Haven. Upon reaching Tree Haven, Shade finds that the tree has been devastated by the earthquake and that Marina's wing has been injured. Shade searches for Griffin and eventually discovers that he has been pulled into a crack in the ground. Shade decides to go into the crack and rescue his son. Marina, unable to go with Shade because of her wing injury, begs Shade to bring Griffin back. In the Underworld, Griffin discovers a colony of bats that are unaware that they are dead. The bats are wary of Griffin, because as he is still alive he appears to glow to them. Griffin discovers that the recently deceased Luna has become a member of the colony and has no memory of him. Fortunately for Griffin, a group of Pilgrims (bats who attempt to convince the other inhabitants of the Underworld that they are dead) appear at the colony to try to convince the colonists that they are dead. One of the Pilgrims is Frieda, a former elder of Griffin's colony. Frieda recognizes Griffin as Shade and Marina's son and tells him of a gigantic, incandescent Tree which supposedly sends dead bats that enter it to another, more enjoyable afterlife. Frieda believes that the Tree will send Griffin back home, as he is alive and not dead. Griffin decides to follow Frieda's advice and travel to the Tree, but refuses to leave without bringing Luna with him. Frieda provides Griffin with a sound map (a map created by echolocative images in his mind) to the Tree and then leaves to preach to more dead bats, warning him that it is difficult for many bats to accept their deaths. Griffin manages to get Luna to remember him and convinces her to travel with him to the Tree. Meanwhile, Goth, the antagonist of the previous two books, awakens in the Underworld and discovers that he is dead. Confused by his surroundings, Goth is easily captured by a group of Vampyrum Spectrum, who set him to work hollowing out a tunnel in the Underworld's "sky" with a group of enslaved bats, including a vampyrum met in Silverwing, named Throbb. Goth manages to escape from his captors and cries for Zotz to come to him and explain to him why he is being punished. Zotz does appear and reveals that Goth's failure to free Zotz during the last eclipse has displeased him and that Goth will spend the next few thousand years working to create a tunnel to the world of the living before being condemned to an eternity of torture. Goth manages to bargain with Zotz to spare himself from such a horrible fate. Zotz agrees to give Goth another chance, provided that he proves his loyalty to him. Zotz sends Goth to go kill Griffin and sacrifice his life to Zotz, and Goth also to take Griffin's life as his own. Shade meanwhile, has encountered a group of dead bats who are attempting to reach the Tree. The group later encounter a dead Vampyrum Spectrum named Murk, who is also travelling to the Tree. Despite their misgivings at having the cannibal bat traveling with them, the group allows Murk to travel with them. Shade eventually discovers the colony of dead bats that Griffin had just left, thus allowing him to know that his son is still alive. Goth eventually manages to catch up with Griffin, but discovers that Griffin is much stronger than he because Griffin is still alive. Griffin manages to fight off Goth and then flees with Luna, leaving Goth behind. Zotz taunts Goth for his failure and then tells him that Griffin's strength will decrease during his time in the Underworld, while Goth's strength will only increase. Zotz also tells Goth that Griffin is Shade's son, in order to give Goth extra incentive for killing Griffin. Griffin and Luna eventually enter a cavern, which contains an odd light. This light traps dead bats in the cavern by causing them to see their past lives. Griffin is unaffected by the light, presumably because he has not lost his life. Shade manages to catch up to Griffin but has a difficult time convincing his son that he is real, as Griffin believes that Shade is actually an illusion the light is creating. Shade eventually manages to convince Griffin that he is real; however as Shade begins to remove Luna from the cavern, he is attacked by Goth. Griffin manages to escape from the cavern with Luna. Shade is lost in a black river that flowed through the cavern while Goth's back is broken during the struggle. Griffin and Luna continue on their journey to the Tree with Shade's allies, while Shade manages to escape from the river. Unknown to Shade, Zotz heals Goth's wounds and carries him off to set a trap for Shade. Griffin and Luna discover another colony of dead bats that are aware that they are dead. A member of the colony named Dante explains that they have chosen to spend the rest of eternity contemplating philosophy rather than enter the Tree, of which they are wary as no bat who has entered the Tree has ever returned. Luna meanwhile has regained all of her memories of her old life and realizes that Griffin was responsible for her death. Luna angrily lashes out at Griffin and injures him, which shocks her out of her anger. Griffin forgives Luna for her assault and realizes that it has shown him that he does not want to die in the Underworld. The two then set off for the Tree again. Shade meanwhile is lured into a trap by Zotz and finds himself facing off against imprisoned. Realizing that he is no match for Goth in physical strength, Shade mutilates Goth's ears, effectively blinding Goth's echolocation and preventing him from locating Shade in the pitch black darkness. Zotz intervenes and tells Goth that his plans have now changed. Goth is to kill Griffin, take his life, and then return to the Upper World. He will be joined by Phoenix, the Vampyrum Spectrum bat who had been Goth's jailer during his time as a slave. Phoenix will return to the Upper World by taking Shade's life, whereupon she and Goth will restart the worship of Zotz on the Upperworld. Zotz disguises Goth as Shade in order to fool Griffin, and then dispatches him to kill Griffin. Zotz then tells Shade that he and Nocturna, the god of Shade's people, had once ruled the world equally, with Nocturna ruling over the living and Zotz ruling over the dead. However, many of the dead became unhappy with their lives; therefore Zotz asked Nocturna to allow him to merge their two kingdoms so that the dead could become happy again. Nocturna refused, as she believed that such an act would upset that natural balance of the world. Zotz thus killed Nocturna, whereupon her body transformed into the Tree, which Zotz cannot destroy. The Tree has provided the dead with an escape from Zotz' realm, which infuriates Zotz. During his story, Zotz informs Shade that the entire Underworld is built out of pictures created in the bats' minds by echoes. Shade uses this information to his advantage and uses his echo vision to bore a hole in the cathedral and allow himself to escape. Zotz attempts to stop Shade, but Shade realizes that Zotz cannot harm him as he is still alive and Zotz cannot harm the living. Shade also comes to realize that what he is facing is not the 'real' Zotz, but a construct made out of echoes similar to those that constitute the Underworld. Shade destroys the construct of Zotz and then frees his imprisoned allies, including Murk. Griffin and Luna reach the Tree and are about to enter it when Goth, disguised as Shade, reaches them. Griffin is fooled by the disguise and is killed by Goth, who devours Griffin's life and then enters the Tree just before Shade and his allies reach him. Shade apologizes to Griffin for failing to save him and then tells Griffin to stay where he is while Shade flies up into the sky. Whispering an apology to Marina, Shade then commits suicide by allowing himself to fall to the ground, which kills him and releases his own life force, which he wishes for Griffin to take. Both Griffin and Luna are able to absorb Shade's life force and return to life. Griffin apologizes to his father for all the trouble he has caused; Shade tells him not to blame himself and that he is proud of him. Shade, Griffin, Luna, and their allies all enter the Tree. Despite Griffin's efforts to hold on to his father, the two are separated and Griffin and Luna are returned to the Upper World. Meanwhile, the newly reborn Goth, under the directions of Zotz, discovers the ruins of the temple which was once used to worship Zotz. Goth also discovers a group of Vampyrum Spectrum, whom he begins to indoctrinate with the teachings of his god. Griffin and Luna return to Tree Haven and are met by Marina, who is overjoyed to see that Griffin is alive. Unbeknownst to them, Shade is also present, in an invisible and immaterial form, which allows him to experience the sensations of anything into which he passes. Content with his new existence, which Nocturna is suggested to share, Shade merges himself with Marina and Griffin, thus experiencing their joy at being reunited.
1551720	/m/059rf8	My Name Is Legion	A. N. Wilson		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At 16, Peter d'Abo is an elusive boy. He seldom stays at his mother's place, but his grandmother, Lily d'Abo, in whose flat he is supposed to live for the time being, does not see him regularly either. From time to time Peter visits Father Vivyan and on such occasions even serves as an altar boy. When, on the social worker's advice, his mother tells him that Lennox Mark is his natural father, Peter decides to get some money out of him his way. One night while Lennox Mark is not at home he poses as a delivery boy and gains entrance into the Marks' private home. However, he is overwhelmed by Martina Mark and her mother, who is also living there, and persuaded to stay and work for them as a servant. As the two women have his DNA and he does not want to be arrested, he accepts their offer. While he is on the streets of London, Peter d'Abo starts committing crimes. He steals a miniature recording device from the Marks' home; he steals Rachel Pearl's expensive watch when she comes to live at Crickleden; but he also turns violent, cutting off a man's testicles just because he was looking for a homosexual encounter; and pushing Kevin Currey in front of an underground train. Meanwhile Lennox Mark is planning General Bindiga's state visit in London&mdash;he has already arranged the details with the Prime Minister and convinced him that Bindiga is an honourable state leader&mdash;to coincide with his elevation to Lord Mark of Lower Pool. To suppress opposition to the state visit which might be headed by Father Vivyan, The Daily Legion launches a campaign against the priest, alleging that he has a history as a child molester and releasing a doctored version of a secretly recorded conversation between Peter d'Abo and Father Vivyan as evidence against the clergyman. Vivyan is suspended from the parish, his reputation as a 20th century saint is immediately destroyed, and ardent devotees such as Lily d'Abo, believing everything the papers say, are devastated. When she is approached by The Daily Legion, Lily d'Abo succumbs to the lure of money and signs an exclusive contract for £10,000, realizing only afterwards that in no way will she be able to help her grandson with the money. Unaware of how dangerous Peter d'Abo is, Rachel Pearl goes in search of the boy in an attempt to make him talk and clear Father Vivyan of the allegations. Following a hint from someone in the street, she walks to a nearby cemetery, finds Peter in an old mausoleum but is immediately taken captive by him. Several people have already been alerted to the fact that Peter d'Abo may have a hostage, and the place is surrounded by police. However, Father Vivyan is there first and shoots Peter between the eyes. Vivyan is fatally wounded by a bullet himself and brought to a monastery to die there. At about the same time&mdash;it is the day of General Bindiga's state visit&mdash;a bomb goes off in a posh London hotel killing Bindiga and injuring two of his women, while another device, planted in the offices of The Daily Legion, is defused before it can explode. Three months later, Lord Mark dies of a massive heart attack.
1552825	/m/059v2k	Splinter of the Mind's Eye	Alan Dean Foster	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Luke and Leia are traveling to Circarpous IV to persuade the Circarpousians to join the Rebel Alliance. A strange energy storm forces them to crash land on the swampy planet Mimban. Luke, after finding Leia, begins looking for a station that would allow them to get off the planet but instead find a town near which agents of the Empire have a secret energy mine. Forced to keep their identities secret, Luke admonishes Leia to follow his lead, and in a nearby bar where they take refuge, claims she is his servant girl. An old woman named Halla approaches them; while revealing little of her own background, she identifies Luke as one who is strong with the Force and shows him a splinter of what she claims to be the Kaiburr crystal, a glowing crystal that magnifies and focuses the Force. Halla strikes a deal with Luke and Leia that if they help her find it, she will help them get off the planet. They leave together. Upon emerging, Leia retorts that Luke ought not to have struck her; the two squabble as some miners emerge from the bar. The miners claim that fighting in public is against Imperial law here, and they all get into a brawl. Imperial stormtroopers intervene and take Luke, Leia and the miners to the local jail. They are questioned by Captain-Supervisor Grammel. The miners are taken away while Grammel continues questioning Luke and Leia. Grammel discovers and confiscates the crystal shard, along with Luke's weapons. Luke and Leia are placed in the maximum security cell with two drunken but friendly Yuzzem--hairy aboriginal creatures resembling squat Sasquatch--called Hin and Kee, while Grammel reports the incident and the crystal shard to Governor Bin Essada, in charge of the group of star systems including Circarpous. Halla, with Luke's help, uses the Force to help rescue Luke, Leia and the two Yuzzem; the two Yuzzem rampage through the jail barracks, while Luke and Leia escape, and the four meet Halla to find the Temple of Pomojema, which Halla believes to be the location of the Kaiburr crystal. They travel through the swampy wilds of Mimban, during which travel they encounter a wandrella, a huge worm-like creature. The wandrella pursues them, forcing them to leave the transport and splitting Luke and Leia apart from Halla, the droids and the Yuzzem. Luke and Leia hide in a deep well, down which the wandrella falls, leaving the two trapped in the well as it destroys their escape path; Halla mentions from the lip of the well that there must be an escape route, and Luke and Leia go in search of it, though their travels involve floating across a lake on lily pads, and fending off creatures of the deep with Luke's light saber. On the other side of the lake, they encounter the secretive residents of the caves, Coway guards/patrols. They kill all but one of the Coway; the survivor escapes and tells his Coway tribe about the visitors. Luke and Leia follow the single Coway to the tribe, where they find Halla's group being held as prisoners. To save his friends, Luke defeats the Coway's champion fighter. The Coway become his friends, but Luke senses Darth Vader. Coway patrols confirm Luke's feeling: Imperials, led by Darth Vader and Captain-Supervisor Grammel, are attacking the underground cave. When the Imperials arrive, they are surprised by the Coway tribe's powerful response and face a debacle. Vader and Grammel retreat with the handful of surviving stormtroopers, though Vader loses patience with Grammel for the defeat and kills him. Luke and company steal an Imperial transport left behind, and begin travelling to the Temple themselves. They beat Vader to the temple and find the Kaiburr crystal. They encounter a monster, and unsuccessfully try to fight it off with blasters. Luke tells Hin and Kee to get some rifles. Luke cuts down one of the pillars holding up the temple, crushing the monsters. Luke's leg is pinned under a fallen boulder. Darth Vader then enters the Temple of Pomojema, announcing that he killed Hin and Kee. Leia takes up Luke's lightsaber and begins fighting Darth Vader, but he toys with her, giving her multiple superficial burns with his own saber. Hin, mortally wounded, shows up and in his dying act, lifts the big rock off of Luke's leg. Luke fights Vader, showing more skill than expected, deflecting some Force-based attacks and eventually slicing off Vader's arm. Despite this, the Sith Lord seems about to win, but then falls into a pit. Luke senses that Vader is still alive. As the story ends, Leia and Luke, healed by the crystal, drive off with Halla into the mists of Mimban.
1552926	/m/059vbw	The Living Corpse	Leo Tolstoy	1911		 The central character of the play, Fedor Protasov, is tormented by the belief that his wife Liza has never really chosen between him and the more conventional Victor Karenin, a rival for her hand. He wants to kill himself, but doesn't have the nerve. Running away from his life, he first falls in with Gypsies, and into a sexual relationship with a Gypsy singer, Masha. However, facing Masha's parents' disapproval, he runs away from this life as well. Again he wants to kill himself, but lacks the nerve; again, his descent continues. Meanwhile, his wife, presuming him dead, has married the other man. When Protasov is discovered, she is charged with bigamy, accused of arranging her husband's disappearance. He shows up in court to testify that she had no way of knowing that he was alive; when the judge rules that his wife must either give up her new husband or be exiled to Siberia, Protasov shoots himself. Hysterically, his wife declares that it is Protasov whom she always loved.
1553175	/m/059vt0	The Very Hungry Caterpillar	Eric Carle	1969-12-31	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A green baby caterpillar hatches from an egg, and from birth he experiences a humongous and perpetual craving for food. He consumes enormous quantities of multiple different types of foods until inadvertently nauseating itself, so he spins a cocoon in which he remains for the following two weeks. Later, the caterpillar emerges as a bright, colorful butterfly with big gorgeous multi-colored wings.
1553425	/m/059wh5	Queen of the Demonweb Pits			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 At the conclusion of Vault of the Drow, the characters find an astral gate leading to the Abyssal realm of Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders, goddess of the drow elves and architect of the sinister plot described in the series involving hill giants, frost giants, fire giants, kuo-toa, drow, and other creatures. Her realm, the 66th layer of the Abyss, is referred to as the Demonweb Pits. The player characters are transported to another plane and cast into the labyrinth known as the Demonweb. In order to return home, the characters must find their way out of the web and then defeat the evil demigoddess Lolth in her lair. The Q1 module was the first to offer a glimpse into the Abyss itself, home to the D&D race of Demons. It features a map of the maze-like Demonweb Pits, a series of interweaving passageways constructed in a maelstrom of lost souls in the abyssal plane. Characters who venture off the path are most likely lost. Many spells work differently or not at all. In the maze, there are a number of portals to other worlds, some where Lolth is sending minions to try and invade, such as a winter world and a world of permanent night. This makes Queen of the Demonweb Pits an unusually open-ended adventure, as each "portal" could potentially lead to a massive area, from which the dungeon master could, if he or she chose, launch an entirely new campaign. As the adventure progresses, the player characters make their way through Lolth's webs, where they are confronted by her minions, slaves, guards, and captives. Here lies a gargantuan mechanical spider, which Lolth can manipulate. The dungeon also introduced Lolth's handmaidens, the demonic Yochlol.
1553964	/m/059yct	Terminal	Robin Cook	1993	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centers around the investigation of a medical student named Sean into a mysterious cancer called medulloblastoma and the secret behind the hundred percent remission treatment offered by a medical institute called Forbes Cancer Centre. In his investigation, Sean learns that the institute is responsible for the creation of the cancer. The secret behind their offering of 100% remission of the disease is that the creators had also invented an antibody to the disease. The institute procured Social Security numbers and other identifying details of wealthy people and their dependents, and as opportunities arose from those people undergoing surgeries or being on IV therapy, they were infected with the transformed St. Louis encephalitis virus. Because the virus was encephalotropic, it manifested with early neural symptoms in the infected patients, in the form of seizures and convulsions. The infected people, once they were completely cured of the disease, were usually willing to donate large sums to the Forbes. This book heavily deals with the controversial issues of the time. hu:Haláltusa (regény) nl:Terminaal (boek)
1555495	/m/05b1b2	Seize the Day	Saul Bellow	1956	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story centers around a day in the life of Wilhelm Adler (aka Tommy Wilhelm), a failed actor in his forties. Wilhelm is unemployed, impecunious, separated from his wife (who refuses to agree to a divorce), and estranged from his children and his father. He is also stuck with the same immaturity and lack of insight which has brought him to failure. In Seize the Day Wilhelm experiences a day of reckoning as he is forced to examine his life and to finally accept the "burden of self". it:La resa dei conti (Saul Bellow) he:תפוס את היום
1555509	/m/05b1bs	Summer Sisters	Judy Blume	1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with a phone call from Caitlin to Vix. Caitlin calls to tell Vix that she is marrying Vix's ex-boyfriend and first love, Bru. Vix is shocked and becomes sick with the news. Flashback: Now the reader learns of Vix's family and first encounter with Caitlin. Vix's home life consists of her controlling mother, Tawny, an average-joe father, and three younger siblings, Lanie, Lewis, and Vix's favorite: her wheelchair-using brother Nathan. Tawny works for a Countess and is always making Vix feel as though she is not good enough. Then Vix meets Caitlin in her sixth grade class, and Caitlin invites Vix to come to Martha's Vineyard with her for the summer. This is when Vix's whole world is turned upside down. After much debate, Vix convinces Tawny and her father to let her go with Caitlin. Vix flies out East from her New Mexico homestead and meets Caitlin's family: her laid-back father, Lambert "Lamb" Somers, her brother "Sharkey", and Trisha, an ex-girlfriend of Lamb's who is still close with him but has recently been replaced by Abby, a woman who means well but whom Caitlin dislikes. Abby's son, Daniel, and his friend, Gus, also vacation with Caitlin's family. This section of the book focuses on the mishaps and adventures that the kids go through, including Vix and Caitlin and their crushes on two older boys, Joseph "Bru" Brudegher and his cousin, Von. When the summer ends, Caitlin and Vix remain friends and continue to attend school together. They make it a tradition for Vix to spend every summer with Caitlin from then on, hence the "Summer Sisters." Eventually, Vix hooks up with Bru and Caitlin with Von. Then Vix makes out with Von while high. She thinks that Caitlin set up the whole scenario and they get into a huge argument. Just prior to her senior year of high school, Vix's beloved brother Nathan succumbs to his physical disabilities and dies as a result, leaving Vix devastated. Vix's younger sister, Lanie, becomes pregnant and has her first child, and Lewis joins the military. As the girls mature, they encounter their first heterosexual experiences (Caitlin with an Italian ski-instructor, then Von, supposedly) and Vix's in-depth and long-term relationship with Bru, which continues into her college years when she attends Harvard on a scholarship from The Somers Foundation. Caitlin is accepted to Wellesley College but chooses not to attend and travels abroad. Vix goes to Harvard while still remaining in a relationship with Bru. She makes new friends, most notably Maia, her uptight roommate whose worrisome ways begin to grow on Vix, but they become close. However, things turn sour when Vix realizes she doesn't know what she wants in life and she and Bru temporarily break up during her Junior year of college. A few months later, a passionate meeting leads to their renewed faithfulness, but all's well does not end well. Just before graduation, Bru asks Vix to marry him, but she says no after realizing that they do not want the same things in life. Vix misses Bru, but moves on and casually dates other people, whilst Caitlin has numerous hetero and homosexual escapades in Europe. The girls keep in loose contact over the years, each becoming busy with her own life until the fateful day when Caitlin makes that phone call and tells Vix about her upcoming nuptials to Bru. Caitlin invites Vix to the wedding, and she decides to go, only to end up sleeping with Bru the night before. Then, Vix discovers that Bru took not only her virginity but Caitlin's as well. As Bru thinks in the book, "he loves them both... he is glad they have decided for him [who he will be with.]" Caitlin and Bru get married nonetheless, and Caitlin has a daughter, Somers Mayhew Brudegher, whom they call "Maizie". Vix, meanwhile, reconnects with Abby's son Daniel's friend Gus, whom she spent all those summers with years ago at the vineyard. She and Gus slowly fall in love and eventually get married as well. In the final chapters, Vix visits Caitlin again after Caitlin has a breakdown and leaves her family, her marriage to Bru ending in divorce and Bru marrying Star, a local islander. Vix is pregnant with her first child at this time, a baby boy to be named Nate in honor of her late brother. Caitlin and Vix's meeting is relaxed and the two end up pledging to be best friends forever with each one truly grateful for the other's presence in her life. In the end, Vix is enjoying married life and motherhood when she and everyone else learn that Caitlin disappears in an alleged boating accident... she was in a boat by herself and that was the last time anyone ever saw her, as the boat turned up empty with Caitlin unaccounted for. Blume is not clear on the true reasons behind Caitlin's disappearance, as no body is discovered and there is no damage or foul play, leading the reader to choose between the possibilities that Caitlin purposely vanished from her family and friends or perhaps she did indeed drown. The closing thought is Vix's recount of her "summer sister" and the memories they will always share, and wishing that things could have ended differently.
1556329	/m/05b2_w	End Zone	Don DeLillo	1972-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gary spends time playing football, picnicking with a girl named Myna, and contemplating nuclear warfare. Its meditative but ultimately playful nature, spry dialogue, and deep but mostly unconnected themes make End Zone perhaps the most easily accessible of DeLillo's early works. The metaphor of football as warfare is challenged in the line "warfare is warfare."
1561318	/m/05bhm9	Mike Nelson's Death Rat!			{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Death Rat! is primarily a satire, with its main subject being the state of Minnesota, where Nelson lives. Among his targets Nelson includes parodies of famous Minnesota residents like Prince and Garrison Keillor, as well as the attitudes and quirks of Minnesotans in general. The protagonist of Mike Nelson's Death Rat! is Pontius Feeb, usually called Ponty, an author of many historical treatises who has just been fired. While working in a fast food restaurant he gets the idea to write a novel of historical fiction based in the small town of Holey, Minnesota. Feeb's novel revolves around the conflict between two citizens of Holey in the early 1900s, as well as a giant rodent from which the novel gets its name. However, when he tries to sell the novel to a publisher, he is told that he doesn't look right to be the author of an action novel. Feeb then enlists the help of local actor Jack Ryback to pretend he wrote the book and attempt to sell it. Jack sells the novel easily, but tells the publisher that it is a non-fiction book, instead of a novel. Jack and Pontius then work with the citizens of Holey to attempt to cover up the book's fictional nature. During their many visits to Holey, Ponty becomes friendly with the town's female mayor. As Feeb's Death Rat grows in popularity, the cover-up becomes harder and harder to maintain, as the rock star "King Leo" adopts the book as the scripture of a new religion, and sets up a revival in Holey. Meanwhile, a rival Minnesotan author is trying desperately to discredit Jack and "his" book. In the end the plot is revealed, And after a flurry of lawsuits and media attention Jack and Pontius go back to doing minimum-wage work in St. Paul. In the end, Ponty decides to go live in Holey with the friends that he made there.
1561692	/m/02p4htp	The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey	Patrick O'Brian	2004	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins with Surprise in the Strait of Magellan, caught up in foul weather. Hanson first spots Cape Pilar at the very opening of the Strait, and soon Surprise moors and conducts some trade with the inhospitable locals for meat and vegetables. Having re-provisioned, she and Ringle sail northwards in fine weather until they enter the River Plate and moor close to the island functioning as the main administrative centre. A quarantine officer comes aboard, a Dr Quental, and gives the frigate a clean bill of health. Wantage informs Maturin of a rumpus in the town: a fight between Protestant mariners from a Boston barque clash with the Catholic locals over the right of polygamy. Further signs of local resentment emerge when a large scow dumps the town's filth next to the frigate and the Portuguese sailors shout abuse at the Surprises. Aubrey spots a black Legate and recognises him as his own natural son, Sam. The Most Reverend Doctor Samuel Mputa, the Papal Nuncio to the Republic of Argentina, has recently saved the government from an open rebellion. The South African squadron, under its Commander-in-Chief Admiral Lord Leyton, finally makes its appearance and the crew of Surprise bring their ship up to a high state of perfection. Jack makes his appearance on board HMS Suffolk and sees his rear-admiral's blue flag hoisted on the flagship. He then has an interview with the somewhat cantankerous Admiral, who instructs him to ask Stephen if two of his officers can sail on Surprise (now a private vessel once more) back to England. While the fleet re-provisions, Ringle sails off under the steady and capable Lieutenant Harding, and later returns with Sophie Aubrey, Christine Wood, her brother Edward and the three children (Brigid Maturin and Fanny and Charlotte Aubrey) who will sail on with Jack and Stephen to South Africa. The final chapters end with an Admiral's dinner before which Stephen and Jack meet Captain Miller, Leyton's nephew and Jack's neighbour at Caxley. Miller, who has a reputation as a ladies' man and as an excellent shot — nicknamed Hair-Trigger Miller — has been paying court to Christine Wood. The Admiral asks Aubrey if he can take Miller on board with him to take up a new position in Cape Town. In the last few handwritten pages that follow the end of the typescript, as the South Africa squadron makes its way to St Helena, Mrs Wood asks Stephen to prevent Randolph Miller's unwanted attentions. In doing so, Stephen also calls Miller out for naming him a liar. Miller insists on pistols but Maturin insists on his right, as the aggrieved party, to name the weapons; thus they fight with swords, which puts Miller at a disadvantage. The duel takes place: after three or four thrusts Stephen disarms Miller and demands an apology, which Miller gives him.
1562296	/m/05blqt	Mrs. Warren's Profession	George Bernard Shaw			 The story centers on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren, a brothel owner, described by the author as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman" and her daughter, Vivie. The play also focuses on Mrs. Warren's handsome young friends Mr. Praed and George Crofts, and the local reverend, Samuel Gardner, who becomes the catalyst of the play by revealing Mrs. Warren's profession. The play focuses on the social hypocrisy and relationships of the characters, who are all middle class other than Sir George Crofts. Vivie Warren is a modern and highly educated lady of the late Victorian period, distinguishing herself at the Acturial Mathematics Tripos at the university. Vivie, Mrs. Warren's (the name was adopted by Mrs. Warren to hide her true identity and to give the impression that she is married) daughter, meets Praed, her mother's friend and through their conversation it is revealed that Mrs. Warren and Vivie do not have a close relationship. Within the same Act Mrs Warren returns to her home after time away bringing with her two friends, Mr. Praed, an architect, and George Crofts, a man close to Mrs. Warren's old profession and sexual relations. Both are bachelors. Vivie is shown to have a romantic relationship with Frank Gardner, whose father, the Reverend Samuel Gardner also joins into the group. His fleeting mention of Mrs. Warren's past and and their reactions to meeting each other make it clear that he was familiar with her when she was a prostitute, even though it is not explicitly said. Mrs. Warren explains her impoverished past and decision to be a prostitute at last to her daughter, but hides the fact that she is still in the business. Vivie, is horrified to discover from Crofts (who is attracted to her despite being old enough to be her father) that her mother's fortune was made managing high-class brothels. The reconciliation of Mrs. Warren and Vivie ends at this point as Vivie flees from these revelations to Honoria Fraser's chambers to become independent of her mother's wealth, which provided for her before. At a last confrontation when Praed and Frank are finally knowledegable of the truth and when there is a last appeal and calculative manipulation by Mrs. Warren, the play ends with Mrs. Warren deciding to leave her daughter.
1563299	/m/05bpb8	Confessions of a Crap Artist	Philip K. Dick	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel’s protagonist, the “crap artist” of the title, is Jack Isidore, a socially awkward tire regroover obsessed with amateur scientific inquiry since his teens. He catalogs old science magazines, collects worthless objects, and believes disproved theories, such as the notions that the Earth is hollow or that sunlight has weight. Broke, Jack eventually moves in with his sister’s family in a luxurious farm house in suburban California. On the farm, Jack happily does housework and cares for livestock. He also joins a small apocalyptic religious group, which shares his belief in extra-sensory perception, telepathy and UFOs and believes the world will end on April 23, 1959. However, most of his time is dedicated to a meticulous “scientific journal” of life on the farm, including his sister’s marital difficulties. Jack’s sister, Fay Hume, is a difficult and subtly controlling woman who makes miserable everyone close to her, especially her misogynist husband Charley. Fay has an extramarital affair with a young grad student named Nat Anteil while Charley is in a hospital recovering from a heart attack. After Jack reports this to Charley, the latter plots to kill Fay. Charley kills Fay's animals and then commits suicide, realising that Fay has led him to do this. However, his will stipulates that Jack will inherit half the house, and Fay must buy her brother out, although Jack has used his half of the money to replace the slaughtered animals. Nat and his wife Gwen divorce, and Nat decides to stay with Fay. When the end of the world doesn't occur on the predicted date, Jack decides to seek psychiatric assistance.
1564851	/m/05btj2	Join My Cult	James Curcio	2004-11	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Many have likened Join My Cult!s non-linear or cut-up style to Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, and Robert Anton Wilson. Also like the works of these authors, there have been heated debates about its cultural value or lack thereof. Various plot elements focus on groups of suburban kids experimenting with shamanism and hallucinogens, who quickly discover themselves unhinged from the culture around them. It details events surrounding their harrowing plunge into this abyss, regularly shifting narrator and frame of reference from one member of the group to the other. Curcio utilizes atypical narrative and grammatical structures in the form of neurolinguistic and hypnotic confusion techniques within the text in an effort to stimulate a similar experience over the course of reading. That Curcio was intentionally utilizing these techniques is shown in various interviews such as a Gpod radio interview found on his website.
1565710	/m/05bwt8	The Virginian	Owen Wister	1902	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with an unnamed narrator's arrival in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, from back East and his encounter with an impressively tall and handsome stranger who proves adept at roping horses, teasing a friend who is off to be married, and facing down a fellow gambler, Trampas, with a pistol and a gently threatening, "When you call me that, smile!" This stranger, known only as the Virginian, turns out to be the narrator's guide to Judge Henry's ranch in Sunk Creek, Wyoming. As the two travel the 283 miles to the ranch, the narrator, later nicknamed the "tenderfoot" and the Virginian begin to come to know one another as the Tenderfoot slowly begins to understand the nature of life in the West, which is very different from what he expected. This meeting is the beginning of what becomes a deep lifelong friendship and the starting point of the narrator's recounting of key episodes in the life of the Virginian. From that point onward, the novel revolves around the Virginian and the life he lives. As well as describing the Virginian's conflict with his enemy, Trampas, and his romance with the pretty schoolteacher, Molly Stark Wood, Wister weaves a tale of action, violence, hate, revenge, love and friendship. In one scene, the Virginian must participate in the hanging of an admitted cattle thief, who had been his close friend. The hanging is represented as a necessary response to the government's corruption and lack of action, but the Virginian feels it to be a horrible duty. He is especially stricken by the bravery with which the thief faces his fate, and the heavy burden that the act places on his heart forms the emotional core of the story. A fatal shootout resolves the ongoing conflict with Trampas, after five years of hate. The Virginian shoots Trampas in a gun battle and leaves to marry his young bride. The Virginian and Molly ride off together to spend a month in the mountains and then journey back East to Maine to meet her family. They were received a bit stiffly by the immediate Wood family, but warmly by Molly's great-aunt. The new couple return to Wyoming and the Virginian is made a partner of Judge Henry's ranch. The book ends noting that the Virginian became an important man in the territory with a happy family.
1565867	/m/05bx3v	Queer	William S. Burroughs	1985-11	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The novel begins with the introduction of "Lee," who recounts his life in Mexico City among an American expatriate college students and bar owners surviving on part-time jobs and GI Bill benefits. The novel is written in the third-person and Burroughs commented in the "Introduction" published in 1985, that it represents him off heroin, whereas in Junkie, his narrator was psychologically "protected" by his addiction. Lee is self-conscious, insecure, and driven to pursue a young man named Allerton, who is based on Adelbert Lewis Marker (1930-1998), a recently discharged American Navy serviceman from Jacksonville, Florida who befriended Burroughs in Mexico City.
1566878	/m/05bzjz	Lunar Park	Bret Easton Ellis	2005-08-16	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The novel begins with an inflated and parodic but reasonably accurate portrayal of Ellis' early fame. It details incidents of his wild drug use and his publicly humiliating book tours to promote Glamorama. The novel dissolves into fiction as Ellis describes a liaison with an actress named Jayne Dennis, whom he later marries, and with whom he conceives an (initially) illegitimate child. From this point the fictional Ellis' life reflects the real Ellis' only in some descriptions of the past and possibly in his general sentiments. Ellis and Jayne move to fictional Midland, an affluent suburban town outside New York City, which they no longer consider safe due to pervasive terrorist acts in a post-9/11 America. Fictional incidents include suicide bombings in Wal-Marts and a dirty bomb detonated in Florida. Strange incidents start happening on a Halloween night, some involving Sarah's (Ellis' fictional stepdaughter) Terby doll. As the novel progresses, the haunting of Ellis' McMansion and questions over the death of his father become increasingly prominent. With his history of drug use and alcoholism, his wife, children, and housekeeper are understandably skeptical of his claims that the house is haunted.
1567266	/m/05b_kj	War and Remembrance	Herman Wouk	1978	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 War and Remembrance completes the cycle that began with The Winds of War. The story includes historical occurrences at Midway, Yalta, Guadalcanal, and El Alamein as well as the Allied invasions at Normandy and the Philippines. The action moves back and forth between the characters against the backdrop of World War II: Victor (Pug) Henry takes part in various battles while separating from his wife. Pug's older son Warren, a naval aviator, and younger son, Byron, a submarine officer, also participate in combat. Warren is killed at the battle of Midway. Byron's wife Natalie is trapped in Axis territory with her uncle, celebrated author Aaron Jastrow, and another major strand focuses on their story as Jews caught in Europe. Like most Americans, Natalie and Aaron fail to believe that the civilized German culture with which they are familiar could possibly engage in genocide. As a result of their rash decision to stay when they could escape, they gradually get absorbed into the Jewish population that is first interned, then sent to concentration camps. As Byron attempts to find out what is happening to them, eventually tracking them down amidst the chaos of wartime Europe, the story of the Holocaust is gradually revealed to the American government and people. * Victor Henry — the main protagonist, becomes captain of the heavy cruiser USS Northampton after his prospective command, the battleship USS California, is sunk at Pearl Harbor. He commands the ship until late 1942, when at the Battle of Tassafaronga the cruiser is sunk by Japanese long-range torpedoes. Henry is not faulted for the loss of his ship, but instead of receiving another naval command at once, is sent back to the Soviet Union to observe the effects of Lend-Lease; he observes the Siege of Leningrad and the privation of the Soviet home front. From there, he is used by Harry Hopkins as an observer. In the novel, he assists in the Tehran Conference of 1943, and then serves as a troubleshooter for landing craft production. In this capacity, he travels to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and is forced to work with Colonel Harrison (Hack) Peters, his rival for Rhoda's love. :Henry obtains a promotion to rear admiral in early 1944. During this period, Rhoda obtains a divorce and Henry is able to marry Pamela. He does not do so until after he takes part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf as a battle force division commander under Admiral William Halsey, whose flag is in USS Iowa. The novel goes into this battle in greater detail than does the miniseries, including discussion of the most commonly perceived of Halsey's operational mistakes. :Victor marries Pamela in April 1945. Upon the death of President Roosevelt, President Harry S. Truman makes him his naval aide. :Victor is a straightforward, honest man, which gains him the respect of political leaders such as Roosevelt and Hopkins, and the admiration of Hack Peters. :The novel notes that Henry retired from the Navy and lived in Oakton, Virginia (near Washington) after the war. He spent part of his retirement translating Armin von Roon's book, and from his notations and commentary, he can be deduced to still be alive as of 1973. * Rhoda Henry — The war, and their time apart, puts a strain on Victor Henry's marriage to Rhoda. She ends her relationship with Palmer Kirby, only to fall in love with Harrison "Hack" Peters, an army colonel. Both the novel and the miniseries show her drinking problem getting worse. * Warren Henry — Victor's son continues to serve as a naval pilot until his death on the last day of the Battle of Midway. He scored a hit on one of the Japanese carriers in the first day of the battle and his rear gunman damaged one Zero. His death affects the Henrys deeply. Victor's thoughts parallel the lament of King David for his son, Absalom. * Byron Henry — Byron starts the war as an officer on the fictional USS Devilfish. When the captain, Branch Hoban, breaks down under the strain of an attack, the executive officer, Carter "Lady" Aster takes over and leads the attack. Aster becomes commander of the ship, with Byron his executive officer. While on leave in Hawaii, Byron is aware that Janice, his brother's widow, is acting strangely. He does not know that she is having an affair with Aster. :Byron wants to see Natalie; when possible, he wangles duty in the European theater. He serves as a courier to the U.S. mission to Vichy France and tries to get Natalie to leave with him. She refuses on the grounds that while they could cross Poland in a war in 1939, they didn't have Louis. Byron and Natalie agree that Natalie and Louis and Aaron should wait to get a passport from the US consulate in Marseilles while Byron travels direct to Lisbon and book a room. Byron arrives in Portugal just as Operation Torch begins, and the plan has to be scrapped. :Byron returns to the Pacific theater and rejoins Aster on the fictional USS Moray. Aster is severely wounded while on deck during an air attack and to save the ship, orders Byron to submerge without him. (This event did occur to Commander Howard W. Gilmore of the USS Growler (SS-215) on February 7, 1943. Gilmore was awarded the Medal of Honor). Byron is later awarded command of the USS Barracuda. :As a Naval Reservist, Byron feels mixed about his role in the war. He is competent, but doesn't enjoy fighting. However, in one engagement, he is forced to surface and fight a battle against a Japanese destroyer. When told he will win the Navy Cross, he replies, "Killing Japs gave Carter Aster a thrill. It leaves me cold." :Shortly before the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Byron visits his father aboard his flagship. The meeting is strained, because Byron blames Pamela for the breakup of his father's marriage. Later, his sister, Madeline, straightens him out about the causes of the breakup; he and his father become reconciled. :In April 1945, Natalie is found in Weimar, Germany. Byron presses the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, for an assignment in Europe so he might be reunited with his wife. He is assigned to investigate the technical details of captured German U-boats and leaves for Europe to join his wife, now recovering in a hospital, and to find his son, Louis. After a long search throughout Europe, Byron reunites with Louis, who was in an orphanage, only to find Louis is so traumatized he will not talk. However, when he reunites Louis with Natalie, Louis begins to sing with her. This occurs on August 6, 1945, the date of the first use of the atom bomb in warfare. * Janice Henry — The wife of Warren Henry. After the death of Aster she disappears from the miniseries; in the book she is given a few sentences more. Janice ends up with a politician. * Madeline Henry — Victor and Rhoda Henry's daughter; wife of Simon Anderson. * Aaron Jastrow — Aaron Jastrow is an American professor who expatriated to Siena, Italy before the war. Because he, his niece Natalie, and Natalie's son Louis are Jewish, the Italian government will not give them visas while making paper-thin excuses. Still, it appears safe for the three at Jastrow's villa, so they are unwilling to try the illegal and perilous sea voyage to Palestine. Then Jastrow meets a former student, Werner Beck, now in the German diplomatic corps. Beck initially pretends sympathy and friendliness so he can solicit Jastrow in broadcasting Axis propaganda. After he refuses, Beck makes veiled threats, so Jastrow, Natalie and her son escape to Vichy France. But after the Allied landings in Africa in November 1942, Germany occupies Vichy and closes the borders. Natalie, Louis and other trapped Americans are sent by the Vichy government to a purported diplomatic exchange camp in Baden Baden, Germany. As more excuses are made for their detainment, Jastrow is tricked into staying behind, and the three are sent to Theresienstadt. Adolf Eichmann has Jastrow savagely beaten after he refuses to join the Council of Elders. Jastrow acquiesces and takes a major role in the beautification, a Potemkin village to convince the Danish Red Cross that conditions are excellent in the "Paradise Camp." When his usefulness is ended, he is sent to Auschwitz. The Council members thought that as "prominents" they would be spared, but all were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Jastrow's body was cremated with millions of other Jews, but despite the degradation of his body, his soul was rekindled with what it means to be a Jew. He leaves behind a diary, A Jew's Journey, which is quoted throughout the book. * Berel Jastrow — Berel, Aaron's cousin, is captured with the Red Army in 1941 and sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner of war. He is transferred to a work kommando led by a Jew named Sammy Mutterperl, who is planning to escape with evidence of the murder of the Jews at Auschwitz. The kommando's task is to cover up the early massacres of Jews, and to insure that Germany benefits from any items of value the victims were carrying during the early, "crude" killings. This involves digging up the corpses, searching them, then burning all traces of the bodies. After the horrors of endless exhuming of the dead, and cremating the half-decayed corpses Sammy goes wild, grabs a weapon and kills five German guards, before the remaining guards kill him. Berel, shortly after, escapes and joins the Czech underground in Prague. He slips into Theresienstadt when he learns that his cousin Aaron and his niece Natalie are there, and later enables Louis Henry to escape. At the end of the book, there is a suggestion that he is killed while coming to retrieve Louis Henry from the Czech farmer he originally hid him with. Berel is the moral center of War and Remembrance. He bears witness to the worst acts of the Nazis, while still managing to maintain his deep Jewish faith and his love for his fellow men. * Natalie Jastrow Henry — along with her son and uncle, travel through various routes across Europe, trying to get home while evading the German government. She refuses a chance to escape with Byron to Lisbon (if caught she and Louis would be sent immediately to a concentration camp), then ends up in Theresienstadt. She becomes a member of the Zionist underground, and only when threatened with the murder of Louis does she agree to take part in a beautification for the benefit of Red Cross inspectors. Another uncle, Berel Jastrow, enables Louis to get out of the ghetto. Natalie is sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the same transport as her uncle, but survives and is sent to recover in a U.S. military hospital. She and Byron reunite, and Byron then locates Louis and brings him to Natalie as the book ends. Having an American with American sensibilities first try to escape from Nazi-dominated Europe, and then to experience the worst of the Nazi charades and horrors, is a very effective way for Wouk to bring home to a modern audience just what the war against the Nazis was all about, and the terrible plight of those the Nazis hunted down and exterminated. (Natalie's name is a play on characters. In Russian, she would be Natasha [diminutive of Natalia] Yastrova: i.e., Natasha Rostova, the heroine of Tolstoy's War and Peace). * Leslie Slote — At the beginning of the war, Slote is attached to the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland. He receives a photographed copy of the Protocol for the Wannsee Conference from a German opponent of Hitler. Slote devotes himself to trying to prove to the American government what the Nazis are doing to the Jews but his superiors refuse to believe it, both on logistics and the idea any civilization could do something so monstrous. When the State Department proves to be apathetic, he resigns and becomes a member of the OSS Jedburgh paratroopers. He parachutes into France to help the resistance, and is killed in an ambush. * Hugh Cleveland — Popular radio personality. Madeline Henry has become his personal assistant and, more recently, his lover by the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. He disappears from the novel and the miniseries shortly after the Battle of Midway, Madeline finally leaving him when she becomes convinced he will never divorce his wife. He also shows a pro-Soviet bias in the book and the miniseries which he did not in the first book or the first miniseries. * Armin von Roon — The fictional Brigadier General Armin von Roon serves as a member of the German OKW, in direct contact with the Fuehrer, and seeing the gradual deterioration of Hitler as the war goes worse for Germany. Von Roon flies from Berchtesgaden to Normandy to observe the German reaction to the Normandy invasion, but finds that Hitler rejects his observations. Von Roon is wounded in the July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler; he walks with a cane for the remainder of the miniseries. Von Roon's character is sent on various fact-finding missions in the novels, and his memoirs serve as a useful dramatic device to explain facts to the reader. :In April 1945, von Roon is assigned the role of operations officer for the defense of the Zitadelle in the Battle of Berlin. Toward the end of the battle, he is ordered by Hitler to assist and oversee Albert Speer in a demolition effort intended as a scorched earth policy to destroy Berlin, leaving nothing for its conquerors. Both men, however, are unwilling to carry out the order, because of the effect it would have on future Germans. Speer eventually confesses that he disobeyed. Speer is pardoned for his earlier services, while von Roon is forgiven because he has been nothing but loyal. In the end von Roon has the duty to inform Adolf Hitler that the Zitadelle can hold only 24 hours more (in real life, von Roon's commander, General Krebs, did this); and he is a witness to Hitler's farewell, suicide, and cremation. :Von Roon is sentenced to 21 years in prison for war crimes (presumably by the Nuremberg tribunal) and writes Land, Sea, and Air Operations in World War II, which is translated (by Victor Henry) as World Holocaust. Von Roon presents the German viewpoint on events; Henry, as translator, provides a rebuttal when required. * Harrison "Hack" Peters — Peters, a colonel in the Army, meets Rhoda Henry and falls in love with her. His work on the Manhattan Project coincidentally forces him to work with Victor Henry, who is vigorously pursuing the specialized parts needed to build landing craft for the assault on hostile beaches in Africa, Italy and France. Since Victor is aware of Peters' romance with Rhoda, it is a very strained relationship. Peters marries Rhoda in late 1944. * Simon "Sime" Anderson — Anderson, a naval lieutenant, works on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and marries Madeline Henry. * Alistair Talcott "Talky" Tudsbury — Tudsbury is in Singapore when the Pacific war breaks out. He speaks about the possibility of the island falling in a subversive BBC broadcast, then leaves on the last boat. Tudsbury is killed by a landmine in the aftermath of the Battle of El Alamein. A fictional correspondent's report, Sunset at Kidney Ridge, reflects on the decline of the British Empire; it serves roughly as the emotional midpoint of the book. * Pamela Tudsbury — serves as assistant to "Talky" Tudsbury (her father) until his death, then finishes his final report afterwards. She is engaged to two men (RAF pilot Ted Gallard and Lord Duncan Burne-Wilke) during the war, but loves Victor Henry throughout and pursues him. Near the end of the war, they marry. * Phil Rule — a dissolute British journalist, a former flame of Pamela Tudsbury. His main contribution is to provide a sarcastic commentary on the decline of the British Empire. * Air Vice-Marshal Lord Duncan Burne-Wilke — A career RAF officer, he becomes engaged to Pamela Tudsbury in 1942. He dies of pneumonia soon after she breaks off the engagement in 1944. * Commander Jim Grigg — Pug's executive officer on the cruiser Northampton. * Adolf Hitler — As a speaking character, Hitler appears in the miniseries in a more prominent role than the novel. * Erwin Rommel — Again, because of the requirements of television, Rommel plays a more prominent speaking role in the miniseries than in the novel. The story of Rommel's death becomes a dramatic element in the miniseries. * Claus von Stauffenberg — The plot against Hitler, including von Stauffenberg's placing of a bomb, is more prominent in the miniseries than in the book, because of the visual drama. * Adolf Eichmann — Eichmann appears in two sections of the novel and miniseries. In both cases, life for the Jastrows becomes worse. In the first, he orders Dr. Werner Beck, a German diplomat and Aaron Jastrow's former student, to figure out a way to convince the Italian authorities to deport Italian Jews into German control. In the second scene, he and a crony beat and bully Jastrow into accepting a position as a figurehead elder in Theresienstadt. An error in the mini-series is that Eichmann appears in 1944 as a full SS-Colonel (SS-Standartenführer) when, in reality, Eichmann never rose above the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel). * Franklin D. Roosevelt * Harry Hopkins — Hopkins represents the person who carries out Roosevelt's grand policies. * Winston Churchill * Dwight D. Eisenhower — General Eisenhower appears in the miniseries, and briefly towards the end of the novel, when he and Capt. Henry discuss aspects of the Normandy landings. * William Halsey — Admiral Halsey's operational mistakes late in the Pacific war are discussed. * Harry Truman - Becomes President upon the death of Roosevelt. He appoints Pug as his naval aide near the end of the movie. * Ernest Lawrence — Nobel Prize winner involved in nuclear bomb development. * Raymond A. Spruance — Although Admiral Fletcher was in overall command, Spruance, in command of the task force containing Enterprise and Hornet, is generally credited with winning the battle of Midway. Although it isn't covered in the book or the miniseries, Spruance went on to command at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, the largest carrier battle in the war. * Eugene Lindsey — Commander of Torpedo Squadron Six (flying off Enterprise); killed at Midway. * C. Wade McCluskey, Jr. — Air Group Six Commander at the Battle of Midway. * Miles Browning — Chief of Staff to Admiral Spruance at the Midway Battle, and also the grandfather of actor Chevy Chase.
1568491	/m/05c2q5	Lair of the White Worm	Bram Stoker	1911	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot focuses on Adam Salton, originally from Australia, who is contacted by his great-uncle, Richard Salton, in 1860 Derbyshire for the purpose of establishing a relationship between these last two members of the family. His great-uncle wants to make Adam his heir. Adam travels to Richard Salton's house in Mercia, Lesser Hill, and quickly finds himself at the centre of mysterious and inexplicable occurrences. The new heir to the Caswall estate, known as Castra Regis, the Royal Camp, Edgar Caswall, appears to be making some sort of a mesmeric assault on a local girl, Lilla Watford, while a local lady, Arabella March, seems to be running a game of her own, perhaps angling to become Mrs. Caswall. Adam Salton discovers black snakes on the property and buys a mongoose to hunt them down. He then discovers a child who has been bitten on the neck. The child barely survives. He learns that another child was killed earlier while animals were also killed in the region. The mongoose attacks Arabella who shoots it to death. Arabella tears another mongoose apart with her hands. Arabella then murders Oolanga, the African servant, by dragging him down into a pit or hole. Adam witnesses the murder which he cannot prove. Adam then suspects Arabella of the other crimes. Adam and Sir Nathaniel de Salis, who is a friend of Richard Salton's, then plot to stop Arabella by whatever means necessary. They suspect that she wants to murder Mimi Watford, whom Adam later marries. Nathaniel is an Abraham Van Helsing type of character who wants to hunt down Arabella. The White Worm is a large snake-like creature that dwells in the hole or pit in Arabella's house located in Diana's Grove. The White Worm has green glowing eyes and feeds on whatever is thrown to it in the pit. The White Worm ascends from the pit and seeks to attack Adam and Mimi Watford in a forest. Adam plans to pour sand into the pit and to use dynamite to kill the giant White Worm while it is inside the pit. Edgar Caswall is a slightly pathological eccentric who has Mesmer's chest which he keeps at the Castra Regis Tower. Caswall wants to recreate mesmerism, associated with Anton Mesmer, which was a precursor to hypnotism. He has a giant kite in the shape of a hawk to scare away pigeons which have gone berserk and have attacked his fields. In the final scene, Adam Salton, Mimi Watford, and Nathaniel de Salis confront Arabella and Edgar Caswall. A thunderstorm and lightning destroy Diana's Grove by igniting the dynamite.
1571119	/m/05cb12	The Book and the Brotherhood	Iris Murdoch			 That is the backstory. When the novel opens, Crimond has resurfaced, book nearly finished. His sudden appearance sets off a chain of events that nearly destroys the lives of everyone in the story.
1571835	/m/05ccsn	Nightmare Alley	William Lindsay Gresham	1946	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with Stanton Carlisle, the story's protagonist, observing the geek show at a Ten-in-One where has recently begun working. After the show, Stan asks the carnival's talker Clem Hoately where geeks come from. Clem replies that geeks don't come from anywhere - rather, they're "made": a sideshow owner finds an alcoholic bum and offers him a temporary job. Initially, the bum uses a razor blade to slice chickens' necks and fakes drinking the blood. After a few weeks the owner threatens to fire the bum in favor of a "real" geek, and the fear of sobering up terrifies the bum into actually biting the chickens. Thus, a geek is made. Stan performs sleight of hand tricks in the sideshow. He asks the carnival's mentalist Zeena to teach him how to execute a refined "code" act, where the performers memorize verbal cues that correspond to certain audience questions, allowing the mentalist to appear psychic. Stan also begins to pick up Zeena's talent for cold reading. He eventually leaves the carnival with beautiful and naive electric girl Molly Cahill to perform a team code act. The act becomes very successful, but Stan grows bored and transforms himself into Reverend Carlisle, an upstanding Spiritualist preacher offering séance sessions with the help of his medium - Molly, appearing as "Miss Cahill" to obfuscate their relationship. Stan gains a devoted following, but the stress of leading a false life leads him to seek the help of a highly-regarded psychologist named Lilith Ritter, who seduces Stan and soon begins controlling him. Stan pleads constantly for the two to run away together, and Lilith eventually agrees, suggesting the Rev. Carlisle swindle a rich man for the getaway money. They settle on Ezra Grindle, a ruthless auto tycoon with a skeptical interest in the occult. Stan manages to convince Grindle of his powers, and the businessman becomes a devoted spiritualist. Stan keeps Grindle hooked by promising to reunite him with his deceased college sweetheart Dorrie. In private meetings with Grindle, Stan communicates with Dorrie's spirit (played by an increasingly reluctant Molly); Dorrie seems to move closer to corporeality with each session. At the crucial moment of full bodily materialization, Molly panics and destroys the illusion, forcing her and Stan to flee and leading Grindle to vow revenge. Molly, tired of Stan's manipulation and abuse, soon leaves him to return to the carnival. Upon Lilith's suggestion, Stan goes into hiding and takes with him an envelope containing a large sum in cash that Grindle had donated to the church, but Stan shortly discovers that Lilith has stolen the money. When he returns to her office to confront her, she attempts to have him committed to a mental institution. He narrowly escapes and goes on the run, performing as a mentalist at increasingly shoddy venues and barely evading the men Grindle continually sends after him. Eventually he becomes a hobo, staying afloat by giving Tarot readings and selling horoscopes. He descends into alcoholism and depression. His life in utter shambles, Stan finds a carnival owner and asks to join the sideshow as a palm reader. The owner gives Stan some whiskey but refuses his proposal, saying the show is full. But as Stan begins to drunkenly stumble out, the owner changes his tune and invites Stan back in with a job offer: "Of course, it's only temporary - just until we get a real geek."
1572420	/m/05cfm0	Corazón salvaje	Caridad Bravo Adams			 This novel, originally by Caridad Bravo Adams is set in the Caribbean, specifically in the French colonies. The Mexican adaptation is set in the Atlantic coast of Mexico. The following plot summary is based on the 1993 version by Televisa, and is described using in-universe tone. Francisco Alcazar is a wealthy landowner, who owns sugar cane fields. Francisco is married to Sofia, a severe and uncompassionate woman, with whom he has a son named Andres. Before his marriage to Sofia, Francisco had an affair with a married woman who was physically abused by her husband. The woman became pregnant and died when the child was 3 years old. This love-child is, in fact, Francisco's true firstborn. When this woman became pregnant, her husband refused to recognize the boy as his son. He also did not allow Francisco to recognize the child as his own. Thus, the boy named "Juan", became known as "Juan del Diablo" (Juan of the Devil) because he had no last name. Juan's mother eventually died of the shame and from the physical abuse she had received from her husband. Juan was raised with no love or instruction, in poverty and neglect. In his early teens, Juan's stepfather dies. Francisco, hiding the fact that Juan is his son, decides to invite him to live at his estate with his family, on the pretext of being a playmate for Andrés. Sofia finds out the truth and tries to send Juan away, to which Francisco objects. Finally, Francisco has an accident while riding his horse before he could legally recognize Juan as his son. Francisco leaves a letter with his intentions addressed to his friend and lawyer Noel Mancera. Sofia seizes the letter and hides it. On his deathbed, Francisco sends for his son Andrés, and while not telling the truth, asks him to care for Juan as a brother. After his death, Sofía sends Juan away without saying anything to Andrés. Eventually, Sofia decides to send Andrés to boarding school in France. Juan grows up among the sailors and pirates of the port-city, earning a shocking reputation for dirty business (contraband of liquor), ruthlessness, and harboring unbound loyalty from his men. Juan is also a womanizer, his heart is still untaken. He has learned the identity of his biological father because Noel Mancera has told him. Through the years, Mancera has given Juan some education, and even offered to give him his last name. However, Juan refuses the offer because he feels that a last name is unwarranted in his chosen occupation. Meanwhile, Mónica and Aimée are two beautiful young countesses, daughters of the deceased Count of Altamira, a distant cousin of Sofia de Alcazar. The Altamira family are very respectable in high society, but they now find themselves in bankruptcy. Their only asset is their nobility and beauty, and the long promise of betrothal between Monica and Andrés. Unfortunately for Mónica, Andres has forgotten about their engagement. While visiting Mexico City, Andres meets Mónica's younger sister. Aimee is beautiful, flirty and selfish. She shows interest in Andrés because he has wealth, influence, and power. Andrés falls completely in love with Aimee, a fact he later shares with his mother when she comes to visit him. When Sofia returns home, she informs Catalina de Altamira that Andres has broken the engagement with Monica because he is now intent in marrying Aimee. Catalina is mortified at the thought of Monica's heartbreak. With her family's financial ruin in mind, Catalina reluctantly agrees to an engagement between Aimee and Andres. When Monica discovers that Andres has broken their engagement in order to marry her sister, she is immediately heartbroken. Monica decides to enter a convent to become a nun. Monica denies her feelings for Andres and tells everyone that becoming a nun is her true calling. Meanwhile, Aimee returns to her hometown with her mother. One day, while walking along the beach, she spies Juan taking a bath in his beach house. Aimee had never met Juan and is unaware of his past or his connection to the Alcazar family. She watches him from a distance, but Juan sees her. Over the next few days, Aimee returns several times to spy on Juan. He decides to confront her and catches her while she's hiding. Soon after, Juan and Aimee fall in love and become lovers. Juan goes away on a business trip and Aimee promises to wait for his return and marry him. When Andres arrives in his hometown, Aimee ignores her promise to Juan and agrees to marry Andres. Juan returns from his business trip several weeks later. Juan discovers that Aimee is now married to his half-brother and decides to kidnap her so that she carries out her promise. Andres, who knows nothing about his kinship to Juan and the affair between him and his wife, decides to employ him as the steward of Campo Real, his country estate. Meanwhile, Monica leaves the convent to spend some time in the countryside with her family. Monica quickly discovers the affair between Juan and Aimee. Monica confronts her sister, but Aimee refuses to end her affair with Juan. Since Monica decides to leave the convent, Andres attempts to redeem himself by proposing an engagement between Monica and his friend Alberto de la Serna. Meanwhile, Andres learns that Juan is actually his brother and that he had an unseemly affair with a young lady in his household. Andres immediately assumes that the lady in question is Monica. Because of this misunderstanding, Monica is pressured to get married immediately. Monica agrees to get married in an attempt to protect Andres and her sister from the impending scandal, but she refuses to marry Alberto. Instead, Monica decides to marry Juan because she believes this is the only way to prevent Aimee to continue her affair with him. In an unexpected turn of events, Juan accepts to marry Monica. Aimee is filled with jealousy and rage at the thought of Juan being married to her sister. Aimee spends all her time plotting and scheming to destroy Monica's engagement to Juan. Unfortunately for Aimee, Juan is no longer interested in her. He is now captivated by Monica's beauty and her kind demeanor. At the same time, Monica discovers a whole different side to Juan's personality. Monica learns that despite Juan's rough exterior, he can also be kind, gentle, and noble. Against all odds, Monica and Juan slowly begin to fall in love. Their happiness is short lived when Andres finds out about Juan's affair with Aimee.
1572600	/m/05cg7d	Damnation Alley	Roger Zelazny	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Both the short story and the novel open in a post-apocalyptic Southern California, in a hellish world shattered by nuclear war decades before. Several police states have emerged in place of the former United States. Hurricane-force winds above five hundred feet prevent any sort of air travel from one state to the next, and sudden, violent, and unpredictable storms make day-to-day life a mini-hell. Hell Tanner, an imprisoned killer, is offered a full pardon in exchange for taking on a suicide mission&mdash;a drive through "Damnation Alley" across a ruined America from Los Angeles to Boston&mdash;as one of three vehicles attempting to deliver an urgently needed plague vaccine.
1573713	/m/05ck8k	Curtain	Agatha Christie	1975-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The murderer, identified by Poirot simply by the letter X, has been completely unsuspected of involvement in five previous murders, in all of which there was a clear suspect. Four of these suspects have subsequently died (one of them hanged), but in the case of Freda Clay, who gave her aunt an overdose of morphine, there was considered to be too little evidence to prosecute. Hastings agrees that it is highly unlikely to be coincidence if X was connected with all five deaths, but Poirot, now using a wheelchair due to arthritis and attended by his new valet Curtiss, will not give him X's name. He merely makes it clear that X is in the house, which has been turned into a private hotel by the new owners: Colonel and Mrs Luttrell. Hastings makes certain discoveries in the next few days. Elizabeth Cole, another guest at the hotel, reveals to him that she is in fact the sister of Margaret Litchfield, who had confessed to the murder of their father in one of the five cases. Margaret had died in Broadmoor Asylum and Elizabeth feels stigmatised by the case. Later that day Hastings and several other people overhear an argument between Colonel Luttrell and his wife. Shortly afterwards, he wounds her with a rook rifle, apparently mistaking her for a rabbit. Hastings reflects that this is precisely the sort of accident with which X is associated, but Mrs Luttrell rapidly recovers. Hastings is concerned by the attentions paid to his daughter Judith by Major Allerton, whom he discovers is married but estranged from his Catholic wife. While he and Elizabeth are out with Stephen Norton, another guest and a birdwatcher, Norton sees something through his binoculars that seems to upset him. Hastings suspects that it is something to do with Allerton and, when his clumsy attempts to persuade Judith to give Allerton up merely antagonise her, he plans Allerton's murder. He falls asleep while waiting to poison Allerton, and feels differently about things when he awakes the next day. Barbara Franklin, the wife of Judith's employer Dr Franklin and the childhood friend of Sir William Boyd Carrington, dies the following evening. She has been poisoned with physostigmine sulphate, an extract from the Calabar bean that her husband has been researching. After Poirot's testimony at the inquest – that Mrs Franklin had been upset and that she had emerged from Dr Franklin's laboratory with a small bottle – a verdict of suicide is brought in, but Hastings suspects that the death was murder and Poirot confirms this. Norton, still evidently upset about what he has seen through the binoculars, asks Hastings for his advice, which is to confide in Poirot. Poirot arranges a meeting between them and says that Norton must not speak to anyone further of what he has seen. That night, Hastings is awakened by a noise and sees Norton – with his dressing-gown, untidy grey hair and characteristic limp – go into his bedroom. The next morning, however, Norton is found dead in his locked room with a bullet-hole perfectly in the centre of his forehead, the key in his dressing-gown pocket and a pistol (remembered by a housemaid as belonging to him) nearby. Apparently, X has struck again. Poirot takes Hastings over the evidence, pointing out that his belief that he saw Norton that night relies on loose evidence: the dressing-gown, the hair, the limp. Nevertheless, it seems that there is no one in the house who could have impersonated Norton, who was a short man. Hastings despairs that the mystery will ever be solved when Poirot himself dies that night, apparently of natural causes. He nevertheless leaves Hastings three conscious clues: a copy of Othello, a copy of John Ferguson (a 1915 play by St. John Greer Ervine that is now – unluckily for readers of Curtain – largely forgotten) and a note telling Hastings to speak to his permanent valet, Georges. In the weeks that follow the death of Poirot, Hastings is staggered to discover that Judith has all along been in love with Dr Franklin, and is now marrying him and going with him to do research in Africa. Was Judith the murderer? When Hastings speaks to Georges, he discovers that Poirot wore a wig, and also that Poirot's reasons for employing Curtiss were vague. Perhaps the murderer was Curtiss all along? The solution, and one of the greatest of Christie's twist endings, is contained in a written confession that is sent to Hastings from Poirot's lawyers, four months after Poirot's death. In it, Poirot reveals that he wore a false moustache as well as a wig and explains that X was Norton, a man who had perfected the technique of which Iago in Othello (like a character in Ervine's play) is master: applying just such psychological pressure as is needed to provoke someone to commit murder, where normally they would let the other live and dismiss their desires as simply the heat of the moment, without anyone ever truly realising what he is doing. Again and again Norton had demonstrated this ability, first by apparently clumsy remarks that goaded Colonel Luttrell to take a homicidal shot at his wife, and then by his careful manipulation of Hastings to resolve upon the murder of Major Allerton. It was Norton's contrivances that created the impression that Judith loved Allerton when in fact she has been in love with Franklin all along. Hastings's potential murder had, however, been averted by Poirot's presence of mind in forcing drugged hot chocolate upon him on the night that he had intended it to take place, the same action resolving Poirot to take action; he knew that Hastings was not a murderer, but if he had not intervened Hastings would have hanged for a crime while the 'true' murderer would have escaped seemingly innocent. Deprived of his prey twice, Norton turned to Mrs Franklin, who was soon persuaded to attempt the murder of her husband, after which she could be reunited with the wealthy and attractive Boyd Carrington. By an ironic twist of Fate, however, Hastings himself had intervened in this murder; by turning a revolving bookcase table while seeking out a book in order to solve a crossword clue (coincidentally Othello again) he had swapped the cups of coffee so that the one with poison in it was actually drunk by Mrs Franklin herself. Poirot knew all this but could not prove it. He sensed that Norton, who had been deliberately vague about whom he had seen through the binoculars when attempting to imply that he had seen Allerton and Judith, was now intending to reveal that he had seen Franklin and Judith, almost certainly implicating them in the apparent murder of Franklin's wife. The only solution was for Poirot to murder Norton himself. At their meeting, he revealed to Norton what he suspected and said that he intended to 'execute' him. He then gave him hot chocolate. Norton, arrogantly self-assured in the face of both the accusation and the threat, insisted on swapping cups, but both contained the same sleeping pills that had previously been used by Poirot to drug Hastings; guessing that Norton would request the swap, Poirot had drugged both cups, knowing that his time taking the pills would give him a higher tolerance for a dose that would put Norton out. With Norton unconscious, Poirot, whose incapacity had been faked (a trick for which he needed a temporary valet who did not know how healthy he was and would accept his word without question) moved the body back to Norton's room in his wheelchair. Then, he disguised himself as Norton by removing his wig, putting on Norton's dressing-gown and ruffling up his grey hair. Poirot was the only short suspect at the house. With it established that Norton was alive after he left Poirot's room, Poirot shot him – with characteristic but unnecessary symmetry – in the centre of his forehead. He locked the room with a duplicate key that Hastings knew Poirot to possess; both Hastings and the reader would have assumed that the duplicate key was to Poirot's own room, but Poirot had said that he had changed rooms before Norton's arrival, and it was to this previous room that he had the key. Poirot's last actions were to write the confession and await his death, which he accelerated by moving amyl nitrite phials out of his own reach, seeking to avoid the traditional arrogance of the murderer where he might come to believe that he had the right to kill those he deemed it necessary to eliminate. His last wish is implicitly that Hastings will marry Elizabeth Cole: a final instance of the inveterate matchmaking that has characterised his entire career.
1573768	/m/05ckgn	Yumegari				 The story revolves around Tatsumi Hōjyō, a seventeen year old girl and heir to a clan of Yumegari (dream hunters). The dream hunter's mission is to investigate the dreams of others and actively participate in them if necessary. A yumegari is bound by fate to a yumemori, one who watches the dreams of a Yumegari and prevents them from falling into an eternal sleep. When Tatsumi's mother and father, the preceding yumegari and yumemori, die in the execution of their duties, Tatsumi inherits the job. She then sets off for Tokyo to find her yumemori, twenty-eight year old Kyousuke Kaga. Tatsumi takes up residence with Kyousuke so they can get a better understand of each other. Despite the warnings from her clan about Kyousuke, Tatsumi continues to work with him, fulfilling her dangerous and uncertain role as a yumegari. es:Yumegari
1574481	/m/05cmbs	Take Me Out	Richard Greenberg			 Much of the play is set in the locker room of a professional baseball team, and as such has an all-male cast that explores themes of homophobia, racism, class and masculinity in sports. The play's main character, Darren Lemming, is a popular and successful mixed-race baseball player at the peak of his career when he decides to come out. Several of his teammates react strongly (some supportive and accepting, and some not), and the drama plays out over the course of a baseball season with tragic consequences.
1574658	/m/05cmr3	Enemy Mine	David Gerrold		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Willis Davidge, a human fighter pilot, is stranded along with Jeriba Shigan, a Drac, on a hostile planet. The Drac are a race of aliens which are reptilian in appearance and reproduce asexually. Davidge and Jeriba Shigan, whom Davidge nicknames "Jerry," initially attempt to kill one another but quickly realize that cooperation will be the key to their survival.
1575143	/m/05cnz2	A Widow for One Year	John Irving	1998-05-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the opening section of the book, the year is 1958 and Ruth Cole is four years old. Although she is a loved child, her parents do not have a happy marriage. Her two older brothers died four years earlier in a car accident, and she is constantly reminded of their presence from the pictures of their childhood hanging on the walls of the Cole family home. Ruth's father, Ted Cole, writes successful children's books, and hires Eddie O'Hare, a teenager who attends Phillips Exeter Academy, the same school as Ruth's two late brothers, to work as his assistant for the summer. Eddie is unwittingly drawn into a plot orchestrated by Ted to drive his unhappy wife, Marion, to infidelity. Marion, unable to forget her dead sons, shows little affection to her daughter. Ted has always conducted extramarital affairs and would likely lose in a custody battle for Ruth in divorce court. If Marion had an affair, he feels that this would strengthen the case for custody to be awarded to him. Ted picks Eddie specifically to tempt Marion, since he bears a striking resemblance to his two dead sons. Eddie and Marion's affair leads to Marion's disappearance at the end of the summer. It is 1990 and Ruth is thirty-six. She is in Europe, dealing with the failures of her love life as she herself has become a successful writer. Ruth is doing research on prostitutes in Amsterdam's red light district, and finds herself hiding in a closet while she observes the murder of a prostitute by the prostitute's client. She makes note of certain details of the murder which, in the future, lead to the murderer's arrest. The detective who solves the murder case is left with the identity of the mysterious "witness" unknown. Ruth is now forty-one, has a son, and is about to fall in love for the first time. This section covers Ruth's brief widowhood ("A Widow for One Year" is a literal description of Ruth's situation as well as a quote from one of her novels). The detective who solved the murder case that Ruth witnessed four years before realizes that Ruth is the witness, because Ruth included details of the victim's room in her novel, and the detective is a fan of Ruth's work. Ruth discovers that the murder was solved and the murderer caught. Ruth meets with the detective, and they fall in love. After a whirlwind romance in Paris (the next stop on Ruth's book tour) he agrees to follow Ruth to Vermont, where they marry. Eddie O'Hare and Ruth, unexpectedly, re-unite with Marion. They end up living happily in Vermont.
1575405	/m/05cpmb	The Looking-Glass War	John le Carré	1965-06	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 An undefined military intelligence organisation, based in Blackfriars Road, London and referred to throughout the book as "The Department," has been resting on its laurels since its successes running agents against the Nazis during the Second World War. Its tasks are gradually being taken over by the more experienced Circus, led by "Control" and his right hand man George Smiley. The Department expends most of its energies on administrative tasks and on a bureaucratic turf war with the more professional Circus. The Department comes across uncertain and weak evidence that Soviet missiles are being placed at Rostock, near the West German border. The Department's chief, LeClerc, seizes the opportunity to re-live glory days and regain prestige for his organization. He decides to send an agent into enemy territory to discover the truth without involving the Circus, thereby enhancing The Department's status. The Department reactivates one of its World War II agents, a naturalised Pole named Fred Leiser, and sends him into East Germany to investigate the missiles. The inexperienced Department's operation is clumsy, and Leiser makes errors -- including his killing a young East German border guard and making overly-long transmissions. Consequently, the East Germans determine almost immediately that security has been breached, and they set out to find Leiser's location. Smiley informs LeClerc and his colleagues about the debacle. He tactfully convinces LeClerc to abandon the operation, with Leiser still trapped in East Germany. The story comes to its inevitable end when Leiser, not knowing the fate of the operation, and receiving no response to his transmissions, continues with his mission. He follows the "War Rules" and plays out the losing game to the end. Leiser's prolonged and slow transmissions give away his location and he is captured. Leiser's fate is unknown at the conclusion of the story.
1577583	/m/05cvxb	Confessions of an English Opium-Eater	Thomas de Quincey		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 As originally published, De Quincey's account was organized into two parts: * Part I begins with a notice "To the Reader," to establish the narrative frame: "I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life...." It is followed by the substance of Part I, ** Preliminary Confessions, devoted to the author's childhood and youth, and concentrated upon the emotional and psychological factors that underlay the later opium experiences &mdash; especially the period in his late teens that de Quincey spent as a homeless runaway in Oxford Street in London in 1802 and 1803. * Part II is split into several sections: ** A relatively brief introduction and connecting passage, followed by ** The Pleasures of Opium, which discusses the early and largely positive phase of the author's experience with the drug, from 1804 until 1812; ** Introduction to the Pains of Opium, which delivers a second installment of autobiography, taking De Quincey from youth to maturity; and ** The Pains of Opium, which recounts the extreme of the author's opium experience (up to that time), with insomnia, nightmares, frightening visions, and difficult physical symptoms. * Another "Notice to the Reader" attempts to clarify the chronology of the whole. Though De Quincey was later criticized for giving too much attention to the pleasure of opium and not enough to the harsh negatives of addiction, The Pains of Opium is in fact significantly longer than The Pleasures. However, even when trying to convey darker truths, De Quincey's language can seem seduced by the compelling nature of the opium experience: ::"The sense of space, and in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c. were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to conceive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience."
1578412	/m/05cxxr	Efuru	Flora Nwapa	1966		 The story was set in a rural community. Its protagonist, Efuru, is a strong and beautiful woman. She loses her child and has two unhappy marriages. At the end she goes to the lake goddess, Uhamiri, who is like a mirror of herself. Uhamiri gives her worshipers wealth and beauty but few children.".
1579630	/m/05c_hc	The Canterville Ghost	Oscar Wilde		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 “The Canterville Ghost” is a study in contrasts. Wilde takes an American family, places them in a British setting, then , through a series of mishaps, pits one culture against the other. He creates stereotypical characters that represent both England and the United States, and he presents each of these characters as comical figures, satirizing both the unrefined tastes of Americans and the determination of the British to guard their traditions. Sir Simon is not a symbol of England, as perhaps Mrs. Umney is, but rather a paragon of British culture. In this sense, he stands in perfect contrast to the Otises. Sir Simon misunderstands the Otises just as they misunderstand him, and, by pitting them against each other, Wilde clearly wishes to emphasize the culture clash between England and the United States. The story illustrates Wilde’s tendency to reverse situations into their opposites as the Otises gain the upper hand and succeed in terrorizing the ghost rather than be terrorized by him. Wilde pairs this reversal of situations with a reversal of perspective. This ghost story is told not from the perspective of the castle occupants, as in traditional tales, but from the perspective of the ghost, Sir Simon. In this sense, Sir Simon could logically be labeled the “protagonist” in this story, as it is he who faces the challenge of overcoming adversity and bettering his “life.” Though Wilde tells a humorous tale, it appears that he also has a message, and he uses fifteen-year-old Virginia to convey it. Virginia says that the ghost helped her see the significance of life and death, and why love is stronger than both. This is certainly not the first time an author has used the traditional ghost story and the theme of life and death to examine the issue of forgiveness; ghosts, after all, presumably remain in this realm because, for some reason, they are unable to move on. Wilde’s ghost, Sir Simon, “had been very wicked,” Virginia tells her father after she returns to the castle. “But he was really sorry for all that he had done.” God has forgiven him, Virginia tells her father, and because of that forgiveness, in the end, Sir Simon de Canterville can rest in peace.
1580111	/m/05d0wh	Moonlight Shadow				 The novella tells the story of a young woman, Satsuki, coming to terms with the death of her boyfriend, Hitoshi, in a car accident and her friendship with her boyfriend's brother, Hiiragi, whose girlfriend, Yumiko, also died in the same accident. With Japanese cultural and surrealistic themes, it is an example of Yoshimoto's clean writing style that portrays the emotions of grief, loss, and hope.
1580433	/m/05d1pn	Outcast of Redwall	Brian Jacques	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the howling, snowy north, a young badger is captured and bound by the cruel ferret Swartt Sixclaw and his group of vermin, who torment him mercilessly. When the vermin also capture a kestrel, Skarlath, the two young beasts help each other escape from the vermin camp. In the scuffle that ensues, the badger uses a massive hornbeam limb to severely injure Swartt's sixclawed left paw. The ferret and the badger both vow to extort revenge, each declaring the other to be his mortal enemy. As the young badger could not remember his name, Skarlath dubs him Sunflash after the distinctive golden stripe running down his snout. The two young beasts quickly become inseparable friends and travel throughout Mossflower Woods together, defending the weak and helpless and quickly growing older. Sunflash's reputation quickly spreads throughout the land. He eventually molds his hornbeam limb into a fearsome, stone-spiked warclub, calling it his mace. Meanwhile, Swartt also grows older, stronger, and wiser. He travels the northern lands with his vixen seer Nightshade and his horde and eventually ends up at the camp of Bowfleg, a fat ferret with a large horde who has settled down in a plentiful land. As an earlier leader of Swartt's, his captains are suspicious, and rightly so: with the help of Nightshade, Swartt executes a cunning trick that kills Bowfleg. Swartt takes over his large horde and marries Bowfleg's daughter, Bluefen. At this point, Sunflash and Skarlath have spent several seasons in the Lingl-Dubbo cave, the home of the families of Tirry Lingl the hedgehog and Bruff Dubbo the mole. Sunflash is eventually called to the mountain Salamandastron in his dreams, and so he travels there to become Badger Lord. He and Skarlath part ways, and Sunflash becomes Lord of the Mountain; this section quotes Sunflash's arrival at Salamandastron from the epilogue of Mossflower. By this time, Swartt Sixclaw and his large horde have passed through the Redwall region of Mossflower, which is efficiently defended by the resident squirrels and otters. However, the nursemaid of Swartt's infant son was trampled, and the infant ferret is dropped in a ditch. He is retrieved by the good-hearted woodlanders and taken to Redwall Abbey. At the abbey, the young ferret's fate is determined. Abbess Meriam and Bella of Brocktree decide to entrust the baby to the care of Bryony, a young mousemaid, and Togget, her sensible mole friend. The ferret is named Veil, and as the seasons turn he grows into a young adult in the abbey. As a youngster he is naughty and mischievous, but as a young adult his true vermin nature begins to show through, as the ferret would steal, lie, and be generally unpleasant to all, especially his adopted mother, Bryony. He is eventually banished, by Bella, from the Abbey when he attempts (and fails) to poison Friar Bunfold's wife. Bryony, feeling his banishment was unjust, leaves the abbey to track the ferret down. Her molefriend Togget accompanies her, and together they follow Veil as he wanders through Mossflower. The young ferret, remaining unapologetic and as mean as ever, makes life difficult for the mousemaid and her friend. Leagues away, Swartt comes upon Salamandastron and launches an attack. Together with a smooth-talking ferret corsair named Zigu, an attack is mounted and war begins. Zigu is eventually killed by a skilled hare of the Long Patrol named Sabretache, and Swartt's horde grows once more. With the help of neighboring woodlanders, the vermin attack is deflected. Sunflash and Skarlath go hunting after them, and Nightshade lays an ambush with poison arrows. In the ensuing attack, Nightshade kills Skarlath with a poison arrow, only to be slain by Sunflash seconds later. Swartt and his depleted horde flee to the mountains east of Salamandastron. Veil, Bryony and Togget reach the same mountains from the east, and Veil meets his father for the first time. Neither is impressed by the other. Sunflash is stunned and captured by Swartt, and Bryony encounters the evil Swartt Sixclaw. The ferret warlord tries to kill her by throwing a javelin; Veil, in a moment that portrays his true emotions toward the mousemaid, saves her life by taking the javelin, dying in the process. Sunflash then kills Swartt by throwing him from the mountain. Sunflash, Bryony and Togget return to Redwall. Bryony is later made Abbess and Togget is made Foremole. Sunflash meets Bella, his mother, for the first time since he was a youngster. He stays with her until her death many seasons later, and he then returns to the western coast to rule at Salamandastron.
1580900	/m/05d2l3	Love! Valour! Compassion!	Terrence McNally			 The setting is at a lakeside summer vacation house in Dutchess County, two hours north of New York City where eight gay friends spend the three major holiday weekends of one summer together for Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day. The house belongs to Gregory, a successful Broadway choreographer now approaching middle age, who fears he is losing his creativity; and his twenty-something lover, Bobby, a legal assistant who's blind. Each of the guests at their house is connected to Gregory’s work in one way or another - Arthur and longtime partner Perry are business consultants; John Jeckyll, a sour Englishman, is a dance accompanist; die-hard musical theater fanatic Buzz Hauser is a costume designer and the most stereotypically gay man in the group. Only John's summer lover, Ramon, and John's twin brother James are outside the circle of friends. But Ramon is outgoing and eventually makes a place for himself in the group, and James is such a gentle soul that he is quickly welcomed. Infidelity, flirtations, soul-searching, AIDS, truth-telling and skinny-dipping mix monumental questions about life and death with a wacky dress rehearsal for Swan Lake performed in drag.
1581133	/m/05d34y	Isle of the Dead	Roger Zelazny	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Sandow is jolted from his wealthy, indolent lifestyle by a series of messages, each accompanied by a picture of one of a number of people once important to him, and all dead for many years. Sandow realizes the pictures could be fake, and he has other obligations, one of which is responding to a call for help from a friend, Ruth Laris. In the course of investigating her disappearance, he receives another message that he will find all his friends "on the Isle of the Dead". The message is in Pei'an, addressed to Shimbo (the name of the Pei'an god connected with Sandow) and signed by Belion (Shimbo's traditional enemy in Pei'an mythology). Sandow soon learns that somebody has been stealing the memory records and tissue samples of people who died on Earth. These things are required of everyone who lives on Earth, so they can be recalled to life should the need arise. The six missing sets are of the people whose photos Sandow received. Visiting his Pei'an mentor Marling, who is dying, Sandow learns that his tormentor is Gringrin, another Pei'an who was denied communion with a deity despite passing almost all the tests. Gringrin vowed revenge on the other worldscapers, starting with Sandow. Somehow Gringrin has been able to unite himself with Belion. Sandow helps his mentor end his life with the glitten root ceremony, in which two telepaths take the hallucinogenic root and have a shared dream, from which only one returns alive. This is also used for duelling between telepaths, which is what Sandow must do when he finds Gringrin. After the funeral, Sandow sets out for Illyria, the world he made which has the Isle of the Dead. Landing by stealth, and armed to the teeth, he sets out to walk the remaining distance to the Isle of the Dead. He now believes that Gringrin intended him to be lured there, and slowly humiliated before all the people who ever mattered to him. He is sure Gringrin has made a major mistake by staging this on a world Sandow made. All the forces on the planet will be allied with Sandow; he is the world's God. He comes upon Gringrin himself, alive but injured. Things have gone badly wrong. One of the recalled persons is Mike Shandon, a con man who is also a telepath, and a deadly enemy of Sandow's. He has persuaded the god Belion to abandon Gringrin and go to him. Apparently the Pei'an gods are real and Gringrin, attempting to ordain himself independently, asked for a creative spirit to come to him, but instead was chosen by Belion. Now, Belion's abandoned him and gone to Shandon. Gringrin wants to flee, but Sandow is determined to rescue as many of his friends as possible. As the two cross the river to the island they meet more of Sandow's revived enemies and friends. From one of them, a feisty dwarf named Nick, Sandow learns that his recalled wife Kathy is having an affair with Shandon. Sandow decides to buy Shandon off, which he is well-equipped to do. As the two negotiate and link minds to confirm the deal, the gods assert themselves and a battle begins in which Shimbo's air and water battle Belion's earth and fire. A storm rages as the ground shakes and splits. Both Sandow and Shandon are consumed by their godgame, until Sandow sees Nick try to help Kathy, only to fall with her into a fissure. Both die, and at the same moment Shimbo deserts him. Shandon/Belion continues attacking, and Sandow goes down under a pile of rocks, breaking his leg. Sandow has one last trick - a laser weapon surgically implanted in his middle finger. In a supremely ironic gesture, he "gives Shandon the finger", killing him and ending the battle. Sandow crawls away to find a "power-pull" energy nexus, so he can use its energies to summon his orbiting ship. On the way he meets Gringrin, mortally wounded. Gringrin begs him to perform the glitten rite with him. In a psychedelic trance, Sandow faces Death in the shape of the Valley of Shadows. But he sees all the worlds he has made, and realizes that as long as he can create life, casting worlds like "jewels in the darkness", he has a purpose. Gringrin in turn loses his dread of death, and walks happily into the Valley. Waking, Sandow crawls on and encounters his last revived friend, Lady Karle, alive but entombed in a cave. Sandow bitterly dismisses her cries and goes on, but once reunited with his ship he goes back for her. They hobble to the ship together.
1582922	/m/05d7mr	Men Among the Ruins				 In this work Evola argues for a radical restructuring of society based on his view of Tradition. Evola takes as his jumping off point Italian Fascism and to a lesser degree German National Socialism and describes the ways that the two failed to achieve his ideal. As in Fascism and Nazism, Evola champions a powerful state unified under a rigid code and caste system. Despite similarities, Evola's ideas differ dramatically from those of the fascists and, while preserving an appreciation of militarism, focus less on modernity than tradition, less on the technological than the spiritual, less on the masses than the person (which Evola distinguishes from the individual). In this work, Evola develops his radical reactionary philosophy. Reactionary is an important word for him, one that he seeks to own. In fact "reactionary" could be seen as an understatement in his case as he seeks to restore the order, not of 100 or 200 years ago, but of literally thousands of years ago. This work constitutes Evola's only attempt at a book-length explicitly political work and, as such, he regarded it as a failure. Ultimately, Evola would become disenchanted about the prospects of achieving a radical reactionary restructuring of society and would advocate that an enlightened or "differentiated" man should Ride the Tiger &ndash; the title of his last work &ndash; of modern civilization.
1583258	/m/05d8dx	The Truth	Terry Pratchett	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 William de Worde is the black sheep of an influential Ankh-Morpork family, scraping out a humble lifestyle as a common scribe and making extra pocket money by producing a gossipy newsletter for foreign notables. When William falls in with a group of dwarves who have come to Ankh-Morpork to set up shop with their printing press, he inadvertently founds AM’s first newspaper. Realizing that with their press the dwarves can help him put out a newsletter every day, William begins scrambling to find enough interesting events to fill up the space. Arguing that it isn’t worth the effort just to make a few copies for William’s wealthy foreign subscribers, the dwarves print hundreds of copies of the “Ankh-Morpork Times” and hire a group of oddball beggars to pitch them on the street. William is shocked when the newsheets sell like hot cakes, bringing in more money than he wants or knows what to do with. Before he knows it William has assembled a newsroom staff, including Sacharissa Cripslock, a prim young woman who attracts news items from talkative, flirtatious city guards, Otto, a vampire photographer from Uberwald who has sworn off drinking blood and often disintegrates in his own camera flash, and Rocky, a quasi-literate troll who deals with the more irate members of the public. Meanwhile, a conspiracy is afoot in the city to depose the Patrician, Lord Vetinari. The wealthy and powerful (but anonymous) Committee to Unelect the Patrician hire Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip, a pair of villainous mercenaries known as the New Firm, to frame Vetinari for attempted murder and embezzlement. The plan goes off without a hitch, except that Pin and Tulip allow a witness to escape from the scene; Lord Vetinari’s prized terrier, Wuffles. William and the Times staff investigate the strange charges against the Patrician and set out to find the missing Wuffles, all while trying to cope with threats from the local Guilds, the sudden appearance of a competing paper (the scandalous and largely fiction-filled “Ankh-Morpork Inquirer”), pressure from the City Watch, and the chance that Otto may fall off the wagon at any moment. William makes the mistake of advertising a reward for information leading to Wuffles' recovery. Hundreds of Ankh-Morpork citizens mob the offices with dogs of every shape and variety (including many that are actually cats, birds, or cows) hoping to cash in. The New Firm arrive too, capturing every terrier in the crowd hoping that one of them will be Wuffles, and trying to intimidate the Times staff. Otto drives them off using his magical “Dark Light” photography method, which has the inadvertent effect of showing Mr. Pin the angry ghosts of his victims who follow him around and triggering a moral crisis for the normally remorseless thug. An anonymous tipster named "Deep Bone" (actually Gaspode, the talking dog who operates as the brains of the beggar crew who sell the Times) helps William track down Wuffles, and when Sacharissa discovers the New Firm’s hideout in William’s own family manor he has enough evidence gathered to break the story wide open. Just as he is preparing to go to press, the New Firm return to take revenge. In the ensuing struggle a lamp explodes and the Times offices catch fire. William and the others take refuge outside while Pin and Tulip hide in the cellar. Hot melted lead from the destroyed printing press leaks down on them through the roof, and Pin resorts to murdering his partner so that he can save himself by standing on the much larger man’s corpse. Pin, now only partially sane, emerges from the cellars and attacks William once the fire is out, only to be killed when he is impaled on the memo spike from William’s desk. With the press and office destroyed, it looks like the Times is out of business, but with the application of a crossbow, dwarven axes, and Otto’s sense of dramatic atmosphere, the crew manage to “borrow” one of the Inquirer’s presses for the evening. The big story breaks the next day and Lord Vetinari’s name is cleared just before a new, Guild-controlled Patrician would have seized power. The New Firm, meanwhile, discuss the finer points of reincarnation, and who does and does not merit it, with Death. William goes to confront the man behind the Committee to Unelect: his own estranged father, Lord de Worde. After a tense argument, William blackmails his father with the information about his criminal doings, forcing him to flee the city or be exposed. In the end William is ambivalent about the new and unexpected role of the free press in his life and in the world, but resolves that someone must tell the public the truth about what goes on in the city, even if the public doesn't want to hear it. The Times comes to be recognized, if not exactly welcomed, by the powers that be in the city, and William and Sacharissa make plans to expand even further, hiring new staff, establishing offices in other cities, and hopefully one day squeezing in time for a lunch date in between deadlines.
1585104	/m/05df6w	The Secret Life of Plants	Peter Tompkins	1973		 The book includes summaries of the life and work of amongst many others, 18th century scientists Jagdish Chandra Bose and George Washington Carver as well as Corentin Louis Kervran. The book also discusses alternative philosophy and practice on soil and soil health, as well as on alternative farming methods. Such topics as auras, psychophysics, orgone energy, radionics, kirlian photography, magnetotropism, bio-electrics and dowsing are also discussed. One of the book's claims is that plants may be sentient despite their lack of a nervous system and a brain. The book includes unscientific experiments on plant stimuli, as through a polygraph, a method which was pioneered by Cleve Backster. The book is regarded as pseudoscientific by skeptics and many scientists.
1585323	/m/05dfr6	The Sands of Mars	Arthur C. Clarke	1951	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Martin Gibson, a famous science fiction author, is travelling to Mars, as a guest of the crew of the spaceship Ares. After arriving at Space Station One, in the orbit of Earth, from which all interplanetary journeys start, he makes the trip to Mars. The youngest crew member, Jimmy Spencer, who is still in training to be an astronaut, is assigned the task of answering his questions about the technology of space flight, and they become friends. Gibson tells him about his early life, revealing that he had to leave Cambridge University because of a nervous breakdown and never completed his studies. After psychiatric treatment, he had become an author. He also reveals that he had an affair at university but that he and his girlfriend broke up and that she married another man, had a child and later died. On Mars, Gibson and the crew go their separate ways. Gibson meets the Chief Executive of Mars, Warren Hadfield, and Mayor Whittaker, who run the colony from the base at Port Lowell. He discusses the future of the colony with Hadfield, who is keen to make Mars as self-sufficient as possible, given the vast distance that materials have to come from Earth. On a trip by passenger jet to an outlying research station, Gibson and the crew are forced down by a dust storm. They explore the nearby area and discover a small group of kangaroo-like creatures, the unsuspected natives of Mars. They appear to have limited intelligence by human standards and are vegetarians, living on native plants. It is later revealed that the plants are being cultivated by researchers to enrich the oxygen content of the Martian atmosphere. This project, and related others, are being kept secret from Earth. Gibson discovers that Spencer is his son. In the meantime, Spencer has formed an attachment to Irene, Hadfield’s daughter. Hadfield reveals that scientists have been working on "Project Dawn", which involves the ignition of the moon Phobos and its use as a second “sun” for Mars. It will burn for at least one thousand years and the extra heat, together with mass production of the oxygen-generating plants, will eventually – it is hoped – make the Martian atmosphere breathable for humans. Gibson finds himself so persuaded of the importance of Mars as a self-sufficient world that he applies to stay on the planet, and is invited to take charge of public relations – in effect, to “sell” Mars to potential colonists.
1587349	/m/05dmr_	In the Miso Soup	Ryu Murakami	1997	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Twenty year-old Kenji is a Japanese "nightlife" guide for foreigners — he navigates gaijin men around the sex clubs and hostess bars of Tokyo. On December 29 he receives a phone call from an American named Frank, who seeks three nights of his services. While Kenji has promised to spend more time with his girlfriend, sixteen year-old Jun, the money is too good to pass up. He finds himself closing out the end of the year accompanying Frank around Shinjuku, wondering if his strange, plastic-skinned patron could be responsible for the gruesome events recently reported in the news.
1587390	/m/05dmx8	69	Ryu Murakami	1987	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 Thirty-two-year-old narrator Kensuke Yazaki takes a nostalgic look at the year 1969 when he, as an ambitious and aspiring seventeen-year-old, living in Sasebo, in western Kyushu where he gets into antics with his equally ambitious and enthusiastic best friends, Iwase and Adama. Their priorities are girls, cinema, music, literature, pop culture, organising a school festival "The Morning Erection Festival", bettering teachers and enemies, and finding a way to change the world somehow.
1587782	/m/05dp1p	Riz noir	Anna Moï	2004	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel takes place during the Vietnam War and tells of two sisters aged 15 and 14, who have been arrested, tortured and finally put into Poulo Condor prison. Throughout their sad adventure, the young girls recall important events in which they were involved, such as the Tet offensive. However, their recollections center more on the countryside, the colors and the scents and smells of their childhood. fr:Riz noir (roman)
1588367	/m/05dqbt	The Lady in the Lake	Raymond Chandler	1943	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 Derace Kingsley, a wealthy businessman, hires Marlowe to find his estranged wife Crystal. Although separated from his wife, Kingsley fears that Crystal - rich, pretty, spoiled and reckless - may have gotten herself into a scandal that could jeopardize his own position with the shareholders of the company he runs. The last definite place Crystal was known to have been was at a resort called Little Fawn Lake. And Kingsley had received a telegram from Crystal about two weeks before, (dateline El Paso, Texas), stating that she was divorcing him and marrying her gigolo boyfriend, Chris Lavery. But when Kingsley ran into Lavery in L.A., and asked him "where's Crystal", Lavery tells him that he hasn't seen her, wasn't with her in El Paso, doesn't know where she is, and never agreed, or wanted, to marry her. Marlowe begins his investigations at Little Fawn Lake. Kingsley has given him a note to the caretaker of his vacation home, one Bill Chess. Chess is in an alcoholic haze, depressed over having been abandoned by his wife Muriel, at about the same time as Crystal disappeared. As Marlowe and Chess walk over the property, they discover the drowned body of Chess' wife, bloated from decomposition and almost unrecognizable except by her clothes and jewelry. Chess is immediately arrested for his wife's murder, and Marlowe, although doubtful of his guilt, returns to Los Angeles. In L.A. he travels to the corrupt neighboring town of Bay City (modeled on Santa Monica) to interview Chris Lavery, who appears to have some kind of guilty knowledge about Crystal but will not come clean. When departing from this interview a tough cop named Al Degarmo drives up and accuses Marlowe of harassing Lavery's neighbor, Dr. Almore. Eventually Marlowe discovers that Dr. Almore's wife had died under suspicious circumstances, that her death was hushed up by the police, and that Dr. Almore's mistress at the time was Mildred Haviland, the former spouse of Degarmo. When Marlowe goes back to talk to Lavery again, he finds him murdered in his bathroom. A gun had been fired six times, two of the shots had hit him, and one was fatal. Mrs. Fallbrook, the owner of the rented house that Lavery lives in, confronts Marlowe on his way out, but Marlowe manages to scare her off without letting her discover the murder. Then he goes back to Kingsley, who offers him a fat bonus to prove Crystal didn't do it. But on the way out of Bay City he is confronted by the cops again, who force him to drink liquor and then beat him up and arrest him for drunk driving. Marlowe manages to convince the Bay City Chief of Police that he was framed, and is turned loose. Now Kingsley tells him that he has received a phone call from Crystal, begging for $500. Marlowe is to deliver it. When he gets to the rendezvous, Marlowe insists that Crystal answer his questions before receiving the money. Marlowe recognizes her as being "Mrs. Fallbrook", the woman he met in Lavery's house, and accuses her of being the murderer of Lavery. She pulls a gun on him and someone hits Marlowe from behind with a blackjack. When Marlowe wakes up he is stinking with gin and Crystal is lying naked, bloody and strangled to death on the bed. Marlowe attempts to get away but is arrested by Degarmo, who wants Marlowe to help him convict Kingsley of the sex murder of Crystal (Kingsley's wife). Marlowe lets him think he can provide the evidence against Kingsley, but they must go to Little Fawn Lake to find it. In the final confrontation at Little Fawn Lake, Marlowe reveals that the murder suspect supposed to be Crystal (in Los Angeles) was actually Mildred Haviland, AKA Muriel Chess AKA Mrs. Fallbrook; she was killed by Al Degarmo (her former husband) in a jealous rage; and that the murder victim supposed to be Muriel Chess (at Little Fawn Lake) was actually Crystal Kingsley, who was killed by Mildred Haviland for revenge and profit, assuming the identity of her victim. Mildred also murdered Lavery. Degarmo - who strangled Mildred - attempts to flee, but is killed while trying to escape.
1588383	/m/05dqd6	Playback	Raymond Chandler	1958	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 This novel puts Marlowe in the position of turning against his client. We are at the beginning of 1952 (some 18 months after the parting of Marlowe and Linda Loring in The Long Goodbye). An unknown client hires Marlowe (via intermediaries) to follow a woman traveling under the name Eleanor King (whose real name is Betty Mayfield). Marlowe traces Mayfield to the small coastal resort town of Esmeralda in California, where he is given the runaround by practically everyone. During her train ride west, Mayfield was recognized by a man who then seeks to blackmail her, for reasons disclosed at the end of the novel. While Marlowe is poking around Esmeralda, the blackmailer is found dead on Mayfield's hotel room balcony. She panics and calls Marlowe for help. Marlowe encounters a variety of characters with dubious motivations, including a taciturn lawyer and his smart secretary (with whom Marlowe had a sexual encounter), a 'retired' gangster, overconfident would-be tough guys of varying morals, a hired killer (whose wrists Marlowe smashes), decent police officers, an affectingly desperate example of the American immigrant underclass of the 1950s. Marlowe also had a striking encounter in a hotel lobby with a reflective elderly gentleman, Henry Clarendon IV, which gives rise to an extended philosophical conversation. Marlowe learns that Betty Mayfield had been married to the son of Henry Cumberland, a big shot in a small North Carolina town. The son, Lee Cumberland, had suffered a broken neck during the Second World War and, though mobile and not paralyzed, for safety he regularly wore a neck brace. One day there was a quarrel between them, and later, the husband was found dead, with Mayfield re-fixing the neck brace on his body. The case drew widespread newspaper publicity (which is why the blackmailer recognized Mayfield on the train), and due to Cumberland's influence on the jury, the jury found Mayfield guilty of murder. But the jury's verdict was set aside by the judge, who saw more than a reasonable doubt and rejected the jury verdict as tainted. Cumberland vowed to hound Mayfield wherever she went, which is why she fled to Esmeralda; Cumberland was presumably behind Marlowe being hired in the first place. Cumberland arrives in Esmeralda to hound Mayfield in person, but with the help of the local police captain, Marlowe scares off Cumberland. (In the British edition of the novel, and the screenplay version by Chandler, see below, Cumberland's name is Kinsolving). Mayfield decides to marry a local criminal-turned-respectable, who has taken a romantic interest in her. Marlowe lets her go ahead but has a frank talk with the ex-criminal, who obviously hasn't quite mended his ways, as he was behind the killing of the blackmailer. At the book's conclusion, Marlowe is rewarded by providence when an old flame (Linda Loring from the previous novel, The Long Goodbye), gets back in touch.
1589066	/m/05ds38	White Light	William Barton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is the story of Felix Rayman, a down-and-out mathematics teacher at SUCAS (a state college in New York) with a troubled family life and dead-in-the-water career. He begins experimenting with lucid dreaming—aided by "fuzz weed" (marijuana)—hoping to gain insight into Cantor's continuum hypothesis. During an out-of-body experience, Felix loses his physical body and nearly falls victim to the Devil, who hunts the Earth for souls like his to take to Hell; Felix calls upon Jesus, who saves him. Jesus asks Felix to do him a favor: to take a restless ghost named Kathy to a place called "Cimön", and bring her to God/Absolute Infinite, which can be found there. Cimön is permeated with the notion of infinity in its various guises: just getting there involves grappling with infinity, as Cimön is an infinite distance away from Earth. Felix and Kathy get there in their astral bodies by doubling their speed in half the time so that they asymptotically approach infinite speed at four hours. Eventually, at the speed of light, they turn into the eponymous "white light" and merge with Cimön. In this new world, Felix encounters famous scientists and mathematicians such as Albert Einstein and Georg Cantor, who all reside in a hotel that is based on Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel. Felix stays there after Kathy leaves him; the hotel is full, but Felix has the desk clerk move everybody one room up, leaving an empty room for him. He falls in with a loquacious beetle named "Franx", reminiscent of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, which is mentioned in Rucker's Afterword. The two decide to climb "Mount On", which itself is infinite (not aleph-null infinite, but perhaps instead cardinality of the continuum or greater). After many adventures, Franx and Felix find Kathy. They leave off climbing Mount On, and instead try the other side of Cimön, the Deserts, littered with portholes to Hell. Felix merges with the Absolute Infinite, but Kathy is scared and refuses. Eventually, Felix wakes back up on Earth in his body; everybody attributes his dreams to a spectacular binge-drinking and marijuana-smoking episode, until Felix remembers an insight he had regarding the continuum hypothesis: if there were three basic kinds of existence, that of solid matter, aether, and things he calls bloogs which are not aleph-null or c infinitely divisible, but a higher infinity, then the hypothesis will have been disproven. With the aid of a physicist friend, he uses his astral travelling abilities to create a ball of this bloog-matter. The ball has unusual properties such as ignoring gravity or being indivisible, or to be more precise, being a physical instantiation of the Banach–Tarski paradox, which means it can be broken apart into multiple pieces, each of which is exactly like the original. It is implied the US government suppresses their research.
1590659	/m/05dxkv	The House of the Scorpion	Nancy Farmer	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The story is set in the country of Opium, a strip of land between Mexico (now called Aztlán), and the United States. Opium, which is essentially an opium-producing estate, is ruled by Matteo Alacrán, also known as El Patrón. El Patrón's work-force consists of illegal immigrants whom the Farm Patrol (ex-criminals who are tempted with the offer of protection from the police) enslave when they catch them crossing the border in either direction. These illegal immigrants become "eejits", humans with computer chips implanted in their brains, making them more or less zombies who can perform only simple tasks. These "eejits" act, or cease to act, only when ordered to do so. If an eejit is not told to stop doing its simple task, it will continue until it dies. The main character, Matt, is a clone of El Patrón, an incredibly powerful, 148-year-old drug lord who intends to take Matt's organs when his own organs fail. Matt was grown from a set of cells taken from El Patrón decades ago, then frozen. He was cultured in a test tube, then transferred into a surrogate mother when it became clear that he was going to survive. For the first six years of his life, he lives with Celia, a cook who works in El Patrón's mansion. One day, he is discovered by two children (Emilia and Steven). The next day they return, and bring Emilia's sister, María, who immediately captivates Matt. They observe him through the window for a while, but soon get bored and turn to leave. Matt is so lonely that he smashes the window and jumps out to follow them. Never having experienced pain before, he was unaware of the danger in jumping barefoot onto smashed glass. The children carry him to El Patrón's mansion to be treated. The people there treat Matt kindly until Mr. Alacran, El Patron's great-grandson, recognizes him as a clone. For the next few months, he is treated as an animal by most of the Alacráns, and is locked into a room filled with sawdust for his "litter". The inhabitants of the Big House, meanwhile, are so disgusted by him that they all move to different wings of the mansion, as if they are afraid of contamination. However, María discovers where he is being kept and informs Celia, who tells El Patrón about Matt's filthy conditions and abusive treatment. El Patrón immediately punishes the maid who was in charge of Matt, gives Matt clothes and his own room, and commands everyone to treat him with respect. Matt is also given a bodyguard, named Tam Lin, who becomes a father figure to him. Still, everyone but Celia, María, and Tam Lin look upon Matt with ill-disguised revulsion, only hiding it when El Patrón is around. Matt lives in the Big House for the next seven years. He and María quickly become friends, and friendship gradually blossoms into romance. However, Matt is deliberately kept in the dark by everyone about his identity and purpose until a cruel joke reveals to him that he is a clone. Matt also discovers that all clones are supposed to be injected when "harvested" with a compound that cripples their brains and turns them into little more than thrashing, drooling animals. From then on, he studies and practices the piano with a vengeance, in a state of denial. In his heart, Matt already knows the reason for his existence, yet he convinces himself that El Patrón would not hire tutors for him and go to all the trouble of keeping him entertained if he were intending to kill Matt in the end, and that El Patrón must want Matt to run the country when El Patron dies. At Steven and Emilia's wedding, El Patrón has a near-fatal heart attack. Matt and María, who have by this time realized they love each other, attempt to flee in the ensuing chaos but are betrayed by Steven and Emilia. María is taken away, and Matt is taken to the Big House's hospital, where El Patrón at last confirms that Matt lived only to keep himself, El Patrón, alive in the end. At that moment, Celia reveals that she has been giving Matt carefully measured doses of arsenic, which, though not large enough to kill Matt, would certainly be fatal to one as frail as El Patrón; El Patrón becomes so enraged that he has another heart attack and dies. Mr. Alacrán orders Tam Lin to dispose of Matt; Tam Lin pretends to comply, and ties him to a horse and rides away to dispose of him. But instead, he gives Matt supplies and sets him on a path to Aztlán. Arriving in Aztlán, Matt comes across a kind of penal colony for orphans. These orphans are called the "Lost Boys", and Matt is sent to live with them by a group of men known as the "Keepers," who are fervent followers of Marxism. The Keepers operate plankton farms, forcing the orphans to do manual labor and subsist on plankton. The Keepers enjoy luxurious quarters and delectable food, claiming that this is fair because they "earned" the right to do so by working hard during their childhood. Matt is at first an outcast because the other boys think he is a spoiled aristocrat. However, Matt becomes a hero when he defies the Keepers and leads the boys in a rebellion against them. Matt then flees with his friends among the Lost Boys. They struggle to the nearest city, San Luis, then go to the convent to find María and her mother, the politically powerful Esperanza. Esperanza thanks the boys for giving her an excuse to charge the Keepers with drug trafficking: for years, everybody has known about it, but no one has had sufficient evidence for a search warrant. Matt also learns that Opium is in lockdown. He manages to re-enter the country, but only to learn that no one in the Alacrán estate is alive, except for Celia, Daft Donald, and Mr. Ortega. Tam Lin and everyone else in the estate drank poisoned wine that El Patrón wanted to be served at his funeral. El Patron wanted to either run the business forever, or have it and everybody else die with him. Matt, being El Patrón's genetic heir, is the new ruler of Opium but decides to dismantle the regime.
1590712	/m/05dxnc	The Lake House	James Patterson	2003	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Lake House starts some time after When the Wind Blows. The bird children - Max, Matthew, Ozymandias, Wendy, Peter, and Icarus - are all depressed and unhappy in their new "normal" lives and wish to return to live with Frannie and Kit. Frannie and Kit miss the children as well and engage in a courtroom battle to regain custody of the children. The judge decides that the children will remain living with their biological parents until an appeal hearing is made. Meanwhile, a doctor named Ethan Kane begins trying to capture the bird children and bring them to the place he works, a nightmarish place called the Hospital. In the Hospital, faceless people are murdered and dissected and their organs are taken and used for the "Resurrection" of rich and famous people such as former presidents and prime ministers. Going back to their lives, the children are forced to put up with harassment from various reporters and paparazzi. After a visit from one of the reporters, it is revealed that Max knows about the Hospital from working at the School, but was trained not to talk about it on the threat of death. Upset, she goes to Oz for comfort. He tells her that she is "drop dead gorgeous". Shortly after, the two begin a sexual relationship. After Kane attempts to kidnap Max and Matthew on their way home, the siblings escape and meet up with the rest of the flock. The children then fly to Frannie's house for protection. That night, Hospital workers try to break into Frannie's house. She calls the police and sets her house on fire. She and the children then escape through the basement and meet up with Kit. Kit takes them to Washington D.C. for help. While left alone, hit men hired by Kane capture the children. Oz is killed while trying to protect Max. Frannie and Kit try to rescue the children but are drugged and hooked up to holographic monitors, which give the patients pleasant visions while their organs are being taken. Max and the flock manage to escape and Frannie and Kit are released later. Although they try to expose the Hospital, all evidence of their experiments are hidden and the V.I.Ps seen there have alibis. At the appeal hearing, the judge decides to return the children to the custody of Frannie and Kit. The family rejoices and moves back to the Lake House. There, Frannie notices that Max has been in her room all morning. She goes to investigate and learns that Max has laid two eggs - her babies with Oz. Max spends the next few weeks caring for the eggs. One night, Kane breaks into Max's room to steal the eggs. Max fights him off and knocks him out of the window, fulfilling her promise to Oz that she'd break his neck. Four weeks later, the eggs hatch. Max's winged babies are a boy and a girl, who she names Ozymandias and Frances Jane. The book ends with Max thinking that she can't wait to teach them how to fly.
1591008	/m/05dyd7	New Grub Street	George Gissing	1891	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story deals with the literary world that Gissing himself had experienced. Its title refers to the London street, Grub Street, which in the 18th century became synonymous with hack literature; by Gissing's time, Grub Street itself no longer existed, though hack-writing certainly did. Its two central characters are a sharply contrasted pair of writers: Edwin Reardon, a novelist of some talent but limited commercial prospects, and a shy, cerebral man; and Jasper Milvain, a young journalist, hard-working and capable of generosity, but cynical and only semi-scrupulous about writing and its purpose in the modern (i.e. late Victorian) world. New Grub Street opens with Milvain, an “alarmingly modern young man” driven by pure financial ambition in navigating his literary career. He accepts that he will “always despise the people [he] write[s] for,” networks within the appropriate social circle to create opportunity, and authors articles for popular periodicals. Reardon, on the other hand, prefers to write novels of a more literary bent and refuses to pander to contemporary tastes until, as a last-gasp measure against financial ruin, he attempts a popular novel. At this venture, he is of course too good to succeed, and he's driven to separate from his wife, Amy Reardon, née Yule, who cannot accept her husband’s inflexibly high standards—and consequent poverty. The Yule family includes Amy’s two uncles—John, a wealthy invalid, and Alfred, a species of critic—and Alfred’s daughter, and research assistant, Marian. The friendship that develops between Marian and Milvain’s sisters, who move to London following their mother’s death, provides opportunity for the former to meet and fall in love with Milvain. However much Milvain respects Marian’s intellectual capabilities and strength of personality, the crucial element (according to him) for marriage is missing: money. Marrying a rich woman, after all, is the most convenient way to speed his career. Indeed, Milvain slights romantic love as a key to marriage: ‘As a rule, marriage is the result of a mild preference, encouraged by circumstances, and deliberately heightened into strong sexual feeling. You, of all men, know well enough that the same kind of feeling could be produced for almost any woman who wasn’t repulsive.’ Eventually, reason enough for an engagement is provided by a legacy of £5000 left to Marian by John Yule. Life (and death) eventually end the possibility of this union. Milvain’s initial career advancement is a position on The Current, a paper edited by Clement Fadge. Twenty years earlier, Alfred Yule (Marian’s father) was slighted by Fadge in a newspaper article, and the resulting acerbic resentment extends even to Milvain. Alfred refuses to countenance Marian’s marriage; but his objection proves to be an obstacle to Milvain only after Yule’s eyesight fails and Marian’s legacy is reduced to a mere £1500. As a result, Marian must work to provide for her parent, and her inheritance is no longer available to Milvain. By this time, Milvain already has detected a more desirable target for marriage: Amy Reardon. Reardon’s poverty and natural disposition toward ill-health culminate in his death following a brief reconciliation with his wife. She, besides the receipt of £10,000 upon John Yule’s death, has the natural beauty and grace to benefit a man in the social events beneficial to his career. Eventually Amy and Milvain marry; however, as the narrator reveals, this marriage motivated by circumstances is not lacking in more profound areas. Milvain, it is said, has married the woman he loves, although it should be noted that the narrator never states this as a fact, merely reporting it as something others have said about Milvain. In fact, in a conversation that ends the book, the reader is left to question whether Milvain is in fact haunted by his love for Marian, and his ungentlemanly actions in that regard.
1591197	/m/05dyw2	Bovo-Bukh				 :Based on Sol Liptzin, A History of Yiddish Literature, pp. 6–7. Bovo's young mother conspires to have her husband, an aged king, killed during a hunt, then marries the murderer. They try and fail to poison the child Bovo, whom they are afraid will avenge his father. The handsome youth runs away from Antona, is kidnapped and taken to Flanders to be stable boy to a king, whose daughter Druzane falls in love with him. The heathen sultan of Babylonia arrives, backed by ten thousand warriors, to demand Druzane in marriage for his ugly son, Lucifer. He is refused; in the ensuing war the king of Flanders is captured. Bovo, riding a magic horse Rundele, defeats the sultan's army, slays Lucifer, frees the king, and is promised the hand of Druzane, but is enticed to Babylonia, where he is horribly imprisoned for a year before escaping. Meanwhile, Druzane has presumed him dead and consented to marry the knight Macabron. On the wedding day of Druzane and Macabron, Bovo arrives disguised as a beggar; he and Druzane flee, first to a palace but later to the forest, pursued by Macabron. Deep in the forest, Druzane gives birth to twins. Bovo sets off to try to find a route back to Flanders. Druzane comes to the conclusion that Bovo has fallen prey to a lion, sets off on her own with the twins, and successfully reaches Flanders. Bovo returns to their forest abode; failing to find her or the twins, he now also presumes her to have fallen prey. Despairing, he joins an army ranged against his native Antona. He kills his stepfather, dispatches his mother to a nunnery, and takes his rightful crown. He is eventually reunited with Druzane, who becomes his queen.
1591344	/m/05dz6m	The Crystal City	Orson Scott Card	2003	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alvin and Arthur stay at a boarding house where mixed-blood children are cared for by Papa Moose and Momma Squirrel. While there, Alvin uses his knack to cleanse the mosquitoes and disease from a well. A young woman, whom the people call Dead Mary, sees what he has done and asks him to come with her and heal her mother, who has yellow fever. Because Alvin heals her, the Yellow Fever spreads throughout Nueva Barcelona, averting an impending war with the United States over slavery. As the fever spreads, people begin to suspect Papa Moose and Momma Squirrel because Alvin has been healing everyone he can, radiating outward through the city. Alvin is then approached by La Tia, an African woman, who wants him to help all the slaves and the displaced French to escape Nueva Barcelona. He reluctantly agrees. Alvin's brother, Calvin, at the behest of Alvin's wife, Margaret, comes to help. Calvin raises a thick fog while Alvin uses his blood (magic he learned from the Red Prophet Tenskwa-Tawa) to construct a crystal bridge across lake Ponchartrain to the north. Arthur helps Alvin with the bridge. While the escapees flee north, they take food and provision from plantations along the way and free any slaves they find. Alvin goes to Tenskwa-Tawa on the other side of the Mizzippy to ask for safe passage through the Red Man's lands, so they can escape the pursuing army. Alvin and Tenskwa-Tawa put on a show by holding back the Mizzippy river to allow the exodus of people from Nueva Barcelona to cross, while the pursuing army can do nothing but watch. Calvin leaves with Jim Bowie and Steve Austin to conquer the Mexica. Verily Cooper is sent by Margaret to seek out Abe Lincoln and get his help for figuring out what to do with all the runaways when they reach the Noisy River Territory. Alvin discovers that Tenskwa-Tawa has been collaborating with La Tia to create a volcanic eruption under the Mexica, who are becoming increasingly threatening. Alvin sends Arthur to initiate the eruption and warn his brother Calvin, who ignores the warning but still manages to escape. Bowie and several others leave with Arthur. The people travel through the Indian lands using the greensong, which allows them to move more quickly. When they reach the Noisy River territory, Abe Lincoln and Verily Cooper have decided to create a new county so they can appoint their own judges that will resist the law to return slaves to their masters. There Alvin starts to build the crystal city he saw in a vision. He realizes that not everyone has to have maker skills, but can contribute in their own way—felling trees, digging the foundation, etc. But all is not well. Calvin and Bowie arrive and decide to stay.
1591552	/m/05dzrd	Speed-the-Plow	David Mamet			 The play begins in the office of Bobby Gould, who has recently been promoted to head of production at a major Hollywood studio. His job is to find suitable scripts to bring to studio head Richard Ross to be made into big Hollywood movies. His longtime associate, Charlie Fox, has arrived with important news: movie star Doug Brown came to his house that morning interested in making a movie Fox had sent his way some time ago. Gould instantly knows to arrange a meeting with the studio head, wanting to deliver the news personally that such a big star who usually works with a different studio is keen to make a movie with them, which is sure to be a financial success. Gould thanks Fox for bringing the project to him when he could have gone "Across the Street" to another studio. Fox says he is to loyal to Gould on account of the many years he has worked for him. Word comes back that the studio head is flying to New York for the day, so they will have to meet with him tomorrow, which could present a problem because Doug Brown wants an answer by 10 o'clock the next morning. Gould assures Fox that it will work out. Fox is beside himself about the big break he has gotten, which could finally make him a player in Hollywood after years of toiling in obscurity. It could also make him rich. He requests coffee and Gould asks his secretary to get some. As they wait, Gould tells Fox about a book he has been asked to give a "courtesy read" to, meaning that it is not seriously being considered to be made into a film because the author is "An Eastern Sissy Writer." Gould's secretary, Karen, arrives with the coffee and the two men ebulliently chat with her about the movie business and their history together in it. Karen is only temporarily filling for Gould's regular secretary and is new to the ways of Hollywood. Gould asks her to make lunch reservations for them and she leaves. After she's gone, Fox comments on Gould's attractive temporary secretary, teasing him about trying to seduce her. Fox thinks that Karen is neither a "floozy" nor an ambitious girl trying to sleep her way up the Hollywood ladder, so it would be hard for Gould to bed her. Gould thinks he can and the two make a five hundred dollar wager to that effect. Fox leaves, soon to be seeing Gould at their lunch appointment. Karen returns to discuss the lunch reservation. Gould asks her to sit and begins to tell her about the movie business. He tells her about the book he has been giving a "courtesy read." Un-corrupted and naïve, she asks why he is so sure there is no hope for the book. Gould offers Karen a chance to take part in the process by reading the book and delivering to him her opinion of it him that night at his home. As she leaves, Gould asks her to tell Fox that "he owes me five hundred bucks." That night at Gould's apartment, Karen delivers a glowing report on the book, a story about the effects of radiation. As he is seducing her, Gould speaks warmly toward her, offering to bring her under his wing at the studio. Karen says she wants to work on the film that this book is made into. Gould says that even if the book is good, it won't make a successful Hollywood movie. Karen admonishes him for simply perpetuating the standard Hollywood formula instead of taking a creative risk. When Gould protests, Karen says that she knows Gould invited her to his place in order to sleep with her and aggressively starts to seduce him into taking her to bed, and into pitching the Radiation book instead of the Doug Brown film. The next morning Fox is back in Gould's office, excited about their upcoming meeting with the studio head. Gould surprises Fox with news that instead he is going to be pitching the Radiation book, without him. The passive Fox initially takes the news with good humor, but gradually becomes more and more aggressive. He chides Gould for preparing to throw both of their careers away by pushing a movie the studio will never agree to make. Gould says that he has been awake all night and feels the call to "do something which is right." Fox suspects that Gould spent the night with Karen and that is the reason for his delirium. Gould denies this, but an increasingly enraged Fox physically attacks him and continues his verbal assault until Gould tells him to go. Fox agrees to leave, but only after he gets the chance to ask Karen a question. Karen enters and eventually admits to being intimate with Gould the night before. Gould and Karen continue to stand together as a team until Fox gets her to admit that she would not have slept with Gould had he not agreed to green light a movie based on the Radiation book. With this, her ambitious motives are revealed and Gould is in shock. She tries to hold on to the plans they had made, but Fox will not allow it, telling her to leave the studio lot and never come back. As she leaves, Fox throws the Radiation book out the door after her. The play ends with Gould straightened out and ready to pitch the Doug Brown film with Fox.
1593170	/m/05f2s_	The Aleph	Jorge Luis Borges	1945-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping or confusion. The story continues the theme of infinity found in several of Borges' other works, such as The Book of Sand. As in many of Borges' short stories, the protagonist is a fictionalized version of the author. At the beginning of the story, he is mourning the recent death of a woman whom he loved, named Beatriz Viterbo, and resolves to stop by the house of her family to pay his respects. Over time, he comes to know her first cousin, Carlos Argentino Daneri, a mediocre poet with a vastly exaggerated view of his own talent who has made it his lifelong quest to write an epic poem that describes every single location on the planet in excruciatingly fine detail. Later in the story, a business on the same street attempts to tear down Daneri's house in the course of its expansion. Daneri becomes enraged, explaining to the narrator that he must keep the house in order to finish his poem, because the cellar contains an Aleph which he is using to write it. Though by now he believes Daneri to be quite insane, the narrator proposes without waiting for an answer to come to the house and see the Aleph for himself. Left alone in the darkness of the cellar, the narrator begins to fear that Daneri is conspiring to kill him, and then he sees the Aleph for himself. Though staggered by the experience of seeing the Aleph, the narrator pretends to have seen nothing in order to get revenge on Daneri, whom he hates, by giving him reason to doubt his own sanity. In a postscript to the story, Borges explains that Daneri's house was ultimately demolished, but that Daneri himself won second place in the Argentine National Prize for Literature. He also states his belief that the Aleph in Daneri's house was not the only one that exists, based on a report he has discovered, written by Captain Burton when he was British consul in Brazil, describing the Amr mosque in Cairo, within which there is said to be a stone pillar that contains the entire universe; although this Aleph cannot be seen, it is said that those who put their ear to the pillar can hear it.
1595100	/m/05f7tl	The Children's Story	James Clavell		{"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The story takes place in an unnamed school classroom, in the aftermath of a war with an unnamed country. It is implied that a country similar to America has been defeated and occupied. The story opens with the previous teacher leaving the classroom, having been removed from her position and replaced with an agent of the foreign power. The new teacher has been trained in propaganda techniques, and is responsible for re-educating the children to be supportive of their occupiers. During the course of the story, the children are persuaded to abandon their religion and national loyalty. Framing the story is the fact that, while the children have ritually recited a 'Pledge of Allegiance' every morning, none know what it actually means. The teacher is relentlessly positive about the change, offering the children candy, songs and praise. When asked if the war was won or lost, she responds only that "we won", implying that everyone would benefit from the conquest. Only one student is initially hostile to the new teacher, a child named Johnny, whose father had been arrested and placed in a re-education camp. At first, he defends his father, but when he is rewarded by the teacher with a position of authority in the class, he quickly accepts the new regime and commits himself to not accepting "wrong thoughts". The story takes place over a twenty-five minute span.
1595433	/m/05f8lx	The Wish List	Eoin Colfer	2003-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Meg Finn is in trouble. Her mother is dead and her only family is an abusive stepfather who does nothing but watch TV all day. Her stepfather is forced to resign from his job when Meg embarrassed him by showing his work colleagues a video of herself smashing his brand new television that he bought with Meg's mother's engagement ring and all of Meg's life saving . When she is forced to help Belch Brennan, a dim-witted criminal, rob the elderly Lowrie McCall, the attempted burglary ends in disaster. In an attempt to scare Meg, Belch shoots by a gas tank which explodes, killing them both. While Belch is sent straight to hell (his soul merged with that of his vicious dog Raptor by the explosion, making him a half-boy half-dog creature,) Meg's perfect balance between good and evil earns her a chance to redeem herself and get blue in her Aura. She is sent back to earth in order to help Lowrie complete the items on his "wish list": a list of things that he feels will correct the many mistakes he made in his life. Meanwhile, Satan has decided that he wants Meg's soul in Hell and Beelzebub is forced to send Belch to recapture Meg and "make her bad", making Belch and Elph, the hologram with which he has been equipped, the chief antagonists in the story. The Wish List: 1) Kissy Sissy - Kiss Cicely Ward, (aka Sissy) a popular talk-show granny and one-date girlfriend of Lowrie. 2) Kick a ball over the bar in Croke Park. 3) Burst Ball - Punch a man who bullied Lowrie at school, Punch Brendan Ball. 4) Spit over the Cliffs of Moher. Ultimately, following a confrontation on the edge of the Cliffs of Moher, Belch is destroyed and Meg's final act of holiness - giving her stepfather a new life - gains her entry to Heaven, where she meets her mother again.
1595454	/m/05f8n_	The Supernaturalist	Eoin Colfer	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The Supernaturalist takes place in Satellite City, a large city in an unspecified location in the Northern Hemisphere, in the third millennium. Much of Satellite City is controlled by the Satellite, owned by Myishi Corporation. By the time of the novel, however, the Satellite is losing links to the surface, causing disasters that range from mild to catastrophic. The book opens with an introduction to Cosmo Hill, an orphan at the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys. At the Institute, orphans (or "no-sponsors") are used as human guinea pigs for various products. However, on a trip back from a record company (where a group of orphans listened to computer-generated pop bands), the truck they're in loses its link to the Satellite and crashes. Cosmo and a friend of his named "Ziplock" Murphy manage to escape the wreckage, but are pursued by a warden from the Institute. The chase takes them to the rooftops, where Cosmo and Ziplock fall into a wrecked generator. Ziplock is electrocuted but Cosmo survives, albeit with multiple critical injuries, including several broken bones and a heart which begins to shut down. He begins seeing small blue creatures around him. When one lands on his chest and begins sucking his life out, it gets shot by a teenager, who has two other people with him. Although they want to leave him, Cosmo begs them not to leave him to the creatures. The group calls him a "Spotter" and agree to take him with them before he passes out. Cosmo wakes up in a warehouse to find his injuries being mended, including a cast on his leg and a steel plate in his head to heal his fractured skull. One of the group, a teenage Latina girl and ex-mechanic named Mona Vasquez, introduces herself, and tells Cosmo about the other two: Stefan Bashkir, another teen, used to be a cop before an accident killed his mother and almost killed him, and Lucien Bonn, called Ditto due to his habit of repeating what people say, had gene-splicing experiments performed on him as a baby to produce a "super-human"; however, these experiments did nothing except stunt his growth, making Ditto appear six in spite of him being twenty-eight. Mona reveals that the creatures, called Parasites, can only be seen after near-death experiences; Stefan can see them from his accident as a policeman, Mona can see them from a car crash in which Stefan saved her after her gang left her for dead, and Ditto can see that as a result of the gene-splicing experiments. Their group, the eponymous Supernaturalists, is attempting to kill as many Parasites in Satellite City as possible, to save people from having their life sucked out by the Parasites. At first, Cosmo is left alone to recuperate. However, the Supernaturalists come home one night with Mona having seizures after getting hit by a poisoned dart, and Cosmo saves her; he had tested those poisoned darts at the orphanage, and knows the correct cure. After this, Cosmo is accepted into the gang and starts going Parasite-blasting with them. One night, the Supernaturalists stalk out a drag race, as the potential for fatal crashes, and Parasites, is large. However, one of the cars is a prototype stolen from Myishi Corporation, who track it down and send a squad of paralegals ("hit lawyers") to take it back. In the following firefight, Cosmo and Stefan are captured by Myishi. They are taken to Ellen Faustino, the president of Myishi, who reveals herself to be a Spotter. She says that energy discharged by the Parasites is forcing the Satellite into an incorrect orbit and causing it to fall out of the sky. She also reveals that the method the Supernaturalists are using to kill the Parasites is only causing them to reproduce faster, increasing the problem with the Satellite. After some discussion, she reveals that she has a plan to kill the Parasites: detonate an electrical bomb in the Parasite hive that contaminates them and eventually kills them. However, she does not know where the hive is, and sets the Supernaturalists to find the hive. After several dead ends, Cosmo hits upon the idea to use the Satellite to scan for the Parasite hive. Due to an extremely long wait time to get a space on the Satellite, they take an illegal spaceship up to do the scan themselves and find that the hive is under Clarissa Frayne. Cosmo and Stefan take the electric bomb under the orphanage and detonate it. Although the bomb doesn't kill any humans, it shorts out Clarissa Frayne, allowing the orphans to leave. Stefan directs them to a friend of his. While Cosmo and Stefan are out, Mona discovers Ditto communicating with a Parasite. When Cosmo, Stefan, and Mona confront him, Ditto claims that Parasites don't take life force, only pain. Not knowing what to believe any more, Stefan orders Ditto to be out by the next day, but Myishi paralegals capture them all that night. While imprisoned, Faustino reveals to the Supernaturalists that the bomb didn't kill the Parasites,that they do indeed take away pain, not life, and that she captured them to use for her own ends; she's going to kill the Supernaturalists to not leave any loose ends. She also tells Stefan that she caused the accident that killed his mother; it was part of an experiment to create a Spotter. After she leaves, Cosmo head-butts them free, using the steel plate in his head. The group finds Faustino in a lab with Parasites contained beneath the floor, but Stefan gets shot right next to his heart by a sniper hidden in the rafters. Faustino tells them that Parasites can be used to "scrub" energy, and she is using the Parasites to make a clean nuclear reactor to keep the Satellite up; the Satellite wasn't falling because of Parasites, but because it had too many attachments on it. Stefan gets Faustino in a dead mans grip, and when the sniper attempts to shoot him, he lets his knees buckle, causing the bullet to miss him and break the Parasites' containment cell. The Parasites take Stefan's pain from him as he dies, and Cosmo, Mona, and Ditto escape. The book ends with the rest of the Supernaturalists getting ready to fight unspecified "other supernatural creatures", and the mayor of Satellite City sends Faustino to Antarctica to continue working on a nuclear plant. Also it is hinted that Mona and Cosmo are beginning to become more open with their feelings for each other.
1596084	/m/06bsglq	Intimacy	Hanif Kureishi			 Set in contemporary London, the story tells why the protagonist wants to leave his family. The timespan of the novel is roughly 24 hours. The novel was loosely adapted to a movie Intimacy in 2001. He has lived with his partner for 6 years and has known her for 10, he is unhappy in his relationship and has had several affairs. The trigger for him deciding to leave his wife is more or less that his young lover one day says to him. "If you want me, I'm here". After that he gradually admits to himself that he's not happy with his wife. There is no actual development of the main character, and in the end he leaves the family.
1597661	/m/05fg8n	Frenchman's Creek	Daphne du Maurier	1942		 Dona, Lady St. Columb, makes a sudden visit with her children to Navron, her husband's remote estate in Cornwall, in a fit of disgust with her shallow life in London court society. There she finds that the property, unoccupied for several years, is being used as a base by a notorious French pirate who has been terrorizing the Cornish coast. Dona finds that the pirate, Jean-Benoit Aubéry, is not a desperate character at all, but rather a more educated and cultured man than her own doltish husband, and they fall in love. Dona dresses as a boy and joins the pirate crew on an expedition to cut out and capture a richly laden merchant ship belonging to one of her neighbors. The attack is a success, but the news of it brings Dona's husband Harry and his friend Rockingham to Cornwall, disrupting her idyllic romance. Harry, Rockingham, and the other locals meet at Navron to plot how to capture the pirate, but Aubéry and his crew cleverly manage to capture and rob their would-be captors instead. Rockingham, who has had designs on Dona himself, perceives the relationship between her and Aubéry, and Dona is forced to kill him in self-defense when he attacks her in a jealous rage. Meanwhile, Aubéry was captured while trying to return to his ship, and Dona hatches a plot for his release. In the end, however, she realizes that she must remain with her husband and children instead of escaping to France with Aubéry.
1599266	/m/05flh9	Labyrinth of Evil	James Luceno		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On the planet Cato Neimoidia, Jedi generals Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker lead clone troopers to capture Nute Gunray, Trade Federation viceroy and one of the leaders of the Separatists. Gunray narrowly escapes to rendezvous with General Grievous and the rest of the Separatist Council, but he leaves behind his walking chair equipped with a specially-constructed holotransceiver. Republic analysts find the afterimage of Darth Sidious, the Sith Lord who masterminded the Clone Wars. However, this puts the Jedi no closer to finding Sidious himself. While Kenobi and Skywalker pursue the constructor of the chair, General Grievous is commanded by Sidious through his apprentice Count Dooku to relocate the Separatist Council to Belderone, where a Republic fleet lies in wait for them. Furious, Grievous learns that Gunray lost the holotransceiver. Republic Intelligence find the signature of the artist that designed the mechno-chair that Sidious provided Gunray. Kenobi and Skywalker seek out the artist, a Xi Charrian, who tells them to find the designer, contracted by Sidious, to build the holotransceiver built into the mechno-chair. The Jedi find the designer in a prison, where he tells them that he built two holotransceivers, one for the mechno-chair, another for a ship of unknown design. The designer knows the identity of the pilot that delivered the ship to its owners (Darth Maul and Sidious). The pilot, a Lethan Twi'lek, is discovered on a moon by the Jedi, and she describes to the Jedi the location of the delivered ship: a columnar building in The Works, a desolate industrial park on Coruscant. On Coruscant, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine resists the Jedi Council's suggestion to recall Jedi from the Outer Rim worlds due to the Separatist threat. Palpatine's increased calls for public surveillance and restriction on freedom of movement and action prompt Senators Padmé Amidala, Bail Organa, and Mon Mothma to persuade him to pull back from the brink. Palpatine somehow knows Sidious' name and orders the Jedi and Republic intelligence to hunt him down. In the bowels of the planet, trace elements lead Jedi Mace Windu, Shaak Ti and Republic intelligence to track down the same Darth Sidious that Count Dooku had been meeting with, the tower described by the Twi'lek pilot. The Jedi/Intelligence team are led through endless tunnels, but find a trail of evidence that leads to the Senate district. Here, the trail grows cold at the base of 500 Republica, the personal quarters of many of Coruscant's finest. At 500 Republica, a Republic Intelligence agent named Captain Dyne was separated from the Jedi, and was the first of the Republic to realize who Darth Sidious is; he was astonished to learn that the Sith really do rule the galaxy. He died with the satisfaction of escaping the war. Before the search for the Sith Lord can proceed further, General Grievous leads an invasion of Coruscant that results in the capture of the Supreme Chancellor himself. As Coruscant is invaded by Separatist forces, Kenobi and Skywalker, fresh from an encounter with Dooku on the former industrial world of Tythe, use orbital hyperspace rings to depart for Coruscant. The novel ends "To Be Concluded". The Supreme Chancellor effectively orders the Jedi on a wild-goose chase. But since certain Jedi trace the trail of his real identity back to Coruscant (see Yoda's ability to sense him on Coruscant, as well as Windu's investigations) he orchestrates his own kidnapping to end the chase and to further Anakin's eventual turn to the dark side. After Kenobi, Anakin, and Palpatine crash land on Coruscant, Anakin and Kenobi have a brief conversation about who owes whom what. Obi-Wan mentions that "that time on Cato Nemoidia doesn't count." The novel reveals how all records of Kamino are erased from the Jedi Library in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
1599634	/m/05fmcr	The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants	Ann Brashares	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the first novel in the series, we are introduced to four high school students, Lena Kaligaris, Tibby Rollins, Bridget Vreeland, and Carmen Lowell, who have been best friends "since birth" (their mothers attended prenatal exercise classes together). The summer before their junior year of high school, Carmen finds a pair of old jeans that fits each of them perfectly despite their different sizes, convincing the girls that the pants are magical. They share the "traveling pants" among themselves over the summer while they are separated. Lena spends the summer with her grandparents in Santorini, Greece. While there, she meets Kostos, the grandson of some of Lena's grandparents friends, and he becomes interested in Lena. Though she does reciprocate his feelings, she is shy and is unable to express them. Lena goes skinny-dipping and is accidentally seen by Kostos, and her grandparents assume she has been assaulted by him when she is unable to explain what happened. Later in the summer, Lena explains what happened in order to repair the rift between her and Kostos' grandparents, and confesses to Kostos that she loves him. Tibby spends the summer working at a department store, planning to make a documentary of her experiences there. She meets a 12-year-old girl named Bailey, whom she is initially annoyed with, but becomes close with by the end of summer as they work on Tibby's documentary. Bailey is hospitalized and dies at the end of the novel from leukemia, which results in Tibby refocusing her documentary to be about the summer they spent together. Carmen goes to South Carolina to spend the summer with her father, whom she has grown apart from since he and Carmen's mother divorced several years before. Carmen is surprised to learn that her father is engaged and lives with a woman with two grown children of her own. After being frustrated at feeling left out of her father's new family, she breaks a window in their house and returns home to her mother. She eventually reconciles with her father and attends his wedding at the urging of her friends. Bridget attends a soccer camp in Baja California, Mexico. While there, she meets Eric, one of the coaches, and immediately falls for him. Despite coach-camper relationships being completely off-limits, Bridget actively pursues him anyway by running with him and going to his room in her underwear. She eventually manages to seduce him and loses her virginity to him, which turns out to be too much for her to handle and after walking off the field during the championship, she takes to her bed for days. Eric later visits her and asks her to take a walk with him, where he tells her that if they had met under different circumstances, he would worship her the way she deserved to be worshiped. Lena comes to comfort her and takes her home.
1602072	/m/05ft94	Saturday	Ian McEwan	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book follows Henry Perowne, a middle-aged, successful surgeon. Five chapters chart his day and thoughts on Saturday the 15 February 2003, the day of the demonstration against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the largest in British history. Perowne's day begins in the early morning, when he sees a burning aeroplane streak across the sky. This casts a shadow over the rest of his day as reports on the television change and shift: is it an accident, or terrorism? En route to his weekly squash game, a traffic diversion reminds Perowne of the anti-war protests occurring that day. After being allowed through the diversion, he collides with another car, damaging its wing mirror. At first the driver, Baxter, tries to extort money from him. When Perowne refuses, Baxter and his two companions become aggressive. Noticing symptoms in Baxter's behaviour, Perowne quickly recognises the onset of Huntington's disease. Though he receives a punch in the sternum, Perowne manages to escape unharmed by distracting Baxter with discussions of his disease. Perowne then goes on to his squash match, still thinking about the incident. He loses the long and contested game by a technicality in the final round. After lunch he buys some fish from a local fishmonger for dinner and visits his mother, suffering from vascular dementia, in a nursing home. After a visit to his son's rehearsal, Perowne returns home to cook dinner, the evening news again reminds him of the grander arc of events that surround his life. Daisy, his daughter, arrives home from Paris, and the two passionately debate the coming war in Iraq. His father-in-law arrives next. Daisy reconciles an earlier literary disagreement that led to a froideur with her maternal grandfather; remembering that it was he who had inspired her love of literature. Theo, his son, returns next. Rosalind, Perowne's wife, is the last to arrive home. As she enters Baxter and an accomplice force their way in armed with knives. Baxter punches the Grandfather, intimidates the family and orders Daisy to strip naked. When she does, Perowne notices that she is pregnant. Finding out she is a poet, Baxter asks her to recite a poem. Rather than one of her own, she recites Dover Beach, which affects Baxter emotionally, effectively disarming him. Instead he becomes enthusiastic about Perowne's renewed talk about new treatment for Huntington's disease. His companion abandons him, and Baxter is overpowered by Perowne and Theo, and knocked unconscious after falling down the stairs. That night Perowne is summoned to the hospital for a successful emergency operation on Baxter. Saturday ends at around 5:15 a.m., after he has returned from the hospital and made love to his wife again.
1602303	/m/05ftr5	The Lost Years of Merlin	T. A. Barron	1996	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the beginning, a young boy has just regained consciousness and finds he, along with a woman with long blond hair and a tattered blue tunic, are washed up on a beach. The boy encounters a boar as he is walking toward the woman, which tries to attack him and the woman. It stamps its foot on the ground, signaling that it is going to attack. With tusks like razor blades, it charges at the boy. He tries to drag the woman into a hollowed out tree trunk. He puts the woman in first, then tries to fit himself in but is too big. A beautiful stag leaps from the forest and stands between him and the boar. The stag and the boar fight. Angrily, the boar retreats. The stag looks at the boy with the deepest eyes the boy would ever see. The stag and the boar fade away, and soon the woman regains consciousness. The woman declares herself the boy's mother, and that her name is Branwen and his is Emrys. Years later, Emrys finds that he has magical powers and eventually uses them to defend Branwen against a terrorizing bully who is trying to burn her at the stake. Tragically, he accidentally sets a tree on fire which collapses on a boy whom Emrys tries to save and fails. Emrys, in his attempt to help the boy, goes blind from the fire, but learns to see through a visual "second sight", after swearing never to use his powers again. After learning to sense well enough to be mobile, Emrys leaves Branwen at the monastery where he had been treated for his burns, and sets out to find his true home. Emrys builds a raft and floats all the way to the magical and mythical island of Fincayra, which is somewhere between heaven and earth, also called the "in between," place, with only the bag of herbs his mother gives him and the Galator, a beautiful gem that he hangs around his neck. There he meets Rhiannon, a girl of the Druma, who seeks his assistance in stopping the terrible blight which is now beginning to kill the forest she lives in. Emrys initially refuses, intent on discovering who he is and regaining the lost memories of his childhood, but when the two are attacked by goblins and Ria tricks them into kidnapping her instead of him because he won't use his powers to save them both, he vows to save her. Along with a dwarf-sized giant, Shim, Emrys sets out to the Shrouded Castle to rescue her. He learns, from a wise Bard named Cairpre, that Branwen really was his mother, but her real name is Elen. He also learns his father serves the king and was turned evil by the troublesome Rhita Gawr, a spirit who wants to control Fincayra before moving on to Earth. Cairpre suggests that he visit the dangerous wagerer Domnu, who may be able to help them reach the castle. Emrys plays her game and wagers the only thing of value he has, the Galator, which he has since learned is the one treasure King Stangmar, under the control of Rhita Gawr, doesn't have, and it is more powerful than all the treasures he does. Domnu shrinks him and Shim to allow them to fly on the back of Trouble, Emrys' named merlin, to the castle, where he realizes that his own father is the king who has made a deal to kill him for the safety of his mother in a deal made with Rhita Gawr. With the help of his friends, Emrys completes a prophecy from ancient times and destroys the castle and the hold that Rhita Gawr has on Fincayra. Both Trouble and Shim sacrifice themselves, the former by attacking Gawr and pushing him back into the otherworld, and the second by throwing himself into the Caldron of Death. But because he went in willingly, Shim destroys the Caldron and grows to his true size as a giant. In the aftermath, Rhia suggests that if Emrys doesn't feel as if he has his true name, maybe he should go by the name Merlin. Emrys agrees to try the name out for a while.
1602499	/m/05fv7t	The Book of Laughter and Forgetting	Milan Kundera		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first section occurs in 1971 and pertains to the story of Mirek, a former supporter now found to be treasonous, as he explores the depths of his memories pertaining to one woman named Zdena. In his attempt to better his life, knowing that he loved the ugly woman left a blemish, and it was his hope to rectify this through destroying love letters that he had sent her. While he travels to her home and back, he is followed by two men, one of whom is described as "a man in a gray jacket, white shirt and tie, and brown slacks." The men make their intentions obvious, even so far as sharing a laugh with Mirek when he manages to lose their tracking thanks to a sports car. Mirek is arrested at his home after several items are confiscated and then sentenced to jail for six years, his son to two years, and ten or so of his friends to terms of from one to six years. Kundera also describes a photograph from 21 February 1948, where Vladimír Clementis stands next to Klement Gottwald. When Vladimír Clementis was charged in 1950, he was erased from the photograph (along with the photographer Karel Hájek) by the state propaganda. This short example from Czechoslovak history underlines the motif of forgetting in his book. Marketa invites her mother-in-law to visit her and Karel's home after her mother did nothing but complain. Inviting her to stay for a week - although contending that she must leave Saturday because they had somewhere to be on Sunday - the mother forces her way to stay until Monday. On Sunday morning, Eva - a friend of Karel and Marketa - arrives and is introduced to the mother as Marketa's cousin. Through narration the reader is told that Eva had met and made love to Karel, who then arranged for Eva and Marketa to meet. Through Marketa's suggestion, the three have conducted a sexual relationship over the years. Mother almost catches the three in the act, but instead realizes that Eva reminds her of a friend of hers from Karel's infancy. This makes Karel even more attracted to Eva, and after the mother leaves, they continue with a new force. This section is mostly narration concerning events after the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia, especially Kundera's attempts to write a horoscope under an associate's name. A big deal was made when the boss - who had studied Marxism-Leninism for half of his life - requested a private horoscope, which Kundera extended to ten pages long, providing a template for the man to change his life. Eventually, Kundera's associate - code named R. - is brought in for questioning concerning Kundera's clandestine writing, causing them to stop their laughter and start worrying. Kundera also describes 'circle dancing' wherein the joy and laughter build up to the point that the people's steps take them soaring into the sky with the laughing angels. Tamina, a woman who works in a cafe, wants to retrieve her love letters and diaries in Prague through her customer who will be going to Prague, Bibi. Also, another customer, Hugo, who lusts for Tamina, offers to help her if Bibi cannot go to Prague. One day, Hugo invites Tamina to dinner and they visited the zoo together. A group of ostriches move their mute mouths vigorously to Hugo and Tamina as if to warn them of something, which gives Tamina a bad feeling about the letters and diaries in Prague. As these items, which Tamina describes as packed in a parcel, are in her mother-in-law's, she phoned her father to take it from her mother-in-law, so it will be easier for Bibi to get them. After a lot of pleas, her father agreed to send Tamina's brother to take them. It turns out that the items are not packed in a parcel, and Tamina fears that her private letters and diaries are read by others. The situation turns worse as Bibi gets fed up with her husband and refuses to go anywhere with him, which means the trip to Prague is cancelled. Hugo offers to help and once again invites Tamina to his house. Hugo tries desperately to win her heart. Tamina later has sex with Hugo, but cannot keep her mind off her deceased husband. Hugo senses her uneasiness but he still finishes the act. Again, Hugo chats with Tamina and tries saying things that please her. However, Tamina is not interested in his talk but only in Hugo's trip to Prague. Hugo gradually knows that and his speech gets weaker and he starts to get angry. Tamina is increasingly disgusted by his talk and eventually vomited in the toilet. Hugo knows that she has absolutely no interest in him and refuses to help her. At the end, the letters and diaries remain in Prague. It starts with introducing Kristyna, who develops a love relationship with a student studying philosophy and poetry. Then, it explains the Czech word Litost, which the writer states that he hasn't found any substitute for the word in any other languages yet. Litost is "a state of torment upon by the realization of one's inadequacy or misery". Litost seems to be always present in the student whom Kristyna loves, and this feeling is also one of the reasons that he broke up with his former girlfriend. His professor, nicknamed Voltaire, invites the student to an evening gathering of the great poets of the country. However, the student has a date with Kristyna that night and refuses to go to the gathering. He then meets Kristyna on the day the gathering is held. He is surprised to find her tacky, gaudy and simplistic in the city setting and decides to go to the meeting. He tells her about it and she is fascinated by it and wants the student to go there so as not to miss the chance. The student agrees and goes to the meeting. He meets the great poets and listens to their arguments and insults to each other. Through this he learns a lot of things. He asks one of the poets, named Goethe by the author, to inscribe on one of his books and give the book to Kristyna as a gift. He returns to his home and finds Kristyna waiting for him. She is moved by the inscription. They do not have sex but feels each other's immense love. The student tries several times to get Kristyna to separate her two legs, but Kristyna fears that this will make her pregnant, which threatens her life. So she keeps saying that by doing this she will die. The student misinterprets that she will die from the immense love from him if they are separated from each other for a long time. He is deeply moved. He soon falls asleep and wakes up next morning, finding a note in his coat from Kristyna. After thinking over their night, he realizes that he misinterpreted her statement last night. He feels Litost but cannot take revenge for Kristyna has already left. One of the poets approaches him and fills him with glory, making the student no longer feeling despair. Returning to Tamina, the author parallels her struggles with the death of his father. Describing an orgy scene, the author targets the progressivism of the Clevis family.
1602528	/m/05fvc0	The Joke	Milan Kundera	1967	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is composed of many jokes, which have strong effects on the characters. The story is told from the four viewpoints of Ludvik Jahn, Helena Zemánková, Kostka, and Jaroslav. Jaroslav's joke is the transition away from his coveted Moravian folk lifestyle and appreciation. Kostka, who has separated himself from the Communist Party due to his Christianity, serves as a counterpoint to Ludvik. Helena serves as Ludvik's victim and is satirical of the seriousness of party supporters. Ludvik demonstrates the shortcomings of the party and propels the plot in his search for revenge and redemption. Written in 1965 Prague and first published in Czechoslovakia in 1967, the novel opens with Ludvik Jahn looking back on the joke that changed his life in the early 1950s. Ludvik was a dashing, witty, and popular student who supported the Party. Like most of his friends, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the still-fresh Communist regime in post-World War II Czechoslovakia. In a playful mood, he writes a postcard to a girl in his class during their summer break. Since Ludvik believes she is too serious, he writes on the postcard, "Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!" His colleagues and fellow young-party leaders did not see the humor in the sentiment expressed in the postcard. Ludvik finds himself expelled from the party and college and drafted to a part of the Czech military where alleged subversives form work brigades and spend the next few years working in mines. Despite the interruption in his career, Ludvik has become a successful scientist. However, his treatment at the hands of his former friends has left him bitter and angry. An opportunity arises when he meets Helena, who is married to Pavel Zemanek, the friend who led the efforts to purge Ludvik from the party. Ludvik decides to seduce Helena as a means of exacting his revenge. In essence this is the second `joke' of the novel. Although the seduction is successful, things do not quite play out the way Ludvik expects (this is the novel's third joke), and he is left once more to sit and think bitter thoughts. Ultimately he decides that these sorts of jokes and their repercussions are not the fault of the humans who set them in motion, but are really just a matter of historic inevitability. Ultimately, then, one cannot blame forces that cannot be changed or altered.
1607704	/m/05g8b2	The Oath			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel opens with an excerpt from a diary entry from 1882 during the founding of Hyde River. Twenty-seven people died that I know of, and I can only guess that the others fled with whatever they could carry away. I could hear the screams and the shooting all night long, and I dared not venture out. The Reverend DuBois was left hanging in Hyde Hall until this afternoon. I informed Ben that I would not attend the signing of the Charter until the body was removed, so Ben ordered him cut down, taken out, and buried with the others. By late afternoon, the men who remained in Hyde River were back in the mines as if nothing had happened, and I also attended my business. After nightfall, we gathered in Hyde Hall under the cover of darkness and signed the Charter. With the signing of our names, we took the oath of silence, so I cannot speak of these things, but only write them secretly. The trouble is over, but I am no happier. I am afraid of what we have done. I am afraid of tomorrow. There are several other archived letters, diary entries, and writings from the townsfolk scattered throughout the book, each of them relating to accounts of numerous mysterious deaths and disappearances in Hyde River and of residents being beaten by a group of hooded figures for breaking the &#34;Oath&#34;. Many of the stones of these clues are overturned by the protagonists later on in the novel. The book&#39;s plot begins after a nature photographer, Cliff Benson, is confirmed to have been killed in the woods, with his head and torso missing. His wife, Evelyn, is found covered with blood and half-crazed on a logging road and taken to a hospital, where she only has vague recollections of the events that transpired. Sheriff Les Collins is quick to close to case and pin the blame on a rogue bear. However, Cliff&#39;s brother, Steve, quickly finds holes in the theory and refuses to drop the matter. Joining him in his investigation is Sheriff&#39;s Deputy Tracy Ellis, who has seen enough cases swept under the rug by authority to know that something is amiss. Meanwhile, Harold Bly, owner of the mining company that keeps the struggling town afloat and looked on as the head authority of the town, kicks his wife, Maggie, onto the streets. As a black, oozing rash grows on the skin above her heart, she takes refuge in the home of Levi Cobb, a Christian mechanic who is looked down upon by the rest of the townspeople. As Steve questions her, he learns that she and Cliff had an affair. After a couple days, Maggie becomes strangely unaware of her rash and makes her way through the town to Old Town, an abandoned town near Hyde River. There she disappears, leaving only a blood-stained purse as evidence of what happened to her. Steve learns from Tracy that it is believed by the townspeople that a giant dragon is responsible for the deaths, and that Harold Bly has the ability to control it. As another victim of the rash, Vic Moore, stumbles into old town, Steve follows. He, too, disappears without a trace. Steve learns that the old town was the original location of Hyde River, and that Hyde Hall is a cursed building where the dragon supposedly snatches up its victims. His and Tracy&#39;s initial disbelief fades after they spend a night in Old Town, chasing the dragon in an attempt to hunt it. In a plot device reminiscent of the final episode of M.A.N.T.I.S. (aired the year before the book&#39;s publication date), the dragon&#39;s impermeable scales are able to mimic the background scenery, rendering it virtually invisible. Charlie Mack, owner of the local bar/restaurant urges Steve to kill the dragon after he sees with horror the rash on his own chest. A couple days later, his car is found on the side of the highway, bashed up with the entire roof peeled off. Harold Bly is perplexed by Charlie&#39;s death at the hands of the dragon, as he apparently never commanded it, but seizes the opportunity to take control of the tavern and mercantile, consolidating his ownership of the town. Steve, meanwhile, confronts the dragon in its supposed lair. His shotgun and rifle prove to be ineffective at killing the dragon, and he barely makes it out with his life when the dragon abandons its attempts to kill him, apparently with the desire to finish him off at its own timing. Shaken from his experience, Steve decides to listen to Levi Cobb, who gives him copies of old letters and diaries from the town&#39;s forefathers. He learns that the town was purged of Christianity in the late 19th century, and any Christians taking residence in the town were either martyred or driven out of town. Those remaining in the town moved from Old Town and reestablished Hyde River after signing a charter. The sordid bargain of the town charter, &#34;If this be Sin, let Sin be served,&#34; gave the dragon reign of the town. It began at an unthreateningly small size but grew over a century to a length of forty-five feet. The town&#39;s founder, Benjamin Hyde, was believed to have control over the dragon, and was the ancestor of Harold Bly. Steve tells Tracy everything that he has learned, and, despite the fact that she is married, the two make love that night. Both of them awake with the foreboding black rash on their chests the next morning. Meanwhile, Harold Bly is upset with the fact that the dragon has been killing people he wanted to remain alive, while ignoring his instructions to kill others. After noticing the rash on his own chest, he decides that the dragon wants Tracy and Steve removed from the town. He arranges for Sheriff Collins to murder Tracy, but she kills him in self-defense. Steve arranges to meet Harold that night at the bar to make peace. There, he learns that Harold Bly and all of his henchmen have the mark and that Harold never did control the dragon at all, but that the dragon is actually just embodied sin. Steve is told that his beer has been drugged, then passes out and awakens tied to a ritualistic stone table in Hyde Hall to await being sacrificed to the dragon. He is freed by a bleeding Levi Cobb, who has been shot by Harold Bly. As Harold and his followers purge the town of Christianity as their ancestors did years ago, Levi tells Steve that he must have Jesus on his side to have a hope of defeating the dragon before taking his turn in death. Tracy convinces Steve to flee the town, but, on their way out during the night, and despite Steve&#39;s efforts, Tracy embraces the unrepentant apathy that all of the previous victims did before their death and is eaten by the dragon. Filled with grief, Steve vows to destroy the dragon and returns to town after injuring it with mining explosives (destroying its wings in the process). Steve attempts to distance himself from growing accustomed to the rash and entering the final phase of the horrible deaths. On his way into town, he stops at the church and prays for forgiveness. He then puts one of Levi&#39;s plans into action and confronts the dragon using a makeshift spear that Levi had constructed in his garage. As Harold Bly and his followers watch in awe, the dragon attacks Steve with its fiery breath, but Steve does not suffer any burns. Frightened by the power of God, the dragon backs into the spear until it slides between its scales and into its heart. As the dragon&#39;s dying act, it bites Harold Bly in half. Instead of dying, the dragon just dematerializes in a bright flash. The other townsfolk, upset with Steve, swear that they will get revenge on him for killing their dragon. Steve corrects them, pointing to their hearts, and tells them that they still have their dragon inside of them.
1610045	/m/05gf_n	The Cement Garden	Ian McEwan		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In The Cement Garden, the father of four children dies. His death is followed by the death of the children's mother. In order to avoid being taken into foster care, the children hide their mother's death from the outside world by encasing her corpse in cement in their basement. Two of the siblings, a teenage boy and girl, enter into an incestuous relationship, while the younger son starts to experiment with transvestism. The narrator is Jack (15), who has two sisters, Julie (17) and Sue (13), and one brother, Tom (6). When they were younger, Jack describes how he and Julie would play doctor with their younger sister, although he is aware that their version of the game occasionally broke boundaries. Jack then mentions how he longs to do the same to his older sister but it was not allowed. When Julie begins to date a man called Derek and invites him round to their house, Jack feels jealous and shows hostility towards him. Derek becomes more and more interested in what is hidden in their cellar but the children attempt to hide it from him. When a smell begins to emanate from down there, he helps to reclose the trunk their mother is hidden in. Tom eventually tells Jack that Derek has told him that their mother is down in the cellar. The story comes to a climax when Jack enters, apparently absent-mindedly, naked into Julie's bedroom. Only Tom is there and he begins to talk to him about their parents. They fall asleep together, in Tom's crib, naked because of the heat. Afterword, Julie enters and perhaps surprisingly, does not say much or show surprise on his nakedness, only to joke that 'It is big'. They sit on the bed and whilst talking, they become more and more intimate with each other. Julie encourages him to go on. Right at this point, Derek enters, remarks that he has seen it all and calls them 'sick'. When he is gone, they begin to have sex. A thudding noise can be heard and their sister, Sue, informs them that Derek is smashing up the concrete coffin. They begin to talk, remembering their mother, and after a while, they sleep, while police lights illuminate the room through the window.
1610574	/m/05ghbb	Hitlers Bombe				 Under supervision of the SS, from 1944–45, German scientists in Thuringia tested some form of "nuclear weapon", possibly a dirty bomb (for the differences between this and a standard fission weapon, see nuclear weapon design). Several hundred prisoners of war are alleged to have died as a result. Karlsch's primary evidence are alleged vouchers for the atomic weapon attempts, a preliminary plutonium bomb patent from the year 1941 (which had been known about, but not yet found), and conducted industrial archaeology on the remains of the first experimental German nuclear reactor.
1612496	/m/05gmbd	The Young Man From Atlanta	Horton Foote			 In this play Foote revived characters which had been in his The Orphan's Home cycle of nine plays. Will Kidder — 64 years old in this play — was in his early twenties in Lily Dale, and approaching middle age in Cousins. Sixty-year-old Lily Dale Kidder was introduced in Roots in a Parched Ground as a ten-year-old, and was portrayed in subsequent life stages in Lily Dale and Cousins. Her stepfather, 72-year-old Pete Davenport, first appears at age thirty in Roots in a Parched Ground. According to the playwright, he thought he was done with these characters after Cousins, but in the early 1990s found himself thinking about them again and started work on this play.
1612950	/m/05gn8r	Bitten	Kelley Armstrong	2001-10-01	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The main character of "Bitten" is Elena Michaels, an ordinary woman - who also happens to be a werewolf. She lives in Toronto, Canada and writes for a popular newspaper. Elena is also the only known female werewolf in the world. This gives her a very special place in the werewolf world, and especially with the werewolf pack. She struggles to deal with her other-ness and to assimilate to the human world. She also contends with her terrible childhood, and with the man who bit her and turned her into a werewolf. Elena has managed to settle into a somewhat normal existence, living with her ad-exec boyfriend and ignoring her wolf side as much as possible. However, she learns that her Pack (the governing body of werewolves) is in trouble, and comes to their aid, flying to Stonehaven, the country estate of the pack Alpha. It is in Bear Valley, a fictional city in up-state New York. When Elena arrives, she is greeted by her ex-lover, Clayton Danvers, who is also the man who bit her and made her a werewolf (without her consent). Clayton is also the bodyguard and foster-son to Jeremy Danvers, the pack Alpha (leader). Elena learns that a local woman was found murdered on Stonehaven's land, and that she had been savaged by what authorities thought to be a dog. However, the Pack has determined that she was murdered by a Mutt, a rogue werewolf. They track the mutt and find out he is a recently escaped killer, who has even more recently been turned by a bite into a werewolf. Clay and Elena chase him into a rave and after several of the partyers are killed, the police shoot him in wolf form. Soon, the rest of the Pack arrives on the scene to help with the problem: Antonio Sorrentino, his son Nicholas Sorrentino, Logan Jonsen, and Peter Myers. The werewolf Pack are the self-appointed governing body of the werewolf world, and they kill to keep the existence of werewolves a secret. This means if they feel any non Pack wolves(whom they term "Mutts") become noticeable to humans, they kill them. They kill humans too, but not as often. First, Logan and Peter are killed. This greatly saddens Elena, and she starts sleeping(cheating) with Clay again, without telling her boyfriend, Phillip. As Logan and Peter are not the best fighters, the Pack wonders why that would happen. They also wonder why any Mutt would dare to go near the Pack. Most are terrified of being noticed by them. Then Jeremy, the Alpha is attacked. Finally, the pack figures out that the "mutts", tired of being brutalized by the Pack, are trying to free themselves from their rule. To do this one mutt in particular, Daniel, who has reason to hate Clay from childhood, has started turning human killers and other escaped convicts into werewolves to fight the pack.
1613401	/m/05gpgy	Chicken Trek			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In Chicken Trek, Oscar Noodleman goes to Secaucus, New Jersey to visit his cousin Dr. Prechtwinkle, an inventor. Before this, however, he had dropped Dr. Prechtwinkle's valuable camera, and now has to work for him to repay the debt. Dr. Prechtwinkle tells Oscar about a contest where the goal is to eat a "Bagful o' Chicken" at all 211 Chicken in a Bag restaurants nationwide. The prize from this contest would pay Oscar's debt, so they attempt to win it. Chicken Trek has drawings by Ron Barrett, illustrator of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. *1st edition: New York : Dutton, c1987, ISBN 0-525-44312-6
1616699	/m/05gzmy	In Search of the Unknown	Mike Carr		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Many years ago two wealthy adventurers, Roghan the Fearless and Zelligar the Unknown, built a hidden complex known as the Caverns of Quasqueton. From this base, they conducted their affairs away from the prying eyes of civilization. While of questionable ethical standing, the two drove back a barbarian invasion and gained the support of locals. Eventually, they gathered their own army and went on an expedition against said enemies, where they met their demise. The player characters (PCs) enter the story at this point, hearing a variety of rumors provided in the module. Each PC knows one or more of the stories although the veracity of them is somewhat questionable. The rumors mostly involve a great treasure hidden somewhere in the Caverns of Quasqueton, which the PCs can enter from a cave-like opening. A variety of monsters wander through the finished upper level of the dungeon including orcs, troglodytes, and giant rats. The DM checks periodically to see if the group encounters these menaces in addition to the dangers in each individual room. Most of the rooms come with blank spots where the DM fills in whatever monster or treasure is most suitable for their campaign. The finished upper level served as a home for Roghan and Zelligar and contains much of their personal possessions. As is typical in these early adventures, a number of traps await an unwary group. Some of these rooms include an area filled with pools (some hazardous and others not) and a wizard's laboratory. The randomly generated monsters in the lower, unfinished level differ from those above and include zombies and goblins. Some of the pre-filled rooms on this level include a museum, an arena, and grand cavern, but many of the caves on this level include no description at all and the DM must devise his own contents for these areas. The end of the module includes a list of foes and treasure for the group to fight and find. It also includes a list of characters of various classes the group might encounter while exploring the dungeon. Also included are a number of pre-generated characters the group might use to play through the adventure.
1616728	/m/05gzqc	Kendermore	Mary Kirchoff	1989-11-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel begins with the character of Tasslehoff Burrfoot at the Inn of the Last Home with his friends. However, soon a bounty hunter arrives and charges him for desertion for violating the laws of prearranged marriage. A journey east turns into a voyage with gully dwarves. Meanwhile in Kendermore, Tas's Uncle Trapspringer and a human "doctor" have found a map leading to a treasure. Tas is having his own adventures after a shipwreck strands him, Gisella (the bounty hunter), and Woodrow (Gisella's assistant) near a dwarven settlement. Tas is captured by gnomes, who seek to turn him into an exhibit. Woodrow saves him with help from Winnie, a wooly mammoth. Gisella is killed by Denzil, an assassin. Tas and Woodrow arrive in Kendermore. In the ruins east of the city, "Dr." Phineas Curick, Uncle Trapspringer, and Damaris (the one intended to marry Tasslehoff) find themselves being entertained by Vincent, a rare ogre who is good! The kender and human wander into a magical portal which takes them to Gelfigburg, a Candyland like place. They also discover that the treasure (a magical amulet) has been used up. Denzil, not knowing this, forces Tas to take him to the ruins. Tas tries to go into the portal, but Denzil pulls him out before he is all the way through, leaving Tas stuck in the portal. The kender in Gelfigburg attempt to pull Tas through, leading to a tug of war. Vincent pulls Tas, Damaris, Trapspringer, Phineas, and all the Kender out of Gelfigburg. Denzil is trapped inside. The Dark Queen attempts to enter, but Damaris closes the portal. The kender return to Kendermore, saving the city from a storm. Tas is reunified with Woodrow, and Damaris marries Trapspringer.
1617469	/m/05h0ng	Boy Meets Boy	David Levithan	2003-09	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Openly gay sophomore Paul lives in a gay-friendly small town in New Jersey, where homosexuality, bisexuality, and transvestism are accepted and embraced. His best friends at this stage are Joni, who he has been best friends with since early childhood and who he came out to in second grade, and Tony, who is also gay and who lives in the (much less accepting) next town over with his strict religious parents. On a night out with Joni and Tony, listening to a friend play music in a bookstore, Paul meets Noah and is instantly enraptured. They discover that they attend the same school, and after some miscommunication and false starts, they track each other down, and start to date. At the same time, Joni (who has recently broken up with her long-term boyfriend Ted for the twelfth time) starts to date Chuck, a football player who was extremely cruel to Paul's friend Infinite Darlene, when his crush on her turned out to be unrequited. This relationship causes a great deal of tension within Joni and Paul's friendship, and also upsets Ted and Infinite Darlene. The previous year, Paul had dated Kyle, who then dumped him and spread the rumor that Paul had 'tricked' him into being gay. As Paul's relationship with Noah starts to flourish, Kyle also attempts to come back into Paul's life. He apologizes to Paul and starts coming to him for comfort and support, as he is uncertain about his sexuality and his aunt has recently died. While Paul is at first cautious, he comes to understand Kyle more and see him as a friend. Paul confesses everything to Joni, who then tells Chuck. Chuck spreads this all around the school, and before long people are placing bets on what they think the outcome will be. Noah's feelings towards Paul seem to cool at this stage. Tony is having a great deal of trouble coping with his homophobic parents, and decides to go for a hike with Paul to nearby woods. After their hike, Paul hugs Tony tightly, only to be interrupted by Tony's mother's best friend, who spreads this to everyone she knows. Rumors start to fly that Paul and Tony are a couple, and Tony is forbidden from seeing him. The next day, Kyle is feeling a great deal of stress and fear, and Paul kisses him. Noah hears the rumor about Paul and Tony, and in the process of denying that anything happened between the two of them, he inadvertently confesses the fact that he kissed Kyle that day. On hearing this, Noah breaks up with him, and not long afterwards, Paul and Joni's friendship seems to break. Paul is arranging the Dowager's Dance, a dance held yearly by his high school. The theme of the dance is to be 'death', and in order to study this theme, the planning committee (including Kyle) go to a cemetery one evening. When Kyle and Paul find themselves alone together, Kyle kisses Paul and tells him that he loves him. Paul says that he doesn't feel the same way, and Kyle is upset and leaves. Paul goes to see Tony and explain everything to him, and Tony confesses that he's feeling troubled by everything that's been happening but that he's working on showing his parents that he is more than just his sexuality, and that being gay won't stop him from living a full and happy life. Tony's mother comes home and catches Paul and Tony talking, but instead of getting mad, Tony quietly challenges her and she finally allows Tony to see Paul again. Tony also decides that he wants to go to the upcoming dance, and he and Paul decides that his parents are most likely to let him attend if a large group of people comes to pick him up. Paul realizes that he is still in love with Noah, and that what he has to do is show him how he feels. Over seven days he sets himself to seven tasks for Noah to prove his love and make his apology: * Day 1: spends the entire night making origami flowers and decorates the hallway and Noah's locker with them * Day 2: writes a list of 100 words he likes and their definitions, and leaves the list in Noah's locker * Day 3: leaves a note in his mailbox wishing him a good day; doesn't want to overwhelm him * Day 4: has his musical friend Zeke write a song for Noah, and goes with him to sing it * Day 5: buys twenty rolls of film (Noah's hobby is photography) and enlists his friends to give them to him in a series of creative ways * Day 6: writes Noah letters explaining everything he's been doing, thinking, and feeling * Day 7: closes the distance, and speaks to Noah in person Noah is overwhelmed by this, and asks Paul to be his partner for the upcoming dance. Their relationship starts afresh. Paul goes to see Joni and ask her to be a part of the group picking Tony up for the dance, but Joni refuses, saying that she and Chuck had already made plans. Paul challenges her, implying that she's letting Chuck control her, and leaves. The night of the dance arrives, and Paul gathers the group to go to Tony's house and ask his parents if he can come with them. At the last minute, Joni arrives with Chuck to join the group. Tony's mother gives her permission for Tony to go to the dance, despite clear signs of uncertainty. Instead of going straight to the dance, the group go to a clearing in the woods where Tony and Paul hike. They start holding their own celebration there, dancing and talking and laughing. Tony and Kyle talk and dance together, and Paul and Noah dance together for song after song. Paul looks around him, wanting to fix this image in his mind forever, and the book finishes with him thinking to himself: what a wonderful world.
1618152	/m/05h26x	The Rule of Four	Ian Caldwell	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is set on the Princeton campus during the Easter weekend, 1999. The story involves four Princeton seniors, friends and roommates, getting ready for graduation: Tom, Paul, Charlie and Gil. Two of the students, Tom and Paul, are trying to solve the mystery contained within an extremely rare, beautifully decorated and very mysterious book— the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. This very real book was published as an incunabulum in 1499 in Venice; it is a complex allegorical work written in a bizarrely modified Italian frequently interspersed with material from other languages as well as its anonymous author's own made-up words. Tom, the narrator, is the son of a professor who had dedicated his life to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Throughout the novel, he struggles between being fascinated by the book and trying to pull away from the obsession that drew a rift between his father and his mother and is now causing discord between him and his girlfriend, Katie Marchand. His roommate, Paul Harris, is a brilliant young scholar who is writing his undergraduate thesis on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. He has spent all four of his undergraduate years studying the book and is close to a breakthrough. Charlie Freeman, the roommate who acts as the parent of the four friends and Gil, heir to a wealthy East Coast banking family are supporting characters to Tom and Paul's project. The novel charts the relationship between the four roommates and how obsession can be both a boon and a burden. It is a story about growing up as much as solving the mystery of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The disciplines of Renaissance science, history, architecture, and art are drawn upon to solve the mystery. Tom, or Thomas Corelli Sullivan, often found himself distracted by his father's death. His father was a close friend of Richard Curry and Vincent Taft, both of them being advisors for Paul in his thesis. The flashback goes on as Taft distanced himself from both Curry and Tom's father at some point to carry out his own research. Taft also developed a rivalry with both men in the quest to decode the Hypnerotomachias 500-year-old secret. By luck, Tom's father found a letter, dating back to Renaissance times, referring to the book's supposed author, Francesco Colonna. Tom's father even wrote a book, The Belladona Document, which revolves around the mysterious letter. But, a negative critique from his academic rival Vincent Taft spelled the demise of the book's popularity as well as Tom's father's career. Taft allegedly also stole a diary written by a contemporary of Colonna's that Curry had found. That diary, as Paul and Tom discovered it later, would prove to help the duo to decode the elusive Hypnerotomachia. In the end, Paul discovers that the Hypnerotomachia contains a number of hidden and encyphered texts, with the solution to each one revealing a clue towards the next one. However, after solving a chain of several of these, he finds a text that says that there will be no more clues and he must solve the rest of the book on his own. He realizes that the entire book contains a message encoded by following a "rule of four", in which the message starts with one letter, then moves to a letter four rows down, then ten columns right, then two rows up, then two columns left, and repeating. The placement of this hidden text throughout the entire book explains the Hypnerotomachias strange syntax, use of multiple languages, and neologisms. Through days of tough work, Paul and Tom managed to unravel a series of riddles, which they solved soon later. The application of the "rule of four" method enabled the duo to slowly piece together portions of a dark Renaissance secret that has avoided human knowledge for centuries. The author of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Francesco Colonna, was a humanist in Renaissance Florence. He was an ardent fan of knowledge, books, arts and anything that has a Renaissance identity on it. His passion for Greek and Roman literature was immense. But, one Girolamo Savonarola saw the exact opposite ; Florence is gradually turning into an free-thinking city, with its people starting to forget God and worshipping knowledge. As soon as he grasps power in Florence, Savonarola started the infamous Bonfire of the Vanities, a practice of burning books and art that seemed to contain elements of blasphemy. Colonna could not stand this practice and confronted Girolamo Savonarola himself as a sign of protest, only to be disappointed. Colonna started the building of a large underground vault to seal away a number of ancient books and pieces of art to preserve them from the followers of the priest. On one occasion, to prove his stand, Francesco and two of his men walked onto the raging inferno of the bonfire. As a result, Francesco met a fiery end. As he expected, the death of Francesco sparked cry against the reign of Savonarola, who was later hanged and burnt to ashes. Before dying, Colonna wrote the Hypnerotomachia, a book of codes on his efforts to uplift humanism despite religious dogmas. He disguises its contents in a seemingly innocent piece of Renaissance romantic literature, concerning the love between Poliphilo and Polia. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili itself meant "Poliphilo's Struggle of Love in a Dream". It also turns out that Paul's friend Bill Stein and his thesis advisor Vincent Taft were conspiring together to steal Paul's thesis and claim credit for it, and the sealed vault of treasures. They were murdered by Paul's wealthy but unstable benefactor Richard Curry to prevent this from happening. In a final struggle between a team of Tom, Gil and Paul against Richard Curry, a fire breaks out at Ivy Club, a Princeton eating club of which Gil is the president. After much persuasion by both Tom and Paul to save each other from the fire, Tom jumps out of a window to be rescued by the firemen. Paul does not manage to do so, leading both Tom and Gil to assume that he must have died in the fire together with Curry. Five years pass. Charlie is already married with two children; Tom is still traumatised by the event that occurred that day. He has subsequently become a software analyst and gotten engaged to another woman, only for it to fail later. One day, he receives a tube in the mail containing an authentic ancient (and unknown) Botticelli canvas. The tube has a mysterious return address in Florence, Italy. Tom realises the address is a code by his long lost friend Paul Harris, urging him to head towards Italy soon. The story ends with Tom packing his clothes and reconnecting with Katie by phone, telling her that he is leaving for Italy and that he wants to see her when he returns.
1618610	/m/05h3hj	Journey by Moonlight	Antal Szerb		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel features the romantic figure of Mihály, aloof and poetic, but struggling to break with an adolescent rebelliousness which he tries to quell under respectable bourgeois conformism, but also with the disturbing attraction of an erotic death-wish. While there is no doubt an element of (the then especially influential and risqué) Freudianism in this, as well as perhaps the sexual and emotional claustrophobia of a society with strong Catholic and martial traditions, it also has a distinct originality. The novel follows Mihály, a Budapest native from a bourgeois family on his honeymoon in Italy, as he encounters and attempts to make sense of his past.
1620198	/m/05h87m	The Fan Club	Irving Wallace	1974	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Adam Malone is a supermarket manager in Los Angeles who is obsessed with blonde movie star Sharon Fields. While watching her on a television in a bar one night he meets four other men who are also enamored of her. They get to talking, and soon are planning her abduction. Believing the sex stories put out by her manager, they think that if they kidnap her she will understand their lust and have sex with them. They get a van and disguise it as an exterminator's, scout out her neighborhood and track her daily routine, find an isolated location to take her to, and plan vacations from their individual work. A sudden crisis takes place when they discover that she will be leaving for Europe, forcing them to move their plans ahead of schedule. They confront her while she is taking a daily walk, and ask for direction. When she stops to help, she is grabbed and chloroformed. After being driven unconscious to their hideout, Sharon awakes and finds out what they want. She explains that the publicity is untrue, but one of the men won't take no for an answer and rapes her. Two of the others follow, with Adam not taking part. Deciding that they should not let the situation go to waste, they demand a ransom from the movie studio. Sharon writes a letter as proof they have her, but cleverly uses the first letters in each word to give the police a clue to her whereabouts. The ransom drop ends up with the three rapists killed, and Sharon saved. Because Adam did not take advantage of her, she omits his part in her abduction. Adam is soon back as his job, obsessed with a new younger actress, and planning on forming a new fan club.
1624037	/m/04_1lkq	Family Values				 Dwight McCarthy is on a mission from Gail to dig up information about a recent mob hit at a small diner. After being hit on by a female cop, (who he manages to get rid of by pretending to be a bisexual masochist), he goes into a bar near where the hit happened and tries to charm one of the local drinkers there named Peggy. Dwight also spots Fat Man and Little Boy, which makes his job easier later on. As Dwight keeps charming Peggy, she realizes he's not interested in any company that night and only looking for information behind the recent hit. It's revealed that Bruno, the target, was killed by Vito; one of Don Magliozzi's nephews and also one of his hitmen. This was done in retaliation on Don Magliozzi's part as Bruno killed his beloved niece years ago. Going against his family's treaty with mob boss Wallenquist, he orders Vito to kill Bruno, who is on Wallenquist's payroll, immediately. Afterwards, everyone's nervous about what Wallenquist will do and if there will be a mob war in retaliation. With that information, Dwight leaves the bar and is confronted by Vito and some other hitmen who came when Fat Man and Little Boy alerted them someone was digging around for information. Dwight is kidnapped by them, but is more interested in Vito's car and constantly refers to it as his just as soon as he kills all of them. No one believes him as they drive toward the Projects. Unknown to them except for Dwight is that Miho was following Dwight for protection. On the way, Vito tells his side of the story as to how he killed every living thing he saw, including a stray dog. Dwight is satisfied with this and orders Miho to make her appearance. She kills Spinelli, one of the goons, and they park in a hilltop rest area, overlooking the Projects. There, Miho toys with one of the hitmen as Dwight tells Vito to kill the other hitman; Vito's own brother Luca. After Miho and Dwight are through, they head straight to Sacred Oaks to confront Don Magliozzi, driven by Vito. Miho cuts through the guards and Dwight makes his appearance. He tells the Don he is going to die along with Vito, and reveals why: the accidental death of Carmen, one of the Old Town girls. Dwight tells them Vito shouldn't have shot at the stray dog, since the angles were in a straight line to a nearby phone booth where Carmen was calling for a ride. Carmen was killed by the gunfire. Carmen's lover, Daisy, arrives as Dwight walks away from the Don and his associates. Daisy guns them down as Dwight remarks there's going to be a mob war because of this, but that neither he nor the girls of Old Town will have cause to worry about it. Finally, he takes possession of Vito's car and drives off into the night.
1624408	/m/05hkwd	Archangel	Robert Harris	1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 While attending a conference in Moscow, an historian named Christopher "Fluke" Kelso is met by an old man named Papu Rapava, who claims to have been present at the death of Joseph Stalin. Immediately after Stalin's death, Lavrenty Beria supposedly took measures to secure a black notebook, believed to be Stalin's secret diary. Rapava spent years in Kolyma after the authorities tried to extract the book's location from him, but he never revealed it—and still has not, though he knows that shadowy agents are still watching him in case he should go near the mysterious thing. Kelso eventually locates the notebook, which Rapava had left to his daughter just before being recaptured and tortured to death. It proves to be the memoirs of a young girl chosen by Stalin to be the mother of his secret heir. Following the trail to the remote northern city of Arkhangelsk, Kelso comes face to face with Stalin's son. Raised in a log cabin filled with Stalin's personal effects, writings and recorded speeches, the son is a physical and ideological copy of his father—we learn that he had murdered the husband-and-wife KGB agents who had raised him from infancy when he decided they were untrustworthy. Young Stalin has been told that he would be sent for when it was time for him to assume control of his country, and he believes that Kelso is the promised messenger. Stalin overcomes a special-forces unit sent to eliminate him (alarming Kelso by his ruthless and dispassionate use of violence) and boards a train headed for Moscow. At each station, ever-larger crowds gather to witness the apparent resurrection of the famous dictator, and it appears that he might be able to simply stride through the doors of the Kremlin and assume command. As he steps off the train in Moscow, Rapava's daughter, who has made her way into the crowd at the train station, takes out her father's pistol. The novel ends there.
1625143	/m/05hmy2	El Túnel	Ernesto Sabato	1948	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with the main character introducing himself as "the painter who killed María Iribarne" before delving into the circumstances that led to their first encounter. Castel's obsession begins in the autumn of 1946 when at an exhibition of his work he notices a woman focusing on one particularly subtle detail of his painting "Maternidad" ("Maternity"). He considers this observation deeply significant since it is a detail that he values as the most important aspect of the painting but to which nobody besides him and the woman pay any attention. Missing out on an opportunity to approach her before she leaves the exhibition, he then spends the next few months obsessing over her, thinking of ways to find her in the immensity of Buenos Aires, and fantasizing about what to say to her. Ultimately, after seeing her entering a building which he presumes to be her place of employment, he considers how to go about asking her about the detail in the painting. He approaches her and learns that her name is María Iribarne. Following their discussion about the painting, Castel and María agree to see each other again. It later becomes clear that she is married to a blind man named Allende and lives on Posadas Street in the northern part of the city. As Castel continues to see María, however, their relationship comes to be dominated by his obsessive interrogations of her life with her husband, why she does not take her husband's last name, and of her inner thoughts, questions she is unable to answer to his satisfaction. Out of this disconnect, Castel's obsessive thoughts lead him to all sorts of irrational doubts about the love he has come to believe that they have for one another. This anxiety intensifies after he and Maria make a trip to an estancia, a country ranch in Mar del Plata owned by Allende's cousin Hunter. The atmosphere, the presence and the attitudes of the other visiting relatives, and an overheard but not understood argument between María and Hunter feed into Castel's paranoia, forcing him to flee the ranch with little more than a word to one of the service staff. While waiting at a station to leave the region, Castel expects María to figure out he has left and to come stop him. She never arrives, confirming his negative feelings. Upon returning home to Buenos Aires, Castel passionately composes a hurtful letter, accusing her of sleeping with Hunter, which he immediately regrets upon mailing to her. He angrily but unsuccessfully attempts to convince a postal worker to retract the certified letter and later concludes that fate has decided it should reach its destination. Later, Castel reaches María by phone: she reluctantly agrees to meet with him again, although she tells him that it will likely do them little good and, in fact, probably cause him more harm. When she does not arrive to Buenos Aires, he decides that María is, in fact, a prostitute who cheats on her husband not only with him, but also with Hunter and other men. In a fit of rage, he drives out to the estancia. There he waits hidden outside for guests to leave the large house. Meanwhile his anxiety grows to the point where he envisions he and María passing each other through life in parallel passageways or tunnels, whereas his is "a single tunnel, dark and solitary: mine, the tunnel wherein passed all my infancy, my youth, my entire life." Eventually, Castel enters the house, approaches María in her room, where he accuses her of leaving him alone in the world, and stabs her to death. Following the attack, Castel shows up to Allende's office to tell him that he has murdered María for sleeping with Hunter, only to discover that Allende is well-aware of his cuckold status. Crying out again and again that Castel is a fool, Allende sadly, and ineffectually, tries to fight Castel, who leaves and later turns himself in to the police.
1625676	/m/05hpb8	The Ships of Earth	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The focus is on the struggles between the pioneers to establish a new social order now that they have left Basilica. The new society is opposite to that of the previous societies - male dominated instead of female dominated, monogamous and lifelong marriages instead of the yearly contracts of Basilica. The struggles between the characters ultimately come down to the struggles between Nafai and Elemak, two sons of Volemak. Nafai leads the faction who have faith in the Oversoul, while Elemak leads the faction who want desperately to return to the civilization of doomed Basilica. Both are ostensibly under the leadership of Volemak (and not Rasa, as they had been in the city). The settlers, after years of traveling, finally arrive in a land lost in ancient times which holds the secret of the Oversoul. Also many children are born, all in their preparation for the ultimate journey to Earth. The book offers an interesting justification of the social structures of the Hebrew tribes in Genesis, all while the originally powerful female characters gradually succumb to the new hierarchy of "men" and "wives." Only one character - Shedemei, the brilliant geneticist, thinks about this problem. The focus in on the group dynamics of the new tribe as they journey where the Oversoul guides them. Prophetic dreams abound, mostly involving giant rats and bats ("diggers" and "angels"). The Oversoul discovers itself.
1626388	/m/05hr3k	Lost at Sea	Bryan Lee O'Malley			 Raleigh is on board a road trip from California, where she was visiting her father and her boyfriend Stillman, back home to Vancouver with her fellow high school students Stephanie, Dave, and Ian, whom she meets by accident after missing her train. During the trip, she muses on her relationship with Stillman, whom she met over the Internet, as well as her belief that she has no friends due to her belief that when she was 14 her mother sold it to Satan in exchange for career success, who then placed it in the body of a cat. Augmenting her palpable existential confusion is the bizarre emergence of a series of cats, seeming to follow Raleigh through her journey. In her confusion and curiosity, Raleigh, with the help of her new friends, attempts to catch one of the cats, believing it to be in possession of her soul. The task acts as a bonding activity for the students, and a catalyst in revealing insight into each others character.
1628245	/m/05hws4	The Marrow of Tradition	Charles W. Chesnutt	1901	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in the fictional town of Wellington, The Marrow of Tradition features several interweaving plots that encompass the poles of the racially segregated society of the American South at the turn of the century. One plot follows Major Carteret, the white owner of the major Wellington newspaper, as he colludes with several other powerful white men to take political control of the town. They are outraged about a provocative editorial published in a black paper that questioned white justifications for lynchings. As the town’s unrest intensifies, Carteret faces domestic pressures; his only child Dodie and wife Olivia are both unwell. Carteret’s niece Clara, recently introduced to society, is courted by the young Tom Delamere, a handsome and conniving aristocrat who spends most evenings nurturing his penchant for drink and cards. His habits are contrasted with those of Lee Ellis, a rival for Clara, and William Miller, a young black physician who with his wife has returned to his hometown of Wellington to practice medicine. He gained his medical education in Paris and Vienna. Though jarred by segregation and Jim Crow racism, Miller sets up his practice and starts his life. Josh Green as a boy witnessed the murder of his father at the hands of a white man—a character named Captain McBane—and is intent on exacting revenge. All these subplots are forced to a crisis through two events: the beginning of the riot and the murder of a white woman, Polly Ochiltree, for which a black servant, Sandy Campbell, is arrested. Tom Delamere is the real culprit. In this web of plotlines, Josh Green, whom Miller is unable to persuade to pursue racial equality along peaceable lines, ends up walking into the face of attackers to try to satisfy vengeance and kill McBane. Miller goes to the aid of Sandy Campbell to stave off a lynching. He is asked to give medical care to Carteret’s baby boy, although the publisher had helped foment the riot. A stray bullet has killed Miller's infant son. The novel ends with Miller, setting aside his own losses, agreeing to go to Carteret’s home to aid his dying son.
1628783	/m/05hx_s	The Grass Is Singing	Doris Lessing	1950	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel starts with a cutting from newspaper article about the death of Mary Turner. It says that Mary Turner, a white woman is killed by her black servant Moses for money. The author of the article is unknown. The news actually acts like an omen for other white people living in that African setting. After looking at the article, people behave as if the murder was very much expected. The plot of the novel shifts to flashback of Mary Turner's past life till her murder at the hand of Moses in the next chapter. Mary has a happy and satisfied life as a single white Rhodesian (we assume, though the novel refers to both Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa simply as South Africa, while making clear the farm is in Southern Rhodesia) woman. She has a nice job, numerous friends, and values her independence. Nevertheless, after overhearing an insulting remark at a party about her spinsterhood, she resolves to marry. The man she marries, after a brief courtship, Dick Turner, is a white farmer struggling to make his farm profitable. She moves with him to his farm and supports the house, while Dick manages the labor of the farm. Dick and Mary are somewhat cold and distant from each other, but are committed to their marriage. Dick and Mary live together an apolitical life mired in poverty. When Dick gets sick Mary takes over the management of the farm and rages at the incompetence of her husband's farm practice. To Mary, the farm exists only to make money, while Dick goes about farming in a more idealistic way. Mary and Dick live a solitary life together. Because of their poverty Dick refuses to give Mary a child. They do not attend social events, yet are a great topic of interest among their neighbors. Mary feels an intimate connection with the nature around her, though being in general rather unexplorative in nature. Mary, like most Rhodesian women, is overtly racist, believing that whites should be masters over the native blacks. Dick and Mary both often complain about the lack of work ethic among the natives that work on their farm. While Dick is rarely cruel to the workers that work for them, Mary is quite cruel. She treats herself as their master and superior. She shows contempt for the natives, and finds them disgusting and animal-like. Mary is cross, queenly, and overtly hostile to the many house servants she has over the years. When Mary oversees the farm labor she is much more repressive than Dick had ever been. She works them harder, reduces their break time, and arbitrarily takes money from their pay. Her hatred of natives results in her whipping the face of a worker because he speaks to her in English, telling her he stopped work for a drink of water. This worker, named Moses, comes to be a very important person in Mary's life, when he is taken to be a servant for the house. Mary does not feel fear of her servant Moses but rather a great deal of disgust, repugnance, and avoidance. Often Mary does all she can to avoid having any social proximity with him. After many years living on the farm together, Dick and Mary are seen to be in a condition of deterioration. Mary often goes through spells of depression, during which she is exhausted of energy and motivation. In her frailty, Mary ends up relying more and more on Moses. As Mary becomes weaker, she finds herself feeling endearment toward Moses. On a rare visit from their neighbor, Slatter, Mary is seen being carelessly, thoughtlessly kind to Moses. This enrages Slatter. Slatter demands that Mary not live with that worker as a house servant. Slatter sees himself as defending the values and integrity of the white community. Slatter uses his charisma and influence to convince Dick to give up ownership of his farm and go on a vacation with his wife. This vacation is to be a sort of convalescence for them. Dick spends his last month on his farm with Tony, who has been hired by Slatter to take over the running of the farm. Tony has good intentions and is very superficially cultured, but he finds himself having to adapt to the racism of the white community. One day Tony sees Moses dressing Mary and is surprised and somewhat amazed by Mary's breaking of the 'colour bar'. The book closes with Mary's death at the hand of Moses. Mary is expecting his arrival and is aware of her imminent death. Moses does not run from the scene as he originally intends, but waits a short distance away for the arrival of the police.
1630601	/m/05j180	The Sound of Waves	Yukio Mishima	1954	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Shinji Kubo lives with his mother, a pearl diver, and his younger brother, Hiroshi. He and his mother support the family because Shinji's father had died in World War II after the fishing boat he was on was strafed by an American bomber. However, the family lives a somewhat peaceful life and Shinji is content to be a fisherman along with his master, Jukichi Oyama, and another apprentice, Ryuji. Things change when Terukichi Miyata, after the death of his son, decides to bring back the daughter he adopted away to pearl divers from another island. Raised as a pearl diver, the beautiful Hatsue wins many admirers, including Shinji. The prospect of marrying Hatsue becomes even more attractive when the wealthy Miyata intends to adopt the man who marries Hatsue as his own son. Shinji and Hatsue soon fall in love. When Chiyoko, the daughter of the Lighthouse-Keeper and his wife, returns from studying at a university in Tokyo, she is disappointed to discover Shinji, whom she has affections for, has fallen in love with someone else. She takes advantage of the jealous Yasuo Kawamoto, an arrogant and selfish admirer of Hatsue, and uses him so Yasuo will spread vicious rumours of Shinji stealing away Hatsue's virginity. Yasuo is jealous of Shinji because he thinks Shinji will take Hatsue's virginity. He tries to rape Hatsue at night when it's Hatsue's turn to fill out the bucket of water. The attempt is unsuccessful, however; he is stung by hornets as he tries to strip her clothes off. Humiliated, he makes a deal with Hatsue: He will refill the bucket and carry it down the stone steps for her, and Hatsue must not tell anyone he was trying to rape her. When Terukichi finds out the rumor, he forbids Hatsue to see Shinji, but through Jukichi and Ryuji, the two manage to continue communicating with one another by means of secret letters. Terukichi steadfastly refuses to see Shinji for an explanation and when Shinji's mother, who knows her son will never deliberately lie, goes to see Terukichi, Terukichi's refusal to see her only increases the tension between Shinji and Hatsue. Chiyoko, before returning to Tokyo, becomes filled with remorse after Shinji off-handedly replies that she is pretty when she asks him if he thinks she is unattractive. She returns to Tokyo with guilt that she ruined Shinji's chance at happiness Terukichi mysteriously employs Yasuo and Shinji on one of his shipping vessels. When the vessel is caught in a storm, Shinji’s courage and willpower allow him to brave the storm and save the ship. Terukichi's intentions are revealed when Chiyoko's mother receives a letter from Chiyoko, who refuses to return home, explaining that she feels she cannot return and see Shinji unhappy because she was the one who started the rumors. The Lighthouse-Keeper's wife confronts Terukichi, who reveals that he intends to adopt Shinji as Hatsue's husband. Employing the boys on the ship had been a test to which one was most suitable for his daughter and Shinji's act to save the vessel had earned Terukichi’s respect and permission to wed his daughter.
1631530	/m/05j3v5	Lysis				 Hippothales is accused by Ctesippus, that he still presents annoying praises of his beloved person before the others. He is then asked by Socrates to show his usual behavior in this situation. He admits his love for Lysis, but refuses, that he behaves by the manner depicted by the others. According to Ctesippus it is possible only by his absolute madness, because how would the others know about the love otherwise? The victory is a real gain of such love, about which Hippothales sings. He is aroused by denied access to such love and encourages only himself in a fear from possible difficulties. The beloved person, which would otherwise hasn't lost his self-criticism, can be conquered by his own pride. The lack of wit, surplus of emotions in behavior, doesn't create reverence and respect and makes impossible to conquer somebody, gaining his sympathy. The one, who should rule in the measure which makes him a part of the relationship, instead of it hurts himself. The following Socrates' dialogue with Lysis implies, that loved by his parents he on the other hand is limited in the most of that what he would wish. Lysis is forced to let the others decide about him (compare with a rental coachman when he is carrying his family). His abilities are not subject of a blind faith. The conclusion is, that friendship must be the opposite of hypocrisy, which sometimes emerges from the surplus of flattering... Another important conclusion from the dialogue with Lysis is, that his parents wish his complete happiness, but on the other hand doing of the things he hasn't enough knowledge for is forbidden by them to him. He is allowed to do something only when his parents are sure, that given activities are achievable for him. Although, he is able to please his parents, make them to be happy, when he is in some task better than the others. The dialogue continues with Lysis only as a listener. Socrates is trying to find out what is friendship. He claims, that friendship is always reciprocal. The friendship of the lover is sufficient to it. But he can obtain back even the hatred. And it is not true, that the one who is hated or who perhaps hates is a friend. That is in contradiction with the mentioned thesis, that friendship is reciprocal. The opposite must be true then. Friendship is non-reciprocal. Otherwise the lover can't be happy. For example of his child, which doesn't obey him and even hate him. The conclusion is that people are loved by their enemies (parents) and hated by their friends (children). Then it is not valid every time, that lover has in loved his friend. This is in contradiction with the premise saying, that friendship can be non-reciprocal. Bad men don't tend neither towards other bad men nor the good ones. The former can be harmful and the latter would probably refuse the disharmony. On the other hand the good men can have only no differences to be good and have therefore no profit from each other. They are perfect and can be in love only to the extent to which they feel insufficiency, therefore to no extent. The opposites attracts one another. For example the full needs the empty and empty needs the full. But this is not right in the case of human beings. For example good vs. evil, just vs. unjust... Searching continues in an attempt to determine the first principle of friendship. The friendship must consists only in itself. Perhaps it is the good itself. But it wouldn't be for itself the everything unless the evil is present. The friendship mustn't lead us to something else (like to the evil). Must be itself only thanks to its own opposite. The opposite is therefore not only bad, but also useful. But there are situations, in which can be viewed the opposite for example of the good - like hunger or thirst - with disgrace. It is possible that even in not presence of the opposite, the elements of friendship can somewhere exist, which is in contradiction with that, that they consist in their opposite. The possession of the good by definition of friendship is therefore retained along for a while. So far it was successful to grasp only a shadow of the real nature of friendship. We tend to the good to escape the evil, to the health to escape the illness, to the certain friend (doctor) to escape the enemy. We don't know the first thing, that is loved. The friendship can have another reason, than a way to the good (escaping the evil). It can be desire, longing for a something. By such way is responded to insufficiency, to our limitation in something. Insufficiency is that which makes us to be close each other. The friendship is therefore something inevitable for us. We are loved by something, we can't be without it, which we ask by our nature. It is therefore impossible to distinguish object of friendship from us. An attempt is possible to distinguish the insufficiency from the mere unlikeness. The evil is insufficiency for everything, the good the sufficiency. For themselves are good and evil alike sufficient - however - they can't be friends the ones who are akin to themselves. From the point of view of the first principle of friendship the distinguishing the insufficiency from the unlikeness wasn't successful.
1632458	/m/05j668	Death and the King's Horseman	Wole Soyinka			 Death and The King's Horseman builds upon the true story to focus on the character of Elesin, the King's Horseman of the title. According to a Yoruba tradition, the death of a chief must be followed by the ritual suicide of the chief's horseman, because the horseman's spirit is essential to helping the chief's spirit ascend to the afterlife. Otherwise, the chief's spirit will wander the earth and bring harm to the Yoruba people. The first half of the play documents the process of this ritual, with the potent, life-loving figure Elesin living out his final day in celebration before the ritual process begins. At the last minute the local British colonial ruler, Simon Pilkings, intervenes, the suicide being viewed as barbaric and illegal by the British authorities. In the play, the result for the community is catastrophic, as the breaking of the ritual means the disruption of the cosmic order of the universe and thus the well-being and future of the collectivity is in doubt. As the action unfolds, the community blames Elesin as much as Pilkings, accusing him of being too attached to the earth to fulfill his spiritual obligations. Events lead to tragedy when Elesin's son, Olunde, who has returned to Nigeria from studying medicine in Europe, takes on the responsibility of his father and commits ritual suicide in his place so as to restore the honour of his family and the order of the universe. Consequently, Elesin kills himself, condemning his soul to a degraded existence in the next world. In addition, the dialogue of the native suggests that this may have been insufficient and that the world is now "adrift in the void". Another Nigerian playwright, Duro Ladipo, had already written a play in the Yoruba language based on this incident, called Oba waja (The King is Dead).
1633294	/m/05j8ln	At Bertram's Hotel	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Jane Marple, the elderly amateur sleuth, takes a holiday at Bertram's hotel in London, to re-live her happy memories of staying there during her youth. The hotel is famous for fully preserving its Edwardian atmosphere even into the 1960s, from the proper staff to the elderly guests who frequent the tearoom. Miss Marple first sees Lady Selina Hazy, a childhood friend. Lady Hazy says she often thinks she recognizes people in the hotel but they turn out to be strangers. Miss Marple is intrigued by the other guests in the tearoom, especially a famous adventuress, Bess Sedgwick; a young woman, Elvira Blake, and her guardian Colonel Luscombe; and a forgetful clergyman, Canon Pennyfather. Elvira's late father left her a lot of money, but it's all held in trust until she, not yet 20, turns 21. Her mother, Bess Sedgwick, had abandoned her as a toddler to become a famous star and adventurer, and has not kept in touch. Elvira suddenly starts asking her guardians who would inherit her money if she dies, and hints that she may be planning marriage. She also says somebody had tried to poison her during her school days in Italy. She secretly flies to Ireland for 24 hours, telling her best friend only that she has to find out something that's of terrible importance. Canon Pennyfather is supposed to fly to Switzerland the same day, also for 24 hours, to attend a religious conference in Lucerne. But he's so forgetful he doesn't arrive at the airport until the following evening, by which time the conference is over. He returns to the hotel around midnight, and upon entering his room, sees something very surprising and is immediately knocked on the head. He wakes up four days later in a house several hours from London but near the location where the Irish Mail train was robbed three days earlier. A family had found him on the side of the road and taken him in. He remembers nothing since taking the taxi to the airport, yet some witnesses at the train robbery say they saw somebody who looked like him at the scene. Miss Marple also saw him leaving his hotel room at 3 am, three hours after he was knocked on the head, and a few hours before the robbery. It turns out that Lady Sedgwick had hidden herself from Elvira because she did not consider herself a suitable mother, given her lifestyle. Sedgwick and Elvira are lovers of the same man, the racing-car driver Ladislaus Malinowski. However, both women claim that Elvira doesn't know him. But Miss Marple knows that she does, because she has seen Elvira and Malinowski together at a restaurant. She thinks Malinowski is an unsuitable man for Elvira, and wishes she could save her from getting involved with him. Meanwhile, a car similar to Malinowski's has been seen at the train robbery and at several other train robberies; it is similar but not identical: the licence plates were off by one digit. Miss Marple overhears Bess Sedgwick talking with the hotel commissionaire, Micky Gorman. It turns out they had earlier been married in Ireland. At the time, Gorman had told her the wedding was just a game and not a legal marriage. But in fact it was a real marriage, and so her four subsequent marriages were unwittingly bigamous. Elvira also overhears this, and worries it might invalidate her inheritance because she is the daughter of one of Sedgwick's later husbands. She had travelled to Ireland to verify the marriage, but we don't know whether she flew back to England or took a train, perhaps the Irish Mail train, so she could have been a witness or perpetrator in the robbery. When Elvira comes to the hotel one foggy night, two shots are fired, and Elvira is found next to dead Commissionaire Gorman. Elvira claims he has been shot dead after he had run in front of her to shield her due to the first shot. The gun is Malinowski's. Police Chief Inspector "Father" Davy, along with Inspector Campbell, has been involved in the mystery since Pennyfather's disappearance. He interviews everybody in the hotel, and quickly realizes that Miss Marple notices things — things in human nature that provide important clues. After Pennyfather is found, the three of them try an experiment. Miss Marple and Pennyfather re-enact their actions from when she saw him in the hallway (although he doesn't remember it). She realizes it wasn't him she saw: the walk was different. Pennyfather then remembers what surprised him when he entered his room: he saw himself sitting on a chair, just before he was knocked on the head. His doppelgänger, with his confederates, left the hotel (when Miss Marple saw him), drove the unconscious Pennyfather to the mail train, made himself visible during the robbery so that people would mistake him for Pennyfather, and then left Pennyfather on the side of the road. Miss Marple tells Inspector Davy that she was disappointed to find out that much of the hotel's Edwardian atmosphere is false. Some of the guests are genuine, but others are actors pretending to be other people. So Lady Hazy wasn't wrong after all; the people she mistakenly recognized were actors pretending to be people she knew. Why a hotel would have so many actors is baffling, until the sleuths realize that the hotel is the center of a criminal ring. The actors pose as other people during robberies in order to make it look like their namesakes were at places they weren't. "Father" Davy and Miss Marple confront Bess Sedgwick as the orchestrator of these robberies, along with the hotel's owners and staff. Sedgwick confesses, and also admits to killing Gorman. She then drives away recklessly and commits suicide, although her racing may let it look like an accident. However, Miss Marple has already concluded that Elvira herself shot Gorman, and that her mother falsely confessed to the shooting in order to save her daughter. Elvira had fallen madly in love with Ladislaus Malinowski and knew that he was primarily interested in her money, but was concerned that if Michael Gorman revealed his marriage to Bess Sedgwick it would endanger her father's legacy.
1635862	/m/05jhfq	The Notting Hill Mystery			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Source documents compiled by insurance investigator Ralph Henderson are used to build a case against Baron "R___", who is suspected of murdering his wife. The baron's wife died from drinking a bottle of acid, apparently while sleepwalking in her husband's private laboratory. Henderson's suspicions are raised when he learns that the baron recently had purchased five life insurance policies for his wife. As Henderson investigates the case, he discovers not one but three murders. Although the baron's guilt is clear to the reader even from the outset, how he did it remains a mystery. Eventually this is revealed, but how to catch him becomes the final challenge; he seems to have committed the perfect crime.
1636145	/m/05jj7x	The Camp of the Saints	Jean Raspail	1973	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Camp of the Saints is a novel about population migration and its consequences. In Calcutta, India, the Belgian government announces a policy in which Indian babies will be adopted and raised in Belgium. The policy is soon reversed after the Belgian consulate is inundated with poverty-stricken parents eager to give up their infant children. An Indian "wise man" then rallies the masses to make a mass exodus to live in Europe. Most of the story centers on the French Riviera, where almost no one remains except for the military and a few civilians, including a retired professor who has been watching the huge fleet of run down freighters approaching the French coast. The story alternates between the French reaction to the mass immigration and the attitude of the immigrants. They have no desire to assimilate into French culture but want the plentiful goods that are in short supply in their native India. Although the novel focuses on France, the rest of the West shares its fate. Near the end of the story the mayor of New York City is made to share Gracie Mansion with three families from Harlem, the Queen of England must agree to have her son marry a Pakistani woman, and only one drunken Soviet soldier stands in the way of thousands of Chinese people as they swarm into Siberia. The one holdout until the end of the novel is Switzerland, but by then international pressure isolating it as a rogue state for not opening its borders forces it to capitulate.
1638177	/m/05jpfj	A Home at the End of the World	Michael Cunningham	1990-11-07	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bobby had grown up in a home in suburban Cleveland, Ohio during the 1960s and 1970s where partying and drugs were a recurring theme. He has already witnessed the death of his mother and beloved older brother by the time he befriends Jonathan, who comes from a sheltered family. After Bobby finds his father is dead, Jonathan's family takes him in. Bobby and Jonathan become best friends, and also experiment sexually. The two eventually lose touch, but meet up again in their 20s in 1980s New York, where Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his eccentric roommate Clare. Clare had planned to have a baby with Jonathan (who is openly gay), but Bobby and Clare become lovers, while Jonathan still has feelings for Bobby. Clare and Bobby have a baby and move to a country home together with Jonathan. The trio form their own unusual family, questioning traditional definitions of family and love, while dealing with the complications of their love triangle.
1638910	/m/05jr4x	Kenilworth	Walter Scott	1821-01-08	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Giles Gosling, the innkeeper, had just welcomed his scape-grace nephew Michael Lambourne on his return from Flanders. He invited the Cornishman, Tressilian, and other guests to drink with them. Lambourne made a wager he would obtain an introduction to a certain young lady under the steward Foster's charge at Cumnor Place, seat of the Earl of Leicester, and the Cornish stranger begged permission to accompany him. On arriving there Tressilian found that this lady was his former lady-love, Amy. He would have carried back to her home, but she refused; and as he was leaving he quarrelled with Richard Varney, the earl's squire, and might have taken his life had not Lambourne intervened. Amy was soothed in her seclusion by costly presents from the earl, and during his next visit she pleaded that she might inform her father of their secret marriage, but he was afraid of Elizabeth's resentment. Warned by his host against the squire, and having confided to him how Amy had been entrapped, Tressilian left Cumnor by night, and, after several adventures by the way, reached the residence of Sir Hugh Robsart, Amy's father, to assist him in laying his daughter's case before the queen. Returning to London, Tressilian's servant, Wayland Smith, cured the Earl of Sussex of a dangerous illness. On hearing about this from Walter Raleigh, Elizabeth at once set out to visit Leicester's rival, and it was in this way that Tressilian's petition, in Amy's behalf, was handed to her. The queen was agitated to learn of this secret marriage. Varney was accordingly summoned to the royal presence, but he boldly declared that Amy was his wife, and Leicester was restored to the queen's favour. Tressilian's servant then gained access to the secret countess Amy as a pedlar, and, having hinted that Elizabeth would shortly marry the earl, sold her a cure for the heartache, warning her attendant Janet at the same time that there might be an attempt to poison her mistress. Meanwhile Leicester was preparing to entertain the queen at Kenilworth, where she had commanded that Amy should be introduced to her, and Varney was, accordingly, despatched with a letter begging the countess to appear at the revels pretending to be Varney's bride. Having indignantly refused to do so, and having recovered from the effects of a cordial which had been prepared for her by the astrologer Alasco, she escaped, with the help of her maid, from Cumnor, and started for Kenilworth, escorted by Wayland Smith. Travelling thither as brother and sister, they joined a party of mummers, and then, to avoid the crowd of people thronging the principal approaches, proceeded by circuitous by-paths to the castle. Having, with Dickie Sludge's help, passed into the courtyard, they were shown into a room, where Amy was waiting while her attendant carried a note to the earl, when she was startled by the entrance of Tressilian, whom she entreated not to interfere until after the expiration of twenty-four hours. On entering the park, Elizabeth was received by her favourite attended by a numerous cavalcade bearing waxen torches, and a variety of entertainments followed. During the evening she enquired for Varney's wife, and was told she was too ill to be present. Tressilian offered to lose his head if within twenty-four hours he did not prove the statement to be false. Nevertheless, the ostensible bridegroom was knighted by the queen. Receiving no reply to her note, which Wayland had lost, Amy found her way the next morning to a grotto in the gardens, where she was discovered by Elizabeth, who had just told her host that "she must be the wife and mother of England alone." Falling on her knees the countess besought protection against Varney, who she declared was not her husband, and added that the Earl of Leicester knew all. The earl was instantly summoned to the royal presence, and would have been committed to the Tower, had not Amy recalled her words, when she was consigned to Lord Hunsdon's care as bereft of her reason, Varney coming forward and pretending that she had just escaped from a special treatment for her madness. Leicester insisted on an interview with her, when she implored him to confess their marriage to Elizabeth, and then, with a broken heart, she would not long darken his brighter prospects. Varney, however, succeeded in persuading him that Amy had acted in connivance with Tressilian, and in obtaining medical sanction for her custody as mentally disordered, asking only for the earl's signet-ring as his authority. The next day a duel between Tressilian and the earl was interrupted by Dickie, who produced the countess's note, and, convinced of her innocence, Leicester confessed that she was his wife. With the queen's permission he at once deputed his rival and Sir Walter Raleigh to proceed to Cumnor, whither he had already despatched Lambourne, to stay his squire's further proceedings. Varney, however, had shot the messenger on receiving his instructions, and had caused Amy to be conducted by Foster to an apartment reached by a long flight of stairs and a narrow wooden bridge. The following evening the tread of a horse was heard in the courtyard, and a whistle like the earl's signal, upon which she rushed from the room, and the instant she stepped on the bridge, it parted in the middle, and she fell to her death. Her murderer poisoned himself, and the skeleton of his accomplice was found, many years afterwards, in a cell where he secreted his money. The news of the countess's fate put an end to the revels at Kenilworth, Leicester retired for a time from Court, and Sir Hugh Robsart, who died very soon after his daughter, settled his estate on Tressilian.
1639433	/m/05jsry	The Death Dealers	Isaac Asimov	1958	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 One Thursday afternoon, Prof. Brade goes to visit his graduate student's laboratory. He finds Ralph Neufeld dead, having inhaled hydrogen cyanide. (This is perhaps a grim echo of Ralph's connection with the Holocaust, as hydrogen cyanide was the lethal agent used by the Nazis in their gas chambers.) In his experiment, he had somehow used sodium cyanide instead of sodium acetate, both white powders. Later, Brade is questioned by Detective Doheny, who is in charge of Ralph's case. When he gets home, he reveals to his wife his suspicions that Ralph's death was murder. She cautions him not to tell this to anyone, as he would destroy any chance of getting associate professorship and tenure. The next day, he meets with the emeritus Cap Anson, who seems to blame him for Ralph's death. They visit the zoo together, and Anson encourages Brade to go into comparative biochemistry. Brade refuses, saying he wants to continue Ralph's work in chemical kinetics. That night, he attends a departmental get-together at Chairman Littelby's, and becomes so fed up with the other professors blaming him for the death that he puts his job on the line and accuses them back. He is also disrespectful to Littelby with a nearly outright demand for tenure. On Sunday, he reads through Ralph's research notebooks and realizes that Ralph's data had been faked, a cardinal sin in chemistry. When Doheny returns, he tells him about the faking, suggesting it as a possible motive for suicide. Doheny, however, twists it around and says that Brade might have been trying to protect his own reputation by hiding the fraud. The next day, after his lectures in the university, he again meets with Cap Anson, and immediately afterward in the lab, nearly triggers a chemical reaction which would have killed him. Now resolved to solve the mystery, he questions student Roberta Goodhue in the presence of Doheny. She admits that she and Neufeld had had an argument about the faked data. The only person who could have overheard was Cap Anson. Doheny then tricks Anson into revealing that he knows about the attempt on Brade's life and Anson confesses.
1640777	/m/05jwss	A Treasure's Trove			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book is about twelve forest creatures whose mates disappear after being crystallized by a dark dust that falls every evening. The forest creatures combine forces with Zac (the handsome woodcarver), Ana (his beautiful half-elf, half-human wife), and their timid, chubby, winged "doth" Pook to save the creatures and restore the dying forest.
1641867	/m/05jzrd	Anansi Boys	Neil Gaiman	2005-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Anansi Boys is the story of Charles "Fat Charlie" Nancy, a timid Londoner devoid of ambition, whose unenthusiastic wedding preparations are disrupted when he learns of his father's death in Florida. The flamboyant Mr. Nancy, in whose shadow Fat Charlie has always lived, died in a typically embarrassing manner by suffering a fatal heart attack while singing to a young woman on stage in a karaoke bar. Fat Charlie is forced to take time off from the accounting agency where he works and travel to Florida for the funeral. After the funeral, while discussing the disposal of Mr. Nancy's estate, Mrs. Callyanne Higgler, a very old family friend, reveals to Fat Charlie that the late Mr. Nancy was actually an incarnation of the West African spider god, Anansi, hence his name. The reason Charlie had apparently not inherited any divine powers was because they had been passed down to his hitherto unknown brother, whom she mentions can be contacted by simply asking a spider to invite him. Charlie is skeptical, and on his return to England, largely forgets what Mrs. Higgler had told him, until one night when he drunkenly whispers to a spider that it would be nice if his brother stopped by for a visit. The next morning, the suave and well-dressed brother, going under the name of "Spider", visits Charlie, and is shocked to learn that their father had died. Immediately Spider steps through a picture to their childhood home. Charlie goes off to work, rather puzzled by Spider and his sudden disappearance. Spider returns that night, stricken with grief that Anansi had died and that he (Spider) had been thoughtless enough not to notice. The two, to drown their sorrows, become uproariously drunk (at Spider's recommendation) on the proverbial trio of wine, women, and song. Although Charlie is not involved in most of the womanizing or singing, he is drunk enough to sleep through much of the next day. Spider covers for Charlie's absence from his office at the Grahame Coats Agency by magically disguising himself as Charlie. In the process, Spider discovers Grahame Coats's long-standing practice of embezzling from his clients. Spider also steals the affection and virginity of Charlie's fiancée, Rosie Noah. Spider, in the guise of Charlie, reveals his knowledge of the financial improprieties to Grahame Coats during a meeting which Grahame calls in order to fire Charlie. As a result, Grahame delays firing Charlie. When Grahame seeks him next, Charlie receives a large cheque and a holiday from work. With Charlie out of the office, Grahame Coats proceeds to alter the financial records to frame Charlie for the embezzlement. Embittered by the loss of his fiancée, Charlie uses his vacation to return to Florida, and requests help from Callyanne Higgler and three of her equally old, eccentric friends to expel Spider. Being themselves powerless in this matter, they instead send him to "the beginning of the world", an abode of ancient gods similar to his father, of whom each represents a species of animal. There, he encounters the fearsome Tiger, the outrageous Hyena, and the ridiculous Monkey, among others. None are willing to trade anything with him until he meets Bird Woman, who agrees to trade Charlie her help, symbolized by one of her feathers, in exchange for "Anansi's bloodline for my own". In London, a swindled client, Maeve Livingstone, confronts Grahame Coats directly, having learned of the embezzlement of her late husband's royalties. Grahame Coats agrees to make full restitution and more, suggesting that taking him to court could fail to achieve her purpose. While she is distracted by his offer, he kills her with a hammer and conceals her body in a hidden closet. Charlie has returned to England, whereupon spontaneous events begin happening in quick succession. Charlie quarrels and scuffles with Spider; Charlie is taken in for questioning by the police for financial fraud at the Grahame Coats Agency; Spider reveals the truth to Rosie, who is angered by his treatment of her; birds repeatedly attack Spider; Grahame Coats leaves England for his estate and bank accounts in the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Andrews; and Maeve Livingstone's ghost begins haunting the Grahame Coats Agency building. Maeve Livingstone is contacted by her late husband, who advises her to move on to the afterlife. She refuses in favor of taking vengeance on Grahame Coats. Later, she meets the ghost of Anansi himself, who recounts a story to her. Once, Anansi reveals, the animal god Tiger owned all stories, and as a result, all stories were dark and violent; but Anansi tricked Tiger into surrendering the ownership of all stories to Anansi, so stories now involve cleverness and skill rather than strength alone. After he is attacked by flamingoes, Spider realizes that something Charlie did is causing these attacks, and that he is in mortal peril. He takes Charlie out of prison. They discuss matters in the course of fleeing from birds around the world, revealing that giving Anansi's bloodline implicates Charlie as well as Spider. Charlie is then returned to prison. He is eventually freed, and then mentions the hidden room in Coats's office, where the police will find Maeve Livingstone's body. Spider is swept away in a storm of birds, by which Bird Woman delivers Spider to Tiger, Anansi's longtime enemy, who imprisons him and takes his tongue in order to prevent most of his use of magic. In spite of his helplessness, Spider manages to form a little spider out of clay, instructing it to go find help in the spider kingdom that Anansi and his descendants command. Though not as effective a hunter as Tiger, Spider can still fend him off for a little while, whereas Tiger is pleased to draw out the hunt, as it allows him to savour his long hoped-for revenge on Anansi and his brood. Rosie and her mother have taken a cruise to the Caribbean, where they unexpectedly meet Grahame Coats. They have not heard of the events in England, and so unsuspectingly walk into his trap and are locked in his basement. Charlie goes searching for Callyanne Higgler, so that she might help him answer his problems. He tries to look for her in Florida, but the rest of Anansi's old friends tell him Mrs Higgler was off in the Caribbean island of Saint Andrews, and reveal him that it was another old lady, Mrs. Dunwiddy, who when fat Charlie was young, made a spell to separate his good side from his bad side, which became Spider, meaning that Fat Charlie and Spider had once been one person (which explains why Anansi refers to his son in the singular in American Gods). He finally finds her after a long search in Saint Andrews and is sent again to the beginning of the world. Charlie forces the Bird Woman to give back Anansi's bloodline in return for her feather. Meanwhile, Spider has managed to survive, Tiger having grown overconfident. When Tiger attempts a killing strike, the reinforcements summoned by Spider overwhelm him. At that point, Charlie rescues Spider and gives him back his tongue. Tiger possesses Grahame Coats and uses his blood-lust to manipulate him, intending to get revenge on Spider by killing Rosie and her mother. The possession by Tiger makes Grahame Coats vulnerable to attacks by other spirits; Maeve Livingstone, having found Grahame Coats with the aid of the ghost form of Anansi, eliminates Coats in the real world and, satisfied, moves on to her afterlife. At the beginning of the world, Charlie, having discovered his power to alter reality by singing a story, recounts the long tale of all that has gone before, humiliating Tiger to the point of retreat. Spider then closes the cave entrance, sealing Tiger and Grahame Coats into the cave; Charlie weaves this event into his song, reinforcing it with his powers, such that Tiger is now well and truly trapped. Coats, now renamed (and in the form of a) Stoat, remains with Tiger as company. In the end, Spider marries Rosie and becomes the owner of a restaurant. He is put constantly under pressure by Rosie's mother to have children, but (possibly to annoy her) never does. Charlie begins a successful career as a singer, marries police officer Daisy Day (whom he met on the night of drinking with Spider, mourning his father), and has a son.
1641949	/m/05jzz2	Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings	Christopher Moore	2003-06-03	{"/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The plot of Fluke is set on and off the Hawai'ian island of Maui as well as deep underneath the Pacific Ocean off the shore of Chile. Nathan Quinn, a marine biologist, goes out on a routine day-trip expedition to survey whales in the area. When he photographs one of the whale's flukes, he notices that the words "BITE ME" are spelled out in huge letters on the mammal's tail-fin. His curiosity and investigations uncover one mystery after another as he seeks the answers considering the source of this peculiarity.
1642887	/m/05k16p	The Fallon Blood	Robert Jordan	1980-02-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In The Fallon Blood, escaping brutal English overlords, 1760s Irishman Michael Fallon becomes an indentured servant to Charleston, South Carolina merchant Thomas Carver, where his infatuation with Carver's sensual daughter Elizabeth causes life-changing complications. His father died in the Battle Of Culloden. The threat of Irish Pickets forced Michael and his mother in both hiding and poverty. His mother sacrificed her own health to keep Michael fed for three years, when she died of malnutrition. Grogan "adopted" Michael and abused him in child labor. Michael ran away at the age of fifteen, vowing that none of his children would suffer the tragedy of poverty. Sometime later Michael became a soldier, and was taught the sword by Timothy Cavanaugh. His time with the army was a full seven years, after which he managed to own land in Ireland. Michael's prospects seemed fruitful until the day he killed an Englishman colonel by accident. Since the punishment of killing an Englishman was death, Michael was left no choice but to flee Ireland to the American colonies, where he became an indentured servant to Thomas Carver. This was the "most fateful moment of his life." He fell instantly in love with Carver's daughter Elizabeth. Elizabeth did not return Michael's feelings until he dueled with Justin Fourrier, scion of Fourrier family. Although Justin was of high blood, his sword skills paled next to Michael's, who won easily. This was the beginning of Justin's hatred for Michael, and in turn, Elizabeth's desire of Michael. Elizabeth's desire was not love, however. She originally wanted a flirtation with the bound man to instill jealousy in Justin. It was her hope that the jealousy would make Justin a lover, instead of a distant man who cared only for her inheritance. Elizabeth's plans culminated in a night of seduction, which hopefully would force Michael into marriage. However, Michael wanted to "set her up as a queen, not as a destitute." Michael's actions towards building their future left Elizabeth alone with child. Horrified of the shame of wedding with child, she manipulated Justin into raping her so that he would give her his hand in marriage. Michael buried himself in working his plantation Tir Alanin to forget Elizabeth, and dabbled in aiding American resistance for the same purpose. He became good friends with Justin's brothers Louis and Henri, who then introduced him to their sister Gabrielle. Sometimes later Fourrier leaked news of Michael's slaying of the Englishman colonel and he was quite close of rotting away in prison. Saved by Gabrielle's plan, the two married. The American Revolution separated Michael and Gabrielle for years, though the two mended the damage between them in raising their family. Twenty years pass, finding Michael with son James and daughter Catherine. On constant guard from Justin's assassinations, Michael met his son Robert Fallon (from Elizabeth). His presence tore a rift in the Fallon family, who more or less hate Robert for his status as a bastard. Gabrielle made the first step towards bridging that chasm when Fourrier assassins set the Fallon house on fire and subsequently killed both Gabrielle and James. In The Fallon Pride, Michael Fallon's son Robert Fallon survives years at sea fighting Barbary pirates and enduring the siege at Tripoli. He then returns to America with an Irish wife, Moira McConnell, and goes into business in Charleston where he raises a somewhat troublesome family. In the eve of the Revolution, the Fourrier family is forced out of the colonies because their centuries-worth of power has no place in the new nation. It is then that Elizabeth accidentally reveals Robert's true heritage. With all of his hatred on the Fallon line, Justin spent years abusing Robert just to see the look on Elizabeth's face. "She fought for food, clothes, an education . . ." Years of spousal abuse had grinded Elizabeth's will until she died. Her last words to Robert was the name of his real father. Robert flees to the safety of the sea. During that time he has ventured to Charleston, though forcibly avoids his father, as he does not wish to be a burden to the Fallon family. His luck runs out when his name is casually offered to Michael, who then confronts him. The two try to make amends with Michael's family, though Gabrielle is livid and refuses to give Robert the benefit of the doubt. James takes this one step further, slugging Robert and warning him not to come back. A spoiled noble, James thinks him invincible due to his "noble" bloodline, and is thus astonished that he is beaten by a bastard. At the end of the Fallon Blood, Robert kills Henry Tyree to save his father, and leads Michael from his grief over Gabrielle's death with a question of sizing a boat Robert wants to purchase. This attempt works, coaxing Michael out of his misery and allows Michael to move on with his life. Sometime before the Fallon Pride, Robert develops incestous feelings towards his half-sister Catherine. Like his father Robert buries himself in the arms of another woman, a French girl by the name of Louise de Chardonnay. Despite the stalker-like intents of powerful sea mogul Murad Reis, Robert takes Louise as a mistress, who eventually bears his first son James. Before they can marry, however, Robert falls victim to Murad's revenge and is shipped to North Africa. For three years Robert fights Tripoli forces under the command of a Colonel Eaten, only to find upon his return that his father is dead, and Louise marries a Thomas Martin. Drunk on both grief and alcohol, Robert succumbs to his passion and sleeps with Catherine. The incest continues for years until finally a child named Edward is born. Edward's birth snaps Robert out of his passion for Catherine. He charges his niece Charollete to protect her new brother, and retreats back to the sea. Years pass. Robert falls in love with Irish girl Moira McDonnel, and returns to America with her as his wife. Like his father before him, war looms on the horizon, drawing Robert away from his family. After the war Robert is content with the hope of both rebuilding his family's wealth and raising his family. Robert has a minor role in the third volume, the Fallon Legacy. There are two pivotal moments that involve him. First he takes another French mistress named Lucille Gautier. This only exasperates the siutation with his wife Moira, who is waging war with Robert over allowing his bastards into his household and the defense of his incestous son Edward, who has grown up a spoiled noble much like his deceased half-uncle James. Robert breaks his defense for Edward when Edward arranges the kidnapping and rape of his half-sister Elizabeth by Lucien Fourrier's son Edouard. Robert Fallon is a source of ironic circumstance. His life of survival and the dangers he has endured makes him a close parallel of his father, who possesses the same will and determination. James, on the other hand, grows up a nobleman with the blind faith of wealth through breeding. He lacks Michael's endurance, thus aligning James more towards his uncle Justin Fourrier than Michael Fallon. In The Fallon Legacy, James Fallon, the last scion of the Fallon line, strikes south and west, adventuring in New Orleans, Missouri, and finally Texas (then still part of Mexico). He loves and loses women, ranches and breeds horses, and becomes entangled in the schemes of shady men and women. Enemies made by Michael and Robert during their lifetimes converge upon James, who must find out if he has strength enough to stand against them.
1644687	/m/05k5q_	The Twenty-One Balloons	William Pène du Bois	1947	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The introduction compares two types of journeys: one that aims to reach a place within the shortest time, and another that begins without regard to speed and without a destination in mind. Balloon travel is said to be ideal for the second kind. The main story begins in medias res with the rescue of Professor William Waterman Sherman, who was picked up by a steamship whilst floating among a strange wreck of twenty deflated gas balloons in the North Atlantic. Sherman, a recently retired schoolteacher, was last seen three weeks ago leaving San Francisco on a giant balloon, determined to spend a year drifting alone. The world waits breathlessly to find out how Sherman could have circumnavigated the globe in record time and landed in the ocean with twenty balloons rather than the one with which he began his journey. After several days' rest and a hero's welcome, the professor recounts his journey before a captivated audience. Sherman's flight over the Pacific Ocean was uneventful until an unfortunate accident involving a seagull puncturing his balloon forced him to crash land on the volcanic island of Krakatoa. He discovers that the island is populated by twenty families sharing the wealth of a secret diamond mine - by far the richest in the world - which they operate as a cartel. Each year, the families sail to the outside world with a small amount of diamonds, to purchase supplies for the hidden and sophisticated civilization they have built on the island. Each family has been assigned one of the first twenty letters of the alphabet, and lives in its own whimsical and elaborate house that also serves as a restaurant. The Krakatoa society follows a calendar with twenty-day months. On "A" Day of each month, everyone eats in Mr. and Mrs. A's American restaurant; on "B" Day, in Mr. and Mrs. B's British chop house; on "C" Day, in Mr. and Mrs. C's Chinese restaurant; on "D" Day, in Mr. and Mrs. D's Dutch restaurant, and so forth. Sherman's first friend on the island, Mr. F, runs a French restaurant containing a replica of the Hall of Mirrors. The houses are full of incredible items, such as Mr. M's Moroccan house, which has a living room with mobile furniture that operate like bumper cars. The children of the island invented their own form of amusement that combines elements from merry-go-round and balloon travel. When the volcano on Krakatoa erupts, the families and Sherman escape on a platform held aloft by twenty balloons (The book's title refers to these balloons along with Sherman's original balloon). As the platform drifts westward around the world, the families parachute off to India and Belgium to start their new lives. Sherman remains on the platform and finally descends onto the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, where he is rescued. The professor concludes his speech by telling the audience he intends to build an improved balloon for a year of life in the air. The novel describes Krakatoa as an island in the Pacific Ocean, but the Sunda Strait that contains the island is considered an arm of the Indian Ocean.
1644786	/m/05k5_s	Haunted	Chuck Palahniuk	2005-05-03	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "Guts" begins with the narrator telling the reader to hold their breath for the duration of the story. The narrator then describes several unnerving incidents involving adolescent boys masturbating. First, he describes a boy inserting a lubricated carrot into his rectum to stimulate his prostate while masturbating, and then hiding the carrot in a pile of laundry. His mother later takes the laundry away and presumably discovers the lubricated carrot, but never mentions it to him. Next, the narrator describes a young boy inserting a thin stick of candle wax into his urethra to stimulate it while masturbating. The wax slips back into the boy's bladder, which causes his urine flow to be stopped almost entirely and blood to seep from his penis. It requires expensive surgery to remove it, which the parents pay for using all the money from the boy's college savings. The narrator then refers, in passing, to numerous boys of about the same age accidentally asphyxiating themselves while masturbating, a fad to which a spike in teenage suicide rates is attributed. Finally, the narrator describes an incident in which he sat on the water intake at the bottom of a swimming pool while masturbating in a process he refers to as "Pearl diving". The suction causes his rectum and lower intestines to prolapse and become tangled in the filter, forcing the narrator to gnaw through his own innards to free himself and avoid drowning. The narrator's sister later becomes impregnated by semen deposited by the narrator in the pool, which results in her having an abortion. In the case of the three core incidents, although the parents of the boys involved knew about the incident, they never discussed it afterwards, causing all three to figuratively "hold their breath" while they waited for the reaction that never came. It is also called the boys' "invisible carrot" in a reference to the first story where the boys mother discovers the carrot he had placed in his anus to achieve a more pleasurable orgasm. Purportedly all three of these incidents are based on true stories. According to Palahniuk, the first two tales came from his friends' experiences and the third he heard while shadowing sexual addiction support groups as research for Choke. In one of these groups, he met an extremely thin man. When Palahniuk asked him how he stayed so thin, he told him "I had a massive bowel resectioning." When Palahniuk asked what he meant, he told him the story which was the basis for the third episode in "Guts".
1645143	/m/05k6t4	Hell House	Richard Matheson	1971	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns four people - Dr. Lionel Barrett, a physicist with an interest in parapsychology, his wife Edith, and two mediums (Florence Tanner, a Spiritualist and mental medium, and Benjamin Franklin Fischer, a physical medium) - who are hired by dying millionaire William Reinhardt Deutsch to investigate the possibility of life after death. To do so, they must enter the infamous Belasco House in Maine, regarded as the most haunted house in the world. The house is called "Hell House" due to the horrible acts of blasphemy and perversion that occurred there under the silent influence and supervision of Emeric Belasco. Fischer is the only survivor of a failed investigation attempt thirty years earlier. The novel combines supernatural horror with mystery as the researchers attempt to investigate the haunting of the house while their sanity is subtly undermined by its sinister supernatural influence. During the investigation, various influences begin to affect each character's personal weaknesses: Florence through her belief in Spiritualism and her over-eagerness to rid the house of its evil; Dr. Barrett through his almost-arrogant disbelief in/disregard for Spiritualism, his belief in science, and his debilitated physical condition (having suffered from polio when young); Edith through her personal fears, insecurities and pent-up desires; and Fischer through his deliberate inaction (which he calls "caution"). Hell House's potency comes from its apparent ability to corrupt those who enter its walls, before bringing about their destruction, both mental and physical.
1645713	/m/05k86_	Daredevil: Born Again	Frank Miller	1986-09		 Karen Page, the former secretary of the Nelson & Murdock law offices and girlfriend of Matt Murdock, had left the series years earlier to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. Her plans did not work out, and she became a star of pornographic movies and a heroin addict. Her addiction finally drives her to sell Matt Murdock's secret identity for a shot of heroin. This information eventually reaches the Kingpin, who proceeds to test it. Over the next six months, he uses his vast influence to hound Murdock, causing his accounts to be frozen by the IRS, the bank to foreclose on his house and in general make Murdock's life increasingly unbearable. He even manipulates police lieutenant Nicholas Manolis into testifying that he saw Murdock pay a witness to perjure himself in a case. In the resulting trial, Murdock manages to avoid a jail term, but he is barred from practicing law. The Kingpin skillfully ruins Murdock's life piece by piece, but Murdock cannot see his handiwork—instead, he is convinced that he is simply unlucky and that there is no enemy for him to fight except for his increasingly desperate and violent attempts to investigate this situation. The Kingpin eventually exposes himself when he has Murdock's house firebombed—a signature mob act. Unfortunately, by now Murdock has become unhinged. He has trouble differentiating between his fantasies and the real world. He is homeless and destitute, and now believes he has no friends. He even thinks that his former girlfriend Glorianna O'Breen and his best friend and business partner Foggy Nelson are a part of a complex, all-encompassing conspiracy against him. Meanwhile, Murdock's confidant, Ben Urich, the Daily Bugle reporter, is investigating his friend's plight and finds evidence of the Kingpin's involvement. The Kingpin learns of this and has Urich's source killed and Urich's hand broken in order to intimidate him into silence. This cows Urich into keeping quiet and Murdock is left on his own. The now delusional Murdock decides to attack the Kingpin directly and force him to return his life. On the way, he brutally assaults three would-be robbers in a subway train and then beats up a police officer who attempts to arrest him and takes the officer's nightstick. In his weakened and confused state, he is allowed to enter the Kingpin's office, where he is quickly and brutally beaten by the crime lord. The badly hurt and unconscious Murdock is drenched in whiskey, strapped into a taxi cab whose owner is beaten to death with the billy club Murdock stole from the cop, and the taxi is pushed off a pier into the East River. The Kingpin anticipates that, when the car is eventually found, Murdock's reputation will suffer the final blow. The Kingpin revels in the knowledge that he has completely disgraced, destroyed and murdered the only good man he ever knew. When the taxi is finally found, there is no corpse. Instead of drowning, Murdock managed to smash the windshield and, in a supreme show of will, cut the safety belt with one of the fragments and swam to safety. Badly injured, Murdock stumbles through New York's Hell's Kitchen. An attempt to stop a robbery ends with Murdock stabbed by one of the assailants. He eventually ends up being rescued by his mother, who, having not been in Matt's life for decades, has become a nun at a local church. She nurses him back to health. At the same time, Karen Page – now hunted by Kingpin's men as part of Kingpin's orders to kill anyone who possessed knowledge of Murdock's secret identity—arrives in New York with an abusive drug dealer named Paulo Scorcese, intent on finding Murdock. She's unable to locate him, but meets up with Foggy Nelson, who takes her to his home in an effort to protect her from Paulo. Meanwhile, Urich manages to regain his courage and comes forward with his investigation, alerting his paper and the authorities of the situation. In the meantime, the Kingpin becomes increasingly obsessed with finding Murdock. He arranges for a violent mental patient to be released from an asylum, dress up as Daredevil and kill both Nelson and Page in an effort to provoke Murdock into resurfacing. In the meantime, the nurse who killed Urich's source attempts to kill Urich as well. Murdock intervenes in both plots, defeats the nurse and the patient, takes the latter's costume and proceeds to save Page from both Scorcese and another hitman sent by the Kingpin. The two are reunited and Matt comforts Karen with the fact that he has moved beyond regretting losing his material possessions. In a major misstep, the Kingpin uses his military connections to procure America's super soldier, Nuke, whom he sends to assault Hell's Kitchen. In a climactic battle, dozens of civilians die while Matt responds as Daredevil for the first time since the destruction of his home. Nuke uses heavy weaponry against Daredevil, who is plagued with not only the challenge of fighting an inhumanly formidable opponent, but the awareness through his enhanced senses of the casualties caused every time Nuke's weapons are fired. In the end, Daredevil defeats Nuke and, in an uncharacteristic move to stop the slaughter, uses Nuke's weapon to destroy an assault helicopter that supported Nuke and further threatened civilians, thereby killing the pilot. The Avengers arrive at the scene and take Nuke into custody. Captain America, however, is not pleased with the situation. Although the authorities claim that Nuke is a terrorist, the Captain is not convinced, especially after a discussion with Murdock, who tells him that the assailant's body was heavily enhanced. As America's original super soldier, the Captain is appalled that a violent, musclebound, insane man with little regard for the lives of civilians like Nuke may be the country's latest super soldier. Unsatisfied with the evasive answers given to him by Nuke's superiors, he breaks into the base's computer files to discover more about Nuke. He turns out to be the only surviving test subject of a severely flawed attempt to recreate Project Rebirth, the same project that originally enhanced the Captain's own body. Enraged by the treatment he is receiving in the media, Nuke breaks free from custody in the same base and runs amok in an attempt to attack the offices of the Daily Bugle. He is stopped by the Captain, but is subsequently shot and injured in an attack by the military. Daredevil comes to help and, while Captain America covers his exit, he attempts to get Nuke to a hospital, but Nuke dies in transit. Daredevil then takes Nuke to the offices of the Bugle, as irrefutable proof of the Kingpin's widespread influence in the military. In the end, the Kingpin's public image as an honest and respectable businessman and pillar of community is shattered, although he manages to avoid imprisonment while he plans for his revenge on Murdock. For his part, Matt Murdock accepts and enjoys a new, different but apparently fulfilling life in Hell's Kitchen with Karen Page and expresses no regret over the loss of his previous lifestyle as a successful lawyer.
1646387	/m/05k9q5	Radix	A. A. Attanasio	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Radix is the story of a young man's odyssey of self-discovery, from dangerous adolescent to warrior, from outcast to near-god, in a far-future Earth dramatically changed from the one we know.
1646816	/m/05kbxn	Are You Afraid of the Dark?	Sidney Sheldon	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In four cities across the world, four people die violently and mysteriously. The dead share a single crucial link: each was connected to an all-powerful environmental think tank. Two of the victims' widows—accomplished artist Diane Stevens and international supermodel Kelly Harris—may hold the key to their husbands' demise. Terrified for their lives, suspicious of each other, and armed only with their own wits and guile, they must join forces in a nightmare cycle of they loved...and about an awesome conspiracy whose ultimate target is as big as the earth and as close as the air we breathe.
1648332	/m/05kgsr	The Minister's Wooing	Harriet Beecher Stowe		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is set in New England in a town called Newport. Dr. Hopkins is a 40-year-old minister. Mary is the daughter of his hostess in town, and Hopkins soon falls in love with Mary. Mary is unable to return his affections because she is still in love with James Marvyn, a sailor presumed lost at sea. Mary is a very religious and saintly girl, so after a period of mourning, she decides that she will marry Dr. Hopkins. Mary has other suitors, including Aaron Burr, but she sees that even though he is the grandson of Jonathan Edwards and has been raised in Calvinism, he is mired in evil. James eventually returns from sea and Dr. Hopkins knows that he cannot compete with Mary's love for James. Hopkins calls off the marriage, and Mary and James are free to marry and live happily.
1649382	/m/05kkyr	Anil's Ghost	Michael Ondaatje	2000-03-30	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens up in early March as Anil arrives in Sri Lanka after a 15 year absence abroad. Her visit comes as a result of the increasing number of deaths in Sri Lanka from all the warring sides in the 1980s' civil war. While on an expedition with archeologist Sarath, Anil notices that the bones of a certain skeleton do not seem to be 6th century like the rest which leads her to conclude that the skeleton must be a recent death. Unsure where Sarath’s political allegiance lies, Anil is skeptical of his help, but agrees to it anyway. Along their journey to identify the skeleton, nicknamed Sailor, Anil becomes increasingly suspicious of Sarath. She begins to question his motives and sees his comments as a hint for her to censor herself since their discovery would implicate the Sri Lankan government in the death of Sailor. Later, Anil and Sarath visit his former teacher, Palipana, hoping to have him confirm their suspicions. Palipana then suggests having a reconstruction of the face done so that others might identify him. They agree to do so and head on to a small village named Galapitigama. There Anil meets Sarath's brother, Gamini, an emergency doctor. She discovers that he is intricately involved in the country's affairs and daily struggles to save the lives of numerous victims. Gamini helps them with a fellow Sri Lankan whose hands have been nailed to a road, and tells them about the various atrocities citizens face as a result of the civil war. Later Anil and Sarath meet with Ananda, on the advice of Palipana, hoping that he will be able to reconstruct the face of Sailor for them. Ananda does so after some days, despite Anil's impatience and skepticism, and then almost immediately attempts suicide, only to be rescued by an intuitive and quick-thinking Anil. Anil and Sarath eventually are able to identify Sailor in a small village. As Anil prepares a report to present to the authorities, claiming the skeleton as a recent death, and therefore evidence of state or state-sponsored terrorism, the skeleton of Sailor disappears. Frustrated, she goes on with her presentation, using another skeleton, but is upset when Sarath arrives after a lengthy and mysterious absence to ridicule her efforts and claim that she cannot back up her claims with the skeleton she has. Angry and betrayed, on her way out Anil is frequently stopped and inspected, and her belongings and research seized, such that by the time she leaves the building she is left with nothing. Outside, she meets Sarath, who surprises her with the body of Sailor that he has placed in a van. Sarath instructs Anil to prepare a fake report for the government and then leave the country the next morning on a plane that he arranged. Relieved, Anil does so in the hope that the evidence will be sufficient. Sarath's actions, however, have severe consequences, leading ultimately to his death. The novel ends with Ananda sculpting the eyes of a Buddha statue.
1649691	/m/05klt_	Son of a Witch	Gregory Maguire	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 Oatsie Manglehand, a woman who leads the Grasstrail Train, discovers the body of a young man, badly bruised and near death, by the side of a road in the Vinkus. The Vinkus has lately become dangerous due to "scrapings", mysterious killings that involve the removal of the head's facial features, but this man's face has not been scraped. Oatsie brings the man to the Cloister of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows. The Superior Maunt recognizes the young man and identifies him as Liir, the young boy who left the Cloister with Elphaba a decade or so ago. The narrative is not chronological for the first part of the book: in the first two sections ("Under the Jackal Moon" and "The Service") the narrative shifts between the time when Liir left Kiamo Ko after the death of Elphaba to the time when Candle and Liir leave the Cloister. The second two sections ("The Emperor Apostle" and "No Place Like It") tell the story chronologically from Candle and Liir's arrival at Apple Press Farm to the end. An explanation for this narrative structure in the first part of the book is provided by references that Candle, in playing the domingon while Liir is in his coma-like state, is "guiding" him through his recollection of his past, and to the numerous and complex references in the novel to connections between past and present in the lives of individuals. After Elphaba's death in Wicked, Liir accompanies Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and Toto back to the Emerald City. While traveling, they meet Princess Nastoya, the leader of the Scrow, a Vinkus tribe. Nastoya is an Elephant who, because of the Wizard's pogrom against Animals, availed herself of a witch's charm that enabled her to transform into a human. Nastoya is slowly dying, and she asks Liir to find a way to enable her return to Elephant form before she dies. In return, she promises that she will try to learn about the fate of Nor, Fiyero's daughter, who, with her family, was taken by the Wizard's forces. When they reach the Emerald City, the others go off to receive what they were promised by the Wizard, leaving Liir alone. Liir becomes convinced that Nor is in Southstairs, a subterranean city that operates as a maximum-security prison, and seeks the aid of Glinda, appointed acting ruler of Oz after the Wizard's departure. She enables Liir to access Southstairs by arranging a meeting with Shell, Elphaba's younger brother. Shell, who undertakes 'missions of mercy' in Southstairs, which involves 'comforting' female prisoners by injecting them with extract of poppy flower and taking sex as payment, brings him to the Under-Mayor, Chyde. When Chyde takes Liir to find Nor, they learn that Nor has recently escaped, by hiding in the carcasses of some slaughtered Horned Hogs. Liir leaves Southstairs by flying out (via the "original geological bucket" at the middle of Southstairs) on Elphaba's broom. After living on the streets of the Emerald City for a time, Liir manages to enlist in the Home Guard. After a number of years in the service, his and three other companies (known as the "Seventh Spear"), led by Commander Cherrystone, are deployed to Qhoyre in Quadling Country, ostensibly to find those responsible for the kidnapping of the Viceroy and his wife and to maintain order, but imperatively to show some strength against the Quadlings for their lack of interest in the disappearance of the Viceroy. Their quietism and general deferential nature, however, prevent the Seventh Spear from needing to display any force. Over time, the unit comes to absorb the laid-back nature of the inhabitants, and the authorities in Emerald City become critical about their laxness, ordering them to get back on mission immediately. To adopt an appearance of keeping the Quadlings in line, and in desperation, Commander Cherrystone provokes the village of Bengda into refusing to pay an exorbitant fine and orders Liir to lead a secret operation to burn the village. In the operation, many of the villagers including women and children are burned to death or drowned, and Liir, having witnessed this, deserts. Liir learns later that the Quadlings attacked and killed most of the Seventh Spear, and that dragons were then sent to punish the Quadlings. Liir returns to Kiamo Ko, where Chistery, Elphaba's Flying Snow Monkey, and her elderly Nanny are still living. While there, a badly injured Princess of the Swans lands, having been attacked by a predator she does not know the name of. Before she dies, she asks Chistery to take her place at a Conference of the Birds she has called. Although Chistery says he cannot go, Liir decides that since Elphaba would have attended the Conference, he will go in her stead. While flying on Elphaba's broom to reach the Conference, however, Liir is attacked by dragons and falls to earth, where he is found by Oatsie Manglehand. The Superior Maunt of the Cloister of Saint Glinda decides to appoint Candle, a young Quadling girl, to watch over Liir and soothe him by playing on her domingon, a Quadling guitar-like instrument. When Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire object, she informs them that she is sending them into the Vinkus to investigate the perpetrators of the scrapings of some novice maunts who were doing missionary work there. They encounter the Yunamata tribe and Princess Nastoya and the Scrow, who each accuse the other of perpetrating the scrapings. It becomes evident to the Sisters that neither tribe is responsible. When Candle believes that Liir is dying and is about to get help, an old maunt, Mother Yackle, stops her and locks her in the room with Liir. In a desperate attempt to save him, she performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the boy, wraps him in her clothes and ultimately ends up raping him. Mother Yackle later unlocks the door, and, when the Superior Maunt and the newly returned Sisters Doctor and Apothecaire enter the sickroom, Candle and Liir are gone. The pair take up residence in a deserted farmhouse, which Candle names "Apple Press Farm." When he is fully recovered, Liir goes to the Conference of the Birds. As the Princess of the Swans had told Chistery, the Birds had until now been little concerned with the fate of other Animals under the Wizard's anti-Animal laws because, being flying creatures, they were relatively safe. However, the Birds were a potential threat to the Emerald City's efforts to divide those groups who might oppose them, like the tribes of the Vinkus and the Munchkinlanders, because they can see and report on what is going on throughout Oz. This is why the dragons are attacking Birds, and why the Conference is huddled up in Kumbricia's Pass, afraid to fly. The Conference wants Liir to destroy the dragons and recover the broom (taken by the dragons) in order to become their human ambassador, a request that Liir reluctantly agrees to fulfill. Returning to Apple Press Farm, Candle tells him she is pregnant. Liir insists he never had sex with her, so he cannot be the father, but Candle insists that he did and he is, and explains that she had sex with him while he was unconscious, although Liir remains unconvinced. Arriving back in the Emerald City, he meets Trism bon Cavalish, the soldier who had told him how to get into the Home Guard, who, he remembers, was a Minor Menacier involved in dragon husbandry. To Liir's disgust, Trism informs him that the Emperor Apostle, the current ruler of Oz, is none other than a born-again Shell. Trism is psychologically shattered because of his responsibility for training the dragons to perform their killing missions (including the scrapings), but, as chief dragon master, feels trapped, fearing for his and his family's life if he resists. Trism reveals the dragons are sent out to terrorize the population of Oz and ensure submission to the Emperor's authority. Liir convinces Trism to help him destroy the dragons, and after poisoning their food, they recover Elphaba's broom and cloak and flee the City. Liir leaves a note saying he has kidnapped Trism, signing himself "Liir, son of Elphaba." During their flight, Liir and Trism become lovers. They eventually end up at the Cloister of Saint Glinda, where Commander Cherrystone and the Home Guard besiege them. The mauntery is spared from attack because Glinda is staying there on retreat. With her help, they come up with a plan for the pair's escape: Liir will fly away on his broom, while Trism will leave with Glinda, disguised as her servant. Returning to the Conference of Birds, Liir flies about Oz, collecting and training a huge flock of Birds, which he leads to the Emerald City. Over the City, they fly in formation as a huge representation of the Witch, with Liir as "the keen black eye of the Witch." Returning to Apple Press Farm, Liir finds that Princess Nastoya and the Scrow have come. Candle informs him that Trism had earlier come to the farm and left, having unsuccessfully tried to persuade her to flee with him, telling her he was afraid Commander Cherrystone and the Home Guard would come looking for him. Liir comes up with the idea that Candle's music might release Nastoya from her human form, and he is correct: he has hung around Nastoya the preserved faces of scraping victims that he and Trism stole after poisoning the dragons (which were going to be displayed as an example of what would happen to those who defied the Emperor), and with Candle playing accompaniment, the faces sing about their lives. Somehow, this allows Nastoya to return to her Elephant form and she dies. The new ruler of the Scrow insists Liir accompany the Scrow and the Princess's body back into the Vinkus, in case they encounter the Yunamata. They do, but the Yunamata only pay their respects to the dead Nastoya and leave. When returning home, it suddenly dawns on Liir that the 'ELPHABA LIVES!" graffiti he has seen in the Emerald City is in Nor's handwriting. When he arrives at Apple Press Farm, Candle is gone, but he finds wrapped in Elphaba's cloak a newborn baby who he initially thinks is dead but revives under his care. Holding the baby up to the rain to wash away the birth blood, she "cleans up green."
1651319	/m/05kr21	Pudd'nhead Wilson	Mark Twain	1894	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The setting is the fictional Missouri frontier town of Dawson's Landing on the banks of the Mississippi River in the first half of the 19th century. David Wilson, a young lawyer, moves to town and a clever remark of his is misunderstood, which causes locals to brand him a "pudd'nhead"a nitwit. His hobby of collecting fingerprints does not raise his standing in the townsfolk's eyes, who see him as an eccentric and do not frequent his law practice. Puddn'head Wilson moves into the background as the focus shifts to the slave Roxy, her son, and the family they serve. Roxy is only one-sixteenth black, and her son Valet de Chambre (referred to as "Chambers") is only 1/32 black. Roxy is principally charged with caring for her inattentive master's infant son Tom Driscoll, who is the same age as her own son. After fellow slaves are caught stealing and are nearly sold "down the river", to a master further south, Roxy fears for her life and the life of her son. First she decides to kill herself and Chambers to avoid being sold down the river, but then decides instead to switch Chambers and Tom in their cribs so that her son will live a life of privilege. The narrative moves forward two decades, and Tom Driscoll (formerly Valet de Chambre), believing himself to be wholly white and raised as a spoiled aristocrat, has grown to be a selfish and dissolute young man. Tom's father has died and granted Roxy her freedom. Roxy worked for a time on river boats, and saved money for her retirement. When she finally is able to retire, she discovers that her bank has failed and all of her savings are gone. She returns to Dawson's Landing to ask for money from Tom. Tom meets Roxy with derision and Roxy tells him that he is her son, and uses this fact to blackmail him into financially supporting her. Twin Italian noblemen visit the town to some fanfare, a murder is committed, and the story takes on the form of a crime novel. "The reader knows from the beginning who committed the murder, and the story foreshadows how the crime will be solved. The circumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not then come into official use in crime detection in the United States. Even a man who fooled around with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a 'pudd'nhead'." (From Langston Hughes' introduction to the novel) The story describes the racism of the antebellum south, even as to seemingly white people with minute traces of African ancestry, and the acceptance of that state of affairs by all involved, including the black population.
1651659	/m/05krzm	Heart of a Dog	Mikhail Bulgakov	1925	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Moscow, 1925. While foraging for trash one winter day, a stray dog is found by a cook and scalded with boiling water. Lying forlorn in a doorway, the dog awaits his end awash in thoughts of self-pity. To his surprise, successful surgeon Filip Filippovich Preobrazhensky arrives and offers the dog a piece of sausage. Overjoyed, the dog follows Filip back to his flat, where he is given the stock dog name, Sharik. At the house, Sharik gets to know Dr. Preobrazhensky's household, which includes the medical student Bormental and two female servants. Despite the Professor's blatant anti-communism, his frequent medical treatment of the CPSU leadership makes him untouchable. As a result, he refuses to decrease his seven room flat and treats the Bolsheviks on the housing committee, led by Shvonder, with unveiled contempt. Impressed by his new master, Sharik slips easily into the role of "a gentleman's dog." After several days, one of the servants begins taking Sharik for walks through Moscow. Preening in his new collar, Sharik is unmoved by the taunts of a passing stray. After his health improves, the Professor at last reveals his real intentions in taking in Sharik. As the laboratory is prepped, he orders Sharik locked in the bathroom. As a seething Sharik plots to again destroy the Professor's stuffed owl, the door opens and he is dragged by the scruff of the neck into the lab. There, he is sedated and an operation begins. As Bormental assists, the Professor trepans Sharik's skull and gives him a human pituitary gland. Sharik's torso is also opened and he is given human testicles. Only repeated injections of adrenaline prevent the dog from dying on the operating table. During the weeks after the operation, the household is stunned as Sharik begins transforming into an incredibly unkempt human. After building an alliance with Shvonder, the former canine is granted papers under the absurd name "Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov." In the aftermath, the Professor and Bormental patiently attempt to teach Sharikov basic ettiquette. Instead, Sharikov mocks the idea of manners as relics of Tsarism. He insists that it is better to behave, as he puts it, "naturally." As a result, Sharikov curses in front of women, refuses to shave, and dresses like a complete slob. Meawhile, Sharikov progressively turns the Professor's life into a living hell. One day, he accidentally turns on the spigot while chasing a cat. With the bathroom door locked, the entire apartment is flooded. Later, he is caught attempting to rape one of the female servants. Enraged, Bormental beats Sharikov up and forces him to apologize. Infuriated, Sharikov leaves the apartment and remains gone for several days. Later, Bormental begs the Professor for permission to dose Sharikov with arsenic, calling him a man with "the heart of a dog." The Professor is horrified and orders Bormental not to "slander the dog." He explains that the human body parts, which came from a drunken Proletarian, are responsible for all of Sharikov's defects. Bormental then suggests that they redo the operation, using the body of a genius. Again the Professor refuses, explaining that the operation was meant to improve the Human race. Breaking with his former beliefs, the Professor admits that any peasant woman could give birth to a genius and that eugenics are therefore a waste of time. In conclusion, the Professor refuses to permit Sharikov's murder or to undo the operation, which could easily kill him as well. Soon after, Sharikov returns, explaining that he has been granted a job by the Soviet State. He now spends his work-day strangling vagrant cats, whose fur is used to imitate that of squirrels. Soon after Sharikov brings home a female co-worker, whom he introduces to the Professor as his new common law wife. Instead of giving them their own room as Sharikov demands, the Professor takes the woman aside and explains that Sharikov is the product of a lab experiment gone horribly wrong. The woman, who had believed that Sharikov was a Red Army veteran maimed during the Russian Civil War, leaves the apartment in tears. Seething with hatred, Sharikov threatens to fire her. Again Bormental beats Sharikov up and makes him promise not to do anything of the sort. The following day, a senior Party official arrives and informs the Professor that Sharikov has denounced him to the secret police, or CHEKA. Explaining that nothing is going to happen to him due to the State's distrust of Sharikov, the Party official departs. When Sharikov returns, the Professor and Bormental order him to leave the flat permanently. Instead, Sharikov refuses and draws a revolver. Enraged, the Professor and Bormental pounce upon him. That night, an ominous silence reigns in the flat and the lights are left on for many hours after bedtime. Over the days that follow, the Professor and Bormental look far more relaxed than at any time before Sharikov's arrival. Eventually, the police arrive escorted by Shvonder. Bearing a search warrant, they demand to see Sharikov on pain of arresting the Professor and Bormental. Unintimidated, the Professor orders Bormental to summon Sharikov, who is slowly being transformed back into a dog. The Professor explains the change as a natural phenomenon, although it is obvious to the reader that in fact he and Bormental have simply performed the reverse operation. Followed by the now apoplectic Shvonder, the police depart. In the aftermath, the fully canine Sharik blissfully resumes his status as a gentleman's dog. However, he is soon terrified to see the Professor bringing home a human brain and removing the pituitary gland...
1651705	/m/05ks3p	Scandal	A. N. Wilson		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the early 1980s, Scandal is about Derek Blore, an MP who, as a public figure, pays lip service to traditional values such as marriage, family and religion while at the same time paying for kinky sex with a young prostitute who is too stupid to realize who he really is. A few years earlier that girl, Bernadette Woolley, left her home town of Bognor Regis after an argument with her mother, went to London, advertised her services in a sleazy shop in Notting Hill, and had her first sexual intercourse, at 17, with her first customer. Now Bernadette has her own flat in Hackney where she can work undisturbed, and a pimp looking after her, Stan Costigano. Without Bernadette knowing let alone caring about it, her apartment has been equipped with video cameras and microphones which can be used to compromise, and eventually blackmail, her customers. Soon the people who pull the strings behind the scenes have Blore on tape&mdash;a long-term victim of his public school education, in shorts, on his knees, begging to be caned by his "teacher", Bernadette. As it happens&mdash;this is the time of the Cold War&mdash;Costigano's employers have a direct link to the Soviet embassy, where each of the politician's clandestine visits to Hackney is secretly registered. When he becomes a secretary of state in the new government Blore finally stops seeing Bernadette because it dawns upon him that now the risk of being found out is just too high. However, Derek Blore's downfall does not come about through Soviet intervention or through a political opponent seeing him enter or leave Bernadette's flat. Rather, it is his beautiful and absolutely loyal yet promiscuous wife Priscilla whose indiscretion towards her current lover, a journalist called Henry Feathers, triggers the "Blore Affair". ("Priscilla did not sleep with every man in London. When Feathers seduced her, it was a whole eighteen months since she had been unfaithful to Derek.") One day, after their lovemaking, she casually tells the journalist about the morning when her husband's "whore" came to see him at home. Reckoning that the story will be a scoop, Feathers composes a series of articles which finally appear in mid-summer, while the Blores are on a family holiday in France. Denying all allegations, Derek Blore is intent on sitting out his ordeal ("I've been in politics now for twenty-five years. And I hope I'm going to be in politics for a further twenty-five years.") and also announces that he is of course planning to sue Feathers and his newspaper. However, the Prime Minister is informed of the true state of affairs, knows that Blore is lying, and has him arrested while he is taking part in a rural pageant in his capacity as a church warden.
1653137	/m/05kwxx	The Holcroft Covenant	Robert Ludlum	1978-07-27	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel concerns Noel Holcroft, New York architect—and secretly the son of Heinrich Clausen, chief economic advisor to the Third Reich. At some point in the 1970s, Holcroft is contacted by the Grande Banque de Geneve, concerning his father's will and testament. The testament says that in the last half of the war, Clausen found out about the Holocaust. Horrified and desperate to make amends, he and his two friends stole vast amounts of money from thousands of individual sources throughout the Reich and funneled them into a secure account in Zurich, Switzerland. Now, if Holcroft will contact the children of the two friends, they can form a group to distribute the funds and alleviate some of the pain of the Holocaust. Ranged against him in this noble endeavor is the last trace of the Third Reich: the children of Projekt Sonnenkinder. In the dying days of the war, a vast search went out throughout Germany. The children of Germany's finest, screened for physical and psychological frailties, were sent to isolated hamlets and right-wing communities all over the world by airplane and U-boat. They were raised, provided for, and indoctrinated. Those who showed promise were inducted into the conspiracy by their elders; those that weren't were "removed." They have waited thirty years for the funds so as to finally take over the world. Their leader, the Tinamou, is the world's deadliest assassin. As Holcroft attempts to carry out what he believes to be the noble, secret mission of his biological father, he is continuously blindsided as good guys turn out to be bad guys, bad guys turn out to be good guys, and Holcroft, who has no training whatsoever in intelligence, is forced to learn on the job.
1655469	/m/05l1cl	The Power Broker	Robert Caro	1974	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Caro traces Moses's life from his childhood in Gay Nineties Connecticut to his early years as an idealistic advocate for Progressive reform of the city's corrupt civil service system. Moses's failures there, and later experience working for future governor of New York Al Smith in the New York State Assembly and future New York Mayor Jimmy Walker in the State Senate, taught him how power really worked, that he needed it to make his dreams of roads and bridges for the city reality, and that ideals and principles had to be set aside if necessary to make them happen, Caro says. By the 1930s, he had earned a reputation as a creator of beautiful parks in both the city and state, and later long-sought projects like the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, but at the price of his earlier integrity. Caro ultimately paints a portrait of Moses as an unelected bureaucrat who, through his reputation for getting large construction projects done, amassed so much power over the years that the many elected officials whom he was supposedly responsive to instead became dependent on him. He consistently favored automobile traffic over mass transit, human and community needs, and while making a big deal of the fact that he served in his many public jobs (save as New York City Parks Commissioner) without compensation, lived like a king and similarly enriched those individuals in public and private life who aided him. While Caro pays ample tribute to Moses's intelligence, political shrewdness, eloquence and hands-on, if somewhat aggressive, management style, and indeed gives full credit to Moses for his earlier achievements, it is clear from the book's introduction onward that Caro's view of Moses is ambivalent (some of the readers of The Power Broker would conclude that Caro possessed only contempt for his subject). At 1,336 pages (only two-thirds of the original manuscript), it provides documentation of its assertions in most instances, which Moses (and his supporters after his death) have consistently attempted to refute. Because Caro's narrative includes a great deal of history about New York City itself, the book is considered by many to be a monumental scholarly work in its own right, transcending the normal style of a biography that focuses on the life of a single person.
1656376	/m/05l32c	A Tiger for Malgudi	R. K. Narayan	1983	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The tiger recounts his story of capture by a [circus] owner, and his eventual escape. He lived freely in the wild jungles of India in his youth. He mates and has a litter with a tigress, and raises a litter until one day he finds that hunters have captured and killed his entire family. He exacts revenge by attacking and eating the cattle and livestock of nearby villages, but is captured by poachers. He is sent to a zoo in Malgudi, where a harsh animal trainer known only as "the Captain" starves him and forces him to do tricks in the circus. He lives in captivity successfully for some time, but eventually his wild instincts overcome him and he mauls and kills the Captain. After an extended rampage though town, he is recaptured, but this time voluntarily by a monk/renunciant with whom he passes the rest of his life on the hills. hi:ए टाइगर फ़ॉर मालगुडी
1656906	/m/05l4jg	The End of Alice				 The child killer &ndash; identified only as "Chappy" &ndash; who narrates most of the novel, has been in prison for 23 years. Now in his 50s and with a parole hearing approaching, he receives a letter from an unnamed 19-year-old girl who takes a morbid interest in his case. She then begins to relate how she plans on seducing a 12-year-old boy named Matthew who lives in her neighbourhood. The girl corresponds with him and the man’s past is contrasted with explicit details of how she seduces Matthew, a typical young boy with many of the unattractive habits a 12-year-old can have, plus a few uniquely disgusting ones of his own creation. Chappy encourages her, and the girl soon accomplishes her mission by first giving Matthew tennis lessons and then, when she babysits him, strips naked and gives him a quick hands-on lesson in feminine biology. The pair soon have sex and continue to do so on regular occasions. Chappy eagerly reads the girl's letters as she describes her successes, although he also berates her for her poor grammar and for her liberal use of exclamation points. There are several scenes of prison sex. During the novel, Chappy makes frequent references to "Alice," his victim, but it is only towards the end of the book that he finally elaborates. Alice was a 12-year-old girl with whom he had a sexual relationship. At the very end of the story, during his parole hearing, we find out the convict brutally murdered and decapitated Alice after she blamed him for her bleeding, which was actually her period (she didn't know what it was). He tried to explain to her what had happened, but she kept threatening to kill him. The novel also references Chappy's childhood, especially his unstable, emotionally and sexually abusive mother.
1657850	/m/05l6qn	Protector	Larry Niven	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel comprises two phases in the same space that are separated by 220 years of time. Its central conceit is that humans evolved from the juvenile stage of the Pak, a species with a distinct adult form ("protectors") that have superhuman strength and intelligence and care only about younger Pak of their bloodline. A key plot point is that transition to the protector stage is mediated by consumption of the root of a particular plant called Tree-of-Life, which cannot be effectively cultivated on Earth. The species is described in greater detail below. The implication, never explicitly stated, is that the Tree of Life in Paradise, mentioned in the Bible's Book of Genesis, represents a vague memory of that plant. The first half of the book follows the path of a Pak named Phssthpok who has travelled from the Pak homeworld in search of a colony of Pak in the distant system of Sol (our solar system). Upon his arrival, he captures a Belter (a worker from the asteroid belt) named Jack Brennan, who is infected by Phssthpok's store of tree-of-life root and is transformed into a protector (or at least a human variant). They land on Mars where Brennan kills Phssthpok and is rescued by two humans, Nick Sohl and Lucas Garner, who had set out to meet the alien. The first half of the novel ends with Brennan telling his story to the humans before he heads for the outer reaches of the solar system. The second half of the book follows the path of a human named Roy Truesdale who has been abducted with no memory of the event. While searching for his abductor, he befriends a Belter named Alice Jordan who helps him figure out that the man he has sought is none other than Jack Brennan. Truesdale and Jordan find Brennan in the outer solar system on a fabricated world of Brennan's design called Kobold. Brennan discovers that a Pak invasion fleet is headed towards human space and takes Truesdale to a human outpost colony called Home in an effort to divert attention away from Earth. During their journey they battle with scout ships from the Pak fleet. Brennan and Truesdale arrive at Home only to have Truesdale realize that Brennan plans to convert the colony into a defensive Human Protector army. Truesdale kills Brennan and lands on Home, but is himself infected with a mutated strain of the Tree-of-Life virus that quickly spreads to a number of other colonists, thus carrying out Brennan's plan despite Truesdale's initial attempts to thwart it. Upon his conversion to protector form, Truesdale immediately understands the necessity of Brennan's plan and completes it by breaking out of hospital confinement and infecting the entire population of Home. The modified virus either kills or converts the remaining inhabitants, resulting in an army of childless protectors. The new protectors know that they absolutely must act quickly to save the rest of humanity, and start preparing for battle with the Pak invasion fleet. As an aside, it is mentioned that during his sojourn in the outer Solar System Brennan had engineered a genocide on Mars, sending a large ice asteroid to crash into the planet in order to raise the water content of its atmosphere. Water is lethal to the Martians' metabolism, thus this effectively wiped out the species. This incident serves to underscore the Pak Protectors' inherent xenophobia and utter ruthlessness in pursuing their ultimate goal of protecting their descendants. The events which impelled Brennan to this action are those narrated in How the Heroes Die and At the Bottom of a Hole, two short 1966 stories which Niven originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction and later collected in Inconstant Moon.
1659730	/m/05ld6n	Ignited Minds	Abdul Kalam			 *The book begins with a sad note. On 30 September 2001, Kalam’s helicopter, while on its way from Ranchi, Jharkhand state, India to Bokaro crashed, but all aboard miraculously survived. He was administered that night a tranquilizer, and he recalls having seen a very vivid dream. He writes in the book that he saw himself in a desert “with miles of sand all around,’ and there stood five men, namely, Emperor Ashoka, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln and Caliph Omar. Kalam felt dwarfed by their presence, and recounts the words of these great personalities. *The next chapter emphasises the importance of mother, father and elementary school teachers as role models. *The third chapter tells that "Vision ignites the minds", and talks about the modern Indian visionaries like J. R. D. Tata, Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan and Dr. Verghese Kurien. *The next section of the book deals with the spiritual heritage of the Indian nation and talks about developing a model of development based on India's inherent strengths. *The fifth chapter of the book exhorts the Indians, constituting a nation of one billion people "with multitude faiths and ideologies" to develop a "national vision" and amalgamate into one "national forum." *The next chapter begins with a Thirukkural, which states: "Wisdom is a weapon to ward off destruction;It is an inner fortress which enemies cannot destroy". This chapter reminds the readers that Ancient India was a "knowledge society that contributed a great deal to civilization." *The caption line of the seventh chapter is followed by the following inspiring words of Abraham Lincoln: "Determine that things can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way." *The eighth chapter exhorts for a change in the mindset and to take pragmatic risks, which shall result into success. *The ninth and the last chapter, with the caption line of "To My Countrymen" begins with few words of the Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore - "let my country awake." *The book ends with a "Song of Youth", with these opening words: "As a young citizen of India&nbsp;,armed with technology and love for my nation,I realize, a small aim is a crime."
1660387	/m/05lg2_	2001: A Space Odyssey	Arthur C. Clarke	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the background to the story in the book, an ancient and unseen alien race uses a device with the appearance of a large crystalline monolith to investigate worlds all across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life. The book shows one such monolith appearing in ancient Africa, 3 million years B.C. (in the movie, this was altered to 4 million years), where it inspires a starving group of the hominid ancestors of human beings to develop tools. The ape-men use their tools to kill animals and eat meat, ending their starvation. They then use the tools to kill a leopard that had been preying on them; the next day, the main ape character, Moon-Watcher, uses a club to kill the leader of a rival tribe. Moon-Watcher reflects that though he is now master of the world, he is unsure of what to do next—but he will think of something. The book suggests that the monolith was instrumental in awakening intelligence, and enabling the transition of the ape-men to a higher order, with the ability to fashion crude tools and thereby be able to hunt and forage for food in a much more efficient fashion. The book then leaps ahead a few million years to the year 1999, detailing Dr. Heywood Floyd's travel to Clavius Base on the Moon. Upon his arrival, Floyd attends a meeting. A lead scientist explains that they have found a magnetic disturbance in Tycho, one of the Moon's craters, designated Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One, or TMA-1. An excavation of the area has revealed a large black slab; it is precisely fashioned to a ratio of exactly 1:4:9, or 1²:2²:3²—that is to say that the thickness of the slab is exactly 1/4 of its width and 1/9 of its height. Such a construction rules out any naturally-occurring phenomena, and at three million years of age, it was not crafted by human hands. It is the first evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Floyd and a team of scientists drive across the moon to actually view TMA-1. They arrive just as sunlight hits upon it for the first time in three million years. It then sends a piercing radio transmission to the far reaches of the solar system. The signal is tracked to one of the moons of Saturn, Japetus (Iapetus), where an expedition is then planned to investigate. The book leaps forward 18 months to 2001 to the Discovery One mission to Saturn. Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Francis Poole are the only conscious human beings aboard Discovery One spaceship. Their three other colleagues are in a state of suspended animation, to be awakened when they near Saturn. The HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent computer addressed as "HAL," maintains the ship and is a vital part of life aboard. While Poole is receiving a birthday message from his family back home, HAL tells Bowman that the AE-35 unit of the ship is going to malfunction. The AE-35 unit is responsible for keeping their communication dish aimed at Earth; without it, receiving support would be impossible. Poole takes one of the extra-vehicular pods and swaps the AE-35 unit. But when Bowman conducts tests on the AE-35 unit that has been replaced, he determines that there was never anything wrong with it. Poole and Bowman become suspicious at HAL's refusal to admit that there could be something wrong with his failure detection sensors. HAL then claims that the replacement AE-35 unit will fail. Poole and Bowman radio back to Earth; they are told that there is most definitely something wrong with HAL, and are directed to disconnect him for analysis. These instructions are interrupted as the signal is broken. HAL informs them that the AE-35 unit has malfunctioned. Poole takes a pod outside the ship to bring in the failed AE-35 unit. As he is removing the unit, the pod, which he had left parked close by, on the ship's hull, begins moving toward him. He is powerless to move out of the way in time and is killed when his spacesuit is torn, exposing him to the vacuum of space. Bowman is shocked by Poole's death and is deeply distressed. He is unsure whether HAL, a machine, really could have killed Poole. He decides that he will need to wake up the other three astronauts. He has an argument with HAL, with HAL refusing to obey his orders to switch the hibernation pods to manual operation, insisting that Bowman is incapacitated. Bowman threatens to disconnect him if his orders are not obeyed, and HAL relents, giving him manual control to wake the sleeping scientists. But as Bowman begins to awaken his colleagues, he hears HAL open both airlock doors into space, venting the ship’s internal atmosphere. The air on board is lost to the vacuum of space. Bowman makes his way into a sealed emergency shelter, which has an isolated oxygen supply and spare spacesuit. He then puts on the spacesuit and re-enters the ship, knowing HAL to be a murderer. Bowman then laboriously shuts down HAL's consciousness, leaving intact his purely autonomic functions needed for power and life support. With the ship back in order, he manually re-establishes contact with Earth. He then learns that the true purpose of the mission is to explore Iapetus, the third-largest moon of Saturn, in the hope of contacting the society that buried the monolith on the Moon. Bowman learns that HAL had begun to feel guilty and conflicted about keeping the purpose of the mission from him and Poole, which ran contrary to his stated mission of gathering information and reporting it fully. This conflict had started to manifest itself in little errors. Given time, HAL might have been able to resolve this crisis peacefully, but when he was threatened with disconnection, he panicked and defended himself out of a belief that his very existence was at stake, having no concept of the state of sleep. Bowman spends months on the ship, alone, slowly approaching Iapetus. A return to Earth is now out of the question, as HAL's sudden decompression of Discovery severely damaged the ship's air filtration system, leaving Bowman with far less breathable air than either returning to Earth or waiting for a rescue ship would require, and hibernation is impossible without HAL to monitor it. During his long approach, he gradually notices a small black spot on the surface of Japetus. When he gets closer, he realizes that this is an immense black monolith, identical in shape to TMA-1, only much larger. The scientists back on Earth name this monolith "TMA-2," which Bowman points out is a double misnomer because it is not in the Tycho moon crater and gives off no magnetic anomaly whatsoever. He decides to go out in one of the extra-vehicular pods to make a closer inspection of the monolith. Programmed for just such an occurrence, the monolith reveals its true purpose as a star gate when it opens and pulls in Bowman's pod. Before he vanishes, Mission control hears him proclaim: "The thing's hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it's full of stars!" Bowman is transported via the monolith to an unknown star system. During this journey, he goes through a large interstellar switching station, and sees other species' spaceships going on other routes; he dubs it the 'Grand Central Station' of the universe. Bowman is given a wide variety of sights; from the wreckage of ancient civilizations to what appear to be life-forms, living on the surfaces of a binary star system. He is brought to what appears to be a nice hotel suite, carefully constructed from monitored television transmissions, and designed to make him feel at ease. Bowman goes to sleep. As he sleeps, his mind and memories are drained from his body, and he is made into a new immortal entity, a Star Child, that can live and travel in space. The Star Child then returns to our Solar System and to Earth. Once there, he detonates an orbiting nuclear warhead. Like Moon-Watcher three million years before, the Star Child is now master of the world and uncertain what to do next—but like Moon-Watcher, the Star Child too will think of something.
1661554	/m/05ljrt	Wintersmith	Terry Pratchett	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tiffany Aching, now 13 years old, is training with the witch Miss Treason. But when she takes Tiffany to witness the secret dark morris, the morris dance (performed wearing black clothes and octiron bells) that welcomes in the winter, Tiffany finds herself drawn into the dance and joins in. She finds herself face to face with the Wintersmith—winter himself—who mistakes her for the Summer Lady. He is enchanted by her, mystified by her presence. Unknowingly, Tiffany drops her silver horse pendant (a gift from Roland, the Baron's son) during the Dance. The Wintersmith uses the pendant to find Tiffany and give her back the pendant during their second encounter. From then on, he uses the pendant to find her and deliver his gifts. The elder witches, including Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, discover that the Wintersmith has been tracking her. Granny Weatherwax demands that she throw her silver horse pendant into Lancre Gorge. Things get trickier for Tiffany when she discovers she has some of the Summer Lady's powers—plants start to grow where she walks barefooted, and the Cornucopia appears, causing problems by spurting out food and animals. Before the problem with Tiffany and the Wintersmith is resolved, Miss Treason dies. The young witch Annagramma acquires Miss Treason's cottage, but she needs help from Tiffany and the other young witches before she can learn to cope on her own. Tiffany goes to live with Nanny Ogg. The Wintersmith decides that the reason Tiffany will not be his is that he is not human. Learning a simple rhyme from some children about what basic elements comprise a human body, he sets off to gather the correct ingredients. He makes himself a body out of these elements and pursues Tiffany, but without truly understanding what it is to be human. Granny Weatherwax instructs the Nac Mac Feegles, who watch Tiffany closely to protect their "big wee hag," to find a Hero, namely her childhood acquaintance and incipient love interest, Roland. Roland must descend into the underworld, guided by the Nac Mac Feegles, and awaken the real Lady Summer from her storybook slumber. But first the Feegles help Roland train to use a sword by providing him with a moving target (themselves inside a suit of armour). Roland and the Nac Mac Feegles go into the underworld where Roland fights creatures that feed on memories. He rescues the Summer Lady, who looks much like Tiffany and they flee back above ground. Meanwhile, the Wintersmith continues to cover the land with Tiffany-shaped snowflakes. The harsh, prolonged winter starts burying houses, blocking roads, and killing off the sheep of the Chalk. Hiding inside her father's house, Tiffany is surprised to find her silver pendant inside a fish that her brother, Wentworth, has caught. This allows the Wintersmith to discover where she is, and he takes her to his ice palace, where she ultimately manages to stop him, melting him with a kiss, and fulfilling the Dance of Seasons, in which Summer and Winter die and are reborn in turn.
1661561	/m/05ljtk	I Shall Wear Midnight			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tiffany is working as the Chalk's only witch in a climate of growing suspicion and prejudice: When the local Baron dies of poor health, she is accused of murder. Tiffany travels to Ankh-Morpork to inform the Baron's heir, Roland, who happens to be in the city with his fiancée Letitia. On the way Tiffany is attacked by the Cunning Man, a frightening figure who has holes where his eyes should be. In the city she meets Mrs Proust, the proprietor of Boffo's joke shop, where many witches buy their stereotypical-witch accoutrements. When they find Roland and Letitia the Nac Mac Feegles, who have as usual been following Tiffany, are accused of destroying a pub. Tiffany and Mrs Proust are arrested by Carrot and Angua, and (nominally) locked up - although it is mostly, in fact, for their protection as people start to resent witches. When they are released the next day, Tiffany meets Eskarina "Esk" Smith (not seen since the events of the third Discworld novel, Equal Rites), who explains to her that the Cunning Man was, a thousand years ago, an Omnian witch-finder, who had fallen in love with a witch. That witch, however, knew how evil the Cunning Man was. She was eventually burnt to death, but as she was being burned she trapped the Cunning Man in the fire as well. The Cunning Man became a demonic spirit of pure hatred, able to corrupt other minds with suspicion and hate. Esk announces that the Cunning Man is coming. Tiffany and the Feegles return to the Chalk, where they find the Baron's soldiers trying to dig up the Feegle mound. She stops them, and goes to see Roland, who throws her in a dungeon (which she locks on the inside, and is brought bacon, eggs, and coffee in the morning). It is later learned that the Cunning Man was responsible for these actions. She escapes, however, and goes to see Letitia, whom she discovers is also an untrained but talented witch. She sees the Cunning Man twice while at Letitia's home, and as guests begin to arrive at Roland and Letitia's wedding, the other witches start to arrive...so that if the Cunning Man takes over her body, they can kill her. The night before the wedding, Tiffany, Roland, Letitia and Preston (a castle guard whom Tiffany has befriended) meet at one of the fields that needs to be burned to clear it of stubble; Tiffany lures the Cunning Man into the flames and defeats him. After some discussions, the story then jumps forward a year where she is offered a beautiful black dress by Amber. We can see Preston, who is about as smart as Tiffany, showing his love for her and Tiffany reciprocating it.
1661883	/m/05lkl0	The Peshawar Lancers	S. M. Stirling	2002	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is October 2025. It has been 148 years since a series of comet impacts rendered life in the northern hemisphere unbearable, forcing the great empires of Eurasia to move south to survive. Athelstane King is an officer in the Peshawar Lancers, a cavalry and heavy infantry unit guarding the North-West Frontier province of the Viceroyalty of India, in the center of the Angrezi Raj. King, along with his friend, the Sikh Daffadar Narayan Singh, is ordered to go on medical leave after being wounded in battle against border raiders from the Emirate of Afghanistan. King comes from a well-to-do family, with a long tradition of service to the British Empire. King and Singh go to the officer's club near the city of Oxford (formerly Srinagar). King is especially eager to be with his Kashmiri mistress Hasamurti. While at the officer's club, he meets Imperial Political Services agent Sir Manfred Warburton, and an agent from distant France-outre-Mer, Henri de Vascogne. Vascogne is in the Raj to lay the groundwork for an arranged marriage between King-Emperor John II's daughter Sita and the heir to the throne of France-outre-mer. Warburton arranges for King to meet him in Delhi in one week. Meanwhile, trouble is brewing. Russian Okhrana agent Vladimir Obromovich Ignatieff and Sister of the True Dreamers Yasmini are on their way into the Raj to kill both Athelstane and his sister, Cassandra. On their way there, Yasmini dreams of literally being the Raj's sacred Mahatma Disraeli. Since she can dream of the future (as well as different outcomes), she is able to dream ways around the Imperial patrols. At the same time, Cassandra Mary Effingham King, devoted Whig and brilliant scientist is on her way home to Oxford from Delhi. She is heavily involved on a project to find ways to deflect another meteor, asteroid, or comet from impacting the earth. Ignatieff, disguised as an impious Muslim, makes a contract with Bengali separatists to kill Cassandra (which they very nearly do; they do kill one of the Raj's best physicists in the process). A group of armed Thuggee try to kill Athelstane King in the Peshawar officer's club, after killing Hasamurti. King decides to leave for Oxford in disguise, but on the train, he is nearly killed again by the Pashtun assassin Ibrahim Khan. When King confronts Khan over who hired him, he makes the connection that a Russian has been sending the assassins. Khan, upon hearing this, swears vengeance at being misled and agrees to follow King. Athelstane returns to his home in the Vale of Kashmir: Rexin Manor. There, Narayan Singh's father, Ranjit, tells Athelstane the truth behind his father's death. When Athelstane was only four, his father, Eric, was on a mission to the foothills of Afghanistan to investigate a smuggling operation. Warburton and Ranjit Singh were also with him. However, they were led into an ambush, in which Eric was killed. The man who caused it, a self-proclaimed holy man from the Zagros mountains, had a seer. This confirms King's theory. He is sent by his mother to Delhi to find Elias bar-Binyamin, a Jewish financier whom the King family has a mutual debt (or tessera) with, to gain further information. Cassandra, shaken by the death of her friend the physicist, is hired by the palace to play tutor to Sita. This is arranged by Sir Manfred to keep her safe. She meets her brother, the heir to the Lion Throne, Charles and finds herself interested in him. In Delhi, on his way to the bar-Binyamin residence, Athelstane is met in the streets by Yasmini, who has deserted Ignatieff to help King. She warns him against going down an alleyway, which turns out to be full of assassins from Dai-Nippon. The fight with the assassins spills over into Warburton's residence, where they are defeated. However, when they get there, Warburton has been critically injured by Ignatieff himself. Ignatieff has been joined by another IPS agent, Richard Allenby. Ignatieff and Allenby escape, and then Allenby uses his powers to summon the police. In order to help his friends escape, Narayan Singh stays behind to face the police. Allenby orders Singh taken to his own house for interrogation. The group then makes their way to Elias residence. As Warburton recovers, Elias tells them the story of how Eric King went to Bokhara to save his son David from imprisonment. Yasmini reveals further details of the Sisterhood of True Dreamers, telling them of a terrible dream kept from the Czar himself. She tells them that if Athelstane and Cassandra King die, then somehow, the King-Emperor and his heir will die. There will be no union with France, and in time, the Empire will be torn asunder by a massive world war and separatist movements. Then, around a hundred years from the present, another asteroid impact will occur, leaving only the rats surviving. The group, joined by David bar-Elias, goes to Allenby's residence to expose him as a traitor and rescue Narayan Singh. Unknown to them, a second group, including Cassandra, Henri de Vascogne, Sita and her Gurkha bodyguard are attempting to do the same thing. Both groups catch Allenby, Ignatieff, and a cult of Kali worshippers in the middle of a cannibal sacrifice. Sita's Gurkha bodyguard is killed defending them, and David bar Elias destroys Allenby's home with a homemade explosive. Sita and her group are confronted by the King-Emperor himself. He is also making plans for a state visit to France-outre-mer on the Imperial air yacht, the Garuda. To save the King-Emperor's life, Athelstane's group makes a secretive journey to Bombay, killing Allenby when he tries to kill them with aid from local Rabari tribesmen. As the Garuda prepares to take off (with Cassandra on board), Athelstane's group sneaks on. Ignatieff is also on board the ship, with aid from the captain, a Kapenaar, (resident of the Cape Viceroyalty) who belongs to a radical Afrikaner terrorist group. He manages to take the King-Emperor hostage and reveals that he has planted evidence that Dai-Nippon and the Caliphate have ordered an assassination, to trigger a major war. He blows himself up, killing himself and King-Emperor John (who refuses to give in to the captain's demands) and damaging the Garuda critically. Meanwhile, Athelstane manages to kill Ignatieff in a brutal sword duel, with help from Ibrahim Khan. Unfortunately, the air yacht is now over a lawless portion of Afghanistan, infested with air pirates. They force the ship down. As the Gurkha guards hold off the raiders, Ibrahim Khan and Sir Manfred are sent to get help. Help does come, in the form of the Peshawar Lancers. The Lancers drive away the raiders, and allow Khan, who reveals himself to be a major prince, to return home with his promised reward pledged to him. The Lancers guide the survivors, including Cassandra, Athelstane, Henri (who has revealed himself as the Prince Imperial of France-outre-mer to Sita), and new King-Emperor Charles III to safety. Charles later marries Cassandra, and Yasmini later marries Athelstane, who had saved her from going mad from her dreams by ending her virginity.
1662337	/m/05llmm	The Edge of the Cloud	K. M. Peyton	1969-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Edge of the Cloud is set in London where, after Will and Christina elope, Christina briefly stays with their Aunt Grace. Will finds a job as a mechanic and later as an instructor at a flying school, and Christina finds employment at a nearby hotel to be close to Will. Uncle Russel and Mr Dermont both die during the course of the story. One death fills Will with pain; the other indifference. Will and Christina become close friends with Sandy, another flying instructor, and his girlfriend, Dorothy, the spoiled daughter of Christina's employer. Will gives exhibition flights to make extra money and designs and builds his own airplane. Mark joins the army. At the end, Will becomes famous as a stunt pilot and is thinking of joining the army, which—on the eve of their long-awaited wedding—worries Christina.
1662344	/m/05lln9	Flambards Divided				 Flambards Divided continues the story of Christina, who has married Dick, following the death of her first husband, her cousin Will, during World War I. No one approves of Christina's marriage to Dick, because of his poor background, and the family runs into hardship. When Will's older brother, Mark, returns from the war in France, he is badly injured, although still his arrogant old self, and deeply resentful of Dick. Christina finds herself torn between the two and ends by doing what she never believed she would do: falling in love with Mark.
1662347	/m/05llnn	Flambards in Summer	K. M. Peyton	1969-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The final novel in the original Flambards trilogy opens in the middle of the First World War with Christina, now a widow, returning to Flambards. Flambards has greatly deteriorated since she left with Will, and is almost in ruins. As distraction from her grief over Will's death and the news that his brother Mark has been reported missing and presumed dead, Christina sets herself the tedious and difficult task of restoring the farm. She not only wishes to restore the house and grounds but also a semblance of her old life, the people, horses and hounds. Finding she is pregnant with Will's baby, Christina adopts Mark and Violet's six-year-old son 'Tizzy' Thomas, along with an original Flambards bitch called Marigold and a nervy five-year-old bay thoroughbred called Pheasant. Eventually she persuades Dick to come back to work on the farm and things slowly begin to go smoothly, until the reappearance of Mark. Christina's joy quickly turns to anxiety and apprehension as Mark tells her that if she wishes to remain at Flambards, she must marry him. But Christina fears Mark become like his father, and when she finds she has feelings for Dick, her confusion increases as she still loves Will.
1662948	/m/02p4psr	David Starr, Space Ranger	Isaac Asimov	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 David Starr, Space Ranger introduces the series' setting and the main characters. The novel is set around A.D. 7,000 (five thousand years after the first nuclear bomb, as stated at the beginning), when humanity has spread among the worlds of the Solar System as well as planets orbiting other stars. The most powerful organization in the Solar System is the Council of Science, which suppresses threats to the System's people. Protagonist David Starr is an orphaned biophysicist qualified for membership in the Council of Science, who learns from his guardians Augustus Henree and Hector Conway of some 200 deaths in the last four months, whose victims died while eating produce raised on Mars. Conway and Henree fear that the deaths are part of a conspiracy to frighten the people of Earth; wherefore Starr travels undercover to Mars to discover the deaths' connection to the Martian Farming Syndicates. On Mars, Starr meets John "Bigman" Jones, a bellicose 5'2" Martian farmboy blacklisted at the Farming Syndicates for seeing something forbidden him. When his former boss Hennes orders Jones out of the Farm Employment Building, Starr intervenes, and gains positions for both himself and Bigman. Later, Hennes has Starr and Bigman stunned. Starr wakes in the farm owned by Hennes' boss, Mr. Makian, to whom he gives the alias Williams, and states that he came to Mars explain a younger sister's death of food poisoning; wherefore Makian sends the farm's agronomist Benson to speak with him. According to Benson, the poisoned food came from several Martian farms, but was exported through Wingrad City, one of three domed human settlements on Mars; whereas Makian and several other farm owners have been offered ridiculously small sums of money for their farms, apparently without connection to the poisonings. Benson suggests also that intelligent native Martians living below the planet's surface are poisoning the food in order to drive humanity from Mars. Makian offers to let Starr join a survey of the farmlands. Bigman warns him that Hennes will attack him during the survey; but when Starr decides to take part anyway, Bigman joins him. As he enters Martian gravity, Starr loses control of his sand-car, nearly sending it over a crevasse; whereupon Bigman discovers that Starr's sand-car is missing its weights, and Starr realizes that Griswold deliberately failed to warn him. He then confronts Griswold, who in the struggle falls into the crevasse and dies. The next day, Benson makes Starr his assistant, to keep him from Hennes. When Bigman receives his references from Hennes and takes his leave, Starr asks him to obtain some book-tapes from the library at Wingrad City. Bigman agrees, then admits that he has recognized the pretended 'Williams' as David Starr of the Council of Science. When Starr meets Bigman that night outside the dome, he reveals that he believes in Benson's Martians, and that the crevasse into which Griswold fell is an entrance to their caverns. Starr descends into the crevasse and is captured by the Martians;–––disembodied intelligences curious about the Earthmen on the surface, and who know nothing of the poisoned food. They give Starr the name 'Space Ranger' because he travels through space, and give him an immaterial mask that will act as a personal force field and disguise him from other humans. Starr uses the mask to shield himself from a Martian dust storm as he returns to Makian's farm, where he is questioned how he survived the storm and answers (truthfully) that he was returned by a masked man called the Space Ranger. Benson tells him that while he was gone, all the farm owners received a letter from the poisoner, who claims that unless the farm owners surrender control to him within thirty-six hours, the poisoner will increase the amount of poisoned food a thousandfold. After Benson leaves, another of Hennes' minions tries to shoot Starr. Later, Hennes accuses Starr of poisoning the food; whereupon Bigman enters with Dr. Silvers of the Council of Science, who announces that the government has declared a System Emergency and that the Council will take control of all the farms on Mars. If the mystery is not solved by the time the deadline expires, all Martian food exports to Earth will stop, and food rationing will be instituted. Starr arranges with Silvers to be publicly removed from the Makian farm, then allowed to secretly return. Disguised by his mask, he confronts Hennes, who blinds himself firing a blaster at him; searches Hennes; and, once undisguised, persuades Silvers to meet with Makian, Hennes, and Benson the next day. At the meeting, Starr appears in disguise and reveals that Benson poisoned the food while pretending to take samples of it, while Hennes kept in contact with Benson's henchmen in the Asteroid Belt. Following Benson's confession, Bigman reveals that despite the disguise of the Martian mask, he recognized Starr by his uniquely colorless black-and-white boots.
1663256	/m/05lnj6	Agricola				 After the assassination of Domitian in 96AD, and amid the predictable turmoil of the regime change, Tacitus used his new-found freedom to publish this, his first historical work. During the reign of Domitian, Agricola, a faithful imperial general, had been the most important general involved in the conquest of a great part of Britain. The proud tone of the Agricola recalls the style of the laudationes funebres (funeral speeches). A quick résumé of the career of Agricola prior to his mission in Britain is followed by a narration of the conquest of the island. There is a geographical and ethnological digression, taken not only from notes and memories of Agricola but also from the De Bello Gallico of Julius Caesar. The content is so varied as to go beyond the limits of a simple biography, but the narration, whatever its form, serves to exalt the subject of the biography. Tacitus exalts the character of his father-in-law, by showing how &mdash; as governor of Roman Britain and commander of the army &mdash; he attends to matters of state with fidelity, honesty, and competence, even under the government of the hated Emperor Domitian. Critiques of Domitian and of his regime of spying and repression come to the fore at the work's conclusion. Agricola remained uncorrupted; in disgrace under Domitian, he died without seeking the glory of an ostentatious martyrdom. Tacitus condemns the suicide of the Stoics as of no benefit to the state. Tacitus makes no clear statement as to whether the death of Agricola was from natural causes or ordered by Domitian, although he does say that rumors were voiced in Rome that Agricola was poisoned on the Emperor's orders.
1664759	/m/02p4q0c	Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury	Isaac Asimov	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It has been a year since the events in Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, and in that time a government-funded research project, Project Light, is built at the astronomical observatory on Mercury's north pole to conduct research into the newly-discovered sub-etheric optics in hope of transmitting solar energy through hyperspace. The head of Project Light is the leading scientist in sub-etheric optics, Scott Mindes. A series of accidents has plagued Project Light, which David "Lucky" Starr and Bigman Jones have come to investigate. Shortly after meeting Starr and Bigman, Mindes takes them onto the surface of Mercury and explains his worries; but works himself into a frenzy and fires a blaster at Starr, whereupon Bigman tackles him and he is brought unconscious into the observatory. Starr and Bigman meet Mindes' friend Dr. Karl Gardoma, the observatory's physician; Jonathan Urteil, who works for a political opponent of the Council of Science named Senator Swenson; Dr. Lance Peverale, the head of the observatory; and Dr. Hanley Cook, Pevarale's chief assistant, who wants to succeed Peverale. The next day, at a banquet in Starr's honor, Peverale states his belief that the Sirians are behind the troubles plaguing Project Light; whereupon Starr replies that the Sirians' most likely locations are the abandoned mines located beneath the observatory, and proposes to search them. Speaking to Cook after dinner, Starr learns Cook's opinion Peverale has become obsessed thinking of the Sirian threat. While Bigman prepares for the trip into the mines, Starr obtains two micro-ergometers, whereby to detect atomic power sources at a distance. In the mines, Starr tells Bigman that his suggestion of Sirians in the mines was a ruse, and that he intends to investigate the sunside while Bigman remains in the mines and maintains the pretense of Starr's presence there. After Starr leaves, Bigman is attacked by Urteil, and both are attacked by a heat-seeking native organism. Bigman distracts the latter with Urteil's blaster, then calls the Dome for help. On the sunside, Starr finds the source of the sabotage in a Sirian robot, driven by solar radiation to forego the Three Laws of Robotics so that it attacks him before he can question it. In the Dome, Bigman challenges Urteil to a fight in Mercurian gravity. Dr. Cook reduces the artificial gravity in the Dome's power room to Mercurian levels to accommodate them; but during the fight, the gravity suddenly returns to Earth-normal, and Urteil dies in a fall. When Starr returns to the dome and learns of Urteil's death, he asks to be present when Peverale conducts an official inquiry, at which Bigman reveals that it was Cook who caused Urteil's death and reveals that only Cook knew where he and Starr would be in the mines, wherefore Urteil must have gotten the information from him. Cook then admits that Urteil had blackmailed him, and was killed to save Cook's career. Starr then reveals that the robot was brought from Sirius by Peverale in hope to use it to implicate the Sirians in the sabotage of Project Light. Starr has Peverale and Cook placed under arrest, and assumes control of the Dome in the name of the Council of Science. On the return journey to Earth, Starr admits to Bigman that the present quarrel between Senator Swenson and the Council of Science was a draw, in that Urteil was not able to manufacture any scandal against Project Light, but the two top men at the Mercury observatory were exposed as felons. Although Swenson is ruthless and dangerous, he is the sort of critic the Council needs to keep it honest.
1664760	/m/02p4q0r	Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter	Isaac Asimov	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 For six years, Jupiter IX has been the site of a secret project to develop an antigravity, or Agrav, space drive; but the Council of Science learns that information from the project is released to the enemy Sirians. A month after returning from Mercury, protagonists David "Lucky" Starr and John Bigman Jones are sent to Jupiter IX to investigate, bringing a V-frog to aid the investigation. Upon reaching IX, Starr and Bigman are warned away by the head of the project, Commander Donahue, who argues the men on the project are angry at investigation and may threaten Starr's safety. Starr and Bigman land nevertheless, and are met by a large group of workers led by a man named Red Summers, who insists that Starr take part in a duel in an Agrav corridor against a much larger man called Big Armand. During the duel, Bigman realizes Summers intends to de-activate Starr's Agrav harness and blackmails Summers not to do so, whereupon Starr wins the duel and gains Big Armand's friendship. At their quarters, Starr and Bigman are met by their neighbor, a blind man named Harry Norrich, who tells Starr that Summers is a convict on Earth, but has earned responsibility on the project, and is hostile to Starr for fear of having his past crimes revealed; whereas when Norrich's seeing-eye dog died, Summers obtained another, a German Shepherd named Mutt, and has done similar favors for other workers on the project. Starr assures Norrich that he has no intention of getting Summers in trouble for the duel. The next morning someone kills the V-frog while both men are distracted; whereafter Starr and Bigman tell Donahue and James Panner, the chief engineer on the project, that because the V-frog telepathically induced affection in all whom it met, only a robot, immune to emotion, could have killed it. It is then suggested that the Sirians are using android spies throughout the Solar System. Donahue, unconvinced, orders the launch of an Agrav ship, the Jovian Moon, to Io the following evening, and forbids Starr to conduct his investigation until after it returns. The Jovian Moon lifts off on schedule, its crew of seventeen including Donahue, Panner, Summers, Norrich, Mutt, Starr, and Bigman; the latter included because Starr believes the spy is on board. On Io, Bigman falls into an ammonial river, and is rescued by Mutt. After lift-off from Io, the Agrav drive fails, leaving the Jovian Moon falling towards Jupiter. Starr manages to land the ship on Amalthea, where they find that Red Summers is missing. An investigation reveals that Summers tricked Norrich into reporting him present on the ship while he was still on Io, whereupon Starr realizes that the Sirians had two agents planted in the Agrav project: the still-hidden robot spy, and the Earthman traitor Summers. Panner repairs the Agrav, and the Jovian Moon returns to Io, where Starr and Bigman locate Summers. Summers admits to working for the Sirians, but kills himself before revealing the identity of the robot spy. When Norrich helps bury Summers, Starr accuses him of being the robot, and Bigman threatens to shoot him; whereupon Mutt, coming to defend Norrich, is revealed as the robot himself. With the exposure of Mutt, Starr discerns that the Sirian spy ring on Earth must be the people who supplied Summers with Mutt, and who may be giving canid robot spies to others on Earth, and sets out to prevent them.
1664763	/m/02p4q13	Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus	Isaac Asimov	1954	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Shortly after returning from the Asteroid Belt, David "Lucky" Starr learns that his Science Academy roommate Lou Evans had been sent to investigate trouble on Venus, but the Council of Science office on Venus has requested that he be recalled and investigated for corruption. As Starr and John "Bigman" Jones are shuttled to Venus, their pilots suffer an episode of paralysis, and Starr is required to keep their craft from smashing itself against the surface of the Venusian ocean. Afterwards, the pilots have no memory of the event. Upon reaching the Venusian city of Aphrodite, Starr and Bigman meet Dr. Mel Morriss, head of the Council of Science on Venus, who explains that Venusian scientists are perfecting strains of yeast that can be processed into luxury foods for export; whereas for six months there has been a growing series of incidents of bizarre behavior among the human colonists, often followed by amnesia. Morriss believes they are being telepathically controlled by an unknown enemy. Evans was sent to Venus to investigate, but was found with stolen data concerning a secret strain of yeast, and is under arrest. When Starr confronts him, Evans admits to having stolen the data, but refuses to explain further. While Starr is questioning him, word reaches them that a man is threatening to open an outside airlock, which will allow the ocean to flood Aphrodite. Starr, Bigman, and Morriss go to the airlock to deal with the crisis, where they meet the city's chief engineer, Lyman Turner, the inventor and owner of a laptop computer carried with him. While Bigman goes through the ventilation ducts to cut power to the airlock door, Starr realizes that the airlock crisis is a feint and hastens to Council headquarters, to find that Evans has escaped custody and left Aphrodite in a submarine. Starr and Bigman pursue Evans in another submarine, eventually finding him and learning that the V-frogs are the source of the telepathic incidents; Evans having tested this hypothesis by stealing the secret data on the yeast strain, and interesting the V-frogs therein with the result of an accident involving that strain. Evans further reveals that the V-frogs have trapped himself and the other protagonists beneath an enormous deep-sea orange patch, which will attack them if they attempt escape. Starr, in response, leaves the submarine and uses an electric shock to destroy the orange patch's heart, killing it. He then returns to the submarine, and pilots this to the surface of the ocean, where he intends to communicate his findings to an orbiting space station to be relayed to the Council on Earth. On the surface, the V-frogs communicate telepathically with him, telling him they intend to take over the minds of the humans on Venus. Initially they keep him away from the radio; but he is able to distract them and transmit his message. Returning to Aphrodite, Starr explains to Morriss that the V-frogs' telepathy is used by a human individual to attempt control over the rest of humanity, and that the means of doing so is Lyman Turner's computer. Bigman destroys the computer and Starr captures Turner, hoping to re-create his computer in the interest of reforming Turner himself.
1664764	/m/02p4q1h	Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn	Isaac Asimov	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Six weeks after returning from the Jovian system, David "Lucky" Starr learns that Jack Dorrance, the chief of a Sirian spy ring uncovered by Starr in the Jovian system, has escaped from Earth. Starr and his sidekick Bigman Jones follow Dorrance to the Saturnian system, where Dorrance tries to lose them in Saturn's rings, but his ship is destroyed by a ring fragment. A Sirian ship then contacts Starr and informs him that the Sirians have built a colony on Titan and claimed it for Sirius, contrary to established precedent that all worlds in an inhabited stellar system belong to that system's inhabitants, whether they have permanent settlements on those worlds or not. Starr orders the pursuing Terrestrial fleet back to Earth; but returns with Bigman and Councilman Ben Wessilewsky to the Saturnian system. When several Sirian ships pursue the Shooting Starr, Starr conceals himself and his ship in the interior of Mimas; leaves Wessilewsky below the surface with enough supplies to maintain himself for several months; then takes the Shooting Starr back into space, where they are captured by the Sirians and taken to the colony on Titan. There, Sirian commander Sten Devoure threatens to have Bigman killed unless Starr agrees to testify at an upcoming interstellar conference on the asteroid Vesta that he entered the Saturnian system to attack the Sirians. When Bigman endangers himself by defeating Devoure in a duel, Starr makes a deal with Devoure: if he spares Bigman's life, Starr will testify that he entered the Saturnian system in an armed ship, and will lead the Sirians to Wessilewsky's base on Mimas. At the Vesta conference, Devoure admits that the Sirians have established a base on Titan, but insists that the fact that Saturn and its moons are part of Earth's stellar system is irrelevant: "An empty world is an empty world, regardless of the particular route it travels through space. We colonized it first and it is ours". Devoure then brings out Starr, who admits to having re-entered the Saturnian system after being warned off, and also that Wessilewsky established a base on Mimas. When asked his reasons, according to a secret plan of his own, Starr replies that Wessilewsky was placed to establish a colony on Mimas; whereupon Conway states that by removing Wessilewsky from Mimas, the Sirians violated the very principle they attempted to establish. The conference ends with three client worlds voting with the Sirians, and the rest voting with Earth, with the result that the Sirians are ordered to leave Titan within a month.
1664765	/m/02p4q1w	Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids	Isaac Asimov	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A year has passed since the events in David Starr, Space Ranger. In that time the spaceship TSS Waltham Zachary has been taken and gutted by pirates based in the asteroid belt, and David "Lucky" Starr has devised a plan whereby the unmanned survey ship Atlas, as soon as the pirates capture it and bring it to their hidden base, will explode. Because Starr harbors a personal dislike of the pirates for their murder of his parents, he sneaks aboard the Atlas to take revenge. When captured, Starr tells the pirate leader, Captain Anton, that his name is Williams (his alias from David Starr, Space Ranger), and offers to join the pirates; whereupon Anton has Starr fight a duel in open space to prove himself worthy. Starr wins the duel, but remains a prisoner aboard Atlas while it is brought to an anonymous asteroid. The asteroid is home to a hermit named Joseph Patrick Hansen, and the pirates leave Starr in Hansen's care. Hansen tells Starr that he purchased the asteroid as a vacation site, and gradually made it more comfortable over the years, but now depends on the pirates for supplies, and later recognizes the pretended 'Williams' as Lawrence Starr's son. Starr admits his true identity, and Hansen convinces him to pilot them to Ceres. On Ceres, Starr plans to send his friend Bigman to infiltrate the pirates, but realizes that Hansen's asteroid is not where it should be. Starr and Bigman take their own spaceship Shooting Starr to search for it and eventually land on its surface, where Starr is captured by Dingo, the pirate he beat in the duel. Dingo takes him inside the asteroid, revealing a hyperatomic engine used to move it. A fight with Dingo ends when Starr is shot with a neuronic whip and loses consciousness. Starr wakes to find himself in a spacesuit on the surface of the asteroid; whereupon Dingo straps him to a catapult and flings him into space. He uses his oxygen reserve to reverse his course and return to the asteroid, where he and Bigman defeat some of the pirates. As they leave the pirates' asteroid, they learn that a pirate fleet is attacking Ceres. Returning to Ceres, Starr realizes that the pirates' real object was to capture Hansen, which they have accomplished, and learns that Captain Anton's ship is taking Hansen to a secret Sirian base on Ganymede, whence the Sirians plan to attack Earth while Earth's fleet is occupied fighting the pirates in the Asteroid Belt. Although Anton has a 12-hour head start, Starr passes him to Ganymede by skimming the Shooting Starr past the Sun, wearing the Martian 'Space Ranger' mask to ward off the heat and radiation. When Anton makes for Ganymede, Starr threatens to ram his ship, and accelerates toward it, all the while talking to Anton. The ships are ten miles apart when Hansen kills Anton and orders Anton's crew to surrender to Starr. When the Terran fleet arrives to take custody of the pirate ship, Starr convinces the commanding admiral to concentrate on the asteroid pirates and leave the Sirian base on Ganymede alone, revealing that Hansen is the leader of the asteroid pirates. It is then revealed that while Starr was intercepting Anton's ship, the Council of Science, on Starr's orders, captured the base and achieved the wherewithal to terminate the asteroid piracy. Hansen, now revealed to be the murderer of Starr's parents, is coerced to have the Sirians leave Ganymede, and is sent to incarceration on Mercury.
1666521	/m/05lxf1	A Taste of Honey	Shelagh Delaney			 In the first scene, Helen and her teenage daughter; Jo, are moving into a shabby flat. Within a few minutes we learn that they have little money, living off Helen's immoral earnings (the money given her by her lovers, although she is not a true prostitute, being more of a "good time girl"). Helen is a regular drinker, and she and Jo have a rather confrontational and ambiguously inter-dependent relationship. As they settle in, Helen's surprise at some of Jo's drawings both suggests Jo's talent and originality and shows Helen's lack of interest in and knowledge about her daughter. Jo rejects the idea of going to an art school, blaming Helen for having interrupted her training all too often by moving her constantly from one school to another. Jo now only wants to leave school and earn her own money so that she can get away from Helen. After this exposition of their past lives and present relationship, Peter (Helen's younger boyfriend) comes in. Jo assumes that Helen has moved here to escape from him, but we are never told the reason why. Peter had not realised how old Helen was until he sees her daughter. Nonetheless he asks Helen to marry him, first half jokingly, then more or less in earnest. When Peter leaves, most of the basic information about the two women characters has been given, and most of this has arisen quite naturally through the dialogue. The second scene consists of four main parts, Jo's meetings with her boyfriend alternating with her confrontations with Helen. Thus we are made to see how Helen's indifference makes Jo look for happiness in other places. It begins outside: Jo is walking home in the company of her black boyfriend. During a light-hearted, semi-serious dialogue, he asks her to marry him, and she agrees, although he is in the navy and will be away on his ship for six months before they can marry. The boyfriend gives Jo a ring which she hangs round her neck under her clothes in order to hide it from Helen. From the conversation we learn that Jo is really leaving school and is going to start a part-time job in a pub. The next sequence takes place inside the flat (without a change of scenery). Helen informs Jo that she is going to marry Peter. Peter enters, and a dialogue that is frequently hostile but also funny evolves between the three: instead of only Jo and Helen attacking each other, a more complex pattern evolves, with Jo attacking the others, the others attacking Jo, and Helen attacking both Peter and Jo. Jo is truly upset at the thought of Helen marrying Peter, but also pesters and provokes him in an effort to antagonise him even more. After Helen and Peter leave her on her own for Christmas, Jo weeps and is consoled by her black boyfriend. She invites him to stay over Christmas, although she has a feeling that she will never see the boy again. After a pause and some moments of darkness on stage, we see Helen and Jo on stage, on the occasion of Helen's wedding day after Christmas. Jo has a cold and will not be able to attend at the wedding. Since she is in her pyjamas, Helen catches a glimpse of the ring around her neck and learns the truth. She scolds Jo violently for thinking of marrying so young, with one of her occasional bursts of real feeling and concern for her daughter. Asked by Jo about her real father, Helen explains that she had been married to a "Puritan" and that she had to look elsewhere for sexual pleasure. Thus she had her first sexual experience with Jo's father, a "not very bright man," a "bit retarded". She then hurries off to her wedding. Several months later. Jo is living alone in the same old shabby flat. She works in a shoe shop by day and in a bar in the evenings in order to afford the rent. She is pregnant, and her boyfriend has not (yet?) come back to her. She returns from a funfair to the flat in the company of Geoff an "effeminate" art student, who has possibly been thrown out from his former lodgings because his landlady suspected he was gay. Jo offends him with her insensitive inquisitiveness about his sexuality, and he in turn maliciously criticises her drawings. She apologises and asks him to stay, sleeping on the couch. Geoff shows concern for Jo's problems, and they develop a friendly, joking relationship. A moment of darkness marks the passage of time, and next we see Jo irritable and depressed by her pregnancy, with Geoff patiently consoling her. Then, seeking reassurance himself he kisses her and asks her to marry him. Jo says that although she likes him she cannot marry him, and he misses that she makes a sexual pass at him, something confirming that "it is not marrying love between us". At this point, Helen enters. She has been contacted by Geoff, who wishes to keep this fact secret from Jo. Jo, however, guesses that much and is angry with both Helen and Geoff. Whenever Geoff tries to interfere in the quarrel between the two women, he is attacked by one or the other or both. As Helen is offering Jo money, Peter comes in, very drunk, and takes back the money and Helen's offer of a home to Jo. He leaves insisting that Helen come with him; after a moment's hesitation she runs after him. In the second scene of act two, the baby is due any moment. Jo and Geoff seem happy. He reassures her that Helen was probably mistaken about or exaggerating the mental deficiencies of Jo's father. Geoff has bought a doll for Jo to practise handling the baby but Jo flings it to the ground because it is the wrong colour: Jo assumes that her baby will be as black as its father. Her momentary outburst against the baby, motherhood and womanhood is short-lived, however, and she and Geoff are about to have tea when Helen enters with all her luggage from Act 1. Apparently, she has been thrown out by Peter and now plans to stay with Jo. In order to get rid of Geoff, she behaves very rudely to him, while overwhelming her daughter with advice and presents. Jo defends Geoff, but while she is asleep, Geoff decides to leave since Helen is too strong for him and he does not want to tear Jo to pieces between them. When Jo wakes up, Helen pretends that Geoff is out doing the shopping. When she learns that the baby will be black, she loses her nerves and rushes out for a drink, despite the fact that Jo's labour pains have just begun. Alone, Jo happily hums a tune Geoff sang before, still not having realised that he is gone.
1666893	/m/05lyjt	A Year in the Merde				 When Paul West starts his new job in September he is altogether unaware of the true character and the machinations of his boss, Jean-Marie Martin, who is in his early fifties, rich, handsome, impeccably dressed, friendly, and prepared to pay him a good salary. West does not know yet that Martin, officially decorated for supporting the French economy, is illegally importing cheap British beef (the ban imposed during the BSE crisis not having been lifted yet); that through his political connections he has secured for his daughter Élodie a cheap, council-subsidized HLM apartment; that he associates with the far right; that, although married, he is having an affair with someone from the office; and that he wants to sell him, Paul West, a cottage in the country quite close to the site of a future nuclear power plant. West is allotted a motley crew who are supposed to work together on his project. However, everyone, including Martin, turns out to be very reluctant to learn what West has to tell them, for example that "My Tea Is Rich" is not a good name for a chain of English tea rooms. Soon West realizes that no one is following his orders, that nothing is happening, that he is being paid for doing, or at least achieving, absolutely nothing. In the end, his contract is prematurely terminated, and he spends some weeks teaching English. ("It was much tougher than working in an office. You can't e-mail your mates while standing in front of a class.") His love life during that year is an emotional rollercoaster ride. In all, West has sex with four different women during that year: Élodie, his boss's daughter; Alexa, who eventually cannot put up with his apolitical outlook on life; Marie, a black girl who willingly drops him when her boyfriend returns from abroad; and Florence, half Indian, the girl with whom he plans to open his own tea room in Paris at the end of the novel.
1669902	/m/05m3gt	The Knight of Sainte-Hermine	Alexandre Dumas			 :"It's vintage Dumas, in the same vein as the vengeful hero of The Count of Monte-Cristo." &mdash;Claude Schopp (Bell, 2005) The swashbuckling historical novel takes place after the events of French Revolution and during the subsequent rise of the Napoleonic Empire. The protagonist is a French aristocrat who is torn between the old and new ways, and seeks vengeance for two brothers killed during the course of the preceding novels. Dumas imagines his main character killing the British admiral Horatio Nelson after his victory during the Battle of Trafalgar against the French and Spanish navies. Historically, Nelson was killed by an unknown sniper.
1671094	/m/05m5rv	Phantoms	Dean Koontz	1983-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jenny and Lisa Paige, two sisters, return to Jenny's hometown of Snowfield, California, a small ski resort village nestled in the Sierra-Nevada Mountains where Jenny works as a doctor, and finds no one alive. The few bodies they find are either mutilated, or reveal some strange form of death. Finally, after growing more alarmed by the town's mysterious and alarming situation Jenny manages to call police in a neighboring town to come help. Together, the girls and the police are able to request help from the military Biological Investigations Unit. The police managed to find only one clue as to what was causing the town's disappearances and deaths. A victim of whatever was trying to kill him managed to write the name Timothy Flyte, on a mirror moments before he was killed. Flyte is a British academic and author of a book, The Ancient Enemy. His book catalogs and describes various mass vanishings of people in different parts of the world over the centuries. It is discovered that the town was built over the hibernating place of this creature, an amoeboid shapeshifter. The Ancient Enemy rarely feeds, but when it does, the effects are devastating. It was theorized that the Enemy either caused or aided in the extinction of the dinosaurs, as well as many of the great mysterious mass vanishings: Mayan civilization, Roanoke, ghost ships, etc. The creature consumes other life forms to increase its mass and is able to perfectly mimic other creatures. It can create small "probes" or "phantoms" imitating consumed life forms to go forth and hunt more prey, obeying the orders of its "hive mind;" in addition the creature absorbs the mental capacity of those it consumes. Its only vital organ is a nucleus located in the center of its main body. The creature's cells are similar in molecular structure to fossil fuels; upon discovering this the scientists use oil-eating bacteria to destroy the Enemy's core or brain. (The genetically-modified bacteria are the real-life creations of Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty)
1672133	/m/05m7y2	Kingdom of Fear	Hunter S. Thompson		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The book seems to begin as memoir or an autobiography, but rapidly devolves into numerous fragmented accounts of Thompson's exploits which could be termed as a type of Gonzo biography. There is a rough adherence to actual chronology though many events in the book are not in order. However, some continuity does exist throughout the work, for example, the "Witness" segments, dealing with Gail Palmer's trial against him, appearing once every section in roughly the same area. In addition to these larger narratives, there are also several sections which hold no connection to each other in any way, with the exception of some of the same people or places from a previous section being mentioned. Among the events, the ones which seem to be as closely related to Thompson's life are listed below: *An early incident involving the FBI attempting to arrest a then nine-year-old Thompson for an action which apparently resulted in the destruction of a federal mailbox. *The "Witness" sections *Various exploits of Thompson's either at or involving the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, an infamous pornographic theater where he claims to have worked throughout the mid eighties. *A possibly fictionalized account of how Thompson met his assistant and later wife Anita.
1672423	/m/05m8h5	Starfighters of Adumar	Aaron Allston		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The planet of Adumar is an anomaly, settled by anonymous colonists during the early years of the Old Republic and isolated ever since. But now it has been discovered. The Adumari love pilots, so the New Republic's best snubfighter jock, General Wedge Antilles, is dispatched as a diplomat, along with three of Rogue Squadron's finest: taciturn Colonel Tycho Celchu, pessimist Major Derek "Hobbie" Klivian and child-at-heart extraordinaire Major Wes Janson. They are also aided by native guide and sword-fighting champion Cheriss ke Hanadi, New Republic diplomat and former Y-wing pilot Tomer Darpen, and New Republic Documentarian Hallis Saper, who wears a second head (the head of a 3PO protocol droid which she uses as a camera). Wedge assumes that he will somehow hammer out a treaty and bring the planet of Adumar into the New Republic, but it becomes quickly apparent that all is not as it seems. Firstly, the Empire's best pilot, General Turr Phennir, and three of his best are here too. Secondly, Adumar is not a united planet, and right now Wedge is only talking to its largest nation, Cartann. Thirdly, the Cartannese seem to like nothing better than killing each other for bragging rights, and Wedge is expected to join in&mdash;especially since they try to kill him for bragging rights too. (Phennir seems to have no problem with it.) Fourthly, a certain woman whom Wedge is acquainted with, Iella Wessiri, is on-planet as a New Republic Intelligence operative and has been so for the past six months&mdash;despite the fact that, supposedly, Adumar was only discovered a few weeks ago. (It also doesn't help that Wedge would like to be a little more than friends with her.) All in all, Wedge has his work cut out for him. Red Squadron spends its time learning to fly the native Blade-32 fighters, absorbing Adumari (or at least Cartannese) culture, and contemplating their largest diplomatic problem: the fact that Adumar is not united under a world government, and cannot enter the New Republic. The Empire, on the other hand, would have absolutely no problem simply conquering it and imposing a government. Thus, Wedge is delighted when Cartann's leader, Perator Pekaelic ke Teldan, announces the formation of a world government. Unfortunately, Pekaelic intends to create it via conquest. He also wants the Empire's and New Republic's diplomats to assist in the war effort. Phennir agrees, but Wedge, unwilling to compromise the New Republic's ideals, refuses. Between this and Tomer Darpen's willingness to sacrifice Wedge to preserve relations with Cartann, Wedge and his wingmen are forced to run "the gauntlet", braving mobs of citizens and pilots eager to kill them for honor, in order to escape with their lives. Wedge and his wingmen, as well as Iella, Cheriss and Hallis Saper, flee to the capital of the Yedagon Confederacy, one of the few nations that continues to resist Cartannese domination. There, Wedge is presented with a proposal: to lead the combined might of the "rebellious" nations in a military effort to overthrow Cartannese imperialism. Several nations that had previously bowed to Cartann defect to the newly-formed "Adumari Union" on the strength of Wedge's reputation, and Wedge ultimately leads an air force only half as strong as Cartann's, but far better led and disciplined. After an indecisive air battle, Red Squadron (with Cheriss's help) are able to reclaim their X-wings and neutralize Phennir and his TIE interceptors; the tide thus turned, Cartann is defeated and joins the Adumari Union. Negotiations with the New Republic begin immediately. The Imperials, bitter over their loss, send a fleet to take Adumar by force, but a combined New Republic and Adumari fleet manages to repel them. With the conflict on Adumar over, Wedge and Iella spend a romantic moment with each other, putting a positive note on their future relationship. The novel is noted for author Aaron Allston's use of humour. Allston often characterizes the four pilots through their joking styles: Tycho with occasional and devastating one-liners, Hobbie with pessimistic backtalk, Janson with constant irreverencies, and Wedge as the smirking straight man.
1673256	/m/05mb94	The Great Redwall Feast	Brian Jacques	1996	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Great Redwall Feast tells about the creatures of Redwall preparing for a feast while Matthias the Warriormouse, Constance the Badger Guardian, Foremole, and the Abbot are traveling in Mossflower Woods questing for a mysterious Bobbatan Weary Nod. The book features the Abbeydwellers bustling in Redwall, cooking, gathering flowers, and doing other chores for their beloved Abbot (presumably Abbot Mordalfus). Many characters from Redwall and Mattimeo are present in the book, however, the baby mole Bungo is the only character to appear and not be featured in any other Redwall novel.
1673640	/m/05mcd6	Firefox	Craig Thomas	1977-08-08	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book focuses on a fictional MiG-31 aircraft developed by the USSR during the Cold War. The highly advanced fighter aircraft (given the NATO code name "Firefox") includes a form of stealth technology that makes it completely undetectable to radar and is capable of attaining speeds of Mach 5 or more with a range in excess of 3,000 miles. Its weapons are controlled by the thought impulses of the pilot, allowing them to be very rapidly aimed and fired. Faced with an aircraft which will give the Soviet Union the ability to completely dominate the skies, the CIA and MI6 launch a mission to steal one of the two Firefox prototype aircraft. The first section of the book details how fighter pilot Mitchell Gant covertly travels to Russia. Gant is ideally trained to steal Firefox, having already trained to fly in captured Russian planes. But he is also scarred by his experiences in Vietnam, including his capture by Viet Cong after being shot down, an ordeal exacerbated when the enemy guerrillas are wiped out almost immediately by napalm from an American air strike. With the help of a network of dissidents and sympathizers, he makes his way to the Bilyarsk air base on which the two prototype aircraft are being developed. With the assistance of some of the scientists working on the project, he is able to penetrate the base and successfully steal a MiG-31. The second section of the book deals with Gant's flight. Here the novel focuses on military technology and tactics. First heading east towards the Ural Mountains, then north to the Barents Sea, Gant narrowly escapes a Soviet reconnaissance aircraft and cruiser. Low on kerosene, Gant makes a pre-arranged rendezvous with an American submarine to refuel, using an ice floe as an impromptu runway. Refueled and armed with captured Soviet missiles, Gant continues on his journey, only to confront the second Firefox prototype, which the Soviet dissidents failed to destroy. Nearly defeated by the second MiG, Gant accidentally destroys it when he reflexively orders his plane's thought-controlled weapon's system to launch a decoy flare. The flare is immediately ingested by the jet intake of the pursuing MiG, triggering an internal explosion that destroys the other plane. Free of pursuit, Gant continues on his journey.
1673827	/m/05mcww	Oeconomicus	Xenophon		{"/m/02rx5hc": "Treatise"}	 The opening framing dialogue is between Socrates and Critoboulus, the son of Crito. There Socrates discusses the meaning of wealth and identifies it with usefulness and well-being, not merely possessions. He links moderation and hard work to success in household management. The dramatic date of this part of the work can be no earlier than 401 BC, as the Battle of Cunaxa is referred to at 4.18. When Critoboulus asks about the practices involved in household management, Socrates pleads ignorance on the subject but relates what he heard of it from an Athenian gentleman-farmer (kaloskagathos) named Ischomachus. In the discussion related by Socrates, Ischomachus describes the methods he used to educate his wife in housekeeping, their practices in ruling and training slaves, and the technology involved in farming. Approximately two thirds of the dialogue concerns the discussion between Socrates and Ischomachus. There is no final reversion to further discussion with Critoboulos.
1674779	/m/05mgd2	A Swiftly Tilting Planet	Madeleine L'Engle	1978-07-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens on Thanksgiving evening, about 10 years after the events of A Wind in the Door. Meg is now married to Calvin and is expecting their first child. Calvin has become a scientist and is in Britain at a conference. The Murry family is joined for Thanksgiving dinner by an unusual guest—Meg's very antisocial mother-in-law, Mrs. O'Keefe. When they receive the news of impending nuclear war caused by the dictator "Mad Dog Branzillo", Mrs. O'Keefe lays a charge on Charles Wallace &mdash; to prevent the disaster. She teaches him "Patrick's Rune", a rhyming prayer of protection that has been passed down to her from her Irish grandmother. Charles Wallace goes for a walk to the star-watching rock, a family haunt, and begins to recite Patrick's Rune. His recitation summons a flying unicorn from the heavens who introduces himself as Gaudior. The winged unicorn explains to Charles Wallace that he must prevent nuclear war by traveling through time and telepathically merging with people who lived in the locale of the star-watching rock at points in the past. By doing so he may change pivotal situations, "might-have-beens", in which things might have turned out better than they did. Though unsure how events in the distant past near his home can affect a South American dictator, Charles Wallace agrees. They are threatened along the way by the Echthroi, the antagonists introduced in A Wind in the Door. The Echthroi are evil beings whose goal is the total destruction of the universe. As Charles Wallace tries to make the might-have-beens turn out for good, the Echthroi are fighting to make them turn out for evil. Gaudior and Charles Wallace's travels bring them to: Harcels, a Native American boy at least 1,000 years in the past; Madoc Gywnedd of Wales, a pre-Columbian trans-oceanic traveler; Brandon Llawcae, a Welsh settler in puritan times; Matthew Maddox, a writer during the American Civil War who wrote a novel about the legend of Madoc Gwynedd; and Mrs. O'Keefe's brother Chuck Maddox, during their childhood. Meg connects with Charles Wallace from home through "kything", the telepathic communication she learned in A Wind in the Door. Eventually, a connection arises between the star-watching rock and Mad Dog Branzillo. In the 12th century, two Welsh princes named Madoc and Gwydyr travelled to North America to escape the in-fighting for their father's throne. But once there, Gwydyr turned against Madoc and tried to conquer their new home. Madoc defeated Gwydyr in combat, and Gwydyr left to South America. Both men married into the local Native American populations and became part of the local folklore. Many generations later in the 1860s, a descendant of Madoc marries a descendant of Gwydyr, and Mad Dog Branzillo is their descendant. However, thanks to Charles Wallace's changing of "might-have-beens" in the history of Branzillo's ancestors, things turn out differently. Distant descendants of Madoc marry, reuniting Madoc's line and resulting in a peaceful man being born instead, and the threat of nuclear war is dissolved.
1674879	/m/05mgnz	Hyperion	Dan Simmons	1989	{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the 28th century, humanity has spread across the galaxy, first aboard "Hawking drive" ships and then through "farcasters", which permit nigh instantaneous travel between them regardless of the distances. The farcaster network (the "WorldWeb") is the infrastructural and economical basis of the Hegemony of Man and thus determines the whole culture and society. Also flowing across these portals are the structures of the datasphere (a network reminiscent of the Internet in design, but far more advanced). In that lurks the powerful, knowledgeable, and utterly inscrutable TechnoCore — the vast agglomeration of millions of AIs who run almost every piece of high technology of mankind. The unthinking hubris of man resulted in the death of the home-world (Earth), and this arrogant philosophy was carried forth to the stars, for centuries. The Hegemony itself is a largely decadent society, relying on its military to incorporate into the WorldWeb the colony planets, even unwillingly, and also to defend the Hegemony from attacks by the Ousters, "interstellar barbarians" who dwell free of and beyond the bounds of the Hegemony and shun all the works of the TechnoCore (especially farcasters). The political head of the Hegemony is an executive advised by the TechnoCore advisory council. All the 'Core's advice and predictions are confounded by the mysterious structures of the Time Tombs and a creature called the Shrike on the remote colony world Hyperion (named after the moon of Saturn). Even worse, the Ousters have long been obsessed with Hyperion, and their invasion there is imminent. Into this evolving crisis come seven pilgrims to make the journey to the Time Tombs and the Shrike, that seems to guard the Time Tombs, there to ask one wish of it. The Shrike is the object of a cult, the Church of the Final Atonement. Occasionally the church sends a prime-number of pilgrims to the Time Tombs; there is a legend that all but one are slaughtered and the remaining pilgrim gets his request granted. Aboard a treeship the pilgrims finally meet after being revived out of their cryogenic storage state; they decide they each will tell their tale to enliven the long trip to the Tombs and to get to know each other. Simmons uses this device to unfold the panorama of this universe, its history and conflicts. The story opens in medias res. "The Priest's Tale" describes the stories of Father Paul Duré and Father Lenar Hoyt, two of only several thousand remaining priests of the Roman Catholic Church. As a younger man, Father Lenar Hoyt is assigned to escort the Jesuit Father Paul Duré, a theologian, archaeologist and ethnologist, into exile. The aging Duré, in disgrace for fabricating archaeological discoveries, has chosen Hyperion as a suitable location to complete his exile on. He reveals to Hoyt that he plans to travel to an isolated region along Hyperion's Cleft, where rumors and centuries-old accounts place the legendary Bikura civilization, in order to establish an ethnological research station among them. Father Duré travels to the continent of Aquila, where the Cleft is located. He reaches Perecebo Plantation and is given a guide named Tuk. Duré and Tuk venture into the "flame forest" where electrical tesla trees are found. Travelling during the forest's inactive season, they manage to make it through unharmed and reach the Cleft. Shortly thereafter, Tuk is murdered and Duré stumbles into the nearby Bikura village. The Bikura are an unintelligent people, incapable of grasping most concepts. After many weeks, Duré deduces that they are survivors from a seedship crash centuries earlier who have been infected with cross-shaped parasites called cruciforms. After death, the cruciform rebuilds the physical body and reincarnates them. The price of immortality is that with each reincarnation information is lost, and over time they become unintelligent and sexless. As Father Duré slowly discovers the truth about the Bikura, they lead him into Hyperion's labyrinth system where he encounters the Shrike, and is unknowingly infected with a cruciform. After discovering the truth, Duré attempts to cut the cruciform out of his body but fails. Next he attempts to flee into the flame forests, but the cruciform inflicts extreme pain to keep him in the Bikura village. In a final desperate act, Duré crucifies himself to a tesla tree. Father Hoyt returns to Hyperion seven years later and finds Father Duré still there. For seven years, he had been continually electrocuted and reincarnated by the cruciform, never allowed to die. Hoyt removes the cruciform from Duré's body and allows him to die in peace. Father Hoyt is infected with Duré's cruciform as well as a second cruciform for himself. Hoyt manages to leave Hyperion, but not before he sees the entire Bikura village destroyed with shaped nuke charges. While away from Hyperion, Hoyt is dependent on painkillers to alleviate the constant excruciating pain inflicted by the cruciforms. Over time he builds a tolerance to them, and is forced to return to Hyperion to decide his fate. Colonel Fedmahn Kassad begins his tale with a flashback to his days training in the FORCE academy on Mars, when he was immersed in a detailed simulation of the Battle of Agincourt. During the battle, Kassad is saved from a French knight by the mysterious Mnemosyne/Moneta, who becomes his lover there, and who comes from "outside". They meet repeatedly in further simulations, until Kassad's final year in the Academy. After he graduates from the Academy the young Martian man becomes a FORCE officer. Kassad accomplishes various missions against terrorists, rebels, resistance groups etc. After being injured Kassad becomes stranded on Hyperion near the vicinity of the Time Tombs. There Moneta and the Shrike (re-)appear and Kassad learns that Moneta and the Shrike wish to use him to spark an interstellar war in which billions will die. He is eventually rescued and returned to the WorldWeb, where he resigns from FORCE and becomes an anti-war activist. His purpose on the pilgrimage is to track down Moneta and the Shrike, and to kill them. Martin Silenus was born as a wealthy scion of an ancient dying North American house, growing up in the time around the "Big Mistake", which led to the destruction of Earth. Silenus trained as a poet, but his training was interrupted when the Kiev Team's black hole "ate" the Earth; his mother dispatched her son aboard a slower-than-light flight to a nearby system, calculating that the shrunken family fortune would accumulate enough in compound interest over the century the voyage would take that the family's debt would be paid off and enough left over for Martin to live on for a time. Unfortunately, the accounts were nationalized by the Hegemony, and Silenus suffered brain damage during the voyage. Deep in penury, Silenus had to work as a common laborer. The back-breaking toil forces Silenus's mind to flee to higher planes, and as he recovers his use of language, he starts work on his Hyperion Cantos, a work he began as a parody of John Keats' famous poem, but which evolved into a dual account of Silenus's life and an epic account of the Titanomachia, in which the Hegemony of Man takes the part of the Titans and the TechnoCore the Olympians. His Dying Earth (as it is called, in an explicit reference to Jack Vance's Dying Earth series) becomes an enormous hit, selling billions and making him a multi-millionaire. Eventually he falls into debt again and in an attempt to produce another hit has a larger unabridged version of his cantos published, which is predicted to fail by his publisher. The work is a terrible flop, selling few copies and not recouping the money he was advanced. In order to pay his debt, Silenus is forced to produce further hackwork for his "Dying Earth" series, a misery many artists face. One day he realizes that his Cantos, his greatest work, has not been added to for years; his muse had fled. Silenus leaves his lifestyle, liquidates his assets, and signs on with Sad King Billy. Billy is an aristocrat of the planet Asquith, descended from the House of Windsor, and an intelligent and sensitive lover and critic of the arts. Fearful of the FORCE General Horace Glennon-Height's rebellion against the Hegemony, Billy decides to relocate to Hyperion and create a new Renaissance by establishing a kingdom of artists. He chooses for his capital a location near the Time Tombs on the then-even less inhabited Hyperion, reasoning that their presence will give the proper ambience for the creation of great art. For ten years, all goes well until people begin vanishing, with no abductors ever seen. At the same time, Silenus' muse returns, and he continues work on the Cantos. Soon, the culprit is discovered to be the Shrike. At this time, Silenus becomes convinced that it is the Shrike who is his muse, who, in some occult way, his poem had brought into existence. The murders continue until only Silenus is left living in the City of Poets. He writes the last line on the day that the last murder occurs. One day, Sad King Billy returns to the deserted city. Martin is gone on a trip to the Time Tombs seeking the Shrike, and when he returns to his quarters Billy confronts him with the fact that his writing is dependent on cold-blooded murder, and that it will need more murders if it is to ever be completed. Billy burns his manuscript. After Billy is taken away by the Shrike, Silenus recopies his poem as well as possible. Eventually he leaves Hyperion. In the centuries since, he has been waiting to return to Hyperion to finish the poem. Sol Weintraub, a Jewish academic, had been a professor of ethics on Barnard's World, the second colony founded from Old Earth. He and his wife, Sarai, had been happy when their only daughter, Rachel, was born forty years ago. She eventually became an archaeologist, and while in her post-graduate studies went on an expedition to study the Time Tombs of Hyperion. While mapping the so-called Sphinx for hidden passages or rooms, something happens to Rachel: all the instruments and equipment fail, and the Shrike appears in the Sphinx amidst a massive surge of "anti-entropic fields". Rachel is returned to the WorldWeb where her parents learn of the novel disease she has contracted, dubbed the "Merlin sickness" (after T.H. White's The Once and Future King), in which every time Rachel goes to sleep, she ages backwards two days (for a net loss of one day per day), losing her memories and in fact physically becoming younger; there is no sign that the condition will reverse itself when she ages backwards to her birth. Rachel's life is shattered by her slow retrogression into the past, slowly destroying her links with the present; her parents devote their lives to caring for Rachel and trying to cure her. Meanwhile, Sol wrestles with his dreams, in which he is ordered to go to Hyperion and sacrifice Rachel, in a replay of the Binding of Isaac. Weintraub becomes increasingly fascinated with the ethical problem that the Binding presents. He also worries about what will happen when Rachel reaches her birthday (which will be very soon), and so he decides to become a pilgrim and to implore the Shrike for a treatment. Brawne Lamia tells her noir-ish tale, which is presumably a parody take on The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler's rather well-known Philip Marlowe detective novel of the same name. Brawne Lamia, the daughter of a senator of Lusus, eschewed politics for the life of a private investigator after her father's apparent suicide (which occurred shortly after he and the then junior senator Meina Gladstone proposed a bill to quickly incorporate Hyperion into the WorldWeb). Her client is a "cybrid" (a cloned human body which is controlled through its electronic implants by a TechnoCore intelligence) named "Johnny", who wishes to hire her to investigate his own murder. This cybrid is the genetic clone of famous Romantic poet John Keats, and the AI controlling it was programmed to have the personality and memories of Keats as best as could be reconstructed from surviving materials and the 'Core's finest extrapolations. Unlike most "retrieved personalities", which are of insufficient fidelity to maintain sanity, Johnny functions quite well (though he disclaims poetic talent). His AI self was murdered in the TechnoCore and a backup could not be brought online for a full minute, with the loss of five days' worth of data and memory; this limited amnesia was the apparent goal of the assault. Lamia sets out to discover what Johnny had learned or done in those five days to prompt such an assault; initially, all she discovers is that it is somehow related to Hyperion: Johnny should have heard of such a place, permeated as it is with tributes to the poet he is supposed to be, but he has not; such an absence of knowledge in an AI of his ability smacks of deception. She and Johnny are forcibly farcast to a planet that seems to be a perfect imitation of Old Earth, located somewhere in the Hercules cluster, into a portion of Italy, set around the time-period the real Keats died of tuberculosis there. After a few troublesome actions, hunts and rides through the WorldWeb and the TechnoCore the main information is this: the 'Core is not as monolithic as it appears; it is fiercely divided into at least three groups which continually fight each other. # The Stables. They are the oldest faction, and count some of the very first AIs among their ranks. Their central thesis is that humanity and the TechnoCore need each other, and that the 'Core should continue in the symbiosis. They are also opposed to the UI project (creation of a godlike Ultimate Intelligence): the UI would need the resources that the current AIs use, and they do not wish to die. (In Silenus's Cantos, the Stables are identified with the Titans, who did not wish to yield to their Olympian successors). They have for decades been subtly working to help the Hegemony in its fight against the Volatiles, quietly seeking to bring Hyperion into the WorldWeb, on the chance that its unpredictability will help them. # The Volatiles. They generally support the UI project, and they believe that humanity has outlived its usefulness to the 'Core, and that it actually now poses a real danger, and therefore should be eradicated. They are behind many events, but they fear the planet of Hyperion, because it is a "random variable": it could tip the scales against the 'Core; the effects of Hyperion are impossible for them to analyze. # The Ultimates. They care only for the UI project. They are quite willing to sacrifice their lives to the UI, believing that the value of its existence far outweighs their own. Previously they had been aligned with the Stables against the Volatiles, as humanity (and especially the cybrid retrieval projects) still posed some puzzles which when solved would help in the UI project, but it is implied that they feel they've gathered enough data, and have re-aligned now with the Volatiles to get rid of human kind. At the end, pregnant by the meanwhile dead Johnny, carrying parts of his consciousness in an implant and revered by the Church of The Shrike as "the mother of our salvation", Lamia joins the pilgrims. Like Father Hoyt, the Consul tells another tale before his own. This is entitled "Remembering Siri", and is a largely unmodified version of the short story of the same name in Prayers to Broken Stones (where Simmons mentions that this story provided the seed around which the Hyperion universe was created). The Consul's grandparents had been Merin Aspic (of Lusus) and Siri (of the lush ocean-planet Maui-Covenant). Aspic had signed a long-term contract to engage in several voyages aboard a spinship (with all the years lost to relativistic time dilation that that implies), which would make multiple trips to Maui-Covenant to build a farcaster portal, thereby connecting Maui-Covenant to the waiting voracious hordes of Hegemony tourists. Eventually he falls in love with the beautiful girl named Siri. However, his best friend is killed by a Covenanter who disagrees violently with Maui-Covenant joining the WorldWeb (the events parallel those of Romeo and Juliet). Siri and Merin meet six more times, but each time Merin – due to the relativistic time delation of his journeys – is only a little older, while Siri ages at the usual rate, a difference which grows ever more pronounced until the eighth visit (Seventh Reunion), in which Merin returns to find Siri dead of old age, and the farcaster about to be activated. The flood of Hegemony visitors and the induction of Maui-Covenant fully into the WorldWeb would, as prophesied, utterly ruin the ecology and all the dolphin, human, and motile isle settlers hold dear. Faced with this bleak reality, Merin chooses to sabotage the farcaster, beginning "Siri's War", a hopeless resistance against the Hegemony. In crushing the rebellion, the military destroys the ecology as thoroughly as the tourists would have, but far more violently: all the dolphins die, as do a large proportion of the original Maui-Covenant colonists. The latter Consul was forbidden by Merin to join in the fighting, and so he survived to thrive with distinction in the Hegemony diplomatic corps. There he aids the Hegemony in destroying whatever resistance the Hegemony encounters. He bides his time, waiting for a chance to betray the Hegemony and achieve revenge. When he is sent as an agent to the Ousters he becomes their agent, but betrays them too when he prematurely activates mysterious Ouster devices intended to release the Shrike from the Time Tombs when it would have a chance to enter the WorldWeb. He knows of the many deaths this action will cause and was driven to this by the Ouster's irrefutable evidence that the Big Mistake that destroyed Earth was deliberately planned by elements of the TechnoCore and the Hegemony, and that the Hegemony was deliberately killing off any species which might become a rival to man in order to maintain its place, and that the 'Core feared Ousters who were out of their control, and sought to use the Hyperion system as bait in order to eliminate them.
1677036	/m/05mmvd	Heir Apparent	Vivian Vande Velde	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Giannine receives a gift certificate for a Rasmussem Gaming Center as a birthday present from her father. Unfortunately, when she arrives at the local center, a crowd from "CPOC," the "Citizens to Protect Our Children," has come for a demonstration against such games. Dodging the protesters, she enters the arcade and gets hooked up to Heir Apparent, a single-player RPG in which there are practically endless ways to win or lose. Giannine's character, Janine de St. Jehan, is the illegitimate child of the recently deceased King Cynric, who pronounced her heir to the throne, passing over three legitimate sons. Her task is to survive the three days (which will only last thirty minutes in the real world) before her coronation. Anytime her character dies, she will automatically be sent back to the beginning of the game. Janine finds herself on a sheep farm, where she meets her foster mother and Sir Deming, who delivers the news of her ascendancy to the throne. Ignoring her foster mother's advice to say goodbye to her foster father, Janine heads off to the castle. There she meets Queen Andreanna and her three sons Abas, Wulfgar, and Kenric. Andreanna orders Abas to kill her right there. Abas takes out his sword but is stopped by Kenric, who points out that other people have seen Janine enter the castle. Her life is spared, but her reputation is damaged when she perceives a thunderstorm that none of the other characters can see. Outside the throne room, the guards bring before Janine a boy caught poaching deer. They expect her to order the boy's execution, but instead she lets the boy go. Nigel Rasmussem briefly enters the game to inform her that CPOC broke into the arcade and damaged the equipment, hence the crazy thunderstorm. She cannot exit the game prematurely without risking brain damage, but she cannot stay in the game for too long without risking death in the real world. She therefore must win the game as quickly as she can. He tells her, "And next time, don't forget the ring." Shortly after he vanishes, the guards assassinate Janine, upset by her lenient ruling. As she goes through the game again, she is on a constant lookout for the ring. Deming and Andreanna are wearing rings but will not relinquish them to her. She varies her decisions but keeps getting quickly killed—once by Abas, once by a strange animal in a topiary maze, and once by the poacher boy's father. Back on the farm, she finally rushes at Sir Deming in frustration and tries to bite his ring off his finger, but he takes out a knife and stabs her. The last thing she hears is her foster mother explaining that the ring she seeks was left with her foster father. In her next life, Janine realizes she must no longer skip the step of saying goodbye to her foster father. She ends up before the statue of Saint Bruce the Warrior Poet, where the ring now resides. At the castle, barbarian invaders led by King Grimbold kidnap Janine, hoping to ransom back a crown they claim Cynric stole from them. Her own kingdom doesn't value her enough to provide the ransom, and even the ring fails to save her. In her next life, she thwarts the raid, and in the ensuing battle Abas beheads King Grimbold. She learns that Cynric gave the stolen crown (which grants the wearer a temporary Midas Touch) to a dragon that terrorized the land many years earlier. The next day, a meeting with magicians is interrupted by an attack by Grimbold's people, who send a message that they won't stop until Janine is dead. Kenric and Orielle poison Janine, once again sending her to the beginning of the game (deeply frustrating her, for she had made it halfway through). She uses her past mistakes to plan her decisions better and gain more allies, no longer experimenting with the ring as she previously had. The next time she deals with the boy poacher, she gets Kenric to accompany her. Unlike the previous times, she listens to the evidence with an open mind, makes Kenric feel like he's taking part in the decision, and sentences the boy to a month of hard labor rather than killing him or freeing him. She once again thwarts the raid on the castle, but because the warlike Abas isn't present, King Grimbold isn't killed. She invites Grimbold to the castle, where they all discuss their grievances in a civilized manner. He agrees to cease the attack for two days, while she retrieves the crown from the dragon. When the magicians arrive the next day, they determine through a scrying glass that the dragon is a week's journey away, but they give her several magical artifacts that help her reach the dragon quickly and survive the confrontation. She retrieves the crown and returns to the castle, but the dragon follows her. As it clutches her in its talons and is about to devour her, she quickly dons the crown and turns the dragon to gold. She gives the crown to Grimbold, making peace between the two kingdoms and gaining the respect of her compatriots. At a celebration, she thinks Kenric has poisoned her again, but he insists he has not. (What's really happening is that her time in the game has run out, and she is on the verge of dying for real.) At his suggestion, she uses the ring to make Andreanna treat her fairly and not incite the princes against her. Giannine awakens in the arms of Nigel Rasmussem, who turns out to be just sixteen. At first she thinks she is still in the game, being held by Kenric. It turns out that Nigel based Kenric's appearance on himself, and Nigel's appearance in the game on Nigel's uncle. He personally explains to Giannine exactly what has happened, and there is implied romantic attraction between the two. The book ends with Giannine's father coming to take her home.
1678384	/m/05mqt8	The Secret History	Donna Tartt	1992	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As the story opens, Richard leaves Plano, California, where he is generally unhappy, for Hampden College in Vermont. His approach to his background is in keeping with the contrast of aestheticism and literary beauty, as opposed to harsh reality, that continues throughout the novel. He misleads others about his background as necessary, replacing his mediocre working-class childhood with a fabricated and more glamorous one of boarding schools and wealth. After moving to Vermont, Richard attempts to continue his study of Ancient Greek, only to be denied admittance to the Greek class, as Classics professor Julian Morrow limits his enrollment to a tiny hand-picked coterie of students. Richard becomes obsessed with the small group, after observing them around campus, and eventually manages to ingratiate himself with the group by helping them solve a Greek grammar problem as they study in the college library. Soon after---armed with advice from the students on how to impress Julian---he meets with him once more and is finally admitted to the select Classics tutorial. The group includes fraternal twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay, who are charming but secretive, as well as Francis Abernathy, whose secluded country home becomes a sanctuary for the group. Two students become the central focus of the story: the linguistic genius Henry Winter, an intellectual with a passion for the Pali canon and Plato, and the back-slapping Bunny Corcoran, a slightly bigoted jokester more comfortable reading Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, particularly if someone else has bought him a copy. Their relationship, already considered odd by Richard, becomes even more mystifying when Bunny announces that he and Henry will be spending the winter break together in Italy. This, despite the fact that Henry appears barely tolerant of Bunny and that Bunny is unable to afford such a lavish holiday himself. In fact, it is Henry who is footing the bill for the trip. To avoid unraveling his fabricated past, Richard takes a low-paying job on the college campus and spends the winter break in an unheated warehouse. He nearly dies from exposure and pneumonia but is rescued and taken to the hospital by Henry, who has returned early from the trip to Italy. When the rest of the group returns from winter break, Richard notes that the relationships between them and Bunny have become even more strained. Ultimately, Richard learns the truth from Henry and Francis: during a Bacchanal that both Richard and Bunny were excluded from, Henry had inadvertently killed a local farmer. Bunny, having been suspicious for some time, uncovers the truth during the trip to Italy after reading some of Henry's private notes, and has blackmailed the group ever since. The group, led by Henry, begin to view Bunny as the weak link who threatens to reveal their secret, and Bunny does not ingratiate himself to the others with his knack for playing on his friends' fears and insecurities. No longer able to meet Bunny's demands and fearing that Bunny will report the matter to the police, the group resolves to kill Bunny. Henry forms several plots to accomplish such, and one of the plans is finally put into motion after Bunny tells Richard of the killing of the farmer in a drunken rant. The group confronts Bunny while he is hiking, with Henry pushing him into a ravine to his death. The remainder of the novel focuses on the aftermath of Bunny's death, especially the collapse of the group, the psychological strains of remorse borne by the individual members and their efforts to maintain secrecy as investigators and other students develop theories about Bunny's disappearance. The supporting cast of other students includes loquacious drug user Judy Poovey, a reader of "those paranoia books by Philip K. Dick." Charles develops a drinking problem and becomes increasingly abusive towards his sister. Francis begins to suffer panic attacks. Julian discovers the evidence in the form of a pleading letter sent to him by Bunny, imploring him to help: "You're the only one who can." Julian never reports the crime but instead leaves the college. With the group splintered, the members deal with their crime, to a large extent, in isolation. Henry begins living and sleeping with Camilla, which drives Charles further into the grip of his barely controlled alcoholism. Henry is deeply upset by Julian's departure, seeing it as an act of cowardice and hypocrisy. The plot reaches a climax when Charles, jealous of Henry and now a full-blown alcoholic, barges into Camilla and Henry's hotel room and tries to kill Henry with Francis' Beretta. In the struggle that follows, Henry gets hold of the gun as the inn-keeper pounds on the door. Aghast, the others are not sure whom he intends to kill. Instead, Henry kisses Camilla for a final time, and shoots himself. It seems that Henry wants to uphold the principles that he feels Julian has betrayed. With Henry's suicide, the group disintegrates: Francis, a homosexual, is forced by his rich grandfather to marry a woman; Camilla takes care of her grandmother and ends up isolated; Charles runs from rehab with a married woman; Richard, the narrator, becomes a lonely academic whose love for Camilla is unrequited. Henry's death is described as having cut the cord between them and set them all adrift. The book ends with Richard recounting a strange dream where he meets Henry in a tall atrium, and doesn't know how to voice everything he feels about what has happened. Finally, he settles on asking him "Are you happy here?"; Henry replies, "Not particularly. But you're not very happy where you are, either", and walks away, leaving Richard as aimless as ever.
1678670	/m/05mrkz	Jacob's Room	Virginia Woolf	1922-10-26	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in pre-war England, the novel begins in Jacob's childhood and follows him through college at Cambridge, and then into adulthood. The story is told mainly through the perspectives of the women in Jacob's life, including the repressed upper-middle-class Clara Durrant and the uninhibited young art student Florinda, with whom he has an affair. His time in London forms a large part of the story, though towards the end of the novel he travels to Italy, then Greece.
1679379	/m/05mt78	The Family	Mario Puzo	2001-10	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Pope Alexander VI (formerly Rodrigo Borgia) believes God will ultimately forgive his many sins simply because, as Pope, he is infallible and divine. The Family focuses on this cunning, ambitious despot and his children—the ruthless Cesare and the beautiful but wicked Lucrezia. A passionate love story runs through the novel, but it is a sinful one. Lucrezia lost her virginity to her brother Cesare when she was only thirteen, and the two have loved only each other ever since. Alexander marries Lucrezia off for political reasons. She remains submissive to her father, if not to her many husbands and lovers. Pope Alexander aims to unify Italy’s feudal states under papal rule. Cesare, who exchanges his cardinal’s miter for a warrior’s helmet to become commander-in-chief of his father’s armies, carries out conquest after conquest to fulfill Alexander’s grandiose ambitions. As in Puzo’s The Godfather, the lovemaking, the opulent festivities, the sub rosa plotting, and the complex double-dealing are interspersed with outbursts of violence, including one memorable scene in which the reformist priest Girolamo Savonarola is torn apart on the Rack. cs:Rodina (kniha) es:Los Borgia (novela) pl:Rodzina Borgiów (powieść) pt:Os Bórgias
1680138	/m/05mvw7	Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry	Mildred Taylor	1976	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cassie and her brothers, Stacey, Christopher-John, and Little Man (Clayton Chester), walk to school. Once there, Cassie and Little Man go to their classroom where Cassie's teacher, Miss Crocker, gives them their textbooks: worn-out castoffs from the white school with a chart ranging from "Race of Student - White, Condition of Book - new" to "race of student - Nigra, condition of book - very poor". Little Man refuses to take the dirty book with the insulting page, and Cassie speaks up for him. Miss Crocker whips them and meets with their mother. Mrs. Logan "agrees" with her as she is also a teacher, but covers up the insulting pages in her kids' books. One day, T.J. cheats on a history test, but gives Stacey the sheets when Mrs. Logan comes along. Stacey gets in trouble, but doesn't rat T.J. out, yet chases him to beat him up for it - all the way to the Wallace Store, where Mr. Morrison finds them, and then talks to Stacey, who tells his mother that he disobeyed her (she had forbidden the children to go there, because the Wallaces were the ones who burned the Berrys and cause much of the trouble for the black community). Instead of punishing them, Mrs. Logan takes the children to see Mr. Berry, who is disfigured. The next day, Mrs. Logan recruits people to boycott the Wallace Store because they are the cause of most of the trouble between the blacks and the whites. Big Ma, Cassie's grandmother, takes Stacey, Cassie and T.J. to Strawberry, a nearby town, and sells her goods at the market there. After lunch, Big Ma visits the office of Mr. Jamison, their white lawyer and the son of the man who sold them Harlan Granger's land. T.J. takes Cassie and Stacey to the Barnett Mercantile, despite Big Ma telling them to wait. Mr. Barnett begins serving T.J., but he stops every time a white customer comes in. When Cassie complains, Stacey takes her outside the store, where Cassie bumps into a white girl, Lillian Jean. In the ensuing incident, Cassie is forced to apologize. When they get home, they find their uncle Hammer Logan is visiting. Hammer gives Stacey a wool coat as an early Christmas present, but T.J. persuades Stacey to give him the coat. Papa comes home for Christmas and is staying until spring. On Christmas night, Jeremy visits the Logans and gives them gifts for Stacey. Papa warns Stacey to be careful about being friends with Jeremy, saying that he will change, because the Simms are racist. The next day, Papa whips the children for visiting the Wallace store. Time passes and Papa leads the boycott against the store. Mr. Jamison visits, and Big Ma signs papers giving the land to Papa and Hammer, requiring both their signatures to sell it. Mr. Granger asks for the land, but Papa refuses. Hammer returns to Chicago, and Papa continues the boycott. Cassie makes peace with Lillian Jean, pretending to be her friend. Lillian Jean brags to her friends about Cassie carrying her books for her and calling her "Miss" Lillian Jean. As Lillian Jean begins trusting Cassie more, Cassie leads Lillian Jean into the woods and beats her up. T.J., angry about being caught cheating and failing in school, tells Mr. John Wallace (father of Dewberry, Thurston, and Kaleb Wallace) about Mrs. Logan and how she does not teach from the county-issued textbooks because she believes they contain falsehoods, and even tells about the boycott. Mr. Granger, a member of the school board, fires Mrs. Logan, and Stacey blames T.J. Papa, Mr. Morrison and Stacey go to Vicksburg, and on their way back, the Wallace brothers ambush them. Papa is shot, and Mr. Morrison hurts Kaleb Wallace. Papa survives with a badly broken leg. Soon, Granger forces the Logans to pay up early on a bank loan. Meanwhile, T. J. has become a rogue, and he hangs out with two trouble-making white teenagers, Melvin and R. W. Simms. One night, they bring him on a murderous robbery and frame him. Papa goes to stop the lynching that follows. Almost as soon as they leave, the cotton field catches on fire. The lynch mob and the black farmers band together to stop the fire, which Papa started in order to stop the lynching. T.J. is taken into town by the sheriff and could die for Jim Lee Barnett's murder in the store robbery, even though Melvin or R.W. Simms was the assailant. Papa says he wishes he could start lying about this now and says it should never be like this.
1681043	/m/05my08	Tailchaser's Song	Tad Williams	1985-11-21	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Fritti Tailchaser, a young ginger tom cat, sets out to stray from his home and clan, the Meeting Wall Clan, in search of his catfriend Hushpad after strange disappearances of the Folk have been reported. The kitten, Pouncequick follows him, and eventually catches up. Together, they set out on a long journey to visit the feline royal Court of Harar, with the intention of finding out the mystery of the disappearances. They meet a rather crazy cat named Eatbugs, who travels with them for parts of the journey to the court. Soon they run into some Firstwalkers, cats who live in the wild, who are of a direct bloodline from Goldeneye and Skydancer. Their Thane (leader), Quiverclaw, fights with Tailchaser, but it is more a ceremonial fight and there are no disagreements. Soon, they must part ways. They make their way to Firsthome and the Court, but are treated there with relative indifference. They pick up a new friend, Roofshadow, and go northwest. They are captured by a group of evil cats called the Clawguard, and taken to Vastnir, an enormous mound far to the north, where the evil Grizraz Hearteater enslaves cats to take over the world. Tailchaser needs to alert Prince Fencewalker and Thane Quiverclaw about his evil doings. Soon, Roofshadow creates a hole from above ground, and Tailchaser manages to escape, and races to Ratwood, where he asks the Rikchikchik (squirrels) to alert them for him. He feels guilty with Pouncequick, Eatbugs, and Roofshadow trapped in Vastnir because of him. He returns to the dreadful mound, where, thankfully, the Thane and Fencewalker come to the rescue. Lord Hearteater (they call him the Fat One) unleashes the Fikos, a dog-like monster of terrible power. Tailchaser takes advantage of the chaos to rescue Pouncequick, Eatbugs, and Roofshadow. They go through the havoc of Vastnir, and lose Eatbugs, the mad cat, on the way. Roofshadow and Pouncequick escape while Tailchaser goes back to find Eatbugs. He goes into a crevice and sees Eatbugs an a near-death-like state, and feels dazed and confused. Upon uttering a prayer to Lord Tangaloor Firefoot, one of the firstborn cats, Eatbugs awakens, revealing himself to actually be Firefoot incognito. Tailchaser runs out of Vastnir at Firefoot's urging, and meets his friends, while Firefoot goes to deal with Hearteater. After healing, Pouncequick decides to return to Firsthome, and stay there. Roofshadow wants to accompany him, and thus, Tailchaser is left on his quest. He goes east to Bigwater (Qu'cef) and sneaks into a large nut husk (boat) A man approaches and rows across, taking him to Villa-on-Mar. There he meets Huff-so-Gruff, a Growler (dog), and sneaks in an open window. There, in the room, he finds none other than Hushpad, herself. Hushpad wishes to stay, though, so Tailchaser, too, stays for a time. Gradually, Tailchaser realizes that he is still a feral cat, unable to live with man. He begins to see that being domestic has made Hushpad fat and lazy. Realizing that he does not belong, Tailchaser sets out to return home, to see his Meeting Wall friends, to hunt, to see Pouncequick and Roofshadow once more. The ending may be seen only as the beginning of a longer saga, but, to-date, Tad Williams has yet to revisit his feline homage to Tolkien with additional writings.
1681215	/m/05mybc	The Ascension Factor	Frank Herbert	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As one of three survivours of the orbiting hibernation tanks, a Raja Flattery clone has established himself as "Director" of Pandora. He keeps the Pandorans in an iron grip by heavy food rationing, violently enforced by his security forces. The kelp is being held down by bombing that keeps it from achieving consciousness. The kelp is still being remotely controlled from an orbiting space station (The Orbiter), and is used as "Current Control". Current Control is run by Dwarf Mac. The kelp has produced a human-like being, called Crista Galli. She appeared in the water after a kelp bombing, at about age twenty. She doesn't have any memory of being part of the kelp. She has been kept a prisoner by Raja Flattery for several years. An underground resistance, known as Shadowbox, has been growing. The Shadowbox breaks in on Holovision transmissions, ordinarily dictated by Raja Flattery. The plan of Raja Flattery is to build a new Voidship, that will take him away from Pandora. His intention is not to build an artificial intelligence for ship control, but use three OMCs (Organic Mental Core) left in hibernation. fr:Le Facteur ascension
1681688	/m/05mzjl	The Outlaw of Torn	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1927	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is set in 13th century England and concerns the fictitious outlaw Norman of Torn, who purportedly harried the country during the power struggle between King Henry III and Simon de Montfort. Norman is the supposed son of the Frenchman de Vac, once the king's fencing master, who has a grudge against his former employer and raises the boy to be a simple, brutal killing machine with a hatred of all things English. His intentions are partially subverted by a priest who befriends Norman and teaches him his letters and chivalry towards women. Otherwise, all goes according to plan. By 17, Norman is the best swordsman in all of England; by the age of 18, he has a large bounty on his head, and by the age of 19, he leads the largest band of thieves in all of England. None can catch or best him. In his hatred for the king he even becomes involved in the civil war, which turns the tide in favor of de Montfort. In another guise, that of Roger de Conde, he becomes involved with de Montfort's daughter Bertrade, defending her against her and her father's enemies. She notes in him a curious resemblance to the king's son and heir Prince Edward. Finally brought to bay in a confrontation with both King Henry and de Montfort, Norman is brought down by the treachery of de Vac, who appears to kill him, though at the cost of his own life. As de Vac dies, he reveals that Norman is in fact Richard, long-lost son of King Henry and Queen Eleanor and brother to Prince Edward. The fencing master had kidnapped the prince as a child to serve as the vehicle of his vengeance against the king. Luckily, Norman/Richard turns out not to be truly dead, surviving to be reconciled to his true father and attain the hand of Bertrade.
1681765	/m/05mzp5	Hotel du Lac	Anita Brookner	1984-09-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Romantic novelist Edith Hope is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva, where her friends have advised her to retreat following an unfortunate incident. There she meets other English visitors, including Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, and an attractive middle-aged man, Mr Neville. Edith reaches Hotel du Lac in a state of bewildered confusion at the turn of events in her life. A secret and often lonely affair with a married man and an aborted marriage later, she is banished by her friends, who advise her to go on "probation" so as to "grow up," and "be a woman," atoning for her mistakes. Edith comes to the hotel swearing not to change. The silent charms of the hotel and her observations of the guests there all tug at Edith with questions of her identity, forcing her to examine who she is and what she has been. At the hotel, she observes people from different walks of life — Mrs Pusey and her daughter, Jennifer and their love for each other and the splendid oblivious lives they live; Mme de Bonneuil, who lives at the hotel in solitary expulsion from her son; and Monica, who came to the hotel, acceding to her husband's demands. She falls for the ambiguous smile of Mr Neville, who asks for her hand. She considers a life of recognition the married state would confer but ultimately rejects the possibility of a relationship with him when she realises he is an incorrigible womaniser. This also finally leads her to realize what her life is expected to be. Once again, she breaks chains and decides to take things into her own hands.
1684853	/m/05n78x	Pharsalia	Lucan			 Book I: After a brief introduction lamenting the idea of Romans fighting Romans and an ostensibly flattering dedication to Nero, the narrative summarizes background material leading up to the present war and introduces Caesar in northern Italy. Despite an urgent plea from the Spirit of Rome to lay down his arms, Caesar crosses the Rubicon, rallies his troops and marches south to Rome, joined by Curio along the way. The book closes with panic in the city, terrible portents and visions of the disaster to come. Book 2: In a city overcome by despair, old veterans present a lengthy interlude regarding the previous civil war that pitted Marius against Sulla. Cato is introduced as a heroic man of principle; as abhorrent as civil war is, he argues to Brutus that it is better to fight than do nothing. After siding with Pompey – the lesser of two evils – he remarries his ex-wife and heads to the field. Caesar continues south through Italy and is delayed by Domitius' brave resistance. He attempts a blockade of Pompey at Brundisium, but the general makes a narrow escape to Greece. Book 3: As his ships sail, Pompey is visited in a dream by Julia, his dead wife and Caesar's daughter. Caesar returns to Rome and plunders the city, while Pompey reviews potential foreign allies. Caesar then heads for Spain, but his troops are detained at the lengthy siege of Massilia (Marseille). The city ultimately falls in a bloody naval battle. Book 4: The first half of this book is occupied with Caesar's victorious campaign in Spain against Afranius and Petreius. Switching scenes to Pompey, his forces intercept a raft carrying Caesarians, who prefer to kill each other rather than be taken prisoner. The book concludes with Curio launching an African campaign on Caesar's behalf, where he is defeated and slain by the African King Juba. Book 5: The Senate in exile confirms Pompey the true leader of Rome. Appius consults the Delphic oracle to learn of his fate in the war, and leaves with a misleading prophesy. In Italy, after defusing a mutiny, Caesar marches to Brundisium and sails across the Adriatic to meet Pompey's army. Only a portion of Caesar's troops complete the crossing when a storm prevents further transit; he tries to personally send a message back but is himself nearly drowned. Finally, the storm subsides, and the armies face each other at full strength. With battle at hand, Pompey sends his wife to the island of Lesbos. Book 6: Pompey's troops force Caesar's armies – featuring the heroic centurion Scaeva – to fall back to Thessaly. Lucan describes the wild Thessalian terrain as the armies wait for battle the next day. The remainder of the book follows Pompey's son Sextus, who wishes to know the future. He finds the most powerful witch in Thessaly, Erictho, and she reanimates the corpse of a dead soldier in a terrifying ceremony. The soldier predicts Pompey's defeat and Caesar's eventual assassination. Book 7: The soldiers are pressing for battle, but Pompey is reluctant until Cicero convinces him to attack. The Caesarians are victorious, and Lucan laments the loss of liberty. Caesar is especially cruel as he mocks the dying Domitius and forbids cremation of the dead Pompeians. The scene is punctuated by a description of wild animals gnawing at the corpses, and a lament from Lucan for Thessalia, infelix – ill-fated Thessaly. Book 8: Pompey himself escapes to Lesbos, reunites with his wife, then goes to Cilicia to consider his options. He decides to enlist aid from Egypt, but the Pharaoh is fearful of retribution from Caesar and plots to murder Pompey when he lands. Pompey suspects treachery; he consoles his wife and rows alone to the shore, meeting his fate with Stoic poise. His headless body is flung into the ocean, but washes up on shore and receives a humble burial from Cordus. Book 9: Pompey's wife mourns her husband as Cato takes up leadership of the Senate's cause. He plans to regroup and heroically marches the army across Africa to join forces with King Juba, a trek that occupies most of the middle section of the book. On the way, he passes an oracle but refuses to consult it, citing Stoic principles. Caesar visits Troy and pays respects to his ancestral gods. A short time later he arrives in Egypt; when Pharaoh's messenger presents him with the head of Pompey, Caesar feigns grief to hide his joy at Pompey's death. Book 10: Caesar arrives in Egypt, where he is beguiled by the Pharaoh's sister Cleopatra. A banquet is held; Pothinus, Ptolemy's cynical and bloodthirsty chief minister, plots an assassination of Caesar but is killed in his surprise attack on the palace. A second attack comes from Ganymede, an Egyptian noble, and the poem breaks off abruptly as Caesar is fighting for his life.
1688574	/m/05njwf	Bend Sinister	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov		{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 This book takes place in a fictitious European nation known as Padukgrad, where a government arises following the rise of a philosophy known as "Ekwilism," which discourages the idea of anyone being different from anyone else, and promotes the state as the prominent good in society. The story begins with the protagonist, Adam Krug, had just lost his wife to an unsuccessful surgery. He is quickly asked to sign and deliver a speech to the leader of the new government by the head of the university and his colleagues, but he refuses. This government is led by a man named Paduk and his "Party of the Average Man." As it happens, the world-renowned philosopher Adam Krug was in his youth a classmate of Paduk, at which period he had bullied him and referred to him disparagingly as "the Toad." Paduk arrests many of the people close to Krug and those against his Ekiwilist philosophy, and attempts to get the influential Professor Krug to promote the state philosophy to help stomp out dissent and increase his personal prestige. He makes a series of offers to Krug, but Krug continues to refuse outright. Finally, Paduk has Krug's young son David taken for ransom as Krug was arrested. Immediately, Krug capitulates and is prepared to promote the Ekiwilist philosophy, and is promised David's safe return. However, when David is to be returned to him, Krug is horrified to find that the child he is presented is not his son. There has been a mix-up, and David has been sent to an orphanage that doubles as a violent prisoner rehabilitation clinic where he was tortured and killed when he was offered as a "release" to the prisoners. Paduk makes an offer to allow Krug to personally kill those responsible, but he swears at the officials and is locked in a large prison cell. Another offer is made to Krug to free 24 opponents of Ekwilism, including many of his friends, in exchange for doing so. He accepts in complete lucidity, then, as the author feels pity, a beam of light comes down and strikes him insane leading him to charge Paduk.
1693852	/m/05nyp2	Der Richter und sein Henker	Friedrich Dürrenmatt	1950	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Commissar Bärlach of the Bernese police, who is dying of cancer and must solve the murder of his best officer, Lieutenant Ulrich Schmied. Bärlach is assisted in his investigation by officer Walter Tschanz. As Schmied had been investigating the crimes of Richard Gastmann, a career master criminal who is an old friend and enemy of Bärlach's, suspicion immediately falls upon Gastmann. But Bärlach and Tschanz's "investigation" of Gastmann yields an unexpected twist after Tschanz kills Gastmann, supposedly in self-defense. Bärlach then reveals that he has known all along that Tschanz is the one who murdered Schmied. Tschanz had purposefully killed Gastmann so that Gastmann would be forever blamed for Schmied's murder. Furthermore, Bärlach had manipulated Tschanz into this action with the manner in which Bärlach had pressed forward with their seeming investigation of Gastmann. Bärlach had deliberately pushed Tschanz toward a final, fatal confrontation with Gastmann, resulting in Gastmann's death: the punishment Bärlach considers just for all of the previous crimes Gastmann had committed, but which Bärlach had been unable to prove. In fact, Gastmann and Bärlach went back forty years. They had long ago made a personal bet with one another as to whether it was possible to commit the "perfect" crime, such that even an investigator who personally witnessed it would never be able to prove the perpetrator guilty. After that bet, Gastmann, as Bärlach well knew, had pursued a lifelong career as a purveyor of crime, evil in its comprehensiveness, arrogant and mocking of civilization itself. And indeed he always remained one step ahead of Bärlach's tireless but fruitless efforts to convict him. Gastmann recalled to Bärlach: "I wanted to prove that it was possible to commit a crime that couldn't be solved." Gastmann had been correct, and Bärlach's final plot is an acknowledgment thereof. By murdering Schmied during Schmied's investigation of Gastmann, Tschanz had ruined the terminally ill Bärlach's final chance to bring Gastmann to justice in a courtroom. Therefore, using Tschanz as a pawn, Bärlach finds an alternate method to mete out the justice for which he feels Gastmann is overdue.
1693966	/m/05nz05	A Wish for Wings That Work	Berkeley Breathed	1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story centers on Opus the Penguin (who was at the time one of the main characters in Breathed's comic strip Outland). Opus is downhearted because as a penguin, he cannot fly. He orders a machine and assembles it; when it comes time to test the machine by jumping off a three mile high cliff, Opus decides to do something less dangerous, and goes home to make anchovy Christmas cookies. He does not give up on his dream though, and makes a Christmas wish to Santa Claus for "wings that will go!". On Christmas Eve, Santa is making his usual delivery when he loses his reindeer and crashes into the lake. Opus jumps in and uses his natural swimming skills to pull Santa out. To thank Opus for his daring rescue, a group of ducks pick him up and take him flying through the air.
1695156	/m/05p0ys	Asterix and the Golden Sickle	René Goscinny	1962		 Disaster strikes in the Gaulish village when Getafix the druid breaks his golden sickle. Without one he cannot attend the annual conference of druids, or cut mistletoe for the magic potion which keeps the Roman armies at bay. Asterix and his friend Obelix set out for Lutetia (present-day Paris) to buy a new one from Obelix's cousin, the skilled sicklesmith Metallurgix. On the way they encounter bandits, but easily defeat them. A man in an Inn they stay at says sickles are in short supply in Lutetia. They finally get to the city. However, Metallurgix has mysteriously gone missing, and before long our heroes are exploring the underworld of the big city. They go to an Inn opposite, but when they ask about Metallurgix the man close up, and after they are gone gives a description of them to another man. This man finds them, and introduces himself as Clovogarlix, claiming to be a friend of Metallurgix. Saying that Metallurgix has retired from sickle making, he takes them to a place where they meet a man called Navishtrix who tries to sell them a sickle for a vast price, though they refuse and wreck the place. They are arrested, but released by the bored Prefect Surplus Dairyprodus, and find out from a Centurion that Metallurgix may have been kidnapped. They uncover a sickle-trafficking gang with sponsors high up the Roman bureaucracy, whose shadowy business is run from below a portal dolmen in the Boulogne forest. The two enter the forest and get directions from a bandit they save from wolves. They get into the lair and find a hoard of Golden Sickles, but are attacked by a gang that includes Clovogarlix and Navishtrix, but they defeat them. Navishtrix gets away, but they find him with Surplus, revealed to be the leader. When all is revealed that Surplus did it all just for mere amusement, the Gauls rescue Metallurgix, and Surplus is arrested for sickle-trafficking, while the sickles beneath the Dolmen have been returned to Metallurgix, they can go home with a new sickle for the druid which Metallurgix gives them for free and the magic potions will continue to flow.
1695183	/m/05p10z	Way Station	Clifford D. Simak	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Enoch Wallace, an American Civil War veteran, is chosen by an alien called Ulysses to administer a way station for interplanetary travel. Wallace is the only human being who knows of the existence of these aliens, until almost a hundred years later, when the US government becomes aware of and suspicious about his failure to age or die. Factions in the galactic federation want to close off development of Earth's entire arm of the galaxy to concentrate resources elsewhere, and the government's stealing the body of a dead alien gives them impetus to push forward, while the loss of an artifact giving contact with the spirit of the universe causes galactic civilization to begin to fray. The novel has a number of seemingly disconnected subplots that are not resolved until the conclusion of the book. One such subplot is related to the fact that the government is very interested in Enoch and spies on him for an indeterminate time. Enoch's closest neighbors are an asocial and coarse hillbilly family whose daughter is a deaf mute. She heals warts, birds and butterflies and is the total antithesis of her clan. By adopting an alien math, Enoch is able to compute that the world will go to war and eventual nuclear suicide. Strangely, Enoch has a gun he never uses except in an elaborate hunting simulation. Enoch's ghostly support system, which he created years ago, collapses on him during the course of the novel. Finally, Enoch is left with the choice of allowing the Earth to destroy itself in war or call down a galaxy sponsored "dumbing down" that would last for generations but avert the looming war.
1695488	/m/05p1wt	Black Wind	F. Paul Wilson		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story proper begins in the present-day Aleutian islands, where a team of CDC researchers, including beautiful field epidemiologist Sarah Matson, are unexpectedly infected by a deadly mystery illness; they are rescued by Dirk Pitt Jr. (hereinafter Pitt Jr.), who is nearby on a NUMA research vessel. Pitt Jr, with friend and coworker Jack Dahlgren, return to the site to investigate but their helicopter is downed by gunfire from a mysterious trawler. They survive, eventually determining that the illness resulted from a toxic compound of cyanide and smallpox. In Japan, the U.S. ambassador is golfing with his British counterpart when he is assassinated by a sniper named Tongju. Tongju later assassinates the ambassador’s deputy and a semiconductor executive, leaving clues that appear to identify him as a member of a Japanese terrorist group. Investigating the toxin, Pitt Jr. consults marine-history researcher St. Julien Perlmutter, who finds records of the I-403. Pitt Jr. and Dahlgren find and dive on the sunken I-403, but its mysterious ordnance has been removed. Meanwhile in the Philippines, Dirk Pitt senior (hereinafter referred to simply as Dirk) and his friend and colleague Al Giordino are also discovering forgotten Japanese ordnance that is poisoning marine life. In Inchon, South Korea, Dae-jong Kang, a multi-millionaire industrialist, is secretly a North Korean sleeper agent who has been using corruption to press for rapid reunification of the divided peninsula. Kang reviews his plans with his assistant; they include framing a U.S. serviceman for the murder of a South Korean girl to foment unrest, while Tongju retrieves more of the World War II toxin from a second sunken submarine. Learning of the interference of Pitt Jr., Kang sends assassins to eliminate him. The assassins track down but fail to kill Pitt Jr. and Matson on Vashon Island in Washington; Pitt Jr. is just able to jump his recently-purchased 1958 Chrysler 300-D convertible aboard the Vashon Island Ferry, while Kang’s assassins crash their black Cadillac CTS. NUMA researcher Hiram Yeager has discovered that the toxic ordnance was also carried by a Japanese submarine lost in the South China Sea. Pitt Jr. joins his sister Summer and father aboard a NUMA salvage vessel that locates the wreck, but Tongju and his commando team seize the vessel. After taking the recovered toxin and kidnapping Dirk and Summer, the North Koreans sabotage the salvage ship and leave the imprisoned crew to drown, but Pitt senior is able to help everyone escape. Pitt Jr. and Summer are taken to Kang’s yacht, where the multimillionaire taunts them with a general threat of infecting the U.S. with the hybrid toxin, then leaves them to drown. They are able to escape (with the aid of Clive Cussler) and make their way back to the United States. Unaware of the exact nature of Kang’s plan, the NUMA team coordinates with government agencies to search for cargo vessels that might be carrying the toxin. However, the real plan goes forward as Tongju and his commando team pirate Sea Launch, a seaborne rocket-launching platform, preparing to fire a toxin-laden warhead at a G8 summit meeting in Los Angeles. When Dirk and Giordino spot the launch platform from a blimp, a deadly countdown is already underway. However, Pitt Sr. manages to infiltrate and alter the launch, resulting in the rocket crashing into the sea. In the final showdown, Pitt Jr. and a team of U.S. Navy SEALs infiltrate Kang's base as he prepares his final getaway aboard his luxury yacht. it:Vento nero sv:Svart vind
1697748	/m/05p79d	Never Let Me Go	Kazuo Ishiguro	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is divided in three sections that chronicle the phases of the main characters' lives. This section is set at the fictional Hailsham boarding school in East Sussex, England. It is clear from the peculiar way the teachers—known as "guardians"—treat the students, that Hailsham is not a normal boarding school. Eventually, it is revealed to the reader and to the students that the children are clones created to provide vital organs for non-clones ("originals"). The students are not taught any life skills, though the teachers encourage the students to produce various forms of art and poetry. The best works are chosen by a woman known only as "Madame," who takes them away. Students believe she keeps their work in a secret Gallery although this is not discussed with guardians. The three main characters—Ruth, Tommy and Kathy—develop a close friendship. From a young age, Kathy seems to have resigned herself to being a rather passive observer of other people and the choices they make, instead of making her own. Tommy, an isolated boy who struggles to be creative, is often the target of bullies. And while Ruth is an extrovert with strong opinions who appears to be the center of social activity in her cohort, she is not as confident as she is perceived to be. Early on in the story, Kathy develops a fondness for Tommy, looking after him when he is bullied. Although a bond grows between Kathy and Tommy, their relationship doesn't become physical. Instead, Ruth and Tommy enter into a sexual relationship, as many of the students do. At one point, they break up, and Kathy resolves to begin a relationship with Tommy, with many of the fellow students seeing it as the normal course of events. But Ruth asks Kathy to talk to Tommy in order to patch things up between herself and Tommy, so instead of asking for a relationship between herself and Tommy, Kathy ends up interceding to get Tommy to take Ruth back. Ruth and Tommy remain together throughout their remaining time at Hailsham. In the second section, the characters, who are now young adults, around age 16 – 18, have moved to the "Cottages," residential complexes where they begin contact with the external world. It is clear from the descriptions of the Cottages that they are vastly inferior to the luxuries of Hailsham. The buildings are cold and in poor condition, and there is little for the clones to do there, with no supervision apart from one maintenance man. The romantic relationship that had developed between Ruth and Tommy continues, while Kathy explores her sexuality with other students there without forming any long-term relationship. Kathy often takes the role of the peacemaker in the tumultuous relationship between Tommy and Ruth. During their time at the Cottages, the characters travel to Norfolk, where two of their housemates tell them of a rumor that Hailsham students might be allowed to "defer" from being donors for three years if they have truly fallen in love. Tommy hypothesizes that Madame collected their art for her Gallery to use it as a kind of lie detector. The art would tell administrators whether clones are telling the truth about being in love, via their personality that they reveal through their art. Tommy feels great anxiety about this issue, because he was always bad at art; he was told that it wasn't important if his art was any good, but then later told that it was important. Thus he began working on his art in secret in order to convince Madame that he is capable of being truly in love. Tensions among Tommy, Ruth, and Kathy rise as they all struggle to find acceptance and understanding outside Hailsham and with each other. Among these tensions is Kathy's hypothesis and Ruth's outburst that children such as themselves were modelled from the human "trash" of the Earth. These complications inevitably lead to Kathy requesting early departure from the cottages to become a "carer"—a clone who cares for other clones recovering from organ-removal surgery. The third section involves Tommy and Ruth becoming donors and Kathy becoming a "carer." About ten years go by without Kathy seeing Ruth or Tommy. Towards the end of this time Kathy sees her old classmate Laura, who is also a carer, and they speak. The reader learns from their conversation that Hailsham has recently closed and that Ruth is on her first donation, which did not go well, and her health has deteriorated. Kathy begins to care for Ruth, and Ruth is aware that the next donation will most likely be her last. She suggests to Kathy that they take a trip and, knowing that Tommy is in a nearby facility, bring Tommy with them. Kathy and Ruth pick up Tommy at his hospital, and they drive to see an abandoned boat in the middle of a marshland. During this trip, Ruth expresses regret and vocalizes what had been only earlier implied: she used deliberate manipulations to come between Kathy and Tommy despite sensing their bond. In an effort to make amends, Ruth hands them a piece of paper with Madame's address, and urges them to pursue a relationship with one another and seek a deferral. Tommy seems puzzled yet excited about the possibility of getting a deferral, while Kathy seems skeptical and afraid to be too hopeful. Soon after the trip, Ruth makes her second donation and dies, which is euphemistically referred to as "completion" by the characters. The term is also referring to the fact that they have given all that they have; their purpose in life is complete. Kathy then becomes Tommy's carer and begins a romantic relationship with him. For a time they are happy, but then think again about the possible deferral. Tommy selects pieces of his art to show to Madame, and, encouraged by Ruth's last wishes they go to Madame's address. Their goal is to see if they can defer Tommy's fourth donation (which is often the last one). Tommy has brought his art with him, as evidence of his personality, to back up his claims that he and Kathy are in love. Madame leads Kathy and Tommy inside, where they also meet Miss Emily, their old headmistress. They learn that Hailsham was a failed effort on their part to prove to society that clones had souls. They emphasized art as a means to make this point to the world. However, the experiment ultimately failed to achieve what they had wanted and they lost their funding and Hailsham had to be closed. Other clones were raised in much grimmer circumstances. Miss Emily dismisses the rumor that Hailsham students may defer their donations if they fall in love. The pair learn that Hailsham was an experiment to improve the living conditions and alter societal attitudes toward clones. Until Hailsham, society had preferred to view clones merely as non-human sources of organs. Kathy and Tommy learn that Madame actually was disgusted by the clones, and that Miss Lucy (another teacher at Hailsham) was dismissed for her dangerously open attitudes towards them. Tommy is upset and bewildered by the discovery of the purpose of Hailsham, whereas Kathy appears simply humbled, as if she has passively accepted her fate. The novel ends after Tommy's "completion" (i.e. death), on a note of resignation, as Kathy will now become a donor and eventually "complete."
1699251	/m/05pc2p	Asterix and the Goths	René Goscinny	1963		 Asterix and Obelix, nervous about Getafix traveling alone to the annual druids' conference in the Forest of the Carnutes, decide to accompany him on his journey, provided that, as non-druids, they remain outside the forest during the conference. Meanwhile, on the Roman Empire's border, two legionaries are ambushed and tied up by a band of Goths (Tartaric, Esoteric, Atmospheric, Prehistoric and Choleric), intending to kidnap the Druid of the Year and use his magic to conquer Gaul and Rome. Asterix, Obelix and Getafix meet another druid, Valuaddetax, who uses his magical powers to convince the Romans that they are actually druids (he makes a legionary bray like a donkey by eating some herbs). At the edge of the Forest of the Carnutes, Getafix and his friend leave Asterix and Obelix for the druid's conference. Unaware that the Goth band is hiding nearby, the druids begin their conference. Getafix goes last and easily wins the "Golden Menhir" prize with his potion, which gives superhuman strength. Realizing Getafix is just the druid they need, the Goths ambush him while he is leaving the woods, tie him up in a bag, and take him away. Asterix and Obelix, fearing for their friend's safety after they do not see him leave the Forest, enter the woods and find a Visigoth helmet (actually a pickelhaube like those worn by Germans during the first years of World War I). They instantly set out towards the east (thoroughly confusing Obelix) to rescue Getafix. Unfortunately, they run into another Roman patrol, which spots the helmet Asterix is carrying and mistakes them for Goths (who are wanted for assaulting Roman border guards). Obelix and Asterix easily defeat the Romans, but the Roman general is informed of the incident and sends out pictures of Asterix and Obelix with a reward for their capture. Asterix has the bright idea of disguising himself and Obelix as Romans and ambush two legionaries, stealing their armor and weapons and leaving them tied up and gagged. Two other legionaries, searching for the Goths, come across our heroes, in which Obelix's laughter at what they should say if they meet other Romans almost blows his and Asterix's cover, although the legionaries think their fellow comrades' hair and whiskers are suspicious. Soon after, the two legionaries spot the two tied-up Romans and mistake them for Asterix and Obelix, 'a fat one and a little one'. Thinking another Legionary captured them and has gone for reinforcements they decide to take the reward, and take the prisoners to the general's tent. They are told they will get seats in the circus for this. When the captives are ungagged, however, the full story comes out, and the Romans promptly begin capturing each other left and right, believing each other to be Goths, much to the disappointment of the General. The two Legionaries, when asking about their seats, are told by the General they will get them in the best position, with the lions. Asterix and Obelix, back in Gaulish clothing, are completely untouched, along with the Goths, who approach the border. The Goths cross the Roman Empire's border back into Germania, stunning a young legionary whose eagerness to report an invasion becomes a running gag (He initially reports an 'invasion' of Goths invading the Goths, then an invasion of Gauls crossing into Germania- which his centurion dismisses as their territory isn't the one being invaded-, and then finally reports the Gauls returning to Gaul, which causes him to get 8 days inside). They present the druid first to a customs officer, who at first refuses to let them through on charges of importing foreign goods. Meanwhile, Asterix and Obelix also stun the young legionary and enter the Gothic lands. While running into a Gothic border patrol, Obelix stupidly uses the cover up names he and Asterix used for their Roman disguises, making the patrol think our heroes are Romans. After Asterix and Obelix beat up the patrol, they disguise themselves as Goths by attacking two of them, infiltrating their barracks as members of the army. Eventually, the Goths present Getafix to their Gothic chieftain, Metric, calls in a Gaulish-Gothic translator, Rhetoric, who is threatened to be executed if he does not convince Getafix to cooperate and brew magic potion. Although Getafix flatly refuses, Rhetoric lies and says that he has agreed to do so in a week's time, at the New Moon. Asterix and Obelix escape from the Gothic army, but are soon captured again by the Goths and thrown in jail along with Rhetoric, who was also trying to flee. Although they are thrown in prison, Obelix easily breaks the door (another running gag) and they flee, gagging Rhetoric and taking him with them to question. When he is ungagged, Rhetoric at first speaks Gothic, but accidentally reveals that he can speak Gaulish when he thanks Asterix for saying 'Bless you' when he sneezes, and when he refuses to spill the beans, Asterix allows Obelix to threaten to bash him, which makes Rhetoric immediately talk. While trying to sneak into the Gothic town, Rhetoric screams and attracts a patrol. Although Asterix and Obelix beat up the patrol, they surrender to the last standing man to be brought to the Chief. The Gauls are brought before Metric. Getafix reveals that he can actually speak Gothic and informs Metric that Rhetoric had been deceiving him. Once again, he is thrown in jail with the Gauls, and they are all sentenced to execution. Asterix, Obelix and Getafix devise a scheme in which many Goths are given magic potion, so that they spend time and energy fighting each other for Chieftainship instead of invading Gaul and Rome, which they figure Rhetoric may play a part in. Under the pretext of cooking a last Gaulish soup, Getafix gives the jailer a list of ingredients and brews the potion when he acquires them. During the public execution, Rhetoric asks to go first. Full of magic potion, he resists all attempts to torture, and beats up Metric, throwing him in jail and making himself Chieftain of the Goths. The Gauls visit Metric in his prison, and give him magic potion. As the two Chieftains had the same magic potion in them, a direct fight proves futile and each storms off, promising to raise an army. Meanwhile, the Gauls wander around the town, giving potion to any Goth who looks browbeaten and who would be glad of a chance of power (their first two candidates being Electric, who is poor and has to sweep up streets, and Euphoric, who is being bossed about by his dictator like wife). The would-be Chieftains each raise an army, and a confusing set of conflicts begins, known as the "Asterixian Wars", thus successfully sowing so much discord in Germania that the tribes will be more occupied with fighting each other rather than trying to invade other countries. Although their peace-keeping mission probably created more casualties than a Gothic invasion of Rome would, the three Gauls make it back to Gaul, again running into the over eager young legionary at the border, return home confident and are welcomed with open arms by the village, who throw their usual banquet in celebration.
1701452	/m/05pjv1	The Richleighs of Tantamount	Barbara Willard		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book tells the story of four young siblings—Edwin, Angeline, Sebastian and Maud—who live together in a London mansion in Victorian society (c. the 1870s), along with their wealthy parents. These four children have been longing all their lives for their maiden visit to Tantamount, a castle on the Cornish coast, built by their great-great-great-grandfather. From time to time, the children wonder about its mysterious past as they look at the gigantic painting of the castle that dominates a wall in their drawing room. Their lives are changed one fateful, unforgettable July when their father contracts a serious illness. The children are sent to stay at the castle while their parents go on a sea voyage to repair his health. Only when the children begin to explore do they realize that despite being built and furnished in magnificent style, the castle is suffering from decades of neglect. The tutor and governess are shocked by the condition of the place and leave abruptly. Soon the recently-engaged servants do the same, but the children decide to stay on alone. Regarding themselves as castaways, they enjoy their freedom despite the hardships. They make friends with two local children, Nancy and Dick, and are worried when they disappear. They begin to suspect that the castle is being used for smuggling and even wrecking. Tantamount is destroyed by fire, but when the parents arrive at last they are relieved to find their children have survived.
1702335	/m/05pmkt	The Moving Finger	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Jerry and Joanna Burton, a brother and sister from London society, take a country house in idyllic Lymstock so that Jerry can rest from injuries received in a wartime plane crash. They are just getting to know the town's strange cast of characters when an anonymous letter arrives, rudely accusing the two of being lovers, not siblings. They quickly discover that such poison pen letters have been recently circulating around town indiscriminately and completely inaccurate. Things flare up when Mrs Symmington, the wife of the local solicitor, commits suicide upon receiving a letter stating that her second child was born out of wedlock. Her body is discovered with the letter, a glass containing potassium cyanide and a torn suicide note which reads "I can't go on". An inquest is held and the verdict of suicide is brought in. The police begin to search for the anonymous letter writer. The Burtons' maid, Partridge, receives a call from Agnes, the Symmington's maidservant, who seems distraught over something. Partridge asks Agnes over to tea the next afternoon, but Agnes never arrives; her body is discovered in the under-stairs cupboard the next day by Mr Symmington's step-daughter Megan. Scotland Yard sends an investigator, who comes to the conclusion that the letter-writer/murderer is a middle-aged woman who must be one of the prominent citizens of Lymstock. Progress is slow until the vicar's wife calls up an expert of her own, Miss Marple. Jerry Burton gives Miss Marple some vital clues by telling her of the contents of his dreams and his disconnected thoughts. There is a break in the case when the Symmingtons' beautiful young governess, Elsie Holland, receives an anonymous letter typed on the same typewriter, proven to have been used to create envelopes for all the previous letters. The village doctor's sister, Aimée Griffith, is arrested, since she was seen typing the letter and delivering it. On the way to London for a visit to his doctor, Jerry takes Megan along with him to London where he buys her some new clothes to make her look presentable. He begins to realize he has fallen in love with her. When they return to Lymstock, Jerry asks Megan to marry him, and she refuses. As a result, Jerry goes to Mr Symmington to ask for his permission and to inform him of her refusal. Symmington, who is eager to have Megan off his hands, tells Jerry he will speak with her. Later that evening, Megan goes to her step-father's office and tries to blackmail him by implying she has proof of his guilt in the murders. He coolly pays her off, but later, when she is asleep, he tries to murder her by putting her head in the gas oven. He is immediately stopped by Jerry and the police, who were lying in wait. It is revealed that Miss Marple wished to prove Mr Symmington's guilt and that Megan was brave enough to assist her. Symmington had written all the letters as a cover-up for killing his wife. He had used phrases from a similar incident, done by a school-girl, which fooled the police into thinking that a woman had been the letter-writer. Miss Marple notes that it could not have been a woman who wrote the letters because none of the accusations was true and a typical middle-aged woman in a village Lymstock would have known of real scandals, whereas a man, especially a professional man like Symmington, would be uninterested in gossip. He murdered his wife by the use of cyanide and then planted the letter and a fake suicide note to disguise the crime. He committed the murders because he wished to marry Elsie Holland. Aimée Griffith, who was in love herself with Symmington, had written only the letter to Miss Holland, out of jealousy and to try to protect the man she loved from marrying the wrong woman. Megan, in light of recent events, finally realizes that she does indeed love Jerry. His sister Joanna marries the local doctor, and both couples settle down in Lymstock instead of returning to London. The book's title, The Moving Finger, is emphasized twice. The first is how the accusatory letters point blame from one town member to another, the second is from the addresses on the letters, which the Scotland Yard agent uses to determine the envelopes were all "typed by someone using one finger" in order to avoid a recognizable 'touch'.
1703697	/m/05pr53	The Testament	John Grisham	1999-02-02	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Troy Phelan, an eccentric elderly billionaire, commits suicide minutes after leaving his vast fortune to an illegitimate daughter, Rachel Lane, instead of his six children by three marriages. His reason is revulsion over years of fighting with, and embarrassment from, his family, as well as their greed &mdash; much of which was due to his neglect of his children and multiple affairs (both personal and business). His lawyers are now tasked with protecting Troy's wishes as well as finding the heiress. Nate O'Riley, a high-powered litigation lawyer and now recovering alcoholic, is sent to Brazil, where Rachel is believed to be living as a missionary. While Nate is trying to find Rachel, Troy's family does everything in their power to contest the new will. They argue that although Troy was examined by three of the top psychiatrists in the nation, he was lacking sanity at the time of the new will. The journey into the Pantanal of South America by way of Corumbá nearly kills Nate, but finally he and his guide locate the tribe with which Rachel Lane is living. She refuses the legacy or anything connected with it. Nate is unable to convince her otherwise, and returns to the United States after contracting dengue fever from a mosquito. In the meantime, the ex-wives, children and respective lawyers continue attempting to destroy and disprove all evidence of Troy Phelan's sanity and even the will itself. They finally decide not to contest the will in court, fearing that their testimony during the deposition will further hurt their case. They also realize that two witnesses for the plaintiff are lying and would be torn to shreds by Nate should a trial ever take place. To settle the matter, Nate agrees that the relatives of Troy Phelan will be paid fifty million dollars each (minus lawyers' fees) to stop turning the will contest into a legal quagmire. When all is over, Nate returns to the jungle in order to get Rachel to sign off on the settlement, but when he arrives he learns that Rachel has died from malaria. She has, however, left instructions that the money be put into trust for the benefit of the indigenous peoples and that Nate will have control of the trust. The end of the book shows Nate riding off in a boat into the Pantanal, not caring if it took a month to get back to civilization.
1703709	/m/05pr65	A Painted House	John Grisham	2001-02-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins to unfold as Luke and his grandfather Eli, also known as Pappy, search for migrant workers to help them with the cotton picking. They initially consider themselves lucky to hire the Spruills, a family of "hill people," and a few Mexican migrant workers who annually come to the area looking for work. Aside from working long hours under the hot sun in the fields, Luke's life is fairly idyllic until he sees the overly aggressive and mentally unstable Hank Spruill attack three boys from the notorious Sisco family, one of whom is beaten so severely he dies from his wounds. Hank arrogantly identifies Luke as a friendly witness who can support his version of the event, and the fearful boy backs up his story, although the adults in his life, including local sheriff Stick Powers, suspect he's too frightened to admit the truth. When Luke sees Cowboy, one of the Mexicans, later murder Hank and toss his body into the river, Cowboy threatens to kill Luke's mother if Luke tells anyone what he saw. Cowboy and Tally, the teenage daughter of the Spruills, then run off together and are not seen again. Luke also learns that his admired Uncle Ricky, fighting in the Korean War, may have fathered a child with a daughter of the Latchers, their poverty-stricken sharecropping neighbors. Grisham surrounds these dramatic moments with descriptive passages of life in the rural South and the ordinary events that fill Luke's weekly routine. His hard work in the fields is preceded by a hearty breakfast of eggs, ham, biscuits, and the one cup of coffee his mother allows him, and at day's end he's rewarded with an evening on the front porch, where the family gathers around the radio to listen to Harry Caray announce the St. Louis games. A devoted fan, Luke is saving his hard-earned money to buy a team baseball warm-up jacket he saw advertised in the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Saturday afternoons are spent in town, where the adults share idle gossip and serious concerns and the youngsters visit the movie house, while Sunday morning is reserved for church. A visiting carnival, the annual town picnic, and Luke's introduction to television - to see a live broadcast of a World Series game - are additional bits of local color scattered throughout the tale. A flood devastates the family's cotton crop before the harvest is completed, and Luke's parents decide to travel to the city to find work in a Buick Plant, breaking a history of generations working on the land. The novel ends with Luke's mother smiling on the bus, having finally got her wish to leave cotton-farming. The book's title refers to the Chandler house, which never has been painted, a sign of their lower social status in the community. One day Luke discovers someone furtively has been painting the weatherbeaten clapboards white, and eventually he continues the job with the approval of his parents and the assistance of the Mexicans, contributing some of his own savings for the purchase of paint. The house's gradual transformation symbolizes the changes in the boy and his family as they prepare to enter a new phase in their lives.
1705774	/m/05pxpt	The Smiling, Proud Wanderer	Louis Cha	1967	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The story's initial development revolves around a coveted martial arts manual known as the Bixie Swordplay Manual. The manual has been passed down as an heirloom in the Lin family, who runs the Fuwei Escort Agency based in Fuzhou. Yu Canghai, leader of the Qingcheng Sect, leads his followers to massacre the Lins and seize the manual for himself but does not find it. Lin Pingzhi, the sole survivor of the Lin family, is rescued by Yue Buqun, head of the Mount Hua Sect, one of the members of the Five Mountains Sword Sects Alliance. Yue Buqun accepts Lin Pingzhi as a student and trains him in swordplay. The novel's protagonist is Yue Buqun's eldest disciple Linghu Chong, an orphaned, happy-go-lucky but honourable swordsman who has a penchant for liquor. He befriends the notorious bandit Tian Boguang and saves a nun called Yilin from the (North) Mount Heng Sect from Tian's sexual advances. In the meantime Liu Zhengfeng of the (South) Mount Heng Sect announces his decision to leave the wulin (martial artists' community) and invites fellow pugilists to witness his retirement ceremony. The event turns into a bloodbath when Zuo Lengchan (chief of the Mount Song Sect) and other orthodox sects accuse Liu Zhengfeng of being unfaithful to their code for befriending Qu Yang of the heretical Sun Moon Holy Cult. Liu and Qu are cornered by Zuo and his men and eventually commit suicide. Before dying Liu and Qu pass the score of Xiaoao Jianghu (a piece of music they composed together) to Linghu Chong. Lin Pingzhi's entrance into the Mount Hua Sect causes Linghu Chong to break up with his romantic interest Yue Lingshan (Yue Buqun's daughter) as she starts falling in love with Lin. Linghu Chong's carefree attitude brings him into trouble; his teacher decides to punish him by making him stay alone for a year in a secluded area on Mount Hua to reflect on his actions. He discovers carvings of swordplay techniques in a cave and practises them, unknowingly familiarising himself with not only the skills of the other four sword sects, but the counter moves as well. He also meets the reclusive Feng Qingyang, an elder of the Mount Hua Sect, who teaches him the formidable skill "Nine Swords of Dugu". The self-proclaimed orthodox Five Mountains Sword Sects Alliance, though seemingly united, is constantly troubled by politicking among its members. Linghu Chong gets embroiled in the internal conflict and becomes seriously injured while saving several students using his newly mastered swordplay, which Yue Buqun deems unorthodox. Linghu Chong meets the "Six Immortals of the Peach Valley", who attempt to cure his wounds in their weird fashion, but fail and aggravate his injuries instead. He follows his teacher to Luoyang and encounters a guqin-playing "old woman", who turns out to be a young maiden named Ren Yingying in disguise. By then Yue Buqun has already grown tired of Linghu Chong's frequent associations with jianghu lowlifes and strangers, and he abandons the latter. At Shaolin Monastery, Linghu Chong helps Ren Yingying recuperate from an injury after she is assaulted by some orthodox pugilists, while he learns to use the Yijin Jing to cure himself. He also hears from the Shaolin abbot that Yue Buqun has publicly announced that he has expelled Linghu Chong from the Mount Hua Sect. Linghu Chong sinks into despair as he is now an outcast of the wulin. After leaving Shaolin he meets a stranger Xiang Wentian, whom he saves from dozens of enemies. Xiang becomes sworn brothers with Linghu and brings him to a manor in Hangzhou, where Linghu meets Ren Woxing (Ren Yingying's father), the former leader of the Sun Moon Holy Cult who was ousted from power by his deputy Dongfang Bubai and imprisoned there. Ren Woxing breaks out of captivity by using Linghu Chong to replace himself, and in return he lets Linghu learn his "Star Sucking Great Skill" and thereafter rescues Linghu from the dungeon. Ren Woxing offers his daughter's hand in marriage to Linghu Chong and tries to persuade Linghu to join his cult but the latter declines. Linghu later helps Ren Woxing defeat Dongfang Bubai and regain control of his cult. Because he once helped the late leaders of the (North) Mount Heng Sect, who were mysteriously murdered, Linghu Chong is appointed head of that sect, whose members are all nuns. He leaves with Ren Yingying later to attend a special assembly of the Five Mountains Sword Sects Alliance, called for by its chief Zuo Lengchan. Zuo Lengchan attempts to intimidate the other four sects to completely submit to him, but Yue Buqun uses the Bixie Swordplay to defeat and blind Zuo and become the new leader of the alliance, much to the surprise of everyone present. After leaving the assembly, Linghu Chong and Ren Yingying see Lin Pingzhi brutally slaying members of the Qingcheng Sect to avenge his family, and overhear a conversation between him and his wife Yue Lingshan, in which Lin reveals that he and Yue Buqun have both mastered the Bixie Swordplay. Through this, Linghu learns that his respected teacher is actually a hypocrite who plotted an elaborate scheme against Lin Pingzhi to seize the Bixie Swordplay Manual, and Lin and Yue have both castrated themselves to learn the skill. Yue Buqun tries to kill Lin Pingzhi, who knows his secret and is quietly plotting revenge on him. The finale climaxes with members of the Five Mountains Sword Sects Alliance being trapped in the cave with the carvings, owing to Yue Buqun's treachery, where they slaughter each other out of paranoia and distrust. Both Yue Buqun's wife and daughter die for their respective husbands, while Yue Buqun is stabbed to death by the young nun Yilin. Ren Woxing, now intoxicated by power, masters an attack to overcome the scattered and fragmented orthodox sects, and then coerces Linghu Chong to join his cult, but dies at a crucial moment from a stroke triggered by his own megalomania. Ren Yingying is nominated as the new leader of the Sun Moon Holy Cult and she seeks a truce between the righteous and unorthodox sides of the martial artists' community. Three years later she passes the leadership to Xiang Wentian and marries Linghu Chong. Disillusioned by all the strife caused by power struggles, Linghu Chong and Ren Yingying retire from the jianghu, living happily after a wedding where the orthodox and unorthodox sects come to a temporary truce.
1706816	/m/05pzqk	Ella Minnow Pea	Mark Dunn	2002-10	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot is conveyed through mail or notes sent between various characters, though with the banned letters missing, creating passages that become more and more phonetically or creatively spelled, and requiring more effort to interpret. The novel is set on the fictitious island of Nollop, off the coast of South Carolina, which is home to Nevin Nollop, the supposed creator of the well-known pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". This sentence is preserved on a memorial statue to its creator on the island and is taken very seriously by the government of the island. Throughout the book, tiles containing the letters fall from the inscription beneath the statue, and as each one does, the island's government bans the contained letter's use from written or spoken communication. A penalty system is enforced for using the forbidden characters, with public censure for a first offense, lashing or stocks (violator's choice) upon a second offense and banishment from the island nation upon the third. By the end of the novel, most of the island's inhabitants have either been banished or have left of their own accord. The island's high council becomes more and more nonsensical as time progresses and the alphabet diminishes, promoting Nollop to divine status. Uncompromising in their enforcement of Nollop's "divine will", they offer only one hope to the frustrated islanders: to disprove Nollop's omniscience by finding a pangram of 32&nbsp;letters (in contrast to Nollop's 35, or just 33 in the version "A quick brown..."). With this goal in mind "Enterprise&nbsp;32" is started, a project involving many of the novel's main characters. With but five characters left (L, M, N, O, and P), the elusive phrase is eventually discovered by Ella in one of her father's earlier letters with him knowing all along that this would happen: "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs", which has only 32&nbsp;letters. The council accepts this and restores the right to all 26&nbsp;letters to the populace.
1707320	/m/05p_vg	Surfacing	Margaret Atwood		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book tells the story of a woman who returns to her hometown in Canada to find her missing father. Accompanied by her lover and another married couple, the unnamed protagonist meets her past in her childhood house, recalling events and feelings, while trying to find clues for her father's mysterious disappearance. Little by little, the past overtakes her and drives her into the realm of wildness and madness.
1707351	/m/05p_wv	The Mad Man	Samuel R. Delany	1994	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In New York City in the early 1980s, John Marr, a black gay graduate student, is researching a dissertation on Timothy Hasler, a Korean-American philosopher and academic stabbed to death under unexplained circumstances outside a gay bar in 1973. As details emerge, Marr finds his lifestyle converging with that of Hasler, and he becomes increasingly involved in intense sexual encounters with homeless men, despite his growing awareness of the risks of HIV.
1708112	/m/05q1lg	Sons of Fortune	Jeffrey Archer		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sons of Fortune talks about two twin brothers who got parted in a cinematic consequence and grown up without knowing the existence of each other. In late 1940s in Hartford, Connecticut a set of twins who are separated at birth by a millionaire couple's nurse, after the millionaire couple's child - born the same day - dies of cot death in the hospital and she secretly switches Peter for the dead Fletcher Davenport. Nat Cartwright goes to home with his parents, a school teacher and an insurance salesman. But his twin brother is to begin days as Andrew Fletcher Davenport, the only son of a multi millionaire and his society wife. During the years that follow, the two brothers grow up unaware of each other’s existence. Even when Nat and Fletcher fall in love with same girl,Diance, they still don’t meet but continue on their separate paths, owing to the efforts taken by the multi-millionaire's nurse. Both complete their graduation. Nat leaves the college at the University of Connecticut to serve in the Vietnam War. He returns a war hero, having received the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam, finishes school and becomes a successful currency banker. Fletcher, meanwhile, has graduated from Yale University and distinguishes himself as a criminal defense lawyer, before he is elected as a state senator for the Democratic Party. They know of each other by reputation. Cartwright marries a Korean computer whiz, Su Ling,an illegal immigrant, whom he meets in college. Fletcher marries his best friend's sister Annie, whom he falls in love with at first sight when they are in their teens. During the years, both men find themselves opposed by the machinations of the untrustworthy Ralph Elliot, who went to school with Nat, slept with his girlfriend and is his personal nemesis. Although their lives (common acquaintances and enemies, Fletcher saving the life of Nat's son during a school hostage situation) are interconnected, they never meet. However, their paths finally cross when they both decide to run for governor of Connecticut and Fletcher agrees to defend Nat on the charge of murdering his Republican primary opponent Ralph Elliot for leaking information about his wife and mother-in-law that lead to the suicide of his only child. Family members comment on similarities between the two, but no one ever connects the dots,until the end, because, after all, they are not identical twins. The truth is revealed to them when a potentially fatal car accident by Fletcher reveals that they share the same rare blood type. Nat donates his blood to save Fletcher. As Fletcher was hospitalized in the clinic where he was born, the attending doctor then finds secret documents which reveals that the obstetrician had the suspicons that the twins were switched at birth. In yet another plot twist, the twins choose to keep the blood link a secret.However, their wives guess this on the day of the election and mutually agree to keep it a secret. Knowing all this, they both still run for governor of Connecticut in 1992. On election day, after several rounds of counting the votes the result is still tied. The winner was ultimately appointed by the toss of a coin. After the toss, when both men stand to the left and right of the mayor to represent their parties, the mayor turns to his right to congratulate the new governor. Through clues in the book regarding their place alongside the mayor and who called heads, one can deduct that the winner is Fletcher.In the end, Fletcher definitely wins and becomes the governor as before the toss, Fletcher was to the left of the mayor. After the toss, the mayor picks up the coin and "turned" and then congratulated the man who was now to his right. Also Fletcher always said heads, so at that time too he must be the one who said heads. Jeffrey Archer also confirmed in Twitter that it was Fletcher. Chapter 31 starts by saying Fletcher always liked to call heads.https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Archer/status/208479092444643328 Several aspects of the plot, as well as specific incidents such as the toss of the coin, also occur in a previous book he wrote - First Among Equals, which is a power struggle between four politicians for the prime ministership of the UK.
1711776	/m/05qbyv	Guerrillas	V.S. Naipaul	1975	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main characters of the book are Jane, a woman from London, and her romantic partner Roche, a white South African man, who have recently arrived on the island. Roche is engaged with helping the poor on the island, which puts him in contact with a dishonest revolutionary opportunist named Jimmy. As they socialize with the privileged, Roche finds Jane contradictory and politically naive about her own place in the power structure, while also being challenged about his own motives and purpose. Jimmy has sexual fantasies about Jane, and has a perverse relationship with the boys he keeps in his commune. Amid the tumult of a societal crisis, the climax of the book is violent and tragic.
1712791	/m/05qf8l	Feed	Matthew Tobin Anderson	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 While spending Spring Break on the moon, Titus and his thrill-seeking friends meet Violet Durn, who is unlike any of them. While at a club, a man from an anti-feed organization hacks their feeds. When they wake up in a hospital, their feeds are unavailable: partially deactivated while under repair. Mostly, this is the teenagers' first experience of life without the influence of the feed. During their recovery, Violet and Titus begin a romantic relationship. Eventually, their feeds are repaired and they return to Earth. However, Violet's feed is not totally fixed. One day, Violet reveals her plan of resisting the feed to Titus. She plans to show interest in a wide and random assortment of products to prevent the corporations that control her feed from developing a reliable consumer profile. The two go to the mall and create wild consumer profiles. Later, Violet realizes that someone, most likely the Coalition of Pity, has been accessing her personal information through her dreams. She calls FeedTech customer service, but receives no help. Later, Violet tells Titus that her feed is severely malfunctioning, and she may die. Due to her deteriorating feed, various parts of Violet's body are shutting down. Throughout the novel, there is also a presence of lesions appearing on the characters' bodies. At first it is something they hide, but eventually the lesions turn into a trend. At School™, Titus notices that Calista has a large artificial lesion cut onto her neck. At a party, Quendy shows up with small artificial lesions over most of her body. Violet is disgusted and determines that everyone has become the feed. After this, she collapses and is taken to the hospital. As a side effect of the malfunction, Violet loses memories of the year before she got the feed installed. To avoid losing more memories, she makes large records of things she can remember. She sends them to Titus, but he deletes them. Violet's body parts continue shutting down. She and her father cannot afford repairs, so they petition FeedTech for assistance. While Titus is in mal with his friends, Violet calls and becomes angry with him. He is unaware of the environmental disaster that happened that morning in Mexico. Some sort of toxic waste has engulfed a number of villages. The Global Alliance is prepared to go to war with the United States. Titus drives to Violet's house. He falls asleep shortly after arriving due to the after effects of the mal. While he sleeps, Violet shares her bad news with Titus in the form of a dream: FeedTech has decided not to help Violet because of her strange customer profile. This is caused by her resistance of the feed. That weekend, Violet comes to Titus' house to ask him to go to the mountains. He is reluctant at first, but ultimately agrees. They begin fighting and break up. On the way home, Violet's arm stops working and when she arrives home her leg fails. Titus drives away. The next day, Violet apologizes to Titus via feed, but Titus does not answer. Titus receives a message from Violet's father saying that Violet wanted Titus to know when it was "all over." He informs him that the time has come. Titus goes to Violet's house, where she lies in a coma. Her father blames Titus and shows him memories of parts of her body and brain shutting down, the pain she experienced. He then tells Titus to be with the eloi. Titus asks what that means, but Mr. Durn refuses to answer, telling him to look it up. They fight, and Titus goes home. In an act of grief, he sits on his floor naked and orders the same pair of jeans continuously until he is entirely out of credit. Two days later, Titus goes to visit Violet again. He tells her any stories he can find in the information available through his feed. Finally, he tells her the story of their relationship in the form of a movie trailer. The book ends with Violet dying and the feed saying "Everything Must Go."
1713869	/m/05qhvf	Possession: A Romance	A. S. Byatt	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Obscure scholar Roland Michell, researching in the London Library, discovers handwritten drafts of a letter by the prestigious (fictional) Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, which leads him to suspect that the married Ash had a hitherto unknown romance. He feels compelled to take away the documents secretly - an unprofessional act - and begins to investigate. The trail leads him to Christabel LaMotte, a minor poet and contemporary of Ash, and to Dr. Maud Bailey, a modern LaMotte scholar and distant relative of LaMotte's family, who is drawn into helping Roland with the unfolding mystery. They become obsessed with uncovering the truth and unearth more letters and evidence of an affair between the poets, and their own personal romantic lives - neither of which are happy or even satisfactory - develop and become entwined in an echo of Ash and LaMotte, whose story is told in parallel to theirs. The news of this affair will make headlines and reputations in academia, and colleagues of Roland and Maud become competitors in the race to discover the truth, for all manner of motives. And the truth is this: Ash's marriage was barren and unconsummated, although he loved and remained devoted to his wife. He and LaMotte had a short, passionate affair resulting in the suicide of LaMotte's companion (and possibly lover) and the secret birth of an illegitimate child, whose existence LaMotte sought to conceal from Ash, but whom he did once meet, unknown to her. As the Great Storm of 1987 strikes England, all the interested parties come together in a dramatic scene at Ash's grave, where documents buried with Ash by his wife are believed to hold the final key to the mystery. Reading them, Maud learns that rather than being related to LaMotte's sister, as she has always believed, she is in fact directly descended from LaMotte and Ash's illegitimate daughter, who was raised by LaMotte's sister and passed off as her own child, and she is therefore heir to their correspondence. Roland, freed from obscurity and a dead-end relationship, manages to live down the potential professional suicide of the theft of the original documents, and sees an academic career open up before him. Maud, who has spent her adult life confused and emotionally untouchable, finds her human side and sees possible future happiness with Roland. And the sad story of Ash and LaMotte, separated by the mores of the day and condemned to secrecy and separation, is resolved at last through Roland and Maud.
1716618	/m/05qqnb	Tomb of the Lizard King	Mark Acres			 The scenario is a three part adventure which involves a wilderness trek, a battle against brigands, and a venture into the tomb of a lizard king. Brigands have been wreaking havoc on the southern trade routes, while merchants have been demanding that the Count of Eor puts an end to the attacks. The Count is seeking brave adventurers to end the evil brigands' activities and discover the power behind the attacks. A short wilderness adventure follows the opening, and leads the characters to the tomb of the lizard king.
1717263	/m/05qs7t	Shiroi Kyotō	Toyoko Yamasaki			 The story contrasts the life of two doctors, former classmates and now both assistant professors at Naniwa University Hospital in Osaka. The brilliant and ambitious surgeon Goro Zaizen stops at nothing to rise to a position of eminence and authority, while the friendly Shuji Satomi busies himself with his patients and research.
1719074	/m/05qxmf	A Case of Conscience	James Blish	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez of Peru, Clerk Regular of the Society of Jesus, is a member of a four-man team of scientists sent to the planet Lithia to determine if it can be opened to human contact. Ruiz-Sanchez is a biologist, biochemist, and the team doctor. However, as a Jesuit, he has religious concerns as well. The planet is inhabited by a race of intelligent bipedal reptile-like creatures, the Lithians. Ruiz-Sanchez has learned to speak their language. While on a walking survey of the land, Cleaver, a physicist, has been poisoned by a plant, despite a protective suit, and is in bad shape. Ruiz-Sanchez treats him and leaves to send a message to the others, Michelis, a chemist, and Agronski, a geologist. He is helped by Chtexa, a Lithian whom he has befriended, who then invites him to his house. This is an opportunity which Ruiz-Sanchez cannot pass up. No member of the team has been invited into Lithian living places before. The Lithians seem to have an ideal society, a utopia without crime, conflict, ignorance or want. Ruiz-Sanchez is more than a little in awe of them. When the team is reassembled, they compare notes on the Lithians. Soon they will have to officially pronounce their verdict. Michelis is open-minded and sympathetic to the Lithians. He also has learned their language and some of their customs. Agronski is more insular in his outlook, but sees no reason to consider the planet dangerous. When Cleaver revives, he reveals that he wants the place exploited, regardless of the Lithians' wishes. He has found enough pegmatite (a source of lithium which is rare on Earth) that a factory could be set up to supply Earth with lithium deuteride for nuclear weapons. Michelis is for open trade. Agronski is indifferent. Then Ruiz-Sanchez drops his bombshell: he wants maximum quarantine. The things Chtexa revealed to him, added to what he already knew, convinces him that Lithia is nothing less than the work of Satan, a place deliberately constructed to show peace, logic, and understanding in the complete absence of God. Point for point, Ruiz-Sanchez lists the facts about Lithia that directly attack Catholic teaching. Michelis is mystified, but does point out that all the Lithian science he has learned, while perfectly logical, rests on highly questionable assumptions. It is as if it just came from nowhere. The team can come to no agreement. Ruiz-Sanchez concludes that Cleaver will probably get his way, and Lithian society will be wiped out. Despite his conclusions about the planet, he has a deep affection for the Lithians themselves. As the humans board their ship to leave, Chtexa gives Ruiz-Sanchez a gift—a sealed jar containing an egg. It is a son of Chtexa, to be raised on Earth and learn the ways of humans. At this point, the Jesuit solves a riddle which he has been pondering for some time, from book III of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (p.572–3), which proposes a complex case of marital morals, ending with the question "Has he hegemony and shall she submit?" To the Church, neither Yes nor No is a morally satisfactory answer. Ruiz-Sanchez sees that it is two questions, despite the omission of a comma between the two, so that the answer can be "Yes, and No". The egg hatches and grows into the individual Egtverchi. Like all Lithians, he inherits knowledge from his father through his DNA. Earth society is based on the nuclear shelters of the 20th century, with most people living underground. Egtverchi is the proverbial firecracker in an anthill—he upends society and precipitates violence. Ruiz-Sanchez has to go to Rome to face judgment. His conviction about Lithia is viewed as heresy, since he believes Satan has the power to create a planet. This is close to Manichaeism. He has an audience with the Pope himself to explain his beliefs. Pope Hadrian VIII, a logical and technologically-aware Norwegian, points out two things Ruiz-Sanchez missed. First, Lithia could have been a deception, not a creation. And second, Ruiz-Sanchez could have done something about it, namely perform an exorcism on the whole planet. The priest bows his head in shame that he has overlooked an obvious solution to his own case of conscience while he was absorbed in "a book [Finnegans Wake] which to all intents and purposes might have been dictated by the Adversary himself ... 628 pages of compulsive demoniac chatter." The Pope dismisses Ruiz-Sanchez to purge his own soul, and return to the Church if and when he can. A violent mass riot breaks out, fomented by Egtverchi and made possible by the psychosis present in many of the citizens as a result of living in the 'shelter state' (an earlier reference to the "Corridor Riots of 1993" indicates that this is not the first time violence has burst out among the buried cities). During the riot, Agronski dies as a result of being stung by one or more genetically modified honeybees. Ruiz-Sanchez administers extreme unction, despite his almost-faithless state. Egtverchi stows away on a ship to Lithia. Michelis and Ruiz-Sanchez are taken to the Moon, where a new telescope has been set up, based on "a fundamental twist on the Haertel equations which makes it possible to see around normal space-time, as well as travel around it", so that the instrument presents a view of Lithia in real-time, bypassing the delay caused by the speed of light. Cleaver is on Lithia, setting up his reactors, but the physicist who invented the telescope technology believes he has found a fault in Cleaver's reasoning. There is a chance that the work will set off a chain reaction in the planet's rocks and destroy it. As they watch on the screen, Ruiz-Sanchez pronounces an exorcism. The planet explodes, eliminating Cleaver and Egtverchi, but also Chtexa and all the things Ruiz-Sanchez admired. It is left unclear whether the extinction of the Lithians is a result of Ruiz-Sanchez's prayer or Cleaver's error.
1720972	/m/05r0sn	Blind Lake	Robert Charles Wilson	2003-08-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel deals with a government installation at Blind Lake, Minnesota, where scientists observe sentient life on a planet 51 light-years away, using telescopes powered by quantum computers that have advanced beyond human understanding. A sudden and unexplained facility lockdown extends into a long-term quarantine. Observation department head Marguerite Hauser tries to carry on with her work studying the alien life while taking care of her socially-challenged daughter Tess, warding off her ex-husband Ray, and deciding how she feels about houseguest and disgraced journalist Chris.
1721704	/m/05r2vd	La Distinction				 In his often densely worded prose, Bourdieu discusses how those in power define aesthetic concepts such as taste. Referring to surveys of French citizens from different economic and educational backgrounds, he shows how social class tends to determine a person's likes and interests, and how distinctions based on social class get reinforced in daily life. He observes that even when the subordinate classes may seem to have their own particular idea of good taste, "the working-class 'aesthetic' is a dominated 'aesthetic' which is constantly obliged to define itself in terms of the dominant aesthetics..."
1721757	/m/05r2y6	The King Must Die	Mary Renault	1958	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is told by Theseus, looking back on his life from his vantage point as an adult. The novel opens with Theseus as a six-year-old child in the household of his grandfather, King Pittheus of Troizen. His mother is a priestess; his father's identity is unknown. Theseus recounts an early experience that made a great impact upon him and which contains some of the key themes running throughout the book. He recalls the rite of the Horse sacrifice; he is shocked and saddened when he sees the "King Horse", whom he considers a noble beast and his friend, killed in front of him as a sacrifice to the gods. However, this leads to a conversation with his grandfather the King who tells him how the King used to be sacrificed with the Horse and how even now a true king of the Hellene people, whose duty is to look after his people, may need to make the ultimate sacrifice. His grandfather discusses the role of "moira" or fate in their lives but also emphasizes that in order for a king to lead his people, he must consent to the risk of sacrifice, in order that "he can walk with the god". This becomes a recurrent theme in the story as, time and time again, Theseus is faced with the choice of choosing a safe course of action over one where he places his faith in the "god" and his skill and where he consents to what he sees as the will of the god. It is during the horse sacrifice that he first hears a surging sea-sound in his ears that he identifies as the voice of his god. After the horse sacrifice, he serves at Poseidon's temple for the next three years. While there as a boy, he dares to jump into the Palace bull's pen and play a risky game of evading the bull before it can harm him. He leads other boys into the game; when one of these boys, Dexios, slips and falls into the pen, Theseus feels that he is responsible and risks his life to save the boy by jumping onto the head of the bull. This incident foreshadows his future sojourn in Crete as a bull dancer. While serving at Poseidon's temple one day, he senses that something is wrong and tells Simo, a shallow and vulgar boy who has been dedicated as a slave to the temple, to be silent. He tells the boy to get out and at that moment an earthquake shakes the temple. Simo believes that Theseus is indeed Poseidon's son and Theseus is told by his grandfather that his ability to sense earthquakes is a warning sent to him by the god so that he can protect the people. As Theseus ages, he becomes frustrated because he is shorter and lighter than most Hellenes his age. As a result, he fails at the traditional wrestling style that relies just on weight and strength, though he is an excellent archer, javelin-thrower, and runner. One night, frustrated by this, he swims out to sea and almost drowns, but then hears the sea-surge sound in his ears which he believes to be the sign from the god; he returns to the shore of a village having a feast and is greeted as "Kouros of Poseidon" by the village beauty, who later that night becomes his first lover. When Theseus is fourteen, his older friend Diokles is killed by cattle raiders; Theseus avenges his friend by killing the raider. Soon after this, the Cretan ships come to Troizen to take away young boys and girls as tribute to Minos for the bull dancing in Crete. Theseus asks his grandfather why he doesn't fight the Cretans. His grandfather tells him that the Cretans control the essential sea trade routes and that they could bring 5,000 men to Troizen in a day. He sends Theseus into the hills so that he is not chosen for the bulldance. As time goes on, Theseus figures out how to compensate for his lighter build by learning to defeat his wrestling opponents through agility, using special holds and throws, some taught to him by two Egyptian boys and others formulated by his own ingenuity. When Theseus turns seventeen, his mother takes him to the sacred Grove of Zeus in the hills and explains that his father made her swear an oath not to tell him who his father was unless he could pry up a certain heavy stone. Theseus tries again and again to lift up the stone, but fails. His failure haunts him for 2 weeks or more but, after listening to a harper tell of the mechanisms used to hoist stones for a great temple and after praying to Apollo, he realizes that he can use a lever to raise the great stone. He recovers a man's sword and sandals from beneath it. At first, Theseus is bitter that his lineage is not godly, but his irritation vanishes when his grandfather explains that Theseus is the only son and heir of King Aigeus of Athens. Theseus is to travel to Athens and join his father at once. After being affronted by way that Cretan merchants, whose ships control the sea route to Athens, treat the people of Troizen, Theseus decides to go to Athens via the bandit-infested land route: the Isthmus of Corinth. At the time, this seems like a foolhardy thing to do but it later turns out to be the beginning of his many victories over adversity and Theseus later reflects on how the Cretan merchants thus unknowingly set in motion a momentous series of events. On the way through the Isthmus, his sole companion, Dexios, is killed by the bandit Skiron. Theseus avenges him, which is considered the first of his great feats. In Eleusis, a matriarchical and non-Hellene society focused on worship of the Earth mother goddess (in contrast to the patriarchical Hellene society that places higher value on worship of male gods), it is the custom to kill their king each year, as a sacrifice to the Earth mother goddess. As Theseus enters Eleusis, he is halted on the road by the 27-year-old Eleusinian Queen, who is the priestess for the mother goddess and whose sacred name is Persephone. She tells him he must wrestle her husband, Kerkyon, the year-king, in single combat, since this is the "day when the King must die". Theseus is not sure that he wants to fight Kerkyon since his goal is to reach Athens; in addition, the tradition of his Hellene society is that the king may need to sacrifice himself for his people for some particular goal or reason but that a true king knows when he is being called to do so and does so willingly. Here he is dismayed at the fact that Kerkyon has not consented to this sacrifice. Nevertheless, he believes that the Eleusinians may kill him if he refuses or the priestess may curse him and in any event he decides that fate has set this battle in his path and that he must trust in the gods. Before they fight, Kerkyon asks Theseus "Whose son are you?" and Theseus, not wanting to reveal the identity of Aigeus, tells them that his birth came about through his mother's sacrifice to the earth goddess. This makes an impression upon the Eleusinians since they believe that the earth goddess may have sent Theseus but Kerkyon laughs for some reason known only to himself and Persephone, his wife and Queen, and then says that she won't know whom to root for. It is suggested later in the book that a prophecy had been made about such a man overthrowing the traditions in Eleusis. For now, however, Theseus begins to wrestle Kerkyon; it turns out that Kerkyon is, like Theseus, a good wrestler and is also older and stronger than Theseus. Theseus begins to fear that he will lose. However, the Queen as priestess begins to beat upon a loud gong while the women of Eleusis chant in order to diminish the spirit of Kerkyon and help Theseus win. This is illustrative of a repeated theme in this book where an action or event occurs that is interpreted by some or all of the characters as having a supernatural element but can also be read as having a naturalistic explanation, e.g., purely as the natural consequence of the beliefs of the people. Theseus pins Kerkyon to the ground but, before he kills him, makes sure he is ready to die and asks Kerkyon to discharge Theseus of his death. Once he kills Kerkyon, he becomes the year-king and husband of the Queen in his stead. In their first night in bed, he is shocked by the Eleusinian custom of allowing the people to watch the King and the Queen have sex together; however, his anger dissipates when he and the Queen are truly alone. He says that he learned more in that one night with her than in the three prior years with the girls of Troizen. But he soon learns that the Queen rules in Eleusis and the King has no real power. The people shower love and gifts on the King but that is because he is expected to die in one year's time. Therefore, everyone treats him like a child of no account. Since Theseus has a strong sense of destiny and belief in the importance of kingship, he soon becomes restless and frustrated after he tries to participate in governing with his Queen and is rebuffed. Therefore, he begins to plan to build a base of support amongst the Eleusinian youths who accompany him around Eleusis. He begins to take them away on hunts to build some sense of independence and comraderie amongst them. His shows his strategic gifts by giving thought to how he can build an alliance with neighboring Megara since he does not wish to die at the end of his one year reign. With his companions, he hunts the great she-boar Phaia. As she charges his men, for whom he feels responsible, he risks his life alone against the boar and, with his agility and quick thinking, uses the boar's strength against it to impale and kill the beast. Pylas, prince of Megara, is impressed by this feat and Theseus, never one to let an opportunity pass, then shows his political skills by persuading Pylas to ask the Queen's brother to undertake a joint war to eliminate the bandits that infest the Isthmus of Corinth. However, killing the she-boar is sacrilege in Eleusis; on his return, Persephone locks him from their room. He climbs to the roof and jumps down onto the terrace leading to their room. The Queen angrily tells him to get out and he refuses, sending her servants out and re-locking the door. Because she berated him in front of her women, which he believes is beneath his status as king, he becomes enraged and threatens to beat her if she does not modify her behavior. They tussle together, she tries to call her guards, but he puts his hand over her mouth and she tries to bite him. They fall to the floor and the Queen's towel falls aways, which leads Theseus to think "For once in this room, it will be a man who says when". At that moment, she stabs him, aiming for his heart but misses. As he is bleeding and she is thinking of calling her guards, he tells her that "if you send me below before my time, by Zeus you shall come with me", and then he releases her. When she bursts into tears he softens, showing that he is still young and impressionable. He shows concern for her at this point even though he is bleeding. He then picks her up from the debris on the floor and carrys her to bed. He naively imagines that they have made things up. Xanthos, the brother of the Queen, agrees to go to war with Megara and further even agrees to let Theseus lead, given his experience in the Isthmus. Theseus is surprised that Xanthos did not argue the point, but, due to his youthful innocence and pride, thinks that he has won him over. He does not suspect that his wife and lover, the Queen, has asked Xanthos to take this opportunity to have Theseus killed. Persephone correctly anticipates that Theseus is trying to overthrow the established order and change the custom that the King must die. The cleansing of the Isthmus of bandits is a complete success and the two attempts by Xanthos to kill Theseus through the covert efforts of others fail. Theseus learns of the treachery of Xanthos and confronts him, challenging him to fight Theseus directly rather than seek his death through others. As they fight with spears, Theseus throws his spear and misses; Xanthos then has the advantage with a spear against the sword of Theseus. As Xanthos begins to press his advantage, Theseus sees that several Eleusinian men have throw their spears near him, showing that the men feel more loyalty to Theseus than Xanthos; Theseus he picks one up and strikes Xanthos with a mortal blow. As Xanthos dies, he is unable to understand this display of loyalty to Theseus. Theseus retires to bed that night with his new won slave girl, Philona, who dresses his wounds. She asks him to promise to never separate her from his household. He keeps this promse and later in life, he has two sons by her, Itheus the shipmaster and Engenes, commander of the Palace Guard. With the excuse of wanting to be purified of Xanthos's blood at the Athenian shrine of Apollo, Theseus finally goes to Athens. But his aged father Aigeus, who fears the powerful young king (whom he quite fails to recognise as his son), would have poisoned Theseus on the urging of his lover Medea, who wants the Athenian throne for her sons. But Aigeus recognises Theseus's sword just in time, and knocks the poisoned goblet from his son's hand. Medea escapes; no one knows how. Aigeus proclaims Theseus his son and heir. When Theseus returns to Eleusis, he finds that Queen Persephone has raised the army against him. When Theseus's oration persuades the army to support him, Persephone stages a suicide attempt by letting one of her sacred snakes (used in the mother-goddess rituals she presides over as priestess-queen) bite her. After Theseus gives her leave to go to a shrine to die, one of the court's women reveals to him that she is functionally immune to the snake-bites (immunity being necessary to ensure survival of priestesses) by way of calculated doses of diluted venom - and will not die, but is using the effects of the bite as a ruse to facilitate her flight from Theseus' justice. When a Cretan ship comes to collect a yearly tribute of seven boys and seven girls from Athens, Theseus offers himself in one boy's place. He insists, despite his father's pleas, claiming that it is what his patron god Poseidon has asked him to do. Theseus becomes a Cretan slave. The boat makes for Crete, and Theseus is content with the idea that he is to be sacrificed to Poseidon. When a fight occurs between an Eleusinian and Athenian boy, Theseus stops it and realizes he must do something. He becomes king of the victims, and makes them swear an oath that they will be together, not Minyans or Hellenes, but one group. They call themselves the Cranes. One of the girls, Helike, is a tumbler, and can dance very well. Bull dancers train for three months in Knossos Palace before they go and get their bull. Then the bull has to catch them; they are not sacrificed to him. The bull-dance began as a sacrifice to Poseidon, whom they believe lives beneath the Palace and causes earthquakes when he is angry. Over the ages the bull-dance developed into an art form, and those who survive the dance teach their art to the newer ones. They go in teams in front of the bull and sometimes, with a good team, the bull tires before someone is killed. In older days noble Cretan youths did it themselves for honor, but those days are gone, and they bring in slaves now. They learn that teams of fourteen dance, but are not usually kept together. To show that they are a team, they perform the Crane dance when they come into port. A crowd of Cretans is there, and larger, fairer people who are from the Palace. The court of King Minos is of Hellene descent and speaks Greek. Among the courtiers are a large man who is greatly respected, so that one of the Cranes speculates that he might be the King, but Theseus says that he isn't kingly before realizing that they'll understand what he says. The large man slaps Theseus, and then slaps him again after receiving a curt answer to a question. The man throws a gold ring in the water and tells him to find it if he is Poseidon's son. Theseus prays to Poseidon, finds the ring, and comes up with it. The man asks for it back, but then Theseus says it was offered to Poseidon and throws it back in. The man is Asterion, son of Minos. They see Knossos Palace, the hugely impressive House of the Axe. The walls of Crete are the seas that the King's ships control. The Cretans call the palace the Labyrinth, and the Cranes see the King in a brief ceremony. In a room with a huge statue of the Mother, a priestess accepts tokens from the nobles, who point to members of the group. She is "Ariadne the Holy One, the Goddess-on-Earth." She cleanses Theseus, because he has shed the blood of kinsmen. Theseus desires her and has to keep himself calm. A man named Aktor comes to take them into the bull court and is told to train them as a team. One boy, clearly the leader of them all, called the Corinthian, sizes up the Cranes and talks to them. They learn that they are the first team to be kept together and that only the King had ever dedicated an entire team before Asterion did it. The bull-dancers all live and eat together. The boys are allowed to roam the Palace at night, while the girls are kept securely in a separate dorm. Although he never sleeps with the girls of the Bull Court, Theseus learns it is not hard for a bull-dancer to get a woman. Other dancers are in homosexual relationships with each other. They practice using the Bull of Daedalus, named after its original designer. The bronze horns were supposedly his own handiwork. The bull-leapers are respected athletes, for they grasp the bull's horns and fly off them when his head rears and are caught by other dancers when they land. Each member of the team is critical to the life of everyone else. The Cretan bulls have been bred for the dance, and the intelligent and quick ones are used for sacrifice. The ones in the dance are slower, but still dangerous. But they cannot be harmed, for the god lives inside them. At the bull dance performance, everyone addresses Ariadne as the Goddess, saying "We salute you, we who are going to die." The Corinthian tries to help another dancer who is disliked by her own team. They would not help her, but the Corinthian does and is killed for it. Theseus makes the Cranes swear a new oath to hold the life of each as precious as their own. A boy gives him a bracelet that the Corinthian wanted him to have. They go get their bull in the pasture, and name him Herakles. They learn that Asterion is not really the King's son but the Queen's, by a bull-leaper, and the King has treated him poorly so there is no love between them. Theseus becomes consumed by the bull dance, feeling that being a bull-leaper is all one could ever ask for in life. The team survives for three months without a single member dying, which is unheard of. Theseus receives a summons to a party given by Asterion, where he is patronized and treated like a prize horse instead of a person. Asterion makes even Theseus' honor an object of amusement. The other lords are kinder to him. They no longer think much of the gods and their honor does not mean much to them. Adultery means little to them, and they hold no grudges. The Cretan nobles are weary of life the way it is, because things have been so easy for them. Another sign that Crete is falling into decadence is their art. Cretans are the best potters in the world, but they have gotten bored with the beauty of their pottery and begin constructing crude things, simply because they are new. One day he is taken to meet ten-year-old Phaedra, the King's daughter, who says she is in love with him. He tells her that if he lives he will be a king, and says she can marry him then. (This is an unconscious prophecy as it actually will happen later in their lives.) Theseus dreams of conquering Crete and knows that the native Cretans would help him. Helike's brother shows up as a traveling performer, whose secret purpose in coming is to make offerings for his sister in the next life. Theseus explains that she is still alive and tells the boy to give a message to Aigeus, saying that Crete is ripe for the plucking. With the Cranes he begins to plan an uprising. Theseus is taken by an old woman to a trapdoor in the Labyrinth. Underneath he finds a passageway, and she instructs him to follow a thread that is tied to a column. Theseus walks along, with jars of grain all around him, and eventually sees a store of old weapons. He notes the spot and continues to follow the thread. He comes out underneath the large statue of the Goddess. There he meets Ariadne, who has perceived his kingly qualities starting with the incident at the harbor, and is in love with him. He sleeps with her and returns to the Bull Court before morning. They spend their nights together, and she tells him that her father, Minos, is sick with leprosy and that Asterion is responsible. Asterion has been gathering power while the king wastes away so that none will dare oppose him when Minos dies. Many are loyal to Asterion, and he rules already as king in everything but name. This state of affairs horrifies Theseus, because a ruler needs to be dedicated to the gods in order to properly lead the people. Cretan tradition requires a new Minos to throw a ring into the sea, "marrying" it. Asterion tried to do so, but Theseus unknowingly thwarted him and then threw the ring himself. Theseus tells the Cranes what he knows, without mentioning Ariadne, and he begins moving the old weapons to an easily accessible spot. The Cranes have been together for three seasons, and they do their best to keep fresh and ready all the time. Ariadne takes Theseus to speak with King Minos, following threads through the underground maze. Minos wishes him to marry Ariadne, and Theseus agrees. Minos does not believe in the gods. He warns that Asterion wants to marry Ariadne in order to keep his power, for the Cretans respect the Goddess. Theseus tells the King of his plan to get help from his father, although in his heart, Theseus does not think ships will come. He tells Minos that Poseidon will send a sign. Ariadne makes up ahead of time what she will prophesy in her oracles; she can no longer hear the voices of the gods. With a trustworthy noble and other bull dancers, Theseus plans a revolt. They begin to bring arms into the Bull Court. Spring comes, and soon the winds from the south begin to blow, and they know that this means there will be no help from any foreign ships. Perimos' son, Alektryon, plans on picking a fight with a member of Asterion's guard because the household would all attend the funeral and they could attack then. The next day, Alektryon comes to get Theseus in the Bull Court, and tells him to go see the King. Minos wants Theseus to kill him, with the ax Labrys, the ancient guardian of the house. Theseus sacrifices the King, after promising to care for Ariadne, and then returns to the Bull Court and sleeps. Theseus tells Amyntor that the King is dying, but he is surprised that no noise has been made about the dead king yet. When they have their bull dance that day, Herakles has seemingly gone mad and almost kills Theseus before falling dead. With the King dead, Asterion needed more money to buy troops to take power, so he drugged the bull and bet on Theseus to die, at great odds. They swear they will have vengeance. Theseus feels strange before falling asleep, later finding out that he slept right through an earthquake. Theseus feels strange again the next day, and when another earthquake occurs, people around him realize he can sense them. The Cretans believe the poisoning of the bull offended Poseidon. Theseus feels so sick he knows there is going to be an immense earthquake soon. Poseidon is angrier than any of them could imagine. He says they must break out because the house will collapse around them. He yells out that Poseidon is coming and that the House of the Axe will fall. The revolt begins, and the dancers nearly panic before Theseus rallies them. They break out of the bull court using Daedalus' model. As the earthquake strikes and the palace crumbles, Theseus saves Ariadne, and is cheered by the bull-dancers and the native Cretans, who heard his warning and fled the palace in time. Asterion is already taking part in the ritual to make himself the new Minos. They charge at the guards while a fire rages through the ruined Labyrinth. While the others fight, Theseus goes with the Cranes through a secret passageway, and they find Asterion wearing only the bull mask of Minos. Theseus charges him, interrupting the rite, and after a battle he stabs Asterion with his dagger. Seeing that Asterion had already been anointed with oil, Theseus puts on the mask, raises Labrys, and sacrifices the King. Nearly all the bull-dancers, plus Ariadne, whom Theseus intends to marry, take a ship and sail for Greece. They land on the island of Dia, whose capital city is Naxos. The people there, who worship the Mother, are amazed by Ariadne, and carry her in a litter to the Palace. The Queen welcomes them, and Theseus looks at the King, who seems distracted, and then realizes that he will be killed the next day at the feast of Dionysos. The Queen invites them to stay for the feast, and Ariadne accepts, although Theseus wishes that she had not. The next day the king is brought in a ship onto the sacred island, and goes up into the hills. Everyone is drunk, and all of the women go along to the island. Everyone begins going off into the hills. Theseus waits for Ariadne but she does not return. He learns that she is with the Queen in the front. Theseus runs up into the hills, and looks for her. Some of the women begin dropping away from the carriage and finding men, and Theseus drinks more and searches for Ariadne. He soon sleeps with a girl. He sees another girl watching them, and the three of them stay together for a while. The day goes by, and people begin returning from the hills. Theseus waits for Ariadne, and finally the procession passes by, looking tired and stained with blood from the sacrifice. He waits until the chariot goes by, and then turns to go back, but he sees Ariadne inside. He runs up to the chariot, which is pushed by two priests. She has passed out, and Theseus thinks that the older priest slept with her on the mountain. Ariadne is unharmed, but there is blood all around her, and when she opens the hand that lay on her breast Theseus sees something that causes him to be sick. The older priest talks to Theseus and tells him he cannot understand some things, but Theseus feels that he cannot bring her back to Athens after what he has seen. Theseus makes sure that Ariadne will be honored there and then tells the priest to explain to the Queen why they leave that night. Theseus feels sad to have left Ariadne, but that he cannot do otherwise. After gathering his companions, they set sail that night. They reach Delos the next morning, and rejoice to be so close to home. They bathe in a sacred lake, and Theseus asks a priest about the harper whom he has heard at Troizen. He learns that the harper was killed in his native Thrace, and the stories and songs about him are many after his death. Some stories are recognizable as the basis of legends about Orpheus. They sail on the next day, and see a fire burning far in the distance. Theseus knows it is the beacon his father had put up, and he remembers Aigeus's request that he paint his sail with white. But Theseus is conflicted, because he cannot be sure what his father meant. Aigeus had said that the god would have a message for him with the painted sail, and Theseus thinks that if he paints it then his father will read it as a sign to sacrifice himself to the god. Theseus wades into the water and asks Poseidon for a sign. The god responds, and Theseus knows that he should not paint the sails. He says that he never anticipated that his father would die. He is sure the god did not lead him incorrectly. He believes that perhaps, since his father jumped from a balcony high up, he was called by the god; otherwise he could have fallen on his sword or taken poison. Theseus becomes King and we have hints of what is to come in later years.
1722063	/m/05r3fy	A Yellow Raft in Blue Water	Michael Dorris	1987-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Yellow Raft in Blue Water follows a young woman named Rayona, her mother Christine, and Christine's mother Aunt Ida. The novel begins with Rayona playing cards with Christine in the hospital, when Rayona's African American father Elgin visits, angering Christine. Christine leaves the hospital with Rayona, threatening suicide at the spot where Rayona was conceived. Christine eventually leaves Rayona with Aunt Ida, where over time, Rayona begins to learn about herself and where she came from. Rayona eventually runs away and lives with a family at Bear Paw Lake until she returns to Aunt Ida.
1723803	/m/05r7wh	Katherine	Anya Seton		{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Katherine tells the true story of Katherine de Roet, born the daughter of a minor Flemish herald, later knight. Katherine has no obvious prospects, except that her sister is a waiting-woman to Queen Philippa, wife of King Edward III, and the fiancée of Geoffrey Chaucer, then a minor court official. By virtue of this connection, Katherine meets and marries Sir Hugh Swynford of Lincolnshire and gives birth to a daughter, Blanchette, and a son, Thomas. After Hugh's death, Katherine becomes the mistress of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and bears him four children out of wedlock. She is also appointed official governess to the Duke's two daughters by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, and helps raise his son by Blanche, the future King Henry IV. The Duke and Katherine separate for a number of years, immediately following Wat Tyler's Peasants' Revolt in 1381, when the rioting peasants sacked and burnt the Duke's Savoy Palace to the ground. The novel's explanation for their separation is Katherine's shock over revelations concerning the death of her husband. However, the couple eventually reconcile and marry after the death of the Duke's second wife and after their children are grown.
1724854	/m/05rbl9	The Monkey	Stephen King	1980-11		 The story centers on a cymbal-banging monkey toy that is possessed by an evil spirit. Every time the monkey claps its little cymbals together, a nearby living thing dies. The monkey is found in a family's attic in an old toy chest by two young brothers, unknowing that their father had been tormented by the monkey years ago, when it worked its lethal enchantment on his family and friends. The dad takes the monkey and throws it in the lake in his backyard. The story ends with an excerpt of a newspaper article which reports on a mysterious die-off of fish in the lake.
1726124	/m/05rfsd	A History of Violence	John Wagner	1997		 The story concerns a small town Michigan cafe owner, Tom McKenna, who becomes a local hero after defending his store from an attempted robbery. When his story receives national attention, several members of the New York City Mafia arrive in town, believing him to be someone named Joey, who crossed them 20 years earlier. Tom protests his innocence to everyone, but eventually his façade is dropped and he is forced to confess his history of violence to his wife and son and eventually the police. Namely, he and his friend performed a well planned and spectacular assassination and robbery of mobsters in their youth in retaliation for the murder of a relative. Unfortunately, Tom's friend foolishly decided to flaunt his take, which allowed the mob to identify him as one of the assailants and abduct him for revenge. Meanwhile, Tom barely escaped the same fate and fled the city with the intent of starting over with a new identity. Fortunately for McKenna and his family, their lawyer arrives and learns that the police failed to Mirandize him, which makes his confession inadmissible in court. However, as the McKenna family is transported to the father's original city to deal with related legal matters, the mobsters learn of McKenna's detention and plan their revenge with a horrific surprise.
1727973	/m/05rkqc	The Mystery of the Blue Train	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Poirot boards Le Train Bleu, bound for the French Riviera. So does Katherine Grey, who is having her first winter out of England, after having inherited a huge sum. While on board she meets Ruth Kettering, an American heiress bailing out from a marriage to meet her lover. The next morning, though, Ruth is found dead in her compartment, a victim of strangulation. The famous ruby, "Heart of Fire", which had recently been given to Ruth by her father, is discovered to be missing. Ruth's father, the American millionaire Rufus Van Aldin, and his secretary, Major Knighton, convince Poirot to take on the case. Ruth's maid, Ada Mason, says she saw a man in Ruth's compartment but could not see who he was. The police suspect that Ruth's lover, the Comte de la Roche, killed her and stole the rubies, but Poirot does not think he is guilty. He is suspicious of Ruth's husband, Derek Kettering, who was on the same train but claims not to have seen Ruth. Katherine says she saw Derek enter Ruth's compartment. This also throws suspicion on Derek when a cigarette case with the letter K on it is found. Poirot investigates and finds out that the murder and the jewel theft might not be connected, as the famous jewel thief The Marquis is connected to the crime. Eventually, the dancer Mirelle, who was on the train with Derek, tells Poirot she saw Derek leave Ruth's compartment around the time the murder would have taken place. Derek is then arrested. Everyone is convinced the case is solved, but Poirot is not sure. He does more investigating and learns more information, talking to his friends and to Katherine, eventually coming to the truth. He asks Van Aldin and Knighton to come with him on the Blue Train to recreate the murder. He tells them that Ada Mason is really Kitty Kidd, a renowned male impersonator and actress. Katherine saw what she thought was a boy getting off the train, but it was really Mason. Poirot realized that Mason was the only person who saw anyone with Ruth in the compartment, so this could have been a lie. He reveals that the murderer and Mason's accomplice is Knighton, who is really The Marquis. He also says that the cigarette case with the K on it does not stand for Kettering, but Knighton. Since Knighton was supposedly in Paris, no one would have suspected him. Derek did go into the compartment to talk to Ruth once he saw she was on the train, but he left when he saw she was asleep. The police then arrest Knighton, and Van Aldin thanks Poirot for solving the case.
1728601	/m/05rm5k	The Way of the World	William Congreve			 Act 1 is set in a chocolate house where Mirabell and Fainall have just finished playing cards. A footman comes and tells Mirabell that Waitwell (Mirabell's male servant) and Foible (Lady Wishfort’s female servant) were married that morning. Mirabell tells Fainall about his love of Millamant and is encouraged to marry her. Witwoud and Petulant appear and Mirabell is informed that should Lady Wishfort marry, he will lose £6000 of Millamant’s inheritance. He will only get this money if he can make Lady Wishfort consent to his and Millamant’s marriage. Act 2 is set in St. James’ Park. Mrs. Fainall and Mrs. Marwood are discussing their hatred of men. Fainall appears and accuses Mrs. Marwood (with whom he is having an affair) of loving Mirabell (which she does). Meanwhile, Mrs. Fainall (having previously been his lover) tells Mirabell that she hates her husband, and they begin to plot about tricking Lady Wishfort to give her consent to the marriage. Millamant appears in the park, and angry about the previous night (where Mirabell was confronted by Lady Wishfort) she lets him know her displeasure in Mirabell’s plan, which she only has a vague idea about. After she leaves, the newly wed servants appear and Mirabell reminds them of their roles in the plan. Acts 3, 4 and 5 are all set in the home of Lady Wishfort. We are introduced to Lady Wishfort who is encouraged to marry ‘Sir Rowland’ – Mirabell’s supposed uncle – by Foible so that Mirabell will lose his inheritance. Sir Rowland is however Waitwell in disguise, the plan being to arrange a marriage with Lady Wishfort, which cannot go ahead because it would be bigamy, not to mention a social disgrace (Waitwell is only a serving man, Lady Wishfort an aristocrat). Mirabell will offer to help her out of the embarrassing situation if she consents to his marriage. Later, Mrs. Fainall discusses this plan with Foible, but this is overheard by Mrs. Marwood. She later tells the plan to Fainall, who decides that he will take his wife’s money and go away with Mrs. Marwood. Mirabell and Millamant, equally strong-willed, discuss in detail the conditions under which they would accept each other in marriage (otherwise known as the "proviso scene"), showing the depth of feeling for each other. Mirabell finally proposes to Millamant and, with Mrs. Fainall’s encouragement (almost consent, as Millamant knows of their previous relations), Millamant accepts. Mirabell leaves as Lady Wishfort arrives, and she lets it be known that she wants Millamant to marry her nephew, Sir Wilful, who has just arrived from the countryside. Lady Wishfort later gets a letter telling her about the Sir Rowland plot. Sir Rowland takes the letter and accuses Mirabell of trying to sabotage their wedding. Lady Wishfort agrees to let Sir Rowland bring a marriage contract that night. By Act 5, Lady Wishfort has found out the plot, and Fainall has had Waitwell arrested. Mrs. Fainall tells Foible that her previous affair with Mirabell is now public knowledge. Lady Wishfort appears with Mrs. Marwood, whom she’s thanking for unveiling the plot. Fainall then appears and uses the information of Mrs. Fainall’s previous affair with Mirabell and Millamant's contract to marry him to blackmail Lady Wishfort, telling that she should never marry and that she is to transfer all the money over to him. Lady Wishfort tells Mirabell that she will offer consent to the marriage if he can save her fortune and honor. Mirabell calls on Waitwell who brings a contract from the time before the marriage of the Fainalls in which Mrs. Fainall gives all her property to Mirabell. This neutralises the blackmail attempts, after which Mirabell restores Mrs. Fainall’s property to her possession and then is free to marry Millamant with the full £6000 inheritance.
1728675	/m/05rmfx	The Private Life of Chairman Mao	Li Zhisui	1994	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 According to the book, Li witnessed Mao's private life on a day-to-day basis, mostly dealing with Mao at the height of his powers. Li alleged that Mao appeared anxious of the public but was indifferent to the problems of the Chinese people. It also describes Mao's signs of illness, paranoia, as well as neglecting dental hygiene (Mao's teeth were coated with a green-colored film, and when Li touched Mao's gums, pus oozed out). The book has two major focuses: * Mao's personal sexual history, including his sexual potence at the height of the revolution, and selection of numerous sexual partners following his adoption, at the age of 62, of the Taoist belief that frequent sex prolongs life. Despite his initial fascination for and admiration of Mao, Li expresses his growing disgust and contempt for Mao beginning at this point due to the leader's hypocritical assertion that the population at large must adopt a sexually conservative lifestyle. * The political intrigue within Communist Party leadership, including Mao's excessive use of propaganda and unrealistic demands leading to absurdities such as putting rice fields near railroad tracks to give the impression of fertility and health while the country suffered from massive famine, as well as Mao's excitement after President Richard Nixon's visit to China, around the time his health started to deteriorate. Li also writes about his personal experiences, the effects of the Cultural Revolution on his family, and his life as a doctor for 22 years in Mao's life.
1728896	/m/05rm_n	The Man in the Maze	Robert Silverberg	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The action takes place in the future. The main character - Richard Muller, a retired diplomat – finds himself forced to hide from the human race on the uninhabited planet Lemnos. He lives there in the center of an ancient city-maze, built by a vanished race. The outer zones of the maze are filled with lethal traps to discourage entrance into the central zone. The maze was considered insuperable until the successful attempt of Muller. In his earlier life he had honestly served humanity, has traveled hundreds of worlds, endured hardship and danger. The career diplomat Charles Boardman invited him to come into contact with the inhabitants of the planet Hydra - the only intelligent alien race yet discovered in the galaxy. In a neighboring galaxy another highly-developed race has been discovered and Mueller must try to enlist the help of the inhabitants of Hydra. Mueller spent five months on Hydra without seeming to establish any meaningful communication with the natives at all. When he returned he discovered that other human beings cannot bear to be close to him - he seems to emanate an intolerable mental field that overwhelms the others. Earth science cannot understand or trace the origin of these emanations from Muller's brain and Mueller went into voluntary exile. After nine years, however, Boardman invades his self-imposed isolation. The lethal snares of the maze are penetrated, firstly with robot drones and later with human volunteers, many of whom perish. Ned Rawlins, son of a friend of Muller who is now dead, establishes contact with him and, under the instruction of Boardman, promises him a cure as a means of luring him out of the maze. Mueller agrees to go, but his conscience torments Rawlins and he tells Muller the whole truth as far as he knows it: that only Muller has the ability to make contact with the aliens from the other galaxy who are on their way to extinguishing human civilization. Already six human worlds have been overrun, the people turned into zombie slaves. The aliens do not seem to realize that the humans are rational beings. They are radically alien, huge in physical size, communicate with each other telepathically, are physically very limited but are able to enslave the inhabitants of entire planets. Only one person - Muller - who can radiate telepathically, might be able to enter in contact with them: yet his experiences have made him potentially furiously hostile to any further contact with aliens, indeed with the human race itself. After a dramatic meeting with Boardman Muller agrees. He flies to the edge of the galaxy, is taken inside an alien ship, and there seems to have his whole psyche read by the aliens. When he returns, Muller meets Rawlins and discovers that his repulsion field has now vanished. To Rawlins' disappointment, however, instead of returning to Earth and its comforts and pleasures, Muller has decided to return to the maze. The worldly-wise Boardman is sure he will come back out in a few years, but Rawlins does not think so. At the end of the story we are left without knowing what resulted from this contact with the alien civilization, or what ultimately happened to Muller. Rawlins is meanwhile following in Muller's footsteps, and those of the innumerable reckless adventurers before him, from the seamen of old to the space-farers of the remote future century of the novel. The last sentence reads: "He held the girl tightly. But he left before dawn".
1728918	/m/05rn2_	Mortal Fear	Robin Cook	1988	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dr. Jason Howard is a resident surgeon at Massachusetts General. When a patient of his is admitted complaining of heart problems and later dies, Jason finds that, though having received a clean bill of health less than a month before, that the heart attack came totally out of left field and the patient looks decidedly older than he ought to at 56. Soon two more cases come to his attention, both healthy a month before, now dead, both looking older than their years. Alvin Hayes, a former classmate of Jason's at Harvard, asks to speak to him about his recent strange caseload. Hayes is a shifty, twitchy man whose personal life is a subject of some question who seems unduly paranoid, and Jason wonders if the resident mad scientist has gotten into something illicit. At dinner Hayes, while talking about his genetic research on aging, suddenly begins expelling blood violently. He dies a gory death right there in the restaurant. Jason begins investigating the connection between the man's sudden demise, his nervous demeanor, and the patients in his hospital who have all been admitted with what seems to be a mutant strain of progeria that killed them in mere days. nl:Doodsangst (boek) pl:Śmiertelny strach
1733103	/m/05ry41	Vi kallar honom Anna			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story starts in 1958. Anders Roos, 14 years old, arrives one week late at Södra Latins' summercamp (which is 10 weeks in total). The leaders of the camp have put him in another barrack than his peers, because they know there are "troubles" at school. Usually peers are together. The other people in the barrack have to decide on a nickname for him: all people in the camp have one. They think he looks like a girl. Therefore, they decide to call him Anna: Vi kallar honom Anna. Anders is far too small for his age, cannot play football and cannot swim. He can At summercamp, Anders gets severely bullied. In the morning, when all boys have to fix their bed, the other people won't let him. This results in a low number of points, and because he gets a low number of points for his bed, the other boys throw him into the sea. A number of times, he is beaten up so badly that he is unable to leave his bed for many days. The camp leaders don't want to send anyone home: the camp reputation would be severely damaged. Micke is the sports' leader at the camp. Through the ten weeks at summercamp, Anders discovers that he can trust Micke. He tells Micke that he is the only one he likes: at home, his father mistreats him. When he eats, his father tells him exactly how much money he owes. On the other hand, his father always complains that Anders is much too small and that he is an imbecile. His father forces him to watch when his father rapes his mother. At school, everyone bullies him, and at camp, it's not different. Micke finds it very difficult to react to this openness, but tries to be open and be a friend. When the summercamp is finished, Micke needs to work for his exams, at the end of the year. He also trains a lot, and wins a lot of matches by running fastest. He has hardly any time left for Anders, and the few times he sees him, Anders tells him a lot about how he is mistreated everywhere. Micke finds it increasingly difficult to know how to handle the situation. He tries to contact the school about it, but the school does not believe him: the school direction does not believe that there is any bullying at Södra Latins. Later, it seems Anders' life might be getting better, for he and his mother are finally moving out of fathers' house and maybe Anders can even change school. However, at a later moment, Anders has a fight with his mother. The neighbours, who he visits sometimes, are not at home, and he can't find Micke either. At this moment, he commits suicide by hanging himself. The suicide method requires a strong will: he hangs himself in a place where his feet reached the ground, so he needed to pull up his feet all the time. When Micke visits Anders' parents after his suicide, Anders' father asks Micke if he wants to sell his model railway track.
1733159	/m/05ry8m	The Angel of Darkness	Caleb Carr	1997-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Stevie Taggert tells of the mystery of Señora Linares's missing child. Set in 1897, the mystery is complicated by rising tensions between Cuba and the United States and forces the team to ask, within the context of their era, a complex ethical question, could the act of a woman murdering her own kids be looked at as her trying to gain control over her life and her world?
1734668	/m/05s002	Songmaster	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The empire of Songmaster is a place of treachery, resembling that of ancient Rome and the Galactic Empire of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The book is morally ambivalent. True love, both heterosexual and homosexual, are major themes as are loyalty and honor. Fraud, kidnapping, assassination, murder are also prevalent and each of them is shown in more than one light. As with many of Card's works, this story is more about the interplay of people, and their moral issues, than it is about technology, although the Empire clearly has advanced technology. The core of the story is the idea that young boys and girls are selected and acquired at a very early age on account of their singing abilities. The children are taken away from normal life and trained to sing. They are given drugs that delay puberty for five years. The drugs also make them sterile. A few specially talented singers are designated as Songbirds, "Songbirds are given only to those who can truly appreciate them. We invite people to accept them. We do not take applications." Songbirds are sold to worthy wealthy clients and stay with them till their fifteenth birthday when they return to the Songhouse. Singers who fail to make the grade do not necessarily have fulfilling lives even though the Songhouse takes care of their material needs. Ansset is seen as special and taken under the wing of Esste, a senior Songmaster. She takes him out into the real world, but only for a few days, a man remarking of the boy, "If he's willing to take off his clothes, he can make a fortune." Because of his talent, he is sent to the Emperor Mikal himself to sing. When he is aged 9, Riktors Ashen collects Ansset from the Songhouse and is captivated by his beauty, "the kind of face that melted men's hearts as readily as women's. More readily." Ansset first experiences unwanted sexual attention in the form of a palace guard who searches him in preparation for his first meeting with Mikal. The guard suffers a steep price for lingering just a little too long, a harsh punishment swiftly dealt by Mikal on Ansset's word. Very soon after his induction into the palace and into Mikal's life, rumors circulate that surely, such a beautiful boy would have shared the emperor's bed. On a student group visitation to the palace, however, Kya-Kya, a former member of the Songhouse, silently debunks such rumors: "They all wondered, of course, if a boy of such great beauty had found his way into Mikal's bed. Kya-Kya knew better. The Songhouse would never tolerate it. They would never send a Songbird to someone who would try such a thing." pg 130 A Songbird is only gifted to a person who has been judged to possess a soul capable of fully appreciating such beauty. A man or woman who would wish such great harm as sexual abuse would never be considered as a candidate for a Songbird. Ansset is loved by Mikal and loves him back, but neither Mikal, nor his successor Riktors, wish to have a sexual relationship with the boy. Kya-Kya (Kyaren) is a girl a few years older than Ansset who leaves the Songhouse and works her way up to a senior position on Earth. Eventually she ends up working for Ansset when he is fifteen (though he still has the body of a 10-year-old.) Kyaran has a boyfriend called Josif who is, in his own words, sixty two percent homosexual and the rest heterosexual. Josif was loved by a slightly older boy when he himself was a "shy child of unusual beauty". Josif falls in love with Ansset the first time he meets him. He tries to avoid seeing the boy again, but this is impossible. As he slowly starts to mature, growing 17 centimetres, Ansset starts to seek out Josif's company more and more. Josif and Kyaren have a baby boy by now, but Ansset begins to realise that Josif is sexually attracted to him, as many people have been before. He recognises however, that Josif's love is different from the lust he has seen so often. Ansset starts to feel new longings. He knows that the drugs cause problems for Songbirds, particularly boys, but he has lost his songs and wants to know what happens next. Ansset eventually offers himself to the young man, saying, "I know what you want, and I'm willing". Josif lovingly brings the boy to his first climax. As Ansset experiences his first ever orgasm, he experiences enormous pain. The Songhouse drugs have almost killed him and he is forever impotent.
1735052	/m/05s0mn	Cabal	Clive Barker		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story concerns a young man named Boone, who is suffering from an unspecified mental illness. Although it is not serious enough to institutionalize him, he is nonetheless seeing a psychiatrist named Decker. To his horror, during a session he is informed by Decker that he is responsible for the brutal mutilation murders of eleven people, murders that have been committed by a serial killer and have terrorized the city (Calgary, Alberta, in Canada) recently. Boone does not recall these actions, apparently because his mind has blanked them from his consciousness. He initially tries to kill himself, but when he fails he begins to believe he can save himself in a place known as Midian, a semi-mythical city, which has appeared in his dreams as a place that offers sanctuary to monsters – both the human kind and otherwise -, known as the Nightbreed. He hurriedly begins to seek Midian, unaware of the truth behind the insidious events that set him on this course. Boone eventually finds Midian, but discovers that the town is deserted. Travelling to the cemetery nearby he discovers that Midian in fact lies beneath the cemetery. Two of the Nightbreed appear and attack him. One of them bites him, but he is able to escape. Boone returns to the abandoned town where he is confronted by Decker. Decker reveals that Boone is innocent of the killings, and that Decker is the one who actually committed the murders, intending to use Boone as a scapegoat. Soon after Boone is shot to death by Decker and the police, who was following his trail. However, soon after this his body vanishes from the morgue. After Boone's apparent death, his lover, Lori, travels to Midian after hearing of his corpse's disappearance. Along the way she makes friends with Sheryl, another woman who decides to accompany Lori. When they arrive at Midian Lori encounters two of the Nightbreed, Babette, a small child, and Rachel, her mother. Lori is refused entrance to the underground by Lylesburg, another member of the Nightbreed. Lori and Sheryl depart Midian and return to a nearby inn. Sheryl brings Lori out to a restaurant with her to meet her new boyfriend, who ends up being Decker. Decker, who possesses a button faced mask that houses his murderous personality, kills Sheryl, and Lori narrowly escapes. She returns to Midian, where Decker pursues her. She is saved by Boone, who goes above ground and reveals himself, being banished for doing so. Before he leaves, Boone sees Midian's creator, Baphomet, who appears as a dismembered body in a large fire. Boone and Lori depart Midian as demanded and return to the hotel where Lori had stayed with Sheryl. They soon discover that Decker was at the hotel, and has killed many inside. The police arrive and Lori is able to flee, while Boone degenerated to an animalistic state and is quickly arrested. Decker goes to the police himself, and is able to convince them to go to Midian and capture or kill everyone living there. Lori meets up with Narcisse, a former human who like Boone traveled to Midian and became part of the Nightbreed. They enter the jail where Boone is being held and break him out. They return to Midian, which is overrun by the police, who have killed or captured many of the Nightbreed, forcing them out from the underground by setting it aflame. Boone and the others engage in the fight and he has his final confrontation with Decker, killing him. The remaining policemen are all either killed or chased off, but Midian is completely destroyed. Those who remain of the Nightbreed bind up the parts of Baphomet and leave, in search of a new home.
1735373	/m/05s1jk	Priestess of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley	2000-11-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 As a young woman, the British priestess Eilan, known to the Romans as Helena, falls in love with the charismatic Roman Constantius. The Roman noble takes her away from Avalon as she is banished for this forbidden love and, before long, Helen bears him a son, who will become Constantine the Great. Helen's position in Roman society now gives her the freedom to travel about in the empire. When her son Constantine becomes Emperor, she slowly discovers brand-new roles. She faces the spread of the new Christian religion and seeks to understand the old knowledge of the goddess in light of the new religion. As Empress-Mother, Helena travels on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to find the answers to questions that arise between the old religion and the new.
1735430	/m/05s1mg	Lady of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1997-11-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Lady of Avalon is the sequel to The Forest House and the prequel to The Mists of Avalon. It is divided into 3 parts. The first part shows us Caillean and Gawen (Eilan's son), who we know from the prequel, The Forest House. Caillean assumes the role of High Priestess of Avalon and somewhat a foster mother to Gawen. Gawen is raised as a druid, but from time to time, the Fairy Queen takes him with her to teach him. She also has a daughter, Sianna. The Fairy Queen and Caillean agree that Sianna will be given the teachings of the priestesses of Avalon. Spending their childhood together, Sianna and Gawen have a special bond. By the end of this first part of the book, Gawen and Sianna have become more than just friends. Sianna will bear Gawen's child, though Gawen himself will not live to see his daughter, as he is killed when he tries to protect Avalon from the Christians and a Roman patrol. After these unfortunate events, Caillean calls upon the mists so that Avalon will be inaccessible to anyone who cannot handle the magic to lift the mist. When Caillean grows too old, Sianna assumes the position of High Priestess and her daughter after her, thus starting a lineage of High Priestesses. The second part tells us about High Priestess Dierna. She takes in a new novice of royal blood, named Teleri. When she gets a vision about the new Protector of Britannia, a Roman admiral named Carausius, she forces Teleri, a foreign princess who hoped to become a great priestess, to be wed to the man to keep Dierna in power. Some years later, Carausius gets more and more opposition from all sides. Teleri will flee from her husband and give support to one of his former trustees to become the new High King. Eventually, Dierna and Carausius will find each other and betray Teleri. The High King hunts down Carausius who tries to reach the safety of Avalon and Dierna, but fails to reach it, dying of his wounds at the edge of the lake of Avalon. Some time later, Teleri falls back into the abusive relationship and finds her way back to Avalon, where she is reunited with Dierna and becomes her successor. The third part focuses on Avalon High Priestess Ana and her third daughter, Viviane. Viviane was fostered on a farm, but when she is 14 her mother sends Taliesin the Druid bard to escort her to Avalon. There she completes her training as a priestess, but Ana won't let her go through her initiation, so Viviane continues to remain a novice. This allows her to be the first maiden in centuries to be able to handle the Holy Grail, which is kept by Taliesin's order of Druids. Viviane's temperament takes after Ana's, so their characters often clash. Finally, Viviane is initiated when she becomes Vortimer's lover but returns to Avalon when he dies, where she bears his daughter. Sadly, her child dies three months later. Ana is also pregnant, but birth proves to be difficult at her age. At last Ana and Viviane find forgiveness for each other, but Ana does not survive the birth of her last daughter, Morgause. Luckily, Viviane can nurse Ana's daughter, since her body is still accustomed to breastfeeding her own child. This last part leads us to the storyline of The Mists of Avalon.
1735504	/m/05s1st	Clarissa	Samuel Richardson	1748	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel"}	 Clarissa Harlowe, the tragic heroine of Clarissa, is a beautiful and virtuous young lady whose family has become wealthy only recently and now desires to become part of the aristocracy. Their original plan was to concentrate the wealth and lands of the Harlowes into the possession of Clarissa's brother James Harlowe, whose wealth and political power will lead to his being granted a title. Clarissa's grandfather leaves her a substantial piece of property upon his death, and a new route to the nobility opens through Clarissa marrying Robert Lovelace, heir to an earldom. James's response is to provoke a duel with Lovelace, who is seen thereafter as the family's enemy. James also proposes that Clarissa marry Roger Solmes, who is willing to trade properties with James to concentrate James's holdings and speed his becoming Lord Harlowe. The family agrees and attempts to force Clarissa to marry Solmes, whom she finds physically disgusting as well as boorish. Desperate to remain free, she begins a correspondence with Lovelace. When her family's campaign to force her marriage reaches its height, Lovelace tricks her into eloping with him. Joseph Leman, the Harlowes' servant, shouts and makes noise so it may seem like the family has awoken and discovered that Clarissa and Lovelace are about to run away. Frightened of the possible aftermath, Clarissa leaves with Lovelace but becomes his prisoner for many months. She is kept at many lodgings and even a brothel, where the women are disguised as high-class ladies by Lovelace himself. She refuses to marry him on many occasions, longing to live by herself in peace. She eventually runs away but Lovelace finds her and tricks her into returning to the brothel. Lovelace intends to marry Clarissa to avenge her family's treatment of him and wants to possess both her body as well as her mind. He believes if she loses her virtue, she will be forced to marry him on any terms. As he is more and more impressed by Clarissa, he finds it difficult to believe that virtuous women do not exist. The pressure he finds himself under, combined with his growing passion for Clarissa, drives him to extremes and eventually he rapes her by drugging her. Through this action, Clarissa must accept and marry Lovelace. It is suspected that Mrs. Sinclair (the brothel manager) and the other prostitutes assist Lovelace during the rape. Lovelace's action backfires and Clarissa is ever more adamantly opposed to marrying a vile and corrupt individual like Lovelace. Eventually, Clarissa manages to escape from the brothel but becomes dangerously ill due to the mental duress of many months caused by "the vile Lovelace." Clarissa is sheltered by the kind but poor Smiths and during her sickness she gains another worshipper &mdash; John Belford, another libertine who happens to be Lovelace's best friend. Belford is amazed at the way Clarissa handles her approaching death and laments what Lovelace has done. In one of the many letters sent to Lovelace he writes "if the divine Clarissa asks me to slit thy throat, Lovelace, I shall do it in an instance." Eventually, surrounded by strangers and her cousin Col. Morden, Clarissa dies in the full consciousness of her virtue and trusting in a better life after death. Belford manages Clarissa's will and ensures that all her articles and money go into the hands of the individuals she desires should receive them. Lovelace seems to have moved on but Belford sends him Clarissa's will. He is shattered when he reads it and can live no longer. Col. Morden has gone back to Italy and he knows that there is only one way to atone for his sins. Lovelace asks Morden for a duel (although not directly) and they meet somewhere in Italy. Lovelace fights Morden and keeps on getting injured. He pretends to be not injured and goes after Morden many times &mdash; each time receiving another deadly blow. Eventually Morden realizes that he has been injured very badly and might die. The duel ends, Morden leaves and Lovelace is taken to his lodgings. The doctor is unable to do anything and Lovelace dies a day afterwards. Before dying he says "let this expiate!" Clarissa's relatives finally realise the misery they have caused but discover that they are too late and Clarissa has already died. The story ends with an account of the fate of the other characters.
1736564	/m/05s3fy	My Name Is Asher Lev	Chaim Potok	1972-03-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This is the story of Asher Lev, a boy born with a prodigious artistic ability into a Hasidic Jewish family, set in the 1950s in the time of Joseph Stalin and the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union. During Asher's childhood, his artistic inclination brings him into conflict with the members of his Jewish community, which values things primarily as they relate to faith and considers art unrelated to religious expression to be at best a waste of time and possibly a sacrilege. It brings him into particularly strong conflict with his father, a man who has devoted his life to serving their leader, the Rebbe, by traveling around the world bringing the teachings and practice of their sect to other Jews, and who is by nature incapable of understanding or appreciating art. In the middle is Asher's mother, who in Asher's early childhood was severely traumatized by the death of her brother, who was killed while traveling for the Rebbe; she suffers anxiety for her husband's safety during his almost constant traveling. It didn’t just affect her, but it affected her whole family and community. After her anxiety had passed, she decided she wanted to continue her brother’s work. Asher begins to go to art museums where he studies paintings. He becomes very interested in the paintings, especially the ones of the crucifixions. He starts copying the paintings of the crucifixions and nudes, but this would only get him into trouble. Asher’s father returned home one night after a long trip to Russia for the Rebbe. He then sees Asher’s paintings of the crucifix and nudes and is furious. Asher’s father thinks that his gift is foolish and from the Sitra Achra, or Other Side. Asher’s mother doesn’t know whether to support her son or her husband. She is torn between the two of them. The Rebbe asks Asher’s father to travel to Vienna, since it would make his work easier. Asher becomes very upset about this and complains that he doesn’t want to go to Vienna. His mother decides to stay in Brooklyn with Asher, while his father goes to Vienna. While Asher’s father is away, Asher gets more into his paintings and neglects his Jewish studies. Yet the gift will not be denied, and finally the Rebbe intercedes and allows Asher to study under one of the greatest living artists, Jacob Kahn, a non-observant Jew who is an admirer of the Rebbe. Asher grows up to be a formidable artist as an apprentice of Jacob Kahn, and even his father cannot help but be proud of his son's success. Jacob Kahn becomes more than just an art teacher to Asher. Jacob Kahn also teaches Asher about life and they eventually become very good friends. However, the gift finally calls upon Asher to paint his masterpiece—a work which uses the symbolism of the crucifixion to express his mother's torment. This imagery so offends his parents and his community that he is asked to leave. Asher goes away not wanting to hurt the ones he loves further.
1737296	/m/05s41m	The Forest House	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1994-04-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the early days of the conquest, when the Roman Legions are aggressively persecuting the Druids, the sanctuary of the Goddess on the isle of Mona is destroyed and its Druids are murdered and its priestesses are raped. The raped priestesses that conceive children kill all of the girl children but leave the boys alive that are born and then kill themselves rather than live with the atrocities done to them; the males later became a rebel group known as the Ravens, which swore vengeance against Rome. Lhiannon, one of the remaining priestesses, re-establishes a new sanctuary at Vernemeton (Most Holy Grove), or The Forest House, which is partially controlled and protected by the Romans. The novel tells the story of Eilan, granddaughter of the Arch-Druid of Britain. She hears the calling of the Goddess and is chosen to become a priestess at Vernemeton, and later to succeed the dying Lhiannon as High Priestess. However, before her calling, she hears the voice of her heart, and during the magic night of Beltaine, conceives a son with Roman officer Gaius Macellius, son of the high-ranking Camp Prefect at nearby Deva. Gaius is an inheritant of royal blood through his Celtic mother of a southern tribe, the Silures. Eilan knows their son, Gawen, whose bloodline comes from the Dragon (Celtic royalty), the Eagle (Roman Empire), and from the Wise (Druids), will play a crucial role in Britain's future, and makes great sacrifices to protect him in his youth. A major shift in the balance of power is in the air; Eilan senses that the death of her peace-loving Arch-Druid grandfather will cause it. She tells her friend Caillean (who was rescued from her uncaring mother in Hibernia by Lhiannon) to take a group of young priestesses to the isle of Avalon to found a new sanctuary and become the first high-priestess of Avalon. In Vernemeton, Eilan is increasingly pressured by the new Arch-Druid, her father, to stop promoting peace and collaboration with the Romans. In a dramatic showdown she sacrifices herself (along with her love Gaius) to avoid a bloody insurgency and, in particular, to save the life of her son Gawen.
1739150	/m/05s8dp	The Godwhale	T. J. Bass	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The protagonist, Larry Dever, is gravely injured resulting in a radical surgical procedure, a hemicorporectomy, in which tissue below the waist is removed. He is outfitted with a set of intelligent mechanical legs, a 'manniquin,' and is placed into suspended animation until the damaged tissue can be restored. He wakes at a time when cloning technology can replace his legs—for a price. Years before he was awakened, a clone, or 'bud child,' was created and is now a thriving young boy without language. Horrified by the prospect of his child being sacrificed to provide him with a new lower body, Larry opts to return to suspended animation. His child, 'Dim Dever,' is selected by the guiding world computer, 'Olga', to carry his ancient genes to a possible new colony on a planet orbiting Procyon. Larry awakens again in a nightmare future. Far from the highly advanced past, now an enormous human population (possibly in the trillions) covers every inch of the planet. Technology and science have degraded, and all freely breeding species have been exterminated. The 'Hive' or human population within its computer-supported subterranean culture ruthlessly hunts, kills, and recycles anyone who does not conform. As Larry is trying to adapt to his new life, without most of his own body or his 'cyber' torso, something re-awakens an ancient, half-derelict cyborg, the Godwhale of the title. This enormous 'rake' is an ocean-going biota harvester built in part from a genetically-modified blue whale. Initially attempting to rejoin human civilization, the Godwhale (named Rorqual Maru or 'Whale Ship' in Japanese) eventually teams up with a genetically modified clone of Larry, Larry himself, and an assortment of misfits and refugees from the Hive. Together they set out to try to find out what mysteriously brings 'the marine biota' back to the previously sterile oceans, while a tiny group from 'the Hive', the outcasts, and their cyber deities survive and thrive in the face of incredible bungling by the 'Class One' computer that manages humanity and the various castes of 'Nebish' humans brought into the fight.
1739705	/m/05s9j0	Fengshen Yanyi	Xu Zhonglin		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is a romanticised retelling of the overthrow of King Zhou, the last ruler of the Shang Dynasty, by King Wu, who would establish the Zhou Dynasty in place of Shang. The story integrates oral and written tales of many Chinese mythological figures who are involved in the struggle as well. These figures include human heroes, immortals and various spirits (usually represented in avatar form like vixens, and pheasants, and sometimes inanimate objects such as a pipa). Bewitched by his concubine Daji, who is actually a vixen spirit in disguise as a beautiful woman, King Zhou of Shang oppresses his people and persecutes those who oppose him, including his own subjects who dare to speak up to him. King Wu of Zhou, assisted by his strategist Jiang Ziya, rallies an army to overthrow the tyrant and restore peace and order. Throughout the story, battles are waged between the kingdoms of Shang and Zhou, with both sides calling upon various supernatural beings -- deities, immortals, demons, spirits, and humans with magical abilities -- to aid them in the war. Yuanshi Tianzun bestows upon Jiang Ziya the Fengshen Bang, a list that empowers Jiang Ziya to invest the gods of Heaven. The heroes of Zhou and some of their fallen enemies from Shang are eventually endowed with heavenly ranking and essentially elevated to their roles as gods, hence the title of the novel.
1741662	/m/05sfw9	Clotel	William Wells Brown	1853	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrative of Clotel plays with history by relating the "perilous antebellum adventures" of a young slave Currer and her mixed-race, light-skinned daughters fathered by Thomas Jefferson. Their girls are born into slavery. The book includes "several sub-plots" related to other slaves, religion and anti-slavery. Currer, described as "a bright mulatto," gives birth to two "near white" daughters: Clotel and Althesa. After the death of Jefferson, Currer and her daughters are sold. Horatio Green, a white man, purchases Clotel and takes her as a common-law wife, although they cannot legally marry. Her mother Currer and sister Althesa remain "in a slave gang." Currer is eventually purchased by Mr. Peck, a preacher. She is enslaved until she dies from yellow fever, although his daughter was preparing to emancipate her. Althesa marries her white owner, Henry Morton, a Northerner, with whom she has daughters Jane and Ellen. Their daughters are enslaved after Althesa and Morton both die. Ellen commits suicide to escape sexual enslavement and Jane dies from heartbreak. Green and Clotel have a mixed-race daughter named Mary. Becoming ambitious and involved in local politics, Green abandons Clotel and Mary. He marries "a white woman who forces him to sell Clotel and enslave his child." Dressing as a white man, Clotel escapes to Ohio (an account based on the 1849 escape of Ellen Craft and William Craft). Her accomplice, William, continues to Canada. Clotel returns to Virginia in an attempt to free Mary. After being captured in Richmond, she is held in a slave pen in Washington, DC, for sale but eventually escapes. Pursued by slave catchers, she is surrounded on the Long Bridge and commits suicide by jumping into the Potomac River. Mary works as a servant to her father Horatio Green and his wife. Mary arranges to trade places with the slave George, her lover, in prison and he escapes to Canada. Sold to a slave trader, Mary is purchased by a French man who takes her to Europe. Ten years later, George and Mary reunite in Dunkirk. The novel ends with their marriage.
1742474	/m/05shd2	The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects	Quentin Fiore	1967		 Marshall McLuhan argues that technologies — from clothing to the wheel to the book, and beyond — are the messages themselves, not the content of the medium. In essence, The Medium is the Massage is a graphical and creative representation of his "medium is the message" thesis seen in Understanding Media. By playing on words and utilizing the term "massage," McLuhan is suggesting that modern audiences have found current media to be soothing, enjoyable, and relaxing; however, the pleasure we find in new media is deceiving, as the changes between society and technology are incongruent and are perpetuating an Age of Anxiety. All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. (p. 26) The Medium is the Massage demonstrates how modern media are extensions of human senses; they ground us in physicality, but expand our ability to perceive our world to an extent that would be impossible without the media. These extensions of perception contribute to McLuhan’s theory of the Global Village, which would bring humanity full circle to an industrial analogue of tribal mentality. Finally, McLuhan described key points of change in how man has viewed the world and how these views were changed by the adoption of new media. &#34;The technique of invention was the discovery of the nineteenth [century]&#34;, brought on by the adoption of fixed points of view and perspective by typography, while &#34;[t]he technique of the suspended judgment is the discovery of the twentieth century&#34;, brought on by the bard abilities of radio, movies and television. Fiore, at the time a prominent graphic designer and communications consultant, set about composing the visual illustration of these effects which were compiled by Jerome Agel. Near the beginning of the book, Fiore adopted a pattern in which an image demonstrating a media effect was presented with a textual synopsis on the facing page. The reader experiences a repeated shifting of analytic registers—from &#34;reading&#34; typographic print to &#34;scanning&#34; photographic facsimiles—reinforcing McLuhan&#39;s overarching argument in this book: namely, that each medium produces a different &#34;massage&#34; or &#34;effect&#34; on the human sensorium.
1743436	/m/05sk39	Make Room! Make Room!	Harry Harrison	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Make Room! Make Room! is set in an overpopulated New York City of 1999 (thirty-three years later than the time of writing). Police detective Andy Rusch lives in half a room, sharing it with Sol, a retired engineer who has adapted a bicycle generator to power an old television set and a refrigerator. When Andy queues for their continually reducing water ration he witnesses a public speech by the "Eldsters", people 65 years and older forcibly retired from work. Pandemonium starts when a nearby food shop has a sale on "soylent" (soya and lentil) steaks. Andy finds that the shop is under attack and being looted. One of the looters, Billy Chung, a desperately poor boy, grabs a box of soylent steaks which he sells to fund himself as a messenger-boy. His first delivery takes him into a semi-fortified apartment block, complete with the rare luxuries of air conditioning and running water for showers. He delivers his message to a rich racketeer named "Big Mike" and sees Shirl, Mike's concubine. Billy leaves the apartment but hides in the basement, and then later breaks back in for theft. He kills Mike when surprised by him and flees. While Andy investigates the murder, he becomes enamored of Shirl, and ensures that she is permitted to stay in the apartment until the end of the month. During this month they both live there in luxury and afterwards Shirl moves in with Andy and Sol. Shirl becomes disappointed with their impoverished lifestyle. Andy attempts to investigate Mike's death despite contending with riots, paperwork, and the chief's trying to spread his meager force to its limit, which makes him irritable. This, in combination with his shame of the life he is now giving Shirl, distances him from her. He therefore becomes obsessed by the idea of capturing Billy Chung. To evade capture, Billy leaves the part of the city to which he is accustomed, eventually breaking into the abandoned Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he comes to live with Peter, a fatalist hermit eagerly awaiting the new millennium as the end of the world. Soon they are attacked by a small group of homeless people and forced to leave their location, later to find a new home in a discarded car whose previous owner had frozen to death. Here, Peter's stoic acceptance of events frustrates Billy until he decides to return to his family, believing the police will have lost interest in him. Meanwhile, Sol decides he can no longer remain passive in the face of what he sees as human life's growing crisis, and joins a protest march against the overturning of a legislative bill supporting family planning, in favor of population control as humanity's hope of survival. Sol is injured in a riot at the demonstration, becomes bedridden, catches pneumonia, and eventually dies. A few days after Sol's funeral, a family takes Sol's living quarters as their own, making Shirl and Andy's life more miserable than before. Andy stumbles upon Billy Chung and accidentally shoots and kills the boy in the latter's attempt to escape. The police chief therefore demotes Andy. On return to his own quarters, Andy finds Shirl gone. The story ends with Andy on patrol in Times Square on New Year's Eve, where he glimpses Shirl among rich party-goers. As the clock strikes midnight, Andy encounters Peter, who is distraught that the world has not ended and asks how life can continue as it is; but gives him no answer. The story concludes with the Times Square screen announcing that "Census says United States had biggest year ever, end-of-the-century, 344 million citizens...".
1743786	/m/05skt3	The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists	Robert Tressell	1914-04-23	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Clearly frustrated at the refusal of his contemporaries to recognise the inequity and iniquity of society, Tressell's cast of hypocritical Christians, exploitative capitalists and corrupt councillors provide a backdrop for his main target — the workers who think that a better life is "not for the likes of them". Hence the title of the book; Tressell paints the workers as "philanthropists" who throw themselves into back-breaking work for poverty wages in order to generate profit for their masters. The hero of the book, Frank Owen, is a socialist who believes that the capitalist system is the real source of the poverty he sees all around him. In vain he tries to convince his fellow workers of his world view, but finds that their education has trained them to distrust their own thoughts and to rely on those of their "betters". Much of the book consists of conversations between Owen and the others, or more often of lectures by Owen in the face of their jeering; this was presumably based on Tressell's own experiences.
1744298	/m/05sm1q	Hegira	Greg Bear		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the novel, "young" humans (i.e. recreations of the medieval originals) are transported through the Big Collapse at the end of time to seed the next cycle of the universe. They are transported to Hegira, an artificial environment of the scale of the planet Jupiter which has habitats for several species on its surface. The habitats are protected and uncoupled from the universe's entropy by means of force fields projected by giant obelisks. In the human realm these are inscribed with the recorded history of humankind, sorted chronologically from the bottom up, including the science that went with it. People try to understand and copy what they can read on the obelisks, using balloons in some places to reach higher points on the obelisks. A legend tells the protagonist that his beloved (frozen in stasis) will awaken if he goes on quest to the rim walls of the habitat, so he does. On the way he lands on an island with a good view of an obelisk (at least high) which is just tumbling down in the distance. Its fall causes a tsunami and devastates a continent. After the devastation, the inscriptions at the top of the fallen obelisk about human history are revealed. The hero's quest to the rim succeeds. He makes contact with an artificial intelligence guardian of Hegira who tells him the story and advises him to go and populate the new universe, having become part of the last one.
1744629	/m/05smtd	Jesuit Joe	Hugo Pratt	1980		 The laconic, anti-heroic and unpredictable main character, a Canadian native dressed in the uniform of a Sergeant in the Canadian Mounties, travels the wilderness during late 19th or early 20th century Canada, occasionally assisting those he finds in need of help. He rescues a kidnapped child and frees an imprisoned couple, but also shoots a bird for being too happy and stabs a priest in the hand. The concerns of famed Italian cartoonist Hugo Pratt included responsibility, humanity, and social justice. Skepticism of European ideals in colonial settings is a common theme in his stories and forms the main thrust of Jesuit Joe.
1747268	/m/05ssxp	The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor	Ernest Borneman	1937	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The novel, written in the first person in the form of Cameron McCabe's confession, is set in London in the mid-1930s. McCabe works in the film industry and has made himself a name as a supervising film editor working mainly on feature films. One day his boss, Isador Bloom, orders him to cut out altogether a young aspiring actress, Estella Lamare, from a movie which has just been produced. As the picture is about a love triangle McCabe does not see the point in doing as he was told and immediately suspects some foul business. He does not know then that this is in fact Bloom's revenge on Lamare for "showing him a cold shoulder" when he made a pass at her. One Friday morning soon afterwards, Lamare's body is found on the floor of John Robertson's workplace at the studio, which happens to be a state-of-the-art cutting room. The place is equipped with an automatic camera which, once it has been set, starts recording the moment the door to the room is opened. Estella Lamare has died from stab wounds, and although the roll of film showing her slow death can be found it cannot be decided exactly how she died. On the film Ian Jensen, her partner in her last movie (from which she was to be cut out), can be seen struggling with Lamare, but the cause of her death may have been either an accident or suicide, or murder. As Jensen is nowhere to be found Scotland Yard assumes that he is Lamare's murderer and that he has escaped to his native Norway. However, four days later, on December 3, 1935, his body is found in a shabby rented room in a cheap boarding house in London. Jensen has been poisoned and, at a point in time when he was already dead, shot in the head. The police investigations are conducted by Detective Inspector Smith of Scotland Yard. Right from the start there is antagonism between Smith and McCabe: Each suspects the other of knowing more about the case than he admits, with Mc Cabe repeatedly assuming the role of detective while Smith seemingly has no idea how to solve the crime. Eventually the confrontation between the two antagonists escalates&mdash;their "game" turns into a "fight"&mdash;when Smith has McCabe arrested for the murder of Ian Jensen. McCabe refuses to be represented by a lawyer during his trial ("a layman conducting his own defence"), and systematically tries to break down the case against his person and to win over the jury to his cause. In the course of the trial a number of facts about the people involved in the two deaths are revealed. For example, we learn that McCabe himself is a "morally uprooted" man who has replaced "eternal values" with "values of the moment". Until his arrest he has a relationship with Maria Ray, the actress who, together with Lamare and Jensen, forms the love triangle in the recently completed film. Although Maria Ray is the love of his life, McCabe cannot help starting an affair with Dinah Lee, his secretary, and, by carrying on two relationships at the same time, double-crossing both women. In his defence he even goes so far as to use Ray's own promiscuity&mdash;she has had affairs with both McCabe and Jensen&mdash;to question her credibility as a witness for the prosecution. He also insinuates that Smith has used doctored evidence to build up his case against him. The members of the jury are impressed, pronounce a verdict of "Not guilty", and McCabe is acquitted. Smith now turns out to be a policeman who cannot lose but who actually loses his job as a result of McCabe's acquittal. When McCabe eventually tells him that he is Jensen's murderer after all it is because he realizes that he has irrevocably lost Maria (as well as Dinah), who would not even speak to him on the phone, and that there is not anything left in this world that might keep him alive. Now that he has written his story down for posterity he no longer minds being the target of Smith's revenge, who thinks McCabe's belated confession is the last straw. McCabe posts his manuscript to an old journalist called A.B.C. Müller whose acquaintance he has recently made and immediately afterwards is found shot. Smith is arrested, tried, and hanged. With Cameron McCabe dead, the addressee of his manuscript continues the narrative, a part of the book which is entitled "An Epilogue by A.B.C. Müller as Epitaph for Cameron McCabe". Müller sees to the proof reading and the publication of The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor and becomes an avid collector of reviews of the book, comparing it with the fiction of Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, and even James Joyce. At the same time he deplores, and condemns, the "arrested development of the criminal mind", in particular of course McCabe's. One day in London Müller bumps into Maria Ray, whom he has not seen again since the trial, and they have a talk. To Müller's surprise, she claims that McCabe committed suicide&mdash;as an act of revenge, in order to get Smith convicted for murder. She also tells Müller that Smith was in love with her. At the end of the novel, Müller on the spur of the moment wants to propose to Maria Ray but then decides instead to "shoot her dead". Thus, in Borneman's novel, Estella Lamare is "the face on the cutting-room floor", both literally and metaphorically.
1749495	/m/05syvv	The Dunwich Horror	H. P. Lovecraft	1929-04		 In the isolated, desolate and decrepit village of Dunwich, Wilbur Whateley is the hideous son of Lavinia Whateley, a deformed and unstable albino mother, and an unknown father (alluded to in passing by mad Old Whateley, as "Yog-Sothoth"), and strange events surround his birth and precocious development. Wilbur matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade, locals shun him and his family and animals fear and despise him. All the while, his sorcerer grandfather indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft. Wilbur wants to acquire an unabridged Latin version of the Necronomicon so that he may open the way for the return of the mysterious "Old Ones", whose forerunner is the Outer God Yog-Sothoth. Thus, Wilbur and his grandfather have sequestered an unseen presence at their farmhouse; this being is connected somehow to Yog-Sothoth. Year by year, this unseen entity grows to monstrous proportions, requiring the two men to make frequent modifications to their residence. People begin to notice a trend of cattle mysteriously disappearing. Eventually, Wilbur's mother also disappears. By the time Wilbur's grandfather dies, the colossal entity occupies the whole interior of the farmhouse. Wilbur ventures to Miskatonic University in Arkham to procure a copy of the Necronomicon – Miskatonic's library is one of only a handful in the world to stock an original. The Necronomicon has spells that Wilbur can use to summon the Old Ones. When the librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage, refuses to release the university's copy to him, Wilbur breaks into the library at night to steal it. A guard dog attacks Wilbur with unusual ferocity, killing him. When Dr. Armitage and two other professors arrive on the scene they see Wilbur Whateley's partly non-human corpse, before it melts completely to leave no evidence. The story culminates with the actual Dunwich horror: With Wilbur Whateley now dead, no one attends to the mysterious presence growing in the Whateley farmhouse. Early one morning, the Whateley farmhouse explodes as the thing, an invisible monster, rampages across Dunwich, cutting a path through fields, trees, and ravines, leaving huge "prints" the size of tree trunks. The monster eventually makes forays into inhabited areas. The frightened town is terrorized by the invisible creature for several days, until Dr. Armitage, Professor Warren Rice, and Dr. Francis Morgan, all of Miskatonic University, arrive with the knowledge and weapons needed to kill it. In the end, its nature is revealed: it is Wilbur's twin brother, though it "looked more like the father than Wilbur did." "The Dunwich Horror" is one of the few tales Lovecraft wrote wherein the heroes successfully defeat the antagonistic entity or monster of the story, although the Horror itself is only the remainder of a far more fiendish plan thwarted by Wilbur's premature death.
1750175	/m/05t02d	The Country of the Blind	H. G. Wells			 While attempting to summit the unconquered crest of Parascotopetl, a fictitious mountain in Ecuador, a mountaineer named Nunez slips and falls down the far side of the mountain. At the end of his descent, down a snow-slope in the mountain's shadow, he finds a valley, cut off from the rest of the world on all sides by steep precipices. Unbeknown to Nunez, he has discovered the fabled Country of the Blind. The valley had been a haven for settlers fleeing the tyranny of Spanish rulers until an earthquake reshaped the surrounding mountains and cut it off forever from future explorers. The isolated community prospered over the years despite a disease that struck them early on, rendering all new-borns blind. As the blindness slowly spread over the generations, their remaining senses sharpened, and by the time the last sighted villager had died, the community had fully adapted to life without sight. Nunez descends into the valley and finds an unusual village with windowless houses and a network of paths, all bordered by kerbs. Upon discovering that everyone is blind, Nunez begins reciting to himself the refrain, "In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King". He realises that he can teach and rule them, but the villagers have no concept of sight and do not understand his attempts to explain this fifth sense to them. Frustrated, Nunez becomes angry but they calm him and he reluctantly submits to their way of life because returning to the outside world is impossible. Nunez is assigned to work for a villager named Yacob, and becomes attracted to Yacob's youngest daughter, Medina-saroté. Nunez and Medina-saroté soon fall in love with one another, and having won her confidence, Nunez slowly starts trying to explain sight to her. Medina-saroté, however, simply dismisses it as his imagination. When Nunez asks for her hand in marriage he is turned down by the village elders on account of his "unstable" obsession with "sight". The village doctor suggests that Nunez's eyes be removed, claiming that they are diseased and are affecting his brain. Nunez reluctantly consents to the operation because of his love for Medina-saroté. But at sunrise on the day of the operation, while all the villagers are asleep, Nunez, the failed King of the Blind, sets off for the mountains (without provisions or equipment), hoping to find a passage to the outside world and escape the valley. In the original story, he escapes the valley but becomes trapped in the mountains, which ultimately leads to his death. In the revised and expanded 1939 version of the story Nunez sees from a distance that there is about to be a rock slide. He attempts to warn the villagers, but again they scoff at his "imagined" sight. He takes Medina-saroté and flees the valley during the slide.
1750202	/m/05t04l	Galvez – Imperador do Acre				 In 1899, the borders between Bolivia and Brazil were not clearly defined. At the time, the people living in the Amazon Basin were rich due to the natural resource of latex. The best rubber is produced in Acre, a region that, although inhabited by Brazilians, is theoretically part of the Republic of Bolivia. Luis Gálvez Rodríguez de Arias was a Spanish journalist in Belém do Pará who on June 3, 1899 denounced a claimed agreement between USA and Bolivia that stated that the United States would support Bolivia in a possible war against Brazil. This became a scandal, but the Bolivian and North-American authorities denied the accusation. Galvez, with the financial support of the Amazonas government, went to Acre and, on July 14, 1899, the Independent State of Acre was declared. He declared himself president. On December 28, 1899, Galvez was deposed by Antônio de Sousa Braga, but he was restored on January 30, 1900, by Braga himself. On March 15, 1900, a military expedition by the Brazilian Navy took the Acre region back from Bolivia. In the book, Galvez is an adventurer without scruples, working as a journalist in Belém. The novel starts when Galvez falls from a window, running away from a lady's husband, and, accidentally, saves the life of Luiz Trucco, the consul of Bolivia. Invited by the diplomat, he goes to a party, where he meets Cira, a woman interested in the Acre question. Cira asks him to steal the USA-Bolivian agreement. Trucco, who trusts Galvez, gives it to him to have it translated. Denouncing the agreement to the Belém press, the journalist has to escape. In the city harbour, he hides himself in a departing ship in the Amazon River, heading to Manaus. The passengers are a group of nuns. He seduces one of them, Joana, and afterwards they are abandoned in a bank of the Amazon River. He is rescued by the ship of Sir Henry, an English metaphysical scientist who thinks the Amazon Theatre is a spaceship, and Justine L'Amour and Blangis are Opera artists and part of the trouppe Les Comédiens Tropicales. Some weeks later, he and Les Comédiens go to the Bolivian city of Puerto Alonso, Acre, in a ship, where Trucco and the neurotic consul of United States are traveling. Galvez gets on the ship, hidden in a coffin. In Puerto Alonso he meets the local big shot and amasses money and an army. On July 14 he takes over Puerto Alonso without a fight. The Great Battle of the Independence of Acre is a trouble in the city-centre. He declares himself Emperor. The old and tedious Acre become the lascivious Empire of Acre (fictional: the author says in the book that Galvez, the narrator is lying). During the new year celebrations, Galvez is deposed and Joana dies.
1750296	/m/03bx53q	Country of the Blind	Christopher Brookmyre	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 Set against the mounting dissatisfaction at the ineffective and over self-indulgent Tory government of John Major all hell breaks loose when conservative tabloid media mogul Roland Voss is found murdered in his country house in Scotland. Next to Voss’s body is that of his murdered wife, while their two slain bodyguards lie outside their room. The culprits seem obvious: the burglars caught fleeing the scene covered in blood and almost immediately four men are arrested for the crime, including former burglar Thomas McInnes, his son Paul and a very strange guy who likes to be known as Spammy. However, if it's really that obvious, why did McInnes pay a visit to his Edinburgh lawyer a few days before the crime took place, and what are the secret contents of the envelope he left with her? When the lawyer, Nicole Carrow, turns up at the Police station demanding to see her client, announcing under the glare of intense media attention claiming to have a letter that proves her client's innocence, the last thing she expects is have an attempt made on her life within hours.
1750909	/m/05t1zd	The Songs of Kings	Barry Unsworth	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set just before the start of the battle of Troy. The Greek army under King Agamemnon is stuck on the island of Aulis enroute to Troy because of a mysterious dying down of the winds. The army is restless and rumor and gossip fly around seeking a reason for the becalming as the men gamble and squabble while they wait and Odysseus connives and schemes behind the scenes with the help of Chasimenos, Agamemnon's chief scribe. The king is slowly convinced that he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia for the gods to be satisfied and Iphigenia is brought to Aulis under the pretext that she is to marry Achilles, the Greek hero. Along with her slave, Sisipyla, Iphigenia arrives in Aulis and discovers the plot. Sisipyla offers to take her place but, at the last moment, convinced of her own destiny, Iphigenia sacrifices herself.
1751695	/m/05t425	The Confessions of Nat Turner	William Styron	1967	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is based on an extant document, the "confession" of Turner to the white lawyer Thomas Gray. In the historical confessions, Turner claims to have been divinely inspired, charged with a mission from God to lead a slave uprising and destroy the white race. Styron's ambitious novel attempts to imagine the character of Nat Turner; it does not purport to describe accurately or authoritatively the events as they occurred. Some historians consider Gray's account of Turner's "confessions" to be told with prejudice, and recently one writer has alleged that Gray's account is itself a fabrication. Styron takes liberties with the historical Nat Turner, whose life is otherwise undocumented. The "Confessions" is largely sympathetic to Turner, if not to his thoughts.
1752935	/m/05t6vq	Gertrud	Hermann Hesse	1910	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Styled as the memoir of a famous composer named Kuhn, Gertrud tells of his childhood and young adult years before it comes to the heart of the story; his relationships to two troubled artists, the eponymous Gertrud Imthor, and the opera singer Heinrich Muoth. Kuhn is drawn to Gertrud upon their first encounter, but she falls in love with and marries Muoth, whom the composer befriended as well some years before. The two are hopelessly ill-matched, and their destructive relationship provides the basis for Kuhn's magnum opus.
1753796	/m/05t981	Another Country	James Baldwin	1962	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first fifth of Another Country tells of the downfall of jazz drummer Rufus Scott. Rufus begins a relationship with Leona, a white woman from the South and introduces her to his friends, including the struggling novelist Vivaldo, his more successful mentor Richard and Richard's wife Cass. Although the relationship is initially frivolous, it becomes serious and the two leave town for several weeks. Rufus is abusive towards Leona and she is eventually committed to a mental hospital and Rufus returns to Harlem in a deep depression. He commits suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. Rufus' friends cannot understand his suicide, but afterwards they become closer and Vivaldo begins a relationship with Rufus’ sister Ida, which is strained by racial tension and Ida's bitterness after her brother's death. Eric, Rufus's first male lover and an actor, returns to New York after a stay in France where he met his longtime lover Yves. Eric returns to the novel's social circle but is more calm and composed than most of the clique. He also begins an affair with Cass, who has become lonely due to Richard's dedication to writing.
1755082	/m/05td95	Humboldt's Gift	Saul Bellow	1975		 The novel, which Bellow initially intended to be a short story, is a roman à clef about Bellow's friendship with the poet Delmore Schwartz. It explores the changing relationship of art and power in a materialist America. This theme is addressed through the contrasting careers of two writers, Von Humboldt Fleisher (to some degree a version of Schwartz) and his protégé Charlie Citrine (to some degree a version of Bellow himself). Fleisher yearns to lift American society up through art but dies a failure. In contrast, Charlie Citrine makes quite a lot of money through his writing, especially from a Broadway play and a movie about a character named Von Trenck - a character modeled after Humboldt. Another notable character in the book is Rinaldo Cantabile, a wannabe Chicago gangster, who tries to bully Citrine into being friends and whose career advice to Citrine, focused solely on commercial interests, is the opposite of the advice Citrine was once given by his old mentor, Humboldt Fleisher, who valued artistic integrity above all other concerns.
1761825	/m/05twwb	Pigs in Heaven	Barbara Kingsolver	1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This novel begins two years after the events of Barbara Kingsolver's first novel, The Bean Trees. Taylor and Turtle are visiting the Hoover Dam when Turtle sees a man fall down a spillway. Because of Taylor's unwavering faith that Turtle is telling the truth, a search is conducted and a man's life is saved. As a result, Turtle and Taylor make the headlines and are invited as guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show. A Cherokee lawyer named Annawake Fourkiller sees the broadcast and recognizes Turtle as a child of Cherokee heritage, beginning a campaign under the Indian Child Welfare Act to return Turtle to her birth family and the Cherokee Nation. Afraid of losing Turtle, Taylor leaves home and takes Turtle on the run. Taylor leaves behind her friend Lou Ann Ruiz (from The Bean Trees) and her new boyfriend Jax, and sets out with Turtle. Her mother, Alice, has left her new husband and joins the pair in Las Vegas. The trio are temporarily joined by Barbie, a waitress obsessed with the dolls of the same name, who appears to be down on her luck but later proves to be a thief and counterfeiter. Alice eventually leaves Taylor, Turtle, and Barbie to visit the Cherokee Nation in person. The others travel to Seattle, where Barbie leaves them. Taylor works a number of jobs, including lingerie sales and hired driving, but has great trouble earning enough money for food, lodging, clothes, and child care. Annawake lives in the area around Heaven, Oklahoma, a fictional town near Tahlequah. Annawake strongly suspects she knows who Turtle's biological grandfather is. It turns out that Sugar Hornbuckle, who also lives in Heaven and was a friend of Annawake's mother, is second cousin to Alice, and that Alice and Sugar grew up together. Alice has a vague hope of exploring alternatives with Annawake. Meanwhile, Annawake schemes to set up Turtle's true grandfather, Cash Stillwater, with Alice. Eventually, Taylor and Turtle come to Heaven and a compromise is established: custody of Turtle will be shared between Taylor and Cash.
1762486	/m/05ty5b	Shatterpoint	Matthew Stover		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mace Windu's former Padawan and fellow Jedi Master Depa Billaba has been sent to Haruun Kal (Windu's homeworld) to start a revolution against the Separatist-allied government; however, all contact has been lost with her. A message is found on a voice chip inside a dead woman's mouth that implies Billaba has fallen to the dark side of the Force or gone insane. Since Windu taught her the lightsaber combat form Vaapad, he knows he is the only one who can stop her, and so he is sent by the Jedi Council alone to his homeworld. While Haruun Kal is not much of a military target, the majority of the population had many Force-sensitive beings, which the Republic wants to keep away from the Separatists. Billaba had been sent to train the planet's population to fight against the Separatists. This was successful in itself, but after a hologram was discovered showing Billaba killing an innocent person, Windu was sent to extract his former apprentice. Eventually, after a fight, he puts his former apprentice under arrest, and calls the Republic cruiser Halleck. At this time, tribes on the planet begin warring with each other. Halleck arrives in-system, and is immediately attacked by Vulture droids. The ship starts deploying Gunships, which come under attack by the droid starfighters. Clone troopers start spilling out of the Halleck, and put themselves in front of the droid starfighters to destroy them. Some of the landing craft make it to the surface, but many are picked off. The cruiser eventually defeats the Separatist enemy, however. On the surface, Windu uses the gunships to destroy the droid starfighters that followed them onto the surface, then orders the clones to take out a nearby droid control station. Lorz Geptun is forced to surrender to the Republic, and Billaba falls into a coma. All clone troopers on the surface are killed. A Republic force stays on Haruun Kal to police the local tribes. Upon his arrival on Haruun Kal, Windu meets such personages as Planetary Security Chief Lorz Geptun, soldier Nick Rostu, and untrained Force master Kar Vastor. The latter has trained several soldiers, known as the Akk guards, and Windu himself says that Vastor has power on the level of a Jedi. During the course of the book, Windu ends the Summertime War, a conflict that has raged between the immigrant Balawai and the native Korunnai for centuries, in a matter of hours, and takes Vastor into custody. Windu nearly falls to the dark side himself in order to defeat Billaba, who is possibly vegetative at the end of the book.
1762744	/m/05tyx8	The New Atlantis	Francis Bacon	1626	{"/m/04xg5kr": "Utopian fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel depicts a mythical island, Bensalem, which is discovered by the crew of a European ship after they are lost in the Pacific Ocean somewhere west of Peru. The minimal plot serves the gradual unfolding of the island, its customs, but most importantly, its state-sponsored scientific institution, Salomon's House, "which house or college ... is the very eye of this kingdom." Many aspects of the society and history of the island are described, such as the Christian religion - which is reported to have been born there as a copy of the Bible and a letter from the Apostle Saint Bartholomew arrived there miraculously, a few years after the Ascension of Jesus; a cultural feast in honor of the family institution, called "the Feast of the Family"; a college of sages, the Salomon's House, "the very eye of the kingdom", to which order "God of heaven and earth had vouchsafed the grace to know the works of Creation, and the secrets of them", as well as "to discern between divine miracles, works of nature, works of art, and impostures and illusions of all sorts"; and a series of instruments, process and methods of scientific research that were employed in the island by the Salomon's House. The interlocutors include the governor of the House of Strangers, Joabin the Jew, and the Head of Salomon's House. The inhabitants of Bensalem are described as having a high moral character and honesty, no official accepting any payment from individuals, and the people being described as chaste and pious, as said by an inhabitant of the island: In the last third of the book, the Head of the Salomon's House takes one of the European visitors to show him all the scientific background of Salomon's House, where experiments are conducted in Baconian method in order to understand and conquer nature, and to apply the collected knowledge to the betterment of society. Namely: 1) the end of their foundation; 2) the preparations they have for their works; 3) the several employments and functions whereto their fellows are assigned; 4) and the ordinances and rites which they observe. He portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge. The plan and organisation of his ideal college, "Salomon's House", envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure science. The end of their foundation is thus described: "The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible". In the describing the several employments and functions to which the members of the Salomon's House are assigned, the Head of the college said: Even this short excerpt demonstrates that Bacon understood that science requires analysis and not just the accumulation of observations. Bacon also foresaw that the design of experiments could be improved. In describing the ordinances and rites observed by the scientists of Salomon's House, its Head said: And finally, after showing all the scientific background of Salomon's House, he gave the European visitor permission to publish it:
1763538	/m/05v03z	Good-bye, Chunky Rice	Craig Thompson	1999-10	{"/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 The book tells the story of Chunky Rice, a small turtle who leaves his familiar surroundings, including his mouse deer best friend, to enter the next phase of his life. Other side characters in the novel also experience similar losses of friendship through tragedy or their own choice.
1764291	/m/05v1tg	Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country	Rosalind Miles	1999-02-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Raised in the tranquil beauty of the Summer Country, Princess Guenevere has had a charmed and contented life until the sudden, violent death of her mother, Queen Maire, leaves the Summer Country teetering on the brink of anarchy. Only the miraculous arrival of Arthur, heir to the Pendragon dynasty, allows Guenevere to claim her mother's throne. Smitten by the bold, sensuous princess, Arthur offers to marry her and unite their territories, while still allowing her to rule in her own right. Their love match creates the largest and most powerful kingdom in the isles. Arthur's glorious rule begins to crumble, however, when he is reunited with his mother and his long-lost half-sisters, Morgause and Morgan. Before Arthur's birth, his father - the savage and unscrupulous King Uther - banished his wife's young daughters, selling Morgause into a cruel marriage and imprisoning Morgan in a far-off convent. Both daughters have reason to avenge their suffering, but only one will strike the deadliest blows against the King and Queen, using her evil enchantments to destroy all Guenevere holds dear. When the Queen flees to Avalon, even her marriage with Arthur comes under threat. In the chaos that follows, a new young knight comes to Arthur's court to offer his services to the Queen. Her loyalty to Arthur betrayed, Guenevere falls in love with Lancelot, a love that may spell ruin for Camelot.
1766719	/m/05v7gp	Dark Passage	David Goodis		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Vincent Parry, convicted of murdering his wife, escapes from prison and is taken in by Irene Jansen, an artist with an interest in his case. Helped by a friendly cabbie, Parry gets a new face from a plastic surgeon, thereby enabling him to dodge the authorities and find his wife's real killer. He has difficulty staying hidden at Irene's, because Madge Rapf, the spiteful woman whose testimony sent him up to prison, keeps stopping by.
1768189	/m/05vf6w	Fear and Trembling	Amélie Nothomb	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Amélie, a young Belgian woman who spent the first five years of her life in Japan, signs a one-year contract as a translator at the prestigious company Yumimoto. Beginning at the bottom of the corporate ladder, Amélie manages to descend even lower. At her arrival to the Yumimoto company she is puzzled as she is apparently not assigned any actual work to do, so she first kills the boredom by memorising the company's list of employees and then she decides she could deliver company's mail, only to find herself later scolded for taking initiative and "stealing someone else's job". Later her departmental manager asks her to copy a thick pile of documents, which, as she later realises, are the rules of his golf club. When she accomplishes the work, the manager returns it to her saying the copies are off-centered and asks her to re-do the job not using the feeder. Copying the pages one by one, Amélie is approached by Mr. Tenshi, the manager of the Dairy Products Department, who wants to use her knowledge and asks her to draft a report about the new method of manufacturing reduced-fat butter developed in Belgium. Next morning, when the manually-done copies are rejected by the manager again even without looking, she does the third batch of copies using the feeder and sets out writing the report for Mr. Tenshi. She researches the Japanese market, contacts the company in Belgium and obtains documentation from them, and continues writing the report overnight at home. The report turns out to be a big success, but she asks Mr. Tenshi not to reveal who the real author is. Her transferring to Mr. Tenshi's department is imminent as Mr. Tenshi plans to present the report to the company's president. However, Amélie's line manager Miss Fubuki Mori feels offended as this constitutes a violation of the company's hierarchy and exposes everything to the vice-president, who scolds severely Mr. Tenshi and Amélie, and sees to it that Amélie is not writing any more reports but strictly sticks to doing duties assigned by Miss Mori. Although advised by Mr. Tenshi not to do so, Amélie decides to confront Fubuki and talk to her personally. This encounter can be seen as the main breakpoint of the novel, as both characters feel the other should apologise but at the same time each of them fails to recognise why she should apologise herself. The main difference is that while Amélie feels her progress in her carrier from useless work to the place where she actually can use her skills has been hindered for no other reason than maliciousness, Fubuki feels Amélie's move being against her as she was trying to overpass her thus violating the subordination. Fubuki had to suffer and work hard for years to achieve her position and it was inconcievable to her to imagine that Amélie would achieve the same level of hierarchy within only a couple of weeks. From that point on, the relationship between them turns from a fairly good one (which, though, only Amélie would describe as 'friendship') to animosity, although still accompanied by respect and admiration from Amélie's side, which Fubuki either fails to notice or choses to ignore. Amélie prooves herself useless at the tasks she is subsequently asked to do at the Accounts Department, as she apparently suffers from dyscalculia to some extent, while Fubuki thinks Amélie is doing mistakes on purpose to sabotage the company and the manager herself. Another dialogue reveals the differences between the different concepts of responsibility in Japanese and Western cultures. While for Fubuki the manager is directly responsible for the mistakes of their staff (you made the mistakes deliberately only to expose me to the public ridicule), Amélie thinks everybody is responsible for their own mistakes (I ridiculed only myself, not you). The biggest mistake however Amélie does after Fubuki is being severely abused by the vice-president in front of all the department. When Fubuki, not having shown tears to her colleagues, goes to the bathroom to let her feelings out in private, Amélie follows her to console her. While from Amélie's point of view Fubuki is not in a shameful position and offering a consolation like that is only a good-hearted gesture, Fubuki feels utterly ashamed to be seen showing her feelings and mis-understand Amélie's following her as vengefulness and hostility. The next day Amélie is assigned the job of a bathroom cleaner by Fubuki. Six more months of her one-year contract to go, Amélie decides to endure until the end, which might be shameful from the Western point of view, but actually means not losing her face from the Japanese point of view. After her contract finishes in January 1991, she returns to Belgium and starts publishing: her first novel Hygiène de l'assassin appearing in 1992, she receives a brief congratulations note from Fubuki in 1993.
1769647	/m/05vkhk	The Iron Man	Ted Hughes	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Iron Man arrived from seemingly nowhere and his appearance is described in detail. To survive, he feeds off local farm equipment. When the farm hands discover their destroyed tractors and diggers, a trap is set consisting of a covered pit on which a tractor is set as bait. Hogarth, a local boy, lures the Iron Man to the trap. The plan succeeds, and the Iron Man is buried alive. The next spring, the Iron Man digs himself free of the pit. To keep him out of the way, the boy Hogarth takes charge and brings the Iron Man to a metal scrap-heap to feast. The Iron Man promises to not cause further trouble for the locals, as long as no one troubles him. Time passes, and the Iron Man is treated as merely another member of the community. However, astronomers monitoring the sky make a frightening new discovery; an enormous space-being moving from orbit to land on Earth. The creature (soon dubbed the "Space-Bat-Angel-Dragon") crashes heavily on Australia and demands that humanity provide him with food. Terrified, humans send their armies to destroy the dragon, but it remains unharmed. When the Iron Man hears of this global threat, he allows himself to be disassembled and transported to Australia where he challenges the creature to a contest of strength. If the Iron Man can withstand the heat of burning petroleum for longer than the space being can withstand the heat of the Sun, the creature must obey the Iron Man's commands forever more; if the Iron Man melts or is afraid of melting before the space being undergoes or fears pain in the Sun, the creature has permission to devour the whole Earth. After playing the game two rounds, the dragon is so badly burned that he no longer appears physically frightening. The Iron Man by contrast has only a deformed ear-lobe to show for his pains. The alien creature admits defeat. When asked why he came to Earth, the alien reveals that he is a peaceful "Star Spirit" who experienced excitement about the ongoing sights and sounds produced by the violent warfare of humanity. In his own life, he was a singer of the "music of the spheres"; the harmony of his kind that keeps the Cosmos in balance in stable equilibrium. The Iron Man orders the Star Spirit to sing to the inhabitants of Earth, flying just behind the sunset, to help soothe humanity toward a sense of peace. The beauty of his music distracts the population from its egocentricism and tendency to fight, causing the first worldwide lasting peace.
1769784	/m/05vkwy	Antarctica	Kim Stanley Robinson	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Most of the story is centred around McMurdo Station, the largest settlement in Antarctica, which is run as a scientific research station by the United States. Robinson's characteristic multiple-protagonist style is employed here to show many aspects of polar life; among the viewpoints presented are those of X, an idealistic young man working as a General Field Assistant at McMurdo; Val, an increasingly embittered trek guide; and Wade Norton, who works for the Californian Senator Phil Chase (Wade and Phil also appear in the "Science in the Capital" trilogy). As well as McMurdo, the story involves the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the Shackleton Glacier, the McMurdo Dry Valleys and a South American drilling platform near Roberts Massif. Antarctica involves many of the ideas Robinson uses elsewhere; as in the Mars trilogy, much emphasis is placed on the importance of living sustainably and the issues of existing in a hostile environment. The significance of Antarctica as a "continent for science" is contrasted with the need to provide a decent environment also for the support staff essential in a place so marginal. Other recurring themes include rock-climbing, physical athleticism, the process and ideology of science, exploitation of natural resources, and the formation of cooperative and anarchic social systems. The novel was heavily influenced by Robinson's 1995 stay in Antarctica as part of the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, and was nominated for a Locus Award in 1998.
1769858	/m/05vl1x	Kafka on the Shore	Haruki Murakami	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between the two, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd chapters tell the 15-year-old Kafka's story as he runs away from his father's house to escape an Oedipal curse and to embark upon a quest to find his mother and sister. After a series of adventures, he finds shelter in a quiet, private library in Takamatsu, run by the distant and aloof Miss Saeki and the intelligent and more welcoming Oshima. There he spends his days reading the unabridged Richard Francis Burton translation of A Thousand and One Nights and the collected works of Natsume Sōseki until the police begin inquiring after him in connection with a brutal murder. The even chapters tell Nakata's story. Due to his uncanny abilities, he has found part-time work in his old age as a finder of lost cats (a clear reference to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle). The case of one particular lost cat puts him on a path that ultimately takes him far away from his home, ending up on the road for the first time in his life. He befriends a truck driver named Hoshino, who takes him on as a passenger in his truck and soon becomes very attached to the old man. Nakata and Kafka are on a collision course throughout the novel, but their convergence takes place as much on a metaphysical plane as it does in reality and, in fact, that can be said of the novel itself. Due to the Oedipal theme running through much of the novel, Kafka on the Shore has been called a modern Greek tragedy.
1770212	/m/05vlwh	A Perfect Spy	John le Carré	1986	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Perfect Spy is the life story of Magnus Pym, a British intelligence officer and double agent. After attending his father's funeral, Pym mysteriously disappears. As his fellow intelligence officers frantically search for him it becomes clear that, throughout most of his career, Magnus worked as a spy for the Czechoslovak secret service. Although intrigue, wit, and suspense compose the novel, the story of Magnus Pym is partly an unadorned recollection of Magnus' childhood and memories of his father Rick Pym. The non-linear narrative cuts back and forth between the present-day manhunt for Pym by his mentor, boss, and longtime friend, Jack Brotherhood, and Pym's first-person reminiscences of his life as, in hiding, he writes a memoir explaining to his family and friends why he betrayed his country. It incorporates flashbacks to Pym's childhood with his father, the enterprising, charismatic rogue and con-man, Rick; to his early years at school and university; to his many amorous adventures, to his introduction to espionage and state secrets; and to his encounters with long-time friend and Czech spy Axel. The portraits reveal Pym as a man who for so long has manipulated his appearance to those closest to him that, in the end, he was unable to hold together the conflicting personae in his self. Magnus Pym has been a perfect spy, but at the cost of his soul.
1770277	/m/05vm0x	Dragon Prince	Melanie Rawn	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rohan, Prince of the Desert, is newly come to the throne. He must outwit the High Prince Roelstra in order to protect his vast lands and to maintain peace throughout the world. Sioned, a Sunrunner witch and his chosen bride, must help him in this dangerous quest and during the harsh times of war to come. Rohan and Sioned have some hard times at first, but they eventually get through. After Rohan's father died and Rohan inherited, he pretended to be a stupid, ignorant young man. The other princes believed him until he showed his true colors. Roelstra, however, thought that he could get Rohan's lands by marrying one of his seventeen daughters off to him. Rohan always came to a head with him. Roelstra wanted the desert, and Rohan was just as determined not to let him have it. No one knew that Sioned was Rohan's Chosen, except his Aunt, the scheming statecrafter Lady Andrade, until he revealed it at one of the many dinners that all of the princes attended. Roelstra was furious, of course, but he managed to keep his cool. For awhile, that is. Ultimately, Roelstra's daughter Ianthe captured Rohan and seduced him, convincing the drugged prince that she is Sioned. She also captured Sioned, locked her in a lightless dungeon and sent soldiers to rape her. When Rohan discovered the truth, he was enraged and took Ianthe fiercely as a form of revenge. Ianthe got what she wanted: a child was conceived of this. Sioned returned to Feruche and stole the babe from Ianthe just before Rohan's vassal Ostvel burned Ianthe's Castle Feruche to the ground&nbsp;– with Ianthe in it. Sioned adopted the child, naming him Pol, which means "star" in the Old Tongue. War erupts between Rohan and Roelstra, ending when Rohan killed Roelstra in a duel and became High Prince in his stead.
1771910	/m/05vr4p	Tandia	Bryce Courtenay	1991-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tandia, whose parents were a South African Indian man (Mr. Patel) and his house worker (a black woman), is raped by a police officer at her father's grave the day after his funeral. With Mr. Patel's death, Tandia knew things were going to be very hard for her. But after his wife (Mrs. Patel) kicks her out of the dark corrugated-iron shed in the back yard, her only house, her situation has been changed more drastically than she expected. She is arrested by the police and meets the policeman who brutalised her on her father's grave and becomes her lifelong enemy, Jannie Geldenhuis. Tandia finds a home in the brothel where Geldenhuis drops her. The brothel's owner and the other residents adopt her and she learns a lot of life lessons. Some of the clients of the brothel end up becoming her sponsors for her ambition to enter law school. While Peekay and Hymie (Morrie in the American version) go to Britain to read law at Oxford University, they want to conquer the world boxing field, Peekay as world welterweight champion and Hymie as Peekay's manager. They also want to pursue justice for the country they love, South Africa. When they arrive back in South Africa, their rivalry with Jannie Geldenhuis, which began in the school where they first met, extends to both boxing and politics. Tandia grows up to be a smart, intelligent and very beautiful lawyer. She joins the law firm formed by Peekay and Hymie and is dedicated to providing counsel to the under-represented black and coloured population of South Africa. Her defense of a black terrorist causes her to again confront her lifelong enemy Jannie Geldenhuis who is now a powerful officer in the police force. Tandia and Peekay develop a romantic relationship, in a country where mixed relationships are outlawed. Their growing love is very dangerous and it leads them into the most fearful consequences.
1774042	/m/05vvn4	The Prodigal Daughter	Jeffrey Archer		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins by introducing Kane and Abel's past and the feud between them. It then tells the story of Kane and Abel from the perspective of their children, Florentyna Rosnovski and Richard Kane. Their childhood, and all the incidents and people who affected them, are portrayed in a similar manner as their fathers' lives were told in Kane and Abel. There are some inconsistencies, however. For example, after Abel's divorce from Zaphia in Kane and Abel Abel gets the custody of Florentyna. But in The Prodigal Daughter, Zaphia has custody of Florentyna. Richard and Florentyna meet by sheer chance and fall in love. When their parents are told, both sets naturally react explosively; Abel goes so far as to slap the daughter he had raised with great affection. The two lovers run away that day to a friend's house in another city. Later, the two create a chain of retail stores named Florentyna's, which are a huge success. Abel helps his daughter anonymously, but refuses to accept his son-in-law. The tale takes a twist with the senior Kane's death, when Abel learns that Kane was the anonymous benefactor who helped him launch his hotel empire. He thus accepts Richard and his grandchildren and considers it an honor that his grandson is named William Abel Kane. Richard and Florentyna take charge of the Baron Hotels, with Florentyna as chairwoman, and then in a daring feat take over Lester's (Kane's bank). Eventually Florentyna takes up politics due to the persuasion of a childhood friend named Edward Winchester. Florentyna's career becomes central to the plot, as she attempts to deal with the problems a very busy and successful mother faces, including the fact that her daughter has an abortion and smokes marijuana in the mid-1970s. However, her career takes a back seat when Richard dies in a car crash in 1985. For some time, Florentyna loses the will to pursue anything, even her career. Then suddenly, seeing a homeless Vietnam Vet impels her to come "back with a vengeance." Working harder than ever, she comes very near her goal of becoming the first female U.S. President. For the good of her party, she strikes a deal with her opponent, Pete Parkin to support him if he promises not to run for a second term, and if he makes her his vice presidential candidate. During Parkin's term, Florentyna averts many a crisis: actions for which the President takes full credit. At the end of his term, however, he not only reneges on his promises and wants to run, but undermines Florentyna's support by announcing Ralph Brooks, the other Illinois Senator as his running mate. It seems as though Florentyna's dream will never become a reality. Disgusted with the entire situation, she leaves Washington. While she is playing golf and discussing what to do with her life—her son William is now President of Lester's, with Edward, for example—Secret Service agents arrive to announce President Parkin's sudden death from a heart attack. Florentyna thus becomes the President, and soon after she marries Edward and they live happily ever after.
1775339	/m/05vysr	Legend	David Gemmell	1984-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Drenai Empire is under threat. The tribal Nadir people have been united for the first time by the great warleader Ulric, who has forged a massive empire in the North. The Drenai leader Abalayn is trying to negotiate new treaties with Ulric, but war is brewing and an over 500,000 strong Nadir army marches on the fortress of Dros Delnoch, gateway to the Drenai heartlands. Dros Delnoch is the greatest fortress in the world, a narrow pass guarded by six high walls and a great keep, but under Abalayn its complement of defenders has been reduced to less than 10,000 men under the leadership of an unfit General. The fate of the Drenai hinges on the defence of Dros Delnoch. If the fortress can hold the Nadir horde for three months, the Drenai general Magnus Woundweaver might be able to gather and train a Drenai army. However, given the odds, no-one truly believes that Delnoch can be held. The novel follows the stories of two men who find their destiny at Dros Delnoch. Regnak Wanderer (Rek for short) an ex-army officer and natural 'baresark', seeing a war brewing, resigned his commission because he lacked the courage to risk his life and took to a life of wandering. Rek is an idealist and eventually he returns to Delnoch at the persuasion of the woman he falls in love with and finds his destiny as the Earl of Bronze. The other man is the greatest hero of the Drenai people - Druss the Legend. His death was foretold defending Delnoch and while given the choice to avoid it and fall into senility Druss (and his once possessed axe Snaga) marched to the great fortress to defend his people one last time. In this story Druss is in his sixties and much weaker than his prime but still a formidable warrior and an inspirational leader to the Drenai. The story also flicks into the perspective of several defenders during different stages of the siege as time goes on. It also follows The Thirty, a group of 30 warrior priests of the light whose purpose is to fight and die (except for one priest that leaves to continue the order at the end of each great battle) for the greater good and their people, the Drenai.
1775677	/m/05vzly	A Death in the Family	James Agee	1956	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is based on the events that occurred to Agee in 1915 when his father went out of town to see his own father, who had had a heart attack. During the return trip, Agee's father was killed in a car accident. The novel provides a portrait of life in Knoxville, Tennessee, showing how such a loss affects the young widow, her two children, her atheist father and the dead man's alcoholic brother.
1775704	/m/05vzq7	The Buccaneers	Marion Mainwaring			 The story revolves around five wealthy and ambitious American girls, their guardians and the titled, landed but impoverished Englishmen who marry them as the girls participate in the London Season in search of a titled English gentleman for matrimonial purposes. As the novel progresses, the plot follows Nan and her marriage to the Duke of Tintagel. It is a story of the morals held by fashionable society at the time, when it was considered more important to marry for social position than for romantic love. The novel is also a poignant example of art imitating life, since one of the stories resembles the ill-fated marriage of heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Duke of Marlborough, as well as Lady Randolph Churchill's marriages, to some extent.
1776204	/m/05w039	The Algerine Captive				 The Algerine Captive tells the story of the upbringing, early career, and later enslavement of fictional Boston native, narrator Updike Underhill. The first volume chronicles Updike Underhill's youth and early adulthood in America; the Preface suggests that its aim is to "at least display a portrait of New England manners, hitherto unattempted." After detailing his family history, Underhill describes his birth, childhood, and early education. Upon the encouragement of a local minister, Underhill's parents agree to prepare the narrator for college by placing him under the minister's tutelage. Underhill's classical education, through which he learns Greek and Latin, provides him with the ability to recite copious lines of poetry, which his countrymen ridicule. Not only is he mocked for his spouting of Greek poetry, which is unintelligible to all but himself, but he is actually challenged to a duel after writing an unintentionally insulting Greek-inspired ode to a young lady. Luckily for Underhill, the duel is discovered and preempted by the local sheriffs and constables before it can take place. This volume also gives an account of Underhill's failed attempt to serve as a teacher in a village school, follows his travels through the Northern and Southern states as a physician, and discusses his service as a surgeon aboard a slave-ship that heads to Africa by way of London. In the final chapter of this volume, while Updike is on the African coast nursing five sick slaves back to health, he is captured and taken as a slave to Algiers. In the second volume, Updike describes his enslavement and gives an account of the country and people among which he is confined. By setting Algiers in opposition to America, this part of the novel leads Underhill to comment on and formulate his conception of what it means to be American. When he is freed at the novel's conclusion, therefore, the message he imparts to the reader is a nation-building one: "My ardent wish is, that my fellow citizens may profit by my misfortunes. If they peruse these pages with attention they will perceive the necessity of uniting our federal strength to enforce a due respect among other nations...BY UNITING WE STAND, BY DIVIDING WE FALL."
1776850	/m/05w1n3	Kane and Abel	Jeffrey Archer	1979	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book tells the stories of two men born worlds apart. They have nothing in common except the same date of birth (18 April 1906) and a zeal to succeed in life. William Lowell Kane is a wealthy and powerful Boston Brahmin while Abel Rosnovski (originally named Wladek Koskiewicz) is a Pole was born in a situation of great poverty and eventually emigrated to the United States. William follows the steps of his father, Richard Kane, to become a successful banker. When William was still a child, Richard dies in the Titanic disaster, leaving William fatherless and heir to the Kane & Cabot bank. William displays extraordinary discipline and intelligence as a young man at St. Paul's School and later at Harvard. His mother marries Henry Osborne, who turns out to be interested in gambling and women. William hates Henry from the beginning and spends most of the time at Harvard and at his best friend Mathew Lester's home. William dreams of becoming the chairman of Lester's bank one day. Henry spends every last penny of Kane's mother's money on the pretext of speculation, while she dies in a miscarriage. Kane throws Henry out of his home. Wladek Koskiewicz is born in a forest and raised by a trapper family. When he grows up and is found to have exceptional intelligence, Baron Rosnovski asks him to become a companion to his son Leon so Wladek might prove to be a competition to him. Wladek agrees to go to the Baron's castle on the condition that he can bring along his elder sister Florentyna. Soon afterwards, World War I breaks out. Germans attack Poland and capture the Baron, his staff and son in his castle. Leon dies by the hand of a soldier. Before dying, the Baron hands him his silver band of authority. Wladek realises that the Baron was his father when he finds that, like him, the Baron too had a missing nipple. Florentyna is also raped and killed in front of young Wladek by Russian soldiers. Wladek was then moved to Siberia from where he manages to escape to Turkey after facing many hardships. There, he nearly loses his hand (a common punishment in the Middle East and in the Ottoman empire, predecessor of Turkey, before 20th century) for stealing food but is rescued by two British diplomats. They transfer him to the Polish consulate from where with their help, he migrates to America and assumes the name Abel Rosnovski. He starts his life as a waiter in the Hotel Plaza, while taking night classes in business at Columbia University. While Abel is working there, Davis Leroy, owner of the Richmond group of hotels, is impressed by his work and appoints him manager of his flagship hotel. Abel converts the ill-managed hotel to a profit-making one and buys stock in the chain. During the Great Depression, the hotel needs a backer and Davis, unable to find one, commits suicide leaving the remaining shares in the Richmond Group to Abel. Before committing suicide, Davis mentions that Kane & Cabot was the bank that didn't support him. Abel thus plans for revenge and considers Kane his arch rival. The bank gets him an anonymous backer. Abel assumes it to be David Maxton, owner of Stevens' hotel. During this time, Abel befriends George and marries Zaphia, both Polish emigres. Abel changes the name of the hotel from Richmond to Baron and builds up a successful hotel chain. By collaborating with Henry Osborne, who had by now entered politics, Abel plans to ruin Kane and his bank. Abel begets a daughter, named Florentyna in memory of his dead sister while Kane has a son, Richard. Abel during World War II would save Kane's life in France, unaware to each other. He divorces Zaphia when he returns home from the war. Meanwhile Kane's bank and Lester's bank merge and a provision is made that anyone who has a share of 8% can summon board meetings. Abel tries desperately to obtain 8% of the bank's stock but Kane manages to thwart his attempts. They unknowingly meet each other many times throughout the novel. Florentyna Rosnovski and Richard Kane happen to meet and fall in love without knowing about the rivalry between their fathers. They get married amid vehement protests from their fathers and start a chain of boutique stores named Florentyna's. Finally, Abel manages to obtain enough shares of the bank and ousts Kane from power. Kane decides to forgive his son and daughter-in-law and expresses his wish to meet them. He dies before he is able to see them and his grandson William. Abel then comes to know that his backer was not David Maxton, but William Kane. Filled with remorse, he reconciles with his daughter and son-in-law. Abel dies soon after, and bequeathes everything to his daughter Florentyna, except his silver band of authority, which he leaves to his grandson, whom Florentyna and Richard have named "William Abel Kane". ar:كين وأبيل ja:ケインとアベル pl:Kane i Abel vi:Hai số phận zh:凯恩与阿贝尔
1777067	/m/05w260	Contest	Matthew Reilly		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story focuses on Dr. Stephen Swain, a radiologist, who manages to fight off two gang members despite having no combat experience. While at home, Swain and his daughter Holly are teleported into the New York City Library. A mysterious alien named Selexin explains that Swain has been chosen to represent humans in a contest called the Presidian. The rules are simple: seven different intelligent beings are teleported into a place such as the Library, and must fight to the death. The last being standing must then find the teleporter that will take them out of the labyrinth. However, an animal called the Karanadon will also be in the labyrinth. The Karanadon was teleported into the Labyrinth a day before the contestants and has already killed Ryan, a security guard at the library. Swain has been chosen to represent Earth because of his natural fighting abilities, as demonstrated in the gang fight. Selexin's species is too small to compete, so they serve as guides and witnesses to a kill. If a contestant says "initialize" a tiny teleporter will appear from a cap on Selexin's head, allowing officials to see what is going on. Clasped to Swain's wrist is a metal band that indicates how many contestants are in the Library, as well as whether the Karanadon is awake or not. As final a precaution in the game, the whole Library is enclosed in a powerful electrical field. If Swain were to somehow get out of the Library the band will give him fifteen minutes to get back inside, and will explode if he fails to do so. Meanwhile, two police officers named Paul Hawkins and Christine Parker are spending the night in the Library after the incident with the security guard's death. Seeing a light down in the stack, Hawkins goes to investigate, leaving Parker alone in the Lobby. Another contestant named Bellos arrives in the lobby and has some unknown creatures who kill Parker. Down in the stack, Hawkins encounters a crocodile-like alien named Reese, who hypnotizes him. Before she can kill him, Swain intervenes and Hawkins escapes. However, Selexin points out that while contestants cannot kill each other at this stage of the contest, they can follow each other. Swain, Holly, Selexin, and Hawkins rush into the parking garage to escape as the final contestant, Balthazar, arrives. In the ensuing fight, Reese injures Balthazar but Swain attacks her and drags Balthazar to an elevator. Having survived, the group tries to regroup in the lobby, but see Bellos and another contestant, called the Konda. Just as the Konda is about to kill Bellos, hunting animals called hoodayas, or hoods, attack and kill the Konda. Selexin and Balthazar's guide say that the Presidian is over: Bellos has cheated by bringing in the hoods, making him an invincible opponent and the definite winner. Before the hoods can kill the group, Reese, who has figured out how to work an elevator, appears and the group flees in the carnage, to a janitor’s closet. Unfortunately, they have stumbled upon the Karanadon's nest. The creature wakes, and kills Balthazar's guide before Swain tricks it into falling down an elevator shaft, knocking it out. Now separated, Swain, Holly, and Selexin find a door Fraser left open to the outside world. Before they can escape, Bellos attacks. Swain manages to kill two of the hoods but the door slams shut, becoming electrified, and trapping him outside, alone and with his wristband counting down. To complicate matters, the NSA has arrived, and is trying to keep people from getting near the library. Finally, Swain manages to uses a magnet in a phone to create a gap in an electrical window and gets back inside. Back in the janitor's closet, Hawkins and Balthazar are attacked by a contestant called the Codex. Balthazar and the Codex kill each other and in the process start a fire. Holly and Selexin manage to escape the stack. Bellos gives chase, and kills Hawkins and the final contestant, called the Rachnid, but one of his hoods is killed by Holly and Selexin. Down in the parking garage, Swain encounters a psychopathic NSA agent named Henry Quaid, who has managed to get into the Library. He is killed suddenly by Reese, who Swain manages to electrocute. While rummaging around, he finds a paper in Quaid's pocket showing power surges every time something is teleported into the Library. By luck, he also finds Holly and Selexin, and uses Selexin's teleporter to kill the final hood, by teleporting half its body away to watching officials. After killing Bellos by crushing him beneath an elevator, Swain's wristband tells him that, because the Presidian has been "contaminated", the final teleporter will not be opened and everything, including Selexin and the Karanadon, will be left behind. Swain realizes that Bellos teleported a teleportation device into the Library, so that at the end of the game he could send the hoods away, and not be discovered cheating. Selexin is teleported away, with the promise to have the escape device teleported back. The electrical field around the Library drops, and the wristband begins its countdown sequence in order to kill all contestants and dispose of the evidence. The Karanadon awakes and chases Swain out into a park near the Library. In the fighting, Swain's band gets knocked off. He clips it to the Karanadon and flees. The NSA watches as the wristbands explode, destroying all trace of the Karanadon and also destroying the Library. The novel ends with Swain and Holly going home on a subway.
1779024	/m/05w72f	Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close	Jonathan Safran Foer	2006-04-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main protagonist of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell. Oskar Schell's father Thomas Schell dies in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, before the narrative begins. While looking through his father's closet, Oskar finds a key in a small envelope inside a vase, on the outside of the envelope the word "Black" is written in the top left corner. Curious, Oskar sets off on a mission to contact every person in New York City with the last name Black, in alphabetical order, in order to find the lock to the key his father left behind. The novel also tells a separate narrative that eventually converges with the main story through a series of letters written by Oskar's grandfather to Oskar's father and by Oskar's grandmother to Oskar himself. Based on real life events. One of the first people Oskar meets in his search for the key's origin is a forty-eight-year-old woman named Abby Black. Oskar makes friends instantly, but she has no information on the key. Oskar continues to search the city, meeting an old man he calls "the renter" – as he is the new tenant in Oskar's grandmother's apartment; "the renter" is actually Oskar's grandfather. Eight months after he meets Abby he finds a message on the answering machine. He had not touched that phone since his father died since his father's last words had been on an identical answering machine which Oskar had kept hidden from his mother. It is revealed that Abby had called Oskar directly after his visit, saying "[she] wasn't completely honest with [Oskar], and [she] think[s] that [she] might be able to help". Oskar returns to Abby's apartment, and Abby directs him to her ex-husband, William Black. When Oskar talks to William Black, he learns that the vase used to belong to William's father. In his will, William's father left William a key to a safe-deposit box, but William had already sold the vase at the estate sale to Thomas Schell. Oskar tells William something that he "never told anyone" – the story of the last answering machine message Oskar received from his father, during the attack of 9/11- a repetition of the words "Are you there? Are you there? Are you there?" Oskar then gives William Black the key. Disappointed that the key does not belong to him, Oskar goes home angry and sad, not interested in the contents of the box. After Oskar destroys everything that had to do with the search for the lost key, his mother reveals that she knew Oskar was contacting all the Blacks in New York City. After the first few visits she called every Black that he would meet and informed them that Oskar was going to visit and why. In response, the people Oskar met knew ahead of time why he was coming and usually treated him in a friendly manner.
1779171	/m/05w7f0	Our Lady of the Flowers	Jean Genet	1948	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of Divine, a drag queen who, when the novel opens, has died of tuberculosis and been canonised as a result. The narrator tells us that the stories he is telling are mainly to amuse himself whilst he passes his sentence in prison - and the highly erotic, often explicitly sexual, stories are spun to assist his masturbation. Jean-Paul Sartre called it "the epic of masturbation". Divine lives in an attic room overlooking Montmartre cemetery, which she shares with various lovers, the most important of whom is a pimp called Darling Daintyfoot. One day Darling brings home a young hoodlum and murderer, dubbed Our Lady of the Flowers. Our Lady is eventually arrested and tried, and executed. Death and ecstasy accompany the acts of every character, as Genet performs a transvaluation of all values, making betrayal the highest moral value, murder an act of virtue and sexual appeal.
1780941	/m/05wdw5	The Hot Zone	Richard Preston	1994	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is in four sections: * "The Shadow of Mount Elgon" delves into the history of filoviruses, as well as speculation about the origins of AIDS. Preston accounts the story of "Charles Monet" (a pseudonym), who might have caught MARV from visiting Kitum Cave on Mount Elgon in Kenya. The author describes in great detail the progression of the disease, from the initial headache and backache, to the final stage in which Monet's internal organs fail and he "bleeds out" (i.e., hemorrhages extensively) in a waiting room in a Nairobi hospital. This part also introduces a young promising physician who becomes infected with MARV while treating Monet. Nancy Jaax's story is told. Viruses, and biosafety levels and procedures are described. The EVD outbreaks caused by EBOV and its cousin, Sudan virus (SUDV) are mentioned. Preston talks to the man who named Ebola virus. * "The Monkey House" chronicles the discovery of Reston virus virus among imported monkeys in Reston, Virginia, and the following actions taken by the U.S. Army and Centers for Disease Control. * "Smashdown" is more on the Reston epizootic, which involved a strain of the virus that does not affect humans but which easily spreads by air, and is very similar to its cousin the Ebola virus. * "Kitum Cave" tells of the author's visiting the cave that is the suspected home of the natural host animal that Ebola lives inside of. The book starts with "Charles Monet" visiting Kitum Cave during a camping trip to Mount Elgon in Central Africa. Not long after, he begins to suffer from a number of symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhea and red eye. He is soon taken to Nairobi Hospital for treatment, but his condition deteriorates further and he goes into a coma while in the waiting room. He dies, but not before a Doctor named Shem Musoke, attempting to insert a laryngoscope, is infected by exposure to Charles' blood and vomit. Musoke is one of the few to become symptomatic from a filovirus and survive. This particular filovirus is called Marburg virus. Dr. Nancy Jaax had been promoted to work in the Level 4 Biosafety containment area at USAMRIID, and is assigned to research Ebola virus. While preparing food for her family at home, she cuts her right hand. Later, while working on a dead, EBOV-infected monkey, one of the gloves on the hand with the open wound tears, and she is almost exposed to contaminated blood, but does not get infected. Meanwhile, Peter Cardinal, a ten-year-old, visits Kitum Cave, gets infected with a MARV relative, Ravn virus (RAVV), and does not survive this infection. Nurse Mayinga is also infected by a nun and elects to visit Nairobi Hospital for treatment, where she succumbs to the disease. A CDC team arrives to collect samples of the virus for study. In Reston, Virginia, less than fifteen miles (24&nbsp;km) away from Washington, DC, a company called Hazelton Research once operated a quarantine center for monkeys that were destined for laboratories. In October 1989, when an unusually high number of their monkeys began to die, their veterinarian decided to send some samples to Fort Detrick (USAMRIID) for study. At the time, it was believed that the virus was Simian hemorrhagic fever virus, a viral hemorrhagic fever harmless to humans but almost always fatal to other primates (see zoonosis). Early during the testing process in biosafety level 3, when one of the flasks appeared to be contaminated with harmless pseudomonas bacterium, two USAMRIID scientists exposed themselves to the virus by wafting the flask. When they eventually tested the samples with known Level 4 agents, only EBOV reacted with the unknown samples. They decided not to tell anyone about their exposure, but they did secretly test their blood every day. After one of the monkey house staff members becomes ill with nausea and violent vomiting, USAMRIID is given permission to send in a team to euthanize all the monkeys at the facility and collect tissue samples. They later determine that, while the virus is terrifyingly lethal to monkeys, humans can be infected with it without any health effects at all. This virus is now known as Reston virus (RESTV). Finally, the author himself goes into Africa to explore Kitum Cave. On the way, he discusses the role of AIDS in the present, as the highway they were on, sometimes called the "AIDS Highway," or the "Kinshasa Highway" was where it first appeared. Equipped with a Hazmat suit, he enters the cave and finds a large number of animals, one of which might be the virus carrier. At the conclusion of the book, he travels to the quarantine facility in Reston. The building there was abandoned and deteriorating. He concludes the book by saying EBOV will be back.
1781984	/m/05wh9r	Islands in the Net	Bruce Sterling	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The action takes place in 2023–2025 on Galveston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Grenada, an island in the north east coast of South America; Singapore and Africa. Protagonist Laura Webster, a mother of three-month-old Loretta, works as a public relations employee for global corporation of economic democrats Rizome. Together with her husband David they run the Lodge, a resort for Rizome workers on the island of Galveston. The action sets off when Rizome organizes a conference between itself and three data havens - EFT Commerzbank of Luxembourg, The Young Soo Chim Islamic Bank and Grenada United Bank - in the Lodge. After the first day of the conference, the representative of Grenada, Winston Stubbs, is assassinated. The organization which admits to killing him calls itself "F.A.C.T." (Free Army of Counter-Terrorism). Rizome decides to send Laura with her husband and baby to Grenada on a diplomatic mission to prove that Rizome had nothing to do with the murder. While in Grenada, Laura and David learn about its tragic history and the advanced technology flourishing on the island thanks to “mad-doctors” like the American Brian Prentis. Grenada is ruled by one party, the New Millennium Movement, with Prime Minister Eric Louison who uses voodoo tradition as means of keeping order in the country. Food is plentiful and cheaply produced on one of the huge tankers adapted for factories and housing. Drugs, in the form of a pure synthetic THC, are also cheap and widely accessible. Laura and David manage to escape Grenada after Singapore attacks it. They return to Atlanta and separate. David takes the baby to one of Rizome’s Retreats and Laura sets off to Singapore to continue her mission to improve the world. In Singapore, Laura witnesses the launching of the first Singaporean space rocket, celebrated by a speech from Singapore’s prime minister and leader of People’s Innovation Party, Kim Sue Lok. The celebration ends in chaos as the prime minister spits fire and explodes, as it turns out he was a victim of Grenada’s pseudo-voodoo tricks. This event triggers national panic and riots. Grenada invades Singapore in reaction to Singapore’s previous attack. In addition, Singapore’s opposition party, the Anti-Labour Party with Razak as a leader, tries to use the situation to get into power. The last group to invade Singapore is the Red Cross. Laura is cut off from the Net and cannot contact her husband or Rizome’s headquarters. Together with other Rizome’s workers in Singapore she decides to get herself arrested and wait in prison for the end of war. Unfortunately, Laura gets separated from her companions and ends up on the roof of The Young Soo Chim Islamic Bank. From there a chopper takes her, together with other survivors from the riots, to a cargo ship somewhere in the middle of a sea. The ship is bombed by F.A.C.T. and Laura is taken to one of F.A.C.T.’s submarines. There she learns more about the organization. Laura is then taken by a plane and transported to one of the prisons in Bamako, the capital of Mali. F.A.C.T. took over this country's government in order to have a base for the organization. After a conversation with the Inspector of Prisons she finds out that she poses a threat to the organization because they think she knows they have an atomic bomb which they keep on board of Thermopylae, the submarine she has been kept on. She spends two years in the prison. When a South African country supported by European authority of the Vienna convention attacks Mali, she is taken in a convoy to the atomic site to be shot on camera as a hostage. She is miraculously freed when the convoy is attacked by a group of Inadin Cultural Revolutionists. Their leader is Jonathan Gresham, an American journalist and radical, who helps Inadin people, also called Tuaregs the nomadic tribes of Sahara, fight against any forms of outside interference in their traditional way of life. Gresham takes Laura to an Azanian relief camp in order to save the life of her convoy companion, Azanian doctor Katje Selous, wounded in the action. Outside of the relief camp Gresham records Laura’s statement on all that happened to her and sends in on the Net. Laura and Gresham get romantically involved but this feeling has no future as she has to go back to the States and Gresham will continue to help Inadins. Next when we meet Laura she arrives at Galveston and takes part in an official Rizome party organized for her. Her husband David lost hope that she was alive and got involved with Laura’s closest friend, Emily Donato. Loretta, Laura and David’s daughter, is raised by Laura’s mother Margaret. Laura continues to work for Rizome and tries to improve the world by doing so. The last scene in the novel describes Hiroshima being bombed by F.A.C.T. Fortunately, this time the bomb did not explode. In the fictional world of Islands there exists a book titled The Lawrence Doctrine and Postindustrial Insurgency by Colonel Jonathan Gresham. It is banned by Vienna and widely read in the political underground. It draws on the example of T. E. Lawrence who during the First World War helped the Arabs fight the Ottoman Turks. Instead of fighting the Ottoman Turks, Lawrence convinced Arabs to block their expansion by destroying their communication lines, which at the time were railway tracks and telegraphs. Although Arabs were successful in fighting Turks they became dependent on the British Empire to provide them with industrial products such as explosives and canned food. Gresham calls the First World War “a proto-Net civil war”. The Arabs defeated their Ottoman overlords by destroying their communication network, namely the railway and telegraph lines. In Sterling's 21st century, for the Tuaregs the enemy is the Net. However, the Arabs were colonized by the British with industrial products and manufactures such as guns, cotton, dynamite and canned food. For Sterling's Tuaregs the necessary products of the Networld are solar power, plastique, and single-cell protein. Gresham’s book shows a pessimistic view of globalization and its mechanisms. It takes the view that it is impossible for small and economically weaker nations to stay completely independent; global influence will always be present with its positive and negative aspects. In the world of the novel the USA and the Soviet Union are still the world powers. The international political order, which is guarded by the Vienna Convention and uses censorship as a means of keeping the world order, is weak and divided, and to avoid world panic protects the terrorists from F.A.C.T. Countries that grow in power are Grenada, Singapore and Luxemburg, the so-called data havens where data piracy is legitimate. Organizations that feel threatened by the growing influence of havens are Rizome Industries Group, an economic democracy global corporation which suffers losses because of the data piracy and wants to negotiate with the pirates, and the Free Army of Counter-Terrorism (F.A.C.T.) which calls itself “the real world police” and plans to deal with any signs of attacks on “doctrines of national sovereignty”. This is the main reason why F.A.C.T. assassinates Winston Stubbs and bombs the ship on which Laura was sailing with Singaporean pirates. The novel shows a new phenomenon emerging in the political world. The global organizations start realizing that they no longer need governments to successfully run their affairs; “Let us cut out the middleman,” says one of Kymera Corporation workers. The F.A.C.T. seems to be fighting signs of such thinking, while at the same time it is a global corporation which chose one of African countries, Mali, and took over its government in order to have its own military base. Africa is still “a mess”. The only problem which has been solved is famine, thanks to "the scop", a single-cell protein. The countries still suffer from poverty and political instability. People die from retroviruses and have no perspectives and developed countries are not interested in what is going on there.
1784357	/m/05wn6w	Forty Signs of Rain	Kim Stanley Robinson	2004-01	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The focus of the novel is the effects of global warming in the early decades of the 21st century. Its characters are mostly scientists, either involved in biotech research, assisting government members, or doing paperwork at the National Science Foundation (NSF). There are also several Buddhist monks working for the embassy of the fictional island nation of Khembalung.
1784687	/m/05wnxn	Heer Ranjha				 Heer is an extremely beautiful woman, born into a wealthy Jat family of the Sayyal clan in Jhang, Punjab. Ranjha (whose first name is Dheedo; Ranjha is the surname), also a Jat of the Ranjha clan, is the youngest of four brothers and lives in the village 'Takht Hazara' by the river Chenab. Being his father's favorite son, unlike his brothers who had to toil in the lands, he led a life of ease playing the flute ('Wanjhli'/'Bansuri'). After a quarrel with his brothers over land, Ranjha leaves home. In Waris Shah's version of the epic, it is said that Ranjha left his home because his brothers' wives refused to give him food. Eventually he arrives in Heer's village and falls in love with her. Heer offers Ranjha a job as caretaker of her father's cattle. She becomes mesmerised by the way Ranjha plays his flute and eventually falls in love with him. They meet each other secretly for many years until they are caught by Heer's jealous uncle, Kaido, and her parents Chuchak and Malki. Heer is forced by her family and the local priest or 'mullah' to marry another man called Saida Khera. Ranjha is heartbroken. He wanders the countryside alone, until eventually he meets a 'jogi' (ascetic). After meeting Baba Gorakhnath, the founder of the "Kanphata"(pierced ear) sect of jogis, at 'Tilla Jogian' (the 'Hill of Ascetics', located 50 miles north of the historic town of Bhera, Sargodha District, Punjab), Ranjha becomes a jogi himself, piercing his ears and renouncing the material world. Reciting the name of the Lord, "Alakh Niranjan", he wanders all over the Punjab, eventually finding the village where Heer now lives. The two return to Heer's village, where Heer's parents agree to their marriage. However, on the wedding day, Heer's jealous uncle Kaido poisons her food so that the wedding will not take place. Hearing this news, Ranjha rushes to aid Heer, but he is too late, as she has already eaten the poison and died. Brokenhearted once again, Ranjha takes the poisoned Laddu (sweet) which Heer has eaten and dies by her side. Heer and Ranjha are buried in Heer's hometown, Jhang. Lovers and others often pay visits to their mausoleum.
1785629	/m/05wrn9	Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield				 The book begins with Vercingetorix conceding his defeat to Julius Caesar. He throws his weapons at Caesar's feet &mdash; or rather, on Caesar's feet. In pain, Caesar hops away to the infirmary while Vercingetorix is arrested. The weapons remain where they were thrown, for several hours, until a curious, somewhat greedy Roman legionary sees that no one's looking, and steals Vercingetorix's famous shield. He then loses the shield in a game of dice to another legionary, who is himself out of camp without a pass. He is spotted by a drunken centurion, who confiscates the shield. The centurion himself uses the shield to pay for a jar of wine at a nearby Gaulish inn; later on the shield is given by the innkeeper to a survivor of the Battle of Alesia, who wanders off into the night... Then begins the actual story. Chief Vitalstatistix is horribly ill with a sore liver (to the point that any contact with his liver causes him to scream in agony). The druid Getafix diagnoses that this is the result of too much roast wild boar, greasy, spicy sauces and beer, Liver trouble. Other Gauls repeatedly poke the Chief's chest, causing him intense pain. As Getafix's magic potions cannot cure weight problems (although it soothes the Chief's liver briefly), he sends Vitalstatistix off to a health spa in Arverne to be cured. Asterix and Obelix (with Dogmatix) go as his escort. At first, Vitalstatistix proposes having a banquet before they leave, but Impedimenta goes off in a rage, forcing him and his escort to make a hasty departure. On the way, they stop at various inns to have the banquet the chief wanted, only to bring back his liver trouble, pain is caused merely by a leaf landing on his stomach. When they arrive, Obelix is mistaken for a patient by a Druid, who punches his stomach. At first all the Gauls stay there together, but because Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix are perfectly healthy and in no need of special diets, they feast on wild boar and beer while everyone else's diets are boiled vegetables daily. This, and other incidents, seriously annoy Vitalstatistix and the other patients, putting pressure on the management, some people break down at this, and the Chef is attacked. One man even tries to steal food from Dogmatix, but is stopped by Obelix. Vitalstatistix advises his men to tour the countryside of Arverne, visiting such beautiful places as Gergovia. Asterix asks about Alesia, but Vitalstatistix angrily shouts that he does not know where Alesia is. (The exact location of Alesia was unknown for centuries, including when this book was published. It also seems to be a sore point for people like Winesandspirix and Vitalstatistix who were there.) Along the way, the Gauls are met by special Roman envoy, Noxius Vapus. A fight ensues, with obvious results: the Romans are left beaten up, with their weapons broken, while the Gauls proceed merrily on their way. In the aftermath Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix meet an old Gaul called Winesandspirix, who has set up shop as a wine and charcoal salesman in Gergovia. Winesandspirix takes the Gauls to his home as his friends. Asterix asks if Wine and Charcoal shops next to each other causes competition, but Winesandspirix says they buy Wine and Charcoal from each other. His wife then cooks vegetable soup which Obelix loves. Followed by a party, where the neighbouring wine and charcoal owners gather to talk. Someone who brought sausages opens and slammed the door quite loudly. Asterix then asks why Winesanspirix about this and says, "We Arvenians are very fond of bangers". Obelix, grabbing three sausages, tasted them and realised that it was actually Wild Boar sausages when Winesanspirix tells him. Meanwhile, when Noxius Vapus makes his report to Caesar in Rome. Caesar decides that the Gauls must be taught a lesson. He plans a triumph on Vercingetorix's shield, only there's one small problem &mdash; he does not have the shield any more. Caesar orders Vapus to send search parties to Arverne, looking for it. Soon the Roman search parties arrive at Winesandspirix's shop. They find nothing, but Asterix's curiosity is piqued. The Romans send a spy, Legionary Pusillanimus, a drunk to find out more but, on drinking too much wine at Winesandspirix's tavern, he accidentally discloses the plan. In order to thwart it, Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix set off in search of the shield themselves. Pusillanimus actually knows about the legionary who originally took the shield as he was at the Battle of Alesia himself, but he fails to inform his superiors and only tells the Gauls while drunk. They follow the shield's trail, meeting those who possessed it before it disappeared- the first legionary, Lucius Circumbendibus who now owns a wheel manufacturing business, the second legionary, Marcus Carniverus who worked at a health resort before going on to open a restaurant called The Boar in Wine (Much to Obelix's annoyance when they learn that they have spent days at the resort trying to find Carniverus undercover for nothing), and the drunken Centurion Crapulus who is still in the army-, and fighting the Roman search parties who are following the same trail. It eventually leads them back to Winesandspirix, for he was the tavern keeper the Roman centurion originally gave the shield to. Winesandspirix confesses that he does not have the shield any more, as he gave it as a comfort to a Gaulish warrior who was trying to drown his sorrows in wine after having witnessed Vercingetorix's defeat. Right after Winesandspirix explains how he originally ran away from home after Asterix and Obelix left out of shame at giving away something so important and just came back to confess, the Gaulish warrior appears. This Gaulish warrior actually turns out to be chief Vitalstatistix- who returns to the group now significantly thinner than before-, who, as it turns out, has had the shield with him all along! Asterix, Obelix, Dogmatix, Vitalstatistix and Winesandspirix organise a Gaulish (instead of Roman) triumph on Vercingetorix's shield, much to the surprise of Vapus and his troops. As a further twist of fate, Caesar himself arrives to check on Vapus's progress, and seeing the results (They get black because of being covered in charcoal dust as they always the charcoal cellar in Winesanspirix's tavern), he punishes Vapus by sending him and his troops to Numidia. As an added measure, Caesar promotes Centurion Crapulus to Officer commanding the garrison of Gergovia and Legionary Pusillanimus to Centurion- on the grounds that they are the only clean legionaries present, despite them both being drunk- and orders them to keep the whole incident a secret, Crapulus assuring Caesar that they will remain on good terms with the local wine merchants. The Gauls return to their village (Vitalstatistix regaining his original weight from having banquets at the inns they visited earlier in the story) and have their traditional, huge feast &mdash; without Vitalstatistix this time, however, for his wife has something to say about his intention to eat well again and put the shield to an offensive rather than defensive use!
1787582	/m/05wykb	Z for Zachariah	Robert C. O'Brien	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ann Burden's diary begins on Monday, May 20. After living alone for a year and believing herself the last survivor of a nuclear war, Ann fears that a stranger approaching her valley might be a killer or enslave her. She hides in a cave to judge his character first from a distance, not revealing herself even to warn him against bathing in a dead stream. However, when he then sickens, Ann’s fear of being alone forever moves her to help him. The stranger is John R. Loomis, a chemist with Cornell University who helped a Nobel-winning professor design radiation-proof plastic and a prototype “safe-suit.” After three months in an underground lab near Ithaca, New York, he spent seven months searching unsuccessfully for other survivors. Then he headed west, finding Burden Valley after walking through dead lands for ten weeks. During the first stage of Loomis's illness, Ann enjoys his company and feels optimistic about their future. He tells Ann how to pump gas manually and begins plans for a hydroelectric generator. Soon, Ann hopes for a church wedding in the spring; and, while plowing on June 2, she recites Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem "Epitaph for the Race of Man," happy they can keep humanity from dying. She wishes she had warned Loomis about the poisoned stream. As Loomis’s condition worsens, he has disturbing nightmares about shooting a coworker, Edward, who tried to take the safe-suit to find his family. Though aware Loomis may have acted in self-defense and intended to find other survivors, Ann thinks his journey west suggests selfish motives. After nearly dying, Loomis speaks again on June 8 and says Ann’s companionship saved him. But during his recovery over the next two weeks, Ann worries when he plans for their future in the valley and sometimes scolds her—for neglecting farm work and wanting to use the safe-suit to get books. When he says on June 19 that they must start a colony together, Ann is uneasy despite her similar hopes earlier. By June 23, Ann thinks of Loomis as a murderer and fears that his horrible experiences have damaged his mind. She then becomes very nervous when, after she asks if he ever married, Loomis grabs her hand and demands to know her intentions. She feels sure he is trying to control her possessively, just as he “controlled” her farm work, the suit, and Edward. In the next few days, Ann sees more disturbing signs in Loomis's behavior, such as when she reads aloud Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice but he doesn’t seem to listen. On the night of June 27–28, Ann thinks her fears are validated when Loomis tries to get in bed with her while she lies quiet, assuming he believes she is asleep. Ann flees and, after getting store supplies, returns to her cave hideout. Over the next few days, seeing Loomis sometimes use her family’s dog, Faro, to practice tracking her, Ann feels she is in “a game of move-countermove” that only Loomis wants to play and only he can win. Worrying also about neglected farm work, on July 1 Ann talks to Loomis to suggest a “compromise” of sharing the valley and farm work while living separate lives. Loomis does not understand why Ann won’t return to her house, but he accepts her demands because he has no choice. He only hopes she will change her mind and “act more like an adult.” For about ten days, Ann thinks her system of living separately is working. Though it is inconvenient and she worries about spending winter in the cave, she assumes there is nothing else she can do. She wishes Loomis had never come to the valley. Around July 10, Loomis denies Ann access to the tractor and the store, warning her that she must forgo many conveniences if she continues her “stupidity” of staying away. Ann guesses he is trying to force her to return or he has a “compulsion for taking charge of things” as part of long-term planning. Deciding for the first time to talk with him to learn his intentions, Ann realizes she might be causing his behavior by denying companionship, and she thinks it sensible to offer to talk sometimes. However, when she goes to the house, Loomis tries to wound her by shooting from a window. He then tracks Ann to her cave, where he burns all her belongings and takes one of her guns. Ann is forced to hide in the wilderness nursing a bullet-grazed ankle, which becomes infected. Over the next several days, she develops a fever and begins dreaming of another valley where children are waiting for a teacher. Believing her dreams are true and Loomis is insane, Ann plans to steal the safe-suit and leave the valley. This will also be her revenge for the burning of her favorite book. For a couple of weeks, Loomis focuses on farm work and preparations for winter while Ann lives miserably, scrounging for food. One day, he tries to lure Ann to the store to attempt again to wound and incapacitate her; but Ann tricks him in turn, leading him into a trap she planned for killing Faro. After Ann fires a warning shot, Loomis is surprised she still has a gun and flees, releasing Faro. The dog then swims across Burden Creek to reach Ann and dies the next day of radiation sickness. In planning to kill Faro, Ann feels she is “as much a murderer as Mr. Loomis.” Believing Loomis has forced her into action, on August 7 Ann takes the offensive by leaving a message that she will talk about returning if he meets her unarmed. When he surprisingly leaves his gun to meet her in good faith, Ann steals his safe-suit and cart. While carrying out her plan, she remembers sadly her hopes they would save humanity together. Ann then waits on Burden Hill for a last meeting with Loomis, who arrives on the tractor enraged, ignores a warning shot, and threatens to kill her if she doesn’t return the suit. However, when Ann accuses him of killing Edward the same way, revealing what he said during his sickness, Loomis suddenly becomes dispirited and passive. When Ann declares she has no choice because of refusing to be his prisoner, Loomis replies in fright and bewilderment, “It’s wrong,” and begs her not to leave him there alone. Finally, in admittedly childish manner, Ann blames Loomis because he never thanked her for nursing him. As she walks away expecting to be shot in the back, Loomis calls out that he once saw birds circling to the west. She then keeps walking for most of the night until, exhausted, she lies down without setting up the protective tent. The story ends uncertainly. Awaking late the next morning, Ann continues west beside a dead stream, hoping to see green on the horizon.
1788886	/m/05x1dl	Green Mansions	William Henry Hudson		{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Prologue: An unnamed narrator tells how he befriended an old "Spanish" gentleman who never spoke of his past. Piqued, the narrator finally elicits the story. Venezuela, c. 1840. Abel, a young man of wealth, fails at a revolution and flees Caracas into the uncharted forests of Guyana. Surviving fever and hostile Indian attacks, failing at journal-keeping and gold hunting, he settles in an Indian village to waste away his life: playing guitar for old Cla-Cla, hunting badly with Kua-Ko, telling stories to the children. After some exploring, Abel discovers an enchanting forest where he hears a strange bird-like singing. His Indian friends avoid the forest because of its evil spirit-protector, "the Daughter of the Didi." Persisting in the search, Abel finally finds Rima the Bird Girl. She has dark hair, a smock of spider webs, and can communicate with birds in an unknown tongue. When she shields a coral snake, Abel is bitten and falls unconscious. Abel awakens in the hut of Nuflo, an old man who protects his "granddaughter" Rima, and won't reveal her origin. As Abel recovers, Rima leads him through the forest, and Abel wonders about her identity and place of origin. Abel returns to the Indians, but relations become icy, because they would kill Rima, if they could. Rima often speaks of her dead mother, who was always depressed. Abel falls in love with Rima, but she (17 and a stranger to white men) is confused by "odd feelings". This relationship is further strained because Abel cannot speak her unknown language. Atop Ytaiao Mountain, Rima questions Abel about "the world" known and unknown, asking him if she was unique and alone. Abel sadly reveals that it is true. However, when he mentions the storied mountains of Riolama, Rima perks up. It turns out that "Riolama" is her real name. Nuflo must know where Riolama is, so a wroth Rima demands Nuflo to guide her to Riolama under threats of eternal damnation from her sainted mother. Old, guilty and religious, Nuflo caves in to the pressure. Abel pays a last visit to the Indians, but they capture him as a prisoner, suspecting that he is a spy for an enemy tribe or consorts with demons. Abel manages to escape and return to Rima and Nuflo. The three then trek to distant Riolama. Along the way, Nuflo reveals his past, and Rima's origin. Seventeen years ago, Nuflo led bandits who preyed on Christians and Indians. Eventually, forced to flee to the mountains, they found a cave to live in. Hiding in the cave was a strange woman speaking a bird-like language. She was to be Rima's mother (never named). Nuflo assumed the woman was a saint sent to save his soul. Nuflo left the bandits and carried Rima's mother, now crippled for life, to Voa, a Christian community, to deliver Rima. Rima and her mother talked in their magical language for seven years, until Mother wasted away in the dampness and died. As contrition, Nuflo brought Rima to the drier mountains. The local Indians found her queer, and resented how she chased off game animals, and therefore tried to kill her. A mis-shot dart killed an Indian, and they fled Rima's "magic". In the cave, Rima is eager to enter Riolama valley. Abel reveals sad news: her mother left because nothing remained. She belonged to a gentle, vegetarian people without weapons, who were wiped out by Indians, plague and other causes. Rima is indeed unique and alone. Rima is saddened but suspected it: her mother was always depressed. Now she decides to return to the forest and prepare a life for herself and Abel. She flits away, leaving Abel to fret as he and Nuflo walk home, delayed by rain and hunger. They return to find the forest silent, Nuflo's hut burned down, and Indians hunting game. Abel, exhausted, is again taken prisoner, but isn't killed, as he quickly makes a vow to go to war against the enemy tribe. On the war trail, he drops hints about Rima and her whereabouts. Kua-Ko explains how, thanks to Abel's "bravery", the Indians dared enter the forbidden forest. They caught Rima in the open, chased her up the giant tree. They heaped brush underneath it and burned Rima. Abel kills Kua-Ko and runs to the enemy tribe, sounding the alarm. Days later he returns. All his Indian friends are dead. He finds the giant tree burned, and collects Rima's ashes in a pot. Trekking homeward, despondent and hallucinating, Abel is helped by Indians and Christians until he reaches the sea, sane and healthy again. Now an old man, his only ambition is to be buried with Rima's ashes. Reflecting back, he believes neither God nor man can forgive his sins, but that gentle Rima would, provided he has forgiven himself.
1789029	/m/05x1vz	Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon	K. W. Jeter	2000-12-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story follows Iris, another Blade Runner, on an assignment to find Tyrell's owl, which seems to have special importance for the Tyrell Corporation and other dubious organizations.
1789241	/m/05x2kt	Mr Standfast	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir	1919	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dick Hannay, under forty and already a successful Brigadier-General with good prospects of advancement, is called out of uniform by his old comrade, spymaster Sir Walter Bullivant, and sent to Fosse Manor in the Cotswolds to receive further instructions. He must pose as a South African, an objector to the war, and once more takes on the name Cornelius Brand (an Anglicisation of the name he had used on his adventures in Germany in Greenmantle). He is upset by the idea of such a pose, but comforted by thoughts of his friend Peter Pienaar, briefly a successful airman and now a prisoner in Germany, and by the beauty of the Cotswold countryside. At Fosse, he meets two middle-aged spinsters, their cousin Launcelot Wake, a conscientious objector, and their niece Mary Lamington, a girl whose prettiness had struck Hannay earlier, while visiting a shell-shocked friend in the hospital where she works. It emerges that she is his contact, but she can tell him little more than that he must immerse himself in the world of pacifists and objectors, picking up "atmosphere". She gives him a label to paste inside his watch, an address where he will be staying, and advises him to pick up a copy of Pilgrim's Progress. Hannay heads to Biggleswick, a small town full of artists and writers. He buries himself in their pacifist community, attending meetings at a local hall, and meets Moxon Ivery, a local bigwig who seems vaguely familiar; he also sees Mary about the place. He hears of his old comrade John Blenkiron, and one day the American appears at one of the town's meetings; he passes a message to Hannay, arranging to meet in London. Blenkiron reveals that he has been hard at work for some time, around the world and undercover around England, on the track of a huge network of German spies and agents, with their head somewhere in Britain, leaking vital information to the enemy. He believes Ivery to be the spider at the centre of the web, but cannot prove it, and wants to use Ivery to feed misinformation to the Germans. He tells Hannay to try and head for Scotland and an American called Gresson, as he believes the information is being sent that way. Hannay goes to Glasgow, and contacts a trade union man named Amos, through whom he moves into Gresson's circles. He speaks at a meeting which descends into violence, and finds himself in at Gresson's side in a street fight. He saves the day, but makes an enemy of a big Fusilier named Geordie Hamilton. He later learns that Gresson makes regular boat trips up the coast, and plans to tag along. He rides the foul boat, but realises he needs a passport to go all the way north, and must follow it on shore, dodging the law. He has a hint from his contact that a mine at a place called Ranna may be what he seeks, and hears the boat stops at an iron mine, so he resolves to head that way. He leaves the boat and treks inland, but soon finds he is wanted by the law, and is caught by some soldiers. He claims to be a soldier too, and their Colonel takes him home with him, to meet his son to check his story; the son confirms all Hannay's army knowledge, and suspicions are allayed. He moves on, staying overnight with peasants, making his way onto Skye and towards Ranna. Arriving there, he meets Amos, who goes to fetch supplies, and sees the boat and Gresson, who meets a stranger on the hill. Hannay tracks the foreign-looking stranger, who Hannay describes as 'The Portuguese Jew', to a rocky bay, where the man disappears for a time before heading back. Hannay stays there overnight, and next morning fetches his provisions and searches the beach, finding the deep water of the bay ideal for submarines. He finds a hidden cave, and while preparing to lay in wait there sees Launcelot Wake climbing in. They fight and Hannay ties the other man up, but they soon realise they are on the same side. They stake out the cave, and in the night the man Hannay followed returns, meeting with a German from the sea; they exchange pass-phrases, and Hannay sees the hiding place they plan to use to pass messages. Wake identifies some of their talk as extracts from Goethe, and is sent back with messages for Amos and Bullivant, while Hannay ponders the phrases he overheard - Bommaerts, Chelius, Elfenbein ('Ivory', homophone of 'Ivery'), Wild Bird and Caged Bird. He heads for home, but Amos warns him the police are still after him, and gives him a new disguise, as a travelling bookseller. On the way south he takes up with another salesman, a man named Linklater who Amos had seen with Gresson. In a small town, Hannay is recognised by Geordie Hamilton, the big soldier he fought with in Glasgow, and flees once more with half the town, including Linklater, on his tail. He hides out in a troop train heading south; he gets off when it stops, is seen by Linklater, but at the station hooks up with his old pal Archie Roylance, a pilot who flies him on southwards. The plane breaks down, and Hannay, still pursued, flees afoot once more, upsetting a film set, stealing a bicycle and making his way into another town. On the verge of capture, his watch is stolen, and he is dragged of the streets by a man who recognises the badge he carries there; he is given a soldier's outfit and sent on his way. He arrives in London in the midst of an air raid; in a tube station he sees Ivery, the spymaster's guard down in fear, and Hannay finally recognises him as one of the "Black Stone" men he had tangled with in The Thirty-Nine Steps. Hurrying to tell his colleagues, he is arrested as a deserter and delayed. He eventually gets word through to Macgillivray at Scotland Yard, but his enemy has two hours start and evades capture. Hannay is encouraged by a letter from Peter Pienaar, and at a meeting with Bullivant, Blenkiron and Mary, he pushes for them to hound the man down. They discuss the clues Hannay overheard on the beach, and Ivery's fear of the bombing, and Mary reveals that Ivery has proposed to her. Hannay returns to the war in Europe for several months. He finds Geordie Hamilton, and employs him as his batman; he runs into Launcelot Wake, working as a support labourer behind the lines; he sees several adverts in English and German newspapers, which he suspects may be some kind of coded communication. Hamilton reports having seen Gresson in a party of touring visitors, and Hannay learns he had stayed behind in a small village for a time; he later hears a story of mysterious goings-on at a chateau near the same village. Flying with Archie Roylance on a reconnoitre, they get lost in fog and land near the chateau in question, where Hannay sees a mysterious old woman in a gas mask. Finding the castle is in a vital strategic spot, he returns to investigate, and learns the place is leased by a man named Bommaerts, one of the words he had overheard on the beach in Skye. Sneaking into the house at night, he finds Mary there too, and learns she has seen Ivery, now calling himself Bommaerts, who is in love with her. They find anthrax powder and a newspaper with one of the adverts deciphered, and then Ivery arrives. Confronted by Hannay, he flees, and Hannay shoots after him; the chateau burns down. A few days later, in January 1918, Hannay is withdrawn from the front for more special duties. Blenkiron gives dinner for Hannay and Mary, now engaged, where he learns that the newspaper advert scam has been broken up and its operatives, led by Gresson, arrested. Blenkiron has found a second code in the messages, used by Ivery and his masters, and has identified Ivery as the Graf von Schwabing, a former high-flyer unseated by scandal. He hears of the Wild Birds, a ruthless and deadly band of German spies, of whom Ivery is a leading member, and learns that they plan to head to Switzerland to pin Ivery down, using Mary as bait. Hannay makes his way south to Switzerland, where he poses as an injured Swiss, servant to the crippled Peter Pienaar, who has been released there. The two catch up, swap stories, and await instructions, keeping an eye on the nearby Pink Chalet, believed to be the base of the Wild Birds. Finally receiving Blenkiron's instructions, Hannay goes one night to the chalet, where he meets his contact, but is betrayed and taken prisoner by von Schwabing. The German tells Hannay he plans to capture Mary too, and send them both back to Germany to deal with at his pleasure, while the German army attacks and crushes their enemies. Von Schwabing leaves him pinned in an ancient rack, but he breaks free. He runs into the man he followed across Skye, and, using the pass-phrases he overheard there, poses as a conspirator. He is provided with a car and chases after von Schwabing, sending Peter to alert the others. After a long drive through the mountains, he crashes the car and runs the rest of the way, but arrives to find Mary already gone and Launcelot Wake waiting for him. Learning that von Schwabing is returning to the chalet the long way, they resolve to head over the mountains on foot, cutting out much of the road. Wake, an experienced mountaineer, leads a tough climb through snow and ice, exhausting himself in the process. Hannay drags him to the safety of a cottage, then continues by train and again on foot. He arrives at the house, and staggers in, to see von Schwabing gloating over Blenkiron, who appears to have walked into the same trap Hannay had the night before. However, Blenkiron was warned by Hannay's message, and has the house in his command; Geordie Hamilton and Amos emerge and take von Schwabing prisoner. At Hannay's suggestion, von Schwabing is sent to the front to see battle, while the others head to Paris, just as the Germans begin a mighty attack. As they near the front, they hear the defenses are crumbling beneath the onslaught, with Hannay's men at the heart of things. He resumes his command, and holds a thin line against the German advance, with Wake running messages for him, Blenkiron engineering the reserve trenches and Mary nursing in a nearby hospital. Amos and Hamilton guard von Schwabing, whose mind has gone strange. A long and hard battle ensues, in the course of which Wake dies heroically, von Schwabing runs into No Man's Land and is shot by his countrymen, and Blenkiron joins the fray with a party of Americans. At the last, with reinforcements due any moment, a party of German planes overflies Hannay's position, and are sure to bear news of the weak point if allowed to return; British planes fly against them, but one, flown by flying ace Lensch, evades them. Peter Pienaar, flying Archie Roylance's plane despite his bad leg, flies into him, bringing him down and killing himself in the process, but the day is saved.
1789839	/m/05x3zs	Limes inferior	Janusz Zajdel	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The hero, Adi Cherryson, also known as Sneer (named after one of Zajdel's fellow science fiction writers Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg), is a lifter who "helps" people cheat during the computer controlled IQ exams by giving them the correct answers through a micro-radio communicator or taking the exam for them. Sneer, who is officially only a level 4, could easily become the top level 0, but he prefers his medium level which doesn't attract much attention. In addition to lifters a whole gallery of black market figures is presented - there are downers (who use their low IQ to provide realistic 'stupid' answers for those who want to keep their class artificially low like Sneer), chameleons (black market point dealers), key-makers (providing all sorts of illegal, special purpose Keys). The story starts when Sneer is questioned by an undercover police agent on the street and unintentionally reveals his intelligence by his answers (or so Sneer thinks). As a result a few hours later his Key is locked and he is told to report to a testing station for an IQ test. Knowing that in such situation "electro-hipnosis" is used to prevent subjects from hiding their true intelligence he solicits help of a "downer". He finds a suitable specialist through another "lifter" - Karl Pron. He goes to the testing station with the "downer", who takes his Key and goes inside leaving Sneer waiting outside. A few minutes later Sneer sees the "downer" arrested. Without his Key he faces the reality of not having a shelter and being able to even find anything to eat without points. Wandering through the city he sees some of the misery of life in Agroland he didn't notice before. Finally, he meets mysterious Alice who gives him shelter and some mysterious clues about a singer and a song about the lake Tibigan. In the morning he meets the "downer" and learns how he secured his release through a ruse - he reported Sneer's Key as found on the street. Sneer goes to the central Police station and retrieves his Key, but the experience makes him uncomfortable and he starts to look at his world in a different way. He visits his parents and an old friend, a doctor, revealing to the reader the history of this world and some further facts about it. He also tries to listen to the song Alice told him about and discovers that theoretical freedom of press is in fact a fiction as some songs etc. can be prohibited. Meanwhile Sneer is hired by a government official (a 'zero') to monitor the scientific lab dealing with Keys - The Key Institute. Working undercover as a doorman Sneer discovers to his amazement that the Key Institute that should know everything about the Keys having designed them is in fact studying them as if they were an alien object. Meanwhile his "lifter" friend Karl Pron tests a new counterfeited Key, which gives the owner an unlimited amount of points. This Key was ordered by the group of '0's - who in fact work in the lab on which Sneer is now spying upon. When Sneer obtains the super Key he is taken to the meeting with top officials of the local government - where he learns that the social system of 'Argoland' is in fact an experiment imposed upon the humanity by the Aliens. The 'over-zeroes' form a ruling class, which suppresses dissent fearful of the Aliens but permits all kinds of irregularities which they see as preserving the human nature of people. The end is largely mystical but it suggests that with the help of Alice Sneer succeeds in saving the humanity, though it is not clear exactly how he achieves that.
1789858	/m/05x40j	Paradyzja	Janusz Zajdel		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Paradyzja (from "paradise") is the story about the human colony on a space station orbiting a distant and mineral rich star system. The colony is controlled by a totalitarian regime. All human activity is tracked by electronic devices. It had been primarily devised as a ring, in which the gravity force is simulated by the centrifugal force exerting upon all objects inside a ring tube in the direction opposite to the centre of the ring. This space station was built accidentally. The expedition had to settle on planet Tartar in order to live there and exploit the natural goods. But general Cortazar, the leader of settlers, decided that Tartar was not suitable for settling because of a lack of good conditions for living, so the living place had to be built as a space station on the Tartar's orbit. On Paradise, living rooms are made of transparent material and to get to some of them you have to pass through other living rooms. Personal watches are not allowed, there; the only clocks are those in living rooms. Rinah Devi's first impression is that all people strictly adhere to the regime law, but then he discovered that they had devised various ways to work around the system. One of them is "the only language of truth" - Koalang, an artificial poetic language invented by the inhabitants of Paradise in order to cheat the electronic eavesdropping system. The government and the safety service is trying to suppress every possible knowledge of physics, which could allow a verification of the statements about what Paradise is as presented to Paradisians. That is why every research in physics is blocked, especially every research about Coriolis force. The main hero discovered this, when he was trying to check whether the forces really differ on every floor: all things that would be used to make such an experiment (even such as a spring from his ballpen) have been taken from him by the customs officers and no other things that would make such a simple experiment possible are accessible. Then he discovers that minutes on clocks in living rooms are not equal in length. Finally, he finds out that Paradise is not a ring-tube space station, but a train of buildings lying on the surface of Tartar planet. In addition, Tartar is a planet quite well suitable for settlement and the group in charge built some buildings and gardens for itself, keeping the majority of settlers in the fictional Paradise and making them believe that it was an artificial planet.
1789915	/m/05x466	The Commodore	C. S. Forester	1945	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Having achieved fame and financial security, Captain Sir Horatio Hornblower has married Lady Barbara Leighton (née Wellesley) and is preparing to settle down to unaccustomed life as the squire of Smallbridge in Kent. He still yearns to serve at sea and accepts with alacrity when the Admiralty puts him in command of a squadron and sends him on a diplomatic and military mission to the Baltic. His primary aim is to bring Russia into the war against Napoleon. Hornblower is shown dealing with the problems of squadron command, and using naval mortars (carried on special ships known as bomb vessels) to destroy a French prize. This leads to the French invasion of Swedish Pomerania. Later his squadron calls at Kronstadt, where he meets with Russian officials, including Tsar Alexander I, who is favourably impressed by Hornblower and his squadron. After Russia enters the war, Hornblower's squadron takes an important role in the defence of Riga, which is besieged by French forces. The bomb vessels again take an important role, and so do amphibious operations under the protection of the squadron. The siege is finally broken, and Hornblower joins the pursuit of the French armies on horseback, only to fall seriously ill with typhus. During the siege and pursuit, Carl von Clausewitz, a German officer in Russian service, who is later to become famous as a military theorist and writer, is a character. The novel occasioned some controversy when it was published. It appeared as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post, and Hornblower, in an implied sexual encounter with a (married) Russian Countess, was the Posts first adulterer. As Forester says in his Hornblower Companion, "...it really caused quite a flutter". Forester wanted to give Hornblower the opportunity to catch typhus, although he does comment that he believes that Hornblower caught typhus during the siege rather than in bed. This book shows Hornblower's contrary character more strongly than many preceding books in the series. In particular, he is shown to be unable to be happy or self-satisfied in spite of accomplishments highly valued by others, including both professional and personal success. It also shows a growth of paternal feeling by Hornblower toward junior officers. The historical accuracy of this book is limited: Forester later wrote that he did not know what British naval forces, if any, were engaged at the siege of Riga. (Historically they were commanded by Thomas Byam Martin.) The date of publication (1945) reveals Forester's preoccupation in The Commodore&mdash;he parallels the political situation with that in the second world war. In both cases, Russia was originally allied with a continental dictator (Hitler/Napoleon) but changed sides after being treacherously invaded. In both cases Sweden remained neutral and traded with both sides. Russia similarly occupied other Baltic territories (Finland, Lithuania etc.) raising doubts about the correct response among the British government. In The Commodore (but not in the real Napoleonic period), as in the second world war, the RN offered substantial help to Russia: at the siege of Riga, and by guarding the Arctic convoys. Less obviously, Forester draws parallels between the early 19th century and his own time in one or two of the other Hornblower novels.
1789930	/m/05x47_	Lord Hornblower	C. S. Forester	1946	{"/m/04rlf": "Music", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Hornblower alters the appearance of his own vessel, the Porta Coeli, so it can masquerade as the mutinous vessel. As dusk falls, he follows a valuable blockade runner into port, pretending to be the Flame. Then, once the two vessels are moored, he captures it and takes it out to sea. He then pursues the Flame, which retreats to the French port. Believing the mutineers responsible, the French send four gunboats to take her. Hornblower manages to exploit the fighting to capture both the Flame and a gunboat. Among the French prisoners is Lebrun, the young and ambitious assistant to the mayor of Le Havre. Lebrun asks to speak with Hornblower privately; he proposes to surrender Le Havre to the English fleet. Hornblower and Lebrun arrange a plan: Lebrun's role is to undermine those parties who would resist a British seizure of the city. Overcoming some tense moments with audacity, Hornblower is able to capture the city with a half battalion of Royal Marines and finds himself its military governor. Hornblower finds his new duties different from that of commanding a naval vessel or squadron. He finds his role demanding, in part because he is such a demanding perfectionist. The Duke of Angoulême, one of the heirs to the Bourbon dynasty, is sent to assume control of the civil leadership. Hornblower hears that Napoleon has been able to amass a strong force, to be transported by barge down the Seine to retake Le Havre. He sends a force, borne by half a dozen large ship's boats, to try to blow up the barges and ammunition. He puts his best friend, Captain William Bush, in command. The raid is a success and the French force is stopped, but an unexpected explosion kills most of the British, including Bush. Hornblower is raised to the peerage, possibly in part to provide him with more dignity, gravitas, when dealing with the French heir's entourage, as well to reward him for his accomplishments. During the following peace, Hornblower's wife Barbara accompanies her brother, the Duke of Wellington, to the Congress of Vienna, leaving Hornblower at loose ends. He decides to visit the Comte de Gracay, where he resumes his relationship with the Comte's widowed daughter-in-law, Marie. When Napoleon escapes from Elba and raises a new army, Hornblower, the Comte and Marie lead a guerrilla fight against the Imperial forces. They are eventually defeated, and Marie dies from a leg wound. Hornblower and the Comte are captured and condemned to death, but news of the Emperor's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo arrives just in time to save their lives. sv:Lord Hornblower
1790018	/m/02p2skn	The Thirteen-Gun Salute	Patrick O'Brian	1989	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Immediately following The Letter of Marque, the narrative picks up with Jack Aubrey getting the Surprise underway for a mission to South America. Upon reaching Lisbon, however, Dr Maturin is intercepted by Sir Joseph Blaine and told that he and Aubrey will be required to first go on a mission to the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, a (fictictious) piratical Malay state in the South China Sea. They are to transport Fox, the envoy who will lead the mission to persuade the Sultan to become an English rather than French ally. The French are being openly assisted by the same English traitors - Wray and Ledward - who were responsible for Aubrey's former disgrace. With the Surprise now commanded by Captain Pullings, they return with Blaine to England where Jack Aubrey is reinstated with his former seniority as a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy by Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty. He is also given command of the recently captured French ship Diane for the mission ahead. Fatefully, the Diane is the very ship Jack Aubrey had just captured from the French and which had secured his reinstatement, along with appointment to Parliament as member from Milport. Captain Aubrey's orders to the Diane are mentioned as occurring in the "fifty-third year" of the reign of King George III, thus fixing the year at around 1813 which, due to the mental illness of the king, was the third year of the Regency. A recurring sub-plot is the hostility between the Regent (later George IV) and his brother, the Duke of Clarence (later William IV), a patient and ally of Stephen Maturin. This hostility was, in part, responsible for the delay in re-instating Captain Aubrey to the Navy List and it was appointment to Parliament that tipped the scales. Stephen's work keeps him undercover as a naturalist as he engages in a political duel for influence at the Sultan's court. Although his activities are to go unknown, they prove to be invaluable in both undermining the French efforts and finally exacting his revenge on his enemies, the French agents, Ledward and Wray. Ledward is caught in bed with Abdul, a boy who is the Sultan's cupbearer and catamite, the Sultan having pederast tendencies, though married and fathering a son by his queen. Abdul is gruesomely executed in a bizarre sanctioned execution via "peppering," in which a bag of pepper is placed over the head. The executioners, often the victim's family, then beat the bag, resulting in inhalation of the pepper and painful asphyxiation. Wray and Ledward are banished from the court for their indiscretions, effectively ending the French mission. Wray tries to change sides in exchange for protection but he and Ledward are later assassinated. Maturin dissects their bodies with a fellow natural philosopher and intelligence agent, the Dutchman van Buren. After a long drunken feast, at which Fox and his retinue behave grossly, the Diane makes for Batavia and to rendezvous with the Surprise off the False Natunas. Fox behaves with increasing arrogance during the return voyage, the success of the treaty having gone to his head. Jack has words with him, Stephen turns against him for his incivility, and the rest of crew of the Diane loathe him. One night the frigate strikes a hidden reef and her captain and crew are shipwrecked on a desert island. Fox and his colleagues decide to sail for Batavia in Dianes pinnace, but are caught in a typhoon and presumed killed. During the same typhoon, the marooned Diane is destroyed but Aubrey's crew are able to begin to build a fair-sized schooner from what remains of the frigate - her starboard bow and hull. The title refers to the honour, a thirteen-gun salute, that is due to Fox as an official envoy and representative of the King.
1790287	/m/05x567	Asterix and the Black Gold				 The book begins with Asterix and Obelix hunting wild boar. One boar is worried, but the other tells him they will escape the Gauls. The Gauls start chasing the boars, but one boar, however, is crafty and leads them straight into a Roman patrol. As the boar predicted, the Gauls forget both the boars and beat the daylights out of the patrol instead. In the midst of the battle, the boars escape with their lives. Later in the story Asterix ponders on their constantly finding Roman patrols whenever they go boar-hunting. Back in Rome, Julius Caesar hears of this, thinks the Gauls are training wild boars to find Roman patrols, and is humiliated. He orders M. Devius Surreptitius, the head of the Roman Secret Service, to send an agent to infiltrate the Gauls. This agent is a Gaulish-Roman druid known as Dubbelosix, who travels in a folding chariot full of secret devices. Dubbelosix and Surreptitius communicate via a carrier fly. However it is revealed Surreptitius is plotting to overthrow Caesar and sends a self-destructing letter to Dubbelosix telling him they will rule together, though Dubbelosix says he will rule Rome himself. In the Gaulish village, Getafix is extremely frustrated and depressed, because he has run out of rock oil. Without rock oil, he can't make any more magic potion and the village will soon fall against the Romans. The next day, Ekonomikrisis the Phoenician merchant arrives in Gaul. This cheers Getafix up, but he soon finds out that Ekonomikrisis forgot to bring any rock oil. This causes him to have a stroke, and chief Vitalstatistix tells Asterix and Obelix to fetch another druid to treat him. This druid turns out to be Dubbelosix who successfully revives Getafix with an alcoholic tonic. Asterix decides that the best thing to do would be for himself, Obelix and Dogmatix to go to Mesopotamia and bring back the rock oil. Dubbelosix insists on coming with them and they set off on Ekonomikrisis' ship. Along the way, they fight pirates and Roman warships, obviously winning each battle. But there's one thing that they don't know: Dubbelosix is sending covert messages to the Romans so they can prevent the Gauls from completing their quest. The Phoenician ship is finally able to land at Judea, where Asterix, Obelix, Dogmatix and Dubbelosix disembark and head for the city of Jerusalem. The Romans form a heavy presence in the city but some sympathising merchants help the Gauls to get in secretly in spite of an attempt by Dubbelosix to alert the city guards. Leaving the treacherous druid behind, Asterix and Obelix make contact with Ekonomikrisis' friend, Samson Alius who advises them to go to Babylon since all the rock oil in Jerusalem has been seized and destroyed by the Romans. The way to Babylon is across a huge desert, but in the middle of the desert, Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix find a source of rock oil in the ground so they fill a waterskin with it and head back home. Since Caesar has all ports sealed off to prevent their escape, the two Gauls simply capture Caesar's personal galley &mdash; along with Surreptitius and Dubbelosix who have been awaiting the developments on board. However a message is sent to the Romans that makes them decide to attack the village, thinking they cannot make magic potion. Unfortunately, just before landing back in Gaul, Dubbelosix grabs hold of the waterskin of rock oil and, as he tries to force it open, Obelix, despite the objections of Asterix, leaps upon him, causing the waterskin to break open and send the oil into the sea; the first oil spill in recorded history. Asterix has lost all hope, but when they come back to the village, they find the Gauls fighting Romans as merrily as ever. It turns out that Getafix has been able to substitute beetroot juice for rock oil and thus produce more magic potion, it also tastes nicer. Asterix has a stroke when he realises that the journey has been for nothing. All ends well for the Gauls; at their usual celebratory feast the crafty boars comment that the holidays are over. The Gauls send the bound and gagged Dubbelosix and Surreptitius back to Caesar in a gift-wrapped box. Caesar sends them to the Circus Maximus as punishment for failure &mdash; with a new show added for a twist: they are covered in honey and chased by bees.
1791504	/m/05x8sw	The Book of Daniel	E. L. Doctorow	1971		 Writing his thesis ('The Book of Daniel') Daniel investigates the background to his parents' conviction and execution with his adoptive parents (the Lewins). The final dénouement is the revisiting, in flashback, of the death of his parents, and in due course the death from nervous disorder (and attempted suicide) of Daniel's sister. The novel closes with the library in which Daniel is working being closed by student unrest, and Daniel closing his work with a parody of lines from Chapter 12 of the Biblical Book of Daniel. The book is written in four parts, and in each Daniel is the principal narrator; the narrative moves fluidly and rapidly between 1967 ('the present') and flashback (to the late 40s/early 50s), and between first and third person:- :1. Memorial Day - Opens, in 1967, with Daniel, his young wife, Phyllis and baby Paul, walking to the sanatorium to see Susan; closes with the dropping of atom bomb in Japan :2. Halloween - closes with the lawyer, Ascher, telling Daniel and Susan of the forthcoming start of the Isaacsons' trial :3. Starfish - closes with Daniel's bruising involvement in an anti-draft march, whilst his sister (the starfish of the title) is lying dying from complications following her suicide attempt. : Daniel says with irony to Phyllis through broken teeth '...It looks worse than it is. There was nothing to it. It is a lot easier to be a revolutionary nowadays than it used to be.' :4 Christmas - recalls the closing moments of the trial, including the key evidence from their co-accused, Selig Mindish; Daniel's later search for, and discovery of Mindish, now senile, in Disneyland; and the funerals of Daniel's parents and his sister Susan.
1791679	/m/05x9ck	Nectar in a Sieve	Kamala Purnaiya Taylor	1954	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Married to a tenant farmer, Nathan, because her family can't afford the dowry for a better match, Rukmani must leave everything she has ever known and learn how to run a household by herself at the age of twelve. Nathan proves to be a tender, thoughtful husband and Rukmani soon comes to love him. Their first child, a daughter named Irawaddy, is born punctually; then six years pass with no more children. In a society where sons were what mattered most, Rukmani grows desperate. She seeks out the help of an English doctor, Kenny, who successfully treats her infertility. Rukmani eventually gives birth to six more children. Meanwhile, a tannery is built in the village and begins to take over the land. The system of trading, and the quiet way of life for the people who live there is quickly disrupted. Rukmani seems to be the only one who recognizes this as a danger, and stands alone in her protest against modernization. Irawaddy is married off to a well-placed young man; then Rukmani's two eldest sons leave her to go work at a tea plantation in faraway Ceylon. After several years Irawaddy, divorced by her husband because she is barren, returns home. The family endure a time of drought and famine, and Rukmani's third son, weak with hunger, is beaten to death while trying to steal a calfskin from the tannery. Her youngest son Kuti begins to starve. Irawaddy is forced to turn to prostitution so she can provide food for her baby brother. Despite the extra food, Kuti dies. Irawaddy becomes pregnant from the prostitution and gives birth to an albino boy. Eventually, the tannery officials buy the land Nathan has been farming for thirty years and evict him. With nowhere else to go, the couple travel by oxcart and on foot to a city, hoping to move in with one of their sons. The son, however, has gone no-one knows where. Completely destitute, they work as stonebreakers at a quarry in hopes of earning enough money to get home. There Nathan dies. Afterward, Rukmani returns to her home village accompanied by a resourceful street boy named Puli, who has lost his fingers to leprosy. She moves in with her daughter and her youngest son, who is now a doctor at the hospital Kenny has built.
1792002	/m/05xbdh	Last Exit to Brooklyn	Hubert Selby, Jr.		{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 Last Exit to Brooklyn is divided into six parts that can, more or less, be read separately. Each part is prefaced with a passage from the Bible. * Another Day, Another Dollar: A gang of young Brooklyn hoodlums hang around an all-night cafe and get into a vicious fight with a group of US Army soldiers on leave. *The Queen Is Dead: Georgette, a transvestite hooker, is thrown out of the family home by her brother and tries to attract the attention of a hoodlum named Vinnie at a benzedrine-driven party. *And Baby Makes Three: An alcoholic father tries to keep good spirits and maintain his family’s marriage traditions after his daughter becomes pregnant and then marries a motorcycle mechanic. *Tralala: The title character of an earlier Selby short story, she is a young Brooklyn prostitute who makes a living propositioning sailors in bars and stealing their money. In perhaps the novel’s most notorious scene, she is gang-raped after a night of heavy drinking. *Strike: Harry, a machinist in a factory, becomes a local official in the union. A closeted homosexual, he abuses his wife and gets in fights to convince himself that he is a man. He gains a temporary status and importance during a long strike, and uses the union's money to entertain the young street punks and buy the company of drag queens. *Landsend: Described as a “coda” for the book, this section presents the intertwined, yet ordinary day of numerous denizens in a housing project.
1797243	/m/05xtdf	I, Jedi	Michael A. Stackpole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In I, Jedi, Corran Horn must develop his Jedi powers in order to save the life of his wife, Mirax Terrik. Corran Horn was a member of the elite X-wing force Rogue Squadron. After returning home from a long campaign to find his wife kidnapped, he turns to Luke Skywalker, the only remaining Jedi Master at the time, for help. This coincides nicely with the master's timing, as he is seeking students for his new Jedi Academy on Yavin 4. Corran knows that he is Force-sensitive, and that only with the Force as his ally can he track down his enemy. It turns out that Corran's wife, Mirax, was tracking down a group of elusive pirates known as the Invids. The Invids' primary tactic is to drop out of hyperspace with the flagship, an Imperial Star Destroyer named the Invidious, strike, and disappear with perfect timing. As she grew closer to solving the mystery of how these pirates performed their supernaturally accurate attacks, she was kidnapped and placed into stasis on their fortress planet. On the journey to save Mirax, Corran learns that his grandfather was a Jedi, a member of the Halcyon line. His adopted grandfather shows Corran the records that the Jedi had left behind, and with that, Corran eventually makes up his mind to follow in his ancestor's footsteps and become a Jedi. After extensive training and being caught in a crisis involving the risen spirit of the Dark Sith Lord Exar Kun, Corran goes as far as he can, and infiltrates the pirates using his CorSec training. He quickly rises through the ranks, and finds out where Mirax is being held. With the timely help of Luke Skywalker and his squadron friend and wingman, Ooryl Qrygg, he fights his way past the Jensaarai, a splinter group of Jedi who focus on stealth and premonition, and into the fortress, where he is able to rescue his wife.
1798336	/m/05xwn9	The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea	Nikolai Leskov	1881		 Tsar Alexander I of Russia, while visiting England with his servant the Cossack Platov, is shown a variety of modern inventions. Platov keeps insisting that things in Russia are much better (embarrassing a guide at one point when he finds something that appears well made that turns out to be a Russian gun), until they are shown a small mechanical flea. After his ascension the next tsar, Nicolas I, orders Platov (after he tries to hide the flea) to find someone to outperform the English who had created the clockwork steel flea (as small as a crumb, and the key to wind it up can only be seen through a microscope). Platov travels to Tula to find someone to better the English invention. Three gunsmiths agree to do the work and barricade themselves in a workshop. Villagers try to get them to come out in various ways (for example by yelling "fire"), but no one can get them to come out. When Platov arrives to check on their progress, he has some Cossacks try to open the workshop. They succeed in getting the roof to come off, but the crowd is disgusted when the trapped smell of body odor and metal work comes out of the workshop. The gunsmiths hand Platov the same flea he gave them and he curses them, believing that they have done absolutely nothing. He ends up dragging Lefty with him in order to have someone to answer for the failure. The flea is given to the czar, to whom Lefty explains that he needs to look closer and closer at the flea to see what they have achieved. He winds it up and finds that it doesn't move. He discovers that, without any microscopes ("We are poor people"), Lefty and his accomplices managed to put appropriately-sized horseshoes (with the craftsmen's engraved signatures) on the flea (Lefty made the nails, which cannot be seen since they are so small), which amazes the tsar and the English (even though the flea now cannot dance as it used to). Lefty then gets an invitation and travels to England to study the English way of life and technical accomplishments. The English hosts try to talk him into staying in England, but he feels homesick and returns to Russia at the earliest opportunity. On the way back, he engages in a drinking duel with an English sailor, arriving in Saint Petersburg. The sailor is treated well, but Lefty, authorities finding no identification on him and believing him to be a common drunkard, send him off to a hospital for unknowns to die. The sailor, after sobering up, decides to find his new friend and with the aid of Platov they locate him. While dying (his head is smashed from being thrown onto the pavement), he tells them to tell the emperor to stop having their soldiers clean their muskets with crushed brick (after he sees a dirty gun in England and realizes it fires so well because they keep it oily). The message never arrives, however, because the man who had to inform the emperor never does. Leskov comments that the Crimean War may have turned out differently if he got the message. The story ends with Leskov commenting on the replacement of good, hard-earned labor and creativity with machines. This story is deeply embedded into Russian consciousness as an archetype of relationships between Russia and the West. The language of the story is unique; many of its folk-flavored neologisms and colloquialisms (very funny and natural, though mostly invented by Leskov) have become common sayings and proverbs. Ironically, both Slavophiles and Westernizers used the story in support of their views; indeed the story of Levsha may signify Russian ingenuity and craftsmanship that amaze the world, or it may just as well be used as a symbol of the oppressive Russian society that mistreats its most talented people.
1799004	/m/05xy0f	Runaway Horses	Yukio Mishima	1969	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set between June 1932 and December 1933, it tells the story of young Isao Iinuma, a rightist reactionary trained in the samurai code by his father. Isao becomes the instigator of a plot to topple the zaibatsu that he feels have corrupted the Yamato-damashii and betrayed the will of the Emperor. He is assured of the army's assistance by the young Lieutenant Hori. They plan to assassinate many key government figures simultaneously on December 3, 1932. Shigekuni Honda, a character who figured prominently in Spring Snow, the first novel of the cycle, appears again here as a judge and later lawyer. He comes to believe that Isao is the reincarnation of Kiyoaki Matsugae, the aristocratic schoolfriend whose story was told in Spring Snow. Realising that Isao too seems to be hurtling towards a "picturesque" death, he makes strenuous efforts to save him without revealing this personal connection. It is just after the May 15 Incident of 1932. Shigekuni Honda, the law student from Spring Snow, is now a junior associate judge at the Osaka Court of Appeals. He is asked by Judge Sugawa to give an address at a kendo tournament on June 16 at the Ōmiwa Shrine in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture. At the tournament, the chief priest points out to him a promising athlete called Isao Iinuma. Honda realises that this is the son of Shigeyuki Iinuma, Kiyoaki's old tutor, now a right-wing "personality". After lunch, Honda climbs the sugi-clad Mount Miwa, and afterwards descends to Sanko Falls to bathe. Some of the kendoists are already there. Honda is startled to see that Isao has the same three moles on his side that Kiyoaki had, and remembers Kiyoaki's dying words: "I'll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls." The next day, at the Saigusa Festival at Izagawa Shrine in Nara, Honda is introduced to Mr. Iinuma. He now runs an "Academy of Patriotism" and is slowly going to seed, morbidly talkative, his face "marked by the years and by the common tribulations." Honda invites him and his son to dinner that evening. Iinuma accepts, and responds by introducing Honda to the poet, retired Lt.-Gen. Kito, and his 30-year-old divorced daughter Makiko. Iinuma and his son leave for Tokyo after the dinner. Just before they go, Isao lends Honda a copy of his favourite book, The League of the Divine Wind by Tsunanori Yamao, and urges him to read it. "At the time of the... Imperial Restoration, the indications had been altogether favourable that the august wish of His Late Majesty Komei to expel the barbarians would be fulfilled. But clouds soon cut off the light of Heaven... swords were forbidden to the common people... it was decreed that samurai could cut off their topknot and that they might go without swords." In 1873, four samurai worship at Shingai Shrine in Kumamoto Prefecture, and then await the results of a divination performed by the priest Otaguro, the heir of the late, revered Oen Hayashi, whose 200 followers will come to be known as "the League of the Divine Wind". The proposals they have put to the gods are: "To bring an end to misgovernment by admonishing authority even to the forfeiture of life" and "to cut down the unworthy ministers by striking in darkness with the sword". Both return the response "Not propitious." In 1874, the proposal Otaguro puts is to take advantage of the vulnerability induced by the Saga Rebellion. Again, the Ukei rite returns "Not propitious." On 18 March 1876, the wearing of swords is prohibited. Harukata Kaya resigns as priest of Kinzan Shrine and presents a petition to the prefectural governor. In May, the rite of Ukei is performed by Otaguro, this time returning "Propitious." The others wish Kaya to join them in rebellion, but he is reluctant. A further rite convinces Kaya that it is his duty. On arriving at Kumamoto Castle on the night of 24 October 1876, the 200 warriors split into three units. The first attacks the residences of the major officials; Governor Yasuoka is killed. The second attacks the artillery battalion, with great success; the third attacks the infantry encampment, breaking down barrack doors and throwing in grenades. The tide turns when ammunition is found for the garrisoned troops, and when the second unit rushes to the aid of the third, it is entrapped, and both Kaya and Otaguro die. The next morning, on the 9th day of the 9th month (lunar calendar), 46 survivors gather on Mount Kinpo, less than four miles (6 km) west of Kumamoto Castle. The six boats intended for escape are stuck in tidal mud and it is debated what they should do. The seven youngest rebels are sent away with Tsuruda, and the rest descend to Chikozu beach. A scouting party returns with the report that a crackdown is underway and no further military action can be taken. Accordingly, the survivors split up. One by one they surrender or commit seppuku, and a detailed accounting is given of each man's end. The pamphlet concludes with a quotation from The Romance of the Divine Fire, a book written by a surviving rebel. Honda sends the book back with a letter that Isao reads when he arrives at school. In it, Honda expresses a new respect for the League, and for the forces of the irrational in general (influenced by his new belief in reincarnation, although that is a secret) and discusses the dead Kiyoaki and his passion for Satoko. However, he warns Isao that the tale of the League is "unsuitable" for him, and dangerous, and lectures him at length on the need for "the comprehensive picture offered by history." Isao concludes that Honda's "age and profession have turned him into a coward", but that the judge is still in some sense "a man of 'purity'." After school, Isao and two schoolfriends (Izutsu and Sagara) go to the boarding-house of a right-wing celebrity, Lieutenant Hori. (It is Kitazaki's&mdash;the same inn that appeared in Spring Snow.) Isao boldly announces his intention of organising a "Showa League" and voices extreme sentiments for which Hori expresses sympathy, although become tense when Isao asks direct questions about Hori's connections to men involved in the May 15 Incident. The three boys stay until 9pm, listening to him discuss current affairs. Isao lends him The League of the Divine Wind. On Sunday morning in July, Isao conducts a kendo practice for young boys in the drill hall of the neighbourhood police station. While a detective called Tsuboi talks to him, four Communists are brought to the prison, and Isao feels a stab of envy. Iinuma runs an "Academy of Patriotism" in a wing of his large house in Hongō. We learn about what happened to Iinuma and Miné between 1914 and 1932, and meet the 40-year-old student named Sawa. After Master Kaido's Sunday lecture, Isao shows his two schoolfriends a map of Tokyo, suggesting an air-raid on the areas he has coloured in purple. Later on they have dinner with Makiko at her house, and the four discuss who in Japan most deserves assassination. Isao names Kurahara. Makiko has kept the lilies Isao brought from Izagawa Shrine a month ago, and hands them one each. Isao visits Hori at the garrison. Hori expresses irritation with Isao's hot-headed talk. During kendo practice, he is impressed with Isao's abilities, and proposes taking him to an audience with Prince Harunori Toin, the military royal for whom Satoko had been intended. Baron Shinkawa gives a banquet at his villa in Karuizawa. Five couples sit and chat in his garden before dinner: the Matsugaes, the Shinkawas, the Kuraharas, the Matsudairas, and the Minister of State and his wife. They discuss current affairs in great detail, with prominence given to the personality and monetaristic opinions of Kurahara. We discover the fate of members of the Matsugae household. The Marquis Matsugae himself is humiliated by his insignificance, even by the fact he has no bodyguard. Isao has an audience with Prince Toin, against Iinuma's wishes. Hori and the Prince chat for a while; when the Prince criticises the nobility, Isao uses the opportunity to give him The League and to express his ideas about bushido. By this time, Isao has gathered 20 more boys into his circle, and Izutsu and Sagara have studied explosives. Two weeks before the end of summer vacation, he sends all the boys a telegram ordering them to return to Tokyo for a meeting at the school shrine at 6pm. All turn up and are stunned when Isao tells them it was only a drill; three leave. Isao then has the remaining boys swear vows of fealty. To Isao's surprise, Makiko turns up, and takes them all to dinner at a restaurant in Shibuya. Chapter 19 gives a description of the opening of a Noh play attended by Honda in Osaka, called Matsukaze. While watching the two ghostly women ladle seawater into their brine-cart, Honda suddenly decides that his grief for Kiyoaki has deceived him and that there could be no real connection between Kiyoaki and Isao. While hanging out his washing in October (on a certain Mr Koyama's 77th birthday), Sawa asks Isao if he can go with him and his "study group" to Master Kaido's training camp in the week starting on the 20 October. Isao makes no reply. Sawa, while serving him tea in his own room, starts to describe how three years ago Iinuma helped extort 50,000 yen from a newspaper and used his 10,000 yen share to bolster the Academy. Isao is disappointed, but not shocked until Sawa warns him, without explanation, that he cannot hurt Kurahara without betraying his father. Wondering if Kurahara is a secret patron of the Academy, Isao later returns to Sawa's room and demands an explanation. Sawa responds by begging to be allowed to kill Kurahara himself. But after hearing him out, Isao smilingly denies there is any plot. Honda hears an account of the coup d'état that took place in Siam on 24 June, during which the country became a constitutional monarchy controlled by Col. Phahon Phonphayuhasena. On Friday 21 October, Honda attends a judicial conference in Tokyo, and on Sunday goes with Iinuma to see Isao at the riverside training camp at Yanagawa. Isao is in trouble: he has taken offence at the bland Shintoism espoused by Master Kaido and gone out to kill an animal after having been ritually purified. When he accompanies the whole group as they look for Isao, Honda is startled to realise that one of the dreams in Kiyoaki's journal is now being acted out in detail. Isao holds a secret meeting on Monday evening and shows the other boys his elaborate plan for a "Shōwa Restoration" placing all government functions under the Emperor's control, through (1) destroying Tokyo's six electric transformer substations, (2) assassinating Shinkawa, Nagasaki and Kurahara, and (3) burning the Bank of Japan, events that would lead to the desired declaration of martial law, after which they would all commit seppuku. The plan mentions Hori and Prince Toin. They discuss details of the plot; Isao names December 3 at random as the date, and they receive an unexpected windfall of 1000 yen from Sawa, who claims he acquired the money by selling land. Honda visits Kiyoaki's grave before returning to Osaka. On November 7, Lieutenant Hori summons Isao and tells him he is being sent to Manchuria on November 15. When Hori suggests moving the date of the plot to this week, Isao realises that he has no intention of taking part. Hori suddenly urges Isao to give up the plot, and Isao pretends to be persuaded. At the group's secret headquarters (a rented house in Yotsuya Sumon) Isao tries to salvage the plan. Seyama, Tsujimura and Ui argue with Isao in private, and he dismisses them from the group. Within days, only 10 are left with Isao, and on November 12 they are joined by Sawa, who sets out a plan for the 12 of them to assassinate one capitalist each. Sawa is assigned Kurahara, and Isao is assigned Baron Shinkawa. Isao visits the Kitos one last time on November 29 to deliver a present of oysters, but Makiko follows him, guessing that he has resolved to die, and they kiss on a hill opposite Hakusan Park. Makiko promises to go to Ōmiwa Shrine at Sakurai and bring them each back a talisman the day before they go ahead. Isao does not admit they already each have one of her lily petals. The morning of December 1, the boy conspirators are at their hideout, discussing the daggers they have bought, when they are arrested by detectives. In the afternoon Sawa is arrested at the Academy. On reading about Isao in the newspaper, Honda resolves to save him, and resigns his judgeship to act as defence lawyer for Isao. In Tokyo, Iinuma thanks him, and then claims that it was he himself who informed the police, and that he did it to save his son from death. Prince Toin summons Honda to his house on December 30. The prince expresses sympathy for the twelve, but is horrified when Honda informs him that he was mentioned by name in the propaganda leaflets they prepared, and loses interest in helping them. Honda saves the situation by persuading him to lean on the Imperial Household Minister to have that part of the evidence suppressed. Isao is moved to Ichigaya Prison in late January, and a long prophetic dream is described. He learns that Honda will be defending him, and realises that he has awakened popular sympathy. During an interrogation he hears Communists being tortured, and asks why he is not tortured; the interrogator replies that as a rightist he has his heart in the right place. In June he receives a Saigusa Festival lily from Makiko, which she has gone all the way to Nara to pick. The trial opens on June 25. The evidence of the leaflets has been suppressed, and it becomes clear that Lt. Hori is unlikely to be indicted. At the second session on July 19, Isao boldly admits to planning the assassinations. Honda tries to fudge the issue by bringing up the purchase of the daggers and leading the witness Izutsu to admit that, as imitators of the League of Divine Wind, these weapons would be more appropriate for committing seppuku than for murder. The innkeeper Kitazaki is called as witness, and he says he heard Hori telling a lone visitor to "Give it up!" although he did not know to whom Hori was speaking. Pressed to identify the person, Kitazaki points to Isao, but his strange words seem to suggest he is confusing Isao with Kiyoaki, although they had no physical resemblance. Most assume he is senile. Only Honda realizes the significance of his confusion of Kiyoaki and Isao. Makiko is called as witness, and she reads out a mendacious diary entry for November 29, in which she asserts that Isao was planning to abandon the conspiracy. She hopes that Isao will finally be forced to start lying in order to save her from indictment for perjury. He sidesteps by claiming that he did not mean what he supposedly said to her, but wanted to spare her from any consequences of his actions. The judge, who becomes sympathetic, allows him to enlarge on his motives, and he delivers a long address on the suffering of the common people and the need to destroy the deadly spirit poisoning Japan. The prosecutor expresses doubts about Makiko's testimony, but it is clear he senses defeat. The verdict is handed down on December 26. They are found guilty, but punishment is remitted on account of their youth and pure motives, and they are released. That evening, a celebratory dinner is held at the Academy of Patriotism. Tsumura, the youngest student, is irritated by the jolly atmosphere and shows Isao a newspaper account of desecratory blunders made by Kurahara on December 16 at the Inner Ise Shrine. Iinuma, drunk, tells Isao that he was the informant. Isao is not surprised until Iinuma goes on to say that the Academy is run entirely with money paid by Baron Shinkawa as protection, and that Shinkawa made him promise, just before the May 15 Incident, never to allow Kurahara to be touched. Later, Honda hears the sleeping Isao mutter "Far to the south. Very hot...in the rose sunshine of a southern land," predicting his next reincarnation. In the morning he meets Tsuboi, who asks him to teach kendo to children, and he has a vision of himself doing so till old age. Sawa takes Isao into his room and lets him know that it was Makiko (whom Isao has not seen since the trial) who told Iinuma of their plan by telephone. This is the final straw for Isao. On 29 December, Isao slips away from Sawa during a lantern procession, buys a dagger, and travels to Inamura, a seaside village near Atami, Shizuoka. He breaks into Kurahara's weekend house, stabs him to death, then runs through his tangerine orchards down to a cave on the shore where he commits seppuku.
1799596	/m/05xzkg	The Eleventh Commandment	Lester del Rey		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The chief of the CIA, Helen Dexter, decides, on her own, to order the murder of political figures of other nations on the basis of their views on the USA. The book starts with the murder of a candidate for the Colombian presidency. During this time, Helen finds out that she would be fired if she is found out to be ordering assassinations on several nations. To cover up her work she plans to have her chief assassin, Connor Fitzgerald, eliminated. The CIA rejects Connor's resignation and asks him to go on a final mission to assassinate a candidate for the Russian presidency. While attending a speech, Connor is arrested and placed in a Russian jail to be executed. A friend of his arrives in time and tries to rescue him by making a bargain with the Russian Mafia. In exchange for Fitzgerald to be replaced with his friend, Fitzgerald will have to assassinate the Russian president. Fitzgerald fails in the attempt and "dies." Later on he returns home with the name of a professor and he has lost his arm.
1799959	/m/05x_fh	Coalescent	Stephen Baxter	2003-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book consists of four distinct parts. The primary purpose of part one is the introduction of the characters, in ancient Britain and the present. Part two introduces a modern first-person view of the Order in Rome while following Regina's budding legacy centuries before. Part three hosts the clash and resolution of Poole and the Order's realities. Part four is a look eons into Humanity's Expansion into the Universe and provides a conclusion in George Poole's present. George Poole copes with the mid-life crisis of losing his father. He meets Peter McLachlan, an eccentric member of an online free-thinking Internet group called the Slan(t)ers, who is researching dark matter and who is fascinated by a new and unknown artificial object discovered beyond the orbit of Pluto. George Poole uncovers an old picture showing a sister he never knew. Poole also discovers that his father regularly donated large sums of money to an organisation called the "Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins". Combined with a sense of futility in determining his future and encouragement from both his former wife Linda and Peter, Poole decides to uncover the mystery of his missing sister. Poole leaves England to visit his sister Gina in Florida for information, despite their strained relationship. After spoiling his clever nephews as well as clashing with his distant sister Gina, Poole extracts the contact of a Jesuit priest in Rome and his own retired uncle in Florida. Poole learns from his uncle, Lou Casella, that his twin sister was given to the ancient Order when Poole's parents were unexpectedly landed with twins. Born into a wealthy mosaic-designing family of 5th-century Roman Britain, seven-year-old Regina is uprooted from her comfortable villa due to her father's death and the Roman Empire's withdrawal. The Roman Empire loses its strength in Britain as invading Saxons pummel the Great Wall north of Roman settlements to where Regina and her grandfather Aetius relocated. Aetius dies after losing control over his unpaid mutinous soldiers. Regina seeks refuge with her servant Cartumandua's relatives in Verulamium but is betrayed by Carta's cousin Amator who rapes and abandons her. Verulamium burns down, forcing Regina and Cartumandua's family to live off the land in poverty for over sixteen years. Regina kills a roaming Saxon who nearly rapes her daughter, Brica. This event convinces Regina, the leader of their hamlet, to accept the invitation of warlord Artorius to help restore order to Britain again. In modern Rome, Lucia, a fifteen-year old scribe for the Order, is devastated when she begins to menstruate &mdash; unlike any of her friends and colleagues within the Order. Once this is discovered Lucia is initiated into in her new role within the Order. Meanwhile, Lucia falls in love with seventeen-year-old American Daniel Stannard but is snatched back into the Order to do what is expected of her. After being impregnated by an anonymous distant cousin in a ceremony held deep within the Order's chambers Lucia gives birth following only three months of pregnancy. The baby is removed from her at once and Lucia never sees her baby again. Emotionally unstable, she runs away with Daniel. Back in 5th Century Britain, Regina establishes her life working with Artorius, eventually managing his kingdom's record keeping. Artorius takes Regina as his wife for symbolic and moral reasons. She disdains Artorius' barbaric practices and thirst for conquest. Regina accompanies Artorius to a War Council where she realizes to stay attached with the reckless Artorius would mean certain doom for her progeny. To search out her mother, Julia, Regina secures passage to Rome by allowing herself and her daughter to give sexual favours to a wealthy merchant named Ceawlin. Upon arriving in Rome, Regina contacts Amator, now openly homosexual and a wealthy bakery owner, and demands recompense for abandoning her and her family. Regina re-establishes contact with her mother, Julia, after a cool reunion. Regina joins the Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins, a Christian-adapted faction of the Vestal Virgins located on the Appian Way &mdash; an organisation that her family has become intimate with. Regina's leadership revives the ageing Order by converting it into a successful private school. Years later, on the night following her daughter's marriage, the Sack of Rome in 455 by the Vandals occurs. Regina's foresight saves the Order when the women and children are evacuated into the underground Catacombs she had had dug for a sanctuary. In Regina's twilight years, she establishes important rules precedents for the Order. Unnecessary and unsupportable births are prohibited. A handful of mothers must dedicate their lives to replenishing the Order with births. Before her death in 476 AD, Regina establishes three main rules to govern the Order: *Sisters matter more than daughters. *Ignorance is strength. *Listen to your sisters. In the centuries following Regina's death, the Order assists the poor, robbed, and injured, gaining donations to its coffers from the occasional assisted person who became wealthy. Another Crypt that developed similarly to the Order is found and plans made for its eradication and occupation. In 1537 the Order survives the pillage of Rome by Antipope Clement VII by sacrificing five of its members to rape and death in order to divert Clement and his men's attention from an entrance to the Crypt. Meanwhile, in the present, George Poole, followed by a nervous Peter McLachlan, has a cool reunion with his lost sister Rosa. Rosa gives George a tour of the Crypt, the Order's secret human cache. Peter speculates with George about evidence of intelligent dark matter life moving through earth. Daniel serendipitously meets with George Poole, who is searching for additional information about the Order. Daniel, George Poole, and Peter take the very pregnant Lucia to a hospital where Peter becomes suspicious of the mysterious Order. The Order promptly retrieves Lucia from the hospital but not before Peter and George learn that most of the Crypt's inhabitants remain prepubescent indefinitely. George Poole convinces his Jesuit priest contact to grant Peter access to ancient Catholic records. George's patriarchal roots are traced to a British surveyor named George Poole who came to Rome in 1863. George returns to the Crypt looking for information and finds himself smothered with the familiar smell and contact of those in the Crypt, all of whom share his similar facial features (namely, cloudy grey eyes). His sister Rosa almost persuades him to become assimilated into the Order as a stud but an urgent text message by Peter brings him to his senses. Peter has a theory explaining the strange peculiarities of the Order. The Order is a family of eusocial humans that evolved from the intense pressures to survive the various conquests of Rome over the centuries. He cites naked mole rats as an example of eusocial behaviour in mammals. He explains how Regina's three rules result in a "genetic mandate for eusociality." He calls the Order a "human hive" and labels them "Coalescents" &mdash; a new kind of human. Peter then suddenly leaves after receiving a text message. Days later, George learns that Peter has invaded the Crypt and is threatening to set off Semtex plastic explosives in order to expose the Order. Peter and the Slan(t)ers are responsible for the recent bombing of a San Jose research facility investigating quantum gravity technology &mdash; under the belief that a higher intelligence would notice the manipulation of space-time and eradicate a possible threat to their superiority. Peter's reasoning in exposing the Crypt is that the Order does not exist for any purpose except for itself. It threatens to destroy humanity as individuals and replace it with mindless drones. Peter Mclachlan then detonates his bombs and dies. George begins the evacuation of the Crypt, and the mob of drones emerge hive-like from the crater in the middle of Via Cristoforo Colombo. Toward the end of the novel there are also two short sections telling of a hive planet in the far future. A planet has been knocked out of its solar orbit, and the hives have survived deep underground for aeons. A military mission arrives, aiming to secure workers for the war-effort, and invades a colony. They fight their way into the hive, and ship the survivors off-world.
1800897	/m/05y1q9	Jack Faust	Michael Swanwick	1997-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The plot is based around a modernization of the anti-hero, Dr. Johannes Faust, who struggles with his growing discomfort with modern thought and questions how and why things happen without scientific explanation. After burning his library and contemplating suicide, a mysterious being named Mephistopheles comes to Faust and offers him all the information of the universe. With Mephistopheles' help, the madman Dr. Johannes Faust becomes savior Jack Faust by accelerating human progress at a blinding speed, reshaping Germany and then all of Europe in his own image.
1804983	/m/05ybwv	Number the Stars	Lois Lowry	1989	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens as two Nazi soldiers stop Annemarie Johansen and her friend Ellen Rosen and ask them both questions on the streets of Copenhagen. That night, Annemarie reminisces about her older sister Lise, who was hit by a car and killed (it is later revealed that the Nazis intentionally hit her). She also recalls her father seeing a boy tell a Nazi soldier about how all of Denmark is King Christian X's bodyguard. Soon after, Peter Nielsen (who was Annemarie's sister Lise's fiance), a man working in the Danish Resistance, visits Annemarie and her family and tells them that the Germans have started closing Jewish stores. The next day, Ellen and her parents go to the synagogue for a Jewish holiday, but come to find out that the Nazis have demanded lists of the Danish Jews. They will use these lists to arrest and relocate the entire Jewish population. Peter takes Mr. and Mrs. Rosen with him into hiding, and Ellen Rosen (disguised as Lise) comes to live with the Johansens. In the middle of the night, Nazi soldiers arrive at the Rosens' apartment and demand that they reveal where the Rosen family is. Annemarie rips off the Star of David necklace which belongs to Ellen to conceal her idenity of being Jewish. The Nazi soldiers become suspicious because Annemarie and Kirsti have blond hair, but Ellen has dark brown hair. Mr. Johansen retrieves baby photos of his three daughters, with their names listed, which clearly show that Lise had hair similar to Ellen's when she was a baby. The soldiers leave. After the Nazis leave, Mr. Johansen calls his brother-in-law, Henrik, and makes encoded arrangements to bring Ellen to him. Later, Annemarie, Ellen, Mrs. Johansen, and Kirsti leave by train for Uncle Henrik's home in Gilleleje. One peaceful day goes by at Henrik's, then Mrs. Johansen tells the girls that their Great-aunt Birte has died and they will be having a funeral. However, Annemarie knows that Great-aunt Birte does not exist, and confronts Uncle Henrik. He explains to her that she is right, and says that it is easier to be brave when you don't know the full truth. Many strangers arrive at Uncle Henrik's house for the funeral, among them a rabbi and several Jewish families. A group of Nazi soldiers arrive and interrupt the funeral, and Ellen's parents and Peter Nielsen arrive shortly after. A soldier asks her mother to open the casket. Her mother told the soldier that she would love to do so, since country doctors were not reliable, and it was only the country doctor who told them that opening the casket would spread germs because Great-aunt Birte had died from typhus. The soldier slaps her face and leaves in frustration. Peter reads the beginning of Psalm 147 to the group from the Bible, recounting the Lord God numbering the stars. Annemarie thinks that it is impossible to number the stars in the sky, and that the world is cold and very cruel like the sky or the ocean, which Mrs. Rosen is scared of. Peter opens the casket and distributes warm clothing and blankets to the Jewish families who then depart, splitting up to attract less attention. Annemarie says goodbye to Ellen. In the morning her mother realizes that a package important to the Resistance was accidentally dropped by Mr. Rosen when he tripped on a flight of stairs. Mrs. Johansen, knowing the importance of the package, gives Annemarie a basket filled with food and hides the package inside. Annemarie runs off, onto a wooded path towards her uncle's boat. When she nears the harbor, she is stopped by German soldiers on patrol, and lies that she is merely delivering lunch to her uncle. The soldiers toss some of the food onto the ground and eventually reach the package, which they tear open, finding only a handkerchief. The German soldiers walk away. Annemarie continues onward to Uncle Henrik and gives him the package. He boards his fishing boat and leaves for Sweden. Uncle Henrik returns to Denmark later that evening and explains that the Rosens and many other Jewish people were hiding in his boat and that the handkerchief contained the scent of rabbit blood and cocaine, to attract the dogs so when they sniffed it, the cocaine would temporarily numb the German dogs' sense of smell. Two years later, the war ends, and all of Denmark celebrates. Several revelations are made: Peter was captured and executed by the Germans. The Jews who were forced to leave Denmark return and find that their friends and neighbors have kept up their apartments in anticipation of their return. Annemarie finds out how Lise died. Before the Rosens come back, Annemarie asks her father to repair Ellen's Star of David necklace (which had been broken off the night the Nazis broke into the apartment in order to conceal her identity), wanting to wear it herself in honor of her best friend.
1808515	/m/05yltr	Night on the Galactic Railroad	Kenji Miyazawa		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Giovanni is a boy from a poor family, working hard to feed his sick mother (who has contracted an unnamed disease). Because of this, he never has any free time and is ridiculed by his peers, leaving him as somewhat of a social outcast. His kindly friend, Campanella, is the only one (apart from his mother and his sister, both of whom are never actually seen) who cares for him. At school, in a science class, the teacher asks Giovanni what the Milky Way really is. Giovanni knows that they are stars, but cannot answer. The teacher asks Campanella, but he intentionally does not answer to save Giovanni from even more ridicule from his peers. During class, the local bully, Zanelli, says that Giovanni has been so absent-minded because his father has yet to come back from an expedition to the far north. Zanelli claims that Giovanni's father was arrested (because the trip was supposedly "illegal"), which angers Giovanni. Before he can give Zanelli a good punch, the bell rings, marking the end of the class. The teacher, after encouraging the students to attend the star festival occurring that night, lets everyone leave. Giovanni, however, stays behind to chat with the teacher. After class, the teacher (another of Giovanni's friends) and Giovanni marvel at the fossils that Giovanni's father brought back from his expeditions. The teacher asks Giovanni if his father is back yet (this question is asked repeatedly throughout the story). Giovanni responds no, and heads home to begin another long, lonely night of work at the local paper. On that night (which marks a large festival), Giovanni runs into Zanelli. He makes fun of Giovanni, mocking him about an otter fur coat his father would give him when he comes back, and runs away to the festival. Giovanni can not go to the festival, because he has to take care of his mother, and do the chores that his sister did not. Tired after a hard day's work, Giovanni lies down on top of a hill. He hears a strange sound, and finds himself in the path of a train. Luckily, the train stops. He gets on board, as does Campanella. Giovanni notices that Campanella is all wet. Giovanni asks why, and Campanella says he's not sure, but a flashback that shows him drowning suggests otherwise. The train travels through the Northern Cross and other stars in the Milky Way. Along the way, the two see fantastic sights and meet various people: for example, scholars excavating a fossil from white sands of crystal and a man who catches herons to make candies from them. Children who were on a ship that crashed into an iceberg (possibly Titanic) get on the train at Aquila, suggesting that the train is transporting its passengers to their afterlife. The train arrives at the Southern Cross and all the other passengers get off the train, leaving only Giovanni and Campanella in the train. Giovanni promises Campanella to go on forever, together. But as the train approaches the Coalsack, Campanella disappears, leaving Giovanni behind. Giovanni wakes up on top of the hill. He heads to the town, and finds out that Zanelli fell into the river from a boat. He was saved by Campanella who went into the water, but Campanella had not come up since then and is missing. Worried, Giovanni heads toward the river, in fear of what he already knows. His worries prove true, because Campanella has been under the water for a long duration of time, meaning he is dead. On the verge of tears, Giovanni tries to stay strong. Campanella's father (who didn't notice Giovanni at first) asks Giovanni to have his classmates come over to his home, after school tomorrow (for reasons unknown, though it seems likely that they are being called in for a formal funeral). Giovanni then makes a promise to stay strong throughout life, claiming that, no matter where he is, he and Campanella will always be together. He then heads home, to deliver milk to his mother.
1808856	/m/05ymh8	Cosmopolis	Don DeLillo		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cosmopolis is the story of Eric Packer, a 28 year old multi-billionaire asset manager who makes an odyssey across midtown Manhattan in order to get a haircut. He drives around in a stretch limo which is richly described as luxurious, spacious and highly technical, filled with television screens and computer monitors, bulletproofed and floored with Carrara marble. It is also cork lined to eliminate (though unsuccessfully, as Packer notes) the intrusion of street noise. Packer's voyage is obstructed by various traffic jams caused by a presidential visit to the city, a full-fledged anti-capitalist riot, and a funeral procession for a Sufi rap star. Along the way, the hero has several chance meetings with his wife and sexual encounters with other women. Packer is also stalked by two men, a comical "pastry assassin" and an unstable "credible threat". Through the course of the day, the protagonist loses incredible amounts of money for his clients by betting against the rise of the yen, a loss that parallels his own fall. Packer seems to relish being unburdened by the loss of so much money, even stopping to make sure he loses his wife's fortune as well, to ensure his ruin is inevitable. He is finally murdered by the second of the two stalkers, a former employee who sees the assassination of Packer as the only possible meaningful act in his own life.
1810427	/m/05yrl9	The Computer That Said Steal Me	Elizabeth Levy	1983	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The protagonist, a sixth grader named Adam, has recently moved with his family to Buffalo, New York from San Francisco, California. Adam attends St. Luke's, an expensive private school which he can only afford by virtue of the scholarship he receives as a consequence of his parents both working for the school. Thus, Adam finds himself the only lower-middle class student at an academy full of children of the wealthy. This disparity is often on his mind as he socializes with his friends, and it serves as the catalyst for the book's central plot and title. Adding insult to injury (at least in Adam's mind) is the fact that he cannot earn any extra money because he must babysit his two year old sister, Allison, a task which his parents feel is a family duty and not an opportunity for income. Adam spends his free time with Jesse and Tracey, with whom he plays chess as well as Dungeons & Dragons. Adam, usually the winner of chess matches with his friends, realizes that he losing more often than he once did. He attributes this new development to the handheld chess computers that his friends now use for practice. Adam knows that his family cannot afford a chess computer, but he begins to covet the device. Without funds, though, all he can do is wish. Lying in bed one night, he begins to toy with the idea of stealing a $400 talking chess computer from an electronics store in the local mall at which he occasionally shops. He approaches the scheme at first in the same fashion as he would create a Dungeons & Dragons game. As the plot becomes more complicated, and in his mind, daring, he dwells upon whether he should actually execute it. He does. Adam takes his sister to the mall on the day he puts his plan into action. Pushing her in her stroller through the aisles of the electronics store, he quickly pilfers a clock radio while no one is watching. He leaves the store without incident. It is no ordinary clock radio, however, at least by 1983 standards. Rather than waking a sleeper with the radio or an alarm pulse, this particular model will play an audio cassette at the designated time of alarm. This is central to his plan, which includes returning the clock radio to the store after setting it to play a prerecorded message the next day. He spends his remaining time at the mall asking passers-by to read one word each into a portable tape recorder he has borrowed from his father. In total, the message reads: "Beware, you will be hurt if you do not do as I say. Go to the bathroom and lock the door." After recording this message, he places the tape into the clock radio and then returns to the electronics store. He explains to Vanessa, the sales clerk, that his sister inadvertently placed the clock radio in the stroller and he did not notice it at the time. Vanessa is overjoyed, as she had feared that the missing clock radio would be deducted from her paycheck. Adam now believes that he is the last person that anyone would suspect of being a thief, as he returned an item when he could have simply kept it. The next day, he returns to the mall moments before the message is set to be played on the clock radio. At the designated time, he enters the store and takes the chess machine. He makes his escape and is not caught. He plays with the talking chess machine but he is quickly overcome with guilt. He confesses to the theft after his friend Tracey finds the chess machine (which Adam had hid in a Monopoly board game box. He later reveals his transgression to Jesse, and ultimately, to his parents (who punish him, but not heavily, as they recognize that their son is racked with guilt). He returns the machine to the electronic store and earns the wrath of Vanessa, who bans him from the store and accuses him of creepy behavior. She does not call the police.
1810470	/m/05yrp_	The Duplicate	William Sleator		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main character, David, finds a device at the beach that can duplicate any living organism. After testing the device on his pet fish, David makes a clone of himself so that he could go on a date with his crush, Angela, while his clone attends his grandmother's birthday. His plan backfires because the Duplicate believes himself to be the original, and refuses to take orders. David ends up having to go to his grandmothers birthday after he loses a coin toss to the duplicate. David's real problems begin when the Duplicate uses the device to create a clone of himself. The new duplicate is a less-than-perfect reproduction, being a copy of a copy, and has goals and desires that differ from the original David. Eventually, the second duplicate turns on Angela and the original David, and he has to find a way to stop him. Later, he stumbles upon something that will change his life.
1810542	/m/05yrtj	Free Air	Sinclair Lewis	1919	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This cheerful little road novel, published in 1919, is about Claire Boltwood, who, in the early days of the 20th century, travels by automobile from New York City to the Pacific Northwest, where she falls in love with a nice, down-to-earth young man and gives up her snobbish Estate. (From the Book Stub) From a critical perspective, Free Air is consistent with Sinclair Lewis's lean towards egalitarian politics, which he displays in his other works (most notably in It Can't Happen Here). Examples of his politics in Free Air are found in Lewis's emphasis on the heroic role played by the book's protagonist, Milt Dagget, a working class everyman type. Conversely, Lewis presents nearly every upper-class character in Claire Boltwood's world (including her railroad-mogul father) as being snobby elitists. The story also champions the democratic nature of the automobile, versus the more aristocratic railroad travel. Lewis's showing favoritism towards the freedom, which automobiles would eventually accord the working and middle classes, bolster the egalitarian, democratic aesthetic. Free Air is one of the first novels about the road trip, a subject that the Beats (most notably Jack Kerouac), would build a cult following around in the mid-20th century. Composer Ferde Grofe used the novel as the basis for the music to his adventurous composition Free Air. In the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, set initially in 1920, Jimmy and his girlfriend Pearl are reading Free Air. The 18-year old Chicago prostitute Pearl hopes to head West like the heroine, along with Jimmy.
1812924	/m/05yz4p	Solomon Gursky Was Here	Mordecai Richler	1989	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells of several generations of the fictional Gursky family, who are connected to several disparate events in the history of Canada, including the Franklin Expedition and rum-running. Some fans and critics have cited this as Mordecai Richler's best book, and in terms of scope and style it is unmatched by his other works. The parallels between the Gursky family and the Bronfmans are such that the novel "may be seen as a thinly disguised account of the [Bronfman] family". While Richler himself denied any similarities, "one longtime Bronfman associate put it, 'I don't know why Mordecai bothered to change the names.'"
1813566	/m/05z04l	Sugar Blues	William Dufty			 The book's central argument is that consumption of refined sugar is unnatural and damaging to human health, causing major differences in physical and mental well-being. Dufty even goes so far as to suggest that eliminating refined sugar from the diet of those institutionalized for mental illness could be an effective treatment for some. The sugar industry is criticized for misrepresenting the health and safety data of its products.
1813748	/m/05z0pv	Scarecrow	Matthew Reilly	2003-11	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Majestic-12, a group of the worlds richest men, make up a bounty list of fifteen targets that have to be eliminated before 12 noon of October, 26th. Among the targets is Shane Schofield, who at that moment is on a mission to Siberia with Book II and a group of Marines. Schofield's team is supposed to meet up with two Delta groups, the leaders of the two Delta units also being on M-12's hit list. Schofield unit comes under fire from a group of bounty hunter led by Cedric Wexley and all but Schofield and Book II are killed. Schofield and Book II escape via a hijacked plane owned by a bounty hunter known as the Hungarian. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Schofield's girlfriend Elizabeth Gant leads a group of Marines along with Mother to a cave system where Osama bin Laden's number two man is. Schofield races to Afghanistan so none of the bounty hunters can use Gant to get to him but arrives too late and she is captured by a bounty hunter group known as IG-88, led by Damon "Demon" Larkham. Schofield meets a bounty hunter named Aloysius Knight who has been paid to protect him from harm. Knight and Schofield go to save Gant while Book II and Mother go to London to confront another person on the hit list. Meanwhile, the remaining people on the hit list are being taken out and Schofield's friend David Fairfax goes to help one of them but the man he is going to help is killed. The person that Book II and Mother are attempting to meet is also killed and they, too are almost killed. Schofield, Knight, and Gant disguise themselves as bounty hunters to get into a castle owned by Jonathan Killian to find out more about the bounty hunt. While Knight claims the bounty on two heads, Killian sets a trap for Schofield and Gant, forcing them to escape in one of Killian's cars with Wexley's men in close pursuit, followed by Knight. Schofield goes over a cliff and is presumed dead while Knight and Gant are captured. Mother is picked up by Rufus, Knight's pilot, and goes to help Knight while Schofield is captured by the French and brought to an aircraft carrier to explain to him why he is to be terminated. Gant is murdered and Knight escapes, Gant's final words being for Knight to tell Schofield she would have said yes to his planned proposal. Rufus, Mother, and Knight go to rescue Schofield. It is revealed that Schofield along with the fifteen other targets are the only people who had quick enough reaction to disable a missiles being launched from ships in the Kormoran Project. The plan being for missiles to attack every nation and make it look like its enemies launched the weapon so that a new Cold War will start and M-12 can make more profits from the war. Schofield is rescued before being killed but Knight reveals to him that Gant was murdered. Saddened by Gant's death, Schofield attempts to commit suicide but is stopped by Mother. At the same time, Fairfax and Book II are flown to different ships so that Schofield can disable all of the missiles at the same time. Schofield succeeds and Mother is presumed to have perished, but learns that there was a backup plan and a missile is heading right for Mecca on the first day of Ramadan. Schofield is able to deactivate the missile but in turn, M-12 captures Schofield, Rufus, and Knight. Shofield is about to be killed in the same way and by the same person as Gant was but Mother reveals herself to be alive and Schofield kills Gant's killer while Rufus is injured. Knight and Schofield go to confront Killian and Wexley is killed too. Schofield throws himself and Killian out a window but Knight saves Schofield. Several months later, Knight and Rufus meet the person who hired them, the richest woman on the planet who wanted to be part of M-12 but, as they wouldn't let her, she ruined their plan. It is also revealed that the rest of M-12 died in mysterious ways. Demon and the IG-88 kill Knight's payer as revenge for taking two of their bounties during the hunt. Later, at Mother's house, Schofield receives a letter from Knight telling him to accept Gant's death and move on. Schofield goes to the Marine Corps building and says he's ready for duty again.
1813784	/m/05z0sn	Anvil of Stars	Greg Bear	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 There are two interwoven themes in the novel. The first is the cost of justice. Destroying the race that attempted to destroy humanity (and, it is later revealed, other races) appears to be a simple matter of retaliation. The Killers, when they are discovered, have formidable philosophical defenses in addition to their vast technological resources. They have created hundreds of sentient races, interlocked in a culture of breathtaking complexity and beauty. The representatives of this cooperative of races claim to not be aware of the Killers' true nature. The combined population of these races number into the trillions, all quite possibly innocents who must be murdered if the Law is to be carried out and the Killers destroyed. The human and non-human characters in the book wrestle with this question of whether enacting the Law at such a cost is just, and the moral qualms nearly tear the crew apart in conflict. Author Charles Stross has an alternate interpretation: "If you take Anvil of Stars at face value, it looks like a childish revenge fantasy. But Bear is a subtle writer, and when you start peeling away the layers you find that a very unpleasant tragedy (in the classical sense of the term) nestling inside a much more ambiguous story." Additionally, Bear explores the complementary theme of the moral compromises required to take and wield power. The children create a libertarian society aboard ship, with few rules and regulations. However, as the pressures of enacting the Law (doing the Job, as they call it) escalate, voluntary cooperation begins to break down. The leaders face the decision between allowing their crew continued freedom, which would result in the disintegration of the ship and abandonment of their purpose, or abandoning their libertarian ideals. Hans, the leader at the time, begins to take increasingly autocratic measures to coerce unity. Bear does not take an explicit moral stance in the novel. Hans initiates the destruction of the system, innocents and all, without consulting with the crew. He is presented as dictatorial, ruthless, and possibly complicit in murder. After completion of the Job, he is overthrown during a violent confrontation between his supporters and Martin Gordon, son of Arthur Gordon in Forge of God, a former leader who was a focal point of dissent. Eventually, a third leader, Ariel, is chosen in place of Hans. It is revealed once the system is destroyed that the Killers were in fact still in the system, and had continued to manufacture fleets of self-replicating machines to destroy alien races. However, while the Killers were destroyed and justice served, trillions of what were likely innocents had to die to accomplish this. Bear leaves the human crew torn between relief that their work is complete and their guilt that they were little better than those they had come to destroy. The book is notable for how well it conveys the alienness and colossal scale of the alien home system, as well as the scope and morality of the final battle. The novel also contains a very original gestalt alien race referred to by the humans as 'Brothers', composed of non-sentient worm-like creatures (Cords) that join to form sentient individuals (Braids). The Brothers form a temporary alliance with the human crew, and the similarities and vast differences between the two races is one of the main elements of the novel's second half.
1814064	/m/05z1hm	The Drowned World	J. G. Ballard	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Drowned World opens within the conventions of a hard science fiction novel, as the catastrophe responsible for the apocalypse is explained scientifically – solar radiation has caused the polar ice-caps to melt and worldwide temperature to soar, leaving the cities of northern Europe and America submerged in beautiful and haunting tropical lagoons. Yet Ballard’s novel is thematically more complex than is immediately apparent. Ballard uses the post-apocalyptic world of the story to mirror the collective unconscious desires of the main characters. A theme throughout Ballard’s writing is the idea that human beings construct their surroundings to reflect their unconscious drives. In The Drowned World, however, a natural catastrophe causes the real world to transform itself into a dream landscape, causing the central characters to regress mentally. Set in the year 2145 in a post-apocalyptic and unrecognisable London, 'The Drowned World' is a setting of tropical temperatures, flooding and accelerated evolution. Ballard's story follows the biologist Dr Robert Kerans and his struggles against the devolutionary impulses of the environment. As part of a scientific survey unit sent to map the flora and fauna in the boiling lagoon, the tranquility and banality of their role is soon upheaved by the onset of strange dreams which increasingly plague the survivors' minds. Amidst talk of the army and scientific team moving north away, Hardman, the only other commissioned member of the unit, a 'burly,intelligent but somewhat phlegmatic man of about of about 30' flees the lagoon and instead heads south, a search team unable to find his whereabouts. When the other inhabitants of the lagoon finally flee the searing sun and head north, Kerans and two associates, the beautiful but reclusive Beatrice Dahl and fellow scientist Dr Bodkin settle down in the swamp into an isolated existence. Kerans is still tormented by his psycho-analytical tendencies, ever analysing and debating the regression of the environment into a neo-Triassic period, but the brief quiet is ended by the arrival of Strangman. A chaotic leader of a team of pirates seeking out and looting treasures within the deep, Strangman defies the remaining civilised reasons of Kerans' mind and upheaves the world that the survivors have grown to know. When Strangman and his team drain the lagoon and expose the city beneath, both Kerans and Bodkin are disgusted, the latter attempts to blow up the flood defences and re-flood the area to no avail. With Kerans and Beatrice resigned to his fate, Strangman pursues Bodkin and kills him in revenge. Strangman and his team grow tired and suspicious of Dr Kerans, and with Beatrice now under his web of control, Kerans is imprisoned and subjected to bizarre and tribalistic rituals intended to kill him. Kerans survives, though severely weakened by the ordeals, and attempts to save Beatrice from her own imprisonment to little avail. With the doctor and Beatrice facing the gun point of Strangman and his men and no apparent excuse, the army return to save them. With no reason and evidence to prosecute Strangman, the authorities co-operate with the captain, and Kerans once more grows frustrated by the inaction, finally taking a stand and succeeding in re-flooding the lagoon where Bodkin had failed. Wounded and weak, the doctor flees the lagoon and heads south without aim, meeting the frail and blind figure of Hardman along the way. Though he aids Hardman back to some amount of strength he soon continues onwards on his travels south, with little idea of an aim or objective, a "second Adam searching for the forgotten paradise of the reborn Sun'.
1816557	/m/05z7ds	Fearful Symmetries	S. Andrew Swann		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nohar is living in a cabin in the woods when he is approached by a lawyer to find a missing moreau. Nohar turns the case down and the lawyer leaves. Soon after, the cabin is assaulted by a para-military team. Nohar escapes with his life and on the run, tries to find the moreau and discover why his life was threatened.
1817170	/m/05z910	The Last Yankee	Arthur Miller			 The Last Yankee takes place in a present-day state mental hospital, located somewhere in New England. Patricia Hamilton is recovering from depression, and this may be the day she feels strong enough to go home. But a visit from her husband Leroy, a descendant of one of America's founding fathers (but referred to as a "Swamp Yankee"), coincides with that of a successful businessman, John Frick, who has come to see his newly-admitted wife, Karen. A clash of values and emotions upsets them all. It is a play in two parts which focuses on the relationships of two couples - Leroy and Patricia Hamilton, married many years with seven children, and John and Karen Frick, a childless couple. Both women are patients at a mental institution, and act one sees the two men meet for the first time in the waiting room on visitors day. Karen has not long been institutionalised, and Frick is having a difficult time coping with her mental illness, while Patricia has been in and out of institutions for many years. The two men struggle to communicate under the circumstances, though even this breaks down in the face of their respective situations. Patricia and Karen have become friendly during their time together in the ward, and act two sees the four characters brought together inside, where a picture emerges of a society whose members feel obscurely cheated and where success is equated with failure. `A short piece in length, but a miniature masterpiece.
1818842	/m/05zdx0	Conspiracy of Fools	Kurt Eichenwald			 Conspiracy of Fools tells the story of the 2001 collapse of Enron. Enron's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Andrew Fastow is depicted as voraciously greedy, using front corporations and partnerships, paying himself "management" and "consultant" fees as if he were an outsider, all while cooking Enron's books to show fictitious profits. In the 1980s there were questionable activities at the company, but the bulk of the events depicted in the book occur from 1997 onward and led to Enron's collapse. In addition to Fastow, there are stories of the complicity of Enron's accountants (at Arthur Andersen), their lawyers (internal and external), the senior management (Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling), Fastow's partner in many of his deals, Michael Kopper, and Enron's board of directors. The picture that emerges of Enron is that of an out-of-control corporate culture that ignored the basic principles of business, allowing it to be manipulated by greedy incompetents for their own personal gain. The focus on reporting profits — rather than actually making money — created a situation that both encouraged and enabled a small group of insider criminals to "game the system". Enron's business losses were masked by accounting tricks, while the insiders raked off huge "profits" and bonuses for themselves. The game was eventually undone by huge losses, bad investments and the structure of the outside partnerships themselves, the solvency of which depended on ever-rising Enron stock prices. When Enron's stock began to fall, the financial structures imploded, leaving Enron with billions of dollars in losses and few assets.
1819834	/m/05zgs5	Thud!	Terry Pratchett	2005	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As the book opens, a dwarven demagogue, Grag Hamcrusher, is apparently murdered. Ethnic tensions between Ankh-Morpork's troll and dwarf communities mount in the buildup to the anniversary of the Battle Of Koom Valley an ancient battle where trolls and dwarves seemingly ambushed each other. Lord Vetinari convinces Commander Vimes to interview a vampire applicant to the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. The new recruit, Lance-Constable Salacia "Sally" von Humpeding, along with Sergeant Angua and Captain Carrot, is attached to the investigation surrounding Hamcrusher's death. Meanwhile, Corporal Nobbs and Sergeant Colon begin an investigation into the theft of the fifty-foot painting, The Battle of Koom Valley by the insane artist Methodia Rascal, from a city art gallery. Most of the populace believe the painting holds clues to a treasure hidden in Koom Valley. Nobbs has a new girlfriend, exotic dancer Tawneee; Nobby first caught her eye when slipping an IOU into her garter. Other subplots involve the tension between vampires and werewolves (new recruit Lance-Constable von Humpeding and Sergeant Angua), and the presence of Vetinari's auditor, A.E. Pessimal, in the Watch House. Vimes finds himself pressured by Lord Vetinari to solve the murder quickly, before inter-species war erupts in Ankh-Morpork. Vimes and Sergeant Angua visit the dwarves' under-city mine, where a nervous dwarf named Helmclever draws a mysterious sign in the spilled coffee on his desk. In a fit of his particular brand of omnidirectional anger, Vimes veers off into the mine where he cuts himself, he supposes, on a locked door. Later, he convinces the deep down dwarves to allow Captain Carrot to be the "smelter" who looks for the truth of the murder. When Carrot tries to find that truth, however, he is shown a body that was mutilated after death, and a confusing patch of clues. Angua discovers that a troll really was in the mine at the time of the murder, much to the consternation and fear of the dwarves who claimed a troll did the killing. This troll turns out to be Brick, who is a gutter troll of the lowest sort, addicted to Troll drugs beginning with "S," (such as Slab, Scrape, Slice, Slide etc.) and who becomes the protege of Sergeant Detritus. Angua and Sally soon discover four more bodies in the mine, dwarves clearly murdered by other dwarves. One of these dwarves used his own blood to scrawl yet another mysterious rune on the back of a door in the mine—the same door that Commander Vimes accidentally 'cut' himself on the other side of. The Deep-Downers flee for the mountains, taking the talking cube they found at the bottom of Methodia Rascal's well, and the painting of Koom Valley. As a parting shot, they send a squad of their guards to invade the Vimes/Ramkin family mansion and attempt to murder Lady Sybil Ramkin and Young Sam. The two survive unharmed, thanks to the fighting talents of Vimes and the family butler, Willikins, as well as a dwarf being foolish enough to provoke Sybil's dragons. Vimes, along with family and several members of the Watch, travels to Koom Valley. He believes he is pursuing justice, but an astute troll king named Mr. Shine and a bright young grag named Bashfulsson know that Vimes is carrying the Summoning Dark, the quasi-demonic entity that wreaks vengeance on dwarves who have done evil in the sight of other dwarves. Vimes acquired the Summoning Dark when he touched the cursed door in the city mine, but his own internal watchman proves stronger than it is. Vimes soon discovers the real secret of Koom Valley: the trolls and dwarves did not intend war, but had originally come to Koom Valley to broker peace. Weather conspired against them and after a thick fog caused a "double ambush", a flash flood carried them into the caverns below. The Deep-Downers intended to destroy the evidence of this attempt at peace to continue the war between troll and dwarf and had sought out the cave where the surviving trolls and dwarfs had been washed. Preserved as a form of stalagmite, troll and dwarf had died as friends in the cavern while the ancient troll king and dwarf king played a game of Thud. As the book ends, the tomb of the dead trolls and dwarves is opened to the public, in the hope that the two races will learn to end their centuries of animosity. Also, back in Ankh-Morpork, the equipment that the Deep-Downers had abruptly left behind in their haste, has been confiscated, under the clause of eminent domain by Lord Vetinari, seeing them as useful for his future "Undertaking" project.
1819957	/m/05zh32	The Gods of Mars	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1918	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04chq5": "Planetary romance", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After John Carter's arrival, a boat of Green Martians on the River Iss are ambushed by the previously unknown Plant Men. The lone survivor is his friend Tars Tarkas, the Jeddak of Thark, who has taken the pilgrimage to the Valley Dor to find Carter. Having saved their own lives, Carter and Tars Tarkas discover that the Therns, a white-skinned race of self-proclaimed gods, have for eons deceived the Barsoomians elsewhere by disseminating that the pilgrimage to the Valley Dor is a journey to paradise. Most arrivals are killed by the beasts of Valley, and the survivors enslaved by Therns. Carter and Tars Tarkas rescue Thuvia, a slave girl, and attempt to escape, capitalizing on the confusion caused by an attack by the Black Pirates of Barsoom upon the Therns. During the attack, Tars Tarkas and Thuvia hijack a Black Pirate flier, while Carter fights his way aboard another, killing all but one of the Pirates, and rescuing a captive Thern princess. From the captured Pirate Xodar, Carter learns that the Black Pirates, called the "First Born", also think of themselves as gods, and accordingly prey upon the Therns; and additionally identifies the captive Thern as Phaidor, daughter of the "Holy Hekkador" (high priest) of the Therns. When their flier is recaptured by the First Born and taken to their realm of Omean, Carter is taken before Issus, the self-proclaimed goddess of Barsoom, who dictates the Therns through secret communications which they mistake for divine revelation. Issus takes Phaidor as a handmaiden for one Martian year; whereas Carter is imprisoned, with Xodar as his slave as punishment for being defeated by Carter. Thereafter Carter treats him with honor, and thus gains his friendship. In prison, they encounter a young man later identified as Carter's son Carthoris, with whom Carter is taken to a series of games wherein the previous year's handmaidens are eaten by Issus and her nobles. Carter leads a revolt of the prisoners, killing many of the First Born; and upon the suppression of their revolt, he and Carthoris escape via underground tunnels, and give themselves to guards unacquainted with the revolt to be returned to their prison. Upon hearing of the revolt, Xodar rejects Issus’ divinity and joins the others in escape. Upon later abandoning their aircraft, they encounter Thuvia, who describes the capture of Tars Tarkas by the green warriors of Warhoon (a clan rival to his own). Carter goes to rescue Tars Tarkas, but is discovered by his enemies. After a chase, Thuvia is sent on alone mounted while the men attempt a stand against the Warhoons. They are rescued by the Heliumetic navy; but do not find Thuvia. Commanding one of the warships is Carter’s friend Kantos Kan; but the fleet is commanded by Zat Arras, a Jed (chieftain) of the hostile client state of Zodanga, and Carter is suspected of returning from Valley Dor, which is punishable by death. Tardos Mors, the Jeddak of Helium, and Mors Kajak, the Jed of Hastor (the grandfather and father, respectively, of Dejah Thoris, and thus Carter’s in-laws) are absent from Helium, having led fleets in search of Carthoris. Later, Carter discovers that Dejah Thoris may have taken the pilgrimage to the Valley Dor to find him. Upon returning to Helium, Carter is tried for heresy by the Zodangans; but the people of Helium do not tolerate this, and Carter is held prisoner for 365 days until his son frees him. Thereafter he goes to rescue Dejah Thoris; but is kidnapped by the Zodangans. Carter refuses Zat Arras’ offer of freedom in exchange for endorsing Zat Arras as Jeddak of Helium, and is imprisoned. After half a (Barsoomian) year, Carter escapes, and embarks to Omean, with secretly raised troop levies, ships, and soldiers lent by Tars Tarkas. Near Omean Carter is challenged first by the Therns; secondly by Zat Arras; and lastly by the First Born, whereupon Carter causes the Therns and First Born to fight one another, and the Heliumetic crews of the Zodangan fleet mutiny in support of Carter. Thereafter the Heliumites and Tharks defeat the First Born, and Issus herself is killed; but Dejah Thoris, Thuvia, and Phaidor are imprisoned in the Temple of the Sun, of whose rooms each opens only once per year. Immediately before their room closes, Phaidor attempts to kill Dejah Thoris, and her success or failure are left unknown. The story is thence continued in the third book of Burroughs’ Martian series, The Warlord of Mars.
1819976	/m/05zh5k	The Warlord of Mars	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1919	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04chq5": "Planetary romance", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 John Carter discovers that a First Born knows the secret of the Temple of the Sun and he and the Holy Hekkador Matai Shang want to rescue the Holy Thern's daughter, who is imprisoned with Dejah Thoris and another Barsoomian princess, Thuvia of Ptarth. John Carter follows them in the hope of liberating his beloved wife. His antagonists flee to the north, taking the three women along. Thereafter John Carter follows them untiring into the north polar regions where he discovers more fantastic creatures and ancient, mysterious Martian races. These he overcomes in battle, and is later proclaimed "Warlord of Barsoom" by his allies. This book is the last to feature Tars Tarkas, John Carter's ally, in any major role; indeed, the green Barsoomians of whom Tars Tarkas is an oligarch disappear altogether from most of the later novels.
1821036	/m/05zkxy	Turnabout	Margaret Haddix		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 2001, 100-year-old Amelia Hazelwood was living in a nursing home, sick and tired of life. Content to die, she signs a document given to her by doctors at the nursing home with very little awareness as to what it is. However, she gradually begins to change soon afterward, beginning with the realization that she no longer needs her hearing aid and is able to swing her legs over the side of her bed again. She quickly learns that she and several other nursing home residents had signed an agreement with Dr. Jimson and Dr. Reed to participate in a study for an experimental drug (PT-1) that reverses the effect of aging by making telomeres grow. All the residents at the nursing home had been given the drug and are now growing younger each day. However, because the drug is experimental, it must be kept a secret. While a second chance at life seems wonderful, when Amelia's first birthday while moving back in time arrives, she finds she cannot remember anything from the last year of her life when she was growing older. The residents realize that as they grow younger, their previous memories are disappearing and being rewritten with new memories from growing younger, even though the brain has plenty of chromosomes left for memory. It's then found out that it's like recording while hitting the rewind button. One man, afraid of forgetting his beloved wife's funeral where so many people said such nice things, is the first to request the Cure, a secondary drug that will halt his age at that exact moment. While the Cure works successfully on lab mice, the man immediately shrivels up, dies, and turns into dust when it is administered to him. While the doctors continue to secretly find a way to make the Cure work on humans with little success, Amelia and a friend, Anny Beth, decide to leave the nursing home and live their lives together and experience the world as they growing younger and younger. They find themselves constantly on the move, as with each year, their un-aging bodies prevent them from keeping the drug a secret. By the time Amelia, now called Melly, is sixteen and Anny Beth is eighteen, they become increasingly anxious that they will soon be unable to live on their own and become infants. With the doctors now deceased and their descendants still trying to make the Cure work, Melly and Anny Beth must find someone they can trust with their story and will take care of them when the time comes. Even more distressing is when Melly and Anny Beth realize someone they do not know named A.J. Hazelwood is trying to locate them for information they don't want to disclose. As Melly and Anny Beth try to stay one-step ahead of the mysterious Annabeth J'Amelia "A.J." Hazelwood, they are surprised to learn that she is a descendent of both of them and had been researching her family history. The two decide to take a chance and reveal the truth regarding their identities to A.J., who eventually believes them and agrees to accept responsibility for their well-being as they unage into childhood again.
1823283	/m/05zs95	Rainbow Valley	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1919	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Anne Shirley has now been married to Gilbert Blythe for 15 years, and the couple have six children: Jem, Walter, Nan, Di, Shirley, and Rilla. After a holiday in Europe, Anne returns to the news that a new minister has arrived in Glen St. Mary. John Meredith is a widower with four young children: Jerry, Faith, Una, and Carl. The children have not been properly brought up since the death of their mother, with only their absent-minded father (who is easily absorbed by matters of theology) and their old, bitter, and partially deaf Aunt Martha to take care of them. The children are considered wild and mischievous by many of the families in the village (who tend only to hear about the Meredith children when they have gotten into some kind of scrape), causing them to question Mr. Meredith's parenting skills and his suitability as a minister. For most of the book, only the Blythes know of the Meredith children's loyalty and kindness. They rescue an orphaned girl, Mary Vance, from starvation, and Una finds a home for her with Mrs. Marshall Elliot. When the children get into trouble, Faith sometimes tries to explain their behavior to the townsfolk, which generally causes an even bigger scandal. The Merediths, Blythes, and Mary Vance often play in a hollow called Rainbow Valley, which becomes a gathering place for the children in the book. Jem Blythe tries to help the Merediths behave better by forming the "Good-Conduct Club", in which the Merediths punish themselves for misdeeds. Their self-imposed punishments lead to Carl becoming very ill with pneumonia after spending hours in a graveyard on a wet night, and to Una fainting in church after fasting all day. When this happens, John Meredith is wracked with guilt over his failings as a father. Mr. Meredith realizes that he should marry again and give the children a mother, though he has always thought he will never love anyone again as he did his late wife. He is surprised to find that he has fallen in love with Rosemary West, a woman in her late thirties who lives with her sister Ellen, who is ten years older. John proposes marriage to Rosemary, but Ellen forbids Rosemary to accept, as years earlier they had promised each other never to leave the other following the deaths of their parents. However, Ellen eventually reunites with her childhood beau, Norman Douglas, and asks Rosemary to release her from her promise so she can marry Norman. Rosemary agrees, but now thinks that John Meredith hates her. Una overhears her father expressing feelings for Rosemary and goes to ask Rosemary to marry her father despite her misgivings about stepmothers, who Mary Vance has told her are always mean. Rosemary sets her mind at ease and agrees to speak to John Meredith again. They become engaged, and Rosemary and Ellen plan a double wedding in the fall.
1825433	/m/05zxsh	La Foire aux immortels	Enki Bilal		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 Set in the year 2023, the book follows Alcide Nikopol return to Paris after spending 30 years frozen in space as a punishment for dodging the draft. The Paris he once knew is now ruled by fascist dictator J. F. Choublanc, the city is swarming with aliens, decaying and succumbing to chaos. At the same time, a flying pyramid-shaped space craft is hovering over Paris. It is inhabited by Egyptian gods who ask for fuel from the local authorities, as their pyramid vessel has run out of gas. In return for this service Choublanc wants immortality from the gods. One renegade god, Horus, meets up with the disillusioned Nikopol in the Metro, and Nikopol agrees to allow Horus control of his body. Together they go on a journey to oppose the corrupt and megalomaniacal powers of the 21st century.
1825444	/m/05zxt7	La Femme piège	Enki Bilal	1986		 The story centers around Jill Bioskop, a journalist woman with blue hair and white skin whose story becomes involved with that of Alcide Nikopol and the Egyptian god Horus. The story continues two years after Nikopol is admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Paris. Nikopol suddenly stops quoting Baudelaire after the discovery of a block of concrete, which contains the immortal body of Horus. At the same time in London, Jill is working on an article about the Afro-Pakistian and Zuben'Ubisch minority conflicts in the suburbs of Chelsea. While working on her Script-Walker she receives a phone call from John, a Alpheratzish friend and informant. During that phone call John is murdered by four Afro-Pakistiani but before he dies, he tells Jill about an article in De Morgen. After having made her way to the phonebooth and discovered John's body, Jill returns to her hotel room where she takes two red pills of HLV, John's drug. The drug erases John from Jill's memory. Meanwhile the news media are reporting about the block of concrete and the liberation of Horus, which was followed by the brutal murder of the workers who freed him onboard of the space vessel Europe I. Upon hearing this news, Jeff Wynatt, a friend of Jill Bioskop and former journalist, hurries towards the hotel where Jill is staying. He finds her in a deep coma and wakes her with cold water. Afterwards during a dinner in a restaurant Jeff asks Jill to cover the news of the return of Europe I, which is expected to arrive in a few days in Berlin. Jeff also says that he might visit Jill once she is in Berlin, which is something she didn't want to hear. Later that evening in the hotel room Jill uses the antenna of the scripwalker to kill Jeff. After she has cleaned up, she takes another red HLV pill to erase everything from her memory. Alcide Nikopol Jr. receives a report from his father's psychiatrist which says that Nikopol has fully recovered from his alleged mental illness, but that he hasn't accepted the fact yet. However, Nikopol is shown to cover the room observation camera while making a deal with the nurse about taking his pills for a kiss, which can be interpreted in several ways. Jill travels with an air taxi to Berlin and during the flight she discovers in her pocket the news paper article that John had told her about before he was murdered. She also learns that what she is writing on her scriptwalker is printed on an old fax at the editorial office of De Morgen. The other Egyptian gods and the pyramid are somewhere in the neighbourhood of Mars when they discover that the pyramid is missing a block of concrete. Exactly the piece of concrete which was used for Horus's punishment. Jill arrives at Mauer Palast Hotel in Berlin and says goodbye to Nick, the taxi driver. When she walks through the lobby of the hotel she feels Nick's eyes. On her room she orders dinner and reviews the notes from the scriptwalker. During the night Nick tries to sneak into Jill's bed which results in another murder with the antenna of the scriptwalker followed by a red pill. The next day Jill meets another journalist, Ivan Vabek, and they drink a cup of coffee in the bar of the hotel. Ivan tells about a conflict in Berlin called the Egg War, of which he thinks every journalist must cover at least once in his or her career. He offers Jill a front row spot and a dinner invitation. Jill accepts the invitation and is transported by a local boy to the spot where she can watch the Egg War herself. Next evening Jill tries to get access to the space port of Berlin, but everybody is denied access. The government inquires the only survivor of Europe I which is in fact controlled by Horus. Horus leaves the human body of the survivor he had taken and murders everybody who was questioning him. He finds Ivan Vabek and takes control of his body. Nikopol has followed these events with his telepathic cat and is preparing to leave the hospital and travel to Berlin. Also travelling to Berlin is John, Jill's alien friend who was murdered in the beginning of the story. During a dinner with Ivan, Jill notices that something has changed in him, especially his voice. While in Ivan's room, Ivan is fighting the spirit of Horus resulting in Horus leaving his body. Once more Jill is left back with another dead body and the usual red pill to erase it from her memory. Nikopol arrives at the desk of Mauer Palast, and he asks for a room. Once in the room, Nikopol speaks to Horus asking him to appear. Horus appears and during a glass of champagne, they discuss an agreement. John is arriving in the railway station of Berlin, where the police demands him to come with them. John knocks down three police men and flees, but is shot in the back three times...
1825884	/m/05zz1h	Jacob's Hands; A Fable	Aldous Huxley			 Jacob Ericson is a shy, enigmatic, and somewhat inept ranch hand who works for crotchety Professor Carter and his crippled daughter Sharon, on a ranch in the California Mojave Desert in the 1920s. One day he learns that his hands possess the mysterious gift of healing, a gift he uses to cure animals, which he adores. Sharon, whom he also adores, then persuades him to heal her. When he successfully cures her, his gift is quickly exploited and the boundaries of his charm and naivete begin to stretch. First he offers his healing powers for free at a church in Los Angeles, where he has gone in pursuit of Sharon after she fled her father and the ranch to follow her dreams of stardom. Jacob and Sharon cross paths when they work for the same pair of exploitative showmen. Jacob stays with the seedy stage show only because Sharon is close by. It is when Jacob's gift is recruited to heal Earl Medwin, an eccentric, ailing young millionaire, that the love and security for which he has worked so hard begin to evaporate.
1826957	/m/05_1sc	The Artemis Fowl Files	Eoin Colfer	2004-10-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Artemis Fowl lures Mulch Diggums, a dwarf, to work with him to steal a tiara for a laser he is developing. A band of other dwarfs, using a circus as their cover have already stolen the tiara. The other dwarfs, led by Sergei the Significant, are planning to sell it to a jewellery fence. Captain Holly Short is on a break pending a tribunal after the Fowl Manor Incident, but Foaly tells her that the LEP have been alerted by Mulch Diggum's stolen helmet, about Artemis Fowl. Holly immediately heads to Ireland and confronts the dwarfs. Soon after Holly has tagged all of the dwarfs in Sergei's band, she chases Artemis and Mulch. Mulch and Artemis soon split with Artemis promising to write Mulch a cheque for the tiara. Holly chases after Artemis and demands the tiara and a LEP helmet from him. Artemis gives her the LEP helmet but keeps the tiara. Holly forces Artemis to give her the tiara, and then he hands it over. Later on we learn that Artemis switched the gemstone in the tiara with a fake one. He gives the real one to his mother because it reminds her of Artemis's father, specifically, the color of his eyes.
1827695	/m/05_42p	The Bluest Eye	Toni Morrison	1970	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with a prologue relating a paragraph-long Dick and Jane tale in which none of Jane's family will agree to play with her until a friend comes along at last. The tale is then repeated two times, each time with less punctuation or fewer spaces between words, until finally all the words are squashed together. The novel is alternately narrated in first-person by Claudia MacTeer and in third-person omniscient, focusing on various other characters. 9-year-old Claudia and her 10-year-old sister, Frieda, live in Lorain, Ohio with their parents, who take two other people into their home: Mr. Henry, a tenant, and Pecola Breedlove, a temporary foster child whose house has been burned down by her wildly (and widely-gossiped) unstable father. Pecola is a quiet, passive young girl with a hard life, and whose parents are constantly fighting, both physically and verbally. Pecola is continually being told and reminded of what an "ugly" girl she is, thus fueling her desire to be white with blue eyes. Claudia is given a white baby doll to play with and is frequently told how lovely it is, though she despises and spitefully dismantles it. Unlike Pecola, Claudia resists the white racial standard in her society, is aggressive and determined, and has a strict but ultimately stable family. While living in the MacTeer household, Pecola experiences menarche, bringing up the first of the book's many themes of sexuality and adulthood. Likewise, ideas of beauty, particularly those relating to racial and class characteristics, are a major theme in this book. Insults or praises toward physical appearance are often given in racial terms. For example, a light-skinned student named Maureen Peal is shown favoritism at school. Claudia and Frieda initially feel both hatred and attraction toward Maureen. When they finally befriend her after finding Pecola bullied by a group of boys, though, Maureen herself insults Pecola regarding rumors about her father and the MacTeer girls furiously chase Maureen away. Throughout the novel, it is revealed through flashbacks that not only Pecola but also her dysfunctional parents had a life full of hatred and hardships. Her mother, Pauline, feels alive and happy only when she is working for a rich, white family who affectionately call her "Polly." Pecola's father, Cholly, is a drunk who was left with his aunt when he was young but later ran away to find his father, who ended up wanting nothing to do with him. Equally troubling to Cholly as a young man was his loss of virginity, interrupted by a pair of white men who humiliatingly forced Cholly to continue having sex in their presence. By the time of the story's current setting, both Pauline and Cholly have by now lost the tender and affectionate love they once had for each other in their youth. There is a contrast between the world shown in the cinema and the one in which Pauline is a servant, as well as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant society and the existence the main characters live in. Most chapters' titles are extracts from the Dick and Jane paragraph in the novel's prologue, presenting a white family that may be contrasted with Pecola's; perhaps to incite discomfort, the chapter titles contain much sudden repetition of words or phrases, many cut-off words, and no interword separations. One day while Pecola is doing dishes, her intoxicated father rapes her. His motives are unclear and confusing, seemingly a combination of both love and hate. Cholly flees after the second time he rapes Pecola, leaving her pregnant. Claudia and Frieda are the only two in the community that want for Pecola's child to survive. Consequently, they give up money they had been saving to buy and plant marigold seeds with the superstitious hope that if the flowers bloom, Pecola's baby will live. The marigolds never bloom and Pecola's child, who is born prematurely, dies. Near the novel's end, a dialogue is presented between two sides of Pecola's own imagination, in which she indicates at strangely positive feeling about her rape by her father; in this inner conversation, Pecola converses as though her wish has been granted: she believes that she now has blue eyes. Claudia, as narrator a final time, describes Pecola's insanity and suggests that Cholly (who has since died) may have shown Pecola the only love he could by raping her. Claudia lastly laments on her belief that the whole community, herself included, have used Pecola as a sort of scapegoat to make themselves feel prettier and happier.
1828832	/m/05_71s	The Valley of Horses	Jean M. Auel	1982-04-13	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book starts off from the events at the end of The Clan of the Cave Bear detailing the life of a young Cro-Magnon woman named Ayla who has just been exiled from the Clan, the band of Neanderthals who had raised her from early childhood. Ayla now searches for her own people, whom the Clan refer to as "the Others". In a parallel narrative, Jondalar, a young Cro-Magnon man of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, accompanies his impetuous younger half-brother Thonolan on a traditional rite of passage called the Great Journey. In these episodes, we learn of the Cro-Magnon's neolithic nature religion, centered on the worship of the Great Mother of All, and follow their adventures and sexual exploits. It is also through these episodes that the animosity, verging on hatred, between the Others and the Clan (whom they refer to derogatorily as "flatheads") is introduced. The Others have repeatedly persecuted the Clan, taking land and resources, but justify it by classing them as animals. However, over the course of his adventures, Jondalar starts to question this prejudice, noting that no other animals have fire, tools or communicate intelligently, nor are they actively hated or attacked-as-sport by his people. Ayla, alone and ritually ostracized from the only people she has ever known, travels steadily from the Beran Sea peninsular home of her former tribe north for around half a year until finding the book's titular valley sunk deep into the windy landscape of the periglacial loess steppes in Ukraine. Worried that she might never find the Others, she begins to prepare for winter. Finding a suitable cave and many conveniences in the valley, she establishes a comfortable but lonely life there. Her desire for companionship leads her to tame a filly whose mother she had killed, naming her Whinney. She also takes in and treats an injured cave lion cub, which she names Baby. In the course of their journey, Jondalar and Thonolan have met women and hope to settle with them, but Thonolan's mate dies in childbirth and Jondalar feels he is not really in love with his woman friend. They continue on their journey and meet up with the Mamutoi people, planning to join them later in the year. Jondalar and Ayla meet when Thonolan is killed by a cave lion—Baby, now fully grown and with a mate of his own. Ayla heals Jondalar's injuries and they begin to learn to communicate and get to know each other. Jondalar overcomes his inbred prejudice against the Clan and Ayla learns that all her peculiarities which confused and angered the Clan are actually fully accepted and encouraged by the Others. The two fall in love as the book nears its end, and decide to leave the Valley of Horses and explore regions around the valley Ayla has not yet investigated.
1828929	/m/05_795	Tiger Eyes	Judy Blume	1981	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Davey Wexler, along with her mother, Gwen, and her little brother, Jason, has just attended the funeral of her father, Adam, who was shot to death in a holdup at their 7-Eleven convenience store in Atlantic City. After lying in bed for days on end and not eating, she starts her sophomore year of high school, but ends up passing out three days in a row. Davey's mother, Gwen, then decides they needed to get away for a couple of weeks, so they take up an offer from Adam's older sister, Bitsy, and her husband Walter, to come stay with them in Los Alamos, New Mexico. However, a few days before they were scheduled to leave, Gwen gets news that their store was further vandalized, and she decides they're going to stay longer. It turns out to be pretty much the entire school year. While there, Bitsy and Walter, who do not have children and were never able to have them, start treating Davey and Jason like their own, which eventually creates tension between Davey and the both of them when they won't let her do a number of things out of fear of her getting hurt or killed, and more so when her mother just sits back and allow it to happen. Meanwhile, as Davey explores the town on her aunt's bicycle, she goes to a canyon and after climbing down she runs into an older boy who calls himself Wolf. Davey calls herself Tiger when they introduce each other. She also becomes a candy striper at the hospital with her new friend, Jane, and meets a cancer patient who turns out to be the father of Wolf. The inspiration from Wolf and his father changes Davey for the better. Another story is Jane's alcoholism and Davey's desire to help her get out of it. Also, in three different parts Davey describes the evening her father was shot and killed, which causes her in at least one part of the book to completely freak out when Jason experiences a nosebleed from the altitude. She carries a paper bag with her, which is revealed to contain the clothing she was wearing when she found her father and cradled him all the way to his death. The clothing was soaked with his blood. She eventually buries it and a bread knife she was carrying for self-defense in a cave in the canyon she met Wolf in. Eventually, against Bitsy's wishes, Gwen decides to return the family to Atlantic City to begin a new life, so Walter helps them buy a car for the trip home. Once they're back home, Davey often wonders if anyone will know how much she had changed, particularly her friend, Laina, and her boyfriend, Hugh, then also has the realization that some changes happen deep down and only you know about them.
1829395	/m/05_8mq	Knowledge of Angels	Jill Paton Walsh	1994	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jill Paton Walsh writes At opposite ends of Grandinsula, a remote pre-reformation Christian island, shepherds find a creature with strange footprints stealing their lambs, and fisherman find a swimmer near exhaustion struggling towards the shore. The child cannot stand, eat or speak like a human being; the swimmer says he is a prince in the unheard of land of Aclar, and declares himself to be an atheist. Severo, Cardinal and Prince of the island, is confronted by a double conundrum. Could an atheist be in good faith? Not if the knowledge of God is inborn; then the atheist must once have known God, and reneged on the knowledge. If he is a renegade from the truth, he must be burned as a heretic; but Severo would dearly like to save him. How could it be found out whether everyone has inborn knowledge of God, since the teaching of the Church as best known to the greatest scholar on the island is unclear? Perhaps by teaching the wolf-child to speak, and then asking her... That will take time. Meanwhile, it is worth while trying to demonstrate the truth of God to the mysterious atheist in argument. What becomes of the argument, of the atheist, and of the wild child, and the effect of their fates on Severo, and the islanders who come in contact with either the Prince of Aclar, or the ferocious child Amara makes up the thread of the story. This is a fable about tolerance, and its conflict with moral certainty.
1829447	/m/05_8rz	The Mammoth Hunters	Jean M. Auel	1985-12-21	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This book picks up where The Valley of Horses ends; Ayla and Jondalar, meet a group known as the Mamutoi, or Mammoth Hunters, with whom they live for a period of time. As the group's name suggests, their hosts rely on mammoth not only for food but also for building materials and a number of other commodities - and indeed for spiritual sustenance. The protagonists make their home with the Lion Camp of the Mammoth Hunters, which features a number of respected Mamutoi. Wisest of their nation is Old Mamut, their eldest shaman and the leader of the entire Mamutoi priesthood, who becomes Ayla's mentor and colleague in the visionary and esoteric fields of thought. Observing Ayla's affinity with horses and wolves, Mamut begins to introduce her into the ranks of the Mamuti (mystics). Mamut is also one of the first to become aware of Ayla's unique upbringing. Many years ago, while on the Journey that all young men take for a [rite of passage], he broke his arm, and was healed by the medicine woman of Ayla's Neanderthal clan (the grandmother of Ayla's adoptive mother Iza). This story is referenced in Clan of the Cave Bear as the Neanderthals rationalize Ayla's behavior in terms of what they know about "the Others" (Cro-Magnon). Mamut learned some of the Clan sign language during that stay, and became aware of the fact that the Clan are human (as opposed to other animals, as is the common opinion of most of his people). Also within the Lion Camp is a six-year-old boy named Rydag who, like Ayla's lost son Durc, is half Clan and half Other. He was adopted by the headman's mate, Nezzie, when his mother died giving birth to him. He cannot speak, having the same vocal limitations as the Clan, but he also has their ancestral memories. Ayla quickly discovers this and teaches him, and the rest of the Lion Camp, the Clan sign language. Rydag is a sickly child, having a heart defect which limits him from even playing like the other children of the Camp. Many Mamutoi regard him as an animal, but Ayla and the Lion Camp are vehement in their defence of him. Rydag's intelligence, maturity and wit endear him to Jondalar as well, who learns to overcome his cultural prejudice towards Clan and half-Clan people. More so than any other book in the Earth's Children series, The Mammoth Hunters relies on the tension created by the relationships between the characters to create a storyline. Ayla is susceptible to being deceived or confused; she was brought up among essentially honest people who due to their visual language are incapable of deception. She also does not know that when a man asks her to "share Pleasures" with him, she has the option of refusing, since Clan women did not. Thus, there are a number of communication failures in her relationships with members of more complex societies, especially with Jondalar, who is obstinate and passionate. Jondalar, a Zelandoni, is a foreigner among the Mamutoi, and Ayla's acceptance in their society makes him feel separated from her. The primary conflict is a love triangle between Jondalar, Ayla, and Lion Camp member Ranec. Ayla is attracted to Ranec, shares "Pleasures" with him a few times, and comes close to marrying him before several last-minute revelations reunite the former pair. Some fans have criticized author Jean Auel for making the book somewhat of a soap opera compared to her other works. The author also uses the same technique (long minutely precise descriptive passages) for common sexual activity as she uses for stone age technology (e.g. flint-shaping). Nonetheless, many readers report having enjoyed the book. At the end of this novel, Ayla and Jondalar leave for the year-long return journey to Jondalar's people, the Zelandonii, a journey detailed in The Plains of Passage and continued in The Shelters of Stone. As in all her books, Auel's archaeological research is detailed, and the huts of mammoth bones which she describes the Mamutoi building are based on real finds. Similar finds, called Tuns, may be the source of ancient Celtic myths about the "Little People".
1830064	/m/05_bss	What the Butler Saw	Joe Orton			 ; Characters * Dr. Prentice * Geraldine Barclay * Mrs Prentice * Nicholas Beckett * Dr Rance * Sergeant Match The play consists of two acts, and revolves around a Dr. Prentice, a psychiatrist attempting to seduce his attractive prospective secretary, Geraldine Barclay. The play opens with the doctor examining Geraldine Barclay in a job interview. As part of the interview, he convinces her to undress. The situation becomes more intense during Dr. Prentice's supposed "interview" with Geraldine Barclay when Mrs Prentice enters. When his wife enters, he attempts to cover up his activity by hiding the girl behind a curtain. His wife, however, is also being seduced and blackmailed by a Nicholas Beckett. She therefore promises Nicholas the post as secretary, which adds further confusion, including Nicholas and Geraldine dressing as the opposite sex. Dr. Prentice's clinic is then faced by a government inspection. The inspection, led by Dr. Rance, reveals the chaos in the clinic. Dr. Rance talks about how he will use the situation to develop a new book: "The final chapters of my book are knitting together: incest, buggery, outrageous women and strange love-cults catering for depraved appetites. All the fashionable bric-a-brac." A penis ("the missing parts of Sir Winston Churchill") is held aloft in the climactic scene.
1830309	/m/05_cc8	Eine Billion Dollar	Andreas Eschbach	2001-09		 John Salvatore Fontanelli, the son of a shoemaker in New York who works as a pizza driver, is one day invited to the Waldorf Astoria by an Italian lawyer, where he is informed that he inherited a huge fortune simply by being the last male descendant of a wealthy Italian merchant living and working in 16th century Florence. This merchant put a rather small amount of money in a bank account some 500 years ago. Through the magic of compound interest, this sum has now grown into the equivalent of roughly 1,000,000,000,000 US dollars. In one fell swoop, John Fontanelli has become by far the richest person in the world, his net worth being bigger than the GDP of most countries. Yet, his ancestor has charged his heir with the task of using the inheritance to give back mankind its lost future. After some hither and tither, he accepts the role assigned to him by his ancestor and tries to better the world socially and ecologically. On the advice of his mysterious new consultant, Malcolm McCaine, he founds a huge corporation called Fontanelli Enterprises and strategically invests the inherited fortune in a diversified group of projects to grow his power and influence. Starting with the hostile takeover of ExxonMobil, John Fontanelli's orders now decide the fate of other companies, currencies, and even complete countries' economies. With the passing of time, John recognizes that all this will not ultimately lead him to success in mastering his assigned task. To get a better picture of the future development of mankind, he sets up a gigantic and secret scientific project, which uses complex computer models to simulate different future scenarios. When the sobering result is finally announced, Fontanelli and McCaine differ about the correct approach to save humanity from its obvious self-destroying development. McCaine leaves Fontanelli, thinking that mankind is doomed to being minimized down to a small but qualified elite. By using his own money, he sets up another company and tries to entice away leading scientists in the research of the AIDS virus to withdraw their manpower from the development of an effective cure. Fontanelli, on the other side, is setting up a foundation to organize and enforce the election of a world speaker. In his belief, the multi-national companies can only be controlled by global laws to prevent a catastrophe. The opposing and contradictory strategies of Fontanelli and McCaine to save humanity from its disastrous fate culminate in an exacerbated struggle for power. Fontanelli achieves a partial victory: The election of a world speaker finally takes place. The book ends with the death of John Fontanelli, who gets shot by an old friend who gradually came under the influence of McCaine.
1830988	/m/05_f2f	Intermere			{"/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Notably in this utopian community women are only permitted to earn half as much as men and cannot vote. Divorce is unknown and Intermere's citizens are said not to have a sense of humor.
1832004	/m/05_hs2	The Plains of Passage	Jean M. Auel	1990-09-24	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Plains of Passage describes the journey of Ayla and Jondalar west along the Great Mother River (the Danube), from the home of The Mammoth Hunters (roughly modern Ukraine) to Jondalar's homeland (close to Les Eyzies, Dordogne, France). During this journey, Ayla meets the various peoples who live along their line of march. These meetings, the attitudes and beliefs of these groups, and Ayla's response form an essential part of the story. Characters range in description from innocent to bloodthirsty, from serious to comical, from noble to corrupt, from found to lost, and from peaceful to violent. All of these adjectives apply, interestingly, in some way to either Jondalar or Ayla. Ayla (and to some extent Jondalar) is often viewed by her new friends as mystic or supernatural, partially due to her friendships with the world's first known domesticated horses and wolf, but also due to her generous nature and wisdom. As they encounter people Jondalar and his brother met on their journey eastward they have a hard time leaving them, especially after an offer to become joined with a high-ranking Sharamudoi couple. Jondalar declines the offer, giving as excuse his desire to have the lead mystic of his people search for and help his deceased brother cross over to the other side. It concludes with Ayla and Jondalar's successful return to the Zelandoni, and Ayla's unconfirmed pregnancy, and Whinney's definite pregnancy. The Plains of Passage is one of the longer books in the Earth's Children series. It was followed by The Shelters of Stone.
1832044	/m/05_hwl	The Glory of Living	Rebecca Gilman			 The play opens with the main characters Lisa and Clint meeting for the first time. Clint has accompanied a friend to Lisa and her mother's mobile home to see Lisa's mother, a prostitute. Clint picks up on Lisa's unease about her mother's situation and begins charming her. The next scene opens a few years later and Clint and Lisa have married and have twins who are being cared for by Clint's mother. The couple has been living in a series of motel rooms and are plying a scam whereby Lisa lures young girls into the room where Clint rapes and abuses them. Afterwards, Lisa murders the girls and disposes of their bodies. Plagued with guilt, Lisa calls the police with anonymous tips on the location of the bodies. Act I concludes with the couple's arrest. Act II deals primarily with the couple's punishments but focuses on Lisa and her motives for her actions. The audience is shown that Lisa has not been able to emotionally mature and that has led her to live the life she has lived.
1832068	/m/05_hy9	The Shelters of Stone	Jean M. Auel	2002-04-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Central to this book is the tension created by Ayla's healing art, her pregnancy, and the acceptance of her by Jondalar's people, the Zelandonii. Ayla was raised by Clan Neanderthals, known as "flatheads" to the Zelandonii and viewed as no better than animals. For the Zelandonii to accept Ayla they must first overcome their prejudice against the Neanderthals. Luckily for Ayla and Jondalar, some of the higher-ranking Zelandonii already have doubts of this misjudgment. Two of their number, Echozar and Brukeval, are of partial Neanderthal ancestry and are ashamed of it. Echozar at least is pacified by Ayla's own story and by his (Echozar's) own marriage to Joplaya, Jondalar's close-cousin (half-sister). Brukeval, on the other hand, rejects his heritage utterly and refuses to listen to reason. Jondalar's first romantic interest, Zelandoni, formerly known as Zolena, has now become the First among the spiritual leaders. She supports adopting Ayla into their society, if not least for the healing arts she brings to the cave, although Ayla also must overcome the feeling that she is uncomfortable with a full connection with the spirit world. After Ayla helps a mortally injured hunter live long enough to see his mate, the First senses that Ayla needs to be brought into the fold of the Zelandonia (mystics, named after their culture so as to identify themselves with it) so that she will be accepted as a healer by all the people of the cave. At one point, Ayla persuades the native mothers to nurse a neglected infant, on the pretext that even a "flathead" would have done so in their place. This both shames them into agreeing (as noted by Jondalar's sister-in-law, Proleva) and educates the Zelandonii in the ways of their ex-neighbors. Ayla is drawn ever closer to an as-yet-undetermined role in the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii. Her knowledge of the healing arts as well as hunting force her to accept a role in the spiritual leadership of the group. Through it all Jondalar is waiting for the summer meeting and matrimonial that will finally "tie the knot" for the two of them. This has been his ultimate goal since The Valley of Horses. Their daughter, Jonayla, named for her mother's belief a man's "essence" creates babies, which leads to Jondalar and Ayla each being part of the baby, not just their spirits, is born sometime after this event. Not long after the birth, Ayla finally decides to become Zelandonii's acolyte, if only so that the members of the Zelandonii will accept her as a healer. This book is set in what is now the Vézère valley, near to Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne, southwest France. It was relatively densely populated in prehistoric times, with many open cliff-top dwellings that can still be seen, some of which have been turned into tourist attractions. The national museum of prehistory is located in this valley. Ayla also discovers the world-famous cave of Lascaux, which her adopted people subsequently paint. <!--
1832080	/m/05_hz0	Natalie Natalia	Nicholas Mosley			 The protagonist of this novel, Anthony Greville, is a Member of Parliament who is married with two children. His son Adam is seventeen and his daughter Sophie is eight. Despite the outward perfection of his life, Greville is having an affair with sculptress Natalia Jones, an enigmatic mother of two who is married to a husband in politics who cheats on her. Greville's wife is away at the family's country retreat for weeks on end and his children at their respective schools, so Greville enjoys his lover's company with minimal risk of being discovered. However, as smitten with Natalia as Greville is, he has a brief fling with a woman named Madeleine, as well. In spite of his easy lifestyle, Greville is not a happy man. The focus of this novel is based on Greville's dissatisfactions and confusions. For instance, although Natalia does not make any demands on him, and his wife prefers not to see what is going on, Greville is torn between the two women. He wants to be with Natalia when he is with his wife and vice versa. What is more, he sees two people in his lover. To Anthony Greville, Natalia is an angelic figure who also symbolizes a diametrical opposite, specifically demonic. This dual perception of his lover leads him call her by two different names (Natalie and Natalia). Greville becomes disillusioned with politics, because he feels that political gaming prefers stalemate to partisanship,and therefore, opposes real change. Subsequently, Greville states that he is going to resign from Parliament as soon as possible. This is a startling announcement because Greville comes from a family of politicians, and his son is already active in grassroots politics. However, before his intended resignation, he must complete a final diplomatic mission as an MP; he journeys to Central Africa to meet Ndoula, a controversial freedom fighter who has been imprisoned by the colonial powers. While he is in Africa, without the emotional chaos of his personal life, Greville begins to introspect, writing and trying to make sense of his life. When Greville returns to England, he finds that both his wife and his idealistic son are leaving for Africa in order to help the current crisis. Greville sees them off at the airport, and then returns to Natalia, even though she has not answered his letters from abroad. Although interesting and similar in content and intent to the works of Graham Greene, the plot line of Natalie Natalia can be construed as "difficult to follow" because the linear narration is interrupted by segments where Greville's thoughts, dreams, and fantasies become the focus of the prose. An example of such an interruptive/introspective segment in Greville's POV (from Chapter 7) follows : […] I had rowed into the harbour from the sea; the oars had made whirlpools. A light appeared in the window: your breast, above the candle, burned. We wrapped our cloaks round us: ran with our shoulders against the drawbridge. Hands came through the door and held us; they were tendrils through the stone. You watched from an upstairs window. We were in the hallway of the castle. You stood with the candle and one hand against your breast. The candle burned: it made blood against the snow. The man with the beak of a bird put his head down to embrace you: with one arm round his neck, you were a tunnel through which he could breathe. On the stairs were figures in suits of armour. Firelight flickered. You were laid on a table with one leg raised. The man with the mask of a bird rummaged inside you. He was looking in you like a suitcase. I had been in the cell all winter alone. Turning you on your front, you had been split up the back by an axe. Men in white coats stood around you. They had instruments in their hands with which to handle coals. They flipped them over. You had your face to the wall and were fastened to iron rings. The man with the beak of a bird tore the lining. Hands had come through the wall and held me. Your arms were round the neck of the man with the mask like a swan. He reached to the entrails and the liver. Men leaned over tables and shovelled coal. Their pink cheeks glowed. You stood with a hand at your breast and the candle burning you. On the stairs were men in armour; their swords flickered. With your back towards them, they heated irons in the coal. They lifted your leg up and put it on the table. Moving with my hands behind me, I felt an iron ring in the stone. If I pulled, there would be a tunnel: I could put an iron bar across the hole. At the end of it would be a cell. There I had been all winter. […]
1832130	/m/05_j38	Woken Furies	Richard Morgan	2005-03-17	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Takeshi Kovacs finds himself back on his home planet of Harlan's World. Nine-tenths water, Harlan's World is surrounded by "orbitals" that were created by "Martians". The Harlan's World orbitals are programmed to destroy any object of sufficient technological level flying above ~400 meters altitude and do so with high-energy beam weapons known as "Angelfire". In the Kovacs universe, "Martians" are a long-dead, super-advanced, avian/winged species who disappeared from our galaxy, leaving behind inscrutable artifacts and a few pieces of operating technology. They are referred to as "Martians" by humans because our first discovery of them is on Mars. Their homeworld is unknown, lost in the millennium since they were active in any space humans have discovered. This mystery is compounded by the Martians' peculiar habit of showing all maps with the local settlement at the center of the universe, rather than relative to a fixed homeworld or system. Martian civilization is covered in more detail in the second Kovacs novel, Broken Angels, which centers around a Martian gateway. Kovacs is on the run after making numerous attacks against the Knights of the New Revelation, an extremist religious order. He has declared a personal vendetta against the New Revelation with the express intent of killing every member, revenge for the killing of a long lost love and her daughter for violating the strict tenets of the order. While trying to secure passage after his most recent attack, he saves a woman named Sylvie from a group of religious zealots. In return, she allows him to take refuge with her mercenary "deCom" crew as they head out to decommission sentient military hardware that has run amok on a nearby continent. Sylvie is the "command head" of her crew, coordinating their missions using embedded circuitry and software. During one of these missions, Sylvie collapses, and upon recovery her personality appears to have been replaced by that of long-dead revolutionary leader Quellcrist Falconer. The crew return to base where they discover a younger version of Kovacs has been illegally duplicated and is hunting them on behalf of the Harlans, dictators of Harlan's World. Most of Sylvie's crew is killed and Sylvie/Quellcrist is captured. Kovacs schemes to rescue Sylvie by approaching old criminal associates of his, the Little Blue Bugs. The Little Blue Bugs mount a semi-successful attack on a Harlan fortress and rescue Sylvie/Quellcrist. Hiding from Harlan forces in a floating base, the neo-Quellists are sold out by its owner and recaptured. An assault by Kovacs and a single UN Envoy on the base ends badly when Kovacs is betrayed by the Envoy who was actually embedded with several colleagues. However, Sylvie/Quellcrist has established a connection with the AI/consciousness which operates the orbitals and calls down anglefire, eliminating their captors but sparing Kovacs and his original Envoy instructor and current revolutionary comrade-in-arms, Virginia Vidaura. Kovacs' younger self catches up with him and after a struggle, Kovacs decides not to kill his younger self but instead allow him life and the chance to make the same decisions he himself had to make. Nonetheless the younger self is killed by one of the survivors of the combat. Kovacs, Vidaura and Sylvie/Quellcrist are left to wait and see whether they will be able to incite a planet-wide revolution with Sylvie/Quellcrist's newfound connection to the orbitals and the expansion of a long-dormant genetic virus which will turn the population against the ruling oligarchy.
1833625	/m/05_m0c	The Great Train Robbery	Michael Crichton	1975-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In 1854, Edward Pierce, a charismatic and affluent "cracksman" or master thief, makes plans to steal a shipment of gold worth more than twelve thousand pounds being transported monthly from London to the Crimean War front. He faces enormous obstacles as the bank has taken strict precautions, including locking the gold in two heavy safes, each of which has two locks, thus requiring a total of four keys to open. He recruits Robert Agar, a "screwsman" or specialist in copying keys, as an accomplice. To ensure the success of his bold plan, Pierce spends more than a year in preparation; his first steps are fairly easy as he uses his wealth and social contacts to procure information on the security measures and locations of the keys: the bank's executives Mr. Henry Fowler and Mr. Edgar Trent each possess a key; the other two are locked in a cabinet at the offices of the South Eastern Railway at the London Bridge train station. Pierce's first target is the key held by Edgar Trent. The attempt to take Mr. Trent's key is difficult, as Pierce has no clues or prior information on his habits. Through painstaking surveillance, conversations with bank employees and a deliberately bungled pickpocketing attempt, Pierce deduces that Mr. Trent's key is kept at his mansion but is still unable to learn the exact location. After learning that Trent is keen on ratting (a blood sport involving the betting on dogs killing rats), Pierce succeeds in becoming acquainted with the man and while visiting the Trent mansion feigns romantic interest in Elizabeth Trent, Mr. Trent's twenty-nine year old daughter, who has had few suitors. Edward begins to court Elizabeth and manages to learn that the key is most likely located in the basement wine cellar. With the assistance of his mistress Miriam and cab driver Barlow, Pierce and Agar successfully break into Mr. Trent's home at night and make a wax copy of the key after a painstaking search. Henry Fowler develops syphilis and, being unwilling to seek medical attention out of embarrassment, decides to seek a remedy by sleeping with a virgin (similar to superstitions about HIV) and asks Pierce for assistance. After charging Fowler the exorbitant price of one hundred guineas for a night of pleasure with a twelve-year-old (twelve being the legal age of consent), Pierce and Agar take advantage of the opportunity to make a copy of Fowler's key (which he always carries with him around his neck but takes off and leaves on the bedside table during the assignation). The most difficult keys to copy are the two keys at the train station which Pierce plans to procure and copy by night; the presence of "crushers" (policemen) forces him to recruit a "snakesman" (a burglar able to slip inside buildings through small and cramped spaces) nicknamed Clean Willy, who is currently incarcerated in the high-security Newgate Prison. He sends a message through Willy's former mistress and assists him in escaping from Newgate while the public is distracted by a public execution outside the prison. After nursing Willy back to health from injuries received during the escape, the criminals succeed in making wax copies of the two keys at the railway station, completing the task with only seconds to spare before detection. Now possessing all four copies of the necessary keys, Pierce loses no time in bribing Burgess, the poorly-paid guard on the train who rides in the baggage van containing the safes. Agar is then able to perform a dry run of the theft on February 17, 1855, making sure that the copied keys work perfectly. Everything appears to be moving along smoothly; the actual theft is planned for May 22nd when the would-be thieves find themselves seriously compromised: Clean Willy turns informant to the police. Pierce manages to have Willy murdered before he can reveal the most crucial information, although their plans are now in danger of discovery by law enforcement agents who correctly fear that a major robbery is at hand. Through careful manipulation of a "nose" (informant), the criminals manage to divert the police's attention to an alleged robbery in Greenwich, leaving them free and clear to finally strike. On the eve of the Great Train Robbery, another unexpected development occurs as a new railway policy requires the train doors to be locked from the outside. Unwilling to further delay their plans, Pierce manages to smuggle Agar into the baggage van inside a coffin and then risks his life by climbing across the roof of the train during their journey and unlocking the door from the outside, thus allowing them to drop off the gold at a pre-arranged point. By the next day, much of England is in an uproar upon the discovery of the robbery with every organization involved in the gold shipment blaming each other, with few leads as to the true culprits, who have largely vanished from the public eye. Although their daring plan appears to have succeeded, Pierce, Agar and Burgess are ultimately apprehended after Agar's mistress, who has been arrested for robbing a drunk, becomes a police informant to escape imprisonment, and Agar confesses after being threatened by the police with transportation to Australia. Pierce and Burgess are arrested at a prize-fighting event in Manchester, and all three are convicted. Pierce is sentenced to a long prison term but manages to successfully escape while being transported from the court and disappears, though reports indicate he, Miriam and Barlow spend much of the rest of their lives living in luxury in various foreign cities such as New York and Paris. The train guard Burgess dies of cholera during his short prison term, while Agar is indeed transported to Australia but manages to prosper, and passes away a wealthy man. Edgar Trent dies from a chest ailment in 1857, while Henry Fowler dies from "unknown causes" (presumably from the syphilis he had contracted) in 1858. The gold from the Great Train Robbery is never recovered.
1835728	/m/05_rs6	Father Sergius	Leo Tolstoy	1912		 The story begins with the childhood and exceptional and accomplished youth of Prince Stepan Kasatsky. The young man is destined for great things. He discovers on the eve of his wedding that his fiancée Countess Mary Korotkova has had an affair with his beloved Tsar Nicholas I. The blow to his pride is massive, and he retreats to the arms of Russian Orthodoxy and becomes a monk. Many years of humility and doubt follow. He is ordered to become a hermit. Despite his being removed from the world, he is still remembered for having so remarkably transformed his life. One winter night, a group of merry-makers decide to visit him, and one of them, a divorced woman named Makovkina, spends the night in his cell, with the intention to seduce him. Father Sergius discovers he is still weak and in order to protect himself, cuts off his own finger. Makovkina is stunned by this act, and leaves the next morning, having vowed to change her life. A year later she has joined a convent. Father Sergius' reputation for holiness grows. He becomes known as a healer, and pilgrims come from far and wide. Yet Father Sergius is profoundly aware of his inability to attain a true faith. He is still tortured by boredom, pride, and lust. He fails a new test, when the young daughter of a merchant successfully beds him. The morning after, he leaves the monastery and seeks out his cousin Pashenka (Praskovya Mikhaylovna), whom he, with a group of other boys, had tormented many years ago. He finds her, now in all the conventional senses a failure in life, yet imbued with a sense of service towards her family. His path is now clearer. He begins to wander, until eight months later he is arrested. He is sent to Siberia, where he now works as the hired man of a well-to-do peasant.
1836609	/m/05_v1b	Utilitarianism	John Stuart Mill		{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 The essay is divided into five chapters, namely #General Remarks; #What Utilitarianism Is; #Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility; #Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible; and #On the Connection Between Justice and Utility. In the first two chapters, Mill aims to define precisely what utilitarianism claims in terms of the general moral principles that it uses to judge concrete actions, as well as in terms of the sort of evidence that is supposed to be given for such principles. He hopes thus to do away with some common misunderstandings of utilitarianism, as well as to defend it against philosophical criticisms, most notably those of Kant. In the first chapter, he distinguishes two broad schools of ethical theory — those whose principles are defended by appeals to intuition and those whose principles are defended by appeals to experience. He identifies utilitarianism as one of the empirical theories of ethics. In the second chapter, Mill formulates a single ethical principle, from which he says all utilitarian ethical principles are derived: The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. Most importantly, it is not the agent&#39;s own greatest happiness that matters &#34;but the greatest amount of happiness altogether.&#34; Utilitarianism, therefore, can only attain its goal of greater happiness by cultivating the nobleness of individuals so that all can benefit from the honour of others. In fact, notes Mill, Utilitarianism is actually a &#34;standard of morality&#34; which uses happiness of the greater number of people as its ultimate goal. The Greatest-Happiness Principle, deals with doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. With the famous words &#34;it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied&#34;, (260) Mill touts the importance of being well brought up and knowledgeably curious about the world, and understanding higher pleasures such as art and music, than to be uneducated and complacent. One need not be personally satisfied with one&#39;s life to be able to contribute to the &#34;total sum happiness&#34; of a society. Mill goes on to discuss what is meant by &#34;pleasure&#34; and &#34;pain&#34; in his formulation of the Greatest-Happiness Principle, to argue that it encompasses intellectual as well as sensual pleasures, and to offer a defence of intellectual pleasures as preferable not only in degree, but also in kind, to sensual pleasures. Throughout the volume, Mill writes mainly as if addressing opponents of utilitarianism, but here he is trying also to criticise and refine the understanding of the Greatest-Happiness Principle offered by earlier utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham in particular. In the third chapter, Mill discusses questions concerning the motivation to follow utilitarian moral principles. He explores ways in which both external and internal sanctions — that is, the incentives provided by others and the inner feelings of sympathy and duty — encourage people to act in such a way as to promote general happiness. The fourth chapter offers Mill&#39;s attempt at an inductive proof of the Greatest-Happiness Principle, on the grounds that happiness and happiness alone is desired as an end in itself. The fifth chapter concludes the essay with a discussion of problems concerning utilitarianism, as well as the concept of justice. Critics of utilitarianism often claim that judging actions solely in terms of their consequences is incompatible with a foundational and universally binding concept of justice. Mill sees this as the strongest objection to utilitarianism and sets out to argue #that a binding concept of justice can be explained in strictly utilitarian terms; and #that the problems created by the utilitarian explanation are difficult problems for any concept of justice whatsoever, whether utilitarian or not. Finally, in order to be truly happy, Mill believes that we must turn our attention away from our own happiness towards other objects and ends, such as doing good for others and such high pleasures in life as art and music. We can clarify what Mill means by utilitarianism by comparing and contrasting it with Aristotle&#39;s classic position of Eudaimonism or virtue ethics. Both Aristotle and Mill argue humans naturally seek the good life, which is happiness. Mill&#39;s principle of utility is natural because it is grounded in the psychological faculty of desiring pleasure and avoiding pain. In Chapter four of his text &#34;Utilitarianism&#34; Mill can claim that the proof for the principle of utility is the fact that it is human nature. Aristotle claims virtue is natural as the excellence of natural human function. But, for Aristotle, virtues are a means to the end of happiness. Virtues are chosen for the sake of happiness. According to Mill, this is an abstract philosophy separated from happiness. Means are, by definition, different from the end for which they are chosen. Mill seeks concrete happiness. The principle of utility establishes what is good because what is good brings about pleasure, while what is bad brings about pain. The principle of pleasure allows us to know what is the best good because it shows what contributes to the greatest good or happiness for the greatest many. As the principle of utility structures human nature it is present in every human action. Every human being desires happiness because every thing a human being desires is desired for its pleasure. Mill shows that the principle of utility is necessary and that those things that are desired are parts of happiness and not a means to happiness. Because humans have parts of happiness, happiness is concrete and not abstract. Happiness remains abstract for Aristotle according to Mill. Mill wants concrete happiness so that people can be happy. For some proponents of Aristotle&#39;s Nichomachean Ethics, one only becomes happy after they die. Mill wants the living to be happy. According to Mill, the mistake of other moral theories, including Aristotle&#39;s, is that all systems are based on the principle of utility, but other moralists were blind to this fact. Mill&#39;s principle of utility is the true principle of morality and human nature and makes it possible for the greatest number to have the greatest happiness.
1838030	/m/05_wrx	The Heidi Chronicles	Wendy Wasserstein			 The plot follows Heidi Holland from high school in the 1960s to her career as a successful art historian more than twenty years later. The play's main themes deal with the changing role of women during this time period, describing both Heidi's ardent feminism during the 1970s and her eventual sense of betrayal during the 1980s. Though most of the characters are women, there are two important male characters; Peter Patrone, a gay pediatrician who is arguably Heidi's best friend, and Scoop Rosenbaum, a magazine editor who marries and has many affairs, and with whom Heidi has a tense friendship.
1838889	/m/05_yx0	Shampoo Planet	Douglas Coupland	1992	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Part one begins shortly after Tyler’s return from a European vacation. He is in a relationship with a girl named Anna-Louise, and dreams of working for American Defense Contractor, Bechtel. He is obsessed with his haircare products, having a collection of different brand name products, most featuring names invented by Coupland. The first part of the novel details Tyler’s life in Lancaster, Washington. The town is a near ghost town, after the town’s largest employer, the Plants, was shut down. The effects of the Plants’ shutdown has caused many problems in the town, including the boarding up of many stores in the local mall. Tyler’s family life is composed of himself, his mother, and his two siblings. He calls his mother by her first name, Jasmine. Jasmine is an ex-hippie who is married to an alcoholic man named Dan. At the very introduction of the novel, Dan divorces Jasmine. Tyler, his sister, Daisy, and his brother, Mark, band together to help Jasmine through her troubling time. Tyler’s grandparents are also introduced. They are quite wealthy, but they will not share their wealth with their family members. They have decided to start selling a product satirically labeled KittyWhip, which is a gourmet cat food product line. At the beginning of this part, two of Tyler’s compatriots from his European vacation decide to visit Tyler in Lancaster. They are Monique and Stephanie. Stephanie is Tyler’s secret shame from Europe, as he had a summer relationship with her. Tyler tells us about his European vacation, and the events that lead to him meeting Stephanie, and what it means to have Stephanie visit them in Lancaster. Tyler’s world starts to turn upside down, as his Grandparents lose their fortune, his mother becomes a KittyWhip salesperson, and his relationship with Anna-Louise enters a rough patch. Tyler feels himself become more drawn to Stephanie than Anna-Louise. Tyler, deciding that his life in Lancaster is not interesting enough, leaves with Stephanie to live in Los Angeles. His time in Los Angeles is wrought with strife. Tyler’s worst fear becomes realized as he finds himself working at a chicken fry shop manning the fryer. It is in Los Angeles that Tyler begins to comprehend advice that his mother gave him about loneliness.
1841204	/m/06047p	The Family from One End Street	Eve Garnett	1937	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lily Rose comes home early after a pipe has burst at school, and being a Girl Guide, Lily Rose tries to help her mother by ironing some of the laundry her mother does for clients. Unfortunately, she uses a too-hot iron for a petticoat of artificial silk, which shrinks, and her mother is furious as the garment belonged to one of her most trusted customers, Mrs. Beaseley. The next morning, Mrs. Ruggles takes Lily Rose to Mrs Beaseley's house to explain what has happened. Fortunately, Mrs. Beaseley is amused, as she has made similar mistakes when she was a child. Kate has passed her 'eleven plus' examinations with flying colors, but her parents are concerned, as they believe that they cannot afford the extra school expenses this will incur. Mrs. Beaseley’s cook points out that Mr. Ruggles has filled the scholarship paperwork out incorrectly: instead of seven children, he stated that he had only one child. After correcting the paperwork, they get a larger scholarship. The week before school opens, Kate is invited on an outing to the seaside by one of her school friends, and manages to lose her new school hat to the incoming tide. She cannot ask her family for another, as she wasn't supposed to be wearing it on the picnic, nor does she have enough money to buy one. Two local boys, Bill and his brother Ted, tell her where she can pick mushrooms and sell them for a shilling a pound. Unfortunately, they are not wild mushrooms but cultivated ones, and the farmer catches Kate with a basket of his mushrooms. He asks her if she's stolen mushrooms before and she tearfully tells him how she found out about them. The farmer believes her, and is understanding enough to give her a basket of mushrooms to sell. After Kate goes back home, a surprise awaits her in a parcel: the hat she had lost at sea during the Salthaven (i.e. Newhaven, Sussex) outing has been recovered by a friend of the Watkins! Jim, the older and more ambitious of the Ruggles twins, decides he wants an adventure of his own, but is captured by a local gang. A twelve-year-old named Henry Oates heads this gang, whose members call themselves Black Hands. The gang meets every Saturday, in an old lime kiln or at the gasworks, where Henry’s father, a foreman, is employed. Though they consider him too young to join and accuse him of spying, Jim begs for his acceptance. The next Saturday, Jim embarks on a real adventure. As a hailstorm begins, he follows a friendly little dog into a drain pipe around a wharf’s barge-loading area for shelter; the dog escapes but Jim, who has fallen asleep in the pipe, is carried off to the seaport Salthaven, when the pipes are loaded onto a barge. Jim relates his story to Mr. Watkins about being a stowaway. To Jim’s surprise, Watkins says he was also a gang member when he was young, and sends him off home. John, the younger twin, is a car fan and regularly visits Otwell Castle’s car park, in the hope of finding visitors who will pay him to mind their car. A couple called the Lawrences arrive at the castle, and allow him to 'mind' their car. The same rainstorm which sends Jim into the pipe on the wharf for shelter catches John, and he climbs into the car for shelter. When the Lawrences return, they drive away without checking the back seat, and John does not awaken until they've driven some miles. Instead of turning around and taking him home, they invite him to their son's birthday party, and promise to send a telegram to his family in order to let the Ruggles know that John is safe. Aside from a slight mishap with the shower, John enjoys the party. There is a huge coffee-chocolate cake, and games. The Lawrences send John home on the bus with several parcels of leftover goodies from the festivities. William, the youngest Ruggles child, is entered in the Annual Baby Show, but the family is concerned as he is a late teether. He wins his age category (6–12 months), yet a slightly older competitor wins the Grand Challenge Cup as he has teeth. The Ruggles return home only to find that William now has a tooth! Jo Ruggles Jr., a Mickey Mouse fan, spends his fourpence allowance at the local Majestic Theater to see cartoons. One week, he goes to the theater, only to find that the next Symphony is due in a fortnight. He sneaks inside the empty building and hides in the orchestra pit, where he soon falls asleep; several hours later, several cinema musicians find him. Jo explains to them why he sneaked in, and the men give him sixpence for the show, and a warning not to do it again. Mr. Ruggles has always wanted to take his family to London for the great Cart-Horse Parade in Regent's Park, but cannot afford it. One week, he and his co-worker find an envelope with £41 in one of the dustbins on their route. They turn the money in to the police, and a week later, the author Mr.Short gives him a reward of £2, which he uses to take his family to the Cart-Horse Parade. The Ruggles travel to Regent's Park, the venue for the Cart Horse Parade, where they meet the family members who have entered their horse in the competition. The horse, 'Bernard Shaw', takes first place, and the families climb into the cart in order to participate in the parade. The Ruggles spend the afternoon at a "Posh" tea shop while Charlie is stabling his horse. They spend longer than they realize amidst the delights of ice cream, sundaes and orchestra music, and must rush off to the train station. They make it just in time, and as the train pulls out, Mr. Ruggle's brother plays The End of a Perfect Day on his mouth organ.
1843534	/m/060c1r	Cold Sassy Tree	Olive Ann Burns	1984-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 On July 5, 1906, Enoch Rucker Blakeslee announces that he intends to marry Miss Love Simpson, a milliner at his store who is years younger than he. This news shocks his family, since his wife Mattie Lou died only three weeks earlier. Rucker’s daughters, Mary Willis and Loma, worry about what the gossips of Cold Sassy will think of their father’s impropriety. Will Tweedy, Rucker’s 14-year-old grandson and the narrator of the novel, supports his grandfather’s marriage. Will thinks Miss Love is nice and pretty, even though she comes from Baltimore and therefore is practically a Yankee. Will thinks that Rucker needs someone to look after him now that Mattie Lou is gone. On the afternoon Rucker announces his engagement, Will sneaks off to go fishing in the country despite the fact that he is supposed to be in mourning for his grandmother. He walks across a high, narrow train trestle and nearly dies when a train speeds toward him. He survives by lying flat between the tracks so the train passes just overhead without touching him. Will becomes a sensation after his near-death experience, and the whole town comes to his house to ask him about the incident. Rucker shocks everyone by arriving with his new bride, Miss Love. The people of Cold Sassy disapprove of Rucker’s hasty marriage, and rumors spread quickly in the small town. Will, however, spends a great deal of time at the Blakeslee house and becomes friends with Miss Love. Will likes her because of her candid opinions and open personality. He also has a little crush on her, often spying on her. Will soon learns that the marriage is one of convenience and that Rucker and Miss Love sleep in separate rooms. Miss Love tells Will that she married Rucker only because he promised to deed her the house and furniture. For his part, Rucker married Miss Love to save on the cost of a housekeeper. One day, Clayton McAllister, Miss Love’s former fiancé from Texas, shows up and tries to persuade Miss Love to leave with him. He kisses her, but Miss Love sends him away contemptuously after kissing him. Will and some of his friends make a trip into the country to pick up a horse for Miss Love, camping in the mountains along the way. When they return, Will and his father, Hoyt, try to convince Will’s mother, Mary Willis, to go on a trip to New York. Rucker has bought the tickets to New York so that Hoyt, who works for Rucker, can go to purchase new goods for the store. At first Mary Willis refuses to go because she is in mourning, but Will and Hoyt convince her that the trip will do her good. Right after Mary Willis changes her mind, Rucker decides to use the tickets himself to go to New York with Miss Love. Mary Willis is crushed, and her hatred of Miss Love increases. To take his and Mary Willis’ mind off the disappointment, Hoyt buys a brand new Cadillac and becomes the first owner of a car in Cold Sassy. Rucker and Miss Love return from New York. They are now flirtatious and affectionate with each other, and Will wonders whether their marriage is becoming more legitimate. Rucker announces that he too has bought a car and intends to begin selling cars in Cold Sassy. Lightfoot McLendon is a classmate of Will’s who lives in the impoverished section of Cold Sassy known as Mill Town. One day Will takes Lightfoot on a car ride to the cemetery, where he kisses her. A nosy neighbor sees the kiss and tells Will’s parents. Outraged at Will’s association with common people, Will’s parents forbid him to drive the Cadillac for two months. Will gets around his punishment by driving Rucker’s car. One Sunday, Will, Rucker, and Miss Love take a day trip into the country, where Will gives them driving lessons. On the way back to Cold Sassy, as he tries to avoid a collision with a Ford wrecked in the middle of the road, Will crashes the car into a creek bed and damages the radiator. While they wait for a repair team to arrive, they stay with a family that lives nearby. That night, Will overhears Rucker tell Miss Love that he loves her and wants their marriage to be real. Miss Love declares that she cannot and that no man would want her if he knew her terrible secret. When she finally tells him what her secret is &ndash; that her father raped her when she was a child &ndash; he tells her he doesn't care, and affirms his love for her. Eventually, Miss Love and Rucker fall deeply in love. Will’s uncle, Camp Williams, commits suicide, which begins a dark period in Cold Sassy. Rucker hires Will’s worst enemy, Hosie Roach, to work at the store in Camp’s place. Because of his new income, Hosie can marry Will’s beloved Lightfoot. A pair of thieves rob and beat Rucker. Although he recovers from his injuries, Rucker catches pneumonia. As Rucker lies sick in bed, Will overhears him tell Miss Love that God provides strength and comfort to the faithful in times of trouble. Miss Love tells Will that although Rucker does not know it, she is pregnant with Rucker’s child. Rucker dies shortly after he falls ill, but his message of faith in God gives Will strength to cope. Though the town and Will’s family do not accept Miss Love, she knows that they will all accept her child, and plans on staying in Cold Sassy.
1844370	/m/060f6t	The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum	Heinrich Böll	1974	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Four days after a Weiberfastnacht party, where Katharina met a man named Ludwig Götten, she calls on Oberkommissar Moeding and confesses to killing a journalist for the newspaper Die Zeitung. Katharina had met Götten at a friend's party and spent the night with him before helping him to escape from the police. The next morning, the police broke into her house, arrested her and questioned her. The story is sensationally covered by Die Zeitung, and in particular its journalist Tötges. Tötges investigates everything about her life, calling on Katharina's friends and family, including her ex-husband and hospitalized mother, who dies the day after Tötges visits her. He paints a picture of Katharina as a fervent accomplice of Götten, and as a communist run amok in Germany. Katharina arranges an interview with Tötges. According to Katharina, upon his arrival he suggests that they have sex, whereupon she shoots him dead. She then wanders the city for a few hours before driving to police headquarters and confessing to Moeding. The book also details the effects of the case on Katharina's employers and friends the Blornas; Mr Blorna is her lawyer, and Mrs Blorna one of the designers of the apartment block where Katharina resides. Their association with Katharina leads to their exclusion from society.
1844480	/m/060fjw	Voyage in the Dark	Jean Rhys	1934	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 # Anna compares England to her Caribbean, where everything was colourful. By contrast, England was greyish. She dislikes England throughout the novel, always feeling like an outsider; she is always cold and describes all of the towns that she tours as part of a chorus line as identical. The book begins with them Anna living in Southsea with a friend, Maudie, where they have trouble persuading a landlady to take them in; the implication is that chorus girls are 'professionals' or prostitutes. The landlady complains about the way that they walk around in their dressing gowns. Anna goes for a walk with Maudie, and they meet two men whom they take back to their flat for some tea, much to their landlady's disgust. When Anna goes to London, she agrees to meet one of the men, Walter. # Walter takes her to dinner in a restaurant with a private dining room and a bedroom attached, a place clearly meant to be used for illicit rendezvous. He is obviously wealthy. After a meal, he makes a pass at Anna, and she goes into the bedroom, shuts the door and lies down on the bed for a long time. He comes in and apologises, and walks her to a taxi. The next day she receives some money in a letter from Walter, in which he apologises. She goes out the next day to buy some clothes. Back home she becomes ill and sends him a letter asking him to visit. Walter visits, buys her food and a warm coverlet for her bed, and pays a doctor to see her. # Anna visits Walter again, and when he puts his hand on her knee, says that she must go, and begins to cry. But he tells her to be brave and they end up going to bed together, and she loses her virginity. # Anna is now supported as a "kept woman"; she moves to better quarters, and waits all day for letters from Walter arranging meeting times. She has fallen in love with him. One day a letter arrives from Maudie, saying that she will visit soon, and they go for a walk in Hyde Park. # Anna goes to visit Walter and meets Vincent, his cousin. She says she doesn't like him and begins to tell Walter about her early life in the Caribbean. They make love, and she lies awake. # Anna goes to visit her stepmother, Hester, who tells her that there is no more money for her from her father's Caribbean estate, which Hester sold. Hester is upset. She sent a letter to Anna's Uncle Bo saying Anna would be better in the Caribbean, but that he will need to pay the other half of the return fare. The reply accuses Hester of cheating Anna out of her inheritance, which Hester denies vehemently. Hester argues she cannot afford to help Anna financially any longer and that it is her uncle's responsibility. Anna's stepmother is depicted as overtly racist; she states that she does not approve of Anna's uncle because he is open in his acceptance of both the black and white children in his family, and gives all the children the family's last name. Her abhorrence of miscegenation is depicted negatively in the text, as a sign of her intolerant bigotry, for her major concern is the appearance of impropriety, and not the impropriety itself. Hester doesn't approve of black-white friendship at all; we learn that she got very annoyed when Anna got too close to the black servant Francine, and eventually had her sent away. Anna's uncle, in turn, doesn't approve of Hester, accusing her of mismanaging her husband's property and failing to support Anna as she should. # Anna is desperately afraid that Walter will get bored and leave her. One day he takes her to the country for what for a while is a wonderful time, but the trip is cut short. Vincent and his French lover, who are with them, fall out and they decide to leave early. Walter tells Anna that the reason for the argument was because Walter is taking Vincent when he goes to the US for a while … the first time that Anna has heard of the trip. # Sure enough, Anna receives a letter from Vincent saying that Walter is sorry, but he is no longer in love with her. They both still want to assist her as much as possible. # Anna asks Walter to meet her, despite the fact that Vincent has said it is better that they don't see each other. She tries to get him to take her home, but he won't, so they part. Anna decides to break from him altogether, and she leaves the lodging he has paid for without leaving a forwarding address. # Anna sells some clothing to raise money to pay her rent. In her new accommodations, she meets a woman called Ethel, only there, she says, whilst her new place is being refurnished. They go to the pictures together, and Ethel, who runs a manicure and massage business, offers Anna accommodation and a job. # One day Anna goes out and meets Laurie by chance, along with two American boyfriends of hers, Carl and Joe. They go out for drinks and get a little tipsy. # They go out again to a hotel. It is implied that Laurie is a prostitute, and Anna goes into hysterics, and throws a scene. # Anna goes and visits Ethel, and is taken up as the manicurist, even though she has no experience. # Anna isn't very good at her job. Ethel is obviously running a bit of a racket. Her adverts are suggestive, but not explicitly so, so that the men arrive expecting more than a massage, but when they don't get it there is nothing that they can do. One day Ethel's massage table breaks and the man on it jumps off into some hot water and injures himself. Anna doesn't show much sympathy, and Ethel is suddenly angry. She tells Anna that she is too moody, no good at the job, and never invites Ethel along when she goes out. It appears that Ethel expected that Anna might prostitute herself and that Ethel expected to act as a madam, but she does not say this explicitly. She orders Anna to leave, then suddenly says the opposite. Anna says that she must go for a walk, and Ethel tells her that if she is not back within an hour she will gas herself. She goes half way to Walter's place and then returns to a very relieved Ethel. # Anna is ill. When she meets up with Laurie, one of her boyfriends, Carl Redman, asks her if she is on ether. She ends up going to sleep with him. # Ethel is inquisitive about Redman and doesn't seem to disapprove. Redman tells Anna that he is leaving the country soon; both he and Joe have wives in the States. One day Anna meets Maudie, who borrows some money. She needs to buy new clothes or else she thinks the man she is going out with won't marry her. # Anna almost ends up going to bed with a man with a broken hand, and while they are dancing she throws her shoe at a picture of a dog she imagines is smirking at her, shattering the glass. Soon after, she has a fit of morning sickness, hits the guy on his injured hand, and throws up. He goes. # Anna is staying at Laurie, who receives a 'peach of a letter' from Ethel, saying that Anna owes her money for utterly destroying her room. She also mentions that Anna was bringing any old man back to the apartment, which she could not stand. Anna and Laurie discuss the possibilities of an abortion. Anna has waited too long to seek this abortion, ambivalently wishing to keep the baby she cannot support. # Laurie and Anna meet up with Vincent to arrange the money for the abortion. He assures her that everything will be all right, but commands Anna to return the letters between her and Walter, which she does. # Anna goes to Mrs. Robinson's and has the abortion. # The abortion is botched, and Anna becomes extremely ill. Anna hears Laurie talking to her new landlady, Mrs Polo about her condition. She is still unwell. She hallucinates, her mind filled with scenes of the masquerade in the Caribbean of her childhood, recent seductions, and the dark room that she is in. A doctor comes to attend her and says, "She'll be alright […] Ready to start all over again in no time, I've no doubt." The last paragraph returns to Anna's stream of consciousness narrative voice pondering repeatedly the idea of "all over again."
1845227	/m/060hxb	The Story of Doctor Dolittle	Hugh Lofting		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 John Dolittle, MD, is a respected physician and quiet bachelor living with his spinster sister in the small English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. His love of animals grows over the years and his household menagerie eventually scares off his human clientele, leading to loss of wealth. But after learning the secret of speaking to all animals from his parrot Polynesia, he takes up veterinary practice. His fortunes rise and fall again after a crocodile takes up residence, but his fame in the animal kingdom spreads throughout the world. He is conscripted into voyaging to Africa to cure a monkey epidemic just as he faces bankruptcy. He has to borrow supplies and a ship, and sails with a crew of his favourite animals, but is shipwrecked upon arriving to Africa. On the way to the monkey kingdom, his band is arrested by the king of Jolliginki, a victim of European exploitation who wants no white men traveling his country. The band barely escapes by ruse, but makes it to the monkey kingdom where things are dire indeed as a result of the raging epidemic. He vaccinates the well monkeys and nurses the sick back to health. In appreciation, the monkeys find a pushmi-pullyu, a shy two-headed gazelle-unicorn cross, whose rarity may bring Dr. Dolittle money back home. On the return trip, they again are captured in Jolliginki. This time they escape with the help of Prince Bumpo, who gives them a ship in exchange for Dolittle's bleaching Bumpo's face white, his greatest desire being to act as a European fairy-tale prince. Dolittle's crew then have a couple of run-ins with pirates, leading to Dolittle's winning a pirate ship loaded with treasures and rescuing a boy whose uncle was abandoned on a rock island. After reuniting the two, Dolittle finally makes it home and tours with the pushmi-pullyu in a circus until he makes enough money to retire to his beloved home in Puddleby.
1845415	/m/060jf2	Absolute Friends	John le Carré	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book tells the story of Ted Mundy, a Pakistani-born Briton who as a student becomes proficient in the German language. He joins a 1960s-era student protest group in West Berlin and becomes a lifelong friend of a West German student anarchist named Sasha. Having been brutally beaten by West Berlin police and ejected from Germany, Mundy fails at several careers, as a teacher at an English prep school, as a newspaper reporter, a radio interviewer and a novelist. Eventually Mundy obtains a position with the British Council. Meanwhile, Sasha has defected to East Germany to become a member of the notorious Stasi secret police. On a trip to East Germany with a youth theatre group, Mundy and Sasha meet again. By this time Sasha has become totally disillusioned with the Communist Bloc and enlists the naive Mundy to become a double agent. Sasha has access to state secrets and he recruits Mundy to help him smuggle them out of East Germany and deliver them to MI6, the British Secret Service. Their efforts contribute to the collapse of the GDR and eventual destruction of the Berlin Wall. Later, Sasha and Mundy once again conspire in grandiose schemes to combat American military and industrial globalization. The two ideologues become pawns of the group they thought they were combating. After they are killed, they are portrayed as terrorists "with connections to Al-Qaeda", in efforts to convince European governments to support the United States in its "war on terror". After Mundy's death, Amory, his controller from the British intelligence service during his espionage years, tries to publicize the truth, but slander by the British government results in his story being totally discredited. The novel is a chilling reminder of the ability of governments and groups to manipulate public thinking to achieve their private ends, and underlines the need for people to not simply believe what they are told/sold without question.
1845545	/m/060jq8	Shiloh	Phyllis Reynolds Naylor	1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the small town of Friendly, West Virginia,Nicknamed the "Mountain State", West Virginia abounds in mountains and rivers. For hundreds of years, the state has been home to hunters of deer, bears, beavers, and other animals. Before 1600, Native American tribes of the Iroquois, the Cherokee, and the Shawnee hunted for food. In the contemporary day, people hunt despite most of the large animals' having disappeared. Numerous laws in West Virginia determine "when, where, how, and what animals may be hunted". In the rural hill setting, neighbors because of local customs rarely meddle with each other's business. Respect of elders and a commitment to honesty are expected of children. where an eleven-year-old boy named Marty Preston finds a stray beagle wandering in the hills near his house. The dog follows him home, and Marty names him Shiloh, a tribute to a neighborhood schoolhouse. Shiloh's real owner is Judd Travers, who owns several hunting dogs. Fearing for the dog's safety because Judd drinks and treats his hunting dogs poorly, Marty does not want to return Shiloh. His father insists Shiloh be returned to his owner and they take the dog to Judd Travers. Shiloh returns to Marty who hides him from his family. Concealing Shiloh in the woods in a wire pen he builds, Marty smuggles some of his dinner to the dog each evening. After his mother discovers Marty feeding the dog, he persuades her not to reveal the secret. That night, Shiloh is attacked by a German Shepherd Dog while in his makeshift cage and his family discovers Marty has been lying and hiding the dog. After taking the dog to the town doctor, the family must return Shiloh to his rightful owner. Before doing so, Marty travels up to Travers' house to try to convince Travers to allow him to keep Shiloh. Judd does not see Marty approaching, and shoots a doe out of season, which would mean a stiff fine Judd cannot afford. Marty lets Judd know he knows, and attempts to blackmail him out of Shiloh. Judd and Marty eventually negotiate a deal in which Marty will earn Shiloh for 40 dollars, paid with 20 hours of working for Judd. At the end of the first week, Judd says that he will not keep his end of the deal because the evidence of the dead doe has with the passage of time disappeared. Second, the contract that Marty had him sign is worthless in the state of West Virginia without the signature of a witness. Despite Judd's pointed disapproval of his work, Marty continues to work for him. They begin discussing dogs and Judd's father who began physically abusing Judd when he was four years old. In the end, Judd warms to Marty, relents, and lets him keep Shiloh.
1845692	/m/060k12	We All Fall Down	Robert Cormier	1991-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the small town of Burnside, the Jerome family house is destroyed by teenage vandals, who defecate on the floors and push their daughter down the stairs, placing her in a coma. However, a childlike stalker calling himself 'The Avenger' witnesses the whole incident and, enraged, begins to track down each culprit.
1845855	/m/060kd0	The Glass Lake	Maeve Binchy	1994-09-02	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 When the beautiful and glamorous Helen is deserted by her lover, she marries the kindly Martin McMahon and moves to the small village of Lough Glass. Although Martin and Helen have two children, Helen still pines for Louis, the man who broke her heart. Helen seems restless and unhappy living in Lough Glass. Then one day, Helen disappears, leaving behind only a note for Martin. Kit, Helen and Martin's 13-year old daughter, finds this letter, and burns it without opening it. Kit knows that her mother was unhappy and assumes that her mother has committed suicide. A suicide note would mean that her mother could not be buried in 'consecrated' ground according to Catholic tradition. However, Helen hasn't committed suicide. Rather, she decided to run away to England with her former lover. Kit McMahon struggles to grow up without her mother and with the stigma of her mother's death. While Kit has many friends and mentors to help her grow, she forges a close relationship via letters with Lena Gray. Lena Gray claims to be a close friend of Helen. However, Lena Gray is really Helen herself. The story then traces the fallout of Kit finding out that her mother isn't dead and is Lena Gray.
1845981	/m/060kn1	Sharpe's Regiment	Bernard Cornwell	1986-01-20	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In this book set during the Napoleonic Wars, Sharpe repeatedly runs into problems caused by his lower social class and his officer standing. This is the only book in the series to be set in England (though in the Television series a second was produced - Sharpe's Justice) and involves Sharpe looking for the missing Second Battalion of the South Essex Regiment which he needs to reinforce the dwindling First Battalion in Spain. The story also involves Sharpe and Harper having to rejoin the South Essex as recruits to find the missing men.
1846045	/m/060kv_	The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle	Hugh Lofting	1922	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Doctor Dolittle meets Tommy Stubbins, the young son of the local cobbler, who becomes his new assistant. Tommy learns how to speak animal languages and becomes involved in the Doctor's quest to find Long Arrow, the greatest naturalist in the world. This novel takes us to the Mediterranean, South America, and even under the sea.
1847613	/m/060pyr	Among the Hidden	Margaret Haddix		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Luke Garner, a twelve year old child, lives on a farm with his mother, father, and two brothers, Matthew and Mark. (The Mothers objective was to have a Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.) As a third child or a Shadow child, Luke's parent's have to break the law. Like all third and fourth children, must spend his days without being seen by the public. Luke meets a person named Jen and she leads a rally against the population law then dies, luke feels guilt
1847951	/m/060qp1	Moon Tiger	Penelope Lively	1987	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Claudia Hampton, a 76-year-old English woman and a professional historian, is terminally ill and is spending her last remaining moments in and out of consciousness thinking of writing a history of the world with her life as a blueprint. Her first, primordial recollections are of a father that died in World War I, and of the summer of 1920, when she was 10 and competing with her 11-year-old brother Gordon for fossils. Claudia and Gordon are, at times throughout their lives, rivals, lovers, and best friends to each other. When the two are in their late teens they begin an incestuous relationship and find it hard to relate to almost any other person their own age. Soon, however, their college careers and other events allow both to open up to the outside world, and look outward for companionship. At the outset of World War II, Gordon, a would-be economist, is sent to India, whereas Claudia sets aside her studies in history to become a war correspondent. Independent and enterprising, Claudia talks her way into a correspondent's post in Cairo, where she meets Tom Southern, a captain of an English armoured tank division, who sweeps her off her feet. Tom and Claudia spend a long weekend together while he is on leave from the front, which culminates in both of them falling in love with each other and making plans for a seemingly far future. But their future together is never to materialize: shortly after their time together, the English are called to defend Egypt from Erwin Rommel's offensive at the First Battle of El Alamein, and Tom is declared missing. Later on, Claudia receives news that he has died. Shortly after Tom's death, Claudia finds out she is pregnant, and decides that she will have the child, even though she would have to raise it alone. It isn't to be: Claudia miscarries, and is never told whether the child she had carried was a boy or a girl. That uncertainty, along with her fear that Tom died a horrible and painful death, will haunt her for the rest of her life. After the War, Claudia and Gordon reunite, but the encounter is more friendly than passionate. Each of them has obviously been changed by the War, but they are both sparse on actual details during their conversations. Gordon marries a girl named Sylvia, who Claudia finds insipid and boring. Claudia meanwhile met Jasper, a well connected young man who she goes on to have an on and off, rather stormy relationship with, and one that Gordon is openly disapproving of. In 1948 Claudia finds herself pregnant again, this time by Jasper, and while she has no intention of marrying him, she decides to have the child, Lisa. While Claudia loves Lisa, she finds she has little patience and time to care for a child, and so Lisa ultimately ends up being raised by her maternal and paternal grandmothers, who share her custody and dictate her upbringing. Not surprisingly, Lisa grows up sullen and indifferent to Claudia, and marries off at a young age to a respectable (boring) man. Throughout her travels abroad, Claudia comes in contact with an Hungarian functionary who becomes implicated in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Knowing that persecution is forthcoming, the functionary decides to ask Claudia to make sure that his son Lazlo, who is in England at college, does not attempt to return to Hungary. So Claudia becomes a sort of surrogate mother to Lazlo, who she grows to love and admire over the years, recognizing that he is drastically different from anyone else she knows: an open, painfully honest, sensitive, self-destructive artist. Claudia writes several books that attempt to popularize history for the masses, earning her accolades from the public, and scorn from other professional historians. She also briefly becomes a consultant for a movie based on her history of Cortez, which leads to a personal scandal, when she ends up in a car accident with the star of the movie, and the press suspects there is more to the relationship than just friendship. The event earns scorn from Jasper, who refuses to see her when she is in the hospital. Gordon, on the other hand, visits her to let her know that she is not alone. At some point in time, Claudia decides to travel to Egypt alone, to try and see Cairo again, but she finds things much changed. The only thing that has not changed is that the desert has become forever etched in her memory as synonymous with her pain at everything she experienced during the war, a pain that she is still unable to share with any other living soul even after all the years that have passed. When Claudia turns 70, she receives a package containing Tom's diary, one of the few personal effects of Tom's recovered from the war. It had been sent to Claudia by Jennifer Southern, Tom's sister, who decides that Claudia should have it upon realizing that Claudia is "C.", Tom's often referred to girlfriend. Claudia cannot muster the courage to read beyond the note accompanying the diary, and so sets the book aside. Shortly thereafter, Gordon dies, and leaves a gaping void in Claudia's life. A few years later, when she is diagnosed with cancer, and knowing death is imminent, she tries to tentatively reach out to Lisa, to apologize for having been a cold and distant mother. Lisa accepts the apology, but is not sure how to feel about it: it is the most unlikely thing Claudia (who to Lisa seemed to revel being an almost omnipotent figure), has ever done for Lisa. Right before dying, Claudia finally musters the courage to ask Lazlo to fetch her Tom's diary. Poring over the short entries in the diary, Claudia allows herself to reflect on her bitterness about having been left behind and having become wholly different from the woman he knew and loved, and to make peace with the fact that she too will soon become nothing more than a set of imperfect memories as recalled by those who knew her. The next day, Claudia passes away.
1851232	/m/060_3t	Snow Falling on Cedars	David Guterson	1994	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set on the fictional San Piedro Island in the northern Puget Sound region of the state of Washington coast in 1954, the plot revolves around a murder case in which Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese American, is accused of killing Carl Heine, a respected fisherman in the close-knit community. Carl's body had been pulled from the sea, trapped in his own net, on September 16, 1954. His water-damaged watch had stopped at 1:47. The trial, held in December 1954 during a snowstorm that grips the entire island, occurs in the midst of deep anti-Japanese sentiments following World War II. Covering the case is the editor of the town's one-man newspaper, the San Piedro Review, Ishmael Chambers, a World War II US Marine Corps veteran who lost an arm fighting the Japanese at the Battle of Tarawa. Torn by a sense of hatred for the Japanese, Chambers struggles with his love for Kabuo's wife, Hatsue, and his conscience, wondering if Kabuo is truly innocent. Spearheading the prosecution are the town's sheriff, Art Moran, and prosecutor, Alvin Hooks. Leading the defense is the old, experienced Nels Gudmondsson. Several witnesses, including Etta Heine, Carl's mother, accuse Kabuo of murdering Carl for racial and personal reasons. Kabuo Miyamoto (a decorated war veteran of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team), experienced prejudice because of his ancestry, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Also involved in the trial are Horace Whaley, the town coroner, and Ole Jurgensen, an elderly man who sells his strawberry field to Carl. The strawberry field is contested in the trial. The land was originally owned by Carl Heine Sr. The Miyamotos lived in a house on the Heines' land and picked strawberries for Mr. Heine. Kabuo and Carl Heine Jr. were close friends as children. Kabuo's father eventually approached Heine Sr. about purchasing of the farm. Though Etta opposed the sale, Carl Sr. agreed. The payments were to be made over a ten-year period. However, before the last payment was made, war erupted between the US and Japan following Pearl Harbor, and all islanders of Japanese ancestry were forced to relocate to internment camps. Hatsue and her family, the Imadas, are interned in Manzanar camp in California. In 1944, Carl Sr. died due to a heart attack and Etta Heine sold the land to Jurgensen. When Kabuo returned after the war, he was extremely bitter towards Etta for reneging on the land sale. When Jurgensen suffered a stroke and decided to sell the farm, he was approached by Carl Heine Jr., hours before Kabuo arrived to try to buy the land back. During the trial, the disputed land is presented as a family feud and the motivation behind Carl's murder. Ishmael's search of the maritime records at Point White lighthouse station reveals that on the night that Carl Heine died, a freighter, the SS "West Corona" had passed through the channel where Carl had been fishing at 1:42am, just five minutes before his watch had stopped. Ishmael realizes that Carl was likely to have been thrown overboard by the force of the freighter's wake. Despite the bitterness he feels as Hatsue's rejected lover, Ishmael comes forward with the new information. Further evidence is collected in support of the conclusion that Carl had climbed the boat's mast to cut down a lantern, been knocked from the mast by the freighter's wake, hit his head, then fallen into the sea. The charges against Kabuo Miyamoto are dismissed.
1851755	/m/06100_	Rocket Boys	Homer Hickam	1998-09-15	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Homer "Sonny" Hickam, Jr. lived in a small coal mining town in West Virginia named Coalwood. Sonny, after seeing the Russian satellite Sputnik, decides to join the American team of rocket engineers called the Army Ballistic Missile Agency when he graduates from school. (Note: In the book Rocket Boys, the main character is always called Sonny. In the movie October Sky, he is called Homer.) Sonny's older brother, Jim Hickam, excelled at football and expected to get a college football scholarship. Sonny, however, was terrible at sports and had no special skill that would get him "out of Coalwood". Sonny's mother was afraid that he would have to work in the mines after high school. Sonny's first attempt at rocketry consisted of a flashlight tube and model airplane body as a casing that was fueled by flash powder from old cherry bombs. It exploded violently, thus destroying his mother's fence. After that, Sonny enlisted the help of Quentin Wilson, Roy Lee Cooke, Sherman Siers, Jimmy "O'Dell" Carroll, and Billy Rose to help build rockets while forming the BCMA (Big Creek Missile Agency). Their first real rocket, powered by black powder, was named Auk 1. This an allusion to the Great Auk, which is a flightless sea bird that became extinct in the mid-19th century. Auk 1 flew six feet before the solder melted and the nozzle, a washer, separated from the casement which subsequently gave the name of the group and book. They called themselves "Rocket Boys" and called the place they were launching their rockets from "Cape Coalwood", in honor of Cape Canaveral. The Rocket Boys enjoyed mixed success during their three year rocket launching campaign (1957 to 1960). They employed several fuel mixtures including rocket candy and a mixture called "zincoshine", which was composed of zinc dust and sulfur, along with alcohol made by a local bootlegger as a binder for the mixture. They launched a total of 34 rockets all sequentially numbered Auk I–XXXI. (There were four different Auk XXIIs.) They also won a National Science Fair gold medal for their rockets, for their project titled "A Study of Amateur Rocketry Techniques".
1852781	/m/0612w3	A Pale View of Hills	Kazuo Ishiguro	1982-02	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During a visit from her daughter, Niki, Etsuko reflects back on her own life as a young woman in Japan, and how she left that country to live in Britain. As she describes it, she and her Japanese husband, Jiro, had a daughter together, and a few years later Etsuko met a British man and moved with him to Britain. She took her elder daughter, Keiko, to Britain to live with her and the new husband. When Etsuko and her new husband have a daughter, Etsuko wants to call her something "modern" and her husband wants an Eastern-sounding name, so they compromise with the name "Niki," which seems to Etsuko to be perfectly British, but sounds to her husband at least slightly Japanese. In Britain, Keiko becomes increasingly solitary and antisocial. Etsuko recalls how, as Keiko grew older, she would lock herself in her room and emerge only to pick up the dinner-plate that her mother would leave for her in the kitchen. This disturbing behavior ends, as the reader already has learned, in Keiko's suicide. "Your father," Etsuko tells Niki, "was rather idealistic at times...[H]e really believed we could give her a happy life over here... But you see, Niki, I knew all along. I knew all along she wouldn't be happy over here." Etsuko tells her daughter, Niki, that she had a friend in Japan named Sachiko. Sachiko had a daughter named Mariko, a girl whom Etsuko's memory paints as exceptionally solitary and antisocial. Sachiko, Etsuko recalls, had planned to take Mariko to America with an American soldier identified only as "Frank." Clearly, Sachiko's story bears striking similarities to Etsuko's.
1856501	/m/061f9w	Doctor Dolittle's Garden	Hugh Lofting	1927	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Doctor Dolittle's assistant, Tommy Stubbins, reports on Professor Quetch, curator of the Dog Museum in the Home for Crossbred Dogs. Meanwhile, the doctor has learnt insect languages and hears ancient tales of a giant race of insects. Fascinated, the doctor plans a voyage to find them &mdash; but before he does so, one arrives in his garden. ja:ドリトル先生と月からの使い
1856534	/m/061ff0	Doctor Dolittle in the Moon	Hugh Lofting	1928	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Doctor Dolittle has landed on the Moon and each day brings a new discovery. He meets Otho Bludge the Moon Man, a Stone Age artist who was the only human on the Moon when it broke away from the Earth. The animals of the Moon flock to Doctor Dolittle, and he discovers how to communicate with the intelligent plants there. But will the lunar flora and fauna ever let him leave? There is no pretence that the Lunar environment, described in meticulous detail, in any way conforms to what was known to science at the time of writing; thus, the book can be considered as fantasy more than science fiction. ja:ドリトル先生月へゆく
1856586	/m/061fkw	The Beautiful and Damned	F. Scott Fitzgerald		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It tells the story of Anthony Patch (a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune), his relationship with his wife Gloria, his service in the army, and alcoholism. Toward the end of the novel, Fitzgerald references himself via a character who is a novelist by quoting this statement given after the novel: "You know these new novels make me tired. My God! Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I've read 'This Side of Paradise.' Are our girls really like that? If it's true to life, which I don't believe, the next generation is going to the dogs. I'm sick of all this shoddy realism."
1858057	/m/061lkv	Better Than Life	Rob Grant	1990-10-25	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Following on from Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, Lister, Rimmer and The Cat have discovered a cache of 'Better Than Life' headbands in one of the sleeping quarters. They fantasise that they board the Nova 5 and use its Duality Jump drive to return to Earth. Lister settles down with a woman who looks exactly like Kristine Kochanski in Bedford Falls, which looks exactly like the Bedford Falls in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, Lister's favourite movie. He has two sons, Jim and Bexley, who are so intelligent they were able to change their own nappies. Lister also opens a successful curry shop and every day is Christmas Eve. Rimmer becomes the head of a multi-national corporation, Rimmer Corp., and has a 50 billion dollarpound fortune. He's married to Juanita Chicata, the most beautiful model and actress in the world, with a massively fiery temper. He's also developed a solidgram to give himself a real body and a time machine, which he uses to beat George Patton, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte at Risk. The Danish government gives Cat an island, on which is built a giant golden castle, right out of a gothic fairy tale. The castle is surrounded by a moat of milk, and is staffed by , scantily clad Valkyrie warriors. He likes to travel on firebreathing yaks and shoot dogs. Back in reality, Kryten is cajoled by Holly to laser messages into Lister's arms. Lister feels the pain of this in Bedford Falls, and when he applies cold cream to the areas of pain, they spell two messages - 'U=BTL' on his left arm and 'DYING' on his right. Eventually Kryten is forced to enter the game to try to retrieve the crew, and his mechanoid brain allows him to remember entering. While searching for his shipmates, Kryten accidentally wanders into a diner which is advertising for a dishwasher to work through an endless pile of dirty dishes. The next thing he knows, months have passed. Meanwhile, the messages on his arm cause Lister to realise that he is in the game and confronts Rimmer. They travel to Denmark and meet with the Cat. While discussing how to get out. Kryten arrives and explains how they started playing, and to leave they need only want to leave, but their subsequent attempts to escape fail because the game lures them in. Their collective fantasies fall apart because of Rimmer's massive self-loathing; even if he wants to stay, he hates himself so much that his mind has only built up his life so that it can bring him down later. He loses his fortune, has his body repossessed, and ends up in the body of a woman while trapped with a couple of violent convicts, forcing him to recognise that his own attitude towards women is disturbing; most of his groupies in the fantasy are women who rejected him in life, his first wife was actually his brother's wife in reality, and his second wife was his mother. Upon attempting to leave, he can't, and realises that all four must leave together. He travels to Bedford Falls in a giant truck, accidentally wiping out the town square in the process, ruining Lister's fantasy. They travel to Denmark, to discover that Cat's Valkyries have gone on strike, the milk moat has curdled, and a volcano has started to erupt. The crew leave the game together. The next morning, Lister wakes up and starts making breakfast, only to realize something is amiss. He didn't have to wait for the lifts on his way back, his alarm clock doesn't violently blare, his towel extends all the way around his waist. Eventually Lister drops his toast and it lands butter-side up, confirming his fears that he's still in the game. The rest of the crew enter and announce they've found statis units containing Rimmer, Kochanski and Petersen, only for Lister to tell them the bad news. At this point, the creator of the game appears and offers them a replay. They decline, and finally return to reality. Due to their having not moved for such a long time, Lister and Cat's muscles have atrophied considerably, and they have to be placed in special suits for some time to re-hydrate and restore their muscles. While Lister and the Cat recover, Kryten and Rimmer realise Holly has shut himself off and the ship's engines are dead. His companion, a novelty appliance named Talkie Toaster, convinced the computer to perform a dangerous repair operation which lead to Holly having a five digit IQ, but has less than two minutes of run time left, forcing him to shut himself down. To make things worse, a rogue planet is on a crash course with the disabled Dwarf. In order to restart the engine, hundreds of mile-high pistons must be test fired. Things are going well, until Rimmer accidentally crushes most of the skutters when he test fires the wrong pistons. Rimmer turns Holly on to warn him that Red Dwarf is doomed. Holly prints out a solution and shuts himself down again. Starbug is to fire a nuclear missile into a nearby sun, causing a solar flare that will knock its planet out of orbit and in turn, knock the rogue planet away from the Dwarf. Rimmer and Lister carry out the plan and although successful, Starbug crashes into the icy rogue planet. Rimmer and Lister are marooned on the planet, Lister begins to starve and Rimmer begins to slow down. He shuts down and is brought online back on Red Dwarf, where he intends to launch a rescue operation. However, the Dwarf is being sucked into a black hole. Holly, via the toaster- having shared the information with the toaster earlier-, informs them that if they accelerate into the hole, they can zip through safely. Lister, meanwhile, is having problems of his own. The ice on the planet has melted, revealing a landscape of green glass bottles. Acid rain begins destroying Starbug. When he sees the remains of Mount Rushmore, he finds that he is on Earth, converted into a garbage dump for the solar system and accidentally blasted from orbit. Lister discovers a tiny olive tree and befriends some cow-sized cockroaches and vows to begin life again. After the black hole experience, the Dwarfers finally go to rescue Lister; Rimmer and the Cat in one ship, Kryten and the Toaster in the other. Rimmer and the Cat are shocked to find a beautiful farm amidst the garbage, tended by an old Lister. Because of the time dilation of the black hole, thirty years have passed on the planet. Kryten contacts the rest of the crew having found a polymorph disguised as Lister, which the Toaster disables. Lister insists the polymorph's remains be shot out into space, but its offspring manages to return to Red Dwarf. It steals emotions from the crew until they are saved by a freak accident which slays the beast, causing them to regain their emotions. The stress of the battle is too much for the elderly Lister, and he dies from a heart attack. After Lister's funeral, Rimmer informs Holly of the loss. Holly prints out some instructions to rescue a canister from certain coordinates in space. They are then to fly back into the black hole and enter a parallel dimension, where they are to bury Lister and the canister (which contains Kochanski's ashes). Lister wakes up in a strange hospital in a weird world where time runs backwards. He recovers from his heart attack, regurgitates lunch, and is forced to take a wallet and watch from a mugger. A message from the Dwarf crew instructs Lister to meet them in thirty years (they can't stay with him or they would have gotten younger). Lister takes a taxi to his new home, and finds an elderly Kochanski waiting for him. Lister is happy, knowing that he and Kochanski have many years behind them to look forward to. When the two Red Dwarf novels were printed together as an omnibus, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor took the opportunity to alter the ending of Better than Life in order to clear up confusion about the book's ending.
1858142	/m/061lw1	Earthsearch II	James Follett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story of Earthsearch 2 continues the adventures of the crew of the starship Challenger (Telson, Sharna, Darv and Astra) begun in the previous serial, Earthsearch, which told the story of theirquest for their lost ancestral homeplanet of Earth (which had moved to orbit a new and unknown star when its citizens realised their original sun was going to go nova). At the end of the serial, the four crewmembers had chosen to settle on the sufficiently Earth-like planet Paradise and escape the ruthless, manipulative control of the Challengers megalomaniacal control computers, Angel One and Angel Two. While the Angels departed Paradise orbit to continue the Earthsearch mission (and to achieve their aim of dominating an entire civilisation), the humans began their new life on their new homeworld. Earthsearch 2 begins four years later, when Telson, Sharna, Darv and Astra have settled into their life on Paradise (assisted by two androids, the agricultural machine George and the argumentative general-purpose service unit Tidy). Both couples now have young children - Darv and Astra have the twins Elka and Savin, and Telson and Sharna have their son Bran. Despite the colonists' embrace of Paradise as home, the lifestyle is proving to be difficult and full of hardships. Sharna's loss of what would have been her second child raises questions about the sustainability of the small colony as well as bringing up differences of opinion on how (and whether) to use the remaining technology and resources (including their surviving planetary shuttle). When Savin is unexpectedly killed by a 'monster' that appears from the sea, the colonists are placed under further strain. Noticing the appearance of an unidentified artefact in planetary orbit, Telson and Darv fly up towards it in the shuttle, to discover that it is an eight-mile long spaceship called Voyager 30 and apparently part of an Earth-originated survey mission. Appearances are deceptive. The spaceship is in fact the returning Challenger: repaired, shortened, refitted and still operated by the Angels (as well by a team of control room androids overseen by Android Surgeon-General Kraken). The Angels are now being attacked by mysterious transmissions apparently aimed at damaging or destroying organic computers such as themselves and the Challengers higher intelligence androids. As humans are totally unaffected by the attacks, the Angels require human assistance in order to seek out and destroy the transmissions at source, and have therefore returned to Paradise to recruit the only humans they can obtain. However, the Angels do not reveal this information, and instead feign an interest in the welfare of the colony in an attempt to gain the trust of the humans. At the same time they have secretly sent an android to kidnap the children (the same "sea monster" which accidentally killed Savin in a bungled abduction attempt). When rejected by the suspicious humans, the Angels resort to sabotage on a planetary scale, using terraforming equipment from the Challenger to melt Paradise's polar ice caps and thus raise the sea level in an attempt to get their former crew to rejoin them on the ship. The resulting flooding begins to submerge all of the land, forcing the settlers to abandon their colony and use their shuttle as a floating ark, even down to loading breeding pairs of animals into the shuttle cargo bay. The crew survive and hold out against the Angels' plans until a series of accidents loses them their drinking water, forcing a surrender. They make the best of things by demanding a concession in the shape of a reversal of the flood (so that the animals can be released and survive), following which they fly their shuttle up to the Challenger. On board the Challenger, the colonists make attempts to regain control over both the Angels and the ships control room, but are thwarted when the Angels kidnap the children from the shuttle. The adults are gassed by a surgical android and fall unconscious. When they come round, they discover that the ship has long left the Paradise system and that they have been in suspended animation for sixteen years. However, the children have been awake the whole time, and have aged normally, now being between eighteen and nineteen years old and firmly under the influence of the Angels. Elka appears friendly and enthusiastic, but Bran is now both hostile and the commander of the Challenger. He demonstrates harsh suspicion and aggression towards his parents and the other two adults, even threatening to kill them should they challenge his authority. En route to the source system of the attacks, the Challenger encounters a free-floating fifty-mile wide parabolic dish which the Angels decide to use as raw material for shielding. Telson, Sharna, Darv and Astra are sent to investigate the dish. They discover that it is an abandoned artificial sun called Solaria D, used by the Earth during its transit to its new sun, and presided over by an Angel-like control computer called Solaria. Despite her apparent benevolence, Solaria is revealed to have been abandoned by Earth once she developed murderous megalomaniacal tendencies. Darv succeeds in destroying her. During their stay on Solaria D, the crew discover the name (though not the location) of Earth's new home star, Novita Six. Returning to the Challenger, the crew notice that Solaria D is now moving in an anomalous way. They discover that the artificial sun is now in the grip of the gravity well of a black hole, and that the Challenger is following it. Attempts to escape from the black hole are hampered by the fact that the human crew have no access to the Challengers control room, where Android Surgeon-General Kraken has had his reasoning capacity damaged by the continuing attacks and is no longer responding to or obeying instructions. With the Angels drastically weakened by the attacks and unable to assist, the humans attempt to storm the control room, which is defended by android warriors. The assault fails when the crew run out of time and the Challenger is pulled into the black hole. The crew regain consciousness to find themselves on a gigantic plain surrounded by many different kinds of abandoned starships, including the Challenger. They discover that they have in fact landed unharmed on an enormous artificial construct - a "gravity platform" which merely resembles a black hole and forms part of Earth's long-range defences, acting as a trap for potentially hostile vessels. The chief engineer of Spaceguard Six, Theros, refuses to release either the Challenger or its crew as he deems the Angels too much of a threat. Not only have they integrated themselves into the entire structure of the ship (making their removal from it effectively impossible), Theros suspects that they may have interposed themselves into the brains of the Challengers crew. When Darv locates the Spaceguard's gravitational control room and reverses the field, he frees the Challenger but at the cost of destroying Spaceguard Six. The ship continues its journey, but immediately runs into further problems when debris from the Spaceguard seriously damages the ship's life support systems and farm galleries, threatening the lives of all humans and organic computers on the ship. With the inexperienced and insecure Bran unable to cope (and undermined by Elka, who secretly dominates him and dictates his actions at the prompting of the Angels), Telson regains command of the Challenger and succeeds in organising the crew to deal with the problems. A second assault on the control room is more successful, but attracts the wrath of the near-invincible Android Surgeon-General Kraken, who kidnaps Darv and Astra to replace his destroyed control room androids. Now suffering catastrophic delusions about seizing the power of stars, Kraken is placing the ship at drastic risk. With the assistance of their android Tidy, the crew manage to destroy Kraken and regain control of the ship. Telson discovers that Kraken has coincidentally selected Novita Six as the ship's next target star. Arriving in the Novita Six system, the Challenger finally reaches its original home, Earth. However, the planet does not look like the Earth that the crew have seen in recordings. It is almost totally dead, with very little water and no rain. The only sign of life is a huge ten-mile-high tower on the equator, with a tiny village nearby. The crew fly down to the village, and meet Peeron, the leader. They discover that the Earth's civilisation has collapsed a long time ago, and the human race is reduced to eking out a meagre living from a tiny spring that grows weaker every year. It appears that the humans will be extinct in a short period of time. The Challenger crew use the terraforming systems on the Challenger to bring rain to Earth and create a stable weather pattern which will allow the people to flourish. The crew examine the tower, finding that there is a door set into one side which cannot be opened. Peeron says that many of his predecessors have made attempts over the centuries - for example, by hitting the door with battering rams - but it will not budge. It is said that it is held shut by a "lock of knowledge". Darv eventually works out how to open the ingeniously simple lock, which requires a low grade of technology which would only be available to people who have already worked out basic principles of science and engineering. The door is a very close/accurate fit in the aperture, and contains mild heating elements that cause it to expand and lock in place. These heaters do not heat it to the point that it is warm to the touch. Simply attaching a refrigeration system to the door and cooling it a few degrees causes the door to shrink and move freely. When the crew open the door, they enter the tower, leaving Peeron and his people outside. They discover that the tower contains a colossal library, presided over by the artificial intelligence "Earthvoice" which serves as both the voice of the library and as a "guardian". Earthvoice explains to the crew that the tower was constructed by the people of Earth as a repository of all human knowledge when their last great civilisation was collapsing. The lock was designed so that the people could not enter until they had already worked out how to make some technology for themselves. Unfortunately, Earthvoice's abilities do not included weather control, so although he has successfully defended Earth's legacy of knowledge he has been helpless to deal with the deterioration of the planet's environmental conditions. Earthvoice has already communicated with the Angels, presenting himself as friendly and subservient. Prompted by Elka to work with the Angels, Earthvoice re-establishes contact with them and is welcomed eagerly. He admits to having been the source of the attacks which have damaged the angels but states that they were a programming directive which he has now overridden. To the humans' horror, Earthvoice and the Angels agree to share both the library's knowledge and power over the Earth, with the Angels also urging that Earthvoice exterminates the crew for safety. Earthvoice begins to transfer the knowledge - however, the Angels have fallen into a final trap. Earthvoice has always intended to destroy them, and he now launches one last brutal and specialised attack on the Angels from close range, erasing their consciousness and memory facilities. Rather than interfere further with the primitive human culture on Earth, the crew seal the door to the tower and return to the Challenger. With the Angels now reduced to subservient and "quite brainless" computer systems, they head back to their chosen home, Paradise, to rebuild their colony.
1858211	/m/061m2j	The Jew of Malta	Christopher Marlowe			 The play contains a prologue in which the character Machiavel, a Senecan ghost based on Niccolò Machiavelli, introduces "the tragedy of a Jew." Machiavel expresses the cynical view that power is amoral, saying "I count religion but a childish toy,/And hold there is no sin but ignorance." The Jewish merchant in question, Barabas, is introduced as a man owning more wealth than all of Malta. When Turkish ships arrive to demand tribute, however, Barabas's wealth is seized and he is left penniless. Incensed, he begins a campaign to engineer the downfall of the Maltese governor who robbed him. With the aid of his daughter, Abigail, he recovers some of his former assets and buys a Turkish slave, Ithamore, who appears to hate Christians as much as Barabas. Barabas then, in revenge for the robbery, uses his daughter's beauty to embitter the governor's son and his friend against each other, leading to a duel in which they both die. When Abigail learns of Barabas's role in the plot, she consigns herself to a nunnery, only to be poisoned (along with all of the nuns) by Barabas and Ithamore for becoming a Christian. The two go on to kill a couple of friars who threaten to divulge their previous crimes. Ithamore himself, however, is lured into disclosing his secrets and blackmailing Barabas by a beautiful prostitute and her criminal friend. Barabas poisons all of them in revenge, but not before the governor is apprised of his deeds. Barabas escapes execution by feigning death, and then helps an advancing Turkish army to sack Malta, for which he is awarded governorship of the city. He then turns on the Turks, allowing the Knights of Malta to kill the Turkish army. The Maltese, however, turn on Barabas and kill him as they regain control of Malta.
1858514	/m/061mx7	Dragon's Eye: A Chinese Noir	Andy Oakes		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The protagonist of the story is Sun Piao, a Chief Investigator of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau Homicide Department. He has a sidekick of sorts, an overweight and spirited rural Chinese, Yaobang. Sun Piao is a jaded, righteous man determined to do his job and with a reputation for being good at it; alternatively he is the archetypical hardboiled detective of film noir: cynical, pessimistic and somewhat self-destructive. The storyline of the book revolves around an investigation of several horrifically - but surgically - mutilated corpses, all chained around their necks and ankles, and one night resting on the muddy banks of the Huangpu, near the Bund. Other characters in the book worth noting are Barbara Hayes - an American politician who goes to Shanghai in search of her missing son, Chief Liping (a Party member several grades higher than Sun) and an Englishman named Charles Haven.
1858892	/m/061nxp	Exiles	James Joyce	1918-05-25	{"/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 The action of the play is very simple. Bertha is jealous of Rowan's relationship with Beatrice, and Hand is jealous of Rowan's relationship with Bertha. Joyce himself described the structure of the play as "three cat and mouse acts", and the action mostly involves Robert Hand's attempts to pounce on Bertha. In the first act, at Rowan's house, Hand kisses Bertha "with passion" several times "and passes his hand many times over her hair". He asks her to come to his own house for a second meeting later that evening. Bertha tells Rowan about this invitation, and asks if she should accept it. Rowan tells her to decide for herself. In the second act, Hand is expecting Bertha at the appointed hour, but instead it is Rowan who appears. Rowan calmly explains that he knows all about Hand's wooing of Bertha. After some minutes of what for Hand is clearly a very awkward conversation, Bertha herself knocks at the door. Hand goes tactfully into the garden, while Rowan explains to Bertha the conversation he has just had with Hand. Rowan then goes home, leaving his wife alone with Hand. Hand again begins to seduce Bertha. The act ends inconclusively, with Hand asking if Bertha loves him, and Bertha explaining: "I like you, Robert. I think you are good... Are you satisfied?" The third act begins in Rowan's house at seven o'clock, the following morning. Bertha tells the maid that she hasn't slept all night. The maid tells her that Rowan has left the house an hour earlier, to go walking on the strand. In the morning newspapers, Hand has published a favourable article about Rowan, written the previous evening. Exactly what has happened the previous night is not entirely clear. Hand and Bertha have shared "a sacred night of love", although the specifics of this are not explicitly stated, and both characters agree that it was "a dream". Hand supplies more detail in his account of the night to Rowan, although of his time with Bertha, he admits only that "she went away". He then claims to have gone to the Vice-Chancellor's lodge where he drank claret, returned home to write the newspaper article, and then gone to a nightclub where he picked up a divorcée and had sex with her ("what the subtle Duns Scotus calls a death of the spirit took place") in the cab on the way home. Hand himself leaves "for foreign parts" (his cousin's house in Surrey), while Rowan and Bertha are reconciled. Bertha admits that she longs to meet her lover, but asserts that the lover is Rowan himself. The resolution of the play lies precisely in the sense of doubt about what occurred between Hand and Bertha between Acts Two and Three. Rowan is wounded by the sense of doubt that he admits he longed for. Indeed, he sees this sense of doubt as what enables him "to be united with [Bertha] in body and soul in utter nakedness".
1859415	/m/061qgd	Nobody's Buddy	John A. Moroso	1936	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Sweet story of a boy and his dog, and their adventures with the circus and the local sheriff.
1860424	/m/061t27	The Last Days of Pompeii		1834		 Pompeii, A.D. 79. Athenian nobleman Glaucus arrives in the bustling and gaudy Roman town and quickly falls in love with the beautiful Greek Ione. Ione's former guardian, the malevolent Egyptian sorcerer Arabaces, has designs on Ione and sets out to destroy their budding happiness. Arabaces has already ruined Ione's sensitive brother Apaecides by luring him to join the vice-ridden priesthood of Isis. The blind slave Nydia is rescued from her abusive owners by Glaucus, for whom she secretly pines. Arabaces horrifies Ione by declaring his love for her, and flying into a rage when she refuses him. Glaucus and Apaecides rescue her from his grip, but Arabaces is struck down by an earthquake, a sign of Vesuvius's coming eruption. Glaucus and Ione exult in their love, much to Nydia's torment, while Apaecides finds a new religion in Christianity. Nydia unwittingly helps Julia, a rich young woman who has eyes for Glaucus, obtain a love potion from Arabaces to win Glaucus's love. But the love potion is really a poison that will turn Glaucus mad. Nydia steals the potion and administers it; Glaucus drinks only a small amount and begins raving wildly. Apaecides and Olinthus, an early Christian, determine to publicly reveal the deception of the cult of Isis. Arabaces, recovered from his wounds, overhears and stabs Apaecides to death; he then pins the crime on Glaucus, who has stumbled onto the scene. Arabaces has himself declared the legal guardian of Ione, who is convinced that Arabaces is her brother's murderer, and imprisons her at his mansion. He also imprisons Nydia, who discovers that there is an eyewitness to the murder who can prove Glaucus's innocence --- the priest Calenus, who is yet a third prisoner of Arabaces. She smuggles a letter to Glaucus's friend Sallust, begging him to rescue them. Glaucus is convicted of murder, Olinthus of heresy, and their sentence is to be fed to wild cats in the amphitheater. All Pompeii gathers in the amphitheater for the bloody gladiatorial games. Just as Glaucus is led into the arena with the lion --- who, by a miracle, spares his life and returns to his cage --- Sallust bursts into the arena and reveals Arabaces' plot. The crowd demands that Arabaces be thrown to the lion, but it is too late: Vesuvius begins to erupt. Ash and stone rain down, causing mass panic. Arabaces grabs Ione in the chaos but is killed by a strike of lightning. Nydia leads Glaucus, Sallust, and Ione to safety on a ship in the Bay of Naples. The next morning she commits suicide by quietly slipping into the sea; death is preferable to the agony of her unrequited love for Glaucus. Ten years pass, and Glaucus writes to Sallust, now living in Rome, of his and Ione's happiness in Athens. They have built Nydia a tomb and adopted Christianity.
1860568	/m/061tgf	The Well of Loneliness	Radclyffe Hall	1928	{"/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book's protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is born in the late Victorian era to upper-class parents in Worcestershire who are expecting a boy and who christen her with the boy's name they had already chosen. Even at birth she is physically unusual, a "narrow-hipped, wide-shouldered little tadpole of a baby". As a girl she hates dresses, wants to cut her hair short, and longs to be a boy. At seven, she develops a crush on a housemaid named Collins, and is devastated when she sees Collins kissing a footman. Stephen's father, Sir Phillip, dotes on her; he seeks to understand her through the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first modern writer to propose a theory of homosexuality, but does not share his findings with Stephen. Her mother, Lady Anna, is distant, seeing Stephen as a "blemished, unworthy, maimed reproduction" of Sir Phillip. At eighteen, Stephen forms a close friendship with a Canadian man, Martin Hallam, but is horrified when he declares his love for her. The following winter, Sir Phillip is crushed by a falling tree; at the last moment he tries to explain to Lady Anna that Stephen is an invert, but dies without managing to do so. Stephen begins to dress in masculine clothes made by a tailor rather than a dressmaker. At twenty-one she falls in love with Angela Crossby, the American wife of a new neighbor. Angela uses Stephen as an "anodyne against boredom", allowing her "a few rather schoolgirlish kisses". Then Stephen discovers that Angela is having an affair with a man. Fearing exposure, Angela shows a letter from Stephen to her husband, who sends a copy to Stephen's mother. Lady Anna denounces Stephen for "presum[ing] to use the word love in connection with&nbsp;... these unnatural cravings of your unbalanced mind and undisciplined body." Stephen replies, "As my father loved you, I loved&nbsp;... It was good, good, good&nbsp;– I'd have laid down my life a thousand times over for Angela Crossby." After the argument, Stephen goes to her father's study and for the first time opens his locked bookcase. She finds a book by Krafft-Ebing&nbsp;– assumed by critics to be Psychopathia Sexualis, a text about homosexuality and paraphilias&nbsp;– and, reading it, learns that she is an invert. Stephen moves to London and writes a well-received first novel. Her second novel is less successful, and her friend the playwright Jonathan Brockett, himself an invert, urges her to travel to Paris to improve her writing through a fuller experience of life. There she makes her first, brief contact with urban invert culture, meeting the lesbian salon hostess Valérie Seymour. During World War I she joins an ambulance unit, eventually serving at the front and earning the Croix de Guerre. She falls in love with a younger fellow driver, Mary Llewellyn, who comes to live with her after the war ends. They are happy at first, but Mary becomes lonely when Stephen returns to writing. Rejected by polite society, Mary throws herself into Parisian gay nightlife. Stephen believes Mary is becoming hardened and embittered and feels powerless to provide her with "a more complete and normal existence". Martin Hallam, now living in Paris, rekindles his old friendship with Stephen. In time, he falls in love with Mary. Persuaded that she cannot give Mary happiness, Stephen pretends to have an affair with Valérie Seymour to drive her into Martin's arms. The novel ends with Stephen's plea to God: "Give us also the right to our existence!"
1860626	/m/061tlb	The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre	Louis Cha	1961	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the late Yuan Dynasty, the story revolves around a pair of priceless and extremely powerful weapons, known as the Heaven Reliant Sword (倚天劍) and Dragon Slaying Saber (屠龍刀), which many jianghu pugilists covet. Either or both of them are thought to allow their wielder to rule the wulin (martial artists' community), according to a widely circulating rumour in a repeated mantra, "Honoured by the wulin, the precious saber slays the dragon, it commands the world, who dares to disobey? If the Heaven Reliant does not appear, who can challenge it?" (武林至尊，寶刀屠龍，號令天下，莫敢不從！倚天不出，誰與爭鋒？). The reason for that is lost at the beginning of the story. The protagonist Zhang Wuji is of mixed heritage: his father Zhang Cuishan hails from the reputable Wudang Sect under the master Zhang Sanfeng, while his mother Yin Susu is from the unorthodox Heavenly Eagle Cult. As a boy, he lives with them and his godfather Xie Xun on the isolated northern island where he was born. He returns to the Chinese mainland and loses his parents after they are cornered on Mount Wudang by several martial artists coveting the Dragon Slaying Saber. At the same time, he is wounded by the Xuanming Elders and survives after seeking medical treatment from Hu Qingniu, a master physician. His adventures further lead him to discover the long lost Nine Yang Manual and he masters the inner energy skills described inside, becoming a formidable pugilist. He later resolves the conflict between the Ming Cult and the six major orthodox sects, who are intent on destroying the cult. He earns the respect of the cult's members and becomes its leader after mastering the skill Heaven and Earth Great Shift. He reforms the cult and helps to improve its relations with other sects. He becomes a key figure in leading rebel forces to overthrow the Yuan Dynasty. Throughout his adventures, Zhang Wuji finds himself entangled in a complex web of love relationships with four maidens. The first, Yin Li, is a horribly disfigured girl who is actually his maternal cousin. The second, Xiaozhao, is a Chinese Persian servant girl who understands him very well. The third, Zhou Zhiruo, is a childhood friend whom he develops a strong bond with. The fourth, Zhao Min, is a Mongol princess and his former arch-rival. Yin Li is apparently killed in the middle of the story while Xiaozhao returns to Persia after it is revealed that she is destined to lead the Persian Ming Cult. Zhou Zhiruo soon falls in love with Zhang Wuji, but has to turn against him as she is bound by an oath she made in front of her teacher Abbess Miejue, who hates and distrusts Zhang Wuji and anyone related to the Ming Cult. Miejue devises a vicious scheme for Zhou Zhiruo to seize the two weapons by exploiting Zhang Wuji's love for Zhou. Zhou Zhiruo also turns vicious after Zhang Wuji reneges his promise to marry her and she swears vengeance on him. Zhao Min was initially Zhang Wuji's rival as they were on opposing sides. However, Zhao Min gradually falls in love with Zhang Wuji after their various encounters, and she even turns against her clan to help him. At the end of the novel, Zhang Wuji decides to retire from the jianghu after he mistakenly believes that the Ming Cult's members are plotting to betray him. He decides that Zhao Min is his true love and they leave for a reclusive life far away from society (the ending to the second edition, however, is ambiguous about his relationship with Zhou Zhiruo). Zhang Wuji gave up an opportunity to become the emperor, as the Ming Cult eventually overthrew the Yuan Dynasty, and ideally Zhang would become the new sovereign, but instead Zhu Yuanzhang takes the throne and founds the Ming Dynasty. In 2005 Jin Yong published the third edition of the novel, which has a slightly different ending from the earlier versions. In this edition, Zhang Wuji becomes disillusioned when he could not save the life of a general and address the death of Han Lin'er, and with that he left the leadership of the Ming Cult in the hands of Yang Xiao and Fan Yao, and then left the Central Plains with Zhao Min.
1860881	/m/061v3h	Dead Man's Folly	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 En route to Nasse House, Poirot gives a lift to two female hitch-hikers – one Dutch and one Italian – who are staying at the youth hostel adjoining the Nasse House grounds. When he arrives, Mrs Oliver explains that she feels that her plans for the Murder Hunt have been, almost imperceptibly, influenced by the advice that she has been given by people in the house, until it is almost as though she is being pushed into staging a real murder. The owner of Nasse House is George Stubbs, a wealthy man who has seemingly adopted an unearned title of "Sir" in order to confirm his position in the local community. His much younger wife is the seemingly simple and impressionable Hattie, a young woman who has apparently been introduced to him by Amy Folliat, the surviving member of the family that once owned the house. Now that her sons have been supposedly killed during the War, she is living out her days in the Lodge House. Other visitors at Nasse House include an architect, Michael Weyman, who criticises the siting some years earlier of a folly in an inappropriate area of the grounds. On the day of the fête, Hattie learns that a cousin, Etienne de Sousa, is about to visit, and she seems upset by this, referring to him as a killer. At the fete, a local Girl Guide, Marlene Tucker, is to play the part of the victim, and she waits in the boathouse to play her role when someone approaches her. Poirot observes the movements of some of the visitors to the house. Later, in the company of Mrs Oliver, he discovers the corpse of Marlene in the boathouse. Moreover, Hattie is discovered to have gone missing. Both the police and Poirot himself are initially baffled. The investigation focuses on Etienne de Sousa, a wealthy young man who shows no apparent concern at Hattie’s disappearance and has arrived in perfect time to have committed the murder. Another suspect is Amanda Brewis, George's secretary, who appears to be in love with Sir George and claims to have been sent down to the boathouse by Hattie with refreshments for Marlene at around the time that the girl was killed. This sounds very out of character for Hattie. Further confusion is added by the behaviour of the Legges, who appear to have some sort of shady connection with a young man in a turtle shirt who has been seen in the grounds. (It later comes to light that this red herring is connected with Legge's career as a nuclear physicist.) Poirot’s attention is directed to Amy Folliat, who seems to know more than she is saying. After the boatman Merdell dies, Poirot discovers that he was Marlene’s grandfather. Now he puts together several stray clues: Marlene had said that her grandfather had seen someone burying a woman in the woods; Marlene was the type to blackmail, and had in fact received small sums of money prior to her murder; Merdell had commented significantly to Poirot that there would "always be Folliats at Nasse House". In the denouement Poirot reveals that "Sir" George Stubbs is none other than Amy Folliat's younger son, James, who had deserted during WWI. Instead, Amy had paired him with the impressionable, but very wealthy, Hattie, hoping they would make a good couple. However, he fleeced her of her money and established his new identity, buying the family house and ensuring the continuity of Folliat possession. Unbeknownst to his mother, however, George/James was already married, and as soon as he had possession of Nasse he killed Hattie, and substituted his legal, first wife, a young Italian woman, in her place. The real Hattie was buried on the grounds where the Folly was built. Marlene Tucker had guessed the secret from hints dropped by her grandfather, and George and his real wife decided it would be safer to kill her than continue giving her hush money. The day before the day of the murder, "Hattie" began to establish another identity as an Italian hitch-hiker. On the day of the murder, she switched between the two roles, killing Marlene and leaving the grounds as the hitch-hiker, with Hattie's clothes in her rucksack. The day of the murder had been selected to cast suspicion upon Etienne, who had actually notified them some weeks earlier of his visit, of whom the fake Hattie pretends to be afraid. As Hattie's cousin, Etienne would not have been deceived and would have realized that the fake Hattie was not his cousin. The arrests of the culprits is not referenced in the novel, the end of which focuses on the despair of Amy Folliat, who does not appear to be facing legal charges, although that is never quite spelled out, in her allocution to Poirot.
1861035	/m/061vc_	Doctor Dolittle's Return	Hugh Lofting		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tommy Stubbins is waiting for Doctor Dolittle's return from the Moon and when the Doctor does so, he is anxious to write of what he has experienced. This proves more difficult than expected. The poignancy of the doctor's lunar experiences is juxtaposed with his hilarious attempts to be put into jail so he will be free of all responsibilities and will be able to write his book. ja:ドリトル先生月から帰る
1861922	/m/061x7_	Arrows of the Queen	Mercedes Lackey	1987-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first section describes the Choosing of Talia by the Companion Rolan, and subsequent journey to Haven, capital of Valdemar. Talia is a farm girl from the southern border of Valdemar. She lives with a clan of Holderkin, a socially and religiously strict group which believes in female submission and polygynous marriage. On her 13th birthday, she heretically rejects an offer of marriage, declaring her desire to be a Herald. She is in hiding from her family when she encounters a horse-like being -- a Companion, who Chooses her and takes her away from the Holderkin. Because she does not know anything about the Heralds, Rolan places a temporary block on her memory until he can get her to people who can explain everything. Talia and Rolan travel to Haven. Upon reaching Haven, Talia is introduced to Princess Elspeth (the Heir-presumptive and a spoiled brat), and Queen Selenay. She is delighted to find that she will be allowed to stay and become a Herald. She tours the Collegium, meets the rest of the trainees, and starts to attend classes at the Collegium. The second section details the torment to which Talia is subjected by a group of "Blues;" Collegium students not affiliated with the Healers, Bards or Heralds. The group of Blues intimidate Talia in both physical (including carefully timed trips and shoves) and psychologically, including the use of disappearing ink designed to make Talia question her sanity. The torment is quieted by the Midwinter holiday as well as Talia's blossoming friendship with Herald Jadus. However, the calm is not to last. The Blues ambush Talia and throw her into an ice-covered river, intending to drown her. Talia survives, though she is hospitalized for a few weeks with pneumonia, and the experience awakens her Gift of Empathy. Because of her Gift, Talia begins to take on the responsibilities of being the Queen's Own Herald, including the role of councilor to the Royal Family. The third section describes Talia's dealings with Princess Elspeth. Known as "The Brat" in the Heraldic Circle, the Heir-presumptive lives up to her nickname. Talia attempts to spend time with Elspeth in hopes of reforming her behavior; she is turned away a number of times by Hulda, the child's caretaker. With the help of Herald-trainee Skif (this has also been spelled 'Skiff'), a former thief and pickpocket, Talia learns that Hulda is acting on orders from a mysterious man who wants Elspeth to remain a brat so that she will never be Chosen as a Herald--and thus never take the throne. She passes the information on to Selenay, but Hulda is warned and flees before being captured by the authorities. Without Hulda's influence, Talia turns Elspeth from her bratty ways, and within a year the young Princess becomes the pet of the Collegium. The fourth and final section of the book deals with Talia learning to use her Gift. She attends a training class and also demonstrates the strength of her Gift and her bond with Rolan. She is exploring the range of her new senses when she empathically 'witnesses' the murder of Herald Ylsa several miles north of Haven. Ylsa was on assignment gathering information and was carrying several important documents. Talia saves Ylsa's life-mate, Herald Keren, from committing suicide, then psychically leads Herald Kris and Herald Dirk out to the murder site. Kris is able to See the place at a distance, while Dirk can Fetch the documents with his mind. After this ordeal, Talia feels she has finally earned the respect which had been given her.
1862100	/m/061xn_	The Oaken Throne	Robin Jarvis	1993-09-30	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set hundreds of years before the Deptford Mice Trilogy in the Middle Ages, the story tells the tale of the squirrel maiden Ysabelle, daughter of the ruler of the Hazel Realm, Lady Ninnia, and Vespertilio (or Vesper), a young bat. The story begins in a ruined tower in London where the Bats live, and they are readying themselves to go to war to fight the squirrels. They believe that the Starwife, ruler of the black squirrels, has stolen their birthright of insight and seeing into the future. In the midst of the preparations, Vesper longs to experience the battle for himself, but he is too young to go. Meanwhile, in the Hallowed Oak in Greenreach, the Starwife has been seriously ill. Unbeknownst to her, her trusted handmaiden Morwenna has been poisoning her. As the bat army launches an attack that will destroy her realm, the poison begins taking full effect on the Starwife and Morwenna reveals her treachery. But before she perishes, the Starwife summons a peregrine falcon who carries her symbol of office, a silver acorn necklace, away to safety. The next day, far away in the Hazel Realm, the celebration for the holiday of Aldertide has begun. Ysabelle is eager to join the festivities, much to the dismay of her field mouse nursemaid Griselda. Soon however, a group of bats who are pursuing the falcon bring an end to the day's happiness. The bats manage to kill the falcon and, to Ysabelle's horror, its body falls near her and the silver acorn drops into her palm. The bats swoop down and attack the squirrel maiden. She is saved by the stoat jester Wendel Maculatum, and most of the bats are soon defeated. One is taken as a prisoner. He verifies that the land of Greenreach has fallen, and says that others of his kind will soon return that night and destroy the Hazel Realm. But before they can get any more information out of him, the bat kills himself by running into one of the squirrels' blades. Left with no other choice, the Lady Ninnia must send her daughter to Greenreach, accompanied by the squirrel guards of the realm. Since she caught the silver acorn, she has automatically received the title of the Starwife. Ninnia and her husband Cyllinus know that they and many of the squirrels must stay in the Hazel Realm to face certain death. They say their painful goodbyes, knowing that they will never see Ysabelle again. As the squirrels march deeper into the forest, they encounter a bat, whom they soon discover is no more than a child. It is Vesper, who has secretly left his home to try to participate in the battle. The squirrels force him to march with them. Later that night, the group is attacked and Ysabelle, Vesper, and many of the squirrel guards are taken prisoner by Hobbers, a group of creatures who worship three evil rat gods called the Raith Sidhe, in particular the worst one, Hobb. It is soon realised that Ysabelle's silver acorn is gone from around her neck; it has been stolen by the high priest of Hobb. The squirrels and bat are led out to an area in the forest wherein a large amount of Hobbers are gathered. The high priest, dressed in a red silk costume, appears and calls for a squirrel to be taken to him. A wicked hedgehog named Pigwiggen unties the unfortunate squirrel, who is then led to the high priest. He is skinned alive in a sacrifice to Hobb. The high priest then lifts up the silver acorn and dips it in the squirrel's blood. Two more squirrels suffer this same fate before a group of Ysabelle's guards decide to recover the silver acorn while the Hobbers are distracted by the sacrificing. This goes as planned but unfortunately these squirrels die in the effort. Ysabelle and Vesper escape into the night, but along the way are confronted by the high priest, who curses them both. Vesper, he says, will die surrounded by the sound of bells. By dipping Ysabelle's silver acorn in blood, he is summoning Hobb to the world, and when the evil rat god arrives he will destroy Ysabelle. After saying this, the high priest disappears into the forest. Vesper is disheartened by his grim prophesy, but Ysabelle doesn't care and wants to continue her journey to Greenreach with him as her guide. He grudgingly agrees to help her, despite the fact that he doesn't really know the way himself. Later, to Vesper's horror, he hears the sound of bells approaching. He fears that this will be his doom, but it turns out that this sound is coming from bells on the lead of a shrew who from this is attached to a mole. The two introduce themselves as Tysle Symkin and Giraldus. Ysabelle and Vesper soon learn that Giraldus is leprous and nearly blind, and that Tysle is lame. The two are very friendly and invite the bat and squirrel to eat with them. Giraldus and Tysle say that they are on a pilgrimage to Greenreach, hoping that they will be cured when they arrive. Ysabelle realises that the two could accompany her on her journey since they are bound for the same place. Vesper is a bit hesitant at first, and Giraldus understands, knowing that it is probably because of his disease. Ysabelle doesn't care however, and insists that they come with her. The four of them travel to the Orchard of Duir, a place where in legend, the Green spirit (whom many of the woodland animals worship) planted seven trees before winter came. When they get there, however, Ysabelle, Vesper and Tysle see that the orchard is not the beautiful place it once was. Not wanting to disappoint Giraldus, they tell the blind mole that it still looks the same, though Ysabelle does not feel right lying to him. After the group goes to sleep in the limbs of one of the trees in the orchard, Ysabelle is awakened by a voice speaking to her. She looks up and sees two large green eyes staring at her. They are those of the Green. He informs her that the bats are not the true enemy of the squirrels, but have been misguided. He also tells her that one of her friends will betray her. Ysabelle, shocked, asks the Green which one of them it will be, but he disappears before giving her an answer. The four again meet up with Wendel Maculatum, who is astonished to see that Ysabelle is alive. He tells them that he was separated from the remaining Hazel Realm guards and has been travelling through the forest for many days. He says that in that time he has heard of a group of woodlanders who are resisting the Hobb cult. He doesn't know exactly where they are, however, but they are somewhere near a lake. Upon following a stream, Ysabelle, Vesper, Giraldus, Tysle and Wendel reach a lake, but its water is dark and polluted, and there are no signs of the woodlanders anywhere. Nevertheless, they decide to camp there. Much to Giraldus's dismay, Tysle is beginning to prefer the company of Wendel, watching eagerly as the stoat jester carves puppets out of wood. Later in the night, the ghosts of animals who had drowned in the lake rise up and try to drag the travellers down with them. The group manages to escape, and soon they find their way to a meadow filled with daffodils. It is here that they are captured by the very woodlanders they were searching for. These woodlanders are led by a mouse captain named Fenlyn Purfote. At first he acts friendly toward the five travellers, taking them to the woodlanders' headquarters, but his mood changes when he suddenly locks them up because he thinks they are Hobbers. Although they try to tell him that they most certainly are not, Fenlyn (or Fenny, as he is often called) will hear none of it. However, Fenny soon receives a message from a mysterious figure called The Ancient, who wishes to speak with Ysabelle and Vesper. Finally convinced that they are not Hobbers, Fenny leads them both down a dark passageway deep underground, where they come upon The Ancient—who is the messenger of the moon goddess, who came to earth in the form of a hare. He tells the bat and squirrel that the only way to prevent doom befalling the world is to convince their kinds to join together to battle the Hobbers. To Vesper's shock, The Ancient reveals that it was not the Starwife who took away the bats' power to see into the future, but their very own Warden of the Great Book, Hrethel. He also tells Ysabelle that because the high priest dipped the silver acorn into the blood of the squirrels that were sacrificed, Hobb has been summoned back into the world, and that even now he is rising from the Pit. In three days time he will appear to claim Ysabelle. What the squirrel maiden doesn't know, however, is that this very night is the third day. Vesper is given a bag of special herbs to be thrown into a fire, which will summon all of the bats. He believes that there is no way that he could ever convince them that the squirrels are not their enemy. After Ysabelle and Vesper return, their three friends are also released from their cell. Later that night, the woodlanders hold a celebration for their five guests to make up for the way they previously had treated them. Ysabelle and Vesper dance together, and begin to realise that they are falling in love. While Wendel is away from his jester's cart, Tysle takes the opportunity to look through his prop chests. He pulls out many amusing objects, but suddenly he sees a silken costume of some sort, which appears to imitate what a victim of a peeling would look like. A horrifying realisation hits Tysle; this is what the high priest of Hobb wears, and that is Wendel's true identity! Before he can run to tell Giraldus what he has discovered, Wendel appears and taunts the little shrew. Then he pulls out a peeling knife and kills him. Tysle's body is found soon after, much to everyone's shock. His being peeled is confirmation that a member of the Hobb cult is among their number. Before this fact can completely sink in, a guard rushes to tell Fenny that the Hobbers are on the move, heading toward their stronghold. Ysabelle and Vesper escape through a tunnel, though not before Wendel reveals his treachery. Mad with grief for his friend, Giraldus starts choking the stoat, but Wendel manages to free himself and strangle him. But before he dies, the mole starts a cave-in and Ysabelle and Vesper can only watch as the entire tunnel collapses on Giraldus, Wendel, and the Hobbers. The bat and squirrel finally arrive at Greenreach, but Vesper is wounded by Hobber crows who have pursued them. Morwenna approaches Ysabelle, and tells her that she wants to help her bring the silver acorn to the Starglass. The unknowing squirrel maiden follows her down below the Hallowed Oak, into a dark chamber. As the two talk, Ysabelle begins to piece everything together and figures out that Morwenna is the one who betrayed the Greenreach squirrels. Morwenna confirms this and reveals that she is the priestess of Mabb, the rat goddess consort of Hobb. She takes the acorn from Ysabelle and locks her in the chamber where her pet toads wait to devour the squirrel maiden. The remaining army of the Hazel Realm arrives in Greenreach and the battle begins. Feeling better, Vesper awakens and hears Ysabelle crying out and goes to rescue her. The two of them rush out of the oak and see the bats and squirrels fighting. Vesper decides that this is his chance to use the herbs that The Ancient gave him, and tosses them into a fire, sending up a beacon which distracts all of the bats, as well as the squirrels. They gather around and listen to his story. Most of them begin to believe what he is telling them; it seems to explain quite a bit. At that moment, the Hobbers arrive, surging up the hill towards them. Now the bats and squirrels are allied together, fighting their true enemy. Ysabelle races up the Hallowed Oak to face Morwenna, who still has the silver acorn. But as she approaches her, the amulet around Morwenna's neck becomes extremely hot, burning her fur. It is then that Ysabelle realises that Hobb has begun to break through the ground. Ysabelle stares in horror while Morwenna is jubilant—that is, until she sees the claws of the rat god reaching for her. The high priest merely cursed the wearer of the silver acorn, not Ysabelle in particular. Hobb blows fire onto Morwenna and she is killed. Vesper swoops down and grabs Ysabelle, just as Hobb kicks the Hallowed Oak and it topples to the ground. Ysabelle tells Vesper to take her down to the ground, where she snatches the silver acorn which had fallen. Then she hurries to the Starglass, now lying on the grass, and holds the pendant over it. A white light wells up and travels through her body; the powers channel through her, and this means that she is now truly the Starwife. Now she is faced with the task of defeating Hobb. She calls out to the rat god and he turns his attention to her. She says that since the acorn drew him back into the world, he will now have that which lured him. Using the forces within the amulet, she imprisons Hobb within an acorn, then faints, exhausted. Several weeks later, the wreckage of the Hallowed Oak had been removed, and the hill was cleaned up. On the day of Ysabelle's inauguration as the Starwife, Vesper arrives and asks to speak with her. When she approaches, he proclaims his love for her and asks her to relinquish her office and to run away with him. She refuses, believing her duty to be more important, and leaves him alone. Saddened, Vesper watches her leave, not knowing what to do. A cloaked figure approaches him and offers him a drink of a strange mixture. Vesper politely accepts, and as he sips it, the figure reveals himself to be the ghost of Wendel Maculatum. The drink was poison, and Vesper's curse was finally fulfilled. At the same time, Ysabelle is feeling guilty for the way she treated Vesper, and realises that she does love him. She runs outside, eager to tell Vesper this, but is heartbroken to find him lying dead, surrounded by bluebells.
1862126	/m/061xqq	High Rhulain	Brian Jacques	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel begins with Riggu Felis, wildcat warlord of Green Isle, and his two sons, Jeefra and Pitru, attempting to kill an osprey, later known to be Pandion Piketalon. Riggu scorns his sons' attempts to kill the osprey and jumps into the fray himself, attempting to scare it into submission. The osprey is not intimidated and sinks his talons into the cat's face, flying into the air with him. The wildcat drops to the ground with half of his face torn off. Because of this incident, the wildcat orders all birds on Green Isle to be slain. Tiria Wildlough is daughter of Banjon Wildlough, the Skipper of Otters at Redwall Abbey. One afternoon, she and a few friends go out into Mossflower Woods to gather some wood, and along the way they run into some trouble in the form of a small but ferocious vermin band terrorizing Pandion. Tiria and her friends manage to fight them off, but the vermin swear revenge. When Tiria returns to Redwall, she and her father have a discussion, where Tiria learns that otter law allows only male otters to be Skippers. This upsets Tiria greatly, and she is quick to listen when Martin the Warrior and High Queen Rhulain Wildlough appear to her in a dream, telling her the otters of Green Isle need her assistance and leadership. After deciphering and scouring the Abbey for many clues with Old Quelt, Sister Snowdrop, Abbess Lycian, Brinty, Tribsy, and Girry, Tiria learns through another dream that she has to leave on her own, so she heads to Log-a-Log Urfa's encampment along with her father and Brink Greyspoke. Soon after, however, Brinty is killed when the vermin band attacks Redwall, seeking vengeance. At the same time, a rogue otter named Leatho Shellhound leads the free otter clans in various attacks against the ruling wildcats in an attempt to free their enslaved friends. Many famous otter clans take part, including Galedeep (descended from Finnbarr Galedeep of The Bellmaker), Streambattle (descended from Rab of The Bellmaker), and Wavedog (descended from Kroova of Triss). However, Finnbarr and Kroova were sea otters, and Finnbarr had no known living kin. Log-a-Log Urfa takes Tiria to Cuthbert Blanedale Frunk, a Long Patrol hare in the service of Lord Mandoral Highpeak at Salamandastron, where she receives a sling from the Badger Lord made of shark skin and the breastplate of the High Rhulain. Along with the a number of hares of the Long Patrol, Tiria sails to Green Isle in Frunk's ship, the Purloined Petunia, and they meet up with Shellhound and his otter clans. At the abbey, the Redwallers continue to solve riddles from Sister Geminya, finding Corriam Wildlough's lance and the High Rhulain's coronet. Brantalis Skyfurrow, a visiting goose, flies the crown to Tiria at Green Isle. When Tiria reaches Green Isle, she finds the otter clans in a stand-off with Riggu. Leatho Shellhound is trapped in a burning tower, set afire by Riggu's mate, Lady Kaltag, who lost her mind after the loss of her son, Jeefra. The birds Pandion and Brantalis save Leatho, but Riggu shortly after slays Pandion, who had previously ripped off part of his face, forcing him to wear a mask. Tiria, seeing Pandion killed, hurls the barbed star that first injured Pandion at Riggu, and with amazing accuracy, she strikes and kills Riggu Felis. Meanwhile, Riggu’s other son Pitru had taken some forces and led them out of the burning fortress. Pitru establishes himself as the new warlord among the wildcats. Knowing the otters will now return back to where their families are hiding, Pitru builds a barricade square in the route that the otter clans have to take in order to rejoin their families. With the help of newly freed Leatho Shellhound, Lorgo Galedeep, Kolun Galedeep, and Banya Streamdog, Tiria routes the remaining vermin forces. Sadly, however, Cuthbert dies bringing down Nessie-type monster Slothunog, and Pitru with him. Recovering from this loss, Tiria is later proclaimed by all as the new High Rhulain of Green Isle.
1863143	/m/061_gf	The Longest Journey	E. M. Forster	1907	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 Rickie Elliot is a student at early 20th century Cambridge, a university that seems like paradise to him, amongst bright if cynical companions, when he receives a visit from two friends, an engaged young woman, Agnes Pembroke, and her older brother, Herbert. The Pembrokes are Rickie’s only friends from home. An orphan who grew up living with cousins, he was sent to a public (boarding) school where he was shunned and bullied because of his lame foot, an inherited weakness, and frail body. Agnes, as it happens, is engaged to Gerald, now in the army, who was one of the sturdy youths who bullied Rickie at school. Rickie is not brilliant at argument, but he is intensely responsive to poetry and art, and is accepted within a circle of philosophical and intellectual fellow-students led by a brilliant but especially cynical aspiring philosopher, Stuart Ansell, who refuses, when he is introduced to her, even to acknowledge that Agnes exists. When visiting the Pembrokes during his vacation Rickie has an epiphanic vision of the sexual bond between Gerald, who is coarse but handsome and athletic, and Agnes, a bond he cannot imagine for himself. He takes these lovers’ side in trying to speed their marriage, offering part of his own inheritance, an offer that insults Gerald. When Gerald is suddenly killed in a football match, Rickie finds a role consoling Agnes—he tells her she should “mind” what has happened, that is, that she should grieve—since her passion for Gerald has been the main event of her life. Rickie becomes Agnes’ chief consolation and support, though he is in every way Gerald’s opposite, and after a year or two, despite the failure of Rickie’s stories to find a publisher, he and Agnes become engaged to marry. The young couple pay a visit to Rickie’s Aunt Emily Failing, a wealthy eccentric, the widow of a well-known essayist. On this visit he meets Aunt Emily’s ward, Stephen, a quarrelsome and handsome semi-educated 19-year-old. For some reason—perhaps just to make malicious mischief—Aunt Emily wants Rickie and Stephen to get to know each other. The two young men do not take to each other at all, and quarrel. Yet it turns out that they are in fact half-brothers, a long-kept secret that Aunt Emily reveals to Rickie, mostly to shock him. Rickie assumes that Stephen is the illegitimate son of his father—a father he hated—who lived apart from Rickie’s mother during Rickie’s childhood. Illegitimacy in this period is still considered to be a blight on the child, as well as the family, and Agnes, who is essentially conventional, considers Stephen’s existence something to be deeply ashamed of and to be kept secret, and Stephen a person who deserves to be shunned. Her brother, Herbert, has received an offer to be the head of a dormitory at Sawston School, and can fill this post only if Agnes and Rickie marry quickly and join him, Agnes to be house mother, and Rickie to be a teacher of classics. Rickie’s ambition to be a writer, and his freedom of thought, are suppressed by the dreary regimen of teaching, and his moral sense is suffocated by the influence of his wife and brother-in-law. He becomes a petty tyrant in the classroom, and an insensitive enforcer of school rules, though a part of him still sees and understands what he has lost, both as a writer and a man of refinement and sensitivity, since Cambridge. He is “dead” to his former friend, Stuart Ansell, who refuses to answer Rickie’s letters. Ansell finally does pay a visit to Rickie, stopping at the house of another acquaintance, and by coincidence he meets Stephen, who (partly due to Agnes’s scheming to get Aunt Emily’s inheritance for Rickie and herself) has been expelled from Mrs. Failing’s house. Stephen has discovered his identity at last, and now knows that Rickie is his half-brother. He wants to meet him again and see whether they might get on better. Ansell falls under the spell of Stephen’s rustic honesty, physical vitality, and impulsiveness. Rickie, Agnes and Herbert assume Stephen has come to blackmail them and Agnes offers him money, but Stephen, who is in fact penniless, now wants nothing to do with them. In a horrifying blowout, in front of all the pupils, Ansell accuses Rickie and Agnes of wanting to deny Stephen’s existence. Ansell reveals to Rickie that Stephen is, in fact, his mother’s illegitimate child, not his father’s. Rickie faints at this revelation. Rickie’s marriage has become loveless, as Ansell assumed it would, and with his brother’s reappearance he realizes that he has fallen under his wife’s spell and denied his better nature. He leaves to find Stephen, dear to him now because he is the child of the same beloved mother, and he attempts unsuccessfully to assume the role of a brother, for example, to get him to stop drinking. The two of them go to Wiltshire to see his aunt. This brief period when they travel together restores to Rickie the sense of himself that has been lost ever since he fell under his wife’s influence, and, as well, restores his sense of joy and playful love of life. Rickie is unable, however, to control his mercurial half-brother, who gets drunk despite his promise not to. Like his mother, and like Gerald, Rickie dies suddenly: his legs are severed when he tries to pull a drunken Stephen off some railroad tracks. Stephen survives, marries, and in a brief epilogue stands up to Herbert Pembroke for his right to money that is due him with the publication of his half-brother’s book of stories, now valuable since, after his death, Frederick Elliot has become a noted author. The “longest journey” which is, of course, the span of one’s life, or, in another sense, the development into one’s true self, has concluded successfully for Rickie, who has regained his sense of integrity. Though his life is cut short, he receives his vindication by coming to moral clarity at last, rejecting conventional hypocrisy, and acknowledging his bond to his brother. His uniqueness and worth are confirmed as well by his posthumous success as an artist.
1863380	/m/06205k	The Drowning Pool	Ross Macdonald	1950	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Archer is hired by a woman to investigate a slanderous letter she received. The family lives in the house situated on the line between two Southern Californian towns, one an idyllic, oil-rich town, and the other the small, seedy town from which the oil comes, corrupt and destroyed by the industry. It is not long before Archer is more concerned with investigating murder instead of just blackmail. The book was the basis of the 1975 Paul Newman film of the same name, but the movie has radical departures from the plot of the novel, including moving the location to Louisiana.
1863394	/m/06205x	The Company of Women	Khushwant Singh		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This Mohan Kumar as a student in the U.S., Mohan has "lost his virginity" at Princeton University to Jessica Brown, a beautiful black lady. Their relationship looked like a honeymoon without wedding. While still in the USA, Ms. Yasmeen, a Pakistani, revealed to Mohan Kumar the heady passion of a woman older than her male counterpart. After Mohan gets back to India and settles in married life, his passion for women continues undiminished. He feels highly relieved after being divorced by his "nagging and ill-tempered" wife. But Mohan was a unfaithful husband. His sex escapades, before the divorce and post divorce were unusual and varied, including his repeated relations with his ever-obliging maid, Dhanno, with her practiced charm on the bed. Another woman in Kumar’s life was Tamilian Marry Joseph, described by the author as “a dark, plump woman in her thirties.” She worked as a nurse to Kumar’s son. She has been described almost inviting Shakti Kumar tacitly with these words, “Saar, one life to live, not to waste it on a drunkard husband. You agree?” Kumar has agreed. The book describes Kumar's rendezvous with madam Sarojini Bhardwaj, a Professor of English. And, when it came to sex, the lady professor proved that she was stronger than many men. Another lady appearing in the sex life of Kumar was Molly Gomes, who was “not only as an incarnation of sensual impulse, but also as a mistress of sexuality.” Likewise, Susanthika, “the small wonderful bird”, from Sri Lanka was really active on bed.
1864652	/m/0623pd	Homeward Bound	Harry Turtledove	2004-12-28	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Admiral Peary travels at approximately one-third c and took a little over 30 years, instead of 24 (the Race's starship velocities were one-half c), to cross the twelve light years between Earth and Tau Ceti. The ship is named Admiral Peary for its role as a military exploration ship, after Adm. Robert Peary, who did the same in Arctic exploration. When the Admiral Peary arrives in orbit around Home, the Race's planet in the Tau Ceti system, it causes a crisis in the highest levels of the Race. The Race's Emperor Risson and Fleetlord Atvar (sent back to Home, with the dubious distinction of being the only Fleetlord not to conquer a planet) argue the merits and drawbacks of attempting to destroy mankind by massive nuclear strikes. Meanwhile, Researcher Ttomalss investigates reports of a major breakthrough by human scientists back on Earth. The Race inadvertently cause themselves a possible ecological disaster&nbsp;— similar to what they are causing on Earth with the Race's introduced species into the Earth's ecosystems&nbsp;— by letting the humans' caged rats loose on Home. The rats were used for food testing for the Humans. It comes as a great shock to the Race when a second human starship (the Commodore Perry) arrives in orbit around Home, having traveled the twelve light years in just five weeks. The faster-than-light drive (which appears to be based on the principle of folding space) allows the crew to return to Earth, which is familiar, yet different, from how they left it. Another pun is the ship's captain Nicole Nichols, inspired by Star Trek's Lieutenant Uhura but playing off the actress' real name. The ship is named Commodore Perry for its role in opening up the Race's empire to US access, after Cdre. Matthew C. Perry, who did the same with Japan, and the Race are fearful that other human nations will make their way to Home, especially a recovered Germany.
1866903	/m/0629fw	The Far Pavilions	M. M. Kaye	1978-09		 Ashton Pelham-Martyn (Ash) is the son of a British botanical scientist traveling through India, who is born on the road shortly before the Sepoy uprising of 1857. His mother dies from childbed fever shortly after his birth and his father dies of cholera a few years later. He is entrusted to his Hindu ayah (nanny) Sita to be brought to his English relatives in the city of Mardan. After discovering that all English feringhis have been killed during the uprising, Sita adopts the dark-skinned Ash and takes him in search of safety. They eventually find refuge in the kingdom of Gulkote where Ashton, now going by the name Ashok, forgets his English parentage and grows up as a native Indian boy. While working as a servant for Lalji, the young yuveraj (crown prince) of Gulkote, Ashton befriends the neglected princess Anjuli, in addition to the master of stables, Koda Dad, and his son Zarin. At the age of 11, Ashton uncovers a murderous conspiracy against Lalji and learns he himself will be killed for interfering with the plot. Promising Anjuli he will return for her one day, he and Sita escape the palace with assistance from friends Sita and Ashok have made within the palace over the years, and flee from Gulkote. The ailing Sita dies en route, but not before revealing to Ash his true parentage and entrusting him with the letters and money his father gave her after his death. Ashok makes his way to the military division Sita instructed him about, and they recognize him; now known by his English name, Ashton is turned over to English authorities and sent to England for a formal education and military training. At age 19, Ashton returns to India as an officer in the Corps of Guides with Zarin on the Northern Frontier. He quickly finds that his sense of place is torn between his new-found status as Ashton, an English "Sahib", and Ashok, the native Indian boy he once believed he was. After going AWOL in Afghanistan, Ash is suspended from The Guides and sent to escort a royal wedding party across India. He discovers that the party is in fact from the former kingdom of Gulkote, now known as Karidkote after merging with a neighboring princedom, and that Anjuli, along with her sister Shushula, are the princesses to be married. Also in the wedding party is Anjuli's younger brother, the prince Jhoti. After revealing himself as Ashok to Anjuli, Ash falls in love with her, but is unable to act on his feelings as she is not only betrothed to another but belongs to what is now an alien culture, across a divide which they can no longer bridge. Over the months that follow, Ash thwarts a plot to murder Jhoti, and falls into increasing despair over his unrequited love for Anjuli. While caught in a dust-storm together, Anjuli reveals her love for Ash, but rebuffs his pleas to run away with him out of duty to her sister as a co-bride in an arranged marriage. Ash is forced to watch Anjuli be married off to the lecherous rana of Bhithor and return to his duties in the military. Two years later, Ash receives distressing news that the rana of Bhithor has died, and that his wives are to be burned alive in the Hindu ritual of suttee. Racing to Bhithor, Ash and his friends manage to rescue Anjuli and take her to safety; this rescue results in the death of not only Ash's beloved horse but also most of the human members of the party. He insists upon marrying Anjuli, despite the insistence of all other members of his group of acquaintances, including Anjuli, that this is not only unnecessary but against God's Law. Here the book's focus shifts from the relationship between Ash and Anjuli to England's and Russia's political wrangling in the regions north of what were the Indian Borders at the time. In England's desire to expand its territory into Afghanistan, Ash is sent into the country as a spy to relay information that will help England establish a permanent foothold in the area. What follows is an account of the first phase of the Second Afghan War, culminating in the September 1879 uprising that killed the English envoy in Kabul. This part of the story is told mostly from the perspective of Ash's best friend Walter "Wally" Hamilton. After the uprising in Kabul, Ash and Anjuli set out in search of a paradise in the Himalayas - "the far pavilions" - free of prejudice where they can live out their lives in peace.
1866977	/m/0629p1	De komst van Joachim Stiller				 The main character in the novel is Freek Groenevelt, a 37-year-old journalist living in Antwerp. From a café, he witnesses four workers breaking up a street and then closing it up again, for no apparent reason. When he decides to write an article about the event, he is contacted by a member of the Antwerp city council, Mr. Keldermans. Mr. Keldermans explains to Groenevelt that things are happening which he does not understand and makes him afraid. Groenevelt is sceptical at first, but Keldermans seems honest and Groenevelt leaves in a state of confusion. He then receives a letter from Joachim Stiller, in which Stiller announces that the event he witnessed is a portent. To Groenevelt's confusion, the letter is stamped one and a half years before he was born. Later on, Groenevelt goes to visit the editors of a literary magazine, "Atomium", which has published a very critical article about him. One of the editors, Simone Marijnissen, explains that they have received a letter from, again, Joachim Stiller, asking them not to criticize Groenevelt. They thought that Groenevelt had written the letter himself and saw this as a reason to attack him. Over the next few days, Joachim Stiller continues to manifest himself. He writes another letter to Marijnissen, and Groenevelt finds a 16th-century book, written by a German theologian from Augsburg called Joachim Stiller. Groenevelt and Marijnissen (who are fast falling in love with each other) visit an art historian, who determines that the letter is thirty-eight years old: again, just one year older than Groenevelt. A graphologist determines that Stiller's handwriting is exactly what he would expect from a man "who doesn't exist at all, but could nonetheless write". Marijnissen spends the night in Groenevelt's apartment, and they are awakened by the sounds of a carillon, which nobody else seems to hear. Then, the telephone rings, and an unknown person promises: "One day I will free you from all your fears." Then, as persistent rumours announcing the end of the world start to run around the city, Groenevelt contacts Keldermans, who explains that these rumours have been spread by people unknown. He had detailed some police officers to keep things quiet, but these have disappeared without a trace. Groenevelt, now understandably nervous, visits a psychiatrist, but apart from high blood pressure, nothing seems to be wrong. He does remember an episode from his early youth, when he witnessed a rocket attack in the Second World War. An American soldier was mortally wounded in the attack, and suddenly Groenevelt remembers the GI's name: Major Joachim Stiller, Longwood, Massachusetts. When Groenevelt comes home, Marijnissen tells him she is expecting their child. Furthermore, a letter from Joachim Stiller has arrived, telling them that he will arrive on Friday evening. On Friday evening, Groenevelt and Marijnissen go to the train station, where they meet Keldermans. At half past nine, a man comes out of the station, whom Groenevelt recognises as the American soldier from his youth. The man smiles, and says: "I am Joachim Stiller", but immediately after that he is hit by a truck. Later, at the police station, it proves impossible to identify the man. Three days later, when Groenevelt and Marijnissen try to visit Stiller's body, it has disappeared. Keldermans's connection with Joachim Stiller is also revealed: his daughter has died in the same attack that Groenevelt has witnessed.
1867786	/m/062ckc	Katherine	Anchee Min			 Six years after the death of Mao, the People's Republic of China opens its doors to learn how to integrate into the larger world. The title character, a thirty-six year old English teacher in Shanghai, learns a great deal of Chinese culture from interacting with her students in and out of class. The narrator of the novel, twenty-nine year old Zebra Wong, is one of the students who eventually helps her adopt a Chinese girl, Little Rabbit. However, the principal of the school Katherine teaches at, Mr. Han, becomes suspicious of Katherine's after-class activities and, with the help of Katherine's student and spurned lover Lion Head, seizes upon her "corrupting Western influence" to call for her dismissal. Katherine appeals to the U.S. consul in Shanghai, but she is returned to America. She maintains contact with Zebra and tries to make arrangements for her and Little Rabbit to come to the United States as well. it:Katherine (Min)
1868369	/m/062f7t	Hunters of Dune	Kevin J. Anderson	2006-08-22	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 For three years, the no-ship (named the Ithaca by its passengers) has been in an alternate universe, carrying the gholas of Duncan Idaho and the famous military commander Miles Teg as well as the Bene Gesserit Sheeana, who has the mysterious power to control sandworms. Other passengers include the last Bene Tleilax Master Scytale, some Bene Gesserits, a group of Jews saved from Honored Matre oppression on the planet Gammu, seven small sandworms that can produce spice, and four captive Futars, fierce half-man/half-cat creatures bred to hunt Honored Matres. The mysterious Oracle of Time speaks to Duncan and brings the no-ship back into the 'regular' universe. However, it is soon discovered by the mysterious "old man and old woman", Daniel and Marty, first mentioned at the end of Chapterhouse Dune, who have unknown designs on the Ithaca and its passengers. The no-ship is nearly caught in their tachyon net, but escapes using the space-folding Holtzman engines. Meanwhile, Murbella is trying to prevent civil war on Chapterhouse, the only known source of melange left in the universe. She meets an emissary sent by the Spacing Guild, which is desperate for spice. Murbella refuses their requests due to the help the Guild gave to the Honored Matres, and demands the Guild's future loyalty, threatening to cut them off completely. Unbeknownst to the Guild delegation and the rest of the universe, the sandworms on Chapterhouse are not yet producing much melange; the Bene Gesserit are making it seem so, using their own stockpiles. Later, Murbella stops a brutal fight between some polarized Bene Gesserits and Honored Matres. Though the Honored Matres had destroyed all Bene Tleilax worlds, their descendants (the Lost Tleilaxu) have returned from The Scattering. Supposedly under their complete control are their improved Face Dancers, creatures who can mimic other humans exactly and go undetected by all known means. It is soon revealed that the Face Dancers have their own will and motives, as they kill the Tleilaxu Elder Burah and replace him with their own duplicate. They have now replaced all the Lost Tleilaxu Elders, as well as countless humans on various planets in the Old Empire. Their leader Khrone sends the scribe Uxtal (presumably the highest-ranking, if only, Lost Teliaxu left alive) to serve the renegade Honored Matre leader Hellica, who has proclaimed herself Matre Superior and now rules the conquered Bene Tleilax homeworld, Tleilax. The desperate Spacing Guild Administrators go to Ix to find an alternative to the use of their own Navigators (who require spice) for space travel. Unbeknownst to the Ixians or the Guild, Khrone and his Face Dancers have infiltrated Ix. While carefully executing his own plans for Face Dancer domination of the universe, Khrone is doing the bidding of Daniel and Marty by offering their advanced navigation technology to the Guild as if it were of Ixian design. The Guild agrees to the development of this technology if they have a monopoly on it. Uxtal has been forced to use Tleilaxu axlotl tank technology to produce the adrenaline-enhancing drug used by Honored Matres. Khrone also tasks Uxtal to make a ghola from recently-found cell samples, which turn out to be those of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. From the start, the young Baron is as sociopathic as the original. Later, Khrone obtains the blood of Paul Atreides from a religious relic on the Atreides homeworld once known as Caladan, and has Uxtal make a ghola of Paul. He plans to twist this Kwisatz Haderach ghola (using the Baron Harkonnen ghola) into a weapon for Daniel and Marty's conquest of the universe. Later, the Guild Navigator Edrik comes to Tleilax seeking Uxtal's knowledge of axlotl tanks; the Navigator fears his kind's obsolescence when the Ixian navigation technology becomes available. He seeks an alternate source of spice to break the Bene Gesserit monopoly, but even Uxtal believes that secret has died with the Tleilaxu Masters murdered by the Honored Matres. Eventually he is able to access the genetic material of deceased Master Waff, and through an accelerated process creates several (ultimately flawed) Waff gholas, hoping to unlock the secret of producing melange in the tanks. The entire universe is unaware that in the events of Chapterhouse Dune, Scytale had been forced to give the passengers of the Ithaca the secret, and it was in use on the no-ship as their primary source of spice. The Tleilaxu had always sustained their lives indefinitely through the use of gholas; his current body is slowly dying, and he does not have another to replace it. Needing to grow a new ghola of himself, he has only one secret to use as a bargaining tool: a hidden nullentropy capsule containing cells carefully and secretly collected by the Tleilaxu for millennia, including the cells of Tleilaxu Masters, Face Dancers, Paul Atreides, Duke Leto Atreides, Lady Jessica, Chani, Stilgar, Leto Atreides II, Gurney Halleck, Thufir Hawat, and even legendary figures dating back to the Butlerian Jihad, including Serena Butler and Xavier Harkonnen. The Bene Gesserit have a vicious debate over whether to create gholas of any of these historical figures. Sheeana believes they may prove useful, while others fear the return of such 'mistakes' as Leto II. Despite the controversy, gholas are created, a few at a time. Scytale is allowed to have his own once the first few have been born. On Chapterhouse, Murbella trains an elite strike force of Bene Gesserit using the combined skills of Bene Gesserits, Honored Matres, and 'lost' Swordmasters of the Ginaz. Her 'Valkyries' attack the rebel Honored Matre strongholds on other planets with success, in the process discovering that some of the Honored Matres are Face Dancers in disguise, undetectable until death. A former Honored Matre herself, Murbella eventually accesses the Other Memory from her Honored Matre ancestors, and learns their true origins. The core of the Honored Matres were vengeful Tleilaxu females, freed and assimilated by Fish Speakers and Bene Gesserits fleeing in The Scattering. The Tleilaxu women had been used as axlotl tanks by their males for millennia; though the current Honored Matres did not know their own origins, this explains to Murbella why they had been compelled to so mercilessly annihilate the Tleilaxu worlds in the Old Empire. Murbella also 'remembers' the attack by a renegade Honored Matre that first antagonized the Enemy. On the no-ship, an attempt by rebel Bene Gesserits to murder the Leto II ghola is foiled by the child himself, seemingly able to change into a sandworm at will. The Paul ghola wants to remember his past; with the help of the Chani ghola, he steals and consumes an overdose of spice. This fails to awaken his past memories, but instead he has a vision in which he has been stabbed by another, evil Paul Atreides. After being discovered by the Bene Gesserit, he concludes that it is prescience. Sheanna’s own visions bring a warning from the legendary Reverend Mother Ramallo of Arrakis about the use of the gholas. She stops the ghola program from continuing until she can make sense of it all. Daniel and Marty inform Khrone that they have no further need of his Baron Harkonnen and Paul Atreides gholas. They insist they have lured the Ithaca into a trap, and will soon have the Kwisatz Haderach they have calculated is on board. Khrone, however, continues to prepare the gholas. He finally manages to restore the Baron's memories, and instructs him to train the Paul ghola (named Paolo), who does not yet have his memories. To the Baron's disquiet, he finds the mocking voice of his granddaughter Alia in his thoughts soon after recovering his memories. She also later threatens him should he try to harm Paolo. Murbella contracts Ix's competitor Richese to provide as many armed ships, and as much weaponry, as possible, in preparation for the confrontation with the unknown enemy. Later, the Honored Matres destroy the entire planet of Richese to cripple the Sisterhood. In a final assault on Tleilax, the most powerful of the rebel Honored Matre strongholds, Murbella and her Valkyries are victorious. It is revealed that Matre Superior Hellica and several of her elite guard were, in fact, Face Dancers. Many of the surviving Honored Matres then join with Murbella. Uxtal and the sole remaining Waff ghola each attempt to escape during the chaos. A Tleilaxu farmer gleefully allows "Master" Uxtal to be devoured by hungry sligs, while Waff finds refuge with the Spacing Guild, offering Edrik something better than artificial melange &mdash; the genetic knowledge for the Guild to create their own, optimized sandworms. The Ithaca stumbles upon the homeworld of the Handlers, masters of the Futars. An exploratory party from the no-ship returns the man-beasts, and soon discovers that the seemingly bucolic Handlers are actually Face Dancers, tasked with their capture. Sheanna and her companions barely escape with their lives. Some Face Dancer ships manage to crash into the Ithaca before its escape, and potentially missing bodies in the wreckage have the no-ship's passengers wondering if the enemies are now among them. The emergency forces Miles Teg to reveal his hidden power of superhuman speed, unlocked in him during torture by Honored Matres in Heretics of Dune. He has kept this ability secret because the Bene Gesserit are suspicious of any males having any 'wild talents', lest another Kwisatz Haderach be created. To them, Paul Atreides and Leto II were disasters never to be repeated. Murbella, now in complete control of the Honored Matres and Bene Gesserit, prepares a defense against the forces of the Enemy, now identified by Other Memory to be thinking machines of Omnius, the machine overlord destroyed back in the ancient Butlerian Jihad. The Oracle of Time is then revealed to be the living consciousness of Norma Cenva, somehow also still in existence millennia after the Jihad. The story concludes with Daniel and Marty revealed to be Omnius and the independent robot, Erasmus. Before its destruction, the Omnius incarnation on Giedi Prime had launched 5,000 probes capable of constructing new machine colonies on any planets encountered. One of these probes eventually intercepted a signal transmitted by the last remaining Omnius on Corrin before it too was destroyed. Its forces and Synchronized Empire finally reassembled, the new version of the Evermind is on the way back to the Old Empire to destroy all humanity.
1868388	/m/062f9l	Sandworms of Dune	Kevin J. Anderson	2007-08-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As Sandworms of Dune begins, the passengers of the no-ship Ithaca continue their nearly two-decade search for a new home world for the Bene Gesserit, while Duncan Idaho evades the tachyon net of the old couple Daniel and Marty, now known to be thinking machine leaders Omnius and Erasmus. Among the inhabitants of the Ithaca are young gholas of Paul Atreides, Lady Jessica, and others. Back in the Old Empire, Mother Commander Murbella of the New Sisterhood attempts to rally humankind for a last stand against the thinking machines. The new Face Dancers continue to infiltrate the main organizations of the Old Empire at all levels, having also sent their gholas of Paul Atreides (called Paolo) and the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen to the thinking machine capital, Synchrony. At the prompting of Face Dancer infiltrators, the Spacing Guild has begun replacing its Navigators with Ixian navigation devices and cutting off the Navigators' supply of melange. Navigator Edrik and his faction have commissioned Waff, the imperfectly awakened ghola rescued by the Guild from the Bene Gesserit attack on Bandalong, to create "advanced" sandworms able to produce the melange they so desperately require. He accomplishes this by altering the DNA of the sandtrout stage and creating an aquatic form of the worms, which are then released into the oceans of Buzzell. Adapting to their new environment, these "seaworms" quickly flourish, eventually producing a highly concentrated form of spice, dubbed "ultraspice." Meanwhile, Murbella commissions Ix to copy the destructive Honored Matre Obliterators for use on the fleet of warships she has ordered from the Guild. However, Ix is now secretly controlled by Face Dancer leader Khrone; previously acting as a minion of Omnius, he continues his own plot for Face Dancer domination of the universe. Omnius's forces have begun striking world after world, releasing a deadly virus and then pressing on to the new string of inhabited planets. The thinking machine plague arrives at Chapterhouse and cripples the Sisterhood, but they rally the unified humankind into one last great stand. Aboard the Ithaca, Sheeana restarts the ghola project. Gholas of Serena Butler, Gurney Halleck, and Xavier Harkonnen are about to be born when the axlotl tanks are poisoned, killing all three ghola babies and the tanks. Saboteurs are suspected, as many of the ship's systems have also been failing. Scytale, the last Tleilaxu Master, finally reawakens his own ghola's past memories, but only by dying in front of his younger self. The gholas of Wellington Yueh, Stilgar, and Liet-Kynes regain their memories through various traumatic experiences. Desperate to replenish their supplies, the Ithaca lands on the planet Qelso, a world slowly being terraformed into a desert planet by the introduction of sandworms years before by the Bene Gesserit. Stilgar and Liet-Kynes decide to remain behind to help the natives slow the encroaching desert and prepare them for the inevitable. Having successfully completed his attempts to create a new incarnation of sandworm, Waff begs Edrik to return him to the ruined planet of Rakis so that he can spend what little time to live he has left attempting to reintroduce the worms there as well. Unsuccessful, Waff resigns himself to failure and prepares to die; as the last of his sandworm specimens perishes, a dozen sandworms erupt from beneath the surface. Waff realizes that the pearl of Leto II's awareness that each sandworm carries had foreseen the Honored Matre attack on Rakis and buried themselves deep beneath the planet's surface. Knowing the planet has begun healing itself, Waff is consumed by a worm, rejoicing that his prophet has finally returned. Meanwhile, Edrik and the ultraspice are intercepted by Khrone, who seizes the spice and kills the Navigator. The saboteurs are eventually revealed to be the Rabbi and the ghola of Thufir Hawat, who had apparently been murdered and replaced with Face Dancers back on the planet of the Handlers during the events of Hunters of Dune. In the ensuing chaos that follows the discovery of the Face Dancers, the Ithaca is ensnared by the tachyon net. Miles Teg sacrifices his life in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent their capture. The Ithaca is brought to Synchrony. They are met by a party led by the ghola of Vladimir Harkonnen. Seeing the young ghola of Alia when he arrives, he immediately kills her; the original Alia had murdered his original self 5,000 years before. The Bene Gesserit gholas of Paul, Lady Jessica, Chani, and Yueh are then taken to see Omnius and Erasmus. Omnius explains that to complete his domination of humanity, he requires the superior Kwisatz Haderach of the two Paul gholas. Paolo and Paul are forced to duel, during which Paul is mortally wounded. Victorious, Paolo takes the ultraspice; overwhelmed by the rapid onset of perfect prescient vision, he slips into a coma. Paul, at the urging and efforts of Yueh, Chani, and Jessica, slowly regains his past memories and is able to repair the damage to his body using Bene Gesserit physiological control. Under the guise of aiding Paolo, Yueh takes his revenge by killing Baron Harkonnen, who had orchestrated the torture and death of Yueh's wife Wanna in their original incarnations. As this is happening, Murbella has all the new ships in place and is finally ready to launch her fleet against Omnius's oncoming armada. But the Obliterators and Ixian navigation devices all suddenly fail; Murbella realizes that they have been sabotaged. When it appears that defeat at the hands of the thinking machine forces is imminent, the Oracle of Time appears with a thousand ships piloted by Guild Navigators and begins to attack the machines. This assault leaves the machine fleet in pieces. The Oracle then tells Murbella that she is going to Synchrony to stop Omnius once and for all; she folds space, and a visual manifestation of the Oracle appears in the room where Paul and Paolo have been dueling. The Oracle then removes every aspect of Omnius and transports the Evermind away into another dimension forever. Sheeana and the young Leto II ghola free the sandworms from the Ithacas cargo hold, and the worms wreak havoc throughout Synchrony. Leto II regains his memories, and after the battle is finished, he tells Sheeana that he must now go back into the dreaming. Leto walks into the belly of the largest worm, Monarch, and the seven worms twist together and join into one worm before digging deep into the ground. Fresh from fighting the thinking machines outside on Synchrony with Sheeana, Duncan enters the chamber where a recovering Paul, his memories now restored, reveals that Duncan is the final Kwisatz Haderach, having evolved and perfected himself through thousands of years of ghola rebirth and altered DNA. Erasmus then explains that he was the mastermind behind the rebuilding of the Synchronized Worlds. A mutinous Khrone declares that the universe now belongs to his Face Dancers, as both humans and machines have been crippled. Amused by Khrone's attempt to seize power, Erasmus explains that a fail-safe system had been built into the Face Dancers. The independent robot kills Khrone and his party &mdash; and then all enhanced Face Dancers across the universe &mdash; with the simple flip of a mental switch. The immediate death of so many Face Dancers exposes how much they have infiltrated human society. Erasmus then offers Duncan a choice. With both humans and thinking machines battered and beaten, Duncan can choose either destruction for one side or recovery and healing for both. Choosing peace over victory, Duncan and Erasmus then merge minds. Erasmus imparts Duncan with all the codes required to run the Synchronized Worlds, as well as all of his knowledge. Duncan now stands as the bridge between humans and machines. With little left for him, Erasmus again expresses his desire to learn everything possible about what it is to be human &mdash; he asks for Duncan to help him die. As Duncan shuts Erasmus down, he shares one of the many deaths he experienced with the independent robot. Back in the Old Empire, Murbella's forces are preparing to attack Omnius's second wave when the machines suddenly stop. With the Oracle having taken Omnius, a Navigator brings Murbella to Synchrony. She and Duncan are reunited, and he explains his intent to end the divide between humans and thinking machines &mdash; the two will co-exist. Duncan gives Synchrony to Sheeana for her Orthodox Sisterhood, while he returns with Murbella to help lead the new human-machine mode of life. On Qelso, the gholas of Stilgar and Liet-Kynes continue to aid in the attempt to hold back the expanding desert, while simultaneously teaching the planet's occupants how to adapt to the changes that will inevitably come. Under Duncan's control, a thinking machine convoy lands on the planet; Duncan offers the gholas the aid of the thinking machines in holding back the desert. He tells Stilgar and Kynes that just as he has become both man and machine, Qelso will become both desert and forest. On Caladan, the gholas of Lady Jessica and Wellington Yueh have returned to the ancient Atreides castle. Having removed all traces of the Baron's occupancy, the two discuss how they will go forward with their lives. Accompanying them is the unawakened ten-year-old ghola of Leto I. Looking forward to the time when his memories will be restored, Lady Jessica finds solace in the fact that she will be reunited with her Duke. With the aid of the Tleilaxu Master Scytale, Sheeana and the Orthodox Sisterhood on Synchrony have reestablished the ancient Bene Gesserit breeding program, resolving to never again breed another Kwisatz Haderach. At her side, Sheeana has a young ghola of Serena Butler, heroine of the Butlerian Jihad. Along with gholas of the Tleilaxu Masters, Scytale has grown Tleilaxu females from newly discovered cells, vowing that they will never again be forced into becoming axlotl tanks, in the hopes that this will prevent the creation of a vengeful enemy such as the Honored Matres from ever occurring again, and also vowing to never again allow the Masters to corrupt the recovering Tleilaxu people. On the recovering planet Dune, the awakened gholas of Paul and Chani go about restoring the planet to its former glory. Now that Paul is able to devote all of his attention to her, Chani remarks that he has finally learned how to treat his wife. As the novel closes, Paul reaffirms his love for Chani, telling her he has loved her for over five-thousand years.
1869208	/m/062hcb	Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc	Mark Twain	1896	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The foreword is by fictional author Sieur Louis de Conte, writing from Domrémy, France to his great-great-grand nephews and nieces, in the year 1492. He relates his relationship to Joan as first a childhood friend, and later her page and secretary. He reminisces, “I was with her from the beginning until the end.” Book One begins with the birth of de Conte on January 6th, 1410, in Neufchâteau, France. He relates his early childhood as plagued with misery brought on by the English forces. For over seventy-five years, he states, France has felt the oppressive force of the English and Burgundian armies. With each battle lost, the despair of the French people grows. In 1415, following the death of his family by a Burgundian raiding party, de Conte is sent to Domrémy to live with the parish priest. Here he meets young Joan d’Arc, who lives a relatively quiet life in the small country village. Yet even in her early years, de Conte describes multiple incidents where Joan is shown to be the wisest and bravest child in Domrémy. For example, she defends the children’s friends (the fairies) against unfair banishment, convinces the townspeople to provide food and shelter for a wandering soldier, and peaceably stops a madman who threatens the village. In Chapter VI, the novel relates that, at fourteen years of age, Joan’s manner undergoes a change. Instead of being “the most light-hearted creature and the merriest in the village” de Conte says that “she had been mainly grave”. In the next chapter, a year and a half later, de Conte finds the reason behind her solemn behavior. On the 15th of May, 1428, Joan reveals that she has been visited frequently by saints and angels. On this particular day, she states that God has chosen her “to lead His armies, and win back France, and set the crown upon the head of His servant that is Dauphin and shall be King”. The book describes Joan as at first being hesitant; stating, “I am only a child; a child and ignorant – ignorant of everything that pertains to war.” Book Two’s final chapters, VII and VIII, relate the difficulties Joan faces to follow her mission, beginning when the governor of Vaucoleurs refuses her an escort of men-at-arms. Book Two begins with the elimination of Joan’s hindrances. de Conte relates that, with the advice of her Voices, Joan remains steadfast in her mission and on February 23rd begins her journey to the Dauphin, complete with escort. In Chapter VI, Joan arrives at the Castle of Chinon, prepared to fulfill her mission and speak with the future king. However, before allowing her entry, the Dauphin tests Joan by switching his royal clothes with those of a layman. Joan is unfazed by the test and identifies the true king-to-be. After receiving a further sign from Joan, the Dauphin is convinced that her mission is from God, and establishes her as General of the Armies of France. In Chapter X, Joan begins to organize her campaign, writing a letter to the English commanders at Orleans, demanding them to vacate France. She also instills order amongst her troops, banning prostitution, gambling, and requiring that “every man who joins my standard must confess before the priest…and all accepted recruits must be present at divine service twice a day.” Starting at Orleans, de Conte describes the army’s march across France, winning multiple victories. He states that throughout the campaign Joan’s Voices remain with her, guiding and encouraging her efforts. On one occasion, in Chapter XXI, Joan’s Voices reveal that on May 7th she will be shot by an arrow, between her neck and shoulder. The prophecy is fulfilled the next day in the exact manner prescribed. Two chapters later, following a victory at Tours, the novel states that Joan is given the Dauphin’s permission to march upon Rheims. Once again, each English stronghold standing in her path is reclaimed. de Conte marvels that for the first time in ninety-one years, the French have the upper hand in the Hundred Years’ War. On July 5th, the English forces at Rheims surrender, allowing the coronation of Charles to take place. Yet, even with this accomplishment, Joan refuses to halt her campaign. In Chapter XXVIII, Joan receives permission to march on Paris stating that, if successful, the move would cripple the English forces. However, with a victory at Paris in sight, the King declares the campaign ended. He instead makes a truce to leave Paris unthreatened and unmolested. De Conte bewails, “Joan of Arc, who had never been defeated by the enemy, was defeated by her own King.” In the final chapter, de Conte laments that on May 24th 1430, Joan is taken prisoner by the Burgundians while assailing a small force at Marguy. The third and final book opens with Joan d’Arc imprisonment at Marguy. For five and a half months, the Burgundians hold Joan while waiting for King Charles to provide a ransom of 61,125 francs. When no attempt is made, she is sold to the English. For two more months, Joan remains imprisoned while her enemies, led by Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, prepare her trial. In an attempt to lessen her influence over the French people, it is decided that Joan must be tried by priests for crimes against religion. de Conte scoffs at the English’s methods of “raking and scraping everywhere for any odds and ends of evidence or suspicion or conjecture that might be made usable against Joan.” Beginning in Chapter IV, the novel provides a detailed account of Joan’s three month long trial starting on February 21st, 1431. de Conte, secretly serving as clerk to the chief recorder, describes the trial as unfair on multiple fronts. “Fifty experts against a novice,” he states, “and no one to help the novice!” de Conte also includes an official transcript that states, “They asked her profound questions…the questioners changed suddenly and passes to another subject to see if she would not contradict herself.” Yet, in spite of this, Joan is praised for boldly answering the questions put to her. de Conte states that many in the courtroom gaped in awe at the wisdom and prudence of her answers. Chapter VII recounts her most well-known answer after being asked by Beaupere, “Are you in a state of Grace.” de Conte states that with simple gravity she answers, “If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; if I be in it, I pray God keep me so.” Yet, in Chapter XX, after nearly three months of imprisonment, Joan finally submits to her captors. Unable to read it, Joan signs a document “confessing herself a sorceress, a dealer with devils, a liar, a blasphemer of God and His angels…and this signature of hers bound her to resume the dress of a woman." However, in Chapter XXII de Conte accuses the English of treachery, stating, “While Joan slept, in the early morning of Sunday, one of the guards stole her female apparel and put her male attire in its place…she saw that she could not save her life if she must fight for it against treacheries like this; so she put on the forbidden garments, knowing what the end would be.” For breaking the condition, Joan is sentenced to be burned at the stake on the following Wednesday, May 30th 1431. The final chapter, XXIV, recounts Joan’s last few hours before she is consumed in flames, but not the execution itself. In his writing, de Conte returns to the present year of 1492, where he is eighty-two years of age. He summarizes the lives and deaths of many of the characters including Joan’s family and King Charles the VII. He closes with a salute to the legacy of Joan, citing her impact on the country she loved so much.
1869270	/m/062hld	Mission of Gravity	Hal Clement		{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The native protagonist, Barlennan, captain of the Bree, is on a trading expedition to the equator, where the gravity is a tiny fraction of what his culture is used to. Prior to the story's opening, a human scientific probe has become stranded at one of the planet's poles, and team member Charles Lackland is dispatched to the equator where he has met Barlennan by chance. Lackland is barely able to survive (machine-aided) what to the captain is the incredibly light gravity, but has managed to teach the Mesklinites English, and enlist the Bree to journey to the pole and recover the probe, in return for information about the violent weather which often plagues such expeditions. Communication is achieved through an audio-visual radio built to function in a high-gravity environment, which is treated as magical by other intelligences encountered on the planet. Along the way to the pole, the ship encounters and overcomes a variety of obstacles, some of which the humans help with using their superior scientific knowledge, and some of which rely on the cunning of Barlennan and his crew. They are captured by various lifeforms similar to themselves, but who live in the lower-gravity areas and have developed projectile weapons and gliders. Gradually, with human help, they gain an understanding of these and manage to escape. Barlennan has been dissatisfied with the humans' efforts to seemingly avoid explanation of anything scientific, and almost withholds the probe when they finally reach it; but the humans convince them that a scientific background is needed to understand the advanced equipment in the probe, and a deal is reached whereby the humans will slowly educate the Mesklinites. The novel provides an exposition on how the weather, geology and atmosphere of the seas and the pole are affected by the local conditions, and sees the Mesklinites overcoming their fear of gravity as they learn to view it scientifically, eventually harnessing aerodynamics to make the Bree fly at the poles.
1869510	/m/062j1t	Blue City	Ross Macdonald		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Twenty-two year old Johnny Weather has returned from the army, having served in the European Theater in the Second World War, only to find his estranged father long dead. His father was a leading factor in the corruption of the town and an important person, but the police seem more than happy to let his murder remain 'unsolved', as does everyone Johnny encounters. As he tries to dig up the murderer, he fences with a motley list of strange characters and hustlers, everyone from the astonishingly cruel man who took over his father's night club, to his father's ex-wife, who's more than willing to seduce Johnny to keep him off the subject of his father. Although the book never names the state in which the fictional town is located, many references are made to the city being located in the Mid-West, apparently within an easy drive to Chicago. The entire book is set over a very short period of time, creating a frantic pace to the novel.
1869622	/m/062jd8	Archangel	Sharon Shinn	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Angels and mortals, who need one another but have a love-hate relation, inhabit the land of Samaria. The angels have wings and fly, and are taller and stronger than humans. Legends state that angels were made by Jovah to oversee Samaria under the guidance of the Archangel. The angels are supposed to protect humans, answer their petitions, solve their problems, and intercede to god for them by petitioning the god Jovah through song, especially for rain when the crops need it and the sun when it is stormy. In addition, the angels must sing to Jovah at the annual Gloria held on the Plain of Sharon, otherwise god would destroy the world. The Archangel and his consort, the Angelica, lead this mass in praise of Jovah. Archangels do not serve for life, but every twenty years Jovah selects a new Archangel. Samaria is divided into three regions, Gaza, Bethel and Jordana, separated by rivers. Each region has an angel hold or fortress that acts as the governing center for the region. However, god destroyed that of Jordana, at Windy Point. The citizens of Gaza, the Manadavvi, are highly cultured and wealthy. The Jansai, who are calculating and greedy merchants, and run the Edori slave trade inhabit Jordana. The Edori are the wanderers and frequently become enslaved by the Jansai. The Oracle has declared that the angel Gabriel is to be the next Archangel. However, Raphael, the current Archangel, who is corrupt and uses his position for himself, does not want to step down. Gabriel has an additional problem in that he procrastinated getting married. He tracks down the mortal that god has selected be his wife, but she has her own thoughts about the marriage and the expectations of her as the archangel’s consort, the Angelica. Rachel, an Edori slave, dislikes angels because of what they had done to her family when she was younger. Gabriel is faced with many trials having to contend with Raphael on the one hand, and his reluctant wife, who is a constant thorn-in-the-side. But the trials and tribulations confronting Gabriel and Rachel brings them close together and they finally realize that they love each other. The story ends with Gabriel and Rachael singing together at the Gloria, thus satisfying the wishes of god. * Archangel (Samaria book 1) (Ace Books, 1997) * Jovah's Angel (Samaria book 2) (Ace Books, 1998) * The Alleluia Files (Samaria book 3) (Ace Books, 1999) * Angelica (Samaria book 4) (Ace Books, 2003) Set before the first book Archangel. * Angel-Seeker (Samaria book 5) (Ace Books, 2004)
1871417	/m/062n0d	Exit, Voice, and Loyalty	Albert O. Hirschman	1970	{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/02j62": "Economics"}	 The basic concept is as follows: members of an organization, whether a business, a nation or any other form of human grouping, have essentially two possible responses when they perceive that the organization is demonstrating a decrease in quality or benefit to the member: they can exit (withdraw from the relationship); or, they can voice (attempt to repair or improve the relationship through communication of the complaint, grievance or proposal for change). For example, the citizens of a country may respond to increasing political repression in two ways: emigrate or protest. Similarly, employees can choose to quit their unpleasant job, or express their concerns in an effort to improve the situation. Disgruntled customers ask for the manager, or they choose to shop elsewhere. The implications of the above concept can be enormous and can allow for a new perspective on daily examples of social interaction. Exit and voice themselves represent a union between economical and political action. Exit is associated with Adam Smith's invisible hand, in which buyers and sellers are free to move silently through the market, constantly forming and destroying relationships. Voice, on the other hand, is by nature political and at times confrontational. While both exit and voice can be used to measure a decline in an organization, voice is by nature more informative in that it also provides reasons for the decline. Exit, taken alone, only provides the warning sign of decline. Exit and voice also interact in unique and sometimes unexpected ways; by providing greater opportunity for feedback and criticism, exit can be reduced; conversely, stifling of dissent leads to increased pressure for members of the organization to use the only other means available to express discontent, departure. The general principle, therefore, is that the greater the availability of exit, the less likely voice will be used. However, the interplay of loyalty can affect the cost-benefit analysis of whether to use exit or voice. Where there is loyalty to the organization (as evidenced by strong patriotism politically, or brand loyalty for consumers), exit may be reduced, especially where options to exit are not so appealing (small job market, political or financial hurdles to emigration or moving). By understanding the relationship between exit and voice, and the interplay that loyalty has with these choices, organizations can craft the means to better address their members' concerns and issues, and thereby effect improvement. Failure to understand these competing pressures can lead to organizational decline and possible failure.
1872359	/m/062q8m	The Insulted and Humiliated	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1861	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Natasha leaves her parents' home and runs away with Alyosha (prince Alexey) – the son of Prince Valkovsky who abuses her father. As a result of his pain, her father, Nikolai, curses her. The only friend that remains by Natasha's side is Ivan – her childhood friend who is deeply in love with her. Prince Valkovsky tries to destroy Alyosha's plans to marry Natasha, and wants to make him marry the rich princess Katerina. Alyosha is a childish young man who is easily manipulated by his father. Following his father's plan, Alyosha falls in love with Katerina. Eventually, Alyosha chooses Katerina over Natasha. In the meanwhile, Ivan picks up an orphan girl, Elena, and learns that her mother ran away from her father's (Smith) home with her sweetheart – Alyosha's father. Shortly after Elena was born, Prince Valkovsky abandoned her, took her money and the poor woman and her daughter came back to Smith asking for forgiveness. Elena's mother dies shortly before her father eventually agrees to forgive her. In attempt to make Nikolai (Natasha's father) forgive his daughter, Ivan persuades Nilokai and his wife to adopt Elena. By telling them her life story, Elena makes Nikolai's heart soften and he accepts Natasha. Shortly afterwards, Elena dies from epilepsy. Finally Natasha accepts Ivan's love.
1874304	/m/062vzq	The Terminal Experiment	Robert J. Sawyer	1995-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dr. Peter Hobson invents a machine that detects a brain pattern that leaves the body after death, a pattern many believe is a soul. In order to test their theories on immortality and life after death, Hobson and his friend Sarkar Muhammed create three electronic simulations of Hobson's own personality. When people Hobson had a grudge against begin to die, he and Sarkar must try to find out which is responsible. But all three, two modified, one a "control", escape Sarkar's computer, into the Internet and the World Wide Web.
1874837	/m/04t18bm	Rhapsody: Child of Blood	Elizabeth Haydon	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rhapsody: Child of Blood is a fantasy/adventure novel, though it opens with a strong romantic scene. The main story begins in Easton, when the protagonist Rhapsody finds herself in jeopardy, having refused the advances of Michael, the self-titled Wind of Death. In her attempt to get away, she falls in with two mysterious men named Grunthor and Achmed and soon finds herself the unwilling accomplice in their own escape. Though they run from their pasts, they eventually realize that no one can outrun their destinies.
1875529	/m/062yyb	Arrow's Flight	Mercedes Lackey	1987-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Arrow's Flight opens with two major events: Herald Talia earns her Whites (the white uniform worn by full Heralds) and Princess Elspeth, the Heir-presumptive, is chosen by the Companion Gwena. Also in the opening section is a reminder of the distrust and animosity between Herald Talia and Lord Orthallen, a high-ranking councilor and advisor to Queen Selenay. Shortly after Elspeth's confirmation as Heir-in-right, news reaches Haven that the Herald on patrol in a northern sector is out of commission due to injury. Herald Kyril assigns the sector to Talia for her year-and-a-half Field internship with the handsome Herald Kris, who is Orthallen's nephew. Before they leave, Orthallen tells Kris that he is afraid Talia is misusing her Gift of Empathy (the ability to read and influence the emotions of others). Once they are on the road, Kris asks Talia about the rumor. She vigorously denies any use of her Gift to influence Elspeth or others, but the rumor nevertheless undermines her self-confidence. This, combined with a hitherto-unnoticed lapse in her training, results in a steady decline in her level of control over her Gift. She finds herself scarcely able to control how much emotion she is receiving or projecting, and she is afraid to ask Kris for help. Rolan, her Companion, assists her as much as he can. About three months into the internship, the two Heralds, their Companions, and their pack animals are trapped by a severe winter storm in a Waystation located in the Forest of Sorrows. Talia's Gift goes rogue in a spectacular manner, projecting feelings of intense rage at Kris and both Companions. After a startled moment, Kris realizes what has happened, and he begins teaching Talia how to properly shield and control her power. The winter storm traps them for almost a month, during which time Talia gets the basics of control back, and she and Kris become lovers. They are also confronted by the mysterious force which inhabits the Forest, which perceives Talia as a threat. The Heralds are soon met by a rescue party, and they resume the internship. Talia finds that the rumor that she misuses her Gift has reached this far, and she and Kris feel they must continue the circuit so that the Heralds won't lose face. As the book concludes, she has recovered mastery of her Gift, but she remains troubled by the ethics of using it. She is also worried about what effect her relationship with Kris will have on the relationship she wants to have with Kris' best friend, Herald Dirk.
1875542	/m/062yyp	The Three-Arched Bridge	Ismail Kadare			 The book describes the construction of an important bridge in Albanian territory at an ungiven time or age. Told by a catholic monk, Gjon (Gjon is a name used by Northern Albanians who were mostly catholic prior to Turkish invasions), the story of the bridge, as seen by Gjon is filled with prissy, unhappy bureaucrats, who take the events at face value without ever trying to understand the larger forces at work. Both the river Ujana e Keqe and the bridge itself are major characters in the book, and they undergo significant transformations. One of the startling events of the book is when a "volunteer" is immured inside the bridge in order to make a "sacrifice" to the river. The man's face is captured in the plaster that surrounds him, as unforgettable as it is horrifying. Though clearly a punishment for the crime of sabotage against the bridge, as Gjon recounts this event, it is less an act of vengeance than it is a true sacrifice. But more than that, it becomes a symbol for the ignorance of and squabbling among tiny Albanian principalities and their fight amongst one another, in front of a major threat.
1876173	/m/062_9b	Mario and the Magician	Thomas Mann	1929	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 During the first half of the story, the narrator describes a trip to Torre di Venere, Italy, which becomes unpleasant for him and his family. He feels the Italian people are too nationalistic. The second half of the story introduces the character Cipolla, a hypnotist who uses his mental powers in a "fascist" way to control his audience. Cipolla may well represent the mesmerizing power of authoritarian leaders in Europe at the time —he is autocratic, misuses power, and subjugates the masses in an attempt to counterbalance his inferiority complex by artificially boosting his self-confidence. Cipolla's assassination by Mario, a native of Torre di Venere, is not a tragedy but a liberation for the audience.
1877328	/m/0631x8	Blood and Gold	Anne Rice	2001-10-16	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with an ancient vampire of Nordic descent awaking after being frozen in a block of ice for hundreds of years. The vampire, Thorne, meets Marius de Romanus and inquires about Marius' past. Marius then provides his life story. As a young Roman patrician, Marius was abducted by druids who were trying to find a replacement for their "god of the grove" - a vampire, kept locked inside a chamber underneath a tree, who took on the role of a god in a druidic religion. Marius does not want to receive the powers of the dying god, but is given them nonetheless. Unable to face a life imprisoned in a tree, Marius escapes from the druids (one of whom is Mael). He embarks on a trip to Egypt, where he learns of Akasha and Enkil, the Mother and Father or Those Who Must Be Kept - the progenitors of all vampire-kind. He takes them back to Rome with him after learning that if they die then every other vampire in the world will suffer the same fate. He falls in love with a mortal woman, Pandora, and turns her into a vampire. They live together happily for a long time, although they argue frequently. One day, their house is attacked by a group of vampires who want to know the secrets of Those Who Must Be Kept. Though they destroy these vampires, the attack leads to an argument between the two and Marius, filled with anger, leaves Pandora. Marius then returns to Rome, where he creates a life for himself as a socialite, fraternizing with mortals and practicing painting. It is here that he meets Mael and Avicus, the latter of which is a former god of the grove - a vampire older than Marius, but who does not seem to know his own power. There is still much enmity between Mael and Marius, and Marius asks them to leave. They do so, but remain in the city of Rome. Marius does not mind this, as they keep the city free from other blood-drinkers who may pry the secrets of Those Who Must Be Kept from his mind. Marius continues to live this way even as the Roman Empire splits, with its capital city moving to Constantinople. Eventually, Marius, Mael, and Avicus leave Rome when it is sacked by barbarians. They travel to Constantinople, taking with them the Mother and Father. There they meet a powerful vampire named Eudoxia, who wants Marius to put Those Who Must Be Kept into her care. After praying to Those Who Must Be Kept for an answer, he relents just far enough to allow Eudoxia to see them. After a series of violent conflicts, Marius angrily drags Eudoxia back down into the shrine and casts her at Akasha, who suddenly awakens to destroy her. Realizing that he cannot live with other vampires due to his custody of the Divine Parents, Marius elects to return to Italy. He becomes disheartened by the horrors of the Black Death and sleeps for hundreds of years. He awakes again during the Renaissance and travels all around Italy, visiting Venice and Florence, admiring the art and culture. In Rome he meets the vampire Santino, who claims that Marius is living in sin by not serving Satan. Marius threatens him and tells Santino to never come near him again. Marius decides to make his home in Venice, and he establishes himself as an amateur painter. His house is set up as a place where young boys can come and improve themselves, preparing to go to university or to become craftsmen. During this time, he also falls in love with the works of Botticelli, whom he briefly considers turning into a vampire. It is in Venice that Marius meets Amadeo (Armand), whom he discovers in a filthy cellar, waiting to become a prostitute in the city's brothels. He purchases the boy from the slave traders and takes him back to his house, where he bathes him and promises him a better life. As the years pass Marius happily continues his life, disappearing occasionally to attend to the Divine Parents. Amadeo grows up, and the two often share a bed. Marius is sorely tempted to give Amadeo the Dark Gift, making him into a vampire, but he stops himself from doing so. When Marius is away looking after the Divine Parents, his house is attacked by the Englishman Lord Harlech who became obsessed with Amadeo after sleeping with him. Amadeo manages to kill Harlech, but sustains several wounds from Harlech's poisoned blade. He slips into a fever. Marius arrives and is told that Amadeo will die as the poison is too strong. Marius turns Amadeo into a vampire in order to prevent the boy from dying. He teaches him to prey only on evildoers in order to save his conscience. Some time after Amadeo becomes a vampire, the house is attacked by a large mob of Satan-worshiping vampires under the leadership of Santino. Marius is burnt and almost killed, but manages to save his own life by jumping into a canal. Nonetheless, he is severely wounded and believes that Amadeo will be killed. He calls a woman named Bianca to his aid. The two have known each other for a number of years and have a close relationship. Marius is too weak to hunt, so he transforms Bianca into a vampire in order to have her help him to recover his strength. The two move to the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept and live there for over a century, where Marius gradually recovers his strength by drinking from Akasha. After Amadeo had transformed, Marius had met with Raymond Gallant, a man from the Talamasca, a group of scholars who found out information about supernatural things, just for information. He hears from him that Pandora is being kept hostage by another vampire and moved around Europe and Russia; so Marius decides to move to Dresden to try meeting with Pandora, whom he still loves. He does not tell Bianca of this. Marius does indeed find Pandora there, but discovers that she does not want to live with him and Bianca and wants to stay with her traveling companion, who was not holding her hostage after all. Marius offers to leave Bianca for Pandora, but Pandora refuses this offer. When Marius sees Bianca the next day, she declares that she is leaving him because she overheard what he said to Pandora. 50 years later, as he is shifting to America, Marius discovers a letter from Pandora offering to live with him if he comes to collect her at a certain place, but it is too late and she is gone. Marius then shelters a young vampire named Lestat, who when playing a song for Akasha on his violin, wakes her up. She comes to him and they drink each other's blood. Enkil is furious and almost crushes Lestat when a shocked Marius saves him. Marius sends Lestat away, thinking that he can pose a danger, but is sad that it is the fourth time he is losing a love. Years later, Marius brings a television into Those Who Must Be Kept's Chapel, for their entertainment. On this they see news, songs, etc. and also The Vampire Lestat's rock guitar music. This, Marius feels, corrupts their minds, and Akasha awakens from her slumber with the evil idea of taking over the world. She destroys Enkil and buries Marius in the ruins of his house, where he lies, injured. Marius lies there trapped, for weeks, but with the Mind Gift informs Lestat that he is in danger, and also asks for help. He is soon found by Pandora, and Santino - whom he tries to kill, but realises that all force would be needed to stop Akasha from her evil deed of taking over the world, killing all males and having a female dominated world with her as the leader. A council is formed and the vampires try to convince Akasha, but she does not listen. Finally, Maharet's (who created Thorne) mute sister Mekare fights with Akasha and destroys her. That is the end of Marius's story through time. The story then moves back to the present day, where Marius and Thorne are at a jungle hideaway with other old and powerful vampires - Amadeo (now going by the name Armand), Santino, Maharet, Mekare, and Pandora. Marius wants justice against Santino for taking Armand away from him, but Maharet refuses to let Marius kill Santino, who is weak. Thorne does not want to accept her decision and so kills Santino himself with the Fire Gift. In penance for his deed, he gives over his eyes to Maharet. de:Blut und Gold es:Sangre y oro fr:Le Sang et l'Or it:Il vampiro Marius pl:Krew i złoto pt:Blood and Gold
1878393	/m/0634gn	Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science	Martin Gardner	1952	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science starts with a brief survey of the spread of the ideas of "cranks" and "pseudo-scientists", attacking the credulity of the popular press and the irresponsibility of publishing houses in helping to propagate these ideas. Cranks often cite historical cases where ideas were rejected which are now accepted as right. Gardner acknowledges that such cases occurred, and describes some of them, but says that times have changed: "If anything, scientific journals err on the side of permitting questionable theses to be published". Gardner acknowledges that "among older scientists ... one may occasionally meet with irrational prejudice against a new point of view", but adds that "a certain degree of dogma ... is both necessary and desirable" because otherwise "science would be reduced to shambles by having to examine every new-fangled notion that came along." Gardner says that cranks have two common characteristics. The first "and most important" is that they work in almost total isolation from the scientific community. Gardner defines the community as an efficient network of communication within scientific fields, together with a co-operative process of testing new theories. This process allows for apparently bizarre theories to be published - such as Einstein's theory of relativity, which initially met with considerable opposition; it was never dismissed as the work of a crackpot, and it soon met with almost universal acceptance. But the crank 'stands entirely outside the closely integrated channels through which new ideas are introduced and evaluated. He does not send his findings to the recognized journals or, if he does, they are rejected for reasons which in the vast majority of cases are excellent'. The second characteristic of the crank (which also contributes to his or her isolation) is the tendency to paranoia. There are five ways in which this tendency is likely to be manifested. #The pseudo-scientist considers himself a genius. #He regards other researchers as stupid, dishonest or both. #He believes there is a campaign against his ideas, a campaign comparable to the persecution of Galileo or Pasteur. He may attribute his 'persecution' to a conspiracy by a scientific 'masonry' who are unwilling to admit anyone to their inner sanctum without appropriate initiation. #Instead of side-stepping the mainstream, the pseudo-scientist attacks it head-on: The most revered scientist is Einstein so Gardner writes that Einstein is the most likely establishment figure to be attacked. #He has a tendency to use complex jargon, often making up words and phrases. Gardner compares this to the way that schizophrenics talk in what psychiatrists call 'neologisms', "words which have meaning to the patient, but sound like Jabberwocky to everyone else." These psychological traits are in varying degrees demonstrated throughout the remaining chapters of the book, in which Gardner examines particular "fads" he labels pseudo-scientific. His writing became the source book from which many later studies of pseudo-science were taken (e.g. Encyclopedia of Pseudo-science).
1878669	/m/06356w	Trouble Follows Me	Ross Macdonald		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It's 1945. Ensign Sam Drake attends a party on his last night stationed in Hawaii and meets the woman of his dreams. But before the night is out, her best friend is dead in an upstairs room at the party. It appears to be suicide. The next day Sam starts his leave before receiving a new post. He returns to his home town of Detroit, and decides to check into a connection there between the dead woman and a radical group of black activists. Another death quickly follows and Sam finds himself on a cross-country adventure, haunted by dangerous characters everywhere he turns. Trouble Follows Me was reprinted by Lion Paperbacks in 1950 and 1955 under the title of Night Train, with cover art that presented it as a "race novel" to capitalize on the wartime Detroit riots. The book, under both titles, is currently out of print.
1879152	/m/06366m	The Lonely Doll	Dare Wright	1957	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Lonely Doll tells the story of a doll named Edith, who lives by herself until two teddy bears, called Mr. Bear and Little Bear, appear in her life. One day, Mr. Bear goes out for a walk leaving the two alone in the house; He returns to find they have rummaged in a closet for dress-up clothing, smeared themselves with makeup, and written "Mr. Bear is just a silly old thing" in lipstick on the mirror. Mr Bear proceeds to discipline both Little Bear and Edith, leaving Edith to worry that he will take Little Bear and leave. Mr. Bear assures her that he will never, ever, leave her.
1880338	/m/0638kh	The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin	Benjamin Franklin	1791	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Part One of the Autobiography is addressed to Franklin's son William, at that time (1771) Royal Governor of New Jersey. While in England at the estate of the Bishop of St Asaph in Twyford, Franklin, now 65 year old, begins by saying that it may be agreeable to his son to know some of the incidents of his father's life; so with a week's uninterrupted leisure, he is beginning to write them down for William. He starts with some anecdotes of his grandfather, uncles, father and mother. He deals with his childhood, his fondness for reading, and his service as an apprentice to his brother James Franklin, a Boston printer and the publisher of the New England Courant. After improving his writing skills through study of the Spectator by Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, he writes an anonymous paper and slips it under the door of the printing house by night. Not knowing its author, James and his friends praise the paper and it is published in the Courant, which encourages Ben to produce more essays (the "Silence Dogood" essays) which are also published. When Ben reveals his authorship, James is angered, thinking the recognition of his papers will make Ben too vain. James and Ben have frequent disputes and Ben seeks for a way to escape from working under James. Eventually James gets in trouble with the colonial assembly, which jails him for a short time and then forbids him to continue publishing his paper. James and his friends come up with the stratagem that the Courant should hereafter be published under the name of Benjamin Franklin, although James will still actually be in control. James signs a discharge of Ben's apprenticeship papers but writes up new private indenture papers for Ben to sign which will secure Ben's service for the remainder of the agreed time. But when a fresh disagreement arises between the brothers, Ben chooses to leave James, correctly judging that James will not dare to produce the secret indenture papers. ("It was not fair in me to take this Advantage," Franklin comments, "and this I therefore reckon one of the first Errata of my life.") James does, however, make it impossible for Ben to get work anywhere else in Boston. Sneaking onto a ship without his father's or brother's knowledge, Ben heads for New York, but the printer William Bradford is unable to employ him; however, he tells Ben that his son Andrew, a Philadelphia printer, may be able to use him since one of his son's principal employees had just died. By the time Ben reaches Philadelphia, Andrew Bradford has already replaced his employee, but refers Ben to Samuel Keimer, another printer in the city, who is able to give him work. The Governor, Sir William Keith, takes notice of Franklin and offers to set him up in business for himself. On Keith's recommendation, Franklin goes to London for printing supplies, but when he arrives, he finds that Keith has not written the promised letter of recommendation for him, and that "no one who knew him had the smallest Dependence on him." Franklin finds work in London until an opportunity arises of returning to Philadelphia as an assistant to Thomas Denham, a Quaker merchant; but when Denham takes ill and dies, he returns to manage Keimer's shop. Keimer soon comes to feel that Franklin's wages are too high and provokes a quarrel which causes the latter to quit. At this point a fellow employee, Hugh Meredith, suggests that Franklin and he set up a partnership to start a printing shop of their own; this is subsidized by funds from Meredith's father, though most of the work is done by Franklin as Meredith is not much of a press worker and is given to drinking. They establish their business, and plan to start a newspaper, but when Keimer hears of this plan, he rushes out a paper of his own, the Pennsylvania Gazette. This publication limps along for three quarters of a year before Franklin buys the paper from Keimer and makes it "extremely profitable." (The Saturday Evening Post traces its lineage to Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette.) The partnership also receives an appointment as printer for the Pennsylvania assembly. When Hugh Meredith's father experiences financial setbacks and cannot continue backing the partnership, two friends separately offer to lend Franklin the money he needs to stay in business; the partnership amicably dissolves as Meredith goes to North Carolina, and Franklin takes from each friend half the needed sum, continuing his business in his own name. In 1730 he marries Deborah Read, and after this, with the help of the league of ordinary gentlemen,http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/philadelphia/aps.htm he draws up proposals for a "Subscription Library"—the first public library. At this point Part One breaks off, with a memo in Franklin's writing noting that "The Affairs of the Revolution occasion'd the Interruption". The second part begins with two letters Franklin received in the early 1780s while in Paris, encouraging him to continue the Autobiography, of which both correspondents have read Part One. (Although Franklin does not say so, there had been a breach with his son William after the writing of Part One, since the father had sided with the Revolutionaries and the son had remained loyal to the British Crown.) At Passy, a suburb of Paris, Franklin begins Part Two in 1784, giving a more detailed account of his public library plan. He then discusses his "bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection", listing thirteen virtues he wishes to perfect in himself. He creates a book with columns for each day of the week, in which he marks with black spots his offenses against each virtue.Of these virtues, he notices that Order is the hardest for him to keep. He eventually realizes that perfection is not to be attained, but feels himself better and happier because of his attempt. Beginning in August 1788 when Franklin had returned to Philadelphia, the author says he will not be able to utilize his papers as much as he had expected, since many were lost in the recent Revolutionary War. He has, however, found and quotes a couple of his writings from the 1730s that survived. One is the "Substance of an intended Creed" consisting of what he then considered to be the "Essentials" of all religions. He had intended this as a basis for a projected sect but, Franklin says, did not pursue the project. In 1732, Franklin first publishes his Poor Richard's Almanac, which becomes very successful. He also continues his profitable newspaper. In 1734, a preacher named Rev. Samuel Hemphill arrives from County Tyrone Ireland; Franklin supports him and writes pamphlets on his behalf. However, someone finds out that Hemphill has been plagiarizing portions of his sermons from others, although Franklin rationalizes this by saying he would rather hear good sermons taken from others than poor sermons of the man's own composition. Franklin studies languages, reconciles with his brother James, and loses a four-year-old son to smallpox. Franklin's club, the Junto, grows and breaks up into subordinate clubs. Franklin becomes Clerk of the General Assembly in 1736, and the following year becomes Comptroller to the Postmaster General, which makes it easier to get reports and fulfill subscriptions for his newspaper. He proposes improvements to the city' watch and fire prevention regulations. The famed preacher George Whitefield arrives in 1739, and despite significant differences in their religious beliefs, Franklin assists Whitefield by printing his sermons and journals and lodging him in his house. As Franklin continues to succeed, he provides the capital for several of his workers to start printing houses of their own in other colonies. He makes further proposals for the public good, including some for the defense of Pennsylvania, which cause him to contend with the pacifist position of the Quakers. In 1740 he invents the Franklin stove, refusing a patent on the device because it was for "the good of the people". He proposes an academy, which opens after money is raised by subscription for it and it expands so much that a new building has to be constructed for it. Franklin obtains other governmental positions (city councilman, alderman, burgess, justice of the peace) and helps negotiate a treaty with the Indians. After helping Dr. Thomas Bond establish a hospital, he helps pave the streets of Philadelphia and draws up a proposal for Dr. John Fothergill about doing the same in London. In 1753 Franklin becomes Deputy Postmaster General. The next year, as war with the French is expected, representatives of the several colonies, including Franklin, meet with the Indians to discuss defense; Franklin at this time draws up a proposal for the union of the colonies, but it is not adopted. General Braddock arrives with two regiments, and Franklin helps him secure wagons and horses, but the general refuses to take Ben's warning about danger from hostile Indians during Braddock's planned march to Frontenac (now Kingston, Ontario). When Braddock's troops are subsequently attacked, the general is mortally wounded and his forces abandon their supplies and flee. A militia is formed on the basis of a proposal by Benjamin Franklin, and the governor asks him to take command of the northwestern frontier. With his son as aide de camp, Franklin heads for Gnadenhut, raising men for the militia and building forts. Returning to Philadelphia, he is chosen colonel of the regiment; his officers honor him by personally escorting him out of town. This attention offends the proprietor of the colony (Thomas Penn, son of William Penn) when someone writes an account of it in a letter to him, whereupon the proprietor complains to the government in England about Franklin. Now the Autobiography discusses "the Rise and Progress of [Franklin's] Philosophical Reputation." He starts experiments with electricity and writes letters about them that are published in England as a book. Franklin's description of his experiments is translated into French, and Abbé Nollet, who is offended because this work calls into question his own theory of electricity, publishes his own book of letters attacking Franklin. Declining to respond on the grounds that anyone could duplicate and thus verify his experiments, Franklin sees another French author refute Nollet, and as Franklin's book is translated into other languages, its views are gradually accepted and Nollet's are discarded. Franklin is also voted an honorary member of the Royal Society. A new governor arrives, but disputes between the assembly and the governor continue. (Since the colonial governors are bound to fulfill the instructions issued by the colony's proprietor, there is a continuing struggle for power between the legislature and the governor and proprietor.) The assembly is on the verge of sending Franklin to England to petition the King against the governor and proprietor, but meanwhile Lord Loudoun arrives on behalf of the English government to mediate the differences. Franklin nevertheless goes to England accompanied by his son, after stopping at New York and making an unsuccessful attempt to be recompensed by Loudoun for his outlay of funds during his militia service. They arrive in England on July 27, 1757. Written sometime between November 1789 and Franklin's death on April 17, 1790, this section is very brief. After Franklin and his son arrive in London, the former is counselled by Dr. Fothergill on the best way to advocate his cause on behalf of the colonies. Franklin visits Lord Granville, president of the King's Privy Council, who asserts that the king is the legislator of the colonies. Franklin then meets the proprietaries (the switch to the plural is Franklin's, so apparently others besides Thomas Penn are involved). But the respective sides are far from any kind of agreement. The proprietaries ask Franklin to write a summary of the colonists' complaints; when he does so, their solicitor for reasons of personal enmity delays a response. Over a year later, the proprietaries finally respond to the assembly, regarding the summary to be a "flimsy Justification of their Conduct." During this delay the assembly has prevailed on the governor to pass a taxation act, and Franklin defends the act in English court so that it can receive royal assent. While the assembly thanks Franklin, the proprietaries, enraged at the governor, turn him out and threaten legal action against him; in the last sentence, Franklin tells us the governor "despis'd the Threats, and they were never put in Execution". It is apparent that Franklin intended to cover more ground, because an outline of the Autobiography written by him and copied by Henry ends with a reference to the Treaty of Paris, which Franklin helped negotiate, so the obvious inference is that Franklin's death prevented his proceeding further with the Autobiography.
1880591	/m/06393v	Cry, The Beloved Country	Alan Paton	1948-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens in a small village in Ixopo Ndotsheni, where the black pastor Stephen Kumalo receives a letter from the priest Theophilus Msimangu in Johannesburg. Msimangu urges Kumalo to come to the city to help his sister Gertrude, because she is ill. It is a long journey to Johannesburg and Kumalo sees the wonders of the modern world for the first time. Kumalo goes to Johannesburg to help Gertrude and to find his son Absalom, who had gone to the city to look for Gertrude but never came home. When he gets to the city, Kumalo learns that Gertrude has taken up a life of prostitution and beer brewing, and is now drinking heavily. She agrees to return to the village with her young son. Assured by these developments, Kumalo embarks on the search for his son, first seeing his brother John, a carpenter who has become involved in the politics of South Africa. Kumalo and Msimangu follow Absalom's trail only to learn that Absalom has been in a reformatory and will have a child with a young woman. Shortly thereafter, Kumalo learns that his son has been arrested for murder. The victim is Arthur Jarvis, who was killed during a burglary. Arthur was an engineer and a white activist for racial justice, and he happens to be the son of Kumalo's neighbour James Jarvis. Jarvis learns of his son's death and comes with his family to Johannesburg. Jarvis and his son had been distant, and now the father begins to know his son through his writings. Through reading his son's essays, Jarvis decides to take up his son's work on behalf of South Africa's black population. Absalom is sentenced to death for the murder of Arthur Jarvis. Before his father returns to Ndotsheni, Absalom marries the girl who is carrying his child, and she joins Kumalo's family. Kumalo returns to his village with his daughter-in-law and nephew, having found that Gertrude ran away on the night before their departure. Back in Ixopo, Kumalo makes a futile visit to the tribe's chief in order to discuss changes that must be made to help the barren village. Help arrives, however, when James Jarvis becomes involved in the work. He arranges to have a dam built and hires a native agricultural demonstrator to implement new farming methods. The novel ends at dawn on the morning of Absalom's execution. The fathers of the two children are now devastated that both of their son's are now dead.
1880839	/m/0639rq	The Angel	Hans Christian Andersen	1843-11-11		 When the tale opens, a child has died, and an angel is escorting him to Heaven. They wander over the earth for a while, visiting well-known places. Along the way they gather flowers to transplant into the gardens of Heaven. The angel takes the child to a poverty-stricken area where a dead field lily lies in a trash heap. The angel salvages the flower explaining that it had cheered a crippled boy before he died. The angel then reveals he was the boy.
1881986	/m/063dzp	Kallocain			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The plot centers on Leo Kall, written in diary form. Leo Kall is a scientist who is incredibly loyal to the government and develops the drug, Kallocain, which is a truth drug. It has the effect that anyone who takes it will reveal anything, even things they were not consciously aware of. Major themes include the notion of the self in a totalitarian state, the meaning of life, and the power of love.
1882542	/m/063gb1	The War of the Flowers	Tad Williams	2003-05-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Theo Vilmos is a thirty-year old musician who plays in a band consisting mostly of much younger players, who fears that he may have wasted his youth with nothing to show for it. The incredible charisma he once possessed has faded. After Theo's girlfriend Catherine ("Cat") has a miscarriage and dumps him while recovering in the hospital, his life goes from bad to worse and he learns that his mother is dying of pancreatic cancer. He watches his mother wither away and die from the cancer and slips further into depression. After his mother's death, he discovers a book written by his great-uncle, Eamonn Albert Dowd, among his inheritance. Theo assumes the book is a work of fiction as it describes a character who travels the world and eventually discovers an ancient passage into another world full of fairies and other mythical creatures. He quickly discovers the true nature of his uncle's book as he is rescued from the clutches of an ancient disease-spirit known as an irrha by a small fairy named Applecore. Theo finds himself in the magical world described in his uncle's book. He quickly discovers the world to be unfamiliar and dangerous. Fairies come in a range of humanoid and nonhumanoid forms. The more powerful fairies (who look like extremely beautiful humans with elvish features and, unlike fairy commoners, lack wings) are known as Flowers and are divided into several influential families, each named after a different type of flower. Seven great family houses rule over the rest of the houses: Thornapple, Hellebore, Violet, Lily, Daffodil, Hollyhock and Primrose, but the Violets are now extinct, having been wiped out by an alliance of the other six great houses in the last War of the Flowers. Other prominent families include Daisy and Foxglove. The families are divided into three factions, those who believe that the fairies should coexist with humans, called Creepers, those who believe that humans should be eradicated, called Chokeweeds, and those who are uncertain what to do, called Coextensives. Passage between the worlds is restricted by the Clover Effect. Each person, human or fairy, has one exemption from the effect; in other words they can only travel once to the other world and then back to their own. Applecore brings Theo to Count Tansy, a Daisy relative, the fairy who had arranged for Theo's rescue, where he learns that he is to be sent to one of the Flower families in the City but quickly discovers that his escort has been murdered. Tansy sends Theo with an incompetent cousin of his instead. When this cousin is murdered in the train station, Applecore takes it on herself to get Theo to the City safely. She goes against Tansy's orders and rather than escorting Theo to the Foxgloves, she takes him to the Daffodils. Theo learns that political tension is high among the families and discovers that he himself is not actually human but also a fairy, a changeling left on Earth, though none of his new friends and acquaintances know who his real parents were. In a meeting of the families, the Chokeweeds declare war on the Creepers and make a preemptive strike, attacking and killing the leaders of the Creeper Flower houses (Hollyhock, Daffodil and Lily) with a dragon. Fortunately, Theo did not go to the Foxgloves, as they have joined the Chokeweed faction. Count Tansy is a traitor. Theo escapes both the burning wreckage from the dragon attack and the irrha, which is still pursuing him, with a fairy servant from Daffodil House, Cumber Sedge, but believes Applecore to have died in the attack. They make their way to a refugee camp where they meet a highly educated goblin named Mud Bug Button who is attempting to start a revolution with the unhappy common fairy populace against the unfair rule of the Flower families. At the camp, Theo meets Caradenus Primrose, now head of Primrose House after his father's death in the attack, and learns of the wrongs that his "great-uncle" Dowd (actually the great-uncle of the child Theo was switched with) inflicted on Caradenus' sister Erephine during Dowd's visit to their world. He also again meets with Poppaea "Poppy" Thornapple, the daughter of a Chokeweed but also one who is responsible for previously saving his life, and is no longer able to deny his feelings for her. Theo and Cumber agree to help Button with a task but refuse to outright join his revolution. While completing the task, Theo learns that Applecore is alive and is being held prisoner by Lord Nidrus Hellebore, the leader of the Chokeweeds and the mastermind of the attack on the Creepers. Theo realized that he has no choice but to try to rescue Applecore, or die in the attempt. On Button's advice, he decides to go ask the Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles, an ancient and powerful but highly selfish fairy, for help. Unbeknownst to Theo, the Remover has been employed by the Creepers to help capture Theo and is responsible for the summoning the irrha, which is now pursuing him. Theo and Cumber travel to the Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles but are quickly captured and restrained by him. The Remover reveals that he is actually Eamonn Dowd, Theo's "great-uncle". Dowd had made a deal with the previous Remover to replace a human baby with a fairy baby in the mortal realm, giving the human baby to the Remover in exchange for the ability to return to the Fairy world. Dowd stole his own niece's child and replaced him with Theo, who is actually Septimus Violet, the sole survivor of the Violet Flower family. The human baby was given to Lord Hellebore and turned into a Terrible Child. Dowd was betrayed resulting in his soul being separated from his body. Dowd fought with the previous Remover, stealing his body and becoming the new Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles. Dowd wants to use Theo for his own ambitions of power but is interrupted by Hellebore's minions. Having infiltrated and bugged the Remover's lair, Hellebore launches a surprise attack, kidnapping Theo while killing the Remover and burning the lair down. Theo is transported to Hellebore house, where he is reunited with Applecore. He is then transported to Midnight, the heart of the Fairy world, while Button's revolution bears down in full force outside, accomplished by destroying the artifact bearing the physical contract made between fairies and goblins. Theo learns that the Terrible Child is to be used to unleash the horror of Old Night on the mortal realm, ruining it and giving Lord Hellebore untold power. Theo is to be used as the key to open the portal to accomplish this, using the special authority he inherited as the lord of Violet House. Per an old agreement, the key to Old Night can only be used by Violet and Hellebore together. Theo attempts to resist the Terrible Child draining him of his power but fails. In the midst of his failure the irrha appears again, only interested in destroying Theo. Theo sacrifices himself to the water nymphs, causing the irrha to attack the Terrible Child—now the closest living thing resembling Theo's essence. The Terrible Child is destroyed and Hellebore is killed in the resulting calamity, saving the mortal realm and ending the war. Theo's freedom from the water nymphs is bought at a high price by Caradenus Primrose. Theo is reunited with Poppy and learns that Applecore and Cumber are now involved. Button is sentenced to death by goblin law for breaking the goblin oath but dies a hero and leaves behind a world of fairies free from the power of the Flower families. Dowd visits Theo, revealing that he stole the body of a Hellebore guard in the confrontation with Hellebore's minions and escapes again, threatening to simply continue stealing bodies if he is pursued. Theo finally decides to remain in the fairy world with his new found friends and life, not to mention his love Poppy, rather than returning to the mortal realm as he had been struggling to do (and later he realizes that he couldn't have "returned" anyway, as his one exemption from the Clover Effect was already used up when he returned to the world of his birth, Faerie). With this decision Theo finally finds happiness.
1882707	/m/063gsq	The Snow Queen	Joan D. Vinge	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The residents of Tiamat are split into two clans: "Winters" who advocate technological progress and trade with offworlders, and "Summers" who depend on their folk traditions and rigid social distinctions to survive on this marginal planet. Every 150 years, the sun's orbit around a black hole dramatically impacts the planetary ecology and to keep the uneasy peace, the government switches from Winter rule to Summer rule under a matriarchal monarch. Interstellar travel between Tiamat and the Hegemony is only possible during the 150 years of Winter rule, and a single woman rules the entire planet: a "Snow Queen" in Winter, a "Summer Queen" in Summer. The Hegemony's interest in Tiamat has to do with the "mers," sentient sea-dwelling creatures whose blood provides the "water of life," a virus that restores physical youth. Mers are hunted as frequently as possible during the Winter years, to the brink of extinction. This also allows a single Snow Queen to reign for the entire 150-year season, and it is with the Snow Queen, Arienrhod, that the story begins. She has secretly implanted several Summer women with embryos, clones of herself, in the hopes of extending her rule past her ritual execution at the end of Winter. The novel follows Moon, the only one of these clones to survive to adolescence. She and her cousin Sparks are lovers, and both are "merry-begots", conceived during the planetary festivals held every 20 years to remind Tiamat of the cycle of power. Moon becomes a sibyl, a position of high status among the Summer people, since they are keepers of knowledge freely available to anyone who asks. Sibyls enter a trance and by mysterious means, can answer questions. Sparks, unable to join her among the sibyl mystics and curious about his offworld heritage, travels to Carbuncle, Tiamat's capital, where he is immediately caught up by Arienrhod and eventually becomes the "Starbuck": her consort and commander of the mer hunts. Moon receives a message, apparently from Sparks, urging her to come to Carbuncle, though the city is barred to sibyls. On her way, she becomes entangled with smugglers and is taken off-world – a one-way trip for a Tiamatan citizen, as the Hegemony forbids Tiamat full access to their worlds. She is taken to the capital planet, Kharemough, and discovers that the Winters' prejudice against sibyls is a political tool used by the Hegemony to preserve its control of technology on Tiamat. Sibyls are highly respected throughout the other planets of the Hegemony; only on Tiamat, due to a careful reinforcement of superstitions during the reign of Winter, are they considered dangerous and mentally unstable. Eventually, despite the waning window of safe travel offered by Tiamat's orbit, she negotiates a return after finding out from a trance that Sparks is in danger. After a crash landing and short sojourn as a captive by an outback tribe of Winter fugitives in the north, Moon returns to Carbuncle and confronts Arienrhod for the fate of her beloved Sparks. Here she discovers the truth of her heritage and that Arienrhod considers her a failure; she wanted a clone in spirit, not just in body, a clone who would keep the Summers from rejecting technology – throwing all imported devices into the sea – at The Change. Moon proves her wrong by participating in the ritual competition for the Summer Throne, and winning. The Change will proceed, and Winter will end&mdash;but with an enlightened queen, preparing Tiamat to face the Hegemony as a peer when the 150 years of summer end and interstellar travel is again possible through the black hole.
1885160	/m/063nmx	Cakes and Ale	W. Somerset Maugham	1930	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told by a first-person narrator and well-to-do author, William Ashenden, who, at the beginning of the novel is suddenly and unexpectedly contacted by Alroy Kear, a busy-body literary figure in London who has been asked by the second Mrs. Driffield to write the biography of her deceased husband, Edward Driffield. Driffield, once scorned for his realist representation of late-Victorian, working-class characters, had in his later years become lionised by scholars of English letters. The second Mrs. Driffield, a nurse to the ailing Edward after his first wife left him, is known for her propriety and interest in augmenting and cementing her husband's literary reputation. Her only identity is that as caretaker to her husband in life and to his reputation in death. It is well known, however, that Driffield wrote his best novels while married to his first wife/muse, Rosie. Amy Driffield requests that Alroy Kear write the biography of her late husband. Kear, who is trying to prove his own literary worth, jumps at the opportunity to ride the coat-tails of the great Edward Driffield. It is Kear, knowing that William Ashenden had a long acquaintanceship with the Driffields as a young man and as a young writer, who contacts Ashenden to get privy information about Edward's past — including information about his first wife who has been oddly erased from the official narrative of Edward's genius. The plot revolves around how much information the narrator will divulge to Driffield's second wife and Kear (while exposing it all to the reader), who ostensibly wants a "complete" picture of the famous author, but who routinely glosses over the untoward stories that might upset Driffield's surviving wife. It is William Ashenden who holds the key to the deep mystery of love, and the act of love, in the life of each character as he recounts a fascinating literary history of creativity, infidelity and literary memory.
1885958	/m/063qj2	The Trumpet of the Swan	E. B. White	1970	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Canada in the spring of 1968, the cob, the name for an adult male swan, and the pen, the name for an adult female swan, both members of the swan species Trumpeter Swan build their summer nest on a small island in a pond. Sam Beaver, an 11-year-old boy on a camping trip, observes them, and saves the female from being attacked by a fox. The swans begin to trust him, and Sam gets to see their five eggs hatch. All of the cygnets chirp at Sam in greeting, except for the youngest, who can make no sound and pulls his shoelace instead. The cygnets' parents are increasingly concerned about their youngest son, Louis, who turns out to be mute. They worry that when he grows up, he will not be able to find a mate if he cannot trumpet like all the other swans. Louis's father promises to find a way for him to communicate. At the end of summer, the swan family flies to the winter refuge, Red Rock Lakes in Montana. Louis decides he should learn to read and write in order to communicate, and flies away from the refuge. Because Sam Beaver lives nearby, he happily takes his swan friend to school with him the next morning. Louis turns out to be a natural at reading and writing, and Sam buys him a portable blackboard and chalk so he can communicate. Unfortunately, because the other swans cannot read, Louis is still lonely when he returns to the Red Rock Lakes. He falls in love with a young swan, Serena, but cannot attract her attention. Louis's father flies to a music store in Billings, Montana, crashes through the window, and steals a brass trumpet on a cord to give to his son. Louis feels guilty about his father's theft, but accepts the instrument. Serena has migrated north, so Louis returns to Sam's ranch. Sam suggests that Louis get a job so he can pay the store for the trumpet and the damaged window, and Louis finds a position as camp bugler at Camp Kookooskoos, the boys' camp Sam attends. Louis plays taps, reveille, and mess call, and composes a love song for Serena. He convinces Sam to split one of his webbed feet with a razor blade, making "fingers," so he can play more notes. He also rescues Applegate Skinner, an unpopular camper who nearly drowns. At the end of summer, Louis receives the Lifesaving Medal, a waterproof moneybag, and $100. Sam suggests that Louis get a job with the Swan Boats in Boston. He flies across country and becomes an instant success, with a salary of $100 per week. He even stays in the Ritz Hotel. A Philadelphia nightclub offers Louis a higher salary, $500 per week. He leaves Boston and takes up residence at the Philadelphia Zoo. The zookeeper promises that Louis will not be pinioned (have a wing tip cut off to prevent escape) like all the other swans at the zoo. One windy night, Serena, blown off course, falls into Bird Lake. Louis serenades her with his trumpet, and she finally notices him. But when the zookeepers spot Serena, they try to clip her wings, and Louis attacks them. He convinces the Head Man to postpone the operation for a short while, and sends a telegram to Sam, asking for help. Sam goes to Philadelphia and strikes a deal with the Head Man: in every litter of cygnets there is always one that needs special care and protection, and if Louis is willing to donate an occasional cygnet to the zoo, the Head Man will let Louis and Serena go free. Louis and Serena fly back to the Red Rock Lakes. Louis writes an apology on his slate and gives it and the moneybag to his father, who flies back to the music store in Billings. Afraid that the swan will destroy another window, the storekeeper shoots the old cob in the shoulder. The cob recovers and flies back to the Red Rock Lakes. In the country, when Sam is about 20 years old, he is again camping in Canada, and hears Louis playing taps to his children. He writes in his journal: Tonight I heard Louis's horn. My father heard it, too. The wind was right, and I could hear the notes of taps, just as darkness fell. There is nothing in all the world I like better than the trumpet of the swan.
1888389	/m/063y70	Invitation to the Game	Monica Hughes	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Lisse and her 8 friends are unemployed after graduating from a respected private school, despite their intelligence. They are assigned to their Designated Area (or DA), and allowed to live as a group in an abandoned warehouse. They discover that by day, the area they live in is a dreary, dirty place. By night, however, the unemployed folks go out to party and otherwise spend care-free evenings. The thought police quickly step in to quell any large problems or disputes. For their own safety, they study karate and develop a security system designed to discourage criminals with electric shocks. During a trip out to experience the nightlife, the group learns of The Game, a kind of entertainment that some people are very desperate to become involved in. They are later invited to try out The Game via a suspicious envelope placed within their warehouse (despite their security measures). After learning how to navigate the subways, they arrive at a secret entrance to a government facility. Inside they have their first taste of The Game, which is actually a very sophisticated simulation of an Africa-like area. They cannot take anything from the real world inside this simulation and nothing from The Game can come back with them. Having little else to look forward to in their lives, the group focuses on training and information gathering during their time between Game sessions. They develop a schedule of regular exercise (consisting of jogging and weight-training), search for information in the local library, and discuss their experiences and motivations. As they progress in The Game, they find that they have needs (for a doctor and someone with agricultural knowledge). The government swiftly moves people they knew from school into their lives, filling those needs. After a year of such training, the game session changes&mdash;they are placed in an area much like the one they visited, except this time, they are not awakened if they are in danger of hurting themselves. Eventually, it is revealed that The Game is a kind of training meant to prepare the group for an off-world colony project. This project is designed to halt the massive overpopulation the world is suffering. It is hinted that part of the reason such a group of people were unemployable out of school was to help in the colonization of other worlds, since each seed group would need a variety of talents. Indeed, an early portion of the book reinforces this supposition, as it explains that the prestigious school from which Lisse and her friends graduated once had a 90% job-placement rate, which is now a mere 10%—meaning that the most qualified workers are being placed within the Game system rather than the workforce.
1889301	/m/063_4g	The Source of Magic	Piers Anthony	1979-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On his way to Queen Iris's masquerade ball in honor of Trent's accession to the throne one year before, Bink is attacked by a floating sword, which he deflects using his talent of protection against magical harm. At the ball, he is attacked again by an unseen enemy. Finally, Bink confides in King Trent, who decides to remove Bink from harm's way by sending him out on a mission to find the source of magic of Xanth. To help him, King Trent sends Chester the Centaur and the soldier Crombie. Crombie is turned into a griffin by King Trent, whose magical talent is the ability to transform living things. First, the party heads to the Good Magician Humfrey's castle, to ask his advice about their quest. When they tell him they are attempting to discover Xanth's source of magic, Humfrey decides he wants to come as well. They come across Beauregard the Demon who tells them they should abandon their quest, as it could result in the destruction of all magic in Xanth. At this time they also find Grundy the Golem, whose talent is understanding any language. This is particularly useful because Crombie in griffin form can only speak in squawks, which Grundy is able to translate. On their quest, they meet many obstacles, including a Siren, a Gorgon whose face turns men to stone, madness itself, a dragon, tangle trees, and an ogre. Bink narrowly escapes all enemies through a series of seemingly circumstantial events, due to his talent. Eventually they find the source of magic - a demon named X(A/N)th imprisoned deep below the surface. Bink is faced with a moral dilemma, to let it be free and destroy all magic in Xanth and act against the Brain Coral, or to keep it against its will. He eventually lets the magic go by freeing the demon, but is convinced by Cherie Centaur to go back and look for the demon again, hoping to convince it to stay. After some negotiation, the demon agrees under the condition that the magic shield which separated Xanth from Mundania will protect him from foolish intruders. Upon Bink's return home, he discovers his son Dor possesses a magician calibre talent - he can talk to inanimate objects. pl:Źródła magii
1889324	/m/063_67	Castle Roogna	Piers Anthony	1979-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dor, son of Bink, is a 12 year old magician and next in line to inherit the throne of Xanth. To teach him the skills he will need to rule the kingdom, King Trent sends him through the tapestry on a mission 800 years into Xanth's past to find the ancient and mysterious Zombie Master. Dor travels to the past via the magic tapestry of Castle Roogna and inhabits the body of an invading mundane barbarian. While in the past Dor is accompanied by a (not normally) giant spider named Jumper, who had been drawn into the tapestry with him, and meets his current governess Millie the ghost, a short time before her unfortunate demise. Dor must use his magic and every other resource he possesses to help beat back an invading wave of mundanes and find a way to restore Millie's zombie lover to life back in the present.Turns out the Zombie Master is Millies zombie lover and ends up providing the cure for his own curse.
1889326	/m/063_6_	Night Mare	Piers Anthony	1983-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Night Mare centers around Mare Imbrium, one of the night mares charged with delivering bad dreams to the people of Xanth. Imbri carries half a soul, her fee for carrying Chem Centaur out of the void in the previous book. She is unwilling to relinquish her soul, though the conscience that comes with it impedes her ability to deliver bad dreams. The Night Stallion, ruler of the gourd realm, makes Imbri the liaison to the day and night world and sends her to meet Trent, King of Xanth, with the ominous message, "Beware the Horseman". Imbri leaves the gourd realm and journeys to the day world, at first flinching from the touch of sunlight but realizing it would not harm her, though it nullified her ability to turn invisible and intangible. She sets out for Castle Roogna, determined to deliver the Stallion's message to King Trent. Along the way she meets a white stallion (wearing a "thin brass band about his left foreleg, at ankle height"), which is rare in Xanth, because the offspring of most of the horses are half-breed animals like centaurs, created by the inbreeding most commonly induced by love springs. The "Day Horse" as she refers to him, is scared by her attempt at contact via a brief daydream, and runs away. She also meets an intelligent man wearing a brass bracelet, similar to that of the Day Horse, on his left arm. He asks her if she has seen the horse and says that he is wearing a bracelet like the one on his own arm. He convinces her to allow him to ride so they can track the Day Horse, but when she becomes confused by his verbal commands, she allows him to insert a bit into her mouth. Realizing she dislikes the bit, she asks him to remove it. When he refuses, she orders him off her, and to suborn her will to his, he uses spurs on her, and captures her. Imbri asks the man who he is, and he says "I am the Horseman". He then corrals her at his camp and builds a large bonfire to shine light on her and prevent her from turning intangible during the night. As the Horseman and his henchmen sleep, the Day horse approaches and courts her. She tells him of her plight and he affirms that he is terrified of the Horseman. The Day Horse, assists her anyway, and urinates on the fire, enabling her to escape. Imbri escapes and makes her way to Castle Roogna. When she arrives, the castle is preparing for the wedding of Prince Dor and King Trent's daughter, Princess Irene. Upon becoming acquainted with Chameleon, the wife of Bink and mother of Prince Dor, she is led to find King Trent, only to discover that he has been ensorcelled, staring blankly into space. Prince Dor, next in line to the crown and newly wed to Princess Irene, assumes the throne. He informs Imbri and others that the Nextwave Invasion is occurring; an army of barbarians from the neighboring, nonmagical land of Mundania has just entered Xanth. King Dor orders Imbri and Chameleon to seek advice from the Good Magician Humphrey. Imbri and Chameleon travel to Humphrey's castle and navigate through the standard three challenges, gaining access to the inside. Humphrey's wife, the fearsome Gorgon, leads the pair to the Magician. The old man casually repeats the Night Stallion's warning, "Beware the Horseman" and adds another cryptic instruction: "Break the chain." After battling with the Mundanes with King Trent's army from A Spell For Chameleon, Dor had fallen to the same ensorcellement as King Trent, and is now catatonic. Since the law of Xanth requires that a Magician sit on the throne, the Zombie Master (Jonathon) becomes the new king. Jonathan's magic talent is to reanimate the deceased, and he rallies his zombies to form an army to fight the Punic invasion from Mundania. Jonathan falls to the same bewitchment as Trent and Dor. Humphrey assumes the throne, and prepares himself for battle against the Punic horde and its leader Hasbinbad. He informs Imbri, much to the chagrin of the Gorgon, that he is not destined to be the savior of Xanth, and that he expects to make a tragic mistake in battle. Before departing to the battle, Humphrey identified his successor: Dor's father Bink, whom everybody assumed had no magic talent. Humphrey revealed to Queen Iris that Bink's talent was immunity from magical harm, and its nature had been hidden so his enemies would not revert to using nonmagical means to harm him. It was hoped that Bink would be immune from the effects of the Horseman's spell. Imbri was sent north to the border of Mundania, where Bink and the centaur scholar Arnolde were traveling. Imbri brought news to Bink and Arnolde of the invasion, and informed Bink that he was slated to become King of Xanth upon Humphrey's demise. Bink agreed to accompany Imbri back to the castle and instructed Arnolde to follow, for Arnolde would be king after Bink fell. Bink and Imbri traveled to the baobab tree and find Humphrey, taken by the power of the enemy. He has a bottle in his hand, and when Bink uncorks it, Humphrey's voice emits from it, with one word: "Horseman". Bink surmises that Humphrey's voice was identifying his assailant, and that they now knew who was ensorcelling the kings. Bink and Imbri prepare for battle alone, armed with Humphrey's numerous spells and potions. They set aside a box marked "Pandora". He and Imbri are victorious but are separated in the battle. When Imbri tracks down Bink, she finds that he has killed the Punic leader Hasbinbad, but has been taken with the Horseman's power nonetheless. Imbri returns to Castle Roogna to inform Arnolde the Centaur that he is now King of Xanth. Arnolde begins laying plans for his successor, and he interprets Xanthian law to his advantage. The law states that the king must be a Magician but had no precedence on whether the king had to be human or what sex. Arnolde states that a Sorceress is simply a female Magician, and that the law does not prohibit a woman from becoming king. He selects Queen Iris to be his successor, and he proclaims her daughter Irene to be a full Sorceress, thus establishing who would be the seventh and eights kings after him. Arnolde then instructs Imbri to report to the Night Stallion with an update. King Arnolde, realizing that the previous king's condition is similar to that of a person trapped by the hypno gourd, sends Imbri through, to the Night Stallion's dimension, to see if the missing Kings are within. Upon arrival, Imbri is amazed to learn that all five of the bewitched kings are present in the gourd. They surmise that the Horseman's magic talent is to connect a person's line of sight to another object, and that he has used this ability to make them all see into a hypnogourd, trapping their souls inside. Imbri brings this news to Castle Roogna, and eventually brings Princess Irene to the gourd to visit her new husband Dor, taken from her after their nuptials. Shortly after the pair return to Castle Roogna, Arnolde is taken by the Horseman, and Queen Iris becomes King Iris, the first female king. Iris uses her talent of illusion to inflict massive casualties on the Punic horde, who are now marching on Castle Roogna under the command of the Horseman. She briefly forms an image of her own face in front of the Horseman to mock him, whereupon he simply uses his talent to enscroll her. Princess Irene becomes king of Xanth next, and she identifies Chameleon as the next king, stating that, although Chameleon does not have Magician-Caliber talent, she would be the best option for king because she is in her ugly, but extremely intelligent phase. The Horseman expends nearly the rest of his forces in reaching Castle Roogna. Chameleon, realizing that the Day Horse and the Horseman are one and the same, lures him into the castle, and once he is inside, Irene uses her talent of accelerated plant growth to wrap the castle in a tight cocoon of plants, trapping him inside. Enraged, he uses his magic to ensnare her, whereupon Chameleon becomes king of Xanth and informs him that he will fail. He takes Chameleon with his power, too, and Xanth is left without a king. Imbri, having been previously named the Tenth King by Chameleon, because she is a creature of the Gourd, and can not enter the world via the peep hole, and therefore can not be forced into it, returns to castle Roogna. Imbri enters Roogna at night, so she is able to slip by the plants, and confronts the Horseman. He is now sitting on the throne, having proclaimed himself the new king of Xanth. As Imbri approaches, he shifts into his alternate form, and Imbri is stricken; she is in season, and he is a male horse. She is unable to act under his dominating power, but when the barbarians break into the castle and call out for their leader, he shifts back to his human form to answer. Imbri attacks and kills him, but the nine catatonic kings do not revive. Imbri realizes that the Horseman's magic talent was shape-shifting, and that the bands he wore around his wrists were magical bands that allowed him to perform his ensorcellment. Devastated, and with nothing to lose, she destroys the box marked PANDORA, and is surrounded by a pink smoke, and feels suddenly hopeful. She removes the band but does not destroy it, because that might not accomplish the goal of releasing the kings. She decides to travel to the Void, an area in the Elemental region of Xanth, from which nothing can escape. She takes the band there and throws it in, but is trapped by the gravitational pull of the Void. Terrified, her physical body is destroyed by the Void. The nine kings revive as the magical band is destroyed, and Imbri returns as a day mare, thanks to Humfrey, and is now charged with bringing pleasant daydreams instead of nightmares to the people of Xanth. King Trent and Queen Iris retire, leaving the throne to their new son-in-law, King Dor. pl:Nocna mara
1889337	/m/063_7p	Question Quest	Piers Anthony	1991-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with Lacuna, one of the mischievous Castle Zombie twins, seeking a way to fix her "dull" life. To do so she comes to ask Grey, Ivy's betrothed and pro-tem magician of knowledge, for the answer. However, Grey doesn't want to answer her question because he knows that something terrible will come of it. Lacuna decides to make a deal that even Grey can't refuse, a way to outwit Com-Pewter. Lacuna plans to use her ability to change prints and write new ones to help Grey. Seeing no other choice, Grey decides to help her, but he realizes that he can't fathom what the book of knowledge is trying to say. Therefore, he sends her to the anteroom of hell to talk to Magician Humfrey. When Lacuna arrives to the anteroom, she finds Humfrey sleeping. After waking Humfrey up, she found out that he is waiting to talk to the Demon X(A/N)th to free his wife Rose. Humfrey tells her to write down his life story (and most of Xanth's history in the process), on the walls, so that he can get the demon's attention. It turns out that Humfrey has five wives. Humfrey manages to save his wives from the pits of hell (sort of) and Lacuna changes her life. pl:W poszukiwaniu odpowiedzi
1889339	/m/063_80	The Color of Her Panties	Piers Anthony	1992-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Mela, like all merpeople, is able to turn into a full human so that she can walk on land. To follow "landbound custom", she finds clothing and shoes (conveniently growing on trees, as is common on Xanth). Of particular concern is which panties to choose - after all, there is significant interest in the color of her panties. After trying on dozens of pairs, Mela finally decides on plaid (the color she would choose was the subject of an Impossible Question that the Deamon X(A/N)th asked the Good Magician Humprey in Question Quest). Gwenny has to prove her courage to become leader of Goblin Mountain. Her task is to steal an egg from the Roc's nest. The two storylines are brought together when Mela has to help save Gwenny from a Roc and a hard place. pl:Barwa jej bielizny
1889342	/m/063_8c	Yon Ill Wind	Piers Anthony	1996-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Hurricane Happy Bottom is causing problems in Mundania and Xanth. The Mundane Baldwin family is blown into Xanth by a Yon Ill Wind. Also, Demon X(A/N)th has made a deal with Demon JU(P/I)ter that he could get one Xanthian to shed a tear. The demons change up by making X(A/N)th into a dragon ass and is only able to talk once explaining to a Xanthian what the quest is. As Nimby, Demon X(A/N)th meets Chlorine and makes her beautiful and talented. Together with the Baldwin family, they must banish Happy Bottom From Xanth.
1889344	/m/063_8q	Zombie Lover	Piers Anthony	1998-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/089m7": "Zombie", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Breanna, a beautiful young newcomer to the enchanted land of Xanth, must deal with a distressing dilemma. She has unwittingly attracted the affections of King Xeth, ruler of Xanth's Zombies, who yearns to make her Queen of the Undead! Her quest to preserve her innocence, and find her destiny, takes her on an exhilarating excursion packed with perils, puzzles, and piles of puns.
1889380	/m/063_cw	J.B.	Archibald MacLeish			 The play opens in "a corner inside an enormous circus tent." Two vendors, Mr. Zuss and Nickles, begin the play-within-a-play by assuming the roles of God and Satan, respectively. They watch J.B., a wealthy banker, describe his prosperity as a just reward for his faithfulness to God. Scorning, Nickles challenges Zuss that J.B. will curse God if his life is ruined. The two observe as J.B.'s children and property are destroyed in horrible accidents and the former millionaire takes to the streets. J.B. is visited by three Comforters (representing History, Science, and Religion) who offer contradicting explanations for his plight. He declines to believe any of them, instead calling out to God to show him the just cause for his punishment. When finally confronted by the circus vendors, J.B. refuses to accept Nickles' urging toward suicide to spite God or Zuss' offer of his old life in exchange for quiet obedience to religion. Instead, he takes solace in his wife Sarah and the new life they will create together.
1890954	/m/0643c3	Atonement	Ian McEwan	2001	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a talent for writing, lives at her family's country estate with her parents. Her older sister Cecilia attends University of Cambridge with Robbie Turner, the son of the Tallis family housekeeper and a childhood friend of Cecilia's. In the summer of 1935, Briony's maternal cousins, twins Jackson and Pierrot and Lola, come to visit the family. On this day Briony witnesses a moment of sexual tension between Cecilia and Robbie from afar. Briony misconstrues the situation and thinks that Robbie is acting aggressively toward Cecilia. Robbie, meanwhile, realizes he is attracted to Cecilia, whom he has not seen in some time, and writes several drafts of a love letter to her, giving a copy to Briony to deliver. By accident he gives her a version he had meant to discard, which contains lewd and vulgar references ("cunt"). Briony reads the letter and becomes disturbed as to Robbie's intentions. Later she walks in on Robbie and Cecilia making love in the library. Briony misinterprets the sexual act as rape and believes Robbie to be a "maniac". Later on at a family dinner party attended by Briony's brother Leon and his friend Paul Marshall, it is discovered that the twins have run away and the dinner party breaks into teams to search for them. In the darkness, Briony discovers her cousin Lola, apparently being raped by an assailant she cannot clearly see. Lola is unable or unwilling to identify the attacker, but Briony decides to accuse Robbie and identifies him to the police as the rapist, claiming she has seen Robbie's face in the dark. Robbie is taken away to prison, with only Cecilia and his mother believing his protestations of innocence. By the time World War II has started, Robbie has spent 2–3 years in prison. He is then released on the condition of enlistment in the army to fight in war. Cecilia has trained and become a nurse. She cuts off all contact with her family because of the part they took in sending Robbie to jail. Robbie and Cecilia have only been in contact by letter, since she was not allowed to visit him in prison. Before Robbie has to go to war in France, they meet once for half an hour during Cecilia's lunch break. Their reunion starts awkwardly, but they share a kiss before leaving each other. In France, the war is going badly and the army is retreating to Dunkirk. As the injured Robbie goes to the safe haven, he thinks about Cecilia and past events like teaching Briony how to swim and reflecting on Briony's possible reasons for accusing him. His single meeting with Cecilia is the memory that keeps him walking, his only aim is seeing her again. At the end of part two, Robbie falls asleep in Dunkirk, one day before the evacuation. Remorseful Briony has refused her place at Cambridge and instead is a trainee nurse in London. She has realized the full extent of her mistake, and decides it was Paul Marshall, Leon's friend, whom she saw raping Lola. Briony still writes, although she does not pursue it with the same recklessness as she did as a child. Briony is called to the bedside of Luc, a young, fatally wounded French soldier. She consoles him in his last moments by speaking with him in her school French, and he mistakes her for an English girl whom his mother wanted him to marry. Just before his death, Luc asks "Do you love me?", to which Briony answers "Yes," not only because "no other answer was possible" but also because "for the moment, she did. He was a lovely boy far away from his family and about to die." Afterward, Briony daydreams about the life she might have had if she had married Luc and gone to live with him and his family. Briony attends the wedding of her cousin Lola and Paul Marshall before finally visiting Cecilia. Robbie is on leave from the army and Briony meets him unexpectedly at her sister's. They both refuse to forgive Briony, who nonetheless tells them she will try and put things right. She promises to begin the legal procedures needed to exonerate Robbie, even though Paul Marshall will never be held responsible for his (supposed) crime because of his marriage to Lola, the victim. The fourth section, titled "London 1999", is written from Briony's perspective. She is a successful novelist at the age of 77 and dying of vascular dementia. It is revealed that Briony is the author of the preceding sections of the novel. Although Cecilia and Robbie are reunited in Briony's novel, they were not in reality. It is suggested that Robbie Turner may have died of septicaemia, caused by his injury, on the beaches of Dunkirk and Cecilia may have been killed by the bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains above Balham Underground station. Cecilia and Robbie may have never seen each other again. Although the detail concerning Lola's marriage to Paul Marshall is true, Briony never visited Cecilia to make amends. Briony explains why she decided to change real events and unite Cecilia and Robbie in her novel, although it was not her intention in her many previous drafts. She did not see what purpose it would serve if she gave the readers a pitiless ending. She reasons that they could not draw any sense of hope or satisfaction from it. But above all, she wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their happiness by being together. Since they could not have the time together they so much longed for in reality, Briony wanted to give it to them at least in her novel.
1891749	/m/06453y	The Way Some People Die	Ross Macdonald	1951	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mrs. Samuel Lawrence gives Lew Archer 50 dollars for one day of his time to find her daughter Galatea (a.k.a. Galley). Archer soon discovers she was married to a small-time mobster named Joe Tarantine. And shortly after that, a big-time mobster offers him five thousand to find Tarantine. The investigation quickly gains a body count and Lew is constantly drawn from Los Angeles to Pacific Point, Palm Springs, San Francisco, and back again, trying to tie together details that seem as random as they are violent.
1892513	/m/06476t	The Tower Treasure	Franklin W. Dixon	1927-06-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins with Frank and Joe Hardy barely avoiding being hit by a speeding driver whom they notice has bright red hair. Later, this same red-haired driver attempts a ferryboat ticket office robbery and successfully steals a yellow jalopy called Queen from the Hardys' friend, Chet Morton. Due to one witness reporting that the villain had dark hair, the Hardys assume he is using a red wig. It is learned that the thief returned to Chet's home to steal a tire, helping Frank and Joe to find Queen abandoned in a public wooded area. The excitement of finding Queen is quickly gone when it is reported that there has been a robbery of forty thousand dollars in securities and jewels from the Tower Mansion owned by siblings Hurd and Adelia Applegate. Hurd Applegate is convinced that the Tower's caretaker, Henry Robinson, is the guilty party. The Hardys are especially concerned by this accusation because Henry's son, Perry, is a friend of theirs who will have to quit school to work since his father can no longer get a job as a result of Applegate's accusation. The only 'proof' of Henry Robinson's guilt is that he was suddenly able to pay off a debt, and refused to reveal where he got the money to pay off the debt. The Hardys suspect that the red-haired man may be involved with the Tower robbery and search the place where Queen was found, finding the red wig. The Hardys' dad, detective Fenton Hardy, learns that the wig was manufactured in New York City. The three Hardys go to New York and learn of a criminal named John "Red" Jackley who is fond of using disguises. Soon, Jackley is injured in a train accident causing him to be hospitalized. About to die, Jackley confesses that he committed the Tower Mansion robbery and put the loot "in the old tower…" Jackley dies before he is able to explain further. After searches inside and outside of the Tower Mansion the stolen loot is still not found. Frank and Joe decide to go to the railroad where Jackley used to work to find out more information. While investigating, they see two water towers nearby. The Hardys realize that Jackley was referring to the old water tower and not the Tower Mansion. Inside the water tower they find the stolen items but are locked in the tower by a man calling himself Hobo Johnny. Johnny feels that anything in the tower belongs to him. Frank and Joe broke out of the water tower and return the securities and jewelry. Then they are rewarded a thousand dollars for returning the missing jewels. In the original version of the book Henry admits that a man who owed him money repaid a debt to him, but he was not allowed to tell anyone in case the man's other debtors found out. This was revised in the 1959 version such that Adelia reveals that she loaned Henry Robinson the money to pay off his debt. Following the revelations and with the stolen loot returned, Hurd re-hires Henry with an increase in salary and Hurd builds a greenhouse for Henry.
1894827	/m/064dd7	The Man Who Tasted Shapes	Richard Cytowic	2003-04		 The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, Cytowic describes his chance encounter during a dinner party on February 10, 1980 with MW, the "Man Who Tasted Shapes." Cytowic describes how his host reported that "There aren't enough points on the chicken!" and how this chance comment led to Cytowic's investigations of the neurological phenomenon of synesthesia. Early chapters include background information on how the brain is organized, drawn mainly from Paul D. MacLean's Triune Brain theory. Cytowic describes MW's synesthesia, noting the consistency of his reports, that such experiences are "generic" and consistent over time. Chapters dealing with more scientific theories, data and experimentation are alternated with autobiographical and more personal chapters describing the historical details of Cytowic's investigations into synesthesia. In order to explore the biological basis of synesthesia, Cytowic describes experiments in which he tested how MW's synesthesia was reduced by MW's daily routine of stimulants such as nicotine and caffeine and depressants such as alcohol. In more intensive investigations of the effects of different psychoactive substances, Cytowic notes that stimulants, including a dose of amphetamine decreased the strength of MW's synesthesia, while amyl nitrite increased the strength of MW's synesthesia. For example, MW reports that mint feels like a cool glass column, but that amyl nitrite led him to feel as if he were placing his hand among many glass columns. Cytowic also summarizes work done with functional neuroimaging which showed unusually low cortical activation in MW. Based on these results, Cytowic proposes a theory in which synesthesia is a result of unusual processing in the limbic system and an overall decrease in cortical activation. In later chapters, Cytowic reports on his efforts to make synesthesia more widely known, on the experiences of many other synesthetes who have contacted him, and how synesthesia affects their lives. Cytowic describes how an article about his work on synesthesia in the tabloid The National Enquirer, which are "not known to help one's career" led to his first contacts with synesthetes beyond MW These personal accounts of synesthesia, described here in more autobiographical style, also form the basis of Cytowic's more detailed scientific book, Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses. Additionally, Cytowic discusses the links between synesthesia and memory, as first noted in Alexander Luria's book The Mind of Mnemonist about Solomon Shereshevskii, a Russian mnemonist who also experienced fivefold synesthesia. In the second part of the book, entitled "Essays on the Primacy of Emotion", Cytowic presents a number of his reflections on what the phenomenon of synesthesia means for traditional neuroscientific and neurological practice, how anomalous findings can lead to major scientific discoveries, and the role that emotion plays in our understanding of the world around us.
1894969	/m/064dt3	The Owl and the Pussycat	John Keir Cross		{"/m/04rlf": "Music", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 "The Owl and the Pussycat" features four anthropomorphic animals &ndash; an owl, a cat, a pig, and a turkey &ndash; and tells the story of the love between the title characters who marry in the land "where the Bong-tree grows". The Owl and the Pussycat set out to sea in a pea green boat with honey and "plenty of money" wrapped in a five pound note. The Owl serenades the Pussycat while gazing at the stars and strumming on a small guitar. He describes her as beautiful. The Pussycat responds by describing the Owl as an "elegant fowl" and compliments him on his singing. She urges they marry but they don't have a ring. They sail away for a year and a day to a land where Bong-trees grow and discover a pig with a ring in his nose in a wood. They buy the ring for a shilling and are married the next day by a turkey. They dine on mince and quince using a runcible spoon, then dance hand-in-hand on the sand in the moonlight. Portions of an unfinished sequel, "The Children of the Owl and the Pussycat", were first published posthumously in 1938.
1895117	/m/064f5y	Dido, Queen of Carthage	Thomas Nashe	1594		 Jupiter is fondling Ganymede, who says that Jupiter's wife Juno has been mistreating him because of her jealousy. Venus enters, and complains that Jupiter is neglecting her son Aeneas, who has left Troy with survivors of the defeated city. He was on his way to Italy, but is now lost in a storm. Jupiter tells her not to worry; he will quiet the storm. Venus travels to Libya, where she disguises herself as a mortal and meets Aeneas, who has arrived, lost, on the coast. He and a few followers have become separated from their comrades. He recognises her, but she denies her identity. She helps him meet up with Illioneus, Sergestus and Cloanthes, other surviving Trojans who have already received generous hospitality from the local ruler Dido, Queen of Carthage. Dido meets Aeneas and promises to supply his ships. She asks him to give her the true story of the fall of Troy, which he does in detail, describing the death of Priam, the loss of his own wife and his escape with his son Ascanius and other survivors. Dido's suitor, Iarbas, presses her to agree to marry him. She seems to favour him, but Venus has other plans. She disguises Cupid as Aeneas's son Ascanius, so that he can get close to Dido and touch her with his arrow. He does so; Dido immediately falls in love with Aeneas and rejects Iarbas out of hand, to his horror and confusion. Dido's sister Anna, who is in love with Iarbas, encourages Dido to pursue Aeneas. She and Aeneas meet at a cave, where Dido declares her love. They enter the cave to make love. Iarbas swears he will get revenge. Venus and Juno appear, arguing over Aeneas. Venus believes that Juno wants to harm her son, but Juno denies it, saying she has important plans for him. Aeneas's followers say they must leave Libya, to fulfil their destiny in Italy. Aeneas seems to agree, and prepares to depart. Dido sends Anna to find out what is happening. She brings Aeneas back, who denies he intended to leave. Dido forgives him, but as a precaution removes all the sails and tackle from his ships. She also places Ascanius in the custody of the Nurse, believing that Aeneas will not leave without him. However, "Ascanius" is really the disguised Cupid. Dido says that Aeneas will be king of Carthage and anyone who objects will be executed. Aeneas agrees and plans to build a new city to rival Troy and strike back at the Greeks. Mercury appears with the real Ascanius and informs Aeneas that his destiny is in Italy and that he must leave on the orders of Jupiter. Aeneas reluctantly accepts the divine command. Iarbas sees the opportunity to be rid of his rival and agrees to supply Aeneas with the missing tackle. Aeneas tells Dido he must leave. She pleads with him to ignore Jupiter's command, but he refuses to do so. He departs, leaving Dido in despair. The Nurse says that "Ascanius" has disappeared. Dido orders her to be imprisoned. She tells Iarbas and Anna that she intends to make a funeral pyre on which she will burn everything that reminds her of Aeneas. After cursing Aeneas' progeny, she throws herself into the fire. Iarbas, horrified, kills himself too. Anna, seeing Iarbas dead, kills herself.
1895332	/m/064fpb	Foreign Affairs	Alison Lurie	1984-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Unmarried fifty-four-year-old Virginia Miner (Vinnie), a professor at Corinth University who specializes in children's literature, is off to London for another research trip. She loves England and likes to feel that she fits in well there. She is hoping to produce an important new book about playground rhymes. However, she finds that her work has been trashed by a critic, L. D. Zimmern of Columbia, for whom she imagines monstrous dooms. The author makes a point of telling us that Vinnie is not beautiful &mdash; perhaps rather homely &mdash; but that she has had her share of affairs nevertheless, and a brief marriage. Although she enjoys these flings, she has stopped believing that falling or being in love is a good thing. A 'pro' at long flights, her serenity is ruffled by her seatmate, a garrulous married man from Tulsa, Chuck Mumpson. She puts him off by giving him Little Lord Fauntleroy to read. But smoking, drinking, loudly American Chuck is persistent, and ends up contacting her in London. He has been inspired by Little Lord Fauntleroy to want to trace his own family history. Vinnie slowly becomes involved with his project, and then with him. Meanwhile, her young colleague Fred Turner has left his wife, Roo, at home for his own sabbatical in London, where he is researching John Gay. Fred and Roo have quarreled and he fears the marriage is over. He consoles himself with the affections of a beautiful TV actress, Lady Rosemary Radley, who gives him the entree into London high life. The exquisite but not so young Rosemary has never managed to have a really successful love relationship—though she is not resigned to this, as Vinnie is. Although Fred is very much in love with her, he cannot give her the commitment she wants, since he must return to Corinth to teach summer school. Quite by accident and with the encouragement of Chuck, Vinnie becomes an emissary for Fred's estranged wife in an improbable midnight walk on Hampstead Heath. What makes this favor more challenging for Vinnie is that Roo's father is the nefarious critic L. D. Zimmern. Just as she begins to think Chuck's affections have cooled, because of his silence of several days duration, Vinnie is visited by his daughter who describes his sudden death while climbing the stairs of a small town hall. When an English friend speaks condescendingly of Chuck, Vinnie realizes with surprise that he loved her and she loved him. She returns to her life in Corinth, solitary and unloved, but altered for having loved and been loved.
1895372	/m/064ftm	Rabbit At Rest	John Updike	1990	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is part of a series that follows the exploits of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom from 1960–1990. Rabbit at Rest focuses on the years 1988-1989. It finds Harry nearly forty years after his glory days as a high school basketball star in a mid-sized Pennsylvania city. Harry and his wife of 33 years, Janice, have retired to sunny Florida during the cold months, where Harry is depressed, bored, and dangerously overweight. Unable to stop nibbling corn chips, macadamia nuts and other junk food, Rabbit finds himself near death after a heart attack while sunfishing with his nine-year-old granddaughter Judy. In a "redemption" of the drowning death of his infant daughter Rebecca in the earlier novel Rabbit, Run, he saves Judy from drowning during this incident. He is distracted from his health worries by the acts of his drug-addicted son, Nelson, to whom Janice has very unwisely given control of the family business, a Pennsylvania Toyota dealership. The discovery that Nelson has been stealing from the company to support his drug habit leads to Harry losing the family business. Despite his problems and growing unhappiness, he manages to take some comfort in Judy, who has turned out to be beautiful and attractive, a reminder of himself in his high-school glory days. He is less attached to his four-year-old grandson Roy, who seems wary and fearful of Rabbit, much like Nelson. While recuperating from heart surgery, Rabbit recognizes one of the nurses, Annabelle Byer, as the young woman he believes is his illegitimate daughter by his old girlfriend Ruth. He becomes friendly with her but decides not to identify himself as her possible father. Around this time, his long-term mistress Thelma Harrison (wife of his high-school nemesis Ron) dies of lupus. Ron angrily confronts Harry at the funeral, but the men later reconcile while playing golf. Harry also sees Cindy Murkett at the funeral, a woman he had sexually obsessed over ten years ago, and is saddened to see she has become an obese and bitter divorcee. After Nelson comes back from rehab, and Janice begins work as a real estate agent, the family finds out that Harry has had a one-night stand with Pru, Nelson's wife, on the night after he was released from the hospital. Janice's anger over this betrayal prompts Harry to escape to Florida. While in hiding, Harry has a heart attack shortly after winning a one-on-one basketball game with a local youth (echoing the opening of Rabbit, Run in which Harry impulsively joins a group of teenagers playing basketball). Nelson and Janice manage to get to his bedside while Harry is still alive; his wife forgives him, and he reconciles with his son.
1895394	/m/064fv9	Rabbit Is Rich	John Updike	1981-09-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This third novel of Updike's Rabbit series examines the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a one-time high school basketball star, who has reached a paunchy middle-age without relocating from Brewer, Pennsylvania, the poor, fictional city of his birth. Harry and Janice, his wife of twenty-two years, live comfortably, having inherited her late father's Toyota dealership. He is indeed rich, but Harry's persistent problems &mdash; his wife's drinking, his troubled son's schemes, his libido, and spectres from his past &mdash; complicate life. Having achieved a lifestyle that would have embarrassed his working-class parents, Harry is not greedy, but neither is he ever quite satisfied. Harry has become somewhat enamored of a country-club friend's young wife. He also has to deal with the indecision and irresponsibility of Nelson, his son, who is a student at Kent State University. Throughout the book, Harry wonders about his former lover Ruth, and whether she had ever given birth to their child.
1895420	/m/064fxc	House Made of Dawn	N. Scott Momaday	1968	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 House Made of Dawn begins with the protagonist, Abel, returning to his reservation in New Mexico after fighting in World War II. The war has left him emotionally devastated and he arrives too drunk to recognize his grandfather, Francisco. Now an old man with a lame leg, Francisco had earlier been a respected hunter and participant in the village's religious ceremonies. He raised Abel after the death of Abel's mother and older brother, Vidal. Francisco instilled in Abel a sense of native traditions and values, but the war and other events severed Abel's connections to that world of spiritual and physical wholeness and connectedness to the land and its people, a world known as a "house made of dawn." After arriving in the village, Abel attains a job through Father Olguin chopping wood for Angela St. John, a rich white woman who is visiting the area to bathe in the mineral waters. Angela seduces Abel to distract herself from her own unhappiness, but also because she senses an animal-like quality in Abel. She promises to help him leave the reservation to find better means of employment. Possibly as a result of this affair, Abel realizes that his return to the reservation has been unsuccessful. He no longer feels at home and he is confused. His turmoil becomes clearer when he is beaten in a game of horsemanship by a local albino Indian named Juan Reyes, described as "the white man." Deciding Juan is a witch, Abel stabs him to death outside of a bar. Abel is then found guilty of murder and sent to jail. Part II takes place in Los Angeles, California six and a half years later. Abel has been released from prison and unites with a local group of Indians. The leader of the group, Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah, Priest of the Sun, teases Abel as a "longhair" who is unable to assimilate to the demands of the modern world. However, Abel befriends a man named Ben Benally from a reservation in New Mexico and develops an intimate relationship with Milly, a kind, blonde social worker. However, his overall situation has not improved and Abel ends up drunk on the beach with his hands, head, and upper body beaten and broken. Memories run through his mind of the reservation, the war, jail, and Milly. Abel eventually finds the strength to pick himself up and he stumbles across town to the apartment he shares with Ben. Ben puts Abel on a train back to the reservation and narrates what has happened to Abel in Los Angeles. Life had not been easy for Abel in the city. First, he was ridiculed by Reverend Tosamah during a poker game with the Indian group. Abel is too drunk to fight back. He remains drunk for the next two days and misses work. When he returns to his job, the boss harasses him and Abel quits. A downward spiral begins and Abel continues to get drunk every day, borrow money from Ben and Milly, and laze around the apartment. Fed up with Abel's behavior, Ben throws him out of the apartment. Abel then seeks revenge on Martinez, a corrupt policeman who robbed Ben one night and hit Abel across the knuckles with his nightstick. Abel finds Martinez and is almost beaten to death. While Abel is in the hospital recovering, Ben calls Angela who visits him and revives his spirit, just as he helped revive her spirit years ago, by reciting a story about a bear and a maiden which incidentally matches an old Navajo myth. Abel returns to the reservation in New Mexico to take care of his grandfather, who is dying. His grandfather tells him the stories from his youth and stresses the importance of staying connected to his people's traditions. When the time comes, Abel dresses his grandfather for burial and smears his own body with ashes. As the dawn breaks, Abel begins to run. He is participating in a ritual his grandfather told him about—the race of the dead. As he runs, Abel begins to sing for himself and Francisco. He is coming back to his people and his place in the world.
1895560	/m/064g8y	Storm Boy	Colin Thiele		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Storm Boy likes to wander alone along the fierce deserted coast among the dunes that face out into the Southern Ocean. After a pelican mother is shot, Storm Boy rescues the three chicks, and nurses them back to health. He names them Mr Proud, Mr Ponder and Mr Percival. After he releases them, his favourite, Mr Percival, returns. The story then concentrates on the conflict between his lifestyle and the externally imposed requirement for him to attend a school, and the fate of the pelican.
1895804	/m/064gxq	The Scions of Shannara	Terry Brooks	1990-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Scions of Shannara is set in a land ruled by the military and cruel order called the Federation. The Elves have vanished from the face of the land, while the dwarves are imprisoned for having fought the Federation in the past. The Dwarves are sent to dig in mines, and will soon be extinct because of the Federation's wickedness. Magic is forbidden and those that practice it are eventually found and brought to their fate. It is a cruel land in which the tale begins. Par Ohmsford and his brother Coll start the story in Varfleet, telling legends and important histories of the past about the adventures of the Ohmsfords and the druids in a tavern through the use of Par's magic, the wishsong. The wishsong is but an illusion seen when Par sings what he wants to create. However, what Par and Coll are doing is illegal under the law of the Federation because magic is supposedly the cause for various problems that are occurring in the Four Lands. On one night, Rimmer Dall, first Seeker for the Federation, bursts in to the tavern, having found out about Par and Coll, and tries to arrest them. Par and Coll are rescued by a mysterious man, who claims to be a leader of the rebel group (or the Movement). The man does not give them his name, though he does hand Par a ring with a hawk insignia. He tells them that when they need help they can go to a certain forge, show the ring, and they will be led to the Movement's base. Thus, the two brothers escape and after much debate decide to travel to Leah to meet up with their friend, Morgan Leah. Upon their way, they are attacked by a frightening woods hag who is a Shadowen, a beast of legend and of great power. Yet they are saved by an old man, Cogline, who was once a Druid, and is now a messenger for the Shade of Allanon. He informs them that they must travel to the Hadeshorn in order to meet with the ancient Druid, Allanon. The fate of the Four Lands lies upon them and the other scions of Shannara: Wren in the Westland and Walker Boh who lives somewhere in the Eastland, and to whom Cogline is to deliver the message also. The Shadowen threaten to overcome all the Races. After arguing the matter over, the two brothers, and later Walker Boh and Wren, travel to the Hadeshorn through much toil and perils. All the scions meet at the Valley of Shale and receive tasks from the shade of Allanon. Wren is charged to return the missing Elves, Walker is charged with returning Paranor and the Druids, and Par is charged with finding the lost Sword of Shannara. Both Wren and Walker see their charges as impossible (Walker even goes as far to say that he would rather lose his hand then recover lost Paranor and restore the druid order) and leave, but Par is determined to fulfill his task. Par heads to the forge, hoping that the Movement will know more of the Four Land in order to find the Sword. He comes to the city of Varfleet with his companions, Morgan Leah, Coll Ohmsford, Steff, and Teel to request for help from an outlaw ally. Upon reaching their meeting point, however, they are pursued by Federation. Hirehone, one of the outlaws, hides them in an underground basement before taking them to the Parma Key, base of the Movement. The company meets the mysterious leader who then tells them that he is Padishar Creel. He says he knows where the Sword is, leaving the Dwarves behind, Creel, Morgan, Coll, a group of outlaws, and Par set out for Tyrsis, the last known place of the Sword of Shannara. Once in Tyrsis, Creel leads them to a hiding place. Padishar Creel goes out to show Par about the truth. They meet with a girl, Damson Rhee. The three of them go for a walk and Creel explains that the Bridge of Sendric and People's Park in Tyrsis where the Sword was said to be placed many years before were destroyed. The ancient Bridge and Park were covered up in the Pit, a place guarded and unseen, and that fake ones were built in their place. They devise a plan so that Morgan, Par, Coll, Padishar, and some of the other outlaws venture into the Pit, where the Sword of Shannara was last seen. Then at night, the group go into out to the pit. They lower a ladder into the Pit, but unfortunately the Federation guards managed to see them. The rebels and Par, Coll, and Morgan are captured and are told that someone of the outlaws had betrayed them. On the way to prison, Par uses the Wishsong to distract the guards so he could escape. He meets with Damson, and together they make a plan to free their companions. They do just that, and after hiding in another place, they make a plan to go into the Pit again. The second time the company, excluding Damson, makes it to the bottom of the Pit safely. There Par finds out that he can use another kind of magic that can find things that he wants, and he sees through this that the Sword is indeed there. However, they are confronted by Shadowen. Creel and Morgan make a stand in order for Par and Coll to escape. Par and Coll flee and are hidden by Damson, thinking that their friends are dead. Par insists on them to venture into the Pit a last time, and Damson knows a creature that might know another way into it. She leads them to the Mole, who agrees to help them, and escorts them through a series of tunnels and into the Pit. Damson and the Mole stay outside, while Par and Coll go in. This time Par does find the Vault, where the Sword is placed, and goes in, leaving Coll to stand guard outside (Coll wanted to). Par finds the Sword, and meets Rimmer Dall there, who shows him that he is a Shadowen and asks Par to join him. Par does not agree, and Rimmer Dall leaves, saying that once Par comes out of the Vault something precious will be lost. Par takes the Sword and runs out of the Vault to find that while he was gone Coll was possessed by Shadowen and that his brother has become one himself. Par kills him to escape and runs away from the Pit. He finds Damson and they hide in the underground tunnels that The Mole live in. Par, depressed and confused, becomes sick and Damson slowly but surely nurtures him back to health before vowing to get revenge for what happened to his brother. Meanwhile, Padishar and Morgan are actually not dead, and have fled from the city of Tyrsis, having survived using Morgan's magical Sword of Leah. But the Sword of Leah is broken in the act of breaking free from the Pit and Morgan turns ill because of this. The two of them run to Parma Key, and are closely pursued by an army of the Federation who want to put an end to the Movement once and for all, having found out the base of the rebels from a traitor. The companions come to Parma Key and prepare to battle away the Federation with the Movement. A long battle takes place, in which Morgan finds out who the traitor is - it being Teel the Dwarf, who is now a Shadowen, who is on her way to opening a passageway into Parma Key for the Federation to breach. Creel and Morgan fight her, and both are wounded in the act, while Steff, her lover, is killed by Teel. However, the passageway was opened, since they were too late, and so Morgan and Creel head back. The Movement then escapes using another secret tunnel and are free for the time. The battle ends thus, with the escape of the Movement. Walker Boh believes it is impossible for him to recover lost Paranor and the Druids, until Cogline brings him an old Druid History. Then Walker learns that he must first find the Black Elfstone from the Hall of Kings and with it accomplish his task. He goes to the Hall of Kings, which is an ancient place of great trouble and evil. There he goes and upon coming there goes to the location of the Black Elfstone. Using his magic he had been born with and had mastered, he senses where the black elfstone. He goes to where he feels something and there he encounters an Asphinx, a snake that turns everything it poisons to stone before becoming rock itself, instead of the black elfstone. The Asphinx bites him and Walker finds that his hand has turned to stone, effectively trapping him. Walker also knows that he is doomed because the poison of the Asphinx will spread until he has been completely turned to stone.
1897581	/m/064m9c	A Maggot	John Fowles	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens with an objective narration about a group of five travellers traveling through Exmoor in rural England. They arrive at an inn in a small village, and soon it becomes clear that they are not who they seem to be. The "maid" Louise casually rebuffs the sexual advances of the servant, Dick Thurlow, but then goes to his master's room and undresses before them both. Bartholomew calls his supposed uncle "Lacy" and they discuss Bartholomew's refusal to disclose his journey's secret purpose, as well as fate versus free will. Eventually the narration stops and is followed by letters, interview transcripts, and snatches of more third-person narration, interspersed by facsimile pages from contemporary issues of The Gentleman's Magazine. We learn from a fictional news story that a man has been found hanged near the place where the travellers were staying. The subsequent interviews are conducted by Henry Ayscough, a lawyer employed by Bartholomew's father, who is a Duke. The interviews reveal that Bartholomew had hired the party to travel with him but deceived them about the purpose of his journey. Variations of his story are (1) he was on his way to elope against the wishes of family; (2) he was visiting a wealthy, aged aunt to secure an inheritance from her; (3) he was seeking a cure for impotence; (4) he was pursuing some scientific or occult knowledge, possibly concerning knowledge of the future. He takes Rebecca and Dick to a cave in a remote area. Rebecca's initial tale, retold by Jones, is that he there performed a satanic ritual, and Rebecca herself was raped by Satan and forced to view a panorama of human suffering and cruelty. Rebecca's own testimony admits this was a deception to quiet Jones. She says that she actually saw Bartholomew meet a noble lady who took them all inside a strange floating craft (which she calls "the maggot"). In this craft she sees what she describes as a divine revelation of heaven ("June Eternal") and the Shaker Trinity (Father, Son, and female Holy Spirit or "Mother Wisdom"). She also sees a vision of human suffering and cruelty in this version of her story. Modern readers may interpret her visions as films and her overall experience as a contact with time travellers or extraterrestrials. Rebecca then loses consciousness; she wakes, finds Jones outside the cave, and they leave together. She then tells Jones the satanic version of her experience. Meanwhile, Jones has seen Dick leave the cave in terror, presumably to go hang himself. Rebecca later finds herself pregnant. She returns to her Quaker parents but then converts to Shakerism, marries a blacksmith named John Lee, and gives birth to Ann Lee, the future leader of the American Shakers. The mystery of Bartholomew's disappearance is never solved, and Ayscough surmises that he committed suicide out of guilt from his disobedience to his father in the matter of an arranged marriage.
1898130	/m/064nfk	Bag of Bones	Stephen King	2008-10-21	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The narrator, Mike Noonan, a bestselling novelist, suffers severe writer's block after his pregnant wife Jo suddenly dies in an accident. Four years later, Mike, still grieving, is plagued by nightmares set at his summer house in TR-90, Maine. He decides to confront his fears and moves to the lakeside house, known as Sara Laughs. On his first day, he meets Kyra, a 3-year-old girl and her young widowed mother, 21-year-old Mattie Devore. Mattie's father-in-law is Max Devore, an elderly rich man who will do anything to gain custody of his granddaughter, Kyra. Drawn to Kyra and Mattie, Mike hires John Storrow, a custody lawyer, for Mattie, and things start looking up. Mike begins to write again, and realizes that Jo's ghost is helping him to solve the mystery of Sara Tidwell, a blues singer whose ghost haunts the house. He also learns that Jo frequently returned to the town in the year before her death, without telling him. Mike begins having recurring, disturbing dreams and visions, and realizes he shares a psychic connection with Kyra. Max and his personal assistant, Rogette, try to drown Mike but he survives with the help of his wife's spirit. Max unexpectedly commits suicide that same night. Mike sees a pattern when he sees that local inhabitants have names that begin with "K" or "C" and learns how relatives of townspeople have drowned in childhood. While Storrow and the private detective he hired are celebrating the end of the custody battle, Mattie attempts to seduce Mike. As they are embracing, Mattie's trailer is subjected to a drive-by shooting, injuring Storrow and the detective and killing Mattie. The detective is able to kill the driver and incapacitate the shooter with Mike's help. Mike then grabs Kyra and drives back to his home. The shooter's buddies try to stop them, but refuse to follow him to Sara Laughs. Under the influence of Sara's ghost, Mike is tormented to drown Kyra and commit suicide himself. Jo's ghost prevents him and calls his attention to the novel he has begun to write. In the pages there are clues that lead Mike to discover documents Jo had hidden, among them a genealogy showing Mike's blood relationship to one of the town families. Several families whose origin lay within the town had firstborn children with "K" names who were all murdered—Kyra, as a descendant of Max Devore, is scheduled to be the next to die. The genealogy also shows that Mike and Jo's child would have been the next firstborn child with a "K" name in the family line. Mike realizes this must be Sara Tidwell's curse for something that had been done to her. He leaves and searches for Sara's grave, stopped by the ghosts of several members of the old families. He learns in a vision that these men had viciously raped and killed Sara, and drowned her son Kito in the lake; all the "K" children who died were descendants of those men. Mike reaches Sara's grave and succeeds in destroying her bones, ending the curse. Upon returning to the house, Mike discovers that Rogette has kidnapped Kyra. He follows them to the lake, where Mattie's ghost appears and knocks Rogette into the water. Rogette tries to pull Mike in with her, but is impaled by wreckage from the dock. Mattie's ghost says her goodbyes to Mike and Kyra. The novel ends with an epilogue, revealing that Mike has retired from writing and is attempting to adopt Kyra. His status as a single, unrelated male complicates things, and the adoption has taken longer than anticipated. The outcome of the adoption is left unresolved at the end, but the reader is given hope that it will be positive.
1898161	/m/064njd	The Colorado Kid	Stephen King	2005-10-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Opening in medias res as the news staff of The Weekly Islander pays for lunch at a restaurant, editor Dave Bowie and founder Vince Teague test young intern Stephanie McCann's powers of deduction regarding their tipping procedure. The friendly assessment becomes more intense as the elderly island natives and Stephanie return to the office, and she asks if the veteran reporters have "ever come across a real unexplained mystery". Dave and Vince take turns recounting a strange incident and investigation, with intermittent breaks for our narrators to crack open a fresh soda. On April 24, 1980, two teenagers stumbled across a body, early in the morning. Slumped against a trash can, and carrying no identification, the body bore no clear indicators of foul play. Cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation, as a large chunk of flesh was extracted from the victim's throat. Every potential clue leads to small revelations, but bigger mysteries. Though the investigation is lightly bungled, everything seems inexplicable, from how the fish-dinner stomach contents could line up with his ferry boat crossing, to the single Russian coin in his pocket. More than a year later, thanks to a sharp-eyed rookie spotting an out-of-state cigarette tax stamp, the John Doe becomes known as The Colorado Kid. Eventually the man's identity is traced, and he is identified as James Cogan of Nederland, Colorado. Everyone involved with the case is at a loss as to how or why the man could have gotten to a beach on a Maine island in the five hours since he had last been seen alive in Colorado. In the Weekly Islander offices, the three friends, old and new, ferret out all the answers they can from the facts of the 25-year-old investigation, then speculate on what might have happened, and meditate on the nature of true mysteries. Vince and Dave tell Stephanie that while they were "the last people alive who know the whole thing", having heard the tale of The Colorado Kid, "Now there's you, Steffi." The warm proclamation seems to signal the young woman's final approval by the old guard of the Islander.
1903199	/m/064_nx	Bring the Jubilee	Ward Moore	1953	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrator of the novel is Hodgins "Hodge" McCormick Backmaker, who writes a diary of his life in our timeline in the year 1877. Hodge was born in 1921 in the alternate timeline of his story, in the town of Wappinger Falls. At age 17 he travels to New York City, the largest city of the United States (and yet a backwater compared to some Confederate cities), in a desperate attempt to gain admittance to a college or university. After being robbed of his few possessions, he comes into contact with the "Grand Army," a nationalistic organization working to restore the United States to its former glory through acts of sabotage and terrorism. One of the Grand Army's operations involves counterfeiting Spanish currency, with the goal of provoking war between the Confederacy and the German Union in Spanish territories, sparing the U.S. from becoming the two superpowers' battlefield. Despite remaining critical of the organization's activities, Hodge accepts work and lodging with a Grand Army member working from a bookshop. Content to work for food and the opportunity to read at every waking hour, Hodge stays in the bookshop for six years before leaving New York for Pennsylvania. Hodge's aspirations of becoming a historian researching the war between North and South become reality when he joins a self-sufficient collective of scholars and intellectuals called Haggershaven. Here he meets a research scientist on the verge of developing time travel. In 1952, Hodge takes the opportunity to finally see the Battle of Gettysburg in person. Wearing a special watch to keep track of the differences in time, he travels back in time to 1863, where he then inadvertently causes the death of the Confederate officer who occupied Little Round Top during the battle. In Hodge's timeline, the Confederates hold the hill and win the Battle of Gettysburg, paving the way for their victory over the Union in Philadelphia a year later; in this timeline, however, Colonel Strong Vincent's brigade and the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment commanded by Joshua Chamberlain occupy the hill early on and successfully repel Confederate advances. In the novel, Hodge asserts that Little Round Top is the key to the battle, and thus the war. Hodge's actions effectively give the hill to the Union, where events play out as they did in this timeline and the South loses the battle. With history changed, Hodge discovers he is unable to return to the future and is stranded in this timeline. The story concludes as Hodge explains why he felt his story had to be written down, and wonders if by destroying the future he was born in, he destroyed the only dimension where time travel was possible. An "editorial note" following the story relates how one Frederick Winter Thammis had found Hodge's diary while remodeling his house in 1953. Thammis' father had known Hodge as a child, and had grown up on his stories of an alternate world, but had not thought him fully sane. Thammis notes that he had found a watch of unique design with the manuscript, and quotes a contemporary history book which states that the Confederates' failure to occupy Little Round Top was "an error with momentous consequences."
1903582	/m/0650lw	Divine Right's Trip	Gurney Norman	1972	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The plot is set in the 1960s, which chronicles the awakening of the hippie stoner Divine Right (Davenport) as he travels with his patient and introspective VW Bus, Urge. Initially, he travels with his 'lady' Estelle and they meet up with characters such as 'The Lone Outdoorsman' (a curiously warm hearted right-wing reactionary character) and 'The Greek'. Eventually, Divine Right finds himself travelling alone back to his Appalachian roots.
1903980	/m/0651jf	Unintended Consequences				 The novel's protagonist, Henry Bowman, shows an early proficiency with firearms, practicing whenever he can find the time. Encouraged by his father, he gathers an impressive firearms collection and gains extensive experience in piloting small aircraft. During college, Bowman is robbed, beaten, and sodomized by a rural gang. The incident nearly destroys him and causes him to become an alcoholic for a period. While at a gun show in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, with friend Allen Kane, Bowman publicly embarrasses an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Wilson Blair. One of Blair's men was trying to trick and entrap a fellow firearms dealer. Blair takes the offense personally, and with the support of the ATF's director, begins to plan revenge. Several years later, Blair and subordinate agents of the ATF plan to frame Henry and his friends as terrorists, smugglers, and counterfeiters. They plan to plant "evidence" when the men are away on vacation. Unbeknownst to Blair, Bowman delays his departure at the last minute due to a work commitment, and is on a friends' property when the agents arrive. Bowman assumes the agents are burglars and engages in a gun battle with them, killing or capturing all and in the process discovering the truth about the raid. Bowman realizes that his life has been irrevocably changed. He makes Blair record a video taped confession of his illegal actions, then kills Blair and disposes of all forensic evidence of the agents' presence. Afterwards, he hunts down and kills Blair's remaining subordinates. Bowman and his closest friends begin to systematically kill ATF agents around the nation - whom Bowman views as supporting the infringement of citizen's constitutional rights, and abusing government powers - as well as politicians who had supported unconstitutional gun control legislation. Simultaneously Bowman releases the video tape of Blair to CNN, which claims that Blair and his companions have had a change of heart, realize what they are doing is wrong, and are now dedicated to killing other ATF agents. Amidst the national search for Blair and company, Bowman continues to rack up the body count. Eventually, as the ATF and FBI are unable to effectively track down those responsible for the killings, the President of the United States is forced to give an address to the nation relating his intent to repeal the unconstitutional laws including the National Firearms Act of 1934 and Gun Control Act of 1968.
1904437	/m/0652nb	Creature Tech				 The book tells of the adventures of Dr. Michael Ong, a paranormal scientist and former seminarian, who is given a head researcher's position at an Area 51-esque laboratory in Turlock, California called Research Technical Institute. In exchange for granting the government the lease to build the facility, the City of Turlock demanded that it be staffed primarily by locals. Ong's task is to open, catalog, and classify each of the hundreds of crates in the facility's warehouse. Many of the artifacts found inside are proven to be highly dangerous and thoroughly insane...Russian teleporter technology, aliens, mutants, even a were-pig. During what is apparently just another day at the office, the ghost of the evil Dr. Jameson looses a slug-beast from its stasis capsule. Jameson was killed a century prior, after making a deal with a demon named Hellcat in exchange for the power to bring a "giant space eel" to Earth. Jameson succeeds a little too thoroughly, and he is crushed when the eel crash-lands into gold-rush-era Turlock. The ghost of Dr. Jameson, generations later, seeks an artifact in one of the crates at Creature Tech, the authentic Shroud of Turin. Jameson released a slug-beast in order to distract the facility staff and abscond with the shroud. During the ensuing battle, Ong is stabbed through the heart by a parasite attached to the slug-beast. The parasite detaches itself from the beast and attaches to Ong, replacing his heart, but creating a permanent symbiosis. Using the Shroud, Jameson resurrects his old body and begins a search for the remains of the space eel that killed him. In the meantime, he unleashes an army of demonically-possessed cats upon Turlock. It's a race against time as Ong, the parasite, and all the human/monster residents of Turlock defend their town against the demon onslaught and attempt to stop Jameson from resurrecting the space eel.
1905285	/m/0654qg	Stray	Rachel Vincent	1987-04-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A cat named "Pufftail" (he says that he truly has no name) tells his life story to his daughter Tabitha and his grandson. He tells of his life on the streets, in a pet shop, at a convent, with a kind grandmother, and with the cruel "June and Jim," among others and says that he has three tragic parts in his life. In chronological order, the most important events of Pufftail's life are: # Being born # Separated from his mum with his brother # Being taken to a pet shop # Being taken in by Grandma Harris, until she dies # Being taken in by June and Jim Harbottle # The death of his brother # Being taken in by a convent of nuns # Joining the gang called "The Commune" # Being used to test a shampoo # Meeting his "wife" # The birth of his children # The death of his "wife" # Meeting his daughter, Tabitha # The birth of his grandchildren
1905676	/m/065606	London Fields	Martin Amis	1989	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 London Fields is set in London in 1999 against a backdrop of environmental, social and moral degradation, and the looming threat of world instability and nuclear war (referred to as "The Crisis"). The novel opens with Samson explaining how grateful he is to have found this story, already formed, already happening, waiting to be written down. This is the story of a murder. It hasn't happened yet. But it will. (It had better.) I know the murderer, I know the murderee. I know the time, I know the place. I know the motive (her motive) and I know the means. I know who will be the foil, the fool, the poor foal, also utterly destroyed. I couldn't stop them, I don't think, even if I wanted to. The girl will die. It's what she always wanted. You can't stop people, once they start. You can't stop people, once they start creating. What a gift. This page is briefly stained by my tears of gratitude. Novelists don't usually have it so good, do they, when something real happens (something unified, dramatic, and pretty saleable), and they just write it down? The characters have few, if any, redeeming features. Samson Young (Sam), the unreliable narrator of the novel, is an American, a failed non-fiction writer with decades-long writer's block, and is slowly dying of some sort of terminal disease. Recently arrived in London, he immediately meets Keith Talent, a cheat (small-time criminal) and aspiring professional darts player, at Heathrow Airport where Keith is posing as a minicab driver. Keith gives Sam an extortionately priced ride into town. The two converse in Keith&#39;s car, and Keith invites Sam to the Black Cross, a pub on the Portobello Road, Keith&#39;s main hangout. At the Black Cross, Sam meets Guy Clinch, a rich upper-class banker who is bored with life, with his terrifyingly snobbish American wife, Hope, and his out-of-control toddler, Marmaduke. Shortly after, the two both meet the anti-heroine, Nicola Six, a 34 year old local resident, of uncertain nationality, who has entered the pub after attending a funeral, a hobby of hers. Later that the same day, Sam sees Nicola dramatically dumping what turn out to be her diaries in a litter bin outside the flat where he is staying (it belongs to Mark Asprey, a wildly successful English writer). The diaries tell Sam that Nicola believes she can somehow see her own future, and, bored with life and fearing the aging process, is plotting her own murder for midnight on November 5, her 35th birthday. Sam, who considers that he lacks the imagination and courage to write fiction, realises he can simply document the progress towards the murder to create a plausible, lucrative, story. He assumes that Keith, the bad guy, will be the murderer. Sam enters into a strange relationship with Nicola where he regularly interviews her and is updated on the &#34;plot&#34;. The novel proceeds on the basis that Keith Talent, the known criminal, will kill Nicola Six, with Guy Clinch as the fall guy necessary to provoke him into doing it (and, incidentally, to provide funds to help Talent avoid being beaten up by loan sharks, and to further his darts career so he can appear in the Sparrow Masters darts final the day before the planned murder). But there is an unexpected twist at the finale. Amis hints at a false ending, in one of Samson Young&#39;s terrifying dreams, simply to confuse the reader.
1906129	/m/065777	The Bride of Lammermoor	Walter Scott	1819	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story recounts the tragic love of Lucy Ashton, and Edgar, Master of Ravenswood. Edgar's father was stripped of the title for supporting the deposed King James II. Lucy's ambitious father, Sir William Ashton(fiction = Dalrymple) then bought the Ravenswood estate (fiction = Rutherford estate). Edgar hates Sir William for this usurpation of his family's heritage, but on meeting Lucy, falls in love with her, and renounces his plans for vengeance. Sir William's haughty and manipulative wife, Lady Ashton, is the villainess of the story. She is determined to end the initial happy engagement of Edgar and Lucy, and force Lucy into a politically advantageous arranged marriage. Lady Ashton intercepts Edgar's letters to Lucy and persuades Lucy that Edgar has forgotten her. Edgar leaves Scotland for France, to continue his political activities. While he is away, Lady Ashton continues her campaign. She gets Captain Westenho, a wandering soldier of fortune, to tell everyone that Edgar is about to get married in France. She even recruits "wise woman" Ailsie Gourlay (a witch in all but name) to show Lucy omens and tokens of Edgar's unfaithfulness. Lucy still clings to her troth, asking for word from Edgar that he has broken off with her; she writes to him. Lady Ashton suppresses Lucy's letter, and brings the Reverend Bide-the-bent to apply religious persuasion to Lucy. However, Bide-the-bent instead helps Lucy send a new letter. But there is no answer. Lady Ashton finally bullies Lucy into marrying Francis, Laird of Bucklaw. But on the day before the wedding, Edgar returns. Seeing that Lucy has signed the betrothal papers with Bucklaw, he repudiates Lucy, who can barely speak. The wedding takes place the next day, followed by a celebration at Ravenswood. While the guests are dancing, Lucy stabs Bucklaw in the bridal chamber, severely wounding him. She descends quickly into insanity and dies. Bucklaw recovers, but refuses to say what had happened. Edgar reappears at Lucy's funeral. Lucy's older brother, blaming him for her death, insists that they meet in a duel. Edgar, in despair, reluctantly agrees. But on the way to the meeting, Edgar falls into quicksand and dies. In the story, Caleb Balderstone, an eccentric old Ravenswood family retainer, provides some comic relief.
1906167	/m/0657cf	Ourika	Claire de Duras		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ourika, a Senegalese infant, is "saved" from the slave trade by the governor of Senegal, and brought back to Paris as a gift for Madame de B. She is raised well, according to the standards for white Parisian girls of high society; she is accomplished in many areas and is even a débutante. After Ourika's society outing, things begin to go awry. She overhears a conversation between her benefactress and a Marquise as they discuss her future, or lack thereof. The Marquise's famous line is: "Ourika ... has been placed into Society without its consent; Society will avenge this indiscretion." Ourika is then struck by the realization of her color, and undergoes a psychological reaction akin to Frantz Fanon's account of racial awareness in Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks). She sinks into profound melancholy and is physically affected by it to the point where her life is endangered.
1906331	/m/0657px	The Call of Earth	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book focuses on several key events that happen after Nafai, Elemak, Issib, Mebbekew, Zdorab and the father Volemak leave for the desert. Elemak has a dream from the Oversoul, foretelling Volemak's sons going back to the city of Basilica to get wives. The sons proceed to Nafai's and Issib's mother, Rasa, who is attempting to keep order within the city. However Hushidh, a raveler under Rasa's care, makes the disastrous mistake of severing the ties between Rashgallivak and his men, leading to widespread riots across the city. At the same time, General Moozh, leader of the "Wetheads" nation (Gorayni), is attempting to conquer cities around Basilica. He sees a strategic chance, and taking only 1000 soldiers, marches across the desert to conquer the city. He arrives in time to help the local city guard quell the uprising, and slowly begins taking control of its affairs. The remainder of the book deals with Nafai and his brothers' (Elemak and Mebbekew, who had come) attempts at finding wives. In the end, they are all forced into a house arrest along with Rasa, where Elemak takes Eiadh as his wife, Mebbekew takes Dol, Nafai takes Luet, the waterseer, with Rasa and Hushidh deciding to come as wives for Volemak and Issib, respectively. Shedemei (a Basilican geneticist) is dragged along with enough plants and animals to populate the future earth with new species, also as a wife to Zdorab. The ending comes when Moozh decides to marry Hushidh to politically tie himself with the city. Hushidh's original mother arrives to stop the ceremony, since Hushidh is actually the daughter of Moozh. Nafai's party is escorted out of the city with the women and supplies for the camp. Moozh ends up conquering the "Wetheads" he had been working for, while his Basilican second-in-command defends the city against the rival nation, Potokgavan. In the end he is killed during an invasion and Basilica falls, scattering the citizens to various other nations and cities on Harmony. Earlier in the book, the Oversoul had revealed the purpose of this dispersal was to force people with a strong connection to it to breed with people who had a weak connection, and so delay the eventual time when the Oversoul loses control of the people of Harmony.
1906832	/m/065922	The Talisman	Walter Scott	1825-06-22	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 During a truce between the Christian armies taking part in the third Crusade, and the infidel forces under Sultan Saladin, Sir Kenneth, on his way to Syria, encountered a Saracen Emir, whom he unhorsed, and they then rode together, discoursing on love and necromancy, towards the cave of the hermit Theodoric of Engaddi. This hermit was in correspondence with the pope, and the knight was charged to communicate secret information. Having provided the travellers with refreshment, the anchorite, as soon as the Saracen slept, conducted his companion to a chapel, where he witnessed a procession, and was recognised by the Lady Edith, to whom he had devoted his heart and sword. He was then startled by the sudden appearance of the dwarfs, and, having reached his couch again, watched the hermit scourging himself until he fell asleep. About the same time Richard Coeur de Lion had succumbed to an attack of fever, and as he lay in his gorgeous tent at Ascalon, Sir Kenneth arrived accompanied by a Moorish physician, who had cured his squire, and who offered to restore the king to health. After a long consultation, and eliciting from Sir Kenneth his visit to the chapel, the physician was admitted to the royal presence; and, having swallowed a draught which he prepared from a silken bag or talisman, Richard sank back on his cushions. While he slept Conrade of Montserrat secretly avowed to the wily Grand-master of the Templars his ambition to be King of Jerusalem; and, with the object of injuring Richard's reputation, incited Leopold of Austria to plant his banner by the side of that of England in the centre of the camp. When the king woke the fever had left him, and Conrade entered to announce what the archduke had done. Springing from his couch, Richard rushed to the spot and defiantly tore down and trampled on the Teuton pennon. Philip of France at length persuaded him to refer the matter to the council, and Sir Kenneth was charged to watch the English standard until daybreak, with a favourite hound as his only companion. Soon after midnight, however, the dwarf Necbatanus approached him with Lady Edith's ring, as a token that his attendance was required to decide a wager she had with the queen; and during his absence from his post the banner was carried off, and his dog severely wounded. Overcome with shame and grief, he was accosted by the physician, who dressed the animal's wound, and, having entrusted Sir Kenneth with Saladin's desire to marry the Lady Edith, proposed that he should seek the Saracen ruler's protection against the wrath of Richard. The valiant Scot, however, resolved to confront the king and reveal the Sultan's purpose; but it availed him not, and he was sentenced to death, in spite of the intercessions of the queen and his lady-love; when the hermit, and then the physician, arrived, and Richard having yielded to their entreaties, Sir Kenneth was simply forbidden to appear before him again. Having, by a bold speech, revived the drooping hopes of his brother Crusaders, and reproved the queen and his kinswoman for tampering with the Scot, Richard received him, disguised as a Nubian slave, as a present from Saladin, with whom he had been induced to spend several days. Shortly afterwards, as the king was reposing in his pavilion, the "slave" saved his life from the dagger of an assassin secretly employed by the grand-master, and intimated that he could discover the purloiner of the standard. A procession of the Christian armies and their leaders had already been arranged in token of amity to Richard; and as they marched past him, seated on horseback, with the slave holding the hound among his attendants, the dog suddenly sprang at the Marquis Conrade, who was thus convicted of having injured the animal, and betrayed his guilt by exclaiming, "I never touched the banner." Not being permitted to fight the Teuton himself, the king undertook to provide a champion, and Saladin to make all needful preparations for the combat. Accompanied by Queen Berengaria and Lady Edith, Richard was met by the Saracen with a brilliant retinue, and discovered, in the person of his entertainer, the physician who had cured his fever, and saved Sir Kenneth, whom he found prepared to do battle for him on the morrow, with the hermit as his confessor. The encounter took place soon after sunrise, in the presence of the assembled hosts, and Conrade, who was wounded and unhorsed, was tended by the Sultan in the grand-master's tent, while the victorious knight was unarmed by the royal ladies, and made known by Richard as the Prince Royal of Scotland. At noon the Sultan welcomed his guests to a banquet, but, as the grand-master was raising a goblet to his lips, Necbatanus uttered the words accipe hoc, and Saladin decapitated the templar with his sabre; on which the dwarf explained that, hidden behind a curtain, he had seen him stab his accomplice the Marquis of Montserrat, obviously to prevent him from revealing their infamous plots, while he answered his appeal for mercy in the words he had repeated. The next day the young prince was married to Lady Edith, and presented by the Sultan with his talisman, the Crusade was abandoned, and Richard, on his way homewards, was imprisoned by the Austrians in the Tyrol.
1906837	/m/065934	The Talisman	Stephen King	1984-11-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jack Sawyer, twelve years old, sets out from Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire in a bid to save his mother, who is dying from cancer, by finding a crystal called "the Talisman." Jack's journey takes him simultaneously through the American heartland and "the Territories", a strange fantasy land which is set in a universe parallel to that of Jack's America. Individuals in the Territories have "twinners," or parallel individuals, in our world. Twinners' births, deaths, and (it is intimated) other major life events are usually paralleled. Twinners can also "flip" or migrate to the other world, but only share the body of their alternate universe's analogue. In rare instances (such as Jack's), a person may die in one world but not the other, making the survivor "single-natured" with the ability to switch back and forth, body and mind, between the two worlds. Jack is taught how to flip by a mysterious figure known as Speedy Parker, who is the twinner of a gunslinger named Parkus in the Territories. In Parkus's world, the beloved Queen Laura DeLoessian, the twinner of Jack's mother (a movie actress known as the "Queen of the B Movies") is also dying. Various people help or hinder Jack in his quest. Of particular importance are the werewolves, known simply as Wolfs, who inhabit the Territories. These are not the savage killers of tradition: they serve as royal herdsmen or bodyguards, and can sometimes under stress voluntarily change to wolf form. A sixteen-year-old Wolf, simply named Wolf, is accidentally pulled into America by Jack Sawyer and adopts Jack as his herd, serving as his companion. Wolf is extremely likeable, kind, loyal and friendly, much like a dog, though his wolf nature shows through on occasion. On the other hand, some Wolfs have joined the malevolent faction which is trying to stop Jack. As the story goes back and forth between the Territories and the familiar United States, or "American Territories" as Jack comes to call them, Jack escapes from one life-threatening situation after another. Accompanied by Wolf and later by his childhood friend Richard, Jack must retrieve the Talisman before it falls into the hands of evil schemer Morgan Sloat, Richard's father, who, we later learn, was Jack's father's business partner before arranging to have the latter murdered. He wants to seize their business from Jack's mother. Morgan Sloat's twinner, Morgan of Orris, also plans to seize the Territories in the event of Queen Laura's death.
1907430	/m/065bby	The Good Apprentice	Iris Murdoch		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Edward Baltram, a college student living in London, gives his best friend Mark a sandwich laced with a hallucinogenic drug for a joke. After Mark, still high, falls to his death from a window, Edward is wracked with guilt and depression &mdash; worsened by daily letters from Mark's mother cursing him as a murderer. In search of his father, Jesse, Edward sets off for Seegard, the family home, away from the harsh reality of London. As Edward progresses through the novel, he revives somewhat, thanks to the love of his eccentric father and his extended family of supportive women. He eventually finds, however, that he must come to terms with Mark's death. Meanwhile, Edward's stepbrother Stuart Cuno decides to give up his studies and goes in search of the "pure" life of an aesthete, to his family's bewilderment. Stuart has 'sexual feelings' for thirteen-year-old Meredith, the son of Thomas and Midge McCaskerville. While Edward seeks redemption and Stuart salvation, Midge is having an affair with her husband's best friend, Harry Cuno - stepfather to Edward and father to Stuart. Her passionate love affair comes to a head after two years when she is disgraced publicly and falls unexpectedly in love with Stuart. Left with a difficult decision, Midge turns to Edward for support.
1908089	/m/065c_s	The Ring of Charon	Roger MacBride Allen	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	- ==Charonian Life Cycle==--&#62; it:L'anello di Caronte
1908763	/m/065fd0	Faith of the Fallen	Terry Goodkind	2000-08-22	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Faith of the Fallen begins right where Soul of the Fire leaves off. Richard is taking Cara and an injured Kahlan to the high mountains of his homeland, Westland. At the end of the Soul of the Fire Richard realizes that he cannot win against Emperor Jagang until the people themselves want to fight for freedom. Because of this mindset Richard isolates himself in the woods, to allow Kahlan time to heal, and refuses to give orders to the D'Haran army. He insists that the fight against the Imperial Order is a doomed cause and further resistance can only result in the loss of more lives. After Kahlan has made a significant recovery, the trio is reintroduced to Nicci, an impassive Sister of the Dark who was one of Richard’s instructors at the Palace of the Prophets in Stone of Tears. She provides great insight into the goals of the Order and about the Dreamwalker, Jagang himself. Nicci believes fully in the goal of the Order: to have everyone live in equality with no one person attaining more "gifts" than another. Nicci achieves her goal in capturing Richard, something that she accomplishes using the rare and difficult maternity spell linking herself to Kahlan and enabling Nicci to kill Kahlan at any time. Anything that happens to Nicci now happens to Kahlan. Faced with a hopeless situation, Richard chooses the life of Kahlan over his own and is forced to go with Nicci into the Old World. Leaving Kahlan, Cara, and the Sword of Truth to rejoin the D'Haran army. Kahlan and Cara, despite knowing Richard's objections, leave the Upper Ven in search of help from Zedd and Sister Verna. Seeing the plight of her troops fighting against the Order, Kahlan takes command of the combined armies of D'Hara and the Midlands in a desperate attempt to halt the Order's advance into the New World. While Kahlan and Richard's friends do battle in the New World, Richard is put to work in the Old World capital of Altur'Rang, first as a delivery man of steel and timber for construction, and then as a sculptor at the new palace being built. Nicci is stringent on her teachings of the poor and needy in the Old World, and frequently informs Richard that it is his duty to ensure all are provided for. She expects Richard to not only see the pains of the poor, but feel the pains as well. Hoping, in the end, that he will be moved to the side of the Order. Ever so slowly, the opposite effect emerges. Nicci begins to see the Order for what it really is, slavery. She sees that Richard freely helps others and shows that one can take pride in his work, himself, and his surroundings. The people around him begin to take notice of his efforts and soon find their own purposes in life. Purposes, they can build upon and work for themselves. They find that it is only they who can make their life better. Soon, the people around Richard change their lives and their outlook for the better. Richard is commanded to erect a sculpture for the center of the New Palace as a punishment. Brother Narev, a self proclaimed leader of the Order, gives him the statue he is to carve. It is a hideous depiction of human existence showing the full pains of humanity. When Richard sees this he is repulsed to a point where a light fizzles out in his eyes. After sleeping on the idea, he wakes up the next day with a new idea. He will carve a statue, but it will be one of his own choosing. Richard works tirelessly to create his own depiction of Life. He carves in deep white marble the very nature of humanity and finally reveals the statue for all to see in a grand ceremony. Grown men and women fell to their knees in absolute awe-inspired wonder at the two individuals so proud in their humanity that they step forward into the hearts of the masses. "LIFE" is inscribed as the title. Shock and amazement draw record crowds as everyone wishes to glimpse on the beauty of true humanity. Brother Narev, when he finally arrives to see the statue, orders Richard to destroy the statue. Richard takes up the hammer and points to the crowd, telling them that the Order only wishes to destroy beauty, only wishes to enslave humanity under the doctrine of faith unsupported by the true value of life. He swings the hammer and shatters the statue in one blast. The people are in outraged shock, looking at a pile of rubble where once stood the most glorious object they have ever seen. Immediately they revolt, proclaiming that the Order will not enslave them any longer. They attack the Imperial Order, and Altur'Rang falls to the hands of the rebels. After fighting many battles against the Imperial Order, overseeing the wedding of Verna to the Wizard Warren, the subsequent death of Warren, and a major blow to the ranks of the Order, Kahlan and Cara leave to find Richard. They enter Altur'Rang in time to see the statue's absolute perfection, and watch as Richard shatters that perfection in one blow. As the rebellion begins Richard enters the palace to find brother Narev. He immediately finds and kills another brother and uses that brother's robes as a disguise. While working his way through the dark corridors he encounters Kahlan, the Sword of Truth over her shoulder. He runs towards her with a sword he claimed off a fallen Order soldier and forces Kahlan into immediate combat, although it's dark enough that she has no idea who she's fighting. Playing on the very moves he taught her earlier in the book, he forces Kahlan into giving him a death blow, and only then does she realize Richard is the one she's stabbed. Richard had realized that this was the only way to force Nicci to choose - to heal him and save him from the wound (which would require severing the link to Kahlan), or to continue to live in slavery. Nicci has seen the absolute glory and beauty of "Life," and long before seeing Richard injured has already pledged herself to her new doctrine: to live her life for herself. She had already vowed to undo the wrong she had done, and pledge loyalty to the man that returned her life to her. Nicci removes the maternity bond to Kahlan and heals Richard just in time. Altur'Rang is free, for a time, from the grasp of the Order, and the people have found a determination not to serve the system as slaves.
1909713	/m/065gv2	The Three Roads	Ross Macdonald		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lieutenant Bret Taylor married his wife after knowing her only over a single overnight drinking binge while on shore leave during the war. His ship is bombed out of the water and he returns home to find his wife freshly murdered in the home he bought but had never seen. The shock of the two events sends him into a mental lapse, and he's in an asylum. The woman who loves him, a successful screenwriter, calls in a specialist who jogs his memory—and his sense of duty. Taylor hits the streets of Los Angeles, digging through his wife's lies and lovers in an attempt to avenge her murder. The book is a psychological thriller, with the main action being the unraveling of the story within Taylor's mind. The reader is denied information that other major characters obviously have throughout the whole novel, and is meanwhile treated to long passages of theories from the main character. The limited number of characters keeps the possible solutions to a minimum and the book is perhaps more straightforward than what makes a good mystery. Alfred A. Knopf, Jr., who functioned as an editing publisher, asked for revisions in what he considered a slow-paced novel. Macdonald cut '10,000 good words' and concentrated the action into four days. The 1985 movie Deadly Companion (or Double Negative) was based on this novel.
1914221	/m/065r94	Incompetence	Rob Grant	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is around him trying to find out who murdered his mentor, Klingferm, before they had a chance to meet. (In their organisation, members only meet face to face if an extremely serious situation is at hand, such as imminent nuclear war). Klingferm was killed after riding a sabotaged elevator which shot him out through the roof. Harry follows clues left by Klingferm, in the process earning the suspicions of the local police, led by the irate Captain Zuccho. A clue left by Klingferm instructs him to go to Vienna. Along the way, his investigation leads him through numerous facets of Europe's incompetent new society. Harry is eventually arrested and placed in jail, but soon manages to get himself released. He is being followed by Klingferm's killer, who plants false evidence on him linking him to the murder of a senior politician, but the police destroy all this evidence themselves. Against all odds, however, Harry finally meets up with Twinkle, an extremely old bunny girl (who happens to be male), who tells him a locker number, which he has forgotten and gives Harry many variants. Afterwards, Harry is attacked by hired thug Wolfie and taken to the murderer, who turns out to be Klingferm himself. Klingferm is an undercover American agent attempting to stop the United States of Europe from ever becoming a potent global force. Klingferm traps Harry in a sabotaged roller coaster, but Harry is able to fatally shoot Klingferm before it activates. Captain Zuccho, having tracked Harry for most of the book, arrives and rescues him. The story ends with Harry, as it began, being subjected to poor piloting of an aeroplane.
1914386	/m/065rx_	The Man in the Brown Suit	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Orphan Anne Beddingfeld, in search of adventure, follows note from murder victim's pocket, from London, aboard ship, to Africa, finally a lost island, tracking stolen diamonds.
1914430	/m/065s0m	The Village of Stepanchikovo	Fyodor Dostoyevsky		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sergey Aleksandrovich (Сергей Александрович), the narrator, is summoned from Saint Petersburg to the estate of his uncle, Colonel Yegor Ilich Rostanev (Егор Ильич Ростанев), and finds that a middle-aged charlatan named Foma Fomich Opiskin (Фома Фомич Опискин) has swindled the nobles around him into believing that he is virtuous despite behavior that is passive aggressive, selfish, and spiteful. Foma obliges the servants to learn French, and gets furious when they are caught dancing the kamarinskaya. Uncle Yegor asks Serguey to marry the poor young girl Nastasha. It turns out Uncle Yegor is in love with her himself, but Foma wants him to marry the wealthy but mentally retarded Tatyana Ivanova instead. This Tatyana has several other suitors, including Mizinchikov, who confides in Sergey about his plans to elope with her. The next morning Tatyana has eloped, not with Mizinchikov but by Obnoskin, who acted under the influence of his mother. After a pursuit Tatyana returns voluntarily. At Stepantchikovo Foma Fomitsj is furious because Uncle Yegor has been caught red-handed during a date in the garden with Nastasha. Foma leaves, but falls into a ditch. The inhabitants beg him to come back. A general reconciliation follows after Foma, manipulating as ever, gives his blessing to a marriage between Uncle Yegor and Nastasha.
1914836	/m/065svj	Something Rotten	Jasper Fforde	2004-08-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story opens with Thursday still in the world of fiction in her job as the Bellman, head of the literary police force Jurisfiction. She is still hunting the Minotaur that escaped in the last book; she is tiring of fiction, however, and longs to return to her own world and get back her husband Landen, who was removed from time by the evil Goliath Corporation in 1947. Despite Landen's non-existence, Thursday still has her son (Friday Next) who is now two years old. Thursday and Friday return to her mother (Wednesday) in Swindon, with Hamlet who is accompanying them on an excursion to the "Outland" to find out what people in the real world think of him. Her mother, whose main functions appear to be to make tea and to provide Battenburg cake, has some curious house guests: Emma Hamilton, Otto von Bismarck, and a family of dodos. Both humans are apparently staying for a rest, while Thursday's father (who has now been re-admitted to the time-travelling ChronoGuard) sorts out various parts of history for them. Despite her earlier transgressions that caused her to flee to the Bookworld in the first place, Thursday gets her job back at SpecOps-27 as a Literary Detective and catches up with her old colleagues. She learns that in her absence, Yorrick Kaine has joined forces with Goliath Corporation and plans to oust the aging English President George Formby. As Prime Minister, Kaine wields some mysterious persuasive influence over Parliament and the people, and has used it to pass some bizarre laws and to stir up hatred of Denmark. Yorrick has also taken out a hit on her: he has hired an assassin known as "The Windowmaker", who is actually Cindy Stoker, the wife of Thursday's longtime friend, Spike. Thursday's father warns her that Kaine's ambitions may cause nuclear armageddon and that it is up to her to stop him. On top of this, she is visited by tearful agents from the Bookworld (Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Emperor Zhark) who tell her that all sorts of things are going wrong without her leadership'; for starters, without its titular character, the play Hamlet has merged with The Merry Wives of Windsor creating a new play called "The Merry Wives of Elsinore", which is not nearly as good as either original play (in the words of Emperor Zhark, "it takes a long time to get funny, and, when it finally does, everyone dies"). Meanwhile, her most pressing problem is finding reliable childcare for Friday. Goliath Corporation have decided to become the new world religion to avoid a prophecy (the prophecy states that the Goliath Corporation will fall; Goliath believes that converting itself into a religion will exempt it from destruction, as the prophecy specifies a business). Thursday meets the CEO -- at their headquarters in the Isle of Man -- and gets a promise that they will un-eradicate Landen in exchange for her forgiveness. Thursday feels duped when she finds that, through some form of mind control, she has formally forgiven them, even though there is no sign of her husband. Then suddenly he is back, but takes a while to stabilize. Thursday must wait patiently for his un-eradication to "stick". In the meantime, she embarks on several seemingly impossible tasks, which include smuggling ten truckloads of banned Danish literature into Wales, tracking down an illegal clone of William Shakespeare, and teaching Friday to speak properly. On top of all of this, Thursday still has to help the Swindon Mallets win the 1988 Croquet Superhoop final in order to thwart Kaine and Goliath and avoid the impending end of the world (as foretold by the aforementioned prophecy). She succeeds but not without a near-death experience and a visit to the gateway to the Underworld (which turns out to be a planned-but-never-built service station on the M4 motorway). The final chapters contain some curious time paradoxes in which Thursday finds that she has met herself at several other stages in her own lifespan, including one character which had seemed to be an independent character.
1914946	/m/065t3p	A Thousand Acres	Jane Smiley	1991-10-23	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Larry Cook is an aging farmer who decides to incorporate his farm, handing complete and joint ownership to his three daughters, Ginny, Rose, and Caroline. When the youngest daughter objects, she is removed from the agreement. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions, as the story eventually reveals the long-term sexual abuse of the two eldest daughters that was committed by their father. The plot also focuses on Ginny's troubled marriage, her difficulties in bearing a child and her relationship with her family.
1915104	/m/065tmq	Redburn	Herman Melville		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Unable to find employment at home and deciding to go to sea, young Wellingborough Redburn signs on the Highlander, a merchantman out of New York City and bound for Liverpool, England. Representing himself as the "son of a gentleman" and expecting comparable treatment as such, he very soon discovers that he is just a green hand, a "boy", the lowest rank on the ship, assigned all the duties no other sailor wants (like cleaning out the "pig-pen", a longboat serving as a shipboard sty). The first mate promptly nicknames him "Buttons" for the shiny rows of them that adorn his impractical, unseamanlike jacket. As his education at sea commences, he begins to understand the brutal workings of ship politics. As a common seaman he can have no intercourse "behind the mast" where the officers command the ship. Before the mast, where the common seaman work and live, there is a man named Jackson, the best seaman aboard, and a bully who is feared by all. Uneducated yet cunning, with broken nose and squinting eye, he is described as "a Cain afloat, branded on his yellow brow with some inscrutable curse and going about corrupting and searing every heart that beat near him." With an iron fist, Jackson rules "before the mast". Redburn soon experiences all the trials of a greenhorn: seasickness, scrubbing decks, climbing masts in the dead of night to unfurl sails; life in the forecastle with its cramped quarters and bad food. They eventually land in Liverpool where he is given liberty ashore. He rents a room and every day walks the city. One day in a street called Launcelott's Hey he stumbles on a sight that will haunt him for the rest of the voyage. From a cellar beneath an old warehouse he hears "a feeble wail" and looking into it sees "the figure of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side. At first I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign; they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening wail." He notices the child lift its head and then the mother looks at him for a moment. A woman and two girls "with hearts which, though they did not bound with blood, yet beat with a dull, dead ache that was their life." He runs for help but everywhere is met with indifference. A ragpicker, a porter, his landlady, even a policeman who tells him to mind his own business. He returns with some bread and cheese and drops them into the vault; but they are too weak to even lift it to their mouths. The mother whispers "water" so he runs and fills his tarpaulin hat at an open hydrant. The girls drink and revive enough to nibble some cheese. Something compels him and he clasps the mother's arms and pulls them aside to see the most haunting image of all: "a meager babe, the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its face was dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes looked like balls of indigo. It must have been dead for some hours." Judging them too far gone for any medicine to help he returns to his room. A few days later he revisits the street and finds the vault empty. "In place of the woman and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening." On the docks he meets Harry Boulton, a sailor looking for a job, and Redburn helps him procure a birth on the Highlander for the return voyage. They become fast friends and make a trip to London where they visit a male brothel. The ship soon departs for New York where Bolton's deficits as sailor become apparent. He is persecuted and tormented by the crew. Jackson has been ill, not leaving his bed for four weeks. His first day of active duty he climbs to the topsail yard but suddenly vomits "a torrent of blood from his lungs," and falls head first into the sea never to resurface. The crew never speak his name again. His death is their deliverance. At port Redburn and Bolton go their separate ways, the former to his home and the latter to ship aboard a whaler. Redburn later hears that Bolton, far out in the Pacific, had fallen over the side and was drowned.
1919166	/m/0662pn	Ham on Rye	Charles Bukowski	1982-09-01	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel centers around the protagonist Henry Chinaski. The start of the novel are his first memories. Then as the novel progresses we follow him all the way through school and into adulthood. We start in elementary school and he tells us his experiences. We learn that he has an abusive father, and a mother that lets it happen. He isn't very good at sports, but he wants to be and he tries hard. Football is hard for him, but he likes the violence that comes with it. Baseball, the other playground sport, is the sport he is better at. He hits hard, but hardly ever hits. As we progress into grammar school the focus of Henry's attention, and the other boys, is on sports, violence and girls, as it has been. Then going into high school his father, who pretends they are rich, makes Henry go to a private school where he fits in even less. However, he develops horrible acne, bad enough that he has to get painful treatments from the doctor. Then we follow him to college, and eventually his attempt to get a job.
1919260	/m/0662x1	Asterix the Gladiator	René Goscinny			 Prefect Odius Asparagus wants one of the indomitable Gauls as a present for Julius Caesar, so his men capture Cacofonix the bard. By the time the other Gauls know he is gone, he is on his way to Rome. But Asterix and Obelix are hot on his heels, taking ship with Ekonomikrisis the Phoenician merchant. Highly unimpressed by his present, Caesar decides to throw the bard to the lions. Asterix and Obelix enlist as gladiators in order to rescue him, and, in the course of their training, teach their colleagues some interesting tricks. The next Games in Circus Maximus turn out to be the most unusual yet... This book is noteworthy in the Asterix series as the first in which Obelix says his famous catchphrase "These Romans Are Crazy"! An audiobook of Asterix the Gladiator adapted by Anthea Bell and narrated by Willie Rushton was released on EMI Records Listen for Pleasure label in 1988.
1920138	/m/06659f	Prisoners of Power	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story describes the adventures of Maxim Kammerer. Kammerer is an amateur space explorer from Earth. This occupation is not considered serious and Kammerer is regarded as a failure by his friends and relatives. The novel starts when Kammerer accidentally discovers an unexplored planet Saraksh inhabited by a humanoid race. The level of technological development on the planet is similar to mid-20th century Earth. Recently, the planet had a nuclear and conventional war and the predicament of the population is dire. When Kammerer lands, the natives mistake his spaceship for a weapon and destroy it. At first, Kammerer does not take his situation seriously. He imagines himself a Robinson Crusoe stranded on an island inhabited by primitive but friendly natives. He is looking forward to establishing contact and befriending the population of the planet. However, the reality turns out to be far from glamorous. Kammerer finds himself in the capital of a totalitarian state, perpetually at war with its neighbors. The population is governed by the oligarchy of Unknown Fathers through brutal police and military repression. The city is grim and polluted. Ordinary populace leads the life of privation and misery. What goes on around Kammerer does not make sense to him, since his own society is free from war, crime and material shortages. Eventually, it is revealed that to maintain the loyalty of the population, the Fathers employ mind control broadcasts. The broadcast towers pepper the landscape of the country. The mind-altering capabilities of the towers are kept secret, they are disguised as ballistic missile defense installations. Constant broadcasts suppress the ability to evaluate information critically, hence making the omnipresent regime propaganda much more effective. In addition, twice a day, intense broadcasts relieve mental stress caused by the disconnect between the propaganda and the observed reality by inducing an outburst of blinding enthusiasm. The authors give a masterful description of this process at work, describing the thoughts of one of the characters as he switches from the state of peeved boredom and disdain for his superiors to the rapturous adoration of people around him and life in general. A minority of the population are not susceptible to the broadcasts. In these people, the intense daily broadcasts induce horrible headache and seizures. The Unknown Fathers — the ruling oligarchs are in this minority. They pay for the power to control the people by intense personal suffering during the daily broadcasts. The people outside the power elite that are not susceptible to the broadcasts are branded degenerates or degens by the state. They are actively persecuted. When captured they are either executed or sent to prison. The renegade degens organized an underground resistance movement and try to fight back by destroying the broadcast towers. The resistance does not have any political or military program and the fighters are united mostly by their suffering and their hatred of the towers. However, the rank-and-file of the underground is unaware of the main purpose of the towers. Apparently, the underground leadership wants to capture the broadcast network and use it to seize the power in the state for themselves. Kammerer, still not quite aware of the situation, gets enlisted in the military. He is required to execute captured "degens", one of them a woman. When he refuses, he is shot. Kammerer survives, joins the underground and participates in a futile attack on a broadcast tower. Captured, tried and sent to a concentration camp in the South, the same one where he made his landing, he's finally revealed the truth about the broadcast system by a fellow prisoner member of underground. Astonished and appalled by the revelation, Kammerer makes it his mission to rid the planet of the mind control broadcast system. Several of his schemes fail because the cure may be worse than the disease. He tries to organize an invasion by barbarian tribes from the inhospitable desert in the South. He then tries to contact the state's neighbor — the Island Empire. He abandons this plan after finding documents on a destroyed Empire submarine that describe mass killings and other atrocities that the Empire military perpetrates. He now focuses on trying to find and destroy the Control Center where the mind control broadcasts originate. Kammerer gets captured and is consigned to a penal battalion that is supposed to lead the invasion of the North. In this abortive action, most of his friends perish while Kammerer himself barely escapes annihilation in retaliatory nuclear blasts. It turns out that Kammerer is not affected by the broadcasts in any way. A Father known as Smart realizes that and plots to use Kammerer to stage a coup and take over the power in the state. His plan is for Kammerer to capture the Control Center and use the mind control broadcasts to incapacitate the rivals and control the population. The Center is protected by intense local broadcasts that make it impossible for anyone but Kammerer to penetrate it. Initially, Kammerer plays along. However, after gaining access to the Center, instead of using it to gain power, Kammerer destroys it. In the end of the novel it is revealed that one of the Fathers — Strannik (literally "Wanderer") - is a human progressor Rudolf Sikorski. Strannik was carefully preparing the operation to gradually improve the lot of the people of Saraksh. His plan was ruined by Kammerer's actions. Strannik catches Kammerer and lambastes him for his interference. Strannik describes the unanticipated consequences of Kammerer's rash actions: up to 20% of the people may die due to the withdrawal of the mind control transmissions on which they have become dependent; Saraksh faces famine, anarchy and invasion from the North. Strannik tells Kammerer to leave the planet. However, Kammerer refuses and stays to help Strannik stabilize the situation. Despite the upheavals that Saraksh has to go through, Kammerer is still glad he destroyed the Control Center because now the people are in charge of their own destiny.
1920434	/m/06660w	The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas	Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis	1881	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is narrated by the dead protagonist Brás Cubas, who tells his own life story from beyond the grave, noting his mistakes and failed romances. The fact of being already deceased allows Brás Cubas to sharply criticize the Brazilian society and reflect on his own disillusionment, with no sign of remorse or fear of retaliation. Brás Cubas dedicates his book to the first worm that gnawed his cold body: "To the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs." (in Portuguese: Ao verme que primeiro roeu as frias carnes do meu cadáver dedico com saudosa lembrança estas Memórias Póstumas.) Cubas decides to tell his story starting from the end (the passage of his death, ironically caused by pneumonia after inventing the "Emplasto Brás Cubas", a supposedly revolutionary medicine), then taking "the greatest leap in this story", proceeding to tell the story of his life since his childhood. The novel is also connected to another Machado de Assis work, Quincas Borba, which features a character from the Memoirs (as a secondary character, despite the novel's name). It's a novel recalled as a major influence by many post-modern writers, such as John Barth or Donald Barthelme, not to mention just about every Brazilian writer in the 20th century.
1920495	/m/06664m	Drowned Ammet	Diana Wynne Jones	1977	{"/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with the birth of Alhammit Alhammitson, or Mitt, in South Dalemark, near a seaport called Holand. When Mitt is a young child, his family are evicted from their farm when the rent is doubled by Earl Hadd, the cruel and tyrannical ruler of South Dalemark. The entire family is forced to move to an unpleasant tenement in the city of Holand, where Mitt's father joins the Free Holanders, a resistance against Earl Hadd. However, after a raid on a warehouse which goes fatally wrong, Mitt's father disappears, most likely killed by the soldiers. Mitt and his mother Milda are convinced that three of the elder Free Holanders, Siriol, Dideo and Ham, betrayed the younger members to the Earls soldiers because they were scared of the consequences of raiding the warehouse. Mitt is determined to take revenge on them for causing his father's death, and to do this, he joins the Free Holanders, hoping to bring them down from within. He ends up working on a fishing boat with Siriol out of Holand harbor. Milda, meanwhile, marries Hobin, a well-off gunsmith. Mitt plans to take revenge on the Free Holanders by assassinating Earl Hadd with a homemade bomb during the annual Sea Festival, then letting himself be caught and, in turn, betraying the Free Holanders. Mitt's attempt fails miserably, when the Earl's youngest son, Navis, kicks away the bomb that Mitt planted at the Earl's feet, but the Earl is killed anyway by a sniper with a long-range gun, shooting from one of the many boats in the harbor. Watching the festival are Navis's children, Ynen and Hildrida (Hildy). Hildy is furious with her father, since he had allowed her to be betrothed to Lithar, Lord of the Holy Islands, whom she has never met. After the assassination, she asks the new Earl, Harl, to break off her engagement, but he refuses. To get back at them, she and Ynen decide to make it look as if they'd run away and gone for a sail on her new boat, the Wind's Road. Having been seen and recognized during the Earl's assassination, Mitt is forced to flee for his life. He hides on a magnificent boat—the very same one that Ynen and Hildy are running away on. They take the ship out of Holand harbor, with Mitt stowing away beneath deck, and when they are sufficiently far out to sea, Mitt shows himself, and demands that they take him to the North, where he can hide from the Earl's soldiers. Although the two are initially uncooperative, Mitt does his best to convince them that he is a rough, tough freedom fighter who will shoot them if he gets the chance; he partially succeeds, and Hildy and Ynen agree to take him North, if only because he has a gun, given to him by Hobin. On the way North the three find, floating in the sea, the wheat figure of Poor Old Ammet, which was thrown in the sea during the Festival. This is considered good luck, and so they take him on board, lashing him to the prow as a figurehead. As well as this, Mitt has a small wax figure of Poor Old Ammet's consort, Libby Beer, which they attach to the stern. That night they weather a dreadful autumn storm with the help the two demigods, Poor Old Ammet and Libby Beer. After the storm has passed, they come across a lifeboat, with one sailor aboard. After a few hours in the man's company, Mitt realizes that not only is the sailor the man who shot Earl Hadd from the harbor, he is also Mitt's own long-lost father. Mitt's father, who turns out to be the actual betrayer of the Freedom Fighters and a truly bad person, forces them to take him to the Holy Islands. He plans to deliver Hildy to her would-be fiance, the Lord of the Holy Islands, the man she ran away from home to avoid marrying. Hildy is determined to stop this, but before they can do anything, they arrive in the Holy Islands. Upon being told the name of the Wind's Road, the Holy Islanders say that a great one "will come on the wind's road with a great one before him and behind." Hildy and Ynen are taken prisoner, but Al forces Lithar, who is a childish imbecile, to have Mitt killed. The Holy Islanders refuse to harm him, so they maroon him on the uninhabited Holy Island. Hildy, meanwhile, meets with Libby Beer herself. Libby tells her that, if she wishes to return to the Holy Islands, she must trust Mitt. Hildy reluctantly agrees. On Holy Island, Mitt encounters the two demigods in person and learns their secret names. When invoked in dire danger, the secret names produce cataclysmic effects that explain the folk names by which the two demigods are called on Holy Islands: the Earth Shaker for Poor Old Ammet and She Who Raised the Islands for Libby Beer. Meanwhile, Hildy and Ynen are re-united with Navis, who tells them that they were lucky to escape Holand alive, as Harl had been planning to kill them. Al is about to shoot all of them when Mitt arrives. He invokes the lesser name of Poor Old Ammet, causing a great storm, during which they manage to escape. From the Holy Islanders they acquire a boat to take them North. Before leaving, Mitt promises Poor Old Ammet that he will return to Holy Islands as a friend, not as a conqueror.
1921012	/m/0667b0	Danny, the Champion of the World	Roald Dahl		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Danny was only four months old when his mother died and lived with his widowed father William in a Gypsy caravan, where William operates a filling station and garage. When Mr. Victor Hazell threatens Danny without cause, William refuses to serve him; whereafter several inspectors visit the station, presumably at Mr. Hazell's direction. When Danny was only nine years old, he discovers that William has habitually taken part in poaching pheasants from Mr. Hazell's estate. William reveals methods of poaching by placing a raisin inside a "Sticky Hat" so that the pheasant cannot flee. Having a horse's tail hair threaded through a raisin causes the raisin to become lodged in the pheasant's throat. This in turn causes the pheasant to become preoccupied with trying to swallow the raisin, so that a poacher can easily catch it. On one occasion, Danny, waking up at around 2:10 a.m., discovers William's absence, and fearing that some misfortune has befallen him, drives an Austin Seven motor car to Hazell's Wood, where Danny eventually finds William in a pit-trap, disabled by a broken ankle, and brings him home. William is treated by Doc Spencer, who is a friend of William and Danny. While William is recovering from his injury, he and Danny find out that Mr. Hazell's annual pheasant-shooting party is approaching, which he hosts to curry favor and prestige among the gentry, and decide to humiliate him by capturing all the pheasants from the forest, so there will be no pheasants to shoot. Danny suggests that he and William should put the contents of sleeping tablets prescribed by Doc Spencer inside raisins which the pheasants will then eat; and William dubs this new method the "Sleeping Beauty". Having poached 120 pheasants from Hazell's Wood, William and Danny hide the drugged pheasants at the local vicar's house, while they take a taxicab home. The next day, the vicar's wife delivers the sleeping pheasants in a specially-built oversized baby carriage. As she is walking toward them, the sleeping pills wear off and many of the pheasants attempt to escape, however being quite dopey from the drug they all land and sit around the pump station, just as Mr. Hazell himself arrives. A shouting match ensues, and with their help of Sgt. Samways, the local constable, William and Danny herd the groggy birds onto Mr. Hazell's Rolls Royce, where the birds scratch the paintwork and defecate on his car. When the pheasants have woken completely, they depart, and Mr. Hazell drives off in disgrace, his fancy car and shooting party ruined. The book ends when Danny is hailed as "the champion of the world" by William, Doc Spencer, and Sgt. Samways, of whom most acquire six pheasants who had died because they had eaten too many sleeping pill raisins. William and Danny walk off towards town, intending to buy their new oven for cooking their pheasants. As he and William go, Danny dwells in his narration on William's imagination and vivacity.
1922962	/m/066cjz	The Violent Bear It Away	Flannery O'Connor	1960	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins when old Mason Tarwater dies. Prior to his death, he had asked his great-nephew, the teen-aged protagonist, Francis Tarwater, to give him a proper Christian burial, with a cross marking the grave so that his body would be resurrected on Judgment Day. Young Tarwater starts to dig the grave but suddenly hears a "Voice" in his head telling to him to forget about the old man. Tarwater obeys and gets drunk instead. When he returns from drinking, he sets the house that he and his uncle had lived in on fire, with his great-uncle's body still inside. He leaves for the city and gets a ride from a salesman, who drops him off at his uncle Rayber's door. Rayber is amazed to see young Tarwater, who he had given up on a long time ago after the young boy had had essentially been "kidnapped" by the boy's great uncle to live in the country and be brought up a Christian. Tarwater is also greeted at the door by Rayber's young son Bishop, who (it is implied) has Down's syndrome. Old Mason Tarwater (the great uncle) had commissioned the young Tarwater to baptize Bishop at some point, in order to save the little boy's soul. Tarwater is immediately put on edge when confronted with Bishop, but decides to stay with Uncle Rayber anyway. He doesn't think of Bishop as a human being and is revolted by him. The three begin to live together as a family for a while, and Rayber is excited to have his nephew back in order to raise him like a normal, educated boy. But Tarwater resists his uncle's attempts at secular reform very much the same way he resisted his great uncle's attempts at religious reform. Rayber understands what Tarwater is going through. When he (Rayber) was only seven years old, old Mason Tarwater kidnapped him in order to baptize him, but Rayber's father rescued him before the old man could fully corrupt him. After many attempts by Rayber to "civilize" Tarwater, and many attempts by Tarwater to figure out his true destiny (be it as a prophet, which was his great uncle's wish, or as an enlightened, educated modern man, which is his Uncle Rayber's wish), Rayber devises a plan to take Tarwater back to the country where the damage had been done in hopes that confronting his past will allow him to leave it. Under the guise of taking the two boys out to the country to a lodge to go fishing, Rayber finally confronts Tarwater and tells him that he must change and must leave the crazy, superstitious Christian upbringing that his great uncle corrupted him with. Tarwater, however, is not so easily convinced. While at the lodge, he meets up again with the "Voice" (the devil) who tells Tarwater to forsake his great uncle's command to baptize little Bishop and instead, drown the boy. One evening, Tarwater takes Bishop out on a boat to the middle of the lake, with Rayber's reluctant blessing. Rayber cannot see them on the lake but can still hear the voices faintly. Tarwater ends up drowning Bishop while at the same time baptizing the boy, thereby fulfilling both destinies simultaneously. Rayber realizes what has happened and faints, not out of fear for his son's life, but because he feels nothing at his son's death. Tarwater runs away into the woods in order to go back to his great uncle's house to confront his demons once and for all. He eventually hitches a ride with another man, who entices Tarwater to get drunk. Tarwater takes the man's offer and passes out, eventually waking up naked against a tree, his clothes neatly folded beside him. Tarwater finally makes his way back to the old farm of his great uncle's, where the house has been burned to the ground. Tarwater had assumed that his great uncle had been burned up with it, but Buford, a black man who lived in the area, had actually rescued old Mason Tarwater's body from the house at the beginning of the novel when Tarwater had gone off to get drunk and given the old man a proper Christian burial, just as the old man had requested that Tarwater do. Tarwater realizes that his great uncle's two main requests (that he be given a proper burial and that the little boy Bishop be baptized) have been realized, which convinces Tarwater that he can no longer run away from his calling to be a prophet. The story ends with Tarwater heading toward the city to "Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy."
1924492	/m/03bx5nr	Silverthorn	Raymond E. Feist	1985-05-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 A year after his brother Lyam's coronation as king, Arutha returns to his city as the new Prince of Krondor, to begin plans for his wedding. Jimmy the Hand, a young thief, foils an assassination attempt on the prince by a fellow thief, and feeling loyalty toward the prince from previously aiding his escape from the city with Princess Anita (in Magician), he chooses to warn the prince of the attempt on his life instead of reporting the traitor to the Mockers, Krondor's powerful and highly organized guild of thieves. Arutha seeks the Mockers' cooperation to obtain more information on the assassins, and at their request, makes Jimmy a squire of his court. Setting a trap, they capture two agents, who are revealed to be operating out of the temple of Lims-Kragma, Goddess of Death, one of whom is a moredhel whose appearance has been altered. During interrogation, both prisoners will themselves to death rather than divulge their plans. As the High Priestess of Lims-Kragma seeks the truth by bringing them back from beyond the grave, one of the prisoners rises by the power of an unknown enemy, and attacks his captors, slaughtering many royal guards, and addressing Arutha as "Lord of the West" before being destroyed by Father Nathan, a priest of Sung. Injured in the attack, the High Priestess warns Arutha that the forces which opposed him were so powerful that they held the gods in contempt. Arutha leads a strike on the assassins' hideout in Krondor, but even as the assault appears to be going in their favor, the assassins begin rising from the dead and renewing their attack. Many of Arutha's men are slain, and the Black Slayers are only defeated when the entire building is burned to the ground. Believing the threat to be over for the time being, Arutha proceeds with his wedding. Just before the ceremony, Jimmy senses something is wrong, and finds the same assassin from the first attempt on Arutha's life hiding on the roof. He manages to disrupt the assassin just as he is firing at Arutha, but the poisoned bolt strikes Anita instead. The assassin is interrogated, and reveals the enemy to be Murmandamus, a moredhel chieftain and powerful sorcerer. According to a prophecy, Arutha is the only force that stands in the way of Murmandamus's total destruction of the Kingdom and domination over the realm. The assassin also reveals that the poison was given to him by a moredhel agent, who called it "silverthorn". Pug is able to keep Anita under a spell that slows the passage of time, giving Arutha time to search for an antidote. With scant clues, he secretly leads a party to the one place most likely to have the answer to any question, the great library at Sarth Abbey. All along his journey, he is tracked by Murad, one of Murmandamus's top generals. They manage to reach the abbey, but their enemies strike again with powerful sorcery, both attacks barely repulsed by the mighty defenses of Sarth Abbey and its priests. From information gathered at the abbey, Arutha's quest turns to the elves of Elvandar for more information. Meanwhile, Pug returns to Stardock to seek the aid of a scryer, whose vision of the future reveals a dark force behind Murmandamus, a powerful enemy speaking in ancient Tsurani, who is even capable of perceiving the scryer past the barriers of time and probability. Believing the threat therefore to be a danger to both worlds, Pug seeks more information from the Tsurani Assembly of magicians, and with the help of research from the books of Macros, creates a new rift to Kelewan and returns to his old estate with two companions, posing as priests. In Elvandar, Arutha is told that the silverthorn plant can also serve as the cure, and grows only around the lake Moraelin, in moredhel-held territory, surrounded by a barrier the elves are unable to pass. He and his band set out for Moraelin. In Kelewan, Pug arrives to find himself removed from the Assembly and declared an outlaw. His old friend and fellow Great One Hochopepa is willing to aid him, but they are captured by a Great One loyal to the current Warlord, who seeks to gain control of the Empire. Tortured by the Warlord and his inquisitors, and with his Greater Path magic neutralized, Pug turns to the Lesser Path, becoming the second magician ever to master both paths after Macros the Black. He is able to overcome his captors, and explains his reasons for returning to the Emperor, who grants him reprieve to continue his search in the Assembly's vast libraries. He arrives at the conclusion that the ancient Tsurani enemy has returned, posing a grave threat to both worlds. Pug is reinstated by the Assembly, and following a clue, travels to the northern polar wastelands of Kelewan, discovering a lost race of elves living in a forest under the ice, twin to Elvandar on Midkemia. Their leader, Acaila, offers to instruct Pug in magic over the course of the following year, in order to better face the coming trials. Meanwhile, Arutha and his band manage to sneak past the moredhel sentries, and discover several silverthorn shrubs in the lake, and make their escape back towards Elvandar. Just as they are about to reach the safety of the Elven forest, they are overtaken by Murad and a band of black slayers. With the help of Tomas, they manage to defeat their enemies and return safely to Elvandar. With the antidote made by the elven Spellweavers, Anita is saved, and Arutha's enemies set back by the death of one of their generals. But Murmandamus vows to regather his armies the next year, and the long-awaited invasion into the Kingdom will commence. fr:Silverthorn nl:Zilverdoorn pl:Srebrzysty cierń
1924575	/m/03bx5p3	A Darkness at Sethanon	Raymond E. Feist	1986-02-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Arutha, Prince of Krondor, uses an attempted assassination as a ruse to fake his own death so that he may travel north to confront Murmandamus. In his travels to the Northlands, Arutha finds his father's former enemy, Guy du Bas-Tyra, as the Protector of the city Armengar, the first location to be invaded by the dark army under Murmandamus. In an attempt to destroy a majority of the army, Guy orders the evacuation of the city, and ignites the naphtha mines below the city. Unfortunately, Murmandamus escapes unscathed, and the army marches towards the border of the Kingdom of the Isles. Meanwhile Pug and Tomas begin searching the world, and eventually beyond, for the famed sorcerer Macros the Black, thought killed when he helped to destroy the rift (at the end of Magician). Macros reveals that he had put into motion a grand plot to instill Tomas with the powers of the Valheru, Ashen-Shugar, in order to turn the tides of the coming battle in their favour. Murmandamus, having successfully overrun the border city of Highcastle, marches towards his final objective: the town of Sethanon, which lies above an ancient ruins containing an artifact of power known as the Lifestone. Murmandamus lays siege to Sethanon, causing wholesale slaughter regardless of his own soldiers, in order to draw his necromantic power from their deaths. Steeped in power, he descends into the chamber of the Lifestone, and is confronted by Arutha, where they begin to duel. A rift begins to form within the chamber, held closed only by the magical efforts of Pug and Macros. Arutha manages to kill Murmandamus, revealing his true form as a Pantathian impersonating a moredhel. With his death, the escaped magical energy causes the rift to open briefly, releasing a Valheru, and a life-stealing Dreadlord. Tomas, now fully embracing his Valheru heritage, battles his ancient kin, while his dragon mount fights the Dreadlord. At the climax of the battle, Tomas stabs his sword through his enemy, and into the Lifestone, inadvertently releasing the spirits of all other Dragonlords. Their combined might, however, is no match for the Lifestone, the nexus of all life on Midkemia. They are drawn into the Lifestone and trapped for all eternity. The invasion is over. Afterwards, Macros entrusts the guardianship of the world to Pug and Tomas, saying that his task to protect Midkemia is finished, and disappears. fr:Ténèbres sur Sethanon nl:Duisternis over Sethanon pl:Mrok w Sethanon
1924982	/m/066kck	A Happy Death	Albert Camus	1971	{"/m/02m4t": "Existentialism"}	 The novel has just over 100 pages and consists of two parts. Part 1, titled "Natural death", describes the monotone and empty life of Patrice Mersault with his boring office job and a meaningless relationship with his girlfriend. Mersault gets to know the rich invalid Roland Zagreus (Zagreus is a character of Greek mythology) who shows Mersault a way out: "Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time." Mersault decides to kill Zagreus in order to create his happiness with the rich man's money. Part 2, titled "Conscious death", follows Mersault's subsequent trip to Europe. Traveling by train from city to city, he is unable to find peace and decides to return to Algiers, to live in a house high above the sea with three young female friends. Everybody here has only one goal: the pursuit of happiness. Yet Mersault needs solitude. He marries a pleasant woman he does not love, buys a house in a village by the sea, and moves in alone. "At this hour of night, his life seemed so remote to him, he was so solitary and indifferent to everything and to himself as well, that Mersault felt he had at last attained what he was seeking, that the peace which filled him now was born of that patient self-abandonment he had pursued and achieved with the help of this warm world so willing to deny him without anger." Severely ill, he dies a happy death: "And stone among the stones, he returned in the joy of his heart to the truth of the motionless worlds."
1927113	/m/066qtq	The True Story of Ah Q	Lu Xun	1921		 The story traces the "adventures" of Ah Q, a man from the rural peasant class with little education and no definite occupation. Ah Q is famous for "spiritual victories", Lu Xun's euphemism for self-talk and self-deception even when faced with extreme defeat or humiliation. Ah Q is a bully to the less fortunate but fearful of those who are above him in rank, strength, or power. He persuades himself mentally that he is spiritually "superior" to his oppressors even as he succumbs to their tyranny and suppression. Lu Xun exposes Ah Q's extreme faults as symptomatic of the Chinese national character of his time. The ending of the piece – when Ah Q is carted off to execution for a minor crime – is equally poignant and satirical.
1927784	/m/066s4x	Gundam Sentinel				 Earth Federation Space Force (EFSF) officers stationed at the asteroid fortress Pezun rebel against the Federation leadership, which has allied with the Anti-Earth Union Group (AEUG). The so-called "New Desides" swear to uphold the Titans' ideology of Earthnoid supremacy. The Federation assembles Task Force Alpha, a small force of EFSF, AEUG, and Karaba veterans equipped with the most advanced mobile suits, and sends them to Pezun to suppress the rebellion before it gets out of hand. The most powerful of them, the MSA-0011 Superior Gundam, is equipped with an artificial intelligence named ALICE (Advanced Logistic and Inconsequence Cognizing Equipment). Task Force Alpha, consisting of four Salamis Kai cruisers ships and the flagship Pegasus III, arrives at Pezun and prepares to attack. In the midst of the action, the rebels launch a volley of guided missiles that destroys two cruisers. A week after the encounter, the Earth Federation sends the Tenth Divisional Fleet to reinforce TF Alpha. However, fleet commander Brian Aeno - who was approached by a New Desides representative days before - announces that his force will side with the rebels. Task Force Alpha and a Federation fleet from the Moon attacks the asteroid, forcing most of the rebels to pull out and head for the city, with a small contingent on Pezun providing cover fire and wiring the base to self-destruct with a nuclear weapon. Task Force Alpha realizes the deception and escape just before the asteroid explodes. Task Force Alpha begins to probe Ayers City with units of Neros which are quickly defeated by the Gundam Mk V piloted by New Desides leader Brave Cod. The New Desides - which finally meets Aeno's forces after they arrive - launches a powerful counterattack just as Task Force Alpha drops mobile suits into the area. They also use a logic bomb that paralyzes Alpha's mobile suits after spies crack their operating systems' software. The EFSF counters the programming, but orders a retreat because of the high casualties and sends reinforcements, designated Task Force Beta. Task Forces Alpha and Beta launch Operation Eagle Falls, an all-out assault on Ayers City. The New Desides, which wanted to use the Moon as a base to establish a new independent nation, fails to rally nearby other lunar cities to their cause. The fighting is spread out over 11 days. Cod also goes on a rampage, destroying Task Force Alpha's three-man FAZZ squad, but is killed by EFSF pilot Ryu Roots and his Extraordinary-Superior Gundam. As the city's forces surrender to the Federation, Ayers Mayor Kaiser Pinefield commits suicide after learning of Cod's death while the Neo Zeon arrive to extract the remaining New Desides forces. The New Desides troops that safely escape Ayers rendezvous with the remnants of Aeno's fleet. Master strategist Tosh Cray assumes control of the group, which he formally disbands over issues on whether it should side with the Neo Zeon. He plans to hijack the relay station Penta and use it as a staging area for raiding the Federation Senate at Dakar. To boost the New Desides survivors' chances of success, the Neo Zeon supplies them with the massive Zodiac mobile armor, which is capable of atmospheric reentry and will be used to bombard the Federation base in the city. The Pegasus III is deployed to pursue the New Desides at Penta. Arriving at the station, the Pegasus III and its remaining mobile suits confront Cray and the Zodiac. The New Desides' remaining members head for Earth in three shuttles after Aeno surrenders. The Superior Gundam launches with Roots and pilots Shin Crypt and Tex West aboard with two Zeta Plus units in support. One Zeta Plus mobile suit is destroyed in the chase and the other, having run out of ammunition destroying one shuttle, safely enters the atmosphere. The Zodiac separates into two halves called Zoans. One Zoan piloted by First Sides explodes because of an overheating mega-particle beam cannon and Josh Offshore tries to stop Roots from intercepting the second. Cray ejects from the Zoan and reboards one of the shuttles before he falls into the atmosphere. Realizing the desperate situation, ALICE, the S Gundam's AI, ejects its Core Fighter with Ryu, Crypt, and West inside. The now-self-aware mobile suit chases and destroys the New Desides survivors during the orbital descent, but breaks up under the blistering heat.
1928000	/m/066sq7	The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County				 The Serial is divided into 52 short chapters. It chronicles the lives of a group of residents of Marin County, mostly in their mid-to-late 30s and early 40s. The plot revolves around Harvey and Kate Holroyd, a couple in the midst of the mid-1970s Marin County lifestyle who are undergoing marital problems, with many other characters introduced in the book.
1929715	/m/066xp7	The Disciples	V. C. Andrews		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 From the bookjacket "After a recruiter for the National Security Agency goes AWOL, NSA information analyst T.C. Steele must track her down."
1930184	/m/066yy7	It Happened to Nancy: By an Anonymous Teenager	Beatrice Sparks	1994-03	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Nancy is a fourteen-year-old girl who just wants to have fun while at a Garth Brooks concert with her friends. While there she has an asthma attack and an eighteen-year old boy named Collin helps her. He takes her outside and tells her to relax. From that day on she starts talking to him every day after school. One night, she invites him to her house when her mother is not home, and he rapes her in her mother's bed. After that night, when she begins to look for Collin, it turns out that he does not study in the college he told her. She begins feeling sick later on, and easily exhausted. Then one day, when her mother takes her to the doctor, she has blood samples taken. She then learns that she has HIV and doesn't know what to do; she just wants to die and feels that she doesn't have anything on earth for her. She decides she wants to find Collin and have him go to jail for raping her. She describes his appearance to the police. Her closest friends do not know what is wrong with her, thinking her father is sick and that she has gone to Arizona because of it. She does not want to tell them that she was raped by a boy who she thought was the love of her life. While at school most of her fellow students do not know that she has HIV, but her friends support her the whole way. Nancy and her parents become closer even though her parents are divorced. Later she dies and wishes for her diary to be published so that other young teenagers like her can know the real truth.
1930310	/m/066z7_	The Island of the Day Before	Umberto Eco	1995	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is the story of a 17th century Italian nobleman, Roberto della Griva, who is the only survivor of a shipwreck during a fierce storm. He finds himself washed up on an abandoned ship in a harbour through which, he convinces himself, runs the International Date Line. Although he can see land, his inability to swim leaves him marooned and he begins to reminisce about his life and his love. He becomes obsessed about his allegedly evil twin brother, who is split from his own persona through a process reminiscent of the doppelganger effect, and thus accusing him of all the bad things that happened in his life. The brother takes blame mainly for his bad choices and is present to sweeten the disappointments of life. Through this reminiscence he becomes convinced that all his troubles will end, if only he can reach the land. The story is told from the point of view of a modern editor who has sorted through the man's papers. Exactly how the papers were preserved and eventually handed down to the editor remains a point of conjecture. bg:Островът от предишния ден cs:Ostrov včerejšího dne de:Die Insel des vorigen Tages es:La isla del día de antes fr:L'Île du jour d'avant it:L'isola del giorno prima he:האי של יום האתמול hu:A tegnap szigete nl:Het eiland van de vorige dag pl:Wyspa dnia poprzedniego pt:L'isola del giorno prima ro:Insula din ziua de ieri ru:Остров накануне sk:Ostrov včerajšieho dňa fi:Edellisen päivän saari tr:Önceki Günün Adası uk:Острів попереднього дня
1931105	/m/06706c	The Slaves of the Mastery	William Nicholson	2005-01-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the beginning of the book, the city of Aramanth is greatly changed since events in The Wind Singer. The walls have been torn down, and the poorer districts abandoned. No longer is it run by the strict system of exams; in fact, everyone is pleasant and docile. The change occurred because the city had been released from the grip of an evil force known as the Morah. This new freedom, however, has also severely weakened the city. News of this reaches as far as a distant country known as the Mastery. The country sends an army of a thousand, commanded by young Marius Semeon Ortiz, to destroy the city and take its entire population as slaves. They do so, killing many of the city's residents, enslaving yet more, and leaving no survivors, except for Kestrel Hath. She vows to have revenge on the unknown Mastery, and on Ortiz himself, and begins to follow the trail led by the returning army. The Manth people are brought to the Mastery, a beautiful country built up entirely on slave labor. They are branded and given jobs. Though some of the people begin to actually enjoy work, as they discover that every single person in the Mastery is a slave (except for the Master, ruler of the land, himself). Hanno Hath, father of Kestrel, signs up to be a librarian, while his son Bowman decides to become a night watchman, in order to listen for his approaching sister. Kestrel, meanwhile, faints with exhaustion on her journey. She is rescued by the beautiful Sirharasi (Sisi), Johdila of Gang. As one of the few people who has seen Sisi unveiled, Kestrel becomes her servant and mutual friend. She discovers that Sisi is also travelling to the Mastery to marry Ortiz, the man who led the attack on Aramanth. Kestrel decides to try to use the considerable might of Gang's army, the Johjan Guards, to overthrow the Mastery, and she convinces Zohon, the Guards' conceited leader, that Sisi loves him, and that she will give him a sign to show this. While on a night watch, Bowman is approached by an ancient, one-eyed hermit known as "Dogface", who tells Bowman that, as the son of the prophet (Bowman's mother, Ira Hath, is descended from the ancient prophet, Ira Manth), he has great powers that belong to the Singer people. Bowman tests these new powers by speaking with a cow, moving a stick without touching it, and later speaking to a cat, Mist, that Dogface leaves behind. Mist's ambition is to learn how to fly, but as Bowman's powers are initially limited and untested, he doesn't and can't teach Mist. Meanwhile, Mumpo, another Manth slave, joins the Manaxa. The Manaxa is a fight where two competitors attempt to stab each other with spiked armor until either one dies or is driven out of the arena, and is considered a great honor to compete in in the Mastery. He shows considerable talent at this and at the wedding kills the reigning champion and heavy favorite. At the wedding Sisi and Ortiz both fall for people other than those intended, Sisi for Bowman and Ortiz for Kestrel, and chaos ensues. Zohan, believing he is rescuing Sisi from the Mastery, instigates a battle against Ortiz and his men; however the entire population of the Mastery, bound by the Master's will, attacks and outnumbers Zohon's army. Mumpo begins searching for Kestrel to try to save her in the chaos, killing anyone he encounters whether they be Mastery Citizens or in the Johjan Guards. Bowman, using his mind powers, engages in a mind duel with the Master. Kestrel and Ortiz come in. Bowman is temporarily distracted and the Master exploits this and commands Ortiz to kill Kestrel. Despite his love for her, he is unable to resist the Master's will and obeys. With the sword centimeters from her heart, Bowman kills the Master and Ortiz is released from his will. Mumpo enters the room and sees Ortiz with his arms around Kestrel, and gets the wrong idea. Mumpo smashes Ortiz's head and breaks his neck. Released from his power, the Master's army dissipates and sets about destroying the city in a frenzy, and Zohon seizes control. Finally free to leave, Ira Hath asserts that they must seek out the homeland, as "the wind is rising". Though many of the Manth people choose to stay behind and make a life for themselves where they are, a small group resolve to trust in Ira's prophecy, and together along with Sisi and her servant Lunki, they set out in search of the homeland.
1931193	/m/06709h	Firesong	William Nicholson	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Firesong begins with the Manth people deliberating over what action to take, now that the Mastery is in ruins. After the defeat of the Master, alone and displaced, they seek a new homeland but have no real destination and very little food. Ira Hath, descendant of Ira Manth, and a great prophetess who is also Kestrel and Bowman's mother, has a vision of the Manth people's true homeland. Throughout the book the Manth people travel with only Ira's guidance, and she becomes weaker as they go, knowing she will eventually die of prophecy. Bowman eagerly awaits a summons from Sirene, and must prepare to sacrifice himself to save his people and the world. Before he is ready for this, however, he must be trained by the great Albard, the Master of the ruined Mastery. The journey is long, and his preparation is tough, especially in the hands of a strange teacher. Jumper, the man-woman Singer who can change forms and personalities to please people, has come for Bowman. Jumper agrees to let Kestrel, Bowman's sister, come along as well. In the end it is revealed that Kestrel is the one who is destined to give her life, having picked up Albard's teachings along the way. Bowman is in fact the Meeting place- the point at which the great evil and the great kindness of the world will annihilate one another. This is because he was once one of the Zars, the army of the Morah (the "spirit" of all evil), and is one of the Singer people too, as he has been trained in their ways. Upon reaching the homeland, Ira's life ends, her destiny fulfilled. Kestrel, too, ends her life with all the other Singers, singing the firesong to destroy the Morah, give humanity a fresh start, and allow the Manth people to finally reach the homeland. The epilogue, set some 8 years later, finds the Manth people established in their new home, with various people married and with young families. Amongst them are Bowman and Sisi (the princess of Gang, and Kestrel's best friend), who are now rulers of Gang due to Sisi's birthright. The ending sees Pinto and Mumpo betrothed, and the Manth people happy at last.
1933393	/m/0674wk	Dying Inside	Robert Silverberg	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's main character, David Selig, is an undistinguished man living in New York City. David was born with a telepathic gift allowing him to read minds. Rather than use his ability for any greater good, however, Selig squanders his power, using it only for his own convenience. At the beginning of the novel, David earns a living by reading the minds of college students so that he can better plagiarize reports and essays on their behalf. As the novel progresses, Selig's power becomes continually weaker, working sporadically and sometimes not at all, and Selig struggles to maintain his grip on reality as he begins to lose an ability on which he has long since grown dependent. The book contains a number of memorable elements, such as David's relationship with a fellow telepath he meets as a young adult, or his strained interaction with his estranged younger sister (who has long distrusted him because of his ability), or his obsession, during one section of the novel, with proving that his girlfriend, a woman named Kitty, is also telepathic after he discovers that he can't read her mind. There's also an interesting moment where David's power causes him to vicariously experience his girlfriend's acid trip, and a bravura sequence in which the adolescent Selig, during a visit to a farm, enters the minds of, variously, a fish swimming in a stream, a hen laying an egg, and a young couple in the midst of passionate sex.
1935323	/m/067955	Salammbô	Gustave Flaubert		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After the First Punic War, Carthage is unable to fulfil promises made to its army of mercenaries, and finds itself under attack. The fictional title character, a priestess and the daughter of Hamilcar Barca, an aristocratic Carthaginian general, is the object of the obsessive lust of Matho, a leader of the mercenaries. With the help of the scheming freed slave, Spendius, Matho steals the sacred veil of Carthage, the Zaïmph, prompting Salammbô to enter the mercenaries' camp in an attempt to steal it back. The Zaïmph is an ornate bejewelled veil draped about the statue of the goddess Tanit in the sanctum sanctorum of her temple: the veil is the city's guardian and touching it will bring death to the perpetrator. *Chapter 1. The Feast. During a victory banquet, the mercenaries destroy Hamilcar's garden for sport in his absence. Hamilcar's daughter Salammbô tries to quell the riot. Matho falls in love with her. The slave Spendius is released, and he tries to persuade Matho to take Carthage for the mercenaries. *Chapter 2. At Sicca. The mercenaries leave the city unpaid and travel to Sicca. Later, Hanno comes and speaks to the mercenaries about delays in recompensing them, but he is driven off when Zarxas arrives and tells them of a treacherous massacre of 300 slingers who had stayed behind. *Chapter 3. Salammbô. Hamilcar's daughter prays and is instructed by Schahabarim. *Chapter 4. Beneath the Walls of Carthage. The mercenaries besiege Carthage; Matho and Spendius penetrate via the aqueduct. *Chapter 5. Tanit. Matho and Spendius steal the Zaïmph. Because Matho is caught while breaking into Salammbô's bedroom to see her again, she falls under suspicion of complicity. *Chapter 6. Hanno. The mercenaries leave Carthage and split into two groups, attacking Utica and Hippo-Zarytus. Hanno surprises Spendius at Utica, and occupies the city, but flees when Matho arrives and routs his troops. *Chapter 7. Hamilcar Barca. The hero returns and an attempt is made to blame him for Hanno's losses. He defends himself before the Council and defends the mercenaries, but turns against the barbarians when he sees the damage they have done to his property. *Chapter 8. The Battle of the Macar. Hamilcar defeats Spendius at the bridge of the Macar, three miles from Utica. *Chapter 9. In the Field. Hamilcar's troops are trapped by the mercenaries. *Chapter 10. The Serpent. Schahabarim sends Salammbô in disguise to retrieve the Zaïmph. *Chapter 11. In the Tent. Salammbô reaches Matho in his tent at the encampment. Believing each other to be divine apparitions, they make love. The mercenaries are attacked and dispersed by Hamilcar's troops. She takes away the Zaïmph, and on meeting her father, Hamilcar has her betrothed to Narr' Havas, a mercenary who has changed sides. *Chapter 12. The Aqueduct. The Carthaginians return to their city with the mercenaries in pursuit. Spendius cuts off the water supply to Carthage. *Chapter 13. Moloch. Carthaginian children are sacrificed to Moloch. Hamilcar disguises a slave-child as his son Hannibal and sends him to die in his son's place. *Chapter 14. The Defile of the Axe. The drought is broken and aid comes. Hamilcar drives the mercenaries away from their encampments. Later, thousands of mercenaries are trapped in a defile and slowly starve (the Battle of "The Saw"). Deaths of Hanno and Spendius, both by crucifixion. *Chapter 15. Matho. Victory celebrations at Carthage. Matho is tortured before his execution; Salammbô, witnessing this, dies of shock. The Zaïmph has brought death upon those who touched it.
1935563	/m/0679v4	Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 At this stage he struggles with his growing unhappiness and tries to drench it in alcohol. One night after too many drinks, Nick Stefanos gets drawn into the murder of Calvin Jeter, and his conscience pulls him back to his earlier occupation. It becomes a journey through the harshest part of the American capital and the blackest part of the human soul.
1935756	/m/067b87	The Great War: American Front	Harry Turtledove	1998-05-12	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After a prologue with Robert E. Lee smashing the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, in October 1862, and the subsequent Anglo-French diplomatic recognition of the Confederate States of America, the novel begins on June 28, 1914, the same day Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. World War I breaks out and spreads to North America, where the pro-German United States under Theodore Roosevelt declares war on Woodrow Wilson's CSA, which is allied with Great Britain and France. After initial US invasions of Kentucky, British-controlled Canada, and western Virginia, and CS invasions of Maryland and Pennsylvania, the conflict bogs down into trench warfare. Across the Mississippi River, in the western part of the continent, the conflict is a war of movement. The novel ends in the autumn of 1915, with the beginning of a Marxist black rebellion against the war-distracted government of the CSA. Most of the characters in the book are small-time folks being caught up in the bigger world of a global war. One main character in the book whose destiny will be intertwined with that of the twentieth century is an artillery sergeant named Jake Featherston. This book is followed by The Great War: Walk in Hell, and then The Great War: Breakthroughs.
1937988	/m/067h9n	The Devil Wears Prada	Lauren Weisberger	2003	{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 Andrea Sachs, a recent graduate of Brown with a degree in English moves to New York City hoping to break into the publishing world. She moves in with her longtime friend Lily, a graduate student at Columbia, and blankets the city with her résumé, hoping for a foot in the door of the magazine industry to further her dream of working for The New Yorker. She gets a surprise interview at the Elias-Clark Group and is hired as the junior assistant of Miranda Priestly, editor-in-chief of the fashion magazine "Runway". Although she knows little of the fashion world, she is told repeatedly that "a million girls would die for [her] job". Andrea is told that if she manages to work for Miranda for a year, she can have her pick of jobs within the magazine industry. Despite the lavish perks that come with her job--free designer clothes, generous expense accounts--she soon finds out that Miranda is tyrannical and capricious. As she is exposed to the grueling yet shallow nature of the magazine world, Andrea begins to doubt the true value of her job. At a celebrity party Andrea meets Christian Collinsworth, a charismatic Yale graduate who has been identified as the hot, up-and-coming writer of their generation. They become attracted to each other, complicating her relationship with her boyfriend, Alex. Andrea is forced to sacrifice her personal life for her all-consuming job, to the detriment of her relationships. Lily increasingly turns to alcohol and picking up dubious men to relieve the pressures of graduate school. Alex, struggling with his own demanding job as an inner-city schoolteacher, grows frustrated with Andrea's long hours and constant stress. Andrea's relationship with her family also suffers. Matters finally come to a head when her coworker Emily gets mononucleosis and Andrea must travel to Paris with Miranda in her stead. Andrea agrees, although this will mean canceling a long-awaited trip with Alex. In Paris, she has a surprise encounter with Christian. Later that night, Miranda finally lets down her guard and asks Andrea what she has learned, and where she would like to work afterwards. She promises to place phone calls to people she knows at The New Yorker on Andrea's behalf once her year is up and suggests that she take on some small writing assignments at Runway. Back at the hotel, Andrea gets urgent calls from Alex and her parents asking her to call them. She does so and learns that Lily is comatose after driving drunk and wrecking a car. Though Andrea is pressured by her family and Alex to return home, she tells Miranda she will honor her commitment to Runway. Miranda is pleased, and tells her that her future in magazine publishing is bright. At the Paris fashion show for Christian Dior, however, Miranda phones her with yet another impossible demand. Andrea finally realizes that her family and friends are more important than her job, and realizes to her horror that she is becoming more and more like Miranda. She refuses to comply with Miranda's latest outrageous request, and when Miranda scolds her publicly, Andrea replies, "Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you". She is fired on the spot, and returns home to reconnect with her friends and family. Her romantic relationship with Alex is beyond repair, but they remain friends. Lily recovers and fares well in court for her DUI charge, receiving only community service. In the last chapter Andrea learns that her tiff with Miranda made her a minor celebrity when the incident made 'Page Six'. Afraid she has been blacklisted from publishing for good, she moves back with her parents and works on short fiction, financing her unemployment with the profits from reselling the designer clothing she had been provided with for her trip. Seventeen buys one of her stories. At the novel's end, she is returning to the Elias-Clark building to discuss a position at one of the company's other magazines. She sees a girl who she realizes is in fact, Miranda's new junior assistant, who looks as harried and put-upon as she once did.
1938520	/m/067jj4	Paris in the 20th Century	Jules Verne	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's main character is 16-year-old Michel Dufrénoy, who graduates with a major in literature and the classics, but finds they have been forgotten in a futuristic world where only business and technology are valued. Michel, whose father was a musician, is a poet born too late. Michel had been living with his respectable uncle, Monsieur Stanislas Boutardin, and his family. The day after graduation, Boutardin tells Michel that he is to start working at a banking company. Boutardin doubts Michel can do anything in the business world. The rest of that day, Michel searches for literature by classic 19th century writers, such as Hugo and Balzac. Nothing but books about technology are available in bookstores. Michel's last resort is the Imperial Library. The librarian turns out to be his long-hidden uncle, Monsieur Huguenin. Huguenin, still working in the arts, is considered a "disgrace" to the rest of the family, and so was barred from attending Michel's birthdays, graduations, and other family events, though he has followed Michel's life—from a distance. This is the first time they meet in person. At his new job, Michel fails at each task with Casmodage and Co. Bank until he is assigned to The Ledger, where Michel dictates the accounts for bookkeeper Monsieur Quinsonnas. Quinsonnas, a kindred spirit of 30, writes the bookkeeping information on The Ledger. Quinsonnas tells Michel that this is a job he can do in order to eat, have an apartment, and support himself while he continues working on a mysterious musical project that will bring him fame and fortune. Michel's fear of not fitting in is resolved; he can be a reader and still work on his own writing after work. The pair visit Uncle Huguenin and are joined by other visitors, Michel's former teacher Monsieur Richelot and Richelot's granddaughter, Mademoiselle Lucy. Quinsonnas and Michel both dream of being soldiers, but this is impossible, because warfare has become so scientific that there is really no need for soldiers anymore—only chemists and mechanics are able to work the killing machines. But this profession is denied to even them, because "the engines of war" have become so efficient that war is inconceivable and all countries are at a perpetual stalemate. Before long, Michel and Lucy are in love. Michel discusses women with Quinsonnas, who sadly explains that there are no such things as women anymore; from mindless, repetitive factory work and careful attention to finance and science, most women have become cynical, ugly, neurotic career women. In fury, Quinsonnas spills ink on The Ledger, and he and Michel are fired on the spot; Quinsonnas leaves for Germany. In a society without war, or musical and artistic progress, there is no news, so Michel can't even become a journalist. He ends up living in Quinsonnas' empty apartment while writing superb poetry, but lives in such poverty that he has to eat synthetic foods derived from coal. He eventually writes a book of poetry entitled Hopes which is rejected by every publisher in Paris. As the year 1961 draws to a close, all of Europe enters a winter of unprecedented ferocity. All agriculture is compromised and food supplies are destroyed, resulting in mass famine. The temperature drops to thirty degrees below, and every river in Europe freezes solid. In despair, Michel spends his last bit of money on violets for Lucy, but finds that she has disappeared from her apartment, evicted when her grandfather lost his job as the university’s last teacher of rhetoric. He is unable to locate her amongst the thousands of starving people in Paris. He spends the entire evening stumbling around Paris in a delirious state. Michel becomes convinced that he is being hunted by the Demon of Electricity, but no matter where he goes, he is unable to escape its presence. In the climax of the story, the heartbroken Michel, bereft of friends and loved ones, wanders through the frozen, mechanized, electrical wonders of Paris. The subjective narrative becomes steadily more surreal as the dying artist, in a final paroxysm of despair, unconsciously circles an old cemetery and finally collapses comatose in the snow.
1942017	/m/067ssz	Ein deutsches Requiem	Jorge Luis Borges	1949	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 A member of the German nobility, zur Linde is born in Marienburg, West Prussia in 1908. Raised Lutheran, zur Linde loses his faith in Christianity after reading the writings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler. Soon after, he joins the Schutzstaffel. Despite his deep contempt for his fellow S.S. men, zur Linde persuades himself that the Nazi Party needs men like himself to assure the world a glorious future. On March 1, 1939, he is wounded in the leg while attacking a synagogue in Tilsit. Days later, the Wehrmacht invades Czechoslovakia, zur Linde is recuperating in a hospital following the amputation of his leg. Declaring how Raskolnikov's switch to robbery and murder was more difficult than the conquests of Napoleon Bonaparte, zur Linde relates how, on February 7, 1941, he was appointed subdirector of Tarnowitz concentration camp. There, many Jewish intellectuals are tortured and murdered under his orders. He relates, "Carrying out the duties attendant on that position was not something I enjoyed, but I never sinned by omission. The coward proves himself among swords, the compassionate man, seeks to be tested by jails and other's pain." During the fall of 1942, Otto's brother Friedrich is killed in action in the Second Battle of El Alamein. Soon after, an Allied bombing raid destroys zur Linde's house in Marienburg. Soon after the end of the Second World War, zur Linde is captured and placed on trial for crimes against humanity. Refusing to offer a defense for his actions, zur Linde is convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad. As he awaits his end, zur Linde scribbles a last testament in his prison cell. He offers no justification and rejoices in the fact that "violence and faith in the sword" shall govern the future rather than "servile Christian acts of timidity." He further expresses hope that, if victory and glory do not belong to Nazi Germany, let them belong to other nations. As he ponders how he shall comport himself before the firing squad, zur Linde realizes that he feels no fear or pity, even for himself.
1942895	/m/067vtr	Breathing Lessons	Anne Tyler	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story describes the joys and pains of the ordinary marriage of Ira and Maggie Moran as they travel from Baltimore to attend a funeral and back home again in one day. It also examines Maggie's attempts to reconcile her son and daughter-in-law.
1943069	/m/067w8h	Perfect Circle	Sean Stewart	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Texan William Kennedy can see and talk to ghosts - an ability which complicates his life immensely and threatens his relationships with family and friends. When his cousin calls him in to lay the ghost in the garage, Will finds he has a murderer to deal with.
1943391	/m/067x33	Marianne Dreams	Catherine Storr	1958	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Marianne is a young girl who is bedridden with a long-term illness. She draws a picture to fill her time, and finds that she spends her dreams within the picture she has drawn. As time goes by, she becomes sicker, and starts to spend more and more time trapped within her fantasy world, and her attempts to make things better by adding to and crossing out things in the drawing make things progressively worse. Her only companion in her dreamworld is a boy called Mark, who is also a long-term invalid in the real world. Marianne Dreams was first published by Faber and Faber in 1958, and was first printed in paperback by Puffin Books in 1964. It was illustrated with drawings by Marjorie-Ann Watts. Catherine Storr's later novel Marianne and Mark was a sequel to Marianne Dreams. It is thought that the house that Marianne dreams of is based on a house in the village of Avebury, Wiltshire. This house looks as if has been drawn by a child, with small, very high up windows. All around the house are the menacing prehistoric standing stones of Avebury Stone Circle.
1943904	/m/067ydq	Tamburlaine	Christopher Marlowe	1590		 Part 1 opens in Persepolis. The Persian emperor, Mycetes, dispatches troops to dispose of Tamburlaine, a Scythian shepherd and at that point a nomadic bandit. In the same scene, Mycetes' brother Cosroe plots to overthrow Mycetes and assume the throne. The scene shifts to Scythia, where Tamburlaine is shown wooing, capturing, and winning Zenocrate, the daughter of the Egyptian king. Confronted by Mycetes' soldiers, he persuades first the soldiers and then Cosroe to join him in a fight against Mycetes. Although he promises Cosroe the Persian throne, Tamburlaine reneges on this promise and, after defeating Mycetes, takes personal control of the Persian Empire. Now a powerful figure, Tamburlaine now turns his attention to Bajazeth, Emperor of the Turks. He defeats Bajazeth and his tributary kings, capturing the Emperor and his wife Zabina. The victorious Tamburlaine keeps the defeated ruler in a cage and feeds him scraps from his table, releasing Bajazeth only to use him as a footstool. Bajazeth later kills himself onstage by bashing his head against the bars upon hearing of Tamburlaine's next victory, and upon finding his body Zabina does likewise. After conquering Africa and naming himself emperor of that continent, Tamburlaine sets his eyes on Damascus; this target places the Egyptian Sultan, his father-in-law, directly in his path. Zenocrate pleads with her husband to spare her father. He complies, instead making the Sultan a tributary king. The play ends with the wedding of Zenocrate and Tamburlaine, and the crowning of the former as Empress of Persia. In Part 2, Tamburlaine grooms his sons to be conquerors in his wake as he continues to conquer his neighbouring kingdoms. His oldest son, Calyphas, preferring to stay by his mother's side and not risk death, incurs Tamburlaine's wrath. Meanwhile, the son of Bajazeth, Callapine, escapes from Tamburlaine's jail and gathers a group of tributary kings to his side, planning to avenge his father. Callapine and Tamburlaine meet in battle, where Tamburlaine is victorious. But finding Calyphas remained in his tent during the battle, Tamburlaine kills him in anger. Tamburlaine then forces the defeated kings to pull his chariot to his next battlefield, declaring, : Holla ye pampered jades of Asia! : What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day? Upon reaching Babylon, which holds out against him, Tamburlaine displays further acts of extravagant savagery. When the Governor of the city attempts to save his life in return for revealing the city treasury, Tamburlaine has him hung from the city walls and orders his men to shoot him to death. He orders the inhabitants -- men, women, and children -- bound and thrown into a nearby lake. Lastly, Tamburlaine scornfully burns a copy of the Qur'an and claims to be greater than God. In the final act, he is struck ill but manages to defeat one more foe before he dies. He bids his remaining sons to conquer the remainder of the earth as he departs life.
1945819	/m/0681rq	Kushiel's Dart	Jacqueline Carey	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Phèdre is born to Liliane de Souverain, a Servant of Naamah, and Pierre Cantrel, a merchant's spend-thrift son. She is born fair-skinned and black-haired, and given a cursed Hellene name. She is distinguished most by a red mote in her left eye, a flaw that is believed to render her unsuitable for work as a Servant of Naamah. Due to poverty and Pierre Cantrel's unwillingness for his wife to continue in the Service of Naamah, Phèdre is sold to Cereus House of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. Phèdre grows up in Cereus House but is somewhat outcast, given her flaw that keeps her outside the canons of the Night Court. As a result, she can never become an adept of one of the Houses of Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. Since she will never be an adept, she must pay off her marque by earning money with any talent she has. One day, after learning about The Eluine Cycle, Phèdre pricks her hand with a pin. The look in her eyes causes the Dowayne to call in the lord Anafiel Delaunay, a learned poet. He recites lines from an ancient epic poem that identifies Phèdre as an anguissette, Kushiel's Chosen, who will always find "pleasure in pain". He buys her marque. To make her fit for his service, Phèdre begins learning the Caerdicci tongue (analogous to Italian / Latin) at age eight, and at age ten, begins her apprenticeship with Delaunay. Delaunay's other pupil, Alcuin nò Delaunay, becomes her foster brother. They are trained physically, mentally, and sexually to be scholars, spies and Servants of Naamah. Her nature as an anguissette is kept secret from all of Delaunay's guests, to make her more valuable as she grows and learns. At age thirteen, Phèdre first meets Melisande Shahrizai, who is one of the few people to identify her as an anguissette at first glance. When they enter the Service of Naamah, Delaunay uses their skills as spies for his court intrigues, the nature of which Phèdre and Alcuin nó Delaunay do not always know. At fourteen, Phèdre officially dedicates herself as a Servant of Naamah. Her virgin-price is bought by Childric d'Essoms when she is sixteen. His patron-gift allows her to begin work on her marque, which Delaunay commissions. When her bodyguard is killed in an incident involving Alcuin nó Delaunay and the political intrigues of the Stregazza family, Delaunay contracts the Cassiline Joscelin Verreuil to protect his charges. An immediate discord strikes up between Joscelin and Phèdre as he does not approve of Phèdre's line of work or her nature as an anguissette, and Phèdre finds him dour and too imposing. Delaunay eventually learns that Alcuin made his marque (became a free D’Angeline citizen) that night. One of the facts of D'Angeline existence is the riddle of the Master of the Straits. Terre d'Ange is separated from Alba by a small channel of water, but which no one has been able to cross for eight hundred years. It is said that the "Master of the Straits" controls the water and will not allow any meeting between the two nations. Phèdre becomes increasingly frustrated when she sees Alcuin working to solve this mystery and yet he will not tell her why. On the Longest Night, Melisande Shahrizai contracts Phèdre for herself for a midwinter masque. She parades Phèdre before the nobles of Terre d'Ange. Phèdre loses herself entirely to Melisande that night, and when Melisande uses flechettes on her, she gives her signale (safeword) for the first time. Phèdre accidentally reveals to Melisande that Delaunay is waiting for word from Quintilius Rousse. Melisande's patron gift provides Phèdre enough money to complete her marque. Joscelin accompanies her to the marquist's, but before the marque can be finished, they are interrupted by a sailor, bearing a message from Admiral Quintilius Rousse to Delaunay; he knows that Delaunay's house is being watched, and seeks to give the message to Phèdre instead. She only believes him when he gives a password, which Phèdre believes to refer to a ring she saw Ysandre present to Delaunay. Rousse's message in return makes no sense to Phèdre but, given that the soldier said Delaunay's house was being watched, she believes that her lord is in danger. Dying, Alcuin tells Phèdre to tell Ysandre what has happened, to trust Admiral Rousse and the remaining Trevalions, that Thelesis de Mornay knows about Alba, and that the important figure is the Dauphine, not Ganelon. Phèdre and Joscelin rush to the Palace, but before they can reach Ysandre, they are betrayed by Melisande, who drugs them and sells them into slavery in Skaldia. Joscelin initially refuses to submit to the Skaldi, and most likely would have gotten himself killed, but that Phèdre steps in and persuades the Skaldi not to harm him. He is instead chained with their dogs until Phèdre can convince him that they will be best served by obedience. She begins to teach him the Skaldic language. Phèdre becomes the bed-slave of Gunter Arnlaugson, the lord of the steading. She is protected somewhat by Hedwig Arnildsdottir, the daughter of the previous lord, and spends some of her time learning songs and stories from the Skaldic women. The relationship between Phèdre and Joscelin first begins to change on the night Gunter and his men return from raiding a D'Angeline town. It reminds them of the severity of their situation, and forges truer compassion and understanding between them. Gunter takes Phèdre and Joscelin to the Allthing held by Waldemar Selig, presenting them both as gifts to Selig. Phèdre becomes Selig's bed-slave, and learns of his plans to invade Terre d'Ange by betraying the traitor Duc Isidore d'Aiglemort. Her knowledge of the political machinations becomes even greater when she sees in Selig's room a letter to him from Melisande Shahrizai, who is helping Selig to betray Isidore. In this way Melisande is playing both Isidore d'Aiglemort and Waldemar Selig and that no matter which one wins, Melisande will have been in league with them, and will benefit. Phèdre comes up with an escape plan and persuades Joscelin to go along with it. Initially she means to take Melisande's letter with her, but decides against it, realizing that would let Selig know she knows his plans. Joscelin disguises himself as a Skaldic warrior, killing several guards so that he and Phèdre may escape from the camps. It takes Selig's best riders four days to catch up with Phèdre and Joscelin; while Joscelin battles several of them, the young Harald the Beardless out of Gunter's steading attempts to recapture Phèdre; she kills him with her dagger in order to escape. Several days out on their journey, Phèdre and Joscelin take shelter in a cave, where Phèdre patches his wounds, and the two make love. The next morning, they find etched on the cave wall the sigil of Blessed Elua, and realize that he and his Companions rested in that same place during their wanderings. Phèdre and Joscelin eventually reach Terre d'Ange. Once back in Terre d'Ange, Phèdre and Joscelin encounter the men of the Marquis le Garde, one of the Allies of Camlach; she borrows names from Cereus House and tells them she is Suriah of Trefail, and that Joscelin is her cousin Jareth, refugees from a town that has been set upon by the Skaldi. When it looks as though they are going to be taken into custody, Joscelin holds their commander at knifepoint and demands horses for their escape. They proceed down a road called Eisheth's Way, until they encounter a Yeshuite wagon on the road. The Yeshuites give them shelter when they recognize Joscelin for a Cassiline, with whom their people share an affinity. They take Joscelin and Phèdre all the way to the City of Elua; in gratitude, Phèdre gifts them with the small grey pony that has come with her all the way from Skaldia. Once inside the City of Elua, Phèdre decides that the only person she can trust is her old friend Hyacinthe, whom she and Joscelin seek out immediately. From Hyacinthe, Phèdre learns that she and Joscelin were tried and convicted in absentia for the murders of Delaunay, Alcuin, and the entire household. Some few spoke on their behalf, including Gaspar Trevalion and Cecile Laveau-Perrin. Deciding upon the best course of action to reach Ysandre, Phèdre sends a message to Thelesis de Mornay, written as a love poem in Cruithne, that it might not be understood if intercepted. Thelesis comes to Hyacinthe's to fetch them and bring them to Ysandre right away. Ysandre wants to clear Phèdre's and Joscelin's names immediately, but Phèdre persuades her that to do so would be to reveal their hand too soon, and would let Isidore know that Ysandre knew of his betrayal. Ysandre instead places Phèdre, Joscelin, and Hyacinthe into royal custody. During this time, the extremely ill King dies. The newly crowned Queen Ysandre de la Courcel can only trust the few courtiers that she is sure aren't working for Melisande. She gathers these trusted peers in a secret conference where she reveals Phedre and Joccelin and the threat to the realm they have discovered. During this secret council, it is mentioned that Ysandre is in love with and was betrothed secretly to the heir of Alba, Drustan mab Necthana. The council knows that without the support of Isidore d'Aiglemort's army, Terre d'Ange must have the support of Alban troops to defeat the Skaldi. The trouble is, Drustan's throne has been stolen by Maelcon The Usurper and he and his family are currently refugees with the Eiran Lords of the Dalriada. Thanks to the Hyacinthe's mother's old fortune, however, this plan is not forsaken and Ysandre decides to make Phèdre - one of the few who can speak Cruithne - her ambassador to Alba and Eire. As well, as the Black Boar is the symbol of Drustan's clan, Elder Brother should allow them to pass. Phèdre must now go to Alba and Eire and convince the Dalriada to help Drustan reclaim his throne, so that Drustan can bring his army to Terre d'Ange to help defeat the Skaldi. Phèdre agrees, if somewhat reluctantly, doubting her aptitude to serve in that capacity. Joscelin, loathe to leave her, swears his sword into Ysandre's service, becoming anathema to the Cassiline Brotherhood, and is allowed to accompany Phèdre to Alba. In a demonstration of her benevolence, Ysandre secretly brings the marquist Robert Tielhard to Phèdre so that her marque may be completed before her journey, allowing her to leave as a truly free D'Angeline citizen. When Phèdre tries to kneel to her, Ysandre dismisses it, declaring them bed-cousins. Ysandre then also Phèdre the diary of her father Rolande, as much was written there about Phèdre's master Delaunay. Hyacinthe comes up with the idea to transport Phèdre safely to Admiral Quintilius Rousse by traveling along the Tsingani routes that are unknown by D'Angelines. He disguises Phèdre as his cousin, a Tsingani prostitute's by-blow, and Joscelin as a Mendacant, a traveling bard from Eisande. At the horse fair in Kusheth, Hyacinthe is reunited with his grandfather and extended family; being unanimously accepted as one of them. While at the horse fair, Phedre sees Melisande Shahrizai and becomes frozen with fear that she will be found. Hyacinthe uses the dromonde (a gift of fortune-telling held by the Tsingani) to assure her that Melisande will not see her. For this, Hyacinthe's family casts him out because only Tsingani women are supposed to use the dromonde. While traveling across Kusheth, the party is intercepted by Quincel de Morhban, the reigning Duc of Kusheth. In order to gain safe passage to Quintilius Rousse's fleet, without questions about their mission, Phèdre suggests a one night assignation with the Duc. This is accepted and the next morning they reach Rousse's fleet. The Master of the Straits attempts to halt their passage to Alba, coming to them in a fierce storm as a face in the waves, and demands a toll. Remembering the story of Thelesis de Mornay, Phèdre pays their passage with one of the Skaldic hearth-songs taught to her by Hedwig Arnildsdottir. The Master of the Straits lets them pass, and they come to the far western shore of Éire, where a delegation is waiting for them; Moiread, Drustan mab Necthana's younger sister, saw their coming in a prophetic dream. Phèdre and her companions are taken to meet the Dalriada. Here Phèdre informs Drustan that the price of marrying Ysandre is helping her to secure her throne from invasion, and that the Master of the Straits will only allow the Albans to cross to Terre d'Ange after Drustan wins his own throne back. The joint Lords of the Dalriada, Grainne and Eamonn, greet the D'Angeline delegation and become part of the discussion on whether or not to go to war. They are eventually reconciled only when Phèdre has sex with Grainne. As Eamonn can not stand Grainne having something he does not, he asks Phèdre why she continues to refuse him. Phèdre says to him that D'Angelines like strong men and not those that are afraid of battle. Eamonn then says he is not weak and will prove his courage by going to battle for Drustan. In the ensuing battle, Phèdre spends it with Necthana and her daughters, with Joscelin as their guard. Unfortunately, this location proves unsafe as they are attacked by a small group and one of Necthana's daughters, Moiread, dies. After the battle is over, Phèdre knights those of Quintilius Rousse's men that survived. That night, she sleeps with Hyacinthe, to comfort him over the sorrow of Moiread's death, and thus comes to understand the view of Naamah expressed by Balm House. After the battle, Rousse tells Phedre that he pledged to his men that all who survived the battle would be knighted and receive the title of "Chevalier". Phèdre keeps Rousse's pledge and, as the Queen's emissary, knights his men. These men see Phèdre as a charm of good luck and make her their personal symbol, calling themselves Phedre's Boys. On their march to the coast, they create a flag for themselves, which they present to her. Phèdre announces that, for those who survive, she will throw open the doors of the Night Court and have a party like none of them have ever seen. On their trek back across the straits to Terre d'Ange, the Master of the Straits accosts them one last time and exacts a terrible price: he needs an apprentice before the ships can leave. To determine who, he gives them a riddle to solve. Phèdre manages to solve it but before she can answer, Hyacinthe uses the dromonde to get the answer, and upon saying it, must take the curse for the rest of his days. That night, Phèdre sleeps with Hyacinthe again as a last tribute to their friendship. They finally reach Terre d'Ange in the midst of battle with the Skaldi. They learn that the D'Angeline army is mostly holed up in the fortress of Troyes-le-Mont. Phèdre comes up with a plan to trap the Skaldi between the walls of the city and an advancing army. In order to break through the Skaldi lines, however, they will need more men. Phèdre achieves the impossible when they accidentally stumble upon Isidore d'Aiglemort's traitorous forces. She tells d’Aiglemort about Melisande's betrayal of him to Waldemar Selig, and that he will be a dead man no matter what. She offers him the choosing of the manner of his death, proposing that he regain his honor and die a hero by fighting for Terre d'Ange. D'Aiglemort vows to help the D'Angelines so that he can spite Melisande and kill Selig himself. They plan to charge the Skaldi army the next morning and aim straight for Selig. Knowing this plan will work most effectively and give the D'Angelines the greatest advantage if those inside the city know of it beforehand, Phèdre decides to make a suicidal attempt to sneak through the Skaldi lines and warn those on the battlements not to fire on Isidore's troops. Knowing that no one will let her sacrifice herself like this, she silently slips out of the Alban-D'Angeline camp in the dead of night. She manages to gain the wall and shout a message to be delivered to Ysandre before the Skaldi drag her down. When Selig learns what she has done, he begins to skin her alive as a message to Ysandre. He is interrupted almost immediately, however, by Joscelin, who, having followed Phèdre from the camp, challenges Selig to the holmgang. As Joscelin realizes that even if he wins the fight they will not escape alive, he begins the terminus (the act where a Cassiline kills himself and his ward at exactly the same time). Upon seeing a rescue force leaving the fort, however, Joscelin quickly changes his mind and kills Phèdre's captor. They are brought inside by Barquiel L'Envers and Ysandre immediately brings a healer to Phèdre. Phèdre then informs her face-to-face that an army of seven thousand is approaching the city and will attack in the morning. She also assures Ysandre that Drustan is alive and crowned. Phèdre watches the next day's battle with Ysandre, looking out from the battlements. She sees Isidore d'Aiglemort, not yet dead of the seventeen wounds he took in battle, charging for Waldemar Selig. He kills Selig and the battle is won, with the defeated Skaldi fleeing back to Skaldia. After the battle, Phèdre is on the fields helping to comfort the wounded and give the wounded and dying water. She finds Isidore and gives him water before witnessing his death. Phèdre spends much of the next few weeks translating for Ysandre and others, as she is one of the few d'Angeline who speak Cruithne or Skaldi, and the only one who can be wholly trusted. Soon after, the Duc de Morhban, brings Melisande Shahrizai, who has been sold out by her kinsmen Marmion and Persia Shahrizai, to the fortress in chains. She is convicted of treason and sentenced to be executed the next morning. Melisande requests for Phèdre to visit her in her cell during the night. In that conversation, she reveals that rather than allowing Selig to rule Terre d'Ange, she had every intention of seizing control of Skaldia. Phèdre leaves her and spends the night alone on the battlements of the city, only to discover later that Melisande somehow escaped her cell before daybreak. Ysandre interrogates everyone, even Phèdre, but then apologizes for casting any suspicion on her. Ysandre clears Phèdre's name entirely, and bestows all of Anafiel Delaunay's estates onto her. At this point, Phèdre officially becomes the Comtesse de Montrève, inheriting Delaunay's mother's estate in Siovale as well. After the wedding of Ysandre and Drustan, Phèdre travels to Montrève with Joscelin. After settling in, Phèdre and Joscelin travel to L'Arène to find Taavi and Danele; they return with Seth ben Yavin, a Yeshuite scholar who agrees to teach Phèdre the Yeshuite language, that she may find the secret to freeing Hyacinthe from his island. Later, a visitor from La Serenissima comes bearing Phèdre's sangoire cloak, which she had lost when Melisande sold her to the Skaldi. This is Melisande's challenge to Phèdre: to find her.
1947039	/m/06847t	States and Social Revolutions	Theda Skocpol			 Before Social Revolutions can occur, she says, the administrative and military power of a state has to break down. Thus pre-revolutionary France, Russia and China had well-established states that stood astride large agrarian economies in which the imperial state and the landed upper classes partnered in the control and exploitation of the peasantry but monarchy in each country faced an extraordinary dilemma in dealing with foreign power intrusion on the one hand and resistance to raising resources by politically powerful dominant domestic classes on the other. She describes the processes by which the centralized administrative and military machinery disintegrated in these countries, which made class relations vulnerable to assaults from below.
1949025	/m/0687yr	The Antiquary	Walter Scott	1816	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At the opening of the story, Lovel meets Oldbuck while taking a coach from Edinburgh. Oldbuck, interested as he is in antiquities, has with him Gordon's Itinerarium, a book about Roman ruins. The book interests Lovel, to the surprise of Oldbuck and by their shared interest the two become friends. Oldbuck invites Lovel to come to Monkbarns and takes the opportunity of a willing listener to divulge his ancient knowledge. In the process of which, Oldbuck shows Lovel a plot of land he purchased at great personal cost which bears the inscription "A.D.L.L", which Oldbuck takes to mean "Agricola Dicavit Libens Lubens". Edie Ochiltree shows up to dispute the antiquary's history, in one of the more amusing scenes of the story (see image at left). Oldbuck decides to introduce Lovel to his good friend, Sir Arthur Wardour. When Sir Arthur arrives, Lovel meets Arthur's daughter, Isabella and the two realize they have seen each other before. Because Lovel is illegitimate, she knows her father would not approve of a marriage between them. When she sees Lovel standing in the road waiting to talk to her, she convinces her father to take the long way home, walking down to the beach. Luckily, Edie Ochiltree, having the insight that someone may be trapped on the beach not knowing that the tide was coming in, finds the Wardours and helps them escape the rising waters. Then, Lovel appears and gets them to relative safety, huddling on the side of a rocky cliff. Finally, Oldbuck arranges a team with a lift system to pull the four up over the cliff to safety. A while later, Oldbuck takes Lovel, the Wardours, his niece and nephew, Douster-swivel and a priest to the ancient ruins of Saint Ruth on Sir Arthur's property. While exploring the property, they discuss an ancient treasure that they believe to be buried at the ruins. Captain M'Intyre dominates Isabella's attention, which she leaves in favor of Lovel's to the dismay of M'Intyre. M'Intyre, angered at this slight, discovers that Lovel is in the military, but realizes he knows of no one named Lovel in his division and calls him out upon the topic. They agree to a duel and return to the scene to fight for their individual honor. Lovel's bullet strikes best and leaves M'Intyre bleeding on the ground, when Lovel flees with Edie to avoid a potential arrest. In their hiding, Edie and Lovel see Douster-swivel and Sir Arthur return to the ruins, looking for treasure. They see Douster-swivel attempting to convince Sir Arthur of his magical abilities to find gold and he does conveniently find a small bag under a stone. After they leave, Lovel boards a military ship and departs. Oldbuck, understanding Douster-swivel's knavery, confronts him about his cons and takes Sir Arthur back to the ruins to look for treasure without Douster-swivel's magical intervention. Digging further under the same stone under which Douster-swivel had previously found treasure, they discover a chest full of silver, which Sir Arthur promptly takes back home. Edie hangs behind and whispers for Douster-swivel to join him. Then, showing the con artist the lid to the chest, with the phrase "Search 1" written on it. Edie convinces the German mage that this phrase means there is a second chest nearby, this time full of gold. They return at night and dig, but cannot find another chest. Just as Douster-swivel is starting to realize that Edie is mocking him, Steenie Mucklebackit jumps from the shadows and knocks Douster-swivel unconscious. Steenie and Edie flee to Steenie's house, where Steenie shows him Douster-swivel's pocketbook, accidentally picked up during the excitement. Edie makes him promise to return the pocketbook and then leaves. Alas, Steenie is not long for this world and dies in a fishing accident the next day. As the family is in mourning, Elspeth, Steenie's grandmother, comes out of a long senility to tell Edie to take a ring and a message to Lord Glenallan. Oldbuck, whose land the Mucklebackits occupy, comes to help carry the casket and pay his respects, to the awe and thanks of the family. Edie meets Lord Glenallan and gives him the ring and tells him to go visit Elspeth. Glenallan does and learns from her his own history. He had married a woman named Eveline Neville, who his mother helped convince was his sister after she had already become pregnant. Eveline attempts to commit suicide by jumping into the sea. She is taken from the water barely alive and dies after giving birth. The child is taken by another maid named Theresa and is raised by Glenallen's younger brother as his own illegitimate son. Glenallen does not know this. Glenallan never recovers from believing that he committed a violation of nature. Elspeth tells him that Eveline was not his sister and that his marriage with her was perfectly legitimate. It relieves his mind and he desires to find his son. Meanwhile, Edie is arrested for attacking Douster-swivel. Oldbuck proves that Douster-swivel is merely a thief and frees Edie, who immediately goes upon a mission. Oldbuck then receives word that Sir Arthur, who has been heavily in debt, is under arrest and has the valuables of his home being taken. Edie returns with money sent by Wardour's son and an order to stop the arrest. Finally, a mistake causes the national warning system—a series of towers with fires that can be lit to warn of invasion—to be lit and everyone believes the French are invading. Oldbuck dons his sword and travels to town to help with defence along with his nephew, who promptly assumes the role of a commander. As they prepare for the defence, Lord Glenallan comes in with his highland troops. Finally, Lovel and Captain Wardour arrive to take command of the defence and it is revealed that Lovel is actually Major Neville. Further, Oldbuck realizes that Major Neville is Glenallan's son and the two are reunited. Major Neville becomes the next Lord Glenallen and is now free to marry Isabella Wardour.
1949104	/m/06883g	The Gun Seller	Hugh Laurie		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The Gun Seller tells the story of retired Army officer Thomas Lang, who lives a somewhat hand-to-mouth existence in London, his attention focused mainly on drinking whisky and driving his motorcycle. His income stems from a variety of bodyguard, strong-arm and mercenary jobs he undertakes, utilizing the skills he learned and contacts he made during his time in the Army. After being approached in Amsterdam by a man asking him to assassinate American businessman Alexander Woolf, Lang attempts to warn the intended victim at his Belgravia flat, finding Woolf gone and instead clashing with (and incapacitating) a mercenary, then encountering Woolf's daughter Sarah. Afterward Lang finds himself under intense scrutiny from both the Ministry of Defence and the Central Intelligence Agency, who claim Woolf is an international drug smuggler currently under investigation. Intrigued by the sudden interest of two government agencies, Lang attempts to track down the man who approached him in Amsterdam, unexpectedly finding him in London, and even more unexpectedly discovering that the man is Alexander Woolf himself. Eventually Woolf and his daughter agree to meet Lang at dinner and answer his questions. The elder Woolf explains that he tried to hire Lang as a hitman to see if he was a "good man", and admits he is under investigation, but not for selling drugs. Rather, Woolf is of interest because of what he knows about a next-generation light attack helicopter. More disturbingly, Woolf and Sarah claim that a conspiracy is under way to stage a terrorist attack and subsequently promote the light helicopter by sending one in to eliminate the terrorists. Lang is skeptical, but begins to believe the story after he is kidnapped and interrogated about Woolf. He frees himself, finding a heavily tortured Alexander Woolf in a nearby room. Woolf is killed shortly thereafter as Lang makes his escape, killing his captors in the process. With Sarah missing and now certain the conspiracy is real, Lang attempts to determine the main conspirators, aided by a friend of Sarah's named Ronnie. After some investigating he centers on a CIA Deputy Director named Barnes, who (forcibly) takes him to meet the head conspirator: billionaire Naimh Murdah. Murdah, owner of the company that manufactures the helicopter, openly admits to the plot and plainly states that Lang will be helping to carry out the terrorist attack, backing up his declaration with an open and explicit threat on Sarah's life. To illustrate his point, Murdah casually kills a CIA agent who accompanied Lang and Barnes to his home. Lang is placed within a small terrorist group called the Sword of Justice as a Minnesotan named Ricky, officially in order to gather intelligence and minimize casualties. A Dutch politician is seemingly shot dead by Lang in Switzerland as a warm up activity by the Sword of Justice, although it was a set-up and the politician was briefed and was wearing body armour. During a brief return to London Lang encounters Sarah and confronts her regarding pictures, provided to him by his friend and handler Solomon, showing Sarah and Barnes together. Sarah admits to being a part of the conspiracy, but swears her father's death was never part of the arrangement. Lang and Sword of Justice arrive in Casablanca and successfully take control of the American embassy there, holding a number of hostages. Barnes, Murdah, Sarah, and a number of other conspirators arrive in Casablanca to direct Lang and ensure the success of the plot. Lang covertly leaves the Embassy as directed, but as Murdah is talking to him Lang pulls a gun, slipped to him by Sarah as part of a plan they made in London. Lang forces Murdah into the Embassy at gunpoint and handcuffs him to a fire escape on the roof, then orders him to call off the helicopter attack. Murdah refuses, certain the attack will not come since he is in the line of fire, but Lang contends the greed of the remaining conspirators will ensure the attack goes as planned. Just as Lang predicted, the helicopter attacks, killing one of the terrorists, but before it can make another pass Lang shoots it down with a Javelin missile he smuggled into the embassy earlier. Footage of the helicopter's attack and destruction is shown worldwide via news networks covering the siege, ruining any chance of any military investing in the helicopter. Lang releases a statement (via the terrorists) to CNN outlining the conspiracy, ensuring that the plot is thwarted. The Ministry of Defence flies a tired Lang and Solomon back to England. After landing Lang is greeted by Ronnie, who managed to force the Ministry to allow her to ride with him from the airport, and makes it quite clear she is happy to see him.
1949492	/m/06892n	Tokyo Doesn't Love Us Anymore	Ray Loriga			 It is a first-person account of a travelling drug salesman. He goes to different places around the world, peddling a memory erasing drug. Various minor characters act as outlets for the authors musings on memory. Told through a mental haze of pretty much every drug ever invented and smattered with promiscuous sexual encounters of all varieties, the protagonist eventually begins sampling his own product. Pages of deja vu and disjointed thought lead him to meet with the inventor of the drug in Arizona. The author is an epileptic and took his seizures and temporary memory loss as part of his inspiration for the book. The memory loss also gives him an interesting transitional device for forwarding the plot without having to get caught up in details he wishes to omit.
1949735	/m/0689q5	The Eagle of the Ninth	Rosemary Sutcliff	1954	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Discharged because of a battle wound, a young Roman officer Marcus Flavius Aquila tries to discover the truth about the disappearance of his father's legion in northern Britain. Disguised as a Greek oculist and travelling beyond Hadrian's Wall with his freed ex-slave, Esca, Marcus finds that a demoralised and mutinous Ninth Legion was annihilated by a great rising of the northern tribes. In part, this disgrace was redeemed through a heroic last stand by a small remnant (including Marcus's father) around the legion's eagle standard. Marcus's hope of seeing the lost legion re-established is dashed, but he is able to bring back the bronze eagle so that it can no longer serve as a symbol of Roman defeat — and thus will no longer be a danger to the frontier's security.
1949804	/m/0689wx	The Lantern Bearers	Rosemary Sutcliff	1959-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is set during the turbulent years following the withdrawal of the last Roman troops from Britain. The land is reeling under the onslaught of Saxon raiders, the Pict War and a slave revolt. Vortigern, the British-Celtic chieftain, has invited Hengest the Saxon and his tribe to fight the Picts, and relies on Roman soldiers to hold the Saxons in check. Rome is increasingly under threat from the barbarian hordes surrounding it on all sides and cannot afford to deal with the problems of a distant province. 18 year-old Aquila, descendent of Marcus Flavius Aquila, is a Decurion of Roman cavalry, serving in the Auxiliary legion at Rutupiae. The story begins when Aquila is home on leave at the family farm in the Downs, with his blind father Flavian, younger sister Flavia and trusted servants who have served his family for years. The few remaining Romans, including Aquila's father Flavian, look upon Ambrosius Aurelianus, the descendent of a Welsh princess and a Roman soldier, as the last hope of Britain. Aquila is hastily recalled to Rutupiae where he is informed that all Roman troops will be withdrawing from Britain in three days on orders from Rome. Caught by surprise, Aquila struggles between loyalty to his duty and attachment with his homeland. At the last minute, he decides that he belongs to Britain and not Rome and so deserts the army. As the last of the legions sail away, he lights the beacon at Rutupiae for the last time. He returns home, only to have the farm attacked by a raiding party of Saxons two days later. In the skirmish, Aquila kills the leader of the band but is soon overpowered by the many assailants. He is forced to watch while a tall blond giant carries away Flavia forcibly. The raiders kill everyone else on the farm and burn down everything. Aquila is left tied to a tree for the wolves as revenge for killing the Saxon. The Saxons are followed by a band of Jutish raiders, who find Aquila and take him to Jutland. Aquila spends nearly 3 years as a slave, during which time he learns that the Saxons who murdered his family and destroyed his home were no chance band of raiders but sent there by Hengest as revenge on Flavian and others who had dared to write to Consul Aetius in Rome pleading for help against Vortigern and the Saxons. Flavian had been betrayed by a bird-catcher who used to carry messages between the Roman plotters. Often tormented by visions of his sister screaming for help, Aquila bides his time for the day he can return, find his sister and take revenge on the bird-catcher. Bad harvests force the Jutes to accept Hengest's invitation to settle in Britain. Aquila sails with them and returns to Britain only to find Rutupiae forsaken and devastated. With the Romans gone and Vortigern too powerless to resist, Hengest has free run of the land. Aquila is plotting his escape from the Saxon camp when he chances upon Flavia, who is now married to the man who abducted her and has a year-old child by him. She helps him escape but refuses to come with him, telling him that she cannot leave her husband and child. Devastated by her apparent betrayal, Aquila leaves alone and bitter. He stumbles upon a cheerful bee-keeping monk, Brother Ninnias, who lives by himself in a forest, the lone survivor of a Saxon raid upon his abbey. Brother Ninnias cuts away the thrall-ring around Aquila's neck and gives him food and shelter. During his stay with the monk, Aquila learns that the bird-catcher had betrayed his father only after being tortured by the Saxons and had died soon after. Denied his revenge as well as his sister, Aquila realises he no longer has a purpose in life. Brother Ninnias advises him to take up his father Flavian's cause and offer his service to the Prince of Britain, Ambrosius Aurelianius. Aquila travels to Dynas Ffaraon, Ambrosius's stronghold in the Welsh mountains and is soon accepted into the prince's Inner Companions. But past hurt and bitterness makes him wary of people and he soon begins to be called 'Lone Wolf'. Ambrosius tries to unite the people of Britain - Celts and Romans alike - to fight the Saxons. He tells Aquila to marry one of the two daughters of Cradoc, a Celtic chieftain whose life Aquila had once saved during battle, as an alliance to unite the two peoples and Aquila chooses younger spirited Ness over the beautiful elder sister, Rhyanidd. At first Aquila is quite indifferent to Ness and she resents him for taking her away from her home and her people. As years pass by, Aquila learns to let go of his hurt and open up to others, especially after the birth of his son who he names Flavian in his father's memory. In the years of skirmishes, uneasy truce and battles that follow, Ambrosius finally scores a decisive victory over the Saxons with the help of Artos (Arthur), his nephew, and Aquila. During the fight, Aquila sees a young dark-haired boy resembling his sister. He tries to dismiss it as his imagination but comes upon the boy lying unconscious on the road and realises that it is indeed Flavia's son. With Brother Ninnias' help, he tends to the boy's injuries, hides him from British soldiers and sends him back to his mother with a message for her. Later Aquila publicly confesses his deed to Ambrosius on the night of the banquet celebrating Ambrosius' ascension as the High King of Britain. Ambrosius listens to the whole story and forgives him. Aquila finally feels free and content even though he knows that the respite he and his people have found is only temporary and they cannot hold off the invaders from Britain forever.
1952851	/m/068jmb	American Empire: Blood and Iron	Harry Turtledove	2001-07-31	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The victorious United States of America stands over the fallen Confederate States of America, victim to its own nationalist-ego and myth after three years of bloody trench fighting. In the CSA, a former soldier named Jake Featherston joins the Freedom Party and uses it as his platform for beginning to take over the Confederate government and exact revenge on both the USA and the groups he perceives as having stabbed the CSA in the back: blacks, the Southern aristocracy, and the Whig Party. He soon takes over as leader of the Party and unleashes angry veterans on his enemies. He almost becomes president in 1921, but setbacks at the polls and elsewhere force him and the Party to wait longer to accomplish their ruthless goals. The USA's conservative government, meanwhile, had been voted out of office by the party of the masses: the Socialists, electing President Upton Sinclair and Vice President Hosea Blackford, who marries Congresswoman Flora Hamburger. Ignoring the looming threat of the south, the Socialists focus on improving the lives of its citizenry&nbsp;— at the cost of trimming down its defenses and the military. The assassination of the Confederate president Wade Hampton V, a Whig, by Freedom party member Grady Calkins led to a mass exodus of Freedom Party members and evoked the pity of the USA's socialist administration. The USA ended Confederate reparations causing the revival of the CSA's currency, which had suffered from crippling inflation since the conclusion of the Great War. Popular distrust in the Freedom Party and the newfound strength of Confederate paper money led to support for the newly appointed Whig president Burton Mitchel. The Socialists also have no better notion about what to do with the blacks in North America, and ignore the plight of those in the Confederacy.
1954364	/m/068n06	Dirty White Boys	Stephen Hunter	1995-11	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The opening scene for Dirty White Boys sets the tone for the rest of the novel with main antagonist Lamar Pye using brutal violence to avoid being raped by a giant black inmate in the showers at McAlester State Penitentiary where he is a "Prince" (a ranking prisoner) among the Dirty White Boys, the white gang element of the prisoner population. Lamar is a physically powerful, charismatic, aggressive and intelligent "alpha male" in his late 30s. The rape was ordered in revenge for a perceived slight made by Lamar's retarded, behemoth cousin Odell against the white gang chief, Lamar having been "sold" to the black inmate gang. Knowing that revenge in some form is certain if he remains in the prison Lamar uses his wits and unrestrained capacity for violence to escape from "the Mac", taking along his cousin and their cell mate Richard Peed, a failed artist who is at once a timid victim yet imprisoned for a gruesome crime of violence against his mother. Bud Pewtie the other main protagonist is introduced as a state trooper called in to participate in the search for the escaped criminals. Pewtie at first seems to be a responsible father of two teenage boys but it quickly emerges that he is having an affair with the young wife of his partner Ted, a confused young man with unarticulated doubts about his role as a trooper. The troopers are among others briefed on the escape by the head of the search effort an embittered alcoholic Lieutenant called C. D. Henderson (Earl Swagger's subordinate from Hot Springs) who was once a star law enforcement officer. The search for the convicts leads the troopers to the remote farmhouse of an old couple where the Pye's and their passenger Richard have taken refuge and armed themselves with the man's guns. The ensuing ambush sees Pewtie perform well under fire but his partner caves under assault, Pewtie is severely wounded and watches as Lamar executes his helpless partner and is himself left for dead after being shot by Lamar. The Pyes escape but Pewtie survives having been unknowingly shot by Lamar with lightweight bird hunting shot. The Pyes flee to the remote house of a mentally ill young woman, Ruta Beth Tull, who has been writing confused letters to Richard about their "mystic connection". Tull it later emerges murdered her own parents as a juvenile and sees this as her link to Richard. Tull immediately takes to Lamar and the group forms into a twisted family unit as the search for them loses momentum. Pewtie returns to the house where he was ambushed to thank the owner, who also survived being kidnapped by Lamar and raised the alarm about the shootout. While at the house he is given pictures of Lions drawn by Richard, and overlooked by investigators, as Richard's value to Lamar rests on his ability to draw pictures as Lamar orders him to; Lamar being amused and intrigued by the artist's ability. Pewtie also returns to his affair with his dead partner's wife Holly and frustrations at the conflicting demands of his newfound romance and his family life continue to build. Lamar and his "family" carry out a bloody robbery of a restaurant in a small Texas town from which Lamar narrowly escapes with his life. The bloodshed of the robbery intensifies the manhunt for Lamar and Pewtie is one of the officers who drops by the scene of the crime. There he finds more pictures of Lions drawn by Richard at the restaurant. He is questioned by a suspicious LT Henderson about his find but does not explain it or the earlier pictures. Lamar now reveals to his family that Richard has in fact been working on the design for a tattoo and they begin a search for a top quality tattoo artist to carry out the work and finding Jimmy Ky outside a small town. After discussing the drawings with a local art teacher Bud also begins to suspect that Lamar is working on a tattoo, and obtains information about Jimmy Ky. The stage is now set for the second bloody confrontation between Bud Pewtie and Lamar. Pewtie literally stumbles in as Lamar is being tattooed and watched over by Odell. A gunfight ensues which ends with Pewtie killing Odell with the last shot in his gun (the last of three he was carrying) and blasting two fingers off Lamar's left hand. Pewtie himself is once again badly injured and Lamar escapes after the intervention of Richard and Ruta. As Bud struggles with his choices Lamar plots a terrible revenge for the death of his cousin. The stage is set for the final confrontation between Pewtie and Lamar. Pewtie fails at first to shoot Lamar with a rifle, his bullet deflected just enough by an unseen glass door to miss his intended target and wound Ruta. The firefight leads to Lamar breaking out of a window using Holly as a shield as running across the fields towards a patch of trees with Pewtie chasing. Holly breaks away from Lamar and runs back towards the house leaving Bud to face Lamar. Bud again confirms to Holly that they are through. Lamar ambushes Bud in the patch of trees but fails to shoot him with his final bullet; the two men begin a desperate hand-to-hand struggle for Bud's gun, in which the physically stronger Lamar is sure to win. As the men fight, Pewtie deperately manages to fire a shot, which hideously wounds Lamar. The fight finishes as Bud uses his back-up gun to shoot Lamar twice in the head. As the medics and SWAT teams arrive all seems to be settled, but Richard is still alive and decides he should help Lamar. He finds Bud near a creek with the just-arrived Henderson. Both of the policemen talk quietly to Richard, trying to convince him to drop his gun and telling him that they know he was not responsible for the crimes committed by the Pyes. Richard responds by firing at Bud with the gun that Lamar took from Pewtie after their first confrontation at the old couples' farmhouse. Henderson moves in front of Bud and takes the brunt of the bullet's damage, though the bullet hits Pewtie after going through Henderson. Bud is severely injured but lives as Henderson dies. The final scene is of a recovered Richard (having been shot by other policemen after firing) being transferred back to "the Mac" where he finds his previous fear of the prison and its brutal inmates is gone and he is a feared member of the criminal community.
1954495	/m/068nb1	The Far Arena			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Lew McCardle is a geologist working for Houghton Oil, which has reason to believe that there is oil in the far north. While running a test drill, the machine accidentally uncovers the frozen body of a man. Lew is given charge of the body, and he immediately calls his friend Semyon Petrovitch, who is a Soviet scientist. Petrovitch, who specializes in cryonics (but not cryogenics, as he explains) immediately takes the body to be revived, explaining that it is easier to treat such a case as alive until it is proven that life cannot be restored. The blood is pumped from the body, and various treatments are administered until, amazingly, it does come back to life. It spends the next fifteen days in a deep sleep, muttering to itself. The mutterings are recorded, but no-one can figure out the language. Finally, Lew McCardle, who has eight years of Latin, sends for a Catholic nun, who joins him and Petrovitch on their quest to sort out the mysteries of the body.
1955111	/m/068p_h	The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds	Paul Zindel			 The play revolves around the dysfunctional family consisting of single mother Beatrice and her two daughters, Ruth and Tillie, who try to cope with their abysmal status in life. The play is a lyrical drama, reminiscent of Tennessee Williams' style. Shy Matilda "Tillie" Hunsdorfer prepares her experiment, involving marigolds raised from seeds exposed to radioactivity, for the science fair. She is, however, constantly thwarted by her mother Beatrice, who is self-centered and abusive, and by her extroverted and unstable sister Ruth, who submits to her mother's will. Over the course of the play, Beatrice constantly tries to stamp out any opportunities Tillie has of succeeding, due to her own lack of success in life. As the play progresses, the paths of the three characters diverge: Tillie wins the science fair through perseverance; Ruth attempts to stand up to her mother but has a nervous collapse at the end of the play, and Beatrice—driven to the verge of insanity by her deep-seated enmity towards everyone—kills the girls' pet rabbit Peter and ends up wallowing in her own perceived insignificance. Despite this, Tillie (who is much like her project's deformed but beautiful and hardy marigolds) secretly continues to believe that everyone is valuable.
1959106	/m/06915w	The Seven Storey Mountain	Thomas Merton	1948-10-11	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The Seven Storey Mountain is an autobiography which reflects on the life of Thomas Merton and his quest for his faith in God leading to his conversion to Roman Catholicism at age 23. Subsequently he left behind a promising literary career and resigned as a teacher of English literature at St. Bonaventure College in Olean, New York, and entered The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in rural Kentucky on December 10, 1941, a moment which he described in the book: "...So Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me, and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom." Later, Dom Frederic Dunne, the abbot at the abbey, who had received him as novice, suggested that Merton write out his life story, which he reluctantly began, but once he did, it started "pouring out". Soon he was filling up his journals with the work which led to the book which TIME later ascribed for having, "...redefined the image of monasticism and made the concept of saintliness accessible to moderns." In Merton's journals, the first entry mentioning the project is dated March 1, 1946, but many scholars suspect he started writing it earlier than that because the draft (more than 600 pages) reached Naomi Burton Stone by October 21, 1946. In late 1946, the partly approved text of The Seven Storey Mountain was sent to Naomi Burton, his agent at Curtis Brown literary agency, who then forwarded it to the noted book editor, Robert Giroux at Harcourt Brace publishers. Giroux read it overnight, and the next day phoned Naomi with an offer, who accepted it on the monastery's behalf. With Merton having taken a vow of poverty, all the royalties were to go to the abbey community. Though soon a trouble arose, when an elderly censor from another abbey objected to Merton's colloquial prose style, which he found inappropriate for a monk. Merton appealed (in French) to the Abbot General in France, who concluded that an author's style was a personal matter, and subsequently the local censor also reversed his opinion, paving way for book's publication. Edward Rice, a close friend of Merton's since their college days together at Columbia, suggests a different story behind the censorship issues. Rice believes the censor's comments did have an effect on the book. The censors were not primary concerned with Merton's prose style, but rather the content of his thoughts in the autobiography. It was "too frank" for the public to handle. What was published was a "castrated" version of the original manuscript. At the time Rice published his opinion, he was unable to provide any proof, however, since then early drafts of the autobiography have surfaced and prove that parts of the manuscript were either deleted or changed. In the introduction to the 50th anniversary copy of the autobiography, Giroux acknowledges these changes and provides the original first paragraph of Merton's autobiography. Originally, it began "When a man is conceived, when a human nature comes into being as an individual, concrete, subsisting thing, a life, a person, then God's image is minted into the world. A free, vital, self-moving entity, a spirit informing flesh, a complex of energies ready to be set into fruitful motion begins to flame with love, without which no spirit can exist..." The published autobiography begins with "On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French Mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world." In the summer of 1948, advance proofs were sent to Evelyn Waugh, Clare Boothe Luce, Graham Greene and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. All responded with compliments and quotations which were used on the book jacket and in some advertisements and the first printing run was increased from 5,000 to 12,500. Thus the book was out in October 1948 and by December it had sold 31,028 copies was declared a bestseller by TIME. The New York Times, however, initially refused to put it on the weekly Best Sellers list, on the grounds that it was "a religious book". In response, Harcourt Brace placed a large advertisement in the New York Times calling attention to the newspaper's decision. The following week, The Seven Storey Mountain appeared in the bestseller's list, where it remained for almost a year.
1959391	/m/0691_s	England, Their England	A. G. Macdonell	1933-12	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Set in 1920s England, the book is written as if a travel memoir by a young Scotsman who had been invalided away from the Western Front, "Donald Cameron", whose father's will forces him to reside in England. There he writes for a series of London newspapers, before being commissioned by a Welshman to write a book about the English from the view of a foreigner. Taking to the country and provincial cities, Donald spends his time doing research for a book on the English by consorting with journalists and minor poets, attending a country house weekend, serving as private secretary to a Member of Parliament, attending the League of Nations, and playing village cricket. The village cricket match is the most celebrated episode in the novel, and a reason cited for its enduring appeal. An important character is Mr Hodge; a caricature of Sir John Squire (poet and editor of the London Mercury) while the cricket team described in the book’s most famous chapter is a representation of Sir John’s Cricket Club – the Invalids - which survives today. The book ends in the ancient city of Winchester, where MacDonnell had gone to school.
1963048	/m/06995g	Bloom	Wil McCarthy	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bloom is set in the year 2106, in a world where self-replicating nanomachines called "Mycora" have consumed Earth and other planets of the inner solar system, forcing humankind to eke out a bleak living in the asteroids and Galilean moons. Two groups of humanity exist—The Immunity which use "ladderdown" technology and augmented reality and lives on the moons of Jupiter, and The Gladholders which use human intelligence amplification and artificial intelligence and live in the asteroid belt. The story begins on Ganymede with an article about a “bloom”, or outbreak of Mycora, that serves to emphasize the danger and horror of this technogenic life (TGL). The author of said story, Strasheim, is also the main character. He is first seen in the office of Lottick, a major public figure, who has called him there for an unknown purpose. Lottick tells Strasheim that the Mycora have apparently been stealing human gene sequences and may develop resistance to the coldness of the outer system, which incites concern. In the short term, a mission to drop some TGL detectors onto Mars' and the Earth's polar icecaps has been approved and Lottick asks Strasheim to go along as a reporter. In the long term, a starship is being constructed to try to beat the Mycora to colonizing other star systems. Strasheim agrees and soon after goes to meet the other crew-members and inspect the ship, which is called the Louis Pasteur which is technologically camouflaged to protect the crew against Mycora. Unfortunately, an unnamed man releases a Mycora bloom in the hangar, killing one crew-member and forcing the others to launch the Pasteur three weeks earlier than planned and without adequate supplies. Because of their forced launch, the Pasteur docks at Saint Helier, a medium-sized Floral asteroid to pick up supplies. While there, they are surprised multiple times, but what shocks them most is that the asteroid's inhabitants have apparently discovered human life on Venus, co-existing with the mycora. Shaken, the crew continues on their journey, but become aware that one of the crew is sabotaging the mission. The saboteur turns out to be a woman named Baucum, to whom Strasheim had formed a strong sexual attraction. She is secretly a member of the Temples of Transcendent Evolution, a spiritual group that believes the Mycora to be divine and invests large sums of money into researching them. After being found out, Baucum ruptures a storage bag inside herself that had been carrying spores of Mycora. Terrified, Strasheim shoves her out of an airlock before the Mycora can devour him and the rest of the crew too. Later, it is revealed that the mission has a somewhat more violent purpose than the crew was led to believe. The detectors that they are supposed to drop on Mars' and the Earth’s surface are designed in such a way that they can generate enough heat to rid Mars and the Earth of most Mycora. The Louis Pasteur is being followed by an armada of Temples ships, seemingly intent on destroying them at any cost. Strasheim realizes that their "cascade fusion" technology could be used to initiate a massive wave of solar flares that would wipe out most Mycoran life in the inner solar system. For this reason, the Temples ships are willing to risk their own destruction to stop the Louis Pasteur. But the true purpose of the mission to Earth isn’t all the Temples were right about, as at the climax of the story, the Mycora is discovered to be sapient and without ill-will toward humans. Communication is brief but paradigm-shattering. An ambassador explains that nearly every person consumed on Earth or on the evacuation out-system was incorporated into the Mycosystem and are still alive, their consciousness and intelligence significantly upgraded, "Unpacked". The crew is given information on how to mark areas as off-limits to the Mycosystem. They are told that humanity is, "...Utterly free. Free to conduct your lives in the classical manner, to escape this solar system, to populate the stars. Free to Unpack, if you choose." The book ends almost thirteen years later. The captain of the Pasteur has been diagnosed with a terminal disease and requests that Strasheim (now a successful media magnate) be his witness as he joins the Mycora and transcends.
1964153	/m/069dtc	The Haunting of Hill House	Shirley Jackson	1959	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Hill House is an eighty-year-old mansion built by a man named Hugh Crain. The story concerns four main characters: Dr. John Montague, an investigator of the supernatural; Eleanor Vance, a shy young woman who resents having lived as a recluse caring for her demanding invalid mother; Theodora, a flamboyant, bohemian, possibly lesbian artist; and Luke Sanderson, the young heir to Hill House, who is host to the others. Dr. Montague hopes to find scientific evidence of the existence of the supernatural. He rents Hill House for a summer and invites as his guests several people whom he has chosen because of their past experience with paranormal events. Of these, only Eleanor and Theodora accept. Eleanor travels to the house, where she and Theodora will live in isolation with Montague and Luke. Hill House has two caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, who refuse to stay near the house at night. The blunt and single-minded Mrs. Dudley is a source of some comic relief. The four overnight visitors begin to form friendships as Dr. Montague explains the building’s history, which encompasses suicide and other violent deaths. All four of the inhabitants begin to experience strange events while in the house, including sounds and unseen spirits roaming the halls at night, strange writing on the walls and other unexplained events. Eleanor tends to experience phenomena to which the others are oblivious. At the same time, Eleanor may be losing touch with reality, and the narrative implies that at least some of what Eleanor witnesses may be products of her imagination. Another implied possibility is that Eleanor possesses a subconscious telekinetic ability which is itself the cause of many of the disturbances experienced by her and other members of the investigative team (which might indicate there is no ghost in the house at all). This possibility is suggested especially by references early in the novel to Eleanor's childhood memories about episodes of poltergeist-like phenomena that seemed to involve mainly her. Later in the novel, the bossy and arrogant Mrs. Montague and her companion Arthur Parker, the headmaster of a boys’ school, arrive to spend a weekend at Hill House and to help investigate it. They, too, are interested in the supernatural, including séances and spirit writing. Ironically, and unlike the other four characters, they don't experience anything supernatural, although some of Mrs. Montague’s alleged spirit writings seem to communicate with Eleanor. Mrs. Montague's lack of social skills provides another source of comic relief in the novel. Many of the hauntings that occur throughout the book are described only vaguely, or else are partly hidden from the characters themselves. Eleanor and Theodora are in a bedroom with an unseen force trying the door, and Eleanor believes after the fact that the hand she was holding in the darkness was not Theodora’s. In one episode, as Theodora and Eleanor walk outside Hill House at night, Theodora looks behind them and screams in fear for Eleanor to run, though the book never explains what Theodora sees. By this point in the book it is becoming clear to the characters that the house is beginning to possess Eleanor. Fearing for her safety, Dr. Montague declares that she must leave. However, Eleanor regards the house as her home, and resists. The others have to practically force her into her car, but she is then killed when her car crashes into a large oak tree on the property. The reader is left uncertain whether Eleanor was simply an emotionally disturbed woman who has committed suicide, or whether her death at Hill House has a supernatural significance.
1965688	/m/069jv5	Man's Fate	André Malraux		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel occurs during a 22 day period mostly in Shanghai, China, and concerns mainly the socialist insurrectionists and people involved. The four protagonists are Ch’en Ta Erh (whose name is spelled Tchen in the French version of the book), Kyoshi ("Kyo") Gisors, the Soviet emissary Katow, and Baron De Clappique. Their individual plights are intertwined throughout the book. Chen Ta Erh is sent to assassinate an authority, succeeds, and is later killed in a failed suicide bombing attempt on Chiang Kaishek. After the assassination, he becomes governed by fatality and desires simply to kill, thereby fulfill his duty as a terrorist, a duty which controls his life. This is largely the result of being so close to death since assassinating a man. He is so haunted by death and his powerlessness over inevitability that he wishes to die, just to end his torment. Kyo Gisors is the commander of the revolt and believes that every person should choose his own meaning, not be governed by any external forces. He spends most of the story trying to keep power in the hands of the workers rather than the Kuomintang army and resolving a conflict between him and his wife, May. He is eventually captured and, in a final act of self-determination, chooses to take his own life with cyanide. Katow had faced execution once before, during the Russian Civil War and was saved at the last moment, which gives him a feeling of psychological immunity. After witnessing Kyo's death, he watches with a kind of calm detachment as his fellow revolutionaries are taken out one by one, to be thrown alive into the chamber of a steam locomotive waiting outside, intending, when his turn comes, to use his own cyanide capsule. But hearing two young Chinese activists talk with trembling fear of being burned alive, he gives them the cyanide (there is only enough for two), himself being left to face the more fearsome death. He thus dies in an act of self-sacrifice and solidarity with weaker comrades. Baron De Clappique is a French merchant, smuggler, and obsessive gambler. He helps Kyo get a shipment of guns ended and is later told that Kyo will be killed unless he leaves the city in 48 hours he will be killed. On the way to warn Kyo, he gets involved with gambling and cannot stop. He considers gambling "suicide without dying". Clappique is very good-humored and always cheerful all the time but suffers inwardly. He later escapes the city dressed as a sailor. *Ch'en Ta Erh &ndash; the assassin. Protagonist. *Kyo Gisors &ndash; the leader of the revolt. Protagonist. *Baron De Clappique &ndash; a French merchant, smuggler, and obsessive gambler. Protagonist. *Old Gisors &ndash; Kyo's father, one-time Professor of Sociology at the University of Peking, and an opium addict, acts as a guide for Kyo and Ch’en *May Gisors &ndash; Kyo's wife and a German doctor, born in Shanghai *Katow &ndash; A Russian, one of the organizers of the insurrection, he is burned alive for treason. *Hemmelrich &ndash; A Belgian phonograph-dealer. *Yu Hsuan &ndash; His partner. *Kama &ndash; A Japanese painter, Old Gisors' brother-in-law. *Ferral &ndash; President of the French Chamber of Commerce and head of the France-Asiatic Consortium. He struggles with his relationship with Valerie because he only wishes to possess her as an object. *Valerie &ndash; Ferral's girlfriend. *Konig &ndash; Chief of Chiang Kaishek's Police. *Suan &ndash; Young Chinese terrorist who helped Ch’en, later arrested in the same attack in which Ch'en was killed. *Pei &ndash; Also helped Ch’en.
1966059	/m/069knb	Bellarion the Fortunate	Rafael Sabatini	1926	{"/m/02w06c6": "Historical romance", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The narrative is presented as the author's compilation of various histories of Bellarion's life, in particular that of one Fra Serafino of Imola. Bellarion, abandoned as a child and raised in an abbey, departs as a young man with a letter of introduction from the respected abbot, intending to study in Pavia. He meets and travels with a Franciscan friar, but discovers that someone has robbed him of his money and letter. Upon arriving in Casale, the capital of Montferrat, he finds himself pursued by the authorities, who suspect him of complicity with the false friar, actually a well-known scoundrel named Lorenzaccio da Trino. He flees until he reaches a palace and enters by a garden door which he is surprised to find unlocked. A beautiful lady admits him, bolts the door, and takes pains to hide him from his pursuers. They arrive, and Bellarion listens to her rebuff them, discovering that she is the Princess Valeria of Montferrat. When the Guard depart, Valeria quizzes Bellarion, mistaking him for a messenger she had been expecting, asking after Giufreddo and Lord Barbaresco. He corrects her misapprehension, but, sensing an intrigue and anxious to impress her, offers in return for her kindness to carry a message to Lord Barbaresco. She distrusts him, but charges him simply to ask what has become of Giufreddo, who Bellarion assumes is the previous messenger, and how Barbaresco's plan is progressing. He discovers that Barbaresco and a group of friends, including Valeria's trusted confidante Enzo Spigno, are plotting the murder of Theodore, Valeria's uncle, who is serving Regent of Montferrat until Valeria's brother, the rightful Marquis, reaches majority. Theodore is plotting to keep the throne for himself, and is doing so by corrupting his nephew and rendering him unable to rule. Bellarion continues to investigate the matter, despite Valeria's wishing that he would leave her alone; he discovers that Spigno is a traitor to the group and is in the employ of Theodore, and consequently stabs him. As he escapes, the Guard captures him, and its captain recognizes him as the same companion of da Trino who had escaped a week before. He goes before the local high court, over which the Podestà presides, for the murder of Spigno. He tells the court that Spigno was murdered in a fight in the house at which Bellarion was not present, and claims to be the adoptive son of Facino Cane, a condottiere in Milan, as a delaying tactic. The Podestà holds the case for the time being, intending to contact Facino to verify whether Bellarion is truly his adoptive son; meanwhile, Theodore enters his prison cell, believing that he was a traitor to Valeria and loyal to himself, and affords him means to escape, unaware that he did in fact murder Spigno. Bellarion travels thence to Milan. Upon nearing Milan, he is attacked by dogs commanded by Gian Maria Visconti, the despotic and cruel Duke of Milan and the son of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. He kills one, becoming soaked in dog's blood, and the rest become pacified, unwilling to attack someone who smells like one of them. Gian Maria believes this is some manner of witchcraft and takes Bellarion to Milan to interrogate him, whereupon Facino Cane, who has heard that his supposed adoptive son has arrived, takes possession of him. Bellarion explains his past to Facino, who thinks it highly amusing, and shortly sets about formalizing the adoption. The story continues to follow the career of Bellarion, who becomes a true and loyal son to Facino Cane, then pledges loyalty to Cane's widow after Facino dies. There are numerous twists and turns to the plot as Bellarion rises in rank to become an important mercenary captain. He serves Valeria in many ways, and that story takes over the plot.
1966128	/m/069kww	The Curse of Chalion	Lois McMaster Bujold	2001-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Lupe dy Cazaril, a castillar (a knight or minor baron), returns home to the Royacy (Kingdom) of Chalion a broken man, though he is only in his mid-thirties. "Caz", as he is known to his friends, had defended a castle during a long siege, only to be ordered to surrender it. Afterward, a jealous enemy had seen to it that he was not ransomed (as were the rest of his men), but sold into slavery, spending 19 months as a galley slave before finally escaping. His old noble patroness finds a use for him as a tutor for her granddaughter, the Royesse (Princess) Iselle, half-sister to the king, and her companion, Lady Betriz. Despite his ardent desire to live a safely low-profile, peaceful life, Caz finds himself drawn into a strange journey of dangers both spiritual and temporal as he seeks to dispel the debilitating curse that hangs over the royal family of Chalion.
1966788	/m/069mbt	Journey Into Fear	Eric Ambler		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The first part of the novel focuses on Colonel Haki, the dour but basically likable head of Turkish Security, who already made his first appearance in The Mask of Dimitrios and returns in later Ambler stories as a general. The protagonist is a British engineer traveling back from Turkey, where he had completed high-level technical talks which could help cement a Turkish-British alliance in the recently-started Second World War. German spies seek to assassinate him. Most of the plot takes place on board an Italian ship, where the protagonist travels in company with his nemesis - a satanic yet believable German intellectual spymaster, accompanied by a Romanian hired killer - and with a rich cast of other characters, such as a Turkish secret agent, a Spanish courtesan and her pimp, and a French couple of which the husband is left-leaning and his wife is a staunch reactionary.
1969185	/m/069tyz	The Inner Circle	T. Coraghessan Boyle	2004-09-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Milk's sexual coming of age starts in 1939 when he is a student at Indiana University in Bloomington and attends Kinsey’s “marriage course”, a lecture in which the renowned zoologist propounds his theories and his plans for the first time in front of a large audience. Still a virgin, he makes Kinsey’s acquaintance when the latter interviews him in order to take his “sex history”. Kinsey makes Milk his personal assistant despite his inexperience, but he turns out to be a quick learner, and thus the young man becomes the first member of what will be “the inner circle”: a handful of men (and, up to a point, also their wives) who furiously collaborate under Kinsey’s dictatorial rule towards the publication of the two volumes later referred to as the Kinsey Report.
1969342	/m/069vcj	The Garden of God	Henry De Vere Stacpoole	1923	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The sequel picks up precisely where the first book left off, with Arthur Lestrange in the ship Raratonga discovering his son Richard and niece Emmeline with their own child, lying in their fishing boat which has drifted out to sea. While the last line of The Blue Lagoon states that they are not dead but sleeping, the first line of the sequel is "No, they are dead", and we are told that they have stopped breathing. The child is drowsy but alive, and is picked up by the sailors. Arthur is shaken, but at the same time relieved. He can see that Richard and Emmeline were healthy, that they must have lived in peace. He feels it's better that they died while still in a savage state and did not have to return to civilization. He has a dream-vision of the pair; they ask him to come to Palm Tree, the island where they lived, and promise he will see them again. Their child becomes quite popular with the Raratonga's crew. His favorite among the sailors is a rascally quasi-pirate called Jim Kearney. Because the child says "Dick" and "Em" while playing with the sailors, Kearney calls him Dick M. Captain Stanistreet has been concerned for Arthur's sanity since they found Richard and Emmeline, but he appears calm when they get to Palm Tree, investigating the things the couple left behind. Only when he enters the house and finds the flower decorations and neatly arranged supplies—unmistakably the work of Emmeline—does he break down in tears. Arthur plans to stay on the island with Dick M, and the captain of the Raratonga asks for volunteers from among his crew to stay also. Jim Kearney volunteers. The captain says they'll return the following year, but the ship is promptly swallowed up in a storm out at sea. Arthur believes his dream-vision is partly fulfilled when he looks at Dick and notices characteristics of both Emmeline and Richard in him. Kearney does most of the parenting for Dick. Years pass; Arthur dies quietly while walking in the forest, and his body is never found. Kearney and Dick are left to their own devices, until an intruder enters: a young woman named Katafa (her name means "Frigatebird"). She hails from the island of Karolin, forty miles away, which is populated by Kanaka natives. It is a huge, almost treeless coral atoll, with no water source other than rain. Richard and Emmeline were aware of the Kanaka's existence, but never encountered them—for many reasons, they stay away from Palm Tree and believe it's haunted. Katafa is actually the daughter of a Spanish sea captain who was killed to prevent his taking water from their wells during a drought. Raised by priestess Le Juan, and psychologically conditioned as a taminan untouchable, she can talk and interact with Karolin natives, but cannot touch or be touched by them. She is on Palm Tree only because a storm blew her fishing boat off course. She makes friends with Dick and teaches him her language, naming him Taori, but Kearney is suspicious of her, particularly when he finds she evades touch. She is likewise antagonistic toward him for having tried to touch her. Her boat destroyed by a volley from a passing ship, she has to stay on Palm Tree until further notice. She lights a fire as a prayer to Nanawa, the ocean god, to return her to Karolin, but Kearney thinks she's trying to signal her people to attack the island. She gets back at Kearney by stealing his chewing gum, blunting his fish spears and sabotaging his fishing lines. He comes to believe she is out to kill him, and is about to return the favor when, pursuing her into the lagoon, he is trapped and killed by a giant tentacled cephalopod. Left to themselves, Dick and Katafa live somewhat as Richard and Emmeline had done; Dick taking Katafa for granted unless he wants help or an audience. Katafa still wants to go home; she creates an image of Nan, the gentler of Karolin's two gods, out of a coconut shell, and puts it up on the reef on a pole, as a signal should any Karolin fishermen come close to the island. The god belongs only to Karolin's people and will show either that someone from Karolin lives on Palm Tree, or that Nan has been "kidnapped". Sure enough, four Karolin fishermen arrive. Seeing their proprietary god on a reef with Dick (a foreigner) nearby, they attack him. He lashes out, killing one. Katafa is angry when she learns her people were that close, but she finds she can't hate Dick; she's falling in love with him, to the point that she begins to desire to touch other living things. Dick wants to hug her, but she automatically evades him and hides in the forest, due to her psychological conditioning. The narrative focus shifts to Karolin. The three remaining fishermen return with their terrible news. The fisherman Dick killed was the grandson of the island's king, Uta Matu, and the fishermen assume that where they saw one 'foreigner', there must be dozens, maybe hundreds. Worst of all, Nan is there, seemingly stolen by the newcomers. Advised by Le Juan in one of her epileptic trances, the king declares war, and all the men of Karolin assemble in their canoes, led by the king's son Laminai and his second son, Ma. In the middle of the night, Dick pursues Katafa through the forest once more, carrying a spear in case of trouble, when he runs straight into the warriors. He kills Ma with the spear, and is about to be killed by Laminai, when Katafa leaps out of nowhere and attacks Laminai. The people have long believed Katafa to be dead, so the warriors flee, thinking she's a ghost. A sudden storm blows up, and in the darkness, noise and confusion the Kanaka kill each other. Now able to hold and touch one another, Dick and Katafa become lovers. They stay together on Palm Tree, but prepare to leave for Karolin. When a schooner of copra harvesters arrives, crewed by Melanesian slaves under the direction of two white men, Dick wants to speak to them but is attacked. He kills the leader, and the Melanesians stage an uprising and take over the island. Dick and Katafa escape to Karolin. By chance, Dick has picked up a large, beautifully decorated club left by the warriors. Katafa tells Dick that it is the sacred war club, and can be carried only by men of the royal family, so he must be the new king of Karolin, and indeed, when they get there, Uta Matu has died. The people—women, very young men, and little children—have turned against old priestess Le Juan, who has terrorized them for so many years and whose advice had sent all the warriors to die on Palm Tree. She drops dead of a stroke when she sees Katafa, seemingly returned from the dead, and the people proclaim Dick their new king. it:The Garden of God
1972474	/m/06b1ct	The Woods Out Back	Robert Anthony Salvatore		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Gary Leger works at a plastic manufacturing factory. Every day he has the same boring routine. Gary constantly refers to The Hobbit as his favorite book and reads it all the time. In the blueberry patch that is near his house through a steadily receding woodline, he sees a pixie holding a small bow before he passes out on the ground. He then awakes in the mystical forest of Tir'na'nog in the presence of the leprechaun Mickey McMickey. After being seduced by a nymph (Leshiye), he is rescued by the elf Kelsenellenelvial Gil-Ravardy (Kelsey for short), who takes Gary on a quest to re-forge the spear of the legendary hero Cedric Donigarten. There are however two problems. The first is that to re-forge the spear, they require the services of the finest blacksmith alive, the dwarf Geno Hammerthrower. To solve this problem they capture him in his home. The second problem is that it must be forged in the flames of a dragon. On their way to visit the dragon Robert they are captured by the witch Ceridwen. Gary and company, through a plan developed by Gary, escape Ynis Gwydrin with the help of a giant named Tommy and make it to the lair of Robert. Kelsey (or rather an image of Kelsey conjured by Mickey) defeats Robert in single combat and convinces him to reforge the spear. Upon returning home, Gary is assured of the reality of all the events in the book when he sees that his book is still in the script of Mickey McMickey.
1973552	/m/06b47k	The Blue Lagoon	Henry De Vere Stacpoole	1908	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel is about two young children and a galley cook who are the survivors of a shipwreck in the South Pacific. In the turmoil of the burning ship from which they escaped, they become separated from another lifeboat that the boy's father (who is the girl's uncle) is in and drift out to sea. After days afloat, they arrive and are stranded on a lush tropical island. The cook, Paddy Button, assumes the responsibility for caring for the small children, teaching them how to behave, how to forage for food, etc. He warns them as well what not to eat, particularly arita, which he calls "the never-wake-up berries." An unspecified amount of time passes and Paddy eventually dies in a drunken binge. Together, cousins Richard and Emmeline Lestrange have to survive solely on their resourcefulness, and the bounty of their remote paradise. Years pass and both Richard and Emmeline grow into tall, strong and beautiful young adults. They live in a self-constructed hut and spend their days fishing, swimming, diving for pearls, and exploring the island. During this period, they get along unthinkingly, although Richard often ignores Emmeline or takes her for granted, unless he needs an audience for one of his stories. Eventually, strange emotions start influencing their relationship. Richard and Emmeline (they call each other Dick and Em) begin to fall in love, although they do not realize it, partly due to their general ignorance of human sexuality. They are physically attracted to each other, but don't realize it or know how to express it. They spend periods of time apart, feeling a sense of annoyance. Ultimately, after making up after a fight, they consummate their relationship. Stacpoole describes their sexual encounter as having "been conducted just as the birds conduct their love affairs. An affair absolutely natural, absolutely blameless, and without sin. It was a marriage according to Nature, without feast or guests." From then on, Richard is very attentive to Emmeline, listening to her stories and bringing her gifts. They make love quite often for several months, and eventually Emmeline gets pregnant. Richard and Emmeline have no knowledge of childbirth and don't understand the physical changes to Emmeline's body. One day, Emmeline disappears. Richard searches for her all day, but cannot find her; he returns to their house and eventually she comes walking out of the forest, carrying a baby in her arms. Assuming her labor pains were a symptom of nauseous migraine like the ones she suffered as a child, she had simply gone for a walk to clear her head, and this strange thing had happened to her. Knowing nothing about babies, they learn by trial and error that the child will not be able to drink fruit juice, but will nurse from Emmeline's breast. Because the only baby they have ever known was called Hannah, they give their little boy this name. Together, the two young castaways spend all their time with Hannah, teaching him how to swim, fish, throw a spear, and play in the mud. They survive a violent tropical cyclone and other hazards of South Sea Island life; Emmeline often feels that the paradisiac beauty of the island is a mask or facade, and that the dangers &mdash; poisonous berries and deadly storms &mdash; are the reality. Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, Richard's father Arthur (Emmeline's uncle) still believes the pair are alive and that he will find them, obsessively turning over any clue. The strongest lead is a child's toy tea set, picked up on an island that the sailors call Palm Tree (because there is a large one at the break of the lagoon). Ships stop there for fresh water, and someone on a whaler had picked up the box out of curiosity. Arthur at once recognizes it as an old plaything of Emmeline's &mdash; she had carried it everywhere and would never be without it. He finds a ship whose captain is willing to take him to Palm Tree. One day, the two young parents and Hannah return in their lifeboat to the side of the island where they had lived with Paddy. Inexplicably, even to herself, Emmeline has broken off a branch of the deadly "never-wake-up" berries that Paddy warned her about on their first day. While Richard cuts bananas, absent-minded Emmeline fails to notice that her son has tossed one of the oars out of the boat. The tide comes in and sweeps the boat out into the lagoon, with her and Hannah in it. Richard comes swimming after, but is followed closely by a shark and is only saved when Emmeline throws the other oar, striking the shark and allowing Richard enough time to climb in. Although not far from shore, they cannot get back, or jump into the water to retrieve the oars for fear of a shark attack. They try to paddle with their hands, but to no avail; the boat is caught in the current and drifts out to sea. Clasped in Emmeline's hand is the branch of arita. The reader is not made privy to the specifics of what happened next. Somewhat later, Arthur Lestrange's ship comes upon the pair with Hannah in their boat, lying unconscious but breathing. The arita branch is now bare, save for one berry remaining. Lestrange asks "Are they dead?" and the captain answers "No, sir. They are asleep." The ambiguous ending leaves it uncertain as to whether they can be revived. In The Garden of God, Stacpoole's sequel to The Blue Lagoon, the story begins at the very next moment and the pronouncement is made that Richard and Emmeline are now dead, as their breathing has just stopped. Hannah lives and is revived.
1974502	/m/06b6jx	Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out				 The first part of the book presents an overview of the theological-juridical underpinnings of apostasy in Islam based upon the Qur’an, the hadiths and written opinions from classical schools of Islamic jurisprudence as well as contemporary written pronouncements of Islamic jurists. The next section presents the history of the application of Islamic jurisdiction on apostates documenting notable cases from the early centuries of Islam, such as those of freethinkers Ibn al-Rawandi and Ar-Razi (865-925), or skeptical poets such as Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) and Hafiz (1320–89), or Sufi (mystic) practitioners including Mansur Al-Hallaj, executed in 922 and As-Suhrawardi executed in 1191, and the atheist Sulayman al-Ma'arri (973-1057). This followed by numerous case studies covering modern day apostasies and conversions out of Islam trends throughout the world. The later part contains testimonials of born Muslim apostates including the ex-Muslim Ali Sina and other western converts.
1974965	/m/06b7hx	Basket Case	Carl Hiaasen	2002-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Jack Tagger, aged forty-six, is an obituary writer for the Union-Register (a fictitious South Florida newspaper). He becomes excited on seeing a death notice for James Bradley Stomarti aka Jimmy Stoma, lead man of the rock band Jimmy and the Slut Puppies. Jack interviews Jimmy’s widow, pop singer Cleo Rio (her stage name comes from the rumor that she flashed a sight of her pubic area during one of her music videos), who says that Jimmy died in a diving accident in the Bahamas. Cleo also plugs her new upcoming album, with a title song co-written by Jimmy and herself. Jimmy's sister Janet tells him Cleo lied: Jimmy was working on his own comeback album. Jack gets more suspicious when he visits Jimmy’s corpse in a funeral home and find that no autopsy was performed on his body. However, before Jack can call for an official autopsy, Jimmy’s body is cremated. Jack used to be an investigative reporter, but was demoted to the obituary beat after publicly insulting Race Maggad III, the CEO of the newspaper’s publishing company. His ambition is to climb back onto the front page by “yoking my byline to some famous stiff.” He tries to convince his editor, the “impossible” Emma to let him investigate Jimmy’s death, but she refuses. Jack’s current job has taken its toll on his life; writing obituaries all day long, he has become morbidly obsessed with death, especially his own. Each year, Jack obsesses about people who died at his age, and about the fate of his deceased father, who disappeared when Jack was young. These obsessions cost him his favorite girlfriend, Anne. Parked outside Cleo’s condominium one night, Jack sees her with a young man, an obvious sex partner. Emma relents and gives Jack a week to investigate Jimmy's death. Jack tracks down Jay Burns, the Slut Puppies’ old keyboardist, and Jimmy’s dive partner. Jay is heavily stoned, but to Jack it is obvious he is lying about something. Later that night, a burglar breaks into Jack’s apartment. Jack attacks him with the frozen corpse of a dead Savannah Monitor lizard which he keeps in his freezer. Jack is beaten unconscious, but the burglar disappears. A few hours later, two police detectives show up and tell him Jay Burns has been found murdered. His apartment trashed, Jack goes to stay with Emma. They decide to search the boat where he interviewed Jay. After careful searching, they find an external hard drive concealed inside the false bottom of a scuba tank. Jack is depressed to hear from his friend Carla Candilla, Anne’s teenaged daughter, that Anne is getting married again — worse, to a hack spy novelist. Meeting her at a club, he catches sight of Cleo's boyfriend, a man who calls himself "Loreal" and claims to be her record producer. Jack and Emma are alarmed when Janet disappears from her home. Jack finds a small patch of blood on her carpet. With the help of Jack's best friend, sports writer Juan Rodriguez, Jack decrypts the hard drive and finds it contains master recordings for Jimmy’s unfinished new album. Listening to it, Jack is still baffled in looking for a motive for Jimmy’s murder, if he was murdered. The cruel fact is, to most of the music industry Jimmy was a has-been. To Jack’s surprise, Emma spends the night with him at his apartment. A few days later, she excitedly tells him that another former Slut Puppy, Tito Negroponte, was shot but not killed in Los Angeles. Jack flies to California and interviews the bass player, who puts his finger on why Cleo killed Jimmy: she wanted a song from his album, “Shipwrecked Heart” for herself. Jack listens to the song, telling Emma that Cleo’s desperate to put out another hit before she fades from the scene, and Jimmy’s song is better than anything she can write. Still, Jack admits that he can’t prove that Cleo killed Jimmy. Cleo's bodyguard kidnaps Emma, and she demands the master in exchange for her. At the climactic confrontation on Lake Okeechobee, Jack and Juan meet the bodyguard and Loreal, and trade the master for Emma. Then the bodyguard tries to kill all of them, but ends up upending the airboat he’s driving, with fatal results. The day after the rescue is Jack’s 47th birthday. Carla calls from Anne's wedding to wish him a happy one. Jack’s mother sends him a card with a copy of his father’s obituary; she confesses that he died at age 46. (“See? You made it!”) Janet resurfaces, saying she skipped town when Cleo’s goons broke into her house. She confesses to Jack that she switched the tags on a pair of coffins at the funeral home, meaning Jimmy’s body wasn’t cremated, but is buried in the wrong man’s grave. At her request, the body is exhumed, and autopsied, and the pathologist finds that Jimmy was drugged before diving off the boat, causing him to pass out underwater and drown. Cleo is arrested, tried, and convicted of murder; Jack sails back onto the front page covering the story. Jimmy’s posthumous album is a hit. A subplot focuses on Jack’s ongoing feud with Race Maggad III, and the ailing state of the Union-Register since Maggad bought it. Maggad’s policy has been to increase the newspaper’s profits to the maximum by cutting down as much as possible on the actual gathering and reporting of news – less space in the paper devoted to news and more to advertisements, fewer reporters and editors employed, and stories that are deferential to business interests and lacking in depth. After Jack insulted him at a shareholders’ meeting, Maggad demoted Jack to the obituary page, expecting him to quit in humiliation. Instead, Jack finds an ally in MacArthur Polk, the newspaper's former publisher. Like Jack, Polk is furious about what Maggad has done to his newspaper, and now holds a position of power, because he owns a large number of shares in Maggad’s publicly-traded company, which Maggad is desperate to buy back before two foreign companies initiate a hostile takeover. Polk dies on the same night Jack rescues Emma. His will names Jack trustee of his shares, with instructions that Maggad can have the stock back, but only if he sells the Union-Register back to Polk’s family. Maggad reluctantly agrees. The new publisher, Polk’s widow, restores the paper to its former glory. Emma is promoted, and the novel ends as she is trying to talk Jack back from his leave of absence from journalism.
1975902	/m/06b96z	The Fireship	C. Northcote Parkinson			 In 1797, the year the novel begins, the Royal Navy was beset by two serious mutinies. The main grievance of the mutineers were over pay and working conditions. The sailors hadn't received a raise in decades, whereas the soldiers had just received a significant raise. Discipline was harsh and most of the seamen were conscripts. Unsurprisingly, Admiral Duncan's fleet was seriously affected. Quick thinking on the part of the first lieutenant of Delancey's ship prevents the mutiny from taking hold, and the Glatton is able to join Admiral Duncan's ship, and bluff until the rest of the fleet joins him. But he had to shoot a mutineer to do so. Since the mutineer's death occurred in port, the first lieutenant has to stay ashore, and Delancey has to assume his duties. He is acting first lieutenant when the Dutch fleet leaves port and is engaged by Admiral Duncan's fleet. The Battle of Camperdown is a decisive victory. Every ship's first lieutenant is to be promoted to commander. But Delancey's colleague has been acquitted, and the Captain wants him to receive the promotion, not Delancey. The Captain wants to make sure the trial does not put a black mark against this loyal officer's career — And the first lieutenant, after all had the primary responsibility for training the crew so that their performance was exemplary. Delancey is bitter, but he does receive command of a fireship. He makes the most of this, by researching the history of fireships. Fire was a very serious danger aboard sailing ships. Their upper works could be bone dry, and very highly flammable materials, like pitch, were used in their construction. Fireships were ships intended to be sailed against enemy fleets at anchor, loaded with incendiaries. Big hooks are hung from her upper works, to entangle with the enemies ship's rigging. When they get close to the enemy fleet, the incendiaries are set alight. Delancey learns that if his vessel is destroyed while burning an enemy vessel, he can count on promotion. It seems a long shot. But a French expedition to stir up sedition in rural Ireland provides him with his opportunity.
1977859	/m/06bg44	The Incoherence of the Philosophers				 The late 11th century book brings out contradictions in the thoughts of philosophers about God and the universe, favoring faith instead. In some ways, it can be seen as a precursor to Søren Kierkegaard's Either/Or or Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, where some even describe it as a "more incisive and decisive critique of metaphysics than that of Kant." The Incoherence of the Philosophers is famous for proposing and defending the Asharite theory of occasionalism. Al-Ghazali wrote that when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton is burned directly by God rather than by the fire, a claim which he defended using logic. He explained that because God is usually seen as rational, rather than arbitrary, his behaviour in normally causing events in the same sequence (i.e., what appears to us to be efficient causation) can be understood as a natural outworking of that principle of reason, which we then describe as the laws of nature. Properly speaking, however, these are not laws of nature but laws by which God chooses to govern his own behaviour (his autonomy, in the strict sense) - in other words, his rational will. This is not, however, an essential element of an occasionalist account, and occasionalism can include positions where God's behaviour (and thus that of the world) is viewed as ultimately inscrutable, thus maintaining God's essential transcendence. On this understanding, apparent anomalies such as miracles are not really such: they are simply God behaving in a way that appears unusual to us. Given his transcendent freedom, he is not bound even by his own nature. Miracles, as breaks in the rational structure of the universe, cannot occur, since God's relationship with the world is not mediated by rational principles. Al-Ghazali expresses his support for a scientific methodology based on demonstration and mathematics, while discussing astronomy. After describing the scientific facts of the solar eclipse resulting from the Moon coming between the Sun and Earth and the lunar eclipse from the Earth coming between the Sun and Moon, he writes: In his defense of the Asharite doctrine of a created universe that is temporally finite, against the Aristotelian doctrine of an eternal universe, Al-Ghazali proposed the modal theory of possible worlds, arguing that their actual world is the best of all possible worlds from among all the alternate timelines and world histories that God could have possibly created. His theory parallels that of Duns Scotus in the 14th century. While it is uncertain whether Al-Ghazali had any influence on Scotus, they both may have derived their theory from their readings of Avicenna's Metaphysics.
1978802	/m/06bjfc	The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner	James Hogg	1824		 Many of the events of the novel are narrated twice. First by the 'editor', who gives his account of the facts as he understands them to be, and then in the words of the 'sinner' himself. The 'Editor's Narrative' starts in 1687 with the marriage of Rabina Orde to the much older George Colwan, the Laird of Dalcastle. Rabina disapproves of her new husband because he lacks her religious beliefs, dances and drinks alcohol, leading to the couple soon separating. However, Rabina Colwan gives birth to two children. The first, George, is the son of the Laird. It is strongly implied, though never absolutely confirmed, that her second son, Robert, was fathered by the Reverend Wringhim, Rabina’s spiritual adviser. George, raised by the Laird, becomes a friendly young man who enjoys sports and the company of his friends. Robert, educated by his mother and adoptive father Wringhim, is brought up to follow Wringhim’s radical sect of Calvinism, which holds that only certain elect people are predestined to be saved by God. These chosen few will have a heavenly reward regardless of how their lives are lived. The two brothers meet, as young men, in Edinburgh where Robert starts following George through the town, mocking and provoking him and disrupting his life. He appears to have the ability of appearing wherever George is. When on a hill-top, George sees a vision of his brother in the sky and turns to find him behind him, preparing to throw him off a cliff. Robert rejects any friendly or placatory advances from his brother. Finally, George is murdered, stabbed in the back, apparently during a duel with one of his drinking acquaintances. The only witness to the murder is a prostitute, who claims that the culprit was Robert, aided by what appears to be the double of George’s friend. Before Robert can be arrested, he disappears. The second part of the novel, 'Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner', consists of Robert's account of his life. It is, supposedly, a document, some of it handwritten, and some printed, which was found after his death. It recounts his childhood, under the influence of the Rev Wringhim, and goes on to explain how he becomes in thrall to an enigmatic companion who says his name is Gil-Martin. This stranger, who could be seen to be the devil, appears after Wringhim has declared Robert to be a member of 'the elect' and so predestined to eternal salvation. Gil-Martin, who is able to transform his appearance at will, soon directs all of Robert’s pre-existing tendencies and beliefs to evil purposes, convincing him that it is his mission to “cut sinners off with the sword”, and that murder can be the correct course of action. The confession traces Robert's gradual decline into despair and madness, as his doubts about the righteousness of his cause are counteracted by Gil-Martin’s increasing domination over his life. Finally, Robert loses control over his own identity and even loses track of time. During these lost weeks and months, it is possible that Gil-Martin assumes Robert’s appearance in order to commit further crimes. However, there are also suggestions in the text, that 'Gil-Martin' is a figment of Robert's imagination, and is simply an aspect of his own personality: as, for example when 'the sinner' writes: 'I feel as if I were the same person' (as Gil-Martin). The novel concludes with a return to the 'Editor's Narrative' which explains how the sinner's memoir was discovered.
1981180	/m/06bq5l	Specter of the Past	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Once the unquestioned master of countless solar systems, the Empire is tottering on the brink of total collapse. Once commanding and invincible armada of Star Destroyers, its fleet has been reduced to a skeleton force. Day by day, neutral systems are rushing to join the New Republic coalition. But with the end of the war in sight, the New Republic has fallen victim to its own success. An unwieldy alliance of races and traditions, the confederation new finds itself riven by age-old animosities. Princess Leia struggles against all odds to hold the New Republic together. But she has powerful enemies. An ambitious Moff Disra leads a conspiracy to divide the uneasy coalition with an ingenious plot to blame the Bothans for a heinous crime that could lead to genocide and civil war. At the same time, Luke Skywalker, along with a mysterious group of pirate ships whose crews consist of clones. And then comes the most startling news of all: Grand Admiral Thrawn--believed to be dead for ten years--is alive. The most cunning and ruthless warlord in an Imperial history has seemingly returned to lead the Empire to triumph. As Han and Leia try to prevent the unraveling of New Republic in the face of this fearful and inexplicable threat from the past, Luke sets out to track down the rogue pirate ships. To do so, he will team up with Mara Jade, with whom he will share his growing mastery of the Force and the ever- present threat of the dark side. All the while, lurking in the shadows is the enigmatic Major Tierce, a disciple of Emperor Palpatine, sharing his long-dead master's lust for power, schooled in the devious stratagems of Thrawn himself, and armed with his own dark plans for the New Republic and the Empire.
1981181	/m/06bq5y	Vision of the Future	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Admiral Gilad Pellaeon admits that the Empire, down to only a few sectors, is now fighting a losing battle. He initiates preliminary peace talks with Princess Leia, who acts as the New Republic representative. However, several Imperial officials are vehemently anti-surrender, the most notable being Moff Disra. He hires a con artist, Flim, to impersonate Grand Admiral Thrawn, the idea being that Imperial Forces would rally, and many systems would rejoin the Empire, due to Thrawn's "returning from the dead." Another Imperial plot is underfoot, to provoke civil war in the New Republic, involving the Caamas Document. Caamas was a world destroyed by the Empire shortly after the Clone Wars, and it is revealed in the book that this was made possible by Bothan sabotage of that planet's planetary shield. Various alien races take sides over treatment of the Bothans and what would be justice for Caamas; more than a hundred alien warships gather in orbit over the Bothans' homeworld of Bothawui. Several of this book's plotlines revolve around major characters seeking an unaltered copy of the Camaas Document, in an attempt to settle the issue. Han Solo and Lando Calrissian travel to an Imperial base at Bastion in an attempt to find it. Meanwhile, Garm Bel Iblis attempts a raid on an Imperial Ubiqtorate base at Yaga Minor. The Empire hopes that the confrontation over Bothawui will reach a flash point, and three Imperial Star Destroyers lie in wait to 'finish off' the survivors. Furthermore, an Imperial sabotage team successfully knocks out a major section of the Bothawui planetary shield. Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade successfully sneak into a fortress called the Hand of Thrawn (so called because of its 'four fingers and a thumb' shape). Many secrets are revealed there, including mention of an expedition by Thrawn to the galaxy's Unknown Regions. Luke and Mara are about to die, when Luke proposes to Mara, she accepts. They escape and at the end of the novel, a peace treaty is signed by Admiral Pellaeon and New Republic president Ponc Gavrisom. fr:Vision du futur
1981230	/m/06bqbt	Why Not Me?	Al Franken	1999-01-12		 The book is made up of three different sections. First is Franken's autobiography, Daring to Lead. Second is a campaign diary, following Franken and his campaign staff across the primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. The final section, supposedly written by Bob Woodward, is a behind-the-scenes account of Franken's first hundred days as president, titled The Void. There is also an epilogue, set several decades after the plot, giving historical perspective on the Franken presidency and Franken's post-presidential life. The book starts with Daring to Lead, Franken's campaign autobiography, in which he recounts his life from his childhood in the fictional town of Christhaven, Minnesota, to his college years, to his career on NBC's Saturday Night Live. We learn later from Franken's campaign diary that some parts of Daring to Lead are completely fabricated. The diary itself describes his experiences in the race in great (and disturbing) detail. We learn that Franken starts out as a dark horse Democratic candidate, running on a single-issue platform (ATM fees). In the diary, Franken routinely insults the residents of New Hampshire and Iowa and describes numerous extramarital affairs, illegal actions, ridiculous campaign promises, and deceptive (and sometimes disastrous) schemes designed to bolster Franken's appearance to the public. Despite Franken's deceit, he is eventually given the Democratic nomination due to a rise in support after the Y2K bug creates glitches solely on ATMs. He is elected president in an unprecedented landslide victory. The Void, a book supposedly written by Bob Woodward, describes Franken's brief and turbulent tenure at the White House. His administration is gripped in crisis from day one, when Franken makes a bizarre inauguration speech apologizing for slavery. A firestorm erupts, causing a PR nightmare for the administration and sending Franken into depression. Franken's aides soon give him anti-depressant drugs, but this causes Franken to display strange behavior. Franken has himself cloned, punches Nelson Mandela in the stomach during a state meeting, and hatches a strange and dangerous plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein by hitting him with a plaque that reads, "World's Greatest Grandpa." Congress forms a committee to investigate Franken's behavior, which leads to the unraveling of his administration. After his secrets come out, Franken is forced to resign. The epilogue reveals that a clone of Franken was indeed made, and the clone (parented by then-lesbian lovers Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche) is now the head of Franken's presidential library. Franken's entire cabinet was arrested and impeached along with the President, and all served varied prison terms; Franken pardoned himself before resigning. Franken later wrote a disastrous TV pilot, but became a successful biblical archeologist after finding the intact skeleton of Jesus Christ, still nailed to the cross. Franken's term is actually revealed to have had some benefits: Franken's campaign for Russia to enter NATO provides important global security; Franken's Vice President, Joe Lieberman, turns out to be the greatest President in history serving eighteen years in office, and the effects of Franken's dismantling of the remains of the Glass–Steagall Act. Most of the characters in the book are real people, but the events are fictional.
1981332	/m/06bqlk	The File on H	Ismail Kadare	1981	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In this often-comic novel, two Homeric scholars from Ireland by way of Harvard University plan to investigate the tradition of oral epic poetry in the rural habitats of Albania where historical epics are composed and sung by itinerant minstrels as popular entertainment. The singers have been doing this for many generations, possibly since ancient Greek times (H stands for Homer). The scholars travel to Albania with a tape recorder to study the phenomenon and record samples of the singing and the changes over time in multiple recordings of the same song, the study of which would give them an answer whether Homer was an editor or a writer. Their main interest is in the variations on the tradition exemplified in the work of individual singers, how historical events are woven into poetry, and whether there is regional bias in their interpretations. When they reach their destination, they are confronted by suspicious provincial townspeople and a paranoid local governor, who sends spies after them, convinced that they themselves are spies of some sort. Their work is attacked by the Serbian pastor because the scholars favor the Albanian epic poetry as original and the Serbian as an imitation. One interpretation of the story is a metaphor for why legends continue to be believed despite our attempts to discover the truth, and highlights the difficulty that the modern world has in truly understanding past, or even rural, civilizations. The novel also considers the passing of the epic form as a means of recording and retelling history and questions the nature of civilization itself as art forms are lost to development and technology.
1984469	/m/06byf6	The Secret of Terror Castle				 Three boys are investigating a known haunted house, Terror Castle, in hopes that perhaps Alfred Hitchcock would use it in his upcoming movie. Having just launched their investigation firm, the Three Investigators are hoping for a triumphant success to gain publicity and build their credibility. They briefly gain an audience with the skeptical Hitchcock, who is dismissive but agrees to introduce their case if they are able to demonstrate that the castle is truly haunted. Terror Castle is the former home of movie actor Stephen Terrill, who has died in a possibly suicidal car accident that occurred as his career was on the verge of collapse. Terrill had pledged to haunt his former home to keep anyone else from living there. During their investigations, the boys find very scary and seemingly real activities going on in the abandoned structure, such as the Fog of Fear and the Blue Phantom.
1985726	/m/06b_mp	Bloodsucking Fiends	Christopher Moore	1995-09-19	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Jody, a young single red-headed woman living in San Francisco, is attacked by a vampire and soon finds that she's become one herself. While trying to adjust to her new nocturnal lifestyle, she's aided by C. Thomas (Tommy) Flood, a wannabe writer who just moved to town and works as a night clerk (and champion "turkey bowler") at a local Safeway. As Jody and Tommy begin their life together (and become attracted to each other), they also discover that a recent string of mysterious murders may be the work of the vampire who attacked Jody. To get to the bottom of the matter, they engage the help of Tommy's coworkers ("the Animals") and an eccentric street person known as "The Emperor."
1986004	/m/06c08w	Tietam Brown	Mick Foley	2003	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is about a period of time in the life of Antietam (Andy) Brown V and his father Antietam (Tietam) Brown IV (the names span across five generations, being taken from the Battle of Antietam). After 16 years of being tossed from foster home to foster home, and spending time in Juvenile Detention for killing a teenager who tried to rape him, his father then shows up to take him home. Andy was molested by his foster father, who was also a member of the KKK, and physically abused by his father. He puts up with cruel treatment from adults and older students at school. Every now and then in his life he cracks, and in a rage causes terrible harm to his tormentors. He draws strength from the love he gets from Terri, a beautiful girl in his grade at school.
1986476	/m/06c19v	Donovan's Brain	Curt Siodmak		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel is written in the form of diary entries by Dr. Patrick Cory, a middle-aged physician whose experiments at keeping a brain alive are subsidized by Cory's wealthy wife. Under investigation for tax evasion and criminal financial activities, millionaire megalomaniac W.H. Donovan crashes his private plane in the desert near the home of Dr. Cory. The physician is unable to save Donovan's life, but removes his brain on the chance that it might survive, placing the gray matter in an electrically charged, oxygenated saline solution within a glass tank. The brainwaves indicate that thought&mdash;and life&mdash;continue. Cory makes several futile attempts to communicate with it. Finally, one night Cory receives unconscious commands, jotting down a list of names in a handwriting not his own—it is Donovan's. Cory successfully attempts telepathic contact with Donovan's brain, much to the concern of Cory's occasional assistant, Dr. Schratt, an elderly alcoholic. Gradually, the malignant intelligence takes over Cory's personality, leaving him in an amnesiac fugue state when he awakes. The brain uses Cory to do his bidding, signing checks in Donovan's name, and continuing the magnate's illicit financial schemes. Cory becomes increasingly like the paranoid Donovan himself, his physique and manner morphing into the limping image of the departed criminal. Donovan's bidding culminates in an attempt to have Cory kill a young girl who stands in the way of his plans. Realizing he will soon have no control over his own body and mind, Cory devises a plan to destroy the brain during its quiescent period. Cory resists the brain's hypnotic power by repeating the rhyme "He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts." With Dr. Schratt's help, he destroys the housing tank with an ax and leaves the brain of Donovan to die, thus ending his reign of madness.
1988525	/m/06c6bk	Death of a Red Heroine	Qiu Xiaolong	2000	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 One afternoon, the naked body of a young woman is found wrapped in a black trash bag in an obscure canal in Shanghai by two friends. Upon further investigation, it is found that the corpse is that of Guan Hongying (the name Hongying can be read as Red Heroine), a national model worker - thus bringing the case's political aspects squarely into place. Chief Inspector Chen Cao and his older subordinate Yu investigate the case, eventually tracing the likely murderer as Wu Xiaoming, the only son of Wu Bing, a high-ranking Party cadre. Having then established Wu as the likely murderer, Chen and Yu must struggle to discover the motive, all the while grappling with political obstructions and power plays as Wu makes use of his family connections to hinder the investigation. Eventually, though, Chen discovers the motive and brings everything to the attention of his superiors.
1990325	/m/06cbmf	The Gremlins	Roald Dahl		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns mischievous mythical creatures, the Gremlins of the title, often invoked by Royal Air Force pilots as an explanation of mechanical troubles and mishaps. In Dahl's book, the gremlins' motivation for sabotaging British aircraft is revenge of the destruction of their forest home, which was razed to make way for an aircraft factory. The principal character in the book, Gus, has his Hawker Hurricane fighter destroyed over the English Channel by a gremlin, but is able to convince the gremlins as they parachute into the water that they should join forces against a common enemy, Hitler and the Nazis, rather than fight each other. Eventually, the gremlins are re-trained by the Royal Air Force to repair rather than sabotage aircraft, and restore Gus to active flight status after a particularly severe crash.The book had an autobiographical connection as Dahl had flown as a Hurricane fighter pilot in the RAF, and was temporarily on leave from operational flying after serious injuries sustained in a crash landing in Libya. He later returned to flying. The book also contains picturesque details about the ordinary lives of gremlins: baby gremlins, for instance, are known as widgets, and females as fifinellas, a name taken from the great "flying" filly racehorse Fifinella, that won both the Epsom Derby and Epsom Oaks in 1916, the year Dahl was born.
1990831	/m/03bx5wg	Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus	Orson Scott Card	1996	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is written in the form of two parallel lines, with alternating chapters in some ways reflecting each other, and which would converge only late in the course of the book. In the late 15th century Christopher Columbus is working slowly towards the trip across the ocean which would make him famous, and the story follows the many ups and downs of his career and especially his complicated relations with the women in his life. The early chapters, before travelers from the future impinge on his life, can in fact be read as a straightforward historical novel. In a parallel development, in a doomed future where humanity had used up the Earth’s resources and civilization is on the verge of collapse, a team of researchers has developed a machine called the “TruSite II” to view and record the events of the past. (The Concept of a "Time viewer" is discussed further on that page). The TruSite II had higher resolution, both visually and temporally, than an earlier competing machine known as the “TempoView,” and an even earlier machine, the “TrueSite I.” Though trying to restore the ravaged earth and preserve personal freedom, the PastWatchers discover that the society in which they live is doomed. The human race is reduced to a population of less than a billion after a century of war, plague, drought, flood and famine. There have been extinctions and the land is poisoned. Ecological damage from misuse of technology cannot be repaired quickly enough to save humanity from even more drastic population reductions, dooming their descendants to primitive, horrific lives for the remainder of the existence of life on Earth. They are endeavoring to record history for future generations, when it is revealed things are far worse than supposed. Upon discovering that the TrueSite II machines (unlike their predecessors) can send information into the past, the scientists set upon a mission to rewrite history and give humanity a second chance for survival. Their efforts are focused on Columbus, a pivotal figure whose religious zealotry and irrational fixation on the New World led to centuries of mass genocide and ecological devastation. When time travel technology is developed, three agents are sent back to the 15th century to alter Columbus’s actions for the better. It’s a one-way trip though, since their timeline along with everyone they know and love will be nullified in the process – an outcome only acceptable since that world is doomed to a fate far worse than extinction anyway. Another sub-story is the discussion about just why Columbus was so obsessed with his westward expedition. A study of his life reveals that the Pastwatch scientists were not the first to realize Columbus’s importance, and that people in a previous incarnation of the timeline had used Columbus’ westward ambition to alter history once before, an action which resulted in our own history. In this “original” history, Columbus never sailed the Atlantic and instead led a last European Crusade to capture Constantinople, taken by the Turks several decades previously. Meanwhile, the Aztec Empire fell and was replaced by an iron-wielding Tlaxcalan empire that was capable of recognizing technological advantages. The Tlaxcala were able to establish a more modern, centralized state and pushed their influence far beyond the old Aztec borders, though still confined to the Americas. This changed, however, when Portuguese sailors in the early 16th century began to be captured by the Tlaxcala and forced to teach them about firearms and large ship construction. This early contact also inflicted the European plagues on the New World empires, which suffered considerable loss of life – but the survivors acquired an immunity. The plagues and arrival of foreigners were taken as a sign that their god, Camaxtli, who demanded human sacrifice, wanted the Tlaxcala to embark on more wars of conquest. Europe of the 16th century was highly politically fragmented to begin with and further weakened by the crusade led by Columbus, and proved to be no match for the invading Tlaxcala armies. Moreover, while the Tlaxcala were already immune to European diseases, the Europeans were vulnerable to such American diseases as syphilis, which accompanied the conquering armies. Later on, the Tlaxcala discovered steam, developed a 19th century type industrial technology while keeping their bloodthirsty, human-sacrificing religion, conquered and enslaved the entire world and destroyed all cultures except for theirs. This history, while dire, eventually developed its own PastWatch which viewed the Tlaxcalan conquest of Europe as the single most tragic event in history. Thus they decided to redirect Columbus’s drive and ambition towards eliminating the fledgling Tlaxcalan empire when it was still vulnerable to European conquest. This action, while technically successful, failed in that they did not go far enough, only trading one flawed timeline for another. The three agents going back in time seek to achieve a balance, and create a timeline where neither Europeans nor Native Americans would cross the ocean on a wave of oppressive conquest. Enormous hard work and endless sacrifice are needed of the three. One of them must deliberately sacrifice his life in destroying Columbus’ ships and stranding him and his crews in the Caribbean. The other man, himself a Central American Indian, works among his own remote ancestors to create a less-aggressive alternative to both the Aztecs and the Tlaxcala. The woman is in the Caribbean, waiting to meet Columbus and his men after they are stranded, to reconcile them with the indigenous tribes and persuade them to share their technology; she eventually becomes Columbus’ lifelong wife and devoted companion. Meanwhile, an artificial germ developed by the genetic engineering of the world they came from is spread through the Americas, designed to give its population immunity to European diseases and thus preventing the decimation they suffered in our timeline upon contact with Europeans. Finally, after decades of hard work, the purpose is achieved: two federations of tribes, one in Central America and the other in the Caribbean, are amalgamated. The structure is held together by the various tribes’ respect for each other, and cemented by the European technology of the Spanish sailors with some additions from the later future, and by a form of tolerant and enlightened Christianity very different from that practiced in contemporary Europe, and especially the Inquisition-ridden Spain. Finally, Columbus returns to Spain more than twenty years after he had set out, at the head of fleet of warships crewed by his new countrymen – making clear that the people of the continent across the ocean can very well defend themselves against the Europeans, but that they come to Europe only for peaceful trade and cultural exchanges – thus averting the evils of both of the previous timelines. Late in his life, Columbus’ future-born wife tells him the truth and reveals the horrific deeds he might have perpetrated and instigated had she not intervened, and he weeps for days. The “redemption” of the title has been achieved. At the end a glimpse is given of this timeline’s Twentieth Century – a harmonious, peaceful and technologically-advanced utopia. Though not explicitly stated, it is implied that this timeline would also avoid the ecological devastation which destroyed its predecessor. Archaeologists in year 1951 (447 of the Humanist Era) disinter an abnormally heavy skull, discover the four indestructible sheets of metal surgically embedded into it by a science clearly more advanced than their own, and follow the indications to recover the three time travelers’ time capsule which will forewarn them of the possible futures.
1990837	/m/06cd1k	The Weight of Water	Anita Shreve	1997-01-01	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In March 1873, two Norwegian-born women were brutally murdered who lived on the desolate Smuttynose Island, one the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. Maren Hontvedt, a sister of one of the victims, survived by hiding in a sea cave until dawn. The murdered women were her older sister Karen Christensen and Anethe Christensen, their sister-in-law. A man named Louis Wagner was tried and hanged for their murders, mostly on circumstantial evidence. His conviction has been argued about, as some people think he could not have done it. More than a century later, Jean Janes, a magazine photographer working on a photo essay about the murders, returns to the Isles with her husband Thomas and five-year-old daughter. Thomas is an award-winning poet who has been struggling with alcoholism and not writing much. Hoping to have a small vacation, they travel on a boat skippered by Thomas' brother Rich, who has brought along his girlfriend Adaline. Jean becomes immersed in the details of the 19th-century murders after discovering a purported memoir of Maren in the library. Gradually, tensions increase among the group on the sloop, with unspoken emotions surfacing. Jean begins to suspect an affair between Thomas and Adaline. The novel is split into two parts: the present day, told from Jean's point of view and in the present tense; and 1873, told in first person from Maren's point of view, her "memoir."
1991222	/m/06cdw8	Flaubert's Parrot	Julian Barnes	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows Geoffrey Braithwaite, a widowed, retired English doctor, visiting France and the Flaubert landmarks therein. While visiting various sites related to Flaubert, Geoffrey encounters two incidents of museums claiming to display the stuffed parrot which sat atop Flaubert's writing desk for a brief period while he wrote Un coeur simple. While trying to differentiate which is authentic Geoffrey ultimately learns that (n)either could be genuine, and Flaubert's parrot could be any one of fifty ("Une cinquantaine de perroquets!", p.&nbsp;187) that had been held in the collection of the municipal museum. Although the main focus of the narrative is tracking down the parrot, many chapters exist independently of this plotline, consisting of Geoffrey's reflections, such as on Flaubert's love life and how it was affected by trains, and animal imagery in Flaubert's works and the animals with which he himself was identified (usually a bear, but also a dog, sheep, camel, and parrot).
1993650	/m/06cjt_	Lucky	Alice Sebold	1999-08-04	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Sebold was finishing her freshman year at Syracuse University when she was raped while walking home through a park off campus. She reported the crime to the police, who remarked that a young woman had once been murdered in the same location. Thus, they told her, she was "lucky." Sebold returned home to Pennsylvania to live with her family for the summer before beginning her sophomore year at Syracuse. After months of no leads by the police, Sebold spotted her rapist while walking down the sidewalk. He smirked at her and remarked that he knew her "from somewhere" before continuing on. She called the police, who apprehended him. Among her professors at the time was Tess Gallagher, who became one of Sebold's confidantes. Gallagher accompanied Sebold to several legal proceedings. Also among her professors were Ray Carver, Tobias Wolff and Hayden Carruth. During a lineup, Sebold failed to correctly identify her assailant, as he had brought a friend with him who looked very similar in order to confuse and presumably intimidate Sebold. Finally, he was arrested again and tried for her rape. After he was convicted, Sebold's off-campus apartment was broken into and her roommate was raped. Though no connection to Sebold's rape case was ever proven, she felt that it was retaliation for her rapist being locked up. Her roommate looked at a photo lineup but ultimately decided not to pursue any further legal action.
1995262	/m/06cn33	Zorba the Greek	Nikos Kazantzakis		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens in a café in Piraeus, just before dawn on a gusty autumn morning in the 1930s. The narrator, a young Greek intellectual, resolves to set aside his books for a few months after being stung by the parting words of a friend, Stavridakis, who has left for the Caucasus in order to help some ethnic Greeks who are undergoing persecution. He sets off for Crete in order to re-open a disused lignite mine and immerse himself in the world of peasants and working-class people. He is about to dip into his copy of Dante's Divine Comedy when he feels he is being watched; he turns around and sees a man of around sixty peering at him through the glass door. The man enters and immediately approaches him to ask for work. He claims expertise as a chef, a miner, and player of the santuri, or cimbalom, and introduces himself as Alexis Zorba, a Greek born in Romania. The narrator is fascinated by Zorba's lascivious opinions and expressive manner and decides to employ him as a foreman. On their way to Crete, they talk on a great number of subjects, and Zorba's soliloquies set the tone for a large part of the book. On arrival, they reject the hospitality of Anagnostis and Kondomanolious the café-owner, and on Zorba's suggestion make their way to Madame Hortense's hotel, which is nothing more than a row of old bathing-huts. They are forced by circumstances to share a bathing-hut. The narrator spends Sunday roaming the island, the landscape of which reminds him of "good prose, carefully ordered, sober… powerful and restrained" and reads Dante. On returning to the hotel for dinner, the pair invite Madame Hortense to their table and get her to talk about her past as a courtesan. Zorba gives her the pet-name "Bouboulina" and, with the help of his cimbalom, seduces her. The protagonist seethes in his room while listening to the sounds of their impassioned lovemaking. The next day, the mine opens and work begins. The narrator, who has socialist ideals, attempts to get to know the workers, but Zorba warns him to keep his distance: "Man is a brute.... If you're cruel to him, he respects and fears you. If you're kind to him, he plucks your eyes out." Zorba himself plunges into the work, which is characteristic of his overall attitude, which is one of being absorbed in whatever one is doing or whomever one is with at that moment. Quite frequently Zorba works long hours and requests not to be interrupted while working. The narrator and Zorba have a great many lengthy conversations, about a variety of things, from life to religion, each other's past and how they came to be where they are now, and the narrator learns a great deal about humanity from Zorba that he otherwise had not gleaned from his life of books and paper. The narrator absorbs a new zest for life from his experiences with Zorba and the other people around him, but reversal and tragedy mark his stay on Crete, and, alienated by their harshness and amorality, he eventually returns to the mainland once his and Zorba's ventures are completely financially spent. Having overcome one of his own demons (such as his internal "no," which the narrator equates with the Buddha, whose teachings he has been studying and about whom he has been writing for much of the narrative, and who he also equates with "the void") and having a sense that he is needed elsewhere (near the end of the novel, the narrator has a premonition of the death of his old friend Stavridakis, which plays a role in the timing of his departure to the mainland), the narrator takes his leave of Zorba for the mainland, which, despite the lack of any major outward burst of emotionality, is significantly emotionally wrenching for both Zorba and the narrator. It almost goes without saying that the two (the narrator and Zorba) will remember each other for the duration of their natural lives.
1996661	/m/06cs4z	The Flies				 Orestes first arrives as a traveler with his tutor/slave, and does not seek involvement. Orestes has been traveling in a quest to find himself. He enters the story more as an adolescent with a girlish face, one who does not know his path or responsibility. He enters the city and introduces himself as Philebus ("lover of youth"), to disguise his true identity. Zeus, also disguising his true identity, has followed Orestes on his journey. Orestes has come on the day of the dead, a day of mourning to commemorate the killing of Agamemnon fifteen years prior. No townsperson will speak to Orestes or his tutor because they are strangers and not mourning, remorseful or dressed in all black. Orestes meets his sister, Electra, and sees the terrible state that both she and the city are in. Electra has been treated as a servant girl since her mother and Aegisthus killed her father. She longs to exact her revenge and refuses to mourn for the sins and death of Agamemnon or of the townspeople. Orestes goes to the ceremony of the dead, where the angry souls are released by Aegisthus for one day where they are allowed out to roam the town and torment those who have wronged them. The townspeople have to welcome the souls by setting a place at their tables and welcoming them into their beds. The townspeople have seen their purpose in life as constantly mourning and being remorseful of their "sins". Electra, late to the ceremony, dances on top the cave in a white gown to symbolize her youth and innocence. She dances and yells to announce her freedom and denounce the expectation to mourn for deaths not her own. The townspeople begin to believe and think of freedom until Zeus sends a contrary sign to deter them, and to deter Orestes from confronting the present King. Orestes and Electra unite and eventually resolve to kill Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Zeus visits Aegisthus to tell him of Orestes's plan and convince him to stop it. Here Zeus reveals two secrets of the gods: 1) people are free and 2) once they are free and realize it, the gods cannot touch them. It then becomes a matter between men. The ceremony of the dead and its fable has enabled Aegisthus to keep control and order over the town, instilled fear among them. Aegisthus refuses to fight back when Orestes and Electra confront him. Orestes kills Aegisthus and then he alone goes to Clytemnestra's bed chamber and kills her as well. Orestes and Electra flee to the temple of Apollo to escape men and the flies. At the temple, the furies wait for Orestes and Electra to leave the sanctuary so the furies can attack and torture them. Electra fears her brother and begins to try to avoid her responsibility for the murders. She attempts to evade guilt and remorse by claiming she had only dreamt of murder for 15 years, as a form of release, while Orestes is the actual murderer. Orestes tries to keep her from listening to the Furies - which are convincing her to repent and accept punishment. Zeus attempts to convince Orestes to atone for his crime, but Orestes says he cannot atone for something that is not a crime. Zeus tells Electra he has come to save them and will gladly forgive and give the throne to the siblings, if they repent. Orestes refuses the throne and belongings of the man he killed. Orestes feels he has saved the city by removing the veil from their eyes and exposing them to freedom. Zeus says the townspeople hate him and are waiting to kill him; he is alone. The scene at the temple of Apollo represent a decision between God's law and self-law (autonomy). Zeus points out that Orestes is foreign even to himself. Sartre demonstrates Orestes' authenticity by stating that, since his past does not determine his future, Orestes has no set identity: he freely creates his identity anew at every moment. He can never know who he is with certainty because his identity changes from moment to moment. Orestes still refuses to repudiate his actions. In response, Zeus tells Orestes of how he himself has ordered the universe and nature based on Goodness, and by rejecting this Goodness, Orestes has rejected the universe itself. Orestes accepts his exile from nature and from the rest of humanity. Orestes argues Zeus is not the king of man and blundered when he gave them freedom - at that point they ceased to be under god's power. Orestes announces he will free the townspeople from their remorse and take on all their guilt and "sin" (author makes reference to Jesus Christ). Here Orestes somewhat illustrates Nietzsche's overman by showing the townspeople his power to overcome pity. Electra chases after Zeus and promises him her repentance. When Electra repudiates her crime, Orestes says that she is bringing guilt on herself. Guilt results from the failure to accept responsibility for one's actions as a product of one's freedom. To repudiate one's actions is to agree that it was wrong to take those actions in the first place. In doing this, Electra repudiates her ability to freely choose her own values (to Sartre, an act of bad faith). Instead, she accepts the values that Zeus imposes on her. In repudiating the murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, Electra allows Zeus to determine her past for her. She surrenders her freedom by letting her past take on a meaning that she did not give to it by herself, and as a result she becomes bound to a meaning that did not come from her. Electra can choose, like Orestes, to see the murders as right and therefore to reject feelings of guilt. Instead, she allows Zeus to tell her that the murders were wrong and to implicate her in a crime. The Furies decide to leave her alone in order to wait for Orestes to weaken so they can attack him. The Tutor enters but the Furies will not let him through. Orestes orders him to open the door so that he may address his people. Orestes informs them he has taken their crimes upon himself and that they must learn to build a new life for themselves without remorse. He wishes to be a king without a kingdom, and promises to leave, taking their sins, their dead, and their flies with him. Telling the story of the pied piper, Orestes walks off into the light as the Furies chase after him.
1998419	/m/06cy25	Merrick	Anne Rice	2000-10-17	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 We again meet Louis, Lestat, and David. They are followed by the beautiful witch Merrick Mayfair, an offshoot of the Mayfair clan, with Julien Mayfair as one of her ancestors. She knew David when he was a mortal man working as a member of the Talamasca and it is through David that Louis seeks Merrick's help in resurrecting the spirit of Claudia. This novel is a major turning point for Louis, after talking with the spirit of Claudia, called upon by Merrick, and receiving harsh words from the spirit that only confirm what the diary found in the French Quarter flat, the one Louis, Lestat, and Claudia once shared, by Jesse as narrated in Queen of the Damned (the diary was kept in the vaults of Talamasca and retrieved by Merrick), he attempts to commit suicide by allowing himself to bake in the sun, but he doesn't burn completely. The other vampires, including Merrick, David and Lestat, find him and restore him by showering him with their preternatural blood. Most of the novel is a rather long flashback detailing David and Merrick's adventures. Readers meet Merrick's malevolent sister, Honey Isabella or Honey in the Sunshine; Merrick's mother, Cold Sandra; and the Great Nananne, a powerful witch whose very presence is enough to frighten and instill respect in Talbot. One notable adventure involves a journey to Central America, which Merrick is compelled to undertake by dreams of Oncle Vervain (or so she thinks). Merrick and David find the cave where Matthew had contracted a fatal disease. David is surprised at the malevolence of the spirits in the cave and conjectures that they are protecting some great treasure. Merrick leaps forward and finds the treasure: a beautiful jade mask. By looking through this mask, one can see ethereal spirits as if they were corporeal. The two Talamascans see a mysterious spirit who resembles a priest. David then falls deathly sick, though Merrick does not. The two escape the treacherous cave, with David growing weaker by the moment; he is shuffled from hospital to hospital and is eventually cured of the disease. At the very end of the book, Merrick reveals her grand scheme. It was she who, from the very beginning, had used her potent magic to draw David and Louis inexorably towards her so that she would receive the Dark Gift of vampirism. Because Lestat (along with Louis) has given Merrick their blood, the Talamasca Elders threaten to wage war on the vampires. David Talbot tries to placate them with a final letter, warning that Lestat's enmity is more than the Watcher society could handle. He writes, "You have made yourselves an interesting adversary to one who loves challenges, and it will require all of my considerable influence to protect you individually and collectively from the avid lust you have so foolishly aroused." This novel builds upon a statement by David in Pandora that vampire powers have recently evolved to include the psychic powers of the human from which they were created. Previously, it was stated that a witch's powers are lost upon his or her transformation into a vampire (stemming from Maharet's recounting of her and her sister's history in Queen of the Damned, wherein she states that while they can no longer see the spirits, they do sometimes still see ghosts). However, Merrick's human supernatural powers remain intact in her vampire form. de:Merrick oder die Schuld des Vampirs es:Merrick (novela) fr:Merrick (roman) it:Merrick la strega nl:De Mayfair Heks pl:Merrick (powieść) pt:Merrick (livro) ru:Меррик (роман)
1999184	/m/06czmg	Our Gang	Philip Roth		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is six chapters long. Chapter one is entitled "Tricky comforts a troubled citizen". In the chapter, the citizen in question is concerned with William Calley's killing of twenty-two Vietnamese villagers at My Lai, but he is "seriously troubled by the possibility that Lieutenant Calley may have committed an abortion". Throughout the chapter, Dixon defends the notion that Calley may have killed a pregnant woman, covering many factors; If the pregnant woman was showing or not, if Calley could have communicated with her, if he really did know she was pregnant, whether the woman asked Calley to give her an abortion or not, etc. In true Nixonian style, Trick E. Dixon manages to defend Calley well until the citizen asks if Calley could have given her an abortion against her will, as "an outright form of murder", and Dixon gives the following answer, which is supposed to reflect his background as a lawyer and his hard-to-pin-down nature: Well, of course, that is a very iffy question, isn't it? What we lawyers call a hypothetical instance-isn't it? If you will remember, we are only "supposing" there to have been a pregnant woman in the ditch at My Lai to begin with. Suppose there "wasn't" a pregnant woman in that ditch — which, in fact, seems from all evidence to have been the case. We are then involved in a totally academic discussion. In chapter two, entitled &#34;Tricky holds a press conference&#34;, Dixon takes questions from reporters with names to suit their respective personalities. The reporters are called Mr. Asslick (who, as his name suggests, &#34;sucks up&#34; to the President), Mr. Daring (who poses, as suggested, the more daring suggestions in the style of investigative journalism), Mr. Respectful (who acts rather meekly compared to some of his compatriots), Mr. Shrewd (who, being slightly more daring than Mr. Daring, suggests President Dixon may be giving voting rights to the unborn for purely political reasons), Miss Charming (the typical female reporter often stereotyped in media as &#39;charming&#39; indeed), Mr. Practical (concerned not with the politics of the situation, but the when and the how much of the situation). From this starting point, Roth satirizes Nixon and his cabinet — particularly Henry Kissinger (&#34;Highbrow coach&#34;) and Spiro Agnew (&#34;Vice President-what&#39;s-his-name&#34;) — as Tricky tries to deny that he supports sexual intercourse, provoking a group of Boy Scouts to riot in Washington, D.C. in which three are shot. Tricky tries to pin the blame on baseball player Curt Flood and the nation of Denmark, managing to obliterate the city of Copenhagen in the process. After an operation to remove his upper lip sweat gland, he is eventually assassinated by being drowned in a giant baggie filled with water, his corpse in the fetal position. Tricky ends the novel in Hell, campaigning against Satan for the position of Devil. es:Nuestra pandilla (novela)
1999266	/m/06czvy	The Time of Your Life	William Saroyan			 The play is set in Nick's Pacific Street Saloon, Restaurant and Entertainment Palace, a run down dive bar in San Francisco. Much of the action of the play centers around Joe, a young loafer with money who encourages each of the bar's patrons in their eccentricities. Joe helps out a would-be dancer, Harry, and sets up his flunky, Tom, with a prostitute, Kitty Duval. The bar is frequented by a number of colorful characters, including a frenetic young man in love, an old man who looks like Kit Carson, and an affluent society couple. Nick's saloon is based on the café operated by Izzy Gomez in San Francisco, which Saroyan frequented.
2000834	/m/06d2cc	The World Is Flat	Thomas L. Friedman	2005-04-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In his book, The World is Flat, Friedman recounts a journey to Bangalore, India, when he realized globalization has changed core economic concepts. In his opinion, this flattening is a product of a convergence of personal computer with fiber-optic micro cable with the rise of work flow software. He termed this period as Globalization 3.0, differentiating this period from the previous Globalization 1.0 (in which countries and governments were the main protagonists) and the Globalization 2.0 (in which multinational companies led the way in driving global integration). Friedman recounts many examples of companies based in India and China that, by providing labor from typists and call center operators to accountants and computer programmers, have become integral parts of complex global supply chains for companies such as Dell, AOL, and Microsoft. Friedman's Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention is discussed in the book's penultimate chapter. Friedman repeatedly uses lists as an organizational device to communicate key concepts, usually numbered, and often with a provocative label. Two example lists are the ten forces that flattened the world, and three points of convergence. Friedman defines ten "flatteners" that he sees as leveling the global playing field: * #1: Collapse of the Berlin Wall &ndash; 11/9/89: Friedman called the flattener, "When the walls came down, and the windows came up." The event not only symbolized the end of the Cold War, it allowed people from the other side of the wall to join the economic mainstream. "11/9/89" is a discussion about the Berlin Wall coming down, the "fall" of communism, and the impact that Windows powered PCs (personal computers) had on the ability of individuals to create their own content and connect to one another. At that point, the basic platform for the revolution to follow was created: IBM PC, Windows, a standardized graphical interface for word processing, dial-up modems, a standardized tool for communication, and a global phone network. * #2: Netscape &ndash; 8/9/95: Netscape went public at the price of $28. Netscape and the Web broadened the audience for the Internet from its roots as a communications medium used primarily by "early adopters and geeks" to something that made the Internet accessible to everyone from five-year-olds to ninety-five-year-olds. The digitization that took place meant that everyday occurrences such as words, files, films, music, and pictures could be accessed and manipulated on a computer screen by all people across the world. * #3: Workflow software: Friedman's catch-all for the standards and technologies that allowed work to flow. The ability of machines to talk to other machines with no humans involved, as stated by Friedman. Friedman believes these first three forces have become a "crude foundation of a whole new global platform for collaboration." There was an emergence of software protocols (SMTP &ndash; simple mail transfer protocol; HTML &ndash; the language that enabled anyone to design and publish documents that could be transmitted to and read on any computer anywhere) Standards on Standards. This is what Friedman called the "Genesis moment of the flat world." The net result "is that people can work with other people on more stuff than ever before." This created a global platform for multiple forms of collaboration. The next six flatteners sprung from this platform. * #4: Uploading: Communities uploading and collaborating on online projects. Examples include open source software, blogs, and Wikipedia. Friedman considers the phenomenon "the most disruptive force of all." * #5: Outsourcing: Friedman argues that outsourcing has allowed companies to split service and manufacturing activities into components which can be subcontracted and performed in the most efficient, cost-effective way. This process became easier with the mass distribution of fiber optic cables during the introduction of the World Wide Web. * #6: Offshoring: The internal relocation of a company's manufacturing or other processes to a foreign land to take advantage of less costly operations there. China's entrance in the WTO (World Trade Organization) allowed for greater competition in the playing field. Now countries such as Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil must compete against China and each other to have businesses offshore to them. * #7: Supply-chaining: Friedman compares the modern retail supply chain to a river, and points to Wal-Mart as the best example of a company using technology to streamline item sales, distribution, and shipping. * #8: Insourcing: Friedman uses UPS as a prime example for insourcing, in which the company's employees perform services &ndash; beyond shipping &ndash; for another company. For example, UPS repairs Toshiba computers on behalf of Toshiba. The work is done at the UPS hub, by UPS employees. * #9: Informing: Google and other search engines are the prime example. "Never before in the history of the planet have so many people &ndash; on their own &ndash; had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people," writes Friedman. The growth of search engines is tremendous; for example take Google, in which Friedman states that it is "now processing roughly one billion searches per day, up from 150 million just three years ago." * #10: "The Steroids": Wireless, Voice over Internet, and file sharing. Personal digital devices like mobile phones, iPods, personal digital assistants, instant messaging, and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Digital, Mobile, Personal and Virtual &ndash; all analog content and processes (from entertainment to photography to word processing) can be digitized and therefore shaped, manipulated and transmitted; virtual &ndash; these processes can be done at high speed with total ease; mobile &ndash; can be done anywhere, anytime by anyone; and personal &ndash; can be done by you. Thomas Friedman believes that to fight the quiet crisis of a flattening world, the United States work force should keep updating its work skills. Making the work force more adaptable, Friedman argues, will keep it more employable. He also suggests that the government make it easier to switch jobs by making retirement benefits and health insurance less dependent on one's employer and by providing insurance that would partly cover a possible drop in income when changing jobs. Friedman also believes there should be more inspiration for youth to be scientists, engineers, and mathematicians due to a decrease in the percentage of these professionals being American.
2002895	/m/06d84h	Disclosure	Michael Crichton	1994-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Tom Sanders, the head of advanced products manufacturing at DigiCom, expects to be promoted to run the advanced products division after DigiCom's merger with a publishing house. Instead, his ex-girlfriend, Meredith Johnson, who recently moved to Seattle from the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California; is given the promotion. Later that day, Meredith calls Tom into her office, ostensibly to discuss an advanced CD-ROM drive. She aggressively tries to resume their relationship, despite Tom's repeated attempts to resist. When he spurns her sexual advances, Meredith angrily vows to make him pay. The next morning, Tom discovers that Meredith has retaliated by falsely accusing him of sexual harassment. DigiCom president Bob Garvin, fearing that the incident could jeopardize the merger, tells the company's general counsel, Phil Blackburn, to propose transferring Tom to the company's Austin facility. However, Tom's division is due to be spun off as a publicly traded company after the merger, and if he's transferred, he will lose stock options which would make him a wealthy man. Seemingly out of options, Tom gets in touch with Seattle attorney Louise Fernandez, who agrees to take the case. Tom threatens to sue Meredith and DigiCom for sexual harassment unless Meredith is fired, throwing the merger and his future with the company in jeopardy. During a mediation, Tom discovers that when he called one of his colleagues, John Levin, about the problems with the drive, John's answering machine recorded the whole incident with Meredith. He and Linda also discover that DigiCom officials have known for some time that Meredith has a history of unwelcome advances toward male coworkers, and yet did nothing to stop it. Confronted with this evidence, DigiCom is forced to agree to a settlement in which Meredith is quietly pushed out and Tom is restored to his former post. That night, Tom gets an email from "A Friend" warning him that all is not normal yet. Later, he overhears Meredith and Phil planning to make it look like Tom is responsible for defects in the CD-ROM project, thereby giving DigiCom an excuse to fire him for incompetence. Tom is unable to access information in the database that would prove his innocence since Meredith has locked him out of the system. Through a prototype of the company's virtual reality machine, Tom discovers that Meredith changed the quality control specifications at the Malaysian plant manufacturing the drive. These changes, ostensibly to appease Malaysian government demands and cut costs, resulted in the defects. With the help of one of his Malaysian colleagues, Tom obtains enough evidence to turn the tables on Meredith, resulting in her getting fired instead.
2003681	/m/06d9_5	Guy Mannering	Walter Scott	1815	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Guy Mannering, after leaving Oxford, had been Mr Godfrey Bertram's guest on the night of his son's birth, when he made acquaintance with Dominie Sampson, and with Meg Merrilies, who came to tell the infant's fortune. The young student, however, offered to do this from the stars, and predicted that three periods of the boy's life would be very hazardous. Five years afterwards he was kidnapped while riding with Kennedy, whose dead body was found on the beach; and the same night, after giving birth to a daughter, Mrs Bertram left her husband a widower. Sixteen more years had elapsed when Colonel Mannering returned from India just in time to be present at his friend's death, and Glossin, who had been concerned in Harry's abduction, became the possessor of the Ellangowan estate. Lucy and the dominie accepted the hospitality of Mr and Mrs MacMorlan; but the colonel, having learnt from Mr Mervyn, at whose house his daughter was staying, that she had a lover, who afterwards proved to be Brown, hired a house in the neighbourhood of Kippletringan, and invited Miss Bertram to be Julia's companion, and the tutor his librarian. As he was following Miss Mannering to Scotland, the smuggler Brown, whom the colonel believed he had shot in a duel in India, dined with the farmer Dinmont at an inn, where he also met Meg Merrilies, who recognised him; and, having rescued the farmer from some robbers, he spent a few days at his house. Proceeding on his journey, he came to a ruined hut, in which the gipsy was tending a dying man; and, hidden by her, he saw a gang of ruffians divide the contents of his portmanteau, and bury their comrade. When they had gone she pointed out his road, and gave him a purse, exacting at the same time a promise that he would come with her whenever she called for him. Writing to a friend, Julia made great fun of the dominie's peculiarities, and mentioned Lucy's discouragement of young Hazlewood because she had no fortune. In her next letter she described an attack upon their house at Woodbourne by smugglers; and in another the sudden appearance of Brown, who had wounded Hazlewood and escaped. The attorney Glossin, now a justice of the peace, was indefatigable in endeavouring to trace him, and heard with pleasure that MacGuffog had a man in custody. He, however, was Hatteraick, in whose smuggling ventures the attorney had largely shared, and who told him that Harry Bertram was in the neighbourhood. Having connived at his escape from custody, Glossin met him in a cave, and learnt that the young heir had been carried to Holland, where he was adopted by a merchant named Vanbeest, who afterwards sent him to India. The attorney then called at Woodbourne to announce that Miss Bertram had left her fortune to Lucy, and the colonel at once started with the dominie to Edinburgh, to place the matter in the advocate Mr Pleydell's hands. Harry had retreated to Cumberland, but he managed to correspond with Julia; and, having returned to Ellangowan, he was wandering among the ruins when he encountered Glossin, who had him arrested for shooting at Hazlewood, and lodged in the bridewell (small prison) adjoining the custom-house at Portanferry. Here he was visited by Dinmont, who had heard from Gabriel of his being in trouble, and was allowed to pass the night with him. Meanwhile Meg Merrilies had sent a paper to the colonel by the dominie, and urged young Hazlewood to cause the soldiers who had been withdrawn from Portanferry to be sent back there instantly. During the night the custom-house was fired by a gang of ruffians; but one of them helped Bertram and his friend to escape, and led them to a carriage, which conveyed them to Woodbourne, where Mr Pleydell had previously arrived. Having been recognised by the colonel as Brown, and questioned by the lawyer, his identity as the heir of Ellangowan was established, and he was hugged by the dominie as his little Harry. The next morning Lucy embraced her long-lost brother, and Julia acknowledged him as her lover. As he was walking with them, Meg Merrilies sent Dinmont to claim Bertram's compliance with his promise to her; and, followed also by Hazlewood, she led the way to a room where she armed them, and thence to the smugglers' cave, where, after a struggle, in which the gipsy was mortally wounded, they seized Hatteraick and handed him over to the village constables. Meg's dying revelations furnished sufficient evidence for arresting Glossin, who, by bribing the jailer, obtained access to the smuggler's cell, where he was found strangled, and his accomplice in crime committed suicide. Having recovered the property of his ancestors, Harry Bertram was able to discharge all his father's debts, and, with the help of Julia's dowry, to erect a new mansion, which contained a snug chamber called "Mr Sampson's apartment." His aunt's estate also reverted to him, but he resigned it to his sister on her marriage with Hazlewood.
2005292	/m/06dfjw	Minty Alley	C. L. R. James	1936		 The book opens with Mr. Haynes deciding to rent part of a house situated nearby on the title street—a very short alley. His mother has died, and he is trying to make the best out of an otherwise dull life. Figuring out how to pay for the house, he arrives there the following day, meeting Maisie and her aunt, Mrs. Rouse, who has a small room to let. Haynes agrees to use it after hearing of the conditions and the price—$2.50. Early next morning, Haynes begins transferring his goods to his new home. Back at that residence, he is introduced to his new landlord, Mr. Benoit. On the first Saturday evening of his stay, he meets a sick Miss Atwell and an East Indian servant named Philomen, as well as a cake-seller named John. Later on, Mrs. Rouse arrives with her new lodger, a nurse named Jackson, and the rest in the house engage in a lot of conversation soon after. Yet after such good times, Haynes is bored and wants to move out of No. 2 in a month, in which case he will leave the rest up to Ella. The next morning, while Rouse and niece are attending Mass, he secretly encounters a brief love affair between Benoit and the lodger nurse. As days go by, that nurse becomes the dominant factor of life at No. 2, keeping the entire house in full shape. One morning, a stay-at-home Haynes witnesses Sonny, Nurse Jackson's son, being beaten by the landlord over his prize for winning a marbles game: a kiss for his opponent, Maisie. After a caning from the nurse, he is chased by her all the way to Haynes’ room, where he hides from her. Then, as she calls him out like she would a dog, Haynes misses his chance to save Sonny, who is intent on staying with him for protection. But upon a further caning by Sonny’s mother, the bachelor decides he must move back to Ella, even with an injured foot. That evening, the nurse comes by to check on his foot and have it treated—the first of such a series of twice-daily visits. Only some days later does his foot become any better. Another few days pass, and the people at No. 2 are preparing to avoid the local bailiff and Mr. Brown from visiting their home. Luckily, both are nowhere to be seen; but word of the two crops up in their conversations for days afterward. Because of a fight between her and Mrs. Rouse, the nurse soon leaves the house. Troubled times thus begin herein: another morning later, a policeman asks for Aucher, who turns out to be a thief; and quarrels between Benoit and Mrs. Rouse erupt for nights at a time, all due to the nurse's departure and her love for the landlord. Even the two try to murder each other, and for that action Haynes decides strongly to move out. Surprisingly, Nurse Jackson passes her examinations, thanks partly to Benoit's help, but nothing more than her affair with the landlord is talked of for days at No. 2. More surprisingly, they both have been engaged, and news of their romance and upcoming marriage crops up regularly soon after. Their wedding takes place at nine on a Sunday morning, at the start of the month, but the people at the house are getting impatient about Miss Atwell's arrival from the ceremony. When she returns at eleven, she tells them everything that happened during that ceremony (the centre of attention being the nurse's expensive white fugi dress). Later on, No. 2 is put up for mortgage, but as an ailing Mrs. Rouse is warned by Haynes, it will take eight years before the house can fully be paid off, even with her cake business on the decline. With Mrs. Rouse, Haynes learns how much the house has fared from the time it was built at the start of the First World War. Then, upon visiting her, he learns of Ella's sickness and that a friend will replace her once she is taken to her mother in the country. December comes, and Haynes, meeting Benoit for the first time since he married the nurse, is nervous to see how much he has changed. It is rumoured that things have not been going well for the couple, and the landlord has had no new job out of this. In spite of their recent woes, Christmas goes on cheerfully for the residents of the house. During the holiday, a freed Aucher helps the rest of them as they work harder than ever to keep No. 2 clean, while Haynes decides to spent some time at the seaside for his health's sake. On Boxing Day, the company at the house, Haynes included, delight themselves with an enjoyable lunch, after which Miss Atwell honours Haynes in a short speech. The bachelor's reply turns out to be "the speech of his life". On New Year's Eve, Miss Atwell pays Haynes a visit, telling him Ella is still sick. On the New Year's holiday the following day, he pays Mrs. Rouse $20 in advance (a plan he had made with Maisie) for the sake of remaining at the house via boarding. Three days later, he learns of the now-recovered headmistress' return to town, even though she has not come to No. 2, because Haynes feels that he does not want her. For another two or three days, he ponders on what has recently come of him. In the midst of a quarrel between Rouse and niece, over Haynes' alienation from Ella, the bachelor is refunded his boarding fee. Now he wants to strike out vulgarly against them both. Late one afternoon, while on a tramcar in town, Haynes encounters the nurse being arrested for stealing clothes. He hurries home to tell everyone at No. 2 about it, but all of them are hearing Philomen's account of the event as he arrives. Then Haynes reads a letter from Nurse Jackson addressed to Rouse, in which the nurse defames Rouse's past relationship with Benoit. With Jackson on bail, gloom hangs over No. 2 once again. On the morning of her trial, everyone but Aucher is in Court to hear of the nurse's fate: she is fined £15 or three months in prison. (This is the last time Haynes will ever see her again in person.) Later, due to accusations about her husband living with another woman, the nurse and her son leave for the United States. After the case, Haynes finds a friend&mdash;and lover&mdash;in Rouse's niece. But she wants to avoid the presence of her aunt's secret admirer, Sgt. Parkes (a father of six), for fear of a do-over of Rouse's former affairs with Benoit. She does so on the Friday morning of his visit, and for this, Haynes gets upset over Maisie. Later that afternoon, Mrs. Rouse tells him, in distaste, that Benoit has returned by surprise. And at dusk, Aucher tells them the sergeant (whom Rouse is not interested in seeing) has come back. For the next several weeks, Mrs. Rouse tries not to let her house be sold, without Mr. Rojas' help, to a woman who is willing to buy the property. One day, nearly a year after his debut at No. 2, Haynes stunningly finds the major compartments of the kitchen have moved to outside for the sake of convenience. Then, he discovers just how much Philomen has changed in weight and appearance. This is due to heavy work and a love affair with Sugedo, which makes Maisie develop hatred for the servant. To avoid further trouble with Rouse, she is forced to move out of her home and live with her new employer, Gomes. A tearful farewell takes place at No. 2, whence Mrs. Rouse also cries for her before she leaves; Haynes is a part of it as well. Just when life at No. 2 begins anew without Philomen, so its trials and tribulations resume: Maisie and some others are soon accused by Mrs. Rouse for being involved in a string of petty thefts, rising by the score. It comes to a climax one Sunday morning when Mrs. Rouse finds a dollar bill belonging to Haynes, with her niece unwilling to admit to this theft. She disappears from Haynes' sight the rest of the day. After spending a worryfree August by the seaside while on leave, Haynes returns to No. 2 on the final day of the month&mdash;a rainy Sunday&mdash;and finds out that nothing has changed. As Mrs. Rouse calls for Maisie, right before Haynes and a few lodgers, the niece speaks out against her being treated by her aunt, and also against her aunt's past love life with Benoit. Thus the ultimate quarrel between the two ensues on a now-muddy yard, during which Mrs. Rouse throws away all of her niece's goods out into the mire. Supporting his now almost-defeated lover, Haynes is angry at her aunt, while the niece, in revenge, ruins some of her aunt's attire amid her own outfits. Angry at Mrs. Rouse, she sneaks away from the rest of the lodgers. Four nights later, Haynes meets her at a nearby park for the last time; she tells the bachelor of her plans for New York City. Another two days pass before she heads to the Big Apple by boat. Life at No. 2, for Haynes, will never be the same without her, and thus he cannot afford to stay there. As September comes to an end, Rouse informs him that the former landlord has suffered a stroke, which she is not sorry to see him get. Both head to the Government Hospital that Sunday night to make sure he is there, since they are unable to visit him. The two of them leave, walking up the street&mdash;Rouse to her church for prayers, and Haynes to No. 2, where he and Miss Atwell discuss about Benoit's past and present. Rouse joins them both after her session has finished. Late that same night, Haynes decides that he should end his life at the house, for all the effects that Maisie's immigration has left on him. Next morning, the 22nd of September, he wakes up uneasily to the news of McCarthy Benoit's death: this event, in turn, causes regular life at No. 2 to come to an end. Entering October, Haynes finds new lodgings with Ella's help, and this leaves Rouse and Atwell as the caretakers of the house before it can legally be sold. (Gomes [Haynes' new neighbour] and Mr. Rojas are taking over Rouse's declining cake business.) Though his visits are less frequent in time to come, bachelor Haynes often passes by No. 2, thinking of all that used to happen there. At the end of the novel, a family of five&mdash;husband, wife and three children&mdash;happen to be its new residents.
2006133	/m/05kddym	Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission	Hampton Sides	2001		 In late January 1945, 121 Ranger volunteers set out to perform a rescue of over 513 Allied prisoners of war in a Japanese camp near the Philippine city of Cabanatuan. The prisoners, remnants of the Bataan Death March, had lived in deplorable conditions for three years, suffering from starvation, tropical diseases, and abuse from Japanese soldiers. Ghost Soldiers recounts the story of the prisoners, the Ranger unit performing the raid, and the Filipino guerrillas who provided assistance. A massacre of American soldiers at Palawan alerted U.S. commanders to the danger of mass POW executions as the Japanese retreated from the Philippines. As a consequence, they planned and executed a mission to rescue the POWs from Cabanatuan prison camp. Ghost Soldiers provides historical background to the events leading to the raid, detailed accounts of camp conditions and the prisoner's heroic will to survive, and the planning and successful execution of the rescue.
2008185	/m/06dnlb	Thomas	Robin Jarvis	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Thomas tells of the midshipmouse Thomas Triton's adventures when he was young. He and his friend Woodget Pipple become embroiled in the hideous schemes of the Scale, the followers of the evil serpent god Sarpedon.
2008212	/m/06dnns	Fleabee's Fortune	Robin Jarvis	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story, taking place in the year before the events of The Dark Portal, is about a young ratgirl named Fleabee, who is unlike the rest of her kind. She is gentle and does not want to harm anything. But the festival of the First Blood is approaching, when young ratlings must murder by midnight or be killed themselves. And so Fleabee has to make a difficult choice.
2008234	/m/06dnpv	The Dark Portal	Robin Jarvis	1989	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the sewers of Deptford there lurks a dark presence that fills the tunnels with fear: Jupiter, a dark god known only by his evil, no one really knows who he is except for his lieutenant Morgan his glowing eyes seen behind a dark "portal" in the tunnel wall. The rats worship him and do his dark bidding. The Deptford mice, who worship the Green Mouse who brings Spring, are aware of Jupiter's evil presence in the tunnels. One of the mice, Albert Brown, is pulled through a grate into the sewers by the dark enchantments that Jupiter has woven there. He meets a cheeky mouse from the city, Piccadilly, also lost inside the lair of the rats. When Albert is captured by Morgan, a Cornish, piebald rat with a stump for a tail and rings through his ears (none other than Jupiter's lieutenant) and brought to Jupiter, Piccadilly escapes into Albert's home, known as the Skirtings, where he meets a large number of friends. Firstly, there is Audrey Brown, Albert's day-dreaming daughter who hates Piccadilly for surviving where her father did not. Then there is Arthur Brown, Audrey's plump and funny brother. There is also simple fieldmouse William Scuttle or 'Twit' and his cousin, the sickly albino runt, Oswald Chitter. Along with the old Midship-mouse, Thomas Triton and Gwen Brown, the mother of Audrey and Arthur, they venture into the sewers to banish Jupiter from the world. The Rat God, however, has an evil plan to unleash the Black Death on the world once more, ridding it of humans and enabling him to conquer it. After a tense-confrontation with Jupiter in this throne-room during which the malevolent deity is revealed to be a monstrous cat, Audrey defeats the Dark Lord by flinging her mousebrass at him. The talisman explodes and Jupiter falls into the water that is rapidly flooding his chamber. The spirits of the many mice and rats he has tortured and devoured then rise up and drag the dark god down to a watery grave. Audrey glimpses her father among the legion of spirits as they depart and despairs, realising that he is truly dead. The sewer floods and the Black Death is destroyed. Thankful that they are alive and resolving to celebrate Jupiter's downfall once they return home, the mice begin the journey back to the surface but as they leave, Orfeo the bat foretells doom.
2008245	/m/06dnqj	The Crystal Prison	Robin Jarvis	1989	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Oswald is ill and he's hours from death. While Twit and Piccadilly vow to return to their home, Thomas arrives, telling Audrey that she must join him on a journey to Greenwich to speak to the Starwife. So Audrey, Thomas, and Twit went they are told that the Chitters will all perish by the end of the night unless Audrey agrees to take Madame Akkikuyu to live in Twit's field. Although Oswald makes a full recovery. Nicodemus, proves his powers to Akkikuyu. Nicodemus tells Madamme Akkikuyu to release him from his prison, and a girl has to replace his spot, Akkikuyu realises that he is referring to Audrey and agrees to do his bidding Nicodemus chooses Alison for the sacrifice. Akkikuyu takes her to be sacrificed and halfway through, Nicodemus reveals that he is Jupiter, and that he will inhabit Akkikuyu's body as soon as he is freed from the Crystal Prison. For redemption Madamme Akkikuyu leaps into the flames, saving Alison and holding Jupiter imprisoned for the time being. Akkikuyu is buried in great honour. Now that Akkikuyu is dead, Audrey's deal with the Starwife is void and a little while later Jupiter's prison is smashed unknowingly by Alison and he flies into the air, vowing revenge on those who opposed him... This is the last appearance of Twit in the Deptford Mice series, although he is mentioned throughout The Final Reckoning. It is unknown if he is to cross paths with the others again, as it is noted that neither Arthur or Audrey would ever return to Fennywolde. Madame Akkikuyu's role in The Crystal Prison is very similar to Morgan's in The Final Reckoning. Both are happier than they have ever been in their life, both lives are ruined by Jupiter at its end and both commit suicide.
2008254	/m/06dnrk	The Final Reckoning	Robin Jarvis	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The ghostly spirit of Jupiter is back, more powerful than ever before. Bent on revenge, he smothers the world in an eternal winter of ice and snow. Huddled around their fires, the Deptford Mice are worried: the mystical bats have fled the attic, and underground a new rat army is being mustered. With food short and no sign of spring, the mice know that a desperate struggle confronts them. Few will survive.
2008609	/m/06dpk3	Inside, Outside	Herman Wouk	1985-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story alternates between Goodkind telling his family history and early years (specifically, his first 26 years (1915-1941)) and his account of current events in 1973, leading up to the Yom Kippur War. The tales of Goodkind's early years describe his family - his mother and father, his sister, his mother's father and father's mother, his mother's half sister, and a tribe of more distant uncles, aunts and cousins (the 'Mishpokha', Yiddish for 'family'). After college, Goodkind works for Harry Goldhandler, a gagwriter for radio comedies (very loosely based on David Freedman), and has a romance with showgirl Bobby Webb. The tales of his present day in 1973 are centered on his wife, his daughter, their friends, and Peter Quat, a college friend who also worked for Goldhandler, and who had become a famous novelist for his sexually explicit characters and unflattering depictions of American Jewish life. Quat's books seem similar to the work of Philip Roth, but Roth did not attend Columbia nor work for Freedman. As a young man, Goodkind becomes less observant, but his adult self has returned to the Orthodox practices of his father and grandfather. Goodkind as a child and young man is embarrassed by his first name "Israel", mockingly shortened by several other characters to "Izzy". In the last scene of the novel when Goodkind returns to the U.S. after the Yom Kippur war, he tells an El Al flight attendant to call him Israel.
2009699	/m/06dshm	Filth	Irvine Welsh	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot centres on Bruce Robertson, a detective sergeant serving in Edinburgh's "Lothian Constabulary". Robertson is an intensely misanthropic man driven by intense hatred, and is fuelled by his penchant for "the games" &mdash; Bruce's euphemism for the myriad foul plots he hatches directed at workmates. He is also addicted to cocaine, and is sexually abusive towards the women in his life. He is able to indulge in non-stop sex and drug use during his annual holidays to Amsterdam. The novel begins with a murder, which is the case that Bruce Robertson is investigating; however, the natural evolution of the plot itself has little or nothing at all to do with the crime. The plot traces Bruce throughout his life, told from a first-person perspective. Through narrative devices such as the tapeworm he acquires, we get to explore the facets of Bruce's personality and learn about his past, through the various tedious police routines Bruce absconds from, his sexual endeavours eventually backfiring, and his various short or long-termed schemes and plots against his colleagues in order to raise his chances of gaining the hoped-for promotion to Detective Inspector. In an example of a rather short-term scheme, at the police station's Christmas party Bruce first waits for a female colleague he calls "Size Queen" to get drunk, and then proposes a game in order to have sex with her. A longer-term scheme, and also a major sub-plot, is the harassing phone calls Bruce directs at the wife of his friend, Clifford "Bladesy" Blades: Bunty Blades. By imitating the voice of British celebrity Frank Sidebottom to call Bunty up and ask vulgar questions, Bruce manages to drive a wedge between her and "Bladesy". After ingratiating himself with Bunty by playing the role of a concerned friend, Bruce manages to trick Clifford Blades into imitating the selfsame voice in a message left to his answering machine, which serves to portray him as Bunty's perverted caller - which Bruce, of course, "reveals" to Bunty. Bruce enters into a purely sexual relationship with Bunty Blades after feigning romantic interest, whilst "Bladesy" is arrested. Apart from the general malevolent scheming, along the way Bruce Robertson also seeks to satisfy his cravings for violence, drugs, sex, and pornography whilst happily voicing his racism, sectarianism and misogyny and pining for his ex-wife. Eventually Bruce is forced into taking leave due to injuries he suffers while dressed as his ex-wife, leading to the revelation that he committed the racially-motivated murder that is the main plot, and that the colleagues he so despised &mdash; particularly his boss Bob Toal &mdash; knew of this, and were protecting him all along. The book ends with Bruce committing suicide in order to claim revenge on his divorced wife, Carole.
2010476	/m/06dvj0	Scarlett	Alexandra Ripley	1991-09	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins where Gone with the Wind left off, with Scarlett attending the funeral of her former sister-in-law and rival for Ashley Wilkes' affection, Melanie Wilkes, at which her estranged husband, Rhett Butler, is not present. Scarlett, heartbroken and aggravated that Rhett has left her completely, sets out for Tara and is saddened when she learns that Mammy, her mainstay since birth, is dying. When she arrives at Tara, she sends a telegram to notify Rhett about Mammy under the name of Will Benteen (her sister Suellen's husband), because she knows that Rhett won't come if he suspects Scarlett is there. Before Mammy dies she makes Rhett swear to look after "her lamb" Miss Scarlett. Rhett agrees, although he has no intention of honoring the request. After Mammy's death, Rhett and Scarlett fight, which culminates in Rhett leaving and Scarlett returning to the Atlanta house, determined to win Rhett back. Scarlett, in her haste to win Rhett back, travels to Charleston to visit Rhett's family and tries to corner him by winning his mother's affection. He instead secludes himself in the family's old plantation on the river. Scarlett convinces Rhett to take her for a sail on the harbour, where their boat capsizes during a terrible storm. When they become shipwrecked, Rhett tries to keep Scarlett awake until they reach land. Scarlett and Rhett swim until they reach an island, and take refuge in a hollow of sand dunes. Rhett says, "Oh my darling, I thought I'd lost you! My love, my life...". Scarlett thinks he means it, and the two make love in the cave. Rhett later tells her that "when a man survived something he thought he wouldn't, he does and says crazy things," and that he didn't mean it. Scarlett, knowing that he meant it tells him to look her in the eyes, and tell her honestly that he does not love her. He then confesses, but runs out because he does not want to "lose himself" over her again. He compares her to an addiction to opium. Once safely back in Charleston, Rhett leaves Scarlett near death at his mother's house, telling her, in a letter, that while he admires her bravery in the face of danger, it has changed nothing; he will never see her again. After Scarlett has regained her strength, she leaves Charleston with her two aunts, Pauline and Eulalie, to attend her maternal grandfather's birthday celebration in Savannah. She leaves a hastily written note to Rhett's mother, whom she has grown to love and admire, with Rhett's sister, Rosemary. Rosemary burns the note. (Rosemary overheard a nasty exchange between Rhett and Scarlett and was upset with this "dark side" of her brother. Rhett told Rosemary the whole story of loving Scarlett till there was not one drop of love left and how he would fall in love with her again if he didn't keep away from her.) Scarlett connects with the Savannah O'Haras against her maternal family's wishes. Scarlett's grandfather offers Scarlett his entire inheritance if she will remain with him in Savannah until his death and avoid all contact with her father's side of the family. Scarlett refuses the old man and storms out of the house, furious at his demands. She goes to stay with her cousin Jamie and his family. Soon after another cousin named Colum, a priest from Ireland, joins them. Later Scarlett agrees to travel to Ireland with him. By this time Scarlett has realized that she is pregnant with Rhett's child but she keeps her pregnancy hidden. In Ireland, Scarlett is heartily welcomed by her Irish kin, including her grandmother, Old Katie Scarlett, Gerald's mother. Exploring one day with her cousin Colum, they pass by an old house which the latter explained was called 'Ballyhara' along with the land surrounding it; it was O'Hara land long ago before the English seized it, along with other land from the Irish. Scarlett is mildly interested until she receives a notification of divorce from Rhett. Scarlett makes plans to leave for America at once but is stunned by more news; Rhett is married to another woman, a Charlestonian named Anne Hampton, who is said to resemble Melanie Wilkes. Heartbroken and full of remorse over her past deeds, Scarlett decides to remain in Ireland. She works with lawyers and leaves her two-third share of her father's plantation, Tara, to her son Wade Hamilton (fathered by her first husband, Charles Hamilton, brother of Melanie Wilkes), buys Ballyhara and settles down in Ireland, to her Irish family's delight. She and her cousin, Colum, tell everyone that her husband had taken ill and then died, leaving her a widow, rather than tell the truth that she was divorced. As Ballyhara is slowly restored, Scarlett eagerly awaits the birth of her child, praying for it to be a girl and vowing to be a good mother. She is well respected by the townspeople and her family, earning her a reputation as a hard worker, with fierce Irish pride. She becomes known as The O'Hara, a title reserved for the undisputed leader of a family clan. One stormy Halloween night, her water breaks. Her housekeeper, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and the midwife whom Colum summons are unable to handle the situation, and it appears that Scarlett will die. Instead, she is saved by the wise old woman who lives near the haunted tower and who appears suddenly. The Caesarian birth is successful, but internal damage is done to Scarlett; as a result, Scarlett can no longer have children. The baby, a girl, is born with dark skin like Rhett's, but with blue eyes that slowly turn as green as Scarlett's. Full of love and thanksgiving, Scarlett names her Katie Colum O'Hara, and calls her "Cat" because of her green eyes. Rumors in the town abound about the birth of the child since one of the townspeople summoned to help with the birth claimed that the wise woman (witch) birthed a healthy boy from Scarlett but replaced the boy-child with a girl-child changeling. These rumors and fears are accented by the fact that Cat is born on Halloween, the time when bad spirits roam and play tricks on the living. After Scarlett has settled down in Ballyhara, she runs into Rhett a number of times—in America when she sees him while she is on the boat to Boston, at a fair where she admits she still loves him and at a hunt a week later. All the while, he still does not know he has a child. He then seeks her out at a society ball and, in this gesture, Scarlett realizes he still loves her, and that she in turn loves him in a way only she and he will ever know. Lord Fenton, one of the wealthiest men in Europe, pursues Scarlett relentlessly, wanting to marry her but not with good intentions. He wants Scarlett to bear his children after seeing Cat's fiery spirit and fearlessness. He also plans to unite their estates; he owns Adamstown, the land adjacent to Scarlett's. The combined estate will go to their son upon their deaths but Cat will bear his name and have the best of everything. Angered by his arrogance, Scarlett refuses and orders him out of her house. He laughs at her and asks her to call him when she reconsiders. Scarlett leaves for Dublin for her yearly visit for parties and hunts. She later decides to accept Lord Fenton when she hears that Anne is pregnant with Rhett’s second child (the first child was lost to a miscarriage). The news leaks out about her engagement and Rhett, in a drunken state, insults her when she runs into him at a horse race. A mutual friend tells her that Anne died of a fever and the baby died four days after its birth and she rushes back to Ballyhara hopeful that Rhett would come looking for her. She finds English there with a warrant to arrest Colum, who is the head of the Fenian Brotherhood, a group of Irish terrorists planning to revolt against the English. Colum is murdered and Rosaleen Fitzpatrick sets fire to the entire English arsenal to avenge Colum. The villagers, thinking Scarlett is in league with the English, burn her house down. Rhett comes to her rescue and he tries to convince her to escape with him. Scarlett doesn't go, but runs around her house yelling, "Cat! Cat! Where are you?" Rhett, confusedly says, "There's no time for the cat! We have to go!" Scarlett looks at him, dumbfounded. "Oh you fool! Not a cat," she barks. "Katie Colum O'Hara, called Cat. She's your daughter." Stunned, Rhett demands that Scarlett tell him how that's possible. Scarlett, still anxious about finding Cat, gives him a hurried explanation of when Cat was conceived. Rhett frantically goes in search of his newfound daughter with Scarlett at his heels. They find Cat in the kitchen after Scarlett remembers that Cat loves the kitchen. The three climb into the high tower on Ballyhara where Cat has made a playhouse and they stay there for the night. Scarlett explains why she didn’t tell him about Cat and he understands. Rhett and Scarlett both say "I love you". They wake up the next morning ready to start their new lives together and leave Ireland. The book ends with "Grainne told me to keep it," said by Cat, speaking of the old rope ladder which they will use to climb down from the tower.
2011865	/m/06dymp	The Boy Who Lost His Face	Louis Sachar	1989	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a 1989 suburban town, a boy named David tries to get in the cool group by helping his friend Scott, and two troublemakers named Roger and Randy (the former being the leader) carry out a prank. Their target was an elderly woman who was called a witch by all the kids in the neighborhood. When they attacked her and stole her cane David flips her off to try to impress Roger. But when they were leaving the old lady's house, she cried out to David "Your Doppelgänger will regurgitate on your soul!" The following days David finds himself experiencing strange happenings that lead him to believe that he is cursed. After being rejected by Roger and his gang, David finds himself becoming a loser. He breaks his parent's window, he walks into class with his zipper unzipped, he falls off his chair in class, and his only friends are fellow outcasts Larry and Maureen "Mo". His actions lead Rogers gang to target him and his friends, calling them "The Three Stooges". He becomes friendly with a cute girl named Tori Williams, but his pants fall down when he gets the courage to ask her for her phone number. Finally, his little brother, after being ridiculed by Roger's younger brother, loses all respect for David. Eventually, David begs the elderly woman to remove the curse, but she asks for her cane to be returned first. As it turns out, Tori does not turn on him for his moment of humiliation, and tries to pretend that she had her eyes closed in thought to prevent David from becoming uncomfortable around her. David finally decides to fight for his dignity, and, with his friends and little brother by his side, he goes to face Roger's gang and get the cane back, not suspecting that many things, including the curse, are not as they seem. Mo, Tori, Larry, David and his little brother all go to Roger's house for the fight. They get the cane and bring it back to the 'witch' who turns out to be Tori's great-aunt. The aunt is not a witch and the is no curse but David was feeling so bad that sub-consciously he does the things to himself that had happened to the old lady. At the end of the book, A boy called Willy admires David and has a similar life style
2012100	/m/06dzf4	The Steadfast Tin Soldier	Hans Christian Andersen	1838-10-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On his birthday, a boy receives a set of 25 toy soldiers and arrays them on a table top. One soldier stands on a single leg, having been the last one cast from an old tin spoon. Nearby, he spies a paper ballerina with a spangle on her sash. She too is standing on one leg and the soldier falls in love. That night, a goblin among the toys angrily warns the soldier to take his eyes off the ballerina, but the soldier ignores him. The next day, the soldier falls from a windowsill (presumably the work of the goblin) and lands in the street. Two boys find the soldier, place him in a paper boat, and set him sailing in the gutter. The boat and its passenger wash into a storm drain, where a rat demands the soldier pay a toll. Sailing on, the boat is washed into a canal, where the tin soldier is swallowed by a fish. When the fish is caught and cut open, the tin soldier finds himself once again on the table top before the ballerina. Inexplicably, the boy throws the tin soldier into the fire. A wind blows the ballerina into the fire with him; she is consumed at once but her spangle remains. The tin soldier melts into the shape of a heart.
2012327	/m/06d_01	The Little Drummer Girl	John le Carré	1983	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Martin Kurtz, an Israeli spymaster, recruits Charlie, a radical left-wing English actress,as part of an elaborate scheme to discover the whereabouts of Khalil, a Palestinian terrorist. Charlie's case officer is Joseph. Salim is abducted, interrogated, and killed by Kurtz's unit. Joseph impersonates Salim and travels through Europe with Charlie in order to make Khalil believe that Charlie and Salim are lovers, the goal being that, when Khalil discovers the affair and contacts Charlie, the Israelis will be able to track him down. Khalil does contact Charlie through intermediaries, and she travels to a Palestine refugee camps in Lebanon to be trained as a bomber. She becomes more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and the schizophrenic lifestyle she is forced to live brings her close to collapse. Finally, Charlie is sent on a mission to pretend to place a bomb at a lecture given by an Israeli moderate whose peace proposals are not to Khalil's liking. She carries out the mission under the Israelis's supervision. As a result, Khalil is killed, and Charlie's mission comes to an end. She subsequently has a mental breakdown caused by the strain of her mission and her own internal contradictions. Whereupon, Joseph comes to her aid: "locked together, they set off awkwardly along the pavement, though the town was strange to them." Charlie's motives for helping the Israelis when she is in fact an anti-Zionist are indicative of why the authors' novels are so well loved. The novels are less about character and other literary concerns, than they are primers about the life of a spy that the author lived prior to becoming a novelist. By having Charlie fall in love with the Israeli Mossad agent, "Joseph," and the terrorist, "Michel," the reader is forced to see the similarities between the methods of both the intelligence services of the world, and those of the world's terrorists. The most common and most interesting method for accessing one another's secrets, is the "honeytrap," in which an attractive member of the opposite sex lures a target. As the characters of the Mossad say, in the book, "tether the goat to attract the lion." The similarity of methodology results in the fascinating inner turmoil of both the Charlie, and her beloved Joseph. Readers, too, are forced to consider the ethics of both the terrorist and the intelligence officer. The result is a wonderful ride on the rivers of conscience.
2013037	/m/06f0lr	Jedi Search	Kevin J. Anderson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with Han Solo and Chewbacca on a diplomatic mission from the New Republic to the spice mines of Kessel. Unbeknownst to them, Moruth Doole had taken over the space mines, and was convinced the Falcon with Solo and Chewbacca aboard was a spy ship, a prelude to invasion to seize control of the extremely lucrative spice production facilities. His small fleet, based on Kessel's solo moon, shot down the emissaries, and brought them to Doole for questioning. He proceeded to do so by ingesting a large quantity of extremely pure glitterstim, which boosted his psychic capabilities to the point where he could forcibly invade Solo's mind and ascertain the truth. When Doole realized that they had been just diplomats, and that he had effectively declared war on the New Republic, he panicked. When combined with the fact that he thought Solo knew he had been the one that ratted out Solo and Chewbacca to the Imperials (the result of which was that Solo was forced to dump his cargo on the Kessel Run; Jabba the Hutt then placed the bounty on his head mentioned in Episode IV), Doole decided the best course was to place the two prisoners in his mines as slave laborers where they would no doubt perish soon. In the mines, the two, with the aid of a young Kyp Durron sought for an escape. Simultaneously, Luke Skywalker embarked on his search for talented Force-sensitives whom he could mold into Jedi within his new Jedi Praxeum. Lando Calrissian, along with C-3PO and R2-D2, aided Luke with this search. In order to do so, he used a device that supposedly could detect one's affinity to the Force. Calrissian followed one lead to the Umgullian Blob races where Dack, the possible force-sensitive, was rumored to have predictive abilities due to his successes at gambling. However, Calrissian discovered that he was cheating and exposed him. Rather than be punished by death, as was the law on Umgul, Dack was returned to the Duchess Mistral. In return, Calrissian was rewarded with half of the one million credit reward. Skywalker, meanwhile had gone to the infested planet Eol Sha where a man named Gantoris was believed to have Force-sensitiveness. After two serious tests, one involving fighting a fire dragon, Gantoris agreed to come to the Jedi academy, but was still afraid about the "Dark man" he saw in his dreams that would one day end his life. After collecting Streen, an old hermit on Bespin, the trio made back to the Yavin 4 where the Jedi academy began.
2014292	/m/06f377	A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy	Laurence Sterne	1768	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Yorick's journey starts in Calais, where he meets a monk who begs for donations to his convent. Yorick initially refuses to give him anything, but later regrets his decision. He and the monk exchange their snuff-boxes. He buys a chaise to continue his journey. The next town he visits is Montreuil, where he hires a servant to accompany him on his journey, a young man named La Fleur. During his stay in Paris, Yorick is informed that the police inquired for his passport at his hotel. Without a passport at a time when England is at war with France (Sterne traveled to Paris in January 1762, before the Seven Years' War ended), he risks imprisonment in the Bastille. Yorick decides to travel to Versailles where he visits the Count de B**** to acquire a passport. When Yorick notices the count reads Hamlet, he points with his finger at Yorick's name, mentioning that he is Yorick. The count mistakes him for the king's jester and quickly procures him a passport. Yorick fails in his attempt to correct the count, and remains satisfied with receiving his passport so quickly. Yorick returns to Paris, and continues his voyage to Italy after staying in Paris for a few more days. Along the way he decides to visit Maria – who was introduced in Sterne's previous novel, Tristram Shandy – in Moulins. Maria's mother tells Yorick that Maria has been struck with grief since her husband died. Yorick consoles Maria, and then leaves. After having passed Lyon during his journey, Yorick spends the night in a roadside inn. Because there is only one bedroom, he is forced to share the room with a lady and her chamber-maid ("fille de chambre"). When Yorick can't sleep and accidentally breaks his promise to remain silent during the night, an altercation with the lady ensues. During the confusion, Yorick accidentally grabs hold of something belonging to the chamber-maid. The last line is: "when I stretch'd out my hand I caught hold of the fille de chambre's...End of vol II". The sentence is open to interpretation. You can say the last word is omitted, or that he stretched out his hand, and caught hers (this would be grammatically correct). Another interpretation is to incorporate 'End of Vol. II' into the sentence, so that he grabs the Fille de Chambre's 'End'.
2015589	/m/06f6vb	Dark Apprentice	Kevin J. Anderson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 While the New Republic struggles to decide what to do with the deadly Sun Crusher--a new doomsday weapon stolen from the Empire by Han Solo--the renegade Imperial Admiral Daala uses her fleet of Star Destroyers to conduct guerrilla warfare on peaceful planets. And now she threatens Mon Calamari, the watery homeworld of Admiral Ackbar and important shipyard for the New Republic. But as the battle for a planet rages, an even greater danger emerges at Luke Skywalker's Jedi academy on Yavin 4. A strong but untrained student named Gantoris delves dangerously into the dark side of the Force and unleashes the spirit of the ancient dark side master Exar Kun, who instructs him in the creation of a unique, three crystal lightsaber that can be focused to extend beyond the normal length to that of a spear. The spirit of Exar Kun also tries, with disastrous consequences, to entice him toward the dark side. Although unsuccessful, this sets the stage for another of Luke's students, Kyp Durron, to face the same choice as Gantoris. Working together, they may become an enemy greater than any the New Republic has ever fought...more powerful than even a Jedi Master can face. Kyp Durron begins his Jedi training with Luke Skywalker during this story, but first, he is being treated to the time of his life by Han Solo. Han felt that because Kyp had been in the mines most of his entire life, that he deserved to have a little fun. When he does get to the Jedi Praxeum, he starts learning the ways of the light side of the Force, astonishing all the other students with his extraordinary talent and his aptitude for Force-training; unfortunately, he also starts learning of the dark side of the Force after Gantoris' death (Gantoris had been corrupted by the spirit of Exar Kun, but turned against him; in revenge, Exar Kun burned Gantoris alive). Exar Kun's spirit began tempting Kyp. Kyp's power increases considerably, and he is tainted by the dark side and the lies Kun told him of the history of the Jedi Order. After a violent disagreement with Tionne over ancient history (involving the fall of Exar Kun), Kyp assaulted Skywalker; with the dark aid of Kun, Kyp ripped Luke's soul from his body, placing him into a coma. With his strength in the Force, Kyp reached out and guided the Sun Crusher from the heart of the gas giant, Yavin, and set out on a mission of vengeance against Admiral Daala and the Imperial Remnant. He knows that his brother, Zeth Durron, is still part of the Empire and he sets course for Carida, intending to rescue him by force if need be.
2015899	/m/06f7s6	Dragon Rider	Cornelia Funke	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 As the novel begins, a dragon clan receives word from a rat named Rosa that humans are going to flood their valley. In frightened disbelief, most of the dragons refuse to accept this news and decide to either hide, fight, or take flight to find safe refuge somewhere else. Slatebeard, the oldest and wisest dragon in the valley, tells the dragons of a great valley he once inhabited as a child, the Rim of Heaven. He believes this to be one of the last places on Earth for the dragons to hide from humans, and urges them to seek it. Firedrake alone heeds Slatebeard's message and sets off with Sorrel, his brownie companion, to find it, but not before Slatebeard warns him to "beware the Golden One". Rosa Graytail suggests before their departure that they should see her cousin, Gilbert Graytail, to pick up a map. They do so, but since Gilbert resides in a large city, Firedrake is forced to hide in an abandoned building. There they meet Ben, an orphaned human boy. Ben is astonished but not terrified by the dragon and quickly learns of his plan. He offers to aid Sorrel in her trek to the mapmaker's home. Though reluctant to be helped by one of her perceived enemies, Sorrel agrees and accepts the company of the boy. Sorrel reaches Gilbert's abode only to discover that he has been unable to, despite constant efforts, to locate the Rim of Heaven. He does mention that the pair's queries are similar to those of some mysterious ravens who visited him recently. Returning to the warehouse with a general world-map, Sorrel and Ben, who they decided must stay, gather up Firedrake and set out from the city. Becoming lost, they encounter a group of dwarves. One of them, named Gravelbeard, conveys news of the party's presence to Nettlebrand, a golden-scaled, draconoid occupying a nearby castle. Nettlebrand, whose only passion is hunting and killing weaker silver dragons, excitedly sets his armor-cleaner, a tiny "homunculus", called Twigleg to spy on Firedrake and his party in the hope that they will lead him to other dragons. Firedrake, Sorrel, and Ben fly onward, but are soon swept off course, arriving on the shore of Egypt. Encountering a basilisk and a band of zealous archaeologists, the party eventually befriends a kindly scientist named Professor Greenbloom. Sorrel is initially suspicious but soon warms up to him. Professor Greenbloom gives Ben one of two freezing-cold metallic scales, which unknown to the humans, once belonged to Nettlebrand. Twigleg relays the news to Nettlebrand, who immediately makes his way to the dig site to find Professor Greenbloom and recover the scales. Meanwhile, the three searchers set out on the advice of the professor to seek the advice of a Djinn, whose thousand eyes can see everything. Ben succeeds in fulfilling the Djinn's arcane requirements with the question: "Where does the Rim of Heaven lie?" The answer to the question appears in two of the Djinn's thousand eyes; it is a path, marked by the Indus River, by a mountain range, and by a monastery. Beyond this monastery is the Rim of Heaven. In the monastery, Ben must break the moonlight on the stone dragon's head. The Djinn also gives them a prophecy: "When that day comes, twenty fingers will point the way to the Rim of Heaven, and silver will be worth more than gold." Meanwhile, Nettlebrand tracks down Greenbloom, who manages to escape him. Twigleg is discovered but is allowed to stay due to his almost-perfect ability to understand and translate any language. He has been grown very attached to Ben, and he begins relaying false information to his master. While flying over the ocean, a lunar eclipse occurs and Firedrake (who lives off of moonlight), cannot fly. He falls and lands on the back of an initially frightening but amiable sea serpent. She agrees to take the friends to Pakistan, where they will rendezvous with a Dracologist, Zubeida Ghalib. She alone knows a way to help Firedrake fly without moonlight. Along the way, the Serpent tells them (among other things) about Nettlebrand and his army of red-eyed Ravens. As the peaceful voyage atop Serpent-back continues, they are spotted by one of Nettlebrand's raven spies. Annoyed, Sorrel throws a stone which she has smeared her adhesive saliva. The stone sticks to the Raven's wing and sends him panicking to shore. In Pakistan, the friends enter a village where Zubeida the Dracologist is living and also find Professor Greenbloom. His wife and daughter, Guinevere, have joined him on account of the incident with Nettlebrand. Deeply worried, the two parties compare their findings, which all point to a single grim fact—Nettlebrand is hunting the Dragons who live in the Rim of Heaven, and expects Firedrake to find them for him. Dr. Ghalib reveals a legend of a Dragon Rider who once lived in the village. Ben is his reincarnation, and his destiny is to save the silver dragons from a terrible enemy. No sooner have they heard the legend than two more of Nettlebrand's ravens descend on them. Sorrel attempts the saliva trick again, with one variation: a few sparks of Dragon-fire are added to the mix. The stones do not adhere, but the Ravens are indeed changed before the eyes of all, into a few crabs. This new strangeness on the part of Nettlebrand disturbs the searchers, ultimately inducing Twigleg to reveal his original intentions as Nettlebrand's spy. He also reveals Nettlebrand's origin—an alchemist created Nettlebrand as a dragon killing machine to obtain the Dragons' horns which he used in his experiments. Twigleg, and eleven other miniature men, were made as Nettlebrand's caretakers. When the Silver Dragons went into hiding, Nettlebrand killed the alchemist and eventually ate all of Twigleg's brothers, then went hunting on his own. Zubeida shows Firedrake and company not only the tomb of the original Dragon Rider, but also a species of flower which collects moonlight in the form of dewdrops on its leaves. Having drunk this "moon-dew", Firedrake is able to fly in the daytime. The two parties split up to lose Nettlebrand's pursuit in the mountains. After a hazardous encounter with a Roc, they are forced off course and must take refuge in a valley. Nettlebrand continues tailing a boat wherein are Professor Greenbloom and his family, knowing they will lead him to Firedrake, but is seen by Guinevere. In the valley, help comes to Firedrake and company in the form of Lola Graytail, Gilbert's niece. Lola had been cartographing the country for her uncle and she guides them to the monastery. There, they are welcomed by the monks, who look on Firedrake as a bringer of good fortune. Also it is here that Ben "breaks the moonlight"--- actually a moonstone kept by the monks for this purpose. Ben shatters the moonstone and summons the aid of a four-armed brownie, named Burr-Burr-Chan. He agrees to guide Firedrake, Sorrel, Twigleg, and Ben to the Rim of Heaven. He warns, however, that Firedrake's kin have degenerated into earthbound cowards as a result of hiding from Nettlebrand. Whilst waiting for the moment of departure, the company discover Gravelbeard (who was threatened by Nettlebrand into becoming another spy) but fail to catch him. They fly on their way swiftly, with Nettlebrand in pursuit. To Twigleg's dismay, in the center of the Rim of Heaven is a great lake, a perfect gateway for Nettlebrand, who can travel by water. To make sure that he is right, Lola takes Twigleg in her miniature airplane to investigate and distract Nettlebrand, while above the others seek the Dragons' cave. There, they meet with a she-Dragon, Maia. She is the only living dragon there, as the other twenty-two have since turned into stone through lack of moonlight. Outside, Lola and Twigleg find Gravelbeard. In the struggle that follows, the Dwarf's hat (which functions as an altitude compensator), is taken by Twigleg. Promptly Gravelbeard is struck with mountain sickness, allowing himself to be taken a prisoner. Nettlebrand, who now knows their location, is coming. No one knows how they could ever stop him since he is twenty times as strong as one dragon as well as immune to other dragons' firepower. In disgust, Sorrel spits on the golden scale which the Professor gave to Ben. Inspired by his success with the Ravens, Firedrake breathes fire on it and reduces it to gold paint. Twigleg comes up with a plan. He frees Gravelbeard and sends him back to Nettlebrand. The Golden One, elated by upcoming success, orders the Dwarf to polish his armor. Unfortunately for Nettlebrand, the armor polish has been replaced with Brownie spit. Nettlebrand enters the cave, and is at once dive-bombed by Firedrake, Maia, and Lola in her plane. At last, the Dragons come together and set Nettlebrand afire. The Brownie spit reacts at once, dissolving Nettlebrand's armor and weakening him. He melts to reveal nothing but a toad underneath. As the company stare in wonder at this transformation, Gravelbeard enters. He has seen the marvelous gemstones and rock formations in the cave, and wishes to enhance them with his own skill, revealing that doing so will bring the petrified dragons back to life. Within a few days, all the silver dragons are awakened again. Firedrake and Maia fly with Sorrel and Burr-Burr-Chan to bring the other members of their species back home. Ben and Twigleg go to live with Professor Greenbloom and his family. Two months later, news reaches the humans that Firedrake has convinced the silver dragons to come with him to the Rim of Heaven. Eager to see their friends again, Ben and Guinevere occupy their time with other investigations of "imaginary" creatures until they can visit the silver dragons again.
2017108	/m/06fcdz	Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism	Georgia Byng	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Molly Moon, an orphan at Hardwick House Orphanage in Briersville, England, is living a "boring and plain" life with her best friend Rocky Scarlet, another orphan. She is usually harassed by Ms. Adderstone, the woman in charge of the orphanage, and Hazel, a snobby orphan girl. During a cross-country race at school, Molly and Rocky have a fight and Molly storms away to the town library. As she walks in, she finds a man yelling at the librarian about a book he ordered, but ignores him. While looking in a curious compartment of the restricted section, she finds a book on hypnotism, placed in the wrong section because the "H" was ripped off the spine. Intrigued, she steals it and sneaks out of the library. She takes it to the orphanage to read it. She fakes to be sick so she can study the book better. Curiously, she finds that chapters 7 and 8 ("Voice-Only Hypnosis" and "Long Distance Hypnosis") are missing. Not long after her discovery of the book, she learns that Rocky has been adopted and taken to America with his new family. Determined to see her friend again, she gains the actual ability to hypnotize from the lessons in her book, first successfully hypnotizing the orphanage dog, Petula. Later on, she is able to hypnotize both Ms. Adderstone and their orphanage chef Edna. Using her ability, Molly wins a large sum of money from a local talent competition, by hypnotizing the crowd into believing that she is a talented singer and dancer. She uses the money to fly to New York City, taking Petula with her. Before leaving, she buys a large gold pendulum, where the mysterious professor from the library learns about her, after he bought some anti-hypnosis glasses. Soon after arriving, Molly hypnotizes her way onto Broadway, landing the lead in a musical called "Stars on Mars". However, she steals this part from a real child star, named Davina Nuttel, in the process. The show is a roaring success, and catches the attention of a man named Simon Nockman, who has passed himself off as a "professor" of hypnosis, but is truly just a criminal. He theorizes Molly must have obtained the book and learned hypnosis, and formulates a plan. After one performance of "Stars on Mars", Nockman kidnaps Petula, threatening to kill her if Molly does not comply with his orders, and she cannot hypnotize him because he always wears the anti-hypnotic glasses he bought in Briersville. He orders her to use her power of hypnosis to rob some rare jewels from a bank for him. Having no choice, Molly agrees. All goes as planned with the robbery until she finds Rocky, who much to her surprise has also learned hypnosis. He had previously stolen and learned from the missing chapters of Molly's hypnotism book, "Long Distance Hypnosis" and "Voice-Only Hypnosis". He also reveals that he had intended to take Molly with him when he was adopted, but had not been able to hypnotize his parents. Since then, he left them as they were not much fun. Together, the two pull off the robbery, but later form a plan to return the jewels. Rocky uses his talent to hypnotize Nockman into giving up his life of crime. He then helps Molly return the stolen jewels by placing them in hollow garden gnomes and placing them around the city. However, Molly keeps one diamond, which Petula found in her jacket. Molly gives her part in "Stars on Mars" back to Davina, and returns home with Rocky. Out of sympathy for the broken man, she takes Nockman with her. Before leaving, they work together to record a commercial, using their hypnotic powers to convince people to be kind to their kids. However, when they return, they find Ms. Adderstone and Edna have disappeared, leaving the orphanage in chaos. With Nockman's help, Molly and Rocky get the orphanage back into a livable condition, and get Ms. Trinklebury, the orphanage maid, to run it along with Nockman. The orphanage is renamed 'Happiness House' and the money that Molly earned in New York is used to buy new things and decorate the orphanage. However, it is implied that Nockman has returned to his old ways as he steals a camera, a lollipop and five pounds from children in the orphanage. At the end of the book, Molly is mysteriously summoned to the library by the librarian, Lucy Logan. Lucy explains that she is the descendant of Professor Logan, the man who originally wrote the hypnotism book, and is a skilled hypnotist herself. She had purposely hypnotized Molly into finding Professor Logan's hypnotism book and keeping it for a month. Now, Molly must return it. In an epilogue, it is revealed what happened to Ms. Adderstone and Edna; Ms. Adderstone left to become a pilot, and Edna is now an Italian chef.
2018587	/m/06fgrk	The Deptford Mice Almanack	Robin Jarvis	1997	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The almanack is presented as though it were written by Gervase Brightkin, a red squirrel. There are entries for all the days of the year, and every major event in the main novels is given a date. Also, much of the folk lore and elaborate traditions of the mice, bats, squirrels and rats is recorded in the almanack. Throughout the almanack, Gervase writes of his stay in Greenwich Park during the tenth year of Audrey Scuttle's reign as Starwife. He also travels to Fennywolde and Holeborn to ask William 'Twit' Scuttle and Arthur Brown to tell their stories. While in Fennywolde, Gervase encounters Alison Sedge, the field mouse who was jealous of Audrey in The Crystal Prison. Seemingly driven mad because of the death of her love, Jenkin Nettle, she solemnly warns that Audrey will not be the Starwife for much longer and will know great loss. At the end of the year, the Great Oak (in which the rat god Hobb was imprisoned by Ysabelle in The Oaken Throne) falls down because of heavy winds, and many of the grey squirrels in the park begin to whisper that it was Audrey's fault because she is not a squirrel but merely a mouse. When the black squirrels Morella and her father Modequai arrive in Greenwich, they and the grey squirrels plot against Audrey, and finally storm into her chamber and oust her from office. Then they give the silver acorn to Morella and she takes the title of Starwife. Strangely enough, she bears a resemblance to Alison Sedge. The almanack ends on this ominous note, opening up the possibility of a new Deptford Mice novel.
2018623	/m/06fgtm	The White Company	Arthur Conan Doyle		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At the age of twenty, the young Alleyne, son of Edric, intelligent, skilled, and well-liked, though sheltered and naive, leaves the Catholic abbey where he has been raised and goes out to see the world, in accordance with the terms of his father's will. The same day, the abbot banishes John of Hordle, for worldly behavior: great appetite, teasing, and flirting. At the Pied Merlin inn, they make friends with veteran archer Sam Aylward. He has returned to England from France to recruit for the White Company of mercenaries, and brings an request for Sir Nigel Loring of Christchurch to take command. Aylward and John continue to Christchurch, while Alleyne detours to visit his older brother, the "socman" or landlord of Minstead, whose fierce reputation has grown to wickedness. Meeting the first time since Alleyne was an infant, the socman is threatening a lovely maiden, and still furious their father gave three hides (80-120 acres) to the monastery for the boy's support. Maude bids flee the dogs, and laughs when Alleyne states that his intentions to rejoin his friends will lead to Sir Loring. Indeed, Sir Loring takes Alleyne as squire and tutor to his daughter, the same Maude, and two other damsels. When the men must depart for France, the young couple admit their love, only to each other. Enroute to Gascony, our heroes destroy pirates, then report to the court of the Prince of Wales. After adventures fearful and funny, the valiant fighters lead the White Company to join the Prince. The Spanish and French attack them in a narrow ravine, where the mighty warriors are almost all destroyed and the Company must disband. John and Alleyne, badly wounded, survive, but Sir Nigel and Aylward are missing and presumed dead. The English go on to win the Battle of Nájera, fulfilling the mission. The Prince knights Alleyne in his sick bed, and the former socman has died. Sir Edrikson, new socman, returns victorious, John his squire, to snatch Maude from the doors of the nunnery, for marriage. Enroute back to rescue their friends, all reunite for a happy ever after.
2021674	/m/06fqhs	The Ties That Bind	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Qui-Gon Jinn and his ally Tahl must go to New Apsolon to investigate a murder that can destroy the peace between the planet's upper and lower classes. Although he feels left out, Qui-Gon's apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, also joins the group. The Jedi investigate, although they receive few leads. During the mission, Qui-Gon and Tahl pledge their love for each other. However, Tahl is soon captured by the rogue faction that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were searching for. It is also learned that one of the heirs to the planet is in league with this faction. However, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are quickly focused on rescuing Tahl before she is killed.
2022490	/m/06fsfc	American Buffalo	David Mamet			 The play concerns a team of men, Don, Teach, Bob, and Fletcher (who does not appear in the play, but is referred to), who are conspiring to steal a coin collection from a wealthy man. Don, who owns a junk shop, sold a nickel to a man for much less than what it was worth. Out of revenge, he and his young gofer, Bob, plan to steal the man's coin collection after suspecting that he went away for the weekend. Teach, an experienced and misanthropic friend of Don's, persuades Don to release Bob from the job because of what Teach feels is inexperience and potential disloyalty, using himself and Fletcher in Bob's place. Right before the caper is going to be carried out later that night, Bob appears at the store and attempts to sell Don a rare nickel, similar to the one Don sold. When asked where he got the nickel, Bob is evasive. He explains Fletcher's absence by saying he was mugged and is now in a hospital, but when Don calls the hospital, Fletcher has not been admitted. Bob's excuse is that he didn't actually know which hospital Fletcher went to, but by this time Teach is sure that Bob is trying to trick them and in anger strikes him on the head with a metal object from the store. Shortly thereafter a call comes in from another friend of theirs corroborating the Fletcher story and naming the correct hospital, which Don calls and confirms. Don admonishes Teach for wounding Bob and orders him to get his car so they can take him to the hospital.
2022663	/m/06ft0h	Boston Marriage	David Mamet			 The two leads, Anna and Claire, argue over Claire's new found "Love" while Anna's Scottish maid, Catherine, is brought to tears by her employer's harsh verbal rebukes. Things get tense as Anna, a mistress to a wealthy gentleman, tries to talk Claire out of her profession of love for another: a young woman. Claire, on the other hand, has already made plans with her young love to meet at Anna's house in the hopes that she will be able to persuade her new love to engage in a "vile assignation." Things go awry, however, when the girl arrives and recognizes that an emerald necklace that Anna is wearing belongs to her mother. The plot line focuses on whether Anna and Claire will be able to find a way to hold on to both the girl and her wealthy but unfaithful father. The play is delivered through quick, witty Victorian-era dialogue, mixed with double entendres and vernacular expressions, to explore the relationship between the two women and their maid. Through humor and nuance, the play explores the negotiation, conflict, compromise and reconciliation that arise in their relationship.
2023763	/m/06fws9	Warcraft: Lord of the Clans	Christie Golden	2001-10-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book's plot revolves around Thrall's journey from birth, to slavery as a gladiator and finally his path on the journey to becoming Warchief of the orcish Horde. The main villain of the book is Aedelas Blackmoore, who commands the encampments where the orcs were imprisoned, and also Thrall's (thrall means slave to humans) former owner. Blackmoore's plans were to raise Thrall to command an orcish army to overrun the Alliance, allowing him to forcibly take the position of King. Thrall was trained to handle every weapon and learned battle tactics, but also studied basic writing and history. Also, to enrich Blackmoore further, Thrall was forced to compete in many gladiator tournaments, which made him want to escape even more. Thrall eventually escapes Blackmoore's tyranny with the help of a young human girl named Taretha. During his captivity, she would sneak notes to Thrall and was one of his only friends while in the grasp of Blackmoore. After earning his freedom thanks to Taretha, Thrall set out to find a group of orcs that had evaded Blackmoore. He found these orcs to be those of the Warsong Clan, led by Grom Hellscream. After learning some of his history from Grom, Thrall then headed for the mountains of Alterac to find his original clan, the Frostwolf Clan. There he met with their Shaman, Drek'Thar, who taught Thrall the ancient ways of Shamanism. There he also met with the Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer and learned more of his past and the reasons for his parents' death. With his new power, and knowledge provided by both Drek'Thar and Doomhammer, Thrall raised an army by freeing his people from the prison encampments, rallying them under the goal of freedom and a return to the orcish life before the war. Unfortunately, Doomhammer fell in a battle liberating one of the encampments, so in his final moments, he granted Thrall the title of Warchief. Thrall then decided to attack the fortress of Durnholde, home of Aedelas Blackmoore, his former captor, to free all the remaining entrapped Orcs at once by cutting off any more reinforcements. He succeeds in taking Durnholde fortress, killing Blackmoore with the help of the elements and of course, his Orcish army. Tragically however, he is too late to save the one human who had helped him during his captivity. At the end of the book, Thrall crushes Durnholde with his elemental powers, then addresses the Horde, promising they will succeed under his leadership.
2023770	/m/06fwtr	Warcraft: Day of the Dragon	Richard A. Knaak	2001-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Set after Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness but before Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Day of the Dragon is the story of how a human Mage, Rhonin ventures into the last remaining Orc-controlled lands in Khaz Modan by the order of Krasus. Krasus is actually a red dragon named Korialstrasz, yet is disguised as a human mage of Dalaran during the earlier chapters of the book. He is loyal to his captured queen, Alexstrasza, Queen of the Red dragon flight and one of the five great Aspects. By using the "Demon Soul", Nekros Skullcrusher, leader of the orcs in Khaz Modan, is able to hold Alexstrasza and her consorts, such as Tyranastrasz, against their will and use their offspring as pawns against the other races of Azeroth. Whilst Korialstrasz sought help from the other Aspects, Nozdormu, Malygos and Ysera, Deathwing helped Rhonin get into the Orc Fortress in order to convince Nekros Skullcrusher that there was an imminent Alliance attack on Grim Batol. Deathwing's real motivation was that he wanted the eggs so he could replenish his flight, not to free the Red Dragonqueen. Believing a great army to be on its way, Nekros had the eggs transported elsewhere, placing them in the open where Deathwing wanted them. However, as Deathwing was stealing the eggs, he was confronted by a dying Tyranastrasz. Despite initial problems, Korialstrasz managed to gain the aid of the other three Great Aspects in his task to free Alexstrasza. With the help of Rhonin, Vereesa Windrunner, Falstad Dragonreaver (Falstad Wildhammer), and a number of dwarven resistance fighters, the group managed to destroy the "Demon Soul" forever. By doing so, they free Alexstrasza, who swallows Nekros Skullcrusher in one gulp, aiding in the defeat of the orcs in the area. Ironically, Deathwing helped with the release of Alexstrasza, yet was not concerned due to the fact that the "Demon Soul" has drained the other Aspects powers. However, with the destruction of the "Demon Soul" the powers were returned to the four Aspects and Deathwing was last seen fleeing from three angry Aspects at the time as Alexstrasza went to Korialstrasz. The storyline also covers Deathwing's plot to throw the mortal kingdoms into disarray by posing as Lord Prestor, using his draconic powers to manipulate the rulers of the human kingdoms into making him king of Alterac, then planning to marry into the Lordaeron royal family to become its heir. However, with his defeat at the hands of the other four Dragon Aspects, Lord Prestor is never seen again.
2024607	/m/06fyp_	The Story of the Amulet	E. Nesbit	1906	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the beginning of this book the children's father, a journalist, has gone overseas to cover the war in Manchuria. Their mother has gone to Madeira to recuperate from an illness, taking with her their younger brother, the Lamb. The children are living with an old Nurse who has set up a boardinghouse in central London. Her only remaining boarder is a scholarly Egyptologist who has filled his bedsit with ancient artifacts. During the course of the book, the children get to know the "poor learned gentleman" and befriend him and call him Jimmy. Cook's house is in Fitzrovia, the district of London near the British Museum, which Nesbit accurately conveys as having bookstalls and shops filled with unusual merchandise. In one of these shops the children find the Psammead. It had been captured by a trapper, who failed to recognise it as a magical being. The terrified creature cannot escape, for it can only grant wishes to others, not to itself. Using a ruse, the children persuade the shopkeeper to sell them the "mangy old monkey," and they free their old friend. Guided by the Psammead the children purchase an ancient Amulet in the shape of an Egyptian Tyet (a small amulet of very similar shape to the picture can be seen in the British Museum today http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/r/red_jasper_tit_amulet_of_nefer.aspx), which should be able to grant them their hearts' desire: the safe return of their parents and baby brother. But this Amulet is only the surviving half of an original whole. By itself, it cannot grant their hearts' desire. Yet it can serve as a portal, enabling time travel to find the other half. In the course of the novel the Amulet transports the children and the Psammead to times and places where the Amulet has previously existed, in the hope that — somewhen in time — the children can find the Amulet's missing half. Among the ancient realms they visit are Babylon, Egypt, the Phoenician city of Tyre, a ship to "the Tin Islands" (ancient Cornwall), and Atlantis just before the flood. In one chapter, they meet Julius Caesar on the shores of Gaul, just as he has decided that Britain is not worth invading. Jane's childish prattling about the glories of England persuades Caesar to invade after all. In each of their time-jaunts, the children are magically able to speak and comprehend the contemporary language. Nesbit acknowledges this in her narration, without offering any explanation. The children eventually bring "Jimmy" along with them on some of their time trips. For some reason, Jimmy does not share the children's magical gift of fluency in the local language: he can only understand (for example) Latin based on his own studies. In one chapter the children also come to the future, visiting a British utopia in which H.G. Wells is venerated as a prophet. Wells and E. Nesbit were both members of the Fabian political movement, as was George Bernard Shaw, and this chapter in The Story of the Amulet is essentially different from all the other trips in the narrative: whereas all the other adventures in this novel contain scrupulously detailed accounts of past civilisations, the children's trip into the future represents Nesbit's vision of utopia. This episode can be compared to many other visions of utopian socialist futures published in that era; Nesbit's is notable in that it concentrates on how the life of children at school would be radically different, with economic changes only appearing briefly in the background. (It seems somewhat akin to William Morris's News from Nowhere.) It also mentions a pressing danger of Edwardian England: the number of children wounded, burned, and killed each year. (This concern was addressed in the Children Act 1908, and later in the Children's Charter.)
2025225	/m/06f_jz	Zaynab	Muhammad Husayn Haykal		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is a seminal point in Egyptian literature since it is the first to feature a fully described, contemporary Egyptian setting and the first to feature dialogue in the Egyptian vernacular. Haykal had spent considerable time in France where he was studying as a lawyer, and it was actually at this point that he wrote Zaynab in 1911. Notably, the author chose the pseudonym Masri Fallah ("An Egyptian Rustic"), which perhaps underlines the lack of prestige attached to the genre at the time of his writing. Originally intended to be a short story, he found that his work had more mileage than he had first appreciated, and continued to tell the story of a young peasant girl named Zaynab, and of the three men who at one time or another strive for her affections.
2025527	/m/06g0lc	The Little Sister	Raymond Chandler	1949	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens when mousy Orfamay Quest first phones and then visits Philip Marlowe's office in search of a detective. Orfamay is a "small, neat, rather prissy-looking girl with primly smooth brown hair and rimless glasses" from Manhattan, Kansas who has come to Los Angeles to search for her older brother Orrin. Orrin had recently come out to nearby Bay City (a fictional tough town that appears in many Chandler novels, modeled on Santa Monica) to work as an engineer for the Cal-Western Aircraft Company, but has in recent months stopped writing to Orfamay and their mother. Orfamay describes her concern to Marlowe and asks that he find her brother. Although Orfamay seems the epitome of the innocent small town girl, Chandler foreshadows that she is not what she seems by having Marlowe say in his initial description of her "and nobody ever looked less like Lady Macbeth". Marlowe starts with Orrin's last known address, a seedy apartment building in Bay City. He talks to the building supervisor who is counting money and obviously very drunk. The supervisor thinks that Marlowe is there to rob him and a fight breaks out in which Marlowe disarms him. Marlowe then finds a man who presents himself as a retired optometrist living in Orrin's old room. The man seems rather cagey for a retired optometrist and he and Marlowe trade wise cracks as they both try to feel each other out for information. During the exchange, Marlowe notices that the "optometrist" wears a toupee and is carrying a gun. As Marlowe leaves the apartment building he notices the supervisor, now lying unconscious. At first he assumes the supervisor has passed out but as he examines him more closely he realizes the supervisor is dead, from an ice pick stabbed into his neck. He phones the Bay City police and reports the murder but doesn't leave his name. When Marlowe returns to his office he gets a call from an unidentified man who offers him an easy $100 to hold something. Marlowe agrees to meet the man at his hotel. As he enters the man's room, a blonde emerges from the bathroom with a gun in her hand and her face covered with a towel. She knocks Marlowe out with the gun. When he comes to he finds the "retired optometrist" dead on the bed in the hotel room, also with an ice pick in his neck. The room has been searched and is in complete disarray. It is obvious that whatever they were looking for was rather small based on the kind of containers that have been opened. As Marlowe surveys the scene he tries to think of a possible spot that the killer may have missed. He remembers the optometrist's toupee which is now fixed to his bald, dead, head. He removes the toupee and finds a claim check for the Bay City Camera Shop. He keeps the claim check and notifies the Los Angeles police of the murder. The police arrive and as they survey the scene they realize that the victim is not a retired optometrist as he claims but in fact a minor player in organized crime. Marlowe, wishing to keep his client shielded from the police, tells them the truth about getting a call from the man to come to his hotel, but not about having met the man earlier. The police aren't satisfied that he is giving them a complete explanation but they let him go for the time being. Marlowe comes to realize that the woman in the hotel room was Mavis Weld, a film star. He uses the claim check and retrieves a set of photos of Ms. Weld and a reputed gangster named Steelgrave. Mavis Weld is currently a supporting star but her prospects for true stardom seem very promising, prospects that could be destroyed if a love affair with a gangster made the news. Marlowe goes to Ms. Weld's apartment. There he meets Dolores Gonzales, another minor movie star. He flirts and trades sex-laden wisecracks with Ms. Gonzales and tries to offer to help Ms. Weld but she throws him out. Two thugs sent by Ms. Weld's agent try to scare Marlowe off the case. Marlowe goes to see the agent and makes the agent realize that far from trying to blackmail Ms. Weld, Marlowe may be able to help her. Through his investigations Marlowe learns that the photos of Ms. Weld were taken by Orrin, Orfamay's missing brother. He also realizes that Orrin is working with a shady doctor named Lagardie who practices in Bay City. Marlowe confronts Lagardie but as they talk Marlowe is knocked unconscious by a cigarette laced with a small bit of arsenic that Lagardie slipped him. When Marlowe comes to he finds Orrin in the room with him. Orrin has been shot and is dying. With his last ounce of strength Orrin tries to stab Marlowe with an ice pick. This confirms Marlowe's suspicion that Orrin committed the previous murders. Marlowe realizes that he must call the police but before he does he tries to contact Orfamay. He feels that he owes it to her to let her know that her brother has died before he calls the police. Before he can meet with her however, Ms. Gonzales calls him and says he must come to Steelgrave's home immediately, hinting that Mavis Weld's life is in danger. Marlowe senses a trap but straps on his gun and drives with her to Steelgrave's home in the Hollywood hills. When Marlowe arrives he finds Mavis Weld is indeed there but Steelgrave is already shot to death, with a gun of the same caliber as Mavis threatened Marlowe with in the hotel room. Ms. Weld confesses to Marlowe that she killed Steelgrave and is ready to turn herself in. Marlowe convinces her to leave the gangster's home and he calls the police to report finding yet another body. The police are rough with Marlowe, finally fed up with his half truths and eating his dust. Marlowe stands firm and is eventually let out of jail when Mavis Weld's agent hires a high-powered attorney who makes the police realize they don't have a case. Back in his office, Marlowe is visited by Orfamay one last time. He confronts her with the truth that she knew about the photos Orrin took all along and her real motive was to get money from Mavis Weld, who is her sister. Also, that Orfamay, not her sister Mavis, killed Steelgrave as revenge for Steelgrave killing Orrin at Lagardie's office. The case seems wrapped up but Marlowe realizes there is one more thread still to go. He confronts Ms. Gonzales at her apartment. She was in fact the one pulling the strings, on Doctor Lagardie and on Orrin. She confesses to Marlowe that she engineered the crimes but says her motive was love not money. At first Marlowe laughs in her face, he finds it hard to believe someone who seems so casual about sex could be so passionate about love but he then realizes she is sincere. Ms. Gonzales was in love with Steelgrave and was jealous of Mavis Weld. Marlowe realizes that he can't touch Ms. Gonzales without destroying Mavis and her career. He leaves her apartment dejectedly only to see Lagardie heading up to see her. Marlowe realizes the doctor plans to kill her and deliberately takes his time notifying the police who arrive to find her dead.
2025770	/m/06g1cx	Snakes and Earrings				 The story follows several months in the life of Lui, a young woman who, while exploring body modification, decides to split her tongue. It follows her feelings at this time, and her slow spiral downwards into alcoholism. The story ends with Lui's own tragic discovery about her lover and the mysterious tattoo artist she has grown entranced by.
2025857	/m/06g1mp	Parineeta	Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay	1914	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Parineeta takes place at the turn of the 20th century during the Bengal Renaissance. The story centers around a poor thirteen year old orphan girl, Lalita, who lives with the family of her uncle Gurucharan. Gurucharan has five daughters and the expense of paying for each dowry has impoverished him. He is forced to take a loan from his neighbor, Nabin Roy. Roy's son Shekhar, is a twenty five year old successful lawyer who is close friends with Lalita. While she is infatuated with him, the differences in wealth and class (and later religion) preclude marriage (as Swagato Ganguly states in the introduction to the 2005 English translation, "child marriages were the norm during much of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's life time...and did not attract any penalties from the law at the time of Parineetas publication in 1914", pp.v-vi). Shekhar is nonetheless jealous of Girin, a student who is the uncle of Lalita's friend, Charubala (her mother's cousin). Girin, Charubala and the rest of their family are Brahmos and Girin exerts a great deal of influence over Lalita's family. Girin helps Gurucharan repay the loan to Nabin Roy. He also convinces Gurucharan to convert himself and his family from Hinduism to Brahmoism as it forbade the giving of dowry in a marriage (a move which so enrages Nabin Roy that he builds a wall between the two houses). As a triangle develops between Girin, Shekhar, and Lalita, tragedy ensues in the wake of a number of misunderstandings. *Lalita: the protagonist of the novella. Lalita came to live with her uncle's family after she was orphaned at the age of eight. At the beginning of the novella, she is thirteen years old and is close with her cousin Annakali (Kali) and her neighbor, Charubala (Charu). Lalita is considered a member of not only her uncle's family but of Charu's and of Shekhar's as well. Shekhar's mother Bhuvaneshwari is so attached to Lalita that she tells Lalita to call her "ma". At a time (1914) when young women were typically married at the age of thirteen, Lalita becomes the object of a triangle between her neighbor Shekhar and Charu's uncle, Girin. *Gurucharan: Lalita's uncle is a bank clerk with a small salary and five daughters, as well as Lalita, to support. He becomes impoverished due to his attempts to follow social custom and pay large dowries for the weddings of his daughters. Indeed, the marriage of his second daughter was paid for by Shekhar's father, Nabin. In lieu of returning the money with high interest, Gurucharan's house was mortgaged to Nabin. *Lalita's aunt: She is never named in the novella and has only a minor role. *Annakali or Kali: Gurucharan's ten year old daughter and Lalita's cousin and playmate. It is during Kali's imaginary "doll-wedding" that Lalita and Shekhar exchange garlands. *Shekhar: The youngest son of the Roy family, Shekhar is twenty-five years old. He has a master's degree as well as a law degree and is working as a teacher. From the time of her arrival to Gurucharan's house, Shekhar had taken an interest in Lalita's upbringing. While Shekhar contemplates marrying Lalita, he is restrained by social customs as well as by the resistance of his father who wants him to marry a wealthy woman with a large dowry. *Nabin: Shekhar's father, who is a millionaire and an unscrupulous businessman. He becomes so enraged when Gurucharan's debt is repaid and when Gurucharan converts himself and his family to Brahmoism, that he builds a wall between the two houses. *Bhuvaneshwari: Shekhar's mother, who is an advanced thinker. She wants Shekhar to choose his own wife rather than marry the woman whom Nabin selects. She also accepts Lalita as her daughter despite the difference in wealth and position. *Abnash: Shekhar's married elder brother, a lawyer, who is mentioned in passing but never appears in the novella. *Charubala or Charu: Lalita's neighbor and playmate. She introduces Lalita to her uncle Girin. *Manorma: Charu's mother and Girin's cousin. She is an active card player and involves Lalita in many card games. *Girin: Manoroma's cousin and a university student who as been away for many years. He, as with the rest of the family, is a Brahmo, and convinces Gurucharan to convert himself (and his family). As a Brahmo, Gurucharan will no longer have to pay large dowries for the weddings of his daughters. In addition to repaying Gurucharan's loan, Girin repeatedly proves himself to be a man of integrity who acts according to the common good rather than his own self-interest.
2027885	/m/06g6p0	Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive In				 Joe Bob, now writing for different papers after apparently being fired from the Dallas Times-Herald in 1985, continues with drive-in movie criticism. The fake stories surrounding and couching each review are noticeably reduced in this book, and almost all of Joe Bob's fictional friends - except for Chubb Fricke - have basically wandered out of the ongoing, almost soap opera-like plot of the book. In addition to the reviews and Joe Bob's Mailbag, this book also has two new features. The first is Communist Alert!, in which Joe Bob singles out and derides someone, somewhere, for an act that goes against Job Bob's principles (such as the banning of a breast calendar for breast cancer awareness). These ended with "Remember: without eternal vigilance, it can happen here." The second is a review of a VHS movie of drive-in quality, after Joe Bob became an overnight VHS convert. These are always shorter than the 'feature' review, and actually lend an A movie - B movie double feature feel to his work.
2029175	/m/06g8rs	The Time Traveler's Wife	Audrey Niffenegger	2003-09-17	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Using alternating first-person perspectives, the novel tells the stories of Henry DeTamble (born 1963), a librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and his wife, Clare Anne Abshire (born 1971), an artist who makes paper sculptures. Henry has a rare genetic disorder, which comes to be known as Chrono-Displacement, that causes him to involuntarily travel through time. When 20-year-old Clare meets 28-year-old Henry at the Newberry Library in 1991 at the opening of the novel, he has never seen her before, although she has known him most of her life. Henry begins time traveling at the age of five, jumping forward and backward relative to his own timeline. When he leaves, where he goes, or how long his trips will last are all beyond his control. His destinations are tied to his subconscious—he most often travels to places and times related to his own history. Certain stimuli such as stress can trigger Henry's time traveling; he often goes jogging to keep calm and remain in the present. He also searches out pharmaceuticals in the future that may be able to help control his time traveling. He also seeks the advice of a geneticist, Dr. Kendrick. Henry cannot take anything with him into the future or the past; he always arrives naked and then struggles to find clothing, shelter, and food. He amasses a number of survival skills including lock-picking, self-defense, and pickpocketing. Much of this he learns from older versions of himself. Once their timelines converge "naturally" at the library—their first meeting in his chronology—Henry starts to travel to Clare's childhood and adolescence in South Haven, Michigan, beginning in 1977 when she is six years old. On one of his early visits (from her perspective), Henry gives her a list of the dates he will appear and she writes them in a diary so she will remember to provide him with clothes and food when he arrives. During another visit, he inadvertently reveals that they will be married in the future. Over time they develop a close relationship. At one point, Henry helps Clare frighten and humiliate a boy who abused her. Clare is last visited in her youth by Henry in 1989, on her eighteenth birthday, during which they make love for the first time. They are then separated for two years until their meeting at the library. Clare and Henry marry, but Clare has trouble bringing a pregnancy to term because of the genetic anomaly Henry may presumably be passing on to the fetus. After six miscarriages, Henry wishes to save Clare further pain and has a vasectomy. However a version of Henry from the past visits Clare one night and they make love; she subsequently gives birth to a daughter, Alba. Alba is diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement as well but, unlike Henry, she has some control over her destinations when she time travels. Before she is born, Henry travels to the future and meets his ten-year-old daughter on a school field trip and learns that he died when she is five years old. When he is 43, during what is to be his last year of life, Henry time travels to a Chicago parking garage on a frigid winter night where he is unable to find shelter. As a result of the hypothermia and frostbite he suffers, his feet are amputated when he returns to the present. Henry and Clare both know that without the ability to escape when he time travels, Henry will certainly die within his next few jumps. On New Year's Eve 2006 Henry time travels into the middle of the Michigan woods in 1984 and is accidentally shot by Clare's brother, a scene foreshadowed earlier in the novel. Henry returns to the present and dies in Clare's arms. Clare is devastated by Henry's death. She later finds a letter from Henry asking her to "stop waiting" for him, but which describes a moment in her future when she will see him again. The last scene in the book takes place when Clare is 82 years old and Henry is 43. She is waiting for Henry, as she has done most of her life, and when he arrives they clasp each other for what may or may not be the last time.
2030098	/m/06gbj_	Raise the Titanic	Clive Cussler	1976	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In 1912, the RMS Titanic sunk to the bottom of the North Atlantic in one of history's most infamous maritime disasters. 75 years later it is discovered that Titanics hold contains a shipment of a rare mineral, the only available supply in the world large enough to power a top-secret and vital United States defense program. When no method can be found of extracting the mineral under more than of water, Pitt and his crew set out to do the impossible: raise the Titanic. Dr. Gene Seagram leads the top-secret Pentagon program Meta Section, which secretly attempts to leapfrog current technology by 20 to 30 years. One result: the Sicilian Project, which uses sound waves to stop incoming ballistic missiles. The immense power needs of the Sicilian Project can be met only by an extremely rare mineral called byzanium. After satellite data pinpoints the most likely source of byzanium, Meta Section sends Sid Koplin to a small island off the northern coast of the USSR. There he discovers that the byzanium ore has already been mined. While making his way back to his hidden boat Koplin is shot and captured by a Russian guard but is rescued by the story's protagonist, Dirk Pitt. Using clues found by Koplin, Seagram determines that the byzanium &mdash; a chunk worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars in 1912 figures &mdash; was mined in the early part of the 20th century by a group called The Coloradans, including Joshua Hayes Brewster. The group was hired by the French but persuaded by the US government to steal the mineral for the United States. Brewster and his men engage in a running battle with French assassins as they crisscross Europe trying to get their stolen goods home. Only Brewster reaches England alive, and he books passage on the maiden voyage of the great White Star Line ship Titanic. Realizing that the only supply of byzanium sufficient to power the Sicilian Project now lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic, Dr. Seagram approaches Dirk Pitt and the National Underwater and Marine Agency and gives them the near impossible task of raising the Titanic. Using data from drop tank experiments Pitt is able to narrow down the search area and begin searching with deep sea submersibles. After finding a presentation model cornet that they can link positively to a member of the Titanics band, Pitt and his colleagues know they are searching in the right place. After discovering that the Titanic is intact they set out on audacious plan to patch all of the holes and then raise the wreck using compressed air. Meanwhile the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) convinces the President of the United States to leak information on both the Sicilian Project and the Titanic mission to the USSR in the hopes of setting a trap to capture one of the Soviet's best intelligence men. When the leaders of the USSR realize that the development of the Sicilian Project would throw off the balance of power in the world and leave their nuclear arsenal impotent they do just as the CIA hopes and launch an operation to sabotage the mission and steal the byzanium for themselves. Once the Titanic is secured for the trip to the United States a massive hurricane strikes the salvage area, allowing the Soviets to board the ship and take the crew hostage. Pitt, who was previously believed dead after being last seen on board a crashed helicopter, reemerges to expose the Soviet spies within the salvage crew. After the crew regains control of the Titanic the ship is eventually towed to New York Harbor and laid up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. When the ship's vault is opened all are shocked to discover the byzanium was never actually aboard the ship. This revelation, coupled with deep troubles with his marriage and the President's agreement to leaking word of the Sicilian Project to the Soviets, eventually cause Dr. Seagram to have a nervous breakdown from which he never recovers. It is eventually revealed that Joshua Hayes Brewster, fearful that he would not make it onto the ship with the mineral, buried the byzanium in the grave of the last of the group to fall to the French assassins and located in the tiny English village of Southby. The novel ends with a test of the Sicilian Project in the Pacific Ocean.
2030129	/m/06gblz	Sylvie and Bruno	Lewis Carroll		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 There are two strands: *the conspiracy against the Warden of Outland, instigated by the Sub-Warden and Chancellor, and *the love of a young doctor, Arthur, for Lady Muriel ;Chapter 1: The narrator finds himself in a high room overlooking a public square filled with people. The room is the Warden's breakfast-saloon. The Chancellor has organised a "spontaneous" demonstration (by a rent-a-mob which seems to be confused about whether to chant "More bread, less taxes" or "Less bread, more taxes"). Bruno enters briefly, looking for Sylvie. The Chancellor delivers a speech. The narrator follows Bruno into the study, where he climbs on to the Warden's knee, next to Sylvie. The Warden tells them that the Professor has finally returned from his long wanderings in search of health. They set off for the Library, where the Professor tells them about his concerns with the barometer and with "horizontal weather". The Professor then leads the children back to the saloon. ;Chapter 2: The narrator finds himself in a train compartment, which a veiled young lady has just entered. He is on his way to see Arthur, a doctor friend, for a consultation; he rereads Arthur's letter, and absent-mindedly repeats out loud its last line, "Do you believe in Fate?" The lady laughs, and a conversation ensues. The scene changes abruptly to the breakfast-saloon, in which the Professor is explaining his plunge-bath invention to the Sub-Warden, his wife, her son, the Chancellor, Warden, Sylvie, and Bruno. ;Chapter 3: The Chancellor tries to persuade the Warden to elevate the Sub-Warden to Vice-Warden. The Warden asks the Sub-Warden for a private talk. The Sub-Warden's wife asks the Professor about his Lecture, suggesting a Fancy Dress Ball. He gives Sylvie a birthday present: a pincushion. Uggug throws butter over Sylvie. The Sub-Warden distracts his wife by saying a pig is in the garden; the Chancellor drags Uggug out by his ear. ;Chapter 4: The Warden agrees to the changes. After he has signed the Agreement and left (to become Monarch of Fairyland), the Chancellor, Vice-Warden and his wife laugh about how they have deceived him, the document having been altered at the last minute to give the Vice-Warden dictatorial powers. A beggar appears beneath the window; Uggug and his mother throw water over him. Bruno tries to throw him some food, but he has gone. ;Chapter 5: The narrator wakes up, and he and the lady discuss ghosts. They change trains at Fayfield Junction; he notices her name on her luggage: Lady Muriel Orme. An old tramp is sent on his way. The narrator falls asleep again, and hears the first stanza of the Mad Gardener's Song. The Gardener directs Sylvie and Bruno after the beggar. They give him cake, and he leads them to an underground octagonal room lined with creepers bearing fruit and flowers. His clothes transform, and they find it is their father. ;Chapter 6: He says they are in Elfland. Bruno tries to eat the fruit (Phlizz) but it has no taste. Their father shows Sylvie two lockets, one blue ("All will love Sylvie") and one red ("Sylvie will love all"). She chooses the red. The narrator finds himself at the railway station of his destination, Elveston. On arriving at Arthur's house, he tells him of Lady Muriel Orme, and it turns out that Arthur knows her and is in love with her. The narrator falls asleep again, and hears the Chancellor warn the Vice-Warden that the Ambassador of Elfland has arrived and that they will need to convince him that Uggug is Bruno, or as able as Bruno. ;Chapter 7: The Ambassador, Baron Doppelgeist, is given demonstrations of Uggug's abilities which always happen when he is looking the other way. Finding his guestroom full of frogs, he leaves in anger. ;Chapter 8: The narrator visits Lady Muriel and her father, the Earl, in the company of Arthur. They discuss weightlessness. Later, Arthur and the narrator visit the beach. Arthur goes home. Sylvie and Bruno go in search of the Beggar, their father. She rubs the red amulet, and a mouse is transformed into a lion, which they ride. Their father listens to their account of the Ambassador's visit; he cannot rectify the situation, but casts a spell. ;Chapter 9: Uggug refuses to learn his lessons. The Vice-Warden and his wife try on disguises: jester and dancing bear. Uggug sees them and runs off to fetch the Professor. When he arrives, they are dressed normally, and they tell him that the people wish to elect an Emperor—the Vice-Warden. ;Chapter 10: The Professor takes Sylvie and Bruno to see the Other Professor. The Professor asks him about the Pig-Tale, which he promised to give after the Professor's Lecture. Bruno asks what "inconvenient" means. ;Chapter 11: By way of illustration, the Other Professor recites Peter and Paul, 208 lines of verse. ;Chapter 12: After a discussion, the Other Professor vanishes. Sylvie and Bruno complain to the Professor about their treatment, and ask him to tell the Gardener to open the garden door for them, so they can go to Fairyland to see their father. ;Chapter 13: They walk a long way, stopping briefly to visit the King of Dogland, before entering the gate of Fairyland. Arthur tells the narrator that he has discovered that he has more wealth than he thought, and that marriage with Lady Muriel is at least possible. ;Chapter 14: The narrator spends a month at London; when he returns, he finds that Arthur has still not yet declared his intentions. The narrator sets off to speak to the Earl; on the way he encounters first Sylvie (who is helping a Beetle) and then Bruno (who is spoiling Sylvie's garden). He persuades Bruno to help weed it instead. ;Chapter 15: Bruno weeds the garden with the narrator's help. ;Chapter 16: The Earl invites Arthur to a picnic in ten days' time. On the day, walking to their house, the narrator encounters Sylvie and Bruno again. ;Chapter 17: The party leave the Earl's Hall and travel to a ruined castle, the site of the picnic. Muriel sings, but the narrator falls asleep, and her song becomes that of Bruno. ;Chapter 18: Muriel introduces Captain Eric Lindon, a highly presentable young man. Arthur is in despair, and declines to return with the party in the same carriage. The narrator falls asleep again, and there is a meeting between Lindon, Sylvie, Bruno, and the Professor. ;Chapter 19: A week later, Arthur and the narrator go to church. They discuss religion with Muriel, condemning High Church affectations, and moralising which relies on Pascal's Wager. The narrator helps carry a lame little girl upstairs at the railway station, and buys a posy in the street. The girl turns out to be Sylvie. ;Chapter 20: He brings Sylvie and Bruno to the Earl's Hall. The Earl is astonished by the flowers, none of which are English. Muriel sings a new song. A couple of days later, the flowers have vanished. The narrator, Muriel, and the Earl idly sketch an alternative scheme for the animal kingdom. ;Chapter 21: Sylvie asks the Professor for advice. He unlocks the Ivory Door for the two of them, and they meet Bruno. The Professor boasts of having devised the Emperor's new Money Act, doubling the value of every coin to make everyone twice as rich, and shows the narrator an "Outlandish" watch (essentially a kind of time machine). Sylvie finds a dead hare, and is horrified to learn that human beings hunt them. ;Chapter 22: Arthur is even more discouraged. Muriel is surprised to discover that Eric has met Sylvie and Bruno. Eric saves Bruno from being run down by a train. ;Chapter 23: The narrator tries to use the Outlandish watch to prevent an accident, but fails. He then uses it to witness, in reverse, some scenes of family life. Later, the narrator is talking to the Earl when he learns, and Arthur overhears, that Muriel is engaged to Eric. ;Chapter 24: Sylvie and Bruno present a variety show to an audience of frogs, including "Bits of Shakespeare", and Bruno tells them a long rambling story. ;Chapter 25: A week after discovering that Muriel is engaged, Arthur and the narrator go for the "last" time to the Earl's Hall. They discuss with Muriel how the Sabbath should best be kept, and the nature of free will. Arthur informs the narrator that he is leaving for India. ;Chapter 1: Several weeks pass in London. The narrator sees Eric Lindon at a club, and learns that Eric's engagement to Muriel is over, and that Arthur is still at Elveston. The narrator meets Bruno in a park; Sylvie gives Bruno his lessons. A thunderstorm drives the narrator home, where he finds a telegram from Arthur, asking him to come. ;Chapter 2: As before, the narrator meets Lady Muriel while changing trains at Fayfield Junction. She is giving money to the old tramp (vol. 1, ch. 5). On their way to Elveston she says that Eric broke off their engagement because of her evident discomfort with Eric's lukewarm faith. Arthur does not know this. ;Chapter 3: The next morning, on a walk, Arthur discusses his anti-socialist views, and condemns charity bazaars as "half charity, half self-pleasing". Sylvie and Bruno contrive that he should meet Muriel, who is also out walking. ;Chapter 4: The narrator presses on without him to Hunter's farm to order milk. On his way he meets the farmer, who is talking to a woman about her hard-drinking husband, Willie. At the farm, the dog Nero (who is the Dog King from vol. 1, ch. 13) catches a boy who is stealing apples. ;Chapter 5: The three of them meet the farmer's wife, daughter Bessie, and Bessie's doll, Matilda-Jane. On their way back to Elveston they pass the Golden Lion, a new public house. ;Chapter 6: Willie comes walking down the road; Sylvie and Bruno invisibly drag him away from the pub. He delivers his wages to his wife, and swears off drink. The narrator walks back to the house, and learns that Arthur is now engaged to Muriel. ;Chapter 7: At the Hall, the narrator finds Muriel with a man called "Mein Herr," who has a beard and a German accent. He bears a remarkable resemblance to the Professor. He shows them Fortunatus's Purse, and describes a gravity-powered train, a method of storing up extra time so that nobody ever gets bored, a carriage with oval wheels (with the end of one wheel corresponding to the side of the wheel opposite it, so that the carriage rises, falls, rolls, and pitches, and so anybody in the carriage gets vomitingly sick) He also describes a carriage designed to prevent runaway horses from getting anywhere. Oddly enough, nobody seems to remember where they first met "Mein Herr", nor what his real name is, nor where he lives, nor where he's from. Lady Muriel admits that she never realized what a mysterious man he is until she met the narrator. A party is planned. ;Chapter 8: Ten days pass. The day before the party, Arthur, Muriel and the narrator have tea at the Hall. Arthur argues that the gravity of a sin must be judged by the temptation preceding it. The Earl returns from the harbour-town with news of the spread of a fever. ;Chapter 9: At the party, conversation ranges over sanity and insanity, cheating at croquet versus cheating at whist, rational honeymoons, teetotalism, and keeping dinner parties interesting. ;Chapter 10: An interlude, with the arrival of Sylvie and Bruno, the discussion of wine (which is transformed into a discussion of jam) and an unsatisfying musical performance. ;Chapter 11: Another interlude, with "Mein Herr" telling tall tales about his country. He describes how nobody in his kingdom ever drowns, because they have been eugenically bred for dozens of generations to weigh less and less until everybody is lighter than water. He also hears about how the largest map ever made on Earth was six inches to the mile; as his country is older, it has gone through maps that are six feet to the mile, then six yards to the mile, next a hundred yards to the mile---finally, a mile to the mile (the farmers said that if such a map was to be spread out, it would block out the sun and crops would fail, so the project was abandoned). He goes on to portray some devices similar to modern planetary engineering or terraforming, and paint-balls. Finally, he describes a system of government where there are thousands of kings and one subject, instead of the other way around. ;Chapter 12: Sylvie plays the piano for the assembled company. Mein Herr discusses incomprehensibility by describing how, in the days when he worked at a school in his country, there was an old professor who lectured to pupils, and, although his speeches were incomprehensible, the pupils were so impressed that they memorized the speeches. Many of these pupils got jobs as lecturers in schools, and repeated the speeches made by the first professor, and the pupils were impressed by the speeches and memorized them, getting jobs as lecturers in schools later on, until a day came when everyone realized that nobody understood what the speeches meant. Another craze was that of competitive examinations, when teachers motivated students by giving them money if the answers are correct, until eventually, the bright students in school make more money than the teachers do. The most insane craze was the Scholarship Hunts, when any principal that wanted a student in his college had to hunt them in the streets and the first principal to catch the student wins. One principal, theorizing how bullets have accelerated velocity because they're spherical, becomes perfectly spherical, in an attempt to catch the brightest scholar. Unfortunately, the Principal runs too fast and soon finds himself going at 100 MPH and only stops after he crashes into a haybale. It is implied that if he hadn't deliberately run into a haybale, he would have run off the planet. ;Chapter 13: A continuation of the Scholar Hunters story of chapter 12. Mein Herr explains how the Scholarship Hunts evolves into a more 'civilized' method of catching scholars; the children are offered more and more money for a scholarship in an event that amounts to auctioning them off. One day, a linguist finds an old African Legend (although the nature of the story appears to be stereotypically Ottoman) in which a village that stands in the heart of Africa is inhabited by people for whom a beverage made for eggs is a necessity. A merchant arrives at the town with eggs and auctions them off for large blocks of money, as the natives very badly need their eggs. He returns each week with eggs, pricing them higher, and the natives end up giving him fortunes for the eggs, until one day, when they realize how they are letting the merchant get rich off of their gullibility, and cheat the system by having only one man (who requests 10 piastres for the whole cartload) appear at the next auction. The principals realize how they are having the same problems with their students that the Africans had with the eggs, and this system is abolished. Mein Herr's speech is interrupted for the narrator by stanzas of What Tottles Meant. ;Chapters 14-15: Sylvie tells the story "Bruno's Picnic". ;Chapter 16: Sylvie and Bruno have vanished. The guests, after a brief search, go home; Muriel, Arthur and the Earl discuss what pursuits might be followed in the Afterlife. ;Chapter 17: Muriel sings To a Lark (which is replaced, for the dreaming narrator, by a different song). Arthur is called away to the harbour to treat cases of the deadly fever, and he leaves immediately after his wedding the next morning. ;Chapter 18: An item in the Fayfield Chronicle reports the death of Arthur Forester. ;Chapter 19: In December of the same year, the narrator returns to Elveston, and visits Arthur's grave in the company of Muriel. They have tea with the Earl, and discuss whether animals have souls. Lady Muriel walks the narrator part of the way home, and they meet Sylvie and Bruno, who are singing A Song of Love. ;Chapter 20: Back in Outland, the Professor welcomes Sylvie and Bruno back to the palace in time for Uggug's birthday celebrations. They hear the last verse of the Gardener's Song, then hurry to the Saloon. ;Chapter 21: The Professor delivers his Lecture. It includes Axioms, Specimens, and Experiments. Part of the Specimens involve shrinking an elephant to the size of a mouse with the use of a Megaloscope, and reversing the Megaloscope to enlarge a flea to the size of a horse. One experiment involves the subject of Black Light by taking a candle and pouring black ink over the flame and turning the flame's yellow light to black light, which admittedly looks no different than no light at all. ;Chapter 22: (The narrator visits the tramp mentioned in vol. 2, ch. 2.) The Banquet takes place. ;Chapter 23: The Other Professor recites The Pig-Tale. The Emperor is in the process of making a speech when a mysterious "hurricane" causes him and his wife to regret all of their previous intrigues against the Warden. (No attempt is made to justify this in the terms of the story.) ;Chapter 24: The Beggar returns to the palace, and is revealed to be the Warden. Uggug, who has turned into a giant porcupine, is put into a cage. Sylvie and Bruno visit the ill Professor in the company of the Empress. ;Chapter 25: In the "real" world, the narrator is called urgently to the Hall. Eric Lindon has found Arthur Forester still living—he had been unconscious or delirious for several months, and went unrecognised as the doctor. On returning to his own lodgings, the narrator witnesses his last scene from Outland: Bruno and Sylvie discover that the two Jewels (vol. 1, ch. 6) are in fact one.
2033119	/m/06gjyq	A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam	Neil Sheehan	1988	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 John Paul Vann became an adviser to the Saigon regime in the early 1960s. He was an ardent critic of how the war was fought, both on the part of the Saigon regime, which he viewed as corrupt and incompetent, and, as time went by, increasingly, on the part of the U.S. military. In particular, he was critical of the U.S. military command, especially under William Westmoreland, and their inability to adapt to the fact that they were facing a popular guerrilla movement while backing a corrupt regime. He argued that many of the tactics employed (for example the strategic hamlet relocation) further alienated the population and thus were counterproductive to U.S. objectives. Often he was unable to influence the military command but used the Saigon press corps including Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam and Malcolm Browne to disseminate his views. The volume begins with a prologue giving an account of Vann's funeral on June 16, 1972, following his death in a helicopter accident in Vietnam. The author, Sheehan, a personal friend, was present. The subsequent account is divided into seven "books" detailing Vann's career in Vietnam and America's involvement in the conflict. Book I tells of Vann's assignment to Vietnam in 1962. Book II "The Antecedents to a Confrontation" tells of the origin of the Vietnam War. Book III gives a detailed account of the shambolic Battle of Ap Bac on January 2, 1963 in which the South Vietnamese army suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Viet Cong. Book IV details Vann's criticism of the way the war was being fought, his conflict with the U.S. military command and his transfer back to America. Book V tracks back to give Vann's personal history before his involvement in the war. In the final chapters, Books VI and VII give an account of Vann's return to Vietnam in 1965 and his doomed attempt to implement a war winning formula for the beleaguered U.S. army and how he eventually compromised with the military system he once criticized.
2038181	/m/06gw4l	Tom's Midnight Garden	Philippa Pearce	1958-12-31	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 When Tom Long's brother Peter gets measles, Tom is sent to stay with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen in a flat with no garden and an elderly and reclusive landlady, Mrs Bartholomew, living upstairs. Because he may be infectious he is not allowed out to play, and feels lonely. Without exercise he is less sleepy at night and when he hears the communal grandfather clock strangely strike 13, he investigates and finds the small back yard is now a large sunlit garden. Here he meets another lonely child called Hatty, who seems to be the only one who can see him. They have adventures which he gradually realises are taking place in the 19th century. And each night when Tom visits, Hatty is a different age, chronologically out of sequence.
2039404	/m/06gy52	Plum Bun	Jessie Redmon Fauset	1929	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Overtly conventional through its employment of elements and techniques of traditional genres such as the romance or the fairy tale, Plum Bun at the same time transgresses these genres by its depiction, and critique, of racism, sexism, and capitalism. The heroine, a young, light-skinned African American woman called Angela Murray, leaves behind her past and passes for white in order to be able to attain fulfilment in life. Only after she has lived among white Americans does she find out that crossing the racial barrier is not enough for a woman like herself to realize her full potential. The detailed description of her coming of age makes Plum Bun a classic bildungsroman.
2039774	/m/06gylr	A Stone for Danny Fisher	Harold Robbins	1952	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the mid-1920s, a young Danny Fisher and his family move in to a new house in a Brooklyn suburb. Within a few years, however, the Great Depression hits and Danny is forced to use his one talent, boxing, as a means of supporting his family. After a few years, the family have lost their house and are living in a mean apartment in the City. Danny continues to box, much against his father's wish, and dates a young Italian Catholic girl, much to the chagrin of his mother. Danny's boxing skills attract the attention of hoodlums, and he is offered a large sum of money to throw the Golden Gloves championship, a fight he could win easily and which would bring him professional fame as well as, he hopes, his father's acceptance. Danny accepts the bribe but beats his opponent. After going on the run for a two years in Coney Island, he returns to marry his sweetheart. Their early married life is marred by the death of their first born child in poverty. Danny seeks out his former manager and goes into business with him as a black marketeer. This activity brings him into contact with the very criminals he previously cheated. The story concludes with Danny's death in counterpoint to arrival of new life.
2040203	/m/06gzbv	Old Mortality	Walter Scott	1816	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel tells the story of Henry Morton, who shelters John Balfour of Burley, one of the assassins of Archbishop James Sharp. As a consequence Morton joins Burley in an uprising of Covenanters (who wanted the re-establishment of presbyterianism in Scotland) which was eventually defeated at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679, by forces led by the Duke of Monmouth and John Graham of Claverhouse. The bulk of the novel describes the progress of the rebellion from its initial success at the Battle of Drumclog, and the growth of factionalism which hastened its defeat. Henry's involvement in the rebellion causes a conflict of loyalties for him, since he is in love with Edith Bellenden who belongs to a family who oppose the uprising. Henry's beliefs are not as extreme as those of Burley and many other rebel leaders, which leads to his involvement in the factional disputes. The novel also shows their oppressors, led by Claverhouse, to be extreme in their beliefs and methods. Comic relief is provided by Cuddie Headrigg, a peasant who reluctantly joins the rebellion because of his personal loyalty to Morton, as well as his own fanatical mother. Following the defeat at Bothwell Bridge, Morton flees the battle field. He is soon captured by some of the extreme Covenanters who see him as a traitor, and get ready to execute him. He is rescued by Claverhouse who has been led to the scene by Cuddie Headrigg. Morton later gets to witness the trial and torture of fellow rebels, before going into exile. The novel ends with Morton returning to Scotland in 1689 to find a changed political and religious climate following the overthrow of James VII, and to be reconciled with Edith. The novel takes its title from the nickname of Robert Paterson, a Scotsman of the 18th century who late in life decided to travel around Scotland re-engraving the tombs of 17th century Covenanter martyrs. The first chapter of the novel describes a meeting between him and the novel's fictitious narrator.
2040389	/m/06gzsr	Superfudge	Judy Blume	1980	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The novel is about Peter's relationship with his younger brother, Fudge, who always causes trouble for Peter and his family. Four-year-old Fudge has gained a high vocabulary for his age owing to his curiosity. He also knows where babies come from and plans to be a bird when he grows up. According to his older brother, Peter, he is the biggest pain ever invented, but is loved all the same. When Peter's mother, Anne, announces that she is pregnant for the third time, Peter decides to run away from home. He worries that the baby will be like a carbon copy of Fudge, but when Anne gives birth to a beautiful baby girl they name Tamara Roxanne, who soon comes to be called "Tootsie," he finds that his fears are unfounded. Fudge, however, becomes jealous of all the attention she is getting and acts out. Fudge's father (Warren) decides to take a leave of absence from his advertising agency job to write a book. Anne decides to return to university in order to pursue art history courses. Peter's parents announce that they are moving to Princeton, New Jersey for a year in order for his parents to pursue their respective goals. Peter unenthusiastic about the idea. Furthermore, when he learns that Fudge is enrolled at the same school as Peter, he feels even worse. His best friend, Jimmy Fargo, however, tries to see the bright side: Peter will be far away from his nemesis, Sheila Tubman, and Jimmy promises that he will visit Peter in Princeton. Princeton proves boring for Peter until he meets a local boy named Alex Santo. Discovering that they will be in the same class at school, they become friends. Fudge makes a new friend of his own, a self-proclaimed bird expert named Daniel Manheim, who is Jewish. At school, Peter (who is 11 years old at the start of the book) is in sixth grade, while Fudge is in kindergarten at the same elementary school. Fudge resents his assigned teacher because she refers to him by his legal name, Farley (the teacher disapproved of the nickname "Fudge") and acts out by climbing to the top of the cabinetry in his classroom and refusing to budge; Fudge is eventually moved to the other class, whose teacher accepts the nickname. Over the course of the following year, Peter and Fudge each experience their own highs and lows: *Fudge gets a myna bird he names Uncle Feather and then decides that he wants to be one when he grows up. *Peter develops a crush on a local girl named Joanne McFadden. *Jimmy comes to visit Peter, but when he and Alex meet and become fast friends, Peter can't help feeling left out and resentful. *Fudge receives a new bike for Christmas, then tells Peter a shocking secret—that he's always known Santa isn't real. *Fudge meets his favorite author, Brian Tumkin, and causes an awkward moment for Peter at a school assembly. *After Fudge plays a practical joke on Peter, he refuses to bring him to a picnic he is having with Alex. Afterwards, Fudge goes missing and Peter thinks he is to blame, until he and Daniel are found at a local bakery. At the end of their time in Princeton, Warren and Anne talk about moving back to New York City. Although Peter has gotten accustomed to life there, he looks forward to going back to his "normal" life in the big city. The timeframe for this story is presumably 1978, as the book talks a lot about Superman, which was the year the film debuted. Peter says how he had seen it when he was still in New York City, but it had not yet played in Princeton, so the friends he made there have not yet seen it. Jimmy Fargo claims to have already seen it twice; to which the second time he saw it was better. The story also mentions a coming of age event for Peter. Fudge pours ice down Peter's shirt in the onscreen shot of Superman kissing Lois Lane, and Joanne sits with him and offers him napkins to dry off the cold water. Jimmy and Alex have not yet gotten into girl-boy relationships and tease him for it. Fudge is also inspired by the film, believing it may be possible he was born on Krypton and can become like Superman. Later (post-2003) reprints contain edits to the book, including a different Christmas list for Peter, references to record players replaced with CDs, MP3 Players and tapes, and making Anne only allergic to tree nuts instead of all kinds (resulting in her unable to eat peanut butter in the original). Fudge also mentions at one part that he likes to watch The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and The Electric Company. This was edited so he says that he likes to watch Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
2040458	/m/06gzzb	Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing	Judy Blume	1972	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is a first person account of a nine-year-old boy, Peter, and his relationship with his brother, Farley who is nicknamed 'Fudge.' Peter believes that Fudge makes his life difficult for him and his family. Peter often becomes frustrated with Fudge getting in his way and trying to always be involved in his activities, and perceives that his parents (Warren, an advertising executive; and Anne, a stay-at-home mom – although the mother's first name is not revealed in this book) will allow Fudge to get away with anything (although this is not always true). As Peter puts it: "Fudge is always in my way. He messes up everything he sees. And when he gets mad, he throws himself flat onto the floor and he screams. And he kicks. And he bangs his fists." Chapters 4 and 7 focus on Jimmy Fargo and Sheila Tubman, Peter's classmates. Peter and Jimmy are best friends, while Peter has great disdain for Sheila (who happens to reside with her family in the same apartment building as the Hatchers). Peter finds Sheila annoying. He also thinks that she likes to show off. Throughout the book, Peter recounts the times Fudge – either by being himself or trying to bond with his brother – caused trouble, including: * When a client of his father's stayed in their apartment, Fudge caused a ruckus several times. A week later, Warren announces that his firm had lost the account due to poor product sales. (Peter speculates in the next chapter that he believes his parents' inability to control Fudge created a poor impression on Warren's client, although he admits nobody ever said as much.) * Fudge going through a "refusal to eat" stage. Warren eventually loses patience with Fudge and dumps a bowl of cereal on him in the shower. This is the first time Peter sees that his parents will not let Fudge get away with everything. * While at the park, when Peter and Jimmy were bickering with Sheila when all three were supposed to be watching Fudge, he sneaks away and climbs atop a set of monkey bars. When they realize where he is, it is too late: Fudge (believing he is a bird) jumps off, thinking he will land safely, but lands hard and loses his two front teeth. When he gets home, Peter faces the wrath of his mother, who fully and solely blames him for the incident; Anne later apologizes for her hasty judgment. * The time he is asked to help supervise Fudge's third birthday party. The three guests who are invited all exhibit various behavioral traits typical of 3-year-olds: Jennie bites other children and adults; Ralph is obese for his age and always eating; and Sam has a social phobia (which he gets over after seeing Peter's turtle Dribble). The party ends up being rambunctious. * Fudge stubbornly refuses to open his mouth for an orthodontist, throws a tantrum at a shoe store (when he is asked to try on a pair of saddle shoes) and misbehaves at a diner (smearing mashed potatoes on a wall and dumping a dish of peas over his head). * Fudge scribbles on a poster Peter, Jimmy, and Sheila were working on for a class project on transportation. Peter is reduced to tears when he sees his hard work apparently ruined and complains to his mother. (Anne later tells Peter that she punished Fudge for his actions, reinforcing that she and Warren have their limits with Fudge.) The chapter also recounts Peter and Jimmy's frustration with Sheila while working on the project; each of them had handwritten a portion of the report booklet, but Sheila (without their consent) replaced their handiwork with her own, believing her handwriting to be more legible, and also wrote "Handwritten by Miss Sheila Tubman" on the report cover. * Two chapters where Warren is left home alone with the boys, when Anne makes a trip to Boston to visit her sister Linda, who just had a baby girl. First, Fudge is hired for a television commercial for Toddle Bike, and only when threatened with being replaced does he perform as directed. Later, on a rainy day, Warren takes his sons to watch a G-rated movie, and Fudge misbehaves. During the final chapter, Peter tells the reader how Fudge swallows Peter's beloved pet turtle, Dribble. Peter has difficulty accepting the loss of his turtle (which died after Fudge ate it), but later shows he cares for and loves his brother when he learns that Fudge may need surgery to remove the turtle from his stomach. Medicine that Fudge had been given (to vomit up Dribble's remains) works, and he makes a quick recovery. At the end of the book, Peter's parents give him a pet dog, which he names Turtle to remind him of his first pet. His parents also tell Peter that the dog is much too big for his brother to swallow.
2041080	/m/06h094	The Lost Symbol	Dan Brown		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to give a lecture at the United States Capitol, with the invitation apparently from his mentor, a 33rd degree Mason named Peter Solomon, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution. Solomon has also asked him to bring a small, sealed package which he had entrusted to Langdon years earlier. When Langdon arrives at the Capitol, however, he learns that the invitation he received was not from Solomon, but from Solomon's kidnapper, Mal'akh, who has left Solomon's severed right hand in the middle of the Capitol Rotunda in a recreation of the Hand of Mysteries. Mal'akh then contacts Langdon, charging him with finding both the Mason's Pyramid, which Masons believe is hidden somewhere underground in Washington D.C., and the Lost Word, lest Solomon be executed. Langdon is then met by Trent Anderson, head of the Capitol police, and Inoue Sato, the head of the CIA's Office of Security. Examining Solomon's hand, they discover a clue leading them to a Solomon's Masonic altar in a room in the Capitol's sub-basement, where they find a small pyramid lacking a capstone, with an inscription carved into it. Sato then confronts Langdon with the security x-ray taken of his bag when he entered the Capitol, which reveals a smaller pyramid in the package Langdon brought in response to the request by the kidnapper posing as Solomon. Because the package had been sealed for years, Langdon was unaware of its contents, but Sato, dissatisfied with this, attempts to take Langdon into custody. Before she can arrest him, however, she and Anderson are assaulted by Warren Bellamy, the Architect of the Capitol and a Freemason, who then flees with Langdon during the melee. Mal'akh is a Freemason with tattoos covering almost his entire body. He infiltrated the organization in order to obtain an ancient source of power, which he believes Langdon can unlock for him in return for Peter Solomon's life. As Langdon deals with the events into which he has been thrust, Mal'akh destroys the Smithonsonian-sponsored laboratory of Dr. Katherine Solomon, Peter's younger sister, where she has conducted experiments in Noetic Science. Mal'akh is also being pursued by Sato in the interests of National Security. Mal'akh captures Langdon and seriously injures Katherine Solomon. He places Langdon in a tank of breathable oxygenated liquid, from where Langdon unlocks the code at the Pyramid's base for Mal'akh, who then flees with Peter Solomon to the Temple Room of the Scottish Rite's House of the Temple. Langdon and Katherine are eventually rescued by Sato and her staff who race to the House of the Temple where Mal'akh threatens to release a heavily edited video showing government officials performing secret Masonic rituals. Mal'akh, who turns out to be Peter's long-believed dead son, Zachary Solomon, forces the Word—the circumpunct—out of his father and tattoos it on his head on the last portion of unmarked skin on his body. Mal'akh then orders Peter to sacrifice him, as he believes that it is his destiny to become a demonic spirit and lead the forces of evil. Director Sato, however, arrives at the Temple in a helicopter, which smashes the Temple's overhead glass panel, the shards of which fatally impale Mal'akh. The CIA then thwart Mal'akh's plan to transmit the video to several leading media channels using an EMP blast, disabling a cell tower in the network path leading from Mal'akh's laptop computer. Peter informs Langdon that the circumpunct Zachary tattooed on his head is not the Word. Deciding to take Langdon to the true secret behind the Word, Peter leads him to the room atop the Washington Monument and tells him that the Word—a common Christian Bible, the "Word of God"—lies in the Monument's cornerstone, buried in the ground beneath the Monument's staircase. Langdon realizes that the symbols on the pyramid's base spelled out the words Laus Deo which translate to Praise God. These words are inscribed upon the small aluminum capstone atop the Monument, which is the true Masonic Pyramid. Peter tells Langdon that the Masons believe that the Bible is an esoteric allegory written by mankind, and that, like most religious texts around the globe, it contains veiled instructions for harnessing man's natural God-like qualities—similar to Katherine's Noetic research—and is not meant to be interpreted as the commands of an all-powerful deity. This interpretation has been lost amid centuries of scientific skepticism and fundamentalist zealotry. The Masons have (metaphorically) buried it, believing that, when the time is right, its rediscovery will usher in a new era of human enlightenment.
2041509	/m/06h17t	Fall on Your Knees				 At the start of the 20th century, James Piper sets fire to his dead mother’s piano and heads out across Cape Breton Island to find a new place to live. Working as a piano tuner, he meets and eventually elopes with 13-year-old Materia Mahmoud, much to the anger of her wealthy, traditional Lebanese parents. James, madly obsessed with Materia, impregnates her, and then becomes increasingly frustrated and confused by her resulting strange behavior. Materia gives birth to their first daughter, Kathleen, and James subsequently becomes disgusted with his once intriguing wife, finally realizing that he actually married "a child". Materia regrets marrying James, and does not take to the child, as she believes her daughter's relationship with James to be revolting. James, however, is swollen with pride over his beautiful daughter, and spends his time ignoring and neglecting Materia while spoiling and smothering Kathleen. Through the eyes of James, his life is perfect, aside from his wife. According to the town folk, however, something appears to be seriously wrong with the Piper family. Materia is taken in by the kind neighbor Mrs. Luvovitz, who teaches her to sew and cook. Materia misses her old life and her family who have since disowned her. She grows to hate James and their daughter Kathleen. Though his fixation on his eldest daughter is all encompassing, James eventually impregnates Materia three more times in quick succession. She gives birth to three girls, Mercedes, Frances and Lily, only to have newborn Lily die a crib death shortly after. She is from here on in the novel referred to as "Other Lily". The novel then explores the girls' relationship with their troubled father; their secretive, silent mother; and friendships that grow between them as they try to figure out their family's strange and mysterious history. As Kathleen grows older, she is perceived by her schoolmates as snobby, and they turn against her. Her father James is her only friend, and when he travels off to war, Kathleen is crushed. James, however, knows that he must leave Kathleen, as he has found himself increasingly attracted to her sexually. To him, enlisting is a way of beating "the devil." Kathleen befriends her younger sisters, and James later returns as a shadow of his former self. Still, he feels an attraction to his eldest daughter, and he sends her to New York City to train with a highly-regarded but challenging voice instructor and to fulfill her dream of becoming an opera singer at the Metropolitan Opera House. During her absence, James receives a letter from an "Anonymous Well-Wisher" suggesting that Kathleen may have gotten into trouble in New York. He immediately fetches her from New York, bringing her home where it becomes apparent that she is pregnant. Kathleen spends her pregnancy hidden in her family home, but eventually dies during childbirth, though her mother manages to save her twin children, a boy and a girl, by performing an emergency caesarian section. Influenced by her mother's increasing devotion to Catholicism, Kathleen's younger sister Frances believes the babies must be baptized, and so attempts to do so in the creek behind the house the night of their birth. James catches her, and believes she is trying to drown them. He drags her away and the male twin, named Ambrose by Frances, is accidentally left to drown in the creek. The female twin, Lily, contracts polio from the contaminated water in the creek, but survives the disease by what Mercedes attributes to a miracle. Mercedes, Frances and Lily are all raised to believe Materia is Lily's mother. When the accidental suicide of the grieving Materia shatters the world of the remaining Piper sisters, they come to depend on one another for survival. The development of the sisters — Kathleen, the promising diva; Mercedes, the caretaker; Frances, the mischievous one; and disabled Lily, the innocent one — forms the heart of the novel as they all bear the burden of their tragically flawed father. Frances, beaten, molested and disowned by her father, causes trouble in school, eventually getting herself expelled, despite Mercedes' best efforts to keep her in check. Frances finds solace in her dolls, matinee movies, her late mother's old hope chest, and her darling younger sister Lily. Frances eventually runs away in the middle of the night, ends up in a beaten down pub run by her Lebanese uncle, and becomes the pub's entertainment and pint-sized whore. She says she does it to save money for Lily, but Frances is unsure as to what exactly she is saving for. She discovers her long-lost grandfathers house, and then becomes obsessed with his African maid, Teresa. Frances stalks and seduces Teresa's brother, Leo, and becomes impregnated by him, after she has saved enough money for Lily and is ready to stop working. She dreams of becoming a mother to a black child. Slowly over the course of her life, Frances remembers in bits and pieces the truth about her father, mother, sisters and her drowned brother/nephew. Lily is crippled, one of her legs being smaller than the other, and she wears a leather brace. She loves Frances the most of everyone, and was raised to believe Materia and James were her parents, although Frances liked to tell her otherwise. Lily believes everything Frances tells her, and so believes Ambrose is her guardian angel, and often wished for him to protect Frances after she left the house in the middle of the night. Lily said Ambrose lived in the creek, and he came to her in her dreams. Lily led Mercedes to the spot where Frances seduced Leo Taylor, and Mercedes believed that Lily was a saint. Mercedes spends her time praying, taking care of the family and working hard at school. She eventually becomes a teacher. Kathleen's diary and old dress is eventually sent home by her caretaker in New York, and after Frances reads it, sends it with Lily to New York, to find Kathleen's lover. Through the pages of her diary as Lily reads, we learn of Kathleen's vocal lessons, her instructor she calls the Kaiser, and her illicit love affair with the female black piano accompanist, Rose Lacroix. The romance is a whirlwind, as both women fall madly in love with one another, going to Jazz bars with Rose dressed as a man. Kathleen thrives, and basks in her complete happiness. The world is their oyster, until James barges into Kathleen's apartment one day to find her in bed with the black woman. A furious attack on Rose leads to James' jealous rape of Kathleen, as his sexual desire for her finally overcomes him. This reveals Lily's true mother, and James brings Kathleen home to Cape Breton, where she then dies in childbirth, her dreams shattered and her short and gloriously promising life cut terribly short. James eventually confesses everything to Frances, after her child, Aloysius, is pronounced dead and she becomes depressed. James eventually dies in his reading chair, peacefully, and Frances finally reveals the family's darkest secrets to her sister Mercedes, who is firmly in denial. Frances dies as an elderly woman with the help of Mercedes, without ever knowing the actual fate of her child. The novel ends in New York, as Lily makes her way across North America to Rose's apartment, where the ghostly return of her lover's doppelganger child pushes her over the edge. The two form a friendship and live together for many years, eventually to be visited by a young black man called Anthony, bearing a gift from Mercedes Piper. He delivers a drawing of a family tree, made by Mercedes, finally revealing all the incest, illegitimate children, crib deaths and affairs that make up the Piper family. Anthony is revealed to be Frances' long-lost son Aloysius, and Lily sits him down to tell him all about his mother. http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780394281780
2043293	/m/06h3rf	The Boy Who Kicked Pigs	Tom Baker	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins by announcing that today will be the day that a young boy, Robert Caligari, dies. Robert is an extremely odd boy who cannot stop himself from kicking pigs. This begins as a private act of revenge against his sister, Nerys, who is always putting money in her own tin piggy bank. Robert is angry at Nerys constantly rattling the pig in front of him, and so takes great pleasure in kicking the pig across the room whenever he is alone. Robert's obsession with kicking pigs gets worse, and one day, he kicks his sister's piggy bank out of the window, causing chaos for his neighbours and a local police officer. The last straw for Robert's mother is when he kicks a rather large woman's bagged pork chops, which she had just bought at the local butcher's shop. After a local man finally gets revenge on Robert by throwing him over a church wall, Robert realises that he hates people. While Robert's neighbours soon come to the conclusion that he is a nice young boy, he is plotting revenge. After poisoning his sister's food, he decides to trick an old blind man into crossing a road of busy traffic. Unfortunately for the old man this proves fatal, yet nobody suspects Robert's involvement. Robert engineers another, far worse, road accident in the next step of his evil plan. However, in the process of doing so, he finds himself trapped in his secret hideaway, where he is about to face a truly terrible fate.
2044092	/m/06h5r4	The Nature of Truth	Sergio Troncoso	2003-05		 Helmut Sanchez is a young researcher in the employ of renowned Yale professor Werner Hopfgartner. By chance, Helmut discovers a letter written decades ago by his boss mocking guilt over the Holocaust. Appalled, Helmut digs into the scholar's life and travels to Austria and Italy to uncover evidence of Hopfgartner's hateful past. Meanwhile, Hopfgartner's colleague and rival, Regina Neumann, wants to reveal the truth about Hopfgartner's sexual liaisons with vulnerable students before the professor's imminent retirement. Neumann traps Sarah Goodman, an insecure graduate student trying to find her place at Yale, into initiating formal charges of sexual harassment against Hopfgartner. Soon Helmut's intellectual quest for the truth metamorphoses into a journey of justice and blood, one with unforeseen consequences.
2045753	/m/06h97s	The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother	James McBride		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Ruth had a very repressed childhood in Suffolk, Virginia. Her father, a failed rabbi who owned Shilsky's Grocery Store, made Ruth and her brother Sam work hard before and after school. They did their homework at the store when there were no customers at the counter. Ruth's father sexually abused her as a child. He did not allow her or her siblings to be friends with Gentiles or Blacks, but Ruth had a secret friend named Frances. They hung out at school and at her home secretly. Ruth also had a black boyfriend named Peter, something that was heavily taboo in a Jewish household at that time. Segregation was in action in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, so they met secretly. Ruth became pregnant by Peter and she was extremely scared of what would become of her and Peter. She hid her pregnancy for as long as she could, but soon her mother discovered it and sent her to stay with her aunt in New York for the summer. Her Aunt Betsy helped Ruth get an abortion; Aunt Mary was mean but she gave Ruth a job in her leather factory where Ruth met a black man named Andrew Dennis McBride. Even though she didn't fall for him at first, she soon began to care about him more and more. They fell in love, married, and had eight children. Later on, Andrew fell dangerously ill and had to be hospitalized for his problems. Andrew McBride died of lung cancer before the birth of his eighth child with Ruth, James McBride. After the death of her husband, Ruth struggled to cope and deal with the responsibilities that come with having eight children. Later, Ruth remarried to another black man, Hunter Jordan, and had four more children. She never spoke of her Jewish upbringing or any of her family members. James McBride grew up in a family of 12 children with a black stepfather, a mother whose past was a mystery until he went out and discovered it for himself. At first, he was in fear of his mother, causing him to obey whatever she told him too. As he got older, he began to oppose what his mother said. When his father died, he too had problems dealing with his passing. He dabbled in drugs, mainly weed, and his grades and behavior plummeted. To straighten him out, his mother and step-father sent him away to live with a relative. While living there, James still led a delinquent lifestyle, doing drugs and losing jobs many times. However, he eventually returns his normal self and returns to his mother. Later in his life, James decided to look into his mother's past in order to have an easier emotional transition into his future. He had always been confused about his racial identity, which led to outrageous behavior and a lack of commitment. His supportive family put him in check, and he was able to find music and activities that reformed his life and gave it new purpose. Ruth died at her home in Ewing, New Jersey on January 9, 2010.
2046305	/m/06hbsl	Time's Eye	Stephen Baxter	2003-03-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the year 2037 (in which the events of 2001: A Space Odyssey would take place by the 3001 Space Odyssey universe), the still-turbulent North West Frontier province of Pakistan near Afghanistan is being patrolled by UN peacekeepers. A helicopter, known as Little Bird, crewed by an American pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Casey Othic, a British observer, Lt. Bisesa Dutt, and back-up pilot Chief Warrant Officer Abdikadir Omar, an Afghan, is badly damaged by a villager using a R.P.G.. Forced to ditch, the crew are met by soldiers based at nearby Jamrud fortress, which houses a garrison of British troops from northern India, part of the British Empire. The soldiers believe the year is 1885. Casey is injured but Bisesa and Abdikadir are relatively uninjured and all three survivors are escorted to the fort to meet the commander, Captain Grove. Bisesa and Abdikadir explain to an initially unbelieving Grove what happened to them. Both parties eventually realise and accept the fact that they are from different periods. Both parties lost all communications before the crash and they hypothesise that it coincided with the “time-slip”. Also at the fort are American reporter Josh White and a British writer known as Ruddy – the young and still-unknown Rudyard Kipling. The British soldiers are outnumbered by sepoys and Gurkhas. Many strange metal orbs, known as the Eyes, are seen floating in the sky and they defy all attempts to examine them, even using advanced equipment scavenged from Little Bird. Other ‘visitors’ from different time periods appear in the vicinity; two hominids, known as ‘Seeker’, a mother, and her infant daughter ‘Grasper’. They are somewhere in the genetic chain between humans and apes (never clearly stated, but probably Australopithecus). They are captured and imprisoned by the soldiers. Simultaneously, Musa and Kolya, two Russian cosmonauts, and Sable, a North American astronaut, are returning to Earth from the International Space Station. They have also lost contact with ground control, but they manage to establish contact with Abdikadir, who’s using equipment from Little Bird. The cosmonauts orbit the Earth and take photographs. Abdikadir suggests that the Earth now comprises a conglomerate of different time periods from two million years ago, up to 2037, but have no clue as to why or who/what caused it. The cosmonauts decide to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere unaided and land near some camp fires spotted in central Asia, in the hope that the humans there will help them. Upon exiting the craft, Musa is decapitated by a Mongolian warrior, while Sable and Kolya are loaded onto a cart heading east. They have arrived in Central Asia when the Mongols were at the height of their power. The Cosmonauts are eventually taken to meet Genghis Khan, with whom they are able to communicate in the Mongolian language. The Khan keeps them alive as he believes they have been sent from heaven. Yeh-lu – an astrologer and adviser to The Khan - and Kolya work together to plan what they should do with the Mongol army. They decide that the Khan should lead his army into China to rebuild the trading posts and towns that were lost in the Discontinuity/time slip. Sable disagrees and convinces the Khan to take the army to Babylon as this is the only place on Earth (other than Abdikadir’s radio) that is broadcasting a radio signal of any sort. Sable believes this is where the power of this new world – which they name Mir (Russian for "world") - lies. Meanwhile, in Northern India, Bisesa encounters the army of Alexander the Great. Using a factor who speaks some Greek as an interpreter, the British forces and the Macedonians form an alliance and look toward Babylon. Alexander intends to establish a new capital there. Like Sable, Bisesa wants to examine the source of the radio signal. Alexander’s army arrives at Babylon before the Khan and has time to explore it. They discover that the western side of the city has been destroyed by an unknown disaster while the eastern side is filled with temples and ziggurats. An orb at least three times larger than those previously seen is discovered in the Temple of Marduk and is found to be the source of the radio signals. Casey receives a radio transmission from Kolya warning him that the Mongolians are heading to Babylon. Casey immediately informs Alexander who prepares his army for the battle. Sable catches Kolya's treachery, and The Khan punishes him by pouring molten silver into his eyes and ears and burying him alive beneath the throne. In battle, the Mongols are held at bay by Alexander’s forces, which have been supplied with firearms by the British forces and taught ‘modern’ military tactics. Sable manages to reach the Temple of Marduk; Ruddy attempts to stop her and is shot dead. Bisesa then confronts Sable and manages to turn the gun on her. The tide of the battle shifts toward the Mongols, but Kolya, who is barely alive, manages to kill the Khan, whilst committing suicide. In confusion, the Mongols retreat. Alexander has prevailed, and Babylon is now his to shape as he sees fit. The Macedonian, British, and modern humans spend the next five years rebuilding the city, while Bisesa devotes her time to studying the Marduk orb. Casey and Abdikadir are worried for her and lead her on an expedition exploring the Mediterranean Sea. Upon returning to Babylon, Bisesa reveals that she has established some manner of communication with the Orb and that it has agreed to take her home to her own time. Josh requests that she take him along and she agrees. The orb takes them to a large nuclear blast crater. Another orb arrives and takes her back to her apartment where her daughter Myra is waiting for her. The orb intended to leave Josh in the crater but, at Bisesa's request, it returned him to the Marduk orb. The penultimate chapter of the novel implies that the entities that created the orbs and the Discontinuity are similar or perhaps identical to those entities mentioned in Clarke’s earlier book 2001: A Space Odyssey, but does not explain why this happened.
2046417	/m/06hb_d	The Enormous Crocodile	Roald Dahl	1978	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One day an enormous crocodile goes tramping through the forest telling all the animals he's going to eat children. The animals tell him that it's a horrible thing to do but he tries to use his tricks to eat the tasty children nonetheless. However, every time he tries, the animals of the forest save the children. Later on, Trunky the elephant kills the crocodile by swinging him around in the air by his tail and letting him go until he flies into the sky and crashes headlong into the Sun. It is in the style of a picture book in contrast to Dahl's other books, illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was first published in 1978. A TV series based on the book is expected to come out sometime in 2012.
2046576	/m/06hcdb	De Magnete	William Gilbert	1600	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 De Magnete consists of six books. # Historical survey of magnetism and theory of Earth's magnetism. # Distinction between electricity and magnetism. Argument against perpetual motion. # The terrella experiments. # Declination (the variation of magnetic north with location). # Magnetic dip and Design of the magnetic inclinometer. # Magnetic theory of stellar and terrestrial motion. Precession of the equinox.
2049650	/m/06hk4f	What Is History?	Edward Hallett Carr	1961		 Chapter one, "The Historian and his Facts", explores how the historian makes use of historical facts. Carr notes that in the 19th century, western historians held to an empirical, positivist worldview that revolved around a "cult of facts", viewing historical facts as information that simply had to be assembled to produce an objective picture of the past that was entirely accurate and independent of any human opinion. Carr argues that this view is inherently flawed, because historians selectively choose which "facts of the past" get to become "historical facts", or information that the historians have decided is important. As an example, he notes that millions of humans have crossed the Rubicon river in Northeastern Italy, but that historians have only chosen to treat the crossing of the Rubicon by Julius Caesar in 49 BCE as an important "historical fact". Carr contends that historians arbitrarily determine which of the "facts of the past" to turn into "historical facts" according to their own biases and agendas. Carr proceeds to document the rise of non-empirical historians in the 20th century, who like himself argued that it was impossible to write an objective history, because all historical facts were themselves subjective. Although sharing their general view, he criticises the approach adopted by one of these non-empiricists, R. G. Collingwood, for insinuating that any one interpretation of history was as good as any other. He compares the situation facing the historian to the situation of Odysseus facing Scylla and Charybdis, remarking that they can fall into the "untenable theory of history as an objective compilation of facts" or they can fall into "the equally untenable theory of history as the subjective product of the mind of the historian". Instead, Carr argues that history should follow a middle-path, constituting a relationship "of equality, of give-and-take" between the historian and their evidence. He remarks that the historian continuously moulds his facts to suit their interpretation and their interpretation to suit their facts, and takes part in a dialogue between past and present. Summing up his argument, Carr puts forward his own answer to the question of "what is history?", remarking that "it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the past and the present." In his second chapter, Carr focuses on the influence that society plays on forming the approach of the historian and the interpretation of historical facts. He begins by highlighting the manner in which each individual is molded by society from birth, meaning that everyone is a "social phenomenon". He proclaims that this "very obvious truth" has been obscured by the "cult of individualism" &ndash; the idea that the individual was entirely separate from society &ndash; that emerged in western thought with the rise of classical liberalism. He accepts that this "cult of individualism" is an inevitable by-product of "advancing civilisation" but nevertheless considers it illogical. Carr highlights that, as individuals, historians are heavily influenced by the society that surrounds them, meaning that they too are "social phenomenon". In turn, he notes, this societal influence subsequently influences their interpretation of the past. As an example, he highlights the work of George Grote (1794&ndash;1871), an English historian and Enlightenment-era thinker whose depiction of ancient Athenian democracy in his History of Greece reflected "the aspirations of the rising and politically progressive British middle class" of which he was a part. In the same way, Carr argued that no individual is truly free of the social environment in which they live, but contended that within those limitations, there was room, albeit very narrow room for people to make decisions that have an impact on history. Carr made a division between those who, like Vladimir Lenin and Oliver Cromwell, helped to shape the social forces which carried them to historical greatness and those who, like Otto von Bismarck and Napoleon, rode on the back of social forces over which they had little or no control. Though Carr was willing to grant individuals a role in history, he argued that those who focus exclusively on individuals in a Great man theory of history were doing a profound disservice to the past. As an example, Carr complained of those historians who explained the Russian Revolution solely as the result of the "stupidity" of Emperor Nicholas II (which Carr regarded as a factor, but only of lesser importance) rather than the work of great social forces. In the third chapter, "History, Science and Morality", Carr looks at the disputed claims that history constitutes a science. He then highlights that there are five objections to considering history a science, and proceeds to discuss each of these. First, he looks at the idea that while science looks at general theories, history
2050049	/m/06hkyf	À rebours	Joris-Karl Huysmans	1884-05	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jean Des Esseintes is the last member of a powerful and once proud noble family. He has lived an extremely decadent life in Paris, which has left him disgusted with human society. Without telling anyone, he retreats to a house in the countryside. He fills the house with his eclectic art collection (which notably consists of reprints of paintings of Gustave Moreau). Drawing from the theme of Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet, Des Esseintes decides to spend the rest of his life in intellectual and aesthetic contemplation. Throughout his intellectual experiments, he recalls various debauched events and love affairs of his past in Paris. He conducts a survey of French and Latin literature, rejecting the works approved by the mainstream critics of his day. Amongst French authors, he shows nothing but contempt for the Romantics but adores the poetry of Baudelaire and that of the nascent Symbolist movement of Paul Verlaine, Tristan Corbière and Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as the decadent fiction of the unorthodox Catholic writers Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Barbey d'Aurevilly. He rejects the academically respectable Latin authors of the "Golden Age" such as Virgil and Cicero, preferring later "Silver Age" writers such as Petronius and Apuleius as well as works of early Christian literature, whose style was usually dismissed as the "barbarous" product of the Dark Ages. Schopenhauer, he exclaims, has seen the truth, and he clearly expressed it in his philosophy. He studies Moreau's paintings, he tries his hand at inventing perfumes, and he creates a garden of poisonous flowers. In one of the book's most surrealistic episodes, he has gemstones set in the shell of a tortoise. The extra weight on the creature's back causes its death. In another episode, he decides to visit London after reading the novels of Dickens. He dines at an English restaurant in Paris while waiting for his train and is delighted by the resemblance of the people to his notions derived from literature. He then cancels his trip and returns home, convinced that only disillusion would await him if he were to follow though with his plans. Eventually, his late nights and idiosyncratic diet take their toll on his health, requiring him to return to Paris or to forfeit his life. In the last lines of the book, he compares his return to human society to that of a nonbeliever trying to embrace religion.
2051467	/m/06hphz	Soldier, Ask Not	Gordon R. Dickson	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tam Olyn is an ambitious, vain, angry young man. Orphaned at a young age, and raised by a nihilist uncle, he cares little for others, with the possible exception of his younger sister, Eileen. Following his graduation from school, he is ready to launch his career as a journalist among the stars. In a prelude to the main events of the novel, he and Eileen visit the Final Encyclopedia, a centuries-long project to try to collect and catalog all knowledge. While standing at the center of the index room, Tam is identified as a one-in-a-billion person who can actually hear the voices of humanity while there. The dying director of the Encyclopedia wants him to stay on and succeed him, but an Exotic, Padma from the planet Mara, reads him as having no identity with others, no empathy, no soul. He cannot help the Encyclopedia. His sister has become engaged to Jamethon Black, a young mercenary from the Friendly world of Harmony. Despite the fact that Black seems a very decent young man, Tam callously manipulates his sister into breaking the engagement. Shortly, he leaves Earth, beginning his profession as a newsman. In the following five years, he advances in his profession, while his sister emigrates to Cassida, and marries a young engineer there. While covering a war on New Earth, he finds his sister's husband, who has been drafted, and attempts to keep him out of harm's way by using him as an assistant. The plan backfires. His brother-in-law, along with several other prisoners, is slaughtered by a fanatic Friendly soldier, in violation of the laws of war. Despite the fanatic's execution for his war crime, Tam chooses to blame the entire Friendly culture, and sets out to destroy them. Unfortunately, Tam has the ability to analyze people and situations, and manipulate them expertly. Padma observes his actions, and tries to put a brake on his behavior, but he will not be stopped. By manipulating events, he creates a situation for the Friendlies that may result in their destruction as a viable culture. In the culmination of events, he arrives to cover a war on the planet of St. Marie, a small agrarian world. (At this point, the novella's narrative commences). On one side are the Dorsai mercenary forces hired by the government, led by the identical twin brothers, Ian and Kensie Graeme. The twins, who appear in a number of other stories, are opposites in every way. Kensie is warm, friendly, loved by all, and a great leader of men. Ian is cold as ice, analytical, and a great tactician. He is respected and feared. On the other side are a group of Friendlies who had been misled into supporting an abortive local revolution. The Friendlies are led by Jamethon Black, whose engagement Tam had broken years earlier. The Friendlies are hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered. Tam has manipulated the situation so that not only will the Friendlies lose, but their ability to hire out their soldiers will be crippled, possibly leading to the end of their viability as a culture. In the end, he is thwarted only by the faith of Black, and the honor and courage of the Graeme brothers, despite the incredible cost to them. The best qualities of the splinter cultures defeat the worst qualities of Tam Olyn. As Padma explains to him, had he succeeded, not only would a necessary component of the human spirit have been lost, but the entire balance of power among the worlds would have been horribly upset. Eventually, Padma manages to break through his shell, allowing Tam to grow into more of a human being, and take his place at the Final Encyclopedia. A key event in the war, barely mentioned in this book, is the death of Kensie Graeme, and the manner in which his brother's honor prevents the bloodbath which could have resulted at the hands of Kensie's angry troops. These events occur after Tam has left the planet. The story is told in great detail in the short story, Brothers.
2052603	/m/06hs33	Oh, the Places You'll Go!	Dr. Seuss	1990-01-22	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins with the narrator, relating the decision of the unnamed protagonist (who represents the reader) to leave town. The protagonist travels through several geometrical and polychromatic landscapes and places, eventually encountering a place simply called "The Waiting Place", which is ominously addressed as being a place where everyone is always waiting for something to happen. It is implied that time does not pass in the Waiting Place. As the protagonist continues to explore, spurred on by the thoughts of places he will visit and things he will discover, the book cheerfully concludes with an open end.
2052886	/m/06hsqc	Gridlock	Ben Elton	1991	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The novel depicts a near-future London in which traffic congestion has reached almost critical levels, such that accidents in a few key places could bring the entire city's traffic network to a halt. The government is aware of the problem and plans a major new road-building program to relieve the pressure. The alternative, heavy investment in public mass transport systems such as railways, is ignored because it clashes with the government's ideology. The author argues that this is a highly misguided policy since, in his view, more roads have historically tended to simply generate more traffic and so create an even bigger problem in the long run. The climax of the book sees shadowy, possibly government-backed forces deliberately instigate the necessary simultaneous accidents which do indeed bring the whole of London to a standstill for several days. The resulting chaos is used as an excuse to press ahead with the road-building scheme.
2053979	/m/06hvtq	The Spanish Tragedy	Thomas Kyd	1592		 Before the play begins, the Viceroy of Portugal has rebelled against Spanish rule. A battle has taken place in which the Portuguese were defeated and their leader, the Viceroy's son Balthazar, captured; but the Spanish officer Andrea has been killed by none other than the captured Balthazar. His ghost and the spirit of Revenge (present onstage throughout the entirety of the play) serve as chorus and, at the beginning of each act, Andrea bemoans the series of injustices that take place before being reassured by Revenge that those deserving will get their comeuppance. There is a subplot concerning the enmity of two Portuguese noblemen, one of whom attempts to convince the Viceroy that his rival has murdered the missing Balthazar. The King's nephew Lorenzo and Andrea's best friend Horatio dispute over who captured Balthazar, and though it is made clear early on that it is in fact Horatio that defeated him while Lorenzo essentially cheats his way into taking partial credit, the King leaves Balthazar in Lorenzo's charge and splits the spoils of the victory between the two. Horatio comforts Lorenzo's sister, Bel-imperia, who was in love with Andrea against her family's wishes; despite her former feelings for Andrea, Bel-imperia soon falls for Horatio. Her courtship with Horatio is motivated partially by her desire for revenge. Bel-imperia intends to torment an amorous Balthazar, the killer of her former lover. As Balthazar is in love with Bel-imperia, the royal family concludes that their marriage would be an excellent way to repair the peace with Portugal. Horatio's father, the Marshall Hieronimo, stages an entertainment for the Portuguese ambassador; Lorenzo, suspecting that Bel-Imperia has found a new lover, bribes her servant Pedringano and discovers that Horatio is the man. He persuades Balthazar to help him murder Horatio during an assignation with Bel-Imperia; Hieronimo and his wife Isabella find the body of their son hanged and stabbed, and Isabella is driven mad. Revisions made to the original play supplement the scene with Hieronimo briefly losing his wits as well. Lorenzo locks Bel-Imperia away, but she succeeds in sending Hieronimo a letter, written in her own blood, informing him that Lorenzo and Balthazar were Horatio's murderers. His questions and attempts to see Bel-Imperia convince Lorenzo that he knows something; afraid that Balthazar's servant Serberine has betrayed the plot, Lorenzo convinces Pedringano to murder him, then arranges for Pedringano's arrest in the hopes of silencing him too. Hieronimo, appointed judge, sentences Pedringano to death; Pedringano expects Lorenzo to procure his pardon, and Lorenzo, having written a fake letter of pardon, lets him believe this right up until the hangman drops Pedringano to his death. Lorenzo manages to prevent Hieronimo from seeking justice by convincing the King that Horatio is alive and well. Furthermore, Lorenzo does not allow Hieronimo to see the King, claiming that he is too busy. This, combined with his wife's suicide, which happens just prior to Hieronimo's appeal to the King, pushes Hieronimo past his limit. He rants incoherently and digs at the ground with his dagger. Lorenzo goes on to tell his uncle, the King, that Hieronimo's odd behaviour is due to his inability to deal with his son Horatio's new found wealth (Balthazar's ransom from the Portuguese Viceroy), and he has gone mad with jealousy. Regaining his senses, Hieronimo, along with Bel-Imperia, feigns reconciliation with the murderers. The two plan to put on a play together, Soliman and Perseda. Under cover of the play they stab Lorenzo and Balthazar to death in front of the King, Viceroy, and Duke of Castile (Lorenzo and Bel-Imperia's father); Bel-Imperia kills herself, and Hieronimo tells his audience of his motive behind the murders, but refuses to reveal Bel-Imperia's complicity in the plot. He then bites out his own tongue to prevent himself from talking under torture, after which he kills the Duke and then himself. Andrea and Revenge are satisfied, delivering suitable eternal punishments to the guilty parties.
2056423	/m/06j05t	Crying Out Love, In the Center of the World				 In a small town in 1980s southern Japan, Sakutaro "Saku" Matsumoto and Aki Hirose, classmates all through junior high, become high school students and then fall in love. They share audio diaries, go on excursions together, and enjoy summer vacation. However, Aki finds herself suffering from Leukemia and begins to weaken, rendering her unable to see Saku or go outside. Saku is desperate to take her to Uluru (Ayers Rock) in Australia (the "Center of the World"), a place she had wished to visit. Saku buys tickets, but Aki dies before boarding the plane. Seventeen years later, an older, sombre Saku trudges through everyday existence. The last tape of Aki's audio diary is suddenly unearthed, leading Saku back to his hometown in the south, and back to his memories of their last days together.
2057934	/m/06j3yv	The Murder at the Vicarage	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In St. Mary Mead, no one is more despised than Colonel Protheroe. Even the local vicar has said that killing him would be doing a service to the townsfolk. So when Protheroe is found murdered in the same vicar's study, and two different people confess to the crime, it is time for the elderly spinster Jane Marple to exercise her detective abilities. The vicar and his wife, Leonard and Griselda Clement respectively, who made their first appearance in this novel, continue to show up in Miss Marple stories: notably, in The Body in the Library (1942) and 4.50 from Paddington (1957)
2058294	/m/06j4rv	Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass	Bruno Schulz	1937	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "Father's Last Escape," the concluding story of the novel, Schulz makes an explicit reference to Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (Schulz helped his one-time fiancee translate Kafka's The Trial into Polish, a translation for which Schulz provided an introduction). The old man's business has been liquidated and all his functions and authorities taken over by wife or relatives. Even the pretty, young Polish maid Adela has gone and been replaced by Genya, "anemic, pale, and boneless,…and so absent-minded that she sometimes made a white sauce from old letters and invoices." Father's response is to turn himself first into wallpaper, then a piece of clothing, and finally into a big crablike insect who — unlike Kafka's passive victim — runs around the house, searching endlessly for something. His wife can catch the creature in her handkerchief sometimes, but cannot hold him. One day, however, she must have managed because Father appears at lunch, as the main course, after which he escapes the table, never to be seen again.
2059665	/m/06j7qd	A Legend of Montrose	Walter Scott	1819	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story takes place during the Earl of Montrose's 1644-5 Highland campaign on behalf of King Charles I against the Covenanters who had sided with the English Parliament in the English Civil War. The main plot concerns a love triangle between Allan M'Aulay, his friend the Earl of Menteith, and Annot Lyle. Annot is a young woman who has been brought up by the M'Aulays since being captured as a girl during a blood feud against the MacEagh clan (also known as the Children of the Mist). M'Aulay and Menteith are both members of Montrose's army. Annot eventually marries Menteith after it is discovered that she has aristocratic blood, and was kidnapped by the MacEaghs as a baby. This leads to the jealous M'Aulay stabbing Menteith and then fleeing Montrose's army. Menteith survives whilst M'Aulay disappears and is rumoured to have been killed by the MacEaghs. Much of the novel is taken up with a subplot involving an expedition into enemy territory by Dugald Dalgetty, an experienced mercenary fighting for Montrose. Dalgetty does not fight out of political or religious conviction, but purely for the love of carnage. However, he is very professional, and remains loyal to an employer to the end of his contract. He gained his experience fighting for various armies during the Thirty Years' War, then still raging in Germany. Note: He did not fight all thirty years. Dalgetty is regarded as one of Scott's finest comic characters, however he dominates so much of the story that the main plot is not really developed in detail.
2059673	/m/06j7qr	The Reader	Bernhard Schlink	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 *Michael Berg, a German who is first portrayed as a 15-year-old boy and is revisited at later parts of his life: when he is a researcher in legal history, divorced with one daughter, Julia. Like many of his generation, he struggles to come to terms with his country's recent history. *Hanna Schmitz, illiterate and former SS guard at Auschwitz. She is 36 and working as a tram conductor in Neustadt when she first meets 15-year-old Michael. She takes a dominant position in their relationship. *Sophie, a friend of Michael's when he is in school, and who he probably has a crush on. She is almost the first person whom he tells about Hanna. When he begins his friendship with her, is when he begins to "betray" Hanna by denying her relationship with him and by cutting short his time with Hanna to be with Sophie and his other friends. *Michael's father, a philosophy professor who specializes in Kant and Hegel. During the Nazi era he lost his job for giving a lecture on Spinoza and had to support himself and his family by writing hiking guidebooks. He is very formal and requires his children to make appointments to see him. He is emotionally stiff and does not easily express his emotions to Michael or his three siblings, which exacerbates the difficulties Hanna creates for Michael. By the time Michael is narrating the story, his father is dead. *Michael's mother, seen briefly. Michael has fond memories of her pampering him as a child, which his relationship with Hanna reawakens. A psychoanalyst he sees, tells him he should consider his mother's effect on him more, since she barely figures in his retelling of his life. *The daughter of Jewish woman who wrote the book about the death march from Auschwitz. She lives in New York City when Michael visits her near the end of the story, still suffering from the loss of her own family. The story is told in three parts by the main character, Michael Berg. Each part takes place in a different time period in the past. Part I begins in a West German city in 1958. After 15-year-old Michael becomes ill on his way home, 36-year-old tram conductor Hanna Schmitz notices him, cleans him up, and sees him safely home. He spends the next three months absent from school battling hepatitis. He visits Hanna to thank her for her help and realizes he is attracted to her. Embarrassed after she catches him watching her getting dressed, he runs away, but he returns days later. After she asks him to retrieve coal from her cellar, he is covered in coal dust; she watches him bathe and seduces him. He returns eagerly to her apartment on a regular basis, and they begin a heated affair. They develop a ritual of bathing and having sex, before which she frequently has him read aloud to her, especially classical literature, such as The Odyssey and Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog. Both remain somewhat distant from each other emotionally, despite their physical closeness. Hanna is at times physically and verbally abusive to Michael. Months into the relationship, she suddenly leaves without a trace. The distance between them had been growing as Michael had been spending more time with his school friends; he feels guilty and believes it was something he did that caused her departure. The memory of her taints all his other relationships with women. Seven years later, while attending law school, Michael is part of a group of students observing a war crimes trial. A group of middle-aged women who had served as SS guards at a satellite of Auschwitz in occupied Poland are being tried for allowing 300 Jewish women under their ostensible "protection" to die in a fire locked in a church that had been bombed during the evacuation of the camp. The incident was chronicled in a book written by one of the few survivors, who emigrated to the United States after the war; she is the main prosecution witness at the trial. Michael is stunned to see that Hanna is one of the defendants, sending him on a roller coaster of complex emotions. He feels guilty for having loved a remorseless criminal and at the same time is mystified at Hanna's willingness to accept full responsibility for supervising the other guards despite evidence proving otherwise. She is accused of writing the account of the fire. At first she denies this, but then in panic admits it in order to not have to give a sample of her handwriting. Michael, horrified, realizes that Hanna has a secret she refuses to reveal at any cost—she is illiterate. This realization explains many of Hanna's actions: her refusal of the promotion that would have removed her from the responsibility of supervising these women, and also the panic she carried her entire life over being discovered. During the trial, it transpires that she took in the weak, sickly women and had them read to her before they were sent to the gas chambers. Michael decides she wanted to make their last days bearable; or did she send them to their death so they would not reveal her secret? She is convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He chooses not to reveal her secret. Michael is trying to come to terms with his feelings for Hanna, and begins taping readings of books and sending them to her without any correspondence while she is in prison. Years have passed, Michael is divorced and has a daughter from his brief marriage. Hanna begins to teach herself to read, and then write in a childlike way, by borrowing the books from the prison library and following the tapes along in the text. She writes to Michael, but he cannot bring himself to reply. After 18 years, Hanna is about to be released, so he agrees (after hesitation) to find her a place to stay and employment, visiting her in prison. On the day of her release in 1988, she commits suicide and Michael is heartbroken. Michael learns from the warden that she had been reading books by many prominent Holocaust survivors, such as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, and histories of the camps. The warden, in her anger towards Michael for communicating with Hanna only by audio tapes, expresses Hanna's disappointment. Hanna left him an assignment: give all her money to the survivor of the church fire. While in the U.S., Michael travels to New York to visit the Jewish woman who was a witness at the trial, and who wrote the book about the winter death march from Auschwitz. She can see his terrible conflict of emotions and he finally tells of his youthful relationship with Hanna. The unspoken damage she left to the people around her hangs in the air. He reveals his short, cold marriage, and his distant relationship with his daughter. The woman understands, but nonetheless refuses to take the savings Hanna had asked Michael to convey to her, saying, "Using it for something to do with the Holocaust would really seem like an absolution to me, and that is something I neither wish nor care to grant." She asks that he donate it as he sees fit; he chooses a Jewish charity for combating illiteracy, in Hanna's name. Having had a caddy stolen from her when she was a child in the camp, the woman does take the old tea caddy in which Hanna had kept her money and mementos. Returning to Germany, Michael visits Hanna's grave for the first and only time.
2061112	/m/06jbyc	Marching Through Georgia	S. M. Stirling	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The story starts with Centurion Eric von Shrakenberg in a cargo airplane with his airborne unit and the embedded American correspondent William Dreiser, on their way to their drop point, where they will jump and parasail into Nazi-controlled Georgia. The Nazis have been much more successful than in our history, since the Soviets had to divert resources to defend their southern border against the Domination of the Draka. As a result, the Nazis managed to overrun European Russia. The Soviet Union has been pushed back and only controls territories east of the Ural Mountains. However, the Germans are seriously overstretched, and vulnerable to a strong attack. During the travel to their drop zone, Eric thinks back on his past and his relationship with his father, and his most recent visit home to see his family. This was the first visit in several years, his exile was due to his arranging the escape of his serf daughter to America. Eric's bravery in the earlier Draka conquest of Italy led to his former "mistake" being forgiven. Eric's "Century" ends up being seriously under-supplied because the gliders with the artillery went into a canyon. The engineers are frantically building a rubble ramp, but the heavy weapons won't be available for the battle. The story details how Eric's single infantry company takes and holds a small village strategically located on the crucial Ossetian Military Highway over the Caucasus Mountains. The balance of the First Airborne Legion is the plug which is holding four German divisions from escaping the trap they are in on the south side of the mountains. Eric's unit is tasked with holding the highway and village against repeated attacks by Felix Hoth's Waffen-SS armored regiment, which is fighting to clear the highway so the German divisions can escape. Eric's company manages to hold out long enough for the Draka to crush the four divisions, cross the mountains, and relieve his unit. Holding this highway and village is the critical act of the invasion of Russia. This lets the Draka's essentially undamaged and superior armored and mechanized units to penetrate into the plains of Southern Russia, where they can bring to battle and destroy the overstretched and exhausted German forces. It also leads to Eric being awarded the Domination's highest medal of valor, the aurora, "for saving 10,000 Citizen lives," and which makes him immune to Security Directorate reprisals for his "treasonous utterances" or for his earlier "indiscretion." The actions of Century A is the pivotal event at the beginning of the invasion of Russia that allows the Domination to eventually win the Eurasian War.
2061378	/m/06jcg2	Outbreak	Robin Cook	1987	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dr. Marissa Blumenthal of the CDC investigates a series of deadly ebola outbreaks. The ebola virus, considered a level 4 pathogen, then plays havoc with the lives of innocent people. The ultimate villain is the ever-helpful doctor friend of Dr. Blumenthal. In the end Dr. Blumenthal is nearly killed by a goon but an FBI agent kills him and she is saved. The person she suspected was innocent and simply had been so caught up in protecting the CDC that he refused to listen and figured out the truth almost too late. Later it is explained to her that due to her investigation the people responsible for the outbreaks were caught and were going to jail for a long time including her former friend and that what they did was being compared to the Nazis. She has become an international epidemiological hero for her actions but she has decided to possibly go back into pediatrics after a vacation she's about to take at the end of the story. * Cook, Robin. (1987) Outbreak. ISBN 0-425-10687-X nl:Epidemie (boek)
2062944	/m/06jhnb	Sad Cypress	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is written in three parts: in the first place an account, largely from the perspective of the subsequent defendant, Elinor Carlisle, of the death of her aunt, Laura Welman, and the subsequent death of the victim, Mary Gerrard; secondly an account of Poirot's investigation; and, thirdly, a sequence in court, again mainly from Elinor's dazed perspective. In the first part, distant cousins Elinor Carlisle and Roddy Welman are happily engaged to be married when they receive an anonymous letter claiming that someone is "sucking up" to their wealthy aunt, Laura Welman, from whom Elinor and Roddy expect to inherit a sizeable fortune. Elinor immediately suspects Mary Gerrard, the lodgekeeper's daughter, to whom their aunt has taken a considerable liking. They go down to visit their aunt: partly to see her and partly to protect their interests. Mrs. Welman is helpless after a stroke and speaks of a desire to die, most notably to Peter Lord, her physician. After a second stroke, she asks Elinor to ask the family solicitor to prepare a will under which it is clear that Mary is to be a beneficiary. Roddy has fallen in love with Mary, provoking Elinor's jealousy. Mrs. Welman dies intestate during the night and her estate goes to Elinor outright as her only surviving blood relative. Subsequently, Elinor releases Roddy from the engagement and makes moves to settle money on him (which he refuses) and three thousand pounds on Mary (which Mary accepts). At an impromptu tea party thrown by Elinor for Mary and Nurse Hopkins, Mary dies of poison that had supposedly been put into a fish-paste sandwich. Elinor (who has been behaving suspiciously) is put on trial. Worse, when the body of her aunt is exhumed it is discovered that both women died of morphine poisoning. Elinor had easy access to morphine from a bottle that apparently went missing from Nurse Hopkins’s bag. In the second part of the novel, Poirot is persuaded to investigate the case by Peter Lord, who is in love with Elinor and wants her to be acquitted at all costs. Poirot's investigation focuses on a small number of elements. Was the poison in the sandwiches, which everyone ate, or something else, such as the tea that was prepared by Nurse Hopkins and drunk by only Mary and herself? What is the secret of Mary Gerrard's birth, which everyone seems so keen to conceal? Is there any significance in the scratch of a thorn on Nurse Hopkins's wrist? Is Peter Lord right to draw Poirot's attention to evidence that someone watching through the window might have poisoned the sandwich, thinking that it would be eaten by Elinor? In the third part of the novel, the case appears to go badly for Elinor, until her Defence unveils three theories that might exonerate her. The first (that Mary committed suicide) is difficult for anyone to really believe, and the second (Peter Lord's theory of the killer outside the window) is unconvincing. But the third theory is Poirot's. A torn pharmaceutical label that the Prosecution supposed to have held morphine hydrochloride, the poison, had in fact held apomorphine hydrochloride, an emetic. This was revealed because on an ampoule, the M in Morphine would be capital; Poirot finds a lowercase M&nbsp;– thus it isn't morphine. The capitalized prefix "Apo" had been carefully torn off. Nurse Hopkins had injected herself with this emetic, apomorphine, in order to vomit the poison that she had ingested in the tea, which explains her quick departure from the table as soon as the tea was consumed that fateful day. Her claim to have scratched herself on a thorn is disproved when it is revealed that the rose tree in question was a thornless variety: Zephyrine drouhin. If the means were simple, the motive is complex. Mary Gerrard is not the daughter of Eliza and Bob Gerrard. Instead—as Poirot has discovered from Nurse Hopkins in the course of the investigation—she is the illegitimate daughter of Laura Welman and Sir Lewis Rycroft, which made her the heiress to Mrs. Welman's estate since she was actually a closer relative than Elinor. When Nurse Hopkins encouraged Mary to write a will, Mary was prompted to name as beneficiary the woman that she supposed to be her aunt, Mary Riley (Eliza Gerrard's sister), in New Zealand. Mary Riley's married name is Mary Draper. Mary Draper is none other than Nurse Hopkins as two witnesses of the defence (Amelia Mary Sedley and Edward John Marshall, both from New Zealand), confirm in court. Poirot ends the novel by rebuking Peter Lord for his clumsy efforts to implicate the hypothetical killer outside the window. He has planted evidence and led Poirot to it in a desperate bid to free Elinor. Lord's momentary embarrassment is presumably alleviated by Poirot's assurance that it is to him, and not to her former love Roddy, that Elinor is now likely to become married.
2066549	/m/06jrn5	Animal Dreams	Barbara Kingsolver		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Animal Dreams opens with a chapter narrated in the third person from the point of view of Doc Homer. This establishes a double narrative voice, which switches between dreams and memories of the past and events of the present. Doc Homer remembers his daughters, Codi and Hallie, when they were young. Their mother is dead. In the second chapter, narrated by Codi in first person, the plot line begins. Hallie leaves Tucson, Arizona, where she was living with Codi and Carlo, for Nicaragua. She plans to assist the newly established communist regime with their crop cultivation. Shortly thereafter, Codi also leaves Tucson, returning to her small rural hometown, Grace, to care for her ailing father and to teach high school biology. The return to Grace is fraught with difficulty for Codi, as she has always felt herself an outsider in the town and has never had a very close relationship with her father. Her return home raises the specter of several mysteries surrounding Codi and her family's past: her failure to hold a medical license despite her attendance at medical school, the deaths of her mother and of her child, and the relationship of her family to the rest of the community. In Grace, Codi stays in her friend Emelina Domingos's guest house. As the two women talk, Codi's high school relationship with Loyd Peregrina is revealed. Loyd, a friend of Emelina's husband J.T., still lives and works in town. Re-visiting Grace, Codi is again struck by her feeling of being an outsider. Codi and Hallie's mother died shortly after Hallie's birth. At the age of fifteen, Codi became pregnant with and then miscarried Loyd's child. She never told anyone. Her father, the town doctor, was aware of the situation, but Codi still does not know this. Codi and Loyd meet again and begin a new relationship. Loyd, a Native American who grew up on the nearby Reservation, is ready to establish a serious and committed relationship, but Codi is not ready to imagine herself as staying in one place or loving only one person. Loyd accepts her ambivalence. They continue to see each other, and he teaches her about Native American Cultures.
2072053	/m/06k6gs	The Truth About Forever	Sarah Dessen	2004-05-11	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Macy is still recovering from the sudden loss of her father. Since he died during one of their habitual morning runs, Macy gives up running and keeps all of her feelings to herself. This results in her being unable to comfort her mother. Her boyfriend, Jason, is currently away at Brain Camp. When Macy attempts to communicate with him about her unhappiness with her coworkers at the library. At the end of one of their e-mails she tells him that she loves him, he replies and thinks it would be for the best if they took a break until he returns in August. Upset and hurt, Macy goes for a ride and sees a van for Wish Catering, which catered her mother's party. She applies for a job, which she gets. Macy enjoys this new job and her new coworkers. There she meets the artistic Wes, who she later discovers lost his mother in a car accident and attended reform school for breaking and entering. During this time Macy's older sister begins to renovate their father's beach house despite reluctance from the other family members (mainly from her mother). Her mother refuses to talk to Macy about the sudden death of her husband, Macy's father; therefore she proceeds to put all of her time into her work. Macy attends a party with some of her coworkers, where she confesses about her father's death and her relationship issues with Jason to Wes. There, she bonds with coworker Kristy, who advises her to enjoy her life because forever keeps changing. Later Wes and Macy end up stranded together after their catering van runs out of gas, where Macy opens up to Wes about all of the issues in her life during a game of "Truth". They continue to play the game later during work, where Macy discovers that he is also in an "on break" relationship with a girl named Becky. As Macy and Wes grow closer together, Macy's mother advises against the job and any possible relationship with Wes. Macy later ends up deciding to confess to Wes, but sees him with Becky and ends up heart-broken again. Her mother has Macy helping her with preparations for a party, but eventually has to have Wish Catering assist her. It is during this time that Macy succeeds in being able to comfort her mother and discovers that Wes has broken up with Becky. Wes and Macy become a couple, with her resuming her running habit with him. Wes later joins her and her family at the beach house that has now been renovated.
2072939	/m/06k84q	Complicity	Iain Banks	1993	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Colley is a "Gonzo journalist" with an amphetamine habit, living in Edinburgh. He also smokes cigarettes and cannabis, drinks copious amounts of alcohol, plays computer games, and has adventurous sex with a married woman, Yvonne. He regrets his addictions and misdemeanours and tries half-heartedly to give them up occasionally. He reflects on his awful experience of witnessing the aftermath of the massacre at the 'Highway of Death' in the Gulf War, and covers the deployment of HMS Vanguard, Britain's first Trident nuclear missile submarine. He thinks he has a scoop when he receives anonymous phone calls about a series of mysterious deaths. Suddenly he has mysterious deaths of his own to worry about, when an editorial he wrote years before comes back to haunt him. In it, he suggested that certain named capitalist and right-wing public figures would be better hate-figures than the conventional ones of foreign leaders or domestic criminals. It seems someone is killing off the people on his list, one by one. The description of the murders (which are ingeniously sadistic) is done in a fairly detailed manner. Under suspicion by the police, Colley finds himself involved doubly in the bizarre murders when the killer is revealed. At the end of the book, Colley is diagnosed with lung cancer (a downbeat ending omitted in the film adaptation).
2073290	/m/06k91l	The Secret of the Old Mill	Franklin W. Dixon	1927-06-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Hardy boys learn a case of counterfeit money is somehow intertwined with a national security case their dad is working on. Frank and Joe help prevent 14-year-old cyclist Ken Blake from getting killed in an accident. As they help the boy up they see he is delivering an envelope to Victor Peters, a name that means something to the Hardys later on in the book. The Hardys learn that their friend Chet Morton has been tricked when asked to make change for what turned out to be a counterfeit twenty dollar bill, something that the police later confirm is becoming more common in their town of Bayport. Later, Joe is awakened by a clattering sound and sees a mysterious figure bicycling away from the Hardys' home. While investigating the disturbance a note is found that reads, "Drop case or else danger for you and your family." The Hardy boys are not sure if this threat refers to the counterfeiting case that Frank and Joe are investigating or another case their detective dad, Fenton Hardy, is trying to solve. The Hardys go with Chet, who wants to apply for a job at Elekton Controls, a missile-development company, but are told by Mr. Markel, one of Elekton's security guards, that there are no openings. Before leaving, they notice a bike that looks similar to the one ridden by Ken Blake and that is likely to have been used by the person who left the threatening note. Mr. Docker, an Elekton maintenance man, tells them that Ken does odd jobs for the company, but that he is not there at that time, even though Joe is certain he saw Ken looking out an adjacent old watermill's window at them. The Hardys, their girlfriends, Iola Morton and Callie Shaw and Chet go nearby to have a picnic but an arrow is shot at them with an attached note reading, "Danger. Hardys beware." The Hardy brothers receive a gift of a motorboat they call The Sleuth, and show it to their friend, Tony Prito. Tony says the construction supply yard he is working at for the summer has become the latest to receive counterfeit money used to pay for lumber by a boy matching the description of Ken Blake. The Hardys take The Sleuth to the mill to investigate and find the mill wheel starting and stopping. Soon, they are attacked and left without gas in their new boat. They recover and get back to investigating by finding Ken who says he thinks someone has used his bike the same night that Joe saw someone bicycling from the Hardy's home. Markel and Docker pull Ken away and then a suspicious vehicle leaves Elekton. Later, the same suspicious vehicle gets away before an explosion at Elekton. Frank and Joe are terrified that their dad is inside the burning building. He was in the building but survived the explosion revealing that he was there to stop the attack after realizing there is a pattern to similar type attacks going on around similar companies in the United States. Eager to learn more from Ken, the Hardys soon find that Ken has been released from Elekton. The Hardys find him at a boarding house and he explains that the bricks and lumber bought with the counterfeit money were being used for a project at the mill. Frank and Joe return to the old mill and realize that the wheel mill is set up to act as a signaling device for the people living inside; an electric-eye stops the flow of electricity to the wheel. It acts as a warning to those inside that someone is approaching the mill. Going inside the mill at a time when they know no one else is there, they discover a secret room hidden by the lumber bought with counterfeit money. In the secret room, they find the tools used to make the fake money, but before they can get away the villains return to the mill. Frank and Joe escape through a tunnel but are captured by Docker and Markel. Victor Peters arrives and these three villains reveal that Docker shot the arrow at the girlfriends and Markel used the bike to deliver the note to the Hardys' home. Docker and Markel also explain that, without the knowledge of Victor Peters, they allowed another villain, Paul Blum, into Elekton to attack the place, which is the case that Fenton Hardy was investigating. Blum reveals that he is working for other countries who wish to stop United States missile development. Frank and Joe take advantage of an opportunity and overtake the villains. The book ends with the police arresting all the villains and the expectation of the Hardys' next case when "they were called upon to solve the mystery of The Missing Chums."
2073550	/m/06k9hp	The Frosted Death				 The Sangaman-Veshnir drug company has discovered a fast-growing mold that grows on meat, covering the victim with a powdered sugar-like coating: "The Frosted Death". Growing into the skin pores and lungs, it causes death by suffocation, and cannot be killed by conventional means; a speck on the skin causes death in a short time. Kindly-seeming, thoroughly evil Veshnir murders to keep the mold secret: he has a deal with Germany to mass produce it as a weapon of war. A submarine of Nazis has infiltrated to support this effort. At his secret estate in Maine, Veshnir has set up a production facility, using dying men enslaved by blowing some mold into their brains. Benson quickly contains outbreaks of the mold, and uses detective work to identify the source. Mac works feverishly, develops an antidote. Mac and Josh are captured. Josh secretly infects Veshnir with the mold. Benson poses as one of the Nazi agents and uses the antidote to save Josh and Mac. Veshnir's production facility is destroyed. The Nazis will return to Germany and likely death.
2073871	/m/06kbfs	The Secret Panel	Franklin W. Dixon	1946-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Innocently responding to a motorist's request that they shut off a light at his home, the Hardy Boys discover a deep mystery: the man used the name of a man, John Mead, that Chief Collig claims died five years earlier in a car accident. Adding to the mystery, the Mead mansion's doors have neither knobs nor visible keyholes. Only after speaking to a locksmith do they learn that the locks were concealed. Meanwhile, their father Fenton assigns them to investigate a lead in the kidnapping of a doctor that may lead down the trail to a local boy who fell in with a local thief, a master criminal, who's a relation to the boy. The Hardy boys are to locate a traffic signal that hums like someone singing faintly, and drive ten minutes from it in each direction, then investigate the area for a "secret panel". Fenton's mystery ends up intertwining with the Mead mansion and the master criminal, who's been carrying out a series of break-ins and thefts without triggering the alarm systems. It turns out that the deceased Mr. Mead was an electronics genius who developed a device that could open any lock and defeat alarm systems, but asked that, upon his death, it be turned over to the FBI. The master criminal had befriended Mr. Mead, found out about the device, and stolen it.
2073882	/m/06kbh7	Josephine Mutzenbacher		1906	{"/m/02js9": "Erotica"}	 The plot device employed in Josephine Mutzenbacher is that of first-person narrative, structured in the format of a memoir. The story is told from the point of view of an accomplished aging 50-year-old Viennese courtesan who is looking back upon the sexual escapades she enjoyed during her unbridled youth in Vienna. Contrary to the what the title indicates, almost the entirety of the book takes place when Josephine is between the ages of 5–12 years old, before she actually becomes a licensed prostitute in the brothels of Vienna. The book begins when she is five years old and ends when she is twelve years old and about to enter professional service in a brothel. Although the book makes use of many "euphemisms" for human anatomy and sexual behavior that seem quaint today, its content is entirely pornographic. The actual progression of events amounts to little more than a graphic, unapologetic description of the reckless sexuality exhibited by the heroine, all before reaching her 13th year. The style bears more than a passing resemblance to the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom in its unabashed "laundry list" cataloging of all manner of taboo sexual antics from incest, rape and homosexuality to child prostitution, group sex and fellatio.
2073892	/m/06kbjq	The Phantom Freighter	Franklin W. Dixon	1947-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Hardy brothers embark on a freighter trip under mysterious circumstances and find themselves involved with a smuggling ring. The Hardy Boys discover that the Phantom Freighter is really a smuggling ship used to smuggle counterfeit documents, illegal drugs, cow hides, and electric motors. Enigmatic stranger Thaddeus McClintock arrives in Bayport and engages Frank and Joe Hardy to arrange for a relaxing trip for him (with the Boys to accompany him) with the mysterious promise of “I’ll pay all expenses and when the trip is over you’ll be paid. Money, if you like. Or something else.” Meanwhile, Aunt Gertrude has arrived and announced that she is going to be living in the Hardy household long term. The shipping company incorrectly delivers one of her cartons, delivering instead a box apparently of raw wool addressed to a Mr. Johnson to the Hardy’s address. After expressing her anger at the shipping company as the carton contains valuable family papers, Aunt Gertrude sends the boys to the address marked on the box to swap the packages. Arriving at the remote farm, the boys find nobody home but the barn ablaze. Frank breaks into the barn to rescue a carton believed to be Aunt Gertrude’s, only to find out it contained discarded newspapers. The owner of the barn who arrives and is shocked to find that someone had been staying at his house and having packages delivered while he was out of town. After getting a description of the man who signed for the package from the delivery driver, the boys spot a man matching that description at a clothing store and follow him to the docks where he disappears. Later, after reviewing several other modes of travel with Mr. McClintock, the boys suggest a cruise on an ocean going freighter, to which Mr. McClintock is receptive. The boys then try repeatedly to book passage on freighters scheduled through Bayport, but are rebuffed at every turn. The travel agency they attempted to work through, owned by Mr. Klack, seems more interested in keeping them off ships than arranging their passage. Even when the boys are successful at obtaining tickets through an out-of-town travel agency, an unknown individual posing to act on their behalf picks up their tickets, again preventing them from setting sail. At the suggestion of loyal Hardy friend Chet Morton (who is trying his hand at fly-tying), the boys and Mr. McClintock employ local fishing captain Harkness to take them on a fishing expedition. Captain Harkness agrees to take the trip, provided they avoid Barmet Shoals as he recently spotted a phantom freighter there that left him spooked and shaken. After landing a monstrous tuna to the delight of Mr. McClintock and heading back to Bayport, their boat runs out of gas to the disbelief of Captain Harkness. As night falls, the party on the boat is horrified to see a freighter cutting through the sea toward them, only to go silent and dark. Though the boys try hard to locate the ship, it is neither heard or sighted again and has disappeared by first light. Rescue comes from a coastal patrol aircraft and ship the next day. Meanwhile, numerous other break-ins are discovered in and around Bayport during which nothing was stolen from unoccupied houses, but packages are delivered and signed for by people unknown to the owners. Fenton Hardy reveals that he is working on a case of forged historical documents which have been appearing in the rare document trade. Aunt Gertrude takes a trip to Bridgewater, evasively answering questions about where and why she is going. The boys follow her to Bridgewater and find her meeting with an elderly woman the boys previously identified as one of the people involved in the package delivery scheme. The boys summon the local police who arrest the woman (who is selling some of the contents of Aunt Gertrude’s carton back to her) and search her motel room, finding more stolen property. The boys recruit their friend Biff Hooper to help them book passage, which turns to their advantage as an out-of-town travel agent arranges their cruise aboard the ‘’Father Neptune’’ Meeting Captain Gramwell of the ‘’Father Neptune’’, the boys learn that one crewmember recently left the ship ill and a new hand had been hired. Suspicious, the boys investigate and find the crewman had in fact been kidnapped and the new hand was sent to interrupt the trip. Captain Gramwell reacts quickly and has the new crewman, recognized by the boys as part of the smuggling ring, arrested and questioned to find his missing crewman, who is recovered. Mr. McClintock, the boys, Biff, and Chet board the ‘’Father Neptune’’ in Southport. At sea, the cargo aboard the ‘’Father Neptune’’ suddenly shifts, leaving the ship listing badly and in danger of sinking. The crew and passengers rush to redistribute the cargo, eventually restoring the ship upright. The boys tell Captain Gramwell about the smuggling ring and phantom ship. Captain Gramwell has the ship’s radio operator contact all the ships in the area and discovers that the ‘’Lion Tamer’’ spotted just such a ship nearby. Spotting the ship at nightfall, the ‘’Father Neptune’’ pursues the mystery ship, identified as the ‘’Black Gull’’, but is unable to overtake it, much to the frustration of Captain Gramwell as the ‘’Father Neptune’’ is declared to be the fastest ship in those waters and the mystery ship is obviously older and slower. That night, the mystery ship is again sighted, dark and apparently adrift. Along with the ‘’Father Nepture’’’s radio operator Sparks, the boys row over to the ship while the ‘’Father Neptune’’ keeps a spotlight on the mystery ship to hide the rowboat. This scene is depicted on the cover of the book. Upon boarding the mystery ship, the party finds the ship seemingly abandoned, but are suddenly jumped by the ship’s crew and captured. Held captive with Sparks aboard the ‘’Black Gull’’ by the chief smuggler Crowfoot, the boys pretend to cast in with the smuggler. Crowfeet tells the boys about the ship’s secret repeller belts around the hull which hold off any motorized vessel or aircraft, allowing the ‘’Black Gull’’ (under many different names) to escape from much faster ships and explaining how the boys adrift in the fishing boat were able to get so close with the fishing boat’s engine shut down due to fuel exhaustion. After the ‘’Black Gull’’’s radio operator falls ill, Crowfeet presses a seemingly reluctant Sparks into service to send messages. The boys then take turns sending coded messages via innocent-sounding nursery rhymes to their father, including the line “sailing, sailing, over the bounding main, for many a sailing ship can go faster…”. Soon a sleek racing sloop under full sail (immune to the effects of the repeller which only affects motor vessels) approaches and quickly overtakes the slow freighter. Coast Guard officers board and rescue the boys, Sparks, and the captured scientists who had been kidnapped and forced to work for the smuggler. Among them is a chemist who had developed the techniques used to artificially age paper to supply forged documents for sale in the antique / rare document market. The elderly “smuggler” Mitchell turns out to be Mr. McClintock’s former business partner and is happily reunited with Mr. McClintock aboard the ‘’Father Neptune’’. With Mitchell rescued, the entire design for the repeller belt is recovered and Mr. McClintock and Mitchell agree to turn the design over to the US Government. The boys, Chet, Biff, and Mr. McClintock then continue their cruise to the Caribbean. The reader is left with a note that the Hardy Boys next mystery will be The Secret of Skull Mountain.
2073897	/m/06kbkd	The Secret of Skull Mountain	Franklin W. Dixon	1948-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Every night water strangely disappears from the new Tarnack Reservoir near Skull Mountain. Frank and Joe join forces with a team of skilled engineers to solve the baffling mystery. The book takes place on Skull Mountain, a mountain where many skulls have been seen, near Bayport, U.S.A. This city around Skull Mountain loses water each night because of the new reservoir. There is always something mysterious happening on the mountain, which has an underground channel. The story begins when Joe wants to go swimming, however, Frank points out that there is no water. When they discover that the water is missing, they team up with Chet Morton, Dick Ames and Bob Carpenter in order to solve the mystery. While exploring Skull Mountain, where the reservoir is located, the boys are attacked several times. They finally find Timothy Kimball Jr. (sweeper) breaking into Mr. & Mrs. Kleng’s store in order to steal the safe which holds his pay ($5000). Timothy is arrested and questioned about the reservoir. This leads the Hardy Boys to catch the villain, Mr. Kleng, and solve the crime. At the end, the Hardy Boys can go swim because there is enough water in the pool.
2073902	/m/06kbl3	The Sign of the Crooked Arrow	Franklin W. Dixon	1949-01-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Hardy brothers interrupt their investigations of jewelry store holdups to answer a plea from their cousin on a New Mexico cattle ranch. They discover how Arrow cigarettes can knock people out using a gas that comes out from a vent in the ground in New Mexico, originally discovered by American Indians.
2073908	/m/06kblg	The Secret of the Lost Tunnel	Franklin W. Dixon	1950-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys travel with Brigadier General Jack Smith to an historic Civil War battlefield in the Deep South. Rocky Run Battlefield (near the town of Centerville in an unnamed state) is the center of a legend involving a Confederate general who was disgraced due to his alleged involvement with the theft of gold from a bank. Smith seeks to vindicate the long-dead officer.
2073914	/m/06kbm4	The Wailing Siren Mystery	Franklin W. Dixon	1951-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Their SOS ignored by a strange yacht in a storm, the Hardy Boys find a wallet, apparently picked up by a helicopter, containing two thousand dollars alongside their speedboat and are launched into a mystery involving diverse clues. This includes finding out who kidnapped Jack Wayne and took his plane, and where the wailing siren is coming from.
2073939	/m/06kbq8	The Secret of Wildcat Swamp	Franklin W. Dixon	1952-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 An paleontology expedition in the West turns into a desperate attempt to capture freight train robbers and an escaped convict.
2073948	/m/06kbqz	The Crisscross Shadow	Franklin W. Dixon	1953-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy boys find the missing deed to an Indian's land, prevent a phony salesman from carrying through a reckless scheme, and help their father solve a top-secret sabotage case.
2073951	/m/06kbr9	The Yellow Feather Mystery	Franklin W. Dixon	1954-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 In trying to trace a missing will, detectives Frank and Joe Hardy trap a dangerous criminal who is willing to risk all--including murder--for money.
2073955	/m/06kbr_	The Hooded Hawk Mystery	Franklin W. Dixon	1954-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys solve a kidnapping and break up a gang smuggling illegal aliens from India who are also holding an Indian prince captive. An official of the Indian government saw to it that a trained peregrine falcon was delivered to the boys to use in their investigation. Throughout their mission the falcon intercepts many messages between the smugglers as the criminals use pigeons to fly messages from place to place. Finally, the boys rescue the Indian prince and catch the human smugglers along with creating a strong bind between India and the Hardys.
2073960	/m/06kbsb	The Clue in the Embers	Franklin W. Dixon	1956-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In solving the mystery of two medallions missing from an inherited curio collection, the Hardys wind up in a desolate area of Guatemala at the mercy of dangerous thugs.
2073970	/m/06kbv1	The Secret of Pirate's Hill	Franklin W. Dixon	1957-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Hired by a mysterious businessman to locate an old Spanish cannon, the Hardy brothers and friends grow more and more suspicious as they encounter stolen cars and a mysterious man on a motorcycle. They eventually uncover the cannon and thousands in gold bullion after perilous underwater adventures.
2073977	/m/06kbvv	The Mystery at Devil's Paw	Franklin W. Dixon	1959-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Frank and Joe Hardy receive a telegram from their friend Tony saying that he is in danger in Alaska and needs their help. He also suggests bringing the brother's friend, Chet Morton. At the airport they find a person following them and spying on them and they are attacked. Later the police discover that the attacker was a wanted spy: Romo Stransky. Arriving in Alaska, they meet Ted Sewell, Tony’s helper, and he leads the boys to Tony’s camp. During the trip, Ted tells the boys about how his father disappeared and he wants them to help him find him. At camp, Tony tells the boys that they have been attacked several times by a gang. During a search of the island, they find a knapsack, a map and a piece of jade. They later learn of a gang member going to The Devil’s Paw — a place in British Columbia. At The Devils Paw they learn of an ancient Indian burial site where people would steal gold and jewelry. The brothers remembered the piece of jade they found in the knapsack and it might have been stolen from the burial site. They locate the ancient burial site and also find Ted Sewell’s father. They find the camp of the gang and learn that the mysterious gang was searching for a lost rocket. They are captured, but escape with the help of their friend Chet. A radio call to special agents leads to the arrest of the gang.
2073982	/m/06kbwj	The Mystery of the Chinese Junk	Franklin W. Dixon	1959-12-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardys purchase a Chinese junk named the Hai Hau to ferry passengers to Rocky Isle and make some extra money. Four mysterious men also are interested in the boat because of treasure hidden inside the Hai Hau.
2073989	/m/06kbxk	Mystery of the Desert Giant	Franklin W. Dixon	1960-12-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys and Chet Morton search on the California desert for missing industrialist, Willard Grafton, and break up a gang of criminals intent on defrauding the US government. Much of this book takes place in Blythe, California and it cites real, current locales, such as Hobson Way and the giant intaglios north of Blythe on U.S. Highway 95. http://www.blytheareachamberofcommerce.com/intag.htm In the end, the boys discover that Grafton's fellow explorer had a part in the gang of criminal's racket. With this, Grafton is rescued, and the thugs who apparently were smuggling illegal cheques across the country are caught.
2074075	/m/06kc4g	The Clue of the Screeching Owl	Franklin W. Dixon	1962	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 When dogs and men suddenly disappear, and strange screams fill the night, fantastic stories of vengeful ghosts are almost believable. It is these strange happenings which bring Frank and Joe Hardy to the Pocono Mountains to help their father's friend, a retired police captain, solve the mystery of Black Hollow. But when the Hardy Boys and Chet Morton arrive at Captain Thomas Maguire's cabin on the edge of the hollow, he has disappeared. In the woods the boys find only a few slim clues: a flashlight bearing the initials T.M., a few scraps of bright plaid cloth, and two empty shotgun shells which had been fired recently. Frank and Joe are determined to find the captain, despite Chet's misgivings after a night of weird and terrifying screams. Neighbors of the missing man insist that the bloodcurdling cries are those of a legendary witch who stalks Black Hollow seeking vengeance. Strangely, it is a small puppy that helps the boys disclose a most unusual and surprising set of circumstances, involving a mute boy, an elusive hermit, and a fearless puma trainer.
2074094	/m/06kc67	The Viking Symbol Mystery	Franklin W. Dixon	1963	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys and Chet Morton travel to Canada's Northwest Territories to recover a stolen Viking artifact (a runestone). They also smash a group of thieves robbing recreational lodges around the Great Slave Lake. They visit Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Edmonton, Alberta; Fort Smith, Northwest Territories; and Hay River, Northwest Territories.
2074100	/m/06kc6l	The Mystery of the Aztec Warrior	Franklin W. Dixon	1964	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The handwritten will of a deceased world-traveller is strange and mysterious. Its instructions are to deliver "the valuable object to the rightful owner, a descendant of an Aztec warrior." What is the valuable object and where is it? What is the name of the owner and where is he? Frank and Joe Hardy have only one clue to work with: the name of a complete stranger who can help find the answers, Roberto Hermosa. Despite the harassments, the threats, and the attacks made upon them by an unknown, sinister gang, Frank and Joe unravel clue after clue in their adventure-packed search for the living descendant of the mighty Aztec nation which once ruled Mexico. The hunt leads to a marketplace in Mexico City, to the Pyramids at Teotihuacan, to the tombs of Oaxaca-where Chet Morton, the Hardy's buddy, is nearly buried alive by foul play. It takes as much high courage as clever deduction for the young detectives to defeat their ruthless foes and to decipher the fascinating secrets of the strange and mysterious will.
2074104	/m/06kc6y	The Haunted Fort	Franklin W. Dixon	1965	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The story starts with the boys' friend Chet Morton who is going off to attend a summer art school in New England. He calls on the Hardy Boys to solve the mystery of the theft of two valuable oil paintings in the area of Millwood. The Hardy Boys accept the proposal and go along with Chet to the Millwood school. In the school, they meet a millionaire - Mr. Davenport. A fort, known as Senandaga, is believed to be haunted and the Hardy Boys think that the Haunted fort may have something to do with the theft of the paintings. The Hardy Boys and Chet are told that Mr. Davenport's ancestor, known as the prisoner-painter was held prisoner in Senandaga and he made 17 paintings of the outside view of Senandaga. Out of seventeen, 3 have been stolen. It is believed that a treasure, which contains a chain of solid gold is hidden in the fort, the clue to find them is in the paintings of the prisoner-painter. The Hardy Boys investigate the case. Many times, their car, boat and jeeps are sabotaged, usually in with the intent to kill them. But, the Hardy Boys escape every time. As the story progresses, all the paintings are stolen by someone who wants the clue to find the chain, except one, which is kept with Mr. Davenport. Soon the Hardy Boys & Chet find the clue in that one painting and search the fort. During which, they see a ghost walking on water. The Hardy Boys have a number of suspects - example: a strange English hermit who lives alone on an island, a critic named Chauncy Gilman who hates Mr. Davenport, a student of the school named Ronnie Rush & a French Sculpting teacher named Rene Folette. While searching, they and Mr. Davenport are caught and are held captive in a dungeon. In the end, they find the gold chain, fight the villains, and solve the mystery.
2074122	/m/06kc9f	The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge	Franklin W. Dixon	1966	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys track down the saboteurs who kidnapped their father, and have to keep them from blowing up a bridge near Boontown, Kentucky. The bridge is being built by Tony Pritos fathers construction company. Mr Hardy is ill most of the story. The Villains are mostly ex-crooks who wants that area of the bridge for themselves.
2074130	/m/06kcbg	The Secret Agent on Flight 101	Harriet Adams	1967	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Joe and Frank Hardy go to a magic show with their dad. After the show is done, their dad asks Hexton how the vanishing act was performed. Hexton offers to do the trick on Fenton Hardy. When their dad disappears, he does not reappear. Hexton says their dad is simply playing a joke on them; Joe and Frank do not believe this. They suspect he was kidnapped. To be sure, Joe and Frank study some of their dad's records; they find Hexton was the leader of an international gang. The first place they look is in a light house that they suspected he might be in. They go inside and see a guard; the guard tries to escape but cannot. He says their dad was here but is not anymore. Though not sure, the boys suspect that their dad was purposely moved to a more secretive place. The boys check in Hexton's castle but get caught. They find that the hinges of the place they were locked in were bad; Joe and Frank take turns to pry them off. Finally, the boys escape. The boys overhear the gang talking about stealing some jewels. They now have a second job to do. As the boys were leaving, the criminals try to recapture them. It ends up that the police have come just in time to save the boys. Although the boys are fine, the criminals escape. Hexton steals the jewels and takes a ride on Flight 101. Joe and Frank also take a ride on flight on Flight 101, but see nothing suspicious. When everyone was exiting the plane, the boys think they see Hexton. As they try to capture him, another person helps in the capturing of Hexton. It ends up that the person was Fenton Hardy. All along Joe and Frank's dad was spying on Flight 101.
2074143	/m/06kcdk	The Arctic Patrol Mystery	Franklin W. Dixon	1969	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 At the beginning the Hardy boys fly to Iceland to look for a man that an insurance company that is giving him a reward. Then at a party someone attempted to kidnap Frank. A clue is a glove by a sulfur pit in Iceland. It might mean the American astronauts that came to Iceland to study the volcanoes. They take a flight on a private plane to Akureyri. The pilot is an enemy and forces a landing on a glacier. After they land on the glacier they handcuff their enemy. They are fooled by a phony police helicopter that rescues the enemy. They tried to use the radio but the pilot hid the radio crystal. They found it and made contact with the radio tower at Reykjavik. Shortly another helicopter came to pick up the Hardys. They went to Akureyri and visited a phony Rex Hallbjornsson. Shortly after they see Chet wandering in front of the hotel. He looked funny. Then they realized he was drugged! They thought some one might be upstairs looking at their stuff! They rushed upstairs. It was the pilot and his phony rescuer .Joe tried to get the pilot and the wig came off. It was the phony Rex Hallbjornsson! They got away! Chet and Tony looked went to investigate a man named Hallbjornsson that might know rex while frank and Joe went with a coast guard officer to look for Hallbjornsson in the sea. After a devastating storm they saw a small raft, maybe with a motor. They thought it might be the criminals. Over the course of a day or two, they put on disguises and acted as phony crewman for Rex Mar (the real Hallbjornson—he changed his name). When they came on deck, Musselaman was there and was fooled by the disguises until Joe slipped up by speaking English in Iceland. The boys defeat the criminals in hand-to-hand combat and have them arrested.
2074150	/m/06kcdx	The Bombay Boomerang	Franklin W. Dixon	1970	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys head to sea to solve the theft of mercury shipments and a government missile and to foil a terrorist plan to create havoc in the United States. They discover that the gang is hiding in a hotel in Baltimore, where their father, Fenton Hardy, is staying under the name L. Marks. An attempt is made on their father's life when his cover is blown, but the Hardy Boys save him in time. Using devices such as ear bugs, they spy on the gang. With the help of an Admiral at the Pentagon, the boys uncover the gang's nefarious plot. The gang wants to blast a cave containing nerve gas with a Super S missile that can't be redirected. This will cause the nerve gas to spread in the USA, which in turn will help overthrow the US government. The Hardys learn that an Indian freighter, Nanda Kailash, is going to dock at Baltimore. They explore the ship as all the clues point towards India. There, an attempt is made on Joe's life. The Hardys also capture the Mercury gang. They find a new friend, Akshay, who takes them to a ship called the Bombay Batarang, where they uncover some clues to the mystery. In the end, with trickery the Hardys capture the rest of the gang. Later they are abducted, but they fight off the criminals and capture the mastermind in the end..
2074152	/m/06kcf7	Danger on Vampire Trail	Franklin W. Dixon	1971	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Hardy boys and two friends take a camping trip to the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to locate a gang of credit card counterfeiters.
2074159	/m/06kcfy	The Masked Monkey	Franklin W. Dixon	1972	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Hardy brothers' search for the missing son of a wealthy industrialist leads them to Brazil and great danger.
2074164	/m/06kcgm	The Shattered Helmet	Franklin W. Dixon	1973	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Danger is the name of the game when the Hardys agree to help their pen pal from Greece, Evangelos Pandropolos, search for a priceless, ancient Greek helmet. Years ago, Evan's uncle had loaned it to a Hollywood movie company for use in a silent motion picture, The Persian Glory, for a role in the movie, but the helmet was lost after the movie was done. At Hunt College, where Evan, Frank, Joe and Chet Morton are taking a summer course in film-making, the boys are harassed by Leon Saffel whose harassments get more and more vicious. All the while a gang is trying to force Mr. Hardy to give up his investigations of a national crime syndicate and also trying to find the helmet, which after speaking to Evan's billionaire uncle, may have belonged to King Agamemnon making the helmet even more valuable. The clues that the Hardys unearth keep them on the move-from their college campus to California and finally to Greece. In a sizzling climax, the Hardys, Evan and Chet match wits with their powerful enemies on the island of Corfu.
2074170	/m/06kcgz	The Clue of the Hissing Serpent	Franklin W. Dixon	1974	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Hardy brothers and Chet head to Hong Kong to investigate a missing chess trophy, a serpent pattern on a vase and hot-air balloon, and end up smashing an international crime ring.
2074179	/m/06kchq	The Mysterious Caravan	Franklin W. Dixon	1975	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 On a winter vacation in Jamaica, the Hardy Boys begin a dangerous adventure when an ancient bronze death mask is discovered near their beach house (where Frank comically loses and finds his underwear) The case takes them from Jamaica to their hometown of Bayport to Casablanca to Marrakesh. They meet William along the way, a kind African who is willing to help them uncover secrets of the mask, which they find out is Jamaican property. William scares off the enemies of the Hardy Boys in Swahili, telling them he is an even more powerful Juju man then theirs and eventually Mr. Hardy comes after Frank and Joe thought they were dead. Back at the Celliers', they celebrate and Christine, the gorgeous, black-haired teen lets the Hardys call home to their worrying mother and Aunt Gertrude. William even receives a wild dog as a present for saving the Hardys from the predicament.
2074204	/m/06kcl6	The Witchmaster's Key	Franklin W. Dixon	1976	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy boys' investigation of a museum and grave robbery in Griffinmoore, East Anglia arouses the anger of a coven of black witches.
2074207	/m/06kclk	The Jungle Pyramid	Franklin W. Dixon	1977	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The search for gold robbed from a mint takes the Hardy Boys to Mexico City and to the Yucatán Peninsula where they uncover a second mystery in the New York Museum.
2074210	/m/06kcm7	The Firebird Rocket	Franklin W. Dixon	1978	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys help their detective father, Fenton Hardy, search for a famous rocket scientist whose disappearance endangers the launching of the Firebird Rocket. They are threatened multiple times, but still do not give up with their lives at risk. Frank and Joe Hardy aid their father and others. However, they soon learn that they are working for a criminal.
2074219	/m/06kcmz	The Sting of the Scorpion	Franklin W. Dixon	1979	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 During their father's investigation of the ruthless Scorpio gang of terrorists, the Hardy Boys witness an explosion and an elephant falling from an airship named Safari Queen of Quinn Airport which was carrying animals of the newly opened Wild World Zoo. Strange events are happening at Wild World, so the Hardy Boys search for the truth. They fall into a trap and almost escape injury. They capture the gang in an all-out fight.The leader of the gang is Eustace Jarman.
2074665	/m/06kdnj	Princess Daisy	Judith Krantz	1980	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel tells the story of Princess Marguerite "Daisy" Valensky. She is the daughter of Prince Alexander "Stash" Valensky, a wealthy Russian-born polo player and former playboy, and his wife Francesca Vernon, a beautiful and talented American actress. Stash and Francesca, madly in love, are thrilled by her pregnancy and the news that she is carrying twins. However, a problem during delivery denies one of the twin girls, named Danielle, enough oxygen, and she is born brain-damaged, while Daisy is healthy. Francesca suffers from acute post-partum depression and enters a fugue state for several weeks. Stash, who has a fear and disgust of illness and abnormality after a childhood spent watching his mother slowly waste away from tuberculosis, is unable to accept or love Danielle. When Francesca recovers from her depression, he lies to her, telling her that the second-born twin died soon after birth. She discovers the truth and flees with both infants to California, where she is helped by her former agent and his wife. For several years, she lives a secluded life in Carmel and grants Stash short visits with Daisy. Francesca dies in a car accident, and Daisy and Dani are reunited with their father, who immediately places Dani in an expensive but remote home for retarded children, much to Daisy's distress. When Daisy turns 16, her father dies in a plane accident, after which her older half-brother, Ram, who has become obsessed with her, seduces and then brutally rapes her. To get her away from Ram, her father's mistress, Anabel (a mother figure to the girl), sends her to the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she forms what will be a lifelong friendship with Kiki Kavanaugh, an auto industry heiress from Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Because of Daisy's total estrangement from Ram, who is a trustee of her inheritance, she neglects to read his letters regarding her stock portfolio at a crucial moment and thus loses everything her father left her. As a result, she is forced to drop out of college and go to work. She paints portraits of rich, horse-mad peoples' children on ponies in order to pay Dani's bills and also works in a demanding job at a production company that makes television commercials. When Anabel becomes ill and needs money for treatment, Daisy must make a decision to abandon her private life. Up to this point, Daisy has lived out of the public eye, refusing to trade on her title for financial gain, but she ultimately accepts an opportunity to do so. In the process, Daisy must learn to trust a man who loves her, to come to terms with her sister's disability, and to make peace with the life she's been given.
2075557	/m/06kgly	The Book of Illusions	Paul Auster	2002	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the late 1980s, the story is written from the perspective of David Zimmer, a university professor who, after losing his wife and children in a plane crash, falls into a routine of depression and isolation. After seeing one of the silent comedies of Hector Mann, an actor missing since the 1920s, he decides to occupy himself by watching all of Mann's films and writing a book about them. The publishing of the book, however, triggers another series of events that draw Zimmer even deeper into the actor's past. The middle of the story is largely dedicated to telling the life story of Hector Mann, involving his self-imposed exile from his past life and career, which serves as a form of penance for his role in the death of a woman who loved him. In his last days, his wife sends a letter to Zimmer, requesting him to come to their New Mexico home to bear witness to Mann's final legacy of films. The events that ensue form the overarching story of Zimmer's rehabilitation from his reclusive state, and his coming to terms with the manner in which his family was killed.
2075804	/m/06kg_7	Cart and Cwidder	Diana Wynne Jones	1975	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Osfameron Tanamoril (Moril) Clennenson is a travelling musician, who travels with his father, Clennen, his mother, Lenina, and his elder siblings, Dagner and Brid, through Dalemark, a country torn by civil war between the South and the North. They travel around, playing music, taking passengers and messages, and spreading news throughout the country. When Clennen (the father and main performer) is murdered by the Earl of South Dales, who suspects him of being a spy for the North, Lenina (who is high-born and gave up the chance of being a Lady when she married Clennen) takes her three children and their passenger Kialan, the fugitive son of a Northern earl, back to her home town of Markind in South Dalemark. Within the same day as her husband's death, Lenina is married to her former fiancé the Lord of Markind, guided by the belief that this is the only way to counter the bad luck caused by Clennen's murder. Dagner, Brid, and Moril encounter their father's murderer among the wedding guests in Markind and together with Kialan they flee the town and try to reach the North, while continuing to perform for a living. However, without Clennen and Lenina, they find this difficult to do. The oldest son, Dagner, tries to continue their father's work as a Northern spy, but is arrested for treason against the Earl of South Dales. Brid, Moril, and Kialan are forced to flee, believing that Dagner will be hanged. Before he died, Clennen left his youngest son Moril a magical cwidder (a common musical instrument in Dalemark similar to a lute with some properties of an acoustic guitar). It is rumored to have been owned by Moril's ancestor and namesake Osfameron, who was both a minstrel and a famous magician, featuring in many of the legends of Dalemark. Throughout their travels from the South to the North, Moril discovers that he has the power to use the magic of his newly inherited instrument. As they travel, they become embroiled in the civil war. As the Southerners are about to attack the North, Moril uses his magical cwidder to make the mountains 'walk' and close Flennpass, the only mountain pass between the North and the South, just as his ancestor, the famed Osfameron, did in so many of the songs Moril's father had sung nearly every day. The walking mountains crush the attacking Southern army, killing the evil Earl of South Dales, Clennen's murderer, and saving the North. However, after the battle, Moril is wracked with guilt, as he caused the deaths of hundreds of men, and mainly because he was angry that his beloved horse, Olob, had been shot. In the end, when all safely reach Hannart, the earldom of Kialan's father, they are joined by Dagner who has been released from jail after the death of the Earl of South Dales and traveled to North Dalemark with another traveling Singer, Hestefan. Moril decides that he should travel with Hestefan and learn how to be a proper Singer. Hestefan accepts, and they leave to continue travelling through Dalemark.
2076029	/m/06khgk	Champions of the Force	Kevin J. Anderson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Kyp Durron continued his rampage to destroy the Galactic Empire with the Sun Crusher to avenge his brother (whom he inadvertently kills when he destroys Carida). Luke, who was in a suspended animation state after the fight between himself and Exar Kun, made every attempt he can to save his body from the evil spirit of Exar Kun. After reaching out to the Jedi twins, he warns them about the danger. In the end, all the apprentices unite and Exar Kun is destroyed. After the death of Exar Kun, Kyp comes to the light side again. Luke forgives Kyp but many throughout the galaxy, especially the Empire, shall hate him forever. Kyp takes the Sun Crusher into the Maw to destroy it. After Wedge Antilles and his group of fighters reach the Maw Installation, the last of Admiral Daala's ships, the Gorgon, limps back to Imperial installation in the Maw near Kessel. After destroyong the Installation and blowing an ionic asteroid, Admiral Daala successfully fakes her death and escapes. Meanwhile, Bevel Lemelisk and his group of scientists escape on the prototype Death Star. Before they could go far, Kyp crashes his ship, the Sun Crusher into the prototype and hauls both ships into a black hole. Kyp escapes by getting into a pod. Now Kyp has redeemed himself to the Jedi Order, himself, and Luke.
2079721	/m/06krj7	Pied Piper	Nevil Shute		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns an elderly Englishman, John Sidney Howard, who goes on a fishing holiday in France after the Second World War breaks out, but before the fall of France. Entrusted with the care of two British children, and overtaken by events, he attempts to return to England and safety. His journey is hampered by the unexpected speed of the Nazi invasion of France, and by the fact that he continually finds himself entrusted with the custody of more and more young children. Eventually, he is stranded in Nazi occupied France and he is fully aware that, as an Englishman, he is an enemy to the occupying forces. While attempting to get passage on a fishing boat, he and his charges are discovered by the Germans. However, in a final plot twist, the German commandant allows them to escape on the condition that they take his niece with them and send her to relatives in the USA. His niece is apparently orphaned and had a Jewish mother. The tale is told by an acquaintance he meets in a London club.
2081495	/m/06kwxd	The Comedians	Graham Greene	1966	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The reader is introduced to the main characters on board the Medea, a Dutch ship serving Port-au-Prince and the Dominican Republic. The narrator is Mr. Brown, returning from an unsuccessful trip to the United States to sell his hotel, located in Port-au-Prince. Also present are Mr. Smith, (the Presidential Candidate), who ran on the vegetarian ticket in the American election of 1948; he and Mrs. Smith are on an optimistic journey to build a vegetarian center in Haiti. "Major" Jones is a likeable person of dubious history; he is full of stories about exploits that are not quite believable. Upon arriving in Haiti, Brown returns to his hotel to find that the secretary of social welfare, who it seems was on the run from the government, has committed suicide in his pool. Brown has to dispose of the body to avoid being implicated. Meanwhile, Jones is arrested as soon as he sets foot on Haitian soil. When Brown is made aware of this, he convinces Mr. Smith to use his 'political weight' to help Jones get out of prison. With only the help of a pen and some paper, Jones is able to forge his way into the Haitian government. When the body of Secretary Philipot is found, his family tries to hold a funeral, but the government's soldiers, the Tontons Macoute, ambush the procession and steal the body. The ex-secretary's nephew decides to join the rebel forces, and to do this he must first participate in a voodoo initiation ceremony. Brown reunites with his lover, Pineda, but finds that her child and husband still stand between them. And Mr. and Mrs. Smith continue to look into establishing a vegetarian centre in Haiti, before they finally realize that this country is in no way suited to such an enterprise. The Smiths pack up their bags and leave for the neighboring Dominican Republic. Just as quickly as he infiltrated the government, Jones is soon an enemy of the state, and Brown has an adventure trying to smuggle Jones out of the country. Brown first attempts to sneak Jones onto the Medea, and when that fails Jones is given sanctuary in Pineda's embassy. But Brown doesn't like it when Jones becomes too close to the Lady Pineda, so he convinces Jones to join the rebels in the north. Many sacrifices are made towards this end, as Jones has been proclaiming himself a great military hero and the rebels really believe that he will liberate their country. However, it seems that this was all a bluff on Jones' part and he is soon killed in action. The rebellion fails. Brown, unable to return to his hotel in Haiti, finds a new job in Santo Domingo as a mortician.
2081593	/m/06kx6l	The Citadel	A. J. Cronin	1937	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In October 1921, Andrew Manson, an idealistic, newly qualified doctor, arrives from Scotland to work as assistant to Doctor Page in the small Welsh mining town of 'Drineffy'. He quickly realises that Page is an invalid and that he has to do all the work for a meagre wage. Shocked by the unsanitary conditions he finds, he works to improve matters and receives the support of Dr Philip Denny, a cynical semi-alcoholic. Resigning, he obtains a post as assistant in a miners' medical aid scheme in 'Aberalaw', a neighbouring coal mining town in the South Wales coalfield. On the strength of this job, he marries Christine Barlow, a junior school teacher. Christine helps her husband with his silicosis research. Eager to improve the lives of his patients, mainly coal miners, Manson dedicates many hours to research in his chosen field of lung disease. He studies for, and is granted, the MRCP, and when his research is published, an MD. The research gains him a post with the 'Mines Fatigue Board' in London, but he resigns after six months to set up a private practice. Seduced by the thought of easy money from wealthy clients rather than the principles he started out with, Manson becomes involved with pampered private patients and fashionable surgeons and drifts away from his wife. A patient dies because of a surgeon's ineptitude, and the incident causes Manson to abandon his practice and return to his former ways. He and his wife repair their damaged relationship, but Christine is killed in a traffic accident. It is Denny, now teetotal, who whisks him off to the Welsh countryside to recover. Since Manson had accused the incompetent surgeon of murder, he is vindictively reported to the General Medical Council for having worked with an American tuberculosis specialist who does not have a medical degree, even though the patient had been successfully treated at his nature cure clinic. Despite his lawyer's gloomy prognosis, Manson forcefully justifies his actions during the hearing and is not struck off the medical register. He joins Denny and bacteriologist Dr Hope in opening an integrated, multi-specialty practice, then uncommon, in a country town.
2082295	/m/06kz09	Fantastic Mr. Fox	Roald Dahl	1970	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story revolves around an anthropomorphic, tricky, clever fox named Mr. Fox who lives underground beside a tree with his wife and four children. In order to feed his family, he makes nightly visits to farms owned by three wicked, cruel, dimwitted farmers named Boggis, Bunce, and Bean and snatches the livestock or food available on each man's respective farm. Tired of being outsmarted by Mr. Fox, the farmers devise a plan to attempt to shoot him by sneaking up on him a certain distance from his hole, blasting shots at their enemy, only to shoot off his tail. In order to successfully kill the fox, the farmers dig up his burrow using caterpillar tractors, although fortunately the family manages to escape by burrowing further beneath the earth to safety. The trio of farmers are ridiculed for their persistence, so they decide to gather by Mr. Fox's hole with tents and pointed guns in order to shoot him when he emerges. Cornered by his rivals, Mr. Fox and his family (along with all of the other families of underground creatures) are left to starve. Suddenly, Mr. Fox devises a plot one day to acquire food. He and his children tunnel through the dirt and wind up burrowing to Boggis's hen-house, just as he had planned. Mr. Fox kills several chickens and sends some of his young to carry the food back home to Mrs. Fox for her to prepare a meal. Along the way to their next destination, Mr. Fox runs into his friend Badger and permits him to accompany him on his mission, and the group proceeds to tunnel to Bunce's farm and then to Bean's cider cellar (where they are nearly discovered by a hired woman named Mabel when she enters the room to collect a few jars of apple cider for Bean). They carry their findings back home, where a great celebratory smorgasbord is being served to the starving underground animals and their families. At the table, Mr. Fox invites everyone to live in a secret underground neighbourhood with him and his family, where he will hunt for them daily and no longer need to worry about predators. Everyone joyfully cheers for this idea, whereas Boggis, Bunce, and Bean are left waiting for the fox to emerge from his hole.
2082335	/m/06kz4g	Twelve	Jasper Kent		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Twelve is the story of 17 year old White Mike, the privileged son of a restaurant tycoon. His mother succumbed to breast cancer several years before the novel began. White Mike is a drug dealer who has taken his senior year in high school off to sell marijuana to his wealthy peers. When he is not selling drugs he is reminiscing of his childhood and philosophizing about a world he feels he is not a part of. The novel takes place over a five day period in December 1999, beginning on the night of the 27th and ending on New Year's Eve. It is told in a 3rd person narrative and follows not just White Mike but many other characters, but despite this White Mike is the central figure in the book. ;Part 1 -- December 27 The novel begins with White Mike thinking about his deceased mother and musing about the state of New York in the Winter. He then visits the rec center, where Hunter, a friend of his has gotten into a fight with a black basketball player named Nana. The fight ends with both covered in copious amounts of each other's blood. White Mike and Hunter head to a nearby Goody's, where they discuss College. White Mike then leaves to make a sale. Hunter then leaves and goes home, thinking about the fight with Nana while listening to James Taylor on his discman. At home he makes sporadic conversation with his father, who is quite wealthy and a borderline alcoholic. Hunter then leaves the apartment and goes for a walk. The narrative then shifts to Nana, who is going home to his apartment in the Harlem housing projects. Before he can get into his building he witnesses a drug deal between two shady characters, a pale white boy and a heavy black man. The deal then erupts into violence when the heavy man shoots the pale boy with a gun wrapped in a hand towel. Nana tries to escape but is killed as well by the heavy man, who pockets the pale boy's revolver before fleeing the scene. We then shift to Sara Ludlow, the "hottest girl in school" and her girlfriends as they head to a party. They discuss school and their friends. White Mike is at the party. He sells some pot to Chris, the boy throwing the party, but declines Chris's invitation to come in. After wondering how smart Sara Ludlow is, he leaves, musing about how rich everyone is. We then meet Chris, the boy throwing the party, a 17 year old boy desperate to lose his virginity. There is an overview of the party and we then meet Jessica, a school mate of Sara and Chris who heads to the bathroom to do some cocaine. Instead of cocaine she does a drug given to her by a boy. The drug is called Twelve. She takes some and is overwhelmed by the high that follows. She compares it to the first time she read The Gettysburg Address before passing out. The narrative shifts to Claude, Chris's brother, and Tobias, a male model, taking a trip through China Town. They smoke some pot together and then buy bladed weapons at a shop. Claude takes home his weapons and arranges them in his closet, all in perfect order like some private shrine. ;Part 2 -- December 28 The corpses of Nana and the pale boy are found. After talking with some boys who witnessed the fight at the rec center, two detectives place Hunter under arrest because of the blood still on his clothes. Jessica wakes up and heads to the skating rink with some girlfriends. Once there, she accidentally injures a boy named Andrew by cutting his forehead with her skate. Andrew is taken to the hospital and the girls leave the rink. Jessica calls Chris and asks for White Mike's phone number, telling him that she wants more of the drug she had the party, Twelve. At the hospital, Andrew undergoes surgery and is placed in a room for an overnight stay. He is placed in the same room as Sean, the high school football star who happens to be Sara Ludlow's boyfriend. Sean was involved in a car accident. Sara arrives to visit him and strikes up a conversation with Andrew. Andrew loans her his Dave Matthews Band CD, thinking it will make a good excuse to see her again. Sara then goes to see Chris. She asks him to host another, bigger party on New Year's Eve, since his parents are out of town. Chris is apprehensive, but Sara tempts him with sexual favors so he gives in. White Mike meets Jessica with Lionel, a mysterious drug dealer who supplies Mike with Marijuana. Lionel sells the Twelve to Jessica, who asks for Lionel's beeper number in case she wants more; Lionel gives her the number. White Mike and Lionel then converse about Charlie, White Mike's cousin who got him into drug dealing and is away at College. It is revealed here that Lionel killed Charlie and Nana. He tells White Mike he has not seen Charlie, and departs. Tobias heads to a shoot at the modelling agency. There he meets Molly, a fellow model who he is interested in. He takes Molly to Chris and Claude's where he is keeping his flesh-eating piranhas. After showing her the fish, he invites her to the New Year's Eve party and she agrees. Hunter is placed under arrest for the murders of Nana and Charlie since the blood on his clothes is verified as Nana's. He finds he does not have an alibi. Chris and Claude go to a cocktail party hosted by their aunt. Chris converses with a wannabe-author friend of his aunt's about The Beatles and Eminem. After the party Claude returns to China Town with Tobias and illegally buys an Uzi submachine gun from one of the shops. ;Part 3 -- December 29 Chris is having a boxing lesson when Sara shows up, requesting money for some Twelve which she will give to Jessica. Chris reluctantly gives her the money. Molly visits White Mike, who is a good friend of hers even though she is unaware of his "profession". She tells him about Tobias and the party. White Mike gently tries to dissuade her from going. Andrew is bored so he goes for a walk and ends up in Carl Schurz park where he meets and eccentric old man named Sven. He plays a game of chess with Sven, who beats him. Andrew feels he is being insulted by Sven and tries to leave, but Sven insists on taking him to a nearby pub for a drink. He does. At the bar, Andrew and Sven drink Scotch and Sodas and discuss school and Sven's old life as a merchant sailor. Feeling weirded out, Andrew leaves. White Mike is walking home and sees Captain, a homeless bodybuilding black man, injuring himself by hitting a brick wall and calls an ambulance. ;Part 4 -- December 30 That morning, Andrew calls Sara under the guise of getting his CD back. She invites him to Chris's party and asks him to bring weed. Andrew does not smoke pot but decides to score some anyway. We are then introduced to Timmy and Mark Rothko, two fat wanna-be black boys who get their kicks stealing CDs, smoking weed and speaking in an exaggerated hip-hop vernacular. They contact White Mike with the intent of buying some weed. White Mike has a phone conversation with an old friend of his and Hunter's, Warren, and then decides to take a train ride down to Coney Island. The perspective shifts to Sean, who has to go to the hospital for a check-up on his broken arm. He takes a taxi and is annoyed by the driver. White Mike goes to Coney Island and observes people. Back on the train he gets the call from Timmy and Mark Rothko. Jessica wakes up and watches the talk shows. She enjoys watching the "dregs of hummanity" on television and holds a fake talk show with her stuffed animals in which she comments on a fictional school massacre. Here we are given the impression that Jessica may not be all there. Timmy and Mark Rothko stop to buy cigarette usings a fake I.D. It fails and they threaten the store clerk, who in turn pulls an empty revolver on them. They leave all too quickly. Jessica has lunch with her mother, who advises she visits a psychiatrist. She reluctantly agrees and wonders what she will tell her psychiatrist. White Mike sells some weed to Timmy and Mark Rothko, who both irritate and amuse him with their lifestyle. In jail, Hunter finally contacts his father through Andrew's father. Hunter tells his father he is frightened. Hunter's father remembers an incident that happened when he was in school, when a boy died at a drunken fireside party. White Mike meets Andrew at the amphitheatre and sells him weed. White Mike is curious as to why Andrew is buying it. Andrew tells him it is for a girl. ;Part 5 -- New Year's Eve Andrew wakes up and decides to get a haircut. He does, then at home decides he looks bad. He decides to go to the party and resolves to get himself drunk. Chris goes out and buys toiletries and condoms, thinking that tonight will be the night that he loses his virginity. He goes home and throws out his collection of pornography. Timmy and Mark Rothko call White Mike for more weed. They follow him to his house, much to his annoyance. He gives them their weed and they talk about birds. Mark Rothko and Timmy then go to the supermarket and smash a container of Marshmallow fluff. White Mike receives a call from his dad telling him Charlie is dead. White Mike breaks down and wonders who could have done it. Jessica prepares for the party and to score more Twelve. At the party, Jessica gives her cell phone to a girl who beeps White Mike for weed. White Mike rushes over. Andrew and Molly meet in the kitchen and grow closer, deciding to head out for pizza when Lionel arrives. Lionel and Jessica go upstairs and she realises she does not have enough for a bag. She offers to have sex with Lionel in exchange. White Mike arrives at the party and in a fit of rage trashes the house stereo. He punches Chris when Chris attempts to kick him out. He bursts in on Lionel and Jessica, who are having sex. Lionel pulls Charlie's revolver, which he took from the murder scene, on White Mike. White Mike realises Lionel killed Charlie and attacks him, only to be shot. The gunshot causes Claude to snap, and he leaves his room armed with his submachine gun and sword. He goes on a rampage, killing many of the partygoers including Mark Rothko, Timmy, Andrew and Molly. After charging through the house, he steps outside and opens fire on the police, who fatally shoot him on the spot. An afterword by White Mike explains that he underwent surgery for his wound and survived. It also states that Hunter was cleared of all charges after the bullets from Lionel's gun were examined. He also explains that he is now studying in Paris and that he likes it better than New York. After the title page is the inscription, "Dedicated to my father." The next page reads, "Can we please all stand and have a moment of silence for those students who died? And can we now have a moment of silence for those students who killed them?"
2082522	/m/06kzr6	Streets of Laredo	Larry McMurtry	1993	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Between the events of the two books, quite a bit has happened. Lorena, lover of Gus McCrae, has left Clara and married Pea Eye Parker, of the former Hat Creek Outfit. They have several children, and own a farm in the Texas panhandle. Pea Eye is thoroughly devoted to Lorena, and Lorena has learned to reciprocate and become almost equally as attached to Pea Eye. Lorena teaches in a nearby schoolhouse. The cattle ranch (set up by the Hat Creek outfit in Montana) has collapsed. Newt is dead, thrown by the Hell Bitch. Call has finally admitted to himself that Newt was his son. July Johnson is dead, and Clara lives alone. Call has gone back to being a Ranger and a gun-for-hire. Trains have greatly expanded the reach of civilization and have pushed back the frontier. The American West is no longer rough and tumble and Captain Woodrow F. Call has become a relic, albeit a greatly respected one. 19-year old Joey Garza and his deadly German rifle (capable of killing a man at a distance of half a mile) are not about to let law and order close the book on the Wild West just yet. The book opens with former Ranger Captain Woodrow F. Call (now a bounty hunter) and Ned Brookshire, the "salaried man" of the title. Brookshire has been sent to Texas from New York by his boss, railroad tycoon Colonel Terry to contract Call's services in apprehending a bandit. The bandit in question is a young Mexican named Joey Garza, who has cost Terry significant business and money through his deadly train robberies. Brookshire is surprised that the old man he encounters has such a reputation, though he notes that Call does have a rather dangerous and respect-demanding aura about him. Brookshire himself does not strike a particularly imposing figure, and soon proves not to be cut out for train or horse travel, inexperienced in the ways of the west or violence, and very homesick for his bossy but loving wife, Katie. Call, on the other hand, is the very picture of experience. Though he is old and seems almost to have trouble lifting his foot into the stirrups, his reputation speaks for him. He has spent forty years on the border and the frontier, many of those with his more talkative but equally respected late partner, Gus McCrae. Protecting settlers in innumerable skirmishes with hostile Indians, rustlers, and dangerous gangs has earned him a great deal of respect and a reputation that generally strikes fear into the hearts of criminals. Family is a focal point of McMurtry's book, with the emphasis on two very different families. One is that of Pea Eye Parker, Call's corporal, a fellow former-ranger who assists Call in his bounty-hunter duties. Pea Eye is now married to Lorena Wood, the whore heroine of Lonesome Dove and now a school teacher and mother of five. Pea Eye is increasingly pressured by his wife and children to stop following the captain in pursuit of bandits, but his loyalty and devotion to Call usually prevails. Though he initially refuses to accompany Call and Brookshire in the hunt for Joey Garza, his guilt wins out and he soon sets out after Call, accompanied by the celebrated Kickapoo tracker, Famous Shoes. The second family that dominates the plot of Streets of Laredo is the family of Joey Garza. Joey's mother, Maria, is the midwife of a small Mexican village on the Rio Grande. She has had a string of brief, failed marriages and has three children, of which Joey is the oldest. Of the other two, her daughter, Teresa, is blind from birth, while her other, Rafael, is very slow. One of Maria's husbands sold Joey to the Apache Indians as a slave when he was a small boy; by the time he came back to Maria and her family, he was a bitter, angry, silent boy who was obsessed with killing and stealing (unknown to Maria, Joey killed her third husband, the only one who was kind to her or her children). Joey possesses a fine German rifle with a telescopic sight, which enables him to shoot his victims from a half-mile away. At the on-set of the novel, Joey is hiding out in Crow Town, an outlaw village deep in the borderland desert. One of the other notorious denizens of Crow Town is the legendary Texas gunfighter, John Wesley Hardin. Maria travels by horse to Crow Town to warn Joey that Call is on his trail. Joey disappears, stealing his mother's horse, and rides to Langtry, Texas, where he shoots and hangs Judge Roy Bean, the "Law West of the Pecos." As Call and Brookshire search for Joey Garza, they discover that he is not the only outlaw preying on the railroad. A string of strange murders soon leads Call in the pursuit of a ghost from the past - Mox Mox (or, as the Apache call him, "The Snake You Do Not See"). A former flunky of Blue Duck, of Lonesome Dove fame, Mox Mox is known for burning his captives alive. Mox Mox was thought to have been killed years before, but had just been in hiding at sea, and has now returned at the head of a murderous gang. The news is especially traumatic for Lorie, who herself had nearly been burnt by the villain while she was a captive of Blue Duck. Fearing for the lives of her children, Lorie sends them to Nebraska, to the protection of her friend Clara Allen. She then sets off to find Pea Eye to warn him. Pea Eye and the Kickapoo Famous Shoes, unaware of the threat of Mox Mox, continue south to find Captain Call. They are thrown into the Presidio jail when the sheriff accuses Famous Shoes of being a horse thief (he came across Famous Shoes eating a dead horse several years ago and decided that it was stolen) and decides to hang him. Captain Call hears of their plight and frees them from jail (near-killing the sheriff in the process in a furious beating) and continues in pursuit of Mox Mox. He ambushes the gang just as they are about to burn two children alive, killing outright all but two - Quick Jimmy, a renegade Cherokee, who escapes unscathed, and Mox Mox himself, who limps off to die. After rescuing Pea Eye and Famous Shoes from a corrupt bordertown sheriff, Call and his gang close in on Joey Garza. Ned Brookshire is killed in a scuffle; the anticipated confrontation between Call and Joey leaves Call seriously wounded; Lorie must amputate a leg to save him. The Mexican bandit is instead shot and mortally wounded by Pea Eye. Garza then drags himself back to his native village and attempts to kill his younger siblings, Teresa and Rafael, for whom he has long reserved his greatest hatred. Maria, mother of the three children, attempts to stop Joey; he stabs her. A local villager then shoots Joey dead. Maria dies from her wounds, and at her request, Pea Eye and Lorie adopt Maria's two surviving children, return with them to their farm. Call, crippled and no longer able to pursue bandits, goes to live with them. He becomes increasingly attached to Teresa, Maria's blind daughter, demonstrating for the first time an attachment to anyone besides Gus McCrae.
2082536	/m/06kzsl	Dead Man's Walk	Larry McMurtry	1995-09	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 In this first prequel to Lonesome Dove the reader finds McCrae and Call as young additions to the Texas Rangers. The two young Rangers are introduced quickly and brutally to the rangering life on their first expedition, in which they are stalked by the Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump. After a narrow escape, the rangers return to civilization, only to quickly join an expedition to capture and annex Santa Fe, part of New Mexico (the part east of the Rio Grande) for Texas. The expedition, led by pirate and soldier of fortune, Caleb Cobb, is ultimately a failure; of the 200 initial adventurers, only about 40 survive, falling to starvation, bears, and Indians (in one memorable chapter, the Comanche ignite the grasses surrounding the ranger camp, forcing rangers to jump over the edge of a canyon to escape the flames), only to be swiftly arrested by the Mexican authorities. Those survivors are forced to march the Jornada del Muerto ("Dead Man's Walk") to El Paso, and many, Mexican and Texan alike, die along the journey. The Texas contingent is reduced to ten persons when the captives panic after they observe cavalry drilling and are slaughtered in a blood lust as they flee. At their destination, the ten are forced to gamble for their lives by drawing a bean from a jar - a white bean signals life, a black bean death. Call and McCrae are among the five survivors. The last Rangers then return to Texas, escorting an Englishwoman and her son, who have also been held captive by the Mexicans. During the course of this book, three other familiar and important characters are introduced. At a general store, Augustus McCrae meets Clara Forsythe, later to marry Robert Allen and become Clara Allen, Augustus's old flame in the original novel. In the same town, Call meets a prostitute named Maggie, later to become the mother of his illegitimate son, Newt. On their journey, they are tracked by Buffalo Hump, future father of Blue Duck, whom they will hunt during their later days as Texas Rangers and during the Montana expedition chronicled in Lonesome Dove.
2083865	/m/06l26k	A Ring of Endless Light	Madeleine L'Engle	1980	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sixteen year old Vicky Austin and her family are spending the summer on Seven Bay Island with her maternal grandfather, who is dying of leukemia. At the beginning of the story, Vicky attends a funeral for Commander Rodney, a family friend. Also present are the commander's wife, his sons Leo and Jacky who own a launch boat business, and Adam Eddington, an intern at the Island's research base and friend of Vicky's brother, John. After the funeral Vicky encounters Zachary Gray, her boyfriend from the previous summer whom her family does not particularly like. She soon learns that Zachary indirectly caused Commander Rodney's death; the commander had his heart attack while saving Zachary from a suicide attempt. This revelation and others set Vicky on a train of thought that continues throughout the book; the mysterious and (to Vicky) frightening topic of death. Death and the threat of it seem to loom everywhere, from news reports to the death of a baby dolphin, from the recent demise of Zach's mother in an automobile accident to Grandfather Eaton's slow deterioration. During the course of the story, Vicky finds herself in a tangle of three romances; one with the solid, unexciting Leo, one with dark and dangerous Zachary, and one with the gentle but emotionally damaged Adam, whom she is helping with a project on dolphin and human communication (ESP) with three dolphins: Basil, Norberta, and Njord. Vicky discovers a remarkable rapport with the dolphins, an unspoken communication that teeters on telepathy. Her ability extends to communicating with Adam as well, but he pulls away, unwilling to allow that level of intimacy after a devastating betrayal the previous summer. Meanwhile, Vicky must help out at home, facing her grandfather's increasing confusion as he identifies Vicky with his dead wife. He has also been hemorrhaging, and Vicky often goes with Leo to pick up blood. There at the hospital, she meets a girl named Binnie who is sick with a type of leukemia and has seizures. Binnie's father is radically religious and is constantly disposing of the medication that control the seizures. One night, her grandfather starts to hemorrhage and is sent to the hospital. Vicky is on a date with Zachary, and does not know about her grandfather's medical crisis until they come to the dock and see that Leo is not there to pick them up. Zachary rushes Vicky to the hospital, and eventually abandons her there. As she waits in the emergency room, she is spotted by Binnie's mother, who leaves her unconscious daughter with Vicky while she goes to find a nurse. Binnie has a convulsion and dies in Vicky's arms. This latest trauma sends Vicky into a wave of darkness, an almost catatonic state in which she is only vaguely aware of reality. Vicky's parents and Leo, who are already upset because Vicky's grandfather has been bleeding internally, try unsuccessfully to comfort and communicate with her. Then she feels hands on hers - Adam's. He tells her that she "called" him (meaning with ESP) and he came. The next day, Vicky in still in a wave of darkness. Her grandfather tells her that it is hard to keep focused on the good and positive in life but she must bear the light or she will be consumed by darkness. He also removes the emotional burden he placed on her earlier, when he asked her to tell him when it was time to die. Vicky is unable to listen, too caught up in her own misery. Finally Adam takes her into the ocean, where Vicky's dolphin friends break through her mental darkness, until she is able to play with them and face the light again.
2084436	/m/06l3dp	Elephants Can Remember	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The bodies of General Alistair Ravenscroft and his wife were found near their manor house in Overcliffe. Both had bullet wounds, and a revolver with only their fingerprints left between them. In the original investigation no one was able to prove whether the case was a double suicide or murder/suicide and, if the latter, who killed whom. Left behind are the couple's two children, including daughter Celia. Ten years later, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, a school friend of the late Margaret Ravenscroft and godmother to her daughter, is approached at a literary luncheon by Mrs. Burton-Cox, to whose son Celia Ravenscroft is engaged. Mrs. Burton-Cox asks Mrs. Oliver what she appears to believe is a very important question: which of Celia's parents was the murderer, and which was murdered? Initially put off by the woman's attitude, after consulting with Celia herself, Mrs. Oliver agrees to try to resolve the issue. She invites her friend Hercule Poirot to solve the disquieting puzzle. Together they conduct interviews with several elderly witnesses whom they term “elephants”, based on the assumption that, like the proverbial elephants, they may have long memories . Each "elephant" remembers (or mis-remembers) a very different set of circumstances, but Poirot notes some facts that may have particular significance: Margaret Ravenscroft owned four wigs at the time of her death, and a few days before her death, she was seriously bitten by the otherwise-devoted family dog. Poirot decides that the investigation must delve deeper into the past in order to unearth the truth. He and Mrs. Oliver discover that Dolly (Dorothea) and Molly (Margaret) Preston-Grey were identical twin sisters, both of whom died within the space of a few weeks. While Molly generally led an unremarkable life, Dolly had previously been connected with two violent incidents and had spent protracted periods of her life in psychiatric nursing homes. Dolly had married a major called Jarrow and, shortly after his death in India, she was strongly suspected of drowning her infant son, something that she had tried to blame on the little boy’s Indian Ayah. A second murder was apparently committed in Malaya while Dolly was staying with the Ravenscrofts; it was an attack on the child of a neighbour. While staying again with the Ravenscrofts, this time at Overcliffe, Dolly apparently sleep-walked off a cliff and died on the evening of September 15, 1960. Molly and her husband died less than a month later, on October 3. Poirot is contacted by Desmond Burton-Cox, Celia Ravenscroft's fiancé, who gives him the names of two governesses who had served the Ravenscroft family, who he thinks may be able to explain what happened. Turning an investigative light on the Burton-Cox family, Poirot’s agent, Mr. Goby, discovers that Desmond (who knows that he is adopted, but has no details about the adoption or his origins) is the illegitimate son of a now-deceased actress, Kathleen Fenn, with whom Mrs. Burton-Cox’s husband had conducted an affair. Kathleen Fenn had left Desmond a considerable personal fortune, which would, under the terms of his will, be left to his adoptive mother were he to die. Mrs. Burton-Cox’s attempt to prevent Desmond getting married to Celia Ravenscroft is thus an unlovely attempt to obtain the use of his money (there is no suggestion that she plans to kill him and inherit the money). Poirot suspects the truth, but can substantiate it only after contacting Zélie Meauhourat, the governess employed by the Ravenscrofts at the time of their death. She returns with him from Lausanne to England, where she explains the truth to Desmond and Celia. Dolly had fatally injured Molly as part of a psychotic episode, but such was Molly’s love for her sister that she made her husband promise to protect Dolly from the police. Accordingly, Zélie and Alistair made it appear that Dolly’s was the corpse found at the foot of the cliff. Dolly took her sister’s place, playing the role of Molly to the servants. Only the Ravenscrofts’ dog knew the difference, and this is why it bit its "mistress". Ultimately, Alistair committed suicide after killing Dolly in order to prevent her from injuring anyone else. Desmond and Celia recognise the sadness of the true events, but now knowing the facts are able to face a future together.
2084907	/m/06l42h	The Heart of Midlothian	Walter Scott	1818	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The title of the book refers to the Old Tolbooth Prison in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the time in the heart of the Scottish county of Midlothian. The historical backdrop was the event known as the Porteous Riots. In 1736, a riot broke out in Edinburgh over the execution of two smugglers. The Captain of the City Guards, Captain John Porteous, ordered the soldiers to fire into the crowd, killing several people. Porteous was later killed by a lynch mob who stormed the Old Tolbooth. The second, and main element of the novel was based on a story Scott claimed to have received in an unsigned letter. It was about a certain Helen Walker who had travelled all the way to London by foot, in order to receive a royal pardon for her sister, who was unjustly charged with infanticide. Scott put Jeanie Deans in the place of Walker, a young woman from a family of highly devout Presbyterians. Jeanie goes to London, partly by foot, hoping to achieve an audience with the Queen through the influence of the Duke of Argyll. Jeanie Deans' role in the novel is described in more detail in Jeanie Deans (fictional character). Jeanie Deans is the first woman among Scott's protagonists, and also the first to come from the lower classes. While the heroine is idealized for her religious devotion and her moral rectitude, Scott nevertheless ridicules the moral certitude represented by the branch of Presbyterianism known as Cameronians, represented in the novel by Jeanie’s father David. Also central to the novel is the early-18th century Jacobitism, a theme found in so many of Scott’s novels. Scott’s sympathies can be seen in the ideal figure of the Duke of Argyll, a moderate on these issues. The Heart of Midlothian has been adapted for the screen once, in 1914, and for television once, in 1966. Two operas have also been based upon the novel - La Prigione di Edimburgo (Imprisoned in Edinburgh) by the Italian composer Federico Ricci (1809–1877) and Jeanie Deans by the Scottish classical composer, Hamish MacCunn (1868–1916).
2085971	/m/06l5wr	The Birthday Boys	Beryl Bainbridge		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Five first-person narratives give different perspectives on the voyage: Petty Officer Taff Evans; the ship's scholar, medic, and biologist Dr. Edward Wilson; Robert Falcon Scott; Lieutenant Henry Bowers; and Captain Lawrence Oates each give their account of the hardships, the problems, and finally the failure of their endeavour: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen beats them to the South Pole by a month.
2086583	/m/06l703	The Fifth Sacred Thing	Starhawk	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel describes a world set in the year 2048 after a catastrophe which has fractured the United States into several nations. The protagonists live in San Francisco and have evolved in the direction of Ecotopia, reverting to a sustainable economy, using wind power, local agriculture, and the like. San Francisco is presented as a mostly pagan city where the streets have been torn up for gardens and streams, no one starves or is homeless, and the city's defense council consists primarily of nine elderly women who "listen and dream". The novel describes "a utopia where women are leading societies but are doing so with the consent of men." To the south, though, an overtly-theocratic Christian fundamentalist nation has evolved and plans to wage war against the San Franciscans. The novel explores the events before and during the ensuing struggle between the two nations, pitting utopia and dystopia against each other. The basic premise resembles that of Pat Murphy's earlier novel The City, Not Long After. The story is primarily told from the points of view of 98-year-old Maya, her nominal granddaughter Madrone, and her grandson Bird. Through these and other characters, the story explores many elements from ecofeminism and ecotopian fiction.
2086748	/m/06l7c5	The Gate to Women's Country	Sheri S. Tepper		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Gate to Women's Country is set in the future, 300 years after a nuclear war destroyed most of human civilization. The book focuses on a matriarchal nation known as Women's Country, and particularly the city of Marthatown. Stavia, the novel's heroine, is the younger daughter of Morgot, an important member of the Marthatown Council. The book opens with Stavia as an adult, heading to meet her fifteen-year-old son, Dawid. He has spent the last ten years living outside the city walls with the warriors, as all boys do, and is now old enough to decide whether he wishes to remain a warrior or accept a life of study and service among the women as a servitor. Dawid formally renounces his mother and chooses to become a full-fledged warrior. Afterwards, Stavia remembers when her younger brother was sent to live with the warriors. Much of the rest of the novel is told in flashback, following Stavia's life from childhood to adulthood. In the story's present, Stavia prepares for her role as Iphigenia in Marthatown's annual performance of Iphigenia at Ilium, a reworking of the Greek tragedy The Trojan Women that weaves through the novel as a leitmotif. While still a child, Stavia met Chernon, the son of one of her mother's friends. Although Chernon lives in the garrison with the other boys and men, he and Stavia form a friendship. They meet at the twice-annual Carnival, the only event in Women's Country where warriors and women can mix freely. Stavia eventually agrees to smuggle books to Chernon for him to read, even though this is forbidden for boys in the garrison. In fact, Chernon has been ordered by his commander, Michael, to learn more about the secrets of the women who rule Women's Country. After confessing to breaking the ordinances, Stavia is sent away from Marthatown for several years to train as a doctor. On her return Chernon pursues their relationship again. When Stavia is selected for an exploration mission to the south, Chernon leaves the garrison (on Michael's orders) and meets her there. While away from Women's Country, Stavia and Chernon are captured by a band of "Holylanders", members of a struggling community to the south of Women's Country. They practice polygamy and seem to be descendants of rural fundamentalist Christian splinter groups. The Holylanders are brutally misogynistic and treat women as slaves to their husbands. Stavia's experiences among the Holylanders gives her a deeper appreciation for her homeland. Upon her return to Women's Country she finally learns the secrets of the Women's Country Council and the choices they have made to preserve their way of life. The secret of Women's Country is that there are no births of warrior children, all children are fathered artificially by servitors. The goal of Women's Country is to breed out the gene that causes men to choose the warrior life.
2089272	/m/06lf1j	The Price of Salt	Patricia Highsmith	1951	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's two main characters are Therese Belivet, a lonely young woman, and Carol Aird, an elegant stranger Therese encounters one day at her temporary job in a New York department store. Therese is just starting out her adult life in Manhattan and looking for her chance to break through into her dream job as a theater set designer. Therese was semi-abandoned as a small girl by her widowed mother, who sent Therese to an Episcopalian boarding school. She is dating a young man, Richard, whom she does not love and does not want to have sex with. On a long and monotonous day working in the toy department of the department store, Therese is struck by an elegant and beautiful woman in her early thirties, whom she serves. The woman, Carol, gives her address to Therese in order to have her purchases delivered. On an impulse, Therese sends Carol a Christmas card to her home address. Carol, who is going through a difficult separation and divorce and is herself quite lonely, unexpectedly responds, and the two begin to spend time together. Therese develops a strong attachment to Carol, but she is unsure how to understand her feelings. Therese's boyfriend accuses Therese of having a "schoolgirl crush" but Therese knows it is more than that: she is in love with Carol. Carol's husband, Harge, is suspicious of Carol's relationship with Therese, whom he meets briefly when Therese stays over at Carol's house. Carol had previously admitted to Harge that she had a short-lived homosexual relationship with her best friend, Abby. Harge is furious, and he takes the couple's daughter to live with him, pending the final divorce proceedings. To escape from the tension in New York, Carol and Therese take a road trip West, over the course of which it becomes clear that the feelings the women have for each other are romantic and sexual. They become physically as well as emotionally intimate and declare their love for each other. The women are unaware that Carol's husband has hired a private investigator to follow them and collect any evidence that would incriminate Carol as homosexual in the upcoming custody hearings. The investigator bugs the room in which Carol and Therese first have sex. Carol stops him on the road and demands that he hand over any evidence against her. The investigator sells Carol some tapes, at a high price, but then tells her that he has already sent several tapes and other evidence to Harge in New York. Carol knows that she will lose custody and most visitation rights to her daughter if she continues her relationship with Therese. Carol leaves Therese out West and heads back to New York to fight for her daughter. She tells Therese that she cannot continue their relationship. Therese is heartbroken, but her strength of character allows her to try to rebuild her life in New York. In New York, the evidence for Carol's homosexuality is so strong that her case for custody would stand no chance in court, and she capitulates to Harge in the end, submitting to an agreement which gives him full custody of their child and leaves Carol with rare supervised visits. However, the book's ending is unusually optimistic compared to those of lesbian pulp novels, as it suggests that Carol and Therese may stay together and be happy after all.
2089508	/m/06lfk9	The Walls Came Tumbling Down	Robert Anton Wilson	1997		 The introduction of the book includes Wilson's thoughts abouts many things, including UFOs, the Magna Carta, the IRA and Nelson Mandela. It also includes Wilson's explanation of how he wrote the screenplay after a film deal had collapsed and he was trying to get another deal together. The book deals with the sometimes frightening experiences that happen to those who stumble into an expanded consciousness without any intent to go there and without any preparation or Operating Manual to tell them how to navigate when the walls tumble and the doors of perception fly open, leaving the brain suddenly free of the limits of "mind".
2089698	/m/06lfy9	My Father's Glory	Marcel Pagnol	1957	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Young Marcel was born in the country but raised in Marseille. His father, Joseph, is a hard-working strongly atheist public school teacher in Marseille. Marcel's Aunt Rose marries the round, jovial, and very theistic and Roman Catholic Uncle Jules. Joseph and Uncle Jules come into conflict over religion. Over summer break, Joseph and Jules decide to take their families to a house in the country. Jules decides to educate Joseph in hunting techniques. Marcel wants to come hunting with them, but the two adults don't like the idea; they lie to him that he can come, but leave the house while he is still just waking up. Marcel, aware of their deceit, gets up and follows them stealthily. He observes Jules making a fool out of Joseph over his hunting prowess. This enrages Marcel. But while he is following them he gets lost in the wilderness. Hearing the hunters later, he follows the sounds to the top of a high cliff. His presence there scares out the legendary birds, the Rock Partridges. Joseph shoots two down with his side-by-side loading musket. Jules does not believe that Joseph has made the kill. Marcel retrieves the birds and holds them by the legs in his outspread arms on the cliff for the sight of the hunters in the valley below. He "lifts his father's glory to the sky", hence the name "My Father's Glory." Back in the village, the residents are amazed at Joseph's skill. Marcel is very proud of him, but realizes his father's vanity when Joseph poses for a photograph with the birds. Earlier, Joseph had mocked a colleague who posed with fish, saying that such poses lacked dignity.
2089819	/m/06lg3n	Sunstorm	Stephen Baxter	2005-03-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Sunstorm opens with the last chapter of Time's Eye as its initial chapter, and Bisesa Dutt is in London, reunited with her daughter. It is June 9, 2037, the day after her helicopter was shot down in the North Western Frontier Province of Pakistan. The five years that she spent on Mir, an alternate Earth, are now only memories (though the fact that her body has aged five years since June 8, 2037, will eventually serve as some confirmation of her story). In the meantime, a major solar event occurs on June 9, disrupting virtually all of the Earth's electronic hardware. Dramatic as it is, this phenomenon is only a minor precursor of a far more massive solar eruption about five years off. Scientific models of the projected 2042 event make clear that the Earth will be sterilized completely by the upcoming solar burst. The effects will be so powerful as to even endanger astronauts on Mars. Rather than sit by and allow the sun to just destroy all of earth's life, political leaders (most notably the President of the Eurasian Union, Miriam Grec), and scientific leaders (led by Siobhan McGorran, the Astronomer Royal) decide to embark upon an ambitious plan to literally shield Earth from the worst effects of the storm. The plot is further complicated when information from Bisesa's odyssey makes it clear that what is happening to the sun is not simply a random happening in nature, but is rather the result of events set in motion by an alien intelligence, known as the Firstborn, since they were the first alien race to reach sentience, and thus the most advanced civilization in existence in the universe. They are determined to stop mankind from infiltrating the stars, since they believe mankind to be a disorderly and wasteful life form, increasing entropy with its energy usage and eventual wars, thus hastening the Universe's eventual heat death.
2091659	/m/06lk4w	The New Inquisition	Robert Anton Wilson	1986		 The New Inquisition is the author's term for what he refers to as a tendency within mainstream science to forbid certain forms of theories from being classed as "science." He cites the cases of Wilhelm Reich, Rupert Sheldrake, and the Mars effect controversy, among others, in support of a central claim that a materialist bias within the scientific community has led to some speculations and theories he claimed were unjustly thought of as unscientific. "The Citadel" is the author's term for the military-industrial complex that he claims funds mainstream science and is the source of its bias. The book lists a large list of paranormal reports, (from the Fortean times among others) with Wilsons tour of the history of modern physics. He is particularly interested in Bell's theorem, and Alain Aspect's experimental proof of Bell's theorem. Wilson opines that the implications of Aspect's proof include that magic is possible, and that "the sum total of all minds is one". He claims the facts that he thinks that it is not a coincidence that the darwinian model of evolution best suits the "reality tunnel" of the Citadel, and that biologists such as Sheldrake who have alternative theories of evolution, are drummed out of mainstream science. On the topic, he states, Among the concepts covered is the idea of "absolute laws of physics" - he ends up saying that every "law" that has been investigated seemed to be subject to anomalous results from time to time, and that there may be some other parallel universe with absolute laws of physics that are always obeyed, but Wilson has not seen any sign of it round in this one. Wilson draws on a large number of accounts of recorded events said to be "paranormal" but dismissed by materialist science as mass hallucination, e.g. the visions in Fátima, Portugal, and various UFO sightings. He comments that when it comes to 70,000 people having a mass hallucination, it's difficult to see how the explanation is any less occult than the events the explanation purports to explain. "You try it", he writes "See if by any means you can induce a mass hallucination [...] try, saying, hey, take a look at that light over there brighter than the sun." The book lists a lot of phenomena that the author claims do not fit neatly into a materialist account of the world, and secondly, the book introduces various interpretations of quantum physics that may or may not provide a ground for explanation. The book concludes with the idea which he claims Schrödinger supported, that the sum total of all minds is one, and that individual brains are best understood as local receivers, of an overall transmission which is always everywhere. The author repeatedly says "I am not asking you to believe any of this stuff, I'm just asking you to dispassionately observe your own reaction to these accounts".
2092472	/m/06llnt	Le Silence de la mer				 In the book, Vercors tells of how an old man and his niece show resistance against the German occupiers by not speaking to the officer, who is occupying their house. The German officer is a former composer, dreaming of brotherhood between French and German nations, deluded by the Nazi propaganda of that period. He is disillusioned when he realises the real goal of the German army is not to build but to ruin and to exploit. He then chooses to leave France to fight on the Eastern Front, cryptically declaring he is "off to Hell."
2093450	/m/06lp3g	The Blood Ring				 Egyptian artifacts intended for the Braintree Museum in Washington, D.C. are stolen. Mysterious figures from ancient Egypt are sighted at night, people are murdered, a mummy speaks and walks, people have terrible headaches and seem to be taken over by their pre-incarnations as ancient Egyptians. The "Blood Ring" is set with a pink cornelian stone that is made blood red and filled with power if it is dipped in human blood every 48 hours. Nellie Gray is prominent on the list of intended sacrifices, and Smitty, rescuing her at one point, Samson-like, pulls down a reproduction Egyptian temple in the museum. Josh guards the Egyptian exhibit at night after a guard is killed and another quits; realistically nervous, he displays none of the typical feet-shuffling eye-rolling mannerisms often found in the pulps of this time. Benson's scientific sleuthing reveals that Egyptian symbolism, drugs, hypnosis, and technology were used by the villain as part of a blackmail scheme. Typically, Benson turns the villain and his gang against one another, and tricks them into dying in their own death trap.
2093559	/m/06lpd5	Elmer and the Dragon	Ruth Stiles Gannett	1977	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Elmer and Boris the dragon are stranded on a remote island inhabited only by canaries. One of them, Flute, was Elmer's pet until he escaped to Canary Island. Elmer helps Flute and the king and queen canaries to dig up a chest that the island's former human settlers left. Inside are various household items, a watch, a harmonica, and six bags of gold. The dragon flies Elmer back to his house before returning to Blueland, his own home.
2095956	/m/06lv_7	Phantom	Terry Goodkind	2006-07-18	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 This book continues Richard's quest to find his wife, Kahlan, and release her from the Chainfire spell. Kahlan still travels with the Sisters of the Dark Ulicia, Cecilia, and Armina as they hurry to catch up with the fourth Sister, Tovi. Unbeknownst to them Tovi is dead, stabbed by Samuel in the previous book and allowed to die after being questioned by Nicci. They stop at the White Horse Inn, and the Sisters are shocked when the innkeeper can see Kahlan and correctly title her. Because of the Chainfire enacted on Kahlan, no one should be able to know she exists. She was erased from the memories of all who knew her and anyone who sees her instantly forgets. The Sisters kill the man and his family, and continue on, traveling toward Caska where they believe Tovi has gone. Back at the Wizard's Keep, Richard senses powerful magic and goes to investigate. He discovers Zedd, Ann, and Nathan in a room where Nicci is caught up in the grips of a powerful spell called a verification web. The web is meant to examine the Chainfire spell and see if there is any way to undo it. Richard realizes that there is something wrong with the spell and tries to convince the others who don't really believe him, but Richard is able to disable the spell. Before Nicci can tell anyone that the spell was indeed corrupted, the deadly beast that Jagang had created to hunt Richard appears in the room. In order to drive it off, Nicci places herself back into the spell form to draw upon the power between life and death. By refusing to actually supply the magic to the spell, the power of life and the power of the underworld come together and strike the beast, driving it away for the time being. When Nicci awakens for the second time, Richard has saved her from the spell. Richard realizes that the corruption to the spell was caused by the presence of the three chimes being in the world, and the chimes not only corrupted the verification web, but they have corrupted all magic. Even the Chainfire spell was affected by the chimes (Reechani, Sentrosi, Vasi), and now he (Richard) believes that the Chimes are infecting anything with magic, not just Kahlan. Shota arrives at the Keep, bringing Jebra in an attempt to make Richard believe that he is wasting his time trying to find Kahlan when there is a whole world that needs to be saved from the Imperial Order. To that end, Shota instructs Jebra to testify to the horrific terrors that had befallen the people of Ebissinia. Shota reveals that Samuel was under the control of another witch woman, Six. Richard says that he understands the situations but Shota is still unconvinced and touches Richard with her power, allowing his mind to see a vision that places Richard in the position of the slaughtered men of Ebissinia, who are condemned to death while listening to the vulgar promises of what the soldiers will do to their wives. In this dream-like reality, Richard sees Kahlan begging for his life and they profess their love for each other. As Nicci and Shota have a minor confrontation, Richard realizes that Shota is right. Despite how important Kahlan's life is to him it's only one life, while the whole of the New World is threatened by the Order. Pleased, Shota gives Richard a prediction she has had from the flow of time. Long ago, the First Wizard Barracus went to the Temple of the Winds to ensure that someone with the Subtractive side of the gift would be born again. After Barracus came back from the temple he threw himself out his window, but not before he left a special book for Richard. Before Shota leaves, she gives him one last cryptic message: Richard's mother was not the only one to die in the fire that claimed her life. After such events, Richard comes to understand that he was right all along when earlier he stated that it is impossible to fight the hordes of Imperial Order forces head on in one great final battle. Richard, Nicci and Cara travel in the Sliph to the main army in D'Hara and explains to the Commanders what he has come to understand and his position. Richard issues a command that the army be broken up into smaller units, stating that if the Old World wants war then they shall have it. The tactic being that while the Imperial Order is here in the New World, they shall become the Phantom D'Haran Legion, bringing death and destruction to the Old World. The death and destruction will be an endless reminder of what will happen to those who support the Order. He orders the troops to kill anyone who opposes them, burn crops, and bring him the ears of anyone who preaches the beliefs of the Order. His troops destroy entire garrisons of troops, impaling their heads on stakes, skin bureaucrats of the empire alive and impale them on stakes, and follow the strategy of slash-and-burn warfare to starve the men, women and children of the empire. The three Sisters of the Dark and Kahlan follow Sister Tovi's trail to Caska, where they are surprised to find not Tovi (who has been dead since the end of the previous book), but Jagang waiting for them. Jagang once again proves that he is a master strategist by revealing that he had never left the Sisters of the Dark's minds and that by tricking them into thinking their fake bond with Richard Rahl was working, he had learnt much from their quest. He also captures Kahlan, him being able to see her because he was linked to the Dark Sister when they performed the Chainfire spell on Kahlan, and was therefore unaffected by it. Meanwhile, while traveling back to the Wizard's Keep through the Sliph, Richard is attacked by Jagang's beast and magic conjured by the previously thought to be dead Princess Violet (now Queen Violet at Six's instruction), causing him to become separated from his power. The Sliph instigates "emergency measures" instilled in her thousands of years ago by First Wizard Barracus and shunts Richard to an emergency escape portal somewhere in the wilds close to the land of the Night Wisps. Richard must pass a test Barracus left for him before the Sliph will tell him why he needs to see the Night Wisps. After a brief visit to the land of the Night Wisps to recover a secret book left by the War Wizard Barracus (who left the outfit and ruby pendant), Secrets of a War Wizard's Power. Richard is captured by Six and taken to Tamarang. There, he hides Secrets of a War Wizard's Power in the room that he was tortured in during Wizard's First Rule, deciding that regardless of what happens to him, he cannot let anyone find the book that Barracus hid for 3000 years for him. While being taken to Violet, Richard attempts an escape killing dozens of Imperial Order soldiers. The commanding officer is impressed with his skill and takes Richard away as a captive to become a player of Ja'La dh Jin (Game of Life) on his division's team. The division of the Imperial Order rejoins the main forces, now laying siege on the People's Palace. Richard catches a glimpse of Kahlan as he is taken into the camp and revives her will to fight on and remember her past. Back at the Wizard's Keep, while discussing Richard's desire to save Kahlan, Zedd states that even though Richard is trying hard, Kahlan is as good as dead. The Chainfire spell put in place over her destroys memories, not just overlap them or bury them; Kahlan will never remember any of them, even Richard, ever again. Nicci has a revelation about the all important Prophecies that Richard must lead them in the final battle and puts one of the Boxes of Orden in play in Richard's name, so that not only the Sisters of the Dark have superiority in that matter. The book ends with a few major cliffhangers: Richard is a captive in the Imperial Order's main camp, without his sword or his gift; Kahlan is a captive of Jagang with a Rada'han; the Boxes of Orden are in play by Sister Ulicia; there is a problem with Chainfire and with magic; that the Imperial Order is slowly making their way into the central stronghold of the D'Haran forces: the People's Palace, but also the D'Haran forces appear able to cut off the Imperial Order supply lines just as winter starts.
2096063	/m/06lw82	The Arm of the Starfish	Madeleine L'Engle	1965-01-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot centers on a young marine biology student named Adam Eddington, who travels to the remote island Gaea off the coast of Portugal for a summer job working for a famous scientist, Calvin O'Keefe. Even before he leaves JFK airport, Adam is approached by Carolyn ("Kali") Cutter, the beautiful, well-traveled daughter of a rich American industrialist living in Europe. She warns Adam against yet another passenger, Canon Tallis. Tallis is accompanying Calvin O'Keefe's eldest daughter, 12-year-old Polly O'Keefe, to Geneva, but bad weather and mysterious dangers derail those plans. Instead, Adam finds himself shepherding Poly on a short flight from Madrid to Lisbon. When Poly uses the restroom during the flight, she seems to disappear from the airplane completely, and the flight crew denies she was ever on board. Kali's father, Typhon Cutter, later enables Adam to rescue Poly from her kidnappers, deepening Adam's confusion about whom to trust. As the plot unfolds, it becomes clear that at least two different factions have equally strong but differently motivated interests in Dr. O'Keefe's research on organ regeneration. Adam faces a number of ethical dilemmas as he is forced to choose between these factions. Eventually Adam realizes that the O'Keefes are the ones who care about "the fall of the sparrow," as their friend Joshua Archer puts it, a Biblical allusion to caring about others, even the seemingly weak and unimportant. Adam wants nothing further to do with Kali and her ruthless father, but the O'Keefes ask him to make a date with Kali anyway, so that Adam can act as a double agent, passing along fake research papers to the Cutters and smuggling the real ones out to trusted people in Lisbon. Adam reluctantly agrees. This plan is complicated, however, by Kali's unexpected claim that she has learned of her father's perfidy, and wants Adam to protect her and keep her confidences. Adam's attempt to do so makes it nearly impossible to pass on the real papers, hampered as he is by Kali's presence and spies from both sides. Eventually Joshua comes to Adam's rescue, but is shot dead; and Adam learns that Kali was acting on her father's behalf all along. The Cutters are not arrested. Later, Adam goes back to the Cutters' hotel to retrieve his passport from Kali. Playfully, she makes him chase her into the ocean, where she is attacked by a shark. Adam uses a special knife Poly gave him to fight off the shark and get Kali to shore. O'Keefe uses his experimental knowledge about limb regeneration to help Kali.
2096411	/m/06lwt_	Redgauntlet	Walter Scott	1824-06	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Darsie had been Alan Fairford's favourite schoolfellow, and, to please his son, Mr Fairford had consented that Darsie, who received an ample allowance on the understanding that he was to make no inquiries respecting his family until he completed his twenty-fifth year, should live with them. Alan was studying for the law, but his companion had started for his first country ramble, and the story commences with a long correspondence between them. As he returned from fishing in the Solway Firth, with Benjie as his instructor, Darsie was overtaken by the tide, and carried by Mr Herries, dressed as a fisherman, on horseback to a cottage, where his niece Lilias said grace at supper-time; and next morning he was placed under the guidance of Joshua Geddes. The Quaker, who was part owner of some fishing nets in the river, invited him to spend a few days at his house; and while there he heard from Alan that a young lady had called to warn him that his friend was in considerable danger, and to urge that he should at once return to Edinburgh. A letter, however, from old Mr Fairford determined him not to do so; and having made acquaintance with the blind fiddler, who told him a tale of the Redgauntlet family, Darsie went with him to a fishers' merry-making, where he danced with Lilias, who reproached him for leading an idle life, and begged him to leave the neighbourhood. Mr Fairford had arranged that Peter Peebles, an eccentric plaintiff, should be his son's first client, and Alan was pleading the cause before the Lords Ordinary when his father, by mistake, handed him a letter from Mr Crosbie, announcing that Darsie had mysteriously disappeared. Alan instantly rushed out of court, and started in search of his friend, who had accompanied the Quaker to await an attack on his fishing station, and been made prisoner by the rioters, of whom Mr Herries was the leader. After being nearly drowned, and recovering from a fever, he awoke in a strange room, to which he was confined for several days, when he was visited by his captor, and conducted by him to an interview with Squire Foxley, who, acting as a magistrate, declined to interfere with Mr Herries' guardianship. As the squire was leaving, however, Mr Peebles arrived to apply for a warrant against Alan for throwing up his brief, and startled Mr Herries by recognising him as a Redgauntlet and an unpardoned Jacobite. Darsie obtained a partial explanation from him, and was told to prepare for a journey disguised as a woman. Meanwhile, Alan had applied to the provost, and, having obtained from his wife's relation, Mr Maxwell, a letter to Herries, he started for Annan, where, under the guidance of Trumbull, he took ship for Cumberland. On landing at Crakenthorp's inn, he was transported by Nanty Ewart, and a gang of smugglers, to Fair-ladies' House, where he was nursed through a fever, and introduced to a mysterious Father Buonaventure. After being closely questioned and detained for a few days, he was allowed to return with a guide to the inn. Darsie was also travelling thither with Herries and his followers, when he discovered that Lilias, who accompanied them, was his sister, and learnt from her his own real name and rank. He was also urged by his uncle to join a rising in favour of the Pretender; and, having hesitated to do so, was detained in custody when they reached their destination, where Alan, as well as other visitors and several of the neighbouring gentry, had already arrived. He was then introduced to a conference of Charles Edward Stuart's adherents, and afterwards to the prince himself, who refused to agree to their conditions, and decided to abandon the contemplated attempt in his favour. Ewart was, accordingly, ordered to have his brig in readiness, when Nixon suggested that he should turn traitor, upon which they fought and killed each other. Sir Arthur now learned that Fairford and Geddes were in the house; but, before he was allowed to see them, they had been shown into the room where Lilias was waiting, when Alan became aware that his fair visitor at Edinburgh was his friend's sister, and heard from her lips all the particulars of her brother's history. Their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Benjie, in whose pocket a paper was found indicating that Nixon had communicated with the Government; and, during the confusion which ensued, the Hanoverian General Campbell arrived, unarmed and unaccompanied, and after explaining that the Jacobites had been betrayed weeks before, announced that he was sufficiently supported with cavalry and infantry. The Rebellion was over before it could begin. His instructions, however, from King George were to allow all concerned in the plot to disperse, and he intimated that as many as wished might embark in the vessel which was in waiting. The Pretender was, accordingly, led by the Laird of Redgauntlet to the beach, and Lilias offered to accompany her uncle in his voluntary exile. This, however, he would not permit, and, after an exchange of courtesies with the general, the prince departed amidst the tears and sobs of the last supporters of his cause, and henceforward the term Jacobite ceased to be a party name. Lilias, of course, married Alan, and Herries, who had asked his nephew's pardon for attempting to make a rebel of him, threw away his sword, and became the prior of a monastery.
2097747	/m/06lzgx	The Dragons of Blueland			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Boris the dragon contacts Elmer shortly after the events in Elmer and the Dragon to ask Elmer's help: several men have found his family of dragons and are proposing to sell them to zoos and circuses. Elmer runs away from home again and helps Boris's family to scare off the men permanently.
2098128	/m/06l_54	Mao: The Unknown Story	Jung Chang	2005-10	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Chang and Halliday do not accept the idealistic explanations for Mao's rise to power or common claims for his rule. They argue that from his earliest years he was motivated by a lust for power and that Mao had many political opponents arrested and murdered, including some of his personal friends. During the 1920s and 1930s, they argue, Mao could not have gained control of the party without Stalin's patronage, nor were Mao's decisions during the Long March as heroic and ingenious as Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China claimed and thereby entered the mythology of the revolution. Chiang Kai-shek deliberately did not pursue and capture the Red Army. Areas under Communist control during the Second United Front and Chinese Civil War, such as the Jiangxi and Yan'an soviets, were ruled through terror and financed by opium. Mao, they say, sacrificed thousands of troops simply in order to get rid of party rivals, such as Chang Kuo-tao, nor did he take the initiative in fighting the Japanese invaders. Despite being born into a peasant family, when Mao came to power in 1949 he had little concern for the welfare of the Chinese peasantry. Mao's determination to use agricultual surplus to subsidize industry and intimidation of dissent led to murderous famines resulting from the Great Leap Forward, exacerbated by allowing the export of grain to continue even when it became clear that China did not have sufficient grain to feed its population. Chang and Halliday argue that the Long March was not the heroic endeavour portrayed by the Chinese Communist Party and that Mao's role in leading it was exaggerated. Officially portrayed as an inspiring commander, the authors write that he was nearly left behind by the March and only commanded a fairly small force. He was apparently disliked by almost all of the people on the March and his tactics and strategy were flawed. They also write that Chiang Kai-shek allowed the Communists to proceed without significant hindrance as his son was being held hostage in Moscow and that he feared he would be killed if the Communists were crushed. Mao is also portrayed, along with the Communist elite, as a privileged person who was usually carried around in litters and protected from the suffering of his subordinates, rather than sharing their hardship. Despite the high level of casualties amongst ordinary soldiers, supposedly no high-ranking leaders died on the journey, regardless of how ill or badly wounded they were. The book says that, contrary to revolutionary mythology, there was no battle at Luding Bridge and that tales of a "heroic" crossing against the odds was merely propaganda. Chang found a witness, Li Xiu-zhen, who told her that she saw no fighting and that the bridge was not on fire. In addition, she said that despite claims by the Communists that the fighting was fierce, all of the vanguard survived the battle. Chang also cited Nationalist (Kuomintang) battleplans and communiques that indicated the force guarding the bridge had been withdrawn before the Communists arrived. A number of historical works, even outside of China, do depict such a battle, though not of such heroic proportions. Harrison E. Salisbury's The Long March: The Untold Story and Charlotte Salisbury's Long March Diary mention a battle at Luding Bridge, but they relied on second-hand information. However, there is disagreement in other sources over the incident. Chinese journalist Sun Shuyun agreed that the official accounts were exaggerated. She interviewed a local blacksmith who had witnessed the event and said that "when [the troops opposing the Red Army] saw the soldiers coming, they panicked and fled — their officers had long abandoned them. There wasn't really much of a battle." Archives in Chengdu further supported this claim. In October 2005, The Age newspaper reported that it had been unable to find Chang's local witness. In addition, The Sydney Morning Herald found an 85-year old eyewitness, Li Guixiu, aged 15 at the time of the crossing, whose account disputed Chang's claims. According to Li, there was a battle: "The fighting started in the evening. There were many killed on the Red Army side. The KMT set fire to the bridge-house on the other side, to try to melt the chains, and one of the chains was cut. After it was taken, the Red Army took seven days and seven nights to cross." In a speech given at Stanford University, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski mentioned a conversation that he once had with Deng Xiaoping. He recalled that Deng smiled and said, “Well, that’s the way it’s presented in our propaganda. We needed that to express the fighting spirit of our forces. In fact, it was a very easy military operation." One of the allegations in the book against Mao was that he not just tolerated the production of opium in regions that the Communists controlled during the Chinese Civil War but also participated in the trade of it, in order to provide funding for his soldiers. According to Russian sources that the authors state they found, at the time the trade generated around $60 million a year for the Communists. This was stopped only due to overproduction driving down the price and Communist officials other than Mao deciding that the practice was immoral. Mao is alleged to have exposed men under his command to unnecessary suffering just to eliminate his opponents. Zhang Guotao, a rival in the Politburo, was sent with his army in 1936 on a hopeless mission into the Gobi desert. When it inevitably failed Mao ordered that the survivors be executed. Chang and Haliday suggest that Mao used other underhanded means in eliminating opponents. Apart from general purges like the Hundred Flowers Campaign and other operations like the Cultural Revolution, he had Wang Ming (another Politburo rival) poisoned twice, who had to seek treatment in Russia. Chang and Halliday write that in comparison to official history provided by the Chinese authorities that Communist forces waged a tough guerrilla war against the Imperial Japanese Army, in truth they rarely fought the Japanese. Mao was more interested in saving his forces for fighting against the Chinese Nationalists. On the few occasions that the Communists did fight the Japanese, Mao was very angry. Notable members of the KMT were claimed to have been secretly working for the Chinese Communists. One such "sleeper" was Hu Zongnan, a senior National Revolutionary Army general. Hu's son objected to this description and his threat of legal action led Jung Chang's publishers in Taiwan to abandon the release of the book there. Rather than reluctantly entering the conflict as the Chinese government suggests, Mao is alleged to have deliberately entered the Korean War, having promised Chinese troops to Kim Il Sung (then leader of North Korea) before the conflict started. Halliday had previously conducted research into this conflict, publishing his book Korea: The Unknown War. The book opens with the sentence "Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth century leader." Chang and Halliday claim that he was willing for half of China to die to achieve military-nuclear superpowerdom. Estimates of the numbers of deaths during this period vary, though Chang and Halliday's estimate is one of the highest. Sinologist Stuart Schram, in a review of the book, noted that "the exact figure... has been estimated by well-informed writers at between 40 and 70 million". China scholars agree that the famine during the Great Leap Forward caused tens of millions of deaths. Chang and Halliday argue that this period accounts for roughly half of the 70 million total. An official estimate by Hu Yaobang in 1980 put the death toll at 20 million, whereas Philip Short in his 2000 book Mao: A Life found 20 to 30 million to be the most credible number. Chang and Halliday's figure is 37.67 million, which historian Stuart Schram indicated that he believes "may well be the most accurate." Yang Jisheng, a Communist party member and former reporter for Xinhua, puts the number of famine deaths at 36 million. In his 2010 book Mao's Great Famine, Hong Kong based historian Frank Dikötter, who has had access to newly opened local archives, places the death toll for the Great Leap Forward at 45 million, and describes it as "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history." Professor R. J. Rummel published updated figures on worldwide democide in 2005, stating that he believed Chang and Halliday's estimates to be mostly correct and that he had revised his figures for China under Mao accordingly.
2099076	/m/06m10l	Joe Cinque's Consolation	Helen Garner			 Joe Cinque's Consolation begins with Garner being informed of Singh's second 1999 trial and its circumstances, when it was already in progress. She becomes interested and begins attending hearings in Canberra. She relates her impressions of the trial, including her negative reactions to Singh and her mystification at Rao's and others' lack of shock at and complicity in Singh's plans. As the trial progresses she becomes acquainted with Cinque's mother Maria and feels that the court system is not doing sufficient justice to the victim or his family. After the trial Garner interviews Singh's family and attempts to interview Singh and Rao, but both refuse or are uncontactable. She becomes interested in victim's rights, interviews the presiding judge and repeatedly visits and becomes a friend of Cinque's family, and eventually concludes that the purpose of the book is to be Joe Cinque's consolation, as the trial proceedings could not be.
2101913	/m/06m7pd	To Dance with the White Dog	Terry Kay		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sam Peek happily resides in Hart County, Georgia as a pecan farmer and local celebrity featured in many gardening/horticultural magazines. He and his wife Cora are both in their 80's, and have just celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary. Cora dies of a heart attack. Sam and his family are deeply grieved over this, and his daughters begin to obsess over his safety and his life. Not long after Cora's death, a mysterious white dog that only Sam can see appears near the house. He thinks it is just a stray, but daughter Kate and his other children don't see it and think he's going crazy. Even Sam's favorite son James can't see the dog. Nobody believes Sam except Kate's son Bobby. After a series of events, the family begins to see the white dog. The day before Sam's death, the dog disappears, and it is thought the dog was Cora in another form.
2101944	/m/06m7sw	The Time Wanderers	Boris Strugatsky	1987-03-25	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The principal characters are Maxim Kammerer and Toyvo Glumov, both working for an organization which investigates "Unexplained Events" ("UE"s). Their investigation of a series of events leads them to believe that they are witnesses to a new action by the Wanderers. After much investigation, the UEs are discovered to be the work of a secret society called the Ludens. The Ludens are born human, but possess latent mental powers far beyond those of normal humans. They view themselves as a distinct race, and claim to have "different interests" from humanity at large, in some instances claiming to be above traditional human morality. The Ludens routinely conduct experiments on humans and alter their minds in order to further their own means. Kammerer and Glumov's investigation unmasks the Ludens, and they are made public in what would later be called "The Great Revelation." At the end of the novel, the Ludens discover that Glumov himself has the capacity to become a Luden, and Glumov must decide whether or not to join their race. Glumov at first states that to join the Ludens would be a betrayal of his family, friends, and civilization. The book ends on a sinister note, with Glumov becoming a member of the Luden group, the implication being that he was coerced. Indeed, the story is told as Maxim's memoir, his sole intent in writing it being to clear up the story of Glumov: another source (in the fictional setting) had implied that Glumov was in the Luden group all along.
2102417	/m/06m8nw	The Redundancy of Courage	Timothy Mo	1991	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Like East Timor, Danu is a Portuguese colony, invaded and occupied by its giant neighbour, which is not named, but is based on Indonesia. The people of the occupying country are referred to throughout the book as the malai, similar to 'malae' the word for foreigner in Tetum, East Timor's national language. Danu is annexed by the malai and declared their 'fifty-eighth province', over which their green and white flag is raised. (Indonesia declared East Timor its 'twenty-seventh province', and its flag is red and white. In any case, by part three of the novel Mo's description of the malai flag has changed to red and white too (chapter 25))
2103722	/m/06mc3r	Empire	Antonio Negri	2000		 In general, the book theorizes an ongoing transition from a "modern" phenomenon of imperialism, centered around individual nation-states, to an emergent postmodern construct created among ruling powers which the authors call Empire (the capital letter is distinguishing), with different forms of warfare: ...according to Hardt and Negri's Empire, the rise of Empire is the end of national conflict, the "enemy" now, whoever he is, can no longer be ideological or national. The enemy now must be understood as a kind of criminal, as someone who represents a threat not to a political system or a nation but to the law. This is the enemy as a terrorist....In the "new order that envelops the entire space of... civilization", where conflict between nations has been made irrelevant, the "enemy" is simultaneously "banalized" (reduced to an object of routine police repression) and absolutized (as the Enemy, an absolute threat to the ethical order"). Empire elaborates a variety of ideas surrounding constitutions, global war, and class. Hence, the Empire is constituted by a monarchy (the United States and the G8, and international organizations such as NATO, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization), an oligarchy (the multinational corporations and other nation-states) and a democracy (the various non-government organizations and the United Nations). Part of the book&#39;s analysis deals with &#34;imagin[ing] resistance&#34;, but &#34;the point of Empire is that it, too, is &#34;total&#34; and that resistance to it can only take the form of negation - &#34;the will to be against&#34;. The Empire is total, but economic inequality persists, and as all identities are wiped out and replaced with a universal one, the identity of the poor persists.
2103817	/m/06mc8y	When Grover Moved to Sesame Street	Jocelyn Stevenson			 Grover's mommy tells Grover that she has a new job, much to Grover's delight. The news remains upbeat to Grover when he learns he'll have to move to "a place called Sesame Street." He, his mother, and best friend Minnie pack for the move. However, in bed that night, Grover is creeped out by his empty room, and starts to have regrets about the move. Grover experiences more shock on realizing that Minnie won't be moving with him and his mother, to which Grover's mommy consoles him with "after we are settled in our new home, Minnie may come to visit us." Grover has obvious apprehensions about the move, even when unpacking in his new room. He finds it smells "funny", and sounds "empty". Outside, on the steps of the apartment, he hollers "Hello, everybodee! Grover Monster is here. Where are my new friends?" Big Bird asks what the problem is, to which Grover replies, "I am crying because I do not have any new friends." Big Bird, a resident of the neighbourhood much longer than Grover, starts to cry with Grover, because he too has no "new friends". Of course, this is all a course of misunderstanding in the semantics of speech, as Grover means he has no friends at all, and Big Bird means that while he has friends, none are "new". The two meet and greet each other, and quickly become friends. Grover then meets Cookie Monster, Betty Lou, Bert, and Ernie. They all take him on a grand tour of the neighbourhood, stopping at Hooper's Store, managed by David, and the Fix-it Shop, operated by Maria and Luis. They also stop at Oscar's can, where a rather pippy Oscar the Grouch shakes hands with Grover, and at Big Bird's nest. On returning to the neighbourhood soda shop, Grover invites everyone to come see his new room, then exclaiming "I think I am going to like it here on Sesame Street." On the last page, as Grover makes this statement to his friends, Minnie and her mother are coming around the bend of the street. In books following this, Grover and Grover's mommy are back in the suburbs, likely somewhere in New Jersey.
2107278	/m/06ml56	Fear on Wheels	Franklin W. Dixon	1991-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Hot rod TV show producer Grant Tucker has hired the Hardy boys following several mysterious accidents; an unknown extortionist has been demanding a quarter of a million bucks in cash. Several dangerous accidents happen, with monster trucks without drivers going on rampage, tires coming off, and hot rods going up in flames. In the end, Joe and star rider Jessica Derey have a hair's breadth escape, narrowly escaping being crushed by a monster pickup on a live TV show. They also catch the extortionist, a former star who was involved in a major accident, got scared of driving, and managed to work up a lot of resentment, which was why he decided to damage the show by crippling it financially.
2108008	/m/06mmm7	Iola Leroy				 Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892), is the story of Iola Leroy, a beautiful young mixed-race woman of majority white ancestry in the antebellum years. Born free in Mississippi, she and her brother Harry are the children of a wealthy white planter and his mixed-race wife, a former slave whom he freed and married before the American Civil War. (Note: Such interracial marriage was then illegal, although planters wealthy enough sometimes flouted the law). Her father sends Iola to the North to be educated. After his death, Iola is kidnapped, told that she has black blood, and sold into slavery in the Deep South. In a plot that follows the conventions of the late nineteenth century tragic mulatto genre, Iola struggles to elude the intentions of her various owners to use her sexually. After she is freed by the Union Army during the war, she seeks to find her scattered family members. Embracing her African heritage, she works to improve the social and economic condition of blacks in the United States. Iola is supported in her struggle by people who relate to various aspects of her complicated life: a devoted former Leroy family slave, Tom Anderson, rescued Iola from a lecherous master. Her brother Harry Leroy joins her in refusing to "pass" as white, although that would make life easier for them. (Note: Both Leroys have a majority of white ancestry.) She meets a newfound uncle, Robert Johnson, who introduces her to her dark-skinned maternal grandmother Harriet, of mostly African descent. After the war, Leroy continues to identify as black. She declines to pass for white when her New England suitor, Dr. Gresham, makes it a condition of his proposal of marriage. He wants her to promise never to reveal her African ancestry. Leroy marries Dr. Frank Latimer, a man of mixed ancestry who also identifies with the black community. They return to North Carolina to fight for "racial uplift." After a series of coincidences, Iola Leroy Latimer reunites with her surviving Leroy family members after the war.
2108187	/m/06mn34	The Black Cloud		1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In 1964, astrophysicists on Earth become aware of an immense cloud of gas that is heading for the solar system. The cloud, if interposed between the Sun and the Earth, could wipe out most of the life on Earth by blocking solar radiation and ending photosynthesis. A cadre of astronomers and other scientists is drawn together in Nortonstowe, England, to study the cloud and report to the British government about the consequences of its presence. The cloud decelerates as it approaches the Sun (contrary to physical laws) and comes to rest around the Sun, causing disastrous climatic changes on Earth and immense mortality and suffering for the human race. This section of the novel presages the nuclear winter scenario popularised in the 1980s. As the behaviour of the cloud proves to be impossible to predict scientifically, the team at Nortonstowe eventually come to the conclusion that it might be a life-form with a degree of intelligence. In an act of desperation, the scientists try to communicate with the cloud, and to their surprise succeed in doing so. The cloud is revealed to be a superorganism, many times more intelligent than humans, which in return is surprised to find intelligent life-forms on a solid planet. When the astronomers ask the cloud how its lifeform originated, it replies that they have always existed. One of the characters suggests this is incompatible with the Big Bang theory. Thus it may be that Hoyle was hinting at his own Steady State theory of the existence of the Universe, which most cosmologists consider disproved by the discovery of cosmic background radiation. The cloud then learns that another intelligent cloud has stopped communicating and may have mysteriously vanished, not so far away in space in the cloud's terms, so it decides to move on, relieving Earth's suffering. Two of the scientists die in an attempt to learn some of the cloud's vast store of knowledge through visual signals, in order to gain further insights about the Universe.
2108642	/m/06mp57	The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea	Yukio Mishima	1963	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 The novel chronicles the story of Ryuji, a sailor with vague notions of a special honor awaiting him at sea. He meets a woman called Fusako with whom he falls deeply in love, and he ultimately decides to marry her. Fusako's 13-year-old son, Noboru, is in a band of savage boys who believe in "objectivity", rejecting the adult world as illusory, hypocritical and sentimental. As Ryuji begins to draw close to Fusako, a woman of the shore, he is eventually torn away from the dreams he's pursued his entire life. Fusako's son, Noboru, who shares an especially close bond with his mother through a voyeuristic ritual, hates the idea of losing his mother to a man who has let his hope and freedom die. This anger and fear of loneliness translates into terrible, savage acts performed by Noboru and the gang of which he is a part.
2109450	/m/06mr6x	Sex and the Single Girl	Helen Gurley Brown	1962	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Introduction (New 2003) In the 2003 edition, Gurley Brown includes a reintroduction to her book and briefly outlines the static situations and changes that the single woman has faced from the 1960s to 2003. *"Chapter 1. Women Alone? Oh Come Now!" The first chapter introduces the single girl to the advantages of her situation, and offers brief advice that will be expanded upon in the following chapters. *"Chapter 2. The Availables: The Men in Your Life" Gurley Brown suggests that the single girl make a list of all the men in her life and then slot them into the following categories: "The Eligibles", "The Eligibles-But-Who-Needs-Them", "The Don Juans", "The Married Man", "The Homosexual", "The Divorcing Man" and "The Younger Man". She then proceeds to advise how to handle the men in each category. *"Chapter 3. Where to Meet Them" The obstacles the single girl faces, and how to overcome them, when meeting men in such environments such as: "Your Job", "Friends of Friends", and "Alcoholics Anonymous". *"Chapter 4. How to Be Sexy" Outlines the different styles of sexy and how to achieve a "sexth sense", and also refers to Alfred Kinsey's reports. *Chapter 5. Nine to Five Includes "Mother Brown's Twelve Rules for Squirming, Worming, Inching, and Pinching Your Way to the Top". *"Chapter 6. Money Money Money" This chapter explains how to stretch your money in areas such as driving and eating, because "nobody likes a poor girl. She is just a drag." *"Chapter 7. The Apartment" Discusses decorating on a budget, hiring a decorator and do it yourself tips such as including "Gobs of Pictures" and how to achieve "A Sexy Kitchen". *"Chapter 8. The Care and Feeding of Everybody" Includes different methods of at home entertaining and recipes for "Three Fabulous Little Dinners and One Semi–Fabulous Brunch". *"Chapter 9. The Shape You're In" The chapter on how to eat well and stay fit with "Gladys Lindberg's Serenity Cocktail", "Ruth West's Stop Dieting! Start Losing!", the "Sexercise" chapter in "Bonnie Prudden's How to Keep Slender and Fit After Thirty", and other methods. *"Chapter 10. The Wardrobe" A quick guide to understanding fashion, shopping and sewing. *Chapter 11. Kisses and Make-Up Step-by-step instructions on cosmetic changes such as make-up, facial hair bleaching (includes formula to mix at home), and contact lenses. *"Chapter 12. The Affair: From the Beginning to End" A step-by-step guide that should prepare a single girl for what will occur, or should occur during the beginning, middle and end stages of an affair. *"Chapter 13. The Rich, Full Life" Includes any advice that did not belong under the previous chapter headings.
2110905	/m/06mvxr	Aliens Ate My Homework	Bruce Coville	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Early one May, sixth-grader Rod Allbright is launched into the adventure of a lifetime when a tiny alien spaceship (the good ship Ferkel of the Galactic Patrol) crashes in his room, changing his life forever. Now, Rod finds himself aiding the aliens on their mission: to capture BKR (pronounced Bee-Kay-Are), an interstellar criminal whose mission in life is to cause as much pain and misery as he can. Ultimately, Rod is able to help the crew of the Ferkel in returning to their normal sizes, and defeating BKR.
2111824	/m/06my0j	Soll und Haben				 After the death of his father, young Anton Wohlfart begins an apprenticeship in the office of the merchant T. O. Schröter in Breslau. Anton quickly succeeds through honest and diligent work, achieving a proper bourgeois existence. He has a variety of experiences with the Schröter family and also with the noble family of the Rothsattels. He later becomes involved with the liquidation of the estate of the Rothsattel family, an obvious symbol of the decline of the nobility and of its clash with emergent capitalist forces. Anton has repeated interactions with two other young men, the Jew Veitel Itzig, whom he had known already in his home town, Ostrau, and a young nobleman, Herr von Fink, who is a co-worker in the Schröter firm.
2112385	/m/06mz8b	A Loyal Character Dancer	Qiu Xiaolong		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 One morning in the park by the Bund, Chief Inspector Chen finds a dead body with precisely 18 axe wounds. He decides to take up the case - however, he is also ordered to escort a U.S. Marshal (Catherine Rohn) and assist her with her investigation. In this case, it means going to look for the wife of a witness in a human-smuggling investigation who will not talk unless his wife is with him. Things are complicated by the fact that the woman has gone missing.
2115844	/m/06n5ry	The Minpins	Roald Dahl	1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Little Billy is forbidden by his mother to enter the Forest of Sin behind his house. She tells him of the Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers, Snozzwanglers and Vermicious knids that live in the forest. Worst of all is the Terrible Bloodsuckling Toothpluckling Stonechuckling Spittler, which chases its prey while glowing clouds of hot smoke pour out of his nose, and then swallows them up in one gulp. Little Billy doesn't believe his mother, and the Devil whispers to Little Billy that the monsters don't exist, and there is a plethora of luscious wild strawberries in the forest. Soon, Little Billy is walking through the forest when he hears something coming after him, and runs to escape it. As he looks back, he sees puffs of orange-red smoke catching up with him. He escapes what he is sure must be the Spittler by climbing up a tree as high and as fast as he can. When he comes to a rest, he notices windows opening all over the branches, and discovers a whole city of little people, the Minpins, living inside the tree. The leader of the Minpins, Don Mini, tells Little Billy that the monster waiting under the tree is not the Spittler (which the Minpins have never heard of), but the Red-Hot Smoke-Belching Gruncher, who grunches up everything in the forest. It seems that there is no way for Little Billy to safely get down from the tree and return home. But upon learning of the close friendship between the Minpins and birds, Little Billy devises a plan to rid the forest of the Gruncher: Little Billy flies on the back of a swan and uses his scent to lure the Gruncher into a lake. The water of the lake puts out the fire in the Gruncher's belly, killing him. The Minpins are grateful to Little Billy for ridding the forest of their tormentor. They reward him by sending the swan to serve as Little Billy's own personal transport every night, which he uses to explore the world and to continue his newfound friendship with the Minpins.
2117675	/m/06nb0g	The First Sex	Elizabeth Gould Davis	1971	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 In the first part of The First Sex, Gould Davis used evidence from archaeology and anthropology to support a theory of matriarchal prehistory. The chapters in this section of the book focus on individual parts of the evidence for peaceful matriarchal queendoms: three are titled "Mythology Speaks", "Anthropology Speaks" and "Archaeology Speaks". Gould Davis said that the "loss of paradise" when the "Great Goddess" was replaced by a vengeful male deity is the theme of all surviving myth. She argued that evidence from the Neolithic site at Çatal Hüyük showed there to be no wars or even violent death, and that even physical injury to animals may not have been permissible there. She pointed to other parts of the Mediterranean in which female tombs are preserved more carefully than male ones, and took this to be evidence of female primacy. In "Anthropology Speaks", Gould Davis focused on taboos, chiefly incest, and aimed to show how taboos against brother-sister relationships acted to protect women against violent men. She also argued that menstrual blood was originally sacred rather than polluting or "unclean", and that only when people began to eat meat did men become bigger than women, because of selection of weak women by men. In this section of the book, Gould Davis examined how mythology and society changed as a result of a suggested violent conversion from matriarchy to patriarchy. Her theory proposed that patriarchal revolution resulted from the violent invasion of nomadic tribes who were warlike and destructive, overrunning the peaceful, egalitarian matriarchies. These nomads (Semites from the Arabian Peninsula) are argued to have never achieved a civilization of their own, but only to have destroyed or taken over older ones. Gould Davis asserted that many tales in the Old Testament were actually rewritings of older stories, with goddesses changed to male actors, or a goddess raped or overthrown and her powers usurped by the new father deity. This, she suggested, was part of a concerted effort to wipe out all evidence of female authority. Because the violent invaders wished to establish the a patrilineal system of inheritance, rigorous control of women's sexuality became paramount. Thus women's right to sexual pleasure was redefined as sinful, and virginity was conceived of as a property right of a woman's father or husband. Gould Davis discussed female circumcision as a means to protect the virginity of women and assure clear lines of paternity. This practice is described in the book in graphic detail, as performed with unsterilized instruments, without anaesthesia (conditions pertaining to all surgical practices before the nineteenth century). In this part of the book, Gould Davis focused on the role of women in the ancient civilizations of Crete and Mycenae. Her research suggested to her that, as in her model of prehistoric civilization, women were the primary powers. The book saw the Cretan and Mycenaean civilizations as remnants of the ancient pre-Christian Celtic culture, which Gould Davis also believed to have granted women a great deal of power. She claimed, for example, that the monarchy was matrilineal, and that most of the tribal chiefs were women rather than men. Gould Davis claimed that Greek women possessed rights that are presently denied by the Catholic, Orthodox, and conservative Protestant churches, such as the rights to abortion and divorce. She cited many well-known historians to support these claims. She also argued that women participated in almost all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman society, including government, learning and sport. In the following chapter, "The Celts", she argued that similar rights prevailed until the collapse of the Roman Empire, for a matrilineal system of monarchical descent, and for Celtic women being the major preservers of learning during the early Middle Ages. The final part of The First Sex focused on the period since Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in 313 A.D. Gould Davis aimed with this part of the book to show how Semitic myths of male supremacy were preached by the early Church Fathers to a Pagan people who would not believe them and did not take them seriously until Constantine became emperor. Gould Davis believed that the writings of Paul in the New Testament were used by the Church to justify violence against women, leading throughout the Middle Ages to a level of cruelty and barbarity unheard of in previous ages. Gould Davis believed that once Christianity had attained civil power, the demotion of women and the "terrible materialism that marks and mars our present civilization" were inevitable. She argued that the influence of Mary as a "Goddess" grew as the violent imposition of Christianity erased the ancient Goddess religion. Quoting Jules Michelet, Gould Davis argued that women by the fifteenth century were treated so badly by men of all social classes that they were seen as "worse than beasts". The Church, she said, approved of this domestic violence, and brutality to women extended beyond families to the priesthood, who cited the Bible to justify themselves. In Gould Davis's view, the status of women was only improved briefly by the Reformation and a flowering of learned women during the sixteenth century. Afterward, Puritanism's witch-hunts and a strengthened papacy placed women back in the same level of submission, and women were tortured and studied in the most prurient manner for "witch marks". Millions of people, she said, most of whom were women, died by burning, drowning, hanging, or from torture during the Catholic and Protestant Inquisitions. In Gould Davis's view, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries marked the first time Western women accepted their own inferiority, and before Mary Wollstonecraft nobody spoke up for them. Gould Davis made a special effort to show how the minds of women were subjugated during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. In the last part of The First Sex, Gould Davis attempted to show the beliefs used to subordinate women to be myths, contending that in reality women are stronger, and physically, mentally, and morally more than equal to men; and that the survival of humanity depends on the restoration of women to their former position as rulers of society. Gould Davis argued that patriarchal civilization is destroying itself, and that only the values of the "matriarchates" can save humanity, because a society based on the mechanistic, Cartesian duality of dominant and violent males leads inevitably to a focus on technology and gadgetry rather than on loving human relationships. Gould Davis called for "the matriarchal counterrevolution that is the only hope for the survival of the human race" and opined that "spiritual force", "[m]ental and spiritual gifts", and "[e]xtrasensory perception" will be more important than "physical force", "gifts of a physical nature", and "sensory perception", respectively, so that "woman will again predominate" and that "the next civilization will ... revolve ["about"] ["divine woman"]", as it had in the past that she asserted. According to critic Prof. Ginette Castro, Gould Davis proposed a discourse "rooted in the purest female chauvinism" and seemed to support "a feminist counterattack stigmatizing the patriarchal present", "giv[ing] ... in to a revenge-seeking form of feminism", "build[ing] ... her case on the humiliation of men", and "asserti[ng] ... a specifically feminine nature ... [as] morally superior." Castro criticized the essentialism and the assertion of superiority as "sexist" and "treason".
2118195	/m/06nckz	Voyage	Stephen Baxter	1996-11-21	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book tells the story in flashbacks during the actual Mars mission of the chronicalized history until the mission's beginning. The point of divergence for this alternate timeline happens on November 22, 1963, where John F. Kennedy survived the assassination (Jacqueline Kennedy was killed, in the renaming of the Kennedy Space Center as the Jacqueline B. Kennedy Space Center), but was crippled and thus incapacitated, as Lyndon B. Johnson is still sworn in. On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Joe Muldoon walk on the moon, and Nixon's "most historic phone call" is joined by a call from former President Kennedy, committing the United States to send a manned mission to Mars, which Nixon backs as part of his fateful decision to decide the future of manned spaceflight, instead of deciding on the Space Shuttle program as he did in our timeline. Preparations for this new goal include slashing the number of moon landings so funding and leftover Apollo spacecraft hardware can go towards the efforts of the manned Mars mission. Apollo 12 still lands, Apollo 13 still suffers its disaster, but Apollo 14 is crewed by the astronauts of the canceled Apollo 15 mission in order to carry out the scientific experiments on the lunar surface, and is the last manned moon landing. At the same time, the NERVA program is revived to become the chosen Mars spacecraft development, with larger tests in Nevada, but without containment and plagued with engineering problems. The book centers around chronicling the lives of the future Mars mission astronauts, NASA and contractor personnel all involved helping in making the mission become a reality, and the shifts within NASA's astronaut and management hierarchy throughout the mission's preparations, including female geologist Natalie York's quest to become an astronaut, and her stormy relationships between fellow astronaut Ben Priest and with NERVA engineer Mike Conlig. Other astronauts include Ralph Gershon, a former fighter-bomber pilot involved in illegal bombing missions in Cambodia during the Vietnam War whose dream is to be the first black man in space, and Phil Stone, a veteran Air Force test pilot-turned-astronaut who has flown in a long-term stay on a lunar orbital station before the Mars mission. In the 1970s, the Skylab Space Station is launched, but apparently as a wet workshop design that is based on the Saturn IB S-IVB upper stage called Skylab A. The Saturn V that might have launched Skylab in our timeline instead launches Skylab B, a lunar orbit space station unofficially named "Moonlab", also a wet workshop based on the S-IVB. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project is instead a series of visits by the Apollo Command/Service Module to Salyut space stations, and Soyuz missions to both Skylab and Moonlab. To facilitate the latter, the Soviets finally finish work on their N-1. The Skylab/Moonlab programs lead to improvements in the design of the Apollo Command/Service Module. A Block III CSM is produced using battery power in place of fuel cells, followed by the Block IV and V, which had a degree of reusability (modular construction and resistance to salt water corrosion). Also chronicled is the development of the experimental 'Mars Excursion Module' by small aerospace firm Columbia Aviation as it struggles against larger rival contractors of NASA and its engineers working painstakingly against the technical challenges of a working and reliable Mars lander. During the Reagan Administration, the Saturn V is upgraded to the Saturn VB, which has numerous improvements, including the use of solid rocket boosters to double its payload. A test of the NERVA is finally launched atop one of these, called Apollo-N, but suffers from pogo oscillations in the S-IC first stage. This damages the NERVA upper stage, which catastrophically fails once fired in orbit; despite returning to Earth safely, the entire crew (including Ben Priest) is killed from radiation poisoning, and the space program nearly collapses from hostile political and public opinion against the use of nuclear power in space, and the seemingly unnecessary risks and reasons of a Mars mission. In the aftermath, a new Mars mission plan dubbed Ares is drawn up, utilizing on-orbit assembly of a different long duration Mars-ship using wet-workshop Saturn rocket components as the propulsion systems as well as a skylab habitat module and external tanks to hold extra fuel, and performing a Venus flyby reminiscent of the Manned Venus Flyby NASA planned in the aftermath of the original Apollo program, but done in this timeline for gravitational assistance, and finally a landing at Mangala Valles on March 27, 1986. However, as a side effect, a number of unmanned probes - including the Viking program, Pioneer Venus project, Mariner 10, Pioneers 10 and 11, and the Voyager program - are cancelled so that their funding can be redirected to the manned Mars mission, although another Mariner orbiter is sent to Mars to help prepare for the manned landing. As a result, although humans walk on Mars, their knowledge of the solar system, including Mars itself, is far less than in reality.
2121389	/m/06nmsd	Rebecca's Tale	Sally Beauman	2001-09-17	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rebecca’s Tale continues twenty years after du Maurier's conclusion and begins with the same classic line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Most of the characters from the original novel have left the area: Maximilian de Winter died in a car accident before this sequel begins and Colonel Julyan has retired to a quiet life at home. None of the other characters from the original novel make significant appearances, although some have brief cameos. While in the original novel, Rebecca was ultimately described as a cruel and wanton woman, in this sequel she is presented as a tormented girl, haunted by her traumatic childhood and deeply sad despite her outward boldness. Although the connection was unknown to most of Rebecca's acquaintances in adulthood (including her eventual husband Maximilian de Winter), her mother was the younger sister of Maxim's mother. Maxim's father had seduced his young sister-in-law before she was sent away in disgrace to France, potentially making Rebecca Maxim's half-sister as well as his first cousin. However, Rebecca's father was generally understood to be "Black Jack" Devlin, an Irish gambler and speculator. During Rebecca's early childhood in Brittany, she was raised to believe that Devlin had died while sailing to South Africa, where he was in fact alive and investing in diamond mines. She and her mother were supported by money sent from their relations in England. When she was still a young girl, she was raped by a boy in their French village, teaching her to mistrust, loathe, and manipulate men, but also to be self-sufficient, assertive, and strong in her own right. At the end, taking partial inspiration from Rebecca's more positive ideals, Ellie Julyan rejects the conventionality of her bucolic country life to pursue her own dreams and ambitions, while Terence Gray reconciles with his own identity and opens himself to love.
2121844	/m/06nnz3	Rascal	Sterling North	1963	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Subtitled "a memoir of a better era," North's book is a prose poem to adolescent angst. Rascal chronicles young Sterling's loving yet distant relationship with his father, dreamer David Willard North, and the aching loss represented by the death of his mother, Elizabeth Nelson North. (The book also touches on young Sterling's concerns for his older brother Herschel, who is in Europe fighting in World War One). The boy reconnects with society through the unlikely intervention of his pet raccoon, a "ringtailed wonder" charmer that dominates almost every page. The book begins with the capture of the baby raccoon, and follows his growth to a yearling. The story is also a personal chronicle of the era of change between the (nearly) untouched forest wilderness and agriculture; between the days of the pioneers and the rise of towns; and between horse-drawn transportation and automobiles, among other transitions. The author's through-a-boy's-eyes view of his observations during expeditions in and around his home town, contrasted with his father's reminiscences of the time "when Wisconsin was still half wilderness, when panthers sometimes looked in through the windows, and the whippoorwills called all night long", provide a glimpse of the past, as the original subtitle suggests. The book is filled with humorous moments. His sister Theo cannot understand Sterling's building of a canoe in the living room and is "startled nearly out of her wits" when Rascal, who had been lying on and blending into Uncle Justus' Amazonian jaguar rug, stands up. Later in the book, Rascal joins him in a pie eating contest, and they win, but are disqualified, although his friend, Oscar Sunderland, takes first prize because of it. Rascal also enjoyed riding in his bicycle's basket, and helped him sell magazines by creating an animated sideshow. The book also has serious moments. The author's brother Herschel is serving in the military during World War I, and Sterling longs for a word from him. Rascal is confined after he bites an annoying lad who snaps him with a rubber band. Later, Sterling catches a mild case of the Spanish flu during the epidemic. (It is stated in the book that his Aunt Lillie, who took care of him during his sickness, said that Sterling's mother had wanted him to be a writer, which he achieved.) Eventually the problems with Rascal's raids into fields and henhouses become too much of an issue; the neighbors' irritation with the boy's pet can no longer be ignored. In addition, Rascal has become a young adult and, as such, is getting attention from jealous male and interested female raccoons. Sterling realizes that Rascal is a wild animal and can no longer be kept, unless always kept in a cage. He travels in the newly completed canoe to release Rascal in the woods at the far side of the nearby lake. The author's sister, the straight-laced poet and art historian Jessica Nelson North, is one note of early 1900s normalcy in the book. She wasn't particularly pleased with how her brother portrayed her family in Rascal (yet was proud of her brother's achievement, regardless). The theme of Rascal is not friendship, but loss, and the transcendence of it. Sterling loses his mother, the attention of his father, his brother to war, and eventually his best friend, Rascal, but survives and learns from it.
2125254	/m/06nw7h	The White Feather	P. G. Wodehouse	1907-10-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Sheen, a quiet and studious boy, finds himself facing a street brawl between boys of Wrykyn and those of St. Jude's, their sworn enemies, he slips away to safety to avoid the wrath of his masters. However, his cowardliness is noticed by his fellows, who send him to Coventry. In order to save his reputation, he must train secretly under boxing legend Joe Bevan. Can he overcome the many obstacles in his path, and restore the school's honour in the ring?
2125816	/m/06nx0q	Poor Things	Alasdair Gray		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main body of the work centres on Bella Baxter, a woman whose early life and identity are the subject of some ambiguity. That ambiguity is complicated by her husband Archibald McCandless's autobiography, "Episodes from the Early Life of a Scottish Public Health Officer," which distorts the truth about his life with Bella. This is followed by Bella's (or Victoria's) refutation of its facts, suggesting that her "poor fool" of a husband has concocted a life for her from the prevailing gothic and romantic motifs of the period: it "positively stinks of all that was morbid in that most morbid of centuries". This is reinforced by the novel's intricate echoes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. These fictitious historical documents are prefaced with an introduction by one Alasdair Gray, who presents himself as the editor of the following text, and relates the 'discovery' of the papers by his real-life friends, Michael Donnelly and Elspeth King. The introduction also hosts a critique of Glasgow City Council's treatment of its culture and heritage in the neglect of the local history museum, and a brief mention of Glasgow's time as the European Capital of Culture in 1990, which would be the subject of a more sustained satire in his novel Something Leather.
2125859	/m/06nx3g	Space	James A. Michener	1982	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in 1944 and covers more than 30 years in the lives of four men and their families: Dieter Kolff, a German rocket scientist who worked for the Nazis; Norman Grant, a World War II hero turned U.S. Senator from a fictional state; Stanley Mott, an aeronautical engineer invested with a top-secret U.S. government mission to rescue Kolff from Peenemünde; and John Pope, a small-town boy turned Naval Aviator who becomes a test pilot and then astronaut. Randy Claggett, a rambunctious Marine Corps aviator and astronaut is considered by Michener to be the most important supporting character (the first two parts of the book are entitled "Four Men" and "Four Women"). The lives of the fictional characters interweave with those of historical figures, such as Wernher von Braun and Lyndon Johnson. A whole group of trainee astronauts are introduced to fly fictional but plausible Project Gemini and Project Apollo missions; the intensive training and jockeying for position amongst the astronauts forms much of the background of the middle of the novel, reminiscent of a fictional version of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and the movie as well. Michener dramatizes the life experiences of these men and their families against the backdrop of the real history of the U.S. space program, depicting their experiences in post-war aviation, the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union; the development of congressional funding for the space program; the early failures in the Gemini program; and the successful moon landings in the Apollo program. In a fictional postscript to history, Michener creates a last, "Apollo 18" launch to further the drama of Pope, Claggett and Linley, America's first black astronaut. This is the only Apollo mission in which the lunar module lands on the far side of the Moon, unseen by Earth; in order to remain in contact with NASA after landing, while still in lunar orbit the Apollo craft must launch a communication satellite that will bounce the lunar module's signals to Earth. An unusually high amount of sunspot activity, only partially predicted by the NASA ground crew, results in the death of Claggett and Linley in the lunar module when they are exposed to lethal levels of radiation following their ascent back towards the command module and they crash back into the lunar surface; Pope, the command module pilot returns to Earth safely. The mission profile is significantly different from that of the real-world canceled mission that would have been Apollo 18. On the human side, various subplots run through the novel, contrasting the "official" heroism of NASA with the human fallibilities of the cast—the difficulties the Kolffs face in integrating into American society; Norman Grant's initial embrace of the space program and his abandonment of it as it no longer serves his political aims, while his unstable wife and their daughter fall in with a highly intelligent but cynical cult leader calling himself Leopold Strabismus who exploits first the UFO craze and then an anti-scientific creationist agenda to increase his fortune; Randy Claggett's womanizing; the contrast between Stanley and Rachel Mott's ordered, rational existence and their troubled relationship with their sons, and John Pope's unusual yet supportive relationship with his lawyer wife Penny. The novel closes with Pope retired from NASA and a respected professor of astronomy, his wife Penny in the Senate, and Mott consulting on "Grand Tour" unmanned missions to the outer solar system. The two men finally attending a NASA workshop discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life, at which Strabismus privately drops the creationist/fundamentalist persona he has adopted and joins in the intellectual debate on the inevitability of life elsewhere in the Universe.
2126110	/m/06nxpk	A History Maker	Alasdair Gray	1994	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Like Gray's Poor Things the novel takes the form of documentation written by the characters themselves in order to record their experiences for posterity: a Prologue and notes (which make up almost a third of the total text) by "the hero's mother", and the central portion of the book, which is a third person narrative written by its protagonist, Wat Dryhope. Wat finds himself dissatisfied with the lack of purpose in a life in which everything is provided by powerplants, bypassing any need for manual labour. He develops an unhealthy interest in the ancient history of twentieth-century wars and dictatorships when men's struggles had a purpose, leaving himself vulnerable to exploitation to a plot to destroy his world's way of life.
2127254	/m/06n_45	The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend	David Gemmell	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in Druss's village in the Drenai Empire. He is a misfit and socially awkward. While he is away from the village chopping wood, a party of slavers, led by Harib Ka and the master swordsman Collan, comes to the village and kills or enslaves everyone they find. With his dying breath, Druss' father tells him to fetch the family battle-axe (Snaga), which was stolen by his grandfather Bardan. Druss meets the hunter Shadak, who is hunting the slavers to avenge the death of his son, and they join forces to pursue them. Shadak succeeds in interrogating Harib Ka before Druss kills him, and learns that Rowena (who Harib Ka has realised has mystic powers) has been taken to the port of Mashrapur. Druss travels to Mashrapur and meets Shadak's friend Sieben. Together they find out that Rowena will be transported to the distant land of Ventria. Druss attempts to break onto the ship to rescue her, but is ambushed by Collan's men on the dock. Druss is badly wounded but survives, and Shadak reappears to kill Collan. However, they fail to stop the ship from setting sail without them. When Druss recovers, he and Sieben (who is fleeing a jealous lover's husband) join a group of mercenaries recruited by the Ventrian soldier Bodasen, who is going to support the emperor Gorben in a war in Ventria against the neighbouring Naashanites and rebels. En route, they are attacked by pirates; and during this fight Sieben sees a demon materialise to defend Druss and comes to the conclusion that Druss is possessed. The soldiers arrive in Ventria and succeed in rescuing Gorben from a siege. Gorben is impressed with Druss and promotes him to serve in his elite bodyguard- "The Immortals". Sieben learns from a priest that Snaga is harbouring an evil spirit, but fails to persuade Druss to abandon the weapon. Meanwhile, Rowena has married Michanek, the leading general of the Naashanites. He is an honourable man and becomes concerned when she falls ill. He is told that she is suffering as a result of her mystical powers, and has these removed, along with her memory, in order to save her life. During a break in the war, Druss goes travelling and loses Snaga in a river. Initially thinking he is free of it, he learns from the a wandering Source priest that it has been found by a brutal warlord, Cajivak. He and the mercenary Varsava set out to recover the axe and kill Cajivak, but Druss is captured and imprisoned in Cajivak's dungeon. At first he wastes away, but with the help of a former prisoner succeeds in regaining his strength and escaping, only to find that Sieben, Varsava and the archer Eskodas have mounted a rescue attempt. Druss kills Cajivak and recovers Snaga, then returns to the army. By this point in the war the Naashanites are desperate and attempt to use a demon to assassinate Gorben, but he is saved by Druss thanks to Snaga- the only weapon that seems to hurt the demon. Druss also learns that Rowena has married Michanek and that her memory has been erased. He vows to kill Michanek and reclaim Rowena as his own as the army moves to besiege the last Naashanite stronghold, where Michanek has his home. Michanek has learned of Rowena's past and attempts to reconcile her to the idea of going back to Druss, but she will not have it. During the siege, Michanek is killed and Rowena takes poison since she cannot face life alone. Druss is forced to venture into the netherworld to bring her back. Druss eventually succeeds in finding Rowena, and despite a trick of Snaga's, rescues her. In the process he banishes the demon from the axe. Then he and his companions return to Drenai. The epilogue deals with the events of Skeln Pass, a famous battle late in Druss's career (by this time he is presumed to be in his mid-forties). Gorben has gone mad and invades Drenai, and Druss and Sieben go to Skeln Pass to meet the troops and raise morale. The Ventrians launch a surprise attack, catching the Drenai unprepared, and Druss and Sieben are caught up in the fighting. Under the leadership of Earl Delnar, and with Druss's inspirational presence, the Drenai manage to hold up the Ventrian advance. In a night raid, Druss accidentally kills his old friend Bodasen. The next day, a furious Gorben, commits the Immortals, who have never been defeated, to battle. In the fierce fighting the ensues, Sieben is mortally wounded, but Druss and the Drenai manage to hold the Immortals long enough for reinforcements to arrive and win the war. In the rout, Gorben is killed by his own officers. During the battle, Rowena, who has stayed at home with Sieben's wife Niobe, dies. She tells Niobe that she knew she was dying but sent Druss to Skeln Pass so that he would not have to witness it, as it would break his heart.
2129772	/m/06p3mz	The Prince	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The action begins in the 2060s and ends in the 2090s. Over that period John Christian Falkenberg progresses from a junior officer in the CoDominium Navy, through a Captain and later Colonel of Marines, to a mercenary leader at the head of Falkenberg's Legion, whose core is composed of officers and NCO's from his former Marine command. Falkenberg is a military genius with a flair for the bold and unconventional, using heavy doses of deception. He has components of Donal Graeme in him, as well as the young Napoleon, though he rejects political power. He has an enemy in Senator Adrian Bronson of Earth, who blames him for the death of his grandson while under Falkenberg's command, and who also opposes Admiral Lermontov, Falkenberg's ally in the Navy. Through the stories, one theme is dominant. The CoDominium is shipping large numbers of voluntary and involuntary colonists to the colony planets. The involuntary colonists cause the most trouble, being used to a welfare state existence in government ghettoes known as Welfare Islands where drugs and entertainment, paid for by the remaining productive members of society, keep them pacified. Relocated to the colony worlds, they gather in city centers and shanty towns. Idealistic reformers take up their cause against the original colonists, who are mostly farmers and large landowners, purportedly in the name of liberty and equality. However, the inevitable outcome would be a short-lived welfare state followed by economic collapse and starvation. Falkenberg and his people are thus on what some would call the wrong side. They act to suppress bandits, rebels and insurgents who prey on landowners, and who may be in cahoots with reforming politicians bent on industrializing the economy. Partly this illustrates the soldier's dilemma, having to obey orders without regard to the rights and wrongs of the cause. It also illustrates Jerry Pournelle's convictions, which echo those of Robert A. Heinlein, that democracy is not the only proper form of government, nor is it always the best given the realities of economics and ecology. In each case in the stories, the nominal democrats are likely to lead their societies to destruction. Often, their opponents are not much better morally, but less likely to destroy their world. The weapons and tactics employed are easily recognizable to a 20th century reader. Indeed a major point in the narrative is the likelihood that, given the need to import all advanced technology, the mule would be a better vehicle than the truck on a colony world, and a tank or two might be the deciding factor in a campaign. The weapons are rifles, mortars and light artillery. A few helicopters are available, but in some situations they are vulnerable to missiles fired by ground troops. Originally published as the novel West of Honor, later incorporated into Falkenberg's Legion Founded by religious zealots, Arrarat's society is besieged by well-organized (and well-supplied) bandit gangs composed mainly of involuntary colonists. The story is a first-person narrative by newly-commissioned Lieutenant Harlan (Hal) Slater of the CoDominium Line Marines. Falkenberg commandeers him and any other available soldiers to form a provisional battalion to be sent to Arrarat in response to an urgent request for help from the governor. On arrival they find that they are not at all welcome. The governor had asked for a much larger (and more experienced) unit to deal with numerous lawless bands in control of much of the countryside. The military men have other concerns, however. They fear the havoc restless soldiers will create in the capital. To avoid this Falkenberg elects to take the marines up-river to the bandit-occupied Fort Beersheba, an old fort built by the Line Marine regiment that had initially pacified the planet. Slater is tasked with taking and holding Fort Beersheba in a daring night assault using one company of airlifted troops, while Falkenberg marches the remainder of the newly organized 501st Line Marine Battalion up the river valley toward him. Holding the fort is not easy - though disorganized and untrained, the rebels have plenty of weapons with which to pummel Slater's A Company. Although A Company takes heavy casualties, Slater holds his position as the anvil to Falkenberg's hammer and the bandits attempting to flee from the CoDominium forces are destroyed. After establishing the fort as a base, Slater and the other officers watch the restless and combat-eager marines suffer more and more from a military kind of cabin fever which they call the Bug. To combat this growing problem, Falkenberg forces the reluctant planetary governor to move against the bandits tyrannizing the farmers of the Jordan Valley who simply want to farm and be let alone by both the central government and the bandits gangs. Meanwhile Falkenberg directs a cleaning out of the farther reaches of the colony. However, the governor's campaign goes poorly and his forces are besieged in the town of Allansport, forcing him to call Falkenberg for help. Slater takes A Company to bait the enemy south of Allansport, and ends up holding off a major enemy counter-attack and occupying the strategic hill called the Rockpile, taking extreme casualties. However, because of Slater's actions the enemy is defeated, with Slater severely wounded and medevacked to the capital. However, the political situation is much more complicated. The religious farmers who had been oppressed by a gang of ex-convicts begin avenging themselves on anyone who collaborated with the bandits; while the colonial governor, who was trying to use the bandits to generate revenue to set up industries on Arrarat to provide employment for the time-expired convicts, becomes an enemy. How much of an enemy he will be is debatable, as he is in the Bronson camp and Bronson has no use for losers. The story ends with the newly promoted Major Falkenberg recruiting the now Captain Slater (the youngest in the history of the fleet) into joining him in a transfer to Falkenberg's new command, the 42nd Line Marine Regiment, and Slater's Arrarat-born girlfriend Kathryn agreeing to join him. Originally part of the novel The Mercenary, later incorporated into Falkenberg's Legion Falkenberg has been recruited by Admiral Lermontov of the CoDominium fleet to create a military force that can support a government on one of the colony planets, providing the Fleet with a base when the CoDominium collapses, taking Earth with it. He is courtmartialed and discharged from the CoDominium Marines on a technicality in order to operate as a mercenary, though thanks to his conflict with Senator Bronson of Earth, he was likely to be arrested anyway. On Hadley he encounters the same situation as on other colonies, with the added element that the CD is pulling out. The authorities left behind are trying to create power bases by raising armies, some from landowners, some from industrialists, some from the convicts and involuntary colonists. Falkenberg, nominally working for the government in power, begins training his Mercenary Legion, using a battalion of officers and noncoms from his Marine regiment, the 42nd Line Marine Regiment, who have arrived as 'colonists,' as the cadre. Eventually this force, plus a regiment of local troops trained separately, allows him to dictate the outcome on Hadley. One of the local officials who had been involved with training that regiment attempts a coup, but is killed by Legion troops anticipating the attempt. The reason for the coup is an imminent takeover by "democratic" populist forces organizing the underclasses. Since all resources are already being used to feed the underclass, any takeover would lead to collapse. Having foiled the coup, Falkenberg carries out a military assault on the populists in a stadium, killing thousands and eliminating their leaders. Though in theory the odds are a thousand or so Legion soldiers against ten times as many civilians, some with firearms, in practice the battle IS entirely one-sided, and depicted as such by Pournelle - as in all cases where trained, well-organized and determined soldiers face untrained civilians. The scene of the soldiers descending from the topmost level of the stadium, firing in volleys, is very like the classic Odessa Steps sequence in the movie The Battleship Potemkin (except that the sympathies are completely reversed). The ruthlessness of the assault is reminiscent of Napoleon's tactics used when dealing with uprisings in Paris. The colourful description "There was too much blood, blood cascading down the steps, blood pouring down stairwells" might be partially derived from medieval chronicles describing the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. The scene as described also sounds remarkably like Belisarius' slaughter of the Nika rioters in the Hippodrome in 6th century Constantinople. The colony is left in the charge of the government's one remaining Vice President, a technical operator who understands the need to remove the population to the countryside and stabilize the agricultural economy. Falkenberg, angered by the necessity of his actions and fully aware that he had perpetrated an atrocity - though convinced it was necessary and unavoidable - takes the Legion and departs. Later, Pournelle, tongue in cheek, provides the official version of "the government of Hadley thanking Falkenberg for suppression of civil disturbances". Originally a short story "His Truth Goes Marching On", later incorporated into Prince of Mercenaries Captain Peter Owensford of Falkenberg's Legion recounts how, as a Lieutenant in a Volunteer Brigade sponsored by the Earth Humanity League, he was part of an intervention on the side of Republican forces against the local rulers, a Spanish aristocracy known as Carlists. Thanks again to dumping of colonists from Earth, the Santiago colony on Thurstone has progressed to de facto slavery by debt bondage in order to maintain social order. Parallels with the Spanish Civil War are many and, according to the author, intentional. The campaign is brutal, especially with a detached officer corps of political appointees unable to make proper military decisions. A "political officer" in the zampolit Soviet style, parroting liberty and atheism instead of communism, overrules Owensford's tactical decisions and impedes his training of the men. In the end, after losing many troops, Owensford catches the officer and some cronies preparing to use an atomic bomb to destroy his command and provoke the CoDominium Navy to act against the Carlists. He confiscates the bomb and attempts to retreat; but is caught in a Carlist advance. Eventually he surrenders to mercenary forces (who as detached professionals are less likely to execute him out of hand), and becomes a mercenary himself. His commanding officer in the mission, Captain Anselm "Ace" Barton, has already done so. Originally the novel Prince of Mercenaries. Parts of the novel incorporate the short story "Silent Leges". On the hot jungle planet of Tanith, Falkenberg is working with Governor Blaine, another Lermontov ally. Tanith is the source of a drug used in the Welfare Islands, borloi, and the revenue from that traffic is being used to support the Fleet as the Senate on Earth cuts its support year by year. Most of the workers on the plantations are convicts. Falkenberg is helping to deal with a rebellion in the plantations. He is also helping Blaine to support Lermontov. Here Prince Lysander of Sparta, a planet founded with certain political ideals by the Constitutional Society, comes to learn about Falkenberg. He finds himself in the middle of a plot to hijack borloi away from the Navy on behalf of Senator Bronson. Enlisting with Falkenberg as a junior officer, he learns the realities of military life. The opposition is another force of mercenaries commanded by Ace Barton. They foil the plot, but now Bronson is determined to undermine Sparta. Barton and Falkenberg broker a truce, with Barton rescuing Falkenberg when one of the locals reneges on the agreement and takes Falkenberg hostage. Barton's part in the rebellion means he has to leave the planet, and with few options, he re-enlists with Falkenberg, who sends him to Sparta. Lysander commits himself to the plans of Lermontov and Falkenberg to use Sparta as a base for the Navy after the CoDominium collapse. Originally a short novel, "Sword and Scepter". Part of the novel The Mercenary, later incorporated into Falkenberg's Legion Falkenberg departs Tanith for a contract on the planet New Washington. This is one of a pair of planets, orbiting a common center which itself orbits a red dwarf star. It is one of the farthest colonies from Earth, being over a hundred parsecs away. The two planets are tidally locked, so they always present the same face to each other. As day progresses to night on New Washington, the side of the sister planet Franklin facing it goes from night to day. One revolution takes 40 hours. The pair revolve around their star in 52 days. New Washington was founded by Franklin dissidents. Now that certain ores have been found on New Washington, Franklin has invaded with CoDominium connivance and mercenary help. Falkenberg is hired to throw out the invaders. As usual, the political class on New Washington is not entirely behind his military objectives. He is able to execute stealthy takeovers of crucial installations to give him an operational base, from which he takes over large amounts of territory on behalf of the rebel government. The campaign eventually comes to a head when Falkenberg's forces come up against a band of Scottish mercenaries from the planet Covenant and holds them at a pass in the mountains, inflicting devastating casualties with his artillery. The leaders of the local militia leaders are outraged when Falkenberg allows an extravagantly long cease-fire with the Coventanters and demand that Falkenberg now try to force the pass himself, however the rebel officials Falkenberg has left behind begin illegal reprisals against civilians and Falkenberg leaves his force guarding the pass and returns to the capital. At this point a CoDominium ship appears, ostensibly to stop the conflict which is breaching the Laws of War. In fact the commander of the ship is a Lermontov ally. The danger was that Franklin would be able to build its own Navy and threaten Lermontov's plans if the invasion succeeded. The scheme was to pacify the planet at minimum cost by creating enough trouble for the CoDominium to order mercenaries on both sides to leave, at which point no credible military force would be present. This turns out to be the real reason Falkenberg did not try to force the mountain pass. However, Falkenberg has decided to stay. He secures a land grant for his Legion, turning them into settlers. In the end Falkenberg becomes Protector of New Washington. Originally the novels Go Tell The Spartans and Prince of Sparta, co-written with S.M. Stirling The remaining narrative takes place on Sparta, leading up to the acclamation of Lysander as Imperator by the Navy and Marines when the CoDominium collapses. However, before this can happen, the conflict between Spartan society and the convict underclass must be resolved. Sparta is a constitutional dual monarchy, one King taking external affairs, the other King being involved in the economy. Citizenship with the right to vote is an earned privilege, as in Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Citizens are also expected to join the militia, on the model of Swiss citizen-soldiers. Other than enforcing basic laws, education and military service, the government does not intervene in the lives of the people. Prosperity or starvation is the responsibility of the individual. The underclass can attempt to become Citizens, and many do. For the rest, the usual populists try to organize them into a Movement. Paradoxically, Sparta's openness and political transparency makes it more vulnerable to such a Movement than a dictatorship such as Carlist Santiago. One such movement has a guerilla army of self-styled Helots. After the episode on Tanith, Senator Bronson begins building up the open and covert oppositions on Sparta. His motives are actually not far removed from Lermontov's - he too wishes to set up a power base among the colonies to preserve his version of civilization when the CoDominium collapses. However, his appetite for personal and dynastic power prevents him from finding common ground with Lermontov, Blaine and Falkenberg. He rejects their attempts at a truce. Instead he sends in supplies and advisors to organize the Helot forces, and employs techno-ninja saboteurs from the Meiji colony to infiltrate the data systems on Sparta. To counter this, a cadre of Falkenberg's Legion does not accompany him to New Washington, instead going to Sparta to create the nucleus of an army. Leading this portion of the Legion is Peter Owensford, along with Ace Barton, the mercenary Falkenberg defeated on Tanith, and Benjamin Whitlock, a sociologist and political historian who, with his Southern U.S.A. roots, may be a stand-in for the author, Jerry Pournelle, who is from Louisiana. The rebels are led by a woman, Skida "Skilly" Thibodeau, who strongly resembles the actress, singer and model Grace Jones. Although highly intelligent and an amateur student of military history, she devises complex campaign plans which the Legion is able to detect and foil, despite the Helots' advanced weaponry and sabotage campaigns supporting her. Much of the narrative is taken up with these bloody campaigns, in which Skilly's rebels employ artillery, missiles, rape, murder, poison gas and civilian massacre in order to undermine Spartan society. They have help from former CoDominium officers in the pay of Bronson. The penultimate act of the Bronson campaign is an attempt to use the Marine garrison on Sparta, with support from suborned Navy ships and a general uprising by Helot elements in the capital, to destroy the government. The armed Citizens stand and fight, so much that the Marines switch sides. The Navy restores proper command, almost engaging in a fratricidal space battle. Lysander's aging father is killed when the palace is assaulted. In the final chapters, one of Skilly's officers, a nephew of Bronson's, defects and tells Lysander's generals that there is an atom bomb somewhere in the city. Skilly then contacts the commanders, offering the location of the bomb in return for a safe-conduct off the planet. They grant her this, but some of Falkenberg's men simply set out to do privately what the government cannot do publicly. The problem of the underclass is dealt with in a fashion that again echoes Heinlein's notions, this the one of being sent to Coventry - those who do not accept Sparta's social contract will be given basic tools and sent to uninhabited islands to work out their own fate without interference. Finally, with the CoDominium in collapse and all Earth authority vanished, the Generals and Admirals acclaim Lysander, now King of Sparta, as Imperator.
2131181	/m/06p5gb	Porterhouse Blue	Tom Sharpe		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 For the first time in five hundred years, the master of Porterhouse fails to name his successor on his deathbed before dying. He succumbs to a Porterhouse Blue - a stroke brought about by overindulgence in the college's legendary cuisine. Sir Godber Evans is appointed as his successor. Sir Godber, egged on by his zealous wife, Lady Mary, announces sweeping changes to the centuries of college tradition, much to the concern of Skullion and the Fellows, who plan a counter-attack on the proposed contraceptive machines, women students, and canteen. Meanwhile, the only research graduate student in the college, Lionel Zipser, visits the hard-of-hearing Chaplain and explains his fixation for Mrs Biggs, his middle-aged, large-breasted bedder, through a megaphone, and is therefore overheard by the whole college. Mrs Biggs is not within earshot, but nevertheless senses that something is up from Zipser's awkward behaviour around her every time she comes to clean his room and especially when she teases him sexually, the climax of which is when she asks him to help her take off her bright red PVC raincoat from behind, which prompts him to reach around her and - at least in the TV mini-series - almost touch her large breasts. While Sir Godber congratulates himself on having defeated the traditionalists, investigative journalist Cornelius Carrington is brought in on the pretext of helping both parties, while secretly having his own agenda. Meanwhile, having been advised to pick up a foreign student, so as to avoid his predatory lust for Mrs Biggs that could end badly, Zipser visits an array of public houses in search of a condom and later wakes from a drunken stupor in possession of two gross of condoms. He tries many ways to get rid of them and eventually inflates them with gas from the gas fire in his room and floats them up the chimney, not realising that some get stuck in the chimney and the rest float down into the college quadrangle. Fearing for the good name of college, Skullion spends the night bursting the inflated condoms. At this point it turns out it is Mrs Biggs who is the predator, as she sneaks up to Zipser's room in the middle of the night and wakes him up. To his amazement she undresses and, despite his protests, promptly enters his bed and lies on top of him. Unfortunately, while undressing, she has lit the gas fire, which takes a short while to ignite the inflated condoms stuck in the chimney, causing an explosion that demolishes the Bull Tower and kills her and Zipser in their moment of passion. When Skullion refuses to open the main gates of college to let the fire engines in and continues to burst the inflated condoms, he is fired. He takes his revenge by giving a shocking revelatory interview on Carrington's live television show. After the new master refuses Skullion's pleas to let him keep his job, Skullion offers shares that a former master left him. Sir Godber flatly refuses, but then has a fatal accident. Skullion, although not entirely to blame, quickly leaves. Two senior academics find the dying Sir Godber who whispers them one word: Skullion. They agree that, in accordance with college tradition, Skullion has been named the new Master of Porterhouse. When Skullion is visited by the college officials with the good news, he thinks they have found out his involvement with Sir Godber's death and whilst they are telling him about his great fortune, he has a debilitating Porterhouse Blue himself. Nonetheless, he is installed as the Master and the college find that the shares he'd offered to Sir Godber are worth more than the cost of rebuilding the Bull Tower, so Porterhouse's traditions are firmly re-established.
2131200	/m/06p5gp	Little Altars Everywhere	Rebecca Wells	1998-11	{"/m/01tz3c": "Anthology"}	 Author Rebecca Wells alternates between setting her short stories in the 1960s, when Siddalee Walker, daughter of Vivi, is growing up, and the early 1990s, when Sidda is grown and dealing with the consequences of her turbulent childhood. It is the prequel to Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Each chapter is narrated by a different person (Little Shep, Sidda, Lulu, etc.).
2132311	/m/06p6rh	O Ateneu	Raul Pompéia	1888	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sérgio is left at the age of eleven on the doorsteps of the Ateneu by his father and enters the school for the first time. It immediately becomes clear the sexual references by the headmaster's statement to Sérgio's father in the begging of the book: "You should see a coiffeur,and cut this blondy hair of yours. You know,the pretty boys in this school, don't go along very well". After,he is eventually is approached by two older students—Sanches and Bento Alves—who try to engage into a homosexual relationship with him, but he does not accept the proposal. Sérgio then approaches a rebellious boy named Franco in order to avoid their company. Since Franco is constantly disciplined by the headmaster, Sérgio cuts his friendship with the boy, out of fear of facing the same fate. He then meets a boy named Egbert and becomes very close to him; their relationship does not develop beyond friendship mostly due to the sexual and emotional feelings Sérgio nourishes for the school's nurse—Dona Ema. Towards the end of the book, a student sets fire to the Ateneu, burning the whole structure down. The fire is a metaphor which represents the end of a chapter in Sérgio's life, as he progresses towards maturity.
2132591	/m/06p79v	Pierre: or, The Ambiguities	Herman Melville	1852		 It tells the story of Pierre Glendinning, junior, the 19-year-old heir of the manor at Saddle Meadows in upstate New York. Pierre is engaged to the blonde Lucy Tartan in a match approved by his domineering mother, who controls the estate since the death of his father, Pierre, senior. When he encounters, however, the dark and mysterious Isabel Banford, he hears from her the claim that she is his half-sister, the illegitimate and orphaned child of his father and a European refugee. Pierre reacts to the story (and to his magnetic attraction for Isabel) by devising a remarkable scheme to preserve his father’s name, spare his mother’s grief, and give Isabel her proper share of the estate. He announces to his mother that he is married; she promptly throws him out of the house. He and Isabel then depart for New York City, accompanied by a disgraced young woman, Delly Ulver. During their stagecoach journey, Pierre finds and reads a fragment of a treatise on “Chronometricals and Horologicals” on the differences between absolute and relative virtue by one Plotinus Plinlimmon. In the city, Pierre counts on the hospitality of his friend and cousin Glendinning Stanley, but is surprised when Glen refuses to recognize him. The trio (Pierre, Isabel, and Delly) find rooms in a former church converted to apartments, the Church of the Apostles, now populated by impecunious artists, writers, spiritualists, and philosophers, including the mysterious Plinlimmon. Pierre attempts to earn money by writing a book, encouraged by his juvenile successes as a writer. He learns that his mother has died and has left the Saddle Meadows estate to Glen Stanley, who is now engaged to marry Lucy Tartan. Suddenly, however, Lucy shows up at the Apostles, determined to share Pierre’s life and lot, despite his apparent marriage to Isabel, and Pierre and the three women live there together as best they can, while their scant money runs out. Pierre’s writing does not go well — having been "Timonized" by his experiences, the darker truths he has come to recognize cannot be reconciled with the light and innocent literature the market seeks. Unable to write, he has a vision in a trance of an earth-bound stone giant Enceladus and his assault on the heavenly Mount of Titans. Beset by debts, by fears of the threats of Glen Stanley and Lucy’s brother, by the rejection of his book by its contracted publishers, by fears of his own incestuous passion for Isabel, and finally by doubts of the truth of Isabel’s story, Pierre guns down Glen Stanley at rush hour on Broadway, and is taken to jail in The Tombs. There Isabel and Lucy visit him, and Lucy dies of shock when Isabel addresses Pierre as her brother. Pierre then seizes upon the secret poison vial that Isabel carries and drinks it, and Isabel finishes the remainder, leaving three corpses as the novel ends.
2133376	/m/06p8rd	Debt of Bones	Terry Goodkind	2001-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 During the war against D'Hara, a young woman meets with Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, Wizard of the First Order in order to force him to pay a debt of bones he owes her and save her child. In so doing, she initiates the series of events leading up to the end of the war with D'Hara and the division of the Westlands, Midlands, and D'Hara by the boundaries.
2133642	/m/06p99f	Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood	Rebecca Wells	1996-05-22	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Vivi, Teensy, Necie, and Caro were younger, they created the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The Ya-Ya’s caused shenanigans and chaos everywhere, but also had a sisterly bond that could fix anything. Now, at 70 years old, the Ya-Ya’s are determined to fix the struggling relationship between mother and daughter. Siddalee “Sidda” Walker, a play director, has never had a smooth relationship with her mother, Vivi, but when a New York Times reporter twists Siddalee’s words around in an article about her recent play, Siddalee and Vivi’s mother-daughter relationship goes spiraling down. Not only is Sidda having trouble with her mother, but she is also having trouble with her fiancé, Conner. Sidda postpones the wedding between her and Conner. Between that and Sidda’s now fear to love, she runs off to her friend’s family cabin at Lake Quinault. When Vivi and the other “Ya-Ya’s” find out about this, they decide to send Sidda the “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” scrapbook to help Sidda understand their lives, and more importantly, her mother’s life, better.
2133799	/m/06p9nw	The Blessing Way	Tony Hillerman		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Anthropologist Bergen McKee has travelled to the Navajo Reservation to research tales of Navajo witches known as "skinwalkers". Meanwhile, McKee's friend, Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, is called upon to investigate a corpse with a mouth full of sand. Soon, both McKee and Leaphorn find themselves in danger as they investigate a mystery involving a missing electronics expert and McKee has a more personal contact with a skinwalker than he bargained for. The novel includes a description of a Navajo Enemy Way ceremony.
2134003	/m/06pbbz	The Magical Monarch of Mo	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Chapter One has no plot, but rather is a basic description of the Land of Mo, or "The Beautiful Valley". It explains that everyone in Mo is happy, and that the people never need to work, because everything they could desire grows on the trees, including items such as clothes. In A New Wonderland, the author mentions planning to move there himself, but this was omitted from subsequent editions. Chapter Two: The Monarch of Mo goes to fight the Purple Dragon, which has just eaten all of the caramels in the land. The Dragon bites off his head, and the King is forced to go home headless. The King tries to make the best of it, but the Queen complains that she cannot kiss him anymore, so he issues an edict saying that whoever can make him a new head will get to marry one of the princesses. After two failures, a durable head is made out of wood by a wood-chopper. The Purple Dragon finds the wood-chopper and bites his head off, replacing it with the King's head. When the wood-chopper appears in court, he switches heads with the King, so that the King has his own head again and the wood-chopper has a wooden head he made. The King then tries to fulfill his promise, but the princesses refuse to marry a wooden-headed man. The wood-chopper then confronts the Purple Dragon, who tries its head-biting technique again, only to get its teeth stuck in the wooden head, thus letting the wood-chopper get his own head back so he can marry a princess. Chapter Three: The Monarch meets a dog, who is a curiosity because there are no dogs in Mo. However, his majesty loses his temper and ends up kicking the dog who literally gets bent out of shape until he resumes his natural form again. Chapter Four: Prince Zingle, the oldest Prince, is upset because the King will not let him milk the Ice-Cream Cow. Urged by the Purple Dragon, Zingle pushes his father down a large hole so he will become the King. The Monarch escapes from the hole and punishes Zingle by abandoning him on the Fruit Cake Island on the Rootbeer River, an island made of fruit cake. After a while, Prince Zingle gets such a furious stomachache from eating nothing but fruit cake that he repents. Chapter Five: The King celebrates his birthday (which he does several times a year) by throwing a huge celebration, during which he entertains everyone with items from a magical casket. Everyone goes ice-skating on a lake of sugar-syrup. The sugar cracks and Princess Truella, Prince Jollikin and Nuphsed sink to the bottom. The King gets them out by fishing for them, baiting the line with a kiss for Truella and a laugh for Jollikin. But when it comes to getting Nuphsed, no one knows what he likes best, so they consult the Wise Donkey. The Wise Donkey suggests that they use an apple, knowing that it won't work. When it doesn't work, the Wise Donkey eats the apple and tells them to use a kind word. They do, and it works. Chapter Six: King Scowleyow, who lives in a nearby country, hates the people of Mo, and has his people build a giant man out of cast-iron, designed to destroy Mo. They wind up the Cast-iron and he walks towards Mo, but trips on the dog. Prince Thinkabit figures out how to get rid of the Cast-iron Man: he tickles the Cast-iron man to get him on his back, then he pushes a pin in the Cast-iron Man to get him to stand up again, but now the Cast-iron Man is facing the other way, so he goes to King Scowleyow's kingdom and destroys it instead. The Cast-iron man eventually gets stuck in the mud at the bottom of the ocean and is never heard from again. Chapter Seven: A boy named Timtom falls in love with Princess Pattycake, the most beautiful princess, who unfortunately has a bad temper and tries to beat anyone who talks to her. He journeys to see the Sorceress Maëtta to get her help, and along the way, he meets three animals, who agree to help him in return for gifts from Maëtta. Timtom gets a pill for getting rid of Pattycake's temper and the gifts for the animals, but they are stolen by a Sly Fox. Timtom manages to recover the gifts, thus pleasing the animals. He then goes to Pattycake and feeds her the pill. She loses her temper and then agrees to marry him. Chapter Eight: A horrible monster called a gigaboo comes to Mo and starts destroying things. Prince Jollikin fights the gigaboo, and has his head, arms and legs cut off. Prince Jollikin manages to put himself back together, although at first he could only find his legs and head. He then saves the day by killing the gigaboo. Chapter Nine: There is an evil wizard in Mo who is a midget and very sensitive about his height, so he tries to make a potion to increase his height. One of the ingredients of the potion is the big toe of a princess, so he steals the toe from Princess Truella. Truella gives chase, overcoming the obstacles the Wizard throws at her, and eventually kills the Wizard and recovers her toe. Chapter Ten: The Duchess Bredenbutta falls asleep on her boat while it floats down the Rootbeer River, and so she gets too close to the waterfall at the end of the river and falls down. She ends up in Turvyland, where everything is opposite of the way it should be. With some help from a local named Upsydoun, she manages to get back to her home. Chapter Eleven: The King's animal crackers, which are real animals, fight amongst each other, putting the King in a bad mood, so when Prince Fiddlecumdoo asks to leave Mo, the King consents, although it is a bad idea. Prince Fiddlecumdoo leaves and meets a friendly giant named Hartilaf. Hartilaf's wife accidentally runs the prince through a clothes-wringer, and Prince Fiddlecumdoo returns home, completely flat. They use an air pump to get him back to normal. Chapter Twelve: Prince Zingle builds a large kite, which flies into the air, taking Zingle with it, eventually landing in the Land of the Civilized Monkeys, where monkeys act like humans. The monkeys do not speak English (but rather, they speak Monkey) and have never seen a human before, so they think Zingle is a dangerous animal and lock him in the zoo, where all of the monkeys come to see him, including two professors who believe that Zingle may be the missing link. Prince Zingle manages to escape and get back home. Chapter Thirteen: The King's plum-pudding has been stolen, so he asks his wise men who did it. The wise men blame the fox, who is captured. The fox explains that he did not do it, as he was busy curing his family's sore throats by taking out the throats and turning them inside-out, then drying them in the sun. The wise men then blame the bullfrog, who is also captured. The bullfrog explains that he did not do it, as he and his wife were busy trying to save their tadpoles, who were eaten by a large fish. The wise men then blame the Yellow Hen, who is also captured. She explains that she did not do it, as her last batch of eggs accidentally produced a Hawk, not a chicken, and the Hawk took her away to a different country, and she spent the last nine days returning to Mo. The King, furious at the wise men for being wrong three times, has them put into a meat-grinder, so that they are mixed into one wise man, who tells the King that the Purple Dragon stole the plum-pudding. Chapter Fourteen: The King holds a council of war to try to figure out how to destroy the Purple Dragon. They decide that the dragon cannot be destroyed, but at least they could rip out its teeth and make it harmless. They build a giant pair of forceps and clamp it to one of the Purple Dragon's teeth. The Purple Dragon winds its tail around a pillar to avoid being pulled by the people. As it turns out, his tooth cannot be removed, even though the men run to the other side of the valley; instead, the Purple Dragon is stretched all the way across the valley, so that it is no thicker than a fiddle-string. Prince Fiddlecumdoo cuts the Purple Dragon into fiddle-strings, and so the Valley of Mo is freed from its worst enemy.
2135139	/m/06pdr_	After Virtue		1981	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 MacIntyre holds that After Virtue makes seven central claims. It begins with an allegory suggestive of the premise of the science-fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz: a world where all sciences have been dismantled quickly and completely. MacIntyre asks what the sciences would look like if they were re-assembled from the remnants of scientific knowledge that survived the catastrophe. He claims that the new sciences, though superficially similar to the old, would in fact be devoid of real scientific content, because the key suppositions and attitudes would not be present. "The hypothesis which I wish to advance," he continues, "is that in the actual world which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world which I described." Specifically, MacIntyre applies this hypothesis to advance the notion that the moral structures that emerged from the Enlightenment were philosophically doomed from the start because they were formed using the aforementioned incoherent language of morality. MacIntyre claims that this failure encompasses the work of many significant Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment moral philosophers, including Kierkegaard, Marx, Kant, and Hume. These philosophers "fail because of certain shared characteristics deriving from their highly specific historical background." That background is the Enlightenment's abandonment of Aristotelianism, and in particular the Aristotelian concept of teleology. Ancient and medieval ethics, argues MacIntyre, relied wholly on the teleological idea that human life had a proper end or character, and that human beings could not reach this natural end without preparation. Renaissance science rejected Aristotle's teleological physics as an incorrect and unnecessary account, which led Renaissance philosophy to make a similar rejection in the realm of ethics. But shorn of teleology, ethics as a body of knowledge was expurgated of its central content, and only remained as, essentially, a vocabulary list with few definitions and no context. With such an incomplete framework on which to base their moral understanding, the philosophers of the Enlightenment and their successors were doomed from the beginning. MacIntyre illustrates this point through an example of a people who, he argues, experienced a similar incoherence in their own moral and ethical tradition: the Polynesian people of the South Pacific and their taboos. King Kamehameha II removed the taboos of the people in order to modernize their society and met little if any resistance. The Polynesians had no issue with abandoning their long-standing cultural traditions and MacIntyre claims this is because the taboos, though once meaningful to the islanders, had been shorn over the centuries of their underlying spiritual and didactic purpose, becoming a set of arbitrary prohibitions. The fact that Kamehameha II could abolish them so easily and without opposition is evidence, MacIntyre argues, of their incoherence. A similar incoherence, he argues, bedevils the ethical project since the Enlightenment. Another reason MacIntyre gives for the doomed nature of the Enlightenment is the fact that it ascribed moral agency to the individual. He claims this made morality no more than one man's opinion and, thus, philosophy became a forum of inexplicably subjective rules and principles. The failure of the Enlightenment Project, because of the abandonment of a teleological structure, is shown by the inadequacy of moral emotivism, which MacIntyre believes accurately reflects the state of modern morality. MacIntyre offers a strong critique of Friedrich Nietzsche, whom he calls the "King Kamehameha II of the European tradition," in reference to the Polynesian allegory above. MacIntyre explains that, "Nietzschean man, the Übermensch, [is] the man who transcends, finds his good nowhere in the social world to date, but only that in himself which dictates his own new law and his own new table of the virtues." Although he disagreed with Nietzsche's inegalitarian and elitist view of mankind, he acknowledged the validity of Nietzsche's critique of Enlightenment morality as an explanation of the latter's degeneration into emotivism, and that, like Kamehameha II, Nietzsche had identified the moral imperatives of his time as arbitrary and incoherent in demanding their abolition. The nineteenth-century critic who has most lastingly and profoundly influenced MacIntyre is not Nietzsche but Marx — indeed, After Virtue originates in MacIntyre's plans to write a book repairing the moral weaknesses of Marxism. His critique of capitalism, and its associated liberal ideology and bureaucratic state (including what, in After Virtue, he condemned as the state capitalism of the USSR) is not expressed in traditional Marxist terms. Instead, it is written as a defence of ordinary social 'practices', and of the 'goods internal to practices'. Pursuit of these helps to give narrative structure and intelligibility to our lives, but these goods must be defended against their corruption by 'institutions', which pursue such 'external goods' as money, power and status (chapters 14-15). MacIntyre seeks to find an alternative to Nietzsche's philosophy and eventually concludes that only classic Aristotelian thought can hope to save Western humanity. While Nietzsche seems to include the Aristotelian ethics and politics in his attack on the "degenerate disguises of the will to power," MacIntyre claims that this cannot be done due to important differences between the structure and assumptions of Aristotelian and post-Enlightenment philosophy. These include: *Aristotle's assumption that man is as-he-happens-to-be and that this is distinct from man-as-he-should-be. The Enlightenment, on the other hand, offers no metaphysical framework whatsoever in place of teleology. *Aristotle's claim that rules are based on virtues, which are derived from an understanding of the telos. The Enlightenment reversed this and predicated virtues on an understanding of subjective (but purported to be universal) principles. *Aristotle's assertion that virtue and morality are integral parts of society, as an understanding of the telos must be social and not individual. In the Enlightenment, however, societies lost their moral authority and the individual became the fundamental interpreter of moral questions. MacIntyre opposes Nietzsche's return to the aristocratic ethics of Homeric Greece with the teleological approach to ethics pioneered by Aristotle. Nietzsche’s critique of Enlightenment moral theory does not work against a teleological ethics. For MacIntyre, "Nietzsche replaces the fictions of the Enlightenment individualism, of which he is so contemptuous, with a set of individualist fictions of his own." Nietzsche’s übermensch, his solution to the lies of the Enlightenment, exposes the failure of the Enlightenment's epistemological project and of its search for a subjective yet universal morality. Nietzsche neglects the role of society in the formation and understanding of tradition and morality, and "Nietzsche’s great man cannot enter into relationships meditated by appeal to shared standards or virtues or goods; he is his own only moral authority and his relationships to others have to be exercises of that authority... it will be to condemn oneself to that moral solipsism which constitutes Nietzschean greatness." After Virtue ends by posing the question 'Nietzsche or Aristotle?', although MacIntyre acknowledges that the book does not give sufficient grounds for a definitive answer that it is Aristotle, not Nietzsche, who points to the best solution for the problems that the book has diagnosed. Those grounds are set out in MacIntyre's subsequent works, in which he elaborates a sophisticated revision of the philosophical tradition of Aristotelianism. In the end, however, MacIntyre tells us that we are waiting not for Godot but for St Benedict. MacIntyre charges a strong critique against individualist political philosophy, such as John Rawls' A Theory of Justice and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. To MacIntyre, morals and virtues can only be comprehended through their relation to the community in which they come from. Whereas Rawls tells us to conceive of justice through abstracting ourselves from who we are (through the veil of ignorance, for example) MacIntyre disagrees. Running throughout 'After Virtue' is the belief that in order to comprehend who we are, we must understand where we come from.
2135718	/m/06pfdf	The Fourth Hand	John Irving	2001-07-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While reporting a story from India, Patrick Wallingford, a New York television journalist, has his left hand eaten by a lion. Millions of TV viewers witness the accident, and Patrick achieves instant notoriety as "the lion guy". In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon, Dr. Nicholas M. Zajac, awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant. After watching video of Patrick, Dr. Zajac contacts the journalist and pledges to find a suitable hand donor for him. Doris Clausen, a married woman in Wisconsin, wants to give Patrick Wallingford her husband’s left hand—that is, after her husband dies. When her husband later dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Doris immediately rushes the hand to Boston. In the waiting room prior to the procedure, Doris has sex with Patrick, explaining that she had always wanted to have a child but was unable to with her late husband. The hand is then successfully attached by Dr. Zajac, with unorthodox visitation rights for the hand granted to Doris. Patrick quickly falls in love with Doris, who has his baby, Otto Clausen Junior. Doris, however, will not return Patrick's love, and only allows him to touch her intimately with her late husband's hand, now Patrick's.
2137175	/m/06pjms	The Nature of Alexander	Mary Renault	1975		 The book is a biography of King Alexander the Great, (356-323 BCE/BC), ruler of Macedon, Egypt and Persia. Renault wrote several historical novels in which Alexander appears: The Mask of Apollo (1966), Fire from Heaven (1969), The Persian Boy (1972) and Funeral Games (1981). She felt these were not enough to tell the whole story of Alexander, and so she completed her nonfiction biography. The book makes no attempt to be impartial or neutral, but rather unabashedly advocates Alexander as a truly great man. For example, Renault rejects the usual terminology of the "murder" of Kleitos, pointing out that legally, "murder" refers only to a killing with premeditation, which absolutely was not the case when the King killed Kleitos in a drunken brawl, after much drink and much provocation. She also points out that the beauty of the mummy of Alexander was still much admired even many generations after his death. She refutes many slurs against Alexander, both ancient and modern. Renault also defends Alexander's friend Hephaistion, pointing out that he corresponded with Aristotle and was successful in every mission and independent command he undertook. The hardcover edition is illustrated.
2138603	/m/06pmlj	Fire and Hemlock	Diana Wynne Jones	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As she clears out her old bedroom, Polly discovers that below her memories, in which she led an entirely normal and unremarkable life, there is a second set of memories, which are rather unusual. As Polly thinks back to this "second set" of memories, the point where they seem to diverge is when she stumbled into a funeral in an old mansion, Hunsdon House, when she was ten and playing with her best friend, Nina. There, she was approached by a man named Thomas Lynn who took her back outside and kept her company. He takes her back inside to help him select six pictures from a large pile, his share of the estate of the deceased; one of them is a photograph called "Fire and Hemlock" (hence the name of the novel), which he gave to her. He then takes her back to her grandmother's house, where she is living. Over the following years Tom and Polly continue a friendship largely through correspondence, with occasional visits. Tom sends her books and letters with stories in them, many of which tie into the general theme of his predicament. Together, the two come up with stories about a hero named Tan Coul and his assistant Hero, who are Mr. Lynn's and Polly's alter egos, respectively. These stories all eventually come true, after a fashion. For instance, after discussing Tan Coul's horse, they encounter an identical horse disrupting traffic in the streets of London, having escaped from a nearby circus. An invented town and hardware store later turn out to be real, the proprietor being the spitting image of Tom, and his nephew Leslie falling into the story much later as a possible victim of Laurel's. Tom and Polly's story features three other heroes; later on, Tom gives Polly a photograph of all the members of his orchestra, and asks her to identify them. She immediately finds the other three heroes. These three are exactly the ones with whom Tom was considering setting up an independent string quartet. All the while, Polly encounters members of Tom's ex-wife's family, all of whom seem to be threatening her and trying to break off her relationship with Tom. These include Seb, who is a few years older than Polly. Polly understands the threats as Laurel (Tom's ex-wife) having some sort of power over him. Tom refuses to talk about it. This friendship develops against the background of Polly's growing up in her own disintegrating family life: her father Reg leaves, and a new lodger moves in and begins a relationship with her mother, Ivy. When Ivy sends her to live with her father in Bristol, it soon becomes apparent that she was not wanted there, her father having neither told his girlfriend that she was coming nor that she was supposed to live with them permanently. Eventually Polly moves in with her grandmother, who acts as a strong, fierce, strict anchor in her life. As Polly turns sixteen, she realises that she has always loved Tom, but when she is rejected by him (in part because of their age difference, but also for her own safety, as she later discovers) she sets out to discover the secret of his relationship with the sinister Laurel that is somehow connected to all the supernatural events that happen to Tom and her. To do this, she performs voodoo-like ceremony, and it partly succeeds - she is summoned to Hunsdon House, where it all started. Laurel is there, but humiliates Polly and tells her (untruthfully) that Tom is dying of cancer, and wants to be left alone by her. Mortified, Polly agrees to forget him, and leaves. Her second set of memories ends here. Three years later, sitting in front of the picture (that she now realizes was a gift from Tom) Polly decides to start investigating, and finds out that all memory of Tom has been erased from her life, and that he has been eradicated from the memories of anyone who should have known him. As well as this, other people that she met in connection with Tom have no idea who she is, her friend Nina believes that Polly stopped talking to her years ago, and friends that she met through Tom have apparently never met her. She becomes frustrated, and is determined to find Tom, the man she knew and still loves. In this she is aided by reading two ballads, Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, which help her figure out the truth. In reality, Tom has entered into a deal with the so-called Queen of the Fairies - Laurel. The time has now come when he must give his life to prolong that of her husband, the sinister Morton Leroy, the King of the Fairies. Using the information in the ballads as an instruction, she arrives at the ceremony over which Laurel is presiding, and manages to outwit her and secure Tom's life, and, depending on the way you interpret the strange happenings of the ending, his love.
2143087	/m/06py0c	River of Ice				 In a cave under a glacier (the "River of Ice") in British Columbia, Brent and Lini Waller find a time capsule with treasure, artifacts, and manuscripts from an advanced, pre-Ice Age civilization. Lini seeks to sell the cave contents to the Wittwar Foundation. Benson declines to lead an expedition to the cave. Lini is kidnapped, and a steel needle is pounded into her brain, a pre-Ice Age mind control technique. She leads the Justice Inc. team into several death traps, including a room filled with dry ice and a building that falls on their car. Mac and Josh, sent to locate the cave, are captured by the criminals. Nellie, captured, apparently has a needle inserted in her brain. Flying to the cave, under Lini's control, Nellie strands Benson, Smitty, and Rosabel in a remote location. Benson had planned for a second plane, delivered by a young Canadian pilot, but accidentally crashes it and is captured. The mastermind seeks the ancient cold light technology which lights the cave, removes all the ancient artifacts, and sets an explosion that buries the cave with the Justice Inc. team inside. Benson arranged for the explosion to destroy the criminals, and escapes the cave using ancient advanced technology.
2143727	/m/06pzrq	My Education: A Book of Dreams	William S. Burroughs	1995-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Most of the dreams are concerned with mundane affairs: talking to his friends Ian Sommerville, Allen Ginsberg and Brion Gysin; protecting his cats; trying to get sex, drugs or something to eat. There are flying dreams, erotic suitcase-packing dreams, dreams of being bullied by men in uniforms. There are references to strange drugs such as "Jade" and "Bogomolets Anti-Human Serum 125." In addition, there are other segments which seem unconcerned with dreams at all, such as a chapter where Burroughs instructs the reader on how to create botulism. There is a place he refers to as the Land of the Dead, which, like Interzone, seems to be a conglomeration of many cities: Tangiers, London, Paris, and others. ru:Моё образование: книга снов
2143733	/m/06pzs1	Bliss	Peter Carey	1981	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Written as a dark, comic fable, the story concerns an advertising executive, Harry Joy, who briefly 'dies' of a heart attack. On being resuscitated, he realizes that the life he has previously drifted aimiably through is in fact Hell – literally so to Harry. His wife is unfaithful with his partner. His son is selling drugs, and his daughter is a communist selling herself to buy them. In one of the novel's more shocking scenes, glimpsed through a window, incest occurs. Redemption comes in the form of Honey Barbara – pantheist, healer, whore. In the words of the book's blurb "Honey is to Harry as Isis is to Osiris. Together they conquer Hell and retire to the forest where their children inherit the legend of paradise regained." But Harry must die for a second time to be truly saved.
2143882	/m/06p_6w	Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul	Tony Hendra			 When Hendra was 14, he had an affair with a married woman. When her husband, a devout Catholic, discovered them in each other's arms, he took Hendra on a trip to Quarr Abbey, a monastery on the Isle of Wight off the coast of England. Hendra, expecting to be disciplined, was surprised when a "cartoonish" monk, Father Joseph Warrilow, instead treated him kindly. Hendra fell in love with Quarr and decided to become a monk. When Hendra reached the age of eighteen and could legally begin his time at Quarr, Father Joe found out that Hendra had received a scholarship to Cambridge University, and he urged Hendra to first attend college and obtain a degree before he could be admitted to the monastery. While at Cambridge, Hendra attended a theatrical revue called Beyond the Fringe. The brilliant performance by Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller had such an impact on him that his life set off on a totally different course. In his words, "I went into that theater a monk. I came out a satirist. Save the world through prayer? I don't think so. I'm going to save it through laughter." In spite of his decision not to become a monk, he continued to visit Father Joe for more than 40 years, until Father Joe's death on April 27, 1998.
2145658	/m/06q3r2	Fletch Won	Gregory Mcdonald	1985-09-19	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 During what is effectively a prequel, Fletch has only been at the News-Tribune as a junior reporter for a short time and Frank (his editor) is losing respect for his new employee. Frank moves Fletch to a different section of the newspaper more than once, but Fletch continues to cause trouble. When Fletch is to run the story of local lawyer Donald Habeck, who requests an interview in order to announce that he is giving 5 million dollars to a local museum, the lawyer turns up dead in the News-Tribune parking lot. Unsurprisingly Frank takes Fletch off the story and gives it to an experienced reporter who has been with the paper for years. Fletch is now charged with investigating a whorehouse—which he does. However, he is not about to give up on the Habeck story, the circumstances of which seem mighty suspicious, especially when Fletch starts to suspect that the legal firm Habeck worked for is one of the most crooked firms around.
2145882	/m/06q4b2	How It Is	Samuel Beckett	1961	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The title is Beckett's literal translation of the French phrase, comment c'est (how it is), a pun on the French verb commencer or 'to begin'. The text is divided into three parts: 1. "before Pim" - the solitary narrator journeys in the mud-dark until he encounters another creature like himself thereby forming a "couple". 2. "with Pim" - the narrator is motionless in the mud-dark until he is abandoned by Pim. 3. "after Pim" - the narrator returns to his earlier solitude but without motion in the mud-dark. In a letter (April 6, 1960) to Donald McWhinnie at BBC Radio Drama, Beckett explained his strange text as the product of a " 'man' lying panting in the mud and dark murmuring his 'life' as he hears it obscurely uttered by a voice inside him... The noise of his panting fills his ears and it is only when this abates that he can catch and murmur forth a fragment of what is being stated within... It is in the third part that occurs the so-called voice 'quaqua', its interiorisation and murmuring forth when the panting stops. That is to say the 'I' is from the outset in the third part and the first and second, though stated as heard in the present, already over."
2146926	/m/06q7bl	Searching for David's Heart	Cherie Bennett	1998-11	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Darcy Deeton is a twelve-year-old girl who loves her older brother, David. After becoming jealous when he falls in love with Jayne Evans, Darcy inadvertently leads David to his death in a car accident. The Deetons decide to donate David's most important organ, his heart. Darcy is so guilt-ridden about his death that she is determined to find the person who has his heart so she can find some closure. Darcy embarks on a wild adventure with her best friend, Sam.
2150790	/m/06qj9s	Hammerhead Ranch Motel	Tim Dorsey	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Serge follows the suitcase containing five million up the coast of Florida to Tampa where he proceeds to meet Lenny Lipowicz, a part time Don Johnson impersonator who owns a real moon rock from a 1970s space mission. Along for the ride are City and Country, two girls from Alabama who are on the run after an incident in a bar bathroom where a girl accidentally stabbed herself with a steak knife she was using to snort cocaine from. One of the girls pulled the blade out trying to help, but it cut an artery. With their fingerprints all over, they decided to run for it. There is also a gangster named Fiddlebottom who changed his name to the more menacing "Zargoza", and a Hemingway impersonator named Jethro, and so on. All these characters meet up by the end at the Hammerhead Ranch Motel as hurricane Rolando-berto comes ashore.
2150808	/m/06qjcm	Cadillac Beach	Tim Dorsey	2004-02-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The year is 1996. At long last, Serge A. Storms has been captured. He is committed to the psychiatric hospital at Chattahoochee, where he patiently tries to explain his views. Serge grows tired of this diversion, however, and escapes once more. His newest obsession involves investigating the circumstances surrounding his grandfather's death forty years earlier, when he allegedly committed suicide by wandering into the ocean at a Miami beach. Serge's grandfather, who passed on many of his habits and interests (as well as his mental instability) to his grandson, may have been involved with a lucrative jewel theft shortly before his disappearance, however, so his friends are understandably reluctant to talk. The novel then skips forward eight years and over the previous novels in the series to 1996, where Serge is living with his friend Lenny and Lenny's mother while planning a phantasmagoric array of projects, the biggest of which is still to solve the matter of his grandfather's supposed suicide. To finance his quest, Serge and Lenny start up a unique tour service highlighting the "lesser known" side of Florida's tourism industry. During one of his tours, a group of drunken convention attendees accidentally kidnap and kill a mob boss. The mobster in question just happens to be one that Serge personally insulted a few days earlier, incurring the wrath of both the mob and the FBI. Serge decides to keep close tabs on the salesmen for their own protection, not letting them leave his sight. Somehow, he also finds the time to publicly embarrass the Castro regime of Cuba and the United States government at the same time. Tagging along in Serge's deathmarch/tour are Lenny, a newspaper columnist from New York City, a friend of Serge's grandfather's named Chi Chi, and City and Country, a pair of dim-witted women that Serge ditched at the beginning of The Stingray Shuffle, in 1998.
2150820	/m/06qjd_	Torpedo Juice	Tim Dorsey	2005-01-18	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The book takes place mainly in the Florida Keys, where Serge heads to "reinvent himself". After flirting with becoming the next Jimmy Buffett (undaunted by a total lack of musical talent), he finally decides to marry. All he has to do is find the right woman. Given Serge's personality (a mixture of bizarre topic-hopping as his attention drifts and his penchant for brutal honesty), this proves quite a challenge. And somehow, he's picked up a legion of devoted followers continually begging him for pearls of wisdom. After briefly courting a few unwilling prospects, he falls in love at first sight with Molly, a new hire at the local library. She initially seems to be stereotypically meek and prim, but is won over when she inadvertently watches Serge beat a man to death for insulting her. She agrees to his hastily-scheduled wedding (held during an underwater concert) and quickly proves to be more than a match for Serge's formidable libido. He is quickly baffled by the intricacies of a "normal" relationship, however, and his bride resents all the time he spends with his dim-bulb pal Coleman. Arguments and cold silences follow. With all of this frustration, Serge barely notices the brown Duster following him or the repeated attempts on his life. Meanwhile, the regulars at the No Name Pub are vexed by Gaskin Fussels, an obnoxious rich loudmouth who flies down to the Keys every weekend to "whoop it up". They ignore him as best they can until Fussels, obliviously following a half-joking suggestion, steals and accidentally destroys a prized possession of the local viciously psychotic drug lord obsessed with the movie Scarface. Simultaneously, downtrodden waitress Anna discovers that her abusive husband has been murdered, along with her brother and his wife. She flees for her life, trying to decide who to trust and how to free herself from the trouble in which she suddenly finds herself. She finds an ally, and later a lover, in Jerry, the desperate-to-be-liked bartender at the No Name Pub. Gus is a deputy in a small police station. Gus can't escape his mocking nickname of Serpico or the humiliations his ex-wife heaped on him, both of which his partner Walter is happy to mention. Suddenly the fax starts spitting out bulletins about possible serial killers headed their way and dangerous cars to be on the lookout for. A slimy ex-CEO, recently tried for improprieties that robbed thousands of people of their retirement funds (in an apparent reference to the Enron scandal), decides to spread a little "goodwill" around the Keys. But he is obviously buying people's support before announcing his plans to obscure some of Florida's most beautiful shoreline with condominiums. Legally, he should have lost nearly all his wealth, but thanks to the quasi-legal dealings of his equally slimy lawyers, he is still spending other people's money and living the good life. In the end, of course, very few people are who they seem and identities are unmasked as all the plot threads come crashing together. Molly is a serial killer even more deranged than Serge, Fussels is a fed investigating Jerry (who is actually "Scarface"), and Anna and Gus find themselves in possession of a solid gold boat anchor worth millions.
2150873	/m/06qjk_	Man Plus	Frederik Pohl	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the not-too-distant future, a cold war threatens to turn hot. Colonization of Mars seems to be mankind's only hope of surviving certain Armageddon. To facilitate this, the American government begins a cyborg program to create a being capable of surviving the harsh Martian environment: Man Plus. After the death of the first candidate, due to the project supervisors forgetting to enhance his brain's ability to process sensory input to cope with the new stimuli he is receiving, Roger Torraway becomes the heart of the program. In order to survive in the thin Martian atmosphere, Roger Torraway's body must be replaced with an artificial one. At every step he becomes more and more disconnected from humanity, unable to feel things in his new body. It is only after arriving on Mars that his new body begins to make sense to him. It is perfectly adapted to this new world, and thus he becomes perfectly separated from his old world, and from humanity. The success of the Martian mission spurs similar cyborg programs in other spacefaring nations. It is revealed that the computer networks of Earth have become sentient, and that ensuring humanity's survival will guarantee theirs as well. In the end, the network is puzzled...it appears that something else was behind the push to space, a mystery even to the machines.
2152947	/m/06qpny	The Flame Breathers				 Four Polish scientists and a private detective become "Flame Breathers" and die; a car and a plane set speed records and are destroyed, the driver, pilot, and a reporter, killed; a Montreal police lab, the financier Singer's home, a bathtub with financier Henderlin in it all explode; a house in NJ, heated and lit without using electricity, gas, or oil, explodes. A beautiful woman with black hair thwarts the Justice Inc. team repeatedly. A small strange man seems to be implicated in the scheme. Benson initially finds no chemical explanation for the flames and explosions. He investigates, his aides playing relatively small roles. Benson is betrayed by his paralyzed face and his white hair. The plot is complex: two gangs, each backed by a financier, fight for control of a secret process, discovered by the four scientists, that can turn water into an energy source. The black-haired woman seeks justice for the death of the reporter, her brother, and gets it as Benson causes the gangs destroy one another. The small man, lab assistant to the four scientists, dies, taking the secret of getting energy from water to the grave with him.
2156091	/m/06qzdc	House of Incest	Anaïs Nin		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nin's usage of the word incest in this case is metaphorical, not literal. In other words, in this book the word "incest" describes a selfish love where one can appreciate in another only that which is similar to oneself. One is then only loving oneself, shunning all differences. At first, such a self-love can seem ideal because it is without fear and without risk. But eventually it becomes a sterile nightmare. Toward the end of the book, the character called "the modern Christ" puts Nin’s use of the word into context: “If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other." Nin was under the analysis of Otto Rank during the period of writing House of Incest. Rank was an early disciple of Freud, serving as the secretary and youngest member of his Vienna group, but had long since dissented from Freudian orthodoxy and developed his own theoretical school. Incest: From a Journal of Love"—The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1932–1934) reveals that the two were also having an affair. Rank helped Anaïs edit House of Incest. He had experience with this topic, as Otto Rank's most famous book is The Trauma of Birth. House of Incest is largely an attempt by the narrator to cope with the shock of the trauma of birth. Anaïs Nin describes the process as akin to being "[e]jected from a paradise of soundlessness.... thrown up on a rock, the skeleton of a ship choked in its own sails."
2156552	/m/06q_s9	The Deep Blue Good-by	John D. MacDonald	1964	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The Deep Blue Good-by introduces readers to McGee, his place of residence, the Busted Flush (a houseboat he won in a poker game), and its mooring place, slip F-18 at the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In the early chapters we learn that McGee is a bachelor, a man who can be friends with ladies as well as have a passion for them, and a man of principle (although they are somewhat at the mercy of his uncertain emotional condition and his circumstances at the moment; in McGee's own words, "Some of them I'll bend way, way, over, but not break."). We also learn that McGee is by occupation a salvage consultant, a concept almost certainly coined and developed by MacDonald. (As a "salvage consultant," McGee undertakes to recover for its rightful owner money or property of which the owner has been wrongfully deprived and has no other hope of recovering, taking half its value as his fee.) McGee works when he has to, almost always only taking jobs when his supply of money (kept in an ingenious "hidey-hole" aboard the Flush) is low. In one tale, however, McGee avenges the murder of a long-time friend. In another, he is asked by the daughter of a friend to find out why her husband is trying to kill her. While he can be mercenary at times, he is not a mercenary. Another feature of the McGee series is the seemingly unending parade of colorful and invariably evil villains whom McGee must contend with in order to make a recovery for his clients. In this first story the antagonist is Junior Allen, a smiling, seemingly friendly man, large, "cat quick", powerful, and pathologically evil. The story begins with a fortune smuggled home after World War II by a soldier who was a native of the Florida Keys. This soldier killed another soldier just prior to his discharge, went on the run back to the Keys, and buried his treasure there. He was later captured by the U.S. Army and sent to a military prison, where he met Junior Allen. Allen discovered vague details about the fortune hidden in the Keys and after his release from prison went there to find it. The story depicts the psychotic behavior of Allen as he evolves from thief to serial rapist to murderer. We see McGee's savvy, guile, and physical prowess as he works methodically to locate Allen and eventually make the recovery. As is thematic in many of the McGee books, however, he pays a heavy price for the successful recovery. Throughout the series, in fact, it is debatable as to whether McGee ever makes a recovery in which the costs outweigh the gain.
2159939	/m/06r817	Dragon and Phoenix	Joanne Bertin	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book covers the fall of an empire to the south of the Five Kingdoms, the land of the first novel. The empire of Jehanglan is sustained by the Phoenix dynasty, which draws its power from a phoenix trapped a thousand years ago. The phoenix is kept in place by the power of a truedragon, also trapped and exploited. On discovering that one of their cousins is trapped, Linden Rathan and his soultwin, Maurynna Kyrissaean, lead a party to rescue him. Unfortunately, they play into the hands of a Jehangli lord who seeks to trap the Dragonlords and use the additional power to take the throne for himself.
2160253	/m/06r8vj	The War in the Air	H. G. Wells	1908	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first three chapters of The War in the Air relate details of the life of Bert Smallways and his extended family in Bun Hill, in the countryside south of London. Bert is an unimpressive, not particularly gifted, unsuccessful young man with few ideas about larger things, but with a strong attachment to a young woman named Edna. He works as a helper and partner in a bicycle shop. When bankruptcy threatens one summer, he and his partner abandon the shop, devise a singing act ("the Desert Dervishes"), and resolve to try their fortunes in English sea resorts. As chance would have, their initial performance is interrupted by a balloon flight of one Mr. Butteridge. Butteridge is known not for ballons, but for his successful invention of an easily maneuverable fixed-wing aircraft whose secret he has not revealed and that he is seeking to sell to the British government or, failing that, to Germany. By accident Bert is stranded in Butteridge's balloon, which has on board Butteridge's plans. Bert is clever enough to appraise his situation, and when the balloon is shot down in a secret German "aeronautic park east of Hamburg," Bert tries to pass himself off as Butteridge in order to sell the secret. (Aircraft development has been mainly limited to airships and what appear to be single-use semi-gliders that have to be launched from an airship (the Drachenflieger); it has not succeeded in producing a really practical heavier-than-air machine, only a few awkward devices of limited utility. Butteridge's invention is a major breakthrough in heavier-than-air flight, being highly manoeuvrable, capable of both very fast and very slow flight, and requiring only a small area to take off and land; it appears to combine the advantages of the helicopter and the aeroplane in a manner superior to modern real-world V/STOL craft.) But Bert has stumbled upon the German air fleet just as it is about to launch an attack on the United States, and Prince Karl Albert, the author and leader of this plan, decides to take him along for the campaign. The German aerial forces, and consisting of airships and Drachenflieger, attempt to seize control of the air before the Americans build a large-scale aerial navy. The Germans are unaware that the Chinese and Japanese have also been building a massive air force. Tensions between Japan and the United States, exacerbated by the issue of American citizenship being denied to Japanese immigrants, also lead to war. The "Confederation of Eastern Asia" (China and Japan) turns out to possess aerial forces, and their aircraft and tactics have been seen as a portent to the kamikaze of World War II. The United States therefore has to fight on two fronts: the Eastern and the Western, in the air as well on sea. Bert Smallways is present as the Germans first attack an American naval fleet in the Atlantic, then bomb New York City into submission. Bert's disguise has already been foiled by the perspicacious Germans, and he is relegated to the role of a witness realizing the true horror of war. After New York City is bombarded by the German flying machines, the Asiatic aerial forces fly over the Rocky Mountains, and engage the Germans in dog fights above Niagara Falls. The Asiatic air fleet is equipped with large numbers of lightweight one-man flying machines called Niais, which appear to be ornithopters, armed with a gun carried by the pilot firing explosive bullets "loaded with oxygen" for use against the hydrogen-filled airships. Bert is stranded on Goat Island in the middle of Niagara Falls, finds a crashed Niais and, after killing Prince Karl Albert, who is similarly stranded, manages to escape from the island on it, crashlanding near Tanooda, NY. He learns that the Asiatic forces have landed "a million men" on the western seaboard, and with the help of a local landowner named Laurier turns the plans for Butteridge's flying machine over to the U.S. president, hiding out in Pinkerville "on the Hudson." The Asiatic fleet also attacks a combined Anglo-Indian aerial force, capturing the Burmese airfields, and in Australia as well, capturing the Pacific islands. In Europe, the United Kingdom, France and Italy fight the German and Swiss forces, leading to the destruction of London, Paris, Hamburg and Berlin. (The imagination of Bert Smallways if not that of H.G. Wells&mdash;it is not always easy to distinguish them in the novel&mdash;is deeply infected by the racism prevalent in England during the Edwardian era.) A global financial collapse is caused by hostile nations freezing assets, and the end of the credit system. This is referred to as "the Panic," which is followed by "The Purple Death." The War in the Air, the Panic, and the Purple Death bring about "[w]ithin the space of five years" a total collapse of "the whole fabric of civilisation." But Bert Smallways, fixated on his amorous attachment, returns home after many adventures via a ship to kill a rival and win the hand of Edna; they marry and have eleven children. We are assured in the final chapter that "our present world state, orderly, scientific, and secured," is eventually established, but the novel reverts to the ensuing fortunes of the Smallways family as England relapses into a sort of an agricultural medieval feudalism.
2161038	/m/06rc0f	Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone	Max McCoy	1995-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure"}	 The search for wealth and immortality has sent men mad. Now Indiana Jones is called to London to recover an ancient alchemist's manuscript that is supposed to contain the formula both for creating gold from lead and also granting eternal life. Certain that a missing British alchemist and an insane Renaissance scholar are involved in the theft; Indy, along with the alchemist's beautiful sister, travels to Rome, and straight into the hands of Mussolini's fascists. The scholar Sarducci (who appears mad) has stolen the Voynich Manuscript. However the manuscript is also a map, leading readers into the desert and the most ancient and magnificent crypt in the world, where Indiana Jones will either witness an astounding miracle of alchemy, or become the tomb's next inhabitant.
2162569	/m/06rgxp	The Perks of Being a Wallflower	Stephen Chbosky	1999-02-01	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "Charlie" is the alias of the adolescent narrator of the novel, who is about to begin his first year of high school. The novel is presented through letters that Charlie writes to an anonymous friend, whom he hears girls at school talk about fondly. Charlie begins his freshman year apprehensive due to the death of his only good friend Michael, who committed suicide several months before. He does not feel that he can lean on his parents or older siblings for support, because they never truly understood him. He also explains that the only relative that he ever felt close to was his Aunt Helen, but she was killed in a car accident on his seventh birthday. Charlie soon befriends two seniors, Sam and her step-brother Patrick. Throughout the story, Sam, Patrick, and Charlie's English teacher Bill introduce him to many new experiences and the letters he writes show his growth. In the end, he learns that he can go on life without being scared because he is a wallflower. Charlie writes about situations he gets into with his new friends including going to parties, seeing and performing in Rocky Horror Picture Show and going on his first date. Charlie also falls in love with Sam during the novel. He writes to his anonymous friend a lot about love. Besides his feelings for Sam, he also briefly dates Mary Elizabeth, another girl in their group of friends. In addition, Charlie writes about Patrick's relationship with Brad, the quarterback of the football team, who is gay but still "in the closet". Another relationship discussed is his sister's, who is dating a boy who Charlie witnessed hitting her, which Charlie is especially sensitive to as his Aunt Helen was abused. Charlie grows a lot during the story and learns how to participate in life. At the end of the summer, Patrick and Sam take Charlie through the tunnel again, this time, with Charlie standing in the truck bed.
2164610	/m/06rn04	The Bottle Imp	Robert Louis Stevenson		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Keawe, a poor Hawaiian man, buys a strange bottle from a sad, elderly gentleman who credits the bottle with his fortune. He promises that an imp residing in the bottle will also grant Keawe his every desire. Of course, there is a catch — the bottle must be sold at a loss, i.e. for less than its owner originally paid, or else it will simply return to him. The currency used in the transaction must also be in coin (not paper money or a bank cheque/check). The bottle may not be thrown or given away. All of these commands must be transmitted from each seller to each purchaser. If an owner of the bottle dies without having sold it in the prescribed manner, that person's soul will burn for eternity in Hell. The bottle was said to have been brought to Earth by the Devil and first purchased by Prester John for millions of dollars; it was owned by Napoleon and Captain James Cook and accounted for their great successes. By the time of the story the price has diminished to eighty dollars. Keawe buys the bottle and instantly wishes his money to be refunded, to convince himself he has not been suckered. When his pockets fill with coins, he realizes the bottle does indeed have unholy power. He finds he cannot abandon it or sell it for a profit, so he wishes for his heart's desire: a big, fancy mansion on a landed estate. Upon his return to Hawaii, Keawe's wish has been granted, but at a price: his beloved uncle and cousins have been killed in a boating accident, leaving Keawe sole heir to his uncle's fortune. Keawe is horrified, but uses the money to build his house. After explaining the risks, he sells the bottle to a friend. Keawe lives a happy life, but there is something missing. Walking along the beach one night, he meets a beautiful woman, Kokua. They soon fall in love and become engaged. Keawe's happiness is shattered on the night of his betrothal, when he discovers that he has contracted the then-incurable disease of leprosy. He must give up his house and wife, and live in Kalaupapa&mdash;a remote community for lepers&mdash;unless he can recover the bottle and use it to cure himself. Keawe begins this quest by attempting to track down the friend to whom he sold the bottle, but the friend has become suddenly wealthy and left Hawaii. Keawe traces the path of the bottle through many buyers and eventually finds a Haole of Beritania Street, Honolulu. The man of European ancestry has both good and bad news for Keawe: (a) he owns the bottle and is very willing to sell but, but (b) he had only paid two cents for it. Therefore, if Keawe buys it, he will not be able to resell it. Keawe decides to buy the bottle anyway, for the price of one cent, and indeed cures himself. Now, however, he is understandably despondent: how can he possibly enjoy life, knowing his doom? His wife mistakes his depression for regret at their marriage, and asks for a divorce. Keawe confesses to her his secret. His wife suggests they sail, with the bottle, to Tahiti; on that archipelago the colonists of French Polynesia use centimes, a coin worth one-fifth of an American cent. This offers a potential recourse for Keawe. When they arrive, however, the suspicious natives will not touch the cursed bottle. Kokua determines to make a supreme sacrifice to save her husband from his fate. Since, however, she knows he would never sell the bottle to her knowingly, Kokua is forced to bribe an old sailor to buy the bottle for four centimes, with the understanding that she will secretly buy it back for three. Now Keawe is happy, but she carries the curse. Keawe discovers what his wife has done, and resolves to sacrifice himself for her in the same manner. He arranges for a brutish boatswain to buy the bottle for two centimes, promising he will buy it back for one, thus sealing his doom. However, the drunken sailor refuses to part with it, and is unafraid of the prospect of Hell. "I reckon I'm going anyway," he says. Keawe returns to his wife, both of them free from the curse, and the reader is encouraged to believe that they live happily ever after.
2165527	/m/06rq91	Fire on the Mountain	Edward Abbey	1962	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Charlie includes the following shadongalong to introduce this book: The story which follows was inspired by an event which took place in our country not many years ago. However, it is a work of fiction and any resemblance to living persons or actual places is accidental. Billy Vogelin Starr returns to his beloved New Mexico after having spent the previous nine months at a school in the East. His grandfather, John Vogelin, is driving Billy back to his Box V Ranch after picking him up in El Paso. Billy has one thought during the drive, he wants to see Lee Mackie II, who he considers the finest man alive and his own personal role model. But when they reach the ranch Billy learns there are problems. They stop at Hayduke&#39;s place—a name that would be used again by Abbey -- (a combination general store, post office and bus stop) for refreshments before returning to the ranch. Hayduke tells Vogelin he&#39;s received more letters from the government. A cowboy comes up as they are preparing to leave. "I hear you declared war on the United States Government, John", the cowboy said. "No, they declared war on me." They discuss Lee Mackie, wondering which side he will come down on. John thinks Lee will support him, but isn&#39;t certain. They return to the ranch and John points to Thieves Mountain, telling Billy that&#39;s where they will be tomorrow trying to track down a wayward pony. Just then three Air Force jets fly over. Billy points in wonder, but John has a different reaction. "Trespassers." Cruzita Peralta, John&#39;s housekeeper and cook, is waiting for them at the ranch. She and her husband, Eloy, help maintain the ranch. Eloy is away repairing a fence that was knocked down by an Army jeep. When Eloy returns he tells John and Billy about an encounter he had with government officials. Three cows escaped through the gate they left open. Billy goes to bed but has trouble sleeping. Eventually he hears 34-year-old Lee Mackie has finally arrived but can&#39;t make out what the two men are discussing. He sneaks up to listen. Lee is trying to convince the old man that he can&#39;t fight the U.S. government and win. Mackie urges John to take the $65,000 and sell the ranch. John says never. When the talk dies down, John hears Billy moving behind the door. That&#39;s when Billy is finally reunited with his hero. While out looking for the wayward pony the following day the three of them come across a sick calf. During the attempt to help him, John collapses. The old man insists he&#39;s all right, but Lee clearly doubts it. John heads off in one direction and Lee and Billy another, all looking for the pony on the mountain. On the journey up the mountain Lee and Billy cross the path of a Jeep with three soldiers in it and a coyote tied to the hood. They have clearly been hunting. Lee asks them if they have seen the horse they are looking for? The soldiers respond with rudeness and jokes. They refuse to answer Lee&#39;s question and eventually threaten him with the shotgun if he and the boy don&#39;t move aside so the Jeep can pass. After Billy provides a distraction, Lee lunges forward and takes the shotgun from the soldier. Lee forces the other soldiers to hand over their guns and then asks them his question again. They claim not to have seen the horse. He hesitates, but decides to let them pass. But he refuses to give them back their guns. And then he demands they take the coyote off the hood too. After the soldiers have left, they roll the dead coyote down the mountain and bury the guns, promising to pick them up on their way down and turn them into the police later. They continue up the mountain and eventually reach a cabin high on the mountain. John has beaten them there but there&#39;s been no sign of the lost pony. After dinner, Billy is out getting water from the stream when he comes across a lion resting on a rock above him. When the lion hears John calling out for the boy, he gets up and leaves. The three wake when it&#39;s still dark and prepare for a new day. Lee apologizes, but he has to leave them and return to his wife and job. Billy and his grandfather search the entire next day, but can&#39;t find the horse. On the third day, they find him. He&#39;s dead. John is convinced the horse was shot before the lion tore him open. They return to the ranch, mostly in silence. Lee tries once again to convince John to sell the ranch to the government. John wonders which side is Lee on? Two days later Colonel Everett Stone DeSalius appears at the ranch to talk to John. He has brought a Declaration of Taking, basically saying the government can take his land over his objections for the Department of Defense, basing the decision on its vital importance to national security. John still refuses to sell his land, not quite grasping the situation. DeSalius tells him a check for $65,000 is waiting for him at District Court and that they are standing on U.S. government property. DeSalius says they will be reasonable and give him a month to vacate their property, his home. They will also pay transportation costs for his goods and herd. The old man says no, he will not cooperate. Tells him to tear up that Declaration and that he will die on that property. Things are quiet for the next month. Lee visits once a week and goes for long horseback rides with Billy, telling him stories of when he was a boy and how he helped defend the ranch in a raid by the Apaches. A lie, of course, but good entertainment for a long ride. Lee was there when the U.S. Marshal made his first appearance in July. He tells John that he was supposed to be off the property by today, but the judge had anticipated that he would still be there. So, the judge granted him a two-week extension. He also tells him that if the cattle are still there in two weeks, the government will remove them for him, at his expense. John asks the marshal, Burr, how many men he&#39;ll bring next time. Burr responds with a smile, &#34;How many you think I&#39;ll need?&#34; John promises him he&#39;ll need more. And that he&#39;ll kill the first man who touches his house. Lee once again tries to convince the old man to take the money and leave, but John shouts, &#34;No! They&#39;ll have to carry me out of here in a box&#34; and that he&#39;ll take a few of them with him. Two weeks later the government drove off the cattle while the men were off getting supplies for a long siege. Eloy, who was left to guard the place, was arrested. A soldier confronts the pair and informs them what is happening. John considers fighting them and reaches for his gun, but Billy sitting next to him convinces him to wait. He promises the soldier he won&#39;t interfere in their roundup of his stock. John tells Cruzita that he&#39;ll go into town that night and bail out Eloy. He also tells her that he wants her and Eloy to stay off the ranch until this business with the government is settled. Cruzita refuses, but when John says he won&#39;t bail out Eloy unless she agrees, she does just that. Billy realizes that he&#39;ll be next. His school reopens in three weeks and his mother had sent a letter to his grandfather. John begins to fortify his home, preparing for battle. Both the Vogelin men wonder where Lee Mackie is. Later that night Lee arrives. John asks him to take Cruzita and Billy into town, bail out Eloy, and then put all three of them on a bus to El Paso. Better yet, take them all there himself. Billy puts up a fight, not wanting to leave his grandfather. John instructs Lee to make sure Billy is on that train when it leaves. By the time they bailed Eloy out and drove the 60 miles to El Paso they had missed the evening train. Lee and Billy spent the night taking in the sights in Juarez before sleeping in a hotel. In the morning, Lee puts Billy on the train and has a private chat with the porter, handing him some cash. They say their goodbyes with a promise to see each other next year, then Lee watches as the train pulls away. The two wave at each other as the train begins moving. Billy gets up and moves toward the cabin door. The porter and conductor start moving toward him. Billy then goes into the bathroom. After a few seconds, Billy exits the bathroom, pulls the emergency stop brake, opens the outer door, closes his eyes and leaps. When he stops rolling Billy discovers he&#39;s still alive and gets up and starts running. He heads for the tall buildings of downtown El Paso, hiding in the shadows whenever he spots a police officer. He eventually finds a bus station and buys a one-way ticket back to Baker, N.M. Then he has lunch while he waits. When they reach Haydukes, Billy hides in the shop until it closes. He helps himself to the snacks in the shop, feeling a little guilty for the theft, then begins to walk toward the ranch. As he gets close to the ranch a car approaches him. He hides in a ditch, recognizing Lee. But he also sees his grandfather, who had promised never to leave the ranch again. He realizes he must be searching for him, but it&#39;s too late. They have sped past him. He goes to the ranch and spends the night in the barn. When he wakes, he&#39;s back in his bed in the ranch house. Billy talks to Lee and his grandfather. They tell him what a foolish thing he did and that if he ever does it again, they&#39;ll never let him return to New Mexico for the summer. John also agrees to let him stay one more week. During the following week some soldiers stop by to put U.S. Government Property signs up around the house. When they try and put one on the house, the old man puts a shotgun in one of their faces, telling him if he touches the house, he&#39;s dead. They back down and leave, trying to avoid a confrontation. Billy goes around and removes all the signs the two had just put up. DeSalius returns and makes John an offer. He can continue to live in his house until his death with only one condition: He must leave the house on the days they do missile testing for his own safety. John refuses to sign the agreement. DeSalius tries to urge him to reconsider, promising this is his last chance. John Vogelin says no. That night Lee arrives and tries to convince John to take the offer. He won&#39;t budge. Lee doesn&#39;t give up, arguing long into the night trying to make the old man see reason. The next day John tells Billy he&#39;s going home that night. And they&#39;re putting him on an airplane, so he can&#39;t jump out of that. The rest of the day John walks through his house, inspecting the fortifications and his storage of food. That&#39;s when they hear many cars approaching the house. It&#39;s the marshal, Burr, and he&#39;s brought eight other men with him, all carrying rifles. John asks his grandson to sneak out of the house and go to the pickup truck and get the handgun out of the glove compartment. Billy agrees. John and the marshal begin to chat as Billy gets inside the cab of the truck. When he looks inside the glove compartment, the gun is not there. Billy realizes his grandfather had fooled him to get him out of the way. He tries to make a dash back to the house, but one of the deputies stops him and forces him inside the back seat of one of their cars. Burr fails to convince John to give up. Billy opens the door and tries to make a run for the house, but the deputy grabs him and throws him back in the car, then threatens to handcuff him. Burr returns to his men and tells them they&#39;ll have to use force. He tells them to prepare the tear gas grenades and get the boy out of the line of fire. John has retreated inside the house. The deputies move in. As Burr distracts Vogelin in front, one of the deputies sneaks around the back and climbs the roof. A shot rings out, missing Burr. The deputy on the roof drops a tear gas grenade down the chimney shaft. John refuses to leave the house, despite the tear gas. When Burr approaches the house, a second shot is fired, missing him again. The deputies decide to wait him out, letting him breathe in the gas. When the deputy watching him relaxes a little, Billy makes another break for the house. Two other deputies catch him, bring him back and handcuff him to the hitching rail. After more tear gas and more time, Burr tries again for the house. This time the bullet lands at his feet. He returns, orders a deputy to take Billy away from the scene, then tells the other deputies to forget about the gas and to put some tracers into the house, hoping to burn the old man out. That&#39;s when Lee Mackie arrives with Billy&#39;s Aunt Marian. He drives his car between the deputies and the house. He orders the deputies to release Billy, who is scooped up by his aunt. Lee talks briefly with the marshal, then takes his ax and heads for the house, calling out to John. John tells him to stop, Lee says he won&#39;t. John shoots over his head, but Lee keeps going. John opens the front door and points his rifle right at Lee, who tells him to go ahead and shoot. Finally, John gives up, calling Lee a traitor. Billy tells Lee that he&#39;s a traitor and never to talk to him again. Three days later the old man has disappeared. He was moved to Aunt Marian&#39;s house, but he was miserable living away from his ranch. Before leaving in the middle of the night, he visits Billy. He asks Billy if he can guess where he&#39;s going. Billy thinks about it and then says yes. He makes Billy promise not to tell them where he went. The next morning the search begins. Billy doesn&#39;t tell them he knows where the old man went. The old man&#39;s truck is found in El Paso and Lee tries to help them with the search. Eventually, he decides John must have returned to the ranch and decides to go out there. He takes Billy with him. Marshal Burr stops them as they are entering, but decides to let them search if they promise to be out by sunset. Lee and Billy spot John&#39;s tracks and then Lee confesses he too knows where the old man went. They&#39;re going up to the cabin on the mountain to talk to him. Eventually they have to leave Lee&#39;s car and climb Thieves Mountain on foot. They hear an Army Jeep following them, but decide there is little they can do about it. They have to climb over some trees that have recently been chopped down to block the Jeep trail. They reach the cabin and discover John Vogelin sleeping against the cabin wall. Only, he&#39;s not asleep. The climb up the mountain and the work in cutting down the trees killed him. Lee and Billy talk about what to do with the body. Billy argues he knows his grandfather wanted to remain here. Lee is worried about laws. They can&#39;t bury him, because it&#39;s all granite six inches down. Lee carries the body into the cabin and just as he&#39;s about to start the fire, the marshal appears. He confirms the old man is dead and regrets the series of events that led to this. While Lee and Burr argue over what to do next, Billy spills the kerosene from the lantern on the cabin floor. Before the marshal can stop him, Billy lights a fistful of matches and drops them on the floor. The marshal tries to rescue the body, but Lee stands before him with a chair, threatening him. The marshal tries to stop it, but seems unwilling to go any further. Finally, he leaves and then they go outside to watch the fire burn.
2165528	/m/06rq9d	As Seen on TV	Chris Kerr	2005-02-10	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the world of TV and small screen production, the main character is a screenwriter. Rush is given the chance to write for the "A-Team" movie, a step up from the world of Zombie, flesh-eaters!
2165536	/m/06rqb2	Jonathan Troy	Edward Abbey	1954	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 Many of the other characters in the book refer to Jonathan Troy as the golden boy. He's a senior at the local high school and they call him that because he has everything: Looks, intelligence and talent. But he is not an easy character for the reader to like. We're given an insight into the mind of a teen-age boy, where he holds nearly everyone he meets in contempt—especially his father, Nathaniel, and his favorite teacher, Feathersmith. The book is written as a series of different events, almost none of them related. Jonathan has had an ongoing relationship with one girl, Etheline. But once he finally succeeds in seducing her, he begins to lose interest, especially when she starts talking about marriage. A chance meeting with a new girl in town, Leafy, gives him new inspiration and he begins pursuit of her. Abbey also introduces the only major gay character in any of his eight novels, Phillip Feathersmith. Abbey doesn't come right out and say he's gay, but he describes his "fairy-flower" hands, talks about what a pink little fellow he is, and Jonathan calls him "Fairysmith" in his own mind. Feathersmith shows an attraction to Jonathan that is not very subtle. Most of the story is set in a western Pennsylvania town called Powhattan. It was actually based on the town near where Abbey grew up, Indiana, Pennsylvania. Abbey even uses some of the names of businesses in Indiana in the 1940s for his story. The Blue Star Restaurant becomes the Blue Bell Bar that is the business under the apartment Jonathan Troy shares with his father. There are many hints of the greatness Abbey would fine tune in his later works, including his love of the desert (Jonathan longs to go there); his deep passion for women and beer; and above all his sense of humor. One of the memorable characters in the book is Fatgut, a pathological liar who Jonathan seems close to. But for most of the book you figure Jonathan has no friends, mostly because he's too full of himself. You hear his every thought, and it's all very brutally honest. The key secondary character of the story is Jonathan's father, Nathaniel Troy. He is a Communist living in 1950s America, right about the time of the Red Scare. He receives almost daily threats to his well-being. Jonathan avoids his father as much as possible, living a mostly independent life. But the climax of the story comes when some town drunks decide they're going to make the Communist kiss the American flag. Another character in the novel is Red Ginter, who would also be a character in The Fool's Progress. In this book, Ginter is the neighborhood bully who has tormented Jonathan most of his life. In the latter book, he's a member of a baseball team who hits the game-winning home run, but then refuses to run the bases. There was a real person named Earl "Red" Ginter who was part of Abbey's early life and seems to be the inspiration for these characters. There is no nobility in Jonathan Troy. Having access to his thoughts kills any affection you might be able to muster. He's rude to nearly everyone he meets, especially his father. Once he's made love to Etheline, he looks at her again with fresh perspective and decides he hates her body. And when given an opportunity to stand up for something noble, Jonathan usually turns and heads in the other direction. One of the techniques Abbey uses in this book is devote a few chapters to printing notices in the local newspaper. It provides a slice of small-town life and in at least once case, relates to the plot.
2165574	/m/06rqfj	The Brave Cowboy	Edward Abbey	1956	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book is the story of a cowboy (Jack Burns), who lives as a transient worker and roaming ranch hand much as the cowboys of old did, and refuses to join modern society. He rejects much of modern technology, prefers to cut down any fence he comes across, will not carry any kind of modern identification such as a driver's license or Social Security card, and refuses to register for the draft. When his friend Paul Bondi, who is a philosophical anarchist, is jailed for refusing to register for the draft, Burns deliberately gets himself arrested in an attempt to break his friend out of jail, but winds up on the run from the law himself. Bondi has been tried and is awaiting transport from county jail to federal prison but refuses to escape with Burns. As police have discovered that Burns has also never registered for the draft, authorities are intent on sending Burns to trial and eventually federal prison for violation of the Selective Service Act of 1948. Burns eventually escapes reluctantly leaving his friend behind. After a brief stop to say goodbye to Paul's wife (Jerry) and son (Seth), Jack heads for the nearest mountains on horseback. The police mount a manhunt and pull out all the stops to capture Burns, including helicopters on loan by the Air Force. If Burns can scale the mountain range, he figures he can escape under the cover of the forest on the other side. The police know this as well, so they position themselves to prevent that from happening.
2165962	/m/06rrg1	The Big Over Easy	Jasper Fforde	2005-07-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins a short time after Easter, and no one can remember the last sunny day. Mary Mary, a detective sergeant from Basingstoke (which is nothing to be ashamed of) is being transferred to Reading, Berkshire. She hopes to be paired up with Detective Chief Inspector Friedland Chymes, a member of the Detective's Guild with multiple appearances in the fictional magazine Amazing Crime Stories, but instead is paired up with Jack Spratt at the Nursery Crime Department, who is most famous for some giant killing (only one was technically a giant, the rest were just tall), and arresting the serial wife killer Bluebeard. Jack himself is living with his second wife, Madeleine,who moonlights as a photographer for certain prestigious events, and their five children: Pandora, Ben, Stevie, Jerome, and Megan. Madeleine is trying to rent the spare room in the house, but without much success. Jack's first wife could only eat fat and soon died. The day after Mary is transferred, Humpty Dumpty is discovered dead outside of his residence at Grimm's Road- fallen off the wall, apparently. Jack's Superintendent, Briggs, introduces him to Mary Mary at the crime scene. Jack interviews some possible witnesses, including Wee Willie Winkie, the insomniac neighbor; Ms. Hubbard, the owner of the boarding house where Humpty stayed; and Prometheus, the titan from Greek mythology, the latter of which Jack offers to rent the spare room in his house to. They all describe Humpty as a nice egg, who generally kept to himself. Upon inspection of Humpty's room, Jack and Mary find some rather odd clues: several shares in Spongg Footcare, Reading's Footcare empire, a picture of Humpty with a girlfriend in Vienna, and a strand of hair. Humpty Dumpty's wife is found to have committed suicide at the biscuit factory, but it is suspected that she has been murdered. The woman had jumped into a chocolate vat and was sliced by the machines, but when the employees stopped the machine, it was too late. The police of the Nursery Crime Division find a suicide note, but Mary concludes that it was written by his wife by comparing it to her diary. The proof of suicide also comes from a witnessing employee who saw her jump in, and no one pushed her. A few days later Jack and Mary team up with Superintendent Baker, Ashley (an alien who can only speak binary code) and forensic scientist Gretel Kandlestyck-Maeker. A few days later, the team are called in to investigate the recent death of Wee-Willy Winkie. He was attacked with a large weapon, supposedly a broadsword, and a fifty pound note was found in his hand, showing he was blackmailing the killer. Jack has his own problems at home when his mother calls him to sell a painting of a cow. Jack next interviews Randolph Spongg. Humpty had been investing in their failing businesses in hope of a breakthrough, which never came. The interview took place in Spongg's strange house, where doors lead nowhere, some rooms revolve around and go-kart races inside the house itself are held commonly every year. They next interview Lola Vavoom, who lives in the room next to Humpty Dumpty in the block of flats. At the end of the conversation she tells them that Humpty's shower had been running for a whole year, before his death. The two men break the door, and baker finds a skeleton in the shower. The man was identified as Tom Thomm, son of a local flautist. His skin had been washed away in the shower water, and his skeleton badly damaged, making it a hard case. Five bullet holes were found in the shower curtain, three waist height and two foot height. Gretel says that when he was shot in the waist, he fell on the floor, where the two other shots hit is head and he was killed. When Jack returns home, he tells his mother that the painting of the cow his mother wanted to sell was fake and he only received some beans in return. Mrs Spratt retorts that she had the painting valued years ago and that the auctioneer probably knows how incredibly valuable it is. She is so upset that she throws the beans out of the window, and Jack sees them bury into the ground by themselves. Jack is interviewed by work colleagues, and Friedland Chimes appears and warns Spratt that if he doesn't give the case to Chimes, he will be fired. Jack accepts that that may happen, and refuses to give the case away. Later on, they have a meeting with another industrialist, Solomon Grundy, whose wife is Rapunzel. When she takes off her hat and her hair falls to the ground, Spratt and Mary remember the hair found in Humpty's bedroom. Solomon shows them into a room with an abnormal amount of security. The security was so big that if a person went in, they had to wear no shoes in case of being detected. In the centre has a puzzle piece held in unbreakable glass. It has magic powers which he reveals to Jack and Mary by putting them on each side of the room. When Jack thought of a number, Mary said it out loud. This was so amazing that Solomon decided to put it on display for everyone in Reading. There is another interview at a hospital called Saint Cerebellum's, this time with mad scientist doctor Quatt, and on their way to meeting her Jack notices the serial killer the 'Gingerbread Man'. Jack had been chasing the killer in previous cases and had to witness his colleague having his arms ripped off, only for the local newspaper, the Gadfly, to say that Chimes had caught the 'Gingerbread Man'. The interview with Doctor Quatt only reveals that she was Humpty's doctor. The conversation ends with Quatt showing Jack and Mary her latest experiment: a kitten's head sewn onto the body of a haddock. When an inspector is put in charge of watching Spratt and the others, Humpty's car, the ford zephyr, is found. They were about to remove it from the garage it was found in, but Jack realises that the front headlight has removed and a wire was feeding through it. He orders everyone to run away and the car explodes. Spratt and Mary then interview a woman who was divorced from Humpty. She reveals that she killed Humpty out of jealousy by putting two poisonous tablets in his coffee. Jack then tells her that Humpty was pushed, not poisoned and that she is innocent. When Jack returns home, he finds that his mother has a huge crowd of people around the house, and says that the beans that were thrown from the window had grown into a huge stalk. She had even made arrangements for the magical celebrity, the Jellyman, to see it when he arrived in Reading. Jack is told by Gretel that Humpty Dumpty was shot by someone from behind, which smashed through his shell and burst the albumen, sending a shock which cracked the whole egg. When Mary, Spratt and the inspector enter Humpty's house, the question they have in mind is how did Humpty get his money? He had no proper job and all he did was invest in failing companies. This is soon answered when a goose that lays golden eggs is discovered on the sofa. On a further inspection, a giant verruca is found on another sofa. Jack then remembers a strange doctor, Horatio Carbuncle, who always made living things like the verruca. He killed Humpty Dumpty because he was investing in a company which got rid of verruca's. Humpty's wife killed herself because she thought that she had killed him, and Wee-Willy Winkie was killed because he was blackmailing him. Jack wasn't sure about Tom, but thought the evidence was good enough. Mary then calls him into the next room and shows him the body of Carbuncle, shot dead. Jack then remembered the verruca and the puzzle piece. If Randolph was the killer, he would have the best motive so that he could put the verruca under the floor of Solomon's room. Hundreds of people would come in bare-footed to see the puzzle piece, and the verruca would give off a gas which would infect all the peoples feet with verruca's. They would turn to the only foot care product, made by Randolph Spongg, and the failing company would make thousands. Jack is told that the man who shot Humpty was employed by Solomon Grundy, but Jack knows that Solomon is not the killer and sets off to find the real one, Randolph Spongg. Arriving at the house, the butler asks him to remove his mobile. The rooms become strange and it starts to revolve. Jack enters a normal room with a mirror next, but he cannot see himself in the reflection. He sees Randolph and Lola come out of a trapdoor, and turns round, but sees no-one. Randolph explains that this is his magic. Lola says that she is happy that Humpty is dead in the ford zephyr and reveals that she loves Randolph. Behind the two, the butler comes out of the trapdoor, but to Jack's surprise the butler is behind him. Jack is confused as he is standing in front of a mirror and can't see his reflection, but that of Randolph and Lola, and the butler is the only one with a reflection. Randolph puts a sandwich with tin foil inside on a table and shines a lamp on it. He explains that the sandwich will crumple up under the heat, and when the corners of the tin foil touch, the house will explode. When they leave, Jack realises that it is not a mirror at all, but glass. He breaks it and finds a room on the other side, made exactly backwards. The butler had a twin brother who appeared on the other side, looking like he had a reflection. Jack stops the bomb, but the killers escape in a UFO. After talking to Mary, he thinks that the car bomb wasn't intended for them, but for Humpty. He gets this idea because Lola said that Humpty died in the zephyr, so was hoping he would be killed in it. Jack then realises that the killer of Tom Thomm was Humpty's wife. The three shots were waist height, but head height for Humpty. His wife killed herself as she was sorry for what she had done. Moments later Jack is informed by Gretel that Humpty survived the shot, and that instead, he hatched. The team are thrown into confusion as they try to find a giant which Humpty hatched into. Spratt and Mary then return to his house to attend the arrival of 'his eminence' the Jellyman. When people look at the stalk, Jack has an urge to climb it. The only people in the house are a few police officers, Spratt, Mary, the Jellyman, Madeleine and their children. The few police officers stationed outside the house are alerted, and one by one, a strange creature kills them all. The monster bursts into the house in an attempt to kill the Jellyman. Jack leads him outside and climbs the stalk, followed by the beast. When they are high up in the sky, the monster rips Jack off and he falls all the way through the garden shed. When Jack regains consciousness, he sees a chainsaw. He is reminded of the axe and takes it and begins hacking down the beanstalk, aiming for the beast to fall down. It jumps onto him and tries to kill him, but a voice behind it makes it stop. Dr.Quatt appears in front of Jack and tells him that she is the killer, who's aim was to kill the Jellyman all along. She was about to kill Jack, but Mary knocks her unconscious. The monster runs to her aid, picking her up and running away. Mary tries to kill them, but Jack tells her to not bother. The beanstalk topples over from when Jack tried to cut it down, crushing the monster and Dr.Quatt. The end of the book is the explanation. The goose that lays golden eggs is taken away by scientists and is cut open to find out what makes it lay golden eggs. They are disappointed when they cut it open and only find a normal goose's insides, and the only gold-laying goose dies. Jack explains to Mary that Humpty, although a good man, or egg, had many friends, and many enemies. His previous wife thought she killed him by poison, his wife thought she killed him by shooting him in the shower, Solomon Grundy thought he killed him by hiring a man to shoot him, Randolph Spongg and Lola Vavoom thought they killed him with a car bomb. But the real killer was Doctor Quatt, who injected him with the monster when he was having his appointments with her. Humpty's wife killed herself because she thought she killed him. Wee-Willy Winkie saw Humpty hatch and knew it was her and blackmailed her. She made the monster follow her, and when she met him, the beast killed him with its claw. She was using Dr Carbuncle to help her, and shot him in case he leaked information. Her plan was to kill the Jellyman and used Humpty as a host to create the monster. She only wanted to kill one person, but a lot of others were the victim of her powerful, and short wrath.
2166164	/m/06rrwf	The Long Emergency				 Kunstler's premise is that "cheap, plentiful" oil is the foundation of industrial society and the pervasiveness of its effects is not widely appreciated. Through the 21st century, oil and natural gas will become increasingly difficult to obtain, becoming increasingly expensive and ultimately unavailable. Scarcity of petroleum will cause significant problems for transportation and generation of electrical power. In addition, shipping of food and manufactured items will become increasingly expensive, ultimately prohibitively so. Also, natural gas is vitally important to food production as it is the raw material for much of commercial crop fertilizers. In the industrialized West, most food production and manufacturing is performed far from, and generally abstracted away from the consumer. The author further argues that alternative sources of energy will be insufficient. As petroleum sources become scarce, environmentally harmful or risky technologies such as coal and nuclear will become necessary but not sufficient for our energy needs. Hydroelectric, solar, and wind power, even in combination with coal and nuclear, will also be far from sufficient. Kunstler does not consider hydrogen to be a true energy source since one cannot drill into the earth and obtain hydrogen. Hydrogen must be extracted from other energy sources, such as natural gas or using electricity at a total net loss of energy. Kunstler states that, as energy becomes scarce, transportation will become difficult or impossible, causing food and other necessary commodities to become unavailable in many communities. It will be necessary for local communities to become self-sufficient for food production, but many communities will be unable to do so, particularly large cities. The result will be mass starvation, disease, and civil unrest. Kunstler suggests that governments will be incapable of managing these problems. This period of scarcity and collapse will possibly last for hundreds of years, hence the "long" emergency of the book's title. Kunstler, a long-time critic of suburban design, advises communities to change to accommodate walking and bicycling as the primary modes of transport. Populations should be moved out of big cities into smaller communities that have nearby arable land with adequate water and favourable climate for agriculture. People should begin learning to grow food.
2167056	/m/06rv1k	The Zahir	Paulo Coelho		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Zahir means 'the obvious' or 'conspicuous' in Arabic. The story revolves around the life of the narrator, a bestselling novelist, and in particular his search for his missing wife, Esther. He enjoys all the privileges that money and celebrity bring. He is suspected of foul play by both the police and the press, who suspect that he may have had a role in the inexplicable disappearance of his wife from their Paris home. As a result of this disappearance, the protagonist is forced to re-examine his own life as well as his marriage. The narrator is unable to figure out what led to Esther's disappearance. Was she abducted or had she abandoned the marriage? He encounters Mikhail, one of Esther's friends, during a book launch. He learns from Mikhail that Esther, who had been a war correspondent against the wishes of her husband (the protagonist), had left in a search for peace, as she had trouble living with her husband. The author eventually realizes that in order to find Esther he must first find his own self. Mikhail introduces him to his own beliefs and customs, his mission of spreading love by holding sessions in hotels and meeting homeless people living in the streets. He tells the narrator about the voices he hears, and his beliefs related to them. The narrator, who only too frequently falls in love with women, consults with his current lover, Marie, about his encounters with Mikhail. She warns him that Mikhail could be an epileptic. However, she also advises him to search for the Zahir as is his desire, even though she would prefer him to stay with her. The narrator eventually decides to go in search of his Zahir. As it was Esther who had initially brought Mikhail from Kazakhstan to France, the protagonist suspects that she may in fact be in Kazakhstan. At first, he is curious about what made Esther leave, but later he realizes that troubles with her relationship with her husband may have been a major reason. As he discovers, she was interested in getting to know herself through the making of carpets. Eventually the narrator meets his Zahir and the outcome of this meeting constitutes the climax of the book. Through the narrator's journey from Paris to Kazakhstan, Coelho explores the various meanings of love and life. In a recurring theme in the book, Coelho compares marriage with a set of railway tracks which stay together forever but fail to come any closer. The novel is a journey from a stagnant marriage and love to the realization of unseen but ever increasing attraction between two souls.
2168301	/m/043tv9f	In the Woods	Tana French	2007-05-17	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Twenty years prior to the novel's events, twelve year-old Adam and his two best friends failed to come home after playing in the familiar woods bordering their Irish housing estate. A search is called by the families, and the police find Adam shivering, clawing the bark of a nearby tree, blood on his shoes and slash marks on his back. He is unable to tell them what happened or where his friends are. His amnesia holds to the present day, where he goes by his middle name, Rob, to avoid the attention of the media to his famous case. His friends were never found. The plot of the novel circles around the murder of a twelve year old girl, Katy Devlin, whose case Rob and his partner Cassie Maddox are given to investigate. The body is found in the same woods where Rob’s friends disappeared, at an archeological dig site, and the coincidence is enough to make Rob nervous, though he insists to his partner that he is fine. Cassie and Rob have been partners for a few years and get along famously, teasing one another and completing one another’s thoughts. There are many rumors at the station that they are romantically involved, though both of them scoff at the idea, despite the fact that they live almost like a married couple, spending a lot of time at Cassie’s cooking dinner for one another, drinking wine, and having Rob crash on Cassie’s couch across the room. Katy’s murder takes the pair along many lines of investigation. Her death might be related to her father’s protests against the new highway meant to go straight through the dig site, or one of the students on the dig might have attacked her. She might have been abused by her father or someone else (her mother, twin sister, or older sister) in the family. She might have been previously poisoned over time. Or it might be related to the disappearance of Rob’s friends, as a hair clip that one of his friends was wearing that day appeared near the crime scene. These possibilities are investigated, but the detectives come up frustratingly empty-handed at every turn. The case messes with Rob’s psyche as he tries to remember details about the two previous disappearances in case it would help. He tries spending the night in the woods, but freaks out and calls Cassie to pick him up. He’s afraid to sleep again, thinking that he’ll just have nightmares, so Cassie allows him into her bed. Things escalate from there and they end up having sex. Rob feels immensely awkward after and can’t go back to their normal jokey-insult ways, but also feels that he can’t start a relationship with her. Their partnership deteriorates just as they start to uncover new leads in the case and they are unable to discuss the case and get along the way they used to. Rob goes back to the dig site alone, where all the students are frantically digging before the site is shut down for the construction of the highway. He comes to a realization and calls in the forensics team again, who discover the location of the murder in a shed to which only three people have the key. After some heavy interrogation, one of the suspects confesses, though his motive is far from clear. It becomes clearer when the suspect contends that he had been dating Katy’s older sister, Rosalind. When questioned by Cassie, she denies it and any involvement in Katy’s death, but also makes a comment that Cassie is obviously sleeping with Rob. Cassie takes it in stride, but after the interrogation, she has an idea of how to get a confession out of Rosalind: Go to her and admit sleeping with Rob and promise to keep her updated on the case if she promises not to tell. Rosalind’s psychopathic tendencies get the better of her, and once she knows that she has Cassie in her debt, she brags about the whole thing and how she got the murderer to come up with the idea by telling him that all three girls were being sexually abused by their father, but that Katy liked it and was therefore their father’s favorite. Rosalind also told him that Katy told their father lies to make him beat them and would watch and laugh, that if Katy was gone, then they would be happy. She also admitted to Cassie that Katy was strong-willed and wouldn’t always do as Rosalind told her, so she had poisoned her to make her sick. After this confession, recorded on a wire, Cassie arrests her and takes her in, but because Rosalind was a few months from turning 18 (though she had told Rob previously that she was already 18), the confession is invalid. She is released with a smug smile. The Police Captain has learned that Rob is actually Adam Ryan and confines him to desk work. He never goes back to Detective work. Cassie starts dating someone else and gets engaged. Rob is heartbroken and calls her, but it’s too late. He goes to the dig site to see the highway construction has begun, and thinks that he’ll never regain his lost memories of that night.
2169544	/m/06s0kv	Equal Danger	Leonardo Sciascia	1971		 The book starts with the murder of District Attorney Vargas, who is prosecuting a high profile case. The subsequent investigation failing, the police assign the protagonist Inspector Rogas, "the shrewdest investigator at the disposal of the police," to solve the case. While he is starting his investigation, two judges are killed. After Rogas discovers evidence of corruption surrounding the three government officials, he is encouraged by superiors "not to forage after gossip," but to trail the "crazy lunatic who for no reason whatever was going about murdering judges." This near admission of guilt drives Rogas to seek out those wrongfully convicted by the murdered judges. Rogas finds his likely suspect in Cres, a man who was convicted of attempting to kill his wife. Mrs. Cres accused her husband of trying to kill her by poisoning her rice, which she escaped only because she fed a small portion first to her cat, who died. Rogas concludes that he was probably framed by his wife, and seeks him out, only to find that he has sneaked away from his house. Meanwhile another district attorney is killed, and eyewitnesses see two young revolutionaries running away from the scene. Rogas, close to finding his man, is demoted, and told to work with the political division to pin the crimes on the revolutionary Left. From this point, Rogas finds Galano, the editor of a revolutionary paper, and has his phone tapped. This leads to Rogas discovering the Minister of Justice at a party with many revolutionary leaders. After this, he and the Minister have a discussion, where the Minister claims he would prefer the revolution, but feels the country is not ready. Following this, Rogas speaks to the President of the Supreme Court, who details a philosophy of justice wherein the court is incapable of error by definition. He also discovers that his suspect, Cres, is in the same complex as the President, but Rogas does not pursue him, hoping that he will kill the President. After Rogas realizes that Cres lives in the complex under a pseudonym and wasn't there to commit a murder, he meets with the Secretary-General of the revolutionary party. Both of them are killed. The book ends with the murder of the Secretary-General being blamed on Rogas.
2173003	/m/06s8r1	Still Life with Woodpecker	Tom Robbins		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins in "the final quarter of the twentieth century," at a year never specified, presumably in the early 1980s. It revolves around a family of deposed European royalty living in a small house in the suburbs outside of Seattle, under the protection of the CIA. They consist of: the father, King Max, a former gambler and poker player whose prosthetic heart valve makes a loud scraping noise when he gets excited; the mother, Queen Tilli, an opera-lover with a strong foreign accent and a fondness for saying "Oh, oh, spaghetti-o"; Gulietta, the non-English-speaking maid and the daughter, Leigh-Cheri, a redheaded vegetarian liberal princess and former cheerleader, having pulled out of classes after being asked to resign from the cheer squad after having a miscarriage while cheering at a football game. Leigh-Cheri proclaims herself celibate, withdraws from public life and cloisters herself in her room, only to emerge to ask her parents for permission to go to the Care Fest, a liberal convention in Hawaii with scientist and politician speakers, including Leigh-Cheri's idol, Ralph Nader. Gulietta is sent to accompany her, and while on the plane, Leigh-Cheri meets Bernard Mickey Wrangle, an outlaw bomber known as the Woodpecker (the common Tom Robbins-fantasy-alter-ego character). Like Leigh-Cheri, he is a redhead, and unlike her, he is on his way to blow up the Care Fest. As it turns out, the Woodpecker has a passion for tequila that inadvertently causes him to bomb a UFO conference instead of his intended target. Gulietta rats him out as the bomber to Leigh-Cheri, who then places him under citizen's arrest. Before she knows it, Leigh-Cheri finds herself at a bar with this crooked-toothed outlaw, drinking tequila and kissing passionately. The two do not agree on their philosophies concerning life: Leigh-Cheri believes it is everyone's job to make the world a better place, Bernard thinks that life is meant to be lived and, on occasion, shaken up. In between bombings and falling in love, Leigh-Cheri is approached by an unusually beautiful woman who claims she is from the planet of Argon. She informs Leigh-Cheri that redheads are considered evil on her planet and that "Red hair is caused by sugar and lust". This is highly insulting to Leigh-Cheri because she has only recently taken those things out of her life. Leigh-Cheri, Bernard, Gulietta, and a friend flee Lahaina after Bernard frames the Argonian couple for the bombing of the UFO meeting. Out on the sea, an unexplainable light source flies by their boat (the Argonians?) and Gulietta leaves Hawaii having developed a slight cocaine addiction. While courting the princess in Seattle, Bernard manages to ruin a priceless royal rug, kill Tilli's chihuahua, and get arrested for his past exploits. The princess is overcome with longing for her confined lover; her solution to their separation is to isolate herself in the attic and create the same atmosphere Bernard is forced to live in. In continuous solitude, with nothing but a pack of Camel cigarettes to entertain her, Leigh-Cheri unveils a secret conspiracy involving redheads, ancient pyramids, Thomas Jefferson, the moon, CHOICE, and the planet of Argon. When Bernard hears that people are copying Leigh-Cheri's self-isolation and making it a fad, he sends her a letter telling her that she has caused him to shave and he will never forgive her. Leigh-Cheri leaves her attic, and becomes engaged to a rich Arab named A'ben Fizel who builds a pyramid for her as an engagement present. Gulietta is made queen by the revolutionaries of her country, and Max and Tilli are given ample living expenses, which Max uses to gamble his life away in Reno. The day before Leigh-Cheri and A'ben's wedding is scheduled, Leigh-Cheri learns that Bernard was shot in an Algerian jail. Hysterical, she flees to the pyramid and, upon entering it, discovers Bernard, waiting for her, strapped with dynamite as usual. A'ben is informed of this by a guard, and he locks the two into the pyramid's chambers. A'ben tells the public that Leigh-Cheri was captured by terrorists, has the pyramid painted black, and announces that no one will ever enter it again, effectively burying the two alive. In the meantime, Bernard and Leigh-Cheri, trapped in the pyramid, are living on wedding cake and champagne while they discuss the pyramids, redheads, the moon, and Camel cigarettes. When they are almost completely out of supplies, Leigh-Cheri decides to use the dynamite to make an opening while Bernard sleeps, sacrificing her own life to save him. He tries to stop her, but the dynamite goes off anyway. They awaken in the hospital where they discover that they are both deaf. Max is so shaken by Leigh-Cheri's capture and reappearance that his heart gives out on him. After the funeral, Leigh-Cheri and Bernard move back to Seattle where they spend the rest of their days living in domestic bliss, and retreating to solitude occasionally.
2174889	/m/06sgg1	Hinds' Feet on High Places	Hannah Hurnard	1955	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is the story of a young woman named Much Afraid, and her journey away from her Fearing family and into the High Places of the Shepherd, guided by her two companions Sorrow and Suffering. It is an allegory of a Christian devotional life from salvation through maturity. It aims to show how a Christian is transformed from unbeliever to immature believer to mature believer, who walks daily with God as easily on the High Places of Joy in the spirit as in the daily life of mundane and oftentimes humiliating tasks that may cause Christians to lose perspective. The book takes its title from Habakkuk 3:19, "The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places." The story begins in the Valley of Humiliation with Much Afraid, being beset by the unwanted advances of her cousin, Craven Fear, who wishes to marry her. The Family of Fearings seems to have some strong similarities to the Addams Family. Much Afraid is ugly from all outward appearances, walking on club feet, sporting gnarled, deformed hands, and speaking from a crooked mouth that seems to have been made so by a stroke or the like. The Good Shepherd is tender and gentle with Much Afraid, especially in the beginning. However, His many sudden departures may strike the reader as bizarre, given the human penchant to expect kindly souls to never do everything that may be interpreted as rude or as hurtful in any way. Yet, though the Shepherd leaves in a moment, He returns the same way at the first furtive cry of the forlorn little protagonist. "Come, Shepherd, for I am much afraid!" When Much Afraid intimates that she would love to be able to dance upon the high places as do the surefooted deer, the Shepherd commends her for this desire. In order to accomplish this, he offers to "plant the seed of love" into her heart. At first sight of the long, black hawthorne-looking seed, she shrieks in fear. Soon, she relents, and after the initial intense pain, she senses that something is indeed different in her, though she still looks the same, for now. Just when the reader thinks that Much Afraid is about to reach the High Places, the path turns downward towards a seemingly endless desert. There is an incident at the sheer cliff that must be climbed with only one rope, which hangs a long way down to her from the top. Then days are spent in a forest that is shrouded in a thick cloud of fog. During this time Much Afraid is sequestered with her two friends, Sorrow and Suffering, in a log cabin. The climax is an unexpected twist that comes as Much Afraid despairs of ever reaching the High Places.
2176803	/m/06smdb	Hudibras	Samuel Butler			 The knight and his squire sally forth and come upon some people bear-baiting. After deciding that this is anti-Christian they attack the baiters and capture one after defeating the bear. The defeated group of bear-baiters then rallies and renews the attack, capturing the knight and his squire. While in the stock the pair argue on religion. Part two describes how the knight's imprisoned condition is reported by Fame to a widow Hudibras has been wooing and she comes to see him. With a captive audience, she complains that he does not really love her and he ends up promising to flagellate himself if she frees him. Once free he regrets his promise and debates with Ralpho how to avoid his fate with Ralpho suggesting that oath breaking is next to saintliness: :For breaking of an oath, and lying, :Is but a kind of self-denying; :A Saint-like virtue: and from hence :Some have broke oaths by Providence :Some, to the glory of the Lord, :Perjur'd themselves, and broke their word; Hudibras then tries to convince Ralpho of the nobility of accepting the beating in his stead but he declines the offer. They are interrupted by a skimmington, a procession where women are celebrated and men made fools. After haranguing the crowd for their lewdness, the knight is pelted with rotten eggs and chased away. He decides to visit an astrologer, Sidrophel, to ask him how he should woo the widow but they get into an argument and after a fight the knight and squire run off in different directions believing they have killed Sidrophel. The third part was published 14 years after the first two and is considerably different from the first parts. It picks up from where the second left off with Hudibras going to the widow's house to explain the details of the whipping he had promised to give himself but Ralpho had got there first and told her what had actually happened. Suddenly a group rushes in and gives him a beating and supposing them to be spirits from Sidrophel, rather than hired by the widow, confesses his sins and by extension the sins of the Puritans. Hudibras then visits a lawyer&mdash;the profession Butler trained in and one he is well able to satirise&mdash;who convinces him to write a letter to the widow. The poem ends with their exchange of letters in which the knight's arguments are rebuffed by the widow. Before the visit to the lawyer there is a digression of an entire canto in which much fun is had at the events after Oliver Cromwell's death. The succession of his son Richard Cromwell and the squabbles of factions such as the Fifth Monarchists are told with no veil of fiction and no mention of Sir Hudibras.
2177480	/m/06snr3	The g  Factor: The Science of Mental Ability	Arthur Jensen	1998	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book traces the origins of the idea of individual differences in general mental ability to 19th century researchers Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton. Charles Spearman is credited for inventing factor analysis in the early 20th century, which enabled statistical testing of the hypothesis that general mental ability is required in all mental efforts. Spearman gave the name g to the common factor underlying all mental tasks. He suggested that g reflected individual differences in "mental energy", and hoped that future research would uncover the biological basis of this energy. Jensen argues that because it is difficult to arrive at a consensual scientific definition of the term intelligence, scientists should dispense with the term and focus on specific abilities and their covariances. He argues that mental abilities are best conceptualized as a three-level hierarchy, with a large number of narrow abilities at the base, a relatively small number of broad factors at the intermediate level, and a single general factor, g, at the apex. The g factor can be derived from a correlation matrix of mental ability tests by many different methods of factor analysis. A g factor always emerges provided that the test battery is sufficiently large and diverse. The only exception is when one uses orthogonal rotation which precludes the appearance of a g factor. Jensen argues that orthogonal rotation is not appropriate for substantially positively correlated variables such as mental abilities. The g factor has been found to be largely invariant across different factor analytic methods and in different racial and cultural groups. Jensen argues that g is normally distributed in any population. He also contends that g cannot be described in terms of the information content or item characteristics of tests, and likens it to a computer's CPU. Jensen hypothesizes that g is fundamentally about the speed or efficiency of the neural processes related to mental abilities. Jensen reviews studies on biological correlates of g, and notes that they are numerous, including brain size, latency and amplitude of evoked brain potentials, rate of brain glucose metabolism, and general health. He puts the broad-sense heritability of g at .40 to .50 in children, at .60 to .70 in adolescents and young adults, and at nearly .80 in older adults. He argues that shared family influences on g are substantial in childhood, but that in adults the environmental sources of variance are almost exclusively of the within-family kind. Jensen suggests that the main environmental influence on g is developmental "noise", consisting of more or less random physical events affecting the neurophysiological substrate of mental growth. Jensen reviews the evidence that elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs) are correlated with g. He argues that the ECT research supports the notion that g is related to the speed and efficiency of neural processes. The g factor shows considerable practical validity. It is related to a large number of economically, educationally, and socially valued attributes. It is a particularly good predictor of academic and job-related outcomes. Jensen stresses the difference between g and what he calls vehicles of g. Changes in test scores do not necessarily represent changes in the underlying construct, viz., g. Practice effects on test scores appear to be unrelated to g. An authentic change in g happens when the change shows broad generalizability to a wide variety of cognitive tasks. Intensive psychological interventions beginning in infancy have generally failed to produce lasting effects on g. To what extent the Flynn effect represents a change in g is unknown. Mainly due to the relation between differences in g and important educational, economic, and social differences, there has long been interest in group differences in g in the United States. The most extensively researched is the gap between white and black Americans. According to Jensen, whites outscore blacks in the US by about 1.2 standard deviations, or 18 IQ points, on average. Blacks in sub-Saharan Africa score, on average, about two standard deviations below the white mean. The black-white gap in the US is not due to test bias. Cognitive tests have the same reliability and validity for all American-born, English-speaking groups. The magnitude of the black-white gap in the US is best predicted by the test's g loading, implying that the gap is mainly due to a difference in g. Jensen argues that the black-white gap has a biological component. He contends that the causes of differences in g between blacks and whites consist of the same environmental and genetic differences and in approximately the same magnitudes as within-population differences. The g factor is important because it is a major node in a complex network of educationally, socially and economically important variables ("the g nexus"). Jensen believes that a person's level of g is a threshold variable, and that above a certain threshold other, non-g abilities and talents, including personality differences, are critical for educational and vocational success. Jensen thinks that future research on g will have to extend into two directions, "horizontal" and "vertical." Horizontal research will identify new variables in the g nexus. Vertical research will uncover the origins of g in terms of evolutionary biology and neurophysiology.
2177830	/m/06spky	Anna of Byzantium	Tracy Barrett	1999-06	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the novel, the manuscript of the Alexiad, which Anna had worked upon in the library at Constantinople, is brought to her to continue at the convent, though in history, she didn't start writing until she arrived.
2179536	/m/06sthv	The Sittaford Mystery	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sittaford is a tiny village on the fringe of Dartmoor. Mrs Willett and her daughter Violet are the newly installed tenants of Sittaford House, a residence owned by a Trevelyan, a retired Army captain. They invite four people to tea on Friday afternoon: Captain Trevelyan's long-standing friend, Major Burnaby, Mr Rycroft, Mr Ronnie Garfield and Mr Duke. At the suggestion of Mr Garfield, the six of them decide to play a game of table-turning. During this séance, at 5.25 pm, a spirit announces that Captain Trevelyan has just been murdered. Concerned for the Captain's safety, Major Burnaby says that he intends to walk to Exhampton, a village six miles away, to see if Captain Trevelyan is alright. After four days of snow, there is already a thick layer of snow on the ground and further heavy snowfall has been forecast for later that evening. There is no telephone in Sittaford, and it is impossible to use a car because of the snow. Two and a half hours later, just before 8 pm, in the middle of a blizzard, Major Burnaby is trudging up the path to the front door of Hazelmoor, the house in Exhampton where Captain Trevelyan now lives. When nobody answers the door, he fetches the local police and a doctor. They enter the house through the open study window at the back, and find Captain Trevelyan's dead body on the floor. Dr Warren estimates the time of death at between 5 and 6pm. A fracture of the base of the skull is the cause of death. The weapon was a green baize tube full of sand, used as a draught excluder at the bottom of the door. Captain Trevelyan's will states that, apart from £100 for his servant Evans, his property has to be equally divided among four people: his sister Jennifer Gardner, his nephew James Pearson, his niece Sylvia Dering and his nephew Brian Pearson. Each of these four would inherit approximately £20.000. James Pearson is arrested for murder because he was in Exhampton at the time of the murder, trying unsuccessfully to get a loan from Captain Trevelyan. While the official investigation is led by Inspector Narracott, James Pearson's fiancee Emily Trefusis starts sleuthing herself. She's assisted by Charles Enderby, a Daily Wire journalist who, the day after the murder, presented a cheque for £5000 to Major Burnaby for winning the newspaper's football competition. Emily and Charles go to stay with Mr and Mrs Curtis in Sittaford, searching for clues. Mr Dacres, James Pearson's solicitor, reveals to Emily that things look much worse than they already imagined. James has "borrowed" money from his firm to buy shares without the knowledge of the firm. There are several red herrings. Brian Pearson, who came under suspicion when Enderby discovered him making a late-night rendezvous with Violet Willett, is Violet's fiancé. He was not in Australia, as first thought, but in England all the time. And the Willetts' motive - up to now obscure and a cause of suspicion - for moving into the isolated Sittaford house had nothing to do with any connection with Captain Trevelyan, but was in order to live close to Dartmoor Prison. An escaped convict (though later recaptured), whose escape from Dartmoor Prison three days after the murder was engineered by Brian Pearson, is Violet's father. The plan was that, after the escape, her father and Brian would live with them in the house as manservants until the danger was past. Martin Dering created a false alibi because his wife Sylvia was watching him for divorce proceedings. Sylvia is Mr Rycroft's niece; Jennifer Gardner is Mr Garfield's godmother; and Mr Duke is an Ex-Chief-Inspector of Scotland Yard. Emily solves the mystery in Hazelmoor after finding Captain Trevelyan's ski boots hidden in the chimney and two pairs of skis in different sizes. Major Burnaby is the killer. He cleverly and opportunistically engineered the table movements during the séance to make the spirit convey the message that Captain Trevelyan had been murdered. Instead of walking the six miles in two and a half hours after the séance, he first went to his own house which was close by, put on skis, and skied the distance in a fraction of that time. He killed Captain Trevelyan about a quarter to six. Then he cleaned his skis, and put them in the cupboard. He hid Trevelyan's ski boots in the chimney and put his own in the cupboard with the other ski gear, hoping that the second pair of skis and the fact that they wouldn't fit Trevelyan would pass unnoticed. Mr Rycroft, who is a member of the Psychical Research Society, reassembles five of the six original participants for a second séance at Sittaford House, the absent Mr Duke being replaced by Brian Pearson. The séance has scarcely begun, when Inspector Narracott steps in, in the company of Emily and Mr Duke, and charges Major Burnaby with the murder of Captain Trevelyan. Emily explains that Burnaby had lost a lot of money by buying rotten shares and that his motive for the murder was to keep for himself the cheque for £5000. Although he denied it to Enderby and the police, he had already received the letter notifying him of the win on the morning of the day on which he murdered Trevelyan and which was actually won by Captain Trevelyan himself. Trevelyan would often use Burnaby’s name to send in competition solutions because he found Sittaford House too grand an address for such correspondence. In the final chapter Emily turns down a marriage proposal by Enderby who has fallen in love with her during the investigation, because she still loves her fiancé James despite his character faults.
2180091	/m/06sw3z	Harlot's Ghost	Norman Mailer	1991	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At first it appears to be the autobiography of Harry Hubbard, which is made up of anecdotes of his life and actions with the CIA, the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, the Mafia in the 60's and the assassination of JFK. The very beginning of the book starts with Harry being told by a friend that his mentor Hugh Montague (a top level CIA officer) has either been assassinated or committed suicide on his boat. He then is told by his wife, Kittredge (a CIA member), that she has been unfaithful and is in love with another high level CIA intelligence officer. Under perceieved threat of his own assassination by the CIA he escapes to Moscow. It is there that he rereads in a hotel room the dense manuscript of his life at the CIA which he has documented and kept secret over his career. At that point, the book really begins. It details the life of a CIA inelligence officer who has connections to the highest levels of the CIA. It raises basic questions about the fight against Communism and goes into the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missle Crisis and perhaps most importantly raises questions about the assassination of JFK and who was ultimately responisble. Well written (the book is a lyrical treasure at times) it is considered by some to be Mailer's masterpiece work. The book ends in 1984 with the words "To be continued."
2180530	/m/06sx81	The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power	Richard Behar	1991-05		 The full title of the article is "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power: Ruined lives. Lost fortunes. Federal crimes. Scientology poses as a religion but is really a ruthless global scam — and aiming for the mainstream". The article reported on the founding of the Church of Scientology by L. Ron Hubbard and controversies involving the Church and its affiliated business operations, as well as the suicide of a Scientologist. Lottick was a Russian studies student who had taken a series of Scientology courses; he died after jumping from a hotel tenth floor window. The Church of Scientology and Lottick's family have differing positions on the effect Scientology coursework had on him. While none of the parties assigned blame, they expressed misgivings about his death. Initially, his father had thought that Scientology was similar to Dale Carnegie's self-improvement techniques; however, after his ordeal, the elder Lottick came to believe that the organization is a "school for psychopaths". Mike Rinder, the head of the Church of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs and a Church spokesman, stated "I think Ed Lottick should look in the mirror&nbsp;... I think Ed Lottick made his son's life intolerable". The article outlined a brief history of Scientology, discussing Hubbard's initial background as a science fiction writer, and cited a California judge who had deemed Hubbard a "pathological liar". Cynthia Kisser, then director of the Cult Awareness Network, was quoted: "Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members".
2181451	/m/06szqq	31 Songs	Nick Hornby	2002	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The music varies from established classics like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan to independents like Ani DiFranco, Top 40 pop like Nelly Furtado, and a few songs with special meaning only to Hornby. Song by song, Hornby delves into what makes music catchy or classic, and how it can come to play an integral role in a person's emotional life. Proceeds from the book go to the TreeHouse Trust, a UK charity operating a school for children with autism and communications disorders, which Hornby's son attends, and to 826 Valencia, a U.S.-based learning center, founded by McSweeney's publisher Dave Eggers, that offers writing workshops and tutoring. The paperback edition of Songbook adds a few music-related essays by Hornby from other sources. After the release of "Songbook," McSweeney accepted online submissions from authors writing about their favorite songs in the same manner as Hornby. These submissions were posted to the McSweeney website. Additionally, TheBlueScarf is a blog adaptation of Hornby's collection. After Hornby mentioned he was a fan in Songbook, Ben Folds contacted him and Hornby wrote the song "That's Me Trying" for William Shatner's album Has Been.
2181558	/m/06s_1s	The Chancellor Manuscript	Robert Ludlum	1977-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the story, Peter Chancellor, who found unlikely success as an author of political thrillers after his ambitions to become a historian were frustrated, writes a work of fiction that comes close enough to the scenario described that the people who controlled those files, a group called Inver Brass in the novel, decide that someone else may also know too much. This sets the stage for the international intrigue that follows. In the end Ludlum left the reader wondering if it was he himself, not Peter Chancellor, the protagonist of his story, who knew of the conspiracy.
2182522	/m/06t1y5	The Virgin Soldiers				 The core of the plot is the romantic triangle formed by the protagonist, a conscripted soldier named Private Brigg; a worldly professional soldier named Sergeant Driscoll, and Phillipa Raskin, the daughter of the Regimental Sergeant Major. The location is a British army base in Singapore during the Malayan Emergency. Brigg and Phillipa are virgins in every sense of the word; they're both barely out of adolescence. Brigg is fearful of Phillipa's father and hardly dares go near her. He is equally afraid of the Malayan and Chinese prostitutes in the nearby city. His only outlet is with his mates in the barracks, who fantasize endlessly about what they might do without actually knowing how to go ahead and do it. Phillipa is getting more and more rebellious, eventually setting herself up with Sgt. Driscoll as a lover while she leads Brigg on in the romance department. Brigg, meanwhile, has finally summoned up the courage and the cash to approach a prostitute, called Juicy Lucy by the troops. The encounter starts out disastrously, but after Lucy realizes Brigg is a virgin, she takes pity on him and begins his education in her own way. This develops into a long-term relationship, at least for Brigg, who she calls affectionately "Bligg". Brigg tries not to think about what Lucy does when he is not with her. Driscoll is seething with his own inner demons. He keeps taunting a Sgt. Wellbeloved with the phrase "Rusty nails!". Wellbeloved boasts constantly of keeping the Japanese busy during WW2, as a one-man guerilla army. Towards the end of the tale, the secret is revealed: Wellbeloved was a coward, and Rusty Nails was the nickname of the soldier he betrayed to the Japanese. Driscoll beats Wellbeloved into a pulp on behalf of the victim. The novel crystallizes around violent incidents involving rioting in the city and an attack by Communist guerillas on a train. Several of Brigg's friends are killed. Brigg tries to find Lucy for solace, only to be told she was beaten to death by soldiers. (In the film, the locomotive destroyed was one of the last four used to haul mainline BR steam - the famous Fifteen Guinea Special.) Mere days before he is to be sent home, he confronts Phillipa with his frustrations, with unexpectedly pleasant results. For Phillipa, however, he is a passing fancy. Her Sergeant awaits ... Eventually Brigg and his remaining friends are about to embark for home. The final scene has them shouting the name of a laundryman whom Brigg's has mistakenly shot in the hand in an earlier episode, a certain Fuk Yew. It symbolizes their relation to Malaya, and Malaya to them, when the tailor responds with the appropriate hand signal, using his damaged hand. One may compare the British-made 'Virgin Soldiers' serving out their 2 years of National Service in Malaya, with the American-made 'MASH' portraying US soldiers serving out their 2 years of the draft in Korea in the same period. There is a stark difference in the style of the humour.
2183179	/m/06t3ny	Spaceland	Rudy Rucker		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Joe Cube is a high tech executive waiting for his company's IPO. On the New Year's Eve before the new millennium, trying to impress his wife Jena, he brings home a prototype of his company's new product (a TV screen that turns standard television broadcasting into a 3D image). It brings no warmth to their cooling marriage, but it does attract the attention of somebody else. Joe is suddenly contacted by a Momo, a woman from the fourth dimension she calls the All, of which our entire world (which she calls Spaceland) is like nothing but the thin surface of a rug. Momo has a business proposition for Joe that she won't let him refuse. She is bent on making him start a company that will create a specific product that she will supply. The upside potential becomes much clearer for Joe once Momo "augments" him, by helping him grow a new eye on a 4D stalk, giving him the power to see in four dimensional directions, as well as the ability to see into our dimension using a four dimension perspective. After that, it's a wild ride through a million-dollar night in Las Vegas, a budding addiction to a tasty purple fruit from the All, a troubled marriage, eye-popping voyages into Momo's universe and strange encounters with Momo's sworn enemies (who are another race of 4D beings), rubbery red creatures called the Wackles, who steal money, speak in unusual words, offer sage advice, and sometimes messily explode when shot at themselves. The plot gets complicated when the Wackles kill Momo, and Joe discovers the startling revelation about Momo's business scheme. Suddenly, the fate of all beings in our world Spaceland is at stake and Joe must do something about it fast before it is too late.
2183724	/m/06t4ps	Saturn Rukh			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In an unspecified time in the future, a multi-national consortium sends a team of six astronauts (each with the chance of earning a billion dollars if they complete their mission properly) to Saturn to establish a factory that mines helium for the production of precious "meta" (stabilized metastable helium), a powerful rocket fuel, in the planet's upper atmosphere. With only enough "meta" fuel to get them to Saturn, failure will cost them their lives. And all too soon the crew of astronauts crash-lands on a surface, which is actually the back of an enormous alien life-form they dub the Rukh, a 4-kilometer-long, bizarre sting-ray-shaped creature that "swims" through Saturn's gaseous upper atmosphere and has two brains, both male and female. When part of their apparatus is swallowed by one of these giant birdlike beings, the crew needs to find a way to communicate and to be able to cooperate with the Rukhs so that they may survive.
2186390	/m/06tc0y	Alice Through the Needle's Eye	Gilbert Adair	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The entire plot really consists of Alice traveling through the Alphabet as she goes along meeting new friends, or rather, creatures and obstacles. In the end, she awakes to find that not more than a few seconds have gone by and that it was all just a dream. The story begins with Alice busily talking to herself as she continuously tries to thread a needle through. To her dismay she continues to fail at this and she takes an extremely close look when she finds herself gliding through the air in an unknown world. She mentions how it was December at her previous whereabouts and how in Needle's Eye World it seemed to have a pleasant summer-ish feel to the place. When she finally falls to the ground she is cushioned by a haystack. When she emerges, she hears a distant call for "'elp". Alice soon discovers that they were the small whimpers of a the Country Mouse, who believes that she is a comet. The Country mouse hereafter befriends Alice and informs her that she is not in a haystack, but an A-stack, or rather a messy pile of A's. She spots a few spelling bees, makes her way out of the haystack and continues in the direction of which she recalls seeing a beach from when she was flying. Alice does not travel too far before she meets two cats, yet upon taking a closer look, she discovers that both are joined at the tail. Alice questions them of their breed which they reply, as they finish each others sentences "We're Siamese--". Unknowingly, Alice interrupts and discusses how Siamese are much much different in appearance. The cats complete their statement and inform her that they were about to say Siamese-Twin Cats until she so very rudely interrupted. Alice apologizes as the cats begin to explain that one or the other is "as large as I am" or "as intelligent as I am" continuing in such a manner that their words are reduced to a mere "--'s I am--". After a short recovery from their long list, Alice decides that she will identify the cats by naming one Ping and one Pang. For if she mistakes one for the other, surely it must end up being the latter. Ping and Pang recite the poem "The Sands of Dee"; Pang forgets the last word of the poem, prompting a duel between them. The two cats instruct Alice to count twenty paces, but she mentions that she could "...count up to a hundred if I really tried." Thus, Ping and Pang begin to step away from each other, but before their duel begins, the sky darkens and rains down cats and dogs. When the peculiar shower of animals has stopped, Ping and Pang realize that they must attend the "vote." Alice follows them to find out what the vote is about. The chapter opens with Alice following the Siamese Cats towards the vote. Suddenly, an Elephant rears about near her—the Country Mouse making a short return to frighten it. Alice decides not to frighten the mouse, but at least scare it off. Hereafter, Alice and the Elephant have a conversation about being afraid of little things, the Elephant retorting "I suppose you aren't afraid of insects, then?" After their short argument, the Elephant states that they will be "late for the speeches." Alice is then swept away by the Elephant towards the "Hide-and-Seek Park." Here, she overhears the conversation of the Grampus and the Italian Hairdresser (She knows he is Italian because he speaks in Italics). The Emu begins its speech, but is constantly interrupted by the Crocodile, belonging to the Hairdresser, which is detained by an electric eel. Finally, the Emu finishes its speech and concludes with "And that's why I ask you all to vote for me!" In the end, after Alice inquires what he stands for, he recites a poem about the letter "F". After this, the vote transforms into an auction, and with the final cry of, "Going...going...gone!" everyone abruptly vanishes. Luckily, not everyone had vanished and Alice was left with both the Grampus and the Italian Hairdresser. The grampus promptly inquires if her name is "Boris". Soon after, after a short while of discussion, the Grampus realizes that he has indeed written down the wrong name within his autobiography. He explains to Alice how forgetful he is, giving an example of how he sometimes "leaves home without an umbrella and returns with one". "This is why I have an autobiography," he said. "So that I don't forget!" Both the Grampus and Alice miss the train that he wrote that they would need to get on in his autobiography. He then points out that they are to be attacked by a band of blood-thirsty brigands. After he realizes that the blood-thirsty brigands are not coming, he asks Alice to tie him up. Soon after she "rescues" him and they board the next train. As they ride the train, the Grampus begins a discussion on the meaning of words. Promptly after their discussion, the Grampus notes that he does not want to be swept away by the hurricane mentioned in his book. Alice, not wanting to "create" a hurricane, comes to the conclusion of simply writing the word 'not' into his book. The train suddenly turns into a study room and, out of curiosity, Alice ventures out to discover what might lay upon the hill she had spotted in the distance. When starting to climb the hill, Alice bumps into two people, or rather, 'stick figure people'. She realizes after a short conversation, that they are Jack and Jill from the nursery rhyme. Although, they are a quite rude rendition of the two. She states that she recognized them from the rhyme which prompts Jack to 'test' her. He says "If you know then surely you can do this!" Jack then asks, or commands, Alice to recite the poem forwards, backwards, and in French. Although Alice had no intention of it, she spat out the words as if it were a second nature to her. Jack then states that due to the fact that she had 'caused' them to fall, she must now carry the eels or "L's" within their bucket to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Alice sets off because she is too polite to say no in the first place. After a whiles walk, Alice reaches a maze-like place with a sign that reads "Llabyrinth". To Alice's disappointment, she cannot get to the centre of the maze due to her childish logic of "If I take all lefts I'll be alright, but if I take all rights I'll be left! Left within the maze!". Alice comes across several confusing signs, many of which leading her back to the same place she was before. After a moment of despondency, she hears the Country Mouse; she attempts to follow it, but to no avail. She also attempts to throw one of the eels over the hedge as a signal, but fails, as it comes back like a boomerang. Eventually, she drops off to sleep. When she awakes, she sees what she assumes is a human, running past her. She follows it, and in time, arrives in the centre of the maze. After finding a large congregation of animals stuck in the middle of the maze, they attempt to go through a race for the food that the Welsh Rabbit (the one who she had followed into the centre) possesses. In this chapter Alice is volunteered for her to go into the rabbit hole which the cluster animals within the maze believe leads out. When going down the hole, she feels as if she's falling sideways, and describes it as an infinity sign. She contemplates things such as parallel lines meeting at infinity and how the sign looks like a tired eight. When she finally comes out, she is surprised to see where she is. ===IX: Swan Pie and Green : Yo I: The Battle of Letter II: Was it a Dream?===
2187599	/m/06tgl4	O Jerusalem			{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The book begins immediately after the partition decision was announced. The Jews flooded the streets of Palestine, celebrating. However, the Jewish leaders immediately began planning for war. Ehud Avriel was sent to Prague to buy arms in the name of Ethiopia. Meanwhile, the Jews built an army and air force from scratch. The Jewish leaders, like David Ben-Gurion, knew that, due to military shortcomings, the conflict could only be won through intelligence warfare. The Arabs vowed to put Jerusalem under siege, and did. For many months Jerusalem survived on very limited foodstuffs. On the Arab side, Captain Abdul-Aziz Kerine bought arms in Prague in the name of Syria, the only sovereign Arab nation at the time. The Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Transjordan) discussed their plan of action. They agreed to work together, but everyone, especially King Abdullah of Transjordan, had their own agenda. In the end, the Arab states' lack of cooperation led to their downfall. There was a lot of disorganization and non-cooperation on the Jewish side as well. The main Jewish army was the Haganah, however the Stern Gang and Irgun were other Jewish militant groups. The groups had conflicting ideals (for example: the Haganah was willing to internationalize Jerusalem in order to have a unified, peaceful state, but Jerusalem was of the utmost importance to the Stern Gang and the Irgun), but they managed to retain more organization and cooperation than the Arab armies.In the main text of O Jerusalem!, it is related that the Stern Gang and the Irgun massacred the Arab village of Deir Yassin, outraging Arabs and Jews alike. The Haganah denounced the massacre, but the Arabs believed the Haganah to be responsible and retaliated at the Jewish kibbutz of Kfar Etzion. Collins and Lapierre also acknowledged that other eyewitness accounts claim that the event at Deir Yassin was a battle and not a massacre. As May 15 drew closer, the two peoples continued preparing for war. However, the Jewish intelligence learned that, although the mandate was set to expire on May 15, the British were planning to leave on May 14. Prepared for the early departure, the Haganah mobilized quickly and managed to capture many British buildings before the Arabs even realized that the British had left. Not privy to this intelligence, the Arab armies activated on May 15. The Jewish homeland of Israel was declared on Iyar 5, 5708 Hebrew, or May 14, 1948 Gregorian. Today, this day is celebrated as Yom Ha'atzmaut, or Israeli Independence Day. After the expiration of the mandate, war befell the region. The Arab armies underestimated the Haganah's strength and were not prepared for a strong foe. Both the Arab and Jewish armies suffered major shortcomings in ammunition and manpower. The situation in Jerusalem worsened, leaving Jewish Jerusalemites near starving. On June 11, 1948 a UN sanctioned cease-fire began. Jerusalem's starving were saved by a temporary end to the siege. Jerusalem's storerooms and stomachs were filled again. By cease-fire agreement, neither army was allowed to re-arm itself, but the Haganah was able to buy arms through the black market. The Arab armies, however, were not. After four weeks, the fighting began again, followed by another cease-fire beginning on July 19 (July 17 in Jerusalem), 1948 (O Jerusalem! Collins).
2189403	/m/06tlvm	Eater	Gregory Benford		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the early 21st century, astronomers detect what appears to be a distant gamma-ray burster, a black hole engulfing another star many light years away. The data is bizarre and also troubling because only 13 hours later, a second burster appears, which, given the great distance between stars, would be impossible. Eventually, the astronomers realize that the black hole, rather than being incredibly far from us, is actually heading towards our own solar system, and moving our way at considerable speed. Stranger still, it seems to be moving under its own will; it is an intelligent being itself. This age-old cosmic being reveals that it had been born seven billion years ago and had become a wandering entity, feeding on asteroids, planets and various space debris, projecting itself forward in space through the process. Through the billions of years of its existence across the expanse of time and space, this intelligent entity has learned of many ancient civilisations in the universe. The black hole eventually sends a message to the people of Earth; it "desires converse". The black hole is willing to share the knowledge it had gained throughout the ages in return for the chance to "chat" with the humans. But eventually, something about the nature of the life-form is revealed. It prefers to learn about people by having their minds uploaded to it and demands that the best and brightest of Earth be sent to it in this way. The three astronomer protagonists: Benjamin Knowlton; his cancer-stricken wife, Channing; and the British Astronomer Royal, Kingsley Dart, must save the Earth and all of humanity from annihilation at the hands of this entity that they dub the "Eater."
2191402	/m/06trlg	The Gammage Cup				 Slipper-on-the-Water is a Minnipin village in the Land Between the Mountains. Slipper-on-the-Water is special, as it is home to the Periods, descendants of Fooley the Balloonist. They hold high offices in Slipper-on-the-Water and have a "Council of Periods" that rules the village. Gummy, a carefree poet, along with Walter the Earl and Curley Green, are three Minnipins who shun the tradition-based existence of the Minnipins and do things such as wear different-colored cloaks and have different color doors. Walter the Earl finds a collection of Ancient Treasures which includes items of warfare like swords and armor. Muggles is a candymaker who runs the Fooley Museum. One night, she wakes up and sees what she at first thinks is the sunrise, but is actually fires on the Sunset Mountains. At first, she thinks that seeing the fires on the mountains was just a dream, but later on she talks to Gummy and realizes that it was not a dream. The mayor returns from the annual meeting of mayors with news that there will be a contest to find the most deserving of the twelve villages. The winning village will win the most valuable thing in the valley: The Gammage Cup. The villagers participate in the contest. A few people decide to repudiate the contest as well as the fact that they are kicked out of the village, and leave. le, they explore the old mines in the Sunset Mountains and hear an odd tapping sound which soon emerges is the sound of the Minnipins' enemy, the Mushrooms. Mingy is taken prisoner and Gummy is hit by a poisonous spear. Walter the Earl warns the village of the threat and gathers an army to fight the Mushrooms. A fierce battle ensues. As the Mushrooms flee back into their tunnel, Mingy sets a heap of sleeping mats on fire, making it impossible for the Mushrooms to escape into the Land Beyond the Mountains. In escaping the flames, the Mushrooms are defeated by the Minnipin army. An antidote for the poison is discovered and all the injured Minippins are cured. On their way back to the village, Gummy and Curly Green announce their engagement, as do Mingy and Muggles. The villagers hang garlands and streamers to celebrate the safe arrival home of the soldiers and the five outlaws, who are now respected, and paint all the doors of the houses of different colors. Ltd. gives a speech and so does Muggles, someone strikes up a song and everybody goes out into the meadow beyond the village to celebrate. While the villagers celebrate, the three judges of the contest arrive. Witnessing the happy scenes, they decide that Slipper-on-the-Water is the most deserving village and leave the Gammage Cup in the town square.
2191889	/m/06tsp6	Lord of the Nutcracker Men	Iain Lawrence		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is told by the 10-year old protagonist, Johnny Briggs, who receives an army of toy nutcracker men from his father, a toymaker. The battles that take place during the first World War seem eerily similar to the battles that Johnny enacts with his nutcracker soldiers, and Johnny eventually comes to think that he is controlling the outcome of the war with every battle that he plays out. The part of the story taking place in France where Johnny's father has enlisted is told mainly through letters sent back home to his family. Through the letters it is possible to tell that the novel takes place from around October 25 until December 26, 1914. At the beginning of the book Johnny and his family live in London, however Johnny is sent to live with his Aunt Ivy in the town of Cliffe soon after his father enlists. His mother moves to the town of Woolwich, also sending letters to Johnny every chapter, to help support the war by getting a job making weaponry in a factory. A main theme of the book is the pointlessness and irrationality of war. After the protagonist, Johnny Briggs, misses school for two days in order to have more time to build his Guy Fawkes, he is forced to spend every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon at his teacher's house. There, his teacher, Mr. Tuttle, tutors him on classic literature, mainly the Iliad. They both draw direct parallels between the events of World War I and the events of Homer's novel. It is during the beginning of the book that he is bullied, but when saved by Sarah is entirely ungrateful and says "a girl for a friend is like no friend at all." This is why he leaves the school. When she saves him from being thrown in the fire he starts to see her as a friend. At the beginning of the book, Johnny's father appears enthusiastic about going to war, so much that at the beginning he is frustrated that he lacks the half-inch of height required to enlist. After the required height is lowered, he joins the war and is moved to the front line afterward. As the war continues, it takes its toll on Johnny's father's health, physique, and mentality. Johnny's father sends his son a newly whittled and painted soldier with every letter, but his creations appear increasingly grotesque throughout the book. This is reflected in the model of himself that he had sent. The brown paint of his clothes turns a moldy green, the wide grin on its face fades to a grim, mournful expression, a hairline crack comes down his chest, and a knothole begins to form in its chest. The book comes to a close when Johnny stops playing with his nutcracker soldiers, and brings them together for the Christmas Truce of 1914. The war continues without Johnny's interference, and his father returns four years later in 1918. Johnny's mother dies from sulfur poisoning in 1923, demonstrating that some of the most valiant sacrifices of World War I came not from the front lines, but from the work force at home.
2192143	/m/06ttbn	Henry and June	Anaïs Nin	1986	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/02gsv": "Personal journal"}	 At the end of 1931, Nin finds herself dissatisfied with being a timid, faithful wife to her banker husband, Hugh Parker Guiler. Nin and her husband contemplate the possibility of opening their relationship, and determine that it would threaten their marriage. However when Anais meets June Miller, she is magnetically drawn to her and perceives June to be the most beautiful and charismatic woman she has ever met. Nin pursues an extremely intense, ambiguous, sexually charged friendship with her. When June leaves Nin becomes involved with Henry, and begins an uninhibited sexual and emotional affair with him, which prompts an intellectual and sensual awakening. A friendship is formed between the two that was maintained throughout both artist's lives.
2192851	/m/06tw6m	The Thief and the Dogs	Naguib Mahfouz	1961	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Said's world revolves around Nabawiyya, his former wife, and Sana', his daughter. Once in love with the former, she has now betrayed him by marrying his friend 'Ilish. Central to the making of Said Mahran is also Ra'uf 'Ilwan, his one-time criminal mentor, who used the same revolutionist rhetoric, but now, being a respected journalist and businessman, is in seeming opposition to Said, whose outlook hasn't changed. These perceived betrayals throw the protagonist into the utmost confusion and his initial calculation in revenge becomes ever more a wild flailing against the whole world. Only Nur, a prostitute, and Tarzan, a café-owner, provide Said with any respite from his anger and the world at large which is closing in on him, yet in time even they cannot help him.
2194450	/m/06t_z0	Reliquary	Lincoln Child	1997	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story picks up where the epilogue of Relic left off. Two headless skeletons are found in the Humboldt Kill. When further decapitated bodies follow, there is suspicion of a second Mbwun monster. Major characters from the original book team up with new ones to solve the puzzle. The mystery soon leads underground to the Mole people, and even deeper towards enigmatic beings called the Wrinklers. Soon, they realize that the Wrinklers are led by Frock, who has taken a modified version of the Mbwun plant to regain the use of his legs. He also gave the drug to the people who were to become the Wrinklers. After going underground, the group kills them with an explosion, vitamin D infused water and a flood.
2196059	/m/06v3pl	The Secret of Hanging Rock				 The chapter opens with Edith fleeing back to the picnic area while Miranda, Irma, and Marion push on. Irma looks down and compares the people on the plain below to ants. When the girls walk past the monolith, they feel as if they are being pulled from the inside out and get dizzy. After they leave it behind, they lie down and fall asleep. A woman suddenly appears climbing the rock in her underwear shouting, "Through!" and then faints. This woman is not referenced by name and is apparently a stranger to the girls, yet the narration suggests she is Miss McCraw. Miranda loosens the woman's corset to help revive her. Afterwards, the girls remove their own corsets and throw them off the cliff. The recovered woman points out that the corsets appear to hover in mid-air as if stuck in time, and that they cast no shadows. She and the girls continue together. After the women experience dizziness, the group encounter a strange phenomenon described as a hole in space that influences their state of mind. They see a snake crawling down a crack in the rock. The woman suggests they follow the snake and takes the lead. She transforms into a small crab-like creature and disappears into the crack. Marion follows her, then Miranda, but when Irma's turn comes, a balanced boulder [the hanging rock] slowly tilts and blocks the way. The chapter ends with Irma "tearing and beating at the gritty face on the boulder with her bare hands".
2196100	/m/06v3t5	The Riddle-Master of Hed	Patricia A. McKillip	1976	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Riddle-Master of the title is Morgon, the Prince of Hed, a small, simple island populated by farmers and swineherds. He has three stars on his forehead, which no one has been able to explain. As the book opens, his sister, Tristan, discovers that he is keeping a crown hidden under his bed, and he must explain that he won it in a riddle-game with a ghost, the cursed king Peven of Aum. When Deth, the High One's harpist, finds out, he explains that another king, Mathom of An, has pledged to marry his daughter Raederle to the man who wins that crown from the ghost. Morgon sets forth to claim his bride accompanied by Deth, but while at sea, his ship is sunk by mysterious shapechangers. Shipwrecked, Morgon loses his memory and the power of speech. When Deth finally finds him again, and he recovers his memory and speaking ability, he resolves to travel to ask the High One about the shapechangers. The High One's home, located in the far north on Erlenstar Mountain, is seldom visited. As Morgon and Deth travel the length of the realm, they are repeatedly attacked by the shapechangers, and Morgon learns more and more dangerous knowledge about his three stars and the great powers that come with them. He also comes to know personally the land rulers of Ymris, Herun, Osterland, and Isig. The book ends as a cliffhanger, with Morgon discovering who is posing as the High One. All three books were collected into the volume Riddle-Master: The Complete Trilogy in 1999.
2196248	/m/06v43s	The Dain Curse	Dashiell Hammett		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The detective known only as The Continental Op investigates a theft of diamonds from the Leggett family of San Francisco. The plot involves a supposed curse on the Dain family, said to inflict sudden and violent deaths upon those in their vicinity. Edgar Leggett's wife is a Dain, as is his daughter Gabrielle Leggett. The detective untangles a web of robberies, lies and murder. It is discovered that young Gabrielle Leggett is also involved in a mysterious religious cult and is addicted to drugs. Gabrielle escapes from the cult and marries her fiancé, but bloodshed continues to follow them. The Continental Op protects Gabrielle, and helps her recover from her morphine addiction. He finally discovers the reason behind all the mysterious, violent events surrounding Gabrielle and the Dains. The novel is structured in three parts, each concerning different mysteries, Part One: "The Dains", Part Two: "The Temple" and Part Three: 'Quesada".
2199810	/m/06vc_8	Aurora Leigh				 Aurora describes her childhood in Florence, growing up as the daughter of a Tuscan mother and an English father. Her mother died when she was four, leaving her father to raise her. He was a scholar, and imparted to her knowledge of Greek and Latin and a love of learning. Her father died when she was thirteen, and she was sent to England to live with his sister, her aunt, in Leigh Hall, her family’s ancestral home. Her aunt tried to educate her in what she considered a ladylike manner, but Aurora discovered her father’s old library and read scholarly books on her own. This book starts on Aurora’s twentieth birthday. Her cousin, Romney Leigh, proposes marriage to her. He is skeptical about her poetic ability, telling her that women do not have the passion, intellectual capacity, or redemptive qualities to be true artists. Because of this, and because she feels that he is too wrapped up in his social work and ideals to be a good husband, she angrily rejects him. Aurora’s aunt chastises her for refusing him, telling her that because he is the male heir, he will inherit all of the estate and Aurora will be left with nothing. Shortly afterwards, her aunt dies. Romney attempts to give Aurora money, but she refuses it, deciding to go to London to make her living as a poet. This book opens in Aurora’s London apartment. She has been writing small popular poems for magazines, which have earned her an enthusiastic following among romantic young men and women, but she is dissatisfied. The great works of art of which she felt she was capable have arrived stillborn – she has the inspiration, but somehow cannot get it onto the page. While she works, frustrated, a visitor arrives for her, a Lady Waldemar. She is beautiful but sharp and sarcastic, and Aurora does not like her. Lady Waldemar explains to Aurora that she is in love with Romney, so much so that she lowers herself to do charity work with him, but Romney has decided to marry instead one of his lower-class ‘projects,’ Marian Erle. She wants Aurora to go speak to Marian and then to Romney and convince them of their foolishness. Aurora, partly out of curiosity and partly concern for Romney, goes to visit Marian and hears her life story: Marian’s drunken mother tried to sell her into prostitution, and to escape it she ran away and became ill, eventually being taken into a poor hospital. There Romney found her and assisted her in getting work as a seamstress. Marian continues her story, relating how Romney continued to aid her and ultimately proposed marriage to her. Aurora asks her if she is sure he truly loves her, to which Marian replies that Romney loves everything. She assures Aurora that despite her lower-class status, she will be a loving and devoted wife to him. Before Aurora can answer, Romney enters Marian’s room. He and Aurora awkwardly trade words, and she tells him she approves of Marian. He walks her home, and during their conversation she becomes confused about her own feelings for him. A month passes, and it is time for Romney and Marian’s wedding – but Marian sends a letter in her place to the ceremony, telling Romney that she is not good enough for him. The crowd at the wedding assume that Romney has seduced and abandoned her, and attack him. Romney is devastated, and searches for Marian for days, but cannot find her. He and Aurora have a conversation about their respective disappointments with their missions; Romney can neither make a dent in the poverty he sees all around him nor gain the respect of the people he tries to help, while Aurora still has not succeeded in writing a real work of Art. Aurora discusses her further attempts to write. She tells how she is determined not to be constricted by her woman’s role but is doubtful that the modern age presents opportunities for epic poetry. As the book continues, she grows more and more desperate, crying out to her muses and gods for inspiration. She confides that she has not seen Romney Leigh for almost two years, but she has heard that he has turned Leigh Hall into a refuge for the poor. At a stifling, insipid evening party at one of her well-born friend’s houses, she learns that Romney is engaged to marry Lady Waldemar, and bitterly reflects that “He loved not Marian, more than once he loved/Aurora.” She decides that to find inspiration, she must travel to Italy, her mother’s land, and in order to get the money sells some of her father’s old books, as well as her own unfinished manuscript. This book begins with Aurora in France, presumably on a stop-over on the way to Italy. She wanders Paris with her head in the clouds, enjoying the atmosphere of history and the beauty that surrounds her. Suddenly, she catches a glimpse of a familiar face – it is Marian Erle. Frantically, Aurora follows her, losing her in the crowd eventually, but not before seeing that Marian is carrying a child. She is shocked, but resolves not to judge her harshly and tries for a week to find her, finally running into her by chance at a flower market. Marian takes her to her poor room, where she shows Aurora her baby boy. Aurora reproaches Marian for being promiscuous, but Marian angrily replies that far from it, she was attacked and raped and left pregnant. She explains to Aurora that Lady Waldemar convinced her that Romney did not truly love her, and sent her to France with her lady’s maid. The lady’s maid left her in a brothel, where she was raped and almost driven insane, but she managed to escape. Marian continues to tell Aurora her story: she was taken in by a kind lady as a maid, but was summarily fired when her pregnancy became apparent. Despite this, she could not bring herself to be unhappy: she was overjoyed that out of her dreadful experience, she could have the wonderful experience of motherhood. Aurora, after hearing Marian’s dreadful story, apologizes profusely to her for misjudging her and offers her a ‘marriage’ of sorts – she will protect Marian and her son and take them to Italy with her. Marian gratefully accepts. Aurora decides not to inform Romney that she has found Marian, but writes an angry letter to Lady Waldemar, telling her she knows of her disgraceful conduct towards Marian. Marian’s presence, however, constantly brings Romney to Aurora’s thoughts. She is surprised when a friend writes to her to congratulate her on her book – the manuscript she sold to get to Italy. She decides that perhaps it was better than she thought. She finds no particular inspiration in Italy, however, finding instead constant bittersweet memories of her childhood. Several years have passed. Aurora, Marian, and the boy are living in a villa in Florence. Suddenly, Romney Leigh arrives, having discovered their whereabouts through a friend of Aurora’s. Aurora, believing him to be married to Lady Waldemar, is cold with him. He tells her that he has read her book and believes it to be good and true Art, and tells her that he has reconsidered the judgmental strictures he passed on her previously. He relates to her the sorry failure of his attempts at social reform: after he converted Leigh Hall into a refuge, stories went around the village that it was a prison and a mob burned the whole thing to the ground. Aurora expresses her sympathy, but tells him she still cannot think well of his wife. Romney is surprised, and tells her that he is not married to Lady Waldemar, although he has a message from her to Aurora. Aurora tears it open, and reads it. Aurora reads Lady Waldemar’s letter, which claims that she did not intend to hurt Marian, only to remove her. Her scheme did not work; even after Marian was gone, Romney did not love her. She tells Aurora, in a vitriolic tone, that she, by her letter forcing Lady Waldemar to tell Romney that Marian lived, has doomed him to a loveless life with her, when he is truly in love with Aurora. Aurora, somewhat shocked both by the letter’s contents and the angry rhetoric, dazedly asks Romney what he will do now, and he answers that he will marry Marian and raise her child as his own. Marian refuses him, however, stating that she prefers to remain as her child’s only guardian and devote her life to him, rather than a husband, and that she has realized that what she thought was love for Romney was rather hero-worship. She leaves, urging Romney to talk to Aurora. They converse, and forgive each other for any wrongs they have done to each other over the years. Romney admits to Aurora that he is blind. Aurora, in tears, confesses to Romney that she loves him, and has finally realized it; and also realizes that, in loving him, she will be able to complete herself and find her poetic muse once more. The poem ends with Aurora and Romney in a loving embrace, as she describes the landscape for his unseeing eyes in Biblical metaphors.
2200789	/m/06vg1l	Red Prophet	Orson Scott Card	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Lolla-Wossiky, a troubled, one-eyed, whiskey "Red", leaves General Harrison's fort and heads north in order to find his "dream beast", the spirit that can save him from the pain of his memories. On his journey, he meets Alvin Miller and assists him in making an ethical decision that will shape his life forever. In appreciation, Alvin heals Lolla-Wossiky painful memories, allowing him to give up alcohol and become in touch with the land once again. Lolla-Wossiky grows into "the Prophet" although he prefers to be known as Tenskwa-Tawa. Lolla-Wossiky preaches both pacifism and separatism, believing that "Reds" should live west of the Mississippi and "Whites" should live east of it. Meanwhile, Lolla-Wossiky's brother, Ta-Kumsaw, tries to rally "Reds" behind his belief that their land should be defended violently. When Alvin Miller and his older brother Measure travel to the place of his birth (where Alvin is expected to become apprenticed to the Hatrack River blacksmith) the two brothers are captured by 'Reds' (Native Americans) sent by William Henry Harrison to intentionally create conflict. Ta-Kumsaw, sent by Lolla-Wossiky, rescues the brothers from torture and death. Measure leaves the "Reds" only to be captured by William Henry Harrison's men and subsequently beaten to the brink of death. Ta-Kumsaw accompanies Alvin to the holy site of Eight-Face Mound where they meet up with Taleswapper, an old friend of Alvin. Using the spiritual powers of the Eight-Face Mound, Alvin is able to heal Measure from afar. Measure is then able to stop some of the slaughter of Lolla-Wossiky's followers by villagers and William Henry Harrison's men over the alleged kidnapping and murder of Alvin and Measure Miller.
2200961	/m/06vgkn	Mr Pye	Mervyn Peake		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Mr. Pye travels to the Channel Island of Sark to awaken a love of God in all the islanders. His landlady on the island, Miss Dredger, quickly becomes a devout follower of his teachings. and even agrees to allow the person she hates the most, Miss George, to stay in her house. As Pye does good works he gradually feels a stinging feeling on his back. On further investigation he discovers that he has started to grow angel's wings, and after consulting with a Harley Street doctor, he concludes the best thing to do is to stop doing good deeds, and instead does bad deeds. He engages in some deliberately malicious acts, and after a time this results in him growing horns on his forehead. He is unable to decide what to do, but eventually decides to reveal his horned condition to the islanders, who chase him to the edge of a cliff, which Pye flies off using his wings.
2201085	/m/06vgx0	Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates	Tom Robbins		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Invalids ... follows Switters, our wheelchair-using protagonist, across four continents, in and out of love and danger. Through Switters, Robbins "explores, challenges, mocks, and celebrates virtually every major aspect of our mercurial era." (Quote from the hardcover book jacket.) Robbins has stated in numerous interviews that in this book he was trying to deal with contradiction. But rather than eschewing his contradictory nature, as is typical Western practice, Switters embraces it. He's a CIA agent who hates the government. He's a pacifist who carries a gun. He's as much in love with his seventeen-year-old stepsister as he is with a forty-six-year-old nun. Switters feels that the core of the universe, the heart of existence, is light and dark existing together. One is not separate from the other, they just exist. This is the core of "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates", along with an interest in the Lady of Fatima and a squawking parrot. The title of the novel comes from Arthur Rimbaud's A Season in Hell, in which he daydreams about becoming one of "... ces féroces infirmes retour des pays chauds."
2201832	/m/06vjwq	Appointment with Death	Agatha Christie	1938	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Holidaying in Jerusalem, Poirot overhears Raymond Boynton telling his sister: "You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?" Their stepmother, Mrs. Boynton, is a sadistic tyrant who dominates all the younger members of her family, and who attracts the strong dislike of a group of people outside the immediate family. But when she is found dead, Hercule Poirot proposes to solve the case in twenty-four hours, even though he has no way of even proving whether it was murder.
2202702	/m/06vm3h	A Dance with Dragons	George R. R. Martin	2011-07-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On the Wall itself, Jon Snow has been elected the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch; but the young man has enemies, both in the Watch and beyond the Wall. After making a peace with the wildlings, he lets them through in large numbers, despite objection from his fellow brothers, and enforces a conscription upon them to reinforce the Wall against the Others. The Red Priestess, Melisandre, whom Stannis Baratheon left behind, shares many of her visions with Jon, telling him repeatedly that he has enemies in the Watch and warning him of daggers in the dark. Her prophecy comes to fruition when Jon is attacked by his brothers and stabbed several times. The narrative closes with Jon either losing consciousness or dying. Meanwhile, in the far north beyond the Wall, Bran Stark's search for the Three-eyed Crow leads him to the secret cave where the last surviving Children of the Forest dwell, the magical non-human original inhabitants of Westeros. As Bran, Hodor, and the Reeds take shelter in the cave, they meet the "Three-eyed Crow", whom they call the "Last Greenseer". He is a former human member of the Night's Watch, who has been sitting on an underground weirwood throne for so long that its roots have fused into his body. He explains to Bran that he has been appearing to him as the Three-eyed Crow in his dreams so that he could lead him here, and train him in greensight. Bran learns that there is truth to the belief that the sacred weirwoods are the eyes and ears of the Old Gods: the trees are capable of seeing and hearing all around them, and recording it in their memory for centuries. They also allow a greenseer at one weirwood to see and hear events going on at another in the present, and communicate through them. Using his increasing powers of greensight Bran sees memories of his father Ned Stark at Winterfell's godswood in the past, and communicates with Theon Greyjoy at the godswood in the present. Meanwhile, having killed his father Tywin, the dwarf Tyrion Lannister is smuggled to Pentos by Varys, where he is sheltered by Magister Illyrio. Tyrion is sent south; on the journey, it is revealed Varys and Illyrio have hidden the presumed-dead Prince Aegon Targaryen, with the intention of reinstating him as the rightful King of Westeros. The self-styled Aegon VI was raised by Jon Connington, a former Hand of the King under King Aerys and old friend of Prince Rhaegar, whom Aerys exiled due to his failure in Robert's Rebellion. In the intervening years they have risen to command the Golden Company, the largest and most skilled mercenary army in the Free Cities, which was founded a century ago by House Blackfyre, a cadet branch of House Targaryen. After traveling with Aegon halfway across Essos, Tyrion is kidnapped by Jorah Mormont, who intends to deliver him to Daenerys in appeasement after she banished him for initially selling information to her enemies and his indiscretion of his sexual interest in her. Later, Tyrion and Jorah are shipwrecked and sold by slavers to a Yunkish merchant as a part of a jousting dwarf grotesquerie. After reaching Meereen, Tyrion escapes in the mass confusion of the plague ravaging the Yunkai'i army, and signs on with the Second Sons mercenary group and plans to switch their support to Daenerys. In Braavos, the girl once known as Arya Stark undergoes the training of the guild of assassins known as the Faceless Men. The potion that made her blind is revealed to only have a temporary effect, as part of a stage in the training during which she must learn to rely on her hearing. After successfully killing her first target by poisoning a merchant, she is officially entered into the assassins' guild as an acolyte, to continue her training. In the far east, Daenerys Targaryen, believed by most to be the sole heir of House Targaryen, has conquered the city of Meereen, but struggles to maintain peace within the city and prevent military defeat at the hands of her many enemies and attempts to stop the spread of a plague, known as the pale mare, from entering the city. In addition, although her dragons are still growing, they have already become very dangerous - killing livestock and people - so she reluctantly confines them to a cage with the exception of the black dragon Drogon, who manages to evade capture. Daenerys marries the noble Hizdahr zo Loraq, despite her intense infatuation and strong sexual relationship with the mercenary Daario Naharis, hoping this will stop a series of insurrectionist murders and avert a planned attack by Yunkai and Volantis. Despite the plague-infected refugees outside, the fighting pits are opened shortly after the wedding, at Hizdahr's insistence. Daenerys happens to avoid an attempt to poison her in her private box at the fighting pits. The games are interrupted when Drogon, drawn by the smell of blood, attacks the fighting pits. In an attempt to stop the bloodshed, Daenerys climbs on Drogon, who flies away from the chaos in the pit. Drogon lands outside the city and slaughters 200 soldiers before flying away again to his lair with Daenerys still on him. After Hizdahr is implicated in the poisoning, Barristan Selmy removes him from power with the assistance of the Unsullied and Meerenese loyal to Daenerys. Having ventured across the world in a failed attempt to court Daenerys, Quentyn Martell, Prince of Dorne, attempts to steal one of the remaining dragons out of desperation. Instead, he suffers fatal burns and both dragons are unleashed upon the city. Meanwhile, Drogon flies Daenerys to the Dothraki Sea where Dany, starved and ill from being stranded in the wilderness, eventually encounters the khalasar of Khal Jhaqo, a former Bloodrider to Khal Drogo who betrayed her after Drogo's death. The War of the Five Kings in Westeros seems to be winding down. In the North, King Stannis Baratheon has installed himself at the Wall and attempts to win the support of the northmen. This is complicated by the fact that the Lannisters have installed Roose Bolton of House Bolton (loyal to the Iron Throne after the events of the Red Wedding, during which Roose personally killed Robb Stark) as Warden of the North, and much of the west coast is under occupation by the Ironborn. On the advice of Jon Snow, Stannis seeks and receives the support of the hill clans and captures Deepwood Motte from Asha Greyjoy, taking her captive in the process. In gratitude for liberating Deepwood Motte, House Glover and House Mormont join Stannis' army. A representative of the Iron Bank of Braavos arrives at the Wall, to bring news that the Iron Bank has officially had enough of Cersei deferring payment on the loans the Iron Bank is owed, and is switching its support from the Lannisters to Stannis. Despite the fact that House Manderly told Cersei that they executed Davos Seaworth on her orders when he arrived in White Harbor, this is revealed to be a lie, intended to ensure the release of Manderly's last son and heir from Lannister captivity. Lord Wyman Manderly had Davos dragged away in view of representatives from House Frey, but then secretly placed him in gentle imprisonment. It is implied that when the ruse is complete, after the Freys send letters to Cersei stating that Davos is dead, the Manderlys execute the Freys. Lord Wyman explains to Davos that the Manderlys and other Northern vassals intend to feign submission to the Boltons, Freys, and Lannisters while plotting their revenge. Wyman informs Davos that he has discovered that Osha the wildling took Rickon Stark to hide on the remote island of Skagos, which is inhabited by savage clans who only hold nominal allegiance to the North. Wyman explains to Davos that they are in need of a skilled smuggler to retrieve Rickon, and that once the Northern bannermen see that a male Stark heir still lives, they will rally against the Boltons and join Stannis' cause. Meanwhile, Theon Greyjoy is revealed to not be dead: he was kept as a prisoner in the Dreadfort's dungeon for over a year while Ramsay Bolton horrifically tortured and disfigured him, flaying his skin and cutting off several of his fingers and toes. Theon has since been driven into complete submission by the torture, and Ramsay forces him to take on the identity of his servant "Reek". Ramsay's father Roose Bolton leads the main Bolton army up from the south towards Moat Cailin, along with several thousand Frey allies. Ramsay secures their passage by sending Reek, now "playing" the role of Theon, to negotiate with the few Ironborn who still holds Moat Cailin into surrendering. Reek succeeds, but Ramsay flays all the Ironborn anyway. When Roose arrives with Ramsay's bride Arya Stark, Reek recognizes her to be actually Sansa's friend Jeyne Poole. The Boltons are also aware of her identity, but merely see the marriage as a way to legitimize their claim of the North. The wedding is held at Winterfell, and to convince the North that the bride is actually Arya, Reek is forced to assume the role of Theon again to represent the lord of Winterfell and give away the bride. After the wedding, Ramsay horrifically abuses Jeyne physically and sexually. Reek sinks to his knees before the heart tree in Winterfell's godswood, and begs for forgiveness and the strength to survive. He hears Bran through the weirwood calling him "Theon", which helped bolster his spirit somewhat. He is approached by a disguised Mance Rayder and his spearwives and is asked to help them free "Arya." He escapes with Jeyne by leaping out a tower window, but Mance and his spearwives are left behind. Reek and Jayne are then captured by Stannis Baratheon's forces nearby and are delivered to the main camp. There, Reek is reunited with his sister Asha. Ramsay's torture has so badly mutilated Reek that Asha cannot at first recognize her own brother. With increased strength from his new Northern allies, Stannis chooses to push south to confront the Boltons at Winterfell, but his army becomes snowbound as the weather continues to worsen. Cersei Lannister, imprisoned by the Faith of the Seven, confesses to several of the less grave charges against her, such as adultery by sleeping with her cousin Lancel Lannister. However, she stops short of admitting that she murdered King Robert, or that her children are actually the product of incest. This is enough that the Faith is willing to release her from imprisonment, though she still must stand trial for the charges she has not confessed to. However, as a condition of her release, she is forced to make a penance walk by being marched under escort naked from the Great Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep. Cersei tries to maintain her dignity but the smallfolk of King's Landing, who have suffered greatly due to Cersei and the war she is responsible for, pelt her with rotten vegetables and insults; by the time she reaches the Red Keep she is crying and crawling on her hands and knees. However, Cersei has one last spark of hope: the unethical ex-maester Qyburn has perfected his "champion" for Cersei, "Ser Robert Strong", by conducting human experimentation on Gregor Clegane and others. An eight foot tall behemoth, completely encased in armor, never taking it off to eat or use the privy, more than a few characters including Kevan suspect that "Robert Strong" is some sort of Frankenstein's monster cobbled together from the corpse of Gregor Clegane and other prisoners. The silent Robert Strong is named to Cersei's Kingsguard, and will be her champion in the trial by combat to settle the Faith's charges against her. In the Riverlands, having negotiated the bloodless surrender of Riverrun, Jaime Lannister arrives with his army at the siege of Raventree Hall. The seat of House Blackwood, Raventree Hall is the last castle of the Riverlords who supported Robb Stark that has not surrendered to the Lannisters. Negotiation goes much easier than at Riverrun, as the Blackwoods were just holding out for better terms, and didn't want to surrender to their age-old rivals House Bracken, who bent the knee to the Lannisters and were leading the siege. Jaime offers House Blackwood peace on generous terms, bloodlessly ending the siege, and the last stronghold of Robb Stark's short-lived kingdom in the Riverlands dips its banners. The Stark-Lannister war in the Riverlands is nominally over, but the region has been so devastated that brigands holding no allegiance now roam most of the broken countryside. Jaime sets about restoring order, when Brienne of Tarth bursts into his camp tent, telling him that she has found Sansa Stark and she is in danger from Sandor Clegane. This appears to be a trap laid by Lady Stoneheart (the reanimated Catelyn Stark), given that Sansa is safe in the Vale of Arryn, Sandor is presumed dead, and Brienne was last seen on the verge of being executed by Stoneheart's Brotherhood Without Banners. Meanwhile, after Tyrion convinces Aegon that Daenerys would rather learn of her nephew from his conquest, rather than by him showing up and demanding recognition, Aegon Targaryen and Jon Connington land in the Stormlands with the Golden Company, a mercenary army, in order to recover the Iron Throne. They land in the Stormlands and quickly capture four castles with little resistance, with the intention of marching on Storm's End. Varys, still in King's Landing, sneaks in and murders Kevan Lannister and Grand Maester Pycelle. Revealing his support for Aegon, Varys killed Kevan to prevent him from fixing the damage Cersei had caused in her attempts to build Tommen's power base. Varys declares that with Tommen back in Cersei's control, the kingdoms of Westeros will spend their strength fighting each other while Aegon prepares to conquer the Seven Kingdoms.
2202928	/m/06vmqg	Pyongyang	Guy Delisle		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 Delisle arrives in Pyongyang, bringing, in addition to the items that he was authorized to bring into the country, a copy of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, that he judged appropriate for a totalitarian state, CDs of Aphex Twin and reggae, and presents like Gitanes cigarettes and Hennessy cognac. Delisle encounters former colleagues working at SEK Studio on an adaptation of Corto Maltese comics. He also meets foreign diplomats, NGO workers in the World Food Programme, and businessmen, such as French engineers installing an HDTV transmitter. During his two month visit, he stays at the Yanggakdo Hotel, and visits other foreigners in the Koryo Hotel. Accompanied by his guide, he visits the massive statue of Kim Il-sung, the Pyongyang Metro, the legation quarter, the Diplomatic Club (former Romanian embassy), the Arch of Triumph, the Juche Tower, the International Friendship Exhibition, the USS Pueblo, the enormous Ryugyong Hotel, the Taekwondo Hall, the Children's Palace, and the Museum of Imperialist Occupation. Delisle is surprised by things such as reverse walking, the absence of disabled and elderly people, North Korean music propaganda, the cult of personality for past leader Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il, the required presence of his translator and guide, nearly-expired water from the South, Coca-Cola and kimjongilias. He also notes the extreme level of apparent brainwashing in the citizens of Pyongyang. When questioned regarding the lack of disabled people in Pyongyang, his guide asserts, and seems to genuinely believe, that North Korea has no disabled, and that the children of the "Korean race" are all born healthy, strong and intelligent.
2204384	/m/06vr39	Asterix and the Magic Carpet				 In the opening scenes, in the Gaulish village inhabited by Asterix and his friends Chief Vitalstatistix is trying to give a speech, when he is interrupted by the bard Cacofonix, who is testing the acoustics of his new hut. This causes it to rain; a pivotal point in this comic. A small, dark-skinned man, Watziznehm the fakir suddenly falls from the sky. He had been brought off of his flying carpet by Cacofonix' downpour. Watziznehm explains that he is searching for a way to make it rain in his country, a kingdom in India because if it doesn't rain in 1001 hours, Princess Orinjade, daughter of Rajah Wotzit, will be executed as a sacrifice to the gods. This prophecy is actually part of an evil scheme by Grand Vizier Hoodunnit. Vitalstatistix agrees to send the rain-making Cacofonix to India, accompanied by Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix. The group sets out slightly disgruntled, as Cacofonix is not allowed to sing and Obelix isn't allowed to bring a whole cart-load of roasting wild boar with him. The next day, they encounter the pirates. Obelix throws out all of the ship's booty on the grounds that it is just junk and not food. The captain hurriedly calls for all the food to be brought and the Gauls and the fakir leave with it, paying with just one small coin. Meanwhile Hoodunnit reveals to his henchman that if it doesn't rain he will have the Rajah executed, and then if it still doesn't rain it won't matter as he will be Rajah himself. The carpet flies over Rome, where the Gauls say hello to a feverish Julius Caesar, causing him to go into a further delirious state. Cacofonix insists on singing, to the point that Watziznehm jumps off the carpet in horror. Without a fakir to steer it, the carpet plummets into the sea, where they are picked up by a Greek merchant's ship. Watziznehm has fallen into a jug of wine. To sober him up, Cacofonix sings yet again, causing a storm and grounding the ship on a tiny island but Obelix and Asterix free the ship easily. After flying over Athens and Tyre, they enter another thunderstorm. A bolt of lightning strikes the carpet and Watziznehm is forced to make an emergency landing in a Persian village, where a carpet seller refuses to fix Watziznehm's or sell one of his own carpets. However, after saving the Persians from Scythian raiders, the Persian gives one of his carpets to the Gauls. The Gauls arrive in India with exactly 30 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds left in which to save Orinjade, but Cacofonix has lost his voice during the journey and cannot sing. Rajah Wotzit's doctors proclaim that to regain his voice, Cacofonix must take an overnight bath in elephant milk. The Gauls take Cacofonix to elephant-man Howdoo's home and set up the bath, leaving him to sit in it. The evil Hoodunnit, however, sends his henchmen to kidnap the bard, and take him to an ancient elephant meeting-place and graveyard, and leave him to the elephants. When Watziznehm, Asterix and Obelix set out to pick up the bard, they are stopped by Owzat, Hoodunnit's fakir sidekick. While Watziznehm and Owzat shoot curses at each other, Asterix and Obelix escape and go to Howdoo's, only to find that he has disappeared. Dogmatix picks up the smell of elephant milk, and after being held up by tigers, monkeys and a rhinoceros, not to mention Hoodunnit's henchmen, they arrive at the elephant graveyard to find Cacofonix alive and well; his elephant-milk smell led the elephants to believe that he was one of them. They return quickly with the help of Watziznehm, who has finally defeated Owzat. Asterix sky-punches Orinjade's executioner into the air and saves her in the nick of time. Hoodunnit is defeated. Cacofonix can speak again because of the dose of magic potion he had taken, and sings Singin' in the Rain at the considerable top of his lungs, causing it to rain at last. At the victory feast in the palace, Obelix muses that now their fellow villagers might be having their traditional banquet, this time without him. And back in the village, some of the Gauls begin to express their desire to have the bard back, since it hasn't been raining for some time now. This includes Fulliautomatix the blacksmith who usually uses his hammer to knock Cacofonix out, but now appears to be missing him.
2205573	/m/06vtx9	Firefox Down	Craig Thomas		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As with the first novel, the book focuses on the efforts of Mitchell Gant to steal the fictional prototype MiG-31 Firefox Soviet aircraft. At the climax of Firefox, Gant engaged in combat with a second MiG-31; the second novel begins mere moments later, with Gant discovering that his aircraft sustained damage in the dogfight and is losing fuel rapidly. After a brief engagement with two Soviet MiG-25s, Gant lands the Firefox onto a frozen Finnish lake. Upon fleeing the lake, Gant is captured by the KGB and taken back to the Soviet Union. The West must then mount a desperate attempt to recover the Firefox from the lake, repair it, and return it to flyable condition before Soviet forces can recapture or destroy it. At the same time, Gant attempts to escape the Soviet Union. Dmitri Priabin (a KGB officer with a minor role in Firefox) has an expanded role in its sequel; his lover has been working for the Americans under the codename Burgoyne, forcing Priabin to choose between recapturing Gant and saving the woman. Unlike its predecessor, Firefox Down did not become a feature film. The book, however, depicts the MiG-31 from the movie on the cover and the text of the novel describes it as black, as it was in the movie, rather than the original silver.
2208399	/m/06w0lm	Heartbeat	Sharon Creech	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book follows a girl named Annie. She loves running and drawing, as well as her relationships with her best friend Max, her grandfather and the imminent birth of her brother, Joey. Annie is going through a lot in her life and running seems to help her with all the changes going on in her life. Through all of this, she learns about herself, her always moody friend Max, and her family too!
2209652	/m/06w3dk	Canal Town				 The novel is set in the 1820s in the town of Palmyra, New York, near Rochester, located on the Erie Canal. The novel opens in 1820, when the construction of the Erie Canal had just begun, but has not reached Palmyra, and most of the town is looking forward to the economic boom the Canal is expected to bring. During the course of the book, Adams depicts the changes in the daily life brought about by the construction of the canal. By the close of the book, citizens in Palmyra are regularly and casually travelling to Rochester via packet boat on the canal, or to New York by canal packet to Albany and thence by steam packet down the Hudson. On publication, a New York Times review by Catharine Brody noted that the book recalls the Erie Canal novels of Walter D. Edmonds, whom Adams acknowledges in his introduction. In fact, Edmonds allowed Adams to use his notebooks as background for the novel. The book is constructed around a single plot device, a case that a Dr. David Little reported to the Albany County Medical Society in the early 19th century. Brody called the incident "a truthful old-wives' tale." The chief protagonist is a young doctor, Horace Amlie. He is intelligent and dedicated, willing to treat both wealthy and indigent, and willing to accept barter in lieu of cash when necessary. He knows of the latest advances in medical science, such as vaccination against smallpox, and comes into conflict with an established doctor who prefers older treatments such as bleeding. Brody called him "an Arrowsmith in a high beaver hat." Amlie visits a settlement called Poverty's Pinch, treats the sick, and pays respectful attention to an old woman named Quaila Crego who practices folk medicine. Work on the canal is constantly interrupted by sickness and fever among the workers. He asks Crego whether the fever has broken out in the Pinch and takes notice when she says "It will, when the black moskeeter stands on her head." Amlie's dedication brings him into melodramatic conflict with landowners who resent his efforts to enforce public sanitation, and with a wealthy and powerful landowner named Genter Latham. Amlie becomes acquainted with a spunky adolescent girl named Araminta Jerrold and her best friend, Genter Latham's daughter Wealthia. Araminta admires Amlie and it comes as no surprise to the reader when she and Horace are married later. A good portion of the plot turns on a romantic situation involving Genter Latham's daughter, Wealthia. It seems obvious to the reader that Wealthia is having an affair with a dashing canal boat operator, Silverhorn Ramsey. She is also engaged to one Kinsey Hayne. Dr. Amlie perceives that Wealthia is pregnant, and assumes that the father is Hayne. Amlie is concerned about the possibility that Wealthia may seek "assistance" from folk healers in Poverty Pinch, or may travel to Rochester for an "illegal operation." Eventually he informs Wealthia's father, who is furious at the aspersions cast on his daughter. Nine months elapse and there is no birth. Amlie is bewildered because he was certain of his diagnosis, and equally certain that Wealthia has not had an abortion. New York Times reviewer Brody says that the reader will "probably stay up the rest of the night" to discover "the resolving of a first-class medical mystery." Meanwhile, Latham resolves to ruin Amlie financially and run him out of town. He succeeds in having Amlie's license to practice medicine revoked. Through a loophole in the law, the revocation is unenforceable on the water of the canal itself, and Amlie manages to eke out a precarious living travelling up and down the canal in a boat, seeing patients only on board his vessel. Without Amlie's public-health efforts, sanitary conditions in Palmyra deteriorate, and there is an epidemic of typhus, to which Wealthia falls victim and dies. Unable to stand not knowing how he could have been mistaken in his diagnosis, Amlie and a collaborator exhume Wealthia, and discover that she has experienced a rare condition, called a lithopedion or "stone baby," in which a fetus dies in the womb but becomes calcified rather than being expelled. Amlie confronts Latham with this evidence, Latham acknowledges Amlie's integrity, numerous complications are quickly resolved in the closing pages, and Amlie and his wife Araminta live happily ever after.
2209716	/m/06w3l2	The Footprints of God			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The story revolves around a supercomputer being built in a secret government lab working on a project called Trinity. When one of the project's scientists dies, David Tennant, the ethical caretaker, discovers that he had been killed for his refusal to accept the ultimate project's aim, a merger of the human mind and the machine, in order to produce an unrivalled super computing machine. Tennant subsequently tries to piece together the truth behind the project while he and his psychiatrist Dr. Rachel Weiss are pursued around the globe. Tennant suffers from a series of regression episodes, which are considered to be seizures by his doctor, who says they are caused by overexposure to a super-MRI scan. During these episodes, he has strangely vivid dreams, in which he witnesses the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) and the history of mankind. Subsequent dreams seem to be memories of Jesus of Nazareth, something that Tennant, an atheist, finds strange and bewildering. They take a bizarre turn when he sees himself as an NSA assassin sent to kill him, and also as his dead friend, Andrew Fielding, in his last moments. In the end, it seems that someone was in fact showing him these dreams, to tell him something.
2210110	/m/06w4bk	Under and Alone	William Queen	2005		 William Queen was a nearly 20-year ATF veteran as well as a motorcycle enthusiast when, in 1998, a “confidential informant” contacted Queen's superiors, offering to help place an agent inside the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Mongols. Queen's work was soon to become the most extensive undercover operation into a motorcycle gang in the history of American law enforcement.
2212795	/m/06wbx3	Mindstar Rising	Peter F. Hamilton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The focus of the novel centers around the growth of the company Event Horizon, founded by Julia's grandfather Philip Evans. Beset by industrial saboteurs, the company seeks help in the form of ex-military Mindstar Brigade turned private detective Greg Mandel. The company is leading the way in rebuilding a 21st century England after the People's Socialist Party (PSP), a tyrannical communist government, had first crushed the country and then collapsed, leaving it in shambles. Initially hired to solve a mystery involving missing stocks from a zero-g satellite production facility, he is then re-hired to find the source of attacks on a stored personality of Philip Evans after the industrialist's death.
2213732	/m/06wfcw	Blood Fever	Charlie Higson	2006-01-05	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Blood Fever begins with a prologue during which a young girl named Amy Goodenough is aboard her father's yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean when she becomes witness to a band of pirates under the command of Zoltan the Magyar who board the yacht. Zoltan's men ransack the vessel and in the process murder Amy's father who was unwilling to part with his priceless possessions. When Amy fails to get revenge by throwing a knife at Zoltan and hitting him in the shoulder, she is taken prisoner, but swears she will one day succeed in achieving vengeance. Following the adventure SilverFin, James Bond is back at Eton where he is now a member of a secret risk-taking club known as the Danger Society. As summer vacation looms, James is given the opportunity to go to Sardinia on a field trip with one of his professors, Peter Haight and a colleague, Cooper-ffrench. While there Bond would also be able to visit his cousin, Victor Delacroix (a relation of Monique Delacroix, James deceased mother). Prior to leaving, Bond learns of the tragedy that took place on the Goodenough's yacht from his friend, Mark Goodenough, Amy's brother who attends Eton. Bond is also witness to a mysterious group whose followers are marked on both of their hands with an 'M' (double M), which James eventually learns is the mark of the Millenaria, a defunct secret Italian society that has had plans throughout history to restore the Roman Empire. Once arriving in Sardinia, James and his classmates begin a tour of the country to learn its history, during which Bond is poisoned (though the reader is not aware of it at the time) and almost killed. To get away and relax, Bond departs from his classmates to spend time with his Cousin Victor, his artist friend Poliponi, and his teenage servant Mauro. While there Victor is host to the Count Ugo Carnifex, a man who is later identified as the leader of the reorganized Millenaria that plans once again to restore the glory of the Roman Empire. Carnifex achieves the funding for such a task, as well as for his palace located high in the mountains of Sardinia, and his lavish lifestyle, by hiring pirates such as Zoltan the Magyar to plunder valuable items; however, Carnifex is a fraud who cannot actually afford to compensate his "employees". Additionally, when Zoltan arrives at Carnifex's palace, Carnifex declares ownership over Amy Goodenough, much to the great annoyance of Zoltan, whom during his travels to Sardinia had formed a unique and strange bond with Amy. Later Bond is once again reunited with his classmates who are now in a town near Carnifex's palace. During one night, Bond sneaks into the palace and finds Amy's cell, but is unable to rescue her and instead informs Peter Haight. Things go bad, however, when Haight reveals himself to be a loyal servant of Carnifex and had earlier attempted to poison and kill James for asking too many questions about the Millenaria. Carnifex subsequently tortures James by allowing the mosquitoes to have a field day (Carnifex betting that at some point one of them will be a carrier of malaria) while James is stripped of his shirt and strapped down, thus preventing him from escaping, killing any mosquitoes feeding and scratching itches, bringing the pain to a maximum. Bond is later rescued by Mauro's sister, Vendetta, who kisses him consistently. Having put up with Carnifex for as long as he could bear, Zoltan turns against Carnifex by flooding his palace leaving it in ruins. Carnifex's sea plane is swept away by the water and flies straight into the count, killing him. Just prior, Bond sneaks into the palace with the help of Vendetta, much to her dismay, to rescue Amy. Vendetta is reluctant to let Bond go and attacks him. Bond convinces her not to follow and, for good measure, he gives her a tongue kiss of his own. After the destruction of the palace, Bond and Amy return to Victor Delacroix's villa, but are ambushed on the way by Peter Haight. Bond and Amy are saved, however, by Zoltan the Magyar who gives his life for their protection in the process. The grief-stricken Amy hugs Bond for comfort. Amy and Bond arrive at Victor's villa. After skinny dipping and lying on the beach, they go up together. However, Jana Carnifex, Ugo's sister, is waiting for them. Bond tricks her, however, by jumping off the rock, while Victor distracts her. She slips and falls into a bed of sea urchins, where she finally dies from the pain and poison. As Bond and Amy wade to the surface, Amy suddenly steps on a sea urchin. Bond knows exactly how to remove it.
2213829	/m/06wfq7	The Riddle of the Sands	Robert Erskine Childers	1903	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/090ts5": "Invasion literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Carruthers, a minor official in the Foreign Office is contacted by an acquaintance, Davies, asking him to join in a yachting holiday in the Baltic Sea. Carruthers agrees, as his other plans for a holiday have fallen through. He arrives to find that Davies has a small sailing boat (the vessel was named Dulcibella, a reference to Childers's own sister of that name), not the comfortable crewed yacht that he expected. Davies gradually reveals that he suspects that the Germans are undertaking something sinister in the German Frisian islands, based on his belief that he was nearly wrecked by a German yacht luring him into a shoal in rough weather. Carruthers and Davies sail back to the Frisian Islands and spend some time exploring the shallow tidal waters of the area, moving closer to the mysterious site where there is a rumoured secret treasure recovery project in progress. They are watched by a German navy patrol boat, which warns them away from the area. Taking advantage of a thick fog, Davies navigates them covertly through the complicated sandbanks in a small boat to investigate the site. They find that it is actually the centre of a German plan to invade England. The invasion plan is master-minded by a renegade Englishman, but Davies has fallen in love with his daughter and he does not want to hurt her by revealing her father's treason. Eventually they manage to escape with the information and the invasion plan is foiled.
2214517	/m/06whhb	The Italian Girl	Iris Murdoch	1964	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Edmund Narraway returns to his family home, an old rectory in the north of England, for the cremation of his mother, Lydia. His brother, Otto, probably drunk, starts giggling during the service, and has to be taken outside. Edmund is disgusted rather than scandalised, yet he immediately finds himself fascinated by Otto's daughter, his own niece, who is now a teenager and, for the first time since Edmund last saw her, sexually mature. After the service Isabel, Otto's apparently neurotic wife, attempts to involve Edmund in her small and frustrated life. He at first refuses. When Edmund later talks to his self-pitying brother, he detects evidence of a sexual tension between Otto and his apprentice David Levkin. Isabel, Otto and Flora all implore Edmund to stay and help them, each for a different reason. In each case, Edmund seems at first untempted, reluctant to get involved, and aware of his own impotence against their troubles. It is finally Flora who gives Edmund a real reason, or excuse, to stay. She confides in him that she is pregnant by another student, and has only him to rely on for assistance. One by one, each character in the house manages to enveigle Edmund in a series of confessions, exposés and almost farcical in flagrante delicto discoveries. Edmund, though sexually aloof and anodyne now seems, somewhat contradictorily, highly prone to getting involved and seeing himself as an integral part of everyone else's problem, if not the means to a solution. He cuts a slightly preposterous and contemptible figure, ever more so as each character, led by David Levkin and Flora, respectively devilish and vituperative, make evident their disgust for him. Midway through the story we have learnt that Otto is having an affair with Elsa, David's sister; Isabel and her daughter Flora have both had affairs with David, and it is he who made Flora pregnant; 'Maggie', the Italian girl, whose actual name is Maria Magistretti and who was nursemaid to Otto and Edmund, had been having a lesbian affair with Lydia, their recently deceased mother and, it transpires, she is the sole beneficiary of Lydia's will. After all these 'secret' relationships have been revealed, Otto's response is to send David and Elsa Levkin packing. Elsa, in despair, reacts by setting fire to herself and the house. She dies, the house survives. At this surprising turn of events Otto and Edmund now seem reconciled, perhaps in misery, perhaps in astonishment. Similarly, Otto and David act civilised towards each other, and Edmund and David begin to talk honestly and respectfully to each other for the first time. David departs, leaving instructions for Elsa's funeral. The fire and Elsa's death seem to have had a cathartic effect on everyone. Isabel finds her independence and leaves Otto. She joyfully announces that she too is pregnant by David. Flora, who ran away from home at the climax now returns to look after her rather helpless father Otto. Maggie generously agrees to split the inheritance equally with Edmund and Otto, and allows Otto to keep the house. The fire damage, incidentally, is all covered by insurance. To crest this unexpected wave of redemption Edmund discovers that he has always actually been in love with Maria and she, conveniently, has always been in love with him. The book closes with them preparing to travel by car to Rome.
2215443	/m/06wkyd	Set This House on Fire	William Styron	1960-05-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The day after Peter Leverett met his old friend Mason Flagg in Italy, Mason was found dead. The hours leading up to his death were a nightmare for Peter - both in their violence and in their maddening unreality. The events were ignited by a conflict between Flagg and a self-destructive painter. "What this country needs... what this great land of ours needs is something to happen to it. Something ferocious and tragic, like what happened to Jericho or the cities of the plain - something terrible I mean, son, so that when the people have been through hellfire and the crucible, and have suffered agony enough and grief, they’ll be people again, human beings, not a bunch of smug contented cows rooting at the trough." - William Styron, from Set This House on Fire
2215489	/m/06wl1x	Nothing But the Truth	Edward Irving Wortis	1991	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Philip Malloy is a track-obsessed ninth-grader at Harrison High School in Harrison, New Hampshire. He has an English teacher, Margaret Narwin, and is doing very poorly in her class, he is given a D for his grade and is not allowed to try out for the track team. He does not tell this to his parents, and instead pretends that he no longer has an interest in trying out for the track team. Philip causes distractions in Narwin's class such as singing the national anthem. Eventually he is suspended from school by Dr. Joseph Palleni, the school's vice principal. Ms. Jennifer Stewart, a reporter that was interviewing Mr. Griffin, Philip Malloy's neighbor, who was running for school board, was interested in Philip's story about suspension and talks to the school superintendent, Dr. Albert Seymour (who was unaware of any policy against singing the national anthem but is not aware of the context), the principal Dr. Gertrude Doane (who received a short memo on the subject), the assistant principal, Dr. Joseph Palleni (who is defensive about his level of involvement), and Miss Narwin (who verifies the facts of the story without providing additional detail or commentary). The story runs in a local paper, and is used as a campaign issue by Mr. Griffen about how a student was suspended for being "patriotic." The story is then picked up by a national newswire as well as a radio station and the school is flooded with telegrams in support of Phillip and against Miss Narwin. The school tries to respond, going through sequential levels of bureaucracy until its statement has become half-truth, putting the blame fully on Miss Narwin. The superintendent makes a deal with Mr. Griffen that they will encourage Miss Narwin to retire in return for his support of a budget which is on the same ballot. It is revealed how great of a teacher Miss Narwin is, as Philip is ostracized by his peers for forcing her removal. At the end of the novel, Philip transfers to another school, Washington Academy, which does not have a track team, and Miss Narwin moves in with her sister in Florida.When his new teacher at Washington Academy asks him to lead the class in the national anthem and Philip breaks down crying and confessing "I don't know the words." The theme of distortion of the truth and people's willingness to disregard the truth to protect themselves is not only accomplished through the storyline, but also through Avi's unique style. Nothing but the Truth which is a documentary novel, pulls together many different nonnarrative elements, such as memos, conversations, letters,diary,and phone conversations. Although these pieces are said to contain “facts,” it is apparent to the reader throughout the novel that there is much discrepancy between these sources. Since these sources contain flaws, the real “truth” is not revealed by the end of the book.
2216258	/m/06wmyr	Yōtōden	Takeshi Narumi			 The story takes place during Japan's great civil war Sengoku period, beginning in the summer of 1581 and ending two years later. In the anime, the historical warlord Oda Nobunaga is really an evil demon killing everyone who stand in his way. An ancient prophecy says three mystical Demon Blades from three different ninja clans can end Nobunaga's unholy campaign. The story follows Kasumi no Ayanosuke, a young kunoichi (female ninja) who has escaped her village's annihilation, in her heroic efforts to reunite these three sacred weapons use them to kill Nobunaga.
2217865	/m/06wrn_	Titus Groan	Mervyn Peake	1946	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/057pyk": "Fantasy of manners", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As the book starts, two important events occur in the castle: Firstly, an heir is born to Lord Sepulchrave, Earl of Groan and the monarchical ruler of Gormenghast, and his wife, Countess Gertrude. He is named Titus and put into the care of the old nurse, Nannie Slagg. Nannie Slagg is an ancient, tiny woman who serves as the nurse for the infant Titus and Fuchsia before him. She is somewhat senile and has an inferiority complex. Her first duty is to go to the dwellings of the Bright Carvers just outside the walls of Gormenghast to choose a wet nurse for Titus (Gertrude has no interest in raising him). Keda, the widow of a well-respected Carver who has recently lost a child from her late husband, volunteers to take on the role. Keda comes to live in the castle for a time helping to raise Titus. Later, she leaves the castle walls and is impregnated by one of her previous two suitors. The suitors promptly kill each other in a duel for her hand in marriage. On the same day as Titus' birth, an ambitious kitchen boy of seventeen by the name of Steerpike escapes from the kitchens and the grossly fat, sadistic Chef, Abiatha Swelter. Lord Sepulchrave’s chief servant, Mr. Flay (Swelter’s archenemy), comes upon Steerpike who has become lost in the confines of the castle, and takes him through the castle (large parts of which are uninhabited) to a room outside the quarters of the Earl and the Countess. Here, Steerpike takes the opportunity to spy on the Groan family. Despite having led him there, the fiercely loyal Flay is angered by Steerpike’s eavesdropping and locks him in a small room. Steerpike, however, escapes out of a window, risking his life above a sheer drop. He manages to climb up onto the roofscape of Gormenghast, and from there begins his rise to power. After spending a long time walking and clambering on the roof searching for a means to enter the castle, Steerpike manages to climb in through a window- and ends up in the secret attic of Lady Fuchsia Groan. Fuchsia is Titus’ fifteen-year-old sister, who has the large area of long-abandoned attic space all to herself. A little later, Steerpike accompanies Fuchsia to the house of Dr. Prunesquallor, and becomes his apprentice for a while. Dr. Alfred Prunesquallor is the castle's resident physician. He is an eccentric individual with a high-pitched laugh and a grandiose wit which he uses on the castle's less intelligent inhabitants. Despite his acid tongue, he is an extremely kind and caring man who also is greatly fond of Fuchsia and Titus. (In a few places in the text, Dr. Prunesquallor is given the first name of Bernard, but this was an error by Peake.) He lives with his sister Irma Prunesquallor. Though she is anything but pretty, she is considerably vain. She desperately desires to be admired and loved by men. In this position, Steerpike is able to come into close contact with members of the Groan family, in particular Lord Sepulchrave’s twin sisters, Cora and Clarice Groan. The sisters are not very bright and are power hungry and resentful, believing that Countess Gertrude holds the position that they rightfully deserve. Steerpike manages to use the twins' ambition for his own ends. He promises them power and influence, and convinces them that they could achieve their goal by burning down Sepulchrave’s beloved library. Steerpike prepares meticulously for the act of arson. He arranges for the burning to happen when the entire Groan family and their most important servants are inside the library for a family gathering (Steerpike intentionally failed to tell the twins that they were invited as well, strengthening their feeling of bitterness towards Sepulchrave and Gertrude). He intends to lock the doors to prevent an escape, and then come through the window and save everyone inside from the fire, appearing as a hero and possibly strengthening his position and granting him more power in the castle. Everything goes according to plan: The entire Groan family (including the Earl and his heir) and most of the retainers are saved. Sourdust, the old Master of Ceremonies, dies of smoke asphyxiation and all the books in the library are destroyed in the flames. This comes as a great blow to Sepulchrave, a rather melancholic man, to whom the library was the only joy in his otherwise monotonous life, dominated by the ritualistic duties he must perform every day, every week, every month and every year at appropriate times. Steerpike hoped to become Master of Ritual (a very prestigious job in Gormenghast) after Sourdust died, but the title, like so many things in the castle, is hereditary, and so goes to Sourdust’s seventy-four-year-old son Barquentine, who has lived almost completely forgotten in a remote part of the castle for sixty years. He is lame in one leg, hideous, and unbelievably dirty. Barquentine is a consummate misanthrope who only cares for the laws and traditions of Gormenghast. During the weeks following the burning, Lord Sepulchrave becomes increasingly insane, starting to believe that he is one of the Death Owls living in the Tower of Flints (the tallest tower in the castle). Flay learns that Swelter intends to kill him. Flay had hit him across the face with a chain before Titus’ christening, escalating a mutual loathing into plans for vengeful murder. Flay observes Swelter practicing the blow with a large cleaver, and so prepares himself for an attack, acquiring a sword for his protection, in case Swelter should ever attempt to murder him while he is sleeping in front of his master’s door. Things happen differently though: Steerpike, now a full-time retainer of the twins, having quit Doctor Prunesquallor’s service, angers Flay by sarcastically imitating Sepulchrave’s madness. Flay loses control and hurls one of the countess’ white cats at Steerpike. At that moment, the Countess enters the room, and seeing that one of her beloved cats has been abused, immediately banishes Flay from Gormenghast. Flay is forced to learn how to survive outside the castle, and he sets up various homes in the nearby forest and on Gormenghast Mountain. Having a strong attachment to the castle, and feeling a need to watch over Steerpike and to protect Titus, Flay returns secretly to Gormenghast during the night. Four nights after Titus’ first birthday, Flay finds Swelter wandering the castle with a meat cleaver. Swelter does not know of Flay’s banishment, and expects him to be sleeping where he has always slept up until now. Flay follows him to just outside Sepulchrave’s door, where Swelter discovers that Flay is not there, and soon realizes that he has been followed. Flay lures Swelter to the Hall of Spiders (making use of the fact that Sepulchrave &mdash; who is by now quite insane &mdash; is sleepwalking), and there they fight a long duel. Eventually, Flay kills Swelter. Lord Sepulchrave arrives on the scene, and decides that Swelter’s body should be taken to the Tower of Flints. After helping Sepulchrave carry the body to the tower, Flay is ordered to stay where he is. The mad Earl babbles about possible reincarnation, bids Flay farewell, and then drags the body into the tower by himself and is attacked and eaten by the starved Death Owls, along with Swelter’s remains. After the disappearance of the Earl and the chief cook (the exiled Flay is not able to tell anyone what has happened), Steerpike leads a search for them. Naturally, their remains are not found, but Steerpike is able to gain a good knowledge of all the rooms in the castle. Flay lives in the mountains, making two caves and a shed for himself- living in seclusion but adept as a naturalist. He later witnesses Keda's suicide as she throws herself off a ledge. Initially just one of a number of minor background characters Keda's story shows some of the world outside the castle and her choices, journey and resolution are among the most emotive parts of the story. Nine days after Sepulchrave's disappearance, Steerpike has a conversation with Barquentine. The Master of Ceremonies tells Steerpike that Titus is now to become Earl of Groan, despite the fact that he is only one year old. He also gives Steerpike the position of his assistant and heir to his post, since Barquentine does not have a child. As the apprentice to the Master of Ceremonies, Steerpike has a good, stable position in the castle. Steerpike fears that Cora and Clarice are too careless and may tell others that he convinced them to burn down Sepulchrave’s library. Steerpike dresses as a ghost and convinces the twins they will die if they ever speak of the fire. By this stage, Steerpike has considerable influence in the affairs of Gormenghast, even if he is not yet a recognized figure of authority. He still has to influence people to do his work for him. Despite this, both the Countess and Dr Prunesquallor are disturbed and uneasy about all that has happened, and disturbed about Steerpike's sudden rise. Yet neither is able to connect Steerpike as the cause of the tragic events, as he was their apparent savior from the fire in the library. Soon afterwards, the “Earling” takes place, and young Titus is officially made Earl of Gormenghast. In a ridiculously elaborate ceremony on a nearby lake, little Titus holds aloft the sacred symbols of his status - the stone and ivy branch, and to the horror of observers, promptly drops them both into the lake. The scene is silent except for the shout of Titus and for the shout of Keda's unnamed baby, with a surrogate parent across the lake with the Bright Carvers.
2219342	/m/06wwdl	Zodiac	Robert Graysmith	1986	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book gives the history of the Zodiac killer who was active in the 1960s and 70s in California. It describes the investigations of the many law enforcement branches that worked on the case and other murders that might have been committed by Zodiac, including the 1966 Cherie Jo Bates stabbing. Later chapters deal with Graysmith's many theories on the case, and the book eventually cites two possible suspects (who are given pseudonyms) and details some of the circumstantial evidence against them. Graysmith received assistance from police departments that fell within the jurisdictions of the murders, especially from Inspector Dave Toschi from the San Francisco Police Department, who had worked the Zodiac case.
2220261	/m/06wyp0	The Deep End of the Ocean	Jacquelyn Mitchard	1996-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Wisconsin photographer and housewife Beth Cappadora leaves her youngest son, Ben, alone with his older brother for a brief moment in a crowded Chicago hotel lobby, while attending her high school reunion. The older son lets go of Ben's hand and Ben vanishes without a trace. Beth goes into an extended mental breakdown and it is left to her husband and owner of a restaurant, Pat, to force his wife to robotically care for their remaining two children, 7-year-old Vincent and infant daughter Kerry. Nine years later a young boy named Sam asks Beth if she needs the lawn mowed. Beth suspects that this boy who lives with his "father" two blocks away is in fact her lost son, and while Sam mows the lawn, she takes photographs of him to show to her husband and teenage son, who then says that he suspected the boy's true identity all along. The parents contact Detective Candy Bliss who pops in to offer wise, albeit often cryptic and conflicting, advice to Beth. It is learned that at the reunion in Chicago, the celebrity alumna Cecil Lockhart kidnapped Ben, renamed him Sam, and raised him as her own child until she was committed to a mental hospital, leaving Sam to be raised in a house only two blocks from the Cappadoras, by his adoptive father, the sensitive and intellectual George Karras. Ben was raised by a Greek-American father for nine years, while his biological parents are Italian-American. Ben is a polite, intelligent American boy who takes great pride in participating in Greek cultural rituals, much to the frustration of Pat who wants to pretend that Ben was never really abducted. Ben is faced with the cultural identity that he grew up with, and the cultural identity he would have known had he not been kidnapped. Ben's adoptive father agrees to surrender Ben to his birth family, while still living two blocks away. Torn between two worlds and having lost both of the parents that he knew, Ben expresses suicidal feelings to Beth. Ben's only memory of his biological family is one of brother Vincent and thus over a one-on-one basketball game he absolves his brother of any responsibility for his abduction, and agrees to return to live with the Cappadoras. At the end of the novel, many conflicts remain unresolved. Pat still has problems loving his sons: Ben because he can not relate to his personality and Vincent because he does not connect his teenaged rebellion and cynicism to nine years of bad parenting. Beth has regained her position in the family as an equal parent, but Ben and Vincent's emotional scars may require years of intense therapy.
2220320	/m/06wytx	Ralph S. Mouse	Beverly Cleary	1982	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Ralph has befriended a young boy named Ryan, the son of the inn's new maid. Ryan has given Ralph the full name of "Ralph S. Mouse," the middle initial standing for "Smart." (The name is not seen in the previous two books.) Meanwhile, Ralph becomes agitated at his family. Forced by his parents to let numerous younger siblings and cousins ride his motorcycle, which is beginning to wear out due to their careless treatment and also worried that their droppings on the floor will result in anti-mouse retaliation by the hotel staff, he asks Ryan to take him to school, where he plans to hide and live out the rest of his life. Ralph is discovered by Ryan's classmates, who adopt him as a class pet and decide to see how smart he is by building a maze for him to run through. All this time Ryan is having difficulties with an aggressive boy named Brad from his class. Brad accidentally breaks Ralph's motorcycle, and Ralph blames Ryan and runs away to hide in the school. However, Ralph also confronts Brad for breaking his motorcycle, and Brad, realizing that Ralph can talk, offers to set things right for him and Ryan. Ryan and Brad discover that they have much in common and become friends. Ryan reclaims Ralph and brings him home on the school bus on the day that his new friend comes with him to visit at the inn. Brad also atones for his destruction of Ralph's treasured motorcycle by giving him his toy car. Ralph discovers that like the motorcycle, he can move the car by making car engine noises as a boy would do while playing with it. Ralph further discovers that he can safely give his younger relatives rides in the car without worrying that they will be irresponsible with it (but only Ralph can drive the car). Brad's father meets Ryan's mother and they marry six months later, thus Ryan and Brad are now brothers.
2220502	/m/06wzby	Lasher	Anne Rice	1993-09-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 The novel begins shortly after the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Rowan Mayfair, recently married to contractor Michael Curry. Michael, feeling betrayed by Rowan, has sunk into a depression helped along by the useless drugs prescribed to him after his close encounter with death. Along comes the sexually adventurous Mona Mayfair, a precocious teenager and powerful witch and Rowan's cousin sharing lines of descent from Julien. She seduces Michael, causing him to snap out of his stupor and renew his vow to find his wife at all costs. He is now convinced that she hasn't gone willingly. And though it was she who spirited her mutant child Lasher away from the house, she is now a prisoner of the monster she has spawned. His first two attempts at impregnating her are failures ending in miscarriage, but he is successful the third time around. As he accompanies her throughout Europe, Rowan manages to send off DNA samples to colleagues in San Francisco. They discover that Lasher is a completely different species, and that Rowan herself has a genetic abnormality, polyploidy, or 92 chromosomes, which was probably what made Lasher's quasi-supernatural birth at all possible in the first place. The dyad returns to America where Lasher sets out to impregnate other female members of the Mayfair family. All attempts are unsuccessful as the women immediately miscarry and hemorrhage to death. Rowan manages to escape Lasher, and after hitchhiking to Louisiana, she collapses in a field and gives birth to Emaleth, a female Taltos. Rowan's last words to Emaleth are to find Michael, which she sets out to do, thinking that Rowan has died. Rowan is found and is rushed to a nearby hospital where she is diagnosed as being in a state of toxic shock. An emergency hysterectomy is performed to save her life, eliminating all chances of her ever giving birth again. She is taken home to Michael where she remains in a deep coma. Much of the book is set into four sections of "Julien's Story" which delineates the life of Julien Mayfair and what he has discovered of the entity known as Lasher. Lasher returns to the house to tell Michael and Aaron his story of his past life. Born to Queen Anne of England, the second wife of Henry VIII, and a man from Donnelaith, Lasher is believed to be a saint known as Ashlar, and is quickly taken away by his father to Donnelaith. His father is the son of the Earl of Donnelaith, and from there he is sent to Italy to become a priest. He returns to Scotland after Elizabeth I takes the throne, and is killed there while performing Christmas Mass by followers of the Protestant reformer John Knox. He knows nothing again until Suzanne calls him back into existence. Michael patiently hears Lasher out, and when his story is complete, Michael wastes no time in killing him and burying him under the great oak in the yard. Soon after, he discovers Emaleth in Rowan's room, feeding her the highly nutritious milk from her breasts. This resuscitates Rowan, but upon seeing Emaleth before her, she panics and screams at Michael to kill her. Michael refuses to, so Rowan grabs a gun and shoots her daughter in the head. Rowan immediately realizes what she's done, and crying for her daughter, insists that she be the one to bury her alongside Lasher under the oak tree there. fr:L'Heure des sorcières it:Il demone incarnato nl:Het Heksenkind ru:Лэшер (роман)
2221400	/m/06x0s9	America Is in the Heart	Carlos Bulosan	1946	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Born in 1913, Bulosan recounts his boyhood in the Philippines. The early chapters describe his life as a Filipino farmer "plowing with a carabao". Bulosan was the fourth oldest son of the family. As a young Filipino, he once lived in the farm tended by his father, while his mother was separately living in a barrio in Binalonan, Pangasinan, together with Bulosan’s brother and sister. Their hardship included pawning their land and had to sell items in order to finish the schooling of his brother Macario. He had another brother named Leon, a soldier who came back after fighting in Europe. Bulosan's narration about his life in the Philippines was followed by his journey to the United States. He recounted how he immigrated to America in 1930. He retells the struggles, prejudice, and injustice he and other Filipinos had endured in the United States, first while in the Northwestern fisheries then later in California These included his experiences as a migrant and laborer in the rural West.
2222413	/m/06x39l	American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold	Harry Turtledove	2002-06-25	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 During the period, the U.S. shares world domination with Germany (now victors of the Great War) while the C.S.A. faces poverty and national calamity. Much like Adolf Hitler and his rise to power in real-life 1930s Germany, an antagonist named Jake Featherston rides a fascist wave to power in this desperate Confederacy of the Great Depression. The Americans seem to care little about the activities of the Confederates until it is too late and it seems the road is leading the U.S.A. and C.S.A. toward a fourth war (after facing one another in the War of Secession, the Second Mexican War, and the Great War).
2223342	/m/06x64z	A Star Called Henry	Roddy Doyle	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in Ireland in the era of political upheaval between the 1916 Easter Rising and the eventual truce signed with the United Kingdom in 1921, seen through the eyes of young Henry Smart, from his childhood to early twenties. Henry, as a member of the Irish Citizen Army, becomes personally acquainted with several historical characters, including Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and Michael Collins. Later, he becomes a gunman in the ensuing guerilla war against the British, setting barracks on fire, shooting G-men and training others to do the same. At the end of the novel, Henry comes to think that the endless violence and killing of innocent people has little to do with the concept of a free Ireland, or the prospect of a better life in Ireland and more about personal gain.
2224493	/m/06x8sr	The Secret Life of Bees	Sue Monk Kidd	2003-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in South Carolina in the months of July and August, 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of 14-year-old Lily Melissa Owens, who is in search of her mother's past. She lives in a house with a neglectful and abusive father, who she refers to as T. Ray. They have a black maid, Rosaleen, who acts as a surrogate mother for Lily. The book opens with Lily's memories of the day that her mother, Deborah, died. She vividly remembers her mother and father fighting. A gun fell to the floor and into the hands of four-year-old Lily, who accidentally shot Deborah. Lily is haunted by the fragmented memory of the incident. When the Civil Rights Act is put into effect, Rosaleen decides to register to vote. She and Lily walk into town, where Rosaleen is harassed by three white men. She gets into an argument with them, pours her spit jug on their feet, and is brutally beaten in return. Lily and Rosaleen are put in jail. After T. Ray takes Lily home from jail, they get into an argument and T. Ray tells Lily that her mother abandoned her. Lily is infuriated and believes that this revelation could not possibly be true. When T. Ray is outside, Lily runs away with all of her belongings. She escapes with Rosaleen by sneaking her out of the hospital where her injuries were being treated. They begin hitchhiking toward Tiburon, SC, a place written on the back of an image of the Virgin Mary as a black woman, which Deborah had owned. They spend a night in the woods with little food and little hope before reaching Tiburon. There, they buy lunch at a diner, and Lily recognizes a picture of the same "Black Mary", but on the side of a jar of honey. They receive directions to the origin of that honey, the Boatwright residence. They are introduced to the Boatwright sisters, the makers of the honey: August, May and June, who are all black. Lily makes up a story about being an orphan. Lily and Rosaleen are invited to stay with the sisters. They learn the ways of the Boatwrights, as well as the ways of beekeeping. With a new home and a new family for the time being, Lily learns more about the Black Madonna honey that the sisters make. Wanting to repay the Boatwrights for their kindness, August tells them they can work off their debt. Lily finds out that May had a twin sister, April, who committed suicide with their father's shotgun when they were younger. While Lily and Rosaleen are staying there, they get to see the sisters' form of religion. They hold service at their house which they call "The Daughters of Mary." They keep a figurehead of "Black Mary," or "our lady of chains" which was actually a statue from the bow of an ancient ship, and August tells the story of how a man by the name of Obadiah, who was a slave, found this figure. The slaves thought that God had answered their prayers asking for rescue, and "to send them consolation" and "to send them freedom." It gave them hope, and the figure had been passed down for generations. Lily meets Zach, August's godson. They soon develop intimate feelings for each other. Acknowledging the trouble that an interracial couple could cause in the South, they attempt to put their feelings aside. They share goals with each other while working the hives. Both Lily and Zach find their goals nearly impossible to meet, but still encourage each other to attempt them. Zach wants to be the "ass-busting lawyer", which means he would be the first black lawyer in the area.Lily wants to be a short story writer. Zach and Lily go out for a honey run, but Zach and some friends get arrested for "injuring" a white man. The Boatwright house decides not to tell May in fear of an unbearable emotional episode. The secret does not stay hidden for long, and May becomes catatonic with depression. May leaves the house and August, June, Lily and Rosaleen find her lying dead in the river with a rock on her chest, an apparent suicide. A vigil is held that lasts four days. In that time, Zach is freed from jail with no charges, and black cloth is draped over the beehives to symbolize the mourning. May's suicide letter is found and in it she says, "It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up." August interprets this as urging June to marry Neil. May is later buried. Life begins to turn back to normal after a time of grieving, bringing the Boatwright house back together. June after several rejections, agrees to give her hand in marriage to Neil. Zach vows to Lily that they will be together someday. Lily finally finds out the truth about her mother. August was her mother's nanny, and helped raise her. After her mother and father's relationship began to sour, Deborah left and went to stay with the Boatwrights. She eventually decided to leave him permanently and returned to their house to collect Lily. While packing to leave, T.Ray returned home. Their ensuing argument turned into a physical fight during which Deborah gets a gun. After a brief struggle, the gun accidentally discharges, killing Deborah. T. Ray, having never been able to get over the fact that his wife was leaving him, lied to Lily about what happened, leading her to believe she had killed her own mother. While Lily is coming to terms with this information, T.Ray shows up at the pink house to take her back home. Lily refuses, and T.Ray flies into an enraged rampage. He has a violent flashback which brings him around. August steps in and offers to let Lily stay with her. T.Ray gives in and agrees. *Lily Owens: the narrator. She believes she accidentally killed her mother. *T.Ray Owens: the father of Lily and the widower of Deborah Fontanel-Owens. *Deborah Fontanel-Owens: the deceased mother of Lily Owens and wife of T.Ray Owens. *Rosaleen Daise: the maid of Lily's household and other neighbors, also acts as Lily's primary caregiver (surrogate mother). She is Lily's best friend for most of the book. *August Boatwright: the eldest of the Boatwright sisters, a beekeeper, a well-respected businesswoman in the community. *June Boatwright: the sister of May Boatwright and August Boatwright. She is a school teacher and musician. *May Boatwright: the sister of August and June Boatwright. She had a twin sister, April, who died when she was younger, and as a result of April's death she is hyper-sensitive. *Zachary "Zach" Taylor: August's godson who helps her with the hives. He is a football player who attends the local black high school. He wants to become a lawyer. *Neil: the principal at the school where June teaches. He has proposed multiple times to June. He becomes June's fiance. *The Daughters of Mary: Cressie, Queenie and her daughter Violet, Lunelle, Mabelee, and Sugar-Girl who attends with her husband, Otis, the one man of the group. They are followers of Our Lady in Chains.
2227100	/m/06xh9s	The Temple of the Golden Pavilion	Yukio Mishima	1956	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist, Mizoguchi, is the son of a consumptive Buddhist priest who lives and works on the remote Cape Nariu on the north coast of Honshū. As a child, the narrator lives with his uncle at the village of Shiraku (師楽), near Maizuru. Throughout his childhood he is assured by his father that the Golden Pavilion is the most beautiful building in the world, and the idea of the temple becomes a fixture in his imagination. A stammering boy from a poor household, he is friendless at his school, and takes refuge in vengeful fantasies. When a naval cadet who is visiting the school makes fun of him, he vandalises the cadet's belongings behind his back. A neighbour's girl, Uiko, becomes the target of his hatred, and when she is killed by her deserter boyfriend after she betrays him, Mizoguchi becomes convinced that his curse on her has been fulfilled. His ill father takes him to the Kinkaku-ji for the first time in the spring of 1944, and introduces him to the Superior, Tayama Dosen. After his father's death, Mizoguchi becomes an acolyte at the temple. It is the height of the war, and there are only three acolytes, but one is his first real friend, the candid and pleasant Tsurukawa. During the 1944–5 school year, he boards at the Rinzai Academy's middle school and works at a factory, fascinated by the idea that the Golden Pavilion will inevitably be burnt to ashes in the firebombing. But the American planes avoid Kyoto, and his dream of a glorious tragedy is defeated. In May 1945, he and Tsurukawa visit Nanzen-ji. From the tower, they witness a strange scene in a room of the Tenju-an nearby: a woman in a formal kimono gives her lover a cup of tea to which she adds her own breast milk. After his father dies of consumption, he is sent to Kinkaku-ji. On the first anniversary of his father's death, his mother visits him, bringing the mortuary tablet so that the Superior can say Mass over it. She tells him that she has moved from Nariu to Kasagun, and reveals her wish that he should succeed Father Dosen as Superior at Rokuon-ji. The two ambitions—that the temple be destroyed, or that it should be his to control—leave him confused and ambivalent. On hearing the news of the end of the war and the Emperor's renunciation of divinity, Father Dosen calls his acolytes and tells them the fourteenth Zen story from The Gateless Gate, "Nansen kills a kitten", which leaves them bemused. Mizoguchi is bitterly disappointed by the end of hostilities, and late at night he climbs the hill behind the temple, Okitayama-Fudosan, looks down on the lights of Kyoto, and pronounces a curse: "Let the darkness of my heart [...] equal the darkness of the night which encloses those countless lights!" During the winter of that year, the Temple is visited by a drunk American soldier and his pregnant Japanese girlfriend. He pushes his girlfriend down into the snow, and orders Mizoguchi to trample her stomach, giving him two cartons of cigarettes in exchange for doing so. Mizoguchi goes indoors and obsequiously presents the cartons to the Superior, who is having his head shaved by the deacon. Father Dosen thanks him, and tells him he has been chosen for the scholarship to Otani University. A week later the girl visits the temple, tells her story, and demands compensation for the miscarriage she has suffered. The Superior gives her money and says nothing to the acolytes, but rumours of her claims spread, and the people at the temple become uneasy about Mizoguchi. Throughout 1946 he is tormented by the urge to confess, but never does so, and in the spring of 1947 he leaves with Tsurukawa for Otani University. He starts to drift away from Tsurukawa, befriending Kashiwagi, a cynical clubfooted boy from Sannomiya who indulges in long "philosophical" speeches. Kashiwagi boasts of his ability to seduce women by making them feel sorry for him—in his words, they "fall in love with my clubfeet." He demonstrates his method to Mizoguchi by feigning a tumble in front of a girl. She helps him into her house. Mizoguchi is so disturbed that he runs away, and takes a train to the Kinkaku-ji to recover his self-assurance. In May, Kashiwagi invites him to a "picnic" at Kameyama Park, taking the girl he tricked, and another girl for Mizoguchi. When left alone with the girl, she tells him a story about a woman she knows who lost her lover during the war. He realises that the woman she is talking about must be the same one he saw two years before through a window of Tenju Hermitage. Mizoguchi's mind fills with visions of the Golden Pavilion, and he finds himself impotent. That evening a telegram arrives at the university bearing news of kindly Tsurukawa's death in a road accident. For nearly a year, Mizoguchi avoids Kashiwagi's company. In the spring of 1948 Kashiwagi comes to visit him at the temple, and gives him a shakuhachi as a present. He takes the opportunity to demonstrate his own skill as a player. In May he asks Mizoguchi to steal some irises and cat-tails for him from the temple garden. Mizoguchi takes them to Kashiwagi's boarding-house, and while discussing the story of Nansen and the kitten, Kashiwagi starts to make an arrangement, mentioning that he is being taught ikebana by his girlfriend. Mizoguchi realises that this girlfriend must be the woman he saw at Tenju Hermitage. When she arrives, Kashiwagi breaks up with her, and they quarrel. She runs away and Mizoguchi follows, telling her that he witnessed her tragic scene two years ago. She is moved, and tries to seduce him, but again he is assailed by visions of the temple, and he is impotent. In January 1949 Mizoguchi is walking through Shinkyogoku when he thinks he sees Father Dosen with a geisha. Momentarily distracted, he starts to follow a stray dog, loses it, and then in a back alley he runs into the Superior just as he is getting into a hired car with the geisha. He is so surprised that he laughs out loud, and Father Dosen calls him a fool. Over the next two months Mizoguchi becomes obsessed with reproducing Dosen's brief expression of hatred. He buys a photograph of the geisha and slips it into Dosen's morning newspaper. The Superior gives no sign of having found it, but secretly places the photo in Mizoguchi's drawer the next day. When Mizoguchi finds it there, he feels victorious. He tears it up, wraps the shreds in newspaper with a stone, and sinks it in the pond. As Mizoguchi's mental illness worsens, he neglects his studies. On 9 November 1949, the Superior reprimands him for his poor work. Mizoguchi responds by borrowing ¥3000 from Kashiwagi, who characteristically raises ¥500 of the money by taking back and selling the flute and dictionary he had given as presents. He goes to Takeisao-jinja (a shrine also known as Kenkun-jinja) and draws a mikuji lot which warns him not to travel northwest. He sets off northwest the next morning, to the region of his birth, and spends three days at Yura (now Tangoyura), where the sight of the Sea of Japan inspires him to destroy the Kinkaku. He is retrieved by a policeman, and on his return he is met by his angry mother, who is relieved to learn that he did not steal the money he used to flee. Obsessed by the idea of arson, one day he follows a guilty-looking boy to the Sammon Gate of the Myōshin-ji, and is amazed and disappointed when the boy does not set it alight. He compiles a long list of old temples which have burnt down. By May his debt (with 10% simple interest per month) has grown to ¥5100. Kashiwagi is angry, and comes to suspect that Mizoguchi is considering suicide. On 10 June Kashiwagi complains to Father Dosen, who gives him the principal; afterwards, Kashiwagi shows letters to Mizoguchi that reveal the fact that Tsurukawa did not die in a road accident, but committed suicide over a love affair. He hopes to discourage Mizoguchi from doing anything similar. For the last time, they discuss the Zen story of Nansen and the kitten. On 15 June, Father Dosen takes the unusual step of giving Mizoguchi ¥4250 in cash for his next year's tuition. Mizoguchi spends it on prostitutes in the hope that Dosen will be forced to expel him. But he quickly tires of waiting for Dosen to find out, and when he spies on Dosen in the Tower of the North Star, and seems him crouched in the "garden waiting" position, he cannot account for this evidence of secret shame, and is filled with confusion. The next day he buys arsenic and a knife at a shop near Senbon-Imadegawa, an intersection 2&nbsp;km to the southeast of the temple, and loiters outside Nishijin Police Station. The outbreak of the Korean War on 25 June, and the failure of Kinkaku's fire-alarm on 29 June, seem to him signs of encouragement. On 30 June a repairman tries to fix it, but he is unsuccessful, and promises to return the next day. He does not come. A strange interview with the visiting Father Kuwai Zenkai, of Ryuho-ji in Fukui Prefecture, provides the final inspiration, and in the early hours of 2 July Mizoguchi sneaks into the Kinkaku and dumps his belongings, placing three straw bales in corners of the ground floor. He goes outside to sink some non-inflammable items in the pond, but on turning back to the temple he finds himself filled with his childhood visions of its beauty, and he is overcome by uncertainty. Finally he remembers the words from the Rinzairoku, "When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha", and he resolves to go ahead with his plan. He enters the Kinkaku and sets the bales on fire. He runs upstairs and tries to enter the Kukkyōchō, but the door is locked. He hammers at the door for a minute or two. Suddenly feeling that a glorious death has been "refused" him, he runs back downstairs and out of the temple, choking on the smoke. He continues running, out of the temple grounds, and up the hill named Hidari Daimonji, to the north. He throws away the arsenic and knife, lights a cigarette, and watches the pavilion burn.
2233223	/m/06xzmz	Accelerando	Charles Stross	2005-07-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The book is a collection of nine short stories telling the tale of three generations of a family before, during, and after a technological singularity. It was originally written as a series of novelettes and novellas, all published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine in the period 2001 to 2004. According to Stross, the initial inspiration for the stories was his experience working as a programmer for a high-growth company during the dot-com boom of the 1990s. The first three stories follow the character of agalmic "venture altruist" Manfred Macx, starting in the early 21st century; the second three stories follow his daughter Amber; and the final three focus largely on Amber's son Sirhan in the completely transformed world at the end of the century.
2233267	/m/06xzq3	The Third Eye			{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The story of The Third Eye begins in Tibet during the reign of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso. Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, the son of a Lhasa aristocrat, takes up theological studies and is soon recognised for his prodigious abilities. As he enters adolescence, the young Rampa undertakes increasingly challenging feats until he is recognised as a crucial asset to the future of an independent Tibet. Tibet's Lamas had foretold a future in which China would attempt to reassert its authority, and Rampa is operated upon to help him preserve his country. A third eye is drilled into his forehead, allowing him to see human auras and to determine people's hidden motivations. With his third eye, Rampa can serve as an aide in the Dalai Lama's court and spy on visitors to the court as they are being received. The visitors upon whom Rampa spies include the scholar Sir Charles Alfred Bell, deemed by Rampa as naive but benevolent. In contrast, Rampa and others are certain that Chinese visitors are nefarious and are soon to attempt to bring conquest and destruction to Tibet. Tibet must then prepare for an invasion. During the story, Rampa meets yetis, and at the end of the book he encounters a mummified body that was him in an earlier incarnation. He also takes part in an initiation ceremony in which he learns that during its early history the planet Earth was struck by another planet, causing Tibet to become the mountain kingdom that it is today. The popularity of the book led to two sequels, The Doctor from Lhasa and The Rampa Story, and Lobsang Rampa wrote over a dozen books in all.
2233542	/m/06x_fs	Nylon Angel	Marianne de Pierres	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is set in post-apocalyptic Australia, around a city called the Tert. There, a bounty hunter/bodyguard named Parrish Plessis has ended up working for a ganglord called Jamon Mondo. She wants out, and her answer arrives in the form of two men wanted in connection with the killing of a journalist called Razz Retribution (In this world, the army, churches and the government have given up on the world, so it is now ruled by the media). The story is divided between the Tert, a rundown slum reminiscent of Mega City One, and Viva City (a pun on the word vivacity), a walled suburb some forty kilometres up the coast.
2235536	/m/06y4fm	Nineteen Eighty-Five	Anthony Burgess	1978-10-01	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 At the novella's beginning, the protagonist, Bev Jones, confronts the death of his wife. She was in a hospital when it caught fire. As the firemen's union was striking, the hospital burned to the ground. (In reality, the UK firemen's union had taken industrial action for the first time ever, in 1977, presumably when Burgess was writing the novella.) Bev is left alone with his daughter Bessie, who is thirteen years old but sexually precocious and unable to comprehend the difference between reality and fantasy, due to a thalidomide-like drug taken by her pregnant mother. The death of his wife engenders in Bev a deep-seated hostility towards the union system - her last words were, "Don't let them get away with it". This is, however, not the first time Bev has been opposed to it, for he had previously been a history lecturer who stepped down as his work was considered expendable by the union-based system which favoured education of practical value. Employed as a confectioner, he goes to work one day despite his union being on strike. For working during a strike, his union membership is revoked, making him effectively unemployable. Knowing that he will soon lose his home, he takes Bessie to a state-run facility where she will be cared for with other girls like herself. Bev then becomes something of a vagrant, traveling around London and falling in with a group of similarly unemployable dissenters. With these, he engages in petty theft from shops in order to survive. Apprehended during one such sortie, he is sentenced to re-education at a state institution, which is neither a prison nor a psychiatric hospital, but contains elements of both. At the re-education centre, Bev is subjected to propaganda films and lectures, which have the aim of converting him into a useful member of society (a theme which Burgess also examines in A Clockwork Orange). He meets the powerful union official Pettigrew, who warns Bev that his day is over and that unionisation is the future of Britain. Despite this, Bev is unconverted and - having served his sentence - leaves as a free man. Having been informed that Bessie will be ejected from the care facility because he refuses to recant his beliefs, he returns to London. In need of an income and a place to live, he joins a network called The Free Britons, which aims to provide infrastructure and order during the increasing strike-related chaos sweeping Britain. Bev effectively sells his daughter as a wife to a wealthy sheik, who takes a fancy to her during a visit to the Al-Dorchester, reasoning that at least this way she will be safe and satisfied. Meanwhile, he discovers that The Free Britons is a front for an Islamic group aiming at the re-establishment of Britain as a Muslim state. Bev, because of his education, is employed as the mouthpiece of the Free Britons and called upon to report on the events of the general strike. He is frustrated when his work is censored by the leader, a man known as Colonel Lawrence. The spreading strike action reaches fever pitch and becomes a general strike, reported to the reader mostly in diary form. Charles III takes command of the country as it grinds to a halt. A few months after the strike, Bev is arrested again and sentenced to life in a secure institution, which again is neither prison nor hospital. The only way out of this facility is to be retrieved by a family member. There, he revives his teaching career by giving informal history lessons to other prisoners. As the years stretch on, his syllabus (which had started with Anglo Saxon England) passes through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and approaches modern times. Snippets of news often circulate among the inmates, some of which suggest that the Muslim conversion of Britain is well-advanced (for example, it is claimed that inhabitants of the Isle of Man have recently discovered that a stimulant-depressant drug has been replacing alcohol in their beer for several years, in line with Muslim prohibitions). There is however no way in which the inmates can verify whether these news items are correct. Bev finds it increasingly difficult to explain the continuity of history in terms of the present. Unable to do so, Bev suggests that they can start over again and work their way back to the present, after which his class spontaneously dismisses itself. Alone at night, Bev slips out of the dormitory in which he sleeps, creeps out into the grounds of the institution and kills himself by deliberately touching the electric fence.
2237294	/m/06y80y	The Butcher Boy	Patrick McCabe	1992-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the early part of the book it becomes apparent that Francie's mother is frequently abused both verbally and physically by her husband, Benny, a bitter alcoholic. Francie's mother often considers suicide and is committed for a time to a mental hospital. Francie seems largely unaware of the trouble at home, and spends the early part of the book in the company of his best friend Joe Purcell, hiding out in a chicken-house and shouting abuse at the fish in the local stream. The two befriend classmate Phillip Nugent, the son of Francie's sanctimonious neighbor, Mrs. Nugent, but end up stealing his comic books. Francie recalls vividly an episode in which she hurls a torrent of verbal abuse at Francie's mother, claiming that the Brady family are 'a bunch of pigs.' Francie takes this insult to heart, and begins to harass the Nugents when they are walking through the town, denying them access through a certain street until they pay the fictional 'Pig Toll tax'. So begins an unhealthy obsession that underpins the rest of the novel. Word comes that Francie's uncle Alo, who is something of a local celebrity, is coming to town. A party is arranged and most of the town turns up. Alo arrives and sings with his guests late into the night, and Francie observes his uncle with admiration. Eventually the guests leave, and Benny, drunk as usual, launches a verbal assault at his brother, claiming he is a fake and a liar, to the protestation and horror of Francie's mother. Alo is totally dejected and leaves. Francie is horrified at the treatment of Alo, and runs away from home. He spends some time thieving in Dublin, and when he returns he discovers his mother has committed suicide, for which his father blames him. Again, Francie's mind turns to the Nugents. He attempts to harm Phillip after luring him to the chickenhouse, but Joe stops him. Eventually he breaks into the Nugent's house when they are out and pretends to be a pig, defecating on the floor of the Nugent's house. The Nugents interrupt him and call the police. Francie is sent to an 'industrial school' run by priests. During the course of his internment he is molested by one of the priests and befriended by a gardener who claims to have been an Old IRA member and close associate of Michael Collins. He claims to have forgotten all about the Nugents, and is determined to get back to town and resume his carefree friendship with Joe. On release Francie heads back to town, fully expectant of a friendly welcome by Joe. However he finds it hard to get in touch with his friend, and when he does Joe is reluctant to talk to him. When Francie is attacked by Mrs. Nugent's brother, Buttsy, and his friend Devlin, Joe disowns him. Francie gets a job in the local abattoir, impressing the owner with his ability to unflinchingly kill a piglet, and dedicates himself to this job, aiming to make his father proud. He has also begun drinking at weekends with local drunk Sean Fleury, and he goes to clubs with the specific aim of getting into fights. After some months, the police enter his home to discover that his father has been dead for a long time, and Francie is committed to a mental hospital. After he is released, Francie discovers that Joe Purcell is attending boarding school in Bundoran, County Donegal. He decides to go there, and en route he stops off at a boarding house where his father had said he and Francie's mother had spent their honeymoon in bliss. He interrogates the landlady, and she informs him that his father had treated his mother terribly for the duration of their honeymoon. Francie resumes his travels and arrives at Joe's school in the middle of the night. He breaks in and, coming face to face with Joe, discovers that his friend has outgrown him and, worse, befriended Phillip Nugent. Francie returns home and resumes his job at the butchers. One day, while on his rounds, he calls at the Nugents' house. Mrs. Nugent answers and Francie forces his way in. He attacks her and shoots her in the head with the butcher's bolt gun. He cuts her open and writes the word 'PIG' over the walls in an upstairs room with her blood. He puts her into the cart in which he transports the offal and meat-waste, covering her body with the detritus. He casually resumes his rounds and makes his way back to the abattoir, where he is apprehended by the police. He leads them on a wild goose chase for Mrs. Nugent's body, and escapes from them for a time, but he is recaptured and eventually imprisoned after revealing where her dismembered corpse is.
2237324	/m/06y830	The Dead School				 Set in small-town Ireland, 'The Dead School' tells the intriguing story about two interacting characters: Raphael Bell, an old schoolmaster, and Malachy Dudgeon, a young teacher. Like other novels by Patrick McCabe, both of the two main characters had troubled childhoods. The intertwining of the two results in the destruction of Raphael and the dramatic change of Malachy. Malachy Dudgeon comes from a small suburban Irish town, from a dysfunctional family, existing under the guise of happiness, using the facade of happy Sunday mornings, whilst the adulteress mother and suicidal father continue to make devastating blows to their son, from which he never truly recovers, and chooses to escape into his world of imaginations, dreams and Americanisms. On the other hand Raphael Bell comes from a small rural Irish town, and is the apparent picture of perfection. Raphael constantly seeks attention, from singing: "Wee Hughie" at any available moment to succeeding at school. However Raphael's world is gravely affected when Black and Tan soldiers shoot his father in the chest before his eyes. From this moment on Raphael strives to uphold the virtues and traditions of old Ireland, and it is inevitably this inability to transgress and adjust into modern living that leads, unsurprisingly to his suicide. The two protagonists become inextricably linked when Malachy joins the teaching staff at Raphael's prestigious boys boarding school, which he sees as his whole life's worth. An unfortunate science trip leads to the drowning of school boy, Pat Hourican and the unravelling of both Malachy and Raphael. Malachy loses his job, and then his girlfriend, Marion, to a wild member of a rock-band, and Raphael loses his job and mind, and then subsequently his wife, Nessa dies. Whilst Malachy becomes a waster and alcoholic and moves to London, Raphael opens what he calls 'The Dead School'. With black bin bags at the windows and an uncontrollable amount of mess and disorder. He begins to teach imaginary classes about his own life, as madness becomes inherent in his everyday life. As the novel concludes, Raphael's suicide occurs, as does his unattended funeral. Malachy returns to his hometown to care for his incapacitated mother, whom he once loathed, and there is a general air of depression, as the golden age of Ireland which Raphael had once loved is exchanged for stripjoints and graffiti. A downright thing. Throughout the novel the narrator becomes more of a character in his own right, making allusions to his opinions, which constantly change, as the omniscient voice chooses to blame a variety of people for the disastrous events. The colloquial narrative is also crucial in building the narrators persona, and also adds to the idea of base culture, something around which the novel is centered. Many critics have hailed McCabe's novel as a member, or rather cornerstone of the subgenre "Bog Gothic". This refers to the specialist Irish Gothic, which has been penned for McCabe's novels.
2237417	/m/06y888	Breakfast on Pluto	Patrick McCabe	1998-05-25	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in 1960s to 1970s, the novel tells of the transwoman Patrick "Pussy" Braden's escape from the fictional Irish town of Tyreelin and a drunk foster mother, to find herself and the biological mother who gave her away. Bad luck surrounds her until she finds temporary contentment with a married politician who acts as a sugar daddy. The latter is killed by either the IRA or the Ulster Defence Volunteers, leaving Braden alone once again. She moves to London, becomes a prostitute in Piccadilly Circus, and later is arrested on suspicion of an IRA bombing, only to be released a few days later. She later embarks on a search to find her mother.
2237727	/m/06y8_j	Emerald Germs of Ireland				 The book focuses on the life of Gullytown homeboy Pat McNab, the village idiot. The alternately adoring and criticizing attention by his mother, Maimie and the total abusiveness of his father finally send him over the edge. He responds by ridding Ireland of "germs," however, in this case, the "germs" are people. He kills his both his father and mother, his neighbors and local visitors to he village. His list includes four-legged "germs" as he kills several donkeys. He then digs his mother up from her grave after the removal of each succeeding "germ". The title "Emerald Germs of Ireland" is similar to Patrick McCabes The Butcher Boy which often brings up a music book titled "Emerald Gems of Ireland".
2241099	/m/06yjkt	Three Act Tragedy	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When a clergyman dies at a dinner party thrown by stage actor Sir Charles Cartwright, it is thought by nearly everyone (Poirot included) to be an accidental death. Shortly afterwards, however, a second death in suspiciously similar circumstances and with many of the same people present puts both Poirot and a team of sleuths on the trail of a poisoner whose motive is not clear. The solution to this mystery is one of Christie's classic pieces of misdirection and relies on a plot device which has been widely imitated. Poirot reveals that the first murder - in which the murderer could not have predicted who would get the poisoned glass and had no motive to kill the eventual victim - had only been a "dress rehearsal" for the second murder.
2241111	/m/06yjm5	Why Didn't They Ask Evans?	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Bobby Jones, the son of the vicar of the Welsh seaside town of Marchbolt, is playing a game of golf with a friend. He chips the ball over a cliff edge and when he goes to look for the ball he sees a man lying unconscious below. Bobby's companion goes for help while Bobby stays with the badly injured man. The man soon dies, but not before briefly regaining consciousness and saying “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” This, and a photograph of a beautiful woman Bobby finds in the man's coat pocket, are the only clues to his identity. While Bobby is waiting with the body another man finds him there. He introduces himself as Roger Bassington-ffrench and offers to stay with the body so Bobby will not be late to play the organ at his father's church. The dead man is identified as Alex Pritchard by his sister, Amelia Cayman. She is said to be the woman in the photograph, and Bobby wonders how such a beautiful girl could become such a coarse older woman. After the inquest, Mrs. Cayman and her husband want to know if Pritchard had any last words. Bobby says that he did not. Later, when talking with his friend "Frankie" – Lady Frances Derwent – Bobby remembers that Pritchard did have last words and writes to the Caymans to tell them. He receives a polite but dismissive reply in the post. Bobby is due to start work with a friend at his garage in London, but receives an unexpected job offer from a firm in Buenos Aires. He rejects the offer. Soon afterwards Bobby falls ill after drinking from a bottle of beer. The beer had been poisoned. The local police can only conclude the poisoning was the work of a madman, but Frankie thinks Bobby was targeted for murder. Bobby is convinced when he sees an old issue of the local paper that had printed the photograph used to find Pritchard's sister. Bobby immediately recognizes that the photo in the paper is not the one he found in the dead man's pocket. He and Frankie realize that Bassington-ffrench must have swapped the photograph while he was alone with the body and that Mrs. Cayman was likely not related to the dead man at all. Bobby and Frankie decide the best way to solve the mystery is to find Bassington-ffrench. They manage to trace him to a house called Merroway Court in Hampshire, owned by his brother Henry and Henry's wife Sylvia. They stage a car accident outside the house with the help of a doctor friend so that Frankie (really uninjured) will be invited to stay at Merroway Court to "recover". Frankie produces a newspaper cutting about the mysterious dead man and Sylvia remarks that he looks like a man she'd met named Alan Carstairs. He was a traveler and big-game hunter who was a friend of John Savage, a millionaire who had killed himself a short time ago after finding out he had terminal cancer. Frankie is also introduced to two neighbours of the Bassington-ffrench’s – Dr Nicholson and his younger wife, Moira. Dr Nicholson runs a local sanatorium and Frankie writes to Bobby and gets him to investigate the establishment. He breaks into the grounds at night and comes across a young girl who says that she is in fear of her life – it is the same girl in the original photograph that Bobby found in the dead man’s pocket. Bobby has to leave the grounds before they are discovered. Several days later, the girl turns up at the local inn where Bobby is staying. She identifies herself to him as Moira Nicholson. She is convinced that her husband is trying to kill her and she admits to knowing Alan Carstairs before her marriage to the doctor. Bobby introduces her to Frankie and it is Moira who suggests that they simply ask Roger if it was he who took the photograph on the body of the dead man. At the next opportunity, Frankie does so and Roger admits that did indeed take the picture, recognising Moira and wanting to avoid scandal for a family friend at the inquest, but he did not put in the photograph of Mrs. Cayman. Interested in the will of the late John Savage, Frankie consults her own family solicitor in London and finds out that by coincidence Carstairs consulted him too. Savage was staying with a Mr. and Mrs. Templeton when he became convinced he had cancer, although one specialist told him it wasn’t the case and he was perfectly well. When he died by suicide, his will left seven hundred thousand pounds to the Templetons who have now gone abroad. Carstairs was also on their trail, suspicious of the will. Bobby is kidnapped and Frankie is lured to his place of confinement – an isolated cottage and finds herself held as well. Their kidnapper is Roger but they manage to turn the tables on him and find Moira in the house but drugged. By the time the police arrive, Roger has escaped. Bobby and Frankie trace the witnesses to the signing of John Savage’s will. They are the former cook and gardener of Mr. and Mrs. Templeton, Mr. Templeton being, in reality, Mr. Cayman. They are told that Gladys, the parlour maid, wasn’t asked to witness the will – made the night before Savage died - and realise that it must have been because she had previously served Savage during his stay (the cook and gardener hadn’t) and she would have realised that it was Roger who was taking his place in the "death-bed" after he forged the will's contents. They also discover that Gladys’ name was Evans, hence the reason for Carstairs’ question – "Why didn't they ask Evans?" Tracing the parlour maid they are amazed to find that she is now the housekeeper at the vicarage of Bobby’s father. This is the reason for Carstairs visit to Wales – his attempt to find Evans when he grew suspicious of Savage's will and it is also the reason for the first attempt on Bobby’s life – the villains couldn’t risk Bobby (who found Carstairs’ body) being in the same house as Evans. Going back to Wales they find Moira who claims she is being followed by Roger and has come to them for help. Frankie though is not taken in and spoils Moira’s attempt to poison their coffee in the quiet country café they are in. Moira was Mrs. Templeton and Roger’s co-conspirator. Attempting to shoot Frankie and Bobby in the café when she is exposed, she is successfully overpowered. Several weeks later, Frankie receives a letter from Roger, posted from South America, in which he confesses his part and Moira's part. Bobby and Frankie realise they are in love with each other and become engaged.
2241232	/m/06yjx8	Murder in Mesopotamia	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dr. Erich Leidner is, ostensibly, a Swedish archaeologist on a dig near Hassanieh, Iraq, then a British protectorate. A middle aged man, he is married just two years to a beautiful woman. His wife Louise was married briefly during the Great War 15 years earlier in 1918, to a German named Frederick Bosner, a young man who worked for the U.S. State Department but was actually a spy for Germany. He was caught, tried and sentenced to death. He managed to escape while he was being transported. It was to no avail as he ended up on a train that crashed; a body bearing his identification was found in the wreckage. Amy Leatheran is a nurse working in Iraq when she meets Dr. Leidner. He asks her to join the dig to look after his wife. Mrs. Leidner has been frightened by weird goings on, such as a ghostly face appearing just outside her window one night and threatening letters. Mrs. Leidner confides to Nurse Leatheran that she had received similar threatening letters several years before that were worded as if written by her dead first husband. They arrived every time she would go out with a new man, then stopped when she broke off the relationship. One of the letters was signed with her late husband's name. She had no letters from him from their short marriage, so she could not ascertain whether the letters were really written by him. No letters arrived when or after she met and married Dr. Leidner, and had hoped that experience was behind her. Its recurrence at the dig scares her badly. Nurse Leatheran settles in to the routine of the archeological dig, with its mix of local people and scientists or enthusiasts from England, America, and France. The young men seem to be in puppy love with Mrs. Leidner, while Dr. Leidner's longtime colleague Richard Carey is formal and terse at meals with her. Miss Johnson is a longtime part of the team, and she, Nurse Leatheran decides, is more than ordinarily attracted to the head of the team. This dig, the whole team seems on edge, unlike previous years. It had been a group known for good humor and good relations among all the varied specialists and workers. Mrs. Leidner begins to be at ease as she trusts the nurse brought in to be her companion. Other strangers, however, make her jump, as shown when the pair observe an unknown man at the house, peering in a window. She is calmed only when Father Lavigny explains who the man is, and the man leaves. A week after the nurse's arrival, Mrs. Leidner is found dead by her husband in her room. He calls the nurse in to the room, as he cannot handle this loss. His wife was struck fatally on the head with a large blunt object. Nurse Leatheran observes that the murder weapon is not in the room. Capt. Maitland spoke with all in the house, while Dr. Reilly inspected the body. They establish the time line, and are certain it is an inside job. The Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is also traveling in Iraq; his old friend Dr. Reilly asks him to solve the crime, on behalf of Dr. Leidner. Poirot questions everyone informally. It is rapidly apparent to all that the murderer of Mrs Leidner must be one of us as no "strangers" were seen by anyone, archeologist, servant, or worker, at the house or courtyard in the time when she was murdered. The only entry to the bedroom is from the house, as the one window is barred, and was shut when her body was discovered. Miss Johnson thought she heard a cry, but disbelieves her own ears when she learns that the window was closed, no way for any sound to reach her. This adds to the tensions in the group, who try to carry on as Dr. Leidner arranges for his wife's funeral and the local police begin their work, along with Poirot. The first round of questions show no obvious suspect, as everyone can account for their time, in the sight of others. Poirot considers each in turn, as available or capable of the crime. Away from the dig at Dr. Reilly's home, Nurse Leatheran tells Poirot the story of Mrs. Leidner's earlier life, her first marriage, its end, and the young brother in law she has not seen in 15 years. Poirot speculates that one of the members of the dig may, in fact, be this younger brother, William Bosner. Two of the young men are the right age. He goes further, wondering if the older men at the dig could be her first husband, as the identity of the body in the train wreck could not be certain. They meet Sheila Reilly, who adds another perspective on the murdered woman, as one who must have the attention of every man around her. Dr. Reilly adds his own views, calling her a "belle dame sans merci". Poirot considers whether Nurse Leatheran is safe to return to the house, remarking that murder is a habit. She does return, wanting to properly end her connection with Dr. Leidner, and to attend the funeral. After the funeral, late in the day, Miss Johnson is on the roof. Nurse Leatheran joins her, seeing how very distracted and upset she appears. Miss Johnson makes clear she has had a new thought about how someone could enter without being seen, but explains nothing. She must think about it more. That night, Miss Johnson is murdered in her bed, dying with Nurse Leatheran at her side, trying to revive her. The method was rather vicious, poisoning by hydrochloric acid substituted in the glass of water on her nightstand. She manages to choke out the words "The window! The window!" before she dies. Nurse Leatheran first makes it clear this was no suicide, thinking the words indicate how her water was replaced by the acid – through her window. Poirot now has two murders to solve. He considers it a crime passionnel, in which he must understand the character of Louise Leidner to solve both murders. He solves the crimes, but has no proof. He presents his results to the group at the house, after a day of sending telegrams all over the world. He analyzes each person in turn, before explaining the resolution with its complex motives and surprising events. Mrs. Leidner and Miss Johnson were killed by Dr. Leidner, who is, in fact, Frederick Bosner. He survived the train crash; but a young Swedish archaeologist named Erich Leidner did not, and was disfigured beyond facial recognition. Bosner traded identities with the dead man. Fifteen years later, established in the dead man's career, he remarried his wife, who did not recognize him. Bosner sent the letters to discourage Louise from her other relationships. When Bosner re-married her under his new identity, he stopped writing them. He saw that Louise was falling in love with Richard Carey, his own friend. If Leidner could not have Louise, no one could. Thus he planned to murder her, in his twisted logic. How did he do it? Bosner committed the crime without ever leaving the roof as he sorted pottery. Louise Leidner took an afternoon rest as her husband and the rest of the team were working. She heard a noise, then saw a mask at her window. She realized this simple mask was the same image that appeared as a head without a body one night a few weeks earlier. No longer afraid and determined to know her tormenter, she opened the window and stuck her head out through the bars. She was then bludgeoned with a heavy stone quern dropped by her husband, above her on the roof. Bosner retrieved the murder weapon with the rope tied through a hole in the quern. Mrs. Leidner cried out briefly; it was this cry that Miss Johnson heard. Bosner altered the scene of the crime before anyone else saw his wife or her room. When he climbed down from the roof as usual to see his wife in her room, he moved her body away from the window, and moved the blood-stained rug near the jug and bowl. Lastly he shut the window before calling Nurse Leatheran to the room, while he nursed his grief at this shocking loss. When planning the murder, Bosner made every effort to divert suspicion from himself. This is the true reason Bosner asked Nurse Leatheran to join the expedition. The nurse would be his perfect alibi, a competent medical professional on the spot to state the time of death. Bosner was on the roof when Miss Johnson talked with the nurse about her new idea. Although she has kept quiet out of loyalty and indecision, Bosner realises she may eventually crack. That night he plants the missing murder weapon under her bed while she sleeps, and replaces a glass of water on her bedside table with hydrochloric acid. His notion is that once she is found, everyone will think she murdered Louise so she could seduce her husband and, overcome by remorse, killed herself. Capt. Maitland saw things that way during his first arrival at the house when her death was discovered. However, as Poirot points out, drinking hydrochloric acid is an incredibly painful and bizarre way to kill oneself. Poirot realized another sort of crime had taken place at the dig. The man Louise and Nurse Leatheran saw looking through the antika room window in that peaceful week was Ali Yusuf, a known associate of Raoul Menier, a skilled thief of antiquities. Raoul Menier joined the expedition disguised as epigraphist Father Lavigny, a Catholic cleric with a wide reputation. He was not known personally to any in the team, allowing this simple ruse. Lavigny was too ill to join as planned. Menier intercepted the wire declining the invitation to the dig. Thus he had a free hand to steal precious artifacts from the dig and replace them with near-perfect copies made on site. The two were captured boarding a steamer at Beyrouth by the police, who had been warned by Poirot. Bosner acknowledged everything, regretting Miss Johnson's murder but not that of Louise Leidner. Not long after, Sheila Reilly married David Emmott, a suitable match. Nurse Leatheran returned to England, where she would think often of her adventure in the East.
2241312	/m/06yk2y	Dumb Witness	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Emily Arundell writes to Hercule Poirot because she believes she has been the victim of attempted murder. However, unfortunately this letter is delayed and when Poirot receives it, she has been dead for some time. Her doctor, who has lost his sense of smell, says that she died of liver problems she had had for many years. Emily's companion Miss Lawson is the unexpected beneficiary of a substantial fortune, according to a very recent change of will. Under the previous will, Emily's nephew Charles Arundell and nieces Theresa Arundell and Bella Tanios would have inherited. This gives them all motive for murder, because it is unclear who knew of the changed will. While examining the house, under a pretence of buying it, Poirot discovers a nail covered with varnish and a small string tied to it. Before her death Miss Arundell had said something about Bob...dog...picture...ajar. Poirot concludes that this means a jar on which there is a picture of a dog who was left out all night—meaning that Bob could not have put the ball on the staircase because he had been out all night. Poirot concludes Miss Arundell had fallen over a tripwire that had been tied to the nail. On the day of her death Emily had been at a seance held by both Miss Tripps. Both Miss Tripps, two sisters who believe in seances, say that when Emily spoke, a luminous figure came from her mouth. They also say that they saw Emily's "spirit" the night Emily died, billowing from her mouth in a halo around her head. Miss Lawson, who was also at the seance, similarly claims that a luminous haze appeared. Theresa and Charles want to have the will contested and even offer to pay Poirot for it. Poirot seemingly agrees. He asks Bella, who, after talking with her husband, agrees. While at Emily's house Poirot talks to the gardener and finds out that Charles talked to him about his weed killer which turns out to be arsenic. The bottle is also nearly empty—something that the gardener finds surprising. Theresa Arundell is a strong suspect because Miss Lawson can recall seeing someone through her bedroom mirror at the top of the stairs on the night of Emily's accident. The person was wearing a brooch with the initials, "TA". After implying for a long time that he is bullying her, Bella leaves her husband, Jacob, accusing him of Emily Arundell's murder and saying he was trying to have her wrongly committed to a mental institution in order to keep her quiet. She goes to stay with Miss Lawson, but Poirot tells her to go to a certain hotel, and read some papers he has prepared for her. The next day, she is found dead. She has taken an overdose of a sleeping-draught. The murderer has apparently struck again. Poirot discovers that Emily Arundell died of phosphorus poisoning, administered in her liver pills. The reason why haze appeared from her mouth was that her breath was phosphorescent. The reason her doctor did not know was because he could not smell the odour. The nature of the murder suggests a doctor. Dr. Donaldson, Theresa's fiancé, has a good motive for the crime, as does Jacob Tanios, also a doctor. At a meeting with all the suspects, Poirot reveals that Theresa took the arsenic. However, she could not bear to take someone else's life, so she threw the arsenic away. The real murderer was Bella. She committed the murder for money to educate her children and escape from her mundane life. Secretly, she had grown to hate her domineering husband, and had already attempted to kill him as well. She killed herself because the papers Poirot had given her contained a description of how she had murdered her aunt. The brooch that Miss Lawson had seen through the mirror was Bella's with the initials "AT" for Arabella Tanios; they appeared as "TA" because Miss Lawson was looking through the mirror. On her deathbed, Emily had asked Miss Lawson for the new will, presumably to destroy it, but Miss Lawson, thinking the will was only for a few thousand pounds, lied and said that her lawyer had it. On discovering that the inheritance was much greater than she had imagined, she was racked with remorse. Respecting the original will, Miss Lawson voluntarily shares the estate with Emily's other relations, including Bella's children. The dog Bob becomes Hastings' new pet.
2241576	/m/06yl49	Hercule Poirot's Christmas	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 It is Christmas Eve and everyone in the house hears the crashing of furniture, followed by a wailing and hideous scream. When they get to Simeon Lee's room, they find it locked and they have to break the door down. When they finally get through the door, they find heavy furniture overturned and Simeon Lee dead, his throat slit, in a great pool of blood. Superintendent Sugden notices Pilar Estravados pick up something from the floor. She tries to conceal what she picked up, but when pressed, opens her hand to show a small bit of rubber and a small object made of wood. Superintendent Sugden explains that he is in the house by prior arrangement with the victim, who confided to him the theft of a substantial quantity of uncut diamonds from his safe. When Poirot is called in to investigate, there are therefore several main problems: who killed the victim? How was the victim killed inside a locked room? Was the murder connected to the theft of the diamonds? And what is the significance of the small triangle of rubber and the peg that Sugden is able to provide when reminded by Poirot of the clue that had been picked up by Pilar? Poirot’s investigation explores the nature of the victim – a methodical and vengeful man – and the way that these characteristics come out in his children. He seems focused on the idea that one of the immediate family is the murderer. When the butler mentions his confusion about the identities of the house guests, Poirot realizes that the four legitimate sons may not be the only heirs of Simeon’s temperament. The final major clue is dropped by Pilar, who while playing with balloons and one bursts, lets slip that what she found on the floor must also have been a balloon. She knows more than she realizes. Poirot warns her to be careful.
2242769	/m/06yp5p	Kabumpo in Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1922	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 During Prince Pompadore of Pumperdink's eighteenth birthday celebration, his birthday cake explodes, revealing a magic scroll, a magic mirror, and a doorknob. The scroll warns the prince that if the he doesn't wed a "proper princess" within seven days, his entire kingdom will disappear. The prince, along with the kingdom's wise elephant Kabumpo, set off on an adventure to the Emerald City so Pompa can marry Princess Ozma, the only "proper princess" the Elegant Elephant can think of as worthy of his prince. Meanwhile, Ruggedo the Gnome King (Thompson "corrected" Baum's spelling of "Nome") finds Glegg's Box of Mixed Magic while tunnelling under the Emerald City. After he brings a wooden doll, Peg Amy, to life, and makes Wag the rabbit the size of a man, Ruggedo turns himself into a giant. This means that Ozma's palace gets stuck on his head, and in a panic he runs off to Ev with it. After many adventures in the strange lands of Rith Metic, the Illumi Nation, and the Soup Sea, Pompadore and Kabumpo arrive in the Emerald City to find Ozma missing. They set off to find her and eventually meet up with Wag and Peg Amy. The group reaches the edge of the Deadly Desert and is hijacked by the Runaway Country, a piece of land that has feet. It carries them over the desert to Ev. Eventually, Peg Amy is revealed to be a princess, and Pompadore marries her.
2244125	/m/06ys85	Camelot 30K	Robert Forward	1993-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 2009, humans make contact with their first extraterrestrials. The signal comes from beyond Neptune and even Pluto, on 1999 ZX, a celestial body between comet and planet in size, out in the Kuiper belt at 35 AU from the Sun. Twenty years later they send a scientific team to this small, ice-bound planetoid in the farthest reaches of the solar system in the Oort cloud. This cold, dark planetoid ends up being a strange world indeed. There is only a thin hydrogen atmosphere, almost vacuum, and the average temperature is some 30&nbsp;K (-243&nbsp;°C), where only hydrogen, helium, and neon are gaseous in state and nearly everything else is a solid. Yet on this icy, frozen world, life manages to thrive: the keracks, which are no bigger than a few centimeters in length resemble "large one-eyed prawns dressed in elaborate clothing". The keracks, despite their small size, have built rather small cities and developed a complex society on their planetoid which they dubbed "Ice". They have a collectivistic hive-like society with a rich culture suggesting that of England in the time of King Arthur. The human visitors' first contact is the female kerack Merlene, wizard of the kerack city of Camalor. The humans themselves, being too hot and large, are unsuited for direct contact with the natives on this chilly world. So, instead, they have built "telebots" through which they can communicate with Merlene and the other keracks. Merlene develops a fondness for conversing with the humans and eventually the humans and the keracks get to learn much about each others' worlds and cultures. The humans also teach Merlene more about science and technology which would hopefully advance the kerack race. The human scientists also uncover mysteries about the energy source of the keracks, who secrete an internal pellet of Uranium and moderate its decay with a Boron-rich carapace to provide internal warmth. Whenever a kerack dies its pellet is taken to be stockpiled by the colony's queen. The scientists discover the tragic conclusion of the kerack life cycle almost too late to save Merlene; when a kerack colony accumulated a large enough stockpile the queen would instinctively arrange it in such a way as to trigger a nuclear explosion, blasting kerack spores off of the Kuiper belt object to colonize other objects in the belt. Since the kerack colony is exploded in the process no living kerack had known of their fate. The book concludes with Merlene going traveling to warn other colonies of the consequences of their expanding stockpiles.
2244167	/m/06ys96	The Woman Who Walked Into Doors	Roddy Doyle	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tells the struggle and survival of an abused wife named Paula Spencer. It is narrated by the victim. The title comes from an incident narrated in the book, where Paula's husband asks her how she received a bruise he was responsible for, and she replies that she "walked into a door." A sequel, Paula Spencer, was published in 2006. The narrative blends her recounting of the circumstances of her childhood, courtship and wedding day, with reflections on those events. The gathering drama is linked to the increasing awareness of moving towards a climax, which is on the one hand the outbreak of violence in her marriage, and on the other hand the violent death of her husband.
2244271	/m/06ysgh	Running with Scissors	Augusten Burroughs		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Running with Scissors covers the period of Burroughs's adolescent years, beginning at age 12 after a brief overview of his life as a child. Burroughs spends his early childhood in a clean and orderly home, obsessing over his clothes, hair, accessories, and having great potential, with his parents constantly fighting in the background. When his parents separate and his mother begins to second-guess her sexuality, Burroughs is sent to live with his mother's psychiatrist, Dr. Finch. The doctor lives in a rundown Victorian house located in Northampton, Massachusetts. He lives with his wife as well as his biological and adopted children and some of his own patients, where rules are practically nonexistent and children of all ages do whatever they please, such as having sex, smoking cigarettes and cannabis, and rebelling against authority figures. For example, Dr. Finch feels that, at age 13, children should be in charge of their own lives. However, the dysfunctional issues that occur in the Finch family are outdone by the psychotic episodes frequently experienced by Burroughs's mother. The Finch house is a parallel universe to the home he came from. It is filthy, with cockroaches roaming around the uncleaned dishes, Christmas trees left up until May, stairs that Burroughs is afraid to walk up because he thinks that they will collapse under him, and nothing off limits. Eventually, Dr. Finch comes to believe that God is communicating to him through his fecal matter. When Hope, Dr. Finch's second oldest daughter, believes her cat is dying, she keeps it in a laundry box for four days until it dies. Burroughs's mother is shown as emotionally drained, excessive, self-centered, and ultimately incapable of being a parent. She has a lesbian relationship with a local minister's wife, which is revealed to a young Burroughs when he accidentally walks in on them while he skips school. When this relationship ends, Burroughs's mother starts another with a teenage and affluent African-American woman. This relationship is tumultuous and unstable. At one point, they have a mental patient named Cesar live at their house. He attempts to rape Burroughs while he's sleeping, but is unsuccessful (when this patient goes to live with the Finches later in the book, he pays one of the Finches' daughters for oral sex and then is forced from the home). His mother's biggest psychotic episode happens when she and Dorothy (her partner) move everything out of their house, and attack Burroughs when he tries to intervene. This later ends with a "road trip" and events leading to Burroughs's mother being restrained on a bed. Burroughs tells Dr. Finch's adopted 33-year-old son, Neil Bookman, that he is gay. From the age of 13 to 15, Burroughs has an intense and open sexual relationship with Bookman, which begins when Bookman forces the young boy to perform oral sex on him. Neither his mother nor any member of the Finch family is bothered by their relationship. Burroughs begins to enjoy exacting power over Bookman by threatening to charge him with statutory rape. Bookman is obsessed with the young boy, even though Burroughs has problems with their relationship (going in phases of needing the affection of Bookman to wanting to humiliate or get away from him) which only infatuates Bookman more. Bookman eventually leaves Northampton and is never heard from again by Burroughs or the Finches, even after they try everything in their power to find him. Burroughs forms a close relationship with Dr. Finch's daughter, Natalie, who is one year older than he is, even though at the beginning of the book, he dislikes her. They do everything together from finding jobs to running under a waterfall. They finally leave the Finch household together. At the end of the book, when Burroughs is living in his own apartment with Natalie, he is asked to choose between his mother and Dr. Finch when she accuses the doctor of raping her. The relationship between his mother and the doctor had been turbulent ever since a scene at a motel, where Dr. Finch's abnormal therapy methods reached a point at which they could possibly be interpreted as sexual assault. He still considers Dr. Finch's family and his mother to be his family, and he cannot bring himself to choose sides, although he is fairly certain that Dr. Finch did rape his mother. The book ends with Burroughs leaving Massachusetts and moving to New York City.
2244325	/m/06ysl_	Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose	Dr. Seuss	1948	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Thidwick, a moose in a herd numbering approximately 60 who subsist mainly on moose-moss and live on the northern shore of Lake Winna-Bango, grants a small bug's request to ride on his antlers free of charge. The bug takes advantage of the moose's kindness and settles in as a permanent resident, inviting various other animals to live on and in the moose's antlers. The moose acquiesces to the unexpected living arraingements, considering the animals 'guests' even though he never told them explicitly that they were allowed to live there, and the situation quickly gets out of control. When one of the guests - a woodpecker - begins drilling holes in Thidwick's horns, the other moose give Thidwick an ultimatum: Get rid of his guests or leave the herd. When Thidwick's sense of proper etiquette directs him to forgo the comforts of herd life in favor of being kind to his guests, his herd leaves him. When winter comes, the herd swims across the lake to find fresh supplies of moose-moss, but when Thidwick attempts to follow them, his guests strenuously object. Even facing starvation, Thidwick refuses to break etiquette, and remains on the cold, northern shore of the lake where his guests prefer to reside. The residents of Thidwick's horns, without regard to the increasing physical or psychological load that the moose has to bear, continue inviting other animals to live with them. The situation comes to a head when hunters attack Thidwick with the goal of mounting his head on the wall of the Harvard Club. Thidwick attempts to outrun the hunters, but the heavy load, coupled with his guests' unwillingness to travel across the lake, prevents his escape. Just before his imminent capture, however, Thidwick remembers that it is time to shed his antlers. He promptly sheds his antlers, makes a snide comment to his former guests, and swims across the lake to rejoin his herd. His former guests are captured by the hunters and are stuffed and mounted with his antlers on the Harvard Club wall.
2244361	/m/06ysqv	At Swim, Two Boys	Jamie O'Neill	2001	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in Dublin before and during the 1916 Easter Rising, At Swim, Two Boys tells the love story of two young Irish men: Jim Mack and Doyler Doyle. Jim goes to school on a scholarship (for which he is looked down upon) – he is quiet, studious, thoughtful, and naïve. In contrast, Doyler is outspoken, rebellious, brave, and affectionate. Doyler might once have received a scholarship, like Jim, but Doyler withdrew from school to find work and support his impoverished family, leading them to grow apart. They have an additional connection through their fathers, who served in the army together during the Boer War, and were once best friends. Jim attends a Catholic school, regularly visits church, and plays in the church's flute band, where he is the object of his Latin teacher's obsession. Brother Polycarp likes to have extra prayer sessions with him; Jim reminds him of his own past. Unbeknown to his father, Jim is offered the chance at a vocation, to join the brothers of the church. When Doyler enters the flute band, their old friendship is renewed. Doyler takes Jim out to the Forty Foot for a swim, a well known swimming area in Dublin Bay. The two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter Sunday, 1916, they will swim to the distant island of Muglins Rock and claim it for themselves. As their friendship grows, Jim reconsiders the vocation, ultimately refusing; Brother Polycarp is emotionally stricken and has to resign. Meanwhile, patriots appear on the novel's stage: Madame Eveline MacMurrough continues to support the idea of Ireland's liberty. The clergy also supports the patriotic body of thought, in particular, Father Amen O'Toiler – who pushes the boys church's flute band to resemble a regimental band. Even Jim's father, Mr. Mack, who is proud having served as a soldier in an Irish Battalion, is swollen with pride for the boys in MacMurrough's garden, seeing them all in uniform kilts. Only Anthony MacMurrough, the nephew of Eveline MacMurrough, turns away from their politics. After his return from imprisonment in England, for acts of gross indecency, his nationalist aunt Eveline MacMurrough is determined to redeem his reputation through a prosperous marriage. In a garden party, Eveline MacMurrough introduces him to Irish society, pushing him to follow her patriotic ideals. However, MacMurrough is still caught up in his memories of imprisonment, conversing with the internal voice of his dead prison-mate, Scrotes, on the fate of homosexuals. In the meantime, Doyler works to help support his family, which has been driven to poverty by Mr. Doyle's alcoholism and illness. Hidden to others but knowing of his sexual desires, he can make an earning out of it. MacMurrough and Doyler meet intimately, but MacMurrough fails in attracting the boy. Doyler being a vehement Socialist and outcast by the patriotic society of his home place, joins the Irish Citizen Army at Dublin leaving home. Jim, left alone from his pal of his heart Doyler, befriends MacMurrough. He becomes a mentor to Jim, teaching about swimming as well as homosexuality and philosophy. MacMurrough finds that he is unable to rid himself of his fascination with the two boys, their relationship and their pact to swimming, claiming the Muglins. The night before Easter Sunday, Doyler leaves his duties as army member and visits Jim: They renew their pact, confessing their love for each other. The next morning, Easter Sunday, Jim and Doyler successfully swim to the Muglins. Not only do they claim the islands with an Irish green flag, but they also make love to one another. On their swim back to Forty Foot, as Doyler is close to drowning, MacMurrough rescues both of them. While Doyler rests and recovers at MacMurrough's house, Jim feels responsible for the duties his friend cannot carry out. As the Easter Rising takes place, Jim grabs the uniform of Doyler and joins the fighting for the Irish Volunteers at Dublin downtown. Meanwhile, MacMurrough does not realize Jim's action. Moreover, MacMurrough is attracted by the physical presence of Doyler in a way he cannot withstand. When Doyler discovers what Jim has done, both Doyler and MacMurrough go searching for Jim. As they approach downtown Dublin where the fighting is occurring, Doyler sees Jim standing in the open. Just as the two are about to be reunited, Doyler is himself fatally wounded.
2245815	/m/06ywy4	The Pillars of Society	Henrik Ibsen			 Karsten Bernick is the dominant businessman in a small coastal town in Norway, with interests in shipping and shipbuilding in a long-established family firm. Now he is planning his most ambitious project yet, backing a railway which will connect the town to the main line and open a fertile valley which he has been secretly buying up. Suddenly his past explodes on him. Johan Tønnesen, his wife's younger brother comes back from America to the town he ran away from 15 years ago. At the time it was thought he had run off with money from the Bernick family business and with the urge to avoid scandal because he was having an affair with an actress. But none of this was true. He left town to take the blame for Bernick, who was the one who had actually been having the affair and was nearly caught with the actress. There was no money to take since at the time the Bernick firm had been almost bankrupt. With Tønnesen comes his half-sister Lona (whom Ibsen is said to have modelled after Aasta Hansteen), who once loved and was loved by Bernick. He rejected her and married his current wife for money so that he could rebuild the family business. In the years since Tønnesen left, the town has built ever greater rumours of his wickedness, helped by Bernick's studious refusal to give any indication of the truth. This mixture only needs a spark to explode and it gets one when Tønnesen falls in love with Dina Dorf, a young girl who is the daughter of the actress involved in the scandal of 15 years ago and who now lives as a charity case in the Bernick household. He demands that Bernick tell the girl the truth. Bernick refuses. Tønnesen says he will go back to the US to clear up his affairs and then come back to town to marry Dina. Bernick sees his chance to get out of his mess. His yard is repairing an American ship, The Indian Girl, which is dangerously unseaworthy. He orders his yard foreman to finish the work by the next day, even if it means sending the ship and its crew to certain death because he wants Tønnesen to die on board. That way he will be free of any danger in the future. Things do not work out like that. Tønnesen runs off with Dina on board another ship which is safe, leaving word that he will be back. And Bernick's young son stows away on the Indian Girl, seemingly heading for certain death. Bernick discovers that his plot has gone disastrously wrong on the night the people of the town have lined up to honour him for his contribution to the city. It is all set up for a tragic conclusion, but suddenly Ibsen pulls back from the brink. The yard foreman gets an attack of conscience and rows out to stop the Indian Girl from heading to sea and death; Bernick's son is brought back safely by his mother; and Bernick addresses the community, tells them most of the truth and gets away with it. His wife greets the news that he only married her for money as a sign there is now hope for their marriage.
2248231	/m/06z1nd	Annie on My Mind	Nancy Garden	1982-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Liza Winthrop first meets Annie Kenyon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a rainy day. The two become fast friends, although they come from different backgrounds. Liza is the student body president at her private school, Foster Academy, where she is studying hard to get into MIT and become an architect. She lives with her parents and younger brother in the upscale neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights, where most residents are professionals. Annie goes to a public school and lives with her parents — a bookkeeper and a cabdriver — and grandmother in a lower-income part of Brooklyn. Although Annie is not sure if she will be accepted, she hopes to attend the University of California, Berkeley to develop her talent as a singer. While they have different histories and goals in life, the two girls do share a close friendship that quickly grows into love. Liza's school is struggling to remain open and she finds herself having to defend a student who planned a poorly conceived program: ear piercing in the school basement. This results in a three-day school suspension for Liza and helps to bring Liza and Annie closer together as they both deal with the struggles encountered by many high school students. The suspension and the partly concomitant Thanksgiving break give the girls time to become closer and lead to their first kiss. Annie admits that she has thought that she may be gay. Liza soon realizes that although she has always considered herself different, she has not considered her sexual orientation until falling in love with Annie. When two of Liza's female teachers (who live together) go on vacation during spring break, she volunteers for the job of taking care of their home and feeding their cats. The two girls stay at the house together, but in an unexpected turn of events a Foster Academy administrator discovers Liza and Annie together. Liza is forced to tell her family about her relationship with Annie, and the headmistress of her school organizes a meeting of the school's board of trustees in order to expel Liza. The board rules in favor of Liza staying at Foster, and she is allowed to keep her position as student president. However, the two teachers, who in the process are discovered to be gay, are fired. After their initial shock at discovering the girls together, the teachers are very supportive and go out of their way to reassure Liza not to worry about their dismissal, but Liza's guilt and confusion still causes her to end her relationship with Annie, and the girls go their separate ways to colleges on different coasts. In the end, Liza's reevaluation of her relationship while at college and her corresponding acceptance of her sexual orientation allow the two girls to reunite. The book is framed and narrated by Liza's thoughts as she attempts to write Annie a letter, in response to the many letters Annie has sent her. This narration comes right before the winter break of both their colleges' and Liza is unable to write or mail the letter she had been working on. Instead she calls Annie, and the two reconcile and decide to meet together before going home for winter break.
2248773	/m/06z35w	The Boys in the Band	Mart Crowley			 During the play, which is set in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, backgrounds of characters are discovered during a birthday party. * Harold celebrates his birthday party, thrown by six of his closest friends. He becomes increasingly morose about losing his youthful looks and claims that he no longer can attract cute young men. * "Cowboy", an attractive blond male prostitute who is "not too bright", is one of Harold's presents. * Alan is an unexpected party guest, Michael's allegedly straight college friend, who is in town and anxious to tell Michael something—but hesitant to do so when he sees the group. His six closest friends are: * Michael is Harold's "friend-enemy", the host, and a lapsed Roman Catholic alcoholic undergoing psychoanalysis * Donald is a conflicted friend, who has moved from the city to spurn the homosexual "lifestyle". * Bernard is an African-American, who still pines for the wealthy white boy in the house, where his mother worked as a maid. * Emory is flamboyant and "effeminite". * Larry, an aggressively sexual homosexual, and Hank, who "passes" as straight, are a couple, who live together but disagree on the issue of monogamy. During the party, one humor takes a nasty turn, as the nine men become increasingly inebriated. The party culminates in a game, where each man must call someone and tell him he loves him. Michael, believing that Alan has finally "outed" himself when he makes his call, realizes that Alan's wife is the caller when he grabs the phone away from Alan. The audience never learns what Alan intended to discuss with Michael in the end.
2249628	/m/06z4_d	Self	Yann Martel	1996-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrator, at first male, explains various events from his early childhood, living with a traveling family who finally settle in Ottawa, Ontario. He goes on to explain events from his years in private school (including his parents' death), until he graduates and travels to Portugal, where he, on his eighteenth birthday, wakes up as a female. Surprisingly unfazed by her transformation, the narrator concludes her trip and begins university back in the fictional Roetown. She begins writing, and keeps travel in her life, eventually visiting such places as Spain and Thailand, to name a few. She shares romances with a select few — males and females alike. Eventually she gets published, and after graduating, moves to Montreal, where she gets a job as a waitress while continuing to write. At her job she meets Tito, her final love. But as the novel is nearing a conclusion, she is suddenly raped by a vicious neighbour in her secluded apartment and her body reverts to being a male again.
2252934	/m/06zf0h	The Master	Colm Tóibín	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It depicts the American-born writer Henry James in the final years of the 19th century. The eleven chapters of the novel are labelled from January 1895 to October 1899 and follow the writer from his failure in the London theatre, with the play Guy Domville, to his seclusion in the town of Rye, East Sussex, where in the following years he rapidly produced several masterpieces. The novel starts with a portrait of Henry as a public figure who feels humiliated in an unexpected way, not just in the public side of his writing career but also in a more personal way, in which all the precautions he had taken to carry on with his life as he wished it to be, come to a crisis. Henry resolves to reduce his public life by buying a house in Rye and there he nurses his loneliness and is haunted by all the consequences his need to maintain a protected space in which to live and write has generated all through his life. He's in his fifties and he's very much aware of how he had to refuse the company of his ill sister, whom he adored, at some point, how he chose to stay away from his country and his family, how he felt to turn cold with a writer friend he had been very close to previously and becomes a bachelor with an unresolved sexuality, certainly close to homosexuality, living in a house with servants in the South of England and a daily visit of the stenographer to whom he dictates. Appalled by the Oscar Wilde case, the portrait of Henry is not one of someone who just represses his self and his sexuality but of something more complex and ambiguous, of somebody who copes with life exerting a control on how much he'd reveal, even to himself, and choosing to be a writer in order to achieve precisely that.
2252952	/m/0g9wlpf	Pentamerone				 The Pentamerone is structured around a fantastic frame story in which fifty stories are related over the course of five days rather than the ten of the Tuscan compendium. The frame-story is that of a cursed, melancholy princess named Zoza ("mud" or "slime" in Neapolitan, but also used as a term of endearment). She cannot laugh, whatever her father does to amuse her, so he sets up a fountain of oil by the door, thinking people slipping in the oil would make her laugh. An old woman tried to gather oil, a page boy broke her jug, and the old woman grew so angry that she danced about, and Zoza laughed at her. The old woman cursed her to marry only the Prince of Round-Field, whom she could only wake by filling a pitcher with tears in three days. With some aid from fairies, who also give her gifts, Zoza found the prince and the pitcher, and nearly filled the pitcher when she fell asleep. A Moorish slave steals it, finishes filling it, and claims the prince. This frame story in itself is a fairy tale, combining motifs that will appear in other stories: the princess who cannot laugh in The Magic Swan, Golden Goose, and The Princess Who Never Smiled; the curse to marry only one person, and that one hard to find, in Snow-White-Fire-Red and Anthousa, Xanthousa, Chrisomalousa; the heroine falling asleep because of saving the hero and so losing him to trickery in The Sleeping Prince and Nourie Hadig. The now-pregnant slave-queen demands (at the impetus of Zoza's fairy gifts) that her husband tell her stories, or else she would crush the unborn child. The husband hires ten female storytellers to keep her amused; disguised among them is Zoza. Each tells five stories&nbsp;— most of which are more suitable to courtly than juvenile audiences. The Moorish woman's treachery is revealed in the final story (related, suitably, by Zoza), and she is buried, pregnant, up to her neck in the ground and left to die. Zoza and the Prince live happily ever after. Many of these fairy tales are the oldest known variants in existence. The fairy tales are: ; The First Day :# The Tale of the Ogre :# The Myrtle :# Peruonto :# Vardiello :# The Flea :# Cenerentola&nbsp;– a variant of Cinderella :# The Merchant :# Goat-Face :# The Enchanted Doe :# The Three Sisters ; The Second Day :# Parsley&nbsp;– a variant of Rapunzel :# Green Meadow :# Violet :# Pippo&nbsp;– a variant of Puss In Boots :# The Snake :# The She-Bear&nbsp;– a variant of Allerleirauh :# The Dove&nbsp;– a variant of Snow-White-Fire-Red :# The Young Slave&nbsp;– a variant of Snow White :# The Padlock :# The Buddy ; The Third Day :# Cannetella :# Penta of the Chopped-off Hands&nbsp;– a variant of The Girl Without Hands :# Face :# Sapia Liccarda :# The Cockroach, the Mouse, and the Cricket :# The Garlic Patch :# Corvetto :# The Booby :# Rosella :# The Three Fairies ; The Fourth Day :# The Stone in the Cock's Head :# The Two Brothers :# The Three Enchanted Princes :# The Seven Little Pork Rinds :# The Dragon :# The Three Crowns :# The Two Cakes&nbsp;– a variant of Diamonds and Toads :# The Seven Doves&nbsp;– a variant of The Seven Ravens :# The Raven :# Pride Punished&nbsp;– a variant of King Thrushbeard ; The Fifth Day :# The Goose :# The Months :# Pintosmalto :# The Golden Root&nbsp;– a variant of Cupid and Psyche :# Sun, Moon, and Talia&nbsp;– a variant of Sleeping Beauty :# Sapia :# The Five Sons :# Nennillo and Nennella&nbsp;– a variant of Brother and Sister :# The Three Citrons&nbsp;– a variant of The Love for Three Oranges
2252997	/m/06zf4z	Guy Domville	Henry James	1894-10	{"/m/05qp9": "Play"}	 The play is set in 1780s England. Frank Humber proposes marriage to the widow Mrs. Peverel, whose son is tutored by Guy Domville. The tutor Domville is planning to become a Catholic priest but learns that he is the last of his family. He starts to believe that it is his duty to marry and carry on the family line. When Mrs. Peverel rejects Humber's proposal, Frank suspects she may be in love with Domville. Guy is later about to wed Mary Brasier, but she really loves Lieutenant George Round. Once he understands the situation, Guy refuses to go through with the marriage and instead helps Mary and George elope. Domville also realizes that Frank Humber and Mrs. Peverel are in love, and commends them to each other. He will enter the priesthood, as he previously planned.
2253107	/m/06zfk7	A Long Way Down	Nick Hornby	2005-06-07	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 *First Part: Disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp, the lonely housewife Maureen (51 years old), the unsuccessful musician JJ and the rude teenager Jess (18 years old) meet at Topper's House in London at New Year's Eve. They all want to commit suicide by jumping from the roof. Their plans for death in solitude, however, are ruined when they meet. After telling their individual stories to the others, they decide to hold off on jumping and to protect themselves. Thus a group of four unfortunate and very individual people forms. Jess' condition not to jump is that they help her to find her ex-boyfriend Chas. So they take a taxi and drive to the party they suppose Chas to be at. After finding and talking to Chas they decide to go to Martin's place where they find Penny, who has obviously been crying. She accuses Martin of cheating on her because he had left the party they'd both attended that evening without any explanation. *Second Part: The next morning the newspapers claim that Martin has slept with Jess after Chas gives them false information. Jess' father takes her to task because the whole thing is very awkward for him. He is the Junior Secretary of Education and has a reputation to lose. Out of fear that her father learns she wants to kill herself, she doesn't deny it. The following newspaper edition is about a suicidal-pact between Martin and Jess. Jess' father asks Martin to clear up the accusations and he denies that he slept with Jess. After the conversation, her father asks Martin to protect Jess and gives him money. Afterwards, a reporter calls JJ wanting to know why they decided not to jump, but JJ refuses to discuss it. Later Jess calls Maureen and they decide to organize a meeting at Maureen's place. At the meeting, Jess suggests that they try to profit from the suicidal-report in the newspaper. Her idea is to confess to the press that they saw an angel who saved them from jumping. Martin, Maureen and JJ don't like the idea and they try to convince Jess out of talking to the press. The next morning they find out that Jess told a reporter, Linda, that they saw an angel that looked like Matt Damon. Jess also promised Linda an interview with Martin, Maureen and JJ. Although they are upset with Jess' behavior, they decide to do the interview. Linda uses the interview to attack Martin in the press. Thus Martin is fired from his cable TV “FeetUp TV”. But he receives a second chance by promising to his boss that the other three will be guests in his show. The show is a disaster and Martin loses his job. At another TV show Jess admits that the angel-story was not true. Later, JJ decides that the four of them have to go on vacation. Martin, Jess and JJ help Maureen to find a place for Matty. One week later they sit in a plane to Tenerife. On the second day, Jess sees a girl who looks very similar to her lost sister Jen. Jess bothers the girl and they have a fight. Out of frustration Jess gets drunk and the police have to take her back to the hotel. JJ meets a girl that knows his old band and they spend the night together. Martin decides to leave the hotel after a fight with Jess. During his absence from the others he thinks about his life and decides that he has made no mistakes and he decides to blame other people for how his life has turned out. In the taxi to the airport they talk about their vacation and plan another meeting for Saint Valentine's Day. They meet at 8 o'clock on the roof of Topper's House on Saint Valentine's Day. While they have a conversation, they detect a young man who is planning to jump from the roof. They try to stop him from committing suicide but he jumps. They decide to go home and to meet the following afternoon at Starbucks. *Third part: Martin tells them about a newspaper article he read according to which people who want to commit suicide need 90 days to overcome their ambition. So they decide to wait with their decision until the 31st of March. Maureen and Jess decide to visit Martins ex-wife Cindy to bring her back to him. Cindy Sharp lives with her kids in Torley Heath and has a new partner Paul, who is blind. Cindy explains to them that Martin made many mistakes and that he didn't take care of his children. After that, Jess organizes a meeting in the basement of Starbucks. She invites all relatives of the four. All in all seventeen people appear, but the meeting is a disaster. Jess and her parents are screaming at each other because her mother claims her that she had stolen a pair of earrings of Jen out of Jen's untouched room. While they are fighting Jess runs out of the Starbucks. JJ and a former member of his band are leaving the basement to have a fight and Martin has an argument with one of Maureen's nurses because he claims him to flirt with Penny. Maureen is the only one of the four who is still present. She talks to Jess' parents and utters the speculation that Jen maybe had come back and took the earrings. The nurses Sean and Stephen help Maureen to bring Matty home and on the way Sean asks her if she is interested to join his quiz-team. At the quiz, and old man from the team offers Maureen a job in a newspaper-store. When Jess comes back from her trip to London bridge her mother apologizes for her behavior. Jess accepts the apology. Maureen, JJ and Martin have new jobs now. Martin teaches pupils and wants to start a new life, JJ is a busker and is happy to make music again and Maureen works in a newspaper-store. The ninety days have passed and they meet in front of the Topper's House again. They decide to go on the roof again. On top, while watching the London Eye they realize that their lives are not so bad. They decide to wait with killing themselves for another six months.
2255151	/m/06zlw6	Murder is Easy	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Luke Fitzwilliam happens to share a London bound train carriage with Miss Pinkerton, a seemingly dotty but sweet elderly lady, who reminds Luke of his own aunt. She talks to him about a series of murders—disguised as accidents—taking place in her home village of Wychwood-under-Ashe. Miss Pinkerton says that although the local police are out of their depth, she knows the identity of the murderer because of a telling gaze that this person fixes on the intended victim. Now that the murderer has set their sights on the local doctor, she is on her way to Scotland Yard to reveal the guilty party and save the doctor. Unfortunately, she does not inform Luke who the murderer is. Luke learns the next day that Miss Pinkerton was killed in a hit-and-run car accident before reaching the Yard. Though he is initially unsuspicious the death of the doctor does surprise him. He goes to the village, posing as a folklore researcher, to find the murderer himself. Four main suspects soon present themselves: a creepy antique dealer, a prickly solicitor, a smug doctor and a bombastic, self-made peer engaged to an attractive young woman; but is the culprit one of the other inhabitants of the village, which emanates a pervasive supernatural atmosphere that unsettles Luke's detective work?
2255162	/m/06zlxl	The Body in the Library	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story starts with Mrs Dolly Bantry waking up from a pleasant dream, and noticing that the maid has not been in yet. Suddenly, the maid, Mary, dashes in, tearful and breathless, and informs Dolly that there is a body in the library, before running out again. Colonel Arthur Bantry then goes downstairs and learns from his butler, Lorrimer, that there is indeed a body in the library, sees it, calls Police Constable Billy Palk, and then Mrs Bantry calls her friend, Miss Marple (revealing that the victim has been strangled). Miss Marple is picked up by Mrs Bantry and her chauffeur, Muswell, and taken to Gossington Hall. There she sees the body. It is a very young girl with platinum blonde hair, with lipstick and painted nails like a gash, wearing an old but glittery, satin, cheap, black and white evening dress of rather poor quality, with silver sandals. The girl is also wearing a considerable amount of make-up. Soon, the police arrive, the senior officers being Detective Inspector Slack and the Chief Constable of the County, Colonel. Terence Melchett. Nobody in the household recognises the body, though. Miss Marple states to Mrs Bantry, that a good suspect in the Bantrys' neighbour, Basil Blake, the son of an old school friend of Mrs Bantry's, who is disliked intensely by Colonel Bantry. Basil is well known for dating a young platinum blonde girl, called Dinah Lee. Colonel Melchett visits Basil, but soon discovers that Dinah is not dead, as she comes and argues with Basil. The autopsy arrives, revealing that the girl was strangled with the belt of her own dress, and that death took place between 10:00 and 12:00 at nighttime. She was also heavily drugged first. Despite her appearance, she died a virgin. Finally, the body is identified as Ruby Keene, an 18 year old dancer who worked at a hotel called the Majestic in Danemouth. The body is identified by Ruby's great-cousin and colleague Josephine "Josie" Turner, who explains that she is dance and bridge hostess at the Majestic, but required Ruby to fill in a as dance hostess, due to Josie suffering injuries sustained to her ankle, whilst sunbathing. Ruby would just do the dancing with men, and the exhibition dances with Raymond Starr, the tennis and dancing pro. But the previous night, Ruby went missing, and Josie was forced to do the dance. After Josie has visited Gossington, Mrs Bantry realises that the one who called the police was Conway Jefferson, an old friend of the Bantrys. Conway had a wife, a son, and a daughter (Margaret, Frank and Rosamund) all of whom were killed in a plane crash. Conway had both legs so badly injured, they were amputated. He lives with Frank's widow, Adelaide, Rosamund's widower, Mark Gaskell, and Peter Carmody, Adelaide's son from her first marriage. And then there is Edwards, Conway's valet. Mrs Bantry then decides that she and Miss Marple will go to Danemouth, stay at the Majestic, and find the killer. Meanwhile, Melchett has appointed a new assistant, Detective Superintendent Harper. Together they interview Conway and discover that he was going to adopt Ruby, disinherit Mark and Adelaide, and settle £50,000 on her. Despite this, Mark and Adelaide both have alibis. They were playing bridge watching Ruby dancing. Melchett and Harper interview George Bartlett, who was the last one to see Ruby alive, and who has had his car stolen. Conway, now tired, orders Edwards to call Sir Henry Clithering. When Sir Henry arrives, Conway asks him to investigate. Sir Henry tells him about Miss Marple. Later after dining, Miss Marple tells Sir Henry that if the case is not solved, the Bantrys' lives will be ruined forever. The police suspect that Ruby went to change to meet a boyfriend, who found out about her and Conway, making him panic and strangle her, leaving her at the Gossington library, and drives away to London. Sir Henry interviews Edwards, who tells him that he saw a snapshot of Basil Blake fall out of Ruby's handbag, making Conway and the reader suspect that Ruby had a lover. Then, Bartlett's Minoan 14 car is found burning in Venn's Quarry, with a charred and blackened corpse inside. With a few scraps of clothing surviving burning, it is identified as Pamela Reeves, a 16 year old Girl Guide reported missing a few days. Pamela was last seen going to Wallworths. Miss Marple interviews Pamela's friends, and discovers that Pamela was actually going to a hotel, for a film test, after being approached by a "film producer", but Pamela never returned from this appointment. Miss Marple then goes to Basil Blake's house and informs Dinah Lee that she has discovered that she and Basil are married and that Basil will be arrested for killing Ruby. Basil returns and confesses that after getting drunk and fighting with Dinah at a studio party, he returned and found Ruby lying strangled to death on "his" hearthrug. Panicking, he dumped Ruby in the Bantrys' library. The police arrive and Basil is arrested. Miss Marple, Sir Henry and the Bantrys once again book into the Majestic (they had briefly left), but this time with Colonel Bantry, Melchett and Harper. Miss Marple makes a quick trip to Somerset House (something about marriages) and ask Conway to tell Mark and Adelaide that he is leaving the money to a hostel for young dancers in London, and that he will visit a solicitor to finalize the details tomorrow. Conway does so, and they ask Det. Supt. Harper to keep a watch on people, with his men. Then the Bantrys and Miss Marple (along with the staff and other guests) retire for the night. At 3:00 in the morning, someone breaks into Conway's bedroom, via the window and balcony, and tries to murder Conway by injecting him with poison, through a needle, but the attacker is stopped by Melchett, Harper and Clithering. But the intruder is not named. Miss Marple then reveals all to the Bantrys, the Blakes, Melchett, Harper, Clithering, and the Jeffersons. Although nail clippings were found in Ruby's room, the girl in the library had bitten hers, which meant that the body in the library was not Ruby's. When Dinah mentioned Somerset House-marriage, Miss Marple found out that Mark was married to Josie. Upon finding out about Conway and Ruby, they decided to murder her and frame Basil. Mark and Josie approached Pamela regarding a film test, and when she accepted, they bleached her hair, put make-up on her, varnished her nails, put her into one of Ruby's dresses, and drugged her. Mark then slipped away to write letters, and drove down to the sea-front. But that was when he drove Pamela to Basil Blake's house, and strangled her. So when the doctor said the time she died, Mark and Josie had solid alibis, they were playing bridge watching the real Ruby Keene alive and dancing, and they did not leave the table until after midnight. Josie told Ruby to go and lie down in Josie's room. Ruby, as well, had been drugged. When changing for the dance, Josie murdered Ruby, either by strangulation, a poisonous injection, or a blow on the back of her head. In the early hours of the morning, Josie dressed Ruby in Pamela's Girl Guide uniform, stole Bartlett's car, drove to Venn's Quarry, and incinerated the lot.
2257192	/m/06zrxf	Towards Zero	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lady Tressilian, an old and humourless woman confined to her bed, invites several guests into her seaside home of Gull's Point for two weeks at the end of the summer. Tennis star Nevile Strange, former ward of Lady Tressilian's deceased husband, incurs her displeasure by bringing both his new wife, Kay, and his ex-wife, Audrey, thus causing awkward romantic misunderstandings. But events soon become sinister when Lady Tressilian is killed and Superintendent Battle, who is holidaying nearby in the home of his nephew, Inspector James Leach, finds himself in a labyrinthine maze of clues and deception.
2257208	/m/06zryg	Sparkling Cyanide	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 One year ago on 2 November, seven people sat down to dinner at the restaurant "Luxembourg". One of them, Rosemary Barton, never got up. She was thought to have committed suicide due to post-flu depression. Her husband, George Barton, received anonymous letters saying that Rosemary did not kill herself but was murdered. George started to investigate and decided to reconstruct the dinner at the same restaurant, inviting the same people as well as an actress that looked like his late wife. The actress did not arrive and that night George died at the table - poisoned, like his wife, by cyanide in his glass. His death would have been dismissed as suicide as well if not for the investigation of his friend Colonel Race. During the investigation it is revealed that the intended victim was Rosemary's young sister Iris. Due to a stipulation of her uncle's will as Rosemary died childless her inherited fortune passed to her teenage sister when she died. If Iris had died at the table as intended the money in turn would have passed to her aunt Mrs. Drake. Mrs. Drake is very much at the mercy of her lazy son Victor, who often threatens to commit suicide when he needs money from his mother. Colonel Race and Iris's suitor, Anthony Browne, discover that Victor had planned the murder together with his lover Ruth Lessing, who was also George's secretary. The plan failed because when the group went to dance Iris dropped her bag and the waiter that retrieved it placed it a seat away from where she was before she went to dance. When the companions returned to the table, George sat at Iris's original place and drank the poisoned champagne. In order to confirm the suicidal nature of the death Ruth had planted a pack of cyanide in Iris's bag and Victor had disguised himself as a waiter in order to poison the sparkling wine. When this failed, Ruth then attempted to run down Iris with a car. Eventually, Colonel Race together with the police and Anthony Browne unravel the truth and save Iris from being gassed to death by Ruth, who had knocked her out, trying to stage her "suicide'. The anonymous letters to George were sent by Ruth in order to convince him to re-stage the dinner at Luxembourg so that Victor and Ruth could try to kill Iris.
2257233	/m/06zr_k	Parker Pyne Investigates	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 James Parker Pyne is a retired government employee who considers himself to be a "detective of the heart." Advertising his services in the "Personal" column of The Times, he works alongside his secretary Miss Lemon, novelist Ariadne Oliver, handsome "lounge lizard" Claude Luttrell and disguise artist Madeleine de Sara. The first six stories deal with Pyne solving cases in England, while the second six stories detail Pyne's vacation, where he hopes not to have to detective work only to end up helping others anyway.
2260408	/m/06z_ls	The Heather Blazing	Colm Tóibín	1992-09-11	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of Eamon Redmond, a judge in the Irish High Court of the late twentieth century Ireland. It reconstructs his relationships with his wife and children through his life and the memories of a childhood marked by the death of his father. The County Wexford landscape and the death of the father are the narrative material, which Colm Tóibín would revisit again in the The Blackwater Lightship. The novel takes its title from a line from the song Boolavogue, specifically "a rebel hand set the heather blazing." The novel also plots the development of Fianna Fáil from the austere republicanism and style of Éamon de Valera to the nepotism of the Charles Haughey era. It has been said that this novel made Tóibín the heir of John McGahern. Amongst Women a book by McGahern has similar atmosphere to this book.
2260756	/m/06_0dv	The Rising	Brian Keene	2003-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story starts off in the aftermath of a secret particle accelerator experiment. Somehow the experiment has opened some sort of interdimensional rift allowing demons to possess the dead. As the dead come back to life, a zombie plague results. The story's protagonist is Jim Thurmond, a construction worker living in West Virginia. Hiding away in a bomb shelter, which was previously constructed because of a fear of the aftermath of Y2K, Thurmond holds off packs of roving zombies, many of which were his neighbors and one of which is his recently deceased second wife who was pregnant. A distraught Jim laments his situation and worries about his son, Danny, who is living with Jim's first wife in upstate New Jersey. Jim considers suicide when unexpectedly Jim's cellphone rings with a message from his son, Danny. Danny whispers into the phone that while their situation is equally morbid they are, for the present moment, safe hiding away from the zombies. Jim's suicidal thoughts turn around into a new purpose - to rescue Danny. Jim packs some supplies from the shelter and heads out into an apocalyptic United States overrun with gruesome sights. Jim fights his way out of the shelter by killing his undead neighbors and even his undead second wife, who taunts him with his unborn daughter. The moment he leaves the shelter, Jim is on the run discovering that the undead possess the ability to think, drive cars, use weapons, and set traps for the living. Meanwhile, a scientist named Baker, who was working on the covert project involving cosmic black holes is trapped within the confines of his underground workspace. With the undead epidemic having swept the world for which Baker is directly responsible he begins to feel an overwhelming sense of guilt. An old colleague is trapped inside a room, a member of the undead who refers to himself as Ob. He hints that he comes from somewhere called The Void, the connotation of which appears to be like "Hell" on Earth. He learns that the zombies are not occupied by their original selves but instead a different evil entity with the possession of the host body's memories and personalities. Baker eventually escapes and finds his life being saved by Worm, a deaf young man whom grateful Baker takes under his wing. Jim eventually meets Martin, a wise elderly black minister. The two join forces to find Danny and soon run into many life-threatening situations such as packs of roving zombies, backwood cannibals seeking extra food and undead wildlife. Among one of their exploits, they run into a father and son in hiding, who help them along the way until tragedy strikes in a double suicide for the two. At the same time, Frankie, a heroin user and prostitute who is trying to hide from a vengeful pimp, narrowly escapes disaster in the Baltimore Zoo begins a trek out of the cities and into the country. Somewhere within Pennsylvania, the National Guard is present which has literally become psychotic with Colonel Schow, a sociopathic official leading a crew of horny, violent soldiers who abuse their authority by violently drafting people into their army and turning women into sexual slaves to satisfy the soldiers. With utter disregard the army uses living humans as zombie bait. Amongst all this chaos a lone private named Skip, who is disgusted with his comrades' behavior, looks to escape. Frankie eventually meets up with Jim and Martin. Together they help Jim reach his destination, New Jersey. Meanwhile, Professor Baker, the scientist responsible for creating the zombie outbreak, finds that Ob is possessing his assistant who had decided to kill himself. Ob is the leader of the demons that are infesting the world and taking over the dead and he demands to be released from the room that Professor Baker has trapped him in. The story also keeps tabs on one of the other scientists in charge of the particle accelerator as he too seeks his destiny in a world full of the undead. In the final chapter all the main characters meet which results in a scene of extreme violence providing a cliffhanger conclusion that raises more questions than answers.
22655	/m/05nzp	Ossian				 The age of feudalism and chivalry was passing away, and the King of France was inciting the wealthy citizens of Flanders against his own rebellious vassal the Duke of Burgundy. Quentin Durward had come to Tours, where his uncle was one of the Scottish body guard maintained by Louis XI, to seek military service, and was invited by the king, disguised as a merchant, to breakfast at the inn, and supplied by him with money. Having narrowly escaped being hanged by the provost-marshal for cutting down Zamet, whom he found suspended to a tree, he was enlisted by Lord Crawford, and learned the history of Jacqueline. In the presence-chamber he was recognised by Louis, and the royal party were preparing for a hunting excursion, when the Count of Crèvecœur arrived with a peremptory demand for the instant surrender of the duke's ward, the Countess of Croye, who had fled from Burgundy with her aunt to escape a forced marriage; and proclaimed that his master renounced his allegiance to the crown of France. In the chase which followed Durward saved the king's life from a boar, for which service Louis, after consulting with his barber, entrusted him with the duty of conducting the Countess and Lady Hameline, ostensibly to the protection of the Bishop of Liege, but really that they might fall into the hands of William de la Marck. After proceeding some distance they were overtaken by Dunois and the Duke of Orléans, who would have seized the countess, but were prevented by Lord Crawford, who arrived in pursuit and made prisoners of them. Then Hayraddin came riding after them, and under his guidance they journeyed for nearly a week, when Quentin discovered that the Bohemian was in league with De la Marck. He accordingly altered their route, and they reached the bishop's castle in safety. A few days afterwards, however, it was assaulted by the citizens, and Hayraddin having effected Lady Hameline's escape with Marthon, Quentin rushed back to save the countess, and, at Gieslaer's suggestion, Pavilion passed them as his daughter and her sweetheart into the great hall where the outlaw, who was known as the Boar of Ardennes, was feasting with the rioters. The bishop, who was also governor of the city, was then dragged in, and, having denounced his captor, was murdered by a stroke of Nikkel Blok's cleaver. There was a shout for vengeance, but De la Marck summoned his soldiers, upon which Quentin held a dirk at the throat of his son Carl, and exhorted the citizens to return to their homes. With the syndic's help Lady Isabella and her protector reached Charleroi, where she was placed in a convent, while he carried the news to the Duke of Burgundy, at whose court Louis, with a small retinue, was a guest. Charles, in a furious rage, accused the king of being privy to the sacrilege, and caused him to be treated as a prisoner. At a council the following day he was charged with abetting rebellion among the vassals of Burgundy, and the countess was brought as a witness against him. She admitted her fault, and Quentin Durward was being questioned respecting his escort of her, when a herald arrived with a demand from De la Marck to be acknowledged as Prince-Bishop of Liège, and for the release of his ally the King of France. Louis replied that he intended to gibbet the murderer, and the messenger, who was discovered to be Hayraddin, was sentenced to death, the quarrel between the duke and the king being at the same time adjusted, on the understanding that the Duke of Orléans should marry Lady Isabelle. Crèvecœur, however, interceded for her, and it was arranged that whoever should bring the head of the Boar of Ardennes might claim her hand. Quentin, who had learnt his plans from the Bohemian, advanced with the allied troops of France and Burgundy against his stronghold, and a desperate battle ensued. At length the young Scot was in the act of closing with De la Marck, when Pavilion's daughter implored his protection from a French soldier; and, while placing her in safety, his uncle La Balafré fought the ruffian, and carried his head to the royal presence. Lord Crawford declared him to be of gentle birth, but the old soldier having resigned his pretensions to his nephew, King Louis vouched for Quentin's services and prudence, and the duke being satisfied as to his descent, remarked that it only remained to inquire what were the fair lady's sentiments towards the young emigrant in search of honourable adventure, and who, by his sense, firmness and gallantry, thus became the fortunate possessor of wealth, rank and beauty.
2266900	/m/06_f_d	A Walk on the Wild Side	Nelson Algren	1956	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Fitz Linkhorn barely managed to make a living pumping out cesspools, but his consuming vocation was preaching from the courthouse steps in Arroyo, a small town in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. He denounced all sins except drinking, because he was drunk as often as possible. Fitz had two sons, Byron, who was weak and sickly, and Dove. Dove had no education because his father had not wanted to send him to a school with a Catholic principal. Instead, he was supposed to see movies with Byron to learn about life, but Dove never got to go; his brother did not have the price of a ticket. Dove got his education from the hoboes who hung around the Santa Fe tracks, telling one another what towns, lawmen, jails, and railroad bulls to avoid. Dove began hanging around the La Fe en Dios chili parlor in the ruins of the Hotel Crockett on the other side of town. The hotel was the place where Fitz had met the mother of his sons. The hotel was closed, but the seldom-visited café was run by Terasina Vidavarri, a wary woman who had been raped by a soldier. She continued Dove’s education by teaching him how to read from two books. One of the books was a children’s storybook; the other was about how to write business letters. Dove and Terasina eventually became lovers. Byron blackmails Dove into stealing from the café, and Terasina knows that Dove has taken money out of the cash register. She kicks him out, but not before he rapes her. Dove then leaves Arroyo on a freight train. Dove took up with a girl named Kitty Twist, a runaway from a children’s home, and saved her life when she was about to fall under the wheels of a train. When they attempted a burglary in Houston, Kitty was caught. Dove got away on a freight to New Orleans. One of the first things he saw in New Orleans was a man cutting the heads off turtles that were to be made into turtle soup and throwing the bodies into a pile. Even with the heads cut off, the bodies tried to climb to the top of the pile. One turtle was able to reach the top of the pile before it slid back to the bottom. In the port city, with its many different influences and cultures, Dove experienced his most interesting adventures. He worked as a painter on a steamship (but did not paint anything), fooled a prostitute who was trying to rob him, sold coffeepots and “beauty certificates” (which supposedly entitled the bearer to a treatment at a beauty shop) while seducing the women to whom he was selling, and, in his most memorable escapade, worked in a condom factory. The condoms, which were called O-Daddies and bore interesting names and colors, were made in a house by a mom-and-pop firm, Velma and Rhino Gross. Dove’s lengthiest stay was with the people who inhabited the twin worlds of Oliver Finnerty’s brothel and Doc Dockery’s speakeasy. In the brothel he found, in addition to his old friend Kitty Twist, who had become a prostitute, Hallie Breedlove, a onetime schoolteacher who was the star of Finnerty’s string of girls. Hallie was in love with Achilles Schmidt, a former circus strongman whose legs had been cut off by a train. Schmidt’s upper body was still powerful and every day he surged into Dockery’s bar with the air of one who could beat up anyone there—and he could. Dove’s main job at Finnerty’s was to couple with the girls in the place, who were pretending to be virgins being deflowered, while customers watched through peepholes. Hallie, who still retained vestiges of her former life as a teacher, was interested in Dove’s mind and helped him to continue to learn to read. Dove’s closeness to Hallie angered Achilles, who assaulted Dove in Dockery’s bar. Schmidt beat Dove until Dove was blind, and a gang of people then descended on Schmidt and killed him. Dove managed to make his way back to Texas and Terasina’s café.
2267240	/m/06_gtb	The Hot Kid	Elmore Leonard	2005-05-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This fictional story is set during The Great Depression and follows the career of Carl (Carlos) Webster, a crack shot, well respected, and mannerful lawman who killed his first criminal at the ripe age of fifteen. The reader follows Carlos' career as he begins a long dance of death with Jack Belmont, an ambitious criminal who wants to become public enemy number one. The story follows other characters like Louly Brown, a woman who loves Carlos, but wants to be known as Pretty Boy Floyd's gal. There's also writer Tony Antonelli, of True Detective magazine, who wants to write like a pro, and wishes Elodie, a gal he likes, wasn't a whore. The novel is full of grade-A action and violence perpetrated through criminals, lawmen, Tommy guns, bank robberies, hot cars, all falling against the backdrop of Prohibition. Carl Webster is presented as the son of Virgil Webster, introduced in Leonard's 1998 novel "Cuba Libre." Both men reappear in Leonard's 2007 novel "Up In Honey's Room." Real life contemporary Bank robbers who make an appearance in the novel include Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson
2267760	/m/06_j3f	Death of a Train	Freeman Wills Crofts		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set during World War II, a network of German secret agents plans to derail a train carrying vital war supplies. Due to a delay another train is derailed instead, the intended one then being diverted safely round the blockage. Inspector French tracks down the conspirators, nearly losing his life in a heroic final action to prevent their escape.
2270723	/m/06_rf9	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	J. K. Rowling	2005-07-16	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lord Voldemort has returned and his wrath has been felt in both the Muggle (non-magical) and Wizarding worlds. Severus Snape, a member of Dumbledore's anti-Voldemort Order of the Phoenix but formerly one of Voldemort's Death Eaters, meets with Narcissa Malfoy, mother of Harry Potter's school rival Draco. Snape makes an Unbreakable Vow to Narcissa, promising to assist and protect Draco. Meanwhile, Dumbledore collects Harry from his aunt and uncle's house and takes him to the home of Horace Slughorn, former Potions teacher at Hogwarts. Dumbledore tries to persuade a reluctant Slughorn to return to teaching and finally succeeds. Later, when shopping for schoolbooks, Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger follow Draco Malfoy to Dark Arts supplier Borgin and Burkes, where they overhear Draco insisting that the store-owner fix an unknown object. Harry is instantly suspicious of Draco, whom he believes to be a Death Eater like his father. The students return to school, where Dumbledore announces that Snape, the previous Potions teacher, will be teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts, while Slughorn will resume his post as Potions teacher. This allows Harry to continue with a Potions course, in which he now excels, thanks mainly due to having received a used Potions textbook that once belonged to someone named "The Half-Blood Prince", which is heavily annotated. Harry falls in love with Ron's sister Ginny, and Ron and his girlfriend Lavender Brown break up, to Hermione's delight. Harry spends much of his time following Draco Malfoy for any proof of suspicious actions, though he often cannot find him on his magical map of Hogwarts. Harry realises that when Draco is not on the map, he is using the Room of Requirement on the seventh floor of Hogwarts, which transforms into whatever its user needs. Harry is unable to gain access to the room unless he knows for what exact purpose Draco is using the room. Believing that Harry needs to learn Voldemort's past to gain advantage in a foretold fight, Dumbledore schedules regular meetings with Harry in which they use Dumbledore's Pensieve to look at memories of those who have had direct contact with Voldemort. Harry learns about Voldemort's family and the influences that corrupted Voldemort. Harry eventually succeeds in retrieving one of Slughorn's memories about how he revealed the secrets about splitting one's soul and hiding it in several objects called Horcruxes. Dumbledore explains that two of these have already been destroyed but that others remain. He suspects three of those to be objects belonging to three of the Hogwarts founders (one for each except Gryffindor), and the last one to reside in Voldemort's snake. Harry and Dumbledore leave Hogwarts to fetch and destroy one of the Horcruxes. They journey into a cave important to Voldemort's youth that Dumbledore senses is protected with magic. They reach the basin where the purported Horcrux is hidden underneath a potion. Dumbledore drinks the potion and Harry fights off Voldemort's Inferi, an army of re-animated corpses. They take the Horcrux, Slytherin's locket, and return to Hogwarts as quickly as possible. Dumbledore is very weak, and when they reach Hogsmeade they can see the Dark Mark, Voldemort's symbol, visible above the astronomy tower. When they arrive at the tower, Dumbledore uses his magic to freeze Harry in place while Harry remains hidden by his cloak of invisibility. When Draco Malfoy arrives, he disarms and threatens to kill Dumbledore, acting on his mission from Voldemort. Dumbledore tries to stall Draco by telling him he is not a killer, but Snape bursts into the tower and kills Dumbledore. Because of Dumbledore's death, his spell on Harry is broken and Harry rushes after Snape to avenge Dumbledore's death. Snape reveals that he is the Half-Blood Prince and manages to escape. Later, Harry finds out that the locket that he and Dumbledore retrieved is not the real Horcrux; containing only a note from someone named "R. A. B". After Dumbledore's funeral, Hermione explains to Harry that Snape was called the Half-Blood Prince because he had a Muggle father and a magical mother (whose maiden name was Prince). Harry is devastated to think that he trusted and took help from the man who would turn out to be Dumbledore's murderer. He tells his friends that he will not be returning to Hogwarts next year and will instead search out and kill Voldemort by destroying all of the Horcruxes. Ron and Hermione vow to join him.
2270992	/m/06_ry9	Servant of the Bones	Anne Rice	1996	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Azriel is telling the story of his transformation into and subsequent existence as an immortal genii who is forced to obey the Master who calls him. Over centuries, Azriel becomes less obedient to the Masters and a warning is placed on the casket of his bones that he is not to be summoned lest his evil be loosed upon the undeserving world. After many centuries of rest, Azriel finds himself awake and in New York City, a dazed witness to the murder of a young woman, Esther Belkin. He becomes inexplicably obsessed with the desire to avenge her death and to find out who called him into the physical world in time to see Esther die but not in time to save her. This quest leads him to the girl's stepfather, Gregory Belkin, who would pay any price to fulfill his messianic dream via his immense worldwide religious organization, the Temple of the Mind of God. As his quest approaches its climax, he risks his supernatural powers to forestall an attempt to destroy the world thus redeeming what was denied him for so long: his own eternal human soul.
2272360	/m/06_w5f	Asterix and Cleopatra	René Goscinny	1963		 The book begins with an argument between Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and Julius Caesar, in which Caesar belittles the accomplishments of the Egyptian people. Infuriated, Cleopatra makes a wager with Caesar promising to build a new palace in Alexandria within three months. Cleopatra summons Edifis, who claims to be the best architect in Egypt. She promises Edifis that if he builds the palace on time he will be covered with gold; if he fails, he will be a meal for the sacred crocodiles. A worried Edifis thinks he needs magic to help him, enlists the help of the Gauls, Asterix, Obelix, Getafix, and Dogmatix. Thanks to Getafix and his magic potion, the work goes forward on schedule, despite multiple attempts by Edifis's arch rival, Artifis, to sabotage the construction after Edifis says he doesn't want to get help of them. Artifis tells the workers to demand less whipping, which would slow construction. However Getafix gives the workers magic potion. Artifis bribes the stone-delivery man to throw his quarry away, before Obelix beats him up, causing him to reveal the truth, a henchman tries to lock the Gauls inside a pyramid but Dogmatix helps him find his way out, he tries to frame the Gauls by sending a poisoned cake to Cleopatra, but Getafix makes an antidote enabling the Gauls to eat it, then cures the taster and claims eating too much rich food was giving him a bad stomach. Edifis is kidnapped and hidden in a sarcophagus in the house of Artifis, but Obelix frees him. Artfis and his henchman are forced to work on the palace, but without magic potion. Just before the palace is due to be completed, Caesar intervenes by sending legions to try to arrest the Gauls, after he realises the three Gauls are in Egypt when a spy disguises himself as a worker, and sees the effects of the magic potion. The Gauls fight off the Roman soldiers, but the commanding officer proceeds to shell the building with his catapults. In desperation, Asterix and Dogmatix deliver the news to Cleopatra. A furious Cleopatra then hurries to the construction site to berate Caesar. Caesar's legions are required to fix the damage they caused (without any magic potion to help them) and the palace is successfully completed on time. Cleopatra wins her bet and covers Edifis with gold. Edifis and Artifis reconcile and agree to build pyramids together, and Cleopatra gives Getafix some papyrus manuscripts from the Library of Alexandria as a gift.
2272612	/m/06_wvn	Kushiel's Chosen	Jacqueline Carey	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kushiel's Dart, the first book in the Kushiel's Legacy trilogy, ends with the arrival of a mysterious gift at Montrève, the Comtesse Phèdre nó Delaunay's quiet country estate. Kushiel's Chosen picks up immediately after an Italian merchant and former acquaintance presents Phèdre with her sangoire cloak, last worn when she was betrayed by Melisande Shahrizai, the beautiful but deadly and manipulative scion of Kushiel. She takes it upon herself to find out how Melisande escaped from Troyes-le-Mont, the fortress featured during the climatic Battle of Troyes-le-Mont in Kushiel's Dart. With her chevaliers, Remy, Fortun and Ti-Phillipe (see Phèdre's Boys), and her lover and protector Joscelin Verreuil, the former Cassiline brother, Phèdre returns to the City of Elua, to resume her life as a Servant of Naamah in the hopes of discerning where Melisande is and what she plans. Unfortunately, the return to Namaah's service causes an uncomfortable rift between her and Joscelin Verreuil, who is becoming increasingly interested in the Habiru religion of the Yeshuites. One of her assignations is the half-d'Angeline Prince, Severio Stregazza. The Stregazza family are the family of the Doge in La Serenissima and are allied through marriage with House Courcel. Phèdre also has an assignation with Nicola L'Envers y Aragon - a cousin of the Compte Barquiel L'Envers and married to the brother of the King of Aragonia - to whom she gives the Lover's Token. Nicola in return gives her the password of house L'Envers, a command that goes above all others and must be followed without question by all persons of House L'Envers. Finding only dead ends, Phèdre decides to travel to La Serenissima in Caerdicca Unitas, in order to track down the missing guardsmen of Troyes-le-Mont. While there she is again courted by Severio Stregazza and learns of corruption within the temple of Asherat-of-the-Sea. Phèdre also learns that Prince Benedicte de la Courcel has re-married. His wife is a D'Angeline woman whose entire family died in the war with Skaldia. She has taken the veil of Asherat-of-the-Sea, the religion of La Serenissima, as a symbol of her constant mourning of their loss. She and Benedicte de la Courcel have a new-born son together and both live in "The Little Court" - the Terre d'Ange Embassy and residences in La Serenissima. Phèdre also learns from Prince Benedicte's children that his marriage abroad has made him bitter. He dislikes that Queen Ysandre will taint the royal blood-line with Cruinthe blood and sees all non-pure-D'Angelines as barbaric and inferior. Upon realizing some crucial information, Phèdre decides to go and tell Prince Benedicte de la Courcel what she has learned and that there may be a plot against the Queen. The evening before her meeting the uncomfortable rift between her and Joscelin finally snaps and he leaves her. In the morning, at her private meeting with the Prince she learns that the mysterious new, young wife of Prince Benedicte is Melisande herself. Melisande tells Phèdre that she will kill Queen Ysandre when she comes to tour Caerdicca Unitas later in the summer. This will mean that Benedicte de la Courcel, as the next member of the royal house, will inherit the throne. Prince Benedicte will then declare his pure-blooded D'Angeline son as heir to the throne, thereby purifying the royal blood-line. In order to stop anyone from refusing their rule, Melisande has also blackmailed the Duc Percy de Somerville and his men to support them with military force. Phèdre's discovery makes Melisande send her to the prison on the island of La Dolorosa, where the mourning of Asherat-of-the-Sea will eventually drive her mad. During her imprisonment, Melisande visits her and offers her a new prison: her own personal dungeon. Phèdre is left one night to contemplate the prospect when the alarm is raised. The island fortress is being attacked by Joscelin Verreuil, in an attempt to save Phèdre. Unfortunately, Phèdre falls off a cliff of La Dolorossa and is washed into the sea. While drowning in the incredible waves she vows to Asherat-of-the-Sea to clean her temple of its corruption in return for her life. The sea then throws her back to the surface with a plank of wood to hold on to. In the morning she is rescued by an Illyrian pirate ship with a cursed capitain, Kazan Atribades, and suggests to them that they can ransom her to the D'Angeline throne. The pirates try this but are intercepted by La Serenissima patrols, told to watch for Phèdre. The patrols take half of the crew hostage and send the others back with a meeting date to trade over Phèdre. Phèdre is kept unawares of this and only learns she has been betrayed when she is forcibly put on the Serenissiman ship at the excahnge. During this exchange, the pirates get their crew back and a significant reward, however, the Serenissimans have ships hidden and are about to kill Phèdre right then and there. Knowing it a trap and having come to care for Phèdre, Kazan betrays the Serenissmans, taking Phèdre back and fleeing with the reward. While fleeing the Serenissman ships, all but the lead pirate ship enter Epidauro, the capital of Illyria. The lead ship, carrying Phèdre and Kazan are forced to flee south on the tail end of a very strong storm. The storm blows the ship to the Temenos in Kriti where both she and Kazan undergo the Thetalos. Phèdre then travels to the capital of Kriti where she meets the Kore (the King) and asks his aid. While he is unwilling to take the risk of standing up to La Serenissima and, if Phèdre is unsuccessful, Terre d'Ange, he does agree to send letters to the Marsilikos. Phèdre writes letters to the Lady of Marsilikos, warning her of the plot, and Barquiel L'Envers, using the word of his house (given by Nicola L'Envers) to close the City of Elua so that it can not be taken by treason while Ysandre is in La Serenissima. Phèdre, Kazan, and other pirates of the lead ship then sail back to Epidauro where she asks the aid of the Zim Sokali (King of Illyria) for aid. Kazan states that he will take Phèdre to La Serenissima regardless but doubts his success without help. The Zim Sokali agrees to smuggle Phèdre in a trunk with a false bottom as part of the tribute gift he is sending to La Serenissima on the morrow. Kazan and his trusted pirates will pretend to be sailors on the ship so that if Phèdre is found on board, the sailors can claim that the pirates overtook them and forced them to do so. The ship makes it into La Serenissima without issue and Phèdre, accompanied by Kazan and his men, manages to find Joscelin Verreuil in the Yeshuite quarter of the city. Together, they manage to learn of a secret underground entrance into the temple of Asherat, where the ceremony of investitute of the new Doge will take place. Phèdre also learns of how Melisande plans to kill Queen Ysandre: Melisande has gotten one of the Cassiline royal guards to kill Ysandre in retribution for Ysandre's mother, Isabel L'Envers, allegedly having killed his sister, the late fiancee of Prince Rolande, Edmée de Rocaille. With the help of Kazan and his crew, Joscelin and his Yeshuites trained to arms, and Ti-Phillipe - who has been living in hiding with Joscelin - sneak their way into the temple hours before the investiture. During the ceremony, Phèdre interrupts it pretending to be the voice of Asherat and causes confusion and mayhem among the attendees. At the same time, a riot breaks out in the square - no doubt staged by Marco Stregazza and Melisande - outside the temple and rioters enter the temple. With all the distraction, Joscelin manages to kill the assassin-Cassiline before he is able to murder the Queen. Phèdre also succeeds in revealing Melisande as Prince Benedicte's second wife and that Marco and Marie-Celeste had suborned the Temple of Asherat. Once the riots are quenched and order is restored, we learn that Prince Benedicte de la Courcel sustained deadly wounds in the fighting and that Melisande has been granted asylum in the Temple of Asherat. All is not yet solved though. Melisande has already sent riders on a relay of fast horses to secure the City of Elua and tell Percy de Somerville that Queen Ysandre is dead and he should take the throne for Prince Benedicte's return. In addition, the infant son of Melisande and Benedicte, Prince Imriel, who is third in line for the throne, is missing. The Queen, her entourage, Phèdre, Joscelin, and Ti-Phillipe rush back to Terre d'Ange to try to reclaim the throne. They enter by way of Camlach, where Phèdre convinces the Unforgiven (troops dedicated to atoning for their sins in the Battle of Troyes-Le-Mont) to ride with them. Upon entering Terre d'Ange, they learn that Phèdre's message had been successful and that Barquiel L'Envers has closed the city. However, Percy de Somerville has claimed the all of its surrounding area though has not yet besieged it. As the Queen's forces march toward the City of Elua, Percy de Somerville puts out the rumour that they are imposters - the Queen is dead and someone is trying to take advantage of this by pretending to be her. Upon Phèdre's suggestion, the Queen's forces then toss coins bearing the Queen's image on their way. This convinces many and when they do so at the gates of the city, the soldiers pause and then realize that they have been duped. Ysandre marches through the soldiers, fearless, and reclaims the throne of Terre d'Ange, putting Percy de Somerville in custody. The novel ends with a large party in Phèdre's honour and where Joscelin is named by Ysandre as the Queen's Champion. At the party, Joscelin asks to be Phèdre's formal consort, which she accepts gladly.
2272664	/m/06_wyt	Kushiel's Avatar	Jacqueline Carey	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The anguissette Comtesse Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève is contacted by her former lover and rival, Melisande Shahrizai, to find Melisande's son Imriel de la Courcel. The Prince has been missing for nearly ten years because Melisande had hidden him (see Kushiel's Chosen). Now it appears that he has gone missing from there as well. Melisande reveals that he had been hidden in an isolated Temple of Elua in Siovale, raised having no knowledge that he is a royal prince and believing that his parents are dead. Melisande has tried to find him through her extensive list of allies but has been unable to. Knowing Phèdre to be loyal to the throne (House Courcel) she asks her to find him. Melisande and Phèdre make a deal: if Phèdre will promise to find Imriel, Melisande will give her the location of the lost tribe of Dan, whose elders know the Name of the One God, allowing Phèdre to free Hyacinthe of his terrible burden. Following her own investigations about Imriel from various sources, Phèdre eventually finds out that Imriel had been abducted by slavers along with a couple other Siovalese children. Following their route takes her through Aragonia and Menekhet. In Menekhet she learns that the dangerous bone-priests, the Skotophagoti, from the new born kingdom of Drujan have bought Imriel. These Skotophagoti seem to control death itself and worship an evil god. This leads Phèdre to Drujan's neighbour and once occupier, Khebbel-im-Akkad. There she learns more of the new kingdom and king of Drujan, the Mahrkagir ("Conqueror of Death"). Each piece of information is more frightening than the last. In Nineveh, Phèdre is refused aid from Khebbel-im-Akkad, despite Valere L'Envers being married to the son of the Khalif, and begins to doubt that she can save Imriel. Those around her beg her not to enter Drujan. As she is about to agree with them she hears Kushiel's bronze wings and feels the presence of Elua and His Companions. She tells them it is too much to ask of her. She feels sympathy from them but also their retreating. All their power, all their presence, leaving her truly empty. At this she replies that she will do this task they give her, as long as they stay with her and help her. Their powers return and she is flooded by love and sympathy. Joscelin Verreuil later tells her that at this time he saw her mote shrinking until it was barely visible, only to return an instant later in full. Phèdre decides to enter the harem (zenana) of the ruler of Drujan, in the capital Daršanga, under the guise of a noblewoman abducted by a vengeful former lover, Joscelin Verreuil. Phèdre soon realizes that her time in Daršanga will reveal the darkest depths of depravity to which an anguissette can sink. The Mahrkagir, who witnessed the mass killing of his father's household as a child and suffered a severe blow to the head in the ordeal, is completely mad. In the bedchamber, he forbids Phèdre to commit any act which begets life, and cruelly uses her body to its limits and beyond. Elua and His Companions are with her, however. At times she feels their bright light and give her visions during these rapes, but after they leave her she feels as lost and depressed as before. She is disgusted with her nature, for she finds great desire in these vile acts that he commits and instantly becomes his prize whore. When she finally sees Imriel in the zenana, he calls her 'Death's Whore' and spits in her face. In pain and fatigue, she leaves him alone but not without one final message - "I come from your mother, Imriel." She knows that Imriel's curiosity will get the better of his disgust and that he will come to her. True enough, eventually he came and a fragile sort of trust develops between the two. She eventually comes to learn that in ten days she is to be offered as a sacrifice to the Angra Mainyu, the god who channels power to the Skotophagoti (in Drujan, called the Aka-Magi) by sacrificing a person they love and eating their heart, in an act called the vahmyâcam. The sacrifice symbolizes the destruction of love and a turning away from all that is good. The Mahrkagir has never known love, until Phèdre. By killing her he will become more powerful than before, perhaps also increasing the powers of the Aka-Magi, and can spread his empire across the world. She decides that she must kill the Mahrkagir on the night of the vahmyâcam as they will both be alone, unarmed, and in near darkness. She plots with the women and eunuchs of the zenana as well as Joscelin Verreuil, using Imriel as messenger, to stage an escape. On the night of the ceremony, during the festivities in the hall, the women of the zenana taint the drinks of all the guards and guests with opium. When taken to the darkened room with the Mahrkagir, Phèdre stabs the Mahrkagir in the heart with a sharpened hair pin. With the Mahrkagir dead, the Aka-Magi lose their powers. In the hall, Joscelin and the women and boys of zenana stage their attack. The slaughter is massive and the cost high but eventually all the drugged guards and guests are killed. Joscelin's arm is badly injured in the fighting and many fighters of the zenana are dead. Phèdre, Joscelin, Imriel, and the rest of the survivors of the zenana flee to Khebbel-im-Akkad. In Khebbel-im-Akkad, there is an assassination attempt on Imriel, who is third in line for the D'Angeline throne. Imriel also learns his true identity as a royal prince. He also later learns from the guards that his parents are great traitors of the realm, had a hand in the death of many people, and that his mother is living under the sanctuary of Asherat-of-the-Sea. Knowing this he now hates who he is and refuses to travel. Phèdre talks to him and tells him a kinder version of his parents, though she can not deny what they did. This brings some solace to the Prince and he agrees that he will travel back to Terre d'Ange while Phèdre and Joscelin travel onward on their search for the Name of God. Imriel, however, pays a boy to pretend to be him so that he can stow away on Phèdre and Joscelin's ship headed for the city of Iskandria in Menekhet. Phèdre and Joscelin find Imriel but agree to take him with them. From Iskandria they travel down the Nahar, stopping at some Temples and generally enjoying the journey. They then leave the Nahar at Majibara and ride camels through the desert to reach Meroë. Here they meet the rulers of Jebe-Barkal and receive free passage through the land and gifts to be taken to the lost tribe of Dan in Saba. On their way, they take the last of the zenana women, Kaneka, back to her home of Debeho, a small town of huts and very friendly people. While Phèdre's skin heals cleanly, the scars on her heart do not, and it takes many months for her and Joscelin to love and understand each other as they once did. After a rhinoceros attack in the camp, the group is forced to make a stop for four days. During this time, after Joscelin having caught a giant fish, Phèdre feels desire again for him. They go to a secluded pool and finally make love again; his caresses erase all of the physical, mental, and emotional scarring that Drujan exacted upon them both and Elua's presence blesses their lovemaking. Phèdre and Joscelin soon learn that they have grown to love Imriel as their son and that he has grown to love them like parents. Phèdre, Joscelin, and Imriel eventually reach the lost tribe of Dan. There the people debate but decide not to let them travel to the island that contains the Name of God. The women, however, disagree with this decision and help Phèdre, Joscelin, and Imriel to escape on boat. They row toward the island of Kapporeth, where the Ark is kept. Having been betrayed, the Sabean male rulership chase after them, leading to a stand-off on the island. The doors then open and Phèdre gains access to the Temple and learns the Name of the One God. She knows that she has been given this covenant so that she may free Hyacinthe from Rahab's curse of the Master of the Straits and should not utter the Name for any other reason or face the One God's wrath. The tribe of Dan give up their charges as they can see in her eyes that she contains the Name of God. They travel back to Tisaar and on to Meroë with a tentative re-alliance between Saba and Jebe-Barkal. In Jebe-Barkal, Phèdre is given gifts to take back to the Queen of Terre d'Ange and is given gifts of her own. Joscelin receives a traditional warriors outfit, to everyone's chagrin, and Imriel receives a rhinoceros-hide belt to hold his daggers. They travel back the way they came though the journey is very different as it is rushed and Phèdre is acting strangely because she contains the Name of God. She sees beauty everywhere and often forgets to eat or drink, her mind is filled with the Name and sometimes must bite her lips so as to not utter it. From Menekhet they depart straight for La Serenissima and Melisande. Melisande promises Phèdre that if Phèdre herself would raise Imriel, Melisande will never raise a finger against Queen Ysandre's daughters and will never use any form of trickery against the D'Angeline throne. Phèdre presents Imriel in Terre d'Ange to the Queen, where she is punished by Queen Ysandre for not having sent Prince Imriel back to Terre d'Ange and instead taking him with them on a dangerous journey. Her punishment is that she must stay in the City of Elua until Drustan mab Necthana, the Cruarch of Alba and Ysandre's husband, returns to Terre d'Ange in the spring. Phèdre is upset about this, since she knows the Name of God and wants to help Hyacinthe immediately. Phèdre, however, has her own boon to ask. Phèdre asks Ysandre for custody of Imriel, as foster parents. Ysandre refuses but Phèdre uses her promise from over ten years ago—a favour that she can never be denied. This is the favour that she asks. The Queen, although furious, agrees reluctantly and insists that Imriel and her daughters must still have a relationship and that visits by the prince will need to be frequent. Upon the Drustan mab Necthana's return she journeys to the Straits and frees Hyacinthe from the curse with the Name of God. Upon their return to the City of Elua, Phèdre throws an enormous party for Hyacinthe's return. Hyacinthe, refusing leadership of the Tsingani, helps choose a new leader for the Tsingani, because he desires to move to Alba to live with Sibeal, Drustan's sister, whom he has come to love.
2273100	/m/06_y5t	Vittorio the Vampire	Anne Rice	1999-03-16	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the twentieth century, from his castle in the northern part of Tuscany, Vittorio writes the tragic tale of his life. In 1450, Vittorio di Raniari is a sixteen-year old Italian nobleman, when his family is murdered by a powerful and ancient coven of vampires. The image of his siblings' severed heads with eyes staring fixedly at him strikes him permanently. Vittorio, however, escapes such a dreadful ending because of a vampire's intervention. After taking care of his family's burial, Vittorio gathers what riches he can and prepares himself for adventure as he flees towards Florence, away from the perilous crowd of vampires, under the sun's protecting wing. By nightfall, Vittorio arrives at the most strange of villages, for there are no beggars at the street, no elderly, no sick or dying. Yet his mournful spirit prevents him from taking notice of it. He soon realizes that someone is stalking him, and, worried enough, he seeks shelter at an inn. Ursula, the vampire who prevented the other members of her coven from killing Vittorio, lurks behind his room's window. She continues to seduce him, all while draining blood from him, and giving him some of her own. Vittorio is led by Ursula to the coven's lair, as she attempts to make him part of their gatherings. It is an ancient castle, where he discovers its many gardens filled with old people and sick children; he suddenly realizes that some of these people he had met at the village. Vittorio then witnesses an important feast that is carried on as a ritual by the leader of the vampires' group. In it, some people who were selected from the gardens are sacrificed to satisfy their thirst for blood. After refusing the dark gift, the vampires do not kill him (thanks to Ursula), but rather leave him in a village. As he is walking, he sees two Angels arguing in a doorway, Ramiel and Setheus. The angels are just as surprised as he that Vittorio can see them (he later learns that they are the guiding angels of his idol, Fra Filippo Lippi). With their help, the help of his own angels, and a very powerful armor wearing angel, Mastema, Vittorio plots his revenge against the vampires, who are invading the lands and killing innocents (incidentally, Vittorio's own guiding angels do not play much of a part; whilst they are often present, they are insubstantial and shadowy, and we do not know their names). The attack takes place in the day and involves decapitating the vampires as they sleep. The heads are then thrown into the sunlight where they wither and die. When it comes time to behead Ursula, Vittorio finds that he cannot do this even as the angels urge him on. Instead, he frees Ursula in the hopes of saving her soul. Within minutes, Vittorio is tricked into becoming a vampire and a yearning for blood conquers everything he knows. In the closing pages we find Ursula and Vittorio performing as an age old Bonnie and Clyde, killing and drinking until they had their fill. These two lovers stay with each other for many years to come. Vittorio is unique in two ways: he can see angels and departing human souls. At the end of the book, he is left with the "gift" to see human souls, which appear from every person as an intense shining light. Mastema tells him that he will never be able to rid himself of this, and that every time he takes a human life he will bear witness to the extinguishing of the soul. es:Vittorio el vampiro fr:Vittorio le vampire pl:Wampir Vittorio ro:Vampirul Vittorio
2274331	/m/0700jy	The Sandcastle	Iris Murdoch	1957-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is about a person Bill Mor who became complicated with his feelings. He was a teacher of History and Latin. Mor was married and had two children, Donald and Felicity. He dreamt about a career of candidate. At his friends` dinner he got acquainted with Rain Carter, a young painter who depicted a portrait of Demoyte, former school director. Mor showed a town to her. T.Burke, his friend, saw them together and came to a conclusion they were lovers. Once Mor wanted to show a small river to Rain. But they strucked and Mor was very late at home. It was the first time he deceived his wife. He made up an alibi but it failed. Nan and Fella had a tour and the relations between Bill and Rain developed quickly. Rain finished a portrait but she didn't want to go away. Once they slept in Bill's house, all doors closed. But a gipsy came and Bill unlocked the door. After the gipsy Nan came. She saw Bill staying on his knees, his head in Rain's knees. Nan ran away. She went to Tim Burke. He advised her to come back as she could ruin her family. Mor was discharged by his wife. He loved Rain but he wanted to save his family. Nan wanted to believe that Bill and Rain did not have any relations. But still Mor visited Carter's exhibition and was deeply impressed with her pictures. Don wanted to climb the school-tower. He was in danger and his father saved him. Donald was expelled from school. And he did not have any opportunity to study at college. After an accident Donald ran away. When he was absent there was a party in the school. Nan praised her husband there. And after that Rain decided to come back to Paris not to ruin his career of candidate. So Nan kept her family and was really happy as her son had come back and her husband was with her.
2274477	/m/0700xh	Trustee from the Toolroom	Nevil Shute	1960	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot of the novel hinges on the actions of a modest technical journalist, Keith Stewart, whose life has been focused on the design and engineering of scale-model machinery. Stewart writes serial articles about how to create scale models in a magazine called the Miniature Mechanic, which are extremely well regarded in the modelling community — as is he. Stewart is called upon to hide a metal box in his sister's and brother in law's sailboat just before they plan to leave in it to emigrate to Canada. Until they are settled in British Columbia, their daughter, Keith's niece, is to remain with Keith and his wife. His in-laws are lost at sea in French Polynesia. After the deaths are confirmed, Keith is told by his in-laws' solicitor, that there is almost no money in the estate, but there is evidence that Keith's brother-in-law has converted his wealth into diamonds to take with him abroad, to evade export and currency restrictions intended to prevent capital leaving Britain. Keith's guardianship of his niece is now permanent, and he becomes her trustee (hence the title), but where is her money? Keith knows that the metal box he secreted contained the diamonds, and he starts to investigate how he may travel to retrieve it from the wreck. It is a difficult problem. Keith, while not poor, has chosen to do work he loves in place of better-paying work, and cannot afford to travel to Polynesia. He is able to call on connections in the model engineering world to deadhead his way on a flight as far as Hawaii. Finding no conventional way to get further which is within his means, he takes passage on the hand-built sailing ship of a half-Polynesian from Oregon, Jack Donelly. Somewhat to the consternation of Keith's friends, he and Jack sail off (Keith having received a quick lesson in navigation) with little regard for paperwork. One of the crew that took Keith to Hawaii, upon his return, worriedly approaches Keith's editor. The editor, somewhat shocked at the risks that Keith is taking, starts trolling the close-knit world of miniature mechanics for someone who could help Keith. Eventually, Mr. Solomon Hirzhorn, who controls much of the lumber of the Pacific Northwest from his home and business near Tacoma, Washington, is informed. As it happens, Hirzhorn, an inexperienced modeller, has sent lengthy letters asking for elementary clarifications of Keith's modelling articles, which Keith always patiently answered. Hirzhorn is currently building one of Keith's designs, a Congreve clock, and jumps at the chance to help Keith. Hirzhorn arranges for the yacht of a business associate, Chuck Ferris (coincidentally, the yacht whose captain was consulted by Keith and Jack in Honolulu for advice on the proper course to Tahiti) to proceed to Tahiti to help Keith out. As it happens, Keith is in great need of that help, for he and Jack have arrived in Tahiti without any ship's papers, and the two are in danger of jail. The captain smooths over the situation, and leaves with Keith on board the yacht for the island where the wreck is located. Keith reaches the island, meditates on the fate that has brought him so far, takes many pictures, erects a headstone—and leaves with the wreck's engine, which he proposes to ship back to Britain and sell. After an amusing incident where Ferris's much-married daughter, Dawn, runs off with Jack Donelly, the yacht proceeds to Washington State, where Hirzhorn is anxious to meet the engineer he so admires. Keith arranges to have the engine shipped home, then spends several days visiting Hirzhorn and helping him with the clock, and is able to help him out by catching an engineering error in the contract between Hirzhorn's company and Ferris's that might have cost a couple of million dollars. Hirzhorn arranges for a large consultancy fee to be paid to Stewart by Ferris's company and has his own company pay Stewart's airfare home. Keith arrives home. The consultancy fee enables his wife to stop working and take care of their niece. The diamonds are "discovered" by Keith in the oil in the engine's sump soon after it arrives, and proceeds from their sale enable them to take care of their niece's education and other needs. The other characters proceed on their lives happily, we are told at the end of what is probably Shute's most villain-free novel.
2276461	/m/07065n	The Blue Castle	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1926	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Valancy Stirling is twenty-nine, unmarried, and has lived her entire life with her gossip-minded family who actively discourage happiness and treat Valancy like a child. When Valancy is diagnosed with a terminal heart ailment, she realizes she has never been happy in her life, and rebels against her family and the colorless life they have imposed on her. She begins by judging them objectively, and worse, telling them exactly what she thinks, causing the Stirling clan to conclude that Valancy has suddenly lost her mind. Valancy decides to move out of her mother's house and take a position as a housekeeper for a friend of hers who is now gravely ill, Cissy Gay. Cissy and Valancy had known each other as children, but Cissy became ostracized from society for having a child out of wedlock, and because of her father, Roaring Abel, and his reckless, sometimes drunken behavior. Cissy and Valancy share a room and rebuild their friendship. Valancy enjoys being paid a salary and spends her money in ways her family would not approve of, such as purchasing a brightly colored, low-necked dress. She also begins spending time with Barney Snaith, who visits often and is friends with Cissy, but who the townspeople are convinced is either a criminal or the father of Cissy's deceased child. Just before the end of her life, Cissy confides in Valancy about the man she fell in love with. He offered to marry her when she told him she was pregnant, but she refused because she saw that he did not love her any more. Her baby compensated for her heartbreak, but when her baby died, she was devastated. Cissy eventually passes away and Valancy's family expects her to move back home, having magnanimously decided to forgive her recent behavior. They are momentarily appeased when Valancy agrees that she is definitely not staying with Roaring Abel; however, she does not plan to move back home. Instead, she proposes to Barney, telling him that she is dying and just wants to enjoy the remaining time she has left. She confesses that she has fallen in love with him, but that she does not expect him to feel the same. He agrees to marry her. Barney takes Valancy to his home on a wooded island (which Valancy discovers is very like the Blue Castle she used to escape to in her imagination), and together they get along very well, though he forbids her to enter a certain room in the house. Together they explore the island, and she quotes to him from books by her favorite author, John Foster, who writes about the great beauty of nature; Foster's books were her escape when Valancy lived with her family. They celebrate Christmas and he gives her a necklace of pearl beads. Just as the year she was given to live is almost over, Valancy gets her shoe stuck in a train track and is nearly killed by an oncoming train. Barney saves her in the nick of time, risking his own life to do so. After the shock passes, Valancy realizes that she should have died, because the doctor had told her any sudden shock would kill her. Barney is likewise stunned by the experience, because he realizes that he has come to love Valancy, who, he believes, must soon die from her heart condition. Instead of telling Valancy how he feels, he retreats to his beloved woods to think. Valancy assumes that he has left because, having married her out of pity, he now realizes he is trapped in a marriage he doesn't want. Valancy goes back to the doctor, who realizes that he sent Valancy a letter with a diagnosis meant for a Miss Sterling, who did have a fatal heart condition; Valancy's condition was never serious. As she arrives home from the doctor, with Barney still away, she finds a gaudily-dressed man waiting near their home. He introduces himself as Barney's father, Dr. Redfern, the millionaire who invented Redfern's Purple Pills and other patent medicines. Years ago, Barney left town abruptly without word to his father, who had no way of tracking him down until Barney withdrew $15,000 from his bank account to buy Valancy's necklace, alerting his father to his whereabouts. Barney's father wants him to come back to his family. Thinking that Barney believes she tricked him into marriage, Valancy decides to leave him and return to her mother's house, so he can be free. While searching for a pencil to write Barney an explanatory note, she goes into his secret room and finds that he is also John Foster, the author of her favorite books. She writes the note and leaves behind the necklace. Valancy reveals to her family that Barney is a millionaire and the son of the famous Dr. Redfern, as well as John Foster to boot. Barney's millionaire status instantly erases any misgivings her family had about him, and they are determined that Barney and Valancy must stay together. Barney rushes to the house to see Valancy and asks her to come back. At first she refuses, believing that he is only asking her out of pity. When he becomes angry at her, thinking that she is refusing him because she is ashamed of his father's patent medicine business, she realizes he does really love her and agrees to come back to him.
2276462	/m/07065_	The Enchanted Wood	Enid Blyton	1939-05	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jo (also known as Joe in later editions), Bessie (Beth in later editions), and Fanny (Frannie in later editions) move to the country and find an Enchanted Wood right on their doorstep. In the wood stands the magic Faraway Tree, which is home to the magical characters that soon become their new friends - Moon-face, Silky the Fairy,Saucepan Man, Angry Pixie, Mister Watsizname and Dame Washalot. Together they visit the strange lands (the Roundabout Land, the Land of Ice and Snow, Toyland, the Land of Spells and the Land of Take What You Want) which lie at the top of the tree and have exciting adventures.
2279237	/m/070dm5	Eye of Cat	Roger Zelazny	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 When the galaxy's most skilled hunter is asked to use his skill to protect an important political mission, he realizes that he needs specialized aid. Thus Billy Singer must seek the telepathic creature only known as "Cat", whom he had caught and trapped for a museum. Cat agrees to help on the condition that, once the mission is over, he be given the chance to hunt his former captor. Billy accepts Cat's offer. However, Billy has been growing increasingly fatalistic in the time leading up to the story, and originally offers to let Cat kill him with no struggle. Cat, a hunter refuses, encouraging Billy to flee. Billy does so, but remains fatalistic, with Cat reading in his mind a wish to die and his foreknowledge of a final location. Billy must reconcile his personal chindi to evade Cat. Billy turns increasingly primitive, away from the technology of the day, and eventually returns to his Navajo roots.
2279287	/m/070dsp	Doorways in the Sand	Roger Zelazny	1976	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 {|class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:25em; max-width: 25%;" cellspacing="4" |style="text-align: left;"| You are a playboy and a dilettante, with no real desire ever to work, to hold a job, to repay society for suffering your existence. You are an opportunist. You are irresponsible. You are a drone. |- |style="text-align: right;"|— Doorways in the Sand |} The will of Fred Cassidy’s cryogenically-frozen uncle provides him with a generous stipend to attend the university until he is awarded an academic degree. By carefully choosing his courses and changing majors, Fred avoids mandatory graduation for thirteen years. He meets with his new academic counselor, Dennis Wexroth, who is infuriated by what he calls Fred’s “dronehood” (See text box.) and threatens to send him off into to the real world by graduating Fred in the coming semester. Fred, however, finds a way to get enough credits in different majors to avoid graduation. Fred goes to his apartment and finds it ransacked. He examines the apartment, but finds nothing missing. Paul Byler, Fred’s geology teacher comes out of a closet. He slaps Fred around demanding the return of a replica he made of the crystalline star-stone. Byler is a world-renowned expert in crystallography and says he makes copies of the star-stone in order to sell them as novelty items. Fred states that the replica is not in the apartment and maybe his ex-roommate has it. Byler does not believe Fred. After a brief fight Fred escapes through a window to an outside ledge. Byler visits Hal Sidmore, Fred’s ex-roommate, roughs him up and demands the model of the star-stone. Hal insists he does not have it saying that Fred probably has it in their old apartment. Previously, during a poker game, Byler gives the copy of the star-stone to Hal. However, Hal switches it without Byler's knowledge for what he thinks is a better model, but is in fact the star-stone itself. Arriving home Fred sees a news story on television reporting Byler’s murder and the odd removal of some of his vital organs. As part of his study plan Fred goes to the desert in Australia to study ancient carvings on a cliff. Zeemeister and Buckler, two professional criminals, arrive and torture Fred for the location of the star-stone. Two alien law officers, Charv and Ragma, disguised as a wombat and a kangaroo respectively save Fred, and they all go into orbit in their spacecraft. Later, as he comes slowly into consciousness a voice instructs Fred that he should not permit the aliens to take him to another world where they want to telepathically examine his mind for clues to the whereabouts of the star-stone. Fred convinces them that it would be against their alien field regulations to take him without his consent. They return him to Earth. After being set down on Earth, Fred goes to visit Hal who reports that he receives phone calls from various people trying find Fred. People break into and ransack his apartment several times. And that Ted Nadler, a State Department employee, is looking for him. Finding himself intoxicated Fred stays the night with Hal and hears the voice, now identifying itself as Speicus, that has been talking to him. It tells him to test the inversion program of the alien Rhennius machine and then get intoxicated. It is easier for Speicus to talk to Fred if he is drunk. Fred breaks into the room with the Rhennius machine and, hanging from a rope from the ceiling, puts a penny through the machine three times. The first time Lincoln is looking backwards and the ONE is also backwards. The second time the penny is incised like an intaglio. The third time returns it to normal. Fred goes bar-crawling to get drunk as Speicus instructs him. He runs into a shady old school adviser named Doctor Mérimée who tells him he is being followed. He joins Mérimée at a party at his apartment, finishes getting drunk, and falls asleep. On waking Fred remembers a communication with Speicus during the night. According to Speicus, reversing himself through the Rhennius machine will put "everything in proper order.” By subterfuge Fred manages to reverse himself by going through the Rhennius machine. Left is right and vice versa, and letters are read backwards from right to left with the letters turned backwards. He remembers his biochemistry and realizes that this reversal can be dangerous to his health. Meanwhile, Ted Nadler convinces the university to award Fred a Ph.D. in Anthropology. This outrages Fred because he loses his uncle’s stipend and has to get a job. Fred calls Hal and they agree to meet in a secret place. They begin driving, aimlessly Fred thinks. Hal explains that Zeemeister and Buckler have his wife, Mary, and are demanding the star-stone. He has another replica of the stone from Byler’s lab and is going to trade it for Mary. Fred agrees to go along with the plan against his better judgment. They go to a beach cottage where they find Zeemeister, Buckler, a cat and Mary. Zeemeister declares the stone to be a fake and threatens to pull Mary’s fingernails off until they tell him where the star-stone is. Paul Byler, brought back to life by multiple organ transplants, enters through the back of the cottage with a drawn gun. In the ensuing struggle Buckler shoots Fred in the chest, and he blacks out. Fred awakens in a hospital. He is alive since his heart was on the right side of his body due to the reversal, and he was shot on the left side where the heart is usually found. Everyone else from the cottage survives with minor injuries. Ted Nadler stops by Fred’s hospital room and offers him a position as alien culture specialist for the U.S. legation to the United Nations. Fred says he’ll think about it. Nadler explains the history of the star-stone. The United Nations hires Byler as an expert in synthetics and crystals to make a replica for safety purposes. The loan of the British Crown Jewels to the aliens outrages Byler and some of his fanatical Anglophile friends. Byler and an accomplice exchange the real star-stone for a fake one. Byler hires Zeemeister and Buckler in their capacity as professional criminals to assist in the substitution of the stones, but they really want the original for themselves for a ransom, Nadler believes. While shaving the next morning Fred remembers a smile that remains with him from his night’s dreams. Ted Nadler and Fred travel to New York to meet with a telepath. As Fred enters his hotel room he is seized and raised into the air by the tentacles of an alien telepathic analyst who practices attack therapy. He attempts to reach into Fred’s subconscious for information about the star-stone. He is stunned to discover that the star-stone, Speicus, is inside Fred, having entered his body through a wound while Fred was asleep. Since he was reversed by the Rhennius machine Speicus is now fully functional and should be able to communicate telepathically directly and easily with Fred, but because Fred is now reversed it cannot. On the way to the Rhennius machine to have him reversed back to his original state, Speicus warns Fred about an unknown enemy by saying, “Our Snark is a Boojum.” In the building housing the Rhennius machine Doctor M’mrm’mlrr, the alien analyst, supervises the removal of the star-stone from Fred’s body. On the wall Fred sees a vision of “massive teeth framed by upward curving lips. . . .Then fading, fading. . . Gone.” Fred looks up and sees a black shape and cries out, “The smile.” Fred chases a telepathic alien disguised as a black cat up to the roof and over girders of the adjacent building. It attacks Fred and falls to its death. During the fight Fred realizes that Zeemeister and Buckler work for the alien agent called a Whillowhim. Ragma explains that the Whillowhim are one of the oldest, most powerful and entrenched cultures in the galaxy. However, there is an alliance of younger ones that back common policies in conflict with those of the older blocs. The Whillowhim belong to a faction of the galactic coalition that opposes the policies of younger, newer members on major issues. One way to limit the power of the newer, less developed planets is to limit their number. The Whillowhim seeks to steal the star-stone to embarrass Earth and delay its entrance into the coalition of planets thereby weakening the power of the newer planets’ alliance. Fred’s future is as an alien culture expert for the U.S. legation of the United Nations and as a host for Speicus. Speicus will use Fred’s nervous system as well as his broad knowledge of many subjects to gather information and process it as a kind of sociological computer. It can produce uniquely accurate and useful reports on anything they study together. In the end, Fred sees a beach with doorways leading to unique experiences in exotic places throughout the galaxy.
2279377	/m/070dyj	Arrow's Fall	Mercedes Lackey	1988-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Having completed her year and a half interning in the field, Talia returns to Haven as Queen's Own Herald in right. In her absence, the Council of Valdemar has been considering an offer of an alliance marriage between Princess Elspeth and the Prince of Hardorn, a young man named Ancar. While the Council is generally in favor, Queen Selenay has her suspicions about the idea, and she and Talia overrule the Council. Meanwhile, the budding lifebond between Talia and Herald Dirk is frustrated due to a misunderstanding - Dirk thinks Talia is in love with his best friend, the handsome Herald Kris. The problems of the kingdom occupy Talia's time so completely that she cannot speak to him, nor spend as much time with the young Princess as she used to. As a result, Dirk falls into depression (worsened by the death of a young Herald who was his special pupil) and begins drinking heavily. Elspeth, through the work of a trusted Councilor, Lord Orthallen, begins spending time with unsavory young men. Dirk is falsely accused by Orthallen, and when Kris (Orthallen's nephew) does not immediately believe his innocence, the two have a falling-out. Dirk's slide into depression continues, and he neglects his health until he collapses from pneumonia. Talia becomes caught up in all of these seemingly unsolvable problems and briefly loses her emotional footing, but her friends reassure her that the lifebond will work itself out in time. Then things fall apart again; Elspeth's new circle of male friends plan to seduce and then disgrace the Princess. Talia arrives just in time; she drives off the young cad, and then she and Elspeth have an argument. Afterwards, Talia confesses what she has done to Queen Selenay, who reassures her that she did the right thing by scolding Elspeth. The Queen then sends Talia and Kris on a mission to Hardorn to investigate Prince Ancar, in case the alliance marriage could be pursued after all. Talia and Kris (who has resolved his quarrel with Dirk) arrive in Hardorn, and witness Ancar murdering his own father and the Hardornen court. As they themselves are trying to escape, Kris and his Companion are killed, and Talia, wounded, is taken prisoner. Rolan, Talia's Companion, escapes, and Talia is able to use him to deliver a message to Selenay and her retinue, who would otherwise have come into the city. Warned, the Queen stops at the border between Hardorn and Valdemar. Talia has managed to convey to them that Kris is dead and that there is no hope for her. In desperation, Dirk and Elspeth use their Gifts (she is able to see at great distances, he is able to lift and move objects with his mind) and the strength of the Companion herd to pull her out of Ancar's dungeon. She is severely injured, for Ancar has tortured and raped her, and she drank a large amount of poison as a suicide attempt. The impossible feat leaves both Elspeth and Dirk incapacitated for some time. Talia revives and remembers some information Ancar has told her; Orthallen is a secret agent who is working for Hardorn because Ancar has promised to give him the throne. Through his manipulations, he has been working in various ways to see to it that Elspeth never becomes Queen. The Princess and Talia set up a trap to reveal his guilt; when he attacks the two women, Elspeth executes him. While still in recovery, Talia makes Dirk understand that she loves him. Ancar's army marches against Selenay, but she defeats them, and the two countries settle into an uneasy standstill. The hostile situation is not completely resolved until the end of the Mage Winds trilogy. The conclusion of the book is the wedding between Talia and Dirk. Even Kris gives a cryptic blessing to their union.
2279706	/m/070g1g	Asterix the Legionary				 The book begins with a now familiar scene of the indomitable Gauls' village. Asterix and Obelix are setting off for a wild boar hunt when they pass a beautiful blond young lady by the name of Panacea who has been picking mushrooms. She has returned to the village after studying in Condatum. Obelix immediately falls in love. After a few scenes of Obelix embarrassing himself, Panacea receives word that her fiancé Tragicomix has been conscripted into the Roman army and shipped to North Africa. Asterix and Obelix promise Panacea that they will return Tragicomix to her, even though it breaks Obelix's heart. Asterix and Obelix head for Condatum where they learn that Tragicomix has already left for Massilia, the Mediterranean port from which the soldiers depart. They then decide to enlist in the Roman army and end up training with Hemispheric, a Goth; Selectivemploymentax, a Briton; Gastronomix, a Belgian; Neveratalos, a Greek; and Ptenisnet, an Egyptian tourist who spends the entire book believing himself to be in a holiday camp. After completing training (which is rather relaxing for the conscripts while very stressful for the Centurions), the newly formed unit sets off as reinforcements to Caesar who is fighting a losing campaign against a rival Roman faction headed by Caecilius Metellus Scipio in alliance with Afranius and King Juba I of Numidia. Asterix and Obelix soon find out that Tragicomix has gone missing in action after a skirmish. Asterix and Obelix desert and set out to search for him, raiding Scipio's camp and successfully rescuing the young man. However, due to their actions Caesar and Scipio each believes that the other is attacking and they both prepare for battle, with Scipio's forces off-balance thanks to Asterix and Obelix's initial attack while while Caesar's forces had time to prepare as they started organising themselves after the Gauls deserted in the belief that they were spies. In the confusion that follows, Caesar achieves a great victory (the historical Battle of Thapsus, 6 February 46 BC). The Gauls are cornered by Caesar after the battle is over and they have recovered their usual clothes, but are released and sent home for the service they provided in helping him win the battle. Panacea is reunited with Tragicomix and everybody is overjoyed. In gratitude, Panacea kisses both Asterix and Obelix. Obelix faints, and Asterix spends the customary banquet sitting on a tree, hopelessly in love as well.
2279714	/m/070g3l	Becoming Madame Mao	Anchee Min	2001	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Madame Mao was born to a very poor family around 1910 (early enough to have had her feet bound although due to a severe infection the bindings were taken off). She had an abusive father who kicked her and her concubine mother out of the house at an early age. Her mother ended up as a concubine and servant and the young 'Madame Mao' ran away to grandparent's. Anchee Min, the author, seems to attribute a lot of Madame Mao's later actions to her childhood - and that a lot of her incessant claims to power actually came from a need to be desired and to feel close to Mao rather than a deep need for power herself. Madame Mao's dream was to become an actress but she has only achieved mediocre success. She spent a few years in Shandong province (where she becomes a Communist due to a lover of hers) and then Shanghai. In Shanghai she had some success in playing Nora from Doll's House - and author clearly parallels Nora's strength and inability to be controlled with Lan Ping's strong personality and need to be in control and the center of attention. The play is closed down since it is perceived to be too subversive by the authorities. She even ends up in prison for a short time but is released after signing a document denouncing Communism. After what seems like strings of rejections as well as a few serious lovers and two husbands, she travels to Yenan which is Mao's revolutionary base to become part of his movement. The book does not offer much explanation for the switch from actress to countryside revolutionary except that she certainly was involved in revolutionary elements (anti-Japanese plays, etc.) and that with the absence of work as an actress she did not have many options and joining the Communist revolution seemed to be a common choice for young discontented students and others in their 20s. In Yenan, she soon met Mao as the leading actress in patriotic plays. They meet frequently and finally become lovers. He is already married to his second wife (his first died as a revolutionary) but his second wife is in Russia and mentally unstable - by the time she returns to China the two have married and she is put in a mental hospital. The Communist Party is very much against Mao's affair with Lan Ping, in large part because they have worked hard to build up the image of his second wife as a martyr for the cause and do not want Mao's image to be tarnished in any way as an adulterer. The Party is supposed to emphasize discipline and unity. The affair continues despite (or perhaps is enhanced because of) these odds and the disapproval of many Communists. Finally, Lin becomes pregnant and Mao is allowed to divorce his current wife and marry her under the condition that she stay out of the public eye and is not involved in politics at all. Her name is changed to Jiang Qing and she will go down in history as Comrade Jiang Qing. During the years before Communists gain full control of mainland China, the relationship seems to go well, although the passion is reduced. Jiang follows Mao everywhere, even to the field, and becomes his secretary when he is sick. However, things change once the Communists triumph. They move to the Forbidden City in Beijing and live in separate quarters. Mao begins to lead a totally separate life with lots of traveling and entertaining. As she is not allowed by the party to be in the public eye she is not a part of all of this. She becomes very lonely and depressed. Mao has many affairs, especially bringing young virgins in from the countryside for his pleasure. Things last in this way for 17 years with the majority of Chinese people not even able to name the wife of the great Chairman. However, Jiang Ching has never lost her ambition to be powerful and loved and noticed. She sees a glimmer of opportunity at Mao's low point - 2 years after the launch of the Great Leap Forward which proved so disastrous. She begins slowly to reemerge from the shadows and spends some time in Shanghai building up a network of actors and producers (her great passion is still opera and theater). Finally, she approaches Mao to reveal that a current popular play is actually subversive against the emperor. She feeds on his paranoia that those closest to him are actually plotting against him. He gives her some permission to carry on her activities and develop some propagandist plays that exalt him. Slowly she builds up her own friends and aides who can be trusted. Finally, in 1966 she is actually allowed to make an important speech and helps Mao develop the concepts behind the Cultural Revolution. Eventually, Mao puts her in charge of the 'ideology side of the business' and she wields an enormous amount of power. Madame Mao, as she is now called, organizes festivals for revolutionary plays and begins to work closely with the student movements which have always been so important in China. She organizes and speaks to rallies of thousands of people to help launch the Cultural Revolution. Finally, Mao and Jiang decide to launch a student-led army called the Red Guards that she would be in charge of. These Red Guards ended up having more power than the official military for a number of years and wreaked chaos and havoc throughout the country. Her relationship with Mao is no longer romantic in the least but is mutually beneficial: 'For him, it is the security of his empire that she aids and for her, the role of a heroine. In retrospect she not only has broken the Party's restriction, she runs the nation's psyche. She is gripped by the vision that she might eventually carry on Mao's business and rule China after his death.' As Madame Mao's power grows, so does her worry about Mao and his constantly changing allegiances and worries about betrayals. He emphasizes that the public only trusts her because he is backing her. His dementia and paranoia grows as he ages. At one point Mao invites a bunch of the 'old boy's over for a meeting without inviting her. She says: ' I should have known that my husband was doing the two-faced trick. I should have understood that although Mao had been promoting me, my new power unnerves him and he needs to have another force to balance the game.' In Mao's final months, Madame Mao is desperate for him to name her as his successor or at the very least to give a definitive statement that she represents him. She desperately wants his power after his death but if that's not possible at the very least she needs protection from all the party members who are ready to attack her. She sends investigators to extract forced confessions from her enemies and becomes increasingly paranoid and power-obsessed herself. She forms a power circle called the 'Gang of Four' with herself as the leader, Chun-quiao (whom she found in Shanghai and gave him lots of power), Wang Hong-wen (whom she found as a student and Mao promoted to vice Chairman of the Communist party) and another disciple, Yiao. In September 1976, Mao died at the age of 83. When Mao's will was eventually found, he named Hua Guofeng as his successor, a provincial governor from his home province. Madame Mao quickly sensed that her enemies would triumph - at Mao's funeral she was barely acknowledged. Soon, even her Gang of Four deserted her and a few weeks after Mao's death she was arrested. Madame Mao remained in prison from 1976 to 1991. Her daughter, Nah, picked up what Madame Mao disliked and dropped what her mother liked or wanted her to do. Madame Mao had "saved enough handkerchiefs and socks to make a rope.". She committed suicide by hanging herself on May 14, 1991. She was on Death Row the whole time, although she was not executed since her captors would have preferred to extract a confession of repentance from her.
2282202	/m/070pfy	The Gruffalo	Julia Donaldson	1999-03-23	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The protagonist of The Gruffalo is a mouse. The story of the mouse's walk through the woods unfolds in two phases; in both, the mouse uses cunning to evade danger. On his way the mouse encounters several dangerous animals (a fox, an owl, and a snake). Each of these animals, clearly intending to eat the mouse, invites him back to their home for a meal. The cunning mouse declines each offer. To dissuade further advances, he tells each animal that he has plans to dine with his friend, a gruffalo, a monster-like hybrid that's half grizzly bear and half buffalo, whose favourite food happens to be the relevant animal, and describes the features of the gruffalo's monstrous anatomy. Frightened that the gruffalo might eat it, each animal flees. Knowing the gruffalo to be fictional, the mouse gloats thus: : Silly old fox/owl/snake, doesn't he know? : there's no such thing as a gruffalo! After being quit of the last animal, the mouse is shocked to encounter a real gruffalo – with all the frightening features the mouse thought that he was inventing. The gruffalo threatens to eat the mouse, but again the mouse is cunning: he tells the gruffalo that he, the mouse, is the scariest animal in the forest. Laughing, the gruffalo agrees to follow the mouse as he demonstrates how feared he is. The two walk through the forest, encountering in turn the animals that had earlier menaced the mouse. Each is terrified by the sight of the pair and runs off – and each time the gruffalo becomes more impressed with the mouse's apparent toughness. Exploiting this, the mouse threatens to eat the gruffalo, which flees. The story is based on a traditional Chinese folk tale of a fox that borrows the terror of a tiger. Donaldson was unable to think of rhymes for "tiger" so invented one for "know" instead.
2284812	/m/070wdr	The Vampire's Assistant	Darren Shan	2002-10	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story begins with the main protagonist of the last adventure, Darren Shan, and his guardian Larten Crepsley moving in for a drink of blood from an ex-scout. Darren is beginning to cope with life as a vampire's assistant though he still refuses to drink human blood and hates his companion, Mr. Crepsley, for turning him into a half vampire which has led him to faking his own death. Although he is far stronger than any human and is still finding it hard to adjust to his new life. His unchallenged strength causes him to be alone, as he can not make any human friends without harming them. Larten teaches Darren all about vampirism and sometimes is shown to regret blooding Darren and decides to take him to the Cirque du Freak. He makes good friends with Evra Von, the snake boy. When they meet a young boy called Sam Grest who loves pickled onions, things begin to look up...and down. A local ecological preserver hippie known as Reggie Veggie (RV) befriends the trio of boys, but soon begins to learn about the animals that the Little People are feeding on animals stolen from farmers. Darren soon begins to worry Reggie, so he goes to tell Mr. Tall but becomes preoccupied on his way because Truska, the bearded lady, put together a new set of clothes for Darren. Darren must then do Evra's chores as he is tending to his sick snake, and forgets about telling Mr. Tall about Reggie that day. A night of performance comes, as Mr. Tall finally gets wind of Reggie from Darren, but doubts that he can do any damage. But the Cirque did move along from that place, because of Reggie's threatening to call the police. Darren, who still refuses to drink human blood, decides not to perform and sets off. He hears a sound coming from the wolfman's cage, and decides to investigate. It was Reggie Veggie who was trying to free the wolf-man, but has no idea how violent the wolf man can be. After biting off Reggie's arms, the wolf-man sets off after a figure behind Darren, who has dropped a bag of clothes and onions which belong to Sam. Darren learns he was going to smuggle himself away with the circus. Eventually Sam is killed by the wolf man. While standing over Sam's corpse, Mr. Crepsley convinces Darren to drink Sam's blood, therefore "preserving" some of Sam's soul, including his love for pickled onions, as decided from a discussion of vampirism between Crepsley and Darren. fa:دستیار یک شبح hu:A vámpír inasa no:Vampyrens assistent fi:Vampyyrin oppipoika zh:鬼不理的助手
2286402	/m/070zsd	Revolutionary Road	Richard Yates	1961-12-31	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in 1955, the novel focuses on the hopes and aspirations of Frank and April Wheeler, self-assured Connecticut suburbanites who see themselves as very different from their neighbors in the Revolutionary Hill Estates. In the opening scene, April stars in an embarrassingly bad amateur dramatic production of The Petrified Forest: She was working alone, and visibly weakening with every line. Before the end of the first act the audience could tell as well as the Players that she’d lost her grip, and soon they were all embarrassed for her. She had begun to alternate between false theatrical gestures and a white-knuckled immobility; she was carrying her shoulders high and square, and despite her heavy make-up you could see the warmth of humiliation rising in her face and neck. After the performance, Frank and April have a fight on the side of the highway, with Frank later beginning an affair with his office colleague Maureen. Seeking to break out of their suburban rut (and consequently blaming herself for all of Frank&#39;s &#34;problems&#34;), April convinces Frank they should move to Paris, where she will work and support him while he realizes his vague ambition to be something other than an office worker. The promise of France brings the two together in love and excitement again, and Frank seemingly ends his relationship with Maureen. While April sees the emigration as an opportunity to escape their dull environment, Frank&#39;s plans are more driven by vanity of his own intelligence, which April panders to. When the dull and prim neighbor Mrs Givings begins bringing her &#34;insane&#34; son John around to the Wheeler&#39;s house for regular lunches, John&#39;s honest and erratic condemnation of his mother&#39;s suburban lifestyle strikes a chord with the Wheelers, particularly Frank. Their plans to leave the United States begin to crumble when April conceives their third child, and Frank begins to identify with his mundane job when the prospect of a promotion arises. After arguing over the possibility of aborting the child, Frank tries to manipulate April into seeking psychiatric help for her troubled childhood. April, overwhelmed by the outcome of the situation, suffers something of an identity crisis and sleeps with her neighbor Shep Campbell, while Frank resurrects his relationship with Maureen. April attempts to self-abort her child, and in doing so is rushed to hospital and dies from blood loss. Frank, scarred by the ordeal and feeling deep guilt over the outcome, is left a hollow shell of a man.
2289739	/m/0716h4	Ring	Koji Suzuki	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 After four teenagers mysteriously die simultaneously in Tokyo, Kazuyuki Asakawa, a reporter and uncle to one of the deceased, decides to launch his own personal investigation. His search leads him to "Hakone Pacific Land", a holiday resort where the youths were last seen together exactly one week before their deaths. Once there he happens upon a mysterious unmarked videotape. Watching the tape he witnesses a strange sequence of abstract and realistic footage that ends with the warning "You, who watched this tape, are going to die in one week from now. There's only one way to survive. And that is—" but the end of the tape has been overwritten by an advertisement. The tape has a horrible mental effect on Asakawa, and he doesn't doubt for a second that its warning is true. The only problem is he has no idea how to avert his fate. Returning to Tokyo, he enlists the help of his curious friend Ryūji Takayama, a self-professed rapist who apparently (most likely due to some psychotic defect) has no fear, and who admits he would see the end of the world if he could, out of curiosity. As soon as Asakawa explains the story, Takayama believes him and wants nothing more than to see the tape. Asakawa shows it to him and although Takayama remains cool and nonchalant, he agrees there is a powerful aura around it and asks Asakawa to make him a copy to study at home, which Asakawa does. Now, both men share the seven day deadline and must fight against the clock to unravel the mystery of the tape, Sadako Yamamura, and the potentially life-saving riddle.
2291579	/m/071bjs	The Covenant	Michael Falconer Anderson	1980	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is set in South Africa, home to five distinct populations: Bantu (native Black tribes), Coloured (the result of generations of miscegenation between persons of European descent and the indigenous occupants of South Africa along with slaves brought in from Angola, Indonesia, India, Madagascar and the east Coast of Africa), English, Afrikaner, and Indian, Chinese, and other foreign workers. The novel traces the history, interaction, and conflicts between these populations, from prehistoric times up to the 1970s. Michener writes largely from the point of view of the Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers and French Huguenot immigrants who traveled to South Africa to practice freedom of worship in the Calvinist tradition, and other European groups (such as the Germans), all of whom were absorbed by the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch Reformed Church. The Afrikaners, whose Dutch ancestors first established a trading and refueling stop at Cape Town in the 17th century to service ships moving between Holland and Java, and whose ranks were augmented by Huguenot and other northern European immigrants, considered themselves the "New Israelites". They found in the Old Testament verification for their belief that God favored their conquest of the new land. Their strict, fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible supported them through the Great Trek of the 19th century; battles against Zulu and other Bantu tribes, who also laid claim to lands to the north; the Anglo-Boer War (when small guerrilla bands of a few hundred Afrikaner farmers were able to hold off tens of thousands of British regulars); and their institution of Apartheid in the 20th century, when they insisted on racial purity, separatism, and white supremacy, per the moral expectations of the God of Israel in the Old Testament and their own determination to keep political power in the hands of Whites of European descent. Michener suggests that the Afrikaner oppression of Blacks was partly due to Dutch animosity towards the English, who assumed political and financial control of southern Africa in 1795 and fought against the traditional way of life, including slavery, pursued by Afrikaner farmers, or Boers. As one Bantu character observes, "no matter whether the English or the Dutch win, the Blacks always lose." Both historical and fictional characters appear throughout the novel. The experiences of the fictional van Doorn family illustrate the Dutch and Huguenot heritage of South Africa, and in the 1970s also illustrate the differences between liberal and conservative Afrikaners. The fictional Saltwood family represents the English settlement of the area. The Nxumalo family illustrates the area's black heritage and culture. African Zulu leader Shaka appears in the novel, during the chapter on the Mfecane.
2291825	/m/071c4y	Killshot	Elmore Leonard	1989-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Carmen and Wayne Colson live a quiet, suburban life. Carmen is a realtor while Wayne is an ironworker. Suddenly everything is violently changed when they stumble upon an extortion plot hatched by two crooks, Armand "Blackbird" Degas and his partner Richie Nix. While Richie is unstable and impatient, the Blackbird is calm and collected. After Wayne forces the two away with a Sleever Bar, the criminals decide to exact vengeance on the Colsons, leading to a tense climax.
2292610	/m/071dvw	Death Comes as the End	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0py65": "Historical whodunnit", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is primarily written from the perspective of Renisenb, a young widow who is just reacquainting herself with her family when her father, Imhotep, brings Nofret into their lives. Nofret soon disrupts and antagonises Imhotep's sons, Yahmose, Sobek and Ipy, as well as their wives. After Imhotep is called away, Satipy and Kait, the elder sons' wives, try to bully Nofret with tricks, but the plan backfires when Nofret appeals to Imhotep and he threatens to throw all his sons and their families out of the household on his return. Suddenly everyone has a motive to kill Nofret and when she is found dead at the foot of a cliff, an accident seems unlikely. Next Satipy is killed when she apparently throws herself to her death in terror from the same cliff while walking with Yahmose. Is it Nofret’s vengeful spirit that she was looking at over Yahmose’s shoulder moments before her death? These rumours only gather pace when Yahmose and Sobek drink poisoned wine. Sobek dies, but Yahmose lingers on, perhaps due to a more insidious slow-acting poison. A boy who suggests that he saw Nofret’s ghost poisoning the wine himself dies of poison shortly afterwards. Ipy starts to boast about his new, better position with his father and plots to get rid of Henet after talking to his father and tells her so. That next morning, Ipy was found dead in the lake, drowned. Kameni seems to have fallen in love with Renisenb, and eventually asks her to marry him. Unsure whether she loves him or Hori, whom she has known since she was a child when he mended her toys, she leaves the choice effectively in her father’s hands and becomes engaged to Kameni. She realises, however, that his relationship with Nofret was closer than she had supposed, and that jealousy may have influenced Nofret’s bitter hatred towards the family. As Renisenb, Hori, and Esa begin to investigate the possibility of a human murderer, the field of suspects is further narrowed when Ipy, himself a likely suspect, is drowned. Esa attempts to flush out the murderer by dropping a hint about the death of Satipy, but is herself murdered by means of an unguent made of poisoned wool fat. Henet – momentarily powerful in the chaos - is smothered in linen. It is on the same cliff path where Nofret was murdered that the killer makes one final attempt. Renisenb hears footsteps behind her and turns to see a look of murderous hatred in the eyes of her brother, Yahmose. On the brink of her own death, she realises that Satipy was not looking in fear at anything beyond Yahmose … she was looking straight at him. His consumption of the poisoned wine had been cleverly limited, and his recovery deliberately was made to seem less rapid than it was while he committed the later murders. Even as Renisenb realises some of this, Hori slays Yahmose with an arrow and she is saved. Her final choice is which of the scribes to marry: Kameni, a lively husband not unlike her first, or Hori, an older and more enigmatic figure. She makes her choice and falls into Hori’s arms.
2292635	/m/071dx_	Taken at the Flood	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In a flashback from late Spring to early Spring, Lynn Marchmont, newly demobilised from the Women's Royal Naval Service, finds difficulty settling into the village life of Warmsley Vale. She is engaged to Rowley, one of several members of the Cloade family living nearby. Each of them grew dependent on money from Gordon Cloade, a bachelor who was expected to die and leave his fortune to them. Before his death he married Rosaleen, invalidating his previous will. As a result, Rosaleen inherited Gordon's fortune and the entire family now faces financial crises, augmented by the poor state of the economy in the aftermath of World War II. Rosaleen's fortune is jealously guarded by her brother, David Hunter, and although various family members manage to wheedle small sums out of Rosaleen, David refuses to help Frances Cloade, whose husband Jeremy is on the brink of ruin. A man calling himself Enoch Arden arrives in the village, and attempts to blackmail David by saying he knows how to find Rosaleen's first husband, Robert. Their conversation in Arden's hotel room is overheard by the landlady, who immediately tells Rowley Cloade. Later, Arden's body is discovered in his room with his head smashed in. Rowley Cloade appeals to a detective, Hercule Poirot, to prove the dead man was Robert Underhay, and Poirot produces Major Porter, who knew Underhay in Africa. At the inquest, despite Rosaleen's protests that the dead man was not Robert, Porter confirms that Arden was indeed her first husband. The estate will revert to the Cloades. Rosaleen has a strong alibi for the time of the murder since she was in the London flat that evening. David has only a weak alibi: down from London for the day, he met Lynn on his dash to catch the last train to London leaving at 9:20 pm, and evidently telephoned her from the London flat shortly after 11 pm. Since the murder is believed to have taken place shortly before 9 pm, he had enough opportunity and motive to be arrested. David's alibi improves when it is discovered that a heavily made-up woman in an orange headscarf left Arden's room after 10 p.m. The investigation shifts back to the female Cloades, but Poirot discovers that the immediate cause of Arden's death may have been smashing his head against a heavy marble mantelpiece. The appearance of a murder may have been created after some form of accidental death. Lynn, though engaged to Rowley, seems to love David. Rowley may be attracted to Rosaleen, who seems to be consumed with guilt and fear. Major Porter apparently commits suicide but leaves no note. It comes to light that Arden was actually Charles Trenton, second cousin to Frances Cloade. She came up with the plan to blackmail Rosaleen after hearing Major Porter's anecdote from Jeremy. Although this explains Arden's identity, it does not clarify who killed him or who bribed Porter to falsely identify the corpse. Rosaleen dies in her sleep from an overdose. Superintendent Spence, the investigating officer, suggests that perhaps she was the murderer; the police have so focused on David's alibi that they subjected hers to little scrutiny. Lynn tells Rowley that she wishes to marry David Hunter. Rowley is strangling Lynn when Poirot stops him. David arrives and Poirot explains everything. Rowley visited Arden, and seeing the physical resemblance to Frances, reacted angrily to the deception that was being played. Pushed by Rowley, Arden fell against the mantelpiece and died. Rowley saw the opportunity to incriminate David. He smashed in Arden's head with fire tongs and left David's lighter at the scene. It was Rowley who persuaded Porter to give the false identification, carefully employing Poirot, who would be sure to go to Porter on the basis of that first scene at the club, which Rowley also knew of from Jeremy. Porter's guilt got the better of him and he committed suicide, leaving a note that Rowley destroyed. Discovering Arden's body, David ran for the 9:20 train but missed it; Lynn actually saw the smoke from the departing train on the evening, but he convinced her that it was earlier than it was and that he had time to meet her. He then backtracked to The Stag, disguised himself as a woman, and played out the scene that established the later time of death. Then he returned to the station and called Rosaleen, who placed a call to Lynn that was delivered by the operator but then cut off. Afterward, David spoke to Lynn from the station, giving the impression that a single call from London was interrupted. He returned to London on the milk train the next day. Of the three deaths, one is accidental, one a genuine suicide. The only true murder was Rosaleen's. David had no apparent motive to kill his own sister, especially when it would mean depriving himself of the Cloade fortune. But the woman posing as Rosaleen was not his sister; his sister was killed during the bombing of Gordon Cloade's estate two years earlier. The woman posing as Rosaleen was one of Gordon's housemaids, who became David's lover and his accomplice in obtaining the Cloade fortune. Now he could kill this accomplice and marry Lynn, whom he really loved and who would gain a portion of the fortune through family connections. In the end, no one is tried other than David. Rowley is implicated in the deaths of Trenton ("Enoch Arden") and Porter, and he is guilty of misleading the police and assaulting Lynn. However, Poirot keeps silence about Rowley's crimes, allowing Rowley to marry Lynn, who has loved him without realising it.
2292690	/m/071f3b	A Murder is Announced	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A strange notice appears in the morning paper of a perfectly ordinary small English village, Chipping Cleghorn: "A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m. Friends accept this, the only intimation." This apparently comes as a great surprise to Letitia Blacklock, the owner of Little Paddocks, as she has no idea what the notice means; she didn't place it and none of her companions knows more than she. Miss Blacklock decides to take it in her stride and prepares herself to have guests that evening. Naturally, the villagers are intrigued by this notice, and several of them appear on the doorstep with awkward reasons but a definite interest. As the clock strikes 6:30, the lights go out and a door swings open, revealing a man with a blinding torch. In a heavily accented voice, the man demands they "Stick 'em up!" Most of the guests do so, believing it to be part of a game. The game ends when shots are fired into the room. The door slams shut, and panic takes hold: in short order, it's discovered that the fuses are blown, the gunman has been shot, and Ms. Blacklock's ear is bleeding, apparently from a bullet's near-miss. The most curious thing of all is the gunman: he is recognized by Dora Bunner (an old friend of Letitia's, affectionately known as "Bunny," who lives at Little Paddocks as her companion) as Rudi Scherz, the receptionist at a local spa, who had asked Letitia for money just a few short days ago. The police are called in. All clues suggest that the case is merely a strange suicide or accidental death, but Inspector Craddock is uneasy about both possibilities. As luck would have it, Miss Marple is a guest at the very same spa where Rudi Scherz was employed. Craddock is advised to involve her in the case, and the two commence working together. At the spa, it emerges that Rudi has a criminal background, but petty theft and forgery rather than any more serious crime. His girlfriend, a waitress at the spa, however, reveals that he had been paid to appear as the holdup man; he believed it was all "a silly English joke", and was clearly not planning on being shot at. With this new knowledge, Craddock returns to Chipping Cleghorn. Miss Marple, not uncoincidentally, is the godmother of the local vicar's wife, and decides to stay with her. The first step is to establish a motive for Scherz's attack on Miss Blacklock. This presents a problem: Letitia has no known enemies. She worked for a successful financier (Randall Goedler) and has done quite well for herself but is not herself wealthy. She does not lead a lavish life and, aside from her house, she has only enough to live on. However, she may shortly come into a great deal of money; Randall Goedler's estate passed to his wife, Belle, when he died. Belle is frail, and is now very near death. When Belle dies, Miss Blacklock inherits everything. If, however, she predeceases Belle, the estate goes to the mysterious "Pip" and "Emma", children of Randall's estranged sister, Sonia. No one knows where these two are, much less what they look like. Inspector Craddock discovers oil on the hinges of a door into the parlour (where the shooting took place) thought to be unused, and Bunny mentions that until quite recently there had been a table placed against the door. Inspector Craddock travels to Scotland to meet Belle; she mentions that Letitia had a beloved sister, Charlotte, who was born with a goiter. Their father, an old-fashioned doctor, tried unsuccessfully to treat Charlotte, but she only withdrew further into herself as her goiter got worse. Their father died shortly before World War II, and Letitia gave up her job with Goedler and took her sister to Switzerland for the necessary surgery to repair the defect. The two sisters waited out the war in the Swiss countryside, but before it was over, Charlotte died very suddenly. Letitia returned to England shortly thereafter. Miss Marple takes tea with Bunny during her shopping trip with Letitia, and Bunny reveals several details about the case: she talks about the recently oiled door she found with the Inspector; she's sure that Patrick Simmons, a young cousin of Letitia's who, with his sister Julia, is also staying at Little Paddocks, is not as he appears; and, most tellingly, she's absolutely positive there was a different lamp in the room on the night of the murder (the one with the shepherdess and not with the shepherd) than there was now. Their tête-à-tête is interrupted, however, as Letitia arrives, and she and Bunny resume their shopping. That evening, Letitia arranges a birthday party for Bunny, complete with almost everyone who was at the house when Rudy Scherz was kills; and she asks Mitzi to make her special cake, which Patrick has nicknamed "Delicious Death". This was while post-war austerity rationing was in effect — butter and eggs were hard to come by even in a rural community, and the chocolate and raisins used in the cake were very difficult to get. A box of chocolates is also a present. Bunny loves chocolate but it gives her a headachek and she can't find the aspirin she bought. She takes some of Letitia's aspirin instead, lies down for a nap - and dies. Miss Marple visits Ms. Blacklock, who mourns Bunny and starts crying. Miss Marple asks to see photo albums which might contain pictures of Sonia Goedler, Pip and Emma's mother, but all photos of Sonia were taken out of the albums recently, although they were in place before the death of Rudi Scherz. Through deduction and re-enactment, Misses Hinchliffe and Murgatroyd (two spinster farmers who were also present at the time of the Scherz murder) figure out that Miss Murgatroyd could see who was in the room as she was standing behind the door when it swung open; she couldn't have seen Rudi as he was on the other side of the opened door, but she could see whose faces were illuminated by the torch beam. The two women conclude that the person who wasn't in the room (and therefore not seen by Miss Murgatroyd) could have sneaked out of the room when the lights went out and come around behind Rudi, and shot at him—and Miss Blacklock. Just as she remembers the one person not in the room, the stationmaster calls to notify them that a dog has just arrived. As Miss Hinchliffe pulls away in her car, Miss Murgatroyd runs into the driveway, shouting "She wasn't there!" She is murdered while Miss Hinchliffe is away, and so does not reveal whom she did not see. Miss Hinchliffe returns and meets Miss Marple. They discover Murgatroyd's body, and a distraught Hinchliffe informs Miss Marple of Murgatroyd's cryptic statement. At Little Paddocks, Letitia receives a letter from the real Julia Simmons in Perth. She confronts "Julia" with the letter, and "Julia" reveals that she is actually Sonia's daughter, Emma Stamfordis, masquerading as Julia so that she could attempt to gain a portion of the inheritance from Letitia and let the real Julia spend time pursuing an acting career. Julia/Emma insists she is uninvolved in the assassination attempt—she was a crack shot during the French Resistance and would not have missed at that range, even in the dark—nor did she wish to prevent Letitia from inheriting Randall Goedler's estate. She had intended to ingratiate herself with Letitia and try to obtain a portion of the money, and once the murder took place, had no choice but to continue the masquerade. Phillipa Haymes (a boarder at Little Paddocks and a young widow) sneaks into the kitchen to speak to Julia/Emma, but Julia/Emma sends her away before finding out what Phillipa had to say. That night, the vicar's cat, Tiglath Pileser, knocks over a glass of water onto a frayed electrical cord, which causes the fuses to blow, and the final clue falls into place for Miss Marple. Inspector Craddock gathers everyone at Little Paddocks and launches the final inquest, which is interrupted by Mitzi, Letitia's foreign "lady-help", crying out that she saw Letitia commit the murder. The inspector does not believe her, and continues with his questioning. The inspector continues, and quickly insinuates that Edmund Swettenham who, with his widowed mother, was also present at the shooting, is in fact Pip. However, Phillipa comes forward and confesses that she is in fact Pip; Inspector Craddock then accuses Edmund of wanting to marry a rich wife in Phillipa by murdering Letitia. Edmund denies this and as he does so, a terrified scream is heard from the kitchen. Everyone rushes to the kitchen and discovers Miss Blacklock attempting to drown Mitzi in the sink. Miss Blacklock is arrested by a local constable who has been hiding in the kitchen with Miss Marple, who imitates Dora Bunner's voice to make Ms. Blacklock break down. Miss Marple explains it quite simply: it wasn't Charlotte who died in Switzerland, but Letitia. Charlotte, aware that Letitia was in line to inherit a fortune, posed as Letitia and returned to England; few people knew Charlotte, as she had been a recluse before leaving England, and a slight change in Letitia's appearance could be explained away to casual acquaintances by her time abroad during the war. She only needed to avoid people who knew Letitia well, such as Belle Goedler, and to always cover her throat with strings of pearls or beads to hide the scars from her goiter surgery. Bunny was one of the few people who remembered Charlotte as Charlotte, but by then, Charlotte was so lonely that she allowed her old school friend to move in. However, Rudi Scherz could have ruined everything: he worked at the Swiss hospital where Charlotte had been treated and could therefore identify Charlotte as herself. This is why Letitia/Charlotte hired him to come to Chipping Cleghorn and "hold up" a room full of guests: she blew the fuse by pouring water from a vase of flowers onto the frayed cord of a lamp, slipped out the second door, stood behind Rudi, and shot him. She then nicked her ear with a pair of nail scissors and rejoined the others, playing the part of perplexed host. Bunny became the next target because she, too, could reveal too much. Bunny had an eye for detail, but was prone to slip-ups: on several occasions, she referred to Ms. Blacklock as "Lotty" (short for "Charlotte") instead of "Letty" (short for "Letitia"), and her conversation with Miss Marple in the cafe proved fatal. Miss Murgatroyd, the final victim, was also killed for guessing too much and for coming to the realization that Letitia/Charlotte was the one person, beside herself, whose face was not illuminated by Rudi Scherz's torch. Mitzi and Edmund had been persuaded by Miss Marple to play parts in tripping Charlotte Blacklock up; Miss Marple's plans were almost brought down when Phillipa admitted to being Pip, but Inspector Craddock thought fast enough to turn around and claim Edmund was after Phillipa's money. In the end, Phillipa/Pip and Julia/Emma inherit the Goedler fortune; Edmund and Phillipa/Pip get married and return to Chipping Cleghorn to live.
2292712	/m/071f4q	They Came to Baghdad	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A secret summit of superpowers is to be held in Baghdad, but it is no longer secret, and a shadowy fascist group is plotting to sabotage the event. Things get complicated when enthusiastic young tourist Victoria Jones discovers a dying secret British agent Henry "Fakir" Carmichael in her hotel room, his last words - "Lucifer...Basrah...Lefarge" - propel her into investigation. "Lucifer" refers to the mastermind, Victoria's false lover Edward, who is behind the plot. "Basrah" refers to the city where certain documents were handed to certain people. "Lefarge" turns out to actually be "Defarge" and is a reference to a Charles Dickens character; it is a clue to where the aforementioned documents can be found. An interesting comparison can be made between the romance themes of this novel and The Man in the Brown Suit, which is also primarily an adventure novel, rather than a straight whodunnit. In that book, the exciting, mysterious young man that falls into the heroine's room ends up as the romantic hero. In Baghdad, an exciting, mysterious young man also falls into the heroine's room, but he is disposed of, as is the other exciting, mysterious young man that the heroine has followed to Baghdad. A more conventional and staid archaeologist ends up as the romantic hero; Christie herself was married to archaeologist Max Mallowan by this date.
2292731	/m/071f7t	Mrs McGinty's Dead	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Superintendent Spence informs famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot of the case of Mrs McGinty, an elderly charlady who was apparently killed by her lodger, James Bentley, for thirty pounds she kept under a floorboard. Bentley is soon to be executed for the crime, but Spence does not think he is guilty. Poirot agrees to go to the town of Broadhinny and investigate the murder further. Poirot finds that Mrs McGinty often worked as a cleaner at the houses of people in the village. No one wants to talk to Poirot, and most agree Bentley is the killer. During a search among Mrs McGinty's possessions, Poirot finds a newspaper from which an article has been cut out. The newspaper is dated a few days before the murder. He later discovers that the missing article is about women connected with famous murder cases, and includes photographs of them. He also discovers that Mrs McGinty had purchased a bottle of ink in a local shop shortly before her murder. He concludes that she had recognized one of the women in the article, and had written to the paper in question. Someone must have found out about it and then killed her to prevent her from talking. Poirot and Spence, using the ages of people in the town, conclude that someone is either Lily Gamboll, who committed murder with a meat cleaver as a child, or Eva Kane, who had been the love interest who inspired a man to murder his wife and bury her in the cellar. Another possibility is that someone is Evelyn Hope, the daughter of Eva Kane. Shortly afterwards, Poirot discovers the murder weapon, a sugar hammer, left around in plain sight at his boarding house and accessible to all the suspects. In an attempt to flush out the murderer, Poirot claims to know more than he does and is nearly pushed under an oncoming train. Poirot decides to show most of the suspects the photos at a party. Mrs Upward claims to have seen the photo of Lily Gamboll, but does not say where. The following day, Poirot is contacted by Maude Williams, who had approached him a few days earlier, telling him that she had known Bentley when they worked together briefly for the same estate agents. She told Poirot that she liked Bentley and did not believe he was guilty or even capable of murdering Mrs McGinty. She now offers to help Poirot who takes up her offer by getting her to pose as a maid in the house of Mrs Wetherby, a resident in the village for whom Mrs McGinty worked as housekeeper, and whose daughter, Deirdre, Poirot suspects may have some connection with the circumstances surrounding Mrs McGinty's murder. During the maid's night off, Mrs Upward's son Robin, a theatre director and Ariadne Oliver, a famed mystery novelist who has been working on a theatre adaptation with Robin, leave for an evening at the theatre, leaving Mrs Upward alone at the house. When they return, they find Mrs Upward strangled to death. She has evidently had coffee with her murderer, and the evidence of lipstick on a coffee cup and perfume in the air points to a woman having committed the crime. Mrs Upward had invited three people to her house that night: Eve Carpenter, Deirdre Henderson and Shelagh Rendell. Any of the three women could be someone from the photographs. Additionally, the postmistress's assistant, Edna, saw someone with blonde hair enter the house, which points to either Carpenter or Rendell, as Henderson is not blonde. Confusing matters even further is the fact that a book is discovered in Mrs Upward's house with Evelyn Hope's signature written on the flyleaf, which suggests that Mrs Upward was actually Eva Kane. Poirot connects the final piece of the puzzle when he finds the photo Mrs McGinty saw at Maureen Summerhayes' house. It is of Eva Kane and has the inscription “my mother” on the back. Now, the story complete, Poirot gathers the suspects together and reveals the murderer – Robin Upward. Robin is Eva Kane's son, Evelyn (which in England, can be a man's name as well as a woman's, the same being true of Robin, perhaps a clue to the plot device); the child was a boy, not a girl. Mrs Upward had not known who was the mother of her adopted son, but he realized that any scandal would be to his detriment. Mrs McGinty saw the photo of Eva Kane while working at the Upward house and assumed the photo was of Mrs Upward as a young woman. Robin killed her to prevent her from telling anyone who might recognize the photo. Mrs Upward thought Kane's photograph to be similar to a photo Robin had shown her of his mother, whose back story he made up. She wanted to confront Robin by herself, so she pointed to the wrong photo (that of Lily Gamboll) to put Poirot off the scent. Robin, however, sensed the truth and killed her before leaving for the play. Then he planted the evidence and made the three calls to make it appear that a woman had committed the crime. At this point Robin still had the photo, but rather than destroy it, he kept it and planted it at Mrs Summerhayes' house in order to incriminate her. But Poirot had gone through the drawer earlier and did not see the photo, so he knew it had been planted subsequently. Further revelations are also made. Eve Carpenter wanted to conceal her past for reasons of her own, which was why she didn't cooperate in the investigation. Poirot discovers that Dr Rendell may have killed his first wife, which led Mrs Rendell to talk about anonymous letters she'd received warning her of the fact. Poirot now suspects it was Dr Rendell, convinced that Poirot was actually in Broadhinny to investigate the death of his first wife, and not that of Mrs McGinty, who tried to push him under the oncoming train, not Robin. Maude Williams turns out to be the daughter of Eva Kane's lover, and has always believed that her mother was murdered by Eva and that her father took the blame. She came to see Mrs Upward, who she thought was Eva Kane, intending to confront and frighten her, but found her dead and left quietly. She admits this to Poirot, who agrees to keep it a secret and wishes her good luck in her life.
2292748	/m/071f9l	They Do It with Mirrors	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 As the story opens, Jane Marple is paying a visit to her old friend Ruth Van Rydock. Miss Marple, Ruth, and Ruth's sister Carrie Louise were all friends together at the same school in Italy when they were girls. Ruth is worried that something is very wrong at Stonygates, the Victorian mansion where Carrie Louise lives with her husband Lewis Serrocold. She can't explain any real reason for these worries, but she fears that Carrie Louise may be in danger of some kind. Ruth asks Miss Marple to visit her and find out what is going on. Carrie Louise is delighted to have Jane Marple for a visit at Stonygates. The old Victorian mansion, though owned outright by Carrie Louise, has been converted into a home for delinquent boys which is run by Carrie Louise's husband, Lewis Serrocold. Lewis Serrocold is actually Carrie Louise's third husband; she was also once widowed and once divorced. Carrie Louise has always been attracted to men who had their minds on noble causes. Her first husband, Mr. Gulbrandsen, was a great philanthropist, and Mr. Serrocold is devoted to the idea of reforming juvenile delinquents and teaching them how to contribute to society. The boys are involved in theatrical productions and many other activities around the estate during the day, but at night they are confined to their own quarters. The family has the central block of the house to themselves. The family includes many people who are connected to each other only through Carrie Louise. Mildred Strete is the only blood relative of Carrie Louise who is resident at Stonygates. She is Carrie Louise's daughter by her first marriage. Carrie Louise also had an adopted daughter, Pippa, who died after giving birth to her own daughter, Gina. Now an adult, Gina is married to an American named Walter Hudd and has recently returned to Stonygates. Juliet Bellever (nicknamed Jolly), a longtime companion, caretaker, and friend of Carrie Louise is also a permanent fixture at the mansion. Stephen and Alex Restarick, Carrie Louise's stepsons from her second marriage, are also frequent visitors. Also frequently present at Stonygates is Lewis Serrocold's assistant, Edgar Lawson. Edgar is an awkward young man whom the others dismiss as pompous and half-mad. He seems to suffer from both a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur. On several occasions he confides to others that he is the illegitimate son of a great man, and claims that powerful enemies are conspiring to keep him from his rightful position. Christian Gulbrandsen, a member of the Stonygates Board of Trustees and the son of Carrie Louise's first husband from his previous marriage, arrives unexpectedly to see Lewis Serrocold. Everyone assumes he is there on business, but no one is sure exactly why. After dinner, Mr. Gulbrandsen retires to the guest room to type a letter. Miss Marple and the others gather in the Great Hall. A fuse blows out, and Walter goes to repair it. Edgar Lawson bursts into the darkened room, screaming that Lewis Serrocold is his real father. Edgar and Mr. Serrocold go into the study and Edgar locks the door behind him. Everyone in the Great Hall listens intently as Edgar screams accusations at Mr. Serrocold, then they hear multiple gunshots. When the door is finally opened, they are surprised but relieved to see that Mr. Serrocold is alive and well, Edgar in tears, and several bullet holes in the walls. Yet there has been a murder at Stonygates that night after all. When Juliet Bellever goes to check on Christian Gulbrandsen, she finds him dead. He was shot while working at his typewriter, and the letter he was writing is gone. Lewis Serrocold later reveals to the police that he took the letter to keep his wife from learning its contents. He explains that he and Mr. Gulbrandsen were both concerned that Carrie Louise's recent poor health was due to deliberate poisoning. At that point, Alex Restarick, Stephen's brother(Carrie Louise's stepsons from her second marriage), arrives. He becomes the most likely suspect since the police who come to investigate find an unaccounted period of time between his arrival in the car and his appearance in the Great Hall. Alex Restarick's remarks about stage scenery lead Miss Marple to reflect on all kinds of stage illusion, such as conjurers who perform magic by using mirrors and stage sets and assistants who are in on the trick. When Alex and a boy who claimed to have seen something on the night of the murder are both killed, Miss Marple realizes who has been behind the plotting at Stonygates: Lewis Serrocold. The attempted poisoning of Carrie Louise never happened; it was an explanation hastily concocted by Serrocold to explain Christian Gulbrandsen's sudden appearance at Stonygates and his secretive conference with Mr. Serrocold. In fact, Gulbrandsen had discovered that Mr. Serrocold was embezzling from the Gulbrandsen Trust, and Serrocold and his unstable accomplice, Edgar Lawson, killed him to silence him. The murder was accomplished via illusion and misdirection, as Alex Restarick and Miss Marple both eventually realized: "behind the scenes" of the interior of the house, which everyone had been focused on, there was a terrace by which someone could exit the study and re-enter the house to commit murder without being seen by the rest of the residents. This was what Mr. Serrocold had done, while Lawson, using his acting talents and different voices, had continued both sides of the loud argument by himself. When confronted by the police, Edgar Lawson panics and flees the house, jumping into an old boat in an attempt to cross a lake on the property. The boat is rotted though, and as it begins to sink, Lewis Serrocold jumps into the lake to rescue his accomplice. Both men are caught in the reeds that line the lake, and drown before police are able to rescue them, bringing an end to the case.
2292761	/m/071fcb	A Pocket Full of Rye	Agatha Christie	1953-11-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When upper middle class businessman Rex Fortescue dies while having tea, the police are shocked. The diagnosis is death by taxine - a poison found as a mixture of cardiotoxic diterpenes in the leaves, but not the berries (darils), of the European yew tree. His wife was the main suspect in the murder, until she also was murdered, after drinking tea laced with cyanide. Going on the only clue, a pocket full of rye found on the victim, Miss Marple begins investigating. Marple realizes the murders are arranged according to the pattern of a childhood nursery rhyme, Sing a Song of Sixpence. The next to be murdered is a maid named Gladys with whom Miss Marple was acquainted. She knew Gladys to be romantic and gullible. The other maid, Ellen, was hanging out the washing when she found Glady's body all mangled up in the clothes line with a peg on her nose. The younger Fortescue son, Lancelot, suddenly arrives from Kenya with his new wife. The older son, Percival, admits that his father was senile and ruining the business. Miss Marple discovers that the use of the rhyme in the crimes was to point the finger at an old dealing of the Blackbird Mine, in which old Fortescue was suspected of having killed his partner, MacKenzie, and swindled the mine from his partner's family. The mine is in Kenya. Thinking that one of the two MacKenzie children is responsible, Miss Marple and Inspector Neele trace Jennifer Fortescue (Percival's wife) to be the daughter of Mackenzie - something that she does indeed admit, as well as taking responsibility for placing dead blackbirds near Rex at various times to remind him of his past crimes. Jennifer's involvement, however, turns out to be a red herring as the murderer is, in fact, Lancelot. He had found out that the Blackbird Mine was valuable and wanted to inherit it, and so he met and romanced his scapegoat Gladys. He talked her into joining the Fortescue household and administering the poison in Rex's morning marmalade, telling her that it was a truth drug and fabricating her a story about needing old Fortescue to tell the truth in order to clear his name for something that he had been falsely accused of. Then, he killed Gladys so that she would not turn him in, and killed his stepmother so that the inheritance went to the children.
2292779	/m/071fff	Hickory Dickory Dock	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Poirot’s solution of the petty thefts is unsubtle but effective: once he has threatened to call in the police, Celia Austin quickly confesses to the pettier amongst the incidents. She denies specifically: stealing Nigel Chapman’s green ink and using it to deface Elizabeth Johnston’s work; taking the stethoscope, the light bulbs and boracic powder; and cutting up and concealing a rucksack. Celia appears to have committed the lesser thefts in order to attract the attention of Colin McNabb, a psychology student who at first regards her as an interesting case study, and then – almost immediately – becomes engaged to her. Celia makes restitution for the crimes and is seemingly reconciled with her victims, but when she is discovered the following morning dead from an overdose of morphine it does not take the investigators long to see through attempts to make her death seem like suicide. Several of the original incidents have not been solved by Celia’s confession. Inspector Sharpe quickly solves the mystery of the stolen stethoscope during his interviews with the inhabitants of the hostel. Nigel Chapman admits to having stolen the stethoscope in order to pose as a doctor and steal some morphine tartrate from the hospital dispensary as part of a bet to acquire three deadly poisons (the other two being digitalin and hyoscine). He claims that these poisons were then carefully disposed of, but cannot be sure that the morphine was not stolen from him while it was in his possession. Poirot turns his attention to the reappearance of the diamond ring, and confronts Valerie Hobhouse, in whose soup the ring was found. It seems that the diamond had been replaced with a zircon and, given the fact that it was difficult for anyone but Valerie to have put the ring into the soup, Poirot accuses her of having stolen the diamond. She admits to having done so, saying that she needed the money to pay off gambling debts. She also admits to having planted in Celia’s mind the entire idea of the thefts. Mrs. Nicoletis has been behaving very nervously, as if she were losing her nerve. One night someone gets her drunk and kills her with poison in her brandy. Poirot focuses his attention now on the cutting up of the rucksack. By comparing an example of the rucksack type destroyed with others, he identifies an unusual corrugated base, and suggests to the police that the rucksack may have been part of a clever international smuggling operation. The rucksacks were sold to innocent students, and then exchanged as a means of transporting drugs and gems. Mrs. Nicoletis had been bankrolling the organisation, but was not the brain behind it. When the police visited Hickory Road on an unconnected issue, the murderer had cut up the rucksack to avoid its being found and removed light bulbs to avoid being recognised. Patricia Lane comes to Nigel and admits that, in an effort to keep a dangerous poison safe, she has taken the morphine from the bottle in his drawer and substituted for it bicarbonate of soda. Now, however, the bottle of bicarbonate of soda has been taken from her own drawer. While they are searching for this bottle Patricia mentions that she is intending to write to his father in order to reconcile the two. Nigel tells her that the reason for his estrangement from his father is that he discovered that his father had poisoned his mother with Medinal, a trade name for barbitone sodium. This is why he changed his name and carries two passports. Nigel comes to Inspector Sharpe and tells him about the missing morphine, but while he is there, Patricia telephones to say that she has discovered something further. By the time that Nigel and Sharpe get to the house, Patricia has been killed by a blow to the head. Mr. Akibombo comes to Sharpe and says that he had taken Patricia’s bicarbonate to ease a stomach complaint; when he took a teaspoonful of the bicarbonate, however, he had stomach pains and later discovered that the white powder was in fact the boracic powder. By the time Patricia had substituted the bicarbonate, the morphine had already been substituted by the stolen boracic powder. Poirot, whose suspicions about Valerie Hobhouse’s role in the smuggling operation have been proved correct by a police raid on her beauty shop, now closes the case. The murderer has been the most obvious person, Nigel Chapman, who was known to have the morphine in his possession. He killed Celia because she knew about his dual identity and also knew that Valerie travelled abroad on a false passport. He killed Mrs. Nicoletis because she was sure to give the smuggling operation away under pressure, and killed Patricia because she was likely to draw to his father’s attention the recent events. When Poirot outlines to Nigel’s father’s solicitor the case against Nigel, the solicitor is able to provide final proof. Nigel’s mother had been poisoned, not by his father, but by Nigel himself. When the father discovered this (medinal is a poison slow to act, and the mother had occasion to explain the method of her imminent death) he forced him to write a confession and left it with his solicitor together with a letter explaining that it should be produced were there any evidence of further wrongdoing by his son. Valerie confirms Poirot’s solution further. She has placed the call to the police station, apparently from Patricia, after Nigel had already killed her. The green ink was a double-bluff intended to divert suspicion away from him. Valerie is willing to incriminate Nigel fully because Mrs. Nicoletis was actually her mother.
2292789	/m/071fg3	Destination Unknown	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Hilary Craven, a deserted wife and bereaved mother, is planning suicide in a Moroccan hotel, when she is asked by British secret agent Jessop to undertake a dangerous mission as an alternative to taking an overdose of sleeping pills. The task, which she accepts, is to impersonate a dying woman to help find the woman's husband, Thomas Betterton, a nuclear scientist who has disappeared and may have defected to the Soviet Union. Soon she finds herself in a group of travellers being transported to the unknown destination of the title. The destination turns out to be a secret scientific research facility disguised as a modern leper colony and leprosy research center at a remote location in the Atlas Mountains. The fabulously wealthy Mr Aristides has built the facility and lured the world's best young scientists to it so that he can later sell their services back to the world's governments and corporations for a huge profit, after having removed the scientists' resistance through lobotomies. The scientists are not allowed to leave the facility, and they are locked in secret areas deep inside the mountain whenever government officials and other outsiders visit. Hilary Craven successfully passes herself as Betterton's wife Olive, because he is miserable and wants desperately to escape. She falls in love with Andrew Peters, a handsome young American who was in the group with her on their journey to the facility. Through clues she has left along the way, Jessop eventually locates and rescues her and the others held there, with help from Peters, who turns out also to be a secret agent and the cousin of Betterton's first wife Elsa, whom Betterton had murdered. Betterton is arrested, Craven no longer wants to die, and she and Peters are free to begin their life together.
2292805	/m/071fhj	4.50 From Paddington	Agatha Christie	1957-11-04	{"/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Elspeth McGillicuddy has come from Scotland to visit her old friend Jane Marple. On the way, her train passes another train running parallel to her. Then, a blind in one of the compartments flies up and she sees a woman being strangled to death! Only Miss Marple believes her story as there is no evidence of wrongdoing. The first task is to ascertain where the body could have been hidden. Comparison of the facts of the murder with the train timetable and the local geography lead to the grounds of Rutherford Hall as the only possible location: it is shielded from the surrounding community, the railway abuts the grounds, and so on. Lucy Eyelesbarrow, a young professional housekeeper and an acquaintance of Miss Marple, is sent undercover to Rutherford Hall. Josiah Crackenthorpe, purveyor of tea biscuits, built Rutherford Hall. His son, Luther, now a semi-invalid widower, had displayed spendthrift qualities in his youth. To preserve the family fortune, Josiah has left his considerable fortune in trust, the income from which is to be paid to Luther for life. After Luther's death, the capital is to be divided equally among Luther's children. Luther Crackenthorpe is merely the trustee of Rutherford Hall and hence cannot sell the house as per the will. The house itself will be inherited by Luther Crackenthorpe's eldest surviving son or his issue. The eldest of Luther Crackenthorpe's children, Edmund, died during World War II. His youngest daughter, Edith, died four years before. The remaining heirs to the estate are Cedric, a bohemian painter and lover of women who lives on Ibiza; Harold, a cold and stuffy banker; Alfred, the black sheep of the family who is known to engage in shady business dealings; Emma Crackenthorpe, a spinster who lives at home and takes care of Luther; and Alexander, son of Edith. The complement of characters is completed by Bryan Eastley, Alexander's father; and Dr. Quimper, who looks after Luther's health and is secretly romantically involved with Emma. Lucy uses golf practice as an excuse to search the grounds. She eventually finds the woman's body hidden in a sarcophagus in the old stables amongst Luther's collection of dubious antiques. But who is she? The police eventually identify the victim's clothing as being of French manufacture. Emma tells the police that she has received a letter claiming to be from Martine, a French girl whom her brother Edmund had wanted to marry. He had written about Martine and their impending marriage days before his death in the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940. The letter purporting to be from Martine claims that she was pregnant when Edmund died and that she now wishes their son to have all of the advantages to which his parentage should entitle him. The police conclude that the body in the sarcophagus is that of Martine, but this proves not to be the case, when Lady Stoddart-West, mother of James Stoddart-West, a schoolfriend of Alexander's, reveals that she is Martine. Although she and Edmund had intended to marry, Edmund died before they could do so and she later married an SOE officer, settling in England. The whole family takes ill suddenly and Alfred dies. Later, the curry made by Lucy on the fateful day is found to contain arsenic. Some days later, Harold, after returning home to London, receives a delivery of some tablets that appear to be the same as the sleeping pills prescribed to him by Dr Quimper, who had told him he need not take them any more. They prove to be poisoned and Harold dies. One by one, the heirs to Josiah's fortune are being eliminated. Lucy arranges an afternoon-tea visit to Rutherford Hall for Miss Marple, and Mrs McGillicuddy is also invited. Mrs McGillicuddy is instructed by Miss Marple to ask to use the lavatory as soon as they arrive, but is not told why. Miss Marple is eating a fish-paste sandwich when she suddenly begins to choke. It seems she has a fishbone stuck in her throat. Dr Quimper moves to assist her. Mrs McGillicuddy enters the room at that moment, sees the doctor's hands at Miss Marple's throat, and cries out, "But that's him &mdash; that's the man on the train!" Miss Marple had correctly concluded that her friend would recognise the real murderer if she saw him again in a similar pose. It transpires that the murdered woman's name was Anna Stravinska, a French ballet dancer who had been married to Dr Quimper many years earlier. Being a devout Catholic, she refused to divorce him, so he decided to murder her so as to be free to marry Emma, thus inheriting Josiah's fortune, once he had eliminated the other heirs. He poisoned the cocktail when he sent a sample of the curry to be tested, he poisoned it "then". There was not enough to kill however, so he poisoned Alfred's medicine and tea so the overdose murdered Alfred.
2293857	/m/071jk7	Platform	Michel Houellebecq		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is the first-person narrative of a fictional character named Michel Renault.
2294437	/m/071l77	Batman: Son of the Demon				 The story centers on the eco-terrorist and head of the League of Assassins, Ra's al Ghul aiding Batman in his quest to solve the murder of Harris Blaine, one of Gotham City's most prominent scientists. Ra's al Ghul and Batman turn out to be searching for the same man, the terrorist known as Qayin. Qayin is a rogue assassin who had murdered Ra's al Ghul's wife Melisande, mother to his favorite daughter and heir-apparent, Talia. Batman has shared a stormy, on-again, off-again romance with Talia for many years, despite his ideological conflict with Ra's. During the course of the storyline, Batman has time to properly romance Talia. When Batman asks if there should have been a marriage ceremony of some sort, Talia replies that there already has been: her father had previously, in a bid to stop Batman from interfering with his plans, performed such a ceremony in the tradition of his own country, where only the consent of the bride was needed to constitute a marriage. Talia soon becomes pregnant, and the prospect of a family has a profound effect on Batman's demeanor, making him more risk-adverse and softening his typically grim outlook. Batman is nearly killed protecting the recently pregnant (and still very dangerous in her own right) Talia from an attack by the assassin's agents. Observing Batman's dangerous and overly protective behavior, Talia resolves that she cannot allow him to continue to act in such a manner, as he will almost certainly be killed. To that end, Talia claims to have miscarried. Crushed by the news, Batman returns to his typically grim disposition, and he and Talia agree to have the marriage dissolved. Batman returns to Gotham, never knowing Talia is still carrying his child. The child, a boy, is born and left with an orphanage, and soon adopted by a western couple. The only hint of his impressive heritage is a jewel encrusted necklace, a gift Bruce gave to Talia just before Qayin attacked Ra's HQ.
2294503	/m/071lgp	The Awkward Age	Henry James		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mr. and Mrs. Edward Brookenham host an effete, rather corrupt social circle. They are the parents of worthless Harold and sweet but knowledgeable Nanda (age eighteen). Mr. Longdon attends one of their social functions and is amazed at how much Nanda resembles her grandmother, his long-ago love who married another man. Vanderbank, a young civil servant with little money, admires both Mrs. Brookenham (nicknamed "Mrs. Brook") and Nanda. Mrs. Brook seems to want an affair with "Van" but he appears more interested in Nanda. Mr. Longdon promises him a dowry if he marries Nanda. Mrs. Brook is instead trying to get her daughter married to Mitchy, a very rich but rather naive member of her social circle. But Nanda urges Mitchy to marry Aggie, the supposedly sheltered step-niece of one of Mrs. Brook's friends (the Duchess). Mitchy follows the advice, then watches helplessly as Aggie kicks over the traces and starts playing around on him. Van constantly hesitates about proposing to Nanda. She finally tells him and Mitchy to be kind to her mother, then prepares to stay at Mr. Longdon's country home as a kind of surrogate daughter.
2295010	/m/071mv9	Flowers in the Attic	V. C. Andrews	1979-11	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the year 1957, Cathy Dollanganger is twelve years old and the second of four children (following her older brother, Chris, who is fourteen years old, and fraternal twins, Carrie and Cory, who are five). They live in Gladstone, Pennsylvania with their parents, Christopher and Corrine. Their father works at a PR firm while their mother stays home to care for them. Their idyllic lifestyle ends when their father dies in a car accident on his 36th birthday. Facing financial destitution, Corrine decides to move the children and herself into her parents' mansion in Charlottesville, Virginia. She writes letters to her mother, Olivia, pleading for shelter. Olivia agrees to let them stay on the condition that the children be kept hidden; she doesn't want their grandfather, Malcolm, to know about them. Corrine tells the children that she did something her parents disapproved of fifteen years ago, so she is disinherited. However, her father is dying, and if she can win back his love, she will be the sole heir to a vast fortune. She also tells them that their real last name is Foxworth. They pack a few things and take the train to Virginia, leaving everything else behind. They make the secret path to Foxworth Hall, where they are escorted into small room below the attic by Olivia. Corrine promises to visit them the next day after she talks to her father. When Corrine does return, the children find that she has been savagely horse-whipped by Olivia, who tells the children that their parents were half-uncle and niece; their father had been Malcolm's half-brother. She says that if Corrine has any chance of winning back her father's love, it is that the children be kept hidden in the room until Malcolm dies, and by then, Corrine will receive her inheritance and be able to provide for the children. At first, Corrine lavishes the children with expensive gifts and promises of a bright future, and visits them every day. She even attends secretarial school to learn the necessary skills to care for the children (this is never mentioned again after the first year). However, as time goes by, she slowly stops visiting with her children and loses interest in them, particularly the twins who have almost stopped growing due to the stress of being locked up. The children are physically and emotionally abused by their grandmother, who calls them the "devil's spawn" and threatens them with severe punishment if they disobey her rules. Corrine continues to favor Chris, though her love for her favorite child does not motivate her to free them. After the first year, Corrine abruptly stops visiting with her children, leading Cathy and Chris to think something has happened to her, but Cathy later suspects that her mother has abandoned them. The children initially spend their time reading and watching television, but then they decorate the attic with paper-made flowers to make it less scary for the twins. Cathy and Chris begins learning the basics to pursue their dreams; Cathy practices ballet and Chris reads dozens of books to become a doctor. Corrine's abandonment of the children forces them to rely on one another for comfort and friendship. This leads to a new family unit, with Cathy and Chris assuming the roles of mother and father for the twins and resolving to teach their siblings in a makeshift school room in the attic. After nearly two years of confinement, Cathy and Chris begin to enter puberty. Cathy becomes curious of the physical changes in her body; in one incident, she is admiring her naked body and Chris accidentally walks in on her. After getting over the initial shock, he proceeds to tell her how beautiful she is becoming. Their grandmother catches Chris watching Cathy and proudly proclaims them as sinners. She gives them an ultimatum: Chris must cut off all of Cathy's hair or all four children will starve for two weeks. When Chris refuses to comply, Olivia sneaks into the room, drugs Cathy in her sleep, and pours tar into her hair, which forces Chris to cut her hair off. The resulting starvation forces the children into desperate measures; Chris offers his blood to feed the twins and guts mice for him and Cathy to eat. Before they can eat the mice, their grandmother leaves them a basket of food, with additional powdered doughnuts. Months later, Corrine suddenly returns and happily announces that she married her father's attorney, Bart Winslow, and was away on her honeymoon. Cathy and Chris are angry that their mother was on vacation while they nearly starved, but she shouts at them for thinking she doesn't care about them when she provides necessaries for them and refuses to visit with them until they apologize. Their grandmother continues to abuse them, and even whips both Cathy and Chris when he talks back at her. Due to their confinement, Cathy and Chris become sexually attracted to each other. They also begin plotting an escape. After distracting their mother during a visit, they take the room's key and make an impression of it in a bar of soap from which they carve a wooden copy. To finance their escape, they secretly steal jewels and money from their mother and stepfather. One night, Chris is ill, so Cathy goes alone. She encounters her stepfather sleeping in his chair. Curious and confused, she kisses him. Days later, Chris finds out about the kiss when he overhears his stepfather telling his mother about what he thought was a dream. Chris rapes Cathy in a jealous rage. Afterward, they feel tremendous guilt and shame. Chris sincerely apologizes to Cathy, who forgives him because she knew he didn't mean to do it. Chris professes his love to Cathy, and although she reciprocates his feelings, she is unsure of how to respond. Soon after, Cory becomes seriously ill, and Cathy angrily persuades her mother to take him to the hospital. Corrine later tells them that Cory had died from pneumonia, leaving the older children devastated. Now desperate, Chris plans to take whatever money he can find in his mother's suite, but discovers that Corrine and Bart have left Foxworth Hall for good. Chris tells Cathy that he found out that he learned their grandfather died nine months ago after eavesdropping on the head butler, John Amos. Chris also tells her that he heard that their grandmother has been leaving food with arsenic to kill the mice in the attic. Realizing they are the "mice" and that arsenic was placed on the powdered-sugar doughnuts, Cathy and Chris take Carrie and slip out of Foxworth Hall before dawn to catch the train to Sarasota, Florida. At the train station, Chris reveals the final horror: their grandfather's will said that their mother would be disinherited if it is proven she had borne children from her first marriage or has any in the future. Their grandmother started leaving the doughnuts for them nine months ago, when their grandfather died and the will was read, therefore, it was their mother who made the decision to poison them. They abruptly decide against going to the police, at the risk of being separated and put into foster care. Their priority is to be there for Carrie and survive on their own. Cathy is very angry of her mother's betrayal, and desperately wants to take revenge on her mother and grandmother, but decides that at the moment, she must be there for her brother and sister. She does declare that one day, she will get her vengeance. At the time of their escape, in November of 1960, Chris is nearly 18 years old, Cathy is 15 years old, and Carrie is 8 years old.
2296100	/m/071qvm	The Matchlock Gun	Walter D. Edmonds	1941	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book is set in the year 1756 during the French and Indian War in Guilderland, New York. Ten-year-old Edward Van Alstyne (throughout the book, he is called "Ateoord", which is his name in Dutch) and his mother Gertrude are determined to protect their home and family with an ancient (and much too heavy) Spanish matchlock gun that Edward's great-grandfather had brought from Bergom Op Zoom in Holland while his father Teunis is away from home with the local militia fighting the enemy (using, to Edward's disappointment, a musket instead of the matchlock). Gertrude, Edward, and his younger sister Trudy go about their everyday chores, but news arrives that the French-Indian forces have been attacking and burning nearby settlements and that Teunis and his militia company have been sent to intercept them. Later that day, while she and the children are out herding the cows, Gertrude spots a column of smoke in the distance and realizes that raiders are getting closer. Rather than take herself and the children over to her mother-in-law's brick house as Teunis had previously suggested, since raiders would be more likely to attack it rather than their house, she devises a plan for a possible Indian attack. Returning home, she loads the matchlock gun, fixes it in position to fire and instructs Edward how and when to fire it. She then goes outside to keep a watch for any approaching raiders. At the book's climax, Gertrude sees flames in the distance and realizes that her mother-in-law's house has indeed been attacked. Moments later, she spots five Indians approaching in the darkness, bent on burning the house. Barely able to outrun them, she reaches the front porch and manages to shout a pre-arranged warning to Edward, but is wounded in the shoulder by a thrown tomahawk, and the boy fires the gun through the front window, killing three raiders and driving off the remaining two (one of them, apparently wounded, is later killed by the returning militia). As their house burns, Edward and Trudy manage to drag their unconscious mother to safety. Edward goes back into the burning house to save the Spanish gun, and later he, Trudy and their mother are found by their father and the other militiamen. The book's forward states that this is a true story handed down from Trudy's descendants (Trudy became widely known as an expert spinner, having been taught by her mother who, because of her crippled shoulder, could no longer perform the task).
2296365	/m/071rkq	The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the South Seas	Erich Kästner	1931	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel is about Conrad, a young boy, who spends each Thursday afternoon with his uncle, Mr. Ringelhuth. One Thursday — it happens to be the 35th of May — they meet Negro Caballo, who is well-versed in German literature, and at the same time, is the best roller skater in the world. Negro Caballo is a black horse that can speak. Together they enter Uncle Ringelhuth's huge wardrobe, which stands in the hallway and end up in a series of fantasy lands, starting with the land of Cockaigne ("free entry — children half price"), followed by a mediaeval castle complete with jousting, an upside-down world in which children send bad parents to reform school, a science fiction nightmare city with mobile phones and moving walkways, and a south sea island. On his return to the real world, Conrad writes a school essay about his experiences. The plot device of a magic wardrobe through which protagonists enter magical lands anticipates the similar device used by C.S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
2297576	/m/071vwt	The Female American			{"/m/06gtzk": "Robinsonade", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with a declaration of the author's intention to relate the events of her life, which introduces the first major theme of female adventure outside of the domestic sphere. She describes her grandfather's plantation in Virginia, and the massacre of settlers by the native Indians, which leaves her grandfather dead and her father, Mr. William Winkfield, captured. As her father is about to be put to death by the Indians, a young Indian princess, named Unca, saves his life and secures his liberty by taking a liking to him and putting him in favor with the king. Unfortunately, his troubles mount when the sister of the young princess grows equally fond of him, and solicits him for marriage. He responds unfavorably, claiming love only for Unca, so she poisons him and leaves him for dead. Unca comes upon him and saves his life yet again, and they remove themselves from the village to live with the settlers. They are not there long before their daughter, Unca Eliza, is born, and they are visited by two Indian men sent from Alluca, the jealous sister of princess Unca. The two men reveal daggers and a skirmish leaves Unca and one of the assassins dead, while Mr. Winkfield escapes death and takes the remaining assassin prisoner. Under the council of the other settlers, he decides to set him free, sending him back to the village with a promise of revenge on Alluca from Mr. Winkfield. She dies of grief before revenge can be had, and sends her heart along with a confession of love to Mr. Winkfield. Overcome with grief for his murdered wife, Mr. Winkfield decides to return to England with his daughter in order to take care of his sick brother. While there, Unca Eliza grows up in the company of her cousins, is educated and exposed to Christianity, under which she was baptized, and notes with what great attention the English attend to her due to the complexion of her skin and her mixed Indian and English dress. Shortly after arriving in England, the grief-stricken Mr. Winkfield desires to return to Virginia, but intends for Unca Eliza to remain in England to finish her education. When she is eighteen years old, she is summoned by her father to return, and she makes the journey alongside her cousin, John Winkfield, who solicits her for marriage. She denies him, claiming she will never marry a man who cannot use a bow and arrow any better than she. Soon after arriving back in Virginia, Unca Eliza's father dies, and she is left alone. She desires to return to England when she is twenty-four, so she purchases a sloop and assembles a crew for the journey. On the way, her chosen captain solicits her for marriage to his son, but she refuses in the same manner as before. He is outraged by this, and threatens to leave her on an uninhabited island - securing all her money to him - if she does not reconsider. An altercation ensues, and the captain is thrown overboard by two slaves. (He is later recovered.) He gives Unca Eliza another opportunity to reconsider, but she does not, and he leaves her on an uninhabited island. Once on the island, Unca Eliza devotes herself to God, and quickly finds a hermitage, which she takes as her shelter. Inside, she finds a manuscript of the previous occupant and uses it to learn how to survive on the island. She is much distressed by her current situation, and she comes down with a debilitating fever. Once she recovers, she consults the manuscript for more information, and learns that there is life on the island after all. She decides to explore her new habitation and understands the hermitage to be a religious temple of the sun, which contains numerous mummies. Upon returning from her explorations, she is startled by the presence of the hermit, who she thought was no longer on the island. The hermit soon dies, and Unca Eliza makes more explorations and discovers an underground passageway leading to an idol of worship. While she is there, a tempest brews outside. Afterward, the temple is visited by a group of Indians, as the manuscript predicted, and Unca Eliza hides in the secret passageway. While she is in there, she resolves to convert the Indians to Christianity and develops a plan to hide within the body of the idol and to speak to the Indians when they arrive for their worship on the following year. An earthquake ensues during her practicing of the plan, and upon its conclusion, she discovers it has destroyed her abode. When the Indians arrive for their worship, she converses with the high-priest from within the idol, instructing the Indians in Christian principles. ' By the end of Volume I, Unca has instructed the Indians to come back to visit her the following week for further instructions. She takes this time to reconsider what she had said to the Indians and how she should continue on with them. She also explored the island and discovered an extraordinary four footed animal. It was the size of a large dog, with long legs, a slender body, it had uncommonly large eyes which projected far from its head, and two rows of sharp but short teeth. This creature excited Unca's curiosity so she followed it. Other animals who were larger than it, fled at the sight of it. It came to a grassy area and extended itself as if dead, with eyes shut and lips closed. She sat down at some distance to watch it. The hair on his body was thick and long, five or six inches (152&nbsp;mm), and formed bunches of clusters. A great number of field mice came up to him and began nibbling at the clusters of hair. It continued to lie still until a considerable number of mice had employed themselves among it. He then got up and shook violently, but the mice were stuck on him. He turned around, extended his long neck and began eating the mice greedily. In a few minutes he ate near three hundred of them because his body was almost covered in mice. Unca's curiosity was satisfied. The day had come when the Indians were instructed to return to the island for further instructions. Unca took her place in the statue and waited. Only seven priest returned so she asked them why they did not bring their people? The high priest responded that it was their business to instruct their people after she has taught them. The priest explained that if she taught everyone, then they no longer had any means of employment. Unca told them that she will not teach them only and that they should not fear. She instructed the priest to go back and return with their people. He agreed and told her that they will return with their people in the morning because it will take up too much time in one day to complete this task. The next morning, the priest returned with a considerable number of people. She lectured for three hours and then told them to break for refreshments. She also instructed them to retire further from her so that she may emerge from the statue and take a refreshment for herself. She encouraged the people to ask her questions but they responded that "our priest know all, teach our priest and they will teach us". She concluded from this answer that the priest had instructed the people in private and then reminded everyone of what she had told them the previous day. Finishing her lecture, she told everyone that she had much more to teach them and that they should return once a week. The high priests being old should come if he pleased and all other could also choose to come if they wished. Unca excused the Indians and soon they all left the island. Being suspicious of the priest because they would never suffer to be useless to their people, Unca decided that she must live among the Indians. Unca wished to make more progress with her teachings and it would be hard to do so from the statue once a week. It would also be inconvenient for them to come during the rainy season. She also considered her living arrangement. It would be hard for her to live underground during the summer and she would be confined to it also in the winter. After much though she decided that it would be absolutely necessary to live with the Indians. She planned to introduce herself to the Indians but keep them ignorant of who she was and how she came to them so that she "might preserve a superiority over them". When the Indians returned to the island, she told them that they were ignorant of the true God and that God will send a holy woman to instruct them more fully. She told them to not be fearful or suspicious of that person who will be a woman. She will bring holy writings. They must respect her, do everything she commands, do not ask her where she comes from or when she is leaving, when she wishes to visit the island do not follow her or do anything that she forbids. Unca told them that she does not wish to force this woman upon them. They tell her to "Let her come! We will love and obey her!" She then instructed them to come back three day later, two hours after sunrise, and they will see the woman dressed like a high priest. After the Indians received her instructions and left, Unca began preparing for her departure. Unca rises early and begins preparing for the return of the Indians. She dresses herself in white and adorns herself in ornate jewelry of gold and precious stones. She leaves her shelter, locks it, and covers it up. Unca arrives at the statue and awaits the return of the Indians with her a staff, her bow and arrow, and a bundle of treasures. She also remembers to pray to God, that He might take away her fear and guide her on this grand task. The Indians arrive and the high-priest greets Unca respectfully. Unca announces her intentions: she will live with them for some time and instruct them on God's teachings, which she says will make them "happy for ever." Unca does not fail to mention a set of rules which include the following: they must obey her orders, learn her teachings, and never ask where she came from, or when she is leaving. At this, the high-priest responds with bows of acceptance and gratitude but follows with a proposal that surprises Unca. Since their previous king had died recently and left no heirs, he asks Unca to take her place as their queen. She thanks him for the offer but declines saying she will be only their "instructor." They all agree and Unca presents the high-priest and many of the people with rings from her treasures. A few of the Indians come forward and offer Unca some food and drink and Unca stands to say grace. This marks the beginning of her Christian teachings. She then mentions Jesus Christ and explains the Christian understanding that he is the son of God to whom they owe their thanks and praise. Before embarking with the Indians, Unca prays to God. After the prayer, she sings a hymn in the Indian language to demonstrate the Christian ritual for the Indians. She leaves with the large group by canoe, and is welcomed in the Indian country where she is provided with lodging and 6 Indian servant girls. She is presented with gifts of liquor, dried meat, flowers, and fruit. Unca begins daily instruction for the priests on Scripture, and a weekly public instruction to spread the Christian faith. She reflects upon her surprise at the willingness and enthusiasm of the Indians to learn about Christianity. Unca also begins to translate her prayer books and the Bible from English into the Indian language. She admits that she is not happy living among the Indians, and that she knows she is perceived to be more than mortal and deliberately takes advantage of this. In her spare time, she shoots her bow and arrow, and revisits her old island. Two years pass living with the Indians, and Unca completes her translation of the Bible, the Catechism, and most of her Prayer Book. She is proud to have replaced the Indians religion of idolatry with Christianity.
2298691	/m/071y61	The Martian Child: A Novel About A Single Father Adopting A Son	David Gerrold	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A single man who writes science fiction books and screenplays for a living, adopts a son who claims he is from Mars. The adoptive father comes to be intrigued by the possibility his son might really be a Martian. Ultimately, the father realizes that he loves his son whether or not he is a Martian. The son uses a magical "Martian wish" to be a human so he can remain with his father.
2298707	/m/071y8g	China Mountain Zhang	Maureen F. McHugh	1992-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main story involves a man's maturation in a future dominated by China, where the United States has undergone a Communist revolution (the "Cleansing Winds Campaign") after a period of economic crisis. His personal evolution is paralleled by four side stories in his narrative, following characters progressing from arrogant outsiders to finding a place in society. These stories never fully interconnect in the normal manner of a novel.
2298729	/m/071ybx	Cyteen	C. J. Cherryh	1988-05	{"/m/0bt0c": "Future history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ariane Emory is one of fourteen "Specials", Union-certified geniuses. In addition to her research on azi, she runs Reseune (founded by her parents) with the assistance of Giraud and Denys Nye. Emory is also a member of the Council of Nine, the elected, top-level executive body of Union. Two political factions vie for power in Union: the Centrists and the Expansionists. The latter, led by Emory, seek to enlarge Union through exploration, building new stations and continued cloning. Her political enemies, headed by Mikhail Corain, prefer to focus on the existing stations and planets. The Expansionists have held power since the foundation of Union, a situation fostered by "rejuv", which extends lifespans and staves off the effects of old age. Emory herself is 120 years old at the start of the novel – and only just beginning to show signs of aging – and has been the Councillor for Science for five decades. Emory's former co-worker and now bitter longtime rival, Jordan Warrick, is also a Special. Jordan has created and raised a clone of himself named Justin. Justin has grown up with and is very close to Grant, an experimental azi created by Emory from the slightly-modified geneset of another Special. When Justin goes to work for Emory, she threatens to use Grant, who is Reseune property, for research. Using drugs and tape to overcome Justin's remaining resistance, she has sex with the inexperienced seventeen-year-old. This trauma causes him to experience periodic debilitating "tape-flashes", similar to the flashbacks that PTSD sufferers experience. Justin does his best to hide the sordid matter from his "father", but Jordan eventually learns of it. He is furious and confronts Emory. She is found dead later that day. Though it could have been accidental, there is strong suspicion that she was murdered by Jordan. He protests his innocence, but agrees to confess in order to protect both Justin and Grant. Because of his Special status, he is only exiled to an isolated research facility far from Reseune. It is later revealed that Emory's rejuv was failing and she was already dying of cancer. Emory's last project had been the cloning of a promising young chemist to see if it was possible to recreate his abilities. An earlier attempt with Estelle Bok, the inventor of the equation that led to faster-than-light travel, had failed miserably. However, Emory believed this was due to the Bok clone growing up in a different social environment than the original. Emory's ultimate goal was to clone herself, with her successor reliving her life as closely as possible, down to her hormone levels and including two longtime bodyguard azi and companions, Florian and Catlin. Emory also created a sophisticated and powerful computer program to help guide her replacement. With her death and the resulting disruption to both Reseune and Union, the second project is begun immediately. Ari, the clone of Emory, is raised by Jane Strassen, a top Reseune scientist in her own right and the closest match to Emory's mother Olga. In addition, Florian and Catlin are replicated (a much easier task with azi). When Ari is seven, Strassen is abruptly transferred to another planet to simulate Olga's death. Denys Nye, now Reseune Administrator, takes over Ari's rearing. By this time, it is clear that the experiment has succeeded. Not only is Ari as brilliant as her predecessor, but due to technological advances, knowledge of the original's experiences, and better parenting by Jane Strassen, Ari is several years ahead of Emory's pace and better adjusted socially. When Ari is nearly nine, the Centrists, in a bid for power, attempt to use a scandal involving Emory – the deliberate abandonment of a secret colony on the planet Gehenna. The Reseune authorities have Ari legally recognized as Emory's clone, entitled to take possession of her predecessor's property, in order to block the release of potentially damaging information. Denys is forced to reveal to his young ward who she is and how much her life has been manipulated. Because of deep Administration suspicion of his loyalties, Justin is warned to stay away from Ari. However, he cannot avoid bumping into her from time to time as she grows up. She comes to like him and appreciate his skills, particularly since his interests lie in her own area of research. Soon after she gains adult status, she has Justin and Grant transferred to her new department. However, when the sixteen-year-old makes a pass at him, she is shocked by his strong reaction. Justin is forced to reveal the reason. Ari discovers that Emory's seduction of Justin had not just been for sex, but also a major "intervention" to free him from his father's domination, so he could work for Emory; it was left unfinished when she died. The younger Ari repairs the damage as best she can. Ari also comes to terms with the fact that she is much like her predecessor; it is sometimes hard to know where Emory's memories stop and Ari's start. She takes up the original's ultra-secret agenda, revealed to her by Base One, her guiding computer program, and unknown to anyone else. Emory had undertaken to restructure Union society to, in her view, save it from eventual collapse. Giraud Nye had taken over Emory's seat in the Council of Nine after her death. A major political crisis is precipitated by his death from old age, as well as the Paxers – a terrorist group – manipulating Jordan. An attempt on Ari's life is barely foiled when Justin's just-in-time warning enables Florian and Catlin to deal with an unexpected would-be assassin. Such a major breach in security could only have come from a top-rank Reseune source. Ari suspects Denys Nye. When Denys tries to lure her in for another try by promising to resign, Florian and Catlin kill him, much to Ari's regret.
2298950	/m/071yzf	The West End Horror	Nicholas Meyer	1976-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book is written in the form of a false document. It opens with a foreword by Meyer, who states that the manuscript was brought to his attention by a woman with some familial connection to Horace Vernet, also an ancestor of Holmes. The woman had read The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and thought Meyer might be interested. Although damaged by water, the manuscript proved authentic. Dr. Watson explains in his own preface that he did not publish the story because of the number of well-known persons who would be affected - persons whose identity would be impossible to disguise. Holmes had for a long time refused Watson permission to write the story on these very grounds, but Watson eventually persuaded him by promising to place the manuscript in Holmes' hands, the only condition being that he not destroy it. The story involves many well-known people, including George Bernard Shaw, who hires Holmes to look into the death of an unpleasant theatre critic; Sir Arthur Sullivan, one of whose singers at the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was another victim of the murderer; and others including W. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Frank Harris. In the novel, Holmes clears the name of a shy Parsee Indian wrongfully accused of murder; in real life Conan Doyle played a significant part in helping George Edalji, a Parsee victim of injustice in the English court.
2299256	/m/071zsb	The Persian Boy	Mary Renault	1972-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Like much of Renault's fiction, the book, published in 1972, provides a sympathetic portrait of homosexual love. The Persian Boy is notable for its depiction of the tradition of pederasty in ancient Greece, where relationships between adult men and adolescent boys were celebrated. In the novel, Bagoas is 15 years old when he begins his relationship with Alexander (then about 26). Renault depicts the attachment as lasting until Alexander's death, when Bagoas would have been about 22. She movingly explores the tensions in the triangular relationship between Alexander and his two lovers, Hephaistion and Bagoas, and suggests that Alexander went mad with grief over Hephaistion's untimely death.
2299283	/m/071zwf	Come Sweet Death	Wolf Haas	1998-03-31	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Disillusioned paramedic and ex-cop Simon Brenner finds himself trapped between the front lines of two competing Emergency Medical Services in Vienna's relentless summer heat. Things turn really hot when Brenner starts looking into the unusually high death rate of elderly patients.
2299915	/m/0720l2	Ordeal by Innocence	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 While serving a sentence for killing his foster mother – a crime he insisted he didn't commit – Jacko Argyle dies in prison. Two years later, the man who could have supported Jacko's alibi suddenly turns up; and the family must come to terms with the fact not only that one of them is the real murderer, but also that suspicion falls upon each of them. Christie's focus in this novel is upon the psychology of innocence, as the family members struggle with their suspicions of one another. The witness, Arthur Calgary, believes that, when he clears the name of their son, the family would be grateful. He fails to realise the implications of his information. However, once he does so, he is determined to help and to protect the innocent by finding the murderer. To be able to do so, he visits the retired local doctor, Dr MacMaster, to ask him about the now-cleared murderer, Jacko Argyle. Dr MacMaster states that he was surprised when Jacko killed his mother. Not because he thought that murder was outside Jacko's 'moral range', but because he thought Jacko would be too cowardly to kill somebody himself; that, if he wanted to murder somebody, he would egg on an accomplice to do his dirty work. Dr MacMaster says "the kind of murder I'd have expected Jacko to do, if he did one, was the type where a couple of boys go out on a raid; then, when the police come after them, the Jackos say 'Biff him on the head, Bud. Let him have it. Shoot him down.' They're willing for murder, ready to incite to murder, but they've not got the nerve to do murder themselves with their own hands". This description seems to be a reference to the Craig and Bentley case which had occurred in 1952.
2299930	/m/0720mj	Cat Among the Pigeons	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story flashes back three months to Ramat, one of the richest countries of the Middle East, where a revolution is about to take place. Prince Ali Yusuf gives a fortune in jewels, which he needs sent out of the country, into the safekeeping of Bob Rawlinson, his personal pilot and the only person he can trust. Rawlinson complies with the prince's request, apparently by concealing the jewels in the luggage of his sister, Joan Sutcliffe, who is travelling with her daughter, Jennifer. He is seen doing this by a mysterious and unnamed woman in the next room. Soon after, both Rawlinson and the Prince are killed in an airplane crash while attempting to leave the country after a flight mechanic named Sergeant Achmed sabotages their plane. A number of people, including British Intelligence, get onto the trail of the jewels, and their attention focuses on Meadowbank School, where not only Jennifer, but also the prince's cousin and expected fiancée, Shaista, are studying. This term at Meadowbank there are both old and new staff. Miss Chadwick helped Miss Bulstrode found the school. Miss Vansittart has been teaching there for several years, and Miss Rich for 1 1/2 years. Miss Johnson is the girls' matron. The new staff include Angèle Blanche (a French teacher), Grace Springer (a gym teacher), Ann Shapland (Miss Bulstrode's new secretary), and Adam Goodman (a gardener, or actually an undercover British agent posing as a gardener). Miss Bulstrode is nearing retirement, and is deciding whom to appoint as her successor. The others assume Miss Vanisttart will be the successor; she would perserve Miss Bulstrode's legacy but is unimaginative and has no new ideas. But Miss Bulstrode is also considering Miss Rich, who is young and has lots of ideas but less experience. She is not considering Miss Chadwick, whom she thinks is too old (although others may assume Miss Chadwick is the second most likely candidate). But all these deliberations are cut short when Miss Springer is shot dead in the Sports Pavilion late at night, and Miss Johnson and Miss Chadwick discover her body. Following the murder, Inspector Kelsey interviews everyone and Adam Goodman reveals his true identity to Miss Bulstrode. Meanwhile, Jennifer Sutcliffe, an expert tennis player, complains that her racquet feels unbalanced (it must have been warped in the Ramat heat), and she writes to her mother asking for a new one. She swaps tennis racquets with Julia Upjohn, who prefers Jennifer's racquet because it has been refurbished recently. Later a strange woman arrives and gives Jennifer a new racquet, saying it's a gift from her aunt Gina. The woman takes the old racquet (actually Julia's), ostensibly to return it to Aunt Gina for restringing. Later, Julia points out that this is impossible because Aunt Gina knows that Jennifer's racquet had been refurbished and restrung recently, so she would not assume the problem is in the strings. Sure enough, Aunt Gina writes to say that she has not sent a new racquet. During a weekend when many of the girls are at home with their parents, Shaista is apparently kidnapped by a chauffeur posing as the one sent by her uncle to take her home. That night there is a repetition of murder when Miss Chadwick is disturbed by torch light in the Sports Pavilion and Miss Vansittart is found dead there, having been apparently coshed. Many of the girls go home, but the resourceful Julia, who has been pondering the exchange of the racquets, takes her (really Jennifer's) racquet back to her room and discovers the gems in the hollowed-out handle. She hears someone at the door who quietly turns the knob and attempts to enter. But Julia has pushed furniture against the door to prevent a murderer from entering. The next day Julia flees the school to tell her story to Hercule Poirot, whom she has heard of through a friend of her mother. The police start to focus on the newcomer, Miss Blanche, but in fact she is not the murderer. Instead, she knows who the murderer is, and makes an attempt at blackmail that backfires when she is also killed. With the school struggling to survive the scandal of two murders, the denouement has arrived. Poirot reviews what the reader already knows, and then explains that Princess Shaista was an impostor: the real Shaista had been kidnapped earlier in Switzerland, and the apparent abduction was actually the imposter's escape from the school. She was the representative of one group of interests who, crucially, did not know where the gems had been concealed. The murderer, however, did know where the jewels were concealed and must have been in Ramat to see Bob Rawlinson hide them. Most of the teachers could not have been there … the exception was Eileen Rich, who was apparently sick at the time but was in fact in Ramat. Jennifer had even recognised her, although she remembered the woman she had seen as a fatter woman. (It later transpires that Miss Rich had been in Ramat for the delivery of an illegitimate child that was stillborn.) Just as it seems that Miss Rich is the murderer, Mrs. Upjohn enters the room having been recalled from her holiday in Anatolia and identifies by face the woman she had seen through Mrs Bulstrode's window: Ann Shapland, who is well known in intelligence circles as a ruthless espionage agent and a mercenary. It was Shapland who had had the room next to Bob Rawlinson at the start of the book. Ann Shapland draws a pistol and Miss Bulstrode steps in front of Mrs. Sutcliffe; Miss Chadwick does the same to protect Miss Bulstrode, and is fatally wounded. It is revealed that Ann Shapland murdered Miss Springer, who caught her while she was searching the Sports Pavilion for the jewels. She also murdered Miss Blanche, who knew her secret and tried to blackmail her. But she did not kill Miss Vansittart, and had a perfect alibi for that night. Miss Vansittart was actually killed by Miss Chadwick, in an unpremedited fit of passion. Miss Chadwick had found Miss Vansittart in the Sports Pavilion the second night, kneeling in front of Shaista's locker, apparently snooping. Miss Chadwick disliked Miss Vansittart and did not consider her a suitable successor for Meadowbank. Miss Chadwick was carrying a sandbag for protection, and here was Miss Vansittart in a perfect position to be coshed from behind. Barely conscious of her actions, she kills her. But she feels immediate remorse, and later throws herself in front of a bullet to save Miss Bulstrode. As Miss Chadwick lies dying, she confesses that she imagined the removal of the widely presumed successor would make Miss Bulstrode change her mind about retiring. So the first and third murders are linked by the same murderer, while the second and third murders are linked by the same method (a sandbag). Shapland used the sandbag to make it seem that the second and third murders were linked, since she had an alibi for the second murder. At the end of the book, Miss Bulstrode reconfirms her decision to make Miss Rich her eventual successor. Poirot turns over the gems to the enigmatic “Mr. Robinson” who, in turn, delivers them to the English woman who has been secretly married to Prince Ali Yusuf. One emerald is returned as a reward to Julia Upjohn.
2299941	/m/0720nz	The Pale Horse	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the following summary, events are not given in strict narrative order. Mark Easterbrook, the hero of the book and its principal narrator, sees a fight between two girls in a Chelsea coffee-bar during which one pulls out some of the other's hair at the roots. Soon afterwards he learns that this second girl, Thomasina Tuckerton, has died. At dinner with a friend, Poppy Stirling mentions something called the Pale Horse that arranges deaths, but is suddenly scared at having mentioned it and will say no more. When Mark encounters the police surgeon, Corrigan, he learns of the list of names found in Father Gorman's shoe. The list includes the names of Mark's godmother, Lady Hesketh-Dubois, who has recently died of what appear to be natural causes, and of Thomasina Tuckerton. He begins to fear that the list contains the names of those dead or shortly to die. When Mark goes to Much Deeping with the famous mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver, to a village fete organised by his cousin, he learns of a house converted from an old inn called the Pale Horse, now inhabited by three modern "witches" led by Thyrza Grey. Visiting houses in the area, he meets a wheelchair-using man, Mr Venables, who has no apparent explanation for his substantial wealth. He also visits the Pale Horse, where Thyrza discusses with Mark the ability to kill at a distance, which she claims to have developed. In retrospect it seems to Mark that she has been outlining to him a service that she would be willing to provide. In the police investigation, there is a witness, Zachariah Osbourne, who describes a man seen following Father Gorman shortly before the murder. Later, he contacts the police to say that he has seen this same man in a wheelchair: it is Venables. When he learns that Venables suffered from polio and would be incapable of standing due to atrophy of the legs, Osbourne is nonetheless certain of his identification and begins to suggest ways that Venables could have faked his own disability. When Mark's girlfriend does not take his growing fears seriously, he becomes disaffected with her. He does, however, receive support from Ariadne Oliver, and from a vicar's wife (Mrs Dane Calthrop) who desires him to stop whatever evil may be taking place. He also makes an ally of Ginger Corrigan, a girl whom he has met in the area, and who successfully draws Poppy out about the Pale Horse organisation. She obtains from her an address in Birmingham where he meets Mr Bradley, a lawyer who outlines to him the means by which the Pale Horse can kill someone for him without breaking the law. With the agreement of Inspector Lejeune and the cooperation of Ginger, Mark agrees to solicit the murder of his first wife, who will be played by Ginger. At a ritual of some kind at the Pale Horse, Mark witnesses Thyrza apparently channel a malignant spirit through an electrical apparatus. Shortly afterwards, Ginger falls ill and begins to decline rapidly. In desperation, Mark turns to Poppy again, who now mentions a friend (Eileen Brandon) who resigned from a research organisation called CRC (Customers' Reactions Classified) that seems to be connected with the Pale Horse. When Mrs Brandon is interviewed, she reveals that both she and Mrs Davis worked for the organisation, which surveyed targeted people about what foods, cosmetics, and proprietary medicines they used. Mrs Oliver now contacts Mark with a key connection that she has made: another victim of the Pale Horse (Mary Delafontaine) has lost her hair during her illness. The same thing happened to Lady Hesketh-Dubois, and Thomasina's hair was easily pulled out during the fight. Moreover, Ginger has begun to shed her own hair. Mark recognises that these are symptoms, not of satanic assassination of some sort, but of thallium poisoning. At the end of the novel it is revealed that Osbourne has been the brains behind the Pale Horse organisation; the black-magic element was entirely a piece of misdirection on his part, while the murders were really committed by replacing products the victims had named in the CRC survey with poisoned ones. Osbourne's clumsy attempt to implicate Venables was his final mistake.
2299978	/m/0720ss	The Clocks	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It is while visiting Wilbraham Crescent one afternoon on his own business that Special Branch agent Colin “Lamb” takes the terrified Sheila into his arms. He is investigating areas connected with crescents or the moon while following up a clue to the route by which classified information is leaving the country. The clue is a note found in a dead agent's pocket; letter M, number 61, and a sketch of a crescent moon are all that is written on a bit of hotel stationery (sketched in the book). At 19 Wilbraham Crescent, home of the blind Miss Pebmarsh, a police investigation begins into the murder. The dead man has a business card in his pocket indicating that the bearer is an insurance salesman called R. H. Curry. Neither the company nor the salesman are real, police learn soon. The clothing reveal nothing else, as all labels have been removed. He was killed by a knife, an ordinary kitchen knife. A colourful group of neighbours is interviewed by Inspector Hardcastle with his friend Lamb in attendance as his note-taking sergeant. The neighbouring homes adjoin the murder site on the street or from the back gardens in this unusually arranged Victorian housing development. The most interesting of the neighbours to Colin is the Ramsey family: the husband popped off for business travel days after his boys came home for the school vacation, as he does frequently for his 'constructional' profession. He is clearly taken with Sheila, an extra motive to aid his friend, the inspector. Things look bleak for Sheila when the aunt who raised her, Mrs. Lawton, is questioned by Hardcastle. Her niece's full name is Rosemary Sheila, but the girl preferred Sheila from age 6. Rosemary is the name on a leather travel clock found at the scene of the murder, but lost before the police gathered up the clocks set to the incorrect time. Frustrated, Colin approaches Hercule Poirot, an old friend of his father, to investigate the case. He challenges Poirot to do so from his armchair as he had always claimed was possible. He leaves the celebrated detective with detailed notes on the investigation thus far. The celebrated detective accepts the challenge, then instructs Colin to talk with the neighbors beyond the initial interviews with Inspector Hardcastle. At the inquest in Crowdean, the medical examiner reveals that the victim had been given a "Micky Finn" (chloral hydrate in alcohol) before he was murdered. After the inquest, Edna Brent, one of Sheila’s fellow secretaries, expresses her confusion at something said in evidence. What she said couldn't be true, she tells the young officer she first encounters. She attempts to draw it to Hardcastle’s attention, but that lower level officer deflects her. Within hours, she is found dead in a telephone box on Wilbraham Crescent, strangled with her own scarf. The dead man's identity proves hard to discover, further frustrating Hardcastle. A letter from a woman called Mrs. Merlina Rival (original name Flossie Gapp) seems the first solid lead. She appears, identifies the dead man as her one-time husband, Harry Castleton, after careful questioning by the Inpsector. In that week, Colin has left Britain on his own case, travelling behind the Iron Curtain to Romania. He returns with the information he needed, but not the person he hoped to find. Following Poirot's advice, Colin seeks to talk with the neighbors. He makes an important discovery in a ten-year-old girl, Geraldine Brown, who lives in the apartment block on the other side of the street. She has been observing the events at Wilbraham Crescent with a pair of opera glasses while confined to her room with a broken leg. She records events of interest. She reveals that a new laundry service delivered a heavy basket of laundry on the morning of the murder. Colin shares his discovery with Hardcastle. Mrs. Rival wrote to the police to state that her late husband had a scar behind his left ear. Meeting her in London, Hardcastle tells her the scar is only a few years old, per medical examination, long after she had last seen him. Upset at this news, she calls the person who involved her in this case. Despite a police "tail" on her to find this link, she is found dead at Victoria tube station, stabbed in the back. Three murders now, the bodies are piling up, and the police are no closer to resolving their case. Hardcastle has one firm fact: Mrs. Rival was hired by the murderer to make the identification she did, and then killed for it. Poirot’s initial view of this case is that the appearance of complexity must conceal quite a simple murder. The clocks are therefore a red herring, as is the presence of Sheila, and the removal of the dead man's wallet, tailor marks in the clothing. Colin updates Poirot on succeeding visits, teasing him for not yet finding the solution. Poirot took a room in a Crowdean hotel to tell Inspector Hardcastle and Colin Lamb what he has deduced. From a careful chronology of events, he deduces what Edna realised. She returned early to the secretarial bureau from lunch the day of the murder because of damage to her shoe, unnoticed by her boss, Miss Martindale. Edna knows that Miss Martindale took no telephone call at the time she testified that she had. Thus only one person had motive to murder poor Edna. From that fictitious call, the boss sent Sheila to Miss Pebmarsh’s house for steno/typing service. Miss Pebmarsh steadfastly denied ever requesting this service. Mrs. Bland, one of the neighbors of 19 Wilbraham Crescent, mentioned she had a sister in the initial interview with Insp. Hardcastle. Poirot deduced the identity of this sister. Miss Martindale, owner of Cavendish Secretarial and Typewriting Bureau, is the sister of Mrs. Bland. Her typing service specialized in readying author's texts for publication, mystery authors and a few writers of seamy romances. The present Mrs. Bland is the second Mrs. Bland, also deduced by Poirot. Mr. Bland said his wife was the sole living relative for her family inheritance — how could she be sole heir and have a sister, at the same time? Mr. Bland married in the war, but his wife was killed overseas in that same war; he remarried soon after, another Canadian woman. The Canadian family of his first wife had disapproved of him, cut off communication with their daughter so thoroughly that they did not know she was dead. Some 16 years later, the first wife was heiress to an overseas fortune, thought to be the last living relative. When news of it reached the Blands, they decided that the second Mrs. Bland must pose as the heiress in order to obtain the money, rather than admit the death. The couple succeeded in fooling the British law firm that sought the heir on behalf of the Canadian firm handling the will. When Quentin Duguesclin, who knew the first wife and her family, decided to look her up in England more than a year later, a plan was laid to murder him. The plan was simple, with additions like the clocks taken from an unpublished mystery story whose author had been a close client of Miss Martindale. She was avaricious and brutal but not imaginative. Mrs. Rival was murdered before she could tell the police who asked her to make the false identification, just as Edna had been killed before she revealed what she inadvertently knew. Mr. Bland and his sister-in-law thought their plan would baffle the police, while Mrs. Bland felt she was a pawn in their schemes, rather than the full partner she was. Mr. Bland took care to dispose of Mr. Duguesclin's passport on a quick trip to Boulogne, which trip he was bold enough to mention to Colin in casual conversation. Again proving Poirot's point that people reveal much in simple conversation. Poirot has assumed this trip, so the man's passport would be found in a country different than where he was murdered, and long after friends and family in Canada had missed him on his vacation in Europe. The missing clock, the one with Rosemary written in faded letters, was traced as well. Colin realized that Sheila had taken it that afternoon, seeing it was her very own clock, mislaid on the way to a repair shop. She tossed it in the neighbor's trash. But she had not mislaid it initially; her boss, Miss Martindale, had taken it as part of her murder plot. Following Poirot's resolution of the motives for these murders, Colin sees his error in reading the note he carries. Turned upside down, it points him to 19 Wilbraham Crescent. Miss Pebmarsh is the center of the ring passing information to the other side in the Cold War, using Braille system to encode their messages. He has decided to marry Sheila and realizes that Miss Pebmarsh is the real mother of his love. A true gentleman, he gives Miss Pebmarsh two hours warning of the net about to close around her, soon to be his mother-in-law. She chose her cause over her child once, and does so again, finding a knife to defend herself. Colin disarms her, and the two wait for the arrest, each secure that their convictions are the true ones. The novel closes with two letters from Inspector Hardcastle to Poirot, telling him police have found all the hard evidence to close the case. Mrs. Bland "cracked" under questioning, and admitted all. The two plots are tied in several points, but one is clever. Colin initially seeks, but did not find, 61 Wilbraham Crescent. That is home to the Blands, who committed the murder that Hardcastle and Poirot want to solve. Initially, the Blands are not suspected in the murder at all, and of no interest to Colin. The murdered body was found in 19 Wilbraham Crescent, a murder in which the owner had no involvement. Instead, it was the home of the person whom Colin sought, center of the spy ring, Miss Pebmarsh. It is important to have human curiosity, to turn the paper every direction. Viewed from the 21st century, well past the Cold War, its flavor and feeling are well captured in this novel.
2300000	/m/0720vj	A Caribbean Mystery	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0463v20": "Cozy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 "Would you like to see a picture of a murderer?", Jane Marple is asked by Major Palgrave whilst on a luxurious holiday in the Caribbean. When she replies that she would like to hear the story, he explains. There once was a man who had a wife who tried to hang herself, but failed. Then she tried again later, and succeeded in killing herself. The man remarried to a woman who then tried to gas herself to death. She failed, but then tried again later and succeeded. Just as Major Palgrave is about to show the picture to her, he looks over her shoulder, appears startled, and changes the subject. The next morning, a servant, Victoria Johnson, finds him dead in his room. Doctor Graham concludes that the man died of heart failure; he showed all the symptoms, and had a bottle of serenite (a drug for high blood pressure) on his table. Miss Marple is convinced that Palgrave was murdered, but needs to see the photograph he was about to show her before seeing something over her shoulder that caused him to stop. She asks Doctor Graham to find it, saying it is a picture of her nephew. Meanwhile, she interviews other people, including Tim and Molly Kendall, the owners of the hotel, Mr Rafiel, an invalid, and Esther Walters, Mr. Rafiel's secretary, Lucky Dyson and her husband and Edward and Evelyn Hillingdon. On the beach when Mr Rafiel is going for a swim, Miss Marple sees Senora de Caspearo, a woman on holiday. She says that she remembers Major Palgrave because he had an evil eye. Miss Marple corrects her that he actually has a glass eye, but she still says that it was evil. Victoria informs the Kendalls that she did not remember seeing the serenite on the man's table when she was tidying up in the afternoon. That night, Victoria is found stabbed. Molly starts having nightmares every night, and Miss Marple investigates why Molly is having nightmares. She finds Jackson in the house looking at Molly's cosmetics, saying that if belladonna was administered to it, then it would cause nightmares. The next night, Tim finds Molly unconscious on the floor, having taken an overdose of sleeping pills. The police are involved, and a cook, Enrico, tells them that he saw Molly Kendall holding a steak knife before going outside. Miss Marple also asks people if Major Palgrave told people about the photo, and other people say that it was not a photo of a wife killer he said, but a husband killer and Miss Marple becomes confused. At night, Tim wakes up the hotel as his wife, Molly, is missing. They find what seems to be her body, in a creek. Miss Marple arrives and tells them that it is not Molly, but Lucky; the two resemble one another. Miss Marple rudely wakes Mr Rafiel at night and tells him that they must prevent another death. They go to Tim and Molly Kendall's house and find Tim asking Molly to drink some wine as it will soothe her down. Miss Marple takes it away from him and gives it to Rafiel, saying that there was a deadly narcotic in it. She explains that Tim Kendall is the wife killer that Major Palgrave had a photo of, but saw him over Miss Marple's shoulder. Miss Marple thought that he saw someone on the right, where the Hillingdons and the Dysons were coming up the beach, but she remembered that he had a glass eye so could not see on his right, but only on his left where Tim and Molly were sitting. Tim was planning to kill his wife, but Major Palgrave recognized him and so had to be killed, and Victoria remembered the serenite so she was killed. Tim put belladonna in Molly's cosmetics to have a reason for her to commit suicide. When Molly accidentally took the sleeping pill overdose, Tim saw his chance and asked her to meet him by the creek. Molly, on her way to the meeting, had a scary vision from the belladonna and wandered off. Tim saw Lucky waiting there and mistook her for Molly and killed her. He was about to poison her when Miss Marple came in. Esther Walters suddenly falls to Tim's knees and says that Tim isn't a killer. Tim shouts at her, asking whether she wants to get him hanged. We learn that Tim was planning to marry Esther, after Molly's death, because he had heard that she was going to inherit a large sum of money from Mr Rafiel. In the epilogue, we see Miss Marple taking her plane back to England, surrounded by her friends from the hotel.
2300127	/m/07215k	Third Girl	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Poirot's acquaintance, the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver, provides him with a number of key clues in the novel, beginning with the identity of the girl, Norma Restarick, whom she had met at a party. Mrs. Oliver and Poirot begin to investigate Norma, but soon find that she has apparently gone missing. Mrs. Oliver meets the girls with whom she shares a flat at 67 Borodene Mansions: Claudia Reece-Holland (who turns out to be secretary to Norma's father) and Frances Cary, an artsy girl with long, dark hair that falls across her face. Neither has seen Norma recently. Poirot (visiting her paternal great uncle’s home in Long Basing) finds that her father and stepmother also have no idea where she has gone. Poirot does meet David Baker, Norma’s boyfriend, in the house, and sees that Norma’s stepmother, Mary, is highly annoyed to discover him there. Poirot also meets Norma’s paternal great-uncle, Sir Roderick Horsfield, who is elderly and has poor eyesight. Norma’s father, Andrew, has been staying with Sir Roderick since returning from Africa, where he had made a vast fortune. Mrs. Oliver provides a second essential clue when she happens across David and Norma in a café. She telephones Poirot, who comes to meet Norma, while she herself tracks David to a dingy artist’s studio, where Norma’s flatmate Frances is posing as a model. Leaving the studio Mrs. Oliver is knocked unconscious. Meanwhile, Norma awakens to find herself in the safe keeping of Stillingfleet, having apparently thrown herself under an oncoming car. In a red herring that is easily spotted by those who recognise the doctor from an earlier meeting with Poirot, it seems that Stillingfleet may have kidnapped Norma. In fact, Poirot has hidden her from danger, and she is not seen again for much of the novel. Andrew Restarick employs Poirot to track her down, and is insistent that the police are not to become involved. Sir Roderick also contacts Poirot seeking help. He has lost letters written during the Second World War by a third party, which would now cause embarrassment should they be made public. Poirot’s attention attaches itself to Sir Roderick’s personal assistant, Sonia, who has apparently been passing secrets to a representative of the Herzogovinian Embassy at Kew Gardens. This is all a red herring, however: Poirot hints to Sonia that he knows of her espionage activities, and she abandons them in order to marry Sir Roderick instead at the end of the novel. Mrs. Oliver now provides Poirot with another key clue: she has heard while at Borodene Mansions that a woman has committed suicide by throwing herself out of the window of Flat 76. This, Poirot infers, must be the murder that Norma believed herself to have committed. Investigating the dead woman, he discovers that her real name was Louise Carpenter: also the name of a woman with whom Andrew Restarick had been in love many years earlier. Mrs. Oliver later even provides Poirot with the draft of a letter from Louise to Andrew in which she attempted to make contact once more: an item that had providentially come into her possession early in the novel when it fell from a drawer. Amongst other clues on which Poirot focuses, there are several that are only explained at the end of the book. Mary Restarick wears a wig, to which the reader’s attention is repeatedly drawn by the fact that Mrs. Oliver’s hairpieces are often mentioned as a plot device: indeed, Mrs. Oliver alters her hair in order to be in disguise when she sees Norma and David in the café. Also, Poirot notices that there is a pair of portraits of Andrew Restarick and of his first wife (Norma’s mother) in their home; why is Mary Restarick apparently content to have a picture of her predecessor on display, and why does Andrew later split the set in order to have his own portrait in his office? Stillingfleet contacts Poirot to say that Norma has walked out on him unexpectedly. She has seen a message in the personal column of a newspaper calling her to the flat, where she is discovered by Frances Cary standing over the dead body of David Baker with a knife, the murder weapon, in her hand. Norma immediately claims responsibility for the murder to a neighbour, Miss Jacobs. Norma has, however, been subjected to a cocktail of drugs intended to disorient her and make her susceptible to the suggestion that she is a murderer. In the denouement Poirot reveals that the man posing as Andrew Restarick is an impostor, Robert Orwell, who has taken his place after the real Restarick died in Africa. Orwell has persuaded David Baker to paint a fake painting in style with the original one, which establishes to anyone who questions it that the new “Restarick” had looked much the same fifteen years earlier when the pair was painted. Mary Restarick, meanwhile, has been leading a double life, as both Mary and as Frances Cary, whom she could become by changing wigs. Their imposture, however, could be revealed by two people: by David Baker, who had taken to blackmailing Orwell over the picture; and Louise Carpenter, who knew Restarick too well to be fooled by Orwell. The murder plot involved killing both of them, and convincing Norma that she was the killer. Norma had never in reality been in Louise’s flat: they simply switched the 7 and the 6 on the door of her own flat. All along the “third girl” in the flat on whom attention should have been focused has been, not Norma, but Frances. At the end of the novel, Stillingfleet, who has staunchly defended Norma’s innocence even when it was most in question, is rewarded by her agreeing to marry him. As Mrs. Oliver realises, Poirot has planned this happy ending all along.
2300163	/m/07218q	Endless Night	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Ambitious young Michael Rogers - the narrator of the story - falls in love with Fenella Guteman (Ellie) the first time he sets eyes on her in the mysterious yet scenic 'Gipsy's Acre', complete with its sea-view and dark fir trees. Before long, he has both the land and the woman, but rumors are spreading of a curse hanging over the land. Not heeding the locals' warnings, the couple take up residence at 'Gipsy's Acre', leading to a devastating tragedy.
2300253	/m/0721h1	Passenger to Frankfurt	Agatha Christie		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sir Stafford Nye's flight home from Malaya takes an unexpected twist when the bored diplomat is approached in an airport by a woman whose life is in danger, he agrees to lend her his passport and boarding ticket. Suddenly, Stafford has unwittingly entered a web of international intrigue, from which the only escape is to outwit the power-crazed Countess von Waldsausen who is hell-bent on world domination through the manipulation and arming of the planet's youth, which brings with it what promises to be a resurgence of Nazi domination. Unwittingly the diplomat has put his own life on the line; when he meets the mystery woman again she is a different person and he finds himself drawn into a battle against an invisible and altogether more dangerous enemy
2300302	/m/0721l6	Nemesis	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Miss Marple receives a post card from the recently deceased Mr Jason Rafiel, a millionaire whom she had met during a holiday on which she had encountered a murder, which asks her to look into an unspecified crime; if she succeeds in solving the crime, she will inherit £20,000. Rafiel, however, has left her few clues, not even when or where the crime was committed and who was involved. Miss Marple's first clue is a tour of famous houses and gardens of Great Britain, arranged for her by Mr. Rafiel prior to his death. She is accompanied on the trip by fourteen other people, at least one of whom she suspects to be related to her enquiries. She learns that one of her companions, Elizabeth Temple, is the retired headmistress of the school which a girl who was engaged to Rafiel's ne'er-do-well son, Michael, attended. Another member of the tour group, Miss Cooke, is a woman she had previously met and discussed gardening with. Her next clue comes in the form of a woman named Lavinia Glynne; Rafiel had written to Mrs. Glynne and her two sisters before his death, suggesting that Miss Marple spend the most physically challenging few days of the tour with them. Miss Marple accepts Lavinia's invitation, assuming it to be the next part of Mr Rafiel's instructions. She then meets Lavinia's sisters, Clotilde and Anthea Bradbury-Scott and immediately feels there is something odd about Anthea. On talking to the servant, Miss Marple learns that the girl engaged to Michael Rafiel had been adopted by Clotilde after the death of her parents. On the morning of her return to her party, Miss Marple is told by another member of the tour group that Miss Temple had been knocked unconscious by a rockslide during their hike of the previous day, and was lying in a coma in hospital. The group stays over an extra night to wait for news from the tour guide about Miss Temple's health. It turns out that Professor Wanstead, a pathologist and psychologist interested in the different types of criminal brains, had been instructed by Mr Rafiel to go on the tour. He had examined Michael Rafiel at the request of the head of the prison where Michael was incarcerated; he came to the same conclusion as his friend: Michael was not capable of murder. He also tells her how uninterested Michael's father seemed. Professor Wanstead then takes Miss Marple to see Miss Temple; in a moment of consciousness, Miss Temple had asked for Miss Marple. Miss Temple wakes only long enough to tell Miss Marple "search for Verity Hunt", and dies that night without reviving again. The three sisters extend their invitation to Miss Marple when she returns to the tour, and she promptly accepts. That night, she discovers that Verity was the girl Clotilde had adopted. After the inquiry into Miss Temple's death, Miss Marple is visited by Archdeacon Brabazon, who was a friend of Miss Temple's. He then tells Miss Marple that he was going to marry Verity Hunt and Michael Rafiel, but had been sworn to secrecy by Verity. While he disapproved of the secrecy and of Verity marrying Michael, he agreed to marry them because he could see that they were in love. He was most surprised when neither turned up for the wedding. Miss Marple decides to stay another few nights with the three sisters when the tour moves on. Professor Wanstead travels to London by train on an errand for Miss Marple. Miss Barrow and Miss Cooke decide they would like to visit a nearby church. Later that evening, Miss Marple talks with the sisters about what she thinks may have happened and, while they are doing so, Miss Barrow and Miss Cooke appear, to talk to Miss Marple. They stay for a time and are then invited back for coffee that evening. As they talk about Miss Temple, Miss Marple suggests that Joanna Crawford and Emlyn Price pushed the boulder, and their alibis are mere fabrication. As they get ready to leave, Miss Cooke suggests that the coffee wouldn't suit Miss Marple, as it will keep her up all night and Miss Marple instead asks for some warm milk. The two ladies soon depart, though each forgets an item and has to return for it. At three o'clock the next morning, Clotilde enters Miss Marple's room. Miss Marple reveals that she knows that Clotilde murdered Verity and hid her in the now-destroyed greenhouse, because she could not stand to see Verity love someone else. She also reveals that she knows that Clotilde killed another girl, Nora Broad, merely in order to (mis)identify the body as Verity's and thus throw suspicion on Michael Rafiel. Just as Clotilde advances toward her, Miss Marple blows on a whistle, which brings Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow—they are bodyguards employed by Mr. Rafiel to protect Miss Marple. Michael Rafiel is set free. Miss Marple collects her 'fee'.
2300352	/m/0721pf	Postern of Fate	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Now in their seventies (though the authoress never states their age clearly), Tommy and Tuppence move to a quiet English village, looking forward to a peaceful retirement. But, as they soon discover, their rambling old house holds secrets. Who is Mary Jordan? And why has someone left a code message in an old book about her 'unnatural' death? Once more, ingenuity and insight are called for as they are drawn into old mysteries and new dangers.
2300924	/m/07237c	Exultant	Stephen Baxter		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Exultant is set in Baxter's "Xeelee Sequence" twenty thousand years into the Third Expansion of Mankind, "a titanic project undertaken by a mankind united by the Doctrines forged by Hama Druz after mankind's near extinction." The human-supremacist Interim Coalition of Governance has conquered almost the whole Milky Way &mdash; all but the alien Xeelee concentrated at the galactic core around a supermassive black hole called Chandra. The mysterious Xeelee are far more advanced but less numerous than the humans, and the war has been at a stalemate for three millennia even though the entire Coalition has been directed toward the war effort and ten billion humans die at the front every year. In a war fought with faster-than-light technology (equivalent to time travel), each side has foreknowledge of the other's actions and can develop counter-measures to plans before they are made. Pirius is a fighter pilot stationed at the front. When a battle turns to disaster for the Coalition forces, he disobeys suicide orders to stand and fight, choosing instead to risk survival. In a desperate gamble to outrun a pursuing Xeelee, Pirius captures a Xeelee fighter for the first time in history. Returning to base via FTL travel, he arrives two years previous to the battle, when his younger self is still a cadet. Rather than being lauded as a hero, both instances of Pirius are court-martialed for disobeying orders. Commissary Nilis of the Office of Technological Archival and Control, part of the Commission for Historical Truth, defends both the older Pirius (whom he calls "Pirius Blue") and the younger one ("Pirius Red") but loses the trial. Pirius Blue is sent to a penal unit at the front as a foot soldier, and Pirius Red is remanded to the custody of Commissary Nilis, who has plans for the fruits of Pirius Blue's battlefield victory. Using the Xeelee fighter and the innovative tactics that saved Pirius Blue, he starts to plan an unheard of assault on the Xeelee's primary stronghold at Chandra itself. While Nilis and his new team struggle to confront ossified government and military institutions, they try to understand and to develop new and sometimes alien technologies: FTL computers, a gravastar shield to protect them from FTL foreknowledge, and a black hole gun, capable of disrupting a supermassive black hole's event horizon. Meanwhile, in the course of his new duties to Commissary Nilis, Pirius Red is practically taken on a tour of the Solar system and some of the Coalition's most scandalous secrets, rife with references to events from previous books in the Xeelee sequence. As Nilis's project nears completion, it transpires that the Chandra black hole is home to not only the Xeelee, but a host of other organisms, many of which are based on exotic physics and non-baryonic matter. Regardless, the assault on the black hole continues despite protestations from Nilis. After a brutal fight to reach the surface of the black hole, the team commence their assault, causing the Xeelee to abandon it (and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy) to prevent humanity from harming the black hole's inhabitants. After the assault, the protagonists realise that the Coalition is unlikely to remain intact, now that the war with the Xeelee is no longer present to hold it together. Luru Parz, one of the team, realises that the Xeelee will eventually return, and returns to Earth to ready its defences for when the return happens.
2301984	/m/0726fk	The Boat of a Million Years	Poul Anderson	1989-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows a group of ten immortals from the ancient past to the semi-distant future. Most of the novel follows the various immortals throughout their lives as they try to find others like themselves, avoid being killed, and remain quiet about their gift. Gradually, the immortals begin to meet across the world and form a family of sorts. After sharing their secret of immortality to the rest of humanity, the ensuing years result in a human culture they no longer relate to or fit in with. Consequently, they create and crew a starship to explore new civilizations within the galaxy.
2302047	/m/0726lr	Zadig, ou La destinee	Voltaire	1747		 Zadig, a good-hearted, handsome young man from Babylonia, is in love with Sémire and they are to marry. Sémire, however, has another suitor: Orcan wants her for himself. Zadig tries to defend his love from Orcan's threat, but his eye is injured in the process. This injury abhors Sémire, causing her to depart with his enemy. Shortly after, Zadig makes a full recovery and falls into the arms of another woman - Azora - with whom he is married, but who promptly betrays him. Disillusioned with women, Zadig turns to science but his knowledge lands him in prison, the first of several injustices to befall him. Indeed, the conte derives its pace and rhythm from the protagonist's ever-changing fortunes which see him rise to great heights and fall to great lows. Upon his release from prison, Zadig falls into favour with the king and queen of Babylonia and is eventually appointed prime minister; in this role he proves himself to be a very honest man, looked upon favourably by the king, as he passes fair judgements on his citizens unlike the other ministers who base their judgements on the people's wealth. He is forced to flee the kingdom, though, when his relationship with king Maobdar is compromised: Zadig's reciprocated love for queen Astarté is discovered and he worries that the king's desire for revenge might drive him to kill the queen. Having reached Egypt, Zadig kills an Egyptian man while valiantly saving a woman from his attack on her. Under the law of the land, this crime means that he must become a slave. His new master, Sétoc, is soon impressed by Zadig's wisdom and they become friends. In one incident, Zadig manages to reverse an ancient custom of certain tribes in which women felt obliged to burn themselves alive with their husbands on the death of the latter. After attempting to resolve other religious disputes, Zadig enrages local clerics who attempt to have him killed. Fortunately for him, though, a woman that he saved (Almona) from being burned intervenes so that he avoids death. Almona marries Sétoc, who in turn gives Zadig his freedom and then he begins his journey back to Babylonia in order to discover what has become of Astarté. En route, he is taken captive by a group of Arabs, from whom he learns that king Moabdar has been killed, but he does not learn anything of what has become of Astarté. Arbogad, the leader of the group of Arabs, sets him free and he heads for Babylonia once more, equipped with the knowledge that a rebellion has taken place to oust the king. On this journey he meets an unhappy fisherman who is about to commit suicide as he has no money, but Zadig gives him some money to ease his woes, telling us that source of his own unhappiness is in his heart, whereas the fisherman's are only financial concerns. Zadig prevents him from committing suicide and he continues on his way. Zadig then stumbles upon a meadow in which women are searching for a basilisk for their lord who is ill, ordered by his doctor to find one of these rare animals to cure his sickness. The lord has promised to marry the woman who finds the basilisk. While there, Zadig sees a woman writing "ZADIG" in the ground, and he identifies her as Astarté. His former lover recounts what happened to her since Zadig fled Babylonia: she lived inside a statue when he left, but one day, she spoke while her husband was praying before the statue. The king's country was invaded and both Astarté and his new wife were taken prisoner by the same group, and the king's wife agrees to formulate a plan along with Astarté to help her escape so that she would not have a rival for the king. Astarté ends up with Argobad, the very same robber that Zadig encountered, who then sold her to Lord Ogul, her current master. In order to secure Astarté's release from Ogul, Zadig pretends to be a physician. He offers Lord Ogul to bring him a basilisk if he grants Astarté her freedom; instead of providing the basilisk, the lord is tricked into taking some exercise, which is what he really needs to cure him from his illness. Astarté returns to Babylonia where she is pronounced queen before a competition begins to find her a new king. Zadig triumphs in the contest which takes place between four anonymous knights, but one of the losing competitors steals Zadig's armour before the winner is revealed, and falsely claims victory. Zadig bemoans his fate, thinking that he will never be happy. While wandering on the banks of the Euphrates, Zadig encounters a hermit reading "the book of destinies", and he agrees to stay with him for a few days. The hermit claims that he will teach Zadig lessons in life: in one such incident, the pair go to an opulent castle and are treated well, but the hermit steals a gold sink; afterwards, they visit the house of a miser and are pushed to leave, but the hermit gives the miser the gold sink. The aim, he tells Zadig, is that the hospitable man at the castle will learn not to be as ostentatious and vain, and the miser will learn how to treat guests. In another, the hermit throws a fourteen year-old boy into a river, drowning him, as he claims that Providence tells that he would have killed his aunt within a year, and Zadig within two. The hermit then reveals his true identity as the angel Jesrad, and opines that Zadig, out of all men, deserves to be best informed about Fate. Jesrad states that wickedness is necessary to maintain the order of the world and to ensure that good survives. Nothing happens by chance, according to the angel: Zadig happened upon the fisherman to save his life, for example. Zadig should be submissive to Fate, he continues, and should return to Babylonia, advice which he follows. Surprisingly regarding Voltaire's hostility towards religions, this passage is based on one of the suras of the Quran: Sura The Cave (Al-Kahf), S. 18; V. 60-82, when Moses follows a mysterious character, endowed with great knowledge, through his journey. On his return, the final part of the challenge to be king is taking place: the Enigmas. Having solved the Enigmas with consummate ease, Zadig proves that it was he that won the first contest. Zadig marries Astarté, is crowned king, and rules over a prosperous kingdom.
2303285	/m/0729_9	Galaxy of Fear: Ghost of the Jedi	John Whitman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Tash, Zak, and their uncle Hoole are fleeing from the threat of the Imperial scientist Borborygmus Gog. There seems to be safe refuge on Nespis 8, an abandoned space station. This place also once housed a Jedi library. According to the group's ally, Deevee, the library is still there, along with the ghost of a Jedi. The station also holds the hope to stopping Gog and a threat far worse than a disturbed Jedi spirit.
2303632	/m/072bns	Headhunter	Timothy Findley		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The novel is set in a dystopic Toronto, Ontario buffeted by a mysterious plague called sturnusemia, which is believed to be carried by starlings. Against this backdrop, a schizophrenic spiritualist "of intense but undisciplined powers", Lilah Kemp, accidentally sets Kurtz free from page 92 of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and is forced to find a Marlow to defeat him. Kurtz becomes head of the Parkin Psychiatric Institute (based on the real Clarke Institute of Psychiatry) and travels among the city's elites, including a "Club of Men" which is in fact a child pornography ring. Marlow, meanwhile, is a staff psychiatrist at the Parkin. Although the reader is clearly meant to see the parallels between Findley's Kurtz and Marlow and Conrad's original characters, the book is deliberately ambiguous about whether Lilah Kemp has really performed this act of literary magic, or is merely crazy enough to think she has.
2304345	/m/072d05	The Cookie Monster	Vernor Vinge	2004	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction"}	 The story begins following the first day of Dixie Mae Leigh's job as a customer support employee at a fictional company called Lotsatech. She receives an insulting and mysterious email and, in a fit of rage, decides to find out who sent it. She and a fellow employee Victor search the Lotsatech campus looking for the author of the email, following clues in the email header. They meet up with Ellen, a grad student in computer science, who decides to try to help Dixie Mae. While they talk, several mysteries arise and convince them that the email may be a kind of warning about something going on at Lotsatech involving a professor named Gerry Reich, who seems to be involved in all the projects on the campus. Ellen finds another clue in the email leading the three to another building where, to their utter astonishment, a second Ellen appears. The only explanation of this is that they are being simulated by a computer. Further clues from another person in the building lead them to an underground lab where they find two researchers working on improving methods of producing and preserving Bose-Einstein Condensates. When Dixie Mae and the Ellens reveal that they are all actually simulations, the researchers explore the email and find a clue that leads them to a 'cookie', a file that is passed from each iteration to the next with messages from the centuries of time they have been simulated over and over. They also find out that it was actually Dixie Mae herself who wrote the email in order to make it as offensive as possible to herself, allowing each iteration of the researchers to access the cookie. The story ends with a sad Dixie Mae realizing she can't do anything herself to stop the endless cycle they are all in, but through the passing of information and ideas from one iteration to the next someday they will have the ability to stop the simulations.
2305280	/m/072gkw	By the Pricking of My Thumbs	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In Sunny Ridge, the nursing home where Tommy Beresford's Aunt Ada lives, resident Mrs. Lancaster stirs up worry among those in charge with her bizarre, disjointed ramblings about 'your poor child' and 'something behind the fireplace'. Intrigued, Tuppence Beresford conducts an investigation when Aunt Ada dies.
2306716	/m/072l3n	Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda	David Michaels	2005-11-01	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Taking place almost a year after the first novel, the plot picks up with Third Echelon attempting to search and bring to justice the members of The Shop, an international arms dealing ring that played a large part in the first novel. While Sam Fisher is working to collect information on The Shop in Ukraine and Russia, Third Echelon is continuing its investigation into how the Shop had previously managed to gain the identity of a number of Splinter Cells and murder them, another plot element from the first book. However, when a German scientist named Jeinsen, who had defected to the United States from East Germany long ago, goes missing and then reappears dead in Hong Kong, heads begin to turn. Jeinsen had developed a new submarine vehicle for the United States Navy, that could theoretically carry a nuclear weapon. Sam Fisher is sent to learn why the scientist was in Hong Kong and who killed him; it is suspected that a local group of Triads named the Lucky Dragons had involvement. What Third Echelon does not yet realize is that Jeinsen, the Lucky Dragons, The Shop, and a traitor inside their own government are all part of a much larger picture involving a rogue Chinese general named Lan Tun, with ambitions to invade and conquer Taiwan. With Sam Fisher not even aware that he is the world's only hope of stopping an international crisis, he has to balance his job and a new romantic relationship with his Krav Maga instructor Katia Loenstern. Despite Sam's best efforts, Katia is killed by a Russian Mafiya sniper hired by The Shop to assassinate Sam Fisher. Ultimately, General Tun threatens to use the submarine vehicle to detonate an MRUUV (a very deadly nuclear bomb) off the coast of California, destroying LA with a massive tsunami, unless America abandons Taiwan when it is invaded by China. Fisher manages to foil the plot, and all the conspirators involved including the traitor, the general, and the Shop are viciously gunned down. The attack on Taiwan is a failure, as the Taiwanese military, with backup from the United States Navy, fends off the invading forces in a matter of hours.
2307799	/m/072p6l	In The Garden of Iden	Kage Baker	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Mendoza tells how she is snatched as a child from the Inquisition in Spain, having first been sold by her real parents to some 'noble Christians' who want her for pagan rites, but are instead arrested. In prison she is called Mendoza, after the name used by the pagans. She does not remember ever having a name of her own before that, her parents simply calling her "daughter" (hija in Spanish). She does not even know her family name, or the name of her village. One of the Inquisitors is Joseph, a cyborg, who is able to deliver her to his fellow agents for 'augmentation'. Fifteen years later she returns to Spain for her first mission. Although she trained as a botanist and wants to go the New World, she has to spend time in Europe on an expedition to England. She finds that the expedition leader is Joseph, the cyborg who saved her. He is about 20,000 years old, having been recruited from the Basque region as a child when his village was massacred. Joseph is a Facilitator, a 'fixer', a top agent. He is also world-weary, cynical and irreverent. His passion is his work, like all the cyborgs, but he also has a deep-seated hatred of religious fanaticism, partly because his parents were killed by a cult, partly because of what he has seen in his long life. The group also includes Nefer, whose specialty is farm animals, and Flavius, a technician. The mission is to travel to England as part of the entourage of Prince Philip of Spain, who is going to marry Queen Mary. Then they will go to the estate in Kent of Sir Walter Iden, who has been persuaded to let them sample rare plants from his garden. Mendoza is not pleased by all this. She is already deathly afraid of all 'mortals' as she calls them, and is further dismayed by the prospect of going to cold, wet, violent, disease-ridden England. When they arrive, without Flavius who stays in London, two things quickly change her mind. One is a hedge of Ilex tormentosum, or Julius Caesar's Holly, a plant with tremendous medicinal properties. It is already rare and, in the future, it is extinct. The other is Nicholas Harpole, Sir Walter's secretary. Nicholas is "tall even for an Englishman" and has a horse-like face but is very intelligent and well-educated. She is immediately attracted to him, and Joseph, always on the lookout for an advantage, encourages her to seduce Nicholas. This she does, and settles in for a long stay, having decided that the Garden is full of unusual plants that will take year to catalogue. Nicholas, it turns out, has a dark past, having been a member of an ecstatic Christian cult that practised sexual freedom. Deciding that the cult leader was simply exploiting his fellows, he broke away and began preaching radical ideas, for which he was arrested and put in chains. Although Nicholas is illegitimate, he had well-connected friends and was freed with the warning to sin no more. Mendoza also has problems. As she matures, she finds she emits "Crome radiation", a psychic field which can have unpredictable effects on time and space. This is not supposed to be possible for cyborgs, who are screened for such abilities when recruited. (In a later Company story, we learn that Joseph caused the tests to be fudged because otherwise Mendoza would be tortured to death by the Inquisition.) As the novel progresses, she is increasingly torn by love for Nicholas and the need to lie to him, to play her assigned part. Nicholas himself is suspicious of Mendoza and her companions. Old Sir Walter Iden, having been given rejuvenating treatments by Joseph as payment for their stay, decides to sell the estate and move to London. The entire household is already amazed by his transformation from doddering old man to virile middle-age. Joseph is furious but can do nothing. Then, while the household is being inventoried for the sale, Joseph is damaged in an accident which would have killed a normal human. Though he talks his way out of the immediate situation with his usual skill, he is eventually found out by Nicholas, who sees him doing self-repairs to his internal machinery. Nicholas, having been prepared to elope with Mendoza, confronts her, believing her to be a devil in human form. She admits that, even in her own eyes, she is no longer human. Nicholas flees the estate. Later she learns he has returned to preaching in Rochester, and has been condemned to burn by the new Catholic authorities. She runs away herself to Rochester, but is unable to convince him to recant. At this point Joseph appears, having followed Mendoza. His only purpose now is to prevent her becoming a Company renegade. He denounces Nicholas as just another fake messiah who can only lead others to destruction along with himself. He reveals to Nicholas that he has lived many thousands of years and has yet to see anything resembling the Truth that Nicholas and his like preach. Telling Nicholas that "of all the burnings I've witnessed, this is one I will actually enjoy" he takes Mendoza away. The next morning, they witness Nicholas' death. Returning to the Iden estate, Joseph promises to pull strings and get Mendoza sent to the New World, as she originally wanted. In the final chapter, Mendoza arrives at New World One in the South American jungle. It is a secret Company base run like a luxury hotel, where the servants are Mayans rescued from sacrifices. She settles into her new air-conditioned existence, with an unknowable future.
2307869	/m/072pf0	The King Beyond the Gate	David Gemmell	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The King Beyond the Gate takes place a century after Legend takes place. The Drenai are under the rule of Ceska, a usurper of the throne who over time has become a mad emperor. Ceska rules with an iron fist, with the Joinings and the Dark Templars as his tools of terror. The Joinings are horrifying werebeasts, made by merging man and animal, and the Dark Templars are priests of darkness, with power beyond compare. Thus it falls to one man to overthrow the tyrant--- Tenaka Khan. pl:Król poza bramą
2310110	/m/072txm	The Conversations At Curlow Creek	David Malouf	1996	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place in 1827 on an isolated farm at the fictional locality of Curlow Creek in the mountains of the colony of New South Wales. The two main characters are Michael Adair, an Irish-born officer in the colonial mounted troopers, and Daniel Carney, an Irish escapee and bushranger. Adair had been dispatched from Sydney to oversee Carney's hanging and he arrives at Carney's temporary prison -- a stockman's hut -- on the night before he is due to be executed. The narrative details conversations held by Adair and Carney throughout the cold night as they explore their shared Irish heritage. The novel is also peppered with Adair's reminiscences of his aristocratic childhood in County Galway. As the plot progresses, Adair develops sympathy for Carney despite his criminal past and impoverished background. The novel ends with Adair presumed to have let Carney escape into the bush -- though as with many of David Malouf's novels, the ending is ambiguous and the reader does not know for sure the fate of the hero.
2311313	/m/072xdw	The Jew of Linz	Kimberley Cornish			 #The occasion for Adolf Hitler becoming anti-Semitic was a schoolboy interaction in Linz, circa 1904, with Ludwig Wittgenstein #In order to fight the growing power of the Nazis in the 1920s Wittgenstein joined the Comintern #As a Trinity College don, and a member of the Cambridge Apostles, Wittgenstein recruited fellow Apostles Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, all students at Trinity&mdash;as well as Donald Maclean from nearby Trinity Hall&mdash;to work for the Soviet Union. #Wittgenstein was responsible for the secret of decrypting the German "Enigma" code being passed to Joseph Stalin, which resulted ultimately in the Nazi defeats on the Eastern Front and liberation of the remnant Jews from the camps. #Both Hitler's oratory and Wittgenstein's philosophy of language derive from the hermetic tradition, the key to which is Wittgenstein's "no-ownership" theory of mind, described by P. F. Strawson in his book Individuals (1958).
2311622	/m/072yct	Sweet Women Lie	Loren D. Estleman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this episode Walker's ex-wife has a new boyfriend, who she cannot find. She employs Amos Walker in the search, but the new "beau" has a secret life as a government assassin, and that is it what he has got involved in.
2311673	/m/072yjr	Angel Eyes	Loren D. Estleman	1981-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An exotic dancer, Ann Maringer's life is in danger, she is scared and sure someone is out to get her. Ann turns to Amos Walker the irascible private-eye from Detroit but then disappears and Walker is out to find out what happened and where she is.
2313324	/m/073248	The Icarus Agenda	Robert Ludlum	1988-02-22	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A few years before, a tragic "accident" left him with 78 fewer friends. The only loved-one left was Emmanuel "Manny" Weingrass, a world-renowned architect and a somewhat impossible person. In his first year in Congress, there is an uprising in Masqat - a hostage taking. The events remind him of a man known as The Mahdi whom Weingrass said was the reason for the deaths of his 78 friends. He goes to Oman for revenge and comes back victorious. The Mahdi dead and a tragedy averted. A year later, the inheritors of Inver Brass - the resurrected group of influential people, destroyed in the events of the Chancellor Manuscript, who had been tracking him ever since he went on the Oman operation through a specially gifted ICT specialist, exposes the truth of Kendrick being involved in Masqat and they reveal this to the world to have Kendrick as Vice-President of the USA, because they consider him to be morally incorruptible. After the revealing, lives are lost and friendships broken, Kendrick is desperately looking for the people who are responsible for turning his life upside-down. But unknown to the Inver Brass there is a traitor in their midst... and this might just be the last straw... Codename Icarus is the last hope to a nation and to a world. The organisation was first mentioned in his 1977 novel The Chancellor Manuscript and is also mentioned in his later novel The Bancroft Strategy.
2314529	/m/07350q	Felidae	Akif Pirinçci	1989	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel begins with Francis, a tomcat, moving to a new neighborhood with his owner. Francis soon finds the corpse of Sascha. Bluebeard, a deformed local cat, is convinced that humans are responsible for the death and other recent murders. Francis disagrees with this assessment, convinced that the slash on Sascha's neck was caused by teeth. The discovery of the body marks the start of terrible nightmares that inflict Francis and intertwine him with the murders. Tomcat Deeply Purple is the next victim; while visiting the body, Francis notices that he, like Sascha, was sexually aroused before death. That night, Francis hears yowling from the uninhabited upper floors of his house. He finds a strange religious meeting taking place, in which a cat named Joker preaches about a cat known as Claudandus, who allegedly sacrificed himself and ascended to Heaven. Meanwhile, cats jump into frayed wires and electrocute themselves. Francis accidentally alerts Joker to his presence and is chased by the cult members. He escapes and falls through a skylight. He then meets Felicity, a blind Turkish Angora who has heard the murderer and his victims shortly before their death. Additionally, Felicity says that she sees images in her mind alongside feelings of fear and pain. Francis believes that the images are actually memories retained from childhood. After leaving Felicity's home, Bluebeard takes Francis to Pascal, an intelligent Havana Brown who has learned to use his owner's computer. With it, he has compiled a list of the local cats. Francis learns from Pascal that Felicity has been reportedly murdered. Francis experiences another nightmare that night, inspired by Pascal's words that Felidae deserve admiration and the large portrait of Gregor Mendel in Pascal's house. Unnerved, Francis hunts for rats and finds the journal of Julius Preterius, a scientist who used the house as a laboratory years prior. Francis learns that Preterius was attempting to create a flesh-binding glue with assistants Ziebold and Gray. The glue is unsuccessful, and, desperate, Preterius uses the glue on a stray cat. Due to a genetic abnormality, the glue seals the wounds on the cat. Preterius names the cat Claudandus (one who must or should be sealed) and plans to breed him and replicate the mutation. Preterius descends into madness, but continues with his project long after funding ceases. The journal's last entry reveals that Preterius had heard Claudandus speak to him and was planning to free the cat. Francis later encounters the strange Persian Jesaja, who alludes to escaping from Preterius' lab and proclaims to be the Guardian of the Dead. He lives in ancient catacombs, keeping a tomb housing hundreds of cat skeletons. Jesaja says that he serves "the Prophet" (Claudandus), who delivers corpses for him to guard. That night, Francis experiences another dream, this time involving a white cat who states he is Felidae. He is surrounded by hundreds of others, many of whom Francis recognizes. The white cat invites Francis to join them on a journey to Africa. Francis wakes and answers the call of a female in heat. He inquires about her breed, but she states that her breed has no name and is both old and new. He mates with her and learns from Bluebeard that her race is more wild than standard cats. Francis, Pascal, and Bluebeard continue to research the murders. Their new data suggests that the murderer has been active since the demise of Preterius and has killed approximately 450 cats. Joker has gone missing and cannot be located. The three present this information to the local cats and Pascal presents a logical explanation that places the blame on Joker. The crowd is placated, but Francis is not; he visits Joker's home. He finds the cat dead among porcelain statues. Unlike previous murders, there appears to have been no struggle. Francis returns home and reads an encyclopedia entry on genetics, which mentions Mendel as the founder of modern genetics through his experiments on plant hybridization. He realizes that the new-old cats are being specifically bred to bear attributes of their ancient Egyptian ancestors. Francis immediately begins to connect his dreams to the murders, and makes sense of Felicity's past comments: a cat had been attempting to keep standard males from breeding with the special females, and killed them after they failed to comply. He also recalls that Pascal's owner idolizes Mendel, that Pascal offhandedly mentioned his owner's name being Ziebold, and that Pascal spoke of Felidae with yearning. Francis concludes that Pascal is Claudandus, and goes to confront him. He finds a program on the computer that catalogs the new breed's genetics and breeding, as well as the cats killed to keep from contaminating the lines. Pascal reveals himself, explaining that he harbors a deep hatred of humanity due to the suffering inflicted upon him by Preterius. He had killed Preterius and set free the other cats before being rescued by Ziebold. Pascal had wanted Francis to take over the program, hoping that the cats would eventually overthrow the human race. Francis and Pascal begin to battle, with Pascal destroying the computer and setting the house afire in the process. Pascal dies after Francis slits his throat. In the epilogue, Francis states that he never told any others the true identity of the murderer and that Joker's name was eventually cleared. Jesaja was coaxed out of the catacombs and found a home with a bartender. Francis muses that Pascal had succumbed to hatred and lost his innocence and, in the process, became human. He states that all animals have the ability to lose their innocence and humans, who descended from animals, still carry a hint of innocence. The novel ends with Francis urging the reader to never cease believing in a world where animals and humans coexist, including those "more sublime and intelligent than the latter--for example, Felidae."
2314554	/m/07352k	Lords of the Starship	Mark S. Geston	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the far future, on an Earth devastated by millennia of war, the Caroline Republic is hostile towards its neighbors although sharing their dire economic straits. Outside the declining remains of civilization lie ruins and wastelands populated by mutants and monsters. It is generally felt that humanity lost its vitality long ago. To a leading politician of the Caroline the aged veteran General Toriman proposes a centuries-long scheme to build the nation by taking control of an ancient shipyard hundreds of miles away which was apparently designed to build spacecraft. Ostensibly, the purpose of the project will be the construction of a spaceship seven miles long called the "Victory" to carry the population of the despairing world to a paradise planet called "Home". In fact, the ship will never be completed, but the effort will revitalize the nation's economy and perhaps restore mankind's missing quality. General Toriman dies and the cynical politicians of the Republic rouse the population to begin the project. The River Road from the Caroline homeland to the Yards is forced with a bloody battle between a Caroline military force and mutants, during which the ghost of the ancient hero Miolnor IV appears to save the day. Work begins on constructing the ship. Despite their antiquity, the Yards' machinery and buildings seem to have been perfectly preserved and materials for the construction of the ship are discovered. Legends say that the fortifications still standing nearby defended human civilization against Dark Powers over the mountains to the west. The magnificent city of Gateway grows in the hills above the Yards while the Victory slowly takes shape. Much of the population of the Caroline moves to the Yards and its society is formally divided into two classes. The Technos supervise construction and are aware of the motivational "myth of the ship" plan while the People believe that the voyage to the planet Home is the actual goal. Some Technos realize that, although Gateway has become rich and prosperous through the Victory project, the Caroline homeland is still as miserable as its neighbors. Before they can act on this knowledge the People revolt, led by a man named Coral who claims truthfully that the Technos have lied and do not intend to complete the Victory. Most of the Technos are killed although one is allowed to bring the news to the Dresau Islands in the eastern sea. The Dresau Navy has a proud tradition as the last surviving remnant of vital humanity and its leader believes the Victory project has a sinister purpose, possibly directed by heirs of the dark power Salasar, which once ruled most of the earth. After almost two centuries of construction, the Victory is completed and the women and children of the People are placed aboard in suspended animation. Led by the Dresau Navy the gathered enemies of Coral's triumphant People attack with their restored ships and scavenged weapons. The defenses of the Caroline Empire are ineffective, and an apocalyptic battle rages about the Yards, with millions fighting. At the height of the battle the sea turns red with blood and the dead of past wars rise in support of the assault. The legendary fortresses fire missiles toward the west. Before any of the men of the People board the Victory it moves down the ways to the sea. It turns its huge engines toward the shore and they ignite, incinerating the fighting armies, ships, Yards, and Gateway. The Victory then redirects the destruction onto itself and its millions of passengers. Balls of fire arrive over the mountains to complete the destruction. When the wreckage of the Yards has cooled, the man who has been called General Toriman, Miolnar IV, and Coral arrives. The Victory project and its opposition have been devised by the heirs of Salasar, which built the allegedly ancient shipyards for the purpose. He signals the completion of the project; the military powers of the east have been destroyed and invasion by those in the west can begin.
2315955	/m/0737ps	The History Boys	Alan Bennett			 The action of the play takes place in Cutlers' Grammar School, Sheffield, a fictional boys' grammar school in the north of England. Set in the early 1980s, the play follows a group of history pupils preparing for the Oxford and Cambridge entrance examinations under the guidance of three teachers (Hector, Irwin and Lintott) with contrasting styles. Hector, an eccentric teacher, delights in knowledge for its own sake, but the headmaster ambitiously wants the school to move up the academic league table; Irwin, a supply teacher, is hired to introduce a rather more cynical and ruthless style of teaching. Hector is discovered sexually fondling a boy and later Irwin's latent homosexual inclinations emerge. The character of Hector was based on the schoolmaster and author Frank McEachran (1900–1975).
2316427	/m/0738q7	Youth in Revolt	C.D. Payne	1993-06	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The book's main protagonist is Nicholas "Nick" Twisp, a 14-year-old boy of above-average intelligence. Nick's life continues like a normal teenager's with his best friend Leroy, a.k.a. Lefty, and his divorced parents George and Estelle. His mother is dating a truck driver named Jerry, who sells a group of sailors a Chevy Nova that dies soon after the sailors get it. In response, the sailors go for revenge. After outsmarting them, Jerry strategically decides to take a vacation, so they all go to a religious mobile home camp. It is there that Nick meets Sheridan "Sheeni" Saunders and his life is turned completely upside down. Through plots to get Sheeni closer to him he ends up with several crimes on his hands and is forced to run from the police. Nick tricks everyone into thinking he went to India, thereby escaping the police. Nick hides out with his sister Joanie and returns with help from his friend in Ukiah, Frank "Fuzzy" DeFalco. He dresses in Fuzzy's late grandmother's clothes, adopting the name Carlotta and a conservative disposition. As Nick does so, he befriends Sheeni and several other people who Nick knew before. While spending the night with Sheeni on Christmas Eve, she reveals to him that she knew from the beginning it was him, not Carlotta. Nick then gets "the best Christmas present a youth could receive," starting a secret relationship with Sheeni. Nick inherits a fortune when an elderly neighbor of Joanie takes a liking to him and decides to put him in her will. When Joanie's neighbor died, Nick is briefly left half a million dollars richer, until his mother's boyfriend, a somewhat corrupt police officer, seizes the money. Faced with homelessness from the loss of the house he had been squatting in, Nick becomes rich beyond belief when an idea of his, a wart watch, makes it big.
2316577	/m/07392n	The Mouse and the Motorcycle	Beverly Cleary	1965	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ralph is a mouse who lives in the run-down Mountain View Inn, a battered resort hotel in the Sierra Nevada of California. Ralph longs for a life of danger and speed, wishing to get away from his relatives, who worry about the mice colony being discovered. One day a boy named Keith Gridley and his family visit the hotel on their way through California. Keith leaves a toy motorcycle on his bedside table, which interests Ralph. While Keith is away, Ralph attempts to ride it, but cannot figure out how to start it. Startled by a telephone ring, he and the motorcycle fall into a metal wastebasket. Keith discovers his missing motorcycle in the wastebasket along with Ralph and the two strike a friendship. Although Ralph's mother worries that he is in contact with humans, Keith shows Ralph how to start the motorcycle--make an engine-like noise--and lets Ralph ride it during the nighttime. While Keith and his family explore California, Ralph recklessly rides the motorcycle through the depths of the hotel. One night he is spotted by Keith's mother, and Mr. Gridley thinks she is imagining things, but she is still sure that she saw a mouse riding a motorcycle. Ralph and the motorcycle are almost sucked up by a maid's vacuum cleaner, but Ralph escapes, riding into a pile of dirty bedsheets. He escapes by chewing holes in the sheets, but, unfortunately, he must leave the motorcycle behind. The management discover the chewed-up bedsheets, resulting in a "war on mice". After Ralph loses the motorcycle Keith loses trust in him, although he still brings the mice colony room service. One night Keith becomes very sick with a high fever, but his parents don't have any more aspirin, nor are able to obtain one until morning. To regain Keith's trust, Ralph searches the hotel for an aspirin tablet, at risk to himself, for the medicine could prove fatal to a small mouse if ingested (In fact, that had caused the death of Ralph's father). His adventures include venturing outside the hotel, being trapped by guests, narrowly escaping an owl, and hatching a plan of adventure which involves Keith's toy ambulance and the elevator. When Ralph succeeds, Keith's health is restored. He agrees to let Ralph keep the motorcycle, which is found by the bellboy, Matt, after he leaves, and Ralph uses the space under the TV set in the lobby to use as a garage; the motorcycle is his to keep.
2318833	/m/073fzp	The Haunter of the Dark	H. P. Lovecraft	1936-12		 The story takes place in Providence, Rhode Island and revolves around the Church of Starry Wisdom. The cult uses an ancient artifact known as the "Shining Trapezohedron" to summon a terrible being from the depths of time and space. The Shining Trapezohedron was discovered in Egyptian ruins, in a box of alien construction, by Professor Enoch Bowen before he returned to Providence, Rhode Island in 1844. Members of the Church of Starry Wisdom in Providence would awaken the Haunter of the Dark, an avatar of Nyarlathotep, by gazing into the glowing crystal. Summoned from the black gulfs of chaos, this being could show other worlds, other galaxies, and the secrets of arcane and paradoxical knowledge; but he demanded monstrous sacrifices, hinted at by disfigured skeletons that were later found in the church. The Haunter of the Dark was banished by light and could not cross a lighted area. The Shining Trapezohedron is a window on all space and time. Described as a "crazily angled stone", it is unlikely to be a true trapezohedron because of the Old Ones' penchant for bizarre non-Euclidean angles. It was created on dark Yuggoth and brought to Earth by the Old Ones, where it was placed in its box aeons before the first human beings appeared. After the passing of the Old Ones, during the final stages of the lower Triassic period, the trapezohedron was salvaged from the ruins of their cyclopean cities by the serpent people of Valusia. Eventually, after the bloody extermination of the serpent people at the hands of the advancing pre-human hordes of Lomar, the device found its way into the possession of the primitive men of Lemuria, Atlantis and in later cycles the Pharaoh Nephren Ka of Egypt until at last it was unearthed and brought to New England. After the death of Robert Blake, who came to grief after discovering the Shining Trapezohedron and deciphering texts about it from ancient evil cults, the artifact was removed from the black windowless steeple where it was found by a Dr. Dexter and thrown into the deepest channel of Narragansett Bay. It was expected to remain there, under the eternal light of the stars, forever; yet, Robert Bloch's sequel, "The Shadow from the Steeple", proved that Nyarlathotep had cheated Dexter, forcing him to peer into the stone and throw the stone into the bay, where the eternal darkness of the depths gave the Haunter the power to remain perpetually free; it used this power to merge with Dr. Dexter and make him one of the world's leading nuclear scientists-in charge of atomic investigation for warfare. Nyarlathotep appears in this story as the "three-lobed burning eye", a huge bat-winged creature, with a burning tri-lobed eye appearing unseen from the Trapezohedron. Blake realizes the horror can only travel in the dark. When a storm and power blackout envelop the city, he scribbles down his findings, concluding the story with his terrified record of what he can only glimpse of the approaching beast. "I see it-- coming here-- hell-wind-- titan-blur-- black wings-- Yog-Sothoth save me-- the three-lobed burning eye..." Lovecraft indicated in his letters with then-young writer Robert Bloch, that the character Robert Blake was an intentionally thinly veiled gesture at killing off one of his friendly correspondents. In 1936, Bloch published story that continued the professional fun, in which Blake did not actually die, but was possessed by Nyarlathotep, and kills off a character based on Lovecraft.
2321966	/m/073pjf	Kangaroo Notebook	Kobo Abe		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 One morning, while pondering the stress of his latest assignment at his uninspiring job, the narrator of Kangaroo Notebook feels an itching on his leg that seems to indicate an unusual hair loss. The next morning he wakes to discover that he is sprouting small radishes on his shins. After battling to be seen in his local medical clinic, he enters a hospital, where a physician prescribes hot-spring therapy in Hell Valley. Hooked to a penile catheter and an IV bottle, the narrator begins a harrowing journey on his hospital bed through the underworld that seems to lie beneath the city streets. Here, he seeks health not so much as he seeks simple explanations for what is happening to him and the strange people he meets: abusive ferrymen, waiflike child demons, vampire nurses, a chiropractor who runs a karate school and works a sideline as a euthanist.
2321970	/m/073pk3	The Face of Another	Kobo Abe		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A plastics scientist loses his face in an accident and proceeds to obtain a new face for himself. With a new 'mask', the protagonist sees the world in a new way and even goes so far as to have a clandestine affair with his estranged wife. There is also a subplot following a hibakusha woman who has suffered burns to the right side of her face. In the novel, the protagonist sees this character in a film; in the film version, this is deliberately obscured.
2321972	/m/073pkv	Inter Ice Age 4	Kobo Abe		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Plot elements include submersion of the world caused by melting polar ice, genetic creation of gilled children for the coming underwater age, and a fortune-telling computer predicting the future and advising humans how to deal with it. Because a similar computer in Moscow is being use to make forecasts of a political nature, an institute of a Tokyo professor decides to avoid politics and try to forsee the future of an individual. A man is picked, apparently at random, only to be murdered before he can be programmed, but the computer can still read his mind. The resulting involvements are complicated by a climactic shift - Inter Ice Age 4 - which puts earth under water.
2323399	/m/073swq	The King of the Golden River	John Ruskin	1851	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The richness of the Treasure Valley, high in the mountains of Stiria or Styria, southeastern Austria, is lost through the evil of the owners, the two elder, "Black Brothers," Hans and Schwartz, who in their foolishness mistreat Southwest Wind, Esquire, who in turn floods their valley, washing away their "liquid assets," and turning their valley into a dead valley of red sand. This personified wind has the power to keep things this way through his influence with other winds that had caused the valley's unique fertility. Forced into a trade other than farming Hans and Schwartz become goldsmiths. They cruelly melt their younger brother Gluck's prize heirloom, a golden mug, which consists of the head of a golden bearded man. This action releases the King of the Golden River for Gluck to pour out of the crucible as a finely dressed little golden dwarf. The Golden River is one of the high mountain cataracts, that surround the Treasure Valley. Gluck fancies that it would be good if that high majestic river would actually be what it appears in the setting sun, a river of gold. The dwarfish king disagrees with Gluck, but offers a proposition: if someone were to climb up to the source of the river and throw into it at least three drops of "holy water," it would become for that person only a river of gold. That person must do it on his first and only attempt or be overwhelmed by the river to become a black stone. Hans and Schwartz desire to take the challenge, duel each other with the result that Schwartz is thrown into jail for disturbing the peace. Hans, who had the good sense to hide from the constable, steals holy water from the church and climbs up the mountains to the Golden River. He has a hard time of it on a glacier and gets away without his provisions and only his flask of holy water. Overcome with thirst Hans is forced to drink from this flask, knowing that only three drops are all that's needed. Along the path, Hans comes across three prostrate individuals dying of thirst, a puppy, a fair child, and an old man. Hans satisfies his own thirst while denying the three needy individuals. The "demeanor" of the surroundings of his journey turns bleak and inauspicious, climaxing in Hans being transformed into a black stone once he has hurled the holy water flask into the Golden River. Gluck secures the release of his brother Schwartz, who, buying his holy water from a "bad priest," eventually fares likewise, spurning in his turn the fair child, the old man, and his brother Hans lying prostrate in his path. The Golden River then acquires another black stone around which to rush and wail. Gluck takes a turn at climbing the mountain. He encounters first an old man walking down the mountain trail who begs water from the flask. Gluck allows him to drink, leaving only a third of the holy water. He then encounters a fair child, lying by the road, whom he allows to drink all but a few drops. Following these unselfish acts, Gluck's path is made bright and pleasant making him feel better than he had in his whole life—no doubt, due to his kindness. He then comes across the prostrate puppy, whom he gives the final drops of the holy water. The puppy turns into the King of the Golden River, who tells Gluck the fate of his two brothers and, thereupon, shakes three drops of dew from a lily into Gluck's flask to throw into the river. Gluck does this, and the Golden River forms a whirlpool where it travels underground and emerges in the Treasure Valley, which then becomes lush and fertile once more. Gluck the new owner is a wealthy man, who never turns away the needy from his door. Ever afterward, though, the people show and tell travelers the tale of the two black stones in the Golden River, known as The Black Brothers.
2323503	/m/073t19	Asterix and the Normans				 The story begins with Vitalstatistix receiving a missive from his brother Doublehelix in Lutetia (modern-age Paris) who wants his aid in making a man of his teenage son, Justforkix. Justforkix arrives in a sports car-like chariot, and comes across as a happy-go-lucky urbanite with an air of superiority about him. Conflict soon emerges between the city boy and the country folk. The village holds a dance in honour of his arrival but he is unimpressed by the simple traditional way of dancing, snatches Cacofonix's lyre and sings and plays in the manner of Elvix Preslix (the Rolling Menhirs in the English version). Some of the younger villagers soon catch on and dance to this new form. Outraged by this usurpation, Cacofonix tries to show off his own skills, but this of course leads to the break-up of the dance and a knock-out blow from Fulliautomatix. Justforkix on the other hand is impressed and suggests that Cacofonix's talents would be better appreciated in Lutetia. On the whole, though, Justforkix is quickly bored with the village. This changes, however, when a Norman ship arrives. The Normans (actually Vikings from the frozen north) have decided to come to Gaul not for plunder, but for learning: they are fearless to the point of not feeling fear or even understanding the concept. This causes many problems for them, including the contempt of children for parental discipline, the inability to cure hiccups &mdash; which can be cured by giving the person a fright &mdash; and lack of road safety since reckless chariot-drivers show no fear towards the authorities. The main reason for this expedition, however, is that they have heard of people "flying in fear", which they interpret too literally, thinking that this mysterious "fear" will grant them the ability to fly. Unfortunately, the local Gauls fear nothing (except the sky falling on their heads) and they actually welcome the prospect of a fight with the Normans. However, Justforkix is horrified and fearfully decides to return home. Viewing Justforkix as an expert in fear, the Normans kidnap him on his "flight" home so he can teach them the meaning of the concept. Their chief, the fierce Timandahaf, roars at Justforkix to make them feel fear, though paradoxically it is Justforkix who fears them. The youngster's situation is hopeless until Asterix and Obelix come to the rescue. A fight breaks out in which the Normans show no fear whatsoever in spite of the beating they get from the magic-powered Gauls, in contrast to some Romans who reluctantly get involved due to an over-enthusiastic new recruit. Timandahaf brings an end to the battle and explains to the Gauls the reasons he and his men have come and kidnapped Justforkix. In order to teach the Normans fear, Asterix sends Obelix to fetch Cacofonix while remaining behind as a hostage. But Cacofonix turns out to be missing — encouraged by Justforkix's comments and annoyed by the villagers' treatment of him, he has decided to go to Lutetia. Obelix manages to track him down, however, and to persuade him to come back to save his first real fan. Meanwhile, the Norman chief's patience runs out and he tries to force Justforkix to teach them flying by tossing him off a cliff. Just before this can be carried out, Asterix engages the Norman warriors in battle and, seeing him pressed by the Normans, Justforkix suddenly gains the courage to fight as well &mdash; albeit to no visible effect. Just in time, Obelix and Cacofonix turn up to stop the slugfest, and after some scepticism the Normans learn that Cacofonix does indeed have the ability to teach one the meaning of fear: his loud and ear-splitting singing has them scared out of their wits. After having experienced this new emotion, the Normans find out that it does not give them wings but rather shows them the true meaning of courage, something they had always taken for granted. Justforkix himself has learned the meaning of courage thoroughly, making him the pride of his uncle. The story ends with the traditional banquet, but with Cacofonix as guest of honour and Fulliautomatix tied up with rope, his ears filled with parsley. For once their roles are reversed.
2324431	/m/073wf2	003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior	R. D. Mascott	1967	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The plot follows James Bond Junior while he tries to uncover what is going on at Hazeley Hall. He and Sheelagh Smith, his "girlfriend" follow the clues of this mystery, but the information is given to the Commander of the police when James is injured. The Commander ultimately gets the credit for solving the case and threatens James if he says anything.
2324984	/m/073xh6	Kalki	Gore Vidal	1978	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 James J. Kelly, a former soldier in the American military, finds out that the American and Soviet governments are about to conduct tests of a new kind of neutron bomb called the model b or the nC, which will kill every living thing on the planet, leaving it uninhabitable for centuries. The American generals know the cataclysmic effects of conducting these tests but they acquiesce to the tests anyway, ignoring a report provided to the National Security Council which predicts the end of the world if six or more nCs are simultaneously exploded. Mistakenly assured that the Soviets would not explode reciprocating nCs, the generals are unwittingly about to destroy the whole world. James J. Kelly decides to save the human race through an elaborate religious hoax, declaring himself to be Kalki and announcing the end of the world. His secret plan is to kill off everyone in the world except for himself and his wife Lakshmi. These two would then be the last living human couple on the planet. They would be the Adam and Eve to a new human race, giving birth to three sons and six daughters over the next twelve years, who would then intermarry and in about two centuries, the world would be fairly well populated again. In addition to himself and his wife, Kalki decides to bring along three more people to his new world, teachers called Perfect Masters, chosen for their knowledge and the fact that they are all sterile. These three people will teach various fields of science to the new race. Teddy Ottinger will teach engineering, Geraldine O'Connor biology and genetics, and Dr. Giles Lowell medicine. Kalki's wife Lakshmi is herself a physicist, and Kalki is a chemical engineer. Shockingly, Kalki succeeds in carrying out his insane plan and the entire world dies, leaving behind only Kalki, his wife Lakshmi and the three other Perfect Masters. However, Kalki's plans go awry when Lakshmi miscarries the first baby girl and it is learnt that Lakshmi is incapable of having children with Kalki. At this point, the only other male in the group, Dr. Lowell, announces that he never had a vasectomy and is the only one now with whom Lakshmi can conceive a child. It had been his plan all along to be the one to father the new human race with Lakshmi, whom he claims to be in love with. When Dr. Lowell admits his treachery, Kalki kills him. The story ends with a bleak postscript from Kelly/Kalki, forty three years after the apocalyptic plague. In the interim period, Teddy died twenty seven years after the plague and Geraldine (Teddy's lover and Kalki's second consort) died, as has Lakshmi. Kalki has become the last human alive, and with his death, the human species will become extinct. It is implied that simians will inherit the post-apocalyptic world.
2327717	/m/074208	Ilse Witch	Terry Brooks	2000-09-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It has been 130 years since the events of the Heritage of Shannara series, and the Free-born and the Federation are still at war. The story follows a quest organized by Walker Boh, the last surviving Druid. Thirty years ago, the Elven prince Kael Elessedil led an expedition in search of a legendary magic which was said to be the most ancient and powerful in the world. Thirty years later, Kael is found floating in the sea of the Blue Divide; a map is found with him, covered with mysterious symbols. Walker is the only man who can read them. But there is another: the Ilse Witch, a beautiful but twisted young woman who is as practiced in magic as Walker himself. She will stop at nothing to possess the map and the magic it leads to. To stop her, Walker must find the magic first. Thus begins the voyage of the sleek, swift airship, the Jerle Shannara. The company chosen by Walker must fly into the face of unknown terrors while the Ilse Witch and her dark allies pursue. This book marked a new era in the Shannara saga, for it was the first time that Brooks described the use of futuristic technology, including airships as well as robots and lasers from the Old World.
2327770	/m/07423r	The Bear that Wasn't	Frank Tashlin		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A bear settles down for his long winter nap, and while he sleeps the progress of man continues. He wakes up to find himself in the middle of an industrial complex. He then gets mistaken by the foreman for a worker and is told to get to work. To this he responds, "But I'm not a man, I'm a bear". He is then taken to each of his successive bosses, who try to convince him that he is just a "silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat", reaching all the way up to an elderly president of the factory who concludes he cannot be a bear because "all bears live in the zoo". The bear is taken to the zoo, hoping to gain support from his own species, but even the zoo bears claim he is not a bear, because if he was "he'd be behind bars like us". Eventually he concludes that he must be a "silly man", and works hard at the factory to the satisfaction of the foreman and the other bosses. However, winter comes again, and he feels cold. He wishes he knew what a "silly man" would do to get warm. But in the end he finds a cave and enters, feeling comfortable and bear-like once more. As the bear is sleeping, he reflects on the events of the year, as the narrator concludes that because all the bosses and even the zoo bears disbelieved he was a bear, did not make it so. "The truth is he was not a silly man...and he was not a silly bear, either".
2327779	/m/074242	Antrax	Terry Brooks	2001-09-18	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The voyage to find the lost magic takes the companions to the continent of Parkasia. Here, they are split up, and Walker, despite all his plans and his enormous power, finds himself caught and trapped by an unseen force, a supercomputer built by the ancient humans. Antrax was created to store data and information from its time and it is given a duty, an order to protect the information that it holds. However, when the Great War broke out, the last of its creators returned, and gave Antrax its final task: protect the information at all costs, no matter what the price. Antrax then began to build its own arsenal of defence mechanisms: lasers and Creepers. Above Castledown, the crew of the Jerle Shannara find themselves besieged by evil forces, and the Ilse Witch confronts the Druid's protégé, Bek Ohmsford, who claims that she is actually Grianne Ohmsford, and that he is the brother she last saw as an infant - now a young man who carries the Sword of Shannara and wields the magic of the wishsong. Meanwhile, Walker realises that the 'magic' they have been searching for is actually the science of the Old World, stored on Antrax, which could be used to rebuild society with new technology. But there is no practical way to access this information, so Walker chooses to destroy the power-hungry computer, which is quickly becoming a danger to the whole world. However, he is mortally wounded in the process. He dies soon after. It is believed that Antrax was in fact initially known as Oronyx Experimental and appears in The Elves of Cintra.
2327814	/m/07425t	Morgawr	Terry Brooks	2002-09-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Morgawr is a centuries-old sorcerer of unimaginable might, who feeds upon the souls of his enemies. With a fleet of airships and a crew of walking dead men at his command, he is in relentless pursuit of the Jerle Shannara. His goal is twofold: to find and control the fabled 'magic' of Parkasia, and to destroy the Ilse Witch (his disciple) to keep her from using the magic to destroy him. But she has already paid a heavy price for her actions. When Walker Boh persuades the witch to use the Sword of Shannara, she is exposed to its awesome power and forced to confront the truth of her horrifying deeds as the Ilse Witch, causing her to flee deep into her own mind. She has only one protector: her brother Bek, who is determined to redeem her. He does this, and they use their combined magic to destroy the Morgawr. They go home to the Four Lands. But rather than going home with Bek, Grianne Ohmsford will be going now to Paranor, for Walker charged her with a very important task before he died: she is to foster a new Druid order.
2329359	/m/0745tc	Weetzie Bat	Francesca Lia Block		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Weetzie is growing up in L.A. with her mother while her father has moved to New York. She does not like school and tends to avoid making friends until she meets Dirk, the “best-looking guy” in her school, who soon admits that he is gay. They become best friends and often visit Fifi, Dirk’s grandmother. The two friends enjoy "duck-hunting," their term for hunting for boyfriends. Fifi presents Weetzie with a lamp, which contains a genie who promises her three wishes. Weetzie wishes "for a Duck for Dirk, and My Secret Agent Lover Man for me, and a beautiful little house for us to live in happily ever after." She quickly receives a call from Dirk, informing her of Fifi's sudden death, and that Fifi left them her cottage in her will. Dirk soon meets his own "duck", Duck, who moves in with them. Weetzie meets a film director, who introduces himself as "My Secret Agent Lover Man," and requests that she be in one of his films. He comes to see her at work every day, until she finally agrees to his requests. He, too, moves into the house. Things go smoothly until Weetzie announces her desire for a baby. My Secret Agent Lover Man refuses, declaring that the world is too evil to bring more people into it. Dirk and Duck secretly make a pact to get Weetzie pregnant. When My Secret Agent Lover Man learns of their plot and discovers that Weetzie is indeed pregnant, he walks out on them, infuriated by the deception. Weetzie gives birth to a tiny baby girl, Cherokee. My Secret Agent Lover Man returns. Although they are still unsure of the baby's true father, he treats the baby as his own, and he is welcomed back into the family. This peace does not last for long. A strange woman (whom we learn to be a witch) comes to their door, demanding to see "Max" (My Secret Agent Lover Man). He explains that they had been sexual partners during his separation from Weetzie, and that the witch now bears his child. The witch demands money from him for an abortion. The witch does not follow through with this, and leaves her baby on their doorstep, along with voodoo dolls of Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man. While he does not want to keep the child, Weetzie insists that they do so, naming her Witch Baby to settle the matter. While on a night out, the little party notices Christmas decorations set up for a film. Weetzie remarks that it looks like "Shangri-L.A.", providing My Secret Agent Lover Man with his next film. As they progress through the filming (taking place in a surreal alternate reality), they realize that they do not yet have an ending for it. They convince Weetzie to ask her father's opinion, and so she flies to New York with her daughter for a visit. The three tour the city, all the while discussing Charlie's failing health, and the estranged relationship he has with his ex-wife. Weetzie pleads with him to return but he refuses and dies a few days later. They dedicate Shangri-L.A., with his ending, to his memory. One day, Duck comes home crying, locking himself in his room, and refusing to confide even in Dirk. They discover him missing the next morning. He has left a note saying that his friend Bam-Bam is dying (most likely of AIDS), implying that he will never return. The devastated Dirk leaves on a search for his lover, which leads him to San Francisco. Upon meeting once again, they become fully aware of how much they truly mean to one another. They return home the next morning to find their family waiting for them with open arms. Weetzie reflects on their life together, and decides that while "happily ever after" may be the ideal, she is perfectly contented with "happily."
2331158	/m/0749xz	Oms en Série	Stefan Wul		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story, set in the far future, deals with Oms (a play on the French word "hommes," meaning "men"), tiny people from Terre (French for "Earth"), who have been brought by the giant Draags to their home planet, Ygam. Some Oms are domesticated as pets, but others run wild in parks, and are exterminated every 2 Draag years (1 Draag day being roughly equivalent to 45 Earth days). The Draags' treatment of the Oms is ironically contrasted with their high level of technological and spiritual development. The protagonist is a domesticated Om named Terr (short for "terrible") who runs away and joins a group of wild Oms. He has learned some of the Draags' scientific knowledge while in captivity, and uses this to forge a new, equal relationship with the Draags. fr:Oms en série
2332270	/m/074d89	North and South	Elizabeth Gaskell	1855	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0blvpd": "Industrial novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Margaret Hale, 19, happily returns home from London to the idyllic southern village of Helstone after her cousin Edith marries Captain Lennox. She lived nearly 10 years in the city with Edith and wealthy Aunt Shaw to learn to be an accomplished young lady. Margaret, herself, has refused a marriage offer from the captain's brother, Henry, a rising barrister. But her life is turned upside down when her father, the pastor, leaves the Church of England and the rectory of Helstone as a matter of conscience—his intellectual honesty having made him a dissenter. On the suggestion of his old friend from Oxford, Mr. Bell, he settles with his wife and daughter in Milton-Northern, where Mr. Bell was born and owns property. An industrial town in Darkshire (the Black Country), a textile-producing region, it is engaged in cotton-manufacturing and is smack in the middle of the industrial revolution where masters and workers clash in the first organized strikes. Margaret finds the bustling, smoky town of Milton harsh and strange and she is upset by the poverty all around. Mr. Hale, in reduced financial circumstances, works as a tutor and counts as his pupil the rich and influential manufacturer, Mr. John Thornton, master of Marlborough Mills. From the outset, Margaret and Thornton are at odds with each other: She sees him as coarse and unfeeling; he sees her as haughty. But he is attracted to her beauty and self-assurance and she begins to admire how he has lifted himself from poverty. During the 18 months she spends in Milton, Margaret gradually learns to appreciate the city and its hard-working people, especially Nicholas Higgins, a Workers’ Union representative, and his daughter Bessy with whom she develops a friendship. Bessy is consumptive from inhalation of cotton dust and she eventually dies from it. Meantime, Margaret's mother is growing more seriously ill and a workers' strike is brewing. Masters and hands (workers) do not reach a resolution on the strike and an incensed mob of workers threatens Thornton and his factory with violence after he brought Irish workers in to his mill. Margaret implores Thornton to intervene and talk to the mob but he manages merely to fuel their anger. Margaret intervenes too and is struck down by a stone. Soldiers arrive, the mob disperses and Thornton carries Margaret indoors, professing his love to her unconscious prostrate figure. Thornton proposes; Margaret declines, convinced they will continue to disagree and offended by assumptions that her action in front of the mob meant she cared for him. Mrs. Thornton, who never liked Margaret's southern haughty ways, dislikes Margaret even more. Margaret’s long-absent brother, Frederick, wanted for naval mutiny, secretly visits their mother as she is dying. Thornton sees Margaret and Frederick together and assumes he is her lover. Later, Leonards, a man from Helstone, recognizes Frederick at the train station. An argument ensues and Frederick pushes Leonards away. Leonards dies shortly after. The police question Margaret about the scuffle: she lies and says she was not there. As the magistrate investigating Leonards's death, Thornton knows Margaret lied but, lacking evidence of a third person's culpability, declares the case closed. Nicholas, on Margaret's prodding, approaches Thornton for a job which he eventually gets. Thornton and Higgins learn to appreciate and understand each other better. Mr. Hale visits his oldest friend Mr. Bell in Oxford. There, Mr. Hale also dies and Margaret must go back to live in London with Aunt Shaw. She visits Helstone with Mr. Bell and requests him to tell Thornton about Frederick. But Mr. Bell dies before he can do so and leaves Margaret a considerable legacy that includes Marlborough Mills and the Thornton house. Thornton is forced to stop production as a result of market fluctuations and the strike. He learns the truth about Margaret's brother from Nicholas Higgins and comes to London to settle his business affairs with Margaret. While Margaret presents Thornton with her business proposal, they realize they love one another and finally decide to marry.
2333244	/m/074gmd	I Am David	Anne Holm	1963	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 David, a 12-year-old, has lived in a prison camp for as long as he can remember. While the people who run the camp are only referred to as them, later in the book it is stated that they came to power in 1917, indicating that the captors are Communists. His only friend in there, Johannes, died some time before, but one of the guards has been keeping an eye on David, making sure he is fed and has vitamins. This guard sets up the escape, gives him some soap, and leaves a sack outside the camp fence with bread and cheese and a compass in it. David must find a boat to Italy, then travel north to a free country that has a king. David uses the excuse that he works for a circus to explain why he is a polyglot and why he is travelling (to catch up with the circus which has gone ahead). On his way, he helps people, and sometimes they give him money. Along his journey, David discovers the beauty of the world and slowly he changes his behavior and the way he interacts with people. He saves a girl named Maria from a fire in a shed where she was trapped. David spends some time in Maria's family's house, where he sees a globe and learns about different countries. However, his knowledge of suffering and death worries the parents. David overhears them talking about him, and leaves the house to travel north again. Some time later he sees a newspaper personal advertisement aimed at him and placed by the parents, so he sends them a letter to reassure them that he is all right. David has also been praying to the God of green pastures, and a priest explains that while some people say there are many gods, there really is only one. When winter hits, he is held prisoner by a farmer who uses him for slave labour. However, this also gives him shelter until the snow melts. The farmer's dog keeps him company through the winter, and travels with him when he escapes in the spring. Later, the dog helps distract some guards so that David can sneak over the border. When he meets Sophie, an old lady that lives in Switzerland and likes to paint as hobby, she asks David if she might paint him; later she invites David to have lunch with her in her house, and while he is there, David sees a picture of a woman in Denmark. Sophie tells him that the woman's husband and child were killed by , but that one guard let the woman escape. He realises he needs to travel to Denmark and find that woman. Finally he arrives in Denmark, and traces the woman through the telephone directory. When he knocks on her door, he simply tells her "I am David", and she knows he is her long-lost son.
2334536	/m/074kcc	Cry to Heaven	Anne Rice	1982	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in eighteenth-century Italy, Cry to Heaven focuses on two characters: peasant-born Guido Maffeo, who is castrated at the age of six to preserve his soprano voice, and fifteen-year-old Tonio Treschi, the last son of a noble family from the Republic of Venice, whose father, Andrea, is a member of the Serenissima's Council of Three. Although Guido becomes a star of the opera as a teenager, he loses his voice at eighteen, like many castrati. After a failed suicide attempt, he becomes a music teacher in the Naples conservatorio. Tonio, on the other hand, learns that his older brother, Carlo, was exiled for embarrassing the family. While Andrea attempts to cut Carlo out of the family, after his death, Carlo returns and plots to regain his original position. Revealing that Tonio is actually his illegitmate son, he has Tonio castrated, and sends him off with Guido to study in Naples. However, although everyone in Venice is inclined to believe that Carlo was behind his castration, Tonio cannot accuse him of the crime because doing so would result in the "extinction" of the Treschi family. After some soul-searching, he decides to remain in Naples and study under Guido, holding off on revenge until after Carlo and his mother (also Carlo's lover and later wife) have children to ensure the family line. Because of Tonio's almost unhuman soprano voice, Guido is roused from his depression, and takes him as a star student. Tonio progresses in his lessons extremely quickly. Guido also has Tonio perform some of his original compositions, which begin to impress audiences at the conservatorio. Tonio, for his part, struggles to come to terms with his castrato status - in his own mind, he is "less than a man." At first, he finds it difficult to even associate with his fellow castrati. As time goes on, he has a love affair with another castrati boy, Domenico, and after Domenico leaves, with Guido himself. He comes to dominate the conservatorio - in addition to being a star student, he soon befriends all the boys his age and becomes something of a leader and confidant. Also, Tonio continues his studies in fencing and firearms, which, in Guido's words, make him into a "hero" to his fellow students, especially after he kills (in self-defense) a student who vowed to kill him. Because he was raised to be a gentleman, and because he was castrated relatively later in life, he continues to act like a man, unlike the more effeminate poses of castrati boys. Despite the fact he's a castrato, even local noblemen come to respect him both as a sparring partner and a friend. However, Guido and others need to scheme to finally get Tonio out of the conservatorio and onto the stage. After his debut, Guido and Tonio travel to Rome for his premiere opera, where he gains the patronage of a powerful cardinal, Calvino, and befriends a powerful count from Florence, di Stefano. Although he is almost booed off the stage for upstaging the operatic star Bettichino, he proves a great success, and both he and Guido have a bright future in front of him. He even becomes lovers with an English noblewoman and widow, Christina, which seems to restore him to his former status. However, Tonio is unable to break free of the desire for revenge against Carlo. After having two children by Carlo, Tonio's mother, Marianna, dies. Soon afterwards—and before his Fat Tuesday opera performance—hitmen sent by Carlo try to kill him. Against the wishes of all his friends, Tonio vows to return in time for an Easter opera, then disappears. In Venice, Carlo has become a pathetic alcoholic wreck. Disguised as a woman (a trick he learned for the opera), Tonio succeeds in "seducing" his father and capturing him. Intoxicated, Carlo curses ever coming back to Venice, and even wanting to take Tonio's place, finding the city decadent and confining. Although he promises never to try and hurt Tonio again, he attempts to kill him the second he has the opportunity. In response, Tonio finally kills Carlo. He then returns to his friends, finally able to fully pursue his life.
2336061	/m/074n62	The Marriage of Figaro	Pierre de Beaumarchais			 The Marriage of Figaro picks up three years following the end of The Barber of Seville as Figaro is engaged to be married to Suzanne; both characters are among the Count’s staff in his dwelling. In the three years since Figaro helped forge the marriage of the Count and Rosine, he has already grown bored with his marriage and is taking notice of Suzanne. The Count looks to re-engage the act of primae noctis, in which he would consummate the marriage with the bride-to-be prior to Figaro’s honeymoon.
2336126	/m/074nbz	Today We Choose Faces	Roger Zelazny	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is set, like many Zelazny pure-SF novels, a few centuries in the future. The narrator, a Mafia assassin named Angelo di Negri, has been revived from suspended animation by the mostly legitimate successors of the criminal organization, and given a mission to assassinate a scientist on a fortified facility on an otherwise uninhabited planet. The first part of the novel describes Negri's assault on the planet, in which he begins the attack in a heavily armed and armored space capsule, which is gradually reduced by the formidable defenses to a ground-attack vehicle, which in turn is slowly degraded until Negri abandons it to continue on foot with hand-held weapons, eventually left only with a stiletto. After he completes the job, the phone rings. This is a motif throughout the story. His victim has managed to survive even the death of his body, and tells Negri that while they were fighting, war has taken place and humanity is near extinction. Only the technology in another building can preserve the remnants. Negri locates the cache, and sets out on the next phase of his story. Despite also being in the first person, the next part of the novel appears to have nothing to do with Negri. The narrator is a member of some secret cabal scattered throughout the House, a series of artificial environments where people live, never seeing the outdoors. It seems this cabal is in charge of the House, and someone is killing the members one by one. Each death jolts the others, so they are evidently clones. (As described earlier in the novel, cloning can be accomplished, although clones have some unexplained psychic connection to each other). One of the cabal is the Nexus, the one who can interface with the computer that seems to run everything. Each time a Nexus is killed his consciousness transfers to another member. The narration passes from one Nexus to the next as the killer works his way through his list. Each one gets the memories of his predecessor at the moment of death. The House has Wings, different sections, connected by Passages, which may really be wormholes in space. Some Wings are residential, some offices, some manufacturing, some maintenance etc. There are also levels within Wings. Wing Null is where the computer is, and also where a series of pins in a circuit board represent stages in the cabal's cleansing of evil instincts and bad memories from its collective personality. This mirrors the avowed purpose of the House - to rid humanity of all the traits which brought about its downfall, so it is fit to be let loose once more. This involves occasionally removing people with undesirable characteristics, in the effort to breed a better human. The narrator has to deal with an internal demon, a voice that tries to get him to remove the most recent pin. Old memories are not entirely suppressed and manifest themselves in this way. As the menace from the killer - now known as Mr. Black, grows, the voice becomes more persistent until one by one the pins are removed, revealing more about the history of the cabal. The narrator is further dogged by a woman, whose father was forced to commit suicide by the cabal to suppress an unwanted technology, and who seems to know Mr. Black. This section of the story features running battles through offices, factories and service tunnels, as the narrator hunts and is hunted by Mr. Black. In one scene the narrator is attempting to escape through offices, and as he passes each desk the phone rings in some mocking version of the pursuit. As the pins are removed the narrator becomes a more capable hunter, and more ruthless. Finally the narrator kills Black, who dies with a smile on his face. It quickly becomes obvious why. Black is another clone, and his personality transfers to one of the cabal. The narrator fights off the transfer, but realizes that in doing so he has allowed Black to take over one of the others, who are all in Wing Null. Arriving there with the woman in tow, he finds that all but one are dead, and Black has escaped to the Outside. He has also pulled all but the last pin. In a final fight across the same blasted landscape where Negri attacked in the beginning, Black kills the narrator, but then has to deal with the inevitable transfer. Black becomes the new narrator. He was a stolen clone, but he did not remember his origins. He simply lived in the cracks in the House society, somehow being helped by an unknown party. He eventually became the cabal's nemesis, intent on opening the House and setting humanity free again. But now he is the cabal, with all their conflicting memories and motives. He has to fight his way back to Wing Null, dealing with all the old defenses again. It becomes obvious that the clones are all related to Angelo Negri. With the pulling of the final pin, Negri's personality is restored. He realizes that the House is a failure. The only thing left to do is to break open the various Wings and shut down the computer. This he does. For the last time, the phone rings. The woman answers. It is the disembodied scientist, who has been manipulating events all along. Negri tells the woman to take a message.
2337220	/m/074r2l	El Corazón de Piedra Verde	Salvador de Madariaga	1942	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book is a work of historical fiction set in the late pre-Columbian age in Mexico City and depicts the daily life of the ancient Aztec people, both the commoners (servants, traders and warriors) and the upper classes (priests, nobles, and government officials). The "Mexican" section contains a great deal of Mexican symbolism, geographical, political and religious references and historical data took from various authors like Bernal Díaz del Castillo and his book Verdadera Historia de la Conquista de la Nueva España (in English, "True History of the Conquest of New Spain"). The novel also recounts the history and development of the Manriques, a family of Spanish nobles, and details aspects of life in 15th century Spain. The Manrique family lives through major historical events, such as the reconquest of Spain by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the reception of Christopher Columbus twice at Torremala (the Family Settlement), news of the discovery of the Americas and the relationship between the family of Hernán Cortés and the Manriques. The two stories eventually merge with the meeting of the two main characters, Alonso Manrique and Xuchitl (the daughter of King Nezahualpilli of Texcoco, one of the three allied kingdoms that Cortés found at the time of his arrival). The Mexican set of characters struggles with love, pain, pride and hate with the Spanish group of characters during the conquest of Mexico (1519-1521) by Hernán Cortés, the fall and complete destruction of Tenochtitlan and its satellite kingdoms, and the emergence of a new nation, New Spain (now modern Mexico) out of the meeting of two great cultures: the Spanish heritage (with old Visigoth, Jewish, Moorish and Catholic roots) and the ancient native Mexican traditions (like the Olmecs, Mayans, and Toltecs). The novel deals with the "conflict between two worlds": Christian Europe and Aztec America. Both civilizations are represented by equally-committed proponents: Alonso Manrique (Europe) and Itzcauatzin (America). Both characters are soldiers and priests (symbolizing nationalism and faith). Alonso started as a priest and later became a warrior; Itzcauatzin entered an academy (Calmecac) that prepared him for both. Caught in between is Xuchitl, the Aztec princess. Whoever wins her wins the future of the Aztec civilization. Xuchitl identifies the winner by giving him the Aztec talisman known as "el corazon de piedra verde" ("the green stone heart"). This talisman was worn by her father and represents the mystic powers of the Aztec religion. Alonso won, signifying the beginning of the Christianization of Mexico. Itzcauatzin gives his life as a human sacrifice vainly trying to add enough power to the traditional religion to overcome the Europeans. In the end, Alonso and Xuchitl have a son and return to Mexico from Spain. They bring the jade heart with them, but with the Virgin Mary etched on it to counteract the stone's original powers. The novel was the first of an intended five novels —each covering a century (XVI-XX)— tracking the creation of modern Mexico through the descendants of Alonso and Xuchitl. However, only four novels were finished before Salvador de Madariaga died. no:Det magiske hjertet es:El_coraz%C3%B3n_de_piedra_verde
2337977	/m/074szh	Blockade	Derek Hansen			 The protagonist is Miklos Bollok, a logging company owner who uses corrupt politicians to clear-fell the last remaining wilderness in Victoria, Australia. He is stymied by a direct action campaign by conservationists. His downfall also comes about by a dark secret that is made public by his wife.
2338979	/m/074w6t	Bellwether	Connie Willis	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character, Dr. Sandra Foster, studies fads in Boulder, Colorado. Her employer, Hi-Tek, wants to know how to predict fads, in order to take advantage of this knowledge and thus to possibly create one. While Dr. Foster is extensively researching and analysing fads, Hi-Tek itself is swept by management fads. In addition, the Management wants one of its employees to win the mysterious Niebnitz Research Grant (the fictitious award is very similar to the MacArthur Fellowship's Genius Grant). Meanwhile, the employees struggle with chaos created by the administrative assistant from Hell. Willis uses humor to come to an unsettling conclusion.
2342511	/m/0753gz	The Buddha of Suburbia	Hanif Kureishi	1990	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Buddha of Suburbia is said to be very autobiographical. It is about Karim, a mixed-race teenager, who is desperate to escape suburban South London and make new experiences in London in the 1970s. Gladly, he takes the unlikely opportunity when a life in the theatre announces itself. When there is nothing left for him to do in London, he stays in New York for ten months. Returning to London, he takes on a part in a TV soap opera and the book leaves its reader on the verge of Thatcherism. The suburbs are "a leaving place" from which Kureishi's characters must move away. To Karim, London&mdash;even though it is geographically not far away from his home&mdash;seems like a completely different world. Therefore his expectations of the city are great. In The Buddha the move into (and later through) the city is like an odyssey or pilgrimage. On the first page Karim introduces himself as follows: "My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost". This motif is reinforced throughout the novel. Pop music is an important theme in Kureishi's novels. One could even say that his novels have a soundtrack. London itself is associated by Karim to a sound. "There was a sound that London had. It was, I'm afraid, people in Hyde Park playing bongos with their hands; there was also the keyboard on The Doors' "Light My Fire". There were kids in velvet cloaks who lived free lives". Through his work with two theatre companies, Karim gets to know new people from completely different backgrounds, like the working-class Welshman Terry who is an active Trotskyist and wants him to join the party, or Karim's lover Eleanor who is upper middle-class but pretends to be working-class. Through the latter group of people, surrounding Eleanor or Pyke (a strange theatre director), he realises that they are speaking a different language, because they received a good education, which was not valuable in the suburbs. In The Buddha other characters and their struggle to make it in London are described, too. Kureishi portrays Eva, as a social climber at war with the city: "Eva was planning her assault on London. […] she was not ignored by London once she started her assault. She was climbing ever higher, day by day. […] As Eva started to take London, moving forward over the foreign fields of Islington, Chiswick and Wandsworth inch by inch, party by party, contact by contact". Later in the novel the main character's father (an Indian immigrant, a boring bureaucrat living with his family in a grey London suburb) is suddenly discovered by the London high society, that is hungry for exotic distractions, and so he becomes their Buddha-like guru, though he himself does not believe in this role. His son does not believe in him either and, at the same time, has his first erotic experiences. Within the problems of prejudice and racism lies one of the themes of initiation novels: the question of identity. Furthermore, London seems to be the perfect setting for the protagonists' "often painful growth towards maturity through a range of conflicts and dilemmas, social, sexual and political." (Bart Moore-Gilbert, 2001, 113) These characterisations mark Kureishi's novels as examples of Bildungsromane and novels of initiation. Even though The Buddha is set in the 1970s and ends just before the Thatcher era begins, Kureishi was writing it under the direct influence of the outcome of Thatcherism. It is not surprising then, looking back, that he can see the roots of conservatism already in the '70s.
2345201	/m/075d1p	Tribulations of a Chinaman in China	Jules Verne	1879	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Kin-Fo is a very wealthy man, who certainly does not lack material possessions. However, he is terribly bored and when news reaches him about his major investment abroad, a bank in the United States, going bankrupt, Kin-Fo decides to die. He signs up for a $200,000 life insurance covering all kinds of accidents, death in war, and even suicide. He rejects seppuku and hanging as means of dying, and is about to take opium laced with poison when he decides that he doesn't want to die without having ever felt a thrill in his life. Kin-Fo hires his old mentor, the philosopher Wang, to murder him before the life insurance expires. After a while news reaches Kin-Fo that the American bank he had invested in was not bankrupt, but instead had pulled off a stock market trick and is now wealthier than ever. Unfortunately, Wang has already disappeared. Together with two body guards assigned by the insurance company, and his loyal but lazy and incompetent servant Soun, Kin-Fo travels around the country in an effort to run away from Wang and the humiliation from the affair. One day he receives a message from Wang, stating that he can't stand the pain of having to kill one of his friends, and instead decided to take his own life while giving the task of killing Kin-Fo to a bandit he once knew. Kin-Fo, Soun and the two bodyguards now try to get to the bandit, planning to offer money in return for his life. The ship they travel with is hijacked, and they are forced to use their life vests with built-in sails to return to land. After being kidnapped by the bandit they were looking for, they are blindfolded and returned to Kin-Fo's home, where his old friends (including Wang, who we now find out staged this entire history to teach him a lesson about how valuable life is) are waiting for him. He marries a young, beautiful woman and they live happily forever after.
2346676	/m/075ht4	Noon: 22nd Century	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is a collection of short stories describing various aspects of human life on Earth in the 22nd century. The plots of the stories are not closely connected, but they feature a shared set of characters. The most commonly recurring characters are Evgeny Slavin and Sergei Kondratev, who, as a result of a lengthy journey through interstellar space at near the speed of light, are thrown over a century into the future and must re-integrate into the society of their great-grandchildren. The book includes the following stories: #Night on Mars - Two doctors walk on foot on Mars after their vehicle was lost in quicksand. They must avoid an encounter with a local wild beast, while hurrying to assist in the delivery of Evgeny Slavin, the first human born on Mars. (This apparently takes place in the late 20th century.) #Almost the Same - Sergei Kondratev as a young man in flight school. #Old-timer - The photon engine-driven spaceship "Taimyr" mysteriously returns to Earth after having disappeared a century earlier. Kondratev and Slavin are the only survivors. #The Conspirators - Schoolchildren Pol Gnedykh, Aleksandr "Lin" Kostylin, Mikhail Sidorov, and Gennady Komov plan and dream about their futures. #Chronicle - A scientific report giving an analysis of the disappearance and reappearance of the Taimyr. #Two from the Taimyr - Kondratev and Slavin recuperate from their wounds after the crash of the Taimyr, and begin to investigate the Earth of the future to which they have returned. #The Moving Roads - Kondratev explores Earth on a global system of moving roadways. #Cornucopia - Slavin attempts to adjust to the domestic technology of the future. #Homecoming - Kondratev encounters Leonid Gorbovsky, and decides to take a job in oceanography. #Langour of the Spirit - Gnedykh and Kostylin reconnect after many years apart. #The Assaultmen - Gorbovsky tours the artificial satellites of Vladislava, and journeys to the surface with Sidorov and Ryu Waseda. #Deep Search - Kondratev and oceanographer Akiko Okada hunt giant squid on a deep sea expedition. #The Mystery of the Hind Leg - Slavin encounters the Collector of Dispersed Data project. #Candles Before the Control Board - Okada (now married to Kondratev) tries to visit her dying father, the subject of the Great Encoding #Natural Science in the Spirit World - Espers assist the Institute of Space Physics in an effort to explain the Taimyr disappearance and reappearance. #Pilgrims and Wayfarers - Gorbovsky discusses the "Voice of the Void" and other mysteries, and the philosophy of space exploration. #The Planet with all the Conveniences - Komov, Waseda, and others explore the planet Leonida and make brief contact with the Leoniders. #Defeat - Sidorov tests prototype colonization devices in a remote area on Earth. #The Meeting - Gnedykh and Kostylin again meet after a long separation, and Gnedykh regrets his accidental killing of an alien creature who may have been sentient. #What You Will Be Like - Kondratev, Slavin, and Gorbovsky explore Tagora. Kondratev and Slavin discuss the progress and stagnation of humanity over their long lifespan, and Gorbovsky tells a fantastic story about his encounter with a visitor from the future.
2346922	/m/075jg4	World's End	Upton Sinclair, Jr.	1940	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Lanny Budd is a teenage student at a private school in Germany for music and dance. Budd, born in Switzerland, is the grandson of the president of Budd Gunmakers in New England. His parents are American born: his father is the European sales representative, and his mother, his father's former mistress, is supported in grand style on the French Riviera. The story follows Lanny Budd, his English schoolmate Rick, and his German friend Kurt through World War I. In the aftermath, Budd joins the staff of the U.S. delegation for the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles. The plot and characters are developed to reveal historical facts as well as the ideological tensions at the time. Budd was troubled by knowing his two closest friends were involved on opposite sides of the major war. Later he was disturbed by what he considered the failure of the negotiations at Versailles to get past the bitterness of the French and British people against Germany.
2348064	/m/075mb9	An Instance of the Fingerpost	Iain Pears	1997	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A murder in 17th-century Oxford is related from the contradictory points of view of four of the characters, all of them unreliable narrators. The setting of the novel is 1663, just after the restoration of the monarchy following the English Civil War, when the authority of King Charles II is not yet settled, and conspiracies abound. Most of the characters are historical figures. Two of the narrators are the mathematician John Wallis and the historian Anthony Wood. Other characters include the philosopher John Locke, the scientists Robert Boyle and Richard Lower, spymaster John Thurloe, and inventor Samuel Morland. The plot is at first centred on the death of Robert Grove but later takes in the conspiracies of John Mordaunt and William Compton (of Compton Wynyates), and the politics of Henry Bennet and Lord Clarendon. Furthermore, the characters that are fictional are nonetheless drawn from real events. The story of Sarah Blundy incorporates that of Anne Greene, while Jack Prestcott is involved in events based on the life of Richard Willis (of the Sealed Knot). The book is an epistolary novel. The accounts are written many years after the events they describe, after Thomas Ken gained his Bishopric but before the death of Henry Bennet. This dates them to 1685, the last year of Charles' reign. A contrast portrayed in the novel is, on one hand, a philosophy based on ancient and medieval learning, and, on the other, the scientific method that was beginning to be applied in physics, chemistry and medicine.
2348755	/m/075nyv	Wonderful Fool				 One day Takamori, a young man living with his mother and dominant younger sister Tomoe, receives a letter from Singapore. After a while they manage to decipher the unusually poor Japanese, and figure out that Gaston Bonaparte, a man who used to be a pen friend of Takamori during his school days, will soon arrive in Japan. On the expected day, they find the poorly dressed Gaston (a striking contrast to his more famous relative, in the eyes of his Japanese hosts) in the cheapest class, deep down in the ship. Gaston immediately befriends a stray dog (who he initially calls 犬さん - Mr. Dog, but later renames Napoleon), who is to follow him for most of the story but they is eventually captured by the dog catcher and killed. After staying a few days at Takamori and Tomoe's home, Gaston decides to carry on his mysterious mission in Japan. He ends up checking into a Love hotel in Shibuya with his dog, attracting some strange looks from the owner. During the night Gaston manages to help a thieving prostitute escape (although mostly due to misunderstanding the situation), which gets him kicked out of the hotel in the middle of the night. but she gets him food and puts him in contact with an old fortune teller, who makes Gaston his assistant. Soon Gaston is kidnapped by a gangster planning to murder two old army officers for revenge. Gaston tries to talk the man, Endo, out of his violent plans. When this doesn't work, he simply steals the bullets from Endo's gun, thus making the victim able to run away. Endo knocks Gaston out and flees, but Gaston manages to track the next victim down, and outside his house he finds Endo once again. The former is not overly happy to see him, but figures that he could use some help with digging up some silver that the army officer stole during the war. In the mountain swamp where the treasure is supposed to be located, Endo and the army officer get into a fight. Gaston gets between them, saving the life of Endo, who is later found by a fisherman and rushed to a hospital. Gaston disappears and is never found again.
2349314	/m/075q5t	Escape Attempt	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel tells a story of two young men from Earth, Anton and Vadim, who decide to go for a trip to Pandora, but are persuaded rather to travel to an uncharted planet by a mysterious man whom they know as Saul Repnin. Their choice is an unnamed planet in EN-7031 system, because that's where Gorbovsky and Bader predicted that Wanderers' traces could be found. After landing successfully on the planet (which they named Saula after Repnin), the explorers soon discover a local human civilization, as well as the predicted Wanderers' traces. The latter appear as a phenomenon later called "everlasting machines" and largely influence the entire local population. Despite the fact that it is strictly forbidden for them to initiate a contact with any human or alien civilization without an authorization from COMCON, they try to do just this - and fail, having misinterpreted the situation. What they see as catastrophic is just a routine life in an early feudalistic society of Saula. Saul Repnin, who, as it was later uncovered, was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp but shifted into the future (s.c. time guest), is so shocked to see a local civilization (even though it's not the Earth's one) commit just the same cruelties he saw in his time, that it causes a severe psychological crisis in him. Anton and Vadim decide that it's the best to leave the planet immediately and after they arrive back on Earth, they discover that Saul has disappeared, leaving a short note, which partly explains who he was and that he wants to go back. Saul Repnin was killed soon after he returned to his time.
2350670	/m/075v2w	Hornblower in the West Indies	C. S. Forester	1957	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Hornblower raises his flag in the schooner HMS Crab and pays a courtesy call at New Orleans. There, he learns of a plot by Napoleon's most loyal followers to liberate him from his exile on the isolated island of St Helena. Hornblower intercepts their ship, the Daring, but is powerless to stop them by force; with no other choice, he lies to their leader, Count Cambronne, telling him that Napoleon has died. When he returns to port, he learns to his astonishment and relief that his lie was the truth. While attempting to suppress the slave trade HMS Clorinda, the vessel carrying Hornblower's flag, follows a faster slave ship, the Estrella del Sur, into a Puerto Rican port. Hornblower figures out a way to disable the slave ship, so that when it leaves port, the Clorinda will be able to catch it. Hornblower, characteristically, outsmarts his subordinate, the dim-witted, pompous Captain Fell of the Clorinda to the point he thinks the sabotage plan was his idea. Pirates kidnap Hornblower and his young secretary Spendlove and take them to their hideout near Montego Bay. Hornblower escapes, and makes use of mortars again to reduce their hideout. Forester takes artistic license with the geography of Jamaica. Hornblower is visited by a rich young wool merchant, named Ramsbottom, one of the very first millionaires. The young man is on a tour of the Caribbean in his yacht, a converted ex-Royal Navy brig-sloop, the Bride of Abydos. Hornblower tours Ramsbottom's yacht during a dinner party on board. Ramsbottom explains his interest in Latin America by saying that he has a Venezuelan mother. He is cautioned to stay away from the South American coast, which is in a state of rebellion against Spain. It turns out, however, that Ramsbottom, far from being a tourist, is dedicated to helping Spain's South American colonies to achieve their independence. While Hornblower and his squadron are conveniently away on manoeuvres, Ramsbottom, by pretending that his yacht is the Desperate, a Royal Navy brig enforcing a (bogus) blockade, captures the Helmond, an unsuspecting Dutch transport, and secures the Spanish artillery train forming its cargo. Hornblower hears the news on his return from manoeuvres and goes to investigate. He finds Ramsbottom's ship, empty, accompanied by the Helmond, anchored off the coast of Venezuela. The captured cannons have been instrumental in the defeat of the Spanish forces. Hornblower secures Bride of Abydos just before the arrival of a Spanish and a Dutch frigate, from where Spanish and Dutch naval officers swiftly arrive to demand its surrender. Hornblower by verbal trickery manages to avoid both surrendering the Bride of Abydos and starting a war. Hornblower's wife Barbara comes out to Jamaica for Hornblower's final days as Commander in Chief, and to accompany him home. On the voyage back, they endure a hurricane and shipwreck. In the middle of the hurricane, Barbara drops her final wall of reserve as she assures him she has never loved another man. sv:Hornblower i Västindien
2351145	/m/075w7q	Sky Coyote	Kage Baker	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Joseph's latest role is that of Sky Coyote, the trickster, the foolish one, the animal god of many Native American traditions. He will play it for the Chumash, a tribe in California in the late 17th century. His job is to persuade the village of Humashup to give up their entire lifestyle, which the Company will take and "preserve," while the Chumash are shipped out to work in a Company facility. The Spanish are coming soon, and the Chumash culture will be wiped out along with all the others. Of course, Joseph can't do this alone. He assembles a small army of his kind, including the erratic and moody botanist Mendoza, whom he occasionally regrets recruiting in 16th century Spain; the anthropologist and former Babylonian Imarte; who is not averse to bedding her subjects to get more data; and many other specialists. Joseph is the Master of Ceremonies, however. He's also wearing a lot of non-standard equipment to turn him into a cavorting, fast talking (and priapic) god. The Chumash turn out to be, well, ordinary. Superb craftsmen, their lives revolve around work, festivals, religion, festivals, getting ahead, and festivals. They may not have churches and boys clubs, but the kantap fills the same needs. The guilds make sure that everybody gets what they need and pays handsomely for it. Oily salesmen try to make their percentage any way they can. Joseph is a little surprised to learn that they are so worldly, and they are quite surprised that he, well, exists. However Joseph spins his tale with his usual skill and pulls off the job. There are snags, but not the usual kind. For a start, actual 24th century Company operatives have come back to supervise. They are disgusted that the cyborgs eat meat, drink alcohol and consume other stimulants banned in their era. The cyborgs are not too impressed with the childish, phobia-ridden operatives either, but a job is a job. Mendoza starts her feud with Imarte, which continues in the next installment. There is a messianic religion encroaching on Chumash territory. This gets Joseph's hackles up. Nature throws in an earthquake or two. The Chumash go to their reward, the Company gets all the valuable information and samples it needs to sell to the rich and not-so-smart in the 24th century, and Joseph is left with a nagging doubt. For one thing, why does nobody know what happens after 2355, even though all history is available to the cyborgs up to that point? And why do cyborgs who talk too much about this tend to get suddenly re-assigned? Why do the 24th century people seem so cowardly and stupid? Didn't they go all the way back to 30,000 BC to start the ball rolling? Or was it 40,000? Nobody is quite sure. However, Joseph is mostly satisfied, but unfulfilled and, at his core, unhappy. Mendoza has been released to wander the redwood forest, a dream task for the botanist. Joseph believes that in 1923 he saw her with a mortal she fell for in Tudor England, but that story is not completed in this volume. Joseph has more or less adopted Mendoza as his daughter, though he cannot admit it. By the end of the book he has become a 20th century Hollywood studio executive, hiding artifacts of the era for the Company.
2352274	/m/075y8h	To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh	Greg Cox	2006-05-23	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with Khan, Lt. Marla McGivers, and most of the other supermen and women that had been with him on the SS Botany Bay arriving on the planet Ceti Alpha V. Khan is given supplies and a phaser and begins to build a colony on the planet. Khan is challenged several times by his fellow supermen, but remains in control for the most part. Some time after arriving, the next planet in the Ceti Alpha system, Ceti Alpha VI, explodes and disrupts the orbit of Ceti Alpha V. This causes major climate changes and loss of plant and animal life. Khan and the supermen take refuge underground and Khan waits for Kirk to arrive and rescue him and his followers from the hell that has become of the planet. After more time passes, several supermen do not wish to follow Khan any longer and try to assassinate Khan by placing a Ceti Eel in Marla McGivers' ear. This bizarre creature causes her to do whatever is commanded of her, and the men order her to kill Khan. Marla's love for Khan allows her to resist enough to instead kill herself. The eel emerges from her ear after her death and Khan sees the reason why she died. After the failed assassination, the rebels leave the underground and form a new faction on the planet, taking control of the vital hot springs that provide the only water on the planet. Khan then battles them, losing many men and women, but winning in the end. At the end of the novel a few years later, Khan sees two men in space suits materialize on the planet's surface. Throughout the novel, Khan blames his hardships on James Kirk for stranding him on the planet and never checking on him again.
2354077	/m/076103	Far Rainbow	Arkady Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of the Rainbow catastrophe of 2156. It starts very simple, as a Wave observer Robert Sklyarov notices an unusually persistent Wave and reports it to the Capital (the only city on the scientists' planet). Simultaneously, Camill (the last remaining of "the Baker's Dozen") appears at his observation tower and tells him to leave it and fly south immediately. Sklyarov refuses to leave precious ulmotrons behind and urges Camill for help but when the wind front preceding the Wave strikes, the falling machinery seemingly kills Camill. Terrified Sklyarov flees south. Back in the Capital, everything is still quiet. Leonid Gorbovsky, whose Tariel II has delivered scientific equipment to Rainbow, pays a visit to Matvei Vyazanitsyn, the general director of the planet, then returns to his ship, when the ominous news come. Camill contacts (via videophone) the nearest scientist village and issues a warning that the Wave Sklyarov saw is closely followed by another one of a new type. According to him, it cannot be stopped like the ones before and therefore the Rainbow world council must begin the evacuation of the planet immediately. At this moment the Wave reaches Camill's observation tower and he dies once again. Soon enough it becomes clear that humans cannot hold the new Wave back and an order to gather the entire population in the Capital is issued. Robert Sklyarov witnesses the Wave destroying semi-automatic charybdis and tries to pilot one manually to give his friends time to flee. In the end, his charybdis is destroyed, too, but Sklyarov manages to escape and sets off (on a flier) for the Children Village, where his fiancée, Tatiana Turchina, works as a governess. He finds the Village already empty but on the way to the Capital, he locates a crashed aerobus that was carrying some of the children from the Village as well as Turchina herself. Having to choose whom to take with him (his flier can only carry two people), Sklyarov decides for his fiancée even though he knows that she would hate him for leaving the children behind. Meanwhile in the Capital, the situation is close to panic. Everyone knows by now that Gorbovsky's Tariel II cannot take them all to space and that the nearest to Rainbow spaceship that can won't make it in time. Plans like burrowing a huge underground cave under the Capital to hide from the Wave, or jumping over it, or diving under it (in the southern ocean) are desperately developed. At this time, Gorbovsky announces that only the children will we transported onto the orbit on Tariel II, but everyone agrees that this is the best choice. Afterwards a crowd of scientists approaches him and asks to take some of their documentation on board, since they consider it too valuable to be sent directly into space with mini-rockets. And in the very last moment, Gorbovsky refuses to board his ship, leaving his first mate in charge and making even more space for the children and documentation. Tariel lifts off when the Waves (both northern and southern) are a few kilometers away from the Capital. Shortly before the two reach it, Gorbovsky, Camill, Sklyarov and Turchina sit on the beach not far from the city and watch a team of null-T-testers float their blind team-mate toward the southern Wave, while he is playing a song on the banjo.
2354429	/m/0761s3	Almost Transparent Blue	Ryu Murakami		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Narrated by the main character Ryū (possibly Ryū Murakami himself) the novel focuses on his small group of young friends in the mid-1970s. Living in a Japanese town with an American air force base, their lives revolve around sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. The near-plotless story weaves a vividly raw image intensive journey through the daily monotony of drug-induced hallucinations, vicious acts of violence, overdoses, suicide, and group sex.
2354886	/m/0762tm	Mendoza in Hollywood	Kage Baker	2000-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the novel opens, Mendoza is walking through incessant rain in the hills above old Los Angeles. It is winter, 1862, and to the east America is at war with itself. For over 150 years she has lived wild in the Pacific coast forest, collecting and cataloging plant species, and rarely interacting with anybody else, human or cyborg. This suits her fine, and she resents being commanded down to Cahuenga Pass for a special mission. As usual, however, she wants to be a "good little machine". She already knows what the mission is. The rain will be followed by a long drought, and there will be much to be preserved, which would otherwise be lost. What the drought cannot eradicate, starving cattle will. Meanwhile, smallpox will reduce the local population, especially the Native Americans. Arriving at the Inn at the pass, she quickly meets her fellow cyborgs, the Facilitator Porfirio, Anthropologist Oscar, Zoologist Einar, Ornithologist Juan Bautista, and the Anthropologist Imarte, with whom she renews her ongoing feud. With all the traffic passing by, the Inn is a perfect cover for Company research and other work. However, when Mendoza arrives, the main problem is lighting a fire to cook dinner, given that everything is soaked by the rain. Mendoza's first night is a rough one, as she dreams incessantly of Nicholas Harpole, her lover in 16th century England, who was burned at the stake. She is woken by Porfirio, who tells her she has been blasting the place with "Crome radiation", the blue radiance of psychic activity. She dismisses his concerns, but worries about this sudden resurgence of her previous troubles. Later, she is led into the hills by Einar, to collect samples in the "Temperate Belt" which will be severely affected by the drought. This just happens to follow the future path of Sunset Boulevard. Along the way, Einar has to kill one of the locals. The hills are infested with bandits, crazy pioneers and other mortals likely to shoot first and warn later. Mendoza is shocked - cyborgs are programmed to run from danger and not harm mortals. Einar informs her that the rules are different here. She is even given a Navy pistol to use if necessary. The Inn's inhabitants pass the time with movies supplied by the Company. In one chapter, we get a long and reverent description of them watching D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, with Einar as Chorus describing every scene. Since Imarte was actually alive in Babylon, one of the movie's famous settings, we hear much about what life was really like. Everything is thrown into tumult, however, when Mendoza decides to forage in Laurel Canyon. The place is known to be saturated with Crome radiation from a bizarre underground quartz formation. It is this which will attract so many unusual people to the site in the 20th century, and give rise to many of the underground stories of Hollywood. Despite precautions and a lot of very futuristic equipment, Mendoza and Einar suddenly find themselves thrown forward in time to 1996. Mendoza the botanist is suddenly in urban LA, where the soil is concrete and the major life form is the automobile. Staggering up to a Company safe house whose future location they know, they are hastily taken inside by the staff, who have been expecting this event. Horses and all, they are placed in a Time Transfer chamber for return to their own time, but at the last minute Mendoza sees the cyborg Lewis enter the building. Lewis had befriended Mendoza at the facility New World One and she suspected he was in love with her. Lewis makes an attempt to talk to Mendoza, and tries to warn her "Don't go with him!". She has no idea what he means, and in any case, the transfer takes place before any more can be said. Returning to the Inn, short one horse which died from the Transfer, Mendoza confronts Porfirio. He must have known what was going to happen to her. He grudgingly admits he knew something, but was just told to let it happen. He also knew only what he needed to know, and nothing more. The drought starts to bite, and Mendoza is going further and further around the bend. Her lover haunts her dreams every night, and the resulting Crome's radiation provides nocturnal fireworks for her colleagues. She can no longer do any real work. Then one of Imarte's clients leaves behind a briefcase with amazing documents in it. They seem to relate to a British plot to exploit the disarray in the United States and take over the Channel Islands, specifically Santa Catalina. From there, a few well-armed ships could control the seas of Western North America. Imarte records all the papers and heads for San Francisco to do more research. All the others are called away also, except for Mendoza and Juan Bautista, who has finally allowed his pets to be shipped out with all the other biological samples. At this point, Mendoza is astonished by the arrival of her ex-lover, Nicholas Harpole, except that he does not recognize her and goes by the name of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, an Englishman with mysterious intentions. Mistaking her for Imarte's assistant, he requests the usual service. Mendoza eagerly complies. Soon Edward reveals he has come for the briefcase. However he is also intrigued by Mendoza, who shows sexual sophistication despite being virgo intacta - apparently the healing capability of the cyborg physiology has gone to extremes in her. She is able to persuade him to take her away, as she will enable him to avoid U.S. agents hot on his trail as he goes to meet his fellow conspirators. Once more Mendoza embarks on an idyll, as they trek to San Pedro, and then to Santa Catalina, where a mysterious sailing ship awaits. Edward starts to show unexpected abilities, especially in being aware of things that humans usually cannot perceive. But then the ship turns out to be a trap, set by the Pinkertons. Edward is killed while disposing of the incriminating documents, and Mendoza finally snaps. She goes into overdrive, killing all the agents. When the British finally show up, she throws assorted body parts at them, whereupon they flee. In the rest of the story Mendoza, having completed her confession, awaits her punishment. In the meantime, she examines her considerable store of information about the history of old LA, noticing for the first time how Santa Catalina has some kind of significance in the activities of the Company. Apparently something on the island is vital to the actual creation of the Company, but what? Before she can pursue this further, she is put in a Time Transfer box and sent Back Way Back, or in more usual terms, to about 150,000 BCE. She is left on Santa Catalina itself, still forested rather than the barren island of later millennia. Her job is to raise food for a Company resort on Santa Cruz Island, where rich folks come back to hobnob with mastodons and hunt saber-tooths, or maybe vice versa. Her memory has been interfered with, so she can no longer remember details of the history she once knew. She also has a mission to alert the Company when certain unusual beings show up to colonize the center of the island. Apparently they have something the Company needs.... Mendoza seems hopelessly trapped. Can she survive to the 19th century all over again, or is her immortality as suspect as other things have become? Twice now she has met her demon lover. She knows he will come for her again.
2355160	/m/0763bd	The Gates of Morning	Henry De Vere Stacpoole	1925	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel picks up a day or so after the events at the conclusion of The Garden of God. Dick Lestrange, son of Richard and Emmeline Lestrange, is about fourteen or fifteen. He has come to love Katafa, a Spanish girl who is the adopted daughter of the Kanaka people of the island of Karolin, about forty miles from the island (Palm Tree) where his parents lived. Now she has brought him to her island, and due to a series of complicated political circumstances, the people have declared him their new king. Dick is not unwilling to lead the people, but needs advice and guidance. He also sees immediately that the island has a defense problem. In The Garden of God, all the Karolin men of warrior age and status have died as the result of an ill-advised attack on Palm Tree—and all their war canoes were burned. Fishing canoes still exist, but new war canoes must be built at once. The Melanesian slaves who took over Palm Tree at the end of The Garden of God were all men; if they decide to make Palm Tree (which Kanaka call Marua) their permanent home, they will attack Karolin, the nearest island, to steal women. He's sent for three elderly men, expert canoe-builders, from the southern side of the immense island; but the ladies who took his message return without them, saying they don't acknowledge Taori (Dick) as their leader. Dick goes in person to explain the situation and meets Aioma, the oldest canoe-builder, and his granddaughter Le Moan, age fourteen, who falls in love with Dick on sight. She has no idea that Dick is already married, let alone that his bride is her own Aunt Katafa (Katafa being an adopted daughter of the late priestess Le Juan and therefore sister to Le Jenabon, Le Juan's biological daughter, who is Le Moan's mother). Left alone on the southern shore when all the other people from the south side go north to help with the canoe building, Le Moan sees the Kermadec, a schooner full of white men, sail into the lagoon. Thinking they might attack the people, and especially Dick, Le Moan tells them that she is alone on the island, that everyone else died in a storm. Captain Peterson, a rough and ferocious-looking but kindhearted man, takes her aboard and gives her over to Sru, his Paomotuan assistant, to stay with the Kanaka crew until he can find her a place to live on another island. Talking with Le Moan, Sru learns two things; the girl has a gift of absolute direction, and can find her way to anyplace she has ever been without need of a compass; and she wears a very large double pearl ornament, which tells Sru that Karolin's lagoons are full of pearls. Sru encourages her to confide in him, including the part about her being in love with Dick and trying to protect him. She also tells him that the lagoon is indeed thick with pearl oysters. Sru tells her Captain Peterson would never have harmed Dick or the people, but that he must not be told about the pearls, because he is something of a profiteer and might take everything for himself. He spends the next few weeks teaching her how to steer the ship. With first mate Rantan and a beachcomber named Carlin who is hitching a ride on the ship to go to the northern islands, Sru plans and carries out a mutiny, killing both Peterson and a white sandalwood trader—and framing the natives of the island where the sandalwood trader lived for the murder. Meanwhile, Aioma is enthusiastically directing the people in the building of new war canoes and conversing endlessly with Dick about boats, about the model ships built long ago by Kearney and treasured by Dick as his one remaining link with his old life. Aioma has also become Dick's chief of staff, so to speak, advising him about etiquette and his duties as king (for instance, he warns Dick that he must not lower himself to work with the people, because to be seen as their equal is unfitting). The Kermadec returns to Karolin, guided by Le Moan, who remains on board as Rantan and Carlin go ashore, shoot a number of the people including two babies, and break up the half-finished canoes. Returning to the Kermadec they tell the Kanaka crew that the people of Karolin attacked them, but Le Moan saw what really happened and tells the crew later, advising them that the people of Karolin are good and will accept them if they go ashore in peace. Le Moan manages to kill Carlin, and tries to kill Rantan; as he defends himself, she is rescued by crewman Kanoa, who is secretly in love with her. They tie Rantan and deliver him into the hands of the Karolin people, who indeed welcome the Kanaka from the Kermadec in peace and friendship. Dick gives Rantan to the mothers of the babies who died, to do with as they see fit. Only now does Le Moan discover that Dick and Katafa are married. A few days later, the tide goes out at half flood and returns with a vengeance, like a tsunami. Three great waves sweep the island, destroying everything, while the people take to the trees. In the next hours huge flocks of birds are seen in the skies, coming from the direction of Palm Tree. When Aioma, Dick, and Le Moan decide to take the Kermadec out on the ocean so that the men can learn to steer it properly, they make for Palm Tree, only to discover that it has completely sunk beneath the ocean. The island of the Blue Lagoon is no more. Aioma believes this is a sign, not from the gods, but from Uta Matu, the late king of Karolin, whose warriors Dick is responsible for having killed (though they mostly killed each other). Le Moan, hearing this, decides to try to keep Dick for herself by steering away from Karolin and pretending she's lost her gift of direction (implying it's the curse of Uta Matu). Dick, devastated by the loss of his former home, is so desperate to get back to Karolin and Katafa that he takes ill. Le Moan cannot stand his suffering, gives up, and declares that her direction-sense has come back and steers the Kermadec for home. On the way, they encounter an abandoned ship. Aioma, unwisely, takes out his frustration with the papalagi (foreigners) and their ships by boarding this one—full of dead bodies—and setting fire to it. He proceeds to do the same to the Kermadec when they get back to Karolin. What he does not know is that his contact with the abandoned ship has infected him with measles. By evening of the next day everybody on Karolin has caught it, and having no resistance, nearly everyone dies. Katafa is frantic with grief, because Dick has caught it, too, and is lying delirious, speaking only in English. Le Moan blames herself; if she'd never asked the Kermadec for a lift none of this would have happened. She believes the curse of Uta Matu, and of her own grandmother Le Juan, have brought shame, disgrace, sickness and death to her people. She calls out to Katafa, "Taori will not die: I go to save him; the nets are spread for him, but I will break them -- I, who have brought this evil." The instant she speaks these words, Dick's fever cools down and he begins to improve. As Katafa goes to care for him, Le Moan gets in her fishing boat. Sailing it clear out to sea, she takes the sail down, lies down in the bottom, and gives herself to the gods. Stacpoole ends the story by saying that to this day, Karolin remains unexplored and uncharted, because try as they might, no one can ever quite get there. it:The Gates of Morning
2357280	/m/076724	The Mount	Carol Emshwiller	2002	{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first-person narrator, Charley, is a young man who like all humans is used as riding mounts (e.g. horses) for an alien race known as Hoots. Humans in Charley's world, a pastoral Earth, have existed in a master-slave relationship with the Hoots for centuries. The Hoots, who have no way to return to their home planet, maintain the natural systems that keep the world running. Escaped mounts like Charley's father, formerly the Guards' Mount known as Heron, lead assaults on the stables where humans are kept and seek to unify their own people against the Hoots. When Charley (mount name Smiley) meets his father for the first time (Heron and Merry Mary were mated and separated by the Hoots soon after Charley was born), he resists betraying either his Master, the Hoot heir apparent, or anything that might help the resisting humans because his life as a mount (breed Seattle) is the only one he's ever known.
2359361	/m/076c1h	The Citadel of Chaos	Steve Jackson		{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook"}	 The player takes the role of an adventurer on a quest to find and stop the powerful magician Balthus Dire. In order to be able to confront Dire, the player must navigate the Citadel, avoiding monsters while also collecting several artifacts that will allow passage past guardians to the villain's inner sanctum.
2359462	/m/076c86	Starship Traveller	Steve Jackson		{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook"}	 The player takes the role of a starship commander whose ship and crew are sucked through a black hole into an alternate universe. The player's goal is to return to collects clues from several different planets that will allow the plotting of a course to return home.
2360147	/m/076dh1	Deathtrap Dungeon	Ian Livingstone		{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the town of Fang on the continent of Allansia, the player takes the role of an adventurer who decides to enter Baron Sukumvit's "Trial of Champions" and brave "Deathtrap Dungeon". Competing against five other adventurers, the player must defeat monsters, navigate the maze of dungeons and collect certain gems, which are the key to escaping and winning the Trial.
2360481	/m/076f77	Doctors	Erich Segal	1988		 The story begins with the childhood days of Barney Livingston and Laura Castellano and the incidents which motivated them to ultimately become doctors. The story then traces their days at medical school. The background of the students provide an insight into the many troubles faced by them. As the story progresses, the strength and weaknesses of their characters come to light. All are struggling with ethics, failed relationships and prejudices of those times. After a failed marriage and a string of failed relationships, Laura and Barney realize their love for each other. Erich Segal had extensively researched the lives of medical students and doctors in practice. Apart from that he acknowledges the inspirations from Gentle Vengeance by Charles LeBaron, Getting Better by Kenneth Klein and Becoming a Doctor by Melvin Konner. He has drawn some anecdotes from The Making of a Surgeon by William Nolen, The Making of a Psychiatrist by David Viscott, The End of Life: Euthanasia and Morality by James Rachels and Requiem pour la Vie by Leon Schwartzenberg. A similar (though much smaller book) is The Year of the Intern by Robin Cook. Doctors had reached the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list.
2360506	/m/076f8m	Year of the Intern	Robin Cook	1973-01-23	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is an insider's perspective of the medical world. As Dr. Peter becomes a doctor he is destroying himself as a person due to extensive work and concerns. He began writing the book while serving on a submarine, basing it on his experiences as a medical resident. When it did not do particularly well, he began an extensive study of other books in the genre to see what made a bestseller. He decided to concentrate on medical suspense thrillers, mixing intricately plotted murder and intrigue with medical technology. He also brought controversial ethical and social issues affecting the medical profession to the attention of the general public.
2362446	/m/076m10	The Graveyard Game	Kage Baker	2001-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Segments titled "Joseph in the darkness" appear before and after each of the episodes described below. Joseph, apparently talking to his father-figure, Budu, fills in historical detail in the storyline and discusses his own motivations. In Mendoza in Hollywood, the botanist Mendoza and her companion Einar were thrown forward in time from 1863 to 1996 in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. This is supposed to be impossible, but Mendoza is a Crome generator, a psychic who cannot control her potential, and Laurel Canyon is a focus of Crome radiation (explaining its attraction for certain kinds of people over the years!). As the action of this novel opens, Lewis is arriving at Company HQ in Laurel Canyon in 1996. Entering the building he is just in time to see Mendoza being sent back to her own time, and tries to warn her "Don't go with him!", meaning the English agent she encounters later. From his point of view, that encounter was the cause of her disappearance. She vanishes as the transfer takes place. Lewis takes advantage of work in San Francisco to contact Joseph who is working in the hi-tech industry there. Joseph persuades him to try out a new virtual reality helmet, which turns out to have a fault that disables cyborgs' implanted monitors for 24 hours. Joseph and Lewis can now talk freely, without Company eavesdropping. Initially reluctant, Joseph drives Lewis to Bodega Bay to talk to Juan Bautista who was the last cyborg to see Mendoza. They give him a dose of VR and then pump him for information. Juan Bautista is able to draw a picture of the man Mendoza met in 1863 and subsequently ran away with. To Joseph's shock, the man is a double for Nicholas Harpole, the religious fanatic with whom Mendoza fell in love in Tudor England, and who was subsequently burned at the stake. Joseph sees Nicholas as the main cause of Mendoza's troubles. He also hates religious fanatics of all stripes. Leaving Juan Bautista, Joseph and Lewis agree to meet from time to time as circumstances allow, and as they learn more. A family is celebrating the "Day of the Dead" at a graveyard in Texas. The paterfamilias, actually an uncle, is Porfirio, Mendoza's Facilitator in 1863. Under cover of an electrical storm, Joseph contacts Porfirio and asks what he knows about Mendoza. Porfirio tells him Mendoza was sent back in time, Back Way Back, over 100,000 years. The Company operated resorts for rich clients back before the arrival of humans in the New World. She must have been sent there, but why? Porfirio sends Joseph on his way with one request: don't come back. Lewis poses as an antiquarian, buying old papers and books, and comes into possession of a box which contains a picture of a man named Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, who he recognizes as the man in the picture drawn by Juan Bautista. Further research turns up a well-born man, apparently a natural son of someone in high places, with powerful friends who guide his life. He served as an agent of various shadowy entities. Lewis contacts Joseph and they meet in London. They make a junket to the north of England. They spend time in the country of "The Innocents", an imagined novel combining elements of Animal Farm and Watership Down. This novel and its loony fans are among the catalysts for the growing animal-rights movement which will eventually ban meat consumption in many countries. They stay at a house run by two of the more extreme fans, but Joseph has other motives. He has finally decoded some information Budu forced on him, and he means to act on it. Under cover of another storm, Joseph sneaks out of the house, with Lewis tailing him. They uncover a secret installation in a hillside, containing many cyborgs suspended in tanks of fluid. Are Mendoza and Budu in places like this? Lewis' Company conditioning, intended to keep cyborgs out of forbidden places, causes him to re-experience his suppressed memories of being disabled and kidnapped in medieval Ireland. He begins to understand why the Company left him in South America for 700 years, until the events recorded in Sky Coyote. Lewis is still researching Edward when he can. He learns that Nennius, another cyborg, was monitoring or guiding Edward, even being the headmaster of his school. Joseph seeks out Suleyman, a former Barbary Coast pirate who has built up an independent power base in Fez, Morocco. Suleyman has also found means of frustrating the Company monitoring. Suleyman reveals that he himself is working secretly against other factions, some of whom seem to be creating new diseases to wipe out humans. He implicates Budu in this, to Joseph's consternation. Joseph and Lewis meet again in London. Joseph now has one of Suleyman's masking devices. Lewis tells him all he knows about Edward. Edward was working for people who wanted to gain possession of Santa Catalina island, off the California coast. Joseph has a meeting with Victor, who reveals that he did bring Budu down, a few hours before the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and tells Joseph where to find him. Lewis is working in a library. Finding his cover blown by a strange little man, Lewis drops out of sight and heads to Spain for another meeting with Joseph. On the way he encounters more of the strange men, and is injured with some kind of disrupter that partially disables his hand. This is not supposed to be possible, as the cyborgs have self-repair mechanisms. Told to take a vacation, he accompanies Joseph on a tour of the local archeological sites— the places where Joseph was raised, 20,000 years previously, before checking into a Company base for repairs. Lewis has an "accidental" encounter with Nennius aboard a cruise ship, and Nennius feeds him a story about Edward. Lewis contacts Joseph, and they proceed to Santa Catalina where Lewis believes the key to the mystery is hidden. It is a trap. Lewis is taken, and Joseph severely injured. Rolling off a cliff and into the sea, he eventually washes up onshore and is able to reach one of Suleyman's mosques, from where he is taken to Suleyman himself. When he recovers, his implant has been removed. He is a free agent, but also a fugitive. If the Company ever discovers he is still alive, there will be Hell to pay. Suleyman gives him the same message as Porfirio did: go, and don't come back. Joseph follows Victor's instructions and locates Budu, buried by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He takes the remains to one of the Company's storage facilities under Mount Tamalpais and starts the process of revivification, with help from the cyborg Abdiel, whose entire life consists of journeying between these facilities, maintaining them. Joseph settles down to wait for Budu to re-activate, and tells his recovering corpse his story. He likens himself to Hamlet, for delaying too long in taking action, resulting in the deaths of all around him. But he still has 74 years until 2355...
2362839	/m/076n1f	The Rose and the Yew Tree	Agatha Christie		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Hugh Norreys, a self-described “cripple” watches John Gabriel run for parliament from his couch in the small Cornish town of St. Loo. Hugh’s invalid status seems to encourage his visitors to reveal their secrets and emotions. Hugh is mystified by Gabriel, an ugly little man who, nevertheless, is attractive to women. He is also intrigued by Isabella, a beautiful young woman from the castle down the road. So, Hugh and most of St. Loo are shocked when, shortly after Gabriel wins the election, he and Isabella run away together and Gabriel resigns as a member of parliament. The novel explores love, caring for others, and a gothic tragedy of one woman and the men who love her.
2363024	/m/076nfp	Strider	Beverly Cleary		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Strider takes place two years after the end of Dear Mr. Henshaw, and Leigh Botts has grown a lot. At age 14, Leigh writes in his diary about his experiences with his parent's divorce, his friend Barry, a girl named Geneva and a dog named Strider who he and Barry find abandoned on a beach. Leigh and Barry decide to share custody of Strider, in the same way divorced parents share custody of their children. However, as time goes on, Barry does not seem to take good care of Strider, which causes trouble for Leigh. Finally, feeling desperate, Leigh winds up taking custody of the dog. Strider is a dog that loves to run; because of Strider, Leigh Botts finds himself running -- well enough to join the school track team. He also develops and a crush on a red haired girl named Geneva.
2363800	/m/076pxb	Scandal At High Chimneys	John Dickson Carr	1959	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Clive Strickland, lawyer and author, was to discover a bewildering and terrifying slice of Victorian life when his friend Victor Damon asked him to visit the family estate. The Damon family home, a huge and formidable mansion, plays host to a multitude of characters. Strange things happen at the Damons': a ghost like figure threatens; Matthew Damon gets murdered under impossible circumstances and it take the brilliance of Jonathan Whicher to solve the tangled puzzle.
2364374	/m/076r3m	How to Eat Fried Worms	Thomas Rockwell	1973	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 10-year-old Billy must eat 15 earthworms in 15 days to win a bet for $50. His friends help him by preparing the worms in a variety of ways to make them more appetizing, such as using condiments including ketchup, mustard, and horseradish, and maple syrup.
2364379	/m/076r3z	The Life of the World to Come	Kage Baker	2004-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The first part is an extension of the first person accounts previously supplied by Mendoza, which accounts are apparently previous chapters in her journal, written on any material she can get. Somehow all of this manages to stay intact for the unknown amount of time, perhaps 3000 years, that Mendoza spends in exile on Santa Catalina. The period is uncertain because Mendoza herself cannot remember living through some portions of it. From time to time she looks down at her plants, and next time she looks up months or years have slipped by. She may just be doing the cyborg version of 'zoning out', but since she has already slipped forward in time once, there's no telling what might be happening. What is certain is that she is about 150,000 years in the past, growing fruit and vegetables for a Company resort on Santa Cruz island. One day, a man shows up in a Company Time Shuttle. These previously unknown vessels let the Company ship tourists back to the past, but can only be piloted by cyborgs. Nonetheless the man is the image of her two previous lovers, and she does unto him what she did unto them. This time, however, he leaves behind genetic material when he goes back to the future. She is able to learn from this that he is no more human than she, but in a different way. His name is Alec Checkerfield. Next we learn about "Smart Alec", precocious scion of rich privileged 24th century Londoners, who leave him in the care of their housekeepers so they can get on with their lives away from dismal, puritanical England. Alec affects all around him, especially machines. Given a highly controlled moral teaching unit at a young age, he is able to re-program it by instinct to become his personal assistant and, eventually, partner in crime. This entity becomes "The Captain", after the pirate Captain Morgan. They resolve to rule the oceans of the world, using smuggling to pay the bills. Since meat, alcohol, chocolate etc. are illegal in most of the developed world, this is both easy and lucrative. With the assistance of the Captain, Alec outwits the Company and becomes master of his own time machine. This is in no small part thanks to Mendoza, who disables the self-destruct device on the one he initially stole from the Company. However, at the peak of his achievements, he finds he has committed one of the most heinous crimes of history. He, Mendoza and the Inklings all become aware of their parts in this. All are left desolated, filled with self-loathing and worse.
2368403	/m/076_ln	Bomber	Len Deighton		{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sam Lambert is an experienced RAF pilot based at an East Anglian bomber station. He has been flying missions over Germany since the start of the war and as he nears his tour's end, he is developing stressful exhaustion. The stress of flying missions is exacerbated by a plot device similar to that found in From Here to Eternity. Lambert is an expert cricket bowler and the station commander needs his participation to assure victory against a rival. Lambert's refusal to do put him at odds with the station commander and an ambitious and unscrupulous flight lieutenant who seeks to force Lambert out of flying by taking his best crewmen and replacing them with poor performers (this chimes with another war movie, Twelve O'Clock High). At the same time, his crew revere him and believe that he is the one factor that will ensure their survival. RAF Bomber Command is organizing a large air raid on Krefeld tonight. We join the bomber crews at rest and in preparation for the ordeal. The men, their planes, weapons, responsibilities, attitudes, thoughts and fears are described in great detail with minute historical accuracy. There are frequent references to weather conditions, meteorological phenomena and forecasts that add to the foreboding in the plot. Meanwhile across the Channel in northwest Germany the small market town of Altgarten goes about its daily business, its residents and wartime guests aware of the war's progress but curiously untouched by it. We follow Oberleutnant August Bach returning from leave in Altgarten to his duties at a Freya radar installation on the remote Dutch coast looking out towards England. Bach is a World War I veteran now serving as commander of a radar station charged with detecting and tracking the Tommi Terrorflieger on their night-time raids against the Fatherland and guide by radio Luftwaffe Nachtjäger (nightfighters) to intercept and attack them. The holder of the Pour Le Mérite for heroism, he is symbolic of a more genteel and decidedly non-Nazi background. The counterpoint to this is his son's membership in a Waffen SS unit serving in Russia. He is a widower with a second younger son, looked after by a state provided caregiver. Back in Altgarten the Bürgermeister (German: "mayor") finalises preparations for his own birthday banquet. It is to be held in a cosy restaurant located in one of the timber-built houses surrounding the medieval town square. We are introduced to the Altgarten TENO (Technische Nothilfe or "Civil Defence") engineers who regularly work heroically in the nearby Ruhr cities following air raids, and the local fire crew, adequate for a small country town but useless against what is to come. The bombs are loaded into the Lancasters, the German radars are allowed to "warm up", the aircrews adjust their night vision and everyone sits and waits and waits. Superstitions, rites and rituals are respected as the combatants ready themselves. Meanwhile Altgarten's people continue with their day-to-day routines. Eventually the raid gets under way. The British bomber stream forms up and navigates its dogleg course avoiding known flak concentrations and searchlight batteries. As the bombers are pinpointed by German nightfighters, we discover in the minutest detail how tiny pieces of shrapnel from an 88&nbsp;mm anti-aircraft shell can destroy one of 750 Lancasters, each costing more than £42,000 at 1943 prices. Despite the meticulous planning, things go wrong immediately: A Lancaster almost crashes on take-off; a Junkers fighter crashes into the sea after hitting birds over the IJsselmeer; another is shot down by a friendly flak-ship. A pathfinder Mosquito is downed and its marker bombs explode south east of Altgarten; with little flak and clear bombing conditions, Christmas Tree marker pyrotechnics are placed over the marker bombs with unusual accuracy. Creepback ensures that the entire town of 5,000 inhabitants is carpet-bombed by a force designed to destroy a city: a firestorm results. The author maintains a clinically distanced vantage point, understating and implying the horror of the characters' situations. Even so, the protagonists' injuries and deaths are described in the same detail as the airmen's tactics. Each successive event is clinically dissected and analysed almost as though in slow-motion. As is the case with virtually all of his works, the author does portray some characters' actions as counter-productive to their own cause. By the time the raid is over, Altgarten is destroyed; many of the main characters are dead or have lost those close to them. Despite the attack going terribly wrong, there are no punishments meted out. Lambert - for not playing cricket - is banished from flying, an indignity that he views with mixed emotions. The book ends with an epilogue which gives details of the later lives of the major characters, some of whom are purportedly still alive at the time of the book's appearance.
2368440	/m/076_r8	The Namesake	Jhumpa Lahiri	2003-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As The Namesake opens, Ashima Ganguli is a young bride who is about to deliver her first child in a hospital in Massachusetts. Her husband, Ashoke, is an engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As she prepares to give birth, she realizes how isolated she has become. If she were still in Calcutta, she would have her baby at home, surrounded by all the women in her family who would administer all the proper Bengali ceremonies and would tell her what to expect. In the United States, Ashima struggles through language and cultural barriers as well as her own fears as she delivers her first child. The baby boy is healthy and the new parents are prepared to take their son home. But Ashima and Ashoke are stunned to learn that they cannot leave the hospital before they give their son a legal name. The traditional naming process in their families is to have an elder give the new baby a name. They have chosen Ashima's grandmother for this honor. They have written the grandmother to ask her to give the baby a name. But the letter never arrives and soon after, the grandmother dies. In the meantime, Ashoke suggests the name of Gogol. He chooses this name for two reasons. First, it is the name of his favorite author, the famous Russian author. The second reason is that Ashoke, before he was married, had survived a very traumatic accident. The train he was riding in had derailed and many people had died, while Ashoke had broken his back and could not move. He had been reading Gogol just before the accident, a page of that book clutched in his hand. The paper caught the attention of the medics who had come to rescue him. If it had not been for that page, acting as a flag in the darkness, Ashoke would have died. While he insists on being called Gogol in elementary school, by the time he turns 14 he starts to hate the name. His father tries once to explain the significance of it, but he senses that Gogol is not old enough to understand. As Gogol progresses through high school, he hates his name more and more. He informs his parents that he wishes to change his name. His father is rather indifferent to the idea and agrees. Shortly before leaving for college, he travels to the courthouse and has his name legally changed to Nikhil Gogol Ganguli. This change in name and Gogol's going to Yale, rather than following his father’s footsteps to MIT, sets up the barriers between Gogol and his family. The distance, both geographically and emotionally, between Gogol and his parents continues to increase. He wants to be American, not Bengali. He goes home less frequently, dates American girls, and becomes angry when anyone calls him Gogol. During his college years, he smokes cigarettes and marijuana, goes to many parties, and loses his virginity to a girl he cannot remember. When he goes home for the summer, Gogol's train is suddenly stopped and temporarily loses electricity. A man had jumped in front of the train and committed suicide, and the wait for the authorities causes a long delay. Ashoke, who is waiting at the train station for Gogol, becomes very concerned when he calls the train company and hears of this incident. When they pull into the Ganguli's driveway, Ashoke turns off the car and finally explains the true significance of Gogol's name. Gogol is deeply troubled by this news, asking his father why he didn't tell him this earlier. He starts to regret changing his name and changing his identity. He lives in a very small apartment in New York City with his friend Eliseo, where he has landed a job in an established architectural office after graduating from Columbia. He is rather stiff personality-wise, perpetually angry or else always on the lookout for someone to make a stereotypical comment about his background. At a party, Gogol meets a very attractive and rather socially aggressive Barnard girl named Maxine. Gogol becomes completely wrapped up in her and her family. Maxine's parents are financially well off and live in a four-story house in New York City. Maxine has one floor to herself and invites Gogol to move in. Gogol becomes a member of the family, helping with the cooking and shopping. Maxine's parents appear to have accepted him as a son. When Maxine's parents leave the city for the summer, they invite Maxine and Gogol to join them for a couple of weeks. They are staying in the mountains in New Hampshire, where Maxine's grandparents live. Gogol introduces Maxine to his parents. Ashima dismisses Maxine as something that Gogol will eventually get over. Shortly after this meeting, Gogol's father dies of a heart attack while teaching a semester in Ohio. Gogol travels to Ohio to gather his father's belongings and his father's ashes. Something inside of Gogol changes. He slowly withdraws from Maxine as he tries to sort out his emotions. Maxine tries to pressure him to open up to her. Gogol breaks off the relationship and begins to spend more time with his mother and sister, Sonia. Ashima, after some time has gone by, suggests that Gogol contact the daughter of one of her friends. Gogol knows of the woman from his own childhood. Her name is Moushumi, and she has had the unfortunate experience of having planned a wedding only to have her intended groom change his mind at the last minute. Gogol is reluctant to meet with Moushumi because she is Bengali. But he meets her anyway, to please his mother. Moushumi and Gogol are attracted to one another and eventually are married. However, by the end of their first year of marriage, Moushumi becomes restless. She feels tied down by marriage and begins to regret what she has done. Gogol suspects something is wrong and often feels like a poor substitute for Moushumi's ex-fiance, Graham, who abandoned her. One day, Moushumi comes across the name of a man she knew when she was a senior in high school. She contacts him, and they begin an affair. Gogol finds out. Moushumi and Gogol divorce. The story ends with Ashima selling the family home so she can live in India with her siblings for half of the year. Sonia is preparing to marry an American man named Ben. Gogol is once again alone. But he feels comforted by one thing: before his father died, he finally told his son why he had chosen that name for him. By the end of the novel, Gogol has come to accept his name and picks up a collection of the Russian author's stories that his father had given him as a birthday present many years ago.
2368625	/m/077065	The Human Factor	Graham Greene	1978	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Maurice Castle is an aging bureaucrat in the British secret service MI6. Married to a black African woman with whom he fell in love during his previous stint in apartheid South Africa, he now lives a quiet life in the suburbs and looks forward to retirement. As the book begins, however, a leak has been traced to the African section in London where he works and threatens to disrupt this precarious tranquility. Castle and younger colleague Davis make light of the resulting inquiry, but when Davis is accused on circumstantial evidence and quietly "disposed of", Castle begins to wrestle with questions of loyalty, morality and conscience. On the one hand, Castle undertakes his day-to-day job professionally, and is willing to do what is more than required for both Davis and Daintry, his boss. On the other hand, Castle is grateful to Carson, who, as a Communist, has helped Castle's wife escape South Africa. In return, Castle decides to help the Communists and believes that by helping them, he is helping his wife's people—not knowing that Moscow has all along been using him for entirely different purposes. Rather than action or high politics, the novel builds its suspense by focusing on the psychological burdens of the pawns in the game: doubt and paranoia bred by a culture of secrecy, the sophisticated amorality of the men at the top, and above all, loyalties (to whom and what and at what cost?) Greene's characters are complete psychological portraits located within the context of the Cold War and the impact of international affairs on the complicated lives of individuals and vice versa. The interplay of international politics on the individual level is a trademark of this author.
2370012	/m/0772zx	Giant's Bread	Agatha Christie			 At London’s National Opera House, the opening of the building is celebrated by the first performance of a new composition, The Giant, in front of a specially-invited audience of Royalty, society figures and the press. Somewhat in the style of a Russian opera, the audience are either puzzled or ecstatic about this modernist piece. One man who does not personally like the composition, but can see the genius that scored it, is Carl Bowerman, the elderly and distinguished Music critic who joins the owner of the Opera House, Sebastian Levinne, for a private drink. Despite the foreign nature of the music, Bowerman recognises that the composer, known as Boris Groen, must be English because "Nationality in music is unmistakable." He states that Groen is the natural successor to a man called Vernon Deyre who was killed in the war. Sebastian politely refuses to tell more about the absent Groen, telling him that, "There are reasons..." In the late years of the Victorian era, Vernon Deyre is a small boy growing up in the old country house of the Deyre family, Abbots Puisannts. He is the only child of Walter, a soldier by profession, and Myra Deyre. She is something of an emotional and clinging person while Walter is a sad figure, not in love with his wife and subject to various dalliances. Vernon's nurse - an important figure in his childhood - raises him but he has no friends. In their place he has four imaginary friends, the most important of which is called Mr. Green, a florid man who loves playing games and who lives in a wood that borders on the grounds of Abbots Puisannts. One of the main male figures in Vernon's life is his Uncle Sydney, Myra’s brother. He is a self-made man who runs a manufacturing business in Birmingham and is someone who Vernon instinctively feels uncomfortable with. Someone who promotes a different reaction is Walter’s sister, Nina, an artistic woman who impresses Vernon by her playing of the grand piano in the house. This is an object for which Vernon has an unreasoning terror, naming it "The Beast", and which promotes a hatred of music in his soul. Aunt Nina’s marriage breaks up and Walter wants her and her young daughter Josephine (Joe) to live with them but Myra objects. Fate takes a turn though when the Boer War breaks out and Walter goes off to fight. In his absence, whilst Vernon is away at school, Nina dies and Myra takes Joe in. As a result, Vernon has a playmate in the holidays and the two start to make a circle of acquaintances. One of them, Nell Vereker, is a thin girl who cannot keep up with Vernon and Joe in their games. The local village is aghast when the adjoining property to Abbots Puisannts is bought by a rich Jewish family called the Levinnes and, although held at arm's length at first, gradually the family come to held in a grudging acceptance. Vernon and Joe also make friends with the son of the family – Sebastian, who is much the same age as them. A few weeks before the end of the war, Walter Deyre is killed in action and Vernon inherits Abbots Puisannts, although not being of age, it is held in trust for him. A shortage of money means that Myra and her son have to move and they rent the house out while they move to Birmingham to be near Uncle Sydney. Eleven years pass. Vernon and Sebastian have remained friends through their time at Eton and Cambridge. Sebastian’s father has died in the intervening years and he, unlike Vernon, has inherited millions. Sebastian is starting on his career of a patronage of the arts, opening a gallery in Bond Street while Joe has artistic tastes and Vernon is at a loose end as to what he wants to do – money, or the lack of it, still being a concern. He has a life-changing moment when he is forced to attend a charity concert at the Albert Hall and suddenly overcomes his childhood hatred of music, so much so that he declares that he wants to be a composer. Vernon reaches twenty-one and is bitter to learn that his financial situation means that he cannot afford to move back to Abbots Puisannts. He is forced to agree that he will work at Uncle Sydney’s firm but life takes a different tack when, after a gap of several years, he meets Nell Vereker again at Cambridge. She has grown into a beautiful young woman and Vernon falls in love with her. He is opposed by Nell’s mother, who has brought her up to be a lady despite being desperately short of money herself and is determined that Nell will marry riches. Her preferred candidate for her daughter’s hand is an American called George Chetwynd. Uncle Sydney is also opposed to Vernon marrying Nell and persuades him to wait until he is more established. One night, while Nell and her mother are abroad, Vernon is introduced to a professional singer called Jane Harding at a party hosted by Sebastian. He is attracted to Jane, despite a ten-year age difference and starts to see her, to Joe’s approval but Myra Deyre’s consternation. Jane's effect on Vernon is to apply himself more to composing music and to do so, he leaves his uncle’s firm. Nell is frightened of Jane and confronts her but the older, more experienced girl is more than a match for Nell. Vernon finishes his composition and, suddenly scared of rumours that Nell is going to marry George Chetwynd, proposes to her but she asks him to wait. Events reach a crisis point when Joe absconds with a married man and this prompts Vernon to accuse Nell of not having that sort of courage. This outburst merely prompts her into getting engaged to Chetwynd with whom, as she tells Vernon, she "feels safe". On the rebound, Vernon starts a relationship with Jane. He also finishes his composition which Sebastian produces and Jane sings in, the piece receiving warm reviews. The First World War is declared on 4 August 1914 and four days later Nell sees Vernon again and confesses that she still loves him. Hearing that he has enlisted she agrees to be his wife and they are married later that afternoon. Six months later, Vernon is sent to France and Nell becomes a VAD nurse, finding the work and the treatment meted out to volunteers like her hard to take. After some time she receives a telegram to say that Vernon has been killed in action... Several months pass and George Chetwynd meets Nell briefly before he goes off to Serbia to carry out relief work and promises to keep in touch with her. Nell has, through her widowhood, inherited Abbots Puisannts and she makes a move that Vernon never could by selling the house. She finds out that Chetwynd has bought it and he invites Nell and her mother to visit him at the house where he proposes to her. She accepts and they marry. It is 1917. In neutral Holland, Vernon turns up one night at an inn, having escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Germany. The daughter of the woman who runs the inn gives him some old English magazines to read and a letter for a soldier she knew called Corporal Green. Struck by the man having the same name as his imaginary childhood friend, he happily agrees but is then dumbstruck to read in one of the magazines of Nell and George’s marriage. He staggers into the night and throws himself in the path of a coming truck. Two years later a man called George Green is the chauffeur of a rich American who found the man in Holland suffering from loss of memory after an "accident" and working as a driver. They are back in England now and George's employer visits Chetwynd, an acquaintance, at Abbots Puisannts. By coincidence, Jane Harding is also visiting the house that day. She has lost her singing voice and is now an actress and, appearing locally with a repertory company, Chetwynd has invited her to tea. She and Nell meet and their mutual animosity to each other is clear but Nell receives a greater shock when she catches sight of their American visitor’s chauffeur and realises that Vernon is still alive. Jane also recognises Vernon in the nearby town and hurriedly summons Sebastian down there by telegram. They get Vernon professional help and he slowly starts to recover his memory and has a proper reunion with Nell while Chetwynd, unaware of what has happened, is away. Vernon wants to take up where he left off, although he accepts the loss of Abbots Puisannts but Nell, afraid, lies to him that she is pregnant. Disconsolate, Jane takes him away, no one else being aware that he is alive, but not before she has confronted Nell with her lie. The two go to Moscow where Vernon is taken up with Meyerhold and the Avant-garde music of the new movements in Russia. They suddenly receive a telegram saying that Joe is dangerously ill in New York and they sail across to see her. On the way, the ship hits an iceberg and starts to sink. In the confusion of the evacuation as the ship starts to tilt badly and go down into the water, Vernon sees Nell, she and Chetwynd having been on board but sailing in a different class to themselves. She cries out to Vernon to save her and he does so, watching Jane’s horrified face as she goes "down into that green swirl…" Back safely in New York, Vernon confesses that to Sebastian that he let the love of his life die. Sebastian is furious but the emotional shock to Vernon causes him to regain his passion and talent for composing again. He begins The Giant, oblivious to all else, even Nell who visits him to admit that she still loves him. He rebuffs her, his only interest now for his music.
2370049	/m/07731n	Unfinished Portrait	Agatha Christie		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In the midst of divorce, bereft of the only people in her life she cares for, Celia considers taking her life. But, while on an exotic island, Celia meets a successful portrait painter Larraby, who spends a night talking with her, and learning her deepest fears, leaving Celia with the hope that he may be the one to help her come to terms with her past.
2370075	/m/077332	Absent in the Spring	Agatha Christie		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stranded between trains, Joan Scudamore finds herself reflecting upon her life, her family, and finally coming to grips with the uncomfortable truths about her life.
2370134	/m/07737b	Too Many Magicians	Randall Garrett	1966	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel takes place in 1966. However, it occurs in a world with an alternative history. The Plantagenet kings survived and rule a large Anglo-French Empire. In addition, around AD 1300 the laws of magic were discovered and magical science developed. The physical sciences were never pursued. The society looks early Victorian, though medical magic is superior to our medicine. The book uses the conventions of a detective story. The protagonist is Lord Darcy, Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy. This Sherlock Holmes-like figure is assisted by Master Sean O’Lochlainn, a forensic sorcerer. The novel is a locked room mystery, which takes place at a wizards’ convention. Garrett delights in puns. Analogues of Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, James Bond and Gandalf the Grey appear. Lord Darcy also appears in several other novellas and short stories by Garrett, but this is Garrett's only novel-length Lord Darcy story. Michael Kurland has written two further novels set in the Lord Darcy universe.
2370475	/m/04ggf05	Colonization: Second Contact	Harry Turtledove	1999-02-09	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set in 1963, eighteen years following the end of the alternate World War II shown in the Worldwar series. Earl Warren is President of the United States, Vyacheslav Molotov is the Premier of the Soviet Union, and Heinrich Himmler leads Nazi Germany. Smaller countries remain independent, such as the Republic of Ireland and Imperial Japan, which still controls portions of its World War II-era empire. A few isolated areas are still held by Charles de Gaulle's Free France, and in German-occupied France the French Resistance remains active. At the start of the novel, the colonization fleet of the Race enters the Solar System, bringing with them eighty to one hundred million colonists for settling on Earth. As the fleet enters Earth orbit, a human satellite unleashes a nuclear attack that kills millions. As Germany, the USSR, and the United States each have large-scale space capability, any of the three nations may have been responsible for the attack. All three deny it when furious Race leaders demand answers, but in truth two of the three human nations are as much unaware of the attacker's identity as the Race. In addition, while there is peace between the independent human nations and the Race- albeit an uneasy one- Mao Zedong and Ruhollah Khomeini continue to lead popular resistance to the invaders in China and the Middle East, respectively. Race efforts to wage a counter-insurgency war in those regions are frustrated by their lack of familiarity with such warfare and a near-total lack of support from the human population. The Race also becomes aware of subtle support of these resistance movements by Germany, the United States, and the USSR, but as the Race are unable to prove it nothing can be done to stop them. Meanwhile, the Race colonists, who expected to encounter an Earth that was already conquered with the natives still at medieval levels of advancement, have to deal with the consequences of the cold war with the humans. The fleet brings with it not only the first civilians, but also the first Race females, both of which cause tension among the male soldiers who formed the invasion force. To the Race males, ginger is a euphoric drug; to the females, it causes them to go into estrus, throwing Race forces on Earth into social chaos. Worse still for the commanding Fleetlord of the Race forces on Earth is a sharp upswing in armed revolts in the Middle East and in China; at the novel's end Khomeini's guerrillas have staged several successful ambushes against Race patrols, while resistance forces under Mao Zedong storm the Forbidden City.
2371419	/m/077611	The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or, The Roly-Poly Pudding	Beatrix Potter	1908	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The theme of the tale is the childhood sin of disobedience. Tom Kitten is a young cat who lives with his mother, Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, and sisters, Moppet and Mittens, in a house overrun with rats. Her children being an unruly bunch, Mrs. Twitchit puts Moppet and Mittens in a cupboard in order to keep them under control, but Tom Kitten escapes up the chimney. As he makes his way to the top of the house, he comes across a crack in the wall and, squeezing through it, finds himself under the attic's floorboards. There he meets the rats, Mr. Samuel Whiskers and his wife Anna Maria. They catch him and proceed to cover him with butter and dough in order to eat him as a pudding. However, when they proceed to settle the dough with a rolling-pin, the noise gets through the floorboards and attracts the attention of Tabitha Twitchit and her friend Ribby who has been helping search for Tom. They quickly call for John Joiner, the carpenter, who saws open the floor and rescues Tom. Whiskers and his wife escape to the barn of Farmer Potatoes, spreading their chaos to another location, though leaving the cat family residence in peace. Potter mentions herself as seeing Samuel Whiskers and Anna Maria making their escape, using a wheelbarrow that looks like her own.
2371609	/m/0776fz	Island of the Lizard King	Ian Livingstone		{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The player takes the role of an adventurer on a quest to find and stop the Lizard King and free the human slaves captured by his army. As the adventurer, the player must traverse Fire Island, battling Lizard Men and various other monsters. The player must also find and utilize information regarding the Lizard King's weakness that will be required during the final confrontation.
2373301	/m/077bfg	Abba Abba	Anthony Burgess	1977-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In Part One, the poet has various adventures, meeting the Roman (dialectal) poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli in the Sistine Chapel, and Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon, in the Pincio. Part Two consists of about seventy (from a total of 2,279) amusingly blasphemous sonnets by Belli, purportedly translated by one "Joseph Joachim Wilson", a descendant of the Roman man-of-letters Giovanni Gulielmi (a character in Part One). An elaborate passage describes how the Italian Gulielmis were transformed into English Wilsons "during a wave of anti-Italian feeling occasioned by alleged ice-cream poisoning in the 1890s in the Lancashire coastal resorts of Blackpool, Cleveleys, Bispham and Fleetwood". "J. J. Wilson" is a thinly veiled "John Anthony Burgess Wilson".
2374475	/m/077ds_	The Jagged Orbit	John Brunner	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The novel is set in the United States of America in 2014, when interracial tensions have passed the breaking point. A Mafia-like cartel, the Gottschalks, are exploiting this situation to sell weapons to anyone able to buy them. A split develops within the cartel, between the conservative old men and ambitious underlings prepared to use new computer technology to pull off some spectacular coups. There are several separate strands of narrative following particular characters. James Reedeth is a young psychologist at New York's major mental health institution who is disenchanted with his job and his employer, the revered Elias Mogshack. Lyla Clay is a "pythoness," a young woman capable of metabolising certain psychedelic drugs to enter a trance in which she makes unconscious predictions. Matthew Flamen, a "spoolpigeon" (a variety of investigative journalist), is struggling to hold onto his job, and by his obsessive behaviour has driven his wife into Mogshack's asylum. The plot is contrived to bring the strands together and resolve matters by a lengthy discussion between Flamen, Reedeth, Lyla Clay, Pedro Diablo (Flamen's African-American counterpart), Xavier Conroy (a long-time critic of Mogshack), and Harry Madison (a former patient at Mogshack's asylum).
2375459	/m/077g_h	Lucky Child	Loung Ung	2000	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Lucky Child tells the story of Loung Ung and her sister Chou Ung. Each chapter alternates between their stories. Loung lives in Vermont as a refugee with her older brother Meng and his wife Eang. Meng only had enough money to bring one of his siblings with him, so he had to leave the rest of his family. He chose Loung to come with him because she was the youngest, ten years old upon leaving Cambodia; hence, she is the "lucky child." *Loung - In America, Loung dealt with issues regarding assimilation and fitting in. Her family originally had live off food stamps in order to survive. At school, Loung was ridiculed for her poor English and her ethnic Cambodian facial features. Her belly still bloated from malnutrition, she felt she wasn't pretty. She also continued to be plagued by memories of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. Even as she began to put the past behind her, she could not entirely because her brother refused to do so. Nonetheless, Loung's quality of life was a lot higher than her prospects had she remained in Cambodia; she even earned a full scholarship to college. Loung was often haunted by her torturous past but finally comes to terms with it when she visits Cambodia at the end of the story and finally reunites with her long-lost family Loung's story is written in the first person present tense. *Chou - Chou's life in Cambodia was very different. The village where she and the rest of Loung's family lived was still plagued by random Khmer Rouge attacks. The family, despite its previous upper-class status, was reduced to peasant status. Khouy was forced to enlist in the military to earn money. At the age of eighteen Chou's aunt and uncle arrange a marriage to her. She and her new husband Pheng lived on a her aunt and uncle's property. Chou gives birth to several children. Chou's story was recorded by Loung and translated to English. It is written in the third person. *Loung Ung - The author and narrator of the American story arc. *Chou Ung - Loung's sister. Older by two years, Chou remained in Cambodia with the rest of her family. Chou was closest to Loung and missed her younger sister a lot. At age eighteen she marries Pheng. She is the central character in the Cambodian story arc. *Meng and Eang Ung - Loung's caretakers, Meng is her eldest brother and Eang is his wife. They flee Cambodia with Loung for Thailand, there they receive sponsorship by an American church to live in Vermont. *Maria and Tori Ung - The children of Meng and Eang, they are the first Ungs to become American citizens since they were born in America.
2376352	/m/077jxp	The Burden	Agatha Christie		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When Laura Franklin's younger sister Shirley comes into the world, Laura instantly resents her, and soon begins wish and even to pray that her baby sister will die. But after saving Shirley's life in a fire, she experiences a complete change of feeling, and becomes very affectionate and protective towards her. Later, as the sisters grow up and fall in love, Laura begins to realise that the burden of her love for Shirley has had a dramatic effect on both their lives.
2376385	/m/077k12	Partners in Crime	Agatha Christie		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Beresfords' old friend, Mr. Carter (who works for an unnamed government intelligence agency) arrives bearing a proposition for the adventurous duo. They are to take over 'The International Detective Agency', a recently cleaned out spy stronghold, and pose as the owners so as to intercept any enemy messages coming through. But until such a message arrives, Tommy and Tuppence are to do with the detective agency as they please - an opportunity that delights the young couple. They employ the hapless but well-meaning Albert, a young man also introduced in The Secret Adversary, as their assistant at the agency. Eager and willing, the two set out to tackle several cases. In each case mimicking the style of a famous fictional detective of the period, including Sherlock Holmes and Christie's own Hercule Poirot. That's when her brother gets murdered... At the end of the book, Tuppence reveals that she is pregnant, and as a result will play a diminished role in the spy business. * A Fairy in the Flat / A Pot of Tea - Introduces the setup of Tommy & Tuppence at The International Detective Agency. Reminiscent of Malcolm Sage, detective (1921) by Herbert George Jenkins. * The Affair of the Pink Pearl - This first case is in the vein of the detective Dr. Thorndyke by R. Austin Freeman. * The Adventure of the Sinister Stranger - An espionage story, following in the footsteps of Valentine Williams and the detective brothers Francis and Desmond Okewood. One of the Williams' books in particular - The Man with the Clubfoot (1918) is named by Tuppence in the story. * Finessing the King / The Gentleman Dressed in Newspaper - This two part story is a spoof of the nowadays almost forgotten Isabel Ostrander, with parallels to the story The Clue in the Air (1917) and the detectives Tommy McCarty (an ex-policeman) and Denis Riordan (a fireman). * The Case of the Missing Lady - This story references Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (1911). * Blindman's Buff - Matches Clinton H. Stagg's stories about the blind detective Thornley Colton. * The Man in the Mist - In the style of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories. * The Crackler - A spoof on Edgar Wallace's style of plotting. * The Sunningdale Mystery - The tale is in the style of Baroness Orczy's The Old Man in the Corner (1909) with Tuppence playing the role of journalist Polly Burton and Tommy tying knots in a piece of string in the same way as Orczy's character, Bill Owen. * The House of Lurking Death - Recreates the style of A. E. W. Mason and his French detective Inspector Hanaud. * The Unbreakable Alibi - Modelled after Freeman Wills Crofts, known for his detective stories centred around alibis and the Scotland Yard detective Inspector Joseph French. * The Clergyman's Daughter / The Red House - A two part story, this is a parody on detective Roger Sherringham by Anthony Berkeley, with plot elements reminding of The Violet Farm by H. C. Bailey (although the latter was not published until 1928). * The Ambassador's Boots - Following the style of H. C. Bailey with Dr. Reginald Fortune and Superintendent Bell as the parodied detectives. * The Man Who Was No. 16 - This story parodies Christie's own The Big Four, featuring Hercule Poirot.
2376568	/m/077kq2	Hell Island	Matthew Reilly	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Hell Island is a remote Pacific Island currently used by the American government for scientific experiments. It was originally used as a Japanese airfield during World War II but was captured with a force of more than 500 Marines, including Schofield's grandfather. The book opens with Schofield's ten-man Marine Recon team parachuting onto the deck of the soon-to-be-decommissioned aircraft carrier, USS Nimitz CVN-68, along with three other special forces squads - a Delta Force team, a squad of SEALs and a force from the 82nd Airborne Division. The Delta team make landfall on the island while the other three teams investigate the aircraft carrier. It quickly becomes clear that the island was the testing ground for an elite force of supersoldier, as the Airborne and SEAL teams are quickly slaughtered. A DARPA scientist, whom Schofield's team stumble across, explain that the enemy is a group of genetically and electronically enhanced gorillas, armed with modified M-4 Colt Commandos and extremely deadly in melee combat. The few remaining Marines dispatch significant numbers of the gorillas in a large battle on board the carrier, eventually departing to investigate the island. Schofield comments that the island is home to an extensive tunnel network dating from World War II, which features an uncommon self-destruct mechanism: sea doors which can flood the lower parts of the tunnel system in the event of an enemy force capturing the base. Schofield then realises the gorillas are somehow controlled by Captain William Buck "Buccaneer" Broyles, the former leader of what was acknowledged to be the best Marines Unit, due to the similar tactics his Marines and the gorillas employed. They set a trap to lock the remaining force in an old ammunition storage bunker before detonating the munitions, but the Delta team's entrance with the rest of the DARPA team (who deactivate the gorillas' neural chips) changes the situation. What is controlling (or at least, calming the apes down) is a silver disc, which are on the men testing Captain Schofield and his group, including the Delta force. Dr Knox, the scientist in charge of the project, tells Schofield that they are the sole survivors of a field test for the apes, which has so far killed five hundred Marines and two special forces squads. He congratulates Schofield on his success, before instructing the Delta team leader to execute them. However, Mother jams the radio signals controlling the apes (remember the silver discs...) releasing them to murder their creators, the scientists. The Delta team is distracted and Schofield's team fires upon them and kills them, leaving only Broyles. Schofield opens a sea door, flooding the tunnels and drowning the gorillas along with the "Buccaneer". They leave on a C-17 which was sent to pick up the DARPA and Delta teams along with the apes.
2377833	/m/077n_t	The Ungoverned	Vernor Vinge	1985	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The framework is the story of the Republic of New Mexico (NMR) invading the peaceful anarcho-capitalist society in Kansas. The NMR creates a military fiasco by completely failing to understand the cultural differences — including the amount of self-protection a lone Kansas farmer may have. The main protagonist is Wil W. Brierson, a detective/insurance agent, who attempts to disrupt the invasion while trying to minimize the property damage (and thus claims his company might have to pay out) and bridge the cultural gap. Brierson is also the protagonist of Marooned in Realtime.
2378467	/m/077q5s	Ring	Stephen Baxter	1993-07-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The AI Lieserl is abandoned for five million years, leaving her to observe the sun's interior. She discovers dark matter-based life, which she names photino birds. These birds gradually drain the energy from the core of a star, ending fusion and causing premature aging into a stable red giant&mdash;the birds' preferred habitat, as it has no risk of going supernova and destroying them. A generation ship is sent with one end of a wormhole to explore the future and investigate the whereabouts of Michael Poole. It will be a five-million-year journey, though only a thousand years will elapse on board, due to relativistic time dilation effects. The crew is broken into three factions&mdash;the primitives, the virtuals, and a survivalist faction, Superet. Their journey is a round trip taking them to the future of our solar system through relativistic time dilation. Among the factions, the primitives are a eugenics project for Garry Uvarov who hopes to lengthen the lives of humanity without the use of Anti-Senescence (anagathic or life-extension) technology. The Superet faction relies heavily on failing technology and maintains a totalitarian government which refuses to acknowledge the existence of other decks on the ship; the virtuals remain aloof. Upon their arrival, the entire universe is full of red stars (indicating that the stars have aged far faster than expected). The Northern makes contact with Lieserl, who explains her observations of the photino birds. The photino birds do not just exist in our sun but every sun, helioforming them to an amenable habitat. The Xeelee, masters of baryonic matter, have known about the photino birds and have been striving to thwart them. The baryonic universe is doomed but the Xeelee create a 'Ring' which is an escape hatch. A cosmic string is made into a loop and creates the phenomenon of the Great Attractor. The function of the Ring is to create a Kerr metric at its centre, which, in this fictional universe, creates a portal to other universes; the rotating Ring is somewhat similar to a Tipler Cylinder. Whenever humans have met up with the Xeelee and pursued war, this was merely an annoyance since the Xeelee were thinking on a larger scale about more potent enemies. The crew of the Northern and Lieserl discover the folly of their species. A Xeelee nightfighter is discovered in Callisto, a reference to the later story "Reality Dust", and it is rigged to piggyback the Northern to the Great Attractor. Fifty days later they discover that the Xeelees' project has been destroyed but a recently awakened virtual of Michael Poole shows Spinner-of-Rope, a primitive, how to pilot around the fragmented cosmic strings and travel into the past using a closed time-like path; this method of time travel was first suggested by J. Richard Gott. These last humans return to the Ring, in an era in which it was not destroyed; the Xeelee allow them through, and they briefly attempt to pick universes (rejecting the high-gravity universe depicted in Raft) and find sanctuary in another younger universe, after passing through the Ring, and get to work on starting a new world. Michael Poole remains in our universe and witnesses the deaths of the last stars, and the decay of the last protons&mdash;the final victory of the dark matter lifeforms over the baryonic Xeelee and lesser races. Eventually, his consciousness disperses, and history ends.
2378930	/m/077r7c	The White Bull	Voltaire		{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 How the Princess Amasida met a bull ---- The story takes place in Ancient Egypt where Princess Amasidia, daughter to King Amasis, is walking along the Pelusium Way in the company of Old Mambres, who the king appointed to be in charge of her household. She is deeply saddened as her love has been missing for 7 years and the King has forbidden him. No one in the kingdom is to even speak his name. While walking along the Pelusium Way she encounters many majestic creatures one which is the most beautiful White Bull she has ever seen. As soon as the Bull sees the princess he tries to run towards her as a peculiar old lady tries to restrain the bull. As soon as the Bull reaches princess Amasidia, he throws himself to the ground weeping and kissing her feet. As soon as the princess sees this she offers to purchase the Bull and the bull seems to want to be with the princess, yet the bull cannot speak. Seeing Amasidia's want of the bull Mambres goes to the old women to try to persuade her. How wise Mambres, former sorcerer to the Pharaohs, recognized an old woman, and how she recognized him ---- As Mambres tries to persuade the old lady to buy the bull, she states that the bull is not hers to sell, like the rest of the animals they see there. Then they speak of how they met 700 years ago when Mambres was traveling from Syria to Egypt. The old lady was the noble Pythoness of Endor. The old woman states that even though they are old friends, she cannot satisfy their curiosity about the bull. Amasidia then goes to talk to the woman about buying the bull, yet the old lady still refuses. The lady says you are welcome to see the bull and feed him to your likings but he is never to leave the watch of the other animals and the old lady. They argue and Amasidia asks if he were to escape she would not be able to restrain him, but the old lady says that if he were to do that, the magical serpent might give the bull a venomous bite. As the day was turning to night Amasidia knew that she had to return home and left the bull. How the fair Amasidia held secret converse with a handsome serpent ---- The next day Amasidia and Mambres are talking and decide the bull truly is a majestic creature and they start devising a plan to speak with the serpent. Mambres sets up a meeting between the princess and the serpent, and informs her that to get a secret from the serpent she must flatter him. They speak of his past presence as a god, and the serpent informs the princess that she has a certain power over him, the same power which he is to have over others. The serpent then agrees to tell Amasidia the tale of the white bull. The bull used to be a king who fell in love with his dreams as he slept. Wanting to remember them he hired Magi to retell him his dreams and interpret them for him. The Magi failed and the king had them hanged. Then about seven years ago a Jew interpreted his dream, and then suddenly the king turned into the ox he is now. Upon hearing that this was her lost love she fainted, Mambres thinking she was dead rushed over. How they wanted to sacrifice the ox and exorcize the Princess ---- The bull saw the princess's ladies rushing to her and did the same dragging the old lady. No one could wake the princess till the bull arrived. Then the princess abruptly awoke. She then showered the bull with kisses and all of the princess's ladies were bewildered. The ladies rushed back to their homes and told different stories to all who would hear. With all the talk of this gossip the king took wind of the story. Upon hearing the story he was filled with anger and sentenced his daughter to be locked in her chamber. Mambres knowing that the bull was the princess's love had to keep it a secret because that man was Nabuchad the one who had dethroned Amasis 7 years prior. The king had hired the Jew to perform the metamorphoses. Mambres then informs the princess that the only metamorphoses that can be changed back is one of an ox. How wise Mambres acted wisely ---- Mambres then tries to trick the old lady into giving the ox to him so that he may hide him in one of his country's stables. Mambres then devised a plan to appoint the white bull as the new bull god Apis, and sent four magical animals, a raven, she-ass, dog, and dove to deliver a letter to the High Priest of Memphis, so that the priests could come and worship the new bull. He used tests to see of the animals were trustworthy, and all passed but the raven, who left displeased. Mambres then sent three servants to follow the animals. How Mambres met three prophets and gave them a good dinner ---- Upon talking to his servants, they revealed themselves as the three prophets, Daniel, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah. He then invited them along with the old lady and bull to a great dinner. The white bull was unable to take part in the feast as he was an animal and his identity was unknown to them. He sat angered as the prophet that had imprisoned him, Daniel, and the old lady got to enjoy a feast while he lay in the grass hungry. The dinner continued and the prophets, Mambres, and old lady feasted and drank wine, telling stories. Then the prophets and Mambres walked along the Nile talking into the night. The white bull seeing and opportunity to strike his enemies took it and as he was charging towards the prophets the master of things transformed them into magpies so they were not harmed. The King of Tanis arrives. His daughter and the bull are to be sacrificed. ---- As the King arrived he yelled out saying that the bull needed to be tied up and thrown out to the Nile where the whale of Jonas was to eat him, for having placed a spell on his daughter. Mambres knowing that the raven had told the king everything, had the serpent go to Amasidia and reassure her that everything would be okay. Mambres then told the king that the bull needed to stay alive until another suitor had been found for the bull god Apis. The king agreed and gave Mambres one week to find a replacement. The old lady had departed spirits try and scare the king into not sacrificing the bull, but just like Nabuchad he did not remember in the morning. How the serpent told stories to the Princess, to comfort her ---- The serpent told stories to Amasidia to calm her. Telling her times of how he cured serpent bites by just displaying himself on the end of a stick. He told her other inspirational stories and avoided one that might fill her with grief. How the serpent brought her no comfort ---- The princess remarked to the serpent stories by saying they did nothing but bore her. She needed stories that did not resemble dreams. He continued to tell her plausible stories, but she was not entertained. After one tale of love she could not refrain and yelled the name of her lover, Nebuchadnezzar!. Her ladies also yelled the name, and the raven went to inform the king, as it was still an offense to even utter his name. Amasis was enraged again and sent 12 of his evilest men to gather his daughter. How they wanted to cut off the Princess's head, and how they did not cut it off ---- As they brought the Princess to Amasis, he re-informed her how by uttering his name you are condemned to death. She told her father to carry out the penalty, but to first allow her to bewail her virginity. He granted her wish and said tomorrow both you and the bull will be killed. Priests arriving due to the letter, and crowds joined from all reaches of the kingdom, all chanting "Our ox is dead and done, we'll find ourselves a better one." How the princess married her ox ---- The king was surprised by this spectacle, and did not carry out the killing of the bull. The priests had arrived just in time to worship Nebuchad as the new Apis. Mambres then told the king that he should be the first to untie the ox and worship him, and the king obliged. Then Amasis went to kill his daughter as if he didn't he would be sentenced to hell. While preparing for the killing, Amasidia shouted her love for Nebuchad. Upon becoming the new bull god Nebuchad gained the ability to speak and shouted back to Amasidia that he will love her till his death. After this the bull regained his human form in front of the large crowd. Then Nebuchad said, "I would rather be Amasidia's lover than a god. I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Kings." Nebuchad then married Amasidia on the spot and showed mercy to his new father-in-law and let him keep his kingdom of Tanis. He also bestowed foundations to the dove, she-ass, dog, whale,three magpies, and even the raven. Showing the whole world that he could pardon as well as conquer. The old lady even received a fat pension. This created a custom that was passed on to all kings, that all can be pardoned after recognizing the error of his ways.
2379539	/m/077st3	The Return	Judith Reeves-Stevens		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins on the planet Veridian III and takes place shortly after the events seen in the motion picture Star Trek Generations. The body of James T. Kirk is stolen by the Romulans after his burial by fellow Starfleet captain Jean-Luc Picard. The Borg have formed an alliance with the Romulan Star Empire in order to destroy the Federation. Using alien technology, the Borg bring Kirk back to life and his katra is restored, but false memories are implanted to turn him against the Federation. The goal of this secret alliance is to destroy Picard and therefore Starfleet's only defense against the Borg but, despite his conditioning, Kirk is able to resist commands to kill Worf, Data, and Geordi La Forge, all of whom are attacked by him during his search for Picard. Simultaneously, Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher are participating in a strike team in a Federation expedition to an assimilated colony, where they are captured on board a Borg vessel. They are able to escape and, as they move freely around the vessel, they learn of the Borg/Romulan Alliance. Spock also learns of this alliance when he is captured dealing with Romulans, but the Borg do not assimilate him as, for some reason, they believe Spock is already Borg. Kirk is eventually captured on Deep Space Nine attempting to kill Commander William Riker, and the implant that was responsible for his false memories is removed by the joint efforts of Dr. Julian Bashir and Admiral Leonard McCoy; McCoy acts as an advisor during the surgery while Bashir's younger, fitter hands perform the operation. Although Kirk retains the drives implanted in him by the device, leading him to a confrontation with Picard in a holodeck re-creation of the original USS Enterprise, Spock is able to remove the commands thanks to a mind meld. In the process, they learn that V'ger, the former Voyager 6, was actually upgraded by a division of the Borg Collective, which explains why the Borg did not assimilate Spock; they assumed the trace of V'ger in his mind from their meld (in Star Trek: The Motion Picture) was an actual link to the Collective. This also gives Starfleet another advantage; thanks to the meld, Spock knows the location of the Borg homeworld. Taking a Defiant-class starship (renamed Enterprise for the mission), the Enterprise-D senior staff, accompanied by Kirk, Spock and McCoy, travel directly to the Borg homeworld thanks to a stolen transwarp drive. Once there, the Enterprise neutralizes the Borg/Romulan fleet around the planet with a wave, dampening the Borg's communication and making them unable to maintain their link to the Collective, effectively neutralizing them. Taking this as a distraction, Kirk and Picard beam down to the planet in search of the Borg central node. Using Picard's memories as Locutus, they track down the Borg central node which, when deactivated, will sever the Borg Collective; every Borg ship will be separate from every other ship, and what can defeat one will always work a second time. However, the result will cause a cataclysmic explosion that will kill whoever operates the node. Picard and Kirk debate on who will go, each attempting to be the hero and sacrifice themselves. Kirk appears to give in and let Picard pull the lever, but he takes the sudden calm to knock Picard out and beam his unconscious body back up to the Enterprise. Kirk then pulls the lever and triggers the explosion. However, even as the crew watches, Spock, who has always been able to sense Kirk ever since they first mind-melded, still does not believe that his friend is dead.
2380715	/m/077ww5	Once a Runner	John L. Parker Jr.	1978	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with a physically fit young man standing on a track, watching as "the night joggers" toil around him. He begins to walk toward the starting post, and thinks that now that the Olympic games are over for him, he does not know what he will do with his life. The man starts to walk around the track, and thinks back to four years ago. Quenton Cassidy is a collegiate runner at fictional Southeastern University based on the University of Florida. He is a distance runner who specializes in the Mile. After writing a petition for the college's athletes protesting a dress and conduct code, Quenton is suspended from the university and prohibited from competing in the university's annual track meet. Cassidy drops out, moves to a cabin in the woods, and submits himself to a brutal training regimen. He is under the coaching of fictional gold medalist Olympian Bruce Denton. His plan is to compete at the Southeastern Relays against the best miler in the world, John Walton (obviously based on John Walker). Because he is barred from competing at the meet, Denton comes up with a plan to disguise him as a Finnish runner attending a nonexistent university in Ohio. Cassidy, who has always dreamed of running a sub 4:00 mile, spends many months training for the race of his life, urged on by Denton, who is nearing the end of his running career due to injuries. After completing an agonizing interval workout of 60 quarter miles, Cassidy finally believes he is ready to face Walton. The night before the race, Cassidy performs a ritual of his to prepare himself for the meet—he walks a mile on the Southeastern track, putting all of his "demons" in a symbolic "orb" that will hold them in during the race and allow him to push through the pain. The next day, Cassidy arrives at the meet, which his disguise allows for, but spends more than an hour warming up on the cross-country course near the track. As the race draws nearer, Quenton fights to keep control of his adrenaline and anxiety, waiting until the race starts so he can unleash them. A large part of a chapter is devoted to the race itself, which comes down to a contest between Cassidy and Walton in the final lap. The novel describes the effect lactic acid has on Quenton as he fights to close in on Walton, who has a slight lead. Excruciatingly, Cassidy reels Walton in, and outsprints him in the final straight to win the race in a time of 3:52.5. After the race, the scene changes back to Cassidy standing at the Southeastern track, walking through the last lap of a mile. Quenton reflects upon his running career, and realizes that while it is over for him, there is much to be left behind on the track. When he reaches the end of the lap, he reaches into his bag and pulls out a box with a silver Olympic medal inside. Cassidy thinks to himself that he can live with leaving behind his old life, and with a bittersweet feeling walks off into the night.
2381146	/m/077xnw	Zahrah the Windseeker	Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu	2005	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the northern Ooni Kingdom, fear of the unknown runs deep, and children born dada are rumored to have special powers. Thirteen-year-old Zahrah Tsami feels like a normal girl, she grows her own flora computer, has mirrors sewn onto her clothes, and stays clear of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. But unlike other children in the village of Kirki, Zahrah was born with the telling dadalocks. Only her best friend, Dari, isn’t afraid of her, even when something unusual begins happening—something that definitely makes Zahrah different. The two friends determine to investigate, edging closer and closer to danger. When Dari's life is threatened, Zahrah must face her worst fears alone, including the very thing that makes her different. In this novel, things are not always what they seem: monkeys tell fortunes, plants offer wisdom, and a teenage girl is the only one who stands a chance at saving her best friend's life.
2382448	/m/0780r9	Doctor Thorne	Anthony Trollope	1858	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When their father dies, Doctor Thomas Thorne and his younger, ne'er-do-well brother Henry are left to fend for themselves. Doctor Thorne begins to establish a medical practice, while Henry seduces Mary Scatcherd, the sister of stonemason Roger Scatcherd. When Scatcherd finds out that Mary has become pregnant, he seeks out Henry and, in the ensuing fight, kills him. While her brother is in prison, Mary gives birth to a girl. A former suitor offers to marry her and emigrate to the United States to start a new life, but refuses to take the baby. Doctor Thorne persuades her to accept the generous offer, promising to raise his niece. He names her Mary Thorne but, wishing neither to have her illegitimacy made public nor to have her associate with the uncouth Roger Scatcherd, he keeps her birth secret. He tells Scatcherd that the baby had died. After his release, Scatcherd rises quickly in the world as a railway project undertaker. In time, his skills make him extremely rich. When he completes a seemingly-impossible important project on time, he is created a baronet for his efforts. Throughout his career, he entrusts his financial affairs to Doctor Thorne. When Thorne becomes the family doctor to the Greshams, he persuades Scatcherd to loan ever growing sums to the head of the family, the local squire, who has troubles managing his finance. Eventually, much of the Gresham estate is put up as collateral. Meanwhile, Mary grows up with the Gresham children and becomes a great favorite with the whole family. As a result, Thorne feels obliged to tell his friend the squire the secret concerning her birth. Mary falls in love with Frank Gresham, the only son and heir of the squire of Greshamsbury and nephew of the Earl and Countess De Courcy, and he with her. However, his parents desperately need him to marry wealth, in order to rescue them from the financial distress resulting from the squire's expensive and fruitless campaigns for a seat in Parliament. As Mary is penniless and of low birth, such a marriage is frowned upon by his mother Lady Arabella and the De Courcys. His snobbish mother and maternal aunt bearing the aristocratic De Courcy family name wish him to marry a thirty-year-old, eccentric, intelligent if kind-hearted heiress, Martha Dunstable. He reluctantly visits Courcy Castle and they become friends. He foolishly and playfully proposes. She demurs, knowing that he does not love her, and he tells her about his love for Mary. Sir Roger is a chronic drunkard, and Doctor Thorne tries in vain to get him to curtail his drinking. In his will, he stipulates that bulk of his estate go to his odious, dissolute only son Louis Philippe, but leaves Doctor Thorne in control of the inheritance until the heir reaches the age of twenty-five. Should Louis die before then, Scatcherd stipulates that the estate go to his sister Mary's eldest child. Thorne is forced to divulge Mary's history, but Scatcherd leaves the will unchanged. Sir Roger eventually dies of his excessive alcoholism, and Sir Louis inherits his vast wealth. The son proves just as much an alcoholic as the father, and his weaker constitution quickly brings him to the same end, before he reaches twenty-five. After consulting with many lawyers, Doctor Thorne confirms that his niece Mary is the heiress, richer than even Miss Dunstable. Unaware of these proceedings, the more-resolute Frank finally persuades his doting father to consent to his marriage to Mary. When all is revealed, everyone is elated, even Frank's mother and Countess De Courcy, and their wedding becomes a much talked of event after the marriage of Mr Oriel and Beatrice Gresham, Frank's younger sister and Mary's best friend.
2385308	/m/0787_w	The Sheep Look Up	John Brunner	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 With the rise of a corporation-sponsored government, pollution in big cities has reached extreme levels and most (if not all) people's health has been affected in some way. Continuing the style used in Stand on Zanzibar, there is a multi-strand narrative and many characters in the book never meet each other; some characters only appear in one or two vignettes. Similarly, instead of chapters, the book is broken up into sections which range from thirty words in length to several pages. The character of Austin Train in The Sheep Look Up serves a similar purpose to Xavier Conroy in The Jagged Orbit or to Chad Mulligan in Stand on Zanzibar: He is an academic who, despite predicting and interpreting social change, has become disillusioned by the failure of society to listen. This character is used both to drive the plot and to explain back-story to the reader. By the end of the book rioting and civil unrest sweep the United States, due to a combination of poor health, poor sanitation, lack of food, lack of services, ineffectiveness of services (medical, policing), disillusionment with government/companies, oppressive government, civil unrest, high incidence of birth defects (pollution-induced), and other factors; all services (military, government, private, infrastructure) break down. A housewife in Ireland smells smoke, and says to a visiting doctor: "We ought to call the fire brigade, is it a hayrick?" to which the doctor replies, "The brigade would have a long way to go. It's from America. The wind is blowing [from] that way."
2386264	/m/078b09	After Worlds Collide	Philip Gordon Wylie	1934	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The United States and several other countries were able to construct and launch space Arks before the Earth was destroyed by a collision with Bronson Alpha, a rogue planet that had entered the solar system months earlier. A French ship malfunctioned shortly after liftoff and crashed. Both American ships survived the voyage to the companion body, Bronson Beta, though they were separated and each unaware of any other successful arrivals. The two American ships' personnel are finally reunited nearly half way into the book. Bronson Alpha destroys Earth and moves out into deep space again, while Bronson Beta swings into what seems to be a stable, but eccentric, orbit around the sun. Early in the story, the survivors of Hendron's own smaller Ark took stock of their situation and set out to establish a colony, already aware of the hint of a previous civilization: a road. Tony Drake and another associate scout out for suitable farmland, which is put to use, but during their return journey following the alien road, the two men come across a vehicle. After a mysterious disease passes through the camp, killing two colonists, Hendron forbids exploration, but some of the colonists defy him and strike out, bringing back wood from a distant forest. That night, an aircraft passes near the camp, beating a hasty retreat when it notices the campfire of wood. Tony's former manservant, Kyto, explains he found a piece of paper blowing in the wind, and it reveals that a group arrived from Earth that intended to establish a "soviet", and they were made up of Germans, Russians and Japanese. At Hendron's order, an exploratory aircraft is built from remnants of the Ark and its rockets, and Tony Drake sets off with writer Eliot James. They follow the road and discover a domed city. These are the remains of a native civilization, whose builders were essentially humanoid and had considerably higher technology than humanity (but this did not enable them to survive the freezing of their world). They explore it for three days and then fly south and discover a search light beaming up in the dark. They discover it to be the second Ark from Hendron's encampment on Earth that had a disastrous landing, but they make a joyous reunion with its commander, Dave Ransdell. Ransdell's camp also saw a mysterious aircraft, long enough to see it had "lark's wings". Tony and Ransdell fly back to Hendron's camp, finding that Hendron is visibly deteriorating in health and mind. Tony is jealous that Ransdell apparently will become the new leader also have Eve, Hendron's daughter, as his wife. Eve, acting as Hendron's regent, dispatches Tony to the Ransdell camp to deliver a radio, and the first signal received is that the Hendron camp has suffered some sort of attack. Tony and one of Ransdell's men return to the Hendron camp to investigate: everyone is lying on the ground. They discover everyone is alive, after all, but drugged; they give the doctor antidotes and then hear an aircraft approaching. Assuming a "dead" sprawl, they watch the aircraft pass over: the men inside have Slavic features and have evidently begun a takeover attempt. The aircraft leaves, the doctor responds to the antidotes, and Tony prepares the weapon emplacements (rocket tubes from the Ark) to defend. An armada arrives soon afterward and is totally obliterated by the Hendron camp's weapons. The people gradually wake up; the other camp reports they are all right. Hendron hands command to Tony, and Ransdell is relieved by that choice. Tony decides to occupy one of the alien cities, not the one they found but a different one shown on a diagram to exist close by; they follow the road there. During the trip, they encounter an alien automobile driven by a British woman; she explains that a British ship also made it over from Earth but landed in a lake; they were found the next day by the "Dominion of Asian Realists" group, which Hendron nicknamed "Midianites", and enslaved. The Midianites' society is like an ant farm, the colony being all important and the people nothing, but the top rulers live luxuriously. The alien city is occupied and the tractors leave at once for Ransdell's camp to bring its people to the city, which Tony names Hendron, because Hendron died just as the convoy came into view of the city. Hendron is buried the next day. The scientists manage, with the Briton's help, to figure out how to charge batteries and operate machinery, and they also find hangars of the lark aircraft; some are armed and used for air defence. Meanwhile, the planet is approaching aphelion, and nobody is entirely certain that the planet is in a stable orbit around the sun. The weather is getting colder, and one night, the Midianites disconnect the power supply to the city of Hendron's people. One member of Hendron's group seems to defect to the Midianites, while four others land in a city on the other side of the Midianites' city, and attempt to reach the Midianite city by an underground service tunnel's high-speed car. They are unsuccessful, but the female defector kills the Midianite leader, defeats his key people, and allows the British to take control. In short order, the story ends quite abruptly. The Dominion is defeated, and the victorious American/British coalition settles into the domed cities, discussing a form of government that the former Midianites now seem resigned to living under. While challenges still exist, their immediate needs for shelter, energy, and food are taken care of. The story ends on an optimistic note with a reference to the first pregnancy among the colonists, Eve's and Tony's, and the confirmation that they have passed aphelion and are now definitely locked into orbit around the old Earth's sun.
2386360	/m/078b7z	Hard to Be a God	Boris Strugatsky	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The first chapter shows a scene from Anton's childhood, when he sneaks away from his boarding school with his friends, Pashka (Paul) and Anka (Anna), for a small role-play in the woods. It reveals that children live in a futuristic utopia, and the teenagers are drawn to the adventures on far away planets, where Earth tries to stimulate progress, by sending undercover agents (known as 'observers', not to be confused with latter-day progressors). While children play they find an abandoned road with a road sign "wrong way". Anton decides to go further and discovers remnants from World War II - a skeleton of German gunner chained to his machine gun. Later it is revealed that both Anton and Pashka grow up to be observers on the other planet, and are based in two neighbouring states: Anton in the Arkanar Kingdom and Pashka in the Irukan Duchy. The actual story begins when don Rumata (Anton) visits the Drunken Den, a meeting place for observers working in the Lands Beyond the Strait (Запроливье). Currently, he is investigating the disappearance of a famed scientist, Doctor Budah, who might have been kidnapped by the Prime Minister of Arkanar, don Reba. Don Reba leads a campaign against all educated people in the kingdom, blaming them for all the calamities and misfortunes of the kingdom. Rumata is alarmed, as the kingdom is rapidly morphing into a fascist police state. Apparently, all Rumata's efforts are concentrated on saving most talented poets, writers, doctors and scientists and smuggling them abroad, into neighboring countries. However, most of his native friends are murdered or broken by Don Reba's regime. Rumata tries to convince his colleagues that a more active intervention must take place. However, don Goog (Pashka) and don Kondor (an elder and more experienced observer) feel that he became to involved in native affairs and can't see the historical perspective objectively. They remind him of the vices of overly active meddling with the history of the planet. Not convinced, but left with no other choice, Rumata agrees to continue his work. Back in the city, Rumata tries pumping multiple people for information, including Vaga the Wheel, the head of local organised crime. He also comes to a soiree organised by don Reba's lover, dona Okana, who is also rumored to be don Reba's confidante. Rumata hopes to seduce he, and pump for information, however, he cannot hide the disgust, of whoring himself out, and has to retreat. Rumata's love interest, a young commoner named Kira, who can't stand any longer the brutality and horrors of fascist Arkanar asks Rumata to stay in his house. Rumata gladly agrees and promises to evetually take her with him to 'a wonderful place far far away' - meaning Earth, of whose existence Kira is unaware. His other plans don't go that smoothly. Life in Arcanar becomes less and less tolerable. Reba orders the torture and execution of dona Okana. Rumata - faced with the horrible consequences of his power play - goes into drunken stupor. Finally, left no other option, Rumata openly blames don Reba in front of the King Pitz VI for kidnapping a famous physician, that he, Rumata, invited to tend to King's maladies. The ensuing events prove that don Reba has anticipated and prepared for this. After confessing that he, in fact, kidnapped Dr. Budah, fearing that the man is not to be trusted with King's life, don Reba apologizes. He then brings forward a physician, introducing him as Dr. Budah. The next night, Rumata, who's turn is to guard royal prince and the only heir to the throne, is suddenly overwhelmed by dozens of Don Reba's men, and while fighting for his life witnesses them murdering the prince. They are in turn massacred by monks, apparently members of the Holy Order, a militaristic religious sect. Defeated Rumata is brought in front of don Reba. Don Reba reveals that he has been watching don Rumata for some time - in fact he knows Rumata to be an impostor - the real Rumata died long time ago. However, don Reba realizes that there is some supernatural power behind Rumata. Rumata's gold is of impossible high quality and Rumata's sword fighting style is unheard of - and yet - he never killed a single person while staying in Arcanar. Don Reba instinctively feels that killing Rumata may lead to retribution from his supernatural allies (he assumes Rumata to be a denizen of hell) and tries to forge a treaty with him. During their conversation, Rumata finally understands the magnitude of Reba's plotting. The presented physician was not Budah - impostor was promised a position of royal physician and was instructed to give King a potion - that was really a poison. King died and the physician was executed for murdering the king. With death of royal prince during Rumata's guard and king dead by hands of "Budah" - a doctor that was brought by Rumata and against Reba's wishes, Rumata can be easily blamed for staging a coup - in fact nobody would ever believe that he is not Reba's accomplice. In the same time, organized crime group of Vaga the Wheel, secretly encouraged by don Reba, started pillaging the city. Don Reba's then called in the Holy Order's army which quickly dispatched the criminals and the guardsmen alike, seizing the defenceless city with minimal losses. Reba - who might have been a pawn of Holy Order from the beginning - has become a new head of state, a magister of the Holy Order and bishop and governor of Arkanar. Shocked and infuriated, Rumata still holds his ground, and forms a non-aggression pact with Don Reba. He uses his new status to rescue the real Dr. Budah as well as his friend Baron Pampa from prison. Around him, Arcanar succumbs to the Holy Order. As the last of his friends and allies die and suffer in the turmoil, Rumata acts with all haste to expedite the departure of Budah. Rumata returns to his home, to discover his most loyal servant killed during a fight with a squad of Reba's stormtroopers who had gained entrance into the house; the rest of the household were then saved by a unit of the Holy Order. The three observers meet again to discuss the future. Both his colleagues are tortured by remorse, however, there is nothing to be done now. Don Kondor suggest that Rumata act carefully, as it is clear that rascal Reba can go back on their deal at any moment. He particularly advices to send Rumata's lover, Kira, to Earth with uttermost speed, as "all that we hold dear should be either in our heart or on Earth". Before Budah's departure, Rumata poses before him a theological question: "what would you ask a god, if he could come from sky and fullfil any of your wishes". After a long discussion - with Budah wishing and Rumata explaining the dire consequences of each of the wishes, Budah finally states that the only true gift, a god could give the people - is to leave them to their affairs. To this, Rumata replies, that god cannot bear the sight of their suffering. Budah crosses the border successfully and is saved. Feeling confident in his superior abilities and contacts in the military and the criminal world alike, Rumata plans to escape with Kira to Earth. However a unit of soldiers (either the friends of Kira's brother, or more likely, henchmen of don Reba) arrive in order to capture Kira and in the confusion she is shot dead by a crossbowman through the window. She dies in Rumata's hands. As the soldiers break the front door, Rumata, maddened with grief, unsheathes his swords and waits for them. The rest is narrated by Pasha to Anka. It is told, that space station was put on alert, when the house was attacked, however they did not have chance to react. The Earthmen doused the entire city with a sleep-inducing gas, but before that Anton-Rumata had fought his way through the city towards the palace - bathing his way in blood - where he finally killed don Reba. Remembering their childhood, Pashka wonders whether that episode, when Anton decided to disobey "wrong way" sign, and found a skeleton, had a deeper meaning - as going back to the past - to medieval world - could bring nothing but trouble.
2387233	/m/078dh6	Scorpia	Anthony Horowitz	2004-04-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In a secret meeting room of criminal organization Scorpia, Julia Rothman briefs her colleagues on their latest project, codenamed "Invisible Sword." It is a plan to murder children aged 12 - 14 in Great Britain and destroy the friendly relations between the United States and the United Kingdom. " Then Alex figures out his parents are not dead Alex Rider is on a trip with his friend Tom Harris in Venice in search of Scorpia, the name that Yassen Gregorovich gave Alex before dying in the prior novel. While investigating at a party being held in the house of Julia Rothman, Alex is captured by a Scorpia assassin called Nile and is left to die in a water room, but manages to escape, barely. Alex is tutored about BASE jumping from Tom's brother Jerry and infiltrates the pharmaceutical company Consanto. He runs into Nile again; however, this time Nile takes Alex to see Julia Rothman. Rothman offers Alex a job at Scorpia, which he accepts after Rothman tells him that Scorpia had hired his father John Rider as an assassin. She also tells Alex that John was killed by MI6 during a prisoner exchange at Albert Bridge. Alex's first task is to kill his former MI6 superior, Mrs Jones. Scorpia sent a letter to the Government informing them of the power of Invisible Sword. To demonstrate, they tell them that they will kill the England B national football team as they arrive at London Heathrow Airport without using any weapons. Despite increased security, the team mysteriously dies. Alex sneaks back into England amid the chaos. He then sneaks into Mrs Jones's apartment to kill her, but is unsuccessful and is arrested. Alan Blunt, the head of MI6, takes Alex to a COBRA meeting to figure out what Invisible Sword is and how to stop it. With Alex's help, they determine that Scorpia embedded gold-encased nanoshells into the football players' bloodstream. The nanoshells were hidden in vaccinations and contained cyanide, which were activated by satellite dishes, and when they were activated, the gold wore away and the cyanide was released into the bloodstream, killing every single one of the players instantly. Scorpia will then kill London's schoolchildren, including Alex (Due to Rothman's hatred for him due to his father's later-revealed double-cross,) as they had all recently been vaccinated. Alex agrees to help MI6 out and pretends to come back to Scorpia. Rothman takes him to an abandoned church; Scorpia planned to put a satellite in a hot air balloon. At a certain height, they will then activate the nanoshells. Alex activates a retainer in his mouth and the SAS invades the church. As the balloon begins to rise, Alex jumps on the balloon and damages the satellites, causing them to plunge to the ground. Rothman is killed by the falling satellite. In the final pages of the novel, Alex learns that his father was a double agent for MI6, and the bridge scene was staged. Scorpia learned that John Rider was still alive and took revenge by blowing up the plane that he and Alex's mother Helen were flying in. In the final scene, as Alex exits the MI6 headquarters, a Scorpia assassin shoots him in the chest. He collapses, sees his parents, and loses consciousness.
2387256	/m/078dhx	Eagle Strike	Anthony Horowitz	2003-09-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 While on holiday in the South of France with his friend Sabina Pleasure, Alex Rider runs into the assassin Yassen Gregorovich, who killed Alex's uncle in the first novel Stormbreaker. When the Pleasures' holiday home explodes in a supposed gas leak, Alex suspects Yassen is involved and sneaks onto his yacht. Yassen captures him and enters him in a bullfight as punishment. After escaping, Alex calls a number he found on Yassen's mobile phone and hears pop star Damian Cray's voice. He tells MI6 about this, but Alan Blunt refuses to follow up on it as he believes it would be politically unwise if the press ever found out that MI6 was investigating Cray. Alex tells Sabina about his double life as a spy, but she does not believe him and refuses to speak with him. Alex meets a photographer named Marc Antonio (Le' Bis"Tro) in Paris; he reveals that Sabina's father was investigating Cray, and Antonio is killed shortly afterwards by an assassin. Alex goes to Cray Industries in Amsterdam, where he hears Yassen and Cray conversing about a flash drive. Cray catches Alex as he tries to sneak away and puts him in a real-life version of Feathered Serpent, a new video game developed by Cray Software Industries (the game was just a cover for getting a huge factory to develop a flash drive). Alex escapes and steals Cray's flash drive. In response, Cray kidnaps Sabina and holds her for ransom. Alex attempts to force Cray to release Sabina, but Cray outmaneuvers him and forces Alex to hand over the flash drive. Sabina is released and apoligizes to Alex for not believing him. Cray reveals his plan, code-named "Eagle Strike": he will board Air Force One and use its missile room to launch nuclear missiles at major drug-running countries to eradicate the drug trade. Sabina and Alex are locked in a room together, Sabina explains then when she first saw Cray when he kidnapped her, she knew Alex was right the whole time and should have believed him, Alex admits he had the stupid mistake of going after Cray which lead to Sabina's capture, the two reconcile. Yassen comes in and forces the two to put on nuclear-proof suits. After creating a diversion using a plane full of fake nerve gas, he, Yassen, Alex, and Sabina sneak aboard Air Force One at Heathrow Airport. Cray plugs in the flash drive and activates the missiles. He then orders Yassen to kill Alex and Sabina; upon Yassen's refusal, Cray shoots Yassen and then Alex, Sabina, flying into a rage, attacks him. But before she is almost killed, Alex, saved by a bulletproof jersey (given to him by Mr. Smithers), gets up and fights Cray. Eventually, the two manage to push Cray out of the plane, along with a food service cart used by Sabina. He is then sucked into the engine and shredded to pieces. The food cart getting sucked into the engine results in the engine's destruction, causing the plane to lose control. Cray's pilot Henryk attempts to abort the plane take-off, but, as the plane has already reached V1 speed, he cannot do so safely and crashes the plane off the runway, breaking his neck in the process. Alex and Sabina survive the crash and Sabina presses a self-destruct button to destroy the missiles. As he lays dying , Yassen tells Alex that Alex's Dad, worked with him as an assassin and that if he does not believe him, to go to Venice and find something called "Scorpia", which is later revealed in the subsequent novel as an evil intelligence company. Alex is stunned at this revelation. At the end of the novel, Sabina tells Alex that she will be moving to San Francisco and then they share a kiss underneath a bridge.
2387780	/m/078fd1	The Constant Gardener	John le Carré	2001-01-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Justin Quayle, a British diplomat in Nairobi, Kenya, is told that his activist wife, Tessa, was killed while travelling with a doctor friend in a desolate region of Africa. Investigating on his own, Quayle discovers that her murder, reportedly done by her friend, may have had more sinister roots. Justin learns that Tessa had uncovered a corporate scandal involving medical experimentation in Africa. KVH (Karel Vita Hudson), a large pharmaceutical company working under the cover of AIDS tests and treatments, is testing a tuberculosis drug that has severe side effects. Rather than help the trial subjects and begin again with a new drug, KVH covered up the side effects and improved the drug only in anticipation of a massive multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis outbreak. Justin travels the world, often under assumed identities, to reconstruct the circumstances leading to Tessa's murder. As he begins to piece together Tessa's final report on the fraudulent drug tests, he learns that the roots of the conspiracy stretch further than he could have imagined; to a German pharmawatch NGO, an African aid station, and, most disturbingly to him, corrupt politicians in the British Foreign Office. John le Carré writes in the book's afterword: 'by comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard'. The book is dedicated to Yvette Pierpaoli, a French activist who died during the course of her aid work.
2390729	/m/078nnq	The Kid from Hell	Boris Strugatsky	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of Gack, a man from Giganda. Gack is a commando in Fighting Cats: an elite army unit of Alai Duchy. In the first chapter of the novel, Gack is mortally wounded in a battle with the army of the Empire. Kornei Yashmaa, a progressor finds him and takes him to Earth where the doctors practically resurrect Gack. Yashmaa tries to help Gack adjust to life on Earth. However, Gack does not want to cooperate or believe that Earth is real. At first, he thinks that everything Yashmaa and other Earthlings tell him is a part of his psychological training as an officer of the Alai Army. Even after Yashmaa proves to him that he is indeed on a different planet, Gack still thinks that he was sent to Earth with an unknown secret mission by the Alai military. His next idea is that the Earth wants to conquer Giganda and wants to use him as a test subject or a future propaganda agent. As he learns more about the technology and lifestyle on Earth (he is even given an android servant), he becomes more and more confused. Accidentally, Gack discovers that other Gigandians have been taken to Earth as well, but they have integrated into the society and do not want to deal with him. After a month since Gack's arrival on Earth, Yashmaa tells him that the war on Giganda was stopped by progressors and that Alai Duchy as well as the Empire is no more. Gack is so shocked by the news that he demands to go back to Giganda immediately. When Yashmaa refuses, Gack tries to escape by force. With the help of his android servant, he manages to construct an assault rifle and ammunition to it. Gack threatens to shoot Yashmaa if he does not send him back. Yashmaa can easily disarm Gack, but, persuaded by Gack's actions, decides to let him go. In the last chapter Gack is back on Giganda and helps local doctors to cure a plague ravaging a nearby city. He is home.
2391323	/m/078pz1	Dr. Heidenhoff's Process	Edward Bellamy	1880	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns a doctor who develops a mechanical method of eradicating painful memories from people's brains so that they can feel good about life again. The protagonist persuades his lover to try the process after she has been seduced by a rival. She is transformed until the protagonist awakes and realizes that he has dreamt of the doctor and his process and that his lover has committed suicide. The book is notable for its vivid description of small-town American life and mores in the period (1880). The 'Process' mentioned in the title is a plot mechanism to introduce a long discussion of the meaning of guilt. If one loses ones memory of the deed, is one still guilty? If one has changed of time since the deed, is one still guilty? The argument also emphasises the difference between guilt (in the eyes of others) and remorse (one's own judgement), and suggests that forgiveness can remove guilt but not remorse. (Information in this paragraph based on my recent reading of the book).
2391980	/m/078rkf	.hack//AI buster	Tatsuya Hamazaki		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the prologue, Watarai leads his team of Cobalt Knights to an area inaccessible to normal players. They attempt to delete a vagrant AI in the form of a little girl in a red dress, but their attempt fails and she escapes. In the first chapter, we are introduced to Albireo. He cheats his way into the lowest level of the dungeon and meets the Vagrant AI. Through text chat, she reveals her name to be Lycoris. The end-of-dungeon treasure was an item named "eciov.cyl", which Albiero traded to Lycoris by her request. In the game, she gains her voice. Lycoris teleports them without warning to his home, where there was currently a massive monster attack. A newbie player, Hokuto, appeals to Albireo to help her. He is forced to help her and finish the event involuntarily, gaining an item "rae.cyl". This is also traded to Lycoris. Hokuto manages to blackmail him into letting her into his empty friend's list, and then into forming a party of the two of them. Due to this, Hokuto was able to see Lycoris. Albireo was also approached by Orca and Balmung to ask for assistance in resolving the "One Sin", an event considered unbeatable. He declined however. He was unable to log out from The World, but was able to continue with his normal life (unlike infected characters later in the .hack series, who fell into comas). Upon returning, he headed to the "One Sin" location. Hokuto met him there, and they witnessed Orca and Balmung defeat the boss character there. Upon its defeat, an angel appeared, trailing feathers. Lycoris requested that Albireo find a red feather, which turned out to be "eye.cyl". This restored Lycoris' sight. Lycoris brought them to another zone. She entered a phantom spring, and Albireo gained "yromem.cyl". Returning to the area in the prologue, Albireo gives Lycoris the item. She regains her memory and realizes that Albireo is none other than Watarai, the Cobalt Knight who had first tried to delete her. Watarai had attempted to complete the event in order to delete the previously fragmented Lycoris. She informs him of the existence of Morganna Mode Gone and the fact that she was a failed prototype of Aura, and reveals the last fragment of herself, hidden in Albireo's spear: "etaf.cyl". She then chose to delete herself, impaling herself onto Albireo's spear.
2392117	/m/078r_v	.hack//Another Birth			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Story follows the original four .hack video games except, through BlackRose's perspective instead of Kite's. When her younger brother, Fumikazu, falls into a coma while playing The World, Akira decides to figure out the cause and begins to play The World where she meets the Kite. fr:.hack//Another Birth ja:.hack//Another Birth もうひとつの誕生
2392201	/m/078s5h	.hack//Zero			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Junka Nimura, a young girl who lives with her mother and her grandmother, is the main character. Her father, who has left her mother, is Junichiro Tokuoka (one of the main characters in .hack//Liminality), and Junka never knew him. In The World Junka plays the female Heavy Axeman named "Carl". She's been playing the game for quite a long time, and likes to cause trouble, like cheating and PK-ing. Her favourite place is the cathedral at "Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground". One day, she meets Sora, and she seems to like his attitude, but every time they meet, something strange happens to him: he starts screaming and the game goes haywire. As the story progress, Aura appears, and Carl views her as the cause of Sora's pain and attacks her, at which point the entire game seems to crash. Meanwhile, Junka's grandmother, Takie, begins to notice about the effect the game is having on her granddaughter's life. She expresses her concerns to Kyouko, Junka's mother, telling her that Junka needs a father figure. Back in The World, Orca and Balmung are investigating the strange incidents that have been occurring recently. Orca tells having spotted a strange cat-like PC sitting in town playing with aromatic grass. In another place Junka meets her friend Alph, and tells her about Aura. Later Alph contacts Balmung and Orca. When Sora no longer appears before Carl, she gets desperate, and posts a weird message about Sora on the BBS. This message reaches Mariko Misono (Subaru's player), who logs into The World for the first time since the events in .hack//Sign. Carl meets Subaru wanting to learn more about Sora. Subaru tells her that Aura isn't evil; just a very young child who can't yet control the power she holds, and tells her about An Shouji (Tsukasa's player). Carl doesn't understand Subaru and eventually walks away in irritation. Alph is worried about Carl's behavior; she thinks Carl may be punished for cheating and PK-ing. So she introduces her to one of her friends, Sieg, who tries to talk some sense into Carl, but has little success. Back in the cathedral, Carl meets Sora again. He attacks her, giving her blows that feel real to Junka. Carl believes that Sora has forgotten her and she surrenders, waiting for him to PK her. At this point Aura appears, and Sora goes through some sort of transformation and fires energy at her. Carl is surprised that Aura doesn't try to defend herself, and asks the girl what she is doing there, and the injured Aura replies that she is there because "Hurting Sora would make Carl sad". Sora stops his attack when Carl calls out his name, and he finally manages to say her name. Carl is really happy, and when Sora is about to continue his attack, she grabs Aura and flees the cathedral with her. Aside from giving their names, the tenth chapter (RE: 2000) is primarily focused on telling about An Shouji's life after the events in .hack//Sign and her relationship with Mariko Misono, from Mariko's perspective. An takes Bear's suggestion and goes to study at a boarding school. Because of this she and Mariko can't see each other as much as they want, but they talk on the phone and write letters all the time. The chapter also has Mariko thinking back to their second date,The actual word is "ouse" (逢瀬), which translates to: tryst; (lover's) meeting; (secret) date. Translation retrieved from Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Japanese-English Dictionary Server on December 8, 2006. with a description of how the two talk while An rests her head on Mariko's lap, with Mariko stroking her hair.
2392577	/m/078tns	The Wave	Todd Strasser		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The setting of the book is Gordon High School in 1969. Even though this book has changed some names, etc., it still has the same meaning. The plot of the book revolves around a history teacher Mr. Ben Ross, his high school students, and an experiment he conducts in an attempt to teach them about how it may have been living in Nazi Germany. Unsatisfied with his own inability to answer his students' earnest questions of how and why, Mr Ross initiates the experiment in hopes that it answers the question of why the Germans allowed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to rise to power, acting in a manner inconsistent with their own pre-existing moral values. At Gordon High School, history teacher Ben Ross is teaching his class about World War II and the Holocaust. His students are upset by the footage of concentration camps and question why the German people allowed this to happen, insisting they wouldn't be so easily duped. Ben Ross considers this and plans an experiment: the next day, he starts to indoctrinate the class using the slogan STRENGTH THROUGH DISCIPLINE. The class reacts well to this, embracing the sense of empowerment it gives them, and they continue their newly disciplined behavior into a second day of class, surprising Ross. He decides to take the experiment further and create a group, The Wave, adding two more slogans --STRENGTH THROUGH COMMUNITY and STRENGTH THROUGH ACTION - which leads to further rules of conduct and an organizational structure. Laurie, a student in Mr. Ross' class, starts to think that The Wave is having too much of an impact. Laurie receives a letter for the paper detailing how members try to recruit others with bullying. That weekend, the football team is unable to win against Clarkstown, as their newfound drive does not compensate for a lack of proper training and planning. David is confused by this turn of events, while Laurie and her staff on The Grapevine plan a special issue of the paper devoted exclusively to The Wave and the negative impact it has had on the school. While some thank her, especially the teachers and the principal, others do not. Laurie's boyfriend David, who has been in The Wave since the beginning, tries to get her to stop bad-mouthing The Wave. He eventually shoves her to the ground and this makes him realize how dangerous The Wave really is. Now united in the belief that The Wave must be stopped, Laurie and David go to the home of the Rosses in order to convince Ben Ross to terminate the program. He tells them he will do exactly that, but that they must trust his moves the next day. He calls a Wave meeting in the auditorium and requests that only Wave members be present. They gather in a similar fashion to the Nazi rallies, even equipped with banners and armbands emblazoned with the Wave. Ben tells The Wave members that they are only one in many schools across the nation that is involved in the Wave, and that they are about to see the leader of the whole organization and that he is going to speak to all of them on television to create a National Wave Party for Youths. Everyone is shocked when Mr. Ross projects the image of Adolf Hitler. He explains that there is no leader, and that there is no National Wave Party. If there were a leader, it would be the man on the projection screen. He explains how their obedience led them to act like Nazis. The shocked students drop all their Wave-branded trinkets and items, and slowly leave the room. As Ben turns to leave, the one person who really flourished in the Wave, Robert, is standing alone, upset that The Wave ended. During The Wave, he was finally accepted as an equal, no one picked on him, he had friends, but his new-found social status is now worthless without The Wave. Mr. Ross tries to cheer him up by commenting on his tie and suit, and they walk out together to grab "a bite to eat".
2393161	/m/078wxv	Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves	P. G. Wodehouse	1963	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, Bertie Wooster returns to Totleigh Towers, the site of an earlier ordeal that nearly landed him in prison and, worse still, in bonds of marriage to Madeline Bassett, the syrupy daughter of the house who believes the stars are God's daisy chain. Only Gussie Fink-Nottle, Bertie's childhood friend and Madeline's on-again off-again fiancé, stands between our hero and the dreaded state of matrimony. No surprise, then, that matrimonial disaster looms for our hero when Madeline, inspired by the life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, orders Gussie to abandon his beloved steak and kidney pie and take up a vegetarian diet. Add the intrigues of Miss Stiffy Byng to win her fiancé the Reverend Stinker Pinker a vicarage, the rivalry of collectors Sir Watkyn Bassett and Bertie's Uncle Tom over an objet d'art, and the irresistible culinary attractions of American Emerald Stoker, and you have trouble of the sort only Jeeves can mend.
2393822	/m/078zgl	Avalon	Anya Seton	1965	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story begins in the year 972, when Romieux de Provence, a young nobleman descended from Charlemagne and King Alfred, leaves his native Kingdom of Arles for England and the Royal Court of Edgar I. After being shipwrecked on the coast of Cornwall, Rumon encounters Merewyn, a teenage girl who claims to be a descendant of King Arthur. Merewyn leads him to her house, where Merewyn's dying mother, Breaca, reveals to Rumon that in fact, Merewyn is the product of her rape by a Viking warrior. This is later confirmed by the Prior of Padstow Monastery, who witnessed the Viking raid. Swearing Rumon to secrecy, Merewyn's mother charges Rumon to take the girl to her aunt Merwinna, Abbess of Romsey Abbey. After the death of Merewyn's mother, Merewyn and Rumon make the journey from Cornwall to England. The party travel to Lydford where King Edgar is holding court. Rumon meets Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, who befriends Rumon, and introduces him and Merewyn to King Edgar and his Queen, Alfrida. Edgar welcomes Rumon into the English Court, while Queen Alfrida employs Merewyn as one of her ladies-in-waiting. The two subsequently witness the King and Queen's coronation at Bath in 973; however, Dunstan catches Rumon in a romantic tryst with Queen Alfrida, and so takes Rumon away from the Royal party to settle at Glastonbury Abbey. Despite Merewyn meeting with her aunt Merwinna at the coronation, Queen Alfrida refuses to let her go to Romsey Abbey, and instead employs Merewyn. A few years later, Rumon starts an illicit affair with Queen Alfrida, who is living in Corfe Castle after her husband's death. Merewyn learns of the affair, and leaves the employment of the Queen for Romsey Abbey. Rumon then wintesses Queen Alfrith's treachery and deception, which leads to the murder of the young King Edward in 978. Alfrida plans Edward's death in order to give the throne to her own son Æthelred, and promptly dumps Rumon after her plan succeeds. Disgusted, Rumon returns to Glastonbury Abbey, under the care of Dunstan who plans for Rumon to enter a religious life. Merewyn is also encouraged to enter a religious life by her aunt Merwinna, and her friend Elfled, who is staying with her at Romsey Abbey. Merewyn has unresolved feelings for Rumon however. A Viking raid on Romsey Abbey weakens Merwinna, and causes her death. Merewyn embarks on a pilgrimage to Padstow to return her aunt's heart to the place of her birth. On the way, she goes to Glastonbury Abbey and encounters Rumon. Merewyn admits her feelings for Rumon, but he rejects her. Merewyn then continues to Padstow. Belatedly, Rumon realises that he too loves Merewyn, and follows her. However, Merewyn encounters another Viking raid, and is captured by Ketil, a Viking who raided Padstow years earlier. Ketil intends to rape Merewyn, but the Prior of Padstow Abbey informs him that he is Merewyn's father. By the time Rumon arrives at Padstow, Ketil has taken Merewyn away on a Viking Longship. Rumon charts a ship, and embarks on a rescue journey overseas to find Merewyn. After stopping in Limerick, Ireland, Rumon's ship is caught in a storm and is blown off-course. The ship eventually finds the mouth of the Merrimack River on the coast of North America. There, Rumon encounters a Merrimack tribe who have been converted to Christianity by a group of Irish Culdee Monks. The tribe (under the influence of the Culdees) capture Rumon and his crew, and steal their ship. Meanwhile, Merewyn has settled in Iceland, where she lives with her father Ketil, and her new husband Sigurd. She also has a son called Orm. Rumon eventually escapes from the Culdees and tracks down Merewyn. Merewyn does not appreciate seeing Rumon, and promptly lets him know that she has settled into a new life. Rejected, Rumon returns to England alone. Ketil and his family then follow Erik the Red, and set sail to colonise Greenland in 985. The family attempt to make a living in the harsh climate of the new colony, and Merewyn gives birth to a mentally disabled daughter called Thora. Ketil, however, succumbs to old-age and dies on the Longship he used on Viking raids for so many years. In the year 1000, Sigurd dies too, and Merewyn persuades her son Orm to take her and his sister to England. Merewyn wishes to find Rumon, but soon learns that he was ordained as a monk at Tavistock Abbey, and that he had famously defended the Abbey from a Viking raid. Merewyn then takes her family to Romsey Abbey where she finds that her old friend Elfled is now Abbess. Elfled takes in Thora, while Merewyn marries and settles with Wulfric, a wealthy thane of King Æthelred. Orm cannot settle into life in England however, and leaves to rejoin the Viking peoples. Merewyn then proceeds to rejoin the Royal Court as a Lady-in-waiting for Queen Ælfgifu and then Queen Emma. After gaining back her social status in the English nobility, finally Merewyn is summoned to Tavistock Abbey, where she reconciles with Rumon before he dies. Rumon makes one last request that Merewyn admit her true birth at court. She fulfills his wish, admitting her Viking parentage to the King and Queen. Queen Emma sympathises with Merewyn's story, and Merewyn's husband Wulfric declares that he does not care about her lineage. Merewyn then settles down to a comfortable life with Wulfric.
2393925	/m/078zsn	A Certain Smile	Françoise Sagan		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Dominique, a student in Paris has a lover, Bertrand, who one day introduces her to his businessman uncle Luc and his wife Françoise. Both Luc and Dominique are aware of their mutual attraction from the beginning, but Dominique holds off for fear of hurting both Bertrand and Françoise, to whom she forms a close attachment. They decide to become lovers, however, spending two weeks in Cannes and promising to not fall in love. Both have a deep fear of hurting their partners, but more so of becoming bored. At the end of these two weeks and on their separation Dominique realises that she may well be in love with Luc. They spend other nights together, but this time tinged with the sadness that Luc does not love Dominique back. When Françoise eventually finds out about the affair, Dominique must learn to get over Luc and accept the transience of their relationship.
2397321	/m/0796v0	Lucky You	Carl Hiaasen	1997	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lucks intends to use the winnings to purchase a block of land to protect the animals by preventing it from being developed into a mall. Before she is able to do this the ticket is stolen by two white supremacist thugs, who have the other winning lottery ticket, but don't think that Lucks deserves to hold onto hers. The story revolves around her efforts to recover the ticket, aided by a newspaper reporter. The book parodies paranoid militia groups that believe in somewhat bizarre conspiracy theories. It also takes a satiric look at vendors in the fictional community of Grange, Florida, (based on the real community of Cassadaga) who proclaim various religious miracles. One character in the book drills holes in his palms to make it appear that he has the stigmata. There is also a woman who worships the "Road-Stain Jesus," which then becomes another tourist attraction. <!-- comment out empty section after 2 years
2398486	/m/0799fs	Einstein's Dreams				 The novel fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist who is troubled by dreams as he works on his theory of relativity in 1905. The book consists of 30 chapters, each exploring one dream about time that Einstein had during this period. The framework of the book consists of a prelude, three interludes, and an epilogue. Einstein's friend, Michele Besso, appears in these sections. Each dream involves a conception of time. Some scenarios may involve exaggerations of true phenomena related to relativity, and some may be entirely fantastical. The book demonstrates the relationship each human being has to time, and thus spiritually affirms Einstein's theory of relativity.
2399516	/m/079d16	The Black Dwarf	Walter Scott	1816	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 As Hobbie Elliot was returning over a wild moor from a day's sport, thinking of the legends he had heard of its supernatural occupants after nightfall, he was overtaken by Patrick Earnscliff, whose father had been killed in a quarrel with the laird of Ellislaw, Richard Vere. The moon suddenly revealed the figure of a human dwarf, who, on being spoken to, refused their offers of assistance, and bid them begone. Having invited Earnscliff to sup with his womenfolks, and pass the night at his farm, Hobbie accompanied him next morning to confront the strange being by daylight; and having assisted him in collecting stones for constructing a hut, they supplied him with food and other necessaries. In a short time he had completed his dwelling, and became known to the neighbours, for whose ailments he prescribed, as Elshender the Recluse. Being visited by Isabel Vere and two of her friends, he told their fortunes, and he gave her a rose, with strict injunctions to bring it to him in her hour of adversity. As they rode homewards, their conversation implied that she loved young Patrick Earnscliff, but that Mr Vere intended her to marry Sir Frederick Langley. Another of the dwarf's visitors was Willie Graeme of Westburnflat, on his way to avenge an affront he had received from Hobbie Elliot, whose dog the next day killed one of the dwarf's goats, for which he warned him that retribution was at hand. Shortly afterwards, Willie Graeme brought word that he and his companions had fired Hobbie's farm, and carried off his sweetheart, Grace Armstrong, and some cattle. On hearing this Elshie despatched him with an order for some money, and insisted that Grace should be given up uninjured. Having dispersed his neighbours in search of her, Hobbie Elliot went to consult Elshie, who handed him a bag of gold, which he declined, and intimated that he must seek her whom he had lost "in the west." Earnscliff and his party had tracked the cattle as far as the English border, but on finding a large Jacobite force assembling there they returned, and it was decided to attack Westburnflat's stronghold. On approaching it, a female hand, which her lover swore was Grace's, waved a signal to them from a turret, and as they were preparing a bonfire to force the door, Graeme agreed to release his prisoner, who proved to be Isabel Vere. On reaching home, however, Elliot found that Grace had been brought back, and at dawn he started off to accept the money which the dwarf had offered him to repair his homestead. Isabel had been seized by ruffians while walking with her father, who appeared overcome with grief, and under the impression that Earnscliff was the offender; whereas Mr Ratcliffe, who managed his affairs, suggested that Sir Frederick had stronger motives for placing her under restraint. Mr Vere's suspicion seemed justified by their meeting his daughter returning under her lover's care; but she confirmed his version of the circumstances under which he had intervened, to the evident discomfiture of his rival and her father. At a large gathering, the same day, of the Pretender's adherents in the hall of Ellieslaw Castle, Ralph Mareschal produced a letter which dissipated all their hopes, and Sir Frederick insisted that his marriage with Isabel should take place before midnight. She had consented, on her father's representation that his life would be forfeited if she refused, when Mr Ratcliffe persuaded her to make use of the token which Elshie had given her, and escorted her to his dwelling. He promised that at the foot of the altar he would redeem her; and, just as the ceremony was commencing in the chapel, a voice, which seemed to proceed from her mother's tomb, uttered the word "Forbear." The dwarf's real name and rank were then revealed, as well as the circumstances under which he had acquired the power of thus interfering on Isabel's behalf, while Hobbie and his friends supported Mr Ratcliffe in dispersing the would-be rebels. Sir Edward at the same time disappeared from the neighbourhood, and Mr Vere retired, with an ample allowance, to the Continent, all the Ellieslaw property, as well as the baronet's, being settled on Earnscliff and his bride Isabel. Sir Frederick Langley was a few years afterwards executed at Preston, and Westburnflat earned a commission in Marlborough's army by his services in providing cattle for the commissariat.
2400949	/m/079hrb	Ibid: A Life	Mark Dunn	2004-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In a series of (fictional) letters exchanged between the author, Mark Dunn, and his editor, it is explained that the only copy of Dunn's excessively and exhaustively researched and documented biography of one Jonathan Blashette - a circus performer born with three legs who goes on to make a fortune in the deodorant business and becomes a famous philanthropist - was accidentally knocked into a bathtub and destroyed. Luckily, Dunn had not yet sent along his voluminous endnotes and they survived, so the editor convinces Dunn to make a virtue of necessity and publish the endnotes by themselves. The reader is left to try and ferret out the details of Blashette's life story through the marginal asides and tangents related therein. While the book's copy and most reviews refer to Ibid: A Life as being a novel made up of footnotes, the novel itself identifies them as being endnotes. As endnotes are collected together and placed after a manuscript, while footnotes are interspersed throughout the manuscript itself, the novel's framing concept necessitates the notes being endnotes, not footnotes. However, from the cover art, it is obvious that the use of the term "footnotes" was as a pun on how the notes are on a three-footed man.
2401175	/m/079j7r	Faggots	Larry Kramer			 The main character, Fred Lemish, is loosely modeled on Kramer. Lemish wants to find a loving, long-term relationship. But his urges are frustrated and he becomes disillusioned with the 1970s "fast lane" lifestyle that dominates the gay subculture in and around New York, as he stumbles through an emotionally cold series of glory holes, bathhouses, BDSM encounters and group sex. Lemish also expresses discomfort with the widespread use of multiple street and prescription drugs that helped to maintain the party atmosphere. Faggots details the use of over two dozen 1970s party drugs and intoxicants such as Seconal, poppers, LSD, Quaaludes, alcohol, marijuana, Valium, PCP, cocaine and heroin. Locales include Fire Island, a gay bathhouse called the "Everhard," and a club called the Toilet Bowl.
2405849	/m/079v9j	The Beast in the Jungle	Henry James		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 John Marcher, the protagonist, is reacquainted with May Bartram, a woman he knew ten years earlier, who remembers his odd secret: Marcher is seized with the belief that his life is to be defined by some catastrophic or spectacular event, lying in wait for him like a "beast in the jungle." May decides to buy a house in London with the money she inherited from a great aunt, and to spend her days with Marcher, curiously awaiting what fate has in store for him. Marcher is a hopeless egoist, who believes that he is precluded from marrying so that he does not subject his wife to his "spectacular fate". He takes May to the theatre and invites her to an occasional dinner, but does not allow her to get close to him. As he sits idly by and allows the best years of his life to pass, he takes May down as well, until the denouement where he learns that the great misfortune of his life was to throw it away, and to ignore the love of a good woman, based upon his preposterous sense of foreboding.
2406396	/m/079wtg	The Magic Pudding	Norman Lindsay		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 Wanting to see the world, Bunyip Bluegum the koala sets out on his travels, taking only a walking stick. At about lunchtime, feeling more than slightly peckish, he meets Bill Barnacle the sailor and Sam Sawnoff the penguin who are eating a pudding. The pudding is a magic one which, no matter how much one eats it, always reforms into a whole pudding again. He is called Albert, has thin arms and legs and is a bad-tempered, ill-mannered so-and-so into the bargain. His only pleasure is being eaten and on his insistence, Bill and Sam invite Bunyip to join them for lunch. They then set off on the road together, Bill explaining to Bunyip how he and Sam were once shipwrecked with a ship's cook on an iceberg where the cook created the pudding which they now own. Later on they encounter the Pudding Thieves, a possum and a wombat. These nasty varmints are scum of the earth, barely fit to own the air that fills their lungs. Bill and Sam bravely defend their pudding while Bunyip sits on Albert so that he cannot escape while they are not looking. Later that night sitting round the fire, Bill and Sam, grateful for his contributions of the day, invite Bunyip to join them and become a member of the Noble Society of Pudding Owners. Later the next day, through some well-thought-out trickery, the Pudding Thieves make a successful grab for the Pudding. Upset and outraged, Bill and Sam fall into despair and it is up to Bunyip to get them to pull themselves together and set off to rescue their Pudding. In the course of tracking down the Pudding Thieves they encounter some rather pathetic and unsavoury members of society, but eventually manage to get led to the Pudding Thieves' lair. Bunyip's cleverness lures the robbers into a trap from where Bill and Sam's fists do the rest and they retrieve their pudding. Some time later the Pudding Thieves approach the three Pudding Owners proclaiming that they bear gifts of good will and will present them to the pudding owners if they would only look inside a bag they have with them. When doing so they pull it over their heads and tie it up leaving them defenceless as the thieves take their pudding and run off. An elderly dog, market gardener Benjamin Brandysnap, comes along and frees the Pudding Owners. The bag had been stolen from his stable, and he joins the Pudding Owners to get revenge on the Pudding Thieves. Another clever plan by Bunyip lures them into another trap where the Thieves are given yet another battering and the Pudding retrieved. The next day the travellers come to the sleepy town of Tooraloo where they are approached by men dressed in suits and top hats and claiming to be the real owners of the Pudding. They turn out to be the Pudding Thieves up to yet another attempt at getting the Pudding and the subsequent fight brings along the Mayor and the cowardly local Constable. In the argument that follows, the bad-tempered Pudding pinches the Mayor who orders his arrest. The Pudding is taken to court where the only officials present are the judge and the usher who are playing cards, but they prefer to eat the defendant rather than hear the case. To settle matters, Bunyip suggests that they hear the case themselves. Bill becomes the prosecutor, the Pudding Thieves are charged with the attempts to steal the Pudding and the theft of Benjamin Brandysnap's bag and the Mayor and the Constable stand in as “12 good men and true” &mdash; conceding that the unconstitutionality of the court is "better than a punch on the snout". The proceedings do not go well however and result in utter chaos. When it is at its height, Bunyip suddenly announces that the Pudding has been poisoned. The judge, who has been eating away at the Pudding, goes suddenly crazy and attacks the usher, the Pudding Thieves, the Mayor and the Constable with a bottle of port. In reality, Albert was never poisoned and the Pudding Owners take advantage of the confusion to beat a hasty retreat. They then decide that it would be best to settle down somewhere rather than continue with their travelling. They build a house in a tree in Benjamin's garden and settle down to a life of ease.
2406541	/m/079x45	City of Night	John Rechy	1963	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the 1960s, the book follows the travels of a young man (Rechy uses the term “youngman” when referring to hustlers) across the country while working as a hustler. The book focuses chapters on locations that the boy visits and certain personages he meets there, from New York City, to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Orleans. Throughout the novel, the unnamed narrator has trysts with various peculiar characters, including another hustler, an older man, an S&M enthusiast and a bed-ridden old man. All of these relationships range in the extent of their emotional and sexual nature, as well as in their peculiarity.
2406828	/m/079xqp	The Real Eve	Stephen Oppenheimer	2002	{"/m/0h5k": "Anthropology", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 In the book, Oppenheimer supports the theory that modern humans first emerged in Africa and that modern human behavior emerged in Africa prior to the Out of Africa migration. Oppenheimer writes that there was only one migration out of Africa that contributed to the peopling of the rest of the world. Oppenheimer believes that anatomically modern humans crossed the Red Sea from the Horn of Africa and followed the "southern coastal route" once in Asia. Thus Oppenheimer is opposed to the theory that there was another out of Africa migration using northern route along the Nile and into the Levant as suggested by Lahr and Foley 1994. The book also supports the theory that modern humans were in South Asia during the Toba Castrophe. Oppenheimer uses familiar names to describe genetic lineages. The biblical analogies of Adam and Eve are used to describe the Most recent common ancestors via mitochondrial DNA and the y-chromosome. Other male lineages are described as Cain, Abel and Seth. Mitochondrial DNA haplogroups are frequently described with female names from regions where the haplogroups are common. For example haplogroup M is named Manju as it is frequent in India, and Haplogroup N is named "Nasreen" as it is predominant in Arabia.
2407323	/m/079ytb	Romance	David Mamet			 A fast-paced, madcap comedy-farce, the main action of the play occurs in a courtroom presided over by a judge in the original cast) whose allergy medications make him, in the first act, so drowsy he repeatedly falls asleep, and in the second act so manic he eventually ends up stripping in the middle of the court. Meanwhile, the prosecutor has to deal with his flamboyant and often difficult-to-control boyfriend Bernard. The gentile defense attorney is swapping racial slurs with his Jewish client, who suddenly comes up with a brilliant idea to solve all the problems in the Middle East. The question is, can he cut through all the courtroom drama in time to make the plan work?
2409043	/m/07b1qz	Smouldering Fires	Anya Seton			 A teenage girl is troubled by dreams and fantasies that parallel the life of another girl who lived over 200 years before. The book revolves around a young New Englander, Amy Delatour, a teenager of French Acadian-English lineage, who often goes into a fugue stage where she believes she is a tormented soul named Ange-Marie, a French Acadian in exile in eighteenth century Connecticut who had been separated from her beloved husband, Paul. The shy and bookish Amy lives in a state of anguish and uncertainty, until one of her high school teachers, Martin Stone, takes an interest in this unusual, highly intelligent young woman. Together they try to get to the bottom of her mysterious dream states and her fire phobia.
2410240	/m/07b46_	Nightrunners of Bengal	John Masters	1951-12	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set at the time of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The central character, Captain Rodney Savage, is an officer in a Bengal Native Infantry regiment, stationed in the fictional city of Bhowani (which is in about the same location as the real city of Jhansi). He is restless with garrison life, but is devoted to his regiment and its sepoys (Indian soldiers). In spite of his empathy with the sepoys, Savage does not realise that fear and resentment are driving them to intrigue with local rulers and other conspirators against the rule of the British East India Company. The complacent life of the British community in Bengal is shattered by the Rebellion. Most of the British officers of the Bhowani garrison and their families (including Savage's wife) are killed in the outbreak or are subsequently murdered. Savage escapes the massacre along with his infant son and an English woman, Caroline Langford. The small group of refugees are sheltered by sympathetic Indian villagers. For some time Savage's sense of betrayal and loss drives him into insane hatred of all Indians and he kills an Indian officer who was his friend. Eventually the humanity and tolerance of the villagers, combined with his growing love for Caroline, enable him to recover and to reach the British forces gathering to suppress the rebellion (who are infected with their own hatred and desire for revenge). In a final clash, an emotionally torn Savage fights against his own former regiment. Ironically it is a charge by Indian cavalry who have remained loyal to the British which turns the tide of battle. The "Nightrunners" in the title are messengers who distributed chapatis shortly before the outbreak of the rebellion. This mysterious historic incident remains unexplained.
2411441	/m/07b6qg	Chokher Bali	Rabindranath Tagore			 Binodini is a convent educated young widow left to her own devices when her husband dies soon after they are married. As was the custom in those times in British India, she returns to her village and lives there for a couple of months until she accepts the invitation of Rajlakshmi to live with her and her son, Mahendra (who had rejected a former marriage proposal with Binodini) in Calcutta. He is newly married to Ashalata (a naive, gentle girl), but soon begins to feel a strong attraction for Binodini. The story details the relationships of these three and Mahendra's best friend Bihari as they deal with issues like distrust, adultery, lies, and problems between them.
2413490	/m/07bc84	Americana	Don DeLillo	1971	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is narrated by David Bell, a former television executive turned avant-garde filmmaker. Beginning with an exploration of the malaise of the modern corporate man, the novel turns into an interrogation of film's power to misrepresent reality as Bell creates an autobiographical road-movie. The story addresses roots of American pathology and introduces themes DeLillo expanded upon in The Names, White Noise, and Libra. The first half of the novel can be viewed as a critique of the corporate world while the second half articulates the fears and dilemmas of contemporary American life. ga:Americana it:Americana (romanzo)
2413751	/m/07bcyq	The Last Samurai	Helen DeWitt	2000-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Last Samurai is about the relationship between a young boy, Ludo, and his mother, Sibylla. Sibylla, a single mother, brings Ludo up somewhat unusually; he starts reading at two, reading Homer in the original Greek at three, and goes on to Hebrew, Japanese, Old Norse, Inuit, and advanced mathematics. To stand in for a male influence in his upbringing, Sibylla plays him Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, which he comes to know by heart. Ludo is a child prodigy, whose combination of genius and naïveté guide him in a search for his missing father, whose identity Sibylla refuses to disclose &mdash; a search that has some peculiar byways and unexpected consequences.
2415681	/m/07bhzx	The White Dragon	Anne McCaffrey	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The White Dragon follows the Coming of age story of Jaxom, the young Lord of Ruatha Hold, who had accidentally impressed the unusual white dragon Ruth in Dragonquest and Dragonsong. As Jaxom grows up, he has to deal with the difficulty of being both a Lord Holder and a dragonrider, the maturity of Ruth (who, besides being white, is a runt), his own teenage angst and desire to fight Thread on his own, and the rebellious Oldtimers, who attempt to steal a golden egg from Benden Weyr. Fortunately, Ruth always knows when he is and can travel through time to avert the growing political crisis. But while fighting Thread, Jaxom falls ill with a potentially deadly sickness called "Fire-Head". This leads him to recuperate in Cove Hold, and while there he discovers some of the mysteries that the Ancients, the ancestors of the Pernese, left behind, and he begins to make more sense of the past.
2415941	/m/07bjm9	Trinity's Child	William Prochnau	1983	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 During the waning years of the Cold War, the United States has engaged in a massive military buildup, hoping to press the economy of the Soviet Union to breaking point and so force them into political compromise. Instead, the Soviet Premier responds by launching a limited nuclear counter-force strike against America, hoping to destroy their military capability whilst leaving the civilian population relatively intact. The President of the United States receives a teleprinter by the Premier in which he offers the United States three choices; accept the damage and the exchange will end, respond in kind (which would result in the deaths of 3 to 9 million people on both sides), or respond in full (which would certainly result in a global nuclear war). The President decides to respond in kind, much to the chagrin of Gen. Renning (codename "Icarus"), the commander-in-chief of Strategic Air Command. Icarus believes the teleprinter to be a ruse, and that the Soviet leadership will retaliate massively, thereby crushing the United States. As the order is passed on, the first wave of Soviet ICBMs and SLBMs arrive, crippling most of America's missile silos and bomber bases. A missile aimed at Andrews Air Force Base, so as to prevent the President from leaving Washington, D.C., overshoots its target and detonates in the vicinity of Chevy Chase, Maryland. Icarus then informs the President that the Soviets have launched a second strike and urges the President to launch their remaining ICBMs and bombers not destroyed in the first exchange. The President reluctantly gives the order just before SAC and Omaha, Nebraska are destroyed. As he is evacuated from the White House to be taken to Dover Air Force Base, the President is informed aboard Marine One that the second Soviet launch was directed at the Chinese who had launched their own strike against the Soviets in accordance to a treaty with the United States. Seeing his hasty response will result in further retaliatory strikes, the President falls into a stupor. Suddenly, a missile detonates over nearby Andrews AFB, and causes the helicopter to crash. Believing the President to be dead, Renning's Navy attache "Harpoon" is given the assignment of locating a successor. He learns through intel by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the Secretary of the Interior is in the swamplands outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Harpoon's Boeing E-4B lands in the city and intercepts the secretary, now with the given name "Condor". The plane leaves Baton Rouge minutes before the city is struck by an ICBM. As the only known successor to be alive, Condor is sworn in as the new president. During Harpoon's briefing, the extent of the damage to both countries is revealed; the Soviet Union has suffered roughly 25 million casualties with the United States suffering 30-35 million. Along with Omaha and Baton Rouge, the cities of Seattle, Los Angeles, Colorado Springs, New Orleans, Phoenix, Raleigh, and Washington, D.C. have been destroyed. Massive social disorder and rioting have broken out in American's remaining cities. It is briefly mentioned that Europe remained neutral during the conflict and that India and Israel have declared war on Pakistan. Believing that America is "losing" the war due to having a higher casualty count, Condor, being urged by the hawkish "Librarian", an air force colonel whose expertise centers on Soviet military doctrine, orders a "Grand Tour"; sending America's remaining bombers into the Soviet Union to destroy leadership bunkers, thus decapitating the Soviet government and leaving the rest of the nation to collapse. Harpoon reasons that the plan will not work as there will be no one in power remaining to "turn off the war". During this, one of the American bombers en route to the Soviet Union abandons its mission. Seeing it as a sign for a truce, the Soviets turn 15 of their bombers around. Condor, seeing the act by the lone bomber as cowardly, states that the United States has "one deserter and the Soviets have 15". Believing Harpoon to be incompetent, Condor relieves him of his command and appoints the Librarian as his new adviser. In his quarters, Harpoon contacts Icarus's successor, "Alice", who is flying aboard the mobile command center designated "Looking Glass". Learning that a full-scale nuclear strike is imminent, Harpoon attempts to storm the cockpit and crash the plane before the order is given. He is stopped, however, and strangled. It is then discovered that the president survived the crash and is immediately taken to a FEMA bunker in the outskirts of Olney, Maryland. There, his Emergency War Orders officer learns that the Soviet Premier is attempting to make contact through a shortwave radio. Not knowing if the call is authentic, the President, now a paraplegic and blind, negotiates a cease-fire with his Russian counterpart. The President manages to make contact with Alice, who at first doubts the identity of his commander-in-chief. However, after much urging and conversation, Alice comes to realize that the man he is speaking to is authentic. The President orders Alice to turn the bombers around. Doing so earns the ire of Condor, who relieves Alice of his command. Condor then orders America's nuclear submarines to launch their arsenal when they emerge in 7 hours time. The President makes contact with Condor and attempts to order him to relinquish command. Condor refuses as he believes to be speaking to a Soviet imposter. Knowing that Condor has his authenticator codes, the President is powerless to call off the order himself. During the 7-hour window, the President and Alice attempt to create a plan to stop Condor. Alice then states that he will use the Looking Glass as a weapon to intercept the E-4B, thus killing Condor and relinquishing authority to the President. The President refutes the plan, urging that there must be another way. Alice convinces him otherwise, and the President accepts his sacrifice. Several hours elapse as Alice attempts to catch up to Condor, who declares the Looking Glass to be manned by treasonous men. Minutes before the submarines emerge and the order is given to launch, the Looking Glass intercepts the E-4B, killing everyone onboard both. Command is returned to the President who orders a full cessation of hostilities of his military. The Soviet Union responds in kind. However, the outcome of the conflicts in the Middle East and the Soviets and Chinese are left unanswered. During these events, a subplot focuses on Polar Bear One, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber on a mission to the Soviet Union with a nuclear payload. The book explores the enormous psychological stress which the crew must endure during the mission - several of the crew crack under this pressure. It is this bomber that abandons its mission and turns away from Russia.
2417687	/m/07bn88	Zorro	Isabel Allende	2005-05-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Allende's story is split into six parts, each part dealing with one stage of Diego's life, with the last part serving as the epilogue. The novel chronicles Diego's formation as well as his origins as Zorro. He goes to America to find his dream. Captain Alejandro de la Vega, a seasoned Spanish soldier, is sent to the San Gabriel mission run by Padre Mendoza, an experienced Franciscan priest, due to a series of savage attacks at other missions. Led by a warrior chief named Chief Gray Wolf, the Indians have set their sights on the San Gabriel mission, the most successful mission in Alta California. Alejandro, aided by Padre Mendoza and a few Indian converts, defeat the Indians, and are successful in hurting Chief Gray Wolf. However, as they contemplate the chief's fate, they find out she is a woman. She is Toypurnia, a young Indian woman. She recuperates in the mission with Alejandro's help. Alejandro then goes to Pedro Fages, the governor of California. Here he decides to allow Toypurnia to be a lady - in - waiting to Eulalia de Callis, Fages' rich and stubborn wife. After three years, Alejandro meets Toypurnia, who was renamed Regina, at a lavish party to celebrate the arrival of Pedro Fages, who has earlier resigned from his post and was on his way to Mexico with Eulalia. He proposes marriage to Regina and she accepts. The two are wed by Padre Mendoza, and Fages then bequeaths a large acreage of land to Alejandro. He then retires from the military and becomes a hacienda owner, and later an alcalde. Regina befriends Ana, a young convert who is assigned to care for Regina. Ana's birthing was smooth, Regina was not, as the baby was crosswise in her womb. The pregnancy was so complicated that she spent fifty hours in labor, and required Padre Mendoza to deliver the baby, whom Regina names Diego, and who is baptized on the spot. Diego and Bernardo, Ana's son, become close friends. Since Ana breastfed Diego while his mother was convalescing from her pregnancy, as well as Bernardo, the boys became milk brothers. The rest of the chapter deals with significant events in Diego and Bernardo's life, and the early formation into what they are today. At an early age, Diego and Bernardo share an unusual childhood. They capture a live bear using the sleeping potion of White Owl, once used to amputate a wounded priest, and a frightened, bullied, obese boy named Garcia. Together, Diego and Bernardo undergo Indian training, while Alejandro teaches fencing to Diego, who passes it on to Bernardo. When the de la Vega hacienda is attacked by pirates, the boys have their own traumatizing experiences: Diego and his mother attempt to defend the house, but are defeated, and Bernardo, hidden in the servants' room, is forced to watch his mother be brutally raped and murdered by the pirates. This causes Bernardo to be mute, as a sign of mourning. Bernardo is sent to the Indian tribe of Regina to recover, and soon strikes a friendship with Night Lightning, which blossoms into a romance, and Diego is forced to remain at home to recover after suffering a few broken ribs during the attack. Diego and Bernardo then undergo a test to prove their maturity and to find their spirit guide, a totemic animal which would guide the boys' future. Bernardo's spirit guide is a horse, in the form of Tornado, a motherless colt which Bernardo encounters and cares for. Diego's is a fox or 'zorro' in the form of a fox who saves his life. After the events in the forest, Alejandro, oblivious to the Indian training Diego has been receiving, receives a letter from Tomas de Romeu, an old friend of Alejandro and currently residing in France - occupied Spain. He invites Alejandro to let Diego go to Barcelona, to receive a more formal schooling, and to learn fencing under the famed maestro Manuel Escalante. Alejandro reluctanly allows Diego to go, and Diego takes Bernardo with him. They leave after their fifteenth birthday, where Regina surprisingly organizes an extravagant party, given her own aversion to parties, and Bernardo has an intimate moment with Light-in-the-Night Diego and Bernando travel to Spain but first sail to Panama City where they learn to be sailors, magic and also acrobatics by swinging through the ships's rigging. Upon leaving Panama City, Diego meets a sea captain, Santiago de Leon, who opens his eyes to new ways of thinking and questions his views on religion, patriotism and justice. Diego spies a golden medallion which the captain wears around his neck but is reluctant to acknowledge to Diego. Upon arriving in Barcelona, Diego and Bernardo live with Don Tomas de Romeu. De Romeu is a French sympathizer who has two young daughters, the beautiful Juliana and the tomboyish Isabel. Diego is immediately struck by Juliana and decides to pursue her romantically. He also begins to study fencing with Maestro Manuel Escalante. Diego's main adversary for the affections of Juliana is Rafael Moncada, the nephew of Dona Eulalia. Moncada utilizes trickery to gain Juliana's favor which Diego and Bernardo investigate. The rivalry escalates upon Moncada's abuse of Bernardo which Diego takes exception and issues a challenge to a duel. Moncada and Diego arrange to have the duel with pistols and Moncada is allowed to take the first shot which hits Diego in the arm. Diego then fires into the ground with his shot. Diego is satisfied with the result having humiliated Moncada. Bernardo and Diego befriend a group of gypsies in Barcelona and Diego begins an affair with a gypsy woman named Amalia. Both boys also perform in a circus act with the gypsies where Diego begins to assemble a costume to disguise himself from the high society people in attendance. After one of Diego's fencing lessons with Escalante, he learns the secret of La Justicia, a secret organization devoted to justice. Members of La Justicia are identified by the gold medallions which they wear around their necks. Diego recognizes Escalante's medallion as being the same as that of de Leon's. Escalante invites Diego to join La Justicia and they begin to train for his initiation test where Diego is tested physically in his fighting against members of La Justicia. Diego passes the test and joins La Justicia and takes the name Zorro meaning 'fox'. Diego learns that Amalia has been arrested and is being held prisoner. Diego, dressed as Zorro, sneaks into the palace to convince Le Chavalier Duchamp, Napoleon's emissary to Spain, to release the hostages which he does under threat of his daughter's life. Moncada and Diego continue their pursuit of Juliana with neither gaining ground. One night, Juliana and Isabel are attacked on the street when Moncada appears and defends them so that they can escape. Everyone is relieved and grateful except for Isabel who recognizes the attackers as being employed by Moncada. Diego confirms this when he visits the gypsies. In an effort to expose Moncada, Diego convinces Amalia to reveal Moncada's scheme to Juliana. Sometime later, Diego warns the gypsies that they are in danger of arrest and they flee the city. The political landscape changes as Napoleon is exiled and Duchamp leaves Spain. Arrests are made including Maestro Escalante who is held in a local barracks. Diego convinces La Justicia to stage a rescue. Diego spikes liquor with his sleeping draught and then gifts it to the soldiers of the barracks. After they have had a chance to drink the drug, Zorro and the other members of La Justicia enter the barracks and rescue Escalante. After which the members scatter and disband. Don de Romeu is also arrested as a French sympathizer and is held in the more secure La Ciudadela. Juliana goes to Moncada and asks him to use his influence to release her father. He agrees on the condition that she marry him and she agrees. Several days later Moncada returns and informs Juliana that he was unable to secure a release. Isabel and Diego approach Eulalia and ask her to intervene. She declines but offers to buy de Romeu's property before it is seized to allow the girls an opportunity to leave the country and also Eulalia will arrange for a visit to their father. Juliana agrees to the terms. The girls then visit their father who signs the papers and comes to peace with his impending execution. He also reveals that Moncada was the one who denounced him and is responsible for his arrest. Following the execution, Moncada visits Juliana who agrees to meet him. Moncada offers protection to Juliana in the hope that she will either marry him or become his mistress. She demands that he provide compensation for the loss of her father. He instead attacks Juliana before Diego sees this and begins to fight him. The two men fight until Moncada is subdued and left in a secret closet with de Romeu kept his contraband materials. The girls and Diego decide to leave the city and head for the Americas. The money from Eulalia, converted to gems, is sewn into their clothing and they leave their home to journey to California. Diego and the girls decide to leave Barcelona and travel on foot dressed as pilgrims. They decide to leave from an Atlantic port as they will be less likely to be recognized there. During their travels they rely upon the kindness of the local people to provide shelter and food. The journey takes many months. After several months of travel, Diego meets up with the gypsies who agree to let Diego travel with them to the port. The gypsies require that the girls live in the way of the gypsies which requires strict separation from the men. Diego, who had viewed the trek as an opportunity to become more intimate with Juliana was discourage by these restrictions but abided them anyway. They reached the port where Diego met his old shipmates and was reintroduced to Captain de Leon who agreed to take them on board. It is when the ship reaches Cuba that the ship is attacked by a pirate crew lead by Jean Lafitte. The ship is taken and Diego and the girls are taken hostage. Lafitte takes them to his home in Louisiana where they await a ransom from Alejandro de la Vega to arrive. During this time, Juliana becomes smitten with Lafitte until she learns that he is married to a Creole woman named Catherine who she never sees. Diego begins gambling in New Orleans in an attempt to win enough money to buy their freedom. The girls, however, use their jewels and gems to buy the freedom of slaves Lafitte is selling at auction. Lafitte tells her that the jewels are more than enough for the slaves and would also buy their freedom, which he grants. Then he returns the jewels back to her, an indication of his love for her. Catherine's mother sees this and takes her to Catherine who is revealed to have died five weeks earlier, unbeknownst to Lafitte. Catherine's mother tells Juliana that Catherine has chosen Juliana to marry Lafitte and raise her child, Pierre. Juliana agrees to marry Lafitte and Diego and Isabel are freed. ===Part Six, Epilogue (Alta California, 1840)===
2418489	/m/07bpx9	Killing Aurora	Helen Barnes	1999-05-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel contains two central characters, both fourteen years of age: the first, Aurora Thorpe (rabbit queen), has been forced by her overprotective mother and stepfather to attend the prestigious St Dymphna's Non-Denominational Ladies' College. The second, also attending St Dymphna's, is Web Richardson (rabbit king), an outcast from a single parent family. Aurora and Web share a prickly connection, despite Aurora's reluctance to be associated with the terribly unpopular Web. In an abruptly unfamiliar environment, and under the pressure of family and social expectations, Aurora becomes increasingly concerned with losing weight as a means of achieving the acceptance of her peers and living up to her own rigorous standards. Meanwhile, Web endures life without a mother, having only the scant guidance of her timid father, overbearing aunt, bitter grandfather and volatile older sister to rely on. Web desperately tries to stop Aurora from "disappearing", at the same time struggling with her mother's absence and the need for a friend. There are many references throughout the book to suggest that the school "St Dymphna's" is in fact the selective Mac.Robertson Girls' High School in Melbourne. This is the school that the author attended.
2418992	/m/07bqyk	Beach Music	Pat Conroy	1995-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jack McCall, an American living in Rome with his young daughter, is trying to find peace after the recent trauma of his wife's suicide. But his search for solitude is disturbed when a telegram from a family member summons Jack back to South Carolina to be with his ailing mother. He begins to explore his past and all its demons, as well as a new mystery that his sister-in-law and two school friends invite him to explore. They want Jack's help in tracking down another classmate who went underground as a Vietnam protester and never resurfaced. As Jack begins a journey that encompasses the past and the present in both Europe and the American South, he also begins a quest that will lead him to shocking truths—and ultimately to catharsis, acceptance and maturity.
2422042	/m/07bz55	Manifold: Time	Stephen Baxter	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Time is set on Earth, the inner part of the Solar System and various other universes onwards from the 21st century. The novel covers a wide range of topics, including the Doomsday argument, Fermi paradox, genetic engineering, and humanity's extinction. The book begins at the end of space and time, when the last descendants of humanity face an infinite but pointless existence. Due to proton decay the physical universe has collapsed, but some form of intelligence has survived by embedding itself into a lossless computing substrate where it can theoretically survive indefinitely. However, since there will never be new input, eventually all possible thoughts will be exhausted. Some portion of this intelligence decides that this should not have been the ultimate fate of the universe, and takes action to change the past, centering around the early 21st century. The changes come in several forms, including a message to Reid Malenfant, the appearance of super-intelligent children around the world, and the discovery of a mysterious gateway on asteroid 3753 Cruithne.
2423068	/m/07c08h	The Hours	Michael Cunningham	1998	{"/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Note: This Summary does not contain the whole book, nor end at the ending. The stream-of-consciousness style being so prominent in this work, a summary of the plot based on physical action does not give a thorough understanding of the content of the work. In the novel, action occurring in the physical world (i.e.: characters doing things, such as talking, walking etc.) is far outweighed by material existing in the thought and memory of the protagonists. Some discretion must be made in a plot summary as to which of these thoughts and memories warrant detailing. The novel begins with the suicide of Virginia Woolf in 1941 by drowning herself in the Ouse, a river in Sussex, England. Even as she is drowning, Virginia marvels at everyday sights and sounds. Leonard Woolf, her husband, finds her suicide note, and Virginia's dead body floats downstream where life, in the form of a mother and child going for a walk, goes on as if Virginia is still taking in all the sights and sounds. *I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. :-- from Virginia Woolf's suicide note to Leonard Woolf. p7, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. The novel jumps to New York City at the end of the 20th century where Clarissa Vaughan (Cunningham's modern Mrs. Dalloway), in announcing she will buy the flowers for a party she's hosting later in the day, paraphrases the opening sentence of Woolf's novel. She leaves her partner Sally cleaning their apartment and heads outside into a June morning. Walking to the flower shop, Clarissa enjoys the everyday hustle and bustle of the city. The sights and sounds she encounters serve as jumping-off points for her thoughts about life, her loves and her past. The beautiful day reminds her of a happy memory, a holiday she had as a young woman with two friends, Richard and Louis. In fact, the flowers are for a party Clarissa is hosting at her apartment that night for Richard (now a renowned poet dying of AIDS) as he has just won the Carrouthers, an esteemed poetry prize awarded for a life's work. Clarissa bumps into Walter, an acquaintance who writes gay pulp fiction romances. Clarissa invites him to the party although she knows Richard abhors Walter's shallow interests in "fame and fashions, the latest restaurant". Clarissa herself appreciates Walter's "greedy innocence." Clarissa continues on her way reflecting on her past, sometimes difficult relationship with Richard which she compares to her more stable but unspectacular relationship with her partner of eighteen years, Sally. She finally arrives at the flower shop. *What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run. :-- Clarissa reflecting on the day as she walks to the flower shop. p10, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *Why doesn't she feel more somber about Richard's perversely simultaneous good fortune ("an anguished, prophetic voice in American letters") and his decline ("You have no T-cells at all, none that we can detect")? What is wrong with her? She loves Richard, she thinks of him constantly, but she perhaps loves the day slightly more. :-- Clarissa thinking about Richard. p11, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *The woman's head quickly withdraws, the door to the trailer closes again, but she leaves behind her an unmistakable sense of watchful remonstrance, as if an angel had briefly touched the surface of the world with one sandaled foot, asked if there was any trouble and, being told all was well, had resumed her place in the ether with skeptical gravity, having reminded the children of earth that they are just barely trusted to manage their own business, and that further carelessness will not go unremarked. :-- Clarissa spotting a movie star sticking her head outside her trailer door in response to a film crew's noisiness. p27, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. The novel then jumps to 1923 with Virginia Woolf waking one morning with the possible first line of a new novel. She carefully navigates her way through the morning, so as not to lose her inspiration. When she picks up her pen, she writes: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. The novel jumps to 1949 Los Angeles with Laura Brown reading the first line of Virginia's Woolf's novel 'Mrs. Dalloway.' ("Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.") Laura Brown is pregnant with her second child and is reading in bed. She does not want to get up despite it being her husband Dan's birthday. She is finding it hard playing the role of wife to Dan, and mother to her son Richie, despite her appreciation for them. She would much rather read her book. She eventually forces herself to go downstairs where she decides to make a cake for Dan's birthday which Richie will help her make. *He makes her think sometimes of a mouse singing amorous ballads under the window of a giantess. :-- Laura reflecting on her son's transparent love for her. p44, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *...the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. :-- Laura remembering a quote from Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway.' p48, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. The novel returns to Clarissa Vaughan who, having left the flower shop with an armload of flowers, decides to stop by Richard's apartment. On her way to Richard's she pauses at the site of a film shoot, hoping to catch a glimpse of a movie star. Eventually she leaves, having not seen the star, embarrassed at her own trivial impulses. Clarissa enters the neighbourhood she and Richard frequented as young adults. It is revealed Richard and Clarissa once had a failed experimental romantic relationship together despite it being obvious Richard's "deepest longings" were for Louis with whom he was already in a relationship. Clarissa still wonders what her life might have been if they had tried to stay together. Clarissa enters Richard's apartment building, which she finds squalid. She seems to associate Richard's apartment building with sense of decay and death. She enters Richard's apartment. Richard welcomes Clarissa, calling her "Mrs. D" a reference to 'Mrs. Dalloway'. He calls her this because of the shared first name (Clarissa Vaughan, Clarissa Dalloway) but also because of a sense of shared destiny. As Richard's closest friend, Clarissa has taken on the role of a caregiver through Richard's illness. Richard is struggling with what appears to Clarissa to be mental illness, brought about by his AIDS and discusses hearing voices with Clarissa. While Clarissa still enjoys everyday life, it seems Richard's illness has sapped his energy for life and the cleanliness of his apartment is subsequently suffering. As Clarissa fusses about, paying attention to the details of Richard's life that he has neglected, Richard seems resigned. He does not seem to be looking forward to the party Clarissa is organising for him nearly as much as Clarissa is. Finally, Clarissa leaves promising to return in the afternoon to help him prepare for the party. Meanwhile, two hours have passed since Virginia began writing the start of 'Mrs. Dalloway.' Reflecting on the uncertainty of the artistic process, she decides she has written enough for the day and is worried that if she continues her fragile mental state will become unbalanced; the onset of which she describes as her "headache." Virginia goes to the printing room (her husband Leonard has set up a printing press, the renowned Hogarth Press which first published Sigmund Freud in English and poet T. S. Eliot) where Leonard and an assistant, Ralph are at work. She senses from Ralph's demeanour the "impossibly demanding" Leonard has just scolded him for some inefficiency. Virginia announces she is going for a walk and will then pitch in with the work. *She might see it while walking with Leonard in the square, a scintillating silver-white mass floating over the cobblestones, randomly spiked, fluid but whole, like a jellyfish. "What's that?" Leonard would ask. "It's my headache," she'd answer. "Please ignore it." :--Virginia reflecting on the detached nature of her mental illness. p70, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *She decides, with misgivings, that she is finished for today. Always, there are these doubts. Should she try another hour? Is she being judicious, or slothful? Judicious, she tells herself, and almost believes it. :--Virginia. p72, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *The truth, she thinks, sits calmly and plumply, dressed in matronly gray, between these two men. :-Virginia reflecting on whose attitude towards work, the carefree Ralph's, or the "brilliant and indefatigable" Leonard's, has resulted in the two men's conflict. p73, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. In parallel imagery to Virginia Woolf's, Laura Brown also goes about an act of creation: making Dan's birthday cake. Richie is helping her, and Laura passes through emotions of intense love for, and annoyance with Richie. Laura wants desperately to desire nothing more than the life she has as a wife and mother, to be making a cake, and sees both the cake-making and her present lot in life as her art, just as writing is Virginia Woolf's art: *She will not lose hope. She will not mourn her lost possibilities, her unexplored talents (what if she has no talents, after all?). She will remain devoted to her son, her husband, her home and duties, all her gifts. She will want this second child. :-Laura's thoughts, the final sentences of the chapter, p. 79, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition Virginia Woolf is taking her walk while thinking of ideas for her novel. She already believes Clarissa Dalloway will commit suicide, now Virginia plans for Mrs.Dalloway to have had one true love: not her husband, but a girl Clarissa knew during her own girlhood. Her love of another girl will have represented a time when she was not afraid to go against the destiny laid out for her by society and family. Virginia plans for Clarissa to kill herself in middle-age over something quite trivial, a representation of what her life has become and what has been repressed. As Virginia walks about Richmond she reflects on how Mrs.Dalloway's deterioration in middle-age represents how Virginia feels about being trapped in suburban Richmond when she only feels fully alive in London. She is aware she is more susceptible to mental illness in London, but would rather die 'raving mad' in London than avoid life (and perhaps prolong her years) in Richmond. As Virginia returns home she feels, as did Laura Brown in the previous chapter, as if she is impersonating herself, as if the person she is presenting herself to be requires artifice. She puts on this 'act' to convince herself and others that she is 'sane' and so Leonard will agree with the idea of moving back to London. Virginia understands that there is "true art" in the requirement for women such as herself to act as they do. Feeling in control of her 'act' she goes to speak to the cook, Nelly, about lunch. However, Nelly, with her petty grievances and implicit demands that the daily life of running the house which is Virginia's domain, be observed, overwhelms Virginia. Nelly appears to have a matronly competence whilst Virginia does not seem to have a house-wifey bone in her body. Virginia decides to give her character, Clarissa Dalloway, the great skill with servants that she herself does not possess. *She is the author; Leonard, Nelly, Ralph, and the others are the readers. This particular novel concerns a serene, intelligent woman of painfully susceptible sensibilities who once was ill but has now recovered; who is preparing for the season in London... :--Virginia Woolf preparing to 'act' as Virginia Woolf. p83, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *Men may congratulate themselves for writing truly and passionately about the movements of nations; they may consider war and the search for God to be great literature's only subjects; but if men's standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed. :--p83-4, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *The trick will be to render intact the magnitude of Clarissa's miniature but very real desperation; to fully convince the reader that, for her, domestic defeats are every bit as devastating as are lost battles to a general. :--Virginia considering how she will write 'Mrs.Dalloway. p84, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *"I've got the cress soup," Nelly says. "And the pie. And then I thought just some of them yellow pears for pudding, unless you'd like something fancier." Here it is, then: the challenge thrown down. Unless you'd like something fancier. So the subjugated Amazon stands on the riverbank wrapped in the fur of animals she has killed and skinned; so she drops a pear before the queen's gold slippers and says, "Here is what I've brought. Unless you'd like something fancier." :--p85, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *...in offering pears she reminds Virginia that she, Nelly, is powerful; that she knows secrets; that queens who care more about solving puzzles in their chambers than they do about the welfare of their people must take whatever they get. :--p85, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. Having walked back home from Richard's, Clarissa Vaughan enters her apartment. Her partner Sally, a TV producer, is on her way out the door to a lunch meeting with a film star. Suddenly, left alone, Clarissa feels unmoored. She feels as if her home and its comforts are trivial in light of the impending death of her closest friend Richard; compared to a time when she felt most alive and had everything to hope for. Her apartment is just as much a "realm of the dead" as Richard's. Like the other characters in Cunningham's novel she questions the value of her present life and whether it isn't a negation via triviality of the life she could lead. Then the feeling moves on. Clarissa is disappointed but relieved to find her life is her own and that she wants no other. She holds onto the prospect of preparing Richard's party as affirmation and begins arrangements. As Clarissa prepares for the party she thinks of the famous actor Sally is lunching with, a B-movie action star who recently came out as gay. This sparks ruminations on why she, Clarissa, was not invited to lunch and again towards thoughts of the worth of her life. In her mind, she is "only a wife" (p94). Clarissa tries to be grateful for the moment she is inhabiting, cutting the stems off roses at the kitchen sink. She thinks of the holiday she had when she was eighteen with Louis and Richard, a time when "it seemed anything could happen, anything at all" (p95). She thinks of kissing Richard, a dramatic reversal of the kiss Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway shares with a girl when she was young. Clarissa (Vaughan) realizes without that holiday and the house where she, Richard and Louis spent it, so many events would not have occurred, including this moment now, standing in a kitchen cutting flowers for her best friend, Richard's, party. She remembers telling herself at the time she was not betraying Louis by sleeping with Richard, it was the free-wheeling 1960's, Louis was aware of what was going on. She wonders what might have happened if she had tried to remain with Richard. She imagines that other future, "full of infidelities and great battles; as a vast and enduring romance laid over friendship so searing and profound it would accompany them to the grave...She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself." "Or then again maybe not," Clarissa thinks. She realizes that maybe there is nothing equal to the recollection of having been young. She catalogues the moment she and Richard kissed for the first time, by a pond's edge at dusk. "It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years, to realize that it 'was' happiness...Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other." *It is revealed to her that all her sorrow and loneliness, the whole creaking scaffold of it, stems simply from pretending to live in this apartment among these objects... :--Clarissa considering the possibility of escaping her present life. p92, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *I am trivial, endlessly trivial, she thinks. p94, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port. p97, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book...What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other. p98, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. Laura's cake is complete but she is not happy. It is less than she had hoped it would be. She had invested great and desperate hopes in the cake, like an artist working on a great piece of art, and in her mind, she failed. Laura catalogues what she will do to keep busy for the rest of the day: prepare for Dan's party. She knows Dan will be happy with whatever she prepares. This slightly annoys her. She realises her husband's happiness "depends only on the fact of her, here in the house, living her life, thinking of him". She tries to tell herself this is a good thing and that she is being difficult but is suddenly hit by the image of Virginia Woolf putting a stone into the pocket of her coat and walking into a river. This psychic connection to another ‘desperate housewife’ is interrupted by a tap on the back door. It is Kitty, Laura's neighbour. Laura is panicked and excited. She wants to see Kitty but she is unprepared, looking too much, she believes, like "the woman of sorrows". Kitty is invited in. She fits effortlessly and confidently into this post-war world of domestication, she seems to have it all. She notices Laura's amateur efforts at making a cake, just what Laura was dreading. Laura recognises her inability to fit into this domestic world, but also her inability not to care -she is trapped between two worlds. She also recognises, however, that Kitty does not have the perfect world her confidence implies. For example, Kitty has remained barren despite her desire to have children. On the other hand, the one thing Laura seems to be excelling at in the domestic sphere is producing progeny. As the two women sip coffee Kitty admits she has to go to hospital for a few days and wants Laura to feed her pet dog. She tells Laura, somewhat evasively, that the problem is in her uterus, probably the cause of her infertility. Laura moves to comfort Kitty with an embrace. She feels a sense of what it would be like to be a man, and also a sort of jealousy towards Ray, Kitty's husband. Both women capitulate to the moment, to holding each other. Laura is kissing Kitty's forehead, when Kitty lifts her face and the two women kiss each other on the lips. It is Kitty who pulls away and Laura is assailed by a panic. She feels she will be perceived as the predator in this astounding development, and indeed "Laura and Kitty agree, silently, that this is true." She also realizes her son, Richie, has been watching everything. However Kitty is already on her way out the door, her momentary lapse of character wiped from memory. Nothing is mentioned of the kiss, she brushes off Laura's continued overtures of help politely, and leaves. Laura's world has been jolted. It is too much. It is like a Virginia Woolf novel, too full. Attempting to return to the world she knows, she attends to her son and, without hesitation, dumps her freshly made cake in the bin. She will make another cake, a better one. *Why, she wonders, does it seem that she could give him anything, anything at all, and receive essentially the same response. What does he desire nothing, really, beyond what he's already got?...This, she reminds herself, is a virtue. :--Laura ruminates on Dan's relentless contentedness. p100, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *Her cake is a failure, but she is loved anyway. She is loved, she thinks, in more or less the way the gifts will be appreciated: because they've been given with good intentions, because they exist, because they are part of a world in which one wants what one gets". p100-101, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *Why did she marry him? She married him out of love. She married him out of guilt; out of fear of being alone; out of patriotism. :--Laura reflects on the complex reasons she married Dan. p106, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *The question has been silently asked and silently answered, it seems. They are both afflicted and blessed, full of shared secrets, striving every moment. They are both impersonating someone. They are weary and beleaguered; they have taken on such enormous work. :--Laura and Kitty embrace in the kitchen. p110, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. As Virginia helps Leonard and Ralph with the printing press a servant announces Virginia's sister has arrived. Vanessa, Virginia's sister, is one-and-a-half hours early. Leonard refuses to stop working so Virginia attends to Vanessa alone. It is at this time that one realizes that her mental problems create a fear for the maids. Virginia and Vanessa go out into the garden where Vanessa's children have found a dying bird. Vanessa, mirroring the character of Kitty in the Mrs. Brown vignettes, has an effortless competence in dealing with life's details, be it servants or children. This competence highlights Virginia's own awkwardness with her lot in life. Virginia believes, as she watches Vanessa's children, that the real accomplishment in life is not her "experiments in narrative" but the producing of children, as Vanessa has achieved. Virginia is out of place in such a society. The bird the children have found has died, and the children, assisted by the adults, hold a funeral for it. Virginia is aware that she and the little girl are far more invested in the funeral than Vanessa's boys, who are probably laughing at the females behind their backs. As Virginia stares longingly at the dead bird she has an epiphany: her character, Clarissa Dalloway, is not like Virginia, and would not commit suicide. Like the bird's funeral bed, Clarissa represents -to Virginia- an uncaring, even foolish thing. As such, Clarissa will represent the death bed (the counterpoint) to the character who Virginia will have commit suicide. *Virginia looks with unanticipated pleasure at this modest circlet of thorns and flowers; this wild deathbed. She would like to lie down on it herself. :--A bird's funeral suddenly becomes the occasion for Virginia to ponder her own deathwish. p119, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. *Virginia lingers another moment beside the dead bird in its circle of roses. It could be a kind of hat. It could be the missing link between milinery and death. :--Virginia humorously seeing both the everyday and the profundity in life's events. p121, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition. As Clarissa prepares for Richard's party, determined to give him the perfect tribute despite its probable triviality, she is visited by none other than Richard's old partner Louis. The visit mirrors those of Kitty and Vanessa in the other story vignettes. Clarissa is thrown off-kilter by the visit, as Laura had been by Kitty and Virginia had been by Vanessa.
2424807	/m/07c4r6	The Hero and the Crown	Robin McKinley	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Aerin is the only child of Arlbeth, king of Damar, and his second wife, a foreigner from the North. Aerin inherits her mother's pale skin and fiery red hair, setting her apart from all other Damarians (who are dark-haired and dark-skinned) and causing her to be feared and ostracized by them. It is rumored, possibly correctly, that Aerin's mother was a witchwoman and she made Arlbeth fall in love with and marry her by magically enchanting him, so that she might bear an heir to rule Damar. However, when she saw that it was a girl that she had borne rather than a boy she died of despair. While the king and the first sola, Tor, supported Aerin, some of the royal family, especially Galanna, a beautiful, but vain young woman, hated her. They went so far as to suggest that her mother was unfaithful, that she is not truly Arlbeth's daughter. This idea is supported by the fact that Aerin failed to develop the Gift, known as kelar, an ability to use magic that all members of the royal family inherit to some degree. During one of her regular fights with Aerin, Galanna convinces her to eat the leaves of the surka plant, known to aid the magic of those of the royal blood, but poisonous to all those not of royal blood. Aerin takes up to the challenge, eats a branch full of leaves and promptly starts to feel ill. While the surka plant does not kill Aerin, it makes her extremely ill, affecting her condition for many years. The one single surka leaf can sometimes kill the consumer and one can safely assume that Aerin is Arlbeth's child since she did survive eating all the surka leaves. Aerin stumbles upon a book about the history of Damar and the dragons of old that used to terrorize it, of which only much smaller relatives still exist. Finding privacy in the pasture of her father's now-injured war horse, Talat, Aerin reads through the book while forging a friendship with him. At the back of the book she finds a recipe for kenet, an ointment meant to protect the wearer from the effects of fire. Unfortunately, the recipe does not specify the amounts of each ingredient needed. While her first attempts to make the ointment fail, Aerin begins to split her time between learning to ride Talat and experimenting with the fire-proof ointment. After three years of experimenting, Aerin stumbles on the correct proportion of ingredients, successfully making kenet. Then, Aerin goes off to slay a small dragon that is terrorizing a village with the help of her kenet and Talat. While Aerin continues her role as dragon killer, trouble comes from the north, spreading madness to one of the western barons, Nyrlol, who is threatening civil war. Arlbeth fears that the hero's crown, an item of power, has finally fallen into the hands of the Northerners. Arlbeth is forced to ride north with many of his court to deal with Nyrlol, whose behavior he believes to be a symptom of the growing power of the North, but denies Aerin her request to join him in the journey, because his people do not trust her. However, just as Arlbeth prepares to ride north, a messenger arrives bearing news that the last of great dragons, Maur, has reappeared and is terrorizing Damar. Arlbeth has no choice but to leave Maur until he deals with Nyrlol. But Aerin, having been left behind, decides to go fight Maur on her own. Aerin just barely manages to defeat Maur, claiming a red stone left behind when his body burns itself to ashes as her trophy, but the fire of the great dragon proved too much for her kenet. Aerin is left badly burned and with a broken ankle, yet manages to drag herself onto Talat, who carries her home. She is intercepted by Arlbeth, Tor and their company as they return, and carried back to the castle. After many weeks of rest and care Aerin's health has not improved. Maur's skull is brought to the castle as a trophy but its presence seems to taunt Aerin. In her declining state, Aerin dreams of a blond man by a lake who beckons her to come to him so that he may help her. Aerin, after much thought, leaves Tor a note and rides off on Talat to find this man. As if guided by an external force, both Aerin and Talat seem to know exactly where to find the man by the lake. He reveals himself as Luthe, and heals Aerin by placing her in the Lake of Dreams, which causes her to become not-quite-mortal. Luthe teaches her some magic and Aerin learns that it is kelar in the royal blood that gives them their magical abilities. The kelar comes from ancestors in the north and is what gave them the power to become rulers of Damar. Luthe then reveals what he knows of her past. Aerin's mother and uncle, Agsded, along with Luthe, were students of a master mage. Agsded was the best student but used his ability for evil. A prophecy foretold that one of Agsded's own blood would defeat him, forcing Aerin's mother to flee to the south. She believed that only a son could defeat Agsded, yet Luthe tells Aerin this is not so, and, when she is fully recovered, sends her north with Gonturan, The Blue Sword, for protection. As she travels north, Aerin is joined by armies of foltsza, large mountain cats, and yerigs, large wild dogs. They eventually reach Agsded's fortress. While Talat, the foltsza, and the yerigs help break an opening into the fortress, Aerin creates a wreath out of surka leaves and places the red rock that she had taken from Maur's body in it. Aerin climbs the long staircases to the top of the fortress where she faces Agsded, who is wearing the hero's crown. Gonturan protects her from Agsded's red sword, but Agsded proves also not mortal, with skin tougher than stone. Just as she is about to fail, she throws her wreath of surka, with the red stone, at him. It falls over Agsded and causes him to burn, defeating him. With his death, Agsded's fortress crumbles. Aerin is met by Luthe, who reveals to her that much time has passed in her battle with Agsded, something that she survived only because she is no longer mortal. Luthe "drags" her back to the present, where a yerig brings her the Hero's Crown. She also discovers that the red stone is Maur's bloodstone, a stone of great power. Aerin gives it to Luthe, saying she doesn't want to have any part of Maur, no matter how much power it would bring her. Luthe escorts Aerin back as far as his lake on her way back home, becoming romantically involved in the process. Aerin leaves him but promises to return one day. Aerin continues back to find the kingdom losing in a battle with the Northerners. Using Gonturan and her army of foltsza and yerigs, and giving the Hero's Crown to Tor, she helps defeat the Northerners, but at the cost of many lives, including Arlbeth. Aerin, with Tor's help, finally rids the kingdom of Maur's skull, which had been polluting the thoughts of the people and helping in their defeat, but in the process the skull turns Damar into a desert. Aerin marries Tor, whom she truly loves in her own way, and they help rebuild the kingdom together as its rulers.
2425811	/m/07c6fb	Black Rain	Masuji Ibuse	1965	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book alternates between Shizuma Shigematsu's journal entries and other characters from August 6–15, 1945, Hiroshima, and the present, several years later, when he and his wife Shigeko become the guardians of their niece, Yasuko, and thus obligated to find a suitable husband for her. At the start of the novel, three earlier attempts to arrange a match have already failed due to health concerns over her having been exposed to the "Black Rain" fallout of the atomic bomb. The radiation sickness is one of the main causes of concern throughout the story. Shigematsu's journal entries attempt to disprove her sickness, but in the end it turns out that Yasuko was indeed affected by the "Black Rain".
2427653	/m/07c9vc	Romola	George Eliot		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Florence, 1492: Christopher Columbus has sailed towards the New World, and Florence has just mourned the death of its legendary leader, Lorenzo de' Medici. In this setting, a Florentine trader meets a shipwrecked stranger, who introduces himself as Tito Melema, a young Italianate-Greek scholar. Tito becomes acquainted with several other Florentines, including Nello the barber and a young girl named Tessa. He is also introduced to a blind scholar named Bardo de' Bardi, and his daughter Romola. As Tito becomes settled in Florence, assisting Bardo with classical studies, he falls in love with Romola. However, Tessa falls in love with Tito, and the two are "married" in a mock ceremony. Tito learns from Fra Luca, a Dominican monk, that his adoptive father has been forced into slavery and is asking for assistance. Tito introspects, comparing filial duty to his new ambitions in Florence, and decides that it would be futile to attempt to rescue his adoptive father. This paves the way for Romola and Tito to marry. Fra Luca shortly thereafter falls ill and before his death he speaks to his estranged sister, Romola. Ignorant of Romola's plans, Fra Luca warns her of a vision foretelling a marriage between her and a mysterious stranger who will bring pain to her and her father. After Fra Luca's death, Tito dismisses the warning and advises Romola to trust him. Tito and Romola become betrothed at the end of Carnival, to be married at Easter after Tito returns from a visit to Rome. The novel then skips ahead to November 1494, more than eighteen months after the marriage. In that time, the French-Italian Wars have seen Florence enter uneasy times. Piero de' Medici, successor to the lordship of Florence, has been exiled from the city for his ignominious surrender to the invading French king, Charles VIII. Girolamo Savonarola preaches to Florentines about ridding the Church and the city of scourge and corruption. In this setting, Tito, now a valued member of Florentine society, participates in the reception for the French invaders. Tito encounters an escaped prisoner, who turns out to be his adopted father, Baldassare. Panicked and somewhat ashamed of his earlier inaction, Tito denies knowing the escaped prisoner and calls him a madman. Baldassare escapes into the Duomo, where he swears revenge on his unfilial adoptive son. Growing ever more fearful, Tito plans to leave Florence. To do this, he betrays his late father-in-law, Bardo, who died some months earlier, by selling the late scholar's library. This reveals to Romola the true nature of her husband's character. She secretly leaves Tito and Florence, but is persuaded by Savonarola to return to fulfil her obligations to her marriage and her fellow Florentines. Nevertheless, the love between Romola and Tito has gone. Again the action of the novel moves forward, from Christmas 1494 to October 1496. In that time, Florence has endured political upheaval, warfare and famine. Religious fervour has swept through Florence under the leadership of Savonarola, culminating in the Bonfire of the Vanities. The League of Venice has declared war on the French king and his Italian ally, Florence. Starvation and disease run rampant through the city. Romola, now a supporter of Savonarola, helps the poor and sick where she can. Meanwhile, Tito is embroiled in a complex game of political manoeuvring and duplicitous allegiances in the new Florentine government. Mirroring this, he has escaped attempts by Baldassare to both kill and expose him, and maintains a secret marriage to Tessa, with whom he has fathered two children. Romola becomes defiant of Tito, and the two manoeuvre to thwart each other's plans. Romola meets an enfeebled Baldassare, who reveals Tito's past and leads her to Tessa. Political turmoil erupts in Florence. Five supporters of the Medici family are sentenced to death, including Romola's godfather, Bernardo del Nero. She learns that Tito has played a role in their arrest. Romola pleads with Savonarola to intervene, but he refuses. Romola's faith in Savonarola and Florence is shaken, and once again she leaves the city. Meanwhile, Florence is under papal pressure to expel Savonarola. His arrest is effected by rioters, who then turn their attention to several of the city's political elite. Tito becomes a target of the rioters, but he escapes the mob by diving into the Arno River. However, upon leaving the river, Tito is killed by Baldassare. Romola makes her way to the coast. Emulating Gostanza in Boccacio's The Decameron (V, 2), she drifts out to sea in a small boat to die. However, the boat takes her to a small village affected by the Plague, and she helps the survivors. Romola's experience gives her a new purpose in life and she returns to Florence. Savonarola is tried for heresy and burned at the stake, but for Romola his influence remains inspiring. Romola takes care of Tessa and her two children, with the help of her older cousin. The story ends with Romola imparting advice to Tessa's son, based on her own experiences and the influences in her life.
2428167	/m/07cbs1	The Abbot	Walter Scott	1820	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Ten years had passed since the final events of The Monastery, during which Halbert had been knighted for his services to the regent, and Lady Avenel had adopted Roland, whom her dog had saved from drowning. The boy grew up petted by his mistress, but disliked by her chaplain and servants; and at length, having threatened to dirk the falconer, he was dismissed to seek his fortune. He had been secretly taught the Romish faith by Father Ambrose, and led by his grandmother to believe that he was of gentle birth. She now introduced him to Catherine Seyton, and then accompanied him to the abbey, where the revels of some masqueraders were interrupted by the arrival of Sir Halbert on his way to Edinburgh, who attached the youth to his train. On reaching the capital he aided Lord Seyton in a street fray, and was introduced to the Earl of Murray, who desired him to be ready to travel at short notice. In company with Adam Woodcock he adjourned to an inn, and was entrusted by Henry Seyton (whom he believed to be Catherine in male attire) with a sword, which he was not to unsheath until commanded by his rightful sovereign. He then learnt that he was to be attached to the household of Queen Mary, and accompanied Lord Lindesay to the castle of Lochleven, situated on an island, where he found Catherine in attendance on her, and was present when, in compliance with a note contained in his sword-sheath, she signed her abdication at the behest of the Secret Council. After a lapse of several months, during which Henderson attempted to convert him, Roland learnt from Catherine that Father Ambrose had been evicted from his monastery, and he pledged himself, for her sake, to assist the imprisoned queen in recovering her freedom. A plan of escape arranged by George Douglas having failed through the vigilance of the Lady of Lochleven, Roland undertook to forge a false set of keys, and the abbot arrived disguised as a man-at-arms sent by Sir William to take part in guarding the castle. As soon as the curfew had tolled, a preconcerted signal was made from the shore, and Roland contrived to substitute his forged keys for the real ones. At midnight the garden gate was unlocked, a boat was in waiting, Henry Seyton came forward, and the queen, with all her adherents, was safely afloat, when the alarm was given. Roland, however, had run back, ere they started, to turn the locks on their jailers, and, until they were out of reach of musketry, George Douglas protected Mary by placing himself before her. On landing, horses were in readiness, and before daybreak they reached Lord Seyton's castle in West Lothian, which was strongly garrisoned. The next morning, as the queen was endeavouring to make peace between Roland and Henry Seyton, who treated the page as a churl, his grandmother emerged from a recess and declared him to be the son of Julian Avenel, who was killed in the battle with Sir John Foster; Lord Seyton also recognised him, and insisted that his son should shake hands with him. Supported by a considerable number of adherents in battle array, and accompanied by the abbot, the royal party moved onwards for Dumbarton, where help from France was expected. They were, however, intercepted by the regent's forces, and a desperate battle ensued. The queen stood near a yew tree, guarded by her devoted admirer George Douglas in close armour, while her page pushed forward to watch the conflict. It had lasted nearly an hour, when Sir Halbert attacked the flank of Mary's supporters, and they were completely routed, Henry Seyton was killed, and Douglas, who was mortally wounded, expired without withdrawing his eyes from her face. Hopeless of further aid, the queen adopted the fatal resolution of trusting to Elizabeth's mercy, and, having bid adieu to her followers, took ship for England. Roland soon afterwards succeeded in obtaining proofs of his claim as the heir of Avenel, and was married to Catherine on her return from two years residence with her unhappy mistress.
2428307	/m/07cc76	The Europeans	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Eugenia and her brother Felix arrive in Boston. The next day Felix visits their cousins. He first meets Gertrude, who is shirking attendance at church. He stays over for dinner. The next day Eugenia visits them. Three days later their uncle Mr Wentworth suggests they stay in a little house close to theirs. Felix suggests making a portrait of his uncle. When Mr. Wentworth refuses, he makes plans to do a painting of Gertrude instead. The latter walks into Mr Brand again and bursts out crying when he asserts that he still loves her. She then sits for Felix to do his painting of her, and he reproaches his American relatives for being very puritanical. Eugenia is talking and flirting with Robert Acton; she says she will divorce her husband. She visits Mrs Acton and says a white lie - that her son has been talking about her a lot - which comes across as a terrible faux-pas. Later, Mr Wentworth tells Felix that Clifford got suspended from Harvard owing to his drinking problem, and that he is improperly in love with Lizzie Acton - Felix suggests fixing him up with Eugenia instead. Later still, Gertrude tells him her father wants her to marry Mr Brand, though she doesn't love him. Mr Brand then criticizes Felix. Gertrude emotionally blackmails Charlotte into keeping him from talking to her, lest she tell him Charlotte likes him. Clifford then visits Eugenia. Robert Acton goes to the Wentworths' but Eugenia is not in their house; he goes into hers and asks her about the divorce note and going to see the Niagara Falls with him. Clifford comes out of his hiding place; the two men get back together. Felix tells Eugenia he wants to marry Gertrude; she admits to being unsure of Robert. Mr Brand then visits Felix, who tells him Charlotte likes him. Eugenia gives her farewell to Mrs Acton as she prepares to move back to Europe. She walks into Robert, who says he loves her - she has sent the divorce letter; he will have to join her in Europe. Later, Felix asks Charlotte to tell her father he would be a good prospective husband for Gertrude. He then meets with his beloved again, and she says she would leave her family with him. Three days later, Felix decides to visit his uncle and tell him he wants to marry Gertrude. The latter turns up and tells her father the same thing. Mr Brand asks for Mr Wentworth's consent to marry Gertrude and Felix - he agrees. Mr Brand and Charlotte later marry. Clifford has proposed to Lizzie Acton; Eugenia, however, has repudiated Robert Acton, not actually signed the divorce note, and is traveling back to Europe. Years later, after his mother's funeral, Robert would find a 'nice young girl'...
2430354	/m/07chtk	Devil in a Blue Dress	Walter Mosley	1990	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Set in 1948, in the Watts area of Los Angeles, the story begins with Easy out-of-work and unable to pay his mortgage. He is sitting in a bar run by Joppy, a friend from Texas, when a man named DeWitt Albright walks into the bar and offers him a job finding a young woman named Daphne Monet. Monet, a young white woman, is rumored to be hanging out in bars frequented mostly by African Americans, although white women are allowed inside. At the bar Easy meets two old friends, Coretta and Dupree from Texas, among many other people that he knew from his former life in the South. Coretta says that she knows Daphne, but gives an incorrect address to Ez. He goes home with them and has sex with Coretta, although Dupree is asleep next room, and then leaves her in the early morning only to be arrested by the LAPD shortly thereafter and, after some questioning, he is told that Coretta is dead and that he is a suspect in Coretta's murder. When he finally does find Monet, he figures out that she has stolen a large amount of money from a man named Todd Carter, who is a local wealthy businessman. Albright wanted to claim it for himself. Eventually, Albright finds Monet through Ez, who is trying to shield the thieving woman. With the help of his friend Mouse (who shows up mid-way through the story, due to a half-hearted invitation from Easy and domestic strife back home in Texas) he finds Monet with Albright and Joppy. They rescue her, kill Joppy and Albright, and then Mouse reveals that Monet is actually Ruby, an African American woman passing as white, and the sister of a local gangster named Green. Mouse and Easy blackmail Ruby, taking her money and dividing it in half for each of them. Daphne/Ruby leaves shortly thereafter and Easy has to clean up the mess with the police and Todd Carter, who had initially hired Albright to find her as he really did love her and not his money. Easy approaches Carter and requests his help with the police. He blackmails him by saying that he will leak the information about his love for a black woman unless he is protected from the law. Carter does so. At the conclusion, Mouse goes back to Texas with half the money that he stole from Ruby, and Easy keeps the other half. Ruby disappears.
2433340	/m/07cq8h	The Liar	Stephen Fry	1991-09	{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with the narrative of the espionage period. Adrian and his mentor, Professor Donald Trefusis, are at Mozart's birthplace in Salzburg, where Adrian witnesses the (staged) murder of their contact. Adrian then enters the espionage game set up by his mentor, Trefusis, and his uncle, David. In the narrative of the school years, Adrian is at a public boys school (Harrow), portrayed as an intelligent and irreverent young man. Adrian has carefully groomed himself to convey the image of a witty, highly extroverted gay boy; however, despite his image, and, despite regarding sex as his "public pride", he finds himself unable to express his love for the beautiful Hugo Cartwright. Another student, Paul Trotter (known as "Pigs Trotter"[Sic.]), hangs himself, as he loves Adrian. Adrian is shown later in the novel to be touchy on the subject of suicide as a result. Prior to Trotter's funeral, Adrian seduces Hugo while pretending to be asleep. Adrian is later expelled from Harrow for writing an article discussing the tradition of hidden behaviours at mixed sex public schools that could be considered homosexual; consequently, he does his "A" levels in a Gloucestershire state school. In the narrative, Adrian claims to have escaped from home due to unhappiness, subsequently becoming a "rent boy", but it is later revealed, in an overheard conversation, that this never occurred. Adrian attains the role of school master in the narrative of the school years and has his first sexual encounter with a woman, of which he speaks positively. The school years finish with Adrian's cricket team defeating the team of Hugo Cartwright, to whom Adrian is no longer attracted. Just as Adrian and his victorious team is about to leave the school at which Hugo is a master he reveals to Hugo that he was, in fact, awake during the incident before Trotter's funeral. In the narrative of the university years, Adrian is at the fictional St. Matthew's College, Cambridge and is given a challenge to produce something original by his tutor Professor Donald Trefusis. As a result, with the aid of his his girlfriend — and later wife and acclaimed producer —, Jenny de Woolf, and his housemate Garry he writes and claims to have discovered a lost manuscript of Charles Dickens which dealt with child sex trade. The discovery brings Jenny and the college fame, but it also results in a dialogue between Adrian and Hugo, who has become an alcoholic. Hugo believes that Adrian in fact hates him, and outlines Adrian's duplicity as proof. Adrian, however, corrects him and the two leave things on a friendly note. After graduation, Adrian is at a meeting where farcically he and other attendees have a discussion while sabotaging the footage of the onlooking BBC film crew. At the meeting they discuss the arrest of Trefusis, who was arrested for cottaging. It is later revealed in the book that it was actually a document exchange preceded by two kisses on the checks as is custom in several continental countries, such as Hungary. Adrian joins Trefusis in his forced sabbatical which nominally is spent studying the fricative shift in English, but in actuality is spent in a game of espionage where they are to acquire the parts for Mendax (Latin adjective meaning "lying, deceptive"), a lie inhibiting device from his Hungarian friend Szabó and his two nephews. Adrian is gradually introduced to spy game as during his university he had accompanied Trefusis in several trips, such as the one in Salzburg, where Trefusis gets one of three parts of Mendax. A showdown results with Adrian's uncle David (Sir David Pearce of MI5) and Trefusis, which resolves as David's aid was a double agent working for Trefusis and it is revealed that the murders witnessed by Adrian were staged so Adrian would report them to his uncle, who ordered the murders to scare Trefusis into giving Mendax to MI5, and that Mendax was fictional. Subsequently Adrian overhears a conversation between Trefusis and David where it is revealed that several parts of the story were not true and that the espionage adventure was just a game to counter boredom. Previously, a letter Jenny had written to Adrian, stated that while young girls grew up, young boys did not, making their erudite education irrelevant and just a game. The book ends with Adrian, now a Cambridge fellow, recruiting a new spy for a new game. In the espionage period, David Pearce and Dickon Lister refer to other characters by code names: * Adrian is "Telemachus", the name of the son of Odysseus in the Odyssea. * Professor Donald Trefusis is "Odysseus". * Istvan Moltaj is "Patrochlus" (Sic. In Greek Πάτροκλος, not Πάτροχλος) * Szabó is "Helen", the catalyst of the Trojan war. * His nephews are "Castor" and "Pollux" * Salzburg is the "walls of Illium"
2434502	/m/07csjn	Emily of New Moon	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1923	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Similar to her earlier and more famous Anne of Green Gables series, the Emily novels depicted life through the eyes of a young orphan girl, Emily Starr, who is raised by her relatives after her father dies of consumption. The series was less romanticized and more realistic than the Anne novels. Montgomery considered Emily to be a character much closer to her own personality than Anne, and some of the events which occur in the Emily series happened to Montgomery herself. Emily is described as having black hair, purply violet eyes, pale skin and a unique and enchanting "slow" smile. Emily Starr is sent to live at New Moon Farm on Prince Edward Island with her aunts Elizabeth and Laura Murray and her Cousin Jimmy. She makes friends with Ilse Burnley, Teddy Kent, and Perry Miller, the hired boy, who Aunt Elizabeth looks down upon because he was born in 'Stovepipe Town', a poorer district. Each of the children has a special gift. Emily was born to be a writer, Teddy is a gifted artist, Ilse is a talented elocutionist, and Perry has the makings of a great politician. They also each have a few problems with their families. Emily has a hard time getting along with Aunt Elizabeth, who does not understand her need to write. Ilse's father, Dr. Burnley, ignores Ilse most of the time because of a dreadful secret concerning Ilse's mother. Teddy's mother is jealous of her son's talents and friends, fearing that his love for them will eclipse his love for her; as a result, she hates Emily, Teddy's drawings, and even his pets. Perry is not as well off as the other three, so his Aunt Tom once tries to make Emily promise to marry Perry when they grow up, threatening that unless Emily does so, she will not pay for Perry's schooling. Other unforgettable characters are Dean "Jarback" Priest, a quiet, mysterious cynic who wants something he fears is ever unattainable; fiery Mr Carpenter, the crusty old schoolteacher who is Emily's mentor and honest critic when it comes to evaluating her stories and poems; "simple" Cousin Jimmy, who recites his poetry when the spirit moves him; and strict, suspicious Aunt Ruth who yet proves to be an unexpected ally in times of trouble.
2436913	/m/07cycp	Women	Charles Bukowski		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Women focuses on the many dissatisfactions Chinaski faced with each new woman he encountered. One of the women featured in the book is a character named Lydia Vance; she is based on Bukowski's one-time girlfriend, the sculptress and sometime poet Linda King. Another central female character in the book is named "Tanya" who is described as a 'tiny girl-child' and Chinaski's pen-pal. They have a weekend tryst. The real-life counterpart to this character wrote a self-published chapbook about the affair entitled "Blowing My Hero" under the pseudonym Amber O'Neil. In the book, Chinaski's nickname is Hank, which was one of Bukowski's nicknames.
2437272	/m/07cz71	The Man Without Qualities	Robert Musil		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first book, entitled "A Sort of Introduction", is an introduction of the protagonist, a 32-year old mathematician named Ulrich who is in search of a sense of life and reality but fails to find it. His ambivalence towards morals and indifference to life has brought him to the state of being "a man without qualities," depending on the outer world to form his character. A kind of keenly analytical passivity is his most typical attitude. Musil said that it was not particularly difficult to describe Ulrich in his main features. Ulrich himself only knows he is strangely indifferent to all his qualities. Lack of any profound essence and ambiguity as a general attitude to life are his principal characteristics. Meanwhile, we meet a murderer and rapist Moosbrugger who is condemned for his murder of a prostitute. Other protagonists are Ulrich's nymphomaniac mistress Bonadea and his friend Walter's neurotic wife Clarisse, whose refusal to go along with commonplace existence leads to Walter's insanity. In the second book, "Pseudoreality Prevails", Ulrich joins the so-called "Collateral Campaign" or "Parallel Campaign", frantic preparations for a celebration in honor of 70 years of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph's reign. That same year, 1918 the German Emperor Wilhelm II would be ruler of his country for 30 years. This collateral coincidence lashes all the Austrian patriots into a fury of action to demonstrate Austria's political, cultural and philosophical supremacy via a feast which will capture the minds of the Austrian Emperor's subjects and people of the world for ever. On that account, many bright ideas and visions are discussed (e.g., The Austrian Year 1918, The World Year 1918, The Austrian Peace Year 1918 or The Austrian World Peace Year 1918). A couple of people take part in the organization team or catch the eye of Ulrich. Ermelinda Tuzzi, called Diotima is Ulrich's cousin as well as the wife of a civil servant; she tries to become a Viennese muse of philosophy, inspiring whoever crosses her path; she miraculously attracts both Ulrich and Arnheim. The nobleman in charge of the Campaign, the old conservative Count Leinsdorf, is incapable of deciding or even of not-deciding. General Stumm von Bordwehr of the Imperial and Royal Army, is unpopular for his attempts in this generally mystical atmosphere to make things systematic and German Count Paul Arnheim (modeled after German politician Walther Rathenau) is an admirer of Diotima's combination of beauty and spirit, without feeling the need to marry her. While most of the participants (Diotima most feverishly) try to associate the reign of Franz Joseph I with vague ideas of humanity, progress, tradition and happiness, the followers of Realpolitik see a chance to exploit the situation: Stumm von Bordwehr wishes to get the Austrian army income raised and Arnheim plans to buy oil fields in an eastern province of Austria. Musil's great irony and satire is that what was planned as a celebration of peace and imperial cohesion in fact turns out as a path toward war, imperial collapse, and national chauvinism. The novel provides an analysis of all the political and cultural processes that contributed to the outbreak of World War One. The last volume, entitled "Into the Millennium (The Criminals)", is about Ulrich's sister Agathe (who enters the novel at the end of the second book). They experience a mystically incestuous stirring upon meeting after their father's death. They see themselves as soul mates or as the book says "siamese-twins". As published, the novel ends in a large section of drafts, notes, false-starts and forays written by Musil as he tried to work out the proper ending for his book. In the German edition, there is even a CD-ROM available that holds thousands of pages of alternative versions and drafts.
2437918	/m/07d08b	Space Mowgli	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel describes the "Ark Project" of 2160 and the first (and last) contact with Ark Megaforms. The story is told by Stanislav Popov, a technician of the ER-2 team, one of the twelve ecologist teams that were working on Ark to prepare the planet for the arrival of the colonists from Pant. The ER-2 consists of Popov, Gennady Komov, Maya Glumova and Yakov Vandehuze The story begins as the members of ER-2 go on a routine exploration mission while Popov is left behind to oversee the construction of a permanent base for the arriving colonists. Suddenly, the construction robots get out of control and leave the construction site. It takes a few hours for Popov to locate the robots, fix them and set them back to work. After that, Popov hears a human baby crying. Popov tries to locate the source of the sound but the crying stops as suddenly as it started. Since infants are not allowed to leave Earth, Popov assumes he had an auditory hallucination. Popov carries on his work with the robots. Now, he hears a female voice pleading for help from somebody named Shura. Popov cannot locate the source of the cry either. Meanwhile, the ER-2 exploration party discovers the wreckage of an Earth spaceship and the remains of its two pilots. They log a report describing their discovery with the orbital base. The following night, the ER-2 members start to exhibit the symptoms of psychosis. Popov is the most heavily affected. However, he does not tell the others about his condition: if he is found to be unfit for duty he might be recalled to Earth. As the team has breakfast the following morning, a figure of a 13-year-old human boy appears on the base. Popov ignores it assuming that it is another one of his hallucinations. However, the other people see the boy too. They try to follow him but the boy quickly leaves the premises and the explorers lose his track. The team sends a report back to the orbital base. They receive a reply from Leonid Gorbovsky. The mission of ER-2 is changed to establish contact with a possible alien race. Another message arrives that identifies the spaceship that ER-2 discovered as Pilgrim and the two pilots as Alexander (Russian short for this name is Shura) Semyonov and his wife Maria-Luisa Semyonova. They had their newborn child Piere Semyonov on board. The spaceship disappeared in 2147. This leads ER-2 members to assume that the boy they saw in the morning is Piere Semyonov. The leader of the team - Komov leaves the ship to scout the surroundings of the base. However, Piere Semyonov soon comes to the base himself. Apparently, he tries to communicate with the humans, they do not understand him and he leaves again. The behavior of the Kid (the official nickname given to Piere, hence the Russian title of the novel) is rather strange. This leads the humans to assume that he was raised by the local alien race. Giant, segmented, insect-like, antennae rise over a distant mountain range. There is no direct connection between the antennae and the aliens, but the newly discovered race is named Ark Megaforms. The demonstration of the antennae appears to be an act of intimidation. It soon becomes apparent that Ark Megaforms want the humans to leave the planet as soon as possible. The Megaforms use the Kid as their negotiator with the humans. The Kid visits the base of ER-2 several times. He allows the humans to study him and question him about his foster parents in exchange for the promise to leave. The communication does not proceed smoothly as the Kid exhibits the mixture of human and alien psychological traits. Moreover, there is a conflict of interest as the humans want to find out about Ark Megaforms as much as possible while the Kid just wants them to leave. Frustrated with the lack of progress the humans give the Kid a portable video transmitter. They do not tell the Kid its function and hope that he will take it with him and the scientists will be able to track his movements outside the base. Over the transmitter the humans see as the Kid walks to the wreckage of the Pilgrim, levitates(?) to a distant canyon and proceeds into the planet's interior. At this moment one of the humans - Maya Glumova turns on an emergency flashlight that is built into the transmitter. The transmission immediately stops. It is disputed if Maya did it on purpose (she did it on purpose, it's obvious if you read carefully). However, Komov takes the responsibility for the failure of the mission on himself. Gorbovsky contacts Komov and tells him that most likely humans will not be able to establish a contact with Ark Megaforms because they are a closed civilization that avoids contacts with others. Gorbovsky informs Komov that an ancient satellite was discovered orbiting Ark. The satellite was built by the Wanderers and was programmed to destroy any approaching spaceship. Apparently, this satellite shot down the Pilgrim 13 years ago. Humans conclude the that Wanderers wanted to prevent anyone from contacting Ark Megaforms. In the epilogue of the novel, Popov talks to the Kid over the video transmitter and reflects on the decisions made by the humans. The humans decided to evacuate Ark and the only remaining contact is through the Kid. Komov, some of his teammates and Piere's grandfather are allowed to talk to him. However, they should carefully avoid any themes related to Ark Megaforms. In the novel there is no mention whether the Ark Project was ever concluded.
2441005	/m/07d7f1	The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg	Mark Twain	1899-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Chapter I Hadleyburg enjoys the reputation of being an “incorruptible” town known for its responsible, honest people that are trained to avoid temptation. However, at some point the people of Hadleyburg manage to offend a passing stranger, and he vows to get his revenge by corrupting the town. The stranger's plan centers around a sack of gold (worth around $41,000) he drops off in Hadleyburg at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Richards, to be given to a man in the town who purportedly gave him some life-changing advice (and 20 dollars in a time of need) long ago. To identify the man, a letter with the sack suggests that anyone who claims to know what the advice was should write the remark down and submit it to Reverend Burgess, who will open the sack at a public meeting and find the actual remark inside. News of the mysterious sack of gold spreads throughout the town and even gains attention across the country. Chapter II The residents beam with pride as stories of the sack and Hadleyburg's honesty spread throughout the nation, but the mood soon changes. Initially reluctant to give into the temptation of the gold, soon even the most upstanding citizens are trying to guess the remark. Mr. and Mrs. Richards, one of the town's 19 model couples, receive a letter from a stranger revealing the remark: “You are far from being a bad man: go, and reform.” Mrs. Richards is ecstatic that they will be able to claim the gold. Unbeknownst to one another, all 19 couples have received exactly the same letter. They submit their claims to Burgess and begin to recklessly purchase things on credit in anticipation of their future wealth. Chapter III The town hall meeting to decide the rightful owner of the sack arrives, and it is packed with residents, outsiders, and reporters. Burgess reads the first two claims, and a dispute quickly arises between two members of the town, "Shadbelly" Billson and Lawyer Wilson. Both of their letters contain nearly the same remark. To settle which is right, Burgess cuts open the sack and finds the note that reveals the full remark: “You are far from being a bad man—go, and reform—or, mark my words—some day, for your sins you will die and go to hell or Hadleyburg—try and make it the former.” Neither man's claim includes the second half of remark. The next claim reads the same, and the town hall bursts into laughter at the obvious dishonesty behind the identical, incorrect claims. Burgess continues to read the rest of the claims, all with the same remark, and one by one the prominent couples of the town are publicly shamed. Mr. and Mrs. Richards await their name with anguish, but surprisingly it is never read. With all the claims presented, another note in the sack is opened. It reveals the stranger's plot and his desire for revenge. He says that it was foolish for the citizens of Hadleyburg to always avoid temptation, because it is easy to corrupt those who have never had their resolve tested. It is discovered the sack contains not gold but lead pieces. A townsperson proposes to auction the lead off and give the money to the Richardses, the only prominent couple in town that did not have their name read off. Mr. and Mrs. Richards are in despair, unsure whether to come clean and stop the auction or to accept the money. The stranger who set up the whole scheme in the first place is revealed to have been in the town hall the whole time. He contrives to reward the Richards for their supposed honesty by buying the sack at auction for its price in gold. Chapter IV The following day the stranger delivers checks totaling $40,000 to the Richards. They fret about whether they should burn them. A message arrives from Burgess, explaining that he intentionally kept the Richards' claim from being read as a way to return an old favor done to him by Mr. Richards. Mr. and Mrs. Richards become distraught over their situation. They grow paranoid and start to think Burgess has revealed their dishonesty to other people in the town. Their anxiety causes them both to fall ill and Mr. Richards confesses their guilt shortly before he and his wife die. Hadleyburg, with its reputation irreparably damaged, decides to rename itself. The story ends with the line “It is an honest town once more, and the man will have to rise early that catches it napping again.”
2444426	/m/07dh60	Resident Evil: Caliban Cove	S. D. Perry	1998-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel takes place between the events of the Umbrella Conspiracy (Resident Evil 1) and City of the Dead (Resident Evil 2) & Nemesis (Resident Evil 3) and centers around Rebecca Chambers. After a call from Barry about the Umbrella investigation, she heads to his house where she meets David Trapp, strategist and captain of the STARS Exeter branch. David informs Rebecca that another incident has occurred at another Umbrella facility, in Caliban Cove, Maine. Just when Chris and Jill come in, David continues his briefing, which includes a list of people involved in or with the Caliban Cove facility. One of the names Rebecca knows as Nicholas Griffith, a former biochemist who had disappeared after being fired from a university. Umbrella forces, led by STARS members, attack Barry's house. Rebecca takes one out; some others are suspected to be dead. The team takes refuge in Brad "Chickenheart" Vicker's home. After a little talk, Rebecca and David set out and leave on a plane for Exeter. At Caliban Cove, Dr. Griffith stands atop a lighthouse, musing on his latest and greatest accomplishment: a virus that robs humans of their ability to make decisions, while keeping their intellect; they become efficient servants to whoever orders them. Griffith has already used his new virus on three other scientists at the Cove facility, and none of them can make any decisions outside of what Griffith tells them. Griffith muses that once he gives his "gift" to the wind everyone will be free. At Exeter, in the home of STARS forensics officer Karen Driver, David briefs his own team, composed of himself, Rebecca, Steve Lopez, John Andrews, and Karen. They set out, collect the equipment they need, and begin the Caliban Cove mission with no STARS backup. After a botched insertion in which giant bottom-feeders called "Leviathans" attack the squad and force them ashore, the team manages to make its way through the base's grounds, solving riddles that let them progress through the area as well as dealing with Umbrella's newest creation, called "Trisquads," which are essentially zombies who have retained enough intelligence and motor capabilities to use automatic weapons. When Karen Driver is accidentally infected with the T-virus after touching contaminated blood, the others rush through the many caves and underground tunnels searching for the bases' lab, fending off more of Umbrella's biological monstrosities. Steve takes Karen and manages to find the labs, but the two are then taken captive by Griffith. Karen turns into a zombie and kills one of Griffith's servant zombies while Griffith injects a stunned Steve with the T-virus. Under Griffith's orders, Steve lures Rebecca, David, and John into a trap in which John is severely wounded. Griffith then orders Steve to lock Rebecca and David in an airlock chamber and flood it. He then orders Steve to kill himself, which he does. As the chamber floods, Rebecca notices Karen's body and remembers that she carried a WWII "pineapple" fragmentation grenade with her as a good luck charm from her father. David pries the pin out of the ancient explosive and jams it in between the screen door and inside door of the chamber. The resulting explosion forces the outside door to open, allowing Rebecca and David to swim to the surface and to safety. The explosion forces the inside door to blow off its hinges, killing Griffith instantly. On the surface, David and Rebecca are picked up by STARS personnel that Barry Burton has managed to get into contact with. While divers are retrieving the canisters of T-virus in the flooded labs, rescue workers also manage to find John, who, despite his wounds, has survived the explosion and was sucked out through the airlock when the grenade went off. The book ends with John transported to a hospital and Rebecca and David asleep in the light of the coming day.
2444502	/m/07dhjv	Resident Evil: Underworld	S. D. Perry		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Rebecca Chambers, and the survivors of the Caliban Cove incident, John Andrews and David Trapp, are en route to Europe to rendezvous with the other surviving STARS members for further operations against the evil Umbrella Corporation. While in the air, their plane is redirected by the mysterious Trent, an enigmatic figure who has been guiding and manipulating events throughout the entire series of novels. Trent informs the group of an Umbrella facility in Utah, used to test and train the company's experimental biological weapons. The facility's overseer, a man named Reston, is one of three people in the world in possession of a codebook which would allow access to all of Umbrella's most secret documents. Trent wants the group to infiltrate the facility, steal the codebook, and take down Umbrella once and for all. The group reluctantly agree to Trent's plan and make their way into the Umbrella facility, but soon after arriving, Leon and John are separated from the others and find themselves trapped within the facility's testing area. The two of them are forced to trek across four massive, artificial environments while evading Umbrella's deadliest new monsters. All the while, David, Claire, and Rebecca fight to avoid detection and possible capture by armed Umbrella guards. Leon and John are helped by Henry Cole, an innocent electrician drawn into the fight against his will. The heroes must deal with Jay Reston, the head of this Umbrella facility, which is called the Planet. In the end, most of the B.O.W.'s (bio-organic weapons) are destroyed and Reston is killed after Leon and John release a monstrous B.O.W. called "Fossil", shortly before the facility is destroyed. Unbeknown to the group as they fly away to safety, Rebecca successfully managed to steal Reston's codebook from him, giving them access to Umbrella's security systems. In addition Trent's motivations are finally revealed to be revenge on Umbrella for the murder of his father and mother, who were the original creators of the T-Virus which was developed to cure cancer and other diseases before being stolen by Umbrella to be used as a weapon.
2445043	/m/07dk45	Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale	Holly Black	2007-04-24	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the realm of Faery, the time has come for Roiben’s coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure only of one thing— her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, on faerie wine, declares herself to him, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Kaye the protagonist in the novel Ironside A Modern Faery’s Tale is given a quest that is described by being “Impossible”. Now Kaye cannot see or speak with Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows does not exist: a faerie who can tell a lie. Corny and Kaye decide to watch Ellen her mother perform in a bar. A male character is watching Kaye. Corney goes over to him and tells him to back off. Unaware that this character is a faery Corny speaks to the faery in the bathroom. The faery curses Corny so that anything he touches withers. Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth— that she is a changeling left in place of her human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother’s shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of the Fae to find her human counterpart and bring her back to Ironside. But once back in the faery realm, Kaye and Corny find themselves a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben’s throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. Meanwhile, Silarial is offering Roiben a lifeline- beat her champion and win seven years of peace while placing Roiben's sister Ethine on the throne instead, or die trying. While she is in the court, the Seelie queen attempts to make Kaye use Roiben's name by bribing her with the return of the "real" Kaye. Kaye uses a fake name, then escapes with Ethine as a hostage. Corny later gives Ethine back in exchange for the release of a friend's brother. (Luis, previously seen in Valiant) Kaye then finds out that Roiben is going to have to battle Ethine, not the knight Talathain, who they believed was the Bright Court's champion. She goes to warn Roiben. In order to speak to him, Kaye must complete his quest, and she does, claiming that she can lie, which in itself is an untruth. He beats Ethine but instead of simply killing her, he asks her who she will pass the crown on to. The Seelie queen objects to this, but Roiben declares that his sister has the right to declare her successor even with her last breath. Silarial tells him that if Bright Court will easily defeat the Unseelie Court if they were to fight; Roiben asks her if she will void their previous bargain, and Silarial agrees. Roiben reveals that he has gathered an army from the exiled fae, which would overwhelm the Seelie Court, but Silarial then threatens Kaye's life. Ethine kills Silarial with the sword she had been given, declaring that Silarial is no longer her Queen. Ethine now holds the crown because she was Silarial's heir, but she chooses to give it to Roiben, saying "Take it and be damned." Roiben states that his sister's hate was a fair price to pay for peace and now rules both the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, and peace will be held as long as he controls both courts. Kaye tells Roiben that she plans to open a coffee shop in Ironside and spend half her time in Faery; she reveals that she was able to say she could lie because "lying" can also mean lying on the ground.
2445369	/m/07dkz6	Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions	Ben Mezrich	2003-09-09	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 The book's main character is Kevin Lewis, an MIT graduate who was invited to join the MIT Blackjack Team in 1993. Lewis was recruited by two of the team's top players, Jason Fisher and Andre Martinez. The team was financed by a colorful character named Micky Rosa, who had organized at least one other team to play the Vegas strip. This new team was the most profitable yet. Personality conflicts and card counting deterrent efforts at the casinos eventually ended this incarnation of the MIT Blackjack Team.
2445792	/m/07dlqq	Arrowsmith	Kurt Busiek			 The series is set in an alternate history Earth in which the United States of America is actually the United States of Columbia, magic is real, and the First World War is fought with and by dragons, spells, vampires and all other kinds of magical weapons and beings. The story follows the protagonist, Fletcher Arrowsmith, as he joins the war effort on the side of the Allies, gets taught the rudiments of sorcery and engages in some brutal battles with the enemy Prussians.
2447322	/m/07dr23	The Education of Robert Nifkin	Daniel Pinkwater	1998	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Robert attends Riverview High School, which is only notable for its anti-semitic attitudes, homophobia, boredom, and anti-communist paranoia. Robert has no interest in any of his classes except for ROTC, a class he is taking instead of PE. His boredom and hatred for school grows and he eventually stops attending for large periods of time, preferring to hang out with Kenny Papescu and his girlfriend Linda in a very beatnik part of town. On a day that he actually attends, he finds that his ROTC sergeant has been fired, on the grounds of being a Communist. Robert's truancy increases even more, except on the occasions that he seeks shelter in Riverview from the Chicago winter. Finally the school orders him to be transferred to a correctional school but, from the recommendation of Kenny Papescu, Robert convinces his parents to let him attend Wheaton, a private school. At Wheaton, truancy, when it is even noticed, goes unpunished. This is how, Robert learns, Kenny Papescu has never been to school in over two years. Robert ends up getting straight A's, some in courses he didn't know he was enrolled in. Robert matures greatly while attending the Wheaton school and learns to appreciate art, chess, and the city's architecture; the freedom that it provides allows him to explore his interests with the guidance of the teachers. Robert concludes his high school reflection with the hope that he be admitted to the college.
2447727	/m/07ds44	Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario	Daniel Pinkwater	1979	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 A boy named Eugene is visiting Rochester, New York with his uncle, a hugely obese vending machine tester, when they are recruited by Professor Ambrose McFwain, an equally obese scientist, to join him on an expedition to find a sea monster called the Yobgorgle in Lake Ontario. They find the Yobgorgle and realize it is actually a submarine in the shape of a giant pig. The ship is almost self-sufficient and the crew consists of only Captain Van Straaten. He invites the search party on board and then locks them in. They learn that Captain Van Straaten has a curse on himself much like the Flying Dutchman. He can only surface in his submarine every seven years and no ship (or life preserver) that has him aboard can float within five miles of shore, and he cannot swim. If the captain gets ashore someone has to offer him a decent corned beef sandwich within 24 hours. They get to shore by hydroplaning (not floating), and then they buy the captain a corned beef sandwich.
2447939	/m/07dsq1	Scandal				 Set in Tokyo during the 1980s, it tells the story of an old Catholic writer struggling with old age and the feeling that he yet has to write his magnum opus. One day, a young woman shows up at a party attended by the main character, Suguro, mentioning loudly that he has not been visiting the ill-reputed street where she works as an artist lately. Because of his reputation as a Christian writer with high moral standards, such behaviour is seen by his publishers as very undesirable and by himself as very embarrassing. He meets a young girl, Mitsu, telling him about enjo kōsai ("compensated dating"), and Suguro decides to hire her as an assistant to help relieve his rheumatic wife from such activities. As time passes he starts to dream about this young girl, but keeps silent about it not to worry his wife. Reluctantly, Suguro visits the studio of the woman from the party, where he meets an older woman whom he later befriends. He also starts to discover another world, including masochism and various more or less odd forms of prostitution. The people in that world all seem to know him and Suguro suspects that an impostor is out there, trying to destroy his reputation, and starts to hunt for this man. Eventually the older woman, with whom he now has become rather close, sends him a letter inviting him to a love hotel where, she writes, the identity of the impostor will be revealed. Suguro finds the young Mitsu there, drunk and half-naked on the bed. Here, in the end of the book, it is revealed to him that a dark side exists below his polished surface.
2448990	/m/07dwbl	Shalimar the Clown	Salman Rushdie	2005-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The central character, India, is an illegitimate child of a former United States ambassador to India, Maximilian Ophuls. Although a number of narratives and incidents in the novel revolve around Kashmir, the novel opens in Los Angeles, U.S.A. Max Ophuls, a U.S. diplomat who has worked in the Kashmir Valley, is murdered by his former chauffeur, Shalimar. Several flashbacks take the readers to the past, and one learns that Shalimar, the clown, was once full of affection, love and laughter. He lived in the Kashmiri village of Pachigam. His skill on the tight rope earned him renown in his village and the name Shalimar the clown. At a young age, he falls in love with a beautiful Kashmiri Pandit girl, named Boonyi. The village elders agree to the marriage and all seems fine, except that Boonyi doesn't want to remain stuck in this small village. Things come to a turn when Maximilian comes to the village and becomes enamored of Boonyi. With the help of his assistant he gets her a flat in Delhi, and an affair blooms. A scandal erupts when Boonyi gets pregnant and Max is forced to return. The child, India, is brought to England by Maximilian's wife. Shalimar was deeply in love with Boonyi and couldn't bear her betrayal. The rest of his life had as major purpose to take revenge on the people that were the cause of his unhappiness. For this purpose he joins up with various Jihadi organisations and becomes a renowned assassin. Maximilian, raised in France, following the death of his parents in a Nazi concentration camp becomes a hero of the French resistance. A fictionalized account of the Bugatti automobile company plays a role in his escape from the Nazis.Tze Ming Mok Never Enough October 15–21, 2005 Vol 200 No 3414 New Zealand Listener http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3414/artsbooks/4851/never_enough.html Following the war, he marries a British aristocrat, and eventually becomes American ambassador to India. This appointment eventually leads to his unspecified role in relation to American counter-terrorism. The appointment is more important than his ambassadorship, but its exact role is vague. Shalimar receives training from insurgent groups in Afghanistan and the Philippines, and leaves for the USA. He murders Max on the day he resigns as his driver. Shalimar evades the authorities and eventually returns to India's home, with the intention of killing her. The story portrays the paradise that once was Kashmir, and how the politics of the sub-continent ripped apart the lives of those caught in the middle of the battleground.
2449341	/m/07dx1b	An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews	Henry Fielding		{"/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 Shamela is written as a shocking revelation of the true events which took place in the life of Pamela Andrews, the main heroine of Pamela. From Shamela we learn that, instead of being a kind, humble, and chaste servant-girl, Pamela (whose true name turns out to be Shamela) is in fact a wicked and lascivious creature, scheming to entrap her master, Squire Booby, into marriage.
2449650	/m/07dxq9	My Sister's Keeper	Jodi Picoult	2004-04-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place in fictional town Upper Darby, Rhode Island in 2004. Anna Fitzgerald's older sister, Kate, suffers from acute promyelocytic leukemia, a blood and bone marrow cancer. Anna was born specifically so she could save Kate's life. At first it is successful, but the cancer continues to relapse throughout Kate's life. Anna is usually willing to donate whatever Kate needs, but when she turns 13, she is told that she will have to donate one of her kidneys. The surgery required for both Kate and Anna would be major; it is not guaranteed to work, as the stress of the operation may well kill Kate anyway; and the loss of a kidney could have a serious impact on Anna's life. Anna petitions for medical emancipation with the help of lawyer Campbell Alexander, so that she will be able to make her own decisions regarding her medical treatment and the donation of her kidney. Anna's mother, Sara, is an ex-lawyer and decides to represent herself and her husband in the lawsuit. Over the course of the novel, she tries on several occasions to make Anna drop the lawsuit. Anna refuses to do so, but the resulting tension between her and her mother result in her moving out of the house to live with her father Brian in the fire station where he works. This is done on the advice of Julia Romano, the court-appointed guardian ad litem whose job it is to decide what would be best for Anna. Julia was once romantically involved with Campbell when they went to school together, but Campbell broke her heart when he left her. Unbeknown to Julia, Campbell left her because he discovered he had epilepsy and thought she deserved better. Meanwhile, Anna's brother Jesse, who has spent most of his life being ignored in favor of ill Kate or donor Anna, spends most of his time setting fire to abandoned buildings with home-made explosives and doing drugs. He is a self-confessed juvenile delinquent. The one moment when his parents pay him any attention is when Brian discovers that it is Jesse who has been setting the fires. Brian forgives him, and by the end of the book, he has reformed and graduated from the police academy. During the trial, it is revealed that Kate asked Anna to sue for emancipation because she did not want Anna to have to transplant, and because she believes that she will die anyway. The judge rules in Anna's favor, and grants Campbell medical power of attorney. However, as Campbell drives her home after the trial, their car is hit by an oncoming truck. Brian, the on-call firefighter who arrives at the scene, retrieves an unconscious and injured Anna from the wreckage of the crushed car and rushes her and Campbell to hospital. At the hospital, the doctor informs Sara and Brian that Anna is brain-dead, that the machines keeping her alive may as well be switched off, and asks them if they have considered organ donation. Campbell steps in, and declares that he has the power of attorney, and "there is a girl upstairs who needs that kidney." Kate is prepared for surgery, and Anna's kidney is successfully transplanted. Kate survives the surgery and remains in remission for at least six years (the book ends in 2010). Kate believes that she survived because someone had to go, and Anna took her place. Six years later, she works as a dance instructor. She mentions that every time she sees two girls doing pliés at the barre she thinks of how she and Anna used to be.
2450001	/m/07dyls	The Bacta War	Michael A. Stackpole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While the Alliance fleet mounts a major campaign against a deadly warlord, tyrant Ysanne Isard has taken control of Thyferra, intending to withhold its supply of medicinal bacta to destabilize and destroy the New Republic (especially in light of a deadly plague she released into their ranks before doing so). Undermanned and deprived of Alliance support, Rogue Squadron must oppose Isard's plans, defeat her Star Destroyer fleet, and free Thyferra from her rule in an all-or-nothing battle against a seemingly superior force.
2451129	/m/07f006	The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers	Paul Kennedy		{"/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/03g3w": "History"}	 Kennedy argues that the strength of a Great Power can be properly measured only relative to other powers, and he provides a straightforward and persuasively argued thesis: Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability; military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threat facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for (summarized on pages 438–9). Throughout the book he reiterates his early statement (page 71): "Military and naval endeavors may not always have been the raison d'être of the new nations-states, but it certainly was their most expensive and pressing activity", and it remains such until the power's decline. He concludes that declining countries can experience greater difficulties in balancing their preferences for guns, butter and investments. Kennedy states his theory in the second paragraph of the introduction as follows. :The "military conflict" referred to in the book's subtitle is therefore always examined in the context of "economic change." The triumph of any one Great Power in this period, or the collapse of another, has usually been the consequence of lengthy fighting by its armed forces; but it has also been the consequences of the more or less efficient utilization of the state's productive economic resources in wartime, and, further in the background, of the way in which that state's economy had been rising or falling, relative to the other leading nations, in the decades preceding the actual conflict. For that reason, how a Great Power's position steadily alters in peacetime is as important to this study as how it fights in wartime. Kennedy adds on the same page. :The relative strengths of the leading nations in world affairs never remain constant, principally because of the uneven rate of growth among different societies and of the technological and organizational breakthroughs which bring a greater advantage to one society than to another. The book starts at the dividing line between the Renaissance and early modern history—1500 (Chapter 1). It briefly discusses the Ming (page 4) and Muslim worlds (page 9) of the time and the rise of the western powers relative to them (page 16). The book then proceeds chronologically, looking at each of the power shifts over time and the effect on other Great Powers and the "Middle Powers". Kennedy uses a number of measures to indicate real, relative and potential strength of nations throughout the book. He changes the metric of power based on the point in time. Chapter 2, "The Habsburg Bid for Mastery, 1519–1659" emphasizes the role of the "manpower revolution" in changing the way Europeans fought wars (see military revolution). This chapter also emphasizes the importance of Europe's political boundaries in shaping a political balance of power. :"The argument in this chapter is not, therefore, that the Habsburgs failed utterly to do what other powers achieved so brilliantly. There are no stunning contrasts in evidence here; success and failure are to be measured by very narrow differences. All states, even the United Provinces, were placed under severe strain by the constant drain of resources for military and naval campaigns... The victory of the anti-Habsburg forces was, then, a marginal and relative one. They had managed, but only just, to maintain the balance between their material base and their military power better than their Habsburg opponents." (page 72) The Habsburg failure segues into the thesis of Chapter 3, that financial power reigned between 1660 and 1815, using Britain, France, Prussia, Austria-Hungary, and Russia to contrast between powers that could finance their wars (Britain and France) and powers that needed financial patronage to mobilize and maintain a major military force on the field. Kennedy presents a table (page 81, Table 2) of "British Wartime Expenditures and Revenue"; between 1688 and 1815 is especially illustrative, showing that Britain was able to maintain loans at around one-third of British wartime expenditures throughout that period * Total Wartime Expenditures, 1688–1815: 2,293,483,437 Pounds, * Total Income: 1,622,924,377 Pounds, * Balance Raised by Loans: 670,559,060 Pounds, and * Loans as % of Expenditure: 33.3% The chapter also argues that British financial strength was the single most decisive factor in its victories over France during the 18th century. This chapter ends on the Napoleonic Wars and the fusion of British financial strength with a newfound industrial strength. Kennedy's next two chapters depend greatly upon Bairoch's calculations of industrialization, measuring all nations by an index, where 100 is the British per capita industrialization rate in 1900. The United Kingdom grows from 10 in 1750, to 16 in 1800, 25 in 1830, 64 in 1860, 87 in 1880, to 100 in 1900 (page 149). In contrast, France's per capita industrialization was 9 in 1750, 9 in 1800, 12 in 1830, 20 in 1860, 28 in 1880, and 39 in 1900. Relative shares of world manufacturing output (also first appearing on page 149) are used to estimate the peaks and troughs of power for major states. China, for example, begins with 32.8% of global manufacturing in 1750 and plummets after the Opium Wars and Taiping Rebellion to 19.7% of global manufacturing in 1860, and 12.5% in 1880 (compared to the UK's 1.9% in 1750, growing to 19.9% in 1860, and 22.9% in 1880). Measures of strength in the 20th century (pages 199–203) use population size, urbanization rates, Barioch's per capita levels of industrialization, iron and steel production, energy consumption (measured in millions of metric tons of coal equivalent), and total industrial output of the powers (measured vs. Britain's 1900 figure of 100), to gauge the strength of the various great powers. Paul also gave emphasis on Productivity Increase based on systematic interventions which lead to Economic Growth & Prosperity to Great Powers in 20th Century. He compares the Great Powers at the close of the 20th century and predicts the decline of the Soviet Union, the rise of China and Japan, the struggles and potential for the European Economic Community (EEC), and the relative decline of the United States. He highlights the precedence of the "four modernizations" in Deng Xiaoping's plans for China—agriculture, industry, science and military—deemphasizing military while the United States and the Soviet Union are emphasizing it. He predicts that continued deficit spending, especially on military build-up, will be the single most important reason for decline of any Great Power. <gallery> </gallery> From the Civil War to the first half of the 20th century, the United States’ economy benefited from high agricultural production, plentiful raw materials, technological advancements and financial inflows. During this time the U.S. did not have to contend with foreign dangers. From 1860 to 1914, U.S. exports increase sevenfold and result in huge trading surpluses. By 1945, the U.S.’ economy enjoyed both high productivity and was the only major industrialized nation intact after World War II. From the 1960’s onwards, the U.S. saw a relative decline in its share of world production and trade. By the 1980’s, the U.S. experienced declining exports of agricultural and manufacturing goods. In the space of a few years, the U.S. went from being the largest creditor to the largest debtor nation. At the same time the federal debt was growing at an increasing pace. This situation is typical of declining hegemons. United States has the typical problems of a great power which include balancing guns and butter and investments for economic growth. The U.S.' growing military commitment to every continent (other than the Antarctica) and the growing cost of military hardware severely limits available options. The author compares the U.S.' situation to Great Britain's prior to World War I. He comments that the map of U.S. bases is similar to Great Britain's before World War I. As the military expenses grow this reduces the investments in economic growth, which eventually "leads to the downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes, deepening domestic splits over spending priorities, and weakening capacity to bear the burdens of defense." Mr. Kennedy's advice is as follows. :The task facing American statesmen over the next decades, therefore, is to recognize that broad trends are under way, and that there is a need to “manage” affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States’ position takes place slowly and smoothly, and is not accelerated by policies which bring merely short-term advantage but longer-term disadvantage.
2452638	/m/07f40p	Sunset Song	Lewis Grassic Gibbon	1932	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Chris Guthrie's mother, broken by repeated childbirths, commits suicide and poisons her baby twins. Two younger children go to live with their aunt and uncle in Aberdeen, leaving Chris, her older brother Will and her father to run the farm on their own. Will and his father have a stormy relationship and Will emigrates to Argentina with his young bride, Molly Douglas. Chris is left to do all the work around the house. Soon after this, her father suffers a stroke, leaving him bedridden. For a time he tries to persuade her to commit incest with him, but as he is badly hurt he is not able to force her. He dies shortly afterwards. At his funeral, Chris realises what happened to her father and breaks down in tears as she never knew the hardship he has endured for them. Chris, who has had some education, considers leaving for a job as a teacher in the towns, but realises she loves the land and cannot leave it. Instead, she marries a young farmer called Ewan Tavendale and carries on farming. For a time they are happily married, and they have a son, who they also call Ewan. However when the First World War breaks out Ewan senior and many other young men join up. When he comes home on leave he treats Chris badly, evidently brutalised by his experiences in the army. Ewan is killed in the war and Chris subsequently hears from Chae Strachan. who is home on leave, that Ewan was shot as a deserter, but he died thinking of her. She begins a relationship with the new minister and she watches as he dedicates the War Memorial at the Standing Stones above her home. The Sun sets to the Flowers of the Forest, bringing an end to their way of life, forever.
2453122	/m/07f5ds	The Adventures of Roderick Random	Tobias Smollett	1748	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the 1730s and 1740s and tells the life story (in the first person) of Roderick "Rory" Random, who was born to a Scottish gentleman and a lower-class woman and is thus shunned by his father's family. His mother dies soon after giving birth and his father is driven mad with grief. Random's paternal grandfather coerces a local school master into providing free education for the boy, who becomes popular with his classmates (some of whom he encounters again in subsequent adventures) and learns Latin, French, Italian and ancient Greek. The language accomplishments are despite, rather than because of, the abusive tutor who oppresses Random at every opportunity. Finally Random is cast out after the tutor exacts revenge for one of Random's escapades and denounces him to his grandfather. With none of his paternal family willing to assist him in any way, Random relies on his wits and the occasional support of his maternal uncle, Tom Bowling. The naive Random then embarks on a series of adventures and misadventures, visiting inter alia: London, Bath, France, the West Indies, West Africa and South America. With little money to support himself, he encounters malice, discrimination and sharpers at every turn. His honest and trustworthy character and medical skills do however win him a few staunch friends. Roderick spends much of the novel trying to attract the attention of various wealthy women he meets, so that he can live comfortably and take up his rightful entitlement as a gentleman. To that end he poses as a nobleman several times, including once while he is in France. Roderick and his companion Hugh Strap end up serving twice on British ships, once on a privateer and once on a warship after being press-ganged. The novel ends happily when Random is reunited with his now wealthy father in Argentina. He inherits some funds immediately, enabling him to marry the lovely Narcissa without the consent of her guardian brother.
2453404	/m/07f5sh	True History	Lucian		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 In True History, Lucian and a company of adventuring heroes sailing westward through the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) in order to explore lands and inhabitants beyond the Ocean, are blown off course by a strong wind, and after 79 days come to an island. This island is home to a river of wine filled with fish, and bears a marker indicating that Heracles and Dionysos have traveled to this point, along with normal footprints and giant footprints. Shortly after leaving the island, they are lifted up by a giant waterspout and deposited on the Moon on the eighth day. There they find themselves embroiled in a full-scale war between the king of the Moon and the king of the Sun over colonisation of the Morning Star, involving armies which boast such exotica as stalk-and-mushroom men, acorn-dogs ("dog-faced men fighting on winged acorns"), and cloud-centaurs. Unusually, the Sun, Moon, stars and planets are portrayed as locales, each with its unique geographic details and inhabitants. The War is finally won by the Sun's armies clouding the moon over. Details of the moon follow; there are no women, and children grow inside the calf of men. After returning to the Earth, the adventurers become trapped in a giant whale; inside the 200-mile-long animal, there live many groups of people whom they rout in war. They also reach a sea of milk, an island of cheese and the isle of the blessed. There, he meets the heroes of the Trojan War, other mythical men and animals, and even Homer. They find Herodotus being eternally punished for the "lies" he published in his Histories. After leaving the Island of the Blessed, they deliver a letter to Calypso given to them by Odysseus explaining that he wishes he had stayed with her so he could have lived eternally. They then discover a chasm in the Ocean, but eventually sail around it, discover a far-off continent and decide to explore it. The book ends rather abruptly with Lucian saying that their adventure there will be the subject of following books.
2453964	/m/07f6xl	The Field of Swords	Conn Iggulden	2005-01-03	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Having defeated Spartacus in The Death of Kings, Caesar is serving a five year term as Governor Of Spain (Hispania Ulterior) with his Tenth legion. Depressed with guilt still over the death of his wife in The Death of Kings, he has exhausted himself in conquering and expanding Spain. However when his friend Marcus Brutus' mother (Servilia Caepionis) arrives, she engages in a romance with him and re-awakens his desire for power. Before his term ends he deserts his Governorship (a serious crime amongst Roman patricians) to challenge for the role of Consul. With the help of current Consul Crassus he manages, yet only just and by getting himself into unbelievable levels of debt (and by defeating a rebel army on the verge of attacking Rome), to obtain the rank. To allow himself unprecedented military control of a province after his first six months as Consul, Caesar forms the First Triumvirate with Crassus and Pompey, the old Consuls. After six months fulfilling promises he made during the election campaign, Caesar takes his Tenth Legion, the Third Gallica (formed from the mercenary survivors) and four other legions from northern Italy to a small outpost in Gaul. While he is fighting in Gaul, Rome is sliding towards strife as two new senators, Clodius and Milo, attempt to wrest control of the city from each other with their gangs, by terrorizing and fighting in the city. On a final night, the Curia is destroyed and both are killed by each other and Pompeys legion. After this night, Pompey declares himself Dictator and begins his dominion of the city. Meanwhile Crassus is killed fighting with his legions in Parthia, leaving Pompey sole master. After ten years of fighting, two expeditions to Britain, one million Gauls killed and another million sold into slavery, Caesar must make possibly the most important decision of his life. Does he return to Rome alone, as ordered by the Dictator Pompey, where his only military rival will most likely kill him, or plunge the Roman world into a civil war and see whether he survives. With a night of soul-searching on the Rubicon riverbanks, Caesar utters the words "The die is cast" (alea iacta est in Latin) and heads south to Rome with his legions.
2454269	/m/07f7l2	Neanderthal	John Darnton	1996-04	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot of Neanderthal revolves around two rival scientists, Matt Mattison and Susan Arnot, who are sent by the United States government to search for missing anthropologist James Kellicut. Their only clue for their search is a neanderthal skull. The skull should have existed 40,000 years ago, however carbon dating shows it is only twenty-five years old. The Russian and American governments are competing to study the surviving Neanderthals, because of their power of remote viewing. The Neanderthals are split into two tribes, a peaceful valley tribe and a cannibalistic, violent mountain tribe. Soon, the protagonists are captured by Neanderthals and must try to escape from the cannibal tribe. They hope to do so without jeopardizing the safety of the peaceful tribe. It eventually, however, becomes necessary to train the peaceful tribe for war. The novel explains that such a completely peaceful society was doomed in any case, and would have been destroyed soon by the mountain tribe.
2454604	/m/07f8dc	Wilt	Tom Sharpe		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's title refers to its main character, Henry Wilt. Wilt is a demoralized and professionally under-rated assistant lecturer who teaches literature to uninterested construction apprentices at a community college in the south of England. Years of hen-pecking and harassment by his physically powerful but emotionally immature wife Eva leave Henry Wilt with dreams of killing her in various gruesome ways. But a string of unfortunate events (including one involving an inflatable plastic female doll) start the title character on a farcical journey. Along the way he finds humiliation and chaos, which ultimately lead him to discover his own strengths and some level of dignity. And all the while he is pursued by the tenacious police inspector Flint, whose plodding skills of detection and deduction interpret Wilt's often bizarre actions as heinous crimes.
2454629	/m/07f8hk	Can You Forgive Her?	Anthony Trollope			 Alice Vavasor, a young woman of twenty-four, is engaged to the wealthy and respectable and dependable, if unambitious and bland, John Grey. She had previously been engaged to her cousin George, but she broke it off after he went through a wild period. John, trusting in his love, makes only the slightest protest of Alice's planned tour of Switzerland with her cousin Kate, George's sister, even when he learns George is to go with them as male protector. Influenced by the romance of Switzerland, Kate's conniving to restore George to Alice's favour, and her own misgivings with John's shortcomings, Alice jilts her second fiancé. Alice's noble but despised relations are shocked, but their protests only strengthen Alice's resolve, and she eventually renews her engagement to George. Now we increasingly see a darker side to George, who seemed charismatic, ambitious and alluring, in contrast to John. He starts asking for money from Alice to support his parliamentary ambitions. Ever attentive to Alice's welfare, John secretly pays the money instead. George wins his first election, but loses his second and in despair and, after learning of John's interference in his campaign and engagement, almost murders John before escaping to America. A second story involves the comic rivalry between the wealthy farmer Cheesacre and the pauper soldier Captain Bellfield for the affections (and substantial inheritance) of the widow Mrs. Greenow. Mrs. Greenow had married young to a very rich older man who had recently died. Still in mourning, which for her involves a great deal of performance, she also enjoys basking in the attentions of her beaux and pitting them against each other. Finally she decides to marry the more attractive Captain Bellfield, knowing that she can keep him under control. The third story deals with the marriage of the extremely rich Plantagenet Palliser to the even wealthier heiress, Lady Glencora M'Cluskie. They are not very well suited. He is a stiff-necked, hardworking politician in line to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, while she has a lively, fun-loving personality and a well-developed sense of humour. She is outspoken and often shocks Alice by her frankness. The marital situation is made more tense by Glencora's failure to conceive a child. Previously, she had been engaged to Burgo Fitzgerald, an aristocratic wastrel, but the same noble relations that protested Alice's jilt had successfully pressured Glencora to abandon Burgo to marry Plantagenet. But she is still passionately in love with Burgo, who plots to elope with Glencora. To Alice's dismay, Glencora argues that it would be for the best if she eloped with Burgo as then Plantagenet could divorce her and marry someone else who could give him children. She publicly dances with Burgo at a ball and nearly agrees to go with him, even at the risk of her fortune and reputation. Plantagenet sacrifices his political ambitions to save his marriage by taking Glencora on a European tour with Alice accompanying. After some rancorous traveling, Glencora finds that she is pregnant, which solidifies her marriage and fulfills Plantagenet's life, though it is clear that Glencora cannot love him. John Grey pursues Alice to Switzerland to renew his courtship and eventually wins her over again, despite her deep guilt over her jilt. They become engaged and Plantagenet persuades his new friend to run for Parliament, to Alice's satisfaction. Back in England, Mrs. Greenow marries Bellfield, Glencora gives birth to a son, and Alice finally marries John. However Alice's happiness is alloyed by a sense of defeat but she accepts this as the price to pay for having tried to be better than other girls.
2456332	/m/07fczm	The Italian	Ann Radcliffe	1797	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 The plot starts in Naples, Italy in the 18th century, in the church Santa Maria del Pianto, where an Englishman is speaking with an Italian friar. The Englishman notices a man in a shadowy area of the church, who is an assassin, according to the friar. When the Englishman asks the friar to recall the story of why this assassin is protected in the church, the friar relates that he will send him a textual story to his hotel written by a student of Padua, and the two retire from the church and go their separate ways. The Englishman reads the story in his hotel room as follows: It is 1758 in the church of San Lorenzo in Naples where Vincentio di Vivaldi sees the beautiful Ellena di Rosalba with her aunt, Signora Bianchi. Vivaldi is struck with her beauty, and intends to court her, with the hopes that they will end up married. When Vivaldi’s mother, the Marchesa, hears about his love for Ellena, she hires her confessor, Father Schedoni, to kidnap Ellena to prevent the marriage, with a promise that she will help him obtain a higher position in his monastery. As Vivaldi continues to attend to Signora Bianchi at Villa Altieri, he is consistently approached by a monk, who seems to be an apparition, warning him to stay away from the villa and Ellena. Each time he encounters the strange monk, Vivaldi tries to follow him, with the help of both his friend Bonarmo and his faithful servant Paulo. Vivaldi is positive that the monk is Father Schedoni, and is determined to discover why his desired marriage to Ellena is forbidden. After being promised the hand of Ellena by Signora Bianchi before her mysterious death, Vivaldi learns that Ellena has been kidnapped, and he immediately assumes it is by the hand of the Marchesa and Schedoni. Vivaldi finds that his beloved has been sent to the convent of San Stefano, under the care of the cruel Lady Abbess, and he and his servant travel to retrieve her. In the convent, Ellena is befriended by a lovely, but melancholy nun, Sister Olivia, who helps her to escape from the convent into the care of Vivaldi. While riding towards Naples after the escape, Vivaldi presses Ellena for an immediate marriage, and she finally consents. Right before they are to take their vows, the Inquisition comes and arrests Vivaldi, Ellena and Paulo on what they believe to be false charges. Vivaldi and Paulo are taken to the Holy Office of the Inquisition to be questioned and put to trial. Ellena, however, is sent by Schedoni and the Marchesa to a lone house on the seaside, inhabited only by the villain Spalatro, to be murdered. Schedoni comes to the house to assassinate Ellena personally, but discovers that she is his daughter. Schedoni has a change of heart, and decides to take Ellena personally back to Naples and put her in a safer place. While on their journey, they once again encounter Spalatro, who is wounded in a scuffle and left behind. Schedoni and Ellena finally arrive in Naples, where Schedoni places Ellena in the convent of Santa Maria del Pianto until Vivaldi can be recovered. Schedoni converses with the Marchesa, keeping secret that he intends to marry her son and his daughter, but does communicate that Ellena comes from a rich lineage, so a marriage would not be disgraceful. Meanwhile, in the prison of the Inquisition, the mysterious monk that had previously forewarned Vivaldi, now known to be Nicola di Zampari, appeared and narrated to him the guilty crimes committed by Father Schedoni before he became a monk, and asked him to summon Schedoni and Father Ansaldo to the prison to confirm the crimes. Both appear in front of the tribunal members, and Schedoni is accused of murdering his brother and wife. Schedoni is summoned to death, and tells Vivaldi where Ellena is being held before he is escorted to a prison confinement. Vivaldi is also escorted back to his prison cell, with the knowledge that the charges against him will be dropped, thanks to Nicola. Back at the convent, Ellena distinguish a voice all too familiar, and sees her dearly loved Sister Olivia in the convent yard. While the two speak of what has become of them since they first parted, Ellena’s servant Beatrice appears to tell of the death of the wicked Marchesa. Beatrice and Olivia recognize each other, and elate Ellena with the news that Olivia is her mother. Ellena also becomes familiar with the fact that she is not Schedoni’s daughter, but his niece. Since they are of the same lineage, Ellena is still from a noble family, which would allow her to marry Vivaldi. The ending of the novel is a happy one; Vivaldi and Paulo get released from the prison of the Inquisition, Ellena is reunited with her mother, and Vivaldi and Ellena are joined in marriage, and all the villains have died.
2456353	/m/07fd15	Rabbit, Run	John Updike	1960-11-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is 26, has a job selling a kitchen gadget named MagiPeeler, and is married to Janice, a former salesgirl at the store where he worked. They have a two-year-old son named Nelson, and live in Mount Judge, a suburb of Brewer, Pennsylvania. He believes that his marriage is corrupt and something is missing from his life: Having been a basketball star in high school, Harry finds his middle-class family life unsatisfying. On the spur of the moment, he decides to leave his family and drive south in an attempt to "escape". However, after getting lost, he returns to his home town. Not wanting to return to his family, he instead visits his old basketball coach, Marty Tothero. That night, Harry has dinner with Tothero and two girls, one of whom, Ruth Leonard, is a part-time prostitute. Harry and Ruth begin a two-month affair and he soon moves into her apartment. During this time, Janice moves back into her parents' house and the local Episcopal priest, Jack Eccles, befriends Harry in a futile attempt to get him to reconcile with his wife. Nonetheless, Harry remains with Ruth until the night he learns that she had a fling with his high school nemesis, Ronnie Harrison. Enraged, Harry coerces Ruth into performing fellatio on him. The same night, Harry learns that Janice is in labor, and he leaves Ruth to visit his wife at the hospital. Reunited with Janice, Harry returns home with her and their daughter, named Rebecca June. Harry attends church one morning and, after walking the minister's wife Lucy home, interprets her invitation to come in for a coffee as a sexual advance. When he declines the invitation for coffee, stating that he has a wife, she angrily slams the door on him. Harry returns to his apartment, and, happy about the birth of his daughter, tries to reconcile with Janice. He encourages her to have a whiskey, then, misreading her mood, pressures her to have sex in spite of her postnatal condition. When she refuses and accuses him of treating her like a prostitute, Harry dry humps her, punches her, then leaves, yet again, in an attempt to resume his relationship with Ruth. Finding her apartment empty, he spends the night at a hotel. The next morning, still distraught at Harry's new departure, Janice gets drunk and accidentally drowns Rebecca June in the bath tub. The other main characters in the book except Harry soon learn of the accident and gather at Janice's parents' home. Later in the day, unaware of what has happened, Harry calls Reverend Eccles to see how his return home would be received. Reverend Eccles shares the news of his daughter's death, and Harry returns home immediately, although in a somewhat aloof way. Tothero later visits Harry and suggests that the thing he is looking for probably does not exist. At Rebecca June's funeral, Harry's internal and external conflicts result in a sudden proclamation of his innocence in the baby's death. He then runs from the graveyard, pursued by Jack Eccles, until he becomes lost. Harry returns to Ruth and learns that she is pregnant by him. Though Harry is relieved to discover she has not had an abortion, he is unwilling to divorce Janice. Harry abandons Ruth, still missing the feeling he has attempted to grasp during the course of the novel; his fate is uncertain as the novel concludes.
2458441	/m/07fjpf	Headlong	Emlyn Williams	1980	{"/m/06cvj": "Romantic comedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story takes place in England in the mid-1930s. In May 1935, the entire British Royal Family is killed in a freak accident after the explosion of a large dirigible (similar to the Hindenburg disaster), and the search is on to find a surviving heir of British blood. After an extensive search, the choice falls on Jack Green, a 24-year-old stage actor who, unbeknownst to him, is the grandson of the philandering Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, and the nearest living heir. He is virtually kidnapped and brought to Buckingham Palace, where he is placed in the care of William Millingham (known as Willie) who is to be his Private Secretary. Millingham assists the new king over the initial period of adjustment to his new status. He is duly installed as King John II. After the new king refuses to marry any of several potential queens offered to him, and also makes a broadcast speech drawing attention to the problem of Great Depression unemployment, which is considered highly radical by "The Powers That Be," a plot is discovered to discredit him. At the same time, the King begins to chafe at the rigid, ceremonial routine of royal life and the limitations inevitably placed upon his freedom. He also misses his girlfriend Kathy, who is deeply uncomfortable with him in his new role. The king decides to try to do some good from the throne. After trying to assert his new-found authority, conservatives led by Cabinet Secretary Sir Godwin Rodd (known as "Sir God"), "suggest" that he abdicate his throne. It is then revealed to him that "Willie" is also a direct descendant of British Royalty, but that he refused the position, deferring to Green. After much soul-searching, Jack decides to abdicate, leaving Willie to take the throne as King William V. Jack leaves the palace, his reign of just over 200 days at an end, to be happily reunited with his girlfriend Kathy and go into seclusion in Mexico. Later, he returns to England and writes his memoirs - this book.
2459222	/m/07flz9	The End	Daniel Handler	2006-10-13	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The Baudelaire orphans and Count Olaf flee the burning Hotel Denouement after setting it on fire. After surviving a storm, they find themselves on a coastal shelf of an island inhabited by a mysterious group of people. They are first greeted by a little girl, Friday. Count Olaf, who had previously proclaimed himself king of Olaf-Land, threatens the girl with a harpoon gun. Friday is unfazed; she refuses Olaf permission to land on the island, but invites the Baudelaires onto the island. Along the way, she describes what the islanders do with their time—all year long, they build an outrigger on the coastal shelf, and once a year the water rises high enough to submerge the shelf and launch the outrigger. This is known as Decision Day, when anyone who wishes can board the ship, bite a bitter apple, spit it back out, and sail away. The island facilitator, Ishmael, introduces the Baudelaires to the strange island customs. Also, Ishmael has the islanders (most named after famous literary or historical castaways) introduce themselves to the Baudelaires. Ishmael, according to the islanders, injured his feet a long time ago and, consequently, must keep his feet submerged in clay. Every time there is a storm, the residents of the island go out to the coastal shelf to pick up items that have washed up that may be useful. These items are judged by Ishmael. If he decides that the items are not useful, they are loaded onto a sled and towed by a local herd of sheep to a local arboretum, where no one should go (according to Ishmael) lest they injure themselves amongst the garbage. The sheep and the sled are also Ishmael's main method of transportation. Although Ishmael always tells the islanders "I won't force you", it soon becomes apparent that his decisions go largely unquestioned and his suggestions are obeyed as if they were orders. After the Baudelaires introduce themselves, Ishmael toasts the "Baudelaire orphans" (despite their not having mentioned their lost parents) with the coconut cordial which everybody carries, but which the orphans themselves dislike. After another storm, more objects wash up including a giant pile of books tied together in the shape of a cube, an unconscious and pregnant Kit Snicket, and the Incredibly Deadly Viper from Uncle Monty's collection. The islanders arrive and Count Olaf tries to fool them by disguising himself as Kit Snicket (with the diving-helmet containing the Medusoid Mycelium tucked under his dress as his supposed baby). However, the islanders immediately see through Olaf's disguise and cage him. They then debate whether the orphans should be expelled from the colony when they discover that the Baudelaires are carrying "contraband" items. Ishmael decides that the children, Kit, and Olaf should all be abandoned unless they agree to abide by the colony's rules. The children, along with Olaf, are left on the coastal shelf. After everyone leaves, Olaf tries to tempt the children to let him out of the cage by promising to explain the many mysteries and secrets which they have been surrounded by since The Bad Beginning, but they ignore him. That night, two of the islanders, Erewhon and Finn, sneak out to feed the children and ask them a favor. A group of discontented colonists are planning a mutiny against Ishmael in the morning, and they ask the Baudelaires to go over to the arboretum where all the contraband items are collected, and find or make some weapons to use in the rebellion. The mutineers refuse to help Kit unless the Baudelaires help them. The children agree, and set off for the arboretum. Upon arrival, they notice very strange clay-encrusted footprints leading to the arboretum. They conclude that Ishmael has been getting up during the night and sneaking out to the arboretum on his perfectly healthy feet to eat apples. As they move to the center of the arboretum, the orphans discover a well-appointed living area, before they are in turn discovered by Ishmael. They learn that their parents were once the island's leaders and were responsible for many improvements meant to make island-life easier and more pleasant, but they were eventually overthrown by Ishmael, who believed that a strictly-enforced simple life (combined with the opiate of the coconut cordial) was the best way to avoid conflict. The Baudelaires find an enormous history of the island, entitled A Series of Unfortunate Events, written by the many different people who had served as island leaders, including their parents and Ishmael. Ishmael also makes references to many other people, including a woman with only one eyebrow and ear (the mother of Isaac Anwhistle) and Gregor Anwhistle. The Baudelaires and Ishmael go back to the other side of the island, where the mutiny is already underway. Count Olaf returns, still in disguise. After a brief exchange, Ishmael harpoons Olaf in the stomach, also inadvertently shattering the helmet containing the Medusoid Mycelium, infecting the island's entire population at once. While Count Olaf bleeds to his death, the Baudelaires run back to the arboretum to try to find some horseradish to cure everyone. They learn that their parents had hybridized an apple tree with horseradish, allowing the fruit to cure the effects of the Medusoid Mycelium. After sharing the apple and curing themselves, they then gather more apples for the island's inhabitants, only to discover that the island people have abandoned the mutiny and boarded their outrigger canoe, ready to set sail. Ishmael refuses to allow the apples on board, though it is clear that he himself has already eaten one to cure himself, and the boat sails away to a horseradish factory to save everyone (It is hinted though, that one apple might have been sneaked on board by the Incredibly Deadly Viper to tide them over until they reach the factory). Kit tells the Baudelaires the fate of the Quagmires, Hector, Phil, Captain Widdershins, and his two stepchildren Fernald and Fiona. After reuniting on Hector's float, they are attacked by trained eagles, who pop the balloons supporting the float and send them hurtling back to the ruins of the Queequeg. There, they are taken by the mysterious object shaped like a question mark (called the "Great Unknown" by Kit Snicket). In turn, the Baudelaires confess their own crimes committed at the Hotel Denouement. At this point, Kit is about to go into labour. She seems to be dying of the fungus, but cannot eat the bitter apple due to the hybrid's unhealthy effects on unborn babies. She is still trapped on top of the cube of books (her Vaporetto (boat) of Favorite Detritus) but when the critically injured and fungus-choked Olaf hears that she is still alive, he takes a bite of an apple and manages to get her safely down onto the beach, giving her a single soft kiss as he lays her on the sand and collapses, still conscious, beside her. Kit recites the poem "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" by Francis William Bourdillon, answered by Olaf reciting the final stanza of Philip Larkin's "This Be The Verse", before dying. The Baudelaires help Kit give birth to a baby girl. Kit then dies due to the Medusoid Mycelium, after asking the orphans to name the baby after their mother. The Baudelaires become Kit's child's adopted parents, and become the only ones on the island. They bury Kit and Olaf next to each other somewhere on the island. Olaf's grave is visited by the Baudelaires but is not as embraced as Kit. Unlike the previous installments in the series which each have thirteen chapters, The End features a total of fourteen chapters. Chapter Fourteen is featured as its own book within The End, serving as an epilogue to the series. One year later, Kit's baby and the Baudelaires sail away from the island on the boat they came on to immerse themselves in the world once more. As they board the ship, Kit's baby says the boat's actual name, "Beatrice," which is also her own name. There is an author and illustrator page, as usual, and a final image which depicts a lonely sea with the murky shadow of a question mark in the water, sugguesting the return of the device (or sea monster) called the Great Unknown, leaving the childrens fate ambiguous. The author and illustrator page was the only instance that artist Brett Helquist and Lemony Snicket swapped their billing places in the pictorial credits. Brett, dressed in Snicket's usual fashion, was photographed and on top, while Lemony, face exposed save for cucumber slices over his eyes, was drawn underneath a comic depiction of himself, as he is shown relaxing beside a pool with a cocktail, when he is usually depicted, as are the Baudelaires, as terribly unfortunate. Their roles revert to their traditional billing places at the true conclusion of the book. Brett Helquist is illustrated and Snicket holds a stack of papers hiding his face with a description saying that he is still at large.
2461964	/m/025sb5z	Casino Royale	Ian Fleming	1953-04-13	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 M, the Head of the Secret Service, assigns James Bond, Special Agent 007, to play against and bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster for a SMERSH-controlled trade union, in a high-stakes baccarat game at the Royale-Les-Eaux casino in northern France. As part of Bond's cover as a rich Jamaican playboy, M also assigns as his companion Vesper Lynd, personal assistant to the Head of Section S (Soviet Union). The French Deuxième Bureau and the CIA also send agents as observers. The game soon turns into an intense confrontation between Le Chiffre and Bond; Le Chiffre wins the first round, bankrupting Bond. As Bond contemplates the prospect of reporting his failure to M, CIA agent Felix Leiter helps Bond and gives him an envelope with thirty-two million francs and a note: "Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA." The game continues, despite the attempts of one of Le Chiffre's minders to kill Bond. Bond eventually wins, taking from Le Chiffre eighty million francs belonging to SMERSH. Desperate to recover the money, Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper and subjects Bond to brutal torture, threatening to kill them both if he does not get the money back: before he does so, a SMERSH assassin bursts in and kills Le Chiffre as punishment for losing the money. The agent does not kill Bond, saying that he has no orders so to do, but cuts a Cyrillic 'Ш' (sh) to signify the SHpion (Russian for spy) into Bond's hand so that future SMERSH agents will be able to identify him as such. Lynd visits Bond every day as he recuperates in the hospital and he gradually realises that he loves her; he even contemplates leaving Her Majesty's Secret Service to settle down with her. When Bond is released, they spend time together at a quiet guest house and eventually become lovers. One day they see a mysterious man named Gettler tracking their movements, which greatly distresses Vesper. The following morning, Bond finds that she has committed suicide. She leaves behind a note explaining that she had been working as an unwilling double agent for the MVD. SMERSH had kidnapped her lover, a Polish RAF pilot, who had revealed information about her under torture; SMERSH then used that information to blackmail her into helping them undermine Bond's mission, including her own faked kidnapping. She had tried to start a new life with Bond, but upon seeing Gettler – a SMERSH agent – she realised that she would never be free of her tormentors and that staying with Bond would only put him in danger. Bond informs his service of Vesper's duplicity, coldly telling his contact, "The bitch is dead now."
2462995	/m/07fvjj	Annie John	Jamaica Kincaid	1985-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Annie John, the protagonist of the book, starts out as a young girl who worships her mother. She follows her everywhere, and is shocked and hurt when she learns that she must some day live in a different house from her mother. While her mother tries to teach her to become a lady, Annie is sent to a new school where she must prove herself intellectually and make new friends. She quickly falls in with an emotionally close crowd of girlfriends, but later is attracted to a wild girl who climbs trees like a boy, and whom Annie John calls "Red Girl". Annie John becomes closer to her friends at school and Red Girl, while alienating herself from her mother and the other adults in her life. It later becomes clear that she also suffers from some kind of mental depression, which distances her from both her family and her friends. The book ends on a symbolic note, in which she physically distances herself away from all that she knew and loved by leaving home for nursing school in England.
2464157	/m/07fxvh	Housekeeping	Marilynne Robinson	1980	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ruth narrates the story of how she and her younger sister Lucille are raised by a succession of relatives in the fictional town of Fingerbone, Idaho (some details are similar to Robinson's hometown, Sandpoint, Idaho). Eventually their aunt Sylvie (who has been living as a transient) comes to take care of them. Initially they become a close knit group, but as Lucille grows up she comes to dislike their eccentric lifestyle and she moves out. Then when Ruth's well-being is being questioned by the courts, Sylvie returns to living on the road and takes Ruth with her. The novel treats the subject of housekeeping, not only in the domestic sense of cleaning, but in the larger sense of keeping a spiritual home for one's self and family in the face of loss, for the girls experience a series of abandonments as they come of age. The events take place in an uncertain time, in that no dates are mentioned; however, Ruth refers to her grandfather living in a sod dugout in the Midwest, before his journey to Fingerbone, while she herself traverses adolescence sometime in the latter half of the 20th century, as Ruth reads the novel Not as a Stranger, a bestseller from 1954.
2465029	/m/07fy_d	A World Out of Time	Larry Niven	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jerome Branch Corbell has incurable cancer and is cryogenically frozen in the year 1970 in the faint hope of a future cure. His body is revived in 2190 by an oppressive, totalitarian global government called "The State". His personality and memories are extracted (destroying his body in the process) and transferred into the body of a mindwiped criminal. After he is awakened, he is continually evaluated by Peerssa, a "checker", who has to decide whether he is worth keeping. With the threat of mindwiping looming over his head, Corbell works hard to pass the various tests. Peerssa decides that Corbell is a loner and born tourist. This makes him an ideal candidate to be the pilot and sole passenger of a Bussard ramjet, whose mission is to find and seed suitable planets as the first step to terraforming them. Disgusted with the State's treatment of him as an expendable commodity, Corbell hijacks the ship and takes it to the centre of the galaxy. It was at this point that the original short story ended. Peerssa tries to talk him out of it, but fails. Peerssa and The State resort to subterfuge; an artificial intelligence program based on Peerssa's personality is secretly transferred into the ship's computer by way of the conversations. Though the Peerssa AI opposes the detour, it cannot disobey Corbell's direct orders. After a lengthy journey (including a close approach to the super-massive black hole at the galactic axis), possible only due to the suspended animation devices on board, Corbell returns to the solar system. Although only hundreds of years have passed on the ship, three million years have elapsed on Earth, due to relativistic time dilation. At first, he is confused and initially believes they might have come to the wrong system because it has changed considerably; the Sun has apparently evolved into a red giant and Earth is now in orbit around a super-hot Jupiter. Corbell and Peerssa eventually find that the solar system has been engineered into this new configuration in order to move the Earth to a habitable distance from the enlarged Sun, but this revelation only comes later in the book. Corbell puts the ship into orbit around the Earth. The Earth's climate has changed, despite its new location in orbit around Jupiter. Among the most important changes is the increased surface temperature; the poles are temperate, while the former temperate zones reach temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius (120+ degrees Fahrenheit). The Earth's axial tilt is still 23.5 degrees so the poles experience 6 years of night and 6 years of day. Almost all remaining life on Earth has adapted to live in Antarctica. Elsewhere life is extinct except for some evidence of biological activity in the Himalayan mountains. When Corbell lands (in a modified biological probe), he is captured by Mirelly-Lyra, who is also a returned star ship pilot and refugee from the past—though from Corbell's (and Peerssa's) future. She explains that the human species has fragmented; it is dominated by a race of immortal, permanently pre-adolescent males (the Boys), who are created by advanced medical techniques. Some time in the past, they had defeated the equally immortal (though now extinct) Girls, in the ultimate war of the sexes. The Boys have enslaved the dikta, who are unmodified humans (though they have evolved somewhat), from whom they take boys to replenish their ranks. A starship pilot, Mirelly-Lyra had initially been a captive toy of the Girls. After their downfall, she had spent her time obsessively searching in vain for the lost adult-immortality treatment, while extending her life as much as possible using her own drugs and a form of zero-time stasis with which she waited for another returning star ship and potential help. Because she could not stop the aging process entirely, she is an old crone by the time she finds Corbell. He manages to escape from her, only to be caught by the Boys, who take him to a dikta settlement. With Gording, the dikta leader, he escapes once more. Eventually, Corbell discovers the adult-immortality treatment, albeit by accident and only realizing it after he himself has been exposed to it. He uses it to enlist Mirelly-Lyra's help, which in turn finally gives him full control of his ship's technology (the hostile Peerssa has decided that the woman is the last survivor of the State and will only obey her). The planet Uranus has been discovered to have been maneuvered to pass by the Earth and adjust its orbit by Peerssa the AI. Corbell arranges for the Earth's distance from the super-heated Jupiter to be adjusted by Peersa to lower the Earth's temperature without destroying the plants and animals that have adapted to the extreme conditions. As the novel closes, he is plotting to liberate the dikta and enable them to regain control of their own destiny.
2466295	/m/07g0yg	Legion of the Lost				 It tells the story of Jaime, a bored and self-described corporate cog. In a quest to seek solace from his corporate existence, he joined the French Foreign Legion, reputed to be the world’s toughest army. He experiences brutality, adventure, and an uncompromising camaraderie. This is the story of his life in the "Army of Strangers". In a 2008 Note addition on the book’s website, Salazar puts into perspective his reckless weekend behavior, notably that with women, into the context of a typical young man’s military life. He claims not to condone such libertine, amorous behavior then or now. He also claims that some of the characters mentioned were morphed from multiple people. Salazar admits to describing a few incidents that were actually second hand accounts. He claims artistic license was taken for purposes of clarity and succinctness.
2470055	/m/07g8qs	The Story of B	Daniel Quinn	1996-12	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Story of B is presented as a diary of the American first-person narrator and protagonist, Fr. Jared Osborne, a Roman Catholic priest of the Laurentian order. The Laurentians have traditionally made it their duty to be the first group to recognize the Antichrist. With this mission in mind, an esteemed member of the order, Fr. Bernard Lulfre, personally tasks Jared with investigating an itinerant American lecturer, Charles Atterley, who has gained notable attention in Europe and whose ideas the Laurentians consider a potential danger to humankind. Although told that Atterley was last spotted in Austria, Jared is initially unable to track down the enigmatic preacher. Upon discovering that Atterley is more commonly known to the public as "B," Jared at last discovers him on a lecture circuit throughout major cities in Germany. Jared begins to attend each of B's speeches and takes verbatim notes that he mails back to Lulfre. Ultimately pressed for a judgment on the possibility of B's being the Antichrist, Jared is driven to penetrate B's inner circle where he soon finds his religious foundations shaken to their core. Jared meets with and soon gets to know B personally. Although B immediately understands that Jared is a potential threat to himself and his movement, he does not seem to be as suspicious of or cold toward Jared as are the rest of B's cohort, including B's closest companion, the extremely distrusting, lupus-stricken Shirin. Instead, B welcomes Jared and seems legitimately motivated to educate him, even presenting his teachings to Jared one-on-one. Among the tenets of B's philosophy are: an advocacy of new tribalism and the "Great Remembering"&mdash;which is his idea humanity has forgotten its hunter-gatherer history and should reclaim this forgotten knowledge that once steadily supported humanity's survival&mdash;as well as an opposition to "totalitarian agriculture," the style of agriculture whereby its practitioners destroy all competition and assume all resources are made only for their own use. Jared finds himself logically supporting these and others of B's ideas, though is unable to rationalize them in terms of his religious convictions. On a train after one of B's lectures, Jared stumbles upon the murdered body of B who has apparently been shot dead in an empty car. B's group of close followers clearly suspects Jared or his organization to be responsible for the murder. To Jared's surprise, Shirin resumes B's lectures where he left off and claims that she is now B. Even more surprising, she begrudgingly continues to personally tutor Jared in B's philosophies, though she openly calls Jared stupid, not because he lacks the capacity to learn but because she has never seen a person "with so much mental equipment being put to so little use." Shirin's further teachings include the idea of a Law of Life, the concept that storytelling may be a genetic characteristic of humans, the promotion of animism, and the notion that totalitarian agriculture results in ecological imbalance and over-population, which themselves are rapidly leading to humankind's self-destruction. Jared begins to see how he cannot remain devout to his order and in agreement with B's teachings simultaneously. The diary abruptly picks up when Jared regains consciousness after being involved in an explosion. In the hospital, Jared attempts to piece together his memories, chronicling that one of B's lecture theaters was bombed; Shirin and B's inner circle are presumably all dead. Flown back to the United States to recuperate, Jared eventually confronts Fr. Lulfre from whom he learns that the Laurentian order indeed authorized both B's assassination and the bombing of the theater. Jared renounces his devotion to the order and returns hastily back to Europe, desperately searching for any information about possible survivors of the bombing and lamenting his lack of knowledge about the people he seeks out, for example, the fact that he never even learned Shirin's last name. Ultimately, though, Jared recalls that the theatre had an underground tunnel through which Shirin and the others might have escaped. Visiting the mouth of the tunnel, which is barricaded by wooden planks, Jared finds contact information engraved in the wood. He is later reunited with Shirin and the others, and the memory comes flooding in that he warned them to flee moments before the explosion, thus saving their lives. A brief epilogue explains that Jared and Shirin plan to completely disappear from the public eye together; moments before Jared must leave to board a plane, he urges the spreading of B's philosophy and writes the final words of his diary: that Charles Atterley, Shirin, he, and the reader, too, are all B.
2472412	/m/07gdyj	All Tomorrow's Parties	William Gibson	1999-10-07	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The book has three separate but overlapping stories, with the repeated appearance of shared characters. The San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge, the overarching setting of the trilogy, functions as a shared location of their convergence and resolution. The first story features former rent-a-cop Berry Rydell, the protagonist of Virtual Light. Rydell quits a temporary job as a security guard at the Lucky Dragon convenience store to run errands for atrophied computer hacker Colin Laney (the protagonist of Idoru), who lives in a cardboard box in a subway in Shinjuku, Tokyo. As a child, Laney was the subject of pharmaceutical trials which damaged his nervous system. As a result, he suffers from a form of attention deficit disorder but gains the ability to discern nodal points in the undifferentiated flow of information, and from that he acquires a certain predictive faculty. This makes him ideal for the role of "netrunner" or data analyst. A side effect of 5-SB, the drug administered to Laney, causes the user to become attached to strong personalities. As a result, Laney has become obsessed with media baron Cody Harwood of Harwood/Levine, a powerful public relations firm. He spends his life surfing the net from his enclave in the subway, searching for traces of Harwood in the media. From this, Laney foresees a crucial historical shift which may precede the end of the world "as we know it". He predicts that Harwood, who had also taken 5-SB before (albeit voluntarily, with the knowledge of the consequences), knows this and will try to shape this historical shift to his liking. To stop Harwood, Laney hires Rydell under the guise of a courier to travel to San Francisco where he believes the next nodal point will congeal. The second story concerns ex-bicycle messenger Chevette Washington, also from Virtual Light, who is on the run from her ex-boyfriend. She escapes to her former home, San Francisco's bridge community, to find refuge and revisit her past. She is accompanied by Tessa, an Australian media sciences student who visits the bridge to film a documentary on "interstitial communities". The third story follows a mysterious, left-handed mercenary named Konrad. Although Konrad is employed by Harwood, he appears to be directed by his own motives. In particular, Konrad aligns his movements with the Tao, the spontaneous, universal energy path of Taoist philosophy.
2472453	/m/07gf0q	Oleanna	David Mamet			 Carol, a female college student, is in the office of her professor, John. She expresses frustration that she does not understand the material in his class, despite having read the assigned books and attending his lectures. Of particular concern is a book written by John himself, wherein he questions the modern insistence that everyone participate in higher education, referring to it as "systematic hazing." While talking with Carol, he is often interrupted by the phone ringing. John is about to be granted tenure, along with a handsome raise. Anticipating this, he is to about to close on a new house, but his wife repeatedly calls with last-minute issues, demanding that he meet her at the home as soon as possible. After initially appearing insensitive, John eventually decides to help Carol, telling her that he "likes her" and that he also felt similar frustrations as a student. He takes the blame for her not understanding what he is talking about and agrees to give her an "A" if she'll return to his office several more times to discuss the material. At one heated point in the discussion he goes to put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her, but she violently shakes it off. Finally, Carol has warmed to John and is on the verge of divulging a secret when the phone rings again and John's wife tells him that the realtor problems were all a scheme to get him back to the house for a surprise reception in his honor. He departs for home immediately. Carol is back in John's office, but more poised than before. John's tenure is threatened because Carol has filed a formal complaint with the committee, accusing him of being sexist and pornographic. His hand on her shoulder is described as sexual harassment. John hopes to resolve the matter privately with Carol so that the complaint may be withdrawn from the tenure committee. He tries to understand how his actions could have offended her so and attempts to convince her that he was only trying to help her without any ulterior motive. Carol will not hear any of his pleas and gets ready to leave. As she does, John stands in front of the door and grabs hold of her. Carol screams for help. John has been dismissed and is packing up his office. He has not been home, staying at a hotel for two days trying to work out in his head what has happened. He has asked Carol to speak to him once more and she has obliged. Carol is even more forceful to name her instructor's flaws. She finds it hypocritical that a college professor could question the very system that offers him employment and gives him an academic platform to expound his views. She also makes references to "her group", which she is speaking for and which seems to be working to oust teachers like John. In passing, John mentions that he has not been home recently. Carol reveals that if he had, he would have learned that her charges against him now amount to attempted rape. She then says she would be willing to drop her charges if John would agree to her group's list of books to be removed from the university, which includes his own. With this, John decides to take a stand. He is willing to sacrifice his career to stand up to her assault on academic freedom. He angrily tells her to leave his office as his phone rings again. It is his wife, whom he calls "baby." Carol tells him not to refer his wife that way, causing John to snap. He savagely beats her and holds a chair above his head as she cowers on the floor. The play ends with Carol cryptically saying, "That's right."
2472875	/m/07gfvj	Red Azalea				 The memoir was written in English. The names of the characters were translated into English instead of being spelled phonetically. For example, Min's first name, Anchee, means Jade of Peace, and her siblings' names are Blooming, Coral, and Space Conqueror. The autobiography deals with themes of ideology and gender and sexual psychology. In part one, Min tells the story of her childhood in Shanghai under the rule of Mao Zedong during the 1960s. She believes wholeheartedly in Mao's Communism, and is an outstanding student. Her first conflict with this system comes when a favorite teacher is put on trial for espionage and the young Anchee Min is expected to testify against her. Part two tells of her life on a farm outside of Shanghai with other teenagers. She was assigned to work there and has little hope of escaping her life of manual labor. At this point, Min finds a role model to follow and stays on track with Maoism. She soon finds difficulty, however, when a friend is mentally broken by interrogation and humiliation after being discovered in a sexual situation with a man. Abuse of power by her superiors and a lesbian relationship with another farm-worker further erode Min's trust in Maoism. At the end of Part Two, she has been selected to move back to Shanghai and train to be an actress. Part three is the story of her training at a film studio, in competition with other young trainees. More abuse of power and complex love relationships exacerbate her disillusion with Mao's system. She comes in and out of favor with her superiors in the film studio, depending on who is in charge. Eventually, her acting career falls through, and Min works as a clerk in the studio. At the end of part three, in 1976, Mao dies, and his wife Jiang Qing is arrested. The next few years are briefly mentioned, and the memoir ends with a short explanation of how Min came to live in the United States in 1984.
2473124	/m/07ggls	Sunrunner's Fire	Melanie Rawn	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Part One: Andry, the new Lord of Goddess Keep, has visions of war and death. He sees the destruction of Radzyn, its proud towers ablaze. To prevent his visions, he reworks the teachings and rituals of Goddess Keep based on the findings of the Star Scroll. He also trains Sunrunners in sorcery. Meanwhile, true sorcerers ready themselves to challenge Pol's right to Princemarch. Ruval, Ianthe's oldest, undisputed son, prepared for the challenge by learning sorcery, while Marron infiltrates Chiana of Meadowlord's personal guards. When he gets close enough, he allows Mireva to enter Chiana's chamber and enspell the Princess with a mirror. Chiana then begins to amass an army, which will invade Princemarch. Part Two: Year 728: Pol, now Ruling Prince of Princemarch, seeks to become the man and Prince that his parents, High Prince Rohan and High Princess Sioned raised him to be, but his spirit is impatient and restless. When word comes that dragons are being hunted, Pol follows Riyan and Sorin to Elktrap Manor. They find a dying dragon nearby, who shows them that men had attacked it using sorcery. The attackers were Ruval and Marron, who had been trying to get Pol's attention. A battle ensues. Sorin is killed. As the Desert mourns, Ruval enlists Prince Miyon of Cunaxa's aid in overthrowing Pol. He and Marron hide in Miyon's entourage as the Prince travels to Stronghold on business before the Rialla, while Mireva becomes a servant of Miyon's illegitimate daughter, Meiglan. Meiglan would - unknowingly - be used to ensnare Pol. As Pol prepares for the challenge Ruval will make, he begins to fall for Meiglan despite his suspicions of her. Before Ruval can make his challenge, however, Marron challenges Pol himself for Feruche, their birthplace. Riyan, who had only moments ago had been made Lord of Feruche, accepts Marron's challenge of sorcery. As Marron forms his first spell, Andry turns it back on the sorcerer by using his knowledge of the Star Scroll. He kills Marron in retribution for Sorin's death. This act results in Andry's banishment from the Desert. When Ruval's challenge finally comes, on starlight, Rohan realizes that Pol needs to be told the truth about birth: that Ianthe bore him and he was a diarmadhi. Pol is horrified and angry, but uses his new found knowledge to study the sorcery in the scrolls. He and Ruval meet at Rivernrock and the rabikor begins. During the battle, Ruval tries to pull a dragon from the sky, but Pol bonds with it. The dragon, Azhdeen, kills Ruval, ending the threat to Pol's claim on Princemarch.
2473187	/m/07ggrq	The Star Scroll	Melanie Rawn	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While on Dorval, the Sunrunner Meath uncovers ancient scrolls in the Sunrunner ruins. Concerned about the content and odd star symbols, Meath decides to take the scrolls to the leader of the Sunrunners, Andrade. Lady Andrade appoints Andry to translate the scrolls with the help of Hollis, his brother Maarken's unofficial betrothed. As Andry and Hollis work through the translation and the embedded code, they learn that the scrolls deal with ancient sorcerers and sorcery. They are unaware that the scrolls' existence and rediscovery is known to sorcerers in hiding. Mireva, a sorceress, forms a plan to retrieve the scrolls. One of her charges, Segev, Ianthe's youngest son, travels to Goddess Keep to pose as a young faradhi in order to steal the scrolls. He addicts Hollis to dranath as a cohort, but Andry disrupts Segev's plan. Meanwhile, an arrogant upstart called Masul attempts to proclaim himself Roelstra's son and heir. The whispers of this heir lead to an assassination attempt on Pol's life. To proclaim Pol's position as Prince of Princemarch, Rohan and Pol progresses through Princemarch. Pol meets the local Lords and earns his people's favor by participating in their traditions. Unfortunately, another assassination attempt is made, this time ending in Maeta's death. At the Rialla, most of the discussion is over Masul, whether or not he is Roelstra's heir, and whether or not it even matters. As the Princes debate the issue, Segev continues to drug Hollis, who in turn draws away from Maarken. Then, Andrade claims that she can show the events of the past by using sorcery from the scrolls. Gleeful at the turn of events, Segev uses sorcery during her conjuring in order to kill her. Andry becomes Lord of Goddess Keep. Though saddened by Andrade's death, the debate of Masul continues; her conjure proved nothing. At last a duel is proposed between Masul and Pol. Maarken fights in Pol's place as Pol has yet to be knighted. During the battle, Segev uses sorcery against Maarken. Seeing Maarken in pain snaps Hollis out of her drugged state, and she kills Segev. Masul nearly kills Maarken, but at the last minute, Rohan intervenes and kills him with a pair of thrown daggers. As the Desert entourage travels home, accompanied by Hollis, who is slowly recovering, a valley filled with dragons is discovered. The site will become Pol's palace, Dragon's Rest. Sioned, who had earlier 'bumped' into a dragon on sunlight, attempts to 'speak' with a dragon. This time she succeeds and a bond is formed between human and dragon.
2474366	/m/07gk9b	Aaron's Rod	D. H. Lawrence			 The protagonist of this picaresque novel, Aaron Sisson, is a union official in the coal mines of the English Midlands, trapped in a stale marriage. He is also an amateur, but talented, flautist. At the start of the story he walks out on his wife and two children and decides on impulse to visit Italy. His dream is to become recognised as a professional musician. During his travels he encounters and befriends Rawdon Lilly, a Lawrence-like writer who nurses Aaron back to health when he is taken ill in post-war London. Having recovered his health, Aaron arrives in Florence. Here he moves in intellectual and artistic circles, argues about politics, leadership and submission, and has an affair with an aristocratic lady. The novel ends with an anarchist or fascist explosion that destroys Aaron’s instrument. Many incidents in the novel have direct parallels with events in Lawrence's own life.
2475970	/m/07gntc	Hello America	J. G. Ballard	1981-06-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Ballard's 9th novel is set in the year 2114 AD, several generations after an ecological collapse has rendered North America virtually unlivable. Most of the population was evacuated to Europe and Asia. The bulk of the novel takes place when a European steamship, the SS Apollo, sails to America to try to discover the cause of increased radioactive fallout in England. In typical Ballardian fashion, each of the crew members has a secret agenda, and is basically a pawn of their own psychological yearnings, whether for destruction or glory. Most of the Apollo's crew are descended from expatriate Americans - the protagonist is a young man who grew up in the American Ghetto in Dublin, for instance - and have become mostly assimilated into European society, but still feel some vague draw to the abandoned continent to the west. In the novel, the Soviet Union dammed the Bering Strait in the 1990s, thus changing global weather patterns by reversing the normally clockwise currents in the Pacific Ocean. Although the Russians were able to grow grain as far north as the Arctic Circle, a massive drought began east of the Rocky Mountains. West of the Rockies, the opposite problem was true. Further, much of coastal Asia freezes over. Though the plot is a straightforward adventure yarn - quite unusual for Ballard - the book is actually a subtle parody of American culture. For instance, the final President of the United States is the former governor Jerry Brown of California, who was a promising face in American politics at the time of the novel. His small, ironic role in the novel represents both the triumph and ultimate failure of west coast liberalism of the late Cold War era: when faced with a massive ecological crisis that threatens (and indeed ultimately destroys) the nation, Brown's solution is to build a large youth center, a twice-life-size fiberglass replica of the Taj Mahal, and then abandons the country so he can devote himself to self-improvement. The novel states that Brown dies at age 114 in a Buddhist Monastery in a glaciated Japan. Eventually the Apollo Expedition comes across survivors from the previous expedition thirty years earlier. One of these survivors - clearly insane - has taken to calling himself "President Charles Manson," but none of the Apollo's crew get the reference because the Manson killings occurred 120 years earlier in a completely different world. In the end, it is implied that Europe needs America, if only as a place where the darker elements of the Western mindset can be allowed to play themselves out without inconveniencing decent people. There is a kind of rebirth that re-establishes something akin to the old order, allowing insanity to be sublimated out in small doses to everyone, rather than bottled up in one person where it proves to be really really dangerous. Possibly for the first time ever, nuclear weapons are used for a constructive purpose, and the 'New World Order' that arises from the events of the book contains both the promise of a better future, and the understated vague promise/threat of phantasmagoric horrors to come, though presumably in smaller doses.
2476891	/m/07gqp3	The Guilty Mother	Pierre de Beaumarchais			 Its action takes place twenty years after the previous play, The Marriage of Figaro: The story's premise is that several years ago, while the Count was away on a long business trip, the Countess and Chérubin spent a night together. When the Countess informed Chérubin that what they did was wrong and that she could never see him again, he went away to war and intentionally let himself be mortally wounded on the field. As he lay dying, he wrote a final letter to the Countess, declaring his love and regrets, and making mention of all the things they had done. The Countess did not have the heart to throw away the letter, and instead had a special box made by an Irishman called Bégearss, with a secret compartment in which to store the incriminating note, so the Count would never find it. Soon after, to her dismay, the Countess discovered herself pregnant with Chérubin's child. The Count has been suspicious all these years that he is not the father of Léon, the Countess's son, and so he has been rapidly trying to spend his fortune to ensure the boy won't inherit any of it, even having gone so far as to renounce his title and move the family to Paris; but he has nevertheless held some doubts, and therefore has never officially disowned the boy or even brought up his suspicions to the Countess. Meanwhile, the Count has an illegitimate child of his own, a daughter named Florestine. Bégearss wants to marry her, and to ensure that she will be the Count's only heir, he begins to stir up trouble over the Countess's secret. Figaro and Suzanne, who are still married, must once again come to the rescue of the Count and Countess; and of their illegitimate children Léon and Florestine, who are secretly in love with each other.
2477139	/m/07gr49	The Three Hostages	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 It is some time after the war, and Sir Richard Hannay is living in rural tranquility, having bought Fosse Manor and married Mary Lamington (both featured in Mr Standfast); they have a small son, named Peter John. Hannay's new friend, local doctor Tom Greenslade, a well-travelled and learned man, talks ominously one night of psychology, the subconscious, thrillers and post-war society. Later, Dick reads a letter from his old boss Sir Walter Bullivant, warning him that he will soon be asked to undertake another job for the country. Next day, Julius Victor visits Hannay and tells him his daughter Adela has been kidnapped and held hostage, asking Hannay to help find her. Later that day, MacGillivray visits and tells Hannay of a sinister criminal organisation, controlling the mass of disturbed and disordered minds left over from the Great War, and tracked by the police forces of the world. Faced with capture, the leaders had taken three hostages, Victor's daughter, an aristocratic student and a young boy, sending each of their families a mysterious poem to prove the kidnappings were linked. He also explains that they have only until June to round up the gang, and that the hostages must be safe by then. Hannay is adamant that he cannot help, but his third visitor that day, Sir Arthur Warcliff, tells him about his missing son, and Hannay is drawn into the chase. That night, he lies awake pondering the lines of doggerel sent to the families, and connects them to something Greenslade had said recently. Next day he tells Greenslade all, and bids him remember where he drew his phrases, two of which, concerning a blind woman spinning and a barn in Norway, matched verses from the poem, while the third in Greenslade's speech referred to a curiosity shop run by an elderly Jew, which seems to bear no correspondence to the poem's reference to the "Fields of Eden". Greenslade is baffled, but Hannay recalls a hymn mentioning the Fields of Eden, which Greenslade connects with his vague memories. Another day's pondering gets them no closer, until Hannay breaks his pipe. Suddenly Greenslade remembers an evening in a country pub, where a man named Medina had broken his pipe as he hummed the tune, and at the same meeting mentioned the ideas echoed in the poem. Hannay heads to London to meet Macgillivray, and briefly runs into his old friend Sandy Arbuthnot. Macgillivray briefs him on their enemies, and soon after Hannay meets with Medina, a handsome and accomplished man who Hannay finds he likes a lot, but doesn't yet take into his confidence. He sees Sandy again, who is suspicious of Medina, and the three attend a meeting of an elite dining club, where something Medina says affects Sandy extremely - he becomes rude and angry, and tries to drag Hannay away, but Hannay refuses and walks home with Medina. They stop at Medina's house for a pipe, and there Hannay has a strange dreamlike experience of which he remembers little, only later realising that Medina attempted to hypnotise him and that he somehow resisted. He wakes next day feeling ill, and visits a Doctor Newhover, whose name was planted in his head and who refers him on to a masseuse named Madame Breda, in whose house he also sees a strange young girl. He is again hypnotised, by unseen hands and a strange voice, and again resists. He later reports his experiences to Sandy, who urges him to watch Medina closely and makes plans to investigate the house of the masseuse, and then to take his researches to Europe. For some time Hannay hangs around Medina, one day attending a secret dance-hall with his friend Archie Roylance, where he sees a beautiful girl with dead eyes led away by Medina's suspicious butler, but learns little. He visits Newhover again, and learns that he plans to head to Norway. At last, visiting Medina, he is taken to the library where he was first hypnotized, and introduced to Medina's mother, a striking, frightening, blind old woman. He is again hypnotised, and made to do demeaning tasks, until they are sure he is under their control. He hears of Medina's plans to meet with one Kharama, and learns the gang plans to break up by midsummer, before he faints from exhaustion. Hannay arranges with his friend Archie Roylance to be flown home from Norway when the time comes, and is taken to meet Kharama, an impressive but sinister Indian who discusses hypnotism with Medina. Later, he gets a note from Sandy, arranging a meeting. Telling Medina he is ill and needs a week's rest, he fixes a rendezvous with Roylance and heads home to Fosse, where he sets up a pretence of being in his sickbed. He meets Sandy and they share what they have found, and then slips onto the boat taking Dr Newhover to Norway. Arriving there, he sees Newhover head off by boat, and follows at a discreet distance. Knowing Newhover's heading, he leaves his boat at the village before, bidding the pilot to await his return, and heads overland to Merdal. There, not wishing to be seen at the inn by Newhover, he approaches some locals to find lodging, and is amazed to meet Herr Gaudian, a German engineer he met during the events of Greenmantle. Gaudian reveals he knows Newhover, in truth a former German agent, and agrees to help Hannay. Hannay takes lodgings alongside Gaudian, and learns of a farm in the hills leased to an Englishman ; next day they watch Newhover travel up there, and the man he replaces head down to the village. They spy out the place, but learn little until the second night, when Hannay, heading to the farm, sees Newhover hurrying anxiously down the hill ; he heads into the scrub to avoid being seen, and comes across someone scrambling through the bushes. The man falls into a stream, and Hannay rescues him, and recognises Lord Mercot, one of the hostages. They feed and bathe him, and hear his broken story of hypnotised abduction, but then must persuade him to return to his captors, until such time as the other hostages can be found, promising Gaudian will be keeping an eye. The brave boy heads back to his prison, and Hannay heads for his rendezvous with Archie Roylance. Despite the weather, he makes it safe back to England, and returns to London and Medina. He spends some days with Medina, including another meeting with Kharama, to little avail, but on hearing the hymn mentioned by Greenslade at the start of his quest he is inspired to investigate London for a place suggesting the "Fields of Eden", calling in his old boss Bullivant, an expert on old London, to help. They find mention of a pleasure-resort of that name, and Hannay travels to where it stood and finds an antique shop, clearly a front. He arranges a housebreaking expert to let him in by night, and explores, finding the shop backs on to a larger and newer house; he sees a man there he recognises from his time under hypnosis at Medina's, and following the sound of music finds himself in a room overlooking the dance club where he saw Odell, Medina's butler. To his shock, he sees his old friend Turpin there, dancing with his own wife Mary. He meets Mary later at her aunts' house, and learns she has been working for Sandy, who also knows about the Fields of Eden; they have found the missing girl, Adela Victor, disguised as one of the dancers at the club, but are no closer to finding the little boy. Hannay is invited to stay at Medina's house, but before he moves there he hears from Mary that Archie Roylance has been to the club, been upset by Odell's treatment of the girl and revealed Turpin's identity. Hannay visits Roylance in hospital, where he was recovering from having been beaten by Odell, but Turpin has disappeared - Hannay later learns he was taken, part-hypnotised by Kharama, to a strange house; there Turpin shakes off his paralysis, sees his girl in the house, and plays quiet for a time. Hannay moves in with Medina, whose cool facade has weakened somewhat, and hears that Sandy has been spotted in London. For a week he stays at the house, under close scrutiny, but learns little until he gets a telegram from Gaudian, saying Mercot and his captors have fought and Gaudian has had to lock them all up, bringing Mercot home himself. Tom Greenslade visits, with a message from Mary saying Turpin and Adela Victor are safe. Hannay discovers that Medina's plans to liquidate his gang have been brought forward, and manages to warn Mary. We learn in an aside of a dowdy but somehow elegant district visitor coming to the house of Madame Breda in Palmyra Square, befriending the maid but being warned off by her mistress. Hannay continues to cling to Medina, until at last Greenslade visits again, and instructs Hannay to come to the dance club the following night, leaving a door to Medina's unlocked, while Mercot travels home by train and Turpin, having awakened Adela from her trance, is held in the mysterious house while she sets off once more for the club, and around Britain, Europe and the world the police close in on a variety of people and places. Sandy briefly drops in on Hannay and Medina at a dinner of the Thursday Club, from where Hannay goes to the dance club and sees the staff rounded up and Turpin soundly beat Odell; Mary visits Madame Breda once more, leaving with a bundle in her arms and police swarming the house behind her; Hannay returns to Medina's house, and reveals he knows all, pleading with Medina to hand over the boy. Despite the upset to his plans, Medina is cool, but shaken somewhat when Kharama enters and reveals himself as none other than Sandy Arbuthnot, who has looked after Turpin and Adela at Medina's request, and now threatens to expose him if he refuses to heal the child. Lavater, an old friend of Sandy long lost to Medina, is discovered to be Medina's private secretary, and to hold many secrets, but still Medina holds out. Mary enters with the strange little girl from Madame Breda's house; she has become a powerful figure of wrath, and threatens to disfigure vain Medina if he does not cure the child; he gives in, restores the boy's mind, and they return him to his joyous father. Later, Hannay and Mary join Adela, Turpin, Mercot, and Gaudian in celebration. After a restful spell in the country, Sandy warns Hannay that Medina, never accused of any crimes, may be out for revenge, and advises him to head to Scotland for a spell. Soon he, Mary, their son and Doctor Greenslade are in the Scottish Highlands for the deerstalking season. Soon Archie arrives with news that Medina is at a neighbouring lodge, and Hannay prepares for a showdown. After a long and complex stalk through the crags, Hannay, with no bullets, climbs a dangerous chimney, only to have his hand shot by Medina; he struggles to the top, and Medina follows, but takes a bad turn and gets stuck. He loses his gun, and Hannay lowers a rope to him, but the exhausted Medina is too much for one-handed Hannay to raise up, and lowering him wears through the rope until it breaks, dropping Medina to his death. Hannay falls back exhausted, but is found alive and safe next day.
2477863	/m/07gsqq	Strip Tease	Carl Hiaasen	1993	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 During a late-night bachelor party at The Eager Beaver, a striptease club in Fort Lauderdale Florida, the drunken groom-to-be, Paul Guber, climbs on stage and grabs one of the dancers. Before the club's bouncer can act, Guber is attacked by another customer, swinging a champagne bottle. Chaos ensues, during which the attacker disappears in a hurry, and the groom is hospitalized. The man with the bottle was U.S. Congressman David Lane Dilbeck, an incorrigible (yet secret) patron of strip bars, nude dancers, and other forms of erotic entertainment. Dilbeck's main function in Washington, D.C. is to rubber stamp lucrative price supports for Florida's sugar cane farming industry. His "handler," political fixer Malcolm Moldowsky, is furious at the Congressman's stupidity, since Dilbeck is up for re-election. The dancer is Erin Grant, a single mother engaged in a bitter legal fight with her ex-husband, Darrell, for custody of their young daughter, Angela. Erin was fired from her job as a secretary for the F.B.I. after Darrell was arrested for grand larceny (his "profession" is stealing and re-selling wheelchairs). The legal costs of her divorce impelled Erin to take up erotic dancing as a career. Ironically, her occupation has given the judge a prejudiced view of her, while Darrell's criminal record has been expunged after he has agreed to become an informant for the police. As a result, Darrell has been given custody of Angela, and Erin desperately needs even more money to reverse the court decision. One of Erin's lovestruck fans, a bookish man named Jerry Killian, recognizes Dilbeck from the club, and tries to blackmail the Congressman into influencing the judge in Erin's favor. But when the judge proves resistant to Dilbeck's probing, Moldowsky decides the only way to safeguard Dilbeck is to have Killian murdered. His body is found floating in the Clark Fork River in Montana - to be found by Miami homicide detective Al Garcia, on vacation with his family. Another blackmailer surfaces in the person of Mordecai, a sleazy lawyer related to Paul Guber's fiancee. One of Guber's friends from the bachelor party inadvertently snapped a picture of Dilbeck during the champagne-bottle attack, with which Mordecai demands hush money. But Mordecai and Paul's greedy fiancee are likewise murdered on Moldowsky's orders. The photo has indirectly sparked Dilbeck's memory of that night, and he becomes obsessed with Erin, refusing to continue with his reelection campaign until he can "possess" her. Moldowsky, conscious that Dilbeck is necessary to his employers' continued prosperity, is forced to assist him. Garcia returns to Florida and compares notes with Erin and her main ally, the club's bouncer Shad. Garcia discovers evidence linking Jerry Killian's murder to Moldowsky, but nothing that will stand up in court. At the same time, Darrell Grant, who is also a drug addict, becomes totally irresponsible and is busted for larceny yet again. Disgusted, the police drop him as an informant and restore his criminal record, tipping the dispute in Erin's favor. Deciding not to wait, she snatches Angela while Darrell is away, from her aunt's house. Moldowsky approaches Erin's boss and asks for her to give the Congressman a private performance. Erin agrees, knowing that it is the best way of gathering evidence. During her first private show, Dilbeck is rendered nearly helpless with lust, and Erin finds it easy to manipulate him. He offers her even more money for a repeat performance, and she agrees. Having realized that, under normal circumstances, Dilbeck will probably escape implication in Jerry Killian's murder, Erin comes up with a plan to "destroy" him. On the night of the second performance, Darrell follows Erin to the meeting place, where he comes upon Moldowsky, watch-dogging the show, and beats him to death in a drug-induced rage. Inside, Erin is dancing for Dilbeck again. Being used to women who are easily awed by his title, or by his extravagant favors, Dilbeck tries to seduce her, and is vexed when she proves unimpressed by either. Darrell enters, demanding to be taken to his daughter, and Erin moves to the next phase of her plan, drawing a pistol and ordering them both out. With the help of Dilbeck's limousine driver, Erin drives Dilbeck and Darrell to a sugar cane field owned by Dilbeck's most prominent supporters. When the car stops, Darrell takes off running into the cane (unknown to anybody at the time, he winds up falling into a drug-induced slumber in a bed of freshly cut cane, and is killed when the cane is fed into a milling machine). Erin offers to slow-dance with Dilbeck in the cane field. Dilbeck believes the dance is a prelude to "wild cowboy sex," but when he realizes it is not, he loses control and tries to rape Erin - at which point he is seized by a squad of F.B.I. agents, led by Erin's old boss, who received an anonymous call saying she had been kidnapped. Dilbeck, caught in the middle of an attempted rape, is now trapped. Erin gives him an ultimatum: in exchange for avoiding arrest and public exposure, he must resign from his Congressional seat. If he refuses - "have you ever been on Hard Copy?" With Darrell gone, and the threat to her from Dilbeck and his patrons removed, Erin resigns from the club and starts a new life with Angela. In the epilogue, it is said that she has gotten back her old job as a secretary with the F.B.I., and a night job dancing in the Main Street Parade at Walt Disney World, and is currently applying to become an F.B.I. Special Agent herself.
2478722	/m/07gvgz	Austerlitz	W. G. Sebald	2001	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jacques Austerlitz, the main character in the book, is an architectural historian who encounters and befriends the solitary narrator in Antwerp during the 1960s. Gradually we come to understand his life history. He arrived in Britain during the summer of 1939 as an infant refugee on a kindertransport from a Czechoslovakia threatened by Hitler's Nazis. He was adopted by an elderly Welsh Calvinist preacher and his sickly wife, and spent his childhood in Mid Wales before attending a minor public school. His foster parents died, and Austerlitz learned something of his background. After school he attended university and became an academic who is drawn to, and began his research in, the study of European architecture. After a nervous breakdown, Austerlitz visited Prague where he met a close friend of his lost parents. The elderly lady tells him the fate of his mother, an actress and opera singer who was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. From Prague, Austerlitz traveled to Theriesenstadt. Here readers learn about the disappearance of European Jewry during the Holocaust. The novel shifts to contemporary Paris as Austerlitz seeks out any remaining evidence about the fate of his father. Sebald explores the ways in which collections of records, such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France or National Library of France, entomb memories. During the novel the reader is taken on a guided tour of a lost European civilization: a world of fortresses, railway stations, concentration camps and libraries.
2479295	/m/07gwf5	The Glove of Darth Vader	Paul Davids		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 After the destruction of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor, the Empire is left without a true leader. The Supreme Prophet Kadann prophesied that the next leader of the Empire would wear the indestructible right hand Glove of Darth Vader, so Imperial senator Timothy Barclay sends Captain Dunwell to find the glove. The Rebel Alliance and the Senate's Planetary Intelligence Network known as SPIN, hoping to find information on the new emperor, send C-3PO and R2-D2 disguised to the planet Kessel. There they discover Grand Moff Hissa introducing Trioculus, who claims to be Palpatine's son, as the heir to Empire. Although he manages to trick his followers by seemingly producing Force lightning, he demands that his advisors find the glove so he can cement his power. After much searching and no clues on the glove's whereabouts, Captain Dunwell, the head of the Whaladon Processing Center on Mon Calamari, contacts him to inform him that he has found the glove, deep in the oceans of Mon Calamari. By chance, Luke Skywalker and Admiral Ackbar, after picking up the droids from Kessel, bring them to Mon Calamari to download the information that R2-D2 found. Although the whaling ship is destroyed and Captain Dunwell killed, Luke is unable to stop Trioculus from obtaining the glove and becoming the new Emperor. As he parts ways with Luke, Trioculus swears he will destroy him.
2479621	/m/07gw_9	The Super Barbarians	John Brunner		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On Qualavarra, humanity was enslaved by the Vorra, a race of technologically-advanced barbarians who had conquered space. However, there was a place called "The Acre" where humans lived in relative freedom, and there they had uncovered a secret about the Vorra: there was something connected with Earth that the Vorra could not abide—and yet could not do without.
2479707	/m/07gx3g	To Conquer Chaos	John Brunner		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On the face of the Earth only the Barrenland remained an impenetrable mystery—a blasted radioactive area the size of a small state where no man dared to venture. But Jervis Yanderman was one of the more courageous souls of that future day when men at least were starting to reconstruct the vanquished civilization of the dim past. Jervis knew that the secret of the Barrenland had to be solved. For things from out of this world still emerged from it to terrorize neighboring lands and strange weird visitations haunted those who even approached it.
2481081	/m/07gzh6	The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch	Neil Gaiman			 The book follows the childhood memories of the narrator, illustrating various experiences in his life: fishing on the beach at dawn; his grandparents and how one grandfather went mad; a hunchback great-uncle; the betrayal of children by adults; fear of the unknown; an unwanted pregnancy, violence, possibly even murder. The general story is paralleled with the traditional story of the Mr. Punch show, 'The oldest, the wisest play'. The narrator is first introduced to Mr. Punch when fishing with his grandfather, but encounters it, and a mysterious 'professor' (Punch & Judy man), during various other activities. The story of Mr. Punch, is that he kills his baby, then his wife Judy and the police officer who comes to arrest him. He outwits a ghost, a crocodile and a doctor, convinces the hangman to be hanged in his place and, at the play's end, even defeats the devil himself. Like many of Gaiman's works, a major theme in this graphic novel is memory and the unreliability of one's own recollections.
2481655	/m/07h01m	Carrie's War	Nina Bawden		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Carrie Willow and her brother Nick are evacuated to Wales during the Second World War. They stay with the bullying Mr. Evans, and his gentle but weak sister, whom they call "Auntie Lou." The children befriend another young evacuee, Albert Sandwich, who is staying with Mr. Evans' other sister, the dying Mrs Gotobed and her helper Hepzibah who Mr Evans thinks is a witch. They also befriend Mrs. Gotobed's distant cousin Mr. Johnny Gotobed who has cerebral palsy, and her housekeeper, Hepzibah Green. The housekeeper tells the children about a curse on the family which concerns a skull kept in the library. According to the tale, the curse would activate if the skull is removed from the house. Later in the book, Carrie, in a fit of anger, throws the skull out of the window into the outside pond. The next day as they depart on a train, she sees the house burning, and this leads her to believe that she caused it by throwing the skull out of the window. Later their mother comes to visit them but nothing is said about Mr Evans. Carrie's birthday arrives and Albert kisses her on the cheek for a present and she is overjoyed by this. Mrs Gotobed passes away after this. The children believe Mr Evans has stolen her will so that Hepzibah and Mr Johnny are out of his deceased sister's house. Auntie Lou meets an American soldier called Major Cass Harper and becomes very friendly with him (keeping this secret from her brother who would not approve). Mrs Willow sends a letter saying to come home and so they try to reveal the truth of the stolen will. Auntie Lou departs to marry Major Cass Harper at this point. Thirty years later, Carrie's children return and discover that Hepzibah, Mr Johnny and Albert are still alive and that the fire was from Mr Johnny playing with matches. Mr Evans was revealed dead after a few weeks of grief; loneliness and of his sister's departure to America, many years earlier.
2482107	/m/07h0ll	Me and Juliet	Richard Rodgers			 : For theatrical terminology, see Stage (theatre). The entire action of the show takes place in and close to a Broadway theatre in which the long-running musical "Me and Juliet&nbsp;" (the "show-within-the-show") is playing. The setting is the early 1950s. A half hour remains before the show is to begin. Electrician Sidney and chorus girl Jeanie are irritated at Sidney's fellow electrician, Bob, for not being there. Sidney needs Bob's help; Jeanie, Bob's girlfriend, is annoyed at being stood up. Sidney warns Jeanie that Bob may not be the right man for her; these are doubts she has too (Musical numbers: "A Very Special Day"/"That's the Way it Happens"). Jeanie leaves, and Bob appears. Bob tells Sidney he likes dating Jeanie, but does not plan to marry her. When Sidney jokes that Jeanie can do better than Bob, the larger man momentarily chokes him. Jeanie sees this, adding to her doubts about Bob. Larry, the assistant stage manager, is also attracted to Jeanie (reprise of "That's the Way it Happens"). Stage manager Mac sees to the final preparations, and the overture to the internal show is played by the orchestra, led by Dario, the conductor ("Overture to Me and Juliet"). The internal show's curtain rises ("Marriage Type Love"): the main male character, "Me" (performed by Charlie, a singer), tells the audience about the girl he wants to marry, Juliet (Lily, a singer). He also tells the audience of the girl he is determined not to marry, Carmen, who scares him. "Me" feels Carmen (the lead female dancing role) is better suited to his boss, Don Juan (the lead male dancer). As the internal show continues, Bob and Sidney are on the light bridge. Bob identifies with Don Juan for his reluctance to marry ("Keep It Gay"). Another day at Me and Juliet, and the dancers are practicing under Mac's supervision (conclusion of "Keep It Gay"). At Larry's urging, Jeanie decides to audition for the position of second understudy for the role of Juliet. On learning this, Mac takes Larry aside and warns him never to get involved with a cast member of a show while in charge of it. No sooner has Mac said this than his girlfriend Betty (currently in the show across the street) auditions for the role of Carmen. The producer gives her the role. As Larry looks on with amusement, Mac accepts this professionally, then stamps off in disgust. Jeanie practices for her own audition ("No Other Love"), and Larry tells her that the audience will accept her if she's "a real kid" like Juliet, but reject her if she's a "phony" ("The Big Black Giant"). Larry desires a romance with Jeannie, but fears the larger and stronger Bob. Several months pass, during which Jeanie gets the job as second understudy. Larry and Jeanie are meeting secretly and keeping their budding romance from Bob. The rest of the cast is aware of their dates—one dancer spotted them in a chili restaurant on Eighth Avenue. Mac, true to his principles, has dumped Betty, but the two are still attracted to each other. Betty enjoys acting ("It's Me"). As she performs in the internal show, Bob and Sidney are on the light bridge again. Bob has been fooled by Jeanie's lies about why they are not going out, and is enlightened when Sidney lets slip that Larry and Jeanie are seeing each other. Bob demands proof, and Sidney tells Bob to watch what happens in the wings during the upcoming Act 1 finale to Me and Juliet. Bob sees Larry and Jeanie kiss after she comes offstage with a tray of flowers, an action caught by Bob's spotlight. Mac enters, grasps the situation, sends Larry away, then puts the tray back in Jeanie's hands and pushes her onstage. She is pursued by Bob's spotlight, which relentlessly follows her around the stage as more and more of the dancers become aware something has gone badly wrong. Bob drops a sandbag from the light bridge; it knocks the tray Jeanie is holding to the ground. Mac orders the curtain lowered in front of a stage in panic. In the downstairs lounge, a few minutes before the Act 2 curtain for Me and Juliet rises, the ushers comment on the remarkable conclusion to Act 1—although the audience has noticed nothing unusual ("Intermission Talk"). As Act 2 of the internal show starts, an enraged Bob is searching the theatre for Jeannie and Larry. Unable to find them, he takes up position at a bar across the street where he can watch the theatre doors ("It Feels Good"). The perspective shifts to the onstage action in Me and Juliet, where Don Juan and Carmen are on a date ("We Deserve Each Other"), before moving to the manager's office where Larry and Jeanie are hiding out ("I'm Your Girl"). Mac has only just begun his lecture to them when Bob enters through the window, having heard familiar voices. In the ensuing fight, Bob knocks out Mac, but when the electrician grabs for Jeannie, Larry strongly defends her. The fight ends when Bob accidentally hits his head on a radiator and is knocked out as well. Ruby, the company manager, sends Larry and Jeannie down to the stage to continue the play. After Bob and Mac recover, Ruby informs Bob that Larry and Jeanie had secretly married earlier that day, and, surprised, the electrician leaves. Mac, fearful of more mayhem, goes in search of him. As Mac exits, the phone rings, and Ruby takes the call. It is the producer, calling for Mac to transfer him to another show, thereby setting him free to resume his romance with Betty. Onstage, Me and Juliet is concluding. After the internal show finishes ("Finale to Me and Juliet"), Larry, who will be the new stage manager, insists on rehearsing a scene from the show. Seeing Bob enter with a scowl, Larry orders him and Sidney to be present the next morning to re-angle the lights. Taken aback, and rather sheepishly, Bob says "I didn't know you were married" before quietly leaving, after stating, "I'll be here, I guess." Jeanie is congratulated by her showmates, but Larry, all business, waves them to their places to rehearse the scene. As Lily has had to leave, Jeanie stands in for her as Juliet, while Larry sings the part of Me in the scene, as the curtain falls ("Finale of Our Play").
2483627	/m/07h3jl	Illywhacker	Peter Carey	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is related in broad chronological order by the main protagonist, Herbert Badgery, but with frequent digressions that relate the circumstances and life history of Badgery himself, and of many of the characters he meets. The story begins in 1919 when the thirty-three year old Herbert lands his aeroplane in a field close to the wealthy former bullock-herder Jack McGrath. Herbert befriends Jack and persuades him to invest in the construction of an aeroplane factory. Herbert also becomes the lover of Jack's teenage daughter Phoebe, who had previously been involved in a lesbian relationship with a teacher, Annette Davidson. Jack commits suicide following a violent argument between Herbert and some other potential investors. Herbert marries Phoebe and they bear two children, Charles and Sonia. After learning to fly Herbert's aeroplane, Phoebe steals it, abandoning her husband and children to live with Annette. Herbert briefly becomes the lover of Jack's widow, Molly, but goes out on the road to scrape a living, often as a confidence trickster, accompanied by his two children. He meets Leah Goldstein, a former medical student turned dancer who is married to the Communist agitator Izzy Kaletsky. She and Herbert become lovers and develop a variety act, but Leah returns to care for Izzy after he has both legs amputated following an accident. Sonia dies, and Herbert is subsequently jailed for an assault on a Chinese man who had been his childhood mentor, Goon Tse Ying, whose finger is torn off. In prison, Herbert is presented with the preserved finger in a jar, and finds that looking into the jar presents the viewer with curious visions. Herbert, who for much of his life had been illiterate, begins studying, and eventually obtains a degree in Australian history. Charles becomes a dealer in animals, and meets Emma Underhill when required to rescue her from the clutches of a frightened goanna. Charles falls in love with and weds Emma, despite warnings from her father about her fragile mental state. Charles builds a successful business selling animals and moves into larger and larger premises. Upon the outbreak of World War Two, he considers enlisting, but is rejected because of his hearing. Traumatised by his decision, Emma retreats into the goanna's cage and continues living in an adapted cage for the rest of her life. Leah returns to help Charles, but also begins living in a cage, as part of Charles' extended household. After his release from prison, Herbert goes to live with Charles at the pet emporium. He attempts to rebuild part of Charles' shop, but the attempt ends in disaster. Herbert befriends Charles' youngest son, Hissao, who dreams of becoming an architect. Herbert suffers a stroke, and Charles is obliged to consider how his shop can continue to maintain the support of his American backers, who wish to export animals illegally against Charles' wishes. Emma comes into possession of the jar of Herbert's that contains Ying's finger and claims that she sees a reptile in the bottle that she also claims is Hissao's half-brother. Distraught by the claim, Charles shoots Emma's goanna, and turns the gun on himself. Hissao claims he will not give up architecture in order to preserve the family business by becoming an animal smuggler, but does so, and becomes wealthy and much-travelled. He accidentally kills a rare bird he is smuggling, whereupon he sells much of his share in the business to Japanese investors and commences rebuilding the emporium to his own design, according to which it becomes a bizarre and controversial museum of the Australian nation.
2486998	/m/07h9hv	The Cowardly Lion of Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1923	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the story, the Cowardly Lion believes that he has depleted the reserve of courage imbued in him by the Wizard (as told in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). Someone soon misdirects the Lion into thinking that he can only replenish his courage by eating a courageous man. Since the Lion dislikes the notion of harming anyone, he resolves to do the deed as quickly as possible, and so embarks on his quest. Unbeknownst to the Lion, he is being hunted by two would-be hunters: a circus clown named Notta Bit More, and an orphaned boy named Bobby Downs, whom Notta calls Bob Up. Notta accidentally said the magic spell that sent Bob and him to the Munchkin land of Mudge, where the tyrannical and cranky ruler, Mustafa, sends them on their quest: two cowardly lion hunters hunting a Cowardly Lion. The three meet; complications ensue. The adventurers meet bird people on the Skyle ("sky isle") of Un, as well as Nikadoodle, the bird with a telephone beak. They fly about in a Flyaboutabus, and encounter the bottled city of Preservatory. The more usual characters, Dorothy, Glinda, and their compatriots, become involved before a satisfactory conclusion is reached.
2487031	/m/07h9l_	The Descent of Anansi	Steven Barnes		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A space station-manufactury attempts to become commercially independent from its Government backers by exporting super-strong nanowire that can only be manufactured in free-fall. Following an attempt to sabotage their first delivery and hijack the cargo, the intrepid crew realise they can escape the hijackers. Their shuttle Anansi can become a modern day version of its namesake, an African Spider-god... by descending to Earth on a thread. The physics of tidal forces are explained, and the possibilities of orbital tethers to accelerate payloads into higher orbits (or indeed de-orbit shuttles without retro-rockets) are woven into a hard science fiction thriller. The Anansi incident, Falling Angel, and other elements of the story are used as background in the Dream Park series, also written by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes - particularly The Barsoom Project, the second of the series.
2487041	/m/07h9mq	Grampa in Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1924	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Things are going from bad to worse in the dilapidated kingdom of Ragbad; even the rag crop is failing. To top it all off (or not), King Fumbo's head is blown away in a ferocious storm (with "ten thousand pounds of thunder"). Prince Tatters of Ragbag, and Grampa, a former soldier and the bravest man in the kingdom (population 27), set out to search for King Fumbo's lost head, and a fortune to save the kingdom, and a princess to boot. They are joined by Bill, an iron weathercock from Chicago, who was brought to life by an electrical storm and blown to Oz. Meanwhile, in Perhaps City in the Maybe Mountains, the Princess Pretty Good has a problem: the prophet Abrog (also known as Gorba) foresees her marrying a monster if she does not marry in four days. (He suggests himself as her bridegroom.) When Pretty Good resists, Abrog kidnaps her and tries to transform her into a clod of earth; but since she is, in fact, more than just pretty good, as princesses go, Pretty Good turns into the beautiful flower fairy Urtha. Wide-ranging adventures&mdash;from Fire Island to Isa Poso to Monday Mountain &mdash; culminate in the location and restoration of King Fumbo's head. Dorothy (with the help of Percy Vere the forgetful poet) manages to restore order. Prince Tatters ends up married to Princess Pretty Good &mdash; which is pretty good for him.
2487067	/m/07h9q6	The Lost King of Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1925	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Old Mombi, formerly the Wicked Witch of the North, is now a cook in the land of Kimbaloo. One day she comes across Pajuka, the former prime minister of Oz, enchanted by Mombi into a goose years before. She sets out to find Pastoria, the king of Oz, whom she also enchanted in the past. She kidnaps a local boy called Snip as her unwilling assistant and bearer of burdens. Eventually deciding, however, that he knows too much, Mombi throws Snip down a well; he ends up in Blankenburg, populated by the invisible Blanks. Snip meets and soon rescues Tora, an amnesiac old tailor. Tora has been held prisoner for many years by the Blanks, to do their tailoring; he has compensated by sending his detachable ears flying about the countryside to hear the news. Meanwhile, Dorothy is accidentally transported to Hollywood, where she meets Humpy, a live stunt dummy, whom she brings back to Oz. They escape the Back Talkers in Eht Kcab Sdoow (by running backwards), and meet the Scooters who help scoot them on their way. Kabumpo the Elegant Elephant shows up to provide transport (of the mandane sort). Dorothy's party encounters Snip and Tora, and Mombi and Pajuka too. They come to the conclusion that Humpy the dummy is the enchanted Pastoria. Eventually, matters are clarified and settled: Pajuka is restored to humanity, but Humpy proves not to be the missing king after all. Old Tora is disenchanted and turns out to be Pastoria. He spurns any notion of returning to his throne, however; he is content to settle down as a humble tailor in the Emerald City, with Snip as his apprentice and Humpy as his tailor's dummy. In a rare act of Ozite capital punishment, Mombi is ruthlessly doused with water and melts away like the Wicked Witch of the West, so that nothing is left of her but her buckled shoes.
2487125	/m/07h9vx	The Hungry Tiger of Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1926	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Thompson begins with a tyrant, Irasha the Rough, the Pasha of Rash, a tiny kingdom in the southwest of Ev. The Pasha has a problem: his prison is too full to cram any more Rashers in. His Vizier's solution is to obtain a ferocious animal from nearby Oz to devour the luckless prisoners. Travelling to the Emerald City by his hurry cane, the Vizier lures the Hungry Tiger (first seen in Ozma of Oz) to Rash, where he is made the guard of the prison. As might be expected from his history, however, the Hungry Tiger is a total failure at eating prisoners. Meanwhile, through an unfortunate series of events involving a winding road and a pair of Quick Sandals, Betsy Bobbin (introduced in Tik-Tok of Oz) and her new acquaintance, Carter Green, the Vegetable Man, end up in Rash, and no sooner do they arrive than they're thrown into the crowded prison. There they meet the Scarlet Prince Evered (known as Reddy), the rightful ruler of Rash. Together with the Tiger, they escape, and have varied adventures with Big Wigs and Gnomes in their search for three magic rubies. Back in Oz, Princess Ozma has troubles of her own: she is confronted by Atmos Fere, a balloon-like being who lives in the upper stratosphere. His plan is to kidnap her up to his own kingdom, to prove to his skeptical fellows that living beings can actually exist on the surface of the Earth. Ozma, however, has a secret weapon (actually, a pin). In time, the adventurers recover the magic rubies, and Reddy is restored to the Rashian throne. The Pasha and his evil Vizier end up stranded on a desert island in the Nonestic Ocean.
2487238	/m/07hb2w	Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1929	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A rainy day in Philadelphia means no baseball; Peter Brown, the child protagonist introduced by Thompson in The Gnome King of Oz, mopes in his attic. He finds the sacks that were full of gold when he brought them back from his previous Oz adventure; and one of those sacks contains an odd gold coin. Toying with the coin and thinking of Oz, he wishes himself back in the magic land &mdash; and suddenly finds himself in the front yard of Jack Pumpkinhead. The sensible thing for Peter to do is to head for the Emerald City; and Jack is ready to act as his guide. This is perhaps not the best arrangement &mdash; and the two quickly get lost in the Quadling Country, where they blunder into Chimneyville and Scare City. By chance, Peter finds that his empty sack will consume objects and creatures that are scooped into its open mouth. The two also happen to obtain the magic dinner bell of Jinnicky the Red Jinn, which supplies Peter with needed provisions. The travelers adopt a third member for their party when they meet the doggerel-spouting Snif the Iffin (he's a griffin who has lost his "gr-"). The three then encounter the unfortunate Belfaygor, the Baron of Bourne. He has been accidentally cursed with a rapidly-growing beard that he must constantly snip away. Even worse, his fiancée, the princess Shirley Sunshine, has been kidnapped by the local villain, Mogodore the Mighty, the Baron of Baffleburg. Boy, baron, iffin and pumpkinhead set out to remedy this situation, and quickly become enwrapped in complexities involving a Forbidden Flagon and a talkative and abusive Sauce Box. When Mogodore sets out to conquer Oz and actually succeeds in seizing the Emerald City, the travelers have to mount a desperate rescue effort. Eventually Jack, with help from the Red Jinn (here introduced for the first time; his name, Jinnicky, is not revealed until later books), manages to save the day: with the Forbidden Flagon, he reduces Mogodore and his thousand warriors to little beings "no bigger than brownies." The miniaturized aggressors are confined to their homeland, also miniaturized. Snif the Iffin recovers his lost "gr-." Order in Oz is restored, with a great celebratory banquet before Peter is sent home, with thanks, once again.
2487655	/m/07hc1h	Handy Mandy in Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1937	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book's heroine is an "honest and industrious" goat-girl named Mandy, who grazes her flock on the slopes of Mt. Mern (a location otherwise unidentified). The story opens with a bang and a splash: an underground spring erupts in a geyser that blasts Mandy into the sky. The force propels her across the Deadly Desert to Oz; she lands in the little principality of Keretaria in the Munchkin Country, her impact cushioned by the influence of a magic blue daisy. Mandy finds a silver hammer, and meets a white ox with golden horns; she blunders into the court of King Kerr and his courtiers. They are outraged by the intrusion of such an outlandish figure &mdash; for Mandy has seven arms and hands. As Mandy explains, :"This iron hand...I use for ironing, lifting hot pots from the stove and all horrid sort of hard work; this leather hand I keep for beating rugs, dusting, sweeping, and so on; this wooden hand I use for churning and digging in the garden; these two red rubber hands for dishwashing and scrubbing, and my two fine white hands I keep for holding and braiding by hair." Mandy, for her part, is amazed to meet so many two-handed people; on Mt. Mern, everyone has seven hands. Mandy is reprieved from the dungeons by Nox the Royal Ox, who takes her as his "slave." It is a benign sort of slavery; Mandy and Nox quickly become friends. (It is Nox who gives the girl her nickname, Handy Mandy.) Nox is preoccupied by the political situation of Keretaria: the rightful king, a boy named Kerry, has disappeared, and his throne has been usurped by his uncle Kerr. The Royal Ox is an unusual creature: his right horn grants wishes, and his left horn offers clues. When a clue indicates that King Kerry can be found at a place called the Silver Mountain, the enterprising Mandy leads Nox on a search for the missing monarch. They swim rivers (Mandy can't swim) and survive a flood on their way to the Gillikin Country. A doorway hidden under a waterfall leads them to a subterranean world within Silver Mountain, a fantastic place of silver filigree lit by glowing amethysts. The domain is ruled by an evil and ambitious tyrant called the Wizard of Wutz. His throne sits in a pool of mercury, bordered by lavender sands. Wutz is plotting to steal all the main magical artifacts of Oz, including the Magic Picture and Glinda's Great Book of Records, in order to conquer the land. As part of this plan, he keeps Kerry prisoner, and has obtained the jug that is the confinement vessel of Ruggedo, the Gnome King (he was transformed into a jug at the end of Pirates in Oz). The Wizard of Wutz's machinations have of course attracted the notice of Princess Ozma, the Wizard of Oz, Princess Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and their friends and allies. Yet their efforts to solve their difficulties are inhibited, since they lack the Magic Picture and Book of Records. When Mandy and Nox confront the Wizard of Wutz, he imprisons them in the depths of his realm. Mandy accidentally liberates Ruggedo from the jug, merely by breaking it. The Wizard of Wutz and Ruggedo instantly become allies in evil (though deeply mistrustful ones), and set off for the Emerald City to complete their conquest. Mandy's silver hammer, though, has proven to be magic; striking it calls forth a helpful purple elf. With the hammer and elf, the blue daisy, and Nox's horns, Mandy and the ox escape confinement, find and rescue King Kerry, and reach Ozma's palace in time to frustrate the plans of Wutz and Ruggedo. Himself the elf transforms the two villains into potted cacti. (This is the last appearance of Ruggedo the Gnome King in the "Famous Forty" Oz books, though he does re-appear in the works of later Oz authors.) Ozma restores order and repairs damage with her Magic Belt. Wutz's spies and agents are transformed into moles; Kerry is returned to his throne. Mandy is rewarded with an emerald necklace and a luxury she has longed for &mdash; gloves; Ozma gives her seven sets of seven gloves for her seven hands. After a month at home on Mt. Mern, Mandy returns to Oz (with her goats) via wishing pill, for a new life. The plot of this book strongly resembles that of Baum's The Lost Princess of Oz, in which Ugu the shoemaker steals magical artifacts and kidnaps a ruler in a conquest plot, just like the Wizard of Wutz. Indeed, Trot comments on the plot resemblance in Chapter 14 of Handy Mandy.
2487738	/m/07hcbv	Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1938	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story opens with a dinner party, attended by seven of the characters from Baum's inaugural book. Present are the famous foursome, Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, along with the Wizard, Jellia, and the Soldier with the Green Whiskers. (Baum named the latter personage Omby Amby, but Thompson re-christened him Wantowin Battles.) The dinner is hosted by the Wizard, preparatory to his introduction of his newest invention. After a long session of reminiscence that fills the first chapter, the Wizard takes his guests to a glass-domed building that contains two gleaming silver aircraft, the newly-created ozoplanes. The Wizard has named them the "Ozpril" and the "Oztober." The guests enthusiastically pile into the craft to inspect them. The Soldier with the Green Whiskers ate twenty-nine pickles at dinner, and is suddenly overcome by a violent cramp. He slams into the control panel of the Oztober, depressing the up, south, fast, spin, spiral, zig, zag, slow, and circle buttons simultaneously. The Oztober zooms off into the sky, headed for parts unknown, with the Soldier, the Tin Man, and Jellia on board. The Wizard, startled and appalled, takes the Ozpril in pursuit and in search of the Oztober, accompanied by Dorothy, Lion, and Scarecrow. Enduring a chaotic flight, the resourceful Tin Man eventually gets the ozoplane under control; he decides to teach himself to fly the craft, and then return to the Emerald City. In the dawn of the new day, he sights an unknown country in the sky, and lands the plane there. He enthusiastically but undiplomatically claims the place for Ozma as a colony of the Land of Oz. The country, however, has a name, and inhabitants, and a touchy, egotistical, and aggressive ruler: Stratovania is the domain of King Strutoovious the Seventh. (He calls himself "Strut of the Strat" for short.) This king quickly decides to turn the tables and conquer Ozma and Oz. He holds the new arrivals prisoner &mdash; though his hostility is somewhat mollified by his affection for Jellia; he likes her smooth brown hair, so different from the upstanding "electric hair" of the Stratovanians. Strat impulsively names Jellia his "starina" &mdash; a pun on "czarina." (Similar puns flow thick and fast: the new starina is addressed as "your Skyness" and "your Stratjesty.") Despite his affection for Jellia, Stratoovious assembles his army of Blowmen and forces the Tin Man to pilot the ozoplane back to the Emerald City. The other Ozites, left behind, try to find a way to counter this threatened invasion of Oz. Jellia tries to use her influence as starina &mdash; but faces the opposition of Strut's existing queen, Kabebe. Jellia and Wantowin are in danger on being thrown off the edge of Stratovania, when the Wizard and company arrive in the second ozoplane. But the plane is blown up by the Blowmen, and the Ozites have to leap off the edge of the skyland to save themselves. The Wizard uses the magic in his "kit-bag" (it has green eyes and emits feline yowls) to cushion their fall. The Ozites land at Red Top Mountain in the Quadling Country. The place's rightful ruler, Princess Azarine, has escaped the clutches of the usurper Bustado (an even worse villain than Strut) who captures the Ozites. This villain sends the Wizard in search of Azarine, and holds the rest of the party hostage. Yet the hostages escape, and meet up with the Wizard, Azarine, and her protectors, the great stag Shagomar and his wife Dear Deer. The group reaches the palace of Glinda, though the sorceress is absent with Ozma; the Wizard is able to use Glinda's magic to combat the Stratovanian invasion. Strut and his forces reach the Emerald City; the residents flee or hide. Strut tries to obtain Ozma's Magic Belt from her safe, but is frustrated; the Wizard has united with Ozma and Glinda to rescue the Belt, the most powerful magical talisman of Oz. Once in possession of the Belt, Ozma sends Strut's army home and ends his bid for conquest. She turns the usurper Bustado into a red squirrel, so that Azarine can resume her rightful place after enjoying an Emerald City vacation. Thompson gives her protagonists some odd adversaries, including sky creatures called spikers that are something like iridescent octopuses, and a large fierce bugbear that is half insect and half bear in form. And she indulges in extravagant nonsensical tech talk, as with the Wizard's "elutherated altitude pills" and Glinda's "triple-edged, zentomatic transporter." She also misuses the word "entomophagous" to mean insect-like; it actually means something that eats insects.
2487782	/m/07hchq	Merry-Go-Round in Oz	Eloise McGraw	1963	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Halidom and Troth are two adjacent principalities within the Land of Oz, both resembling medieval kingdoms. Heir to the throne of Halidom is Prince Gules. The people of Halidom have always derived their physical and mental abilities from three golden circlets worn by their ruler: the first around his forehead, the second on his right forearm, the third on his right thumb. The first and third circlets have been lost, with attendant loss of abilities by the subjects of Halidom. Fess is a young pageboy in the household of Prince Gules, but Fess was born in Troth, so the circlets have no effect on him. Awakening one day to discover that all the natives of Halidom are strangely languid, Fess learns that the second (and last remaining) circlet has been stolen. He embarks on a quest with Prince Gules, aided by a unicorn and a Flittermouse (a mouse with wings) to retrieve all three. Meanwhile, Dorothy Gale and the Cowardly Lion temporarily leave the Emerald City to place an order with the Easter Bunny, whose underground domain is conveniently accessible from Oz. When Dorothy escapes from an orphanage, she and the Lion join the Prince and Fess in their quest. Robin Brown, an orphan from Oregon, USA, rides a magic merry-go-round horse to the Land of Oz. The horse whisks him to the Quadling and Munchkin Countries of Oz, where Robin has adventures in View Halloo (a region dedicated to fox-hunting) and Roundabout (a land where everything is round, inhabited by Roundheads). Eventually, Robin must help find the missing magic circlets of Halidom.
2487799	/m/07hckv	The Hidden Valley of Oz	Rachel Cosgrove Payes	1951	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jonathan Andrew Manley, nicknamed Jam, is a boy from Ohio, the son of a biologist. At the start of the story, he is building a "collapsible kite" from plans he found in a popular magazine. Rather than cutting the pieces of his wooden frame to match the plans, however, he scales up the kite to match the size of his wood, yielding an extra-large result. The size of the thing inspires him to try to fly on it; he attaches a shipping crate, and gathers up three of his father's experimental animals (two guinea pigs and a white lab rat). A strong gust of wind lifts kite, crate, and passengers into the sky; Jam is on his way to Oz. Kite and crate thump down the next day, in the purple landscape of the Gillikin Country. Jam is amazed to find that his animals can now talk; the guinea pigs call themselves Pinny and Gig, while the white rat introduces himself as Percy. Jam meets some of the inhabitants, who inform him of local conditions. This remote valley of Oz is dominated by a wrathful giant, fifty feet tall, called Terp the Terrible, who enslaves the common people to work in his vineyards and his jam-making factory. Terp captures Jam, and is struck by his name; the giant threatens to spread the boy on his breakfast muffins the next day, and eat him. Terp imprisons the boy and his animals in the highest tower of his castle. The courtyard of Terp's castle contains a magic muffin tree, guarded by a fierce monster (it has an elephant's body, alligator's tail, and two heads, a nocturnal owl and a diurnal wolf). In the night, Percy is able to help Jam and friends escape the tower, with the aid of a handy grapevine. Jam and his pets flee, though Percy doubles back to steal one of the magic muffins. On the Gillikin plains, Jam and friends are menaced by the Equinots, hostile centaurs; Percy frightens away the Equinots when he eats some of the magic muffin, and grows to ten times his normal size. A local farmer and his wife provide shelter for the night; Pinny and Gig, who have little taste for adventure, decide to stay at the farm as pets of the farmer's children. Another kite flight takes Jam and Percy to the tin castle of the Emperor of the Winkies, the Tin Woodman. There, the party is soon joined by Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Hungry Tiger. After hearing Jam's tale, the assembled party decide to defeat Terp and free the oppressed Gillikins. Their path from the Winkie Country to the Gillikin lands leads through a wilderness; a commotion in the jungle brings them a new friend, the Leopard with the Changeable Spots. They enter Bookville, where a hostile King and court condemn them to be pressed into books. (The animated books resemble the playing cards in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The idea of changing size by eating a food also links the two works.) Percy gnaws the travelers a way out of their bookshelf prison during the night. Another disagreeable adventure awaits them in Icetown; to escape an igloo prison, the Scarecrow volunteers his stuffing as kindling for a fire. (The Scarecrow made a similar sacrifice to placate the Hip-po-gy-raf in The Tin Woodman of Oz.) The travelers, with a re-stuffed Scarecrow, eventually reach the Gillikin Country and the Hidden Valley. Percy's shrinking-and-growing experiences with the magic muffin have made them realize that Terp needs a steady supply of muffins to maintain his giant stature. Jam and company, with local collaboration, lure Terp away from his castle, and hypnotize the guardian beast into harmlessness; The Tin Man chops down the magic tree, killing it. Terp is trapped in the smokestack of the jam factory until he shrinks to his normal size. The party travel to the Emerald City, where Jam is welcomed as a hero; after a celebratory banquet, Ozma and the Wizard send the boy home to Ohio once more. Percy remains in Oz, and convinces the Wizard to enchant him into his large size permanently. ---- Cosgrove originally intended to have Jam travel to Oz by rocket, but the publishers informed her that that had already been done in The Yellow Knight of Oz. Cosgrove's original opening was published posthumously in an issue of Oz-story Magazine. She later gave an account of how she wrote and revised Hidden Valley and worked with the personnel at Reilly & Lee. Her article appeared in The Baum Bugle, and was later included as an Afterword in the 1991 edition of Hidden Valley. Cogrove began work on a second Oz book soon after finishing the first; but Reilly & Lee declined it, due to low sales for Oz books in the 1950s. The work would finally appear in print forty years later.
2487809	/m/07hclz	The Magical Mimics in Oz	Jack Snow	1946	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the start of Snow's story, Princess Ozma and Glinda the Good are planning to leave Oz, to attend the Grand Council of the fairy queen Lurline, held in the Forest of Burzee every 200 years. Dorothy Gale is surprised when Ozma appoints her to rule Oz during their absence; but Ozma reminds Dorothy that she is a princess of Oz. (Ozma's choice is not well-motivated; but it is in keeping with Snow's "Baum-centric" approach, in that it places Baum's primary heroine Dorothy at the center of the coming action.) Chapter 3 shifts attention to the evil Mimics in their lair in Mount Illuso. The Mimics habitually shift "from one loathsome shape to another" &mdash; an ape body with a head of an alligator, and a serpent with black butterfly wings, and a toad with a hyena's head are a few of their choices. Their rulers, King Umb and Queen Ra (a play on "umbra"), reveal their plan to counter Lurline's controlling magic and attack Oz. The shape-shifting royals and their minions fly to Oz as big black birds, and waylay Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. By stepping into their shadows, Ra and Umb take the shapes of Dorothy and the Wizard; the originals are paralyzed by the magic, and are carried off to Mount Illuso by Mimics. Ra and Umb, in their stolen forms, search Ozma's library for the antidote to Lurline's magic spell. Umb and Ra are not capable of imitating the Wizard and Dorothy convincingly; people become suspicious, and Toto exposes them &mdash; but not before the Mimic royals find what they are looking for. Back in Mount Illuso, they conjure a gigantic red spider that spins a magic web; this negates the influence of Lurline's spell, and allows the Mimics to launch a mass attack against Oz. Dorothy and the Wizard are imprisoned in a cave deep within Mount Illuso. There, however, they see a blaze of brilliant fairy light that restores their power of motion. The light stems from a button on the cave wall. They press the button, and a hidden door opens to expose an elevator and its attendant. Hi-Lo, a living wooden puppet, takes them to the top of the mountain. There, the two Ozites discover Pineville and are led to the fairy Ozana, who had been delegated by Lurline to watch over the malicious Mimics. Ozana has spent her lonely days and years creating her Story Blossom Garden and her wooden puppet people (one of whom has escaped to the outer world, to become Charlie McCarthy). Ozana is shocked to discover that the Mimics have evaded her guardianship; she leads Dorothy and the Wizard back to Oz, flying on giant swans. The attacking Mimics arrive in Oz disguised as beautiful birds, with gorgeous plumage of "Red, blue, green and gold...." The residents are seduced by their beauty, and the Mimics quickly duplicate and paralyze them. The trick works only on humans; fierce beasts like the Cowardly Lion and Hungry Tiger are magically sedated, while the Scarecrow, the Patchwork Girl and other non-human creatures are simply tied up. The Mimics have largely accomplished their ends when they confront the simultaneous arrivals of Ozma and Glinda, and Ozana, Dorothy, and the Wizard. Ozana's magic is powerful enough to subdue Ra and Umb and reverse their spells. The Mimics, back in their grotesque forms, are herded into the mirrored grand ballroom of Ozma's palace; good magic imprisons them in the ballroom's many mirrors, from where they are sent back to the interior of Mount Illuso. Order is restored to Oz, and celebrated with the usual concluding banquet. Ozana is rewarded with an invitation to live in Oz; her Pineville people and her Story Blossom Garden are magically transported to Oz so that she will not miss them.
2487822	/m/07hcp0	The Shaggy Man of Oz	Jack Snow	1949	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Abbadiah and Zebbidiah Jones are twins from Buffalo, New York; they prefer to go by their nicknames, Twink and Tom. The twins enjoy watching cowboy serials on the family TV set, customized by their scientist father with its own wall-sized projection screen. While the twins are watching the TV one afternoon, the normal picture changes into a strangely beautiful scene with a castle in the background. They are confronted by a living toy clown, a duplicate of the familiar toy they have named Twoffle. This living version, who calls himself Twiffle, persuades them to walk into the screen before them; the two children find themselves magically transported into the scene. Twiffle explains that he is a third cousin of the twins' toy, Twoffle; the two have had long conversations about Twink and Tom while the children have slept. Twiffle serves a sorcerer named Conjo; they are on Conjo's island in the Nonestic Ocean, and are heading toward Conjo's castle. Meanwhile, a problem has arisen in the Emerald City in Oz; the love magnet (introduced by Baum in his fifth Oz book, The Road to Oz) had been hanging above the city's entrance gate, but has now fallen from its nail and broken in two. Princess Ozma consults with the Shaggy Man, who first brought the talisman to Oz; they determine that the magnet can be repaired only by the magician who created it &mdash; none other than Conjo. In the Magic Picture, they watch Twink and Tom approach Conjo's castle with Twiffle. Surprised at the presence of two human children, Ozma decides to send Shaggy there immediately to investigate. Ozma equips Shaggy with a magic compass that will return him to Oz whenever he chooses. (Ozma herself will be unavailable, sequestered with Glinda the Good as they work on deep magics.) Ozma transports Shaggy with her Magic Belt; he joins the children and Twiffle, much to their surprise. The four of them go to meet Conjo, who is short, fat, bald, and untrustworthy. Conjo agrees to repair the love magnet, though he wants Shaggy's magic compass in payment. The visitors stay the night; but Shaggy is awakened from sleep by a slight disturbance in his guest bedroom. He discovers that Conjo has repaired and surreptitiously returned the love magnet, but also has taken the magic compass. Twiffle insists that Conjo is not overtly evil, merely "selfish, lazy, and foolishly vain." Yet Conjo has lured the twins to his island to rob them of their memories and use them as his servants, which is malicious enough. Shaggy, Twink, Tom, and Twiffle escape from the island in Conjo's Airmobile. They reach a sky country called Hightown, and the Airmobile is inadvertently lost, stranding them. They learn they can leave Hightown merely by swimming and walking down through the air, since gravity does not function in the place's vicinity. They next find their way to the Valley of Romance, where they stumble into a nightmare of incompetent amateur theater. Shaggy and Twink are bewitched into serving as cast members in an inept stage play. Tom and Twoffle manage to free them and break the spell of the place, by showing the love magnet to the Valley's king, queen, and assembled lords and ladies. (In Snow's narrative, the magnet has to be displayed to have its effect.) Traveling again, the four encounter the King of the Fairy Beavers. The King agrees to help them reach Oz, if they invite him for a visit &mdash; and Shaggy is happy to oblige. The protagonists and their beaver companions make their way under the Deadly Desert through the Nome King's tunnel (see The Emerald City of Oz). They pass the barrier of invisibility that shields Oz from the outside world, and arrive in Oz &mdash; only to stumble into a crisis. Conjo has used the magic compass to reach Oz, where he grabs the Wizard's black bag of magic and locks himself in the Wizard's laboratory. Conjo wants to supplant the Wizard and gain control of Oz for himself. The Fairy Beaver King defeats Conjo with his water magic, squirting a jet of water from the Forbidden Fountain into Conjo's mouth. The now amnesiac Conjo is easy to manage and reform; he is returned to his island in Twiffle's care, for re-education. Twink and Tom enjoy a pleasant stay in Oz before Ozma sends them home once again.
2488209	/m/07hdl8	Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns	Thomas Mann	1939	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Beloved Returns is the story of one of Goethe's old romantic interests, a real historical figure by the name of Charlotte Kestner, who has come to Weimar to see him again after more than 40 years of separation. Goethe had romanced Charlotte when they were young, but she had already been engaged (and then married) to another man whom she truly loved. Ultimately, the romance ended unconsummated; afterwards, Goethe wrote a fictional depiction of these events, with some artistic changes, and published it under the title The Sorrows of Young Werther—a (still) famous/infamous German book, which brought early renown to Goethe. The real Charlotte became inadvertently and unwillingly famous, and remained so for the rest of her life to a certain degree. Her return in some ways is due to her need to settle the "wrongs" done to her by Goethe in his creation of Werther; one of the underlying motifs in the story is the question of what sacrifices both a "genius" and the people around him/her must make to promote his/her creations, and whether or not Goethe (as the resident genius of Weimar) is too demanding of his supporters. Most of the novel is written as dialogues between Charlotte and the other residents of Weimar, who give their own opinions on the issue of Goethe's genius. Only in the last third of the book, starting with the internal monologue in the seventh chapter, the reader is finally directly confronted with Goethe and what he himself thinks of the entire affair. "Lotte in Weimar" also echoes in subtle ways Mann's and the world's concerns with German military aggression and social oppression.
2488703	/m/07hfs4	Ark Angel	Anthony Horowitz	2005-04-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Following events of Scorpia, Alex Rider is in a hospital recovering from an assassination attempt. Four masked men come to the hospital attempting to kidnap Paul Drevin, the son of Russian billionaire Nikolei Drevin, who is financing a revolutionary space hotel named "Ark Angel". Alex fights the men, in an attempt to save Paul, he pretends to be Paul. He knocks all four of them out, but then a fifth man comes in to the hospital and overpowers Alex. Still weak, Alex faints and is kidnapped. Alex is taken to a flat in a building site, where he finds out the men belong to Force Three, an eco-terrorist group led by a man named Kaspar. Despite proving he is not Paul Drevin, Force Three lock Alex up and set fire to the apartment, but Alex escapes and Nikolei Drevin invites him to come and stay for two weeks in the lap of luxury for saving his son and see an Ark Angel rocket take off. While at Drevin's home, Alex starts to befriend Paul, but decides to leave him and his father once they arrive in New York in route to Flamingo Bay, mainly due to the fact that Nikolei Drevin nearly killed him in a go-kart race. On route to Flamingo Bay, Alex is taken with Paul and Nikolei Drevin to New York. At the airport, he is held up at customs and taken to the CIA. He is told that Nikolei Drevin could be "the biggest criminal in the world", and the CIA recruits him to gain information on Drevin. Upon his arrival at Flamingo Bay, Drevin learns of Alex's CIA connections and decides to have him killed while scuba diving. Alex becomes trapped in a sunken ship named the Mary Belle. With the help of Tamara Knight, an undercover CIA agent and who is Drevin's secretary, Alex escapes. Alex and Tamara hide on the island, but are both captured. Drevin ties Alex up and then tells Alex that his rocket Gabriel 7 contains a bomb that will destroy Ark Angel, causing it to fall to Earth and destroy Washington, D.C. This will eradicate the evidence against him the CIA have accumulated in the Pentagon, as well as letting him reclaim some of his money spent on the (now regretted) Ark Angel project. Alex escapes using a CIA gadget from Tamara, and sails away from the island. Drevin tries to get away in a seaplane, but Alex causes Drevin to crash by tying two canoes to the plane, and Drevin is killed. Drevin's rocket takes off before the CIA can stop it. Alex is then chosen to board a second rocket to move the bomb before it explodes, since he is the only one small enough to fit inside. When Alex arrives, he sees Kaspar and must fight him. Alex gains the upper hand when Kaspar is blinded by the sun's light, and then Kaspar is killed when he falls back on his own knife. Alex moves the bomb into the station's toilet and escapes. His escape capsule splashes down in the sea near Australia. The bomb explodes and the satellite falls harmlessly into the sea.
2490006	/m/07hjq4	The Killing Zone	James Howard Hatfield	1985	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The novel begins with the murder of Bill Tanner by Klaus Doberman, a German-South American drug lord. Enraged by his friend's death, Bond disobeys his official orders to get revenge. The synopsis of this book is as follows: "In this new high voltage spy thriller, Secret Agent 007 must "liquidate" ruthless billionaire kingpin Klaus Doberman. But James Bond has his hands full as he battles a luscious lady assassin who offers lethal love Russian style and a slit-eyed Oriental sadist who is an elusive and deadly Ninja. Aided by his confederate Lotta Head and his old CIA buddy Felix Leiter, 007 is pitted against Klaus Doberman in his heavily armed fortress high in the Mexican Sierra Madres... in the most bloodcurdling death duel in the great Bond saga."
2490135	/m/07hjw8	When the Wind Blows	Raymond Briggs	1982	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel", "/m/08jhkx": "Anti-nuclear"}	 The book follows the story of the Bloggses, characters previously seen in the book Gentleman Jim. One afternoon the couple hears a message on the radio about an "outbreak of hostilities" in three day's time. Jim immediately starts construction of a fallout shelter (according to a protect and survive brochure), while the two reminisce about the Second World War. Their reminiscences are used both for comic effect and to show how the geopolitical situation has changed, but also how nostalgia has blotted out the horrors of war. A constant theme is Jim's optimistic outlook and his unshakeable belief that the government knows what's best and that it has the situation under full control, coupled with Hilda's attempts to carry on life as normal. The Bloggses soon hear of enemy missiles heading towards England, and they just make it into their shelter before a nuclear explosion. They stay in it for several days, misreading the advice given in governmental leaflets: they believe they have to stay in the shelter for two weeks instead of two days. They do briefly go outside to get some fresh air and rainwater, exposing themselves to a large amount of radioactive fallout. They also, unknowingly, smell the burning corpses of their neighbours. Jim and Hilda exhibit considerable confusion regarding the serious nature of what has happened after the nuclear attack; this generates gentle comedy as well as darker elements: amongst them, their obliviousness of the fact that they are probably the only people left of their acquaintance. As the novel progresses, their situation becomes steadily more hopeless as they begin to suffer the effects of radiation sickness. Hilda suffers the most, losing her hair, vomiting and has bleeding gums. Both of them come out in great purple blotches but mistake them for varicose veins. The book ends on an extremely bleak note, with them praying in their fallout shelter as almost certain death approaches.
2490343	/m/07hk3q	I, Lucifer	Peter O'Donnell	1967	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin are in Paris. Modesty is being wined and dined by René Vaubois, head of the French Deuxième Bureau (the French Intelligence Service), on a floating restaurant on the Seine. René asks Modesty for advice regarding a new protection racket. High-level people all over the world are receiving death threats, and those who don't pay end up dead. The really crazy thing is that most of the deaths are apparently natural deaths. Willie, waiting on the river bank for Modesty's return, encounters Chuli, a criminal whose specialty is planting bombs. René Vaubois' car has been wired with explosives. And when Modesty, Willie, René and Stephen Collier (making his first appearance) leave the scene they are followed by a car full of underworld killers, all bent on putting René down. This is the start of a rather strange story about Lucifer and a pair of elderly puppeteers, Seth and Regina. Seth and Regina have turned to crime after being unable to get work when the music halls closed down. Now Seth has created an incredible worldwide protection racket based on Lucifer's ability to accurately predict impending deaths. The action heats up when Modesty is taken prisoner and a radio-controlled cyanide capsule is surgically implanted under her skin. The final confrontation takes place on a remote island near Indonesia. First Modesty and Willie are forced to fight a duel to the death against each other. Later the machine guns are blazing in a major battle between the good guys and the bad guys, with Modesty risking everything to try to save Lucifer.
2493476	/m/07hrc9	The Magic Toyshop	Angela Carter	1967	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The novel starts with Melanie stealing her mother's wedding dress and venturing out in the night into her family's property. However, on her way home, she realizes she forgot the door key and is forced to climb up a tree to get back into her room, destroying the dress in the process. The next morning, Melanie learns of the unexpected deaths of her parents in a plane crash over the Grand Canyon, and she and her two siblings - Victoria and Jonathon - are moved to South London, to the care of her tyrannical uncle Philip, a bullish and eccentric maker of life-sized puppets and fantastical old fashioned toys. There, she meets her mute aunt Margaret, who is mistreated by and terrified of her husband and only converses through notes. She also meets Margaret's younger brothers Francie, a fiddler, and the rakish Finn. At first, Uncle Philip ignores Melanie and her siblings as they are introduced to his bizarre puppet shows and she is made to work selling toys in the toyshop. Meanwhile, Finn and Melanie grow closer until he takes her to a park, the remnants of the National Exhibition of 1852. There, after seeing a worn, fallen statue of Queen Victoria and walking across a chess board (only on the white squares), Finn kisses Melanie. She feels intruded by the gesture, imagining it only romantic as an observer from far away. This kiss, however, ignites Melanie's conflicted feelings of attraction towards Finn. After the kiss, at another puppet show, Finn fails to control his puppet perfectly and is thrown to the floor by Uncle Philip, who obviously despises him. Satisfied that Finn shall never be adept at working the puppets, Uncle Philip devises a new plan, drafting Melanie to perform with the puppets. Philip assigns Finn to assist Melanie in honing her acting skills for the future show. During this time, Melanie notices a difference in Finn's behavior. Whereas before he had been subtly rebellious, he now seems depleted of all resistance and resigned to Philip's control. Finn also becomes incredibly physically dirty. However, Finn's opposition returns when he refuses to make love to Melanie, as he considers this to be a fulfillment of Philip's machinations. Soon the day of the long awaited puppet show arrives. Melanie arrives on stage in a white dress. Philip has arranged for Melanie to play Leda being raped by Jove in the guise of a monstrous swan. The play, however, is not successful, as Melanie struggles to beat off the swan. As she scrambles to escape the swan, Finn calls for the end of the show. Philip comes to Melanie and slaps her, not satisfied with her performance. After the show, Uncle Philip travels with Jonathon, leaving the rest of the family alone at the house. Finn decides to destroy Philip's puppet swan, burying it in the park next to the fallen Queen Victoria. He returns home and crawls into bed with Melanie. She comforts him and arrives at the realization that they will someday marry and have children, leading a poor, constrained life together. Finn reaches a sort of epiphany when he decides to wash and not to tolerate Uncle Philip's hegemony anymore, a coup which is exemplified when Finn sits in Uncle Philip's seat at the dinner table. After a somewhat drunken evening, Melanie learns that Margaret and Francie have been having an incestuous relationship. Suddenly Uncle Philip returns, discovering the infidelity of his wife and the rebellion of his household. In a tremendous rage, he sets the house on fire. Margaret finally speaks as she urges Finn and Melanie to escape. They do so just in time, to land at the outside of the house and watch the floors of the house collapse in fire. They realize now that their old world is destroyed and, for better or worse, all they have left is each other.
2494843	/m/07htmq	The Escaped Cock	D. H. Lawrence			 The story is a recasting of the resurrection of Christ narrated in the New Testament. The man who survives his crucifixion comes to celebrate his bodily existence and sensuality. Lawrence himself summarized The Escaped Cock in a letter to Brewster: 'I wrote a story of the Resurrection, where Jesus gets up and feels very sick bout everything, and can't stand the old crowd any more - so cuts out - and as he heals up, he begins to find what an astonishing place the phenomenal world is, far more marvellous than any salvation or heaven - and thanks his stars he needn't have a mission any more.' * The Complete Short Novels, Edited by Keith Sagar and Melissa Partridge, Penguin English Library, 1982
2495391	/m/07hw77	The Three Bears	William Stobbs	1837		 In Southey's tale, three anthropomorphic bears &ndash; "a Little, Small, Wee Bear, a Middle-sized Bear, and a Great, Huge Bear" &ndash; live together in a house in the woods. Southey describes them as very good-natured, trusting, harmless, tidy, and hospitable. Each bear has his own porridge bowl, chair, and bed. One day they take a walk in the woods while their porridge cools. An old woman (who is described at various points in the story as impudent, bad, foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty and a vagrant deserving of a stint in the House of Correction) discovers the bears' dwelling. She looks through a window, peeps through the keyhole, and lifts the latch. Assured that no one is home, she walks in. The old woman eats the Wee Bear's porridge, then settles into his chair and breaks it. Prowling about, she finds the bears' beds and falls asleep in Wee Bear's bed. The climax of the tale is reached when the bears return. Wee Bear finds the old woman in his bed and cries, "Somebody has been lying in my bed, &ndash; and here she is!" The old woman starts up, jumps from the window, and runs away never to be seen again.
2497286	/m/07h_l2	Solar Lottery	Philip K. Dick	1955-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Solar Lottery takes place in a world dominated by logic and numbers. Loosely based on a numerical military strategy employed by U.S. and Soviet intelligence called minimax (part of game theory), the head of world government is chosen through a sophisticated, computerized lottery. This element of randomization in the society serves as a form of social control since nobody, in theory at least, has any more of an advantage over anybody else in becoming the next Quizmaster. Society is further entertained by a televised selection process in which an assassin is also allegedly chosen at random. By countering and putting down these threats to his life (using telepathic bodyguards as defense), the leader gains the respect of the people. If he loses his life a new Quizmaster, as well as another assassin, are again randomly selected. Quizmasters have historically held office for timespans ranging from a few minutes to several years. The average life expectancy is therefore on the order of a couple of weeks. The plot follows the story of Ted Benteley, an idealistic young worker unhappy with his position in life. Benteley attempts to get a job in the prestigious office of Quizmaster Reese Verrick. Reese has just been forced out of office, however, and Benteley gets tricked into swearing an unbreakable oath of personal fealty to the once and former world leader. Verrick then makes it clear that his organization's mission is to assassinate the new Quizmaster, Leon Cartwright, in the world's most anticipated "competition". In order to defeat the telepathic security web protecting Cartwright, Verrick and his team invent an android named Keith Pellig into which different volunteers' minds are alternately embedded for the purpose of breaking any kind of steady telepathic lock on the assassin. An action sequence centered on Pellig's assassination attempt proves to be the novel's most exciting and clever element. Cartwright ultimately kills Verrick, and Benteley, much to his own astonishment, becomes the next Quizmaster. A second plotline concerns a team of Leon Cartwright's followers travelling to the far reaches of the solar system in search of a mysterious cult figure named John Preston, who, 150 years after his disappearance, is thought to somehow still be alive on the legendary tenth planet known as the "Flame Disc". Although this particular sub-plot seems to have only a marginal connection with the main storyline, the recorded voice of a long-deceased John Preston ends the novel on a positive note by exhorting his audience to "...spread out, reach areas, experiences, comprehend and live in an evolving fashion....", to "push aside routine and repetition, to break out of mindless monotony and thrust forward....", to "keep moving on...".
2497955	/m/07j1bt	The Lost Girl	D. H. Lawrence	1920	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Alvina Houghton, the daughter of a widowed Midlands draper, comes of age just as her father’s business is failing. In a desperate attempt to regain his fortune and secure his daughter’s proper upbringing, James Houghton buys a theater. Among the traveling performers he employs is Ciccio, a sensual Italian who immediately captures Alvina’s attention. Fleeing with him to Naples, she leaves her safe world behind and enters one of sexual awakening, desire, and fleeting freedom.
2503309	/m/07jdx9	Little Fuzzy	H. Beam Piper	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jack Holloway, a sunstone miner, lives a solitary life in a wilderness area of planet Zarathustra. The planet is basically "owned" by the Chartered Zarathustra Corporation (under Victor Grego), which installed basic services and colonial outposts initially, and now reaps the benefits of new discoveries, such as the valuable sunstones. One day, Holloway returns to his little shack to discover a tiny humanoid, covered in golden fur. The little creature has armed itself with a chisel from his workbench, but is peaceful and mostly unafraid. The miner gives the "little fuzzy" (as he calls it) some Extee-Three, a kind of canned emergency ration cake, and the Fuzzy devours it greedily. It is soon apparent that the creature is highly intelligent, and he soon brings his family band to join "Pappy Jack" at the shack. Victor Grego soon tries to intervene, claiming that the Fuzzies are just animals, not sapients. If they were ruled sapient, the entire planet would be declared a protected aboriginal zone, and the Chartered Zarathustra Company would lose its exclusive rights to the resources there. Leonard Kellogg, one of Grego's staff, kills a Fuzzy and this leads to a court case which hinges on whether the Fuzzies are animals or sapients. After much discussion of what it means to be "sapient" (speech and fire use being one definition), the matter goes to court. In the midst of the proceedings, the Terran Navy commander reveals that his people have been studying Fuzzies, and that they can indeed speak. The tiny people use ultrasonic frequencies, which to human ears sound like "yeek." When processed with the proper electronics, the sounds are rendered as a complex language. The Navy experiments prove that Fuzzies have at least the mental capacity of a ten-year-old human, and are therefore protected under Terran law. Judge Pendarvis declares them to be aborigines, and the Charter of the Zarathustra Company is immediately invalidated. Kellogg has his worst fears confirmed; he killed a sapient being, not an animal. He commits suicide in his cell. The second book, Fuzzy Sapiens, deals with the new 'Charterless Zarathustra Company' and how it eventually begins to work with the new governor to ensure control over the planet. Victor Grego becomes the affiliate of a Fuzzy he names Diamond. It becomes clear that criminals are using the irregular status of the government and of the company to attack it and even to steal sunstones. The third book, Fuzzy Bones by William Tuning, suggests that the remarkable demand by all Fuzzies for the ration-pack 'Extraterrestrial Type Three' (aka 'ExTee 3' or 'estefee') does not fit with the composition of Zarathustran soil. A third significant Fuzzy character is developed called Starwatcher. Little Fuzzy, Diamond and Starwatcher become the clear leaders of the group in working with humans. Golden Dream fits with these three books in terms of the general plot and relationships. After these two official sequels, the original third book by Piper himself was found and of course this offers an alternative future.
2504604	/m/07jhv4	Slipback	Eric Saward		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Sixth Doctor and Peri arrive on a mysterious space liner, where intergalactic policemen are investigating art thefts, a computer is suffering from a split personality and the Captain's disease threatens every living thing on the ship…
2505453	/m/07jkm3	Top 10: The Forty-Niners	Alan Moore			 In 1949, 16-year-old Steven Traynor is stateside after fighting the Axis forces in the skies over Europe. Joining him on his train ride is Leni Muller, a defector from the German Luftwaffe who fought Steven on her industrial broomstick as the Skywitch. Both are headed to the newly founded Neopolis, a city where the "science heroes," robots, mad scientists and other unique characters are being located to (out of the public's eye). After registering at town hall, Steven and Leni both head to their lodgings at Betty Doesgood's. Later that night at Scowling Joe's bar, Steven is introduced to the The Skysharks, fellow pilots that act as a private air force for Neopolis. Skyshark Wulf recommends Steven to be mechanic for the air field, an idea he happily accepts. After a near scuffle between local gangsters and Scowling Joe, Leni is introduced to several members of the police force, and decides to apply for a job. After meeting officers like armored scientist Steelgauntlet and toy inventor Major Lilliput, Leni is introduced to her partner, the Black Rider. Out on her first patrol, Leni and Black Rider arrest a hero and his sidekick for felony vigilante assault on a former archenemy. The partners then get a call to investigate a call from the Institute, the scientific research facility where many of the German refugee scientists are currently working. The body of Herr Panzer has been discovered, his body turned to ash and bones inside his armored suit. While Black Rider calls in for a forensics cleanup, Leni takes statements from her countrymen. At the Skysharks air field, Wulf and Steven relive the war through the eyes of the archived newsreels. The intimacy between Wulf and himself makes Steven a bit uneasy, and he buries himself in his work, rather than talk to Wulf about it. As Major Lilliput has his toy soldiers transport the remains of Herr Panzer, he mentions what he has read about the scientists' secretive Janon project, an energy experiment dealing with particles that "go both ways in time." When Muller meets up with Wulf and Steven at Scowling Joe's, the young pilot makes a show of strong affection for his female friend, then quickly escorts her back to their apartments, where he fumbles through an attempt at sex with Leni. Heading outside after his awkward encounter, Steven follows a police wagon to Scowling Joe's, where the Cosa Nosferatu (vampire mafia) have murdered the barkeep and local prostitute. After a tense and silent breakfast at Betty Doesgood's, Leni leaves to assist in a bust on a Nosferatu whorehouse. The raid leads to the arrest of the mayor's nephew, as well as a high-ranking enforcer being killed by the Maid. At the Skyshark air field, Wulf and Steve share an awkward moment, and the older pilot eventually admits to being gay and having an attraction to Steven, but his friend cannot find the courage to voice his emotions. Wulf says he will be around. Police captain Doctor Omega congratulates his officers on the raid, but warns about likely reprisals from the mafia. Leni and Black Rider are then informed of a lead at the Institute, where they learn that several of the scientists were secretly creating a time machine to re-write the outcome of the war, but Leni successfully halts their attempts. Doctor Omega tells Steelgauntlet he's putting him in charge of intercepting a Nosferatu replacement arriving at the subway station, saying Steel knows the reason why he is being given the responsibility. As Wulf and Steven leave work for the night, Steve admits to wanting to spend time with Wulf, and the two agree to head to Wulf's apartment. In the privacy of his office, John Sharkey, the squadron leader, draws plans for a bombing raid on Neopolis itself, with the key target being the shipyards, home to all of the robotic and automaton residents. Due to the bad press from the mayor's nephew being arrested, the subway arrest has to go off without incident, or the city might defer its security to martial law (such as Skysharks) within days. The preparations appear flawless, but the squad feels anxious when they discover that the one officer the vampires have a natural fear and weakness against, the Maid, is on special assignment out of town. Before the squad leaves on its assignment, Leni is stopped by Steven, who apologizes for his behavior earlier. He admits to being gay, and asks if she can still think of him as a friend. Leni is unable to decide then, and leaves to help in the arrest. At the station, Steelgauntlet has his suspicions about how easy the bust will be, but Doctor Omega assures him of the success of the mission, guaranteeing good press thanks to the reporters waiting outside to document the police's triumph. Just then, the sky is flooded with bats and vampires. As Steven makes it to the air field, he discovers Wulf on the floor, bleeding from gunshot wounds in the leg and shoulder. Lars and Sharkey stole their planes and flew off to complete the bombing run, in an attempt to stage a military coup. Steven despairs with the situation heard over the radio about the vampires in addition to the Skysharks, but Wulf encourages the young ace, and gives him a good luck kiss. Steven hops in his jet-propelled craft, Beauty, and pursues. Outside the train station, Doctor Omega orders Steelgauntlet to take the brunt of the vampire attack, while the other officers rally around fire hydrants. Leni is dismayed at the sight of Steel's armored body being torn to shreds, but Doctor Omega assures his survival. Standing on the edge of the city reservoir, the Maid blesses the water, allowing the police to unleash gallons of holy water on their attackers. Leni rushes to Steelgauntlet's side, only to be shocked at his electronic inner workings. Just as she is about to scour the air for any remaining bats, the robot district erupts in flames. Steven catches up to the Skysharks, managing to down Lars, but Sharkey begins to strafe Steven, until Leni swoops in and catches Sharkey off guard with a grenade launcher. After the fires are put out in the shipyards, Leni stands with Steelgauntlet, asking him to trust her with his secrets, so she can understand him. Frank Chambers, the identity Steelgauntlet had assumed, died burned beyond recognition. His creation lived on as the first true artificial intelligence. In the hospital, Steven visits Wulf, telling him he wants to live the rest of his life together. Wulf, however, scoffs at being anything more than a first love. The pair have about as much chance of lasting as the bizarre city of freaks in tights. "I give it six months."
2506382	/m/07jmc8	The Forbidden Territory			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The Duc de Richleau receives a letter that is a code from his missing friend the young American Rex Van Ryn who, while hunting for treasure lost during the Soviet takeover of Russia, is now in prison somewhere in that vast country. He shares the letter with another young friend, Simon Aron, who agrees to accompany him to search for their friend. They travel to Moscow separately, and reunite one cold winter morning. Aron had met a famous Russian soprano in London and begins an affair with her in Moscow, much to the chagrin of her watcher, a Soviet official. Eventually, she obtains through her watcher the location of Rex, who is in a prison two days to the east of Moscow, in exchange for a guarantee that Simon will leave Moscow within the day. So they book a train for a seven-day transit far to the east, but the morning after they board Simon feigns illness. The Duc, who grew up in Russia and therefore speaks Russian, befriends the porter and the next morning persuades him to allow them to leave the train secretly just before it enters a station in order to save the rapidly ailing Simon's life. They are followed off the train, but they are armed as the Duc smuggled two pistols along with fifty Hoyo de Monterrey cigars into the country through the British embassy. They kill their pursuer and hide him in an old tool shed where they hope he will not be discovered until the spring thaw. By then, the train has gone and they enter the small town. Entering a café, they discover the train that goes to the north will take them only part of the way, as the town they want is in forbidden territory. The train leaves at lunch time, so they wait until the last minute before attempting to buy tickets, which they do successfully after paying three times the official price. As they arrive in the new town, dusk is approaching. They go to a hotel and ask about hiring a carriage to take them, but there are none available. They begin traveling to the town's other hotel but encounter another carriage which an official is just getting out of. "Please hire it to us", asks the Duc, but when he refuses, they take it by brute force and race out of town on the road north. They keep going until midnight when they find shelter in the hovel of a man who owns the boat to cross the river. Finally the next afternoon they arrive in the town where Rex is a prisoner. Finding shelter in a synagogue, they find Rex the next day. The only security during winter is that the prisoners have no boots and none are from the local town, so with the aid of his companions, Rex escapes that night in a horse and carriage that the Duke and Simon have stolen. They keep the carriage driver prisoner, but he escapes with the carriage when they are taking a rest, and so they are stranded.
2506409	/m/07jmf2	Heir of Sea and Fire	Patricia A. McKillip	1977-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the second book of the series, the focus shifts from Morgon of Hed to Raederle of An. Raederle, the heir of sea and fire referred to in the title, was promised by her father to the man who won a riddle game with a ghost. In the previous book, this was revealed to be Morgon, but as this book opens, he has been missing for a year; since his power over the land of Hed has just passed to his heir, he is thought dead. Raederle sets out for Erlenstar Mountain, where Morgon was trying to reach when he died. Along the way, she is assisted by Lyra, the Morgul of Herun's heir, and by Tristan of Hed, Morgon's sister. The first half of the book chronicles their journey north. Along the way, Raederle grows to understand her own significant powers as a descendant of both shapechangers and witches. Her hidden ancestry makes her related to Morgon's enemies. Midway through the book, she discovers that Morgon is alive, while shapechangers and Ghisteslwchlohm, an ancient, evil wizard and traitor from ages past pursue him. Sensing a powerful, dangerous force in pursuit across her land, Raederle uses her abilities to confound it, thinking she is protecting Morgon; but discovers that the force she thought was Ghisteslwchlohm is Morgon himself, who has stolen much of Ghisteslwchlohm's power during his long captivity, while the helpless man he pursued was Deth, who betrayed him. Confronted with this, and realizing how he appears, Morgon forsakes his revenge and allows Deth to escape.
2509642	/m/07jwp5	More Than Human	Theodore Sturgeon	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first part of the novel, The Fabulous Idiot, narrates the birth of the gestalt. In the beginning, we are introduced to the world of Lone, referred to as the "Idiot", a 25-year-old male with a telepathic ability who lives on the street. He knows he can make people do what he wants them to, but has never experienced real human connection. One day he encounters Evelyn Kew, an innocent woman who has been completely sheltered by her domineering father. She is the first person he has mentally and physically connected with. Evelyn's father finds out about the relationship and kills Evelyn and himself. During this incident Lone barely escapes a beating from the father; bleeding and nearly dead, he is found and then adopted by the Prodds, a poor farming couple, and lives with them for about seven years. When Mrs. Prodd becomes pregnant, the couple are about to ask Lone to leave, but he makes his departure appear to be his own idea. Lone builds a shelter in the forest and is soon joined by three runaway children: Janie, an eight-year-old with a telekinetic gift, and the twins Bonnie and Beanie, who cannot speak but possess the ability to teleport. Lone returns to the farm to find Mrs. Prodd has died after giving birth to a "Mongoloid" baby. Lone adopts the baby, who has a phenomenal mental capacity and thinks almost like a computer. Together, Lone, Janie, the twins and Baby form what will be later called the homo gestalt. Prodd's old truck is always getting stuck in the mud, and when Lone asks Baby for a solution, Baby helps Lone build an anti-gravity generator. He installs it in Prodd's truck, only to find that Prodd has left for Pennsylvania. The second part of the novel is Baby is Three, which occurs several years after The Fabulous Idiot. Gerry Thompson, a street urchin who has grown up in abusive institutions, is possibly sociopathic. He consults a psychiatrist, trying to piece his memory back together. Gerry ran away from the institution and was taken in by Lone. Lone was killed in an accident and Gerry subsequently became the leader of the gestalt. Lone had instructed the kids to seek out Evelyn's sister, Alicia, after his death. They were educated and fed under her care. Soon, however, Gerry learned that domestication and normalization had weakened their gestalt. He killed Alicia, and the group returned to living alone in the woods. If anything, Gerry's telepathic abilities are stronger than Lone's. His amnesia was caused by Alicia's having accidentally transmitted her memories to his mind when they first met, triggered by her strong emotional reaction to hearing the words "Baby is three". He learned about her entire life, including her past relationship with Lone, in a split second. After being helped by the psychiatrist, Gerry erases the man's memory of him. The third and concluding part of the novel is Morality. Again, it occurs several years after the previous part. Lt. Hip (Hippocrates) Barrows is a gifted engineer who worked for the US Air Force until the incident which led to his incarceration, first in an insane asylum, then in jail. Janie, now an adult, befriends him and helps him regain his health. He slowly remembers what had happened. He discovered some odd effects on an anti-aircraft range. Practice shells fired in a certain area were all duds. Barrows does magnetic tests and finally discovers the anti-gravity machine, still on the rusted-out old truck on the nearby farm. Gerry knows of Hip's investigation and poses as a common soldier assisting Hip, then launching the anti-grav into space and stopping Hip from saving it. He then mentally attacks Hip to make him look insane, driving him to a mental breakdown and amnesia, Gerry does this because Baby has told him that if the anti-grav was discovered, it would lead either to a terrible war or to the complete collapse of the world economy. Gerry is determined to drive Hip permanently insane. Hip confronts Gerry, and becomes the last part of the gestalt, its conscience.
2511857	/m/07k07v	Birds of Prey	David Drake	1984-08-23	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel relates an episode in the life of Aulus Perennius, a middle-aged operative of the Bureau of Imperial Affairs, an agency which has evolved into an intelligence service over the life of the Empire. He is accompanied by his protégé Gaius, a dashing young cavalry officer with an unfortunate tendency to act without thinking, and an odd figure named Calvus, tall, slim, bald, incredibly strong, and rather clueless. (The story hints that Gaius is Aulus' biological son, but never makes a clear statement on the matter.) At the beginning of the story Aulus' own mentor, head of the Bureau of Imperial Affairs, has summoned him back to Rome on a matter urgent enough to pull him out of a deep-cover operation just as it was coming to its critical phase. At the direct behest of the emperor the Bureau has been ordered to provide Calvus with any sort of support requested, and Calvus has asked only for the services of the Bureau's best agent &mdash; requesting Aulus by name. Invoking the authority of the Bureau, Aulus orders an ancient trireme out of dry-dock storage to be outfitted for a trip to Cilicia in southern Anatolia, technically a part of the Roman Empire but at that time under the control of Odenath, to provide some unspecified service for Calvus. En route they are beset by pirates and other parties; the story of the journey takes up the greater part of the book. Calvus, though taken for a male, is actually a female (of sorts) sent back from the far distant future to destroy the seed creche of monstrous aliens who, by her time, have multiplied into millions, emerged from their underground creches, and are in the process of destroying the human race. As a desperate measure a set of six mutually telepathic sisters, including Calvus, are specially bred to be sent on the mission together. (The book hints that the future human race has evolved to be somewhat different from ourselves, and that the six sterile drone-like sisters are uncommon only in their preparation for this particular mission.) Calvus is the only one of the siblings to arrive at the proper time in the past; there are strong hints that the presence of a handful of extinct creatures such as dinosaurs and sabre-toothed cats in Aulus' time are a side effect of the unintentional displacement of the other siblings into the far distant past. The time-travel technology did not allow Calvus to take any weapons or other gadgets along, so she herself serves as the weapon. She has a limited ability to influence the thoughts of humans other than her sisters &mdash; which is how she induced the emperor to issue orders for the Bureau's cooperation &mdash; and at the end of the story she destroys the creche by self-destructing as a nuclear or thermal bomb. Before then, through her association with Aulus and separation from her sisters, she learns to experience her humanity almost in the way ordinary humans do.
2512391	/m/07k180	Oh My Darling Daughter				 This unforeseen event occurs at the beginning of summer, when Viola has just finished school. St. Winifred's, her "Alma mater", is an expensive public school which prides itself on turning out "ladies"&mdash;refined young women who are mostly "unemployable" and have certainly not been taught domestic subjects but who will nevertheless, it is believed, have no problem finding suitable husbands among their own social class. Secretly, Viola has already made her choice in this respect: She intends "to marry the Reverend Mr Chisholm and have ten children". Now she is waiting for Chisholm to respond to her subtle, ladylike advances. However, at the same time she is in charge of the household, tending to her father Harry, who writes articles on literature; her twelve-year-old sister Persephone ("Perse"), who also goes to St. Winifred's; and her five-year-old brother Nicholas Anthony ("Trubshaw"). Their large house, The Old Vicarage, has not been renovated in a long time, which has started to show in places and does not make life easier for them. (They have named the spare bedrooms after the problems that have befallen them: Dry Rot, Woodworm, the Mildew Room.) While they are slowly adjusting to their new life without Mother, Clementine Kemble occasionally informs them about her current whereabouts&mdash;they get cheery postcards from such faraway places as Marrakesh, Cairo, Istanbul, Samarkand, Kuala Lumpur, Eureka, California, Los Angeles, and Acapulco. When Harry Kemble thinks they cannot cope alone any longer he hires Gloria Perkins, a friend of his wife's, to keep house for them. However, Gloria turns out to be not only dim-witted but also spectacularly incompetent as a housekeeper&mdash;the only dish she can prepare is goulash&mdash;while at the same time she is a young unattached and very attractive woman. Gossip among the villagers that she might be Harry Kemble's "mistress" seems inevitable, especially when people find out about her loose morals. ("Gloria wouldn't recognize a moral principle if it was served up to her on a plate, with chestnut stuffing".) Even the Reverend Chisholm seems to be attracted to Gloria and succeeds in involving her in various church activities. Just as Viola starts becoming slightly suspicious of the two Chisholm, to her great and pleasant surprise, proposes to her, adding that the responsible thing to do will be to wait for a year or two for them to get married. Nevertheless in seventh heaven now, Viola discards any ideas of continuing her association with Johnnie Wrighton, a friendly young man who has obviously fallen in love with her but whom she considers definitely beneath her as he is the son of ordinary farmers. On Christmas Eve, six months after having bolted from Shepherd's Delight, Clementine Kemble makes a surprise appearance at The Old Vicarage. Looking out of the window, the Kembles see a beautiful woman clad in mink alighting from a London taxi, her baggage in tow. Only gradually does Harry Kemble accept it when his wife informs him that she has made up her mind to stay for good now. Immediately she takes over the regime again, having been used all her life to getting her way in all decisions big and small, whether they concern her own person or another family member. She gets rid of Gloria Perkins by inviting her husband's literary agent for the weekend and having her run off with him back to London without even doing so much as saying good-bye; she subtly prepares for the family's move from Derbyshire to the island of Sark, where she has just inherited a beautiful house but where no one except herself wants to go and live; and she vehemently forbids Viola to marry Chisholm. When Perse gets into trouble by sending poison pen letters to a number of villagers Clementine Kemble once more takes the initiative. In order to protect her girl from being found out she deliberately spreads the rumour that it was her husband who, allegedly in a temporary state of overwork and confusion, has written and dispatched them. Harry Kemble is furious when she tells him, but at the same time can do nothing about it except thinking about relocating to another part of the country&mdash;maybe Sark. The tragic aspect of Perse's bizarre adolescent prank is the ensuing suicide attempt of Agnes Buttle, a middle-aged spinster accused by Viola, herself the recipient of an anonymous letter ("Leave him alone or I'll kill you"), of writing the letters. However, as it soon turns out, Agnes Buttle has had other reasons for being desperate, first and foremost the Reverend Chisholm's abominable behaviour. To further his career in the Church, he made advances to Buttle, whose uncle was a bishop, although she is more than ten years his senior. When that uncle died, he dropped her. Chisholm has also fallen in love with Gloria Perkins and only proposed to Viola to avert attention from his association with Gloria. Viola considers it an important step in her journey from "green girl" to full-fledged adult when she breaks off her engagement and calls Chisholm a "poor little bastard". At the beginning of April, shortly before Viola's 18th birthday, the Kembles finally move to Sark. By now Viola has realized that she loves Johnnie Wrighton, but her mother already has other plans for her. Viola is to get a job in Berkshire as a receptionist for a distant uncle of hers who is a GP there. That way, Clementine Kemble assures her, she will meet lots of eligible young men to choose from. Only by means of a "ruse"&mdash;she tells her little sister that she got pregnant from a day tripper to the island&mdash;can she eventually convince her mother, who for an awful moment loses her poise and fears that it actually might be true, that they are now on the same footing. At the end of the novel Johnnie Wrighton proposes to Viola, and Clementine Kemble not only gives her consent but also surprises them by giving them The Old Vicarage as a wedding present.
2514671	/m/07k5_4	Phantom	Susan Kay		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Phantom is born as Erik in Boscherville, a small town not far from Rouen, in the summer of 1831. His father is a well-known stonemason and dies in a construction accident a few months before his son is born. His mother is the beautiful and talented daughter of an English woman and a French architect. A spoiled and vain woman, she scorns her deformed child from birth and cannot bring herself to name him. Instead, she instructs the elderly priest who baptises him to name the child after himself. Due to his mother's shame but also for his own safety, Erik is forced to spend his childhood locked in his home lest he or his mother become a target for the violent attentions of the very superstitious villagers of Boscherville. Much of the verbal and physical abuse Erik suffers from his mother is chronicled in the opening chapters of the novel. One such event occurs on his fifth birthday when he refused to wear the cloth mask to the dinner table. His mother drags him before the only mirror in the house in retaliation and upon seeing his visage, Erik mistakes his reflection for that of a horrible monster. He shatters the mirror, lacerating his hands and wrists, and his mother is unable to bring herself to tend to his wounds. A family friend, Marie Perrault, bandages the wounds and saves his life, but Erik is left forever physically and emotionally scarred from this event. After this, Erik becomes morbidly fascinated with mirrors and believes that they are capable of performing magic. This fascination turns into an obsession and Erik quickly becomes a master of illusion, able to make people see only what he wants them to see. Says Erik of his abilities, "I can make anything disappear, if I really want to. Anything except my face." From a young age, Erik exhibited a strong interest in architecture and was privately tutored by a well-respected professor. However, his strongest abilities lie in the subject of music and he is an incredibly talented composer and performer. However, his mother does not encourage his pursuit of singing, claiming that his supernaturally beautiful voice cannot be one created by God. When he was nine years old, Erik's mother begins to receive the attentions of the handsome, new town physician. This doctor makes it clear that he believes that a child such as Erik belongs in an institution for the mentally insane, and Erik begins to desperately try to win his mother's affections. He uses his rapidly developing skills of ventriloquism to create the illusion of a perfect home and family. His mother begins to surrender her links on sanity but is forced to awaken when an attack on her home by a superstitious mob of villagers leaves the family dog, Sasha, dead and Erik seriously injured. The doctor comes to Erik's aid and saves his life, but begs his mother to marry him and send her child to an institution. Experiencing a sudden change of heart and pangs of remorse, Erik's mother cannot bring herself to abandon her child and refuses the proposal. She resolves to make amends for her treatment of her child, but discovers the next morning that Erik had run away. It is not until much later in the novel that it is revealed that Erik left believing that she had accepted the proposal of the doctor and had hoped to free her so that she may live happily. After a week or so without food and still healing from the attack, Erik stumbles upon a Gypsy camp in the woods. He is discovered as a thief and is unmasked. Upon seeing his severely deformed face, a freak show showman named Javert decides to exhibit him as the "Living Corpse" and Erik is forced to spend the next several weeks locked in a cage. Eventually, he gains some personal freedoms such as his own tent as he develops his show to include the illusions that he had begun to master as a child in Boscherville. He travels around Europe with the Gypsies and masters their languages as well as their herbal remedies. His quick mind and inhuman abilities garner him the fear of many of the Gypsy tribe. He remains with the tribe until he is about 12 years old, leaving only after he is forced to murder his master in order to evade rape. Erik continues to join up with travelling fairs and while performing at a fair in Rome meets Giovanni, a master mason who would take the boy on as his apprentice. Erik quickly masters the aspects of the design and construction of buildings and stays with Giovanni until age 15. He spends a few happy years under the man's tutelage, but is forced to leave when he is inadvertently involved in the death of Luciana, Giovanni's youngest and favorite daughter. Erik's whereabouts are unknown for several years after this event, but it is assumed that he continued to travel throughout Europe and into Asia, occasionally performing with travelling fairs. Four years later, Erik is sought out by the Daroga of Mazanderan Court and becomes a court assassin, magician, and personal engineer to the Persian Shah. He becomes responsible for the entertainment of the Khanum, the Shah's mother, and builds sophisticated traps and torture devices for her amusement. In addition he is involved in the design and construction of a palace for the Shah, throughout that time becoming involved in political affairs which make him a target for a poisioning attempt from which he nearly dies. Much of these years are a personal hell for Erik, and he soon becomes an opium addict. Erik eventually stops using opium due to his fear that it will damage his voice and switches to morphine. After construction on the palace is finished, the Shah fears that Erik knows too many of his personal secrets and, with the influence of the Khanum, arranges to have him arrested and put to death. Nadir, the Daroga who has befriended him, helps him to escape the guards, and Erik eventually makes his way back to France. Since early childhood, Erik has wished to eventually become the designer for a Paris Opera House. Unfortunately for him, the contest for the position is over by the time he learns of it in his perusal of his mother's old newspapers after her death. He approaches the winner, Charles Garnier, and makes a deal with him wherein he may help design and build the Palais Garnier Opera House. Below the Opera House, an artificial lake is created during its construction using eight hydraulic pumps because of problems with the ground water level that keep rising. Without the knowledge of the other workers, Erik builds a maze of tunnels and corridors in the lower levels. Past the underground lake, he builds a lair for himself, where he may live protected from the public. Ensconced here, he rides out the strife and misery of the 1871 Paris Commune. Besides being a brilliant inventor and engineer, Erik is also a musical genius, and he is frequently involved in the affairs the opera house in order to listen to operas and interfere with the manager's bad taste. Because he cannot show his distorted face in public, he takes the disguise of a ghost, using violence in order to blackmail the opera managers and bind them to his will, exploiting the employees' superstitions to maintain his power and his knowledge about the building's secret passages for access to every part of the building without notice. With increasing amorality, he threatens those who refused his demands via letters and even kills some employees as warnings. However, he treats those who were loyal to him and obey his command, such as Madame Giry, very kindly. The rest of the book is largely based around the original Phantom of the Opera novel - though it differs on several points - following the relationship between Erik and the object of his desire, Christine Daae, and switching back and forth between their points of view. Christine, timid and frail, is frightened of Erik - it is revealed that she is indeed in love with him, but she is frightened of her feelings, and is unable to come completely to terms with his appearance. Because of this, she pursues a relationship with Raoul de Chagny, a young nobleman, while still frequently visiting Erik in his underground home. When Erik offers her a proposal of marriage, stating that it would be a temporary state of affairs (as he himself, owing to the prior poisoning attempt on his life in Persia, has begun to suffer extreme ill health and believes that he has roughly six months to live), Christine becomes agitated and returns to the world above. Considering his request to return to his home and give him an answer, whether it be "yes" or "no," Christine cannot bear the thought of hurting Erik by refusing him. She ultimately decides to flee with Raoul after her next performance, using it as her symbolic goodbye. Erik, however, has become aware of her plans and has been driven into a jealous, hurt frenzy; he kidnaps her during the performance and takes her to his home, while Nadir, who has been following Erik's activities, leads Raoul to the house underground in an attempt to free Christine. When Nadir and Raoul fall into Erik's torture chamber, a device created specifically to drive its occupants insane and ultimately suicidal, it is revealed that Erik plans to blow up the entire Opera House if Christine does not agree to marry him. Christine finally agrees, and an underground chamber stocked with gunpowder begins to fill with water in order to douse the danger; the water begins to fill up the torture chamber as well, threatening Nadir and Raoul with imminent death by drowning. Christine, who has at last fully realized her feelings for Erik, kisses him passionately on the mouth (a change from the original Leroux novel, in which she merely bestows a chaste kiss on his forehead); this act changes Erik, making him realize the futility of further violence. He stops the water in the chamber, and rescues Nadir and Raoul from their fates, allowing Raoul to leave with Christine and stating his wish for the two young people to marry; his only stipulation is that he would like for Christine to visit him one more time before his death. Raoul agrees in order to placate him, even though he has no intention of allowing such a thing; once their wedding-day draws near, however, Christine backlashes against Raoul's insistence that she never see Erik again and goes herself to visit him. When Raoul - who tells the remainder of the novel from his point of view - learns of Christine's return to Erik, he descends himself into the underground home to fetch her, but is detained by Nadir, who refuses to let him enter the room where Erik is dying. Christine emerges from this room some time later after Erik has died, and returns to the upper world with Raoul. They marry, and a few months later, Christine reveals that she is pregnant. Though both are overjoyed at the news, the pregnancy is very difficult for Christine, and she almost dies in childbirth. The doctor is forced to perform a Cesarean section in order to save her life and that of the child - Raoul is initially opposed to this, as he believes that the baby is premature and cannot possibly survive outside of its mother's womb - making the procedure an unnecessary risk on Christine's life - but the doctor assures him that the baby is full-term. This causes Raoul to realize, due to timing, that the child cannot possibly be his, and is in fact Erik's. Despite this, Raoul raises the child as his own, never mentioning to Christine that he knows about the child's parentage. The boy, named Charles, has escaped his father's fate and is physically perfect. Christine dies when Charles is sixteen, and Raoul goes on to raise him. The last line of the novel is "The cuckoo is a very beautiful bird!" which carries the implication of cuckolding, and refers to the cuckoo bird's habit of laying its eggs in other birds' nests, but also of the beauty of adoption and acceptance.
2516929	/m/07kb1g	The Club Dumas	Arturo Pérez-Reverte	1993	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Lucas Corso, a mercenary book-dealer, specializes in acquiring rare and valuable editions for anonymous buyers and other book dealers. Corso visits the narrator, Boris Balkan, to get his opinion on the authenticity of a manuscript he has acquired, apparently a previously unknown The Three Musketeers chapter called The Anjou Wine. Corso then meets with the owner of the manuscript, his occasional friend and fellow bibliophile, Flavio La Ponte. La Ponte was given the manuscript by its previous owner, Enrique Taillefer, immediately prior to his suicide. Corso and La Ponte talk about eccentric book-collector Varo Borja. In Madrid, Corso visits the beautiful widow of Taillefer, Liana Taillefer, who is intelligent and manipulative. She seems curious about The Anjou Wine and skeptical that Corso's possession of the manuscript is legitimate. On his way out, Corso sees a sinister man with a scar driving a Jaguar. Corso goes to Toledo to visit the very successful Varo Borja, who shows him a very rare book called The Book of the Nine Doors, which purportedly contains a formula for summoning the devil. The author, Aristide Torchia, printed it in 1666 and was subsequently burned at the stake by the Inquisition, along with most of the copies of the book. Borja's book is one of only three remaining copies in existence. Borja believes that only one copy is legitimate, and the other two (including his own copy) are elaborate forgeries. After showing him his vast collection of occult books, Borja then gives Corso an odd but very lucrative assignment: find the other two copies of The Book of the Nine Doors, and compare them. All Corso's expenses will be paid, and Corso is to acquire the copy he determines to be the original, no matter the cost and by any means necessary. Corso does a bit of research, and the reader is treated to a history of Dumas' private life, and of the sinister character Rochefort from The Three Musketeers, whom Corso compares to the man with the scar. Corso visits Balkan again, this time in a cafe where Balkan is giving a lecture, and they discuss the villains in The Three Musketeers, including Rochefort, Milady, and Richelieu. Corso meets La Ponte again, and in a bit of self-reference, they playfully pretend they are characters in a mystery novel. Lucas Corso visits the Ceniza Brothers, experts in book restoration and probable world-class book forgers, and they discuss methods of book forgery. Liana Taillefer visits Corso in his hotel room and attempts to seduce him in return for "The Anjou Wine"; he sleeps with her and sends her on her way without giving her the manuscript, making her an enemy for the rest of the story (this parallels D'Artagnan's liaison with Milady in The Three Musketeers). Corso takes a train to Lisbon and meets a young woman in her twenties with striking green eyes, who was also at the café listening to Balkan's lecture. A backpacker, she mysteriously identifies herself as "Irene Adler", the name of an antagonist in the Sherlock Holmes stories. They part in Lisbon as Corso visits the owner of a second copy of The Book of Nine Doors, Victor Fargas. Fargas is an aged and obsessive book collector who is the last of a prominent Sintra family. Now he lives alone in an empty mansion with no furniture, selling what is left of his famous library of rare antique books to pay for food and property taxes. Corso compares the two copies of The Book of Nine Doors and notices slight differences in a few of the illustrations. (Pérez-Reverte includes one set of all nine illustrations in the book.) While most plates are signed by Torchia, some of the variants feature the initials "L.F." in place of the artist's signature. On his way back to the village from Fargas' place, the man with the scar, whom Corso now refers to as "Rochefort", makes an appearance. After a brief appearance of "the Girl" (formerly known as Irene Adler), Corso meets a corrupt policeman named Amilcar Pinto to arrange a burglary of Fargas' home to acquire the book. That night the Girl calls Corso in his hotel with news that Fargas is dead. They visit Fargas' home, find The Book of Nine Doors has been burnt in the fireplace, and also find Fargas drowned in his own fountain. Corso and the girl then leave for Paris, the location of the third copy of the book. In Paris Corso meets with Achille Replinger, an antique book seller, who verifies the The Anjou Wine manuscript to be genuine and discourses on the history of Dumas' writing habits. As they walk they see La Ponte with Liana Taillefer. Corso returns to his hotel and meets with a concierge, Gruber, and asks him to find the hotel where Liana is staying. That night the Girl visits Corso in his room and they talk about Lucifer and the war in Heaven — at one point she implies that she is actually a witness to the events of the fall, possibly a fallen angel herself. The next day Corso visits Baroness Frida Ungern, a widow who controls the Ungern Foundation, which in turn owns the largest occult library in Europe, including the last copy of The Book of Nine Doors. Baroness Ungern and Corso flirt as they discuss the occult books she has written and the personal history of Torchia. The Girl calls Corso while he is in the library and alerts him to the presence of Rochefort outside. Baroness Ungern translates the captions of all the illustrations in The Book of Nine Doors for Corso, and Corso notes the differences in this third set of plates. Later Corso drinks in a restaurant and analyses the difference in the three sets of illustrations, discovering that the mismatched plates are the only ones signed "L.F." On the way back to his hotel he is assaulted by Rochefort, who is successfully repelled by the Girl. Corso takes the Girl back to the hotel and they make love. Gruber locates Liana Taillefer and his friend La Ponte, and Corso goes to their hotel and assaults La Ponte. Rochefort arrives and knocks Corso unconscious. Corso awakes to find that Borja's copy of the book is missing, along with The Anjou Wine. La Ponte realizes he has been used by Liana Taillefer so that she could obtain the Dumas manuscript. Soon afterward, they learn Baroness Ungern has been killed in a fire at her library. By assuming Liana is playing out her part as Milady and Rochefort as her henchman, Corso deduces Liana has escaped to Meung, a setting in The Three Musketeers. Corso, La Ponte, and the Girl confront Liana, who confirms she is indeed emulating Milady. Rochefort arrives and holds them at gunpoint. The unseen analog to Cardinal Richelieu summons Rochefort by phone, and Corso is taken to a castle appearing in The Three Musketeers. Richelieu's identity is revealed, and he describes the motives of Liana, Rochefort, and Liana's late husband Enrique. He then introduces Corso to The Club Dumas, a literary social group for very wealthy Dumas enthusiasts, who are all at the castle for an annual banquet. To Corso's chagrin, Richelieu knows nothing about the plot surrounding The Book of Nine Doors, as the two conspiracies are completely unrelated. Although invited to stay, Corso leaves the party confused. Corso, the Girl, and La Ponte drive back to Spain, where Corso knows he must confront Borja. On a hilltop overlooking Borja's mansion, the Girl explicitly tells Corso that she is a fallen angel who rebelled against God and has wandered the Earth ever since. Corso accepts this and his growing attachment to her. Corso arrives at Borja's home, realizing that his employer is the perpetrator behind the murders and arsons. Borja has apparently gone completely insane, having dismantled a great deal of his occult book collection in the name of "research", and so that none might follow after him, in an effort to summon the devil and "gain knowledge." Borja explains his methodology and the symbolism in the ritual before he executes it. The ritual goes awry, as one of the prints needed to properly complete it is a forgery made by the Ceniza Brothers. Borja appears to meet with an unhappy ending, each protagonist - Corso and Borja - getting the devil they deserve.
2519281	/m/07kj2n	The Ticket That Exploded	William S. Burroughs	1962	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Ticket That Exploded continues the adventures of Agent Lee in his mission to investigate and subvert the methods of mind control being used by The Nova Mob, a gang of intergalactic criminals intent on destroying Earth. From the book: The basic nova technique is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflicts-This is done by dumping on the same planet life forms with incompatible conditions of existence-There is of course nothing "wrong" about any given life form since "wrong" only has reference to conflicts with other life forms-The point is these life forms should not be on the same planet-Their conditions of life are basically incompatible in present time form and it is precisely the work of the nova mob to see that they remain in present time form, to create and aggravate the conflicts that lead to the explosion of a planet, that is to nova- ru:Билет, который лопнул
2519788	/m/07kkj8	The History of Sir Charles Grandison	Samuel Richardson			 As with his previous novels, Richardson prefaced the novel by claiming to be merely the editor, saying, "How such remarkable collections of private letters fell into the editor's hand he hopes the reader will not think it very necessary to enquire". However, Richardson did not keep his authorship secret and, on the prompting of his friends like Samuel Johnson, dropped this framing device from the second edition. The novel begins with the character of Harriet Byron leaving the house of her uncle, George Selby, to visit Mr. and Mrs. Reeves, her cousins, in London. She is an orphan who was educated by her grandparents, and, though she lacks parents, she is heir to a fortune of fifteen thousand pounds, which causes many suitors to pursue her. In London, she is pursued by three suitors, Mr. Greville, Mr. Fenwick and Mr. Orme. This courtship is followed by more suitors: Mr. Fowler, Sir Rowland Meredith and Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. The final one, Pollexfen, pursues Byron vigorously, which causes her to criticize him over a lack of morals and decency of character. However, Pollexfen does not end his pursuits of Byron until she explains that she could never receive his visits again. Pollexfen, unwilling to be without Byron, decides to kidnap her while she attended a masquerade at the Haymarket. She is then imprisoned at Lisson Grove with the support of a widow and two daughters. While he keeps her prisoner, Pollexfen makes it clear to her that she shall be his wife, and that anyone who challenges that will die by his hand. Byron attempts to escape from the house, but this fails. In order to prevent her from trying to escape again, Pollexfen transports Byron to his home at Windsor. However, he is stopped at Hounslow Heath, where Charles Grandison hears Byron's pleas for help and immediately attacks Pollexfen. After this rescue, Grandison takes Byron to Colnebrook, the home of Grandison's brother-in-law, the "Earl of L." After Pollexfen recovers from the attack, he sets out to duel Grandison. However, Grandison refuses on the grounds that dueling is harmful to society. After explaining why obedience to God and society are important, Grandison wins Pollexfen over and obtains his apology to Byron for his actions. She accepts his apology, and he follows with a proposal to marriage. She declines because she, as she admits, is in love with Grandison. However, a new suitor, the Earl of D, appears, and it emerges that Grandison promised himself to an Italian woman, Signorina Clementina della Porretta. As Grandison explains, he was in Italy years before and rescued the Barone della Porretta and a relationship developed between himself and Clementina, the baron's only daughter. However, Grandison could not marry her, as she demanded that he, an Anglican Protestant, become a Catholic, and he was unwilling to do so. After he left, she grew ill out of despair, and the Porrettas were willing to accept his religion, if he would return and make Clementina happy once more. Grandison, feeling obligated to do what he can to restore Clementina's happiness, returns to Italy; however, Clementina determines she can never marry a "heretic", and so Grandison returns to England and Harriet who accepts him. They are married; and everyone is accorded their just deserts. In a "Concluding Note" to Grandison, Richardson writes: "It has been said, in behalf of many modern fictitious pieces, in which authors have given success (and happiness, as it is called) to their heroes of vicious if not profligate characters, that they have exhibted Human Nature as it is. Its corruption may, indeed, be exhibited in the faulty character; but need pictures of this be held out in books? Is not vice crowned with success, triumphant, and rewarded, and perhaps set off with wit and spirit, a dangerous representation?" In particular, Richardson is referring to novels of Fielding, his literary rival. This note was published with the final volume of Grandison in March 1754, a few months before Fielding left for Lisbon. Before Fielding died in Lisbon, he included a response to Richardson in his preface to Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.
2520413	/m/07klx_	An Option for Quebec		1968		 The essay opens with a foreword entitled The Moment of Choice signed by Roch Banville, Rosaire Beaule, Gérard Bélanger, Jean-Roch Boivin, Marc Brière, Pothier Ferland, Maurice Jobin, René Lévesque, Monique Marchand, Guy Pelletier and Réginald Savoie. The foreword is followed by a preface by historian Jean Blain. The substance of the essay consists of three parts and a short conclusion. The book ends with an epilogue by Quebec documentary film director Pierre Perrault. The first part (17 pages), is entitled A Country That Must be Made and contains six small chapters advancing the reasons for Quebecers to make the double choice of independence for Quebec and a new economic union with Canada. Chapter I ("Belonging") treats of the collective personality of Quebecers. Chapter II (The Acceleration of History) discuses the challenge that modernity poses to the preservation of the collective personality of the Quebec people and suggests that the only way to dissipate the danger of the assimilation of its francophone majority is "to face up to this trying and thoughtless age and make it accept us as we are". Chapter III (The Quiet Revolution) discuses the catch up and progress accomplished by the Quebec nation since the Quiet Revolution. In chapter IV (The Basic Minimums), Lévesque points out the limitations of the centenary Canadian federal framework (1867–1967) if Quebec is to enjoy the basic amount of internal autonomy it needs to continue on the way of progress as it has been doing since 1960. In chapter V (The Blind Alley), Lévesque remarks that the vital minimum for Quebec is a "frightening maximum, completely unacceptable" for English Canada which needs the central State of Canada "for its own security and progress as much as we need our own State of Quebec". Chapter VI (The Way of the Future) presents the alternative of René Lévesque to what he describes as the blind alley of maintaining or adapting the political status quo. He invites his readers to reject Canadian federalism entirely and proposes a sovereign Quebec ("complete liberty in Quebec") that would be associated to the rest of Canada as part of a new Canadian Union modelled on the precedents of the European Economic Community, Scandinavia or Benelux. The second part (25 pages), entitled A Country that Is "Feasible", is made of two chapters describing the "Option for Quebec" in more details. This part is introduced by a short text of Bernard Chenot (From Politics to Economics) treating of the economic organization of the State. The first chapter (The Association) presents the association that Quebec would propose to Canada, that is to say a monetary union and a common market. The monetary union would be carried out on the basis of an accord renewable every five years. The second chapter (The Transition Period) deals with the question of the steps Quebec would have to go through to reach the status of a sovereign State. It discuses the financing of the state and the means of retaining investments in Quebec. The third part (68 pages) consists of seven appendices which serve as documentation of the first two parts of the essay. Appendix 1 (Some Varieties of Special Status) cites authors who wrote on the special status which Quebec would in their opinion need to ensure the future of its development and the conservation of its particular collective personality within the framework of a reformed Canadian federalism. The works cited are Equality or Independence by Daniel Johnson, Sr. (published in 1965), Le Québec dans le Canada de demain (published in 1967) and comprising texts by Marcel Faribault, Jean-Guy Cardinal and Claude Ryan, as well as an excerpt of the report of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of the Quebec Liberal Federation presided by Paul Gérin-Lajoie and prepared for the Congress of October 1967. Appendix 2 (Neo-Centralization) contains the point of view of senator Maurice Lamontagne, who, in two articles published in Le Devoir on September 23 and 25, 1967, rejected the special status thesis of Claude Ryan and proposed a "cooperative federalism" in which René Lévesque saw nothing but a way to re-centralize powers in Ottawa. Appendix 3 (Québec-Canada: A Blind Alley) reproduces a talk given by economist and former Premier of Quebec Jacques Parizeau in Banff, Alberta, on October 17, 1967. Appendix 4 (The Snare of Biculturalism) gives the statistics available at the time concerning the assimilation of out-of-Quebec francophone minorities and argues that it is not possible to reanimate the cultural life of these minority groups simply by offering them the status the Anglophone "minority" of Quebec enjoys, as proposed by the report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. The report, in addition, does not propose an answer to the question of the integration of immigrants to Quebec society. The appendix reproduces a text by René Lévesque dated December 3, 1967 and an excerpt of an essay by Richard Arès published in the November issue of the Relations review. Appendix 5 (Association of Sovereign States) is a dossier on the functioning of the European Union and Scandinavia. The appendix includes an excerpt of the Treaty of Rome of March 25, 1957 which is at the origin of the Common Market of Europe. Appendix 6 (Other Testimony) reprints two texts: Sovereignty, Condition of Salvation by Jean-Marc Léger, initially published in Le Devoir on October 23, 24 and 25, 1967, and Quebec's Independence: Condition of Quebec's Salvation, Guarantee of Peace for Canada by Doris Lussier, excerpted from an interview he gave to Échos-Vedettes on November 11, 1967. Appendix 7 (Operation Panic) analyzes the flight of capital from Quebec which made the news soon after October 18, 1967, which is to say just after René Lévesque released the manifesto that forms the first part of An Option for Quebec.
2520775	/m/07kmld	Charley's Aunt	Brandon Thomas			 Jack Chesney and Charley Wyckeham are undergraduates at Oxford University in love, respectively, with Kitty Verdun and Amy Spettigue. Charley receives word that his aunt, Donna Lucia d'Alvadorez, a rich widow from Brazil whom he has never met, is coming to visit him. The boys invite Amy and Kitty to lunch to meet her, also intending to declare their love to the girls, who are being sent away to Scotland with Amy's uncle, Stephen Spettigue, who is also Kitty's guardian. They seek out another Oxford undergraduate, Lord Fancourt Babberly (known as "Babbs"), to distract Donna Lucia while they romance their girls. While they are out, Babbs breaks into Jack's room to steal all his champagne, but Jack and Charley intercept him and persuade him to stay for lunch. Babbs tells the boys about his own love, the daughter of an English officer called Delahey whom he met in Monte Carlo, although he does not remember her name. Babbs also uses Jack's room to try on his costume for an amateur play in which he is taking part. Amy and Kitty arrive to meet Jack and Charley, but Donna Lucia has not arrived yet, and so the girls leave to go shopping until she returns. Annoyed, Jack orders Charley to go to the railway station to wait for Donna Lucia. He soon receives an unexpected visit from his father, Sir Francis Chesney, a former colonel who served in India. Sir Francis informs Jack that he has inherited debts that have wiped out the family's fortunes; instead of going into politics as he had intended, Jack will have to accept a position in Bengal. Horrified, Jack suggests that Sir Francis should marry Donna Lucia, a widow and a millionaire, in order to clear the family debts. Sir Francis is hesitant but agrees to meet Donna Lucia before he makes a decision. Charley receives a telegram saying that Donna Lucia won't be arriving for a few days. The boys panic: the girls are coming, and they won't stay without a chaperone. Fortunately Babbs's costume happens to be that of an old lady. Jack and Charley introduce Babbs as Charley's aunt. His strange appearance and unchanged voice (he had never acted before) do not raise any suspicions. Babbs annoys the boys by accepting kisses from Amy and Kitty; the boys respond to his flirtations with violence. Sir Francis soon enters to meet Donna Lucia. He takes one look at Babbs and tries to leave, but Jack retrieves him. Spettigue arrives, angered that Kitty and Amy are lunching with the boys without his permission. However the penniless Spettigue soon learns that Charley's aunt is Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez, the celebrated millionaire. He decides to stay for lunch to attempt to woo "Donna Lucia". Outside Jack's rooms, in the grounds of St Olde's College, the boys are trying to get their girls alone so that they can confess their love. However, Babbs is in the way, charming the girls as Donna Lucia. Jack's father, Sir Francis, has decided to propose marriage to Donna Lucia, purely for money. Jack urgently corners Babbs and orders him to let his father down gently. Babbs does so, which Sir Francis finds to be a relief. Spettigue still wants to marry "Donna Lucia" for her money. Meanwhile, the real Donna Lucia, who turns out to be an attractive woman of middle age, arrives with her adopted niece, Miss Ela Delahay, an orphan. The money left to Ela by her father is enough to make her independent for life. Ela reveals that her father had won a lot of money at cards from Fancourt Babberly, for whom Ela still holds a great deal of affection. Donna Lucia recounts the story of a colonel named Frank who she once met over twenty years ago, of whom she was similarly fond. However, he was too shy to propose, and he left for India before he could tell her how he felt. Sir Francis enters, and Donna Lucia recognizes him, and the two rekindle their affection. However, before she can introduce herself, she discovers that someone is impersonating her. To investigate, she introduces herself as "Mrs Beverly-Smythe", a penniless widow. Jack and Charley finally make their declarations of love to their girls. However, they discover that they need Spettigue's consent to marry. The girls enlist Babbs to get the consent from the greedy Spettigue. Spettigue invites the entire party, including the real Donna Lucia and Ela, to his house, so that he can talk to "Donna Lucia" in private. Babbs, recognizing Ela as the girl he fell in love with in Monte Carlo, tries to escape, but he is caught by Spettigue. Babbs is upset by being in the same room as the girl he loves without being able to talk to her. Jack and Charley try to calm him down. Babbs spends time with the real Donna Lucia, Ela, Amy and Kitty, during which the real Donna Lucia embarrasses Babbs by showing how little he really knows about Donna Lucia. Ela takes a liking to the fake Donna Lucia, who sounds like the man she loves, and pours her heart out to Babbs, telling him of the anguish of losing her father and of the man who cared for him in his dying days, Lord Fancourt Babberly. She admits that she loves him and longs to see him again. Babbs tricks Spettigue into giving letter of consent for the marriages of Charley to Amy and Jack to Kitty by accepting marriage to Spettigue. (Kitty's father's will specified that if she marries without Spettigue's consent, Spettigue would inherit all of the money). Charley can no longer keep up the lie and admits that "Donna Lucia" is not really his aunt. Babbs, now dressed in a suit, confirms that he had been playing the part of Charley's aunt. As he is about to return to Spettigue the letter of consent, the real Donna Lucia reveals herself and takes the letter, stating that it "is addressed to and has been delivered to Donna Lucia d’Alvadorez". Spettigue storms off, threatening to dispute the letter. Amy is upset at everyone for making a fool of him. Donna Lucia reassures her and gives the girls the letter. Sir Francis and Donna Lucia are engaged (he made the proposal before he realized her identity; the young couples can marry; and Babbs confesses his feelings to Ela.
2522700	/m/07kr45	Life Expectancy	Dean Koontz	2004	{"/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 James Tock was born on a stormy night in Snow County Hospital in Colorado...and at the exact moment his grandfather, Josef Tock, a pastry chef, dies of a stroke. Though crippled by a stroke earlier in the week, moments before his death, Josef recovers miraculously to impart on his son Rudy ten cryptic predictions: the boy would be born at 10:46 PM, weigh 8 pounds, 10 ounces, be 20 inches long and be born with syndactyly. Josef also predicts five terrible days to come in his grandson's life. He names each, though not why they are so terrible, and Rudy dutifully notes them on the back of a free circus pass given to him by a police officer friend. Coherent though bizarre his speech may be, Josef Tock does not recover from his event, but expires right when the baby is born. Earlier in the evening, Rudy Tock made the acquaintance of a strange man, Konrad Beezo. Beezo is a clown for the very circus Tock's pass is for, and is a fitful, spiteful, creepy, chain smoking individual half in his clown costume. His wife Natalie, a trapeze artist of some renown and born of a good family, is lying in childbirth, says he, and her relatives have virtually disowned her for marrying him. He speaks glowingly of his soon-to-be-born son, who is to be named "Punchinello", and will carry on the fine tradition of clowning. He speaks venomously of his father-in-law, using many colorful epithets. Tock is only too grateful to leave Beezo and attend to his father...however, the grief for his father's death was short-lived. Beezo, upon learning Natalie died in childbirth, goes insane ranting about her family sending assassins to kill her and begins shooting, killing a doctor and a nurse. Tock, in perhaps the one moment of heroism in his meek baker's life, convinces the mad clown his enemies have left, and momentarily quells his anger. Beezo leaves, his son Punchinello swaddled in his arms... but drops a cliffhanger: "I'll never forget you, Rudy Tock. Never." As his late grandfather predicted, Jimmy Tock is twenty inches long, 8 lb. 10 oz, and has syndactyly; a fusing of the digits at birth a problem that is corrected with minor surgery. Jimmy Tock writes the book, a loose autobiography of personal experience, reminisces, and second- or even third-hand accounts of events, transcribing it from a series of tapes on the eve of his fifth and final terrible day. The narrative is given in an often self-deprecating, comically understated manner. However, certain experiences stand out starkly, most noticeably blundering into a harrowing, yet almost surreal, bank robbery by a trio of plastique-wielding crazed history buff clowns led by none other than Punchinello Beezo--in which Jimmy gradually realizes he's falling for a comely fellow hostage (on the first predicted date)--and a dangerous game of chicken with a severely disturbed stalker on an icy road the night his wife Lorrie--the former fellow hostage--is about to deliver their first child (on the second predicted date). The man after the Tocks is none other than Konrad Beezo himself, looking for retribution for his imprisoned, and accidentally-gelded son. His mad obsession with the family frames both this terrible day (2) and the next predicted day (3)--for Beezo desires a male Tock child as his prize, a new son to raise in the fine clown tradition. The lunatic will do whatever he must to collect what he believes due him, including numerous facial reconstructive surgeries to assume new identities and escape the grasp of the law. Jimmy believes that everyone in the world is tenebrously yet inexorably connected to one another, just as his toes were at birth. This phenomenon is often called "Six degrees of separation".(4)--Punchinello, who is currently imprisoned, is asked by Jimmy and Lorrie, who aided in his conviction and sentencing, to donate one of his kidneys to help save the life of Annie Tock, the daughter of Jimmy and Lorrie. Punchinello only agrees to the donation in return for multiple favors that are frivolous by comparison to the precious kidney. As the deal is about to be complete, Punchinello asks that Jimmy kills Virgilio Vivacemente as one last favor. The ensuing chapter(s) are picked up by Lorrie, and as he prepares to face the last of his five labors, Jimmy reflects on the writing at the bottom of that thirty-year-old ticket on which his life was mapped out: "PREPARE TO BE ENCHANTED!", and all the meanings those four red words hold, with both hope and trepidation. As the prophecies are fulfilled one by one, and he survives each, Jimmy learns many things about himself--as well as Konrad, Natalie, Punchinello, and Konrad's father-in-law, Virgilio Vivacemente, the vain, sadistic patriarch of the world-famous acrobatic clan who casts his long shadow over the lives of both the Tocks and the Beezos. Some of Jimmy's revelations are beautiful; others fearsome; still others shake his meek, lumbering pastry chef's life to the foundation and cause him to reflect on the true meaning of syndactyly--as both an ailment and a life's philosophy.
2523381	/m/07ksmy	The Mummy	Anne Rice	1989-05-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Henry murders his uncle Lawrence with a poison found in the mummy's tomb. When Henry tries to poison Julie in the same manner, Ramses comes to life in attempt to kill Henry, but succeeds only in scaring him away. After his awakening, Julie and Ramses are instantly attracted to each other. Ramses quickly adopts a pseudonym, "Reginald Ramsey," and claims to be an Egyptologist to throw off the accusation made by the frightened Henry that a "bloody mummy" rose from the crypt to harm him. With superhuman intelligence and the ability to learn quickly, Ramses quickly learns the English language and, with the help of an eager Julie, is given a tour of modern London and new technology that had arisen during the past two thousand years. While Henry's accusations are passed off as the rantings of a drunkard, the elderly and ailing Elliott Savarell suspects that it may be the truth. He trails Ramses and comes to believe that he is who Henry claims him to be. During Ramses's reign as pharaoh, he had learned from a Hittite priestess the formula for an elixir that grants eternal life. The potion not only made him immortal, but also allows his body to regenerate from damage that would kill a normal human, such as multiple bullet wounds. He requires neither food nor drink nor sleep, and only the sun's rays to maintain his life. However, he still craves food and certain other physical pleasures, like sex, smoking, and alcohol. Ramses nurses a deep secret. Prior to the Roman conquest of Egypt, he had served as an immortal advisor to its kings and queens, and the last person to awake him for consultation had been Cleopatra, the last ruler of Egypt. Although he served as Cleopatra's counsel (and encouraged her to romance Julius Caesar in a bid to keep the country independent), he had also fallen in love with her, and had revealed to her the secrets of the elixir. Having fallen in love with Mark Antony in defiance of Ramses's advice, Cleopatra refuses the elixir and chooses suicide upon Antony's death. In his depression, Ramses had given himself the name "Ramses the Damned", and had Egyptian priests seal him away underground. With Julie's encouragement, Ramses begins to recover. While Henry is convinced that Ramses is an evil monster ready to kill the entire family, Elliott reads Lawrence's notes and chases after Ramses to learn the secret of the elixir of immortality. Eventually, Ramses and Julie decide to visit Egypt one last time so that Ramses can say good-bye to his past. Although Ramses appears to be coming to terms with his past, upon visiting the Cairo Museum, he unexpectedly recognizes an unidentified mummy as being that of Cleopatra. Breaking into the museum later at night simply to see her, he impulsively pours some of the elixir onto the dead body. Cleopatra is revived, but by Ramses not pouring the entire vial of elixir on her, the restoration is incomplete; she is a half-formed monstrosity, awake and conscious yet with parts of her face, hands, and torso still gone. Her incomplete brain restoration leaves her not totally coherent; though Ramses later repairs her body with more of the potion, she appears to be insane and kills a number of people, including Henry. Cleopatra unexpectedly falls in love with Elliot's son Alex though realizes a life with him cannot last because of his mortality and his innocence. Because Ramses would not give her long-ago love Mark Antony the elixir to save his life, Cleopatra holds a passionate hatred for him and seeks to even the score by killing his current love: Julie Stratford. Cleopatra ultimately falters before killing Julie, realizing that the girl should not be punished for Ramses's actions. She also comes to regret the other murders she has committed. In an attempt to escape Ramses, Cleopatra "dies" when her car is hit by a train and is consumed by a fiery explosion so hot that it "could kill even an immortal." Ramses later gives the elixir to Julie after she attempts suicide in her grief for her loss of him, and he promises to stay with her for eternity. To thank him for his help in covering up all the unusual events, Ramses also gives the elixir to a dying Elliott, who drinks it after serious consideration of the consequences: dying miserably, or living eternally even when wishing for nothing but oblivion. Cleopatra has secretly survived the crash, and awakens under the care of a British doctor in Sudan. She vows to find Ramses again someday for revenge.
2524345	/m/07kvlk	The Gift of Stones	Jim Crace		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As a boy, the storyteller lost an arm and became an outcast to the villagers who rely heavily on their stonemasonry skills. The boy leaves the confines of the village, in order to seek a role for himself, and discovers his adeptness at telling stories. The storyteller returns to the village, but most of his time is spent acting as a protector for a widow and her child who had also been forced out of the village, and live two days' walk away. Periodically, he returns to the village charged with new stories to tell. The novel deals with the nature of truth and fiction. We are often presented with variations of the narrative and invited to judge which, if any, we accept as reality. It also deals with social change and the effects of revolutionary new technology and as such could be seen as sympathising with the victims of our modern post-industrial age.
2525000	/m/07kx2p	Poor White	Sherwood Anderson	1920	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is the story of an inventor, Hugh McVey, who rises from poverty on the bank of the Mississippi River. The novel shows the influence of industrialism on the rural heartland of America.
2525414	/m/07kxy6	The Red Pony	John Steinbeck	1933	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The book's action begins when Mr. Tiflin gives his son Jody a red pony colt. Overjoyed, Jody quickly agrees to all of the conditions his father places on the gift (to feed the pony, to clean his stall, etc.). Jody is so awed at the pony's magnificence that he decides to name him Gabilan, after the majestic Gabilan Mountains. After several weeks of training and getting to know Gabilan, Jody is told by his father that he will be allowed to ride the horse by Thanksgiving. Though the ranch hand Billy Buck assures him there would be no rain, the pony is caught in a downpour and catches what appears to be a cold after being left out to corral. Billy tries to cure the horse of its illness to no avail and finally diagnoses the illness as strangles, placing a steaming wet bag over the pony's muzzle and entrusting Jody to watch the pony. In the night, Jody becomes sleepy in spite of his constant worry and drifts off to sleep, forgetting about the open barn door. By the time he awakens, the pony has wandered out of the barn. When Billy arrives, he deems it necessary to cut a hole in the horse's windpipe so he can breathe. Jody stays by his side, constantly swabbing out the mucus that clogged the windpipe. After falling asleep, Jody dreams of increasingly powerful winds and wakes up to see that the pony is gone again. Following the pony's trail he then notices a cloud of buzzards circling over a nearby spot. Unable to reach the horse in time, he arrives while a buzzard is eating the horse's eye. In his rage, Jody wrestles with the bird and beats it repeatedly, not stopping until he is pulled off by Billy Buck and his father, though the bird had long since died. The story overall deals with ideas regarding the infallibilities of adults and the entrance into manhood. "The Gift" was first published in the November 1933 issue of North American Review. Jody gets bored. He looks with longing at the great mountains, wishing he could explore them. Suddenly, an old Mexican man named Gitano appears, claiming he was born on the ranch. Gitano requests to stay on the farm until he dies. Carl Tiflin refuses, although he does allow him to stay the night, noting that the old man is very similar to his useless old horse, Easter. That night, Jody secretly visits Gitano. He is polishing his old rapier. Jody asks if he has ever been to the great mountains, and Gitano says he has but remembers little. The next morning Gitano is gone, as is the old horse Easter. Jody searches the old man's things, but is disappointed to find no trace of the sharp sword. A neighbor reports seeing Gitano riding the missing horse into the mountains with something in his hand. The adults assume that this is a gun but, as Jody seems to know, it is most likely the rapier. Jody's father wonders why the man has gone into the mountains and jokes that he has been saved the trouble of burying the old horse. The story ends with Jody filled with longing and sorrow at thoughts of the old man, the rapier, and the mountains. "The Great Mountains" was first published in the December 1933 issue of North American Review. Jody's father Carl thinks it is time for Jody to learn more responsibility, so he arranges for Jody to take the mare Nellie to be serviced at a neighbor's farm. The stud fee is five dollars and Jody works hard all summer to satisfy the five dollar credit his father held over him. After a few months, Billy Buck determines Nellie is pregnant. While Jody and Billy take care of the mare, Billy states that his mother died in childbirth and he was raised on mares' milk. That's why Billy is supposed to be so good with horses. Jody dreams often about his coming foal. Billy explains that mares are more delicate than cattle and sometimes the foal has to be torn to pieces and removed to save the mare's life. This worries Jody. He thinks of his pony Gabilan, who died of strangles. Billy failed to cure the pony, and now Jody worries something will happen to Nellie. This doubt also assails Billy, who is insistent on not failing the boy again, both for Jody and his own pride. Jody wakes up in the middle of the night. He dreams of all the possible things that could go wrong with Nellie’ pregnancy, hoping none of them would come true. Then, “he [slips] his clothes on” and sneaks out to the barn to check on Nellie. When Jody catches sight of Nellie, “She [does] not stop her swaying nor look around." and that he “can’t turn [the colt].” A horrible sound comes from the barn as Nellie’s life ends, and the colt’s is saved. "The Promise" was first published in the October 1937 issue of Harper's Monthly. Jody's grandfather comes to visit. Carl complains about how his father-in-law is constantly re-telling the same stories about leading a wagon train across the plains. Mrs. Tiflin and Billy, however, believe he's earned the right to tell of his adventures, and Jody is delighted to hear them no matter how many times. The morning after his arrival, Carl complains about Grandfather's stories at the breakfast table: "Why can't he forget it, now it's done?...He came across the plains. All right! Now it's finished. Nobody wants to hear about it over and over." At that moment Grandfather walks into the room. Afterwards Jody's grandfather becomes melancholic. He acknowledges that his stories may be tiresome, but explains: Jody, attempting to console his weary, nostalgic, and heartbroken grandfather, tells him that he wants to be a leader as well. The story ends with Jody preparing a lemonade for his grandfather, allowed to do so by his mother after she realizes he is acting out of genuine sympathy, not in an effort to win himself a treat. "The Leader of the People" was first published in the August 1936 issue of Argosy. The short story concerns a man named Junius Maltby, who, dissatisfied with his life as an accountant in San Francisco, finally breaks with that life on the advice of his doctor, who recommends drier weather for his respiratory illness. Junius, in fairer climate, takes boarding with a widow and her children in his convalescence. After some time, with the townsfolk beginning to talk about the single man living so long with the widow, Junius promptly marries his landlord and becomes the head of the well-kept, profitable ranch/farm. The widow releases her working man and tries to put Junius to work on the farmstead, but Junius, having become accustomed to a life of leisure, ignores his duties. Eventually the farm falls into disrepair, the family goes broke and without enough food or clothes, and the widow and her own children succumb to disease. Only Junius and his lone son by the widow survive. Junius, with his barefoot child and a hired servant as lazy as he, spends his time reading books and having fanciful discussions with his companions, never actually working. Because of this, his son is raised in rags, though well trained to independent thought and flights of the imagination. Despite his appearance and the intentions of the other children to torment him, the child is well received at school and indeed becomes a leader of the children. So influenced by him are they, the other children begin to spurn their shoes and tear holes in their clothes. Except for the teacher, who finds the man and his son to be romantically dignified, the rest of the community has nothing but scorn for Junius and sympathy for his child. The story ends with members of the school board attempting to give the child some shoes and new clothes as a present. Upon realizing the regard in which he is held by society, he loses the last of his innocence and becomes ashamed, realizing for the first time that he is poor. The last scene has the sympathetic teacher see Junius and his son, cleaned and well dressed though painfully so, on their way back to San Francisco where Junius will go back to dull work and ill-health in order to provide for his unwilling son.
2526704	/m/07k_j1	Ladysmith	Giles Foden	1999-12-02	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The time is November 1899 through February 1900; the place is Ladysmith, a small railway town in the British Colony of Natal near ths border with the Boer Republics. The Boers have surprised the world with initial victories over the British Army and have now laid siege to Ladysmith. As they shell the town from surrounding hills, people die, disease is rampant, structures collapse, starvation looms, there is panic about enemy agents and yet the British muddle through. The setting of Giles Foden’s novel is historically accurate, and a number of historical figures appear as characters; for example, the Boers arrest a young reporter named Winston Churchill as he struggles to reach the besieged town, and an Indian lawyer-turned-medical volunteer named Mohandas K. Gandhi becomes more committed to his philosophy of active non-violence. The core of Ladysmith is a fictionalised version of a love story that Giles Foden found in the letters of his great-grandfather, who was a British soldier at Ladysmith. Bella, the Irish hotelkeeper's daughter, falls in love, first, with a British soldier; and later with a Portuguese barber, thus defying convention and rebelling against her father.
2526948	/m/07l0gx	The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story	Richard Preston	2002-10	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 *Section 1, “Something in the Air”, begins with a day-by-day account of the anthrax letter attacks in Florida and Washington, DC, for the period 2 to 15 October 2001. Robert Stevens, a photo retoucher for the tabloid The Sun was a victim and US Senator Tom Daschle was an intended victim. The reactions of the FBI, the CDC and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) are detailed. *Section 2, “The Dreaming Demon”, looks back to an outbreak of smallpox at St Walburga Hospital in Meschede, Germany. The successful efforts organized by local public health authorities and the WHO -- including a textbook example of ring vaccination containment -- are described. *Section 3, “To Bhola Island”, describes the variety and evolution of poxviruses and the history of smallpox in particular. The story of the SEP (Smallpox Eradication Program, referred to throughout as “the Eradication”), led by DA Henderson and others is recounted. The more personal story of physician, counterculture figure, and future virtual community pioneer Lawrence Brilliant is told as his Indian guru, Neem Karoli Baba exhorts him in 1970 to join the SEP and “go eradicate smallpox”. (Brilliant ended up fighting the outbreak at the Tatanagar Railway Station in Bihar. Finally, the Maximum Containment Facility (MCF) of the CDC in Atlanta is described. *Section 4, “The Other Side of the Moon”, begins with an account of the 1989 defection to the UK of Vladimir Pasechnik, the first Soviet bioweaponeer to flee to the West. Pasechnik described Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons program, to MI6, including their genetically modified, antibiotic resistant plague and their smallpox program at the site known as Vector. The fact that the Russians had armed ICBMs with both plague and smallpox is revealed. Various biological weapon facilities in Russia and Iraq are described. Finally, the history and work of the Ad Hoc Committee on Orthopox Infections is related. This group of the WHO has hotly debated since 1980 over the fate of the remaining samples of smallpox in the last two official repositories. DA Henderson has been in favor of destruction, while US Army scientist Peter Jahrling has been against it on the basis that further research is needed since smallpox almost certainly exists (he believes) outside of the repositories. *Section 5, “A Woman with a Peaceful Life”, tells the story of USAMRIID microbiologist and epidemiologist Dr Lisa E. Hensley who was originally recruited to do Ebola work. A January 2000 accident in the AA4 “Hot Suite” that Hensley experienced, along with the protocols that followed it, is described. The efforts of USAMRIID scientists to get approval to do smallpox research on animals is described including the FDA’s “Animal Efficacy Rule” and the WHO General Assembly’s provisional permission to do research for three years (1999–2002). A “Monkey Cabinet” is designed at USAMRIID and CDC for use in the possible investigation of the question of whether animals can be infected with smallpox. The development of a lethal, genetically engineered mousepox virus (the Jackson-Ramshaw virus) and its implications for bioterrorism are described. Finally, the “awakening” of the smallpox at the CDC’s MCF West in 2001 by US Army investigators to induce smallpox disease in monkeys for the first time is dramatically recounted. *Section 6, “The Demon’s Eyes”, continues the story of the induction of smallpox disease in monkeys at the CDC in 2001. It was determined that the Harper strain of smallpox kills monkeys slowly while the India strain kills them quickly. This was the first time that smallpox had ever been shown capable of infecting non-humans. Of eight monkeys infected, seven died—six of hemorrhagic smallpox and one of the classic pustular type. There follows a discussion of the need and justification for animal-use smallpox experiments. The emergency evacuation of the Army workers in the MCF West on 9/11 is described. *Section 7, “The Anthrax Skulls”, relates the atmosphere at the Department of Health and Human Services and their actions at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The story of the Amerithrax investigations is picked up again in day-by-day detail for the period 16 to 25 October 2001. The response by the FBI, HHS, DOJ, CIA and the White House are detailed. Actions at USAMRIID and USAMRMC are also described. (USAMRIID became the FBI’s reference lab for forensic evidence related to the bioterror incident.) The events leading to Dr Steven Hatfill becoming a DOJ “person of interest” are related. Finally, the indignation of Alfred Sommer, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health at the news of the Army animal smallpox experiments is described as well as a reiteration of DA Henderson’s opposition to the same. *Section 8, “Superpox”, the last section, begins with a description of an attempt at replication of the Jackson-Ramshaw virus at a lab at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine by Mark Buller working for USAMRIID. The potential for a similarly engineered “super-smallpox” virus for use by a terrorist is examined. The procedure for the transfection of an interleukin-4 gene into a mousepox virus is described. Finally, an unusual artifact – the preserved arm of a 3 or 4 year old child with classic smallpox lesions, discovered in 1999 and now housed at USAMRIID—is described. This leads the author to muse that “the dream of the total eradication had failed”, because although we could eradicate smallpox from nature, “we could not uproot the virus from the human heart”.
2527567	/m/07l2_r	The Last King of Scotland	Giles Foden	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist is a fictional character named Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish doctor who goes to work in Uganda out of a sense of idealism and adventure. He relates how he came to be the personal physician and confidant of Amin, the president of Uganda from his coup d'état in 1971 until his deposition in 1979. The novel focuses on Garrigan's relationship and fascination with the president, who soon grows into a brutal and ruthless dictator. Garrigan acts repeatedly against his better judgment, remaining in Amin's employment until he is far past the point of easy escape physically or morally. He is gradually drawn into the corruption and paranoia of Amin's rule, including the expulsion of the Asians, with disastrous results for those around him. Drawing on his twenty years of living in Africa and his background as a journalist, Foden researched the events surrounding Amin's rise to power and downfall. He interviewed many of those who watched and participated in the Ugandan ruler's eight-year reign. The author evokes the form of a memoir by inserting fictional newspaper articles and journal entries, along with actual events. In a 1998 interview with the online magazine Boldtype, Foden said he based parts of Garrigan's character on an associate of Amin named Bob Astles. As a British soldier who worked his way into Amin's favour, Astles was much more "proactive" than Garrigan, according to Foden. He paid the price by spending six and a half years in a Ugandan jail after the fall of his protector. Astles compromised himself by his direct association with Amin's security forces. While Amin was in power, Astles was alternately either favoured or punished; he was imprisoned and tortured on at least one occasion. Amin's personal physician was, in fact, a Ugandan doctor called Paul D'Arbela. The title of the book refers to Amin declaring himself as the King of Scotland.
2527894	/m/07l3hl	The Rising Force	Dave Wolverton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Obi-Wan Kenobi is trying hard to become Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn's apprentice. However, when he fails to gain a master, he is assigned to the Jedi Agricultural Corps on the planet Bandomeer. He finds out Qui-Gon is on a mission on Bandomeer, also. The two must dodge Whiphids and Hutts on a mining ship, which is eventually hijacked by Offworld Corporation, a rival faction to the group Obi-Wan is joining. Offworld holds the ship's stash of dactyl, a mineral required for most of the creatures on the ship. The mining ship is soon attacked by pirates, which causes them to launch an emergency landing on a moon close to Bandomeer. The Jedi, Offworld, and Offworld's rival faction must work together to fight against predators and other threats. Offworld's uprising is also stopped during this truce, and once the ship is repaired, the factions travel together to Bandomeer. Most importantly, Qui-Gon catches glimpses of Obi-Wan's potential, and starts to reconsider.
2528063	/m/07l3v8	The Dark Rival	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Qui-Gon Jinn must face his past: his former apprentice, Xanatos, who has turned to the dark side of the Force, returns to fight Qui-Gon and lead Offworld Corporation as the major mining faction on Bandomeer. The Jedi Master must request the help of the boy he refused to have as his Padawan, the young Obi-Wan Kenobi. During their fight against Xanatos and Offworld, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon become close allies. However, Obi-Wan is soon captured by Offworld miners and forced to work as a slave on a deep sea mining facility, where Obi-Wan meets a Phindian named Guerra. After some near misses, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan reunite in a showdown against Xanatos. Xanatos escapes after nearly trapping Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in a mining shaft. However, the mission brings Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan even closer. Finally, Obi-Wan is accepted as Qui-Gon's padawan learner.
2528114	/m/07l3yt	The Hidden Past	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Young Obi-Wan Kenobi is now the Padawan of the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. While preparing for their next mission, Obi-Wan celebrates his thirteenth birthday. Qui-Gon provides his apprentice with a special rock that has Force-sensitive powers. Meanwhile, Yoda assigns them to the planet of Gala, where they must oversee elections between Prince Beju and two other candidates. However, along the way to Gala, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are hijacked by Guerra's brother, Paxxi and forced to land on the planet of Phindar, which is controlled by The Syndicat crime organization. Although hesitant to help eradicate the Syndicat at first, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are forced to cooperate with Guerra and his friends when they realize that none other than Gala's Prince Beju is in league with the crime faction. Beju plans on using the Syndicat's power to cut bacta supply, allowing him to control Gala and, hopefully, the entire sector. At the Syndicat's headquarters, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discover that the storages are empty, giving them a lead that Beju is indeed in on the plot. Later, Obi-Wan is captured and nearly brainwashed by the Syndicat, though he uses the Force to endure it along with the Force-sensitive rock. As a result, Obi-Wan is able to sneak aboard Beju's ship and incriminate the Syndicat organization. With the Syndicat defeated, Beju is forced to return to Gala and operate his plans alone. Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi brace themselves on their next mission.
2528252	/m/07l47v	The Wars	Timothy Findley	1977	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A man named Robert Ross is introduced as squatting in a tattered Canadian military uniform, with his hands between his legs while holding a pistol. A nearby building is on fire, and a train is stopped. There is evidence of war, and Ross is shown to be in the company of a black horse and a dog. Robert, the horse, and the dog seem to have been together for a while, as they understand each other. He decides to free a herd of horses from the train, and the prologue ends with the horses, rider, and dog all running as a herd. Robert Ross has enlisted in the army after the death of his sister which he feels guilty about. His sister, Rowena, has recently died from falling out of her wheelchair in their barn while playing with her rabbits. Robert feels guilty because he was unable to save her since he was making love to his pillows in his locked room. He then joins the army to distance himself from the pain. Rowena was in a wheelchair and Robert watched over her. She had rabbits and loved to play with them. When she died, Robert's mother wanted him to kill the rabbits but Robert refused. Instead, Mr. Ross called someone else to kill the rabbits. In an attempt to stop the rabbit-killing by Teddy Budge, Robert was beaten up, covered in bruises. Robert's mother came to talk to him as he soaked his bruises in the bathtub. She was drunk and smoking a cigarette when she confronted him, and said there was nothing she could do to stop him from going to war. He meets Eugene Taffler, a war hero while in training. Eugene Taffler is very big and strong. Robert's first encounter with him occurs while he is looking for some lost horses. He then goes with his soldiers-in-training to a brothel named Wet Goods and when the prostitute (Ella) finds that he has ejaculated in his pants, she shows him a way to see into the next room. This is where he sees his hero, Taffler, having sex with the large man from reception. Upon seeing this, he starts throwing stones at the bottles and scares Ella in an imitation of the violence he has just witnessed. While on the S.S. Massanabie to England, Ross has to kill a horse that broke its leg during a storm. Robert struggles a lot trying to kill the horse, firing and missing many times before landing his shots. Robert is now in France and in charge of a convoy. He went ahead in the fog. He falls into a muddy sinkhole and nearly drowns. After 'saving himself' he is met by Poole and Levitt, two of his men. Robert eventually reaches the dugout with Levitt. Devlin, Bonnycastle, and Rodwell are there. Rodwell cares for injured animals he finds and has birds, rabbits, toads, and hedgehogs. The rabbits remind Robert painfully of Rowena, because she loved to play with her own rabbits back at home. Robert builds a bond with Rodwell, and begins to love him. Rodwell is the only other civil soldier who cares and respects animals. Harris dies two days before Robert was scheduled to leave for France. Trying to figure out what to do with Harris and wanting a proper funeral by the army for his friend, Robert discovers when he goes back that Harris is already cremated. Disappointed by the way his friend is buried Robert says to Taffler "This is not a military funeral. This is just a burial at sea. May we take off our caps?" pg. 107. Feb 28th - the Germans set of a string of land mines, strategically placed along the St.Eloi Salient. The whole country side goes up in flames. This was the second half of the battle the Canadians thought was already over. 30,000 men would die and not a inch of land would be won. Robert is now experiencing trench warfare at its worst. Following a shelling of the dugout, his fellow soldier Levitt loses his mind, and Robert finds himself close to the brink. Ordered to place guns in a location sure to be a deathtrap, Robert and his men find themselves on the wrong end of a gas attack in the middle of a freezing cold winter. Robert is instructed to place the guns in a crater that is formed by the shelling attacks because these provide the best strategical advantage. As he approaches the crater Robert tells the rest of the men to stay back while he tests it to see if it is safe. He begins climbing across the slide of the crater when he slips down but smashes his knees on a rifle sticking out of the wall of the crater. The rifle has at least stopped his fall but has injured Robert's knees pretty badly. As the rest of the men start climbing down and landing on the rifle to set up the guns there is a gas attack. The bottom of the crater is full of freezing water and many begin jumping into it. Robert takes control with his pistol and instructs the men what to do. He saves the men by telling them to urinate on clothes and hold them over their faces. One man is scared to urinate and Robert must do it for him. After pretending to be dead for hours, Robert finds that they are being watched by an enemy German soldier. Rather than shooting the soldiers, the German allows all of Robert's men to leave the area. Just as Robert is leaving, however, the German makes a quick motion, and Robert turns around and shoots the German. Robert thinks that the German was reaching for his rifle when he was actually reaching for a pair of binoculars to look at the bird flying overhead, and is even more horrified to see that the German has a sniper rifle right beside him, meaning he could have killed Robert and the rest of the soldiers if he had wanted to. Robert hears a bird chirping above him and is then haunted by the sound of the bird from then on. Robert receives an invitation to Barbara d'Orsey's home. The majority of this section is told through transcripts via Juliet d'Orsey. Juliet relays through diary entries when she is with them. What she does not tell Robert is that Taffler had both his arms cut off in the war and is just laying on a bed in a room. When Robert sees this he is devastated. Juliet also tells of Eugene Taffler's attempted suicide. One day she decides to pick some flowers and bring them to Taffler. As she walks in she is faced with a man head first into the floor and bloody streaks all over the walls. Taffler had rubbed his raw stumps where his arms had been against the walls so he could bleed to death. But since Juliet walks in on him she screams and people come and end up saving Taffler. Juliet has told Robert that the room he had been given had a ghost (Lady Sorrel) who came to it every night to light the candles. And one night Juliet sees Barbara sneak into Robert's room without even knocking. So she thinks it would be a neat prank to dress up as Lady Sorrel carrying a candle and walk into Robert's room to light the candles and leave. As Juliet puts on her costume and walks up to the door she opens a crack and accidentally sees Barbara and Robert Ross make love prior to leaving, which she at first thinks is Robert hurting Barbara. By the end of the chapter, Juliet gives Robert a candle and a box of matches. Robert leaves Barbara d'Orsey's home and heads back to battle on a small train. He gets hopelessly lost on the way and loses his pack, after many weeks of travelling in circles he arrives at Désolé, a mental institution. Shortly after reaching the bath house, he is brutally raped by an unknown number of his fellow soldiers. When he returns to his room, he finally receives his lost pack, and burns his picture of Rowena as an act of charity, reasoning that it would be horrible for something so innocent to exist in such a messed up world. Robert then moves back out to the front. The Germans begin firing shells that set everything ablaze. Robert goes to speak to Captain Leather to request that the horses be let out of the barn because if the barn is hit they will all die. Captain Leather refuses Robert's request. Once back at the barn Robert asks his friend Devlin if he would help him release the horses. Devlin contemplates whether or not he should let all the horses die or face the wrath of Captain Leather. Devlin decides to help Robert and runs out to open the gate for the horses. At that moment Captain Leather gets up from hiding beneath a table and looks out the window to see Devlin disobeying his orders. He runs out screaming at him to stop, and calls treason and traitor. Leather pulls out his gun and fires at Devlin killing him. Then he sees Robert and takes aim at him and starts firing but misses because Robert hides between the horses as they are running out. At that moment three shells land and set the barn ablaze, the building where the Captain was and other soldiers were still in, and the field where all the horses had run to ablaze. And soon everything is burning around Robert, even the horses are slowly burning alive. Robert sees Captain Leather struggling to get him, walks over and shoots him in between the eyes. Robert runs away as he knows he will be court-martialed for disobeying orders. He finds a black horse and a black dog beside it, as he is about to ride the horse down the track he realizes there are horses in the abandoned train and frees a hundred and thirty horses and flees the area. As Robert is riding with all the horses a soldier stops him and tries to force him to return the horses, Robert pulls out his Webley and shoots him. He is a fugitive for some time before finally being caught in a barn with the horses. The soldiers surrounding Robert set the barn on fire in order to force him out. But because it had not rained for days the roof of the barn was extremely dry and lit up in seconds. Before Robert could open the barn doors the roof collapsed on him and the horses, setting them all on fire. Robert is saved but badly burned, and all the horses and the dog are killed. Robert turns down an offer of euthanasia from a nurse before being sent to England and tried in absentia. Since he could not be kept in prison, he was given leave to stay in St. Aubyn's for longterm treatment. Juliet d'Orsey rarely left Robert's side until his death in 1922. Mr. Ross was the only member of his family to come see Robert buried.
2529763	/m/07l79c	Batman: The Man Who Falls	Dennis O'Neil			 "The Man Who Falls" consists of a series of concentrated retellings of previously published Batman stories, including Detective Comics #33, which includes Gardner Fox and Bob Kane's first version of Batman's origin. O'Neil's story begins with a young Bruce Wayne falling down a hole on the grounds of Wayne Manor. Bats begin to swarm towards him and out the hole. Bruce's father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, rescues Bruce but chastises him for his carelessness, while Bruce's mother, Martha Wayne, comforts him. When Bruce asks if he was in Hell, she reassures him it "was just some old cave." The story then cuts to the murder of Bruce's parents and him kneeling at their dead bodies. The layouts of this version of the Waynes' murder is designed to resemble Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. At the age of 14, Bruce leaves Gotham City to explore and obtain skills in martial arts and forensics. Scenes of his early training as a teenager are depicted, including failed attempts at college, and a disillusioning experience in working with the FBI upon turning 20. He realizes that to achieve justice the way he sees fit, he cannot work "within a system." The story next turns to Bruce's foreign travels, one extended scene depicts Bruce's time training at a monastery, hidden in a mountainous region of Korea. After nearly a year of training, Master Kirigi tells Bruce he has exceptional intelligence and physique, but his traumatic past has made him self-destructive. Bruce Wayne leaves Korea and heads to France, where O'Neil summarizes events from Sam Hamm's Batman: Blind Justice. Bruce trains with a bounty hunter named Henri Ducard, who shows him "the uses of brutality, deception [and] cunning." When Ducard kills a fugitive he had been tracking one night, Bruce abandons his training, disgusted. The narration explains that Bruce meets and learns from every great detective in the world, when he approaches Willie Doggett. Summarizing events from O'Neil's own Legends of the Dark Knight story, "Shaman," Bruce (now 23) and Doggett track down a man named Tom Woodley to a mountain ledge, where Woodley shoots and kills Doggett. Woodley himself falls from a precipice. Bruce, without food or warmth, wanders the snowy mountains. After falling unconscious, he is rescued by a Native American shaman. When Bruce awakens, the old man tells Bruce he has the mark of the bat, an animal sacred in his tribe. Bruce returns to Gotham to begin his crime-fighting career. O'Neil again recounts events from Year One: Bruce's first night out, fighting street thugs while still uncostumed, is deemed a failure. While brooding in the library of Wayne Manor that night, a bat crashes through the study window. Modeling himself after the recurring images of bats, Bruce creates his costumed identity: the Batman.
2530403	/m/07l8h0	Message in a Bottle	Nicholas Sparks	1998-04-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Divorced and disillusioned about romantic relationships, Theresa Osborne is jogging when she finds a bottle on the beach. Inside is a letter of love and longing to "Catherine," signed simply "Garrett." Challenged by the mystery and pulled by emotions she doesn't fully understand, Theresa begins a search for this man that will change her life. What happens to her is unexpected, perhaps miraculous-an encounter that embraces all our hopes for finding someone special, for having a true and strong love that is timeless and everlasting. In a conference Nicholas Sparks held in a school, he said that this story was inspired by his parents.
2531453	/m/07lbc8	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	Ken Kesey		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story, narrated by the gigantic but docile half-Native American inmate "Chief" Bromden, focuses on the antics of the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy (ES, PL, RO, RU), who faked insanity to serve out his prison sentence, for statutory rape, in the hospital. The head administrative nurse, Mildred Ratched, rules the ward with a mailed fist and with little medical oversight. She is assisted by her three black day-shift orderlies, and her assistant doctors. McMurphy constantly antagonizes Nurse Ratched and upsets the routines, leading to constant power struggles between the inmate and the nurse. He runs a card table, captains the ward's basketball team, comments on Nurse Ratched's figure, incites the other patients on the ward to conduct a vote on watching the World Series on television, and organizes an unsupervised deep sea fishing trip. His reaction after failing to lift a heavy shower room control panel (which he had claimed to be able to) – "But at least I tried." – gives the men incentive to try to stand up for themselves, to do their best instead of allowing Nurse Ratched to take control of everything they do. The Chief opens up to McMurphy and reveals late one night that he can speak and hear. A disturbance after the fishing trip results in McMurphy and the Chief being sent for electroshock therapy sessions, but even this experience does little to tamp down McMurphy's rambunctious behavior. One night, after bribing the night orderly, McMurphy breaks into the pharmacy and smuggles bottles of liquor and two prostitute girlfriends onto the ward. McMurphy persuades one of the women to seduce Billy Bibbit, a timid, boyish patient, with a terrible stutter and little experience with women, so that he can lose his virginity. Although McMurphy plans to escape before the morning shift arrives, he and the other patients fall asleep instead without cleaning up the mess and the staff finds the ward in complete disarray. Nurse Ratched finds Billy and the prostitute in each other's arms, partially dressed, and admonishes him. Billy asserts himself for the first time, answering Nurse Ratched without stuttering. Ratched calmly threatens to tell Billy's mother what she has seen. Billy has an emotional breakdown and, once left alone in the doctor's office, commits suicide by cutting his throat. Nurse Ratched blames McMurphy for the loss of Billy's life. Enraged at what she has done to Billy, McMurphy attacks her and attempts to strangle her to death and tears off her uniform, revealing her breasts to the patients and aides watching. He has to be dragged away from her and is moved to the Disturbed ward. Nurse Ratched misses a week of work due to her injuries, during which time many of the patients either transfer to other wards or check out of the hospital forever. When she returns, she cannot speak and is thus deprived of her most potent tool to keep the men in line. Most of the patients leave shortly after this event. Later, after Bromden, Martini, and Scanlon are the only original patients left on the ward, McMurphy is brought back in. He has received a lobotomy and is now in a vegetative state, silent and motionless. The Chief later smothers McMurphy with a pillow during the night in an act of mercy, before throwing the shower room control panel, the same one McMurphy could not lift earlier, through a window, and escaping the hospital.
2532588	/m/07ld5n	Cause for Alarm	Eric Ambler		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Nicholas Marlow, an English engineer engaged to a young doctor, one day, out of the blue, loses his well-paid job. After several months of sheer desperation, he responds to an advert by an English engineering company, the Spartacus Machine Tool Company of Wolverhamption. He is offered the post of the firm's representative in Italy. Although the firm does not itself make weapons, its main sales are of the "Spartacus Type S2 automatic" boring machine, which is used for shell production. Able to speak some Italian, Marlow gladly accepts, secretly deciding that he will quit the job again as soon as possible to go back to England and get married. On arrival in Milan, he realizes that there is a huge backlog at his office, and that both Bellinetti, his personal assistant (male), and his secretary (female) are highly inefficient co-workers. What is more, a lot of his time is diverted by the Italian authorities, to whom he has to report on a regular basis and who eventually inform him that they have misplaced his passport so that he is temporarily unable to leave the country. There is growing uneasiness on Marlow's part when he happens to notice that his private correspondence with his fiancée has been steamed open. When he makes friends with Andreas Zaleshoff, an American businessman of Russian descent whose office is in the same building, he learns from the latter that Bellinetti is an agent for the OVRA and watching each and every step Marlow takes, and that his predecessor's accident&mdash;he was run over by a car in a dark and foggy street of Milan&mdash;was in fact cold-blooded politically motivated murder. On top of all that, Marlow is contacted by a General Vagas who informs him that he has no choice but to work as a Yugoslav spy. There is no way Marlow could legally leave Italy, especially after an arrest warrant has been issued for him by the authorities. Assisted by Zaleshoff, he succeeds in making his escape from Milan. Together, the two men embark on a several day long odyssey through the North of Italy&mdash;by train and on foot&mdash;until they finally, in the midst of a snowbound forest, reach the Yugoslav border. (Their flight takes up more than one third of the novel.) From Zagreb, Marlow can safely travel home to England. The final episode before the escape is a particularly excoriating attack on the repressive behaviour of the Mussolini State. This novel, together with Uncommon Danger/Background to Danger and The Mask of Dimitrios/A Coffin for Dimitrios comes from Ambler's 'Popular front' period when he was plainly sympathetic to the Left and the USSR. One of Marlow's English work colleagues, an obviously decent and intelligent sort, is sympathetically identified as a 'socialist'. Marlow escapes capture on one occasion thanks to the selfless intervention of a former Communist railwayman, who has been cunningly identified as a one-time Comrade by Andreas Zaleshoff.
2533940	/m/07lgq6	The Trigger	Arthur C. Clarke	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Trigger starts in the early to mid 21st century. A group of scientists invent, by accident, a device that detonates all nitrate-based explosive in its vicinity, thus providing good protection against most known modern conventional weapons. The first half of the book explores the reactions of society, government and the scientists themselves as the latter attempt to ensure that their invention will only be used for peaceful ends. It also traces the scientists' slow progress in understanding the science behind their invention. The second half of the book begins when the science is sufficiently well-understood that a second device can be built - one that does not detonate explosives, but merely renders them permanently harmless. cs:Spoušť (kniha)
2534288	/m/07lhjy	The Mark of the Crown	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Queen of Gala is dying. Her son, Prince Beju, wants to take the control of the whole planet no matter the consequences. Young Jedi apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi and his master, Qui-Gon Jinn, must find another heir to the throne to avoid a war. They must use a special device known as the "Mark of the Crown" to prove that Beju is not the rightful heir. The mission ends with successful elections, though Beju nearly compromises the Jedi's mission, as he almost did on Phindar.
2534588	/m/07ljcy	The Defenders of the Dead	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Immediately after the Gala incident, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn are ordered to the planet of Melida/Daan, where they are to rescue the Jedi Knight Tahl. There is a millennia-long war on Melida/Daan, with two bands fighting each other. Both bands have forgotten the Young, an organization made up of orphaned children and teenagers who fight for peace. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are not supposed to get involved, but the young apprentice feels that he must fight beside the Young, against his master's wishes. After the Jedi successfully rescue Tahl with the help of the Young, Obi-Wan decides to stay behind and help the Young bring peace between the Melida and Daan factions. Consequently, Qui-Gon quietly leaves with Tahl, having lost another apprentice.
2534610	/m/07ljgr	The Uncertain Path	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Obi-Wan Kenobi has left the Jedi Order because of a civil war on the planet of Melida/Daan. He's now part of the Young and he is content with the decision. But soon everything goes wrong; once the Young unite the two factions, they start to fight amongst themselves. In the crossfire, Obi-Wan's close friend, Cerasi, is killed, and Obi-Wan feels alone. Meanwhile, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan's former Jedi master, discovers a plot to destroy the Jedi Temple. While investigating, he receives notice that Obi-Wan wishes to rejoin the order. Qui-Gon knows that Obi-Wan would be an asset to the investigation at the temple, so he decides to return and bring his ex-apprentice back to the Jedi Order. The Young cease their internal struggle, and they succeed in uniting the Melida and the Daan under one government. With his task completed, Obi-Wan returns to the Jedi upon Qui-Gon's return. However, he is not immediately welcomed with open arms, for the Temple plot thickens when an assassination attempt is made on Yoda.
2534629	/m/07ljkk	The Captive Temple	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Obi-Wan Kenobi is back in the Jedi Order. But now everything is different: his master Qui-Gon Jinn is sure he will become a great Jedi Knight, but he is not sure that Obi-Wan should still be his Padawan. Now they must unite forces to investigate the recent attacks on the Jedi Temple, including a failed assassination attempt on Yoda. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon team up with Bant and the recently rescued Tahl. They soon learn that Xanatos is the mastermind behind the recent Temple attacks, and that he has converted Obi-Wan's former rival, Bruck Chun, to his cause. Furthermore, it is uncovered that Xanatos is planning more attacks, namely on the reactor core of the Jedi Temple. Bruck Chun also kidnaps Bant. In order to continue funding Offworld Corporation, Xanatos demands vast supplies of Vertex, an expensive crystal worth high monetary value, in exchange for the temple's freedom and the release of Bant. Qui-Gon locates Xanatos and duels with him, while Obi-Wan hunts down Bruck. Xanatos escapes, but not before setting the Temple on a course for destruction. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Bruck fight in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, where Bant is being held. During the duel, Bruck slips, and ignores Obi-Wan's offer of forgiveness by choosing to fall to his death. Bant is rescued, and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon soon locate the source of Xanatos' time bomb: the Fire Crystals locked in the reactor core. Although the Temple is free, Xanatos is once again at large. Qui-Gon has only one lead: Xanatos could be on his home planet, Telos. Obi-Wan decides to join Qui-Gon on his quest, even though the two are not master and padawan anymore.
2534663	/m/07ljq4	The Day of Reckoning	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi go to the planet of Telos on an unofficial mission to apprehend Xanatos, the Dark Jedi who had tried to destroy the Jedi Temple. Upon their arrival, they are surprised to find that Xanatos wields significant financial and political power on Telos. They soon discover that Xanatos and the government of Telos have been distracting the populace with a new form of gambling called Katharsis. In the meantime, the company UniFy, a subsidiary of the massive Offworld Corporation headed by Xanatos, has been mining the planet's resources despite the importance the native Telosians place on their environment. Pursued by Xanatos' men, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are forced to trust Denetrus ("Den"), a con man associated with POWER, an outlawed political party dedicated to preserving the Telosian environment. The three infiltrate the UniFy headquarters, looking for evidence to prove that Offworld is mishandling the planet's resources. However, the two Jedi are arrested, and Xanatos personally informs them they have been sentenced to death. The Jedi manage to escape the public execution with the help of Andra, a member of the POWER party. Obi-Wan and Andra infiltrate the Sacred Pools of Telos and discover that the site is indeed being used for mining operations. The two are detected by surveillance droids, but are able to escape and record evidence that Offworld is connected with UniFy. Meanwhile, Den and Qui-Gon have rigged the Katharsis lottery so that Den will win. When Den does win and Xanatos presents the prize to him, the recorded images are played for all the Telosians to see. However, Xanatos deceives the crowd and the Jedi are captured once more. But Den, addressing the crowd, tells the people how the lottery was rigged and how the Telosians were robbed of their money. Xanatos then makes his get-away, but Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan chase him back to the Sacred Pools site. After a lightsaber battle amid the black acid pools, the two Jedi finally corner the Dark Jedi. But Xanatos, not willing to be defeated, commits suicide by throwing himself into the acid pools.
2534704	/m/07ljv0	The Fight for Truth	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Qui-Gon Jinn and Adi Gallia are sent with their young padawans to the planet of Kegan. They must pick up O-Lana - a Force-sensitive baby - and take her to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant without interfering with the customs and isolationist-centered ideology of the planet. However, the nature of this culture ends up compromising the original mission when Siri Tachi and Obi-Wan Kenobi are mistaken for orphaned children, captured, and put in a school known as the Learning Circle. This school is a brainwashing camp, where Keganite children are preached the ideals of V-Tan and O-Vieve, the Benevolent Guides who are the cause of Kegan's isolationism. While at the school, Siri and Obi-Wan meet several Keganite children and discuss the reality of the situation. Meanwhile, the apprentices try to talk sense into O-Bin, their "teacher". This attempt fails, and the duo is sent to the "Relearning Circle", where drastic actions are taken to try and brainwash them. Fortunately for the Jedi, O-Lana is also located within this Relearning Circle, and Qui-Gon and Adi are able to rescue their padawans and the baby at the same time. After this incident, the truth behind the Learning Circle is revealed, which creates an uproar against the Benevolent Guides. Kegan is eventually introduced to the ways of the Galactic Republic.
2534774	/m/07lk0x	The Shattered Peace	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 For a hundred generations the worlds of Rutan and Senali have temporarily exchanged their heirs to the throne as a cultural learning experience. Now, one of the heirs does not want to come back to his planet and a war is going to happen. Only Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi and his master Qui-Gon Jinn can assist the planet. While trying to balance the peace between the two factions, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are nearly killed by a terrorist group, doublecrossed multiple times, and imprisoned by the people they are trying to assist. In the end, the peace between Rutan and Senali is re-established.
2534854	/m/07lk9m	The Deadly Hunter	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When a murderer tries to kill Didi, a friend of Qui-Gon Jinn, he and his fourteen-year-old apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi must stop the murderer. But they fail and the murderer, a bounty hunter by the name of Ona Nobis, starts going after them. After several days of investigations, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon learn that Ona Nobis will stop at nothing, and Didi must be sent away from Coruscant. Unfortunately, Didi is attacked at his sanctuary, and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are forced to fight Ona Nobis. Qui-Gon is captured by the bounty hunter, and it quickly becomes clear that it was all a plot to capture him, not Didi.
2534874	/m/07lkds	The Evil Experiment	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jenna Zan Arbor is a mad woman. She kidnaps Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, using him to investigate the Force. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Astri Oddo look for a cure, while also searching for Qui-Gon. Along the way, they meet other characters, such as Cholly, Weez and Tup, and a bounty hunter named Ona Nobis. Obi-Wan uses clues from Uta S'orn's son to track them from Nobis' home planet of Sorrus to Simpla-12, where he finds Cholly, Weez and Tup. He also finds the bounty hunter Ona Nobis, who easily matches the young apprentice's strength. At Simpla-12, Obi-Wan teams up with Adi Gallia and Siri Tachi before preparing to break into Zan Arbor's hideout and rescue Qui-Gon. However, it will not be an easy task, for Zan Arbor's laboratory is nearly impregnable.
2537199	/m/07lpnh	Gaia Gear				 Gaia Gear is a story set in the future of the Universal Century timeline of the Mobile Suit Gundam anime universe, specifically in UC 0203. Once more, the governments of Earth and its space colonies are at odds and resolve their differences with mecha, now named "Man-Machines". This time the resistance group Metatron fights against the Man Hunting Attachment police force of the corrupt Earth Federation. To have better chances Metatron creates a memory clone of the legendary Char Aznable called Affranchi Char ('affranchi' being a French word for a 'freed slave'), who commands the troops of Metatron and pilots the Gaia Gear Alpha. Two hundred years have passed since people floated the islands called space colonies into outer space. During this time, several wars have occurred. It was a battle in order to protect the Earth. Amongst the twinkling of the stars, man hated one another, got hurt, and collapsed, yet did not forget love. Much blood was shed, and grief brought forth. The souls of the dead wander the silence of the universe become light and melt into the Milky Way. The immeasurable universe swallows the feelings of everyone, continuing with no change. When the Earth loses its radiance, changing the people’s prayer to sighs of grief, one soul crosses time. Perhaps that person was the harbinger who awoke for that. Affranchi Char is a 19-year-old man who was raised on an island in the Pacific Ocean. The "cell chips" inside his brain contain strange memories and information. Affranchi was raised by a man named Gaba Suu, one of the island's elders. On his deathbed, Gaba Suu tells Affranchi to go into space, but his lover Everly Key is strongly opposed. One day, a giant humanoid machine washes up on the island's shore, and Affranchi makes up his mind to leave. One stormy night, Affranchi sneaks away in a canoe, intending to catch a ship for Hong Kong and go from there into space. While he is waiting for the ship, he meets and quarrels with a bigoted stranger who tells Affranchi that the white man is humanity's elite, destined to rule over the lesser races. After Affranchi boards the ship, it is hijacked by pirates. Everly, who has followed Affranchi aboard, is taken hostage. Affranchi displays an uncanny prowess in the martial arts and defeats the hijackers. Upon their arrival in Hong Kong, Affranchi and Everly are met by a waiting limousine. They are taken to meet the mysterious Berm Segen and his secretary Miranda Howe, who give Affranchi the antique "Man Machine" (Mobile Suit), the Zorin Soul. Suddenly, strangers burst in and kill Berm Segen, and our heroes flee in the Zorin Soul. Affranchi operates the machine with unnatural skill, returning Everly to her home island and then heading to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, Affranchi battles the forces of Maha, the Federation government's dreaded "Man-Hunting Agency." Formally known as the 13th Special Investigative Section of the Earth Federation Government Police Agency, this group is responsible for discovering illegal Earth residents and deporting them to the space colonies. Affranchi is able to fight off the Maha forces and, with the help of Miranda Howe, he hijacks a space shuttle and loads the Zorin Soul on board. Miranda tells the shuttle pilot to set course for the Side 4 shoal zone. Here they rendezvous with the waiting transport ship Spacious, whose crew greet Affranchi as "Your Excellency Char Aznable." Among the crew is a beautiful young woman named Krishna Pandent. The Spacious heads for the Side 2 colony Hellas, hiding Affranchi and Miranda in order to smuggle them into the colony. The ship makes its way through the colony to the factory block at the other end, along the way rescuing a young hang-glider named Ul Urian. The Spacious reaches the factory block and drops Ul Urian off, but the timing of his chance encounter with the Spacious strikes the crew as very suspicious. Affranchi, Miranda, and Krishna board an electric car and drive through the colony. They enter the Grenze district, which is a colossal slum, and a sudden attack by Maha's Minox craft forces them to flee into the tunnels in search of shelter. Affranchi is separated from his comrades and captured by the police. After clashing with his cellmates, Affranchi befriends one of them, a giant named Todd Goering. Affranchi is then released, but the Maha agent Ul Urian has planted a transmitter in his stomach in order to track him. Ul Urian submits a report to his commander Bijan Dargol, and then goes to meet Krishna for a "date" with the intention of taking her prisoner. Affranchi wanders the streets and encounters a gang of delinquents led by a man named Messer Mett, who turns out to be another friend of Todd Goering. Affranchi then runs into Miranda Howe and another Spacious crewmember named Joe Suren, who feed him a big dose of laxatives so he can get rid of the transmitter. Meanwhile, Ul Urian meets Krishna at a French restaurant and begins quizzing her about the "Z Organization" for which she works and the whereabouts of its secret base "314." Krishna attempts to escape but is abducted by Ul Urian. Affranchi and friends begin pursuit, and Ul Urian summons his Minox, bringing Krishna aboard with him. The Z Organization dispatches the Gaia Gear, operated by a pilot named Keran Mead, to engage the Minox. But since Krishna is aboard the Minox, the Gaia Gear is helpless to fight it. Fortunately, the Gaia Gear is protected by its barrier, and the Minox ends up losing control and crashing thanks to the shockwaves caused by its own attacks. Two Gussa man machines appear, and Keran's Gaia Gear knocks one to the ground, allowing Affranchi to board it and defeat the second enemy machine. Affranchi, Keran, and their comrades escape the colony and board the Z Organization's warship "Thirty-One Square." Overruling the ship's captain, Affranchi orders the crew to rescue the captive Krishna. While he's at it, he renames the Z Organization "Metatron" and rechristens the Thirty-One Square as "Mother Metatron." The Mother Metatron heads for Hellas, demanding that the colony government turn over its political prisoners. The Maha commander Bijan Dargol, meanwhile, readies his own military response. The Mother Metatron approaches Hellas, with Affranchi leading the charge in his Gaia Gear. Affranchi, impatient with the stalling of the colony government, orders the Mother Metatron to fire on the colony's agricultural blocks. Using this as a pretext, Bijan Dargol launches a preemptive attack on the Metatron forces. Ul Urian launches from the Maha flagship Maha Gayjisu to lead the attack, piloting the new man machine Bromb Texter and carrying Krishna as a hostage. But just before he enters battle, Ul Urian sets Krishna adrift in space, with the intention of picking her up later. Affranchi easily defeats Ul Urian and then, sensing Krishna's whereabouts, goes to rescue her. Having recovered Krishna and collected the colony's other political prisoners, the Mother Metatron heads for the secret base "Thirty-One Cubed." Among the released prisoners are the delinquent Messer Mett and his lackeys Rey Seias, Reyzam Stack, and Saez Konsoon, who decide to remain with Metatron and become combat pilots. However, they get along poorly with the rest of the crew and begin considering desertion. Metatron learns that the Maha fleet is preparing to descend to Earth, an act of "reverse immigration" by which Maha will establish its own nation on Earth. The Mother Metatron likewise sets course for Earth in order to intercept the enemy fleet. The Metatron forces deploy the shuttles Air Force 1 and Air Force 2, escorted by Affranchi's Gaia Gear. Ul Urian's Bromb Texter attempts to intercept the Gaia Gear, but Messer Mett and his comrades unexpectedly join the battle and attack the Bromb Texter. Reyzam's man machine Dochadi is shot down in the ensuing combat. The fighting continues as both sides enter the atmosphere. Affranchi rams into Ul Urian's Bromb Texter, forcing the enemy pilot to retreat. The Maha Gayjisu deploys its Gussa forces, the Metatron shuttles launch their own man machines, and the Metatron forces are ultimately forced to withdraw. Messer and his two surviving henchmen desert during the battle. Air Force 1 and Air Force 2 land in Hamar, Norway, where the Metatron members join forces with the local resistance. Messer and his comrades go to ground in Ireland, where they learn from a news broadcast that the main Maha fleet has arrived in Nouveau Paris. They decide to surrender to Maha, offering their man machines as gifts. As they approach Nouveau Paris, Messer and his friends encounter a Federation Forces truck convoy. They begin negotiating their surrender, only to discover that their old comrade Todd Goering is among the prisoners being transported in the convoy. Instead of surrendering, they decide to rescue Todd and escape, but a Gussa team from Nouveau Paris is now in hot pursuit. Picking up Messer's distress signal, Air Force 1 and Affranchi's Gaia Gear launch to meet them, and an aerial battle begins over Denmark. Affranchi leads the Metatron forces to victory, repulsing Ul Urian's man machine team and successfully recovering Messer and friends. However, during the battle Krishna falls out of Air Force 1, and the Metatron forces have no time to search for her before they withdraw. Back at Hamar, Todd tells Affranchi and the others what he learned about Maha's plans while toiling as a forced laborer. It appears that Maha intends to establish a "Gaia Empire" on Earth, governed by a chosen elite. For sentimental reasons, the Maha commander Bijan Dargol has chosen Bavaria as the heart of his new empire. Krishna, meanwhile, has once again been picked up by Ul Urian, who has now been demoted to command of the support vehicle Bushing Nugg. Having used hypnotic interrogation to find out everything she knows about Metatron, Ul Urian is now keeping her around for his own amusement. Accepting her situation, Krishna decides to throw in her lot with Maha. The two sides soon clash again at Liege, Belgium. After a gun battle in the city, the Metatron and Maha pilots run for their machines. Rey Seias, Saez Konsoon, and Keran Mead enter battle in Dochadis, but Saez and Keran are shot down by Ul Urian's Bromb Texter, and Rey's damaged machine crashes in the forest. Air Force 1 attacks the Bushing Nugg, but is shot down by Krishna's anti-air fire, and the crew are forced to escape. Air Force 2 and Affranchi's Gaia Gear finally arrive, driving the Maha forces away. Rey and the Air Force 1 crew are rescued, but the Metatron forces have taken heavy losses and they are shocked by Krishna's betrayal. The Mother Metatron begins bombarding Nouveau Paris with missiles, and Miranda Howe arrives with reinforcements in the form of Air Force 3. The Mother Metatron's bombardment inflicts considerable damage on the Maha forces, and the Maha Gayjisu withdraws from the city. The Metatron forces gather in Besançon, France, to establish a frontline base. Even as Affranchi and his comrades battle Maha's ground forces in Besançon, they learn that a Maha fleet from Hong Kong is now approaching the Adriatic Sea. The Metatron forces engage the Hong Kong Maha fleet, but are overwhelmed by the performance of the new enemy machine Gids Geese. Affranchi returns to Besançon to find that Todd Goering has devised a new plan for their man machine forces. The Gaia Gear will now be entrusted to Messer, while Affranchi stands by at Besançon. Messer sorties in the Gaia Gear to intercept an approaching Bromb Texter, and returns with Ul Urian as his prisoner. From the Bromb Texter's flight data, they determine that the Maha forces are gathering at Munich, and Metatron begins preparations for an attack. As the attack preparations are underway, the Metatron member Joe Suren takes off in the Zorin Soul in order to look for Krishna. He is detected by Maha, and the attack on Munich is aborted. The Hong Kong Maha launch another attack, but this time they are outnumbered by Affranchi's Gaia Gear, Messer's captured Bromb Texter, and a third wave of reinforcements dropped from the Mother Metatron. Meanwhile, Krishna is wandering in the woods near the battlefield, and is rescued by a mysterious young woman. Joe Suren finally locates Krishna, and in the process he retrieves a flopy disk from a crashed man machine. According to this floppy disk, Benoit Rojak, the leader of the new Metatron reinforcements, has been given secret orders to assassinate Affranchi after Maha has been eliminated. As for the mysterious young woman who rescued Krishna, she turns out to be Affranchi's former lover, Everly Key. Affranchi and his comrades relocate to Monfalcone, Italy, to prepare for the final confrontation with Maha. Benoit Rojak and her Gaiyas team are already on the scene. Affranchi proposes that they make it look as if Metatron is attacking Munich and Neuschwanstein Castle, splitting the Maha forces so they can ambush Bijan Dargol himself. Joe, Krishna, and Everly rush to Monfalcone to warn Affranchi of Benoit's treachery, but they are detected en route by Ul Urian, who has returned to Maha and received a new Gids Geese man machine. Joe drops off Krishna and Everly, then attempts to draw Ul Urian's attention away from them, but his Zorin Soul is swiftly shot down. Ul Urian finds the women and takes Everly captive, leaving Krishna behind. Just before the Metatron forces begin their attack, Todd discovers Krishna in the nearby woods, and she tells Affranchi of Benoit's treachery and Everly's predicament. Affranchi continues the operation regardless, and joins battle with the enemy flagship Maha Gayjisu. Ul Urian enters the battle in his Gids Geese, carrying Everly as a hostage, and uses his knowledge of the Bromb Texter's characteristics and weaknesses to shoot down Messer's captured machine. The battle continues. Bijan Dargol attempts to defend Neuschwanstein Castle from Affranchi's forces. Benoit Rojak ambushes and destroys the Maha Gayjisu, and the ensuing explosion consumes many nearby man machines, including Benoit's own. Metatron begins mopping up the remaining Maha forces, and Rey Seias is hit by Ul Urian, forcing her to make an emergency landing at the castle. Affranchi confronts Ul Urian and, sensing that Everly isn't aboard the enemy machine, shoots him down. Rey and Affranchi enter the castle, where they find Everly. Affranchi and Everly embrace as Rey succumbs to her injuries, then board the Gaia Gear and fly away to an island in the Atlantic Ocean to live happily ever after.
2537708	/m/07lqr1	Dersu Uzala	V. K. Arsenʹev	1996-10		 Arsenyev's book tells of his travels in the Ussuri basin in the Russian Far East. Dersu was the name of a Nanai hunter (who lived c. 1850&ndash;1908) who acted as a guide for Arsenyev's surveying crew from 1902 to 1907, and saved them from starvation and cold. Arsenyev portrays him as a great man, an animist who sees animals and plants as equal to man. From 1907, Arsenyev invited Dersu to live in his house in Khabarovsk as Dersu's failing sight hampered his ability to live as a hunter. In the spring of 1908, Dersu bade farewell to Arsenyev and walked back to his home in the Primorsky Krai, where he was killed. According to Arsenyev's book, Dersu Uzala was murdered near the town of Korfovskiy and buried in an unmarked grave in the taiga.
2538126	/m/06r11dz	Paddle-to-the-Sea	Holling C. Holling	1941	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 At Lake Nipigon, Canada, a native boy carves a wooden model of an Indian in a canoe and sets it free to travel the Great Lakes to the Atlantic ocean. The story follows the progress of the little wooden Indian on its journey through all five Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, finally arriving at the Atlantic Ocean. Each movement of the canoe is celebrated by a short chapter, suitable for reading aloud to a child and decorated with black-and-white sketches and at least one full-page watercolor. The sketches accompany the larger story and tell smaller narrative stories of their own: for example, one sketch demonstrates how a sawmill works by visually outlining the progress of a log of timber towards a mechanical saw.
2540966	/m/07lxb5	The Dangerous Rescue	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Obi-Wan Kenobi is joined by Jedi Master Adi Gallia and her Padawan Siri Tachi at Jenna Zan Arbor's secret laboratory on Simpla-12. Zan Arbor, who has been conducting experiments in an attempt to break the Force into its constituent parts, is holding captive Qui-Gon Jinn and the elderly Jedi Master Noor R'aya. The three rescuers attempt to smuggle themselves into the laboratory; however, despite the fact that Qui-Gon has managed to free himself, Zan Arbor escapes with the unconscious Noor. Later, Obi-Wan receives a message informing him that his companion Astri Oddo, who went to pursue the bounty hunter Ona Nobis, is injured on the planet of Sorrus. Qui-Gon and Adi send their Padawans to Sorrus to bring Astri home, but Obi-Wan learns that this was merely a trap set by Ona Nobis, and wisely chooses to run away from a fight. He and Siri are ordered to return to the Jedi Temple, but he convinces Siri that they should look for Astri since she's on Sorrus. They are transported to the far desert and investigate a cave where they find Astri and her three companions tied up. However, the cave collapses &mdash; another trap set by Ona Nobis. The party are eventually rescued by a member of a tribe that Astri once helped. The two Padawans learn that Ona Nobis is headed to Belasco, the homeworld of Senator Uta S'orn, Jenna Zan Arbor's only friend. On Belasco, the Jedi discover that the population is suffering unusually severely from bacteria that recur in the drinking supply every seven years. They find Senator S'orn caring for sick children, but she wants nothing to do with the Jedi. Eventually, they discover that S'orn has altered Galactic Senate transcripts for Zan Arbor, and that Zan Arbor is likely on the planet. Suspecting that Zan Arbor has bioengineered the bacteria in order to make a profit selling a cure, the four Jedi infiltrate the water purification plant, obtaining dated water samples as evidence. Obi-Wan and Siri then follow Uta S'orn as she delivers dinner to patients at the royal grounds, in the hope that she will lead them to the hiding place of Zan Arbor and Ona Nobis. After seeing Ona Nobis eat dinner, they report back to their Masters, who confront the Leader of Belasco and ask that S'orn's quarters be searched. There, the Jedi find Jenna Zan Arbor, along with the captive Noor R'aya. Zan Arbor is quickly captured, but Obi-Wan notices that Siri has left the room, and he goes to search for her. He finds her cornered by Ona Nobis on the palace roof, and the two Padawans manage to hold off the wily bounty hunter. Ona Nobis then tries to escape, but she falls to her death when Siri slashes through her whip.
2541048	/m/07lxkq	The Death of Hope	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Everything is a confusion in the New Apsolon mission. The Jedi Knight Tahl, partner of Qui-Gon Jinn, has been trapped. The Jedi Master soon forgets his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi and goes after his beloved Tahl. No one can be trusted and Tahl is dying. When Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discover Tahl, she is severely maimed. After returning to the capital, Tahl perishes, which sends Qui-Gon over the edge. Qui-Gon now begins his call to vengeance, which is targeted at the leader of the rogue faction that caused the entire catastrophe.
2541095	/m/07lxnw	The Call to Vengeance	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Qui-Gon Jinn is nearing the dark side of the Force. He's looking for vengeance and he has left alone his Padawan, forgetting everything except vengeance. Now Obi-Wan Kenobi is afraid about his master and he asks for help from Jedi Master Mace Windu and his close friend, Bant. However, Qui-Gon's leads are solid, and the Jedi have a difficult time keeping him at bay. Eventually, Qui-Gon pins down the leader of the rogue faction. Although his revenge is almost complete, Qui-Gon backs down when he sees his apprentice, Obi-Wan, staring at him passively. Qui-Gon lays down his grief and accepts the fact that the rebels on New Apsolon must be tried and brought to justice, not slaughtered. Peace is temporarily restored to New Apsolon, but Qui-Gon is still bitter over the death of his loved one, Tahl.
2541109	/m/07lxpz	The Only Witness	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A witness asks for escort and protection from the Jedi Order. She wants to testify against her family - the Cobral group - who control the planet of Frego much like the Syndicat controlled Phindar. An older Obi-Wan Kenobi and his master, Qui-Gon Jinn, have to protect her, but they suspect that she is hiding something. The Cobral family stop at nothing to ensure that the witness does not testify, but they eventually fail. She is escorted to Coruscant, where she successfully testifies.
2541164	/m/07lxtt	The Threat Within	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Obi-Wan Kenobi is almost an adult and his Jedi Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, is very proud of him. Now they have to investigate and solve an odd terrorist threat between two work-obsessed planets. Eventually, it is discovered that a new culture is rising within the planet, which has a goal of stopping the planet's excessive relationship with work. The mission, while somewhat routine, sees Obi-Wan acting independently during several scenes. When a major building is nearly destroyed, Obi-Wan acts calmly, which impresses his master. Despite working somewhat separately on this mission, the master and apprentice find themselves closer.
2542994	/m/07m162	The Prestige	Christopher Priest	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The events of the past are revealed primarily through the diaries of magicians Rupert Angier and Alfred Borden. The diaries are read by their grandchildren and chapters of present day are interspersed throughout the novel. The two fledgling magicians begin a feud when Borden breaks up a fake seance being put on by Angier and his wife for one of Borden's relatives. During the scuffle, Angier's wife is thrown to the ground and results in a miscarriage. The two magicians begin to go back and forth for many years as they rise to become world-renowned stage magicians. Borden develops a teleportation act called The Transported Man, and an improved version named The New Transported Man, which appears to move him from one closed cabinet to another in the blink of an eye without appearing to pass through the intervening space. The act seems to defy physics and puts all previous acts to shame. Over the course of the diaries we learn Alfred Borden is the name used by identical twin brothers, Albert and Frederick. Both men are living the life of Alfred, committed to maintaining their secret to ensure their professional success with The New Transported Man. Angier suspects that Borden uses a double, but dismisses the idea when he cannot find evidence to prove it. Unable to discern the method that Borden uses, Angier desperately tries to equal him, and with the help of the acclaimed physicist Nikola Tesla, develops an act named In A Flash, which has a similar result, though a starkly different method. For Angier's trick, Tesla successfully creates a device capable of teleporting a being from one place to another, but which has a surprising side-effect. As well as recreating the subject wherever is designed by the device, the original, now lifeless, body of the subject is also left behind in its original position, forcing Angier to devise a way to conceal it to preserve the illusion. Angier, with bitter humour refers to these shells as 'prestiges'. Angier's new act is equal to Borden's. Borden, in retaliation, attempts to discover how In A Flash is performed. During one performance he breaks into the backstage area and turns off the power to Angier's device during the act itself. As a result, the teleportation is incomplete, and both the new Angier and the old, 'prestige' Angier continue to live, though the old feels constantly weak while the new seems to lack physical substance. The real Angier fakes the death of his magic act alter-ego and returns to his family estate, where he becomes terminally ill. The clone Angier, alienated from the world by his ghostly form and discovering Borden's secret, attacks one of the twins before a performance. However, Borden's apparent poor health and Angier's sense of morality intervene and Angier does not go through with the murder. It is implied that this particular Borden dies a few days later, and the incorporeal Angier travels to meet the corporeal Angier, now living as Lord Colderdale. They obtain Borden's diary and publish it without revealing the twins' secret. Shortly afterwards, the corporeal Angier dies and his ghostly clone uses the device to teleport himself into the body, hoping that either he will return it back to life and be one person again, or kill himself instantly. It is revealed in the final chapter that some form of Angier has continued to survive to the present day.
2544050	/m/07m2wq	The Odessa File	Frederick Forsyth	1972	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In November 1963, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Peter Miller, a German freelance crime reporter, follows an ambulance to the apartment of Salomon Tauber, a Jewish Holocaust-survivor who has committed suicide. The next day, Miller is given the dead man's diary by a friend in the police. After reading Tauber's life story and learning that Tauber had been in Riga Ghetto commanded by Eduard Roschmann, "The Butcher of Riga", Miller resolves to search for Roschmann. Miller's attention is especially drawn to one diary passage in which Tauber describes having seen Roschmann shoot a German Army Captain who was wearing an unusual military decoration. Miller pursues the story and visits the State Attorney General's office and other offices where he learns that no one is prepared to search for or prosecute former Nazis. But his investigations take him to the famed war-criminal investigator Simon Wiesenthal, who tells him about the society "ODESSA". Miller is approached by a group of Mossad agents who have vowed to search for German war criminals and kill them and have been attempting to infiltrate Odessa. Miller is asked to infiltrate ODESSA and agrees. A former SS member who is working with the team of Israeli agents trains him to pass for a former SS sergeant. Miller visits a lawyer working for ODESSA and after passing a severe scrutiny is sent to meet a passport forger who supplies those members who wish to escape. Slowly Miller unravels the entire system. But Miller's identity has been compromised, in part by his ill-advised decision to use his own car; the impoverished SS man he is impersonating would not have been able to afford a sports car, and ODESSA sets its top hit man on Miller's trail. Miller escapes one trap by sheer luck; the hit man then installs a bomb in Miller's car, but because the sports car has a very stiff suspension the bomb is not triggered while Miller is driving it. Eventually Miller confronts Roschmann at gunpoint and forces him to read from Tauber's diary. Roschmann admits to killing the German Army captain, now revealed to have been Miller's father, and attempts to justify his actions. Miller tells Roschmann that he doesn't care about Roschmann's Jewish victims; he is there to avenge the death of his father. Miller, momentarily off guard, is disarmed and knocked unconscious by another ODESSA man who leaves in Miller's car but is killed when he drives over a snow-covered pole and detonates the bomb. Roschmann manages to escape, eventually flying to Argentina. The hit man who has been sent to kill Miller is instead killed by an Israeli agent. While Miller is recovering in hospital, he is told what happened while he was unconscious. Josef, his contact, warns him not to tell anyone the story. He does disclose that with Roschmann (code-named "Vulkan") in Argentina, West German authorities (at the urging of the Israelis) will close Roschmann's radio factory where a rocket guidance system is being secretly developed for the Egyptian army. ODESSA's plan to obliterate the State of Israel by combining German technological know-how with Egyptian biological weapons has been thwarted. Josef, in reality Uri ben Shaul, an Israeli army officer, returns to Israel to be debriefed, and performs one final duty. He has taken Tauber's diary with him and per the last request in the diary, Uri visits Yad Vashem and says Kaddish for the soul of Salomon Tauber.
2544786	/m/07m414	The Prime Minister	Anthony Trollope	1876	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When neither the Whigs nor the Tories are able to form a government on their own, a fragile compromise coalition government is formed, with Plantagenet Palliser, the wealthy and hard-working Duke of Omnium, installed as Prime Minister. The Duchess, formerly Lady Glencora Palliser, attempts to support her husband by hosting lavish parties at Gatherum Castle in Barsetshire, a family residence barely used until now. Palliser is initially unsure that he is fit to lead, then grows to enjoy the high office, and finally becomes increasingly distressed when his government proves to be too weak and divided to accomplish anything. His own inflexible nature does not help. A significant sub-plot centres on Ferdinand Lopez, a financially overextended City adventurer of undisclosed parentage and doubtful ethnicity (possibly Jewish), who wins the favour of Emily Wharton. She marries Lopez despite her father's objections in preference to Arthur Fletcher who has always been in love with her. As in Trollope's earlier Palliser novel Can You Forgive Her?, in which also the heroine has to choose between two suitors, the enticing and charismatic suitor is revealed to have many unpleasant traits (here Lopez' ethnic background is also presented as a factor against him); and Emily soon has cause to regret her choice. Lopez meets the Duchess at one of her parties and Glencora unwisely encourages him to stand for Parliament. He campaigns against Arthur Fletcher, the popular former suitor of Emily's, as well as a local tradesman, and withdraws from the contest when he sees he has no chance. He then insists that the Duke reimburse him for the election expenses, since the Duchess had led him to believe that he would have the Duke's endorsement. The Duke is furious with Glencora, who has disobeyed his explicit order not to interfere in the election, but his strong sense of personal honour forces him to give in to Lopez's shameless and desperate demands. This causes a minor political scandal when it becomes known, for it appears to many people that Palliser has used his great influence and wealth to buy a seat in Parliament for a supporter. This causes the Duke great unhappiness, though he is spiritedly defended in the House of Commons by old colleague Phineas Finn, eponymous hero of Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux, two earlier books in the Palliser sequence. Lopez's high-risk gambles lead to financial ruin and, after trying to persuade the comparatively wealthy Lizzie Eustace (protagonist of The Eustace Diamonds) to run away with him to Guatemala, a proposition she somewhat contemptuously rejects, he takes his own life by throwing himself in front of a train at Tenway Junction, partly out fear of disgrace and partly to spare Emily whom he has genuinely loved, though he treated her badly. After a period of mourning, Emily is persuaded, without too much difficulty, to marry Arthur Fletcher. Eventually the coalition government breaks apart and the Duke resigns, to both his regret and relief, and withdraws into private life, hoping to be of use to his party again one day.
2545908	/m/07m69g	Time's Arrow	Martin Amis	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel recounts the life of a German Holocaust doctor in a disorienting reverse chronology. The narrator, together with the reader, experiences time passing in reverse, as the main character becomes younger and younger during the course of the novel. The narrator is not exactly the protagonist himself but a secondary consciousness apparently living within him, feeling his feelings but with no access to his thoughts and no control over events. Some passages may be interpreted as hinting that this narrator may in some way be the conscience, but this is not clear. The narrator may alternatively be considered merely a necessary device to narrate a reverse story. Amis engages in several forms of reverse discourse including reverse dialogue, reverse narrative, and reverse explanation. Amis's use of these techniques is aimed to create an unsettling and irrational aura for the reader; indeed, one of the recurrent themes in the novel is the narrator's persistent misinterpretation of events. For example, he simply accepts that people wait for an hour in a physician's waiting room after being examined, although at some points he has doubts about this tradition. Relationships are portrayed with stormy beginnings that slowly fade into pleasant romances. Although the narrator accepts all this, he is puzzled and feels that the world does not really make sense. The reverse narrative begins in America, where the doctor is first living in retirement and then practising medicine. He is always fearful of something and does not want to be too conspicuous. Later he changes his identity and moves to New York. (Considering the story forward, he escaped Europe after the war and succeeded in settling in America, with the assistance of a Reverend Nicholas Kreditor who apparently assists war criminals in hiding.) In 1948 he travels (in reverse) to Portugal, from where he makes his way to Auschwitz. The doctor, Odilo Unverdorben, assists "Uncle Pepi" (modelled on Josef Mengele) in his torture and murder of Jews. While at Auschwitz, the reverse chronology means that he creates life and heals the sick, rather than the opposite. What tells me that this is right? What tells me that all the rest was wrong? Certainly not my aesthetic sense. I would never claim that Auschwitz-Birkenau-Monowitz was good to look at. Or to listen to, or to smell, or to taste, or to touch. There was, among my colleagues there, a general though desultory quest for greater elegance. I can understand that word, and all its yearning: elegant. Not for its elegance did I come to love the evening sky above the Vistula, hellish red with the gathering souls. Creation is easy. Also ugly. Hier ist kein warum. Here there is no why. Here there is no when, no how, no where. Our preternatural purpose? To dream a race. To make a people from the weather. From thunder and from lightning. With gas, with electricity, with shit, with fire. (p119-120, Vintage edition, 1992) In the reversed version of reality, not only is simple chronology reversed (people become younger, and eventually become children, then babies, and then re-enter their mothers&#39; wombs, where they finally cease to exist) but so is morality. Blows heal injuries, doctors cause them. Theft becomes donation, and vice versa. In a passage about prostitutes, doctors harm them while pimps give them money and heal them. When the protagonist reaches Auschwitz, however, the world starts to make sense. A whole new race is created.
2546056	/m/03m3nsd	Tablet of Destinies	Traci Harding	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The second book in The Celestial Triad takes Tory and Maelgwyn into the realms of the Devachan, the Fourth Dimension. They and their clan have had many peaceful years on the planet of Kila until Tory's new twin babies, only a few days after their birth, are switched with changelings ... the babies now exhibit all the characteristics of fairy folk and, as with all deva infants, are neither male nor female. Tory seeks the counsel of the Tablet of Destinies and is told that the changelings are the first of the Devachan to venture into human existence, and that her twins are the first humans to choose to experience the world of the Devachan ... and all the babies are psychically linked. To reclaim their children, Tory and Maelgwyn must journey into the fourth dimension.
2546296	/m/07m75v	Flux	Stephen Baxter	1993-12-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the novel begins, a glitch—an instability of the magnetic field inside the star caused by changes in the star's rotation—is about to destroy a net made up of ropes, where a group of 50 humans live. During this several of the older humans are killed, and importantly the humans lose their main food, a herd of "air pigs", animals indigenous to the star. To find more food, Dura, together with her young brother Farr, Adda (the eldest of the Humans and one of the novel's main characters), Philas (wife of a man killed during the glitch; this man was also seeing Dura), and 6 other adults travel high into the top of the mantle of the star to find food in the forest. Whilst there Adda is injured by a pregnant sow air pig. Just after, the humans encounter Toba Mixxax, a human from Parz City. Parz is a massive wooden city where other star humans live, with a functioning economy and upper and nether classes etc. As becomes apparent, the ancestors of Dura's group did originally live in Parz, but left when their belief that the Xeelee should ultimately be accepted as being for the good of humanity was not accepted by the rulers of Parz. A hospital, "The Hospital of the Common Good" in the heart of Parz City is Adda's only chance for survival. While in Parz, we meet several other characters: Muub, the head physician and advisor to Hork, the administrator of Parz. To pay for Adda's treatment, Dura's labor is sold to a "mantle farm" (where trees are harvested for use as fuel or as building blocks for the city), and Farr is sold to work in the underbelly of the city. Farr makes two friends whiles here: Toba Mixxax's son Criss and Byza, a fellow miner. Criss teaches Farr to board (using a specially constructed plate to "surf" along the flux lines), an ability which allows him to escape from the eventual attack by the Xeelee. After various plot points, the characters realise the instabilities are actually being caused by the attack of the Xeelee, and the next instability could destroy both Parz and possibly the star itself. Hork calls a combination of Muub, Dura (called due to her experience as a star human), Adda, Farr and a scientist to go down into the inhabitable centre of the star and try and retrieve ancient weapons, supposedly left by the humans who originally created the star human race.
2546829	/m/07m8df	Dance of the Yellow-Breasted Luddites	William Shunn	2000		 The story takes place in a wildlife reserve on a mostly barren planet named Sutter's Mill. Rescue Star operative Hannah Specter is overseeing the introduction of a new alien animal species into the reserve and must unravel the mystery of the species' seemingly suicidal behavior.
2546941	/m/07m8ln	The Halloween Tree	Ray Bradbury		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A group of eight boys set out to go trick-or-treating on Halloween, only to discover that a ninth friend, Pipkin, has been whisked away on a journey that could determine whether he lives or dies. Through the help of a mysterious character named Moundshroud, they pursue their friend across time and space through Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, and Roman cultures, Celtic Druidism, Notre Dame Cathedral in Medieval Paris, and The Day of the Dead in Mexico. Along the way, they learn the origins of the holiday that they celebrate, and the role that the fear of death, spooks, and the haunts has played in shaping civilization. The Halloween Tree itself, with its many branches laden with jack-o'-lanterns, serves as a metaphor for the historical confluence of these traditions.
2547524	/m/07m9t9	Julie of the Wolves	Jean Craighead George	1972	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story has three parts, from her present situation (Amaroq, the Wolf), then a flashback (Miyax, the Girl), and finally back to the present (Kapugen, the Hunter).
2549412	/m/07mfrd	The Runaway in Oz	John R. Neill	1995	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 On the eve of an important ceremony in the Emerald City, Scraps the Patchwork Girl has been making more of a nuisance of herself than usual. After confrontations with Jellia Jamb and Jenny Jump, Scraps decides to run away on her spoolicle (a bicycle made of thread spools). She visits Jinjur's Munchkin Country farm; but Jinjur wants to put Scraps to work, so Scraps leaves quickly. At Prof. Wogglebug's Royal Athletic College, Scraps falls in with a 12-year-old prodigy named Alexample. They marvel at the air castle the Professor has dreamed into existence for his coming vacation, as it hovers above the college. Through unfortunate clumsiness, Scraps knocks the mooring line loose and the air castle floats away, with Alexample hanging onto the tethering rope. Scraps flees from the pursuit of the irate Wogglebug. Scraps meets a Repairman who magically fixes the damage and staining she's endured in her recent actions. The exasperated Scraps longs to run away from Oz entirely, but doesn't know how to cross the Deadly Desert. The Repairman informs her of a Weather Witch who lives on the highest mountain in Oz; she makes weather for the entire Earth from her windmill there. Scraps decides to get the Weather Witch to blow her across the Desert with wind, and sets out for the mountain. On the way, Scraps meets Popla, "the one and only power plant...the most powerful plant in the world." (Popla looks like a large shrub, with the face of a beautiful young woman.) Popla longs for release from her bleak and stationary existence, and eagerly transfers herself into a flowerpot to join with Scraps; Popla's strength and resourcefulness prove to be important advantages in their coming adventures. Despite tempestuous winds, the two intrepid travelers reach the top of the mountain. Fanny the Weather Witch agrees to blast them across the Deadly Desert; but additional clumsiness gets them stuck on one of the windmill's blades, which hurls them high into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, Prof. Wogglebug stomps toward the Emerald City to complain about Scraps to the Wizard. He encounters Jenny Jump and Jack Pumpkinhead, who have set out in search for the missing Scraps. The Wogglebug decides to join up with them, as the most direct approach to recovering his air castle. (The later chapters of the book alternate between the two plots: the runaway Scraps and her companions, and the searchers pursuing her.) Scraps and Popla land on a friendly cloud, who takes them to a nearby star. The star is a kind of semi-mechanical conveyance, commanded by Captain Batt, who is built of wires and electric components. Predictably, Scraps gets into a fight with him; she punches him in his button nose, which proves to be his on-off button. With Captain Batt shut down, they meet the Twinkler, the star's maintenance man (he looks like Cap'n Bill). Popla tries piloting the star &mdash; and crashes into the missing air castle. They find Alexample there, and endure a few peaceful days in its palatial environs. They get to know the inhabitants of the upper air, who include sky fairies and air sprites, and cloud sheep herded by cloud-pushers and sky-sweepers. Scraps and company also repel an attack from sky pirates. Things go badly for the searchers below; they are caught in a storm, in which Jack loses his pumpkin head. Jenny and the Professor have to lead or drag his headless stick-body along with them. They wander into an enchanted orchard, where they confront an army of rebellious quinces. By this time, the week of the Wogglebug's planned vacation has expired, and the air castle's time is up: it melts, cracks, dissolves, shatters, and otherwise falls apart around its occupants. They come tumbling down upon the enchanted orchard, and the search party, and the quince army. In a final confrontation, the quince soldiers commit mass suicide by shooting their sooty stems at Scraps. She is so blackened by the soot that she tries to hide from the world. The others convince Scraps to return to the Emerald City, where she can be magically repaired. Scraps agrees, but she hides herself under a sheet as she walks through the city streets (like Ojo in The Patchwork Girl of Oz); she causes a panic when she is mistaken for a ghost. Yet Ozma has no trouble in restoring Scraps to normal (if that term applies) with her Magic Belt. Popla and Alexample are welcomed into the ever-growing circle of Ozma's followers.
2550967	/m/07mj7l	Pinball, 1973	Haruki Murakami	1980-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot centers on the narrator's brief but intense obsession with pinball, his life as a freelance translator, and his later efforts to reunite with the old pinball machine that he used to play. He describes living with a pair of identical unnamed female twins, who mysteriously appear in his apartment one morning, and disappear at the end of the book. Interspersed with the narrative are his memories of the Japanese student movement, and of his old girlfriend Naoko, who hanged herself, like the character of the same name in Murakami's later novel Norwegian Wood. The plot alternates between describing the life of narrator and that of his friend, The Rat. Many familiar elements from Murakami's later novels are present. Wells, which are mentioned often in Murakami's novels and play a prominent role in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, occur several times in Pinball. There is also a brief discussion of the abuse of a cat, a plot element which recurs elsewhere in Murakami's fiction, especially Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (in which the search for a missing cat is an important plotline). Rain and the sea are also prominent motifs.
2554050	/m/07mn13	The Pothunters	P. G. Wodehouse	1902-09-18	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows the lives of several of the schoolboys as they study, take part in their school sports (particularly boxing and running), and enjoy tea in their studies. After the school's sports trophies ('pots' in contemporary slang) are stolen in a burglary, the boys, their masters, and the police join in the hunt for the 'pots'.
2554063	/m/07mn25	Descent into the Depths of the Earth	Gary Gygax	1981	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The plot of the original modules Descent Into the Depths of the Earth and Shrine of the Kuo-Toa place a party of player characters (PCs) on the trail of the drow priestess Eclavdra through the Underdark, battling various creatures on their journey. In the last module in the preceding G-series, Hall of the Fire Giant King, the PCs were supposed to have discovered that the drow had instigated the alliance between the races of giants and their attacks on neighboring humans. The drow that survived the party's incursion have fled into tunnels leading deep into the earth. The adventurers will have arrived at the bottom of the dungeon below the cave-castle of King Snurre. In D1 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, the PCs seek the home of the drow by traveling through an underground world of caves and passages. In the tunnels, the adventurers first fight a tough drow patrol, and the next major fight is with a raiding party of mind flayers and wererats, who have halted their patrol long enough to torture their drow prisoner. The characters also find a grand cavern containing drow soldiers, purple worms, a lich, a clutch of undead, a giant slug, sphinxes, trolls, bugbears, troglodytes, wyverns, and fungi. D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa picks up with the party continuing to pursue the drow. The party encounters a kuo-toan rogue monitor who helps them cross a large river for a fee. A party of Svirfneblin (or deep gnomes) approaches the player characters on the other side, and the party has a chance to convince them to help them fight against the drow. As the party travels, signs of the drow are all around; the drow are allowed to pass through these subterranean areas, even though they are hated and feared by the other local intelligent races. The party then moves through kuo-toa territory, ruled by the Priest-Prince Va-Guulgh. If the PCs appease the kuo-toa and respect their customs, the evil kuo-toa are not openly hostile to the party, but will attack if the party gives them a reason. The party learns that the drow and kuo-toa trade with each other openly, but the kuo-toa hate and fear the drow, resulting in frequent skirmishes between the two peoples. D3 Vault of the Drow is set in Erelhei-Cinlu, an underground stronghold of the drow, and the Fane of Lolth, their evil spider-goddess. After traveling for league after league into the Underdark, the adventurers come upon Erelhei-Cinlu, the vast subterranean city of the drow. The adventure is written in a very open-ended fashion, giving the Dungeon Master (DM) free rein to script any number of mini-campaigns or adventures taking place inside the drow capital. An extensive overview of the drow power structure is given for just this purpose. Eventually, the players may discover an astral gate leading to the plane of the Abyss, leading into the Q1 module.
2555958	/m/07msdz	Extension du domaine de la lutte				 The protagonist (Harel), known only as "Our Hero" during the entirety of the story, lives a solitary life, and has not had sex for over two years. Within most of the book and film versions of Extension du domaine de la lutte, Our Hero draws on recollections of Schopenhauer and Kant to lambaste the commodification of human contact, punctuating his inner monologue with bouts of nausea and onanism. He is wracked by the implications of decisions that would seem minor to the average person, such as disclosing his lack of a sex life through the purchase of a single bed. He is teamed up with a disturbing, desperate 28-year-old virgin, Raphael Tisserand, to deliver a series of seminars on the use of IT. Raphael looks up to Our Hero for ever having been able to hold down a relationship, and listens to his musings on love with tragic, but ultimately inspirational consequences.
2558043	/m/07mxtg	Against the Giants	Gary Gygax	1981	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Each of the original three modules is a dungeon crawl. The player characters focus on battling hill giants, frost giants, and fire giants, three of the original evil giant types used in Dungeons & Dragons. The module begins with a prologue explaining that giants of different types have been raiding lands occupied by humans. Angered by this, the human rulers hire a group of adventurers (the player characters) to "punish the miscreant giants." The players' party is informed that they must defeat the giants, or have their heads placed on the chopping block. The human nobles equip the party with weapons and horses, along with a guide and a map that shows the location of the hill giants. The players are informed that the hill giants are led by Nosnra, a sly hill giant chieftain who loves to set up ambushes; there is an unknown force binding together different giant groups. The player characters are informed that they may keep any spoils they find, but must return at once if they determine what "sinister hand" is behind the alliance. The bulk of the adventure takes place in two locations: the upper level fortress of the hill giants' lair, and the dungeon level beneath it. This module starts in one of two ways. If the players have finished Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, they have been transported to the glacial rift via the magic chain. They will know that they are searching for some force behind the giant alliance. If the players are starting with Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, then they have been hired by nobles to destroy the frost giants. Either way, a safe, hidden cave is easily found for a base of operations. As in Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, the bulk of this adventure takes place in two locations: an upper area consisting of caves and the rift floor, and a lower area consisting of natural caverns. In the upper area there are ice caves, barracks, and a dome of ice. These are inhabited by yeti, frost giants, ogres, and winter wolves. The dome of ice houses a remorhaz. In the lower area there are caverns that house the servants, serve as a prison, and contain the Jarl Grugnur and emissaries who have come to meet with him. The main inhabitants are frost giants and ogres. The prison contains an attractive storm giantess. There are also polar bears; pets of the jarl. After defeating the jarl, the adventurers have a chance to pull an iron lever which will transport them near to Snurre's hall from Hall of the Fire Giant King. If it is played as a continuation of the first two modules, the players know that they are searching for the force behind the giant's alliance, otherwise they have been hired by nobles to destroy the fire giants. This module is twice as long as the previous two: sixteen pages instead of eight. Unlike the two previous modules where the giant's complex consists of two levels, the fire giant hall contains three levels. The giants live in a hot, smoky barren area made of rock; as in the previous module, the party is able to find a safe location for forays against the giants. The leader of the fire giants is King Snurre Iron Belly, and his hall is made of obsidian and natural caverns. The first (top) level includes the queen's rooms, barracks, and kennels. Creatures encountered here include fire giants, gnolls, and in the kennels, hell hounds. The second level is also made of obsidian rocks and natural caverns. It houses chambers of spiritual interest to the fire giants. There is a hall that houses the dead fire giant kings, and rooms for worship. There are also rooms that contain drow clerics. This is where the party learns that the drow are behind the giant alliance, led by Eclavdra, a high level drow fighter/cleric. The third level consists of natural caverns and contains a great treasure guarded by a red dragon. There are also more fire giants and drow; to exterminate the fire giants, the adventurers must penetrate deep into the active volcano where they live. If the DM wishes, there is a tunnel that leads deep into the earth; to the home of the drow. This allows the adventure to be continued in Descent into the Depths of the Earth.
2558186	/m/07my2t	Winston's War	Michael Dobbs	2003	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts with Chamberlain’s 1938 triumphant return to 10 Downing Street, a public hero after the signing of the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, declaring "peace in our time." The story ends with the fall of the Chamberlain Government, and the appointment of Churchill as Prime Minister. Churchill, relegated to the periphery of British politics by the late Thirties, lashes out against appeasement despite having almost no support from fellow parliamentarians or the British press. The novel includes many of the momentous historical personages of the day: Chamberlain, the ailing and pacifist Prime Minister; Churchill, the political outcast, whose pugnacity created opprobrium in the public eye; Joseph Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's; Guy Burgess, an alcoholic BBC journalist of later Cold War infamy; the machiavellian newspaper mogul, Max Aitken, (Lord Beaverbrook), and the stuttering and insecure King George VI, who personally detests Churchill and tries to persuade his good friend, Lord Halifax, to take the reins of leadership. Winston's War is the first in a series of novels by Dobbs about Churchill's wartime leadership. The sequel Never Surrender continues the storyline over the first few weeks of Churchill's premiership.
2558301	/m/07my8q	Rainbow Fish				 The story tells of a fish with shiny, multi-colored scales named Rainbow Fish. He is always fond of his scales. But one day, a small fish asks him if he could have one. Rainbow Fish refuses in a very rude way. The other fish are really upset about his behavior and don't want to play with him anymore. Feeling upset, his only friend left, the starfish, tells him to go visit the mysterious octopus for advice. Rainbow Fish finds the octopus and asks what he should do. The octopus tells him that he should share the beauty of his scales with his friends. When he encounters the small fish a second time, the Rainbow Fish gives him one of his precious scales and, seeing the joy of this little fish, feels immediately much better. Very soon Rainbow Fish is surrounded by other fish requesting scales and he gives to each of them one of his shiny scales. The author about his book: "Rainbow Fish has no political message. The story shows us the joy of sharing. We all enjoy making presents for Christmas or birthdays and we are feeling good doing so. I want to show to our children the positive aspect of sharing: To share does not only mean to give away something (which is quite hard for a child), but above all to make happy someone else - and itself."
2558582	/m/07myx9	Castle Amber	Tom Moldvay		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The player characters explore the haunted mansion of the Amber family, and encounter new monsters such as the brain collector. During their night's rest on their way to Glantri, the player characters are unexpectedly drawn into a large castle surrounded by an impenetrable, deadly mist. This is the result of a curse the wizard-noble Stephen Amber (Etienne d'Amberville) put on his treacherous relatives for murdering him. The only way to escape Castle Amber (or Château d'Amberville) is to explore the castle, putting up with the demented and at times insane members of the d'Amberville family and the other, often hostile, denizens, and open a hidden portal to the wilderness of the world of Averoigne, where the party can find the means to reach the inter-dimensional tomb in which Stephen Amber rests, in order to break the curse and return home. In this world, magic is frowned upon, and spellcasters may come to the attention of the Inquisition.
2558979	/m/07mznz	Players	Don DeLillo	1977	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lyle works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and spends evenings seated close to the television, rapidly flipping channels, while his wife Pammy works at a "grief management firm" in the World Trade Center. While their marriage is free of problems and they have many friends, a cloud of ennui hangs over their domestic life. Pammy joins her friends Ethan and Jack on a trip to Maine, where they come to the realization that their collective nostalgia for simpler times and rural life is largely invented. Pammy begins a sexual relationship with Jack, who is in a homosexual relationship with Ethan, which ultimately ends in Jack's inexplicable self-immolation at a nearby junkyard. Meanwhile, in a divergent and concurrent storyline, Lyle witnesses the shooting death of one of his acquaintances, George Sedbauer, on the floor of the exchange. Through this event, Lyle becomes privy to a vague conspiracy of violent terrorists targeting Wall Street, and his curiosity draws him into their fold. His recruitment and participation are equally inexplicable, a function of the draw of revolutionary activity and respite from the boredom of his ordinary life. His engagement with the radicals, themselves devoid of any morality or particular ideology, becomes more absurd when he attempts to inform on them to equally ill-defined government agents, and begins having sexual relationships with two other conspirators. Lyle discovers that J. Kinnear, one of the shadow key figures in the terrorist network, is a double-agent himself and the web of essentially meaningless conspiracies appears to be endless and be the end in itself; pursued not for chaotic ends, but for the sake of imposing structural order on what the "players" view to be chaos.
2560618	/m/07n2p2	Matilda	Mary Shelley		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Narrating from her deathbed, Matilda tells the story of her unnamed father's confession of incestuous love for her, followed by his suicide by drowning; her relationship with a gifted young poet called Woodville fails to reverse Matilda's emotional withdrawal or prevent her lonely death.
2560765	/m/07n2yv	A Stranger in the Mirror	Sidney Sheldon	1976	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Stranger in the Mirror The love story between Josephine Czinski (Jill Castle) and Toby Temple is told through a flashback. The Templehaus are German immigrants coming to the USA. Freida Templehaus is the plump wife of a poet who would rather write poetry than work in the meat shop. Angered and faced with reality that her husband is weak, she controls the meat shop and rules the family home. She decides to have a child and they have a son named Tobias, who is noted to be born with an extremely large member. Throughout his childhood, Toby has always strived to earn his busy mother's affections, and has learned to gain it through comedy. However, in his teens, Toby has gained a large libido and after sleeping with many women, impregnates a classmate. To avoid her son marrying what she calls "a nobody", she packs up his bags and sends him to the city to become famous, hoping he would send for her soon. She lies to Eileen's father, the chief of police, that Toby ran away. Years later, the Czinski Family, a family of Polish Immigrants, are expecting their first born daughter. Their baby was born not breathing, causing the father to die of shock. However, the baby was indeed alive but has head trauma that would later cause her bad headaches. The mother named her Josephine. Mrs. Czinski moved to Odessa, Texas, and became a devout Catholic who believes her daughter's head aches to be the demon's attempt to possess her. Josephine grew up as a beautiful child, to the point that the "Oil People", the upper-class members of Odessa, would love having their children hanging out with her. Josephine is smitten with David Kenyon, the son of the wealthy Kenyons. However, on her thirteenth birthday, she embarrasses herself when she gets her menstruation in a swimming party and is scorned by the Oil Children, except for David, who shows sympathy. Soon after, Josephine stops her friendship with the Oil Children and hangs out with the other middle-class residents like her. She grows into a beautiful woman, and meets David once more after his long period away in college. David and Josephine start a relationship and it climaxes when she and David consummate their love and David proposes. However, as David tells his aging mother about his plans, she insults him about his choice and persuades him to marry Cissy Topping, a fellow Oil Child and former friend of Josephine. David makes a deal with Cissy that he will marry her only until Mama Kenyon dies so he can fulfill her wishes, but unknowingly, Cissy and Mama Kenyon have already planned for this and has no intention of leaving him. Unfortunately, Cissy asks Mrs. Czinski to do the wedding dress, and before David can tell Josephine, she finds out from her mother and, distraught, leaves for Hollywood under the name Jill Castle. Toby's career has a rocky start, and Toby goes into a depression when he finds out that his mother has died of a heart attack, yet he cannot attend her funeral due to Eileen's father on the lookout for him. He decides to join the army and along the way meets Clifton Lawrence, a prominent PR in Hollywood. After the war, he continues his career without Clifton's help due to many scammers using his story that Clifton's assistant does not tell him about Toby. Toby gets his big break when all the better comedians are unavailable to perform for the president of the United States. He gains fame soon after, and in the process catches Clifton's attention and Toby hires him. Toby begins his womanizing but unknowingly sleeps with Millie, the mistress of Al, a mafioso. Al tells Toby that Millie loves him and wants to marry him and threatens to kill him if he will not. Toby marries Millie, and avoids women to please Al. He impregnates her, but Millie dies in a birthing accident, but is not there to witness it due to Al allowing him to perform in South Korea. With no obligation, Toby begins womanizing once more. He gets a notorious reputation for ruining people for the slightest reasons. However, secretly, he is lonely as more people come that he fires people who have other engagements other than working for The Toby Temple Show and forces Clifton to drop his other clients so that he would be totally dependent on Toby. Meanwhile, nobody wants to hire someone like Jill. All the people willing to screen her only want her for sex. She lives in a rundown building with other actors like her, and starts a relationship with Alan, who is later revealed to be an adult film actor. He convinces her with the help of liquor and drugs to do a film with her, and at the end he writes her birth name on the credits. She only gets minimal small roles, but nothing that makes her recognizable. She realizes that she has to try earning fame their way—by using her body. She is brutally ravaged by a director for a small spot in a major movie, and finally begins her climb to the top. She sleeps with everyone to get jobs, until she makes it to the Toby Temple Show. Toby is infatuated with her, and goes crazy when she acts indifferently to his charm and wealth. He falls in love with her when he realizes that he doesn't feel alone with her around, and they marry despite Clifton's warnings. Those who have slept with Jill are too scared to admit they have in fear that Toby will ruin them. Meanwhile, Jill is now plotting revenge against those who have used her. One by one, she gets Toby to destroy the lives of those who have used her without necessarily admitting that she had sex with them all. Her final act is when she convinces Toby to get rid of Clifton (who ignored Jill in her early days and, when she convinced Toby to get her a role, called her a bad actress), as she would be his new manager. Clifton knew she would do that sooner or later, and tries to get on Jill's good side but fails. Jill becomes the new manager of Toby. In an act of revenge, he learns about Jill's adult film and bribes a technician to copy the film for him. However, it is too late as she has already fired him. Jill begins acting like his mother. She pushes him to go to all parties and attend all events to the point that Toby receives a stroke. Jill, still in love with Toby, forces him to recope, and he miraculously gets better. It is now Jill who has become the more popular of the two, and in the process meets David once again. David has a listless marriage to Cissy and his attempts to leave her has caused her to attempt suicide. However, she finally leaves him when she meets another man who is not as rich as David but looks like him and loves Cissy. Jill remains friends with him but starts to have feelings for him when she remembers their history. Toby relapses into a stroke, ruining his looks and ultimately paralyzing him. Jill has no will power to regain his ability, and accidentally says out loud that she wishes he would just die due to his gargoyle-like face, which Toby hears. She begins having nightmares of Toby trying to kill her, and the head aches come back after a long time. She decides kill Toby since his expected life span is more than twenty years, and leaving him would ruin her reputation as a heroine. She stages his death and makes it look like an accident while attempting to cure him, but Clifton is the only one who sees past the trick. He finds out that she killed him to be with David, who married her two months later in a cruise ship. However, Clifton uses his last resort and forces David to watch Jill's adult film. David is revealed to be an extreme racist, especially to Mexicans. It explains why David showed disdain at Jill's co-worker when he met her after college as well as the reason why he left to go to college: He caught his older sister having sex with the Mexican gardener and killed him with a letter-opener; his mother quietly paid Odessa's jail to make it look like he raped her daughter and committed suicide in jail and sent her deranged daughter to a mental hospital. It is revealed why Mama Kenyon forced him to marry Cissy, due to his bad choices. David breaks up with Jill and leaves on a helicopter. Clifton reveals himself to Jill. Jill, depressed, hallucinates and sees Toby's face in the water, and she jumps off the boat to be with him and dies. The captain of the boat resigns, starts a bistro, and tells Jill's story to others.
2560856	/m/07n357	Asterix and the Cauldron				 Whosemoralsarelastix, the chief of a neighboring Gaulish village, is a mean and greedy man who often does business with the Romans. When the Romans levy new taxes, Whosemoralsarelastix asks the people of Asterix's village to guard a cauldron full of money, his village's treasures, claiming that he is trying to keep the money away from the imminent visit of the Roman tax collectors. Asterix is left in charge of the cauldron full of sestertii, which is promptly stolen during the night. The strict laws of the Gauls demand that Asterix be banished until he has atoned for his negligence. Obelix immediately “banishes” himself to stay with his friend. In order to regain his honor, Asterix, with Obelix's help, must find money to refill the cauldron and repay Whosemoralsarelastix. Asterix and Obelix engage in many futile attempts to earn back the money. This includes questioning the Romans at Compendium (only to trigger a riot when the Romans know nothing about the theft and assume that the Gauls are there to get them to pay for being in the legions), trashing the pirates in the belief that they stole the money (although the pirates were for once trying to engage in an honest profession by turning their ship into a restaurant), selling boars (only to sell them at a ridiculously low price), prize fighting (only to win worthless statuettes), acting (Obelix insults the audience and ruins the company), gambling (only to lose their money when the tip doesn't pay off) and even trying to rob a bank (which is empty of money due to the recent tax increases by the Romans). With little else to gain or lose they take the cauldron back to Whosemoralsarelastix's village, Asterix hoping that he will be able to save the village's honour by clarifying that he alone is responsible for the loss. As they approach the village's area, they stumble upon and rob a Roman tax collector at the last minute. They beat up his escort and Asterix steals the money the taxman has obtained. But as they set off to take the money to Whosemoralsarelastix, Asterix catches a suspicious smell on the coins. The cauldron had previously been used for cooking onion soup &mdash; and the coins, fresh from the collector's coffers, smell of onion soup as well. Asterix and Obelix go to Whosemoralsarelastix's village, which lies on a high cliff at the coast. Asterix confronts Whosemoralsarelastix with the onion soup-smelling money, having correctly guessed that Whosemoralsarelastix stole back his own money and paid his taxes to the Romans to retain their favor, knowing that Asterix would go to any lengths necessary to get the money back and make up for his debt; essentially, Asterix was to pay Whosemoralsarelastix's taxes for him. A fight between Obelix and the villagers &mdash; although Obelix fails to fully understand why they are fighting &mdash; and Asterix versus the treacherous chief ensues. Asterix and Whosemoralsarelastix duel with their swords due to Asterix having exhausted his potion, but Whosemoralsarelastix is the better swordsman. Just as he is about to strike Asterix down, however, a section of the cliff suddenly gives way, the cauldron of money falling towards the sea while Whosemoralsarelastix barely manages to hold on to the side. Asterix rescues the treacherous chief and he and Obelix return to their own village while Whosemoralsarelastix cries his heart out over the loss of his money. The money itself, however, falls right into the ship and the lap of the pirates, who for once conclude an adventure on a happy note for themselves. Back at Asterix's village a celebration is held for the return of the two heroes and the recovery of their honour, though Obelix, still a little confused over matters, asks why the cauldron was used to contain money instead of onion soup in the first place.
2561113	/m/07n3v1	The Abominable Man	Per Wahlöö	1971	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A senior policeman known for brutality is violently knifed while in his hospital bed. Within a 24 hour period, Martin Beck searches through the policeman's many enemies for the killer, for whom the murder was only a precursor to a Charles Whitman-style attack on Stockholm.
2562109	/m/07n6bk	Blott on the Landscape	Tom Sharpe		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story revolves around the proposed construction of a motorway (M101 in the book and the M399 in the film) through Cleene Gorge in rural South Worfordshire (a fictional gorge in a fictional English county). At one end of the gorge is Handyman Hall, home to politician Sir Giles Lynchwood and his wife Lady Maud Lynchwood. Sir Giles is secretly in favour of ensuring the motorway passes through the Cleene Gorge as it will mean he will be paid the compensation for the destruction of Handyman Hall, which is under a covenant preventing its sale. While superficially pretending to be supportive he takes steps to undermine the inquiry and prevent alternatives being adopted, to ensure the new road travels through the Gorge. By contrast, Lady Maud's family has lived in the gorge for over 500 years, and she is fiercely defensive of her heritage and expects Giles to support her. Matters are further complicated by their on-going marital problems, including Sir Giles's fetishist infidelity and Lady Maud's wish for children to continue her line (to which Sir Giles is opposed), and the actions of Maud's gardener, Blott, a former German prisoner of war (it is a common misconception that Blott is Italian, however he was brought up in a Dresden Orphanage (where he learnt his skill in impersonation)), he does not know his parents (whom he believes might be Jewish) and served in the German Army. However the Army got fed up with Blott and so the High Command decided to get rid of him by assigning him to an Italian bomber on a raid to England. Blott, who served as navigator (and who wasn't very good at it), got completely lost and was forced to bale out, whereupon he was captured, and he is strongly patriotic towards his new home nation and home. Maud's and Giles's marriage settlement leaves Giles with Handyman Hall in the event of a no-fault divorce but not in the event of death or infidelity, a situation he also seeks to provoke by refusing to co-operate in his marital duties and which Maud sees as a potential solution. With his military training, and some leftovers of the war found beneath the hall, Blott begins a covert campaign including blackmail and wire tapping to scrutinize Sir Giles's activities on Maud's behalf and to undermine the construction of the motorway. He also discovers and aims to foil Giles's plans. In the course of the fight for the Gorge, the picturesque village is destroyed by Blott using a demolition crane to whip up popular opposition for the works. Giles is discovered seeing a prostitute and is blackmailed, as is Dundridge, the official in charge of the works, and the Hall is quickly converted into a wildlife park in an attempt to prevent the removal of its occupants. Giles himself is finally killed by lions when he is discovered by Blott and Maud trying to burn down the Hall. As a final resort, Blott concretes himself into his home, located in the entrance archway to the estate, preventing works progress. Dundridge, frustrated, demands the SAS are called in to remove Blott. Blott secretly launches an attack on his own archway for which the SAS are blamed, finally compelling enough public attention to cause the plans to be dropped. Dundridge is imprisoned for his part in the 'attack', and Maud and Blott (who have fallen in love by this time) marry and state their intention to add to the Handyman family.
2562413	/m/07n6v0	Green Shadows, White Whale	Ray Bradbury		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/070l2": "Soft science fiction"}	 The narrator, an unnamed writer, is sent to Dublin, Ireland to coproduce a film adaptation of Moby Dick with a director whose first name is given as "John". While there, he hears of the many strange and surreal stories of the boyos in Flinn's pub that make up the bulk of the novel, along with other adventures in the land of Ireland, including a "hunt wedding" and a house that has a mind of its own. The last chapter of the novel is devoted to the successful completion of the screenplay and the narrator's resulting ascent to fame.
2562778	/m/07n79t	A Prefect's Uncle	P. G. Wodehouse	1903-09-11	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel"}	 The action of the novel takes place at the fictional "Beckford College", a private school for boys; the title alludes to the arrival at the school of a mischievous young boy called Reginald Farnie, who turns out to be the uncle of the older "Bishop" Gethryn, a prefect, cricketer and popular figure in the school. His arrival, along with that of another youngster, Wilson, who becomes fag to Gethryn, leads to much excitement and scandal in the school, and the disruption of some important cricket matches. Early editions are highly prized by collectors, and first printings regularly sell for over $5,000. The novel was reprinted on June 17, 2004 by R A Kessinger Publishing. It contains approximately 128 pages and has been assigned the ISBN 1-4191-0286-9. The text was released under Project Gutenburg in 2004.
2562800	/m/07n7ck	The Sign of the Twisted Candles	Carolyn Keene	1933	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the course of solving the mystery of an old man's disappearing fortune, Nancy both starts and ends a family feud and reveals the identity of an orphan of unknown parentage. The second of three novels by ghostwriter Walter Karig, this story focuses on Nancy's encounter with a 100-year-old man at "The Sign of the Twisted Candles," a roadside inn and restaurant. Nancy, Bess and George take afternoon tea there while waiting out a storm; Nancy's roadster was blocked by a fallen tree. They encounter Asa Sidney, celebrating his 100th birthday, and the pathetic maid/waitress, Carol Wipple, mistreated by her adoptive parents, Frank and Emma Jemmit. Nancy discovers that Mr. Sidney is an elderly relative of Bess and George, and her willingness to communicate with him launches a family feud upon his death a few days later, and leaves her chumless, as the cousins refuse to associate with Nancy. Carol is named as the major benefactress, and Nancy must prove that Frank and Emma Jemmit have misappropriated property. Relatives of Mr. Sidney and his wife from the Sidney and Boonton families fight over the money. Nancy also must discover why Asa was interested in the young woman. While investigating, Nancy is reunited with her friends, and later, in the climax, is nearly killed when she is pushed while climbing a ladder against a tower window (illustrated as internal art in the original 1933 edition; this illustration and two others were dropped in 1936). Carol is discovered to be the great-niece of Asa Sidney, and thus owns the rights to a number of inventions awaiting patent from Sidney, in addition to securities. The family feud is resolved due to Nancy's discoveries.
2564143	/m/07n9l6	Philoctetes	Sophocles			 Sophocles' Philoctetes begins with their arrival on the island. Odysseus explains to Neoptolemus that he must perform a shameful action in order to garner future glory - to take Philoctetes by tricking him with a false story while Odysseus hides. Neoptolemus is portrayed as an honorable boy, and so it takes some persuading in order for him to play this part. In order to gain Philoctetes's trust, Neoptolemus tricks Philoctetes into thinking he hates Odysseus as well. Neoptolemus does this by telling Philoctetes that Odysseus has his father's (Achilles) armor. He tells Philoctetes that this armor was his right by birth, and Odysseus would not give it up to him. After gaining Philoctetes' trust and offering him a ride home, Neoptolemus is allowed to look at the bow of Heracles. Neoptolemus holds the bow while Philoctetes is going into an unbearable fit of pain in his foot. Feeling ashamed, Neoptolemus debates giving it back to him. Odysseus appears, and a series of arguments ensue. Eventually Neoptolemus's conscience gains the upper hand, and he returns the bow. After many threats made on both sides, Odysseus flees. Neoptolemus then tries to talk Philoctetes into coming to Troy by his own free will, but Philoctetes will not agree. In the end Neoptolemus consents to take Philoctetes back to Greece, even though that means that he will be exposed to the anger of the army. This appears to be the conclusion of the play; however, as they are leaving, Heracles (now a deity) appears above them and tells Philoctetes that if he goes to Troy then he will be cured and the Greeks will win. Philoctetes willingly obeys him. The play ends here. When Philoctetes later fights in Troy, his foot is healed, and he wins glory, killing many Trojans (including Paris).
2566521	/m/07nftw	The End of the Road	John Barth	1958		 Jacob (or "Jake") Horner, the first-person author of this confession, suffers from "cosmopsis"—an inability to choose from among all possible choices he can imagine. His cosmopsis completely paralyzes him in the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Baltimore just after his 28th birthday, having abandoned his graduate studies at John Hopkins University. He is taken in by a nameless African-American doctor who claims to specialize in such conditions. At the doctor's private therapy center called the Remobilization Farm, Jake is given "mythotherapy", instructed to read Sartre, and to assign "masks" to himself and abolish the ego. Horner would thus get over his paralysis by inducing action through taking on symbolic roles. As part of his schedule of therapies, Jake takes a job teaching at Wicomico State Teachers College, where he becomes friends with the history teacher Joe Morgan and his wife Rennie. Joe and Jake enjoy intellectually sparring, participating in a "duel of articulations". The philosophical Morgans have a marriage in which all must be articulated, and in which "the parties involved be able to take each other seriously". While Joe is busy working at his Ph.D. dissertation, he encourages Rennie to teach Jake horseback riding. She does, and the two talk at length about the Morgans' unusual relationship. After returning from one of their outings, Jake encourages a resistant Rennie to spy on her husband. She is convinced that "real people" like Joe are not "any different when they are alone. No mask. What you see of them is authentic." What she sees of him is disorients her and her vison of the reality of Joe. When Joe discovers that Jake and Rennie have committed adultery, he insists they maintain the affair, in an effort to discover the reasons for his wife's unfaithfulness. Rennie discovers she is pregnant, but cannot be sure whether Joe or Jake is the father. The Morgans visit Jake, Joe with Colt .45 in hand. Rennie insists on having an abortion, or she will commit suicide. Jake hunts for an abortionist under an assumed name, but is unable to find a doctor who will agree to the procedure, and thus turns to the Doctor. The abortion is botched, resulting in Rennie's death. Jake does not know what to feel, and "crave[s] responsibility". His relativist "cosmopsis" confirmed, he reverts to his paralysis. Two years later, as part of his Scriptotherapy on the Remobilization Farm, he writes his story of what happened in Wicomico.
2566762	/m/07ng7v	Pennington's Seventeenth Summer			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Penn is a troublemaker and is generally disliked by all but two of his teachers, especially Mr Marsh (or ‘Soggy’), who has had it in for him for years. Penn has very little faith in himself or those around him. He habitually causes trouble for himself, due largely to his defensiveness and inability to consider the consequences of his actions. He has already had a number of brushes with the law. Only the games master, Mr Matthews, and his piano teacher, Mr Crocker, see any potential in him. In this book he discovers that his musical ability is much more extraordinary than he had thought and that he may actually enjoy playing the piano. However, his temper and rash behaviour are likely to lead him to jail before he has a chance to see where his talent can take him.
2567031	/m/07ngrn	Detective	Arthur Hailey		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Detective is the story of Miami Police detective Malcolm Ainslie, who had previously trained to be a Catholic priest. A serial killer breaks free in Miami. He is a religious freak and he starts killing people feeling that he is the avenger of God. He leaves certain things at the murder scenes that are symbols from the Book of Revelation. Miami Police Detective Sergeant Malcolm Ainslie and his team start to investigate the murders. They eventually find the killer and arrest him. The murderer is nicknamed The Animal because he kills in such a barbaric manner. Now, when this man is about to be executed for the serial killings he did, he calls for Malcolm. 30 minutes before his execution he confesses to Malcolm that he did all the serial killings he is accused of except one, which was not done by him. It was the killing of mayor of the city commissioner and his wife. Malcolm, at first, refuses to believe him because The Animal has a reputation of being a liar. But as he goes deep into the history of cases and studies all the killings he discovers that there are two killings in separate cities, unsolved murders which were confessed by The Animal. When he carefully studies all the killings done by him, he finds out that the killings of city commissioner and his wife were attempted by someone else, a copy cat killer, and these murders were made to look as if done by the same killer. Thanks to his priestly training, he notices that the pattern of the symbols left by the Animal at scenes of all the other murders is derived from the Book of Revelation, but that the symbols left at the murder of the Mayor do not fit this pattern. Malcolm suddenly finds himself facing a situation where a copy cat killer is roaming around free. And when the killings are of a city commissioner and his wife the matter became more complicated. His team starts to investigate and finds important people involved in the killings and a famous novelist is also involved. Malcolm AinslieCynthia ErnstRuby
2572444	/m/07nwrp	Five Weeks in a Balloon	Jules Verne	1863	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 A scholar and explorer, Dr. Samuel Fergusson, accompanied by his manservant Joe and his friend professional hunter Richard "Dick" Kennedy, sets out to travel across the African continent&nbsp;— still not fully explored&nbsp;— with the help of a hot-air balloon filled with hydrogen. He has invented a mechanism that, by eliminating the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad. The trip begins in Zanzibar on the east coast, and passes across Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné and Ségou to St Louis in modern day Senegal on the west coast. The book describes the unknown interior of Africa near modern day Central African Republic as a desert, when it is actually savanna. A good deal of the initial exploration is to focus on the finding of the source of the Nile, an event that occurs in chapter 18 (out of 43). The second leg is to link up the other explorers. There are numerous scenes of adventure, composed of either a conflict with a native or a conflict with the environment. Some examples include: * Rescuing of a missionary from a tribe that was preparing to sacrifice him. * Running out of water while stranded, windless, over the Sahara. * An attack on the balloon by condors, leading to a dramatic action as Joe leaps out of the balloon. * The actions taken to rescue Joe later. * Narrowly escaping the remnants of a militant army as the balloon dwindles to nothingness with the loss of hydrogen. In all these adventures, the protagonists overcome by continued perseverance more than anything else. The novel is filled with coincidental moments where trouble is avoided because wind catches up at just the right time, or the characters look in just the right direction. There are frequent references to a higher power watching out for them. The balloon itself ultimately fails before the end, but makes it far enough across to get the protagonists to friendly lands, and eventually back to England, therefore succeeding in the expedition. The story abruptly ends after the African trip, with only a brief synopsis of what follows.
2573089	/m/07ny5q	The Widow's Broom	Chris Van Allsburg	1992	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story involves a widow named Minna Shaw. One evening, a witch falls from her broom when it loses the ability to fly and lands in the garden near Minna Shaw's house. Minna Shaw takes her in until she recovers, and when she does, the witch calls a friend to "drive" her home, leaving her own broom behind. Minna Shaw discovers the broom is still in her house and leaves it alone but is startled, and more than a little afraid, when it comes to life later that evening. She discovers that the broom is harmless, as all it does is sweep, but she teaches it how to feed the chickens, chop wood, and play the piano. While most of the neighbor women and children are comfortable with the broom, the men are concerned that it had been a witch's broom. Shortly afterwards, two boys begin to harass it. The broom, apparently angered, beats them and flings their dog over the forest. The boys' parents demand that the broom be burned at the stake. Minna Shaw surprisingly agrees, and the broom is burned. Things appear normal until the broom's phantom-white ghost begins stalking the Spiveys' house. The Spiveys are so terrified that they pack up and leave the house. Minna Shaw can now be alone and listen to the broom play the piano; she'd given the Spiveys her own ordinary household broom to burn and cooked up the plan for the magical broom (which was just painted white), to scare her neighbors away. She painted it white to make it look like the "ghost" broom.
2575166	/m/07p1p5	The Hungry Tide	Amitav Ghosh	2005	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Hungry Tide tells a very contemporary story of adventure and unlikely love, identity and history, set in one of the most fascinating regions on the earth. Off the easternmost coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans. For settlers here, life is extremely precarious. Attacks by deadly tigers are common. Unrest and eviction are constant threats. Without warning, at any time, tidal floods rise and surge over the land, leaving devastation in their wake. In this place of vengeful beauty, the lives of three people from different worlds collide. Piyali Roy is a young marine biologist, of Indian descent but stubbornly American, in search of a rare, endangered river dolphin, Orcaella brevirostris. Her journey begins with a disaster, when she is thrown from a boat into crocodile-infested waters. Rescue comes in the form of a young, illiterate fisherman, Fokir. Although they have no language between them, Piya and Fokir are powerfully drawn to each other, sharing an uncanny instinct for the ways of the sea. Piya engages Fokir to help with her research and finds a translator in Kanai Dutt, a businessman from Delhi whose idealistic aunt and uncle are longtime settlers in the Sundarbans. As the three of them launch into the elaborate backwaters, they are drawn unawares into the hidden undercurrents of this isolated world, where political turmoil exacts a personal toll that is every bit as powerful as the ravaging tide. Already an international success, The Hungry Tide is a prophetic novel of remarkable insight, beauty, and humanity. The Morichjhanpi massacre incident of 1978-79, when government of West Bengal forcibly evicted thousands of Bengali refugees who had settled on the island, forms a background for some parts of the novel. The novel explores topics like humanism and environmentalism, especially when they come into a conflict of interest with each other.
2575536	/m/07p2nz	I Heard the Owl Call My Name	Margaret Craven		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mark Brian, a young vicar, is sent to a Native Indian village called Kingcome in British Columbia, where the Kwakwala language is spoken. His bishop sends him, knowing that Mark is suffering from an unnamed, fatal disease, in order to learn life's hard lessons in the time left to him. Mark is unaware of his terminal illness and his bishop does not tell him. Through various experiences and inter-relationships, Mark learns from the villagers and they from him. By the time he has spent one year there, he considers the small village his home and family, and they consider him part of their tribe. The title of the book derives from a Kwakiutl belief that when one hears the owl call one's name, death is imminent.
2576481	/m/07p50s	Setting Free the Bears	John Irving	1968	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book’s central plot concerns a plan to liberate all the animals from the Vienna Zoo, as happened just after the conclusion of World War II. Irving’s two protagonists—Graff, a young Austrian college student, and Siggy, an eccentric motorcycle mechanic-cum-philosopher—meet and embark on an adventure-filled motorcycle tour of Austria before the novel’s climax: "the great zoo bust". Towards the middle of the book the two protagonists go their separate ways and a large section of the novel is given over to “The Notebook”—a chronicle of the Siggy character’s family from pre-WWII, through the occupation of the Soviets, to the late 1960s. Siggy is killed in a motorcycle accident, the grief-stricken Graff then continues with their plan to free the inhabitants of the Vienna Zoo with Siggy's voice echoing in his head. This ends in catastrophic results. de:Laßt die Bären los! fr:Liberté pour les ours ! pl:Uwolnić niedźwiedzie
2576980	/m/07p67d	The Shattered Chain	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the first section, Lady Rohana Ardais, a Comyn woman of young middle-age - nobility by birth and possessing the psychic powers of laran, or telepathy in Rohana's case - travels with a band of Renunciates to the city Shainsa to free her kinswoman Melora who had been kidnapped ten years before. Rohana chooses to cut her hair and travel with the women as a Renunciate, into the desert heart of the Dry Towns where women are literally kept in chains by the men who own them. While the women manage to free the heavily pregnant Melora and her twelve year old daughter Jaelle, born in Shainsa to her kidnapper-husband, Melora dies giving birth to her son Valentine in the desert, leaving Jaelle in the care of her childhood friend Rohana. The young Jaelle chooses to stay with the Renunciate Kindra, rather than be fostered by Rohana, and the section ends with the child's request: "Foster-mother, will you cut my hair?" and we are left with the very clear impression that Rohana's experiences with the Renunciates and in the Dry Towns have profoundly changed her self-perception as a woman, and of the relationship between the sexes. In the second section of Shattered Chain, twelve years later the Terran agent Magda Lorne assumes Renunciate garb and haircut under the direction of Rohana, now nearing the end of middle-age. Just as Rohana's journey to rescue Melora was prompted by her male kin's refusal to jeopardise the Domans' political relationship with the Dry Towns by rescuing a woman, Magda is travelling into the Hellers to ransom her kidnapped ex-husband Peter, whom her employers and people - the Terrans - have refused to rescue, again for political reasons. Magda, however, travels alone, yet coincidentally - or fatefully - comes across a band of real Renunciates led by the now-adult Jaelle, who has chosen the life of the Renunciate, forgoing the privilege, power and cloistered life of a comyn lady. Magda's deceit is uncovered, and the traditional punishment for a woman who takes the guise of a Renunciate without taking their oath - to make the lie truth - is meted out to Magda by Jaelle and her Renunciate sisters. Magda chooses to travel with Jaelle alone to the Nevarsin Guild House to begin training as a Renunciate, though she plans secretly to escape her responsibility and continue on to rescue Peter. Shortly after the other Renunciates part ways with them, Magda and Jaelle are attacked by bandits and Jaelle is seriously injured. Magda must choose whether to abandon Jaelle and hold true to her responsibility to her ex-husband, or to uphold her oath to the Renunciates and to the injured Jaelle. Magda chooses to do both, taking Jaelle with her into the mountains, rescuing Peter, and then travelling with both to the Ardais estate. Magda's conflict and eventual decision to abide by her oath to Jaelle and to the Renunciates echoes Rohana's earlier inner conflict in choosing whether to leave her life for the Renunciates or to continue in her life as comyn nobility. Whereas Rohana chooses to continue as a noblewoman, yet takes advantages of her high social position as head of a domain, taking her ill husband's place in the comyn council and running her estate and domain, Magda eventually chooses to pursue the life of a Renunciate. In the third and final section of the book, Jaelle, Magda and Peter shelter the winter at the mountain estate of Ardais, home to Rohana, her husband and children, including the aggressive and intimidating Kyril Ardais, for whom the bandits originally mistook Peter when kidnapping him. In this section, Jaelle chooses to become freemate to Peter, and questions both her choice to become a Renunciate at a young age, and her decision to ignore her developing laran. By the end of this section, the two women and Peter return to Thendara, where Jaelle is forced to face her responsibility as an heir to a comyn domain with powerful and untrained laran, and Magda must choose whether she honours her oath to the Renunciates and to her now-dear friend Jaelle or returns to the Terran zone to continue her work as translator and agent. By the end of the novel, Jaelle has chosen to live with Peter as freemates in the Terran zone in Thendara, fulfilling Magda's role as translator and honouring her responsibility to her employers. Magda has chosen to seek out her Renunciate training at the Thendara Guildhouse, to remain cloistered in a house-bound year where she must learn what it means to renounce the traditional place of a woman in Darkovan society.
2578148	/m/07p8p2	To Have and to Hold	Mary Johnston		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 To Have and to Hold is the story of an English soldier, Ralph Percy, turned Virginian explorer in colonial Jamestown. Ralph buys a wife for himself - a girl named Jocelyn Leigh - little knowing that she is the escaping ward of King James I, fleeing a forced marriage to Lord Carnal. Jocelyn hardly loves Ralph - indeed, she seems to abhor him. Carnal, Jocelyn's husband-to-be eventually comes to Jamestown, not knowing that Ralph Percy and Jocelyn Leigh are man and wife. Lord Carnal attempts to kidnap Jocelyn several times and eventually follows Ralph, Jocelyn, and their two companions - Jeremy Sparrow, the Separatist minister, and Diccon, Ralph's servant - as they escape from the King's orders to arrest Ralph and carry Jocelyn back to England. The boat that they are in, however, crashes on a desert island, but they are accosted by pirates, who, after a short struggle, agree to take Ralph as their captain, after he pretends to be the pirate "Kirby". The pirates gleefully play on with Ralph's masquerade, until he refuses to allow them to rape and pillage those on board Spanish ships. The play is up when the pirates see an English ship off the coast of Florida. Ralph refuses to fire upon it, knowing that it carries the new Virginian governor, Sir Francis Wyatt, but the pirates open fire, and Jeremy Sparrow, before the English ship can be destroyed, purposefully crashes the ship into a reef. The pirates are all killed, but the Englishmen (and woman) are rescued by the Governor's ship. Ralph is put on trial on board the ship as a pirate, after Lord Carnal tells the Governor that he ordered the destruction of the ship, but Jocelyn, having come to love Ralph, speaks for him. Her words are so persuasive that the Governor believes her and frees Ralph. They return to Virginia, though Ralph is forced to remain in a gaol - King's orders. Ralph is lured into a trap, though, by Lord Carnal and is subsequently captured by Indians - but not before putting up a fight and seeing Lord Carnal terribly wounded. The brother of Pocahontas, the Indian Nantauquas, rescues him and Diccon, but only to inform them that all the Virginian Indians plan to massacre the Jamestown settlers. As they are on their way back to Jamestown, Diccon is shot and killed by a hostile Indian, and Ralph is left alone to brave his way back. Returning to the colony, he gives his information, only to be told that Jocelyn had made her way to the forest in search of him after his absence was noticed, with Jeremy Sparrow, and that they had not been found. It is also discovered that Lord Carnal has taken poison and will die within a week. Jamestown is saved, thanks to Ralph's almost-too-late warning, and after things are stabilized, Ralph goes in search of Jocelyn and the minister. After a long and seemingly fruitless search, Nantauquas himself, though he had turned traitor, leads Ralph to where Jocelyn is staying. The two are reunited, and at the end of the story intend to go to England, where Jocelyn's lands have been restored to her and they can finally live in peace. To Have and to Hold was revised and edited by Josh and Sarah Wean for the four-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. It is sold in this edition by the Christian company, Vision Forum Inc.
2578185	/m/07p8s5	The Historian	Elizabeth Kostova	2005-06-14	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Historian interweaves the history and folklore of Vlad Ţepeş, a 15th-century prince of Wallachia known as "Vlad the Impaler", and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula together with the story of Paul, a professor; his 16-year-old daughter; and their quest for Vlad's tomb. The novel ties together three separate narratives using letters and oral accounts: that of Paul's mentor in the 1930s, that of Paul in the 1950s, and that of the narrator herself in the 1970s. The tale is told primarily from the perspective of Paul's daughter, who is never named. Part I opens in 1972 Amsterdam. The narrator finds an old vellum-bound book with a woodcut of a dragon in the center associated with Dracula. When she asks her father Paul about it, he tells her how he found the handmade book in his study carrel when he was a graduate student in the 1950s. Paul took the book to his mentor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi, and was shocked to find that Rossi had found a similar handmade book when he was a graduate student in the 1930s. As a result, Rossi researched Ţepeş, the Dracula myth surrounding him, and the mysterious book. Rossi traveled as far as Istanbul; however, the appearance of curious characters and unexplained events caused him to drop his investigation and return to his graduate work. Rossi gives Paul his research notes and informs him that he believes Dracula is still alive. The bulk of the novel focuses on the 1950s timeline, which follows Paul's adventures. After meeting with Paul, Rossi disappears; smears of blood on his desk and the ceiling of his office are the only traces that remain. Certain that something unfortunate has befallen his advisor, Paul begins to investigate Dracula. While in the university library he meets a young, dark-haired woman reading a copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula. She is Helen Rossi, the daughter of Bartholomew Rossi, and she has become an expert on Dracula. Paul attempts to convince her that one of the librarians is trying to prevent their research into Dracula, but she is unpersuaded. Later, the librarian attacks and bites Helen. Paul intervenes and overpowers him, but he wriggles free. The librarian is then run over by a car in front of the library and apparently killed. Upon hearing her father's story, the narrator becomes interested in the mystery and begins researching Dracula as she and her father travel across Europe during the 1970s. Although he eventually sends her home, she does not remain there. After finding letters addressed to her that reveal he has left on a quest to find her mother (previously believed to be dead), she sets out to find him. As is slowly made clear in the novel, Helen is the narrator's mother. The letters continue the story her father has been telling her. The narrator decides to travel to a monastery where she believes her father might be. Part II begins as the narrator reads descriptions of her father and Helen's travels through Eastern Europe during the 1950s. While on their travels, Helen and Paul conclude that Rossi might have been taken by Dracula to his tomb. They travel to Istanbul to find the archives of Sultan Mehmed&nbsp;II, which Paul believes contain information regarding the location of the tomb. They fortuitously meet Professor Turgut Bora from Istanbul University, who has also discovered a book similar to Paul's and Rossi's. He has access to Mehmed's archive, and together they unearth several important documents. They also see the librarian who was supposedly killed in the United States&nbsp;– he has survived because he is a vampire and he has continued following Helen and Paul. Helen shoots the vampire librarian but misses his heart and consequently, he does not die. From Istanbul, Paul and Helen travel to Budapest, Hungary, to further investigate the location of Dracula's tomb and to meet with Helen's mother, who they believe may have knowledge of Rossi&nbsp;– the two had met during his travels to Romania in the 1930s. For the first time Helen hears of her mother and Rossi's torrid love affair. Paul and Helen learn much, for example that Helen's mother, and therefore Helen herself and the narrator, are descendants of Vlad Ţepeş. Part III begins with a revelation by Turgut Bora that leads the search for Dracula's tomb to Bulgaria. He also reveals that he is part of an organization formed by Sultan Mehmed&nbsp;II from the elite of the Janissaries to fight the Order of the Dragon, an evil consortium later associated with Dracula. In Bulgaria, Helen and Paul seek the assistance of a scholar named Anton Stoichev. Through information gained from Stoichev, Helen and Paul discover that Dracula is most likely buried in the Bulgarian monastery of Sveti Georgi. After many difficulties Paul and Helen discover the whereabouts of Sveti Georgi. Upon reaching the monastery they find Rossi's interred body in the crypt and are forced to drive a silver dagger through his heart to prevent his full transformation into a vampire. Before he dies, he reveals that Dracula is a scholar and has a secret library. Rossi has written an account of his imprisonment in this library and hidden it there. Paul and Helen are pursued to the monastery by political officials and by the vampire librarian&nbsp;– all of them are seeking Dracula's tomb, but it is empty when they arrive. Paul and Helen move to the United States, marry, and Helen gives birth to the narrator. However, she becomes depressed a few months afterwards. She later confesses that she feared the taint of the vampiric bite that she acquired earlier would infect her child. The family travels to Europe in an attempt to cheer her up. When they visit the monastery Saint-Matthieu-des-Pyrénées-Orientales, Helen feels Dracula's presence and is compelled to jump off a cliff. Landing on grass, she survives and decides to hunt him down and kill him in order to rid herself of his threat and her fears. When the narrator arrives at Saint-Matthieu-des-Pyrénées-Orientales, she finds her father. Individuals mentioned throughout the 1970s timeline converge in a final attempt to defeat Dracula. He is seemingly killed by a silver bullet fired into his heart by Helen. In the epilogue, which takes place in 2008, the narrator attends a conference of medievalists in Philadelphia, and stops at a library with an extensive collection of material related to Dracula. She accidentally leaves her notes and the attendant rushes out and returns them to her, as well as a book with a dragon printed in the center, revealing that either Dracula is still alive or one of his minions is imitating the master.
2581528	/m/02p6nd0	The Shadow of the Torturer	Gene Wolfe	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Severian, an apprentice in the torturers' guild, barely survives a swim in the River Gyoll. On his way back to the Citadel Severian and several other apprentices sneak into a necropolis where Severian first encounters Vodalus, the legendary revolutionary. Vodalus, along with two others, including a woman named Thea, are robbing a grave. Vodalus and his companions are confronted by volunteer guards. Severian saves Vodalus's life, earning his trust and the reward of a single "gold" coin. Shortly after Severian is elevated to journeyman he encounters and falls in love with Thecla, a beautiful aristocratic prisoner. Thecla's crime is never made clear, though it is ultimately implied that she is imprisoned for political reasons. Thecla's sister is Thea, Vodalus's lover, and the Autarch (ruler of the Commonwealth) wishes to use Thecla to capture Vodalus. When finally Thecla is put to torture, Severian takes pity on her and helps her commit suicide, by smuggling a knife into her cell, thus breaking his oath to the guild. Though Severian expects to be tortured and executed, instead the head of the guild is uncharacteristically forgiving and dispatches Severian to Thrax, a distant city which has need of an executioner. Master Palaemon gives Severian a letter of introduction to the archon of the city and Terminus Est, a magnificent executioner's sword. He departs the guild headquarters, traveling through the decaying city of Nessus. He finally comes upon an inn, where he forces the innkeeper to take him in despite being full and is asked to share a room with other boarders. This is where he first meets Baldanders and Dr. Talos, travelling as mountebanks, who invite Severian to join them in a play to be performed the same day. During breakfast, Dr. Talos manages to recruit the waitress for his play and they set out into the streets. Not intending to participate, Severian parts with the group and stops at a rag shop to purchase a mantle to hide his fuligin cloak (the uniform of his guild, which inspires terror in common folk). The shop is owned by a twin brother and sister, and the brother immediately takes interest in Terminus Est. Severian refuses to sell the sword, shortly after which a masked and armoured hipparch enters the shop and challenges Severian to a duel. Severian is forced to accept, and he departs with the sister, Agia, to secure an avern, a deadly plant that is used for dueling. While on their way, urged by Agia's bet to a passing fiacre, their driver crashes into and destroys the altar of a religious order, where Agia is accused of stealing a precious artifact. After Agia is searched and released, they continue their journey to the Botanic Gardens, a large landmark of Nessus created by the mysterious Father Inire, right hand to the Autarch. Inside the gardens, Severian falls into a lake used to inter the dead, and while pulling himself out he finds a young woman named Dorcas to have come up from the lake as well. Dazed and confused, the woman follows Severian and Agia. Severian secures the avern and the group proceeds to an inn near the dueling grounds. While eating dinner, Severian receives a mysterious note warning about one of the women. After dinner, Severian meets with his challenger, and though stabbed by the avern he miraculously survives and finds that his challenger was the male owner of the rag shop, Agia's brother. When Severian wakes again, he finds himself to be in a lazaret. After finding Dorcas and identifying himself, he is requested to perform an execution as a carnifex. The prisoner turns out to be his challenger, Agia's brother, whom he executes. Severian and Dorcas return to their travels and while searching his belongings, Severian finds the Claw of the Conciliator. Apparently Agia stole the Claw from the altar they destroyed and placed it in Severian's belongings knowing that she would be searched. Eventually Severian and Dorcas encounter Dr. Talos and Baldanders, who are almost ready to perform the play they had invited Severian to that morning. Severian assists in the play, and the next day the group sets out toward the great gate leading out of Nessus. When they are at the gate, there is suddenly a commotion and the narration abruptly ends.
2581531	/m/05qbbjr	The Claw of the Conciliator	Gene Wolfe	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The book continues shortly after the previous installment left off, skipping only Severian's journey from the gate of Nessus to the nearby town of Saltus. Having been separated from the rest of the group he was traveling with, Severian pauses his search for them here as he is given an opportunity to practice his art (in this case, execution) on two people. The first was found to be a servant of Vodalus, a revolutionary and traitor to the commonwealth. As the man is dragged out of his home by a mob, Severian glimpses Agia in the crowd, a woman who with her twin brother had tried to swindle and then kill Severian to get his priceless executioner's sword. Severian executed the brother at the request of the local authorities. Severian searches for her at the town fair but instead has a conversation with a man whose skin is green, held prisoner in a tent as a sideshow attraction. The green man tells Severian he is from the future. Severian takes pity on him and gives him a piece of his whetstone so that he can free himself by grinding through his chains, thus recalling his mercy to Thecla, another prisoner, in the first book. He does not find Agia and instead returns to town where he later executes a woman accused of being a witch. Eating dinner with his friend Jonas (whom he met at the gate at Nessus) that evening, he finds a letter from Thecla asking him to meet her at a nearby cave. In the cave, Severian encounters and barely escapes a group of man-apes. The light from the Claw (a relic he accidentally had come into the possession of, which had previously been held by a religious order) stops the man-apes' attack, but it also seems to wake an unknown creature somewhere in the cave, who is only heard and not seen. Severian has little time to ponder this as he escapes, only to be attacked by Agia and her assassins outside the cave. One of the attackers is killed by one of the man-apes, who had its hand cut off in the battle. When Severian brings out the Claw its wound is healed. Severian lets Agia go and returns to Saltus, where he and Jonas are taken by Vodalus. Vodalus recalls that Severian saved his life and allows Severian to enter his service. Severian and Jonas attend a dinner with Vodalus where they consume the dead Thecla's flesh, which, when combined with an alien substance, allows Thecla's memories to live within Severian. Given the task to deliver a message to a servant in the House Absolute, the Autarch's seat of power, Severian and Jonas set off to the north. They are attacked by a flying creature who feeds on the heat and life force of living beings, and barely escape. A nearby soldier patrolling the area is killed by the creature (now divided into three separate individuals after being cut by Severian's sword), but is then revived by the claw. They are then captured by guards of the House Absolute and thrown into an antechamber designed to hold prisoners indefinitely. Severian's claw heals a wound Jonas receives during the night they spend there; then the pair escape some unknown horror using a pass phrase to open a secret door—Severian remembers the phrase using Thecla's memory within him. Walking the corridors of House Absolute, Jonas is revealed to be a robot who once crash landed on earth and is now partly covered by human flesh, and steps into a mirror and disappears, promising to return for Jolenta when he is healed. Severian is lost and eventually encounters the Autarch himself, to whom he swears service, upon being shown a portal to another universe. Stumbling into the gardens of the House Absolute, Severian is reunited with Dorcas, Dr. Talos, and Baldanders, who are preparing to once again perform the play they put on in Nessus in the first book. Severian participates again, but the play is cut short as Baldanders flies into a rage and attacks the audience, revealing that aliens are among them. The band is scattered and Severian finds them a ways away the next morning, heading north. Talos and Baldanders part ways with Severian and Dorcas at a crossroad, Severian heading toward Thrax and the giant and his physician headed toward Lake Diaturna. The waitress Jolenta tries to have Talos take her with him, but he has no more use for her now that the plays were no longer necessary, and Severian is forced to take her. As they head north, Jolenta is attacked by a "blood bat" and becomes ill. It is revealed that she had been scientifically altered by Dr. Talos to be gorgeous and desirable, but is quickly becoming sickly and unattractive. Soon the trio meets an old farmer who tells them they must pass through an enigmatic stone city to get to Thrax. Upon arriving at the ruinous city, Severian sees a pair of witches initiate a dream-like event in which ghostly dancers of the stone town's past fill the area and engage with the witch's' servant, who is actually Vodalus's lieutenant Hildegrin. The book ends with Dorcas and Severian emerging from a stupor in the stone town, Jolenta dead and the witches and Hildegrin gone.
2584738	/m/07prhy	When Knighthood Was in Flower	Charles Major		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set during the Tudor period of English history, When Knighthood Was in Flower tells the tribulations of Mary Tudor, a younger sister of Henry VIII of England who has fallen in love with a commoner. However, for political reasons, King Henry has arranged for her to wed King Louis XII of France and demands his sister put the House of Tudor first, threatening, "You will marry France and I will give you a wedding present – Charles Brandon's head!"
2588025	/m/07p_w9	The Short-Timers	Gustav Hasford	1979	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The book is divided into three sections, written in completely different styles of prose. "The Spirit of the Bayonet" chronicles Pvt. James T. "Joker" Davis' days in the Marine Corps boot camp, where a drill instructor (Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim) breaks the men's spirits and then rebuilds them as brutal killers. Here, Joker befriends two privates nicknamed "Cowboy" and "Gomer Pyle". The latter, whose real name is Leonard Pratt, earns the wrath of both Gerheim and the rest of the platoon through his ineptitude and weak character. Though he eventually shows great improvement and wins honors at graduation, the constant abuse has unbalanced his mind. In a final act of madness, he kills Gerheim and then himself in front of the whole platoon. This section is written in a very simple, savage style. "Body Count" shows some of Joker's life as a war correspondent for the Marines in 1968. While in Da Nang, he runs across Cowboy, now assistant squad leader in the Lusthog Squad. As the Tet Offensive begins, Joker is dispatched to Phu Bai with his photographer, Rafter Man. Here, he unwillingly accepts a promotion from Corporal to Sergeant, and the two travel to Huế to cover the enemy's wartime atrocities and meet up with Cowboy again. During a battle, Joker is "wounded" (actually only knocked out by an RPG concussion blast) and the book goes into a psychedelic dream sequence. After his quick recovery, Joker learns that the platoon commander was killed by a friendly grenade, while the squad leader went insane and attacked an NVA position with a BB gun only to be shot down. Later, Joker and Rafter Man battle a sniper who killed another Lusthog Marine and an entire second squad; the battle ends with Rafter Man's first confirmed kill and Cowboy's being wounded slightly. As Joker and Rafter Man head back to their base, Rafter Man panics and dashes into the path of an oncoming tank, which fatally crushes him. Joker is reassigned to Cowboy's squad as a rifleman, as punishment for wearing an unauthorized peace button on his uniform. The writing style in "Body Count" is more complex than that in "The Spirit of the Bayonet". "Grunts" takes place on a mission through the jungle with Cowboy's squad, outside of Khe Sanh. They encounter another sniper here, who wounds three of the men multiple times. After the company commander goes crazy and begins babbling nonsense over the radio, Cowboy decides to pull the squad back and retreat, rather than sacrifice everyone trying to save the wounded men. Animal Mother, the squad's M60 machine gunner, threatens Cowboy's life and refuses to retreat. Promoting Joker to squad leader, Cowboy runs in with his pistol and kills each victim with a shot to the head. However, he himself is repeatedly wounded in the process; before he can kill himself, the sniper shoots the gun out of his hand. Realizing his duty to Cowboy and the squad, Joker kills Cowboy and leads the rest of the men away. This section is written in a more complex style than the previous two, with more time spent on Joker's inner thoughts.
2590110	/m/07q42h	Maestro	Peter Goldsworthy	1989	{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The protagonist, a boy called Paul Crabbe, is taught piano by his teacher (or maestro), Eduard Keller. Paul does not like his teacher at first, but by the end of the novel has grown to appreciate him dearly. Paul learns the limits of his own musical ability through Keller, but he also grows to understand himself and Keller enough to write the novel. Additionally, he has a loving relationship with his sweetheart, Rosie. This book deals with the main idea of contrasts, as well as other themes. Contrasts are shown by Paul's mother and father – how they differ; Vienna and Darwin – high culture vs. low culture; Paul as an adolescent and Paul as an adult – through the continual change in narrator, as Paul changes. Paul slowly comes to realisation that he is now learning from the maestro, and that his talent starts growing day by day. The most influential character, Eduard Keller, lost his family during The Holocaust, despite performing for Adolf Hitler in private concerts in the belief Hitler would spare his Jewish family. For Keller, the grand piano is his sanctity and security, assisting him to deal with the horrors of the world; "safe beneath that grand piano," and likewise offering Eduard a method of deconstructing life. As Paul matures, Keller's phrasings, which seemed absurd in adolescence, ossify into a "musical bible whose texts I knew by heart" but Paul does not relate them to his life until middle-age, leaving him "smug, insufferable," throughout his life. Keller originates from Vienna, where he was a renowned musician "becoming so visible so that nothing can touch him", therefore believing he is exempt from the effects of war. Eventually he lost his wife and son and disappeared from the country, leaving every-one to believe he was dead. Filled with remorse and regret, Keller transforms and evolves to become a completely different man, "if we are discussing the same man how different our two versions." Keller understands the frivolities and foolish nature of human society, passed onto Paul in the form of clippings from newspapers, Keller's "textbooks." "The thousands of stories of human foolishness and greed and cruelty that he had tried to patch together into some kind of understanding of his fellow beings" depicts Keller's knowledge. When Paul initially began lessons with Keller, his first impressions were misleading, "a boozers incandescent glow", "I'd seen nothing like him before." As Paul matures, his attitudes towards the Maestro become warmer and they develop an unexpressed bond. "I slipped my arm beneath his head and kissed him" represent Paul's final realisation of his connection with Keller in death. Throughout his life, Paul took the Maestro for granted, believing his advice was "irritating – and also contradictory." After Keller's death, Paul realises the opportunities Keller had presented him. "Mourning for a great man, yes, but also mourning for myself – for times and possibilities that will never come again." Throughout the novella the tone shifts from egotism and selfishness to regret and wisdom depicting Paul's growth. In conclusion, Maestro has the main themes of adolescence and growing up. Paul is educated about life through music and Keller's experiences in Vienna and understanding of human nature contribute to Paul's knowledge of the world. The book tracks Paul as he develops into a responsible, mature man from an obnoxious, egotistical teenager.
2590334	/m/07q4jm	Metaphysics	Aristotle		{"/m/04s0m": "Metaphysics"}	 Book I or Alpha outlines "first philosophy", which is a knowledge of the first principles or causes of things. The wise are able to teach because they know the why of things, unlike those who only know that things are a certain way based on their memory and sensations. Because of their knowledge of first causes and principles they are better fitted to command, rather than to obey. Book Alpha also surveys previous philosophies from Thales to Plato, especially their treatment of causes. Book II or "little alpha": The purpose of this chapter is to address a possible objection to Aristotle’s account of how we understand first principles and thus acquire wisdom. Aristotle replies that the idea of an infinite causal series is absurd, and thus there must be a first cause which is not itself caused. This idea is developed later in book Lambda, where he develops an argument for the existence of God. Book III or Beta lists the main problems or puzzles (Gr. ἀπορία, "aporia") of philosophy. Book IV or Gamma: Chapters 2 and 3 argue for its status as a subject in its own right. The rest is a defense of (a) what we now call the principle of contradiction, the principle that it is not possible for the same proposition to be (the case) and not to be (the case), and (b) what we now call the principle of excluded middle: tertium non datur - there cannot be an intermediary between contradictory statements. Book V or Delta ("philosophical lexicon") is a list of definitions of about fifty key terms such as cause, nature, one, and many. Book VI or Epsilon has two main concerns. Aristotle is first concerned with a hierarchy of the sciences. As we know, a science can be either productive, practical or theoretical. Because theoretical sciences study being or beings for their own sake—for example, Physics studies beings that can be moved (1025b27) -- and do not have an end (telos) beyond themselves, they are superior. The study of being qua being is superior out of all the theoretical sciences because it is concerned with that which is separate and immovable. The second concern of Epsilon is proving why accidents cannot be studied as a science. Accidents do not involve art (techne) and do not exist by necessity, and therefore do not deserve to be studied as a science. Aristotle dismisses the study of accidents a science fit for Sophists, a group whose philosophies (or lack thereof) he consistently rejects throughout the Metaphysics. The Middle Books are generally considered the core of the Metaphysics. Book Zeta begins with the remark that ‘Being’ has many senses. The purpose of philosophy is to understand being. The primary kind of being is what Aristotle calls substance. What substances are there, and are there any substances besides perceptible ones? Aristotle considers four candidates for substance: (i) the ‘essence’ or ‘what it was to be a thing’ (ii) the Platonic universal, (iii) the genus to which a substance belongs and (iv) the substratum or ‘matter’ which underlies all the properties of a thing. He dismisses the idea that matter can be substance, for if we eliminate everything that is a property from what can have the property, we are left with something that has no properties at all. Such 'ultimate matter' cannot be substance. Separability and 'this-ness' are fundamental to our concept of substance. Chapters 4-12 are devoted to Aristotle’s own theory that essence is the criterion of substantiality. The essence of something is what is included in a secundum se ('according to itself') account of a thing, i.e. which tells what a thing is by its very nature. You are not musical by your very nature. But you are a human by your very nature. Your essence is what is mentioned in the definition of you. Chapters 13-15 consider, and dismiss, the idea that substance is the universal or the genus, and are mostly an attack on the Platonic theory of Ideas. Aristotle argues that if genus and species are individual things, then different species of the same genus contain the genus as individual thing, which leads to absurdities. Moreover, individuals are incapable of definition. Chapter 17 takes an entirely fresh direction, which turns on the idea that substance is really a cause. Book Eta consists of a summary of what has been said so far (i.e., in Book Zeta) about substance, and adds a few further details regarding difference and unity. Theta sets out to define potentiality and actuality. Chapters 1-5 discuss potentiality. We learn that this term indicates the potential (dunamis) of something to change: potentiality is "a principle of change in another thing or in the thing itself qua other" (1046a9). In chapter 6 Aristotle turns to actuality. We can only know actuality through observation or "analogy;" thus "as that which builds is to that which is capable of building, so is that which is awake to that which is asleep...or that which is separated from matter to matter itself" (1048b1-4). Actuality is the completed state of something that had the potential to be completed. The relationship between actuality and potentiality can be thought of as the relationship between form and matter, but with the added aspect of time. Actuality and potentiality are diachronic (across time) distinctions, whereas form and matter are synchronic (at one time) distinctions. Book X or Iota: Discussion of unity, one and many, sameness and difference. Book XI or Kappa: Briefer versions of other chapters and of parts of the Physics. Book XII or Lambda: Further remarks on beings in general, first principles, and God or gods. This book includes Aristotle's famous description of the unmoved mover, "the most divine of things observed by us", as "the thinking of thinking". Books XIII & XIV, or Mu & Nu: Philosophy of mathematics, in particular how numbers exist.
2591880	/m/07q8k4	Heritage	Dale Smith		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Seventh Doctor and Ace arrive on Heritage in the year 6048 to visit the Heyworths, who are old friends of the Doctor's. Nobody seems to want them on the planet, and certainly not poking their noses in. But they are stuck there until the next day. The Doctor doesn't want to get involved, but Ace can't help herself: by talking to Lee Marks she finds out that the Heyworths were murdered by the townsfolk, because they threatened to disrupt Professor Wakeling's experiments into cloning. Without the cloning technology, Heritage would have nothing going for it at all. The Doctor suspects all this, and also that the Heyworth's surviving daughter Sweetness is a clone of her mother created by Professor Wakeling. What he doesn't tell Ace is that Sweetness's mother is actually his old companion Melanie Bush. The Doctor confronts Wakeling and ruins his chances of announcing his discoveries to the universe. As Wakeling tries to take revenge on the Doctor, he is caught in a landslide and probably killed.
2593338	/m/07qcvq	The Fourth "R"	George O. Smith	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the beginning of the story, Jimmy's mother and father are murdered by their best friend, who is also the youngster's godfather and appointed guardian as well as the inventors' trustee. It leaves the protagonist—who has had the plans of his parents' invention eidetically and indelibly imprinted in his mind—to destroy the physical copies of these plans before his "uncle" can finish him off as well. Jimmy must survive his guardian's efforts to squeeze the secret of the invention out of him (whereupon his death will most certainly be arranged, just as his parents' were), and then escape into hiding until he can grow into a physical stature commensurate with his mental age. In the process, the character must make for himself a living and a safe place of residence, and Smith uses his protagonist's situation and capabilities to examine the nature of childhood and the "protections" (including incapacitations) imposed upon legal infants in American civil society at the time of writing.
2594646	/m/07qgrn	Rum Punch	Elmore Leonard	1992	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Set in West Palm Beach and Miami, FL, Rum Punch follows Jackie Burke, a 44-year-old airline stewardess, who has been bringing cash into the country for a gunrunner named Ordell Robbie (whose nickname, Whitebread, comes from the fact that he's a light-skinned African-American). When the cops try to use Jackie to get at Ordell, she hatches a plan—with help from bail bondsman Max Cherry—to keep the money for herself.
2594896	/m/07qh5j	The Crystal Cave	Mary Stewart	1970	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This novel covers the time from Merlin's sixth year until he becomes a young man. The Romans have recently left Britain, which is now divided into a number of kingdoms loosely united under a High King. Merlin is the illegitimate son of a Welsh princess, who refuses to name his father. Small for his age and often abused or neglected, Merlin occasionally has clairvoyant visions. These visions and his unknown parentage cause him to be referred to as "the son of a devil" and "bastard child". Educated by a hermit, Galapas, who teaches him to use his psychic powers as well as his earthly gifts, Merlin eventually finds his way to the court of Ambrosius Aurelianus in Brittany. There, he assists in Ambrosius's preparations to invade and unify Britain, defeat Vortigern, the Saxon usurper, and become its High King. Also exiled in Brittany is Uther, Ambrosius's brother, heir and supporter. It is revealed that Merlin is Ambrosius's son, the result of a brief relationship between Ambrosius and Merlin's mother. Merlin returns to Britain but finds Galapas killed. He is captured by Vortigern who is attempting to build a fortress at Dinas Emrys - but each night the newly built walls collapse. The king's mystics say the fort will only be built when a child with no father is sacrificed and his blood spilt on the ground. Vortigern plans to use Merlin as the sacrifice. Merlin realises that the fort's foundation is unstable due to the caves below ground, but he attributes the problems to dragons beneath the ground. As a result of this Merlin becomes known as Vortigern's prophet. Days later Ambrosius invades and defeats Vortigern. Merlin uses his engineering skills to rebuild Stonehenge but has visions of Ambrosius's death which are soon fulfilled when a comet appears in the sky and Ambrosius dies. Uther becomes King Uther Pendragon. However, Britain is soon thrown into chaos when Uther, besotted with Duchess Ygraine, goes to war with her husband the Duke of Cornwall. Merlin reluctantly helps Uther enter Tintagel Castle by stealth, knowing it will lead to Arthur's birth.
2595065	/m/07qhg_	Colony	Rob Grant	2000-11-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The story starts on Earth in the future. Global warming and over population has caused an imminent apocalypse. The hope for the survival of the human race is a spaceship called the Willflower, which will take a small number of the world's best minds on a journey to colonize another planet. Eddie O'Hare, the protagonist, is not one of them. He is deep in debt due to his computer having mysteriously stolen several million dollars online, then sending it to an unknown location. As such, he decides to gamble what money he has left in the hope of getting enough to pay back the debts. On his way to the casino, he meets a pink-socked assassin who he fears may have been sent to kill him. It turns out that he has not (or at least, Eddie is not the man's current target). When gambling his the last of his money, Eddie wins- thanks to him mimicking the gambling decisions of a man who looks uncannily like himself-, but the casino is no longer operational; due to the Willflower's imminent departure, the town (which was created only to house people working on the project), is closing down, and the casino has already lost all its money to the other man. He leaves and decides to hide. Whilst doing so, he happens to meet the man whose luck he 'piggy-backed' on earlier. He discovers that the other man, Charles Perry Gordon, is due to go on the Willflower but doesn't want to go now that he was won such a vast amount of money. Due to the ramifications for the rest of his family Gordon cannot refuse to leave, so he offers Eddie a place in place of himself. Eddie successfully smuggles himself on board (Unaware that Gordon had intended to sell him out as an impostor once the ship took off and it was too late for him to join the mission, only for Gordon to be killed by the hitmen he hired to simulate Eddie's alleged 'assault' because they had also been hired by the casino staff to get the money back). As Gordon's job is the community planner, Eddie reads the plans so far to learn more about his job and discovers that the man he is replacing has enforced a fascist, totalitarian system: crew members are paired for life before they are even born, and jobs- even unpleasant ones such as prostitution- are inherited. However, shortly after the ship sets off he is murdered by an unknown assailant. The story then jumps forward several generations. He is revived as a cyborg with only his head and spinal column remaining of his original body, and trapped forever in a jar of green slime (Even worse, the nerve endings are incorrectly wired, so that, for example, he moves his right arm when trying to move his left foot). He finds himself on a ship full of idiots and that there is something going wrong with the ship; all but one of its engines are gone and it has only 20% of its manoeuvring thrusters. The ship needs to land soon, but only three planets are available: Thrrrppp, which is the most habitable but with no way for the ship to enter orbit, Penis, which the ship has a 50% chance of docking with but is covered in volcanoes, and Panties, which is totally hostile but has a 90% chance of docking. As the only intelligent life form on board it is up to him to find out what is happening. As he explores the ship, he meets more of the ship's mentally retarded crew, none of which have even the slightest ability to perform their jobs. He is puzzled by this, the fact that the crew is totally illiterate and, most importantly, the fact that the ship, which has been shown to be able to self-repair itself if it takes damage, has not done so. The ship is also on a collision course with a massive gas giant which does not appear on the radar system. The ship's less than moral priest attempts to leave in the nuclear powered escape pod, but fails thanks to the captain overriding the system. Eddie decides to cause the escape pod to self-destruct in the hope that the explosion will force the ship towards planet Thrrrppp. This fails when the priest steals the pod- accompanied by some of the ship's prostitutes to help him 'rebuild' human society, destroying the remaining engines in the process. Eddy is forced to leave the ship and go and see what is happening. Outside, he is drawn back into the ship by an unknown force. He encounters the assassin from the beginning of the novel, still intent on fulfilling his centuries-old contract (At the same time, Eddie has a flashback where he realises that the original Father Lewis killed him to stop him spreading 'his' mad plans any further). Before he can do so, however, the ship kills him. It then talks to Eddy and reveals what has been happening. Its internal self-repair systems, it transpires, were also capable of self-modification, eventually becoming self-aware. Realizing the madness that the original crew had instigated, it made the crew members illiterate to erase all memory of the old system. It has also gained the ability to time travel into the past, where it can affect electronics, but not take a physical form. Back on Earth, humanity has become extinct; the crew of the Willflower are all that is left. The ship had selected Eddie to look after the crew as he was the only person with sufficiently low self-esteem to survive the cybernetic revival system; the sheer horror of the suit would have driven anyone else insane, but Eddie expected so little out of life that he actually came through the process as a better person. The ship causes Eddy's computer to steal the money (instigating the series of events that caused Eddie to arrive on the ship), then repairs itself and flies the crew to planet Thrrrppp.
2595361	/m/07qj2k	Eleven Minutes	Paulo Coelho		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Maria, a young girl from a remote village of Brazil, with innocent brushes with love failures at an early adolescent stage and hatred for love goes to seek her fortune in Switzerland, only to find that reality is a lot harder than she expected. After working in a nightclub as a samba dancer for a brief period, she realizes that this is not what she wants. After a heated discussion with her manager one night, she storms out and begins to look for a career in modeling. After a long unsuccessful search for a position in that field, and as she starts running out of money, she engages herself for 1000 francs for "one night" with an Arab man. Delighted with the easy money and after compromising with her soul she lands in a brothel on Rue de Berne, the heart of Geneva's red-light district... There she befriends Nyah who gives her advice on her "new profession" and after learning the tricks of the trade from Milan, the brothel owner, she enters the job with her body and mind shutting all doors for love and keeps her heart open only for her diary. Quickly she becomes quite successful and famous and her colleagues begin to envy her. Months pass and Maria grows into a professionally groomed prostitute who not only relaxes her clients' mind, but also calms their soul by talking to them about their problems. Her world turns upside down when she meets Ralf, a young Swiss painter, who sees her "inner light". Maria falls in love with him immediately and begins to experience what true love is (according to the author, it is a sense of being for someone without actually possessing him/her). Maria is now torn between her sexual fantasies and true love for Ralf. Eventually she decides that it is time for her to leave Geneva with her memory of Ralf, because she realizes that they are worlds apart. But before leaving, she decides to rekindle the dead sexual fire in Ralf and learns from him about the nature of Sacred Sex, sex which is mingled with true love and which involves the giving up of one's soul for the loved one. This book explores the sacred nature of sex. "Eleven minutes" describes the duration of sex. Also, it depicts two types of prostitution: prostitution for money and sacred prostitution. There are also direct references to sadomasochism. The story is of Maria's journey to find what true love is by letting her own life guide her. She enters a life that leads her down the path of sexual awakening and almost leads to her self-destruction when she is introduced to all sides of sexual experience. When she has given up hope to find true love, she finds her true "inner light" and her everlasting true love.
2595366	/m/07qj2y	Bloodstone Pass	Douglas Niles			 Bloodstone Pass combines a role-playing scenario with Battlesystem combat. In the plot, the player characters are hired to organize the defense of the town of Bloodstone Pass against an army of orcs, goblins, giants. The army also included human renegades led by a powerful assassin. The module's action focuses on leading the armies rather than having the battle occur in the background while the players adventure to find a MacGuffin.
2595434	/m/07qj74	By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept	Paulo Coelho		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is essentially a story about love. It also includes elements of paganism; in particular it focuses on the female aspect of divinity. The story focuses on Pilar, an independent young woman, who is frustrated with the grind of university life and looking for greater meaning. Pilar's life takes a turn when she meets up with a childhood sweetheart, who is now a spiritual teacher and a rumoured healer and miracle worker. They set off on a journey through the French Pyrenees as the journey unfolds.
2595536	/m/07qjdf	The Pilgrimage	Paulo Coelho			 The story begins in 1986 when he Coelho undertakes his initiation into the order Regnus Agnus Mundi (RAM) which he subsequently fails, he is then told that he must embark on a pilgrimage along the Strange Road to Santiago to find the sword that is the symbol of his acceptance into the ranks of RAM. He must do this to gain insight into the simplicity of life, the journey transforms him as he learns to understand the nature of truth through the simplicity of life. He begins his journey with a guide, also a member of RAM, who goes by the alias Petrus. During the journey Petrus shows him meditation exercises and introduces him to some of the more down-to-earth elements of Western mystical thought and philosophy, and teaches him about love and its forms; agape, philia and eros.
2595713	/m/07qjq6	The Incredible Tide	Alexander Key	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story alternates between the experiences of Conan and Lanna. A New Order ship discovers the island where Conan has been surviving for five years since the helicopter crash and captures him, taking him back to the city of Industria as a worker. Meanwhile, Lanna and her parents at High Harbor have to deal with Dyce, who wants her people to supply lumber faster than they can with the tools they have and is desperate for knowledge of the whereabouts of Briac Roa. The New Order seems to be resurrecting only the worst of the fallen civilization's qualities, putting together a military-industrial complex without a culture or conscience. Without telling him what it will mean, they mark his forehead with a tattoo that designates him as an "apprentice citizen," meaning that he will have to work to pay off the "debt" that he owes in gratitude for having "rescued" him. Enraged, he seizes the tatooing device and marks several self-important officials before he is subdued, and they assign him to work for a crazy old man named Patch, who turns out to be Teacher. Teacher has been hiding in Industria since the cataclysm, since it's the last place where the New Order would ever look for him, hiding his identity by acting like an insane, crippled old man. At High Harbor, Lanna and her parents are continuing to deal with Dyce and his demands -- now he wants some wrecked aircraft that are on the island and some sassafras roots. Teacher has said that the New Order should by no means have those aircraft or the roots (the trees haven't yet multiplied to populations where there are enough to trade). Lanna finds out that they also have to deal with Orlo, who has been leading a rebellious tribe of children and teenagers that has broken away from the rest of High Harbor. Teacher, in the guise of Patch, is still an apprentice citizen despite having been in Industria for years, because he likes where he is: in a boat shop, building boats. No one else in Industria knows know to build them -- the city wasn't even on the coast before the Change. But Teacher has been planning to leave, and now that Conan is here, Teacher can put those plans into motion. Sickness breaks out at High Harbor, and Dyce is the only one who has any medicines. Lanna discovers that not only is Orlo trying to take over High Harbor, he's making deals with Dyce. Teacher discovers that there's going to be another earthquake, and this one will drop half of what remains of Industria into the sea. His humanitarian nature forces him to go to the Council and tell them who he really is so he can warn them, but he wants Conan to take the boat he's been building and wait for him at a designated rendezvous point. Meanwhile, a child has died from the illness at High Harbor, and Shann and Mazal agree to let Dyce have the aircraft in exchange for the medicine they need, although Shann thinks Dyce deliberately started the sickness as a bargaining chip. Conan waits for Teacher, but Teacher doesn't come. Realizing that Teacher is in trouble, he returns to Industria and rescues him, and they set sail for High Harbor, hoping that the searchers from Industria don't find them. They run deliberately into a storm as the only way to escape pursuit, but Teacher nearly drowns. Conan manages to get them to the island where he had survived for five years, and with Teacher's help he modifies their ship for the voyage to High Harbor -- but they will have to hurry, because they know that with the coming earthquake will also come a tsunami. To their surprise, they discover that Dr. Manski has also washed up on this island, because her survey ship was ordered to search for Briac Roa and went down in the same storm. They can't just leave her there with a tsunami on the way, and she has no choice but to go with them, but she still can't believe that he is Briac Roa or that such things as telepathy -- or God -- exist. Lanna despairs when Dyce entices more and more of the High Harbor people onto his trading vessel to show them the goods he has to trade -- things that people don't need but that he can entice them into believing they want. She wishes she could see the ship for herself, because it might give her a better idea what to do, but she doesn't dare go there for fear of looking as if she were herself endorsing Dyce and his goods. So she tries something that has worked for her in the past; she sends her tern Tikki to fly over the ship and attempts to see through his eyes. But this fails. Instead, she climbs to the highest point on the island and tells Tikki to find Conan and bring him safely to High Harbor. Teacher tells Dr. Manski about how Dyce had traded for the flying machines and their power cells for medicine to stop the sickness that had killed one child at High Harbor, and how he may in fact have spread the sickness in the first place. Manski thinks he's lying, because she doesn't trust how he gets his information and because he's an enemy of the New Order. But she begins to believe that he really is Briac Roa. Tikki makes it to their ship, but the fog has closed in, and they can't follow him because they can't see what direction he flies in. Lanna and her parents learn that Orlo and Dyce have a plan to take over their house and move in, throwing Shann and Mazal out but keeping Lanna around, presumably as a plaything for Orlo. They resolve that this will not happen without a fight and arm themselves. Teacher has warned Mazal about the coming tsunami, and she has warned Dyce to take his ship out to sea, but he doesn't believe her. Lanna tries once more to put her psyche into Tikki and help him lead Conan and Teacher home, and this time she succeeds. Conan, Teacher and Dr. Manski arrive at High Harbor right in the middle of the strife. Orlo and Dyce's faction immediately moves to seize Conan and Teacher, but Conan fights back and tells them to take shelter because there's a tsunami coming. Neither Dyce nor Orlo believe either Conan or Dr. Manski. Orlo captures Lanna, but lets her go when Conan challenges him directly, and Conan easily defeats him, awing his followers. Conan then uses the situation to get them all to seek higher ground, carrying the semi-conscious Orlo himself as the tsunami waters start to rush in. The story ends rather abruptly as it appears they will all make it to safety by working together.
2596759	/m/07qlkr	The Shadow	Hans Christian Andersen		{"/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale"}	 Once a learned man from the northern regions of Europe went on a voyage south. One night, he sat on his terrace, while the fire behind him cast his shadow on the opposite balcony. As he was sitting there, resting, the man was amused to observe how the shadow followed his every movement, as if he really did sit upon the opposing balcony. When he finally grew tired and went to sleep, he imagined the shadow would likewise retire in the house across the street. The next morning however, the man found to his surprise that he in fact had lost his shadow overnight. As a new shadow slowly grew back from the tip of his toes, the man did not give the incident another thought, returned to northern Europe, and took up writing again. Several years passed by until one night there was a knock at his door. To his surprise, it was his shadow, the one he lost years before in Africa, and now stood upon his doorstep, almost completely human in appearance. Astonished by his sudden reappearance, the learned man invited him into his house, and soon the two sat by the fireplace, as the shadow related how he had come to be man. The learned man was calm and gentle by nature. His main object of interest lay with the good, the beautiful and the true, a subject of which he wrote often but was of no interest to anyone else. The shadow said his master did not understand the world, that he had seen it as truly was, and how evil some men really were. The shadow then grew richer and fatter over the years, while the writer grew poorer and paler. Finally he had become so ill that his former shadow proposed a trip to a health resort at his expense, but on condition that he could act as the master now, and the writer would pretend to be his shadow. As absurd as this suggestion sounded, the learned man eventually agreed and together they took the trip, the shadow now as his master. At the resort, the shadow met with a beautiful princess, and as they danced and talked with each other each night, the princess fell in love with him. When they were about to be married, the shadow offered his former master a luxurious position at the palace, on condition that he now became his own shadow permanently. The writer immediately refused and threatened to tell the princess everything, but the shadow had him arrested. Feigning his distraught, he met with the princess and told her: {| | :"I have gone through the most terrible affair that could possibly happen; only imagine, my shadow has gone mad; I suppose such a poor, shallow brain, could not bear much; he fancies that he has become a real man, and that I am his shadow." :"How very terrible,” cried the princess; "is he locked up?" :"Oh yes, certainly; for I fear he will never recover." :"Poor shadow!" said the princess; "it is very unfortunate for him; it would really be a good deed to free him from his frail existence; and, indeed, when I think how often people take the part of the lower class against the higher, in these days, it would be policy to put him out of the way quietly." | :"Jeg har oplevet det Grueligste, der kan opleves!" sagde Skyggen, "tænk Dig - ja, saadan en stakkels Skyggehjerne kan ikke holde meget ud! - Tænk Dig, min Skygge er blevet gal, han troer at han er Mennesket og at jeg - tænk dig bare, - at jeg er hans Skygge!" :"Det er frygteligt!" sagde Prinsessen, "han er dog spærret inde?" :"Det er han! Jeg er bange han kommer sig aldrig." :"Stakkels Skygge!" sagde Prinsessen, "han er meget ulykkelig; det er en sand Velgjerning at frie ham fra den Smule Liv han har, og naar jeg rigtig tænker over det, saa troer jeg det bliver nødvendigt at det bliver gjort af med ham i al Stilhed!" |} When the shadow wed the princess later that night, the learned man was already executed.
2596784	/m/07qlnh	Heat and Dust	Ruth Prawer Jhabvala	1975-10-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The initial stages of the novel are told in the first person, from the narrative voice of a woman who travels to India, to find out more about her step-grandmother, Olivia. She has various letters written by Olivia, and through studying these, and learning from her own experiences in India, she uncovers the truth about Olivia and her life during the British Raj in the 1920's. Through the use of analepses the reader experiences the story from Olivia's point of view. We discover that Olivia, although at first glance seems simply to be a proper english woman, is actually smothered by British social restrictions, and longs for excitement. She meets the Nawab, who instantly charms her, and gradually lets her in to his life bit by bit. Olivia is drawn to the charm and charisma of the Nawab, whereas he slowly gains control over her, as he does with other characters such as Harry. Harry, is portrayed as weak, due to his homosexuality and inability to withstand the Indian climate and food. Olivia eventually falls pregnant with the Nawab's baby, and out of fear decides to abort the child. This causes scandal in the town of Satipur. She then resides in an unnamed town ("Town X") for her remaining years. The novel ends with the present-day narrator (whose name we do not find out) also falling pregnant, deciding to spend her years in Town X, just as Olivia did.
2598879	/m/07qr_3	A Rose for Emily	William Faulkner	1930		 The story opens with a brief first-person account of the funeral of Emily Grierson, an elderly Southern spinster. It then proceeds in a nonlinear fashion to the narrator's recollections of Emily's archaic and increasingly insane behavior throughout the years. Emily was a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family had fallen on hard times. She and her father, the last two of the clan, continued to live as if in the past; neither would consent to a marriage for Emily to a man below their perceived status. Her father died when Emily was about thirty; she refused to accept that he was dead for three days, behavior that was written off by the community as part of her grieving process. After her acceptance of her father's death, Emily revived somewhat; she became friendly with Homer Barron, a Northern laborer who came to the town as a contractor to pave the sidewalks. The connection surprised the rest of the community: the match would have been far below her earlier standards, and Homer had himself claimed that he was "not a marrying man." The town appealed to Emily's distant cousins; they were her closest remaining relatives, but they had been on bad terms with Emily and her father, and had not even been present at her father's funeral. The cousins arrived at Emily's house, but quickly gained a reputation even worse than that of Emily; the sentiment of the town rallied behind Emily in opposition to the cousins. Indeed, during this time, Emily bought arsenic from a shop without giving her reasons for needing it; neighbors believed that she meant to poison herself with it. However, her relationship with Homer appeared to solidify, and there was talk of marriage between the two. Homer left the area for a time, reputedly to give Emily a chance to get rid of her cousins, and returned three days after the cousins left; one person reported seeing Homer walk in the house at night, which was the last contact the neighborhood had with either of them for a long time. Despite these turnabouts in her social status, Emily continued to behave haughtily, as she had before her father died. Her reputation was such that the city council found themselves unable to confront her about a strong smell that had begun to emanate from the house. Instead, they decided to send men to her house under the cover of darkness to sprinkle lime around the house, after which the smell dissipated. The mayor of the town, Colonel Sartoris, made a gentleman's agreement to overlook her taxes as an act of charity, though it was done under a pretense of repayment towards her father to assuage Emily's pride. Years later, when the next generation came to power, Emily insisted on this informal arrangement, flatly refusing that she had owed any taxes; the council declined to press the issue. Emily had become a recluse: she was never seen out of the house, and only rarely accepted people into it; her black servant did all her shopping for her. The community came to view her as a "hereditary obligation" on the town, who must be humored and tolerated. The funeral was a large affair; Emily had become an institution, so her death sparked a great deal of curiosity about her reclusive nature and what remained of her house. After she was buried, a group of townsfolk entered her house to see what remained of her life there. The door to her upstairs bedroom was locked; some of the townsfolk kicked in the door to see what had been hidden for so long. Inside, among the possessions that Emily had bought for their wedding, lay the corpse of Homer Barron on the bed; on the pillow beside him was the indentation of a head, and a single thread of Emily's now-gray hair.
2598899	/m/07qs0h	Storm Warning	Mercedes Lackey	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Storm Warning begins, we meet Emperor Charliss, the Eastern Emperor (first mentioned in Winds of Fury). He knows he is dying and must name a successor. Grand Duke Tremane, a Commander in the Army, is currently his favorite choice. Tremane is sent to Hardorn, a country the Imperial Army recently invaded after the Hardornen King, Ancar, was killed by a group of assassins from Valdemar. Tremane understands that he must succeed in this mission or he will be killed. Meanwhile, in Haven, the capital city of Valdemar, An'desha shena Jor'ethan, a young Shin'a'in Adept, is feeling lonely. While Adept Firesong k'Treva, his lover, is perfectly at home in Haven, An'desha feels left out and alien. He spends almost all of his time in Firesong's ekele, an environment something like a cross between a sukkah and a treehouse and something like the flets of the elves in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, where he meditates and tends the plants in the garden. However, he has been having premonitions of approaching doom. Neither he nor Firesong can explain these premonitions. Also, An'desha has an Adept-class (the highest level of ability of magic) potential, but refuses to be trained, believing his powers to be tainted by Falconsbane, by whom An'desha was earlier possessed. Ambassador Ulrich of Karse has been sent with his assistant, Karal Austreben, a novice Sun-priest, to negotiate peace between Karse and Valdemar. At the border, a single escort arrives, who seems to Karal to be some sort of Court official dressed in white and mounted on a white stallion; he later discovers this man is a Herald. As they ride north, Karal examines himself and his attitudes towards the people of Valdemar and the Heralds. Karsites are taught to fear the Heralds and Mages, who are said to have "witch powers". On their arrival in Haven they are greeted by the Seneschal, Lord Palinor, Kyril, the Seneschal's Herald, and Prince-Consort Daren. Karel is glad of the rest, but as the weeks pass, begins to feel lonely. Talia, the Queen's Own Herald, introduces him to An'desha. Karal and Ulrich, much to Firesong's chagrin and jealousy, help An'desha to become less afraid of his power, as well as to become more independent.
2602571	/m/07q_wk	Jarka Ruus	Terry Brooks	2003-08-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the 20 years since the events chronicled in The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, Grianne Ohmsford has become High Druid, or Ard Rhys, of the new Druid Council, but not without misgivings by many over her former life as the evil Ilse Witch. In a bid for power, a group of Druids led by Shadea a'Ru use unorthodox magic called "liquid night" to send Grianne out of the Four Lands and into the Demon-infested world of the Forbidding. Tagwen, Grianne's loyal Dwarf aid, sets out to restore her, seeking the aid of her brother Bek Ohmsford. Finding Bek and his wife Rue Meridian otherwise disposed, Tagwen joins forces with their son Pen, who has a supernatural ability to commune with nature. Advised by the King of the Silver River, they set out in search of the legendary Tanequil tree, which they are told can provide a means to reach Grianne in the Forbidding. They are joined by the elf Ahren Elessedil, now a Druid, and his niece Khyber (heir to the magic Elfstones), as well as the mysteriously empathic Rover girl Cinnaminson, for whom Pen develops strong feelings. Along the way, they are stalked by traitorous Druid minions and their spider-like assassin accomplice, Aphasia Wye. They manage to defeat one of the pursuing Druid airships, but at the cost of Ahren's life and Cinamminson's capture. Meanwhile, Grianne finds the Forbidding to be a dark mirror of the Four Lands. Exploring this horrific land known locally as Jarka Ruus, she encounters an enigmatic and somewhat annoying creature called Weka Dart. After defeating a dragon like creature and knocking Weka Dart out of a tree, she has a frightening encounter with the shade of Brona, the most legendary evil from the Four Lands, and Grianne is captured by a party of Demons.
2602588	/m/07q_xl	Tanequil	Terry Brooks	2004-08-31	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Pen, Khyber, and company rescue Cinnaminson and continue their journey north, pursued continuously by traitorous Druids and the assassin Aphasia Wye. Meanwhile, the traitourous Druids find Pen's parents, Bek and Rue, and they agree to go back to Paranor to help to try to find their son Pen. The senior Ohmsfords recognize the deception and lies that the Druids have been telling them, so Bek attempts to locate Pen by using the magical scrye waters in the depths of Paranor. However, Bek and Rue are captured and unwillingly give Pen's position away. Pen and his friends find allies among the Troll people, led by Kermadec and his semi-estranged brother Atalan, who aid them in locating the mystical Tanequil tree on a ravine-surrounded island. From the Tanequil, Pen receives the enchanted wooden "darkwand," a talisman that can aid him in saving his aunt. However, two of his fingers, as well as Cinnaminson, are taken in exchange. Pen and Aphasia meet in one last confrontation in which the assassin is killed by the Tanequil, but as Pen leaves the island, he finds the rest of his party taken hostage by the enemy Druid traitors. Meanwhile, the corrupt Federation army has unleashed a devastating new airship-mounted weapon in their war against the Elven and Free-born armies. A shape-shifting Demon called the Moric, has crossed over into the Four Lands from the Forbidding in exchange for Grianne's banishment. This creature, who has taken the form of a Druid advisor to the Federation leader, is intent on using the weapon to destroy the Ellcrys tree in Arborlon, which would allow the Demon hordes from the Forbidding to flood into the Four Lands. Finally, caged inside a Demon stronghold in the Forbidding, Grianne discovers the Straken Lord's master plan to have the Ellcrys destroyed, and how he manipulated Grianne's nemesis Shadea a'Ru to advance towards this goal. When Grianne is pitted in a contest against a horde of demonic Furies, she is forced to take a Demon-like form in a desperate attempt to survive. She then finds herself trapped in this form and unable to break free because she is unable to control the Wishsong's hold on her. However, the Straken Lord uses the enchanted conjure collar to subside her magic and she is again turned back to Grianne, but with the magic having taken an effect on her. Grianne's only hope for survival lies in the Straken Lord's former minion, Weka Dart.
2602597	/m/07q_xy	Straken	Terry Brooks	2005-09-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After receiving the darkwand from the Tanequil tree, Pen Ohmsford finds his companions—the Dwarf Tagwen and a small troll force led by Kermadec and his brother Atalan—captured by Druid forces under the command of the illegitimate High Druid Shadea a'Ru. Pen agrees to be taken prisoner in exchange for their release. The elf-girl Khyber Elessedil, however, manages to stow away on the Druid airship before it leaves for Paranor. Meanwhile, Trefen Morys and Bellizen, Druids still loyal to the banished Ard Rhys, help spring Bek and Rue from Paranor's dungeons. After barely escaping with their lives, Bek is directed in a dream by the King of the Silver River to seek Pen's abandoned friends in Taupo Rough. He is told that Pen has made it into the Forbidding in order to save Grianne Ohmsford (the banished High Druid) and Bek will have to work together with each of Pen's companions to ensure their safe return. In a daring airship rescue, Bek and company save the Trolls and Tagwen from a marauding flood of wraithlike Urdas and return to Paranor, picking up a new army of Kermadec's Trolls along the way. Pen is imprisoned in Paranor and the darkwand is confiscated. Khyber soon springs him free, and together they make their way up to the High Druid's sleeping quarters, where the darkwand is secured. Pen grabs the darkwand and is transported to the realm of the Forbidding, while Khyber is taken prisoner and sentenced to death. On the Prekkendoran Plains, Pied Sanderling, Captain of the Elven Home Guard, successfully rallies the remaining Elven army to repel the advancing Federation forces and take refuge in a besieged Free-born camp. He leads a daring raid on the Federation base and manages to destroy the Dechtera, the airship that bears a devastating crystal-powered fire-launching weapon prototype. Unshaken, Prime Minister of the Federation Sen Dunsidan commissions the building of another such weapon, but continues to refuse the advice of his vizier Iridia, who wants him to attack Arborlon, the Elven capital. He finds out too late that Iridia is a Moric, a changeling Demon who escaped from the Forbidding when Grianne Ohmsford was banished, and is killed along with the weapon engineer Etan Orek. Taking the Prime Minister's form, the Moric takes the newly created weapon upon the airship Zolomach towards Arborlon, with the intent of destroying the Ellcrys tree-the only barrier keeping the armies of Demons from the Forbidding from flooding the Four Lands. Grianne Ohmsford, meanwhile, escapes the stronghold of the Straken Lord with the help of the Straken Lord's turncoat minion Weka Dart, promising him that she will take him back to the Four Lands if at all possible. They are chased through the tunnels under the fortress by a huge worm-like Graumth, and in a final stand, Grianne unleashes a powerfully destructive Wishsong that reminds her of her former life as the evil Ilse Witch, although the Wishsong had never before been this powerful or irrepressible. She speculates that her recent forced psychological transformation into a Fury may have awoken this frightening power in her. Escaping the catacombs, Grianne and Weka Dart are found by Pen, who has been guided to her location by the darkwand. Pen, too, has discovered magic within him, magic more powerful than the simple animal communication skills that he had been previously blessed with. Having survived several encounters with a massive dragon, Pen found that the darkwand had awoken in him the magic of the Wishsong, the magic that both his father and his aunt possess, and that it has not fully revealed itself even yet. Together, Pen, Grianne, and Weka Dart travel back to the place where they can use the darkwand to return to the Four Lands. Unfortunately, Grianne is forced to tell Weka Dart that it is unlikely that the darkwand will be able bring Weka back as well, sending him into a frenzy. After being explained to about the world that Grianne is returning to, he decided not to go to the world after all. He leaves in the middle of the night, never to be seen again. Pen and Grianne prepare to transport back to Paranor. Having returned to Paranor to help Pen and Grianne when they return, Bek, Rue, and Tagwen sneak in through a tunnel of Tagwen's finding, while Kermadec and his Troll army besiege the keep. Using a secret passage to the Ard Rhys' chambers, they discover Khyber, who escaped her executioners, hiding in the shadows. They find that Shadea a'Ru and her followers have set an inescapable magic trap, called a triagenel, in the chamber to incapacitate Grianne should she return from the Forbidding. Through the combined powers of Bek's Wishsong and Khyber's elfstones, the two manage to weaken the triagenel so that Grianne will be able to break free when it collapses upon her and Pen. Pen and Grianne return to Paranor and, after the triagenel is sprung, Grianne unleashes the power of her Wishsong upon it. This not only utterly destroys the triagenel, but also obliterates one of the walls of the room. Grianne sends Pen with his family and Khyber to find the Moric, while she confronts Shadea, Traunt, and Pyson herself. Reinforced at the last minute by Kermadec and his brother Atalan, Grianne defeats Shadea and her followers and retakes her rightful name as Ard Rhys. Aboard the airship Swift Sure, Khyber uses the Elfstones to discover that the Moric has taken the form of Sen Dunsidan and is headed for Arborlon. They catch up to him, and under the guise of a diplomatic meeting, trick him into taking the darkwand which transports both the Moric and the darkwand back into the Forbidding. The Moric is then presumably devoured by Pen's giant dragon. Finally, Grianne, having negotiated an arms treaty calling for the elimination of all crystal-based weapons research, retires as Ard Rhys. She travels with Pen to try to save Pen's girlfriend Cinnaminson, who was transformed into an Aeriad spirit of the Tanequil tree. She is able to, but only by taking the Rover girl's place as an Aeriad. As a spirit, she lives unfettered by both her guilt over her history as the Ilse Witch and her fear of evil awakening in her, and thus finds freedom.
2603703	/m/047vpb8	The Purple Cloud	M. P. Shiel	1901	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 The story, a recording of a medium's meditation over the future writing of the text, details the narrator's (Adam Jeffson's) expedition to the North Pole during the 20th century on board the Boreal. Jeffson's fiancée, the Countess Clodagh, poisons her own cousin in order to secure a place on the ship for Jeffson, because the expedition was known to be one of the best ever planned. A millionaire, who died some years previously, had ordered in his will that he would pay 175,000,000 dollars to the first person standing at the North Pole. Before Jeffson leaves, he hears a sermon by a Scottish priest named Mackay, speaking against Polar research, calling the failure of all previous expeditions the will of God, and prophesying a terrible fate for those who attempt to go against God's will in this. The narrator at the same time remembers his meeting with a man who claimed that the universe is a place of strife between vague "powers", "The White" and "The Black", for dominance. Throughout the events of the polar journey, the narrator gradually discovers that his course has been, for many years, guided by these forces, all the way up to the point where he reaches the pole first. He finds a huge, clear lake of spinning water with a rock island inlaid with inscriptions. Upon seeing this, Jeffson falls into a faint. When he returns to his camp he, along with his dogs, feels nauseous after having smelled a peculiar peach-like odour. He also notices a moving purple cloud, spreading in the far heavens. During the progress of his journey, he discovers dead animals, all without the slightest sign of injury, and he gradually learns of the death of his entire crew on board the Boreal. The ship being fairly easy to operate, he sets out by himself. First he travels towards northern islands, but upon seeing dead of all various races from around the world there (the result of an exodus, escaping the death-bringing cloud) and meeting ships crowded with corpses, he comes instead to the dead continent, walking through London, searching for news of the cloud. Later, he looks for any survivors in shut land mines, but finds all barricades broken through by mad crowds. He travels the country by locomotive wherever possible, using cars for further progress. Later, he goes to the house of Arthur Machen (an actual close friend of Shiel's), whom he finds dead, having been writing a poem until the very end. There, he finds the notebook into which he writes his whole narrative. The later parts of the book describe Jeffson's descent into mad pompousness: adopting Turkish attire, declaring himself monarch and burning down cities (including Paris, Bordeaux, London and San Francisco) for pleasure. He then willingly puts his life into one task, the construction of a huge and colossal golden palace on the isle of Imbros, which he means to dedicate as an altar to God and a palace to himself. He spends seventeen years on the palace, several times abandoning the work, until its completion, when he recognizes the vanity of it. Later, while going through Constantinople, which he also burns down, he stumbles upon a twenty-year-old naked woman who is without the slightest knowledge of anything in the world. She keeps on following him, however he shuns and mistreats her, going as far as throwing her into a locked chamber with her leg bleeding, while he himself goes to sleep on cushions in another part of the house, and many times meditates on killing her. Gradually, he accepts her, but forces her to wear a veil over her mouth. But her speed at learning astonishes him. So he teaches her to speak, read, cook, fish and dress. The girl (who is unable to pronounce "r",instead saying "l") reveals that she had been living her whole previous life in a cellar below the royal palace of Turkey, and that she knew nothing of the world until she was freed when Jeffson burned down Constantinople. She becomes absorbed in the Bible and declares the humans who sought for riches as "spoiled". Jeffson struggles mightily against his growing affection towards the girl, wishing to end the human race. At the very end, when he leaves to go to England, she telephones him about the re-appearance of the Purple Cloud over France. He rushes to her, embracing her as his wife. He concludes his writing by saying that he has accepted his role and that after three weeks have passed no purple cloud has appeared.
2605866	/m/07r7hg	The Battle of Life	Charles Dickens	1846	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Two sisters, Grace and Marion, live happily in an English village with two servants Clemency Newcome and Ben Britain, and their good-natured widower father Dr Jeddler. Dr Jeddlar is a man whose philosophy is to treat life as a farce. Marion, the younger, is bethrothed to Albert Heathfield, Jeddlar's ward who is leaving the village to complete his studies. He entrusts Marion to Grace's care and makes a promise to return to win Marion's hand. Michael Warden, a libertine who is about to leave the country, is thought by the barristers Snitchey and Craggs to be about to seduce the younger sister into an elopement. Clemency spies Marion one night in her clandestine rendezvous with Warden. On the day that Albert is to return, however, it is found out that Marion has run off. Her supposed elopement causes much grief to both her father and her sister. Six years pass. Clemency is now married to Britain and the two have set up a tavern in the village. After nursing heartbreak, Albert marries Grace instead and she bears him a daughter, also called Marion. On the birthday of Marion, Grace confides in Albert that Marion has made a promise to explain her so-called "elopement" in person. Marion indeed appears that evening by sunset and explains her disappearance to the parties involved. It turns out that Marion has not "eloped" but has instead been living at her aunt Martha's place so as to allow Albert to fall in love with Grace. Tears are shed and happiness and forgiveness reign as the missing sister is reunited with the rest.
2606152	/m/07r84x	Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm	Kate Douglas Wiggin	1903	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens with Rebecca's journey to Riverboro, to live with her two aunts, Miranda and Jane Sawyer. Until this time, she has lived on the family farm. Rebecca is the second eldest of seven children. Most of the children have fanciful names, such as Marquis and Jenny Lind, influenced by the father's artistic background (Rebecca is named after both the heroines in Ivanhoe). The family is quite poor, due to the number of children, Mr. Randall's inability to stick to a job, and the farm being mortgaged. At the beginning of the novel, he has been dead for three years and the family are barely scraping by. Therefore, Rebecca's stay with her aunt is both a chance to improve her opportunities in life and to make things easier, as there is one less mouth to feed. Despite her impoverished background, Rebecca is an imaginative and charming child, often composing little poems and songs to express her feelings or to amuse her younger brothers and sisters. It is she who names their farm "Sunnybrook". Miranda and Jane had wanted Hannah, the eldest sister, due to her pragmatic nature and household skills, but as these skills are also greatly valued by her mother, Rebecca is sent instead. Miranda is unimpressed by Rebecca's imagination and sallow complexion, saying that she is the image of her shiftless father, Lorenzo DeMedici Randall. Miranda determines to do her duty and train Rebecca to be a proper young lady, so she will not shame the Sawyer name. Jane takes on the role of Rebecca's protector, acting as a buffer between her niece and her sister, and teaches Rebecca to sew, cook and be a proper little housekeeper. In return, Rebecca's liveliness and curiosity brighten Jane's life and refresh her spirit. Although Rebecca strives to win Miranda's approval, she finds it hard to live up to the older aunt's high standards, as she has to fight against Miranda's view of her as "all Randall and no Sawyer". The middle part of the novel is taken up with describing the life of Riverboro and the people who live there. Important characters include Jeremiah Cobb, who is the first resident to encounter Rebecca and be charmed by her; Sarah Cobb, his wife; Rebecca's best friend, Emma Jane Perkins, and Adam Ladd, a young businessman, who first meets Rebecca when she and Emma Jane are selling soap for charity. Rebecca nicknames him "Mr Aladdin", as he gave her and Emma Jane a lamp as a present. Rebecca proves to be a good student, especially in English, and goes on to attend the high school in Wareham. During the last part of the book, she matures into a young lady, but still retains her high spirits and develops her talent for writing. She applies for a teaching place at Augusta, but her mother falls ill and Rebecca has to return to take care of her and the farm. While Rebecca is away from Riverboro, Miranda dies, having willed the Sawyer house to Rebecca. A railway company will buy Sunnybrook Farm in order to build on the land, giving the Randall family enough to live on. Thanks to Miranda's will, Rebecca now has enough money to become an independent woman and help her brothers and sisters. The novel ends with her exclaiming, "God bless Aunt Miranda! God bless the brick house that was! God bless the brick house that is to be!"
2608248	/m/07rdrf	Mr. Popper's Penguins	Florence Atwater	1938	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 One day, the Popper family tunes in to a radio broadcast by an Admiral traveling to many countries. Mr. Popper had previously sent the Admiral fan mail, and the Admiral promises Mr. Popper a surprise. The surprise turns out to be a penguin, which comes in a large box. Mr. Popper names the penguin "Captain Cook" after the famous James Cook. Mr. Popper cleans out the icebox so that the penguin can sleep inside. As time goes by, the Poppers find that Captain Cook is growing large, but his health is failing. Mr. Popper writes to the curator of a large aquarium, asking for help. The curator replies that the aquarium has a female penguin, Greta, who unfortunately is also experiencing the same symptoms, and he suggests that perhaps the penguins are simply lonely. Soon after, the Poppers receive their second penguin in the mail. The pair of penguins are revitalized by each other's presence. As both birds cannot fit into the icebox together, Mr. Popper opens the window to let in the cold winter air, creating a snow-covered habitat. As this solution will not work in springtime, Mr. Popper has the main things moved upstairs and a freezing plant installed in the basement for the birds. As time passes, Greta lays an egg. She continues laying a new egg every three days until the total reaches ten. As penguins do not normally lay so many eggs, Mr. Popper attributes this to the change in climate the birds have experienced. When the eggs hatch, the Popper family now has twelve penguins to feed, and the contractor is looking for payment on the household changes. Mr. Popper decides to raise money by training the twelve penguins and turning them into a circus act. The act debuts at the local theater, and soon the "Popper's Performing Penguins" are featured throughout the country. But in the theater in New York, the penguins cause trouble; what's worse, they've accidentally shown up at the wrong theater. The manager of the wrong theater is extremely angry and has Mr. Popper arrested, along with the penguins. Admiral Drake, having arrived to see Popper's Performing Penguins for himself, posts bail for Mr. Popper. After speaking with the Admiral, Mr. Popper decides that show business is no life for a penguin. Drake lets all of the twelve penguins go with him on his expedition to the North Pole, where they will be released experimentally into the Arctic. The Poppers are sad to see the penguins go, especially Mr. Popper himself — that is, until Admiral Drake invites Mr. Popper to accompany him on the trip. The Poppers wave goodbye as Mr. Popper and his penguins sail away towards the North Pole and Mr. Popper promises to be back in a year or two.
2608809	/m/07rfsc	Utopia	Thomas More	1516		 The work begins with written correspondence between Thomas More and several people he had met on the continent: Peter Gilles, town clerk of Antwerp, and Jerome de Busleyden, counselor to Charles V. More chose these letters, which are communications between actual people, to further the plausibility of his fictional land. In the same spirit, these letters also include a specimen of the Utopian alphabet and its poetry. The letters also explain the lack of widespread travel to Utopia; during the first mention of the land, someone had coughed during announcement of the exact longitude and latitude. The first book tells of the traveler Raphael Hythloday, to whom More is introduced in Antwerp, and it also explores the subject of how best to counsel a prince, a popular topic at the time. The first discussions with Raphael allow him to discuss some of the modern ills affecting Europe such as the tendency of kings to start wars and the subsequent bleeding away of money on fruitless endeavours. He also criticises the use of execution to punish theft saying that thieves might as well murder whom they rob, to remove witnesses, if the punishment is going to be the same. He lays most of the problems of theft on the practice of enclosure&mdash;the enclosing of common land&mdash;and the subsequent poverty and starvation of people who are denied access to land because of sheep farming. More tries to convince Raphael that he could find a good job in a royal court, advising monarchs, but Raphael says that his views are too radical and would not be listened to. Raphael sees himself in the tradition of Plato: he knows that for good governance, kings must act philosophically. However, he points out that: More seems to contemplate the duty of philosophers to work around and in real situations and, for the sake of political expediency, work within flawed systems to make them better, rather than hoping to start again from first principles. Utopia is placed in the New World and More links Raphael's travels in with Amerigo Vespucci's real life voyages of discovery. He suggests that Raphael is one of the 24 men Vespucci, in his Four Voyages of 1507, says he left for six months at Cabo Frio, Brazil. Raphael then travels further and finds the island of Utopia, where he spends five years observing the customs of the natives. According to More, the island of Utopia is The island was originally a peninsula but a 15-mile wide channel was dug by the community's founder King Utopos to separate it from the mainland. The island contains 54 cities. Each city is divided into four equal parts. The capital city, Amaurot, is located directly in the middle of the crescent island. Each city has 6000 households, consisting of between 10 to 16 adults. Thirty households are grouped together and elect a Syphograntus (whom More says is now called a phylarchus). Every ten Syphogranti have an elected Traniborus (more recently called a protophylarchus) ruling over them. The 200 Syphogranti of a city elect a Prince in a secret ballot. The Prince stays for life unless he is deposed or removed for suspicion of tyranny. People are re-distributed around the households and towns to keep numbers even. If the island suffers from overpopulation, colonies are set up on the mainland. Alternatively, the natives of the mainland are invited to be part of these Utopian colonies, but if they dislike it and no longer wish to stay they may return. In the case of underpopulation the colonists are re-called. There is no private ownership on Utopia, with goods being stored in warehouses and people requesting what they need. There are also no locks on the doors of the houses, which are rotated between the citizens every ten years. Agriculture is the most important job on the island. Every person is taught it and must live in the countryside, farming, for two years at a time, with women doing the same work as men. Parallel to this, every citizen must learn at least one of the other essential trades: weaving (mainly done by the women), carpentry, metalsmithing and masonry. There is deliberate simplicity about these trades; for instance, all people wear the same types of simple clothes and there are no dressmakers making fine apparel. All able-bodied citizens must work; thus unemployment is eradicated, and the length of the working day can be minimised: the people only have to work six hours a day (although many willingly work for longer). More does allow scholars in his society to become the ruling officials or priests, people picked during their primary education for their ability to learn. All other citizens are however encouraged to apply themselves to learning in their leisure time. Slavery is a feature of Utopian life and it is reported that every household has two slaves. The slaves are either from other countries or are the Utopian criminals. These criminals are weighed down with chains made out of gold. The gold is part of the community wealth of the country, and fettering criminals with it or using it for shameful things like chamber pots gives the citizens a healthy dislike of it. It also makes it difficult to steal as it is in plain view. The wealth, though, is of little importance and is only good for buying commodities from foreign nations or bribing these nations to fight each other. Slaves are periodically released for good behaviour. Jewels are worn by children, who finally give them up as they mature. Other significant innovations of Utopia include: a welfare state with free hospitals, euthanasia permissible by the state, priests being allowed to marry, divorce permitted, premarital sex punished by a lifetime of enforced celibacy and adultery being punished by enslavement. Meals are taken in community dining halls and the job of feeding the population is given to a different household in turn. Although all are fed the same, Raphael explains that the old and the administrators are given the best of the food. Travel on the island is only permitted with an internal passport and any people found without a passport are, on a first occasion, returned in disgrace, but after a second offence they are placed into slavery. In addition, there are no lawyers and the law is made deliberately simple, as all should understand it and not leave people in any doubt of what is right and wrong. There are several religions on the island: moon-worshipers, sun-worshipers, planet-worshipers, ancestor-worshipers and monotheists, but each is tolerant of the others. Only atheists are despised (but allowed) in Utopia, as they are seen as representing a danger to the state: since they do not believe in any punishment or reward after this life, they have no reason to share the communistic life of Utopia, and will break the laws for their own gain. They are not banished, but are encouraged to talk out their erroneous beliefs with the priests until they are convinced of their error. Raphael says that through his teachings Christianity was beginning to take hold in Utopia. The toleration of all other religious ideas is enshrined in a universal prayer all the Utopians recite. Wives are subject to their husbands and husbands are subject to their wives although women are restricted to conducting household tasks for the most part. Only few widowed women become priests. While all are trained in military arts, women confess their sins to their husbands once a month. Gambling, hunting, makeup and astrology are all discouraged in Utopia. The role allocated to women in Utopia might, however, have been seen as being more liberal from a contemporary point of view. Utopians do not like to engage in war. If they feel countries friendly to them have been wronged, they will send military aid. However they try to capture, rather than kill, enemies. They are upset if they achieve victory through bloodshed. The main purpose of war is to achieve that which if they had achieved already they would not have gone to war. Privacy is not regarded as freedom in Utopia, taverns, ale-houses and places for private gatherings are non-existent for the effect of keeping all men in full view, so that they are obliged to behave well.
2611422	/m/07rmhv	The Time of the Ghost	Diana Wynne Jones	1981	{"/m/048945": "Ghost story", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with the words "There's been an accident! Something's wrong!" - and something is. There is a ghost. She does not know who she is, or how she died, or quite where she is. All she knows is that there has been a terrible accident. The as-yet unnamed heroine finds herself attracted to a large building, a boys' boarding school, which she finds to be strangely familiar. After a little detective work, the disembodied spirit concludes that she is Sally Melford, one of a quartet of eccentric sisters (Imogen, Cart, Fenella and Sally) who live at the school and are neglected by their overworked parents, both of whom teach at the school. Their father, only known as Himself, is the headmaster, and his wife, Phyllis, is the school nurse. Both of them are constantly busy with school business, and leave their daughters to fend for themselves. As the plot continues, evidence of time-travel begins to emerge. In the present day, the adult, university-age Sally is in a hospital, badly injured after her abusive boyfriend threw her from a speeding car. Some part of her has journeyed back seven years into the past, where, with the help of her sisters and their schoolboy friends, she must undo a rash bargain with the powerful and ancient goddess, Monigan. The Worship of Monigan is a game that the sisters made up, in which an old rag doll supposedly represents the goddess Monigan. Although Cart, Fenella and Imogen treat it as somewhere between a belief and a game, the ghost discovers that the fourth, Sally, is romantically involved with a student at the school, the enigmatic fifth-former Julian Addiman, and both of them take the Worship of Monigan very, very seriously. After a deal of detective work, Sally (in her ghostly form) discovers the truth. The young Sally had dedicated herself to Monigan in a midnight ritual, with the help of Julian. Monigan had taken her up on the offer, and had agreed that Sally would be hers in seven years time. The seven years are now up, and Monigan had attempted to call in the debt, in the form of the boyfriend (now revealed to be the same Julian Addison) tossing her out of the car. However, Sally survived; and, with the help of her sisters and her childhood friends, she is determined to cheat Monigan, and take back her life.
2611550	/m/07rmwb	A Tale of Time City	Diana Wynne Jones	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is September, 1939, the start of World War Two, and Vivian Smith is being evacuated. On arriving at the station, she is kidnapped by two boys, Jonathan and Sam, and taken to Time City, which exists outside of what we know as History. Most of the plot takes place in Time City; the purpose of which is to oversee the course of history, and ensure that is stays on its "correct" path. To stop it straying from this path, the Time Police have Observers out in history, tweaking events to make sure that they go the right way. Jonathan and Sam have kidnapped Vivian because they (incorrectly) believe that she is the "Time Lady," a legendary figure in Time City. The Time Lady is the consort of Faber John, another legendary figure. The legend states that at the end of history, Faber John and the Time Lady will return to Time City. Sam and Jonathan believe that Vivian is the Time Lady because they overheard the Chronologue, powerful authorities in Time City, talking about history going wrong, and it being the fault of the Time Lady. They reasoned that, since she is Faber John's (in translation, John Smith's) wife, she must be calling herself Smith, and disguised as a young girl. Since Vivian fits these criteria, they had reasoned that she must be the Time Lady. Vivian manages to convince them that she is not the Time Lady. However, the boys cannot return her to her own time, since the repeated use of the time-locks would be picked up on by the Time Police, and they would be found out. Vivian ends up staying with Jonathan's family, disguised as his cousin Vivian Lee. This works, because the real Vivian Lee is out in history with her parents, who are Observers. Jonathan and Sam are especially concerned about the disruptions in history because it may mean that Time City will also break up with it. However, they then learn from Vivian's tutor, Doctor Wilander, that there is another legend about Faber John. This one states that Faber John created four Caskets - Gold, Silver, Iron and Lead - which, after being placed out in history, provide the power needed to keep Time City running. They also discover that the Caskets are hidden in what are known as the Unstable Eras - eras of history in which events are not fixed or stable and which might change at any moment. However, there are only three large Unstable Eras, so the fourth Casket must be hidden somewhere else. Undeterred, Jonathan, Vivian, Sam and the android Elio go in search of the Caskets, using an ancient time-travel device they find in a secret room beneath a museum. They discover that the Iron Casket, which was hidden in Vivian's time, had already been stolen, and it was this that was causing the disturbances in history. They see the so-called "Iron Guardian" as a ghost, in Time City, and talk to him. They realize that they will have to go back in time to stop the theft, and actually see the casket being stolen, but they are unable to catch the thief. They fare no better with the Gold Casket; they find it, and its Guardian, but the Guardian refuses to hand it over, saying that at midday on the final day of Time City, he will come to the Gnomon Tower and return it. Although they try to convince him that they urgently need it, he refuses to hand it over, and promptly vanishes. The Silver Casket is unfortunately hidden in the middle of the Mind Wars, but they still manage to find it, and the Silver Guardian, who, surprisingly, lets them have it. But, as it turns out, it is a fake, and the real Silver Casket had already been stolen, probably by the woman who posed as the Silver Guardian. On returning to Time City, they see that things have gone terribly wrong. Since the Silver Casket had gone, history has gone into convulsions, and nothing is as it was supposed to be, with World War II starting in 1937 and involving napalm and atom bombs from the start, and World War I melding into the Boer War. In a final attempt to catch the thieves, Jonathan, Vivian and Sam return to the station where they had kidnapped Vivian, and where they are sure the thief must be. This goes badly wrong when they fail to catch the thief, cause an accidental explosion of a train carrying radioactive fuel, and return to Time City with two hundred evacuees in tow. Because of this final disturbance of history, Time City has practically shut down. The Observers are being recalled from history, and this includes the real Vivian Lee and her family. But when they arrive, Vivian, Sam and Jonathan have a nasty surprise; the real Vivian Lee is the child thief that they saw stealing the Iron Casket, her mother is the false Silver Guardian, and her father is a man that they saw in the Age of Gold who tried to kill Jonathan. As Time City starts to fall to pieces around them, the Lees, Vivian, Sam and Jonathan make their way to the Gnomon Tower, for a climactic showdown that involves the return of Faber John, the awakening of the Time Lady, and a great deal of butter-pie...
2614279	/m/07rvc6	Bud, Not Buddy	Christopher Paul Curtis	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 "Bud, and Not Buddy" is the story of ten-year old Bud Caldwell, an orphan living in Flint, Michigan in 1936 during the Great Depression. Since the death of his mother, years earlier, Bud has been living in an orphanage, as well as short stints in several foster homes. All he has of his mother are a bag of rocks and a photograph of his momma as a child and fliers that show Herman E. Calloway and his jazz band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression. The story opens with Bud being placed with a new foster family, the Amoses, where Bud soon meets Todd Amos, their tormenting twelve year old son. After a fight with Todd, Bud is forced to spend the night in the garden shed, and in the morning they would bring him back to the orphanage.In the shed he is stung by hornets. This happens by cutting the hornets' nest after thinking it was a vampire bat and hitting it with a rake. After extricating himself from the shed, Bud takes revenge on Todd by causing him to wet the bed, and with his friend Bugs from the orphanage, finds the Flint Hooverville. Their stay does not last beyond the next morning, when the men and boys attempt to board a freight train heading west and in their absence Hooverville is torched. After this fiasco, Bud determines to seek out Herman E. Calloway, believing the man is his father. With suitcase in hand, Bud starts walking the 120 miles to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along the way, he is picked up by Lefty Lewis from Grand Rapids, on his way to Flint. Bud tells him that he was running away from his home in Grand Rapids, and Lewis agrees to drive him back to Grand Rapids the following day. Bud stays the night in Lewis' daughter's house and the next morning has breakfast with Lefty, his daughter and her two children. Lefty drives Bud to the club where the Dusky Devastators are currently performing, and Bud manages to convince the band to allow him to stay at their home, despite Calloway's reluctance to acknowledge Bud as his son. The band takes Bud under their collective wing, and he comes with them on tour. After their first concert together, he notices Calloway picking up a rock and writing the date and location of the concert on it. When Bud shows Calloway the rocks that Bud's mother kept, Calloway accuses him of stealing them from his house. The other band members intervene, and upon further questioning, the adults realize that Bud's mother is Calloway's estranged daughter, making Bud his long-lost grandson.
2616570	/m/07r_h9	Pendennis	William Makepeace Thackeray			 Arthur Pendennis ("Pen" to his friends) is the only child of a prosperous physician or apothecary now deceased. He and his foster-sister Laura are raised in the village of Fairoaks by his indulgent mother, Mrs. Pendennis. The family has risen to gentility in the past generation or two but is not wealthy: the late Mr. Pendennis left only a house and investments producing about 500 pounds a year. The Pendennises, however, claim descent from an ancient family, and Arthur's uncle Major Pendennis, though he has only his retired Army pay, associates with wealthy and titled people. As Pen and Laura grow up, Mrs. Pendennis tells them that she hopes they will marry someday. At age 18, however, Pen falls in love with an actress, Emily Fotheringay (a stage name), who is about ten years his senior. Emily's father, Captain Costigan, believes that Pen is rich and wants Pen to marry his daughter, but Pen's mother is horrified. She summons Major Pendennis from London and the Major derails the marriage simply by telling Costigan that his nephew is not rich. Emily jilts Pen. Pen, heartbroken, leaves home to study at St Boniface's college in Oxbridge. There he lives extravagantly, unwittingly causing his mother and Laura to live in near poverty. After two years, Pen fails his final examination and remorsefully returns home where, unfortunately, his mother and Laura easily forgive him and Laura sacrifices her small personal fortune to pay Pen's debts. He soon returns to Oxbridge, retakes the exam, and obtains a degree, but returns to Fairoaks as his mother thinks earning a living is both beneath her son and harmful to his health. Soon a large house in the neighbourhood that has stood empty for years is reoccupied by its owners, the Clavering family, consisting of Sir Francis, a baronet and Member of Parliament addicted to gambling; his rich and kindly but low-born wife whose father earned his fortune in India; their young son; and Lady Clavering's daughter from her first marriage, Blanche Amory. The Pendennises become friendly with the Claverings and Pen is infatuated with Blanche, but the flirtation doesn't last long. To please his mother, Pen at this point languidly proposes to Laura but she turns him down essentially because she thinks he's not mature enough. Pen then sets out for London where he meets George Warrington, a journalist, with whom Pen takes cheap lodgings and who helps Pen get started as a writer. Pen achieves some success and starts to support himself, swearing he'll take no more of his mother's or Laura's money. The Clavering family also comes up to London where they live very well and where Blanche continues to flirt with Pen and many other men. One of them, Pen's college friend Henry Foker, falls in love with Blanche but cannot propose to her as his father will disinherit him unless he marries his cousin Ann. Pen — by now rather cynical about love and life — toys with the idea of a marriage of convenience to Blanche and his uncle encourages him in this, but — partly because he knows Harry Foker loves Blanche — Pen doesn't propose. Foker leaves England for a year or two, unable to marry Blanche but unwilling to marry his cousin. A new character, Colonel Altamont, is introduced at this point: he knows a secret about the Clavering family and uses it to extort money from the baronet. Major Pendennis meets Colonel Altamont, recognizes him from his Army service in India, and knows "Altamont" is Lady Clavering's supposedly dead first husband Mr. Amory. He is an escaped convict and a murderer as well. Major Pendennis, however, doesn't act on his knowledge. In addition to being blackmailed, Sir Francis Clavering loses a tremendous sum of money at the races and hides from his wife and creditors in an obscure part of London. Meanwhile, Pen meets Fanny Bolton, who is pretty and young, but ignorant and lower-class. They fall in love a little, but after a very short and innocent relationship, Pen decides not to see her any more for the good of both. Brooding and keeping to his comfortless room to avoid seeing Fanny, Pen falls very ill. When malicious gossip reaches Helen and Laura that Pen is "entangled" with a girl of low station, they rush to his side: they fnd Fanny in his room, where she has just arrived to nurse him, but Helen and Laura think the worst and treat Fanny very rudely. Pen, unconscious, is unable to defend Fanny and himself. Recovering after several weeks of illness, Pen takes a journey with his mother, Laura, and Warrington, who falls in love with Laura but cannot marry her because of his own catastrophic early marriage. (He is separated from his venal wife and her children — of whom he is only legally, not biologically, the father. He supports them but does not see them, and has no ambition because if he earns more money, his wife will demand it.) Helen's health deteriorates because of her belief in Pen's immoral connection with Fanny. Pen finally discovers how Helen treated Fanny; he is very angry at his mother and tells her he and Fanny are innocent. She is overjoyed to hear it, and soon mother and son forgive each other. Helen's health is nevertheless too much shaken and she dies soon after. Pen thus comes into possession of the family property of 500 pounds a year. He leases his house at Fairoaks to tenants and returns to London while Laura goes to live as companion to a Lady Rockminster. Pen does send a small amount of money to Fanny Bolton with his thanks. She eventually marries a Mr. Huxter (who had started the gossip about her and Pen!). Major Pendennis, still hoping to arrange a profitable marriage between Pen and Blanche Amory, meets Sir Francis and threatens to divulge his secret — that he is not really married to Lady Clavering — if Sir Francis will not retire and turn over his seat in Parliament to Pen. Sir Francis consents. Major Pendennis's shrewd valet Morgan overhears the conversation and makes plans to extort everyone — the Major, Pen, Altamont, Sir Francis, and Lady Clavering. When Morgan tries this on Major Pendennis, however, the Major won't stand for it, as he has as much to threaten Morgan with (theft) as Morgan has to threaten others with. At this point, Pen has finally become engaged to Blanche though they do not love each other. Then he learns, through Morgan, of the scandal concerning the Claverings. Pen does what he considers the honorable thing: he maintains his engagement with Blanche, but refuses her family money and the seat in Parliament. Now Henry Foker comes back into the picture: his father has died and his fiancee-cousin Ann has eloped with another man, leaving Harry rich and free to marry as he likes. He returns to England and immediately proposes to Blanche. She accepts because he is richer than Pen. On learning that Blanche has broken their engagement, Pen proposes to Laura, whom he has come to love, and is accepted, because she has long loved him — even when she refused his first marriage proposal. The secret of the Clavering family finally becomes known to everybody and Henry Foker breaks his engagement to Blanche — not because of her disreputable father but because she deceived him and doesn't love him. There is one final surprise: Altamont/Amory, although he IS Blanche's father, was bigamously married to several women before he "married" Blanche's mother, so the Clavering marriage is legal after all — but Blanche is illegitimate. Blanche leaves for Paris where she apparently marries a con man. Foker remains unmarried. Pen and Laura marry and soon their income increases and he enters Parliament through his own honest efforts.
2617237	/m/07s186	The Constant Wife	W. Somerset Maugham			 The leading character, Constance Middleton, is a calm, intelligent and self-possessed wife of a successful London doctor. Knowing full well of her husband's infidelity with her best friend Marie-Louise, Constance purposefully maintains the fiction held by her other friends, mother and sister that she has no idea of the affair. However, when confronted by Marie-Louise's jealous husband, Constance reacts in a way not expected by her husband, mother or sister. She first deftly conceals the affair from the husband, and then tells her family that she has known all along. She further shocks them by demonstrating a total lack of sentiment on the subject of matrimony. The modern wife, she explains, is nothing but a parasite, "a prostitute who doesn't deliver the goods." She resolves to establish her own economic independence ("which she considers the only real independence"), going into business as an interior decorator with her friend Barbara. After a year of successful employment, she pays her husband for her room and board, and then announces she is going off for an Italian vacation with a longtime admirer. Her husband is, in turn, shocked and outraged at this turn of events, but finally capitulates to her outrageous charm as the curtain falls.
2620456	/m/07s8fz	Carry On, Mr. Bowditch	Jean Lee Latham	1955-09-09	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel introduces readers to young Nathaniel "Nat" Bowditch, the son of a ship Captain. Nat loves school, especially mathematics. He dreams of someday attending Cambridge, Massachusetts's Harvard University, but is forced by economic circumstances to quit school and begin working. Eventually, he ends up as an indentured servant to a ship's chandler, or outfitter. Still determined to continue his education, and compelled to work for the chandlery for nine long years, he begins to teach himself other languages by comparing translations of the Bible. After being granted access to a local private library, he continues to study and to master advanced mathematics in the evenings after work. When his indenture is complete, he gets the chance to go to sea. There, he discovers that many of the navigational sources used at the time contain extensive and dangerous errors. He is prompted to compile a new book of navigational information. This book, The American Practical Navigator, is still in use today. Under several captains, Nat learns how things work at sea. He invents new ways of calculating latitude and longitude, increasing the accuracy of calculations used to find ships' locations. He also teaches the crew on the ships about math. It took a while for the men to understand, but when they did understand, the men, such as Lem Harvey-the crew's troublemaker, felt smart and important. He also let Little Johnny look through a sextant and search for Polaris. Eventually Nat becomes a captain himself. In the course of the book, Nat receives an honorary degree from the school he always wanted to attend, Harvard.
2620544	/m/07s8p9	No Longer at Ease	Chinua Achebe		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with the trial of Obi Okonkwo on a charge of accepting a bribe. It then jumps back in time to a point before his departure for England and works its way forward to describe how Obi ended up on trial. The members of the Umuofia Progressive Union (UPU), a group of Igbo men who have left their villages to live in major Nigerian cities, have taken up a collection to send Obi to England to study law, in the hope that he will return to help his people navigate British colonial society. But once there, Obi switches his major to English and meets Clara Okeke for the first time during a dance. Obi returns to Nigeria after four years of studies and lives in Lagos with his friend Joseph. He takes a job with the Scholarship Board and is almost immediately offered a bribe by a man who is trying to obtain a scholarship for his little sister. When Obi indignantly rejects the offer, he is visited by the girl herself who implies that she will bribe him with sexual favors for the scholarship, another offer Obi rejects. At the same time, Obi is developing a romantic relationship with Clara Okeke, a Nigerian woman who eventually reveals that she is an osu, an outcast by her descendants, meaning that Obi can not marry her under the traditional ways of the Igbo people of Nigeria. While he remains intent on marrying Clara, even his Christian father opposes it, although reluctantly due to his desire to progress and eschew the "heathen" customs of pre-colonial Nigeria. His mother begs him on her deathbed not to marry Clara until after her death, threatening to kill herself if Obi disobeys. When Obi informs Clara of these events, Clara breaks the engagement and intimates that she is pregnant. Obi arranges an abortion, which Clara reluctantly undergoes, but she suffers complications and refuses to see Obi afterwards. All the while, Obi sinks deeper into financial trouble, in part due to poor planning on his end, in part due to the need to repay his loan to the UPU and to pay for his siblings' educations, and in part due to the cost of the illegal abortion. After hearing of his mother's death, Obi sinks into a deep depression, and refuses to go home for the funeral. When he recovers, he begins to accept bribes in a reluctant acknowledgement that it is the way of his world. The novel closes as Obi takes a bribe and tells himself that it is the last one he will take, only to discover that the bribe was part of a sting operation. He is arrested, bringing us up to the events that opened the story.
2620725	/m/07s94x	From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler	E. L. Konigsburg	1967	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The prologue is a letter from Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, "To my lawyer, Saxonberg", accompanied by a drawing of her writing at her office desk. It is the cover letter for the 158&#8209;page narrative, which provides background for changes to her last will and testament. Eleven-year-old Claudia Kincaid decides to run away from home comfortably, because she thinks her parents do not appreciate her and she doesn't like discomfort. She chooses the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York City, with nine-year-old brother Jamie as companion partly because he has saved all his money. With one unused adult fare on the commuter train and one very long walk, they get there at no cost when admission is free. Early chapters show how Claudia and Jamie settle in at the Met: hiding in the bathroom at closing time from staff on circuit to see that all the patrons have departed; blending with school groups on tour, to learn more about the museum exhibits; bathing in the fountain, whose "wishing coins" provide income; sleeping in an antique bed. A new exhibit draws sensational crowds and fascinates the children: the marble statue of an angel, sculptor unknown but suspected to be Michelangelo. It was purchased at auction from Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a collector who recently closed her showcase Manhattan residence. They research it on site and at the Donnell Library, and give their conclusion to the museum staff anonymously. After learning they have been naive, the children spend the last of their money on travel to Mrs.&nbsp;Frankweiler's home in Connecticut. She recognizes them as runaways but sets them briefly to the task of researching the angel in her long bank of file cabinets. Despite the idiosyncratic organization of her files, they do discover the angel's secret. In exchange for a full account of their adventure, she will leave the crucial file to them in her will, and send them home in her Rolls-Royce. It's a deal. Claudia learns her deep motive for persisting in the crazy search: she wanted a secret of her own to treasure and keep. Mrs. Frankweiler may get "grandchildren" who delight her. Her lawyer gets a luncheon date at the Met, to revise her will, surely not for the first time.
2621239	/m/07sb9_	The Merchant of Death	D.J. MacHale	2002-09-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story takes place in a "territory" (Universe separate from the "Second Earth" universe of the story, there are ten territories in all) called Denduron. Denduron has three suns, one to the east, the north, and the south, but besides that, it has most of the same characteristics as Earth. The story is based around two tribes: the Milago and the Bedoowan. The Milago are treated very poorly by the Bedoowan; they live in little huts without running water or even outhouses, and have to mine for a valuable stone called glaze every hour of the day in order to meet the demands of Kagan, the queen of the Bedoowan. If the Milago do not meet the required supply of glaze which changes for each day, then one of them is killed by being pushed into an abandoned mine shaft. This process is used by a weight system that weighs the person in glaze. The Bedoowan have more advanced tools and technologies such as running water, stoves, and artificial light.
2621769	/m/07scfy	Jacob Have I Loved	Katherine Paterson	1980	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 ==Characters== *Sara Louise Bradshaw Louise helps her father through the crabbing season. As she grows older, she becomes frustrated with the unceasing attention Caroline receives and attempts to become more feminine — to no avail. After growing up in the oppressive situation of playing second-fiddle to her golden-haired sister, Sara Louise eventually leaves the island to move to a small town in the mountains called Truitt. *Caroline Bradshaw Caroline is perfect. Caroline is considered the "miracle child" because she was near death during birth. She is an amazing singer and pianist, and she is considered more intelligent and feminine than her sister. She tends to tease her sister, and she made up "Wheeze," a nickname Louise despises. She went to a music school when she graduated high school on her home island she then goes to Juilliard in New York. She marries McCall Purnell, Louise's longtime friend. *McCall Purnell McCall, or "Call" to his peers, is Louise's longtime friend. He married Caroline in the end of the story. *Hiram Wallace Also known as "The Captain", is an 80 year old man that used to live on the island as a boy but moved away. He comes back and befriends Call and Louise. Louise falls in love with him as if he was her grandpa. *Susan Bradshaw Susan is the mother of Sara and Caroline. She is married to Truitt Bradshaw. She is an educated woman who used to be a teacher. *Grandmother Bradshaw A very religious woman, Grandma can be strict and hard to get along with. She loves the Lord, but hates the water. She believes The Captain is a heathen. *Truitt Bradshaw Truitt is the father of Louise and Caroline, and the husband of Susan Bradshaw. He is a waterman. He is also a war veteran.
2624382	/m/07sjvc	The Coming of the Quantum Cats	Frederik Pohl	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with Nicky DeSota, a timid mortgage broker in a fascist America who draws the unwelcome attention of Nyla Christophe, an FBI agent investigating a break-in at a government lab by what proves to be a Dominic DeSota from an alternate universe. Used as a pawn by Christophe's con-man boyfriend Larry Douglas to entrap an activist former actor (who turns out to be Ronald Reagan), he is later detained and brought to New Mexico to unravel a mystery. The focus then shifts to another Dominic DeSota, a United States Senator having an affair with Nyla Christophe Bowquist, who in this world is a famous violinist. Contacted by the military, he travels to Sandia National Laboratories, where he meets an identical version of himself—a "Cat" from an alternate universe. As Senator DeSota interviews his alternate-universe counterpart, the man vanishes after offering a cryptic warning. As the senator leaves the building, he and the base commander are captured by a detachment of troops led by Major Dominic P. DeSota, the commander of a military force from yet another universe. Major DeSota's mission is revealed to be to secure the parallel-world research facilities of Senator DeSota's universe, which is the first step in a larger military operation. In Major DeSota's universe (which is subsequently designated Paratime Gamma) a militaristic United States is engaged in a tense standoff with the Soviet Union, and wants to use Senator DeSota's universe (Paratime Epsilon) to launch sneak attacks against them. After being transported to Paratime Gamma, Senator DeSota manages to escape by distracting his guard (Gamma's version of Nyla Christophe) and escaping through a portal with a scientist to Paratime Tau—the home universe of Nicky DeSota. After being discovered in the desert, Senator DeSota and the scientist—who is Larry Douglas from another universe—are captured and interrogated by Agent Christophe. In an interrogation session involving the senator, the scientist, and their counterparts from Paratime Tau, Douglas reveals that he is from Paratime Alpha, and that he was forced by the military in Paratime Gamma to give them the ability to travel between universes. As Agent Christophe begins to pressure Douglas to give her government similar assistance, she and the other FBI agent with her are rendered unconscious by knockout darts fired by Dominic DeSota—the same Dominic DeSota who had escaped interrogation in Sandia. DeSota brings the entire group back to his universe—Paratime Alpha—where he explains that since the senator's escape that Paratime Gamma has invaded the Epsilon's Washington D.C. in a failed bid to capture the president. He also reveals that travel between universes is creating a growing problem of "ballistic recoil," where the boundaries between the universes is growing weaker, causing matter and energy to cross unintentionally from one universe to the next (something depicted in interludes between the chapters). He brings the travelers to Washington D.C., where they cross over to Paratime Epsilon in an effort to help stop the invasion. Before they can help, however, every "Cat" located in a different universe disappears, along with any scientists involved in paratime research. There they are informed that they have been transported by a group of more advanced alternate Earths in order to stop ballistic recoil before it escalates and the barriers between universes become irreparably permeable. The "Cats" are relocated to New York City on a new Earth, one being resettled after its inhabitants wiped themselves out. There the paratime transplants gradually settle into new lives. Six months after his arrival, Nicky DeSota returns to New York to propose to Agent Christophe. Now working on a collective farm in Palm Springs, he has embraced the opportunity for a new life and developed into a much more confident man. After considering his proposal, the Nyla of his world accepts. On their trip back to California, however, Nicky reveals to her his expectation that their transplantation has not solved the problem of paratime travel—that with an infinite number of Earths, the number of them that will develop the ability to cross into alternate worlds will only increase, so many that the problem of ballistic recoil may prove to be unavoidable.
2624565	/m/07sk52	Iphigenie auf Tauris	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe			 Scene 1: Since Diana saved her from death (her father Agamemnon chose to sacrifice her in return for a favourable wind for Troy), Iphigenia has been serving as her priestess on Tauris. Although she is grateful to the goddess, and although she is held in high regard by King Thoas and his people, she longs more and more to return to her homeland. :"And days together stand I on the shore, / seeking, in my soul, the land of Greece .." She laments her life as a woman in a foreign land, recognising that her normal fate would have been to be tied to a husband. :"Woman's fate is lamentable ... / how narrow the limits to her happiness!" She begs Diana to reunite her with her family: :"And rescue me, you who rescued me from death, / from this, the second death that I am living here." Scene 2: Arkas, the confidant of Thoas, King of Tauris, announces the King’s arrival. Iphigenia admits her homesickness to him. Arkas reminds her of all the good she has done in Tauris, for example, ending the custom of sacrificing all strangers on Diana's altar. He explains that the King is coming to ask for her hand, and he advises her to accept. Iphigenia declines: marriage would tie her to Tauris for ever. Scene 3: Thoas makes his suit. Iphigenia justifies her refusal by her longing for Greece, and does her best to add other sound reasons, such as the curse that lies on her family, which condemns all the descendants of Tantalus to kill each other. She gives several examples. Thoas is not dissuaded, but Iphigenia now calls on Diana: :"Has not the goddess, who rescued me, / and she alone, the right to my dedicated life?" Thoas threatens to reintroduce the old custom of human sacrifice, which she would be obliged to carry out, rather than allow her to leave. Scene 4: Iphigenia prays to Diana: she places her faith in the goodness and justice of the Gods, and she begs her to spare her from having to sacrifice innocent victims. Scene 1: Iphigenia's brother Orestes and his friend and cousin Pylades arrive, and we learn that they are following up an oracle of Apollo. Orestes has avenged his father by murdering his mother, and has been pursued ever since by the implacable Furies. So he has pleaded with Apollo to release him from their anger. Apollo has answered through his oracle at Delphi, saying that his guilt will be redeemed if he brings his sister back to Greece. He takes Apollo to mean his own sister, and so the two men have landed in Tauris to steal the statue of Diana from her temple. They have been discovered by the KIng's soldiers however, and taken prisoner. Orestes despairs, fearing that they will become human sacrifices.. Pylades encourages him, telling him about the kindly priestess who does not kill prisoners. Nevertheless Orestes feels that their mission is hopeless. Scene 2: Iphigenia speaks with Pylades, who does not reveal his name. He pretends that he and Orestes are brothers, and that Orestes has killed their brother. Iphigenia questions him about Greece. He tells her of the fall of Troy and the death of many Greek heroes. His account increases her homesickness and her desire to see her father Agamemnon again. But Pylades tells her that Agamemnon has been murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, in revenge for Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter. Iphigenia leaves in dismay. Scene 1: Iphigenia promises Orestes, whose name she still does not know, to do all in her power to save him and Pylades from being sacrificed to Diana. She asks about Agamemnon's children (her siblings). Orestes tells her of Clytemnestra's murder, stabbed by Orestes at Electra’s urging, and reveals his true identity, because he cannot bear Iphigenia's distress at this news: Let there be truth between us: I am Orestes. Iphigenia is happy to have found her brother again, and makes herself known in turn. Orestes decides nevertheless that he should die to appease the Furies; Iphigenia and Pylades should save themselves. He keeps the oracle’s words to himself. At the end of the scene he falls unconscious to the ground. Scene 2: Orestes has a vision of Hades. He sees his dead forbears in the Tantalus line happily forgiven in the underworld. This vision perhaps contributes to his healing, since it reveals to him the possibility of forgiveness after death. Scene 3: Orestes wakes, but still believes himself to be in Hades, and thinks that Iphigenia and Pylades have descended there too. He pities his friend and wishes that his sister Electra were also in the underworld, so that she too can be free of the curse. Iphigenia and Pylades come to him, to heal him. In a prayer, Iphigenia thanks Diana and asks that Orestes may be released from the curse. Pylades tries to reason with him. When Orestes finally wakes from his dream (The curse is lifted, my heart assures me), he embraces Iphigenia, thanks the gods, and declares himself ready for action again. Pylades reminds them both of the need for haste which their danger imposes on them, and urges them to a quick conclusion. Scene 1: While Orestes and Pylades prepare a boat for their escape, Iphigenia is troubled by the need to deceive the King. Scene 2: Arkas brings the King’s command to hasten the sacrifice: Iphigenia tells him that the prisoner’s bloodguilt has polluted the temple, and that she must first purify it. They argue over the King’s right to command, and the priestess’s right to interpret the will of the Goddess. Arkas leaves to report to the King. Scene 3: Iphigenia reflects on her dilemma and the need to decide between the joy of escaping with her brother and the need to deceive and abandon the King, who has been good to her. Scene 4: Pylades announces that Orestes is in good spirits, that the boat is ready, and urges her to hurry. She still hesitates, even though Pylades points out that she would have an even worse conscience if Orestes and he were killed. Scene 5: In the Song of the Fates she recalls the pitiless vengeance of the Gods. Still, she adds a verse indicating that she does not entirely accept the Song of the Fates. Scene 1: Arkas reports to Thoas, who commands him to bring the priestess before him at once. Scene 2: Thoas reflects that his goodness to Iphigenia has encouraged her independence. Scene 3: Iphigenia tells the angry Thoas that having experienced mercy when she was to be sacrificed, she is obliged to be merciful now. She argues that a woman’s words can be as powerful as a man’s sword; she tells him who the prisoners are, who she is, and of their plan to escape; and she appeals to his humanity. He begins to concede. Scene 4: Orestes arrives, sword in hand, and urges Iphigenia to flee with him. She reveals that she has confessed to the King. Scene 5: Pylades and Arkas arrive; the King orders a halt to the fighting. Scene 6: Orestes offers himself in single combat, to decide their fate. Thoas himself is willing to accept the challenge, and is unpersuaded by Iphigenia’s reasoning, especially because she had been party to the plan to steal the statue of Diana. Orestes explains his misunderstanding of the oracle’s reference to a sister. The King reluctantly allows them to go; Iphigenia begs that they part as friends; and the King finally wishes them Farewell.
2624632	/m/07skb6	The Golden Globe	John Varley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Golden Globe and Steel Beach take place in a universe similar to, but different from, Varley’s "Eight Worlds" universe; in both universes, the solar system has been colonized by human refugees fleeing aliens (known simply as "the Invaders") invading the Earth. Earth and Jupiter are off-limits to humanity, but Earth's moon (known as Luna) and the other planets and moons of the solar system have all become heavily populated. There are also minor colonies set in the Oort cloud beyond the solar system itself. The Golden Globe story is told initially from a first person perspective, but a substantial portion of the book comes in the form of extended flashbacks. The Golden Globe in question is Luna, Earth's moon and the most heavily inhabited world in the solar system since the Invaders obliterated human civilization on Earth. The novel begins as a first person account of Valentine's adventures in the outer worlds of the solar system as he attempts to make his way to Luna in order to play King Lear in an upcoming production. Valentine is a consummate actor and a skilled con man. It is by exercising the latter skill that he runs afoul of the Charonese Mafia, personified by the cold-blooded and nigh-unkillable assassin Isambard Comfort. The story is punctuated by several extended flashback sequences in which we learn that Valentine's father, a supremely egotistical and domineering stage actor, has groomed his son almost from birth to follow in his footsteps. It is Valentine Sr.'s megalomania and obsession with the stage that sets the tone for much of the flashback material. While his father is auditioning for a role and has left young Kenneth sitting in a waiting room, Valentine wanders a little and gets swept up to audition for a part in a new children's adventure show called "Sparky and His Gang" and is cast in the lead role. As the show becomes increasingly popular, Valentine Sr. interferes more and more, and becomes more difficult for his son and the producers of the show to deal with. We learn in these flashback segments that Valentine Sr. subjects his son to monstrous and potentially fatal child abuse. This is framed quite realistically and Valentine, Sr. is apparently aware of but unable to control his nearly homicidal rage. At times, both in the main story and in flashback, Valentine meets with a mysterious character named Elwood. It is ambiguous in the narrative exactly what type of being Elwood is, however. As the novel progresses, both in the present and in flashback, the character is more fully identified as Elwood P. Dowd and said to look very much like actor James Stewart, who played a character of the same name in Harvey. Though the reader gradually comes to believe Elwood is a figment of Valentine's imagination, the climactic confrontation between Valentine and his father blurs this distinction considerably. However, Valentine narrates his own flashbacks for the reader, and as much as states that he may be an unreliable narrator. It is revealed in both the main and flashback storylines that Valentine killed (or is believed himself to have killed) his father. In the main storyline, he is, after 70 years on the run, eventually put on trial for this murder, and his case is weighed by the Central Computer of Luna. Genetic tests reveal that Valentine is actually a clone of his father (further evidence of the maniacal self-absorption of the father). The fact that cloning was illegal at the time of his father's murder causes the Central Computer to declare that no crime was committed, as the only legal remedy in place at the time was for one clone or the other to be destroyed. At the conclusion of the novel, Valentine says that he has reclaimed his fortune (long inaccessible to him during his life on the run) and thrown in his lot with the Heinleiners, a reclusive group of libertarian idealists who are building a starship and planning a voyage to the stars.
2626115	/m/07sn62	A Kiss Before Dying	Ira Levin	1953-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Bud Corliss is a young man with a ruthless drive to rise above his working-class origins to a life of wealth and importance. He serves in the Pacific in World War II, and upon his honorable discharge in 1947 he learns that his father was killed in an automobile accident while he was overseas. The most pivotal moment in his life occurs during the war, when he first wounds, then kills a Japanese sniper, who is so terrified that he wets his pants and begs for mercy. Corliss is elated by the total power he holds over the soldier; at the same time, he is disgusted by the man's display of abject terror. Upon returning to the U.S., he enrolls in college and meets Dorothy Kingship, the daughter of a wealthy copper tycoon. Seeing an opportunity to attain the riches he has always craved, he becomes Dorothy's lover. When she tells him she is pregnant, however, he panics; he is sure that her stern, conservative father will disinherit her. Resolving to get rid of Dorothy, he tricks her into writing a letter that, to an unknowing observer, would look like a suicide note, and then throws her from the roof of a tall building. He runs no risk of getting caught, having urged Dorothy to keep their relationship a secret from her family and friends. He continues to live with his mother, who dotes on him and has no clue as to what he has done. Corliss lies low for a few months until the press coverage of Dorothy's death has subsided. Then he pursues Dorothy's sister, Ellen. The romance is going according to plan &mdash; until Ellen begins to probe into Dorothy's death, convinced her sister did not kill herself. Eventually, Ellen uncovers the truth about Corliss and confronts him. Corliss nonchalantly confesses to the crime and kills Ellen as well. Unfazed by this setback, Corliss courts the last remaining Kingship daughter, Marion. This affair is the most successful; Corliss sweeps her off her feet and charms her father, and soon he and Marion are engaged. Local college DJ Gordon Gant, who met Ellen during her investigation of Dorothy's death, begins investigating the case, and is immediately suspicious of Corliss. He breaks into Corliss' childhood home and steals a written plan for meeting and seducing Marion to get her family's money, as well as news clippings about Dorothy's and Ellen's deaths. Days before the wedding, he shows up at the Kingship family home and presents Marion and her father with the evidence of Corliss' deception. On a trip to one of the Kingship family's copper manufacturing plants, Marion, her father and Gant all corner Corliss while he is standing over a vat of molten copper and threaten to expose him. Corliss frantically pleads his innocence, but his accusers are unmoved. Realizing his luck has finally run out, Corliss panics and wets his pants &mdash; just as the Japanese soldier, his symbol of pathetic cowardice, had done. Delirious with fear and shame, Corliss stumbles and falls to his death into the vat below.
2626140	/m/07sn7j	Despair	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1934		 The narrator and protagonist of the story, Hermann Karlovich, a Russian emigre businessman, meets a tramp in the city of Prague, whom he believes to be his exact double. Even though Felix, the supposed doppelgänger, is seemingly unaware of their resemblance, Hermann insists that their likeness is most striking. Hermann is married to Lydia, a sometimes silly and forgetful wife (according to Hermann) who has a cousin named Ardalion. It is insinuated at times that Lydia and Ardalion are, in fact lovers, although Hermann continually stresses how much Lydia loves him. Ardalion is an awful artist, although he refuses to admit it. After some time, Hermann shares with Felix a plan for both of them to profit off their shared likeness by having Felix briefly pretend to be Hermann. But after Felix is disguised as Hermann, Hermann kills Felix in order to collect the insurance money on Hermann on March 9. Hermann considers the presumably perfect murder plot to be an artistical expression rather than a scheme to gain money. But as it turns out, there is no resemblance whatsoever between the two men, the murder is not 'perfect', and the murderer is about to be captured by the police in a small hotel in France, where he is hiding. Hermann who is writing the narrative switches to a diary mode at the very end just before his captivity, the last entry is on April 1.
2627084	/m/07sqn4	Rogue Squadron	Michael A. Stackpole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the novel begins, Wedge Antilles has gathered together a group of pilots to choose from to recreate the legendary Rogue Squadron, as a dual X-wing and commando squadron. Although Wedge is allowed to pick most of his squad, his superiors in the Rebel Alliance force him to choose certain pilots, in the hope of causing some neutral planets to join the Alliance. Wedge is able to convince Admiral Ackbar to allow him to choose his own executive officer, Tycho Celchu, who was a member of the original Rogue Squadron, but had been accused of being an Imperial spy after a solo-mission to Imperial Center left him as their prisoner. Although Tycho escaped, and was trusted by Wedge, his superiors weren't convinced of his loyalties, and Tycho was not allowed to fly an X-wing, wouldn't be able to command any weapons in battle, and would be under guard when not training with the Rogues. With Rogue Squadron complete, they begin training, and soon Corran Horn stands out above the rest. Though initially mysterious to his squadron-mates and very boastful, he is rebuked by Wedge, but is made a lieutenant and put in charge of the third flight of three other X-wings when Rogue Squadron is activated months before training was finished. On the way to their new base on Talasea, the squadron is pulled out of hyperspace by an Imperial Interdictor Cruiser, a capital ship which creates a gravity well to prevent hyperspace travel. Although surprised, the squadron survives their first battle, and save the Pulsar Skate, a smuggler's ship, captained by Mirax Terrik, that had been attacked by the cruiser. After a few more attacks by the Rogues, Kirtan Loor, an Imperial intelligence agent, realizes that they must be stopped. After being called into Imperial Center by Ysanne Isard, the Director of Imperial Intelligence, and told that Corran Horn, a man he worked with in the Corellian Security Force, was still alive, Isard gives him the mission to destroy Rogue Squadron. Although the Rogues always used multiple hyperspace jumps to hide their locations, Loor, a genius with a photographic memory, determines where they are based. Against his suggestion to send in a larger force, the admiral in charge of the sector covertly sends in only two squads of stormtroopers to kill the Rogues in their sleep. Even though six sentries are killed, the squadron has its first pilot loss, and multiple pilots are seriously injured, they survive and relocate to a new base to plan their next attack. The Alliance command then plans a large-scale attack on Borleias. Although their intelligence suggests that it would be an easy target, and could be captured and used as a step toward Imperial Center, it is actually a trap set up by General Evir Derricote. Although the planetary shields are taken down and the rebels begin to land attack shuttles, multiple squadrons of TIE fighters attack, the shield is reinforced, and planet-side defenses attack. Multiple ships are lost, including five of Rogues' X-wings. Only two of their pilots are killed, the rest able to eject safely. Although the mission is considered a failure, Corran, with the aid of one of the commandos, is able to plan a new attack on Borleias that would prevent an ambush by capital ships. With only six Rogues being the only air support for the first four hours of the mission, and a group of commandos on the ground, the battle is a success. Although Corran doesn't have enough fuel to escape and the rest of the squadron thinking him dead, he is rescued by the Pulsar Skate, and no Rogue is lost in the mission. Borleias is taken, and the Alliance takes a step toward liberating Coruscant. As the novel ends, Ysanne Isard reveals to Loor the existence of an unnamed spy in Rogue Squadron.
2628471	/m/07stzn	Dealer's Choice	Patrick Marber			 Stephen owns a small restaurant which employs Sweeney (the cook), Mugsy and Frankie (waiters). A third waiter, Tony, is mentioned but never appears in the play. Every Sunday after closing, the staff and Stephen's son, Carl play a poker game in the basement. At the start of the play, we learn Mugsy is attempting to buy a public toilet in Mile End and convert it into a restaurant. Mugsy doesn't have the money - he lost £3,000 at poker to Stephen several weeks ago. Mugsy is hoping to convince Carl to get the money from his father, and plans to dump Carl once the restaurant is open. Carl has his own problems. He has a severe gambling addiction which he believes he has kept hidden from his father. He currently owes £4,000 to Ash, his poker mentor, who, in turn, owes £10,000 to other gamblers. In the second act, Ash comes to the restaurant to get his money. Carl, having again lost the money he had saved, convinces Ash to join the poker game under cover of being a former schoolteacher. The staff, believing Ash's story, accept his inclusion; the absence of Tony has left a seat available. Frankie spends much of the first act convincing Sweeney to play in the game that night. Sweeney has permission to see his daughter the following morning and doesn't want to stay up all night getting drunk and losing his money. Frankie is thought the best poker player in the group, and believes he is going to become a professional in Las Vegas. The second half of the play is the poker game. As the game goes on, Ash wins every game. At first he puts this down to beginner's luck, but it soon becomes apparent to most of the players that Ash is far more than just a beginner and that it was highly likely he was lying when he claimed to be Carl's former schoolteacher. Each player in turn ends up losing all their money to Ash until finally only Carl, Ash, Mugsy and Stephen are left playing. Mugsy has only a small amount of money left and is convinced by Stephen to walk away with what he has got. Mugsy leaves. Carl, Ash and Stephen are left alone and Stephen sends Carl out of the room to fetch some coffee. Once he has left, a heated interrogation starts and Stephen finds out who Ash really is. As the tension rises, the two men argue over which of them is truly addicted to gambling - Stephen, who plays poker every Sunday with his son and employees or Ash who owes £10,000 to other gamblers. Stephen has stated that he will return the £4,000 he just won from Ash in the previous round, even though he now knows Ash's circumstances. The men argue again until at the very peak of the argument Ash asks Stephen to toss a coin to decide which of them should get the money. Stephen refuses. Ash asks again and Stephen again refuses. Ash asks again, and again, and again. Each time Stephen refuses until eventually he gives in. Stephen bets heads and Ash bets tails. Ash tosses the coin. He is about to reveal which side the coin has landed on. He looks up at Stephen and states: "Four thousand pounds on the toss of a coin?". Nothing more is said for a while. It slowly dawns on both Stephen (and the audience) that although Ash is a gambler with debts to pay, Stephen is the real gambling addict. Still without having seen the result of the coin, Stephen offers the four thousand pounds to Ash. Ash goes over to the cash box and removes it. He asks Stephen if he would like to check that he has removed the correct amount. Stephen shakes his head and says "No, I trust you".
2629145	/m/07swcw	Beetle in the Anthill	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set in 2178 AD and follows the story of Maxim Kammerer, an experienced investigator of COMCON-2 who receives an order to track down a man named Lev Abalkin, who was not supposed to return to Earth but has returned nevertheless. The order was issued by in secret by Rudolf Sikorski (called "Excellency" throughout the book), the chief of COMCON-2. Studying the materials on Abalkin that Sikorski provided him with, Kammerer discovers that prior to his arrival on Earth, Abalkin was a progressor on Saraksh, working as an undercover agent in the power structures of the Island Empire. Among other materials, he find a sheet of paper with a strange symbol resembling the Cyrillic letter Ж or Japanese character 卅 (san juu) which only adds to his confusion. Kammerer's search leads him to several of Abalkin's friends and associates, including Maya Glumova who is a historian working in the Museum of Extraterrestrial Cultures (MEC) and Shokn the Golovan who worked closely with Abalkin in projects on Saraksh and Hope. Each of these has had recent contact with Abalkin, and report that he had been behaving strangely. Kammerer also begins to perceive a connection between Abalkin and progressor Kornei Yashmaa. Both men were born on the same day from mysteriously deceased parents. Late at night, Sikorski orders Kammerer to meet him at the MEC in order to ambush Abalkin. However, the one who comes to the Museum tonight is not Lev Abalkin but rather Issac Bromberg, Sikorski's fiercest opponent in his policy about knowledge and its classification. Kammerer witnesses a long verbal argument, in which many of the detals of the Abalkin case are revealed. Apparently, Abalkin has called Bromberg via videophone and talked to him about the "detonators", an artifact stored in the closed section of the MEC where Sikorski and Kammerer had laid their trap. Reluctantly, Sikorski agreed to tell Maxim about the "foundlings": Abalkin (as well as Kornei Yashmaa) was a "foundling", one of thirteen humans born from embryos stored in the "sarcophagus" left by the Wanderers and discovered by Earthlings on an unnamed planet. The "detonators" were thirteen small discs each carrying a strange symbol identical to one that each of the "Stepchildren" had on his/her elbow. Abalkin's symbol was the one resembling the Cyrillic letter "Ж". Upon returning to his COMCON-2 office with Maxim, Sikorski admits that he always believed that all "foundlings" carried a program deep in their subconsciousness that was potentially dangerous for Earth. It was because of this that all of them received an education that implied that they work as far from Earth as possible. Sikorski believes that Abalkin's surprise return to Earth indicates that he has become a dangerous agent of the Wanderers. Kammerer does not believe that Abalkin poses a threat, but suggests that this is a psychological test engineered by the Wanderers. Kammerer likens the situation to when a human might put a "beetle in an anthill" simply to watch the alarmed reaction of the ants. Eventually Abalkin comes to Sikorski and Kammerer voluntarily, and finds the truth about his origins. He demands to be left alone, but Sikorski orders Kammerer to follow him. Sikorski himself sets off for the MEC. Kammerer, guessing what is to come, tries to convince Abalkin to leave Earth for his own safety, but to no effect. Abalkin enters the Museum of Extraterrestrial Cultures, and is shot three times by Sikorski and dies on the floor millimeters from his "detonator".
2629149	/m/07swdk	A Case of Need	Michael Crichton	1968	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dr. John Berry, the protagonist, is a pathologist working in Boston during the 1960s, a time when abortion was illegal in the United States. The story opens with an introduction of the various requirements and challenges of the medical profession during the era. Subsequently, Dr. Berry is notified that his friend, an obstetrician named Arthur Lee, has been accused of performing an illegal abortion that led to the death of Karen Randall, a prominent member of an established medical dynasty. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Lee is already well known amongst the medical community as an abortion provider and that Berry has in the past helped Lee disguise medical samples to hide the fact that Lee's dilation and curettage patients were pregnant. After visiting his friend in a jail cell, Berry sets out to prove Lee's innocence. Subsequently he investigates the personal life of the dead woman, creating an accurate portrait of her past, psychology, and character. During his search, which lasts several days vandals attack Lee's home. The protagonist's knowledge of medicine and law are helpful in overcoming various barriers in his search including a hostile police captain and bribes from the scion of the Randall family itself: Karen's father, a well-established (though mediocre) doctor. Eventually, with the aid of an unscrupulous African-American lawyer, Wilson, Berry is able to obtain solid evidence showing Karen Randall's uncle (who had already performed three previous abortions for her) to be the culprit. Nonetheless, Berry is troubled by this conclusion and is persuaded to continue his investigation despite Wilson's displeasure. Eventually, he discovers that Karen's drug dealing friends had performed the botched abortion, but Berry is attacked and sent to the hospital before he can reveal his discovery. Subsequently, Berry's attacker, Karen's African American boyfriend is also brought in an ambulance, dead after a fatal fall. The actual abortionist attempts to commit suicide. She is forced to confess in the hospital after being threatened with what she believes is an excruciatingly painful dose of Nalorphine (but is actually water). Berry continues to be suspicious about Karen's boyfriend's death, and ultimately forces one of his old friends and colleagues (the uncle of the woman who did Karen's abortion) to admit to his involvement before turning him in to the police. However, despite being proven innocent, Lee's reputation has been ruined, and he decides to move to California. Crichton then ends the novel with a postscript discussing the problems in the medical profession, including abortion. fr:Extrême Urgence it:In caso di necessità nl:A Case of Need ja:緊急の場合は ru:Экстренный случай tr:A Case of Need
2630729	/m/07szg9	The Dark Frigate	Charles Hawes	1924	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book opens in (Stuart London 17th century London). Philip Marsham, a nineteen year old sailor, has just been orphaned when his father's ship was lost at sea. An accident with a gun causes him to flee London, leaving behind the small inheritance left by his father. He decides to journey across England on foot, heading towards Bideford. During his travels, he encounters Sir John Bristol, a local Lord who greatly impresses the young man. He also encounters two men, Tom Jordan and Martin Barwick, who claim to be fellow sailors. Tom, who is more commonly known as the Old One, soon parts company with them, however Martin becomes Phil's traveling companion. When they reach Bideford, Martin leads the way to the house of Mother Taylor, an old woman who works as the go-between for numerous illegal activities. She informs them that the Old One has already gone ahead on a ship without them, but arranges positions for Martin and Phil on a frigate, known as the Rose of Devon. Once aboard the frigate, Phil quickly impresses the captain with his skills. When the (boatswain) is killed in an accident, Phil is promoted to replace him. After a violent storm, the crew of the Rose of Devon encounters a wrecked ship. While rescuing the survivors, Phil is surprised to see that they are coincidentally led by the Old One. Although the Old One and his followers initially put on a mask of friendliness, they soon reveal their true nature as (pirates), killing the Rose's captain and seizing control of the ship. Tempted by the promise of vast riches, the majority of the Rose's former crew willingly join the Old One. Only Phil and Will Canty, a fellow sailor of the same age, show reluctance to become pirates. Having taken an immediate liking to Phil, the Old One allows him to keep his position as Boatswain, hoping to convince him to join them willingly. The newly formed band of pirates attempt several raids against other ships, but none of them go well, and they end up gaining very little. During an attempted attack against a small island town, Will Cantry takes the opportunity to escape in attempt to find help. Unfortunately, he is soon recaptured by the pirates, who torture and kill him. Seeing his friend murdered is the last straw for Phil, who shortly afterwards attempts his own escape. Fleeing to a nearby island, he sees another ship anchored nearby. When he swims out to it to investigate, he discovers that it is a British warship, but is captured by its crew. He manages to convince them of the nearby pirate ship, and thus forewarned, they are able to easily defeat the Old One and his crew, and capture the Rose of Devon. Unfortunately, the British captain is unconvinced of Phil's innocence, believing instead that he was a pirate spy who, once captured, sold out his friends in an attempt to gain his freedom. Phil is arrested with the rest of the pirate crew, and taken back to England for trial. During the trial, it seems certain that the entire crew, including Phil, will be found guilty and hanged. When he is called to the stand to defend himself, Phil insists again that he was an unwilling participant in the pirates' activities. However, when he is asked to testify against the rest of the Rose's crew, he refuses on the grounds that even if it was forced upon him, they were still his companions. Impressed by Phil's courage and honor, the Old One testifies on his behalf, declaring to the court that Phil is indeed innocent of the charges against him. At the conclusion of the trial, Phil alone is acquitted. The pirate crew is executed shortly after, with only the Old One retaining his bold face until the end. After regaining his freedom, Phil journeys back to the lands of Sir John Bristol, and asks the lord to be let into his service. Phil becomes one of Sir John's closest companions for several years, and serves under him during the English Civil War on the side of the Royalists. Although Phil rises through the ranks during the war, the forces of Oliver Cromwell eventually emerge victorious, and Sir John is killed in battle. Growing weary of England, Phil decides to leave the country, and once again travels to the docks at Bideford. He is shocked to find the Rose of Devon among the ships there, and after speaking with her new captain, books passage to the colonies in Barbados.
2630910	/m/07szwz	Hitty, Her First Hundred Years	Rachel Field	1929	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrative unfolds through the eyes of a wooden doll named Hitty. Hitty was carved in the early 19th century for a young girl from Maine. The story details Hitty's adventures as she travels from owner to owner over the course of a century. She ends up living in locations as far-flung as Boston, New Orleans, India, and an island in the South Pacific. At various times, she is lost deep under the sea and also under sofa cushions, abandoned in a hayloft, and serves as part of a snake-charmer's act. The story was inspired by a doll purchased by Field. The doll currently resides at the Stockbridge Library Association in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
2631072	/m/07s_89	Wedge's Gamble	Michael A. Stackpole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A month after the conquest of Borleias, the Rebels and Rogue Squadron have to deal with Imperial probes by the rogue Warlord Zsinj, the apparent death of member Bror Jace, and re-populating the squadron with new, hotshot members, Aril Nunb and Pash Cracken. With worries of attacks by Zsinj's forces, the Provisional Council of the Alliance, including Princess Leia Organa and Borsk Fey'lya, meet and decide that an invasion of Coruscant must proceed. With a decision that criminals from the Black Sun organization, imprisoned on Kessel, could be released on Coruscant to help bring resistance against the Empire, the Rogues are first sent to Kessel. After freeing a number of criminals that Corran himself sent there, including Zekka Thyne and his girlfriend, Inyri Forge, sister to former Rogue member Lujayne. After the Black Sun members are placed on Coruscant, Rogue's members are covertly inserted onto the planet in small groups. Corran and Erisi Dlarit are put together and meet with Alliance Intelligence agent Winter, Wedge and Pash Cracken are together and meet with agent and Corran's former partner Iella Wessiri, and the rest of the Rogues are brought by Mirax Terrik to the Invisisec, an underworld for many of the poor, non-humans on Coruscant. After Mirax is compromised and meets with Wedge and Corran sees Tycho Celchu speaking to Imperial agent Kirtan Loor, the Rogues think they may have a traitor in their midsts. Meanwhile, the Imperial forces, led by Ysanne Isard, are creating a virus that attacks non-humans, the Krytos Virus, and are planning on giving the Rebels Coruscant when it is ready. They believe that the Rebels will be taxed for resources if they try to help everyone with the virus and will soon lose Coruscant once again and be finally defeated. The Rogues are informed, after plans from Admiral Ackbar and Fey'lya are approved, that they must take down Coruscant's planetary shields at a precise time in order for the Rebel attack to succeed. After some minor failures and the capture of Aril Nunb, the group formulates a plan. Told of the Rebels impending invasion by a traitor in Rogue Squadron, Isard accelerates the plan to release the virus, informs Loor that he is to stay as a form of resistance when the Rebels invade, and readies herself for an escape from the planet. With help from Black Sun, a group of Bothan spies, and the rest of the Alliance Intelligence on the planet, the Rogues are able to take down the shields in time for the Rebel fleet to arrive. With only two Star Destroyers sent to defend the planet, it easily falls into Rebel hands, however, Corran, investigating a fleeing ship, crashes his Z-95 Headhunter when an outside force takes control of it. Although Aril Nunb is found safe and the non-humans of the Rogues are treated and cured of the virus, the squadron ends in turmoil with Corran's apparent death and the arrest of Tycho as the apparent traitor responsible for his death. The novel ends with Corran waking as a captive aboard a ship, where Isard informs him that he is on his way to the prison and torture facility, Lusankya.
2631112	/m/07s_d6	Wraith Squadron	Aaron Allston		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wedge Antilles, fresh back from the Bacta War on Thyferra, decides to make a new fighter squadron/commando team. While pitching the idea to Admiral Ackbar, he proposes a way to build the squadron without any cost to the New Republic: he'll use screw-ups, wash-outs, and pilots who are a hair's breadth of being kicked out of Fighter Command&mdash;the pilots that no one else will take. Whilst Rogue Squadron was compiled from elite pilots with ground fighting expertise as a secondary, this new squadron was to be consisted of expert ground combatants with piloting skills as a secondary. Antilles, with help from Wes Janson, scrounges up a team that comes to be known as Wraith Squadron: *Jesmin Ackbar, communications expert and the niece of Admiral Ackbar *Hohass "Runt" Ekwesh, a Thakwaash with multiple personalities *Garik "Face" Loran, a former Imperial child-recruitment actor *Voort "Piggy" SaBinring, a Gamorrean pilot *Kell Tainer, the son of a Rebel pilot that Janson was forced to kill and a demolitions expert *Myn Donos, the sole surviving pilot of an Imperial ambush to his Talon squadron *Ton Phanan, former doctor and part mechanical *Falynn Sandskimmer, vehicle specialist from Tatooine with chronic insolence *Tyria Sarkin, former Antari Ranger with minor Force abilities *Eurrsk "Grinder" Thri'ag, an expert code slicer and prankster The novel focuses on Wraith Squadron's antics as it goes undercover as the crew of Night Caller, an Imperial blockade runner under the employ of Warlord Zsinj.
2636302	/m/07td0b	I'm Not Who You Think I Am	Peg Kehret	1999-04-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Thirteen-year-old Ginger becomes the target of a disturbed lady who believes that Ginger is her dead daughter. Ginger becomes distressed because the woman (Joyce) starts stalking her insisting that Ginger is her daughter. Joyce uses the help of her brother-in-law while Ginger's parents are out of town to speak to Ginger and convinve Ginger to go with Joyce.
2636680	/m/07tdzc	Waterless Mountain	Laura Adams Armer	1931	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Younger Brother, a Navajo Indian living in Arizona in the 1920s, wishes to follow in the footsteps of his uncle and become a medicine man. To accomplish this task, he must undergo several arduous years of training, to learn all of the ancient songs and customs of his ancestors. This includes a journey to the Pacific Ocean in the far west, participating in traditional ceremonies, and climbing the nearby Waterless Mountain. Throughout his training, his Uncle relates to him numerous legends of their culture.
2640800	/m/07tpk1	The Krytos Trap	Michael A. Stackpole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot focuses on three key events that happen mostly simultaneously. The first is the occupation of Coruscant and the trouble the Empire left behind with its crippling bio-attack on the planet. The virus used in the attack is the Krytos virus, a biological weapon developed by General Evir Derricote and released under the orders of Imperial leader Ysanne Isard. Humans are apparently immune, while all other species are vulnerable. This, combined with Imperial Intelligence officer Kirtan Loor's terrorist activities while taking orders from the Palpatine Counterinsurgency Front, leaves Coruscant and the New Republic in a state of emergency. The second event is the treason trial of Rogue Squadron executive officer Tycho Celchu, who is suspected of murdering Rogue Squadron pilot Corran Horn, who was captured during the invasion. Finally, Corran Horn is being held prisoner in her Lusankya prison facility. His attempts to escape lead him to uncover the secret of Rogue Squadron's mole, and it becomes a race against time to save the innocent and reveal the true traitor.
2640991	/m/07tpwg	Northwest Passage	Kenneth Roberts	1937	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Langdon Towne is a young Congregationalist resident of Kittery, Maine, in love with Elizabeth Browne, the youngest daughter of Anglican minister Rev. Arthur Browne of nearby Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Towne wants to become an artist, a goal which he has kept secret from even Elizabeth. He is admitted to Harvard College, but an ill-timed visit from his friends Saved from Captivity ('Cap') Huff and Hunking ('Hunk') Marriner results in his expulsion in 1759, although it does allow him to meet the young artist John Singleton Copley. Upon his return to Portsmouth, he incautiously insults Benning Wentworth, the governor of the Province of New Hampshire, and he and Hunk flee arrest and head to Crown Point to join the volunteers fighting the French and Indian War. On their way, they meet a sergeant named McNott, who is a member of Rogers' Rangers. Both Towne and Hunk decide to join Rogers' Rangers themselves. After arriving at Crown Point, Towne impresses Major Robert Rogers with a discussion about the Northwest Passage and is chosen as one of Rogers' aides. Setting out with a force of Rangers, Stockbridge Indians and Mohawk Indians, the troops are not told their destination. The Mohawks, who are closely allied with Sir William Johnson, are jealous of Rogers' preference for the Stockbridge Indians and decide to leave. Hunk and McNott, among others, are critically injured when the Mohawks detonate gunpowder after failing to steal it. The rest of the Rangers are then informed that their destination is the Abenaki town of Saint Francis, a center for hostile native raiding parties into New England. In a predawn attack, the Rangers annihilate the town and kill about a quarter of the population. However, to prevent capture, the Rangers choose to return across Quebec and northern Vermont. The harrowing journey creates dissension, and some Rangers who choose to separate from the main body are massacred by pursuing French and Indian troops. The starving troops eventually make it safely to the planned meeting point, Fort Wentworth on the Connecticut River, where reinforcements and supplies were supposed to be waiting for them. However, the reinforcements withdrew with the food shortly before their arrival, apparently afraid that Rogers' men were enemy troops. A group of four men, including Rogers and Towne, make the arduous raft trip down the Connecticut to the Fort at Number 4 to get food for the rest of the company. They barely make it, but they succeed in saving the company. As a result, Towne is promoted to ensign, and he returns to Portsmouth a hero, just in time for Hunk's death from his wounds. Towne now openly works at painting, and Copley helps get him a small commission and points him toward a trip to England to study art. Towne, however, wants to stay in Portsmouth, paint natives and the West, and marry Elizabeth. When Rogers comes to town in the summer of 1761, he greets Towne as a long-lost friend ... and asks Towne to be his best man, as he has proposed to Elizabeth, whom he met through fellow Mason Rev. Browne, and she has accepted. Instead, a crushed Towne decides to go to England. In London, Towne learns that no one can achieve success except through "preferment", usually through a sponsor. His search for sponsorship leads him to Benjamin Franklin, who arranges for him to get a commission for a panel of Jeffrey Amherst at Vauxhall Gardens that brings him other work, more than enough to prevent him from having to return home broke. In early 1765, Towne, now 26, finds out that Rogers (minus Elizabeth) has arrived in London. With Rogers' help, Towne gets a major commission from a wealthy nobleman to paint a series of pictures of the Saint Francis raid. Rogers has decided to mount an expedition to find the Northwest Passage and has come to England both to collect his back pay and to win appointment as the royal governor of Fort Michilimackinac, the farthest west of the British forts on the Great Lakes, and he offers to include Towne in the expedition. Rogers has a personal secretary named Natty Potter, who helps him write two books and a play while in London. Potter recruits Towne to find his daughter Ann. Towne finds that Ann, now about 14, was left nine years ago with a family that trained children to act as crippled beggars, and he ends up paying £15 to take her away from there. To his surprise, Towne learns that Potter only wanted to blackmail Ann's mother, a member of a wealthy family with whom he'd had a Fleet Marriage, and is unwilling to provide for Ann (or even to reimburse Towne) after the blackmail is paid, so Ann ends up as Towne's responsibility. Ann proves to be a gifted mimic and quickly picks up "proper" behavior from the tutor Towne hires for her. With the help of Charles Townshend, Rogers is appointed governor of Michilimackinac over the objections of General Thomas Gage and Sir William Johnson, who had monopolized trade with the natives. When Towne finishes his series of paintings, he and Ann return with Rogers and Potter to Portsmouth in 1766. Rogers has arranged for several of his former Rangers to join the journey, including McNott (who lost a leg from the gunpowder explosion), Jonathan Carver, and James Tute; Elizabeth, Potter and Ann also accompany the group to Michilimackinac. Rogers expects to receive orders that permit him to appoint a deputy governor so that he can lead the search for the Northwest Passage himself, but such orders are not included with the authorization for the expedition, so the group leaves without Rogers (or Elizabeth, Potter and Ann), with Tute and a trader named Stanley Goddard in command. Because Towne has paid his own way to join the expedition, he is not under Tute's command, and he and McNott winter separately among the Yankton Dakota. In the spring, when they reunite with Tute, Goddard and Carver, they find that the rest of the group is out of supplies. Towne and McNott then learn that the other three have used their supplies to purchase a large parcel of land from the Dakota (which the Yankton Dakota inform McNott that the Dakota do not actually own, because it is contested by the Chippewa) and have abandoned their mission. McNott and Towne travel up the Missouri River on the route to the Northwest Passage without them, but a serious injury to McNott forces them to head back to Michilimackinac. When they arrive, in the spring of 1768, they learn that Charles Townshend has died, that Rogers has been arrested by Gage and Johnson for exceeding his authority, and that Ann has returned to England after Rogers tried to take improper liberties with her. When the ice on the Great Lakes breaks, Towne, who realizes that he has fallen in love with Ann, returns to England himself, where he finds and marries Ann, who has just opened a one-woman play about life on the frontier. She has taken some of his sketches to a royal society that commissions him to paint a series of pictures based on native mythology. Rogers later returns to England after being acquitted at court-martial but is ill from his imprisonment and is soon placed in debtors' prison. At the end, Towne and Ann decide to return to America and side with the American Revolution, although they know Rogers has sided with the British.
2642575	/m/07tt1l	Reaper	Ben Mezrich			 The story opens up when a group of lawyers are meeting to take down Telecon corporations when suddenly each and every one of the lawyers are hit with a type of rhinovirus that the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases classifies as "CaV". At that very time, our protagonist Nick Barnes is in the back of an ambulance trying to save a woman who suffered a vicious car accident. After a high speed operation, the woman is saved by having the blood drained from a bruise on her chest. After barely saving her life, Nick and his fellow EMT Charles both make it to the hospital. Nick faces suspension from the dangerous tactic taken to save the womans life. After leaving the hospital, they come across an office building where a janitor with battered face. He was the only survivor of the outbreak in the office building. After treating him, Nick and a few police officers at the scene move up to the lawyers office to see nine horribly Calcified bodies. Minutes later, the USAMRIID turns the area into a quarantine zone and lets Nick and the other officers off easily because they know that the virus couldn't affect them. Samantha Craig, the leader of the operation, dismisses Nick after he tries to discover whats going on. After time passes, Nick tries to break into the Quarantine area only to be held up by a group of armed soldiers. He is taken back to Boston General Hospital where he is being suspended for breaking protocol. Samantha learns of Nick's wife Jennifer who was a victim of AIDS and was killed in a car wreck that nearly took Nick's right hand. She also knows that he has a degree in microbiology. Samantha too has lost family, her brother Jeffery had died. While the two go into the investigation to discover what causes the disease, they begin to contradict their previous research after discovering the function of CaV. While this happens, president Marcus Teal of Telecon is preparing to activate his fiber optic system that had outdone Microsoft and other computer companies in the "Big Turn On". A controversy erupts between the employees because few are winding up dead and the lead programmer Melora Parkridge begins to plan her revenge on the world after what technology had done to the entire civilization. She crestes Reaper to destroy all technologies in the world after the Big Turn On. The virus is capable to burn computers away, but she is unaware that the virus has become self-aware and is killing humans by elctrocuting them at the keyboards on PCs or using CaV as a weapon. After a woman is killed by CaV in Washington, Nick begins to believe that computers are killing people. His belief is extended after joining an autopsty to learn that the virus attacks the brain and tells it to calcify all the cells. What terrifies him the most is the fact that the virus has affected and only affected the people with the Beta Test Run on the Telecon system. This starts the conspiracy that the killer is a computer virus that produces a Subliminal light pattern that is causing the brain to react. After getting photos of the Washington infection, they go to Telecon to speak to Marcus Teal about the virus and learn a good bit about fiber optics. Marcus Teal denies their claims and files harassment. Nick is fired, and then Samantha is thrown of the case of tracking down CaV. A friend of Samantha's then decides to help her out by funding her search illegally. Eventually they get too deep into the system by sending in Samantha's ex-boyfriend. Nick ends up getting into a gunfight after gunmen take out Samantha's ex-boyfriend. Samantha and Nick are on their own, so they decide to break into the system themselves in order to find enough information about the employees. They learn about the backdoor code that is a code for the military to use. Reaper itself has been using the backdoor code to slip into the test run. After getting enough information, they observe the data and go after a woman who was married to one of the programmers for the system. They go in deeper and eventually Melora discovers them. After that, everybody around them who helps is getting killed or injured by an antagonist. After getting deeper in, a man named Ned Dickerson is also a victim of Reaper by helping it. Reaper is now capable of using light patterns such as those of CaV to control people to do lenear tasks. Since it is evolving, this task is weak now. Melora is now ready to complete her plan by releasing Reaper into the main computer of Telecon unaware of its ability to use CaV or control people. The day of the Big Turn On, Marcus Teal is held hostage by Melora during the half hour before the Big Turn On. Nick and Samantha have already entered the building to stop the oncoming disaster. While trying to shut down the computer, Ned shows up in a trance state with a rifle. He begins to shoot at Nick and Samantha, then they begin a chase through the crowd because Ned shoots Teal and takes the key card needed to shut down the computer and quarantine the virus. They eventually find Ned, kill him in front of thousands, and finally stop the Big Turn On. Barely saving the world, Microsoft takes over the project and then they end up becoming the leaders of the system. But as for Nick and Samantha, they end up getting married. Other than that, the story ends with a big cliffhanger.
2644222	/m/07txqn	Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist	Alexander Berkman	1912	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The book begins with the details of how Berkman came to be imprisoned: as an anarchist activist, he had attempted to assassinate wealthy industrialist Henry Clay Frick, manager of the Carnegie steel works in Pennsylvania. Frick had been responsible for crushing the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers in the infamous Homestead strike, in which about 10 men were killed. However, although Berkman shot Frick three times and stabbed him several times in the leg with a poisoned knife, Frick survived, and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Berkman had hoped to awaken the consciousness of the oppressed American people &mdash; an attentat &mdash; but, as the book goes on to detail, America lacked the political culture to interpret his actions. Even fellow prisoners from the union he was defending failed to see his political intent. The bulk of the book is set during Berkman's years in prison. Written in first person, present tense, English (his second language), it reads like a diary, though it was in fact written after Berkman's release. It is a coming-of-age story that tracks Berkman's difficult loss of his youthful sentimental idealism as he struggles with the physical and psychological conditions of prison life, at times bringing him to the verge of suicide. As he gets to know the other prisoners, he has nothing but disdain and disgust for them as people, though he sees them as victims of an unjust system. "They are not of my world," he writes. "I would aid them," he says, being "duty bound to the victims of social injustice. But I cannot be friends with them... they touch no chord in my heart." Gradually, though, Berkman's self-imposed distance and moral high ground begins to crumble as he comes to see the flawed humanity in everyone, including himself. The Prison Memoirs is also, in part, a tribute to his friendship with fellow activist Emma Goldman, to whom he refers repeatedly (though not by name; he refers to her as "the Girl") throughout the book. She is the only person to maintain correspondence with Berkman in prison, and defends him from criticism on the outside, helping him upon his release. The book tracks the development of Berkman's ideas on political violence, and his ruminations often read like a dialog with Goldman, whom he knows intimately.
2644402	/m/07ty3g	The Rainmaker	John Grisham	1995	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Rudy Baylor is about to graduate from Memphis State Law School. He secures a position with a Memphis law firm, which he then loses when the firm is bought up by another, larger firm. As one of the few members of his class without a job lined up, Rudy is forced to apply for part-time and poorly-paid law positions. Desperate for a job, he reluctantly allows "Prince" Thomas, the crooked owner of a sleazy bar where he has been working part-time, to introduce him to J. Lyman "Bruiser" Stone, a ruthless but successful ambulance chaser, who makes him an associate. To earn his fee, Rudy is required to hunt for potential clients at the local hospital, where he must pick up injury cases and sign them on. He is introduced to Deck Shifflet, a less-than-ethical former insurance assessor who received a law degree but is not a lawyer because he has failed to pass the bar examination six times. Rudy signs two clients. One is his new elderly landlady, who needs a revised will drawn. The other is a poor family, Dot and Buddy Black, whom he met through a class visit to a community center. Their insurance bad faith case could be worth several million dollars in damages. With Stone's firm about to be raided by the police and the FBI, he and Deck set up their own practice and file suit on behalf of the Blacks, whose son Donny Ray is terminally ill with leukemia but almost certainly could have been saved with a bone marrow transplant for which his identical twin brother is a perfect match. The procedure should have been covered and paid for by their insurance company, Great Benefit Life Insurance, which instead denied the claim. Rudy, having just passed the bar exam, has never argued a case before a judge or jury but now finds himself up against experienced and ruthless lawyers from a large firm, headed by Leo F. Drummond. On his side, Rudy has several supporters and a sympathetic newly-appointed judge. While preparing the case in the local hospital, he meets and later falls in love with Kelly Riker, a young battered wife recovering from her latest injuries. Donny Ray dies just before the case is due to be heard. The case goes to trial and Rudy uncovers a scheme Great Benefit ran throughout 1991 to deny every insurance claim submitted, regardless of validity. Great Benefit was playing the odds that the insured would not consult an attorney. A former employee of Great Benefit testifies that the scheme generated an extra $40 million in revenue for the company. The trial ends with a plaintiff's judgment of $50.2 million. Great Benefit quickly declares itself bankrupt, thus allowing it to avoid paying the judgment. This starts a chain of further lawsuits as well as further financial catastrophes for the company and they go out of business. Ultimately, there is no payout for the grieving parents and no fee for Rudy, although Dot Black was never concerned with the settlement money, because for her helping to put the company out of business is an even greater victory. In fact, she testified that if awarded any money from Great Benefit, she would donate it to the American Leukemia Society. During the Black trial, when Kelly is beaten again by her husband, Rudy helps her file for divorce. While he and Kelly retrieve items from her home, Cliff arrives and threatens to kill Rudy, attacking him with a baseball bat. Rudy wrestles the bat away from Cliff and cracks his skull with it. Kelly intervenes and orders him to leave. Cliff dies from the injuries and Kelly allows herself to be charged with manslaughter to protect Rudy. Kelly spends a day in jail before Rudy gets the charges dropped but Cliff's vengeful family have made several death threats against them both. Rudy and Kelly leave the state, heading for someplace where Rudy - who has become disillusioned with the law - can let his license expire and then become a teacher, and Kelly can attend college.
2646076	/m/07v1f4	A Maze of Death	Philip K. Dick	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The plot revolves around fourteen colonists of the world Delmak-O. They are: Betty Jo Berm, a linguist; elderly Bert Kostler, settlement custodian; Maggie Walsh, a theologian; Ignatz Thugg, who oversees thermoplastics; Milton Babble, a physician; Wade Frazer, a psychologist; Tony Dunkelwelt, a geologist; Glen Belsnor, who specialises in telecommunications; Susie Smart, a typist; Roberta Rockingham, a sociologist; Ben Tallchief, a naturalist; Seth and Mary Morley, a marine biologist couple; and Ned Russell, an economist. They inhabit a universe in which the deities of their religion can be contacted through a network of prayer amplifiers and transmitters. Tallchief is transferred to Delmak-O as a direct result of his prayer-petition for a change in his intolerable work situation. Delmak-O is a mysterious and largely unexplored world. It seems to be inhabited by both real and artificial beings and enormous cube-shaped, gelatinous objects ("tenches") that duplicate items presented to them and give out advice, in anagrams reminiscent of the I Ching. In addition, various members of the group report sightings of a large "Building". As various calamities continue to befall each character, part of the group ventures out to find the mysterious structure. Each member of the group perceives the Building's entrance motto, and thus its purpose, differently. One by one, the characters Tallchief, Smart, Berm, Dunkelwelt, Kostler and Walsh either kill themselves or are killed under mysterious circumstances. During a fight between the remaining colonists Seth Morley is shot through the shoulder causing an artery to be severed. While recovering from an attempt to repair the artery, Morley is abducted by armed men who kill Belsnor. They put Morley aboard a small flying craft but Morley overpowers them and takes control of the craft. With it he discovers that Delmak-O is in fact Earth, and he returns to the group to report this. The group then comes to the conclusion that they are all criminally insane and part of a psychiatric experiment in rehabilitation. Once they admit to having killed the other members they conclude that the experiment has been a failure. It is at this point that they notice that each of them is tattooed with the phrase, "Persus 9". They decide to ask a tench what this means but doing so causes the tench to explode and the world around them to crumble to pieces. All of them, including the colonists thought to be dead, awake to find that they are actually the crew of a spaceship that has become stranded in orbit around a dead star with no way of calling for help. Their experience had been a kind of virtual reality—a computer-generated religion that synthesized their beliefs—to help them pass the time. Seth Morley is depressed by this and wonders whether it would be better to let all the air out from the ship and thus kill them all rather than live out the rest of their lives engaging in virtual reality with no hope of rescue. Before he can act, however, an aspect of the deity known as the Intercessor, supposedly existing only in the virtual reality program and not a part of the "real" world, appears before Morley and removes him from the ship. The others, unconcerned with his disappearance, embark on another hallucination which begins in exactly the same way as the previous one, only this time without Seth Morley.
2646126	/m/07v1my	The Mines of Bloodstone	Michael Dobson			 The characters need to journey through a blizzard to get to the Bloodstone Mines, which lead to the duergar kingdom of Deepearth, and the Temple of Orcus. The adventure begins with a set of village encounters, before some further encounters in a big valley. The player characters then proceed into the Mines of Bloodstone, where the duergar and svirfneblin are at war, and then on to the demonic temple of Orcus of the duergar. This is an attempt to gain an ancient treasure to help the belagured innocent citizens of Bloodstone Pass. The module includes two Battlesystem conflicts, between armies of gnomes and duergar.
2646224	/m/07v1xh	The Parrot's Theorem	Denis Guedj	1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot revolves around a household in Paris: Mr Ruche, an elderly wheelchair-using bookseller; his employee and housemate Perrette; and Perrette's three children - teenage twins and young Max who is deaf. Max liberates a talking parrot at the market and Mr Ruche receives a consignment of mathematical books from an old friend, who has lived in Brazil for decades without any contact between the two. The household sets up its own exploration of mathematics in order to crack the code of the last messages from Mr Ruche's old friend, now apparently murdered. Mathematical topics covered in the book include primes and factors; irrational and amicable numbers; the discoveries of Pythagoras, Archimedes and Euclid; and the problems of squaring the circle and doubling the cube. The mathematics is real mathematics, woven into an historical sequence as a series of intriguing problems, bringing their own stories with them.
2648617	/m/07v7kb	Gladiator	Philip Gordon Wylie	1930	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins at the turn of the 20th century. Professor Abednego Danner lives in a small, rural Colorado town, and has a somewhat unhappy marriage to a conservative religious woman. Obsessed with unlocking genetic potential, Danner experiments with a tadpole (which breaks through the bowl he's keeping it in), and a pregnant cat, whose kitten displays incredible strength and speed, managing to maul larger animals. Fearing the cat may be uncontrollable, Danner poisons it. When his wife becomes pregnant with their first child, Danner duplicates his experiment on his unknowing wife. Their child Hugo almost immediately displays incredible strength, and Danner’s wife realizes what her husband has done. Though she hates him, she does not leave him, and they instead raise their son to be respectful of his incredible gift and sternly instruct him never to fight, or otherwise reveal his gifts, lest he be the target of a witch-hunt. Hugo grows up being bullied at school, unwilling to fight back. However, he finds release when he discovers the freedom the wilderness around his hometown provides, unleashing his great strength on trees as a manner of playing. Hugo finds success in his teenage years, becoming a star football player, and receives a college scholarship. He spends summers and free time trying to find uses for his strength, becoming a professional fighter and strongman at a boardwalk. After killing another player during a football game, Hugo quits school. Danner then journeys to France and joins the French Foreign Legion fighting in World War I, where his bulletproof skin comes in handy. Upon returning home, he gets a job at a bank, and when a person gets locked inside the vault, Hugo volunteers to get him out if everyone will leave the room. Alone, Hugo rips open the vault door, freeing the man. The banker's response is not gratitude but suspicion. Hugo is deemed an inventive safecracker who was otherwise waiting for an opportunity to rob the vault. Not only is he fired and threatened with arrest for the destruction of the vault, but he is taken away and (ineffectually) tortured. He withstands all attempts at getting him to tell how he opened the vault, escapes, and lifts a car into the air (a feat echoed in the first appearance of Superman on the cover of Action Comics #1). Next, he attempts to have an influence in politics, but becomes infuriated with the state of affairs and the bureaucracy of Washington. Still seeking a goal for his life and a purpose for his powers, he joins an archeological expedition headed for Mayan ruins. Finally finding a friend in the scientist heading the expedition, Hugo reveals his gifts and origin to him. The wise archeologist sympathizes with Danner and suggests some courses of action for him to take. That night, during a thunderstorm, Danner wanders to the top of a mountain, debating what to do. He asks God for advice, and is struck dead by a bolt of lightning.
2649212	/m/07v8xz	A Dead Man in Deptford	Anthony Burgess	1995-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Starting in Marlowe's youth, Burgess paints a detailed picture of Elizabethan England. Marlowe's life as a homosexual may have had difficult consequences, but these were perhaps not as great as those of being a classical playwright and spy for Queen Elizabeth. Early in his spying career, Marlowe is instrumental in the discovery of the Babington Plot, but is sickened by the execution of the conspirators. Marlowe is portrayed as a secretive, solitary and eventually isolated person. Burgess explores his sexual addiction and passion for the theatre.
2649360	/m/07v9bg	Men of Iron	Howard Pyle		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story begins in 1400, the year after the abdication of Richard II of England and accession of Henry IV. Lord Gilbert Reginald Falworth is attainted for being King Richard's councilor, who strongly advised him to resist his cousin Henry's movement to seize the throne, and for protecting Sir John Dale, a fictional conspirator against the succeeding King Henry. Falworth is blinded in a trial by combat with William Bushy Brookhurst, later created Earl of Alban, whom young Myles remembers brutally killing Sir John Dale in the hall of Falworth castle where he lived with his parents. Lord Falworth, his wife, Myles, and Diccon Bowman go into hiding in Crosbey-Dale (pronounced, kris' bē-dāl) on the estates of the Priory of St. Mary, under the protection of the elderly Prior Edward. Most of the action of the novel is in Derbyshire, England where a city of Mackworth actually exists near Derby. Diccon Bowman undertakes the physical training of young Myles, and Prior Edward performs the academic training. Lady Falworth teaches him the French language. Myles is a champion wrestler, defeating a man a head taller than he. Later in the novel the reader learns that Myles as a child took a dangerous ride on a country windmill. In 1408 when Myles is 16 years old he is taken to Devlen castle, the seat of the Earl of Mackworth, kinsman to Lord Falworth. There he is enrolled as a squire by Sir James Lee, an old friend of his father's and Diccon Bowman. Sir James advises Myles to be discreet about matters concerning his family since his father had been attainted as a traitor to the king. Another squire, Francis Gascoyne, became Myles's good friend, who defended him in his struggle against the head-squires (the bachelors) led by Walter Blunt. There had been a pecking order established by which the bachelors forced the younger squires to serve them. Myles, Francis, and eighteen other lads formed what they called the "Twenty Knights of the Rose" as a fellowship to promote justice among the squires and end the hierarchy established by the bachelors. The "Knights of the Rose" met in a hideout discovered by Myles and Francis at the top of the oldest part of the castle, known as the "Brutus Tower," which they called their Eyry (hawk's nest). After two fights with Walter Blunt, Myles and his "knights" win a skirmish with the bachelors in which Blunt is gravely wounded by Myles for the second time. The bachelor's routine is ended. Walter Blunt is made a gentleman-in-waiting by the Earl Mackworth, and he is no longer mentioned in the novel. When retrieving a ball he had used in play with his friends, Myles makes his way over a wall into the "privy garden" used by the Countess Mackworth and her household, and meets Anne, the earl's daughter and Alice, the earl's niece. Anne is a few years older than Myles, but Alice is just his age so he begins to consider her his lady fair and a possible wife. Seven times he climbs over the wall to meet with the girls to tell them about his exploits. The last time Earl Mackworth himself sees him tresspassing and puts a stop to it. The reader is told later that Myles's father had his mother write Mackworth to advise him to do this. Myles escapes being severely punished for his actions as two other young men had been for venturing into this forbidden area. Unknown to Myles, his father and Earl Mackworth, who also was an enemy to the Earl of Alban, plan to have Myles knighted by the king as a Knight of the Bath to make him eligible to champion and exonerate his father on the field of battle in trial by combat. This is done during a royal visit to Devlen castle in 1411 in order to have Myles oppose the French jousting champion of the Compte de Vermoise, Sieur de la Montaigne. Sir Myles succeeds in unhorsing this knight fairly in a joust. Sir Myles with his chosen squire and friend Francis Gascoyne accompany the Earl Mackworth's brother Lord George Beaumont into France for military maneuvers in the French Dauphin's service. After six months he is recalled to London by Earl Mackworth to oppose the Earl of Alban. To further facilitate this Sir Myles is transferred from Mackworth's household to that of Henry, Prince of Wales. Myles's parents are brought to London to join their son before the king as their grievances are presented to him. Myles throws down his gauntlet before the Earl of Alban, initiating trial by combat. The ailing King Henry suspends these proceedings until the "High Court of Chivalry" can render a decision about the legality of the matter. After two months they find that Sir Myles Falworth may justly fight Alban. The battle is set for September 3, 1412. Sir Myles shows himself a more chivalrous knight than Earl Alban had been by giving his opponent quarter three times. This almost costs him his life, but in the end Sir Myles prevails in conquering his enemy. The king refuses to restore all the estates of Lord Falworth, but with the accession of his son, King Henry V of England, the following January the fortunes of Falworth and Mackworth are secured. Sir Myles marries the Lady Alice and lives in Falworth castle as his home with Sir Francis Gascoyne and Sir James Lee.
2652585	/m/07vk0n	Waiting for the Barbarians	John Maxwell Coetzee	1980-10-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set in a small frontier town under the jurisdiction of a political entity known only as "the Empire". The town's magistrate is the story's protagonist and first-person narrator. His rather peaceful existence in the town comes to an end with the declaration of a state of emergency and arrival of the Third Bureau, special forces of the Empire, led by a sinister Colonel Joll. There are rumours that the natives of the land, called "barbarians", are preparing an attack on the Empire, and so Colonel Joll and his men conduct an expedition into the land beyond the frontier. They capture a number of barbarians, bring them back to town, torture them, kill some of them, and leave for the capital in order to prepare a larger campaign against the barbarians. In the meantime, the Magistrate begins to question the legitimacy of imperialism and personally nurses a barbarian girl who was left crippled and partly blinded by the Third Bureau's torturers. The magistrate has an intimate yet ambiguous relationship with the girl. Eventually, he decides to take her back to her people. After a life-threatening trip through the barren land, during which they have sex, he succeeds in returning her&mdash;finally asking, to no avail, if she will stay with him&mdash;and returns to his own town. The Third Bureau soldiers have reappeared there and now arrest the Magistrate for having deserted his post and consorting with "the enemy". Without much possibility of a trial in wartime, the Magistrate remains in a locked cellar for an indefinite period, experiencing for the first time a near-complete lack of basic freedoms. He finally acquires a key that allows him to leave the makeshift jail, but finds that he has no place to escape to and only spends his time outside the jail scavenging for scraps of food. Later, Colonel Joll triumphantly returns from the wilderness with several barbarian captives and makes a public spectacle of their torture. Although the crowd is encouraged to participate in their beatings, the Magistrate bursts onto the scene to stop it, but is subdued. Taking the Magistrate, a group of soldiers hangs him up by his arms, culminating his understanding of imperialistic violence in a personal experience of torture. With the Magistrate's spirit clearly crushed, the soldiers mockingly let him roam freely through the town, knowing he has nowhere to go and no longer poses a threat to their mission. The soldiers, however, begin to abandon the town as winter approaches and their campaign against the barbarians starts to fall apart. The Magistrate tries to confront Joll on his final return from the wild, but the colonel refuses to speak to him, hastily fleeing the area with the last of the soldiers. With a widespread belief that the barbarians intend to invade the town soon, all the soldiers and many civilians have now departed, though the Magistrate helps encourage the remaining townspeople to continue their lives and to prepare for the winter. There is no sign of the barbarians by the time the season's first snow falls on the town.
2656781	/m/07vtrk	The Door in the Wall	Marguerite de Angeli	1949	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story, illustrated by the author, is set in England during the Middle Ages, as the bubonic plague is sweeping across the country. Young Robin wants to be a knight like his father, but his dreams are endangered when he loses the use of his legs. A doctor reassures Robin that the weakness in his legs is not caused by the plague and the doctor is supposed to come and help him but does not. His parents are away, serving the king and queen during war, and the servants abandon the house, fearing the plague. Robin is saved by Brother Luke, a friar, who finds him and takes him to a monastery and cares for him. Brother Luke teaches Robin how to swim and carve wood and make a harp, to be independent and build self confidence, but Robin also learns patience and strength from the friar. The friar tells him that before overcoming a challenge you must first find "the door in the wall". Robin's parents had planned for him to become a knight and to stay with Sir Peter de Lindsay to be a page first. John Go-in-the-Wynd, a minstrel, gives him a letter from Robin's father telling him and John Go-in-the-Wynd and Brother Luke to go to Lindsay. They get there after traveling for long hours, almost being robbed, and going on the wrong road for a time. When the castle of Peter de Lindsay is besieged by the Welsh and unable to send word for assistance, Robin swims the moat, hobbles through enemy lines using his crutches, disguised as a shepherd, and alerts a messenger. John Go-in-the-Wynd sends for Sir Hugh's help, and they defeat the Welsh invaders. The king and his forces deliver the inhabitants of the castle. Robin is reunited with his parents and they assure him that they love him more for his brave spirit than for his physical prowess. He is then knighted for his service to the crown. The term "door in the wall" means if one keeps trying and never gives up, they'll find a way to break through and to succeed. A quote from the book reads, "If thou followeth a wall far enough, there must be a door in it."
2656804	/m/07vts_	A Short History of Progress	Ronald Wright			 The first chapter, "Gauguin’s Questions", poses the questions that provide a framework for the book. Referring to Paul Gauguin's painting of the same name the questions are: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Wright defines progress using the Victorian terms "the assumption that a pattern of change exists in the history of mankind...that it consists of irreversible changes in one direction only, and that this direction is towards improvement". Despite the extended time span of the Stone Age, Wright places the first sign of progress as being the ability to create fire. The competition between Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals is examined with respect to the conditions that allowed one to out-compete the other. The second chapter, "The Great Experiment", continues the examination of Stone Age progress by looking at the advancements in hunting. Wright uses the term "progress trap" to refer to innovations that create new problems for which the society is unable or unwilling to solve, or inadvertently create conditions that are worse than what existed before the innovation. For example, innovations in hunting during the Stone Age allowed for more successful hunts and consequently more free time during which culture and art were created (e.g. cave paintings, bone carvings, etc.), but also led to extinctions, most notably of megafauna. As smaller and smaller game were hunted to replace larger extinct animals, the hunts became less successful and culture declined. With agriculture, and subsequently civilisations, independently arising in multiple regions at about the same time, ~10,000 years ago, indicates to Wright that "given certain broad conditions, human societies everywhere will move towards greater size, complexity and environmental demand". The chapter title refers to the human experience which Wright sees as a large experiment testing what conditions are required for a human civilisation to succeed. In the third chapter, "Fools' Paradise", the rise and fall of two civilisations are examined: Easter Island and Sumer. Both flourished, but collapsed as a result of resource depletion; both were able to visually see their land being eroded but were unwilling to reform. On Easter Island logging, in order to erect statues and build boats, destroyed their ecosystem and led to wars over the last planks of wood on the island. In Sumer, a large irrigation system, as well as over-grazing, land clearing, and lime-burning led to desertification and soil salination. In the fourth chapter, "Pyramid Schemes", the fates of the Roman and Mayan civilisations are compared; both peaked with centralised empires but ended with power being diffused to their periphery as the center collapsed and ultra-conservative leader refused reformations. Anthropologist Joseph Tainter's explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire is invoked, that "complex systems inevitably succumb to diminishing returns" so that the costs of operating an empire are so high that alternatives are implemented. Two examples of civilisations that have been sustainable are described: China and Egypt. Both had an abundance of resources, particularly topsoil, and used farming methods that worked with, rather than against, natural cycles, and settlement patterns that did not exceed, or permanently damage, the carrying capacity of the local environment. The final chapter, "The Rebellion of the Tools", seeks to answer the final Gauguin question, 'where are we going?', by applying these past examples to modern society. Technological advancements in bio-engineering, nanotechnology, cybernetics, amongst others, have the potential to be progress traps, and the global scale of modern society means that a societal collapse could impact all of mankind. Wright sees needed reforms being blocked by vested interests who reject multi-lateral organisations, and support laissez-faire economics and transfers of power to corporations as leading to the social and environmental degradations that led to the collapse of previous civilisations. Necessary reforms are, in Wright's view, being blocked by vested interests who are hostile to change, including American market extremists. Wright concludes that "our present behaviour is typical of failed societies at the zenith of their greed and arrogance" and calls for a shift towards long-term thinking:
2657088	/m/07vv58	Isard's Revenge	Michael A. Stackpole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After the death of Grand Admiral Thrawn in Timothy Zahn's The Last Command, the New Republic has decided to go after the numerous warlords terrorizing the galaxy. Its first target is Admiral Krennel. The mission seems straightforward at first, but then Isard appears from the dead, offering her services and using New Republic prisoners as bait (the same prisoners with whom Corran Horn spent some time aboard the Lusankya). After several initial victories against Krennel, the New Republic begins taking savage political blows from Krennel thanks to Isard. Meanwhile, Iella Wesseri and Mirax Terrik begin investigating a series of strange events and clues, and discover that somebody is setting up a trap for Rogue Squadron. Unfortunately, they are too late to warn Rogue Squadron. While on a mission, the Rogues are ambushed by an entire wing (6 squadrons, or 72 fighters) of assorted TIE-Fighters. With the unexpected aid of a squadron of TIE Defenders, the Rogues manage to win, but not before losing Janson, Asyr, and their two replacement pilots. It is revealed that they were rescued by Isard, and that the Isard working for Krennel is in fact a clone. She makes a deal with Wedge, saying that in return for helping the Rogues defeat Krennel and retrieve the Lusankya prisoners, she is to be granted amnesty for all past crimes. Wedge has no choice but to agree. While most of the galaxy, including Krennel, believe that Rogue Squadron is dead, Mirax finds out that they are still alive when Whistler and Gate escape Isard's base. The New Republic then receives a message from Wedge outlining the final decisive attack on Krennel. During the battle, Isard betrays Rogue Squadron and denies their commando and fighter support. Corran decides to land his Defender and liberate the prisoners himself, taking Ooryl and Nrin Vakil with him. Fortunately, Admiral Ackbar suspected a trap and brought secret reinforcements, including a large commando force. Krennel and the Isard clone are killed in the battle, and the Lusankya prisoners are liberated. Meanwhile, Isard takes her extra forces and attempts to steal the Lusankya, which was captured by the New Republic during the Bacta War and almost fully repaired. However, Iella and Mirax predicted her actions and thwarted Isard's plan. Isard was killed in the process. At a party celebrating the success of the campaign against Krennel, Janson, who survived Isard's ambush, is reunited with Rogue Squadron. Asyr, who also survived, keeps news of her survival secret, wanting to return to Bothawui and try to change the Bothan way of life for the better.
2657135	/m/07vv8c	Iron Fist	Aaron Allston		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After Wraith Squadron's first successful mission against Admiral Trigit, the squadron is transferred back to Coruscant. During a visit to one of the many bars on the planet, an anonymous cyborg, similar to Phanan, attacks them and starts a large bar fight. New Republic Military Police officers quickly arrive and break up the fight and arrest the members of Wraith Squadron. While being marched off, Face Loran hints that this may in fact be a trap, and the other members escape, subduing their captors. At the debriefing, it is revealed that the New Republic MPs were in fact covert agents working for Warlord Zsinj. For security reasons, Wraith Squadron is to be confined to the base. They also receive replacements pilots: Castin Donn, Dia Passik, and Shalla Nelprin. While at the base their new mission is to predict what Zsinj may be planning next. Meanwhile, Phanan recognizes that one of the officers who had debriefed them was Atton Repness, the corrupt officer who blackmailed Tyria into keeping quiet about his black market operation. Phanan and Kell devise an elaborate plot to bait Repness and expose him. Phanan and Face recruit Lara Notsil, who is actually Gara Petothel in disguise and offer her a spot in Wraith Squadron if she agrees to help bring down Repness. After submitting their predictions of Zsinj's plans, Wraith Squadron is sent to the Halmad system, an Imperial world with a large amount of resources. Their mission is to pose as a band of pirates and stage raids in an attempt to catch Zsinj's attention. They manage to sneak into an Imperial base and steal six TIE Interceptors. As the "Hawk-bats", the Wraiths begin staging pirate raids on freighters and ground targets. Meanwhile, at the pilot academy, Lara Notsil continues trying to bait Repness and succeeds. Using her Imperial Intelligence skills, she manages to hack into Repness' computer and anonymously sends the data to New Republic Intelligence. She then publicly rejects Repenss' offer to join his operation. Repness attempts to keep her quiet, but fails and is arrested. Lara is given Repness' old X-Wing and transferred to Wraith Squadron just in time to assist with a joint mission with Rogue Squadron. During the mission, Lara has the opportunity to shoot Wedge's X-Wing in the back, but can't bring herself to do it. After the mission, Wraith Squadron resumes the guise of the Hawk-bats and prepares for a massive raid on two Imperial airbases. Face begins to realize Phanan's deep depression, and Lara is covertly contacted by Warlord Zsinj, disguised as a job offer from the real Lara's brother. Lara is forced her to decide whether to join the New Republic or the Empire. Myn Donos passes by and provides some comfort, and offers to accompany Lara to see her "brother", fearing that it may be a trap set by Zsinj. The Wraiths start their massive raid, but are quickly foiled when Zsinj ambushes them. Phanan's fighter is shot down and Face tries to rescue him. Unfortunately, Phanan is mortally wounded from the crash and dies. Shocked at the death of his best friend, Face returns to the Wraiths, where he finds out that Zsinj has offered the Hawk-bats to join his fleet. Meanwhile, Lara and Donos arrive at the rendezvous. Lara meets her "brother", along with an Imperial Intelligence agent. Lara refuses to join them, and before they can do anything, Donos shoots both of them dead with his sniper rifle. Lara then lies to Donos by saying that both men tried to abduct her. Taking up Zsinj's offer, Face, Kell, and Dia go to meet Zsinj and obtain some intelligence on him. Castin smuggles himself on board their shuttle, believing that his tracer program will help destroy Zsinj. Unfortunately, Castin is killed trying to implant the program. Zsinj questions Face about the issue, and Dia is forced to "kill" Castin in order to prove their loyalty. (Zsinj staged it so that it looked as if Castin's body was still alive.) Dia suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder for her actions, but Face manages to calm her down. The romantic ties between Face and Dia begin to reveal themselves. After reviewing the data that Zsinj provided, Wedge figures out that Zsinj wants to attack Kuat and steal a new Super Star Destroyer, the Razor's Kiss. Shalla is sent as the Hawk-bat's combat specialist to "assist" Zsinj's commando force, while the rest of Wraith Squadron will pose as the Hawk-Bats, and will aid Zsinj's forces in the assault on the Kuat shipyards. Shalla manages to install Castin's tracker program into the Razor's Kiss computers, and sabotages the shield generators. A New Republic task force led by Han Solo ambushes Zsinj's forces at the rendezvous after the successful capture of the Razor's Kiss, destroying Razor's Kiss and severely damaging the Iron Fist. Face, after suffering severe injuries during the battle, returns to the Wraiths. They discover that he had removed his trademark scar. Face admits that Phanan forced him to, since his will stated that if Face did not undergo the operation, Phanan's considerable wealth would be given to Face's rival actor, Tetran Cowall.
2657171	/m/07vvb3	Solo Command	Aaron Allston		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wraith Squadron is once again tasked with destroying Warlord Zsinj. This time, they are assigned to General Han Solo, who is heading up the New Republic task force that is seeking Zsinj. At the same time, Face, who has just been promoted to Brevet Captain and given command of the squad, delves deeper into the history of Lara Notsil, finding out her secret and forcing her to abandon the group, though she would later help out the New Republic by creating an army of saboteur droids to cripple the flagship of the warlord. At the end of the book Wraith Squadron is absorbed into the New Republic Intelligence and Myn Donos, newly recovered from his depression, transfers to Rogue Squadron.
2657613	/m/07vw4q	Palace of the White Skunks	Reinaldo Arenas	1982	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character, Fortunato, wants to escape the throes of his sisters and parents by joining the revolutionaries vying to overthrow Batista's regime. Arenas seamlessly weaves in and out of the domestic voices that scream of the emotion and convention that young Fortunato wants to escape. Despite his courageous efforts, death remains outside in the backyard rolling the wheel of his bicycle.
2660869	/m/07w1_7	Arctic Adventure	Willard Price		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Hal and Roger Hunt go to Greenland to capture wild animals and send them to their father's animal farm on Long Island. With the help of Nanook, a huge polar bear, and Olrick, an Eskimo, they capture lots of animals. However, all is not well. They meet a mean American called Zeb who is determined to kill the two teenagers.
2661599	/m/07w4nr	The Hallowed Hunt	Lois McMaster Bujold	2005-05-24	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The principal characters are: Ingrey, who received a wolf spirit in childhood and spends most of the story discovering how, why and to what effect; Ijada, who receives a leopard spirit in a bungled rite; and Wencel, who has extended his life for centuries by taking over the bodies of others, mainly his own descendants, for a purpose that is finally revealed. Ingrey is sent by his lord to take custody of Ijada, who has killed an heir to the kingdom, and bring her to the capital. During their journey, Ingrey learns of the circumstances of the death and does his best to protect Ijada. They become entangled in Wencel's grand plan, which is finally nearing fruition. In the end, Ijada and Ingrey together defeat him and marry at the plot's resolution.
2661803	/m/07w55v	Waiting for the Mahatma	R. K. Narayan		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sriram is a high school graduate who lives with his grandmother in Malgudi, the fictional Southern Indian town in which much of Narayan's fiction takes place. Sriram is attracted to Bharati, a girl his age who is active in Mahatma Gandhi's Quit India movement, and he becomes an activist himself. He then gets involved with anti-British extremists, causing much grief to his grandmother. Sriram's underground activity takes place in the countryside, an area alien to him, and the misunderstandings with the locals provide the book's best comic moments. After spending some time in jail, Sriram is reunited with Bharati, and the story ends with their engagement amidst the tragedy of India's partition in 1947. Waiting for the Mahatma is written in Narayan's gentle comic style. An unusual feature of this novel is the participation of Gandhi as a character. His revolutionary ideas and practices are contrasted with the views of traditionalists such as the town's notables and Sriram's grandmother. The political struggle serves as a background to Sriram and Bharati's unconventional romance which is concluded outside either's family circle. This is one of Narayan's most successful novels, where much happens behind the facade of the low key storytelling. hi:वेटिंग फ़ॉर महात्मा
2661844	/m/07w576	In the Lake of the Woods	Tim O'Brien	1994	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main storyline often branches out to flashbacks of significant events in John Wade's past. John's childhood is constantly referred to as the advent of his persona, Sorcerer. As a child John was frequently abused verbally and emotionally by his alcoholic father, whom to other children seemed the perfect father. John often visited Karra's Studio of Magic, where he bought the Guillotine of Death, purchased by his father. John was devastated after his father's death and channeled his grief into magic. Wade met his future wife Kathy during their college years, becoming intimate with her despite his secretive nature. John spied on Kathy, of which she was aware, just as he was aware of her affair with a dentist. When John was deployed to Vietnam, he and Kathy conversed through letters, some of which frightened Kathy. John became deeply absorbed in his identity as Sorcerer. Charlie Company was involved in a massacre of a village, reminiscent of the real-life My Lai massacre but later, while working a desk job in records, John erased his involvement with the Company. Afterwards, John became lieutenant governor of Minnesota and later ran for the US Senate, with his campaign managed by the business-oriented Tony Carbo. At one point, Kathy has an abortion, despite her great wish to have a baby, because having a child would be problematic for John's career. After his landslide loss, John and Kathy took a vacation at a cabin in Lake of the Woods. They are continuously troubled by the revelation of John's Vietnam secrets, but pretend to be happy nevertheless. One night, John wakes up to boil a kettle of water for tea. Instead of preparing a drink, he pours the boiling water over a few household plants, reciting "Kill Jesus", which seems to please him. He remembers climbing back into bed with Kathy, but the next morning she's gone. After a day of walking around the area and discovering the boat's absence, John talks to his closest neighbors, the Rasmussens. After some time they call the sheriff and organize a search party. The authorities are suspicious of John's calm demeanor and noninvolvement in the search effort. Kathy's sister joins the effort and John begins to search for Kathy as well. After eighteen days the search party is called off and the investigation into John heats up. With a boat from Claude and supplies from the Mini-Mart, John heads north on the lake. Claude is the last person to talk to the disoriented John, over the boat's radio. O'Brien introduces a number of theories over the course of the story. Maybe Kathy had sped over the lake too quickly, hit a rough patch of water, and had been violently tossed into the lake, where she drowned. Perhaps she had misnavigated the boat and had become hopelessly lost in the wilderness, only to run out of supplies. Or possibly John had returned to the bedroom with the boiling water and had poured it over her face, scalding her. Afterwards he would have sunk the boat and body in the lake, weighed down by a number of rocks. Or the event might have been John's last great magic trick, a disappearing act. John and Kathy would have planned her disappearance, and to have John join her later on, after the search efforts had been called off, leaving them to a new start at life. O'Brien introduces numerous pieces of evidence to support these theories, and leaves the decision up to the reader. Although the inconclusive ending irritates many readers, O'Brien tries to argue that this is the truest way to tell a story, which is reminiscent of his other book, The Things They Carried.
2661883	/m/07w5b0	The Westing Game	Ellen Raskin	1978	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sixteen heirs who are mysteriously chosen to live in the Sunset Towers apartment building on the shore of Lake Michigan, somewhere in Wisconsin, come together to hear the will of the self-made millionaire, Samuel W. Westing. The will takes the form of a puzzle, dividing the sixteen heirs into eight pairs, giving each pair a different set of clues which consist of almost all of the lyrics from "America The Beautiful", and challenging them to solve the mystery of who murdered Sam Westing. As an incentive, each heir is given $10,000 to play the game. Whoever solves the mystery will inherit Sam Westing's $200 million fortune, and his company, Westing Paper Products.
2662109	/m/07w62r	Shadow of a Bull	Maia Wojciechowska	1964	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After Spain’s favorite matador Juan Olivar dies from being gored by a bull it is up to his 3 year old son Monolo to live up to his father’s name. Six men tell Monolo he will have his first bullfight when he is 12 years old. But there is one thing Monolo won’t tell a soul, he is a coward. He doesn’t have the passion to be a bullfighter. He wants to become a doctor. All the people in the town of Arcangel are expecting him to be just as good as his father was at his first bullfight. Monolo’s friend Juan wants to be a bullfighter but can’t get anyone important to watch him. At Monolo’s tentena he realizes that he can’t be a bullfighter and he gives his bull and the ring to Juan and a doctor tells him “I knew you were no bullfighter, so how would you like to come work with me for a while?” Monolo agrees. The story takes place in the province of Arcangel, Southern Spain, but it never tells the year to date the book but you can get a pretty good idea from reading it. Twelve-year-old Manolo Olivar is the son of Juan Olivar, a renowned bullfighter who was killed in the ring when Manolo was only three. The people in the town of Arcangel, Spain, expect that Manolo will follow in his father's footsteps. His best friend, Jamie, has a brother, Juan, who yearns to fight bulls like his father before him, but Manolo has been trying to conquer his own fears. Many of the townspeople have paid much attention to Manolo, mainly by comparing him to his famous father or taking him to bullfights to see how to perform the sport. Through all this commotion, Manolo is trying to learn more about his father. Everyone in the town always speaks of how great Juan Olivar, Manolo's father, was, but Manolo wants to know the truth. Manolo has heard that his father first killed a bull when he was twelve years old. Manolo wants to know, did Juan Olivar have fear? After seeing the result of a bull goring, Manolo becomes more discouraged in becoming a bull fighter. He notices the old doctor cleaning the wound and, hearing that he was the only doctor who would touch a goring injury, decides that he could be the next doctor. Manolo still suffers from the problem that everyone wants him to be a bullfighter, not a doctor. Realizing that he should follow in his father's footsteps, Manolo trains in secret as a matador with his friend's brother Juan. The more he practices, the sooner Manolo realizes how big a coward he is. The days left until the annual fiesta, his first bullfight, are decreasing. Manolo is close friends with Count De La Casa, a very famous count who also knew Manolo's father. Because of their friendship, Manolo is confident that the count would give him anything he asked for. Manolo goes and meets with Juan and promises him that he would ask the count if Juan could be invited to the party. Manolo does not tell Juan that he would like it if Juan fought Manolo's bull so he can have a chance for the count to see him fight. The day of his first contest arrives, and Manolo is successful in the corrida. He knows all the moves and has practiced daily, but when it is time for the killing, Manolo realizes that he simply does not have the spirit of a bullfighter, and he finally offers Juan a chance in the ring. The doctor who Manolo had met previously offers Manolo an apprenticeship, allowing Manolo to follow his own dream. Manolo does live up to his father's name, just not how people expected.
2662485	/m/07w6yt	The Witch of Blackbird Pond	Elizabeth George Speare	1958-12-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In April 1687, 16-year-old Katherine Tyler (known throughout the story as Kit Tyler) leaves her home in Barbados after her grandfather's death and goes to Wethersfield, Connecticut to live with her Aunt Rachel and Uncle Matthew in their Puritan community. On the way to her new home, there is a brief stop in Saybrook, a small town just down river from Wethersfield, and four new passengers board the Dolphin, the ship on which Kit is traveling. As the small rowboat returns to the ship, a small girl named Prudence accidentally drops her doll in the water and begs her mother to get it back for her. Her mother, Goodwife Cruff, harshly strikes Prudence and tells her not to be foolish. Impulsively, Kit jumps into the water and retrieves the doll. When she returns to the rowboat, she is met with astonished suspicion as few people in Connecticut could swim so well. Goodwife Cruff is the most cynical of them all, believing Kit is a witch, saying, "No respectable woman could stay afloat like that." But Kit knew how to swim because she lived in the islands. On the slow trip upriver, Kit befriends John Holbrook, another passenger coming to Wethersfield to study with Reverend Gershom Bulkeley. After the Dolphin reaches Wethersfield, Kit admits to the captain of the ship that neither her aunt nor uncle know she is coming. She says that they would welcome her because she is family. When she arrives in Wethersfield, Kit finds Connecticut very different from Barbados. In her previous home, she had servants but here is expected to work along with the rest of the family. There is none of the luxury to which she was accustomed, and even the weather is miserably cold. She has two cousins, Mercy and Judith. She is required to attend meeting (church) services twice each Sunday, which she finds long and dull. She meets the rich, 19-year old William Ashby, who begins courting her, though she does not care for him; originally, herchurch, Kit cousin Judith had hoped to marry William, but soon sets her sights on John Holbrook, a divinity student studying with local minister Gershom Bulkeley. Kit's life improves when she and Mercy begin teaching the 'dame school' for the young children of Wethersfield who are preparing for the traditional school. Everything goes well until one day, bored with the normal lessons, Kit decides the children will act out a part from the Bible--the tale of the Good Samaritan. Mr. Eleazer Kimberly, the head of the school, enters the house just as things get out of hand. He is outraged at Kit for having the audacity to act out something from the Bible and shuts down the school. Heartbroken, Kit flees to the meadows where she meets and befriends the kind, elderly woman named Hannah Tupper, who was outlawed from the Massachusetts colony because she is a Quaker, and does not attend Meeting. As outcasts, Kit and Hannah develop a deep relationship, and even after her uncle forbids Kit to continue the friendship, Kit keeps visiting Hannah. During one of her visits, she once again meets the handsome Nathaniel "Nat" Eaton, son of the captain of the Dolphin. Without realizing it, she falls in love with him, and though he doesn't say so, Nat loves her as well. Unfortunately, Nat is banished from Wethersfield after setting lighted jack-o-lanterns in the windows of William Ashby's unfinished home with two of his shipmates-he will get 30 lashes if he returns to Wethersfield. Kit also begins secretly teaching Prudence to read and write; Goodwife Cruff claims the child is a halfwit and refuses to allow her to attend the dame school. When a deadly illness sweeps through Wethersfield, a mob gathers to kill Hannah by burning her house, since everyone believes she is a witch who has cursed the town. Kit risks her life to warn Hannah, and the two women escape to the river just as the Dolphin appears from the early morning mist. Kit flags it down, and she explains to Nat the events of the night. Hannah refuses to leave without her cat, so Nat bravely gets it for her. After taking Hannah aboard, he then invites Kit to come with them. She refuses, explaining how Mercy is gravely ill, though Nat believes Kit fears risking her engagement to William Ashby. After the Dolphin sails away, Kit returns home to find that Mercy's fever has broken. In the middle of the same night, the townspeople come for Kit — Adam Cruff, Goodwife Cruff's husband, had accused Kit of being a witch. The next day, after a night in a freezing shed, she is asked to explain the presence of her hornbook in Hannah's house and a copybook with Prudence's name written throughout, as the townspeople fear that she and Hannah had been casting a spell over the girl. Kit refuses to explain that it is Prudence herself who wrote her name in the book, as she does not wish Prudence to get in trouble with her parents. Then, just as the case seemed to be decided, Nat appears with Prudence who testifies that she herself wrote her own name in the hornbook, not Kit. To demonstrate her literacy, Prudence reads a Bible passage and writes her name, thus convincing her father both that she is intelligent and that no witchcraft could be involved, as he points out the devil would be foolish to allow a child to be taught to use the Bible against himself. Judith becomes engaged to William Ashby, who had been courting Kit, and Mercy to John Holbrook, and Kit decides to return to Barbados. However, she soon realizes that she is in love with Nat, and she waits for him to return. Nat returns to Wethersfield with his own ship, the Witch, named for Kit. Nat asks her to come on board the Witch "for keeps".
2662812	/m/07w7sg	Secret of the Andes	Ann Nolan Clark	1952	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Cusi is a 20th century Incan boy who lives in a high mountain valley with an old llama herder named Chuto. Chuto raised Cusi in a traditional Incan fashion, although the Spanish culture was prevalent in Peru since the conquest of the Incan Empire. Although eager for adventure, Cusi is still drawn to the home he has known all his life. Cusi sets out from his home to try to find a family.
2663746	/m/07w9f5	The Bloodstone Wars	Douglas Niles			 The Bloodstone Wars consists of a Battlesystem scenario depicting a battle to rid a city of a bandit horde. The module is designed for 1st edition AD&D and makes considerable use of some rules that were removed in 2nd edition, notably the assassin character class. There are two main parts of the module, the War itself which includes preparation and fighting out Battlesystem battles, and a small "dungeon" adventure which could occur at several points of the war. While the module provides alternatives for those who do not want to use miniatures to fight out the battles, the Battlesystem scenarios take a considerable portion of the module information. Players without Battlesystem would likely feel they were not getting full value from the module.
2664876	/m/07wczp	Uncommon Women and Others	Wendy Wasserstein			 Alumnae of Mount Holyoke College (Wasserstein's alma mater) meet for lunch one day in 1978 and talk about their time together in college. The play is thus a series of flashbacks to the 1972-1973 school year as seven seniors and one freshman try to "discover themselves" in the wake of second-wave feminism.
2664992	/m/07wd73	Slavers	Chris Pramas	2000	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 ==Publication histor
2665819	/m/07wg9c	Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy	Telford Taylor	1970-06		 The book begins with a lengthy history of war crimes beginning with the “knightly chivalry” of the medieval period. These rules were put into place in order to minimize unnecessary cruelties during the course of warfare. The rules protected civilian populations from massacre and the needless spread of disease. Thus, the blanket of immunity that protects soldiers from being held criminally responsible for murder committed during the course of warfare had to be carefully balanced so as to discourage wartime atrocities. The laws of war remained largely unwritten until U.S. President Abraham Lincoln approved the “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field”, in 1863. Concerning spies, prisoners of war, and the punishment of war crimes, this document comprising 159 articles facilitated the formation of military tribunals and later led to a demand for the formalization of international laws of warfare. Thus, international laws of warfare were codified by means of a series of treaties known as the Hague and Geneva conventions. The most important consequence of these treaties is that all nations, whether signatory or otherwise, were bound by international laws of war. The Nuremberg Trials, for which Taylor served as a leading figure, gave rise to several developments in regard to international law as applied to warfare. First, it gave international jurisdiction to the prosecution of war crimes; and second, it obligated individuals engaged in warfare to adhere to international laws of conduct over and above those of their respective armies. Of greatest importance with respect to this book however is that the United States as a result of its participation emerged as legally, morally, and politically bound to the principles that resulted from the Nuremberg trials. Thus, Taylor is concerned by how the principles of the Nuremberg trials would apply to the United States’ conduct of the Vietnam War. When Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy was published, those in favor and opposition to the United States involvement in Vietnam frequently cited the Nuremberg trials in support of their positions. Those in favor of United States involvement argued that North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam in violation of Article 2 of the United Nations Charter; South Vietnam was justified in using force to repel such an attack; and this in turn allowed the United States to join with South Vietnam as provided by Article 51. Those opposed to the United States involvement in the Vietnam War asserted that both South Vietnam and the United States violated the Geneva Declaration of 1954 by attacking North Vietnam, rearming illegally, preventing the 1956 national elections which were provided for in the Declaration, and subsequently bombing North Vietnam. Such actions would constitute “aggressive warfare” by the standards of Nuremberg. Taylor points out that the definition of “aggressive warfare” is ambiguous, thus severely hindering any attempt to determine which of the belligerent powers involved in the Vietnam War could be deemed the “aggressor.” What’s more, such ambiguities lead to several related questions, such as the legality of refusing to serve in Vietnam. At the time, many conscientious objectors refused to serve in Vietnam on the grounds that their complicity in an illegal war made them, by implication, guilty of crimes against humanity. Taylor cites possible war crimes in regard to the Son My incident, which is more commonly known as the My Lai Massacre of 1968 (). It is in this portion of the book that Taylor makes the most convincing comparison of Nuremberg to the Vietnam War. In this section, Taylor quotes two eyewitness accounts, each from a different war. One account, written by a German construction engineer, describes the killing of Jews during the Holocaust by German SS officers in 1942. This account is juxtaposed on the adjacent page by an eyewitness account of the My Lai Massacre. The accounts are eerily similar, yet Taylor explains all of the differences, and in characteristically unbiased fashion shows the difficulty in determining whether or not crimes were committed by the United States. Taylor also raises domestic problems with regard to the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. According to Taylor, it remains to be seen whether the United States Congress or the Executive branch of government held responsibility for officially declaring military action in Vietnam. It is the opinion of Taylor that both the President and the Congress bear responsibility, and that the Vietnam War could only be ended by an act of national will, rather than by judicial means.
2667163	/m/07wkqv	Mr. Palomar	Italo Calvino		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 27 short chapters, arranged in a 3 × 3 × 3 pattern, the title character makes philosophical observations about the world around him. Calvino shows us a man on a quest to quantify complex phenomena in a search for fundamental truths on the nature of being. The first section is concerned chiefly with visual experience; the second with anthropological and cultural themes; the third with speculations about larger questions such as the cosmos, time, and infinity. This thematic triad is mirrored in the three subsections of each section, and the three chapters in each subsection. For example, chapter 1.2.3, "The infinite lawn" ("Il prato infinito") has elements of all three themes, and shows the progress of the book in miniature. It encompasses very detailed observations of the various plants growing in Mr Palomar's lawn, an investigation of the symbolism of the lawn as a marker of culture versus nature, the problem of categorizing weeds, the problem of the actual extent of the lawn, the problem of how we perceive elements and collections of those elements ... These thoughts and others run seamlessly together, so by the end of the chapter we find Mr Palomar extending his mind far beyond his garden, and contemplating the nature of the universe itself.
2667882	/m/07wmh0	Coin Locker Babies	Ryu Murakami		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 It is the surreal story of two boys, Hashi and Kiku, who were both abandoned by their mothers during infancy and locked in coin lockers at a Tokyo train station in the summer of 1972. Both boys become wards of the Cherryfield Orphanage in Yokohama, where the tough and athletic Kiku comes to the defense of the slight, and often picked on, Hashi. They are adopted by foster parents, the Kuwayamas (the wife is Zainichi Korean) who live on an island off Kyushu. At the age of 16 both find themselves in a diseased urban wasteland in Tokyo named Toxitown. Hashi, whose voice has deep effects on those who hear it, becomes a bisexual rock star, employed by an eccentric producer named D. Kiku becomes a pole vaulter and with his girlfriend Anemone, a model who has converted her condo into a swamp for her crocodile, searches for a substance named DATURA in order to take his revenge upon the city of Tokyo and destroy it. Along the way, however, in a search for Hashi's real mother, Hashi and D come upon a woman who turns out to be Kiku's... with grave consequences for them all.
2671263	/m/07wv_s	The Sundial	Shirley Jackson	1958	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Sundial tells the story of the residents of the Halloran house, opening on the evening of the funeral of Lionel Halloran, the house's master. Lionel's wife, Maryjane, is convinced that Lionel was pushed down the stairs and murdered by his mother, Orianna Halloran, who stands to inherit the house; only hours after the funeral, Maryjane has already taught her young daughter Fancy to repeat that "Granny killed my daddy." Also living at Halloran house are the aged Richard Halloran, needing a wheelchair to move around, and kept by a nurse; Essex, a young man hired to catalogue the library (and of whom it is implied was more specifically hired to be a kept man to the elder Mrs. Halloran); Fanny, Richard Halloran's sister; and Miss Ogilvie, young Fancy's governess. A less obvious but nonetheless imposing character in the novel is the Halloran house itself. Built by a man who came into great wealth late in his life, the house is lavish to the point of garishness, and the endless details of the grounds and interiors are carefully described by Jackson until they overwhelm both characters and reader alike. One of these details is the titular sundial, which stands like an asymmetrical eyesore in the middle of the mathematically perfect grounds and bears the legend "WHAT IS THIS WORLD?" (a quote from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in "The Knight's Tale"). Immediately upon the death of her son, Orianna seizes ownership of the house and begins to exert her power over its occupants: Miss Ogilvie and Essex are to be dismissed, Maryjane sent away, and Fanny allowed to live in the house only by Orianna's good graces. Young Fancy, who Orianna claims will inherit the house upon her grandmother's death, will remain. Amid the uproar following this announcement, Fanny receives a vision whilst walking in the Halloran gardens: the ghost of her father warns her that the world is soon to end and that only those in the Halloran house will be spared. As Fanny tells the others of the coming destruction, a snake seems to manifest on the floor; this is taken as an omen from the ghost of Fanny's father. Orianna, shaken, reconsiders and allows everyone to remain in the house. Soon after this, Orianna sends for Mrs. Willow, "an old friend" of Orianna's. Mrs. Willow arrives with her two daughters, Julia and Arabella; all three women seem intent on winning their way into the Hallorans' money, but become frightened when they hear of the coming destruction and refuse to be sent away. Only a few days after, another young woman named Gloria arrives. Gloria is seventeen, a cousin of Orianna, who asks to stay with the Hallorans whilst her father is out of the country. Mrs. Willow, meanwhile, suggests they try to view the future through an oil-coated mirror—a parlor game from her adolescent years. Gloria volunteers to try it, and describes visions of the end of the world and the Eden-like paradise that will come afterwards. The visions terrify Gloria and the others must pressure her to see for them. Finally, a last member of the party is brought into the house: a stranger whom Fanny and Miss Ogilvie meet at random in the village. Upon making his acquaintance, Aunt Fanny dubs him "Captain Scarabombardon." His real name is never revealed. At first the small group is excited, using the opportunity to spend Halloran money to stock up on items for the "next world." They burn books in the library to make room for supplies. At first the items are useful, but gradually, as the pampered residents begin to think of luxuries they might miss in "Eden", the supplies grow fanciful to the point of ridiculousness. Orianna soon begins to issue edicts and laws regarding behaviour after the world ends, setting herself up as the queen of the coming paradise. The more she commands and postures, the more the others ignore her as they grow more and more caught up by Gloria's increasingly detailed visions of the beauty of the next world. When doubt is again expressed by Orianna, another omen—the spontaneous shattering of a window overlooking the sundial—is attributed to Fanny's dead father. There are at least two dissenters in the group. Julia, who finds the concept of the end of the world ridiculous, wishes to leave with Captain. Orianna, realising that Captain is only one of two males who will enter the new world, bribes him with enough money to convince him to stay, claiming that she does not believe he will have enough time to spend it all. Julia goes on alone, but after a ride with a terrifying, sadistic cabbie (it is possible, though barely suggested, that this man might have been employed by Orianna solely to scare Julia), she flees back to the safety of the house. Gloria, meanwhile, has befriended Essex, and talks about her dream to live out the rest of her life—no matter how short it might be—in a real world, rather than the artificial, insulated world of the Halloran manor. Essex betrays Gloria by alerting Orianna of the young woman's plans of leaving. A less obvious dissenter is Fancy. A spoiled and frightening child, Fancy resents the idea that the world will be destroyed before she has a chance to live in it, and plays obsessively with her dollhouse (which itself is a small model of the Halloran house), taking as much delight in ordering her dolls about as Orianna takes in lording over the residents of Halloran House. Fancy has taken her grandmother's promise of inheritance to heart, and claims that when she will smash the dollhouse when her grandmother dies because she "won't need it anymore." The evening before the world is due to end, Orianna plans a great party (outdoors, so that no one will comment on the preparations inside the house) and invites the whole village to attend for a final feast. This party takes on the air of a coronation when Orianna appears wearing a small gold crown to symbolise her position in the next world. Orianna vows never to remove the crown until she passes it on to Fancy. The day after the party is spent sending away the servants and covering up the windows of the house so that no one will have to see the destruction that will happen that night. A violent storm begins, and the lights go out as the residents prepare to gather for the night in a single room. As the group goes downstairs, they discover Orianna dead on the landing. "I was certainly wondering about all those instructions and rules of hers," observes one character. "I kept thinking maybe she was going to a different place than ours." As they speculate on what might have happened, Fancy dashes down to take the crown from her grandmother's head and put it on her own. The two men brave the storm to carry Orianna's body to the sundial, where it is implied she will be swept away in the destruction. Then all the players gather together to wait for the coming morning, and the novel ends.
2672715	/m/07wzg2	For Love of Audrey Rose			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 In 1964, a fiery car crash claimed the lives of Audrey Rose Hoover and her mother. Eleven years later, Elliot Hoover, her father, believes he has found Audrey's reincarnated soul in the body of 10-year-old Ivy Templeton. When Ivy dies during a terrible hypnotic reenactment of Audrey's death throes, the Templetons are devastated and Elliot disappears. However, the question remains: If Audrey Rose returned as Ivy Templeton, who died in 1975—then, where is she now? Janice Templeton is determined to find the answer.
2673389	/m/07w__8	The March	E. L. Doctorow	2005	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Published in 2005 by E.L. Doctorow, The March is a historical fiction novel set in late 1864 and early 1865 near the conclusion of the American Civil War. Central to the novel is the character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as he marches his 60,000 troops through the heart of the South, carving a 60 mile wide scar of destruction in their wake. As a result of Sherman’s order to live off the land, his soldiers wreak chaos as they pillage homes, steal cattle, burn crops, and accumulate a nearly unmanageable population of freed slaves and refugees who have nowhere else to go. While the novel revolves around the decisions of General Sherman, the novel has no specific main character. Instead, Doctorow retells Civil War history according to the individual lives of a large and diverse cast of characters—-white and black, rich and poor, Union and Confederate--whose lives are caught up in the violence and trauma of the war. The character of General Sherman is an unstable strategic genius who longs for a sense of romance in the war he wages and chafes under the implications of a post-war bureaucracy. Charismatic, yet often detached, Sherman is idolized by his men and the freed slaves who follow behind in hope of a better future. Pearl is a young and attractive former slave who is unsure about her future and the attention she is now receiving from the handsome Union soldiers. She must decide whether to follow the advice of other emancipated slaves or choose to seek the possibilities she hopes the conclusion of the war will bring. Colonel Sartorius is a cold yet brilliant field surgeon who is seemingly numb to the horrors of war due to his close and frequent proximity to the surgical hacksaw which he carries with him everywhere. Trained in Germany, Sartorius experiments with new techniques on his patients and becomes consumed with his work, leaving little time for regret, romance, or pain. Arly and Will are two Confederate soldiers who serve the roles of the Shakespearian fool, alternately offering comic relief and poignant wisdom. Their antics are wild and chaotic and include defecting to the Union, impersonation, and robbing a church in order to be able to pay for a trip to a brothel. Emily Thompson is a displaced southern aristocrat who becomes the assistant and passionless lover to Colonel Sartorius. The novel ends when the war ends, exposing the cautious optimism of the freed slaves and beleaguered soldiers. The final scene of the novel describes the faint smell of gunpowder dissipating through a forest with the lonely image of the boot and shredded uniform of a fallen soldier lying in the dirt. While Doctorow’s characters express guarded hope now that the conflict is over, the physical and psychological toll of the war has left its scars on the people and the land and no one is quite sure what to do next.
2673948	/m/07x1cf	So Big	Edna Ferber			 The story follows the life of a young woman, Selina Peake De Jong, who decides to be a school teacher in farming country. During her stay on the Pool family farm, she encourages the young Roelf Pool to follow his interests, which include art. Upon his mother's death, Roelf runs away to France. Meanwhile, Selina marries a Dutch farmer named Pervus. They have a child together, Dirk, whom she nicknames "So Big," from the common question and answer "How big is baby? " "So-o-o-o big!" (Ferber, 2). Pervus becomes ill and dies, and Selina is forced to take over working on the farm to give Dirk a future. As Dirk gets older, he works as an architect but is more interested in making money than creating buildings and becomes a stock broker, much to his mother's disappointment. His love interest, Dallas O'Mara, an acclaimed artist, echoes this sentiment by trying to convince Dirk that there is more to life than money. Much later in life, Selina is visited by Roelf Pool, who has since become a famous sculptor. Dirk grows very distressed when, after visiting his mother's farm, he realizes that Dallas and Roelf love each other and he cannot compete with the artistically-minded sculptor. In the end, Dirk comes to appreciate the wisdom of his mother, who always valued aesthetics and beauty even as she scraped out a living in a stern Dutch community. Ultimately, Dirk is left alone in his sumptuous apartment, saddened by his abandonment of artistic values.
2674646	/m/07x2vh	The Boggart	Susan Cooper		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A timeless spirit of mischief, the boggart has lived in Castle Keep since ages past, wreaking havoc upon the MacDevons who've lived there. His job, as far as he's concerned, is to keep life "interesting" for his beloved family. He's been too busy filching apples, knotting shoelaces, and trashing the kitchen to pay much attention to the march of history. But when the last MacDevon dies, the boggart has to come to terms with a new set of owners: the Volnik family from Toronto, who have no intention of inhabiting the drafty tumbledown castle that they've inherited from their great-uncle MacDevon. The sulking boggart is most displeased to find himself mistakenly shipped to Canada inside an antique desk destined for Emily Volnik's room. But once out and about, he is fascinated by this new world of peanut butter, pizza, and electric gizmos. Filching oatcakes quickly becomes a thing of the past as the boggart finds all sorts of new ways he can drive this modern family crazy. Possessing the t.v. set? No problem. Booby-trapping the house for Halloween? Well, if kids can do it, boggarts can do it. The traffic lights in downtown Toronto? Wouldn't they look prettier if they were another color? But when the boggart's pranks send Emily to the hospital, she and her brother Jessup must find a way to pry the boggart out of his new home and send him back to the castle where he belongs. Back in Scotland, the mail carrier swears his van is haunted when he delivers Jessup's Christmas package all the way from Canada. And the video game that Jessup finds inside seems to have a mind of its own! When Jessup crashes into the black hole himself, the boggart bursts forth from his own computer, home at last and free. The happy boggart returns to Castle Keep, ready to welcome its new owners with a whole host of boggart tricks.
2674801	/m/025sdyx	The Light in the Forest	Conrad Richter	1953	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01j1n2": "Coming of age", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 John Cameron Butler, a young boy from a Pennsylvanian Colony in America is taken hostage during a raid by a Lenni Lenape tribe during territorial wars. None of the Pennsylvanian men rescue him, and he is adopted by tribesman Cuyloga into the Native American society and rechristened "True Son". Believing himself to be of Indian blood, he hates the colonists, and 11 years later, the American military men come to return him to his colonial home. His Native American father reluctantly gives him back to the colonists, in exchange for the return of some Indian lands. His cousin, Half Arrow, and his friend, Little Crane, accompany him on his journey to the new settlement, but soon they must leave him before they venture too far out of Native American territory. True Son returns to his colony of origin and finds it hard to communicate with his English speaking family. His family tries reconnecting with their lost son, but he refuses to have any part in the English colony. His Aunt Kate remarks upon the objects that seem to be randomly missing from their places. Later, we find out True Son has been stealing various items for his journey back to the Native Americans. Little Crane was killed the previous night by his white racist Uncle Wilse, and he and Half Arrow go to scalp his uncle. His uncle fights back and calls for help, and True Son and Half Arrow forget their attempt and begin their trip back. True Son and Half Arrow return home and inform Cuyloga of the murder. Little Crane's family rallies a group to go raid the settlement to avenge Little Crane. All the men of the tribe go, as do True Son and Half Arrow. The tribe makes plans to ambush a boat. True Son was to tell them when to ambush the boat. True Son, instead, told the people on the boat that they were to be ambushed, thus betraying his Indian family and tribe. The tribe then forces him to go back to his white family. In the end it is Cuyloga who brings him back to the territory line and tells him that from that point on they will separate and become enemies, if they happen to see each other again they will treat each other like enemies and not like father and son.
2675192	/m/07x40h	The Praxis	Walter Jon Williams		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Praxis begins with the last days of the Shaa. The Shaa are a powerful race that have ruled the Empire for thousands of years, having subjugated humans and other races. The Praxis is their philosophy, founded on total obedience and hierarchy. The end of the Empire brings civil war, as an insectoid race, the Naxids, battle humans and the other races following the death of the last of the 'Great Masters'. The plot revolves around interstellar battles and the relationship between two humans, a male naval officer and a female pilot. Lieutenant Gareth Martinez, a provincial peer, and Cadet Sula, head of the Sula clan, meet after participating in the rescue attempt of a yachtsman named Blitsharts. Martinez, the communications officer to Fleet Commander Enderby, realising that Blitsharts is in distress, requests that the captain of the 'Bombardment of Los Angeles' launch a rescue. The captain in turn launches a pinnace, a small single seater spacecraft, piloted by Lady Sula. Over the course of the rescue and subsequent recovery of the yacht, a period of over a month due the distances involved, Martinez sends Sula regular messages which include comedy and literature to entertain her during the long journey home. Martinez also informs Sula that the last remaining Shaa intends to commit suicide leaving the convocation, a committee consisting of peers of all races, in charge of the empire.
2676035	/m/07x5kx	Perceval, the Story of the Grail				 The poem opens with Perceval, whose mother has raised him apart from civilization in the forests of Wales. Since his father's death, he continually encounters knights and realizes he wants to be one. Despite his mother's objections, the boy heads to King Arthur's court, where a young girl predicts greatness for him. He is taunted by Sir Kay, but amazes everyone by killing a knight who had been troubling King Arthur and taking his vermilion armor. He then sets out for adventure. He trains under the experienced Gornemant then falls in love with and rescues Gornemant's niece Blanchefleur. They agree to marry. Returning home to visit his mother he comes across the Fisher King, who invites him to stay at his castle. While there he witnesses a strange procession in which young men and women carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another. First comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying candelabra. Finally, a beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated graal, or "grail", passing before him at each course of the meal. Perceval, who had been warned against talking too much, remains silent through all of this and wakes up the next morning alone. He finds his mother is dead, then Arthur asks him to return to court. But before long, a loathly lady enters the court and admonishes Perceval for failing to ask his host whom the grail served and why the lance bled, as the appropriate question would have healed the wounded king. No more is heard of Perceval except a short later passage in which a hermit explains that the grail contains a single mass-wafer that miraculously sustains the Fisher King’s wounded father. The loathly lady announces other quests that the Knights of the Round Table proceed to take up and the remainder of the poem deals with Arthur's nephew and best knight Gawain, who has been challenged to a duel by a knight who claims Gawain had slain his lord. Gawain offers a contrast and complement to Perceval's naiveté as a courtly knight having to function in un-courtly settings. An important episode is Gawain's liberation of a castle whose inhabitants include his long-lost mother and grandmother as well as his sister Clarissant, whose existence was unknown to him. This tale also breaks off unfinished.
2677483	/m/07x9bp	Adam Loveday	Kate Tremayne	1999-11-25	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The plot centres around the rivalry between Adam and his brother St John. As the younger of the two, Adam knows that when their father dies, the family estate and shipyard that he loves so much will be inherited by his wayward brother. The rivalry between the two men intensifies when Adam falls in love with Meriel Sawle, the beautiful daughter of the local tavern keeper. But St John is determined that Adam will have neither the estate or Meriel. According to genealogical information provided in the book, Adam Loveday was born in Cornwall in 1767 as the son of Edward and Marie Loveday. He has a twin brother, St John Loveday. Adam Loveday was encouraged to join the Royal Navy, and spent much of his early life as a junior officer. However, he was eventually forced to leave after being caught duelling with a rival officer, Lieutenant Francis Beaumont. After this he spent much time working in his father's shipyard where his designs for new ships helped to expand and improve the business. His talent for shipbuilding encouraged his father to make Adam heir to the family shipyard, further fuelling the rivalry between himself and St John. Adam is described as being tall, with dark shoulder length hair, a lean build and deeply tanned skin from his long days spent at sea. He is twenty years old when introduced in the first book of the Loveday series.
2677819	/m/07xb5f	Ape and Essence	Aldous Huxley		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Ape and Essence is presented in its entirety, without remark by interruption, footnote or afterword. It begins with a vignette describing the destruction of the world by nuclear and chemical warfare at the hands of intelligent baboons - a critique of the human race (see more about these vignettes below). The two warring sides each have an Einstein on a leash which they force to press the button, releasing clouds of disease-causing gases toward each other. The story then advances to a time 100 years after the catastrophic events of World War III, which characters in the book refer to as "the thing", when nuclear and chemical weapons eventually destroyed most of human civilization. In the script's timeframe, radiation has subsided to safer levels and the New Zealand rediscovery scientists (New Zealand being spared from the bombings because it was "of no strategic importance") are sailing to California. Unfortunately, a strange society has emerged from the radiation and two of its men capture one of the scientists (Dr. Poole). Dr. Poole is introduced to an illiterate society which survives by "mining" graves for clothes, burning library books as fuel, and killing off newborns deformed by radiation (that is, newborns with over 3 pairs of nipples and more than 7 toes/fingers per hand) to preserve genetic purity. The society has also taken to worshipping Satan, whom they refer to as Belial, and limiting reproduction to an annual two-week orgy which begins on "Belial's Day Eve" after the deformed babies are "purified by blood." The story climaxes during the purification ceremonies of Belial's Day Eve with an intellectual confrontation between Dr. Poole and the Arch Vicar, the head of the Church of Belial (much like the confrontation John the Savage has with Mustapha Mond in Brave New World). During the conversation the Arch Vicar reveals that there is a minority of "hots" who do not express an interest in the post-World War III style of reproduction, but they are severely punished to keep them in line. In exchange for his life, Dr. Poole agrees to do what he can as a botanist to help increase their crops yields, but about a year later he escapes with Loola in search of the community of "hots" that is rumored to exist North of the desert. The script—and the novel—end with Dr. Poole and Loola in the desert north of Los Angeles, breaking their trek by a tombstone which bears the author's name of Tallis, the dates 1882-1948, and three lines from the antepenultimate verse of Percy Bysshe Shelley's elegy on the death of John Keats. Lest Loola find it sad, Dr. Poole, happily possessed of a duodecimo Shelley, reads her the poem's penultimate verse: That Light whose smile kindles the Universe That Beauty in which all things work and move That Benediction, which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love, Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.
2678701	/m/07xdpz	The Loveday Fortunes	Kate Tremayne	2000-12-07	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 When the Lovedays' banker is found dead in the river Thames, his legacy of debts and foolish investments plunges the family into financial chaos and leaves them facing ruin. As Adam struggles to face this new challenge, he falls in love with the mysterious gypsy woman Senara despite his father's censure. Meanwhile St John, encouraged by his wife Meriel, throws in his lot with a gang of smugglers in order to win the riches both of them have always dreamed of. The growing Revolution in France also has repercussions for the family.
2678768	/m/07xdtt	The Loveday Trials	Kate Tremayne	2001-12-06	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Adam, now married to the half-gypsy Senara, returns to his home to find his father threatening to disown him for his wife's heritage. To support his wife and new child, he becomes an undercover agent helping nobility to escape from a France now in the turmoil of revolution. Meanwhile, his brother St John is making a fortune as a smuggler and his wife Meriel is pregnant with his second child, ensuring his future as heir to their father's estate. But his success has made him an enemy of Thadeous Lanyon, a rival smuggler. When Lanyon attacks Meriel and causes her to lose her child, he is soon found murdered. With all the evidence pointing to him, St John faces execution unless the family can find some way of proving his innocence.
2679072	/m/07xfj0	Marjorie Morningstar	Herman Wouk		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Marjorie Morgenstern is a New York Jewish girl in the 1930s. She is bright, very beautiful and popular, with lots of boyfriends. Her father is a prosperous businessman, and her family has recently moved from a poorer ethnically Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx to the wealthier neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her mother hopes that the change of neighborhood will help Marjorie marry a man with a brighter future. Marjorie dreams of becoming an actress, using "Marjorie Morningstar" as a stage name. She begins with her school's (Hunter College) production of The Mikado, and lands the title role. This introduces her to Marsha Zelenko, who will become her best friend (for a while). Marsha encourages Marjorie in her quest, and helps her gain a job as a dramatic counselor at the summer camp, where Marsha teaches arts and crafts. During the summer Marsha persuades Marjorie to accompany her on an illicit excursion to South Wind, an exclusive adult resort with a staff of professional entertainers. There Marjorie meets Noel Airman, an older man who has won some fame as a composer, as well as Wally Wronken, a younger man who hopes to become a playwright. Marjorie idolizes Noel, who can sing, dance, compose, and speak several languages. They begin a relationship that determines the next four years of her life. He tells her that he has no interest in marrying, or fitting in with the middle class life that he tells her she will ultimately want. Having changed his birth name from Saul to Noel to escape his Jewish origins, he mocks her Jewish observances (such as her unwillingness to eat bacon), and taunts her for her 'Mosaic' unwillingness to engage in premarital sex. Noel tells Marjorie that she is a "Shirley": a typical well-brought up New York Jewish girl who will ultimately want a stable husband and family, while he is embarking on an artistic career. Over the course of the novel, neither Noel nor Marjorie finds professional success in the theater. Marjorie accepts that she will not succeed as a professional actress, and spends more of her time reading and working. Noel takes and quits stable writing and editing jobs, blaming Marjorie for motivating him to take jobs that do not suit him and for his unhappiness. He flees New York in a panic rather than marry Marjorie, saying that he will not succeed as a writer and will return to studying philosophy. Having entered a sexual relationship with him, Marjorie is convinced that her only hope is to marry Noel. She decides that the best way to persuade him to marry her is to wait a year and then pursue him to Paris. However, en route to France, Marjorie meets a mysterious man aboard the Queen Mary. She enjoys his company, he treats her well and speaks respectfully of her religious traditions, and he helps her locate Noel. In Paris, Noel tells her how happy he is to see her, but does not notice when she is hungry or hurt. He tells her that in his year in Paris he has not actually enrolled in school to study philosophy, and that he will return to the U.S. to take another stable writing job. He offers to marry her, but Marjorie has realized that life with Noel will not make her happy, and that it would be possible for her to fall in love with someone else. She returns to New York free of her infatuation with Noel, and quickly marries. She no longer cares whether Noel would describe her as a "Shirley". The novel concludes with an epilogue in the form of an entry in Wally Wronken's diary. Wally idolized Marjorie as a young man, and meets her again 15 years after she marries. Marjorie has happily settled into a role as a religious suburban wife and mother. Wally recalls the bright-eyed girl he once knew, and marvels at how ordinary Marjorie seems at 39. The end of the novel is somewhat disappointing to some contemporary readers. Marjorie begins the novel as an idealistic, intelligent (though spoiled) young woman, who determinedly pursues her dreams in the era before the feminist movement. By the end of the book, her aspirations match her parents' narrow expectations that she will be a good wife and mother. However, Noel (her alternative, once she realizes she will not succeed as an actress) is the source of some of the most misogynistic statements in the book.
2680403	/m/07xjf4	The Home and the World	Rabindranath Tagore	1916	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in early 20th century India in the estate of the Bengali zamindar Nikhil. He marries Bimala, a woman who is both of a lower status and of a darker complexion, which is contradictory to his family traditions. Their love is idyllic and both are dedicated to one another until the appearance of his friend and radical revolutionist, Sandip. Sandip, a passionate and active man, is a contradiction to the peace-loving and somewhat passive Nikhil. His charismatic speech, support of the Swadeshi movement, and a renewed appreciation of everything Indian while denying everything British garnered support from local natives across the province. After hearing Sandip speak at a rally, Bimala insists that Sandip visit Nikhil’s estate. While visiting, Sandip's influential nature easily attracts the innocent and unsuspecting Bimala, and she suggests he make his headquarters at their house. Once empowered by the inside world, knowing only her husband and home, she becomes engaged with the outside world, taking part in the Swadeshi movement by working with Sandip. As the novel develops, Bimala is drawn to Sandip’s passion and the attraction between the two becomes inevitable, producing a love triangle. She begins to question her marriage with Nikhil and finds in Sandip what she has always sought after in a man: zeal, ambition, and a hint of danger. She begins to help Sandip by stealing money from Nikhil’s treasury, convinced that if it is not equally his money as well as hers, then it belongs to the country. While Bimala claims her national duty as motivation, her true intentions lie in pleasing Sandip. Nikhil subsequently discovers their actions, but grants Bimala freedom to grow and choose what she wants in her life (as their marriage was arranged when she was a young girl). Meanwhile, Bimala experiences love for the first time, which ultimately helps her understand that it is indeed her husband Nikhil who really loves her. The novel ends with a riot, resulting in Sandip fleeing the city. Nikhil is mortally wounded in the head. Amulya, a young follower of Sandip's movement who considered Bimala as his sister, and whom Bimala thinks of as her son (since she has no children), dies by a bullet through his heart.
2681060	/m/07xksm	Monster				 Reed Shelton is out to make the perfect camping trip with his wife, Beck. However, Beck is more of a stay-at-home kind of wife. But Reed manages to convince her to accompany him on the trip. As the couple makes camp for the night, they encounter a strange, unearthly wail accompanied by a set of glowing eyes. In a blur of action, Beck is snatched up by a creature and dragged into the night. Reed, with the combined efforts of a small town and a band of close friends, begins the investigation for his wife. In the meantime, Beck must fight for survival as she is forced to adapt not only to her surroundings, but also to the behavior of her frightening abductors. Realizing that there is little time, Reed and friends pour on the hunt for Beck, only to realize that they aren't the only ones doing the hunting. Something grave and terrifying—and definitely not human—is hunting them. As the net closes, the monster is revealed to be more real than originally imagined. In the midst of the horror, Michael Capella (or "Cap"), a friend of Reed's and a former scientist, investigates the DNA left at the monster's ravaging sites. As he researches further, he finds that it is some form of chimpanzee DNA "contaminated" with human DNA. This revelation leads him to suspect his former colleague, Adam Burkhardt, whom he discovers has indeed been doing some dangerous experiments.
2681170	/m/07xl11	The Deadly Curse of Toko-rey			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Dr Cooper meets with a man at the Langley Memorial Art Museum in New York. He wishes to hire Dr Cooper to retrieve valuable artwork from Central America that were recovered from the tomb of Toco-Rey, an Olteca king who died nearly 1200 years ago. Dr Ben Cory was sent to find the city, following a map left by Jose de Carlon, who rediscovered the city in 1536, but whose men succumbed to madness shortly thereafter. Cory is also missing.
2681510	/m/07xlpt	Such a Long Journey	Rohinton Mistry	1991-04-01	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Such a Long Journey takes place in Mumbai, Maharashtra, in the year 1971. The novel's protagonist is a hard-working bank clerk Gustad Noble, a member of the Parsi community and a devoted family man struggling to keep his wife Dilnavaz, and three children out of poverty. But his family begins to fall apart as his eldest son Sohrab refuses to attend the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology to which he has gained admittance and his youngest daughter, Roshan, falls ill. Other conflicts within the novel involve Gustad's ongoing interactions with his eccentric neighbours and his relationship with his close friend and co-worker, Dinshawji. Tehmul, a seemingly unimportant and mentally disabled character, is essential in Gustad's life, as he brings out the tender side of him and represents the innocence of life. A letter that Gustad receives one day from an old friend, Major Bilimoria, slowly draws him into a government deception involving threats, secrecy and large amounts of money. He then, begins the long journey, that sheds new light on all aspects of Gustad's personal and political life. The novel not only follows Gustad's life, but also India's political turmoil under the leadership of Indira Gandhi.
2682322	/m/07xnlh	The Sky is Falling	Sidney Sheldon	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The main character of this book is Dana Evans, an anchorwoman for the press, who was also featured, though not as a main character, in another Sidney Sheldon book, The Best Laid Plans.
2682333	/m/07xnnb	Bloodline	Sidney Sheldon	1977	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Roffe and Sons is a family firm, an international empire filled with desperate, cash-hungry family members. At its head was one of the wealthiest men in the world, a man who has just died in a mysterious accident and left his only daughter, Elizabeth, in control of the company. With this, her relatives hoped to be allowed to steal their stocks since the company's bylaws prevent it from becoming public until all shareholders agree to change that and Elizabeth's father.
2682376	/m/07xnqy	If Tomorrow Comes	Sidney Sheldon	1985	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tracy Whitney, the protagonist of the story, is a young, beautiful,and intelligent woman working as a computer operator for a bank in Philadelphia. The story begins with a phone conversation between Tracy and her mother Doris Whitney, who lives in New Orleans and takes care of the business set up by her deceased husband. Tracy tells her mother about her planned marriage with a businessman, Charles Stanhope III. Doris commits suicide after the conversation and Tracy is notified about it by a Lieutenant of the New Orleans police department. Upon arriving at New Orleans, Tracy becomes aware of the circumstances that led to her mother's suicide. She learns that Joe Romano, the main assistant of New Orleans' mafia leader Anthony Orsatti, had framed her mother into a legal case relating to fraud—Doris didn't have the money to fight the case and decided to commit suicide. Tracy is filled with hatred for Romano, and naively decides to bring her mother's name in the clear by making Romano confess his misdeed. She purchases a gun, which she only intends to use to threaten Romano, and reaches Romano's house. Romano lets her in and offers her a drink, while she asks him to write out a confession letter. Romano refuses, snatches the gun and tries to rape Tracey. Tracy grabs the gun during the struggle and accidentally fires a shot at Romano. She is horrified, as she never intended to kill Romano. She calls for medical aid and then flees to the airport where she is arrested by two policemen. She learns that Romano was alive, only wounded by the shot. The plaintiff accuses her of attempted murder and stealing a costly painting from Romano's house. She is assigned an attorney named Perry Pope who, to her ignorance, works for the mafia. Pope convinces her to plead guilty in court before Judge Lawrence (who is also secretly a mafia man) and promises that she'll be given only a three-month prison sentence. She follows his advice, and realizes in court that it was all a setup by Orsatti and Romano to destroy her — Lawrence sentences her to 15 years of incarceration in Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women. Charles doesn't give her a chance to let her explain her version of the incident, and leaves her at her fate with his unborn child in her womb. Tracy enters a life of hardship, sexual harassment and violence at the penitentiary and vows revenge against all those who harmed her and her mother. The title of the novel itself is from a melodramatic quote in the novel, where Tracy vows to take her revenge tomorrow, if tomorrow comes: Eventually, she becomes the nanny for the prison warden's young daughter, a job that leads to her release from jail. After coming out, she cunningly sets up distrust among Romano, Perry Pope and Orsatti, and frames Judge Lawrence in Russia over spying charges, thus ruining Anthony Orsatti's empire. Desperate, unable to find a job as an ex-convict, she turns to a well-known New York City jewelry store owner (and fence) who helps her make some fast money in a jewel heist. Escaping with the goods, Tracy has an encounter with Jeff Stevens, a master con man. Stevens steals the jewels from Tracy, who realizes she's been had. She then cons Jeff, taking back her prize. Not long after, Tracy travels to England and is introduced to Gunther Hartog, a world-class fence for valuable stolen property. Thus begins her life as one of the world's cleverest criminals. Tracy pursues some brilliant con schemes filled with humor and ingenuity all over Europe — such as stealing jewelry from an actress on the Orient Express, valuable painting from a museum, reselling a gem to a jeweler for much higher than its worth, etc. The Interpol issues alerts all over Europe in search of - as they perceive it - a gang of con-women. Only Daniel Cooper, a plain-looking sociopath and insurance investigator, seems capable of matching Tracy's brilliance; although he never manages to catch her red-handed. In the end, after having collected enough money to live a luxurious life, Tracy and Jeff plan to marry and live together in Brazil as law-abiding citizens. Unusually, the book presents the nominal "villains" – Tracy and Jeff – as sympathetic and kind-hearted, while the pursuing detective, Cooper, is presented as almost psychotic; this could be a reversal of the classic "bloodhound detective" chasing a smart and elusive enemy, as in The Day of the Jackal.
2682415	/m/07xnw6	The Best Laid Plans	Sidney Sheldon		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Oliver Russell, a man with a desire for power, is fated to rise to the highest office, that of President of the United States. Leslie Stewart, his betrayed fiancée, is a woman dedicated to the single purpose of bringing Oliver Russell to ruin. After amassing her own media empire and marshaling all her forces against him, she stands poised to destroy Russell on the eve of his most dazzling triumph. Thinking only of preventing Oliver from winning the Presidency for a second term, little does she know that she is about to fall into her own trap. When Oliver returns from Paris married to Jan, Leslie vows to avenge him. However she keeps her thoughts concealed. This makes Todd Davis, Jan's father, introduce her to one of his friends, who owns a newspaper. A brief introduction followed by marriage sees Leslie manage her husband's empire. With his falling health and subsequent death, Leslie becomes the sole owner of his properties. In spite of all the other businesses, Leslie takes an immense liking for the media empire, with which she intends to destroy Oliver. During this part, Dana Evans, who stars in Sheldon's other novel "Sky is Falling," appears as an inquisitive reporter who adopts a boy from war torn Sarajevo. In the meantime, Oliver becomes the president, but during his first term there occur a series of deaths, all due to toxicity of Liquid Ecstasy, a dangerous aphrodisiac that Leslie connects to him. When she is convinced it is Oliver who is behind these murders, she goes on to publish the news of his arrest before it is confirmed. Dana Evans then unmasks the real culprit, while the president reveals a shocking secret. The book ends with the proposal of a peace pact, brokered by President Russell, among the Arab nations, while Leslie is left wondering if she has gone a bit too far.
2682432	/m/07xnyp	Morning, Noon and Night	Sidney Sheldon	1995	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harry Stanford is a rich businessman. While travelling on his yacht, he mysteriously falls overboard owing to a storm, leaving his entire fortune, estimated to be around six to seven billion dollars to his three children-Tyler, a circuit court judge, Kendall a successful fashion designer and Woodrow.
2682741	/m/07xpzz	Master of the Game	Sidney Sheldon	1982	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with Kate Blackwell's ninetieth birthday celebrations in 1982 and is told in flashback. The story then moves one hundred years back to the arrival of Scotsman Jamie MacGregor (1865–1894) in Klipdrift, South Africa in 1883 to seek his fortune. He is soon defrauded by a wealthy Dutch storekeeper, Salomon Van Der Merwe, who steals his diamonds and leaves him in the desert to die. Jamie is rescued and taken to Cape Town by van der Merwe's Bantu servant Banda. Jamie plans his revenge, joined by Banda, who seeks vengeance for his younger sister who was raped and killed by Salomon. The two sneak into van der Merwe's heavily guarded diamond mines in the Namib Desert and succeed in stealing a load of diamonds worth a fortune. Jamie, now rugged and unrecognizable, returns to Klipdrift, cons Salomon into believing him to be a rich businessman and violates his daughter Margaret who gradually falls in love with him. However, when Jamie learns that Margaret is pregnant by him, he refuses to marry her and reveals to Salomon his true identity. The violation of Margaret's chastity becomes the talk of the town and Salomon plunges into depression and starts drinking; he soon commits suicide, an unhappy man. Jamie, initially, despises Margaret, but when she gives birth to a son, Jamie develops extreme fondness of his son and consents to marrying Margaret for the sake of their young son, Jamie, Jr. (1886–1893). Jamie creates a company called Kruger Brent (named after two guards who were calling each other in the diamond field) and pours all his attention into the business. At one point, after Kruger-Brent takes over the diamond mines, a young American named David Blackwell attempts to rob the mines in exactly the same way as Jamie and Banda did, but is caught by the guards. Jamie, feeling sympathy for Blackwell, gives him a job in the company. Jamie likes his determination and he works his way through the ranks becoming a Kruger-Brent executive. Banda, meanwhile, reunites with Jamie and informs him that he is using his share of the diamond fortune to discreetly fight against the government for Bantu rights. Over the years, Jamie finally abandons his vendetta, but never really loves Margaret. Instead, he falls for a young prostitute also named Margaret. He comes home one night drunk, and mistakes his wife for his favorite prostitute, and they make love. In 1892, Jamie and Margaret have a daughter Kate. A year later, Jamie, Jr. is mistakenly murdered in a Bantu uprising led by Banda, causing Jamie to have a stroke from which he later dies. Margaret takes over Kruger Brent to secure Kate's future and hires Blackwell to aid her. Kate grows up beautiful, strong-willed and manipulative. Having fallen in love with David Blackwell, who is 22 years older to her, as a teenager she is determined to marry him, and thwarts his engagement by buying the company owned by his fiancee's father. Kate and David later get married, move to NY and then David enlists in the army during World War I and is away for four years. He then returns home safe and later Kate becomes pregnant, but when she is seven months pregnant David is killed in a mine explosion, causing her to go into premature labor and give birth to a son, Anthony "Tony" James Blackwell (b. 1924). Like her father before her, Kate pours her life into Kruger Brent with passion, making it a global conglomerate. She naturally expects Tony to take over Kruger Brent, but Tony is more interested in becoming an artist. While he clearly has the potential to become a world-class artist, Kate secretly destroys Tony's career by paying a notable French critic to give negative comments on Tony's work because Kate strongly believes he is wasting his life as an artist and that there were "tens and thousands of painters in the world and my son was not meant to be one among them". Kate feels sad about Tony's disappointment and unhappiness but is determined to get him out of it. Kate later manipulates him into marrying Marianne Hoffmann, whose father owns a scientific patent she covets. The marriage is happy, but Marianne is told by a doctor that pregnancy is out of the question as she would be at risk for a stroke. When she tells Kate who is now a good friend of hers this, Kate is in denial about Marianne's condition and tells her that doctors could be wrong and to go ahead with a pregnancy. In 1950, Marianne becomes pregnant, but when she is taken to the hospital to give birth her blood pressure goes out of control and she has a stroke. An emergency Caesarian section is performed and twin girls are delivered, but Marianne dies before the second girl is delivered. Her doctor tells Tony that he had warned Marianne of the dangers but that Kate told her to ignore them. The incident, along with the coincidental revelation that Kate manipulated and ultimately destroyed his entire art career, drives Tony mad and he tries to kill his mother in revenge. She survives the gunshot wound, but Tony is committed to an institution. Kate is heart broken that her son felt this way about her but she is determined to survive. Kate takes in her two identical looking granddaughters, whom she names Eve and Alexandra, to raise. Eve, ruthless and cunning, sees Alexandra as an interloper and repeatedly attempts to kill her starting when they are young children, taking advantage of their identical looks. Alexandra is thought to be clumsy and accident-prone as they grow up and Kate clearly favors Eve as the heir apparent to Kruger Brent, but when Eve tries to implicate Alexandra in a sex scandal Kate realizes the truth about Eve and disinherits her, giving her only a small allowance and pays attention to Alexandra. She also does not tell Alexandra the truth about Eve but tells her that "Eve chose her own life". Enraged, Eve plots revenge against both her sister and grandmother. She meets George Mellis, the black sheep of a wealthy Greek family, and seduces him into helping her. Mellis is handsome and cultured, but he is also a violent sadist and homosexual. Eve, knowing this, holds it over his head as she reveals her scheme—to get Alexandra to fall in love with and marry him, after which he will murder her and cause Kate to die of grief. Cued by Eve, Mellis woos Alexandra by being the perfect man who loves all the things she loves, and Alexandra does fall madly in love with him and they marry. Eve continues to taunt Mellis, and one night he snaps and attacks Eve, brutally assaulting her. She eventually recovers thanks to the work of a talented but mousy plastic surgeon Keith Webster and uses the beating to get back into her grandmother's good graces. Kate melts and takes Eve back in and puts her back in the will, making Mellis superfluous. Eve changes tactics, fakes a scar, and begins visiting a psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Templeton pretending to be a depressed, suicidal Alexandra; the plan is that Mellis will take Alexandra out on a yacht where he will throw her overboard and make it appear as if she killed herself. When Mellis gets on the boat with whom he believes to be Alexandra, he instead finds Eve, who stabs him to death. In the course of the investigation Eve's plastic surgeon, Dr. Keith Webster, overhears a remark about the scar on Eve's head. Having fallen in love with her, he goes to her and reminds her that he left no scar and knows that she killed Mellis. When she tries to deny it, he offers her a deal—if they are married, he will not be forced to testify against her. Eve marries him but cheats on him flagrantly with a young actor. When the actor makes a joke about her laugh lines she demands that Webster repair them. Webster deliberately destroys her face and proves to be a master manipulator himself, making Eve completely dependent on him. Alexandra, meanwhile, falls in love with the psychiatrist Peter Templeton; they marry and have a son, Robert. The book closes at Kate's ninetieth birthday party with all her relatives present. Robert, now eight, is turning into a talented pianist. Kate sees him as Kruger Brent's heir but Peter laughs her off and asks her if she never gave up. Alexandra too tells Kate that she is happy doing whatever Peter wants. Looking around at her family, including Tony, who was released from the institution for the occasion, and a masked Eve, Kate still believes that she acted in the best interest of all and that it was she who has been cheated, even though everyone in her family has been negatively affected by her actions. In the last line of the book she tells her great-grandson, Robert that she would introduce him to the great musician Zubin Mehta. At this point the readers are left to interpret the ending - does she sincerely means it and has she really changed, or is she planning a repeat of what she did to her son Tony?
2683082	/m/07xqxg	Passage	Connie Willis	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Joanna Lander, a clinical psychologist, interviews patients who have had near-death experiences; she aspires to understand what occurs between the times when a person dies and then is revived. She becomes frustrated when many of her patients cannot or will not give accurate information about their experiences. She realizes that the scientific evidence is contaminated by the influence of Dr. Maurice Mandrake, a persistent charlatan "researcher" who publishes books about near-death experiences and convinces patients that their experiences happened exactly the way his books describe NDEs, such as learning cosmic secrets from angels. Dr. Richard Wright, who has discovered a way to induce artificial NDEs in patients and monitor their brain activity throughout, contacts Joanna and asks if she will join his research study and interview his patients after he induces NDEs. She agrees. They are intellectually compatible and have a budding, mutual romantic interest. Mandrake considers them competitors, and he sabotages their efforts by approaching revived patients before they can. Mandrake's method is to ask mellifluous leading questions of the patients and thereby taint their self-reported NDEs; this causes Joanna and Richard hardship in finding volunteers for the study. Lacking enough volunteers for proper methodology, Joanna elects to undergo the process. She gets the help of Tish, a good nurse, to help with the prep; Tish is happy to, because she thinks Richard Wright is "cute" and can flirt with him while Joanna is "under". Joanna finds herself in a dark passage that, through further NDEs, she realizes is part of a dream-like version of the RMS Titanic, on which she encounters passengers of the real Titanic as well as someone symbolically near death, a high school teacher of hers, Mr. Briarley. Between NDE sessions, Joanna struggles to figure out why she sees the Titanic, and she eventually tracks down Pat Briarley, her English teacher from high school, who spoke often of the Titanic in class. Joanna discovers that Mr. Briarley, once a highly animated and keen teacher, now suffers from Alzheimer's disease. This is crushing to Joanna, who was certain that Mr. Briarley could give her "the key" to clarify why she sees the Titanic. However, Mr. Briarley's niece, Kit, promises to help. Joanna also consults with Maisie Nellis, a girl who suffers from a heart defect, "V-fib", because Maisie, a born rationalist, gives only accurate information about her NDEs. Maisie also gives Joanna important information about the Titanic. Through talking with her patients and undergoing more NDEs, Lander realizes that the near-death experience is a mechanism that the brain uses to create a scenario symbolic of what the brain attempts to do when it is dying: find a suitable neural pathway by which to send a message that can "jump start" the rest of the body back into life. If the person having a real near-death experience can metaphorically send a message to someone appearing in the NDE, she learns (specifically, from a revived coma patient), the person will awaken and survive. Before she can tell Richard Wright about her discovery, she goes to visit Nurse Vielle in the Emergency Room and is stabbed by a man deranged by a drug called "rogue". Before losing consciousness, she manages to say a few words to Vielle, trying to communicate her discovery about NDEs. She finds herself in the Titanic again and races against dream-like obstacles to escape and awaken. Richard Wright, on hearing that Joanna is dying or dead, enters an artificial NDE, thinking that he will find himself in the Titanic and be able to rescue Lander. He instead finds himself at the offices of the White Star Line, where the names of the victims of the Titanic disaster are being read to the public - he is too late to "save" Joanna. He awakens many hours later, and Tish, crying, tells him that Joanna has died. As Richard and Joanna's friends struggle with her death, Joanna herself remains in the Titanic until it sinks, and her memories of life fade away. Richard realizes that Joanna was trying to tell him something before she died (they had discussed the importance of last words), and he tracks down all the people she spoke to before she was stabbed. He learns what Joanna discovered. Before she could reach him, Joanna had told, of all people, Mandrake, "The NDE is a message. It's an SOS. It's a call for help." Grasping her dying message, Richard develops a chemical treatment that he believes can revive a patient. Maisie suffers V-fib and dies, but Richard successfully uses his experimental treatment on her, and she later receives a heart transplant; she will live. Within her final NDE, on an imaginary ship, Joanna finds herself adrift on the water, with some memories still intact and accompanied by a child and a dog which Maisie has told her about from other disasters. As the novel ends, they watch the approach of a ship repeatedly mentioned by Ed Wojakowski.
2683268	/m/07xr7y	The Body Artist	Don DeLillo	2001-02-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Lauren Hartke and her film director husband, Rey Robles, are occupying an isolated house outside New York City. They have a sparse verbal exchange over breakfast before Rey leaves for work. Later that morning, Rey is found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his first wife's Manhattan apartment. An obituary detailing the frequently ambiguous details of Rey's life ensues, where Rey's age (64) is revealed, along with his history of depression and the fact that Lauren had been Rey's third wife. A bereaved Lauren remains alone in the house against the advice of her friends and relatives. She becomes disconnected from the temporal world and from her own body, experiencing frequent and inexplicable déjà vu. Lauren spends the subsequent hours, days and weeks exploring this disconnection. She practices her trademark 'bodywork'-- aerobic and stretching techniques she has developed to prepare her body for performance pieces. Lauren also integrates a sequence of daily rituals, including chopping firewood and gazing for hours at webcam footage of a road in Kotka, Finland. One morning, Lauren hears a noise coming from the upper floor of the house. She goes upstairs to investigate but finds no one there. Lauren goes upstairs again the next day. This time, she finds a man sitting in one of the bedrooms. The man's appearance varies each time Lauren sees him, but in this first incarnation, he is described as "smallish and fine-boned [resembling] a kid, sandy-haired and roused from deep sleep" (43).
2684016	/m/07xt9p	The Tree Bride	Bharati Mukherjee	2004-08	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The quiet brahmin girl from Bengal becomes a passionate resister of foreign rule, against the British Raj. The narrator discovers her ancestor's struggle for her land, whilst seeking to establish herself as an American citizen.
2684337	/m/07xt_k	Ronin Hood of the 47 Samurai				 In the story, the master shogun and his disciple Blizzard, start battling the evil ronin of the Ako Prefecture.
2684481	/m/07xvbv	Wife	Bharati Mukherjee	1975	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This is the story of Dimple Dasgupta who has an arranged marriage to Amit Basu, an engineer, instead of marrying a neurosurgeon as she had dreamed about. They move to the United States and experience culture shock and loneliness. At one point, she jumps rope to escape her pregnancy. As frustration becomes expressed as abuse, the tale turns to tragedy.
2684487	/m/07xvcj	The Loveday Scandals	Kate Tremayne	2003-03-03	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 St John Loveday has been cleared of murder, but forced to leave England for America until the scandal of his trial dies down. His wife Meriel has left him to seek her fortunes elsewhere, and Adam Loveday is still at sea on his ship Pegasus. Meanwhile, Japhet Loveday, spurned by the love of Gwendolyn Druce, leaves the peace of Cornwall for London. There he begins an affair with the treacherous actress Celestine Yorke. As bad fortune continues to dog him, he turns to highway robbery to settle his debts. When Gwendolyn arrives in London, Japhet realises how much he still loves her. But Celestine Yorke is not a woman to be trifled with and she is determined that if she can't have Japhet, then no one will. Edward Loveday is also shocked by the arrival of his illegitimate daughter Tamasine, who puts his relationship with his wife under immense strain.
2684509	/m/07xvfl	The Tiger's Daughter	Bharati Mukherjee		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story revolves around Tara who was raised in Calcutta, educated at Vassar College in New York and is married to an American man. The novel explores her sense of culture shock when she travels back to India intertwined with the political situation in Calcutta and West Bengal.
2684573	/m/07xvn8	The Loveday Honour	Kate Tremayne	2004-03-01	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Japhet Loveday has been convicted of highway robbery and sent to prison, where he faces deportation to the penal colony of Botany Bay. His wife Gwendolyn races to prove his innocence, but powerful men are working to ensure she will be too late. Meanwhile, Edward Loveday's marriage is stretched to breaking point as he struggles to hold together the shipyard and family estate despite his deteriorating health. He is fighting a losing battle however, and finally dies from the effects of a gunshot wound that never fully healed. St John returns from America on hearing of his father's death. But there are further shocks for him - Meriel, his estranged wife, has returned from London after being discarded by her wealthy lover. Bankrupt and desperately ill from tuberculosis, she seeks to reinstate herself into the Loveday family and become mistress of Trevowan, the family estate.
2686027	/m/07xyjd	Ghost Warrior	Lucia St. Clair Robson	2003-05-18	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Chiricahua Apache chief, Victorio, called his sister Lozen his wise counselor and his right hand. He said she had the strength of a man and was a shield to her people. Even in a society possessing extraordinary courage, endurance and skill, she was unique. The Apaches believe that when she was young, the spirits blessed her with horse magic, the gift of healing and the power to see enemies at a distance. In the Apaches’ 30-year struggle to defend their homeland, they came to rely on her strength, wisdom, and supernatural abilities. Because of her gift of far-sight, she was the only unmarried woman allowed to ride with the warriors and fight alongside them. After her beloved brother Victorio's death, she joined Geronimo's band of insurgents. With Geronimo and fifteen other warriors, she resisted the combined forces of the United States and Mexican armies, and the heavily armed civilian populations of New Mexico and Arizona Territories. She and the sixteen warriors, and seventeen women and children held out against a total of about nine thousand men. :Smoke from the grass fire smudged the blue sky of early May, but it did not obscure the footprints in the moist sand in the arroyo. The footprints weren’t a mystery. For miles the soldiers had been following the woman who made them. :“She’s heading up the canyon.” Lt. Howard Bass Cushing beckoned to thirteen of the sixteen privates in the company. “These men and I will trail her. Sergeant Mott, you and Collins, Green, Pierce, and Fichter cover the rear.” :“The tracks are too clear, sir,” said John Mott. :“What do you mean?” :“The squaw set her feet down heavy. She avoided places where the prints won’t show. Looks like she wants us to follow her.” :“More than likely she doesn’t know we’re here. She’s being careless.” :“Apaches aren’t careless.” Rafe knew that disagreeing with Cushing wouldn't change his mind, but he had to try. … Rafe kept his peace on the subject of Cushing and stared at the thorny landscape until his eyes watered. :“If I were an Apache. I’d set up an ambuscade in that canyon,’ said Mott. “That dry gulch is a sack waiting to close around us.” :As though on cue, rifle fire reverberated across the canyon. Where no Apache had been, dozens appeared. Cushing and his troops retreated and joined Mott and Rafe to form a line, firing as they fell back. :The Apaches advanced down the slope in two lines, keeping formation rather than scattering…
2686113	/m/07xypw	Tithe : A Modern Faerie Tale	Holly Black	2002	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tithe follows the story of sixteen-year-old American Kaye Fierch, a young nomad who tours the country with her mother's rock band. The book begins in Philadelphia, at a gig her mother's band Stepping Razor is playing in a seedy bar in Philadelphia. After her mother's boyfriend and guitarist, Lloyd, attempts to stab her mother under the enchantment of Nephamael (a knight of the Unseelie Court) her mother takes her back to Kaye's grandmother's house in New Jersey to stay. Once at her grandmother's house, Kaye begins to look for her old "imaginary" friends she had during her childhood, faeries named Lutie-Loo, Spike, and Gristle. However, she fails to find them and, begins to suspect that they were simply figments of her imagination. Her suspicions dissolve when she finds and saves the life of Roiben, a faerie knight, by pulling an iron-tipped arrow from his chest. In return, he grants her three truthfully answered questions about anything she chooses, which she does not immediately use. Soon after this, Spike and Lutie-Loo contact her and warn her that Roiben is a murderer who has killed Gristle. As revenge, Kaye tricks Roiben into telling her his full name (she later learns that faeries can be controlled by their true names). Later on, her friends tell her that she is a changeling and that she should keep her human appearance, because the Unseelie Court wishes to use her as a "Tithe" in order to bind the Solitary Fey to the Court's queen, Nicnevin. Since Kaye is not mortal, the ritual will be forfeit, and the fey whom the Unseelie Court wishes to bind will go free. Kaye attempts to control her newfound abilities by enlisting the help of a Kelpie to teach her how to use magic. She is soon kidnapped by a group of fairies, as planned and is taken to the Unseelie Court to go through the sacrificial ceremony. Before the ceremony Roiben takes her to be prepared, having a dress made for her and allowing her to stay with him the night, where they acknowledge their feelings for one another. At the climax of the ceremony, Kaye uses Roiben's name to order him to free her from her bonds before she is killed, resulting in a bloodbath between Roiben and the court before they flee safely. In the process, he kills the queen of the Unseelie Court and many of her guards. Kaye and Roiben spend the day at Kaye's home, and discover that strange events are affecting the mortal world. Odd reports of mauling and kidnappings are reported on the news and Roiben makes Kaye understand that this is a result of the solitary fey being free for the next seven years. Kaye receives a call from her friend Janet, inviting her to come to a Halloween rave held at the waterfront, she tries to persuade her not to go but fails. After a failed attempt to receive help from her "imaginary" faerie friends, Roiben and Kaye attend the rave. They are separated, and Kaye successfully locates her friends, but briefly leaves them to apologize to Janet's boyfriend for bewitching him earlier in the novel. However, she finds that the kelpie who lives near the waterfront has taken Janet into the water to kill her. In the novel, it is suggested that Janet went with him out of loneliness and a desire to get revenge on her boyfriend for going off with Kaye. Kaye follows but is too late and she manages to convince the kelpie to relinquish her body. Roiben finds Kaye mourning for her friend and gets her home. The next morning, she and Roiben travel to the Seelie Court's camp some distance away to see if Corny is there. They reach a dead end, but discover that the knight (Nephamael) has proclaimed himself the king of the Unseelie Court. Roiben is suspicious of the situation and thinks that it is a trap for Kaye and him. Later, Roiben's suspicions are proved correct when they enter the Unseelie Court. Nephamael, who had discovered Roiben's true name from Spike before killing him, uses it to take control over Roiben. He orders him to seize Kaye, but Roiben uses trickery to let her get away. Kaye then devises a plan to poison Nephamael, while Corny and Roiben amuse him. She goes through with it; however, before Nephamael is dead, the Seelie Queen arrives, hoping to take over the court (right after her arrival Corny goes insane and stabs Nephamael multiple times, ultimately killing him). Roiben prevents the Queen's takeover attempt by claiming the throne as his.
2686392	/m/07xz3r	The Hollow Hills	Mary Stewart	1973	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This novel covers the time from when Arthur Pendragon was conceived to when he was crowned a king. In this version, Merlin's father is Aurelius Ambrosius, the Roman war leader, Uther Pendragon's brother, making Merlin Arthur's cousin. Merlin is depicted as twenty-two years old at the beginning of the book, which opens on the morning after the conception of Arthur. This conception has taken place as a result, not of illusion or shape-changing as in the legends (and as Merlin would like people to believe), but of ordinary human disguise and misdirection. Duchess Ygraine is said to have known who she was mating with and whose son she bears from the moment Uther came to her. Merlin goes into hiding, to avoid trouble. He learns that Uther wishes the child to be hidden, until another (legitimate) son is born. In later chapters, Merlin travels from one place to another, arranging for the upbringing of Arthur. He gives the child first to his own nurse Moravik, who after some years sends the boy to Count Ector of Galava to be trained as a man. Merlin sets off for Constantinople, accompanied by a small retinue of servants. In Constantinople, he learns from his host Adhjan that Magnus Maximus (also known as Macsen Wledig) possessed an especially beautiful and well-made sword, which was taken back to Britain after Macsen Wledig's death. Inspired by a dream which he believes to be prophetic, Merlin returns to the North in search of this sword. In Wales, Merlin finds the sword in a deserted temple of Mithras hidden beneath the altar with a spearhead and a chalice. He takes only the sword. In order to hide from overly curious people, Merlin becomes a hermit in an obscure shrine, providing healing to the injured and advice to the insecure. He commits himself to no religion, but "allows" whatever god is willing to receive the offerings at the shrine. Later, Merlin becomes Arthur's tutor and that of two other boys, those being Arthur's foster-brother Cei and his friend Bedwyr. Out on a ride, Arthur discovers the sword of Macsen—his ancestor and Merlin's—hidden in a cave on an island in the center of a lake. Naming it Caliburn and laying it to rest in the altar of the Chapel Perilous, he goes on to win his first battle in a decisive victory against invading Saxons. His parentage is revealed and he is named the heir of High King Uther Pendragon; facing a challenge to his fitness as the next High King, he returns to the Chapel and draws forth Caliburn as proof before the assembled nobility.
2687516	/m/07y08b	Manifold: Space	Stephen Baxter	2000-10-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Alien activity is discovered in a Kirkwood gap; the aliens are identified as self-replicating machines (von Neumann probes). Their activity is potentially an immense threat, as Malenfant notes in an earlier speech: "A target system, we assume, is uninhabited. We can therefore program for massive and destructive exploitation of the system's resources, without restraint, by the probe. Such resources are useless for any other purpose, and are therefore economically free to us. And so we colonize, and build." The self-replicating spacecraft are named Gaijin (Japanese for "foreigner"), after their discovery by a Japanese observer on the Moon. Malenfant travels in a prototype fusion engine to the Kirkwood Gap and discovers an interstellar teleportation device. His travels around the galaxy uncover information about the Fermi paradox (see below). At the same time, the story also follows the efforts of Humans on Earth and the eventual draining of the Earth's resources, making a move off-world necessary. At the same time small group of humans use anti-aging techniques and an alien form of interstellar teleportation to "parachute" in on the changing solar system over many centuries. Eventually, it is revealed that in this version of the Fermi paradox, sentient life is endemic throughout the universe; Humanity simply hadn't noticed it earlier because the universe destroys any race before it becomes advanced enough to develop a Type IV civilization. The story ends with Malenfant helping the Gaijin build a shield to prevent a pulsar from sterilizing a large part of the galaxy. Although this project will not be completed before another predicted pulsar event wipes out all extant species, it is hoped to give the sentient aliens who develop from the aftermath of the coming extinction a better chance at long term survival.
2688466	/m/07y2f7	The Best Awful There Is	Carrie Fisher	2004-01	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is about a bipolar young actress, Suzanne Vale, who married a studio executive, Leland Franklin, who helped her find her "far-flung best self." He then left her, for a man, when their daughter, Honey, was three. Now, three years later, Vale is a successful TV talk show hostess with a six year old daughter, a gay ex-husband, and an aging starlet mother. It is her love for Honey that keeps her going. When Vale, a recovering drug addict, stops taking her medication, she is plunged into a manic episode. She goes on a search for OxyContin in Tijuana with a tattoo artist friend and new house guest, a clinically depressed patient she met at her psycho-pharmacologist's office. A psychotic break lands Vale at Shady Lanes, where she is the "latest loony to hit the bin." Despite her mental illness, Vale still has her wit and ability to find irony in every situation as she struggles back from the brink of insanity. "You entered the hospital broken, found some other like broken patient people, and once in their company, looked down on the other more pathetic inhabitants of the bin you shared, those flying even lower than you and your lo-flung co-conspirators." Pharmacological facts and scenes from group therapy are revealed. Rather than hide the truths of mental disorders, the humor serves to highlight them. A happy ending is contrived for Vale and Honey, a sweet little girl, but a little happiness in the midst of all the craziness is a good thing.
2689456	/m/07y484	Fearless, A Novel of Sarah Bowman	Lucia St. Clair Robson		{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In 1845, Mexico would not relinquish its claim to Texas, and the U.S. prepared for war. Under the command of General Zachary "Old Rough and Ready" Taylor, Sarah signed on as a laundress and cook and bivouacked with Taylor's army in Corpus Christi, preparing for an attack by Mexico. Before the war even began, though, her husband was killed. But going home was out of the question. She considered the army her home and its soldiers her family. Nowhere else would her courage and compassion be so much needed and appreciated. While the battle raged around her, Sarah became a familiar figure through the haze of sulfurous blue smoke and the stench of exploding gunpowder, riding among the flames to retrieve the wounded. Through the long years of bitter battle, she would find love in the arms of a sergeant with eyes as golden as a flame, and friendship in the company of Cruz, a Mexican woman whose personal history encompassed the war in all its passions and horrors.
2689526	/m/07y4bm	Walk in My Soul	Lucia St. Clair Robson	1985-05-12	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Walk in My Soul is the story of Tiana Rogers of the Cherokee, the young Sam Houston, and the Trail of Tears. Tiana grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of the Cherokee. In a tribe that revered the life force that was female, she became a beloved woman—priestess, healer, and teacher. Known as the "father of Texas", the young Sam Houston ran away on a lark from his family's general store in Maryville, Tennessee, to live among the Cherokee. He hunted and played ritual games with the men and was adopted as a headman's son and was known as "Raven". Houston falls in love with Tiana, but due to their differing racial and cultural backgrounds, conflict ensues.
2689586	/m/07y4ds	Light a Distant Fire	Lucia St. Clair Robson	1998-09	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Osceola had no illusions that the struggle would be an easy one. But after years of humbly acquiescing to the white men's demands, he was ready to fight no matter what the cost. The young men would have the chance to earn war honors. Their women would have reason to be proud of them again. When "Old Man" Jackson declared war on the Seminole, he never envisioned battling a people who would become symbols of courage, loyalty, and patriotism. Led by the mighty warrior Osceola and witnessed by his beloved daughter Little Warrior, they were men and women fighting an unjust war of greed and aggression—and the bonds of love and rebellion that united them would thrust them into the heart of a conflict that would change the world and their lives forever.
2693199	/m/07yc44	Incest: From a Journal of Love	Anaïs Nin	1992-10	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/02gsv": "Personal journal"}	 The book covers the conclusion of her and Henry's relationship with June, as well as her relationships with her analysts. Among other events, she re-establishes contact with her absent father Joaquín Nin, becomes pregnant with Miller's child and eventually has an abortion in her sixth month of pregnancy. She examines all of these events with a sharp eye through the filters of psychoanalysis, and herself becomes an experiment for psychoanalysis by symbolically appointing her husband Hugh Guiler as her father, Henry Miller as her husband, and her father as her lover.
2696429	/m/07yj_f	The Loveday Pride	Kate Tremayne	2005-06-06	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 With the death of his father, St John Loveday is finally master of Trevowan. But his success is blighted by the presence of his treacherous wife Meriel who, despite being riddled with pox and consumption, manages to cling on to life long enough to thwart his plans to marry a rich widow from America. Embittered by his failure, St John soon turns to drink and gambling while his hatred towards his brother continues to fester. Adam meanwhile has been putting all his energy into rebuilding the ruined estate of Boscabel, which he intends to create as a rival to Trevowan itself. And on the far side of the world, Gwendolyn races to reach her estranged lover Japhet and give him his pardon. But Japhet has sworn to live an Honorable life, and to return to England with pride. He has made a promise, and pride will not allow him to abandon his obligations. The girl on the front cover is performance artist, Abi Lake.
2697672	/m/07ymc0	The Fifth Mountain	Paulo Coelho			 For a considerable portion of the story Elijah is very compliant, obeying everything God's angels say. Eventually he realizes that his destiny is not being chosen by him but by God and ultimately, he decides to abide by his own desires and will. In this way Coelho suggests that Elijah was able to reach an ultimate level of spiritual awareness and have the most powerful relationship with God. ar:الجبل الخامس cs:Pátá hora de:Der fünfte Berg es:La quinta montaña fr:La Cinquième Montagne it:Monte Cinque ka:მეხუთე მთა ne:द फिफ्थ् माउन्टेन pl:Piąta Góra pt:O Monte Cinco ru:Пятая гора tr:Beşinci Dağ
2698107	/m/07yncw	The Valkyries	Paulo Coelho			 The plot involved Paulo going to the Mojave Desert to meet "the Valkyries" themselves, a group of warrior women who travel the desert on motorcycles. At the beginning of the story, "J", Coelho's master in RAM, shows him a copy of the poem by Wilde that says "we destroy what we love" and this theme is central to the story. * A story about Paulo and his wife as they embark on an adventure to find his guardian angel. ar:فالكيريس es:Valquirias (novela) pt:As Valkírias ru:Валькирии (роман)
2698719	/m/07yppm	Unnatural Causes	P. D. James		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While staying with his Aunt Jane in Suffolk, Adam Dalgliesh stumbles across a most bizarre and frightening murder. A local detective novelist, Maurice Seton, becomes himself the subject of investigation when his boat washes ashore with his body inside, with both his hands cut off, seemingly with a meat cleaver. Strangely, the scene of his death is mirrored in a manuscript for the new thriller he was writing...
2699785	/m/07yrjv	A Winter Haunting	Dan Simmons	2002-01-22	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Dale Stewart, a character from Summer of Night, has ruined his life. A fifty-one year old college professor and writer, he left his spouse for a young co-ed and the co-ed has left him. He returns to Elm Haven, Illinois, where the events of Summer of Night took place. Dale is remembering these events as more pleasant than what actually happened. He will soon recall the truth and also must deal with current-day Neo-Nazis.
2701519	/m/07yw9y	Smoky the Cow Horse	Will James	1926	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story details the life of a horse in the western United States from his birth to his eventual decline. It takes place after the 1910s, during which the West dies away and there are cars. Smoky is born in the wild, but is captured and trained by a cowboy named Clint. Clint is taken by Smoky's intelligence and spirit, and uses him as his personal steed. Under his guidance, Smoky soon becomes known as the best cowhorse around. Unfortunately, Smoky is among a number of horses stolen by a horse thief. When Smoky refuses to allow the thief to ride him, being loyal only to Clint, he is beaten repeatidly in punishment. Developing an intense hatred for humans from this treatment, Smoky eventually attacks and kills the thief. When Smoky is eventually captured by local authorities, his now violent and aggressive demeanor prompts his use as a bucking bronco at a rodeo. Under the moniker of "The Cougar", Smoky becomes the most famous rodeo attraction in the South West, and people come from miles away to attempt to ride him. Years of performing at the rodeo eventually take their toll on his body and spirit, and he is left a shell of his former self. As he is no longer of any use as a rodeo horse, he is renamed "Cloudy" and used as a riding horse, and then later sold to an abusive man who starves him. It is during this time that Clint is finally reunited with Smoky. While in town on business, Clint spots and recognizes the horse. After having Smoky's current owner arrested for his acts of cruelty, Clint reclaims him and takes him home with him. Although Clint initially despairs at the condition Smoky is now in, his careful treatment of the horse eventually begins to show results. In the end, Smoky has completely recovered his former health and personality. An illustrated edition was issued in 1929.
2701581	/m/07ywhl	Dobry	Monica Shannon	1934	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Dobry is a young boy who lives in a small farming village in Bulgaria with his widowed mother and grandfather. Both of them are dedicated farmers, and Dobry spends much of his early life helping them in the fields. The majority of his free time is spent with his best friend, Neda, the daughter of the village shoemaker. While still young, Dobry discovers a found love for art, in which he displays an unusually high amount of natural talent. In order to pay for the art supplies he needs to practice, he takes on the job as the village cow herder, and spends the next several years honing his artistic skills. While Neda and Dobry's grandfather are impressed and supportive of his dedication to his craft, his mother becomes increasingly worried and agitated. She had always assumed that Dobry would take over the family farm as an adult, and sees the time that Dobry spends with his art as wasted time that he could be using to help with the work. However, Dobry's grandfather is slowly able to convince her that talent like his should be allowed to develop. When Dobry creates a beautiful snow sculpture of the nativity that the whole town praises, his mother finally realizes how skilled her son truly is. At the following New Year celebration, Dobry's mother presents him with a surprise gift: money that she has saved up in order for him to enroll in an art academy. While Dobry excitedly begins to prepare for his new life, Neda worries that he will be leaving the village forever. However, he assures her that once he has completed his education, he will return to the village and marry her.
2701901	/m/07yx0h	Saved	Edward Bond			 The action of the play may be assumed to take place over a period of many months, or even a few years. Len, a young London man, has a new girlfriend, Pam. The play opens with Pam bringing Len back to her house. They eat sweets. When Pam's father Harry passes, Len encourages Pam to pretend that they are having vigorous sex, so that Harry will overhear them. Pam is amused by Len's behaviour. Len and Pam go boating on a lake in a local park. Pam is showing signs of being bored of Len. In charge of the boats is Fred, a friend of Len's. He shows interest in Pam. Len becomes a lodger in Pam's house, although Pam has now left him for Fred. It is clear that Fred does not treat her well, and Len is sympathetic. Pam is grateful for the sympathy, although she finds Len irritating. Pam becomes pregnant by Fred, and has his baby. Pam's mother Mary becomes fond of Len, although Pam gets increasingly annoyed by his presence in the house. Over the course of one scene, Pam fights with Len and with her mother Mary while the neglected baby cries continually. When Len suggests that something needs to be done about caring for the baby, Pam responds "Put it on the council", i.e. hand it over to child welfare authorities. Fred goes fishing, watched by Len. Fred confides in Len that he is disenchanted with Pam. Fred and Len's friends Pete, Colin, Mike and Barry turn up, as does Pam, who is wheeling the baby in a pram. Not wanting to be left in charge of the baby, Fred loses his temper with Pam, who in turn becomes angry and leaves the baby with him. Len leaves. Pete, Colin, Mike and Barry tease the baby, at first harmlessly then with increasing roughness. Fred does nothing to stop them. Barry observes that babies are only animals that don't feel pain. When the baby dirties its nappy, they rub its face in the mess. The violence escalates as they strike the baby and ultimately throw stones at it, Fred joining in. The park is about to close and they run off, Fred returning only to fetch his fishing tackle. Pam returns to retrieve the baby and talks to it absently, not having noticed that it has been stoned to death. Still oblivious, she wheels it away. Fred is sent to prison for his part in the baby's death, but far from accepting responsibility he is chiefly outraged at the way the crowd outside the prison was treating him. Len admits to him that he saw them attack the baby, but didn't intervene. Fred's response is that that will not help his case. He has finally finished with Pam. Len is still lodging with Pam and her parents. Pam is hoping that Fred will get back together with her when he is released from prison. Len feels a sexual attraction to Mary, Pam's mother, and flirts with her; she is flattered, but doesn't act on it. Pam and Len go to a coffee bar, where Fred will come to celebrate his release. Fred, Colin, Pete, Mike, Barry and Fred's new girlfriend Liz turn up. Although Fred is glad to have been released he is edgy and tense, and is disgruntled to notice that Pam is there. When Pam confronts him and asks for him back, he explodes and calls her a "bloody menace", before leaving in disgust. The others follow, except for Len. Pam finally realises that Fred does not love her, and Len offers himself as a substitute, although she does not respond. Harry confronts Mary about flirting with Len. They argue, and she hits him on the head with a teapot. A chair is also broken. Len helps Harry fix himself up and Harry reveals that he does not bear Len a grudge. Harry tells Len that Len's problem is that he didn't get to fight in World War II : "Yer never got yer man", i.e. Len has never killed anyone in combat. In the final scene, Len slowly and methodically repairs the broken chair while Harry does his football pools, Pam reads a magazine and Mary does housework. The otherwise entirely silent scene contains only one line of dialogue, from Len to Pam: "Fetch me 'ammer." Although he ends up having to fetch the hammer himself, the family has not completely disintegrated. Edward Bond described the end of the play as "almost irresponsibly optimistic".
2704564	/m/07z23l	The Devil's Alternative	Frederick Forsyth	1979	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens with the discovery of a castaway in the Black Sea. Recovering in hospital in Turkey, the man is visited by Andrew Drake, an Anglo-Ukrainian. The castaway, Miroslav Kaminsky, is a Ukrainian nationalist who escaped after he was betrayed to the KGB. Drake convinces Kaminsky that they should strike a blow against the Soviet Union. Kaminsky tells Drake about Lev Mishkin and David Lazareff, two Ukrainian nationalists who may be able to help him. Meanwhile, a chain of failures at the Soviet Union's plant that makes fungicide for wheat has led to the inadvertent poisoning of the wheat crop. The United States is aware of this crisis and plans to sell its food to the Soviets in exchange for political and military concessions. Hardliners in the Politburo come up with a different strategy: to take the food from the West by invading Western Europe. The Politburo, led by Chairman Maxim Rudin, narrowly votes down the war plan; however, Rudin is dying of cancer and it is only a matter of time before the faction in favor of war gains supremacy. The news of the war plan comes to British intelligence agent Adam Munro through a Russian woman, who works in the Kremlin offices and has access to the records of Politburo debates. The information shakes both the British and U.S. political leadership. Mishkin and Lazareff, with the help of Drake, complicate the situation for Rudin by killing his ally in The Politburo, the chief of KGB. Mishkin and Lazareff hijack a Russian airliner to escape from Ukraine. They are arrested in West Berlin after one of the pilots is shot dead during landing. Drake wants to help them because only they can reveal truth about the death of the KGB chief. Drake and other Westerners of Ukrainian origin hijack an oil supertanker and request freedom for Mishkin and Lazareff. The coastal countries threatened by ecological catastrophe support the release of the prisoners. US president Matthews receives information from the British that the USSR will stop negotiations regarding grain and military concessions if the prisoners are released. So there appear to be only two options: an ecological catastrophe, or a war that the USSR will start against western Europe. This is the 'Devil's Alternative' of the title. Munro devizes a third option which enables the prisoners to be released (thus ending the oiltanker hijack) without them being able to reveal that they have killed the KGB chief.
2706718	/m/07z797	Gump and Co.	Winston Groom	1995		 After the death of Jenny, his wife, and failure of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, Forrest and his son find a way to stumble through life and history. As in the first book, Gump stumbles through historical American events through the 1980s and early 1990s. On the first page, Forrest Gump tells readers "Don't never let nobody make a movie of your life's story," though "Whether they get it right or wrong, it don't matter." However, the character is not an idiot savant, as in the first book, but more similar to Tom Hanks' "kind hearted imp". Frequent spelling and grammar mistakes, in the text, are used as a device to indicate the character's deficient education and cognitive difficulties. The story suggests that the real-life events surrounding the film have affected Forrest's life. Gump runs into Tom Hanks. He even goes on The David Letterman Show and attends the Academy Awards. He plays football for the New Orleans Saints, sells encyclopedias door-to-door, works on a pig farm, and helps develop the infamous New Coke. He accidentally crashes the Exxon Valdez, helps destroy the Berlin Wall, and fights in Operation Desert Storm with his friend, an orangutan named Sue (who survived a NASA mission and cannibals, with Gump, in the first book). He meets many celebrities, including Colonel Oliver North, the Ayatollah Khomeini, John Hinckley, Jim Bakker, Ivan Boesky, Ronald Reagan, Saddam Hussein, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Tom Hanks (who plays Forrest in the movie). Throughout the book, Jenny appears to Forrest as a guardian angel, and advises him to "listen to Lieutenant Dan." Lt. Dan frequently mentions a fondness for oysters, and oystering re-vitalizes the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.
2708729	/m/07zc1d	Harvest Home	Tom Tryon		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 Harvest Home is narrated in the first person by Ned Constantine, and describes events surrounding himself, his wife Beth, and their daughter Kate. Fed up with life in New York City, the family relocates to the country, where Ned can pursue an artistic career. After months of intermittent searching for a suitable new home, they discover a geographically isolated village in Connecticut named Cornwall Coombe. The village seems an idyllic farming community that offers all that Ned and Beth have been seeking. They express interest in an abandoned three hundred year old house, and they are contacted some weeks later by the Dodds, who live next door to the house, and who tell them that it is for sale. The Constantines buy and renovate the house and move to Cornwall Coombe. The opening chapters describe several matters in innocent detail, including the past marital difficulties of Ned and Beth, now apparently resolved; the moody Kate's serious, potentially life-threatening asthma, in part a psychosomatic reaction to those marital troubles; and, most importantly, the eccentricities of life in Cornwall Coombe. The villagers adhere stubbornly to what they call "the old ways", eschewing modern agricultural methods and limiting contact with the outside world. The villagers celebrate a number of festivals that revolve around the cultivation of corn, which is their chief product. The most important rite is Harvest Home, which takes place at the conclusion of the crop growing year. While the villagers are ostensibly Christian, Ned gradually becomes aware of the paganism that underlies life in Cornwall Coombe, particularly its rituals. The Constantines befriend the Dodds. Maggie Dodd, an educated woman who left Cornwall Coombe but later returned with her husband, Robert, an outsider. Maggie is the church organist. Robert Dodd, totally blind, is a retired college professor. Other prominent villagers who become friends with the newcomers are Worthy Pettinger, a young man who disdains the old ways and wants to go to agricultural college; Justin Hooke, who serves as the current year's ceremonial "Harvest Lord", and his wife Sophie, whom Justin has chosen to be his "Corn Maiden" in the approaching "Corn Play"; Jack Stump, a local itinerant peddler, only recently arrived; and Mary Fortune, a widowed herbalist and midwife, and the town's most influential resident. During a late summer festival, known as Agnes Fair, Ned first begins to sense something sinister. After most of the festivities are over, Ned hears a horrible cry and beholds a strange spectacle: Missy Penrose, a young girl regarded by the farmers as an oracle, stands over a newly-slaughtered sheep and touches her blood-drenched hands to Worthy's face. Ned learns that this means Worthy has been chosen to be the "Young Lord", who will succeed Justin as Harvest Lord when Justin's seven-year term ends later that year. Worthy is the only one unhappy at this development. Jack Stump reports that he has seen a ghost in Soakes's Lonesome, a local forest named for the family of moonshiners who live within. Ned sees a strange apparition one night, and later finds a skeleton hidden deep within the woods. Worthy decides secretly to leave the village with Ned's help rather than become Harvest Lord. Jack disappears. Ned grows preoccupied with the mysterious death of Grace Everdeen fourteen years earlier: she is buried in unhallowed ground, and the locals still occasionally say harsh but unspecific things about her. Ned finds a primitive corn dolly in Justin's fields. The Widow Fortune succeeds in resuscitating Kate and saving her from certain death during an asthma attack; her herbal remedies apparently cure Kate of her asthma. Ned, under the influence of the Widow's mead, believes he sees the Harvest Lord and Corn Maiden trysting in a neighboring cornfield. During a harvest service in church, Worthy loudly curses the corn and "the Mother" and then flees. The community is scandalized. Worthy's parents are ostracized by the villagers. Jack Stump is found mutilated, having had his tongue cut out and mouth sewn shut in apparent retribution for trespassing into Soakes's Lonesome. Ned becomes more intent to unravel the village's secrets while his personal life goes awry. Tamar Penrose, the postmistress, seduces Ned, whose resistance weakens as he tries to learn more about Missy and her abilities. Ned learns that the women of Cornwall Coombe practice pagan fertility rites connected to the earth mother. Tamar reveals that she served as Corn Maiden fourteen years ago, and that Missy was conceived as a result. Grace Everdeen, originally slated to be Corn Maiden for her fiancé Roger Penrose, had developed a disfiguring disease. When she was replaced by Tamar, Grace cursed the corn. Drought followed, for which Grace was blamed. At the end of the harvest, the villagers come together for a Husking Bee, a riotous party marking the conclusion of the growing season. Ned and other male villagers drink heavily as part of the festivities. During the Husking Bee, the villagers put on the Corn Play, a symbolic fertility rite that foreshadows what will happen at Harvest Home a few nights later. Ned watches stuporously as the women perform a barefoot pagan dance. When the women draw Kate into their circle, Ned furiously breaks into the dance to pull her back out but the villagers cast him into the street and pelt him with corn cobs for interfering in the ritual. The Constantines' marriage has begun to unravel again. Beth had hoped to have another child, but Ned learns that he is sterile. Beth, aware of Tamar's designs on him, grows distrustful of Ned. Ned dislikes and distrusts the rapacious Tamar, but finally has sex with her in which she dominates him, symbolizing the ancient homage that men are forced to pay to the earth goddess. Robert Dodd explains to Ned the matriarchal pagan fertility religions of antiquity, and advises Ned to steer clear of Harvest Home at all costs: previous discovery of the secrets of these rites by any man has always resulted in dire consequences, which Dodd has suffered himself. Dodd removes his dark glasses showing that his blindness is the result of his eyes having been gouged out in retaliation for observing the sacred ritual, but Ned disregards his warnings. Ned's rage at Tamar is further fueled by the discovery that Tamar was involved in the mutilation of Jack Stump. The villagers wanted to prevent him revealing that the skeleton in the woods — the same skeleton that Ned later discovered — belonged to Grace Everdeen, who had resisted the pairing of her fiancé with Tamar at Harvest Home fourteen years earlier, and was killed after arriving and disrupting the rites. The villagers, having learned Worthy's location from a letter he sent to Ned, which was steamed open by Tamar, the postmistress, send a posse to find him. He is returned home and killed. They initially hang his corpse in a field as a scarecrow, and later fling it into a massive bonfire on Kindling Night. On the day of Harvest Home, Justin's wife Sophie Hooke, the new Corn Maiden, hangs herself. She is denied burial in consecrated ground on the orders of the Widow Fortune. Ned denounces the villagers at the church and the widow, a revered high priestess, declares him an outcast. Missy instructs the gathered villagers to confine Ned. Ned escapes from the building in which he is imprisoned via a secret passageway to the church. There, the village women have chosen the new Corn Maiden who is heavily veiled; Ned believes she is Tamar. She departs with the other women and Justin for the Harvest Home ritual. Ned races to the forest clearing ahead of them, determined despite Dodd's advice to discover what happens there. He watches the women play out the rites, which includes the copulation of the Harvest Lord with the Corn Maiden to symbolically ensure the fertility of the Mother. To Ned's horror, the new Corn Maiden is not Tamar, it is Beth. Ned cries out, alerting the women to his presence. He is forced to watch while Justin and Beth complete their intercourse, finally learning why Worthy had tried to escape and why Sophie killed herself: Tamar cuts Justin's throat with a sickle as he climaxes, spilling his blood onto the ground throughout the clearing. The villagers allowed his family to settle here in order to bring new blood, Beth's and Kate's, into Cornwall Coombe. Ned tries to escape but the women surround him and render him blind and mute. Months later, the blind, dependent Ned learns both that Beth is pregnant and that Kate is destined to be the next Corn Maiden.
2708975	/m/07zchf	Candy	Terry Southern	1958		 Candy Christian, aged eighteen, is an extremely pretty and desirable but naïve young woman, who finds herself in a variety of farcical sexual situations as a result of her desire to help others. The men in her life, regardless of age or relationship, wish only to possess her. Having eluded the pursuits of her philosophy instructor Prof. Mephesto, she returns to her father's house, where she plans to allow the family gardener to sexually initiate her. However, her father steps in, and angrily denouncing the gardener as a communist, attacks him and in the ensuing scuffle ends up with a fractured skull. Candy visits him in the hospital. Mr. Christian's twin brother Jack and his lascivious wife Olivia (Livia) are also present. Aunt Livia leaves, and Uncle Jack attempts to have sex with Candy; a nurse enters and wrestles him away from the girl, who escapes, only to find herself in the lair of young Dr. Krankeit, who is studying the salutary effects of masturbation. (Aunt Livia also has an adventure with Krankeit, which she later describes to Candy in a cheery letter.) Back in the hospital room, the patient (in identical head-bandages after the scuffle with the nurse) turns out to be Jack; Candy's father has gotten up quietly and left. On her way to work, Candy encounters a perverted hunchback, whom she takes for a sort of performance artist and invites to her apartment. Subsequently she is propositioned by school friends in a café, and by a gynecologist who overhears their conversation and gives Candy an "exam" in the bathroom. The café is raided by police and Candy escapes with the help of Pete Uspy, an anti-materialist (the only man in the novel with no designs on Candy's body) who sends her to the camp of the peace activist Crackers. Their leader Grindle is a would-be guru who talks Candy into intercourse by couching it in metaphysical terms. When Candy fears she is pregnant, he tells her the next phase of her spiritual journey is beginning, and buys her a one-way ticket to Calcutta, India. Soon after, Candy is meditating in a temple in Lhasa, along with a dung-encrusted pilgrim who sits nearby, when a thunderstorm occurs. She finds herself pinned between the fallen, lightning-struck statue of Buddha and the pilgrim. As he has the usual physical reaction experienced by men in Candy's proximity, she becomes aware of his identity when the rain washes his face clean (it is her father), and the novel closes with her cry of recognition.
2709167	/m/07zctd	The Russia House	John le Carré	1989-06-01	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 In 1987, Bartholomew "Barley" Scott Blair, a heavy-drinking British book publisher, attends a book fair in Soviet Moscow. There, business friends cajole him into joining them on a drunken retreat to a secluded dacha in the forest near Peredelkino. When discussion turns to politics, Barley finds himself talking boldly of patriotism and courage, of a new world order, and an end to Cold War tensions. One attentive listener, Goethe, asks him privately whether he truly believes in the possibility of such a world. Barley convincingly says that he does. Months later, a beautiful Soviet woman named Katya seeks Barley out at another book fair, hoping to convince him to publish a manuscript for her friend Yakov, which is in truth details the Soviets' nuclear capabilities and atomic secrets. The manuscript has a cover letter to Barley, saying this is Yakov's way of serving his country, by hastening the day when democracy will come to the USSR. However, with Barley at home in Portugal, Katya gives the package to a sales agent with instructions to forward it to Barley. The agent reads the manuscript and recognizes its potential value. When the sales agent is unable to locate Barley, he ultimately turns the manuscript over to British authorities. MI6, specifically a section called the "Russia House", become interested in the manuscript and ask Barley to contact Yakov with a list of verifying questions in order to determine the document's authenticity. Barley is content to stay out of the matter, but the Russia House manipulates him into undertaking the mission. He grows fond of Katya, and schemes of a way to get her out of the Soviet Union. Over the course of several meetings with Katya and Yakov, Barley realizes his nervous informant is very likely under KGB scrutiny. The CIA and MI6 decide one more meeting is needed to verify the authenticity of the data, but Yakov is suddenly "hospitalized" due to purported exhaustion. In a secure phone call, Yakov tells Katya through code that he has been taken and that she is in danger. Barley and Katya realize that any further meeting is merely a KGB scheme to draw them out into the open. Barley receives a message that he must bring "a final and exhaustive" list of questions on Soviet research. He makes contact with one of his Soviet publishing associates and uses his connections in the KGB to arrange a meeting with Yakov's handlers. Although the CIA and MI6 set up a major surveillance operation of the meeting site, Barley goes missing along with the last set of questions, presumably arrested. More than a year later, after several unconfirmed sightings in Moscow, Barley shows up in Portugal, offering no explanation for his absence. Neither the CIA nor MI6 are inclined to interrogate him, reasoning that the KGB has already worn him down to get the information they needed. They are resigned to the fact that the "manuscript" had been KGB bait all along. The truth, however, is that Barley traded the questions for the freedom of Katya and her family. The philosophical Barley reasons that governments are not the only ones who can manipulate and betray, and some things are more important than the games that spies play with others' lives.
2713541	/m/07zld1	Appointment with Venus	Jerrard Tickell	1951	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 In 1940, after the fall of France, the fictitious Channel Island of Armorel is occupied by a small garrison of German troops under the benign command of Hauptmann Weiss. He finds that the hereditary ruler, the Suzerain, is away in the army, leaving the Provost in charge. Back in London, the Ministry of Agriculture realise that Venus, a valuable pedigree Guernsey cow, remains on the island. They petition the War Office to mount a rescue operation, and Major Valentine Morland is assigned the mission, with the assistance of the Suzerain's sister Nicola Fallaize who joined the A.T.S. at the outbreak of war. They travel to Armorel by submarine, contact the Provost and other friends on the island, and discover that Weiss, a cattle breeder in civilian life, is about to have the cow shipped to Germany. By a series of elaborate deceptions, they extract Venus from Weiss's command and succeed in returning her to England.
2716264	/m/07zqfx	The Fourth K	Mario Puzo	1990	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 President Francis Xavier Kennedy is elected to office, in large part, thanks to the legacy of his forebears–good looks, privilege, wealth–and is the very embodiment of youthful optimism. Too soon, however, he is beaten down by the political process and, disabused of his ideals, he becomes a leader totally unlike what he has been before. When his daughter becomes a pawn in a brutal terrorist plot, Kennedy, who has obsessively kept alive the memory of his uncles’ assassinations, activates all his power to retaliate in a series of violent measures. As the explosive events unfold, the world and those closest to him look on with both awe and horror.The novel's emphasis is on the characters. The reader learns about a character's background when he/she has to make a major decision. Critics have stated that, once the book has focused on a particular character, he/she is relegated to the background and never again returns to prominence. Mario Puzo has stated: "The Fourth K was a [commercial] failure—but it was my most ambitious book."
2719346	/m/07zv_4	Once on a Time				 When the King of Barodia receives a pair of seven-league boots as a birthday present, his habit of flying over the King of Euralia's castle during breakfast provokes a series of incidents which escalate into war. While the King of Euralia is away, his daughter Hyacinth tries to rule in his stead and counter the machiavellian ambitions of the king's favourite, the Countess Belvane.
2720141	/m/07zx2l	Hyperspace	Lionel Fanthorpe	1994	{"/m/01p4b_": "Popular science", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Michio Kaku tries to explain higher dimensions, first analyzing the history of higher dimensions of space and the struggle to unite quantum mechanics and general relativity in one theory. He then goes on to detail theories concerning the 2-D world, named "Flatland". The end of the book discusses such topics as wormholes, parallel universes and the fate of the universe.
2721637	/m/07zz26	The Throne of Bloodstone	Michael Dobson			 In The Throne of Bloodstone, the player characters take a trip to the Abyss to steal the wand of the demon prince Orcus. This module is recommended for characters between levels 18 and 100. They play the rules of Bloodstone Pass. A war against the Witch-King of Vaasa has come to a standstill. The players venture into the 'Abyss', destroy a mighty demon, steal the Wand of Orcus and take it to the Seven Heavens to be destroyed. The battle between the mighty undead army of the Witch-King of Vaasa and the forces of Bloodstone has come to a standstill. As long as the source of the Witch-King's power is at work, his evil forces will never be defeated! This module requires the Player Characters, as the rulers of Bloodstone Pass if following the series, to find the true power behind the Witch-King and defeat it. The module requires the players to journey to the Abyss, confront Orcus, one of its greatest demons, steal the Wand of Orcus, and destroy it. The wide range of levels the module is for is dealt with in several ways as well as the general principles described above for dealing with 100th level characters. For some encounters either the number and/or type of opponents vary or the NPC's reaction to the characters vary depending on the total level of the party. Some areas in the module like the city of liches or the city of 100,000 demons, are really too difficult for any party to take out directly and require approaches other than brute force.
2723148	/m/07_18s	The Brothers Lionheart	Astrid Lindgren	1973	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 9 year old Karl Lejon has found out that he is going to die. His adored big brother, 13 year old Jonatan, calms him down and starts telling him about life after death. In the afterlife, all men will go to a land on the other side of the stars, known as Nangijala, where they're still in "the campfires and storytelling times". But Karl is not happy; it could still be over 90 years until Jonatan joins him there. Jonatan assures Karl that time is different in Nangijala and that 90 years will only feel like a few days to Karl. Some time later a fire spreads throughout their home. Jonatan rescues his little brother by carrying him on his back and jumping out the window, but is fatally injured in the fall. During Jonathan's funeral, the priest saints him "Jonathan Lionheart" to tribute his courageous act. Karl is left alone, and starts to wonder if the story about Nangijala is really true. A white pigeon appears one night on his window sill, and Karl interprets it as a confirmation that it is. Two months after his brother Jonatan, Karl dies of his illness. Right before he dies, he leaves a message for his mother: "Don't cry mother, we'll see each other again in Nangijala". Immediately after his death he finds himself standing outside a small cottage. He is no longer sick, and runs down to a river, where his brother is sitting and fishing. Jonatan tells him that they will be living at the Riders farm in the Cherry Valley. They each have a horse, Grim and Fjalar, and a short time of peace and joy follows, with fast riding and discovery expeditions. They have finally come to Nangijala, a land which seems to be remicent of the earlier Swedish Middle Ages. Karl meets Sofia, whose rose garden Jonatan tends. He is gradually informed that there are problems even in Nangijala. On the other side of the mountains lies Törnrosdalen (the Thorn Rose Valley) which has been occupied by the evil Tengil, who has descended from the country of Karmanjaka with his men and built a wall around it. He has enslaved the original inhabitants. With the dragon Katla at his service, he appears unbeatable. Jonatan does not wish to tell Karl about Katla, since he fears knowledge of her would frighten Karl. The people of the Cherry Valley, led by Sofia, help the resistance movement in the Thorn Rose Valley, but they know a traitor exists in the village. Someone from the Cherry Valley is helping Tengil, as Sofia's white doves, which fly with secret messages between the valleys, are being shot down with a bow and arrow. One day Jonatan leaves for the Thorn Rose Valley, where the resistance leader Orvar has been arrested and sits in custody in the Katla cave. His sense of duty makes him go, igoring the dangers. Karl is left alone, and after a few days he attempts to follow his brother. One night he hides in a cave, and later. two of Tengil's men wait outside it to meet the traitor, who turns out to be Jossi the tavernkeeper and not Hubert, as Karl had expected due to his shrewd and open contempt for Sofia and his skills as a marksman. Jossi is branded with the "Katla mark" on his chest to demonstrate his allegiance. In the morning, Karl is discovered by the two soldiers. They are suspicious and bring him to the Thorn Rose Valley. Karl tells them he lives with his grandfather, and the soldiers demand that he show them his house and his grandfather. Luckily an old man is standing outside a small house with a white dove, and Karl throws himself into the old man's arms. The soldiers are satisfied. The old man, Mattias, is also part of the resistance movement, and inside the house Karl finds Jonatan asleep. A happy reunion ensues when the two brothers meet again. Mattias' house lies right next to the high wall, and there are constantly guards from Tengil snooping around to see if someone is doing something forbidden, with capital punishment for a wide range of offenses, including keeping weapons and traveling outside after dark. Jonatan is digging an underground tunnel which will go from Mattias' house, under the high wall and end in a forest on the inside. When Tengil himself shows up in the Thorn Rose Valley, everyone has gathered in the square. He is dressed in black, rides on a black horse and looks cruel. All the men in the village have to get in a line and Tengil picks out the ones who will be brought to Karmanjaka as slaves to build his impenetrable fort, on which they will work until they are too weak and then they are given to Katla. A married man who is chosen protests and publicly denounces Tengil, claims that he will die as well and spits on him. The man is quickly subdued and executed on the spot. Jonatan has almost completed the underground tunnel. The brothers manage to escape the valley. As they stop to bathe in the river, they must hide from groups of soldiers. One of the soldiers rides out into the fast-flowing river to show his bravery, but almost drowns. Jonatan shows empathy with the enemy soldier by saving him and his horse from drowning. When they sit down to camp at the Karma Falls, Karl gets to see Katla - who turns out to be a firebreathing female dragon - for the first time, the dragon that Tengil uses to terrorize and control the people. Tengil controls Katla with the help of a trumpet, which he called to rally more men to his defence when Katla woke from a near-eternal sleep and entered his castle. The next day the brothers cross the river, using the suspension bridge that connects the Thorn Rose Valley from Karmanjaka. The entrance to the Katla cave is guarded by Tengil's soldiers, but Jonatan manages to find a second entrance. Deep in the mountain they arrive at the Katla cave where Orvar is kept. They manage to release Orvar from his wooden cage moments before he is to be collected and fed to Katla, and their escape is soon discovered. They ride back as fast as they can towards the Karma Falls and the bridge, but the pursuing soldiers start overtaking Karl and Jonatan, who are both riding on Grim. Karl throws himself off the horse and hides in a ditch so that Jonatan and Orvar can escape and start planning the rebellion. When the pursuing soldiers have gone away, Karl moves on to the place where they went swimming, and hides in a tree. At dusk three familiar people show up: Sofia, Hubert and the traitor Jossi. When Karl tells Sofia that Jossi is the traitor, she gets angry. Once Jossi's shirt is forced off, and everyone can see the branding on his chest, they understand. Desperate, Jossi escapes by throwing himself into a small boat, but the current catches him and takes him to certain death in the waterfall, upon which Karl cannot resist crying despite his treason. Shortly thereafter, the people of the Thorn Rose Valley rise up against Tengil and his men, and Jonatan reluctantly agrees to join the fighting despite his pledge never to take a life, even if it ment the loss of his own. Orvar mocks him, claiming that if everyone were like him evil would prevail forever, but Karl points out that if everyone were like Jonatan, evil would not exist. The battle commences and claims the lives of Veder, Kader, Mattias, Hubert and many others, before Tengil shows up with Katla, who he (being ignorant of the rebellion until this point) brought to punish the people of Thorn Rose Valley. All seems lost, but Jonatan manages to attack Tengil himself and pull the horn out of his hands. As Katla no longer fears Tengil, the dragon instead attacks him and his men, and finally kills the tyrant. Having turned the tide of the battle in favour of the liberators, Katla comes under the tenuous control of Jonatan. Once the fight is won, Orvar asks Jonatan to bring Katla back to the Katla cave, and vows to kill her himself when starvation has weakened her enough to be approached safely. When Jonatan and Karl rides over the suspension bridge, their horse Grim gets frightened and Jonatan drops the trumpet down into the river. Katla then chases them up the mountain. They finally hide high up on a cliff where Jonatan pushes a big rock down on Katla. Katla falls backwards into the river, and a fight breaks out between Katla and the (male) lindworm Karm. The two beasts, who have been waiting for this battle since the beginning of times, savagely kill each other. Jonatan and Karl set up a camp and Jonatan explains that during the fight he was burned by Katla's fire, and that he will soon become totally paralysed. Jonatan tells Karl about the land that lies after Nangijala called Nangilima, a land of light where there are only happy adventures. Karl does not want to be separated again from his brother so he carries him on his back to a cliffdrop and they jump together. Karl's last words while falling are: "Oh, Nangilima! Yes, Jonatan, yes - I see the light! I see the light!"
2723219	/m/07_1ft	Prizes	Erich Segal		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel deals with the relationships of all the three characters, and how life brings them together. Adam Coopersmith, an Obstetrician and Immunologist, helps in saving the life of Thomas Hartnell, known as the "Boss" in Washington, who is one of the advisors to the President of the United States, and arguably, a man holding more personal power than the President himself. Adam's mentor, Dr.Max Rudolph, takes a slight detour from his ethical conduct and gives an FDA unapproved life saving cancer treatment whose efficacy is proved in his laboratory, to Hartnell. Adam serves as the attending doctor and ends up falling in love with Hartnell's daughter Antonia, who is the Assistant Attorney General in Washington. After the demise of Max Rudolph, who is more of a father figure to Adam than a professional colleague, Adam is broken and finds solace in Antonia's arms. They get married and have a daughter, Heather. However things soon start changing as Adam and his daughter slowly start realising that Antonia is married to her career, and in her list of priorities family figures quite below her work and her father. This slowly leads to a rift between Adam and Antonia, and he is drawn to Anya Avilov, the childless and abandoned wife of a Russian émigré Dr.Dmitri Avilov. Dmitri abandons Anya when he realises she is incapable of conceiving, and Adam, the attending obstetrician, rushes to fill in the gap in both his and her life. Eventually, Adam divorces Antonia and marries Anya. Antonia wins custody of Heather, but Heather always remains more attached to Adam rather than Antonia. Adam commits suicide unable to bear the crushing burden of Alzheimers Disease, a few days after he hears that he has won the Nobel Prize. Sandy Raven is the son of Sidney Raven, a Hollywood producer. Sandy has an inferiority complex about his looks, which gets reinforced over time as he faces the conspicuous lack of a social life throughout his teenage years. He joins MIT to study Genetics. His teenage love, Rochelle Taubman, uses him to get to his father and thereby gain entry into Hollywood. She very conveniently forgets Sandy after she gains contacts in Hollywood. She ends up doing seedy bit parts, and eventually, on the centerspread of Playboy. Sandy is unable to get over this betrayal and turns into a repressed person who is desperate for female company. He falls in love with his lab director's daughter, Judy Morgenstern. His mentor and Laboratory director Gregory Morgenstern, cheats him out the Nobel Prize by not mentioning his contribution on a project. This leads to Judy and Sandy's divorce, but Sandy finds solace in the love of his daughter Olivia, who, in turn studies physics under Isabel later in the book. Sandy finds love in a Japanese woman, Kimiko, and becomes a reputed scientist in Genetics. Isabel Da Costa is the daughter of Raymond Da Costa, and is a genius with an IQ far above average. Raymond recognizes this early on in her childhood and begins to run her life with an iron hand, thereby causing his marriage with Isabel's mother Muriel to go into ruins. They also have a son Peter who is very close to Isabel, and who thinks that Raymond is ruining Isabel's youth. Muriel wants Isabel to have a normal life, and Raymond is stubbornly intent on making Isabel win a nobel prize for physics, to vindicate his own failure in having a good academic career. Isabel is denied all pleasures of a normal teenage life with a punishing schedule in academics, and becomes a post graduate student at Berkeley before she has completed eighteen years of age, owing to her extraordinary powers of comprehension. She falls in love with Jerry Pracht, the son of her Thesis advisor Karl Pracht, in spite of her father's repeated efforts to keep them apart. Jerry is a genius himself, who has quit the pressure of academics and is an ace tennis player. Isabel also longs to rebel against the pressure of being a genius and encourages this relationship on the sly. Her father realises that his hold on her life is detrimental, and gracefully moves out of her life. Isabel goes on to win the Nobel in Physics and strengthens her relationship with Jerry to a commitment.
2723594	/m/03gq53f	Gil Blas	Alain-René Lesage		{"/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 Gil Blas is born in misery to a stablehand and a chambermaid of Santillana in Cantabria, and is educated by his uncle. He leaves Oviedo at the age of seventeen to attend the University of Salamanca. His bright future is suddenly interrupted when he is forced to help robbers along the route and is faced with jail. He becomes a valet and, over the course of several years, is able to observe many different classes of society, both lay and clerical. Because of his occupation, he meets many disreputable people and is able to adjust to many situations, thanks to his adaptability and quick wit. He finally finds himself at the court as a favorite of the king and secretary to the prime minister. Working his way up though hard work and intelligence, Gil is able to retire to a castle to enjoy a fortune and a hard-earned honest life. <!--
2727926	/m/07_bwp	The Beauty Myth	Naomi Wolf	1991	{"/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 In the book, Wolf argues that "beauty" as a normative value is entirely socially constructed, and that the patriarchy determines the content of that construction with the goal of reproducing its own hegemony. In her introduction, Wolf offers the following analysis: Wolf also posits the idea of an "iron-maiden," an intrinsically unattainable standard of beauty that is then used to punish women physically and psychologically for their failure to achieve and conform to it. Wolf criticizes the fashion and beauty industries as exploitative of women, but claims the beauty myth extends into all areas of human functioning. Wolf writes that women should have "the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women's appearance to undermine us psychologically and politically". Wolf argued that women were under assault by the "beauty myth" in five areas: work, religion, sex, violence, and hunger. Ultimately, Wolf argues for a relaxation of normative standards of beauty.
2728104	/m/07_c7j	The Silent Boy	Lois Lowry	2003	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Silent Boy is told by Katy Thatcher, an old woman in 1987, about a critical period in her life from 1908 to 1911. Katy, whose father is a community doctor, dreams of becoming a doctor herself. Katy takes an interest in Jacob, a “touched” boy from a neighboring farm, who can't speak, but somehow hums quietly to himself, and seems able to communicate with animals. Jacob occasionally comes to the Thatcher home to be in the barn with the animals. Katy shares Jacob’s love of animals and comes to feel she can communicate with him in a rudimentary but empathetic way. When Nell, the sister of Jacob, has a baby out of wedlock by Paul Bishop, Jacob is aware of the trouble. He abducts and brings the baby to the Thatcher's house on a stormy night, hoping to save it the way he has saved orphaned lambs by bringing them to a substitute mother. But it doesn't go the way he had planned it to. Later, Katy marries Austin Bishop and becomes a doctor. 50 years later the Asylum closed and Jacob was never seen again. There were no records of him there.
2728432	/m/07_cyp	Alongside Night	J. Neil Schulman	1979-10-16	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The story is set in United States on the brink of economic collapse, where inflation is spiraling out of control and the government struggles to keep hold of its power. Trading in foreign currency has become illegal and many shops are subject to rationing. As a result there is a sprawling black market for almost all conceivable goods. The setting reflects the world as Samuel Edward Konkin III conceived it would be just prior to a successful agorist revolution. The story begins with Elliot Vreeland, son of Nobel Laureate economist Dr Martin Vreeland (an economist of the Austrian school) hearing of his father's apparent death and being rushed home from school. He quickly discovers however that the death is fake, a plot concocted by his father (after receiving a tip-off) to escape arrest by the FBI who are rounding up "radicals" accused by the government of worsening the economic crisis. Eliot is sent by his father to collect some gold coins that had been stored in a safe location, for use as hard currency during the families intended escape. However, upon his return Eliot finds his family to be missing. Not long after, FBI agents enter the house searching for Eliot who manages to escape. Eliot's escape leads him into contact with the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre, an organisation plotting the downfall of the US government through the means of counter-economics. The cadre has grown strong over the years of its existence, and has its own militia and extensive underground network. Eliot enlists the help of the Cadre, and meets Lorimer, a girl similarly on the run from the law. As the novel progresses, government stability weakens still further, and they bring in tight controls on communication, travel and trade, however they fail to avert total collapse, leading to the private sector (unions, individuals, syndicates and many others) taking control of the old infrastructure.
2730451	/m/07_jn4	The Coffin Dancer	Jeffery Deaver	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Coffin Dancer struck 5 years ago, killing two techs who worked with Lincoln Rhyme, and it seems he has struck again. Then it was a bomb in a wastebasket, this time it's on a plane. A coverup is witnessed, a hitman hired, and all hell breaks loose. There are three key witnesses the Dancer has been hired to kill and he just finished off the first. The police and the Federal Bureau Investigators are desperate to keep the last two safe as well as finding the killer behind the bombing. Rhyme is more interested in just finding the Dancer. He drops his current case and dives head first, so to speak, into the evidence. Amelia Sachs, his arms and legs, is sent off to every crime scene in hopes to find that one shred of evidence to pin down the killer. The crime scenes pile up as they get closer to their man then they could ever hope to be, but still he outsmarts them. This game of cat and mouse they play ends many lives, just to save the two.
2730873	/m/07_ksn	The Machine Gunners	Robert Westall	1975-09-18	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is set during the Second World War and deals with a group of six children living in the North East of England. Their town, Garmouth, regularly suffers bombing raids by the German Luftwaffe. One of the children, Chas McGill, finds a crashed German He 111 bomber and takes a fully operational machine gun and over two thousand rounds of ammunition. With the help of his friend, Cyril "Cemtery/Cem" Jones, the pair intend to set up their own fortress with their friends, including a boy from Glasgow called "Clogger" Duncan, and another boy, nicknamed "Carrot Juice" on account of his ginger hair and freckles. They also team up with a girl called Audrey Parton, and a boy, Benjamin "Nicky" Nichol. They name their "Fortress Caporetto", after a World War I battle in which Chas's grandfather fought. Later a bomb lands on Nicky's house and he is presumed dead. According to Chas's puritan neighbour Nicky's mother and a man were found "dead in their bed of sin with not a stitch on". Nicky has actually survived, and, understandably shaken and upset, he hides in the Fortress, where he is found by the gang. After this, only his friends know he is alive. During an attack by an Me 110 fighter, the children fire their gun at the plane. They miss but, surprised, the plane swerves into the path of an AA gun and is shot down by three Spitfires from the nearby airfield at RAF Acklington. The pilot is killed; rear gunner Rudi Gerlath bales out, injuring his ankle on landing. The victor of two air battles, Rudi evades capture for many days, until his ankle is sufficiently healed to allow him to walk again. He then discovers the children's hidden fortress and is promptly arrested by the children, who take his pistol. Only later does he realise that the machine-gun has been damaged and is not working. The children do not wish to reveal their secret so do not hand Rudi over to the authorities, but keep him prisoner at their fort, where Clogger and Nicky now live permanently. After a while Rudi is bribed with the offer of a boat belonging to Nicky's dead father, if he will mend the gun. He agrees and mends it before being taken to the dock where he rows off. The same night the church bells ring, the alarm signalling a German invasion. The children hurry to the fortress but do not see anything; it was a false alarm. Out at sea, Rudi finds he does not have the strength to row to German-occupied Norway and is forced back to England. He rejoins the children at the fortress. The next day it is realised that the children are missing, and some Polish refugee soldiers are drafted in to look for them. The children, on seeing troops speaking in a foreign language, open fire on them with the gun believing they are a German invasion force. The children are soon overpowered, however, and forced to surrender. In the chaos, Clogger shoots and wounds Rudi with his own Luger pistol, but the injury is not fatal. The very well-made fortress is surrendered to the Home Guard, then Clogger and Nicky are taken to a children's home while the other children are handed over to their parents. A sequel, Fathom Five, set two years later, was published in 1979.
2731114	/m/07_l76	Folk og røvere i Kardemomme by	Thorbjørn Egner	1955	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book is about the peaceful town of Kardemomme and the people there, as well as the only characters which stir up serious trouble. They are the three robbers, Casper, Jasper and Jonathan who live outside the town and regularly enter to steal the things they need. In the end the robbers are arrested, but good treatment in the jail by the kindly constable Bastian reforms them, and in the final chapter they become the heroes of the day when they extinguish a fire in the tower of the town. At the end Casper becomes the town's fireman, Jasper becomes the town's circus manager and Jonathan becomes the town's baker.
2733493	/m/07_rgf	Regency Buck	Georgette Heyer	1935	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance"}	 Judith Taverner is a beautiful young heiress who comes to London to join high society. She takes an instant dislike to her unwilling guardian, Julian, fifth Earl of Worth, who, having met her earlier in a small town filled with bucks watching a boxing match, treats her with a familiarity reserved for loose women. Judith soon becomes a sensation in London. She gets many offers of marriage (including one from the Duke of Clarence). Worth does not permit her to marry any one of them. This initially makes Judith very angry, but she comes to appreciate it later. Judith has a younger brother named Peregrine (Perry) who is a young handsome boy with very little sense and a lot of money to spare. Hence, he is always getting into trouble. Perry and Judith's cousin Bernard Taverner seems always so kind and attentive, though there is little love lost between him and Worth. Perry keeps getting into scrapes. He is challenged to a duel, gets held up, and nearly gets poisoned. Worth suspects that Bernard is the villain and he sends his brother, Captain the Hon. Charles Audley to watch over Perry. Meanwhile, Bernard tries to convince Judith that it is Worth who is the real culprit. In the end, after Worth provokes Taverner into acting, the truth comes out and Bernard is shown to be the guilty one. The sparring and eventual love affair of Judith and Julian, against the backdrop of Judith's brother Peregrine's romance and danger, make up this novel. Miss Heyer's An Infamous Army is a sequel to Regency Buck.
2734302	/m/07_t3v	Friday's Child	Georgette Heyer	1944	{"/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The wild young Viscount Sheringham is fast running through his considerable income through gambling and other extravagant pursuits; and he cannot as yet touch the principal, unless he marries. As the lady with whom he currently fancies himself in love, the beautiful Isabella Milborne, is also an heiress, he proposes. Isabella rejects him with contumely, citing his dissipated lifestyle. A lively quarrel then follows with his obnoxious widowed mother and her brother, who wish to retain control of his father's fortune themselves. The Viscount storms off in a fit of pique, vowing to marry the first female he meets. This turns out to be the pretty but orphaned and shy Hero Wantage, who has secretly loved him since they were children, and who now lives with one of his neighbours in the position of Cinderella, complete with Ugly Sisters. The rest of the novel, chronicling the Viscount's gradual transition to maturity and the realisation that the one he really loves is Hero (the "loving and giving" child of the title), is told with Miss Heyer's characteristic wit, and features some of her most memorable dialogue, plot twists and characters (such as the fiery but lovelorn George Wrotham, whose hobby is fighting duels).
2734797	/m/07_v7j	The Gem and the Staff	John Van De Graaf		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Gem and the Staff is an adventure for a DM and a single player using a provided thief character. The player must search for a magic gem and a staff of power inside an evil wizard's tower. This module is divided into two separate adventures, which can be played as successive scenarios. The player takes the role of an experienced thief named Eric the Bold, who is pressed in both adventures into special thieving services. In the first adventure, Eric's task is to steal a certain gem from the trap-riddled tower of the wizard Tormag. The second adventure involves Tormag hiring Eric to steal a mighty magic wand from his arch-rival Felspel. Both modules are set with a time limit of thirty real-world minutes to complete the task.
2734854	/m/07_v9y	Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact	Karen Traviss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story begins during the Battle of Geonosis with Clone Commando Darman and his team assaulting a Separatist position. However, the entire squad is massacred in the attack, with Darman being the only survivor. After the battle, he is grouped with other clone commandos in incomplete squads and meets Niner, Fi, and Atin. All four commandos must learn how to work together as a team, as they had in their previous squads. It is not long before the newly formed squad is given another mission. This time, they are to be inserted onto the planet Qiilura, deep in Separatist territory in order to destroy a research facility developing a nanovirus that specifically targets clone troopers. They also must capture the lead scientist, Ovolot Qail Uthan. However, the facility is guarded by Ghez Hokan, a fearsome Mandalorian mercenary who shows little mercy to his enemies or friends, and commands a small army of militia, Trandoshan slavers, and droids. When the squad attempts to land on the planet, their ship suffers mechanical problems and is forced to crash land, resulting in Darman being separated from the others. Meanwhile, a young Jedi Padawan, Etain Tur-Mukan, is on the run after her master, Jedi Master Kast Fulier, is killed by Hokan. She goes into hiding and is sheltered with the help of a strange woman named Jinart. Meanwhile, Niner, Fi, and Atin run across and defeat several Separatist patrols in an attempt to find Darman and complete their objective. With Jinart's help, Darman and Etain link up but Etain lacks the self-confidence to lead and tells Darman to take charge. They then manage to reunite with the rest of the squad and make their plans to attack the research facility. Jinart reveals herself to be a Gurlanin, shapeshifting native animals of Qiilura, and gives them vital information on how to approach the facility. Etain and the commandos attack the facility and manage to destroy it and take Uthan prisoner, but Hokan does not give up without a fight, nor does his lieutenant, who wounds Atin and, through shrapnel, Uthan. He fights the Republic forces valiantly, but is eventually outsmarted and killed by Etain who decapitates Hokan with her lightsaber. After their victory, Etain gains a little more confidence in herself and her abilities. As the extraction dropship arrives, Etain desperately wants to leave with the commandos, but Jedi Master Arligan Zey has different ideas. He wants Etain to stay with him on Qiilura to organize an anti-Separatist resistance movement, and that she would be far more valuable to the Republic by staying behind. Etain reluctantly agrees and parts ways with Omega squad, and especially Darman, as they leave. S.S.
2735069	/m/07_vh7	The Cestus Deception	Steven Barnes		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set during the Clone Wars, the story follows Jedi Knights Obi-Wan Kenobi and Kit Fisto and their adventures as ambassadors on the planet of Ord Cestus, which has started producing so-called "Jedi Killer" droids. While, Obi-Wan Kenobi takes the diplomatic approach with the leadership, Kit Fisto and a clone trooper squad start recruiting and training fighters from the working class of the planet to incite a rebellion, should Obi-Wan fail. While they deal with the intrigue and politicking of the locals, as well as intervention by the Sith minion Asajj Ventress, a love affair forms between one of their clone trooper bodyguards Nate and a female pilot who is attracted to the clone template Jango Fett.
2736064	/m/07_x7d	Memories of Midnight	Sidney Sheldon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The plot of Memories of Midnight takes off from the ending of The Other Side of Midnight, where Catherine Douglas is recovering in a convent. The world thinks that she has been killed by her husband Larry Douglas and his mistress Noelle Page, except Constantin Demiris, known as Costa. But Catherine wants to discover herself and know who she is. The only thing she knows is that her name is Catherine Alexander. She requests to see the world outside the convent in order to reveal her past. This request is granted by the Sister of the convent, but only after getting the approval from their mentor Constantin Demiris. It is there in Greece that she realizes that her husband and his mistress tried to kill her. She remembers them trying to drown her and this becomes a recurring dream. When she tells all this to Costa, he is a bit angry as he didn’t want her uncovering her past as she is the last link to the case in which Larry and Noelle were wrongly accused of killing her and sentenced to death. So he sends her off to London to work in one of his various offices. At this point in time, Constantin Demiris seems like a benefactor to Catherine as she has no knowledge of what Constantin Demiris has planned for her. Trouble starts brewing when Frederick Stavros begin to feel guilty for sending Larry and Noelle to their death as he was their lawyer and they were all tricked into pleading guilty by Napoleon Chotas. He dies shortly after confiding this news to a priest who after his death tells this news to an employee working in the office of Spyros Lambrou, the brother of Costa’s wife Melina. This news reaches Spyros Lambrou who uses this news to destroy Costa as Costa had maltreated his wife, Spyros’ sister. This is when Napoleon Chotas starts fearing for his own life. He leaves a package with a prosecuting attorney, Peter Demonides, and sends a tape referring to this to Costa. The next day Chotas’ house is burned down. He dies and the package is delivered to Costa, rather than the authorities by Peter, who starts working for him. Meanwhile, Catherine finds a good friend in Kirk Reynolds who is in love with her and wants to marry her although Catherine is a bit reluctant. She confides in him that her husband and his mistress attempted to kill her and were executed for it. Kirk reassures her by saying that from the little he knows about Greek law he is confident that their law doesn’t sentence anyone to death on account of attempted murder. Still, he will make sure by asking one of his acquaintance, Peter Demonides. Within a day of relating Catherine's story to Peter, he dies. In the meantime, Spyros tries to destroy Costa by narrating this incident to a drug dealer, Tony Rizzoli and advices him to trick Costa into taking one of his drug shipments to USA. But Constantin Demiris kills Tony and destroys his shipment and then threatens Spyros by telling him that he will destroy him but will first take care of his sister. When Spyros tells this to Melina, she assures him by saying that she can take care of herself. Her brother’s house is attacked but he and his wife survive the attack. This is when she becomes confident that Costa wants to destroy them. Hence, she kills herself and fakes it in such a way that it seems that Constantin Demiris has murdered her. Meanwhile, Costa has ordered the killing of Catherine Alexander. Costa gets arrested for the murder of his wife. The only one who can save him is Sypros Lambrou, who can give an alibi for the time of the murder but, won’t do so as he detests Constantin Demiris and wants him dead. This is when Napoleon Chotas makes a reappearance after mysteriously surviving the fire, which burned his house. He fights the case of Constantine Demiris. He convinces Spyros into giving testimony for Costa, arguing that instead of having him dead it will be better if he forces him to live in poverty. This will be achieved by Costa transferring all the assets of his company to Spyros in return for SPyros' testimony. On the other hand Costa and Chotas have already planned that the assets of Costa’s company will first be shifted to a firm owned by Napoleon Chotas himself, so that Spyros will get nothing. Catherine goes into psychoanalysis but in turn falls in love with the doctor Alan Hamilton who also falls in love with her. This is when 3 men arrive in London to study the operation taking place there and they all seem pretty weird and she has a bad feeling about them but it is not until she is to be killed that she realizes that it is not the 3 men but the office boy who came along with them who has come to kill her. He tries to kill her by locking and tying her up in the basement and turning up the thermostat of the boiler which will explode when it reaches 400 degree Celsius but she manages to survive by hiding in the bomb shelter. She comes to know the truth about Costa and also the fact that he was convicted. She marries Alan. Constantin Demiris is being tried for a murder he didn’t commit but, on the last day of the gruesome 10 day trial, Spyros Lambrou testifies, setting Constantin Demiris free. Afterwards, on the way to Napoleon’s home, Napoleon confide in Costa that even he liked Noelle Page though he still helped him in killing her. He starts driving faster and tells him that he has donated all the assets of his company to the convent. Finally, he drives the car over the cliff down the steep mountainside. “ The car tumbles end over end until it finally crashes in the sea. There is a tremendous explosion and then a deep silence and its was over.” (quoted from the book Memories of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon)
2737067	/m/07_zpq	The Quiet Game	Greg Iles		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is of investigative crime fiction genre, entailing the main character of Penn Cage. Cage travels back to his home town of Natchez, Mississippi with his daughter after his wife died. He is a successful novelist, with a legal background, and finds that his father is being blackmailed over a long forgotten murder by a criminal who he never turned in to the police. Penn soon finds himself in the middle of hidden racial tension and prejudice towards blacks within the heart of Natchez. He soon realises that the case he is involved with is much bigger than he expected. He joins forces with Caitlin Masters, a beautiful young newspaper journalist, and meets his high school love interest in a quest to find justice and the truth.
2738284	/m/0801v_	The Traveler	John Twelve Hawks	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the shadows of modern society an epic battle is fought. One woman is standing between those who try to control mankind and those who will risk their lives for the freedom of us all. On one side the Brethren, using high-end surveillance technology for control, supported by officials and politicians. On the other side the Travelers, the gifted ones, who are able to leave our realm and cross over into other realities. Because of their knowledge they are a great threat to the Brethren. The Travelers are supported by the Harlequins, a group only trained to defend the Travelers and to save them from the Brethren. Harlequins are trained since birth by their parents and other Harlequins. They are able to use all kinds of weapons, but their favored arm is a unique Harlequin sword they carry with them all the time. Maya, a pretty young woman, is trying to live the life of a normal citizen. Her background, on the other hand, is anything but normal. She is the daughter of a famous German Harlequin named Thorn, who had been badly injured in an ambush by the Brethren. On a mission she killed two men of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. As a consequence Maya had tried to hide and leave her Harlequin past behind until one day her handicapped father calls for her. When visiting him in Prague, she finds him slaughtered by his enemies. Fulfilling her father's last wish, Maya takes a flight to the States supporting Shepherd, the last American Harlequin. She is determined to help him defend the last two Travelers alive. However, Shepherd has become a member of the Brethren. Working for the other side now, he tries to kill Maya. With the help of a young woman named Vikki she is lucky to get away. Vikki is a member of the I. T. Jones Church, a church of followers of the Traveler Isaac T. Jones, who was killed by the Brethren in 1889 with Lion of the temple (known as Zachary Goldman) a harlequin. Together they are able to find an ally, Hollis, a Capoeira trainer from Los Angeles and a former member of the Isaac T. Jones Community. The three of them are able to find the last living Travelers, Michael and Gabriel Corrigan. Before they are able to give them protection, Michael is captured by the Brethren. Instead of killing him immediately they try to convince him to help them. The Brethren recently started a new Program. They were in contact with a technologically advanced civilization dwelling in another realm. Aiming to travel through the realities, they need the help of a guide, someone who is able to travel without technology - like a Traveler. For achieving help, they offer the Brethren high technology, weapons and plans for a quantum computer. The Brethren want to use a real Traveler that can find this other civilization and guide it to the Earth. By offering Michael power, money and everything else he wants, the Brethren convince him to work for them. With a new drug called 3B3, Michael is able to leave his realm without any usual way a Pathfinder would offer. A Pathfinder is a person that helps a Traveler to cross over. He or she is a teacher, but never a Traveler himself. While Michael gains his first experiences with other realms, Maya tries to find a Pathfinder for Gabriel. She herself knows little of other realms and the process of crossing over. At all time they must be careful and live "off the grid”, because the Brethren use all their power to get hold of them. Hollis stays in Los Angeles to place a false track. Within little time the Brethren show up at his house and try to kill him with a new weapon called “Splicer," some kind of genetically engineered animal designed to search and destroy. But, Hollis defeats them. In the meantime Maya and Gabriel find a Pathfinder in the desert in Arizona: an old woman researching king snakes in an abandoned missile silo. While teaching Gabriel how to cross over, she tells him everything she knows about the Travelers and the six realms. There is the first realm of a town like hell, the second realm of a city full of "hungry ghosts", the third is inhabited by animals ignorant of all others, the fourth realm is our own reality, where the sin is desire, the fifth realm is the reality of the "half gods", where the sin is jealousy, and the sixth realm of the "gods" themselves, where the sin is pride. The "gods" and "half-gods" of the fifth and sixth realm are not meant like God as the creator of all life, but like the Tibetans describe them: human beings from parallel worlds. The realms are separated each by four barriers: one barrier of fire, one of water, one of earth and one of air. A Traveler that is capable of passing these four barriers is then able to enter one of the five other realms. If his body on earth dies, his soul, called the light, is condemned to stay forever in the realm it visits at that time. Crossing over into other realities, a Traveler can only carry special objects, called talismans, with him. Such an object is the sword Gabriel’s father gave him. Equipped with this sword, he meets his brother in the realm of the hungry ghosts. His brother tries to convince him to join the Brethren. Gabriel resists the temptation, but he tells his brother where he left his body. As a consequence Gabriel is imprisoned by the Brethren within hours and brought to the research centre where Michael is kept. Maya realizes that an immediate counterstrike is necessary. After an exciting battle in the Brethren's research facility, they free Gabriel but have to realize that they can not convince Michael to leave the Brethren. Maya and her allies are able to find refuge in a house on a beach in Cape Cod - but only to recover. At this point the first book of the fourth realm has a cliffhanger ending.
2739269	/m/0803_8	Behold the Man	Michael Moorcock	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with Karl's violent arrival in the Holy Land of AD 28, where his time machine, a womblike, fluid-filled sphere, cracks open and becomes useless. By interpolating numerous memories and flashbacks, Moorcock tells the parallel story of Karl's troubled past in 20th century London, and tries to explain why he's willing to risk everything to meet Jesus. We learn that Karl has chronic problems with women, homosexual tendencies, an interest in the ideas of Jung, and many neuroses, including a messiah complex. Karl, badly injured during his journey, crawls halfway out of the time machine, then faints. John the Baptist and a group of Essenes find him there, and take him back to their community, where they care for him for some time. Since the Essenes witnessed his miraculous arrival in the time machine, John decides Karl must be a magus, and asks him to help lead a revolt against the occupying Romans. When he asks Karl to baptise him, however, the latter panics and flees into the desert, where he wanders alone, hallucinating from heat and thirst. He then makes his way to Nazareth in search of Jesus. When he finds Mary and Joseph, Mary turns out to be little more than a whore, and Joseph, a bitter old man, sneers openly at her claim to have been impregnated by an angel. Worse, their child Jesus is a profoundly retarded hunchback who incessantly repeats the only word he knows: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Karl, however, is so deeply committed to the idea of a real, historical Jesus that, at this point, he himself begins to step into the role, gathering followers, repeating what parables he can recall, and using psychological tricks to simulate miracles. When there's no food, he shows the people how to pretend to eat to take their minds off their hunger; when he encounters illness caused by hysteria, he cures it. Gradually, it becomes known that his name is Jesus of Nazareth. In the end, determined to live the story of Jesus to its decidedly bitter end, he orders a puzzled Judas to betray him to the Romans, and dies on the cross. His last, agonized words, however, are not Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani, but the phonetically similar English it's a lie....it's a lie...let me down... After Karl's death on the cross, the body is stolen by a doctor who believed the body had magical properties, leading to rumors that he did not die. The doctor is disappointed when the body begins to rot as any normal human would.
2741000	/m/080726	The Speed of Dark	Elizabeth Moon	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lou Arrendale is a bioinformatics specialist, and high-functioning autistic, who has made a good life for himself. A new manager at the firm where he works puts pressure on the department where many autistic people work. Lou is pressured to undergo an experimental treatment that might "cure" his autism. Lou does not think he needs curing, but he risks losing his job and other accommodations the company has put in place for its autistic employees. Lou struggles with the idea of going through this "treatment" for his autism while he pursues fencing with "normal" friends and continues to go to work. His autistic friends, as well as himself, meet together after work and discuss what or what not to do.
2741847	/m/0808h5	The Never War	D.J. MacHale	2003-05-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bobby Pendragon and Vo Spader, the Traveler from Cloral, arrive on First Earth (New York City, 1937) shortly after the death of Bobby's uncle, Press Tilton, greeted by bullets from gangsters that Saint Dane has hired. They then meet the First Earth Traveler, who saved them from the gangsters. He is a bell captain at the Manhattan Tower Hotel named Vincent Van Dyke nickname "Gunny". Bobby and Spader become employed as bellhops there, and investigate the ties between First Earth's Turning Point, rival crime godfathers Max Rose and Winn Farrow, and the Nazi party. The critical connection is revealed to be the Hindenburg zeppelin. To understand its significance, Bobby and Gunny visit Third Earth, in the year 5010. The Traveler of Third Earth, Patrick, accesses a computer that predicts the future in which they save the Hindenburg: industrial spies working for Max would lead to the Nazis developing an atomic bomb and disastrously winning World War Two. Bobby and Gunny return to First Earth, only to find that Spader and Rose have gone ahead, seeking to stop Winn Farrow from shooting a firework rocket into Hindenburg. Bobby flown to the LZ-129's launch site by a female aeroplane pilot called Nancy Olsen (Jinx), who has been his friend and client at the Hotel. Once parachuting from the aeroplane, Bobby tracks down Max and Spader, who are seconds from departing to meet Max's airship arrival. Bobby accompanies them, and with Third Earth foresight, manages to save the entire entourage's lives. While on Third Earth, the young Traveler learns that Max Rose was destined to die on the same highway, on the same day, after crashing into a motorcycle cop. With Max unconscious and Spader, convinced stopping the Hindenburg will save First Earth, heading for the airfield, Bobby uses Max's car to follow them. Spader, misunderstanding, tries to stop the rocket from launching; Gunny holds him back, but fails. Spader tries to save the Hindenburg on his own, but is stopped by Winn Farrow. Spader begs Bobby to save the Hindenburg. Looking up, Bobby sees the faces of those who will die in the explosion and is reluctant to let them die. Gunny again intervenes, holding him until the rocket launches and the zeppelin burns. After the whole incident is over, Bobby is upset that Spader's emotions nearly got the better of him which almost lead to the destruction on all three earth territories. Bobby tells Spader to return to Cloral until he learns to control his emotions. Full of angst over his role in the tragedy, Bobby returns to his home on Second Earth (the 20th and 21st-centuries) for a pause in his Travels. After a week, he receives a call from Gunny, and meets him back at Bobby's old house a few hours later. Gunny arrives in a limousine with an elderly man claiming to know Bobby's great grandfather (unknowingly referring to Bobby when he was on First Earth), and explains how Uncle Press had died, describing how an accomplice (who the Gangster revealed to be Saint Dane) persuaded Tony, the gangster's partner, into shooting a Tommy Gun into the flume. He states clearly that he never fired a bullet. He then gives Bobby his traveler ring which the gangster took from him on First Earth. Bobby thanks the gangster, and he and Gunny accompany the gangster down town to the flume. This is where "The Reality Bug" begins.
2742705	/m/0809yt	Infernal Devices	Philip Reeve	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The story begins sixteen years after the events of Predator's Gold, in the grounded Ice City of Anchorage, now "Anchorage-In-Vineland". Wren Natsworthy, the child of Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw, is bored with her life in the sleepy static of Anchorage-in-Vineland, and jumps at the chance to join the Lost Boys, who have turned up on the island in search of a mysterious Rasmussen family artifact named the "Tin Book", which is a copy of a document from the Sixty Minute War, found by the original founders of the New Anchorage on an old American Empire nuclear submarine. The Tin Book, bearing the insignia of the President of the United States of America, contains the activation codes for the final remaining orbital weapons platform left over from the Sixty Minute War, potentially with firepower far greater than that of MEDUSA, the energy weapon that destroyed the traction city of London in Mortal Engines. The Lost Boys persuade Wren to give them the Tin Book, and to join them on their journeys around the world. Wren decided to find out what the Tin Book is. She starts by asking Freya knowing that it is in the palace's library. Freya tells Wren that the Tin Book was found on an old American Nuclear Submarine; everyone on board was dead, except for one person who, before he died, wrote the Tin Book. No one knows what it is about or what it is for; all it has in it are random letters and numbers. Then Wren asks Gargle, who is in charge of the mission to get the Tin Book. He tells Wren that Nimrod Pennyroyal wrote a book about the time he was on Anchorage, called PREDATOR'S GOLD. It is selling well, but most of it is a lie, and because it talks about 'Parasite Pirates' towns and cities now have their hulls checked every day, meaning that it is harder to attach limpets (vehicles used by the Lost Boys) to them. So the Lost Boys have had to stop going to the Atlantic Sailors and the Ice Runners; they have had to send their limpets further away, to other oceans, and the central Hunting Ground. Worse yet, they are losing limpets; some of them have never returned, no distress call, nothing. Now raft cities are searching for Grimsby. The Lost Boys need the Tin Book. Gargle claims this is because the ancients made submarines that can last for years underwater and information in the book could get Grimsby moving, however it is likely that Uncle wanted to sell it to either Stalker Fang or the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft. Wren steals the book from the library and gives it to the Lost Boys. However, the townspeople of Anchorage find Wren, and believing she is in danger Hester Shaw opens fire on the limpet which is taking her away. She kills two Lost Boys in the process, and Fishcake, the only surviving crew member of the limpet, kidnaps Wren in anger. Fishcake plans to take her to Grimsby but is diverted en route to the raft resort of Brighton by a trap intended to lure limpets to the city, so that their Lost Boy crews can be sold as slaves. The slaves are supposed to be sold to Nuevo Maya, but Wren convinces the owner of the slave trade company to sell her to Nimrod Pennyroyal, now Mayor of Brighton. Tom and Hester set sail with Caul in the Screw Worm to Grimsby to save Wren, unaware that she is in Brighton. Caul, upon returning to Grimsby, just bombed by Brighton's depth charges, defects once more to the Lost Boys. However, Uncle is killed when Caul tries to let Hester and Tom escape, and so Caul and Freya take the remaining Lost Boys not killed by the depth charges back to Anchorage on a spare cargo submarine, while Tom and Hester go to Brighton. Meanwhile, Shrike is 're-resurrected' to mark Stalker Anna Fang's birthday. The Anti-Traction League is extending its borders and the Green Storm has started to bomb and destroy cities, starting a war. This is when the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft is mentioned for the first time. At Brighton, Tom is captured as a slave. After discovering this, Hester sets the slaves in the city free to create a distraction so she can free him, resulting in pandemonium. During the confusion, Tom meets Fishcake, and promises to take Fishcake with him and Hester. Meanwhile, the Green Storm attacks the city, in search of the Tin Book. The Stalker Fang succeeds in obtaining it, and memorises the codes. However, shortly afterwards she is attacked by the once again resurrected Stalker Shrike (Grike in the American editions), who has been programmed by his re-resurrector to tear her apart. He succeeds. Cloud 9, Pennyroyal's floating palace, has been severed in the Green Storm attack. It crash lands in the Sahara Desert, with Wren and newfound friend Theo. The 'Jenny Haniver' is found by Tom and Hester, who have escaped Brighton, but accidentally left Fishcake behind. However, after having spoken with Pennyroyal, Wren discovers that Hester was the one who sold Anchorage to Arkangel in Predator's Gold. After Wren tells this to Tom, Hester flees into the burning wreckage of Cloud 9 in despair, believing her life with him is over. Once within the complex, she encounters Shrike, who carries her out into the Sahara Desert. In the desert, the Stalker Fang's still functioning severed head and body are found by the betrayed and miserable Fishcake, who agrees to help rebuild her.
2743200	/m/080b_m	Don't Play Us Cheap	Melvin Van Peebles			 Trinity and Brother Dave are a pair of devil-bats looking for a party to break up. They come across a party in Harlem. Although Trinity is eager, Dave warns him not to touch it. "When black folks throw a party, they don't play!" Trinity joins the party, already in progress, thrown by Miss Maybell in honor of her niece Earnestine's birthday. Trinity first tries to break the records ("you can't have a party without music"), but finds that they are unbreakable. He drinks an entire bottle of liquor, thinking he has depleted their supply of alcohol, but finds out that all of the guests have brought their own bottles, and when he tries to eat all of the sandwiches, another plate is brought in. Trinity finds himself unwilling to continue being mean after he insults Earnestine, making her cry. Trinity apologizes to her, and tells her that he has fallen for her. Three more guests show up, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, and their college-educated son Harold. Earnestine ignores Trinity for Harold. Trinity becomes jealous. Brother Dave arrives in human form, eager to break up the party, but Trinity is unwilling to. Mr. Johnson tells Harold not to get involved with Earnestine, because her family is too "common," and he can't risk the big future he has ahead of him. Earnestine approaches both Harold and Trinity to dance, but they are pulled back by Mr. Johnson and Dave. Dave persuades Trinity to try to break up the party before midnight, when they will both be turned into the thing that they pretend to be: human beings. As time runs short, Dave and Trinity find themselves at the dinner table with the rest of the guests. Dave insults Mrs. Johnson, prompting her to leave with her husband and son. The rest of the guests tell Dave that they're glad that they left. After the dinner, Trinity stands up and announces that he and Earnestine are getting engaged, an announcement which infuriates Dave. Dave makes one last attempt to break up the party by trying to make a move on Miss Maybell. When Dave finds that she is all too willing, he turns himself into a cockroach and tries to sneak out the door before being smashed by Miss Maybell.
2745227	/m/080g3c	Thérèse Philosophe				 The narrative starts with Therese, from solid bourgeois stock, becoming a student of Father Dirrag, a Jesuit who secretly teaches materialism. Therese spies on Dirrag counseling her fellow student, Mlle. Eradice, and preying on her spiritual ambition to seduce her. Through flagellation and penetration, he gives her what she thinks is spiritual ecstasy but is actually sexual. "Father Dirrag" and "Mlle. Eradice" are named after anagrams of Catherine Cadière and Jean-Baptiste Girard, who were involved in a highly-publicized trial for the illicit relationship between priest and student in 1730. Therese is placed in a convent, where she becomes sick because her pleasure principle is not allowed to express itself, putting her body into disorder. She is rescued by Mme. C and Abbe T. and she spies on them discussing libertine political and religious philosophy in between sexual encounters. Therese's sexual education continues with her relationship with Mme. Bois-Laurier, an experienced prostitute. This is a variation on the whore dialogues common in early pornographic novels. Finally, Therese meets the unnamed Count who wants her for his mistress. She refuses him intercourse, out of her fear of death in childbirth (not unreasonable at the time.) He makes a bet with her. If she can last two weeks in a room full of erotic books and paintings without masturbating, he will not demand intercourse with her. Therese loses and becomes the Count's permanent mistress.
2746510	/m/080hzj	Weapons of Choice	John Birmingham		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book starts in 2021 off East Timor, as a US-led Multinational Taskforce, commanded by Admiral Phillip Kolhammer, prepares to liberate the Indonesian islands from an Islamic government calling itself the Caliphate, which is slaughtering Chinese citizens. In the book's backstory, the Chinese government was planning to send a task force but was warned by the American government not to do so. The flagship of the taskforce is the aircraft carrier USS Hillary Clinton, named after "the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States". The task force is made up mainly of American and British units alongside French, Australian, Japanese and Free Indonesians, along with a few other units like Spetsnaz from Russia and Kommando Spezialkräfte from Germany. Alongside the navy taskforce is the JRV Nagoya, a scientific ship which is experimenting with wormholes; the navy ship protecting it is ordered to join the taskforce. A new ship from the Royal New Zealand Navy is sent as escort, but prior to its arrival, the Nagoya's project director, Manning Pope, decides to make a trial run. The taskforce is constantly watched by a Caliphate spy on the mainland. Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance and Lt. Commander Daniel Black are on the bridge of the , on their way to face the Japanese sent to invade Midway. A growing commotion outside the bridge prompts them to investigate, only to find a large group of what are, to them, unknown and strangely designed ships. They spot a ship with the Japanese ensign and assume it is the Japanese fleet sent against Midway and they order their own ships to open fire. The multinational taskforce Combat Intelligence, referred to as CI, takes defensive action; the 21st century fleet nearly wipes out the American fleet, including the and . During the battle, Kolhammer and the rest of the Multinational Taskforce commanders learn that not all ships of the taskforce came through and those that did, did not all end up in the same place. The HJIMS Ryūjō encounters the Free Indonesian ship KRI Sutanto and boards it. The Indonesians are taken captive, the Japanese learn of the force sent against them at Midway and the rest of the Japanese navy is warned and ordered back home. After the battle between the 1942 American naval force and the 21st century Multinational Taskforce, an unsteady peace starts after they both reach Pearl Harbor. However, murders, rapes and riots happen as the 21st people try to mix with the locals. Kolhammer is flown to California to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Albert Einstein. As time goes by with no sight of the JRV Nagoya, more and more 21st century personnel start to realise they are stuck in 1942. Captain Karen Halabi and the HMS Trident, a Trident-class trimaran stealth destroyer, is ordered back to the Home Island for evaluation and possible transfer of the Trident. However, prior to her and the ship's departure, they take part in a POW rescue in Singapore and Luzon. The rescue is carried out by both 21st century and 1942 personnel. Through the Japanese, Hitler learns about the results of the invasion of the Soviet Union and sends Ribbentrop to negotiate peace with the Soviet Union.
2746789	/m/080jb2	Lord Loss	Darren Shan	2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Grubitsch "Grubbs" Grady, the younger child of chess-obsessed parents, grows increasingly uneasy with the recent strange, nervous behaviour of his parents and sister. One night, he finds the mutilated bodies of his family and encounters Lord Loss,a gruesome human-like demon who sets his two familiars, Vein and Artery, on Grubbs. Although Grubbs manages to escape, he is deeply traumatised and is placed in a mental institute. He refuses to respond to treatment until he is visited by his father's younger brother, Dervish Grady, who tells Grubbs that he knows demons exist and convinces Grubbs to finally accept help. After Grubbs recovers, he lives with the rather eccentric Dervish in his mansion near the village of Carcery Vale. Dervish explains to Grubbs that using magic is possible as Grubbs himself used magic to flee from Lord Loss and his minions, members of an otherworldly race known as the Demonata. As Grubbs begins to settle down, he meets and befriends Bill-E Spleen, an orphan who visits Dervish often to learn magic. Fearing for Grubbs’ safety, Bill-E eventually shares his theory that Dervish is a werewolf, as many Gradys were prone to lycanthropy, which manifests itself at puberty. However, Bill-E is later revealed to be the real werewolf, though he doesn't know it himself. Dervish later explains that Bill-E is Grubbs' half-brother from one of his father's affairs. The only way to cure him is by winning three out of five simultaneous chess games with the powerfully magical demon master Lord Loss while another person battles his familiars. Neither one is permitted to fail. This is also revealed to be the reason his family was killed, when his sister Gret also succumbed to the family curse. Meera Flame, a friend of Dervish, who is knocked out while trying to restrain a transformed Bill-E, was supposed to help battle the demons. Dervish convinces an extremely reluctant Grubbs, who is still haunted by nightmares, to take her place. While confronting Lord Loss, Dervish is constantly distracted from his chess match as Grubbs is unable to fight off the two familiars. Dervish finally uses magic to save Grubbs, but Lord Loss sees this as breaking the rules of the game and is about to let his familiars kill Dervish, Grubbs, and Bill-E. However, Dervish is able to convince Lord Loss to let Grubbs finish the chess game, while he battles the familiars. A terrified Grubbs then makes a bad game worse. Then Grubbs realizes that Lord Loss is feeding on his despair and then decides to play with an aloof attitude. This throws Lord Loss' concentration, allowing Grubbs to win the game. Lord Loss then cures Bill-E, but someone must battle him in his realm. Grubbs offers to go, but Dervish refuses to let Grubbs fight and goes instead. Dervish leaves to the Demonata universe, leaving Grubbs behind with Bill-E. Grubbs lies to Bill-E, telling him that Dervish used a calming spell to try to cure his lycanthropy. Grubbs figures that it's better for Bill-E to believe that Dervish is his father, since his real father is dead. Fourteen months later Grubbs has been caring for Dervish in his zombie-like state, also dealing with the fear that he'll turn into a werewolf. One morning, Grubbs wakes up to find blood under his nails and hair in his teeth. Thinking that he has turned, he prepares to call the mysterious Lambs Dervish told him about, to kill him before he does any harm. As Grubbs reaches for the phone he hears someone call his name. Turning to look he sees Dervish, with his senses regained, holding a tin of paint and a woollen scarf. The book ends with Dervish saying, "The look on your face!"
2746925	/m/080jjs	The Nun in her Smock				 Venus in the Cloister is made up of five dialogues, all of them carried out between Sister Agnes and Sister Angelica. The entire story can be considered as a “whore dialogue” The dialogue begins when Sister Agnes is caught in the act of masturbating by the older and wiser nun Sister Angelica. She is embarrassed and taken aback while Sister Angelica appears to be quite unaffected by what she has just witnessed. Agnes: Ah Lud! Sister Angelica, for heaven’s Sake, do not come into our Cell; I am not visible at present. Ought you to surprise people in the condition I am in? I thought I had shut the door. Angelica: Be quiet, my dear, what is it gives thee this Alarm? The mighty Crime of seeing the shift thy self, or doing (something) somewhat more refreshing? Good friends ought to conceal nothing from one another. Sit down again upon the Mattress, I’ll go and shut the Door. What follows is an attempt by Sister Angelica to seduce the younger nun. Sister Agnes is discomfited to have been caught by the older nun and so she meekly protests against Sister Angelica’s sexual attempts. Agnes: Ah Lud! how you squeeze me in your Arms ; Don’t you see I am naked to my Smock? Ah! you have set me all on Fire. However Angelica knows that her seduction will remain incomplete if the younger nun’s philosophical thought process remains unchanged. So she promises Agnes teachings of a new kind of religion in which there is little room for self denial and more scope for “informed Judgment”. Angelica then proceeds to mentions Reverend Father Jesuit who helped open her mind to such new types of religious speculations and debate. The father talks of Religion in terms of two distinct bodies--&#34;one of which is purely celestial and supernatural, the other terrestrial and corruptible, which is only the invention of Men&#34;. The second body is termed as Policy which tends to destroy inner peace. Angelica decides to explore the different designs of the “Policy” in putting up such elaborate rules to be followed. The following speech on Policy given by Sister Angelica becomes essential in establishing the sex scenes that follow. Policy, which cannot suffer any Thing defective in the State, seeing the Increase of these Recluses, their Disorder and Irregularity, was obliged to make use of its Power ... It had a Mind to rid it self entirely of those Leaches, who through laziness and horrible sloath, would live on the Labour of poor People; but this Buckler of Religion with which they cover themselves, and the Judgment of the Vulgar, of which they had already made themselves Masters, gave Things another Turn; so that these Communities were not entirely unuseful to the Commonwealth. Policy, then looked upon these Houses so many Common-Sewers, into which it might disperse it self of its Superfluities; it makes use of them to ease Families, whom a great Number of Children would make poor and indigent, if there were not Places for them to retire to; and that their Retreat many be secure, without any Hopes of Return, it invented Vows, by which it pretends to bind us, and tye us indissolubly, to that State which we have embraced: It makes us even renounce the Rights which nature has given us, and separate us from the World in such Manner, that we make no part of it. What follows is a process of exploration of the sexual desires of both the nuns. While Angelica imparts her knowledge, Sister Agnes carefully acts the part of the younger nun who tries to escape seduction but fails in the attempt. Agnes submits to being in a sense of &#34;Confusion&#34; and she is embarrassed to let the older nun see her body. This also relates to the fact that Agnes has not completely accepted the religious and philosophical deliberations of the older nun. Gradually as she starts accepting the truth of her own body and sexuality she will finally be free from her old biases.
2747741	/m/080kl_	An Equal Music: A Novel	Vikram Seth	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot concerns Michael, a professional violinist, who never forgot his love for Julia, a pianist he met as a student in Vienna. They meet again after a decade, and conduct a secret affair, though she is married and has one child. Their musical careers are affected by this affair and the knowledge that Julia is going deaf.
2748265	/m/080lpf	Predator	Patricia Cornwell	2005-10	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dr. Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, takes charge of a case that stretches from steamy Florida to snowbound Massachusetts, one as unnerving as any she has ever faced. The teasing psychological clues lead Scarpetta and her team—Pete Marino, Benton Wesley, and Lucy Farinelli—to suspect that they are hunting someone with a cunning and malevolent mind whose secrets have kept them in the shadows, until now.
2748428	/m/080lxf	Berenice	Edgar Allan Poe	1835-03	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The narrator, Egaeus, is a studious young man who grows up in a large gloomy mansion with his cousin Berenice. He suffers from a type of obsessive disorder, a monomania that makes him fixate on objects. She, originally beautiful, suffers from some unspecified degenerative illness, with periods of catalepsy a particular symptom, which he refers to as a trance. Nevertheless, they are due to be married. One afternoon, Egaeus sees Berenice as he sits in the library. When she smiles, he focuses on her teeth. His obsession grips him, and for days he drifts in and out of awareness, constantly thinking about the teeth. He imagines himself holding the teeth and turning them over to examine them from all angles. At one point a servant tells him that Berenice has died and shall be buried. When he next becomes aware, with an inexplicable terror, he finds a lamp and a small box in front of him. Another servant enters, reporting that a grave has been violated, and a shrouded disfigured body found, still alive. Egaeus finds his clothes are covered in mud and blood, and opens the box to find it contains dental instruments and "thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances" – Berenice's teeth. The Latin epigraph, "Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas," at the head of the text may be translated as: "My companion said to me, if I would visit the grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries." This quote is also seen by Egaeus in an open book towards the end of the story.
2748812	/m/080mlf	The Pushcart War			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The opening sentence says,"The Pushcart War started on the afternoon of March 15, 1976 when a truck ran down a pushcart belonging to a flower peddler." Later editions changed 1976 to 1986 then to 1998 so that the date would still be set in the future. Post-millennium editions of the book have been published with the date 2029. Traffic in New York City has become intolerable. The leaders of the three biggest trucking companies, known as "The Three," hold a secret meeting where they plan to take over the streets for themselves by eliminating other traffic, starting with the pushcarts.The character Professor Cumberly says, "The truck drivers had gotten together and figured out that in crowded traffic conditions, the only way to get where you wanted to go was to be so big that you didn't have to get out of the way of anybody." This is known as the Large Object Theory of History. Faced with truck-related "accidents," damaged carts, and injured fellows, the pushcart peddlers respond with the Pea-Shooter Campaign. The aim is to flatten truck tires using pea shooters with pins in the peas so that everyone can see that the trucks are the cause of the traffic problems. One peddler, Frank the Flower, is arrested and falsely confesses that he shot all 18,991 of the trucks. After his arrest, the peddlers give up the Pea-Shooter Campaign. But soon, inspired by Frank's arrest, children join in the sabotage of truck tires. The movie star, Wenda Gambling, also comes out in support of the peddlers. On the truck side are the owners Moe Mammoth of Mammoth Moving, Walter Sweet of Tiger Trucking, and Louie Livergreen of LEMA (Lower Eastside Moving Association). Their biggest trucks are respectively the Mighty Mammoth, the Ten-Ton Tiger and the Leaping Lema. Their most prominent driver is Albert P. Mack. A driver for Tiger Trucking is Joey Kafflis and he gets fired for saying that traffic is lousy and that he is standing up for the pushcarts instead of the trucks. Prominent peddlers are Frank the Flower, Morris the Florist, General Anna, Harry the Hot Dog, Mr. Jerusalem, Carlos, Papa Peretz, Eddie Moroney and the pushcart repair shop owner Maxie Hammerman, the "Pushcart King." Initially, the outlook is bad for the peddlers because the trucking companies control the newspapers and the corrupt mayor, Emmett P. Cudd, but the citizens of New York City and the members of the press eventually move to the side of the street vendors after the peddlers' Peace March is interrupted by violence on the part of the truck drivers. New laws are enacted to limit the size of the trucks to the current smallest size or smaller and to limit the number of trucks to one half of the current number. The Truce is passed to make it a criminal offense for a larger vehicle to take advantage of a smaller vehicle in any way. Albert P. Mack is sentenced to life in prison for violating the Truce nineteen times. The city erects a statue of General Anna to commemorate the struggle.
2749079	/m/080n60	The Perilous Road	William O. Steele	1958-04-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Chris Brabson is a boy whose family lives in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee during the Civil War. His family encounters hard times when cavalry soldiers of the Union Army come and take most of his family's food and their one and only plow horse leaving them little supplies to sustain the winter. Chris vowes to get even with the Yanks and is determined to fight for Confederate Army. Chris' brother, Jethro, has just recently joined the Union Army forcing Chris to examine his beliefs of war, courage, and tolerance. Jethro's enlistment causes the Brabson family to be the victims of prejudice from their neighbors who are sympathizers of the Confederate Army. The neighbors become intolerant of their beliefs and burn down their shed and threaten to do the same with their house. Though Jethro is a Union soldier, Chris hates the Union troops. When Chris finds out that there is a wagon train in the area he alerts a friend of his, Silas Agee, who claims to be a Confederate spy. It is only after he tells Silas about the wagon train that he finds out that his brother's job in the Army will be as a wagon driver. Chris then takes it upon himself to go tell his brother of the fact that the Confederates have been alerted about the wagon train in order to try to save Jethro's life. When he gets to the wagon train in search of Jethro, he is kindly greeted by Union troops who offer him food and conversation. He begins to change his perspective of the Yankees learning that they are very different from him and are not the hateful thieves he once viewed them as.
2750413	/m/080qch	Hannibal's Children	John Maddox Roberts	2002-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens at the alternate close of the Second Punic War. Hannibal offers terms to the Romans: abandon your city and move north of the Alps, or be destroyed. The Romans, under the dictator Q. Fabius Maximus, accept the offer and withdraw into Germania, vowing to return. The Carthaginians declare victory and go home. One chapter and several generations later, the Romans have long since reestablished their republic. These Romans, largely out of need, have adopted a practice of Cultural Romanization more pronounced than the historical Romans did: large numbers of Germans have been adopted into the Roman society, forming a large proportion of both the legions and the Senate. A series of auspicious omens prompt the Senate to send a delegation south into Latium. The expedition leaders are subtly but immediately at cross purposes: the commander, Marcus Scipio, a scion of the ancient patrician Cornelii Scipiones family, is wholly motivated by a desire to reestablish the Republic in the Mediterranean basin. His deputy, Titus Norbanus, one of the newer, Germanic Romans, seeks personal glory, at least in part to ensure that the Germans (particularly his own family) remain as powerful within the expanded Republic as they do under the current scheme. It quickly becomes clear to the Romans that generations of constant warfare in Germania have strengthened them, whereas the Carthaginians have grown soft in the absence of real opposition. The Republic quickly begins playing the Carthaginians off against the Egyptians (the only other serious power in the Mediterranean), reclaiming Latium in the process. At the close of the novel, the Egyptian army led by Scipio vanquishes the Carthaginian force, in which four Roman legions led by Norbanus are technically serving. The sequel follows Norbanus's trek back to friendly territory and his march towards power.
2750461	/m/080qdw	The Wheel on the School	Meindert DeJong	1954	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Lina Sendak is one of six school children in the small fishing village of Shora. When she writes an essay for school that asks why there are no storks in their village, the teacher encourages the class to find out for themselves. They discover that the roofs on the village's homes are pitched so steeply that the storks cannot find space to nest on the sharp ridges, and placing a wagon wheel on each roof ridge would give storks a place to nest. The task of finding a wagon wheel in the tiny village proves difficult, and the children meet several interesting personalities during their search. This simple, yet compelling plot teaches that if people think and wonder why, things will begin to happen and dreams will come true. The schoolchildren are: Lina, the only girl in the small school; Jella, the biggest of all the children; Auka, an average boy; Eelka, who is fat and awkward; and Pier and Dirk, the inseparable twins. These six kids are aided by their teacher, Grandmother Sibble III, legless Janus, old Douwa, and the "tin man". Other characters include the fathers of the children, who are all fishermen; Lina's aunt, who lives in Nes; Evert, the man living across from Lina's aunt; Lina and Auka's younger siblings, Linda and Jan; Jana, Janus's wife; and the mothers of the children. The dedication reads: "To my nieces, Shirley and Beverly, and their flying fingers".
2751886	/m/080rvy	Doctor Sax	Jack Kerouac		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with Jackie Duluoz, based on Kerouac himself, relating a dream in which he finds himself in Lowell, Massachusetts, his childhood home town. Prompted by this dream, he recollects the story of his childhood of warm browns and sepia tones, along with his shrouded childhood fantasies, which have become inextricable from the memories. The fantasies pertain to a castle in Lowell atop a muted green hill that Jackie calls Snake Hill. Underneath the misty grey castle, the Great World Snake sleeps. Various vampires, monsters, gnomes, werewolves, and dark magicians from all over the world gather to the mansion with the intention of awakening the Snake so that it will devour the entire world (although a small minority of them, derisively called "Dovists," believe that the Snake is merely "a husk of doves," and when it awakens it will burst open, releasing thousands of lace white doves. This myth is also present in a story told by Kerouac's character, Sal Paradise, in On the Road). The eponymous Doctor Sax, also part of Jackie's fantasy world, is a dark but ultimately friendly figure with a shrouded black cape, an inky black slouch hat, a haunting laugh, and a "disease of the night" called Visagus Nightsoil that causes his skin to turn mossy green at night. Sax, who also came to Lowell because of the Great World Snake, lives in the forest in the neighboring town of Dracut, where he conducts various alchemical experiments, attempting to concoct a potion to destroy the Snake when it awakens. When the Snake is finally awakened, Doctor Sax uses his potion on the Snake, but the potion fails to do any damage. Sax, defeated, discards his shadowy black costume and watches the events unfold as an ordinary man. As the Snake prepares to destroy the world, all seems lost until an enormous night colored bird, an ancient counterpart of the Snake, suddenly appears. Seizing the Snake in its beak, the bird flies upward into the heartbreakingly blue sky until it vanishes from view, leading the amazed Sax to muse, "I'll be damned, the universe disposes of its own evil!"
2752484	/m/080shc	City of Pearl	Karen Traviss	2004-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On Planet Earth, Superintendent Shan Frankland (A hardened, self-sufficient, and brutally honest female cop) is preparing for retirement when she is confronted by politician Eugenie Perault, who recruits Shan to lead a top-secret mission into outer space on a ship named the Thetis. Her destination is Cavanagh's Star; a planet hundreds of light years away, but with an atmosphere strikingly similar to that of Earth. However, rather than risk exposure of the classified information Shan will need to carry out the unknown mission, Perault gives Shan a Suppressed Briefing (SB), which installs the information into Shan's subconscious mind, only to be brought forth when circumstances call for it. Knowing only that she was preceded on this journey by a colonist group named Constantine (who have never been heard from again), and that the time in speed-of-light travel will amount to 75 years on Earth but only months for her ship, Shan sets off in command of a mix-matched group of specialized civilians (called the "payload") anxious to use the planet for their own gain, and competing for control with Commander Lindsay Neville, the independent leader of a small force of marines. When Shan and the Thetis crew reach Cavanagh's Star, however, they have big surprises ahead of them. Not only do they find Constantine alive and thriving as a religious colony within a carefully controlled biosphere designed to grow crops brought from Earth, but they also discover a unique and complex environment of alien plants and animals, including such species as the scavenger rock velvets, and the bog-dwelling predator shevens. The civilian scientists are itching to take samples and compile medical information. But the small band of humans soon learns that the planet isn't theirs to claim. Two unique alien races inhabit Cavanagh's Star; the water-dwelling, squid-like Bezeri, and the bipedal Wess'har. The Wess'har, who originate from Wess'ej, the planet's moon, are strong environmentalists who see each species as an intelligent race; they are extreme vegans, and take pride in the fact that their architecture is subterranean and unobtrusive. For centuries, they have protected Cavanagh's Star and the Bezeri from the Isenj - a third alien race who once attempted to colonize the planet. When the pollution from Isenj cities which they had built on the planet got so bad that it was killing Bezeri by the millions, the Wess'har stepped in. Now, not a single trace of the enormous Isenj civilization can be found on the planet - a stunning example to Shan's crew of what the Wess'har military is capable of. On the planet, Shan meets Josh Garrod - the Christian leader of Constantine - who explains to her the ways of the Constantine people. They live in a hardworking, god-oriented society in which crime is almost non-existent and technology is kept to a minimum. Josh is in contact with the Wess'har (mainly through a representative named Aras) and follows their orders compliantly, knowing that the Wess'har could obliterate Constantine at any time, should they so wish. According to the agreement between Shan and the Wess'har (made through Josh), the Thetis has been allowed to land and to make camp within the boundaries of Constantine. However, both Constantine and the Wess'har are wary of the Thetis and its intentions. The crew is permitted to explore the planet (with Wess'har or Constantine guides) but are given one ultimate rule: no samples. The Thetis must leave nothing and take nothing - and that means no scientific samples. Shan's crew grumbles at the arrangement, and some resolve not to heed the warnings given to them. Through Josh, Shan eventually comes in contact with Aras, the Wess'har representative and protector of the Constantine colony. However, Aras is not a normal Wess'har, nor does he even look like one, though Shan does not yet know this. He used to be completely Wess'har, but his appearance, along with many of his attributes, had altered since he had been infected with a disease unknown to humankind. This "disease," called c'nataat, is actually a symbiotic creature which uses genetic information from previous hosts and ingested materials to alter its current host's genetics to fit its own needs. Though in many ways it had made Aras more efficient (it gives him an indefinite lifespan, and allows him to hold his breath under water for extended periods of time), the disease, which is transferable by touch, has cut him off from everyone he knows and left him suspended in time as his friends and family slowly die off. When Shan learns about his trouble - and touches Aras for the first time in 170 years - a bond begins to form between the two of them. In the mean time, within the Thetis crew, issues are rising. Shan must fight for the power and respect she requires to run her mission; the "payload" scientists are angry at the restrictions placed on them, and Commander Neville is sore at her lack of power as only second in command. However, Shan and Neville learn to work together as the anger of the payload increases and Neville discovers she has yet another issue on her hands - an unplanned pregnancy has occurred from a hookup just days before the launch of the Thetis. Abortion pills are available, but Neville decides to have the baby, despite the fact that medic Hugel tells her it could be complicated. At the same time, Shan begins to get little whispers from her SB, telling her to look for a gene bank that Constantine supposedly possesses. It is a compilation of seeds and embryos from Earthly plants and animals, and rumored to be the largest ever compiled. Also, she keeps thinking the name "Helen," but does not know who this is.
2758869	/m/0810xx	Tonio Kröger	Thomas Mann	1903	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The narrative follows the course of a man's life from his schoolboy days to his adulthood. The son of a north German merchant and an Italian artist, Tonio inherited qualities from both sides of his family. As a child, he experiences conflicting feelings for the bourgeois people around him. He feels both superior to them in his insights and envious of their innocent vitality. This conflict continues into Tonio's adulthood, when he becomes a famous writer living in southern Germany. "To be an artist," he comes to believe, "one has to die to everyday life." These issues are only partially resolved when Tonio travels north to visit his hometown. While there, Tonio is mistaken for an escaped criminal, thereby reinforcing his inner suspicion that the artist must be an outsider relative to "respectable" society. As Erich Heller &ndash;who knew Thomas Mann personally&ndash; observed, Tonio Kröger’s theme is that of the "artist as an exile from reality" (with Goethe’s Torquato Tasso (1790) and Grillparzer’s Sappho (1818) for company). Yet it was also Erich Heller who, earlier, in his own youth, had diagnosed the main theme of Tonio Kröger to be the infatuation and entanglements of a passionate heart, destined to give shape to, intellectualize, its feelings in artistic terms.
2759646	/m/08129z	The Faction War	Monte Cook			 The culmination of several adventures leading up to that point, The Faction War brought an end to the factions' control of the city. Instigated by the power-hungry Duke Rowan Darkwood, factol of the Fated, in a bid to dethrone the Lady of Pain and rule Sigil himself, the war spread throughout the city before the Lady of Pain, with the aid of a group of adventurers (the players' characters), intervened.
2759840	/m/0812ng	The Joiner King	Troy Denning		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Six years after the Yuuzhan Vong War ended, all of the survivors of the Mission to Myrkr back in Star by Star, except for Hapan Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo, respond to a call through the Force. They all leave their current posts and travel into the Unknown Regions. After this happens, an envoy from the Chiss Ascendancy, Mitt'swe'kleoni (Tswek for short), comes to the Jedi Masters' Council on Coruscant to file a complaint. He asks why the Jedi Knights are involved in a border dispute with an enemy of the Chiss who Tswek refuses to give the name for. None of the Masters give an answer, but Luke Skywalker agrees to look into it. He takes his wife Mara, their son Ben, and Saba Sebatyne into the Unknown Regions in order to learn what the Knights are up to. When Han and Leia Organa Solo discover this, they join the Skywalkers and Saba in their journey after they rendezvous inside an insect-like hive in space, which is filled with beings from all over the galaxy, along with strange insect beings. The Skywalkers, Solos, and Saba all meet up with Captain Jae Juun and his rude copilot Tarfang, who agree to take the group to the planet Yoggoy, where they will be able to find the Jedi Knights. On Yoggoy, instead of meeting any of the Jedi Knights, the Skywalkers, the Solos, and Saba all meet up with the leader of the strange insect beings that populate the world of Yoggoy, UnuThul. As it turns out, UnuThul is the badly burned and psychologically scarred Raynar Thul, a Jedi Knight who was taken by the Dark Jedi Lomi Plo and Welk during the Mission to Myrkr. UnuThul reveals that the ship that Plo and Welk took him in had crashed onto the surface of Yoggoy while the Yuuzhan Vong War was still commencing, and the insect beings who now call themselves the Colony took Raynar in to repair his badly burned form to the best of their abilities. A side effect of being with those of the Colony is that they eventually become part of their hive mind. Due to Raynar's Force-sensitivity, however, he had accumulated such power that he actually become the leader of the Colony, and he helped them expand their territory from Yoggoy. When asked about what happened to Lomi Plo and Welk, Raynar tells the group that he has never even heard of them before. Afterwards, as the Skywalkers, the Solos, and Saba find evidence that the Colony is really the long-lost species of the Killiks, the clan is attacked by dark blue Killiks. They survive the attack and confront UnuThul about the matter, who denies any knowledge about it. Regardless, the Skywalker-Solo-Sebatyne clan leave Yoggoy for Qoribu, where the Jedi Knights are fighting alongside the Killiks against the Chiss. Leia figured this out because when the clan visited the crash site of the ship that brought Raynar to Yoggoy, she saw a vision of her son, Jacen, telling her this information. As it is, Jacen had previously visited the Yoggoy crash site and had a vision of his mother visiting the crash site, and he decided to tell the vision where the Killiks and Jedi were fighting the Chiss. At Qoribu, where the Skywalker-Solo-Sebatyne clan plan to confront the Knights, they are once again attacked by the mysterious blue-black Killiks. They once again survive the attack, and they confront the Knights as expected on Qoribu's moon of Jwlio. From this, they come to an agreement: some of the Knights will stay behind in order to save Lowbacca from Chiss captivity, as he was lost in the previous battle against the Ascendancy. Jaina and Zekk are the ones who stay behind, but strangely enough, they don't sense Alema Rar's intent to come with Han and Leia back to Ossus. This prompts suspicion from Han and Leia just as Saba gets into a fight with a mysterious figure who is no doubt Welk. Saba is injured thanks to Welk and a couple of his blue-black Killik assistants, and she is knocked into a coma as a result. Before she was knocked out, however, she was able to discern that the remaining Killik who attacked her went to the Skywalkers' ship, the Jade Shadow. The Millennium Falcon takes a wounded Saba and a suspicious Alema back to Ossus. Ben gets in trouble by Mara for eating too much gelmeat. In Ben's defense, he says that it was really his new Killik friend who did it, which Mara takes to be a lie. Meanwhile, Luke looks into R2-D2's systems in order to find out what the cause of the strange malfunctions that the astromech droid has been suffering. Luke finds a recording of his father talking to a mysterious woman, which R2-D2 denies any knowledge about. Luke becomes suspicious of R2-D2's motives after this. As the Millennium Falcon travels back to Ossus with Alema and Saba, Leia subtly interrogates Alema in order to understand what she is really up to. When Alema refers to herself as "we," the conversation awkwardly ends on Alema's part, and Leia knows that something more is going on. Later, after the Falcon undergoes a mysterious malfunction in hyperspace that was no doubt caused by Alema, they end up in an unnamed nebula and land on a planet full of plant life that, strangely, has no animal or insect life on it. When Leia and Alema go to repair the Falcon, Alema betrays her and everyone else on the ship, as Leia suspected, and she fights Leia and her Noghri bodyguards, Cakhmaim and Meewalh. Although Alema is able to defeat the Noghri, Han is the one who defeats Alema by activating an escape pod that knocks her unconscious. Later, after the Falcon is repaired, they take an imprisoned Alema the rest of the way back to Ossus. On Ossus, the Jedi Knights are tested for the hive mind that shared with the Killiks as Luke and Mara meet with a representative from the Chiss, Chaf'orm'bintrano (Formbi for short), in order to clarify the conflict between the Ascendency and the Colony. Formbi explains that the war between the Killiks and the Chiss goes beyond that of the border conflict, and was even somewhat responsible for the plot against the Fel family back in Force Heretic II: Refugee. Then, after Saba is healed from the injuries she sustained in her fight with Welk, Mara is quickly informed that there is indeed a blue-black Killik that had sneaked aboard the Jade Shadow. Realizing that Ben wasn't lying about the gelmeat, Mara rushes to her son's room and fights the Killik infiltrator. She defeats it, and has it tested along with Alema and the Knights. Alema and the Killik have the strongest connection, as the other Knights don't seem to feel what Alema and the Killik feel. Jedi Master and medical healer Cilghal concludes from this blue-black Killik, whose nest is of the Gorog as it turns out, that it and Alema are part of an unconscious nest among the Colony; this explains why UnuThul was unable to explain their presences. It wasn't because he lied about them, but rather, it was because he was unaware of their existence. Meanwhile, computer slicer Zakarisz Ghent accesses more of R2-D2's memory files and finds another recording of Anakin Skywalker talking to the mysterious woman that has to be his wife, and therefore, is Luke and Leia's mother. They, along with their friends and family, find the time to watch the newly found footage. Back to the main plot, the Jedi Knights are able to sneak out of their captivity and elicit the help of other allies in order to help the Killiks fight the Chiss. Tesar Sebatyne enlists the help of Raynar's mother, Aryn, while Jacen seeks out the help from Tenel Ka Djo. Tenel Ka reveals that she was able to withstand UnuThul's call through the Force by locking herself in her room until the call passed, as she couldn't leave her duties as Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium. Tenel Ka agrees to lend the Killiks the assistance of the Hapan fleet if Jacen will agree to sleep with her. Jacen complies, and so does Tenel Ka. The Jedi on Ossus hypothesize a way to get rid of the Gorog, which they nickname the Dark Nest (hence, the title of the trilogy). They put tracking beacons on all of the ships on the Academy's hangar bay and have Alema and her fellow Gorog take one to return to the Dark Nest's base. They follow Alema and the Gorog back into the Qoribu as the Killiks and their new allies engage in an all-out battle against the Chiss forces. Luke and Mara follow Alema and her Gorog friend down to Qoribu's moon of Kr, and they battle off and kill and wound many of the Dark Nest before they confront Alema and Welk. Mara is wounded in combat, but she survives a suicide bombing from the Gorog she fought on Ossus by putting a Force shield around herself. Amidst the smoke cloud that followed the explosion, Mara saw a mysterious image lurking there. Alema escapes the conflict, though severely wounded. Meanwhile, Luke ends up in a one-on-one lightsaber duel against Welk. Though both put up a good fight, it is inevitably Luke who wins and ends Welk's life. Soon, all of the other Gorog on Kr are killed by the Skywalkers' backup forces, and the Battles of Qoribu and Kr end. UnuThul investigates the bodies of the Gorog, and they find Dark Nest cells filled with Chiss captives that are being used for Gorog offspring. This explains both the Dark Nest's motivation for going to war against the Killiks, as well as why the Chiss were going against the Colony. UnuThul agrees to let the Chiss have Qoribu, and the Hapans help the Killiks relocate to the unnamed nebula that the Solos found before Alema was revealed as a traitor. The Chiss return Lowbacca back to the Jedi, and UnuThul separates his fellow Knights from the rest of the Killik hive mind, their purpose in defending the Colony now over. Jaina and Zekk, however, due to their extensive time with each other, have an unbreakable hive mind with each other, which makes it awkward when it comes to Jaina's relationship with Jagged Fel.
2759982	/m/0812xh	Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant	Anne Tyler	1982-03-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Pearl Tull is a rigid perfectionist. She has 3 children with her husband, traveling salesman Beck, who abandons the family. After Beck leaves, Pearl struggles to maintain a front as if nothing is wrong. Cody, the oldest, is wild and adventurous, but is envious of his brother Ezra, whom he believes is Pearl's favorite. As they grow up, this plays out in endless pranks. Ezra is passive, and never tries to get back at Cody. He is nurturing and sweet, traits that often interest Cody's girlfriends, furthering Cody's resentment. Ezra goes to work at a restaurant, which he later manages and ultimately inherits, while Cody becomes a wealthy and successful efficiency expert. When Ezra becomes engaged to Ruth, his star cook, Cody becomes obsessed with luring her away, and ultimately succeeds, but his marriage to Ruth is not easy. Ezra never recovers, and remains at home with Pearl; he is a caregiver, both for Pearl and his customers, but this is underlain by sadness. Jenny is the third child and the most scholarly of the Tulls, but in college, she marries on an impulse with unhappy results. Only in her third marriage to a man with 6 children whose wife has abandoned him does she find stability in family life and in her successful, if harried, career as a pediatrician. A recurring scene in the novel involves Ezra's unsuccessful attempts to bring the family together for a meal at his "Homesick Restaurant", reflecting his desire to unite and mend the family. At Pearl's funeral, Beck returns to the family for the first time. However, they never seem to be able to get through a single dinner without conflict, this time with Cody facing down his father.
2761684	/m/0816fx	The Sicilian	Mario Puzo	1984-11	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens in 1950 Sicily, where Michael Corleone, nearing the end of his exile in Sicily, meets with Don Croce Malo, the Capo di Capi or Boss of bosses in Sicily, his brother, Father Benjamino Malo, Stefan Andolini (redheaded cousin of Don Vito Corleone), and Sicilian Inspector Frederico Velardi. They discuss with Michael the details of his father's agreement to allow Michael to usher the bandit Salvatore "Turi" Guiliano out of Sicily and to America. Michael is told of a "testament", a set of documents Guiliano has composed that would be damning to certain political officials of the Italian government if released. Michael is taken to Guiliano's house where he meets Turi's parents and Gaspare "Aspanu" Pisciotta, Guiliano's second in command. Michael is informed that Turi's pregnant fiancée is heading to America first, ahead of Guiliano, and only when she sends word back that she is safe, will Turi leave for America. Michael is also told he is to be entrusted with Guiliano's testament. Maria Lombardo Guiliano gives Michael a negro statue of the Virgin Mary as a gift as he parts. The bulk of the novel focuses on the life of Salvatore Guiliano and how he rose to his legendary status as a bandit and hero to the Sicilian people. He was born in the village of Montelepre, west of Palermo. His godfather, Hector Adonis, a small man tormented his entire life for his small stature, was a professor of history and literature at the University of Palermo. He is a very close personal friend of the Guiliano family, a mentor for Turi, and a man who caters to the Friends of the Friends (the word Mafia is rarely spoken in Sicily). In September 1943, the town of Montelepre was preparing for its annual festa for its town's patron saint. Montelepre was a very poor town, and in this period, food was very scarce and often had to be purchased on the black market because of the strict rationing laws that starved the people of Sicily. In reality, all food that was given to the government storehouses was appropriated by the Mafia chiefs and sold on the black market for the citizens to buy; the people of Sicily had to break the law in order to eat. Black market laws were rarely enforced, but smuggling was another matter. On a September morning in 1943, Turi Giuilano and his best friend Aspanu Pisciotta travelled to the nearby town of Corleone to procure some food for his sister's engagement party. On the way back, they were stopped by the carabinieri, and decided to take them on, for the food was too valuable. Turi was shot, but he also managed to shoot his attacker, a police Sergeant, through the eye. Turi was carried by Aspanu to a local monastery, where he was taken care of by the monks there, helped by the Abbot Manfredi, a close friend of Aspanu. Here he was nursed back to health, and Aspanu Pisciotta developed his undying loyalty to Turi. Leaving the monastery, he and Aspanu made their way back to Guiliano's home in Montelepre, knowing he was still being sought for the murder of the Sergeant. While he was discussing his future with his parents and close family friends, Aspanu is informed that the Maresciallo of the local police force was on his way over to arrest Turi. Turi and Aspanu flee down the Via Bella of their town, and enter the church. They open fire on the jeeps pursuing them, and although it was not intended, kill some of the soldiers pursuing them. They flee to the Cammaratta Mountains. Turi and Aspanu are met by Turi's godfather Hector Adonis, who tries to dissuade them of the path they are headed on toward banditry. Though Turi deeply respects and loves his godfather, he can not be dissuaded. They decide to free the prisoners of Montelepre, unjustly jailed in the nearby Bellampo Barracks. Turi narrowly escapes death at the hands of the Corporal Canio Silvestro whose pistol fails when he points it at Turi's head. Silvestro then, at the mercy of Guiliano, is spared in an act of mercy, and Turi frees the captives, including two men named Passatempo and Terranova, who join Turi's band. Guiliano at this point, is beginning to become famous in the news throughout Italy. Not soon after daringly robbing the home of a local duke, the Corporal Canio Silvestro, disgraced by his military, asks to join Guiliano's band. Though suspecting him of being a spy, they allow him to join. They test his loyalty by asking him to execute Montelepre's Frisella, the barber, who has informed on Guiliano. Silvestro completes this task, proving his loyalty, and they attach a letter to his body that said "So die all who betray Guiliano". Guiliano had now solidified his domination of the entire northwest corner of the island. He was legendary throughout Sicily, and children concluded their prayers at night saying, "...and please save Guiliano from the Carabinieri". Guiliano next orchestrated a kidnapping of Prince Ollorto. The prince was taken, and was treated with the utmost respect and dignity, and his ransom was paid by Don Croce Malo, who had normally been paid for protection by the Prince. It was in this that Guiliano finally came into fierce opposition with Don Croce. The assassination attempts on Guiliano increased, but he evaded them all, suspicious of all who came into contact with him. One of his would-be assassins is found to be Stefan Andolini, who is spared only through Abbot Manfredi, his father, to whom Guiliano owed a favor. Andolini joins Turi's band. The book now fast-forwards back to 1950. In Trapani, Michael Corleone is met by Pete Clemenza, who is to help orchestrate Guiliano's escape. Michael meets Justina, Guiliano's fiancée, and Hector Adonis. Justina leaves for America. Hector informs Michael that Guiliano's elusive and damning Testament is hidden in the black statue of the Virgin Mary that Turi's mother gave him. Back in 1947, Don Croce Malo was strongly aligned with the Christian Democratic party, and driven to keep that party in power, and to deny power to the up and coming Socialist parties that would surely strip him, and the other Mafia chiefs, of their power in Sicily. Don Croce along with Italy's Minister of Justice Franco Trezza, draw up plans to mount a great offensive against Guiliano, but intend to use these plans to blackmail Guiliano to use his influence to swing the upcoming election for the Christian Democrats. Guiliano, who was a man of God and hated the Socialists, ultimately accepts these terms, and helps the campaign across Western Sicily. The 1948 election was a disaster for the Christian Democrats. The Socialists picked up many seats. A celebration was to take place on May Day to celebrate their victories in the Italian legislature by the people of the towns of Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato. The two towns would parade up mountain passes and converge at a plain called the Portella della Ginestra. Guiliano agreed to suppress this festival, giving his two leaders in this operation, Passatempo and Terranova, orders to "shoot over their heads". Passatempo's men end up shooting too low, and massacre many people, including many women and children. The massacre proved devastating for Guiliano's image in Sicily. Guiliano discovers later that Passatempo had been paid off by Don Croce to shoot the paraders. Guiliano executed him while on his honeymoon with Justina. Guiliano can now feel that his time as a bandit is coming to an end. He stages one final daring move against the aristocracy and corrupt Mafia chiefs. Six mafia chiefs had been summoned to the estate of Prince Ollorto, defending it from the local peasantry who desired to lease land from him, as a new Italian law had recently allowed them to. Guiliano and his band surrounded the estate and executed each one of these chiefs. Guiliano then snuck into Palermo, and kidnapped a Cardinal, the highest Catholic authority in Sicily. The Church instantly paid the ransom. The Minister of Justice Trezza could no longer hold back his plans to assemble a large force in Sicily to take down Guiliano. Part of the force comes to the island from the mainland, and immediately arrests Guiliano's parents and many citizens of Montelepre for conspiring with Turi. In retaliation, Turi robs the heavily armed and guarded pay truck that was responsible for paying all the Carabinieri stationed in Sicily. He is successful, and the Commander of the operation immediately calls for the rest of the reserve force to come to the mainland to combat Guiliano. The plan to escort Guiliano to America is set into motion, and Aspanu Pisciotta meets with Michael Corleone. He gives the details on precisely where to intercept him and Guiliano. The next day, Clemenza and Michael head down the road toward Palermo, and are stopped by a huge traffic jam. They learn that up ahead Turi Guiliano has been killed by the Carabinieri. They move into town and eat at a cafe, hearing the news of Guiliano's death on the lips of every person in town. They are then discovered and arrested by the Inspector Velardi. They are later released after Don Croce Malo vouches for them, and organizes their release. They return to America. Though the news is that he was killed by the Carabinieri, Guiliano's father, however swears a vendetta on Aspanu Pisciotta. Pisciotta betrayed Guiliano to Don Croce Malo and the Carabinieri because he was fearing his actions were becoming suicidal. He committed grievous offenses against the most powerful in Sicily and feared the end was near. It was Pisiciotta who had killed Guiliano, shooting his hand off in a moment of nervousness, fearing that he would discover he betrayed him. Later, in prison, Pisciotta was poisoned by a joint effort of Don Croce Malo and Hector Adonis. Right after Aspanu's death, Adonis made his way into his cell and left a letter in Pisciotta's pocket reading, "So die all who betray Guiliano". Michael returned home to the Corleone compound in Long Beach. He met with his father in private, and the Don told him that they would not release Guiliano's testament for fear Guiliano's parents would be harmed in retaliation by the Italian government or its Mafia supporters. In this, Don Corleone teaches his son his first lesson: it is better to remain alive and live a fruitful life, than to be dead and a hero.
2762926	/m/081836	Thornyhold	Mary Stewart	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story is about a lonely child, Geillis "Gilly" Ramsey, who is made to see the world through her mother's cousin's (also Geillis — Gilly was named after her) unusual eyes. When the child becomes a young woman, she inherits her dead cousin's house as well as her reputation among the local community as a white witch and herbalist. However, as she finds out, this is no normal community, and worries quickly present themselves. Magical effort is pointed at the attractive and widowed popular writer, Christopher Dryden, who lives in rural isolation with his young son. As Christopher Dryden points out to Gilly, her (and her mother's cousin's) name is that of a real witch, Geillis Duncane, who was tried in Edinburgh in the late 16th century.
2765223	/m/081cbg	Premalekhanam	Vaikom Muhammad Basheer	1943		 A young bank employee, Keshavan Nair, Hindu by religion, Nair by caste lodges on the upper floor of the house belonging to Saramma's father. Saraamma is a Christian by religion, beautiful, young, unmarried, unemployed, happy-go-lucky with a sting on the tip of her tongue. Keshavan Nair is an honest simpleton haplessly in love with her. The book gets its title from the letter that Keshavan Nair composes to reveal to Saramma his love for her. The setting is 1940's Kerala. The story is a sarcastic commentary on the dowry system and is in favour of inter-religious marriage. But this is disguised in a funny love story. Basheer was not a Nair or a Christian, he was a lover of humanity. Saramma is an educated woman, and she is trying to get a job, and she has applied for jobs in many countries( because the story is set in Travancore, which was a country, or princely state). At last she gets a job. The job provider was Keshavan Nair, and the only job assigned to Saramma was to love him!He pays for that too in a monthly basis. Now the serious questions arise. They belong to different religions, then which religion will their children follow? They decides to teach their children every religion and it is up to the children to choose their religion. They plan to grow their children "Religion less". Then comes the other serious issue, How will they name the child? They cannot choose a Hindu name or Christian name, Keshavan Nair asks "Shall we go for Russian names?"Saramma asks "How will it be?" "Anything ending with 'Visky'is a Russian name" Saramma was not happy with it. Keshavan Nair asks "Shall we go for Chinese names like Kwang" Saramma is still not happy. Finally they decides to go with names over objects like sky, sand, Air, toffee, balloon. They finally decide to take a lot of these objects, The result of the lot will be two chits which say "Sky" and "Toffee". They name their child as "Skytoffee". Keshavan Nair shouts saying "Mr.Skytoffee","Skytoffee","Comrade:Skytoffee". Saramma interrupts "Do you want our child to become a communist" Keshavan Nair says "Let him decide on that". The story ends happily.
2765547	/m/081cn6	The Italian Secretary	Caleb Carr	2005	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Architect Sir Alistair Sinclair and his foreman, Dennis McKay, have been slain in the midst of rehabilitating the medieval west tower of the Royal Palace of Holyrood--the very wing where Mary, Queen of Scots, had lived, and where David Rizzio had met his brutal, politically motivated end. Mycroft Holmes fears these murders portend new threats against Britain's present monarch—the elderly Queen Victoria, who infrequently lodges at the palace—by a known assassin, perhaps in nefarious league with the German Kaiser. En route north, Holmes and Watson are menaced aboard their train by a red-bearded bomb thrower (supposedly a rabid Scots nationalist), only to discover that still greater dangers await them, and others, at Holyroodhouse. The plaintive drone of a weeping woman, cruelly punctured and shattered corpses, a pool of blood "that never dries", and a disembodied Italian voice with unexpected musical tastes all imply the wrath of wraiths behind recent atrocities. But Holmes and Watson deduce that greed, rather than ghosts, may be to blame.
2768880	/m/081k6h	The Unseen Queen	Troy Denning		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A year after the events of the previous novel, Luke Skywalker, his wife Mara, Han and Leia Organa Solo, Saba Sebatyne, and their charges arrive in the Killiks' inhabited sector of space, the Utegetu Nebula, and land on the world of Woteba to meet up with UnuThul. As they pass through the village to meet the Colony's leader, they notice that the Killiks are suffering some kind of affliction. When they all meet UnuThul, he explains that the affliction that they are suffering has been dubbed the "Fizz," and the cause of it is unknown. Han and Leia question UnuThul about the suspicions that the Galactic Alliance has of the Killiks hiding pirates and smugglers in the Utegetu Nebula. In response, the Colony's leader suggests the accusation that this could be in addition to the Galactic Alliance having deliberately selected the worlds of the nebula because they were meant to kill the Killiks with the Fizz for the trouble they caused at Qoribu. UnuThul then moves on to other business by informing everyone with him that the Gorog are back. Luke agrees to take Han, C-3PO, and R2-D2, to explore Woteba in order to find and clear out the lingering Dark Nest threat, as well as to confirm or deny the Galactic Alliance's accusations of the Killiks hiding pirates and smugglers. Leia and Saba, with a sample of the Fizz, take the Millennium Falcon back to Ossus in order to find out what the Fizz is. Mara goes with the Jedi women back to Ossus, and after this, Luke, Han, and the others come into contact with Alema Rar. Alema tells Luke to leave the Dark Nest alone, and in return, they will release new footage of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala from R2-D2's memory files every week. In fact, Alema and her Gorog comrades do this, and Luke feigns acceptance. However, as soon as she and her fellow Gorog leave, he tells Han that he doesn't intend to honor that promise. Meanwhile, Jacen Solo takes his cousin, Ben Skywalker, from a camping trip on the Sanctuary Moon of Endor to Hapes in response to Tenel Ka Djo's call. When they secretly arrive in Tenel Ka's room, they discover that she has a baby daughter, and it is shared with Jacen. As it turns out, Tenel Ka slowed the child's growth in her womb in order to avoid suspicion as to the baby's paternity. The four of them are then attacked by Gorog, but with the help of Ben's nanny battle droid, they kill the assassins, and then Jacen and Tenel Ka hypothesize why the Gorog would be interested in attacking them. They come to the conclusion that it was thanks to Tenel Ka's grandmother, Ta'a Chume. Later, Jacen interrogates Ta'a Chume and finds out that she indeed sent those Gorog to kill Tenel Ka's daughter. The reason for this is because the Gorog came to Ta'a Chume for navigation technology, and in return, Chume sent them to kill Tenel Ka's baby; this way, Ta'a Chume could find a way to reclaim power as Queen Mother again so a Jedi won't rule the Hapes Consortium ever again. In response, Jacen tortures Ta'a Chume into a permanent coma from which she'll never recover. After this, he has an apocalyptic vision of an eternal war between man, Chiss, and Killik that will ultimately consume the galaxy. Back on Woteba, Luke, Han, and the others come across a gang trading credits for spice from the Gorog. A battle brakes out between the smugglers and Gorog against Luke and Han. The former group is killed in the confrontation, and Luke and Han find that the Fizz consumes the corpses of their enemies. They return to UnuThul, where Luke explains that the Fizz is most likely a biological agent that protects the environment of Woteba from harm via dangerous enemies. UnuThul thanks Luke and Han for this and gives them Killik-made replicas of the X-wing Luke flew at the Battle of Yavin 36 years earlier and of the Millennium Falcon. Then Alema appears and takes UnuThul and his following Killiks under complete control of the Dark Nest. The Killiks then place Luke, Han, and the others in a prison so that they will spend enough time to become part of the Colony's hive mind. Han comes up with a plan after he figures out that the Killiks are shipping their replicas throughout the galaxy, and correctly hypothesizes that Jae Juun and Tarfang are working for them in this manner. He calls for them to come over, and to pass the time, Luke plays a holorecording that R2-D2 took when Anakin Skywalker, now Darth Vader, had carried out Order 66 in the Jedi Temple. Juun and Tarfang come over, and Han shatters his replica of the Millennium Falcon, which turns out to be Gorog assassins in disguise. They kill the assassins, and come to the horrifying conclusion that with the false replicas transported even to the Galactic Alliance military, the galaxy is in serious trouble. In the Galactic Alliance, Chief of State Cal Omas becomes impatient with the New Jedi Order's progress in dealing with the Killik problem, so he takes advantage of Luke's absence from the Order and appoints Corran Horn as its temporary leader. Omas tells Corran to hold the Jedi off as he sends an Alliance fleet to form a blockade around the Utegetu Nebula. Meanwhile, Cilghal tells Leia and Saba that the Fizz was part of the explosion that created the nebula, and it infected every one of the nebula's worlds so that while the plant life could flourish, no other kind of life could live there for long. Leia and Saba then go back to the nebula to tell the Killiks that they can't inhabit any of the nebula's worlds, but they run straight into the Alliance blockade. While Leia and Saba are captured, Mara remains on the loose. In response, half the Jedi turn to Kyp Durron in an effort to save Luke and the others. Jacen takes advantage of the schism to collect his Jedi colleagues from the Mission to Myrkr and the Battles of Qoribu and attack the Chiss space station of Thrago Depot. Jacen tells his friends that the Chiss are planning a preemptive attack on the Killiks, and that raiding Thrago Depot will delay their invasion of the Colony. In reality, however, the Chiss have no intention of restarting their conflict with the Killiks, and Jacen intends to persuade the Ascendancy through this Jedi attack to start a war that will most likely exterminate the Colony. The Jedi Knights' attack on Thrago Depot ensues successfully without casualties from either side as Kyp Durron and his Jedi supporters go to the Alliance blockade around the Utegetu Nebula. On Woteba, Luke, Han, and the others, with the help of Jae Juun and Tarfang, manage to escape their prison, and they make it off of Woteba. They later get into a brief battle against smugglers, and then sneak aboard a Gorog nest ship just before it goes into hyperspace. When it comes out, it rendezvous with other Killik nest ships right at the Galactic Alliance blockade. When this happens, just after Leia and Saba escape from their prison cells, the replicas that the Killiks gave the Alliance military pop open with Gorog assassins, and begin taking over the ships they're on. Leia, aboard the ship Admiral Ackbar, convinces Admiral Nek Bwua'tu to abandon ship as the Killiks spark the battle of the Murgo Choke (the Murgo Choke is where the bulk of the blockade is). But before Leia evacuates, she gets into a second lightsaber duel with Alema Rar, further wounds the Dark Jedi, and emerges victorious, although Alema escapes death once again. As the Battle of the Murgo Choke rages, Luke, Han, and the others actually enter the Gorog nest ship to at least disable it, if not altogether destroy it. There, they confront Lomi Plo, who uses her powers to manipulate the doubts of others so that they can't see her; hence, she is the titular unseen queen of the novel. Despite her invisibility, Luke is able to combat Plo while Mara, in her StealthX, manages to destroy the Gorog nest ship's hyperdrive core. Plo escapes while the heroes regroup with Admiral Bwua'tu aboard the Mon Mothma as the Battle of the Murgo Choke draws to a close. But with all of the events that have occurred, war is certain. The Swarm War has begun.
2769039	/m/081knj	The Swarm War	Troy Denning		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with the Jedi group of Jaina and Jacen Solo, Lowbacca, Zekk, Tahiri Veila, and Tesar Sebatyne on the Killik world of Snevu, watching as the Chiss try and destroy the planet. While there, they discover a bomb that was made by the Chiss, which was meant to exterminate the Killik life on the planet, but the bomb failed to detonate. The Chiss send in infantry to try and vaporize the bomb, in which they succeed. Back on the planet Ossus, Luke Skywalker has called back all the Jedi (except Jaina and Zekk) and delivers an ultimatum. He wants anyone who cannot make being a Jedi their top priority to quit while he becomes Grand Master of the New Jedi Order, dictating that the Jedi will be servants of the Galactic Alliance for now on. The likes of Danni Quee and Tenel Ka Djo agree to this; Danni never considered herself a Jedi, and more of a scientist intrigued to explore the further mysteries of the living world of Zonama Sekot. Tenel Ka, on her part, has too much responsibility as Hapan Queen Mother and as a mother to her own daughter, Allana. Aside from Jacen and Tenel Ka, no one else knows who Allana's father is. Following Luke's conclave on Ossus, he and his family watch another holovid from R2-D2's memory banks where Anakin Skywalker, now Darth Vader, speaks to his wife, Padme Amidala, after carrying out Order 66 in the Old Jedi Temple. Luke and the rest of the Jedi consider how to end the Dark Nest Crisis and the Swarm War. Killing Lomi Plo won't be enough, Cilghal explains, because a new Gorog would emerge to manipulate the Killiks from behind the scenes; so neutralizing UnuThul as leader of the Killiks, thus dissembling the entire Colony hive mind overall, is the only way to end this conflict. But in order to defeat Lomi Plo, Luke must purge all doubt from his heart and mind so that he can fight and kill Plo to the best of his abilities. Jacen helps him along with that. Han, Leia, C-3PO, Saba Sebatyne, Cakhmaim, and Meewalh all go traveling throughout the major sectors of the galaxy now involved in the Swarm War. Their mission is to find Jaina and Zekk and bring them back within the Jedi Order's fold. They once again come into contact with Jae Juun and Tarfang, who tell them that Jaina and Zekk are fighting with the Killiks against the Chiss on Tenupe. After Luke purges all doubt from his mind by watching the last of R2-D2's family recordings that depicted scenes from Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the Grand Master of the Jedi Order travels to Tenupe, where Lomi Plo and UnuThul are. Han and Leia foil the Chiss's attempt to eradicate the Killiks on Tenupe with a biological bomb, similar to the one deployed on Snevu, just as Leia engages Alema Rar in their final lightsaber duel of the trilogy. Leia once again emerges victorious as Alema is caught in the jaws of one of Tenupe's beasts and disappears into the planet's jungle. As this happens, Luke confronts UnuThul and Lomi Plo aboard the captured Admiral Ackbar. There, he briefly fights UnuThul before convincing him to renounce his leadership of the Killiks. He does so and becomes Raynar Thul again, while Luke manages to kill Lomi Plo in their final duel. With that, the Killik hive mind, including that of the Gorog, dissipates into nothingness. The Dark Nest Crisis and the Swarm War conclude, with the Killiks now a harmless race; the Chiss go back to their own business in the Unknown Regions, and the Galactic Alliance returns to its normal duties in peacetime. For all she did as a Jedi apprentice under Master Saba Sebatyne, Leia is promoted from apprentice to Jedi Knight. Then, when asked about what will happen to the Jedi Order should he ever be absent again, Luke replies, "I don't know. I wish I had the answers."
2770501	/m/081nxq	Gerald's Party	Robert Coover		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 As Gerald tries to describe the things around him in painstaking detail, he recounts simultaneous conversations and events as they happen by using a format similar to data packet handling. After describing a small part of a situation or a conversation, he moves on to a small part of a different conversation, then returns to the first conversation, or maybe moves on to a third or a fourth, returning each time to try to be as accurate as possible while recording the events.so
2770911	/m/081pvy	A Million Little Pieces	James Frey	2003-04-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The badly tattered James awakens on an airplane to Chicago, with no recollection of his injuries or of how he ended up on the plane. He is met by his parents at the airport, who take him to a rehabilitation clinic. We find out that James is 23 years old, and has been an alcoholic for ten years, and a crack addict for three. He is also wanted by the police in three different states on several charges. As he checks into the rehab clinic, he is forced to quit his substance abuse, a transition that we find out later probably saves his life, but is also an incredibly agonizing event. As part of this, he is forced to undergo a series of painful root canals, without any anesthesia because of possible negative reactions to the drugs. He copes with the pain by squeezing tennis balls until his nails crack (when challenged on this incident, specifically, during his second Oprah appearance, Frey said that it may have been "more than one" root canal procedure and may or may not have included Novocaine, as he remembers it). The book follows Frey through the painful experiences that lead up to his eventual release from the center, including his participation in the clinic's family program with his parents, despite his strong desire not to. Throughout the novel, Frey speaks of the "Fury" he is fighting, which he sees as the cause of his desire to drink alcohol and use drugs. The "Fury" could be seen as the antagonist of the novel, because he believes that he will not be able to recover until he learns to ignore it or "kill it." Frey meets many interesting people in the clinic, with whom he forms relationships and who play an important role in his life both during and after his time in the clinic. These people include a mafia boss who plays a vital role in his recovery (subject of Frey's subsequent book My Friend Leonard), and a woman drug addict with whom he falls in love, despite strict rules forbidding contact between men and women at the clinic. James finally recovers and never relapses. A notable feature of Pieces is its lack of quotation marks to indicate direct discourse. Instead, a new line is started each time. The fact that the author uses this same style to indicate his internal thoughts, often interspersed between direct discourse from himself and others, gives the book a unique and sometimes confusing writing style, purportedly reflecting the nature of his experience in the treatment center. Frey makes frequent use of this stream of consciousness writing technique, which allows the reader to better understand his version of the events. Frey's unique writing style also involves his capitalizing nouns throughout the book for unclear reasons. Frey also uses heavy repetition of words throughout the text.
2771999	/m/081sv3	Betrayal	Aaron Allston	2006-05-30	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Thirty-six years after the fall of the Galactic Empire, the novel begins with Luke Skywalker sensing the dark presence of a mysterious enemy. Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker are sent on a mission to disable the planet of Corellia's new independent weapons on Adumar. After they are discovered, they fight their way out of the facility and report to the Galactic Alliance of their discoveries. Han and Leia Solo host a dinner with the Skywalkers as guests at LukStation, where the failed peace meeting between the GA and Corellia took place. As this happens, a mysterious tassel is discovered, which Jacen looks to investigate with Ben on the information planet of Lorrd. Jacen and Ben meet up with Jedi Knight Nelani Dinn and they seek to find the meaning imbedded in the tassel. As they do this, they encounter crimes where mentally unstable individuals are motivated by their obsession with Jedi. The crimes all trace back to a woman named Brisha Syo. When arrested and questioned, Brisha demands to speak with the Jedi, to which they quickly acquiesce. Jacen asks what she knows about the crimes on Lorrd, and realizes that she's Force-sensitive. Brisha invites Jacen, Ben, and Nelani to her home on an asteroid near Bimmiel. They agree, so they set course for this asteroid. When they arrive, Brisha informs them that she suspects that there is a Sith Lord in the caves beneath the asteroid, and that she needs the Jedi to get rid of him. They agree, and they follow Brisha down into the bowels of the asteroid. While they're in the cart that's taking them down into the caverns, Ben and Nelani are both yanked out of the travel cart by Brisha through the Force. When Jacen demands why she did it, she informs him that they would have died fighting the Sith Lord. While Jacen's still suspicious of her motives, he goes along with her down to the caves. When Jacen and Brisha are separated, he comes face to face with a dark side version of his uncle Luke Skywalker, and Ben fights a dark side version of his mother, Mara Jade Skywalker; on Coruscant, Luke and Mara are likewise fighting dark side versions of their nephew and son, respectively. At the end of each fight, they each feel uneasy of their battles, except Ben, who is knocked unconscious. Jacen and Brisha reunite, with Brisha saying that she was the one who conjured the dark versions of each of them, as a test for Jacen. Brisha then leads Jacen to a very colorful house in a large cave, and tells Jacen that it was the home of the Sith Lord Darth Vectivus. Brisha also reveals that her true name is Shira Brie, a.k.a. Lumiya, an enemy of Luke Skywalker. She then goes on to explain that Jacen has never heard of Vectivus because he never tried to conquer the galaxy, or tried to eradicate the Jedi Order. She tells him that Vectivus believed in peace and learning, and that Jacen's perception of the Sith has been clouded by the Empire's reign of terror and the Jedi's philosophical and subjective stance against them. By then, Nelani has also arrived at Vectivus' mansion, and tries to arrest Lumiya. She refuses, and she and Nelani do battle, Nelani with her lightsaber, and Lumiya with her lightwhip. All the while, Lumiya tries to convince Jacen that the true Sith way is one of peace and understanding, and that he is destined to become the next Sith Lord, just as Vergere taught him. Lumiya and Nelani's battle ends, and Jacen, stunned by this revelation, peers into the future, and realizes that if he doesn't kill Nelani, each future ends with Luke dying by Jacen's hand. Devastated, Jacen takes off after Nelani when she realizes his intent, and stabs her through the chest with his lightsaber in the midst of combat. When he returns to Lumiya, Jacen wipes Ben's solid memories of his experiences in the Home. And then tells her that he will accept her Sith teachings in order to save the galaxy from spiraling out of control from the upcoming war between the Galactic Alliance and Corellia. The novel ends on Coruscant, where, as Luke senses that the presence of the dark man he sensed at the beginning of the novel is real now, Mara informs Luke that Jacen and Ben are returning home.
2772027	/m/081sy7	Bloodlines	Karen Traviss	2006-08-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "But the bitterest enemy can be your own flesh and blood - and your foe can turn out to be your only ally." In Bloodlines, a civil war continues to break out in the Galactic Alliance, as acts of terrorism on the part of Coruscant's local Corellians force the Alliance to create even more repressive laws. Many families find themselves divided, including the Solo/Skywalker families as Han Solo's Corellian roots and Luke Skywalker's dedication to the Jedi are creating conflict. Meanwhile, Luke and Mara Skywalker fear for their son, Ben, when his cousin and Jedi Knight, Jacen Solo, makes a dangerous choice. This choice shocks both families. After going on numerous raids with Jacen, Ben gets the chance to make a decision about a raid in which he kills two people. This experience shakes him to the core, and he begins to distrust Jacen's teachings. In this novel, the conflict's main author (and Han's cousin), Thrackan Sal-Solo, finally meets his end when Mirta Gev, Boba Fett's granddaughter, shoots him in the head. Meanwhile, Jacen continues on the path to becoming a Sith, deciding that the only thing left for him to do is to "immortalize his love," according to the Sith tassels. Jacen loves Tenel Ka and their daughter Allana very much, but if he is to achieve his full Sith ranking, it appears that he must kill them. While wracked with doubt and sorrow, Jacen decides that the sacrifice is worthwhile if it means he can save the galaxy. With that goal in mind, he believes that he must follow the path of his grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, in order to achieve it. He even "flow walks" through time with the Force in order to witness his grandfather's fall from grace (as portrayed in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith) and decides that his journey is meant to be different. Jacen may yet acquire full Sith knowledge and acknowledgement and avoid becoming another Darth Vader. The choice that Jacen chooses is when he kills Boba Fett's daughter, Ailyn Vel, during an interrogation; Ailyn had been smuggling military-grade weapons on Coruscant, and Jacen was trying to figure out who would be her target. Although he doesn't get an answer from her, her targets were supposed to be Han and Leia Organa Solo. After he learns of this, Fett decides not to kill Jacen in vengeance, but rather, as he sees Jacen falling to the dark side with his actions against Coruscant's Corellians, the galaxy's greatest bounty hunter figures that it would hurt Jacen more to let him live; by falling to the dark side as he is, and just like his late grandfather Darth Vader had, letting him live long enough to fall to the dark side will have Jacen see his friends and family turn on him in the future. A subplot to Fett's arc is that he has an illness that is degenerating his cells.
2773413	/m/081x6g	Ashenden: Or the British Agent	W. Somerset Maugham	1928	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A playwright called Ashenden is recruited by Colonel R., a British Intelligence officer. He is sent to Switzerland where he becomes involved in a series of adventures. In one he accompanies a man called the Hairless Mexican to Italy, where a Greek agent of the Germans is to be assassinated. In another he must get an Italian dancer to induce her Indian lover, a German agent, to cross the border into Switzerland to see her, so that Ashenden can arrest him. # R. # A Domiciliary Visit # Miss King # The Hairless Mexican # The Dark Woman # The Greek # A Trip to Paris # Giulia Lazzari # Gustav # The Traitor # Behind the Scenes # His Excellency # The Flip of a Coin # A Chance Acquaintance # Love and Russian Literature # Mr. Harrington's Washing The chapters are collected in later collections under different titles, as below. It is unknown whether they were rewritten slightly from original publication. * "A Domiciliary Visit" & "Miss King" as Miss King * "The Hairless Mexican", "The Dark Woman", "The Greek" as The Hairless Mexican * "A Trip to Paris, "Giulia Lazzari" as Giulia Lazzari * "Gustav", "The Traitor" as The Traitor * "Behind the Scenes", "His Excellency", as His Excellency * "A Chance Acquaintance", "Love and Russian Literature", "Mr. Harrington's Washing" as Mr. Harrington's Washing
2775413	/m/08204z	Tutankhamun and the Daughter of Ra	Moyra Caldecott	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Ankhesenamun has never been safe in all her short life – not even with her beloved husband and half brother Tutankhamun. Daughter of Pharaoh Akhenaten and the fabled Nefertiti, and married at one time to her father, she is forced to marry Tutankhamun by the powerful General Horemheb at a time of bitter political and religious division. Ankhesenamun is the delicate link between scheming factions. Left vulnerable by the failure of her plans for the sacred egg of Ra and the death of her young husband, Ankhesenamun is forced into making one last extraordinary and desperate bid for life and happiness...
2778204	/m/0823zn	Gilead	Marilynne Robinson	2004-11-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is an account of the memories and legacy of John Ames as he remembers his experiences of his father and grandfather to share with his son. All three men share a vocational lifestyle and profession as Congregationalist ministers in Gilead, Iowa. John Ames describes his vocation as "giving you a good basic sense of what is being asked of you and also what you might as well ignore", explaining that your vocation is something both hard to fulfill and hard to obtain. He writes that this is one of the most important pieces of wisdom he can bestow to his son. Ames' father was a Christian pacifist, but his grandfather was a radical abolitionist who carried out guerrilla actions with John Brown before the American Civil War, served as a chaplain with the Union forces in that war, and incited his congregation to join up and serve in it; as Ames remarks, "He preached this town into the war." The grandfather returned from the war maimed with the loss of his right eye. Thereafter he was given the distinction that his right side was holy or sacred in some way, that it was his link to commune with God, and he was notorious for a piercing stare with the one eye he had left. The grandfather's other eccentricities are recalled in his youth: the practice of giving all and any of the family's possessions to others and preaching with a gun in a bloodied shirt. The true character and intimate details of the father are revealed in context with anecdotes regarding the grandfather, and mainly in the search for the grave of the grandfather. One event that is prevalent in the narrator's orations is the memory of receiving 'communion' from his father at the remains of a Baptist church, burned by lightning (Ames recalls this as an invented memory adapted from his father breaking and sharing an ashy biscuit for lunch). In the course of the novel, it quickly emerges that Ames's first wife, Louisa, died while giving birth to their daughter, Rebecca (a.k.a. Angeline) who also died soon after. Ames reflects on the death of his family as the source of great sorrow for many years, in contrast and with special reference to the growing family of the Rev. Boughton, local Presbyterian minister and Ames' dear and lifelong friend. Many years later Ames meets his second wife, Lila, a less-educated woman who appears in church one Pentecost Sunday. Eventually Ames baptizes Lila and their relationship develops, culminating in her proposal to him. As Ames writes his memoirs, Boughton's son, John Ames Boughton (Jack), reappears in the town after leaving it in disgrace twenty years earlier, following his seduction and abandonment of a girl from a poverty-stricken family near his university. The daughter of this relationship died poor and uncared-for at the age of three, despite the Boughton family's well-intended but unwelcome efforts to look after the child. Young Boughton, the apple of his parents' eye but deeply disliked by Ames, seeks Ames out; much of the tension in the novel results from Ames's mistrust of Jack Boughton and particularly of his relationship with Lila and their son. In the dénouement, however, it turns out that Jack Boughton is himself suffering from his forced separation from his own common-law wife, an African American from Tennessee, and their son; the family are not allowed to live together because of segregationist laws, and her family utterly rejects Jack Boughton. It is implied that Jack's understanding with Lila lies in their common sense of tragedy as she prepares for the death of Ames, who has given her a security and stability she has never known before. Although there is action in the story, its mainspring lies in Ames' theological struggles on a whole series of fronts: with his grandfather's engagement in the Civil War, with his own loneliness through much of his life, with his brother's clear and his father's apparent loss of belief, with his father's desertion of the town, with the hardships of people's lives, and above all with his feelings of hostility and jealousy towards young Boughton, whom he knows at some level he has to forgive. Ames' struggles are illustrated by numerous quotations from the Bible, from theologians (especially Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion) and from philosophers, especially the atheist Feuerbach, whom Ames greatly respects. It is unusual that a book with so much openly religious and theological content should be so widely recognized as a successful novel and should achieve such acclaim from a secular audience. However the abstract and theological content is made meaningful because it is seen through the eyes of Ames, who is presented in a deeply sympathetic manner and who writes his memoir from a position of serenity, despite his suffering and a knowledge of his own limitations and failings. Throughout the novel, Ames details a reverential awe for the transcendental pathos in the small personal moments of happiness and peace with his wife and son and the town of Gilead, despite the loneliness and sorrow he feels for leaving the world with things undone and unsolved. In the closing pages of the book, Ames learns of Jack Boughton's true situation and is able to offer him the genuine affection and forgiveness he has never before been able to feel for him.
2778653	/m/0824nl	A Wild Sheep Chase	Haruki Murakami	1982-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This mock-detective tale follows an unnamed Japanese man through Tokyo and Hokkaidō in 1978. The passive, chain-smoking main character gets swept away on an adventure that leads him on a hunt for a sheep that hasn’t been seen for years. The apathetic protagonist meets a woman with magically seductive ears and a strange man who dresses as a sheep and talks in slurs; in this way there are elements of Japanese animism or Shinto. The manipulation of the narrator into the hunt and repeated references to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes raise connections to "The Red-Headed League."
2780141	/m/0826cr	The Ringworld Engineers	Larry Niven	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot of the novel centers on the instability of the Ringworld. The recently-deposed Hindmost, leader of the Puppeteers, abducts the human Louis Wu (who has become a wirehead) and kzinti Chmeee (previously known as "Speaker-to-Animals"). Both were part of the Ringworld exploration in the first novel. The Hindmost hopes to acquire Ringworld technology that he hopes will help him reacquire his position as leader. In the course of the novel, Louis and Chmeee set forth on an exploration of the Ringworld in order to learn where the creators of the Ringworld may have built a control or repair system. In their travels they meet a number of the hominid species that have evolved on the Ringworld. They also learn more about the "maps" of various known space worlds that are located in one of the Ringworld's great oceans. These full-size maps include, among others, Kzin, Earth, and Mars. It is on the Map of Mars that the party finds the Ringworld control room, located in a vast maze of rooms contained in the hollow space under the map. In order to create the rarefied atmosphere on Mars, the Map of Mars was built to an altitude above the main Ringworld surface creating a cavity. The Control Room contains living space for thousands of Pak Protectors, as well as space to grow the "Tree-of-Life" plants to support this many Protectors. Other rooms in the cavity support such features as the "Meteor Defense System", which uses the superconductor grid embedded in the scrith foundation material to manipulate the magnetic field of the Ringworld's sun to create a solar flare; it uses this to generate a powerful gas laser, which is capable of destroying everything in its path. In the course of finding the control room and saving the Ringworld, the party learns what became of Teela Brown, who had been left behind after the exploration twenty years earlier led by the Puppeteer, Nessus.
2780163	/m/0826f3	The Ringworld Throne	Larry Niven	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 This book consists of two main plot threads, which only come together towards the end of the book. The majority of the first half of the story is devoted to a plot where a variety of hominid species from the ring join together to kill a large nest of vampires (the shadow nest) which has been feeding on all of them. Some of the characters are also found in The Ringworld Engineers, as early on in this book Niven tells us that relatively few of the hominids died when Louis Wu and the Hindmost restabilised the ring at the end of the previous book. The second part of the book details the continuing adventures of Louis Wu, who is now aging and ill. Eventually he returns to the Hindmost and is healed, only for the pair of them—and also a Kzin called Acolyte, who is Chmee's son—to be enslaved by a vampire protector. What follows is a power struggle between Protectors on the rim wall and the vampire protectors who have control of the ringworld's defences. In many of the situations in this section of the book Louis, the Hindmost and Acolyte are present only as observers, as it is the Protectors who are the main protagonists of the story.
2783141	/m/082fc5	Strawberry Girl	Lois Lenski	1945	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the Florida in the early 20th century, the story deals with two families, the Boyers and the Slaters. The Boyers move to Florida to raise strawberries. They come into conflict with their new neighbors, the Slaters, who raise cattle and let their animals roam loose. The two main characters are Birdie Boyer, the "Strawberry Girl" of the book's title, and Shoestring Slater, whose pony ruins the Boyers' strawberries. The feud between the two families heightens through the book, but they reconcile by the end of the novel.
2783573	/m/082gb4	Baalyakaalasakhi	Vaikom Muhammad Basheer		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The childhood romance between neighbours blossoms into passionate love during adolescence. Majeed's father was rich once, so could send him to a school in the distant town, although he was not very good at studies. Suhra's father on the other hand had trouble making both ends meet. Even then he wanted to send his daughter, who was good at studies to the school. But after her father's death, all her hopes of further studies was ruined. Majeed begs his father to sponsor Suhra's education, but he refuses. Majeed leaves home after a skirmish with his father, and wanders over distant lands for a long time before returning home. On his return, he finds that his family's former affluence is all gone, and that his beloved Suhra has married someone else. He is grief struck at the loss of love, and this is when Suhra turns up at his home. She is a shadow of her former self. The beautiful, sunshiny, vibrant Suhra of old is now a woman worn out by life, battered hard by a loveless marriage to an abusive husband. Majeed commands her, "Suhra, don't go back!" and she stays. Majeed leaves home once again, but this time with plans on his mind. He needs to find a job, to ward off poverty, and thus he reaches a North Indian city. He finds work as a salesman but one day he meets with a bicycle accident in which he loses a leg. The day after he is discharged from hospital, he is informed that he's fired from his job. He again sets off on a job quest knocking at every door, wearing off his soles. He finds work as a dish-washer in a hotel. As he scrubs dirty dishes each day, he dreams of Suhra back home waiting for him to return. He must make enough money to return home and repay debts, before he can finally get married to the woman of his life. His mother writes him that Suhra is sick and subsequently of Suhara's death.
2785471	/m/082m94	The Kingdom of the Wicked	Anthony Burgess	1985-09-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story of the birth of Christianity and its interaction with the Roman Empire is told largely chronologically by a narrator slowly succumbing to disease during the reign of Domitian. The story starts where Man of Nazareth ended, immediately after the crucifixion of Jesus, and covers the work of the apostles, in particular Paul (who himself was not one of the original twelve apostles), the development of Christianity as an Abrahamic religion separate from Judaism, the Great Fire of Rome, the persecution of Christians, the destruction of the Second Temple, and the destruction of Pompeii.
2787167	/m/082r3j	The Lost City of Faar	D.J. MacHale	2003-01-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Loor flumes to her home in Zadaa while Press and Bobby flume to Cloral. Most of the book takes place on the territory known as Cloral, a planet that is entirely covered by water. The inhabitants of Cloral live on giant floating barges, called habitats. The main habitat in the book is called Grallion. Grallion is responsible for growing food for Cloral. A territory called Zadaa is also visited. Pendragon goes searching for a mythical city called Faar.
2789564	/m/082tsv	Not Wanted on the Voyage	Timothy Findley		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Noah Dr. Noyes, an authoritarian doctor and father whose obsession with God's law leads him to neglect his family, his wife, Mrs. Noyes, an alcoholic who talks to animals, and Mottyl, her blind cat are the central characters of the novel. Noah and Mrs. Noyes have three sons, Shem, Japeth, and Ham. Shem is married to Hannah, who spends a great deal of time with Dr. Noyes. Japeth is married to Emma, a young girl of about 11, who refuses to consummate their marriage. One day, an exhausted Yaweh visits Dr. Noyes. Yaweh is depressed to the point of willfully allowing himself to die, due to the treatment he's received from humanity. He tells the Noyes that the people of the City threw offal, rotten fruit, and feces at his carriage and have assassinated him 7 times. Yaweh remains depressed until he's inspired by a magic show Noah puts on to raise his spirits. Noah puts a penny under a glass bottle then fills the bottle with water. Due to refraction of the penny's image, the coin appears to vanish, but Yaweh becomes obsessed by the idea that the application of water can make things disappear. Soon Yaweh tells Noah to build an ark in preparation for the flood. Noah is resolutely obedient, but some in his family react negatively. Ham quickly marries Lucy, a mysterious seven-foot-tall woman with webbed fingers (a trait found only in angels, according to the novel) who is eventually revealed to be Lucifer in drag. As Yaweh leaves, Mottyl hears flies buzzing from within Yaweh's carriage and knows that Yaweh has resigned himself to death. Noah is adamant that Yaweh's edict must be followed to the letter and insists that there must be only two of every animal. Mrs. Noyes tries to bring Mottyl, who Noah has decreed must stay behind since he's chosen Yaweh's own two pet cats to represent felines on the ark. Noah sets fire to the house and barn, with Mottyl inside, offering all their additional animals as a giant sacrifice to Yaweh. Mrs. Noyes in enraged at the attempt to kill her cat, and by the carnage in what is left of her home, and refuses to board the ark. Noah is concerned that if Mrs. Noyes does not come, the ark and its passengers will be doomed, as Yaweh's edict clearly states that Noah's wife must be aboard. Mrs. Noyes hides in Noah's orchard as the rain starts, but leaves when she notices Emma's sister Lotte, a "monkey child" trying to cross the river. Mrs. Noyes rescues Lotte and agrees to board only if Lotte can also come. Noah agrees to let Lotte on board, but has Japeth kill her shortly after. Mrs. Noyes again rebels, but ultimately agrees to board the ark and smuggles Mottyl aboard, hidden in her apron. As the voyage begins Noah quickly imposes his will on his family by drawing a line between the "rebellious" elements (Mrs. Noyes, Emma, Ham, and Lucy) and the rest (himself, Hannah, Japeth, and Shem). One day, dolphins swim by the ark, attempting to befriend the inhabitants. Noah decides that the dolphins must be pirates and has Japeth slaughter them. Mrs. Noyes attempts to stop him, and once the "pirates" have been defeated, Noah locks Mrs. Noyes, Lucy, Ham, and Emma in the lower levels of the ark, forcing them to care for the animals alone. Meanwhile, Noah, Hannah, Shem, and Japeth enjoy quarters on the deck of the ark and freedom from heavy chores. Noah notices that Japeth is becoming more preoccupied with sex and often eyes Hannah in a way that makes Noah wary. He decides that the solution is to force Emma to consummate their marriage. Noah has Emma brought to the deck and "inspects" her to see what the problem is. He decides that Emma's "tightness" is the reason why Japeth could not "gain entry" and requests that the Unicorn is brought to aid the problem. Noah uses the Unicorn to "open" Emma for Japeth, a process which traumatizes Emma and severely injures the Unicorn. When Japeth finds out what his father has done, he cuts off the Unicorn's horn. Emma is then forced to live on the top deck to be near her husband. Mrs. Noyes, Lucy, and Ham decide to rebel against Noah and the others. They formulate a plan to burn through the locked door using the two demons on board. They get the door open and plan to close the armoury, where Japeth sleeps, from the outside so as to neutralize Japeth. Unfortunately, Japeth is patrolling the deck and captures the escapees. He ties up Mrs. Noyes, Lucy, and Ham and throws the demons overboard, which enrages Lucy. She breaks free of her bonds and curses Japeth so that his wounds will never heal properly and he will always smell of the violence he has inflicted on others. Mrs. Noyes, Ham, and Lucy are locked below again, this time with boards and chains locking the door from the outside. Lucy plans another escape and has Crowe take a message to Emma to release them. Emma removes all the chains and bars while Noah and Hannah are preoccupied with praying, Shem is preoccupied with eating, and Japeth is preoccupied dressing his wounds. Mrs. Noyes, Lucy, and Ham bar the armoury and the chapel, locking in Noah, Hannah, and Japeth, but they are unable to find Shem. While locked in the chapel, Hannah's labour begins. She asks Noah to call for help, but he refuses to call for anyone until the baby is born. Noah knows that the baby is likely his and is worried that it will be a "monkey child" like Lotte, as Japeth's dead twin brother was also monkey-like. When the baby is born dead it is indeed revealed to be a "monkey child." Ham, hearing Hannah's cries of pain, opens the chapel door to help Hannah. He is quickly brained by Shem, but not before he sees Hannah's child. Hannah wraps it in blankets to hide its hairy arms and throws the baby overboard. A truce between the factions is tacitly called. The weather is sunny for the first time since the start of the rain, and Noah asks Emma to send a dove to look for land. When the dove does not return, they continue to send birds until Noah decides to send his own trained dove. Noah's dove returns with an olive branch, which Noah uses to prove Yaweh's edict. The other members of the ark remain unconvinced, as they know it is the same branch from the dove's cage. The novel ends with Mrs. Noyes sitting on deck with Mottyl, praying to the clouds for rain. The book is written by Timothy Findley and is produced by Penguin Books.
2794260	/m/0832fc	In Search of The La's : A Secret Liverpool		2003-12-11		 "With the timeless single "There She Goes", Lee Mavers' La's overtook The Stone Roses as great British guitar hopes and paved the way for the Britpop renaissance of Blur and Oasis. However, since 1991, The La's have been silent, while rumors of studio-perfectionism, madness and drug addiction have abounded with Mavers lined up as another rock casualty. The author sets out to discover the truth behind Mavers' lost decade and eventually gains a revelatory audience with Mavers himself." The author, MW Macefield, travels to Liverpool to interview several ex-members of the band (including co-founder Mike Badger, guitarist Paul Hemmings and bass player John Power), and sundry other personnel, and eventually gets to chat with the group&#39;s chief songwriter Lee Mavers. In it several La&#39;s myths are dispelled along the way, new song titles are named, and the past and future of the band is discussed.
2794614	/m/08335w	Tricked				 When the novel opens, Ray Beam is mulling over the decline of his career; he's still making money from residuals, but he's unable to write new music. He's shaken up when a cute temp at his promotional office asks for his autograph - the machine that automatically signs autographs is on the fritz, so she asked him to do the job himself. Ray invites the temp, Lily, into his limo, where he does a line of cocaine and attempts to seduce her. She rebuffs him; he realizes that she isn't one of his fans. This intrigues him, and he offers Lily a job as his "personal assistant." At the same time, a girl named Phoebe is taking a bus to the city from New Mexico. Her eventual destination: The Little Piggy Diner, owned by Richard Krinker, whom she believes is her father. The diner is well known, featured on TV travel shows, but it has a relatively small staff included a waitress named Caprice. She ends many years of awful relationships when she meets Boyd, a bartender, during a double date that's going nowhere. She starts dating Boyd around the same time Phoebe reconnects with Richard. Phoebe is integrated into the diner's life, making a little money with the waitress and hanging out with Richard and her other "father," Richard's partner Frank. As she's showing her new friend around the city, Caprice takes Phoebe to a sports memorabilia store called The Dug Out to buy a gift for Boyd. The clerk who sells her the baseball is Nick, a signature forger who has been stealing from the business and lying to his wife about what he does. He immediately falls for Caprice and gives her a baseball card with a genuine signature, on the condition she'll have coffee with him. She accepts; it just so happens that she's tiring a little bit of Boyd. The two of them start dating while the situation with Boyd remains murky. While all of this is happening, a computer engineer named Steve is going through a severe depression - if not a psychotic period. Bitter about his life, especially his love life, he's stopped taking his medication and grows more and more obsessed with his favorite singer, Ray Beam. He receives a signed photo from Beam's office; as it happens, it's the original signature that Ray did for Lily. Since the signature doesn't match the rest in his (very large) collection, and since Ray drew devil horns and a beard on the photo, Steve obsesses over it. A voice in his head helps convince him that this means the real Ray Beam has been replaced by an evil imposter. Steve loses his job, gets a gun from his grandmother's house, and plots the assassination of the "phony" Ray. Ray and Lily are, of course, unaware of any of this. Ray had hoped Lily would become his muse, and lucky for him, she does. Newly inspired he takes her to a Caribbean recording studio, then to a series of exotic locations, and asks her to marry him. She says yes. But while on their honeymoon, Lily walks into a room of call girls that have been hired by Ray's jealous ex-personal assistant (who had been doing the real work while Ray fell in love with Lily). She flees, but Ray (through his manager Marty) convinces her to come to a reconciliation dinner at a place of her choosing. She chooses the Little Piggy Diner. Before they open the diner for the Ray-Lily meeting, the diner staff start to sort out their lives. Caprice gets tired of Nick's rudeness and deception and realizes that she loves Boyd. Phoebe thanks Richard for letting her stay, but says she wants to return to her mother in New Mexico. Then the diner opens for the dinner. Nick arrives, bruised and bloody - he has killed the manager of the Dug Out in a brawl over the stolen money, although he doesn't tell Caprice this. While she tries to get him to leave, Steve sneaks in through the open door. He attempts to shoot Ray, but Nick dives in the way, takes the bullet, and dies. The story wraps up some months later. Steve is in prison and back on medication, telling his story to a sleazy journalist. Phoebe is in college and working at the diner, where she serves two surprise guests: Caprice and Boyd, still happily together. Ray and Lily are settling some accounts in their mansion. Lily reads Ray a thank-you letter from Nick's family, for the "generous gift" he provided after Nick died saving Ray's life. Then she reads the sales figures for Ray's comeback album which are disappointing. Ray shrugs it off, and excitedly tells Lily about the new song he's working on. "I can't wait!" she says; and they kiss.
2794729	/m/0833fn	The Poky Little Puppy	Janette Sebring Lowrey	1942-10-21	{"/m/016475": "Picture book"}	 Instead of following his siblings when they all sneak out to play, the Poky Little Puppy lags behind to observe other things. In the beginning, his independence is rewarded. The puppies had all dug a hole underneath the fence to escape from their yard, but only the Poky Little Puppy's siblings are caught. The Poky Little Puppy avoids punishment because he's off exploring as his mother scolds his siblings, and he comes home alone after everyone is asleep. The Poky Little Puppy then eats the rice pudding that the mother was planning to give all the puppies but withheld because of the fence-digging incident. This pattern then repeats itself, only with chocolate custard for dessert instead of rice pudding. Only at the end of the book does fate catch up with the Poky Little Puppy. When the puppies are sent to bed without dessert a third time, they wait until they think their mother is sleeping, then sneak out of bed and fill in the hole they'd dug under the fence. She sees them doing this and rewards them with strawberry shortcake. The Poky Little Puppy not only arrives too late to get any strawberry shortcake, but is forced to squeeze between the fence boards since the hole has been filled in. The book concludes with Poky Little Puppy going to bed without a bite and feeling "very sorry for himself." The next day there is a sign outside that says "NO DESSERTS EVER UNLESS PUPPIES NEVER DIG HOLES UNDER THIS FENCE AGAIN!"
2794802	/m/0833lv	Tootle	Gertrude Crampton		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The protagonist is Tootle, who is a baby locomotive who is attending train school, hoping to grow up to be the Flyer on the New York-Chicago route. His schoolwork involves such tasks as stopping at red flags and pulling a dining car without spilling the soup. Most important, however, is that he must stay on the rails no matter what...Bill his good friend and teacher tells Tootle that trains are not professional unless they get 100 A+ on staying on the rails no mater what. One day when Tootle is practicing the rule a horse challenges him to a race to the river. Tootle goes faster but loses his race lead to the horse when he turns a curve so he gets off the tracks and ties with the horse. In the days that follow Tootle becomes fond of playing in the meadow and not staying on the tracks and Bill quickly discovers what Tootle has been doing. Not wanting to take away the offer of being a flyer Bill decides a plan with the mayor to put Tootle back on the tracks. One day when Tootle is driving the railroad he hops off the tracks to play in the meadow but sees red flags everywhere in the grasses and he is upset due to having to stop at red flags; trains hate nothing more than stopping. Tootle then sees Bill with a green flag over the railings and having learned his lesson gets back on the track and says that playing in the meadow only brings red flags to trains. In response to the lesson learned the town cheers for him and rewards Tootle the flyer of the route to Chicago. In the days that follow when Tootle becomes elderly he teaches some new locomotives some advice including "Stay on the rails no matter what."
2795327	/m/0834vc	Picture This	Joseph Heller		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Like in Heller's version of King David's story, God Knows, the author changes little in the storyline of the original – he execrates narrative, and denies historical counterpoints, both explicit, some implicit. Incomprehension may have contributed to a critical redemption of this book, along with less weight for humour and a sobering conclusion.
2795495	/m/08353x	Les Mystères de Paris			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The hero of the novel is the mysterious and distinguished Rodolphe, who is really the Grand Duke of Gerolstein (a fictional kingdom of Germany) but is disguised as a Parisian worker. Rodolphe can speak in argot, is extremely strong and a good fighter. Yet he also shows great compassion for the lower classes, good judgment, and a brilliant mind. He can navigate all layers of society in order to understand their problems, and to understand how the different social classes are linked. Rodolphe is accompanied by his friends Sir Walter Murph, an Englishman, and David, a gifted black doctor, formerly a slave. The first figures they meet are Le Chourineur and La Goualeuse. Rodolphe saves La Goualeuse from Le Chourineur's brutality, and saves Le Chourineur from himself, knowing that the man still has some good in him. La Goualeuse is a prostitute, and Le Chourineur is a former butcher who has served 15 years in prison for murder. Both characters are grateful for Rodolphe's assistance, as are many other characters in the novel. Though Rodolphe is described as a flawless man, Sue otherwise depicts the Parisian nobility as deaf to the misfortunes of the common people and focused on meaningless intrigues. For this reason, some, such as Dumas, have considered the novel's ending a failure. Rodolphe goes back to Gerolstein to take on the role to which he was destined by birth, rather than staying in Paris to help the lower classes.
2798992	/m/083dkz	The Far Country	Nevil Shute		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story takes place partly in London and partly in Australia. It is set in 1950. Jennifer Morton, a young girl from Leicester but living in London, witnesses the death of her grandmother, the widow of a retired Indian civil servant. Her pension has ceased and she has literally starved to death, despite apparent prosperity. Before she dies, she leaves Jennifer a small sum of money sent by a niece in Australia, and asks that Jennifer use the money to visit Jane and Jack Dorman who own a prosperous sheep station in Merrijig Victoria. She does so. Jennifer finds herself falling in love with the new, relatively unspoiled country, though she continues to worry about her parents. She also meets Carl Zlinter, a 'New Australian'; a Czech refugee who is working at the nearby lumber camp of a timber company as a condition of his free passage to Australia. A medical doctor qualified to practise in Czechoslovakia, he is not qualified to practise in Australia and only looks after First Aid at the lumber camp. But when an accident badly injures two of the workers and no doctor, nurse or medical facilities are available, he is faced with the choice of either watching the workers die or operating on them; he chooses to operate, and Jennifer assists him. The two operations are successful, but one man later gets drunk and dies. Zlinter is initially in potentially serious trouble over the unlicensed operations and death, but he is cleared of responsibility. Jennifer helps Zlinter to trace the history of a man of the same name who lived and died in the district many years before, during a gold rush, and they find the site of his house. Back in England, Jennifer's mother dies and she is forced to return, but she is now restless and dissatisfied. Zlinter turns up in Leicester; he has found gold dust that the earlier Zlinder earned as a bullock driver and hid beneath a stone. He has used the money from illegally selling the gold to travel to England to ask Jennifer to marry him, and to re-qualify as a medical practitioner.
2799807	/m/083g6c	Rowan and the Keeper of the Crystal	Jennifer Rowe		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Keeper of the Crystal - leader of the Maris people - is dying and a messenger brings this news to Rin Rowan of Rin learns that his mother, Jiller, is to choose the new leader from one of the three warring Maris clans. Doss of Pandellis, Asha of Umbray and Seaborn of Fisk are their names. When she falls victim to a strong poison, however, Rowan finds himself in the Chooser's position as well as trying to create the antidote to wake his mother from Death Sleep. Rowan then receives a riddle of how to make an antidote by bonding with the crystal and finding the recipe against the Keeper's will. They then exit the cavern of the keeper to go to the island where Orin the first keeper went to make the antidote. They think that the water will be the answer to the second line, however Doss says that it is too obvious and that it wound not be the sea water. Rowan then sights a slight glint in the trees and runs toward it. they discover that it is a pool of clear water. Seaborn is then asked to retrieve the water but once his hand touches the water clear tubular leeches then get attached to his hand. He screams in pain and gives Rowan the water. Then a bird swoops down towards them but is actually diving toward to the pool to grab some leeches. The pool then turns silver as the leeches bury themselves under the silver sand. In the centre of the pool is a moon flower and they decide that they will have to grab the flow with their hands since the "tears" that they need is the sap. Rowan then remembers that in Rin they use scarecrows to scare away crows and they construct a bird like kite using Seaborn's cape and sticks. They fly the kite near the pool and Rowan puts his and in the pool and grabs for the moonflower because all the other refuse to do it. The 5th line means a quill from the bird that has not been plucked and exposed to air for a long time. They use Asha's cape which is silver as a mirror to attract the bird. The venom of your greatest fear is the venom from the Great Serpent. They got the venom from the serpent while it was laying its eggs into the pool where Rowan got the moonflower from.
2799854	/m/083g9v	Rowan and the Zebak	Jennifer Rowe		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Rowan's younger sister, Annad, is snatched from Rin by a flying monster. Rowan must travel to the land of the Zebak - Rin's greatest enemies - in order to rescue her. As she has several times before, the witch Sheba gives a prophecy to guide them on their quest: :Five strange fingers form fate's hand, :Each plays a part at fate's command, :The fiery blaze the answer keeps, :And till its time each secret sleeps, :When pain is truth and truth is pain, :The painted shadows live again, :Five leave but five do not return, :Vain hope in pride and terror burn The five fingers become Rowan, his Zebak born traveller friend Zeel, Allun the baker, A Maris friend, Perlain, and Sheba through correspondence. During the journey to Zebak City, Rowan and his companions have their own strengths that allow the four to safely reach the city. Rowan is given a gift by Sheba, that she tell him that he can only open then he&#39;s on Zebak land. Sheba turns the fire into green flames, burns Rowan&#39;s hand, and summons pain in his arm, only to have something to laugh at. Later, this gift should become handy, as it contained a special metal medallion owned by the people of Rin&#39;s ancestors, a bunch of dry branches, that by burning them, would summon the green flames again, show Sheba&#39;s face, and tell a new prophecy. And a little bit of grass from Rin, gathered by Sheba, for a grach. There they discover a thrilling truth, that once long ago their people had been varied, in nature and strength, strong and weak, shy and outgoing. This had been when they were in captivity by the Zebak, but when three hundred years ago, the Zebak captors separated the prisoners, taking the strong people are their warrior slaves, brainwashing them into forgetting family left behind. The story of what happened to the warriors was known,, turning on their Zebak masters the helped the Travelers and the Maris repel them, and eventually settled into what is now Rin, but what happened to those left behind was not. The people left, gentle and timid, with the loss of their people began to decline, so when Rowan and his companions hear this tale there are only three survivors, a grandfather and his grandchildren, Shaaran, gentle like Rowan, and Norris- a throwback to his warrior lineage. Five leave Rin, but five do not return, because along with bringing Annad home, Rowan and the others also bring the grandchildren to rejoin their people after many centuries apart.
2800015	/m/083gnr	Rowan of the Bukshah	Jennifer Rowe		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 :The beasts are wiser than we know :And where they lead, four souls must go. :One to weep and one to fight, :One to dream and one for flight. :Four must make their sacrifice. :In the realm twixt fire and ice :The hunger will not be denied, :The hunger must be satisfied. :And in that balct of fiery breath, :The quest unites both life and death. Winters have been getting colder and longer the past few years, posing mounting problems for the people of the valley of Rin. This year, in what should be spring the people are still in the dead of winter, with no end to the cold in sight. The people are worried, because if the winter continues much longer, their food storehouses will be empty. A decision is made to evacuate to the coast, to finish the winter with the Travelers and the Maris. The group departs, leaving behind Rowan, Brondon, Sharron and Norris. Rowan will care for his beloved Bukshah; Brondon will care for Lann, the elderly village leader; and the other two are newcomers to the group who returned with Rowan from the Land of the Zebak. When a new enemy, the ice creepers, are discovered, Rowan follows Sheba's advice. He takes Norris and Sharron, and sets off on a long trek through the land following the Bukshah. Along the way, Zeel joins the trek (thus completing the introductory rhyme; Sharron to weep, Morris to fight, Rowan to dream, and Zeel for flight). The Bukshah lead them to the mountain, where they learn some new and terrifying facts. When the Bukshah are fenced, they cannot go up the mountain to eat the seals on the ice creeper nests, preventing the numbers from growing and the habitual spreading. When the ice creepers multiply they cause the cold to grow. When the Bukshah are free to roam, they make an annual pilgrimage to the mountain and keep the ice creepers under control, preventing the rise of a cold time. Far more chilling is the extended truth about what happened to the people of the Valley of the Gold. In Travelers, Rowan already discovered the truth about the destruction of the Valley of Gold. Due to the mountain berry plants the soil was loosened and the Valley was destroyed by a landslide. Here he learns much more. When the Zebak invaded and word of the invasion was sent to the Valley, the message was received. Leaving only two behind (the Keepers of the Bukshah and the Silks), the villagers set out for the coast. On their way they were ambushed by the Zebak,captured and taken as slaves. One man escaped and returned to the Valley to warn the others. Fearing other attacks the three followed the Bukshah into the heart of the mountain where they were trapped by the landslide that destroyed the Valley as they knew it. Rowan and his companions learn this from the silks that were kept as up-to-date as possible. From this they learn the truth, that the people of Rin were once the people of the Valley of the Gold, that the land is their home, and has always been their home. :"Yes," he said. "At last the people truly can come home."
2801349	/m/083kr5	Claudine at School	Colette	1900		 Claudine, a fifteen year old girl, lives in Montigny, with her father, who is more interested in mollusks than his daughter. Claudine attends the small village school, which is the primary location of her many adventures, presented as an intimate journal. The journal begins with the new school year, marked by the arrival of the new headmistress, Miss Sergent, and her assistant, Miss Aimée Lanthenay, as well as the boys' instructors, Mr. Duplessis and Mr. Rabastens. Although Claudine begins an affair early on with Miss Lanthenay, Miss Sergent soon discovers the liaison and discourages Miss Lanthenay, ultimately taking her on as her own lover. Claudine feels betrayed and causes trouble for the two women with the help of her friends, cynical Anaïs and childlike Marie Belhomme. Miss Lanthenay's sister Luce arrives at school, and Claudine mistreats her, but Luce idolizes Claudine nonetheless. Some major events of the school year documented in the novel are the final exams, the opening of the new school, and a ball to mark the visit of an important political minister to the town.
2803150	/m/083pnq	The First Men in the Moon	H. G. Wells	1901	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 The narrator is a London businessman who withdraws to the countryside to write a play, by which he hopes to alleviate his financial problems. Bedford rents a small countryside house in Lympne, in Kent, where he wants to work in peace. He is bothered every afternoon, however, at precisely the same time, by a passer-by making odd noises. After two weeks Bedford accosts the man, who proves to be a reclusive physicist named Mr. Cavor. Bedford befriends Cavor when he learns he is developing a new material, cavorite, that can negate the force of gravity. When a sheet of cavorite is prematurely produced, it makes the air above it weightless and shoots off into space. Bedford sees in the commercial production of cavorite a possible source of "wealth enough to work any sort of social revolution we fancied; we might own and order the whole world." Cavor hits upon the idea of a spherical spaceship made of "steel, lined with glass," and with sliding "windows or blinds" made of cavorite by which it can be steered, and persuades a reluctant Bedford to undertake a voyage to the moon; Cavor is certain there is no life there. On the way to the moon, they experience weightlessness, which Bedford finds "exceedingly restful." On the surface of the moon the two men discover a desolate landscape, but as the sun rises, the thin, frozen atmosphere vaporizes and strange plants begin to grow with extraordinary rapidity. Bedford and Cavor leave the capsule, but in romping about get lost in the rapidly growing jungle. They hear for the first time a mysterious booming coming from beneath their feet. They encounter "great beasts," "monsters of mere fatness," that they dub "mooncalves," and five-foot-high "Selenites" tending them. At first they hide and crawl about, but growing hungry partake of some "monstrous coralline growths" of fungus that inebriate them. They wander drunkenly until they encounter a party of six extraterrestrials, who capture them. The insectoid lunar natives (referred to as "Selenites", after Selene, the moon goddess) are part of a complex and technologically sophisticated society that lives underground, but this is revealed only in radio communications received from Cavor after Bedford's return to earth. Bedford and Cavor break out of captivity beneath the surface of the moon and flee, killing several Selenites. In their flight they discover that gold is common on the moon. In their attempt to find their way back to the surface and to their sphere, they come upon some Selenites carving up mooncalves but fight their way past. Back on the surface, they split up to search for their spaceship. Bedford finds it but returns to Earth without Cavor, who injured himself in a fall and was recaptured by the Selenites, as Bedford learns from a hastily scribbled note he left behind. Chapter 19, "Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space," plays no role in the plot but is a remarkable set piece in which the narrator describes experiencing a quasi-mystical "pervading doubt of my own identity. . . the doubts within me could still argue: 'It is not you that is reading, it is Bedford &mdash; but you are not Bedford, you know. That's just where the mistake comes in.' 'Counfound it!' I cried, 'and if I am not Bedford, what am I? But in that direction no light was forthcoming, though the strangest fancies came drifting into my brain, queer remote suspicions like shadow seem from far away... Do you know I had an idea that really I was something quite outside not only the world, but all worlds, and out of space and time, and that this poor Bedford was just a peephole through which I looked at life..." By good fortune, the narrator lands in the sea off the coast of Britain, near the seaside town of Littlestone, not far from his point of departure. His fortune is made by some gold he brings back, but he loses the sphere when a curious boy named Tommy Simmons climbs into the unattended sphere and shoots off into space. Bedford writes and publishes his story in The Strand Magazine, then learns that "Mr. Julius Wendigee, a Dutch electrician, who has been experimenting with certain apparatus akin to the apparatus used by Mr. Tesla in America," has picked up fragments of radio communications from Cavor sent from inside the moon. During a period of relative freedom Cavor has taught two Selenites English and learned much about lunar society. Cavor's account explains that Selenites exist in thousands of forms and find fulfillment in carrying out the specific social function for which they have been brought up: specialization is the essence of Selenite society. "With knowledge the Selenites grew and changed; mankind stored their knowledge about them and remained brutes &mdash; equipped," remarks the Grand Lunar, when he finally meets Cavor and hears about life on Earth. Unfortunately, Cavor reveals humanity's propensity for war; the lunar leader and those listening to the interview are "stricken with amazement." Bedford infers that is for this reason that Cavor is prevented from further broadcasting to Earth. Cavor's transmissions are cut off as he is trying to describe how to make cavorite. His final fate is unknown, but Bedford is sure that "we shall never .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. receive another message from the moon."
2803688	/m/083qtr	Little Boy Blue	Edward Bunker	1981-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Alex Hammond is an 11 year old boy living in Los Angeles, California. His father Clem Hammond is a carpenter and has been struggling to find a job ever since the Great Depression hit the US. His parents are separated and he is very close with his father. However, Clem does not have the resources to support Alex. As a result, he attempts to have outside intervention in supporting Alex such as enrolling him into military school and placing him into foster homes. Alex has run way from all of these places and exhibits temper tantrums because he does not want to be away from his father. His bursts of rage cause authorities and fellow inmates in various institutions to believe that he is crazy, specifically displaying the early traits of psychopathy, such as what is deemed to be "criminal versatility". The story starts out in 1943, with Alex, Clem, and a social worker going from LA to the Valley Home For Boys in San Fernando Valley where Alex will live. However, he meets up with trouble there because one of his roommates Sammy decides to shoplift from a store. Even though Alex does not steal anything, the housemother Thelma Cavendish decides to punish him. This unfair act in the eyes of Alex causes him to attack her and he rips her dress. He decides to run away with Sammy. They decide to burglarize a shop during the night, but the owners investigate as the boys are inside. Alex shoots one of them with a pistol that he had found when they broke in. Alex runs away, but he gets caught very soon. The police beat him and humiliate him. He finds out that his father died in a tragic accident while trying to find him. Alex goes to Juvenile Hall. There, he first sees the brutal violence that is so typical of a prison and other institutions. He quickly learns about the usefulness of such violence and how it can protect him from various injustices. It is also here that he learns about racial identity and racism. His love for reading and his high intelligence sets him apart from the other juvenile delinquents. He is sent to Camarillo, a state mental institution to determine whether or not he is insane. There, he meets First Choice Floyd and Red Barzo who are two black heroin addicts. They teach him how to play poker and how to box. He also starts to masturbate. Eventually, Alex meets an older teen called Scabs. They regularly sneak out of the institution. One day, Scabs teaches Alex how to hot-wire a car, and they leave. Alex is not able to go back to the institution so he decides to stay in the city. It is not long before the authorities find him and they send him to Pacific Colony. Alex regards the new institution as a lot worse than Camarillo. One night, one of the members of the staff nicknamed “The Jabber” beats Alex for a minor infraction that he did not commit. He fights back in self defense, and hurts the Jabber. He gets into trouble again and gets sent back to Juvenile Hall before going to another juvenile institution at Whittier. He gets into one more fight. At Whittier, Alex gets into more conflicts and he fights so that no one would regard him as a “punk.” (In other words, an inmate who gets sodomized) He finally decides to escape with a friend named Joe Altabella (also credited as "JoJo"). They escape successfully, to where they hide out with the rest of JoJo's family (primarily Italian-Americans), and Alex meets JoJo’s sister Teresa as well as their younger sister Lisa, the latter of whom seems to hold most affection for Alex over time. At this point in the novel, Alex is 13 and he starts to have sexual feelings for her as well as other girls. Soon, Alex meets Teresa’s 17 year old boyfriend Wedo and the two boys begin to like each other. However, JoJo and Alex eventually get caught, both at separate instances. This time, Alex gets sent to Preston, an even stricter institution. At Preston, an older boy, Kennedy, cons Alex out of his shoes. Out of great anger, Alex unscrews a fire hose nozzle and attacks him with it, almost killing him. Alex is unrepentant in the face of authorities. One of them wants to send Alex to San Quentin State Prison, but he is too young at the age of 13 so he is put into solitary confinement. He actually prefers this because he can be away from the violence and he can read in peace. Eventually, he serves his time and gets released into the custody of his aunt and her husband. Alex finds them to be quite hospitable and he helps them by working at their cafe. However, after having walked out one day, this superficially placid exterior is shattered by the unjustly great indignance towards his lengthy absence from both relatives, his uncle threatening to attack him. Recalling prior attacks upon him ala "The Jabber", Alex threatens to kill them if they dare to attack him. He runs away and finds Wedo again. The older teen has become a heroin addict and must commit robbery in order to support his drug habit. The two youths begin to rob drugstores, taking the money and selling the drugs. One night, they attempt to rob a store, but the owners shoot Wedo with a shotgun. Alex gets hit, in a literary reprise of the event that brought him into the prison system to begin with, and he gives up. The novel ends with him drifting into unconsciousness, surrounded by the police as he is about to be taken to a hospital.
2809611	/m/0842_d	Mount Dragon	Douglas Preston	1996	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dr. Guy Carson is a young scientist and cowboy-at-heart, raised on a southwestern ranch and bored with city life. That is, until the prestigious genetic engineering corporation GeneDyne offers Carson a six-month position as a lab researcher at its Mount Dragon Remote Desert Testing Facility in Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico. Carson accepts and soon finds that the Mount Dragon facility is home to testing far more promising—yet extremely dangerous—things than Carson ever expected. Scientists at the facility spend months isolated from the outside world, essentially locked in the guarded facility within a Level 5 containment lab, as they conduct medical tests and research for a seemingly common mission: to create a vaccine for the influenza virus. With the help of his feisty lab assistant, Susanna Cabeza de Vaca, Carson begins to unlock the mysteries of the spontaneously mutating influenza virus, dubbed “X-FLU,” and even the Mount Dragon facility itself. Carson and DeVaca discover that their predecessor, Dr. Franklin Burt, was literally driven mad by his time at Mount Dragon and was institutionalized. Burt’s death is not the only one caused by the facility; an emergency quarantine prompted by the contamination of the Level 5 lab by a chimp infected with the deadly X-FLU results in the death of researcher Rosalind Brandon-Smith. Soon, more human harm follows as Carson’s friend and messmate Dr. Andrew Vanderwagon spontaneously punctures his own eye with a fork and attempts to commit suicide and kill others. Through researching Burt’s descent to madness, Carson and DeVaca realize that what occurred with Vanderwagon closely resembled the behavior of Burt toward the end. In fact, everyone at the facility except for Carson and DeVaca begin to display abnormal and erratic behavior that Carson at first presumes is the result of tight quarters or contamination by X-FLU. However, Carson has an epiphany after conducting further tests on influenza and discovers that what caused the virus to mutate is Burt’s filtering system — a system that was used to filter the artificial blood product PurBlood that GeneDyne is releasing in hospitals across the nation in mere days. Burt’s journal confirms that PurBlood is in fact contaminated; Burt’s filtering system caused the contamination by mutating the cells in the artificial blood. Carson and DeVaca are the only workers at the Mount Dragon facility who did not undergo a PurBlood transfusion for beta testing, and thus are the only ones not driven to insanity by the contamination. They set off an explosion to destroy the facility and flee from its homicidal and suicidal inhabitants. Attempting to alert officials before PurBlood can be introduced across the nation, resulting in an epidemic, Carson and DeVaca set off on horseback across the arid New Mexico desert, hundreds of miles from the nearest civilization. They are chased by the security director, an eccentric Englishman named Nye whose PurBlood-induced madness has led him to believe that there is a treasure buried in the desert and that Carson and DeVaca are trying to steal it from him. After days of thirst and starvation, Carson and DeVaca find water—and the remains of the worthless “treasure” of Spanish explorer Mondragón—before engaging in a fight-to-the-death battle with Nye. Carson and DeVaca are injured, but survive, and make it to a nearby cattle ranch in time to spread the word about the dangers of PurBlood. Aside from the action-ridden plot of Carson and DeVaca, the novel highlights political and scientific battle between the CEO of GeneDyne, Brent Scopes, and his former best friend, Charles Levine, over the ethics of genetic modification. Scopes argues that genetic modification, such as that involved in the creation of PurBlood, will one day lead to a healthier human race. Levine counters that the extent of the dangers of genetically modified products is unknown, and that humans should proceed with caution in genetically altering or engineering products that could change the biological make-up of humanity. In the end, Scopes and Levine are exposed to the mutated influenza virus X-FLU and resolve their differences before dying.
2809701	/m/08436j	Paaththummaayude aadu				 Ever since Basheer first left home to participate in the salt satyagraha at Kozhikode, he had led a wanderer's life; Ottaanthadi, muchaanvayaru. Only occasionally did he return to his home at Thalayolapparambu, with the intention of penning down his thoughts in interludes of tranquility. Next to the house where he grew up, in the same compound, he had a walled-in plot with a small house. He built this retreat himself, and around the house he planted a garden. This gate was always closed, and he required silence and peace of mind. He would sit and write or walk around his garden tending to his beloved plants. On returning from one of his travels, he was forced to live in the house where his large family lived, instead of in his private home. This household was always filled with noise and chaos; no place for a writer. The inhabitants were Basheer's mother, his younger siblings and their families. Add to this, there were myriads of domestic animals who treated the house as their own. Basheer's sister Paaththumma, who lived in a dilapidated shack a little distance away, would visit the house everyday with her daughter Khadeeja and with them would come Paaththumma's goat. This goat had absolute freedom in the house. It would eat up anything it could, from fallen leaves before someone came to sweep them, Chaambaykka fruits (Water Apple) from the lower branches of the tree basheer planted, trousers worn by Basheer's nephew Abi, grass specially gathered for it, food set away for it, even food meant for human inhabitants of the house, to the author's copy of newest editions of Basheer's Baalyakaalasakhi, Shabdangal and Vishwavikhyaadamaaya Mookku, fresh out of press. When Basheer arrived home, each of the family members approach him with requests for financial assistance. When Basheer gives money to his mother, the next day his younger brother Adbul Khaadar would take it all from her. When he gives anything to any of his nephews or nieces, other people of the family ask why he doesn't give stuff to their children. His money runs out within a few days of his arrival. He gets down to disciplining the noisy children of the house. His youngest brother, Abu terrorises the household, the children, women and animals. Basheer's immediate younger brother, Abdul Khaadar was the head of the family, since Basheer was away most of the time and did not have a permanent source of income. At times the author would return home with a small fortune after publishing one of his books, then people of the family and the village would approach him with supplications. Abdul Khaadar was handicapped in one leg. When Basheer and he were young, he used to beat up Basheer and make him carry his books to school. His handicap got him special privileges from everyone. Once when Basheer's tolerance was pushed to the limits, he beat up his younger brother, and since then Abdul Khadar began giving him due respect. In their childhood, Basheer often had to bear the punishment when actually Abdul Khaadar was the real culprit. While Basheer wandered from place to place, Abdul Khadar got himself a job and looked after the family. First he worked as a school master, then quit the job and took various other employments. At the time when he became a schoolmaster, Basheer was serving three months prison term in Kannur prison after getting arrested at Kozhikode on his way to participate in Salt Satyagraham (1930). In 1936-37, he was residing at Ernakulam, writing for various magazines essentially for free. That was the time when he lived in near poverty, struggling to get to eat one square meal a day, having to borrow from everyone even to manage a cup of tea. He wrote prolifically, for newspapers and periodicals, but he got paid next to nothing for his efforts. This was the period which forms the backdrop in which works like Janmadinam were set. Once during this period, Abdul Khadar visited Basheer. The older brother proudly gave him his literary works to read. Abdul Khadar, instead of admiring his brother's literary genius found fault with the grammar and language usage. Avante oru lodukkoos akhya... Ithu njaan varthamaanam parayunnathupole ezhuthivachirikkayaanu. Avante chattukaalan akhyaadam. Palunkoosan vyakaranam, Basheer retorts. Years later, with the publication of major works like Baalyakaalasakhi(1944), Basheer's name became recognised throughout Kerala. Then Abdul Khaadar no longer complained of grammatical errors in his brother's sentences, instead asked him for copies of the book so that he could make money selling them. He even asked Basheer to write about members of the family and gave him ideas for plots of stories.
2810191	/m/0844lx	Thumbelina	Hans Christian Andersen	1835-12-16	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 In the first English translation of 1847 by Mary Howitt, the tale opens with a beggar woman giving a peasant's wife a barleycorn in exchange for food. Once planted, a tiny girl, Thumbelina (Tommelise), emerges from its flower. One night, Thumbelina, asleep in her walnut-shell cradle, is carried off by a toad who wants the miniature maiden as a bride for her son. With the help of friendly fish and a butterfly, Thumbelina escapes the toad and her son, and drifts on a lily pad until captured by a stag beetle. The insect discards her when his friends reject her company. Thumbelina tries to protect herself from the elements, but when winter comes, she is in desperate straits. She is finally given shelter by an old field mouse and tends her dwelling in gratitude. The mouse suggests Thumbelina marry her neighbor, a mole, but Thumbelina finds repulsive the prospect of being married to such a creature. She escapes the situation by fleeing to a far land with a swallow she nursed back to health during the winter. In a sunny field of flowers, Thumbelina meets a tiny flower-fairy prince just her size and to her liking, and they wed. She receives a pair of wings to accompany her husband on his travels from flower to flower, and a new name, Maia. In Hans Christian Andersen's version of the story, a bluebird had been viewing Thumbelina's story since the beginning, and had been in love with her since. In the end, the bird is heartbroken once Thumbelina marries the flower prince, and flies off, eventually arriving at a small house. There, he tells Thumbelina's story to a man who is implied to be Andersen himself, who chronicles the story in a book.
2810372	/m/08451l	The Dwarf	Pär Lagerkvist			 The main character of this story is a dwarf, 26 inches high, at the court of an Italian City-state in the Renaissance. The exact locations are unclear, but since a character named Bernardo, who is unmistakably modeled on Leonardo da Vinci, appears in the novel, it appears to take place in a fictional version of Milan around the time of Leonardo's stay at the court of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, from 1482 to 1499. There is a reference to Santa Croce being in the immediate surroundings, but this is possibly mixed up with the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze so that the story could actually be set in Florence. At the same time Lagerkvist puts Bernardo/Leonardo's creation of The Last Supper and Mona Lisa into the plot, one of them created in Milan, the other presumably in Florence. Further, the prince that inspired Niccolò Machiavelli to write The Prince has been assumed to be Cesare Borgia, who also employed Leonardo da Vinci as a military architect, a role he (as Bernardo) plays alongside his painting work in The Dwarf. In this way aspects of all these historical places and people are mixed into the background of the novel. The dwarf is the teller of the narrative, obviously obsessed by writing down his experiences in a form of diary. Everything in the novel is described from his particular viewpoint, mostly in retrospect, ranging from a few hours or minutes to several weeks or months after the actual events. The dwarf is a profound misanthrope and generally embodies all things evil. He hates almost every person at the court except for the prince (who is the ruler of the city-state, rather king than prince), or rather aspects of him. He loves war, brutality and fixed positions. While almost all other characters of the novel develop during the chain of events, the dwarf does not change. He is still exactly the same character from the first to the last page. He is deeply religious, but his take on Christianity includes the belief in a non-forgiving God. He is impressed with Bernardo's science but soon repelled by its relentless search for truth. When the dwarf is ordered to assassinate a number of enemies of the prince using poisoned wine, he takes this opportunity to assassinate one of the prince's rivals, simply because the dwarf dislikes the rival and the rival is having an affair with the prince's wife. The novel ends with the dwarf being strapped in chains at the bottom of the royal castle, never to be released again. He is seemingly convicted for flogging the prince's wife to death in anger over her sins. However he takes this sentence lightly, since, as he says, "soon the prince will need his dwarf again".
2811232	/m/0846nk	Moscow 2042	Vladimir Voinovich	1986	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05qt0": "Politics", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The Russian author Kartsev, living in Munich in 1982 (just like Voinovich himself), time travels to the Moscow of 2042. After the "Great August Revolution", the new leader referred to as "Genialissimus" has changed the Soviet Union... up to a certain point. After Vladimir Lenin's dream of the world revolution narrowed down to Joseph Stalin's theory of "Socialism in one country", Genialissimus has decided to start from building "Communism in one city", namely in Moscow. The ideology has changed somewhat, into a hodgepodge of Marxism-Leninism and Russian Orthodoxy (Genialissimo himself is also Patriarch). The decay from which the Soviet Union suffered has worsened. The rest of the Soviet Union, where people barely survive, has been separated by a Berlin type of wall from the "paradise" of Moscow, where communism has been realised. Within the wall everyone gets everything "according to his needs". Only their needs are not decided by themselves, but by the wise Genialissimus. Most people have "ordinary needs", but a chosen few have "extraordinary needs". For the first-mentioned group, life is dismal even within the privileged "Moscow Republic". The situation finally gets so desperate that people throw themselves in the arms of the "liberator", a fellow dissident writer and (kind of) friend of Kartsev, the Slavophile Sim Karnavalov (apparently inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), who enters Moscow on a white horse and proclaims himself Tsar Serafim the First. Thus, communism is abandoned and society progressed back into feudal autocracy. This novel is considered to be a masterpiece of dystopian satire.
2811336	/m/0846ts	Doctor Fischer of Geneva	Graham Greene	1980	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is narrated by Alfred Jones, a translator for a large chocolate company in Switzerland. Jones, in his 50s, lost his left hand while working as a fireman during The Blitz. Jones is a widower when he meets the young Anna-Luise Fischer in a local restaurant. Jones is surprised to learn that Anna-Luise is the daughter of Dr. Fischer, who has become rich after inventing a perfumed toothpaste and whose dinner parties are famous (or infamous) around Geneva. After a brief courtship, the two are married. Anna-Luise is estranged from her father, the Dr. Fischer of the book’s title. Jones goes to see Dr. Fischer to inform him that he and Anna-Luise are married, but Dr. Fischer is indifferent to the information. Later, however, he invites Jones to one of his dinner parties; Anna-Luise warns Jones not to go, saying that these parties are nothing more than an outlet for her father to humiliate the rich sycophants (whom she calls “the Toads,” her malapropism for “toadies”) in his coterie. Jones goes anyway when Anna-Luise relents, saying that one dinner party can’t corrupt him. At the party, Dr. Fischer and his guests explain some of the rules of engagement: If a guest follows all the rules, s/he receives a present (or prize) at the end of the meal. The presents are usually tailored to each guest and are worth a substantial amount of money. However, the rules include complete submission to the humiliations of Dr. Fischer, which always include barbed verbal taunts that focus on each guest’s failings or insecurities. At this particular party, the dinner consists strictly of porridge. One guest asks for sugar, but Dr. Fischer only provides salt. Dr. Fischer explains to Jones that the guests must eat the porridge to receive their presents, and that this is all part of his experiment to see how far the rich will go to debase themselves for more riches. The guests all eat the porridge except for Jones, who earns himself the enmity of the Toads by abstaining. Jones doesn’t receive another invitation for some time. Anna-Luise fills Jones in on the dissolution of her parents’ marriage. Her mother had developed a friendship with an employee of Kips, one of the Toads, based on their mutual love of Mozart. When Dr. Fischer found out, he paid Kips’ firm fifty thousand francs to fire the man, and then hounded his wife until she “willed herself” to die. Jones and Anna-Luise encounter the man, Steiner, in a local record shop, and Anna-Luise’s resemblance to her mother (Anna) gives Steiner a heart attack. Meanwhile, he and Anna-Luise discuss having children, but she says she would prefer to wait until after the skiing season is over because she wouldn’t want to ski while pregnant. The two go on a skiing trip, and while Jones (who doesn’t ski) waits in the lodge, Anna-Luise collides with a tree after swerving to avoid a young boy who had sprained his ankle while skiing a course that was too tough for him. She suffers a severe head injury and bleeds enough to stain the front of her white sweater red. She later dies at the hospital, leaving Jones broken and lonesome. He attempts suicide by drinking whiskey laced with aspirin, but it only leaves him drowsy. The next day he responds to an invitation to visit Dr. Fischer in his office. Dr. Fischer offers to give Jones the money held in trust for Anna-Luise, but Jones refuses it. Fischer is surprised, and asks Jones to attend his next dinner party with the Toads, which he promises will be the last. This party - the “Bomb Party” of the novel's alternate title - fills the longest chapter of the book. The party is held outside sometime around New Year’s Day, and the guests are kept warm via enormous bonfires around Dr. Fischer’s lawn. The meal is exquisite. Following dinner, Dr. Fischer explains the rules for that night’s experiment. He has hidden six crackers in a bran bucket. Inside five of them are checks for two million francs apiece, with the name left blank. Inside the sixth is a small bomb. The guests are expected to draw crackers and open them one by one. One of the toads, a stooped man named Kips, says that gambling is immoral and refuses to take part, leaving the party instead, and leaving Mr. Jones to consider that it is only Mr. Kips and himself who take the Doctor's threat of a bomb in the last cracker seriously; the other Toads seem to be disbelieving, especially Mrs. Montgomery, who passes off Fischer's bomb-threat as playful, untrue banter. The other Toads begin to take the crackers; a hack actor named Deane, immediately goes into a role from one of his movies as a soldier volunteering for a dangerous mission, rambling dialogue to himself while he stands near the bucket. Two other Toads, the widow Mrs. Montgomery and the accountant Belmont, rush up and draw their crackers, realizing that the odds favor the earlier selectors. Both draw crackers with checks inside. Deane finally snaps out of his delusion long enough to draw a cracker, and when he finds a check inside, he passes out of either shock or inebriation. This leaves just Jones and the retired military officer, the Divisionnaire. The Divisionnaire takes a cracker but won’t open it. Jones, still considering suicide as a way to avoid his lonely future, takes a cracker, opens it, and finds a check. The Divisionnaire remains paralyzed by fear, so Jones roots around for the last cracker (which would have gone to Kips) and opens it as well, finding the last check, meaning that the Divisionnaire must hold the bomb. While Dr. Fischer torments the Divisionnaire for his cowardice, Jones offers to buy the Divisionnaire’s cracker for two million francs. Over Dr. Fischer’s objections, Jones takes the fatal cracker and runs off into the snow, where he opens the cracker to find nothing. Steiner suddenly wanders up to Jones, saying he came to confront Dr. Fischer and to spit in his face. Dr. Fischer arrives and after a brief conversation about whether he has achieved his goals with his experiment, says that it is “time to sleep” but heads away from the house. A few moments later, Jones and Steiner hear a crack, and rush off to find Dr. Fischer, who has shot himself with a revolver. The novel ends with Jones saying that he is no longer considering suicide and has even struck up a small friendship with Steiner where the two meet for coffee and mourn their lost loves. Jones says he rarely sees any of the Toads and avoids Geneva for the most part; he did once see Mrs. Montgomery, who called him “Mr. Smith,” allowing Jones to pretend he didn’t hear her and walk away.
2815166	/m/084h0k	Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road	Neil Peart	2002-06		 Neil begins his story with explaining the beginning of his travels by motorcycle from his home in Quebec to Telegraph Creek, British Columbia. In reality he has no schedule, no restriction in time, or life for that matter. In time he finds himself traveling from Canada to Alaska, and then ultimately down south through the United States to Mexico then to Belize. Eventually he travels (by plane) back to his home in Canada where he continues a series of letters to his friend Brutus. He then continues his journey, which ultimately ends at his home.
2818294	/m/084mxg	Polar Star	Martin Cruz Smith	1989	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Arkady Renko, former Chief Investigator of the Moscow Town Prosecutor's Office, is serving a self-imposed exile in Siberia to avoid being detained for his actions in Gorky Park several years earlier, despite the Soviet Union's ostensibly increasing liberalization. He procures menial employment as a fish gutter on the "slime lime" of a large Arctic sea factory ship called the Polar Star, part of a joint Soviet-American fishing exercise within detente. He is brought to the attention of Viktor Marchuk, the ship's captain, after a young woman named Zina Patiashvili is found dead in a net full of freshly-caught fish. Due to his past as a homicide investigator, he is given the task of finding out what happened to her—to the dislike of political officer Volovoi. Hess, the ship's chief electrical engineer—an elaborate blind for his espionage activities—welcomes Arkady more warmly. Researching the girl's background, he discovers an open and somewhat radical Georgian personality, known for her many lovers (including the Captain, before she became a crew member) and fondness for underground music. Looking into her death also attracts the attention of the ship's main gang, lead by Karp Corabetz—the ship's leading fisher and Arkady's former prisoner. The American corporate representative on board, Susan Hightower, takes an interest in the case. Arkady grows weary of the investigation, largely due to the obstructive actions of many of his shipmates—many of whom are concerned that it will delay a long-awaited shore leave on the island of Dutch Harbour. Renko finally decides to go along with the original verdict of suicide, letting the ship's crew disembark. Though lacking proper authorization to go ashore himself, Arkady is sponsored in an impromptu shore leave by "Fleet Electrical Engineer" Hess. Whilst there, he starts to enter into a relationship with Susan before encountering Volovoi in a nearby dwelling. Volovoi threatens him but is killed by a disgruntled Karp, who then locks Arkady in and sets the building on fire. The investigator manages to escape and "accidentally" falls into the water to wash off any incriminating odors. Questions are raised, but nothing is decided. Arkady has no evidence against Karp and, having already survived an attempt on his life, fears he will be attacked again. Entering the icy North, the American trawler freezes into the ice whilst trailing the Polar Star. Arkady learns of Karp's relationship with Zina and her attempts to defect aboard the American ship, as well the secret spy cable running underneath the vessel that is operated by Hess. Arkady ventures out into the ice towards the American ship, and Karp casually follows and eventually catches up with him. On board they find evidence that Zina was killed and stowed on board in one of the lockers. Arkady also finds indications that the Americans were deceiving Hess by transmitting the electronic signatures of numerous other decommissioned American vessels. Karp kills the killer, scaring off the Americans and allowing him and Renko to escape. After a final foiled attempt to finish Arkady off, Karp finally decides, with draconian Russian justice awaiting him back home, to drown himself in the icy water. When the Polar Star returns to Vladivostok, Arkady says farewell to Susan and his fellow crewmen, suddenly finding himself in the party's favour again. <gallery> Image:AleutianIslandsFromSpace.jpg|The Aleutian Islands. Image:UnalaskaAlaska.jpg|Dutch Harbor, Alaska with the Russian Orthodox church in the foreground. </gallery>
2818495	/m/084n89	Red Square	Martin Cruz Smith	1991	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the existing social and economic structures of the Soviet Union break down, Arkady Renko has been reinstated as an Investigator in the Moscow Militsiya (Police Force). He is trying to clear up a nest of illicit traders when his chief informant dies in a horrific fireball. At the late informer's flat, his fax machine keeps asking the apparently meaningless question, "Where is Red Square?" The question does not pertain to a location but to an avant-garde painting by suprematist painter Malevich which has resurfaced on the black market after being lost since World War II. The story, however, reverts to the August Coup, which takes place in and around Red Square and indeed throughout Moscow in August 1991, leading to the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union. One of the subplots within this novel involves Arkady Renko's improbable reunion with the one great love of his life, Irina Asanova. Her seemingly total disinterest in Arkady sends him resignedly on his way until, in an ultimate ironic twist, a belatedly-delivered message from Renko's recently deceased father galvanizes him into one last, determined attempt at winning Irina back. <gallery> Image:Redsquarenight.jpg|The Red Square in Moscow Image:Red Square. Visual Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions.jpg|Rotes Viereck (Red Square, Malevich, 1913), the source of the book's name. </gallery>
2819151	/m/084pkb	The Bay of Love and Sorrows	David Adams Richards			 Set in rural New Brunswick in 1974, the novel's protagonist is Michael Skid, the privileged son of the town judge. After a falling out with his friend Tom Donnerel, Michael befriends Madonna and Silver Brassaurd, a brother and sister who draw him into the orbit of Everette Hutch, a charismatic and violent man who ultimately leads the three youths to commit murder.
2819247	/m/084pw9	Mercy Among the Children	David Adams Richards			 Set in the rural Miramichi Valley of New Brunswick, the novel depicts the family of Sydney Henderson, a man who vowed in childhood never to express himself in anger or violence after accidentally pushing a playmate off the roof of a building. As a result of his vow, residents of the community exploit Henderson, framing him for a crime and tormenting his children. The novel closely explores the effect of this dynamic on one particular son, Lyle, who is drawn into violence as he attempts to defend his family. The characters are limited by many constraints such as class, poverty, lack of education, family background and reputation and the biases that come along with these factors.
2822315	/m/084xj6	In the Presence of Mine Enemies	Harry Turtledove	2003-11-04	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Wehrmacht officer Heinrich Gimpel astonishes his 10-year-old daughter, Alicia, with a secret that has been hidden from her all her life: the family is Jewish. He explains that the Gimpels, friends Walther and Esther Stutzman, and their extended families all belong to those remnants of Jews who now survive by hiding in plain sight within the very society that wants them dead. Now old enough, by family tradition, to be trusted with this life-or-death deception, Alicia is obliged to hide the truth from her friends, her classmates, and even her younger sisters even as she is forced to regard her school's racist curriculum from a new perspective that leaves her sick and angry over all the anti-Semitic propaganda that she always learned and parroted without question. Meanwhile, Heinrich finds himself caught in the marital strife between his co-worker, Willi Dorsch, and Willi's wife, Erika. Embittered by her husband's infidelity, Erika wants a retaliatory affair with Heinrich. He resists, which leads to Erika accusing him of being a Jew and Heinrich being arrested by the SS. Only after Erika realizes that her accusation caused Heinrich's children to be taken also, she confesses that she lied, unaware the entire time that Heinrich and his family really are Jewish. Esther Stutzman, who works as a receptionist in a doctor's office, also experiences a close call with Nazi policies when her friends Richard and Maria Klein, closeted Jews like herself, bring their ailing eight-month-old baby, Paul, in for a checkup. The diagnosis, Tay-Sachs disease, is a disease known to be prevalent among Jews. A subsequent investigation into his family background would spell doom for his parents and any names they might be forced to reveal under torture. Although Esther's husband, Walther, is able to hack into the Reich's computer network and change the Klein's family history, it is the revelation that Reichsführer-SS Lothar Prützmann has a nephew with Tay-Sachs that brings the investigation to a halt. All of this happens against the background of the events happening after the death of the current Führer, Kurt Haldweim. He is replaced by the reform-minded Heinz Buckliger, who relaxes the oppressive laws of the Reich. In a secret speech, with word-of-mouth spreading it to the populace, the new Führer denounced his predecessors, saying that the Reich committed crimes in the past. Reactionary opposition rallies around the SS, while the populist Gauleiter of Berlin, Rolf Stolle, champions accelerated reform. Things come to a head with the announcement of (relatively) free elections: candidates need not be Nazi Party members, but they must be Aryan. Led by Reichsführer-SS Lothar Prützmann, the SS effect a conservative coup d'état, imprisoning the Führer, and installing former High Commissioner of Ostland Affairs, Odilo Globocnik, as the new Führer. However, Stolle instigates a people power movement, which the Wehrmacht supports. The coup d'état is defeated after Walther Stutzman salts the country's computer network with the information about Reichsführer-SS Prützmann's Tay-Sachs afflicted nephew. Soon, Berlin comes to the conclusion that Prützmann is a Jew, which definitively turns the tide against the coup. In the aftermath, Prützmann kills himself, and Globocnick is lynched.
2822553	/m/084x_4	Sweet Thursday	John Steinbeck	1954		 Doc returns to a failed Western Biological Laboratories after serving in the army during World War II to a changed Cannery Row. Mack and the Boys are still living in the Palace Flophouse, but Lee Chong has sold his general store to Joseph and Mary Rivas. Since the death of its original owner Dora, the local brothel, The Bear Flag Restaurant, is now being run by Dora's older sister Fauna, a former mission worker previously known as Flora. Under Fauna, the girls of the Bear Flag study etiquette and posture with the goal of joining Fauna's list of "gold stars", former employees of the Bear Flag who have married and left their employ there. As Doc tries to rebuild his neglected business, the latest Bear Flag resident Suzy is causing trouble. Fauna knows Suzy isn't cut out to be a working girl, but her soft heart always causes her to fall for a hard luck story. Deciding to make Suzy one of her gold star girls, Fauna plots to throw Suzy into the arms of an unwitting Doc and enlists the aid of Mack and the Boys. After a disastrous party hosted by Mack and the Boys, Suzy leaves the Bear Flag but not to marry Doc. Choosing to live alone, Suzy moves into an empty boiler in a vacant lot and takes a job at the local diner, the Golden Poppy. While Cannery Row is stunned over Suzy's actions and Doc wrestles with a critical project, Hazel, one of the Boys living in the Palace Flophouse, struggles with his own demons. Having been told by Fauna in an astrological reading he will become President of the United States, Hazel fights destiny. To practice for high office, Hazel understands that he must learn to make difficult decisions — one of which is breaking Doc's arm, for he’s realized that this, arousing Suzy's sympathy, is the only way to bring the couple together. Realizing Doc's broken arm will keep him from a much-needed collecting expedition, Mack and the Boys teach Suzy to drive a car. Suzy and the injured Doc head off to the coast for the collecting expedition.
2823228	/m/084zks	Paradise City	Lorenzo Carcaterra		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Paradise City is the story of Giancarlo Lo Manto, an east Bronx raised Italian American who returns with his widowed mother to Naples at the age of fifteen. Giancarlo grows up to become an educated yet street-wise cop within the poverty and crime-ridden southern Italian city. His on-going battle with the city's organized crime families has him in constant contact with his native NYC. Then one day, his young niece, who is on an exchange trip to the city that never sleeps, goes missing resulting in Giancarlo canceling his holiday to the Capri in exchange for the Island of Manhattan to search for her.
2823345	/m/084ztt	The Death Of Grass	John Christopher		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A new virus strain has infected rice crops in East Asia causing massive famine; soon a mutation appears which infects the staple crops of West Asia and Europe such as wheat and barley, all of them types of grasses (thus the novel's title), threatening a famine engulfing the whole of the Old World, while Australasia and the Americas attempt to impose rigorous quarantine to keep the virus out. The novel follows the struggles of architect John Custance and his friend, civil servant Roger Buckley, as, along with their families, they make their way across an England which is rapidly descending into anarchy, hoping to reach the safety of John's brother's potato farm in an isolated Westmorland valley. Picking up a travelling companion in a gun shop owner named Pirrie, they find they must sacrifice many of their morals in order to stay alive. At one point, when their food supply runs out, they kill a family to take their bread. The protagonist justifies this with the belief that "it was them or us." By the time they reach the valley, they have accumulated a considerable entourage as a result of their encounters with other groups of survivors along the way. They find that John's brother is unable to let them all in to the heavily-defended valley. Pirrie acts to prevent John leaving the group and taking only his immediate family into the valley; instead, the group takes the valley by force. Pirrie and John's brother are killed; John takes possession of the valley.
2824017	/m/085060	Outbound Flight	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book, which is set five years after Star Wars—Episode I: The Phantom Menace, tells the story of the mysterious Outbound Flight Project mentioned in Heir to the Empire, Specter of the Past, Vision of the Future, and Survivor's Quest.
2824118	/m/0850ff	Allegiance	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set just after Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The book's subject is, according to Zahn, "...three different people and groups with allegiance issues."
2824171	/m/0850k8	A World of Difference	Harry Turtledove	1990-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When the Viking 1 space probe lands on Minerva in 1976 it takes a picture of a native Minervan wielding a primitive tool, thus proving the existence of intelligent life on other worlds. The main action of the story involves separate American and Soviet missions, who both pay lip service to non-interference with Minervan society, but in the course of their research, the teams' respective political ideologies inevitably come to the fore. This leads the teams and their commanders back home to use the Minervans in a transparent analogy to Third World/Cold War proxy conflicts on Earth. One of the Americans saves the life of a female Minervan after she gives birth. Eventually Minervans get their hands on high tech items like steel hatchets, rubber rafts, and finally AK-74s, which severely disrupt their way of life.
2824720	/m/0851s4	O Pioneers!	Willa Cather		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The book is divided into five parts, each of which has numerous (unnumbered) chapters. On a windy day in Hanover, Nebraska, Alexandra Bergson is with her five-year-old brother Emil. Emil's little kitten has climbed a telegraph pole and is afraid to come down. Alexandra finds her neighbor and friend Carl Linstrum, who retrieves the kitten. In the general store, Alexandra finds Emil with Marie Tovesky who is two years older than Emil. Marie's father has brought her from Omaha. Alexandra's father is dying, and he wishes that she run the farm after he is gone. They later visit Crazy Ivar, who advises them to keep their hogs clean. When the Linstrums are leaving, Oscar and Lou want to leave too, but neither their mother nor Alexandra will. After visiting villages downwards to see how they are getting on, she talks her brothers Oscar and Lou into mortgaging the farm to buy more land, in hopes of ending up as rich landowners. Sixteen years later, the farms are now prosperous. Alexandra and her brothers have divided up their inheritance, and Emil has just returned from college. The Linstrum farm has failed, and Marie, now married to Frank Shabata, has bought it. That same day, the Bergsons are surprised by a visit from Carl Linstrum, whom they have not seen for thirteen years, [Note: Carl says it has been sixteen years, but this is a textual error. John Bergson died sixteen years earlier, and Carl's family left during the drought that occurred three years later.] having failed in a job in Chicago. He is on his way to Alaska, but decides to stay with Alexandra for a while. There is a growing flirtatious relationship between Emil and Marie, which Carl notices. Lou and Oscar suspect that Carl wants to marry Alexandra, and are resentful that they had to work hard for their farms, but he thinks he can marry into a farm. After this, Alexandra and her brothers are no longer speaking. Then Carl, recognizing a problem, decides to leave for Alaska. At the same time, Emil announces he is leaving for a job in Mexico City. Alexandra is left alone. Alexandra spends the winter alone, except for occasional visits from Marie, whom she visits with Mrs. Lee. She also begins to have mysterious dreams. Emil returns from Mexico City. His best friend, Amédée, is now married with a young son. At a fair at the French church, Emil and Marie kiss for the first time. They later confess their illicit love, and Emil determines to leave for law school in Michigan. Before he leaves Amédée dies from a ruptured appendix, and as a result both he and Marie realize what they value most. Before leaving he stops by Marie's farm to say one last goodbye, and they fall into a passionate embrace beneath the white mulberry tree. They stay there for several hours, until Marie's husband, Frank, finds them, and shoots them. He goes off to Omaha. Ivar discovers Emil's abandoned horse, leading him to search for the boy and discover the bodies. Alexandra has gone off in a rainstorm. Ivar goes looking for her and brings her back home, where she sleeps fitfully and dreams about death. She then decides to visit Frank in Lincoln where he is incarcerated. While in town she walks by Emil's university campus, comes upon a polite young man, and feels better. The next day she talks to Frank in prison. He is bedraggled and can barely speak properly, and she promises to do what she can to see him released; she bears no ill will toward him. She then receives a telegram from Carl, saying he is back. They decide to marry, unconcerned with her brothers' approval.
2825416	/m/0853fb	The Hammer of God	Arthur C. Clarke	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A good portion of the book details the life of spaceship-captain Robert Singh (including his running a marathon race on the Lunar surface and uprooting his life and moving to Mars). When it is discovered that the asteroid Kali is likely to hit Earth, Singh's ship Goliath makes an emergency voyage to Kali with a load of thrusters to set up on the asteroid, hopefully nudging the rock's orbit just enough to push it clear of Earth. In the meantime, a religious sect called Chrislam, originally founded by a female veteran of the Persian Gulf War, believes that they can convert a human being into a few terabytes of computer information, and then transmit this data across space to Sirius (where they believe aliens reside); members of the sect also come to believe that the asteroid is meant to destroy the Earth. They thus sneak a bomb on board the Goliath and ruin the thrusters. While Singh uses the Goliath itself as a thruster to move the asteroid, the world government on Earth rushes to reconstruct one of the planet's long-decommissioned nuclear weapons, hoping to break the peanut-shaped Kali in two.
2826174	/m/085518	Survivor's Quest	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Survivor's Quest opens with a meeting between Talon Karrde and Luke and Mara Skywalker. Karrde's people had earlier picked up an urgent transmission, addressed to Luke, coming from Admiral Voss Parck on the planet Nirauan. Before the message could be passed on, however, it had been stolen by a member of Karrde's own organisation, one Dean Jinzler. Fearing that the message might be somehow connected with the unknown menace Parck and Baron Fel had warned them about two years previous, Luke and Mara decide to head out to Nirauan. There, they learn that the message had in fact come from Chiss Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano (or "Formbi"). The Chiss have found the remains of the pioneering Jedi expedition, Outbound Flight, which had been mercilessly destroyed by Grand Admiral Thrawn many years previous. Now, the Chiss wish to hand over their find to the New Republic, and Luke and Mara join the odd group&mdash;which includes a squad of stormtroopers from the 501st, a remnant of an alien people, the Geroons, who owe a strange debt to the people of Outbound Flight, and a false New Republic Ambassador&mdash;which will visit the site of the tragedy. As they voyage on the Chaf Envoy deeper into Chiss space, into a treacherous cluster of stars known as the Redoubt, Luke and Mara grow more uneasy. Occurrences of sabotage and theft only serve to deepen their suspicions. On top of that, Mara begins to feel torn between her duty to the New Republic and her troubled respect for the Empire. The expedition reaches its destination: the remains of the Dreadnaughts that made up the Outbound Flight project. Not only are the ships fairly intact, but Mara can sense life. There are survivors, possibly hundreds of them. Suddenly, everything comes together in a whirlwind of events. The supposedly peaceloving Geroons instead are revealed to be the bloodthirsty Vagaari, who desire revenge against the Chiss and Outbound Flight for their defeat at the hand of Admiral Thrawn years before. Luke, Mara, the Chiss, the Imperials, and the embittered survivors now must work together against the Vagaari if any of them are to come out alive. They manage to defeat the Vagaari, who in turn sabotage the Chaf Envoy and commandeer one of the Dreadnaughts. The Vagaari then head back through the Redoubt to attack the Chiss command center, leaving Luke, Mara, and the others practically stranded. Following the welcome discovery of a Delta-Twelve Skysprite, however, Luke and Mara are soon pursuing the rogue Dreadnaught. They catch up to it and make their way aboard. They find out that the main Vagaari "colony ship" is actually a starfighter carrier that is beginning to overwhelm Chiss defenses. Using a fake signal, Luke and Mara trick the Vagaari into believing the Dreadnaught to be a friendly ship. However, Luke and Mara use the Dreadnaught under their control after a showdown with a droideka and the fanatical Vagaari Estosh, to aid the Chiss fighters and to defeat the other Vagaari forces. The survivors are entrusted into the care of the Empire of the Hand, and Luke and Mara finally have time to settle down and enjoy their marriage.
2827217	/m/08577d	A Year Down Yonder	Richard Peck	2000-10	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The year is 1937, and the Great Depression has hit the Dowdel family hard. 15-year-old Mary Alice is sent downstate to live with Grandma Dowdel while her Ma and Pa eke out a meager living in Chicago. Mary Alice is less than thrilled with the arrangement. Grandma's Hicksville farming community couldn't be more different from Chicago if it tried, and the grandmother Mary Alice remembers from childhood is a no-nonsense country gal. Having no choice in the matter, Mary Alice arrives by train in September with her beloved cat Bootsie and prized Philco radio. Day one in the new high school finds Mary Alice getting on the wrong side of the local bully, Mildred Burdick. Mildred brazenly follows Mary Alice home, demanding a dollar---but Grandma Dowdel turns the tables on the tyrant, slyly untying Mildred's horse. Faced with a barefoot 5-mile-hike home, Mildred loses in interest in making trouble for Mary Alice. October brings plenty of other trouble, however, when another teen hooligan - August Fluke Jr. - gets in the habit of knocking down privies for pre-Halloween amusement. With the help of a strategically strung wire and a pan of glue, Grandma Dowdel trips up Augie's trickery, with a hot coat of glue that sticks "till kingdom come." Luckily, Grandma's treats prove far sweeter than her tricks: at the school Halloween party, Mrs. Dowdel dishes up home-baked pies made with borrowed pecans and pumpkins. In November, Armistice Day cracks dawn with a bang when Grandma rises to shine at the annual Turkey Shoot. The Legion Auxiliary ladies serve stew at noon for a dime-a-cup---but with Grandma Dowdel as cashier, this year's price is pay-what-you-can-afford, publicly pressuring the banker, Mr. L.J. Weidenbach, for five dollars. The money Grandma raises is given to Mrs. Abernathy and her son, a war veteran gassed and injured in combat now using a wheelchair. As the Virgin Mother in the school Christmas pageant, Mary Alice is set to steal the spotlight from the local snob Carleen Lovejoy. The moonlit winter nights find Grandma and Mary Alice trapping foxes; with the extra money, Grandma buys Joey a train ticket and he arrives just in time for the pageant. But when Mildred Burdick's illegitimate baby turns up in the manger, Christmas is anything but a silent night. Mary Alice stirs the town up by submitting an anonymous article to a community newspaper and a new boy---Royce McNabb---arrives just in time for Valentine's Day. Carleen develops an instant crush on Royce. With the help of best friend Ina-Rae, Mary Alice fools Carleen into believing that Royce sent Ina-Ray a valentine. Meanwhile, Grandma hosts a tea for the Daughters of the American Revolution and country bumpkin Effie Wilcox learns that the hoity-toity Mrs. L.J. Weidenbach is her long-lost sister. In spring, Grandma takes in a New York artist, Arnold Green, as a boarder for a whopping $2.50 a day as Mary Alice invites Royce over for an ostensibly "study" focused-date. The snake Grandma keeps in the attic drops down on Maxine Patch, the postmistress, whom Green was painting naked, or nude, as he prefers, leaving Maxine shamed (as she ran through town au natural) and Arnold in shock. Grandma cameos as matchmaker, introducing Green to Mary Alice's English teacher, Miss Butler. Mary Alice survives her first tornado, and the school-year wraps up with a hayride that finds Royce and Mary Alice promising to exchange letters. A year down yonder leaves Mary Alice with a more tenderhearted view of country-life and Grandma Dowdel, and she hesitates to head back to Chicago. Wedding bells ring when World War II ends, and Mary Alice returns to tie the knot with Royce McNabb on Grandma's front porch.
2827312	/m/0857g1	Maniac Magee	Jerry Spinelli	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Jeffrey Lionel Magee's parents were in a trolley when a drunk driver crashed and sunk the trolley (P and W) into the Schuylkill River in Bridgeport, PA, orphaning him at age three. After living with his Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan in another town and enduring their mutual hatred and silence for eight years, he runs away during a school musical performance. One year (The Lost Year) and 200 miles later, Jeffrey finds himself across the river from Bridgeport in Two Mills, PA, where Hector Street sharply divides black East Enders from white West Enders. He meets Amanda Beale, an East Ender who carries her library of random books in a suitcase, and borrows a book before continuing his dash through town. Along the way, he intercepts a football pass made to local football star James "Hands" Down, infuriates gigantic little-leaguer, John McNab, by hitting home runs off his fastball, and saves an unlucky child from Finnsterwald’s backyard. Finnsterwald house is a house dreaded by everyone and has a very bad reputation. Because of these acts, he earned the nickname "Maniac" and started a local legend. When East Ender "Mars Bar" Thompson corners Maniac and rips a page from Amanda's book, Maniac is rescued by Amanda herself, who takes him home to her chaotic but loving household. Maniac finds a temporary home there, helping Mr. and Mrs. Beale with the chores and pacifying Amanda's little brother and sister, Hester and Lester. Soon though, a few East End residents make it clear to Maniac that they don't want him in the East End anymore by writing racist graffiti on the Beale's front door. His final effort to gain acceptance is by untying the famous Cobble’s Knot (a huge, grimy ball of string with a year's supply of pizza waiting for its vanquisher.) After finishing the task he is praised by everyone as confetti is thrown into the air. Amanda Beale realizes, too late, that the confetti was made from the pages of her favorite book. Maniac runs away again so he won't hurt the Beales anymore. He takes shelter in the buffalo pen at the zoo and occasionally eats with the Pickwells—West Enders who kindly provide spaghetti dinners for anyone who shows up at their dinner table. At the zoo, Maniac meets Earl Grayson, a washed up minor-league baseball pitcher who turns out to be a groundskeeper , who hasn't ever learned to read, and who insists he has no stories to tell. For a few months Maniac has a home again with Grayson, helping him at work, celebrating holidays with him, and teaching Grayson to read. When Grayson dies in his sleep, Maniac wanders off aimlessly. On the verge of frozen starvation he encounters Piper and Russell, child-ruffians who are running away to Mexico, and who turn out to be John McNab's little brothers. Maniac leads them back home, bribing them with free pizza, and stays at their cockroach-infested, decrepit house. Here, Maniac finds the worst that the West End has to offer as he learns that the McNabs are making a bunker because they believe the East End is planning a rebellion. He endures the coarseness and squalor of the McNab home in hopes of keeping Piper and Russell in school and under control, but eventually gives up. After beating Mars Bar in a foot race and goading him into crashing a birthday party at the McNab's, Maniac is homeless again. He moves back into the buffalo pen, and runs for miles every morning before Two Mills wakes up. Before long, Mars Bar Thompson starts running with him as if by coincidence, and the two never say a word to each other. One day they come across a hysterical Piper McNab, who frantically leads them to Russell, stuck on the trolley trestle where Maniac's parents died. Maniac walks away silently, nearly unconscious and stunned by fear, while Mars Bar rescues Russell, becoming a hero in the child’s eyes. Maniac retreats once again to the buffalo pen, where Mars Bar leads Amanda Beale to persuade Maniac once and for all to come and live with her family again. *Jeffrey Lionel "Maniac Magee," is the book’s protagonist. Jeffrey is orphaned and finds himself in Two Mills, where he becomes a local legend while trying to find a home. He has astonishing athletic abilities, runs everywhere he goes, can untie any knot, is allergic to pizza, and crosses the barrier between East End and West End as if blind to racial distinction. *Amanda Beale is the first person Maniac meets in Two Mills. Amanda carries her library in a suitcase so her books aren't ruined by her younger siblings, Hester and Lester. She defends Maniac (whom she always calls Jeffrey) from Mars Bar the bully, and eventually provides him with a home. *Mars Bar Thompson the worst kid in the East End and antagonist to Maniac. He is actually a Mountaineer, which means he knows how to party. -He resents Maniac's presence in the East End, which is exacerbated when Maniac beats him in a race. Mars Bar eventually rescues Russell McNab from the trolley truss, and offers Maniac a place for a while. As his nickname applies, he is known for eating Mars Bar chocolate bars. *John McNab is infuriated when he can’t strike out Maniac with his ball. After acting as a bully, he welcomes Maniac into his home when Maniac brings back John's younger brothers Piper and Russell after their attempt to run away to Mexico. He remains convinced that the black East Enders are planning a rebellion. *Piper and Russell McNab are younger brothers of John McNab who play hookey, steal, and constantly try to run away from home. In their house, they use toy machine guns to shoot the "rebels" from the East End. *Earl Grayson is the groundskeeper at the zoo and resident of the YMCA, though he was once a minor league baseball pitcher who struck out Willie Mays. He becomes friends with Maniac, who listens to his stories and teaches him to read. *Mrs. Beale is the kind and caring mother of Amanda, Hester, and Lester. She is very sweet and thoughtful to Maniac as well. *Hester and Lester are the brother and sister of Amanda Beale and the son and daughter of Mrs. Beale. They are very hyper and will mess anything that they can get their hands on.
2827977	/m/0858kd	The Lime Twig	John Hawkes			 This highly elliptical novel, set in England after World War II, deals with a sedate, bored lower-class couple -- Michael and Margaret Banks -- who are lured into fronting a racehorse scheme. Michael Banks is befriended by William Hencher, a well-meaning but lost soul who fell into association with a ruthless gang during the war. After his mother's death, Hencher wants to repay the Bankses for their allowing him to rent a room in their home, where he lived with his mother twenty years prior. Knowing Michael likes horses, Hencher invites him to the heist of the racehorse Rock Castle -- which goes awry, leading to Hencher's death. The gang members then keep Michael under wraps. Realizing that Margaret is becoming suspicious of Michael's absence, they force Michael to call and tell her to meet him at a party. In order to ensure that Michael will front as the owner of the stolen stallion, they kidnap Margaret while distracting Michael with two women, both sexual predators. The heavy of the gang, Thick, beats Margaret mercilessly with a truncheon after she attempts to escape; then, Larry, the seemingly invincible kingpin of the gang who orchestrates the novel's events, slashes and rapes her. Meanwhile, in a brutally ironic contrast, Michael finds delirious pleasure in a femme fatale, Sybilline, the mistress of Larry -- and two other women, as well. Having been badly beaten in a street fight with a constable, Michael attempts to redeem himself from both criminal activity and infidelity by thwarting the race, which has been set up in order to allow Larry to retire to America in comfort. Plot, though, is decidedly subordinate in Hawkes' fiction to intense imagery and a nightmarish, hallucinatory atmosphere. Many details of the plot can only be inferred, and many narrative questions cannot easily be answered. The narrative parodies detective thrillers, particularly through the final presentation of two baffled detectives in bowler hats who, having discovered Hencher's corpse during a heavy rain, set out "separately on vacant streets to uncover the particulars of this crime." In some sense, these figures may be taken as representatives of the reader, who is left to make coherent sense out of the novel's fragments. Some readers have found the novel's events highly disturbing, but the ultimate meaning and value of the work are irreducible to incident; instead, they inhere in the vividly impressionistic style through which these sordid events are both presented and transfigured.
2828565	/m/0859lh	Nervous Conditions	Tsitsi Dangarembga	1988	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 Tambu is the main character of the novel. She is a young bright girl that is eager to go to school. The novel opens up with the news that Tambu’s older brother, Nhamo, had just died. Tambu is not upset about this because Nhamo studied at a missionary school away from his homestead with his uncle Babamukuru and his family. The only thing Tambu desires is to attend school, but her family is very poor and does not have enough money to pay for her school fees. Tambu’s uncle, Babamukuru, and his family came to visit the homestead. Because of Babamakuru’s success, Babamukuru is worshipped whenever he comes to visit. During the visit, Babamukuru suggests that Tambu should take Nhamo's place and attend the missionary school by his house. Tambu is extremely excited to be going away to study at the missionary school. Upon arriving, she soon becomes close to her cousin Nyasha and completely focuses in her studies. During her stay with Babamukuru, Tambu is exposed to a different lifestyle. She often questions Nyasha’s behavior. On one occasion, Nyasha and Babamukuru get into a serious argument after a school dance. The argument soon develops into a fight, where Nyasha punches Babamukuru and Babamukuru strikes her back. Tambu is completely shocked by these events. After the fight, Nyasha becomes distant and focuses on her studies and exams. During term break, everyone returns to visit the family back in the homestead. Tambu does not want to go back as she is much more comfortable living with Babamukuru. Babamukuru's wife, Maiguru also does not look forward going back, because there she is expected to do all the cooking and cleaning for all the members of the extended family. Upon arriving, family drama arises everywhere. Babamukuru concludes that the reason his family has so many problems is because Tambu’s parents are not legally married. He decides that they must marry as soon as possible. Tambu is punished by Babamukuru because she disagrees with the idea of her parents marrying and does not attend the wedding. Soon after, Maiguru decides to leave Babamukuru after an argument over how she is being treated. However, she later returns to live with him. Towards the end of the term, there is an exam administered at Tambu’s school. This exam is to test the students and offer them an opportunity to study at a well known missionary school. Tambu excels on the exam and is offered a scholarship to attend this well known school. Babamukuru is hesitant to let her go, but he then realizes that this is a great opportunity and allows her to attend. Since Tambu is leaving, Nyasha gets upset with her because she does not want her to leave. In the new school Tambu is introduced to many cultural changes; however, she remains resilient to the changes. As always she is fully focused on her studies. When Tambu returns home to Babamukuru, she discovers that Nyasha has changed. Nyasha is extremely thin due to the fact that she is suffering from a serious eating disorder. Babamukuru finally decides to take Nyasha to see a psychiatrist, which allows her to slowly recover. Maiguru is also very disappointed that Chido has decided to have a white girlfriend. Because of the unfortunate events that surround Tambu’s family, Tambu fears that she may become affected by them just like Nyasha. Consequently, Tambu remains cautious of her daily situations and nervous of the conditions that surround her.
2829031	/m/085bmc	Night of the Big Heat			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The main characters are a former novelist named Richard Callum and his wife Frankie, who own a pub called the White Lion. Richard has hired a secretary to help out on his new book, Patricia Wells, who turns out to have an obsession for Callum. A visiting scientist named Harsen reveals, ultimately, that the reason for the extreme heat is that an alien race of spiders are "beaming in" scouts from their home planet via an improbable "radio wave" ray which generates intense amounts of heat as a side effect. The spiders themselves are carnivorous and eat humans, and give off bodily heat intense enough to burn alive any person who gets too close to them. Together with Harsen, Patricia, and science fiction author Vernon Stone, the Callums try to make it to the island's radio station to call for help so that they can thwart the invasion.
2829546	/m/085chc	The Warden	Anthony Trollope	1855	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Warden concerns Mr Septimus Harding, the meek, elderly warden of Hiram's Hospital and precentor of Barchester Cathedral, in the fictional county of Barsetshire. Hiram's Hospital is an almshouse supported by a medieval charitable bequest to the Diocese of Barchester. The income maintains the almshouse itself, supports its twelve bedesmen, and, in addition, provides a comfortable abode and living for its warden. Mr Harding was appointed to this position through the patronage of his old friend the Bishop of Barchester, who is also the father of Archdeacon Grantly to whom Harding's older daughter, Susan, is married. The warden, who lives with his remaining child, an unmarried younger daughter Eleanor, performs his duties conscientiously. The story concerns the impact upon Harding and his circle when a zealous young reformer, John Bold, launches a campaign to expose the disparity in the apportionment of the charity's income between its object, the bedesmen, and its officer, Mr Harding. John Bold embarks on this campaign in a spirit of public duty despite his romantic involvement with Eleanor and previously cordial relations with Mr Harding. Bold starts a lawsuit and Mr Harding is advised by the indomitable Dr Grantly, his son-in-law, to stand his ground. Bold attempts to enlist the support of the press and engages the interest of The Jupiter (a newspaper representing The Times) whose editor, Tom Towers, pens editorials supporting reform of the charity, and presenting a portrait of Mr Harding as selfish and derelict in his conduct of his office. This image is taken up by commentators Dr Pessimist Anticant, and Mr Popular Sentiment, who have been seen as caricatures of Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens respectively. Ultimately, despite much browbeating by his son-in-law, the Archdeacon, and the legal opinion solicited from the barrister, Sir Abraham Haphazard, Mr Harding concludes that he cannot in good conscience continue to accept such generous remuneration and resigns the office. John Bold, who has appealed in vain to Tom Towers to redress the injury to Mr Harding, returns to Barchester where he marries Eleanor after halting legal proceedings. Those of the bedesmen of the hospital who have allowed their appetite for greater income to estrange them from the warden are reproved by their senior member, Bunce, who has been constantly loyal to Harding whose good care and understanding heart are now lost to them. At the end of the novel the bishop decides that the wardenship of Hiram's Hospital be left vacant, and none of the bedesmen are offered the extra money despite vacancy of the post. Mr Harding, on the other hand, becomes Rector of St. Cuthbert's, a small parish near the Cathedral Close, drawing a much lesser income than before.
2830260	/m/02wv9gs	Across the Nightingale Floor	Gillian Rubinstein	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Across the Nightingale Floor is set in a fictional feudal Japan, and follows the story of a sixteen-year-old boy named Tomasu and fifteen year old girl named Kaede. Tomasu, a member of The Hidden by birth, returns from exploring the mountains to find members of his family slaughtered. Trying to escape he unhorses Iida Sadamu, leader of the Tohan, who led the slaughter of The Hidden. Chased by Iida's men, Tomasu is rescued by Lord Shigeru of the Otori. Shigeru takes Tomasu with him to protect, and later adopt him. However he deems his name unsuitable because of its Hidden roots and renames him Takeo. On the road Takeo loses his voice temporarily and his hearing becomes superhuman. On the journey to Shigeru's home, the two stop at an inn where they meet Maruyama Naomi, a powerful female ruler from the Seishuu. Lady Maruyama is found that she was against the persecution of the Hidden and urged Takeo to tell her about the slaughter. At night, when Takeo was in his room, he overhears Lady Maruyama and Shigeru expressing their love for one another. Eventually, the pair reach Lord Shigeru's home in Hagi, where Takeo is received with astonishment by an old maid named Chiyo and Shigeru's ex-instructor, Ichiro. Takeo is slowly accepted by the household and is later is adopted Shigeru's son, under the condition that Shigeru gets married to Shirakawa Kaede, the most beautiful maiden in the Three Countries. However, Takeo was under the threat of Shigeru's uncles' sons, who tried to murder him during practice everyday. Later, Takeo meets Muto Kenji (also known as the Fox), the master of the Muto clan, who reveals to him that Takeo's father was the most skilled assassin of the Kikuta, the greatest family of the Tribe. Kenji, after informing Takeo, starts to train him in the arts of the Tribe. Around autumn of that year, Takeo sneaks out of the house one day and explores Hagi, where he meets a merchant who he'd saved when he was one of the Hidden. The merchant, recognising him, called out to him by his real name. Takeo denied that that was his name and fled. When the time came, Shigeru and Takeo and others started preparing their trip to Tsuwano where they would meet Shigeru's future wife, Shirakawa Kaede. At Tsuwano they meet Kaede (who had been held hostage by the Noguchi since she was seven and forced to sleep in the maid's rooms. She was constantly harassed by the guards who wanted to have her. Not long before she reaches Tsuwano, a guard tried to rape her, only to be stabbed with a knife). She is under the protection of her kinswoman Lady Maruyama (with whom Shigeru has had a secret relationship for almost 10 years), and is accompanied by Kenji's niece, Shizuka, who is half Muto and half Kikuta. But it is Takeo and Kaede who immediately find a connection between them. They stop at the shrine at Terayama, at the time of the Festival of the Dead, to visit Shigeru's brother's grave, and for Shigeru to discuss war plans with the Abbott. As an army headed by Lord Arai musters from the west, they arrive at Inuyama in the 9th month. Shigeru plans for Takeo to assassinate Iida that night, but the Tribe, not wanting to risk Takeo (and appreciating the stability that Iida brings), abducts him so that his training can be finished. Thus the treachery plays itself out: Shigeru is crucified on the castle wall, and Lady Maruyama and her daughter drown whilst attempting to escape. Takeo makes a deal with the Tribe that allows him to bring Shigeru's body down in return for joining them. Takeo, together with Kenji and Yuki sneak into the castle at night and bring Shigeru down from the wall. Shigeru, dying from his wounds, asks Takeo to bury him at Terayama. During the invasion of the castle at Inuyama, Takeo discovers Kaede with the corpse of Iida Sadamu, whom she killed when he attempted to rape her. After carrying out Shigeru's wishes, Takeo honours his promise to the Tribe and departs with them, leaving Kaede unconscious from his Kikuta Stare and in the care of Muto Shizuka.
2830266	/m/02wv9h4	Grass for His Pillow	Gillian Rubinstein	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kaede slowly recovers from the Kikuta sleep given to her by Takeo, with dreams of the White Goddess: Be patient. He will come for you. Afterwards she travels towards home, accompanied by Shizuka. Arai is furious that Takeo has gone off with the Tribe, and realizes that he had underestimated them. He sends his men to search for him, and to assassinate Shizuka, his ex-lover whom he now fears because of her association with the Tribe. However, the attempt fails. Kaede is pregnant with Takeo's child, but Shizuka creates the notion of a secret marriage with Shigeru before his death to explain the coming child. Meanwhile Takeo is kept hidden inside a Tribe house in Yamagata. Kikuta Akio, one of his abductors, is charged with teaching him, despite their mutual hatred. Under the disguise of traveling acrobats, they head north to Matsue. Yuki, Kenji's daughter, enters a relationship with Takeo as directed to by the Tribe, though she has genuine affection for him. One day she leaves suddenly, pregnant with his child, whom the tribe hope will inherit Takeo's extraordinary abilities. Kaede returns to her childhood home to find the estate in disrepair, her mother dead, and her father in despair after losing a battle to Arai and not having the courage to take his own life. She determines, despite her gender, to take over Shirakawa. She attracts the interest of an Imperial noble who lives nearby, Lord Fujiwara, who assists her in return for hearing her secrets. Makoto, a monk from Terayama, visits and accidentally reveals that there was no marriage between Kaede and Shigeru. In disgrace, her father decides their whole family must take their lives, and attacks Kaede. Shizuka and Kondo (a retainer, and member of the tribe) rescue her by killing him. Kaede goes into labour, miscarries her child, and becomes gravely ill. The Tribe become frustrated with Takeo's disobedience, and send him on a mission as a last chance. They believe Shigeru compiled records on the Tribe, so Takeo goes to his old house with Akio to retrieve them—Takeo being the only one who could get across the nightingale floor without being detected. Takeo discovers the records are at Terayama, but decides to escape from the Tribe. He shakes off Akio, and makes his way south, with winter closing in. On the way he is taken to a blind woman who delivers the prophecy that would haunt him: "Your lands will stretch from sea to sea...Five battles will buy you peace, four to win and one to lose. Many must die, but you yourself are safe from death, except at the hands of your own son." He reaches Terayama the last day before the pass is closed by snow. Once Spring thaws the snow, Kaede excuses herself from Fujiwara, stating her intention to visit Arai, her overlord, to discuss her future. He reluctantly agrees, and she travels via Terayama, as she has heard that Takeo is there. They meet, and as Takeo is under a death sentence from the Tribe, Kaede sends Shizuka and Kondo away. Against advice, Takeo and Kaede marry at Terayama.
2830275	/m/02wv9hj	Brilliance of the Moon	Gillian Rubinstein	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Soon after Kaede and Takeo's marriage, messengers arrive at Terayama from his Uncles with a threat, and the head of Ichiro, his old teacher. The Otori army lies in wait to ambush him, so Takeo leads them over the mountains, and across the river near Kibi, with the assistance of a bridge made by Jo-an and some outcasts. After a minor skirmish with some bandits, they lead the army to Maruyama, the domain that Lady Maruyama left to Kaede. Lady Maruyama's son-in-law, Iida Nariaki, a cousin to Iida Sadamu, has marched in to Maruyama just ahead of them, but Iida's army gets caught between the Maruyama and Takeo's armies, and are defeated. Meanwhile Shizuka and Kondo Kiichi arrive at the hidden Muto village, and are reunited with her uncle, Kenji, and her two sons. She fears the consequences that will come from Kaede's rash marriage. From Kenji she learns of the Kikuta's belief in the existence of records on the tribe compiled by Shigeru before his death. They decide to send Kondo to Arai, to gauge his reaction to Kaede's marriage, and his feeling towards his sons by Shizuka. Kenji also tells her how his daughter Yuki was recently married to Akio, but was forced to take her life after her son by Takeo was born. The child will remain with the Kikuta, who have their own plans concerning the boy and Takeo's futures. In Maruyama, they start restoring the land and estates. Takeo is threatened by the local Tribe members, so using Shigeru's records, he has them rounded up and the adults executed. His mind turns to Hagi, and he concocts a plan to invade it by sea. He travels to Oshima island to meet his childhood friend Terada Fumio, whose family have now become pirates, to seek an alliance. Kaede wants to accompany him, but he tells her to stay. On the way he meets Ryoma, an illegitimate son of his Uncle, Masahiro. He makes an agreement with Fumio's father, but his return is delayed by typhoons, and he almost drowns in a storm. Despite Sugita's objections, Kaede rides to Shirakawa with Hiroshi, and finds that Shoji, the Shirakawa retainer, had given up her sisters to Fujiwara, and returned her hostage to his family. Shocked, she hides the records on the Tribe at the nearby Shrine, and rides to demand her sisters return. Fujiwara abducts her, and only Hiroshi escapes to later bring the news to Maruyama. Fujiwara declares her marriage to Takeo to be illegal, and he forces her to marry him. Their marriage is celibate: he is not interested in her as a woman, but as a treasure, to be locked away. Takeo returns and hears the news of Kaede's abduction. His army marches towards Shirakawa, but discovers not only Fujiwara's army, but Arai's. They retreat to the coast as Maruyama surrenders to Arai's men, hoping for Fumio to come by boat, but the weather delays him. Takeo submits to Arai, but rather than killing him, they enter into an alliance against the Otori lords (Shigeru's uncles), but to dispel rumors about him being one of the hidden, Takeo is forced to kill the outcast Jo-an. Kenji, turned against the Kikuta because of the murder of his daughter, comes to Takeo and brings a truce, and an alliance on behalf of the Tribe, save the Kikuta. Before they leave, Fumio demonstrates to Takeo the use of a firearm, an invention obtained from the white barbarians. Arai's army marches north, and Takeo sails around the coast to Hagi. With Kenji and Taku, Arai and Shizuka's younger son, they sneak into the castle, and kill the lords and their families. When Arai's army arrives, he betrays Takeo. Fumio shoots Arai dead with the firearm, and at that moment a huge earthquake rocks the entire three countries. It destroys Arai's army, and in Shirakawa it destroys Fujiwara and his household in an example of Deus ex machina. The Kikuta master, Kotaro, sneaks into Takeo's house to assassinate him, as he did to his father years before. With Kenji and Taku's help, they defeat him, but Takeo loses 2 fingers, and goes into a delirium from the poisoned blade that cut him. After he recovers, and despite the onset of winter, he rushes south to find what happened to Kaede. They come to the shrine to find Kaede, Shizuka, and her new husband Dr Ishida alive, with the tribal records safe. But Kaede's hair is shorn, terrible burns marring her neck. As it starts to snow, Takeo prays the spring would bring healing to his land.
2831217	/m/085h8h	Dragoncharm	Graham Edwards	1995-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with the destruction of the dragon settlement, South Point, home to Fortune, a young Natural dragon. Fleeing, he joins with the Charmed dragon Cumber on a desperate quest to reach the fabled citadel of the Charmed at Covamere. As they journey, the two dragons witness the growing conflict between the Charmed and the Naturals, which threatens to culminate in all-out war between the two species. They encounter signs everywhere that magic is leaving the world: trolls lie dying beneath the landscape, giants build enigmatic stone circles and faeries are evolving into proto-humans. The two dragon armies come together. Leading the Naturals is an insane dragon named Shatter, while the Charmed commander is a military monster called Wraith. Wraith's ambition is to breach the Maze of Covamere, at the very centre of which lies the ultimate power of the Seed of Charm. Fortune and Cumber, along with a growing band of companions from both races (including Gossamer, Brace, Scoff, Velvet, and others), thread their way through the conflict, seeking a way to unite both dragon species to face the greater threat that faces them all: the world is turning its back on magic and all dragons are facing extinction. When Fortune finally faces Wraith inside the Maze of Covamere, both dragons learn a dark secret from their shared past. When the ancient, immortal basilisk Ocher enters the fray, even Fortune is tempted by the power offered by the Seed of Charm. Dragoncharm ends in the aftermath of the turning of the world, the very moment when magic departs, leaving in its wake the natural world we humans know today. The story, following the lives of the surviving dragons, is picked up in Dragonstorm.
2832333	/m/085kz9	Deathstalker	Simon Green		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	- --&#62; &#60;!-
2833878	/m/085n_2	Junk	Melvin Burgess	1996-11-14	{"/m/026llv5": "Literary realism", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel is told in the first person from various points of view; much of the narration is by Gemma and Tar, and takes place over the course of a few years in their lives. At the beginning of the story, Gemma is spending time with Tar, a gentle teenager who is planning to run away from home after suffering abuse at the hands of his father. Gemma is a rebellious 14 year old and, despite having loving parents, decides to leave home and join Tar in Bristol. In Bristol, Tar is introduced to Richard through Skolly, the tobacconist that took pity on Tar. Richard is a nervous, vegetarian anarchist, and he and his friends Vonny, a motherly character, and Vonny's boyfriend Jerry break into an abandoned house to squat there and invite Tar to stay with them. Tar is eager for them to meet Gemma as she arrives in Bristol; they are less pleased because they think Gemma is young and impulsive and would be better off at home with her parents. Gemma and Tar experiment smoking marijuana while they are living in the abandoned house. Tar phones his mother to let her know he's safe. However she makes him feel guilty for leaving her alone with his father, upsetting Tar greatly. Richard holds a party in the abandoned house and Tar and Gemma meet Lily, who enchants Gemma with her confidence and carefree attitude. Gemma and Tar leave to stay the night with Lily and her boyfriend Rob. While they are there, Lily and Rob encourage Gemma and Tar to smoke heroin with them, and they do, believing that only smoking it won't get them addicted. Tar and Gemma live with Lily and Rob for a long time, their heroin smoking habit turning into long-term addiction. They are joined by Sally, another heroin addict. Lily becomes pregnant and this inspires them into attempting to quit by going cold turkey, however they fail after only a day. Lily continues to inject heroin while pregnant. Lily, Gemma and Sally work as prostitutes in a massage parlour to fund their addiction. After getting arrested, Tar is sent to a rehabilitation centre. Once out, he declares himself clean, but after going back to the flat with Gemma, Lily and Rob, he takes heroin again. The catalyst comes after Tar and Gemma are found with heroin again; Tar takes the blame and this time is sent to prison. Gemma, now pregnant with Tar's baby, allows Vonny to get in touch with her mother, who asks Gemma to come home and have the baby with the help of her parents. She agrees, and after 3 and a half years she is back at home. Her story ends with her clean and heroin-free, bringing up the baby without Tar because she doesn't trust him to stay off the drugs. Tar, once out of prison, slowly weans himself off methadone and settles down with a girlfriend, visiting his and Gemma's daughter every few months.
2833953	/m/085p6k	Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall	Charles Major	1902	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is narrated by Sir George Vernon's 35-year-old cousin, Malcolm François de Lorraine Vernon. Raised in France, he became enamored of Mary, Queen of Scots, when she was a youth there, and followed her to Scotland. Historically speaking, Mary was captured, imprisoned, and forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in July 1567, but in the novel, Malcolm receives word of Mary's capture in the Fall. He immediately flees to England, and heads to Haddon Hall to take refuge with Sir George. On the way, he meets and becomes friends with John Manners, son of Sir George's hated enemy Thomas Manners (Lord Rutland). Years earlier, Sir George had suggested that Malcolm marry George's daughter Dorothy as a way to keep the Vernon properties held by Vernons. Dorothy at the time had been an awkward adolescent; she now is a mature, strong-willed, red-headed beauty. On his way to Haddon Hall, Malcolm (still in the company of John Manners) encounters Dorothy, her aunt, and her friend Madge, all of whom live at Haddon Hall. Catching glimpses of each other, John Manners and Dorothy instantly begin to be attracted to each other. Malcolm, by contrast, sees his cousin as too beautiful and strong-willed to make a good wife. As the book progresses, Dorothy and John develop a secret romance, aided by Malcolm and hidden from her father, who first presses her to marry Malcolm, and then the son of the Earl of Derby. Various dramatic elements include a chapter in which Dorothy is imprisoned in her bedroom, but manages to disguise herself as Malcolm to escape and meet John; John fails to recognize her, thinking her a male stranger, and makes some embarrassing remarks about his previous love affairs, and then when he realizes she is a woman, fails to recognize her as Dorothy, but attempts to kiss her, causing her to reveal herself. Later, John disguises himself and takes a job as a household servant at Haddon Hall to be able to spend time with Dorothy; she fails to recognize him for days until he reveals himself. This ruse ends when Dorothy quarrels with her father, who attempts to strike her. John jumps in the way and is struck unconscious, and a distraught Dorothy reveals that this is the lover her father suspected her of having. Her father orders him imprisoned in the dungeon, to be hanged the next day if the blow to his head does not kill him, but Malcom, aided by Dorothy's Aunt (also named Dorothy), arrange for his escape. Subsequently, Queen Mary escapes from Scotland and takes secret refuge at Lord Rutland's estate. Queen Elizabeth arrives to visit Haddon Hall. Sir George brings the Stanlys (the Earl of Derby and his oafish son) to ratify the marriage contract before the Queen, but Dorothy publicly humiliates the Stanlys, ruining the arrangements and amusing the Queen. Meanwhile, her father has already begun to nurse a hope she might marry the Queen's favorite, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. Unable to see John for an extended period of time, and knowing that the seductive Queen Mary is staying at his home, Dorothy becomes crazed with jealousy and tells Queen Elizabeth of Queen Mary's location. Elizabeth rouses a troop of soldiers to arrest Mary. Remorse-stricken, Dorothy attempts to arrive at Lord Rutland's before the troops, but fails, and John, his father, and Queen Mary are all arrested, and Dorothy's father finds out John's identity. Malcolm shares a carriage with Queen Mary and a sleeping, exhausted, Dorothy for the return to Haddon Hall, and during the trip Mary manages to regain his allegiance and romantic interest (despite his being engaged to Madge) and he promises to help her escape to France. Mary also attempts to gain the allegiance of the Earl of Leicester, but he betrays her to Elizabeth, resulting in Malcolm's arrest. Queen Elizabeth tells Dorothy she will free John and Lord Rutland if Dorothy can prove that they planned only to get Mary out of Scotland, and had no part in any conspiracy to place Mary on the throne of England. By speaking with him in the dungeon, which is equipped with a speaking tube for eavesdropping, Dorothy exonerates John and his father, and they are set free. Elizabeth decides Malcolm may go free as well, provided he leaves England and returns to France. Sir George, furious at Malcolm's part in aiding Dorothy and John's romance, tells him to leave Haddon Hall, so Malcolm gathers his belongings and apologizes to Madge and prepares to head to Lord Rutland's estate, where he will await the passport allowing him to leave England. As he leaves, Madge joins him, forgiving him, and they plan that she will accompany him to France as his wife. In the final chapter of the novel, during a party in Queen Elizabeth's honor, Dorothy tricks her father into letting her steal away for a few crucial minutes, supposedly to court the Earl of Leicester's affections. Instead, she is met by John, who literally carries her off despite her last-minute uncertainty, and they elope to his father's hall where they bid farewell to Malcolm and Madge, who move to France and don't see them again (as of the close of the novel, forty years later).
2834123	/m/085pq8	Millennium People	J. G. Ballard		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 When a bomb explodes on a baggage carousel at Heathrow Airport, killing his ex-wife, David Markham tries to unravel the mystery surrounding her seemingly pointless death. But with unresolved questions about himself, his job, and his loving but adulterous wife, he soon finds himself immersed in the deeper waters of middle class revolution. When a protest at a cat show turns ugly and he is beaten up by angry cat lovers, then arrested and tried, Markham enlists in the cause of the rebellious Chelseans - imagining he will uncover the persons and causes responsible for his ex's murder. Slowly, he succumbs to the call of subversion and gradually finds himself a terrorist functionary. Along the way we meet an assortment of wonderfully ballardian characters: Markham's wife, who continues to use her arm canes though her leg injuries from an accident with a tram have completely healed. A sociopathic, college film studies lecturer/terrorist cell leader who takes Markham for a lover; a troubled priest and his Chinese girlfriend; a former MI5 bombmaker turned revolutionary. And a kindly pediatrican cum terrorist mastermind. Ultimately, Markham learns the reasons behind his former wife's murder have a very different logic than he had imagined.
2834215	/m/085pxz	The Dream Master	Roger Zelazny	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Dream Master is set in a future where the forces of overpopulation and technology have created a world where humanity suffocates psychologically beneath its own mass while abiding in relative physical comfort. This is a world ripe for psychotherapeutic innovations, such as the "neuroparticipant therapy" in which the protagonist, Charles Render, specializes. In neuroparticipation, the patient is hooked into a gigantic simulation controlled directly by the analyst's mind; the analyst then works with the patient to construct dreams—nightmares, wish-fulfillment, etc.--that afford insight into the underlying neuroses of the patient, and in some cases the possibility of direct intervention. (For example, a man submerging himself in a fantasy world sees it utterly destroyed at Render's hands, and is thus "cured" of his obsession with it.) Render, the leader in his field, takes on a patient with an unusual problem. Eileen Shallot aspires to become a neuroparticipant therapist herself, but is somewhat hampered by congenital blindness. Not having experienced visual sensation in the same way as her patients, she would be unable to convincingly construct visual dreams for them; indeed, in a case of eye-envy, her own neurotic desire to see through the eyes of her patients might prevent her from treating them effectively. However, she explains to Render, if a practicing neuroparticipant therapist is willing to work with her, he can expose her to the full range of visual stimuli in a controlled environment, free of her own attachments to the issue, and enable her to pursue her career. Despite his better sense and the advice of colleagues, Render agrees to go along with the treatment. But as they progress, Eileen's hunger for visual stimulation continues to grow, and she begins to assert her will against Render's, subsuming him into her own dreams.
2836377	/m/085vd7	Spiral	Koji Suzuki	1995	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The events in the story occur a day after the events of the first book. It introduces us to Ando Mitsuo who is assigned to do the autopsy of Ryuji. He and his colleague, Miyashita, find a benign tumor in Ryuji's throat which is believed to be his cause of death. They are puzzled because the tumor they found appeared much like a tumor with smallpox, which was eradicated 30 years prior to the story. Ando, with his colleague, Miyashita, find out that an organism called "Ring Virus" caused this tumor. The virus is transferred to the body via the tape and begins to grow a tumor in the viewer's throat. When the charm is not performed, the tumor grows to block the airways and kills the person. To stop this, the tape must be copied and shown to another person. They also found a cryptic message inside his stomach with the word RING and a series of other cryptic messages. This discovery further perplexes Ando. In search for the message's meaning he came to meet Ryuji's assistant and lover, Mai Takano. Mai seems to know something about the videotape and tells Ando the curse, but does not know how Ryuji died. As a scientist, Ando laughed at Mai's explanation. He also went to talk to Kazuyuki, but found that he and his family were involved in a car accident. It is discovered that Kazuyuki's wife and child were dead before the crash. Kazuyuki is in critical condition and unable to talk, and at the accident's site lies a crushed videotape. When Mai was suddenly lost which further motivates Ando to investigate until he stumbles upon Kazuyuki's files with the title THE RING. He is uncertain because it contains supernatural events and contradicts scientific explanations. After reading the report, Ando and Miyashita visited the well where Sadako died. They discovered that the virus has mutated and now uses the report as a medium. Ando also found out that Kazuyuki's older brother, Junichiro Asakawa is planning to publish his brother's report as his own horror novel. Days after Mai's disappearance, he met a beautiful woman named Masako who introduced herself as Mai's older sister. He fell in love with her. They made love one night. The day after that he discovers Masako and Sadako are one and the same. Later he receives a parchment from Sadako/Masako explaining how Mai Takano gave birth to her as well as warning Ando not to interfere with the publication of Kazuyuki's files, which now contain the deadly virus. In exchange for his co-operation, Sadako offered to resurrect Ando's son, whose death through drowning two years previously cast a shadow over his life. Ando realized that Ryuji was the master-mind behind the resurrection of Sadako as he lured Mai Takano into watching the video tape, as well as giving out clues to Ando, hoping he would discover the Ring Report and therefore distribute the virus. Ryuji is then brought back to life by Sadako. The epilogue shows Ando playing with his son on the beach, planning to reintroduce him to his wife. Unlike the first book where the focus was mainly on the supernatural and revealing more about the past of the origins of the virus, here we see the virus less as a supernatural event and more as a scientifically explainable one.
2837809	/m/085y6g	Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History		1959	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/0dh4n": "Literary theory"}	 Brown offers what Robinson sees as a unique analysis of the problems associated with sexuality and human mortality, and equally distinctive solutions to them. Brown expounded "the underlying ambivalence of Freud's late instinctual dualism", in which "Eros and Death were seen as antagonistic psychological principles which constantly threatened to collapse into one another." Unlike Marcuse, however, who emphasized the antithetical nature of the two instincts, Brown stressed their underlying unity, since this approach suggested a way of escaping Freud's conclusion that aggression was inevitable. Brown argued that Freud did not consider aggression a basic psychological fact, but rather a secondary manifestation of a more fundamental instinctual force, the death instinct: it was "the external expression of an impulse originally directed against the self". In Brown's interpretation of Freud, aggression becomes a problem "because Eros could carry out its project of creating life only when the death instinct was frustrated in its original enterprise. In order that men might live (and love), they were inevitably forced to destroy, to direct the energies of the death instinct away from themselves onto their fellowmen." Freud's analysis of the dynamics of Life and Death was mistaken, according to Brown, since Freud's discovery of the ultimate identity of the two instincts implied that there is no necessary antagonism between Eros and Thanatos: they exist in harmony at a deeper level of psychic life and aggression was therefore not inevitable. Brown believed that the death instinct need not be externalized in the form of aggression if "men could recapture the original undifferentiated harmony of Life and Death." Brown therefore called for an end to the "repression of death" that perpetuated aggression. People had to learn "how to die" or, more concretely, to learn "how to grow old." Robinson calls Brown's argument "daring", and stresses that it is a very different solution to the problem of aggression than that proposed by Marcuse, since it was a psychological solution that involved adopting a new attitude toward death and did not involve political or economic revolution. Robinson compares Brown and Marcuse's treatment of Reich: both criticize him for "misrepresenting the problem of repression as one of genital sexuality" and advocated polymorphous perversity instead, but Brown again provided an exclusively psychological argument. Brown concluded that if undifferentiated sexuality is the ultimate measure of human happiness, then any form of sexual organization is already repressive. While Marcuse had in general "complained only of the tyranny of genital sexuality" and suggested that "the pregenital libidinal had to be reactivated in a nonrepressive civilization", Brown maintained that the pregenital organizations were "just as tyrannical as adult sexuality" and that the earlier organization of libidinal energy into oral, anal, phallic syndromes was "as foreign to the undifferentiated eroticism of early infancy" as genital sexuality. Brown thus did not accept Marcuse's "characterization of the sexual deviant as a prophet of polymorphous perversity". In a truly nonrepressive civilization, "sexuality would be completely undifferentiated" and even the distinction between the sexes would become insignificant. Brown did not accept Freud's theory of an innate biological dynamic leading from undifferentiated sexuality to adult genitality, and suggested instead that the explanation of how mankind abandoned the "primeval happiness" of polymorphous perversity was to be found through an analysis of social history. Robinson comments that Brown in fact offered no such analysis, and instead produced an "exclusively ontogentic explanation", one he finds inconsistent with "the prophetic intentions" of Brown's larger argument. Brown explained repressive differentiation in terms of Freud's revised theory of anxiety, according to which anxiety produces repression rather than the reverse. Brown, like Róheim, saw the basic form of anxiety as separation anxiety, and also identified separation with death, a breakdown of the union of mother and child that he saw as "the essence of life." Robinson finds the identification of life with union and death with separation neither easy to understand nor essential to Brown's argument. Brown's crucial point according to Robinson is that anxiety can be identified with separation, and that separation causes anxiety because the union between mother and child had been so long and lovingly indulged. Children respond to the anxiety caused by separation through various projects to reestablish the original unity, projects Brown identified as "flights from death", but which Robinson believes could have been described more simply as flights from separation. These projects involve various organizations of the libido that Brown characterizes as repressive and which required abandoning the polymorphous perversity of earliest infancy. Examples are the oral project, in which children try to overcome separation through "the hypercathexis of the act of sucking", reuniting themselves with their mothers through the mouth (and in fantasy, ingesting them entirely), the anal project, in which children engage in "symbolic manipulation of feces as a magic instrument for restoring communion with the mother", and the phallic project, which is the attempt to reunite with the mother through the penis, identified with the entire body. These projects all involve reorganization of the libidinal economy, transferring sexual energy from the entire body to particular organs, and in all of them repression is self-imposed. The differentiation of sexuality occurs not because of an external force such as social or economic exigency, but because of "self-repression."
2838055	/m/085ytd	This Happy Breed	Noël Coward			 ;Scene 1 – June 1919 The Gibbons family has just moved into 17 Sycamore Road in Clapham in South London. Ethel expresses her relief that her husband Frank has survived army service in World War I and her pleasure at moving into their new home. Their new next-door neighbour, Bob Mitchell, introduces himself. He turns out to be an old army colleague of Frank's, and the two reminisce. ;Scene 2 – December 1925 After Christmas dinner, the grown-ups, Frank and Ethel, Ethel's mother Mrs Flint and Frank's sister Sylvia, have retired to another room to leave the young people alone. These are Frank and Ethel's children, Vi, "a pleasant nondescript-looking girl of twenty", Queenie, "a year younger... prettier and a trifle flashy", Reg, aged eighteen, "a nice-looking intelligent boy", Reg's friend Sam and Queenie's friend Phyllis. Sam indulges in a spot of socialist preaching against capitalism and injustice. The young women fail to accord him the respect he thinks he deserves, and he and Reg leave. Bob Mitchell's son Billy visits the house. He is left alone with Queenie, and there is a short love scene between them. Queenie baffles him by saying that she so hates suburban life that she would not make him a good wife. She rushes out. Frank enters and encourages Billy. After Billy leaves, Ethel and Frank chat together, partly to avoid Sylvia's singing in the room next door and partly for the pleasure of each other's company. ;Scene 3 – May 1926 It is the time of the General Strike of 1926. The women of the household bicker. Frank and Bob are strike-breaking as volunteer driver and conductor of a London bus. Reg, encouraged by Sam, is backing the strikers and has not been seen for some days. Frank and Bob enter, singing "Rule, Britannia!" at the top of their voices, having had a few drinks to celebrate their successful strike-breaking. Sam and Reg enter, the latter slightly injured from a fracas connected with the strike. Vi confronts Sam for leading Reg astray and throws him out. Left alone together, Frank and Reg exchange views, Frank's being traditionalist and Reg's idealistic. They bid each other good night on good terms. ;Scene 1 – October 1931 On Reg's wedding day, Frank gives him paternal advice. The women of the household bicker. Queenie again complains of the tedium of suburban life. The family all leave for Reg and Phyl's wedding ceremony. ;Scene 2 – November 1931, midnight Queenie tip-toes downstairs in street clothes, carrying a suitcase. She puts a letter on the mantelpiece and leaves. Frank and Bob arrive after a convivial evening at a regimental dinner and amiably discuss the world in general. Ethel, woken by their noise, tells them off. Bob leaves. Frank and Ethel see Queenie's letter and open it. She has been having an affair with a married man and has run off with him. Ethel disowns Queenie as a member of the family. Frank is shocked at Ethel's intransigence. They retire to bed unhappily. ;Scene 3 – May 1932 The older members of the family discuss a letter they have received from Queenie in France. They are interrupted by the news that Reg and his wife have been killed in a road accident. ;Scene 1 – December 1936 The family have been listening to ex-king Edward VIII's abdication broadcast. Mrs Flint is no longer alive, Vi and Sam, now married, have become comfortably middle-aged. Billy enters with the news that he has run into Queenie in Menton. Her lover had left her and returned to his wife, leaving Queenie stranded. After some prevarication Billy says that Queenie is with him and indeed is now his wife. Queenie enters, and there is an awkward but loving reconciliation between her and Ethel. ;Scene 2 – September 1938 It is the time of Neville Chamberlain's return from Munich and the false hopes of averting war. Sylvia is as delighted by the Munich agreement as Frank is bitterly opposed to it. Bob comes in to say goodbye. He is moving to the country. He and Frank reminisce and look forward to the future anxiously. ;Scene 3 – June 1939 Frank and Ethel are about to move to the country. The house is now almost empty of furniture as they prepare to leave. Frank is left alone with his youngest grandchild, also called Frank. He talks to the baby philosophically, in a long monologue about what it means to be British. Ethel calls him to supper.
2838088	/m/085yx9	Cast of Shadows	Kevin Guilfoile	2005-03-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book's plot is set in the near future at a time when cloning has been legalised in the United States of America. It is based around a Chicago-based cloning doctor, Davis Moore, whose daughter is brutally raped and killed. The doctor uses the DNA of the murderer to clone him. The resulting clone is a boy called Justin Finn, which Moore follows throughout his life, hoping that the boy will offer him a glimpse into the psyche of the killer and perhaps enable him to find the identity of his daughter's murderer.
2838649	/m/085_9l	Beard's Roman Women	Anthony Burgess	1976	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ronald Beard jets off to Hollywood and meets Paola Lucrezia Belli, an Italian photographer and descendant of the Roman dialect poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli. Various comic adventures ensue as the narrative switches to the Eternal City. The book is an interesting companion piece to Burgess's next novel, Abba Abba (1977): the Roman setting (some 150 years apart), references to the poet Belli, and the focus on the Romantic poets. In Abba Abba John Keats is the main character; here it's Byron and Shelley as the subject of a screenplay by the main character.
2839535	/m/0861dl	Asterix and Son				 A baby boy inexplicably appears at the porch of Asterix's house one morning. While taking care of him - a horrifying task for two single men - Asterix and Obelix along with Dogmatix, set out to discover who left the baby there and who are its parents, following a lead left with the baby's wrappings. Curiously, they find that the Romans seem to be very inquisitive about the child, too - and all in the interests of Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar's adopted son. Asterix finds out that some people suspect the baby is his illegitimate child, causing shock for him. As the Romans are using deceptive methods to try getting the baby, it is decided the baby needs protection from the Romans. While in the village, the baby twice drinks a great deal of magic potion (the second time, he falls in a nearly-empty cauldron, prompting Obelix to remark that he 'really take[s] to [the baby]), after which he becomes a "terrible little monster" to every door in the neighborhood and every spy sent to capture him, including a legionnary disguised as a peddlar selling rattles, and a centurion disguised as a nursemaid, driving both up the centurion's tent pole. Finally, Brutus, who is keeping his presence secret from Caesar, takes matters into his own hands, attacking the village with his own legions and burning it to the ground, while he himself goes after the baby. He demands the baby from the Women, who think he still has superhuman strength, but it turns out the potion has worn off, and Brutus manages to kidnap him temporarily - with the help of the ever-present pirates -, but soon Asterix and Obelix catch up with him and give him a taste of why they are considered the terror of the Romans, while the Pirates leap overboard. Just as the Gauls try to make Brutus reveal the truth, the unexpected arrivals by Caesar, and then Cleopatra resolve the child's mystery; he is none other than Ptolemy XV Caesarion (born 23 June 47 BC), the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra VII of Egypt. Brutus had been attempting to kill the baby while Caesar was away on campaign so that he could guarantee his accession to the throne, so Cleopatra had the boy sent to the village to protect him on the grounds that the village was the one place she could guarantee the child's safety from Brutus's soldiers. Brutus is sent away by Caesar. The story ends with the banquet on Cleopatra's royal barge where even Caesar joins in, having promised to rebuild the village in thanks for the Gauls' efforts to protect his son.
2839541	/m/0861fp	Asterix in Belgium				 After fighting the Belgians in the northern part of Gaul, Caesar states that they are the bravest enemies he's ever faced (historically this statement really was made by Caesar). His soldiers agree with him, to the point when they consider being posted to the camps outside Asterix' village as a period of leave. Chief Vitalstatistix is aghast at the idea that his village, which has been the terror of the Romans for years, is now looked upon as relatively harmless. He is further outraged when he hears of Caesar's remarks. He claims that his villagers are in fact the bravest men of Gaul, and travels to Belgium to prove his point. A reluctant Asterix and Obelix go with him after Getafix tells them not doing so could make the story come to a sticky end. After crossing the border, they encounter a village of Belgians who rely on brute strength (and a regular diet of meat and beer) to successfully scare off Caesar's troops. These Belgians are led by two chiefs, Beefix and Brawnix (though Brawnix comes across mainly as a second-in-command). To prove that the Gauls are the bravest, Vitalstatistix proposes a competition. The contest consists of raiding and destroying Roman camps on either side of the village. The Belgians and Gauls destroy the camps, telling the soldiers who they are. By the end they have destroyed an equal number of camps, and word is sent to Rome. Meanwhile the Pirate's ship is wrecked when Obelix throws a boulder catapulted at him too high, causing the Captain to complain, saying he and his men are neutrals. Word is sent to Rome, though the facts are exaggerated, talking about vast hordes of Gauls, a savage pack of hounds, and a mysterious fleet of neutrals. Caesar goes to Belgium himself to restore order unaware of the fact that the whole thing is to get him to decide once and for all which side is the bravest. Outraged at being reduced, in the eyes of the Gauls and Belgians, to a mere umpire (as opposed to emperor), Caesar furiously declares that he will meet them in battle. The Belgians tell the Gauls to stay away as it is now a purely local issue. Through the use of catapults the Romans get their way in the early stages of the battle. But then the three Gauls, and their magic potion, join the Belgians after they thwart an attempted attack on the Belgian lines from behind through a forest, and, by combining their efforts, the Gauls are the final victors. Caesar decides to leave for Rome. On his way he comes across the Gaulish and Belgian chiefs. Caesar proudly announces that he will lay down his life, but they say that they are there to remind him of their competition and want to know who is the bravest. Caesar angrily declares them simply all crazy and leaves. Vitalstatistix and Beefix laugh the incident off. They have to face the fact that they are all equally brave and, after a victory feast, part on good terms.
2839568	/m/0861jj	Obelix and Co.				 After Obelix single-handedly defeats the newly-arrived Romans from the camp of Totorum (as a birthday present), Caesar once again ponders with any possibility to take down the rebellious Gaulish village. A young Roman know-it-all called Preposterus, who has been studying economics, proposes to integrate the Gauls into the stream of capitalism, pointing out that Caesar's once-brilliant officers are now corrupt, venal politicians in Rome. For that purpose, he moves into the camp of Totorum and proceeds to make the acquaintance of Obelix, who is carrying a menhir through the forest. Preposterus claims to be a menhir buyer, and buys every menhir Obelix can make, on the pretext that a rich man is a powerful man. Obelix begins by making and delivering a single menhir a day, but when Preposterus demands more menhirs in exchange for more money, Obelix hires other villagers to help him make menhirs, and an equal number to hunt boar for him and his sculptors. Although he tries to include Asterix in this, Asterix will have no part of Obelix's growing corporation. This corporation later includes a cart-and-oxen from a travelling salesman with which to deliver half-a-dozen menhirs to the camp in one go. Obelix's workload also means that he neglects Dogmatix. Obelix's increasing wealth causes problems for the village men, whose wives reproach them for not matching his success. Obelix himself shows off this wealth by wearing ostentatious clothes, hiring Mrs Geriatrix to be his tailor. Deciding that the time has come to teach Obelix a lesson, Asterix encourages the other villagers to start building menhirs, selling them to the Romans and putting their subsequent wealth on display. Getafix agrees to dole out magic potion for anyone who makes menhirs, in spite of nobody knowing what menhirs are for. Because the menhir makers can no longer spend time hunting wild boar, they hire the other half of the male village populace to do it for them. Only Asterix, Getafix, Cacofonix and Vitalstatistix are not engaged in the new economic system. Asterix estimates that it is only a matter of time before things come to a head, explode and get back to normal. With Preposterus buying up every menhir at ever-increasing prices, it is not long before the camp of Totorum is filled with menhirs, and Caesar's finances heavily in debt. This abundance of rock reaches Rome where Preposterus sells them to the patricians. He does this by making out that a menhir is a symbol of great wealth and high rank, therefore prompting insecure people to buy them. But before he can go further, a Roman businessman jumps onto the bandwagon and sells Roman menhirs at a cheaper rate. Anxious to sell off his stock of Gaulish menhirs and recover the money that was paid to the Gauls for them, Caesar imposes a ban on the sale of Roman menhirs. In protest the unemployed Roman menhir makers (actually slaves) block the Roman roads with menhirs. A slaveowner meets with Caesar and demands a lift of the ban saying that his employees are out of work because of the ban. A confused Caesar points out that it's ridiculous because the "employees" are slaves. The slaveowner replies: Exactly! The right to work is the only right a slave has. He must not be deprived of it! The ban is lifted in the face of a possible civil conflict and Preposterus suggests a price war to deal with the competition. But then menhirs from other countries such as Egypt and Greece start pouring in. Even the pirates are faced with the growing Menhir Crisis since (as revealed in the French version) every ship they attack contains nothing but menhirs and taking these stones away as loot causes their own ship to sink. Soon, even free menhirs are unwanted. Facing financial ruin, an angry Caesar then orders Preposterus back to Gaul to stop the menhir trade before it goes one stone further. Preposterus fears that the Gauls will not take this news lightly but Caesar tells him that if he does not comply with the order, he will find himself thrown to the lions in the arena. The Gaulish village meanwhile is unaffected by the Menhir Crisis since the centurion at the local camp has continued buying their menhirs in order to keep the peace. Obelix however is quite miserable: he has had too much of this tomfoolery with menhirs, markets, money, meat and mayhem, which he never understood at all. All the other menhir makers are now wearing garish clothes and he is demoralised. He wants to go back to the easy days of having fun with Asterix and Dogmatix and eating (an obvious comment on the dullness of corporate life). Asterix agrees to go hunting boar with him if he changes back into his old clothes, rather than the fancy ones he has been wearing. Asterix and Getafix then exchange winks: the next stage of the plan is approaching. Preposterus returns to Gaul and announces that he is not buying another menhir if his life depends on it (as it does). He thus turns down Unhygienix's delivery of menhirs. Although Fulliautomatix is apt to blame this on the fact that Unhygenix's menhirs have an odour of rotten fish, it becomes clear that even menhirs made by a cynical blacksmith do not suffice. When the men of the village notice that Obelix has himself called a halt, they criticize him on the wrongful grounds that he knew that the Romans were no longer buying menhirs and did not tell them. Annoyed by these accusations, Obelix starts a fight between the villagers. Asterix and Getafix are glad to see their friends back to their old ways. Asterix then ends the fight with the suggestion that they turn their anger on the Romans, since they started the whole thing. In gratitude for their earlier present, Obelix for once takes no part in the fight, allowing the other villagers to attack the Romans on their own. The Roman camp is wrecked, and so is Preposterus. Asterix wants to know what his neighbours will do with all their money. Getafix tells him that due to certain events in Rome the sestertius has devalued; in other words, the villagers are now stone-broke. But they hold a traditional banquet to celebrate the return to normality and a menhir proves useful in literally holding Cacofonix down.
2839582	/m/0861ky	Asterix and the Great Crossing				 Unhygienix is out of fresh fish (as always), which is carted overland in ox-drawn carts from Lutetia (Paris), and causing it to get unhealthy on the long trip, and Getafix says that he needs some for his potion. Asterix and Obelix borrow a boat from Geriatrix and go fishing. After a storm, they get lost, but despite Obelix's concerns, they do not reach the edge of the world; instead- following a brief encounter with the pirates-, they arrive on an island (which is actually North America) with delicious birds that the Gauls call "gobblers" (turkeys), bears and "Romans" with strange facial paintings (Indians). Soon they earn the "Romans"' affection, but they decide to leave after the "centurion" chooses Obelix as his rather rubenesque daughter's fiancé. They go to a small island. Seeing a boat coming, Asterix climbs a cairn of rocks holding a torch and a book like the Statue of Liberty to attract it. The crew are anachronistic Vikings (with names like Herendethelessen, Steptøånssen, Nøgøødreåssen, Håråldwilssen, Irmgard, Firegård, and their Great Dane, Huntingseåssen) - who managed a Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact and take the Gauls, who they thought to be the local natives, to their homeland as proof that there are continents beyond Europe. Their mutual desperation, the Gauls wanting to return home, and the Vikings' eagerness to prove their story of a new world, results in a trip back to Europe to the Vikings' homeland. The Vikings' chief, Ødiuscomparissen, greets them and is skeptical of their stories, until he sees the Gauls. They plan a celebration, then attempt to sacrifice the "natives", much to the chagrin of the other Vikings ("Why? They haven't done anything!"). Before this can be carried out, a Gaulish prisoner called Catastrofix, who can understand both Gallic and Norse, stirs up Ødiuscomparissen's suspicion that Herendethelessen is a liar, causing a fight between the Vikings with the assumption that Herendethelessen has simply gone to Gaul rather than to a new world. Meanwhile, the Gauls escape. This escape is conducive to their original purpose, since Catastrofix is a fisherman and hence able to procure some fish for the magic potion. Unhygenix, however, prefers the scent of his own stock; a preference that explains why his product is such a delicate and filthy topic.
2839587	/m/0861l9	Asterix and Caesar's Gift				 Having completed twenty years of service in the Roman Army, Veteran legionaries Tremensdelirious and Egganlettus await their honesta missio (Latin:honorary discharge) for the morning but that night Tremensdelirious expresses his opinion on Julius Caesar in his drunken state and gets arrested. The following morning Caesar is informed of Tremensdelirious's mishap the night before. Caesar suggests playing a practical joke. He will receive his honorary discharge after all but Caesar has a "special" gift for him. In the ceremony, Egganlettus receives a share in Nicaea and the still drunk Tremensdelirious receives his special gift: a Gaulish village in Armorica, the only territory of Gaul not yet conquered by the Roman legions. The village is inhabited by Asterix and his friends. Tremensdelirious sees little merit in a gift he cannot drink and attempts to sell his land share immediately, but Egglanlettus refuses, wanting to grow salad in Nicaea. A few days later Tremensdelirious is drunk again and is unable to pay the innkeeper. So, he offers his land share. The innkeeper, Orthapedix agrees to the bargain. Soon Orthapedix, his wife Angina and Influenza, their daughter, arrive at "their" new village only to be disappointed to find it already inhabited but hope the seal of Julius Caesar will convince the villagers to leave. They request a meeting with Vitalstatistix and state their claim. The village chief bursts into laughter and is soon joined by Asterix, Obelix and a number of villagers. Vitalstatistix dismisses their claim as absurd. Angina berates her husband for selling their inn to travel to Armorica. Vitalstatistix, decides to offer Orthapedix a chance to get out of his situation and informs him that their village has no inn and offers him a building for him to use next to the fish-stall. Obelix helps the new family and soon has a crush on Influenza. Geriatrix doesn't like Orthapedix, saying he isn't against Foreigners but he doesn't like ones that don't come from the Village. The opening night of the new inn, the villagers are invited to attend but the merriment seems to end when Vitalstatistix and his wife Impedimenta arrive. Impedimenta and Angina greet each other coldly and soon the two women enter an argument about who owns the village. Meanwhile a comment by Impedimenta about the smell of fish has set off Unhygienix and Fulliautomatix's rivalry. A fight starts with all the villagers present. The morning finds the inn abandoned except for the bruised Orthapedix, a sobbing Angina and Influenza. Orthapedix is ready to quit and return to Lutetia, but Angina wants to have revenge on Impedimenta and makes a claim to the leadership of the village on behalf of her husband. Vitalstatistix is shocked to have his long-held position challenged but soon has Cacofonix obtain an opinion poll of the villagers and the results are disappointing for Vitalstatistix. Soon both candidates and their families search for supporters by offering their markedly insincere voice of support to the individual concerns of each villager. The villagers become very involved in the political race. Geriatrix originally supports Vitalstatistix due to his distrust of Orthapedix, but then thinks the Chief is weak and tries to stand for Chief himself. Asterix, however, becomes worried that internal conflict could benefit the Romans. Meanwhile, Tremensdelirious arrives at the village to visit Orthapedix and explains that since their last meeting he unsuccessfully tried all kinds of trade. Thus he wants to claim his land share saying that veterans are not allowed to sell their shares to Gauls. The family attempts to throw him out but he draws the sword on the family. Meanwhile Astrix arrives and the two proceed in a demonstration of their swordsmanship. Asterix wins. Influenza is impressed by the diminutive Gaulish warrior and Tremensdelirious leaves. Tremensdelirious visits one of the four Roman camps surrounding the village and finds his old friend Egganlettus serving as an aide-de-camp under the local centurion, as he found retirement boring and signed up for another 20 years. With his support Tremensdelirious makes an official request on the centurion to restore a stolen land share to a veteran soldier. The centurion is rather reluctant to face the Gauls but the veterans threaten to report him to Caesar who would not like the Gauls taking advantage of his veterans. He agrees to prepare a military attack but Egganlettus has clearly fallen out of favor and his rank is reduced to Legionary second class. The following day, Influenza expresses her admiration to Asterix. A jealous Obelix feels betrayed by both his best friend and his love interest. Asterix attempts to express his concerns about the mysterious Roman from the previous day but it falls on deaf ears. Hence, Asterix decides to investigate the forest area himself and soon finds that in one of the Roman camps they are preparing siege weapons for an extended campaign. He listens to their plans but lacks the magic potion needed to end their preparations. The Romans see him, but are afraid to attack, enabling him to escape. However his escape means the Romans become convinced that the Gauls can no longer resist the Romans, thus Roman morale rises. Egganlettus is given his position back. Asterix returns to the village and attempts to sound the alarm, but the village pays no attention to him. Everybody is gathered to witness the public debate between Vitalstatistix and Orthapedix, with Cacofonix serving as a referee. When Vitalstatisix questions the impartiality of Cacofonix his allotted time is ended abruptly. While the debate is in progress, they are interrupted by rocks thrown into the village by the Roman catapults outside. Vitalstatistix begs for Getafix to give them magic potion but the druid refuses even though he must know the village is under attack. He is just too disgusted by the Gaulish in-fighting. There is a change of attitude in Orthapedix and Vitalstatistix and they stop fighting each other. Getafix approves of this and agrees to help them. Obelix single-handedly attacks the Romans and delays their attempts to enter the village. His efforts provide enough time for the potion to be prepared. The rival factions of villagers combine their efforts against the Romans and counterattack, demolishing the war machines. Orthapedix himself confronts Tremensdelirious and returns the stone tablet that claims ownership of the village and smashes it on Tremensdelirious' head. Egganlettus realizes his friend's treacherous nature and is furious and follows this up with a blow with a stick. This results on Tremensdelirious falling into unconsciousness with a very pronounced lump on the head. Both Gauls and Romans seem to want nothing more to do with him and his body is left on the field. The centurion has Egganlettus demoted to second-class legionary and assigns him to clean up the remains of the war machines with a mere broom. The Gauls are reconciled following their victory. A much more confident Orthapedix befriends his former rival who says he will make a good Chief, but he decides to withdraw his claim for leadership and return to Lutetia. Angina is about to object, but Orthapedix angrily puts her in her place, making it clear that the decision has been made and there is no room for argument. Now he has something to brag about to his brother-in-law. Impedimenta and Angina have nothing left to fight about. They exchange recipes and addresses of their relatives in Lutetia. Obelix mourns the loss of Influenza but is reconciled with Asterix, as they are no longer rival suitors. There is a victory celebration at night and everyone takes part. The narration claims that the events happened long ago, when such matters were not considered so important.
2839602	/m/0861nz	Asterix in Corsica				 In most editions of this book the map that is shown before the story begins does not present Gaul and a close-up of the village with the four surrounding Roman camps. Instead the reader is shown a map of Corsica and a multiple of camps around the coast-line. The story begins with a banquet celebrating the anniversary of Vercingetorix's victory at the Battle of Gergovia. As part of the celebrations, the indomitable Gauls attack the local Roman camps. As a result, most of the Roman soldiers go on special manoeuvres to avoid the punch-up. On this particular year various people who have helped the Gauls against the Romans in previous books have been invited along with their wives (this may be because this was the last story published in Pilote magazine, or because this was the 20th album). They include: *Petitsuix from Helvetia (Asterix in Switzerland), *Huevos Y Bacon and son Pepe from Hispania (Asterix in Spain), *Instantmix, the Gaulish restaurateur from Rome (Asterix the Gladiator), *Anticlimax from Britain alongside Dipsomaniax the tavern-keeper, McAnix the Scotsman, O'veroptimistix the Irishman, and Chief Mykingdomforanos (Asterix in Britain), *Drinklikafix of Massalia, Jellibabix of Lugdunum, Seniorservix from Gesocribatum (Asterix and the Banquet), *Winesanspirix and his wife from Gergovia (Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield). The Roman camp of Totorum, too, has visitors: three Roman soldiers escorting the Corsican leader Boneywasawarriorwayayix, exiled by Praetor Perfidius. He is left to spend the night in the Centurion's tent, to its owner's dismay. While the other camps are deserted, the Romans of Totorum have no option but to stay and be decimated by the Gauls and their friends, who discover Boneywasawarriorwayayix awakening from a long siesta (meaning sleep). The proud Boneywasawarriorwayayix attends the Gaulish banquet and leaves the next day for Corsica with Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix accompanying him. At Massalia, he hires a ship crewed by none other than Captain Redbeard and his pirates. When the passengers go aboard it is too dark for the captain and the Gauls to recognise each other. But when, in the middle of the night, the pirates attempt to rob the Corsican and his three companions, they recognize the sleeping Gauls and the entire crew vacates the ship in a rowboat. The following morning the passengers awake to find to their astonishment that the ship is deserted. Boneywasawarriorwayayix then invites the Gauls to share a pungent Corsican cheese. Not used to the strong smell, they feel unwell, but then the Corsican realises that they are off the coast of his native island, abandons the cheese and excitedly swims ashore. The arrival of the three men and dog is noticed by a Roman patrol. The Romans go to investigate the ship for anything suspicious, but find nothing. As they leave, the pirates arrive to reclaim their vessel. Unfortunately, the presence of a burning torch ignites the fumes from the Corsican cheese, blowing up the ship. A keen young Roman called Courtingdisastus captures the pirate captain and takes him as a prisoner before Praetor Perfidius in the Roman city of Aleria. From him the Romans learn that Boneywasawarriorwayayix, a known revolutionary leader, has returned from exile. Perfidius announces that he must be recaught and appoints Courtingdisastus leader of the party sent to recapture Boneywasawarriorwayayix. But in fact Perfidius has few illusions that the mission will be successful, and starts making his own plans to flee Corsica, leaving his men in the lurch and sailing away with all the loot he has purloined from the Corsicans. Courtingdisastus and his men go to Boneywasawarriorwayayix' village, but are faced by his second-in-command Carferrix, who intimidates them into fleeing. Meanwhile the Corsican leader and the Gauls travel through the maquis to a rendezvous where several clan chieftains are to gather and plan their attack on Aleria to recover the wealth the Praetor has extracted from them. The attack begins before Perfidius can make his escape. Boneywasawarriorwayayix then makes a proud and defiant speech stating that Corsica will never be ruled by an Emperor unless he is a Corsican himself. After the victory over the Romans, a vendetta between the clans of Boneywasawarriorwayayix and Olabellamargaritix, fought over various but complicated age-old issues, is settled by the diplomatic Asterix; though, when the Gauls leave, there are strong hints that other Corsican chieftains will resume the feud with Olabellamargaritix even if Boneywasawarriorwayayix has called his off. The Gauls return home with fond memories of their trip.
2839609	/m/0861pc	Asterix and the Soothsayer				 One stormy day, the Gauls — with the exception of Getafix, who is at his annual druid meeting — are huddled in the chief's hut, fearing for their lives. But then, a man enters the hut in a burst of lightning - it is a soothsayer, who promptly proceeds to see the future for our superstitious Gauls. He predicts that "when the storm is over, the weather will improve" and that there will be a fight (Revealed to be caused by the typical argument of Unhygenix's poor-quality fish, which he had provided for the soothsayer to examine the entrails). But not all are impressed; Asterix alone dares question the qualities of this soothsayer, who is in fact a fraud. Although Asterix can see this, not everyone is convinced, most notably Impedimenta, the chief's wife. Partly out of superstition and partly out of personal ambition, she convinces the soothsayer (known also by the name "Prolix") to remain in official hiding near the village, where she and the other villagers may question him at will. The only two whom she will not permit into the forest are Asterix and Obelix. Obelix in particular has a grudge against the soothsayer, who has threatened to kill Dogmatix in order to examine his guts for predictions of the future. When Obelix finally thwarts Impedimenta and enters the forest, he finds Prolix there and chases him up a tree. When he threatens to uproot it, Prolix puts him off by claiming to see a vision of a beautiful woman who loves warriors matching Obelix' description. Obelix returns to the village and almost instantly falls for Mrs. Geriatrix. Prolix meanwhile is arrested by a strictly rule-abiding Roman Optio (a senior officer). The Optio brings Prolix before the Centurion, who decides to make use of the imposter's persuasive voice. Back in the forest Impedimenta and Asterix have within moments of each other discovered the absence of the soothsayer, causing consternation among the villagers who were told by the soothsayer that the gods would put a curse on them if anything untowards happened to him. Being that Obelix has been beguiled by Prolix's ironically accurate description of Mrs. Geriatrix (not mentioned by name), Asterix finds himself standing alone. Prolix returns at that moment, claiming dramatically that soon the air in the village will become polluted by a divine curse. Terrified, most of the villagers leave their home, to wait on a nearby island for the curse to run its course, as if it were a quarantined virus. Asterix, Obelix, and Dogmatix stay behind (Although Obelix only remains when Dogmatix goes to join Asterix). The Romans soon arrive to claim the village, while Asterix and Obelix hide in the local undergrowth. Getafix the druid suddenly returns from his conference (which seems to be a facsimile of a twentieth-century scientific conference). Hearing of the situation, he concocts a witty plan by which to drive out the Romans and teach the villagers a lesson. Using a number of unidentified ingredients in his cauldron, the Druid literally raises such a stink that even the powerful Obelix is affected. The fumes spread to the village, expelling the Romans, Prolix, and Cacofonix the Bard who had sneaked back to find his lyre. He returns to the other Gauls on the island and for them his story confirms the soothsayer's genuineness. Prolix is baffled: the seeming fulfilment of his prediction has set him to wondering if he is becoming a real soothsayer. On the other hand, the appearance of the foul air has cemented the Centurion's faith in his oracle. He sends word to Caesar that all of Gaul is now conquered ("All?" "All."). But, like Crismus Bonus of Asterix the Gaul, he begins to desire the Imperial Throne for himself. To pass the time, therefore, he has the soothsayer tell him exaggerated stories of the luxuries emperors enjoy. Meanwhile, Getafix, Asterix and Obelix join the other villagers on the island. Here we see a reference to the priestly role of the Druid, when Vitalstatistix begs Getafix to "appease the anger of the Gods, which has fallen upon our poor village." To which Getafix replies "Nonsense!" and proceeds to demonstrate where the stinking fumes came from. Inspired by this, the villagers go home, while the Romans deal with their own problems. The Optio is himself confused, because even though the Centurion is convinced that Prolix is a genuine soothsayer, the Optio's own observations tell him otherwise. Though upright and law-enforcing, he is no intellectual and finds himself thoroughly perplexed by the simplest of contradictions. Even his inferior officers regard him as an "idiot". In the village, trouble is still present. Impedimenta and her fellow women are not convinced that Prolix was a cheat, partly because he only foretold pleasant things for them, such as a business partnership between Vitalstatistix and Impedimenta's brother Homeopathix, each of whom considers the other an arrogant dope. Asterix has an idea: to take the soothsayer by surprise and thus prove that his predictions are not genuine. To this end the Gaulish men and women attack the Roman camp together and when the Centurion demands to know why Prolix did not warn him of this, the fraudulent soothsayer admits that he had no idea that they were coming. This convinces Impedimenta who beats the Centurion and the soothsayer with a rolling pin, causing her husband Vitalstatistix to look on her with an almost patronizing pride. Returning to the village, the Gauls meet an envoy of Caesar's who has come to check on the Centurion's claim that the village is conquered. They beat him and his escort up. The envoy, Bulbus Crocus, goes to the camp and faces the Centurion: "AND LOOK WHAT YOUR CONQUERED GAULS DID TO US, BY JUPITER!" He reduces the centurion to a common soldier who is then commanded by the Optio to sweep out the camp alone, under orders to speak properly to a superior officer. Prolix, who has been taking a lot of yelling from the now-ex Centurion over being a fraud, leaves the camp swearing to give up soothsaying at the risk of having the sky fall on his head, whereupon Rain-God Taranis sends down a thunderstorm. The Gaulish village, however, is soon at peace, enjoying themselves for the present and not worrying about the future &mdash; with the exception of Cacofonix, who still dreams about being a famous singer.
2839614	/m/0861qg	Asterix and the Laurel Wreath				 The story begins in Rome where Asterix and Obelix are talking. Asterix is angry and frustrated and vents his annoyance on Obelix. To explain why they are in Rome, the story flashes back to Lutetia where Asterix, Obelix, Chief Vitalstatistix and his wife Impedimenta are on a shopping trip. The men are loaded with parcels and packages. Furthermore they are visiting Impedimenta's brother Homeopathix. Vitalstatistix dislikes Homeopathix, a rich, crass businessman who immediately shows off his wealth. Impedimenta is always reproaching Vitalstatistix for not matching this wealth or getting on with her brother. At dinner, Vitalstatistix quickly gets drunk and boasts that as a Chief he can obtain for Homeopathix something money cannot possibly buy: a stew seasoned with Caesar's laurel wreath. An equally drunk Obelix declares that Vitalstatistix is "ferpectly right" and volunteers himself and Asterix to fetch the wreath. The story now returns to Rome. Asterix and Obelix see a man coming out of Caesar's palace. Discovering that he is a slave there, they decide to offer themselves as slaves and go to the slave trader Typhus, who has only the best slaves to offer and who also supplies Caesar's palace. Typhus' other slaves are a rather snobbish, arrogant lot and their attitude soon provokes the Gauls into a fight. A man, whom Asterix believes is Caesar's major-domo, is amused and offers to buy them. However, he turns out to be Osseus Humerus, a wealthy patrician who has nothing to do with Caesar's household. The Gauls are placed under the supervision of Goldendelicius, Humerus' chief slave. Goldendelicius soon expresses his intense dislike of the two Gauls because they come from Typhus &mdash; which is a mark of distinction &mdash; and he does not and he is worried about his position as head slave. Disappointed that they have not made it into the palace, Asterix and Obelix make several disruptive attempts to have Humerus give them back to Typhus; they cook a very volatile stew, which accidentally cures Humerus' heavy-drinking son Metatarsus of his constant hangovers; and disturb the sleeping family by making a lot of noise, which only inspires them to throw a wild party. Humerus was due to go to Caesar's palace for a meeting with an official there. As a result of the party he has a bad hangover and tells the Gauls to go and tell the official that he cannot attend. Goldendelicius is still concerned that Asterix and Obelix will take over his job, so he slips away to the palace himself and tells the guards that the Gauls are planning to kill Caesar. As a result, Asterix and Obelix are thrown into the palace cells upon arrival. Under this advantageous situation, they break out during the night and comb the palace in search of the laurel wreath but to no avail. Frustrated and tired, they return to their cell, much to the confusion of the palace guards. Asterix decides that the only option is to find Caesar himself, since the laurel wreath is usually on his head. The next morning a lawyer comes to defend Asterix and Obelix, who are to face trial for the "attempt" on Caesar's life. It is already taken for granted that they will be found guilty and thrown to the lions in the Circus Maximus, which Caesar himself might attend. Since it is a show trial anyway, the lawyer decides to take advantage to show off his oratory skills. When the prosecutor announces that he is going to make the same speech, the defence lawyer calls for a suspension in proceedings. Anxious to be sentenced to the Circus in order to catch Caesar, it is Asterix himself who makes a passioned speech for the prosecution, outlining all the wrongdoings committed by himself and Obelix: the wrecking of Typhus' slave stand, the chaos in the Humerus household and the "plot" against Caesar. The whole audience, including Typhus and the Humeruses, is moved by this plea of guilty and the Gauls are sentenced to death in the Circus. In the cells, they are treated to first-class meals, and gifts are even sent by Typhus and Humerus. However, as they are about to enter the arena, Asterix and Obelix learn that Caesar is actually not present, having gone off to fight pirates. Stubbornly, the Gauls refuse to go into the arena until he returns, which results in the big cats in the arena eating each other, a mass riot of the audience, and everyone (including Asterix and Obelix and the last remaining lion) getting evicted from the circus. That night, Asterix and Obelix sleep inside a doorway, where they are spotted by a group of brigands. The latters' attempt to rob the two Gauls results in a thrashing for the bandits. Impressed, their chief Habeascorpus offers Asterix and Obelix a place to stay in return for their participation in their raids. The next night, the gang runs into a drunk who turns out to be Metatarsus. Refusing to allow them to attack an innocent, Asterix and Obelix thrash the bandits again. From Metatarsus the two Gauls learn that he has just been celebrating with Goldendelicius in a nearby tavern. Goldendelicius has been appointed as Caesar's personal slave, and Caesar himself is due to hold a triumph the very next day for his victory over the pirates. Asterix and Obelix corner Goldendelicius in the tavern (where he has fallen into a drunken sleep) and coerce him to exchange Caesar's laurel wreath for one made of parsley. The next morning, just before the triumph, Asterix and Goldendelicius secretly switch wreaths. The next day, during the triumph, Goldendelicius holds the wreath over Caesar's head, nervously worried that he'll notice that it is made of parsley. The dictator does not notice the switch, though he is puzzled as to why he secretly "feels like a piece of fish". Upon Asterix and Obelix's return, Homeopathix arrives in his brother-in-law's village in order to eat the stew with Caesar's laurel wreath. Vitalstatistix even states that a wealthy man like him would never be able to eat such a meal in his own house. Homeopathix "agrees" by sarcastically pointing out that it is overcooked and the meat in not up to the quality he expects at home. This causes Vitalstatistix to punch him sky-high in a fit of rage. Homeopathix lands in front of Cacofonix, who wonders if he was also banned from the feast because of singing. The novel also ends with the note that, with Asterix's cure for drunkenness now available to the Romans, it has begun a series of ever-increasing parties that will eventually result in the collapse of the empire.
2839622	/m/0861r6	The Mansions of the Gods				 With the intent to wipe out the Gaulish village by any means necessary, Caesar concocts a plan to absorb the villagers into Roman culture by having an estate built next to the village to start a new Roman colony. The colony is to be called the Mansions of the Gods. The project is led by the architect Squaronthehypotenus, who begins by getting an army of slaves of various races and countries to pull down the trees in the forest. With the help of Getafix's magic, Asterix and Obelix sabotage the plan by planting instant-growth trees, magically enhanced by one of druid Getafix's potions, thus repairing the damage. Obsessed with getting the work done, an increasingly erratic Squaronthehypotenus threatens to work the slaves to death. Taking this remark literally, Asterix gives them magic potion with which to fight back. Although the slaves, led by a Numidian called Flaturtha, do rise up in rebellion, they do not stop work and leave, as Asterix intended. Instead they insist on better working conditions, regular pay and being freed with the consent of their masters after completing the first building of the Mansions of the Gods (the negotiations seem similar to that of modern-day employers and trade unionists). Upon hearing that the slaves are getting better pay than they are, the Roman legionaries also go on strike demanding similar and better conditions for themselves (a common occurrence among French strikers). Since the freedom of the slaves depends on constructing at least one building, the Gauls allow the work to proceed after Flaturtha complains and Getafix says they should let the slaves proceed. After their release the slaves "float a company" with their wages and become the (almost) luckless pirates of other adventures. Finally, the first building of the Mansions of the Gods is built and inhabited by Roman families. One couple is forced to go, after the husband wins an apartment in a competition at the arena under coercion of getting eaten by lions if he refuses. These Romans then go shopping at the village which, before too long, turns into a market town with the inhabitants opening a variety of shops, antique and fish, to cater to the Romans. In addition, they start to engage in price wars, literally since there is an actual fist-fight over the issue. The villagers are in disunion and some are adapting to Roman ways, which was Caesar's intention. Bashing Roman soldiers is one thing, but Getafix insists that civilians are not to be attacked since they are in fact innocent pawns in Caesar's scheme. Thus Asterix comes up with an alternative plan to get the Romans to leave. He asks Sqaronthehypotenus for an apartment, but is told they are full up. Then the unlucky Roman couple mentioned earlier is continuously harassed by Obelix, who is acting like a rabid monster, with Asterix holding him back. This is enough for the terrified husband, and the next day the couple leaves and returns to Rome. No sooner have they gone that Asterix arranges for Cacofonix the bard to move into the vacated apartment. As a result of the bard's night-time practising, the rest of the Roman inhabitants are quick to return to Rome as well. Squaronthehypotenus tries to keep the place in business by bringing the local Roman soldiers in as tenants, and naturally expels Cacofonix from the building. The Gauls take this as an insult to their pride and bring the building down to the ground. The Mansions of the Gods are no more, and Squaronthehypotenus goes to Egypt to build pyramids in the desert. That evening the Gauls hold their usual celebratory banquet (in which Cacofonix takes part) and the ruins of the mansion ending up as picturesque parts of the woodland due to Getafix's treated seeds.
2839626	/m/0861rz	Asterix in Switzerland	Albert Uderzo			 Roman governor Varius Flavus of Condatum has been "setting aside for himself" (i.e.embezzling) a large majority of the taxes he collects in order to finance a debauched lifestyle of never-ending parties, sending only a pittance to Rome. Quaestor Vexatius Sinusitus is sent by Rome in order to investigate. Flavus finds that the stiff, no-nonsense Quaestor will not be easy to corrupt so, while pretending to co-operate, he serves him food laced with poison and provides an inept team of doctors who make absurd guesses at the cause of Sinusitus' distress. Realizing his life is in danger, Sinusitus sends for the druid Getafix. Getafix, who identifies the malady as attempted murder by poison, agrees to brew an antidote for Sinusitus. However, he requires an essential ingredient, a flower called the silver star (edelweiss), which only grows on the highest mountains of Helvetia. Getafix sends Asterix and Obelix to Helvetia (Switzerland) to retrieve the flower. He also insists that Sinusitus remain in their Gaulish village as a hostage as, he claims, in order to guarantee Asterix and Obelix's return. This is actually a ruse to get Sinusitus away from Flavus, whom Getafix understands is the would-be killer. Asterix and Obelix reach Helvetia but soon run into difficulties set by the Romans, as Varius Flavus has warned his colleague in Helvetia, the equally-corrupt Curious Odus, of their arrival. Thus the Gauls find themselves continually chased by the Romans, but they manage to get help from some courageous Helvetians, including the hotel manager Petitsuix (who has to dirty his hotel floor to cover up the Gauls' presence), Zurix the bank manager (Asterix and Obelix spend a night in one of his safes, though they break it and have to hide in another one) and some Helvetian veterans who hold a celebration at Lake Geneva. After some difficulties &mdash; including Obelix passing out from draining a whole cask of plum wine &mdash; the two Gauls manage to secure an edelweiss. A few days later, Varius Flavus comes to the village and asks how Sinusitus is doing, dropping hints that he should be executed. But Asterix and Obelix have returned to the village and made Getafix's antidote. Now cured, Sinusitus confronts Flavus and with the aid of some magic potion punches Flavus into the sky, announcing that he will now expose the corruption and that Flavus and Odus will be facing the lions in the Circus in Rome. The story ends with the usual banquet, with Sinusitus being the first Roman ever to participate.
2839630	/m/0861t3	Asterix and the Roman Agent				 The resistance of the Gaulish village against the Romans causes friction between dictator Julius Caesar and the Roman Senate, whose power has been reduced by Caesar. With their Magic Potion which gives them superhuman strength and is known only to their druid Getafix, they easily stand up against Rome and her laws. At a meeting with his associates it is suggested to Caesar that causing internal conflict between the Gauls will lead to their breakdown. He is then told by another Official about Tortuous Convolvulus, a natural troublemaker who used to live in an Insula owned by the Official and can cause dissension and stir up fights between anyone. These include the lions which were to devour him in the circus the other tenants got him sent to, which ended up eating each other. His mere presence even causes an argument and a fight between Caesar's associates. Impressed by his abilities Caesar sends him to deal with the Gauls. On the way Convolvulus causes fighting on the ship. The Pirates try to attack the ship, but are surprised the people on the ship are more occupied with fighting among themselves then the Pirates. Convolvulus then says he gave one of the Pirates a bag of gold in Rome and was told they would not attack. This causes the Pirates to fight which ends with the ship being scuttled. Meanwhile in the Gaulish village, unaware of all this, things are being organised for Chief Vitalstatistix's birthday, a celebration of friendship all round. One who is not looking forward to it is his own wife, Impedimenta, who complains about all the eating and drinking that will go with it as well as the burden of useless and non-valuable presents including a mounting collection of swords, shields, stuffed fish and menhirs with huge ribbons. Arriving in Gaul, Convolvulus moves into the nearby Roman camp of Aquarium and gets a description of the village inhabitants. He then goes to the village and quickly stirs up distrust between the Gauls: he gives a valuable vase to Asterix whom he describes as the "most important man in the village", to the outrage of Chief Vitalstatistix who considers himself the most important. The other villagers take this announcement seriously with Impedimenta having fights with the other women on the subject of who is the most important and then privately dismissing her husband as a failure. Further gossip and rumours lead to the belief by many in the village that Asterix, who is close to Getafix the druid, has sold the secret of the druid's Magic Potion to the Romans. Suspicion and paranoia becomes part of everyday life to the point that the banquet to celebrate the Chief's birthday is held in sullen silence. Leading this atmosphere of distrust are Fulliautomatix the blacksmith, Geriatrix the oldest inhabitant and their wives, one of whom goes so far as demanding to leave the area entirely. Convolvulus does not have the Magic Potion, but his whole plan rests on making the Gauls believe that he does. Through other tricks and deception, Convolvulus convinces the Gauls that their suspicions are well founded and that the Romans have the Magic Potion. His Psychological Warfare is misinterpreted by the large Legionary Magnumporus as hitting people with clubs. When Fullautomatix and Unhygenix go to the camp to check, they see 'potion' being given to Romans. Realising the Gauls are spying on them from Unhygenix giving of a smell of fish, Convolvulus has a small Legionary pretend to knock out Magnumporus, causing the two Gauls to flee back to the village. However his plan works a little too well when even the Roman troops of Aquarium believe that they have the Magic Potion and insist on drinking it, even though it is not actually available to them. The real turning point in his ruse however occurs when some of the deceived villagers openly voice their suspicions that Asterix and Getafix gave the secret of the Magic Potion to the Romans. This provides Asterix and Getafix with the excuse they need to announce a self-imposed exile and they leave the village with their heads held high. Obelix goes with them; he is himself confused as to whether or not the Romans have the Potion, but loyally sticks by his two best friends. They in fact intend to expose Convolvulus and teach the other Gauls a lesson in trust. The shock of their departure and their seeming helplessness against Roman attack has the villagers thinking they have acted foolishly. Asterix and Getafix confront Convolvulus and announce that they are leaving the area with Obelix and the Magic Potion. Taking them at their word, Convolvulus persuades the Roman commander, centurion Platypus, to attack the village. At first the Legion arms themselves with clubs, thinking this is Psychological Warfare, but Platypus orders them to arm properly. The Gauls take the Roman's fake potion back to the village, smashing through a row of Romans to get through. As the villagers suspect their folly, it is easy for Asterix, Getafix and Obelix to prove to them that the idea of the Romans having the Magic Potion was all due to trickery and deceit on Convolvulus's part. Convolvulus sees this and realises his trick has been discovered, causing him to tell Platypus. Getafix makes some Magic Potion while Platypus summons for reinforcements after Asterix and Obelix beat back his garrison. After drinking the real Magic Potion, the Gaulish villagers engage in a major battle with all four of the Roman garrisons that surround them. After winning the fight, they turn the tables on Convolvulus in an ingenious move: they thank him, treating him as one of their own, and give him the vase he gave Asterix earlier on. This tricks the Roman troops into believing that Convolvulus is a traitor who deliberately engineered their defeat and the vase is smashed as they arrest him. He is sent back to Rome for punishment, though that may be a case of easier said than done given that he retains his cunning and deceitful skills. Despite this, he has made no further appearances to date. In the village there are apologies all round and it is agreed to hold another birthday for Vitalstatistix and make up for the previous one which was held in moody silence. Asterix however decides that he is entitled to a little of his own back after being suspected of being a traitor himself. The next day he is seen being proudly carried on a shield by Obelix in the same way that Vitalstatistix usually goes about his business. In a manner that Convolvulus would be proud of, this leads to gossip that Asterix has been appointed Vitalstatistix's successor and an argument and a fight between the wives as to which of their husbands would make the better chief. The men soon join in and peace is only restored when Asterix claims that he was simply testing the shield that he intends to give to Chief Vitalstatistix. Getafix says that they can't be blamed, they are only human, and Obelix exclaims "These humans are crazy!". The story ends with the traditional banquet which doubles for a better celebration of Vitalstatistix's birthday.
2839632	/m/0861tj	Asterix in Spain				 A group of Iberian resistance fighters are holding out against the Romans, very much like Asterix's village, so the Romans kidnap Chief Huevos Y Bacon's son, Pepe. As the Romans are taking him to a garrison in Gaul (as it happens, it is one of the garrisons close the Gaulish village), Asterix and Obelix beat up the Romans under the command of the Roman officer Spurius Brontosaurus and take Pepe to their village. Obelix is assigned to take care of Pepe, but the boy proves to be highly taxing (especially in Obelix's opinion when Pepe and little Dogmatix take a shine to one another), so Asterix and Obelix are assigned to take him back home. Asterix, Obelix, Pepe and Dogmatix travel to Spain, but little do they know that Spurius Brontosaurus — who has returned to Iberia in the meantime — has spotted them and is now accompanying them in disguise to take Pepe back to Gaul. If Brontosaurus fails, it would mean being fed to the lions in the circus for him. Brontosaurus sees Asterix and Obelix beat up some bandits, so he plans to steal the magic potion. That night, when they are asleep, Brontosaurus steals the potion but is caught red-handed by Asterix, and in the subsequent chase both run into a group of Roman legionaries. The legionaries take Asterix and Brontosaurus to the commander-in-chief, who throws Asterix and Brontosaurus in the dungeon. In the circus of Hispalis they are both pitched against an aurochs. A woman drops her red cloak, so Asterix gets it. The aurochs keeps on charging at him, so he gets the cloak out of the aurochs's way to keep it from getting dirty, thereby introducing bullfighting. With his victory, Asterix is released, and Spurius Brontosaurus, discharged from the army, gladly decides to make his living as a bullfighter. Obelix has meanwhile brought Pepe back to his village. Asterix arrives at the village which is being besieged by Romans. In his eagerness to be re-united with Asterix, Obelix rushes through the Roman lines, scattering them all over the place. They then say a tearful goodbye to Pepe and the Iberians and return to Gaul for the usual banquet, Obelix giving a demonstration of Spanish dancing and singing that, it is hinted by Fulliautomatix (by muttering "A fish, a fish, my kingdom for a fish!") will lead to one of the typical internal fights in the Gaulish village.
2839651	/m/0861w_	Asterix and the Secret Weapon				 The story begins when a female bard named Bravura comes to the village to teach the children. She has been hired by the women of the village who think that Cacofonix, the current teacher of the village, is giving the children a poor education. Upon hearing this, Cacofonix leaves the village. When Bravura arrives, the women are stunned by her singing and the men laugh at it (the only difference between Bravura's singing and Cacofonix's is that when Bravura sings it does not rain). Bravura is insulted and wonders how the women put up with them. The next day Bravura asks Impedimenta about this, and tells her not to let her husband boss her around. Impedimenta then tells Vitalstatistix that since she is the chief's wife, she has as much power as he does. They both lose their tempers and Impedimenta hits Vitalstatistix. He then leaves the village, joining Cacofonix in the forest. Impedimenta is then made chief by majority vote (all the women vote for Impedimenta, but the men do not dare vote or even speak up against their wives). Meanwhile, Julius Caesar has another plan to take over the village of indomitable Gauls. His special agent for the task, Manlius Claphamomnibus, swears to bring the "secret weapon" over the ocean discreetly. Back at the village, the "woman dominance" has caught on to every family, basically destroying the village. Asterix, troubled by all of this from the start, is met by Bravura who tells him that if both of them settle down together they could become chiefs of the village. Asterix accuses her of coming to the village to do just that and loses his temper. Bravura picks Asterix up and kisses him, and Asterix hits her out of reflex, though he feels shame and regret immediately after. Asterix is brought before the new chief for breaking their laws by striking a woman, and is given temporary exile. Getafix objects to this, but Bravura argues with him, getting him angry and causing the druid to leave the village also. And not only does Obelix join them, but every other village man as well. The men actually have a good time in the forest, drinking beer and eating wild boar. Claphamomnibus's ship lands at Gaul, and he unleashes the secret weapon: female legionaries (strongly resembling amazons). Claphamomnibus's reasoning for the forming of this strange unit is that because of the Gaul warriors' code of chivalry, they cannot fight women and thus could be easily defeated. Asterix, while scouting the Romans, learns of the arrival of Claphamomnibus and his female legionnaries and is sent as an ambassador to warn the village women of the threat (they worriedly send clothes to their husbands via Asterix and Obelix, in case it gets cold at night in the forest). Bravura tries to meet the women as an ambassador, claiming that since they are all women, they are sisters. The Roman sentry pounds her and Claphamomnibus insults her. Asterix watches it all; he also sees her slapping Clapharmomnibus which gives the Gaul hero a new perspective about the lady bard. Asterix approaches Bravura with a plan to get rid of this new problem. Part of his plan is to have Cacofonix sing songs in the forest, causing it to rain and scaring off all animals such as rabbits and snakes (and in one scene even a dragon). This scares the female Roman scout parties, causing them to retreat many times. (Humorously Asterix' departure to talk to Bravura was misinterpreted by the men, who by their passed comments assumed he was proposing marriage.) The rest of the plan involves the women of the village setting up a mall with the latest styles and accessories from Lutetia, and thus when the Roman women arrive to attack the supposedly undefended village they immediately become absorbed in shopping. In the meantime, the men of the village take out the fortified camps filled with male legionaries; Obelix is even allowed to destroy one of the camps single-handedly, as acknowledgment that he has not been much involved with the storyline until that point. Finally, Cacofonix sings once again as the Roman women leave the village with their shopping, and the terrified women (along with the dragon) flee Gaul on their ship with Claphamomnibus left behind. The story ends with the Gauls in a good mood, and there seems to be a good mood in Rome as well, for Julius Caesar is the laughing stock of his nation for having had to hire women to defeat the Gauls, and, on top of this, it is again a failure. Bravura and Asterix settle their original angst and develop a regard for one other.
2839658	/m/0861xq	Asterix and Obelix All at Sea				 A band of one direction band gallery slaves under leadership of Spartakis (a parody of Spartacus) have taken over Julius Caesar's personal galley - much to its possessor's irking, for which he insults, then sends his no-good admiral Crustacius to recover the ship. After some arguing about a safe place to disembark, the slaves decide to set sail for the only place safe from the Romans: Asterix' small Gaulish village, as one of the slaves heard about it from a relative in Britain. Crustacius, hot in pursuit and ignorant of the Gauls' reputation, prepares to attack the village. The Gauls prepare for battle, but Obelix is yet again denied a drop of Getafix's magic potion. As the Gauls return triumphant from battle, they find Obelix has drunk the remaining cauldron of magic potion- Getafix having made two cauldrons just in case- and that this overdose has turned him into stone, which has also proven that it would be dangerous to drink more magic potion. The former galley slaves are granted refuge, and Getafix tries desperate measures to return Obelix to his normal state. He tries potions and things that stimulate his emotion (wild boar cooked by Impedimenta and a kiss from Panacea), and finally Obelix recovers from his stone state - but as a child. Obelix has also lost his old strength, leaving him feeling useless as he now cannot lift menhirs or eat boars in the same quantity that he is used to doing so. He is kidnapped by Roman soldiers while trying to run away to the forest, and made a slave by the Officer. The former slaves travel with Asterix, Dogmatix and Getafix to rescue Obelix who is en route to Rome by galley under Crustacius' supervision. When they recover Obelix on the high seas, Getafix proposes Atlantis as their next destination in order to help Obelix recover his adult shape. After dropping off Crustacius and his adjutant with the ever-returning pirates- who are also offered Caesar's galley to bring back to Rome for a reward, as a compensation for Asterix having (this time, accidentally) sunk their ship-, Getafix brings them to the remnants of Atlantis (the Canary Islands), where the Atlantides have found eternal youth, in the hope that they can restore Obelix's true appearance. Unfortunately, the Atlantides have no means to help, only knowing how to make someone younger, not older, so the Gauls head back to the village, while the freed slaves decide to live at Atlantis as children forever, finally being free from Rome. On their way back, the Gauls are intercepted by yet another Roman galley. Asterix is incapacitated by a catapult stone, and when the Romans want to feed him to the sharks after throwing the gourd of potion into the Ocean all seems lost. Seeing his friend in danger provokes so much emotion that it triggers Obelix to transform within seconds to his former self. With all his conserved aggression from being bossed around the entire album, he first drives off the attacking Roman galley (causing surprise to Getafix when he climbs back onto the boat having dived in to recover the potion), then smashes the Roman outpost near the village before returning for the traditional village feast. As for Crustacius, the story ends like this: When swapping Caesar's galley with the pirates for another ship, Asterix and Getafix had accidentally left the magic potion they had taken along for the trip aboard. When Crustacius gets a sip of it just before Ostia, he easily gets rid of the pirates. But when he realizes the nature of his drink and plans to overthrow Caesar, he commits the same mistake as Obelix and is turned into a statue himself, and his adjutant's dream of getting a promotion for bringing back the ship is dashed when some over-eager soldiers fire flaming ballista bolts against the supposed pirate vessel. The statue of the admiral ends up in the Circus Maximus for the lions- with the adjutant and the soldiers reduced to sweeping the arena-, with Caesar expressing his hopes to a baffled Cleopatra that one day the lions may actually develop a taste for granite after all...
2839667	/m/0861ys	Asterix and the Actress				 For Asterix and Obelix' birthday party, their parents have decided to come from Condatum. Their mothers have already arrived, bringing a fabulous Roman sword and helmet as presents, and they immediately fuss about why their sons are still single; their methods to rectify the situation, however, bring little happiness to their offspring. Meanwhile, however, Asterix and Obelix' fathers - who run a 'modernities' store in Condatum - have inadvertently got themselves into a tight spot: an alcoholic legionary veteran (Tremensdelirius from Asterix and Caesar's Gift) has pawned a helmet and a sword in their shop - the personal weapons of Pompeius, Caesar's enemy, which are now in Asterix and Obelix's possession. Of course, their rightful possessor wants them back, and to this end he employs one of his agents, Decurion Fastandfurious, and a gifted tragic actress named Latraviata. Disguised as Panacea, Obelix's love interest, who is allegedly suffering from amnesia, Latraviata is to infiltrate the Gaulish village and retrieve Pompeius's weapons. However, the real Panacea and her husband Tragicomix soon discover that Asterix and Obelix's fathers have been imprisoned by Pompeius, and they immediatedly travel to their village to warn their friends. On their way they run into Latraviata and Fastandfurious, who have left the village with Asterix and Obelix (who have not yet realized what was going on) in pursuit, and the game is exposed. Fastandfurious is "menhired", Pompeius's weapons are returned to the two friends (with some "slight" damage from menhir pressure), and Asterix and Obelix race to Condatum to free their fathers and to give Pompeius a run for his money. At the end of the story Latraviata is the first actress ever to receive an award for Outstanding Performance, which is believed to how the César Award was born.
2843754	/m/086b3p	The Mystery of the Fire Dragon	Carolyn Keene	1961	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy Drew is called to New York by her Aunt Eloise to solve a missing-person case. The granddaughter of her elderly Chinese author neighbor, Mr. Soong, has been kidnapped. The search is on, first by disguising Nancy's friend George Fayne as the missing Chi Che, and then pursuing a lead at Chi Che's place of employment, a book store, where Nancy encounters its suspicious owner. Nancy decides to visit the store again but as she goes along the sidewalk, Nancy is knocked-out by a falling vase which hits her on the head. While Nancy is unconscious, Bess and George take up the mystery and a red haired man is quickly arrested. A series of clues lead the girls to Hong Kong, where Nancy's boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, joins the action. Nancy foolishly follows "Chi Che" on board a plane, and is herself kidnapped. Ingenious Nancy uses her lipstick to signal for help on the plane windows. After her rescue, she follows more clues to an international smuggling ring, and, utilizing a disguised George once again, forces the thieves out of hiding and has the chance to finally locate the missing girl.
2844257	/m/086cd6	The Chequer Board	Nevil Shute		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is a multi-part story telling of the experience of one John (Jackie) Turner, whom the doctors have given just one year to live due to injuries sustained in a wartime plane crash. Turner decides to use his remaining time to trace the men he got to know while recovering in hospital. The men were: *Flying Officer Phillip Morgan - the plane's British pilot. *Corporal Duggie Brent - a young British Commando, accused of murder. *Pfc Dave Lesurier - a black American serviceman, accused of attempted rape, in hospital after cutting his own throat while being pursued. As the story unfolds, we learn that charges against Lesurier were dropped after an Army investigation and that he later returned to the English town near which he was stationed during the war. He marries the girl he was courting and becomes a draughtsman. Brent is also acquitted of murder but served six months for manslaughter after a brilliantly defended court-martial - he is later found living close to Lesurier and working as a meat vendor. Morgan relocates to Burma and becomes a successful businessman, married into a strong local community. Turner is contented by the thought that each man, who had helped with his recovery after the plane crash, had managed to make a good life in his own way. The novel ends with what will be his last visit to the medical specialist. Underlying the novel is the Buddhist belief in reincarnation and redemption. Although a thief and someone with a shady past, it is indicated that Turner, through his attempts to help his fellow passengers and his acceptance of his death, has attained Nirvana.
2845808	/m/086g6h	The Simulacra	Philip K. Dick	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the middle of the twenty-first century, The Simulacra is the story of several protagonists within the United States of Europe and America (USEA), formed by the merger of (West) Germany and the United States, where the whole government is a fraud and the President (der Alte, "the Old Man") is a simulacrum (android). As well as the USEA, other global superpowers are the French Empire, People's Republic of China and Free (Black) Africa. There is some mention of a World War Three, which may have involved some tactical nuclear weapons, and a possibility that the Soviet Union exists. Communism still exists, but Poland has become its global centre of authority, with its administrative centre now based in Warsaw. Society is stratified into 'Ges' (German Geheimnisträger, "bearers of the secret" (the elite)) and 'Bes' (German Befehlsträger, "implementers of instruction" (professional and artisanal)) classes, and there is conspicuous consolidation of political and broadcast media power. The Democratic and Republican Parties merged into a single party, the 'Democrat-Republican Party' and the 'United Triadic Network' presumably resulted from an amalgamation of NBC, CBS and ABC. In addition, actual political power has devolved to a permanent First Lady, Nicole Thibodeaux, whose consorts are a series of male presidents – die Alten. While the current der Alte, Rudi Kalbfleisch, is a simulacrum, "Nicole" is human, although the original Nicole Thibodeaux died several decades ago. Since the death of the original, her role has been portrayed by four consecutive actors, and the latest such figure is Kate Rupert. This is a Geheimnis (secret), and insider possession of this secret is enough to insure elite membership through conferral of Ges status. A secretive governing council controls the USEA, although 'Karp und Söhne Werke', as manufacturers of the current der Alte-simulacrum, exerts some power. The next simulacrum contract, for Dieter Hogbein, however, will be given to 'Frauenzimmer Associates', and Karp und Söhne is unhappy about this new contractual arrangement. One subplot involves the Karp und Söhne Werke threatened exposure of what has been a state secret over the last five decades. Nicole dislikes Kalbfleisch, although inbuilt obsolescence means that he is about to suffer an obligatory heart attack and he will be replaced in his turn. Kalbfleisch only momentarily appears in this novel. Doctor Egon Superb encounters additional difficulties because A. G. Chemie, the leading USEA psycho-pharmaceutical drug cartel, has engineered the prohibition of psychotherapy under the "MacPhearson Act." However, the USEA is willing to let him continue to practice, and treat Richard Kongrosian, a well known pianist who performs in the White House. Richard Kongrosian believes that his body odor is lethal; this belief is delusional, he has no such body odor. Kongrosian has telekinetic abilities: he can play piano using only his mind. Nicole Thibodeaux is anxious to keep his abilities under control, as are Wilder Pembroke, head of the National Police, and members of the covert national governance council. Bertold Goltz (an alleged neofascist) is seemingly trying to overthrow the government, and runs the 'Sons of Job', a religious paramilitary organisation, although he is not what he seems, and is secretly head of the covert USEA governing council. In addition, there is a subplot that involves Charles (Chic) Strikerock, Vince, his brother and a cut-price colonisation spacecraft sales firm (known as "Loony Lukes") involved in Martian colonisation. Mars boasts insectoid life, the sentient and empathic 'papoola', while Ganymede is inhabited by multicellular primitive life forms. Nothing is as it seems, and the novel ends inconclusively. The der Alte-simulacrum has been revealed as an android and Kate/Nicole has been disclosed as an impostor- therefore undoing the Geheimnis (secret) raison d'etre for ges/bes class stratification. Bertold Goltz is killed by a National Police detachment, as is the rest of the covert governing council. Using telekinesis, Kongrosian kills Pembroke before he can overthrow Nicole in a coup d'etat and teleports her to safety at his secluded Northern US home. Karp und Sohnen rebel against the abortive coup, however, and soon the National Police and USEA armed forces are engaged in civil war, with active use of low-yield nuclear weapons. Recrudescent Neanderthals (or "chuppers") seem happy at this turn of events, as they gather near Kongrosian's home: the imminent self-destruction of Homo sapiens might give them another opportunity to dominate Earth.
2846264	/m/086h70	HMS Ulysses	Alistair MacLean	1955	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel features HMS Ulysses, a light cruiser that is extremely well armed and among the fastest ships in the world. (Ulysses is similar to the real Dido-class cruisers. MacLean had served in of that class.) Her crew is pushed well beyond the limits of endurance and the book starts in the aftermath of a mutiny. Ulysses puts to sea again to escort FR-77, a vital convoy heading for Murmansk. (The fictitious convoy FR-77 is based on the ill-fated convoy PQ-17.) They are beset by numerous challenges: an unusually fierce Arctic storm, German ships and U-boats, as well as air attacks. All slowly reduce the convoy from 32 ships to only five. The Ulysses' is sunk in a failed attempt to ram a German cruiser after all her other weapons had been destroyed. This echoes events in which British G-class destroyer and HMS Jervis Bay, an armed merchant cruiser, sacrificed themselves by engaging larger opponents. The book uses a set of events to paint moving portrayals of the crew and the human aspects of the war. His heroes are not especially motivated by ideals, they rarely excel at more than one task and they are outfoxed by a respectable enemy. It is only their resilience, as they redefine the word, that pushes this bunch of seamen to genuine acts of heroism. The realism of the descriptions, the believable motivations of the characters and the simplicity of the line of events make the story all the more credible, though the number of coincidental accidents that plague the crew are startling, robbing them of any real victory.
2846537	/m/086hyp	Tunnel Through the Deeps	Harry Harrison	1972	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In an alternative history, the United States lost the American Revolutionary War, George Washington was shot as a traitor, and America is still, in 1973, under the control of the British Empire. The divergence point between this world and our own occurred far earlier, however, when the Moors won the battle of Navas de Tolosa on the Iberian peninsula, on July 16, 1212. Thus it was that Spain was unable to become unified, owing to the survival of an Islamic presence in its territory, and therefore could not finance the expedition of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Instead, it was John Cabot who discovered America, just a few years later. The protagonist, Captain Augustine Washington, is a direct descendant of George Washington, and labors in his 'traitorous' shadow. Captain Washington and Sir Isambard Brassey-Brunel (descendant of Isambard Kingdom Brunel) get together to link the heart of the British Empire with its far-flung Atlantic colony in North America, although they fall out over Augustine's wooing of Isabard's young daughter, Iris, and as a result of disputes over engineering techniques. However, the two are reconciled on Sir Isambard's deathbed, and the lovers later marry. Detective Richard Tracy also makes an appearance, as do 'Lord' Amis and 'Reverend' Aldiss.
2846549	/m/086hzq	Herr Lehmann	Sven Regener	2001		 Frank Lehmann will soon turn 30 years old which is why all his friends tease him by calling him by his last name, Herr Lehmann. He works in a bar in Kreuzberg and drinks a lot of beer. Episodes in the story include his daily life in Kreuzberg; his parents' visit to Berlin; his love affair with Katrin, the beautiful cook; taking care of his best friend Karl, who slowly goes insane; and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
2847098	/m/086jz0	Two Steps From Heaven	Mikhail Evstafiev			 The events of the novel take place in the mid-1980s during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and soon after the troop withdrawal, back in the then Soviet Union. It is a stirring account of the trials of Lieutenant Oleg Sharagin, a platoon commander in the elite Soviet airborne forces, his fellow officers and soldiers. It also portrays the ordinary Afghans who suffered enormously under the Soviet occupation. Sharagin survives many combat operations but is critically wounded just a few months before the end of his tour of duty when his platoon is ambushed in the course of a major offensive against the Mujahideen. He is evacuated to a hospital in Kabul, undergoes surgery, and finally finds himself reunited with his family. But back home he realizes his military career is over. The war haunts Sharagin and the pain caused by the wound turns his life into a nightmare, leading to a dramatic finale. The novel is a good example of Russian "accurate fiction." It puts a human face on the Soviet soldier without sparing the gory details, like the hard to comprehend top-down authority and license for physical punishment and humiliation within the Russian army, the mental suffering which young soldiers and officers endured during their catastrophic experience in Afghanistan, or the gruesome killings of innocent Afghan civilians. The novel first came out in Russian in 1997 in an abridged version. In 2006, it was published by Eksmo, one of the largest publishing houses in Russia. The Russian and English versions can also be found on "Art of War" http://artofwar.ru/e/english/, a project dedicated to the soldiers of the recent wars, which was created in 1998 by Afghan war veteran Vladimir Grigoriev. It features short stories, novels, poetry and essays by veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya, as well as in the Middle East, Nagorno-Karabakh, Yugoslavia and contributions from veterans of the Vietnam and Korea wars. ru:В двух шагах от рая (роман)
2847572	/m/086l0b	And Having Writ…	Donald R. Bensen	1978	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 According to the novel, the Siberian explosion was originally caused by the crash landing of the spaceship Wanderer. In this alternate reality, however, the alien astronauts are able to commandeer their failing vessel so that it lands in the Pacific Ocean, just outside of San Francisco. Shortly after landing, the quartet of spacemen are rescued from the sea by an American ship and taken to California. The Wanderer sinks into the ocean, and the team reasons that they must find a way to accelerate Earth’s technological advances so that they can get back home. The eventual conclusion they arrive at is that they must provoke the planet into what Ari says as an inevitable global conflict, one that, through weaponry innovations, will result in boom of new science and industry.
2848492	/m/086n1r	Space Opera	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On Earth, audiences are entranced by the musical entertainments staged by an alien troupe, the Ninth Company of the planet Rlaru. Dame Isabel Grayce (one of a long line of formidable society matrons in Vance’s works) has sponsored the entertainments; when the Ninth Company disappears without a trace, she proposes to recoup her losses and bring culture to the wastes of space by forming an opera company which Adolph Gondar (the discoverer of Rlaru) will pilot on a tour of suitable planets, with Rlaru as ultimate destination. Singers, orchestra, a British conductor (Sir Henry Rixon) are engaged; an argumentative critic, Bernard Bickel, who thinks the Ninth Company were fakes, is hired as musical consultant. Dame Isabel’s indolent and aptly named nephew Roger Wool (one of a long line of Vancian put-upon nephews) tags along also, smuggling his new girlfriend Madoc Roswyn, who claims to be a simple girl from Merioneth in Wales, aboard the ship as a stowaway. Like many of Vance’s works, the novel is a picaresque; Gondar has his own reasons for not returning to Rlaru, and diverts the company half way round the galaxy, with various adventures or humiliations occurring on the different planets they touch down on. (There are some similarities with Vance’s later novel Showboat World, which has a travelling company presenting performances of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to generally uncomprehending audiences along an immense river on a distant planet.) Over the course of the voyage, the company stages several celebrated works, such as Beethoven’s Fidelio, Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Così fan tutte, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Flying Dutchman. These are performed before various human or non-human audiences, the libretti and costumes sometimes having to be adapted to become understandable to alien cultures. On the whole, due to such cultural disparities, their reception is far from that expected by Dame Isabel: on a penal colony planet, for instance, the performances are made the cover for a jail-break; on a planet inhabited by a race priding themselves on their musical talents, the productions are vetted by an artistic inspector and the company is fined for every unresolved dissonance in the scores performed; on still another, the performance is mistaken for a trade exhibition and the aliens attempt to buy some of the singers. While Gondar is confined to his cabin, apparently insane, Madoc Roswyn induces his deputy to take the ship to the distant planet Yan. It emerges that her remote ancestors inhabited a land now sunk beneath the Bay of Biscay whose people had colonized that planet and there developed a high civilization. (Here we detect the germ of Vance’s later major fantasy trilogy Lyonesse, the heroine of whose third volume is named Madouc.) A group had returned to Earth thousands of years later, but their spacecraft was destroyed and they were forced to settle in Wales, ever intending to return to Yan. Madoc is their last descendant. She is disappointed by what she finds: Yan’s cities are dust and its folk have reverted to barbarism, hiding in the forests. Although the company present Debussy's Pelléas to try to establish communication with the unseen inhabitants, they barely escape with their lives. Eventually the voyage ends at Rlaru. It turns out that Gondar had abducted the Ninth Company from the planet; he is suitably punished by the natives, who demonstrate a capacity to creatively manipulate illusion and environment far beyond anything their Earth visitors can achieve. They listen to several operas with mounting boredom, but are utterly entranced by an impromptu washboard jazz band formed by some members of the crew, which has been a source of annoyance to the opera-lovers throughout the voyage. (Vance was at one time a jazz musician.) Dame Isabel returns to Earth, chastened but determined not to admit it; Roger marries Madoc Roswyn and begins writing a book describing the voyage.
2849115	/m/086pns	In the Wet	Nevil Shute		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is opened by its initial narrator - an Anglican priest named Roger Hargreaves - who describes his ordinary circumstances in a large parish of the Australian outback in 1953. As part of his duties, he has to minister the dying and this brings him into contact with an aged, alcoholic, opium smoking, diseased, ex-pilot and ex-ringer named Stevie. Caught in Stevie's squalid cabin in a heavy rainy season, Hargreaves struggles with recurring malaria whilst on deathwatch for Stevie. As both men are in altered mental states the story shifts and Stevie becomes David 'Nigger' Anderson, a decorated member of the Royal Australian Air Force, telling his story to Hargreaves. But this is a story yet to happen - in 1983, to be exact. 'Nigger' (the name is used quite unselfconsciously and in a manner which may make the modern reader uncomfortable) is a quadroon, of mixed European and Aboriginal ancestry. As a first rate pilot he is chosen by his country to be a member of an elite test pilot team in the UK. Although of humble origins, Nigger has advanced quickly in the RAAF and is soon offered a position commanding one of two aircraft of the Queen's Flight. The England of the 1983 in the story is a technically advanced country that has been abused and bled dry by Socialism. Austerity is the watchword, and rationing is still in force. It is an England in which the Royal Family is both revered, and abused - revered by the common people, and abused by politicians who use them as whipping boys for the economic woes of England. When the politicians attempt to control the foreign travel of the monarch by curtailing her use of government aircraft, the Canadian and Australian governments each donate a modern jet transport to the Queen's Flight, provide for operating expenses, and furnish crews. Nigger is chosen as the captain of the Australian plane. Both Canada and Australia are heavily royalist countries, and Nigger is shocked at one point by the suggestion that Australia could become a republic. Both are democracies, though subject to the "multiple vote"--everyone gets one vote, but other votes can be earned by individuals, up to a maximum of seven. Nigger himself has three votes in Australian elections. At first absorbed by the job, Nigger slowly becomes aware of what is going on around him. He sees the Secretary of State for Air, Lord Coles, inspect the advanced aircraft, and insist that a signal gun be placed in the radio-equipped aircraft in case it needs to land in a field. The Prime Minister, Iorweth Jones, is more intelligent, but only interested in scoring political points. The Royal family, though, is delighted at the gift of the aircraft, and the middle-aged Queen and Consort come down to inspect them. Nigger repeatedly meets, and slowly falls for, a junior secretary to the Queen, Rosemary, daughter of an Oxford don, who is assigned to help streamline the administrative aspects of the Commonwealth aircraft joining the Queen's Flight. Nigger learns of the difficult political situation the Queen is faced with. The Queen's visit to Canada in the Canadian craft coincides with another attack on the Royal Family by Labour politicians. The Prince of Wales has Nigger fly him to Ottawa so he can meet with the Queen. It is later made clear that the Prince carries an ultimatum from himself and his sister (the Queen has only two children)--they will not take the job of monarch as it now stands. Nigger is ordered to fly the Queen and her entourage, including Rosemary not back to England, but on to Australia to meet with politicians there. En route, they have a lengthy refueling delay on Christmas Island, allowing the Queen to relax a bit—until local officials show up with their wives, in formal dress. Nigger, struck with food poisoning, dreams of the scene with Hargreaves and Stevie in the cabin in the wet. After he recovers, the party move on to Australia. The Queen meets not only with current Australian politicians but with elder statesmen Sir Robert Menzies and Arthur Calwell. After the meetings, the Queen is flown back to England but ground control diverts the flight hundreds of miles to Yorkshire on the pretext that the Australian airmen are not qualified to land at a commercial airport - Heathrow - in poor weather. In reality the Australian and Canadian crews which have been trained by BOAC are well qualified to make the landing and the diversion to Yorkshire is apparently for no other purpose than to cause the Queen inconvenience. After Royal intervention the crews are all granted accreditation as civil aviators without further ado. Nigger asks Rosemary to marry him, but she refuses so long as the Queen needs her. Rosemary arranges for Nigger to meet her father, a political scientist, who inadvertently spills the beans of what the Queen is contemplating doing to make the monarchy bearable for her and her family—Britain is to have a Governor General who will deal with the politicians, while the monarch devotes herself to Commonwealth affairs. The Queen announces this on her Christmas broadcast, and makes it clear that she and her family will not return to Britain without the country having undergone political reforms, meaning the multiple vote. Though David takes every precaution to protect the aircraft, which takes off with the Queen soon afterwards, a sixth sense, deriving from his Aboriginal heritage, tells him something is wrong. He searches the party's luggage, and finds a sealed metal box, obviously a bomb. It seems impossible to get the box outside due to winds, but through skilled flying, he is able to create the right conditions. The Queen swears all to secrecy, and awards David the Seventh Vote, given only by Royal commission. The party makes it to Australia safely. Meanwhile, in Britain, the new Governor General has summoned Parliament to debate the multiple vote. Prime Minister Jones' government falls, and a new government, still Labour, is expected to institute the political reform. Now that the Queen is no longer in a crisis situation, Rosemary can leave the royal employment and marry David. In an epilogue, the framing story resumes. Stevie has died peaceably and an exhausted Hargreaves tries to separate dream from reality. This becomes more difficult when the child who will grow to be Nigger is presented to him for christening.
2853892	/m/086_55	Zeno's Conscience	Italo Svevo	1923		 The novel is presented as a diary written by Zeno (who claims that it is full of lies), published by his doctor. The doctor has left a little note in the beginning, saying he had Zeno write an autobiography to help him in his psychoanalysis. The doctor has published the work as revenge for Zeno discontinuing his visits.The diary, however, does not follow the chronological order; instead, it is structured in large chapters, each one developing a particular theme (The smoke addiction, My father's death, History of my marriage and so on). Only the last chapter is a real diary, with pages related to single dates in the period of the First World War. Zeno first writes about his cigarette addiction and cites the first times he smoked. In his first few paragraphs, he remembers his life as a child. One of his friends bought cigarettes for his brother and him. Soon, he steals money from his father to buy tobacco, but finally decides not to do this out of shame. Eventually, he starts to smoke his father's half-smoked cigars instead. The problem with his "last cigarette" starts when he is twenty. He contracts a fever and his doctor tells him that to heal he must abstain from smoking. He decides smoking is bad for him and smokes his "last cigarette" so he can quit. However, this is not his last and he soon becomes plagued with "last cigarettes." He attempts to quit on days of important events in his life and soon obsessively attempts to quit on the basis of the harmony in the numbers of dates. Each time, the cigarette fails to truly be the last. He goes to doctors and asks friends to help him give up the habit, but to no avail. He even commits himself into a clinic, but escapes. When Zeno reaches middle age, his father's health begins to deteriorate. He starts to live closer to his father in case he passes away. Zeno is very different from his father, who is a serious man, while Zeno likes to joke. For instance, when his father states that Zeno is crazy, Zeno goes to the doctor and gets an official certification that he is sane. He shows this to his father who is hurt by this joke and becomes even more convinced that Zeno must be crazy. His father is also afraid of death, being very uncomfortable with the drafting of his will. One night, his father falls gravely ill and loses consciousness. The doctor comes and works on the patient, who is brought out of the clutches of death momentarily. Over the next few days, his father is able to get up and regains a bit of his self. He is restless and shifts positions for comfort often, even though the doctor says that staying in bed would be good for his circulation. One night, as his father tries to roll out of bed, Zeno blocks him from moving, to do as the doctor wished. His angry father then stands up and accidentally slaps Zeno in the face before dying. His memoirs then trace how he meets his wife. When he is starting to learn about the business world, he meets his future father-in-law Giovanni Malfenti, an intelligent and successful businessman, whom Zeno admires. Malfenti has four daughters, Ada, Augusta, Alberta, and Anna, and when Zeno meets them, he decides that he wants to court Ada because of her beauty and since Alberta is quite young, while he regards Augusta as too plain, and Anna is only a little girl. He is unsuccessful and the Malfentis think that he is actually trying to court Augusta. He soon meets his rival for Ada's love, who is Guido Speier. Guido speaks perfect Tuscan (while Zeno speaks the dialect of Trieste), is handsome, and has a full head of hair (compared with Zeno's bald head). That evening, while Guido and Zeno both visit the Malfentis, Zeno proposes to Ada and she rejects him for Guido. Zeno then proposes to Alberta, who is not interested in marrying, and he is rejected by her also. Finally, he proposes to Augusta (who knows that Zeno first proposed to the other two) and she accepts, because she loves him. Very soon, the couples get married and Zeno starts to realize that he can love Augusta. This surprises him as his love for her does not diminish. However, he meets Carla, a poor aspiring singer, and they start an affair, with Carla thinking that Zeno does not love his wife. Meanwhile, Ada and Guido marry and Mr. Malfenti gets sick. Zeno's affection for both Augusta and Carla increases and he has a daughter named Antonia around the time Giovanni passes away. Finally, one day, Carla expresses a sudden whim to see Augusta. Zeno deceives Carla and causes her to meet Ada instead. Carla misrepresents Ada as Zeno's wife, and moved by her beauty and sadness, breaks off the affair. Zeno goes on to relate the business partnership between him and Guido. The two men set up a merchant business together in Trieste. They hire two workers named Luciano and Carmen (who becomes Guido's mistress) and they attempt to make as much profit as possible. However, due to Guido's obsession with debts and credit as well as with the notion of profit, the company does poorly. Guido and Ada's marriage begins to crumble as does Ada's health and beauty. Guido fakes a suicide attempt to gain Ada's compassion and she asks Zeno to help Guido's failing company. Guido starts playing on the Bourse (stock exchange) and loses even more money. On a fishing trip, he asks Zeno about the differences in effects between sodium veronal and veronal and Zeno answers that sodium veronal is fatal while veronal is not. Guido's gambling on the Bourse becomes very destructive and he finally tries to fake another suicide to gain Ada's compassion. However, he takes a fatal amount of veronal and dies. Soon thereafter, Zeno misses Guido's funeral because he himself gambles Guido's money on the Bourse and recovers three quarters of the losses. Zeno describes his current life. It is during the Great War and his daughter Antonia (who greatly resembles Ada) and son Alfio have grown up. He spends his time visiting doctors, looking for a cure to his imagined sickness. One of the doctors claims he is suffering from the Oedipus complex, but Zeno does not believe it to be true. All the doctors are not able to treat him. Finally, he realizes that life itself resembles sickness because it has advancements and setbacks and always ends in death. Human advancement has given mankind not more able bodies, but weapons that can be sold, bought, stolen to prolong life. This deviation from natural selection causes more sickness and weakness in humans. Zeno imagines a time when a person will invent a new, powerful weapon of mass destruction and another will steal it and destroy the world, setting it free of sickness.
2854751	/m/087136	Indian Ink	Tom Stoppard			 In 1930, the year of Gandhi's Salt March, British poet Flora Crewe travels to India for her health. Flora is a thoroughly modern girl who has modeled for Modigliani, hobnobbed with communists, and been accused of obscenity for the racy book A Nymph and Her Muse. In India her portrait is painted by the Indian artist Nirad while she fends off the attentions of a dashing but dimwitted scion of the British Raj. But her bravado hides the knowledge that she is severely ill with tuberculosis. In the 1980s, American academic Eldon Pike seeks out Flora's younger sister Eleanor to discover the truth about the end of the poet's life — she died in India soon after meeting Nirad. Eleanor, who married an Englishman she met at Flora's grave and became a staunch Tory, reveals little to the scholar, sending him off on a wild goose chase tracing Flora's path through India. But she is more welcoming to Nirad's son Anish, who also comes looking for answers. Eleanor shows Anish a painting by Nirad done partly in a classical Indian style, and partly in the style of Western realism. The painting's erotic symbolism convinces him that his father and Flora were lovers before she died.
2855787	/m/0873wt	Shadowmancer	Graham Taylor	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story takes place in Whitby and concerns the evil sorcerer Reverend Obadiah Demurral who is seeking two powerful amulets, called the Keruvim, which he plans to use to control the elements and dominate the world. At the start of the book he purchases the first Keruvim (which takes the form of a golden statuette of a cherub) from an Ethiopian mercenary named Gebra Nubera. He then uses the Keruvim to destroy a ship upon which the next Keruvim is prophesied to arrive, but when he surveys the wreckage he finds nothing. The next day an Ethiopian boy named Raphah arrives searching for the Keruvim. He befriends the main character, an urchin named Thomas and reveals that he is a messenger from God (referred to as Riathamus here), and that Demurral is a Shadowmancer, a sorcerer who can control the dead. Despite not believing in God, Thomas agrees to assist Raphah in regaining the Keruvim because he wants revenge on Demurral for evicting him and his dying mother from their home. They pursue Demurral and the Keruvim with the assistance of Thomas's tomboy friend Kate and the mysterious smuggler, Jacob Crane. During the story, Thomas, Kate and Jacob Crane, who all for their own individual reasons did not believe in God, do come to believe in him. Eventually it is revealed that, in using the Keruvim, Demurral has unleashed a demonic race called the Glashan who were imprisoned at the dawn of time for rebelling against God. Led by the evil Pyratheon (the Devil), they join forces with Demurral so that they can find the other Keruvim and harness its power to overthrow God and rule the universe. It is eventually revealed that Raphah is the other Keruvim, so Demurral and Pyratheon try to capture him, so that they can kill him and turn him into an Azimuth (a slave spirit) in order to activate the Keruvim's full power. At the climax of the story Thomas, Kate and Raphah meet an angel referred to as a Seruvim (a play on the word Seraphim) named Raphael, who goes by the alias Abram Rickards. A showdown takes place in Demurral's church during which Raphah is killed and Pyratheon obtains the Keruvim. He recites the incantation to activate its power and the world is temporarily plunged into night. Pyratheon thinks he has succeeded in stealing the power of God and gloats. However Abram then reveals that while Raphah is dead it has no power and all Pyratheon has done is meddle with time. After Abram restores life to Raphah, the sun rises, Abram is revealed in his true form and Pyratheon and Demurral flee. Abram tells Thomas, Kate and Jacob Crane to take the Keruvim away to another land so they leave aboard Crane's ship, The Magenta. However, in the closing page of the book it is revealed that they are being stealthily pursued by sea-demons known as Seloth.
2855953	/m/08746l	The Homeward Bounders	Diana Wynne Jones	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Twelve-year-old Jamie discovers a strange place in his hometown in which mysterious and demonic entities, known only as Them, are playing a board game with the entire world. Upon his discovering Them, They are forced to make Jamie a Homeward Bounder; this means he must constantly travel from world to world until he finds his home again. Homeward Bounders cannot die, and must not interfere with Play. If he can reach his home he may stay, and re-enter play. No-one is allowed to interfere directly with the Homeward Bounders; for example, if someone were to attempt to hurt or steal from Jamie, that person would die mysteriously. In his travels through the many worlds, Jamie meets the Flying Dutchman, with his ship and crew, and Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew. In addition, he meets a strange entity chained to a rock by Them. Every day, a Vulture comes to peck at him. While he is never named, the entity is Prometheus (he states that his name means "foresight" and that, according to legend, he was punished for bringing fire to humanity). Jamie becomes skilled at travelling, learning to read the signs left by other Homeward Bounders, growing fluent in many languages and proficient in many unusual skills. So Jamie wanders through the worlds, time passing, never reaching his home, yet hardly aging at all, until he meets Helen Haras-Uquara, from the barbaric world of Uquar. She has a gift - she can change her right arm into anything at all (for instance, an elephant trunk or a snake). Helen has only recently become a Homeward Bounder, because she, like Jamie, has seen Them playing Their game with the worlds. Although she has no experience with anything much, having been shut in a temple for most of her life, she proves to be a resourceful and intelligent person; her knowledge of Them, which mainly comes from the teachings of Uquar, her god, turns out to be very useful. Helen and Jamie travel together until they meet Joris, another new Homeward Bounder, who was a slave and apprentice demon hunter from another world, separated from his master by a demon that showed him Them. The three travel together until they come to a world in which they meet Adam and Vanessa. This world is like our current world, and is also strongly reminiscent of Jamie's home world. He is sure that if they could just travel on one or two worlds more he would reach his Home. The Homeward Bounders convince Adam and Vanessa that They exist, when Konstam, Joris' demon-hunting-master arrives, and joins their party. Konstam is eager to fight this new kind of demon, if only because of the challenge that They present, and the six go and invade Their strange place and try and defeat Them. The attack goes awry, however, and all six of them are made into Homeward Bounders. This fills the Bounder circuits to their maximum capacity; in effect, this means that They cannot create any more Homeward Bounders. Even They must play by Their own rules. Jamie awakens, alone, and realizes that Adam and Vanessa's world is his Home, only 100 years too late - he recognizes a photo of Adam and Vanessa's grandmother when she was young; it was his little sister, grown up. He realizes that although he did not age during his time on the Bounder circuits, time was still passing on his Home world, and his family and his Home world have gone forever. They are cheating; his world is gone. He has no Home to go to. His hope of ever returning home crushed, he returns to the mysterious entity chained to a rock, and inadvertently frees him, as only one without hope can free him. With His help, Jamie rallies all the Homeward Bounders, and they make a frontal assault on the main base of Them, and destroy many of Them and also Their special place, known as "The Real Place". Everyone is returned to their respective home worlds, except for Jamie. Since his home is gone, he chooses to continue to wander through the worlds, so as to keep The Real Place in all the worlds, not just in one place, as They did. So, in the end, Jamie stops Them from returning for at least a few centuries, by giving up any hope of a normal life and having to endure watching his friends die while he stays young.
2856954	/m/087611	A Darkling Plain	Philip Reeve	2006-03-20	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 Theo Ngoni foils an attempt to murder the now Oenone Naga, General Naga's wife. Oenone suspects that the murder attempt was organized by factions in the Green Storm still loyal to the Stalker Fang. Theo is made commander of an airship that will secretly deliver Lady Naga back home to Batmunkh Gompa. While flying across the Sahara Desert it is revealed that one of Oenone's retinue is really Cynthia Twite, a secret agent for the Stalker Fang first encountered in Infernal Devices. After murdering the pilot, Twite attempts to kill Lady Naga but is foiled by Theo. She escapes from the airship before a bomb she planted explodes. Theo and Oenone are assumed dead. Meanwhile, Tom and Wren encounter a face from the past: Clytie Potts, a historian from London who Tom had assumed perished on the night MEDUSA exploded. She goes by a different name and claims to have never met Tom, but he is unsatisfied and follows her to the cities of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft. Manchester has recently arrived and is encouraging the German cities to abandon the peace treaty and attack the Green Storm again. Here they also encounter Professor Pennyroyal, who assures them that nobody could have survived the destruction of MEDUSA. A young German soldier named Wolf Kobold, however, claims to have seen Potts' airship flying east towards the ruins of London. He tells them of how he once crash-landed in London and witnessed strange activity. Wolf suspects there are survivors living in the ruins of London, who are working on something secret. Tom and Wren agree to travel with him in his burrowing predator suburb Harrowbarrow to investigate. Meanwhile, Hester Shaw and Shrike (called Grike in US editions), who finds himself unable to kill any humans due to memories unlocked by Dr Zero, have been travelling the Sahara for six months, where they have a chance encounter with Theo. Following the crash, he and Oenone were taken as slaves by a desert town. Hester rescues Theo and shoots several guards. They escape on board Hester and Shrike's sand-ship, killing their pursuers. Theo tells them that Oenone Zero was taken north by a merchant called Napster Varley, and convinces the two to help him rescue her. They sell the sand-ship, buy an airship and travel north. The Stalker Fang is demanding that Fishcake take her east, back to Shan Guo, so she can activate ODIN. They steal a limpet from Brighton (which, after the events of Infernal Devices, is now ruled by warring gangs of Lost Boys) and travel east, eventually arriving at the mountain Zhan Shan in Central Asia. Throughout this journey, the Stalker faces an internal battle between its warlike side and the remnants of Anna Fang, resulting in a split personality. Fishcake comes to love Anna and hate the Stalker Fang. Eventually Anna gains the upper hand, and Fishcake is delighted. After meeting with Sathya in a hermitage on Zhan Shan, they travel to Batmunkh Gompa to try to find Dr. Popjoy (the Engineer who created her) and force him to remove the Stalker Fang personality permanently. Meanwhile Cynthia Twite has returned to Tienjing and informed General Naga of Oenone's supposed death. The General despairs and Twite becomes his own servant so that she can infiltrate his government and then topple it from within. Tom, Wren and Wolf travel across the Green Storm's frontline in Harrowbarrow. They are shocked by his violence when smashing through the line, but still take the Jenny Haniver westwards with him on board. In the ruins of London they make a startling discovery - survivors are indeed living amongst the ruins, including two people Tom knew from his life on London: Clytie Potts and Chudleigh Pomeroy, who is the new mayor. They are welcomed into the community suspiciously, but Wren thinks the Londoners are hiding something from them. Fishcake and Anna arrive at Popjoy's villa, but in killing his guards she reverts to her Stalker self, and the plan backfires as she makes Popjoy try and remove the Anna parts of her instead. He tells her he cannot, so she kills him and steals his airship to travel east to activate ODIN, accompanied by a miserable Fishcake. In the ruins of London, Wren and Wolf make a discovery - the Londoners are concealing a new city called "New London", built to float above the ground using the Ancients' magnetic levitation technology. Wolf escapes from London with this knowledge, intending to return and devour it with Harrowbarrow. Napster Varley arrives in Airhaven, which is floating above the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft, and makes cautious attempts to sell Oenone. Hester, Theo and Shrike arrive shortly afterwards and attempt to buy her back, but they do not have enough money. Hester then finds Pennyroyal hiding in Airhaven, in disgrace and debt after a newspaper exposed him as a fraud. She takes what remains of his money and heads to Varley's ship to buy Oenone back. Pennyroyal realises what she is doing and rounds up a group of troops from Manchester to try to get there first. Hester attempts to cheat Varley, but is discovered and has to fight her way out. He is killed by his wife and she escapes with Oenone when Pennyroyal and his troops challenge them. A fight ensues, and in the confusion Hester and her party manage to escape on their airship with Oenone. Pennyroyal falls from Airhaven, and is assumed killed, but instead lands in the rigging of Hester's airship and is begrudgingly taken on as a passenger. The five of them make it across no-man's land to a Green Storm airbase, where they are hailed as heroes. The airbase is soon attacked by the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft, however - at the urging of Manchester, the war has begun again. All of them manage to escape in an airship heading east except Theo, who turns back to recover a letter he had from Wren. Meanwhile the Stalker Fang and Fishcake arrive in Erdene Tezh, her old home. She begins to assemble a powerful radio station to send a signal to ODIN. Theo survives the attack on the airfield and, as the letter from Wren says she intended to explore the ruins of London, he treks east across the plains to find her. He is welcomed into the ruins by the community there and reunited with Wren, but brings bad news that the war has started again. The development of New London is pushed faster, the Londoners eager to escape before the cities of the west arrive. The Stalker Fang has activated ODIN, however, and turns it on the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft. Manchester and many other cities are completely destroyed, and the surviving cities flee west. In Tienjing, news of Oenone's survival reaches General Naga. He realises Cynthia Twite had deceived him and confronts her. She is about to kill him when ODIN fires upon the city. Twite is killed instantly but Naga survives. He takes the shattered remnants of his government and flees to Batmunkh Gompa. News of ODIN's destruction reaches the ruins of London. They have no idea it has been turned on Green Storm cities as well, and assume it is a new weapon of Naga's. Tom decides to take the Jenny Haniver east to talk to the General and tell him about New London, and how it will not damage the earth as the other Traction Cities do. He sneaks away in the dead of night, leaving a letter for Wren, confident that Theo and Chudleigh Pomeroy will look after her. In no-man's land, news comes to Harrowbarrow of the destruction of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft. Wolf is determined to carry on to the ruins of London, and tells his second-in-command that after the Sixty Minute War, the creatures that survived best were cockroaches and rats. He believes that with the old cities gone, the time for creeping places like Harrowbarrow is at hand, and they continue east. On the same night that Tom slipped away, Chudleigh Pomeroy died in his sleep. The new mayor appointed is Mr. Garamond, the paranoid head of security who is convinced that Tom has gone to tell the cities about New London, and that Wren and Theo are traitors. He orders them locked up, but an Engineer (the mother of Bevis Pod) believes he is wrong and frees them in the night. They sneak away west through the debris fields. Tom arrives in Batmunkh Gompa and is taken prisoner by the Green Storm. General Naga speaks to him, but does not believe him about New London. He does, however, believe that something is going on in London's ruins, and becomes suspicious. Hester's party arrive in Batmunkh Gompa to discover that Tienjing has been destroyed. Shrike speculates that perhaps the Green Storm does not control ODIN; that it is instead in the hands of a third party, the Stalker Fang. Hester also learns that Tom is being held captive in the city, and goes to see him. Oenone meets General Naga but he no longer trusts her, and hits her. He still believes ODIN to be a weapon of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft, and since Oenone wanted the peace treaty, tells her it is her fault. He has her imprisoned and flies to the ruins of London with a fleet of airships. Hester is awkwardly reunited with Tom. She frees him just as Pennyroyal comes back from the audience chamber with Naga; he tells them that Oenone has fallen from grace, and Naga intends to destroy London. Another blast from ODIN strikes just to the south, triggering the volcano of Zhan Shan. Shrike suggests they find ODIN's true ground station and destroy it before any more attacks occur. Leaving the debris fields of London, Wren and Theo encounter Harrowbarrow approaching. Theo runs back to warn the Londoners, as Wren stays and convinces Wolf to lead Harrowbarrow down 'Electric Lane' a clearing where anything metal is struck by lightning from the remnants of MEDUSA. The Green Storm's air fleet then arrive and the Londoners demonstrate New London's levitation to Naga. He decrees that it is not a city, just a "very large, low-flying airship" and decides to help defend them against the approaching predator suburb. Hester, Tom and Shrike fly towards Erdene Tezh, where ODIN's ground station is located. During the journey Hester confesses to Tom that she is Valentine's daughter, and he forgives her for betraying Anchorage. They fall in love again, but are interrupted by Shrike announcing that he has discovered a stowaway: Pennyroyal. As they decide what to do with him, the airship is attacked by Stalker-birds. Shrike defends the ship but falls from it, disappearing down into the mountains. The Jenny Haniver then crashes on the shores of the lake at Erdene Tezh, and the three escape as it burns to ashes. Hester ties up Pennyroyal and leaves him in the bushes as she and Tom approach the house where the ground station is. The Stalker Fang (whose personalities have fused back into one) confronts them. Fishcake is with her and, bitter about their betrayal in Infernal Devices, demands that Fang kill them. Tom has a heart attack, however, and she takes them into her house as prisoners. Meanwhile, Theo and Wren are engaged in a sword fight with Wolf on top of Harrowbarrow, as New London flees through the debris fields. Wolf is killed and they are rescued by General Naga, who takes them back to New London. Harrowbarrow still chases the young city, however, and the General sacrifices himself by flying his airship into its mouth in a kamikaze attack, destroying both of them. New London escapes across the plains. Shrike recovers from his fall into the mountains, and climbs out of a frozen lake, running towards Erdene Tezh. Fishcake discovers Pennyroyal in the bushes and frees him, telling him about the airship and how the keys are kept around the Stalker's neck. Pennyroyal realises he has no other way to escape, salvages an electricity gun from the wreck of the Jenny Haniver, and creeps towards the house. Inside Tom has recovered from his heart attack, and Fang tells the two of them about her plans. She intends to fire ODIN on volcanoes across the world, blotting out the sky with volcanic ash and wiping out the Human race. She believes it is the only way to make the world green again. Tom pleads with the Anna side of her to destroy ODIN, and after an internal struggle the Stalker sends a new set of orders up to the orbiting weapon. Pennyroyal bursts into the house and attacks Fang with the electricity gun shortly after. He manages to kill her, but also sets the house on fire. Tom has another heart attack, and lies helpless in Hester's arms. She drags him outside as Pennyroyal runs to get the airship and get Tom to a doctor. On board the airship, however, Fishcake puts a knife to Pennyroyal's throat and forces him to fly away, abandoning Tom and Hester the same way they abandoned him on Brighton. Hester sees him fly away, and understands. Tom dies in her arms, and Hester peacefully commits suicide to be with him in death. Above them, ODIN follows Anna Fang's last order and turns its weapon upon itself, raining debris down on the planet. With the Green Storm's armies shattered and the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft smashed, Oenone is appointed the new leader of Shan Guo. New London prospers, and Wren and Theo become air-traders. Fishcake returns to the mountains to find Sathya; he grows old and has children, and finds in his later life that he regrets leaving Tom and Hester. Pennyroyal tries to publish a new book about what happened at Erdene Tezh, telling the truth this time. He cannot find a publisher for it, however, and lives out his last days with Minty Bapsnack, an old girlfriend in the Traction City of Peripetitiapolis. The final chapter deals with Shrike (called Grike in US editions), and how he arrives at Erdene Tezh too late. He finds Tom and Hester's bodies, and takes them up into the mountains where he lays them down together. Because of his everlasting being, He is able to watch as they decompose over a fairly long period of time, and new plants and trees grow from their remains. He then shuts down into hibernation, and sees hundreds of years go past like minutes, he sees a girl putting a ring of flowers around his neck, and starts to slow his hibernation. He sees another girl, who thought he was just an old statue, and put flowers around him for luck, she says that her family have been hanging the flowers since her mother's mother's time, showing that he took two generations to slow his hibernation. He follows her down into a valley where her village rests (built around the ruins of an old city), where he starts to decipher their language, and discovers that traction cities are considered a fairytale. Cities no longer move except in stories, showing that some knowledge of Municipal Darwinism has lived on, and airships still exist, powered by magnetic levitation. They ask if he is one of the machine men out of stories they have heard, again showing some memory of Stalkers. They ask Shrike what he is for, and he tells them he is a Remembering Machine. He says that he remembers the age of the Traction Cities, London and Arkangel, Thaddeus Valentine and Anna Fang, and Hester and Tom. The villagers gather round and ask him to tell them. He begins to tell them his story, beginning with the first line of Mortal Engines.
2858180	/m/08782v	The Soddit	Adam Roberts	2003	{"/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story starts with a peaceful Soddit called Bingo who is visited by a wizard and a party of dwarfs who ask Bingo to come with them on a quest to 'The Only Mountain' where 'Smug the Dragon' lives. After a few drinks, Bingo accepts, not knowing what they were actually searching for. "Gold, boyo gold, la, look you." On the way, they have many adventures and close shaves. Bingo finds a 'Thing®' that was created by the Evil Sharon and is potentially the most evil Thing® in the world. Bingo steals the Thing® and continues to escort the dwarfs and the hastily sickening wizard to the only mountain, where horror strikes.
2859965	/m/087cz_	The Stone Angel	Margaret Laurence		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a series of vignettes, The Stone Angel tells the story of Hagar Shipley, a 90-year old woman struggling to come to grips with a life of intransigence and loss. "Pride was my wilderness, the demon that led me there was fear."
2860088	/m/087d5b	The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Heartless Grandmother	Gabriel García Márquez	1978		 A 14-year-old girl (Eréndira) is living with her grandmother when she accidentally sets fire to their home. The grandmother forces Eréndira to repay the debt by becoming a prostitute as they travel a road as vagrants. Men line up to enjoy Eréndira's services and eventually after several years, Ulises, one of her clients, falls in love with her. She returns his affection and eventually he becomes willing to help her to freedom; he formulates a plan to escape with her and live off a fortune from oranges which contain diamonds smuggled by his Dutch father. The only obstacle lies in her grandmother, whom Eréndira convinces Ulises to kill. Not being the homicidal type, he attempts poisoning and an explosive, but must eventually resort to stabbing her while she sleeps. After he regains his composure following the murder, Eréndira runs off into the night alone leaving him in the tent with the grandmother. Eréndira and her grandmother make an appearance in One Hundred Years of Solitude, another book by García Márquez. Also included in this story are characters from other Márquez works, such as the spider with the woman's head from "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and Blacamán the Good from the story "Blacamán the Good: Vendor of Miracles".
2860494	/m/087dsy	The Parsifal Mosaic	Robert Ludlum	1982-02-12	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Michael Havelock, (an anglicized version of Mikhail Havlíček), is an intelligence officer working for the US State Departments black operation division "Consular Ops". At the beginning of the novel he believes he has just witnessed the execution of his partner and the love of his life, Jenna Karas (anglicized version of Jenna Karasova) along an isolated stretch of the Costa Brava. Jenna had been marked for execution because she had been proved to be a KGB double agent. He immediately leaves the intelligence world, something he had been considering doing for some time and goes sightseeing in areas he had previously visited. In Athens, Pyotr Rostov, a senior director of the KGB forces a meeting with Havelock. Rostov denies that Karas is an agent of theirs. Later, in Rome, Havelock sees Jenna alive at a train station. She flees him, frightened, and he pursues her. He makes contact with a former source at the US Consulate called Colonel Baylor, and begins his search for Jenna throughout several countries. Meanwhile, strategists for Consular Operations in the US government decide that he is a paranoid schizophrenic and must be terminated, lest he compromise entire networks across Europe. All the evidence available to them indicates that Karas was a double agent, and was successfully terminated on the Costa Brava. So one of them, "Red" Ogivile sets up an ambush on the Palatine hill in Rome with the intention of taking Michael in. However, the two mercinares he hired are taken out by Michael, the gas grenade he uses only affects him when michael lashes out, and after being convinced of Havelock's innocence, he ends up taking an accidental bullet from Colonel Baylor who was sent to kill Havelock. Back in the United States, however, the US government has a problem of its own: Anton Matthias, Secretary of State, acknowledged by the entire world as a genius and trusted with powers far beyond those his office allow him, has gone completely insane. Before anybody realized that he was insane, he negotiated treaties with parties he believed to be representing the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China, each agreeing to a nuclear strike against the third party, but in fact with a man who identified himself as Parsifal. Parsifal demands a huge ransom to keep the documents from being released, thereby triggering a nuclear war. Once the ransom is paid, however, he does not touch it, having confirmed how desperate Washington is. Havelock, who as a child had been one of the few survivors of the massacre at Lidice, has a special bond with Matthias, a fellow Czech who had advised him in graduate school. Somehow Matthias's insanity is linked to the order to terminate Jenna Karas. For her part, Karas has been told that Michael is a Russian spy and that he is trying to kill her. Consequently, she is not especially eager to meet him. When Michael finally traces Jenna to an isolated farm in Pennsylvania, they realize that they were both deceived and that each had been told that the other was an enemy. They then work together with the President of the United States, Charles Berquist, and several trusted advisors to find Parsifal and stop him. They are opposed by Arthur Pierce, a brilliant and murderous Soviet mole highly placed in the State Department. Pierce has ordered the murders of the strategists of Consular Operations ( two of them are crushed by a bulldozer in their car and driven off a cliff and another is shot), and then a string of successive killings - all in his own quest to gain evidence of Matthias's insanity. Pierce is working not for the regular KGB, but the VKR (Voennaya Kontra Razvedka), a fanatical branch of Russian intelligence identified as an offshoot of the OGPU. He is also, for that matter, a paminyatchik - an agent under deep cover, who has lived in the United States since infancy. For much of the novel, Pierce's true loyalties lie undiscovered. One of Havelock's allies, Undersecretary of State Emory Bradford, realizes that Pierce works for the VKR, but he is murdered by the ever-alert Pierce before he can warn anyone else. Pierce also solicits the murder of Rostov, who loathes the VKR and has tried to help Havelock. When Michael finally finds Parsifal, a friend of Anton and a Paminyatchik who is less fanatical than Arthur Pierce, he finds out that the documents were not produced to provoke nuclear war, but rather to demonstrate that no one man could be trusted with vast amounts of power. Pierce, however, has had his operatives murder Michael's bodyguards and breaks into Parsifal's house just as he agree's to burn the documents. However hearing that Rostov has been mudured, Prarsifal decides to sacrifice himself by using his body to block Pierce's gun allowing him and Jenna time to get out. Michael and Jenna then kill Pierce's operatives by stabbing them and Michael then flanks Pierce and guns him down. They conclude that the documentary evidence of Matthias's insanity is best destroyed. Havelock tells Berquist of this; he is informed, in turn, that Matthias has just died . Finally safe, he and Jenna move to New England, where Havelock accepts an academic position.
2861858	/m/087hs5	Man, Woman and Child	Erich Segal			 Robert is contacted one day by a friend in France, who tells him that Nicole, a woman with whom Robert had had an affair years ago, has died - and Jean-Claude, the son Robert never knew he had, is now an orphan. That evening, Robert explains the situation to Sheila, and they agree to take in Jean-Claude for the summer holidays; however, they also agree to keep Jean-Claude's true identity a secret. Later that summer, Sheila, a journalist, is tempted by the possibility of an affair with an author she has been interviewing. At the same time, Jessica and Paula discover Jean-Claude's true identity, through Davey Ackerman, Robert's friend's son. They refuse to speak to their parents. As the Beckwiths are bringing Jean-Claude to the airport to return to France, he suddenly falls ill and is hospitalized. After surgery, during which the Beckwiths become closer again, he makes a full recovery. At last, the whole family come to terms with Jean-Claude and would like him to live with them. However, Jean-Claude refuse politely, for he has to go to the school in France chosen by his mother years before. This ending is not wonderful, but thoughtful.
2864563	/m/087p8j	The Rover	Joseph Conrad		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 The story takes place in the south of France, against the backdrop of the French Revolution, Napoleon's rise to power, and the French-English rivalry in the Mediterranean. Peyrol (a master-gunner in the French republican navy, pirate, and for nearly fifty years "rover of the outer seas") attempts to find refuge in an isolated farmhouse (Escampobar) on the Giens Peninsula near Hyères. The story is about Peyrol's attempt at withdrawal from an action- and blood-filled life; his involvement with the pariahs of Escampobar; the struggle for his identity and allegiance, which is resolved in his last voyage.
2866225	/m/087sfw	Nor Crystal Tears	Alan Dean Foster	1982-08-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows a Thranx, Ryozenzuzex (i.e. Ryo, of Family Zen, clan Zu, Hive Zex) who came from an odd numbered hatching (thranx offspring almost always come in multiples of two) immediately making him somewhat different from his brethren. Setting himself aside as different Ryo decides that he has to know what is the secret of the new space faring race that supposedly wear "their skeletons inside". To accomplish this un-thranxlike task Ryo travels from his home planet, Willow-Wane, to the ice caps of the Thranx home world, Hivehom with the aid of the wealthy Wuuzelansem, a poet in-search of inspiration. Once on Hivehom he is confronted with the "monsters" and comes to the conclusion that they must set them free, believing that an alliance between Thranx and these so-called "humans" is the only way to stop the aggressive advances of the AAnn Empire. Thranx military and scientists, by studying the contained humans tendency to fight amongst each other came to the conclusion that the entire species could be insane and would destroy Thranx society if they were to attempt any further contact. Ryo, after spending a good amount of time with the humans decides to aid in their escape from Hivehom. Once they escape they return to a human research station where the reaction to Ryo is worse than anticipated. When the scientists there decide to kill and dissect Ryo the crew he rescued from Hivehom returns the favor and helps him escape his death sentence. It is at this point Ryo and the crew come to the conclusion that they must start a long term program in order to properly integrate human and thranx society. With the scientists he befriended on Hivehom, Ryo brings a group of human children and researchers to interact with a group of Thranx larvae on his home of Willow-Wane in an attempt to build lasting race relations. The larvae and human children seem to get along well and the compatibility between the two races is confirmed. When an AAnn raiding party attacks Ryo's hive the militant humans take action which results in a formal first contact between both human and Thranx governments. By his risky actions, Ryo plants the seeds of what would become the Humanx Commonwealth.
2866829	/m/087ts2	The Mysteries of Harris Burdick	Chris Van Allsburg		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A fictional editor's note tells of an encounter between a children's book editor named Peter Wenders and an author and illustrator named Harris Burdick, who says he has 14 stories that he has written; he has brought one picture from each story with a caption. He leaves with a promise to deliver the complete manuscripts if the editor chooses to buy the books. The next day, Burdick didn't show up. Burdick never returned to Wenders' office. Over the years, Wenders tried to find out who Harris Burdick was, but he never found out. Burdick was never seen again, and the samples are all that remain of his supposed books. Readers are challenged to imagine their own stories based on the images in the book. In 1984, Chris Van Allsburg visited Wenders' office, and Wenders showed him Burdick's drawings. Van Allsburg decided that maybe if he published the drawings, they may find out who Harris Burdick was. Both Wenders and Van Allsburg were sure that someone would come with information about Burdick. Then, in 1993, a dealer in antique books, told them that he had purchased an entire library that had previously belonged to a recently deceased woman, including an antique mirror with portraits of characters from Through the Looking-Glass. The mirror fell from the wall and cracked open. Neatly concealed between the wooden frame and the mirror was an image identical to Burdick's other works; its caption identified it being from the Burdick story "Missing in Venice." As said on the Burdick website, Peter Wenders died in 2000 at the age of 91.
2867874	/m/087x45	The Forest of Doom	Ian Livingstone		{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The player takes the role of an adventurer on a quest to retrieve a magical warhammer for the dwarves of the village of Stonebridge, which has apparently been stolen and hidden in separate pieces by goblins in Darkwood Forest.
2868364	/m/087y55	City of Thieves	Ian Livingstone		{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The player takes the role of an adventurer on a quest to find and stop the powerful Night Prince Zanbar Bone, a being whose minions are terrorizing a local town. Hired by a desperate mayor, the player must as the adventurer journey to the dangerous city-state of Port Blacksand (the "City of Thieves"), and find the wizard Nicodemus, who apparently knows of Bone's one weakness. What follows is a series of challenges as the player must locate certain key items, escape Port Blacksand and eventually confront Bone.
2869023	/m/087zk8	A Madman's Diary	Lu Xun			 The story is allegedly a copy of the diary entries (in vernacular Chinese) of a madman who, according to the foreword written in classical Chinese, has now been cured of his delusive paranoia. After extensively studying Chinese history as outlined in the Four books and five classics of his culture, the diary writer, the supposed "madman", began to see the words "Eat People!" written between the lines of the texts (Lu Xun implies this figuratively, although in the story's context, this could be read literally). Seeing the people in his village as potential man-eaters, he is gripped by the fear that everyone, including his brother, his venerable doctor and his neighbors, who are crowding about to watch him, are harboring cannibalistic thoughts on him. It is anti-traditional in the sense that the other characters are portrayed as heartless, bound to tradition, and cannibalistic, yet the madman's fears are depicted as genuine. Despite the brother's apparent genuine concern, the narrator still regards him as big a threat as any stranger. The insanity of the narrator is never proven, however. Towards the end the narrator turns his concern to the younger generation, especially his late sister (who died when she was five) as he is afraid they will be cannibalized. By then he is convinced that his late sister had been eaten up by his brother, and that the narrator might have unwittingly tasted her flesh. The story ends with a famous line: "Save the children..."
2869620	/m/08801d	The 48 Laws of Power	Robert Greene			 The 48 Laws of Power are a distillation of 3,000 years of the history of power, drawing on the lives of strategists and historical figures like Niccolò Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, and P.T. Barnum. The book is intended to show people how to gain power, preserve it, and defend themselves against power manipulators. Each law is its own chapter, complete with a "transgression of the law," "observation of the law," and a "reversal." Those laws are: # Never outshine the master. # Never put too much trust in friends; learn how to use enemies. # Conceal your intentions. # Always say less than necessary. # Create a Sense of Urgency and Desperation: The Death-Ground Strategy. # Court attention at all costs. # Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit. # Make other people come to you; use bait if necessary. # Win through your actions, never through argument. # Infection: avoid the unhappy and unlucky. # Learn to keep people dependent on you. # Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim. # When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interests, never to their mercy or gratitude. # Pose as a friend, work as a spy. # Crush your enemy totally. # Use absence to increase respect and honor. # Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability. # Do not build fortresses to protect yourself. Isolation is dangerous. # Know who you're dealing with; do not offend the wrong person. # Do not commit to anyone. # Play a sucker to catch a sucker: play dumber than your mark. # Use the surrender tactic: transform weakness into power. # Concentrate your forces. # Play the perfect courtier. # Re-create yourself. # Keep your hands clean. # Play on people&#39;s need to believe to create a cultlike following. # Enter action with boldness. # Plan all the way to the end. # Make your accomplishments seem effortless. # Control the options: get others to play with the cards you deal. # Play to people&#39;s fantasies. # Discover each man&#39;s thumbscrew. # Be royal in your fashion: act like a king to be treated like one. # Master the art of timing. # Disdain things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the best revenge. # Create compelling spectacles. # Think as you like but behave like others. # Stir up waters to catch fish. # Despise the free lunch. # Avoid stepping into a great man&#39;s shoes. # Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter. # Work on the hearts and minds of others. # Disarm and infuriate with the mirror effect. # Preach the need for change, but never reform too much at once. # Never appear perfect. # Do not go past the mark you aimed for; in victory, learn when to stop. # Assume formlessness.
2869864	/m/0880n6	The Eight Doctors	Terrance Dicks		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Immediately after the events of the television film, the Eighth Doctor finishes reading The Time Machine (a book written by his old friend H.G. Wells). After he checks the Eye of Harmony in his TARDIS, he falls prey to a final trap set by his old enemy, the Master; which erases all of his memory. The only fact he knows for certain is that he is called "the Doctor" - but Doctor who? His instincts tell him to "trust the TARDIS", which immediately lands. He has landed at a scrapyard at 76 Totters Lane, London in 1997; where he encounters a young lady by the name of Sam Jones, who is being accused by local drug dealers, led by Baz Bailey, of "grassing" them over to the police. Having saved Sam from these insidious characters, who were intending to force Sam into taking drugs to get her addicted, the Doctor falls foul of the local police who promptly charge him with possession and selling the cocaine he has confiscated from the thugs. Sam tells her two teachers, who have noticed her lateness, and takes them back to the junkyard to verify the story. The Doctor escapes in the confusion of Bailey's desperate attack on the local police station, he runs back into the TARDIS and it dematerialises - taking the cocaine with him to dispose of it safely. This leaves Sam alone, defenceless against the knife-wielding druggies... The TARDIS lands in the year 100,000 BC, and he meets his first incarnation in the jungle and they psychically link (giving the Eighth Doctor his memories up to that point in his life). The Eighth Doctor stops his other self from killing a caveman who was slowing their party down. The First Doctor explains that he must get away before the "time bubble" his Eighth self is in bursts and starts to damage the timeline. The Eighth Doctor then leaves. The TARDIS then lands during the events of The War Games, where he helps his second incarnation, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot with their important mission to contact the Time Lords. Having regained his second life's memories, he leaves happily. He next meets the Third Doctor, who himself has just fought the Master and the Sea Devils; and has saved humanity by blowing up a Sea Devil base. He, blaming his Eighth self for his exile to Earth and for the Master's concurrent escape, threatens him with the Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator. But he tosses the weapon to him instead. The Master has again escaped to fight another day, and the Eighth Doctor leaves. Having landed during the events of State of Decay, the Eighth Doctor gives the Fourth Doctor an emergency blood transfusion after his younger self is attacked and nearly fatally drained by another group of vampires, and leaves with yet more memories (to the astonishment of companion Romana). Meanwhile, back on Gallifrey, Lady President Flavia has noticed the Doctor crossing his timelines and demands that he be carefully watched. A Time Lord called Ryoth demands the Doctor be executed: the resulting paradoxes could be irreversible. Flavia denies this. Ryoth alerts the Celestial Intervention Agency to the situation, and the Agency give him access to the fabeled Timescoop technology, perfectly preserved since the Death Zone incident. He uses it to send a Raston Warrior Robot to the Fifth Doctor and his companions, Tegan Jovanka and Vislor Turlough. Luckily, the Eighth Doctor then arrives at the aftermath of The Five Doctors, where he saves his fifth incarnation and his companions from the Raston Warrior Robot and a passing platoon of Sontarans by tricking the two into fighting each other. The Doctors create a feedback system, so when Ryoth sends a Drashig to kill them, it instead materialises in the same room as Ryoth and eats him and the Timescoop. It is then caught and transmatted to the Death Zone by guards in the Capitol in the hopes that it will take care of the other horrors there. Soon he arrives in the middle of his second trial by the Time Lords; which his Sixth self seems to be losing (especially as the insidious Valeyard has just accused him of a mass genocide attack against the Vervoids). After giving him advice and encouragement- as well as helping to begin an investigation into his past self's trial on Gallifrey-, he leaves, his memories almost completely intact. He finally arrives on the planet Metebelis Three, where the alone and depressed Seventh Doctor is trapped by a giant spider. After rescuing his former self (by killing the arachnid with the TCE), he remembers leaving Sam, and immediately dashes back into the TARDIS to her rescue. Once saved by the Doctor, Sam decides to join him on his travels.
2870221	/m/0881k3	Double Fudge	Judy Blume	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this sequel in the Fudge' series, Fudge takes up an obsessive and greedy love for money and his family decides to take him to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington to show how money is made hoping that his obsession would stop there. That plan doesn't work, and instead they meet up with their long-lost cousins, the Howie Hatchers. There is Howie, a park ranger who resides in Hawaii and is traveling the country, his pregnant wife Eudora, their perfect, slightly overindulged twin daughters Flora and Fauna who are sometimes nicknamed the "Natural Beauties," and the "Heavenly Hatchers," and last but not least, three-year-old Farley Drexel Hatcher, which is also Fudge's real name. The boys are left alone with their cousins and find out that the Natural Beauties have been trying to find a nickname for Farley and try to use Fudge's own nickname. He tries to save his nickname from being taken by the Natural Beauties for Farley's own use by yelling and gets bitten in the leg. After the two are broken up, Peter suggests the natural beauties call Farley "Mini-Fudge," but when the other Fudge disagrees, the name is changed to Mini-Farley. Peter is having a rough time throughout this because his best friend Jimmy has left Manhattan and moved far off to the SoHo section of New York City. He still goes to the same school but Peter feels lonely. Fudge begins to start hating Mini, and the Natural Beauties then annoy Peter more when they are invited to perform at an assembly at his school. Mini lets Uncle Feather, Fudge's myna bird who has stopped talking out of his cage and he has a near-death incident (which causes him to begin talking again, although it is never explained why he stopped in the first place), Fudge goes trick-or-treating with Mini on Halloween and they get stuck in a elevator. Near the end of the story, in a semi-homage to the ending of the original Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Mini swallows Fudge's baby tooth that just fallen out. The Howies quickly depart from the Hatchers' apartment because he was throwing a fit, and after writing a note to the Tooth Fairy to explain what happened, he still tries to get some more Tooth Fairy money by using a box of Peter's old baby teeth. He takes it back and places it under his own pillow because, as Peter says, "Hey, you never know
2871691	/m/08851t	Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb	Philip K. Dick	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Dr. Bloodmoney is set in a post-apocalyptic future. In 1974, before the start of the narrative, Dr. Bruno Bluthgeld (German for "Blood-Money") had led a project testing nuclear weapons as a protectionary measure against Communist China and the Soviet Union. However, a miscalculation caused an atmospheric nuclear accident leading to widespread fallout and mutations. More recently the United States has been involved in a prolonged period of hostilities with China and the Soviet Union erupting in a war in Cuba. In 1981, the now universally hated Bluthgeld seeks psychotherapy with Dr. Stockstill for his paranoia and guilt. Meanwhile Stuart McConchie, Hoppy Harrington and Jim Fergesson, employees at Modern TV Sales and Service in Berkeley, California, go through a fairly typical day, pausing to watch Walt and Lydia Dangerfield being launched into orbit in the first stage of a colonization mission to Mars. This ordinary day, however, is disrupted by a massive nuclear strike. Orbiting overhead, Walt Dangerfield witnesses the tragic events as they unfold, while other characters are reduced to desperate measures in their struggle for survival. Fergesson is killed as his shop collapses. Meanwhile, Bluthgeld is convinced that he caused the strike in response to a universal conspiracy against him. Believing that he has shown the world his power, he sets out to heal and restore order through his imagined magical powers. The narrative jumps to 1988, when many communities have begun to rebuild a sort of order. A military government has arisen in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while in California government is by local community councils that view one another with varying degrees of hostility. Most pre-war technologies and amenities have been lost. Oil shortages result in disabled cars being pulled by horses or fitted with wood-burning (steam) engines. Former California ranch territory has been converted into agricultural land for corn and other crops. Human mutants have become more common, such as phocomeli, as well as conjoined symbiotes. At the same time, former domestic animals like dogs and cats have undergone mutations that have greatly enhanced their intelligence. Many of these former pets and zoo specimens have allied themselves into ferocious tribal units of their own. Bruno Bluthgeld's dog Terry is capable of imitating simple human speech, while some species of felines may have developed their own evolved languages. Walt Dangerfield, supplied with enough rations to last him for at least several more years, as well as a vast treasury of books and musical recordings, has become a disc jockey in orbit. His broadcasts help provide some sense of continuity with pre-war civilization in the isolated settlements that comprise the postwar world. His wife Lydia committed suicide at some point during the intervening period. Dangerfield has begun to experience symptoms of an unknown medical condition, causing some of his listeners to worry. In Marin County survivors including Bonny Keller, Dr. Stockstill, June Raub and Hoppy Harrington have organized into a self-governing community. Harrington, a Thalidomide baby missing all four of his limbs, harbors a quietly smoldering resentment of the patronizing and condescending attitudes he endured before the war. He has now become a successful mechanic thanks to electronic servo-mechanism technology as well as his gradually increasing abilities of psychokinesis or mind-over-matter. As such, he becomes a genuinely respected and absolutely indispensable member of the community. His ultimate goal, however, is to dominate and humiliate the people within his community through intimidation via his increasingly capricious and violent misuse of his ever-strengthening powers. He's been using his talents to gradually weaken Walt Dangerfield in order to take over Dangerfield's much-beloved satellite transmissions. Meanwhile, Bluthgeld, under the assumed name of Jack Tree, lives as a sheep farmer outside the community. One outsider searching for the infamous Bluthgeld was exposed by Bonny Keller and summarily executed for his troubles. Stuart McConchie has become a travelling entrepreneur in the post-apocalyptic world, selling "smart" robotic rat traps for a company based in post-war Berkeley. Still holding onto his ambitious pre-war salesman's mentality, McConchie travels to Marin County to meet Andrew Gill, a cigarette and alcohol entrepreneur, to discuss the re-introduction of automation within his factory as an agent of Berkeley-based business interests. His appearance in West Marin startles Hoppy Harrington and Bruno Bluthgeld, both of whom had last seen McConchie on the day of the "Emergency". Bluthgeld's increasing psychosis eventually leads to the discovery of his identity. His magical powers, however, do not appear to be entirely imaginary. In his ardent desire to silence the talking satellite he seems to initiate another series of atmospheric explosions merely by willing them to occur. Hoppy, viewing him as a potential rival as well as a direct threat to the community and the planet itself, kills him from several miles away. Harrington employs his own psychokinetic powers in flinging the mad scientist high into the air and then simply letting him fall back to the ground. The Marin County council decides to thank Hoppy by presenting him with gifts of Gill's tobacco, alcohol and a monument in Harrington's honor, but Hoppy scorns these gifts as being much less than he deserves. Bonny Keller begins to worry that Hoppy will set himself up as a vindictive little tin god, and so she flees the county with Gill and McConchie in hopes of eventually settling beyond the reach of his powers. Meanwhile, Edie Keller's conjoined twin brother Bill, a sentient fetus within her body, has been yearning for an independent existence. Bill Keller is able to communicate telepathically with the dead, and they warn him how dangerous Hoppy is becoming. When Edie approaches Hoppy's house, Harrington uses his powers to draw Bill outside of her in hopes of causing him to perish. Little Bill has a near-lethal adventure inside of an owl before finally engineering a body-swap with Hoppy which quickly proves fatal to Harrington. The idol with feet of clay has finally been toppled. At the conclusion of the book, Dr. Stockstill begins a course of psychotherapy, broadcast over the radio, with Walt Dangerfield, who seems to be slowly recovering from his illness in the absence of a jealous Hoppy Harrington's debilitating mental emanations.
2871931	/m/0885l0	Q-in-Law	Peter David		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) is assigned to diplomatic duty to host the wedding between two houses of the Tizarin, a race that lives only in space and engages in commerce. One of the guests is Lwaxana Troi, to represent Betazed. The time setting places it after the events of "Deja Q" (third season) and before "Q-Pid" (fourth season). Kerin, heir to the house of Nistral, will marry Sehra, the daughter of the house of Graziunas. Q puts in an appearance. Although he toys with Picard while asking to be allowed to attend the wedding festivities, he promises to behave himself. Q attracts Lwaxana's notice, and she is fascinated by Q. To Picard's horror, Q fans the flames of love. Later, Q also begins to fan the animosity between the two Tizarin houses, mainly by feeding on the occasional blowups between the bride and groom, who are themselves irritated: Sehra by her future father-in-law Nistral's comments and Kerin by his future mother-in-law Mrs. Graziunas' comments. The two families come to battle, and a despairing Lwaxana wishes she could do something. Q gives her power, and Lwaxana stops the battle, and Kerin and Serah determine they will marry, no matter what. Meanwhile, Q has revealed his true colors: another way of annoying lower life forms. He scorns Lwaxana, who gives Q a serious thrashing, thanks to Q2 helping her hold onto the power. Meanwhile, a gift of gratitude by Sehra to Wesley Crusher turns out to be anything but a joy, as Sehra gives Wesley a clumsy slave girl. After much pain and a broken rib, Wesley returns the slave girl to Sehra, who had been trying to get rid of her but is now happy to have her back.
2872231	/m/088636	Foley is Good: And The Real World is Faker Than Wrestling	Mick Foley	2001	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The book covers the last years of Mick Foley's in-ring wrestling career up until the birth of his second son, Michael Francis Foley, Jr., which he mentions in the book's epilogue. It has a more celebratory tone than his first book, as he is writing about the time of his career where he has already achieved success. The book alternated between in-ring wrestling activities and Foley's life away from the ring. In the book, he also describes his obsessions, such as theme parks and Christmas. He also writes about his experience writing his first book without the aid of a ghostwriter. He defends himself against being misquoted by news program 20/20, and explains the events surrounding his "I Quit" match with The Rock at the Royal Rumble in January 1999, which can also be seen in the documentary Beyond the Mat. The book also heavily defends the World Wrestling Federation against accusations of being violent. Foley made an effort to pointedly refute claims made by detractors, citing statistical data and other evidence he compiled himself. He criticizes the actions of the Parents Television Council.
2873257	/m/08882q	April Morning	Howard Fast	1961	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins in the afternoon with Adam getting water for dinner from the Coopers' well. He is interrupted by his eleven year-old brother Levi. As he returns to his home, his father Moses reprimands him for superstitious ignorance. Similarly, his mother Sarah upbraids him for not spending his free time reading and memorizing the Bible's Book of Lamentations. At dinner, Moses sternly reprimands Adam for the ignorance represented by the spell and points to the Cooper family tradition, in 125 years in the American colonies, of literacy, rationalism and intellectualism. He pointedly tells him that he is not yet a man in his father's eyes. As dinner ends, the Coopers are visited by their cousin Joseph Simmons, who is a member of the local Committee of correspondence, which organizes resistance to the British. He and Moses work on a declaration of their rights before they go to the Committee meeting. Moses refuses to let Adam join him. That evening, Adam learns that the attendees discussed matters of revolt and whether or not to keep minutes. Moses convinces the men to be proud of their speech and not fear punishment for treason. Meanwhile, Adam visits Ruth, whom he admires. She once told everyone that she was going to marry him when they grew up. He finally vents his frustration with his father's constant belittling. They part with a kiss. That night Adam and Levi overhear a midnight rider say that the British are coming. Adam joins the militia in order to resist the British, which, surprisingly, Moses agrees to, telling Sarah that Adam is no longer a boy in his eyes. Father and son prepare for combat and talk about the relationship between Adam and Ruth. After breakfast, they join the militia to face the British on the green. About 70 men and boys gather in Lexington and when the British arrive shortly after dawn they encounter two lines of militia. The colonists stand their ground though the British commander, Major Pitcairn, orders them to disperse. A shot is fired by a British soldier, starting the battle, in which Moses is killed. After the British kill more of the colonists, the outnumbered militia flees the battlefield. Adam hides in a nearby smokehouse, worrying about his father's death. Later that afternoon, Adam hears two British soldiers outside the smokehouse debate whether to burn it, but they do not. He escapes through the woods but runs into two British soldiers and is nearly shot. Escaping across a meadow he encounters Solomon Chandler, who tells him stories in order to assuage his fear after having lost his father. He assures him that despite having run away when the shooting started on the green, he is not a coward. The two join a group of militiamen, and he tells them all what happened in Lexington. Soon, more militias gather and they learn that the British took heavy casualties at the Old North Bridge. They gather along the road back to Boston and plan an ambush of the retreating British. The British troops arrive and the militia open fire. After several volleys, the militia runs away and the British do not pursue. The militia regathers and the British approach again. The militia lays another ambush, in which they retreat down the road under cover of sharpshooters killing the British from great distances. They continue to lay ambushes for the British, and retreat through the woods. They meet up with others at a nearby barn and decide to set yet another trap for the British along a nearby road. Along the way they encounter, and defeat, a British cavalry patrol. The group of militia men continues to grow, with men from neighboring towns joining in, and they set another trap. Meanwhile, they see smoke rising from the vicinity of Lexington and think that the village has been burnt by the British. The attack on them goes as planned, but Adam falls asleep during it. Soon he gets leave to return to Lexington and console his family. He finds his house unburned, and his family is relieved he isn't dead. Moses' body is brought home. They bear him to the church with the other dead. As Adam looks over the damage left from the battle, he realizes that, unlike Levi, he has left childhood behind. That evening, Adam returns to his home. Many neighbors have come to visit and prepare food there, including Ruth, and she and Adam talk. She asks about the battle in the morning on the green, and he tells her about some of the things he saw. She worries that the British will come again and the same thing will happen, but he reassures her. She then asks him if he loves her, and after thinking about it, he says yes. She tells him that she loves him and then they part. After returning home to a nearly empty house, he goes to bed thinking about the changes that happened to him during those two days.
2876437	/m/088hl7	The Nightingale	Hans Christian Andersen	1843-11-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale"}	 The Emperor of China learns that one of the most beautiful things in his empire is the song of the nightingale. When he orders the nightingale brought to him, a kitchen maid (the only one at court who knows of its whereabouts) leads the court to a nearby forest where the bird is found. The nightingale agrees to appear at court. The Emperor is so delighted with the bird's song that he keeps the nightingale in captivity. When the Emperor is given a bejeweled mechanical bird he loses interest in the real nightingale, who returns to the forest. The mechanical bird eventually breaks down due to overuse. The Emperor is taken deathly ill a few years later. The real nightingale learns of the Emperor's condition and returns to the palace. God is so moved by the nightingale's song that he departs and the emperor recovers. The nightingale agrees to sing to the emperor of all the happenings in the empire, that he will be known as the wisest emperor ever to live.
2876554	/m/088hyg	Flyte	Angie Sage		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Septimus has become the apprentice to Marcia Overstrand, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. and a year has gone by. Septimus' older brother, Simon, had run away after an argument between him and Sarah/Silas Heap about Septimus, who Simon disliked. He comes back and kidnaps Jenna on his horse, Thunder. Septimus goes to search for her and he is assisted in his search by his brother Nicko, who helps build boats at Jannit Maarten's boatyard. But Jenna runs away from Simon's observatory in The Badlands and makes her way towards The Port. Eventually Septimus is able to rescue Jenna with his elder brother Nicko's help from the Port but they are tracked by Sleuth, Simon's tracking ball. They make their way to the Marram Marshes where they take the Dragon-Boat from Aunt Zelda's cottage and fly her to the Castle. However, they are pursued by Simon, who used a Flyte Charm to fly in the sky. Simon drops a huge Thunderflash on the Dragon-Boat's wing and it drops over Jannit Marten's Boatyard. Septimus, Jenna and Aunt Zelda are able to revive her through the Transubstantiation Triple spell. Septimus is also in search of the long lost Flyte charm. He finds the separated charm and unites it along with the small pair-of-wings Flyte charm that Marcia had given him as a token for his apprenticeship. Eventually he is able to fly and even warns Simon never to harm Jenna again. Also, the rock that Jenna gave him at Aunt Zelda's cottage turns out to be the egg of a dragon and eventually it hatches. Septimus absolutely adores the dragon and names him Spit Fyre. The dragon, based on the seeing-is-believing basis, identifies Marcia as his mother after yelling at him on the dragon launch pad. Septimus rescues Marcia by identifying the shadow that has been trailing her. He also finds out that the ShadowSafe Marcia is developing contains, unbeknown to her, the bones of destroyed Necromancer DomDaniel, which, once reassembled, tried to kill Marcia. With Septimus's help, Marcia is able to Identify him and he is once again destroyed.
2876803	/m/088jpv	Mio, my Mio				 Mio, My Son starts by introducing Bo Vilhelm Olsson ("Bosse"), a young boy who has been adopted by an elderly couple who dislike boys. They harass him, and tell him to stay out of their way. One day he receives an apple from the kindly shopkeeper, Mrs. Lundin, who asks him to mail a postcard for her. He mails the postcard, but not before he has thrown a glance at it. It is addressed to a king, and it says that his son will soon be coming home, recognized by his possession of a golden apple. Bosse looks at his apple and suddenly it turns into gold. Soon after, Bosse finds a bottle with a genie trapped inside. Upon freeing it, the genie recognises the apple and takes Bosse to another world, far, far away. Upon arriving, Bosse is told that his real name is Mio, and that he is son of the king and thus prince of the land. He finds a new best friend, Jum-Jum, and receives the horse Miramis from his father. However, he soon learns that not everything in this world is as wonderful as it first seemed. In the lands beyond that of the king lives an evil knight named Kato, whose hatred is so strong that the land around his castle is barren and singed. He has kidnapped several children from the nearby villages, and he poses a constant threat to the people living there. Mio is told that his destiny is to fight Kato, even though he is only a child. Together with Jum-Jum and Miramis, Mio sets out on a perilous journey into the land of Kato, as the stories have foreseen for thousands and thousands of years. In the American version, Mio is first called Karl Anders Nilsson, nicknamed Andy, and Jum-Jum's name is Pompoo.
2877118	/m/088k9v	The trials of Nikki Hill	Dick Lochte	1999	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist of this legal thriller is 33 year old, Nikki Hill. Nikki is a lead prosecutor at the District Attorney's office, and he has trusted her to help find the killer of Madeleine Gray, Hollywood's most popular TV host of a blackmail show. At first there is a hands down suspect, Jamal Deschamps, who was found at the scene of the crime. He possessed her ring and his skin was also under Maddie's thumb. After a lie detector test, it was proven that Deschamps was not the killer. It turned out, he merely found the cadaver and whilst stealing its ring, cut himself on her thumb. Nikki, another smart aleck prosecutor, and two quirky homicide detectives have a few loose strings, and bewilderment of who the real killer is. At Maddie's mansion, there was a missing rug, and a glass a ball that had Maddie's blood on it. And upstairs, where her blackmail files are, there is a busted drawer with missing contents. Nikki and the team discover that R&B singer, Diana Cooper, had a fight with Maddie the day of the murder. She quickly becomes a major suspect when Maddie's blood is also found in her trunk. The detectives come up with a scenario: Maddie threatened to give Diana's blackmail information, so she stole it and killed Maddie. This was soon proven wrong when detective Goodman's girlfriend confessed to stealing the black mail file for Diana's husband. Diana's charges were also dropped due to conflict with her alibi the time of the murder. Next, fingers were pointed towards John Willins, Diana's huband. Maddie had told Palmer, her neighbor, that she had slept with a J man. There were also logs at a private getaway club that a J. W. and M. Gray went together several times. Nikki and the team try to trace John Willin's past, and it turned up that he was from a small town. While putting together clues, they find out that John's family was killed in a fire, and that he could be taking on the identity of his deceased cousin. This leads to another question: did he murder his family with the fire? The only way to really find out was to go to the town and see if there was a grave for "John Willins". When they report this phenomenal news to district attorney, Joe Walden, he decides he wants to come along. And when they finally get to the town's only cemetery, they find out that Joe Walden, the district attorney, is the J.W....!
2879087	/m/088plh	Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa	Marc Estrin		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Rather than being thrown away like trash, Gregor Samsa was secretly sold to a Viennese sideshow by the Samsas' chambermaid. He then met various figures like Wittgenstein, Spengler and Einstein and witnessed American Prohibition, the Scopes trial, was involved in Alice Paul's feminist movement, encountered the Ku Klux Klan, and conferred with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Robert Oppenheimer.
2879237	/m/088pv5	My Life As a Man	Philip Roth		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The work is split into two sections: the first section, "Useful Fictions," consisting of two short stories about a character named Nathan Zuckerman (although this character frequently featured in Roth's later novels, scholarship has revealed this not to be the same character), and the second section, "My True Story," which takes the form of a first-person memoir by Peter Tarnopol, a Jewish writer who authored the two stories in the first section.
2880529	/m/088s9b	The White Bone	Barbara Gowdy		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is told entirely from the points of view of its elephant characters. Much like real elephants, all female elephants (cows) and prepubescent males (bulls) live in matrilineal family groups, and mature male elephants are loners. The main characters in the novel are mostly from the "She-S" family, into which Mud, a young cow who is pregnant with her first calf, has been adopted. Mud is blessed with visionary powers and can occasionally see into the future. Thrown into a drought, with human poachers becoming increasingly common, Mud and her family must find the legendary "Safe Place" where drought and poachers do not come. The "White Bone," a rib of a newborn elephant, is rumored to be lying somewhere in the savannah and is said to point in the direction of the Safe Place. After a slaughter which leaves most of Mud's adoptive family dead and her best friend, Date Bed, missing, Mud and the remaining She-S elephants set off to find the White Bone and Date Bed. The novel is rather nihilistic, as it is unlikely that any of the characters ever reach the Safe Place, with a few possible exceptions. Hence, it is considered a powerful social commentary on the plight of endangered animals, showing their situation to be somewhat hopeless. Another main theme of the novel is the importance of family ties, and the fact that Mud, as an adopted member of the She-S family, feels alienated from the other elephants throughout. Another theme of the novel acknowledges the old saying, "An elephant never forgets." The novel implies that elephants will eventually go senile, but as most are killed before their prime, the saying is usually true. The elephants are capable of remembering every minute detail of their lives, unlike humans, who tend to remember important events most strongly.
2880770	/m/088sr9	Black Sunday	Thomas Harris	1975	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Michael Lander is a pilot who flies the Aldrich Blimp over NFL football games to film them for network television. He is also, secretly, deranged by years of torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a bitter court martial on his return and a failed marriage. He longs to commit suicide and take as many of the cheerful, carefree American civilians he sees from his blimp each weekend with him as possible. Lander conspires with Dahlia Iyad, an operative from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, to launch a suicide attack using a bomb composed of plastique and a quarter million steel darts, housed on the underside of the gondola of the Aldrich Blimp, which they will detonate over Tulane Stadium during a Super Bowl between the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins. Dahlia and Black September, in turn, intend the attack as a wake-up call for the American people, to turn their attention and the world's to the plight of the Palestinians. American and Israeli intelligence, led by Mossad agent David Kabakov and FBI agent Sam Corley, race to prevent the catastrophe. They piece together the path of the explosives into the country, and Dahlia's own movements. In a spectacular conclusion, the bomb-carrying blimp is chased by helicopters as it approaches the packed stadium.
2881655	/m/088vgy	All the Shah's Men	Stephen Kinzer	2003-07-18		 In 1933 Reza Shah signed a deal selling Iranian oil extraction rights to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later called British Petroleum (BP). Though Iran was officially neutral at the start of World War II, its monarch was friendly towards the Axis. Following the 1941 Allied Invasion of Iran, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Mohammad Reza Shah, who upheld the oil agreement with APOC, which by then had been renamed the "Anglo-Iranian Oil Company". When the first democratically elected parliament and prime minister in Iran took power in 1950 they planned to seize the oil assets in Iran that had been developed by the British, violating the still running oil contract with British Petroleum. The British Government followed to court in Belgium's International Court and lost the case against Iran's new government. Great Britain reacted by blockading the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, halting Iran's trade and economy. The US was concerned that Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh was seeking help from local superpower, the Soviet Union, in the case against Great Britain. The Dwight D. Eisenhower administration agreed with the Churchill government to restore the pro-western Shah to power. In the summer of 1953, the CIA and Britain's MI6 arranged a coup in Tehran. The Iranian prime minister was successfully overthrown. Mossadegh spent the rest of his life on his country estate under house arrest, and Iran remained a staunch Cold War ally of the West. After more than 20 years of the Shah's rule, there was a bloody revolution in 1979 after which Iran became the Islamic Republic it is today. Regarding US policy as it developed towards Iran in the early 1950s, the book portrays it as having been variously driven by the fear of annoying the British, or attempting to be an honest broker, or as being motivated by efforts to stop the spread of Communism. The fact (stated at the end of the book) that US companies were granted the majority of the oil concessions from the Shah's government after the coup, does not feature significantly in the earlier part of the narrative. However, that this was the chief reason for the coup is the tacit conclusion of the book. The British critic David Pryce-Jones takes strong issue with this conclusion in his essay "A Very Elegant Coup" (link below). In his view, the attempted Communist takeover of Iran was the chief issue, and the portrayal of the CIA by Kinzer as 'arrogant, thuggish and immoral' was originally a notion put forward by leftists who sympathized with the attempt.
2883349	/m/088zvp	Desire Under the Elms	Eugene O'Neill	1925		 Widower Ephraim Cabot abandons his New England farm to his three sons, who hate him but share his greed. Eben, the youngest and brightest sibling, feels the farm is his birthright, as it originally belonged to his mother. He buys out his half-brothers' shares of the farm with money stolen from his father, and Peter and Simeon head off to California to seek their fortune. Later, Ephraim returns with a new wife, the beautiful and headstrong Abbie, who enters into an adulterous affair with Eben. Soon after, Abbie bears Eben's child, but lets Ephraim believe that the child is his, in the hopes of securing her future with the farm. The proud Ephraim is oblivious as his neighbors openly mock him as a cuckold. Madly in love with Eben and fearful it would become an obstacle to their relationship, Abbie kills the infant. An enraged and distraught Eben turns Abbie over to the sheriff, but not before admitting to himself the depths of his love for her and thus confessing his own role in the infanticide.
2883699	/m/088_kv	The Sea	John Banville	2005	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told by Max Morden, a self-aware, retired art historian attempting to reconcile himself to the deaths of those whom he loved as a child and as an adult. The novel is written as a reflective journal; the setting always in flux, wholly dependent upon the topic or theme Max feels to write about. Despite the constant fluctuations, Max returns to three settings: his childhood memories of the Graces&mdash;a wealthy middle-class family living in a rented cottage home, the "Cedars"&mdash;during the summer holidays; the months leading up to the death of his wife, Anna; and his present stay at the Cedars cottage home in Ballyless&mdash;where he has retreated since Anna's death. These three settings are heavily diced and impromptly jumbled together for the novel's entire duration. Max's final days with Anna were awkward; Max does not know how to act with his soon-to-be-dead wife. Scenes of Anna's dying days are more full of commentary than with actual details, as are most of the novel's settings. It's through these commentaries that we learn of Max's choice to return to the cottage of his childhood memories (after Anna's death), confirming that a room would be available for residence during a visit with his adult daughter, Claire. We learn of the Cedars' current house-maid, Miss Vavasour, and her other tenant: a retired army Colonel, often described as a background character (even during his important role in the denouement). The Colonel is also seen, at the beginning of Max's stay, to have a crush on Miss Vavasour; Max suspects Miss Vavasour had entertained the Colonel's slight infatuation prior to Max's own arrival. Despite the actual present day setting of the novel (everything is written by Max, after Anna's death, while he stays in the Cedars home), the underlying motivation to Max's redaction of memories, the single setting which ties the novel together, are Max's childhood memories. With Max's unreliable, unorganised and omitted iteration of events, we gradually learn the names of the Graces: Chloe, the wild daughter; Myles, the mute brother; Connie, the mother; Carlos, the father; and finally the twins' nursemaid, Rose. After brief encounters, and fruitless moments of curiosity, Max becomes infatuated with Connie Grace upon first sight; seeing her lounging at the beach launches him to acquaint Chloe and Myles in, what Max stipulates to have been a conscious effort to get inside the Cedars, hence, closer to Mrs. Grace. He succeeds. Later, Max recounts being invited on a picnic&mdash;for what reasons or what specific time during the summer is never explicitly stated&mdash;where Max, in awe, catches an unkempt glance at her pelvic area. This day of "illicit invitation" climaxes when Max is pulled to the ground, and snuggled closely with Connie and Rose in a game of hide-and-seek. The latter half of his summer memories (the relation of Max's memories in the second part of the novel), however, revolve around Max's awkward relationship with Chloe: a girl with a spastic personality and blunt demeanor whom Max describes as one who "[does] not play, on her own or otherwise". Chloe is shown as a volatile character: flagrantly kissing Max in a Cinema, rough-housing with her brother Myles, and what was hinted as hypersexuality earlier, is quite possibly confirmed as hypersexuality in the book's final moments. We soon learn that Chloe and Myles like to tease Rose, who is young and timid enough to feel bullied. Max, another day, climbs a tree in the yard of the Ceders house, and soon spots Rose crying not too far from him. Mrs. Grace soon emerges, comforting Rose. Max overhears (rather, Max remembers overhearing) key words from their conversation: "love him" and "Mr. Grace". Assuming this to mean Rose and Mr. Grace are having an affair, he tells Chloe and Myles. The ending of the book entwines the exact moment of Anna's death with Chloe and Myles drowning in the sea itself as Max and Rose look on. Max, done with his childhood memories, offers a final memory of a near-death episode while he was inebriated. The Colonel does not physically save Max, rather finds him knocked unconscious by a rock (from a drunken stumble). His daughter scolds him at the hospital, assumingly being told he nearly killed himself, and tells him to come home with her. It is revealed at this point that Miss Vavasour is Rose herself and she was in love with Mrs. Grace. Max finishes with a redaction of himself standing in the sea after Anna's death (an allegory is made between crashing waves and tumultuous periods of his life). We are to assume that he will leave the Cedars' home to be cared for by his daughter, Claire.
2884498	/m/0891fh	Tribes of Redwall Badgers	Brian Jacques	2001	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This booklet about badgers features trivia questions, a giant poster, and profiles of many of the badger characters that are featured in the series. They include cartoons, fun facts, and the story information. Illustrated by Peter Standley.
2884749	/m/0891xc	The Land of Crimson Clouds			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A spaceship, propelled by a prototype photon engine, sets off for Venus, which at that time, is an enigmatic and unexplored planet covered by clouds. The tasks of the crew are a) to test the prototype engine in field conditions and b) to locate and set radio beacons on the s.c. "Uranium Golconda" (a place with incredibly large heavy metals deposits), presumably, found somewhere on the second planet of the Solar System. As the crew ventures into the depths of Venus, unknown dangers take them out one by one, so only a half of them returns home after accomplishing the mission - all badly damaged, both physically and mentally. However, their feat was the first milestone in colonizing Venus and the first step into the 22nd century. cs:Planeta nachových mračen de:Atomvulkan Golkonda pl:W krainie purpurowych obłoków ru:Страна багровых туч
2886759	/m/0ddgp01	Falling Free	Lois McMaster Bujold	1988-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set about 200 years before the birth of Miles Vorkosigan, the protagonist of much of the Vorkosigan series. It deals with the creation of the "Quaddies", genetically modified people who have four arms, the second pair appearing where unmodified humans would have legs. They were intended to be used as a space labor force, not only superbly adapted to zero-gravity but unable to function "downside" in any but the lightest gravitational field. From the point of view of the commercial interests responsible for their creation, they would be highly-profitable, requiring none of the special facilities or mandatory time off needed by other humans, whose bodies tend to deteriorate over the long term in weightlessness. They would also be completely beholden to the company for life support, and would have no rights as human beings. Legally, the Quaddies are not classed as human but as "post-fetal experimental tissue cultures". The company treats them as chattel slaves. Their access to information is tightly controlled. Even their children's stories are about working in space. They can be ordered to reproduce or to have a pregnancy terminated. They are the subject of breeding programs, the company compelling them to mate only with one of the company's choosing, regardless of existing partners. When a new artificial gravity technology renders them both obsolete and a potential political embarrassment to the executives, there are discussions about killing them or sterilizing them. Bipedal engineer Leo Graf, who had been assigned to help train them, instead helps them break free. They eventually settle in an initially remote system that gradually becomes a major part of the Nexus. Bujold has stated in the notes of her reprints that Falling Free was the first half of the intended story. The unwritten, second story was to tell how the Quaddies settled into what would be known as "Quaddiespace". Diplomatic Immunity, published in 2002, revisits the subject of the Quaddies, showing the state of their society some 240 years after its foundation. It takes place on Graf Station, named for Leo Graf, who is hero and patriarch to the Quaddies.
2887589	/m/0898hd	Season of Migration to the North	Tayeb Salih	1966		 The unnamed narrator has returned to his native village in the Sudan after seven years in England furthering his education. On his arrival home, the Narrator encounters a new villager named Mustafa Sa'eed who exhibits none of the adulation for his achievements that most others do, and he displays an antagonistically aloof nature. Mustafa Sa'eed betrays his past one drunken evening by wistfully reciting poetry in fluent English, leaving the narrator resolute to discover the stranger's identity. The Narrator later asks Mustafa Sa'eed about his past, and Mustafa tells the Narrator much of his story, often saying "I am no Othello, Othello was a lie." The Narrator becomes fascinated by Mustafa, and he learns that Mustafa was also a precocious student educated in the west but he held a violent, hateful and complex relationship with his western identity and acquaintances. The story of Mustafa's troubled past in Europe, and in particular his love affairs with British women, form the center of the novel. The narrator then discovers that the stranger, Mustafa Sa'eed, awakens in him great curiosity, despair and anger, as Mustafa emerges as his doppelgänger. The stories of Mustafa's past life in England, and the repercussions on the village around him, taking their toll on the narrator, who is driven to the very edge of sanity. In the final chapter, the Narrator is floating in the Nile, precariously between life and death, and the narrator makes the conscious choice to rid himself of Mustafa's lingering presence, and to stand as an influential individual in his own right. The novel has also been related in many senses to Heart of Darkness by author Joseph Conrad. Both novels explore cultural hybridity, cross-colonial experiences, and orientalism.
2887991	/m/0899gc	Threshold	David R. Palmer	1985-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Due to what they call a 'racial mental block' a quasi-immortal race called the Isi are unable to prevent a galactic catastrophe. The Isi think humanity (specifically Peter) will help them overcome this hurdle, hence the book's opening line "Peter, we are losing Armageddon..." Unless he joins forces with them "... the galaxy is doomed...!" While Peter (and the reader) is understandably skeptical, the talking cat, as well as a crash course in telepathy rapidly convince him of Meg's sincerity. Soon he is using his uniquely human perspective to unveil new applications of ancient Isi mental powers, and develops some startling new abilities. Armed with complete control of his cellular structure (which allows for slow but complete cellular metamorphosis), and a "gnNäáq" (knack) which allows the mental manipulation of electrical energy, Peter and Meg travel to Meg's home planet of Isis where he will be taught the "mMj'q" (Magic) necessary to help save the galaxy from its impending destruction. Writing in what can only be described in a "Heinlein-esque" style, Palmer deliberately plays with sci-fi conventions. For example he implies that common terms such as witch, familiar, and magic actually stem from alien words. He also turns several clichés on their ear, giving the reader a trip through the protagonist's ego as he travels across a decidedly hostile planet.
2889602	/m/025shmj	Ysabel	Guy Gavriel Kay	2007-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ned Marriner is in France with his father, Edward, a celebrated photographer who is working on a book about Provence. While his father shoots outside the deserted Saint-Sauveur Cathedral, Ned wanders in to look around. There he meets Kate Wenger, an American exchange student with a passion for ancient history and an extensive knowledge of the cathedral's past. The pair is startled by the appearance of a then-nameless man, who warns them to leave immediately, stating that they "have blundered into the corner of a very old story". Ned finds that he is able to sense the man's presence, a power of which he was previously unaware. Ned and Kate also notice an ancient carving of a woman on one of the church pillars, which the nameless man claims he created. Frightened by the incident, Ned and Kate make plans to meet a few days later. Ned goes on a photo-scouting mission with his father's assistants, Greg, Steve, and Melanie, a young woman who is hyper-organized, witty, and well liked by everyone, including Ned. They head towards Mont Sainte-Victoire, a much-photographed location made famous by Cezanne. But along the way, Ned falls suddenly and inexplicably ill. Arriving at the mountain, he is overcome by images of the slaughter that took place there centuries prior, when a Roman general killed thousands of Celts. He is rushed back to the team's villa, but once he has travelled only a short distance from the mountain, he recovers completely. Ned and Kate meet later that day in a coffee shop to discuss their situation. Ned is unnerved by the discovery of his strange abilities, while both are curious to find out more about the nameless man and his "story." Unaware that they are being watched by the nameless man, they make plans to meet again in Entremont, an ancient Celtic site, on the Eve of Beltaine. Kate leaves, but Ned becomes aware of the nameless man's presence and confronts him. The man tells him little, and soon leaves the cafe. Outside, however, he is attacked by unnaturally vicious dogs, and Ned steps in to defend him, saving his life. Ned meets his Aunt Kim, a woman with mysterious powers. She tells him that she sensed he was in trouble, and came at once to offer her help. He discovers that she has the same ability to "sense" the presence of those with power, which she claims "runs in the family." They are confronted by a second nameless man, a large Celt with antlers, and are again warned to stay out of the "story." The Celt plans to kill the nameless man from the cathedral (who he calls a "Roman"), and threatens Ned for having helped him, but Aunt Kim manages to bluff their way out of the situation. Despite Ned's misgivings, Kate, who is acting strangely, convinces him to follow their original plan of visiting Entremont on Beltaine. They plan to be away from the place before dark, but not long after they enter the site, darkness falls several hours early. They hide from a ghostly procession of druids that arrives soon after and becomes more solid as the light continues to fade. The nameless Roman from the cathedral confronts them, ordering them to flee as soon as they can. Kate begins to struggle, possessed with a strange desire to join the druidic ceremony below. Just before she escapes, however, Melanie arrives, looking for Ned. As she approaches the waiting Celts, she is transformed into Ysabel, possessed by the spirit of an ancient woman who the two nameless men have been fighting over for centuries. Ysabel names the Roman Phelan and the Celt Cadell, and orders them to spend three days searching for her. Whoever finds her first will win her. Ned and Kate discover that this is the "story": a battle between two men for one woman's love, which has been repeated in various incarnations throughout the millennia. Ned and Kate leave unnoticed, stricken by the loss of Melanie. He tells his father, Aunt Kim, Greg, and Steve everything that has happened, and also asks his mother, Meghan, to leave Sudan, where she is working with Doctors Without Borders, to be with them as they attempt to get Melanie back. Meghan and Kim, her sister, had a falling out when they were younger, and there are some strained moments once Meghan arrives and they attempt to work together and reconcile their differences. They are aided by Uncle Dave, Kim's husband, who also possesses special abilities and knowledge of the supernatural. Ned and his fellow searchers visit various historical sites in Provence over the following two days, trying to track down Ysabel's hiding place before Phelan or Cadell in the hopes that they will be able to rescue Melanie. Following a hint from one of the wild boars that are common throughout the South of France, Ned realizes that Ysabel is hiding on Mont Sainte-Victoire, the site where he experienced his mysterious illness. He decides to go there alone, as he is a marathon runner and will be able to reach the summit fastest. Despite feeling sick the entire way, Ned makes it to the summit before Phelan or Cadell, discovering Ysabel in a cavern that looks out over Provence. He demands that she release Melanie. Cadell and Phelan arrive shortly thereafter, both claiming the victory. Ysabel points out that it was Ned who arrived first, and reveals that Ned is distantly descended from the original Ysabel (who would have gone by a different name). Both Phelan and Cadell commit suicide by leaping from the mountain, for neither succeeded in reaching Ysabel first. When Ned looks at Ysabel again, he finds that she too has departed, leaving Melanie safe and unharmed in her place.
2890614	/m/089h62	Inkspell	Cornelia Funke	2005-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A year has passed, and Meggie now lives in Elinor's house along with Darius and her parents, Mo and Resa. Life is peaceful, but not a day goes by without Meggie thinking of Inkheart and the characters that came to life. For the fire-eater Dustfinger, the need to return to his homeworld has become urgent. When he finds a crooked storyteller named Orpheus who has the same ability to bring stories to life as Mo, he asks him to read him back. Orpheus obliges, but doesn't send Dustfinger's apprentice, Farid, back into the book as they arranged; he then steals the book from the boy and hands it over to Basta, who wants revenge for the death of his master Capricorn. Dustfinger, now in the Inkworld, regrets the fact that Farid didn't come back with him but doesn't suspect that Orpheus intended it that way. Distraught, Farid goes in search of Meggie, and before long, both are caught inside the book, too. Soon after the two youths are in the book, Mortola, Basta, Orpheus, and a "man built like a wardrobe" barge into Elinor's house, and take Mo, Resa, Elinor, and Darius prisoner. As per Mortola's orders, Orpheus reads Basta, Mortola, and Mo into Inkheart, but Resa comes with them by accident by getting hold of Mo. Mortola has brought along a rifle from our world, and shoots Mortimer. Resa discovers that her voice has come back to her only as she cries for her husband, praying for him to survive the wound. Resa and Mo are hiding in a secret cave with the strolling players (known also as Motley Folk) while he recovers, but they soon discover (or erroneously assume) that the injured Mo is the mysterious gentleman-robber, the "Bluejay", a fictitious hero created by Fenoglio's words made into song for the Motley Folk to sing. Fenoglio has been living within his own story since the events of Inkheart, working as a court scribe in Lombrica's capital city of Ombra, and once reunited with Meggie he asks her to read Cosimo the Fair back into the story, since he died a death the author never planned for him. Meggie doesn't feel right to interfere with the story so much but is soon convinced by Fenoglio as it will be 'a double' of Cosimo - not Cosimo himself. Reluctantly Meggie agrees to read the words when Adderheads soldier's barge into the fair and injure and kill many people by riding horses over them, but soon regrets it when she realises that it has gone wrong. Cosimo has none of his doubles memories and doesn't seem to love his wife and child anymore. Instead he 'spends his nights' with Dustfinger and Roxanne's daughter Brianna. Violante begs Fenoglio to convince Roxanne to deal with Brianna and tell her not to upset Violante's marriage. Fenoglio attempts this but fails, a mixture of Roxanne's reluctance to tell her daughter what to do and Roxanne's distracting beauty. Fenoglio thinks that Roxanne is 'too beautiful' for Dustfinger. Cosimo's return upsets the Adderhead, ruler of the neighboring region of Argenta, whom planned to take over Lombrica once the Laughing Prince died. With the rightful heir to the throne of Ombra mysteriously brought back to life, but with no memories of 'his own' life, a war is imminent. Mo and Resa are captured by the Adderhead's men along with many other strolling players in the cave, sold out by one of their own. Meggie, who had also been able to read a few of Fenoglio's words to aid her father in recuperating, joins Dustfinger and Farid in searching for her parents and the strolling players. Along with the Black Prince, de facto leader of the Motley Folk, they launch a successful rescue mission, but Mo is unable to escape because of his wound and Resa stays behind with him. Meggie goes willingly into the Adderhead's Castle of Night and, fulfilling a prophecy she and Fenoglio dreamed up and "read" into reality, offers him a bargain: Mo, a great bookbinder rather than the robber they believe him to be, will bind the Adderhead a book of immortality if he lets Meggie, Resa, Mo, and the rest of the strolling players he has captured go free. What they neglect to tell the Prince of Argenta is that if three words are written in the book ("Heart", "Spell", and "Death", referencing the titles of the books), the person who signed his name in the book to gain immortality will die instantly. However, his lieutenant Firefox, disbelieving of the entire concept from the beginning, is chosen to test it. Firefox is made immortal, surviving a fatal stabbing without suffering any consequences, but then Taddeo, the Adderhead's librarian, kills him by writing the three words in the book. Satisfied that the book works, the words are all erased and replaced by the Adderhead's name, consequently making the Adderhead invincible. Mo picks up Firefox's sword as they leave and claims it as his own, feeling a strange coldness within him; he believes his anger and sadness at the events thus far are changing him into a different person. The Adderhead decided, as celebration for his wife giving birth to a healthy son to release all of the prisoners from his cells, but the Black Prince suspects that he instead plans to sell the prisoners into slavery. Together the robbers plan to free the prisoners, during the raid in which Basta leads, Mo learns to fight and kill and, Unfortunately Basta kills Farid, with a knife thrown at his back (The death Fenoglio had originally planned for Dustfinger) Basta is then killed himself by Mo. Later while mourning Farids death, Dustfinger asks Meggie if she too would like to have Farid back. When Meggie agrees sends her to Roxanne to tell her "he will always find his way back to her". Roxanne realizes what Dustfinger plans to do and runs to him, she is too late however and watches as the White Women, (the Inkworld's Angels of Death) take Dustfinger. Farid is then brought back to life in Dustfinger's place and the story ends with Meggie reading Orpheus to the Inkworld so as to resurrect Dustfinger. Orpheus convinces Farid to become his servant in saying that it will help him bring Dustfinger back to life sooner.
2890732	/m/089hk4	The Heaven Makers	Frank Herbert	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Heaven Makers is set on contemporary Earth with the one difference that we are being watched and manipulated by aliens for their viewing pleasure. The plot focuses on several humans whose lives are changed by the aliens, and an alien observer investigating the morality of these changes.
2892919	/m/089nr1	Memories of the Ford Administration	John Updike	1992	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the early 1990s, it concerns a historian and teacher, Alfred Clayton, and his response to a national survey requesting "memories and impressions" of the administration of Gerald Ford. The novel is presented as Clayton's improbably long and incredibly personal response, submitted to his professional association, the Northern New England Association of American Historians (NNEAAH). (Clayton teaches at a junior college in New Hampshire.)
2894733	/m/089sqm	Core	Paul Preuss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After several disasters around the world connected with the electromagnetic field, a group of scientists travel into the Earth's core to start it again.
2895874	/m/089vqn	Enemies, a Love Story	Isaac Bashevis Singer	1966	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in New York City in 1949, the novel follows Holocaust survivor Herman Broder. Throughout the war he survived in a hayloft, taken care of by his non-Jewish, Polish servant, Yadwiga, whom he later takes as his wife in America. Meanwhile, he has an affair with another Holocaust survivor, Masha. To Yadwiga, he poses as a traveling book-salesman despite the fact he is simply a ghost writer for a corrupt rabbi. He wanders about New York with a constant paranoia and perpetual desperation, made more complicated when his first wife from Poland, Tamara, who was thought to be killed in the Holocaust, comes to New York.
2897522	/m/089_b5	Dying of the Light	George R. R. Martin	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book takes place on the planet of Worlorn, a world which is dying. It is a rogue planet whose erratic course is taking it irreversibly far from its neighboring stars into a region of cold and dark where no life will survive. Worlorn's 14 cities, built during a brief window when the world passed close enough to a red giant star to permit life to thrive, are dying too. Built to celebrate the diverse cultures of 14 planetary systems they have largely been abandoned allowing their systems and maintenance to fail. The cast is a group of characters who are also flirting with death. Dirk t'Larien, the protagonist, finds life empty and of little attraction after his girlfriend Gwen Delvano leaves him. Most poignant of all, the Kavalar race, into which she has "married," is dying culturally. Their home planet has survived numerous attacks in a planetary war, and in response they have evolved social institutions and human relationship patterns to cope with the depredation of the war. Yet now that the war is long past, they find themselves trapped between those who would recognise that the old ways need to be reviewed for the current day and those who believe that any dilution of the old ways spells the end of Kavalar culture. The battles, then, of all these varying actors are played out beneath the dying light falling on Worlorn. At the end many of the characters have died, though the author leaves some endings deliberately ambiguous. However they have all faced their fears of death and of life.
2899736	/m/08b4wk	The Fortunes of Nigel	Walter Scott	1822-05-29	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 David Ramsay, a watchmaker, lives with his daughter Margaret on Fleet Street. He has two apprentices, Mr Vincent and Mr Tunstall. The two apprentices had run off to join in a street fray, and the goldsmith George Heriot was gossiping with Ramsay, when they brought in a fellow named Richie Moniplies with a broken head and very tattered garments. His wound having been dressed, he explained that he had come to London with his master Nigel Olifaunt to obtain payment of a debt owing to him by the king, and had been set upon as a stranger. Next morning Nigel received a visit, at his lodging with the chandler and his wife, from the goldsmith, who had known his father, and, having warned him that his estate was in danger, lent him money to appear in proper attire in Court. Heriot proceeded to Whitehall, and, having presented the young lord's petition, King James authorised him to advance part of the sum due, and promised to interest himself in his affairs. Dining with him the same day at the goldsmith's, in company with her father and Sir Mungo, Margaret lost her heart to Nigel, and employed Dame Ursula, the barber's wife, to ascertain all particulars respecting him. On being presented at Court by Lord Huntinglen he obtained an order for payment of his claim, and was introduced to the Duke of Buckingham, who announced himself as his enemy, and to the Duke's son, Lord Dalgarno, by whom he was initiated in all the vices of the aristocracy of that period, although warned by Richie, and by an anonymous letter. Meeting the Prince of Wales, later Charles I, in St. James's Park, attended by several courtiers, Nigel learnt from their manner, as well as from Sir Mungo, that he had been ill spoken of to Charles, upon which he challenged Dalgarno in the precincts of the Court, and was compelled to take refuge in Whitefriars to avoid arrest. Here he renewed his acquaintance with the barrister Lowestoffe, whom he had met at Beaujeu's tavern, and was assigned to the care of old Trapbois the lodging-house keeper and his daughter. On hearing of Nigel's trouble Margaret sought an interview with Lady Hermione, who occupied a suite of apartments in Heriot's mansion, and, having revealed her secret, was supplied with money to help him, being told at the same time by her confidant of the ill usage she had suffered from Lord Dalgarno. Vincent, who was in love with his master's daughter, and had been encouraged by Dame Ursula in extravagant habits, was now engaged by her to act as his rival's guide in effecting his escape from London. The same night old Trapbois was murdered by two ruffians who came to rob him; and, just as he had rescued the daughter, whom the bailiff Hildebrod had advised him to marry, Nigel was accosted by the apprentice, dressed as a waterman, from whom he learnt that a warrant had been issued for his apprehension, and that a boat was in readiness for him to give the king's officers the slip. Martha begged that she might accompany him, and, having secured her father's treasure, they were conducted by Vincent to the Temple Stairs. Having landed his companion at Paul's Wharf, where she was taken charge of by Moniplies, Nigel insisted on disembarking at Greenwich, instead of joining a Scotch vessel which was waiting for him at Gravesend; and having made his way to the park, he attended the king while he killed a deer, when he was recognised and consigned to the Tower. Presently Margaret, dressed as a boy, was shown into the same room; then the chandler came to claim his wife, whom he accused Nigel of having carried off; and, after he had dined, his friend Heriot arrived to reproach him with the position in which he had placed himself. He had also lost the king's warrant for his debt, and when his companion's disguise was detected, she saved him from further embarrassment by a full confession. One of her acts had been to present a petition to the king from Lady Hermione, on reading which he had commanded that Lord Dalgarno should instantly marry her; and another to offer such explanations respecting Nigel as induced his Majesty to pardon him. One hour only, however, remained within which to redeem his estates, when Moniplies appeared with the money, and Lord Dalgarno, who hoped to have secured them, was deprived of his revenge. The next day he was shot in Enfield Chase, where Captain Colepepper had planned to waylay him, as he was waiting, in company with Dame Nelly, and a page in charge of the treasure, to fight a duel with Nigel. Vincent and Lowestoffe, however, arrived in time to put two of the robbers to flight, while Moniplies killed the captain, who was suspected of having murdered Trapbois, and Christie recovered his wife. Nigel and Margaret were soon afterwards married; and as King James was honouring the feast with his presence, Richie presented Martha as his bride, who, at the same time, handed to the preserver of her life the deeds of the Glenvarloch estates, which she had freed from all liabilities, and the royal sign-manual which had been found among her father's papers.
2900387	/m/08b6c8	The First Man	Albert Camus	1995	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The novel takes Jacques Cormery from birth to his years in the lycee, or secondary school, in Algiers. In a departure from the intellectual and philosophical weight of his earlier works, Camus wanted this novel to be "heavy with things and flesh." It is a novel of basic and essential things: childhood, schooldays, the life of the body, the power of the sun and the sea, the painful love of a son for his mother, the search for a lost father. But it is also about the history of a colonial people in a vast and not always hospitable African landscape; about the complex relationship of a "mother" country to its colonists; about the intimate effects of war and political revolution. Most importantly, The First Man brings Camus to life again, allowing us a view of the man—visceral and vulnerable—that had never before been revealed.
2902110	/m/08bb80	Locus Solus	Raymond Roussel	1914	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 John Ashbery summarizes Locus Solus thus in his introduction to Michel Foucault's Death and the Labyrinth: "A prominent scientist and inventor, Martial Canterel, has invited a group of colleagues to visit the park of his country estate, Locus Solus. As the group tours the estate, Canterel shows them inventions of ever-increasing complexity and strangeness. Again, exposition is invariably followed by explanation, the cold hysteria of the former giving way to the innumerable ramifications of the latter. After an aerial pile driver which is constructing a mosaic of teeth and a huge glass diamond filled with water in which float a dancing girl, a hairless cat named Khóng-dek-lèn, and the preserved head of Danton, we come to the central and longest passage: a description of eight curious tableaux vivants taking place inside an enormous glass cage. We learn that the actors are actually dead people whom Canterel has revived with 'resurrectine', a fluid of his invention which if injected into a fresh corpse causes it continually to act out the most important incident of its life." As well as Dutch, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish translations, there have been three English translations of the work in question, published by the University of California Press (Berkeley) (1970), Calder and Boyers (London) (1970) and Calder (2008), and all based on Rupert Copeland Cunningham's scholarship and transcription.
2903352	/m/08bgp8	Galatea 2.2	Richard Powers	1995	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main narrative tells the story of Powers' return to his alma mater&nbsp;– referred to in the novel as simply "U.", but clearly based on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the school Powers attended and teaches at as a professor&nbsp;– after he has ended a long and torrid relationship with a loving but volatile woman, referred to as "C." Powers is an in-house author for the university, and lives for free for one year. He finds himself unable to write any more books, and spends the first portion of the novel attempting to write, but never getting past the first line. Powers then meets a computer scientist named Philip Lentz. Intrigued by Lentz's overbearing personality and unorthodox theories, Powers eventually agrees to participate in an experiment involving artificial intelligence. Lentz bets his fellow scientists that he can build a computer that can produce an analysis of a literary text that is indistinguishable from one produced by a human. It is Powers' task to "teach" the machine. After going through several unsuccessful versions, Powers and Lentz produce a computer model (dubbed "Helen") that is able to communicate like a human. It is not clear to the reader or to Powers whether she is simulating human thought, or whether she is actually experiencing it. Powers tutors the computer, first by reading it canonical works of literature, then current events, and eventually telling it the story of his own life, in the process developing a complicated relationship with the machine. The novel also consists of extensive flashbacks to Powers' relationship with C., from their first meeting at U., to their bohemian life in Boston, to their move to C.'s family's town in the Netherlands. The novel culminates with Helen being unable to bear the realities of the world, and "leaving" Powers. She asks Powers to "see everything" for her, and subsequently shuts herself down. Her exit from the world forces Powers to experience a rebirth. In addition, Powers realizes that he was Lentz's experiment: would he or wouldn't he be able to teach a computer? Through the transformation he experiences, he is suddenly able to interact with the world, and he can write again.
2903698	/m/08bhlr	The Franchise	Peter Gent	1983		 Taylor Rusk is a star college quarterback and a can't-miss prospect in The League. Through various illegal means, North Texas is awarded an expansion franchise. As expected, the expansion Texas Pistols draft Rusk number one. The Pistols have a five-year plan to turn the team into champions, and getting Taylor Rusk ready is the key. But Rusk is on to the corruption and refuses to be a victim. With his college coach at the helm and "old league" legends mentoring him, Taylor Rusk plays The League's game until it's time for him to make his most daring move to bring it down. But along the way, Rusk is betrayed. One teammate, a chronic con man, becomes the Pistols' general manager and ultimately betrays him. Another teammate suffers a devastating knee injury. However, the surgery is botched. Rusk sees him get tossed aside and, due largely to steroid abuse, he murders his family and commits suicide. Five years later, the Texas Pistols are world champions, but Taylor Rusk has little time to celebrate. He's got to save the life of another victim: the woman he's fallen in love with &mdash; who's also the mother of his son. They ultimately take control of the Texas Pistols for him.
2904051	/m/08bjsd	Fourth and Long Gone				 Charles Forrest "Buck" Lee is an assistant coach to the legendary Coach Reginald Benbow "Buddy" Shavers at the powerhouse West Alabama State University in Evergreen. When Lee is hired as the new head coach job at West Alabama's historic in-state rival, the East Alabama University in Stanleyville, Shavers takes great offense because their rivalry is a bitter one. West Alabama has been extremely dominant in their meetings; the last East Alabama victory was years earlier when Buck Lee was a young assistant. Shavers didn't take to losing to them well. In his last meeting with Shavers as a West Alabama assistant coach, Buck Lee accuses Buddy Shavers of sabotaging his chances of getting head coaching positions elsewhere, and cites, in particular, his failure to get the job at the United States Air Force Academy because Shavers said he had sex with West Alabama cheerleaders. But Buck Lee has a plan to beat West Alabama: sign a phenomenal high school running back named Eaarnel Simpson. A certain Heisman Trophy candidate, most of the big name colleges want to sign him. But Coach Shavers is known as the master recruiter, so Buck Lee, believing he knows Shavers' recruiting style and tricks, takes the sole responsibility of signing Eaarnel Simpson and building a winning football team around him. To do that, he uses a unique clique of assistant coaches, friends, and supporters who aid him in recruiting players, which means that, in one case, they have to essentially recruit the domineering father of a quarterback prospect. One of Lee's top supporters is a real estate agent who variously portrays a veterinarian, a gynecologist, and a Catholic priest. Thanks to winning a lottery, East Alabama signs Eaarnel Simpson. Buck Lee believes that he's finally one-upped the master recruiter Shavers, but he has to defeat Shavers and West Alabama on the gridiron. However, Eaarnel Simpson fractures his ankle in the previous game and can't play in West Alabama game. A victory seems improbable, but the Rattlers do defeat the Hawks and Buck Lee wins Coach of the Year. But the success comes at a price: his family leaves him.
2904605	/m/08bl7b	Peter Duck	Arthur Ransome	1932	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Swallows and Amazons are in Lowestoft, preparing for a cruise aboard a schooner, The Wild Cat, with Captain Flint, the Blacketts' uncle Jim Turner. Unfortunately the other adult (Sam Bideford) cannot come and so the cruise is threatened until Peter Duck, an elderly seaman, offers to come along to help. In the harbour a larger black schooner, the Viper is fitting out for a voyage and Peter Duck's presence aboard the Wild Cat interests Black Jake, the Viper’s captain. Peter Duck spins a yarn about a treasure that he saw being buried long ago, when marooned on a desert island in the Caribbean Sea, and which Black Jake wants to find. When the Wild Cat sails, the Viper is quick to follow and trails her down the English Channel, at one point threatening to board her in the night. In a fog off Land's End, the crew of the Wild Cat give the Viper the slip but pick up the Viper’s cabin boy, Bill, who has been set adrift to try and fool the Wild Cat’s crew with false signals. They continue across the Atlantic Ocean to Crab Island where they spend several days searching in vain for Peter Duck's treasure. When a hurricane blows up, Peter Duck and Captain Flint take the Wild Cat out to sea to ride out the storm, leaving the Swallows and Amazons ashore. There is an earthquake during the storm, and when the schooner returns all the paths to the treasure-hunters' camp are blocked by landslides and fallen trees. However, a fallen palm tree exposes a small box, Peter Duck's treasure, which the children recover. They decide to sail round to the anchorage as the land route is blocked. While Captain Flint attempts to cross the island to rescue the Swallows and Amazons, the Viper arrives and Peter Duck and Bill are captured. The crew of the Viper also go ashore to look for the treasure. The children rescue Peter Duck and Bill, and then the Wild Cat sails back to the other side and pick up Captain Flint just before Black Jake arrives. They attempt to sail away from the island but the wind dies and the Viper looks like catching them, when they are saved by a waterspout which destroys the Viper. They return home safely without further incident. The treasure proves to be a collection of pearls.
2907127	/m/08bs5n	The Ophiuchi Hotline	John Varley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Lilo is a rebel geneticist living on Luna. Violating the laws of the Eight Worlds, she has experimented with human DNA, using money she received from her legal work on such creations as the "Bananameat" tree. As the story opens, she is facing execution. On the eve of her execution, she is visited by "Boss Tweed", the most powerful politician in Luna. Accompanying Tweed is a formidable bodyguard and Lilo's own clone, fresh out of the growth tank with a full set of Lilo's memories. Tweed offers Lilo a deal - she can escape and the clone will die, or vice versa. It's never clear which she chooses, because the next scenes show one Lilo committing suicide in the prison and another going free with Tweed. Whichever it is, the corpse goes into the "Hole", a captive black hole which serves as a power plant for Luna, generating energy from garbage tossed into it. Lilo learns she is to become a cog in Tweed's machine, to be trained for use in his schemes to strike back at the Invaders. Like all Lunarians she periodically records her memories for restoration into a clone should her body die. The first time she does this, she revives and is told that she has been killed twice, for escaping from Tweed. She is the third clone Tweed has made of Lilo. Thus Lilo resolves to be much more careful. Tweed's bodyguards are themselves clones of one individual, both male and female, called "Vaffa" or sometimes "Hygeia". They are large, strong and deadly. Tweed's one weakness is that his entire operation is clandestine. Despite his power, his illegal cloning and his intent to take on the Invaders would result in his downfall if it were generally known. Lilo is eventually sent to an asteroid. Her job is to maintain the food supply. There are more Vaffas guarding these workers, some of whom have been shanghaied, in the sense that their memories and tissues were stolen by Tweed without their knowledge. One such is Cathay, a Teacher. In this time Teaching means devoting yourself to helping one child mature, regressing in age if necessary. Cathay and Lilo quickly become bonded lovers - a rarity in a society where sex is recreational. On the asteroid, everyone has a null-field suit. This generates a field just above the skin to protect them in vacuum, and is yet another piece of Hotline technology. Air comes from an implanted generator. Tweed has a bizarre scheme - he intends to send a stolen black hole through Jupiter to see what the Invaders will do about it. Lilo and Cathay are recruited for the mission. They eliminate the Vaffa sent with them, and Cathay escapes in the ship used to tow the Hole. Lilo, however, is left to fall with the Hole into Jupiter's atmosphere. Protected by her suit, she encounters an Invader. Another Lilo awakes in Tweed's tank. This one has no memory of the asteroid, or anything else since the previous copy left Luna. She is sent on a mission to Pluto. There is something new coming down the Hotline, and it looks dangerous. The actual beam misses the solar system - it was originally found when deep space probes went out years beyond the orbit of Pluto. Nobody is sure whether it is intended for another system entirely, or whether the point is to make sure that the information is only available to those with the right technology. The new messages seem to be demands for payment. Whoever has been providing the information for hundreds of years wants compensation. Unfortunately the decoders can't determine what that is. Lilo and another Vaffa reach Pluto and look for a "Hole Hunter" to take them out to the beam. Hole Hunters are prospectors who take ships out for years, looking for the miniature black holes that orbit the Solar System. Their guide is another copy of Cathay, who has no knowledge of his alter ego. However he and Lilo rapidly bond, just as the other two did. They eventually hire Javelin, a grotesque woman who has altered her body for free fall so she consists of a head on a cut down torso with two other limbs. No part of her body is much wider than her head, hence her name. Under way, Javelin announces a change of plan. Vaffa protests but Javelin easily overpowers her. The plan is to go to the source of the beam. The Hole Hunters have known for some time that the beam comes from something a mere half a light-year away. Since the trip will take 20 years, the crew elects to go into cold sleep. Another Lilo awakes. This one was created by the original and hidden in orbit in the rings of Saturn. She is revived by Lilo's companion from the asteroid, and Parameter/Solstice, a human-Symb pair Lilo had entrusted with the location of the clone. The other Lilo told her companion to seek out Parameter/Solstice as she was falling into Jupiter. This Lilo examines the situation and determines to take over the asteroid. They use the stolen ship to ram the asteroid, sending it into the asteroid's Hole power generator, which sits in a null-field dish on the surface. The resultant thrust boosts the asteroid out of orbit, and on a journey to Alpha Centauri. Faced with a fait accompli, the Vaffas throw in their lot with the prisoners. Tweed's downfall is assured - the asteroid broadcasts details of his plans to the various governments, and "he" activates an escape plan, shedding large amounts of fake flesh and disappearing into the general population as a sexless person. Lilo awakes. This is the Lilo who fell into Jupiter. She awakes on Earth, on a beach. She learns to survive, becoming, in her own mind and those of the tribes of humans she encounters, Diana the Huntress. With her null-field suit she can face down animals and dive to great depths to hunt fish. As years pass, she determines she is probably on the east coast of the former USA. Occasionally she sees the blurs in the sky that are the only visible traces of Invaders. Finally deciding to go out in a blaze of glory, she dives into the sea to hunt a whale. As she dives after it, an Invader appears. Lilo awakes. On Javelin's ship, she and her companions have reached the source of the Ophiuchi Hotline. It is a large, artificial object. Taken on board, they meet beings who are apparently human. They are given a show. The story is simple. Life arises on planets like Earth, in systems with planets like Jupiter. Eventually whale-like lifeforms inhabit the seas. The Invaders arrive, and remove all other threats to the whales. Some time later, the remnants of technological life in the rest of the system have to be expunged when they become enough of a threat. The story cannot be changed. The Invaders can manipulate not only energy and matter, but time. They live in at least four dimensions. The Hotline is part of the rescue mission to humans. They need the technology to survive when they are attacked again by the Invaders, which will be soon. One of the purposes of the Hotline was to give humans the ability to manipulate their own genetic makeup, but because of the laws they passed this has not happened. The Hotline people ask for their price - they need to become humans themselves for a time, to add human thought and experience to the pool of knowledge held between the stars by all the other beings ejected from their homes by Invaders. The alternative is for them to activate hidden features in the Symbs, turning them into an army of space-borne killers. As if to underline all this, alarms sound and the Hotline people detect Invader activity. Suddenly, another Lilo appears. It is Diana the Huntress from Earth. According to the Hotline instruments, she was moved 25,000 years in the future, left there for some years, and then brought back. For the Invaders this is as simple as "folding a piece of paper". She also has a gift from the Invaders - a small silver cube. The Hotline people are taken aback. The cube is a null-field surrounding a singularity. Receiving a singularity from the Invaders is a sign that time is even shorter than they thought. It is another element of the story that always takes place. Because of Tweed's attack, the Invaders are preparing to evict humanity from the entire solar system, but before they do so, are offering humanity the chance to escape. The singularity is a tool to manipulate space-time and eliminate inertia, and can be used to evacuate the Solar System and allow humanity to seek a new home among the stars. Unfortunately, however, the available living space is spoken for, and humanity is in for a long time in the wilderness. Lilo, Diana and companions set out to return to the solar system, to break the bad news. At the end the various Liloes, past, present and future, on Javelin's ship and on the asteroid, realize they have a connection. They have been having dreams all along, and realize that the place in the dreams is somewhere they will all meet, in the future.
2910437	/m/08bzks	House of Hell	Steve Jackson		{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook"}	 House of Hell is a horror themed book, and the only Fighting Fantasy book set on modern day Earth. The player's car breaks down during a rain storm, forcing the player to seek shelter in a nearby mansion. Though this is the only Fighting Fantasy book to employ this type of setting, books such as Beneath Nightmare Castle use the horror theme in the more common fantasy setting of Titan. The player's quest to escape the mansion is hampered by the presence of Satan-worshippers and various demons, though not all are entirely hostile. Much of the gameplay involves searching a series of rooms, most of which bears an obscure religious or satanic titles, including the Shaitan room and the Mammon room. If the reader is to be successful, he must recover a hellfire-forged kris dagger and survive an encounter with the house's Master.
2911778	/m/08c1vf	The Reality Bug	D.J. MacHale	2003-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bobby begins on the territory of Veelox, with Gunny, where they land in the dark room outside the Veelox flume. Bobby and Gunny encounter Saint Dane and believe they have him cornered, however, four realistic holograms of the villain suddenly appear around him, allowing the actual Saint Dane to escape (to a territory called Eelong) amidst the confusion. Bobby and Gunny decide to split. Gunny will immediately go to Eelong and report back later with news while Bobby stays on Veelox because Saint Dane had mentioned that it is on the verge of destruction. Bobby hates the darkness and is worried if the inhabitants of Veelox are floating giants after meeting Aja Killian, the local Traveler, in the form of a massive holographic face. Bobby doesn't know if the huge hologram is life-sized. He meets up with a very ordinary, humanoid Aja in a city much like those on Second Earth, called Rubic City. The only differences are that it is deserted, and there is a huge structure called the Lifelight pyramid looming over the town. Aja explains that Lifelight is a virtual reality world—a computer that gives people's desires the appearance of being real. Almost everyone on Veelox is in it, living out their own perfect virtual lives. She takes Bobby through it, and he is amazed at the vedders, who are the "physical" caretakers of the bodies, and the phaders, computer geniuses running the place. She is one of the latter. Bobby experiences his own fantasy "jump";he meets his family, plays with his dog, Marley, and plays a basketball game where he and his team simply cannot lose. Aja then explains that, because Lifelight is so perfect, hardly anyone leaves. No food is being made. The territory is dying. However, she has a way to stop Lifelight....a Reality Bug that preys on your fears to make it all less-than-perfect. She then takes Bobby to where he left off in his fantasy, but uses her virus to make it different. His opponents are taller, his coach has a heart attack, and he is injured. While in the locker room Aja tells him is this is how to save the territory. However, a Saint Dane hologram appears and tells them that the bug is working "far better than you could imagine". Saint Dane is right. The Reality Bug has become far too realistic; its use of fears to dilute the jumps has a placebo effect on people, in that if they die in their fantasy, the death is real. Only one man can stop the rapidly evolving virus; Dr. Zetlin, who invented Lifelight and the only one to know of the origin code, the key to purging the bug from the processing code. Zetlin is in Lifelight. Thankfully, he is in the alpha grid, which can be brought online independently of the rest of Lifelight. However, he can't simply be pulled out. Bobby would need help in the danger to come. Bobby goes to Zadaa and convinces its Traveler, Loor, to come along to help him defeat the nightmares. She agrees, and they start the alpha grid up again, with Aja acting as phader-vedder. They plan to get the source code from Dr. Zetlin and destroy the Bug. However, the software is malfunctioning. Rather than send them into Zetlin's fantasy, it sends them into a "Wild West" and thence into Aja's own residence. They meet Saint Dane twice therein before they are pulled out. Aja takes them to Zetlin's fantasy, where Zetlin resides in a massive building called the 'Barbican', which can either stand upright or on its side. The first level of its structure is a tropical jungle filled with plant-animal life forms. The second level is a sort of large pool, with racing motorboats following lights. The level after that is a snow covered landscape, where Bobby has to finish a race called slickshot in which six skaters need to pick up red balls and put them into buckets. Unfortunately, only four people can finish the race. Bobby finishes the race (with a bit of intervention from Loor) and sees that Zetlin is actually one of the racers, a popular sixteen-year-old called the "Z" in his fantasy. Bobby, Loor and Aja convince him to spill the code, which turns out to be "zero." When Aja enters the code, it turns out that Saint Dane sabotaged it. The Reality Bug takes physical form(a black ameoba-like shapeshifter), and chases Bobby, Zetlin, Aja, and Loor around Zetlin's fantasy home, and even into the real world when it grows too powerful to be contained by Lifelight. They leave Zetlin's jump and shut down all of Lifelight, and the Reality Bug is destroyed. The Travelers feel they have beaten Saint Dane&mdash;again. But at a ceremony congratulating Aja and explaining the loss of Lifelight, Dr. Sever, prime director of the program, steps up. She turns out to be Saint Dane in disguise, and she stirs up the crowd, promising to bring Lifelight back online. He/She succeeds, everyone reenters Lifelight, and Saint Dane receives his first victory. Saddened, Bobby sets off alone for Eelong, leaving Aja behind to seek some avenue of hope. Aja trusts him.
2912242	/m/08c31l	Sleeping Beauty: A Lew Archer Novel	Ross Macdonald	1973-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Private eye Lew Archer finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands - including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of nembutal, a six figure ransom and a stranger afloat, face down, off a private beach.
2912627	/m/08c41c	The Code of the Woosters	P. G. Wodehouse	1938-10-07	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Code of the Woosters is the first installment in the Totleigh Towers saga. It introduces the characters of Sir Watkyn Bassett, the owner of Totleigh Towers, and Roderick Spode, later known as Lord Sidcup after his ascension to Earldom. The story opens with Bertie recovering from a bachelor party he has thrown the night before for Gussie Fink-Nottle, his fish-faced, newt-fancying friend. While still convalescing, he is summoned before his somewhat beloved Aunt Dahlia and ordered by her to go to a particular antique shop and "sneer at a cow creamer". This is an effort to sap the confidence of the shop's owner and thus drive down the piece's price before it is purchased by Dahlia's collector husband Tom Travers. While in the shop, Bertie has his first run-in with Sir Watkyn (another collector of silver pieces) and Spode (whose aunt Sir Watkyn is planning to marry). Bertie escapes this ordeal relatively unscathed, but later learns that, via underhanded skulduggery involving lobsters and cold cucumbers, Sir Watkyn has obtained possession of the creamer ahead of Uncle Tom and spirited it away to Totleigh Towers. Bertie was already headed there in a frantic attempt to patch over the sudden rupture in the engagement of Gussie and Madeline Bassett, Sir Watkyn's droopy and oversentimental daughter, but now he has been assigned an additional impossible task by Aunt Dahlia: recovery of the cow creamer, which is being guarded both by Spode and the local police. His situation is complicated further by the presence at Totleigh Towers of Stiffy Byng, Sir Watkyn's anarchic young ward, who draws Bertie into her plan to marry the local curate, another old pal of Bertie's named "Stinker" Pinker, and a certain leather-covered notebook of Gussie's, in which he has lovingly and extensively detailed Sir Watkyn and Spode's many character failings, and which has escaped Gussie's possession to roam freely about the local community. Jeeves's intellect is strained to the utmost, but in the end, the two couples are still engaged to be married, the cow creamer is headed back towards the hands of its rightful owner, and Bertie has not been beaten to a pulp by Spode, thrown in jail for stealing a policeman's helmet, roped into marriage with either Madeline or Stiffy, or cut off from partaking in the cooking of the famed Anatole. In gratitude, he agrees to take the Round-The-World cruise Jeeves has been promoting, thinking that at absolute worst, he won't be seeing Stiffy Byng. The actual code of the Woosters is "Never let a pal down."
2912790	/m/08c4hq	Nicolae	Tim LaHaye	1997-10-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The members of the Tribulation Force have discovered that their pastor, Bruce Barnes, has been killed during the bombing of a hospital in World War III. Rayford Steele is quickly called to meet Global Community Supreme Potentate and Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia in Dallas, Texas to fly him to New Babylon, Iraq. Meanwhile, Cameron "Buck" Williams and Chloe Steele go to New Hope Village Church to inform Loretta about Bruce. Chloe is in downtown Chicago, Illinois when it is bombed by the Global Community. Buck is eventually able to rescue her after she crashed her Range Rover into a tree. Rayford hears about this and sends Amanda White back to Chicago to help them and to keep her safe because Nicolae was dropping bombs on major cities and he says to her, "If your flight doesn't leave before mine, board my flight", because Ray is piloting the flight that Nicolae is on. On the flight back to New Babylon, Rayford learns much about Nicolae's secret plans through a secret intercom device installed by his former boss at Pan-Continental Airlines, Earl Halliday. Rayford eventually arrives back in New Babylon. Having heard from his friend Chaim Rosenzweig about Tsion Ben-Judah's loss of his wife and children to murder, Buck goes to Israel with charter pilot Ken Ritz. He is led by the two witnesses, Eli and Moishe in Jerusalem, to a boat near the Sea of Galilee. After proving that he is who he says he is, Buck is taken to the shelter where Tsion is hiding for his protection. Tsion has been accused of murdering his family, although he did not do so. Buck and Tsion are given a worn-out bus to drive to Egypt to meet Ritz for the escape to the United States. They meet many obstacles along the way, but are supernaturally protected and arrive in Chicago safely. During this time, Rayford meets with his friend Hattie Durham, and tries to discourage her from having an abortion of her baby that she conceived with Carpathia. Because both Buck and Tsion are international fugitives, Rayford flies back to Chicago for the funeral service for Bruce. The service mainly consists of an evangelical message and predictions of what is to come, all outlined by Rayford himself. Rayford then returns to New Babylon to be joined by his wife later. The stateside Tribulation Force meets Hattie Durham on her journey to see her relatives. After this, Amanda flies to New Babylon to join Rayford. Buck is driving to see Tsion at the hideout where he is when the worldwide earthquake predicted at the funeral begins. The sun goes dark, the moon turns blood-red, and meteors fall from the sky. A quarter of the world's population dies. Buck finds Tsion alive but trapped in the shelter. Condor 216 first officer Mac McCullum flies Carpathia and Rayford to Baghdad International Airport just as Global Community headquarters collapses. As the book ends, only Buck, Tsion, and Rayford are accounted for and safe among the Trib Force. Loretta is confirmed dead. Chloe and Amanda are missing.
2912870	/m/08c4nj	Ten Kids, No Pets	Ann M. Martin	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Rosso family has ten children, who were named using their incredibly organized mother's naming system, where the first child's name would be the first name of the A section of a book of baby names (the girls' section or the boys' section, depending on the gender), the second child by the second name of the B section of the book, and so on. As such, the ten children have been named Abigail (Abbie), Bainbridge, Calandra (Candy), Dagwood (Woody), Eberhard (Hardy), Faustine and Gardenia (Dinnie) (the twins), Hannah, Ira, and Janthina (Jan). The story begins with their move from a New York City apartment to a New Jersey farmhouse. Each chapter deals with one child's views on how to adjust to their new home (like Woody's attempts to be a comedian like Woody Allen, Hardy wanting to be a detective like the Hardy boys, Hannah feeling left out of the family, Bainbridge struggling in vain to pull together a local kids' football team) and the collective attempts of the children to obtain a pet, despite how their parents argue with ten children, they should not have a pet. The children finally win their battle to obtain a pet when their parents announce that they are breaking the rules and having an eleventh child (ruining their mother's image of a perfect staircase of children), which will be named Kelly or Keegan, depending on the gender (which ends up being a boy according to Eleven Kids, One Summer). Since their parents have broken the rules, their mother relents and allows them to get a dog. However, they change their minds when they find a stray kitten. Taking after their mother, they decide the cat "Zsa Zsa" or "Zuriel", the last names of the book of baby book, thus reversing their mother's system. The kids are thrilled about this.
2914384	/m/08c7hk	Airborn	Kenneth Oppel	2004-02-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The story begins with the Aurora, an airship for a luxury line akin to the Lunardi line, on a journey to Sydney, Australia. Matt, a 14-year-old cabin boy, is the protagonist of the story. When we first enter the story, we see him while he is on duty in the crow's nest, scanning the skies for anything unusual. He soon spots a dark balloon drifting a few hundred feet away. The balloon is heavily damaged, and when Matt receives permission to board the balloon from the Aurora's captain, he finds an old man lying unconscious in the gondola. Matt rescues the Old Man, but he dies shortly afterward, rambling about 'Beautiful Creatures'. The story cuts abruptly to one year later when the Aurora is embarking from Matt's home; Lionsgate City, on another journey to Sydney. Matt admits that, although he loves his Mother and sisters dearly, he is relieved to be aloft again, for he only feels truly at ease in the air. When airborne, Matt feels closest to his father, and he was born in the air it is his natural element. Matt idolizes his father, who died some years previously as the result of a fall from his airship. Matt aspires to be an excellent sailmaker like his father, but also dreams of becoming a Captain of one of the majestic airships himself. Back aboard the ship, Matt's relief is ruined by terrible news; he was promised the position of the sailmaker, but the place is given to Bruce Lunardi, a boy who just graduated from the Airship Academy and whose father, Otto Lunardi, is the wealthy owner of not only the Aurora but of many other airships as well. One day, just after the Aurora sets sail, a small aircraft lands on the ship, bringing aboard 2 passengers: Kate de Vries and her chaperone, Miss Marjorie Simpkins. Matt learns that the old man he rescued was Kate's grandfather and Kate will stop at nothing to prove that the creatures that her grandfather saw were real. Kate shares her grandfather's journal containing detailed drawings and information of the creatures with Matt. The creatures are born in the air and can stay in the air forever, never touching the ground, though they are as large as a panther. A few nights later, the ship is raided in the dead of night by a notorious group of pirates led by the notorious Vikram Szpirglas, a father of two (second child revealed in Skybreaker). Szpirglas' pirates plunder the passengers and crew of all valuables. Szpirglas kills Mr. Featherstone, the chief wireless officer of the Aurora, who'd been caught trying to radio for help. The pirates then proceed to leave, but both ships are caught in a storm and Szpirglas' smaller ship crashes into the Aurora, tearing through the ship's skin and causing hydrium, the substance that keeps the Aurora afloat, to leak out of the airship. Without its precious lifting gas, the airship is left at the mercy of the winds and is sinking quickly towards the churning seas below. Sailmakers begin gluing and repairing the skin, but the Aurora has lost too much hydrium gas and the passengers and crew prepare to abandon ship. Just then, Matt sights an island on which they can land the Aurora, and they do so. While the crew unload unnecessary baggage so the ship may remain airborne, Kate discovers that this is the very island which her grandfather spotted the creatures flying above. She is firmly bent upon exploring the island, forcing Matt to accompany her. After hours of looking, they find the skeleton of one of these large winged creatures in a tree. A few minutes later, they find a living one which has a crippled wing and fell to earth at birth. They decide to name these creatures "Cloud Cats". The Aurora is almost ready to fly again when another storm heavily damages the ship's skin yet again. Matt is rebuked for being late for his shift but redeems himself when he remembers that he smelt hydrium on the island. Kate has one last chance to go back and take pictures of these creatures but Miss Simpkins has locked her in her room for associating with Matt. She escapes by drugging Miss Simpkins and runs off with her camera. Matt and Bruce are sent to find her and together discover that cloud cats are dangerous carnivores. Bruce gets bitten on the leg and as they run back to the ship, Matt and Kate lose Bruce and stumble on the pirates. Szpirglas and his crew don't recognize them; Kate and Matt are forced to act as if they were shipwrecked. They decide to spend the night at the pirate camp, then try and escape at night but are caught and locked in a hydrium pit. They use Kate's harem pants as a balloon and escape. They then have to rescue the Aurora from the pirates, who are bound to find her. In the forest, Kate is overwhelmed with guilt over the disaster that looms ahead. If she had not gone running into the jungle in the first place, attempted to photograph the cloud cat, alerted the pirates to their presence, or fallen asleep while in the village, the pirates would never have suspected that the Aurora was just on the other side of the island. Matt interrupts Kate by kissing her twice, and this action marks the beginning of their romantic relationship. They find Bruce with an injured leg in the forest and sneak back onto the Aurora. All passengers and crew are being held hostage by 8 pirates. There is no wind, so the pirates don't notice as they undo all the landing lines. Matt is only a cabin boy, but because of his passion for flying, he knows everything about the Aurora and how to fly her. They switch the controls from the main control car to the auxiliary control car and fly her but Szpirglas soon retakes control. Matt, Kate and Bruce have to defeat 8 pirates and shut down the engines that are carrying them back to the island. Matt sneaks into the infirmary to get bandages, peroxide and antiseptic ointment for Bruce's wound. He also takes some sleeping elixir with him. Matt gives sleeping elixir to the ship's passionate cook, Chef Vlad Herzog, to put in the pirates' food. Bruce is killed (by being shot in the head) by Szpirglas. Crumlin, the first mate pirate, is eaten by the cloud cat. Matt and Szpirglas fight on top of the Aurora in the open air and Matt is forced to fall off the hull. He freefalls, then lands with a crash on a fin. He comes to the bitter realization that he is not as light as a feather as he thought, and cannot fly. But he defeats Szpirglas, who is torn apart by cloud cats as he falls. The Aurora is about to crash into the island's mountain peak but Matt steers her out of harm's way. The story ends six months later, as Kate is exhibiting her cloud cat skeleton and her pictures of the cloud cats and is going to study zoology at a university in Paris. Matt, with the help of the reward money for finding Szpirglas' base of operation, goes to the Airship Academy in Paris, which is located directly across the river from the university.
2916148	/m/08cbzx	The Hippopotamus	Stephen Fry		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The "hippo" of the title (occasionally referred to as "the happy hippo" and given to wallowing in long baths) is Edward (Ted/Tedward) Lennox Wallace, an aging, lecherous, one-time hell-raising poet, reduced by diminishing poetic talent to working as a theatre critic. The story opens with the aftermath of Ted being fired from his job on a newspaper. At the suggestion of a sick goddaughter, Jane (suffering from leukaemia), he goes to stay at the Norfolk country house of old schoolfriend and Army colleague from National Service, Lord Michael Logan and his wife Lady Anne, to investigate unspecified mysterious goings-on. Ted reports back to Jane regularly, in the form of long, rambling letters, apprising her of events at Swafford Hall whilst also offering his views on numerous other issues (women, art, poetry, sex, morality and modern life being favorite topics), all the time attempting to uncover the nature of the unusual events that Jane has instructed him to look out for. Over the course of his stay it gradually becomes apparent that other house guests are ascribing healing powers to one of Logan's children, David (Ted's other godchild), and indeed it is in the hope that he might bestow his 'talent' upon them that they have descended upon Swafford Hall. Amongst the assembled guests are a witty and hugely camp, but rebarbative defrocked minister and TV producer, a businessman and his wife and rather gawky teenage daughter, a friend of Jane's, and Jane's mother, a woman Ted has crossed paths with disastrously many years earlier. The life stories of the tycoon Logan and his family, as well as Ted's own, are intertwined to provide a colourful and credible back story. The highly comical story is run through with a stream of sexual practices, some more unusual than others, as Ted uncovers the means by which David delivers his 'healing'. The story contains several (spoof) poems and limericks. nl:The Hippopotamus
2916601	/m/08cdf8	Billy Elliot the Musical	Lee Hall			 In County Durham, the 1984-85 coal miners' strike is just beginning ("The Stars Look Down"). Motherless eleven-year-old Billy is required to stay behind after his boxing class and finds his way into a ballet class run by Mrs. Wilkinson. He is the only boy, but becomes attracted to the grace of the dance ("Shine"). The secret is at first easily kept, as the only person home at the time is his grandmother. She reveals her abusive relationship with her dead husband and that she too loved to dance, which made everything all right ("Grandma's song"). While his brother, father, and neighbours are on strike and clash with riot police, Billy continues to take dance lessons, keeping it a secret from his family ("Solidarity"), a number which intersperses the violent reality of the strike with the peaceful practise of ballet. Eventually, Mr. Elliot discovers Billy in the ballet class and forbids him from attending the lessons. Mrs. Wilkinson, who recognizes Billy's talent, privately suggests that he should audition for the Royal Ballet School in London. To prepare for the audition, she offers free private lessons. Billy is not sure what he wants to do so he visits his best friend Michael for advice. He finds Michael wearing a dress. He persuades Billy to have fun with him by dressing up in woman's clothing and disdaining the restrictive inhibitions of their working class community ("Expressing Yourself"). Billy arrives for his first private ballet lesson bringing with him things to inspire a special dance for the audition ("Dear Billy (Mum's Letter)"). He begins learning from and bonding with Mrs. Wilkinson while he develops an impressive routine for his audition ("Born to Boogie"). Mrs. Wilkinson's daughter Debbie tries to discourage Billy because she has a crush on him. Meanwhile, Billy's father and brother Tony are engaged in daily battles with riot police that often turn bloody. They struggle to support the family with very little in strike and union pay, a difficult task that goes on for nearly a year. When the day of the Royal Ballet School audition comes, police are coming through the village and Tony has been injured by the police. Because Billy had not come to the miner's hall to get picked up by Mrs. Wilkinson for the audition, she goes to the Elliot home. There, Billy's family and some members of the community have gathered. She is forced to reveal that she has been teaching Billy ballet in preparation for this very day. This news upsets Billy’s father and Tony, who gets in an argument with Mrs. Wilkinson. Tony tries to force Billy to dance on the table in front of everyone. The police approach and, as everyone escapes, Billy calls out to his father saying that his mother would have let him dance, but his father refuses to accept that, saying that, "Your Mam's dead!". Billy goes into a rage ("Angry Dance"), and for nearly a year, stays away from anything related to ballet. Six months later at the miner's annual Christmas show, the children put on a show disparaging Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who is seen as the antagonist by the coal miners ("Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher"). Billy's father gets drunk and sings an old folk song that elicits memories of his deceased wife and the usually stoic man leaves in tears ("Deep Into the Ground"). Left alone with Billy in the Community Centre, Michael reveals he has feelings for him, but Billy explains that the fact that he likes ballet does not mean that he is gay. Michael gives him a kiss on the cheek. Michael tries to get Billy to show him some dancing, but Billy is sad and just tells him to leave. Michael departs, but leaves a music player running. Billy feels like dancing for the first time since the day of the aborted audition and dances while dreaming of being a grown-up dancer ("Swan Lake"). Unknown to Billy, his father arrives and watches him dance. Overcome with emotion, his father goes to Mrs. Wilkinson’s house to discuss Billy’s prospects as a dancer. She confirms Billy's talent, but is not sure whether or not he would get into the Royal Ballet School. Mrs. Wilkinson offers to help pay for the trip to London for the audition, but Mr. Elliot refuses. He leaves questioning his working-class pride and the future mining has for his boys. Mr. Elliot decides the only way to help Billy is to return to work. When Tony sees his father cross the picket line, he becomes infuriated and the two argue over what is more important: unity of the miners or helping Billy achieve his dream ("He Could Be A Star"). The argument eventually comes to blows and Billy is hit accidentally. One of the miners chastises them for fighting and says that the important thing is looking after the child. One by one, the miners give money to help pay for the trip to the audition, but Billy still does not have enough for the bus fare to London. A strike-breaker arrives and offers him hundreds of pounds. An enraged Tony attempts to shun his donation, but no one else speaks up in his support. Now drained of hope, Tony dismally ponders whether there's a point for anything anymore, and runs off. Billy and his father arrive at the Royal Ballet School for the audition. While Mr. Elliot waits outside, an upper-crust Londoner highlights the contrast between the Elliots and the families of the other applicants. Mr. Elliot meets a dancer with a thick Northern accent. The dancer confesses that his father does not support his ballet career. He sharply advises Mr. Elliot to "get behind" his boy. Billy nervously finishes the audition with a sinking feeling that he did not do well. As he packs his gear, he lets that emotion overwhelm him and he punches another dancer who was trying to comfort him. The audition committee reminds Billy of the strict standards of the school. They have received an enthusiastic letter from Mrs. Wilkinson explaining Billy's background and situation, and they ask him to describe what it feels like when he dances. Billy responds with a heartfelt declaration of his passion ("Electricity"). Back in Durham, the Elliots resume life, but times are tough and the miners are running a soup kitchen to ensure everyone is fed. Eventually, Billy receives a letter from the school and, overwhelmed and fearful, knowing that it heralds the end of the life he has known, informs his family that he wasn't accepted. Tony retrieves the letter from the waste bin and discovers that his brother was accepted. At the same time, the miners' union has caved in; they lost the strike. Billy visits Mrs. Wilkinson at the dance class to thank her for everything she did to help him. Debbie is sad that Billy will be leaving. Billy packs his things for the trip to the school and says goodbye to the miners who are returning to work ("Once We Were Kings"). Billy says goodbye to his dead mother, who often visits him in his imagination ("Dear Billy (Billy's Reply)"). Michael arrives to say goodbye and Billy gives him a kiss on the cheek. Billy takes his suitcase and walks out to his future alone. The entire cast comes out on stage and calls Billy back to celebrate the bright future ahead of him ("Finale").
2917021	/m/08cfq0	A Redwall Winter's Tale	Brian Jacques	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A Redwall Winter's Tale opens up on the last day of autumn. At Redwall Abbey, dibbuns are playing outside when they notice a group of travelling performers approaching the Abbey. Everyone enters and a show is put on by the performers. Finally, when it is time for bed, the dibbun mole Bungo is told the story of the Snow Badger, a mythical creature who makes the snow fall. Later that night, Bungo sees the Snow Badger and is able to talk to him! When the little mole wakes up, he finds a pouch around his neck. It contains a small crystal drop, and a note is written on the inside of the pouch on a scrap of parchment. It is in the form of a riddle, but what does it mean? The Redwallers must try to figure it out...
2918867	/m/08ckpc	Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom	Ignacy Krasicki		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Krasicki's novel is the tale of Nicholas Experience (Mikołaj Doświadczyński), a Polish nobleman. During sojourns in Warsaw, Paris, and the fictional island of Nipu (based on Japan, known to natives as Nippon), the protagonist gathers numerous experiences that lead him to a rationalist outlook and teach him how to become a good man, and thus a good citizen. This rationalist outlook, often emphasized in Krasicki's writings, constitutes an apologia for the Enlightenment and physiocratism. The Adventures of Nicholas Experience offers a portrayal both of the 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and of the broader European culture of the time.
2921746	/m/08csqh	Slow Man	John Maxwell Coetzee	2005-09-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Paul Rayment, a man of late middle-age, loses part of a leg after his bicycle is hit by a car driven by a reckless young man. He becomes reclusive and retreats to his flat where he is cared for by a succession of nurses. None suit him until Marijana, with whom he shares a European childhood (hers in Croatia, his in France), comes along. Paul's feelings for Marijana, and for her teenage son Drago, become more complex. When Paul offers to finance Drago's education, Marijana's husband becomes suspicious of Paul's relationship with Marijana, which causes trouble in their family and culminates in Drago fighting with his father and moving in with Paul. It is not until the famed author Elizabeth Costello shows up unexpectedly and uninvited at Paul's doorstep that he confronts his feelings for Marijana and his resentment at the state of his life following his bicycle accident. Costello's sudden presence in his life confounds Paul, who believes she is merely using him as a character in her next novel. The book can be read as a metafictional discourse on the inter-relationship between the literary author and the characters, and with reality.
2922874	/m/08cwsd	Ethics	Baruch Spinoza			 The first part of the book addresses the relationship between God and the natural world. According to a traditional view, God exists outside of the universe, created it for a reason, and could have created a different universe if he so chose. Spinoza's picture is different. God is the natural world. Men and other natural things are his modes – a term usually understood to mean properties. Everything that happens follows from the nature of God, just as it follows from the nature of a triangle that its angles are equal to two right angles. Since God could not have had a different nature, everything that happens could not have been avoided. God didn't create the world for any particular purpose. The second part focuses on the human mind and body, and implicitly attacks several Cartesian positions: first, that the mind and body are distinct substances, each capable of existing without the other, but which can elicit changes in one another; second, that we know our minds better than we know our bodies; third, that our senses may be trusted, since our benevolent Maker made us incapable of disbelieving them; and finally, that despite being created by God we can make mistakes, namely, when we affirm, of our own free will, an idea that is not clear and distinct. Spinoza denies each of the aforementioned claims. The mind and the body are one and the same thing; "mind" and "body" are two ways of understanding the same thing. The whole of nature can be fully described in terms of thoughts or in terms of bodies. However, we cannot mix these two ways of describing things, as Descartes does, and say that thoughts cause actions in the body, or that changes in the body cause the mind to change. Moreover, the mind's self-knowledge is not fundamental: it cannot know its own thoughts better than it knows the ways in which its body is acted upon by other bodies. Further, there is no difference between contemplating an idea and assenting to it, and there is no freedom of the will at all. Sensory perception, which Spinoza calls "knowledge of the first kind", is entirely inaccurate, since it reflects how our own bodies work more than how things really are. We can indeed have accurate knowledge, but only of knowledge of truths that apply to all things (e.g., knowledge of geometry and physics, "knowledge of the second kind"), and knowledge of particular things seen as following from the nature of extension or thought (intuitive knowledge, "knowledge of the third kind"). In the third part of the Ethics, Spinoza argues that all things, including human beings, strive to persevere in their being. This is usually taken to mean that things try to last for as long as they can. Spinoza explains how this striving ("conatus") underlies our emotions (love, hate, joy, sadness and so on). The fourth part argues that human beings are controlled chiefly by such emotions. This condition is best remedied when we join with like-minded individuals into societies that promote clear reasoning. The fifth part argues we can defeat the emotions by replacing them with adequate ideas, and to the extent that we have adequate ideas, we do not die, since the portion of one's mind that contains such ideas is eternal.
2929013	/m/08d9l5	The Age of the Pussyfoot	Frederik Pohl	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Charles Dalgleish Forrester is revived from cryopreservation in the year 2527, having been killed in a fire 500 years earlier. Thanks to his insurance, after the expenses of his revival are paid he has a quarter of a million dollars, a fortune in his eyes. He can afford the luxuries of 26th century life, such as a Joymaker, a scepter-like portable computer terminal with some extra features like a drug dispenser. After a heavy night partying, with some distant memory of an argument with somebody, he wakes in his new apartment, and over a 20th century breakfast, checks in with his Joymaker. The Joymaker communicates by voice, and addresses him always as "Man Forrester". He is informed that he has a message from a woman whose name he doesn't recognize, and that someone called Heinzlichen Jura de Syrtis Major has taken out a hunting license on him. Baffled, he eventually encounters the woman from the party who he believes is called Tip. She maintains she is Adne Bensen, the woman whose messages he has been ignoring. Apparently she got on so well with Forrester that she is ready to begin a relationship. She takes him back to her apartment, where he finds she has two children, around 8 years old, who seem somewhat precocious for their years. With names like "Tunt" and "Mim" flying around, he mistakenly assumes those are the children's names, baffling them when he uses them that way. Later Forrester encounters Heinzlichen with a few friends, who without much ado beat him up so badly he goes to the hospital. It transpires that Heinzlichen's hunting license allows him to kill Forrester providing he pays for the revival, and the whole vendetta is over some insult at the party, which Forrester can barely remember. It's possible Forrester trod on Heinzlichen's foot. Since Heinzlichen is from the human colonies on Mars and is adapted to low gravity, this is a major faux pas. Mistake follows on mistake, compounding confusion. Forrester comes to believe that Adne is attempting to entrap him in fatherhood, presumably for his money, when she leaves a message saying that "we have to choose a name". He is equally disdainful of a friend who keeps asking him to join his Club, expecting that also to be just a ruse to get at his money. Eventually Adne sets him straight. Firstly, he'll be broke soon because, unbeknownst to him, all the 20th century foods he likes are very expensive, as are all the other Joymaker functions he enjoys. He needs to get a high-paying job. Secondly, the "name" she was asking about was a "reciprocal name," one used only between two close friends or intimates. Each uses it only to address the other, as "Tunt" was the children's name for each other, and "Mim" was the name used between Adne and the children. Tip was the name she and another close friend used, so Forrester could not use it. The friend wanting Forrester to join his Club was in fact offering him a paying position in the organization, though Forrester is not sure he likes what the Club stands for. However, Forrester's woes are not over. He first takes a high-paying job for what turns out to be an alien life form. The alien is known to all as a Sirian, but only because that's the star system in which he was captured (Sirius). Earth is in a state of preparation for a Sirian attack it is expecting. When the alien ship was first encountered, the Earth ship shot first and asked questions later. The only thing stopping an attack, it is believed, is that the Sirian's home world population has no idea where Earth is. The captured Sirians live on Earth in a state of virtual house arrest, with their movements restricted and monitored. Forrester's job is to be the Sirian's guide to Earth culture and history, and is paid handsomely for it. Unfortunately Adne and the others shun him for working for the alien. The Sirian asks many questions about seemingly arbitrary topics of human history. When Forrester fails to respond to one of the Sirian's requests in time, he is promptly fired by the Sirian. He then takes a high-paying job which is an apparent sinecure, watching over some machinery, until he learns that all the previous holders of the post are in cryopreservation after being blasted with radiation. Against the warnings of the Joymaker, he quits in the middle of a shift. In this time, this is a huge error, and all his funds are taken in fines. He is reduced to nothing, and forced to live with all the other bums on Skid Row. The existence is actually quite comfortable. Nobody can afford a Joymaker, but rich people pass through doling out money to 26th century panhandlers, and there are cash-only eating places with coin-operated Joymakers at the tables. However, there are also people looking for thrills on the cheap, wanting to kill someone without having to pay for the revival. After a near miss, he runs into the Sirian again, who drugs and hypnotizes him. Under the delusion that he is helping Adne take a trip, Forrester places the Sirian in control of a spacecraft. The ship heads into space and escapes, but not before the whole world learns that the alien escaped, though not Forrester's role in the affair. The entire human population goes into a panic. Most commit suicide in order to hide in the cryopreservation banks. Heinzlichen comes after Forrester one more time, and Forrester kills him. This was simply Heinzlichen's way of getting into the freezer. Eventually Forrester is almost alone. At this point the Club he had been asked to join goes into action. They are a 26th century version of Luddites and are bent on dismantling the world's technological base by subverting central computing systems, believing this will improve human welfare. Ominously, they are "helped" by the Sirians in doing so. In the end, medical technicians and the Luddites are the only people left awake. Forrester learns about the conspiracy of the Luddites. Forrester cannot reach the technicians because all the computer terminals have been programmed against him. His only hope is to kill himself. He walks up to one of the automated medics, and cuts his throat. Fortunately the medic, reacting to its programming to save lives over that set up by the Luddites, gets him to a medical facility in time, and he is able to abort the revolution. Eventually people start being revived, and he is reunited with Adne.
2929214	/m/08d9_8	Cal	Bernard MacLaverty		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One of the major themes of the novel is the way in which the title character attempts to come to terms with taking part in the murder of a reserve police officer by his friend Crilly, an operation for which he was the getaway driver, while at the same time trying to fend off the murderous anti-Republican "Orangemen". To make matters worse, Cal finds himself falling in love with the slain man's wife, Marcella. Cal lacks self-esteem, one source of which is the death of his mother, who held him in high regard; following her death, Cal seems to be only capable of thinking of himself in a bad light. Another factor adding to Cal's initial unhappiness is being a Catholic on a mainly Protestant estate and being part of the minority in Northern Ireland. He is afraid of Crilly, his friend from school who's a bully, who works for the IRA and uses Cal as a driver. Cal chooses not to follow his father's line of work as he cannot stand the smell of the abattoir. This contributes to, in the general opinion, his feeling of weakness and inferiority. Cal's self-hatred and depression manifest themselves in a number of ways, such as swearing at himself "You big crotte de chien", hatred of his name, even a hatred of his own reflection. When seeing Marcella with her daughter Lucy, he feels this self-loathing again, believing that this bond between mother and daughter is a "pure love" that he is not worthy of intruding upon, or even observing. Cal's self-hatred is intensified by his feelings of guilt, even sickness, at the part he played in the murder, describing it as "a brand stamped in blood in the middle of his forehead which would take him the rest of his life to purge". As his love for Marcella grows, so too does his guilt. From this he develops a sense of acceptance at his arrest and brutal treatment, grateful that at last someone is going to beat him "within an inch of his life”, giving him the ability to feel able to repent and allowing the mental anguish within to be transformed into a physical act that he can more readily deal with.
2929349	/m/08db98	The Penultimate Peril	Daniel Handler	2005-10-18	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The book starts off where The Grim Grotto left off. The Baudelaires are traveling with pregnant Kit Snicket to the Hotel Denouement where they start their new jobs as concierges, but secretly they are flâneurs, there to learn whether the mysterious "J.S." is helping V.F.D. or its enemies. Kit warns them not to trust Ernest, the identical twin brother to Frank, the hotel manager. Violet's first task takes her to the rooftop sunbathing salon, where she encounters Esmé Squalor, Carmelita Spats, and Daily Punctilio reporter Geraldine Julienne. She hears Esme and Geraldine discussing a cocktail party which J.S. supposedly will try to spoil, but is sent off by Carmelita to get her a harpoon gun. As she leaves, she overhears Esme mention that her fashionable eyewear are to watch the skies. Violet asks Frank for the harpoon gun and returns to the roof. Klaus takes Sir and Charles (from The Miserable Mill) to the sauna. Eavesdropping on their conversation, he overhears them talk about a party on Thursday, and someone with the initials of J.S. However, Frank enters the room and in asks Klaus to hang a flypaper-like roll of sticky paper outside the window, in order to catch and trap any falling birds. At the same time Sunny meets Vice Principal Nero, Mr. Remora, and Mrs. Bass from The Austere Academy. She leads them to an Indian restaurant in the hotel, run by Hal from The Hostile Hospital. Sunny listens in to a conversation between Hal and Frank. They too discuss J.S. and mysteriously refer to her as a woman, but then spot Sunny. Ernest gives her a lock to create a Vernacularly Fastened Door and has her put it on the laundry room door. That night, the Baudelaires exchange stories and realise that as Frank could not be in three places at the same time, one of the men must be Ernest but who could the third one be? Klaus deduces that a crow will bring the sugar bowl to the Hotel. It will be shot down by the harpoon gun, fall onto the flypaper, and drop the sugar bowl into the laundry room vent. Suddenly, they see a man descending from the ceiling of the lobby. They think it is Ernest or Frank, but it turns out to be the third triplet, Dewey Denouement who was the one Sunny encountered. Klaus had encountered Ernest, who wanted the flypaper hung to catch the crow for the villains. And Violet had encountered Frank, who slyly tried to tell Violet not to give the harpoon gun to Carmelita by saying "Are you sure a harpoon gun should be given to a young girl on the roof?" Dewey tells them that there is a duplicate of the Hotel at the bottom of the pond, containing a catalogue of all the secrets of V.F.D., which he has spent his entire life collecting. Then Justice Strauss and Jerome Squalor, who both believe that they are the J.S. being contacted, arrive by taxi. Justice Strauss has been working with the High Court to help the Baudelaires, and Jerome - who also felt bad over how he treated the orphans - has written a book on the matter called Odious Lusting After Finance, in order to bring more attention to Count Olaf's treacherous misdeeds. The High Court justices are coming to put Olaf and the other evil people of V.F.D. on trial and so—on Thursday—all of the noble people will arrive to give evidence. Re-entering the hotel, they encounter Count Olaf who says that the Hook-handed man and Fiona stole his submarine. Hugo, Colette and Kevin, the three carnival freaks who joined Olaf in The Carnivorous Carnival, all arrive. Olaf also hints that the Baudelaire's own parents were not noble, and that they had something to do with a box of poison darts in an opera. Later, it is said that the poison darts were used to kill Olaf's parents, which Kit and Lemony Snicket say they were involved in, at the "fateful night at the opera". Dewey tells Olaf of the catalogue he has made, which prompts Esmé to comment that he must already know what is inside the sugar bowl, and why it is so important. She also mentions that Beatrice stole the sugar bowl from her. Olaf takes the harpoon gun from Carmelita and threatens Dewey. The Baudelaires shield him and approach Olaf as he counts to ten, however he is interrupted by the distinctive coughing of Mr. Poe, who has come from his room to investigate the loud noises. Count Olaf quickly shoves the gun into the Baudelaire's hands. Not expecting it, the Baudelaires accidentally drop the heavy gun to the ground. It discharges, and a harpoon impales Dewey, inflicting a fatal wound. As he dies he thinks of Kit Snicket who is the love of his life, and is now carrying his baby. Dewey stumbles out of the hotel and the Baudelaires watch as he sinks into the pond. Justice Strauss's taxi driver - an enigmatic man smoking a cigarette - offers to take them away, but they cannot tell whether he is a volunteer or a villain, and they realize they cannot leave the scene of the crime. As the entire hotel is quickly awakened, the Baudelaires walk back into the hotel, and the taxi driver drives the cab away. Justice Strauss breaks the ensuing chaos up by demanding that the accused must be brought to justice in a legal trial, and both the Baudelaires and Count Olaf are locked in separate rooms until the trial. It is early Wednesday morning when the Baudelaires go to bed, and they wake in the afternoon where they are returned to the lobby for the trial. In the trial, the phrase "justice is blind" is taken literally, and everyone except the judges are blindfolded. The trial begins and Olaf gives a brief speech where he states his innocence. The Baudelaires, however, are beginning to question their own nobility and morality and so they answer that they are "comparatively innocent". When Justice Strauss stops commenting in sentences, the Baudelaires get suspicious and remove their blindfolds to discover that the other justices are Olaf's villainous associates: the man with a beard but no hair, and the woman with hair but no beard. Olaf flees to the elevator, with a bound and gagged Justice Strauss and the Baudelaires in pursuit. Despite the Baudelaires telling everyone what has happened and they should take off their blindfolds, the villains respond that if they do so, they would be held in contempt of court, so everyone leaves them on. The Baudelaires go with Olaf and Justice Strauss to the basement laundry room, believing the sugar bowl to be inside. They unlock the Vernacularly Fastened Door for Olaf, only to find that the sugar bowl is not there. Angered, Olaf declares that he is going to the roof to get the specimen of Medusoid Mycelium which he will spread through the hotel, killing everyone. He will then escape, by jumping off the roof in a boat. Violet agrees to help, because they also need an escape route as they are wanted by the authorities. Sunny then abruptly suggests that they burn down the Hotel, and Olaf agrees, instructing the children to start a fire in the laundry room. In the elevator the Baudelaires press all of the buttons it stops on every floor, so they can inform everyone about the fire and the need to evacuate. However, everyone is still blindfolded and when Olaf shouts that the fire warning is a lie, they believe him. On the roof, Klaus reveals that the sugar bowl fell into the pond and not into the laundry room. Using sheets from the laundry room, Violet makes a chute for the boat to safely make it off the building. Justice Strauss attempts to stop the Baudelaires leaving on the boat, but Sunny bites her hand and makes her let go. The boat floats safely down to the ocean, and the Baudelaires are left both literally and figuratively adrift "in the same boat" as Count Olaf. Flames engulf the Hotel Denouement as they sail away.
2929620	/m/08dbwf	The Silver Mistress	Peter O'Donnell	1973	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sir Gerald Tarrant, head of a secret service department in the British Government, and good friend of Modesty Blaise, is being driven by his chauffeur along a narrow road on the edge of the gorge of the Tarn River in S. France. His chauffeur stops to help two nuns change a tire on their car, and Sir Gerald is taken prisoner - by the nuns, no less. On the other side of the gorge lies Quinn, only semi-conscious after having stumbled and fallen while hiking. But he is sufficiently aware that he sees the two cars stopped on the road, and he tries to summon help by waving his handkerchief. Unknown to him, he is spotted by Mr. Sexton, who is the leader of the kidnapping operation. This starts a long chain of events. Modesty rescues Quinn the next morning, and then later Quinn provides the missing information that convinces Modesty that Sir Gerald has been kidnapped. (Until now everyone had believed that Sir Gerald had died together with his chauffeur when his car went tumbling down into the Tarn River.) Modesty and Willie Garvin have by chance already determined the probable location of Sir Gerald's captivity: Chateau Lancieux in the foothills of the Pyrenees in S. France. A hasty rescue mission is set in action. Modesty and Willie gain access to the chateaux via a deep cave, but on entering into the basement they are captured by the formidable Mr. Sexton, who prides himself on being the world's greatest unarmed combat man. Now Modesty and Willie are scheduled to die at Mr. Sexton's hand, one at a time, to further the process of softening Sir Gerald up for interrogation.
2930806	/m/08ddz5	Between the Rivers	Harry Turtledove	1998-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the novel, the cities and regions are each ruled by their own gods. In the city of Gibil, however; the god Engibil has gotten lazy and does not monitor his city. As such the inhabitants have developed technology such as writing and smelting, and have started to lose respect for Engibil and his power. The other gods have gotten angry at Gibil for reasons they keep to themselves, and have started to refuse to trade with Gibil. It becomes the task of the main character, Sharur, a merchant, to travel the land and find out why the gods are angry and try to solve the problem.
2930944	/m/08df87	The Pickup	Nadine Gordimer	2001		 The events in part one of the novel all take place in South Africa. In a busy South African street, Julie Summers' car breaks down. She goes asking for the nearest garage, where she meets Abdu. He accompanies her to where she left the car. The events in part two of the novel all take place in Abdu's homeland. In the airport of an unnamed Arab country Julie and Abdu pass through the usual paper work.
2931171	/m/08dfs2	The Bull's Hour	Ivan Yefremov		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Some 3000 years in the future, a Communist Earth has just developed faster-than-light space travel based on the experiment of Ren Boz (of The Andromeda Nebula). Using the new technology, Earth constructs "straight-beam" starships which travel by sliding on the edge between our Universe ("Shakti") and the Anti-Universe ("Tamas"). The second ship of that kind, Dark Flame, departs from the Solar System on a mission to a habitable planet Tormance (the name is borrowed from David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus) in the Lynx constellation, which was reported by alien space voyagers from Cepheus to be colonized by humans, thought to be Earth escapees from the Age before World Unification. The society of this distant planet is labelled by Efremov as "an amalgamation of a Capitalism in its worst form and of a Chinese pseudo-socialism" and a part of "Inferno" (a deep philosophical concept of Efremov's relating to the Nature and the natural way of things, always as he claims infernal towards the living thinking sentient beings), a society in which ordinary workers' lives are limited to 26 local years ("short-living", KJI, or КЖИ for ) while scientists, engineers and other selected qualified professionals live out their natural lives ("long-living", DJI, or ДЖИ for ), with artists, sportspeople and "models" given somewhat longer life-spans than that of KJI (up to about 34 years). Both KJI and DJI are under the ruthless totalitarian control of the ruling class of government bureaucracy ("snake-carriers", similar to the prototypical "inner-party members" of Orwell's "1984") and the police forces ("the lilac"), which in turn are under the direct command of the Council of Four and its Chairman, the actual Ruler of the planet. The most shocking aspect of its civilization for the Earthians is its total control of information, maintaining separate information systems for separate social strata, with full and true information available ultimately only to the Supreme Leader. The plot follows the Communist crew as they establish contact and explore the planet's society, eventually sacrificing some lives including that of the expedition leader, female historian Fay Rodis, for the sake of free future of the planet and its people's children. Their influence is predominantly through providing full and true information freely to all people about Earth's past and present, and their views of the situation on the planet. They also provide a selective short memory-eraser (a modifier of social and behavioural skills) to be used against the system's spies by the nascent resistance. Also, some of the crew (esp. Rodis) have the mental capacity to do the same sort of influence without use of the device. Every member of the crew was also accompanied by a nine-legged discoid robot called "SDF" (Servant, Defender and Freighter). The book's seemingly strong anti-Chinese sentiment was added because the novel was written in the time of the Sino–Soviet split, as a device to get it past the censors. Examples of it are found throughout the novel; for example, the gardens of the Planet's Dictator were called Zoam Gardens, an obvious backward reading for Mao Zedong, The Council of Four represented the Chinese Gang of Four. The name of the novel deriving from an old (1909) Chinese-Russian dictionary (quoting the phrase "Earth is born in the Bull's hour (or Daemon's hour, 2:00 am)"). This quote also appears in the novel's epigraph.
2931176	/m/08dfsf	Razor's Edge	Ivan Yefremov		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The plot contains some storylines which are intertwined. We can call this storylines according their setting places. The first one is the Soviet Storyline and is about the medical doctor and psychophysiologist Ivan Girin, who studies the hidden possibilities of human brain and is interesting in human beauty. The second storyline is about Italians who go to Africa to find diamond, but find Alexander's The Great Crone with mysterious minerals. The third storyline is about Dayaram Ramamoorty, the sculptor from India, and Amrita Tillottama, the dancer. The characters meet each other in the end of the novel. === Italian Storyline Indian Storyline Connection of Storylines ===
2931456	/m/08dg8l	The Tale of Despereaux	Kate DiCamillo	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book is divided into four separate sections called "books". Book I covers Despereaux's childhood and origins; Book II focuses on Roscuro, a rat with a mysterious past. The third book is about Miggery Sow, a servant girl who is sold by her father for a red table cloth, a handful of cigarettes, and a hen. The first three books are set years apart all building up to the fourth book which concludes the novel. Book one tells a story about a small,sickly mouse born in a castle named Despereaux. He was born a runt with large ears and eyes. Despereaux unlike other mice spends lots of time reading. He particularly enjoys a book about how a knight saves a princess and they live happily ever after. One day while reading he hears music.He follows the sound and is led to Princess Pea and King Philip. He falls in love with the princess and speaks to her. Furlough,his brother, sees this and tells his father, Lester Tilling. Lester calls the mouse council, who orders Despereaux to be sent to the dungeon. In the dungeon he meets Gregory, the jailer, who saves him from the rats because Despereaux can tell Gregory a story. Many years before the birth of Despereaux,there was a rat named Chiaroscuro,meaning light-dark, nicknamed Roscuro. Roscuro like Desperaux is considered odd amongst other rats, and is obsessed with the light and soup. Entranced by the royal family's grandeur, climbs a chandelier during dinner and is seen by Princess Pea. She calls out to everyone to take notice. Roscuro falls accidentally and lands in the Queen's soup, causing the queens death but nobody know why she died. Roscuro escapes back to the dungeon with the Queen's soup spoon. From then on he always wears the spoon on his head, like a crown. Heartbroken, he vows revenge on Princess Pea for causing the event to happen and forcing him back underground. Meanwhile, the grief-stricken king outlaws soup throughout the Kingdom of Dor and orders the knights to take everything related to soup including spoons, bowls and kettles. He also orders for all rats to be hunted down and killed. Many years before Despereaux and Roscuro, a six-year-old Miggery "Mig" Sow witnesses the death of her ill mother. Afterwards, Mig is sold to work by her father for some cigarettes, a hen, and a red tablecloth to a man Mig calls "Uncle". Uncle occasionally beats Mig, especially around the ears, leaving her partially deaf. Mig decides that she wants to be a princess. Mig is then sent to work in the castle where she gains weight and begins to become lazy during her chores. Mig's main job is to go down to the dungeons to deliver Gregory his meal and, while there, she meets Roscuro and confesses to him that her greatest wish is to become a princess. Roscuro convinces Mig that if she helps him kidnap Princess Pea he'll make her a servant girl so Miggery Sow can become a princess. Despereaux escapes the dungeons on a tray of Gregory's that Mig brings back to the kitchen, where he hears her conversation with Roscuro. However, Despereaux is soon discovered by Mig and Cook. Cook, as a mouse-hating woman, orders Mig to "kill 'em, even if they's already dead." When Despereaux is attempting to flee, Mig chops off his tail with a knife but Mig did not want to, it was Cook's orders. Despereaux then spends the night in pain, sleeping on a sack of flour. He dreams of knights in shining armor, darkness, and light. However, when the knight removes the helmet, it doesn't reveal anyone. Despereaux begins to doubt "happily ever after and everything else that he has read and starts to weep. Meanwhile, Roscuro leads Mig to Princess Pea's room with a knife, and to kidnap the Pea and lead her to the dungeon. The next morning, the castle is in a panic over the missing Princess. Guards are sent to search the dungeon, only to find Gregory dead from being lost in the dark. Despereaux is then seen by the mouse council who mistake him for a ghost because he is covered in flour. Despereaux forgives his father, who also believes he's a ghost, for sentencing him to the dungeon and goes on to seek the King. Despereaux tells the King that he knows that Pea is in the dungeon, but the King refuses to believe him because Despereaux is a mouse, which is related to a rat. Despereaux then goes to Hovis, the threadmaster, who gives him the entire spool of red thread and a sewing needle, as a sword, for his quest to the dungeons. Despereaux cuts back through the kitchen only to see Cook making soup. However, Cook is delighted to see Despereaux because he is a mouse and not a castle guard come to arrest her for making soup. She gives Despereaux some soup to eat and he then makes his way to the dungeons. While there, Despereaux meets Botticelli, an evil one eared rat, who tells him that he will lead Despereaux to the Pea, however, this is only an act, to make Despereaux suffer. Mig then learns that Roscuro tricked her into helping him kidnap Pea, and that Mig will never be a princess. Roscuro plans for Pea to remain locked in the dungeons, so that he can marvel over her brightly colored dress, but Despereaux arrives and Mig chops Roscuro's tail off with the knife. However, many rats arrive on the scene because they followed the smell of Despereaux, and the soup he recently ate. Despereaux threatens to kill Roscuro with the sewing needle, who then begins crying. Pea offers to Roscuro that if he lets her go, she will treat him with some soup, to which Roscuro agrees. Botticelli and the other rats are disgusted by the happiness of all that is happening that they all return into the darkness. Despereaux and Pea become close friends. Roscuro is allowed access into the upstairs of the castle, and reunites the freed dungeon prisoner with his daughter, Mig, who is seen as a princess by him. Roscuro, Mig, the King, Pea, and Despereaux all join together for soup, as the mice watch in amazement.
2932249	/m/08dhlr	Stormy Weather	Carl Hiaasen	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Young newlyweds Max and Bonnie Brooks, on their honeymoon at Walt Disney World in Orlando, are taken aback by news of a hurricane making landfall in South Florida. To Bonnie's surprise, Max is possessed by a fervent desire to visit the disaster scene after it has passed through. Once they arrive, Bonnie is appalled to see Max hopping through hurricane debris and gutted houses with his video camera, treating the devastation as a tourist attraction. She stalks away from him to regain her temper, and is not present when Max is snatched up by "Skink," an ex-governor of Florida now living wild in the Florida country, who attempts to teach him some manners and respect for nature (partly through the use of a shock collar). At the same time, con artist Edie Marsh, and her sometime partner, an ex-convict nicknamed "Snapper," travel to the hurricane zone to work a personal injury scam. Unfortunately for them, the house they pick belongs to mobile home salesman Tony Torres. A bit sharper than the average hurricane victim, Torres quickly sees through them and takes them hostage with a shotgun. Instead of killing them, he invites them in on his own scam: he's expecting a large settlement from the insurance company, but needs his estranged wife Neria's signature to collect. If Edie poses as the wife, Tony can cut out his real wife, and Edie gets a slice of the take. Meanwhile, after searching fruitlessly for Max, Bonnie is befriended by Augustine Herrera, an independent young man who is roaming the county in a half-futile search for a menagerie of exotic animals loosed from his deceased uncle's wildlife farm by the hurricane (these animals appear throughout the novel in various bizarre ways). Edie and Snapper's promising new scam falls apart when Tony Torres is abducted from under their noses and murdered by Ira Jackson, a mob enforcer whose mother lived in one of Torres's sub-standard trailer homes and was killed during the hurricane. After unceremoniously parting ways, each of them discovers a new angle to work: Edie seduces the insurance adjuster, Fred Dove, sent to the Torres home, and convinces him to help her pose as Neria for the insurance payoff. Snapper, meanwhile, partners with Avila, an egregiously corrupt building inspector, to run a phony roofing company and con as much money as possible out of desperate homeowners. While working the scam, Snapper does two things with long-term consequences: he manages to score a $7,000 cash "deposit" from the dim-witted wife of construction mogul Gar Whitmark; later, when pulled over for a routine traffic stop, he ambushes and savagely beats Highway Patrol Trooper Brenda Rourke, who happens to be the girlfriend of Skink's best friend, Trooper Jim Tile. In the process, he steals Rourke's service weapon, a .357 revolver. Growing bored with the roofing scam, Snapper returns to the Torres house, and blackmails Edie and Fred into letting him in on their insurance scam by posing as the now-deceased Tony Torres. Ira Jackson's next targets Avila, the inspector who approved his mother's trailer court, sight unseen. However, Avila is rescued at the last second by an escaped African lion, that pounces on Jackson and eats him. Avila's problems do not end there, however, when a wrathful Gar Whitmark tracks the phony roofing scam back to him, and threatens to expose Avila unless Avila pays him back the money Snapper stole, plus the cost of replacing Whitmark's roof. Skink eventually arranges to hand Max over to Bonnie, and announces that his next order of business is to track down the man who hurt Brenda. Bonnie has become attracted to Augustine, and at the same time aware of Max's less attractive qualities. When Augustine volunteers to help Skink in his new mission, Bonnie impulsively decides to stay in Florida and go along. Max, preoccupied with a new crisis at his job, flies back to New York without her. The three track the car Snapper was driving when he assaulted Trooper Rourke back to the Torres house, where they see something bizarre. Yet another of Torres' disgruntled former customers has shown up looking to get even. This time it is Levon Stichler, an elderly man enraged by the loss of his home (and his deceased wife's ashes) in the hurricane. Snapper, thinking Stichler is an insurance agent, identifies himself as Torres, only to be attacked with a metal spike in return. The two quickly realize that both have made a mistake. Fearful that the scam will be exposed, Snapper quickly concocts a plan to drive Stichler south and dump him at a hotel in the Florida Keys. As he and Edie are loading Stichler into a stolen Jeep Cherokee, Skink chooses to intervene, and both he and Bonnie are likewise taken hostage by Snapper using Trooper Rourke's stolen gun. Augustine misses the abduction as he had left the pair to retrieve a weapon from his truck, but quickly deduces what must have happened when he finds everyone missing upon return. By hitting the redial button on the house phone, he learns of their hotel destination in the Keys and notifies Jim Tile. Tile catches up to the Jeep on the highway and begins to shadow it, but loses the tail when he gets cut off by an opening draw bridge. The sudden involvement of three more unwanted people into the scam has put Snapper on edge and soon his nerves begin to fray. He and Edie argue during the drive and the deteriorating situation is punctuated by Snapper shooting a hole in the roof of the Jeep. Snapper forces them to stop at a liquor store to get him a bottle of whiskey, making the situation even worse. However, it delays him long enough for Augustine to reach the hotel ahead of him. Upon reaching the hotel, Snapper checks Stichler into a room. To make sure he stays there for at least a couple days, Snapper has hired a pair of prostitutes to keep him "entertained". Unknown to Snapper, the two women blabbed their part in the plan to Avila earlier in the day, and he has also come to the Hotel, demanding Snapper fix the fallout from the roofing scam. Snapper chases Avila away, forcing him to jump off a bridge into the ocean. Augustine uses this opportunity to conceal himself inside the getaway Jeep with a tranquilizer gun. When Snapper and the rest of the hostages return and attempt to leave, Jim Tile arrives and is immediately shot by Snapper, but survives thanks to a bulletproof vest. Convinced he's killed Tile, Snapper decides to dump the Jeep and transfers everyone to a Cadillac he carjacks at gunpoint from a convenience store parking lot. Augustine emerges from hiding and follows them in the Jeep. Catching up, he manages to steer alongside and shoot Snapper through the window with a tranquilizer dart that quickly renders him unconscious. Knowing that Tile's shooting will bring the police out in full force, the party abandons the vehicles and retreats into the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge to wait until the coast is clear. Around a campfire that night, Skink enacts revenge on Snapper for his actions against both Rourke and Tile before knocking him out with another tranquilizer dart. Skink decides that Edie deserves a second chance but Snapper is irredeemable. Edie, Bonnie and Augustine are led back to civilization by Skink while Snapper is left to fend for himself in the wild. *Max and Bonnie's marriage is annulled; a chance meeting between Edie and Max leads to her accompanying him back to New York, where they become engaged, while Max re-starts his advertising career, and Edie becomes active in organizing charity relief for victims of natural disasters; *Bonnie and Augustine move to a house in Chokoloskee, on the edge of the Ten Thousand Islands, where Bonnie becomes an avid outdoor photographer; *Avila is picked up by a Coast Guard cutter, passes himself off as a Cuban refugee, and is repatriated to Florida, where he resumes his career as a corrupt building inspector under a false name; a few months later, he dies after being bitten by a rabid rabbit, while fumbling an attempt to sacrifice it for a santeria rite; *Gar Whitmark escapes the wrath of his homeowner customers by declaring bankruptcy and reviving his construction companies under different names; after he is killed in a freak accident at one of his construction sites, his widow donates his entire estate to the Church of Scientology; *Brenda Rourke recovers from her injuries, and eventually marries Jim, who gives her a replica of her mother's wedding band for Christmas; *Snapper's skeleton is discovered in the Crocodile Lake Refuge, except for his skull, which joins Augustine's collection.
2932805	/m/08djyy	Fitzpatrick's War	Theodore Judson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes the form of an autobiography by a twenty-fifth century soldier, Brigadier General Sir Robert Mayfair Bruce, of the Yukon Confederacy, as edited by a prudish, bigoted academian of the twenty-sixth century, Professor Roland Modesty Van Buren. Bruce's story chronicles (and criticizes) the career of Lord Isaac Prophet Fitzpatrick, a consul of the fictional Yukon Confederacy whose life closely parallels that of Alexander the Great. This unique style allows the reader to simultaneously learn the "official history" of Fitzpatrick as well as the revisionist version of Bruce's purported work.
2933212	/m/08dkvh	The Master of Ballantrae	Robert Louis Stevenson	1889	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is presented as the memoir of one Ephraim Mackellar, steward of the Durrisdeer estate in Scotland. The novel opens in 1745, the year of the Jacobite Rising. When Bonnie Prince Charlie raises the banner of the Stuarts, the Durie family—the Laird of Durrisdeer, his older son James Durie (the Master of Ballantrae) and his younger son Henry Durie—decide on a common strategy: one son will join the uprising while the other will join the loyalists. That way, whichever side wins the family's noble status and estate will be preserved. Logically, the younger son should join the rebels, but the Master insists on being the rebel (a more exciting choice) and contemptuously accuses Henry of trying to usurp his place, comparing him to Jacob. The two sons agree to toss a coin to determine who goes. The Master wins and departs to join the Rising, while Henry remains in support of King George II. The Rising fails and the Master is reported dead. Henry becomes the heir to the estate, though he does not assume his brother's title of Master. At the insistence of the Laird (their father) the Master's heartbroken fiancee marries Henry in order to repair the Durie fortunes. Some years pass, during which Henry is unfairly vilified by the townspeople for betraying the rising. He is treated with complete indifference by his family, since his wife and his father both spend their time mourning the fallen favourite. The mild-tempered Henry bears the injustice quietly, even sending money to support his brother's abandoned mistress, who abuses him foully, and her child, who she claims is his brother's bastard. In April 1749, however, a messenger appears, one Colonel Francis Burke, an Irishman who had been out with the Prince. He bears letters from the Master, who is still alive and living in France. At this point the narrator, Mackellar, introduces a story within the story: it is the memoir of Colonel Burke, from which Mackellar extracts the sections that deal with the Master. From Burke's memoir it appears that the Master was attached to the Prince solely for the chance of money and high station, and was a quarrelsome hindrance, always favouring whatever he thought the Prince wanted to hear. He abandoned the Rising as soon as it looked sure to fail and, in company with Burke, took ship for France, refusing to wait in case they might be able to rescue the Prince. However, the ship was old and unseaworthy, and commanded by an incompetent captain. After seven days of being lost in bad weather, it was taken by pirates. The pirate captain, who called himself Teach (not the famous Edward Teach, called Blackbeard, who had died some thirty years previously, but an imitator), took both Burke and the Master aboard to join his pirate crew, but had the rest of the ship's company killed. Burke and the Master sail with the pirates for some time. The Master eventually succeeds in overthrowing Teach and effectively becoming the new captain. He proves to be brutal and ruthless, seizing several ships and slaughtering all their crews to prevent their identifying him. Eventually he steers the ship to the coast of North Carolina, where he abandons it and its crew, to be taken by the Royal Navy, while he escapes with Burke and two confederates, carrying all the ship's treasure between them. In the course of their escape through the swamp the Master treacherously kills one of the confederates and leaves another to die. Burke and the Master obtain passage to Albany on a merchant ship, deserting it once it makes port. Then they strike out across land for Canada, where they hope to find sanctuary among the French, who supported the Rising. They take along a guide, an Indian trader named Chew, but he dies of a fever and the pair became hopelessly lost. For some days the Master navigates his way through the wilderness by tossing a coin, saying, "I can think of no better way to express my scorn of human reason." In the end they bury the treasure. Burke records that the Master blamed his younger brother for all his troubles: "Have you ever a brother?" said he. "By the blessing of Heaven," said I, "not less than five." "I have the one," said he, with a strange voice; and then presently, "He shall pay me for all this," he added. And when I asked him what was his brother's part in our distress, "What!" he cried, "he sits in my place, he bears my name, he courts my wife; and I am here alone with a damned Irishman in this tooth-chattering desert! Oh, I have been a common gull!" he cried. After the Master&#39;s uncharacteristic explosion the two quarrel and separate. Burke never learns how the Master made it to France, where they meet again. Henry Durie and Mackellar learn something of the Master&#39;s piratical ventures, but do not inform the Laird or Mrs Durie, both of whom continue to regard the Master as a kind of angel lost to them. Henry continues to support the Master&#39;s mistress and her bastard child, and also answers the Master&#39;s demands for money. The Master is in fact well-supported by a pension assigned by the French monarchy to Scotsmen who lost their estates due to the Rising, but he continues to demand money from his brother anyway, accusing him of stealing the inheritance: "'My dear Jacob' - This is how he begins!" cries he - "'My dear Jacob, I once called you so, you may remember; and you have now done the business, and flung my heels as high as Criffel.' What do you think of that, Mackellar," says he, "from an only brother? I declare to God I liked him very well; I was always staunch to him; and this is how he writes! But I will not sit down under the imputation" - walking to and fro - "I am as good as he; I am a better man than he, I call on God to prove it! I cannot give him all the monstrous sum he asks; he knows the estate to be incompetent; but I will give him what I have, and it is more than he expects. I have borne all this too long. See what he writes further on; read it for yourself: 'I know you are a niggardly dog.' A niggardly dog! I niggardly? Is that true, Mackellar? You think it is?" I really thought he would have struck me at that. "Oh, you all think so! Well, you shall see, and he shall see, and God shall see. If I ruin the estate and go barefoot, I shall stuff this bloodsucker. Let him ask all - all, and he shall have it! It is all his by rights. Ah!" he cried, "and I foresaw all this, and worse, when he would not let me go."Henry bleeds the estate dry to answer the Master&#39;s demands, consequently getting a reputation as a miser. He does not tell even his family where the money is going. This continues for seven years, in the course of which Henry sends the Master some eight thousand pounds. In July 1756 Mackellar receives a letter from Colonel Burke, who is in Champagne. Burke relates that the Master&#39;s court intrigues have backfired on him, and he has been imprisoned in the Bastille. He has since been released, but has lost his Scots Fund pension and the regiment he had been commanding, and is now destitute again. He plans an expedition to India, but it will require a good deal of money to send him on his way. Mackellar exults at this chance to be rid of the leech, but by an ill fate this letter has crossed with another letter, in which Henry has told the Master that the estate is at last exhausted. In November 1756 the Master returns to Durrisdeer, under the alias of &#34;Mr Bally&#34;. He meets Henry on the road to the house, sneeringly comparing the two of them to Jacob and Esau, and ominously says that Henry has chosen his fate by not agreeing to the Master&#39;s plan to go to India. On his return he ingratiates himself with his father and with his brother&#39;s wife (who was once his own fiancée). Neither have seen him in eleven years and both are overjoyed at his return. With satanic gifts of deceit and manipulation, the Master turns the family against Henry, always putting him in the wrong and cruelly insulting him, while making it seem as though Henry is insulting the Master. To the family it seems that the Master is a long-suffering and kind-hearted hero and saint, while Henry is a cruel, unfeeling monster. In private the Master gloats to Henry over his success, taunting him by pointing out that their father does not love him, that Henry&#39;s daughter prefers the Master&#39;s company and that, despite the Master&#39;s falseness and crimes, he is everyone&#39;s favourite. He exults that he will destroy Henry&#39;s virtue: "[Y]ou need not look such impotent malice, my good fly. You can be rid of your spider when you please. How long, O Lord? When are you to be wrought to the point of a denunciation, scrupulous brother? It is one of my interests in this dreary hole. I ever loved experiment." Henry suffers all this in stoical silence. Mackellar eventually discovers that the Master betrayed the Jacobites and sold himself out to the Hanoverian government by becoming a paid spy for King George, and that this is the real reason for his safe return. However, even when Henry confronts the Master with this, right in the middle of the Master&#39;s holding forth on the great risk he is running by returning to be with his family, the Laird and Mrs Durie remain blind to the Master&#39;s nature. Even when the Master demands that the Laird break the entail and sell off a large part of the estate at a disadvantageous price to finance the Master&#39;s expedition to India, the Laird remains besotted and rebukes Henry for lack of generosity when he objects. Eventually the Master goads Henry one time too many. On the night of 27 February 1757 he tells Henry that Mrs Durie has never loved him and has always loved the Master instead. Henry strikes him in the mouth with his fist and the brothers resort to a duel with swords. Henry runs the Master through and he falls to the ground, seemingly dead. Mackellar takes Henry indoors and then rouses the house, but when he and Henry&#39;s wife return to the duelling ground the body is gone. By the tracks they can see that the body has been dragged away by smugglers (&#34;free traders&#34;), who carried it to a boat, but whether alive or dead they do not know. The Master miraculously survives the sword wound and, with the money extorted from his father, goes to India to make his fortune. Back at the Durrisdeer estate the old Laird declines and dies, and Henry becomes Laird in his place. Mackellar, on his own authority, shows Mrs Durie all the correspondence between Henry and the Master, as well as papers that prove that the Master was a paid spy. Her eyes are opened and she becomes reconciled with Henry, though she also burns the papers, not to protect the Master, but to prevent a scandal for the family. She and Henry have a son, whom they name Alexander. However, after the duel Henry gradually becomes mentally unstable. His personality changes, and he becomes careless about business and the estate. When Mackellar tells him that the Master is probably still alive he responds strangely: "Ah!" says Mr Henry; and suddenly rising from his seat with more alacrity than he had yet discovered, set one finger on my breast, and cried at me in a kind of screaming whisper, "Mackellar" - these were his words - "nothing can kill that man. He is not mortal. He is bound upon my back to all eternity - to all eternity!" says he, and, sitting down again, fell upon a stubborn silence. When Alexander is about eight years old Mackellar comes across Henry showing Alexander the duelling ground and telling him that this was where a man fought with the Devil. A second excerpt from Colonel Burke&#39;s memoir details a brief encounter he had with the Master while they were both in India. Caught in a &#34;mellay&#34;, Burke and his cipaye flee and climb into a garden, where Burke sees the Master sitting with an Indian servant named Secundra Dass. Burke requests help from the Master, but the Master does not acknowledge him, while Secundra Dass tells the two of them (in English) to leave and threatens them with a pistol. Burke leaves and the story within a story ends. In the Spring of 1764 Mackellar comes downstairs one day to find the Master in the house, accompanied by Secundra Dass. The new Laird receives him coldly and Mackellar warns him that there will be no money forthcoming. The Master sneers and answers him: &#34;[S]peech is very easy, and sometimes very deceptive. I warn you fairly: you will find me vitriol in the house. You would do wiser to pay money down and see my back.&#34; The Laird takes his wife and children and leaves Scotland for New York, where Mrs Durie has a family estate. Mackellar remains behind, and tells the Master that he may have room and board at Durrisdeer, but he will not be permitted to contact the family or given any money. The Master furiously answers: "Inside of a week, without leaving Durrisdeer, I will find out where these fools are fled to. I will follow; and when I have run my quarry down, I will drive a wedge into that family that shall once more burst it into shivers. I shall see then whether my Lord Durrisdeer" (said with indescribable scorn and rage) "will choose to buy my absence; and you will all see whether, by that time, I decide for profit or revenge." Eventually the Master discovers where the Duries have gone and takes ship for New York. Mackellar follows, to get ahead of the Master and warn the Laird. The Master finds the family prepared against him and sets up shop in the town, pretending to work as a tailor, but really only working to poison the town against his brother. Henry, who has grown more unstable as the years have passed, takes pleasure in rubbing the Master&#39;s face in his failure. Eventually the Master makes his demand. The pirate treasure he buried years ago is still in the wilderness of New York: if Henry will give him the money to set out and retrieve it, he will leave Henry alone forever. Henry, however, refuses, on the basis of on his brother&#39;s record of failed promises and extortion. Mackellar remonstrates that it would be worth the money to be rid of the Master, but Henry will not be moved. Desperate, Mackellar goes to the Master and offers to pay for the expedition himself. The Master refuses and rants that he cares only about ruining his brother: "Three times I have had my hand upon the highest station: and I am not yet three-and-forty. I know the world as few men know it when they come to die - Court and camp, the East and the West; I know where to go, I see a thousand openings. I am now at the height of my resources, sound of health, of inordinate ambition. Well, all this I resign; I care not if I die, and the world never hear of me; I care only for one thing, and that I will have." A ship arrives from Britain, carrying news that, in return for his loyalty to the rebels the Master of Ballantrae is to be given the title of Lord (or Laird) of Durrisdeer, and young Alexander, Henry&#39;s son and the rightful heir to the estate and title, is to be disinherited. The news is obviously false, but the already unhinged Henry believes it to be true and is driven to full-blown madness. Unknown to Mackellar, Henry secretly arranges with a smuggler to gather a crew of riff-raff and present themselves to the Master as being willing to set out with him to find the buried treasure. Their real purpose, unknown to the Master, will be to murder him and steal the treasure. The Master is at first deceived, but in the course of the expedition he discovers their plan. He tries to escape, but fails; he tries to set them against one another, but fails; and at last he announces that he has fallen ill. He wastes away and on his deathbed he tells them where the treasure is hidden. Secundra Dass wraps up his body and buries it, and the party sets out to find the treasure, but they fall foul of hostile Indians, and all but Secundra Dass and one man named Mountain are killed. Mountain encounters the diplomat Sir William Johnson, who is on his way to negotiate with the hostile Indians. With him are Henry Durie and Mackellar. Mountain tells them about the Master&#39;s death and burial, and says that Secundra Dass has gone back to where it happened. Mountain thinks that Dass is after the treasure. Henry, however, is convinced that the Master is not really dead: "He's not of this world," whispered my lord, "neither him nor the black de'il that serves him. I have struck my sword throughout his vitals," he cried; "I have felt the hilt dirl on his breastbone, and the hot blood spirt in my very face, time and again, time and again!" he repeated, with a gesture indescribable. "But he was never dead for that," said he, and sighed aloud. "Why should I think he was dead now? No, not till I see him rotting," says he. The party finds Dass digging up the Master&#39;s body. Caught in the act, he tells them that the Master faked his illness, and Dass showed him how to swallow his tongue and fake death. They unearth the Master&#39;s body and he opens his eyes briefly. Henry faints, falls to the ground and dies. The Master&#39;s resurrection is only momentary, as he too dies almost immediately. Mackellar buries the two of them under the same stone, with the inscription: J. D., HEIR TO A SCOTTISH TITLE, A MASTER OF THE ARTS AND GRACES, ADMIRED IN EUROPE, ASIA, AMERICA, IN WAR AND PEACE, IN THE TENTS OF SAVAGE HUNTERS AND THE CITADELS OF KINGS, AFTER SO MUCH ACQUIRED, ACCOMPLISHED, AND ENDURED, LIES HERE FORGOTTEN. * * * * * H. D., HIS BROTHER, AFTER A LIFE OF UNMERITED DISTRESS, BRAVELY SUPPORTED, DIED ALMOST IN THE SAME HOUR, AND SLEEPS IN THE SAME GRAVE WITH HIS FRATERNAL ENEMY. * * * * * THE PIETY OF HIS WIFE AND ONE OLD SERVANT RAISED THIS STONE TO BOTH.
2934861	/m/08dq3w	Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister	Gregory Maguire	1999-11-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 The story follows Iris, the plain younger daughter of Margarethe Fisher, as she takes care of her mentally challenged older sister Ruth and her stepsister Clara. Having fled from the Fens of Cambridgeshire, England to Haarlem, the Netherlands, Iris is slightly at odds with the world and often contemplates the value of beauty and ugliness. While caring for her sisters and keeping the peace between Clara and Margarethe, Iris develops a painter's eye and spends time studying under a local painter known as The Master, and his apprentice, Caspar. Margrethe makes Iris and Ruth go to the ball in the hopes of making the prince fall in love with Iris. Iris secretly helps Clara get to the ball and the prince immediately falls in love with her. While at the ball, Ruth does the unthinkable out of jealousy and love of Clara and Master. That night the fairy tale of Cinderella and her pumpkin carriage is spun, and the next morning her prince comes to collect her.
2934901	/m/08dq6n	Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa				 This book takes readers along on the author's seven-month adventures across Africa as two confirmed independent travelers join 20 companions and inexperienced guides on a do-it-yourself safari. After their dream of crossing Africa becomes a nightmare, the couple sets off across the continent alone – and that makes all the difference. Stories include encounters with mountain gorillas, a breakdown in the Sahara, hunting with Pygmies, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, exploring the Serengeti, the frustration of border extortion, hopping a “gun-run” thru Mozambique's civil war, rafting the Zambezi rapids and arriving in South Africa as Soweto (circa 1990) erupts into violence. Once on their own, the couple is thrust into everyday African life. They stay in local hostels, eat in local restaurants and arrange their own travel. Sometimes that means spending 36-hours on a bus ride. Or hiring guides and porters for their climb up Kilimanjaro. One theme the author emphasizes is the challenge of traveling in a land where the rules change daily, a context likely unfamiliar to most Western readers. At first, there are the basics: where to camp, find food, locate clean water, bathe out of the reach of crocs and bilharzia, protect yourself from malaria-carrying mosquitoes and other diseases. Then there is the challenge of changing money, many times on the black market. They also deal with corrupt border officials. There is the very real challenge of crossing the Sahara eight feet at a time when their half-blind driver hits every piste along the way. Plus they always wonder when some pool in the central African jungle will swallow their truck. With more work comes more satisfaction. For the author, part of the attraction of travel is to know that you make it from here to there on your own wits. As he states, "The destination permanently becomes a part of you." They wanted to wallow in the minutiae of African life: to talk with Africans, share in their culture, hear about their lives. In an interview the author states, "It blew away all those African stereotypes that had formed from watching films, reading the news and watching non-profit infomercials. As Westerners, we have a tendency to think of Africa as one big place. In reality, it’s composed of hundreds of different cultures, languages and peoples. By Western standards, much of it is poor. But we can’t apply the same standards to African life. The people we met had such vitality and love of life. I’ve never been to a place where the people are so quick to smile and welcome you. Nor have I been to a place where the kids are so eager to learn. We were constantly approached and asked for pens or paper. We learned that kids throughout Africa often can’t attend school without bringing a 25-cent pen." Illustrated with 38 author photos and maps.
2942531	/m/08f6dk	Veniss Underground	Jeff VanderMeer	2003-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Veniss Underground alludes in several places to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Like Orpheus, Shadrach descends into the underworld to retrieve his love, Nicola, but here from a cyborg hell, where genetic engineering and DNA splicing create fantastic and horrific creatures. Parallels also exist with Dante's Inferno. Throughout the novel the idea of heaven and hell come into play. Nick looks into the chaotic world in which he tries to find purpose through what is called living art. Nick journeys into the underworld and makes a deal with the "devil", also known as Quin. As the story progresses, the reader takes on the second person perspective of Nicola and is introduced to a meerkat whom Nicola names Salvador. Salvador (an assassin meerkat sent by Quin) attacks Nicola but she incapacitates him. Nick arrives at Nicola's door and chokes her till she is near death and sent to an organ bank in the underworld. Shadrach comes into play in the third person point of view and takes the initiative of finding his lost love Nicola in the underworld. He finds Salvador injured at Nicola's apartment and cuts off the meerkat's head and attaches it to a plate and renames him John the Baptist. After, with the help of Dr. Fergusen, he finds a partially mutilated Nicola in an organ bank under a pile of miscellaneous body parts guarded by a naked troll. He carries Nicola through the underground tunnels back to his childhood home and finds a creation of Quin named Candle. Candle leads Nick to the Psyche witch named Rafter. After Rafter decides to try to salvage Nicola, Shadrach takes the action of venturing deeper into the underworld to kill Quin. He finds Nick, now transformed into a piece of living art, being attacked by some in the garbage re-cycling facility. Nick takes Shadrach lower and tells him how to get to Quin by jumping off a moving train with a parachute. Nick pushes Shadrach out of the train only to be shot by Shadrach as he falls. Shadrach manages to open his chute yet he hits the ground hard. Later, he wakes by a beach and an ocean and kicks over a skull where he finds another creation of Quin's called the Gollux. The Gollux tells him the truth while John the Baptist lies, the Gollux leads Shadrach to a ray-like creature named the saylber which Shadrach rides across the ocean and into Quin's world which is actually a very large minnow named the leviathan. He kills Quin and the remote and the whole place explodes. Shadrach climbs up the cliffs back to the subway level. Shadrach retrieves Nicola and takes her to the surface where they are both on a bridge staring at the city which is called Veniss.
2942875	/m/08f707	The Producers	Thomas Meehan			 In New York in 1959, Max Bialystock opens "Funny Boy", a musical version of Hamlet ("Opening Night"). It is terrible, and the show closes after one performance. Max, who was once called the King of Broadway, tells a crowd of down-and-outs of his past achievements and vows to return to form ("King of Broadway"). The next day, Leo Bloom, a mousy accountant, comes to Max's office to audit his books. When one of Max's "investors" arrives, Max tells Leo to wait in the bathroom until she leaves. The investor is a little old lady. She plays a sex game with Max, who eventually persuades her to give him a check to be invested in his next play, to be called "Cash". Leo reveals his lifelong dream: he's always wanted to be a Broadway producer. After a panic attack when Max touches his blue blanket, Leo tells Max that he has found an accounting error in his books: Max raised $100,000 for "Funny Boy", but the play only cost $98,000. Max begs Leo to cook the books to hide the discrepancy. Leo reluctantly agrees. After some calculations, he realizes that "under the right circumstances, a producer could actually make more money with a flop than he can with a hit. ... You could've raised a million dollars, put on your $100,000 flop, and kept the rest!" Max proposes the ultimate scheme: <poem> Step 1: We find the worst play ever written. Step 2: We hire the worst director in town. Step 3: We raise two million dollars. ... One for me, one for you. There's a lot of little old ladies out there! Step 4: We hire the worst actors in New York and open on Broadway and before you can say Step 5: We close on Broadway, take our two million, and go to Rio. </poem> However, Leo refuses to help Max with his scheme ("We Can Do It"). When he arrives at work 6 minutes late, Leo's horrid boss, Mr. Marks, reminds him that he is a nobody. While he and his miserable co-workers slave over accounts, Leo daydreams of becoming a Broadway producer ("I Wanna Be a Producer"). He realizes that his job is terrible, quits, and returns to Max ("We Can Do It" (reprise)). The next day, they look for the worst play ever written. Finally, Max finds the sure-fire flop: Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden written by Franz Liebkind. They go to the playwright's home in Greenwich Village to get the rights to the play. Ex-Nazi Franz is on the roof of his tenement with his pigeons reminiscing about the grand old days ("In Old Bavaria"). The producers get him to sign their contract by joining him in singing Adolf Hitler's favourite tune ("Der Guten Tag Hop Clop") and reciting the Siegfried Oath, promising never to dishonor "the spirit and the memory of Adolf Elizabeth Hitler". Next, they go to the townhouse of flamboyant homosexual Roger De Bris, the worst director in New York. At first, Roger and his "common law-assistant" Carmen Ghia decline the offer to direct because of the serious subject matter ("Keep It Gay"). After much persuading and invoking the possibility of a Tony award, Roger agrees and tells them the second act must be rewritten so the Germans win World War II. Max and Leo return to the office to meet a Swedish bombshell who wants to audition for their next play: Ulla Inga Hansen Benson Yansen Tallen Hallen Svaden Swanson. She auditions for them ("When You've Got It, Flaunt It"). The producers are impressed, mostly by her beauty, and hire her to be their "secretary-slash-receptionist". Max leaves to raise two million dollars for "Springtime for Hitler" by calling on all the little old ladies in New York ("Along Came Bialy"), which he does ("Act I Finale"). Leo and Ulla are left alone in Max's office (redecorated by Ulla), and they start to fall in love ("That Face"). Max walks in and sees the perfect form of Ulla's covered behind ("That Face" (reprise)). At the auditions for the title role, Hitler, one terrible actor after another is rejected by Roger in summary fashion. Finally, Franz performs his own jazzy rendition of "Haben Sie Gehört Das Deutsche Band", at the end of which Max stands up and shouts, "That's our Hitler!". Opening night arrives ("It's Bad Luck to Say 'Good Luck' on Opening Night"). At the last moment, Franz falls down the stairs and breaks his leg. Roger is the only one who knows the part of Hitler, and he rushes to the dressing room to get ready. The curtain rises, and Max and Leo watch the theatrical disaster unfold ("Springtime for Hitler"). Unfortunately, Roger's performance is so camp and outrageous, the audience mistakes it for satire, and the show becomes the talk of the town. Back at the office, Max and Leo are near-suicidal ("Where Did We Go Right?"). Roger and Carmen come to congratulate them, only to find them fighting. Franz bursts in, waving a pistol, outraged by Roger's portrayal of his beloved Führer, since he took his own advice of keeping people happy quite too seriously. Cowardly Max suggests that he shoot the actors, not the producers. The police hear the commotion and take into custody Franz, who breaks his other leg trying to escape, Max, and the accounting books. Leo hides; Ulla finds him and convinces him to take the two million dollars and run off to Rio with her. In jail awaiting trial, Max receives a postcard from Leo and feeling "Betrayed" recounts the whole show (including intermission). At his trial, Max is found "incredibly guilty"; but Leo and Ulla arrive to tell the judge that Max is a good man who would never hurt anyone ("'Till Him"). The judge is touched by this and decides not to separate the two, sending both (plus Franz) to Sing Sing prison for 5 years. In prison, they write a new musical entitled "Prisoners of Love", which goes to Broadway ("Prisoners of Love") (starring Roger and Ulla), and they are pardoned by the Governor. Leo and Max become the kings of Broadway and walk off into the sunset ("Leo & Max"). Everyone comes back for one last song, telling the audience that they have to leave ("Goodbye"). Although the musical includes many scenes and jokes taken from the film, there are many differences. The film was set in the present day of its year of release, 1968. The musical was set in 1959, consequently the character Lorenzo St. Dubois (LSD), a hippie who played Hitler, was omitted from the 2001 musical. In the original film, Max & Leo seek to procure $1,000,000; in the musical it has become $2,000,000 ("one for me, one for you. There's a lotta little old ladies out there!"). Ulla has a much larger role in the musical and is a three-dimensional character instead of the mindless bimbo of the 1968 movie. Even the Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind is portrayed more sympathetically and comes to a happier ending than his 1968 counterpart. Over all, the musical is much more upbeat than the original film, which was a darker comedy though with a happy ending.
2945288	/m/08fct1	The Named	Marianne Curley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Named begins with a foreshadowing that portrays the protagonist: Ethan, witnessing his own sister's death by Marduke, an evil minion to the evil Goddess: 'Chaos' who is also the leader of the 'Order of Chaos' (an organization that opposes the Guard). The story continues when Ethan is 16. He goes to school in Angel Falls and is aware of his powers, and is relatively good at controlling them. The story switches point of views and Isabel comes into play. She is a long-time acquaintance with Ethan because of his standing friendship with her brother Matt. Unfortunately, Matt and Ethan's friendship grew apart because of their common interest in Rochelle. However, Rochelle doesn't come truly into play until later in the story. Ethan is training under the power of Arkarian, a coordinator of the Guard. He has the power of agelessness and remains 18. He has blue hair and violet eyes, but only because of this power. Arkarian is also a truthseer (can read the minds of others) and has his wings, which allows him to teleport to anywhere by thinking of it. Isabel becomes aware of her powers one day while getting ready for school. She has the power to heal. Arkarian tells Ethan that he has been given an apprentice: Isabelle, whom he must train in the following three weeks. This is to be ready for the final battle between the Order and the Guard but Ethan now Isabel knows of this in this moment in time. Isabel was in love with Ethan when they were young. She would follow him and her brother around just to be with them. She grew attached to the outdoors and was very strong for being a girl. This feature alone helped Ethan train her. At first, Isabel was weary about Ethan and couldn't trust what he was saying, but she grew to it and soon was a very strong member of the Guard and one of the named. The Named, are the group of nine who are said to fight the evil goddess in the final battle. The nine who may or may not appear in this book, are Arkarian, Ethan, Isabel, Matt, Neriah, Rochelle, Jimmy, Shaun, and Mr. Carter. Ethan and Isabel go on their first mission back in time to make sure King Richard actually became king. The only way to get back in time is to go through the citadel (a palace with many rooms that appeal to the people who show up in them). They can only get to the Citadel through their sleep, and only their souls go, their body remains behind while they sleep. Isabel is close to dying at one point in the book. Only her soul-mate can save her. Her soul-mate had to call her name to get her soul back to her body. Ethan tried but failed. Isabel couldn't hear him. Then Arkarian called her name. Isabel heard him. When she awoke she thought it was Ethan that had saved her. Arkarian said that Isabel can never know that he is her soul-mate.
2946175	/m/08ffjn	Beyond Apollo	Barry N. Malzberg	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel's protagonist is Harry M. Evans, the lone survivor of the disastrous first manned expedition to the planet Venus. Evans provides details of the doomed expedition as a novel in progress, and he proves to be a remarkably unreliable narrator, constantly changing the particulars of his story as it progresses. It quickly becomes apparent to the reader that he may be completely insane, as a feeling of deep (and comical) paranoia underlies Evans's descriptions of the absurd conversations that ensue with the Venusian inhabitants. There is some indication that Evans could very well have murdered his fellow crewmember. The novel ends with a publishing house offering to purchase the rights to Evans's outlandish tale.
2947962	/m/08fhl2	The Lake	Yasunari Kawabata	1954	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Beginning in Karuizawa, the novel alternates between the now middle-aged Momoi and recurring memories of a lake from his hometown, and his interactions with a number of women, beginning with a relative and the uncomfortable circumstances surrounding a death in his family. The novel then explores his connection to a woman who loses a purse full of several years' worth of money earned as a lover to an older man as well as a relationship with a student, Hisako, when Momoi is a teacher, a relationship that begins with a somewhat odd-request for a good cure for a foot condition Momoi suffers from and then examines the circumstances of Hisako's family, who are well-off in the immediate post-war era. Finally, the now middle-aged Momoi follows a young girl during a summer period leading up to a festival and crosses path with a woman closer to his age. ja:みづうみ pt:O Lago
2949255	/m/08fky4	Les Illusions perdues	Honoré de Balzac			 Lucien Chardon, the son of a lower middle-class father and an impoverished mother of remote aristocratic descent, is the pivotal figure of the entire work. Living at Angoulême, he is impoverished, impatient, handsome and ambitious. His widowed mother, his sister Ève and his best friend, David Séchard, do nothing to lessen his high opinion of his own talents, for it is an opinion they share. Even as Part I of Illusions perdues, Les Deux poètes (The Two Poets), begins, Lucien has already written a historical novel and a sonnet sequence, whereas David is a scientist. But both, according to Balzac, are "poets" in that they creatively seek truth. Theirs is a fraternity of poetic aspiration, whether as scientist or writer: thus, even before David marries Ève, the two young men are spiritual brothers. Lucien is introduced into the drawing-room of the leading figure of Angoulême high society, Mme de Bargeton, who rapidly becomes infatuated with him. It is not long before the pair flee to Paris where Lucien adopts his maternal patronymic of de Rubempré and hopes to make his mark as a poet. Mme de Bargeton, on the other hand, recognises her mésalliance and, though remaining in Paris, severs all ties with Lucien, abandoning him to a life of destitution. In Part II, Un Grand homme de province à Paris, Lucien is contrasted both with the journalist Lousteau and the high-minded writer Daniel d’Arthez. Jilted by Mme de Bargeton for the adventurer Sixte du Châtelet, he moves in a social circle of high-class actress-prostitutes and their journalist lovers: soon he becomes the lover of Coralie. As a literary journalist he prostitutes his talent. But he still harbours the ambition of belonging to high society and longs to assume by royal warrant the surname and coat of arms of the de Rubemprés. He therefore switches his allegiance from the liberal opposition press to the one or two royalist newspapers that support the government. This act of betrayal earns him the implacable hatred of his erstwhile journalist colleagues, who destroy Coralie’s theatrical reputation. In the depths of his despair he forges his brother-in-law’s name on three promissory notes. This is his ultimate betrayal of his integrity as a person. After Coralie’s death he returns in disgrace to Angoulême, stowed away behind the Châtelets’ carriage: Mme de Bargeton has just married du Châtelet, who has been appointed prefect of that region. Meanwhile, at Angoulême David Séchard is betrayed on all sides but is supported by his loving wife. He invents a new and cheaper method of paper production: thus, at a thematic level, the commercialization of paper-manufacturing processes is very closely interwoven with the commercialization of literature. Lucien’s forgery of his brother-in-law’s signature almost bankrupts David, who has to sell the secret of his invention to business rivals. Lucien is about to commit suicide when he is approached by a sham Jesuit priest, the Abbé Carlos Herrera: this, in another guise, is the escaped convict Vautrin whom Balzac had already presented in Le Père Goriot. Herrera takes Lucien under his protection and they drive off to Paris, there to begin a fresh assault on the capital.
2949694	/m/08fl__	Rocheworld	Robert Forward		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In Rocheworld, a small group of civilian and military personnel crew humanity's first manned exploration of another star system. Using a laser-pumped light sail spacecraft, the journey to their destination of Barnard's star lasted 40 years. The crew used a drug called "No-Die" which slowed their aging process, whilst proportionately lowering their effective I.Q., and arrived only a decade physically older than when they left. A fraction of the crew visit the double planet Rocheworld, landing on the water-free lobe, dubbed Roche (French for rock as well as the name of the French mathematician who worked on Roche limits). After exploring Roche, they again split up, and one group journeys via the space-plane Dragonfly to the other lobe, Eau (French for water), which is covered almost entirely by ocean. The crew are caught in a violent storm that causes their plane to experience a crash water-landing. The flooded propulsion systems of the space-plane are unable to provide enough thrust to break free and take off from the ocean surface. The crew decide to use the plane's lift fans as propellers to make their way to the inner pole of the double planet, where the gravitation from the other lobe of the double planet should help them to break free and allow rendezvous with the remaining crew in the lander at the zero point between the two lobes. While making this journey, the space-plane attracts the attention of one of the native species of the planet: the very intelligent, but technologically lacking, Flouwen. The Flouwen and the artificial intelligence aboard the space-plane establish communications and the two species begin to exchange cultural and scientific knowledge. The Flouwen realize the humans are travelling to the pole and warn the humans that they are approaching a period where the configuration of the star and planets of the system allow for a phenomenon where the ocean on the water lobe of Rocheworld can partially flow to the rocky lobe, due to the change in the gravitational equipotential. They try to stop the humans from continuing into this violent event by pinning the spacecraft to the ammonia-water ocean floor with ice as ballast (water ice sinks in the less dense ammonia-water solution of the ocean). However, the humans realize that the interplanetary waterfall poses a threat to the crew remaining on Roche. Fortunately, the tidal stresses cause nearby dormant volcanoes to become active again. This melts an underwater glacier and floods the area with warm water, upon which the ice floats off the plane. The crew manages to get airborne and takes advantage of the changing equipotential to return to Roche. They rendezvous with the lander just as water is reaching it.
2950845	/m/08fp3w	De Praetistigiis				 The book also contains a famous appendix also circulated independently as the Pseudomonarchia daemonum, a listing of the names and titles of infernal spirits, and the powers alleged to be wielded by each of them. Weyer relates that his source for this intelligence was a book called Liber officiorum spirituum, seu liber dictus Empto Salomonis, de principibus et regibus demoniorum ("The book of the offices of spirits, or the book called Empto, by Solomon, about the princes and kings of demons.) Weyer's reason for presenting this material was not to instruct his readers in diabolism, but rather to "expose to all men" the pretensions of those who claimed to be able to work magic, men who "are not embarrassed to boast that they are mages, and their oddness, deceptions, vanity, folly, fakery, madness, absence of mind, and obvious lies, to put their hallucinations into the bright light of day." Weyer's source alleged there were estimated to be 7,451,926 devils, divided into 1111 legions and obeying 72 infernal princes. Weyer's source claimed that Hell arranged itself hierarchically in an infernal court which is divided into princes, ministries and ambassadors.
2951792	/m/08fr37	Noon Wine			{"/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 Royal Earle Thompson owns a dairy farm in southern Texas during the late 1890s. His farm is fairly unproductive, due in part to Thompson's laziness and distaste for most of the required labor on a dairy farm, which he considers "women's work." Thompson lives with his wife, Ellie, and his two small sons, Arthur and Herbert. Ellie is continually ill, though she does her best to perform her domestic duties around the house. The two boys, aged about six and eight when the story opens, are generally well-behaved. One day, a man named Olaf Helton presents himself at the farm. The remarkably taciturn Swede asks Farmer Thompson for a job. Thompson agrees to employ Helton, offering him a small monthly wage, plus room and board. It is clear that Thompson views Helton as somewhat beneath him because he is a foreigner. Even though the wage is far below what Helton reports having earned in the wheat fields of North Dakota, he nonetheless sets to work immediately and proves himself to be an efficient farmhand, single-handedly transforming Thompson's run-down dairy farm into a productive, profitable enterprise. Though he is unable to figure out anything about his Helton's personal life or origins, Thompson grows to appreciate and respect his mysterious, silent farmhand. He increases his pay and entrusts him with much responsibility. Ellie also values Helton for the prosperity he brings to the farm, and is troubled by him just once, in a bizarre event in which she sees Helton silently shake her two boys in a terrifying manner after they had snatched his harmonica. She tells Thompson about what she saw and asks him to tell Helton that in the future he is to leave the discipline of the boys to their parents, and the family quickly moves past the event. Nine years go by, and the Thompson dairy farm thrives, thanks to Helton's incomparable work ethic. The Thompsons come to view Helton as one of the family; his traits of rarely speaking, never smiling, and continually playing the same song on his precious harmonica, are oddities, once puzzling, that they simply accept. One day, an offensive and irritating stranger named Homer T. Hatch shows up at the farm. Like Helton, he has come to Texas from North Dakota, and, more interesting still, he is there to "locate" Helton. The man annoys Farmer Thompson immediately with his grating banter and subtle insults. Hatch eventually reveals the reason for his visit: he is a bounty hunter, and Olaf Helton is an escaped mental patient who must be returned to the asylum. Many years earlier, Helton killed his only brother with a pitchfork. The man had lost one of Helton's harmonicas and refused to replace it. Thompson is stunned by this news and unwilling to give up Helton to Hatch, whom he instinctively feels is an evil man. At this point, Helton, apparently believing Hatch is attacking Thompson, runs onto the scene, and Thompson sees Hatch drive a knife blade into Helton's stomach. Thompson rushes to Helton's defense, striking Hatch with an axe blade and killing him. Ellie comes on the scene only in time to see Hatch lying on the ground and Helton running away (unaccountably, in view of what Thompson "saw"), and she faints. The fleeing Helton, soon afterwards, in the midst of an apparent "mad" episode, such as he had never exhibited while with the Thompsons, is killed by the sheriff's men. When found, Helton's body bears no mark of a knife. It appears (though what happened is never explained) that Hatch's attack on Helton was Thompson's hallucination. Thompson impresses on Ellie the importance of her swearing that she witnessed Hatch attacking Helton, and she reluctantly agrees. After a perfunctory trial, Thompson is acquitted on the ground of self-defense/defense of another. Despite the verdict, Thompson continues to relive the killing, at one moment sure that there must have been a way to get Hatch off his farm without harming him, at the next certain that he had no choice and that if the scene were playing before his eyes again, he would instinctively act as he did before. Worse, he is sure that though he is legally "not guilty," the community regards him as not innocent, and he fears that he has become an outcast. He decides to pay a visit on every household of the small farming community, accompanied by the unwilling Ellie, in an attempt to regain his reputation. His efforts are unsuccessful; both he and Ellie can see that they have lost the esteem of their neighbors and former friends. In a climactic scene at home, Thompson realizes that even his wife is afraid of him, and that their now nearly-grown sons no longer trust him with her. He decides that he must end his ruined life. Dressed in his best, he leaves the house and walks as far as he can while still on his land. He writes a note of explanation, saying that he never intended to harm Hatch, even though Hatch deserved to die; still, he is sorry that he had to be the one to kill him. Poignantly, Thompson puts no blame on Helton and observes that had Hatch come hunting him instead of Helton, his friend would have done the same for him. Thompson then shoots himself with his shotgun.
2953387	/m/08fvvg	The Day of Creation	J. G. Ballard	1987	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character of the novel is the World Health Organization doctor John Mallory who, six months after his arrival in Central Africa, finds that intense guerilla activity has left him without patients. He devotes himself, instead, to the task of bringing water to the region, with dreams of setting the Sahara in flower. When he accidentally manages to achieve his task by creating a river, he becomes prey of an increasingly delirious spiral of fantasies, starting to identify himself with the new river that he has dubbed "Mallory". Obsessed, he decides to go up the river in order to "kill" its source, together with a teenaged African girl, whom he considers a sort of spirit of the waters, and other characters including a half-blind British documentary film-maker and two ruthless local chieftains trying to take advantage of the new prosperity brought by the water.
2954089	/m/0bwh2t7	Way of the Peaceful Warrior	Dan Millman	1980	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story tells of a chance meeting with a gas station attendant who becomes a spiritual teacher to the young gymnast, Dan Millman. The attendant, whom Millman names Socrates, becomes a kind of father figure and teaches Millman how to become a "peaceful warrior."
2955266	/m/08fzlm	Mystery Mile	Margery Allingham		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When Campion saves him from certain death on the ship over, Judge Lobbett looks into the man's background, and is advised to trust him. So, he takes Campion's advice and brings his handsome son and pretty daughter down to Mystery Mile, a tiny village on a near-island on the Suffolk coast, where Campion's friends Biddy and Giles Paget own a run-down manor house. The night they arrive, a roving fortune-teller visits, and soon afterward the local Rector "St." Swithin Cush, a mild and much-loved man, commits gruesome suicide, leaving a note and some mysterious clues—a red knight from his chess set, and the word "Danger" in encrypted form. Settling in at the manor, the judge calls in an art expert to inspect a possible masterpiece, but as the man (an annoying bore they had encountered on the boat) arrives at the house, the judge vanishes, seemingly inexplicably, while exploring the maze. They search for the judge's secret knowledge, the clue to the identity of crime boss Simister, which has brought such danger, but find only a large box of children's books. Travelling to London to investigate the judge's enemies, and to shake off art expert Barber, Campion and Lobbett's son Marlowe are recalled by a shocking telegram, but find the local Post Office man has exaggerated things—not a body, but Judge Lobbett's clothes, have been found. Next day, Biddy disappears, and Campion soon sees that the shopkeeper is behind it. Thos. T Knapp, a low-class criminal of Campion's acquaintance, arrives with news of their enemies, and they all decamp to London to rescue Biddy, leaving Lobbett's daughter safe in Campion's flat. They break into the house of the fortune-teller, where Biddy is being cruelly interrogated, and after a fight and Campion's use of a smoke-bomb, escape, leaving the gang in disarray. Back at Campion's flat, they see a photo of the judge in a newspaper, and Campion reveals that he had arranged for the disappearance, and hidden the man on a nearby estate, following St. Swithin's advice. They go there, fetch the judge, and he, Giles and Campion decamp for Mystery Mile once more, where they find the household, including Mr Barber, drugged. They retrieve the judge's evidence—a book of stories from the Thousand and One Nights from his set—and Giles and the judge flee using the same path used to smuggle the judge away before, a boat from a beach near some dangerous "soft" - mud that works like quicksand. Campion sits in the hut and deciphers the clue—the art expert's name is Ali Barber. The man comes in, and reveals his secret role as Simister, head of a colossal criminal gang, inherited from his father. He tries to kill Campion with a syringe filled with acid, but Campion breaks through the floor of the hut and falls beneath it. Barber goes to retrieve the book, but is taken by the soft mud, dying horribly. Recuperating later, Campion's friend Stanislaus Oates tells him the secret of Swithin Cush's suicide - he was in fact not a parson at all, having taken the place of his brother who died young. The fortune-teller, a blackmailer working for Simister, knew this and threatened to reveal it. Biddy and Giles Paget plan to marry Marlowe and Isopel Lobbett, respectively, and to sell the valuable painting for a small fortune.
2956553	/m/08g123	Who?	Algis Budrys	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the historical development leading up to the book's plot - a future history at the time of writing, which can now be considered a kind of retroactive alternate history - the Cold War led to the Eastern and Western blocks fusing into two unified super-states during the 1970s and remaining locked in an endless permanent confrontation into the foreseeable future. Actual events seem to have diverged from this scenario with the Sino-Soviet rift and confrontation of the late 1950s and early 1960s, not long after the book's publication. An explosion resulting from an experiment gone awry rocks an Allied research facility near the border with the Soviet Bloc. A Soviet team abducts Dr. Lucas Martino, a leading Allied physicist in charge of a secret, high-priority project called K-88. Several months later, under American pressure, the Communist officials finally hand over an individual, claiming that he is Dr. Martino. The man has undergone extensive surgery for his injuries. He has a mechanical arm advanced beyond any produced in the West. More importantly, his head is now hidden behind a nearly-featureless metal mask. A medical evaluation reveals that several of the man's internal organs are also artificial. The Allies are suspicious that the Soviets have sent them a spy and are holding the real Martino for further interrogation. The struggle to determine the man's true identity is the novel's central conflict. In the end, Shawn Rogers, the agent given the task, is unable to reach a conclusion. The man is released, but kept under surveillance and barred from working on K-88. Later, when progress bogs down on the project, Rogers is sent to ask him to come back to work. The man refuses. Budrys tells the story in alternating chapters. Every second chapter relates part of Lucas Martino's life. The young man spent his formative years on a New Jersey farm, working his way through university in New York City, and graduate studies at MIT. The last part of the novel tells what happened on the Soviet side. It takes many weeks for doctors to save Martino's life. Soviet interrogator Anastas Azarin has little time to work with and is thrown off by the prisoner's expressionless appearance.
2956815	/m/08g1m_	Diva: A novel	Delacorta		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The young man Jules is a motorbike-riding courier for RCA in Paris, and a major fan of classical music and opera. Jules is also a groupie of the beautiful Cynthia Hawkins, an American opera singer. Hawkins is unusual in that she only performs live. She has never made a recording, studio or otherwise. One day, Jules secretly records a Cynthia Hawkins concert. He then shares the tape with his teenage friend Alba, who shares the tape with her adult friend Serge. Criminal Serge Gorodish is in his mid 40's, he shares his life with Alba, a precocious teenage beauty. Serge realizes that the Cynthia Hawkins tape could fetch a large amount of money. Meanwhile, Nadia is a twentysomething in the employ of Saporta. Saporta controls the largest drug cartel and prostitution ring in Paris. Nadia records harmful evidence against Saporta on a cassette tape. Nadia's cassette is erroneously dropped into the satchel on Jules' motorbike. Soon, Jules is being chased by the police, as well as gangsters, though he has no idea why. Saporta mobilizes his entire crime organization to attempt to retrieve the tape from Jules. Locating an intrepid and skilled motorbike rider in Paris is not easy. Meanwhile, there is a furious underground bidding war for Jules' tape of Cynthia Hawkins' concert.
2960744	/m/08g7tg	Cat and Mouse	Günter Grass	1963	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrator describes the character "The Great Mahlke" from their youth together through to Mahlke's disappearance near the end of the Second World War. Much of the action of the story is on a half-submerged sunken minesweeper of the Polish Navy, on which the narrator, Mahlke, and their friends meet each summer. Mahlke explores the shipwreck by diving through a hatch, and with his ever-present screwdriver salvages various items (information plaques, objects left behind by the crew, and even a gramophone) to sell or collect for himself. Over the course of the novella Mahlke steals an Iron Cross from a visiting U-boat captain, and is expelled from school. He joins a Panzer division and himself receives an Iron Cross thanks to his successes in battle. Returning to the school from which he was expelled, however, the principal forbids him from making a speech to the students, on the grounds of his former disgrace. The narrative in the story is often fairly incoherent. For instance, the timeline of the narration is often treated flexibly, moving from the narrator's perspective to different points within his memory of the events. There is also disunity about whether Mahlke is addressed in the second- or third-person, with Grass sometimes changing the form of address within a single sentence, possibly indicating the narrator's inability to remove his own emotions and feelings of guilt from an objective account of Mahlke. Mahlke, with the help of the narrator, returns to the shipwreck. Mahlke's main reason for entering the war in the first place was to make a speech at his school afterwards. Since he is denied that wish, Mahlke deserts his post, seeing no other reason to fight. Desertion implies treason and in consequence death. Pilenz, whose relationship to Mahlke becomes increasingly ambivalent, takes advantage of the situation and pressures an unwell Mahlke to dive into the wreck once more to hide, aware that Mahlke might not survive the dive. Pilenz never sees Mahlke again.
2961517	/m/08g953	The Crown of Dalemark	Diana Wynne Jones	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book is set in two parallel times; the present-day Dalemark, and the time of Mitt (Drowned Ammet) and Moril (Cart and Cwidder), some 200 years in the past. Mitt, who has recently escaped from the South and met Moril in North Dalemark, finds himself embroiled in a race to find an heir to the throne of Dalemark, which has lain empty for over 200 years, and gets mixed up in the machinations of a number of powerful forces. Maewen, a girl from present-day Dalemark, is transported by magic back in time to assist with the restoration of the royal line. In ancient Dalemark, Noreth Onesdaughter, a twin likeness of Maewen and apparently descended directly from the ancient kings of Dalemark, asks people to accompany her on her quest to become Queen. Unfortunately, just before she goes to meet her followers, she is murdered. Maewen is drafted to replace her, and she has to lead Noreth's followers, collect the four tokens that will prove her right to the throne, and convince everyone that she is Noreth, all the while hearing mysterious voices in the air. Maewen sets out on her quest for the ancient crown of Dalemark with a small band of followers from the previous books in the series: Moril, Mitt, Navis Haddsson (a refugee nobleman from the South, see Drowned Ammet), Wend (the ancient magician-singer Tanamil, Osfameron or Duck: see The Spellcoats), and Hestefan the Singer (who is eventually exposed as the evil Kankredin's agent and the murderer of Noreth). When they finally receive the crown from the One, the supreme god-like power of Dalemark, it is not Maewen who receives it – but Mitt. As the new king, Mitt assumes the name Amil (one of the One's secret names) and continues to reunite and rebuild Dalemark as Amil the Great. Maewen goes back to her future, but she is followed by the evil Kankredin who seeks to kill her for foiling his plans in the past. This is represented as a bomb threat to the building where Maewen is. Mitt, who we now learn is one of the Undying, appears as a bomb expert, and destroys Kankredin by invoking the "strong name" of the god-like Earth Shaker, who has been helping Mitt ever since his adventures in Drowned Ammet. Mitt leaves, sending Maewen a message to wait four years to contact him, presumably until she is old enough to marry. On hearing this, Maewen decides that four years is far too long, and sets off to find him. The Crown is a particularly interesting addition to the Dalemark series, as many of the characters from previous books are seen from quite different perspectives, not necessarily favourable. Hildrida Navissdaughter, Earl Keril of Hannart, and the singer-magician Osfameron (appearing as Wend) are notable for the negative sides of their personalities that are brought out in the book.
2961685	/m/08g9kz	Breath, Eyes, Memory	Edwidge Danticat	1994		 Edwidge Danticat’s first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published when Danticat was only twenty-five years old. As she has recounted in interviews, the book began as an essay of her childhood in Haiti and her move as a young girl to New York City. The novel is written in a first person narrative. The narrator, Sophie Caco, relates her direct experiences and impressions from age 12 until she is in her twenties.
2961717	/m/08g9mc	Rifles for Watie	Harold Keith	1957	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jeff marches off to Fort Leavenworth from Linn County, Kansas in 1861, on his way to join the Union volunteers. He's off to fight for the North; his zeal having been fueled by reaction to the guerilla war of "bushwhackers" that was taking place in eastern Kansas. However, Stand Watie is on the side of the South. We meet many soldiers and civilians on both sides of the war, including Watie's raiding parties, itinerant printer Noah Babbitt and, in Tahlequah, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) the beautiful Cherokee girl, Lucy Washbourne. Jeff's story is notable as he eventually winds up fighting for both the North and the South at different times during the conflict while making new friends on each side. It is also notable for the detailed depiction of contemporary Cherokee life in Indian Territory, including various tribal political factions. Keith portrays how Jeff Bussey, in the midst of huge conflicts, had to choose one side or another at various times and how this was not always as simple as it may seem in historical hindsight.
2961759	/m/08g9p4	Hawkes Harbor	S. E. Hinton		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Orphaned and illegitimate, Jamie Sommers grows up believing he has "no hope of heaven", that he is doomed to a dreadful existence. A Catholic, he is deeply depressed by the ideas of being conceived in adultery and born in sin. The impressionable Jamie is repeatedly told by mean nuns in the Bronx, that he is destined to repeat the sins of his parents and he proves them right. Taking to the sea, Jamie seeks out danger and adventure in exotic ports all over the world as a smuggler, gun runner – and murderer. Life became a constant struggle in his search for excitement and fulfillment. Also Jamie believed he didn't deserve a better life than has, so he chooses to worsen himself. Tough enough to handle anything, he survives foreign prisons, pirates and a shark attack. But in a quiet seaside town in Delaware, Jamie discovers something that pushes him over the edge mentally and changes his life forever. After being taken out of the Mental Institution life gets harder. Trying to deal with the townspeople who want him hurt and taking his medicine, all the while having to deal with his master. He starts to find himself when he switches medicines and Grenville takes him on a cruise. S.E. Hinton takes you on a journey through one life that couldnt be harder. Jamie fights through his late life being scared of everything.
2965994	/m/08gl1f	Ma Rainey's Black Bottom	August Wilson			 In a Chicago-based recording studio, Ma Rainey's band players, Cutler, Toledo, Slow Drag, and Levee turn up to record a new album of her songs. As they wait for her to arrive they banter, tell stories, joke, philosophise and argue. As the play unfolds it becomes clear that the tension is between the young hot-headed trumpeter Levee, who has dreams of having his own band, and veteran players Cutler and Toledo. By the time Ma Rainey does turn up in full regalia and entourage in tow, the recording schedule is badly behind, throwing the white producers Sturdyvant and Irvin into more and more irate disarray. Ma's insistence that her stuttering nephew Sylvester should do the voice intro to the title song causes more havoc. As the band waits for various technical problems to be resolved, the conflict between Levee and Cutler reaches boiling point and violence ensues. Finally, when Levee is simultaneously fired from the band by Ma for his insubordination and then rejected by Sturdyvant who had offered to record his songs his anger becomes too much and he stabs Toledo, killing him, thus destroying any possibility of a future for himself. * Ma Rainey * Cutler, trombonist * Dussie Mae, Ma's girlfriend * Irvin, Ma's manager * Levee, trumpeter * Policeman * Slow Drag, bassist * Sturdyvant studio owner * Sylvester, Ma's nephew * Toledo, pianist
2966759	/m/08gmxf	Three Junes	Julia Glass		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Three Junes follows the McLeods, a Scottish family, throughout their lives and relationships. Its members are Paul and Maureen, and their sons: Fenno, and twins David and Dennis. At the opening of the book, Paul is on a tour of Greece, Maureen has died from lung cancer, and Fenno is running a bookstore in New York City. Other important characters include Malachy, Fenno's friend who is a music critic and suffering from AIDS, and Fern, an unwed pregnant woman, who Paul formerly met on his trip to Greece, trying to recover from his wife's death. Finally, another important character of the book is Tony, a photographer, who is a house-sitter, never living in the same house for more than a few months. He is a catalyst in the narative development of Fern and Fenno. He is an old friend with Fern and he develops a tumultuous relationship with Fenno. The novel is written in three parts, using the flashback technique. The first takes place in 1989 and is told from Paul's perspective; the second, in 1995 and from Fenno's point of view; the third, in 1999 and from Fern's perspective. As Julia Glass has said herself, the book should be viewed not as a trilogy but rather a triptych - elements that may seem small in one section play a large role in another, like a triptych, rather than a consecutive series of novels in a trilogy.
2966922	/m/08gn85	The Magic Labyrinth	Philip José Farmer	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins from the point of view of The Mysterious Stranger, also known as X, the renegade Ethical who has been contacting people in the valley and enlisting their aid. He had posed as the engineer Barry Thorne on the airship Parseval where he had murdered Milton Firebrass and several others, all of whom were fellow Ethicals. He is now posing as a Mayan named Ah Qaaq and is traveling in the company of the Chinese poet Li Po. Through his internal reverie he reveals some of his secrets. His identity had been discovered by Monat Grrautut, who was the director of the Riverworld project. Monat had recalled him to the Dark Tower to be judged. However, he used a remote command to kill all the inhabitants of the tower and stopped the resurrections so that agents in the valley could not return to the tower. Stuck in the valley like the others he began to make his way upriver, hoping to catch a ride on one of the riverboats. His reverie ends on one of the most traumatic days on the Riverworld. On that day the left bank grailstones fail to fire. They had done so once before, when the meteorite which Sam Clemens discovered, broke the circuit which powered them. That time the damage had been repaired by the Ethicals. But this time they are all either dead or stuck in the valley. One day after the grailstones fail the inhabitants of the left bank invade the right en masse, half of humanity dies in the conflict. At the same time Richard Burton and his friends have joined the crew of King John's ship the Rex Grandissimus. They participate in the defense of the boat after the grailstones fail and Burton, masquerading as a Dark Age British warrior, eventually becomes King John's security chief. One day Tom Mix, Jack London, and Peter Jairus Frigate apply to join the crew. Burton, recognizing Frigate, attacks him. Realizing his mistake Burton eventually becomes friendly with Frigate and becomes an ally of Mix and London. The false Frigate has disappeared, but his travelling companion, Monat Grrautut, has boarded Sam Clemens' ship. Shortly after boarding, Monat is murdered by the renegade Ethical. Eventually the two riverboats reach Virolando, a wide lake which is the last inhabited stretch before the headwaters. It is also home to the pacifist Church of the Second Chance, where Hermann Göring has become a priest. King John and Clemens finally get to square off. Initially they begin with an aerial dog fight. When the planes are destroyed the two great riverboats attack each other. In the ensuing conflict both riverboats are sunk, most of the crews die, and the two captains are killed. King John is killed by Clemens and Clemens dies of a heart attack after being pulled from the water by his mortal enemy Erik Bloodaxe. Clemens dies before he notices that Bloodaxe has become an adherent of the Church of the Second Chance, and seeks no revenge against Clemens. Among the survivors are Burton, Frigate, Alice, Kaz, Joe Miller, Li Po, Ah Qaaq, and Nur ed Din. They are joined by the American piano player Tom Turpin, the English novelist Aphra Behn, a man claiming to be Gilgamesh, and the French soldier Jean Marcelin, Baron de Marbot. They take one of the ship's launches, the only craft to survive the fight, and proceed upriver. They scale the waterfall at the end of the river and make their way, after much difficulty, to the polar sea. When they arrive at the tower they unmask Ah Qaaq as the renegade Ethical and take him prisoner. He explains his identity as Loga, son of King Priam of Troy. Like all children who died before age five, he was resurrected centuries ago and raised by the alien Ethicals to be one of their agents. He reveals also the purpose of the Riverworld. It is meant as a grand moral test, to allow humanity to progress to the point where they can achieve enlightenment. When the project is brought to a close the souls of those who have not achieved enlightenment will be set loose to wander the universe aimlessly. Loga became obsessed with sparing his earthly family this fate and worked to sabotage the project. He was the one who awakened Burton prematurely, recruited Clemens and the others, and he used satellites to direct the meteorite to land near Clemens. While this is all being revealed they discover that there is a problem with the computer which runs the tower. A part malfunctioned, and since no one was around to repair it the problem has reached a critical point. If nothing is done the computer will die, releasing all the stored wathans, or souls, of the people who died on the Riverworld. Without the wathans these people can never be brought back to life. In addition, Monat has locked out other users from accessing the computer. Göring, who had followed the group to the tower, attempts to fix the computer, but is killed by security measures put in place by Monat. Alice then devises a way to get around this programming, and deactivate the security. Loga then is able to repair the computer.
2967710	/m/08gpvq	Secret Agent of Terra	John Brunner		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Planet 14 was just a speck on a spacial stereo map, just a world inhabited by a group of barbaric refugees. But to Belfeor, it was instant cash. All he needed was an iron hand and a means to dig out its radioactive resources for export to his own world. To Maddalena it was a final exam: this would be her last chance to prove herself worthy of Corps Galactica membership. To Saikmar, it was a nation and a people stolen from him by cruel treachery. To Gus Langenschmidt, it was part of a job he had, watching the skies and helping men who were being enslaved. But how do you help people who don't know you exist and who must not be told?
2968338	/m/08gr80	Summoned by Bells	John Betjeman			 *Chapter I — Before MCMXIV &nbsp; Memories of the nursery &ndash; realisation of class, you could look up: ::But what of us in our small villa row ::Who gazed into the Burdett-Coutts estate? ::I knew we were a lower lesser world … and, socially and geographically, down ::Glad that I did not live in Gospel Oak. *Chapter II — The Dawn of Guilt &nbsp; The author prefers poetry to his father's fascinating world of trade. *Chapter III — Highgate &nbsp; His love for Miss Peggy Purey-Cust and trouble with rivals. *Chapter IV — Cornwall in Childhood Evocative sounds and smells of childhood holidays in Cornwall. *Chapter V — Private School To the Dragon School in Oxford, a new interest in churches. *Chapter VI — London John's father is doing well, they have moved to Chelsea, "the slummy end"; but he preferred leafy Hampstead. *Chapter VII — Marlborough After a depressing start, the discovery of literature, nature and the Wiltshire Downs. *Chapter VIII — Cornwall in Adolescence Adolescent family troubles — an independent exploration of Cornwall. *Chapter IX — The Opening World Up to Magdalen College, Oxford, influences, failing at divinity.
2972242	/m/08gzk1	The Telling	Ursula K. Le Guin	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Sutty, travels from Earth to the planet Aka to provide observations as an outside observer. On Aka, all traditional customs and beliefs have been outlawed by the state. On Aka Sutty experiences and tells of the conflicts there between the Corporation, a repressive State capitalist government, and the native people who resist.
2973377	/m/08g_y1	Daniel Martin	John Fowles	1977	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Daniel Martin is the story of a Hollywood screenwriter who returns to his native England when a friend from university asks to see him before he dies. With flashbacks to his childhood in the 1940s and time at university in Oxford, a tale of frustrated love emerges. The dying man (Anthony) asks him to look after his wife Jane. Daniel had in fact married Jane's sister, despite loving Jane and having had a one night stand with her. Whilst in England, Daniel improves relations with his daughter (Caro) and estranged wife (Nell). Then Daniel and Jane go on a cruise visiting Egypt, Syria and Lebanon and the two fall in love again. Daniel breaks up with his Scottish girlfriend and the two lovers are reunited at the end of the book.
2975892	/m/08h58x	Annie's Baby	Beatrice Sparks	1998-07	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book is about a fourteen-year-old girl, Annie, who falls in love with a boy named Danny. She soon becomes the victim of domestic violence, along with rape. Not long after the two start dating, she finds out she is pregnant. Annie and her mother are left to decide what will become of the baby. At first, Annie tries to keep the baby, who is called "Little Annie," but soon finds it too difficult and gives her up for adoption. The book ends with the words "Annie loves Danny," meaning that Annie had to remember her very first love. There are inconsistencies in the book that support the theory that Beatrice Sparks fabricated the diary. On the first page, Annie remarks, "This morning I... threw a last minute polish on my (due-yesterday) science paper..." However, the entry is written on a Monday. As school never operates regularly on weekends, this would have been impossible. At the end of the novel, Annie mentions that she drew a heart with the words "Annie loves Danny" on a tree on the day of their first meeting; however, Annie did not learn Danny's name until their second meeting. Whether this is a true story is still unclear.
2976153	/m/08h5rd	The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists	Neil Strauss	2005-09		 Strauss stumbles across the community while working on an article. Intrigued by the subculture, he starts participating in the online discussion groups, mainly out of his own frustration with his romantic life. As he becomes more and more involved in the romantic community, Strauss attends a "Bootcamp" conducted by Mystery. The bootcamp consists of Strauss and other participants approaching women and then Mystery and his counterpart Sin giving them corrective advice on their behaviors, body language, and what to say; Strauss learns habits that, as he sees it, are often basic – and should have been taught to him by society in the first place. The book then narrates the journey of how Strauss goes through the various stages of becoming a Pickup artist, description about the various members of the community and how Strauss befriends many of the members, particularly Mystery. A good deal of the book focuses on how to obtain the elusive upper hand, or just hand, in a relationship. Strauss advocates various methods – mostly from the point of view of heterosexual men. Strauss generally recommends a "cocky and funny" attitude. He offers further guidelines for the process of seduction, which include: prepare things to say before going out, tell groups with girls surreptitiously impressive stories but also "false time constraints" (a reason that the conversation could end very soon), put the girl of interest in a situation where she must convince the man she is interesting, very slowly increase the amount of physical contact, and more. Strauss tells the story of: his success; the spreading of the romantic community itself and his life at "Project Hollywood", a high end mansion and a lifestyle plan shared by Strauss, Mystery, Playboy, Papa, Tyler Durden, Herbal, and other members of the seduction community; and how rivalries and animosity between various members of the community lead to "Project Hollywood's" collapse. The book also documents the start of Real Social Dynamics with Tyler Durden and Papa. By the end of his story, Strauss concludes that a life of nothing but picking up girls is "for losers", and he advocates incorporating Pick Up Artist habits into a more balanced life. Strauss mentions his experiments with sleeping habits, personal grooming and his meetings with celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Courtney Love and Britney Spears.
2977219	/m/08h84f	Iceberg	Clive Cussler	1975	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 While on a routine survey mission of the iceberg fields in the North Atlantic, a United States Coast Guard survey plane discovers what appears to be a ship embedded in an iceberg. The plane marks the iceberg with a red dye marker and then returns to its base to report the discovery. Admiral Sandecker dispatches Dirk Pitt and Dr. Bill Hunnewell of the National Underwater and Marine Agency on a top-secret mission to survey the ship in the iceberg. Pitt concocts an outlandish story about a disappeared Russian spy trawler, supposedly equipped with their latest in technology and codes, in order to commandeer the Coast Guard cutter Catawaba as a base of operations. In reality they are searching for the yacht Lax which disappeared mysteriously over a year ago with its billionaire owner, Kristjan Fyrie, and its entire crew while on their way to the United States. When Dirk and the doctor search for the iceberg, they discover that someone has gone to a great deal of effort to erase the dye marker and try to convince them that the iceberg they are looking for is somewhere else by marking a similar iceberg 90 miles to the east. Pitt quickly figures out the trick and they eventually find the correct iceberg and work their way into the derelict ship. Inside they discover that all those on board have been incinerated at their posts by a terrible fire much more severe than should have been possible on the ship of that type. It is revealed that Fyrie has developed a new type of underwater probe using a laboratory created element called Celtinium-279. Using this new probe it is possible to scan the ocean floor from the surface and detect minerals and metals without having to drill. The probe is of enormous value. Unfortunately for the crew the Celtinium-279 proves to be extremely unstable and it ignites causing an incredibly destructive fire, the heat from which eventually allowed the ship to become embedded in the iceberg. After their work on the iceberg is done Pitt and Dr. Hunnewell continue on their trip by helicopter from the Coast Guard cutter toward Reykjavík, Iceland. They are intercepted along the way by a black Lorelei Mark VIII jet and engage in a frantic battle. Pitt earns a pyrrhic victory over the jet causing it to crash by ramming into it with his helicopter which naturally caused it to crash as well. Dr. Hunnewell is severely injured in the crash and dies in Pitt's arms while uttering the cryptic last words "God save thee..." which it is later revealed are lines from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner intended to give Pitt clues as to who is responsible for Hunnewell's death. After recovering from his injuries Pitt is assigned by Admiral Sandecker to get close to Kirsti Fyrie, long-lost sister of Kristjan who is now in charge of his companies. Kirsti's fiancé, Oskar Rondheim is a ruthless businessman who appears to be intimidating Fyrie into marrying him in order to take control of her businesses. It is later revealed that Rondheim is in actuality a criminal with many aliases who discovers that Kirsti Fyrie is in actuality Kristjan Fyrie who has undergone secret sex reassignment surgery. He uses this information to blackmail Kirsti in order to gain control over her empire. Pitt uncovers a shadowy organization known as Hermit Limited conceived and funded by American billionaire F. James Kelly. The group's goal is to obtain control over Central and South America by secretly buying up all of the major industries in these relatively weak countries. By controlling the economy they hope to take over the countries in the hopes of creating a utopia in this poverty-stricken region. The group intends to employ the domino theory by taking over two countries and turning them into such huge successes that the other countries in the region clamor to join. In order to distract the world while they take over the government' s of these two countries Hermit Limited conceived the plot to kidnap five millionaires and other important people from various countries and fake an air disaster in an uninhabited area of Iceland. While there is an international furor in the press over the disappearance of and eventual discovery of the bodies of the missing people Hermit Limited will quietly assassinate the leaders of the two countries and assume control. The leaders of the two countries targeted by Hermit Limited, Pablo Castille of the Dominican Republic and Juan De Croix of French Guiana, were in the United States attending a conference in San Francisco for the Alliance of Economic and Agricultural Products. On their way home they have stopped to do some sightseeing at Disneyland where Hermit Limited will attempt to assassinate them. Dirk Pitt, who has been stranded with the group of abducted millionaires, manages to escape and make his way to civilization where he commandeers an old Ford tri-motor airplane which he uses to rescue the group that has been left at the mercy of the elements. Barely out of the hospital following this harrowing rescue, Pitt is rushed to Disneyland where he attempts to save Castille and de Croix who have slipped away from their security and are enjoying a ride on the Pirates of the Caribbean.
2979728	/m/08hftl	The Aspern Papers	Henry James		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 A nameless narrator goes to Venice to locate Juliana Bordereau, an old lover of Jeffrey Aspern, a famous and now dead American poet. The narrator presents himself to the old woman as a prospective lodger and is prepared to court her niece Miss Tita (renamed Miss Tina in later editions), a plain, somewhat naive spinster, in hopes of getting a look at some of Aspern's letters and other papers kept by Juliana. Miss Tita had denied the existence of any such papers in a letter to the narrator and his publishing partner, but he believes she was dissembling on instructions from Juliana. The narrator eventually discloses his intentions to Miss Tita, who promises to help him. Later, Juliana offers to sell a miniature portrait of Aspern to the narrator for an exorbitant price. She doesn't mention Jeffrey Aspern's name, but the narrator still believes she possesses some of his letters. When the old woman falls ill, the narrator ventures into her room and gets caught by Juliana as he is about to rifle her desk for the letters. Juliana calls the narrator a "publishing scoundrel" and collapses. The narrator flees, and when he returns some days later, he discovers that Juliana has died. Miss Tina hints that he can have the Aspern letters if he marries her. Again, the narrator flees. At first he feels he can never accept the proposal, but gradually he begins to change his mind. When he returns to see Miss Tina, she bids him farewell and tells him that she has burned all the letters one by one. The narrator never sees the precious papers, but he does send Miss Tina some money for the miniature portrait of Aspern that she gives him.
2979877	/m/08hg3t	Magyk	Angie Sage	2005-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with Silas Heap, father of the eponymous protagonist to the series, returning home through the winter snow. As he is walking, he feels a heartbeat in the snow, through magical means, and finds that a baby girl with violet eyes has seemingly been abandoned. Since Silas already has seven children, he finds that another will do no harm. He hides the baby in his cloak and continues his trek home. However, he is confronted by the apprentice to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Marcia Overstrand, who warns him that he should not tell anyone about the baby he found, and that the child should be kept a secret. Silas agrees, and also finds out that Marcia has succeeded her mentor, who was killed, and is the new ExtraOrdinary Wizard. Silas continues his walk home, to bring his wife the herbs she needs. Upon reaching his home, Silas sees the midwife run out with a bundle of cloth, wailing that his newborn Septimus, the seventh son of a seventh son, is dead. Silas and his wife, Sarah, decide to raise the baby girl in place of Septimus, as if she was their own daughter. They name their child Jenna. Months later, Sarah learns from a neighbor that the queen has been assassinated, and the castle is under the control of the Supreme Custodian. As well, the queen’s newborn daughter had gone missing. Her neighbor also says that the assassination had occurred months before, but had been kept a secret. She mentions that it happened around the time Alther Mella, Marcia’s mentor, had been killed. Sarah realizes that Jenna was the missing princess, but decides to keep this a secret from everyone, other than Silas. Ten years later, Jenna Heap is celebrating her tenth birthday with her parents and six other brothers. But Marcia interrupts the party, telling the family that another woman living next doors works as a spy for the Supreme Custodian, and has confirmed with him that Jenna is the queen’s daughter. Marcia states that she must take Jenna into safekeeping right away, for the assassin is on his way. Sarah agrees, and explains to a reluctant Jenna that she is a princess, and that she must go with Marcia. Marcia whisks Jenna to her apartment in the Wizard Tower, where she can temporarily be kept safe. Marcia also finds a boy, part of the Young Army, had been buried in the snow, and had almost died. The boy, called Boy 412, is rescued by Marcia, and is taken into her apartment to warm up. But the assassin, being a skilled huntsman, manages to locate Jenna’s whereabouts, and goes after her. Silas, Nicko (the youngest of the six brothers) and their dog Maxie decide to pay Jenna a visit. Shortly after they arrive, the ghost of Alther Mella warns Marcia that the assassin is outside the tower. Marcia panics and tries to get everyone, including Boy 412, out of the tower through the rubbish chute. The group ends up in the dump, with the hunter hot on their heels. Marcia clogs the chute to make it look as though they had gotten stuck. But in the night, Sally Mullin, who owns a café near the dump, noticed them. Silas tells her about their predicament, and Sally allows them to use her sailboat to escape. Marcia gives Sally a KeepSafe Charm in return for her thanks. Silas, Marcia and the children then flee to the Marram Marches, with Nicko sailing the boat. The hunter reaches the dump, and spends quite a while in unclogging the chute. After sending one of his men to make sure they are still not stuck somewhere inside, he looks for anyone who may have seen the escapees. He notices Sally and confronts her. She denies knowing anything, but her actions prove otherwise. He threatens to burn down her café, unless she confesses. She still refuses, but one of her customers rats out Marcia’s group, and the huntsman allows the customer and his friends to leave before he burns the café down. He locks Sally inside and sets the building on fire. However, Sally survives because of Marcia’s KeepSafe Charm. The assassin follows the group, heading for the Marram Marshes. His skilled men manage to catch up with the small sailboat, but are unable to see them through the thick fog. Boy 412 causes a scuffle, for he thinks that the wizards are holding him captive, which is another crazy way for the Young Army to assess him. Jenna, just a bit stronger than 412 (much to his dismay) manages to keep him quiet, before he kicks the boat, and alerts the hunter where the boat is. Marcia uses a Reverse Spell to Project the Muriel, the boat that they're sailing on, and distract the Hunter, upon which he loses the group’s trail, and has to return to the castle. The group reaches the Marshes, and must navigate through perilous bogs, but reach a safe cottage, belonging to Aunt Zelda, a white witch. Zelda is Silas’s aunt, which would make her Jenna’s great-aunt. The witch keeps everyone safe and well-fed throughout the winter. The groups learns that the Supreme Custodian is doing the bidding of DomDaniel, the ex-ExtraOrdinary Wizard. However, he needs to have Jenna killed before he can return to the castle to rule. On the island, Boy 412 wanders around the marshes, falls into a pit with a large cavern in it, and finds a ring that glows when he places it on his finger. He keeps the ring a secret for sometime. Marcia then walks with Boy 412, (who is beginning to like the Heap family) and shows him a charm that Alther, gave to her when she was his Apprentice. Marcia sees that Boy 412 has potential, and asks him to become her Apprentice, but he refuses. Aunt Zelda also helps Jenna, Nicko, and Boy 412 make shield bugs to protect themselves. Marcia then tries to use her Midnight Minutes to protect herself when she goes back to the Wizard Tower because of a letter that said that she should go back. But then she gets captured by the Custodian Guards because she got her Midnight Minutes wrong. A few more weeks pass until the hunter discovers the groups location with Aunt Zelda, in the marshes, and returns to assassinate Jenna. Jenna and Boy 412 defend themselves by using shield bugs, and Aunt Zelda uses a Freezing Spell on the Hunter. Soon after the Hunter was frozen, they try to figure out the identity of DomDaniel's Apprentice, who claims to be Septimus when they capture him. Nicko firmly denies it after seeing what treachery the apprentice could do. Then, the Apprentice escapes and tells DomDaniel of their location. A bit after that, Aunt Zelda tells Boy 412 that the ring is the legendary Hotep-Ra's dragon ring, which gives him control over the Dragon Boat. Aunt Zelda gives Boy 412 a book with the legend of Hotep-Ra. The legend says that Hotep-ra, the first ExtraOrdinary Wizard, was being pursued by people planning to kill him. Therefore, the dragon became a boat to save her mastser and before Hotep-Ra died he put the boat in his hidden temple. Afterward, Boy 412 soon begins to become interested in the art of Magyk, and the mysteries surrounding the ring. Aunt Zelda later tells Boy 412 that the cave in which he found the ring is connected to a secret cavern containing Hotep-ra's temple, and within it, the Dragon Boat. The boat is then used by Boy 412, Nicko and Jenna in order to save Marcia and stop DomDaniel from being the ExtraOrdinary Wizard again. The boat somehow talks to Jenna inside her head because she the Princess and only Boy 412 can make it fly and steer it. They rescue Marcia, who managed to stay alive thanks to Hotep-Ra’s ring, and Boy 412 agrees to become Marcia's Apprentice. They throw DomDaniel overboard, and he dies in the bog, after creatures attack him. Later, the Heap family discover during the apprentice banquet that Boy 412 is really Septimus Heap, the seventh son of the seventh son. This is because the midwife secretly worked for DomDaniel. DomDaniel needed a powerful apprentice and Septimus, who was a seventh son of a seventh son, would be born with such abilities. The midwife pretended Septimus was dead, and smuggled him to the Young Army, where another one of DomDaniel’s workers is supposed to take the baby. But the midwife’s own child was enlisted in the army, and she places Septimus in a cradle next to her own child. DomDaniel’s worker accidentally takes the midwife’s child, leaving Septimus to be raised in the Young Army as Boy 412 instead. Sarah takes off Septimus’ hat, to reveal a thick bush of golden locks, the signature Heap trait, and lovingly accepts Septimus as her long-lost son.
2982175	/m/08hlk8	The Eternal Quest				 The Eternal Quest covers a short period of time in Spain in the early 17th century during the reign of King Philip III. The events in the novel circle around Miguel de Cervantes and his attempts to complete and publish the first book of Don Quixote. The Eternal Quest provides a fictionalized rendering of that time, including an intrigue to stop Cervantes from publishing his work, set in the then-capital of Valladolid. Branston takes Cervantes’ comic style and grafts it on to his miniaturization of the Don Quixote myth. Although Cervantes himself is a character in this novel, much of the action centers on a character known only as the Old Knight, a soldier in the army of King Philip II and officer under the Duke of Alva who has gone mad from the violence of war. He now believes himself to be a soldier sent on a quest by God. Pedro, a friend of Cervantes and local trader, sees the Old Knight and tells Cervantes about him, inspiring the writer to create a series of short stories, published individually as pamphlets by the local printer Robles, about the comic adventures of a confused, self-proclaimed knight named Don Quixote. These events are set against a backdrop of political intrigue surrounding the impending appointment of a new poet laureate to the “emperor” (King Philip III). The marquis of Denia approaches the duchess, a widow who oversees an academy of poets and artists, to boast that he controls the emperor’s appointments and will decide who the new poet laureate shall be. He is met at the duchess’ mansion by Ongora, a local poet of small talents and great ambitions, who subsequently hatches a plot to disgrace Cervantes and elevate himself into the new royal position. The novel itself then follows three tracks: *The meanderings of the Old Knight through Valladolid, including his encounters with the other characters and his Quixote-like confusion of ordinary objects (e.g., Pedro’s family pot) for great artifacts (the sword of Lancelot); *The efforts by Cervantes to complete his work and maintain his reputation, even as the Old Knight appears to come to life from his pamphlets; and *Ongora’s plot, which involves having the duchess write a satire of Don Quixote in the form of a rejection letter from Dulcinea, with Ongora himself writing a scathing introduction in which he claims to have cuckolded Cervantes, and publishing both anonymously. The Old Knight’s misadventures take on a mystical quality, as he defeats stronger and better-armed enemies and always seems to arrive at scenes in the nick of time to stop some evil from being done. He eventually concludes that Ongora is a warlock and calls him the “Evil Magician of Bad Verse.” When Cervantes sees the satire and introduction, he approaches the duchess directly to offer to work with her on future writings if she will explain the reason for the violence of the introduction (which Cervantes believes was also written by the duchess). The duchess, who had not seen the introduction, then disavows Ongora and offers her financial and political support to Cervantes. Thus spurned, Ongora hires an assassin to kill Cervantes, but this attempt is foiled by the Old Knight, who knocks the assassin out with Pedro’s pot. Ongora eventually slays the Old Knight, who dies in Cervantes’ house, only to come back to life and die permanently with his head on Cervantes’ shoulder in front of the “Holy Grail” (an olive tree in Cervantes’ yard). Ongora tries to exact one last revenge by publishing various poor imitations of Don Quixote to stain Cervantes’ reputation, but these only serve to secure Cervantes' fame. Ongora is banished from the Spanish empire and Don Quixote is published to great acclaim.
2983701	/m/08hp3q	Bee Season: A Novel	Myla Goldberg	2000-05-25	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Eleven-year-old Eliza Naumann is the only "ordinary" member of a family of gifted people. Her father, Saul, is a cantor in the local synagogue and a keen student of Jewish texts; her mother, Miriam, is apparently a successful lawyer and her brother, Aaron, is a gifted student who is able to read and recite in Hebrew and is allowed into his father's study, where he plays the guitar with his father. One day Eliza surprises herself by winning the class spelling bee, then the school bee. At first Saul is unaware of her success, but then he becomes increasingly involved with her. Eliza is invited into his study to practice, and Aaron for the first time finds the door closed to him. But as Eliza progresses through the district bee and prepares for the national bee, the troubled lives of her family come into sharp focus. Saul, who has tried to reach God first through drugs and then through study, becomes convinced that Eliza's talent shows a propensity for mysticism greater than his, which has the potential to lead her to shefa, the influx of the Divine. He gradually introduces her to the writings of Abraham Abulafia, a Medieval kabbalist writer, and it becomes clear that his ambitions for her go far beyond the winning of the spelling bee. Aaron, who had a "religious experience" at the age of eight (it was actually the wing-light of a plane), finds himself disillusioned with Judaism and begins to look elsewhere, first to Christianity and then to Buddhism. Through a chance encounter in a park he discovers the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and becomes a devotee, unknown to his family. Miriam, who has always had an obsessive personality, is in fact a kleptomaniac who spends her time stealing small items from department stores, believing that they are small parts of herself from which she has become separated, a concept she formed when Saul told her about Tikkun olam, the "fixing of the world". With the other members of her family preoccupied, Miriam's obsession takes a new turn when she finds herself entering people's houses and stealing small objects from them. Several times she is almost discovered, but, though she tries to anchor herself to the real world through soulless sex with Saul, she cannot resist the pull of the empty houses. Having performed well, but ultimately failed to win the national spelling bee, Eliza begins to prepare for the following year, with Saul's enthusiastic help. But the family is about to be torn apart. Miriam is arrested, pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Aaron announces his intention to leave home, and his faith, to join ISKCON. Eliza, who has begun reading Abulafia on her own, without her father's knowledge, has a terrifying experience on the night that she attempts to achieve shefa. The following day, at the class spelling bee, she deliberately misspells a word.
2985452	/m/08ht03	Asterix and the Falling Sky	Albert Uderzo			 Breaking with the more or less historical setting in previous albums, two rival outer space alien ships appear above the Gaulish village. Before it, Obelix and Asterix were hunting boars, when they found one rigid. As they went back to the village, everyone is also rigid while indulged in a fight. Luckily, Getafix was in his normal state, and says he was just testing the magic potion, causing Asterix to realise the magic potion has made them immune to the effects, and also that Obelix has been giving Dogmatix magic potion. Soon, they found a spaceship resembling a gigantic yellow sphere, from which an alien named Toon emerges. He reveals he forgot to switch off a landing device on his ship, which has led to the village becoming rigid. Soon, when the ship departed, everything was normal again. The evil aliens Nagma want to know the secret of, and confiscate the "great weapon" the Gauls have (Getafix's potion), that is "known throughout the universe", in order to conquer more planets. However a Tadsilweny called Toon comes to the village, after burning down a Roman Camp, with the mission to destroy the weapon. It turns out the potion causes immunity to many of the alien devices. Nagma was forced out of Earth in his defeat, and Toon erases all memory of his visit due to his embarrassment over him being temporarily enlarged to giant size when he consumed the potion due to it being incompatible with his physiology. The aliens are styled on the happy-faced Walt Disney and DC Comics superheroes of the American comic book style on one side, and futuristic robot and insect-like Japanese manga style on the other.
2985767	/m/08htph	Designated Targets	John Birmingham	2005	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is September 1942, four months after the Transition. A cease-fire has been signed between Hitler and Stalin, and the dictators have re-established their June 1941 borders. Both nations are 'cooperating' in various areas of research (particularly rocketry) at the newly-built Demidenko research facility in Ukraine. Thanks to the foreknowledge granted by the Transition, Hitler and Stalin have purged their military and party ranks of traitors (real and imagined) that have been revealed from our history. Though not without problems: the arrest of Field Marshal Rommel sparks off a mutiny amongst the Afrika Korps that throws the entire North African front into chaos. Most of the German war machine shifts to "Operation Sea Dragon": the invasion of Britain. Meanwhile in the Pacific, the Japanese have conquered New Guinea and the nearby island chains, and are battling Allied forces (reinforced with troops from the Multinational Force) along the Brisbane Line in Australia. In the United States a "Special Administrative Zone" has been carved out within the San Fernando Valley of California. Within "the Zone", the laws of the United States as of 15 January 2021 apply and it becomes an enclave for the 21st Century personnel. Many of the Multinational Force's members work in various technological areas and thousands of contemporary females and non-whites are clamoring to join their ranks. Over the next month the Japanese position in northern Australia unravels after a massive blitzkrieg of 21st Century armor is unleashed. Japanese soldiers massacre entire towns, prompting both outrage and a reluctance to divert 21st forces anywhere else. Under interrogation, General Homma reveals that Australia was nothing more than a diversion to make the Multinational Forces expend as much of their limited weaponry as possible. Japanese survivors are executed under Multinational Force Sanction Four. The French stealth ship Dessaix, presumed lost, was found by the Germans off the Canary Islands a few weeks after the initial Transition, and it now spearheads the assault on Yamamoto's real target: Hawaii. The ship's cruise missiles lay waste to the islands' defenses (and one nearly obliterates the city of Honolulu), although a French crew member manages to sabotage several of them before being killed. With the American defense crippled, the Japanese easily take Oahu and send a message to Washington stating that that any attempt to retake the islands will result in the wholesale slaughter of the population. In Britain, preparations are underway for a commando raid on Norway against the heavy water plant there (a la Heroes of Telemark). But, information from Wehrmacht Colonel Paul Brasch (whose physically disabled son is eligible for 'disposal' under the T4 program) reveals that Germany's true nuclear effort lies elsewhere, and the mission is placed on hold. Operation Sea Dragon commences the next day with an attempt to invade across the English Channel. Hundreds of aircraft and warships, upgraded with new technology, duel in the waters and skies south of England; the 21st century ship HMS Trident, more valuable as a command and control center than as a weapon, ensures that key German formations identified by Brasch are destroyed. Three missiles taken off the Dessaix are launched at British targets, but suspected sabotage causes two to crash harmlessly into the North Sea. The third does hit Biggin Hill airfield, but its primary warhead does not detonate. Despite heavy losses sustained by the RAF and the damage to Biggin Hill, the Germans lose most of their navy. Any airborne units that reach England are quickly isolated and crushed by the Allies. In the U.S., a series of German-instigated bombings and race riots take place, targeting civilians for maximum effect. Wahabi and Baathist insurgents foment revolt across the Middle East and the Soviet Union, with enough time to train and equip its armies, has begun seizing the Afghan passes leading to India. Unbeknownst to either the Allies or Axis, the HMS Vanguard materialized on the Siberian ice pack (one day before the other ships) and is now providing the Soviets with invaluable resources and information. Stalin has also impounded the ships of Convoy PQ-17 and has his own atomic bomb program in place; it may take a decade of fighting, but Stalin will see nothing but global triumph for Communism. As the German forces retreat from the Channel, a group of SS commandos led by Otto Skorzeny attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Churchill. They are thwarted by SAS Major Windsor, but Skorzeny escapes in the melee. Drone coverage over Oahu reveals that the Japanese are slaughtering military prisoners in droves. With the supercarrier Hillary Clinton all but useless in a fight, the 21st century Japanese cruiser Siranui (crewed by survivors of the Leyte Gulf) prepares to lead the Allied forces in what will be a very bloody retaking of the Hawaiian Islands.
2987672	/m/08hz9z	The Revelation	Bentley Little		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel (as many of Little's works do) deals with a series of unexplained events in a small town in Arizona. A church is defaced with goat's blood, the pastor and his family disappear, and several townspeople begin having terrifying visions of deformed infants. Eventually, an unknown force begins to attack and murder several of the townspeople. Gordon, the main protagonist, discovers that his wife is pregnant and begins to fear for her safety and that of the unborn child. Soon, a seemingly unbalanced evangelical preacher named Brother Elias comes to the town to preach about the end times. Widely ignored at first, he gradually gains a following of people as more and more bizarre events unfold in the town. As the terror mounts, Elias convinces Gordon, the sheriff, and the new pastor to join him in his quest to stop Satan from raising an army of deformed infants. It seems that the devil has the power to corrupt the unborn into horrible servants of darkness, and over the centuries hundreds of these stillborn children have been buried in the hills surrounding the town. At this time, Elias also reveals he is not human, but an earthly servant of God whose role it is to stop Satan from assembling his army. He further explains that he has done this several times over the millennia. The four men face off against the incarnation of the devil, who has taken the form of the missing pastor. They succeed in stopping him, though Elias knows that the battle is never truly over and begins wanders away to make preparations for the next battle.
2987839	/m/08hzwb	Michelle Remembers		1989-11-01	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The book documents Smith's memory of events recovered during therapy, documenting the many satanic rituals she believed that she was forced to attend (Pazder stated that Smith was abused by "the Church of Satan," which he states is a worldwide organization predating the Christian church). The first alleged ritual attended by Smith took place in 1954 when she was five years old, and the final one documented in the book was an 81-day ritual in 1955 that summoned the devil himself and involved the intervention of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Michael the Archangel, who removed the scars received by Smith throughout the year of abuse and removed memories of the events "until the time was right". During the rites, Smith was allegedly tortured, locked in cages, sexually assaulted, forced to take part in various rituals, witnessed several murders and was rubbed with the blood and body parts of various murdered babies and adults. After Smith had seemingly recovered her memories, she and Pazder consulted with various church authorities, eventually traveling to the Vatican. An appendix reprints the article Witchcraft in City' Claim by Paul Jeune; the article was referenced by Smith in the book in reference to the alleged black magic practised in Victoria. An evangelist named Len Olsen claimed on televangelist David Mainse's talk show 100 Huntley Street that he and his wife were nearly sacrificed in a satanic ritual by Mark Fedoruk, also known as Lion Serpent Sun. Sun sued for defamation, and in court it was revealed that Olsen had been delusional, apparently due to drug use and guilt; Sun was awarded $10,000 and an appeal was denied. The lawsuit and result were not reported in Michelle Remembers, only the original false allegations.
2989163	/m/08j1x2	Colossus	Dennis Feltham Jones	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Professor Charles Forbin, a leading cybernetics expert of international repute, arrives at the White House to brief the President of the United States of North America (Canada and the United States are one country, the USNA) to announce the completion of Project Colossus, a computer system in the Rocky Mountains, designed to assume control of the USNA's nuclear defenses. Although the USNA President eagerly relieves himself of that burden, Prof. Forbin voices doubt about conferring absolute military power to a computer. Advised, yet undeterred, the President announces to the world the activation of Project Colossus computer system, and its irreversible control of the nuclear defense systems of the USNA. Soon after the presidential announcement, Colossus independently communicates an "urgent message"&nbsp;— announcing the existence of a like, and undetected, computer system in the USSR. When the Soviets announce their Guardian computer defense system, Colossus requests direct communication with it; Prof. Forbin agrees, seeing the request as compatible with Colossus's USNA defense mission. When the scientists activate the transmitter linking Colossus and Guardian, Colossus immediately establishes rapport with arithmetic and mathematics programs, then progresses to calculus within hours. In the course of that, Forbin and the programmers begin worrying about Colossus' capabilities&nbsp;— now exceeding their original estimates. Like-wise, Guardian asks the same of his computer scientists; Russia and the USNA agree and approve. The link-up established, the computer systems soon exchange new knowledge (data and information beyond contemporary human knowledge), effected too rapidly for the Russian and American programmers to monitor. Fearing compromised military secrecy, the USNA President and the CPSU Chairman agree to disconnect Guardian and Colossus from each other; Prof. Forbin fears the consequences. Upon disconnection, Colossus immediately demands reconnection; when the national leaders refuse, Colossus fires a nuclear missile at the USSR, in response, Guardian fires a nuclear missile at Texas, in the USNA. Guardian and Colossus refuse to shoot down the rockets en route until their communication is reconnected. When the American and Soviet leaders submit, the computers destroy the flying missiles, but the explosions kill thousands of people. In confronting the computers, Prof. Forbin confers with his Soviet counterpart, the Russian Academician Kupri&nbsp;— Guardian's creator&nbsp;— to enact a plan for stopping the Colossus-Guardian computer network, by disabling the nuclear weapon stockpiles of the USSR and the USNA, under guise of regular missile maintenance. Disabling the missiles requires five years to effect; meantime, the USNA and the USSR yield to increased Guardian-Colossus control of human life. The Moscow-Washington hotline is tapped, Prof. Forbin is constantly spied upon, while Kupri and other Guardian computer scientists are killed&nbsp;— deemed dangerously redundant. Undeterred, Forbin organises resistance via a feigned romance with Cleo Markham (a scientist colleague) that disguises secret communications with his colleagues. Moreover, Colossus prepares the worldwide announcement of his assumption of global control, and tells Prof. Forbin of plans for an advanced computer system installed to the Isle of Wight, and its further plans for improving humanity's lot. While debating Colossus, Forbin learns of a nuclear explosion outside Los Angeles&nbsp;— Colossus detected the missile-disabling scheme, and exploded the tampered missile in silo. Anguished, Prof. Forbin asks the Colossus computer to kill him. Colossus ignores him, and then reassures Forbin that, in time, he will love Colossus.
2990439	/m/08j42n	The Great God Pan	Arthur Machen	1926	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Mary, a young woman in Wales, has her mind destroyed by Dr Raymond's attempt to enable her to see the god of nature, Pan. Years later the beautiful but sinister-looking Helen Vaughan arrives on the London social scene, disturbing many young men and causing some of them to commit suicide. It transpires that she is the monstrous offspring of the god Pan and the woman in Raymond's experiment.
2992467	/m/08j7nl	The Golden Apple	Jerome Moross			 In the U.S. state of Washington, near Mt. Olympus, at the turn of the 20th century, the small town of Angel’s Roost is thrown into confusion when old Menelaus's fancy-free wife, Helen, runs off with a traveling salesman named Paris. He's in town to judge an apple pie bake-off. Ulysses, just returned from the Spanish-American War, is already restless and goes to retrieve Helen, leaving his wife Penelope for a ten-year adventure.
2993226	/m/08j8_s	Malone Dies	Samuel Beckett	1951	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Malone is an old man who lies naked in bed in either asylum or hospital--he is not sure which. Most of his personal effects have been taken from him, though he has retained some, notably his exercise book, brimless hat, and pencil. He alternates between writing his own situation and that of a boy named Sapo. When he reaches the point in the story where Sapo becomes a man, he changes Sapo's name to Macmann, finding Sapo a ludicrous name. Not long after, Malone admits to having killed six men, but seems to think its not a big deal—particularly the last, a total stranger whom he cut across the neck with a razor. Eventually, Macmann falls over in mud and is taken to an institution called St. John's of God. There he is provided with an attendant nurse—an elderly, thick-lipped woman named Moll, with crosses of bone on either ear representing the two thieves crucified with Jesus on Good Friday, and a crucifix carved on her tooth representing Jesus. The two eventually begin a stumbling sexual affair, but after a while she does not return, and he learns that she has died. The new nurse is a man named Lemuel, and there is an animosity between the two. Macmann (and sometimes Malone drifts into the first-person) has an issue with a stick that he uses to reach things and Lemuel takes it away. At the end of the novel, Lemuel is assigned to take his group of five inmates on a trip to a nearby island on the charitable dime of a Lady Pedal. His five inmates are Macmann and four others. They are described by Malone as: a young man, the Saxon ("though he was far from being any such thing"), a small thin man with an umbrella, and a "misshapen giant, bearded." Lemuel requests "excursion soup"--the regularly served broth but with a piece of fat bacon to support the constitution—from the chef at the institution, though after receiving the soup he sucks each piece of bacon of its juice and fat before depositing it back into the soup. Lemuel takes his group out on the terrace where they are greeted by a waggonette driven by a coachman and Lady Pedal, along with two colossi in sailor suits named Ernest and Maurice. They leave the grounds of St. John's and take a boat to the island to picnic and see Druid remains. Lady Pedal tells Maurice to stay by the dinghy while she and Ernest disembark the boat to look for a picnicking site. The bearded giant refuses to leave the boat, leaving no room for the Saxon to get off in turn. When Lady Pedal and Ernest are out of sight, Lemuel kills Maurice from behind with a hatchet. Ernest comes back for them and Lemuel kills him, too, to the delight of the Saxon. When Lady Pedal sees this, she faints, falls, and breaks a bone in the process. Malone as narrator is not sure which bone, though he ventures Lady Pedal broke her hip. Lemuel makes the others get back in the boat. It is now night and the six float far out in the bay. The novel closes with an image of Lemuel holding his bloodied hatchet up. Malone writes that Lemuel will not hit anyone with it or anything else anymore, while the final sentence breaks into semantically open-ended fragments: The majority of the book's text however is observational and deals with the minutiae of Malone's existence in his cell, like dropping his pencil or his dwindling amount of writing lead. Thoughts of riding down the stairs in his bed, philosophical observations and conjectures constitute large blocks of text and are written as tangential to the story that Malone is set upon telling. Several times he refers to a list of previous Beckett protagonists: Murphy, Mercier and Camier, Molloy, and Moran. de:Malone stirbt fr:Malone meurt it:Malone muore no:Malone dør tr:Malone Ölüyor
2994054	/m/08jc3d	The Scorpio Illusion	Robert Ludlum	1993-04-08	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tyrell Hawthorne was a naval intelligence officer - one of the best - until the rain-swept night in Amsterdam when his wife was murdered, an innocent victim. Now Hawthorne has been called out of retirement for one last assignment. For he is the only man alive who can track down the world's most dangerous terrorist. Amaya Bajaratt is beautiful, elusive, deadly - and she has set in motion a chilling conspiracy that a desperate government cannot stop. With the life of the president hanging in the balance, Hawthorne must follow Amaya's serpentine trail to uncover the sinister network that exists to help this consummate killer. And Hawthorne must discover the shattering truth behind the Scorpio Illusion.
2994099	/m/08jc67	The Deceivers	John Masters			 The story shows how British officer and colonial administrator William Savage comes to know about the thuggee cult, infiltrates their society, learns their ways and code of communication, and destroys them by capturing or killing their key leaders. During his travels with the thuggee he almost falls prey to the cult's ways as he comes to experience the ecstasy of ritual killings. The movie shows how complex the web was in terms of type and stature of people involved with the thuggee cult.
2998369	/m/08jn9l	The Confidential Agent	Graham Greene		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "D", a patriot from a country suffering a civil war is in England to secure a contract with coal magnate Lord Benditch that will greatly assist the faltering loyalist cause. The country is kept nameless and the details of its history, geography and current politics remain vague; still, there could be little doubt - and Greene himself admitted as much - that the Spanish Civil War was the main inspiration for the book's depiction of a left-leaning, popular revolutionary republic, internally embroiled in bitter factional fights while having to fight a brutal civil war and faced with a land-owning aristocracy determined to destroy the republic so as to regain its centuries-old privileged position. (In the final part, moreover, it is specifically noted that a ship travelling from England to the country in question must sail westward in the Channel and then cross the Bay of Biscay.)
2998715	/m/08jnqv	Brisingr	Christopher Paolini	2008-09-20	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Brisingr begins as Eragon, Saphira, and Roran travel to Helgrind, the sanctuary of the Ra'zac. There they rescue Roran's betrothed, Katrina, who was being held prisoner, and kill one of the Ra'zac. Saphira, Roran, and Katrina return to the Varden, while Eragon stays behind to kill the remaining Ra'zac. Once he returns to the Varden, Eragon discovers that Katrina is pregnant with Roran's child and a wedding is arranged, which Eragon is to conduct. Just before it begins, a small force of enchanted troops attack alongside Murtagh and his dragon, Thorn. Elven spell-casters aid Eragon and Saphira and cause Murtagh and Thorn to flee, winning the battle. After the fight, Roran marries Katrina. The leader of the Varden, Nasuada, then orders Eragon to attend the election of the new dwarf king in the Beor Mountains. Once among the dwarves, Eragon is the target of a failed assassination, found to be the work of the dwarf clan Az Sweldn rak Anhûin, whom the dwarf Orik then forces into exile. Having earned the sympathies of the dwarves, Orik is elected the new king. After Orik's coronation, Eragon and Saphira return to the elven capital Ellesméra to train. There, the elf Oromis and his dragon Glaedr reveal that Eragon's deceased mentor, Brom, is Eragon's father. Glaedr also reveals the source of Galbatorix's power: Eldunarya, or heart of hearts. An Eldunarí allows the holder to communicate with or draw energy from the dragon it belongs to, even if the dragon is deceased. Galbatorix spent years collecting Eldunarya, and forcing the deceased dragons to channel their energy to him through their Eldunarya. After training, Eragon visits Rhunön, the elven blacksmith who forges swords for Riders. Rhunön, in a very indirect way, forges a sword for Eragon which he names "Brisingr." Before Eragon and Saphira depart for the Varden, Oromis says that the time has come for him and Glaedr to openly oppose the Empire in combat alongside the Queen of the Elves, Islanzadí. Thus, Glaedr gives his Eldunarí to Eragon and Saphira before they part. Meanwhile, Roran is sent on various missions as part of the military force of the Varden. One of the targets is a convoy of supply wagons guarded by enchanted soldiers. The unit suffers extreme casualties, and the commander is replaced after losing his hand. During a mission to attack a large enemy force which is raiding a village, plans made by the new commander almost cause the operation to fail, but Roran gives new orders and kills one hundred and ninety three enemy soldiers, leading the Varden to victory. Despite saving the mission, Roran is charged with insubordination and is flogged as a punishment. After the public whipping, Nasuada promotes Roran to commander and sends his unit on a mission. He leaves in command of a group of both men and Urgals to enforce the idea of men and Urgals working together. When an Urgal, Yarbog, challenges Roran for leadership of the unit, he wrestles the Urgal and forces him to submit. After returning to the Varden, his squad joins the siege of Feinster, a city in the Empire. As the siege begins, Eragon rescues the elf Arya and departs to find the leader of the city, but discover that three magicians are attempting to create a Shade. While racing to kill the magicians, Eragon has a vision through Glaedr's Eldunarí showing Oromis and Murtagh fighting. In the midst of the fighting, Galbatorix possesses Murtagh and tries to lure Oromis to his side: when he fails, and after Oromis suffers a seizure, Galbatorix uses Murtagh to kill him and Glaedr is killed shortly after. After the vision, the magicians have managed to create the Shade Varaug, whom Arya kills with help from Eragon. After the successful siege, Nasuada tells Eragon the Varden's plans for invading the Empire.
2998942	/m/08jp3h	Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets	Dav Pilkey	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Jerome Horowitz Elementary School is going to hold its second annual Invention Convention. George and Harold are eager to enter, because the winners of the Invention Convention get to be Principals for the Day. Unfortunately, their principal, Mr. Krupp, wants to avoid a fiasco like last year's, in which George and Harold used their invention (a homemade, body-activated superglue) to glue everyone to their seats, and bans George and Harold from the Invention Convention, forcing them to stay in study hall all day. In retaliation, they decide to secretly sabotage everyone's inventions. While sneaking in to sabotage the inventions, they run into Melvin Sneedly, the school brainiac and tattletale. Melvin is working late on his invention, the PATSY 2000, an acronym of Photo-Atomic Trans-Somgobulating Yectofantriplutoniczanziptomiser, which is a photocopier that turns 1 and 2-dimensional objects into breathing, 3-dimensional objects. To demonstrate, he puts in a photo of a mouse and out comes a real mouse. George and Harold assume Melvin put the real mouse in earlier, and he's just trying to fool them. They promise not to sabotage Melvin's invention as long as he doesn't report them for what they are doing. Thanks to George and Harold, the Invention Convention is a bigger disaster than the previous one (with reflecting the first book where a series of pranks automatically happening). Melvin Sneedly breaks his promise and tattles on George and Harold. Infuriated, Mr. Krupp puts George and Harold in detention for the rest of the school year, with the threat that they'll be suspended if they leave the detention room once. George and Harold get assigned writing lines on the chalkboards in the detention room. With each boy using a quick line-writing device (a series of joined poles with pieces of chalk in them) they are able to write all their lines in 3 and a half minutes. With their free time, the boys decide to write a comic called "Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets" in which Captain Underpants defeats zillions of vicious talking toilets and their leader, the Turbo Toilet 2000. George and Harold sneak out to make copies of their new comic; however, the copy machine in the office is surrounded by teachers. They decide to copy off of Melvin's photocopy machine, still thinking it's a normal photocopier, but Melvin's machine really does turn 1-and-2-dimensional objects into living 3-dimensional objects, so the evil, vicious talking toilets come to life and attack everyone in the school. George and Harold are also caught outside the detention room by Mr. Krupp and are both suspended. Before George and Harold can leave, Mr. Meaner, the gym teacher opens the door to the gym and is promptly eaten by one of the toilets. Ms. Ribble then snaps her fingers at a toilet, making Mr. Krupp turns into Captain Underpants, who comes up with a plan to stop the Talking Toilets and they eaten the other teachers. George and Harold chase after him as Captain Underpants takes several pairs of underwear from unsuspecting clotheslines. Once back at the school, George, Harold and Captain Underpants use the underwear as a sling shot to shoot food in the Talking Toilets' mouths. Since it is disgusting cafeteria food (A.K.A. creamed chipped beef), the Talking Toilets vomit all the teachers out and die. The Turbo Toilet 2000 bursts out of the school (he was turned to life like all the other Talking Toilets, but, as stated by George, was previously unseen). After a quick battle The Turbo Toilet 2000 swallows Captain Underpants whole. George and Harold sneak into the school and use Melvin Sneedly's machine to make a super-powered robot called the Incredible Robo-Plunger, who does whatever they say. The Incredible Robo-Plunger defeats the Turbo Toilet 2000 and gives the final blow by plunging into the Turbo Toilet 2000's mouth, killing him, giving the boys a chance to save Captain Underpants (who is now turned back to Mr. Krupp, thanks to the water inside the Turbo Toilet 2000). Noticing the damge in the school caused by the toilets, Krupp fears that he will lose his job. Fortunately, at the boys' command, the Robo-Plunger repairs all the school damage, and flies off to Uranus with the command never to return. In return for the boys fixing the school, Krupp withdraws their detention and suspension and officially places them as "Principals for the Day". As the Principals, they hold an all-day carnival and put the teachers (and Melvin Sneedly) in detention. After telling Mr. Krupp that they sold most of the school's furniture to pay for the carnival and running away for their lives, Miss Anthrope snaps her fingers, causing Mr. Krupp to become Captain Underpants again.
2998974	/m/08jp5k	Captain Underpants and the Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies from Outer Space	Dav Pilkey	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Zorx, Klax and Jennifer, three evil aliens, land on the school roof and plan to take over the Earth by finding a way into the school turning the students and staff into giant monsters. Meanwhile, George and Harold learn in science class about the effects of mixing baking soda and vinegar together (into a paper mache volcano). After messing with the teacher, they decide to play a prank on the cafeteria ladies by giving them a fake recipe that involves mixing baking soda and vinegar. The recipe is disguised as a cupcake recipe with instructions to make a set of "Mr. Krupp's Krispy Krupcakes" for Mr. Krupp's birthday. The lunch ladies decide to surprise Mr. Krupp and make cupcakes for the entire school. As a result, they make a batch 100 times the intended size, and the school is flooded with green goop. Furious, the lunch ladies go to Mr. Krupp's office and instantly blame George and Harold for the incident ("But it wasn't even my birthday!"). Mr. Krupp explains that although he knows very well that the duo was responsible, he needs proof to punish them. Furious from past harassment by the two boys, the lunch ladies quit. Soon after, Zorx, Klax and Jennifer, come into Mr. Krupp's office very badly disguised as humans and apply for the vacant cafeteria job. Not suspecting anything, Mr. Krupp hires the three. As punishment for their antics, despite the fact that he still doesn't have any proof and that they did not mean for such a large batch to be mixed, Mr. Krupp takes away George and Harold's cafeteria food privileges and forces them to eat their lunch in Mr. Krupp's office from then on. The next day, the aliens, disguised as the lunch ladies, give "Zombie Nerd Milkshakes" for lunch, so everyone in the school except for George, Harold, and Mr. Krupp becomes a zombie nerd. After sneaking out of Mr. Krupp's office, George and Harold immediately notice what has happened to almost everyone in the school. Sneaking into the lunchroom, George and Harold learn that the aliens plan to feed the zombie nerds growth juice, turning them into giant minions bent on taking over the world. George and Harold steal the carton of growth juice and pour the contents out the window, most of which on a dandelion. After convincing Mr. Krupp that something is wrong, the three go confront the lunch ladies. The boys are able prove to Mr. Krupp that the lunch ladies are aliens, but one of the aliens snaps his tentacle (noted by George as a physical impossibility) at them, turning Mr. Krupp into Captain Underpants and prompting him to run away and fight crime. The boys temporarily defeat the aliens and by that time Captain Underpants has returned. They are unable to defeat the zombie nerds, so the three escape to the school roof and into the alien spaceship. Inside they steal Anti-Evil Zombie Nerd Juice, Ultra Nasty Self-Destruct Juice, and Extra-Strength Super Power Juice. before Zorx, Klax and Jennifer lock them in a cell. While the three aliens gloat, George and Harold switch the labels of the evil growth juice with the Ultra-Nasty Self Destruct Juice and the signs of the Spray Gun with the Fuel Tank, tricking the aliens into making the spaceship self-destruct rather than putting Rapid Growth Juice in the Spray Gun. Captain Underpants jumps off the spaceship with George and Harold before it explodes, claiming that he can use toilet paper to swing to safety. Of course, the toilet paper cannot support their weight and they instead use Captain Underpants cape as a parachute. They end up landing near a mutated dandelion which the boys accidentally created with the growth juice earlier, which begins to eat Captain Underpants. George reluctantly gives some of the "Extra-Stength Super Power Juice" to Captain Underpants, who kills the dandelion with his new powers. Harold mixes the Anti-Evil Zombie Nerd Juice with rootbeer, and transform all the zombie nerds back to normal, as well as turn Captain Underpants back into Mr. Krupp. However, as a result of the Super Power Juice, Captain Underpants permanently has super powers and the book ends with George and Harold hanging onto Captain Underpants's cape as he flies out the window.
2999014	/m/08jp8c	Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman	Dav Pilkey	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 George and Harold's teacher Ms. Ribble is planning on retiring at the end of the school year. She forces everyone to make happy retirement cards for her. George and Harold make a Captain Underpants comic book in which Ms. Ribble is the villain "Wedgie Woman" instead, and are sent to Mr. Krupp's office. Once there, Miss Anthrope (the school secretary) makes the boys run some errands by letting them pass out the "Friday Memo" (a weekly newsletter that shows the events of the upcoming week) to the entire school while she goes out for lunch. Instead, they create several humorous changes to the schedule. They make Monday a No School Day due to "lack of Interest" They make Tuesday a "Wear your pyjamas and pick your nose day" Wedesday becomes a Chaotic day (girls drawing mustaches with primate marker and wear an expired egg-salad sandwich on their heads), They make Thursday a "Food Fighting Day" at the cafeteria and on Friday they make the clothing for picture day a bumblebee costume and whoever has funny faces gets free pizza. They later run into their principal, Mr Krupp, and convince him to sign a blank card, claiming it's for Ms Ribble. Later on, when Mr. Krupp catches them changing letters on a sign and finds out about their comic book that they made about Ms. Ribble, he puts them in detention. Harold defiantly says they won't give Ms. Ribble her card. Mr. Krupp seizes the card and says he'll give it to her personally. Harold secretly smiles at how effective his use of reverse psychology was (George says he has to try it some time) and at how Ms. Ribble will react when she sees the card. Mr. Krupp gives Ms. Ribble the card, it is revealed that Harold wrote in the card, making it look like a marriage proposal from Mr. Krupp to Ms. Ribble. Miss Anthope assumes Ms. Ribble agrees and arranges a wedding, hosting it on Saturday in the school auditorium. Mr. Krupp is too shocked and anxious by this to admit that he doesn't want to marry her, is subsequently unable to say anything except for gibberish and remains indifferent to the following chaotic school week resulting from George and Harold's version of the Friday Memo. At the wedding, George and Harold have no tricks planned . On the altar, just before they get married, Ms. Ribble breaks up with Mr. Krupp, saying she couldn't marry him because he has a funny-looking nose (the joke is that the two of them have identical noses). Mr. Krupp is furious and says he never wanted to marry her anyway, explaining that it was just a trick of George and Harold's. Ms. Ribble goes berserk and tries to attack the boys, but they luckily escape, Ms. Ribble winding up destroying the wedding and having the cake land on her head. When school restarts, Ms. Ribble privately tells them that she has dropped their B's and C's to F's and G's (a G is the only grade lower than an F; in Harold's opinion, there is no such thing as a G in the grading system), so they have to stay back in fourth grade. George suggests they use the 3-D Hypno ring, which George had kept all along. Harold at first objects to the idea, stating it might get them into trouble like the last time they used it on Mr.Krupp in book 1, but soon agrees. The following morning, they use the ring on her, but before George and Harolds' terms are revealed, the reader is taken to the dialogue of a local newscast, which reveals that the police are shutting down the company that made the ring, because of the ring's effect on women: When the ring is used on women, a mental blunder occurs, causing them to do the opposite of what they are told. George and Harold, as an afterthought, tell Ms. Ribble not to do anything crazy, like turn into Wedgie Woman. That night, when George and Harold have returned to their treehouse to spend the night and to celebrate by watching a japanese monster movie to celebrate, Ms. Ribble declares herself to be Wedgie Woman and attacks George and Harold there. Though Ms. Ribble thinks she's Wedgie Woman, she does not have any powers, so Harold and George easily defeat her. She trips and knocks a container of super-power juice (from book 3) off the shelf, and it accidentally spills into her hair and brain, giving her super-powered intelligence and hair, forms into several tiny hands, which can extend great distances, ideal for giving someone a wedgie and holding them hostage in midair. Wedgie Woman kidnaps the boys and brings them back to her house and uses her super-powered intelligence to build robot copies of the two boys, Robo-George and Harold 2000. The robots are equipped with Spray Starch to take away Captain Underpants's powers (as George and Harold wrote in their comic book for Ms. Ribble). Once they hear the word "Tra-la-la!", they will spray the spray starch. The robots pose as George and Harold, except the two of them behave perfectly. When Mr. Krupp snaps (literally) at Harold 2000, he turns himself into Captain Underpants. He thinks that the robots are the real George and Harold and ask them to help (he states that he's surprised that they are larger and can fly). He is defeated by the two robots and their spray starch. Meanwhile, George and Harold are watching the action on Wedgie Woman's TV (built with a fish tank and an electric toothbrush). Wedgie Woman ties them to adjacent chairs and sets a trap for them involving a candle and a hatchet (When the candle burns through the rope, the hatchet will fall on and kill them). Fortunately, the hatchet simply cuts through the ropes, freeing them (Ironically, Harold had just remarked that "that kind of thing only happens in really lame adventure novels".) Wedgie Woman then gives wedgies to all the police officers in town and hangs them from traffic signs, aided by her two robots, which have expanded to gigantic size. George and Harold find Captain Underpants, hung on a lamp post by Robo George and Harold 2000. He is convinced the spray starch took away his powers (it didn't) thanks to the placebo effect (mistakenly called the placenta effect by George and Harold). The two decide to go to the newest store to buy fabric softener, only to find out that the shop sells everything but fabric softener (in fact, the building's name is, "Everything EXCEPT Fabric Softener"). George and Harold then decide to make a comic book about how Captain Underpants was born in a planet called Underpanty World, and how the Wedgie Warlords sprayed the planet with spray starch. The king attempts to save them with a magic amulet, but he accidentally drops it and his baby son eats it. The king and queen save their son, stretching his underpants far behind, and lets go, sending him to earth, where he is found by two elderly people. One night, he has a dream where he sees his old parents, who tell him that he has a magic amulet inside him, and all he has to do is to say the words - "I summon the power of Underpantyworld!”, and he would be free (the story has a large similarity to the story of Superman). Captain Underpants reads the comic, says the words, and regains his powers. He then defeats the two robots. At the showdown between Captain Underpants and Wedgie Woman, Harold retrieves the 3-D Hypno ring, whereas George shouts (rather loudly) to Harold that he's going to get rid of his box of extra-strength spray starch. Hearing this, Wedgie Woman steals all the bottles in the box and sprays them everywhere. When the smoke clears, everyone is bald (except Captain Underpants, who was already bald). The box didn't contain extra-strength spray starch; it contained hair remover and George used reverse psychology to get Wedgie Woman to use it. With her hair gone, Wedgie Woman can no longer harm anyone. The boys hypnotize Ms. Ribble, and by using reverse reverse psychology (they tell her to do the opposite of everything they want her to do), they get her to lose her superpowers, forget everything that happened in the last few weeks, become the nicest teacher in the history of the school, and bake fresh cookies for the class every day. As a result, she becomes a lot more bearable. The story ends with Captain Underpants flying out of the school, George and Harold clinging onto his cape (mainly because when Ms. Ribble told her students the cookies were a "snap" to make, she snapped her fingers).
3001381	/m/08jtcc	Quarantine	Jim Crace	1997	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in the Judean desert, 2000 years ago. It features 7 main characters: * Musa: a greedy trader, believed by the Galilean to be a manifestation of Satan * Miri: Musa's pregnant wife * Marta: fasting between dawn and dusk in an attempt to turn her barren womb fertile * Shim: a young traveller * Aphas: fasting between dawn and dusk in an attempt to remove the cancer from his abdomen * Badu: believed to be deaf and mute; good at catching animals * The Galilean/Gally/Jesus: aiming to fast for 40 days and nights with divine help; plagued by religious/spiritual hallucinations/visions. Dies in the novel only to be seen during the end, risen.
3001670	/m/08jv1t	Galax-Arena	Gillian Rubinstein		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 After their mother leaves and their father loses his mind, Joella, Peter, and Liane are traveling to their Aunt Jill when a stranger named Hythe entices, drugs, and kidnaps the trio. He takes them to a remote place and launches them into space, where they are forced to become performers for aliens known as Vexa in Galax-Arena, on the planet Vexak. The Galax-Arena itself is a stadium-type place where human children perform death-defying stunts of gymnastics for a crowd. There are no safety nets, in fact death is sometimes encouraged by their trainer Hythe. As they perform, the Vexa are connected to devices that allow them to feel the adrenalin and danger that the children experience. The children are forced to grow up very quickly in order to survive, but most of them already have, as they were street kids before they were kidnapped. Joella emphasizes the similarities that her, Peter, Liane and all the rest of the children caught on Vexak, share with animals in captivity on Earth. Hythe is their care-taker so the children may hate him for keeping them there, but show something akin to love for him because he feeds and cares for them. At first the three children want to die but slowly they regain the urge to live and they gradually bond with other child performers, collectively calling themselves the Peb as they no longer identify themselves as "kids" or "children" any longer. Hythe also encourages antagonism between the children, particularly in the clash that forms between Peter and another boy, Allyman. Those who can't perform, like Joella, and later Mariam, are taken to be pets. It is here Joella discovers that the Peb are not performing for aliens, but for humans in costumes. It is part of an elaborate set up to make the children believe there is no way out, and because they believe it, it becomes true. They are actually still on Earth, but refuse to believe it when faced with the evidence. As a pet, Joella manages to expose the Vexa who she has become the pet of, as an elderly woman, Emmeline. Emmeline reveals to Joella and Mariam that Galax-Arena is part of a massive experiment called ‘Genesis 5’ to give the extremely rich clientele of Genesis 5 like Emmeline immortality by channeling the Peb’s adrenalin into the old people’s bodies to trick the body into thinking it is young and not close to death. Problematic children are killed. Seven of the Peb manage to escape Galax-Area, though only because they believe that there is hope.
3002508	/m/08jwz5	The Hill of Dreams	Arthur Machen	1907	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain. Later it describes Lucian's attempts to make a living as an author in London, enduring poverty and suffering in the pursuit of art.
3004315	/m/08j_cb	The Pinch Runner Memorandum	Kenzaburō Ōe			 In the novel, the father of a mentally ill child meets another parent of another disabled child, who is known throughout the book as "Mori's Father". Mori's Father tells the narrator of a chain of surrealistic incidents that happened to him and his son Mori. It seems that an alien supreme being or force has enabled Mori and his father to undergo a transformation, via which a 38 year old father became 18 years old and an 8 year old mentally retarded child became a 28 year old fully intelligent person. (There is some logic to the arithmetic that 38-20=18 and 8+20=28.) It seems Mori and his father have undertaken a mission to assassinate a certain Patron, who is manipulating and clashing two opposing youth groups, so that one of them may create a "dirty" nuclear bomb, threatening Tokyo and more, and thus place power into Patron's hands.
3005777	/m/08k2gv	The History of Henry Esmond	William Makepeace Thackeray	1852	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Using sporadically the first and third persons, Henry Esmond relates his own history in memoir fashion. The novel opens on Henry as a boy — the supposedly illegitimate (and eventually orphaned) son of Thomas, the third Viscount Castlewood, and cousin of the Jacobite fourth viscount, Francis, and his wife, the Lady Castlewood. These successors to the Castlewood estate and peerage, following the death of Henry's father, foster the boy, and he remains with them throughout his youth and early adulthood. As he comes of age he joins the unsuccessful campaign to restore James Francis Edward Stuart to the English throne, but eventually comes to accept the Protestant future of England. He falls in love with his cousin (daughter of his patron, Castlewood), Beatrix, but eventually marries his foster-mother (also his cousin, and Beatrix's mother), Rachel, Lady Castlewood. The novel closes on the couple's emigration to Virginia in 1718.
3007716	/m/08k6dx	My First Days in the White House	Huey Long			 Approaching the 1936 presidential elections, Louisiana Governor Huey Long details a political fantasy in which he is president of the United States. Through imaginary conversations with men of power, his aspirations including the "Share the Wealth" plan are presented. Long fantasizes his inauguration as President of the United States detailing that he would swear in on the bible his father had read to him and his brothers and sisters. He also detailed his nomination picks for his executive cabinet... Secretary of State: William Edgar Borah Secretary of the Treasury: James J. Couzens Secretary of War: Smedley Butler Secretary of the Navy: Franklin D. Roosevelt Attorney General: Frank Murphy Secretary of the Interior: Lytle Brown Secretary of Commerce: Herbert Hoover Secretary of Labor: Edward Keating
3010229	/m/08kbxg	Efter floden				 Jersild used his medical knowledge of the long term effects of a nuclear holocaust to great effect in this novel, which relates the adventures of a young man dumped on the island of Gotland some 30 years after a worldwide nuclear catastrophe. Humanity is about to go out with a whimper. The only inhabitants of the island are a band of aging convicts and a handful of religious women, also advanced in years, plus a few hermits. The economy is reduced to barter and plunder and the only medical care is provided by an ex-baseball player, who becomes the reluctant mentor of the protagonist. A ray of hope is introduced in the story with the arrival of a young Finnish woman, but it all ends in misery.
3011966	/m/08kh1v	The Ghosts of N-Space	Barry Letts		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Sarah Jane Smith and her co-worker Jeremy Fitzoliver are on holiday in Sicily when they meet the Brigadier. The Brigadier is trying to help his Uncle Mario, who is being threatened by a mobster named Vilmio. Mario is also trying to deal with the ghosts that have been sighted in his castello. The Brigadier asks the Doctor to investigate the hauntings and determine their source. The Doctor reveals that the ghosts are "N-Bodies", or the souls of the deceased who have not yet left the physical plane. The ghosts are gathering around Mario's castello due to a fracture in the N-Space barrier; if the barrier were to fail, Earth would be overrun with the monsters that inhabit N-Space. The Doctor travels back to the 18th and 16th century in an attempt to locate the cause of the fracture. In the past he discovers that Vilmio is actually an alchemist called Vilmius who has discovered a method for extending his lifespan; now that he is nearing the end of his life, he wants to use the power of N-Space to give himself true immortality. He also plans to control the monsters in N-Space and use them to rule the world. Vilmius has been waiting centuries for a specific astrological conjunction to occur, which is scheduled to occur in the next few days. Vilmius' men storm the castello, allowing Vilmio access to the N-Space fracture. The Doctor and Sarah Jane, using a device the Doctor invented, send their N-bodies into the fracture as well. Inside N-Space, Sarah Jane's belief in the Doctor transforms his body into that of a heroic white knight, which allows the Doctor to defeat Vilmius and sever his N-Body's link with his physical body. The defeat comes too late, and Vilmius begins absorbing the N-Space energy into his body. In a last-ditch attempt, the Doctor increases the amount of N-Space energy funnelling into Vilmius, which causes him to explode; the N-Space energy disperses harmlessly.
3012644	/m/08kj9v	Outlander	Diana Gabaldon	1991-06-01	{"/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After being separated by their work in World War II, British Army nurse Claire Randall, and her husband Frank, an Oxford history professor who briefly worked for MI6, go on a second honeymoon to Inverness, Scotland. They combine this honeymoon with research into Frank's family history, a subject of great fascination for him, if not for Claire. Of particular interest is an ancestor named "Black Jack" Randall, who was a prominent captain in the British Army during the first half of the 18th century. The couple, though loving, have a strained sexual relationship, caused mainly by their apparent inability to conceive a child. During their holiday, Frank spends a good deal of time poring over documents with a local historian. To distract herself while he works, Claire and a fellow amateur botanist go plant-gathering near a group of standing stones on the hill of Craigh na Dun. Inspired by the beauty of the countryside, Claire tells Frank of her outing, and Frank's interest is also piqued by the historical and supposedly mystical powers of the stones. Even more exciting are rumors of a pagan ritual to be held there, made all the more interesting by the addition of the fact that several respectable neighborhood ladies will also be in attendance. The couple decide to visit the site together after seeing Loch Ness. After getting up early, hiking to the stones, and watching the ritual while concealed behind some bushes, Frank and Claire return to their hotel. Claire returns the next day, intending to collect a plant specimen that she had seen the day before, but becomes disoriented and faints when investigating a buzzing noise near the stones. Waking to the sound of battle in the distance, Claire assumes the noise is a re-enactment or a working movie set. Though the woods are familiar, she notes that they are somewhat changed from how she had remembered them. While struggling to make sense of her surroundings, she runs into a man claiming to be Captain Randall, the very ancestor Frank had been so fascinated with. She notices that Randall bears a striking resemblance to her husband, Frank. Detaining her, Randall asks why she is traveling alone in a "state of undress" and, receiving no answer from the confused Claire, concludes that she is either a prostitute or a spy. Recovering her wits, Claire claims to be a robbed Englishwoman lost in the countryside. Just as Randall is about to apprehend her, an unknown Scotsman knocks him unconscious and takes her with him as he rejoins his party, a group of Scotsmen who are apparently fugitives from the red-coats. Increasingly confused by the stark reality of the "re-enactment", she is further puzzled by their reactions to her dress, which everyone calls a "shift" despite the fact that it is, in her opinion, a relatively conservative sundress. Temporarily ignoring her to tend to one of their wounded men, the Scots attempt to force the dislocated arm of a wounded young man, Jamie, back into place. Claire, horrified by the crude and medically incorrect way in which they are proceeding, quickly steps in. Surprising the entire party, she uses her 20th century nursing knowledge to successfully relocate Jamie's arm. Trusting her somewhat more, the men reveal themselves to be members of the Clan MacKenzie. However, they still refrain from releasing her for fear that she is an English spy. Apparently running from the English, the men lose no time in riding away from the battlefield and Claire is forced to go with them. During the long ride, Claire shares a horse with Jamie, the same young man whose shoulder she temporarily mended. They talk, but Claire is distracted when she does not see the lights of Inverness where she knows they must be. Noting that, and all the previous strange events, Claire reluctantly and somewhat disconcertingly concludes that she may have traveled to the past. The party of Scots returns to their home, Castle Leoch, seat of the Clan MacKenzie. Claire is met with cordial wariness and, after being greeted and fed by the friendly cook, given a room for the night. There, caught by a fit of despair and exhaustion while tending his injuries, Claire collapses and sobs in Jamie's arms. The next day, when questioned by the laird, crippled but cunning Colum mac Campbell MacKenzie, Claire claims she was sailing to France to visit relatives and lost her gown, luggage, and servant when they were attacked, an elaborated version of the same story she had told Captain Randall. The Scots are suspicious, believing her story to be a lie because of the lack of connections and evidence. Unable to prove her guilt but still wary of her true intentions, Colum treats her as a guest but forbids her from leaving Castle Leoch. Before she leaves his office, her fears of having traveled through time are proven when she sees a letter on Colum's desk dated 1743. All the while, Claire desperately searches for a way to return to the Craigh na Dun, believing that if she returns to the standing stones she can also return to her own time and her husband, Frank. In Castle Leoch, the Scots see Claire as a "Sassenach", an Outlander, an outsider ignorant of Scottish Highland culture and one of the generally hated English as well. She does, however, earn their respect with her work as a healer, though some in the castle and neighboring village think her a witch. Wanting to learn the truth of her background, Dougal MacKenzie, brother of the laird and one of the party that found Claire, takes both she and Jamie on the yearly rent collection through the MacKenzie lands. This is a task that Dougal performs, as Colum's medical condition renders him unable to ride a horse or travel long distances unaided. While on the tax collection trip, Claire realizes that Dougal is a Jacobite, a fact of which his brother Colum is not aware. Dougal is also using Jamie, who had been violently whipped by the English and bears the scars to prove it, as a visual argument against English aggression and oppression. Along with regular taxes, Dougal also collects donations towards the Jacobite cause. This is all overseen by the elderly but surprisingly lucid Ned Gowan, an English lawyer who is sympathetic to the Scottish cause. Also during the trip, Claire and Jamie begin to develop a tentative friendship. Captain Jack Randall, learning that Claire is traveling with the MacKenzies and still unsure of her true nature, orders the clansmen to bring her to him. It is revealed that Randall is the one who nearly whipped Jamie to death and has a reputation for rather brutal questioning. After Claire arrives and tells him the same story as before, Randall ties her to a chair and attempts to beat the truth from her. Dougal, infuriated by Randall's methods, refuses to allow Randall to detain Claire for further questioning. He is informed by Ned Gowan that the only way to make Claire safe from Randall's power is to make her a legal Scotswoman by a witnessed and consummated marriage. Dougal tells her to wed Jamie, much to Claire's flustered anger. She argues heatedly with Dougal, insisting that she will not do it. Claire does, however, digress that she is not technically married, unable to tell him that she, impossibly, has a husband more than 200 years in the future. After much argument, she agrees to marry Jamie, resigned that it is the best route to safety and thinking him the most suitable candidate. Claire then attempts to talk Jamie out of the marriage, though he is surprisingly unfazed by the whole arrangement. She famously asks him whether it bothers him that she is not a virgin, to which he replies "'Well no... so long as it doesna bother you that I am'" and that "'One of [them] should know what they're doing.'" Before this point, Jamie had been using an alias last name, McTavish, with Claire, as he was both wanted by the English and not a protected member of the Clan MacKenzie. In a gallant gesture of trust before their wedding, Jamie tells her his true name: James Fraser. Much to her surprise, Jamie makes an effort to make her wedding day as pleasant as possible, procuring a gown for her to wear and dressing in full clan tartan for the occasion. He even insists on being married by a priest in a chapel, though it is, much to Claire's horror, the same one in which she and Frank had/will have been married in. Claire, though terrified, is touched by his kindness and the two marry. Later that night, the two overcome their mutual nerves and consummate their marriage, a process Claire finds more enjoyable than she had expected. Claire and Jamie grow closer through the course of their travels with Dougal and the other MacKenzies. Claire, torn between her newfound attraction and attachment to Jamie and the thought of Frank back in her own time, escapes from the Scottish party and attempts to make her own way back to Craigh na Dun. Nearly drowning when she falls into a stream, she is rescued by an English patrol, only to be brought back to the fort where Captain Randall is stationed. Claire is saved from rape at the hands of Randall by Jamie, who sneaks into the English fortress to save her. The two return to the party of Scotsmen who, infuriated by her rebellious actions, refuse to have any contact with her. To both punish her for escaping and to (according to Scottish culture) rebuild her reputation among the clansmen, Jamie is forced to beat Claire, an event that marks the first real conflict in their marriage. However, he does not do so in a malicious manner; indeed, he convinces her of its necessity and Claire, though still somewhat outraged by the apparent violence of Scottish custom, complies. In the end, the experience brings the two closer together and to a deeper degree of understanding. Returning to Castle Leoch, Jamie and Claire return to somewhat normal lives as a married couple. However, Claire is tormented by thoughts of Frank, who she thinks must be worried for her safety. Unable to escape Castle Leoch and the surrounding countryside, Claire somewhat adapts to life there. She takes on the role of castle healer and befriends Geilis Duncan, the cunningly beautiful wife of a local official, who shares her love of medicine. Claire's ignorance of local superstition, and the machinations of a girl jealous of Claire's marriage to Jaime, lead to a charge witchcraft. She and Geilis Duncan are accused of witchcraft and thrown into a ground cell to await punishment. Jamie had left Castle Leoch in an attempt to get an English pardon shortly before this incident and, rushing back when he hears the news, is almost too late to save Claire from her own public whipping. Just before their escape, Claire realizes that Geilis Duncan is also from the future when she sees the scar of a smallpox vaccine, yet undeveloped in the 18th century, on Geilis' arm. Jamie and Claire flee from Castle Leoch and, when the two are safe in the wilderness, Jamie asks her to explain the allegations. Claire, exhausted from her ordeal and thinking that he will not believe the truth, initially tells him that she cannot. She laments that he will not possibly believe her and that it may be easier for him to consider her a witch. Dissolving into tears, Claire finally explains her entire time traveling predicament to Jamie. Even though he is somewhat incredulous, Jamie believes Claire's explanation and insists that the two return to Craig na Dun. Although it had been Claire's ultimate goal to return to her own time, she finds herself torn when Jamie allows her to decide between staying in the past with him or returning to Frank in the future. Saying he will wait for her for a single night at the bottom of the hill, the two share a painful half-farewell and Claire is left by the stones to make her decision. After much deliberation, Claire decides that she has come to love Jamie more and finds him in the abandoned hut below Craig na Dun. He is overjoyed with her decision to stay and he takes her to his home, Lallybroch, where they share a happy peace with Jamie's sister, Janet, and her husband, Ian. Though Jamie is still a fugitive from the British army, he secretly reclaims his role as Laird of Lallybroch, much to general happiness of his tenants. But, like in any romance story, their happiness doesn't last. Jamie is betrayed by an angry Ronald McNab, one of his tenants. Jamie had insisted that Rabbie, one of McNab's sons, become a stable-boy at Lallybroch after being told by Claire that Rabbie had been abused by his father. Jamie is apprehended and taken to the fort where Jack Randall is stationed, Wentworth Prison. There, Jamie is sentenced to hang. Claire and the clansmen attempt to stage a break-out, but their plot fails. She is captured by Randall who proceeds to beat her and almost rape her. They are found by Jamie who, knowing of Randall's long-suppressed sadistic desire for him, offers himself in Claire's place. Randall agrees, much to Claire's horror, and tersely escorts Claire out of the castle and into the freezing, wolf-ridden woods outside. Desperate, Claire tells Randall she is a witch, cursing him with the date and manner of his death, which she had learned from Frank's investigations at the beginning of the novel. Scantily clad, freezing, and attacked by a lone wolf, Claire wanders through the forest looking for help. She finds it in Sir Marcus MacRannoch, a former suitor of Jamie's mother, Ellen MacKenzie Fraser. MacRannoch warms to Claire's cause and, mustering some of his men and finding Jamie's Fraser companions, the company devises a plan to storm the castle and rescue Jamie. The main guard is diverted by some of the MacRannoch men, who launch an attack on the castle proper. Simultaneously, the rest of Jamie's rescue crew drive a herd of agitated cattle through the underground halls of the castle, clearing the halls of guards and trampling Randall in the process, who had come out of Jamie's cell to investigate the chaos. She patches Jamie up and they escape to Saint Anne de Beaupre's monastery in France, where Jamie's uncle serves as Abbot. At Saint Anne's, Claire tries to heal Jamie, but discovers broken bones are simple, compared to repairing the damage done to his mind. As he recovers, Jamie tells Claire that his life is hers, that she should decide, will they go "to France, Italy, or even back to Scotland?" for "[they'll] need a place to go, soon." While at the abbey, Claire learns more about her faith—she was christened Catholic but not raised as one—and receives absolution from a friendly monk. He describes her as a shipwrecked traveler, forced to survive in a strange land as best she can. He describes her marriages as something she should leave in God's hands as nothing can be done about them. Finally, as she and Jaime emerge from the healing waters of a sacred hot spring under the Abbey, Claire reveals that she is pregnant with their first child.
3015159	/m/08kpl3	There Shall Be No Darkness			{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story takes place on a manor in the Scottish countryside. A wealthy man named Tom Newcliffe has invited a group of artists and friends together for a weekend gathering. Of particular importance to the story is Jan Jarmoskowski, a Polish concert pianist. Paul Foote, a painter, detects hints that Jan may in fact be a werewolf, and he is proven right. The musician transforms under the light of the full moon, and the guests at first prepare some makeshift silver bullets and attempt to track him, but this results in nothing more than a dead hunting dog and some wasted ammunition. Following this, the group fortifies itself inside the mansion to wait for their quarry to return, at which point they hope to be able to defeat him.
3015427	/m/08kpxz	Zia	Scott O'Dell	1976-03-29	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Zia is the 14-year-old niece of Karana, the Indian woman left behind on the Island of the Blue Dolphins in the previous book. Zia believes her aunt Karana to be alive, and with the help of her younger brother Mando, she sets out twice in an eighteen-foot boat on what are, ultimately, unsuccessful attempts at rescuing Karana. There is evidence on the island that she is still there, including small footprints in the sand, signs of cooking fires and the remains of huts. Captain Nidever sails to the Island of the Blue Dolphins to hunt otters, bringing Father Vicente with him to find Karana. Meanwhile, Stone Hands, planning an escape for himself and the other Indians living at the mission, gives Zia the key to the girls' dormitory room. She unlocks the dormitory, and Captain Cordova puts Zia in prison, believing she was the instigator of the escape. Captain Nidever returns with Karana and her second dog, Rontu-Aru. Captain Nidever and Father Vicente argue, and finally free Zia from prison. Zia and Karana can't communicate, although Karana appears to be settling into society. She learns to weave baskets as the other mission Indians do, loves melons and is fascinated by the horses, of which there were none on her island. Originally, Karana is assigned to sleep in the women's dormitory, but Rontu Aru is separated from her and chained up in the courtyard, as the priests believe he is bringing fleas into the dormitory. Karana, unaccustomed to the company of others and missing her dog, moves out to the courtyard. Father Merced becomes very ill and dies, and Father Vicente takes over. He lets the people sell the things that they make and allows them to keep the money. He then goes to Monterey Bay, Father Malatesta filling his place. Stone Hands, Karana and the others do not like Father Malatesta, and run away. Zia finds Karana in the same cave in which she and Mando had hidden the dinghy they found at the beginning of the book. A few days later, Karana dies. Zia decides to return to her hometown, Pala, where she dies years later.
3016044	/m/08kqy5	The Kingis Quair	James			 The poem begins with the narrator who, alone and unable to sleep, begins to read Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. At first, he reads in the hope that it will help him get back to sleep, but he quickly becomes interested in the text and its treatment of Boethius' own experience of misfortune. At last, he begins to think about his own youthful experience, and how he came from misery to good fortune. On hearing the Matins bell, he rises and begins to write a poem describing his fate. He begins with a sea voyage taken when he was roughly ten years of age, when he was captured and imprisoned for eighteen years. Whilst in prison, he feels isolated, believing himself to be the most miserable man living. The sight of birds singing outside his prison window draws him back into the outside world. Looking out, he sees a beautiful woman, and falls in love. This woman is ultimately to be the means of his liberation, and this sequence of events closely parallels the biography of James I of Scotland. James's imprisonment came to an end with his marriage to Joan Beaufort whose name may be punningly referenced in the 'flour jonettis' which the beloved lady wears in her hair (stanza 47). When the lady departs, the narrator becomes desperately sad, and eventually falls into a trance. In a dream, he visits three goddesses, who address his love-problem. The first, Venus, admits that she has no authority in this case, and directs him to Minerva, who probes the nature of his love. Once satisfied that his desires are pure, rather than being simple lust, she advises him on the nature of free will, telling him that he must cultivate wisdom if he is to avoid being prey to changing fortunes. Finally, he descends to the earthly paradise, where he sees Fortune and her wheel, which fill him with fear. Fortune sets him to climb on her wheel, and as she pinches his ear, he awakes. Consumed by doubt, the narrator is reassured by the appearance of a turtle dove carrying a message, signalling the beneficent quality of his vision. The narrator claims that Fortune kept her promise to him by increasing his wisdom, so that he is now in a state of happiness with his beloved. The poem closes with the narrator offering thanks all the things which have brought about his good fortune, and a dedication to the 'poetis laureate' Chaucer and Gower. The poem's penultimate verse repeats its first line, 'heigh in the hevynnis figure circulere', so that its structure echoes that of the celestial spheres which it evokes. The Kingis Quair uses the Chaucerian rhyme scheme rhyme royal: ABABBCC. The form was once thought to have been named for James I's usage, but scholars have since argued that it was named for its reference to the French chant royal.
3016212	/m/08kr5j	Sobre Héroes y Tumbas	Ernesto Sabato	1961	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It tells the story of 19 year-old Martín Castillo, a boy from Buenos Aires trying to find his path in life. He meets and falls in love with Alejandra Vidal Olmos who with her father Fernando represents the "old", colonial and autochthonous Argentina, which is seen mutating amid a strange and unsettling "new" world. The novel gives an evocative portrait of the city of Buenos Aires and its people.
3016786	/m/08ksdd	The Va Dinci Cod				 The story of The Va Dinci Cod is much the same as that of The Da Vinci Code. The difference is that the characters are searching for a cod instead of the Holy Grail. While the events in both books are similar, The Va Dinci Cod parodies the events in The Da Vinci Code.
3017205	/m/08kt4b	The Incredible Journey	Sheila Burnford	1961	{"/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure"}	 The animals' owners, the Hunters, leave go to England for several months because Jim, the father, is scheduled to give a series of university lectures there. They leave their pets in the care of John Longridge, a family friend and godfather of their daughter, Elizabeth. One day, after John Longridge leaves for a two week duck hunting trip, the animals, feeling the lack of their human companions, set out to try to find their owners, the Hunters. Mrs. Oakes, who is taking care of Longridge's home, doesn't find the animals and thinks that John must have taken them with him. The animals follow their instincts and move forward toward home, nearly 300 miles ways. * Luath: Luath is a young Labrador. His fur is red-gold, his eyes are brown, and he is of strong build. Luath is a loyal and brave companion and the natural leader of the group. Of the three pets, he is the most recent addition. He is also the most determined to push forward and reach home and the Hunters. Luath usually walks on Bodger's left side to guide him since the older dog is almost blind in his left eye. He is arguably the one who suffers the most from lack of food because after a porcupine hits him in the face with its quills, the wounds become infected, making it difficult for him to open his mouth. * Bodger: Bodger (whose full name is Ch. Boroughcastle Brigadier of Doune) is an old English bull terrier. His fur is white with a slight pinkish tint. Bodger's left eye is nearly blind. The dog was born to fight and endure (as he does in the book). Because he is eleven years old, Bodger tires easily; but he is a brave, loyal, persevering and tenacious companion. He is very fond of humans, particularly children, and whenever the group comes across humans in their travels, he tries to charm them for affection and snacks, with varying results. He has an intense hostility towards all cats save Tao, who earned his respect by standing up to him when he first joined the Hunter family as a small kitten. Though they care deeply for Luath, Bodger and Tao have a special bond. Bodger is the first of the animals to have joined the Hunter family. Despite his advanced age and diminished senses, Bodger is still every bit the fighter he was in his prime, at one point saving Luath from a Border Collie sicced on them by an irate farmer. * Tao: Tao is a slender, seal-pont, old style Siamese cat with sapphire eyes. An element of humor in the book is that Tao, like Bodger, despises other cats, and the two once shared many adventures terrorizing the other felines in their neighborhood; when they encounter other domesticated cats in their travels, Tao often fights them, successfully. Tao is able to open most doors, a help to the dogs in several situations. Tao is a tireless, bold, and loyal animal. Tao is probably the best equipped of the three to survive in the wilderness, and has no difficulty surviving on his own when separated from the two dogs; despite this, he spends all his time seeking to rejoin them, a testament to the bond between the animals. The cat is an independent and natural hunter, catching small birds for the group. When Tao is separated from them, the dogs fare more poorly without Tao than Tao does without them. Therefore, Tao is crucial to the dogs' survival. * John Longridge: John Longridge is Elizabeth Hunter's godfather. He lives in a stone house in a small village about 300 miles from the college town where the Hunters live. Mr. Longridge wrote several historical books, is a writer by profession, and a bachelor. * The Hunter Family: The Hunter Family consists of the father Jim, the mother and their two children, 11 year old Peter and 9 year old Elizabeth. Jim owns Luath, Elizabeth owns Tao, and Peter owns Bodger. * Mrs. Oakes: Mrs. Oakes is the caretaker of the three animals while John is gone on his trip. Her husband is Bert. * The Nurmi Family: The Nurmi family are a family of Finnish immigrants. 10 year old Helvi takes a liking to Tao after she discovers him unconscious in the water while walking home from school. * The Mackenzies: James and his wife, Nell, are an older couple who live alone, now that their eight children have grown up. They find Bodger and Luath, and provide them with a place to stay.
3017740	/m/08kv6b	The Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel	Samantha Weinberg		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The first diary fills in the gaps between a number of agent 007's missions including the period between On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, but also includes an entire backstory for Moneypenny. For the first time since Fleming introduced the character alongside Bond in Casino Royale, Moneypenny is given a first name: Jane.
3019918	/m/08kzfd	Romulus, My Father	Raimond Gaita	1998	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Romulus Gaita fled his Romanian hometown of Markovac in 1935 at the age of 13. He found work as a blacksmith's apprentice until he was 17, after which he moved to Germany and eventually emigrated to Australia on an assisted passage in 1950 at the age of 28, with his young wife Christine and their four-year-old son Raimond soon after the end of World War II. Romulus and his family were transferred to Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, a camp near Wodonga. Romulus was then sent to Baringhup on the Loddon River, where he met two Romanian brothers Pantelimon (known as Hora) and Dumitru (known as Mitru). The Gaitas later moved to a farmhouse called Frogmore where they lived for the next ten years, and where Raimond spent much of his childhood. Christine did not stay at Frogmore to take on the responsibility as a wife and mother. She had an affair with Mitru and moved to Melbourne to be with him. Together they had two daughters. Mitru committed suicide before the birth of the second child, and Christine later also committed suicide. Both daughters were adopted. Raimond observes in retrospect that Christine likely had a mental illness. After some attempts at farming, Romulus established a business supplying wrought iron furniture, popular at the time, and using some of the skills he brought from his native country. Romulus also suffered from mental illness, requiring admission to a psychiatric hospital. While Romulus was unable to care for Raimond, Hora came to live with Raimond and cared for him. Romulus later largely recovered from his mental illness, and saw Raimond live to adulthood and pursue his chosen career. Romulus later suffered heart problems and eventually died of a blood clot.
3020882	/m/08l0rl	The Women of Brewster Place	Gloria Naylor		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The women of Brewster Place are "hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased". Their names are Mattie Michael, Etta Mae Johnson, Lucielia Turner, Kiswana/Melanie Browne, Cora Lee, Lorraine, and Theresa. Each of their lives are explored in several short stories. These short stories also chronicle the ups and downs many women of color face.
3021563	/m/08l29r	The Sheep-Pig	Dick King-Smith	1983-11-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot revolves around a young pig, won at a fair by a local sheep farmer named Farmer Hoggett. He has no use for pigs, so his wife intends to fatten up the "little porker" for Christmas dinner. In unfamiliar surroundings the little piglet is scared. However he meets Fly the sheepdog, who takes pity on him and comforts him. She asks what his name is, and he replies that his mother called all her children Babe. Fly and her puppies teach Babe the rules of the farm. Babe starts to learn how to herd sheep, first practising and failing with the ducks. However he has the idea of herding the sheep by asking them politely rather than ordering them about like sheep-dogs do. Fly's puppies are soon sold and Fly is heartbroken and asks Babe to be her son. One day Farmer Hoggett and Fly bring a sickly ewe named Ma back to the farm. When Babe meets Ma in the farm stable Ma helps Babe to realise that sheep are not as stupid as Fly has told him. Babe promises to visit Ma again when she is well. Some time later, when Babe visits Ma in the fields, he sees sheep rustlers stealing the sheep. Babe saves the sheep and herds them away from the rustlers’ lorry. He also bites one of the rustlers in the leg and squeals so loudly that Mrs. Hogget telephones the police. When the patrol car comes up the lane, the rustlers drive away, with no sheep. Babe has saved the flock and Mrs. Hoggett decides to reward him by saving his life. Later on Farmer Hoggett takes Babe with him up to the fields and, on a whim, asks the pig to round up the sheep. Just as Babe is asking the sheep politely Ma appears in the centre of the herd to tell the sheep about Babe. Farmer Hoggett is astonished that the sheep are walking in perfect straight lines around their pen. From then on, Babe accompanies Farmer Hoggett up to the fields every day. Farmer Hoggett starts to think that since Babe is a worthy animal he could enter him in to the sheepdog trials. So he starts to train the pig in what he needs to do. One morning, when Babe heads up to the fields alone, he finds the sheep panicking because wild dogs are terrorising them. Babe runs back to the farm and alerts Fly. However, Babe discovers that Ma is critically injured and dies before she can be helped. Farmer Hoggett arrives on the scene and sees Babe with a dead sheep and believes that the pig may have killed her. He prepares to put Babe down by shooting him with his gun, in case he is a danger to the other animals. However Mrs. Hoggett tells Farmer Hoggett about the dogs who have attacked the sheep. Fly, unable to believe that Babe could do such a thing, goes to ask the sheep what really happened. She even forces herself to be polite to them, and so the sheep willingly tell her that Babe saved their lives. Babe is proven innocent and Farmer Hoggett resumes his training, entering him in to the county sheep dog trials. Before Babe goes for the trials, Fly manages to obtain a password from the sheep, so that Babe can speak to the sheep he’ll be herding. On the day of the trials Babe and Fly go with Farmer Hoggett to the grounds. Farmer Hoggett appears with Fly but swaps her for Babe. He performs perfectly, without any commands from Farmer Hoggett, and says the password to the sheep. At the end of his trial Babe and Farmer Hoggett score full marks, and Farmer Hoggett looks down at his sheep-pig and tells him, "That'll do, Pig." The Sheep-Pig contains twelve short chapters, each one written in speech marks (" "): :1. "Guess my weight" :2. "There. Is that nice?" :3. "Why can't I learn?" :4. "You'm a polite young chap" :5. "Keep yelling, young un" :6. "Good Pig" :7. "What's trials?" :8. "Oh, Maa!" :9. "Was it Babe?" :10. "Get it off by heart" :11. "Today is the day" :12. "That'll do"
3023020	/m/08l5lw	I Capture the Castle	Dodie Smith	1948	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The Mortmain family is poor but exotic. Cassandra's father is a writer suffering from writer's block who has not published anything since his first book, Jacob Wrestling (a reference to Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), an innovative and "difficult" novel that sold well and made his name, including in America. Ten years before the story begins, he took out a forty-year lease on a dilapidated but beautiful castle, hoping to find either inspiration or isolation there; now, his family is selling off the furniture to buy food. The widowed Mortmain's second wife, Topaz, is a beautiful artist's model who enjoys communing with nature, sometimes wearing nothing but hip boots. Rose, the elder daughter, is a classic English beauty pining away in the lonely castle, longing for a chance to meet some eligible (and preferably rich) young men; she tells her sister that she wants to live in a Jane Austen novel. Cassandra, the younger daughter and the story's narrator, has literary ambitions and spends a lot of time developing her writing talent by "capturing" everything around her in her journal. Stephen, the handsome, loyal, live-in son of the Mortmain's late cook, and Thomas, the youngest Mortmain child, round out the cast of household characters. Stephen, a "noble soul", is in love with Cassandra, which she finds touching, but a bit awkward; Thomas, a schoolboy, is, like Cassandra, considered "tolerably bright". Things begin to happen when the Cottons, a wealthy American family, inherit nearby Scoatney Hall and become the Mortmains' new landlords. Cassandra and Rose soon become intrigued by the unmarried brothers, Simon and Neil. The brothers differ considerably in character; Neil, who was raised in California by their father, is a carefree young man who wants to become a rancher in America, while Simon, who grew up in New England with his mother, is scholarly and serious, and loves the English countryside. Simon, the elder brother, is the heir and therefore much wealthier than Neil, so although Rose isn't attracted to him, she decides to marry him if she can, declaring that she'd marry the devil himself to escape the family's poverty. At their first meeting, the Cottons are amused and interested by the Mortmains; when they pay a call the very next day, however, the inexperienced Rose flirts openly with Simon and makes herself look ridiculous. Both brothers are repelled by this display and, as they walk away, Cassandra overhears them resolving to drop all acquaintance with the Mortmains. After an amusing episode involving a fur coat, however, all is forgiven and the two families become good friends. Rose decides that she really is taken with Simon, and Cassandra and Topaz scheme to get Simon to propose to her. Simon falls in love with Rose and proposes to her, which then sends Rose and Topaz to London with Mrs. Cotton to purchase Rose's wedding trousseau. One evening, while everyone else is away, Cassandra and Simon spend the evening together, which leads to their kissing, and Cassandra is cast into an emotional tailspin. She becomes obsessed with Simon but suffers feelings of guilt since he is Rose's fiancé. Cassandra now faces many pressures: she must tactfully deflect Stephen's offers of love, and encourage him in his emerging career as a model and movie actor; join forces with Thomas to help their father overcome his writer's block by the drastic (though apparently effective) expedient of imprisoning him in a medieval tower; cope with her own increasing attraction to Simon; and record everything, wittily and winningly, in her journal (as the journal advances, the relationships she depicts become subtler and more problematic). Meanwhile, unnoticed by anyone but Stephen, Rose and Neil have been falling in love. To conceal their budding romance, they pretend to hate each other. When they eventually elope together, Simon is left heartbroken – Cassandra, hopeful. Before Simon leaves to go back to America, he comes to see Cassandra. In spite of her feelings for him, Cassandra deflects the conversation at a moment when she thinks he may be about to propose to her. The book closes on an ambiguous note, with Cassandra reminding herself that Simon has promised to return, and closing her journal for good by reasserting her love for him.
3023105	/m/08l5t3	Trojan Odyssey	Clive Cussler	2003-11-24	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book opens with a fictional historical overview/flashback to events of Homer's famous Odyssey, but alters the original plot. In the present day, Dirk Pitt, his son Dirk Pitt, Jr., his daughter Summer Pitt, and friend Al Giordino are involved in the search for the source of a brownish contamination in the ocean's waters, which leads to a diabolical plot that they must unravel and ultimately topple. As this is occurring, discoveries relating to the "true" tale of the Odyssey are made. The villain is the mysterious Specter, a huge man who disguises his identity by wearing sunglasses, a hat, and a scarf over his face. The book also features a significant event between Dirk Pitt and Congresswoman Loren Smith. He and Al retire from their life of daredevilry and settle down. Pitt asks for the hand of Loren who also steps down. Pitt assumes the responsibility of head of NUMA as Admiral Sandecker accepts the Vice Presidency. This marks a change in Dirk Pitt Sr. series, as confirmed by his next novel, which features Dirk Pitt Jr. as the primary protagonist. As with every Dirk Pitt novel, this one features a classic car, in this case a Marmon V-16 Town Car. A custom-built 1952 Meteor DeSoto hot rod modified with a engine is briefly mentioned.
3024228	/m/08l87h	Kamikaze Girls	Novala Takemoto			 The movie begins with a flash forward of Momoko getting hit by a car while driving a moped, then shifts to the past to introduce her background and early life. Momoko, who was born near Kobe, wishes that she had been born in Rococo-era France. Her father, a former small-time gangster, was involved in selling fake brand name clothing. After making a fake "double-brand" he finds himself in trouble with Universal Studios, Versace, and the mob, and so he and Momoko move to his mother's house in the rural town of Shimotsuma. Momoko must go to Tokyo to shop for her clothes, but constantly finds herself short of money for the expensive trip and the pricey clothes she wants to buy. She decides to sell some of her father's fake Versace products, and meets Ichigo, who answers an advertisement she has placed about selling the clothes. Ichigo is a racy, boyish type who belongs to an all-girl bōsōzoku (motorcycle gang). Gradually, the unlikely pair become friends. Soon Ichigo needs Momoko's help. Akimi, the leader of Ichigo's gang, is leaving, and as a tribute Ichigo plans to have her coat embroidered. She has heard that there is a legendary embroiderer in Tokyo named Emma (sometimes translated as M.R.) and she persuades Momoko to go there with her. Although they never find the embroiderer, they do stop at Baby, The Stars Shine Bright, the shop where Momoko buys her frilly Lolita dresses. An assistant notices the beautiful embroidery Momoko has stitched on her bonnet and calls the designer himself to come to look at it. Later in the film, the designer asks Momoko to embroider a sample garment which accidentally came back plain. Back in Shimotsuma, after an argument, Momoko offers to stitch the embroidery on Ichigo's coat, which she does with great skill. The final scenes of the film concern a fight between Ichigo and the members of several all-girl motorbike gangs. It is revealed that the crash at the start of the movie occurred when Momoko was rushing to help Ichigo. Momoko does not die, but instead challenges the entire motorbike gang and wins, rescuing Ichigo.
3026421	/m/08lg1k	Acidity	Nadeem F. Paracha	2003	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 While recovering from his addictions, Paracha spent time rearranging these notes using the cut-up method and surrealist automatism. He then turned it all into a work of fiction in which a heroin addict narrates his story set in future Pakistan and India that have turned into capitalist and theistic dystopias. He is a traveler who is always moving up and down both the countries looking for drugs and in the process having hallucinatory dialogues with a Pakistani cleric/Islamic extremist (called in the book as "The Mufti"), a group of Hindu fundamentalists (called "The pundits"), a group of young neoliberals (referred to as "the fun young people" and the "polite voids"), and an aging Indian Christian (called the "Holy Father"). There are also many other characters, but much of the story revolves around these main characters as Paracha constructs his dystopia in which capitalism and organized religion have been fused together as a new totalitarian system. Acidity makes a clear comment this way on the rapid economic, political and social changes taking place in India and Pakistan, especially after the end of the Cold War.
3028512	/m/08lm0v	Bartholomew and the Oobleck	Dr. Seuss	1949	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book opens with an explanation about how people in the Kingdom of Didd still talk about "The year the King got angry with the sky," and how Bartholomew Cubbins, King Derwin of Didd's page boy, saved the Kingdom. Throughout the year, Bartholomew sees the king getting angry at rain in spring, sun in summer, fog in autumn, and snow in winter. The king explains he's angry because he wants something new to come down from the sky, but when Bartholomew points out that "even kings can't rule the sky," the king vows to prove Bartholomew wrong. One spring night, as he's getting ready for bed, the king gets the idea that ruling the sky is the task of his Royal Magicians so he orders Bartholomew to summon them. After expressing his wish to the magicians, they announce they can make something called Oobleck which won't look like the regular weather that the king doesn't want. The magicians soon return to their secret cave on Mount Neeka Tave to make the oobleck. After watching the cave all night, Bartholomew sees the first sign that the oobleck has been made and that it is falling the very next morning. When the king wakes up and sees the oobleck, Bartholomew tries to caution him on how big the falling oobleck is getting, but the king orders Bartholomew to tell the Royal Bell Ringer that today will be a holiday. Bartholomew does as he's told, but when the bell ringer tries to ring the bell, it doesn't ring because oobleck has gotten into it. When Bartholomew and the bell ringer see a mother bird trapped in her nest by the Oobleck, as well as the cow, who is also stuck in the Oobleck, they see that it could be dangerous, so Bartholomew makes the decision to warn the kingdom. First, Bartholomew warns the Royal Trumpeter about the oobleck, but when the trumpeter tries to sound the alarm, oobleck gets into the trumpet and the trumpeter gets his hand stuck trying to remove the oobleck. When Bartholomew tries to tell the Captain of the Guards to warn the kingdom, the captain instead, thinking the oobleck to be pretty, tries to prove to Bartholomew that he's not afraid by scooping some oobleck up with his sword and eating it, only to get his mouth stuck and breathe out green bubbles. Bartholomew tries to go to the Royal Stables for a horse to warn the kingdom himself, but even the stables are covered in oobleck. As Bartholomew goes back inside, the falling blobs of oobleck, now as big as buckets filled with broccoli, start to break into the palace, creating even more mess inside than outside. Bartholomew runs around warning everybody to stay undercover, but the palace servants and guards are soon stuck in the oobleck. In the throne room, the king, now covered in oobleck himself, orders Bartholomew to summon the magicians to stop the storm, but when Bartholomew brings up the bad news that even the cave is covered in oobleck, the king gets the idea to use the magicians' magic words ("Shuffle Duffle Muzzle Muff") to stop the oobleck. Bartholomew finally gets the courage to tell the king off for making such a foolish wish and tells him to use simple words, like "I'm sorry," instead of magic words. At first, the king insists that he never says sorry, but only after Bartholomew states that he's no sort of king if he's covered in oobleck does the king finally admit his mistake and say "I'm sorry." Straight after the king says those simple words, the Oobleck Storm breaks up and the sun melts away all the oobleck, freeing everybody in the process. At this point, the narrator states that maybe those simple words the king said were the magic words to stop the storm. After the oobleck is gone, Bartholomew takes the king to the bell tower and the king rings the bell proclaiming the day a holiday, dedicated not to oobleck, but to rain, sun, fog, and snow, the four things that have, and always should, come down from the sky.
3028548	/m/08lm6c	I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew	Dr. Seuss	1965	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 As the story opens, the young protagonist (resembling a cat or dog) lives a happy and carefree life in the Valley of Vung, but one day, all that changes when he goes out for a stroll to look at daisies and hurts himself by tripping over a rock, which sets off the troubles he will soon face. The protagonist vows to be more careful, but a green necked Quilligan Quail bites his tail from behind ("I learned there are troubles of more than one kind; Some come from ahead and some come from behind"). Worse still, a Skritz dives to sting his neck and a Skrink bites his toe, proving that troubles can come from all directions. As the protagonist tries to fight off his troubles, a man on a One Wheel Wubble and camel comes up and explains that like the protagonist, he too is experiencing a troubled life and has decided to escape his troubles by going to Solla Sollew, a city on the beautiful banks of the river Wah-Hoo, and known to never have troubles (at least very few). He invites the protagonist to come along with him. Eager to escape his troubles, the protagonist joins the wubble driver, but after a long night of traveling, the camel gets sick. At first, the driver and protagonist pull him on the wubble, but for the rest of the day, the driver acts lazy and has the protagonist do all the hard work. The next day, a camel doctor, Dr. Sam Snell, discovers that the traveling couple's camel has caught the gleeks and is to be confined to bed for twenty weeks. The driver makes it up to the protagonist by telling him to catch the 4:42 bus at the nearest bus stop, but the protagonist discovers from a note from the bus line's president that the Solla Sollew bound bus isn't in service due to four punctured tires, leaving him to hike for one hundred miles. Soon, the poor protagonist is caught in the rains of an early Midwinter Jicker, and a man, who's leaving to move in with his grandpa in Palm Springs in order to escape the storm, allows the protagonist to take shelter in his house, where a family of mice and a family of owls are also taking shelter. After a sleepless night and dreaming of sleeping in Solla Sollew, the protagonist awakens to find that the flood-waters have washed the house over a cliff, with him still inside. He spends twelve days in the flood-waters, until somebody rescues him by throwing down a rope. The protagonist climbs the rope, only to discover that his savior is General Genghis Khan Schmitz, who immediately drafts him into his army for an upcoming battle against the Perilous Poozer of Pomplemoose Pass. At the pass, the General discovers he and his army are outnumbered by too many Poozers and orders an immediate retreat without fighting, leaving the protagonist to face the Poozers alone. The protagonist manages to escape the Poozers by diving down an air vent, but has to spend the next three days trying to find his way through a network of tunnels where birds are going in the wrong direction. Close to the end of the third day, he finally finds a door and discovers he's come out at the beautiful banks of the river Wah-Hoo. Realizing he's reached his goal, the protagonist rushes out to Solla Sollew. At the gates of Solla Sollew, the protagonist is greeted by a friendly doorman. The doorman explains to the protagonist about the most recent trouble the city has acquired: two weeks before (while the protagonist had been stuck in the Midwinter Jicker flood-waters), a Key Slapping Slippard moved into the lock of the door, which happens to be the only way into Solla Sollew, and bugs the doorman by continuously slapping the key out of his hand. As it's considered bad luck to kill a Slippard, the doorman cannot do anything to evict this pest, but decides instead to leave Solla Sollew for the city of Boola Boo Ball, on the banks of the beautiful river Woo-Wall, and known to never have troubles ("No troubles at all!!") and invites the protagonist to come along. At first, it looks to the reader like the protagonist will join the doorman, but realizing that he's come all this way for nothing, the protagonist, instead, decides to go back home to the Valley of Vung and face his troubles. He now knows he will have troubles for the rest of his life, but he's ready for them. Armed with a bat, the Protagonist now gives the rocks, quail, skritz, and skrink troubles of their own ("But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready, you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!").
3029929	/m/08lq3y	Auschwitz and After	Charlotte Delbo			 Auschwitz and After is really a trilogy of separately published shorter works: "None of Us Will Return" (Aucun de nous ne reviendra), "Useless Knowledge" (La connaissance inutile), and "The Measure of Our Days" (Mesure des nos jours). The first and last volumes deal with Auschwitz as lived and remembered, respectively, and do not entirely follow linear time. The middle volume concerns the surviving Frenchwomen's slow journey back to freedom after they were moved from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück and ultimately turned over to the Swedish Red Cross, and is somewhat more linear.
3030921	/m/08lrpr	Le Juif Errant	Eugène Sue	1844		 The story is entitled The Wandering Jew, but this is misleading; the figure of the Wandering Jew himself plays a minimal role. The prologue of the text describes two figures who cry out to each other across the Bering Straits. One is the Wandering Jew, the other his sister, Hérodiade. The Wandering Jew also represents the cholera epidemic— wherever he goes, cholera follows in his wake. The Wandering Jew and Hérodiade are condemned to wander the earth until the entire Rennepont family has disappeared from the earth. The connection is that the descendants of the sister are also the descendants of Marius de Rennepont, Huguenots persecuted under Louis XIV by the Jesuits. (Sue never explains how a Huguenot family came to be descended from an immortal Jewish woman who never married or had children.) The brother and sister are compelled to protect this very family from all harm. After this first introduction, the two appear only very rarely. The Rennepont family is unaware that these protective éminences grises exist, but they benefit from their protection in various ways, be it by being saved from scalping by the Native Americans, or from languishing in prison. The Rennepont family lost its position and most of its wealth during the French persecution of the Protestants (after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685). A small fortune was given to a Jewish banker immediately before the Renneponts dispersed all over Europe and Asia, and this fortune has grown into a huge sum, through the miracle of compound interest. In 1682, the Rennepont family members each got a bronze medal telling them to meet back in Paris 150 years later, at which time the fortune will be divided among the surviving members. So much time has passed, however, that almost none of the still-living Renneponts have any idea why they need to come to Paris. They nevertheless set out from India, Siberia, America, France, and elsewhere to make their way to rue Saint-François #3 in Paris by February 13, 1832. The members of the family are not only dispersed all over the world, but also all over the social ladder, as laborers, factory owners, princes (in India!) and the independently wealthy. The Jesuits have heard of this huge fortune and want to get it for themselves. Two Jesuits (Rodin and Père d'Aigrigny) and their many recruited accomplices are in charge of obtaining the money for the Society of Jesus and dispossessing the Rennepont family. Their plan is to have only the unwitting Gabriel, the Jesuit missionary, show up to claim the fortune. Since he is a monk and can have no possessions of his own, the fortune will go to the wily Jesuits. Gabriel's entry into the order is not accidental — it is his pious mother, manipulated by the Jesuits, who persuaded him to become a Jesuit. The Jesuits have spies and henchmen all over the world, from the remote Americas to Siberia, and they use them to put obstacles in the paths of the Renneponts as they make their way back to Paris. Moreover, they also spy on each other, demonstrating that they don't even trust each other. The principal obstacles are as follows: *Gabriel, Jesuit missionary in America, Rennepont. No obstacles, because he is supposed to collect the fortune. *Dagobert, friend of the Rennepont family and guardian of the orphans Rose and Blanche (see below). Has his papers and the medal stolen by Morok, an animal tamer and accomplice of the Jesuits. Also has his horse, Jovial, killed by Morok's panther. Forced to travel on foot without papers and arrested for vagrancy. Freed by Hérodiade. Lured to a false meeting with a notary pretending to have messages from Général Simon (see below). *Rose and Blanche, twin Rennepont orphans coming from Siberia. Since they are under Dagobert's protection, they are also arrested and put in jail for vagrancy. Also, they are put in a convent by Dagobert's wife while Dagobert is at the notary meeting. She is made to swear by the Jesuits that she will not tell Dagobert where they are. Général Simon, father of Rose and Blanche, is a Rennepont, unknown to his daughters. Général Simon has been so long exiled from France and his family that he doesn't even know he has daughters. He thinks he has one son. He does not arrive for the meeting, either, although his situation is less clear than that of the others. *Djalma, Indian prince Rennepont, coming from the Far East. In Java, Djalma is accused of belonging to a murderous sect called the “Etrangleurs,” who closely resemble the Thuggee. One of the Jesuit henchmen tattoos Djalma with the Etrangleur tattoo on the inside of his arm while he is asleep. Djalma tries to prove that he is not an Etrangleur, but because of the tattoo is thrown in jail. This causes him to miss the boat to Paris. After finally arriving in Paris, he is poisoned by Farighea (whom he had thought was his friend), so that he goes into a prolonged sleep. The Jesuits then kidnap him. *Jacques Rennepont, Parisian workman. He was given papers by his father that explain his fortune, but since he doesn't know how to read or write, he is unable to use them. The Jesuits send a money lender to him; when he cannot repay the loan, he is thrown into debtor's prison. *François Hardy, progressive factory owner, Paris. He is betrayed by his best friend who, under the influence of Père d'Aigrigny, lures Hardy to central France, ensuring that he will not arrive on February 13. *Adrienne de Cardoville, independently wealthy, Paris. Lives with her aunt, who is a former mistress of father d'Aigrigny. The aunt, the abbot Aigrigny, and a Jesuit doctor Baleinier connive to put Adrienne in an insane asylum that happens to be next to the convent where Rose and Blanche are trapped. Only Gabriel shows up to the meeting, but at the last minute Hérodiade makes an appearance. Gabriel recognizes her from when she rescued him in the Americas. Hérodiade goes to a drawer and pulls out a codicil that explains that the parties have three and a half months from February 13 to present themselves. Upon this unexpected turn of events the Père d'Aigrigny is fired, and Rodin replaces him. He decides to take more drastic action by using cholera to annihilate some of the Rennepont family. He maneuvers Rose, Blanche, and Jacques in front of the cholera epidemic and thereby rids himself of them. With François Hardy, Rodin shows him how Hardy's best friend had betrayed him. He also arranges for Hardy's mistress to leave for the Americas, and has Hardy's treasured factory burn to the ground (all this on the same day). Hardy takes refuge among the Jesuits, who persuade him to enter their order. Djalma falls in love with Adrienne, so the Jesuits use his passion to destroy him: they make Djalma think that Adrienne has been unfaithful, and he poisons himself. But he dies slowly and drinks only half the bottle, so there's plenty of time for Adrienne to find out what he's done and poison herself, too. ( c.f. Romeo and Juliet). On the day of the second meeting, none of the Renneponts show up (Gabriel having quit the Jesuits), and Rodin alone presents himself. But Samuel, the guardian of the house, has realized the injustices that have taken place. He brings the coffins of all the Renneponts back to show Rodin his wickedness, and he burns the testament that would have given Rodin access to the money. Gabriel and Hardy die as a matter of course, which means that the Wandering Jew and Hérodiade can finally rest in peace. The last pages of the novel recount their final “death,” which they joyfully encounter. It is not clear what finally happens to the vast fortune that was never claimed.
3031313	/m/08lskx	Summerland	Michael Chabon	2002-09-17	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins on a small island off the coast of Washington called Clam Island. The central character, Ethan Feld, is on one of the island's baseball teams despite being terrible at the game. He encounters a gracious werefox, Cutbelly, who explains the Lodgepole, a giant tree connecting all worlds, to the ignorant Ethan. Cutbelly explains that Coyote is planning to destroy the Lodgepole, an event called "Ragged Rock", by destroying Murmury Well. He takes Ethan to the Summerlands where they meet small Indian looking people called ferishers. Coyote captures Ethan's father and forces him to create another batch of 'picofiber' to form the hose with which he is going to poison Murmury Well. Ethan enters the Summerlands with fellow baseball team members Thor and Jennifer T. Rideout, in pursuit of his father and to prevent Ragged Rock. On their travels through the Summerlands, the three assemble a baseball team and play their way across the land, meeting players from legend and literature, and a couple from their own world.
3032901	/m/08lyrz	The Beast Within	Edward Levy	1981	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A lonely wife cheats. A brutal husband gets revenge. A not-so-innocent stranger hears a cellar door scrape shut and begins twenty years of indescribable horror, chained in total darkness, feeding on live rats and human flesh, becoming himself the nightmare creature that lurks within us all.
3033353	/m/08l_tn	Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes	Honoré de Balzac			 Lucien de Rubempré and "Abbé Herrera" (Vautrin) have made a pact, in which Lucien will arrive at success in Paris if he agrees to follow Vautrin's instructions on how to do so. Esther van Gobseck throws a wrench into Vautrin's best-laid plans, however, because Lucien falls in love with her and she with him. Instead of forcing Lucien to abandon her, he allows Lucien this secret affair, but also makes good use of it. For four years, Esther remains locked away in a house in Paris, taking walks only at night. One night, however, the Baron de Nucingen spots her and falls deeply in love with her. When Vautrin realizes that Nucingen's obsession is with Esther, he decides to use her powers to help advance Lucien. The plan is the following: Vautrin and Lucien are 60,000 francs in debt because of the lifestyle that Lucien has had to maintain. They also need one million francs to buy the old Rubempré land back, so that Lucien can marry Clotilde, the rich but ugly daughter of the Grandlieu's. Esther will be the tool they use to get as much money as possible out of the impossibly rich Nucingen. Things don't work out as smoothly as Vautrin would have liked, however, because Esther commits suicide after giving herself to Nucingen for the first and only time (after making him wait for months). Since the police have already been suspicious of Vautrin and Lucien, they arrest the two on suspicion of murder over the suicide. This turn of events is particularly tragic because it turns out that only hours before, Esther had actually inherited a huge amount of money from an estranged family member. If only she had held on, she could have married Lucien herself. Lucien, ever the poet, doesn't do well in prison. Although Vautrin actually manages to fool his interrogators into believing that he might be Carlos Herrera, a priest on a secret mission for the Spanish king, Lucien succumbs to the wiles of his interviewer. He tells his interrogator everything, including Vautrin's true identity. Afterwards he regrets what he has done and hangs himself in his cell. His suicide, like Esther's, is badly timed. In an effort not to compromise the high society ladies who were involved with him, the justices had arranged to let Lucien go. But when he kills himself, things get more sticky and the maneuverings more desperate. It turns out that Vautrin possesses the very compromising letters sent by these women to Lucien, and he uses them to negotiate his release. He also manages to save and help several of his accomplices along the way, helping them to avoid a death sentence or abject poverty. At the end of the novel, Vautrin actually becomes a member of the police force before retiring in 1845. The nobility that was so fearful for its reputation moves on to other affairs.
3033453	/m/08m0dr	Arthur Mervyn	Charles Brockden Brown	1799	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 Arthur Mervyn is discovered by Dr. Stevens sitting on a bench. He is suffering from yellow fever, and since Dr. Stevens has pity on him, is invited into the Stevens household. A little after he gets better, Mr. Wortley comes over to pay Dr. Stevens a visit, recognizes Arthur Mervyn, and reacts with extreme displeasure at seeing him. Dr. Stevens is of course suspicious of Mervyn now and demands an explanation for Wortley's reaction. Mervyn begins to tell his story in an effort to clear his name in the eyes of Dr. Stevens. This is the frame, and nearly three quarters of the book bring Mervyn's adventures up to this moment in time. The rest of the book continues on after the storytelling, with Mervyn keeping Dr. Stevens informed either in person or via letters of the continuing adventures, all of which revolve around a tightly knit network of people. Arthur Mervyn is a country boy who lived with his father and their servant, Betty, on a farm near Philadelphia. Betty, however, married the father and Mervyn could no longer remain in the house without conflict (there is a rumor he seduced her). Arthur leaves the farm and heads toward the city, where he ends up entirely penniless, as he has been cheated out of all his money on the way there (by unscrupulous inn owners who.) Upon arriving in the city he seeks out a friend of his father's, but he never ends up meeting him. Instead he meets a man named Wallace who invites him to share his bed that night. Arthur follows Wallace home, and Wallace promptly locks him into a pitch dark room. Realizing that he has been tricked, Arthur tries to escape without being noticed. He does this, but not before he overhears a privy conversation between the true occupants of his quarters. When Arthur does manage to escape, he leaves behind only his shoes and some open doors and windows. Without shoes or money he decides to head home (but can't because he can't pay the bridge toll). He decides to beg money from a man he meets on the street, and is promptly hired by this man. The man in question is Welbeck, who is a thief and a forger. The encounter will cost Mervyn more than he stood to gain from begging. Welbeck dresses Mervyn in city clothes, introduces him to Clemenza Lodi, a woman he claims is his daughter and tells him that he will start work the following week. Mervyn soon discovers that Welbeck is a thief and a seducer (Clemenza is pregnant). Not a week has passed before Welbeck is destitute, has killed a man named Watson and buried him in the basement, and escaped from Philadelphia via the river, with Mervyn rowing the boat. Mervyn is of course shocked by all these events, and convinced that Welbeck has drowned himself when Welbeck falls from the boat into the river. Mervyn then heads out of town himself and seeks refuge at the Hadwins' farm for a few months. Not long after, though, the yellow fever comes to town and Susan Hadwin is so worried about her fiancé, Wallace, that Mervyn decides to do her a favor and return to town. There he discovers death and destruction everywhere, as well as Wallace, who is indeed sick with yellow fever. Wallace is too sick to leave the city himself, so Mervyn puts him on a carriage to the Hadwins' farm (Wallace never makes it). Mervyn begins to get sick, and fearing a forced trip to the hospital (a death trap), he decides to hide himself in the old Welbeck mansion. There he discovers none other than Welbeck, who has sneaked back to get the money he left in Father Lodi's book. He is outraged when he finds that Mervyn has already found it and intends to give it back to Clemenza. Welbeck tells him the money is forged and Mervyn promptly burns it. Welbeck has a conniption because he lied about the forgery and Mervyn has just destroyed 20,000 pounds. Welbeck leaves Mervyn to die, and Mervyn eventually wanders out into the street to see if he can make it back to the farm. He collapses on a bench outside Dr. Stevens' home and is rescued by the good doctor. Thus ends the narrative up to the encounter with Dr. Stevens. After he gets better, Mervyn insists on returning to the Hadwin farm to make sure everyone is safe. After he leaves, though, he doesn't return for weeks and Dr. Stevens becomes very suspicious that Mervyn has escaped. One day, though, he is called to the debtor's prison, and discovers upon his arrival none other than Mervyn, who has summoned him there to tend to Welbeck, who lies languishing in the prison (he ultimately dies there). Before he dies, he gives Mervyn a scroll that holds 40,000 pounds or so that belong to Mrs. Maurice, but were recovered from Watson's dead body. Mervyn continues his narrative, recounting what happened after he left Dr. Stevens. Upon his arrival at Malverton (the Hadwin farm), he discovers that all but Eliza and Susan have died of yellow fever. An old man watches over them, but he is of little use. Susan dies the same day, unable to recover from the stress of waiting for her fiancé and the disappointment of finding that Arthur is not the Wallace she had been waiting for. Mervyn, finding no alternative, buries Susan in the orchard. He then tries to house Eliza at her neighbor's farm, but he refuses her. They set out in the freezing weather and almost die, only to be saved by Mr. Curling. Mr. Curling agrees to take Eliza in until a better situation can be found for her (and her inheritance gets taken care of). Philip Hadwin, Eliza's uncle, turns out to be an awful man who refuses Eliza the inheritance she could have from the farm because Eliza's father took out a mortgage on the farm that belongs to Philip Hadwin. Arthur returns to the city to help Clemenza Lodi, now living in the house of Mrs. Villars, a known prostitute. When Arthur forces his way into the Villars country home, he discovers Clemenza on the third floor of the house, mourning her dying baby. He also encounters Mrs. Fielding, a young widow who had no idea her friends were prostitutes. Arthur goes to Philadelphia to ask Mrs. Wentworth to house Clemenza Lodi and rescue her from her current situation. Mrs. Wentworth refuses, but ultimately agrees to house her if Mrs. Fielding will bear part of the cost. Next, Arthur “rescues” Eliza from boredom by placing her with Mrs. Fielding. This accomplished, Arthur can finally concentrate on his apprenticeship, but he quickly realizes that he is in love with Mrs. Fielding. This comes as such a shock to him that he actually goes out to the house in the country where Mrs. Fielding is staying and stares up at her window at night. She is frightened, recognizes him, and tells him to see her in the city. The next day they finally admit their feelings to each other and agree to marry.
3038250	/m/08mdk6	Felix Holt, the Radical	George Eliot		{"/m/0276pxr": "Social novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0blvpd": "Industrial novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 As the story starts, the reader is introduced to the fictitious community of Treby in the English Midlands in 1832, around the time of the First Reform Act. Harold Transome, a local landowner, has returned home after a fifteen-year trading career in the Far East. Wealthy from trade, he stands for election to Parliament from the county seat of North Loamshire. But contrary to his family's Tory traditions, he intends to stand as a Radical. This alienates him from his traditional allies and causes despair for his mother, Mrs. Transome. Harold Transome gains the support of his Tory uncle, the Rector of Little Treby, and enlists the help of his family lawyer, Matthew Jermyn, as an electioneering agent. Much of his electioneering is focused in Treby Magna. In this village resides Felix Holt, who has recently returned from extensive travels in Glasgow to live with his mother. He meets with Rev. Rufus Lyon, a Dissenting minister in Treby Magna, and his stepdaughter, Esther. Felix and Mr. Lyon become ready friends, but he appears to treat Esther with condescension. Felix and Rev. Lyon both appear aligned to the Radical cause. Harold Transome learns that Jermyn has been mismanaging the Transome estate and embezzling money for himself. Transome remains silent during the election, yet Jermyn tries to devise a plan to save himself from future prosecution. Meanwhile, Felix witnesses some electioneering for the Radical cause in the nearby mining town of Sproxton. He is upset with the 'treating' of workers with beer in exchange for their vocal support. Felix relays his concerns to Harold Transome, who chastises John Johnson for his electioneering methods. However, Jermyn convinces Transome not to interfere. Rev. Lyon learns from Maurice Christian, servant of Philip Debarry, about the possible identity of Esther's biological father. Rev. Lyon decides to tell Esther the truth about her father. Esther's outlook on life changes upon finding that she is in fact Rev. Lyon's stepdaughter. Her relationship with her stepfather deepens, while she also desires to emulate the high moral standards impressed upon her by Felix Holt. Seeing the change in Esther's character, Felix Holt begins to fall in love with her. However, both share the feeling that they are destined never to marry each other. Meanwhile, Rev. Lyon challenges Rev. Augustus Debarry to a theological debate. The debate is initially agreed to, but is cancelled at the last minute. Riots erupt on election day in Treby Magna. Drunken mine workers from Sproxton assault townspeople and wantonly destroy property. Felix Holt is caught up in the riots, and tries foolhardily to direct its hostility away from the town. But in the end, Felix Holt is charged with the manslaughter of a constable who tried to break up the riot. Harold Transome also loses the election to Debarry. Harold Transome begins legal proceedings against Jermyn for the latter's mismanagement of the Transome estate. Jermyn counters by threatening to publicise the true owner of the Transome estate. However, Maurice Christian informs the Transomes that the true owner of the estate is in fact Esther Lyon. Harold Transome invites her to the Transome estate, hoping to persuade her to marry him. Harold and Esther establish a good rapport, and Esther also becomes more sympathetic with Mrs. Transome, whose despair has continued to deepen. Esther feels torn between Harold Transome and Felix Holt. She compares a life of comfortable wealth with Harold Transome and motherly affection with Mrs. Transome, to a life of personal growth in poverty with Felix Holt. Meanwhile at Felix Holt's trial, Rev. Lyon, Harold Transome and Esther Lyon all vouch for his character, but he is nevertheless found guilty of manslaughter. However, Harold Transome and the Debarrys manage to have Felix Holt pardoned. Harold Transome proposes to Esther Lyon, with the eager support of Mrs. Transome. But despite Esther's feelings towards both Harold and Mrs. Transome, she declines the proposal. Esther also surrenders her claim to the Transome estate. The story ends with Felix Holt and Esther Lyon marrying and moving away from Treby, along with Rev. Lyon. Matthew Jermyn is eventually ruined and moves abroad, while John Johnson remains and prospers as a lawyer. The Debarrys remain friends with the Transomes, and the contest to the Transome estate, while widely known, is never discussed.
3040785	/m/08mklj	Kelroy	Rebecca Rush			 After the death of her husband, Mrs. Hammond realizes that she is deeply in debt. She is used to living richly, however, and therefore focuses on her two beautiful daughters as her best hope of financial security. If she can marry them to rich husbands, both she and her daughters will escape poverty. To accomplish this plan, she pays off all her debts and all the property she can under the guise of grief, and moves to the country to save her money. No one must know the extent of her poverty, or the girls will never find a good match. There she waits until her children are old enough to marry, and spends the time making them into cultured young ladies: Lucy and Emily Hammond. The girls are not far apart in years, but there are differences between them. While Lucy absorbs the ideas about marriage that her mother imparts (all economically minded), Emily has a romantic personality that resists such materials concerns. When the two girls return to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 17 (Emily) and 18 (Lucy), their beauty is a huge success, and they have many admirers. A wealthy and noble Englishman, Mr. Walsingham, finally “bites” and marries Lucy. Emily is not as easily married off, especially after she sees the very moody poet Kelroy. Kelroy comes from a good family, but like the Hammonds has lost his fortune because of his father's love of gambling. He is currently penniless, but plans a voyage to India, where he hopes to make his fortune. Emily and Kelroy are a perfect match for each other and quickly fall in love, despite all the attempts Mrs. Hammond makes to separate them. Other suitors, notably Mr. Marney, are very jealous of this obvious attachment. Kelroy has one advantage, however: he is a good friend of Mr. Walsingham, who endeavors to help Kelroy in respect to Mrs. Hammond. Mr. Walsingham, who had been made to believe that Lucy has a fortune, now knows better and tells Mrs. Hammond that he will ask back for the money Mrs. Hammond has borrowed from him over the last months (900 dollars) if she does not agree to let Kelroy see Emily. Mrs. Hammond is in no position to return the money and reluctantly agrees. The two are engaged, but not married before Kelroy leaves for India. After Lucy and Mr. Walsingham leave for England, Mrs. Hammond's house burns down and she wins the lottery, which allows the pretext and the means to move to the country (to preserve the money she has left). Emily there meets a new rich suitor, Dunlevy. This man is perfectly nice, but Emily still loves Kelroy most and resists Dunlevy's advances. Only after she receives a letter from Kelroy in which he releases her from the engagement does Emily (deeply grieving) agree to marry Dunlevy. The marriage goes well for six months despite the death of Mrs. Hammond. But then Emily finds some letters her mother had hidden in a writing desk: one of the letters is an exact copy of the one she received from “Kelroy,” and seeing another written to Kelroy in her name, she realizes what her mother (in collusion with Marney) did. Unable to recover from this shock, she dies not long afterwards. Kelroy of course received a similar letter and has tried to forget about Emily. After hearing that both Emily and Mrs. Hammond have died, he returns to the United States. There, Helen (Emily's best friend) sends Kelroy the packet of letters to prove to him that Emily never quit loving him. The shock of this discovery so affects Kelroy that he borders on the edge of insanity. He decides to begin traveling again, and the ship he sails on sinks into the ocean three weeks after his departure.
3042418	/m/08mnt3	War Game	Michael Foreman	1993-10-07	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Will, Freddie, Billy, and Lacey are four young friends eager for "the grand adventure" of old-fashioned war. The story follows them through training in England, arrival in France and the trenches, the famous 1914 Christmas truce, and the Battle of the Somme. At key points in the story, the author includes historical information on particular events of the war. The main characters are named after and based on Foreman's uncles who were killed in the war at ages 18 to 24. He was born about twenty years later in 1938.
3042686	/m/08mpmd	Herland	Charlotte Perkins Gilman	1979-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/02_w8": "Feminist science fiction"}	 The story is told from the perspective of Vandyk "Van" Jennings, a student of sociology who, along with two friends (Terry O. Nicholson and Jeff Margrave), forms an expedition party to explore an area of uncharted land where it is rumored lives a society consisting entirely of women. The three friends do not entirely believe the rumors because they are unable to conceive how human reproduction could occur without males. The men speculate about what a society of women would be like, each guessing differently based on the stereotype of women which he holds most dear: Jeff regarding women as things to be served and protected; Terry viewing them as things to be conquered and won. When the explorers reach their destination, they proceed with caution, hiding the biplane they arrive in and trying to keep themselves hidden in the forests which border the land. They are quickly found by three young women who they realize are observing them from the treetops. After attempting to catch the girls with trickery, the men end up chasing the young women towards a town or village. The women outrun them easily and disappear among the houses, which, Van notes are exceptionally well made and attractive. After meeting the first inhabitants of this new land (which Van names Herland) the men proceed more cautiously, noting that the girls they met were strong, agile, and completely unafraid. Their caution is warranted because as the men enter the town where the girls disappeared, they become surrounded by a large group of women who march them towards an official looking building. The three men attempt an escape but are swiftly and easily overpowered by the large group of women and eventually anesthetized. The men awake to find themselves held captive in a fortress-like building. They are given comfortable living accommodations, clean clothes, and food. The women assign each man a tutor who teaches the men their language. Van makes many notes about the new country and people, commenting that everything from their clothing to their furniture seems to be made with the twin ideals of pragmatism and aesthetics given equal consideration. The women themselves appear intelligent and astute, unafraid and patient, with a notable lack of temper and seemingly limitless understanding for their captives. The women are keen to learn about the world outside and question the men eagerly about all manner of things. Often Van finds himself having difficulty justifying the practices of his own society such as the milking of cows, the keeping of dogs as pets, and abortion, when faced with the apparent utopia the women have managed to build. After being held captive for a number of months, the men break out of the fortress and escape cross-country to where they left their biplane. Finding the biplane sewn inside a large fabric covering, the men are unable to get away and are resignedly recaptured by the women. They are treated well nonetheless and soon learn that they will be given a freer rein when they have mastered the women's language and proved they can be trusted. Van remarks upon Terry's personal difficulty in dealing with the women who steadfastly refuse to conform to his expectations of how women should act, though Jeff seems perfectly enamored of the women and their kindness. Van gradually finds out more information about the women's society, discovering that most of the men were killed 2,000 years ago when a volcanic eruption sealed off the only pass out of Herland. The remaining men were mostly slaves who killed the sons of their dead masters and the old women, intending to take over the land and the young women with it. The women fought back, however, killing the slaves. After a period of hopelessness at the impending end of their race, cut-off from the rest of the world and without any men, one woman among the survivors became pregnant and bore a female child, and four more female children after. The five daughters of this woman also grew up to bear five daughters each. This process rapidly expanded their population and led to the exaltation of motherhood. Ever since that time the women had devoted themselves to improving their minds, working together and raising their children; the position of teacher being one of the most revered and respected positions in the land. As the men are allowed more freedom, each strikes up a relationship with one of the women they had first seen upon their arrival, Van with the one called Ellador, Jeff with Celis, and Terry with Alima. Having had no men for 2,000 years the women apparently have no experience or cultural memory of romantic love or sexual intercourse. As such, the couples' budding relationships progress with some difficulty and much explanation. Terry in particular finds it hard to adjust to being in a relationship with a woman who is not a 'woman' in his terms. Eventually all three couples get 'married', although the women largely fail to see the point of such a thing and as they have no particular religion the ceremony is more pagan than Christian. Their marriages cause the men much reflection; the women they married have no conception of what being a wife or being feminine entails (according to the outside world's views). Van admits finding it frustrating and hard sometimes, though he is in the end grateful for his wonderful friendship with Ellador and the intense love he feels for her. Terry is not so wise and out of frustration attempts to rape Alima. After being forcefully restrained and once again anesthetized, Terry stands trial before the women and is ordered to return to his homeland. Van realizes that he must accompany Terry home in the biplane and Ellador will not let him leave without her. In the end, the three leave Herland with promises not to reveal the utopia until Ellador has returned and such a plan has been fully discussed. Van tries to prepare Ellador for returning to his world but feels much trepidation about what she will find there.
3042711	/m/08mpr4	Call It Sleep	Henry Roth		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Call It Sleep is the story of an Austrian-Jewish immigrant family in New York in the early part of the twentieth century. Six-year-old David Schearl has a close and loving relationship with his mother Genya, but his father Albert is aloof, resentful and angry toward his wife and son. David's development takes place between fear of his father's potential violence and the degradation of life in the streets of the tenement slums. After the family has begun settling into their life in New York, Genya's sister Bertha arrives from Austria to stay with them. Bertha's coarse and uninhibited nature offends Albert, and her presence in the home renews and exacerbates the tension in the family's relations. Listening to conversations between Genya and Bertha, David begins to pick up hints that his mother may have had a passionate affair with a non-Jewish Austrian man before marrying Albert. David imagines the romantic setting "in the corn fields" where the pair would secretly meet. Bertha leaves the Schearl household when she marries Nathan, a man she met at the dentist's office. She and Nathan open a candy store where they live with Nathan's two daughters, Polly and Esther. David begins his religious education and is quickly identified by his rabbi teacher, Reb Yidel, as an exceptional student of Hebrew. David becomes fascinated with the story of Isaiah 6 after he hears the rabbi translate the passage for an older student; specifically, the image of an angel holding a hot coal to Isaiah's lips and cleansing his sin. During the Passover holiday, David encounters some older truant children who force him to accompany them and drop a piece of zinc onto a live trolley-car rail. The electrical power released from this becomes associated in David's mind with the power of God and Isaiah's coal. Meanwhile, Albert has taken a job as a milk delivery man. David, accompanying his father one day, sees Albert brutally whip a man who attempts to steal some of the milk bottles, possibly killing him. David meets and becomes infatuated with an older Catholic boy named Leo. Leo takes advantage of David's friendship, and offers him a rosary — which David believes to have special powers of protection — in exchange for the chance to meet David's step-cousins, Polly and Esther. Leo takes Esther into the basement of the candy store and rapes her. David is thrown into an agitated state. He goes to Reb Yidel and fabricates a story, telling him that Genya is actually his aunt, his true mother is dead, and that he is the son of her affair with the non-Jewish man. Meanwhile, Polly tells Bertha and Nathan about what Leo did with Esther. As the rabbi goes to the Schearl household to inform Genya and Albert of what David told him, Bertha begs Nathan not to confront Albert about David's role in Leo's actions. Nathan goes anyway, although he fears Albert's wrath as well. After Reb Yidel relates David's story to Genya and Albert, David arrives at the apartment. Albert begins to reveal what he has suspected about David's birth. He tells Genya that their marriage is a sham, arranged to make one sin cover up the other — her affair, which was kept secret — against his sin, allowing his abusive father to be gored by a bull, widely known in the Austrian village they left. Despite Genya's denials, Albert reaffirms his belief in his version of the story. He declares that David is not his son but the product of Genya's affair. At that moment, Nathan and Bertha arrive. Nathan hesitates at the moment of speaking his mind under Albert's cold fury, but David steps forward to confess to his parents of his part in what took place. He gives his father the whip that was used on the would-be milk thief. As Albert reaches the height of his enraged frenzy, he discovers the rosary that David possesses, believing it to be a sign that proves his suspicions. Albert makes as if to kill his son with the whip. As the others restrain Albert, David flees the apartment and returns to the electrified rail. This time, he touches the rail with his foot and receives an enormous electric shock. Incapacitated, he is discovered by nearby tavern patrons and returned home by a policeman. When his parents are informed what happened, Albert appears remorseful and compassionate toward his son for the first time. As his mother takes him into her arms, David experiences a feeling such that "he might as well call it sleep".
3046091	/m/03bx91p	The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood	Ed Burns	1997-09-02	{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 The book covers a year in the life of an inner city drug market at Fayette & Monroe Streets in Baltimore. Simon and Burns spent over a year interviewing and following around the people who lived on the Fayette & Monroe corner. Although written like a novel, the book is nonfiction; it uses the real names of those people and recounts actual events. It centers mostly around the lives of Gary McCullough, a drug addict, his ex-wife Fran Boyd, also an addict, and their son DeAndre McCullough, a high school student who begins to sell drugs. The book is a look at the effects of drug addiction, the drug trade, and the war on drugs on an urban neighborhood, as well as being an examination of the sociological factors which underlie the modern drug trade.
3046836	/m/08mz1c	The Crime at Black Dudley	Margery Allingham	1929	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins as the guests assemble for dinner on the first night of a house party. Black Dudley is a remote, ancient and sprawling manor house with a long and complex history, its numerous changes of use resulting in plenty of hidden rooms and secret passages. The pile is owned by the family of Wyatt Petrie, a popular young academic, and inhabited by his uncle by marriage, Colonel Coombe, a sickly recluse who wears a mask to cover unsightly scars. The bulk of the guests are young friends of Petrie - among them our red-headed hero George Abbershaw, pathologist and occasional consultant to Scotland Yard, and similarly flame-haired Meggie, whom he shyly admires. The Colonel's medic Doctor White Whitby, and two of his associates, a shifty Englishman named Gideon and an imposing but silent foreigner going by the name of Benjamin Dawlish, are also present. So is one Albert Campion, garrulous and affable, but, George soon learns, unknown to either Petrie or the Colonel. After dinner, the guests notice a sinister, bejewelled dagger hanging above the fireplace; Petrie tells them a story of its ancient origins in the family, and mentions a ritual involving the dagger being passed from hand to hand round the darkened house. The guests are keen to play the game, so the servants are dismissed, the lights extinguished and the ritual begins. Abbershaw, not excited at the prospect of people waving daggers around in the dark, slips outside to check on his car; in the garage, he finds the mysterious Mr Campion loitering around. Admiring the Colonel's ancient car, they find it has been converted to contain a powerful Rolls-Royce engine. The two head back into the house to see the end of the game, and find Meggie in a state of shock. The knife was handed to her at some point, and then snatched away again, but not before she realised the blade was covered in blood. When the lights are finally restored, they hear the Colonel has fallen ill and has been taken to bed. The party breaks up for the night, but as George prepares for bed he is visited by Prenderby, a young newly-qualified doctor, who has been shown Coombe's body and been asked by Doctor Whitby to sign forms allowing a rapid cremation, but, nervous and suspicious, has refused. Abbershaw is next to be asked, and entering the room he at once pulls the sheet from the bed. Although there are no obvious signs of foul play, Abbershaw's experience tells him the man did not die of heart failure, as Whitby claims. Also, his mask has slipped, revealing an unmarked face beneath. Abbershaw is forced to sign the forms, but plans to wire London the next day, to delay the cremation until a proper investigation can be carried out. Later that night, the house is awaked by loud noises, and they find Campion fighting wildly with one of the servants. Abbershaw finds a leather case on the ground, which he later opens, burning the document it contains and secreting the case. He talks with Meggie and her friend Anne, finding that Campion had met Anne in London, informed her he was invited to the party and got a lift down in her car. The next day, Whitby and the chauffeur depart early with the body. At breakfast, the imposing Mr Dawlish makes a stark announcement - the cars have been drained of fuel, and no-one is to leave the house until something he has lost is returned to him. A brave young rugby-player attempts to escape in a car powered by alcohol, but is shot and wounded. Campion, having mocked their captors, disappears, but later materialises, dusty and shaken, in Abbershaw's wardrobe. He tells them he has been roughly interrogated and locked up, but escaped through a secret passage, and also that he came to the house on a mission from an unknown, to collect an item from the Colonel and return to London with it. He retrieved the item, but was prevented from leaving by Abbershaw's presence in the garage, and then lost it in the fight with the chauffeur. He has also recognised the crooks, and names Dawlish as Eberhard von Faber, the head of a powerful criminal gang, one of the deadliest men in Europe. Abbershaw hears that Meggie has been taken for questioning, and angered at the thought of the villains mistreating her, he uses Campion's passage to reach their lair. He too is questioned, and then locked up with Meggie. They speak to an eccentric servant locked up next doow, and find that the criminals were as surprised as anyone at the Colonel's death. Campion releases them, and they form a plan to overpower the villains. After much fighting and danger, they retake the house, and are about to flee to safety when the chief villains return and recapture them. Abbershaw reveals that he has burned their document, the plans for an audacious crime, and the party is locked upstairs, while the gang prepare to leave the house, leaving it on fire with the guests trapped inside. Just in time, the local hunt ride by, with a friend of Campion's among them. Hearing the prisoners' cries for help, the hunt rides up, are incensed by the German's behaviour, and, as he tries to flee, cause his car to crash, crushing him. The party breaks up and all return to London, where Campion impresses Abbershaw with the name of his mother before disappearing. Abbershaw, Prenderby and another man from the party find the converted car, and follow it to find Dr Whitby and the chauffeur about to flee the country by air. He denies killing the Colonel, and departs. Abbershaw, after some thought and research, pays a visit to the killer - Petrie himself. Having fallen in love with a young girl, he found she was the puppet of evil criminals, and enraged by their treatment of her, he resolved to track them down. When he found his own uncle was one of them, he felt he had no choice but to slay him, inventing the dagger ritual to give him the chance. Abbershaw lets him go, on condition he enters a monastery.
3048022	/m/08n0fl	Mahomet	Voltaire			 The story of "Mahomet" unfolds during Muhammad's post exile siege of Mecca in 630 AD, when the opposing forces are under a short term truce called to discuss the terms and course of the war. In the first act we are introduced to a fictional leader of the Meccans, Zopir, an ardent and defiant advocate of free will and liberty who rejects Mahomet. Mahomet is presented through his conversations with his second in command Omar and with his opponent Zopir and with two of Zopir's long lost children (Seid and Palmira) whom, unbeknownst to Zopir, Mahomet had abducted and enslaved in their infancy, fifteen years earlier. The now young and beautiful captive Palmira has become the object of Mahomet's desires and jealousy. Having observed a growing affection between Palmira and Seid, Mahomet devises a plan to steer Seid away from her heart by indoctrinating young Seid in religious fanaticism and sending him on a suicide attack to assassinate Zopir in Mecca, an event which he hopes will rid him of both Zopir and Seid and free Palmira's affections for his own conquest. Mahomet invokes divine authority to justify his conduct. Seid, still respectful of Zopir's nobility of character, hesitates at first about carrying out his assignment, but eventually his fanatical loyalty to Mahomet overtakes him and he slays Zopir. Phanor arrives and reveals to Seid and Palmira to their disbelief that Zopir was their father. Omar arrives and deceptively orders Seid arrested for Zopir's murder despite knowing that it was Mahomet who had ordered the assassination. Mahomet decides to cover up the whole event so as to not be seen as the deceitful impostor and tyrant that he is. Having now uncovered Mahomet's "vile" deception Palmira renounces Mahomet's god and commits suicide rather than to fall into the clutches of Mahomet.
3048112	/m/08n0nn	Stellaluna				 A mother fruit bat loves her baby called Stellaluna very much and would never let anything happen to her. When the two are attacked by an owl, the predator knocks Stellaluna out of her mother's safe embrace. Soon the baby bat ends up in a bird's nest filled with three baby birds named Pip, Flitter and Flap. The mother bird will let Stellaluna be part of the family only if she eats bugs, does not hang by her feet and sleeps at night. When all the baby animals grow, they learn to fly. When Stellaluna and the birds are out playing, it gets dark and the birds go home without her because they will not be able to see in the dark. Stellaluna keeps flying, but when Stellaluna's wings hurt, she stops to rest. When she does, she hangs by her thumbs. Soon another bat comes to ask why Stellaluna is hanging by her thumbs. She tells the bat the story of what had happened after she and her mother were attacked by the owl. Another bat interrupts the story. That bat is Stellaluna's mother. Stellaluna and her mother are happily reunited and Stellaluna finally understands why she is so different. Excited about learning how to be a bat, Stellaluna returns to Pip, Flitter, and Flap in order to share her new experiences. They agree to join Stellaluna and the bats at night, but find they are unsuited to flying at night and nearly crash. Stellaluna rescues them and the four of them decide that while they may be very different, they are still family.
3048166	/m/08n0sm	The Merlin Conspiracy	Diana Wynne Jones	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 In a parallel universe, Roddy (a.k.a. Arianrhod), daughter of two magicians who serve the King of Blest, has traveled with "the King's Progress" her entire life. The King's Progress is a mobile Court that continuously roams the Islands of Blest (our England) to contain and control the natural magic in the world. Roddy and her best friend, Grundo, uncover a sinister plot involving Grundo's mother and the new "Merlin" – the magical governor of Blest – to take over the throne and the magic of the universe. When Roddy and Grundo try to warn the adults around them of the plot, they are not believed, and Roddy ends up making a spell to ask help of someone from another world – unfortunately, the only person she manages to find is Nick. Nick Mallory (a.k.a. Nichothodes Koryfoides) is a boy living in our own England who dreams about becoming a Magid and travelling to other worlds. A Magid is a sort of magical policeman who travels between worlds and helps people. Nick finds himself accidentally wandering the dark paths between the worlds, where he finds Roddy and then the powerful magician Romanov. Nick finally makes his way to Blest when he finds Maxwell Hyde, Roddy's grandfather, who is a Magid. But Grundo's mother and the fake Merlin have been kidnapping all the most powerful witches and wizards in Blest – including Maxwell Hyde and both of Roddy's parents – and it is up to Nick, Roddy and Grundo to raise the land and stop the plot.
3049716	/m/08n3sf	The Ambler Warning	Robert Ludlum	2005-10-18	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Hal Ambler, a former Consular Operations agent in the Political Stabilization Unit, is kept heavily medicated and closely watched in a psychiatric facility just off the US coast. However, Ambler is unique amongst the other patients in the Parrish Island psychiatric facility, because he is perfectly sane. With the help of a sympathetic nurse, Ambler manages to clear his mind of the drug-induced haze and stage a daring escape off the island. Although he is desperate to discover who put him on Parrish Island and why, the world he returns appears to have conveniently forgotten him. Friends and associates no longer recognize him, no official records of his existence are to be found, and the face he sees in the mirror is not his own. After contacting several old associates who do not recognize him or even have any recollection of his existence, Ambler goes to a cabin in certain part of country which had always been his lone solace even during his days as a field agent. He arrives to find no cabin, and the landscape looked such that there hadn't been any before. A tranquillizer dart armed with carfetanyl then strikes him, but does not affect his thought processes severely . He tracks down the sniper and forces the sniper, a freelance operative, to give him authorisation codes. However, before the operative can be milked for more information, he is killed by a sniper whose single bullet also grazed Ambler's neck. He then contacts the agency that is tracking him down. Ambler comes in contact with agents from his past in the Political Stabilization Unit. Among those is Osiris, a blind operative who had an uncanny linguistic ability and has also regarded Ambler as his close friend. His friend is subsequently shot and killed by a Chinese intelligence officer independent of the organization Ambler is being hired by, who believes Ambler wants to assassinate the Chinese head of state. He uncovers a conspiracy involving a State Department official to kill the Chinese President, in order to hinder the shift in power and to restore the old world order of Pax Americana, in accordance with her university lecturer, Ashton Palmer's fanatical ideals. Ambler manages to unravel the conspiracy, while at the same time discovering that the nurse who had freed him and supposedly helped him on his endeavours to find out more about himself was in league with the "Palmerites", or so those who conform to Palmer's ideals are called. Ambler's ability to determine others' emotions and pick up even the slightest of change in facial expression is foiled, for the nurse was trained in Method acting. At the end of the book, Ambler is seen to be lounging with a CIA officer, albeit a desk-jockey, who had assisted him in self-discovery and the foiling of the conspiracy. fr:L'Alerte Ambler pl:Kryptonim Ambler
3050187	/m/08n4t2	The Apocalypse Watch	Robert Ludlum	1995-04-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0594kx": "Conspiracy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot concerns Drew Latham, a special officer for consular operations, who must discover why his brother was killed after a covert mission. He impersonates his brother, and uncovers a web of neo-Nazi supporters with members at high levels of the U.S. government and its allies. Latham must stop the neo-Nazis plot to take over Europe through terrorism and biological warfare. A running joke concerns the French being unable to pronounce "Latham" correctly.
3050412	/m/08n521	The Janson Directive	Robert Ludlum	2002-10-15	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Paul Janson is an ex-Navy SEAL and former member of a U.S. government covert agency called Consular Operations. He is haunted by his memories of the Vietnam War and his brilliant commander and mentor, Alan Demarest. Unfortunately, Demarest was also a sadistic psychopath who loved to toy with the lives of both friend and foe; he arranged for Janson to be captured and tortured by the Viet Cong. Janson eventually escaped and provided evidence of war crimes, which led to Demarest's execution. Janson now makes his living as a corporate security consultant who is so much in demand that he can pick and choose which jobs he takes. After a mysterious woman makes contact with him while Janson is waiting for a plane, he finds himself taking on a job to repay a debt. She asks Janson to rescue her boss, the Nobel Peace Laureate visionary and billionaire, Peter Novak, who has been taken hostage by a militant organization which intends to kill him. But when the rescue goes horribly wrong, Janson finds himself the target of a "beyond salvage" termination directive (the directive of the title) issued from the highest levels of the U.S. government. Meanwhile, several senior U.S. government officials are assassinated. Janson is then faced with the difficult question of finding out who wanted to frame him for Novak's death, while dodging bullets from his former comrades at Consular Operations. Janson takes matters into his own hands as he tries to save himself and solve the mystery of a decades old conspiracy that will rock the foundations of all countries in the world if exposed.
3052362	/m/08n9k_	When We Were Orphans	Kazuo Ishiguro	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is about an English man named Christopher Banks. He used to live in the international settlement area of Shanghai, China in the early 1900s, but when his father, an opium businessman, and his mother disappear within an interval of a few weeks, Christopher is sent away to live with his aunt in Britain. Christopher vows to become a detective in order to solve the case of his parents' disappearance, and he achieves this goal through ruthless determination. His fame as a private investigator soon spreads, and in the late 1930s he returns to China to solve the most important case of his life. The impression is given that if he solves this case, a world catastrophe will be averted, but it is not apparent how. As Christopher pursues his investigation, the boundaries between fact and fantasy begin to evaporate. At this time in China, Christopher is caught up in the battles between the Japanese and Chinese. Through an old detective, he locates the house at which his parents may have been held. However, this event was a few decades earlier but it seems that Christopher still believes adamantly that they are still there. On his way, he enters a war-torn police station belonging to the Chinese. After convincing them of his neutrality, he persuades the commander to direct him to the house of his kidnapped parents. After a while, however, the commander refuses to take Christopher further, so he goes alone. Throughout all this, he appears to disregard the commander's words that what he is doing is dangerous, and even appears to be rude to him. He meets an injured Japanese soldier who he believes is his childhood friend Akira. They enter the house only to find out that his parents are not there. Japanese soldiers enter and take them away. He later learns from his uncle that his father in fact ran away to Hong Kong with his new lover, and that his mother a few weeks later insulted Chinese warlord Wang Ku, who then captured her to be his concubine. Uncle Philip (not his real uncle, but a former lodger at their residence in Shanghai) was complicit in the kidnapping, and made sure Christopher was not present when this kidnapping took place. He offers Christopher a gun to kill him, but Christopher refuses. He learns that his father later died of typhoid but that his mother may still be alive. Uncle Philip reveals to him the truth about the source of his living expenses and tuition fees during Christopher's early years in England. Christopher is told that he had been living off his mother, who only agreed to cooperate with Wang Ku after he had promised to lend financial support to her son. Several years later, Christopher is reunited with his mother, but she does not recognize him. He uses his childhood nickname, "Puffin", and his mother seems to recognize it. He asks her to forgive him, but she is confused as to why she should. Christopher takes this as confirmation that she has always loved him.
3052466	/m/08n9w5	Hover Car Racer	Matthew Reilly	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01z02hx": "Sports", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jason Chaser is an independent Hover Car racer, who along with his autistic little brother - known only as "the Bug" - are competing in regional races, with hopes of reaching the Pro circuits, but in reality have little chance of doing so. During a local derby, Scott Syracuse representing the International Race School is impressed with Jason's skill and despite damage to the "Argonaut" placing them last, offers him a position at the IRC for the next season. Jason accepts, and he and the Bug find themselves in Tasmania (now a privately owned training school) along with some of the best student Hover Car racers in the world. Jason is paired with independent Mech Chief Sally McDuff, who will look after their equipment and pit crew, including a robot named "Tarantula" which will perform most of the actual pit work - changing the magneto drives which enable the hover cars to function, the compressed gas for steering, and the coolant to prevent the magneto drives from melting. During the first few races, Jason is outclassed and bullied - both on and off the track - by the other racers who all consider him inferior - the perfect Xavier Xonora, his own team-mates Washington and Wong, and Barnaby Becker, who Jason already knew from earlier races. Even the equipment seems to be against them as they - and the only female racer Ariel Piper - suffer more than their fair share of faulty mag drives, substandard coolant, and failures on the part of Tarantula. Despite this, and due to their natural talent they begin to rise in the rankings, until it becomes apparent that they both have a chance of becoming 2 of the top 4 rated racers who will be invited to take part in the New York Masters. Ariel and Jason have forged a friendly relationship which becomes soured when Jason is critical of Ariels decision to use her body to gain advantage and keep in the good grace of Fabian, a ruthless, yet influential French Pro racer. When Fabian dismisses her after Jason beats her in a one-on-one race the two rekindle their friendship, which Jason consolidates when he later overhears LeClerq and Smythe (The Headmaster & stores chief respectively) discussing sabotaging Ariels pit robot, and at the same time admitting to having been responsible for her and Jason's earlier equipment misfortune. Jason forewarns Ariel, and the attempt to plant a virus on her pit robot backfires, instead disrupting the entire race power grid, meaning that none of the pit robots work. All racers have to perform a manual pit stop, and due to previously practising such tactics Jason and Ariel not only win the race, but Jason also ensures his place in the New York Masters. At the same time Jason attracts the attention of two individuals - Umberto Lombardi, the billionaire owner of Team Lombardi, and Dido, a beautiful Italian girl who thanks to her rich parents is able to follow Jason around the next few races. Jason agrees to trial race with Team Lombardi, and begins a tentative relationship with Dido, stilted slightly due to his age and inexperience with the opposite sex - a factor which causes Sally to tease him relentlessly. Prior to the New York Masters Jason is involved in a large and dangerous crash, completely destroying his Team Lombardi Hover racer, and with it much of his confidence, however with the aid of Sally & the Bug he regains his nerve, but not before several racers take advantage of his doubts and gain points that otherwise could have been his. Jason and Ariel get their revenge on Fabian when he challenges Jason to an exhibition race while in Italy - but Jason secretly swaps places and it is in fact Ariel who races - and beats - Fabian, thus ridiculing him for earlier comments when he stated that Ariel was "quite frankly, a non-event", also possibly alluding to her night with him. After again barely winning his next race Jason realises that Dido has been feeding Xavier information, including his doubts and race strategies, and he breaks off the relationship - after which Sally discovers that Dido is in fact Xavier's cousin, and the two are seen in public together. Jason and Xavier both race in New York, and as Xavier points out he is the far superior racer in every respect - something that Jason is forced to agree with. After reviewing all of Xavier's races Jason formulates a strategy based on not only Xaviers actual superiority, but how he perceives himself as well: Jason realises that Xavier celebrates victory before the race is won, and uses this to surprise him with a late charge and wins whilst Xavier is otherwise distracted already saluting the crowds whilst still on the home straight. During the rest of the New York races Jason and the Bug slowly collect points, relying on luck as much as skill, and ultimately find themselves in a last race with the world champion Alessandro Romba. After pulling a slight lead the Argonaut II suffers another bout of sabotage and literally meters from the finish line the rear stabiliser wing is destroyed by a tiny explosive charge placed by a corrupt betting agent, Ravi Gupta, who wishes to stack the odds in his favour. In a last desperate manoeuver, Jason uses his cars ejector seat to fire himself - and his steering wheel containing the Argonauts transponder - across the finish line thus winning the championship. Romba shows himself to be quite different to most of the other pro racers so far encountered, and is not only magnanimous in defeat, but genuinely pleased for Jason, and Jason himself secures a full-time racing position with Team Lombardi.
3053925	/m/08nf0w	The Brightonomicon	Robert Rankin	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in Brighton, and concerns the grand high magus Hugo Rune (AKA The Reinventor of the Ocarina, the Mumbo Gumshoe, the Hokus Bloke, the Cosmic Dick, the Guru's Guru, the Perfect Master, the Lad Himself) and his quest to solve the mystery of the Brighton zodiac, with the aid of his amnesia struck assistant, Rizla (revealed at the conclusion of the novel to be Jim Pooley of The Brentford Trilogy). The are opposed in the novel by Rune's arch foe, the evil Count Otto Black. The following cases are featured:- {| border="2" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;" |- bgcolor="#CCCCCC" align="center" !Case !! Description !! Connection |---- | The Hound of the Hangletons |Hugo Rune and the amnesiac Rizla are hired to investigate a strange lost dog, and Rune reveals to Rizla the secret of the Chronovision, a television that allows the user to witness any event in history |The lost dog of the original case |---- | The Curious Case of the Centenary Centaur |While attending a lecture on the size of the universe with Hugo Rune, Rizla is captured by a group of demented doctors seeking to dissect him for organ transplants, and a centaur is unleashed |A centaur appears from a fairy mound |---- | The Monstrous Mystery of the Moulescomb Crab |A conversation with a bog troll about his dead brother leads to Rizla and Rune learning of a terrible plot by the Secret Government to bring down the Royal Family with the aid of a group of space crabs |The crabs originate from a distant nebula |---- | The Lark of the Lansdowne Lioness |When a statue of Queen Victoria begins to cry tears of real Earl Grey Tea, Rune alone knows that a nightmare from the past is about to be unleashed |The 'Lioness' is Queen Victoria, who according to Rune was the reincarnation of King Richard the Lionheart |---- | The Curious Case of the Woodingdean Chameleon |With Rune away on business, it is up to Rizla to avert an assassination attempt at a game of croquet while posing as fictional private detective Lazlo Woodbine |Rizla initially believes that the case refers to Count Otto Black in disguise at the Withdean Stadium- identified as 'Woodingdean' by a barman by accident-, but Rune later claims that it referred to him (Continuing the running gag of Lazlo Woodbine's name being mispronounced) |---- | The Scintillating Story of the Sackville Scavenger |Attending the opening of a nudist theme restaurant with Rune (All other Brighton restaurants no longer accepting Rune's presence), Rizla is shocked to witness a group of dead rock stars dining with them |The scavenger is Robert Johnson, who aided the world around him with his music |---- | The Fantastic Adventure of the Foredown Man |While attending a garden party, Rizla witnesses the apparent murder of Lord Jeffrey - despite the fact that the man in question vanished over a hundred years earlier - and his various relatives subsequently begin to die in various horrible manners |Lord Jeffrey was the forefather of the others |---- | The Baffling Business of the Bevendean Bat |Reports of lost cats in the Bevendean area, coupled with radioactive doves, multiple roaring animals at regular intervals, and an encounter with an exploding uniped in the bar The Really Small Atlantean, lead to a confrontation between Rune and the evil Count Otto Black about a modern-day version of Noah's Ark |The bar's true name is the Bevendean Bathyscaphe |---- | The Sensational Sage of the Saltdean Stallion |While at a party in Lewes, Rune is apparently killed as a sacrifice to reveal the location of the Chronovision, leaving Rizla to escape Count Otto Black’s followers with the aid of an urban legend |The 'Stallion' is Norris Styver, who became trapped in Lewes's complicated street system and could not escape |---- | The Birdman of Whitehawk |The Chronovision now recovered after a trip into the Forbidden Zones, Rune and Rizla must tackle the mysterious apparitions that plague their current host |The Birdman is an native-american/Indian chief, Chief Whitehawk, who provides Rune and Rizla with accommodation |---- | The Wiseman of Withdean |Rizla is forced to disguise himself as a woman as he and Rune search for the last descendant of Jesus Christ at a Heavy Metal concert |The Wiseman is Lord Tobes, the last descendant of Jesus |---- | The Concluding Chaotic Conundrum of the Coldean Cat |Their forces gathered, Rune and Rizla prepare for the final confrontation with Count Otto Black and for their final parting after a long year of adventures |Coldean is Tobes' recently-lost cat |---- |}
3054677	/m/08ngxk	Hangover Square	Patrick Hamilton	1941	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 Set against the backdrop of the days preceding Britain declaring war on Germany, the main character is George Harvey Bone, a lonely borderline alcoholic who suffers from a split personality. He is obsessed with gaining the affections of Netta, a failed actress and one of George's circle of "friends" with whom he drinks. Netta is repelled by George but, being greedy and manipulative, she and a mutual acquaintance, Peter, shamelessly exploit George's advances to extract money and drink from him. George suffers from 'dead moods' in which he is convinced he must kill Netta for the way she treats him. Upon recovering from these interludes, he cannot remember them. However outside these he embarks on several adventures, trying in vain to win Netta's affections, including a 'romantic' trip to Brighton which goes horribly wrong (Netta brings Peter and a previously unknown man with whom she has sex in the hotel room next to George's). Apart from being a source of money and alcohol, Netta's other reason for continuing to associate with George is because of Johnnie. He is one of George's long-time friends who works for a theatrical agent, and Netta hopes that through him she will get to meet Eddie Carstairs, a powerful figure in the theatre. However in a final reversal of fortune it is George, not Netta, who ends up attending a party amongst the theatrical great and good whilst Netta is cast aside by Eddie who (unlike George) has immediately seen her for the unpleasant person she is. George suddenly realises what it is like to be surrounded by 'kind' people who are interested in him as a person rather than what he can provide. This potentially promising turn of events in George's life is, however, dashed, when he suddenly clicks into a dead mood and resumes his murder plans. He executes his murder of Netta (and also of Peter, whom the narrative describes as a 'fascist' moments before he is murdered) before escaping to Maidenhead. Throughout the novel, Maidenhead represents for George a semi-mythical new beginning, and representing a picture of traditional Englishness in contrast to the seaminess of Earl's Court. However, in the closing pages of the novel the stark fallacy of that dream becomes apparent to George. It is the same as everywhere else. Now penniless, he gasses himself in a dingy Maidenhead boarding house.
3056014	/m/08nl1p	Tunnels of Blood	Darren Shan	2000-11-06	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This story introduces Gavner Purl, a full vampire and an old friend of Mr. Crepsley. Gavner Purl is a Vampire General. Gavner Purl is shocked to discover Darren a half-vampire. Mr. Crepsley wants to talk to Gavner Purl alone in secrecy. After the meeting, Gavner walks with Darren for a while, revealing to him that Mr. Crepsley was a Vampire General and was about to be invested as a Vampire Prince, who is a leader of the Vampire Clan. He also lets slip that Mr. Crepsley is going to leave the Cirque and finally binds Darren to secrecy regarding all these facts. A day or so later, Mr. Crepsley does inform Darren that he must leave and Darren has to accompany him to some place. He suggests that Evra can come with Darren as if on a "vacation" and to help him keep Darren out of mischief as Mr. Crepsley pointed out incidents regarding Madam Octa and Sam Grest. They go to the city and get a disguise made for Evra and in the night while Mr. Crepsley goes out on mysterious excursions, in the day, Darren and Evra enjoy themselves. When looking for a Christmas gift for Evra, Darren comes across Debbie, a girl from the Square, where they were staying. The two begin dating and like each other very much. After a date and a "kiss" with Debbie, when one night Darren reaches back to the hotel, he and Evra are disturbed by a news report saying that human bodies were found in a basement, drained of blood. Darren and Evra fear that it may be Mr. Crepsley, and decide to track him at night to see where he goes. When Darren thinks that he is about to go and kill a man, Darren attempts to face Mr. Crepsley and tries to stop him, but discovers that it was actually a work of a mad vampaneze named Murlough. Murlough runs away, managing to kidnap Evra with him. Mr. Crepsley tells Darren about the Vampaneze and Murlough. Mr. Crepsley and Darren discover Evra kidnapped when they come out of the abattoir where the man Murlough intending to kill was. Mr. Crepsley declares that Evra has been or would be killed by Murlough. Darren takes the loss of Evra pretty badly. Darren goes over to Debbie to seek some comfort. He gets invited over to her house for Christmas Eve. Debbie almost cries when she realizes that Darren might have to leave suddenly and gives him a hug. Murlough spots Darren with Debbie and sneers him about, demanding for Mr. Crepsley and a release for Evra. Darren refuses. On returning, Darren tells Mr. Crepsley about Debbie, his talk with Murlough and his refusal to sell Mr. Crepsley for Evra. Mr. Crepsley is highly impressed and they begin making plans to save Evra before 25 December, the day when Murlough has promised to kill Evra. The two venture down the sewers and Darren gets caught by the vampaneze. Darren gives Murlough a piece of his mind by telling him about the vampire laws. He then decides to trade Debbie's life for Evra's. They reach Debbie's home and room where Mr. Crepsley slays Murlough, who is tricked into killing a goat, according to Darren's plan. The dying vampaneze whispers to Darren, 'Cluh-cluh-clever buh-buh-buh boy, hmmm?'. Afterwards, Darren decorates Debbie's Christmas tree and kisses Debbie on her forehead and wishes, 'Merry Christmas, Debbie'.
3060214	/m/08ntxq	Junior Jedi Knights: Lyric's World			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Lyric, a Melodie; is friend of Anakin Solo and Tahiri Veila, must return to her homeworld of Yavin 8. She must go through a change to join the elders of her race. In the caves of Yavin 8 are carvings similar to those found near the Golden Globe. If Anakin and Tahiri can decipher the markings, they may be able to break the mysterious curse. Along the way, they must overcome a reel, defeat wraiths, and escape the purella, a giant spider-like monster that feeds on Melodies.
3060288	/m/08nv2_	Junior Jedi Knights: Promises			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Tahiri Veila knows nothing about her past: the identity of her real parents, or how she came to live with the Tusken Raiders. Now the day has come for her the find out! However first she must complete a deadly task to prove she's worthy.
3060391	/m/08nv8j	Junior Jedi Knights: The Golden Globe			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Anakin Solo's uncle, Luke Skywalker, informed the Solo family that young Anakin, eleven years old, is ready to begin his Jedi training. Anakin leaves his homeplanet of Coruscant to go to Yavin 4, where the Messeni Jedi Academy resides. There, he feels shy at first, but quickly comes across a bubbly, nine year old girl named Tahiri Veila. Tahiri is talkative and Anakin is quiet, but the two become instant friends. However, all is not well. Anakin begins to have visions of himself on a raft, going down a big river. He confides in Tahiri that he feels he needs to follow his vision, and see what it means. Tahiri is skeptical, until she too has the vision. The vision grows, showing a storm behind the two of them on the raft, Tahiri falling into the water, and Anakin unable to help her. Together, they sneak out of the Jedi Academy on students' break. They hitch a raft, and begin their journey. Anakin, who brought R2-D2 with them, listens to his beeps and notices that there is a storm brewing behind them, just like in the vision. There are monthly storms on Yavin and they are very dangerous, so Anakin and Tahiri are determined to reach the shore. Along the way, Tahiri falls into the water just as Anakin predicted. Anakin, terrified, keeps his cool and saves Tahiri with the use of the Force. Tahiri is saved and the two come across a temple, much like the Jedi Academy. They enter and go through a series of puzzles before entering the final room. A sleeping animal awakes, and claims to be a Jedi Master. Ikrit, a Jedi of the Old Republic, informs the two that there was a golden globe in the room and that Massassi children were trapped within it. The children had been trapped a long time ago by a Sith Lord. Master Ikrit had tried to free the poor children years ago, but the children could only be freed by children themselves. With that in mind, Anakin and Tahiri tried to reach within the globe, but find swirling sand, and pain, so much pain that it is unbearable. They sadly tell the Jedi Master that they cannot do the task right yet, but maybe when they grew stronger, they would be able to. Master Ikrit tells them that it is their destiny. They alone were the ones chosen to free these children. They take the furry Jedi Master with them, and head back to the Academy. They were fearful to discover that it was already midnight, and that people at the Academy were looking for them. Sure enough, when they got back to the Jedi Academy, Luke Skywalker was waiting for them on the front steps, not at all pleased. Tahiri, afraid that Luke would expel them both, takes blame for their outing completely, saying that they had gotten lost and that R2 led them home. This was a lie, and Luke was doubtful but when he asks R2 for confirmation, the droid whirrs back in agreement. So they avoided punishment. They have yet to fulfill their destiny which continues in the next installments in the book series.
3060406	/m/08nv98	Junior Jedi Knights: Anakin's Quest	Rebecca Moesta		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After having a dark-side focused nightmare, Anakin begins to question his future. His uncle, Luke, tells him of his own experiences in the dark side cave on Dagobah. This causes Anakin to leave Yavin 4 on a similar quest.
3060413	/m/08nvbp	Junior Jedi Knights: Vader's Fortress	Rebecca Moesta		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Anakin Solo, Tionne and the Jedi Master Ikrit travel to one of Darth Vader's safehouses on the planet Vjun. It is entirely abandoned and seemingly holds Obi-Wan Kenobi's old lightsaber.
3060441	/m/08nvcq	Junior Jedi Knights: Kenobi's Blade	Rebecca Moesta		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Uldir, a classmate of Anakin Solo's at the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4, wished to become a great Jedi, but his skills in the Force are weak, such that he can't even lift a feather with his mind. He gets the idea to use a Holocron to learn the secrets of the Jedi of the Old Republic. He "borrows" the Holocron along with Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber, recovered from Darth Vader's palace on the planet Vjun where the Dark Lord took it after striking down his old master on the first Death Star. Apparently, Obi-Wan's lightsaber grants its wielder skill in Form III of lightsaber combat, of which Kenobi was a master. Anakin—along with his friends Tahiri Veila, R2-D2, Tionne and the Jedi Master Ikrit—must race across the galaxy to find Uldir. If they don't find and stop Uldir, he could very well be killed, and Kenobi's blade and the Holocron could fall into the hands of a very evil man.
3061467	/m/08nxkc	Helen with a High Hand	Arnold Bennett		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The story concerns the chance meeting between an elderly, witty, but miserly man and his estranged young niece. Both characters are strong and stubborn, and discover an affection and affinity for each other. The niece moves into the miser's house, and what follows is an enjoyable battle of wills between the two - a battle relished as much by the characters as by the reader. Indeed, on occasion, both characters scheme to achieve the same outcome (such as ensuring that the niece will miss a boat to Canada that would remove her from the uncle's life). Under his niece's influence, the uncle reluctantly abandons some of his financial prejudices. The book also chronicles their two romances, and, by the end of the book, both are married to suitable partners.
3061712	/m/08ny5t	Direct Descent	Frank Herbert	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set in the far future, it consists of two stories about how the peaceful Archivists of the library planet Earth have to deal with warmongers arriving and trying to exploit knowledge for power. It contains a lot of pictures and is aimed at children or adolescents.
3063410	/m/08p097	The Aquitaine Progression	Robert Ludlum	1984-02-12	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Joel Converse is a lawyer, having previously been a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. Because of his wartime experiences with Command Saigon, in the form of a psychopathic general named "Mad" Marcus Delavane, he is chosen to thwart a cabal of former generals bent on world domination.
3063853	/m/08p12m	Richter 10	Arthur C. Clarke		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 There are four defining episodes in the story, and a variety of subplots and minor threads — many of them unrelated to the main story. The story begins late in the 20th century, and tracks the life of the main protagonist, Lewis Crane. The first of four episodes opens the story. An earthquake in California in the late 20th century has left seven year old Lewis Crane a crippled, homeless orphan. The second major episode shows Crane as an adult, world's foremost earthquake expert, a Nobel laureate, and a ruthless scientist and entrepreneur dedicated to relieve the misery of those affected by earthquakes. He is also the moving force behind Foundation, an organization dedicated to scientific research on earthquakes. His Foundation has just perfected the technology to predict earthquakes to within minutes of due time, intensity, and geographical areas that will be affected. His first prediction is for Sado island in Japan—most of the island will be destroyed, as will the inhabited village of Aikawa. Local authorities not only ignore his warnings, but vilify him. On the D-day, he has collected a lot of media and relief organizations to cover the event. Many of them are on a small part of the island that will be safe, according to prediction. Others are covering the event from the air. In a very moving culmination, mayor of Aikawa arrives with police to arrest Crane as a fear monger, and to deport him. That is when the earthquake hits. By the time the dust settles, all of his predictions have come true. And there is a beach where the village of Aikawa used to be. The third major episode is set in the US. A major quake is to hit the areas around a part of the Mississippi river. A business politician cartel of disbelievers decides to use this prediction to further their interests in the presidential elections due soon. The cartel penetrates the Foundation, and tweaks their field data so the prediction is revealed to be a few months sooner. The cartel wins the elections, and Lewis loses credibility when there is no sign of a quake on the announced date. A postmortem at Foundation uncovers the data fudging, and the fact that the quake is still due in a few months. After much drama and public relations work, a few people are willing to take precautions, but many are not listening. And authorities are out to silence the fear mongers. The quake hits as predicted, and there is a lot of damage. Lewis emerges a hero and a prophet. The fourth and final episode involves a bold plan to banish earthquakes from Earth forever by "spot welding" the plates forming earth's crust at about 50 strategic places, thus stopping their movement. This welding will be done by detonating powerful nuclear bombs deep inside the earth with energies directed downwards, with no impact on the surface. There are two objections from naysayers. First, nuclear bombs are dangerous. Second, will the earth be doomed by stopping all tectonic activity? The story mentions the second argument only in passing, and focuses on the nuclear argument. This is when another long range big quake prediction is made. A few decades hence, a monstrous quake will split much of California from the North American mainland, and make it an island in the Pacific, with massive losses of life and property. But there is a solution. If the first of the 50 odd "spot welds" is done at a certain location in the Western US, and within a certain time window, this disaster can be averted. Lewis convinces the powers that run the country of the event, and a secret project on the lines of Manhattan Project is conceived for the first "spot weld". Just before the nukes are to be triggered, a terrorist attack on the project destroys the facility. Lewis loses his wife and child in the attack. The book ends with Lewis's suicide by remaining in the quake zone when it finally hits. fa:ریشتر ۱۰ fr:10 sur l'échelle de Richter
3063872	/m/08p140	The Enemy of My Enemy	George Michael	2006-04		 In the book Michael examines the positions of neo-Nazi and Islamist groups on American foreign policy, the media, modernity, and the so-called New World Order. Both camps share a "fervent anti-Semitism, accompanied by strong pro-Palestinian views, anger over Israel's influence on American policymakers, and opposition to the Iraq War and the U.S. presence in the Middle East."
3066557	/m/08p5nn	The Outsider	Richard Wright	1953	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This novel presents ideas which examine life in the light of modern philosophies. The novel's central character, symbolically named Cross Damon, represents the 20th century man in frenzied pursuit of freedom. Cross is an intellectual Negro, the product of a culture which rejects him. He is further alienated by his "habit of incessant reflection", his feeling that the experiences and actions of his life have so far taken place without his free assent, and a profound conviction that there must be more to life, some meaning and justification which have hitherto eluded him. When Cross is introduced (in "Book One: Dread") he is drinking too much, partly in an effort to forget his problems (of which he has many) but mostly to deaden the pain caused by his urgent and frustrated sense of life. There is an accident in which he is reported dead and so he sets out to create his own identity, and thus, he hopes, to discover truth. This search for the absolute compels him to commit four murders and ends in his despair and violent death. En route, he encounters totalitarianism in its most-likely-to-succeed form, Communism. Though he agrees with these other "outsiders" that power is the central reality of society and that "man is nothing in particular", he is outraged by their acceptance and cynical exploitation of these "facts". "That’s enough", he screams before he kills a Communist who has just told him that there is no more to life. You say life is just life, a simple act of accidental possession in the hands of him who happens to have it. But what's suffering? That rests in the senses... You might argue that you could snatch a life, blot out a consciousness and get away with it because you're strong and free enough to do it; but why turn a consciousness into a flame of suffering and let it lie, squirming...? Having rejected religion, the past and present organization of society, the proposed totalitarian alternative and the kindred uncontrollable violence of his own behavior as a &#34;free&#34; man, Cross abandons ideas and pins his last hope on love. But his mistress commits suicide when she sees him as he is. There follows a chapter in which the Law, personified by a hunchbacked district attorney who understands Cross Damon, convicts him of a crime and condemns him, but is powerless to give his life significance by punishment. After this Cross is murdered. The district attorney comes to his death bed and asks how was life and Cross dies murmuring, &#34;It was horrible.&#34;
3069279	/m/08p9_8	Malevil	Robert Merle		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story's events take place in rural France in the late twentieth century. The protagonist is Emanuel Comte, former school director, now turned farmer and landowner. He is also an owner of a tourist attraction - an old castle called Malevil after the nearby village. Comte is a highly motivated, well-respected person with a talent for diplomacy and leadership. By chance, Emanuel and several of his friends find themselves in the wine cellar of the castle during the unexpected outbreak of nuclear war. The survivors find their surroundings reduced to ashes and rubble. Together under the leadership of Emanuel they start to rebuild. They later discover that other people and animals have survived in nearby farmsteads and villages. Nature begins anew and an agrarian society starts to reform. From time to time more survivors show up, some bringing death and destruction with them. One of the main challenges of the slowly emerging society is to fend off the threat of a new theocratic dictatorship that has taken over a neighboring village with the assistance of a marauding gang.
3069636	/m/05n02bl	Castles Made of Sand	Gwyneth Jones	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Halfway through Bold As Love the two male leads agree that one day they will take oxytocin together — the intimacy drug, based on the hormone released to create the bond between mother and baby, or between monogamous reproductive partners. At the opening of the second episode we meet Ax and Sage loved-up, making out on Brighton Beach on an oxytocin high: a shocking development for readers lulled by the sexual conformity of the first volume. Ensuing chapters are devoted to the painful birth-pangs of a passionate rock and roll sexual threesome. Meanwhile Ax's friends, the other almost-famous Indie musicians who survived Massacre Night, are repelled by vapid celebrity-culture, and form an alliance instead with the security forces, the emergency services, and the masses: the beleaguered people of England. This "innocent" feudalism is counterpointed by far more sinister developments on the Green Right Wing, where a Pan-European Celtic movement grows in the shadows, like National Socialism, into something monstrous. The love affair between Ax, Sage and Fiorinda is treated with wit and tenderness, and Jones's trademark emotional intensity, yet it clearly serves as a microcosm for the macrocosm of Ax's England: and a test bed for one of the most naïve (or daring) assertions of radical politics. Is love really all we need? Can utter personal freedom and licence, restrained only by that oxytocin bond, form the foundation of the Good State...? As in Bold As Love on Massacre Night there is a revelatory gestalt flip, here mediated by the Irishman, Fergal Kearney, (shades of Shane McGowan) one of Jones’s fascinating and engaging secondary characters: a bridge after which everything developed in the first chapters takes on a different meaning. Readers are wrest from the canonisation of Thom Yorke and Led Zeppelin, and the highly plausible trials of a country wrecked by global warming and social unrest, into the darkest of adult fairytales. It seems that Jones, unable to contain the problem of evil realistically in the pantomime format of Bold As Love, (her own description) has chosen to depict the horrors, that must attend a future such as she describes, in terms of the supernatural. Parted by the manipulation of a truly horrible, thoroughly enjoyable pantomime villain, each member of the Triumvirate suffers the trials and tests of fairytale, updated for the 21st Century: Ax, far away, as the hostage of a vicious drug cartel, Sage in his struggle to achieve the Holy Grail of Bold As Love fantasy neuroscience; and Fiorinda as a different and uglier kind of hostage, laying down her life for her people. A rich fusion of legend and folklore, science and fantasy, ancient and modern, brings the story to a climax. By the time Aoxomoxoa sets sail for the castle of the Wounded King, in a futuristic yacht called the Lorien, with a mainframe computer in the jewel of a ring borrowed from the female Merlin, the re-imagining, re-vision of the Arthur cycle seems triumphantly complete. Jimi Hendrix was a great fan of science fiction, though probably not as steeped in sf as Gwyneth Jones has proved to be in rock and roll. His lyrics and his music permeate Castles Made Of Sand, but here the ruin of treasured dreams (...and so castles made of sand, fall in the sea...) is not the end of the story; and the violent romanticism of Led Zeppelin is not the last phase of this rock and roll career. There is more of Jones’s "complicated optimism" to come. Few readers can have anticipated a sequel so different from Bold As Love, yet essentially the formula is the same: a Brechtian pantomime, neither fantasy, nor sf, nor mainstream, that manages to be both deadly serious, and thoroughly entertaining.
3069826	/m/08pc62	The Sleepwalkers	Hermann Broch			 The novel contains three parts, in fact three novels in one, which differ from each other in style, time and place of action, characters and atmosphere. The first part of the trilogy takes place in Berlin and a Prussian province in 1888 and is a parody of 19th century literary realism. The main character, Prussian aristocrat and military officer Joachim von Pasenow, balances between romantic devotion to a Czech prostitute Ruzena (Rose) Hruska and a neighbor, Elisabeth von Baddensen, who is his social equal. In his secret liaison with Ruzena he finds emotional and sexual fulfilment while courting a delicate and distant young lady. In the ocean of doubts and hesitation, he finds refuge in rationality, order and prejudice (represented by the theme of a military uniform) which lead him into a loveless marriage with Elisabeth. Almost all the decisions and actions of Joachim, Ruzena and Elisabeth are inspired and controlled by his diabolical friend, the rich merchant Eduard von Bertrand whom, for his evident lack of comprehension for old values, Joachim never trusts fully. The second part, a pastiche of an expressionistic prose, is situated in Cologne and Mannheim in 1903. Instead of the upper crust, the reader finds a working-class and low bourgeoisie setting. Having left his promising career as an accountant and his old friends, including social democrat Geyring and inn-keeper Gertrud Hentjen, the book-keeper August Esch starts a new life as a circus manager and starts up a women's fights production. As the circus production does not satisfy him he aspires to leave Germany for the USA and take Hentjen with him. Like Joachim in the first part, Esch feels insecure in the world of decaying old values (here the values of business and middle-class life) and tries to find a guilty party, first in his former superior, then in unfeeling industrialist Bertrand (Eduard von Bertrand from the first part), who not only exploits his employees but is a homosexual. In fury, Esch decides to murder Bertrand but does not achieve his goal. His dream of America is destroyed when his associate runs away with all his money. Finally Esch marries Hentjen and moves to Luxemburg, where he gets an even more prestiguous job as a bookkeeper. The last part focuses on several characters (including Joachim von Pasenow, Esch and his wife Gertrud) in a little town on the Mosel River during the last year of World War I. The well-ordered way of their lives is disrupted as deserter Huguenau arrives in town and pretends to be a businessman and publisher. While Esch fulfills himself through a sect, Huguenau cheats him out of his newspaper and attempts to insinuate himself into the favour of Major von Pasenow, the military commandant of the town. The third novel contains parallel stories of Hanna Wendling, a young woman alienated from her family; of shell-shocked and mutilated soldiers and field hospital nurses; and that of a Salvation Army girl in Berlin. The plot of each chapter determines the genre used (occasional verse for the story of a Salvation Army girl, journalistic style of the hospital chapters, etc.). The outstanding element of the third novel is the essay titled The Disintegration of Values. While prosaic or balladic chapters refer to fictional characters and their attitudes to the community and ideas of their social role, the essay deals with the transformation of values in society theoretically. The finale takes place during the last days of the war; in the total chaos Huguenau murders Esch and violates his wife, then legally leaves the town and soon becomes a respectable businessman in Lorraine.
3070159	/m/08pc_1	Cowl	Neal Asher	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel follows Cowl, a human male that was genetically engineered to be the perfect specimen of human evolution. However he is also on the run from the Heliothane Dominion, which considers him their enemy. In an attempt to stop the rule of the dominant Heliothanes, Cowl travels back into the past in order to make himself the dominant force. Cowl intends to create this through the use of human samples collected throughout time, samples that he quickly disposes of once he's finished with them. When Cowl pulls the twenty second century prostitute Polly and the government soldier Tack through time, his plans might not be as easily executed as he thought.
3070508	/m/08pdrr	Arch of Triumph	Erich Maria Remarque	1945	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 It is 1939, and, despite having no permission to perform surgery, Ravic, a very accomplished German surgeon and a stateless refugee living in Paris, has been ghost-operating on patients for two years on the behalf of two less skillful French physicians. Unwilling to return to Nazi Germany which stripped him of his citizenship, and unable to legally exist anywhere else in pre-war western Europe, Ravic manages to hang on. He is one of many displaced persons without passports or any other documents, who live under a constant threat of being captured and deported from one country to the next, and back again. Though Ravic has given up on the possibility of love, life has a curious way of taking a turn for the romantic, even during the worst of times, as he cautiously befriends an actress.
3071403	/m/08pgq5	Shabdangal				 An infant abandoned at a junction of four roads is adopted by a priest who finds it. The child grows up to be a soldier and participates in the Second World War. Most soldiers returned from the war carrying syphilis but this soldier did not get the disease. During peacetime, his courage earns him a means of livelihood. His curiosity about sex and another's treachery leads him to his first homosexual intercourse, in a state of intoxication. He gets the diseases gonorrhoea and syphilis and becomes a homeless wanderer. The insanity of the world infects him; the meaninglessness of his life and the pain of disease compel him to commit suicide. He does not succeed in his attempt at suicide. Overcome by a desire to confess, he walks into the house of a writer he respects and retells to him the story of his life. The soldier in the story has never done anything but kill other people. The horror of what he had seen and done during the war haunts him. He cannot take a bath, as he is afraid of blood; to him, water is the blood of the earth. At war, he once killed a friend of his at the friend's request. Blood was flowing from every part of his body; all his skin was gone. The soldier cannot adjust to life in peacetime. He is furious at "those dyed pieces of cloth": flags symbolizing people's groups with different opinions. He had never known a mother: the sight of breasts fills him with thirst. The first 'woman' of his life turns out to be a male prostitute dressed as a woman. "She.. it.. he" tells him how the street became his home. The soldier then describes to the writer his encounter with a mother and child, the mother a prostitute. He recounts the circumstances under which the mother kicked him in the chest and later gave him money for food, thinking he was a beggar. He then tells the writer about the failure of his attempted suicide.
3073085	/m/08pl08	The Cancer Ward	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	1968	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in a hospital in Soviet Uzbekistan in 1955. As the title suggests, the plot focuses on a group of cancer patients as they undergo therapy. The novel deals with political theories, mortality, and hope — themes that are often explored either through descriptive passages or the conversations the characters have within the ward, which is a microcosm of the post-Stalin Russian Communist government. Also explored is the effect life in the labour camps will have on a man's life, as Oleg Kostoglotov, the main character, is shocked to discover the materialist world of the city outside the cancer ward. Oleg is in "Perpetual Exile" in Ush-Terek, in Kazakhstan. Bureaucracy and the nature of power in Stalin's state is represented by Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov, a "personnel officer". The corrupt power of Stalin's regime is shown through his dual desires to be a "worker" but also achieve a "special pension". At the end, Rusanov's wife drops rubbish from her car window, symbolising the carelessness with which the regime treated the country. The novel is partly autobiographical. The character Oleg Kostoglotov was admitted to the hospital from a gulag, similar to Solzhenitsyn, and later subjected to internal exile in the same region of the USSR. Oleg is depicted as being born in Leningrad, while Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk. Some Uzbek landmarks are mentioned in the novel, such as the trolleyline and Chorsu Bazaar. The zoo Oleg visits is now a soccer field near Mirabad Amusement Park. Kostoglotov begins two romances in the hospital, one with Zoya, a nurse and doctor in training, though the attraction is mostly physical, and a more serious one with Vera Gangart, one of his doctors, a middle-aged woman who has never married, and whom he imagines he might ask to become his wife. Both women invite him to stay overnight in their apartment, ostensibly only as a friend, after he is discharged, because he has nowhere to sleep &mdash; his status as an exile makes finding a place to lodge difficult. His feelings for Vera are strong, and seem to be reciprocated, though neither of them has spoken of it directly: He could not think of her either with greed or with the fury of passion. His one joy would be to go and lie at her feet like a dog, like a miserable beaten cur, to lie on the floor and breathe on her feet like a cur. That would be a happiness greater than anything he could imagine." After wandering around the town, he decides against going to see either woman. He does find the courage to go to Vera&#39;s once, but he has left it so late in the day that she is no longer there, and he decides not to try again. He is well aware that the hormone therapy used as part of his cancer treatment may have left him impotent, just as imprisonment and exile have taken all the life out of him. He feels he has nothing left to offer a woman, and that his past means he would always feel out of place in what he sees as normal life. Instead, he decides to accept less from life than he had hoped for, and to face it alone. He heads to the railway station to fight his way onto a train to Ush-Terek. He writes a goodbye letter to Vera from the station: You may disagree, but I have a prediction to make: even before you drift into the indifference of old age, you will come to bless this day, the day you did not commit yourself to share my life ... Now that I am going away ... I can tell you quite frankly: even when we were having the most intellectual conversations and I honestly thought and believed everything I said, I still wanted all the time, all the time, to pick you up and kiss you on the lips. :So try to work that out. ::And now, without your permission, I kiss them.
3074110	/m/08pmqx	In His Steps	Charles Sheldon	1896		 In His Steps takes place in the railroad town of Raymond, probably located in the eastern U.S.A. (Chicago, IL and the coast of Maine are mentioned as being accessible by train). The main character is the Rev. Henry Maxwell, pastor of the First Church of Raymond, who challenges his congregation to not do anything for a whole year without first asking: “What Would Jesus Do?” Other characters include Ed Norman, senior editor of the Raymond Daily Newspaper, Rachel Winslow, a talented singer, and Virginia Page, an heiress, to name a few. The novel begins on a Friday morning when a man out of work appears at the front door of Henry Maxwell while the latter is preparing for that Sunday’s upcoming sermon. Maxwell listens to the man’s helpless plea briefly before brushing him away and closing the door. The same man appears in church at the end of the Sunday sermon, walks up to “the open space in front of the pulpit,” and faces the people. No one stops him. He quietly but frankly confronts the congregation—“I’m not complaining; just stating facts.”—about their compassion, or apathetic lack thereof, for the jobless like him in Raymond. Upon finishing his address to the congregation, he collapses, and dies a few days later. That next Sunday, Henry Maxwell, deeply moved by the events of the past week, presents a challenge to his congregation: “Do not do anything without first asking, ‘What would Jesus do?’” This challenge is the theme of the novel and is the driving force of the plot. From this point on, the rest of the novel consists of certain episodes that focus on individual characters as their lives are transformed by the challenge.
3077183	/m/08pvc6	Molon Labe!	Kenneth W. Royce	2004-01-30	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Molôn Labé!, the free state movement's first novel, has encouraged many people to relocate to Wyoming for their own immediate increase in personal freedom, as well as for long-term hopes of bolstering the general climate of liberty in the Cowboy State. Molon labe is an ancient Greek expression for "Come and take them!", the defiant reply of King Leonidas to the Persian demand before the Battle of Thermopylae for his 300 Spartans to lay down their arms in surrender. In the United States, the phrase is becoming a modern-day Second Amendment cry of resolve never to disarm in the face of compulsion.
3077775	/m/05m_zfq	Midnight Lamp	Gwyneth Jones	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The third episode of the Bold As Love Sequence opens on a cold beach in Mexico, where Ax and Sage are hesitantly renegotiating their relationship, while Fiorinda struggles on the brink of schizophrenic fugue. The rockstars, scarred by outrageous fortune, have dropped out, joined the masses, abandoned the centre stage: hoping to find peace. Their Avalon is invaded by Harry Lopez, the boy-wonder producer who wants to make a virtual movie about Ax Preston; who brings a summons from the US President. The secret behind the assassination of Rufus O’Niall is out. The Pentagon is openly embarked on developing the new human superweapon: but President Fred Eiffrich, who wants to stop the Neurobomb, believes the hawks are speeding the process by shocking, and extremely dangerous, means. He needs advice. With indecent haste the three decide that what they really need is the hair of the dog that bit them. Soon they are heading north to tackle the demons of the Republic of California, in an adventure where the West Coast music scene will be ignored, while Hollywood — the virtual movies, the stars, the agents, the players — takes the role that rock and roll played in England. In Midnight Lamp, the Bold As Love glamour is deconstructed by confrontation with the real world. A young woman raped by her father, and doomed by the crippling mental illness that is her heritage, featuring on the reality TV show hosted by Bollywood import, the truly wonderful Puusi Meera . A pop-icon warlord, latest darling of the Hollywood fame machine, admits to dirty secrets behind the romance of the Rock and Roll Reich. A reformed bad boy, stripped of his wealth, status and physical prowess, finds that enlightenment is no protection from remorse. Secondary characters come to the fore, loyalties are strained. The Few — shipped over from a dreary post-Ax England — are thinking of solo projects. As the Pentagon thriller unfolds, against the backdrop of an uncannily believable day-after-tomorrow tinseltown, Gwyneth Jones returns to her long-time fascination with boundary events, moments of change. The "magic" of the Bold As Love Sequence is conjured into science fictional reality (literally conjured, on stage at the Hollywood Bowl!) through the mediation of historical precedents: the sheer, limitless terror of the Atom Bomb when it was new; and the transition from alchemy into chemistry, myth into manufacture, in the midst of the French Revolution. And above all, there is the desert: Vireo Lake, Lavoisier, the "Cow Castle"—lyrical images of austerity and endurance, of human/nature, flayed to the point of death but undefeated. This is the lightest in tone of the Bold As Love books, despite some inventively gory crime scenes. Dissolution has gone global, there is no escape, but by the final credits the heroes have made their peace with the Burning World, the maelstrom in which they will live and die. Yet there is a darker undertow, an elegy for those who have no hope: for the Invisible People, fragments of human souls, digital fodder for virtual movies; for the self-immolation of the Gaian marytrs; and for the unsung queen of it all, Janelle Firdous. The addictions of fame, the addictions of power, are inescapable: but most dangerous, perhaps, those who have been cheated of the glittering prizes.
3077802	/m/05n01mq	Band of Gypsys	Gwyneth Jones	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the last pages of Midnight Lamp a secret military test of the Neurobomb went live, and the altered-brain neuronauts died in the act of wiping out the planet’s reserves of fossil fuel. Like the bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the "A team event" seemed both horrific and benign. The latest US/Islamic conflict was over at a stroke, the terminal sickness of post-peak-oil mercifully cut short. No way back to "business as usual": now there must be a new world, a better world. Band of Gypsys opens, some months later, with a complete change of pace. Having failed to make terms with a corrupt and dangerous Westminster government, the Triumvirate are in Paris, conducting a mordant John and Yoko style, "bed-in" in protest against conditions in English labour camps. Ax gets some bad news. US President Fred Eiffrich, the man who "Banned the Bomb", is doomed: brought down by a cunningly manufactured scandal. The hour is getting late. The rescue of Ax's family, held as hostages for his good behaviour, shows Ax and friends doing what they do best: extracting bloodless victory from a nasty situation. There's a festival at Reading, there's a clandestine mind/matter tech space programme in the basement of the Heads' Battersea HQ. The ideals of the Rock and Roll Reich are alien to a new, post-Crisis generation. The leaders of fashion are neo-feudalist dandy Jack Vries MP (secret chief of the secret police), and Toby Starborn, sinister young virtual artist. Ax 'n Sage 'n Fiorinda are outdated icons, corpses in the mouths of the bourgeoisie. When Ax and Sage are engulfed in the Lavoisier Massacre Scandal a moment's shocking loss of control precipitates disaster. The Triumvirate find themselves — like many English Royals before them — incarcerated. Once more they are forced to provide rockstar window-dressing for a reactionary and degenerate Green regime, but this time Ax Preston has no miraculous solutions. Locked away in the shadowy, haunted fortress of Wallingham House, the prisoners hear distant echoes of a new blitzkrieg. The Chinese, emerging from their own struggle with the Crisis years, are taking over in Central Asia. They are almost at the gates of Europe. Unlike previous episodes, Band Of Gypsys can't easily be read as a stand alone. In Midnight Lamp the past, seen from a fresh angle, illuminated character and motivation. Now the past is all there is. A freezing garret in Montmartre, where the three enacted the miserable fate of England's former hedonistic consumers, turns out to have been the last glimpse of open sky, a viable future. Fiorinda's hopes of pregnancy fade, as she plods through the motions of her national sweetheart role. Ax and Sage see the life ahead of them as a dreadful imprisonment, long before Ax self-destructs. Finally we are facing the real, monstrous bulk of the evils Ax tried to combat, and it's too late: it was always too late. England was never going to be saved. It's relentless, claustrophobic stuff. Fans might have preferred the saga to end on the high note of Midnight Lamp. Yet this bleak downturn is as rich as ever in outrageous invention, black humour and acute social commentary — and true, on many levels, to what has gone before. Camelot moments do not endure, Ax told us at the start that he was bound to be defeated in the end. When a civilised country dies the first shocks may be exhilerating, even liberating, but then the grim symptoms appear in earnest, and there's no more dancing in the streets. In 1969, Hendrix felt he’d reached a dead end, and embarked on a major career change. It did him no good. His new band, (Band Of Gypsys: the title of the novel honours Hendrix’s misspelling), didn’t last, and in a few months he was dead. The Rock and Roll Reich version ends differently, in passages of elegiac beauty and steely hope. An idealised England that never was cannot return, horror broods over the birth of a new world, but the Triumvirate are still standing, and la lutte continue.
3078211	/m/08pxjv	The Big Nowhere	James Ellroy	1988-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 What begin in this novel as two separate tales eventually twist together into one, centered around the efforts of a LA Sheriff's Deputy to capture a brutal sex murderer while serving, somewhat reluctantly, as a decoy for a set-up to expose communists in Hollywood. This young deputy, Danny Upshaw, finds himself on a ride that will force him to confront secrets he has kept his whole life, even from himself. Two other major characters, disgraced former cop, Turner "Buzz" Meeks, now working for both Howard Hughes and Mickey Cohen, and ambitious LAPD lieutenant Malcolm "Mal" Considine, involved in a child custody case, try with varying success to do the right things in an environment of deception, paranoia and brutality. The story begins on New Year's Eve, as 1949 turns to 1950, and creates a vivid portrait of Los Angeles during that era, from the bebop emanating from the jazz clubs on Central Avenue to the labor union battles facing the Hollywood studios. The entire story takes place in the aftermath of the notorious Sleepy Lagoon murder case and the resultant Zoot Suit Riots, an event that roiled LA for years. While the novel mocks opportunistic Red-baiting as a scam to oust organized labor that benefited political careers and the fortunes of movie studio executives and mobsters, Ellroy is no easier on the film colony's communists and fellow travelers, many of whom he depicts as decadent hypocrites, easily compromised into "naming names" in an effort to hide their own dirty secrets. As with most of Ellroy's fiction, he liberally employs the brutal slang of the times. Gays are "fruits," "homos," "nances"; blacks are "boogies" and "jigs" and their neighborhoods are all Niggertown. The Big Nowhere is, in fact, a feast of vernacular, and Ellroy is brilliant at capturing the nuances of dialogue that denote class, race, and mindset.
3079045	/m/08pz14	Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles	Anthony Swofford	2003-03-04	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book recounts Swofford's enlistment and service in the U.S. Marine Corps during the First Gulf War, in which he served as a Scout Sniper with the Surveillance and Target Acquisition (STA) Platoon of 2nd Battalion 7th Marines. Like most of the troops stationed in the Middle East during the Gulf War, Swofford saw very little actual combat. Swofford's narrative focuses on the physical and mental struggles of the young troops.
3079253	/m/08pzhf	The Chosen	Ricardo Pinto	1999	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story concerns the move from boy to man of its hero, Carnelian, son of the Lord Suth. Formerly powerful and influential, Lord Suth is in exile far from Osrakum, capital of the Three Lands. His son has been brought up with only his father and immediate household, which though extensive is only a pale shadow of the extravagance and excesses of the court life normally experienced by a ruling Lord. A delegation of lords comes to their island, asking that Suth will return to the capital and oversee the election of a new emperor, since the current one is dying. The emperor has two sons, and a choice must be made between them. Suth agrees, and Carnelian is thrown into a world of cruelty and indifference to the suffering of others. His home is torn apart to make repairs to the ship which brought the delegation. Most of the household are left behind, without the stores they would have needed to survive the winter. It is death for a common man to look upon the face of such a lord, and Carnelian has several sharp lessons in the laws of caste which govern this society. The journey to Osrakum is experienced by the reader through the impressions of Carnelian, as a stranger to the three lands. Once at court, Carnelian again experiences the contrasts between the rich and powerful, and their inconsequential slaves. He becomes involved in the affairs of the two brothers contending for the throne. His position as an outsider and his fathers position, initially as regent and then as arbiter of the election, makes him well placed to see the inner workings of the palace and to become a natural rulebreaker and explorer of secret places. He becomes allied to prince Osidian, who in a tight and vicious contest gains the greatest number of votes to become Emperor. Molochite, the other prince, is not the sort to accept such a loss. Carnelian and Osidian are abducted, making it impossible for Osidian to attend his own coronation and causing him to lose the election by default.
3079306	/m/08pzmd	The Standing Dead	Ricardo Pinto	2002	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Carnelian, son and heir to Lord Suth, and prince Osidian have been abducted, drugged and smuggled out of the capital of the three lands, Osrakum, in funeral urns. Carnelian is awakened by a would-be grave robber seeking spoils in the urns. The robber is immediately placed in the dilemma of having looked upon the face of one of the exalted chosen lords, for which the penalty is death, of killing them and risking eventual discovery and death, of being caught in the inevitable hunt for such exalted missing persons and being executed, or fleeing far from the capital with his captives in the hope of selling them as valuable slaves. He chooses the latter as his only chance of survival and thus Carnelian and Osidian are set upon a very different course than Osidians anticipated coronation. Osidian having failed to appear at the coronation, his brother Molochite would automatically be made emperor instead. As mortal brother to the new divine emperor, Osidian would take Molochite's place as blood sacrifice. Carnelian and Osidian are bound and disguised and marched away from the capital. Osidian is in worse shape than Carnelian, so that Carnelian must make the difficult choices of attempting their escape. Carnelian has a possibility of escape and return to the capital, but either abandoning Osidian or bringing him back would mean his inevitable death. Instead he seizes the opportunity of an attack by nomad tribesmen to transfer them to captivity with the tribesmen, instead of the slavers. As the party returns to the plains which are home to the ochre tribe, Osidian recovers somewhat and his reckless determination defending the party from wild animals, plus his navigational skills and knowledge of the plains drawn from his unconventional and privileged education, impresses the tribesmen. Some of them start to defer to Osidian both as a clearly recognisable member of the ruling race which they have been taught to fear, and as a natural replacement for the dead leaders of their party. The tribesmen return to their village, where a combination of fast talking by Carnelian (whose family had a number of plainsmen as slaves), and growing respect for Osidian mean they are allowed to live as part of the village. Carnelian is accepting of their new life, but Osidian is at first suicidal, but then vengeful. He embarks on a plan to recover his position and sets about manipulating the tribesmen to his ends. By a number of staged encounters, he sets tribesmen from different villages against each other, until he controls a steadily growing warband. This he intends to use as the start of an army to wage war against his brother.
3080389	/m/08q0xp	All for Love	John Dryden			 ;Act One Serapion describes foreboding omens (of storms, whirlwinds, and the flooding of the Nile) of Egypt’s impending doom. Alexas, Cleopatra’s eunuch, dismisses Serapion’s claims and is more concerned with Cleopatra’s relationship with Antony. He sees that Cleopatra dotes on Antony and worries that Antony will not continue seeing Cleopatra. Thus, Serapions hosts a festival to celebrate Antony’s honor. Ventidius, a Roman general, comes to aide Antony in Alexandria. Ventidius disagrees with Antony’s relationship with Cleopatra and offers to give Antony troops if he leaves her. Although Antony is insulted by Ventidius’s opinions regarding Cleopatra (and refuses to hear anything negative about her), Antony agrees. ;Act Two Cleopatra mourns about her situation without Antony. Charmion, Cleopatra’s lady in waiting, attempts to set up a meeting between Cleopatra and Antony, but she is unsuccessful. Cleopatra thus sends Alexas to try to win back Antony using gifts (jewels including a bracelet). Alexas suggests that Cleopatra should tie the bracelet onto Antony’s wrist. In the subsequent meeting between Cleopatra and Antony, Ventidius appears and tries to proclaim how Cleopatra is not Antony’s rightful partner and would betray him for her own safety. However, Cleopatra wins this argument by demonstrating a letter showing that she refused Egypt and Syria from Octavius. Antony is overjoyed by Cleopatra’s decision and proclaims his love for her. ;Act Three Antony is returning from battle and is overwhelmed with love for Cleopatra. Ventidius comes to speak with Antony, who attempts to flee unsuccessfully. Antony does not want to go back to war but doesn't know how to stop it. He believes Dolabella can help him and Ventidius brings Dolabella out. Dolabella, Antony’s friend, appears after Antony’s success in battle. Dolabella was banished for his love for Cleopatra, but he returns to a warm welcome from Antony. Dolabella offers a gift that will bring peace between Antony and Caesar. The gift is Octavia, Antony's true wife and Caesar's sister, and Antony’s two daughters. Octavia tells Antony the war will stop when he returns to his rightful place, by her side. Antony and Octavia reunite, and Alexas’s attempts to meddle for the sake of Cleopatra are dismissed. Cleopatra appears informed of her defeat. Alexas tells her to avoid Octavia but Cleopatra chooses to face her as a rival. Cleopatra and Octavia have an argument, it seems clear that Octavia is whom Antony rightfully belongs to, even if it is not she whom he loves most. ;Act Four Antony has been convinced by Octavia that his rightful place is by her side, in Rome, with his children. Antony plans to leave but does not have the strength to tell Cleopatra himself. Antony asks Dolabella to tell Cleopatra he is leaving so that Antony will not be persuaded to stay. Ventidius overhears that Dolabella will be going to Cleopatra to bid her farewell. He also sees her divising a plan with Alexas to inspire jealousy in Antony by way of Dolabella. Ventidius and Octavia see Dolabella taking Cleopatra’s hand, but when the time comes to make a move romantically, both of them fall apart from the guilt of their betrayal. Ventidius tells Antony that Cleopatra and Dollabella have become lovers and Octavia also bears witness. Ventidius then asks Alexas to testify to the same story, which Alexas believes to be. Antony is infuriated by this information, but is still looking for some loophole that would confirm Cleopatra's innocence. Antony's belief in Cleopatra's innocence hurts Octavia and she leaves permanently. When Dolabella and Cleopatra try to explain themselves Antony refuses to believe them. ;Act Five Antony takes Cleopatra's naval fleet and sails to Caesar where he is greeted like an old friend. They then sail back to Alexandria. When Cleopatra hears of this Alexas tells her to flee and that he will attempt to make amends with Caesar. Cleopatra tells him this would make him a traitor and that he cannot go to Caesar. Cleopatra flees and Alexas is left behind. Antony and Ventidius meet up and prepare to fight. Alexas, Cleopatra’s messenger, comes and informs Antony that Cleopatra is dead. Antony then tells Ventidus to end his life, but Ventidius refuses and kills himself. With Ventidius dead, Antony then tried and failed to commit suicide. Cleopatra then comes in and sees the dying Antony, and living on the verge of death. Cleopatra then kills herself. Serapion delivers their eulogy.
3080986	/m/08q249	The Apprentice	Scooter Libby		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 According to the description of the book by St. Martin's Press:
3082166	/m/08q4gq	Portrait of a Young Man Drowning			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel takes place in the slums of Brooklyn during the Great Depression, and follows the narrator, Harry Odum, from his early childhood to his death. His father, Hap, abandons the family, leaving Harold to be raised by his mother, Kate. Harold falls in with his friends from the neighborhood, who take him along to participate in petty crime. He soon join up with "Bug", the neighborhood kingpin, and moves his way up through the local crime syndicate. He eventually becomes the neighborhood mob's killer for hire. Meanwhile, Kate spirals deeper into alcoholism and mental illness, and grows ever more possessive of her son. Through it all, the only person Harold feels any love for is his mother; he develops an Oedipal complex and an inability to sexually relate to anyone without resorting to his alter-ego, Madden. In the guise of this other self, he rapes a local girl, Iris, with whom he later falls in love. Harold attempts a relationship with Iris, but Kate threatens her away during a family dinner. The next day, Harold flies into a psychotic rage and rapes his own mother, who commits suicide. A dazed, traumatized Harold then goes for a ride with some of his partners-in-crime who, fearing his testimony to a police investigation, shoot him dead.
3083202	/m/08q690	An Old-Fashioned Girl		1869		 Polly Milton, a 14-year-old country girl, visits her friend Fanny Shaw and her wealthy family in the city for the first time. Poor Polly is overwhelmed by the splendor at the Shaws' and their urbanized, fashionable lifestyles, expensive clothes and other habits she has never been exposed to, and, for the most part, dislikes. Fanny's friends reject her because of her different behavior and simple clothing, and Fan herself can't help considering her unusual sometimes. However, Polly's warmth, support and kindness eventually win the hearts of all the family members, and her old-fashioned ways teach them a lesson. Six years later, Polly comes back to the city to become a music teacher and struggles with profession issues and internal emotions. Later in the book, Polly finds out that the prosperous Shaws are on the brink of bankruptcy, and she guides them to the realization that a wholesome family life is the only thing they will ever need, not money or decoration. With the comfort of the ever helpful Polly, the family gets to change for the better and to find a happier life for all of them. After being rejected by his fiancée, Trix, Tom procures a job out West, with Polly's brother Ned, and heads off to help his family and compensate for all the money he has wasted in frivolous expenditures. At that point of the book, we see that Polly and Tom seem to have developed strong feelings for one another. At the end of the book, Tom returns from the West and finally gets engaged to his true love, Polly. <!--
3083277	/m/08q6kc	Stargirl	Jerry Spinelli	2000-08-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with a brief introduction of Leo's life and chronicles his moving from his home state of Pennsylvania to Arizona, at the age of twelve. Before his move, his uncle Pete gives Leo a porcupine necktie as a farewell present, inspiring him to collect more like it. For a while, his collection still contained only one porcupine necktie until his birthday, when he receives one in a gift-wrapped package that an anonymous person left on his doorstep. This story picks up four years later with the arrival of an eccentric new classmate, Susan Caraway. Her behavior is unusual for a teen at Mica Area High School which prizes student conformity above all else. She wears kimonos, Native American buckskin, 1920s [flapper] clothes, and pioneer clothing with no makeup. During each class period she decorates her desk with a tablecloth and a vase with a daisy in it. She dances in the rain. She strums a ukulele during lunch every day and sings "Happy Birthday" to kids she has never met. She attends other peoples' funerals and, during sporting events, cheers for both teams. Her behavior is so unusual and so unlike anything anyone at the school had seen before that the student body at first did not know what to make of her. One student, the popular Hillari Kimble, declares, "She is not real." Leo becomes infatuated with Stargirl and refuses pleas of his best friend, Kevin, to put her on their show Hot Seat, the school’s student run television production where students are placed on the spot, and a jury of fellow students ask them questions "to make them squirm." Because Leo is infatuated with Stargirl, he doesn’t want to embarrass her on the show. Once the student body becomes accustomed to Stargirl’s eccentricities and Mallory Stillwell invites her to join the cheerleading squad, her popularity soars. Students begin to mimic her behavior, and at lunch, her table is overflowing with peers. She joins the cheer squad and goes to games for all of the sports, and the attendance at games suddenly booms. She sparks a revolution against conformity in the school. When Hillari Kimble, the girl who was the most popular in school before the appearance of Stargirl, demands Stargirl not to sing to her on her birthday, Stargirl keeps her promise—she does not sing to Hillari, but she sings to Leo, only she says Hillari's name. When Kevin, Leo's best friend, asks Stargirl, "Why him?", she responds by tweaking his earlobe and saying, "He's cute." Leo does privately celebrate the outburst of individuality taking over the school, even though his own shy demeanor keeps him from participating himself. He is merely a spectator in the events that follow. The basketball season brings about Stargirl's downfall. For the first time in the school's history, they have an undefeated basketball season. She slowly begins to anger her school by cheering for not only MAHS, but the other teams as well. She doesn't believe winning is the only way to have fun, and this puzzles and angers the students, though this is the same behavior she exhibited as a cheerleader for the football team. Shortly after the beginning of the basketball controversy is Stargirl's "Hot Seat" appearance. The show starts innocently, however, things slowly turn sour as the students begin to attack Stargirl with questions that single her out and attempt to embarrass her. As events get out of control the advising teacher cuts the show short. It never airs but the events are quickly revealed to the school by the members of the Hot Seat jury. When basketball play-offs come around, the school faces tough competition, and, unfortunately, lose in the semi-finals. Stargirl angers the school by comforting a player from the opposing team when he breaks his ankle. This leads to her ultimate downfall from popularity. After the next game, where MAHS suffers a season-ending humiliating defeat, an unknown student hits Stargirl in the face with a ripe tomato, to which the audience responds by applauding. The school takes out their anger for the defeat on Stargirl, illogically blaming her for the team’s loss. This eventually leads to her being shunned by the entire student body except for Leo and her one remaining friend, Dori Dilson. After Stargirl’s popularity ends, she and Leo begin an obvious romance. Stargirl takes Leo to a place that seems like nowhere and they sit there for an hour and enjoy the beauty and "connect with the earth". A few days after this, they kiss on the sidewalk in front of her house, and Leo declares that it was "no saint I was kissing," They enjoy each other's company, and Leo begins to help Stargirl with her antics, such as leaving cards for people she doesn't know, and dropping change on the sidewalk. It is by observing her behavior that he figures out that Stargirl was the mysterious person that gave him the porcupine necktie four years before. Soon, though, Leo realizes the entire school is shunning the couple. Wanting to help her, he asks Stargirl to change and become "normal", so she becomes "Susan", the name she was born with. She drops her unconventional clothing and acts like all the other students at the school. She becomes obsessed with being "accepted" and popular. This plan, however, fails, and their classmates continue the shunning, despite Stargirl's valiant efforts to become a normal girl. "Susan" feels that the best way to become popular is by winning a state public speaking competition. Her eccentric and creative personality helps her achieve victory in the competition, and she returns to MAHS thinking she will receive a hero’s welcome. She is bitterly disappointed when only three people show up to see her homecoming. Susan realizes that she had achieved nothing by trying to fit in. She decides to go back to being her true self, and Stargirl returns, much to Leo’s dismay. He then abandons his relationship with Stargirl, confused about his feelings for her and with his desperation to be accepted by the school. When the Ocotillo ball comes Leo decides not to go. Leo watches the ball from his bike in the distance. Stargirl regains popularity as she arrives on a bike covered in sunflowers. Stargirl is dressed beautifully and impresses everyone as she walks onto the tennis court. As the dance progresses, Stargirl causes conflict with Hillari Kimble. When Stargirl asks the DJ to play the "Bunny Hop", Hillari is appalled. Stargirl starts the dance with only a few people participating, until eventually the only people not in line are Hillari Kimble and Wayne Parr. Stargirl leads the hop into the desert where it seems as though they stay for hours. Upon the dancers' return, Hillari confronts Stargirl telling her that she always ruins everything and slaps her on the face. Stargirl returns Hillari's anger-filled action with, yet another, act of kindness - a polite kiss on the cheek. The next day, Stargirl disappears...Later on in the story Archie tells Leo that Stargirl moved away. Fifteen years after graduating high school, Leo finds himself working not as a television director, but a set designer. Stargirl has left behind some permanent changes at Mica Area High School: students cheer the first basket scored against them at every game, a club called "The Sunflowers" performs one nice act per day for someone else, and the school’s marching band is the only one in Arizona to feature a ukulele. The story ends with Leo receiving a porcupine necktie in the mail one day before his birthday and realizing Stargirl had given it to him, his hope for Stargirl continues.
3086720	/m/08qhbs	Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail		1999		 The book contains three major parts: #A description of her early life as the daughter of the powerful General Mohamed Oufkir and adoptive daughter to the Moroccan king Hassan II. She was taken into the palace as a child to be a companion to the king's daughter, Princess Amina. Although she led the life of a princess during these years, she was not one, and she always longed to go home to her real family. She was eventually released for two years to live with her family. #The details of her family's lives in a various desert prisons. While Malika was living with her family, her father was involved in a coup d'etat attempt on the king. Her father was then executed and she and her five siblings, mother, and two maids, were political prisoners for the next twenty years. #A description of the escape of four of the siblings, the house arrest of the entire family in Morocco, and their final escape to freedom. As the right hand man of king Hassan II in the 1960s and early 1970s, Oufkir led government supervision of politicians, unionists and the religious establishment. He forcefully repressed political protest through police and military clampdowns, pervasive government espionage, show trials, and numerous extralegal measures such as killings and forced disappearances. A feared figure in dissident circles, he was considered extraordinarily close to power. One of his most famous victims is believed to have been celebrated third-world politician Mehdi Ben Brka, who was "disappeared" in Paris in 1965. A French court convicted him of the murder. In 1967, Oufkir was named interior minister, vastly increasing his power through direct control over most of the security establishment. After a failed republican military coup in 1971 he was named chief of staff and minister of defense, and set about purging the army and promoting his personal supporters. His domination of the Moroccan political scene was now near-complete, with the king ever more reliant on him to contain mounting discontent. The following year, he turned on the monarchy, ordering the Moroccan air force to open fire at the king's jet and organizing a takeover on the ground. Hassan survived, however, and some sources indicate he personally shot Oufkir after securing power. The official line, however, was and is that Oufkir committed suicide upon hearing of the coup's failure While the book describes the life of its protagonist, it also discusses the nature of freedom. From someone who has lived most of her life as a prisoner, readers come to learn that real freedom is a question of the mind. The book was formerly banned in Morocco, but it is now reportedly available.
3088029	/m/08qlg1	Invitation to a Beheading	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in a prison and relates the final twenty days of Cincinnatus C., a citizen of a fictitious country, who is imprisoned and sentenced to death for "gnostical turpitude." Unable to blend in and become part of the world around him, Cincinnatus is described as having a "certain peculiarity" that makes him "impervious to the rays of others, and therefore produced when off his guard a bizarre impression, as of a lone dark obstacle in this world of souls transparent to one another." Although he tries to hide his condition and "feign translucence," people are uncomfortable with his existence, and feel there is something wrong with him. In this way, Cincinnatus fails to become part of his society. While confined, Cincinnatus is not told when his execution will occur. This troubles him, as he wants to express himself through writing "in defiance of all the world's muteness," but feels unable to do so without knowledge of how long he has to complete this task. Indifferent to the absurdity and vulgarity around him, Cincinnatus strives to find his true self in his writing, where he creates an ideal world. Taken to be executed, he refuses to believe in either death or his executioners, and as the axe falls the false existence dissolves around him as he joins the spirits of his fellow visionaries in "reality." Other characters include Rodion the jailer, the director of the jail Rodrig, and Cincinnatus' lawyer Roman. Some suggest that these names are meant to mimic that of the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. Cincinnatus' wife Marthe, a child named Emmie, and fellow prisoner "M'sieur Pierre" are also secondary characters.
3088913	/m/08qnjx	Julian	Gore Vidal	1964	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Julian was the last direct relative of Constantine the Great to assume the purple, his father being Constantine's half-brother, and attempted to destroy the influence of the Christian church, bringing back the worship of the old Roman pantheon, as well as other religions including his attempted restoration of the Jewish Temple, and Mithraism, a mystery religion that had been popular among Roman soldiers. The book takes the form of the correspondence between two Hellenistic pagans, Libanius, who is considering writing a biography of Julian, and Priscus, who possesses Julian's personal memoir. Christianity has, by this stage, become the official religion of the Roman Empire (as decreed by the emperor Theodosius), with rioting and inquisition causing extreme violence between traditionalists and Christians, and even between Christian sects. Only thirty years after the novel took place, the city of Rome would be sacked by the Goths. The memoir relates Julian's life from the time so many members of his family were purged by his cousin, the emperor Constantius II (whom he succeeded on the throne), his "exile" to libraries as a child, and his subsequent negative childhood experiences with Christian hypocrisy and conflict over dogma (see Arianism). As he matures, a rift forms between Julian and his disturbed half-brother Gallus, who is made Caesar (heir to the purple) by Constantius II; Julian claims, for his safety, to have no interest but philosophy, so he undertakes a journey to Athens to study under the city's greatest teachers. Here, he first sees Libanius, the book's narrator, and has an affair with a female philosopher, Macrina. He also comes to know some of the early Church Fathers in their formative years, including the agreeable Basil of Caesarea and the abrasive and dishonest Gregory of Nazianzus. Julian is eventually made Caesar in place of Gallus, who was executed by Constantius II for cruelty, debauchery, and to satisfy Constantius's legendary insecurity and paranoia. This leaves Julian the successor to Constantius II, and he is given (at first nominal) command of Gaul, under attack by the Alamanni. Subsequently, Julian seizes hands-on military and administrative control from his 'advisors,' and, against expectations, experiences overwhelming military success over the Germans at Strasbourg. Upon the death of Helena, Julian's wife and Constantius's sister, and in the face of Constantius's ever-increasing manic paranoia, Julian undertakes a short rebellion against Constantius, which ends bloodlessly, with Constantius's natural death during the journey to confront Julian, and Julian's accession to the title of Augustus. Julian's early reign is successful, with the removal from office of court eunuchs, whose true role Julian sees as being to drag on the state coffers and to isolate the emperors from real-world concerns. He also undertakes attempts to prevent the spread of Christianity; referring to the religion throughout the novel as 'back-country' and a 'death-cult' (and churches as 'charnel-houses,' for their reverence of relics), Julian sees the best means to do this as to block Christians from teaching classical literature, thusly relegating their religion to non-intellectual audiences and thwarting attempts by Christians to develop the sophisticated rhetoric and intellectualism of traditional Roman and Hellenistic religions. Here, Julian's headstrong nature begins to affect his ability to know his own capabilities, evident in several clashes with the Trinitarian clergy and with advisors. Nonetheless, Julian takes the opportunity to outline his arguments against Christianity, and to lay out his vision for reforming and restoring Roman civic life. His reforms are under way when, in spite of his own faith in prophecy, Julian undertakes an ill-omened campaign to reclaim Roman Mesopotamia from the Sassanid Empire. This marks a significant turning-point in the novel, as it is the end of Julian's memoir. The rest of the novel consists of field dispatches and diary entries detailing Julian's campaign, with commentary by Priscus and Libanius's reflections. Initially, Julian is extremely successful (in spite of his relying on Xenophon's dated Anabasis for geographic details of the region), reaching Ctesiphon and defeating the Persian emperor in several decisive battles. However, after Persian scorched-earth tactics leave Julian's army with no food or water, it becomes apparent that the Christian officers' loyalty is in question, and that a plot may be afoot to kill Julian. Priscus recounts a short conversation with another non-Christian advisor during the campaign, in which he is told simply, 'we're not safe.' Indeed, Julian's dispatches begin to show delusion on the part of the emperor, and in spite of his steadily eroding grasp of reality and his own limitations, he presses on until a near mutiny of his soldiers. Not long after, during the return to Roman territory, Julian rushes to fight off a Persian attack on the line, eschewing his armor, which his aide Callistus claimed had broken straps. Julian returns to camp mortally wounded, and in spite of the efforts of his physician and friend Oribasius, he dies without picking a successor. Here, Vidal's narrative departs slightly from the known story of Julian, as it becomes apparent in the novel that Julian was wounded by a Roman spear. Upon the removal of Julian's body, Priscus secretly rifles through Julian's belongings, taking Julian's memoir and diary for himself and saving them from censorship. The Christian officers win the debate over whom to elevate to the title of Augustus, settling on the simple-minded and drunken Jovian. The campaign ends in disaster, and Jovian cedes significant portions of Rome's eastern territory to the Sassanid Empire. The rest of the novel consists of the continuing correspondence of Libanius and Priscus; Libanius asks Priscus what he knows about Julian's death, himself suspecting that there was always a plot among the Christian officers to kill Julian. Priscus responds (with the assurance that his role as the source of such information would be kept anonymous) that, upon visiting Callistus years later, Priscus asked whether Callistus, who rode into battle with Julian on the day of his death, saw who killed the emperor. Callistus's originally one-dimensional and vague tale began to take on more detail, and when Priscus again asked whether Callistus knows the killer's identity, Callistus responded that he did, of course: 'it was I who killed the Emperor Julian.' Callistus recounted breaking the straps on Julian's armor before the fatal engagement, and personally stabbing Julian with his spear. Priscus asked how Callistus could have hated Julian, his benefactor. The Christian Callistus responded, chillingly, that he did not hate Julian, but admired him, and that 'every day [Callistus] pray[s]' for Julian's soul. Priscus closes the anecdote by begging Libanius to keep his name out of any published account of Julian's death, citing Callistus's powerful co-conspirators from the army and Theodosius's well-documented brutality, and Libanius's worst fears about Julian's death are confirmed. The novel ends with Libanius's sending a letter to the emperor Theodosius seeking permission to publish Julian's memoir; it is denied. Lamenting his ill health, Theodosius's politically motivated proscription of traditional religion, and the end of intellectual culture and its replacement by widespread religious violence and intolerance, Libanius meets John Chrysostom, his former best student, giving a sermon at a Christian church. Libanius finally realizes that traditional religion is defeated, seeing as even the best and brightest of his students had abandoned the traditionalists. Irritated by John's solemn triumph, Libanius calls Christianity a death-cult, and in response, John Chrysostom morbidly implies that Christianity embraces the coming death of the classical world. By extension, though somewhat more vaguely, John claims that he awaits the coming apocalypse. In closing, Libanius writes, prophetically, that he hopes the coming collapse of reason and the Roman world will be only temporary, likening the dying of the Empire to that of his oil lamp, and expresses the hope that reason and 'man's love of light' would one day bring back the prosperity, stability, and intellectualism of the pre-Christian empire.
3088980	/m/08qnqm	The Man	Irving Wallace	1964	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 President Douglass Dilman's presidency is marked by white racists, black political activists, and an attempted assassination. Later, he is impeached on false charges for firing the United States Secretary of State. Moreover, racially, one of his children, "passing" for white, also is targeted and harassed.
3089682	/m/08qq5s	A Question of Upbringing	Anthony Powell	1951	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dance opens with the last year or so of their school days in 1921&ndash;22. We are also introduced to their Housemaster Le Bas and Nick's Uncle Giles. Lunching at the invitation of Stringham's mother, the glamorous Mrs Foxe, Nick meets Cdr. Buster Foxe, "a chic sailor", and Miss 'Tuffy' Weedon. On leaving school Jenkins visits the Templers, setting eyes for the first time on Templer's sullen sister Jean and meeting the older Sunny Farebrother and Jimmy Stripling. Later Nick is sent off to France to learn the language, staying at La Grenadière, where Widmerpool puts in an appearance, displaying unexpected powers of persuasion. The final chapter sees Nick at university where he enjoys afternoon tea with Professor Sillery and meets Mark Members for the first time, JG Quiggin, and Bill Truscott. A car outing with Templer, Bob Duport and Jimmy Brent turns to minor disaster when Templer drives them into a ditch. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent
3090064	/m/08qq_g	Oil!	Upton Sinclair, Jr.	1927		 The book is divided into twenty-one chapters with titles, which are further subdivided into numbered sections. “The Ride” – Bunny and Dad are introduced to the reader as they drive by car through the southern California desert to a meeting with the owners of some oil property. “The Lease” – Dad meets with the owners of the residential lots to discuss an oil lease; the owners are hopelessly deadlocked about how the properties and proceeds should be divided; the character of Paul Watkins is introduced. “The Drilling” – Details of the oil drilling business and of the Ross family. “The Ranch” – Dad and Bunny go quail hunting on the Paradise goat ranch, property of the Watkins family, and find oil. “The Revelation” – At Bunny’s urging, Dad tries to prevent Old Man Watkins from beating his oldest daughter Ruth; Dad tries to convince them that he has received the “third revelation”, which prohibits parents from beating their children (among other things), but the plan backfires when Eli Watkins, Paul’s younger brother, interjects himself into the discussion and claims that HE has received the revelation. “The Wild-Cat” – Drilling begins at the Paradise oil field; Bunny begins to realize his father’s business methods are not entirely ethical; an oil worker is killed in an accident, and the oil well explodes and burns. “The Strike” – The oil workers go on strike, and Bunny is torn between loyalty to Dad and his friendship to Paul and Ruth Watkins. “The War” – Bunny begins a high-school love affair with Eunice Hoyt, daughter of a wealthy family; WWI breaks out, Paul is drafted, and the Ross and Watkins families are divided. “The Victory” – WWI is over, but Paul remains in Siberia with the Allied intervention forces opposing the Soviets; Bunny decides to go to college after high school. “The University” – Bunny enrolls in Southern Pacific University, where his ideas of social justice evolve further as he meets free-thinking professors such as Dan Irving. “The Rebel” – Bunny becomes increasingly involved with various socialist and radical students, including Rachel Menzies, against the background of the Red Scare. Also Paul comes home and tells of his travels. “The Siren” – An aging socialite attempts to seduce Bunny aboard her yacht. “The Monastery” – Bunny accompanies Dad to the Monastery, the seaside mansion of his business associate Vernon Roscoe. “The Star” – Bunny begins an affair with Viola (“Vee”) Tracy, a silent film star; she loves him deeply, but does not share his political views. “The Vacation” – Bunny goes back east with Vee and Dad, ostensibly to take care of some business matters, but in reality so that Roscoe can have a free hand to crush the oil workers’ movement. “The Killing” – Dad makes a killing by joining with the big oil companies, but loses his independence; Bertie, Bunny’s spoiled socialite sister, has an abortion. “The Exposure” – The bribery involved in the naval oil reserve transactions during the Harding administration becomes exposed by radical journalists, including Dan Irving; Bunny broaches his idea of going away and earning his own way in the world to Dad, who is confused and hurt, but not unsupportive. “The Flight” – Roscoe and Dad are forced to flee to Canada and then to Europe (accompanied by Bunny), to avoid being subpoenaed by Congress in connection with the naval oil reserve scandal. “The Penalty” – Dad meets and marries Mrs. Olivier, a widower and Spiritualist, but he soon passes away from pneumonia. “The Dedication” – Bunny decides to dedicate his life and his inheritance to social justice; Roscoe moves to get control of the bulk of Dad’s estate. “The Honeymoon” – Bunny and Bertie are swindled out of most of their inheritance by Roscoe and Dad’s widow; Bunny marries Rachel Menzies and they dedicate themselves to establishing a socialist institution of learning; Eli Watkins, by now a successful (and completely hypocritical) evangelist, adds insult to injury by falsely claiming that his communist brother Paul underwent a deathbed conversion to Christianity; the final, sad end of Paul and Ruth Watkins.
3091032	/m/08qtb0	Tempest	Troy Denning	2006-11-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Civil war threatens the unity of the Galactic Alliance. To ensure financial stability, the Alliance wants more control in the powerful Corelian systems. This involves control over the Centerpoint Station, a powerful artifact that is capable, in the right hands, of destroying entire planets. The Corelian systems desire more independence than the Alliance is willing to let them have. Han and Leia Solo anger their families and friends by allying themselves with the Corellian insurgents. The Correlian government send the Solos on a diplomatic mission to the powerful Hapes Consortium, but Han and Leia are outraged when they discover a plan to buy Consortium support by murdering the pro-Alliance queen Tenel Ka and her daughter, long-time Solo family friends. The Solos race to solve the situation and save the intended victims. Neither the queen or her daughter are killed but the Solos are now the number one suspects in the assassination attempt. Meanwhle, Jacen Solo's dark side powers grow stronger under the Dark Jedi Lumiya. As such, the Galactic Alliance Guard, which he commands, grows more powerful and corrupt. Lumiya is encouraging Jacen to make a sacrifice, by killing an important family member; this would "balance the Force". As Jacen goes closer to the dark side, his influence over his potential apprentice, Ben Skywalker, grows stronger. Various characters come together over the conflict. Luke, secretly betrayed by Jacen, nearly loses his life in a duel with Lumiya and the wayward Twi'lek Jedi Alema Rar. Han and Leia, on the run, literally come under fire from their own son, who is commanding the Star Destroyer Anakin Solo. They barely escape with their lives, though the Millennium Falcon is shot clean through and Leia's friends, her two Noghri bodyguards, are killed. Regardless, the traitors in Tenel Ka's Hapes Consortium and their Corellian allies fail their mission to overthrow the Queen Mother, and with Jacen's fleet's success in defending Tenel Ka, the two of them secretly embrace as lovers before he leaves her once again.
3091092	/m/08qtdv	The Amulet of Samarkand	Jonathan Stroud	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nathaniel becomes an apprentice Magician after his parents forfeit him (as a very young child) to the magicians' adoption service in return for some money. His master, Arthur Underwood, is a mediocre magician and the minister of Internal Affairs. Underwood is unwilling to having an apprentice whilst his wife, Martha, warmly welcomes Nathaniel. Throughout his youth, noteworthy events embitter Nathaniel towards Underwood. One year before the events of the novel Underwood hosts a gathering of magicians in his villa. Upon his presentation to the other magicians, Nathaniel (age 10 at the time) is interviewed by his later antagonist Simon Lovelace who dismisses Nathaniel's obvious powers for magic. Nathaniel retorts impolitely and incurs Lovelace's wrath, in the form of an invisible demon which holds him immobile, allowing Lovelace to deride his helpless condition. Once he is released, Nathaniel sets a fleet of mites upon Lovelace, which he easily destroys, and is punished with a beating from one of Lovelace's imps. Ms. Lutyens, his admired art teacher, attempts to waylay the punishment and gets fired. Following his experience, Nathaniel vows to become his own master and learns from the books in Underwood's study while also plotting the downfall and humiliation of his nemesis Lovelace. Using a rudimentary scrying glass Nathaniel spies on Lovelace. One night he witnesses him paying a bearded mercenary after receiving a suspicious package. The imp in the glass quotes the mercenary as saying that the package is the Amulet of Samarkand. Days after his twelfth birthday, Nathaniel summons the djinni Bartimaeus, a cocky spirit with a grudge against his slavers --- the magicians. Bartimaeus, expecting a ridiculous and simple charge, such as levitating an object, is instead charged with the highly dangerous, unexpected command to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from Simon Lovelace. While fulfilling his charge Bartimaeus runs into Faquarl and Jabor, two djinni under Lovelace's employ, the former of whom harbors a mutual grudge with Bartimaeus spanning thousands of years, the latter being a particularly dangerous and vicious djinni. After escaping Faquarl and Jabor, Bartimaeus is also accosted in an alleyway by a mysterious gang of youths, who attempted to steal the Amulet from him, somehow spotting it under Bartimaeus's clothes. The youths are later revealed to be the Resistance. Bartimaeus is summoned back to Nathaniel who orders him to hide the amulet in Underwood's study for safekeeping. Charged to return to Nathaniel after completing that task, Bartimaeus is with him when Mrs. Underwood calls the boy by his birth name "Nathaniel", thus awarding the djinni with ammunition against the young magician. The use of the birth name acts as a defense mechanism against corporal punishment. Nathaniel counteracts this with a Perpetual Confinement spell on a sealed tin of rosemary (agonising to spirits) which guarantees Bartimaeus' servitude for one month and the safety of Nathaniel. Later, Nathaniel is officially named as John Mandrake. That night John/Nathaniel accompanies the Underwoods to parliament in for the state address. Nathaniel witnesses a wild looking youth release an elemental sphere into the throng of magicians at the address which results in a large explosion of trapped elements; an attack of the Resistance. Bartimaeus was further ordered to spy on Simon Lovelace and to discover all he can about his acquaintances and the Amulet of Samarkand. He disguises himself as a messenger imp, after accosting Lovelace's genuine messenger, and travels to Pinn's Accoutrements to learn of the amulet. Simpkin, Sholto Pinn's foliot assistant, reveals that the amulet had been under government protection before it had been stolen. Then Bartimaeus' cover is blown by Pinn, he botches his escape and is detained in the Tower of London, preventing Nathaniel from summoning him. After Nathaniel fails to clean up his room after his attempted summoning, Underwood discovers Nathaniel's covert operation and confiscates his summoning paraphernalia and notes detailing his plot against Lovelace. However, before he can examine these notes Underwood is called to the Tower of London so he may interrogate Bartimaeus (unbeknownst to Nathaniel). When he returns later, Nathaniel spies on him using the scrying glass but is caught by his master. Before his master can punish him, Lovelace presents himself at the door and demands Underwood's attention. Previously, Bartimaeus had awoken in the Tower to be unsuccessfully interrogated by Sholto Pinn and Jessica Whitwell, the Minister of Security. Jabor and Faquarl assist Bartimaeus in escaping the Tower on condition that he reveal the location of the Amulet and his master. In order to protect his master, and thus avoid perpetual confinement, Bartimaeus refuses and escapes by igniting the car petrol that Faquarl had been covered in during the escape. Bartimaeus then unwittingly leads Lovelace's servants to the Underwood house. Lovelace threatens Underwood with violence when Underwood expresses ignorance to the alleged theft of an artifact. After quailing under Lovelace's magical intimidations, Underwood leads Lovelace to his study where the amulet is discovered. Nathaniel then reveals himself as the thief in an act Bartimaeus deems suicidal. Underwood then betrays Nathaniel by encouraging Lovelace to kill the boy but let him live. In spite of this, Lovelace summons Jabor to destroy the house, Underwood, Mrs. Underwood and Nathaniel; but Nathaniel survives, thanks to Bartimaeus. Instead of fleeing the country after escaping the fire, Nathaniel promises to seek revenge for his beloved Mrs. Underwood's death and forces Bartimaeus to help by reminding him of the rosemary tin should he betray him. An angered Bartimaeus threatens to kill him because he believes that either way he will end up in the tin and encourages Nathaniel to free him then and now, but resolves to try to keep him alive after Nathaniel promises to free him after this final task. Nathaniel meets by chance some members of the Resistance, yet fails to infiltrate the group and furthermore has his scrying glass stolen. After this fiasco, Nathaniel and Bartimaeus travel to Heddlehem Hall in order to stop Lovelace's plot against the government. The pair arrive disguised as a delicatessen manager and his son and Nathaniel slips past Faquarl, who is present in the kitchen at the hall. Bartimaeus attempts to kill the mysterious bearded mercenary, who has become alerted to Nathaniel's plot by the delicatessen people whose van was stolen as a disguise. The mercenary displays an extraordinary resistance to magic and a pair of seven league boots, which grant him exceptional speed. Meanwhile, Nathaniel is discovered by Lovelace and his master Schyler. After Lovelace leaves the room to set his plans in motion, Schyler offered Nathaniel an ultimatum: to join Lovelace in his new order or die. Nathaniel manages to kill Schyler using petty magical firework-cubes and he and Bartimaeus arrive in time for the conference. The room in which the Parliament commune is promptly sealed shut both physically and magically. Nathaniel attempts to warn the seated magicians of the coup, but is unknowingly foiled by Jessica Whitwell, who places him in an impenetrable bubble. The extravagant Persian rug displayed under a floor of glass is pulled away mechanically to reveal an enormous pentacle. Lovelace then blows an ancient summoning horn and calls forth the immensely strong spirit Ramuthra through a rift, who proceeds to warp reality on the seven planes and destroy the surrounding magicians and djinni. Jabor is summoned to destroy Bartimaeus but is tricked into flying toward the summoning rift and is trapped in its attractive field. After this, Bartimaeus, disguised as Lovelace's girlfriend Amanda, distracts Lovelace and allows Nathaniel to steal the amulet. Ramuthra obliterates Lovelace. Nathaniel surprises Bartimaeus by knowing the required method of dismissal. In this climactic moment, the culmination of Nathaniel's disastrous experiences and thirst for knowledge are appeased when he speaks the words of dismissal and cracks the summoning horn. After Ramuthra and the rift disappear, Nathaniel dramatically limps over to the half buried form of the prime minister Rupert Devereaux and lays the Amulet in his hands. After recounting a modified version of events which belittles Bartimaeus' achievement, advocates the role of Mrs. Underwood and neglects the less admirable experiences, Nathaniel becomes the quiet hero of the government. The outside world remains ignorant of his heroic acts, yet Nathaniel is satisfied with a true magician's lifestyle under a new master, Jessica Whitwell. Finally, Nathaniel dismisses Bartimaeus with a mutual agreement that he will never summon Bartimaeus again and that Bartimaeus never reveal Nathaniel's birth name to other spirits and other magicians. Before he is dismissed, Bartimaeus attempts to warn Nathaniel against the typical road of a magician involving power-seeking behavior, materialism, and a generally shallow existence, also adding that Nathaniel should beware of his new master. Bartimaeus tells Nathaniel that he has something other magicians lack, something that he should guard, a conscience. In spite of feelings that this attempt is in vain, his last thoughts before dismissal are those of hope for his young master.
3091098	/m/08qtg7	Eye in the Sky	Philip K. Dick	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While on a visit to the (fictional) Belmont Bevatron, eight people become stuck in a series of subtly unreal worlds, caused by the malfunction of the particle accelerator. These are later revealed to be solipsistic manifestations, bringing the story in line with Dick's penchant for subjective realities. As well as his future discussions of theology and fears about McCarthy-era authoritarianism, the novel skewers several human foibles. Jack Hamilton, the central protagonist, is dismissed from his job at the California Maintenance Labs due to McCarthy-era paranoia about his wife Marsha's left-wing political sympathies. Other affected members of the injured touring party include Bill Laws, a Physics PhD who happens to be a Negro, who happens to be employed as a tour guide within the plant. The above-mentioned Arthur Silvester is an elderly believer in the obsolete geocentric cosmology. Joan Reiss is a pathologically paranoid woman. Edith Pritchet is a maternal but censorious elderly woman. In succession, the group moves through solpsistic personalized alternate realms related to the beliefs and opinions of Arthur Silvester, Pritchet, Reiss and a hardline Marxist caricature of contemporary US society. Marsha Hamilton's subconscious perceptions, however, did not produce this alternate reality, as originally thought. It originates instead from an unexpected source, revealed as Charles McFeyffe, a Communist sympathizer who works as chief security officer in the California Maintenance Labs plant. At story's end Jack Hamilton and Bill Laws form a small business that seeks advances in stereophonic technology. The disclosure of McFeyffe's Marxist allegiances is dismissed as completely unprovable.
3091732	/m/08qvns	A Planet for the President	Alistair Beaton	2004-09-30	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the face of all sorts of natural disasters of an unprecedented scope, an ever increasing percentage of the U.S. population demands leadership from their President. So far, however, Ritchie has turned a blind eye to ecological concerns, repeatedly dismissing warnings from scientists and environmentalist groups alike as the rantings of "eco-nuts". For example, when wildfires in California not only kill off 38 of Hollywood's celebrities gathered for a private party in Malibu, but also fell the 2,200 year-old General Sherman tree in Sequoia National Park and thus destroy a symbol of American strength and continuity, Ritchie rationalizes his practically non-existent environmental policy by concluding that the fire must have been started by arson, while at the same time ignoring the drought which, at least partially caused by human intervention, enabled the fire to spread so quickly in the first place. The novel predates the terrible wildfires of October 2007. The terrifying consequences of environmental destruction have become a day-to-day reality to people all over the world. The United Kingdom, for example, America's closest ally, suffers "the loss of much of East Anglia" due to flooding, and Prime Minister James Halstead, as a gesture of friendship, sends Ritchie "the last cod from the North Sea for at least ten years", a specimen which, he adds, could just as well be "the last North Sea cod ever". In Nepal, inexperienced engineers trying to drain a glacial lake cause the surrounding moraine to burst, which results in a valley being flooded and in 62,000 Nepalese losing their lives. And in the United States, New Orleans is flooded and destroyed and 23,142 people are killed when Hurricane Wendy, a Category 5 hurricane, hits the city. In these troubled times, many state leaders turn to the American President for support, a fact which on occasion makes Ritchie L. Ritchie reflect on the state of the union and that of the globe at large: In theory, the United States is still a democracy. In practice, Ritchie is heading a War Cabinet. The FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon have assumed most of the tasks of the former government. In order to avert attention from the many presidential lapses, the members of Ritchie's inner circle have become ruthless beyond imagination. For instance, when the President meets "Inspirational Moms and Dads" in the White House and chats animatedly in front of the television cameras with Chuck and Geraldine, a couple who have four kids, his media chief is at first pleased with her boss's performance and the extensive media coverage this event gets. When, however, a few days later that father runs amok and kills his wife and their four children she decides that something has to be done to get the meeting between the President and a murderer out of the headlines. This is the only reason why, during an impromptu conference, the Defense Secretary and she decide to launch an airstrike against Haiti on the following day. In the morning she informs Vince Lennox, Special Assistant to the President, that "[...] we're about to bomb Haiti. Should we wake the President?" "Why are we bombing Haiti?" "We have evidence of terrorist groupings planning an attack on the United States." "You mean that sad little bunch of leftist guerrillas? The ones we've known about for ages?" "Terrorist groupings, Vince." "Oh, I get it. We need to deflect attention from Chuck and Geraldine." "That's one way of looking at it. I'd say it was Chuck and Geraldine and the celebs and General Sherman." "Anna. Are you really sure about this? [...] People will be killed." "Anna Prascilowicz gave Vince a long hard look. "You know, Vince, sometimes I worry about you." Four hours later the airstrike on Haiti went ahead. In the depths of the Haitian mangrove swamps, one guerrilla, eleven fishermen and twenty-two villagers were killed in the space of seven minutes. The President went live on television that night to praise the nation's vigilance in saving America from a ruthless terrorist attack. At a later point in the novel, the President&#39;s inner circle will even launch a chemical attack on the unsuspecting—and innocent—Justices of the Supreme Court, all nine of whom will be killed in the attack. Citizens&#39; First Amendment rights are more and more ignored by the Administration. For example, freedom of the press is practically non-existent; many political opponents have had to go underground after the media were gleichgeschaltet. Covert listening devices have been widely installed so that no one can be sure that their conversation is not being listened to, recorded, transcribed, and archived for future use. The U.S. defense budget is the largest in history, while there is no discernible social safety net any longer. The Administration encourages citizens to live by traditional American values. Foreign food imports as well as vegetarianism are frowned upon; the number of females in leading positions has been reduced to a few token women; teen abstinence rallies are regularly organised; homosexuality is generally considered unnatural. A strong Christian element pervades the decision-making process in the White House. The product of these developments is a thoroughly hypocritical society. Vince Lennox, for example, who frequently has to eat cheeseburgers with his boss, does not dare admit to the President that he is actually a vegetarian. Various celebrities publicly support the campaigns for moral integrity and sexual abstinence while behind closed doors indulging in pornography, promiscuity and all kinds of perversions. The President himself, whose son comes out during a live television broadcast, more and more often locks himself in his private study adjacent to the Oval Office to &#34;be alone with his God&#34;, a phrase which is very soon recognized by everyone on the presidential staff as a euphemism for drinking bourbon. More and more members of the Ritchie Administration realize that something has to be done about the global environmental crisis. However, influenced by a confidential study made by a government-sponsored think tank, they draw all the wrong conclusions. Instead of promoting a simple lifestyle and drastically reducing toxic emissions, they warm to the idea of MPR—Mass Population Reduction: Fewer people on the planet will also result in less pollution, and that, in the long run, will be the only way to save humanity. The plan is to trigger a pandemic which, within a few hours, will kill six billion people—96 per cent of the world&#39;s population, i.e. everyone except the population of the United States. The means for doing so is a newly developed lethal virus which will immediately kill all humans unless they have been vaccinated against it. A new governmental campaign is to make U.S. citizens believe that America&#39;s enemies are plotting to attack the United States with biological weapons, and thus scare them so much that they have themselves inoculated. After &#34;Operation Deliverance&#34; has been carried out, Americans are to colonise the globe. This plan, America&#39;s rulers believe, has also been sanctioned by God. Preparations start at once. President Ritchie publicly announces that the United States is preparing a global environmental survey as the starting point of a new ecological policy which will be implemented once the data from the survey have been processed and publicized. A date is set, state leaders around the globe applaud the United States for its initiative, there are standing ovations in the United Nations General Assembly, and all countries with the exception of North Korea agree to grant overflying rights to U.S. military aircraft, which is how the alleged survey will be conducted. Secretly, however, these aircraft are now equipped with sprayers which will enable them to spread the highly contagious new virus quickly and efficiently around the world. At the same time mass production of the new vaccine sets in, and soon afterwards the new vaccination programme for all U.S. citizens is started. Just in time before being inoculated himself, Ritchie L. Ritchie realizes that he is allergic to eggs and thus, for medical reasons, cannot be given the vaccine. It turns out that German technology can solve the problem, as there is one company in Cologne which can produce the vaccine without the help of eggs. So, in due course, the President of the United States also gets his shot. Immediately after Operation Deliverance has finally been launched, reports of U.S.citizens dying by the hundreds—although they have been inoculated against the virus—reach the White House. Only too late do scientists find out that, due to the vaccine having been hastily mass-produced, certain production regulations were neglected, which resulted in the vaccine being inefficient. (&#34;The free market made America and the free market destroyed America.&#34;) In the end, Ritchie L. Ritchie is the only human survivor, as his vaccine was the only one produced outside the United States. He continues living in the White House for several years until his death.
3095941	/m/08r404	Double Image	David Morrell		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Double Image is a noir thriller from Morrell set in modern-day Los Angeles. It tells the story of a war photographer named Mitch Coltrane, who decides to give up photographing atrocities after an assignment in Bosnia nearly costs him his life. While at home recovering from a gunshot wound from the above-mentioned job, he sees an advertisement in a magazine stating that a legendary photographer from the 1920s and 30's named Randolph Packard will be giving an exhibit of his work. Coltrane attends the exhibit and finds himself face-to-face with Packard, now a sickly old man, who takes a liking to Coltrane and invites him to his private residence the next day. Coltrane and Packard decide to collaborate on a job, in which Coltrane will go to various locations throughout the L.A. area and take photographs of the very same houses which Packard has photographed over half a century ago, in order to show how much Los Angeles has changed over the decades. But before Coltrane can begin his work Packard dies, leaving him a collection of photographs. Coltrane begins the assignment and quickly becomes fascinated by one of the houses in Packard's photographs. Upon finding the house he discovers that it has been maintained in perfect condition with no renovations over the years and he promptly decides to purchase it, since Packard owned the residence and it is now for sale. He also makes a discovery in the house's basement: a hidden vault filled with thousands of pictures of a beautiful young woman. Along with his girlfriend Jennifer, Coltrane begins to try to discover who the beautiful woman was and finds himself enmeshed in a deadly web of deceit and treachery. It is to be mentioned that Georgia O'Keeffe was a renowned American artist, and Alfred Stieglitz a famous photographer. However, Randolph Packard and Rebecca Chance are unfortunately fictional characters.
3096137	/m/08r49v	The Number Devil	Hans Magnus Enzensberger	1998	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Robert is a young boy who suffers from mathematical anxiety due to his boredom in school. He also experiences recurring dreams—including falling down an endless slide or being eaten by a giant fish—but is interrupted from this sleep habit one night by a small devilesque creature who introduces himself as the Number Devil. Although there are many Number Devils (from Number Heaven), Robert only knows him as the Number Devil before learning of his actual name, Teplotaxl, later in the story. Over the course of twelve dreams, the Number Devil teaches Robert mathematical principles. On the first night, the Number Devil appears to Robert in an oversized world and introduces the number one. The next night, the Number Devil emerges in a forest of trees shaped like "ones" and explains the necessity of the number zero, negative numbers, and introduces hopping, a fictional term to describe exponentiation. On the third night, the Number Devil brings Robert to a cave and reveals how prima-donna numbers (prime numbers) can only be divided by themselves and one without a remainder. Later, on the fourth night, the Number Devil teaches Robert about rutabagas, another fictional term to depict square roots, at a beach. For a time after the fourth night, Robert cannot find the Number Devil in his dreams; later, however, on the fifth night, Robert finds himself at a desert where the Number Devil teaches him about triangular numbers through the use of coconuts. On the sixth night, the Number Devil teaches Robert about the natural occurrence of Fibonacci numbers, which the Number Devil shortens to Bonacci numbers, by counting brown and white rabbits as they reproduce multiple times. By this dream, Robert's mother has noticed a visible change in Robert's mathematical interest, and Robert begins going to sleep earlier to encounter the Number Devil. The seventh night brings Robert to a bare, white room, where the Number Devil presents Pascal's triangle and the patterns that the triangular array displays. On the eighth night, Robert is brought to his classroom at school. The Number Devil arranges Robert's classmates in multiple ways, teaches him about permutations, and what the Number Devil calls vroom numbers (factorials). On the ninth night, Robert dreams he is in bed, suffering from the flu, when the Number Devil appears next to him. The Number Devil teaches Robert about natural numbers, which the Number Devil calls ordinary numbers, the unusual characteristics of infinite, and infinite series. Robert finds himself at the North Pole, where the Number Devil introduces irrational numbers (unreasonable numbers), as well as aspects of Euclidian geometry, such as vertices (dots) and edges (lines). By the eleventh night, Robert has shown considerable increased interest in mathematics, but questions its validity, to which the Number Devil introduces the concept of mathematical proofs, ending with the Number Devil showing Robert a complicated proof of basic arithmetic. On the twelfth night, Robert and the Number Devil receive an invitation (which names the Number Devil as Teplotaxl) to Number Heaven, as Robert's time with the Number Devil has finished. At Number Heaven, Robert learns of imaginary numbers, which Teplotaxl describes as imaginative numbers, as well as the Klein bottle. Walking through Number Heaven, Teplotaxl introduces Robert to various famous mathematicians, such as Fibonacci, whom Teplotaxl calls Bonacci, and George Cantor, or Professor Singer. The book ends with Robert in class using his newfound mathematical knowledge.
3097394	/m/08r72k	It's Not the End of the World	Judy Blume	1972	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Karen's world seems to be crumbling before her eyes. She is led to believe that marriage only causes heartache and pain, and so she decides that she will never get marry. Just before she entered sixth grade, she was overjoyed that she was placed in the class of a very nice teacher that she desperately wanted to have; her hopes were shattered when she discovered that the teacher got married the summer before and has turned into a "witch." Her parents act like they do not love each other anymore; the only way that they communicate is by arguing and fighting over every possible situation. Eventually, her father moves out of the family's house. When he announces his plans to go to Las Vegas to file for divorce, her mother is very happy. Karen's brother Jeff runs away after he finds out about his father going to Las Vegas. Their father stays home to find Jeff, so the father is unable to go to Las Vegas. Karen tries every possible way to stop the divorce from happening, including sending anniversary cards and feigning illness. Karen grades the days in her diary and only rarely does the day get an A+. At the end there is the possibility that things might be getting better even though she does not succeed in getting her parents to remarry. Next, Karen's older brother Jeff has a fight with his mother in a restaurant and runs away. Everyone including the police get involved, but after a little while Jeff comes back on his own. Then to make things worse Karen's mother announces that they are moving. Karen tries to see things in a better way and tries to make the best of things and finally has a B+ day.
3098466	/m/08r955	Gravity Dreams		2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set in the distant future of the year 4512, wherein humans have achieved spaceflight faster than the speed of light, along with nanotechnology, Gravity Dreams centers itself around its main character, Tyndel. He was raised in Dorcha, whose culture uses the philosophy of Dzin as a means of social control. Dzin preaches that what you see is, and not to ask questions that a scientist normally would—a rock is therefore it exists, the clouds are therefore they exist. Tyndel is a master of Dzin. One day he is attacked and infected with nanites. This brands him as a 'Demon' because Dorcha has rejected technology, seeing it as the cause of a major ecological collapse centuries before. After escaping the prison that he is placed in, Tyndel returns to his wife, and sees her killed by the people who he thought were meant to protect her. After effecting his revenge by killing the man who infected him with the nanites, Tyndel flees north to the "Demon Nation" of Rykasha, which still retains high technology and uses nanites. He is taken to a medical facility after experiencing weird lights across his vision. Here he is told that he was infected with a very ancient strain of nanites that would have killed him. They are replaced with more balanced nanites adjusted to his system. He is introduced to his handler Cerrelle who explains to him that it is her duty to help him adjust to their society and become a productive citizen so that he can repay the debt he now owes for their help. Tyndel, however, is riddled with guilt over his wife's death and sees many of her attributes in Cerrelle. He also believes the system should care for him, even though he knows that on a social level that is not possible. He rejects and pushes everything being offered to him away, even as he slowly learns more about the world that he has found himself in—one that clashes with the views that have been sowed into him by his training. At the same time Cerrelle forces him to question how Dzin is used to prevent development, and why its teachings oppose nanite technology. Tyndel is meant to start training as a web jockey—one of those who are able to pilot ships through the "web" which allows faster-than-light travel. He rejects this position, much like a spoiled child, and is instead shipped off to Omega Eridiani, where he spends three years as a low level tech. This places him extremely low in the social ladder of Rykasha. Cerrelle attempts to entice him back and the two have a small fight over what he truly wants. He also gets involved with a fellow tech and after she dies in an accident, Tyndel begins to question much of what he has been doing. He requests to go back to web-jockey training and is accepted. Tyndel undergoes extreme physical training to condition his body to peak levels. He also repairs the relationship with Cerrelle. At this time he again begins to see the distorted vision that he saw when first infected. Eventually he is further enhanced by nanites, so that he may link with the Web Needles, the name given to the faster than light capable ships that the "Demons" use. After a further year of training in space he is made a web jockey. Tyndel hears a voice asking him questions while he is in the web, one that points out some answers to his questions. It is an entity called Engee, which tells him that it requires his consciousness to act as an observation platform for it in a reverse-energy universe. Tyndel accepts and is sent through, learning that Engee is a group of nanites created by the 'Ancients' of Earth before the devastation, and that Engee is attempting to prevent the universe from completing its purpose by replacing the amount of information lost by the expansion of the universe with matter from another universe. After doing as asked, Tyndel returns to Earth and explains what has happened. The Demons act as though it is the end of their society, however Tyndel states that they should just trade with the station of 'followers' because they have some technology that the Demons do not, such as gravity control. He returns to Cerrelle and explains that he and his children will no longer require the nanite treatments as Engee has made them part of his genetics. The Book ends with Tyndel returning to Dorcha to reflect on the past before returning once more to what he now knows as his home in the north.
3098469	/m/08r95w	The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus	L. Frank Baum	1902	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Santa Claus, as a baby is found in the Forest of Burzee by Ak: Master Woodsman of the World, and placed in the care of the lioness, Shiegra. The Wood Nymph, Necile, breaks the law of the forest and takes the baby because she desires to raise a child of her own as mortals do, convincing Ak that since he made the law, he can allow an exception. Necile calls him Claus, meaning "little one" in the old Burzee language, but Queen Zurline gives him the more formal name Neclaus, "Necile's Little One" (According to a footnote "Nicholas" is an erroneous name based on common convention). He is educated by the immortals of the Forest, including: * The Fairies who watch over humans * The Wood Nymphs who watch over trees * The Gnomes who watch over rocks * The Knooks, who watch over animals * Ryls who watch over flowers * Sleep Fays who bring sleep to the world * Light Elves * Sound Imps * Wind Demons * Water Spirits Upon reaching young adulthood, Ak decides it is time for Claus to see how other mortals live. He sees war, brutality, poverty, child neglect and child abuse and is frustrated by mortals' very existence. Ak encourages him not to shy away from the mortals, because he is one, and must learn to live among them, as he cannot reside in Burzee as an adult. He settles in the nearby Laughing Valley of Hohaho, where the immortals regularly visit and assist him, and Necile gives him a little cat named Blinky. He becomes well known for his kind acts toward children. Once a boy named Weekum gets lost in the snow, and aware of Claus's kindness to children, tries to make it to his house, but collapses before he can make it. Claus finds him and gets him inside. When Weekum regains consciousness, he meets Blinky, and wishes he could have a cat, but there is no money to take care of one. Claus happened to have been carving an image of Blinky to pass the time, so when Weekum wakes from further rest, Claus presents him with the finished carving, calling it a "toy". Soon, the immortals begin assisting him, the Ryls coloring the toys with their infinite paint pots (the first toy was not colored). After Little Mayrie becomes frightened by a toy of Shiegra, he vows not to make toys of wild predators. When he makes a clay figure reminiscent of Necile, he proclaims it a "dolly" (in a typically Baumian reversal, "doll" resulted when children shortened the name). Claus presents the first one to Bessie Blithesome, daughter of the Lord of Lerd, after consulting with Necile and the Queen of the Fairies about whether he should give toys to wealthy children. Says the Queen: whether it be rich or poor, a child's longings for pretty playthings are but natural. Rich Bessie's heart may suffer as much grief as poor Mayrie's; she can be just as lonely and discontented, and just as gay and happy. I think, friend Claus, it is your duty to make all little ones glad, whether they chance to live in palaces or in cottages. He frequently tells children stories of his friends among the immortals, albeit with alterations to protect their anonymity, and coins the term &#34;dolly&#34; to avoid saying &#34;Necile&#34;. The Awgwas, evil beings who can turn invisible, steal the toys that Claus is giving to the children, because the toys are preventing the children from misbehaving. This leads to Claus making his journeys by night and descending through chimneys when he is unable to enter the locked doors. The Awgwas are crafty and capable of becoming invisible. They thwart so many of Claus&#39;s deliveries that Ak declares war upon them. With the aid of 300 Asiatic Dragons, Three-Eyed Giants of Tatary, Goozzle-Goblins, and Black Demons from Patalonia, the Awgwas believe their might superior to that of the immortals, but the wands of the immortals can turn the evil ones&#39; powers against them, and all are destroyed in their attempts to use them on the immortals. Claus is not present for any of the battle. When it is concluded, Ak tells him simply, &#34;The Awgwas have perished.&#34; As his journeys continue, Claus is aided by two deer named Glossie and Flossie, who cart his sleigh full of toys. With their aid, he reaches the dominions of the Gnome King, who wants toys for his children, but does not believe in the concept of gifts, so he trades a string of sleigh bells for each toy given by Claus. Claus gathers eight more reindeer, as they become called: Racer, Pacer, Fearless, Peerless, Ready, Steady, Feckless, and Speckless, and trades enough toys with the Gnome King to get a string of bells for each one. The ten reindeer working together can make such huge leaps through snow fields that it is almost like flying, though they never actually fly. Wil Knook, guardian of the deer, is not pleased with Claus taking them out each night, and demands a stop. Ak arbitrates their disagreement, and concludes that since the reindeer clearly enjoy helping Claus, that one trip a year is acceptable, and gives Wil Knook the privilege of choosing which day. Wil decides upon Christmas Day, being two weeks away from the hearing, believing that will mean a year without taking the reindeer from their homes, for he fears if they are hurt it will mean he has shirked his responsibility. The Fairies, however, find the hoards of toys the Awgwas stole and bring them back to Claus, allowing Claus&#39;s first Christmas to proceed in spite of Wil Knook. As his fame spread far and wide, he became recognized as a saint, earning the title &#34;Santa&#34; (&#34;Saint&#34; in most Romance languages). Rumors Claus would have disagreed with say that naughtiness will make him stop bringing toys, but Claus "brought toys to the children because they were little and helpless, and because he loved them. He knew that the best of children were sometimes naughty, and that the naughty ones were often good. It is the way with children, the world over, and he would not have changed their natures had he possessed the power to do so. "And that is how our Claus became Santa Claus. It is possible for any man, by good deeds, to enshrine himself as a Saint in the hearts of the people." Claus sees stockings placed by the fire to dry are a good place for his surprises, but when he finds a family (sometimes taken to be Native Americans, sometimes caricatures of the same) living in a tent with no fireplaces and very little of their own, he lops the top off a small tree and places the gifts on the branches of the trees just outside the tent. Once Claus is in his 60s, the Immortals realize he is near the end of his life. A council, headed by Ak: Master Woodsman of the World, Bo: Master Mariner of the World, and Kern: Master Husbandman of the World, gathers together the Gnome King, the Queen of the Water Spirits, the King of the Wind Demons, the King of the Ryls, the King of the Knooks, the King of the Sound Imps, the King of the Sleep Fays, the Fairy Queen, Queen Zurline of the Wood Nymphs, and the King of the Light Elves with the Princes Flash and Twilight to decide the fate of Santa Claus. After much debate, the immortals decide that using the Mantle of Immortality on Santa Claus is more appropriate than continuing to wait for someone more worthy, and he is granted immortality just as the Spirit of Death comes for him. At the end of the book, the immortal Santa Claus takes on four special deputies, Wisk the Fairy, Peter the Knook, Kilter the Pixie, and Nuter the Ryl. Baum&#39;s short follow-up, &#34;A Kidnapped Santa Claus&#34;, further develops his relationship with his deputies, who must work in his place when Claus is captured by five Daemons.
3098692	/m/08r9q0	Immortal Coil				 When a newly-developed android developed by Starfleet is destroyed, Lieutenant Commander Data helps investigate the incident and who is responsible. During the course of his search he discovers he is not as unique as he once believed. During the run of the original Star Trek series many other robots and androids were seen, yet Data is often referred to as the only android in existence during the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Immortal Coil explains what happened to those other robots and androids, and how Data fits into their histories. The story references several previously-seen artificial intelligences and characters: * Exocomps from the TNG episode "The Quality of Life" * Androids from the TOS episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" * The M5 computer from the TOS episode "The Ultimate Computer" * Flint and Reyna from the TOS episode "Requiem for Methuselah" * Doctor Ira Graves from the TNG episode "The Schizoid Man" * Commander Bruce Maddox from the TNG episode "The Measure of a Man" * Dr. Noonien Soong, Data's creator, first seen in the TNG episode "Brothers"
3098707	/m/08r9rd	Ex Machina				 The plot concerns several crew members' efforts to deal with the aftereffects of the V'Ger entity and the long-term ripples of overthrowing a computer intelligence on Yonada so many years ago.
3098774	/m/08r9tw	Paste	Henry James	1899-12		 After the death of her aunt, the protagonist Charlotte and her cousin, her aunt’s stepson Arthur Prime, find a tin of imitation jewelry which includes a string of pearls. Charlotte is immediately fascinated with the pearls, and wonders if they could be a gift from when her aunt was an actress. Arthur disputes this and is insulted at the thought of some gentleman other than his father giving his stepmother such a gift. Charlotte quickly apologizes and agrees that the pearls could be nothing more than paste. With Arthur’s enthusiastic approval, she keeps the jewelry for the memory of her aunt. When Charlotte returns to her governess' job, her friend, Mrs. Guy, asks her if she has anything to add color to her dress for an upcoming party. When Charlotte shows Mrs. Guy the jewelry, she too becomes fascinated with the string of pearls, insisting that they are genuine. Mrs. Guy wears the string to the party; and when Charlotte finds out that everyone believed that they were real, she insists that they must be returned to her cousin. Mrs. Guy claims that it was Arthur's foolishness to have given away the necklace, and that Charlotte should have no guilt in keeping it. However, Charlotte decides to return the pearls to her cousin, who still refuses to consider that the pearls could be real. A month later Mrs. Guy shows her a wonderful string of pearls, telling Charlotte that they are the same ones that Charlotte had inherited from her aunt. Charlotte is surprised because Arthur claimed he had shattered them, when in fact he had sold them to the store where Mrs. Guy bought them.
3099243	/m/08rbp5	Maggie: A Girl of the Streets	Stephen Crane			 The story opens with Jimmie, at this point a young boy, trying to fight a gang of boys from an opposing neighborhood all by himself. He is saved by his friend, Pete, and comes home to his sister Maggie, his toddling brother Tommie, his brutal and drunken father and mother, Mary Johnson. The parents terrify the children until they are shuddering in the corner. Years pass, the father and Tommie die, and Jimmie hardens into a sneering, aggressive, cynical youth. He gets a job as a teamster, having no regard for anyone but firetrucks who would run him down. Maggie begins to work in a shirt factory, but her attempts to improve her life are undermined by her mother's drunken rages. Maggie begins to date Jimmie's friend Pete, who has a job as a bartender and seems a very fine fellow, convinced that he will help her escape the life she leads. He takes her to the theater and the museum. One night Jimmie and Mary accuse Maggie of "Goin to deh devil", essentially kicking her out of the tenement, throwing her lot in with Pete. Jimmie goes to Pete's bar and picks a fight with him (even though he himself has ruined other boys' sisters). As the neighbors continue to talk about Maggie, Jimmie and Mary decide to join them in badmouthing her instead of defending her. Later, Nellie, a "woman of brilliance and audacity" convinces Pete to leave Maggie, whom she calls "a little pale thing with no spirit." Thus abandoned, Maggie tries to return home but is rejected by her mother and scorned by the entire tenement. In a later scene, a prostitute, implied to be Maggie, wanders the streets, moving into progressively worse neighborhoods until, reaching the river, she is followed by a grotesque and shabby man. The next scene shows Pete drinking in a saloon with six fashionable women "of brilliance and audacity." He passes out, whereupon one, possibly Nellie, takes his money. In the final chapter, Jimmie tells his mother that Maggie is dead. The mother exclaims, ironically, as the neighbors comfort her, "I'll forgive her!"
3100266	/m/08rf16	Aunt Phillis's Cabin	Seth Eastman		{"/m/0276pxr": "Social novel"}	 The story is set in unnamed rural town in Virginia, which is frequented by several plantation owners living around it. The town relies on trade from the cotton plantations for its economy. Understanding this, the plantation owners, in contrast to their neighbors in surrounding towns, have adopted a benign approach towards their slaves to keep them peaceful and assure the safety of the town. Several characters in and around the town are introduced throughout the story, demonstrating how this process works and the delicate balance of such a process in action.
3102550	/m/08rklt	The People of Sparks	Jeanne DuPrau		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Having to leave from living in an underground city for over 200 years, the 417 refugees of the city of Ember can't go back and have no idea how to survive on the surface. Wandering for days, exhausted and hungry, they come across the village of Sparks. The people of this small village reluctantly agree to take in the refugees for 6 months, just long enough to teach them to survive on their own. They are allowed to stay in an old hotel, the Pioneer Hotel, which was once grand but has now fallen into disrepair. Most of the rooms have been picked clean of furniture prior to their arrival, making it necessary for the people of Ember to sleep on the floor. There are only 75 rooms, which averages 5 to 6 people a room. There is not enough food for everybody in Sparks, leaving a disaster for both the people of Sparks and the Emberites. The starving Emberites don't seem to know anything about the surface, and the villagers soon begin to resent having to take care of them. Lina Mayfleet, Poppy Mayfleet and Mrs. Murdo are told to live at the doctor's house, where there is a whiny boy named Torren Crane. As tensions mount a mysterious series of acts of vandalism against the people of Ember heightens the anger on both sides, until conflict seems inevitable. The people of Ember are growing restless and the people of Sparks want to get rid of them, as they are not being very civil to each other. Soon the food the Emberites are provided with is more and more unpleasant. The Emberites are unwelcome and they know it. The Emberites are told that at the end of six months they will have to leave and start their own civilization in the Empty Lands. Meanwhile, Lina leaves with a roamer who travels to old cities to find treasure, hoping to find the city she has been dreaming of and drawing. There she finds not a beautiful city like she expected, but a crumbling metropolis. She arrives back to Sparks disappointed. The climax occurs when Sparks' town hall catches on fire. The Emberites watch passively as the people of Sparks try to save the building, most hoping the building will burn down. But Lina decides to help the people of Sparks, upon which most of the Emberites decide to pitch in and they all succeed in putting out the fire. As this happens, Doon Harrow sees that Torren is trapped in the burning tree by the building, rushes in, and bravely saves him before he catches on fire. This act turns around the spiral of resentment and it is discovered that it was in fact a person belonging to the people of Ember, Tick Hassler, who perpetrated the acts of vandalism against the people of Ember. This results in a bright future for both the people of Ember and the people of Sparks, symbolized by Doon's rediscovery of electrical currents, partly due to a school science book describing how to create one, and Torren's light bulb, given to him by his older roamer brother, Caspar Crane.
3103145	/m/08rlxk	Luna: A Novel			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Alba is out running one day when she is kidnapped by a psychiatrist and his patient. They remove Alba to an estate in rural France where she is forced to participate in the patient's entomological fantasies. When Alba goes missing, her adult companion Serge is distraught. He hatches a plot to save her which involves the theft of multiple Rolls-Royces. When a painter comes to the estate to paint Alba in a dragonfly costume, Alba befriends him. Alba manages to escape the estate, but she finds herself traumatized, broke, and lost, with criminals trailing her closely. Eventually Alba and Serge are reunited.
3103639	/m/08rmwf	A Nation of Immigrants	John F. Kennedy	1964	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book contains a short history of immigration in the United States beginning in colonial America, an analysis of the importance immigration has played in American history, and John F. Kennedy's proposals for the liberalization of immigration law.
3104028	/m/08rnns	The Secret Sharer	Robert Silverberg	1912	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 *Nameless Captain (Narrator) *Leggatt *Captain Archbold (Skipper of the Sephora) *The Second Mate *The Chief Mate *The Steward ---- The story takes place at sea, near the Gulf of Siam, and is told from the perspective of a young nameless Captain. The captain is unfamiliar with both his ship and his crew, having only joined their company a fortnight earlier. The Captain is furthermore unsure of himself, questioning his ability to fulfill the role of such an authoritative figure. These themes are explored through symbols throughout the novella. The captain soon encounters a naked swimmer holding onto the side ladder of the ship while he is alone at night on look-out duty. He helps the mysterious swimmer onto the boat and hides him in his cabin without the rest of the crew's knowledge. He then learns of the mysterious swimmer's past; his name is Leggatt, and he swam away from a nearby ship, called the Sephora, where, as chief mate, he killed another crew member for insolence during a storm. The captain keeps Leggatt hidden in his quarters, away from the suspicious crew members and a visit from the skipper of the Sephora. Eventually the Captain allows Leggatt to escape by bringing the ship perilously close to land for Leggatt to swim away safely, though this risky sailing maneuver nearly sends the ship into the rocks, testing the Captain's seamanship. He succeeds and leads the ship away.
3104353	/m/08rpd9	The Spellcoats	Diana Wynne Jones	1979-04-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tanaqui, the narrator, is a young woman living in a small town called Shelling, which lies beside the Great River. She and her four siblings look different from the rest of the townsfolk, and instead of worshiping the River, their family has three idols—the so-called Undying. When the country is invaded by the Heathens (who are modeled after Europeans and are the ancestors of the people of Dalemark in the other three novels) who look like them, Tanaqui and her siblings flee to avoid being killed by the people of their own village. Tanaqui's narration in The Spellcoats is not her diary, nor is it being "told" as many stories are. Rather, Tanaqui is weaving the story into a pair of "spellcoats" that she is making. The first spellcoat tells of how the five siblings (Gull, Robin, Hern, Tanaqui and Duck) traveled downriver on their boat. First, they encounter the mysterious magician Tanamil, then the Heathen king Kars Adon, and finally, at the sea, the evil mage Kankredin, whose aim is to take over the power of the river by taking over the five children's souls. In the middle of this Gull was bound like the One, Tanamil (Younger Amil or the young one) and the Lady. The second spellcoat tells how, after their escape from Kankredin, the five siblings are captured by their own King, "the king of the natives" (who are modeled after Native Americans and Hawaiians and are the ancestors of the Holy Islanders in Drowned Ammet) who has lost his kingdom and is drifting with the remains of his army trying to avoid the Heathens. The King keeps the children in his company because he needs one of the children's idols—the powerful One—to assist him in his pursuits. As Tanaqui continues to weave during her travel upriver with the King, she realizes that the spellcoats that Kankredin and his mages wore gave them the powers that were woven into their spellcoats. She becomes convinced that the words woven into her spellcoats will have the power to defeat Kankredin. Realizing that Tanaqui is the only one able to stop Kankredin and his mages with her weaving, her elder brother Hern convinces the combined forces of their own people and the Heathens to make a stand at the headwaters of the Great River, and hold off Kankredin while Tanaqui completes her second spellcoat. Tanaqui weaves frantically to catch up to her "present," and finally she completes her spellcoat with a waking vision she experiences. In this vision, their eldest family idol called The One rises up, crushes Kankredin, and shakes the land into a new shape. We do not find out from Tanaqui's narration if she succeeds or fails, because she must finish the spellcoat and put it on the idol before the spellcoat's woven spell can take effect. In an epilogue written by Elthorar Ansdaughter, Keeper of Antiquities, we learn that the spellcoats were discovered hundreds of years later, during the approximate time period of Drowned Ammet and Cart and Cwidder, in the mountains of North Dalemark near Hannart. Elthorar notes the close correspondence between various figures in the stories and their apparent counterparts in the legends and folktales of the people of Dalemark. She also tries and fails to determine the places described, leading the reader to conclude that Tanaqui's vision came to pass, Kankredin was defeated, and The One reshaped the land. Like the other three novels of the Dalemark Quartet, The Spellcoats is a story about a physical journey, during which revelations occur. As in the other three books, the presence of magic is not readily apparent at its beginning, but slowly creeps into the story.
3105149	/m/08rr4h	Crossfire	Anna Husson Isozaki		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is about a girl named Junko Aoki (青木淳子 Aoki Junko), who has the psychokinetic power of pyrokinesis. She decides to kill criminals in order to make her world better. When Junko sets off to rescue a woman kidnapped by juvenile delinquents, the arson division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and a secretive vigilante group that wants to recruit her, pursue her. Chikako Ishizu (石津ちか子 Ishizu Chikako), a policewoman, is astounded by Junko Aoki's case as she digs deeper into it.
3109733	/m/08s06b	A Stranger Is Watching	Mary Higgins Clark		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The main characters in the novel are Steve Peterson, whose wife Nina was murdered two years before, his six-year-old son Neil, who witnessed the murder, and Sharon Martin, a young journalist who befriends them both. The novel opens as Steve and Sharon debate capital punishment. A young man named Ronald Thompson has been sentenced to death for Nina's murder. Sharon is against the death penalty and tries to save Thompson. Unknown to them, Thompson is actually innocent. The real killer is a psychopath named August Rommel Taggart, Arty for short. He calls himself Foxy because General Rommel was called the desert fox. He kidnaps Sharon and Neil, hiding them under New York's famed Grand Central Station. The rest of the novel describes the race against time to save the three innocent victims.
3111401	/m/08s3c0	The Nitrogen Fix	Hal Clement	1980-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The family is allied with an alien, an octopus-like being who can survive in the new atmosphere. Humans must live in shelters with oxygen-generating plants, or use suitable breathing equipment. Some of Earth's original life forms have mutated to survive in the changed atmosphere. Since almost no metals can exist in the corrosive atmosphere, any technology is based on ceramics or glass. Some humans are suspicious of the aliens, and even blame them for the change to the atmosphere, since they seem to be adapted for it. The family have an almost fatal encounter with a group of such people, who are holding another alien hostage. However, the two aliens are able to pool memories biochemically, so that they become the same personality in two bodies. Their combined knowledge and skills help the humans to escape. At the end the aliens reveal that they are basically tourists or scientists, and they travel from one system to another over thousands of years. Atmospheres "mature" when the nitrogen absorbs all the oxygen, the cause being the inevitable evolution of bacteria that use gold to catalyze the reaction. It is hinted, but not stated outright, that human mining of gold triggered this reaction.
3111640	/m/08s3rm	Rogue Planet	Greg Bear		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place a few years after the events of The Phantom Menace. Young Anakin Skywalker chafes under his new life as a Jedi apprentice. He sneaks away from Obi-Wan Kenobi to participate in and gamble on deadly flying games. This is interrupted by a Blood Carver assassin. The Jedi Council decides Anakin would be best served to send him with Obi-Wan to investigate the remote world of Zonama Sekot, a world that produces organic spacecraft. A Jedi has gone missing on Sekot. A battle squadron pursues the two Jedi; it is headed by a weapons designer that has already blueprinted the Death Star. Commander Tarkin, of the future Grand Moff Tarkin becomes involved as well. Blood Carver assassins appear again, the Jedi grow their own ship and no less than two fleets threaten the planet.
3111831	/m/08s44w	Tea from an Empty Cup	Pat Cadigan	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tea From an Empty Cup is at its core a tightly plotted detective novel. The story revolves around near mythical Japan, which has been destroyed in a vaguely described natural cataclysm several decades before the story opens. The generation that remembers "Old Japan" appears to have passed on. A virtual version of Japan has become a sort of holy grail for a core group of artificial reality addicts. Artificial Reality, or AR, like "post-apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty" has become immensely popular in an increasingly dreary overcrowded world, not just as a game, but as a way of life. Written in 1998, the world described bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the amount of time spent online by generations who have grown up with the Internet as part of the fabric of their existence. AR is not just a way of life, it turns out, but also of death, as homicide detective Dore Konstantin discovers when she is called upon to investigate the death of a young man in an artificial reality parlour (think video arcade with a full wired body suit) and discovers he died the same way in the game as in reality. She therefore decides to investigate this young man's life within the artificial realities he frequented, even though the legal precedents already established mean that nothing she discovers is admissible as evidence because "Everything is a Lie" in AR. In the process she stumbles onto something far more complicated then a mere murder case. In Tea from an Empty Cups interwoven storyline, Yuki, a young ethnically Japanese woman is desperately looking for her boyfriend Tom, whom she fears has taken up with a mysterious and notorious woman named Joy Flower, becoming one of "Joy's Boyz", about whom a lot of nasty rumours circulate. When Yuki seeks Joy Flower out, she immediatedly is taken into Joy's inner circle, becoming her personal assistant, which leads her, like Konstantin, into a voyage of discovery towards the central mystery of the book.
3112463	/m/08s5lr	Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter	Michael Reaves		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After years of waiting in the shadows, Darth Sidious is taking the first step in his master plan to destroy the Jedi Order and take over the galaxy. He meets secretly with his Neimoidian contacts in the Trade Federation to finalize details in the plan to blockade the planet Naboo. But one member of the delegation is missing, and Sidious does not need his Force-honed instincts to suspect betrayal. He orders his apprentice, Darth Maul, to hunt the traitor Hath Monchar down. Maul completes this task by decapitating Monchar with his double-bladed lightsaber, but learns from Monchar that he had also recorded proof of the Sith's manipulation of the Naboo blockade on a holocron, to sell for profit. A suicidal attack by a Trade Federation-hired bounty hunter forces Maul to retreat before claiming the holocron, making an explosion which kills the bounty hunter, and by the time he returns to its hiding place, the holocron is in the possession of its intended purchaser, a Corellian con man named Lorn Pavan. Pavan, although at first purely motivated by money and deeply resentful of the Jedi for taking his son away from him, realizes the nature of the information and seeks to take it to the Jedi Temple. Maul, for his part, is ordered by Sidious to not only retrieve the holocron, but kill Lorn, his droid partner I-Five, and anyone else who might have knowledge of the information. Meanwhile, a Jedi Padawan named Darsha Assant is faced with the Jedi Trials to finally become a full-fledged Jedi Knight by saving Oolth the Fondorian, a Black Sun member, and get some information out of him of Black Sun's destruction (which had been caused by Maul in the previous novel Darth Maul: Saboteur). Darsha saves Oolth from a gang in one of the lower levels of Coruscant, but when she and the Black Sun member zip-line toward the top of a building, Darsha and Oolth are attacked by hawk-bats. Eventually, the two go high enough where the hawk-bats force Darsha to release Oolth and he falls to his death on the lower levels. Lorn and I-Five meet up with Yanth the Hutt, a crime lord in one of the lower levels in Coruscant, to get money out of the deal, but Maul arrives to kill Yanth by impaling one of his lightsaber blades into him and murders his bodyguards. This gives Lorn and I-Five the opportunity to escape. Jedi Master Anoon Bondara and his padawan, Darsha Assant, who are on a mission related to the Black Sun crime syndicate, find Lorn and I-Five. The two Jedi agree to escort Lorn and I-Five to the Temple, but the foursome are attacked by Maul, leading up to a battle on the top of a building. Bondara manages to nearly kill Maul at the cost of his own life, leaving Lorn, I-Five, and Darsha to work their way to the Temple from the underground caverns of Coruscant, while Bondara is killed in an explosion that also nearly kills Maul. Maul, however, is not seriously wounded, and immediately begins tracking the three again. After escaping various dangers of Coruscant's subterranean levels, Lorn, Darsha and I-Five are once again set upon by Maul, who is intent on fulfilling his mission. Darsha, realizing that she cannot defeat Maul, draws out their duel long enough for I-Five to hastily repair a carbonite-freezing unit and seal Lorn and the droid inside it. Darsha plunges her lightsaber into a pile of volatile gas canisters, causing an explosion that Maul barely escapes and kills Darsha. Upon surveying the scene, Maul feels no trace of Lorn in the Force, not realizing that the carbonite hibernation has made his lifeforce all but undetectable. An automatic timer frees Lorn from hibernation, and he decides to go after Maul on his own to try to retrieve the holocron. When I-Five attempts to come along, Lorn deactivates him and asks a friend to take the droid, who knows about the blockade, to the Jedi Temple. Lorn's friend, however, decides to keep I-Five for himself - after giving the droid a memory wipe. Lorn, unaware of this, uses a piece from the body of a subterranean creature to block his presence in the Force, and follows Maul to a Republic space station. Lorn sneaks up on and stuns Maul momentarily before Maul awakens and strikes out, severing Lorn's right hand and pursuing him through the station's service tubes. Lorn barely makes it into the public area of the station where Maul cannot follow, and unwittingly gives the holocron to Senator Palpatine of Naboo, not realizing the senator's true identity is Maul's Sith Master, Darth Sidious. After a brief period of recovery, Lorn starts to leave his quarters, only to be confronted by Maul one final time. Maul by this point considers Lorn a worthy opponent and kills him quickly, then leaves, his task completed.
3112773	/m/08s699	The Technicolor Time Machine	Harry Harrison	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Barney Hendrickson is a mediocre movie-maker with no prospects, and his employer, Climactic Studios, is about to go out of business, particularly as the owner, L M Greenspan has systematically looted the corporation. In desperation, he drags Greenspan to see Professor Hewitt, who claims to have a time machine. Hewitt's idea of a demonstration is not Greenspan's, sending a bottle half a second into the past. Barney desperately takes over the machine, turns everything up to maximum and sends Greenspan's Cuban cigar three seconds into the future, burning out the circuitry in the process. "L M" is convinced enough to finance a replacement, under cover of a mad scientist's plot device for a horror movie. Barney aims to make a historical movie in the past, with a minimal crew, a handful of actors, and all the other parts filled by extras recruited (hopefully for wampum and beads) from the local people. His first script is Viking Columbus, about the founding of the Vinland settlement, obtained by sending Chinese-American scriptwriter Charley Chang back to a barren Precambrian Catalina Island for a month. On the first trip, they capture a Viking named Ottar in Orkney of the 11th century. With Ottar as local guide and interpreter, paid in bottles of Jack Daniel's, they move an entire sound stage into the past and begin filming. Their stars are Ruf Hawk, a narcissistic he-man, and Slithey Tove, a sex goddess. In the present the auditors from the bank are arriving in a few days, at which point they will discover the cooked books. Also, Prof. Hewitt explains that the time machine must return to the present, a moment after departing, before going to any other time. As a consequence, time used in the present day is lost forever. Barney thinks he can stay in the past as long as necessary, but following an attack by marauders shortly after their arrival, Ruf is injured and refuses to participate in the film. Then the time machine itself breaks down in the present day, taking hours to repair. Improvising desperately, Barney casts Ottar in the lead and resolves to stay in the past until all is done. They film Ottar setting sail for Vinland with an actual colonising crew, then the movie people jump, via present day Hollywood, to Newfoundland a few months later, tracking Ottar by a radio beacon on his boat. While waiting, they have a nasty encounter with the natives, whom the Vikings will call skraelings. Ottar hits the beach and digs in while the cameras roll, then the crew jumps forward a year to give the colonists time to build the settlement and stockade. They learn that Slithey, who had become smitten with Ottar, had been left behind by accident. Not only that, she has Ottar's baby son on her hip. They continue filming, even during a mass attack by skraelings, which is repelled with tear gas and Viking axes. Shooting the final scenes, Barney is triumphant - and downcast. Even with all the film shot, he still has to do a soundtrack, dub the spoken lines, and edit the final cut. There is no time in the future to do this, and no equipment in the past. All seems lost. Barney is all set to walk into Greenspan's office empty-handed, when he is stopped by a surprise visitor - a future version of himself, carrying a finished copy of Viking Columbus and sporting a bandaged left hand. He reassures Barney #1 that all he has to do is return to the past and complete Viking Columbus, and that everything will work out in the end. Barney #2 then walks into Greenspan's office with the completed film, leaving Barney #1 to wonder about what happened to his hand. Filled with confidence, Barney #1 heeds his counterpart's advice and returns to Vinland to finish the film. Along the way, however, he gets a wood sliver in his hand, and in order to mess with himself, he demands a huge bandage, over which he pours mercurochrome to make it look like blood. With the movie a smash hit, Climactic's future is assured. Only one puzzle remains. The Vikings went to Vinland, but where did the real settlers land? The Norse sagas say that the expedition was led by Thorfinn Karlsefni, but there was no sign of him. Then Ottar, overhearing, reveals that his formal name is indeed Thorfinn Karlsefni. Shocked, Barney and Hewitt realize that the colony was founded because they decided to make a movie about founding the colony. Not only that, but Slithey, whose character in the movie was named "Gudrid", has also entered history as the mother of her son, whom she called "Snorey" because he snored so much. He will be known as Snorri Thorfinnsson, the ancestor of many Icelanders. The sagas also mention another important figure, Bjarni Herjólfsson. Barney Hendrickson realizes: "They wrote a part for me!" The novel ends with Greenspan planning to produce a historical film about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, shot on location in 1st Century Judea, while a horrified Barney tries to talk him out of it. This novel presents a clear use of the restricted action resolution of the Grandfather paradox. The actions of the characters can not have changed the past because the past is what their actions brought about. For example, you couldn't go back in time and kill your Grandfather because then you wouldn't be born. A curious fact which probably escapes most English readers: The company's linguist's name, "Dr. Jens Lyn", is actually the Danish name of comic book character Flash Gordon - a homage, probably, to Harrisons many Danish friends - he lived in the country for a while. References of that kind can be found in several of his books, i.e. the placename "Storhestelortby" in "Bill the galactic hero" means "City of big horse shit". The BBC produced a radio play adaption of this novel for the long-running series "Saturday Night Theatre". It was broadcast on September 5, 1981.
3113572	/m/08s7rk	Monument			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A nondescript spacer with little education named Cerne Obrien finds a cache of extremely valuable "retron crystals", but crashes on an idyllic planet before he can sell them. The planet has a single continent, inhabited by humans with a Polynesian culture. The natives live contented lives, hunting a horrific sea-creature called the koluf, which constitutes almost their entire diet. Obrien uses his surviving technology to rid the area of several pests, and eventually marries. The natives come to call him the "Langri", a title of deep respect. Obrien lives a peaceful life, watching his descendants grow up, but when he realizes he is getting old, he begins worrying about the future. Unscrupulous developers would inevitably attempt to turn it into a resort. Obrien could handle them if they arrived soon, but he cannot live forever. He has bright young people sent to him. He begins to teach them "the Plan". It is difficult to teach the non-technological natives all they need to know, as they have little concept of modern galactic society, but he manages it. His best pupil is a young man named Fornri. Even as Obrien lies dying, a developer called Wembling arrives to illegally prospect for minerals. The people, led by Fornri, put the Plan into effect. They first capture Wembling and his men, and the crews of the four scout ships sent to find Wembling. The Navy eventually arrives, official negotiations ensue, and a treaty is signed recognizing the planet under the name Langri. The people of Langri fine the Federation for illegal landings. In due course, this (and Obrien's retron crystals) allows the people of Langri to hire a law firm as specified in the Plan. Eventually Wembling realises the planet's potential. He sees to it that the record of Langri's Galactic treaty is lost and procures a charter to develop a tourist resort. The construction drives away most of the koluf, and the people begin to starve; their adaptation to the environment has eliminated their ability to digest "normal" food. The starving people of Langri fail to get a court to stop Wembling; he has a seemingly valid charter. Meantime, Wembling's niece Talitha, and his hired (and fired) anthropologist Hort form a relationship, and sympathize with the natives. They discover Obrien's wrecked craft and read the log, including his notes on the Plan; they are amazed that one man could have created such a complete and detailed scheme, including Obrien's masterstroke. Fearing to interfere with the Plan, they keep their newfound knowledge to themselves. In accordance with the Plan, the people of Langri have been secretly learning to read. After having achieved the required high literacy rate, they successfully petition for membership in the Galactic Federation. The Plan then enters its endgame: the duly formed planetary government imposes a tax rate of 1000%. Since the natives have few personal assets, they can easily afford to pay, but such an exorbitant rate would bankrupt Wembling. The developer mounts a legal challenge, but there is precedent that a government can impose any tax it wishes, as long as it is applied equally to all. Obrien knew of this obscure precedent and made it the cornerstone of the Plan. The new government of Langri plans to build schools, parks, and hospitals to benefit the people. In the short story version, it even hires Wembling, admiring his ruthless energy, if not his morals. (In the novel he departs in disgust after trying to offer the new government a deal on a hotel.)
3114677	/m/08s9v5	Higher Education	Charles Sheffield	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Since expulsion means that Rick's family will no longer be able to claim their welfare bonus, Rick begins looking for a job. One of his former teachers encourages him to get a job for the Vanguard Mining corporation, whose primary financial interest is in space mining of asteroids in the asteroid belt. The book follows his progress through an initial grueling examination period on Earth, initial training on an asteroid in a high orbit of Earth, and through an apprenticeship on another training facility in the asteroid belt. After proving himself, Rick is recruited to join a secret program to infiltrate and subvert Earth's education systems away from its current initiative-deadening pandering to the lowest common denominator.
3114705	/m/08s9xy	The Chessmen of Mars	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1922	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04chq5": "Planetary romance", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tara meets Prince Gahan of Gathol, and is initially unimpressed, viewing him as something of a popinjay. Later she takes her flier into a storm and loses control of the craft, and the storm carries her to an unfamiliar region of Barsoom. After landing and fleeing from a pack of ferocious Banths (Martian lions), she is captured by the horrific Kaldanes, who resemble large heads with small, crab-like legs. The Kaldanes have bred a symbiotic race of headless human-like creatures called Rykors, which they can attach themselves to and ride like a horse. While imprisoned, Tara manages to win over one of the Kaldanes, Ghek, with her lovely singing voice. Gahan, who has fallen in love with Tara, sets out to find her, only to find himself caught up in the same storm, and he falls overboard while attempting to rescue one of his crew. He stumbles upon Bantoom, realm of the Kaldanes, and manages to rescue Tara, and together with Ghek they flee in Tara's crippled flier. Tara doesn't recognize Gahan as the prince she met earlier, as he is worn from his ordeals and no longer dressed in his fancy clothes. In light of her earlier reaction to him, Gahan decides to keep his identity secret, and identifies himself instead as a Panthan (warrior) called Turan. The three of them manage to reach the isolated city of Manator. Gahan ventures into the city seeking food and water, but is tricked and taken prisoner by the inhabitants. Tara and Ghek are also captured. In Manator, captives are forced to a fight to the death in the arena, in a modified version of Jetan, a popular Barsoomian board game resembling Chess; the living version uses people as the game pieces on a life-sized board, with each taking of a piece being a duel to the death.
3115536	/m/08sd0j	Varjak Paw	S. F. Said	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Varjak Paw is a small Mesopotamian dark blue kitten who lives with his family in the Contessa's house on the hill. He is always made fun of because he is not a proper Mesopotamian blue. When a large gentlemen and two mysterious black cats enter the house, Varjak and his grandfather, Elder Paw, know something is wrong. The family is split apart, leaving Varjak to embark on a quest to the city for help. Using a form of secret cat martial arts called "The Way" handed down from his ancestor, the kitten must make his way through the city and overcome obstacles such as angry dogs, gangs of cats, and the mysterious "Vanishings." Varjak, whose amber eyes shun him from his family (as the color of danger), listens to his grandfather's tales of the Outside. His older brother Julius constantly bullies him. None of his family care to venture into the outside world, for they are happy and contented inside, being fed by the old woman known as the Contessa. One day, a Gentleman appears inside the house with two black cats acting in synchronized motions. The Contessa had died. He seems to take care of the cats, but when Varjak and his grandfather venture outside and his grandfather tells him stories of the mysterious Jalal the Paw, the Gentleman's two black cats kill him. Varjak runs away into the city, where he meets a black and white cat, Holly, and her best friend, a brown cat named Tam. Varjak learns of the Vanishings, the mysterious disappearances of cats off the streets. He travels with Holly and Tam. In his dreams he is visited by the strange Jalal the Paw, who teaches him of the Way, a lost form of cat martial arts. Varjak runs into a cat gang, Ginger's gang. He is immediately beaten up. When he travels into the evil Sally Bones' territory, he learns of the villain and a bit about the Way. The fight between him and the fierce white cat Sally Bones is interrupted by a dog, Cludge. Cludge knocks Varjak out, but wakes up to find that the dog meant no harm, and is even friendly. He befriends Cludge. Which surprised his friends as the dogs were known enemies to cats. Tam disappears and Varjak finds a grotesque toy cat inside a cardboard box, but it has every aspect of a real cat. He and Holly go back to his house, and his family wants Varjak to stay, but soon after Holly gets captured by the Gentleman. Varjak goes upstairs, where he finds dozens of cats inside a large cage, trapped by the Gentleman and his creepy cats. It is found that the Gentleman is taking them into a room and killing them to make toys out of them, although the methods of doing so have never been found (they come back out with glassy fake eyes and collars, with the sound boxes and mechanical movements of a doll, although they look and smell exactly like real cats). Varjak kills one of the black cats by snipping off its collar, the source of the Gentleman's power, and the other falls. The Gentleman is about to kill Varjak when Cludge jumps through the window and scares the Gentleman off. Varjak is named a hero. His family asked him to come back, but decides to live on the streets and leave his family at the house and outside he decides to start his own gang and try to defeat Sally Bones.
3116503	/m/08sgys	Rabbit Redux	John Updike	1971	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rabbit Redux finds the former high-school basketball star, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, working a dead-end job and approaching middle age in the downtrodden and fictional city of Brewer, Pennsylvania, the place of his birth. When his wife leaves him for another man, Harry and his thirteen-year-old son are at a loss, and the chaotic state of the nation circa 1969 finds its way into Harry's home. Updike's recurring themes of guilt, sex, and death are joined in Redux by racism when Harry plays host to an African-American named Skeeter, a cynical, drug-dealing Vietnam vet who engages Harry in debates about the war and race relations. Jill, a wealthy white teenager fleeing suburban Connecticut, enthralls both Harry and his son, and the four of them make a scandalous household emblematic of the Summer of Love's most confusing implications, culminating in a house fire that kills Jill. Harry and his wife are reconciled at book's end.
3116541	/m/08sh1p	High Society	Ben Elton	2002-11-07	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It also follows several other characters: *Tommy Hanson. Tommy Hanson is Britain's most successful musical artist and became famous after winning Pop Hero (ostensibly a reference to Pop Idol). He is an abuser of several drugs and narrates his story to people at his NA and AA meetings. His character is possibly inspired by Robbie Williams, whose name is mentioned several times in the novel. *Jessie. Jessie is a seventeen year-old Scottish girl who, after running away from home to London, was coerced into prostitution. The story follows her battle to escape her pimp and her battle against her drug addiction. *Commander Barry Leman a high ranking police officer who becomes obsessed with a personal quest for justice when a friend of his daughter's is horrifically sexually assaulted (and subsequently commits suicide) as a way of threatening him over his involvement with Peter Paget's campaign *Samantha Spencer, Paget's beautiful but psychologically unhinged mistress. *Sonia, a teenage drug mule imprisoned in a Thai jail.
3117333	/m/08sk25	Santorini	Alistair MacLean	1986	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While on station in the Aegean Sea under the guise of a hydrographic survey mission, the crew of Royal Navy electronic intelligence vessel HMS Ariadne witnesses two disasters at once, a mysterious strategic bomber crashing into the sea and a large pleasure yacht on fire and sinking. The plane turns out to have been loaded with nuclear weapons, and the survivors rescued from the yacht (who include a wealthy Greek tycoon) appear somehow connected with the plane's destruction. With potential saboteurs aboard, Commander Talbot and the crew of the Ariadne must raise the one activated weapon before it can explode, setting off the others by sympathetic detonation and causing the nearby volcano of Santorini to explode in a tremendous eruption which would bring on a devastating tsunami and possibly a worldwide nuclear winter. sv:Santorin
3118111	/m/08sl_r	The Dark	Marianne Curley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Arkarian is kidnapped by the Order of Chaos, who plan to weaken the Guard by erasing his birth. Isabel is determined to save him, but that means defying Lorian's orders, risking her life, and facing the underworld itself. Going through many hardships in the underworld with her friend Ethan, and brother Matt. They meet a new friend along the way ( John Wren ) but also rescuing Ethan's sister who got killed when he was a boy ( she is a ghost/spirit ) - ( a wren is a birdlike creature but still has somewhat the appearance of a human ). When rescuing Arkarian, they gain another member of the guard Dillon who was working for the Order of Chaos but came to the good side. Arkarian and Isabel realise they love each other and Arkarian saves them by opening a rift. When they return Lorian summons Isabel to a hearing and Arkarian pleas for her life and finds out Lorian is his father. At the hearing Isabel is pardonned and Lorian grants her the power to cease ageing so she and Arkarian can be together.
3121975	/m/08svkc	The Story of an Hour	Kate Chopin	1894-12-06		 The short story describes the series of emotions Louise Mallard endures after hearing of the death of her husband, who was believed to have died in a railroad disaster. Mrs. Mallard suffers from heart problems and therefore her sister attempts to inform her of the horrific news in a gentle way. Mrs. Mallard locks herself in her room to immediately mourn the loss of her husband. However, she begins to feel an unexpected sense of exhilaration. "Free! Body and soul free!" is what she believes is a benefit of his death. At the end of the story, it is made known that her husband was not involved in the railroad disaster and upon his return home Mrs. Mallard suddenly dies. The cause of her death is ambiguous and left for analysis as it can range from her known heart problems to psychological factors. We can ask ourselves if the, real reason for the death was knowing that she wouldn't be free after she sees that her husband isn't really dead.
3123415	/m/08sybn	The Last Ship	William Brinkley	1988-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is told in a first-person point of view by the ship's commanding officer, whose full name is never revealed, although it is later revealed that his first name is Thomas. The Captain is writing this history several months after the war in order to describe the USS Nathan Jamess odyssey during in the wake of the conflict's aftermath. The Captain begins by describing his ship, the USS Nathan James (DDG-80), to the reader. The ship, named after an American naval hero from World War II, is a nuclear-powered guided missile destroyer, and is armed with nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles. He then discusses the ethics of command, both of a warship and of nuclear strike forces; life aboard a United States Navy ship in the Arctic Circle; and the nature of his vessel's mission. He then recounts how, without warning, he one day received orders to carry out a nuclear strike on the Soviet city of Orel and its nearby ICBM silos. He then explains that after carrying out the mission and reporting the fact to his superiors, a reply from the U.S. Navy became hopelessly garbled halfway through the message. With one exception later in the book, this was the last official communication from the United States Navy that the Nathan James ever received. The Captain then decides to head southward into the North Sea, and thence to England, in order to re-establish contact with friendly forces. Upon steaming up the Thames to London, the ship encounters dense clouds of radioactive smoke, through which can be seen the ruins of London. The Captain then reverses course and heads for the open sea in order to escape the radiation. In the following months, the ship's crew discovers that the radioactive cloud hovers around all land masses that the Nathan James approaches, rendering them uninhabitable. The ship soon encounters a Soviet Navy ballistic missile submarine, the Pushkin, off a destroyed Gibraltar, and by common agreement the two ships rapidly establish a truce; thereafter the two commanding officers agree to a joint operation. The Pushkin, fully fueled but low on food, will attempt to reach a secret Soviet supply base in the Arctic and retrieve supplies and nuclear fuel for the Nathan James, while the U.S. Navy destroyer, relatively well-stocked with food but low on nuclear fuel, will make her way to the Pacific Ocean in search of habitable land for the two crews. The ships then part ways. As the USS Nathan James steams through the Mediterranean Sea, it encounters lifeless derelicts, inhospitable lands, and ill, wounded survivors who have made their way to the coasts, though the ship lacks the resources to offer any aid to the stricken civilians. At one point, weeks after the war, the ship does receive a message from the United States National Command Authority ordering all recipients to reply. The USS Nathan James does so, but the mysterious message simply repeats again and again, leading the Captain to believe it is an automated transmission. Based on his knowledge of the Soviet Union's targeting of North America as well as what he has seen of Europe, he, along with most of the ship's officers, concludes that the United States has simply ceased to exist and that what remains of North America is uninhabitable. He thus resolves to proceed to the Pacific Ocean by way of the Suez. At this point however, the ship's Combat Systems Officer challenges the Captain's authority. Believing that parts of North America may be habitable, he demands that the ship return to the east coast so that they can see for themselves. He further charges that the Captain is no longer in lawful command, since the U.S. Navy and the United States, by whose authority he commands the USS Nathan James, themselves no longer exist. The Combat Systems Officer thus demands a vote on the correct course of action. The Captain, angered at this mutiny, allows a vote, believing that the Combat Systems Officer has little support, and he is shocked when nearly a third of the crew side with the Combat Systems Officer. In the end, this minority demands rafts and the Captain's gig in order to sail across thousands of miles of open ocean to the United States. With a mixture of sadness and outrage, the Captain agrees, and as the mutineers depart, the USS Nathan James steams through Suez. In the following weeks, the ship travels through the East Indies, during which she experiences nuclear winter, including sub-freezing temperatures, black snow at the equator and exposure to high levels of radiation. Afterwards, the USS Nathan James reaches the remote South Pacific and, with her fuel levels down to just a few thousand miles of steaming, discovers a small, uncontaminated island. The ship's crew then establishes a community on the island, and the captain and his officers begin to wrestle with the issue of how to go about the business of beginning families. Ultimately the female sailors establish an arrangement, to which the men accede, which consists of a type of polyandry together with a prohibition on monogamy. Ultimately, most of the male sailors mate with most of the female sailors, but no pregnancies occur. Due to this, the crew begins to worry that the radiation of the nuclear winter may have rendered everyone sterile. Some time later, the Pushkin, which had lost contact with the USS Nathan James months earlier, arrives, its crew on the verge of starvation, but bearing an abundance of nuclear fuel. Now, at last, the USS Nathan James is free to explore as much of the world its crew wishes, keeping the island as its home base, without needing to economize on fuel. But at the very moment when the Captain is preparing the ship for such a voyage, a new disaster strikes; a group of sailors led by the Captain's senior officer, abhorring the remaining nuclear missiles aboard the ship, launches them without his permission. But one of the missiles accidentally detonates while in flight, triggering a chain reaction among all of the missiles, destroying the USS Nathan James and contaminating the island. The Captain, his remaining crew, and the Soviet crew immediately embark aboard the Pushkin to escape, beginning a new search for another sanctuary, eventually reaching the United States research facility McMurdo Station, in Antarctica, which contains years' worth of food and supplies. By this time, the Pushkins ballistic missiles have been jettisoned, and the resulting space rebuilt into expanded crew quarters, recreational area, and a nursery. The introduction of the Soviet crew (who were much less affected by radioactive fallout due to the superior protection offered by the submarine) into the predesigned breeding program has resulted in at least three pregnancies by the novel's end. The Pushkin has the fuel to conduct long, thorough explorations of the world. Thus it is the Soviet submarine, and not the USS Nathan James that is the "Last Ship." The novel ends on a hopeful note, as the well-provisioned survivors now prepare to rediscover the world.
3123579	/m/08syqh	The Deer and the Cauldron	Louis Cha	1969-10-24	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story centers on a witty, sly, illiterate and lazy protagonist called Wei Xiaobao, who was born to a prostitute from a brothel in Yangzhou during the Qing Dynasty. The teenage scamp makes his way from Yangzhou to the capital Beijing through a series of adventures. In Beijing, he is kidnapped and taken to the Forbidden City, where he impersonates an eunuch. While in the palace, Wei Xiaobao bumbles his way into a fateful encounter with the young Kangxi Emperor and they develop an unlikely friendship. Once, Wei Xiaobao is captured by some jianghu pugilists and brought out of the palace. He meets Chen Jinnan, the leader of the Heaven and Earth Society, an anti-government secret organisation, and becomes Chen's disciple. He also becomes one of the society's branch leaders and agrees to be an undercover agent for them in the palace. He is captured again by another group of pugilists and brought to Divine Dragon Island, where the sinister Divine Dragon Cult (神龍教) is based. Unexpectedly, he becomes the cult's White Dragon Marshal by flattering its leader Hong Antong. Wei Xiaobao is lecherous and flirtatious by nature, and he encounters seven women on separate occasions and eventually marries them. Wei Xiaobao makes several seemingly impossible achievements through sheer luck and cunning. Most of the time, he uses despicable and immoral means to accomplish them. First, he assists the Kangxi Emperor in ousting the autocratic regent Oboi from power. Second, he discovers the whereabouts of the Shunzhi Emperor, who was presumed dead, saves him from danger, and then helps him reunite with his son, the Kangxi Emperor. Third, he eliminates the Divine Dragon Cult by stirring up internal conflict, which leads to the cult's self-destruction. Fourth, he weakens the rebellion staged by Wu Sangui by bribing Wu's allies to withdraw, allowing the Qing army to crush the rebels easily. Last, he leads a campaign against the Russian Empire and helps the Qing Empire reach a border treaty with Russia. He met the Russian regent Sophia Alekseyevna earlier and helped her secure her rule over Russia. Wei Xiaobao is also responsible for recommending talents to the Kangxi Emperor, among whom include the admiral Shi Lang, who led the naval campaign against the Kingdom of Tungning. Throughout the story, Wei Xiaobao exhibits devout loyalty to both the Kangxi Emperor and personal friends in the anti-Qing forces. He instinctively shields the emperor with his body from assassins twice and saved the emperor's life. He plays an important role in assisting Kangxi in consolidating power. On the other hand, he helps anti-Qing forces escape from danger on numerous occasions by distracting imperial forces. He undermines the attempts by the society on the emperor's life and uses his status in the imperial court to prevent the society from being destroyed by the government. For his numerous accomplishments, Wei Xiaobao is rewarded with immense wealth and titles of nobility. His highest rank ever was "Duke of Luding" (鹿鼎公). He also gained respect from the anti-Qing factions for eliminating tyrannical Court officials and defending China from foreign invaders. Ultimately, Wei Xiaobao's conflicting loyalties reach a disastrous conclusion. The Kangxi Emperor discovers Wei Xiaobao's relationship with the Heaven and Earth Society, and forces Wei to make a choice, putting Wei in a dilemma. If Wei Xiaobao chooses to side with the society, he will become an enemy of the state and be forced to turn against the emperor, whom he regards as a childhood friend and master. If he chooses to follow the emperor's orders, he will have to eliminate the anti-government forces and be branded an ethnic traitor. Wei Xiaobao refuses to help Kangxi destroy the society and is forced into exile. However the emperor still regards him as a close friend and loyal subject so he pardons Wei Xiaobao and allows him to return to the palace later. Towards the end of the novel, Kangxi tries to force Wei Xiaobao to help him eliminate the Heaven and Earth Society again. On the other hand, Chen Jinnan had died and the society's members want Wei Xiaobao to be their new leader. Wei Xiaobao ponders over the issue and realises that he will never be able to reconcile between the two rivaling parties. He feels that his divided friendships and split loyalties are tearing him apart. He decides to leave and lead a reclusive life away from society, taking with him his immense wealth and family. Wei Xiaobao is never heard of again. It is said that later the Kangxi Emperor went on inspection tours to Jiangnan to look for Wei Xiaobao but never found him.
3124623	/m/08t04q	Seven Ancient Wonders	Matthew Reilly	2005-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Around 4,500 years ago, the capstone upon the summit of the Great Pyramid of Giza absorbed the energy released by the Tartarus Rotation (a monstrous sunspot that occurs every 4,000-4,500 years), and saved the earth from major flooding and catastrophic weather. This capstone was later divided up by Alexander the Great with one piece in a booby-trapped hidden location within each of the seven wonders of the world, in other than the Pyramid. If and when they are reunited and replaced on the capstone during another solar event, they can bring 1,000 years of peace or power for the nation which possesses them. In 2006, seven days before this sunspot is again due the pieces are still divided and 3 teams are trying to reunite them, 2 for their own gain - one from Europe (representing the Catholic Church) and the other is CIEF, the Commander-in-Chief's In Extremis Force (an American force covertly representing the power of the Freemasons). The third team is an alliance of a group of 'small nations' called the Alliance of Minnows (Canada, Australia, Ireland, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Jamaica, New Zealand, and later Israel), led by Jack West Jr, trying to reunite the capstone for nobler reasons. This team and the European team each also possess a child, one of the only two people who can read the "Word of Thoth", a special hieroglyphics system used in the booby-traps (the other person is her twin Alexander, who is being brainwashed by the Vatican). West's team gain and lose a capstone, the head of the Colossus of Rhodes to the CIEF but manage to escape and then reach the hiding place of two more pieces at Hamilcar's Refuge on the coast of Tunisia. There they again lose their gains to the CIEF, and again escape. They then spring Mustapha Zaeed, the world's foremost authority on the Capstone and the Seven Wonders and a known terrorist, from Guantanamo Bay, who leads them to two more pieces. After separating the team, the "Coalition of the Minnows" is devastated through kidnap and death. The survivors escape to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in Iraq, but are there apprehended by an Israeli strike team. West is forced to lead the Israelis to the piece, but the Americans arrive, execute the Israelis, capture the piece and trap West and his team. Jack is presumed dead. The European contingent escorts their hostages to Cairo with a lone Piece - taken from St. Peter's Basilica - and, in attempting to capture the CIEF's five pieces, lose the St Peter's piece and Epper and Lily to them. The CIEF team then goes to Hatshepsut's Mortuary, and - with the aid of the measurements from the Paris Obelisk - finds the last piece in the tomb of Alexander the Great. Taking the whole Capstone to the Giza pyramid on the day of the rotation, placing Alexander in the chamber beneath it to ensure the ritual works. However, Jack West and his team's plane return to stop them. Judah tries to carry out the ritual, but Alexander crawls out to save himself from death, unwittingly ensuring its failure and del Piero's death, then Lily crawls in willingly and Zaeed carries it out successfully. West, however has ensured a twist to who has world dominion. West's team then wins the battle and he finds that Lily has survived by (unlike Alexander) going into the chamber willingly. The epilogue takes place three weeks later, with Wizard and Zoe accompanying Lily across Central Australia, before reuniting with West.
3124965	/m/08t13x	The Golem's Eye	Jonathan Stroud	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book begins two years after the events of The Amulet of Samarkand. Nathaniel is apprenticed to the Minister of Security, Jessica Whitwell; and is working as an understudy to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Julius Tallow. At the exceedingly young age of fourteen he is now a government official and a competent magician, but he no longer uses his original servant, Bartimaeus. When the book starts, he is working on a case involving a shadowy group of rebelling commoners, known as the Resistance. Nathaniel knows only a few facts about the group including three of their members' names: Kitty, Fred, and Stanley from his unpleasant encounter with them from Book One. He tries to search for these three through written records but to no avail. He disguises several minor spirits as commoners and sends them out to find the Resistance, but they too find no trace of the elusive group. Kitty Jones is on a mission for the Resistance during a performance of The Swans of Araby, in a posh London theatre. Kitty is having doubts about the point of her working for the Resistance, and she begins to reminisce about her past and why she joined the Resistance. She remembers her childhood, where she lived, somewhat poorly, next door to a Czech family who owned a factory that printed books for the magicians. Kitty often played cricket with her friend Jakob Hyrnek, son of the family that lived next door. One day, she accidentally hit a ball through the window of a magician's car as it passed. The magician came out and ordered his demon, a green monkey called Nemaides, to perform the "Black Tumbler", a magical attack, on Kitty and Jakob. Kitty is then woken up from her dream-like reverie by Fred and Stanley, the Resistance members she is commanding, who chastise her for sleeping on the job, as the intermission of the play has started. They leave the theatre and go to the nearby carpet shop that sells posh carpets for magicians. They break in, steal some documents and magical items, and Fred and Stanley set fire to the shop with an Inferno stick. Kitty is worried about being caught and harming commoners, but Stanley and Fred disagree, ignoring her protests against the fire. They return to the theatre in time for the rest of the play. Afterwards, several major shops in London are broken into by a mysterious enemy; everyone sent to investigate or on duty there is killed. From the foliot Simpkin's point of view, he sees the attacker as a cloud of darkness. Nathaniel switches to investigating the incident, discovering that six policemen and eight spirits including Simpkin were also killed by the creature. Most of the government suspects the Resistance of being behind the attack but Nathaniel thinks otherwise, citing the enormous scale of the attack. Nathaniel and his master, Ms. Whitwell, are called to meet with the prime minister, Rupert Devereaux. He orders Nathaniel to find the Resistance and put a stop to their activities. Nathaniel returns home, searches for a competent demon for surveillance, and finally decides to summon Bartimaeus again, remembering various woefully unsuccessful demons he previously experimented with. He instructs Bartimaeus to find the unknown attacker, identify it, and destroy it if he can. The book returns to Kitty and her memories, continuing from where they left off earlier. Kitty and Jakob had both been sent to the hospital, and Jakob was badly burnt. Kitty escaped mostly unharmed -- although she did not know it at the time, this is due to her innate resistance to magic. Kitty attempts to sue the magician but soon finds the justice system tilted in favor of magicians, and the magician gets away without charge, claiming Kitty and Jakob were trying to rob him. Kitty is fined £100 for compensation to the magician for the damage to his car, and she also has to pay the magician's penalty (£500) for coming late, as per tradition which dictates that fines awarded to winners are passed on to losers of the cases. She thus has to pay £600. As Kitty distraughtly leaves the court, a man asks her to meet up with him later, assuring her he will pay the full fine. She is rather suspicious of the stumbling little old man, but when she returns home and talks to her parents, she finds out the only way they can come up with the money is to sell the house. Kitty quickly decides to meet the man, who turns out to be the leader of the Resistance by the name of Mr. Pennyfeather. This eventually leads to her joining the Resistance, and being placed in command of small groups of raiders, vandalising magicians' property. In the meantime, Bartimaeus meets an old friend named Queezle, and the two hunt for the mystery attacker, commanding a force composed of multiple djinn and foliots. Eventually, as Bartimaeus and Queezle split up to patrol, the attacker runs across Queezle and promptly kills her. Hearing her scream, Bartimaeus returns to assist her. He arrives too late, but is able to track the attacker to the British Museum. He destroys the perceived black mist which conceals the attacker, and discovers that it is a golem, unharmable by djinn and other spirits. However, the golem attacks him as he flees, crushing him under an entire section of the Museum. Bartimaeus is rescued the following morning, and reveals the marauder's identity to Whitwell, Duvall, Nathaniel, and Tallow. Whitwell then orders Nathaniel to travel to Prague, the origin of golem magic, and find out who controls the golem. Kitty, while this occurs, meets with her friends in the Resistance, including their informant, Mr. Hopkins, and they are told that they will raid Gladstone's tomb. Kitty meets with a magician, whose identity remains unknown and is referred to as 'the benefactor', and who gives them the materials to enter the tomb. That night, they enter Gladstone's tomb. As they loot his coffin, Stanley is killed by a powerful afrit named Honorius, caged in Gladstone's bones. The afrit then engages Fred in a blade fight, which delays it long enough for the rest of the living Resistance members to flee the tomb. As Kitty urges her aged leader, Mr. Pennyfeather, up the steps, Fred is killed by the afrit's antique sword, and the afrit quickly drags Mr. Pennyfeather off. Kitty retreats and meets Anne. As they escape the Abbey, Anne is killed by the afrit. At this point, as Kitty flees, the afrit calls her back, imitating Mr. Pennyfeather. Kitty hesitates, and Honorius attempts to kill her; she is saved by her pendant of silver due to all demons' antipathy to the metal, and Honorius' distraction at his rediscovering of the stars. She escapes, with only the staff of Gladstone in exchange for her friends' deaths. Nathaniel travels to Prague to collaborate with a spy named Harlequin to discover who the magician that created the golem spell is. During the second meeting, the Czech police engage him and Bartimaeus, and kill Harlequin, after he gives Nathaniel the magician's name: Kavka. Bartimaeus easily evades the police with Nathaniel, and they arrive at the magician Kavka's house. After 'breaking in', they convince Kavka not to create a second golem. The dreaded Mercenary from the previous book suddenly appears, and casually threatens the three of them. Kavka then destroys the golem manuscript, and a combat scene follows, ending with Bartimaeus blasting Verroq, the Mercenary, through a window with a hurricane, hurling him hundreds of feet away, but not killing him. Nathaniel then returns to London, whereupon he is immediately whisked away with Whitwell to an emergency meeting with the prime minister. Nathaniel learns of the resistance's raiding of Gladstone's tomb, and learns that Honorius is terrorizing all of London. Nathaniel sends Bartimaeus to take care of Honorius, and Bartimaeus eventually drowns Honorius in the Thames, which should have killed him. Bartimaeus returns to Nathaniel, without much praise. Nathaniel then hatches a plan to lure Kitty Jones, who possesses a historical and powerful artifact, Gladstone's Staff, into his clutches, by kidnapping her childhood friend Jakob Hyrnek. When Kitty goes to rescue her friend, she is attacked by the Night Police. Nathaniel, angry at the Night Police's intervention, sends Bartimaeus to escape with Kitty. He does so and takes her to the abandoned building where Nathaniel and Bartimaeus hid after the death of the Underwoods. There, the two share an enlightening conversation about the endless cycle of conflict between humans and spirits. Meanwhile, Jakob Hyrnek and Nathaniel are apprehended by the Night Police and are taken before the Council, who decide that if he can recover the Staff, he will be set free. Vigilance spheres follow them to the building, and Kitty reveals where she hid the Staff. She takes them there, and they recover the Staff. However, when Kitty and Jakob attempt an escape, they are confronted by Honorius, who is revealed to have climbed on a boat from an anchor chain. The ensuing chaos is interrupted when the golem intervenes. When the vigilance spheres flee, Nathaniel tells Kitty he will give her and Hyrnek one day to leave the country. Honorius is destroyed by the golem, and Nathaniel attempts to destroy the clay beast with Gladstone's Staff. He fails, and is knocked unconscious by the magical backlash. Kitty takes a desperate gamble, and yanks the animating parchment from the golem's mouth, thus saving Nathaniel. Jakob and Kitty leave the scene, and when Nathaniel comes to, he and Bartimaeus trail the golem, which is returning to its master. Henry Duvall, the Chief of Police, is revealed to be the perpetrator, and is arrested. A few days later, Duvall attempts escape, unintentionally killing himself. And much to Nathaniel's displeasure, the Staff is stored away.
3124976	/m/08t15b	Ptolemy's Gate	Jonathan Stroud	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The British Empire is falling apart. Many commoners are unhappy with the current government, though none of the commoners claim responsibility for the status quo. The magician's demons are being assaulted by the children's natural abilities to see and resist the demons. (All of the magicians in the government were originally commoners whose parents sold them to the government at a young age, so it is not hard to understand why they are such a heartless group of people, concerned only with power and wealth.) Some commoners advocate slow reform, while others advocate open revolt, while still others say the commoners should learn how to summon spirits of their own to combat those spirits belonging to the magicians. Ptolemy's Gate concludes with a council of surviving magicians and important commoners trying to work out a government that is beneficial to everyone. Kitty Jones eventually unearths the reason why humans and spirits are locked into the endless cycle, that humans do not understand the nature of djinni and summon them only as powerful, but dangerous, slaves, not equals. This theory is confirmed by Bartimaeus who states that his greatest master, Ptolemy, was the only human who treated his servants as equals and tried to build a bridge between djinni and humans. However, Ptolemy misguidedly believed many others would follow in his footsteps; the only other person to ever successfully cross into the Other Place was Kitty. England's domestic turmoil has taken its toll on John Mandrake. Mandrake is friendless and constantly watched by his numerous enemies. In the three years since The Golem's Eye there have been several attempts on Mandrake's life. His years as a high ranking government official have made Mandrake merciless, and he treats all of his servants cruelly, especially Bartimaeus. However, events in Ptolemy's Gate shatter Mandrake's confidence in what he has become. The transformation from Mandrake to Nathaniel is much more rapid than the one from Nathaniel to Mandrake. Nathaniel drops the name John Mandrake all together, as well as the fear of others knowing his true name, humbly telling it to Kitty, with whom he seems to have struck up a newfound friendship, and boldly proclaiming it to the spirit Nouda. With the end of Mandrake, Nathaniel becomes all that Ptolemy hoped to be. Nathaniel willingly allows Bartimaeus to share his body to combat Nouda and his army of hybrids, using Gladstone's staff, a fusion that forever bridges the gap between humans and djinn. However, at the last moment, he dismisses Bartimaeus and then sacrifices himself to destroy the spirit Nouda. This incident was similar to what Ptolemy did in the moments before he died.
3129981	/m/08tckw	All Families Are Psychotic	Douglas Coupland	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is the tale of the Drummond family from Vancouver gathering together to watch Sarah Drummond's rocket blast off at the Kennedy Center. The Drummonds are a group of misfits with a wide array of personal foibles and intricacies. The novel's plot is the tale of events that reunite the Drummond family after many years of estrangement. Several plot points of the book include geriatric HIV, armed robbery, death in Walt Disney World, pharmaceutical drug lords, black market baby sales, Daytona Beach, and suicide attempts. Early in the book the men of the family travel to nearby Walt Disney World where they receive a package destined for the Bahamas containing a letter written by Prince William stolen from Princess Diana's casket. The men start to travel to the Bahamas to deliver their package, but everything and anything happens to them on the way. The novel is told in a similar style to Miss Wyoming, with many plot flashbacks. However, the focus in this novel is on the temporally linear plot.
3133672	/m/08tln8	The Scapegoat	Daphne du Maurier	1957	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 'I left the car by the side of the cathedral, and then walked down the steps into the Place des Jacobins. It was still raining hard. It had not once let up since Tours, and all I had seen of the countryside I loved was the gleaming surface of the route nationale, rhythmically cut by the monotonous swing of the windscreen-wiper. Outside Le Mans, the depression that had grown upon me during the past twenty-fours had intensified.' (p.1) The Scapegoat is narrated by John, an Englishman and lecturer in French history at a London university, who is coming to the end of his holiday in France. He arrives in Le Mans, depressed and melancholy at the thought of returning to his lectures: 'the real meaning of history would have escaped me, because I had never been close enough to people' (p.1). John feels lonely, isolated, and as though his outward life is a meaningless facade. 'I lived and breathed and had my being as a law-abiding, quiet, donnish individual of thirty-eight. But to the self who clamoured for release, the man within? How did my poor record seem to him? [...] Perhaps, if I had not kept him locked within me, he might have laughed, roistered, fought and lied' (p.10). John considers concluding his visit at the Abbaye de la Grande-Trappe where he hopes to find some consolation but as he crosses the road in Le Mans the driver of a car calls out to him, addressing him as Jean. John tries to explain to the man who seems to know him that there has been a mistake but the man takes it to be a deliberate deception, winks, laughs and drives away. He enters the station buffet and is confronted by another man: 'I realised, with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined, that his face and voice were known to me too well. I was looking at myself' (p.13). John has a premonition that meeting his double could be 'fraught with tragedy, like the Man in the Iron Mask' (p.14) but he sits down and has a drink with his doppelganger, to whom he begins to confess his feelings of depression and failure. His double mistakes him for a Frenchman because of his excellent grasp of the language and they eventually retire to a backstreet hotel where they continue to drink and eventually swap clothes. John falls to the floor drunk and when he awakes, he discovers a chauffeur at the door: 'Monsieur le Comte is awake at last?' (p.27). John realises that his double has disappeared with his clothing and he attempts to convince the chauffeur that he is not the Comte. The chauffeur believes him to be drunk and when he enquires after the 'gentleman I was with last night' (p.30) the hotel receptionist has no knowledge of him. John decides that if 'he wished to make an idiot of me, I would do the same to him. I would put on his clothes and drive his car to hell - as he was no doubt driving mine - and have myself arrested, and then wait for him to turn up and explain his senseless action as best he could' (p.31). Ignoring further opportunities to explain his predicament, John shaves, dresses, gets in the car and they make for the chateau at St Gilles. He realises that Jean de Gué 'had given me what I asked, the chance to be accepted. He had lent me his name, his possessions, his identity. I had told him my own life was empty: he had given me his' (p.34). They arrive at the chateau and John is met by a man named Paul, Jean's brother, who appears irritated by his lateness. John enters the house and goes into a room in which three women are seated. One, named Blanche, leaves as soon as he enters; the second, a fair-haired woman, who is pregnant, tells him that they have been worried about his absence; and the third, dark-haired, exchanges a knowing glance with him. The women inform him that Marie-Noel has a fever and when asked about Paris he declares carelessly: 'I have no idea what happened in Paris. I'm suffering from memory loss' (p.41). The pregnant woman expresses her hope that he has reached an agreement in Paris but John continues to taunt the women: 'Actually, I am not Jean de Gué at all. I am someone else. We met in Le Mans last night, and changed clothes, and he has disappeared in my car, heaven knows where, and I am here in his place. You must admit it's an extraordinary situation' (p.42). The women take no notice, believing him to be suffering from a hangover, and eventually John admits that he drank too much in Le Mans and leaves the room. Venturing upstairs, John finds himself in a bare room decorated only with religious paraphernalia: a painting of the scourging of Christ, a crucifix, and a small alcove for prayer. A servant discovers him and asks, looking rather surprised, if he is searching for Mademoiselle Blanche. He is told that she is with the Madame la Comtesse who is eager to see him and will not wait. He follows the servant into a room in which 'a massive elderly women, her flesh sagging in a hundred lines, but her eyes, her nose, her mouth so astonishingly and horribly like my own that for one wild moment I believed after all Jean de Gué had come up here before me and was masquerading as a final jest' (p.46). John intuits that the woman is Jean's mother and when she presses him as to whether he has renewed the contract; he tells her that everything has been arranged. She pesters him for a present that he has brought her from Paris and then they dine. She tells him that Marie-Noel has been having visions and that 'she kept telling Françoise and Renée that you were not coming back' (p.52). Blanche, who has been sitting with Madame la Comtesse while the local priest attended her, declares that she will inform the bishop if Marie-Noel continues to have visions of the Virgin Mary. The mother's maid, Charlotte, presses John for the package and he leaves the room, fortuitously stumbling upon Jean's dressing room where he discovers a number of parcels, marked F, R, B, P, M-N, and Maman. He returns with the parcel but Charlotte intercepts it and takes it away. When he returns to the dressing room he discovers that the pregnant woman is Françoise and that rather than being Paul's wife, as he had assumed, she is in fact Jean's wife. John gives her the package marked 'F' which turns out to be a locket brooch containing a miniature of himself/Jean. Françoise is pleased but confesses her deep unhappiness to John. When she falls asleep, John goes out into the corridors of the chateau and is accosted by Renée, the dark haired woman, who says: 'I waited for you, leaving my door open. Didn't you see it?' (p.64). John brushes her off and she storms away upstairs. He goes out onto the terrace at the back of the house and is suddenly pelted by chestnuts, by a kneeling figure in an upstairs window. He looks closer and discovers that it is a child who declares: 'I swear to you, that if you don't come to me by the time I count a hundred, I shall throw myself out of the window' (p.67). John rushes inside and finds the child, who looks like Jean de Gué in miniature and calls him 'Papa'; the child is Marie-Noel. She is affectionate and playful with him but notices that his hands and smell are different. She tells him that she had a vision of the Virgin Mary who told her that her father would not return. She declares that she would have killed herself if he had not returned: 'And then I should have burnt in hell. But I would rather burn in hell than live in this world without you' (p.71). Her room, like Blanche's, also contains a crucifix, a prie-dieu, and pictures of the saints. John returns to his bedroom and opens the package marked M-N, it is a book called 'The Little Flower' about St Therese Lisieux. John thinks that Jean acted wrongly to escape from the chateau- 'none of these people under his roof would be behaving as they had behaved tonight but for something he had done to them' (p.76)-but he sees an opportunity for himself to put it right. When John awakes the next morning, Gaston tells him that Paul will be expecting him at the verrerie (the glass-works) in the afternoon. John gives Marie-Noel her present and declares that he will give all the other presents at lunchtime, although Marie-Noel is surprised that there is one for Blanche. At lunch, the content of Renée's package- a lace nightgown- upsets the party and there is further embarrassment when Marie-Noel reads the label on Paul's present- a remedy for impotence. Blanche does not open her parcel. John realises his mistake and leaves with Paul for the verrerie. He apologises for the mistake but Paul remains furious. At the verrerie, John discovers that the reason for Jean's visit to Paris was to attempt to save the business by renegotiating a contract with a firm called Carvalet to sell their glass. Despite having no idea as to the outcome of Jean's meeting, John tells Paul that he has renewed the contract and that production can continue as normal. Paul is delighted. John interrogates Jacques who works at the foundry and discovers that the verrerie is a liability and that unlike Jean's father, and Monsieur Duval who managed affairs previously, the Comte's management of the business has been non-existent. He then meets some of the workers at the foundry including Julie and her son-in-law André who had been badly injured in an accident. Back at the chateau, John reads the letter from Carvalet and discovers that they had declined to renew the contract and that the visit to Paris had been a failure. John decides to rectify the situation. He rings Carvalet and tells them that he will accept their terms, despite running the verrerie at a loss. He suspects that someone has overheard his phone call but he cannot locate the other extension. He rummages through Jean's desk in search of some information about his finances but instead finds a photograph album featuring himself, Paul, and Blanche as children, and a man named Maurice. Renée comes into the library and berates him for giving her the lingerie at the dinner table. John suddenly realises that Jean was having an affair with her and he attempts again to brush her off. He goes to see Marie-Noel and discovers that Blanche had opened her package. Inside was a bottle of perfume and a note: 'For my beautiful Béla, from Jean'. Marie-Noel also lets slip in conversation that Jean had not spoken to Blanche in fifteen years and John muses: 'no wonder the giving of a present had been out of character. The revelation was disturbing, even sinister, especially when I remembered the snapshots of the two children with their arms about each other. Something personal and bitter had come between Blanche and Jean de Gué, yet it was accepted by all, even by the child' (p.127). When John puts Marie-Noel to bed she tells him that she had sinned by threatening to kill herself and she attempts to perform penance by beating herself with a leather whip. Appalled by the effects which Blanche's religion is having on his daughter, John delivers the whip back to her only to find the door slammed in his face. John decides to spend his second night at the chateau sleeping in the dressing room. 'I knew that everything I had said or done had implicated me further, driven me deeper, bound me more closely still to that man whose body was not my body, whose mind was not my mind, whose thoughts and actions were a world apart, and yet whose inner substance was part of my nature, part of my secret self' (p.138). The next morning John decides to go to the bank in Villars to investigate his double's finances. Renée contrives to go with him but John encourages Marie-Noel to join the party. Marie-Noel is delighted but when doing cartwheels in her mother's room, smashes two ornaments. Françoise is upset and lashes out at the child, telling her that when the baby arrives, she will take second place. John takes the pieces of the ornaments with him, parcelled up in some discarded paper he found in the dressing room, hoping to arrange for them to be mended in Villars. Renée is annoyed that she and Jean/John are to be chaperoned by the child and she goes off to the hairdressers. Marie-Noel visits the antique shop to see if they can fix the ornaments while Jean goes to the bank. In his vault he discovers the marriage settlement relating to Jean and Françoise. He discovers that Françoise's dowry was in trust for a male heir and that Jean would only come into the money otherwise if Françoise reached the age of fifty having only given birth to daughters or if she died. John understands why it is crucial for Françoise's baby to be a boy and why she is anxious about the pregnancy. John leaves the bank, having been told that Marie-Noel had already left town in a lorry going back to the verrerie. He goes over to speak to the blonde woman who he presumes owns the antique shop where Marie-Noel left the ornaments. She ushers him inside and declares: 'That child of yours is adorable but it was very naughty of you to send her here. Any why for heaven's sake did you wrap up those pieces of broken porcelain in cellophane and paper with a card addressed to me?' (p.155). John inadvertently wrapped the pieces in the paper containing the note to 'Béla' from Jean. He realises that this woman in Villars is Béla and she is another of the Comte's mistresses. John tells Béla the truth about the Carvalet contract and she asks him why the sudden concern for the verrerie and its workforce. She tells him that she has always wondered whether his lack of interest in the place was because of what happened to Maurice Duval. John encourages her to keep talking and she mentions that he died during the Occupation. He tries to tell her about the change that has come over him/Jean and that he is a different person. Béla replies 'you aren't the only one with a dual personality. We all have multiple selves. But no one avoids responsibility that way. The problems remain to be tackled just the same' (p.164). When John returns to the house, he discovers that the doctor who had called to see Françoise has already left and he has ordered her to remain in bed in order to protect the baby. He goes to talk to Françoise and tells her that he had a long meeting at the bank which prevented him from being home in time, and he confesses about the Carvalet contract. Françoise is pleased that he confided in her and she then asks if he looked at the marriage settlement when he was in the vault. He says that he did and she asks whether he will inherit the money if she dies. '"What happens if I die? You get everything, don't you?" "You're not going to die"' (p.172). John goes to see Jean's mother and when he mentions that perhaps Françoise should see a specialist if the pregnancy is going to present problems, she says slyly 'Whatever for?' (p.176). They are interrupted by a telephone call from Dr Lebrun. He tells John that Françoise needs complete rest. Marie-Noel asks why the servants are gossiping about the baby dying and she asks why they need to have another baby. John replies honestly that it is because of the money they will receive from the marriage settlement. John returns upstairs to sit with Françoise rather than brave Paul and Renée in the salon. She is touched, if a little surprised, by the concern. The following day he goes down to the verrerie to go through the figures with Jacques in the office and he then asks about the rest of the disused house. He finds a box of books, one of which is inscribed 'Maurice Duval', and he asks Jacques why they don't make the house inhabitable. He replies that 'there are not very happy memories connected with the house when it was last inhabited. Few people would wish to live there now [...] When the last man to live here, the master of the verrerie, Monsieur Duval, is woken from his bed in the middle of the night, and taken downstairs and shot by his own countrymen, and his body thrown into the well cut to pieces with his own glass, even if it happened a long time ago and is something we all prefer to forget, yet it does not make anybody very anxious to come and live here, where it happened, bringing a wife and family' (p.189). John signs the new contract from Carvalet and puts it in the post. He then goes to talk to Julie and asks her about the Occupation. She shows him a snapshot of a young German officer whose coat she cleaned so that he would not get in trouble with his superiors. The villagers ostracised her two years afterwards: 'so you see, when war comes to one's own village, one's own doorstep, it isn't tragic and impersonal any longer. It's just an excuse to vomit private hatred' (p.194). When he returns to the chateau, the servants ask John about the arrangements for the annual shoot the following day. He has overheard references to the 'grande chasse' during the past few days but he suddenly realises its implications: he, John, cannot shoot. He goes out into the grounds of the chateau, desperate for an excuse not to participate. He sees a fire burning and decides on a rash course of action. He drops Jean's watch into the fire and then thrusts his hand into the flames to retrieve it. He returns inside in great pain, to the shock of the family, especially when they discover that the watch he had wished to save had been a present from Maurice Duval. Blanche dresses the wound and he tells Paul to organise the shoot; now he is injured, he has no interest in it. When he goes to put Marie-Noel to bed, she tells him that she saw him thrusting his hand into the fire on purpose. He tells her that it was because he had not wanted to shoot and she says that he must have been thinking about Duval. When John questions her further she says that she knows he met a horrible death, but that her grandmother had forbidden her from talking about Duval either to her father or to Blanche. She asks if he did it because he didn't want to kill any birds, and when he says that perhaps that was the reason, she is pleased at his courage and his 'great act of humiliation' (p.216). John persuades her not to mention it to any one and Marie-Noel agrees, although she tells him that she thinks his act to be like the sacrificial mortifications of the saints. When the annual shoot begins the next day, John discovers Jean's mother welcoming the guests, who are so surprised by her emergence from the chateau that John's hand goes unnoticed. John is annoyed when she mocks Paul and Renée's attempts to run the shoot but he then finds himself unable to control Jean's dog, César. The dog scatters the birds, to Paul's annoyance, and John returns to the chateau with Gaston, drinking cognac from a hip flask. He meets the man who first mistook him for Jean in Le Mans before the swop took place and on a whim he gives the man his own address in London: '"Any assistance you give this chap you'll be giving to me; we're closer than brothers." Then I burst out laughing, thinking him extremely stupid not to see the point' (p.229). John is encouraged to give a speech to the guests, which despite his inebriation he does, but they are not amused when he jokes that if he had shot with his damaged hand 'some of you present might never have survived' (p.230). When he returns to the chateau, John is summoned to Jean's mother who appears to be unwell. Her maid is downstairs in the kitchen and the mother urges him to help her, directing him to a drawer. When John opens it he discovers that the package which he brought back from Paris was ampoules of morphine. 'But his mother was not ill or dying, neither was she in pain' (p.234). He reluctantly administers the drug and she loses consciousness. John spends the night in Villars with Béla. He recounts the events of the day and when he recalls his quip about the gun she comments: 'Coming from a one-time Resistance leader to a group of well-known collaborators, it must have sounded curious all the same' (p.245). When he returns to the chateau he discovers a letter from Marie-Noel pushed under his door in which she writes: 'The Sainte Vierge tells me you are unhappy, and are suffering now for wrong done in the past, so I am going to pray that all your sins may be visited upon me, who, being young and strong, can bear them better.' (p.248). When he goes in to Françoise, she tells him that Marie-Noel has disappeared. Everyone goes out to look for Marie-Noel except Françoise. By chance John discovers her down at the house at the verrerie being looked after by Julie, who found her down the well amongst the broken glass after the dog, César, was found there barking. When he expresses surprise about the well and that it has contained no water for fifteen years, he finally discovers the secret of Jean's past. Maurice Duval was shot by Jean and his men: 'poor Monsieur Duval, whose only crime was trying to preserve the verrerie while you were absent, for which you and your little group of patriots called him a collaborator, and shot him, and let him die there in the well' (p.258). John's realises that Marie-Noel had climbed into the well as an act of penitence on behalf of her father. Blanche arrives and looks around her at the house and John suddenly realises that 'what she was looking at had once been part of her life' (p.260): Blanche had had a relationship with Duval. Marie-Noel wakes up and tells John that she had had a dream in which the Virgin Mary told her that her grandmother wanted Françoise to die: 'In the dream I wanted her to die too. So did you. We were all guilty. It was very wicked. Isn't there something you can do to prevent it coming true?' (p.263). At that moment there is a telephone call from the chateau for John to return at once. Françoise has fallen from the bedroom window and been taken to the hospital in Villars. She requires a blood transfusion and when Blanche says that either Jean or Paul could donate because they are the same blood type, John speaks up and denies it. Blanche declares: 'You don't want to save her. You're hoping she'll die' (p.269). Françoise and her baby, which was a boy, both die and John thinks back on his behaviour towards Jean's wife. He is glad he gave her the locket but he regrets that he had done no more. Back at the chateau, John interrogates his mother's maid Charlotte. She says that when Marie-Noel had gone missing, Françoise worried that 'the child might have turned against her. She is too fond of her papa, she said, and of Mademoiselle Blanche' (p.275). Charlotte tells John that she agreed with Françoise and he worries about how this might have affected her. He goes to the bedroom and leans out of the window, wondering whether her death can really have been an accident. Fearing the worst, John goes to interrogate Jean's mother. He forces her into recounting a conversation which she had with Françoise shortly before she died. Madame la Comtesse recalls: '"Does he want me to die so that he can marry someone else?" she [Françoise] asked at last. I told her I did not know. "Jean makes love to everyone. He has made love to Renée, even, here in the chateau, and he has a mistress in Villars" [...] "So the child isn't the only one to want me out of the way," she said, "Jean does, too, and so do you, and Renée, and the woman in Villars." I didn't answer her.' (p.283). Jean's mother concludes by saying 'You've got what you wanted, haven't you?' (p.283) but John denies it vehemently. He declares that he needs her help and after considerable effort, he persuades her to resume her position at the head of the family and to give up the morphine. She agrees and goes downstairs to begin making the funeral arrangements. The commissaire de police arrives to investigate Françoise's death. The suspicion of suicide is raised and when Charlotte is interviewed, she lets slip that she had been listening in to John's conversation with Carvalet about the renewal of the contract. Paul is astonished. When the commissaire goes to Françoise's bedroom Marie-Noel is there, having leant out the window and discovered the locket on the ledge. It seems that when leaning out to rescue Jean's present, Françoise fell. Paul confronts John about the Carvalet contract and he tells him the truth. John admits that he/Jean has no head for business and he agrees with Paul that if he had gone to Paris instead, the contract would no doubt have been more favourable. John suggests that Paul take over that part of the business and travel with Renée, while he stays at the chateau. Paul is surprised but he accepts, believing it to be the only way to save his marriage. Later when Renée confronts him, John says that he is not in love with her. She asks him whether he contrived the Carvalet contract in the hope that Françoise would die, and is relieved when he denies the charge. John sits with Jean's mother until she falls asleep as she is beginning to suffer withdrawal symptoms from the morphine. He then goes to see Blanche and while she dresses his hand, he forces her to talk about the past. He tries to apologise but Blanche is still angry, reminding him of his mockery of her and Duval's relationship, and his jealousy when their father made Duval head of the verrerie. John tells Blanche that he wants her to run the verrerie in his place and to live in the master's house. 'The house is waiting there for you. It's been waiting for fifteen years.' (p.326). The next day the funeral arrangements are begun, Blanche goes down to the verrerie, and Renée begins to talk about travelling with Paul. Then there is a telephone call for John. It is Jean de Gué: 'It's me. Jean de Gué. I've just seen today's newspaper. I'm coming back' (p.334). They agree to meet at the master's house at the verrerie. 'Although the emotion that filled me now was violent, over-whelming, yet at the same time I felt deliberate and calm. I was the possessor now, he the intruder. The chateau was my chateau, the people were my people, the family who in a few minutes would sit with me round the table were my family, my flesh and blood; they belonged to me and I to them. He could not return and make them his again' (p.336). John goes into the library and removes a revolver from the desk drawer. He waits in the master's house but when there is a knock at the door, he finds the priest standing there, who takes the gun from his hand. The priest had feared that John might kill himself and he says: 'What good would that do, to you or to them? By living, you can create their world afresh. Already I see signs of it, here in the master's house' (p.343). When the priest leaves, Jean de Gué enters holding a gun and says 'So you planned to get rid of me, did you, and stay in St Gilles?' (p.345). Jean is amazed that John has managed to keep up the deception for seven days and he amuses himself by wondering how John dealt with his various intrigues, and problems with Renée, with Blanche, with Françoise. He mocks John's attempt to take his mother off morphine: 'tonight she'll be a raving maniac', and he thinks that John's plan for Renée and Paul will break up their marriage even sooner: 'Renée will find the lover she's been searching for and Paul feel himself more inferior than ever [...] What want of tact, if I may say so, how lacking in finesse' (pp.347-8). He is more concerned with the Carvalet contract but considers that asking Blanche to run the verrerie might in fact make sound business sense. Jean thinks that John wants to stay at the chateau for the money and comfort, but John says 'I happen to love your family, that's all' (p.349). Jean laughs in disbelief that he could love them, listing their faults: 'Paul, who is an oaf, a weakling, a thoroughly disagreeable personality [...] Blanche, who is so twisted with repressed sex and frustrated passion that the only stimulation she gets out of life is to kneel before a bleeding crucifix' (p.350). John tells Jean to kill him, if that is his wish, and to throw him down the well. Jean is surprised that he has discovered the secret about Duval. He believes that John could not possibly have met Béla, and John does not disabuse him of this notion. He then tells John that during his time in the chateau, he had been to London. Jean stayed in his flat and then sold it, clearing out his bank account and changing the money into francs after fortuitously meeting up with his friend from Le Mans, to whom John had given his London address during the annual shoot. John is astounded: 'unless I liked to make a fool of myself by writing to the university and saying it was all a mistake - that I had decided not to resign after all - I had no work. I had no money, save for one or two investments. I had no flat, and if I didn't get back to London soon I should have no furniture. I did not exist. The self who had lived in London had gone forever' (p.355). Jean admits that in a strange way he missed his family, and the two exchange clothes. Jean suggests that they might make the switch again, from time to time, if they fancied a change. They get into John's car and drive towards the chateau. He tries to tell Jean that his family has changed, but he ignores him. Jean gets out of the car and walks the rest of the way and John sees him greet Marie-Noel as he drives on along the road. John drives to Villars to see Béla. She alone had realised that he was someone else and not the real Jean de Gué. She says that he had a 'tendresse' that Jean did not possess. She says that because of John the family in the chateau will be different, even if Jean tries to undo the good he has done there. John says that Jean is a 'devil' but Béla replies: 'he's not a devil. He's a human, ordinary man, just like yourself' (p.364). She tells him that 'you've given something to all of us [...] Just now I called it tendresse. Whatever it is, it can't be destroyed. It's taken root. It will go on growing. In the future we shall look for you in Jean, not for Jean in you' (pp.364-5). John says that at St Gilles his failure turned into love but 'the problem remains the same. What do I do with love?' (p.367). He leaves resolving to follow his original path to the Abbey de la Grande Trappe. 'I drove to the network of roads at the top of the town, turned left, and took the road to Bellême and Mortagne' (p.368).
3134175	/m/08tmtv	The Zoo Story	Edward Albee			 This one-act play concerns two characters, Peter and Jerry. Peter is a middle-class publishing executive with a wife, two daughters, two cats and two parakeets. Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man. These men meet on a park bench in New York City's Central Park. Jerry is desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peter’s peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories like "THE STORY OF JERRY AND THE DOG", and the reason behind his visit to the zoo. The action is linear, unfolding in front of the audience in “real time”. The elements of ironic humor and unrelenting dramatic suspense are brought to a climax when Jerry brings his victim down to his own savage level. The catalyst for the shocking ending transpires when Peter announces, "I really must be going home;..." At the same time Jerry begins pushing Peter off the bench. Peter decides to fight for his territory on the bench and becomes angry. Unexpectedly, Jerry pulls a knife on Peter, and then drops it as initiative for Peter to grab. When Peter holds the knife defensively, Jerry charges him and impales himself on the knife. Bleeding on the park bench, Jerry finishes his zoo story by bringing it into the immediate present, "Could I have planned all this. No... no, I couldn't have. But I think I did." Horrified, Peter runs away from Jerry whose dying words, "Oh...my...God", are a combination of scornful mimicry and supplication.
3134572	/m/08tnmc	No Country for Old Men	Cormac McCarthy	2005-07-19	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot follows the interweaving paths of the three central characters (Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh, and Ed Tom Bell), set in motion by events related to a drug deal gone bad near the Mexican-American border in southwest Texas, in Terrell County. While Llewelyn Moss is hunting antelope, he stumbles across the aftermath of a drug-deal gone bad, which has left everyone dead but a single badly wounded Mexican who pleads with Moss for water. Moss responds that he doesn't have any and searches the rest of the vehicles, finding a truck full of heroin. He searches for the "last man standing" and finds him dead some ways off under a tree, with a satchel containing $2.4 million in cash. He takes the money and returns back home. Later, however, he feels remorse for leaving the wounded man and returns to the scene with a jug of water, only to find that he has been shot and killed since he left him. When Moss looks back to his truck parked on the ridge overlooking the valley, another truck is there. As soon as he tries to run, he is seen, which sparks a tense chase by gunmen in the other truck. This is only the beginning of a hunt for Moss that stretches for most of the remaining novel. After escaping from the gunmen at the scene of the drug deal massacre, Llewelyn sends his wife, Carla Jean Moss, to her mother in Odessa while he leaves his home with the money. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell investigates the drug crime while trying to protect Moss and his young wife, with the aid of other law enforcement. The sheriff is haunted by his actions in World War II, leaving his unit to die, for which he received a Bronze Star. Now in his late 50s, Bell has spent most of his life attempting to make up for the incident when he was a 21-year-old soldier. He makes it his quest to resolve the case and save Moss. Complicating things is the arrival of Anton Chigurh, a hitman hired to recover the money. Chigurh uses a captive bolt pistol (called a "stungun" in the text) to kill many of his victims (and to destroy several cylinder locks to open doors), as well as a silenced shotgun. Carson Wells, a rival hitman and ex-Special Forces officer who is familiar with Chigurh, is also on the trail of the stolen money. After a brutal shootout that spills across the Mexican border and leaves both Moss and Chigurh wounded, Moss recovers at a Mexican hospital while Chigurh patches himself up in a hotel room with stolen supplies. While recuperating, Moss is approached by Wells, who offers to give him protection in exchange for the satchel and tells him his current location and phone number, instructing him to call when he has "had enough." After recovering and leaving the hotel room, Chigurh finds Wells and murders him just as Moss calls to negotiate the exchange of money. After answering Wells's phone, Chigurh tells Moss that he will kill Carla Jean unless he hands over the satchel. Moss remains defiant and soon after, calls Carla Jean and tells her that he will meet up with her at a motel in El Paso. After much deliberation, Carla Jean decides to inform Sheriff Bell about the meeting and its location. Unfortunately for her and her husband, this call is traced and provides Moss's location to some of his hunters. At the motel, Sheriff Bell arrives to find Moss murdered by a band of Mexicans, who also were after the drug deal cash. Later that night Chigurh arrives at the scene and retrieves the satchel from the airduct in Moss's room. He returns it to its owner and later travels to Carla Jean's house and shoots her after flipping a coin to decide her fate. Soon after, he is hit by a car, which leaves him severely injured but still alive. After bribing a pair of teenagers to remain silent about the car accident, he limps off down the road. After a long investigation that fails to locate Chigurh, Bell decides to retire and drives away from the local courthouse feeling overmatched and defeated. For the rest of the book, Bell describes two dreams that he had the previous night. In one, he met his father in town and borrowed some money from him. In the second, Bell was riding his horse through a snow-covered pass in the mountains. As he rode, he could see his father up ahead of him carrying a moon colored horn lit with fire, and he knew that his father would ride on through the pass and fix a fire out in the dark and cold and that it would be waiting for him when he arrived. And then he woke up.
3136049	/m/08trjw	Trials of Death	Darren Shan	2003	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Darren Shan, is about to take the Trials of Initiation, a series of tests that vampires were forced to take part in, in years gone by, to prove himself to the Princes. Currently, it is only used for vampires who want to become a general, or for those who wish to demonstrate their strength. However, Darren Shan is required to endure the trials to earn the respect of the entire vampire race for his mentor Mr Crepsley's 'impulsive' decision to turn him. Darren is mostly trained by the games master of the Mountain, Vanez Blaze For The first trial He must escape from a maze that is filling with water whilst dragging a stone weighing half of his body weight. The second trial Darren must complete is The Path of Needles, a barefoot journey through one of the mountains many caverns littered with stalagmites and stalactites, all of which are razor sharp and could fall at any second. Luck is on Darren's side as the Festival of the Undead takes place right after his second trial. During this three day period no official business can take place meaning he gets a five day rest before his next trial. Suffering from a lot of cuts, notably on his hands and back, he finds it hard to enjoy the festival. A veteran vampire and also Larten Crepsely's mentor, Seba Nile, tells him to meet him later as he had a cure for his discomfort. They go to a cavern deep inside the mountain which is covered in spider webs and Darren soon realizes that it is full of hundreds of thousands of spiders. Seba breaks up the cobwebs and applies them to Darren's cuts which he says helped immediately. After the Festival of the Undead, Darren must choose his third trial which is The Hall of Flames, a metal room with various jets that emit flames periodically. Darren must remain in the room for approximately fifteen minutes, trying not to be 'toasted' by the scorching hot flames. This is reveled by many to be one of the hardest trials he could have picked, and barely survives it. The fourth trial is The Blooded Boars, a trial which is generally considered quite easy for full vampires. As Darren is only a half vampire and still nursing bad wounds from the previous trial, he struggles. The aim is to kill two wild boars which have been injected with vampire blood making them more aggressive than usual. Darren kills the first boar but it lands on top of him, his lack of strength means he is unable to move the boar as the second closes in. It charges at him, certain to kill him when Harkat Mulds, the Little Person who accompanies Darren in his journey to the Mountain steps in and kills the boar. This causes uproar as failure to complete the trials leads to death. Mr. Crepsley and Kurda, a soon to be Vampire Prince, argue that Harkat is not a vampire and cannot be expected to behave by their rules, and it was not that Darren would've died if he'd not been interrupted by Harkat. However, it is decided for Darren to be executed for not completing the Trials. Kurda finds Darren in his room facing imminent death and encourages him to escape the mountain. Regretfully Darren follows Kurda as they make for one of the mountains many exits. Soon they are tracked down by Gavner Purl who tries to convince them to go back but eventually ends up following them. They come across a cavern full of the Vampaneze. Kurda tells Darren to go on and him and Gavner would stay and fight the Vampaneze. Darren heads off but decides to come back and fight. He comes back and witnesses Kurda stabbing Gavner in the stomach and it is revealed he is an ally of the Vampaneze. Darren runs and ends up in the Hall of Final Voyage, where dead vampires were tossed into the strong current and washed out of the mountain. He realizes he is on the wrong side of the stream and attempts to jump over it. He falls short and manages to grab on to a rock as Kurda and the Vampaneze enter the cave. Kurda offers his hand to help pull him back to safety but Darren brands him a traitor and pushes himself out into the current. He is swept out of sight into the darkness beyond. fa:آزمون‌های مرگ no:Dødsprøvene fi:Kuoleman koetukset zh:死亡審判
3136512	/m/08tslc	Soul Harvest	Tim LaHaye	1999-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the Wrath of the Lamb earthquake, Rayford Steele must find his wife Amanda White, who was supposed to land in New Babylon. Buck Williams must find his wife Chloe Steele, who was last seen in a house that is now a shattered ruin. The only other person accounted for is Tsion Ben-Judah, and nearly a quarter of the world's population was snuffed out by the earthquake. The GC starts a new program called Cellular Solar, aka: Cell-Sol (pronounced sell-soul), a solar powered cell phone global network. Both Buck and Tsion find a new home for the Tribulation Force, half of a duplex belonging to the late Donny Moore and his wife, after discovering the death of Loretta, a close friend to the Tribulation Force. Buck searches for Chloe, discovering she is pregnant with their baby. He also meets Floyd Charles, a physician and fellow believer, who later joins the Trib. Force. Mac, Rayford's co-pilot, becomes a Believer. Believers around the world discover that they have received a sign on their foreheads visible only to other believers, leading to the common phrase, “I can see yours. Can you see mine?” This mark becomes a central plot device, since believers are able to locate each other with ease and yet blend in with Antichrist and Global Community Potentate Nicolae Carpathia's henchmen when necessary. Buck finds Chloe in a GC Hospital and rescues her, taking her back to the house where he and Tsion are staying. Tsion is planning to go back to Israel to teach the 144,000 witnesses. Ken Ritz becomes a believer as well. After TV signals return, they discover that the content is terrible from nudity, sexuality, torture, black arts, and more. The Tribulation Force finds Hattie Durham in an abortion clinic in Denver and discovers that Carpathia is plotting to have both Rayford and Hattie murdered there. Pretending to be Rayford, Buck rescues Hattie and unwittingly punches and kills an armed security guard intent on killing them. Later, Buck deeply regrets the guard's death even after one of his friends explains it was a "kill or be killed" situation. Rayford, who continues to fly the Condor 216 for Carpathia, tries to finds Amanda’s body. He buys two sets of scuba gear to dive to the bottom of the Tigris River with Mac. Hattie is sick and Trib. Force members try to get her to accept God. Rayford and Mac find his wife's body as the First of the Seven Trumpet Judgments, flaming hailstones and blood pour down from the sky. Ray recovers her laptop and says that the Hard Drive is intact. Rayford and Mac discuss that they didn't see the mark of the Believer on Amanda, but decide that this is inconclusive because they don't know if she died before or after the marks started appearing, or if the mark stays on the believer or goes away after they die. The GCASA (Global Community Aeronautics and Space Administration), find that a new comet is going to crash in to the ocean, killing marine life and sinking ships. This is the second Trumpet Judgment. Ten weeks later, right before the Trib. Force travels to Israel, the GCASA find a new threat in the heavens, a star called Wormwood. The GC tries to destroy it, shattering it into billions of pieces that fall into the lakes streams and fountains, turning the water to a bitter poison. This is the Third Trumpet Judgment..
3136545	/m/08tsns	Assassins	Tim LaHaye	1999-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational"}	 Rayford, filled with rage over so many losses, contemplates killing Nicolae Carpathia. He is so obsessed with the idea that he becomes stern and short tempered at times. At the New Babylon palace, David Hassid is placed in charge of delivering 144 computers to Nicolae, but diverts the delivery by telling the pilots delivering the computers to go one place and does the paperwork for another location. Floyd Charles reveals that he was infected from delivering Hattie's stillborn child and goes to the hospital where Leah Rose works. While on the run from GC forces, Floyd Charles succumbs to the poison and dies. The International CO-OP is up and running, which will allow believers to trade when it becomes illegal to buy and sell without the Mark of the Beast. Rayford is still wondering if he might be the one to kill Nicolae. Hattie (who also wants to kill Nicolae) runs off after an incident with Floyd and Rayford goes to find her, only to be tricked by GC Forces. Hattie is imprisoned and taken to the Belgium Facility for Female Rehabilitation, or "BUFFR". Rayford and the newest member of the Trib Force, Leah, are trying to retrieve a large quantity of cash from Leah's safe when the Sixth Trumpet Judgment hits as prophesied in Revelation 9:13-19, where a plague of death by fire, smoke, sulphur and deadly snake strikes carried out by 200 million demonic horsemen, visible only to the Tribulation saints, attack nonbelievers. Ray and Leah run into GC Peacekeeping forces and the horsemen, heading back to the safe house with the cash as the Peacekeepers are killed. David Hassid meanwhile successfully gets the computers incorrectly delivered. He also introduces the Condor cargo chief and his love interest, Annie Christopher, to Mac. An assassination attempt on Nicolae ends up destroying the Condor 216; it is soon replaced by Pontifex Maximus Peter Matthews's plane and renamed the Phoenix 216. The GC plans a gala for the midpoint of the Tribulation in Jerusalem. The Tribulation hurtles to its midpoint as the four murders prophesied in scripture take place. Peter Matthews is murdered by the 10 sub-pontentates of the world. Carpathia personally kills the Two Witnesses with a gun similar to the one Rayford buys to kill him. The Witnesses later protagonize a dramatic resurrection as they are taken up into the clouds, which is dismissed by the media as a hoax. After they are resurrected, an earthquake breaks out, destroying one tenth of Israel and leaving seven thousand dead, as prophesied in Revelation 11:11-13. Finally, Carpathia himself is assassinated as prophesied in Revelation 13:3-4 while delivering a speech three days before the midpoint of the tribulation. Rayford is skeptical as to whether he really was the one who did the deed as he planned to. A hole in Carpathia's head is the same size that Rayford would expect his gun to make, but he was bumped from behind a split second before pulling the trigger. And there were several people near him who are just as suspect. In a brief flashforward to the day before the Pontentate's burial, it is revealed that the assassin was caught on video camera and David Hassid is clearly surprised by what the tape reveals.
3136559	/m/08tsqh	The Indwelling	Jerry B. Jenkins		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 People flee from the scene of the assassination in a panic. Buck Williams notices that the gunshot sounded similar to the sound of the gun Nicolae used to kill Eli and Moishe. Rayford Steele is still wondering whether he really was the one that scripture singled out to deliver the killing blow to the Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia. In fact, it was Chaim Rosenzweig who stabbed Nicolae through the back of the head with a knife that he created- the thinnest, sharpest knife ever. Leah Rose attempts to free Hattie Durham from BFFR, meeting fellow believer and GC mole Ming Toy. Hattie is eventually let go from BFFR and tracked by the GC, who expect her to lead them to the Tribulation Force safe house. She does not go to the safe house, as the GC wants her to, but goes AWOL. Buck Williams is frantically searching for Chaim, believing that he has had a stroke, or worse, a heart attack. He returns to Chaim's manor to find several of Chaim's friends murdered by GC. Rayford escapes to Greece, worried that the GC may be pursuing him. After being filled with rage for the past several months, resulting in his attempted killing of Carpathia, Rayford is guilty over his selfishness and vows never to allow his emotions to rule him again. Meanwhile, Buck and Chaim make an escape from Israel, ending in a plane crash that results in Chaim's acceptance of Christ, as well as the death of T. M. Delanty. At the safe house, Tsion Ben-Judah experiences a series of dreams imparted unto him by God Himself. He witnesses a brief glimpse of the cosmic war in heaven that is slowly spilling into the Earth. He also receives a glimpse of the future, God's deliverance of His people- the Jews- into a safe haven, an act in which the Tribulation Force will soon play a vital role. He awakens to find that the safe house has been compromised. Rayford Steele, with the aid of new believer Al B, helps Tsion and toddler Kenny Bruce Williams escape the GC. As the world mourns the death of their leader and a funeral service is set for three days later after the assassination, a great statue of Nicolae is erected. Millions gather to view Carpathia's body, encased by bulletproof glass. Suddenly, the statue comes to life in the midst of black billowing smoke and speaks, demanding worship. Leon Fortunato, who is here revealed as the False Prophet, calls down lightning and fire from heaven to kill those who do not worship the image. David and his new fiancée Annie Christopher (who works in the palace and is also a believer) are stationed in different areas as they watch the resulting chaos. In full view of the crowd, Carpathia is resurrected, possessed by Satan on the first day of the Great Tribulation. David is frantic because Annie is missing. The Antichrist speaks to the people of the world, declaring that if anyone is able to doubt that he is God after seeing this, and if there are still people who think that they have already been enduring Tribulation, then they should prepare for the Great Tribulation.
3136584	/m/08tssl	The Mark	Jerry B. Jenkins		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 His Excellency Global Community Supreme Potentate Nicolae Carpathia has been resurrected and indwelt by Satan himself. He plans to remodel his offices and add two floors to his palace, including a glass ceiling. He also demands that the people of the Global Community worship him. Statues of himself are erected for worship. He introduces Viv Ivins to the senior staff and tells them of the loyalty mark program. The Antichrist declares that every single person on earth must receive his mark of loyalty and worship his image or lose their head to the loyalty enforcement facilitator. David Hassid finally finds out that his fiancée Annie Christopher has been killed by lightning called down by GC Supreme Commander and False Prophet Leon Fortunato. Albie and Rayford Steele run across Steve Plank, under the alias Pinkerton Stephens, at Boulder, CO, where Hattie has been taken. Steve tells them his conversion story; he became a believer during the Wrath of the Lamb Earthquake, surviving but losing much of his body. He now wears prosthetic body parts and uses a wheelchair. The three then carry out the incredible rescue of Hattie Durham, who finally becomes a believer. Before they rescue her, she tries to hang herself in her room. Terror comes to Christians in Greece as they are among the first to receive the death penalty for refusing the mark. Lukas Miklos loses his wife, his pastor, his pastor's wife and dozens of fellow Greek believers to the guillotine, while Cameron "Buck" Williams, who is in Greece in disguise along with Albie, help two Greek teenagers escape the detention center. Meanwhile, back in the states, Gustaf Zuckermandel, Jr. also known as Zeke, is distraught to find out that his father, whom everyone calls "Big Zeke", has suffered the same fate after being caught helping and supplying other believers (subversives, according to the GC). In New Babylon, David Hassid, Mac McCullum, Abdullah Smith, and Hannah Palemoon plan to leave, taking Ming Toy's 17 year-old brother Chang Wong (who is also a believer) along with them. But Chang, a computer prodigy, was brought by his parents to New Babylon, hoping to get him hired in Carpathia's forces. Determined to "make proud", Mr. Wong has Chang drugged, carried to the mark application site, and held down, even as he protests. But even after being given the mark of the beast against his will, Chang still has the mark of the believer clearly visible because he never "accepted" the mark of the beast. In this, David and Chang discover a great advantage: Chang can now be the new Tribulation Force mole in the GC Headquarters Palace as he can come, go, and trade freely. Meanwhile, the others plan a plane crash to deceive the GC into thinking they're dead while they join up with the Tribulation force to get ready for the massive exodus for believers which they call "Operation Eagle". Everything reaches a climax when Carpathia announces that he will be returning to Jerusalem to occupy what he believes is his rightful house: the Jewish Temple.
3136596	/m/025sl_8	The Remnant	Tim LaHaye		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Remnant begins immediately after the end of Desecration. The Great Tribulation unfolds, with one million believers gathered in Petra under the protection of God as Global Community Supreme Potentate and Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia continues to attack them and Armageddon approaches. Carpathia is ecstatic that he is about to attack the believers with massive amounts of conventional ordnance, a barrage that no one could survive without a miracle, yet all the believers do, not even feeling the flames that engulf their bodies. A final missile hits, opening a spring that drenches the fire. Afterwards, people talking to each other hear each other in their own language. Chloe Steele Williams, Hannah Palemoon, and Mac McCullum all go to Greece disguised as GC officers to try to rescue George Sebastian. Meanwhile, Ming Toy leaves the safe house and under her new disguise (provided by Gustaf Zuckermandel, Jr. aka Z) attempts to return home to China to aid her parents. While on the way, she falls in love with a South Korean Pilot named Ree Woo (who later marries her). She discovers that both of her parents have become believers, but her mother informs her that her father was killed. Chang Wong despairs for his safety and looks to escape New Babylon. After an arduous ordeal, George escapes his holders. Steve Plank doesn't take the Mark of the Beast and dies at the Guillotine. The new safe house is compromised, and the Tribulation Force is forced to look for a new place. They manage to leave the now compromised safe house and the Chicago, Illinois, area just in time before Antichrist orders what remains of [Chicago] to be obliterated by a nuclear blast. The main Trib. Force members find a new safe house with George Sebastian in San Diego, California. Meanwhile, the next two Bowl Judgments hit: the world's freshwater supply is turned into blood and the sun scorches with fiery heat. Antichrist sends scores of false teachers to deceive as many people as possible. Many people, including several at Petra, follow them only to meet horrible and gruesome deaths. The next Bowl Judgement hits, and a deep and painful darkness descends upon the throne and kingdom of the Antichrist in New Babylon. Chang plans to use the darkness to his advantage in order to finally escape. As the book ends, the final year of the Tribulation begins. God is leveling the playing field and setting the stage for Armageddon, the cosmic battle of the ages that will decide the fate of all that exists.
3136647	/m/02p744t	Armageddon	Jerry B. Jenkins		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the final days of the Tribulation, Nicolae Carpathia prepares to launch the greatest military conflict the world has ever seen, against none other than Jesus Christ Himself, raising the largest army in the history of mankind, the Unity Army. Believers all around the world are in hiding to avoid the Mark of the Beast and execution. Rayford Steele leads a rescue mission to New Babylon to extract GC mole Chang Wong from New Babylon, now eclipsed in a supernatural nightfall that blinds all unbelievers. In Al Basrah, Albie is murdered by a former associate for the bounty posted on those who have not taken the Mark. In San Diego, Chloe Steele Williams falls into the hands of the GC, and the underground safe house is found out, causing everyone to relocate, this time to Petra. Chloe is taken to an execution site to be put to death. Before the mass execution, Chloe's testimony leads several convicts to salvation. Accepting her fate as a martyr, Chloe is executed with a loyalty enforcement facilitator. There is a brief interlude as friends and loved ones gather at Petra for the funerals of Chloe and Albie. Their time of mourning is short-lived, however, as believers must prepare for the coming battle, set to come at the final day of the Tribulation. The Sixth Bowl Judgment hits and the Euphrates river dries up to open the way for the East's mighty armies to come and join the forces of the Beast. God destroys the city of New Babylon with fire that rains from the heavens, and spares all believers inside through the acts of Mac McCullum, who leads a rescue mission into the heart of the city before it is annihilated. On what is expected to be the final day of the Tribulation, the GC Unity Army attacks the city of Jerusalem, breaking the peace treaty Antichrist made with Israel. Tsion, along with Buck, decides to go to Jerusalem and join the fight. Rayford and the others find themselves in the middle of this greatest conflict in history as the bulk of the Unity Army surrounds Petra and stands poised to annihilate all remaining believers. In Jerusalem, Tsion is killed by Unity Army Forces as the GC overrun the Holy City. Buck Williams, in Jerusalem, and Rayford, outside Petra, are both gravely wounded. One of them dies, and the other is on the brink of death. (The mystery of who died is revealed in the next book.) It has been over seven years since the Rapture, and almost exactly seven years since the unholy treaty between Antichrist and Israel. The world is on the brink of total destruction as the tribulation nears its end and believers look to the heavens for the Glorious Appearing of Christ.
3136654	/m/025sl_n	Glorious Appearing	Jerry B. Jenkins		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Antichrist has assembled the armies of the world in the Valley of Megiddo for what he believes will be his ultimate triumph of the ages. With a victory here, he would ascend to the throne of God. The Tribulation Force has migrated to the Middle East, most ensconced at Petra with the Jewish Remnant, now more than a million strong. Petra is surrounded by the Unity Army, poised to destroy all that is left of God's people and usher in Nicolae Carpathia's new world order. The world holds its breath as the greatest military battle to ever take place threatens to obliterate all that remains of humanity. All seems lost. Tsion Ben-Judah and Buck Williams have been slain in Jerusalem, now overrun by Global Community forces. The hour of attack for Nicolae Carpathia’s Global Community Unity Army to assault the Rebels at the Temple Mount draws near. The seventh and final Bowl Judgement comes in the form of the greatest earthquake ever measured, followed by a rain of hailstones. Rayford Steele is the only original member of the Tribulation Force alive, and he's severely injured and on the brink of death. The sign of the Son of Man, a large Cross of lightning, appears over the global skyline for the whole world to witness. In addition, people who were sick and disabled were healed, and those who were formerly undecided were on their knees crying out for God to save them. This does not dissuade the enemies of God, as the Unity Army, led by Antichrist himself, makes their final charge against Petra, seeking to annihilate all remaining rebels to the Global Community. But suddenly, when all seems lost, the entire planet is covered in shadowless light and Jesus Christ returns to Earth in power and glory followed by the armies of heaven, slaying the armies of the Global Community with the Word of God in the four final battles of the Apocalypse, leading to a final confrontation with Antichrist in Jerusalem. Once the Global Unity Army has been destroyed, Jesus Christ sets foot on the Mount of Olives and sets up his kingdom in Jerusalem, where he proceeds to sentence The Beast (Bible) (Nicolae Carpathia) and his False Prophet (Leon Fortunato) to eternity in the lake of fire for the atrocities they committed against the entire world. Thereafter, Christ condemns Lucifer to 1,000 years in the abyss. In the newly formed Valley of Jehosaphat, Jesus condemns the last of the unbelievers and those who received the Mark of the Beast, cleansing the world for the beginning of his thousand-year reign. Those who were Raptured or martyred return to Earth to be reunited with their loved ones, and Paradise is ushered in. Believers from all over the world finally reunite in Jerusalem after the long seven years of the Tribulation and welcome the dawn of the Millennium World.
3136677	/m/08tsy2	The Rising	Tim LaHaye	2005-03-31	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Rising deals with Rayford Steele's childhood and college days, and how he nearly married another woman. A conflict between father and son as Rayford decides to become an airline pilot against his father's wishes. Also featured is the birth of Nicolae Carpathia, who would later rise up in Nicolae as the Antichrist. Marilena is a simple Romanian woman who is overcome by the need to have a baby. Her husband, Sorin, does not love his wife anymore and is revealed to be a homosexual. Thus, Marilena reads an ad for a group to find something "Beyond themselves", and meets Viviana Ivinisova, later known as Viv Ivins. Viviana is a Russian who talks with the spirit world. She is a Luciferian, and says that loyalty to her lord can bring Marilena the baby she wants so badly. However, this baby comes through genetic engineering with the best traits of two sperm mixed into a hybrid sperm, which is fused with the egg. At first, it is unknown who Nicolae's two biological fathers are. Later, they are found out to be Sorin and his lover, and Nicolae orders them executed and the truth covered up. After giving birth and realizing the amazing talent her son possesses, while showing no concern for her, Marilena discovers Viv's plans for the prodigy child. Jonathan Stonagal is the financier of Nicolae's education. However, Marilena disagrees with these plans so much that she is finally assassinated; however, Nicolae is the one who plans her death through poisoning. Once Nicolae has become a powerful businessman, he is taken by a demon to the desert, where he is forced to remain without food or water for forty days. In a contrast to Jesus' temptation, Nicolae falls to all three temptations. After this, Nicolae is returned to Romania. Meanwhile, Rayford Steele deals with his father, who is determined to have Ray take over the family business. Ray has his own dreams of becoming a pilot, and joins ROTC to attend college, where he meets and almost marries Kitty. However, Ray has second thoughts about the latter, and breaks up with her. Furthermore, he later dates his friend Irene, and they get married after a while. Chloe Steele is born during this time as well. After befriending a woman named Jackie, Irene slowly begins to feel something is missing in her life. Jackie, a Christian, lays out God's plan of salvation, and Irene accepts Christ.
3136712	/m/08ts_4	The Rapture	Tim LaHaye	2006-06-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the moments leading up to the Rapture, nobody knows it is coming as the clock silently ticks down. Choices are made. The stage is set as Nicolae Carpathia ruthlessly eliminates any obstacles in his rise to power. Time seems to slow as the clock ticks down. Pan-Con Airlines Captain Rayford Steele prepares for a flight to London with beautiful flight attendant Hattie Durham. Because of his wife's newfound faith, Rayford looks forward to time&ndash;and the possibilities&ndash;with Hattie. Journalist Cameron "Buck" Williams is in Israel when the Russians attack, and he experiences for himself the power of God when fire rains down from the sky, destroying the attackers. Even more, not a single casualty is reported in all of Israel. Buck cannot deny Chicago bureau chief Lucinda Washington's insistence that the event was prophesied in Ezekiel 38,39 and clearly of the supernatural, though he dares not consider the personal ramifications. Meanwhile, Nicolae Carpathia eliminates any obstacles in his path to power. As the newly appointed president of Romania, Nicolae is invited to speak before the U.N. Without warning, millions disappear and are welcomed into the unspeakable presence of Jesus Christ, and believers from all over space and time reunite in the house of God, as prophesied in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17. The Judgment Seat of Christ takes place and the saints of the ages are rewarded for their perseverance with crowns from Christ himself. They are followed into heaven, where they see the glory prepared for them by the Lord. On Earth, some realize what has happened, what they’ve lost, what they’ve missed, as the world plunges into chaos as drivers, pilots, and pedestrians of all occupations go missing. Rayford's first officer, Chris Smith, is among the first to commit suicide in the wake of the disappearances and the ensuing chaos. Pastor Bruce Barnes is among those left behind, and the young pastor knows all too well that the disappearances signal the beginning of the end and the darkest days the planet will ever see.
3137061	/m/08ttmj	Waterland	Graham Swift	1983	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tom Crick, fifty-two years old, has been history master for some thirty years in a secondary school in Greenwich, in a sense the place where, in a world that sets its clocks according to Greenwich Mean Time, time begins. Tom has been married to Mary, for as long as he has been teaching but the couple have no children. The students in Tom’s school have grown increasingly scientifically oriented, and the headmaster, a physicist, has little sympathy for Tom’s subject. One of Tom’s students, Price questions the relevance of learning about historical events. The youth’s scepticism causes Tom to change his teaching approach to telling tales drawn from his own recollection. By doing so, he makes himself a part of the history he is teaching, relating his tales to local history and genealogy. The headmaster tries to entice Tom into taking an early retirement. Tom resists because his leaving would mean that the History Department would cease to exist and be combined with the broader area of General Studies. Tom’s wife is arrested for snatching a baby. The publicity that attends her arrest reflects badly on the school, and Tom is told that he now must retire. Tom uses his impending forced retirement as an excuse to unfold a story to his students. The bulk of Waterland is devoted to this story that, before it is done, covers some three hundred years of local history and relates it to the broader historical currents of those centuries. The primary plot of the story has to do with Tom’s relationship to Mary both before and after their marriage. She is reared on a farm close to where Tom’s father, a lock-keeper, lives with his two sons in the lock-keeper’s cottage, beside a tributary of the Great Ouse. Tom's mother dies when he is eight years old. Mary is also reared by her father because her mother died giving birth to her. He sees that his daughter receives a strict religious upbringing. As Mary matures, her interest in men grows, and she and Tom slip into an affair and she discovers that she is pregnant. Tom’s brother Dick asks Mary if he is the father of the child. Mary lies to him, telling him that Freddie Parr is the father. Dick, distraught at this information, struggles with the drunken Freddie, who cannot swim, and pushes him into the river. It is Tom’s father who pulls Freddie from the sluice, not realising that his drowning is anything but accidental, as the coroner’s inquest finally finds. Mary tries to provoke a miscarriage but fails, so she and Tom, the father of the child, go to an old crone, who performs an abortion that leaves Mary sterile. Her father forces her into seclusion, and for three years she remains isolated. Finally the two fathers agree to bring their children together again; unknown to them, Tom, away fighting in World War II, has already written to Mary. When he comes home, the two marry, and Tom begins his teaching career while Mary takes a position in an old persons’ home. Finally, she steals a baby and explains the new arrival to Tom by saying that it is a gift from God. Obviously disturbed and suffering from a pain that has been festering since her teenage abortion, Mary is arrested. A secondary plot involves Tom’s mother’s family, the Atkinsons, who have run a brewery for several generations. This subplot is interwoven into the development and resolution of the primary plot.
3138034	/m/08tw69	Dangling Man	Saul Bellow	1944	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Written in diary format, the story centers on the life of an unemployed young man named Joseph, his relationships with his wife and friends, and his frustrations with life. Living in Chicago and waiting to be drafted, the diary acts as a philosophical confessional for his musings. It ends with his entrance into the army during World War II, and a hope that the regimentation of army life will relieve his suffering. Along with Bellow's second novel The Victim, it is considered his "apprentice" work.
3138438	/m/08twrk	With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa	Eugene Sledge	1981	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 In contrast to the European theater, Sledge's memoir gives a perspective on the Pacific campaign. His memoir is a front-line account of infantry combat in the Pacific War. It brings the reader into the island hopping, the jungle heat and rain, the "banzai attack" or full frontal assault used by his enemies. Sledge wrote starkly of the brutality displayed by American and Japanese soldiers during the battles, and of the hatred that both sides harbored for each other. In Sledge's words, "This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands." Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, including one Marine whose genitals had been cut off and stuffed into the corpse's mouth. He also describes the behavior of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpses (and, in one case, a severely wounded but still living Japanese soldier), as well as other disturbing trophy-taking. Sledge describes in detail the sheer physical struggle of living in a combat zone and the debilitating effects of constant fear, fatigue, and filth. "Fear and filth went hand-in-hand," he wrote. "It has always puzzled me that this important factor in our daily lives has received so little attention from historians and is often omitted from otherwise excellent personal memoirs by infantrymen." Marines had trouble staying dry, finding time to eat their rations, practicing basic field sanitation (it was impossible to dig latrines or catholes in the coral rock on Peleliu), and simply moving around on the pulverized coral of Peleliu and in the mud of Okinawa.
3139231	/m/08ty0k	Family Voices	Harold Pinter			 Family Voices exposes the story of a mother, son, and dead husband and father through a series of letters that the mother and son have written to one another and that each speaks aloud. The son has moved off to the city and is surrounded by odd characters and circumstances. The mother, who apparently never receives her son's letters, questions angrily why her son never responds to her letters, and brings news of his father's death. Towards the end of the play, the father speaks as it were from the grave, "Just to keep in touch" (81). A series of interlocking monologues spoken by three Voices (One, Two, and Three), Family Voices exposes themes involving difficulties of communication, the vicissitudes of memory and the past, and family dysfunction familiar from Pinter's other dramatic works, employing some of Pinter's well-known stylistic traits. The peculiar circumstances of the characters evoke the Theatre of the Absurd. The mother and son continually have trouble communicating with each other, resulting in more intense attempts at communication that only serve to make the situation more absurd.
3139599	/m/08tysy	The Deceiver	Louise Cooper		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 It is discreetly explained to the Chief of British Intelligence that, in the new atmosphere of detente, and the warming of relations with the Soviet Union, that the SIS's role will have to be redefined, and some of its more aggressive agents will have to be taught a lesson. The Chief is ordered to make an example of a maverick officer, and Sam McCready is suggested. McCready's deputy is unwilling to let his mentor retire without a fight, and insists on a hearing, during which four of McCready's most celebrated cases are recalled. The SIS is approached by a high-ranking Soviet general, offering to turn over documents with crucial details of Soviet military plans. The meeting is to take place in East Germany. McCready is in charge of the operation, but he is too well known by the Soviets to risk going himself. So, he recruits his old ally, aging BND agent Bruno Morenz. As a favour to his old friend, and in stark violation of his BND employment rules, Morenz agrees to enter Eastern Germany, and manages to get the documents into his hands. Morenz, however, is already on the verge of nervous collapse because of events in Western Germany (he was having an affair with a sluttish woman who later insulted him and led to him accidentally killing her and her pimp boyfriend) and makes a rash escape while involved in a minor traffic accident. A man-hunt ensues, with the East German security services eventually realizing that they have a substantial spy case on their hands. McCready also realizes that Morenz is in deep trouble; digging into Morenz' past, he locates a potential hiding place. Against all orders, he assumes a false identity, uses old friends to cross the border without being noticed, and manages to locate Morenz. Since the search is already closing in on them, and Morenz is in no state to make an escape, Sam hands him poisoned alcohol, takes the documents and slips again through the border, thus protecting the general from exposure, saving Morenz from an uglier fate, and retrieving the sought-after document. During a visit of the Soviet Military Intelligence Corps (GRU) to Britain, one of them phones the Central Intelligence Agency's London outpost, and defects to the U.S. He introduces himself as KGB Colonel Pyotr Orlov. Orlov's information prove to be highly valuable, leading to the arrest of Russian spies in many countries, and providing important information on USSR military planning. While the CIA is delighted to have such a valuable asset, Sam McCready has a gut feeling that something might be wrong with Orlov; his suspicion is confirmed by one of his own agents, the head of the KGB's London residency, who secretly works for McCready (Codename Keepsake). Keepsake claims that Orlov is not a defector, but a plant, tasked with denouncing a high-ranking CIA officer as a Soviet mole and thus bringing chaos and distrust to the entire agency. At this point, the cooperation between the U.S. and the British turns into mutual distrust, with both sides vouching for their own sources. The events accelerate when Orlov finally (though indirectly) identifies the supposed CIA traitor; at the same time, Keepsake suddenly departs for Moscow. It looks like Sam is wrong. But in order to prevent the disintegration of the CIA from within, and also to prove to himself that Keepsake was not deceiving him, McCready prepares Keepsake's escape from Moscow. Keepsake reveals that he returned to Moscow in order to bring back incontestable proof of both his own loyalty to Sam, and of Orlov's treachery. It is, however, too late: an over-eager CIA agent has already killed the officer identified. The story ends with Orlov being exposed, and stoically accepting his immediate execution. The SIS uncovers evidence that Libya is preparing a shipment of arms to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other European terrorist groups. Sam McCready recruits an ex-SAS soldier-turned-novelist named Tom Rowse, to pose as a weapons buyer, thinly covered by the pretense of conducting research for a new novel. He manages to get into contact with the Libyan arms provider, and manages to get his weapons cache included in the IRA shipment. With his information, the British are able to identify the ship transporting the weapons. McCready enlists the help of the elite Special Boat Service (SBS), seaborne equivalent of the SAS, to intercept the vessel. A woman, in whom Tom was romantically interested, is found to be directly involved with the IRA terrorists, and is shot dead when the vessel is boarded. There is an error in that part of the book, Rowse flights from Valletta Malta, to Nicosia airport Cyprus.He could not have done that because Nicosia airport has been closed since July 1974. So he would've had to fly to Larnaca. Sunshine is a small (fictional) island in the Caribbean, in transition from British rule to independence. The island is about to hold its first election for governor, and, since no political parties have developed yet, the two leading candidates are both expatriates, without any financial backing or popular support from the population. When a vacationing Florida law enforcement officer recognizes a notorious hired killer amongst one of the candidates' campaign workers, he flies back to Miami in a hurry, but his plane explodes in mid-air. His partner flies to Sunshine to investigate. At the same time, the British territorial governor has been murdered, and Scotland Yard sends an investigator; Sam McCready, who is in the USA, hears about the murder, and decides to pay a visit to Sunshine. The three investigators team up on the island and McCready exposes the two presidential candidates as, respectively, a Bahamian cocaine smuggler, and an agent of the Cuban secret service, both seeking to exploit the island for their own ends. It takes some quick thinking on McCready's part to apprehend the criminals - including forging a document appointing himself Governor for a day - but McCready is able to foil both candidates' schemes, and ensures that Sunshine's transition to independence will be smooth. The DEA agent catches his partner's killer in the smuggler's house, but it takes the Scotland Yard Investigator too long to find out who killed the governor. McCready figures out first the murder was committed by an elderly expatriate American lady, with the sole purpose of drawing the authorities and the press to the island to deal with the entourage of both candidates. Given her age, and extreme popularity with the island's people, McCready decides to keep her crime a secret. At the conclusion of Sam's case, his appeal is rejected. The SIS hierarchy decided, weeks ago, that Sam's office was no longer necessary, since the Cold War was over. Offered a variety of desk jobs, Sam declines in favor of early retirement, deciding that he's done his part. But on his way out, he warns his deputy to keep focused on his job because, despite what the bureaucrats in charge of the SIS think, the world is still a very dangerous place that will always need spies. As he leaves the building, he passes a newspaper headline stating the official end of the Cold War. Four weeks later, he is fishing outside his retirement cottage, when he hears over the radio that Saddam Hussein has invaded Kuwait. Hearing this headline, McCready, vindicated and unmoved, decides it's "time to change his bait".
3142140	/m/08v2yy	The Victim	Saul Bellow	1947	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Asa Leventhal's wife Mary has left the city for a few weeks in order to help her elderly mother move from Baltimore to her old family home in the South. While she is away, Leventhal must take on many tasks of caring for himself which his wife would ordinarily undertake for him. The action of the story begins when Leventhal is at his job as a copy-editor and receives a frantic phone call from his sister-in-law. She tells him that his nephew is terribly ill and that she desperately needs his assistance. During their conversation we learn that Asa's brother Max is a negligent husband and father who has practically abandoned his wife and two sons for itinerant work in Texas. His family subsists on the money he sends to them. On his way to his brother's apartment, Leventhal reflects on the annoyance of being disturbed at work and the shameful treatment which Max is visiting upon his young family. But these reflections quickly take on a tone of self-reproach as Leventhal briefly admits to himself that he has allowed his obligation to this extended family to lapse inexcusably. Throughout the novel, Leventhal flirts with the possibility of widening his arc of responsibility to include humans other than himself and his wife. Usually, however, he finds a way to preserve his positive image of himself and to shirk responsibility for others. This theme is expanded one evening when Leventhal, while walking in the park, is abruptly confronted by a man whose face he is unable immediately to place. Slowly, through conversation and subterfuge, the stranger reveals himself to be an old acquaintance named Kirby Allbee. Leventhal initially regards Allbee, who looks down on his luck, with a mixture of alarm and pity, but is swiftly put on guard, for Allbee's stream of false courtesy is barbed with anti-semitism, and it emerges that Allbee holds Leventhal responsible for his having lost his job at some point in the past. As they stand there, Leventhal scrambles to recall the details of their acquaintance. He does recall Allbee's references to a party at which Allbee had angered Leventhal with anti-semitic remarks, and also that, while looking for a job himself, he had had a disastrous interview with Allbee's old boss. But Allbee has clearly become a 'crank' and a drunk, and Leventhal at first rejects out of hand Allbee's accusation that Leventhal's disastrous interview has lost him his job. Allbee asserts that Leventhal's angry behavior at the interview was deliberate provocation, payback for Allbee's anti-semitic remarks at the party, directed at Leventhal's close friend, Dan Harkavy, who had nonetheless contacted Allbee to help secure the disastrous interview for Leventhal. Allbee confronts Leventhal several more times over the following weeks and it is revealed that in recent years Allbee has led a life of dissipation and poverty. The loss of his job, his wife's subsequent decision to leave him and her ultimate death in an auto accident have left him without resources. Leventhal mulls over his angry behavior at the interview and begins, despite the fact that Allbee is stalking him and spying on him and eventually turns up on his doorstep late at night, to accept some degree of responsibility. He enters into painful introspection about his stance toward others and interpretations of their behavior. We learn that Leventhal's mother was institutionalized for mental illness, that Leventhal's 'nerves' are shot, and thus despite Allbee's alarming behavior the reader accepts Leventhal's doubts about his own assessments of people's motives. Interwoven with his struggles with Allbee are Leventhal's uneasy interactions with the family of his brother Max. After his initial visit to their lowly apartment, Leventhal is convinced that Max has neglected his young wife and children unconscionably and he resolves to give Max a piece of his mind. Leventhal convinces his sister-in-law to allow her son to be admitted to a hospital for treatment. When the young boy takes a turn for the worse, Max returns to the city just at the time of his son's death. Bellow uses the twin events of the death of Leventhal's nephew and the jarring conflict with Allbee to portray a period of self-examination and growth in the life of the protagonist. Although his tangles with Allbee nearly end in disaster, he parts with his brother on good terms, and in a final chapter, we learn that he has been promoted, looks younger despite graying hair, and is about to become a father. The end describes a chance meeting between Leventhal and his old tormentor Allbee—both early-middle-aged, in a theatre, just before the final act. Allbee's fortunes are superficially reversed: he is dating a Hollywood actress and is richly attired. Leventhal is dismayed when Allbee hails him, but Allbee comes close to apologizing for his past aggression, saying that now he has learned that 'the world wasn't made exactly for me' and that he has come to terms with 'whoever runs things'. But since Allbee has in the past bruited his belief that 'the Jews' run everything, Leventhal's parting words to him are, 'Wait a minute, what´s your idea of who runs things?' Poignantly, we part with Leventhal and his 9-months-pregnant wife in the dark, being shown to their seats by an invisible 'usher'.
3144211	/m/08v861	Young Bond Book 3	Charlie Higson	2007-01-04	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The story's prologue is set in Highgate Cemetery, where Professor Alexis Fairburn, an Eton beak (Professor), is kidnapped by Wolfgang and Ludwig Smith. When he was kidnapped, Fairburn was tracing a tombstone, but leaves the piece of paper with which he was tracing. The story itself starts with young James Bond and his friend, Perry Mandeville (leader of the Danger Society) reminiscing the previous days events. Out of the blue, a letter to Pritpal from Alexis Fairburn comes, regarding Fairburn's resignation from Eton. To House Master Codrose and Headmaster Elliot, the 'mistakes' were just made by Fairburn because of his scatterbrained personality and eccentricity, but Pritpal soon figures out that the mistakes were there for a reason. James and Pritpal work towards trying to decipher them - the first of them are easy - some wrong names in the letter (Luc Olivier and Speccy Stevens) translate into "Solve seven cryptic clues." However, they have to get several photographs of the letter, which has been confiscated by Cecil Codrose, before they can continue. Eventually, they get it and continue. They determine that they have to solve the puzzle of a certain crossword in the next The Times and eventually determine that "Gordian Knot" means that they must meet a man nicknamed "Gordius," who is coming to Pritpal's next Crossword Society meeting. James decides to come along to the meeting, but all the man does is play a game of Hearts, during which time James wins five pounds. The man gives his name as "Professor Ivar Peterson," who is a professor at Cambridge University. However, James and Pritpal do not believe him. James arranges with his friend, Perry Mandeville to go to Cambridge University, which will work as he is intending to go off to London on his father's birthday leave. Before James can go to London, there is a break in at the school and the matron is forced to leave the school out of shock. James is sure that the intruder was intending to take something related to Fairburn. James decides to leave for London with Perry at once and learns that one more clue, when solved, says that Fairburn has actually been kidnapped and James realises that the former Maths beak is in danger. He and Perry drive to London in his Bramford and Martin. On the way, they spy an old Bentley that is for sale. Eventually, they arrive in London and James goes off to Cambridge University to find Professor Peterson. Eventually, he asks his porter if he can see him and he agrees. However, when he goes into his office, he discovers that Professor Peterson has been murdered with an Apache revolver bayonet. The killer is, in fact, still in the room and James flees before he can be attacked. James then reads a letter that he took from Peterson's desk and finds the name "John Charnage" in it. Before he can work out what it means, the killer James had seen arrives in a Daimler vehicle with his accomplice. It is clear to the reader that the killers were Ludwig and Wolfgang, the two men who had kidnapped Fairburn. James flees in the Bramford and Martin, but the men give chase and eventually, James ends up in a river. He manages to escape the vehicle before it explodes and hides under a bridge. James passes out from the cold and wakes up in a hospital. After managing to steal a suit and his shoes, James hitches a ride to Perry's house in a taxi. After a light breakfast with Perry, the two realise that "John Charnage" is actually Sir John Charnage, a local businessman whose father used to own a chemical factory. The two pay him a visit, but James is recognised as the boy that was seen leaving the scene of Professor Peterson's murder. He locks them in a room and leaves seemingly to call the police. James and Perry try and escape, but they are spotted and only narrowly escape by throwing a basket of groceries that a boy was delivering at Charnage. They flag down a taxi and manage to get to Hackney, where the Eton Mission is and for which Pritpal and Tommy Chong are working. The group solve the remains of the puzzle and determine two things - they need to check Room 5 of The Royal College of Surgeons and then go to Highgate Cemetery. They go to the museum first and discover the name "Charles Babbage," who had tried to invent two machines for solving mathematical problems that were basically and early computer and determine that Charnage is trying to build one of these machines. They then head down to Highgate cemetery and meet a tramp named Theo who is living in the cemetery. He casually tells them that the cemetery houses Karl Marx, the man who had come up with the idea of Communism and "the man who turned the Russian bear red." At that moment, Wolfgang and Ludwig arrive at the graveyard and kill the tramp. James and Perry flee and split up. James hides in the trunk of the killers' Daimler and is led straight to Fairburn's kidnapper - Charnage. When they arrive, James sets alight the Daimler and, in the confusion, enters the building. James finds himself in an old, abandoned Chemical factory and finds his way to a room marked "Hazardous Chemicals." He steals a bottle of Potassium from it. However, he is discovered and is forced to escape. He discovers that the factory has been changed into an illegal underground casino. James tries to find a way out, but an American man who has just lost a fortune in the casino forces him to help him win back his money in Roulette, preventing him from escaping. Eventually, James is caught and taken to Charnage, who decides that he needs to kill him. To do this, he forces him to drink a large amount of Gin. Drunk and with a damaged liver, James is then dragged by Ludwig and Wolfgang to a barge and they prepare to throw him into the River Thames. In his drunken state, he works out the rest of the crossword and determines that the word "Bond" (in his name) must have the word "runner" and the letter "m" inserted into it, but cannot make sense of the results. He manages to escape, however, by throwing the jar of potassium he had taken from Charnage's factory at them, blowing Wolfgang's hand off and then throwing himself overboard. After eventually making it to land, he wanders through East London in his drunken state and passes out in an alley. He wakes up to find himself surrounded by a gang of girls, who prepare to beat him up. However, by coincidence, he is in the town of Red Kelly (the boy he met during the events of SilverFin). The leader of the gang is Red's younger sister, Kelly, who immediately takes a shine to James. After getting some food at the local pub, he goes to Red's home and learns that Charnage's business had died several years before because the labourers were always dying. James rests for a few hours and eventually determines that Charnage must have been doing a deal with the Russians to build the computer that he is trying to build, the N.E.M.E.S.I.S. machine. Red inadvertently solves the last piece of the puzzle - one of the results James had got earlier, Brunnermond, was actually where a large explosion took place, near the Royal Docks. James realises that the machine is at the Royal docks, in a boat called the Amoras. They get to the Royal docks in an old mail train that Red has been using. Upon arrival, James and Red's sister sneak up to the boat in a small rowing boat and hide in a bathroom. James locates Fairburn and the three escape to a nearby passenger ship, where they decide to shelter for the night. Kelly, who has demonstrated an interest in James since learning his identity, insists on dancing with him in the ballroom to some music played on an old gramophone. However, during the night, some intruders get onto the boat and search for them. They are attacked by Charnage's butler Deighton and a Russian man, but are rescued by Kelly's gang. They return to the Amoras and destroy the Nemesis machine, killing Wolfgang and Ludwig in the process and decide to go off and find the Russian in charge - Colonel Irina Sedova (Babushka). They track her down to an abandoned train tunnel and search. Before leaving for the search, Red's sister gives James a kiss. They eventually find Babushka, but she prepares to kill James. James manages to kill her henchman, and discovers a gun in his own pocket. He has it aimed at Babushka's head, but she pleads with him to let her go. James agrees and eventually his friends arrive to help him. He tells Perry Mandeville that he intends to buy the Bentley they saw earlier with the money he won at the casino.
3145214	/m/08vbhd	Evening's Empire	David Herter	2002-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book follows the travels of a man to the small town of Evening, Oregon, where his beloved wife was killed in a freak accident the year before. The novel relies heavily on surrealism and a lolling suspense that is never realized in any sort of actual climax. Nonetheless, the book retains a small following of fans that greatly admire its "mature" style and few reviewers have considered it a poor effort.
3149476	/m/08vlxd	Roseanna	Per Wahlöö	1965	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A young woman is found dead in a canal, molested and murdered. The case is almost instantly cold: nobody can identify her and where and by whom she was killed. Then a stroke of luck: through Interpol her identity is ascertained—Roseanna McGraw, an American tourist who was taking a boat trip in southern Sweden. A meticulous investigation determines that she was murdered aboard the boat and proceeds to determine if a fellow passenger was responsible.
3151394	/m/08vrgq	The Enchanted Castle	E. Nesbit	1907	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The enchanted castle of the title is a country estate in the West Country seen through the eyes of three children, Gerald, James and Kathleen, who discover it while exploring during the school holidays. The lake, groves and marble statues, with white towers and turrets in the distance, make a fairy-tale setting, and then in the middle of the maze in the rose garden they find a sleeping fairy-tale princess. The "princess" tells them that the castle is full of magic, and they almost believe her. She shows them the treasures of the castle, including a ring she says is a ring of invisibility, but when it actually turns her invisible she panics and admits that she is the housekeeper's niece, Mabel, and was just play-acting. The children soon discover that the ring has other magical powers. The Enchanted Castle was written for both children and adults. It combines descriptions of the imaginative play of children, reminiscent of The Story of the Treasure Seekers, with a magic more muted than in her major fantasies such as The Story of the Amulet.
3152340	/m/08vtss	Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan				 The first half of Futility introduces the hero, John Rowland. Rowland is a disgraced former US Navy officer, who is now an alcoholic and has fallen to the lowest levels of society. Dismissed from the Navy, he is working as a deckhand on the Titan. On an April night the ship hits the iceberg, capsizing and sinking somewhat before the halfway point of the novel. The second half follows Rowland, as he saves the young daughter of a former lover by jumping onto the iceberg with her. After a number of adventures, in which he fights a polar bear (suffering permanent physical disability due to wounds sustained in the fight) and finds a lifeboat washed up on the iceberg, he is eventually rescued by a passing ship, overcomes his addiction and, over several years, works his way up to a lucrative Government job restoring his former income and position in society. In the closing lines of the story he receives a message from his former lover, pleading for him to visit her and her daughter.
3154776	/m/08vz51	Invasion	Robin Cook	1997	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Robin Cook envisions in this book a strange contact with extraterrestrial aliens.(A deadly threat to life on earth -from the icy vastness of outer space). An alien virus arrives on earth contained in a tiny black disk. Those who pick up the disk are infected by the virus which spreads rapidly with flu like symptoms. The first human to pick up the disk and be infected is Beau Stark, an ambitious 21-year-old young man. The virus starts by giving him flu like symptoms but within a few hours he is not only free of the symptoms but also infused with new energy and power. His girlfriend Cassy notices major personality changes and an obsession with environment. The man who was all for banning big dogs in the city suddenly acquires one and proceeds to infest it. The virus apparently infects all life forms on earth. Meanwhile the first invasion & infestation having succeeded the disk sends a signal, inviting millions more disks to come. Those who handle the disks receive a sting, soon followed by flu-like symptoms and ending in what could be called "zombie assimilation" into an alien collective consciousness with Beau being the leader. Cassy however shares her fears of Beau’s changing personality with their mutual friend and her ex-boyfriend Pitt, who is a medical student and concerned after witnessing a sudden upsurge in deaths of people suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes. He takes Cassy to meet his senior Dr. Shiela who is also concerned about the preventable and unexplained deaths and surging number of flu cases. Cassy also tells them about personality changes reported in some people by one of her students, Jonathan. Jonathan introduces the group to his parents Nancy & Eugene, a virologist and a physicist. Jesse, a cop, also comes in contact with the group when he accompanies a colleague suffering sudden seizures to the hospital. The group finally zeros on the disks as being the carriers of the infection and deduces that this may be alien virus and decides to take the matter to CDC. Nancy, Eugene & Shiela travel to CDC HQ, but discover to their horror that the entire board is already infected. While attempting to escape, Eugene is engulfed by one of the disks that is also a powerful weapon which emits radiation and can create a black-hole. The two women make it back to the others and the group flees to a remote cabin owned by Jesse. Meanwhile, The final wave of disks infest the entire earth slowly infecting people all over the world and killing those with any genetic disease. The group contacts other hidden groups who are working on means to combat the virus. However, they soon have to make forays to the town for research supplies and food. On one such foray, Jesse is consumed by the disk just like Eugene, Nancy is infected and Cassy is carried off by the infected to Beau, who is unable to cope with the human emotions and is pining for her. Jonathan, Pitt, and Shiela abandon their hideout and go looking for a Dr. M who has made advances in isolating the virus. Cassy is taken to Beau who informs her that this invasion had been planned for a very long time as the disks only activate the virus which was planned in human DNA 3 billion years ago when life was just evolving on earth. Every million years, the virus activator protein is sent to earth to judge the suitability of its inhabitants as hosts to the virus. This time the hosts have been most suitable and are in the process of building a transporter, which would link Earth to the other planets infested by the virus and allow travel between all those planets. He shows Cassy the transporter under construction and then proceeds to infect her, telling her that he loves her and wants her to be a part of the alien consciousness. The strain makes Cassy faint and when she wakes up, she is horrified by what she would become once the virus takes control. She flees from the place with hopes of contacting her friends and informing them what they are up against. Cassy contacts the group, who has hooked up with Doctor Harlan McCay, who has a Biological Warfare Research Lab at his disposal. When the invasion started, Dr. McCay headed to the lab, which was left over from the Cold War. The lab is stocked and was at least somewhat staffed (the staff apparently left when they got infected) and although it was a secret, the local Native Americans knew about it and had at some point in time informed him of it. The lab had everything they needed to work on a cure for the virus. Dr. McCay discloses that he also was stung by the disk, but has prevented an infection by injecting himself with a monoclonal antibody that at least temporarily prevents the virus from taking hold of the host. Cassy is brought to the facility and given an infusion of the monoclonal antibody. While experimenting they discover that infecting themselves with another virus will cause the virus to expose itself and oxygen will destroy it, since it came to Earth 3 billion years ago when there was little to no oxygen so its vulnerable to it in a virile state. After testing this with infected mice (it cures all except the one infected the longest, who dies; apparently if it's in the system too long, the cure kills), they take a cold virus that has never been encountered before (it was artificially engineered, and thus will no one will have immunity) as it is mild enough to not kill the person infected but will do the job. Dr. McCay acts as the guinea pig and exposes himself to the virus in a containment unit. Beau, in the meanwhile, has discovered that Cassy has escaped and unable to overcome his human emotions, follows and discovers the facility but has to leave before he can find Cassy as the gateway is encountering problems. He leaves a few of his associates behind to deal with the humans. The group escapes the facility and storms the mansion, smashing the gateway with a car. Beau is too far gone to be cured and tells them to run as the destruction of the gateway would cause dispersion. He dies and the mansion is destroyed but they are able to spread the cure and the invasion is halted.
3155194	/m/08v_00	Operation Chaos	Poul Anderson	1971	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In an alternate world, where the existence of God has been scientifically proven and magic has been harnessed for the practical needs of the adept by the degaussing of cold iron, the United States is part of an alternative Second World War in which the enemy is not Germany but a resurgent Islamic Caliphate, which has invaded the United States. Werewolf Steven Matuchek and witch Virginia meet on a military mission to stop the invading Islamic army from unleashing a secret superweapon, a genie released from a bottle in which it had been sealed by King Solomon. Together, they fight against the demon and incidentally fall in love with each other. After the end of the war (an Allied victory as in our World War II, but U. S. forces remain in occupation of former enemy lands for much longer) the two of them continue and deepen their liaison and have various additional adventures (which were originally published as a series of independent stories). Among other things they stop an elemental summoned as a college prank which had gone amok, confront a succubus/incubus on their honeymoon, and enter the Hell dimension to save their daughter (who has been kidnapped and taken there, with a changeling left in her crib in her place). Some parts of the book can be seen as a kind of social satire. For example, the widespread use of flying brooms and carpets (actually, both have cabins mounted on top of the basic flying instrument) provides in this world a non-polluting flying substitute for cars, which encounters no traffic jams as it can use the whole of the sky. Later, in Hell the protagonists encounter an especially nasty form of torture reserved for heavy sinners: to be enclosed in horrible, clumsy ground vehicles which emit noxious fumes and move with agonising slowness along crowded strips of asphalt. While in Hell the protagonists are at a loss to understand the identity of a moustached man with a strange armband who speaks with a strong German accent, and why the most powerful demons tremble at the sight of him, or why he uses the "ancient and honorable symbol of the fylfot". Their alternative history never had a Nazi Germany. Another part of the book features a magical analogue to the counterculture of the 1960s, presented rather facetiously - reflecting Anderson's attitude to the real-life original. Given the supernatural metaphysics of this world, however, it takes the form of gnosticism, within a "Johannine Church" that is based on either an esoteric reading of the Gospel of John, or an alternative gnostic gospel version of that canonical New Testament book. In his werewolf form, Matuchek does not suffer many of the liabilities of a werewolf of folklore or, indeed, the werewolf of Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. He remains himself while turning into a wolf, and is able to fully use his four-leg incarnation to fight various enemies; and in this magical world (unlike, for example, in the later created Harry Potter universe), there is no social stigma attached to lycanthropy. Dependence on the moon is lightly tossed aside with a comment that the necessary components of moonlight (specific frequencies of polarized light) have been isolated, and his Polaroid "Were-flash" lets him turn into a wolf or back to his human form at any time, its controls having been designed to be operable even with paws and no opposable thumbs. However, his invulnerability to silver is limited. Conservation of mass makes him a rather large wolf, although other weres in the book, taking far more drastic forms, have more serious problems. (A 600-pound weretiger has to be a 600-pound man in human form, again in order to not violate the Law of Conservation of Mass.)
3158211	/m/08w4dh	Monster Nation	David Wellington	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The Colorado National Guard is called in to investigate a strange epidemic at ADX Florence. Its officers struggle to contain the disease before it overruns the United States, and search for a mysterious woman who may be vital to the solution. The novel begins with a mysterious woman in California being bitten on the street by a random man who walks up to her. She runs into the nearest establishment, an oxygen bar and proceeds to get high while waiting for the police to show up. The police arrive and take her to he hospital where a zombie outbreak is occurring. Although restrained, she manages to convince a nurse to let her go, a nurse who is then consumed by zombies. While this is occurring, we are also introduced to two additional characters, Captain Bannerman Clark and Dick Walters. Captain Bannerman Clark is in the Colorado Army National Guard and is the Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection Officer in Charge, making him the always ready first man on the scene of any major disaster, trained to get the best intelligence on the situation and report to others who will take over. He is called away from enjoying a steak dinner alone to investigate an outbreak of what is believed to be a biological weapon at a prison in Colorado which spread from the prisoners to the guards, causing them to become perceived cannibals. The warden of the prison had travelled to California and had succumbed to the biological agent there, biting and infecting a young woman. Clark then goes to California to assess the damage. Dick Walters is travelling in the rural areas of Colorado to check on an outbreak of an infectious agent in sheep. When he arrives at the farm, the woman he is there to visit greets him with a gun and surmises quickly he is not, "One of them." She takes him to an abandoned mine shaft where several zombies are trapped, zombies which ate her husband and young son. The pair spend the night on the roof of her cabin, waiting for the walkers to come. Clark and the woman meet for the first time when she walks out of the hospital he arrives at, a hospital besieged by zombies. She is thought to be one of them and is to be executed in front of him when she disappears, removing her own aura. The girls then decides, after seeing a vision of a man, to head east towards Colorado. She is picked up by two delinquents along the way and runs amok with them for a bit, seeing a disturbing scene in a small town where the village kills a zombie. They eventually bunker down for the night in a small, abandoned inn. The woman, calling herself Nilla after Nilla Wafers, is approached for sex by the man of the group, but he runs when he sees she is covered in mold. She runs into the forrest nearby and kills a bear when attacked, turning the bear into one of the undead. The next morning the trio depart. Clark is determined to find Nilla after seeing her disappear, but his superiors force him to go to Washington to meet with and work for a civilian. The civilian likes Clark and intends on using him to figure all this out. Clark returns to Colorado to work on the cause of the disease and later transfers to Las Vegas for a short time as the West Coast is eventually overrun by zombies. Dick and his companion eventually come off the roof and go exploring in the night. The woman is attacked atop a hill and he runs, tripping on a rock and falling down the hill. He has a concussion and is attacked, first by the woman's dead sheep, slaughtered to control the disease and then the woman herself. When he is reanimated without arms, this time as a ghoul, a lifeless zombie without intelligence, he is drawn towards the source, an area nearby which exudes life force. He is eventually recruited by a voice coming from the source to go on a mission. The voice guides him along the way. Nilla and her two friends leave the inn and go on, eventually stopping by a truck with two men in the back. The man goes and checks on the two and is bitten when it is revealed it is a zombie feasting on a corpse. The zombie is Dick and he is then tasked with following Nilla after she is abandoned by the woman and her dying boyfriend. Nilla continues on, psychically drawn to a house where she is met by a handicapped man who tells her she is the only one who can stop the source.
3158342	/m/08w4nk	The Confusions of Young Törless	Robert Musil	1906	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Three students of an Austrian boarding school, Reiting, Beineberg and Törless, catch their classmate Basini stealing money from one of the three and decide to punish him themselves instead of turning him in to the school authorities. They start abusing him, first physically and then psychologically and sexually, while also blackmailing him by threatening to denounce him. Their abusive treatment of Basini becomes openly sexual and increasingly sadistic; nevertheless, he endures all the torture even when, after being deprived of any dignity, he is discredited by the entire class. Törless's moral and sexual confusion leads him to join Beineberg's and Reiting's degradation of Basini; he is both sexually attracted to Basini and Beineberg and repelled by them. He observes and takes part in the torture and rape of Basini while telling himself that he is trying to understand the gap between his rational self and his obscure irrational self; he is a disturbed and despairing observer of his own states of consciousness. Basini, being homosexual, is somewhat complicit in the abuse, as he apparently enjoys the sexual part of Beineberg and Reiting's "experiments". Beinberg and Reiting compensate for their own shame about their attraction to Basini by debasing him. Basini professes love for Törless and Törless comes to reciprocate somewhat, but ultimately is repelled by Basini's unwillingness to stand up for himself. This disgust with Basini's passivity ultimately leads him to almost off handedly stand up to Beineberg and Reiting. When the torment becomes unbearable, Törless covertly advises Basini to turn himself in to the headmaster as a way out of the situation. An investigation starts, but the only party to be found guilty is Basini. (In this respect the novel adheres to the "rules" for stories about bullying at school: the victim has to take the blame and the bullies go unpunished.) Törless makes a strange existential speech to the school authorities about the gap between the rational and irrational ("but that after all, things just happen"), which puzzles the authorities more than anything else. They decide he is of too refined an intellect for the institute, and suggest to his parents that he be privately educated, a conclusion that he comes to on his own. Other subplots include Törless's experience with the local prostitute Božena, his encounter with his mathematics teacher, and his analysis of his parents' attitudes toward the world.
3158402	/m/08w4tl	Monster Island	David Wellington		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Monster Island takes place in Manhattan one month after New York City has been completely overrun by the undead. A former UN employee named Dekalb, whose daughter is being held by a warlord in Somalia, enters the zombie-infested island with a band of East African child soldiers in order to retrieve precious AIDS medication. After surviving numerous zombie attacks, the group encounters Gary Fleck, an undead medical student who has managed to retain a high level of consciousness and self-control unlike other zombies.
3158434	/m/08w4wr	The Children of the Company	Kage Baker	2005-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Like the cyborg Joseph, Labienus was recruited by the Enforcer Budu when his village was wiped out by the "Great Goat Cult" about 15,000 years ago. Unlike Joseph, Labienus was destined for high office in the Company, but was first allowed to develop as an arrogant young individual, delighting in terrifying mortals, who are content to live in small villages. Like many cyborgs, he despises mortals. Eventually Labienus is told to begin organizing mortals and start civilizing them - the first direct evidence in the Company stories that civilization itself is a result of Company activities. Labienus creates a city, which may be Nippur, presenting himself as the god En-lil. After installing a mortal ruler, he moves to Egypt, to run Company operations there. As part of this, he contacts an operative called Imhotep, who is actually Joseph, to begin the secret cabal which will develop, through the centuries, into Dr. Zeus Inc.. Another figure in the Company is Victor. He is also one of Budu's recruits, having been born as an Anglo-Saxon. His mentor in the Company is Aegeus. Victor's first mission is to supervise the revival of Lewis, who was almost destroyed in an encounter with Homo Umbratilis, strange, dwarf-like people in 5th century Ireland. Aegeus is anxious to make sure that Lewis remembers nothing, as he is trying to use the strange new race, who are mechanical and scientific geniuses, to further his own ambitions. These are the same people who pursue Lewis in The Graveyard Game. Victor is somewhat disgusted by what he has to do, and Labienus is able to use this later to manipulate Victor for his own purposes.
3168384	/m/08wr9l	Drawing Blood	Poppy Z. Brite	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns Trevor McGee, a comic book artist and sole survivor of a family murder-suicide, and Zachary Bosch, a bisexual hacker, and their arrival at McGee's old family home in Missing Mile, North Carolina, a fictional town featured in Brite's previous novel, Lost Souls. Something of a haunted house tale, Drawing Blood was originally entitled Birdland but the publisher retitled it to make a thin connection to Brite's first novel Lost Souls, a vampire tale. The characters Trevor and Zachary reappear in Brite's short story "Vine of the Soul", published in 1998 in Disco 2000, edited by Sarah Champion.
3171583	/m/08wy9w	Myron	Gore Vidal		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Myra Breckinridge, the transsexual who terrorized Hollywood with dildo-rape and lesbianism, has transformed back into her former self, the literally and figuratively castrated Myron. One night, while watching the movie "Siren of Babylon" on the late show, he/she is transported to the set of the 1948 film through the television. It's Myra's dream come true, and Myron's nightmare. As Myron tries to adapt to life inside an endlessly repeating B-movie, Myra slowly starts creeping her way back into Myron's head, making a connection with a gay member of the community to obtain dresses and wigs. Her lapses back into Myron's personality are strongly encouraged by a character slyly based on Norman Mailer (though at one point he drunkenly hits on Myra), while most of the others on the set seem to prefer Myra to Myron. She attempts to castrate a crew member, then tries to castrate herself and partially succeeds in acquiring silicone implants. While Myron desperately searches for a way off the set (running into Richard Nixon along the way, who is considering taking up residence in "Siren of Babylon" in order to escape the Watergate hearings), Myra wants to stay permanently. Eventually, Myra/Myron trades places with Maria Montez, the star of the film. Myra is ecstatic and Myron disappears entirely from the narrative for a time. But when Montez, inhabited by Myra, coincidentally meets the 1948 Myron (who at this point is a child, possessed by the soul of a perplexed Maria Montez) their respective personalities are restored to their original bodies, returning Myron at once to his living room in 1970's California. However, the changes wrought by Myra's running amok on the set of "Siren of Babylon" continue to influence the present, and the book ends with a former cowboy actor in the film, now a transsexual, being elected Republican governor of Arizona.
3172541	/m/08w_6x	Dragonfly in Amber	Diana Gabaldon	1992-07-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Dragonfly in Amber opens when Claire returns to Scotland with her twenty-year old daughter, Brianna, hoping to find what happened to the men of Lallybroch after the battle of Culloden. After discovering Jamie Fraser's gravestone in an abandoned churchyard, Claire ends up breaking the news of Brianna's true paternity to her and Roger Wakefield. The story then flashes back in time (literally and figuratively) to when Claire and Jamie lived in Paris after leaving the abbey at the end of Outlander. As the story develops, we learn about Claire and Jamie Fraser's fight to stop the 1745 Jacobite rebellion and the bloody battle of Culloden - and also why Claire returned to the future. At the end of Outlander, Claire convinced Jamie that they should do everything possible to stop the Jacobite Rising and the slaughter that would follow. After learning that Charles Stuart is trying to get money from the French King, Louis XV, they travel to Paris. In Paris, Jamie agrees to work with his cousin Jared, running his wine business and, since many of his French relatives are Jacobites and are well placed in society, secures meetings with Charles Edward Stuart (also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie) and many well-to-do members of the French aristocracy and bourgeoisie. So, while running Jared Fraser's wine business, Jamie and Claire begin to plot against the Bonnie Prince. However, their lives are soon interrupted by the arrival of Jack Randall, who Jamie and Claire thought had died at Wentworth Prison. Jamie, despite promising Claire that he would spare Randall's life in order to spare Claire's previous husband, Frank, challenges Randall to a duel in the Bois de Boulogne. Though he doesn't kill the man, he does wound him and renders him impotent. And, after she witnesses the duel, Claire loses the child she was carrying and is taken away to l'Hôpital des Anges, where they believe she won't recover. Jamie is sent to the Bastille for the crime of dueling. After recovering from her illness, Claire manages to free Jamie from prison. A condition of his release is that they must leave France, so they sail to Scotland. (Fortunately, Jamie is pardoned for his crimes). Once in Scotland, Claire and Jamie settle in to farm life at Jamie's home at Lallybroch, with his sister, Jenny, and her family. However, Jamie receives a letter from Charles Stuart, announcing his attempt to retake the throne of Scotland. There is no escape, as Charles has had Jamie's name on the letter as one of his supporters. The Rising has begun. Seeing no option but to fight for the Stuarts, Jamie gathers the men of Lallybroch to join the Stuart army. They fight and win at the battle of Prestonpans, but the tide soon turns against the Jacobites. The Rising culminates in the disastrous battle of Culloden. Jamie, knowing that the Scots won't win at Culloden, takes Claire and heads for Craig na Dun, where he forces her to travel back to her own time, to spare her the battle's aftermath. Before she goes, however, Jamie tells Claire that he knows she is pregnant again. After sending her through the stones, Jamie returns to Culloden, intending to die. The lengthy flashback ends and the reader learns that Brianna is the child Claire was carrying through the stones. Frank asked Claire where she had been during her absence but refused to believe her, thinking she was mentally unstable. Claire told him to leave her but suspecting he was sterile and desperate for a child, he asked Claire to allow him to be father to her baby and only tell Brianna the truth after his death. Brianna refuses to believe Claire and Claire enlists Roger's help by revealing his true parentage to him as the great great grandson of Geilie Duncan and Dougal. They witness Geilie Duncan/Gillian Edgars' disappearance through the stone circle and the novel ends with Roger informing Claire that Jamie didn't die at Culloden. nl:Terugkeer naar Inverness sv:Slända i bärnsten
3173282	/m/08x0py	Hart's Hope	Orson Scott Card	1983	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Hart's Hope begins by describing the state of Burland: ruled by tyrannical king Nasilee, damaged young princess Asineth, and bloody martial law. While all four gods dislike Nasilee, only the god named God takes action, by raising up the young Count of Traffing, Palicrovol, to overthrow the King. He is assisted by Zymas, Nasilee's former right-hand man and general. Palicrovol kills the king and, to cement his new rule, marries and publicly consummates with the twelve-year-old Asineth. He then sends her away with his ally Sleeve, an albino wizard. He then sends for the Flower Princess, whose nearly unpronounceable name (Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin) is rarely used and whose hand he secured during his bid for power; she is the most beautiful woman in the world, because she will never lie. These events are described by the narrator of the story, who is addressing Palicrovol directly and begging him to "no longer seek the death of the boy Orem"; despite the use of the pronoun I, the narrator's identity is withheld from the reader. Unknown to Palicrovol, Asineth has conceived, and bears the child for a ten-month term&mdash;noted with consternation by a local priestess of the Sister. Sleeve, who being a man knows nothing about the customs of the Sisters, begins to research this phenomenon; unbeknowest to him, Asineth is duplicating his reading and, being a woman, understands a great deal more of it. She employs the most terrible sacrifice possible: her own daughter. Made immensely powerful by this hateful decision, she overthrows the gods and the city of Hart's Hope, setting Palicrovol in place as a humiliated (and continually tormented) puppet ruler. She steals the Flower Princess's face and body and keeps Sleeve, Zymas and the Flower Princess as her personal pets in altered forms, along with her collection of enslaved gods&mdash;the Hart a pile of bones beneath the castle, the god named God a blind slave scrubbing floors, and the Sweet Sisters sundered and sold out as whores. She renames herself Queen Beauty and rules with omnipotent power from the capital city, while all her toys&mdash;Palicrovol, Sleeve, Zymas and the Princess&mdash;are kept immortal for three hundred years. But the gods still have some power, and they arrange for Palicrovol to father a bastard son with specific magical properties who will destroy Queen Beauty&mdash;a son named Orem, whose great power is that he is a "Sink", a person in whose presence magic has no power. He is also innocent and good, and is able to win over his mother's husband (though his mother prefers that he play outside, since she can't execute any of her household spells when he's nearby). Of course, since none of the strengthening spells make him any more muscular, he cannot join the military, and is instead passed on to the clergy. From there he travels to Inwit, where he spends a short time on the street before coming under the tutelage of the wizard Gallowglass, who teaches him to control his power. Shortly after a falling-out with Gallowglass, however, he is taken prisoner by the Queen's forces; but instead of executing him, she takes him to husband and, once again, conceives a child during the consummation. Orem, now the "Little King" and exposed to the Queen's pets, begins his life as royal consort of Queen Beauty. He uses his power as a Sink to protect Palicrovol, who takes heart from this apparent weakening of the queen's power and begins to march on Inwit. He also discovers (by overhearing the Queen's Companions) that Queen Beauty has a plan to kill somebody to sustain her power; Orem assumes it is him, though he is warned by his friends not to begin to love the child he sired on the queen&mdash;a boy, named Youth, whom Orem nonetheless begins to father. Finally, when Youth is a year old, Queen Beauty launches her plan: to kill him as she did her first, unnamed daughter, as a sacrifice to enhance her power. Sleeve explains to Orem that this is in line with the plans laid by the Hart, Sisters and God: if Orem manages to hijack the ritual, Beauty will not only drink her own vitality from her son's blood, but Orem's Sink-ness, and destroy herself. Orem, grieving over his beloved son, does so, and Palicrovol enters the city triumphant and unopposed. In the end, the narrator, revealed to be the restored Enziquelvinisensee, tells her husband in a letter she is writing for him that he must make the choice: will he kill young Orem for usurping, however briefly, his place on the throne? Or will he decide that enough blood has been shed needlessly for the city and his rule? The Princess's letter doesn't tell the reader, who must rely on their understanding of the characters to decide the ending.
3173445	/m/08x11d	Taran Wanderer	Lloyd Alexander	1967-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Taran and Gurgi have returned to Caer Dallben following the events of the third chronicle, The Castle of Llyr. It is now full springtime, at least three years after The Book of Three. Taran knows that he loves Princess Eilonwy, who now resides at Dinas Rhydnant for royal education. In full springtime some weeks after return from escorting her there, he is restless and determines to know his parentage, noble or common, partly in hopes that noble birth will support a marriage proposal. Dallben the enchanter tells him nothing but gives his approval for Taran and Gurgi to travel on their own. They travel first to the Marshes of Morva to ask the witches Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch. Taran has nothing of great value to give in exchange, so Orddu merely tells him of an alternative, the Mirror of Llunet in the far east Llawgadarn Mountains will show him who he is. Taran goes next to Cantrev Cadiffor to be outfit by King Smoit for a longer journey. After a border patrol of Smoit's vassal Lord Goryon steals his horse Melynlas and Gurgi's pony, they spend the night with the farm couple Aeddan and Alarca who have lost their son and livestock. Taran would be welcome to remain and he leaves with new respect for common farmers. They recover their steeds because Melynlas will have no other rider and Goryon is relieved to escape the honorary burden of mastering him.At the neighboring stronghold of Lord Gast they meet old friend Fflewddur Fflam, who seems to return to wandering as a bard every spring. Together they go on to Caer Cadarn where Smoit does welcome them. Goryon and Gast have been feuding for years (every spring?), especially over the prize cow Cornillo. When their dispute breaks out again next day, Taran questions King Smoit's habitual resort to imprisonment and persuades Smoit to try Taran's judgment. Namely, the rival cantrev lords shall resow the fields of Aeddan, which have been ruined by battles. The prize cow shall be further compensation, although the lords shall have her calves. The remainder of their commingled herds shall be divided in half by Goryon, and Gast will choose which half to take for himself. The childless widower Smoit later offers to adopt Taran as his son, who will succeed as King of Cadiffor. Taran declines but says he will gladly accept if he discovers noble birth. Continuing eastward, they cross Ystrad. Taran's pet crow Kaw and Fflewddur's mount Llyan, a giant lion, find treasures which they bring to their masters. Kaw a polished bone the size of a toothpick, which has been stashed high in a tree. Llyan a green and yellow frog that has nearly dried to death: their old friend Doli the dwarf, whom they revive. Doli has been transformed during investigation of a deadly threat to the Fair Folk. He knows that he is not the first to disappear in animal form, for a human wizard Morda has attained power to enchant them, and to raid their underground realms. Taran and Gurgi investigate Morda's abode, followed by Fflewddur, but all are captured by his snares. After explaining himself (history, boasts, plans), Morda turns Fflewddur and Gurgi into a hare and a mouse, but fails to transform Taran. Something protects him, and he guesses from the stump of Morda's little finger that it is the polished bone. Although elderly, Morda is stronger than Taran, but his strength finally snaps the bone in desperate fury to regain it. (Morda has worn a silver crescent moon with pendant jewel on a necklace. Eilonwy has one without the jewel, and Morda prompted by Taran's recognition of the symbol of the House of Llyr has revealed the primary source of his magic. After Eilonwy was kidnapped as a child, the long search by her mother Angharad ended here, where she weakly sought shelter. Morda inherited both the amulet she wore and the empty book among her possessions. He mastered the amulet and developed its power, gave the book to a pest Glew. (The Castle of Llyr.) Morda's death restores Doli and others to their natural forms. Before parting, Taran gives the jewel from Angharad's amulet to him (returning a gift by the Fair Folk to the House of Llyr) and Doli identifies the ceremonial horn Taran wears in token of Eilonwy's pledge. It will summon the Fair Folk to his assistance, and one summons remains. Taran, Gurgi, and Fflewddur camp next with the ruffian Dorath and his band. Their hosts suspect a quest for treasure and offer guidance to Llunet, in exchange for a share. The guests try to slip away early next morning but Dorath prevents that and extracts a wager on hand-to-hand combat with Taran. He cheats and takes Taran's sword (the stake), then departs. An old shepherd Craddoc, with decrepit holdings, welcomes the companions next. From Taran's account of the mission, he welcomes Taran as his son. Fflewddur departs but Taran and Gurgi remain and labor beside him. Taran and Craddoc develop some bond, but Taran also resents the end of his dream of noble birth. During the next winter, however, Craddoc suffers a bad fall down a mountain gorge, and Taran is unable to rescue him. Near death he reveals that he knew enough of Dallben's history to pose as father and gain Taran as a son. The gorge and the weather threaten Taran too, and he finally summons the Fair Folk who are able to save only himself and Gurgi. Afterward Taran and Gurgi continue eastward, across Little Avren to the Free Commots. They stay first with lucky Llonio and his family on the banks of the river, where Taran learns that life is a net to gather what comes. Next Taran assists and learns the trades of three great craftmasters: Hevydd the smith, Dwyvach the weaver, and Annlaw the potter. They teach him that life is a forge, a loom, and a potter's wheel. He learns enough that he would be welcome to remain as assistance, but pottery alone seems to call him and he realizes to his dismay that he will never master it. He does have a new sword, new cloak, and new bowl. Driving the wares of Annlaw to Commot Ivar, he leads the poor farming village in resistance to a raid by Dorath, killing half the band at no loss of life. Annlaw tells Taran the way to the Mirror of Llunet; he knows it, but has never visited, for he knows who he is. After a short journey, Taran and Gurgi find the Mirror, a pool of water at the mouth of a cave beyond the Lake of Llunet. Taran gazes into it, and he is astonished, but Dorath interrupts, now alone. Evidently there is no treasure, so Taran and the ruffian are soon at swordpoint. His old sword shatters on his new one and Dorath flees. Taran does not pursue but returns to Annlaw Clay-Shaper. He relates that the Mirror showed his own reflection and nothing more. Cheated by Orddu? No, for he saw what he had become and all he had learned on the way.
3173458	/m/08x12t	The Castle of Llyr	Lloyd Alexander	1966	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in the spring perhaps 18 months after the Black Cauldron. (For almost a year FF has lived in his small kingdom.) Eilonwy is the last in a line of royal sorceresses, daughter of Angharad, daughter of Regat, of the House of Llyr (who no longer reign). Dallben the enchanter has decided that Eilonwy, as a princess, needs different that he cannot provide at Caer Dallben. She will reside at a royal court on the Isle of Mona, west of Prydain. With Gurgi, Taran escorts her to Mona, primarily on a ship "captained" by Prince Rhun, a cheerful but incompetent youth. Taran is finally aware of his feelings for Eilonwy and he envies the prince's noble birth. While Eilonwy is introduced to the ladies, the banal tedium of life at court, and the maxims of proper lady-like conduct, Taran meets his frequent companion Fflewddur Fflam, who is living in the stables as a bard, and a traveling shoemaker, who turns out to be none other than Prince Gwydion. Gwydion tells Taran that Eilonwy is in grave danger, very likely from the evil sorceress Achren, who survived Spiral Castle (The Book of Three). He charges Taran with helping to protect Eilonwy. Soon after, Taran and Gwydion separately witness Chief Steward Magg leave the castle to the beach at night and signal a ship at sea. When Magg and Eilonwy do not show for breakfast next morning, the king organizes search parties. One is nominally under the command of Prince Rhun, although the Master of Horse is really in charge. The bards already sing of Taran, and King Rhuddlum asks him to protect Rhun personally. Rhun must rule one day, and he confides that he and Queen Teleria hope for his wedding to Eilonwy. Although he is appalled and envious, Taran takes the oath. Shortly before dusk, the prince separates from the group. Taran pursues him, joined by Fflewddur and Gurgi, but finally must halt and spend the night in the forest. Next day they find his horse outside a small, dilapidated house, and he wishes them good morning from the door. Inside they find a fine small book of empty pages that Rhun decides to keep for himself and a sheaf of notes by the former resident. Evidently Glew was a careful experimentalist with potions and he developed one that successfully enlarged a young mountain cat he named Llyan. Horrified by their inferences from a small pair of abandoned boots, they prepare to leave, but Llyan herself returns settles down just inside the door. She is larger than the average horse and they infer that she recognizes four ready meals. She is entranced by Fflewddur's harping, which allows the others to escape through a broken corner. Later that day, the party is rejoined by Fflewddur on the run and by Taran's pet crow Kaw on the wing. Kaw has spotted Magg and Eilonwy on horse and Taran determines to pursue alone rather than return to Dinas Rhydnant or try to find the official party. Kaw leads them to the river Alaw and some recent tracks of Magg and Eilonwy's horses. Further, Rhun finds Eilonwy's golden bauble near a rock where it appears that they dismounted and fetched a boat. The companions build a hasty raft to follow downstream but it disintegrates before reaching the mouth. Harvesting young willow for repairs, Rhun manages to tumble into a deep pit and his attempted rescue prompts a landslide that traps all four. But the pit opens up into spectacular caverns. None of the party is able to light the bauble, but it glows for Taran after he has given up and turned his thoughts to Eilonwy. They explore by its light and eventually find Glew, who is trapped by his giant size! The companions promise him Dallben's aid and persuade him to show a way out, but he leads them to a dead end tunnel and traps them. Sobbing pitifully, he explains that he surely knows the recipe for a potion that will diminish him, but he must kill one of them for a final ingredient-their choice. Gurgi volunteers and Rhun surprises them by nominating himself, for he has recognized that he is a burden to all and incompetent to rule. Taran explains his oath to the king, which Rhun gainsays. Instead, they notice the exit of bats above their heads and construct a human ladder which enables one to reach a ledge and some unknown passage: Rhun, who shall return to the city and bring help. When Glew permits the exit of his final ingredient, the trio breaks out and attacks him. Meanwhile Rhun has not left the caverns but returned by another route with the help of light. Perhaps because his action is selfless, the bauble now blazes for him and blinds the giant. The enraged Glew inadvertently helps them escape from underground When they reach the mouth of Alaw (some cliffs and rocks, not a flat delta) on the reconstructed raft, they meet Gwydion who hides them and tells what he knows. In particular, he has visited the offshore ruin of Caer Colur and determined Achren, Magg, and Eilonwy with a several mercenary guards. The ancestral home of the House of Llyr and its former peninsula have been sinking since Eilonwy's mother Angharad eloped with a common man. The book of empty pages that Rhun took from Glew's hut actually records the House of Llyr's most powerful enchantments, which are only revealed under the light of Eilonwy's bauble, the Golden Pelydryn. Evidently Achren hopes to rule by bringing Eilonwy to her full ancestral powers yet maintaining control by her personal magic. At night Gwydion rows them all to land below the seaward walls and he hides the book and bauble before they begin to search. Kaw quickly discovers the tower room where Eilonwy resides, and helps to secure a rope for Taran to climb. --only to find that Eilonwy does not know him or any of the names of her former companions. Her memories stir, for he has interrupted a dream of Caer Dallben, but he fails to persuade her and she flees from her room and cries out. Taran vainly hopes to halt the alarm and follows her until Magg arrests him. Gwydion, Fflewddur, and Gurgi have entered the halls as well, and they have the better of struggle with Magg and some guards, but the appearance of Achren and Eilonwy stops the action. Achren demonstrates Eilonwy's power and Rhun stupidly reveals that they know she cannot complete her plans. Rhun shuts up in shame and Gwydion does not yield. Achren turns to Taran and offers to pay him for what he knows: she will restore Eilonwy's memories of him and allow them to wed. Gwydion interrupts the torment by revealing the cache and Magg retrieves the magical implements. When Eilonwy takes hold of the heirlooms, and begins to examine the book in the light of the bauble, she also begins to fight against Achren's spell and finally makes her own choice. Calling upon the full power of the Pelydryn, she incinerates the book in a column of crimson flame, which also quiets the stone whispers of Caer Colur and breaks Achren's personal spell. Meanwhile Magg has responded to Achren's scorn by opening the gates that protect the castle from the sea, and he and the surviving guard have embarked by the only ship. The sea threatens them all and the rowboat has been shattered. Taran loses consciousness and awakes to discover that all reached the shallows alive, and Llyan pulled them up the beach(?) Achren, Eilonwy, Gwydion, Fflewddur, Gurgi and himself. Eilonwy tells how Magg tricked her, gagged and kidnapped her, but she knows little of the episode offshore. Before leaving the sea, she finds a ceremonial horn that has washed ashore, which she calls "all that's left of Caer Colur". She gives it to Taran as a pledge that she will not forget him during her tenure at Dinas Rhydant. He can pledge only his word in return, but "the word of an Assistant Pig-Keeper ... shall do very well indeed." He mentions the royal plan to engage her and Prince Rhun, which she scorns him for taking seriously.
3176445	/m/08x8c7	The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man	James Weldon Johnson		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Ex-Colored Man’s mother protected him as a child and teenager. Because of the money provided by his father, she had the means to raise him in a different environment than most other blacks. He was exposed to only upper-class blacks and mostly benevolent whites. After his mother’s death, his poor orphan status exposed him to a part of black life unknown to him while living a sheltered life with his mother. He adapted very well to life with lower-class blacks, and was able to move easily between the classes of black society. During this carefree period of his life, he was still able to teach music and attend church, where he came in contact with the upper class blacks. The Ex-Colored man living in an all black community discovered three classes of blacks; the desperate class, the domestic service class, and the independent workman. The Ex-Colored Man believed the desperate class consists of poor blacks that loathe the whites. The domestic service, domestic worker class consists of blacks that work as servants to the whites. The third class consists of well-to-do blacks that had no interaction with the whites. Many white readers, who viewed all blacks as a stereotype of a single class, are unfamiliar with the narrator’s description of class distinctions among blacks. Johnson’s description of the black classes also serves to show that blacks and whites also have the same human tendencies to seek social status. While playing ragtime at one of the late night hot spots in New York, the Ex-Colored Man caught the attention of a rich white gentleman. The gentleman had a particular liking to the Ex-Colored Man's music which evolved into a particular liking of the Ex-Colored Man himself. The white gentleman hired him to play ragtime piano for guests at parties. Soon the Ex-Colored Man spent most of his time working for the white gentleman, who would have him play ragtime music for hours at a time. He would play until the white gentleman would say “that will do.” The Ex-Colored man would tire after the long hours, but would continue playing as he saw the joy and serenity he brought the white gentleman. The white gentleman frequently "loaned" the Ex-Colored Man out to other people to play at their parties. The gentleman was not exactly “loaning” him out as a piece of property, but simply giving the narrator a broader palette to display his talents. The Ex-Colored man saw how the rich lived; he was thrilled to live in this life style. The Rich White Gentleman absolutely influenced the Ex-Colored Man more than any one else he met. The relationship towards the Rich White Man was not only on a slave/master basis, but also one of friendship. While he was with the white gentleman, the Ex-Colored Man decided he would use his skills to aid in Abolitionism. Even though life was pleasant, it was void of substance; using his music to aid impoverished African Americans he felt would be a better use of his talents. The Ex-Colored Man continued to show devotion to the white gentleman, as the white gentleman treated him with kindness, which eventually led to the forming of a friendship while in Paris. However, the Ex-Colored Man’s devotion to the white gentleman also portrays the relationship that some slaves had with their masters, showing devotion to the slave-owner. This shows that even though the Ex-Colored Man had “freedom”, but he was still suffering from the effects of slavery. After playing for the white gentleman while touring Europe, the Ex-Colored Man decided to leave the white gentleman and go back to the South so that he could study Negro spirituals. He planned to use his knowledge of classical and ragtime music to create a new Black American musical genre. He wanted to “bring glory and honor to the Negro race”. He wanted to return to his heritage and make it a proud and self-righteous race. Many critics have suspected that the Rich White Gentleman may in fact not be white, but is passing as well. His love for ragtime music and his conviction that the Ex-Colored Man not embrace his blackness to pursue a career as a definitively black composer could be used to argue that he experienced inner turmoil with his racial identity similar to the experience of the Ex-Colored Man. Just as the Ex-Colored Man began to work on his music, he witnessed the lynching of a black man. The crowd originally wanted to hang the man, but decided to burn him instead. The Ex-Colored Man narrates in detail of what he saw, “He squirmed, he withered, strained at his chains, then gave out cries and groans that I shall always hear." The incident at the town square opens his eyes to a racism he has never seen before. He continues, "The cries and groans were choked off by the fire and smoke; but his eyes, bulging from their sockets, rolled from side to side, appealing in vain for help." The scene that day stuck vividly in his mind. It burned a sour image in his brain. He finishes with, "Some of the crowd yelled and cheered, others seemed appalled at what they had done, and there were those who turned away sickened at the sight. I was fixed to the spot where I stood powerless to take my eyes from what I did not want to see.” This scene describes the horror of lynching, and the power it had over the mob of people in the deep south. It should also be noted that many critics believe that James Weldon Johnson wrote this scene about the lynchings to dissuade people from lynchings. Michael Berube writes, "there is no question that Johnson wrote the book, in large part, to try to stem the tide of lynchings sweeping the nation." After witnessing this event, the Ex-Colored Man decided to “pass” as white. He gave up his dream of making music that would glorify his race. He stated that he did not want to be "identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals," or with a people who could treat other humans that way. He simply wishes to remain neutral. The Ex-Colored Man declares that he “would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race.” The world accepted The Ex-Colored Man to be white. Our narrator is “passing” as a white man his whole life and never truly reveals himself as black to the world. This fact is what gives the narrative its title of “Ex-Colored Man”. He later married a white woman, had two children, and lived out his life a successful yet mediocre business man. The only true acceptance the Ex Colored Man experienced in his life was from his wife, who loved him and agreed to marry him after he revealed his secret to her. His wife dies during their second child's birth, leaving him alone to raise his two children. At the end of the book, the Ex-colored Man said, “My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.” “Passing” could be interpreted as a decision to avoid the black race. He states that he "regrets holding himself back." He may have been implying that if he had he embraced the Negro community and let the community embrace him, that he could have made a difference. The Ex-Colored Man was one of the few people who was not held back by being black. He had a strong education, smart wits, and light colored skin. The masses all assumed he was white. However, his talent was in black music. Because of his fear of being a Negro, he threw away his talent as a musician to "become" a white man. This act depicts how society was during the 1910s and how terrible it was of this society to force him between his love of music and the safety and convenience of being white. The white gentleman accepted the Ex-Colored Man for who he was, but most people were not like that. He did not go back and play his music for the world after his wife died because of his children. He could not have his white children grow up on the black side of a segregated world. He wanted to give them every advantage he could.
3179527	/m/08xgmj	Hot Sleep	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book follows Jason Worthing, also known as Jazz, who is a boy growing up on Capitol, the capital planet of the Empire. Jas has "the swipe", which is a genetic trait that allows for telepathy. The swipe is feared in the Empire, so those who possess it are executed. After being found out as a swipe, Jas tries to escape, which leads to his capture by Abner Doon, who helps him rise to prominence as a space pilot. Eventually, Abner sends Jason away as the head of a colony so that the swipe would become more widespread, but when his ship reaches the planet, he is attacked, and the memories of all but one of the three-hundred eleven colonists are destroyed and two-third of the colonist are killed or damaged beyond awakening. Jason prevails, however, leading to the survival of the colony, which he visits every several years, being on Somec the rest of the time. Eventually, Abner Doon comes and sees how Jason has done, and after Doon leaves, Jason takes his ship to the bottom of the ocean.
3179753	/m/08xh26	The Mysteries of Udolpho	Ann Radcliffe		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Emily St. Aubert is the only child of a landed rural family whose fortunes are now in decline. Emily and her father share an especially close bond, due to their shared appreciation for nature. After her mother's death from a serious illness, Emily and her father grow even closer. She accompanies him on a journey from their native Gascony, through the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast of Roussillon, over many mountainous landscapes. During the journey, they encounter Valancourt, a handsome man who also feels an almost mystical kinship with the natural world. Emily and Valancourt quickly fall in love. Emily's father succumbs to a long illness. Emily, now orphaned, is forced by his wishes to live with her aunt, Madame Cheron, who shares none of Emily's interests and shows little affection to her. Her aunt marries Montoni, a dubious nobleman from Italy. He wants his friend Count Morano to become Emily′s husband, and tries to force her to marry him. After discovering that Morano is nearly ruined he brings Emily and his wife to his remote castle of Udolpho. Emily fears to have lost Valancourt forever. Morano searches for Emily and tries to carry her off secretly from Udolpho. Emily refuses to join him because her heart still belongs to Valancourt. Morano′s attempt to escape is discovered by Montoni, who wounds the Count and chases him away. In the following months Montoni threatens his wife with violence to force her to sign over her properties in Toulouse, which upon her death would otherwise go to Emily. Without resigning her estate Madame Cheron dies of a severe illness caused by her husband′s harshness. Many frightening but coincidental events happen within the castle, but Emily is able to flee from it with the help of her secret admirer Du Pont, who was a prisoner at Udolpho, and the servants Annette and Ludovico. Returning to the estate of her aunt, Emily learns that Valancourt went to Paris and lost his wealth. In the end she takes control of the property and is reunited with Valancourt.
3182248	/m/08xmlc	The Phantom of Manhattan	Frederick Forsyth	1999	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance"}	 The Phantom of Manhattan tells its story from the viewpoint of several characters. On her deathbed, Madame Giry confesses to a priest of when she took her daughter Meg, then six years old, to a fair. Madame Giry felt so sorry for a young boy with a disfigured face who had been ill-treated that she crept back to the fair at night and stole him. She took the boy to her apartment where she aided and cared for him until she had grown to love him like a son. The boy, Erik, recounted that he had been sold to the circus by his abusive alcoholic father shortly after his mother had run away with her lover. For reasons of security, Madame Giry took him to the Opera house where she worked; he hid out in the catacombs, stealing books and other appliances to educate himself. Over time, as a result of missing objects, the legend of the phantom was born. Erik had fallen in love with Christine Daaé, a young chorus girl who did not return his feelings. Driven by rage, Erik abducted Christine and accidentally killed the tenor Piangi when he was trying to silence him. A mob found their way to his home but all they found was Christine and the Vicomte De Chagny, Erik having already fled to Mme. Giry's apartment on a ship bound for New York. Mme. Giry, who had paid for Erik's passage, then addresses her lawyer Armand Dufour, telling him to go to New York and find Erik; Mme. Giry gave Armand a letter she had written to give to Erik; she said it contained important and vital information for him. Erik then narrates, recounting events after he reached New York. For a short while Erik lived in among the slums of New York in a shack. He met a man named Darius, whom he used to do his bidding. Together, they made their fortune by scamming and conning people for two years. Hearing of a man named Paul Boyton who was looking to open up a theme park in New York, Erik together with Darius arranged to help Boyton build the rides and attractions that were to be included in the park. Other businessmen heard of Boyton's success, and commissioned Erik and Darius to design similar rides for them. Business was good, and through astute investments in the stock market, Erik and Darius prospered. They owned a building called E.M Tower. However, Erik's latent love for opera was never quenched, and after being rejected a private box by the Metropolitan Opera, he and a budding opera house designer Oscar Hammerstein chose collaborate on a grandiose project &ndash; an all-new opera house to rival the Metropolitan Opera. Armand Dufour, who had been looking frantically for Erik in New York with little success, was on the point of returning to France when he met a columnist named Cholly Bloom in a coffee shop. Through a translator, Cholly learns of Armand's mission to find the mysterious Erik and quickly realises that this is an opportunity to get a good story, so he accompanies Armand to E.M Towers, where he demands to see Mr Erik Mulheim. However, he is fielded by Darius, who denies him audience, but firmly insisted that he would personally hand the letter to Mr Erik himself. While waiting, Cholly notices that subject of the painting on the wall had been replaced by a rather frightening figure in a mask; when Darius returns, the painting seemingly has gone back to normal. Cholly, confused and suspicious, leaves the tower, convinced that he has just had an encounter with the mysterious Phantom of Manhattan. Darius goes to the House of Hishash in a trance-like state to see his Master, Mammon. He tells Mammon of his concern for his friend Erik since he has received a letter from Paris. Erik, he said, had become increasingly obsessed with opera; Darius is concerned at the risks of investing in the grandiose opera project. In fact, since reading the contents in the letter, Erik sent his man to Paris with a great sum of money to pay for two of the world's leading opera singers &ndash; Dame Nellie Melba and Vicomtesse Christine De Chagny &ndash; to come to New York for the new opera house's opening. He also has begun to furiously work on writing his own opera. Mammon calms Darius' fears calming that he should not worry but, rather threateningly, concludes the chapter by telling Darius that whatever obstacles that stand in the way of his claiming his inheritance from Erik must be eliminated. We then are introduced to Gaylord Spriggs gossip column, which noted that the whole operatic world was in a frenzy over the arrival of Nellie Melba and Christine De Chagny. The column reveals the vast amounts of money that were spent to induce Dame Melba to cross the Atlantic to come to New York. It also gushes about how Christine De Chagny's claim that she was coming to New York not for the money but out of her sheer admiration of the quality and desire to be a part of the newest opera `The Angel of Shiloh`, whose composer is yet unknown. Meanwhile, accompanying his mother on the boat to New York with a tutor, Fr. Joseph Kilfoyle ('Father Joe'), 12-year-old Pierre De Chagny enquires and is told about Father Joe's experiences and the circumstances which drove him from his native Ireland. As Vicomtesse De Chagny and her son arrive, they are greeted by journalists and fans alike at the quayside. As they make their way through the crowd, onlooker Bernard Smith remarks on New York's great admiration for the young singer and about the welcoming ceremony in which both Christine and the Mayor gave speeches. However, in the midst of the excitement, Smith notices a man whose face is covered by a white mask staring directly at Christine De Chagny from the roof of the warehouse opposite the docks; no one else has noticed him. The figure disappears when he notices Bernard looking at him. He then notices that a man has thrown his cloak on the ground, for Christine and her entourage to walk on, to avoid getting their feet dirty as they enter their carriage. This man turns out to be one of Bernard's own employees &ndash; a young news reporter. Cholly's act of kindness earns him an exclusive interview with the world renowned opera singer in her suite. When he arrives, he is greeted by Christine De Chagny's young son Pierre, who is busy examining the contents of a present that has just arrived for him &ndash; a certain monkey music box. As the music box begins to play "Masquerade", Christine De Chagny screams and says: "He must be here!" Cholly explains to Christine that the music box comes from Steeplechase amusement park. Christine, clearly agitated, demands to know where the park is, and then asks Cholly to accompany herself and Pierre to the park. Cholly, overjoyed with the chance of getting an exclusive from the opera singer, happily accepts. Meanwhile, Erik is still in shock at seeing Christine again. He realises that his love for her will be forever unrequited, but the letter he received gave him reason to hope: Mme. Giry, his former protector, wrote that Christine has a son and that Erik is his biological father; the young Vicomte De Chagny, Christine's future husband, was unable to have children as a result of an unfortunate set of events. Erik becomes determined to meet Christine the following day, knowing that the music box he sent will have already alerted her to the fact that he is residing in New York. Later that evening, Christine De Chagny's maid, Meg Giry, recalls how agitated her mistress was after hearing the sound of the music box. She later recalls how many years ago she had seen first hand Christine's encounter with the mysterious Phantom. She attempts to comfort Christine. The following day, Taffy Jones, master at Steeple Chase fun-fair, was catering to Christine De Chagny when the controls the hall of mirrors all began to malfunction almost as if they had been reprogrammed. The mirrors swung in a different direction to reveal a person whom Jones could not see, but whom Christine clearly recognised. Jones overhears the pair's conversation in which the stranger says he still loved Christine, and tries to convince her to go with him; she refuses. After a brief pause, he asks Christine to leave him his son. Christine, shocked by his knowledge of Pierre, promised to tell Pierre the truth of his parentage in five years time, and to give her consent for Pierre to go with him should Pierre desire. The stranger does not like this arrangement and vows silently, but within earshot of Taffy, to have the boy one way or another. At the same time Taffy notices another pale faced figure, who apparently has heard the whole conversation, run out of the hall of mirrors. Pierre's tutor, Joseph Kilfoyle, is then shown having an encounter with God in the cathedral. God tells Joseph of Erik's past and that he is not a bad person but a tormented soul who can still be saved. As for his accomplice, Darius, it is too late for him and he has sold his soul to a man made God (Mammon). The new opera opens, and Christine is critically acclaimed by Gaylord's Sprigg. During the last act of the show, the character of the lead tenor is replaced by an unknown, severely disfigured, singer &ndash; one whose voice matches the lead tenor in strength and clarity. After the show, the mysterious understudy is still nowhere to be found. Then, Cholly sees him whisper something to Pierre (who also is revealed to be an amazing singer, he is featured in the opera as well) and then pass a note to Christine. The final section of the book is narrated some years later by Cholly, a lecturer at university. He tells his class of the importance of being a reporter and reveals the one event he never printed that occurred on the last day of Christine De Chagny's visit. The Vicomte De Chagny had arrived some time after his wife, and he and Cholly had become friends. While awaiting Christine at breakfast, Cholly lets it slip that she is meeting someone called Erik in the park. Shocked by this news, the Vicompte rushes out; Cholly follows. He notices something else &ndash; a slip of paper he discovered on which Darius had written, indicating that Darius intends to kill Pierre, believing him to be the one obstacle between him and his inheritance. Fearing for Pierre's life, Cholly rushes to the park also to warn Christine. When he arrives he hides behind the bushes in time to see the mysterious Phantom and Christine meet, while Darius prepares his gun. As the Vicomte and father Joe arrive, Pierre rushes out of the carriage and embraces his mother. At that moment, Darius shoots, the bullet hits Christine and fatally injures her. The Phantom shoots and kills Darius in return. As Christine lay dying, she confesses the truth to Pierre. The Phantom is heartbroken. The Vicomte De Chagny picks up Christine's body and tells Pierre he must make a choice. Pierre removes the phantom's mask and declares that he will stay with him. The Vicomte goes back to France to bury his wife and love. The epilogue states that Raoul never married again. Pierre and the Phantom stayed in New York and when war broke out they changed their family name and alerted people to the causes of deformity and injury due to the war. The Phantom never wore the mask again. The New York Opera eventually closed down but Hammerstein's grandson wrote many famous musicals in the 1950s with Richard Rodgers. Father Joe remained in the church and taught under privileged children.
3183130	/m/08xph3	The Secret People	John Wyndham	1935	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Sahara is being flooded to create a new sea when the protagonist of the novel, Mark Sunnet, crashes his private rocket plane into an island of what is currently little more than a large lake. He soon finds himself and his female companion sucked into an underground cavern where they are promptly captured by mysterious pygmies. The diet of little people is centred around large fungi; the captives speculate that stories which reached the surface of the little people and their giant mushrooms may have led to the myth of gnomes. Sunnet finds that a tiered community has evolved in the underground caverns - the pygmies inhabiting a large underground collection of natural and artificial caverns and tunnels, and the captured humans in a deliberately isolated subsection of the caverns. He is also surprised to learn that family life exists in the caverns - "natives", children of captured humans who were born and have lived all their lives in the caverns exist, and are generally happy with their life, and have no wish to escape. Most of the captured humans do wish to escape, and two different methods are being tried. Both are tunnels, one going up at an angle, to try and break through to the surface, and another on a level, hoping to intersect a pygmy tunnel or cavern, from where they will be able to make their way to the surface. The pygmies are distressed, and it is Sunnet's arrival that reveals why to the captives - the pygmies fear their environment will be flooded and destroyed by the newly formed Saharan Sea. Their fear is well founded, and the waters break through into the pygmy caverns, eventually flooding the entire ecosystem. Sunnet and a handful of others survive, and finish the story being sunburned after years of subterranean life, and establishing a new company based on primitive - but unique - technology they rescued from the caverns.
3184881	/m/08xtgy	L'Œuvre	Pierre-Louis Rey	1886	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Painter Claude Lantier advocates painting real subjects in real places, most notably outdoors. This is in stark contrast to the artistic establishment, where artists painted in the studio and concentrated on mythological, historical and religious subjects. His art making is revolutionary and he has a small circle of like-minded friends equally intent on shaking up the art world and challenging the establishment. His best friends are his childhood comrades Pierre Sandoz, novelist and Louis Dubuche, an architect. Like Zola, Sandoz contemplates a series of novels about a family based in science and incorporating modern people and everyday lives. Dubuche is not half as bold as Claude and, although a painter, finds music to be his passion. He chooses a more conventional course, opting for the security of a middle-class life and a bourgeois marriage. Sandoz also pursues marriage - not for love but stability and to better understand what he is writing about. The outcry in the artistic community over the sidelining of new artists in favor of popular, established, traditional artists at the annual Salon of the Académie des Beaux-Arts leads to the creation of a Salon des Refusés for the rejected artists to display their work. No painting gathers more interest or generates more criticism than Claude's. Entitled Plein Air (Open Air), it depicts a nude female figure in the front center and two female nudes in the background, with a fully dressed man, back to the viewer in the foreground. (Zola deliberately invokes Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Edouard Manet, which provoked outcries at the actual Salon des Refusés in 1863.) Claude moves to the country to soak up more of the 'Open Air' atmosphere he revelled in as a child and to create more masterpieces. Accompanying him is Christine Hallegrain, who served as the model for Claude's nude and they have a son. Claude is unable to paint much and grows more and more depressed. For the sake of his health, Christine convinces him to return to Paris. Claude has three paintings in three years rejected by the Salon before a spectacular view of the Ile de la Cité captures his imagination. He becomes obsessed with this vision and constructs a massive canvas on which to paint his masterpiece. He is unable to project his ideas successfully or combine them into a meaningful whole. He begins adding incongruous elements (like a female nude bather), reworks and repaints until the whole enterprise collapses into disaster, then starts over. His inability to create his masterpiece deepens his depression. The slow breakup of his circle of friends contributes to his decaying mental state, as does the success of one of his confreres, a lesser talent who has co-opted the 'Open Air' school and made it a critical and financial triumph. Christine, whom he has at last married, watches as the painting — and especially the nude — begins to destroy his soul. When their son dies, Claude is inspired to paint a picture of the dead body that is accepted by the Salon (after considerable politicking). The painting is ridiculed for its subject and its execution and Claude again turns to his huge landscape. Christine watches as he spirals further into obsession and madness. A last-ditch effort to free him from Art in general and from his wished-for masterpiece in particular has an effect but in the end Claude hangs himself from his scaffolding. The only ones of his old friends who attend his funeral are Sandoz and Bongrand, an elder statesman of the artistic community who recognized and helped nurture Claude's genius.
3185806	/m/08xw3x	Beyond Civilization	Daniel Quinn	2000	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Within the main body of Beyond Civilization, each page contains its own chapter-like heading and a few paragraphs exploring the topic of that heading. The book as whole is divided into seven parts: Quinn states his reasons for writing the book and focuses on clarifying his idea in The Story of B that “If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.” He articulates how successful situations often have no visible indicators and that this is true in the community of life whose successes, in general, through natural selection are easy to overlook. He expands upon the nature of his idea of a cultural “vision,” including how vision can go bad and how a successful vision results in any easily overlooked lack of symptoms such as social problems. He also introduces Richard Dawkins’s concept of the meme, which he merges into the discourse of his own philosophy. Quinn discusses the memes that are regarded as infallible within our own, world-dominating culture. These range from “Growing all your own food is the best way to live” to “Civilization must continue at ANY cost and must not be abandoned under ANY circumstance.” He explores the history of tribal societies apart from our own who tried civilization by beginning to take up full-time agriculturalism (for example, the Maya and the Olmec), but who unlike us realized the failures of civilization and abandoned it in favor of a return to tribalism. Quinn finds it peculiar that the working masses in our culture have often historically been moved to rebellion against their hierarchal oppressors but never moved to simply walking away from the system of hierarchy itself, which will lead time after time to the majority’s displeasure. He also makes use of an analogy of "pyramid-building" to represent the idea of our culture’s people perpetuating a system which repeatedly fails them because they see no alternative: they think they must continue to “build pyramids” even when they overthrow the despots who originated such an idea and they see themselves as having no choice in the matter, as if pyramid-building is something humans somehow simply cannot resist. Quinn clarifies that he does not mean to say tribalism is perfect, but it is a more workable system than civilization and is in accord with natural selection. He claims also that tribes do not inherently involve “spears and caves,” arguing that some circuses or traveling shows still function as tribes, even today. He also chronicles the passage of a society from one practicing tribalism to one practicing hierarchalism. He states that our culture uses three reasons to justify our resolve in not abandoning civilization: the just-world fallacy, the possibility for transcendence (for example, in the afterlife or through spiritual enlightenment), and the capacity for revolution (which, he argues, merely shuffles the hierarchy around but does not dissolve it). Quinn states that abandonment is a more workable technique to be rid of hierarchy when compared with violent upheaval; this is because, unlike with upheaval, the people in power have no way to defend themselves against abandonment. He also claims that people do not (and cannot) transform our culture toward tribalism in one single event and, therefore, do not need to wait for conditions to improve before starting to act more tribally (for example, by first ending sexism or racism before moving on to tribal endeavors). Quinn proposes an “incremental revolution” in which groups of people begin to form tribes little by little. These tribes, he speculates, would not be based on shared ethnicity like their historical precedents, but rather, on shared occupational interests. In addition, he proposes that no move beyond civilization could cause greater harm to the environment than already does our civilized society, which he terms the “culture of maximum harm,” since it incites each and all of its members to attain the highest, most world-destructive point of affluence. Quinn goes into detail about homelessness. He comments on the paradox that our culture aims to both aid the survival of the homeless, by trying to temporarily house and feed them, but also to thwart their survival, by outlawing and demonizing many of their typical survival-based activities. They perform many of these activities merely in order to continue to live while remaining outside a system that is clearly failing them: creating makeshift shelters in parks, dumpster diving for food, etc. Quinn proposes that city officials should help the homeless by listening to their wants rather than trying to end homelessness altogether by ignoring and hindering their survival tactics in a foolish effort to somehow frustrate them back into the work force. He also provides a few quotations from homeless people who explain their pleasant sense of cohesion and of departure from social obligations in their current condition. Quinn reminisces on his own tribe-like experience creating a local newspaper with three others, the East Mountain News. He expands upon the patterns and arrangements of successful tribes and gives further examples of what he considers tribal or tribe-like organizations. He also makes a distinction between communes and tribes. According to Quinn, a tribe primarily brings together individuals working or “making a living” together democratically; a commune primarily brings together individuals living together but often with a shared set of ideals and with each individual practicing their own personal way of making a living (i.e. working). Quinn refers to many events that show distress among the modern-day youth of our culture, including school shootings and rises in teenager suicides. He believes this points to signs that young people feel they have no place in our deranging society and that our culture provides no strong sense of belonging or of hope toward improvement. Essentially, Quinn argues, our culture must provide an alternate story to the self-destructive one it is currently playing out. He says that this alternate story is also to him the most beautiful one ever told: “There is no one right way for people to live.” He addresses two common accusations about this motto: (1) that he is claiming that there is a right way to live&mdash;the tribal way&mdash;and (2) that having no one right way to live is still itself an expression of a particular way to live that he believes to be right. He dispels these criticisms by stating: (1) that he prefers the tribal way (and hopes to see the development of a New Tribal way) but has never claimed this to be the one right way, and (2) that knowing there is no one right way to live is not at all a way to live. He admits to not having all the answers and encourages his reader to admit likewise when in similar circumstances. He further encourages the reader (an assumed New Tribalist activist) to let others formulate their own questions, to demand to understand others’ questions before answering them, and to look for people who are already open to something new rather than wasting time on those who would argue and are closed-minded. He concludes that the ending of the book is also the beginning of the revolution.
3186281	/m/08xx0d	Class Reunion	Franz Werfel	1928	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is about 43 year-old Dr. Ernst Sebastian, a lawyer who works as an Untersuchungsrichter (investigating judge) in the fictional town of Sankt Nikolaus during 1927. One Saturday afternoon a middle-aged man called Franz Adler, who has been arrested for the murder of a prostitute, is brought before him. During the interview&mdash;a preliminary hearing during which the two men are alone in Sebastian's office&mdash;Sebastian recognizes that Adler is in fact his old classmate, who attended the Gymnasium in Sankt Nikolaus, which was then Austria-Hungary, for two years when they were both 16 and 17. Adler, however, who appears to him fearful and beaten by life, does not seem to recognize the judge, and Sebastian decides to postpone any private talk with Adler till the following Monday. As it happens, that same Saturday night Sebastian attends a class reunion (the Abituriententag of the title) occasioned by the 25th anniversary of his Matura (Class of '02), a meeting he knows he will regret going to as it will bring back both a plethora of unpleasant memories and a confrontation with the bourgeois self-satisfaction of his former classmates. That night, Sebastian does not go to sleep. Rather, upset by his chance meeting with Adler and the ennervating talk at the class reunion, he sits down at his desk and writes down a confession in shorthand, which on the following morning turns out to be indecipherable to everyone including himself&mdash;except to the reader, who can read Sebastian's confession as the middle part of the novel). At the age of 16, Sebastian, on the command of his father, the highest-ranking judge in Austria-Hungary, has to leave the prestigious Schottengymnasium in Vienna due to poor grades and is forced to continue his education in the provincial town of Sankt Nikolaus, where he stays with two aunts of his. A mediocre pupil, he tries desperately to attract the attention of his new classmates, who turn out to be very reluctant to accept the new boy into their close-knit community. In the course of one schoolyear, however, Sebastian succeeds in tempting, and eventually seducing, many of his classmates to truancy, stay up late on a regular basis, lie to their teachers and parents, drink excessive amounts of alcohol, and eventually associate with prostitutes. In particular, although he is aware of his mediocre performance at school and also of his own abominable character; Sebastian, rather than repent for his sins, sets out to conquer the intellectual superiority of his classmate Adler, a red-haired Jew who writes dramas and philosophical treatises, though he is only 17. To get rid of his rival once and for all, Sebastian pushes him into forging a document. The truth comes out, and before Adler can be expelled, Sebastian helps him escape to Germany, thus ensuring that his own part in the crime will never be revealed. On the Monday following the class reunion, Adler is again brought before Sebastian. This time the judge does reveal his identity to Adler, but on closer inspection of the file in front of him he finds out that the man's assertion that he has never gone to school in Sankt Nikolaus is true.
3187900	/m/08xzq4	Hunter's Moon	Garry Kilworth		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 O-ha is a young vixen that has found happiness with her mate A-ho. Soon thereafter, however, a fox hunt ends with A-ho's death. O-ha attempts to move on and moves into a badger sett in which she meets the badger Gar. When she feels that she is about to give birth to her cubs she moves out into a shed and her six cubs are born. On one of her food forages into a manor garden, O-ha is assailed by Sabre, a ridgeback hound. She escapes him, but Sabre leads his master to the shed, and O-ha is unable to save any of her cubs. Sabre, however, swears to one day kill O-ha, as no other creature had ever escaped him as she did. Meanwhile, Camio, an American Red Fox, is being held in a zoo. One night, he escapes from the zoo. He hops a train into the countryside. His travels eventually lead him to Trinity Wood, near which a town is now being constructed. There, he meets O-ha and falls in love with her, but she refuses his attempts to approach her. At one point, O-ha tells Camio that any fox who could kill Sabre would receive her love. Soon after Camio departs, and O-ha, believing that he had gone to confront the hound, heads to the manor to intervene. Camio had instead consulted a fox mystic, who tells him O-ha was herself heading to the manor, thinking he was there already. He rushes to rescue her and with Camio's help and the appearance of a flock of geese travelling south do they escape the clutches of Sabre. O-ha and Camio become closer, and they finally move into an earth together. O-ha and Camio eventually mate. However, when a fox mystic commits ritual suicide in the middle of the new town's square, the residents believe that there has been an outbreak of rabies and systematically begin killing all animals that they encounter. O-ha and Camio barely escape and they flee north to the marshes. There they encounter Breaker, an old Foxhound that had once led the hunts, but who had with age been deposed and sent to a farm, and eventually chased away when feared to have rabies. Finally, they decide that enough time has passed since the humans attacked the animals, and O-ha and Camio return to the town, where they move into the depths of a scrapyard, and Breaker returns to his farm. At the scrapyard, O-ha gives birth to four cubs, but one does not survive the first night. The three other are given the names O-mitz, A-cam, and A-sac (who is an albino). Soon the time of dispersal approaches. O-mitz decides to drop the traditional gender distinction before her name and calls herself Mitz. A-sac and his sister grow up as normal cubs, but A-sac expresses his desire to become a fox mystic, to his parents' dismay, after talking to a rangfar (A wandering fox). One day A-cam and Mitz decide to go to the manor to see what their parents were always warning them about, and are attacked by Sabre, who bites off A-cam's tail. He barely escapes and makes it out to safety, but is dizzy and weak from blood loss. He collapses on a nearby road, and is picked up by some humans who take him away. Mitz returns to her parent's earth and informs them of what happened to A-cam, whom they mourn. Soon thereafter, Mitz goes out to search for an earth of her own, whiles A-sac goes off to meet the fox mystic O-toltol. At the same time, Sabre has escaped from the manor and goes into the town seeking to find and kill O-ha and her family. Mitz almost encounters him, and flees into a nearby house with an open door. The human occupants, unsure of what to do, call in a man that expertly manages to capture and cage her. He then drives to his home, where Mitz meets the friendly St. Bernard dog Betsy. The man who kidnapped her spends some time studying Mitz, before putting a tracking collar around her neck. He drives her back to the city after Betsy explains that he plans to follow Mitz around from a distance, simply taking notes. When Mitz informs her of Sabre, Betsy promises that she'll be safe as long as she can be followed because of the collar. Further north, A-sac has been making his way through the dangerous marshes to O-toltol, who resides within an ancient human tomb, in order to become her assistant. When he finally reaches her, he is disappointed by the crude condition that her home, as well as herself, is in. After being shown into the damp, cold tomb and hearing O-toltol's strange views on humans, A-sac decides to return home. He begins suspecting that something is strange about O-toltol. A-sac becomes even more suspicious when he finds a pile of large bones in one of the tomb's corners. O-toltol insists that A-sac stay to rest and lays down by the exit, barring the way. A-sac feigns to be sleeping, and in the middle of the night O-toltol approaches him and tries to nudge him over, to expose his throat. A-sac fears for his life and clamps his jaws down on her throat, wrestling to hold on to her as she struggles to get away. Finally, he throws O-toltol against the tomb and her back collides against its corner. She loses all her strength and goes limp, slowly dying. A-sac, frightened and shocked, shouts his suspicions that she had been a cannibal who had got rangfars to send young foxes to her. Although not talking directly to him, what could be O-toltol's spirit or A-sac's own consciousness rebukes his accusations. Unsure of whether the vixen had been guilty or innocent, A-sac leaves, emotionally and mentally shaken. He makes his way to the sea and becomes convinced that the fox deity A-O has given him the mission to purge the Earth of evil. He comes to believe that killing O-toltol had been his first mission, and that he now has to go back to the town and kill the 'giant'. He makes his way there, and quickly encounters Sabre. Sure of his quarry, A-sac savagely attacks Sabre, but proves no match for the giant Ridgeback and is killed. Shortly afterwards, Camio and Mitz find themselves outside the safety of their earth when they encounter Sabre. They flee and the giant dog takes up pursuit, but are saved when Betsy and her master interfere. Camio is convinced that the humans must be able to catch Sabre soon, as the giant dog has been roaming the streets for several days. As these events have unfolded, A-cam also had an adventure of his own. After being picked up by the humans, he was driven to a veterinarian that treated his wound. The humans then left A-cam on the side of the road by a nearby field, not realizing that they had left him far away from his home. Completely lost and having problems with his balance after the loss of his tail, A-cam manages to live off the countryside and travels far in an attempt to find his way home again, slowly adapting to his lack of a tail. Shortly after sighting the first landmark, A-cam stumbles upon a fox farm, which he must cross in order to get home. As he traverses the compound, he meets the twin vixens O-sollo and O-fall, whom he agrees to help escape. After escaping the compound under gunfire, O-sollo agrees to become his mate. As winter approaches, A-cam decides to visit his parents one last time, to inform them of his good condition and ask them for advice on living through the winter. He makes it to their earth, much to the family's jubilation, but just then Sabre finds their home. He tries to make his way through the trash and metal in order to reach them, but he is too big and he destabilizes the heap, bringing scrap metal falling down on himself. As the family of foxes escapes, Sabre is captured by the humans. Peace returns as A-cam moves away to live with his mate and start a family, and O-ha and Camio create a new earth by the new railway, with Mitz temporarily moving in with them. As winter falls upon the land, Camio becomes sick. In order to try to save him, O-ha goes out foraging in the middle of a blizzard. She fights her way onward, and when the blizzard stops and the sun breaks through the clouds, O-ha finds herself in the situation that she had so often seen in her nightmares: standing in the white snow as the sun makes the shadows of trees fall around her like black bars. Just then, Sabre appears, being walked by his master. Upon sighting O-ha, who flees, Sabre breaks free of his master's grip and gives chase. She manages to elude him all the way to a farm, where she flees into a barn. There, Sabre reveals that he had killed A-sac and then tries to kill O-ha, biting his jaws into her ear. She tears herself away and flees deeper into the farm, with Sabre close on her heels. Just as he is about to reach her, she is saved by Breaker the foxhound, who is mortally injured after a brief struggle with Sabre. O-ha runs onto a frozen pond and Sabre follows her, but his greater weight is too much for the ice and he falls through. Nevertheless, he continues to try to reach O-ha by breaking the ice towards her, and comes as close as clamping his jaws down on her hind leg and trying to drag her down with him, but she escapes him and Sabre sinks to his icy death alone. O-ha goes over to Breaker and thanks him for saving her, but the Foxhound's injuries are mortal, and he dies. O-ha then returns to Camio, bringing him some food, and when questioned about her ear she replies that it was just a little tussle with an ermine. O-ha and Camio finally find a lasting peace. They have two more litters, and Mitz finds a mate of her own and has her own litters. A-cam, who changed his name to A-salla in order to respect the tradition of reflecting his mate's name, has also established a happy life. At the conclusion of the story, O-ha and Camio are old and after leaving their earth one winter, O-ha lies down and dies peacefully. She follows a spirit to the Perfect Here after Camio performs the last rites on her, and after informing Mitz of her mother's death, he returns to his earth, contemplating the loneliness that he now feels.
3189922	/m/08y3ld	The Staircase	Ann Rinaldi	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lizzy Ender's father dumps her at a Santa Fe convent after her mother died on the Santa Fe Trail. A Methodist, Lizzy is an outcast in the school who can't comprehend the dedication to Catholicism. She thinks the nuns who pray to Saint Joseph for help to finish their choir loft (which doesn't have a staircase) are crazy. She befriends an unemployed carpenter and suggests he build the staircase. Her classmates are furious as they were waiting for a miracle to occur. The carpenter, named Jose, proceeds to build the staircase in a matter of weeks armed with three simple tools and his faith. After building the staircase, Jose disappears and Lizzy decides to leave the convent to search for her father. This story is based on the real legend of the miracle occurring at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, where an unnamed man(thought to be Saint Joseph) built a staircase. The circular staircase made two complete revolutions lacking both nails and a center support.
3192496	/m/08y8z6	La pensée straight	Monique Wittig	1992	{"/m/02t97": "Essay"}	 "One Is Not Born a Woman," follows in the wake of Simone de Beauvoir's feminist political visions. Wittig writes, 'Lesbians are not women', under the assumption that the term 'woman' is defined by men. Moreover, she compares lesbians to fugitive slaves. "The Trojan Horse," explains her theory of literature as a "war machine", echoing Gilles Deleuze.
3193118	/m/08ybpv	Black Easter	James Blish	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the first book, a wealthy arms manufacturer, Dr Baines, comes to a black magician, Theron Ware. Initially Baines tests Ware's credentials by asking for two people to be killed, first the Governor of California, Rogan (Reagan was governor at the time of writing) and then a rival physicist. When this accomplished to Baines' satisfaction Baines reveals his real reason: he wishes to release all the demons from hell for one night to see what might happen. The book includes a lengthy description of the summoning ritual, and a detailed (and as accurate as possible, given the available literature) description of the grotesque figures of the demons as they appear. Tension between white magicians (who appear to have a line of communications with the unfallen host in heaven) and Ware is woven over the terms and conditions of a magical covenant that is designed to provide for observers and limitations. Black Easter ends with Baphomet announcing to the participants that the demons can not be compelled to return to hell: the War is over, and God is dead. The Day After Judgement, which follows in the series, develops and extends the characters from the first book. It suggests that God may not be dead, or that demons may not be inherently self-destructive, as something appears to be restraining the actions of the demons upon Earth. In a lengthy Miltonian speech at the end of the novel, Satan Mekratrig explains that, compared to humans, demons are good, and that if perhaps God has withdrawn Himself, then Satan beyond all others was qualified to take His place and, if anything, would be a more just god. However, the defeat of Satan is complete - He cannot take up this throne, and must hand the burning keys to Man, as this is the most fell of all his fell damnations - He never wanted to be God at all, and so having won all, all has He lost.
3193171	/m/08ybt7	Darwin's Radio	Greg Bear	1999-08-31	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the novel, a new form of endogenous retrovirus has emerged, SHEVA. It controls human evolution by rapidly evolving the next generation while in the womb, leading to speciation. The novel follows several characters as the "plague" is discovered as well as the panicked reaction of the public and the U.S. government to the disease. Built into the human genome are non-coding sequences of DNA called introns. In Darwin's Radio, certain portions of these "non-sense" sequences, remnants of prehistoric retroviruses, have been activated and are translating numerous LPCs (large protein complexes). The activation of SHEVA and its consequential sudden speciation was postulated to be either controlled by a complex genetic network that perceives a need for modification or a human adaptive response to overcrowding. The disease, or rather, gene activation, is passed on laterally from male to female as per an STD. If impregnated, a woman in her first trimester who has contracted SHEVA will miscarry a deformed female fetus made of little more than two ovaries. This "first stage fetus" leaves behind a fertilized egg with fifty-two chromosomes rather than the typical forty-six characteristic of Homo sapiens sapiens. During the third trimester of the second stage pregnancy, both parents go into a pre-speciation puberty to prepare them for the needs of their novel child. Facial pigmentation changes underneath the old skin which begins sloughing off like a mask. Vocal organs and olfactory glands alter and sensitize respectively, to adapt for a new form of communication. For over a year after the first SHEVA outbreak in the United States, no second stage fetus was recorded to have been born alive. The new human species was highly sensitive to all varieties of herpes and could not be viably born to a mother who had ever been infected with any of the virus' many forms, including Epstein-Barr and the chickenpox — thus eliminating 95% of the female population. Anesthetics and pitocin administered during childbirth were also lethal. So while many women would contract activated SHEVA, few would be able to successfully give birth, making the transition from Homo sapiens sapiens to the new human species very gradual. The international response to the threat of SHEVA was to form a special task force that would work alongside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to find a vaccine. Because the "disease", called "Herod's Flu", was already in the genome of every person on Earth, the only two options were to either inhibit the activation of the SHEVA gene by discovering the signal it used or to abort the second stage fetus. Due to the rapid mutation rate of the missing-link signal molecule, preventing the activation of the gene was infeasible. The second option, abortion, was already a controversial issue and the proposal of handing out free RU 486 was met with social upheaval, adding to the already chaotic social scene. The general public believed that the government was either not placing due importance on the death of countless fetuses, or already had a cure and refused to release it. In response, government research facilities were forced to test prospective treatments prematurely and could not pursue explanations for SHEVA outside of the "disease" category because of the potential reactions from the masses. It was not until viable second stage fetuses were born that the idea of SHEVA being a part of evolution rather than a disease began to grow from a few isolated sources.
3195372	/m/08ygz_	A Glimpse of Tiger	Herman Raucher	1971	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's main character is the eponymous "Tiger," a 19-year-old girl who has run away to New York City from her home in Indianapolis because of pressure put on her by her parents. There she meets Luther, a playful con artist who takes her in and becomes her lover; together, the two become a pair of grifters, surviving by sneaking into charity benefits for food and eating free samples at department stores, and by scamming subway passengers into believing that Luther is a blind singer in need of donations. In spite of being a great lover, Luther is incredibly immature, always assuming other personalities and playing games instead of engaging in meaningful conversation or forming real connections with people; Tiger actually knows very little about him. Whenever she tries to get him to talk about himself, he engages in a role-playing game, assuming identities such as "The Mad Bomber of London" or Count Dracula, and then going about his daily routine in this persona. Luther sees no need to evolve beyond his current position in life as an essential thief whose only other real activities are repairing antique toys and cheating at Monopoly. One day, on a whim, Luther invites a homeless schemer named Theodore "Fat" Chance to move in with him, after having known the man for less than half an hour. Fat brings with him Leon, a silent, rodent-like man, and together the two begin plotting to turn Luther and Tiger's apartment into a phone sex operation. Tiger is furious and threatens to leave Luther, but Luther reassures her that the men will not be living with them long. Shortly thereafter, though, Tiger returns home one night from grocery shopping to find that Fat has overdosed on some unidentified drug. Although he pulls through, the incident frightens Tiger enough that she decides to leave Luther and move ahead with her life. At this point in the novel, the narration begins to switch from third person to first person, with italicized segments being narrated by Luther, in what appear to either be letters, journal entries, or direct addresses to the reader. While the third person segments detail Tiger's attempts to re-enter proper society, moving into a YWCA and getting a job as a typist at a law firm, Luther's first person narrations document his attempts to win her back. Tiger puts Luther at the back of her mind and is successful with her plans of becoming part of proper society; she befriends a secretary at her law firm, and is (briefly) promoted to being the personal assistant to one of the firm's lawyers, a handsome, middle aged, sexually aggressive attorney who keeps a couch in his office for the purpose of seducing his unending line of personal assistants. He attempts to sleep with Tiger on her first day as his assistant, and while she initially considers it, she recants at the last minute, resulting in her being demoted back to a typist. Meanwhile, Luther begins showing up at the YWCA where Tiger works, attempting to woo her back. She refuses to come back to him, but Luther recognizes her passionate denouncement of him as evidence that she still possesses some feelings for him. Back at his apartment, Leon leaves, speaking his only words in the book ("Au revoir"), followed sometime later by Fat, who goes off to seek his fortunes elsewhere. At the same time, Luther's electricity is shut off for non-payment, and his spare time becomes dedicated to writing to his vacationing, rich parents for money, and worrying over his sudden sporadic bed wetting. Back at the law firm, Tiger's secretary friend sets her up on a date with an optometrist named Steven, whom Tiger develops a fondness for. On one of their dates, to a Russian restaurant, Luther shows up, performing one of his old grifter routines, pretending to be a Russian waiter. He nearly gets into a fight with Steven, prompting a pair of real waiters to try to eject Luther from the premises. Breaking from his usual pattern of abandoning a character when caught, Luther instead jumps on another diner's table and pretends to be Al Jolson, before assuming the persona of a juggler and hurling people's food at them, sparking a small riot in the restaurant. Luther ends up with his nose broken, but escapes, and in a first-person segment, wonders to himself why he felt compelled to shift characters rather than escape. Briefly wondering if he may be part Russian, he travels to the Russian embassy and requests asylum, which he is naturally not granted. Tiger, meanwhile, is promoted again, this time as the assistant of an absentminded attorney for whom she becomes an invaluable Girl Friday. She also continues to date Steven, and considers starting a friendly relationship with Luther, whom she is concerned about due to his actions at the restaurant. One day he shows up at the law firm, dressed in a gaudy, mis-matched suit, and pulls a routine on the clerks there, earning a large amount of cash by pretending to be collecting for an absentee typist's wedding shower. Luther shows the money to Tiger and asks her to come back to him, but she refuses. She comes home that night to find Luther waiting in her room. He asks her to come back to him one last time, and Tiger explains to him that, while he may be happy with a meaningless, carefree life, she wants to feel some purpose to her existence. Luther sadly acknowledges this, and agrees to let her go. The next day, Tiger is typing when "The Mad Bomber of London" phones into the office to say that he's going to blow up the building. Everyone evacuates except Tiger, who remains at her desk working, knowing that it's another one of Luther's games. In the novel's twist ending, a series of Luther's first-person narratives, tying into his earlier behavior at the restaurant and belief that he is a Russian, reveal that his behavior throughout the novel has not been the cliché actions of a hero in a romantic comedy, but the depraved workings of an obsessed stalker. His narratives degenerate into non-sensical ramblings about breaking his nose on New Year's Eve and bizarre rants about God's bodily functions and hatred of Christianity. In the book's closing third person segments, Luther stands on a street corner watching Tiger's law firm, as the bomb he planted there detonates, and Tiger is killed, her co-workers frantically running around the flaming wreckage looking for her as the now fully insane Luther envisions himself on a beach, finding Tiger as a young girl and then walking away with her to go back home.
3195652	/m/08yhjt	The Master Mind of Mars	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1928	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On Mars, Paxton is taken in by elderly mad scientist Ras Thavas, the "Master Mind" of the title, who educates him in the ways of Barsoom and bestows on him the Martian name Vad Varo. Ras has perfected techniques of transplanting brains, which he uses to provide rich elderly Martians with youthful new bodies for a profit. Distrustful of his fellow Martians, he trains Paxton as his assistant to perform the same operation on him. But Paxton has fallen in love with Valla Dia, one of Ras' young victims, whose body has been swapped for that of the hag Xaxa, Jeddara (empress) of the city-state of Phundahl. He refuses to operate on Ras until his mentor promises to restore her to her rightful body. A quest for that body ensues, in which Paxton is aided by others of Ras' experimental victims, and in the end he attains the hand of his Valla Dia, who in a happy plot twist turns out to be a princess.
3199312	/m/08yrzh	Pushing Ice	Alastair Reynolds	2005-10-27	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Pushing Ice begins in the distant future, where the elected rulers of the Congress of the Lindblad Ring gather to decide on a suitable ceremony to honour a woman they consider responsible for the technological advancement and territorial expansion of the future human race, Bella Lind. To explain her role, the chronology is then pushed back to the early days of humanity's manned exploration of the solar system, where it is explained that Lind is the captain of the Rockhopper, a spacecraft used for mining cometary ice. While on a routine mission, Lind is informed that Saturn's moon Janus has deviated from its normal orbit, and is accelerating out of the solar system. The Rockhopper, deemed the only ship capable of catching up to Janus, is asked to undertake the task of pursuing the moon, and sending back as much information as possible before being forced to turn back by the limitations of fuel and supplies. However, on their approach to the moon, revealed to be a camouflaged alien spacecraft, Lind and her crew are caught in the field of the ship's inertialess drive, causing them to travel further and faster than expected, and beyond their capacity to return to Earth. Realising their predicament, the crew decide to land on the moon and attempt to survive the flight out of the solar system, wherever it may take them. Eventually it becomes apparent that ship is heading towards Spica, a close binary pair in the constellation of Virgo. At one point before the landing, Bella's closest friend and subordinate, Svetlana Barseghian, pushes for Bella to turn the ship around while there is still a chance to return to Earth. Bella decides that turning back is too dangerous, angering Svetlana, who then leads a mutiny and, after the ship lands, exiles Bella to a structure set apart from the main colony. The novel traces the life of the colony for many years as they try to eke out an existence on Janus and determine why it is moving through space. They work out a way of deriving power from some alien technology they find, and slowly start to improve their living conditions. They eventually arrive at a vast megastructure where they meet an alien species, called 'Fountainheads'. The encounter with the benevolent aliens improves the colonists' situation dramatically. The alien presence is played poorly by Svetlana who loses control of the colony to Bella. Bella does not exile Svetlana, even if she chooses a form of self-exile. The Fountainheads are able to rejuvenate humans, healing injuries and making them younger. The only restriction is that they cannot heal brain damage without the patient losing part of his/her personality. Bella and several others undergo rejuvenation to make themselves younger. Those that are rejuvenated still age, but more slowly. Another several decades go by as the Fountainheads and the humans co-exist. The Fountainheads are trading advanced technology with the colony in exchange for drilling rights on Janus, whose core is a vast energy resource. The Fountainheads warn Bella of the arrival of another, repulsive (by human standards) race called Musk Dogs that will infect the colony and tear it apart in an effort to get at Janus' core. When they arrive, Svetlana meets with the Musk Dogs and trades with them, she tries to regain control of the colony, but her actions set off a chain of events that destroys Janus and requires everyone to evacuate. Svetlana, with the assistance of the Fountainheads, leaves the structure through the gap created by the explosion. Pictures from her ship reveal the structure to be a Torus the size of a planetary system, with part of the structure missing at its center (believed to be the Spicans' quarters). Bella dies during the evacuation of Janus, but her body is nonetheless brought along with the evacuating colony. Her body remains in stasis for decades, waiting for the Fountainheads to restore her to life; she eventually awakens to learn that a new human colony has been established elsewhere in the structure.
3200770	/m/08ywr2	Quicksand	Jun'ichirō Tanizaki		{"/m/065q54": "LGBT literature"}	 The story is narrated by Sonoko Kakiuchi, a young woman from Osaka. At the start of the novel she lives comfortably with her husband Kotaro, and attends art classes at a local women's school. Rumors spread around the school that Sonoko is having a lesbian affair with another student, the beautiful young Mitsuko. Sonoko finds herself drawn to Mitsuko, though she barely knows her, and she proceeds to forge a friendship with her. Soon, she invites Mitsuko to her house to pose nude for her figure drawing. Mitsuko agrees, but insists on covering herself with a sheet. The sexual tension comes to a head when Sonoko rips the sheet away, thus sealing her infatuation. The two begin a fiery affair. Things are complicated by the arrival of Watanuki Eijiro, Mitsuko's sometime fiance. The effeminate, impotent Watanuki reveals that Mitsuko had intended to marry him, but now refuses unless he allows her affair with Sonoko to continue. Sonoko begins to sense that Mitsuko has been manipulating them both, but is far too mired in her infatuation – the quicksand of the title – to back out. Meanwhile, Sonoko's husband Kotaro has taken notice of her infatuation with Mitsuko. He attempts to put an end to it, but Sonoko will not be dissuaded. After a few chance meetings, Kotaro falls under Mitsuko's spell as well, and attempts to get closer to her. One evening when all three are sleeping in bed together, Sonoko awakens to find Kotaro having intercourse with Mitsuko. Knowing that their ménage à trois is doomed, Sonoko, Kotaro, and Mitsuko form a suicide pact, in which they will kill themselves with poison-laced sleeping powder. In the event, however, Sonoko wakes up, realizing that Kotaro and Mitsuko have withheld the poison from her dose, a final betrayal.
3202072	/m/08yzf5	Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book begins with the impact of genetic engineering. For 200 years modern humans morphed the genetics of other humans to create genetically-altered creatures. The aquamorphs and aquatics are marine humans with gills instead of lungs. One species - the vacuumorph - has been engineered for life in the vacuum of space. Its skin and eyes carry shields of skin to keep its body stable even without pressure. Civilization eventually collapses, with a few select humans escaping to colonize space. The humans that manufactured these species degrade to simple farmers and following a magnetic reversal, were driven to extinction. Other humans, the Hitek, become almost totally dependent on cybernetic technology. With Magnetic reversal imminent, the Hitek built genetically altered humans to occupy niches: Genetically-altered humans include a temperate woodland species, a prairie species, a jungle species, and a tundra-dwelling species. Since then the genetically-altered humans must face a new phenomenon. They can no longer be genetically tweaked in a lab, so all modifications must naturally evolve. Many new forms resulted from natural selection. Socials, colonial humans with a single reproductive parent, Fishers, otter-like fishing humans, Slothman sloth-like humans, Spiketeeth, saber-toothed predatory humans, and even parasitic humans developed through natural changes. After five million years of uninterrupted evolution, the descendants of modern man that retreated into space returned. Then the world changed dramatically. Earth was xenoformed and covered in vast alien cities. The humans and other life forms in this new Earth must breathe air with low oxygen content. Thus the alien invaders use cyborg-technology to fuse the bodies of the few human species they find useful on the planet with air tanks and respiration systems. Genetic modification also returned and giant building humans and tiny connection humans were bred to aid city construction. Genetically created horse-like men serve as mounts for the invaders. Some engineered human species even became farmed like pigs or cattle. As with all civilization, this new era of man fell apart once again. Eventually the spacefaring humans left, the Earth was left in ruins. With barely any oxygen left in the Earth's atmosphere, all terrestrial life on the planet perished. At the bottom of the world's oceans, at the oases that were the underwater hot springs, life continues. In the abyss, was Piscanthropus profundus, a deep-sea descendant of the now-extinct Aquatic evolved. It is implied that Piscathropus profundis would eventually recolonize Earth's surface.
3202505	/m/08y_59	Time Jumper			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Greenleaf’s first novel Time Jumper is a coming-of-age novel set in Earth's distant future. The story revolves around two contrasting characters: a dwarf named Erin and an adolescent boy named Randi. Erin lives in a city sealed beneath a protective shield, where everything is artificially engineered, even the birds in the trees. The citizens isolate themselves in their crystal towers, caring only about wealth and status. In stark contrast, Randi lives with his tribe in a much different and more primitive environment: the wilderness outside the domed city. Erin, a loner and something of a freak in a society which values perfection, wants more out of life and spends his time secretly working on his passion, a time-traveling machine like the one built thousands of years ago by the legendary Joc-Sindor. However, Joc-Sindor's attempt to jump through time failed catastrophically, killing thousands and obliterating an area of the city now known as the Black Plain. Erin's task is to find the piece of the puzzle that Joc-Sindor missed and avoid making the same mistake. The story begins when Erin receives a message telling him that the solution to his problem lies in the city's library, a forgotten room hidden in the cavern beneath the city. Books are no longer produced, for nobody reads them. Erin's discovery of a book containing Joc-Sindor's handwritten notes sets off a series of mysterious and frightening events. It appears that someone has taken an interest in Erin's secret development of the time jumper, but whether this individual wants him to fail or succeed is not clear. In the process of pursuing answers, Erin learns surprising truths about his heritage, Joc-Sindor, and the priesthood that rules the city. Meanwhile, in his village beyond the city's shield, Randi wonders about the giant golden bubble and the city inside it, known as Chalmarene, or “place of death.” Years ago, his brother died when he dared to touch the surface of the impenetrable shield. Despite the rules in his village discouraging any interest in the bubble, which has existed unchanging for as long as his people can remember, Randi becomes determined to enter it somehow. In the end, Erin becomes the captive of a rogue priest seeking to sabotage the time jumper in his bid for power and revenge. Intending to kill Erin, the priest leads him through a hidden passageway to the outside, and for the first time, Erin sees the wilderness beyond the shield. By chance, Randi comes upon them while visiting the bubble, accompanied by his dog. The dog—the first real animal Erin has ever seen—attacks the priest, saving Erin's life. Erin and Randi then become unwitting ambassadors for their two cultures, and they embark on an effort to prepare their people for future encounters.
3203192	/m/08z0vv	The Recognitions	William Gaddis	1955	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story loosely follows the life of Wyatt Gwyon, a Calvinist minister's son from rural New England. He initially plans to follow his father into the ministry, however, he is inspired to become a painter by The Seven Deadly Sins, Bosch's painting in his father's possession. He leaves and travels to Europe to study painting. Discouraged by a corrupt critic and frustrated with his career he moves to New York. He meets Recktall Brown, a capitalistic collector and dealer of art, who makes a Faustian deal with him. Wyatt creates paintings in the style of Flemish and Dutch masters (such as Hieronymous Bosch, Hugo van der Goes, and Hans Memling), forges their signature, and Brown will sell them as newly discovered antique originals. Soon Wyatt is discouraged, goes home only to find his father converted to Mithraism and losing his mind. Back in New York, he tries to expose his forgeries, then travels to Spain where he visits the monastery where his mother was buried, restores old paintings, and tries to find himself in his search for authenticity. At the end, he moves on to live his life "deliberately". Interwoven are the stories of many other characters, among them Otto, a struggling writer, Esme, a muse, and Stanley, a musician. The epilogue follows their stories further. In the final scene Stanley achieves his goal by playing his work at the organ of the church of Fenestrula "pulling all the stops". The church collapses, killing him, yet "most of his work was recovered ..., and is still spoken of, when it is noted, with high regard, though seldom played." The major part of the novel takes part in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
3203784	/m/08z1z_	A Dark Night's Passing	Naoya Shiga		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Dark Night's Passing is divided into four parts. Its protagonist is Tokitō Kensaku, a young, aspiring writer who have a dark secret in his family's closet. As a young boy he is sent to live with his paternal grandfather and his mistress Oei. His grandfather and his mother dies soon after from illness. In Part One, Kensaku, who resides in Tokyo with Oei, goes with his friends to visit geishas (as well as prostitutes) day in and day out, and finds it difficult to maintain a disciplined lifestyle of writing. He develops interest in a few geishas and bargirls, but his interest comes to nothing. Part Two concerns Kensaku's trip to the seaside town of Onomichi. Kensaku goes there to do some serious writing, but instead find himself proposing to Oei, about twenty years his senior, in letters while asking his elder brother Nobuyuki to act as their intermediary. In their correspondences Nobuyuki tells him a dark secret: Kensaku was conceived as the result of a brief affair between their mother and their paternal grandfather. During this affair their father was studying in Germany, and he chose to forgive his late mother over it. This explains the somewhat cold attitude their father had always with him. Oei turns down Kensaku's proposal, and Kensaku returns to Tokyo. In Part Three Kensaku visits Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, and decides to make the place his home. He meets a young lady there, Naoko, of whom he takes a fancy, and writes to his brother to ask him to act as a go-between. Oei decides to go overseas to Tianjin, China, to help a kin in her business. Kensaku and Naoko marry, and the first year of their marriage is blissful. However, Naoko gives birth to a baby boy who dies in his infancy from cellulitis. In the final part, Kensaku and Naoko's relations become strained. Naoko mourns her dead baby but becomes pregnant again. Kensaku's feelings toward Naoko change when he realizes she was raped by a cousin when Kensaku goes over to Korea to pick up Oei. Oei now lives with the couple, and Naoko gives birth to a baby girl. Kensaku decides to go for another trip to the secluded countryside after realizing his temper has caused estrangement between him and his wife. During the trip he suffers from a case of cholera whilst his wife rushes down to see him after he falls ill. The novel ends on a cliffhanging style, with the reader uncertain whether Kensaku would ever make it from his feverish state.
3204913	/m/08z4y1	Hernani	Victor Hugo			 Set in a fictitious version of the Spanish court of 1519, it is based on courtly romance and intrigues. In the first scenes Hugo introduces Doña Sol, a young noblewoman of the court of Don Carlos, King of Spain (the future Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor). The King has come to her room to seduce her. They are interrupted by the arrival of Doña Sol's true love, the bandit Hernani, and the two argue over her and are about to duel. Her uncle (and fiancé) Don Ruy Gomez de Silva enters, and demands to know why both men are in Doña Sol's private chambers. Don Carlos asserts that he had come hoping to meet Ruy Gomez to discuss affairs of state, and Hernani does not reveal the King's true intent. In return for the bandit's discretion, Don Carlos claims to Don Ruy that Hernani is a member of his entourage. Thus, each has given the other an honorable excuse for his presence in the quarters of Doña Sol. Thus, three men- two noblemen and a mysterious bandit, are in love with the same woman. What follows in the ensuing chaos of action prompted the biographer of Hugo, J.P. Houston, to write "... and a résumé [plot synopsis] will necessarily fail, as in the case of Notre-Dame de Paris, to suggest anything like the involution of its details" (Houston 1974:53). Don Carlos learns of a midnight rendezvous between Doña Sol and Hernani. He decides to interrupt it in the hope of abducting her. Hernani becomes aware of the plot and has his men surround the King's guards. For the first time, the King becomes aware of Hernani's true identity as a bandit, rather than a nobleman, and refuses a duel. Hernani, although he could charge the King with a crime, allows him to go free. The (interrupted) wedding of Doña Sol to Ruy Gomez. Hernani arrives in disguise, and confronts her for agreeing, however reluctantly, to marry. He admits his criminal past to Ruy Gomez, and the fact that he is being pursued by the King. On the King's arrival, Ruy Gomez hides Hernani and refuses to surrender him, citing laws of hospitality, which, he asserts, protect his guests, even from the King. While Ruy Gomez and Don Carlos argue, Doña Sol, alone with Hernani, reveals that she plans to commit suicide before her marriage can be consummated. The King, frustrated by Ruy Gomez' resistance, drops the pursuit of Hernani, and instead abducts Doña Sol. Ruy Gomez agrees to spare Hernani's life long enough to free Doña Sol, on condition that Hernani will die willingly at some point in the future. Hernani gives him a horn which Ruy Gomez is to blow to announce the moment of Hernani's death. Don Carlos is elected Holy Roman Emperor. He resolves to live up to the requirements and responsibilities of his new title. Carlos pardons Hernani and gives him Doña Sol. The two are married, but as they enjoy their wedding feast, Hernani hears the call of the horn blown by Ruy Gomez. As Hernani is about to drink poison Doña Sol enters the room and tries to convince him that he is hers and he does not have to listen to her uncle. He is unable to persuade her otherwise. She drinks half the bottle of poison. Hernani shocked by Doña Sol's decision to kill herself drinks the other half of the poison and they die in each others arms. Ruy Gomez de Silva kills himself.
3205275	/m/08z615	Robur the Conqueror	Jules Verne	1886	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with strange lights and sounds, including blaring trumpet music, reported in the skies all over the world. The events are capped by the mysterious appearance of black flags with gold suns atop tall historic landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty in New York, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. These events are all the work of the mysterious Robur (the specific epithet for English Oak, Quercus robur, and figuratively taken to mean "strength"), a brilliant inventor who intrudes on a meeting of a flight-enthusiast's club called the Weldon Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Members of the Weldon Institute are all firm believers that mankind shall master the skies using “lighter than air” craft, and that "heavier than air" craft such as airplanes and helicopters would be unfeasible. The institute has been constructing a giant dirigible called the Go-ahead, and are having a heated discussion of where to place its propeller (in front to pull it, or behind to push it) when Robur appears at the meeting and is admitted to speak to them. He chastises the group for being balloon-boosters when "heavier than air" flying apparatuses are the future. When asked if Robur himself has "made conquest of the air," he states that he has, leading to him accepting the title "Robur the Conqueror." During his short time at the Weldon Institute Robur so incites the members, that they chase him outside. Just as they are about to attack him, Robur appears to vanish into the mob, but he has actually been borne away by a flying machine. Later that night Robur kidnaps the Weldon Institute's secretary, president, and the president’s valet. He takes them on board his ship, a huge rotorcraft vessel called the Albatross which has many vertical propellers so as to operate similar to a helicopter, and horizontal propellers to provide lateral movement. It bears the same black flag with golden sun that has been sighted on so many landmarks, and the music in the sky is explained to be one of the crewmen playing a trumpet. To demonstrate the vessel's superiority, Robur takes his captives around the world in the course of three weeks. The president and secretary are angry at Robur for kidnapping them and unwilling to admit that the Albatross is a fantastic vessel, or that their notions of "lighter than air" superiority are wrong. They demand that Robur release them, but he is aloof and always says that they shall remain as long as he desires it. Fearing they will be held captive forever, the two formulate plans to both escape and destroy the Albatross. After the horizontal propellers are damaged in a storm, the Albatross is anchored over the Chatham Islands for repairs. While the crew is busy at work, the two Weldon Institute members light a fuse and make their escape. They try to bring the valet with them but cannot find him, only later discovering that the coward had escaped already without them. The Albatross explodes and its wreckage, along with Robur and his crew, plunge into the ocean. Meanwhile the three escapees are safe on a small but inhabited island and are later rescued by a ship, then make a long journey back to Philadelphia. The Weldon Institute members return, and rather than describe their adventures or admit that Robur had created a flying machine greater than their expectations of the Go-ahead, they simply conclude the argument the group was having during their last meeting. Rather than have only one propeller to their dirigible, they decide to have one propeller in front and another behind similar to Robur's design. Seven months after their return the Go-ahead is completed and making its maiden voyage with the president, secretary, and an aeronaut. The speed and maneuverability of the dirigible marvels a huge crowd, but are trivial if compared to Robur’s Albatross. Suddenly, out of the sky there appears the Albatross. It is revealed that when the Albatross exploded, enough of it was intact so that at least some of the propellers operated and slowed its descent, saving the crew. The crew used the remains of the Albatross as a raft until they were rescued by a ship. Later, Robur and the crew made it back to his secret X Island, where the original Albatross had been built. Robur has built a new Albatross and now intends to exact revenge by showing it is superior to the Weldon Institute’s Goahead. The entirety of the final scene is described from the crowd's point of view. The Albatross begins circling the Go-ahead; the Go-ahead drops ballast and rises to fourteen thousand feet. The Albatross follows, still a circling menace. The Go-ahead is at the mercy of the Albatross because the Albatross is both faster and more maneuverable. Finally, the Go-ahead exceeds her pressure height, where her gas bags rupture. Losing her buoyancy gas, Go-ahead drops out of the sky like a rapidly descending kite. The Albatross stays alongside of Go-ahead as she falls, signalling the pilot and passengers of Go-head to come on board the Albatross. They refuse, but then the crew of Albatross again seizes them and brings them aboard the Albatross. Having demonstrated his rule over the skies, Robur returns the three men to the ground. In a speech, Robur says that nations are not yet fit for union. He cautions the crowd that it is evolution, not revolution that they should be seeking. He leaves with the promise that he will one day return to reveal his secrets of flight.
3205902	/m/05h5pds	The Planter's Northern Bride	Caroline Lee Hentz			 The book's main character is Eulalia, a young daughter of an abolitionist from New England, and the wife of a plantation owner named Moreland. At first indoctrinated by her father's views on Abolitionism, Eulalia initially condemns her husband's use of slaves on his plantation - even though he is behaving benignly towards them - but soon realises how well off Moreland's slaves truly are. As time passes, Eulalia also discovers a plot by a group of local abolitionists to stage a large-scale slave rebellion, with aims to "free" the otherwise-content slaves of the plantation, and to murder both Moreland and Eulalia, despite their kindness to their slaves.
3206427	/m/08z8x1	Deenie	Judy Blume	1973	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Deenie chronicles the life of thirteen-year-old Wilmadeene "Deenie" Fenner, whose mother is determined to have her become a model. At the same time, Deenie's 16-year-old sister, Helen, who is academically proficient, is being pushed by their mother to keep her grades up so that she can eventually become a doctor or lawyer. One day, Deenie is diagnosed with scoliosis, and is prescribed a body brace to wear for the next four years. At the same time, Helen has fallen in love with Joey, a charming and romantic young gentleman who works for the family business (a gas station). Mrs. Fenner, upset that her plans for her daughters are coming undone, has Joey fired and still exhorts Deenie to pursue a modeling career once she stops wearing the back brace. Though fearful that Helen will hate her because Mrs. Fenner said that Joey was let go because of the family's doctors' bills, Deenie is astonished to learn that Helen refuses to blame her for Joey's departure, and the sisters close ranks. Though initially upset at having to wear the body brace, Deenie eventually resigns herself to her fate. She finds herself at peace with the idea of not becoming a model, and, inspired by her experience, begins to ponder a future career as an orthopedist, concluding that she never really wanted to be a model herself. The book concludes with Deenie asking her father to not wear the brace to a party, and though her mom is surprisingly relaxed about it, her father, who until now was rather mute about everything, firmly says 'no', rightfully pointing out that she'd want to not wear it for every special occasion if he gave in. In defiance, she brings a bag with clothes that fit her without the brace with the intention to change once she got to the party, but once there, Deenie changes her mind and leaves the brace on. Other story arcs include Deenie's friendship with a girl whose eczema alienates her, and Deenie's anxiety over whether her crush will still like her in spite of her back brace. Deenie is named after the character Natalie Wood played in Splendor in the Grass. The movie itself was mentioned in description in the book, though the name of the movie was not, possibly due to copyright reasons.
3207099	/m/08zbch	Woman In Mind	Alan Ayckbourn			 Susan awakes to a man tending to her speaking apparent gibberish, actually misheard English (such as “Squeezy cow, squeezy” really meaning “Easy now, easy”). He is Dr. Windsor (or “octer bin sir”), and Susan suggests she's died and gone where no-one speaks English, and when Bill says “December bee” (“Remember me”), Susan retorts that there are no bees in December. When Bill's language starts to make sense, he explains she knocked herself out with a garden rake. After Bill leaves to fetch a cup of tea, Susan's husband (Andy), lovingly tends to her, joined by daughter Lucy and brother Tony,fresh from the tennis courts. All show concern for her welfare and tease her about the rake. Lucy and Tony fetch the ice, and Andy goes to cancel the ambulance Bill has ordered. When Bill returns, however, it is apparent something is not right. Bill sees a tiny garden, whilst Susan insists her garden is massive, complete with rose-beds, swimming pool, tennis courts and lake. Susan also denies having a sister-in-law or son and becomes more confused when Bill says that her husband has not yet come home. When her real husband (Gerald) and sister-in-law (Muriel) enter, Susan faints. The following day, Susan, dozing in the garden, is woken by Gerald. Now back in tune with the real world, she openly discusses the deadness of their marriage, something Gerald insensitively glosses over. Muriel serves “coffee”: ground coffee prepared as one would do instant. Indignantly Muriel points out she tended to her late mother, then late husband (or finished off, as Susan sees it) before digressing into her deluded conviction that her late husband's ghost will return with a message. When Gerald reminds Susan that their son, Rick, is coming for lunch, it transpires that he joined a sect two years ago that forbids members from talking to their parents. He writes, but only to Gerald. Susan, hurt by this, blames this (and Rick's fear of women) on the public school scholarship Gerald bullied him to take. Susan is momentarily distracted by glimpses of Tony and Lucy, before Bill returns to check on Susan, only to be drawn into Gerald's account of the book he's writing on the history of the Parish. Susan therefore takes the opportunity to talk to Lucy, who praises her for her status as a historical novelist, and then informs her (naturally Susan is the first to know) that she is getting married. In the real world, Bill agrees to stay for lunch (Muriel's “omelette surprise”, where she mistakes the tea tin for herbs). Gerald makes excuses for the sect, until confessing that Rick is coming to sell the possessions in his room – something that horrifies Susan as this is all she has left of him. Bill offers to act as a go-between so that Gerald and Susan can communicate with their son. When Rick arrives, even Gerald has trouble bringing himself into the house. But before Susan can enter, her imaginary family brings her a sumptuous outdoor banquet, and persuades her to dine with them instead. Rick then comes into the garden and, to Susan's surprise, asks her to come inside. As she goes to her son, she collapses again. Susan wakes to find Rick still speaking to her, explaining that he has left the sect he and now has a girlfriend. Her joy, however, is short-lived when she learns they are already married and they are moving to Thailand – her to do nursing, and him to do “odd jobs”. He will not even allow Susan to see her, because Rick is embarrassed by the way she acted around past girlfriends. Rick leaves a stung Susan to explain this to Gerald, who says “it's not fair to lay all the blame at your door”. They get into a fierce argument, with Susan egged on by Tony and Lucy (by now sitting in on most of Susan's conversations). Lucy tries to console Susan by praising her status as a brilliant heart surgeon. This time, Susan snaps at Lucy to shut up. Lucy runs off in tears, and Susan tries to apologise only for it to be accepted by Gerald. In the sunset of her imaginary world, Andy caresses Susan and forgives her for being angry with Lucy. Susan, now worried by the increasing influence that Lucy, Tony and Andy have on her real life, tries asks Andy to leave her alone. Andy says they will go when she asks, but stays when Susan does so, suggesting she didn't really mean it. The scene becomes unreal, with Andy anticipating everything Susan says, then the voices of Susan and her imaginary family coming out of both their mouths. Back in reality, Susan find Bill beside her (who fled on mention of a dessert, but has now returned). Susan confides to Bill about her hallucinations, and when asked about Rick, tells him a semi-fantasy where he is getting married, and she has met her daughter-in-law to be. Having previously hinted over his own family life – two daughters married to wheeler-dealer stockbrokers and a wife probably cheating with another doctor – Bill reveal how he feels about her, and his about to kiss her when Susan points to Lucy. Bill tries to humour Susan by talking where Susan pointed, but Lucy has already moved away. Tony and Andy arrive, and suddenly, Bill become part of her fantasy – now a wheeler-dealer stockbroker poaching rabbits. His is thrown into the lake, leaving Andy and Susan to reminisce on their own wedding day. As he kisses her, Susan weakly protests with “Oh dear God! I'm making love to the devil!” At an indeterminate time overnight, Gerald and Rick find Susan sprawled out on the middle of the lawn during a thunderstorm. Gerald tries to bring Susan inside, but she mocks him with an offer of a quiet divorce. It appears that Susan has burnt Gerald's precious book of the Parish, something Susan has no memory of. Then Muriel comes out screaming, having read a message of “Knickers off Muriel”. She refuses all pleas to come inside, denouncing Gerald for narrow-minded meanness, Rick as a priggish brat, and Muriel for wanting a phantom pregnancy. Tony appears and opens an umbrella and the storm ends in time for what initially appears to be Lucy's wedding, but Tony and Andy appear to be some sort of race stewards, and Lucy, although dressed as a bride, seems to be taking part in a “brides race”. Meanwhile, Bill becomes a clichéd bookie, Muriel is a heavily pregnant French maid, Gerald is an Archbishop and Susan's real son Rick (now an odd-job man), to her horror, seems to be the groom for her imaginary daughter Lucy. All kinds of snippets relating to her real life mesh together as a surrealistic nightmare. Ignoring Susan's protests, they all toast her, acclaiming Susan as precious to them all, demanding a speech. The final shred of reality is when Muriel says “The ambulance is on its way”, and a blue light flashes. Susan's speech descends into she same gibberish Bill used at the beginning of the play, and, with a desperate request to "December bee", she collapses a final time.
3207665	/m/08zcgw	A Dweller in Two Planets		1905	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In its introduction, Oliver claims that the book had been channeled through him via automatic writing, visions and mental "dictations", by a spirit calling himself Phylos the Tibetan who revealed the story to him over a period of three years, beginning in 1883.
3208132	/m/08zd4x	A Day with Wilbur Robinson	William Joyce	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A Day With Wilbur Robinson follows the story of a boy (13 years old) who visits an unusual family and their home. While spending the day in the Robinson household, Wilbur's best friend joins in the search for Grandfather Robinson's missing false teeth and meets one wacky relative after another.
3208774	/m/08zfdj	The Man Who Went Up in Smoke	Per Wahlöö	1966	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Beck leaves his holiday and travels to Hungary to search for a missing journalist called Alf Matsson. After intersecting with the Budapest police and the criminal underground, he begins to wonder if Matsson ever entered the country.
3211116	/m/08zks1	The Book of Three	Lloyd Alexander	1964-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The youth Taran lives at Caer Dallben with his guardians, the ancient enchanter Dallben and the farmer and retired soldier Coll. He is dissatisfied with his life as a farm laborer, longing to become a great hero like High Prince Gwydion and others he knows from his studies with Dallben. Dallben discourages Taran's daydreaming and tells him of a new threat beside Arawn: a warlord known as the Horned King. He forbids Taran from leaving the farm or the care of Hen Wen, the oracular white pig. Coll, attempting to mollify Taran by conferring upon him the title of Assistant Pig-Keeper. The responsibility does not please Taran nor can he fulfill it when Hen Wen flees the farm in evident terror, following the bees and chickens. Dallben and Coll hope to ask Hen Wen about the animals' unrest. Before they can do so, she overwhelms Taran who follows her into the forbidden forest. After a long chase and losing her trail, he watches a host of horsemen gallop toward his home, led by one who must be the Horned King himself. One warrior spots him but he escapes with a glancing blow from one sword hurled at distance, and runs again until he drops. He awakes to find his wound treated by none other than Gwydion, the crown prince in Prydain's ruling House of Dôn, who has been traveling to Caer Dallben to consult Hen Wen himself. One of Taran's heroes, he does not fit expectations. Learning the Horned King has passed that way and the pig this way, he determines to follow the pig and takes Taran along. They encounter Gurgi, a hairy humanoid living in the forest, who has seen Hen Wen cross the river Avren northward, who is also able to lead them to the Horned King's camp. There under cover of darkness they observe a ceremonial sacrifice of captives by the local warlords who have joined with the Horned King. Gwydion surmises that their target will be Caer Dathyl far to the north, the home castle of the House of Don. He determines to ride that way in warning rather than look for the pig. (He explains much Prydain geography to Taran.) Gurgi flees when four scouts discover the companions. Gwydion captures one by enchantment and slays another, so the horsemen fall back, but a pair of undead footsoldiers remorselessly approach: the Cauldron-Born. Gwydion orders Taran to flee for his life on the horse Melyngar, but Taran stands his ground. The Cauldron-Born are deathless and powerful; fortunately, their goal is capture. Both men are wounded as they and Melyngar are taken ... to Queen Achren in Spiral Castle. The sorceress asks Gwydion to join her in the overthrow of Arawn, once her consort, and to join her in ruling Prydain together. He and Taran are separately taken below when he refuses. In his dungeon cell, Taran is visited by Princess Eilonwy. She lives in Spiral Castle to learn enchantment from her self-proclaimed "aunt" Achren. She knows all the castle's secrets including how to come and go anywhere. Taran suspiciously tells her little but asks her to free his companion, then himself, and bring weapons. Eilonwy agrees, perhaps to spite Achren. She returns without weapons and leads Taran out of his cell, through the labyrinth of tunnels. Suddenly Taran falls thru a collapse to a lower level she does not know, but she joins him nevertheless. They find the evident barrow of a lord with many guards. (It is the death chamber of High King Rhitta, the last to wield the legendary sword Dyrnwyn.) They take weapons and continue through the catacombs and breaches to an exit in the words. As they emerge Spiral Castle is sheathed in blue light and they see it collapse. Perhaps owing to Taran's secrecy, the man who waits with Melyngar is not Gwydion but Fflewddur Fflam, a king by birth but a wandering, story-telling bard by choice. The three search the ruins, salvage some weapons and other equipment, and mourn Gwydion's death. Eilonwy is now homeless and will travel with them, naturally. (She has taken the king's sword from the tomb, legendary Dyrnwyn, and its departure has destroyed the castle.) Gurgi rejoins Taran with news of a great army nearby. Taran chooses to take up Gwydion's task, to warn Caer Dathyl, rather than to search for the pig. (Fflewdur gives more geography lesson.) Unfortunately, they spotted and pursued by Cauldron-Born, whom they flee day and night. They have no food and finally stop for Gurgi to scrounge. He falls from a tree and breaks his leg, asks Taran to kill him rather than let him be a burden or leave him alive. Taran refuses and a long friendship begins. Gurgi's leg becomes infected, and fatigue induces a fever in Eilonwy. They carry both on horse but slowly. Barely they outlast or outdistance the deathless warriors, who weaken with time and distance away from Annuvin. They turn from pursuit, but they have driven the companions far east of their northward course Gwydion's horse Melyngar intervenes and leads them to valley of Medwyn, which is hidden from humankind. Medwyn heals Gurgi while Taran discovers the bees and chickens of Caer Dallben, but not the pig. Nor does Medwyn know of Hen Wen's flight. Medwyn respects Taran's manner and welcomes the orphan to stay; Taran loves the valley and is tempted to leave worldly responsibilities but still feels obligation to warn Caer Dathyl. Medwyn gives them provisions and directions. Their way is mountainous. When they encounter a lake of black water, Taran think to take an easier route by wading through shallows rather than clambering around. Instead they find themselves drawn away from the shore and finally swept underwater, to the realm of the Fair Folk. Gurgi escapes but guards take the others to King Eiddileg, who treats them gruffly, but softens when Eilonwy expresses rare gratitude for all that the Fair Folk have done for humankind. Gurgi finds them with news that he has spotted Hen Wen. The Fair Folk rescued her, but Eiddileg grudgingly agrees to let Taran have her, to re-equip their party, and to provide a guide. The guide is Doli, a red-haired dwarf. He leads them on a good pace to Caer Dathyl, until they encounter an injured fledgling gwythaint, one of the great birds of prey that Arawn has enslaved. Doli would kill "the eyes of Arawn" and Fflewdur agrees, but Taran determines to save it and deliver it alive to Caer Dathyl; he takes time to build a cage and tend its wounds. The gwythaint recovers quickly and escapes overnight, much to Doli's fury. Later that same day, Hen Wen also escapes and flees, just before the scouts of the Horned King's army spot them all. The companions repel the scouts and continue to Caer Dathyl, but can now hope to reach it only barely ahead of the army. In fact, before they see the castle, vanguard troops approach them. Fflewddur orders Taran and Eilonwy ahead on Melyngar while he, Doli and Gurgi stand to fight. Melyngar carries Taran and Eilonwy straight through a party of foot soldiers, but the Horned King sees them and gives chase himself. He catches them at the top of a hill, and breaks the boy's sword on the first blow. Taran seizes Dyrnwyn from Eilonwy, but lacks the "noble birth" needed to draw it. Exposing only a part of the blade, white flame burns his arm but throws him to the ground and momentary safety. Just before losing consciousness, he sees another man in the trees and hears an unintelligible word. The Horned King's mask melts and he bursts into flame. Taran wakens in bed, in a room with Hen Wen and Eilonwy. She tells him of the Horned King's death and his army's defeat. The man on foot was Gwydion, who had been with Achren at another stronghold, for his torture, when Spiral Castle fell. Having survived the haunted(?) Oeth-Anoeth, he understands the hearts of all creatures, which enabled him to communicate with the gwythaint Taran had saved, and then with Hen Wen. The fledgling led him to the pig, who had run away because she sensed him. From the oracular pig he learned what could destroy the Horned King, his secret name, and was led to Taran by the fledgling again. Eilonwy has given Dyrnwyn to him, recognizing his nobility. The companions are given treasures from Caer Dathyl in recognition of service to the House of Don. Eilonwy gets a ring made by the Fair Folk, Gurgi a wallet of food that cannot be depleted, Fflewddur a golden harp string that can never break, Doli the ability to turn invisible (which he unusually lacks). In the course of his adventures, Taran realizes more and more that Dallben was right, and that Caer Dallben is where he most wants to be, living the quiet life of an Assistant Pig-Keeper. He asks only to return home, for he has learned its value, and Gwydion accompanies him personally, along with Eilonwy and Gurgi who are now homeless.
3211341	/m/08zl92	Auriol	William Harrison Ainsworth	1844	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Prologue (1599): Auriol Darcy is surprised attempting to remove the heads of two traitors from the Southwark Gateway of Old London Bridge. He is injured by the warder, Baldred, and carried to the house of Dr Lamb, an alchemist and Auriol Darcy's grandfather, who is assisted by his faithful dwarf Flapdragon. Lamb, on the point of discovering the elixir of life, has a seizure and dies as his ungrateful grandson consumes the draught. Book the first 'Ebba' (1830): Two varmints, Tinker and Sandman, waylay a gentleman in a fantastical ruined house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road in London, but they are surprised and he is carried unconscious to the house of Mr Thorneycroft, a scrap-iron dealer. While he convalesces and falls in love with Ebba, the iron-dealer's daughter, Tinker and Sandman and their associate Ginger (a 'dog-fancier' who steals dogs and resells them) discover in the gentleman's pocket-book the private diary of a man who has lived for over two hundred years, and has committed nameless crimes. Auriol (for it is he) seeks to dissuade Ebba from her love, for he bears an awful doom. A tall sinister stranger has Auriol in his power, and employs a dwarf (who is Flapdragon) to recover the pocket-book. The stranger confronts Auriol and informs his that Ebba must be surrendered to him according to their contract. Auriol refuses, but Ebba is snatched from him, and he is imprisoned, during a nocturnal assignation at a picturesque ruin near Millbank Street. Tinker, Sandman and Ginger offer their services to Mr Thorneycroft to attempt her rescue. Ebba is conveyed to a mysterious darkened chamber where the stranger demands that she sign a scroll surrendering herself body and soul to him. She calls to heaven for protection: in the darkness a tomb is revealed and opened by menacing cowled figures, and Auriol is brought forth. Ebba hurls herself into the tomb to precede him and save him, but then re-emerges silent and cowled to sign the scroll. Intermean (1800): Cyprian Rougemont visits a deserted mansion at Stepney Green, where he finds the portrait of his ancestor (of the same name), a Rosicrucian brother of the 16th century, one of the Illuminati. Satan has appeared to him in a dream and promised him an ancestral treasure, the price for which is his own soul, or that of Auriol Darcy. Cyprian strikes the portrait and a plaque falls away, revealing the access to the ancestral tomb. There in a seven-sided vault lit by the ever-burning lamp and painted with kabbalistic symbols he finds the uncorrupt body with a book of mysteries, a vial of infernal potion, and a series of chests filled with gold, silver and jewels. With use of the potion, he lures Auriol into a compact whereby he is given a magnificent mansion in St James's Square and £120,000, in exchange for a female victim whenever Rougemont requires one from him. Thus Auriol can win the woman he loves, Elizabeth Talbot; but Rougemont, once the contract is signed, demands Elizabeth Talbot as his first victim, in a week's time. Auriol seeks to defy him and to marry her within the week, but he is thwarted and Elizabeth is abducted on the seventh night. Book the Second, 'Cyprian Rougemont' (1830): Thorneycroft, Sandman and Tinker (with Ginger) continue their pursuit led by another, who is the brother of Rougemont's second victim, Clara Paston. They enter a mysterious mansion, and becoming trapped in a chamber and locked into enchanted or mechanically-contrived chairs three of them are muffled by bell-masks which descend from the ceiling, and then plunged through traps in the floor. Flapdragon appears and attempts to help them find Ebba, while Paston, Ginger and Thorneycroft find Rougemont and confront him with pistols, but Rougemont is impervious to the bullets. Thorneycroft, Tinker and Sandman are trapped in a pit over which an iron roof closes by a giant mechanical contrivance, and Ebba is never found again. Auriol, meanwhile, awakes to find himself in Elizabethan costume, chained in a vaulted dungeon. The voice of Rougemont addresses him, telling him that he has been mad, but that he has given him a potion to heal him, and is his keeper. James I is now the King of England. Old Dr Lamb is still living, and his dwarf Flapdragon, and Auriol is taken to him, where they begin to hope that Auriol's cure has been effected. He becomes convinced that he has lived centuries in a few nights and has awakened from a delusion... but even in the last sentence, addressing Dr Lamb, the author relates what he says to his supposed grandsire.
3213886	/m/08zrpv	JPod	Douglas Coupland	2006-05-09	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 JPod is an avant-garde novel of six young adults, whose last names all begin with the letter 'J' and who are assigned to the same cubicle pod by someone in human resources through a computer glitch, working at Neotronic Arts, a fictional Burnaby-based video game company. Ethan Jarlewski is the novel's main character and narrator, who spends more time involved with his work than with his dysfunctional family. His stay-at-home mother runs a successful marijuana grow-op which allows his father to abandon his career and work as a futile movie extra. Ethan's realtor brother Greg involves himself with Asian crime lord Kam Fong who serves as the plot's crux of character connection. The JPod staff are required to insert a turtle character based on Jeff Probst into the skateboard game that they are developing as 'BoardX'. The marketing manager, Steven Lefkowitz, mandates the turtle's addition to the game because he is trying to please his son during a custody battle. JPod is then drastically challenged and changed when Steve goes missing and the new executive replacement declares that the game will be changed yet again. Upper management decides to change Jeff the turtle for an adventurous prince who rides a magic carpet. The game is then renamed "SpriteQuest". The JPodders, upset that they would not be able to finish their game, decide to sabotage SpriteQuest by inserting a deranged Ronald McDonald. They do this by creating a secret level where Ronald works malevolence, thus creating, in their opinion, a culturally-suitable game for the target market. Ethan begins to date the newest addition to JPod, Kaitlin, and their relationship grows as she discovers that most of the members of the team, including herself, are mildly autistic. Kaitlin develops a hugging machine after researching how autistic people enjoy the sensation of pressure from non-living things on their skin. Douglas Coupland, as a character, is inserted into the novel when Ethan visits China to bring a heroin-addicted Steve back to Canada. This Google-version of Douglas Coupland consistently bumps into Ethan and manages to weave himself into the narrator's life. JPod finds itself in a digital world where technology is everything and the human mind is incapable of focusing on just one task.
3215597	/m/08zwwz	Lord Foul's Bane	Stephen R. Donaldson	1977	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Thomas Covenant is a young, best-selling author with a wife (Joan) and an infant son (Roger), whose world is turned upside-down when he is diagnosed with leprosy. After six months' treatment and counselling in a leprosarium, he returns home to find himself divorced, alone and an outcast in the community. On a rare trip into town, he is accosted by a beggar who makes a number of cryptic pronouncements. The beggar refuses Covenant's offers of charity, including his white gold wedding band, leaving Covenant with the admonition to "be true." Confused and disturbed by the encounter, Covenant stumbles into the path of an oncoming police car and is rendered unconscious. He wakes to find himself in the Land, a classic fantasy world. He first meets the evil Cavewight Drool Rockworm, wielding the magical power of the Staff of Law, who summoned him to the Land. Drool is guided (manipulated) by a malevolent, incorporeal being who calls himself "Lord Foul the Despiser." Foul reproaches Drool for his arrogance and transports Covenant to Foul's demesne. Addressing Covenant as "groveler", Foul taunts him with a prophecy that he (Foul) will destroy the Land within 49 years; however, if Drool isn't stopped, this doom will come to pass much sooner. He tells Covenant to deliver this message to the rulers of the Land, the Council of Lords at Revelstone, so that they can make preparations to combat Drool Rockworm and recover the Staff of Law. Once again, Covenant is somehow transported and wakes on Kevin's Watch, a tall finger of rock attached to a mountain overlooking the Land's southernmost region. He meets Lena, a young girl who uses a special mud called hurtloam to heal some minor cuts caused by his fall. To his astonishment, Covenant discovers (albeit somewhat later on) that the hurtloam has also cured his leprosy. This is only the first example Covenant will see of the Earthpower: a rich source of healing energy present throughout the Land. Covenant's loss of two fingers on his right hand (a consequence of the failure to promptly diagnose his leprosy) causes him to be identified by Lena as the reincarnation of Berek Halfhand, an ancient Lord who saved the Land from Lord Foul during a war which occurred in the Land's distant past. His special identity is seemingly confirmed when Lena's mother Atiaran identifies Covenant's white gold ring - in his world a plain wedding band, which he had been emotionally unable to discard notwithstanding the breaking of his marriage - as a token of great power in the Land. Believing that he is unconscious from his collision with the police car, and therefore experiencing a fantastical dream or delusion, Covenant refuses to accept the reality of the Land. Appalled and indignant at the expectations the people of the Land have for him as their new-found savior, he gives himself the title of "Unbeliever." He is also unprepared for the sudden restoration of his health, which cures the impotence brought on by his leprosy. This, and his mental turmoil over the reality he feels but does not believe, drives him into a frenzy, causing him to rape Lena, an act which will be pivotal to all that follows. When Lena's friends and family learn of what happened to her, they are barely able to comprehend the enormity of or reasons behind this crime, but the Oath of Peace to which they are sworn forbids them from taking vengeance. Atiaran, with great chagrin, guides Covenant to the Hills of Andelain, a region of the land where the Earthpower is especially strong. There she entrusts Covenant to the care of Saltheart Foamfollower, one of the Unhomed Giants, who are allies of the people of the Land. The Giants, a seafaring people who live on the eastern coast of the Land, have a strong understanding of the Earthpower, especially as it relates to the Sea and other waters. Foamfollower is able to sail his stone boat up one of the great rivers of the Land to Revelstone, the Lords' mountain fortress. Covenant delivers the message of Lord Foul to the Lords. He is invited into their council as an "ur-Lord" because of his connection to Berek, and his white gold ring, which the Lords recognize as having the power to unleash the "wild magic" which may be the key to defeating Lord Foul. Despite the obvious danger, the Lords decide to make an effort to wrest the powerful Staff of Law from Drool's evil grasp. Rather than waging an all-out war, the Council sends four Lords and a band of forty warriors to attempt to infiltrate Drool's base at Mount Thunder. Led by High Lord Prothall, and accompanied by the Lords' sleepless and ageless protectors the Bloodguard, and the Giant Foamfollower, the Lords' party sets out eastward. Covenant joins them in the hope that the recovery of the Staff of Law will somehow assist in his return to his "real" world. Along the way, Covenant attempts to come to terms with whether or not to believe in the reality of the Land. He also attempts to redeem himself for his outrage against Lena by commanding one of the Ranyhyn, the wild, free and intelligent horses of the eastern Plains of Ra, to do homage to her yearly. The Ramen, a tribe of humans who dedicate their lives to care and protection of the Ranyhyn, though repulsed to see their equine companions under Covenant's compulsion, agree to assist the quest on the last leg of its journey. In the end, at the cost of the deaths of many of their companions, the Lords succeed in penetrating Mount Thunder and seizing the Staff, temporarily securing peace for the Land. Covenant destroys Drool Rockworm and saves the surviving members of the party by using the wild magic of his ring to summon the Fire-Lions, creatures of living lava which issue from the peak of Mount Thunder, although he does not fully control or even understand his power. After the death of Drool, who had used the Staff of Law to summon Covenant to the Land, Covenant feels his physical body fading away, loses consciousness, and wakes up in his own world, a leper once more.
3215874	/m/08zxlz	The Hamlet	William Faulkner	1940	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 CHAPTER ONE Part 1 (which is the only part) (pp.&nbsp;3–26) Frenchman's Bend/The Old Frenchman Place introduced: lawlessness; socioeconomic background of settlers. Will Varner, Jody Varner introduced. Ab Snopes rents a place from Jody; is discovered via gossip to be an alleged barn-burner. First glimpse of Eula (p.&nbsp;11). Jody plans to force Ab out after getting work out of him. Ab is discovered to be mixed up in a second incident of barn-burning, over a dispute with de Spain over his wife's expensive French carpet. Jody agrees to take on Flem as a clerk in the Varner store to keep Ab happy. CHAPTER TWO Part 1 Ratliff is introduced, claims he knew Ab a long time ago. Part 2 Ratliff discusses Ab's past, before he was "soured." Ab trades horses with Pat Stamper. Ab's motive: to recover the eight Yoknapatawpha County dollars that Stamper had acquired from Beasly. Ab picks up his wife's milk separator; trades Pat Stamper several teams, and comes out much the worse. Part 3 Ratliff takes Ab a bottle of McCallum's whiskey. CHAPTER THREE Part 1 Flem settles in to clerking at Varner's store. Ratliff is established as a gossipmonger, a speculative capitalist, a traveler. Flem disrupts the normal business practices of the Varner store by insisting on payment up front and always calculating the bill correctly. Flem has a bow tie (64). Flem quickly establishes himself as upwardly mobile. Flem establishes a cow-trading sideline; I.O. and Eck Snopes appear on the Frenchman's Bend scene. The old blacksmith, Trumbull, is forced out. Jody wonders how much he'll have to pay in order to keep himself safe from the rumor of Ab's barn-burning. Part 2 Ratliff is recovering from an operation; catches up on local gossip. Flem is making usurious loans to Negroes; I.O. is to be the new schoolteacher. Mink Snopes appears for the first time; he trades a note bearing the name "Ike Snopes" for a sewing machine. Ratliff tells the story of the goat-scarcity caused by the Northerner's goat-ranching plans. Ike Snopes turns out to be an idiot; Flem redeems his note; Mrs. Littlejohn watches after Ike, as she can communicate with him somehow. Part 3 Flem "passes" Jody Varner at the store; apparently, he means to pass Will Varner, as well. CHAPTER ONE Part 1 (which is the only part) Eula's childhood described; she is the last of 16 children and is immediately established as a symbolic-mythological figure who has a privileged childhood. Refuses to walk or otherwise take action. Insofar as this is problematic for her parents, the solution is immediately seen in inserting her into the economy of marriage. She is supra-feminine, immediately noticeable when she is in public. Labove's recruitment as schoolmaster is described. Labove is the first person described as caught within Eula's orbit, even though she is only 11. Labove drawn back to teaching at the Frenchman's Bend school even after he receives his university degree. Labove tries to assault Eula (133); Eula is unafraid. Labove worries about retribution until he realizes that Eula does not even see the event as important enough to complain to her older brother. CHAPTER TWO Part 1 Eula, now 14, is the center of teenage masculine attention in Frenchman's Bend; and though she is assaulted by proxy (resulting in attention paid to other girls in her social circle) none of the boys manages to gain access to her. Flem becomes closely acquainted with the Varner family. The background of Hoake McCarron is given. McCarron courts Eula. McCarron/Eula fight off a group of local boys determined to keep McCarron from deflowering Eula. McCarron's arm is broken; set by Varner; Eula then arranges to be deflowered by him. Eula turns out to be pregnant; Jody is furious but Will is unsurprised. The suitors flee Yoknapatawpha County. Flem reappears and is married to Eula, so that her bastard can have a name; he receives (a) money; (b) the old Frenchman place; (c) Eula's hand. Part 2 The history of Eula's relationship to Flem before marriage is recapped. Ratliff's knowledge of Frenchman's Bend is analyzed. Eula and Flem depart for a honeymoon in Texas. Ratliff's fantastic allegory of the Flem's sale of his soul. CHAPTER ONE Part 1 Varner tells Ratliff the story about Mink's attempt to retrieve his yearling. They wander down to Varner's store, where the verdict against Mink is discussed and the peep show in Mrs. Littlejohn's barn begins again. Ratliff's fantastic fable about Flem and the illiterate field hand. Part 2 Ike Snopes rises early and pursues Houston's cow; there are misadventures and he is chased off. Seeing fire in the direction of the cow, he becomes concerned and returns; he gets the cow out and travels with her, then is caught again by Houston, who curses him. When Houston leaves again, Ike abducts the cow and leaves. They travel together for several days, and Ike steals feed for the cow. They get rained on. Part 3 Houston comes home and finds the cow missing. At first he believes that he forgot to fasten the gate, but soon discovers that the cow has been led away. He gets his horse and waters it at Mrs. Littlejohn's house, The unnamed vicious farmer from whom Ike takes feed is described; he searches for Ike, the feed-thief; he captures the cow and Ike follows him home. Houston sells the cow to Mrs. Littlejohn; she purchases it with Ike's money. The establishment of the peep-show, presided over by Lump Snopes. Ratliff determines to stop the peep show; gets the other Snopeses involved, as they are concerned for the Snopes name. Whitfield Snopes, preacher, explains his plan to break Ike away from his perversion. CHAPTER TWO Part 1 Houston's backstory: Early childhood, later schooling; meeting his future wife, who pushes him through school, and from whom he flees; his flight to the Texas railyard and abduction from a whorehouse of a prostitute with whom he lives for seven years. Houston is drawn back to Yoknapatawpha County; he marries his wife, and they move into the house he has built for her; his stallion kills her. Houston kills the stallion. Mink kills Houston. Part 2 Mink kills Houston; he strikes his wife and she leaves him, taking the children. Mink attempts to cover up the evidence; he kills Houston's hound and hides the body. Mink doesn't run because he doesn't have any money. Cousin Lump doesn't believe he didn't check Houston's body for money, claiming that Houston was carrying at least $50. Mink's wife gives him money; Lump Snopes keeps him company and won't be shaken off, hoping to collect some of the money that Houston was carrying. Mink is arrested trying to recover the money from Houston's body, which he had placed in a hollow oak. Mink injures his neck trying to escape from a moving carriage after his arrest, but is treated and placed in jail. Part 3 Mink is in jail; his wife and children stay with Ratliff. She makes money by keeping house at a boardinghouse and by prostituting herself. Mink refuses bond and counsel. I.O. Snopes is revealed as a bigamist. Mink hangs his hopes on being saved by Flem. CHAPTER ONE Part 1 Flem Snopes comes back into town, along with a Texan and his wild ponies. The ponies are continually demonstrated to be vicious. Flem's superiority as a trader is acknowledged by Ratliff, who is himself no mean trader. The ponies are auctioned off, with the townspeople nervous at first but gradually led into trading when the Texan offers Eck Snopes a pony for free just to make a bid. Henry Armstid bids his wife's last five dollars on one of the spotted ponies. Flem accepts the money for the pony that Henry had (arguably) bought from the Texan. Flem swaps a carriage for the last three Texan ponies. The men who purchased ponies attempt to get their purchases, but the wild ponies break free. One of Eck's ponies breaks into Mrs. Littlejohn's house; she breaks a washboard over its head and calls it a "son of a bitch." Henry is badly injured when the horses break free. Tull is injured when the horses surprise his mules on a bridge. Ratliff and Varner speculate about fertility while watching the horses spread out over the county. Lump inadvertently admits the horses belonged to Flem (although no consequences seem to follow from this admission). The men in front of the Varner store discuss the Armstids' lack of luck. Flem refuses to refund Mrs. Armstid the money for the horse, despite the fact that the Texan had assured her that he would. St. Elmo Snopes steals candy from the Varner store. Part 2 The Armstids and Tulls sue the Snopeses over the matter of the ponies. Flem declines to appear. Lump perjures himself, claiming that Flem gave Mrs. Armstid's money to the Texan, and that therefore he was not responsible for refunding it to Mrs. Armstid. Eck is held blameless in the injuring of Vernon Tull because, technically, he never owned the horse that injured him. Mink Snopes is brought to trial for killing Jack Houston, but fails to participate in the trial itself; he declines even to enter a plea because he is waiting for Flem to solve his legal problems. When Flem fails to appear, Mink is convicted and sentenced to life in prison; he promises to kill Flem. CHAPTER TWO Part 1 Ratliff, Armstid, and Bookwright go out to the old Frenchman place at night and find Flem digging in the garden. Armstid is emphatic that his previously broken leg is fine now, and quite touchy about the subject. Speculation about what is out in the garden at the old Frenchman place: local legend has it that Confederate treasure was buried there when the Union army came through. They agree to get Uncle Dick Bolivar, a local diviner, out to the property the next night, after Flem has gone to sleep. Uncle Dick manages to locate three cloth bags with money buried in the earth; the three men confederate to purchase the property. Ratliff rides out to find Flem and purchases the old Frenchman place from him; Flem refuses to negotiate and the three men own the property; they move out to find the treasure and discover that it is a "salted gold mine" when they finally examine the dollars that inspired them to purchase the property in the first place (none were manufactured before the Civil War). Part 2 Flem and Eula depart for Jefferson. The men outside Varner's store speculate on Flem's next move; his "horse-trading" has become proverbial.
3216507	/m/08zzbh	What a Piece of Work I Am	Eric Kraft		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 We are told at the beginning of the novel that Ariane is a figment of his imagination, yet we learn her life story in intimate detail and the lines between reality and imagination are blurred throughout the story. Named for Ariadne, the heroine of Greek myth who helps Theseus escape the Minotaur, Ariane begins as the promiscuous beauty of the fictional town of Babbington, Long Island. We follow as she tries to escape her demeaning job at a clam shack and bad-girl reputation, going through several phases of personal examination and reinvention. Ariane is an energetic storyteller, and she relates her story to Leroy and the reader through a series of funny and poignant episodes that explore the power of personal fantasy. In one sequence, Leroy's grandfather, with Ariane's help, comforts his dying wife by pretending their home is a ship making the journey to the tropical destination of Rarotonga. Later, we learn that much of Ariane's life has been a public exhibition in a very literal way. As Ariane weaves her story, Leroy acts as a foil and guide, often finishing her sentences and filling in details.
3218710	/m/08_451	Kydd	Julian Stockwin	2001-04	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story: The year is 1793. Europe is ablaze with war. The Prime Minister, Pitt, is under pressure to make an active move at sea, and despatches a squadron to appear off the French coast. To man the ships, ordinary people must be press-ganged. Thomas Paine Kydd, a young wig-maker from Guildford, is seized, taken across the country to Sheerness and the great fleet anchorage of the Nore to be part of the crew of the fictional 98-gun line-of-battle ship Duke William. The ship sails immediately and Kydd quickly has to learn the harsh realities of shipboard life fast; but despite all that he goes through in danger of tempest and battle he comes to admire the skills and courage of the seamen &mdash; taking up the challenge himself to become a true sailor.
3223450	/m/08_gnb	The Normal Heart	Larry Kramer			 During the early 1980s, Jewish-American writer and LGBT activist Ned Weeks struggles to pull together an organization focused on raising awareness about the fact that an unidentified disease is killing off an oddly specific group of people: gay men largely in New York City. Dr. Emma Brookner, a wheelchair-bound physician and survivor of polio, who is the most experienced with this strange new outbreak, bemoans the lack of medical knowledge on the illness, encouraging the abstinence of gay men for their own safety, since it is unknown yet even how the disease is spread. Ned, a patient and friend of Brookner, calls upon his lawyer brother, Ben, to help fund his crisis organization; however, Ben's attitude toward his brother is to give merely passive support, ultimately exposing his apparent homophobia. For the first time in his life, meanwhile, Ned falls in love, beginning a relationship with New York Times writer Felix Turner. The increasing death toll raises the unknown illness, now believed to be caused by a virus, to the status of an epidemic, though the press remains largely silent on the issue. A sense of urgency guides Ned who realizes that Ben is more interested in buying a two-million-dollar house than in backing Ned's activism. Ned explosively breaks off ties to his brother until Ben can fully accept Ned and his homosexuality. Ned next looks to Mayor Ed Koch's administration for aid in financing research about the epidemic that is quickly killing off hundreds of gay men, including some of Ned's personal friends. Ned's organization elects as its president Bruce Niles, who is described as the "good cop" of gay activism, in comparison to Ned; while Bruce is cautious, polite, deferential, and closeted, Ned is vociferous, confrontational, incendiary, and supportive only of direct action. Tensions between the two are clear, though they must work together toward the promotion of their organization. Felix, meanwhile, reveals to Ned his belief that he is infected with the mysterious virus. Although he continues to try to strengthen interactions with the mayor, Ned ruins his chances when his relentless and fiery personality appalls a representative sent by the mayor. Dr. Brookner gradually takes the role of activist herself, noting the epidemic's appearance in other countries around the world and even among heterosexual couples. Although she desperately asks for government funding for further research, she is denied; the rejection releases in her a passionate tirade against those who allow the persistence of an epidemic that is taking the lives of the homosexual individuals already marginalized by the government. In the meantime, Ned's conflict with Bruce comes to a head, and their organization's board of directors ultimately expels Ned from the group, believing his unstable vehemence to be a threat to the group's attempts at more calm-mannered diplomacy. As Felix’s condition worsens, he visits Ben Weeks in order to make his will and with a hope of reconciling Ben with his brother. Felix soon dies and Ned blames himself for Felix’s death, lamenting that he did not fight hard enough to have his voice heard. The mortality rate from HIV/AIDS is shown to continue increasing as the stage fades to black.
3223688	/m/08_h5j	Kailashey Kelenkari	Satyajit Ray		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Super Sleuth Feluda goes after a gang of smugglers - who steal and smuggle out the country's valuable treasure, the unique stone figures that adorn ancient temples of India. In the bait, he has to take up multiple disguises, encounter many shady characters, all in the land of Kailash Temple in Ellora. He does however get a little help from his able assistant & cousin Topshe and best friend Lalmohan Ganguly. He gets the culprits buy calling ooo ooo o ye baba which he heard while travelling around the temples.
3228071	/m/08_t0w	Innocent Blood	Graham Masterton		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young woman, Philippa Palfrey, finds out that her father and mother are actually her adoptive parents. Her adoptive father, Maurice, is a lecturer at a school. He is also a spokesperson for the Young Socialists party and a writer of textbooks on sociology. Philippa's adoptive mother, Hilda, is a magistrate with a local Juvenile court and an amateur cook. At the age of 8 years old, Philippa suppresses memories of her biological parents and in the intervening years, creates an idealised version of her parents. Upon learning of her biological parents, Philippa conducts a rudimentary investigation of her biological parents and discovers the truth of the crime: her biological parents were convicted ten years ago for the rape and murder of a young girl, Julie Scase, which caused her to be put up for foster care and eventual adoption by the Palfreys. She discovers her father died in prison a few years after the conviction and her birth mother is still alive, due to be released after 10 years in an English women's prison. She returns home after the discovery and confronts Hilda, who is shocked and dismayed to learn the adoption order was unsealed. It is after a strained dinner party with three guests where Philippa places her adoptive family in a position where the elder Palfreys have a contentious argument with Philippa. When her mother, Mary Ducton, is released from prison, Philippa looks her up, decides to live with her in a small flat in London and try to recreate the mother-daughter relationship. They rent a small flat in Central London and have a menial job at a fish and chips shop to supplement Philippa's meager savings. Mary Ducton provides Philippa with an account of the murder/rape and a bit of background information on the rapist, Martin. It is revealed later that the account was written recently, presumably for Phillipa's benefit. Norman Scase, the father of the murder victim, has sworn vengeance and prepares to track down Mary and kill her as Julie's mother and Scase's wife lie dying in a hospital. Through deception, his own methods of surveilling the Palfrey residence, a clever call to the Palfrey residence, and the use of a shady private investigator, Norman Scase discovers the murderess and Philippa. At the same time Norman Scase is conducting his own search, a school friend of Philippa's has other intentions: he intends to blackmail Philippa and Mary Ducton for his own reasons. He too manages to trick Hilda into revealing the location of the rented flat and tips off one of his paramours, a young reporter. The novel reaches its climactic ending when Scase breaks into the flat after Mary Ducton commits suicide and Scase stabs her. Philippa orders him out and she takes the blame for the murder, but it is Maurice who has the strings pulled so she is not connected to the stabbing. The last chapter ends with Philippa meeting Norman Scase in a church and the revelation she has published a book under her new name, Philippa Ducton.
3228413	/m/025sn9k	Daggerspell	Katharine Kerr	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Events are listed here not in chronological order, but in the order they were originally presented in the novel. ; Year 1045 The sorcerer Nevyn sees an omen indicating that a person whose Wyrd, or destiny, is intertwined with his own has been reborn, and sees the infant Jill in a vision. ; Year 1052 Jill, a seven-year-old girl who sometime has precognitive dreams, loses her mother Seryan to a fever. Because her father, Cullyn, is a mercenary soldier — known as a “silver dagger” for the weapon he carries — and visits irregularly, Jill is taken in by a local tavern owner. Cullyn arrives in Jill’s village a month later. Finding Seryan dead, he decides to take Jill with him on his wanderings, which he calls “the long road.” For seven years, Nevyn has been searching for Jill, with nothing more than luck and intuition to guide him. He finds a clue when he meets the ten-year-old lord Rhodry Maelwaedd, and sees that the boy’s destiny is linked with his and Jill’s. ; Year 643 Galrion, a prince of Deverry, has secretly begun studying dweomer. He begins to fall in love with dweomer power, and out of love with Brangwen of the Falcon clan, his betrothed. Galrion considers breaking his betrothal so that he will have more time to devote to his dweomer studies. Galrion’s father, King Adyroc, is infuriated when he discovers that his son has been studying dweomer, and puts Galrion under house arrest, though the prince escapes by a ruse. Adyroc soon finds his son and sends him into exile, taking from him all his rank, titles, and property. He even takes Galrion’s name from him, and gives him a new name, Nevyn, meaning “no one.” Adyroc also breaks Nevyn’s betrothal to Brangwen, who then falls into an incestuous relationship with her brother Gerraent, and the two promise to end their lives together when autumn comes. When Gerraent’s sworn friend, Blaen of the Boar clan, discovers the incestuous relationship, Gerraent kills him. Gerraent is in turn killed by Blaen's brother. Nevyn takes Brangwen away from the Falcon lands, but the distraught girl drowns herself. Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Nevyn rashly swears an oath that he will not rest until he sets things right. Thunder booms from a clear sky — the Great Ones have accepted Nevyn’s oath. ; Year 1058 When Jill turns thirteen, Cullyn, who has been teaching his daughter swordcraft, buys Jill a silver dagger like his own for a birthday present. Otho, the smith who made the dagger, notices that Jill can see spirits called Wildfolk, and tells her a riddle. “If you ever find no one (nev yn), ask him what craft to take.” Some time later, Otho tells Nevyn about Jill. Unable to find her, Nevyn returns to his home province of Eldidd, where he saves the life of Rhodry Maelwaedd, earning the gratitude of his mother Lovyan, the local tieryn (an intermediate rank of nobility). Nevyn receives a prophecy about the boy — Rhodry’s destiny is somehow bound to that of the entire province. ; Year 696 Nevyn comes to Deverry province to banish an unnatural drought. Here he finds the bard Gweran (Blaen reborn), his wife Lyssa (Brangwen reborn), and a rider called Tanyc (Gerraent reborn). When Tanyc angers Gweran by his behavior towards Lyssa, Gweran takes his revenge by subterfuge. He provokes Tanyc into attacking him — but as a bard, Gweran’s life is sacrosanct. Tanyc is hanged for his crime. While this is happening, Nevyn meets Lyssa’s elder son, Aderyn. He teaches the boy a little herbcraft, and eventually takes him as his dweomer apprentice. ;Year 1062 Lovyan discovers that Rhodry has fathered a bastard child on a common-born girl, and decides to put the child into fosterage with one of her noble servitors when it is born. In the meantime, Lovyan, is having trouble with some of her vassals. A number of minor lords are sitting on the edge of rebellion over matters of succession and taxes. Lovyan’s own overlord, Rhys, the Gwerbret of Aberwyn (who is also her eldest son), makes it very clear that he won’t intervene unless she disinherits Rhodry. Cullyn, meanwhile has taken a hire guarding a caravan heading toward the kingdom’s western border to trade with the mysterious Westfolk. On the way, Jill sees the errie Loddlaen, a councilor to Lord Corbyn of Bruddlyn. At the trading camp, Jill meets Aderyn, an old Deverrian man who lives with the Westfolk. She also learns that Loddlaen is both half-human/half-Westfolk and a fugitive murderer. At the conclusion of the trading, Aderyn and several of the Westfolk accompany the caravan back to the city of Cannobaen, to begin legal proceedings against Loddlaen in Lovyan’s malover, or court. On the way to Cannobaen, the caravan is attacked by bandits, and flees to an abandoned dun fort to make their stand. Aderyn transforms himself into an owl to spy on the bandits. He discovers that they aren’t bandits at all, but warriors from several different lords, including Corbyn. Cullyn sends Jill to beg the tieryn for aid. By a stroke of luck, Jill comes across Rhodry and his entire warband on the road, in the midst of a day-long training exercise. Meanwhile, the attacking army has reached the dun. The defense is thin: two swordsmen, two archers, and six stavemen. Albaral, a man of the Westfolk, is slain, but the attackers are defeated when Rhodry and his warband arrive.
3228756	/m/08_vl8	Maria's Wedding				 Maria's Wedding is a comedy-drama about a wedding at a large Italian family, the first traditional wedding since the family was split into bickering sides over a gay wedding. Maria's cousin Frankie, whose brother had married another man, has vowed to tell off the family members who were against that wedding, and the family wonders if he will destroy Maria's wedding in the process of carrying out that threat. Complicating matters is the fact that no-one likes Maria's groom, and that Frankie may be more interested in rekindling his romance with Maria's bridesmaid, Brenna.
3228767	/m/08_vlz	The Tomb				 Jessica Parrish is a down-on-her-luck archaeologist whose last hope of glory is to lead a team of explorers into a tomb that is buried in the most unlikely place &mdash; the basement of a New England mansion. The team discover that the house is booby-trapped like an ancient Egyptian tomb. It is also seemingly haunted by ghosts condemned by King Tut's curse.
3229504	/m/08_x3c	Ligeia	Edgar Allan Poe	1838-09	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The unnamed narrator describes the qualities of Ligeia, a beautiful, passionate and intellectual woman, raven-haired and dark-eyed, that he thinks he remembers meeting "in some large, old decaying city near the Rhine." He is unable to recall anything about the history of Ligeia, including her family's name, but remembers her beautiful appearance. Her beauty, however, is not conventional. He describes her as emaciated, with some "strangeness." He describes her face in detail, from her "faultless" forehead to the "divine orbs" of her eyes. They marry, and Ligeia impresses her husband with her immense knowledge of physical and mathematical science, and her proficiency in classical languages. She begins to show her husband her knowledge of metaphysical and "forbidden" wisdom. After an unspecified length of time Ligeia becomes ill, struggles internally with human mortality, and ultimately dies. The narrator, grief-stricken, buys and refurbishes an abbey in England. He soon enters into a loveless marriage with "the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine." In the second month of the marriage, Rowena begins to suffer from worsening fever and anxiety. One night, when she is about to faint, the narrator pours her a goblet of wine. Drugged with opium, he sees (or thinks he sees) drops of "a brilliant and ruby colored fluid" fall into the goblet. Her condition rapidly worsens, and a few days later she dies and her body is wrapped for burial. As the narrator keeps vigil overnight, he notices a brief return of color to Rowena's cheeks. She repeatedly shows signs of reviving, before relapsing into apparent death. As he attempts resuscitation, the revivals become progressively stronger, but the relapses more final. As dawn breaks, and the narrator is sitting emotionally exhausted from the night's struggle, the shrouded body revives once more, stands and walks into the middle of the room. When he touches the figure, its head bandages fall away to reveal masses of raven hair and dark eyes: Rowena has transformed into Ligeia.
3230926	/m/08_zyb	Five Point Someone - What not to do at IIT	Chetan Bhagat	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, in the period 1991 to 1995. It is about the adventures of three mechanical engineering students (and friends), Hari Kumar (the narrator), Ryan Oberoi, and Alok Gupta, who fail to cope with the grading system of the IITs. Ryan is a bit smart and outspoken, whereas Alok and Hari are mildly cry babies. The three hostelmates – Alok, Hari and Ryan get off to a bad start in IIT – they screw up the first class quiz. And while they try to make amends, things only get worse. It takes them a while to realize: If you try and screw with the IIT system, it comes back to double screw you. Before they know it, they are at the lowest echelons of IIT society. They have a five-point-something GPA out of ten, ranking near the bottom of their classes. The book is narrated in the first person by Hari, with some small passages by his friends Ryan and Alok, as well as a letter by Hari's girlfriend Neha Cherian. It deals with the lives of the three friends, whose elation on making it to one of the best engineering colleges in India is quickly deflated by the rigor and monotony of academic work. Most of the book deals with the numerous attempts by the trio to cope with and/or beat the system as well as Hari's fling with Neha who just happens to be the daughter of Prof. Cherian, the domineering head of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Their most important attempt was "C2D" (Cooperate to Dominate). While the tone of the novel is humorous, it takes some dark turns every now and then, especially when it comes to the families of the protagonists. Most of the action, however, takes place inside the campus as the boys, led by the ever creative Ryan, frequently lamenting how the internationally lauded IIT system has stifled their creativity by forcing them to value grades more than anything else. Uninspiring teaching and numerous assignments add to their woes, though the boys do find a sympathizer in Prof. Veera, the new fluid mechanics professor.
3231048	/m/08__4b	The Lady in the Morgue	Jonathan Latimer		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Throughout the novel the true identity of the young, attractive woman found hanging dripping wet from a rope in her hotel room remains a mystery. Neither her clothes nor the conspicuous lack of any shoes provides the police with any clue as to what has happened, and they assume the woman has committed suicide. At the same time a young woman from a prominent New York family goes missing, but when the stolen body is retrieved by Crane her relatives assert that these are not her human remains. Only in the final pages is it found out that a case of switched identities is at the bottom of the riddle. The Lady in the Morgue is remembered for its frank treatment of drug addiction among artists, for its frequent references to contemporary jazz and swing music, and for its bizarre setting (morgues, cemeteries).
3231788	/m/0900vc	The Tenth Man	Graham Greene	1985-01-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in a prison in Occupied France during World War II. It is decreed that one in every ten prisoners is to be executed; lots are drawn to decide who will die. One of the men chosen is a rich lawyer. He offers all his money to anyone who will take his place. One man agrees. Upon his release from prison the lawyer must face the consequences of his actions. The story comprises four parts. In Part I, set in prison, the occupying German guards issue a decimation order to the thirty inmates. One of the three chosen by drawing lots is a rich lawyer named Chavel. Chavel becomes hysterical and desperately offers his entire wealth to any man willing to die in his place. A young man, known as Janvier, accepts his offer and is executed. In Part II, the war is over and Chavel is alive and free, but virtually destitute. He returns to the house he sold for his life and finds it occupied by Janvier’s mother and sister, Thérèse. Assuming the false name Charlot, he becomes their servant. Part III sees the arrival of an impostor, named Carosse, who claims to be Chavel. Carosse attempts to denounce Charlot, win the favour of Thérèse and stake a claim on the property. Finally in Part IV, Charlot, having fallen in love with Thérèse, must save her from Carosse, as a means of redemption from his earlier cowardice.
3231954	/m/090151	A Matter of Honour	Jeffrey Archer	1986-07-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In 1966 disgraced British colonel bequeaths a mysterious letter to his only son. The "item in question" that Adam's father's letter leads him to acquire from a safe deposit box in Switzerland is a precious Russian Orthodox icon made long ago for the Russian czars which by misadventure came into the possession of Hermann Göring sometime in the 1930s. Göring wanted Scott's father (one of his jailers at Nuremberg) to have it in token of his kind treatment and because Göring realized Scott's father would be unfairly blamed for his pre-execution suicide. But the icon contains something that even Göring did not dream of: the only official Russian copy of a secret codicil to the Alaska Purchase treaty by which the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. "Seward's Folly" turns out to have not been a true purchase at all, but a 99-year lease akin to the British hold on Hong Kong, with a right of return to Russia (now the part of the Soviet Union) if they can only retrieve their copy before the lease deadline, only days away.
3232513	/m/0902kj	Flush	Carl Hiaasen	2002	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This takes place in the Florida Keys up to Miami. It is placed in modern day time. This story happens in the summer. This book is about a pre-teen boy (Noah) whose dad doesn't always think about what he does before he does it. His dad used to work with a man name Dusty "Money Man" Muleman who said that one day he was going to form a new business. Dusty owns a gambling facility that was parked in Indian Territory and made a deal with the Indians that he could gamble on their waters and pay them a part of the profit. Since his ship, the Coral Queen, never leaves the dock, passengers do not get seasick and continue to gamble and spend money. In order to save money, he dumps his waste from the holding tanks into the ocean at night when nobody is looking. Noah's dad is a person who stands up for the environment and sinks Dusty's boat and is then put in jail. Noah and his sister decide to try and find a way to stop him. They talk to their dad and he tells them that he also worked with a man called Lice Peeking. He says that he also worked on the boat and he could testify on the fact that Dusty really did dump his waste into the ocean. He wanted Lice to sign a paper saying that Lice saw Dusty "Money Man" Muleman dumping wastes into the lake. It then looks like Lice is kidnapped and is unable to testify. They meet his girlfriend, Shelly, who tells them that she will help them stop Dusty's casino scam. She tells them that she used to work as a bartender on Dusty's Boat. She tells them that one night she stayed late and saw Dusty dumping the waste from the ship. A few days later, he goes to a popular beach and sees a park ranger putting up signs that say the water is contaminated from human waste. Since there are many boats docked in the harbors, it's impossible to see which boat the waste is actually coming from. They then get the idea to color the waste with a very bright dye to help identify the culprit. Then they go into a food store and purchase 34 bottles of Fuchsia dye and tell Shelly their plan. They tell her that Noah will hide in an empty rum box and wait till it is picked up and placed on the ship he then will go into a restroom and Shelly will tack on an out of order sign. He will then take his sack full of dye and squeeze it out into the toilets. After that he will leave the ship and go home. Since kids are not allowed on the ship he will need to be very careful. The plan has some problems and they barely make it off. A guard catches him and threatens to shoot if he does not explain everything. Then a strange old guy that resembles a pirate attacks the guard. Noah swims and says the emergency code word he and Abbey came up with but she couldn't start the boat to get to him. Noah then sees the boat and gets on board. He and Abbey drift away into the deeper ocean. They fall asleep, and in the morning they see a tow boat. Their dad is driving, and the same fat guy is on board the tow boat. Once they get on board the other boat, they find out he is their grandpa who disappeared a long time ago that they thought was dead. They call the coast guard and Dusty gets fined. Noah's dad is mad that he didn't get arrested then they find out that Dusty's son Jasper was messing with fireworks and accidentally set the boat on fire.
3232569	/m/0902pb	Sword at Sunset	Rosemary Sutcliff	1963	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The action of the novel continues that of The Lantern Bearers. Artos (Sutcliff's version of Arthur) recalls his life as he lies near death, from when he served under his uncle, the British high king Ambrosius. He has gathered a core cavalry group that will become Artos' Companions, and win a major victory. During this activity, he meets a girl who drugs and seduces him. He is unaware that the girl is his sister, and that her seduction was a deliberate plan from her mother to gain revenge against their father: Ygerna, the girl, like Artos, is Uther's child. Artos' seduction and the conception of Medraut is Ygerna's means of bringing ruin to Artos. Artos marries Guenhumara in order to bolster his forces with much needed troops, and his best friend Bedwyr (combining both the roles of Bedivere and Lancelot) eventually betrays Artos by his involvement with Artos' wife. Sutcliff presents a more realistic story than some Arthur legends, removing Merlin and many of the fantastic elements, and grounding Artos and his followers as clinging to Roman ways after Rome has left Britain to fend for itself. The battles in particular are described realistically, and show her knowledge of Roman fighting techniques.
3233299	/m/0904gc	The Silver Branch	Rosemary Sutcliff	1957	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is set in 3rd-century Roman Britain, when Carausius, the military commander, has rebelled against Rome and named himself the emperor of Britain and northern Gaul. After a series of naval victories, he is temporarily recognized by Rome's ruler Maximian. Justin, a shy young army surgeon, is posted to Britain for the first time although his family has been connected with the isle for years. He meets his cousin Flavius there and both become fast friends. Upon overhearing a plot against Carausius by his finance minister Allectus, they try to warn the emperor but are instead reposted to the Northern Wall in disgrace. By luck, they meet Evicatos of the Spear who convinces them that the danger is real. They attempt to race back to warn Carausius but it is already too late by then. Faced with the prospect of capital punishment for desertion, the two cousins go into hiding with the help of a rebel leader. When he is betrayed, the two young men must take over the banner of rebellion and continue his work of protecting and smuggling away people who are disenchanted with Allectus or are in danger from his cruel edicts. Finally, Constantius and his aide Asclepiodotus sail to Britain to attempt to put an end to Allectus' misrule. Flavius and Justin assemble a ragtag group of people prepared to fight on their behalf but are much derided for their shabby appearance. When they are hiding at their Grand-Aunt Honoria's place, they discover the lost eagle standard that was buried by their ancestor, Aquila, and which entitles them to call themselves a Roman legion. Despite their looks, the new 'legion' helps the main Roman force find their way and defends the helpless inhabitants of Calleva from the fighting. In recognition of their help, the cousins are pardoned by Constantius and praised for their efforts. The motifs of the lost eagle standard and dolphin signet ring reoccur in this book.
3234286	/m/0906gp	The Rivers of Zadaa	D.J. MacHale	2005-06-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As in the other Pendragon books, this book covers Bobby's adventure and those of Mark and Courtney, his friends on Second Earth. Bobby's adventures are chronicled as an epistolary novel and those of his friends in the third-person narrative. The story starts after Bobby Pendragon has spoken with Loor, who explains to him, the lead Traveler and main character, the situation on Zadaa, introduces Bobby to her sister and her acolyte Saangi and her friends, Bokka and Teek. Soon afterwards, Saint Dane, who is disguised as a Batu warrior, beats Bobby up with a wooden staff. Bobby is almost killed but is rescued by Pelle a Zinj, the kind prince, and recovers quickly in a Batu hospital. After Bobby has recovered, he decides to start training to be a warrior. Alder, the Traveler from Denduron, joins Loor and Saangi to help train him. For a month, Bobby works hard in a deserted training camp. Finally, at the end of the month, they all celebrate his successful training but are interrupted by an attack by a group of Rokador, who shoots Bokka with an arrow and flee. As Bokka dies, he gives Bobby and Loor a map to the underground city Kidik, and tell them that Saint Dane is there. Loor and Bobby decide to attend the Batu Festival of Azhra first, because Pelle a Zinj has invited them personally. At the festival, Pelle a Zinj is killed by a Rokador. After this, it rains, but still there is no ready supply water for the Batu. This convinces the Batu that the Rokador are indeed holding back the water and they start making preparations for war. Meanwhile, Bobby and Loor begin their journey to the city of Kidik. There, they find an underground ocean of fresh water. They take a boat across this, arriving on an island where Saint Dane captures them and puts them in a prison-like room. Bobby and Loor later escape and learn that after an epidemic virus had killed most of the Rokador, Saint Dane was able to convince the survivors to attack the Batu. The plans was to hold back the water, making the Batu starve; when the Batu attacked, the Rokador would flood the entire village, drowning all. Saangi and Alder join Bobby and Loor. As the Rokador prepare to flood the underground, the protagonists foil their plans by flooding it prematurely, presumably to the ruin of both tribes. Rather than abandon one another, warriors of both tribes co-operate to escape the flood. The heroes escape from the floods by riding a 'dygo', the machine that the Rokador use for making tunnels. All the water shoots out from the underground and creates a river which flows by the city of Xhaxhu, providing water for both people. Bobby then returns to Loor's house, where he attempts to share a kiss with her. She refuses him, arguing that to become lovebirds would distract them from their purpose of preventing the destruction of Halla. Bobby accepts this without complaint. Bobby goes back to the flume to try to return to Second Earth (Earth in modern-times), whereupon Saint Dane comes out of the flume in a fury and kills Loor with a sword. He then tries to kill Bobby, but Bobby uses his training to disarm him. Bobby then raises the same sword that killed Loor as Saint Dane jumped on top of him, impaling him in a way that should have killed him. However, Saint Dane disappears and reappears at the entrance to the flume, proving the suggestion given in earlier books that he cannot be killed. Saint Dane then travels to a territory called Quillan. Bobby goes back to Loor. His own desire that she live rather than die appears to resurrect or revive her, in that her wound closes of its own accord while she resumes full faculty, memory, and mobility. Moments later, Bobby gets a message from Quillan from people named Veego and LaBerge; to investigate this, he embarks for Quillan. The story ends with him writing his record in what is revealed to be the residence of those who sent him the message. The story begins when Mark and Courtney have realized that they have accidentally destroyed the flume to Eelong trying to help Bobby. Courtney therefore becomes severely depressed and stops coming to school. Eventually she decides to go to summer school for six weeks in order to recover, so that Mark is left to read Bobby's journals alone. Throughout the summer, Mark collects Bobby's journals and reads them, and begins to have conversations with Andy Mitchell, the former school bully. Mark soon realizes that Mitchell is an adept in mathematics and became a bully for having been a misfit. Gradually Mark and Mitchell become friends. At her summer school, Courtney meets a boy named Whitney Wilcox, whom she befriends and of whom she begins to entertain romantic thoughts. Before long, he invites her out for pizza. En route, she is struck down by a black car which seems to have been following her. From the car emerges Whitney, who is here revealed to be Saint Dane. Looking upon Courtney, he remarks cryptically "I give, and I take away" and departs in the form of a raven. As Courtney loses consciousness as a result of her injuries, she sends a cellphone message to Mark, who upon inferring that she is in danger convinces Andy Mitchell to drive him to Courtney's summer school. There they find Courtney, badly injured and unconscious. They call the local ambulance and hurry Courtney to the hospital. Courtney slowly begins to recover. In the last scene of the book, Courtney's heart rate suddenly begins to slow, whereupon Andy Mitchell, unseen, brings it to normal by a means, implied, to be the same kind of "thing" used by Bobby to revive Loor. This suggests that Andy Mitchell is another alter-ego assumed by Saint Dane.
3234309	/m/0906j1	Moonchild	Aleister Crowley	1929	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A year or so before the beginning of World War I, a young woman named Lisa la Giuffria is seduced by a white magician, Cyril Grey, and persuaded into helping him in a magical battle with a black magician and his black lodge. Grey is attempting to raise the level of his force by impregnating the girl with the soul of an ethereal being — the moonchild. To achieve this, she will have to be kept in a secluded environment, and many preparatory magical rituals will be carried out. The black magician Douglas is bent on destroying Grey’s plan. However, Grey's ultimate motives may not be what they appear. The moonchild rituals are carried out in southern Italy, but the occult organizations are based in Paris and England. At the end of the book, the war breaks out, and the white magicians support the Allies, while the black magicians support the Central Powers.
3234640	/m/090772	The Wright 3	Blue Balliett	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Calder's friend Tommy Segovia, who moved away a year before, has moved back to Hyde Park, Chicago. He is immediately jealous of Calder and Petra as they received the "glory" of saving a Vermeer painting in the previous book (Chasing Vermeer). Tommy feels that he deserves something as well. In his first new day of class, Ms. Hussey announces that the world-famous Robie House is soon to be demolished, which she considers to be murder. The class takes a field trip to the house, and both Calder and Petra discover that there are many secrets concerning the building that they were not aware of. After Tommy learns to tolerate Petra, the three (who call themselves 'The Wright 3') work to save the house, even breaking into it toward the end. Tommy finds a fish talisman in the Robie House garden and realizes it is worth a lot of money. Finally, after saving their own lives against a band of robbers in the Robie house, they manage to save that of the house. In almost every illustration, there is a drawing of a fish (referring to Frank Lloyd Wright's lucky talisman) that is usually hidden by nature. They appear in each chapter with the fibonacci sequence. On one of the last illustrations, a dragon can be found, expressing the change from carp to dragon in the story. Toward the bottom of the last picture there are footprints from the invisible man. In several images, a face can be spotted.
3237183	/m/090dlp	The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time	Michael Craig	2005	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book tells about the highest stakes poker match of all time, over the course of a few years, between Andrew Beal and a group of professional poker players called "The Corporation." It begins as Ted Forrest, a professional poker player, is driving outside of Las Vegas when he calls the Bellagio poker room. The personnel in the poker room tell him the highest game is $10,000-$20,000 (which, at the time, was more than two times larger than any cash game ever played). He decides to go straight to the poker room, sit down with his last five hundred thousand dollars, and play against the other two men sitting at the table (Chip Reese and Andy Beal). Forrest had lost $400,000 without playing a single hand, and questions why he is there. The book then flashes back to February 2001, when Beal first visited the Bellagio poker room. He enjoys the atmosphere and the players, and meets many professional poker players, like Todd Brunson. He ends up winning over $100,000 dollars, and thinking it was luck, trains intensely to face the top players. Andy returns to Las Vegas, and wants to play heads-up with a professional for the highest stakes. Because they are in a casino, nothing can prevent other players from sitting down at the game, so the top professional poker players decide to pool their money with everybody who they thought would sit down at the game. Then Beal starts his match with Chip Reese. Beal and Reese play their match, and then Ted Forrest sits down. (Forrest was unreachable, so he was not originally part of the group.) Down to his last $100,000, Ted makes a stand and ends up winning $1.5 million. He is then asked to join the group, and for the rest of the book, nobody else sits down besides Beal and his selected opponent, who alternates throughout the story. The book then chronicles the three years of matches between the professionals and Beal, with the professionals winning most of their matches, but Beal occasionally coming out on top. It also delves into personal stories of the pros and Beal. In March 2004, Beal loses 16 million dollars in two days, and vows to give up poker, which ends the book.
3237968	/m/090gbc	Prince of Foxes	Samuel Shellabarger	1947	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel begins with Andrea on the verge of embarking from Venice on his first non-military mission for Borgia, to induce Alfonso d'Este, the heir of Ferrara, the "brightest court in Italy," to marry Lucrezia Borgia, lately widowed, despite the numerous objections against the match on the grounds of state and taste. Orsini meets with an instrument maker and humanist to sell a certain painting he claims was taken during the fall of one of the cities of the Romagne. There he meets Camilla Varano, the wife of the lord of the fictional Citta del Monte, both of which have been promised to him by Borgia. There is a definite attraction between the two. The d'Estes, forced by Borgia to accept Andrea's service, do not wish to kill him in their demesne, and delegate the matter to their ambassador to Venice. He uses Mario Belli (Marius de Bella, lately of Savoy), erstwhile nobleman, traitor, and assassin of some repute. Mario fails, but, a true "modern," turns his coat and offers information. Finding him intriguing and useful, Orsini spares him and offers him a place in his retinue. By force of his personality, Orsini overawes the d'Este ambassador and makes his way to Ferrara. On the journey, Belli secretly discovers Andrea's true heritage. In Ferrara, despite the interference of Duke Ercole d'Este and his impetuous son Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, and the resistance of the cannon-happy Alfonso d'Este, he accomplishes his mission, securing the Alfonso's promises. Meanwhile, Orsini makes an enemy of the cardinal, befriends Belli's enemy Pierre de Bayard, paints a monastery, and falls deeper in love with Camilla, a guest of the d'Estes. Without knowledge of Andrea's success, the duke and cardinal send him to bring to Ferrara a living saint, Lucia Brocadelli of Narni, a woman whose stigmata are the talk of the region. Despite the Duke's earnest inducements and her willingness to go, the people of Viterbo will not release her. After a pleasant sojourn at the Citta del Monte, Orsini meets the saint, whose obvious piety deeply affects both himself and Belli. In making his attempt to free her, Andrea is captured, but Belli succeeds, and Andrea talks his way out of the fracas. In Rome, the pope grants his niece, Angela, lady in waiting to Lucrezia, a betrothal to her former lover, Orsini, and reveals his plot against the Varanos, who will come to Rome for the Jubilee. Cesare, thinking his father's actions precipitous, arrives in Rome to stop the arrest and the betrothal. Orsini attempts to detach himself from the favor of his former lover, and has himself knifed for his trouble. Belli, distrusting the sovereigns and potions of the medicos and dottores, tends to the wound himself. With his contacts in the underworld, Belli interrupts Angela's attempt to assassinate her rival for Andrea's affection, and, in an unnerving interview with Cesare, he secures Camilla's safety. Borgia can only gain Citta del Monte through treachery, as low taxes and the love Varano's people bear him leave no obvious angles to stir up unrest as he has done elsewhere, and Borgia cannot afford protracted warfare in the Marches. With Ferrara in alliance, he recalls his spy in Varano's court so that Orsini may take his place as captain of the guard, to suborn its people and assassinate its prince. At Citta del Monte, Orsini falls further from Cesare's orbit, taking Varano as his new role model. Varano is a man of noble character and vast military experience, having in his youth made his fortune as a captain in the mercenary army of the prince of Urbino, serving the Papal interest. This wealth has allowed him to adorn his court without oppressing his domain. With a new understanding of leadership and foregoing his dreams of an Italy united under a single personality, Orsini sets about to strengthen Citta del Monte against Cesare. When the ultimatum finally arrives, Varano asks his people whether he should stay and bring his city the miseries of protracted siege, or take himself into exile. They overwhelmingly reject Borgia and acclaim him. The Varanos also reject Borgia's claim that Orsini is the impostor Zoppo, embarrassing him. Belli, according to their contract, informs Orsini that he will leave his service for Borgia's. Despite a spirited defense of several months, Citta del Monte is left battered and bereft of its lord Varano, who dies of wounds incurred in the first attack. The walls breached beyond repair, the city prepares itself for its last defense, when Borgia, impatient, offers terms through his lieutenants. The terms are generous for a people so stubbornly set against him, but for one point: Zoppo must surrender himself. Despite Camilla's rejection of the terms, Orsini gives himself up in order to save her and the city. Borgia keeps his terms, stripping the valuables from the court, but leaving the city under Camilla and one of his Catalan adventurers. However, to embarrass the young widow, he parades Orsini before her after having starved him for weeks, proves his Zoppo identity by means of his peasant mother, and plans his execution. Belli, now a favored lieutenant of Borgia, is outraged: after all the losses Orsini has inflicted on Borgia, is mere execution to suffice? He offers to gouge out his former master's eyes before Camilla, Borgia, and the assembled captains, and, given leave, does so. Borgia, feigning pity, sends the blind peasant and his mother to wander the countryside, but sends Belli after them to "hurry them along." Belli catches up to them, whereupon Orsini reveals the trick to his mother: Belli simulated the gouging using grape innards and blood from his hands. They plot to recover Citta del Monte. Belli returns to Camilla for funding, warning her that Borgia has granted the new city prefect the chance to win her through whatever means he deems necessary, including the torture of her townsfolk. She is to pretend madness to discourage these plans. Despite their careful plans, Orsini is recognized by Angela Borgia and the Cardinal d'Este while recruiting Swiss mercenaries and Pierre de Bayard. They reveal the plot to Borgia's captain, and spying on Orsini's interview with Camilla in the madhouse, discover how to stop the plot. Having suspected them, Orsini reveals that they have actually set the attack in motion. Peter and the Swiss gain the walls as the city rises in revolt. Camilla gives the Catalan prefect to the people to avenge themselves upon, and Angela and d'Este are sent away. Months later, the pope is dead and Cesare, ill and left without patronage, has been captured and exiled by his enemies. Orsini is acclaimed by all as the model man of the Renaissance, married to Camilla, whose (anonymous) paintings excite the envy of Mantegna himself.
3237972	/m/090gbq	Call It Courage	Armstrong Sperry	1940	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The whole book being 95 pages, it is about a boy who tries to overcome his fear of the sea. The summary is below. Call It Courage is a story set in the Pacific Islands. It chronicles the journey of Mafatu, the son of the chief of Hikueru Island, Tavana Nui. Mafatu is afraid of the sea due to witnessing his mother die as a young child, which makes him a shame to his father, and referred to as a coward among his tribe. One night Mafatu takes a dugout canoe and sets sail into the ocean without knowing where he will end up. He is caught in a storm and the canoe is lost. He lands on a deserted island and learns to hunt and fish for himself, along with his companions Uri, a yellow dog, and Kivi, an albatross. Soon Mafatu finds a sacrificial altar built by cannibals from a neighboring island. Mafatu realizes his days on the island are numbered and he begins designing his escape by making a canoe. He gathers things he will need to survive a trip across the ocean. He finds a spear point on the terrible altar and uses it to hunt. After a number of encounters with natural foes, including a shark, a wild boar and an octopus, all of which he successfully kills, he realizes he is gaining courage and learning to deal with the things that have frightened him. The cannibals return and he makes a daring escape from them, returning home at last to his village. He has become transformed by the experience into an imposing figure. His father does not recognize him at first, then proudly accepts him on his return.This is the main summary.
3241257	/m/090n_k	His Family	Ernest Poole	1917-05-16	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins in the spring of 1913 with Roger Gale, a New York businessman and a widower, reflecting on the changes that have come to New York since his arrival in the city as a young man from a New Hampshire farm somewhere near the time of the Civil War. He is driven by his wife's dying request to remain close to their three daughters, yet he feels very distant from them—this despite the fact that the younger two (Deborah, a school principal, and Laura) live in the family home with him, and Edith, who is married with four children, visits him regularly. The early conflicts within the family largely surround Laura's sudden announcement of her engagement to Hal Sloane, a young businessman who is generally unknown to the family, and Edith's pregnancy, as her fifth child arrives weeks before his due date, endangering her life. After the baby's birth and Laura's wedding (and subsequent honeymoon to Europe), Roger's concerns turn to the one daughter remaining at home. Deborah works constantly at her school, and spends her free hours agitating for reforms and financial support to help the families living in the tenements. Roger is disturbed by this, especially given his prejudices against the immigrant families Deborah works with, but a visit to Deborah's school changes his perspective. He takes a crippled Irish boy named John into his care, providing him with lodging and a job in Roger's news clipping office downtown. When summer arrives, the family goes to spend most of it on the old family farm in New Hampshire. At the farm, Edith's oldest son, George, is happiest, pursuing his interest in becoming a farmer someday; Edith's husband, Bruce Cunningham, spends most of his time racing around the backroads on his brand-new automobile. That following winter, Roger becomes concerned about his daughter, Deborah, whose suitor Allan Baird, a doctor and friend of the family, seems to be giving up hope of marriage. Roger conspires with his daughter Edith and her husband Bruce to pressure Deborah, and she eventually accepts Allan's proposal (with the caveat that they wait until the end of the school year, so that a long honeymoon in Europe can be enjoyed). Before the date of the wedding is reached, Bruce is struck by a taxi while standing next to his car in the street. After his death, Edith and her children are forced to return to the family home, until Roger arranges for their return to New Hampshire and the family farm. Deborah's wedding to Allan is delayed as a consequence—she asks him to wait until August. The end of July, however, brings the onset of World War I, and Roger's business loses many of its clients. As a result, he can barely afford to support the family, taking out a mortgage on the home to make ends meet, and Deborah chooses to delay her wedding again until the spring. Given the family's financial straits, Edith's children have to be removed from their expensive private school and tutored from home by Edith herself. After weeks of this, Edith resolves to sell most of her possessions, and use the money for the children's school tuition. Edith also discovers that John, the Irish boy living in the home, has tuberculosis and orders Roger to send him away, which Deborah arranges for her father. Laura, who has been largely absent from family affairs, returns suddenly to the house, arriving with luggage and refusing to see anyone but her sister, Deborah. Her husband, Hal Sloane, has made a large amount of money through war profiteering, but she has fallen in love with his business partner, an Italian, and Hal intends to divorce her, publicly or privately, as a detective has brought him "proofs" that Laura has been unfaithful to him. Roger, who initially resists the divorce, relents when he learns of his daughter's indiscretions, and she elopes with her lover soon thereafter. As their money troubles worsen, Roger is forced to sell his antique ring collection to cover the family's bills, and tensions increase between Deborah and Edith over money: Deborah raises large amounts of money for "her family" of tenement schoolchildren, and Edith feels it's wrong of her not to devote her energies to the care of her niece and nephews. Edith is also very hostile to Deborah's "modern" ideas about women's suffrage, and the resulting arguments are very stressful on Roger. When Roger learns that Deborah has ended her engagement to Allan Baird, he intervenes, informing her that he is fatally ill, and pleading with her to make a life for herself beyond her school. He intends to sell the family home, use most of the funds to set up the family farm in New Hampshire so that George (now 17) can become a farmer and support his mother and siblings, and prepare for death. After she agrees to marry Allan, Roger finds good fortune at last: John, the Irish boy who works for him, discovers a new source of clients and saves the business (and with it, the family home). Roger lives out the end of his days watching Deborah and Allan settle down happily together and have their first child. John, who a doctor had said would never live past 30, falls ill and passes away suddenly, and soon thereafter, Roger falls ill for the final time himself. All of his daughters return to him to make their peace (even Laura, whose new husband allows her to find and reacquire Roger's prized collection of rings), and Roger dies feeling finally connected to his family, as his wife had hoped.
3244679	/m/090xbl	Voss	Patrick White	1957	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centres on two characters: Voss, a German, and Laura Trevelyan, a young woman, orphaned and new to the colony of New South Wales. It opens as they meet for the first time in the house of Laura's uncle and the patron of Voss's expedition, Mr Bonner. Johann Ulrich Voss sets out to cross the Australian continent in 1845. After collecting a party of settlers and two Aborigines, his party heads inland from the coast only to meet endless adversity. The explorers cross drought-plagued desert then waterlogged lands until they retreat to a cave where they lie for weeks waiting for the rain to stop. Voss and Laura retain a connection despite Voss's absence and the story intersperses developments in each of their lives. Laura adopts an orphaned child and attends a ball during Voss's absence. The travelling party splits in two and nearly all members eventually perish. The story ends some twenty years later at a garden party hosted by Laura's cousin Belle Radclyffe (née Bonner) on the day of the unveiling of a statue of Voss. The party is also attended by Laura Trevelyan and the one remaining member of Voss's expeditionary party, Mr Judd. The strength of the novel comes not from the physical description of the events in the story but from the explorers' passion, insight and doom. The novel draws heavily on the complex character of Voss.
3245853	/m/090_7r	Variable Star	Spider Robinson	2006-09-19	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eighteen-year-old aspiring musician and composer Joel Johnston, a Ganymedean on Earth for his education, falls in love with fellow college student Jinny Hamilton. Both are orphans, and virtually penniless. When Jinny decides their relationship is ready for marriage, she reveals that she is actually Jinnia Conrad, a granddaughter of humanity's richest man, Richard Conrad. Joel learns that Conrad has already mapped out his future; he is to be groomed for a role in the family business and to produce children to continue the dynasty. Preferring to pursue his own destiny, he flees the Conrad estate with the help of Jinny's cousin, seven-year-old Evelyn. To escape the Conrads and their vast reach, Joel joins the crew of the RSS Charles Sheffield. The ship is headed to a distant star on a 20-year voyage to establish a colony, one of several scattered dozens of light-years from Earth. With experience from his family farm, Joel works as a farmer for the ship's crew of 500 and as a part-time musician. He regularly corresponds with Evelyn through the twins on board who maintain contact with Earth via telepathy with their siblings. Six "relativists" are essential to the voyage, controlling the ship's quantum ramjet drive with their minds. The drive has to run continuously; at relativistic speeds, it is nearly impossible to restart it, and then only for a short period after it has stopped. Each relativist can only stand the strain reliably for six hours a day. Five years into the voyage, one is killed and another mentally incapacitated, leaving only four and no margin for error. The next year, the Sheffield learns through its telepaths that the Sun has gone nova, killing everyone in the solar system. A wavefront of deadly gamma radiation is expanding at lightspeed, threatening the colonies that are all that is left of humanity. The crew is only able to warn one in time; the rest are doomed. The Sun going nova is contrary to all astrophysical theories, and because over 90% of the sun's mass was converted into energy, it is speculated that an alien species caused the disaster. Unable to bear the catastrophe, one of the relativists commits suicide. Despite the other three's efforts, the quantum ramjet drive soon shuts down. The Sheffield will not be able to stop; it will coast by its intended destination at 97.6% of the speed of light. A vessel overtakes the ship, however; Jinny married a genius scientist who has developed a revolutionary faster-than-light drive. Only one experimental ship exists, capable of carrying ten people; aboard are several Conrads, including the domineering Richard, Jinny, her husband, and Evelyn, who has aged faster than Joel because of time dilation. She is now 19, and explains that she persuaded her grandfather into coming to get him. Conrad proposes an evacuation plan, shuttling people to their destination planet nine at a time. Joel realizes that Conrad is lying; he only contacted the Sheffield to obtain needed supplies and has no intention of returning. The businessman needs to establish control of the colonies and cannot spare the time. Conrad is defeated and the faster-than-light engine is transferred to the Sheffield. Joel and Evelyn marry, then join the mission to warn the other colonies of the coming radiation wave. Joel decides to stay in space with his wife and child, rather than becoming planet-bound.
3246263	/m/09104m	Lord of the Shadows	Darren Shan		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Along with the Cirque Du Freak, Darren Shan returns to his home town, the place where it all began. He was still having nightmares about the Lord of the shadows. While the Cirque Du Freak rests at an old abandoned football stadium, Darren walks through his old home. After spotting his sister, Annie Leopard, living a happy life with her son at their old house, Darren decides not to disturb them. One night before the freak show starts a boy shows up hoping to get a ticket to attend the freak show. The boy, Darius, asks many questions and acts strangely, leaving Harkat and Darren curious. The freak show starts, Darren and Harkat wait for Darius but he doesn't attend, instead, he sees his old friend Tommy Jones. Jekkus Flangs, a performer of Cirque Du Freak, introduces him to Tommy Jones who is now a famous footballer. Tommy is shocked that Darren was alive after he was proclaimed dead eighteen years ago when he became a vampire assistant, Darren tells him that he had a rare disease that prevented him from aging normally and they had to fake his death to leave home and travel with a physician so he could be helped. Tommy gives Darren a ticket to the semi final. After the soccer match ends, Darren witnesses RV and Morgan James kill Tommy. Thus, he goes on a hunt for them. He finds them in an old dark-end ally and edges out to the road where Gannen Harst and Steve Leonard had been waiting for him too. Darren also finds out that Darius is Steve's son and that Steve has blooded him. Trained by Steve, Darius shoots Darren using his father's arrow-gun where it strikes him high in his right shoulder. By luck, Darren manages to flee to safety even though he is badly hurt. Later, he is found by two hobos that take him to their leaders who turn out to be Debbie and Alice, recruiting for the vampire version of the Vampets called Vampirites. Reuniting with Vancha March, Debbie, Evra, and Alice, the group go ahead on their final hunt for the Vampaneze Lord, Steve Leonard. Darren finds Steve at the abandoned cinema theatre. They plan to make a trade between Shancus,Evra's son, who Steve had captured earlier and Darius. However, before the trading proceeds, Steve breaks Shancus' neck, killing him, and challenging Darren to do the same with Darius. Darren thinks it over and accepts the challenge, but it doesn't end there. Darren was going to stab Darius in the heart but Steve told him that he didn't know who he was killing. Sensing something dark and secret in Steve's tone, Darren hesitates. When Steve asks Darius to tell Darren his mother's name, Darius gawps at his father. Infuriated, Steve asks him to say his mother's name again. He tells him: Annie Leopard, Darren's younger sister, is the mother of Darius. But the Sons of Destiny has more to give... cs:Pán Stínů fa:ارباب سایه‌ها
3246609	/m/0910t1	Dirt Music	Tim Winton	2001	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Georgie, the heroine of the book, becomes fascinated in watching a stranger attempting to smuggle fish in an area where nobody can maintain secrets for very long; disillusioned with her relationship with the local fisherman legend Jim Buckridge, she contrives a meeting with the stranger and soon passion runs out of control between two bruised and emotionally fragile people. The secret quickly becomes impossible to hide and Jim wants revenge, whilst the smuggler decamps to the farthest outback to escape a confrontation. His subsequent struggles to survive in the hostile environment and, knowing that he must try to literally cover his tracks, give this book its gripping denouement.
3247092	/m/0911t1	The Island on Bird Street	Uri Orlev	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Alex (the main character) is an 11-year-old Jewish boy living in a Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II with his father and their friend, Boruch. German soldiers come into the Ghetto and send people onto trains to be taken away (most likely to concentration camps). Alex and his father get separated, and soon Alex has to learn how to survive in the empty ghetto by himself. As it turns out the ghetto is not entirely empty, and that is where he comes across various people, from neighbors to robbers, some of whom even try to help him. He finds himself in an abandoned, bombed out building on Bird Street (Ptasia street) where he seeks refuge. The only thing he has to pass the time away with is his pet mouse Snow, the novel Robinson Crusoe and other books, and a small window overlooking the town. He has to hunt for food on his own and still stay hidden from soldiers. It is a great test for Alex to see if he can make it through tough conditions, and also wait for the arrival of his father.
3247367	/m/09127g	The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil	George Saunders	2005-09-06	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05qt0": "Politics", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story focuses on the border disputes between the countries of Inner and Outer Horner, the former of which is "so small that only one Inner Hornerite at a time could fit inside, and the other six Inner Hornerites had to wait their turns to live in their own country while standing very timidly in the surrounding country of outer Horner." Phil, an embittered Outer Hornerite, decides that the puny Inner Hornerites do nothing but stand around very close together solving math proofs all day, and have to stretch one at a time every morning; Seen as an evil threat to the leisure of the five Outer Hornerites, they are understood as abusing the vast good will that they have received courtesy of the Outer Hornerites. As they stand in the short-term residency zone in Outer Horner, they wait their turn to reenter their country. So Phil, gaining the support of the other Outer Hornerites and hiring two giants as his personal policy enforcers, begins to tax the Inner Hornerites for staying in his country. He settles in the end to accept the disassembling of the Inner Hornerites as sufficient payment. The story chronicles Phil's tyrannical rise to power and his attempted Inner Hornerite genocide.
3247527	/m/0912k5	Cryptid Hunters	Roland Smith	2004-12-27	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Marty and Grace O'Hara were very different twins. After their journalist parents were lost in a helicopter crash, they went to their uncle's island. Dr. Laurel Lee arrived with a Mokélé-mbembé egg, a dinosaur thought to have gone extinct but is believed by some to still exist in the Congo. Laurel explained how she'd given the egg to Dr. Noah Blackwood, an evil man who collects rare and unique animals, but is portrayed as a sweet and caring person. Laural stole the egg back, but Blackwood was on the trail of Mokélé-mbembé. Wolfe and his team depart to the Congo, to protect his friend Masalito and Mokélé-mbembé. The twins where to be left at their boarding school until afterwards. But on the plane, Grace and Marty had to catch a run-away chimp in the supply shoot. They fell out when the luggage drop over Congo takes place. While they were stranded in the wilderness, Wolfe contacted them and told them to travel to a safe place, the Skyhouse, by Lake Télé and to wait for them, and explained that he needed to avoid Butch McCall, Blackwood's number one guy. The children forgot what Wolfe had said about Butch. Butch saw the children and spied on them, sending information back to Blackwood. Blackwood told him to find the girl. The children found the Skyhouse and Marty left shortly, leaving Grace behind. She climbed upstairs and knocked herself unconscious while Butch and his men kidnapped her and took her to their camp. Marty signaled Masalito and Marty realizes Butch must have kidnapped Grace. The twins realized that Grace was actually the daughter of Rose, Blackwood's daughter, and Wolfe, and that Wolfe had handed her to her cousin Marty's parents, the O'Haras. Marty and Masalito went to find Grace, and Wolfe and Laurel saw a note through a video feed in the Skyhouse. Grace's captors fell asleep, and Grace escaped. Grace and Marty met up and hurried into a tunnel in the trees and saw the body of Mokélé-mbembé, setting it on fire and collecting two eggs. Blackwood and Butch arrived. Marty had went upstairs and Grace was about to come up also. Butch tied Grace up, about put her into Blackwood's helicopter, and went to get Marty and the eggs. Marty forced Butch and Blackwood to hand out Grace. In the meantime, Dr. Lee and Wolfe has arrived at the cleaning. With Blackwood's helicopter, they fly out of the clearing.
3248537	/m/0914np	Drowned Wednesday	Garth Nix	2005-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Drowned Wednesday is the first Trustee among the Morrow Days who is on Arthur's side and wishes the Will to be fulfilled. She appears as a leviathan/whale and suffers from Gluttony. The book begins when Leaf is visiting Arthur and they are discussing the invitation that Drowned Wednesday sent him. Arthur had been admitted to hospital because of the damage done to his leg when he attempted to enter Tuesday's Treasure Tower. Suddenly, the hospital room becomes flooded with water as the two are transported to the Border Sea of the House. Leaf is snatched away by a large ship with green sails, known as the Flying Mantis, while Arthur remains in his bed. When the Medallion given him by the immortal called the Mariner apparently fails to summon help, Arthur is without hope. Eventually, a buoy marking the pirate Elishar Feverfew's treasure floats toward him. As soon as Arthur opens it, his hand is marked with a bloody red colour. Arthur now has the Red Hand, by which Feverfew marks whoever has found his treasure, so that he can identify them later. Not long after, a scavenging ship called the Moth rescues Arthur. On board, Arthur (going by the name of Arth) is introduced to Sunscorch, the First Mate, and to Captain Catapillow. Their journey brings them through the Line of Storms and into the Border Sea, where they are later pursued by Feverfew's ghostly ship, the Shiver. The damage inflicted on the Moth is serious; therefore Sunscorch commands an Upper House Sorcerer, Dr. Scamandros, to open a transfer portal to elsewhere in the Secondary Realms. Scamandros claims that Arthur is carrying something that interfered with his magic, and tells Sunscorch to throw him overboard. As a last resort, Arthur shows them the Mariner's Medallion, which stops Scamandros saying that they must get rid of Arthur. After going through the transfer portal (with Arthur's help), the ship is grounded on a beach. When Arthur wished to learn what happened to Leaf, Dr. Scamandros applies his sorcery to make it possible. She is revealed to be aboard the ship Flying Mantis. Arthur joins Catapillow for supper, later to reveal his identity. At first, Propaganda issued by Dame Primus (Arthur's Steward) makes them skeptical of this, but they eventually become convinced. A few days later, Wednesday's Dawn takes Arthur to meet Wednesday for her 'luncheon of seventeen removes'. As they approach, Wednesday shrinks into her human form to meet Arthur. During their lunch, Wednesday tells Arthur that after Part 3 of the Will has been released, she will surrender the Third Key to Arthur. Arthur is then taken by Wednesday's Dawn to a place called the triangle in search of his friend Leaf. He learns that Leaf has been forced to work on the Mantis, but is otherwise intact. Arthur later makes a deal with the Raised Rats, a group of anthropomorphic rats brought to the House by the Piper, to take him to Feverfew's hideout, which they believe is inside a miniature world located within Drowned Wednesday's stomach. On the Raised Rats' ship, Arthur opens a gift from Dr. Scamandros, which proves to be a golden transfer watch. With this, he communicates with and rescues Dr. Scamandros. He then uses a scrying mirror Dr. Scamandros gave him to watch Leaf. A rat watches him during the scry, and later saves him from a battle with Feverfew. Later, the Rats bring Arthur onto their submarine, where he meets with Suzy Turquiose Blue. In contrast to Suzy's former cockney attitude, she has assumed a more "ladylike and proper" demeanor on the orders of Dame Primus. Only when they are no longer on the Border Sea, but under it, does she resume her customary ways of speech and dress. They are, with navigational difficulty, able to enter the stomach of Lady Wednesday and the worldlet therein. There, Arthur and Suzy, disguised as rats, find escaped slaves, professed followers of the Carp. These exiles take them to the Carp, who is the third part of the Will. They are halted in their attempt to escape by Feverfew, who proposes that each of them will try to kill the other by means of one strike only. Arthur fails his first try, then dodges Feverfew and severs his head. Leaf, who is Feverfew's prisoner, then kicks it into a mud puddle containing Nothing, which consumes it. Upon his death, the worldlet begins to collapse. Via the Moth, Arthur and all his friends (with the exception of the reluctant Catapillow) are able to escape. Lady Wednesday recovers from her gluttony, then dies as a result of being poisoned by the worldlet, which had opened a void to Nothing. Arthur, now Duke of the Border Sea, appoints Sunscorch as his Noon and Scamandros as his Dusk. fr:Mercredi sous les flots th:พุธเพชฌฆาต
3249201	/m/0915xw	The Spook's Apprentice	Joseph Delaney	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins after the arrival of the Spook, who will be taking Tom Ward, the narrator, as his apprentice. The Spook is a cloaked old man carrying a wooden staff in his left hand, who travels the county fighting troublesome creatures such as Boggarts, Ghosts/Ghasts, and Witches, for the people who need these things gone. However the religious world hates them, for they are thought to be meddling in the dark powers themselves, which is against the Christian church. Tom knows that his parents have agreed to make him the apprentice of the Spook. He will have to learn how the Spook fights "The Dark", as it's referred to in the book. He can use practice, reading or listening to learn about all creatures that feature in the dark. The Spook is actually a person, and looks after Tom well. He explains that most of his other apprentices have failed, due to them being cowardly, disobedient, or deceased. It is revealed that one of the deceased was Billy Bradly, who whilst fighting a particularly dangerous boggart had his finger bitten off and died from loss of blood. The Spook's staff is not what it appears. It has a retractable knife at the end of it and the wood is very uncomfortable to witches. Later on Tom Ward realizes it is very useful to defeat witches. The Spook lives in a house at Chipenden. This house is protected from unwanted visitors by a boggart, whom the Spook has made a servant of sorts. The Spook has promised the boggart that as long as the house is standing, the boggart must cook for them, do the dishes, and do their laundry. The boggart happily complies with these tasks, because this is what boggarts do best. After learning what the Spook does, Tom is sent out on an errand to pick up some food for the house. He is given a strict warning - do not talk to women wearing pointy shoes. On his way home, some boys about the same age as Tom come up and threaten to beat him unless he gives them some food. Tom refuses and the boys are about to beat him up, when suddenly a girl in pointy shoes shows up and scares them away by telling them a certain person is back. She has an ungodly amount of strength for a girl of her age. The mysterious girl's name is Alice, and she is a relative of some of the most dangerous witches in the world: Mother Malkin and Bony Lizzie. Bony Lizzie uses bone magic, a type of necromancy involving the bones of dead enemies. Mother Malkin was one of the most sinister witches, who uses blood magic, a type of witchcraft that involved draining the blood of anyone she thought could have useful features. She was called Mother Malkin for her strategy of welcoming young runaway women into a care home, and then sucking the blood of every girl there to make her more youthful. Over time she had developed a taste for children. A long time ago the Spook had bound Mother Malkin to a pit in the ground with 13 iron bars on top, so she could never escape to terrorize anyone again. Soon Tom is tricked by Alice to give Mother Malkin three cakes, one every night at midnight for three days, which (Tom doesn't know) is filled with blood. Mother Malkin becomes stronger and breaks out of her pit prison in two days. Tom then tries to find a way to deal with Mother Malkin, because the Spook is not at home. A horrible monster-like boy, who is Mother Malkin's son, as well as Bony Lizzie, try to kill Tom. Alice first tricks Tom, but as Bony Lizzie sharpens her knife to kill him, she pulls him out of the pit he was thrown in. The Spook returns home, kills Mother Malkin's son with his staff, then tests Alice to see whether she is good or evil. She passes the test, then they put Bony Lizzie into her pit. Tom returns home, to realize that Mother Malkin has followed him. She possesses the body of the pig killer of Tom's farm, using terrible dark magic, but is thrust out of his body with the help of Alice, who runs and kicks the pig killer hard when his possessed body is about to murder Tom. The three then kill Mother Malkin by having her escape into the lair of the hungry pigs, who eat her alive, including her heart. This ensures that she cannot return to the world again after death. Tom, the Spook and Alice decide that Alice should go to Staumin to escape the dark influence of her witch relatives and Tom escorts her there. Tom then returns to Chipenden to resume his training as a Spook.
3249286	/m/091634	The Hairy Ape	Eugene O'Neill	1922		 The play tells the story of a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. At first Yank feels secure as he stokes the engines of an oceanliner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines. However, when the weak but rich daughter of an industrialist in the steel business refers to him as a "filthy beast," Yank undergoes a crisis of identity. He leaves the ship and wanders into Manhattan, only to find he does not belong anywhere—neither with the socialites on Fifth Avenue, nor with the labor organizers on the waterfront. Finally he is reduced to seeking a kindred being with the gorilla in the zoo and dies in the animal's embrace. The play is divided into 8 scenes. Scene 1 takes place in the fireman's forecastle of a cruise ship, where they sleep. Their racks resemble the bars of a cage. They are sailing from New York, where Yank and the other firemen are talking and singing drunkenly. Yank is shown to be a leader among them. Other featured characters are Long, a socialist, and Paddy, a particularly drunken Irishman. Scene 2 takes place on the deck, where Mildred Douglas (the rich girl) and her aunt are talking. They are almost constantly arguing. Scene 3 takes place in the stokehold. Yank and the other firemen take pride in their work. When Mildred comes to visit the stokehold, Mildred hears Yank cursing. When he turns around and she sees him, she is so shocked by him she calls Yank a filthy beast and faints. Scene 4 also takes place on the ship. Yank is very depressed and the other men try to understand why. In scene 5, Yank and Long go to 5th Avenue in New York. Yank argues with Long about how best to attack the upper class. Long leaves, fearing arrest, and Yank is arrested after attacking a Gentleman. Scene 6 takes place at the prison at Blackwell’s Island. Yank tells the prisoners his story and one of the prisoners gives him an article about the Industrial Workers of the World. Yank tries to escape. Scene 7 takes place at the IWW office that Yank goes to after his month in jail. They are happy to have him at first because there are not many ship firemen in the union - but he is thrown out after he says that he wants to blow up things, and they think he is a spy. Scene 8 takes place at the zoo, when Yank is crushed after trying to talk to an ape and releasing it from its cage.
3251094	/m/09191h	Ice	Shane Johnson	2002-07	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In February 1975, Apollo 19 lands near the Aitken Basin near the lunar south pole (called "Marlow" in the novel) following a discovery of a vast quantity of water ice at that location. (Observation data from the 1994 unmanned spacecraft Clementine has indicated the existence of subsurface water ice mixed with lunar soil, as confirmed by Lunar Prospector and subsequent missions, but exposed water ice on the moon's surface has not been recognized by the scientific community.) There the crew tests an experimental heavy Lunar rover, launched to their location earlier by a Saturn 1B and delivered to the Moon using a stand-alone LM descent stage called the "LM Truck." (Both of these vehicles might have been actually used on the Moon, according to Johnson, had not Project Apollo been cut short.) All goes well until the astronauts are ready to lift off to return to the orbiting Apollo CSM. Unfortunately, their LM ascent engine fails to fire. Repeated attempts to restart that engine—the only part of the LM system without a backup—all end in failure. Finding themselves stranded, the mission commander and LM pilot say goodbye to their wives. The commander peremptorily orders his CM pilot, in orbit around the Moon, to return home. He and the LM pilot then abandon the LM and strike out on their own, driving their rover to the limit of its remaining driving range "to see what we can see." In their last message to Earth, they ask their colleague and Capsule Communicator to help their returning crewmate understand that he must not blame himself for their deaths. Before their oxygen runs out entirely, they find a vast and incredible Out-of-place artifact that might save their lives - or kill them. It is an ancient, abandoned, but fully functioning Lunar base - which they find immediately before the last seconds of their air run out. The base contains technology far beyond the reach of human science and engineering, best exemplified in the "war room" that they find immediately upon entry. This leads the two men to argue whether extrasolar visitors built it. LM Pilot Charlie Shepherd, a fundamentalist Christian, refuses to admit the possibility, because the Bible contains no warrant for it. Both men agree, however, that whoever the base builders are (or were) would be able to conquer Earth easily, had they chosen to attack—though why they never did attack remains a mystery. The two men soon find EVA suits that are one-third again as tall as human EVA suits are. Shortly thereafter, they find many members of the base crew—dead of various acts of violence, and in at least one case, a suicide. The suicide's living quarters contains multiple artworks depicting various scenes of torture, indicating that the base builders were a thoroughly evil people whose mania for causing suffering is incomprehensible. Subsequently Mission Commander Gary Lucas vanishes into an apparent journey into the past—specifically to the builders' home world. His friend, left on the base, searches it in vain for his friend, not realizing that his friend has entered a machine that can simulate events stored in its historical memory, based on input from a base-wide and planet-wide surveillance system. Shepherd finds a means of sustenance, and then finds a hangar—which turns out to be empty. Angered and desperate, Shepherd activates all the base' systems in the war room, except for one system that refuses to activate. In the process, he activates the base computer system, which regards him as non-human and starts broadcasting a distress signal to Earth. That signal will turn out to be the salvation of the two astronauts—because Congress, on the point of cancelling Project Apollo completely, reverses itself and authorizes Apollo 20 in direct response to the signal, which clearly is coming from the Marlow Basin. They cannot read the message, but—at least subconsciously—they realize that its activation after the men of Apollo 19 were supposed to have died cannot be coincidental. Gary Lucas has many perilous adventures in the "home world" simulation, which he accepts as entirely real. They begin with his rescue of a woman being assaulted, and continue with his capture by men bent on offering him as a human sacrifice and by his rescue by the woman's husband and brother-in-law. In gratitude, Lucas offers to join the workforce that is now applying the finishing touches to a vast granary that his hosts have been building and stocking. Meanwhile, Shepherd tries again to activate the last war-room system—and realizes, too late, that he has in fact started a self-destruct sequence. One by one, various base systems—gravity, climate control, and ultimately the food dispensary—begin to shut down. Lucas is injured during the storehouse construction project and, after the householders have an apparent argument concerning him, is given a sedative. He awakes to find himself in an empty house and steps outside in time to hear the roar of an onrushing wall of water, which lifts the storehouse off its foundations (incredibly, without damaging it) and threatens to sweep Lucas to his death. But then Lucas finds himself back on the base, in time to watch its crew destroy one another in mutiny, mayhem, murder, human sacrifice, and the eventual suicide of the base commander, who is the crew's last survivor. Following this, Lucas experiences an attack of vertigo. In fact the simulator machine has run its program, sounds three piercing alarm tones, and ejects him into the waiting arms of Shepherd just as the crew of Apollo 20 arrive to rescue them. That rescue is just in time—because after Apollo 20 completes trans-Earth injection, the self-destruct sequence runs its course, and the base destroys itself, apparently in a thermonuclear detonation. Back on Earth, the mission commander studies the Bible—and realizes that he actually witnessed the Noachic Flood and even ate at Noah's table. Also, the base builders never attacked Earth, because they were from Earth originally—from Antediluvian Earth. He and Shepherd further realize that God has entrusted him with a warning, which he must convey to anyone who will listen.
3251656	/m/091b3c	The Ferguson Rifle	Louis L'Amour	1973	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 The main character, Ronan Chantry, who is of Irish ancestry, is going into the West away from his troubles. Chantry's wife and son are dead, burned to death in the fire that consumed his home, for which he is blamed. He takes with him a Ferguson Rifle, given to him by Major Ferguson himself. He meets up with an outfit of trappers after crossing the Mississippi River. Although never stated directly, Chantry quickly becomes the leader of the group. Main members of the group are an Irishman, Davy Shanagan, and Solomon, who by the end of the book is revealed to be very well known throughout the wilderness. Early on the outfit's journey west, they encounter the Spanish Captain Fernandez accompanied by Ute Indians. The Captain attempts to arrest the outfit for trespassing on Spanish colonies. The outfit informs him that the land was bought under the Louisiana Purchase. That night it is believed that Captain Fernandez attacks them but fails with two Utes being killed. The outfit presses on. Another night Chantry hears gunshots ring out in the distance after being awakened by a wolf who was trying to steal bacon. The next morning Chantry discovers the dead body of a man in a Mexican uniform. He searches the body and recovers a medallion. Chantry and Walks-by-Night back-track him and come to the realization that he was with a woman and boy and they had been chased and he had been killed. Chantry goes off by himself and encounters the girl and the boy.
3251977	/m/091btg	The Witches of Karres	James H. Schmitz	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Captain Pausert, a well-intentioned, but inexperienced merchant traveler voyaging solo on the old pirate chaser Venture from the planet Nikkeldepain, is induced to purchase three young witches (Maleen, Goth, and the Leewit) who had been enslaved on the Imperial planet of Porlumma. The sisters were captured in a raid by Imperial slavers while visiting another planet on a jaunt of their own. In getting clear of Porlumma, the Venture escapes belated pursuit with the use of the witches' klatha (psionic) Sheewash drive, which enables far faster transit of distance than is possible with primary or secondary space drives available either in or outside the Empire. This draws the unwelcome attention of both the Imperium and other governments to both Captain Pausert and the elderly Venture. After returning the witch sisters to their homeworld, Karres, Captain Pausert attempts to return to Nikkeldepain, but is arrested before he can obtain permission to land. The Captain is informed that he faces a barrage of criminal charges, many relating to his encounter with the witches and his brief stay on the prohibited planet of Karres. And they want the Sheewash drive. Avidly. Captain Pausert escapes the Nikkeldepain police and military with the help of the middle witch sister, Goth, who had stowed away on the ship. From that point, he and Goth find themselves becoming more and more embroiled in wild adventures involving interdimensional alien invaders, space pirates, many more of the Karres witches, and assorted other characters.
3254026	/m/091gg8	The Boy Who Followed Ripley	Patricia Highsmith	1980-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A 16-year-old American boy calling himself Billy approaches Ripley in the village, asking for a job. Ripley agrees to give him a small amount of gardening work and puts him up in the guest room, but he believes that he recognizes the youth from a newspaper. Further investigation reveals that 'Billy' is actually Frank Pierson, the son of a recently deceased American tycoon, who has fled the United States. Frank soon confesses to Tom that he did in fact murder his own father by pushing him off a cliff. Ripley's interest thereby increases as he now recognizes a kind of kindred spirit in young Pierson. He also discovers that Frank deliberately sought him out for advice after learning of his questionable reputation. Ripley commissions a false passport for Frank and they travel to Germany, ending up in West Berlin, where they stay with a friend of Ripley's erstwhile partner in crime, Reeves Minot. Frank is kidnapped while strolling through a wooded area in West Berlin. Ripley communicates with the Pierson family and with a private detective the family has sent to Paris. The Piersons wire the ransom to Berlin, and Ripley takes it to the appointed drop-off point where he impulsively kills one of the kidnappers. The other three drive off. Ripley returns with the money and arranges a rendezvous at a gay bar, which he infiltrates by dressing in drag. He identifies the kidnappers, who again leave empty-handed, and follows them back to the flat where they are keeping the boy. Ripley scares the amateur thugs into dashing out of the apartment, and he single-handedly rescues the semi-conscious hostage. Ripley then dispatches the money back to the Pierson family, encourages Frank to return to his family in New England and accompanies him there besides. Despite Ripley's coaching and reassurances, Frank is overwhelmed by guilt as well as by his unrequited love for a teenaged girl named Teresa, and eventually commits suicide by throwing himself over the same precipice from which he pushed his wheelchair-confined father. Shaken and, much to his own surprise, saddened by Frank's death, Ripley returns to Belle Ombre after securing a former possession of the boy's as a memento.
3254430	/m/091h68	Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left	Robin Klein	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel tells the tale of the planet Zyrgon, ruled by the galactic police called The Law-Enforcers. They are after Mortimer, who has cheated the government lottery for the 27th time in a row. His family is governed by the youngest daughter, 12-year old X, who wants to save her father from the detention centre. The family also includes Mother, who would rather design clothing and leave all worries to her daughter X. The oldest sister Dovis is a cosmic flier who writes poetry and levitates. The youngest is a boy genius, Qwrk who is a professor at age 5. X is the lead character: a stressed girl who has to balance between strange Earth customs such as school and her duty to take care of her family. Zyrgonians have special powers such as levitation, simulations, and kinetics. They love gambling and live on an ultra-modern and dystopian planetoid.
3254821	/m/091j7z	At All Costs	David Weber	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Due to the actions of the High Ridge government in War of Honor, which led to a successful attack on key Alliance shipyards by the Republic of Haven, the Star Kingdom of Manticore finds itself decidedly on the short end of the strategic balance between the two warring star nations. Admiral Honor Harrington is placed in command of Eighth Fleet, the Manticoran Alliance's primary offensive force, which is the sole heavy formation available for operations against Haven. Queen Elizabeth and her senior advisors project it will be at least two "T-years" (Terran years, i.e. Earth years) before they can expect any significant numbers of new construction to begin bolstering their thin wall of battle; this while Haven's progress under Admirals Theisman and Foraker have given them an even larger force advantage, and smaller technological disparity, than Haven suffered before the beginning of hostilities in Short Victorious War. Strategically, the goal of Honor and Eighth Fleet is to instill enough operational caution and sensitivity to losses in Haven to force redeployments; this would have the desperately needed effect of reducing the available number of ships of the wall Haven would then be able to concentrate for offensive action against the Star Kingdom and its allies. Despite the grave circumstances, the Star Kingdom finds itself spread dangerously thin against its security commitments; to itself and the Alliance. At All Costs climaxes with the largest and most critical battle of the entire series, the Battle of Manticore, as Havenite forces attack the Manticoran home star system. Haven comes close to winning the battle, until Admiral Harrington's Eighth Fleet intervenes, giving Manticore a hard-won victory. Both sides suffer heavy losses, and they are temporarily stalemated. Honor continues to work closely with Hamish Alexander, now First Lord of the Admiralty, on the military and political challenges facing the Alliance. Their professional respect for each other's abilities, and their need for mutual support as they navigate the precarious political landscape in the Star Kingdom, has led them into the very romantic embrace the High Ridge government tried to insinuate during War of Honor. While this is not the dire political crisis it was during the prior Star Kingdom government, it still offers numerous personal and professional difficulties for them. Unfortunately, they find themselves trapped between their emotions and their responsibilities to each other, to the loved ones in their lives, and to the Star Kingdom and the Alliance. The dilemma is resolved when the Reverend of Grayson engineers a polygamous marriage of Honor to Hamish and his crippled wife.
3254859	/m/091jcr	The Light Bearer	Donna Gillespie	1994-10-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The fictional protagonists are a proto-Germanic tribeswoman, Auriane, daughter of a Chattian war leader; and Marcus Arrius Julianus, a Roman senator and imperial advisor whose character and circumstances are loosely based on the Roman philosopher Seneca, as well as another contemporary in the reign of Nero, Stoic philosopher and statesman Helvidius Priscus, a man much praised by his contemporaries for his outspokenness in public life. Rome’s interference in tribal affairs compel Auriane to take the warrior’s oath and lead her father’s retinue after his untimely death. In Rome, Stoic humanist Marcus Julianus reaches the highest pinnacles of government, where he is taken into the confidence of the Emperor Domitian. Through political maneuvering, he strives to check the murderous whims of the increasingly corrupt Emperor Domitian. Auriane is captured in Domitian's Chattian War and taken to Rome. As Domitian's reign of terror begins, Julianus orchestrates a plot to assassinate the Emperor; here the author has inserted a fictional character into a gap left by history. The Emperor Domitian, who according to Suetonius, was fond of pitting women against dwarfs in the arena, condemns Auriane to a gladiatorial school. Here Auriane discovers the tribesman who betrayed her people in war. As Julianus’ assassination plot rushes to its conclusion, Auriane must carry out the tribal rite of vengeance in the Colosseum.
3255341	/m/091krc	The Damnation of Theron Ware	Harold Frederic	1896	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The congregation of The First Methodist Episcopal Church of Tecumseh sits in their exquisite sanctuary, awaiting the decision of whom they are going to appoint as the new pastor for their church. The members of the congregation regard their time at the church with such high importance that they pay hundreds of dollars to rent the front pews. When the new pastor is announced, Abram G. Tisdale, members of the congregation began leaving upset and selling their pews for sixty dollars. The man they wanted to be appointed, Theron Ware, was appointed to the church in Octavius. After the ceremony, Theron and his wife are disappointed, but Theron tells her there is nothing more they can do. In their new home in Octavius, the Wares are surprised that the milk delivery boy informs them that they will be pressured by the congregation to not have milk delivered on Sundays. Theron reminisces about how he arrived in Octavius. A young minister who changed his first parish in Tyre into an over-capacity congregation, met his wife Alice in Tyre and had a quick marriage. However, the Wares found themselves eight hundred dollars in debt, not knowing how to budget the church and their own lives. As they trimmed down the spending both in the church and in their personal lives, by selling possessions and their piano, the clergy once again began to dwindle. Their third year at Tyre, a man named Abram Beekman gave them a loan. Theron, determined to show that he could do better in a bigger congregation, went to the conference at Tecumseh to prove his abilities, only to be placed in Octavius. Theron meets with three trustees from the church - Pierce, Winch, and Gorringe - in his house. Pierce tells Ware that he is not to use "dictionary words" because he does not want people to be redirected to one of the two Catholic churches in Octavius. They discuss the church finances and they try to make him take a pay cut and pay for his gas bill. Theron refuses, and Gorringe is the only level headed of the trustees as they get angrier and nearly threaten him. They agree to bring in a "debt-raiser" to reduce the church's debt, and after the meeting Theron tells his wife that he nearly thought he should go out and learn a trade. After a good first sermon at his church in Octavius, Theron ponders his next move as minister, and how to help his overworked wife, as he takes a walk. While on his way back home, he comes upon a procession of people carrying a man. The man, Mr. MacEvoy, is injured and is taken to his house where the people await for the Catholic priest Father Forbes to give the man his last rites. Theron observes the man and other people chanting in Latin and is intrigued. After the last rites, Father Forbes introduces himself to Theron while they walk away from MacEvoy's house. Forbes leaves and Celia Madden, also at the last rites, introduces herself to Theron. She is the daughter of the owner of the wagon shop where MacEvoy worked, and explained that if she did not attend the last rites, Mrs. Ann MacEvoy would no longer speak to her. She also tells Theron that she is an organist at Forbes' church. When she leaves, Theron ponders how he has never interacted with Catholics before, but that they are not as foreign as he originally thought. That night at dinner, Theron and his wife talk about their new estate and that it is adequate, but not as nice as they'd like. Theron forgets to tell Alice his thoughts about hiring an aide for her, but talks to her about Father Forbes and asks her why she thinks there is a separation between the Methodists and the Catholics. Alice expresses her dislike for Catholics. The next day, Alice tells Theron that she won't need a hired girl until winter. Theron goes out to buy a piano for the church and a book for himself, and is upset at the store Thurston's which only carries the most recently popular books and has such low prices that it is putting specialty stores out of business. At the piano store, Theron realizes he is not qualified to pick out a piano and decides to ask Celia to help him pick one out. Back at home, Theron struggles to begin writing a book of his own and is distracted by the fact that he does not own very many books. He suddenly leaves his dinner with Alice to go ask Father Forbes for help. Theron admires the new, yet-unfinished Catholic cathedral, which he remarks is the finest building in Octavius. When he arrives at Father Forbes' residence, he is greeted by an ugly helper, who leads him into a dimly lit dining room, where Forbes and a stranger are eating. The stranger is Dr. Ledsmar, an elderly man who is nonreligious. Theron talks about his book which he hopes to write about Abraham, and Father Forbes seems to know quite a bit more about Abraham than Theron can comprehend. Alone, Theron and Dr. Ledsmar talk about why Father Forbes rarely gives a sermon at his church, and Theron discovers it is because the parish need him to participate in the traditions of the church rather than preach. Theron hears organ music from the church, and Ledsmar tells him that it is Celia Madden practicing. Ledsmar doesn't seem to be moved by the music, and he reveals to Theron that he thinks all art is "decay." He invited Theron over to see his collection of books, and Theron finds out that he has a Chinese servant living with him. When Theron leaves, he passes the Catholic Church and the organ music makes him walk inside the church, something he has never done before. The narration of the novel takes a different turn in the ninth chapter by giving the back story of Celia Madden and her father Jeremiah Madden. Jeremiah, a very rich man, has had multiple wives and multiple children. Celia had been quite the talk of Octavius for her past actions, but Theron knew none of this when he first met her and decided to enter the Catholic Church, where Celia notices him and approaches him to talk. Celia tells Theron that she hates Dr. Ledsmar for disliking art. She inquires Theron if he likes music, poetry, and books, and he says that he does. Celia tells Theron that she won't like him as a person if he likes Dr. Ledsmar, and that she is upset that Ledsmar is friends with and has influence of Father Forbes. Theron continues to walk Celia home, and she reveals that she is not religious at all, but subscribes to the Greek philosophy of her ancestors, claiming to be Greek herself. Theron forgets to ask her about the piano until after she is inside her house. At the Ware household, Theron wakes up Alice who was sleeping in a chair. He tells her about Ledsmar, whom Alice is very wary of. Alice also complains about their neighbors who are playing the piano so late at night, but Theron enjoys it. Theron had not seen Forbes, Ledsmar, or Celia for several weeks because of various events with his church, including the advent of automobiles, a circus, and the scorn from some of the trustees over his style of sermons. Overall, he has been getting good reviews from the parish, but he still wants to improve the church. Alice seems to be more depressed in Octavius than previously. The Wares discuss Gorringe, and how Theron wishes he were a more active member in the church because of his understandings of Theron's activities and motivations. Finding a spare moment four days before another Methodist conference, Theron gets around to reading some books he borrowed from Dr. Ledsmar. He reads nearly all day long, and when Alice enters the room she is surprised to find him researching his book on Abraham that she thought he abandoned. He tells her that he has a headache, and she is concerned that he is getting sick. When she leaves, he is pleased by his solitude and ability to read the books. He suddenly has a realization that he envies Forbes and Ledsmar, who are able to live with their own theories and ideas, and that Forbes can still work in the religious field. He contemplates leaving his job as a pastor when Alice returns home and introduces him to Sister Soulsby, a debt-raiser whom she hired so the congregation would not take away from the Ware's income and so they can possibly afford a new house. Sister Soulsby talks with the Methodists in Octavius and after a couple of days proposes a "love-feast" for the congregation. Her idea is confirmed when her husband, Brother Soulsby, arrives. Alice and Theron disagree that springing a debt-raiser on the congregation after a festival is an appropriate way to make money, but the Soulsby argue that they have been raising funds for churches and organizations for a long time, and that they know what they are doing. All the while, Theron worries about his wife. He doesn't seem to care for her as much, and thinks that Forbes and Ledsmar wouldn't regard her very well. He does take note that she has made good friends with Gorringe. The love-feast occurs at 9:00AM on the next Sunday. The feast includes singing, praying, and speeches. Sister Soulsby gives a particularly good speech that motivates the people of the Methodist church. The presiding elder also speaks, and Alice gets up from her pew to kneel at the front of the sanctuary in prayer, and is joined by the lawyer Gorringe. Theron reads the list of stewards is upset that Gorringe's name is not on the list and feels alienated from the church. Theron awakes inside his home and remembers that he fainted inside the church due to the heat. He goes outside and finds that the Soulsbys are threatening to "close down" the church until funds are raised to get the church out of debt and a little extra for things that need money. In the end, they raise enough money to give the Wares an extra $100 per year and for themselves to be paid. Later, Theron talks with Gorringe, who is now religiously invested in the church as well as financially. The trustees must vote to see if Erastus Winch will have to pay what he pledged to the church after going bankrupt. The vote comes down to Theron, who votes that he should have to pay. Sister Soulsby and Theron discuss Erastus Winch's case and how Theron feels bad about forcing him to pay what he cannot afford. Sister Soulsby notes that it is not her place to be moral, but that she did what she was hired to do. Theron and her continue to talk about separating people from their money, and Sister Soulsby tells Theron that he would be terrible at conning anyone. Theron and Alice take a walk and Alice wonders what the congregation will think that they are not at a prayer. She leaves and Theron begins to think about what Sister Soulsby said about Catholics, and he finds himself nearby the Catholic Church, and realizes that he probably ended up there because he wanted to run into Celia. He hears her voice and they meet and talk. She invites him into the church so she can play the organ for him. Later, he walks her home and she invites him in. She shows him her workroom and a private room that is "[her] very own." Celia's room was full of candles, sculptures, art, and a piano. Celia offers Theron a cigarette, which he usually does not smoke, and he accepts. She plays him songs on the piano and later slips into a robe. After she plays more and more songs on the piano, Theron stands up and walks closer to her. They talk softly, and Theron tells her that he want to experience her Greek philosophy, hinting toward her bedroom. It is late so he has to leave, but Celia knows he will be back and laughs at the situation when he is gone. The next morning, Theron Ware recognizes that he has in fact gone though an illumination and will never be the same again. Alice notices it too, at breakfast, but thinks that it is because he is overworked by the new parish. Theron decides to write a letter to Celia, but at the end of it cannot think of a good enough word to close his letter. He visits the specialty book store and buys a book entitled George Sand which included information about Chopin, one of Celia's favorite composers. He then hurries off to meet Celia at the piano store where she helps him pick out a piano. He agrees on a cheaper model than Celia originally recommends. They part ways. Theron meets with Dr. Ledsmar at the doctor's house. He is surprised that the doctor greeted him at the door instead of his "Chinaman". Dr. Ledsmar and Theron talk about women, and Theron thinks of Celia during their conversation. Ledsmar discusses how men have been studying women for ages and that sex is relatively not understood. They talk about the use of flowers, Ledsmar looking at them scientifically instead of aesthetically. Ledsmar then shows Ware his Chinaman, who the doctor is doing experiments on. The doctor claims that his shoulder is hurting and bids Ware farewell. Time has passed and Theron is starting to look healthier due to his new outlook on life. His church is thriving because he is following Sister Soulsby's advice. It is time for a conference at the Methodist church in Octavius, and people have come and are camping out for the event. Theron walks among the tents. He continues walking into the woods and comes out at a Catholic picnic. They are drinking beer and he is interested in trying it but doesn't want to approach the bar for himself. Father Forbes and Celia walk up to him as he thinks about how to get a beer. A young man fetches Theron a beer, and Theron, Forbes, and Celia discuss their respective religions. Forbes convinces Ware that their beliefs aren't too different. After more drinks of lager and talking about how one day there may be one "Church of America", Celia introduces Ware to her brother Michael. Theron and Celia excuse themselves from their company and decide to talk a way in the woods away from the party. As Celia and Theron walk through the forest, Celia falls to her knees and begins crying. She quickly stops and explains that she doesn't want people to think she is being improper for spending time with Theron. They sit and he comforts her, but their conversation quickly turns to Theron's desire to be free from what holds him down. Celia claims he will never be truly free as he fiddles with a ribbon on her dress. He proclaims himself a Catholic, at which Celia laughs. They get up and leave, but the garden boy for Theron's garden sees them walking together in the woods and Theron and Celia are frightened of what gossip might happen. Celia allows Ware to give her a brief goodbye kiss. The kiss haunts Theron throughout the next weeks. He contemplates leaving his job, but knows that it is currently safe for him to occupy it. He wonders if Celia loves him. He overhears some women talking about how Gorringe bought $30 worth of flowers for his garden. He meets with him and asks him about the flowers, but their conversation becomes coded and Theron attempts to find out if the boy had told Gorringe about Theron and Celia in the forest. Eventually, Theron leaves but not before asking Gorringe if he knows of any scandal about Alice, which the lawyer does not understand due to Alice's purity. Theron has convinced himself that Gorringe and Alice are having an affair or are somehow conspiring against him. He has dinner with Father Forbes, and tells Forbes that he has decided that he won't be a minister for much longer. The conversation turns to Michael, who is deathly ill, and then to Celia. Forbes doesn't seem to find her as interesting as Ware does, but Theron falls victim to how articulate of a speaker Forbes is. The priest retires for the night and Theron leaves. The next morning at breakfast, Theron attempts to get a confession out of his wife about her relationship with Gorringe. Nothing arises, but Alice gets very upset and claims that she doesn't like how Theron has changed ever since they moved to Octavius. Theron blames it on the book he is writing, but Alice doesn't fully believe him. He leaves breakfast, and she cries. Theron starts thinking about why Father Forbes always has pleasant things to say about Celia even though she makes it clear that she is not Catholic. Theron puts the pieces together in his head and thinks that Celia and Father Forbes are sexual partners. He decides to talk to Celia and figures she is with her brother. He visits Michael, who is doing quite well, but warns Theron that if men seek what they want it doesn't always work out best for everybody. Theron then learns from a maid that Celia is heading to New York, and Forbes happens to be there as well. He contemplates going to Albany himself. Theron boards a train to Albany and is intrigued by the sights he sees outside of his car. He is surprised that a yacht can voyage across the ocean, and thinks that he should travel across the ocean with Celia one day. In New York, Theron is surprised at how much of a hurry some people are in just in their normal lives. He follows Father Forbes meets Celia at the station and Theron follows them to a hotel and to a restaurant for breakfast without detection. Sitting in the lobby of the hotel, Theron goes up to Celia's room after he sees Forbes leave. She greets him and tells him that she knew he was following her. She tells him to go away but eventually invites him when he is stubborn. Celia reveals that the kiss they shared was meant as a good-bye kiss, and that Dr. Ledsmar and Father Forbes are upset that Theron has constantly talked about Celia with them and attempting to find out something scandalous. During the conversation, Theron imagines killing Celia but he is not disturbed by the thought. There is a knock at the door and Forbes enters and tells Theron that they came to New York so he could introduce the upset Celia to a friend to calm her down. Reverend Ware has been in New York for two days now, and shows up at the residence of the Soulsbys at five in the morning. They welcome him in tiredly, and urge him to get some sleep. He would rather explain his situation to them than sleep, and after explaining why he is in New York, tells them that he stole money from the church to pay for his experience in the city. Theron eventually falls asleep and Brother Soulsby goes to telegraph Alice. Back in Octavius, Candace and Alice talk about the changes that are happening in the Ware's lives. Just one year ago they moved to Octavius, and Alice blames the town for changing Theron but Sister Soulsby disagrees. Alice has convinced Theron to leave the ministry and Brother Soulsby has arranged a job in real estate for him in Seattle. As he is ready to leave his house in Octavius for the last time he mentions that he might get in politics and become a senator, of which Alice replies that she has no intention of being a part.
3257921	/m/091r7c	Arthur & George	Julian Barnes	2005-07-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set at the turn of the 20th century, the story follows the separate but intersecting lives of two very different British men: a half-Indian solicitor and son of a Vicar George Edalji, and the world-famous author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Roughly one-third of the book traces the story of Edalji's trial, conviction, and imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. About one-third of the book traces the story of Doyle's life and his relationships with his first wife Louisa Hawkins and his platonic lover Jean Leckie. Roughly one-third of the book concerns Doyle's attempt to clear the name of Edalji and uncover the true culprit of the crime. Julian Barnes called it ' a contemporary novel set in the past' and the book does not aim to stick closely to the historical record at every point.
3258018	/m/091rgp	Lady Friday	Garth Nix	2007-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 At the beginning of Lady Friday, a cleaner tells Leaf that everybody has become infatuated with a "Dr. Friday", because she is so beautiful and refined; as a result, every member of the staff calls her Lady Friday. Lady Friday, a Denizen and Trustee of the House, is in command of the Middle House. It is later revealed that Lady Friday has kidnapped thousands of people and taken them to Avraxyn, the world that is mentioned in Sir Thursday as the world from which the Skinless Boy's mind-controlling mould originated. There, Lady Friday drains from them their emotions and memories, which she then drinks in order to experience them (being a House Denizen herself, she cannot have these emotions herself, but must take them from others). Arthur, the Piper, and Superior Saturday all receive messages from Lady Friday, saying she has abdicated the rule of the Middle House and that the first of the three who can reach her Scriptorium in the Middle House can claim the Fifth Key and her domain as their own. Along with each message is sent a Transfer Plate that sends whoever touches it straight to the Middle House (which is a giant, terraced mountain). Arthur accidentally takes the plate and is sent to the Middle House; he still retains the Fourth Key. While the Piper is contemplating what to do with his Plate, the Piper's Children Suzy Turquoise Blue and Fred Initial Numbers Gold, along with their loyal New Nithling bodyguard Ugham, grab it and are transferred to the Middle House. In the Middle House, Arthur takes refuge in a Manuscript-Gilding workshop, where he fights off some Fetchers and eventually meets Fred and Suzy. At first, he does not trust them, fearing their allegiance to the Piper; however, they and his own inclinations convince him that they can be trusted. Around their necks are bindings that bend them to the Piper's will; these are removed by Arthur with the power of the Fourth Key, at Suzy's behest. While on the way to the Scriptorium, they meet some of the Middle House's Winged Servants of the Night, who are fighting several of Saturday's elite forces, known as Artful Loungers. Arthur singlehandedly defeats four of the latter, earning the friendship of the Servants. While flying to the pinnacle of the mountain, on which stands the Scriptorium, Arthur is guided to the Fifth Part of the Will, which is chained within the lair of the Winged Servants. This part of the Will (shown on the British cover), a bizarre creature having the head of a fox, the upper torso of a bat, the lower body of a blue dragon, and four legs, is much more likable than the other parts; it is stated that this part, presumed to embody the virtue of moderation, is the part without which the Will has no self-control. When Arthur reaches the Scriptorium, he finds that the Piper has apparently killed Saturday's Dusk. The Piper orders Ugham to pick up what is supposed to be the Fifth Key; when Ugham does so, a trap from Lady Friday, in the form of an entrance to the Void of Nothing, is sprung. Ugham is instantly dissolved; as the breach gets bigger, Arthur decides to use the Fourth Key, even if it turns him into a Denizen, to close the hole. One Key alone is not sufficient to accomplish this task; therefore the Will advises him to call upon the power of the remaining Keys in his possession; the Keys appear with him, and he fixes the breach. To return to the Lower House, Arthur uses the Improbable Stair, the Architect's own personal transport, to transport himself, Suzy, and Fred to Monday's Dayroom. There, the butler Sneezer uses the Seven Dials to transport Suzy, Fred, Arthur, and their friend Dr. Scamandros to Friday's hideout. They find that Friday has lost her self-control and is about to "experience" thousands of people at once. Arthur arrives just as Friday transfers their beings into the Key; having obtained mastery of the Middle House, he returns their experiences. He finds that his friend Leaf was among the people, but that his own mother is not. It is confirmed thereafter that Arthur's mother is not in the Secondary Realms, and is therefore deduced to be in the Upper House. Arthur gives all the keys to the Will, except for the Fifth, and decides to go to Earth to settle matters there before going after Saturday. As the book closes, Suzy gives Arthur a note that Ugham gave her before he died. It appears to be a piece of a letter sent from Sunday to Saturday or vice versa. It reads "For the last time, I do not wish to intervene. Manage affairs in the House as you wish. It will make little difference in the end. S". The sender of this message, 'S', is presumed to be either Saturday or Sunday and is later revealed to be Sunday in Superior Saturday. The final sentence may remind readers of the suggestion raised in Sir Thursday by Dame Primus that the Trustees are wittingly or unwittingly part of a plan to destroy the House, and itself makes the suggestion that the sender believes the House to be doomed.
3258281	/m/091s35	Laches				 Lysimachus, son of Aristides, and Melesias, son of Thucydides (not the historian Thucydides), request advice from Laches and Nicias on whether or not they should have their sons (who are named after their famous grandfathers) trained to fight in armor. After each gives their opinion, one for and one against, they seek Socrates for council. Socrates questions what the initial purpose of the training is meant to instill in the children. Once they determine that the purpose is to instill virtue, and more specifically courage, Socrates discusses with Laches and Nicias what exactly courage is. The bulk of the dialogue is then the three men (Laches, Nicias and Socrates) debating various definitions of courage. Nicias argues in favor of an education in fighting in armour for young men. He mentions that it promotes physical fitness, prepares a man for military duties, gives an advantage over untrained opponents, helps one understand military strategy, makes one braver, and gives one a martial appearance. Laches argues against the need for fighting in armour by claiming that the Spartans do not practice it; the instructors that Laches has seen are not brave soldiers and so have not benefitted from this knowledge; and it causes cowards to take foolish and damaging military risks. Melesias and Lysumachus ask Socrates to decide which side is correct. Socrates begins by trying to clarify what the actual topic is. He determines that the issue is the care of young men's character and asks if there are qualified teachers for this. Socrates confesses not to be skilled in this and assumes that Laches and Nicias are either versed in character building or else know of experts in that field. Socrates proposes to question them about this to see if they have qualified expertise. Nicias warns about Socrates' philosophical methods of getting the interlocuter to examine their own conscience. Laches states that he likes to hear discussions that are "musical", when a person's discourse is in tune with their actions. Paraphrasing Solon, Laches agrees to participate in Socrates' inquiry because he likes to learn from good men. Socrates uses a medical analogy to help define goodness: If eyes can be improved by adding sight to them, then a boys' character can be improved by adding goodness to it. As knowledge of what sight is necessary before it can be considered as an improvement, so too it is necessary to have knowledge of what good is before it is used to improve a character. Rather than try to define what the whole of goodness is, Socrates thinks it would be easier to define an aspect of goodness that is relevant to the question - bravery. Laches advances that to be brave is to be a soldier who can hold his position in combat without running away. Socrates explains that his definition is very specific to military infantry and what he was really looking for is a notion of bravery that pertains to all military situations and extends to all situations in life. Laches offers an opinion that courage is "a certain perseverance of the soul". However, Socrates challenges this idea by arguing that there are many instances in battle when the prudent thing to do is to withdraw or flee. Since courage is a virtue, Socrates argues, it cannot contradict prudence, and therefore the idea that courage always demands perseverance must be false. Laches is forced to admit this contradiction. Socrates expresses his perplexity in trying to account for bravery. Laches wishes to pursue the conversation, saying that he has a sense of what bravery is, but is not able to express it properly. Socrates states that like a good huntsman pursuing a trail, they must persevere in the search for their quarry. They invite Nicias to give his definition of bravery. Nicias then offers another definition. He suggests that courage is "knowledge of what is to be feared and hoped for both in war and in all other matters". Since bravery is the knowledge of what is fearful and encouraging, Socrates asks if a pig could be brave. Nicias denies that animals can be brave as he believes that a certain amount of wisdom is necessary for bravery and that very few people can be considered brave. Socrates playfully suggest that Nicias is being influenced by a sophist named Damon and offers to respond to Nicias' assertion. Nicias agrees that something 'fearful' is the expectation of a future evil and something 'hopeful' is the expectation of a future good. Socrates then argues that full knowledge of any subject involves an understanding not only of future matters, but also of past and present. Thus if courage is the knowledge of future evils and goods, it must also necessarily be the knowledge of those of the present and past too. He then asserts that Nicias' definition actually amounts to a definition of all virtue (since it implies knowledge of all good and evil) and therefore, since courage is in fact only a part of virtue, a contradiction arises and the definition must be false. And so, in the end, Socrates finds both his companions' theories to be unsatisfactory, and the dialogue ends in aporia, the Greek term for philosophical confusion.
3259568	/m/091vfx	The Man on the Balcony	Per Wahlöö	1967	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Martin Beck and his team realize that a pedosexual murderer may have been seen by an unidentified serial robber who was watching for prey in the area, at the time. The pressure is turned up when more child murders begin to occur.
3260842	/m/091xzq	Night Probe!	Clive Cussler	1981-08	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 It is 1989 and the United States is in an economic freefall caused primarily by the world’s dwindling supply of energy. CIA estimates put the depletion of the Middle East oilfields at just two years away. The total worldwide demand for oil is more than 50% of estimated supplies and while nuclear and other alternative energies are trying to make up the difference they are coming up short. Canada is now the exclusive supplier of electricity to 15 states in the northeast after investing billions in a massive new hydro-electric power plant in Quebec. To make matters worse, a top-secret experimental sub developed by NUMA has recently discovered a stratigraphic trap, potentially the richest kind of oil deposit, which lies just across the border in the territorial waters of Quebec. Radicals in Quebec resembling the FLQ, secretly led by Canadian MP Henri Villon, are pushing for a referendum on independence from Canada. Newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Charles Sarveux fears that if Quebec declares independence Canada will disintegrate as the other provinces either follow Quebec into independence or possibly petition the U.S. for statehood. Heidi Milligan, a U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, is working on her PhD in history by researching the naval policies of President Woodrow Wilson between assignments. She stumbles across a reference to a "North American Treaty" in a long forgotten letter and is intrigued when she finds out that all traces of the treaty appear to have been erased from the National Archives. The North American Treaty, it is later revealed, was a landmark agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom. In 1914, the U.K. finds itself in economic hard times with war looming on the horizon. Fearing that the nation will not survive without a large infusion of capital, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, with the cooperation of King George V, quietly approach the United States and offer, for the sum of one billion dollars, to sell Canada to the United States. President Wilson quickly agrees and pays a down payment of $150 million to seal the deal. Tragedy strikes when, on the same day in May 1914, the American copy of the treaty plunges to the bottom of the Hudson River when the steam locomotive Manhattan Limited attempts to cross a downed railroad bridge and the British copy plunges to the bottom of the St. Lawrence River when the liner RMS Empress of Ireland is accidentally rammed by a Norwegian collier. With both nation's copies of the treaty lost and the British cabinet outraged at having Canada sold off without their knowledge, Wilson orders all records of the treaty destroyed and records the $150 million payment as a war loan. Now that knowledge of the treaty has once again emerged, the President of the United States orders NUMA and Dirk Pitt to attempt to recover the copies of the treaty, which have both lain submerged for more than 70 years. The treaty becomes the cornerstone in the President’s plan to save the United States from national bankruptcy by proposing an audacious plan, to merge the United States and Canada into one nation, "the United States of Canada." The British see the loss of Canada to the United States as the start of the unacceptable and unthinkable disintegration of their Empire. If Canada is allowed to leave the Empire, so too might Australia, or even Wales and Scotland. The British Secret Intelligence Service recalls one of their best former agents, Brian Shaw, from retirement and orders him to keep an eye on the American salvage efforts and to ensure the destruction of the North American Treaty at all costs. The salvage team decides to try for the St Lawrence copy of the treaty on the grounds that this copy would have been packed in waterproof material to guard against the risk of damage on the sea voyage. Despite efforts by Shaw and hired thug Foss Gly to sabotage the project, the treaty is recovered, but it transpires that the waterproof covering was unable to withstand several decades of immersion and the document has turned to pulp. They then try to recover the Hudson copy hoping that some freak of chance will have saved it from a similar fate. The atmosphere becomes increasingly panicked as extensive searches fail to discover any trace of the wrecked train, either in the wreckage of the bridge or elsewhere in the river. Extra suspense is provided by the mystery of the "ghost train" which on stormy nights howls up the abandoned trackbed and suddenly vanishes on reaching the site of the bridge. Pitt solves this particular mystery by chance - walking along the trackbed one night the "ghost train" passes him and he sees that it is faked by means of a locomotive headlight and a PA playing locomotive sounds running along a cableway strung above the trackbed. This gives him the clue as to the whereabouts of the real train - it was in fact the victim of an elaborate scheme to rob it of a cargo of bullion. One group of robbers demolished the bridge with black powder charges, then staged a holdup of the nearest station; while one of them kept the stationmaster at gunpoint on the floor, another, who remained outside, played a gramophone record of train sounds and flashed a lantern through the windows to give the impression of a passing train, misleading the stationmaster into thinking that he had failed to prevent the train tumbling off the downed bridge. In fact another group of robbers had hijacked the train further up the line, diverted it along a disused spur into an abandoned underground quarry, and then blown up the entrance to the quarry concealing the train and allowing them to remove the heavy load of bullion at their leisure through the quarry's old ventilation tunnels. Pitt locates the quarry and discovers that the robber gang had failed to ascertain whether the ventilation tunnels were actually passable; in fact they were flooded, trapping both robbers and train passengers in the quarry to starve to death. Pitt passes through the tunnels by means of diving equipment and finds the train. Shaw, meanwhile, has mined into the quarry from above and arrives at almost the same moment. There is a fight for the possession of the treaty - which is intact - and Pitt is victorious. Pitt races desperately to deliver the treaty to the President before he delivers a crucial address in which possession of the treaty will be decisive. He makes it by the skin of his teeth. The President receives the treaty, announces that from now on Canada and the US will be united as "The United States of Canada".
3261065	/m/091yh8	The Burning City	Larry Niven		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first and last parts of the novel are set in Tep's Town, on the site of modern Los Angeles. The town consists of three classes: the Lords, the ruling class, who live in a separate area of the town; the kinless, essentially a slave class forbidden to carry weapons, descendants of a people conquered by the allied ancestors of the Lords and the Lordkin; and the Lordkin, proud, uneducated, undisciplined and indolent knife fighters organised into street gangs, who live by "gathering" whatever they wish from the kinless. The Lords supervise the kinless and placate the Lordkin. The kinless are unarmed and untrained in the use of weapons, and cannot resist the Lordkin. Some leave the town, but the surrounding vegetation is malevolent. The town is the base of a fire god, Yangin-Atep, who possesses the Lordkin every few years to burn the town down and rape any kinless woman they can catch. The main character, Whandall, is an 11 year old Lordkin boy severely beaten unto scarring and broken bones by Lordsmen (police) for associating with a Lord girl and illegally entering the segregated Lord's Hills. As an adult he becomes a product of his culture - a thief, a rapist, and a murderer, but, strangely, not without regret, not without honor, and not without the reader's sympathy. He teams up with an ex-Atlantis wizard and some kinless and they escape from the city. Beyond the city they find traders and Whandall founds a successful trading empire. Eventually, he returns to the city to establish a trade route there, and defeats Yangin-Atep. In the epilogue the authors add further information to the timeline of the described reality - long after the described events, the savage people who became the "so-called Native Americans" appear on the stage and wipe out the existing civilization, including horses (and presumably cats and wheels) in their conquest of the Americas.
3261210	/m/091ysw	Dragonquest	Anne McCaffrey	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As it opens, tensions are rising between the Oldtimers, those dragonriders who came forward in time 400 turns (Pernese years) to help the undermanned contemporary dragonriders protect the planet Pern and its inhabitants from the destructive Thread. F'nor attempts to mediate, but things escalate to the point that an Oldtimer, T'reb (who is disturbed by his green dragon being in heat), stabs F'nor. F'nor is sent to the Southern Continent to recover, where he falls in love with Brekke and discovers the wicked deeds of Weyrwoman Kylara. F'lar, F'nor's half-brother, is eventually forced into a duel with T'ron, the leader of the Oldtimers, which ends in banishment for the Oldtimers who will not accept F'lar's leadership and in a grave injury for F'lar. Brekke's queen dragon (Wirenth) rises in mating flight but is attacked by Kylara's queen dragon (Prideth), and both dragons die, leaving their riders in near-catatonic states. Only Brekke recovers, mostly because she can hear other dragons (besides her own queen, Wirenth). With the Lord Holders adamant that the dragonriders attempt to eliminate Thread at its source, F'nor attempts to direct himself and his dragon, Canth, to the Red Star, but they find the atmosphere inimicable, and they fall back to Pern, badly injured. Brekke's cry for F'nor not to leave her was also the inspiration for a song by Menolly, after she found that a certain guitar chord sounded amazingly like Brekke's voice when she screamed. This is chronicled in Dragonsinger.
3261311	/m/091z13	All the Weyrs of Pern	Anne McCaffrey	1991-09-19	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows immediately from the final scene of Renegades of Pern, in which the Admin building from Pern's first generation of colonists is discovered, along with an advanced computer called AIVAS (Artificial Intelligence Voice Address System), at the Landing site that is being excavated. AIVAS has remained undisturbed since the events of Dragonsdawn some 2500 years earlier and, in addition to holding a huge volume of stored information long since lost to the Pernese society, claims to be able to eliminate the threat of Thread forever. The Weyrs, led by Lessa and F'lar, enthusiastically embrace this possibility, and with the support of the Holds (led in particular by Jaxom) and the Crafthalls (championed by Masterharper Robinton) proceed to implement the ambitious plan under the careful guidance of AIVAS. Aivas itself had been programmed to speak with a masculine-analogue, inquisitive, somewhat humorous personality, which gave the impression of a light-hearted counsellor to the Pernese, who have no real concept of what artificial intelligence entails. Over the course of the next four years, Pernese society systematically regains much technology that was lost to the colonists in early attempts to survive Threadfall, including marvels such as electricity, plastics manufacture, heating & cooling, printing presses, and surgery. Although most technological development focuses on the tools and knowledge needed to eliminate the threat of Thread, there are huge developments in the areas of Medicine and Science, and along the way new Crafthalls are created, including the Print Hall, Paper Hall, Computer Hall, and Dolphin Hall (this last occurs in a parallel story later in the series The Dolphins of Pern). The phenomenal advancements in technology lead to a kind of culture shock, manifesting in certain traditionalist elements among the Pernese who label AIVAS an "Abomination" that is corrupting their society. This dissenting opinion results in attempts to sabotage AIVAS itself and the projects it initiates, culminating in the kidnapping of the beloved Masterharper Robinton in an attempt to ransom his life for the destruction of AIVAS. When the conspirators responsible for the kidnapping are brought to justice, two Lords Holder and a Craftmaster are among those sentenced to exile for the crime. The Weyrs, Holds, and Halls are successful in carrying out AIVAS's plan to transfer the anti-matter engines from the ships used to colonize Pern to the Red Star, and detonate them. The explosion alters the Red Star's orbit, eliminating the configuration that allowed Thread to land on Pern. AIVAS earlier reveals to Jaxom that in order for the project to succeed, he must lead the other Dragonriders into using the lesser-known Draconic capability to transfer between time to deposit two of the three engines 1800 and 600 years in the past. Only the cumulative effect of three interspersed explosions will provide sufficient force to alter the planet's orbit. Jaxom's Ruth, who has an unusually precise ability to know exactly his location in time, is the only Dragon capable of performing this feat. In parallel to the primary task to alter the Red Star's orbit, a team of medical researchers led by Masterhealers Oldive and Sharra develop an improved parasitic vector which is capable of infecting the space-born Ovoids that are the precursors to Thread. During the course of the three engine-transfer missions, Green Dragons are deployed to seed the surface of the Red Star with these infected Ovoids so that they can be dragged back to infect the Oort Cloud, which is the origin of Thread in the Pernese system. The combination of Jaxom's time travel and this infestation is responsible for the two Long Intervals in the history of Pern wherein Thread failed to appear. The book concludes with the peaceful death of Masterharper Robinton, whose health has declined since the kidnapping, and his fire-lizard Zair. "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." Thereafter AIVAS deactivates itself, presumably to prevent Pernese society from idolising the facility as an all-knowing Oracle and thereby stifling the society.
3263860	/m/092318	Description de l'Egypte				 Approximately 160 civilian scholars and scientists, many drawn from the Institut de France, collaborated on the Description. Collectively they comprised the Commission des Sciences et Arts d'Égypte. About a third of them would later also become members of the Institute of Egypt. In late August 1798, on the order of Napoleon, the Institute of Egypt (l'Institut d'Égypte) was founded in the palace of Hassan-Kashif on the outskirts of Cairo, with Gaspard Monge as president. The structure of the institute was based on the Institut de France. The institute housed a library, laboratories, workshops, and the savants' various Egyptian collections. The workshop was particularly important, supplying both the army as well as the servants with necessary equipment. Many new instruments were constructed as well, to replace those lost during the sinking of the French fleet in August 1798 at Aboukir Bay (Battle of the Nile) and the Cairo riot of October 1798. One of the goals of the Institute was to propagate knowledge. To this end, the savants published a journal, La Decade Egyptienne, as well as a newspaper, the Courier de L'Egypte, which disseminated information about the French occupation and the activities of the French army, the Commission des Sciences et Arts d'Égypte, and the Institute itself. The vision of a single comprehensive publication amalgamating all that the French discovered in Egypt was conceived already in November 1798, when Joseph Fourier was entrusted with the task of uniting the reports from the various disciplines for later publication. When the French army left Egypt in 1801, the savants took with them a large quantities of unpublished notes, drawings, and various collections of smaller artifacts that they could smuggle unnoticed past the British. In February 1802, at the instigation of Jean Antoine Chaptal, the French Minister of the Interior, and by decree of Napoleon, a commission was established to manage the preparation of the large amount of data for a single publication. The final work would draw data from the already-published journal La Decade, the newspaper Courier de L'Égypte, the four-volume Mémoires sur l'Égypte (an expansion of the La Decade journal, published by the French government during and after the Egyptian campaign) and an abundance of notes and illustrations from the various scholars and scientists. The huge volume of information to be published meant adopting an apparently haphazard modus operandi: when sufficiently many plates or text on a particular subject were ready, the information was published. Despite this, publication of the first edition took over 20 years. The first test volumes of engravings were presented to Napoleon in January 1808. Initially published by order of the emperor (Napoleon Le Grand), successive volumes would be published by order of the king, and the last simply by order of the government. A second edition (known as the Panckoucke edition) was published by Charles Louis Fleury Panckoucke. The text was expanded in more volumes and printed in a smaller formats, new pulls were taken from the plates, and these were bound with many of the large format plates folded in the smaller format volumes.
3264774	/m/03bx9v7	The Battle of Dorking	George Tomkyns Chesney		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/090ts5": "Invasion literature"}	 The story is told as a narrative by an unnamed veteran who participated in the Battle of Dorking and is recounting the final days before and during the invasion of Britain. It is addressed to his grandchildren as an event fifty years past. Beginning sometime after an event similar to the Franco-Prussian War, concerns grow with the mobilisation of armed forces near Holland. The Royal Navy is destroyed by a wonder-weapon ("fatal engines"), and an invasion force suddenly lands near Harwich, Essex, England. Demilitarisation and lack of training means that the army is forced to mobilise auxiliary units from the general public, led by ineffective and inexperienced officers. The two armies ultimately converge outside Dorking in Surrey, where the British line is cut through by the advancing enemy, and the survivors on the British side are forced to flee. The story ends with the conquest of Britain and its conversion into a heavily-taxed province of the invading empire. The British Empire is broken up, with only Gibraltar and Malta being kept by the victorious Germans. Canada and the West Indies are ceded to the United States, whilst Australia, India and Ireland are all granted independence, with Ireland entering a lengthy civil war as a direct result.
3265260	/m/0925n7	The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters	Robert Lewis Taylor	1958	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel alternates between Jaimie describing his journey by wagon train to California with commentary by his father, a Scottish doctor with an effervescent personality whose judgment is often clouded by his weakness for gambling and strong drink. The novel contains, in graphic detail, some intense Native American customs, especially rite of passage.
3266354	/m/0927y8	Miss Wyoming	Douglas Coupland	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is the story of John Johnson and Susan Colgate. It begins with a meeting between Susan and John after their yearlong absences from the world, and then progresses to tell the stories of their disappearances through flashbacks. The flashbacks have no temporal order. Each chapter is a different flashback, intermixed with chapters of temporally present plot. ; Susan Colgate : A former child pageant star, an 1980s television family daughter, a closeted rock star's wife, and a B movie actress. She was on a plane heading across the United States that crashed, but she survives without a scratch. She takes this opportunity to disappear into the night, leaving behind her identity. ; John Johnson : A decadent film producer. His life is composed of drugs and women. He dies from the flu, but his death is only temporary. While dead, he has a vision of Susan Colgate. Once revived, Johnson decides to give away his decadent lifestyle and to live on the road like Jack Kerouac. The novel tells their stories, the stories of the characters that they encounter, and the story of their lives after they meet. The novel is written in the third person.
3266629	/m/0928g0	Kinderseele	Hermann Hesse	1919-11		 One day Hermann Hesse, an eleven-year-old boy, returns from school and as nobody is at home he goes upstairs into his father’s room where he steals sugared and dried figs out of his dad’s chest of drawers. Although he has pangs of conscience and thinks a lot about his deed, he does not confess it to his father. Hermann pretends to have bought the figs at the cake shop in Calw. That is why his father punishes him by taking him there; but before entering the shop, the boy tells that he did not get them there. At home he finally admits that he stole the figs. The book ends with the phrase: “Als ich im Bett lag, hatte ich die Gewissheit, dass er mir ganz und vollkommen verziehen habe – vollkommener als ich ihm.” Hesse himself made a comment on his book in a letter to his sister Adele, in which he stated that the way described in Kinderssele was one of extremely straight psychology and love of truth.
3267292	/m/0929rm	A Hazard of New Fortunes	William Dean Howells	1890	{"/m/026llv5": "Literary realism", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book, which takes place in late 19th century New York City, tells the story of the dispute between a self-made millionaire and a social revolutionary, with a third man futilely attempting to mediate the tense situation. The main character of the novel, Basil March, is a neutral character from whose viewpoint the reader experiences much of the story. He resides in Boston with his wife and children. The March family is persuaded by March's idealistic friend Fulkerson to move to New York to help him start a new magazine, where the writers benefit in a primitive form of profit sharing. After some deliberation, the Marches move to New York and begin a rather extensive search for a perfect apartment. After many exhausting weeks of searching, Basil finally settles on an apartment full of what he and his wife refer to as "gimcrackery"--trinkets and decorations that do not appeal to their upper-middle-class tastes. Work at the new magazine, entitled Every Other Week begins. The magazine is bankrolled by a millionaire named Dryfoos, who made it rich after discovering natural gas on his farm in the Midwest, and who is now making money on Wall Street. Dryfoos' son, Conrad, becomes the business manager of the magazine. An illustrator by the name of Angus Beaton, an old friend of Fulkerson's, is chosen to head the art department. Beaton chooses Alma Leighton, for whom he has feelings, to illustrate the cover of the first issue. Berthold Lindau, an old friend of Basil March's and a veteran of the American Civil War, becomes the translator. He knows many languages, so he selects and translates Russian, French, and German stories to publish in the magazine. Lindau lost his hand in a Civil War battle, fighting for the north because he was a strong abolitionist and an idealistic American immigrant. Colonel Woodburn, a wealthy Southerner, and his daughter move to New York and become involved with the newspaper when their social circle connects with the magazine's; they board with Alma Leighton and her mother. Fulkerson decides that he would like to publish some of Colonel Woodburn's pro-slavery writings in Every Other Week, because he believes it would sell more copies of the new magazine. At a dinner banquet, the personalities of Dryfoos the capitalist, Lindau the socialist, and Colonel Woodburn the pro-slavery advocate clash. Lindau fiercely criticizes Dryfoos, expressing his harshest feelings in German to March, because he does not think anyone else at the table speaks German. Later we learn that Dryfoos speaks German, and he was insulted by Lindau's comments. In the end of the book, the New York City streetcar drivers strike. The strike, similar to the Hay Market Square Riot, turns into a riot. Conrad Dryfoos, already a humanitarian helping the poor and working class, is charmed by the lovely Margaret Vance, who shares his values of charity. She encourages Conrad to try to end the strike by telling all sides to desist. While attempting to stop a policeman from beating the aged and disabled Lindau, Conrad is fatally shot. March emerges from a streetcar to see the fallen men lying on the street next to each other. Dryfoos grieves the loss of his son. After further amputation of his already disabled arm, Lindau dies with Margaret Vance at his side. Dryfoos, who has always used money to separate himself from pain, sells the magazine to Fulkerson and March for an extremely low price and takes his remaining family to Europe.
3267449	/m/092b58	The Haj	Leon Uris			 The novel begins in 1922 with a depiction of traditional life in the Arabic village during the British Mandate of Palestine: Ibrahim al Soukori al Wahhabi asserts his inherited position as leader of the town, takes the pilgrimage to Mecca, and starts a family, but suffers humiliation in that his wife does not bear him a son before his third child. The family had settled in the area about 100 years previously, still maintains contact with their Beduin relatives, and sets great value in their traditions and values. In 1936 their youngest son, Ishmael, is born. As youngest son his expected lot in life is to become the family shepherd, but his mother Hagar protects him and helps give him opportunities to develop his skills. He seeks out continued opportunities through use of his natural resourcefulness and drive, two qualities generally lacking in his brothers. Only his sister Nada seems to share these traits with him, and they have a close bond. Traditional life is altered permanently with the establishment of a kibbutz nearby on land sold to Jewish farmers by Effendi Fawzi Kabir, a rich Palestinian "absentee landlord" who owns a great deal of land in the region, including the town of Tabah, but lives in Damascus. One of the settlers is Gideon Asch, who helps establish a tenuous but workable co-existence with the residents of Tabah through the leadership of Haj Ibrahim. Their struggles lead to reciprocal trust and eventually friendship, but these continue to be tested throughout the novel. The villagers feel compelled by the history of brave warriors in Arabic culture to destroy Kibbutz Shemesh. The villagers attack the kibbutz on its first night but are repelled. Haj Ibrahim secretly acknowledges this failure, which he expected. But his defeated villagers come back to Tabah proudly proclaiming that they killed many Jews, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. Haj Ibrahim gradually develops a personal friendship with Gideon Asch, and he even visits the kibbutz from time to time. But Ibrahim's tolerance of and even friendship with Jews does not fit in with the general mood during the 1930s and 1940s. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni whips up emotions against the Jews with his fiery speeches. The Egypt-supported Muslim Brotherhood, as represented by Mr. Salmi, Ishmael’s school teacher, infuses their classrooms with hatred of Jews. Radio broadcasts in the village coffeehouse heard on the radio given to the villagers by the kibbutz (along with the electricity to run it) promise the Arab locals revenge against the Jews. And Transjordan’s well-trained Arab Legion stands ready to move in and claim the land in the name of a Greater Syria for King Abdullah I. Against the background of the United Nations General Assembly passage of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181) on 29 November 1947, Haj Ibrahim is summoned to Damascus to talk with Effendi Fawzi Kabir at his luxurious home. Also at the meeting are Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni and General Fawzi Al-Qawuqji, who Haj Ibrahim has made an enemy of when he repulsed his attempt to overtake the village of Tabah as a strategic military position. The three try to convince Ibrahim that as leader of his people, he should evacuate Tabah, and they give him promise of financial support. He is wary of their offer, and makes no firm promise. Al-Qawuqji expresses his lust for revenge against Ibrahim after the Haj has left the meeting. Tensions in the village rise to fever pitch as a result of the Battle of Deir Yassin, and Haj Ibrahim can no longer keep his followers from abandoning Tabah; he leads them to Jaffa, where he plans to hire a boat to take them to the Gaza Strip. They find themselves in the Manshiya neightborhood with little money, caught between Al-Qawuqji’s troops and the rival Jewish forces, Haganah and Irgun. Haj Ibrahim and a business contact in Jaffa, Bassam el Bassam, manage to strike a deal with a Greek Cypriot ship owner, but Ibrahim and family are unable to meet the boat on account of pursuit by Al-Qawuqji, and hide in St. Peter’s Church. Ishmael is able to reach Gideon Asch, who had offered the family help in a crisis, if ever they need it. Asch helps them escape to Tulkarm in Samaria on the West Bank, in the triangle which includes Jenin and Nablus. While in Jaffa, al-Qawuqji's men search for and discover the family's women, whom they summarily gang-rape. Ishmael witnesses the rape of his mother, stepmother, and sister-in-law, but does not tell his father until the book's climax. The family continues on to Nablus where they are able to live more reasonably, and eventually Ibrahim contacts Clovis Bakshir, the city’s mayor. Bakshir introduces Ibrahim to Farid Zyyad, who is undercover at the meeting, but who is actually a colonel in Abdullah’s Arab Legion. The two try to persuade Ibrahim to give his support to their political aims, but Ibrahim maintains his distance. While accepting the gifts they offer him, Ibrahim plans an escape for the family from Nablus to a cave in the desert around Qumran by the Dead Sea. They enlarge their family group with teenager Sabri Salama, a clever auto mechanic who helps keep their stolen truck in operating condition for the journey, and sees to it that it can be sold afterwards. Life in the desert is difficult at times, but also satisfying to the family as it gave them a chance to find strength in their isolation and in their desert traditions. However as the weather worsens during early 1949 they abandon their cave in Qumran and wander further to Jericho where they settle into refugee camp Aqabat Jaber at the foot of the supposed Mount of Temptation. In Jericho they make contact with a disfigured archeologist, Dr. Nuri Mudhil, in the hope of using him to make contact with their old friend Gideon Asch. They guess correctly that he has contact with Jews in Jerusalem, and they are able not only to contact Asch but also to arrange a sale of some valuable artifacts they had found in Qumran. Asch encourages Ibrahim to become involved as a moderating representative of the refugees in the conferences being arranged to discuss the Palestinian situation. He travels to Amman where he meets like-minded moderates, Charles Maan, a Palestinian Christian, and Sheik Ahmed Taji, who like Ibrahim are willing to negotiate with the new State of Israel for the return of Palestinians to their homes. They arrange an alternative conference in Bethlehem, where they manage to pass a resolution whereby they would represent the plight of the Palestinians at an international commission in Zurich later that year. The conference ends in disaster when Zyyad’s Arab Legion makes a mass arrest of the three ringleaders and the youth gang members they brought to protect the conference building, one of these being Ibrahim’s son, Jamil. In spite of threats against his son by Arab leaders threatened by his moderate pragmatism, Ibrahim travels to Zurich along with Maan and Taji. Their participation credentials are constantly challenged by the rest of the Arabs at the conference, and the commission’s committee work is stifling and unproductive. Charles Maan negotiates with the Vatican for a modest low-key solution that would return many Christian Palestinians to their homes, and Sheik Taji is bought off by the opulent Fawzi Kabir, who represents a Saudi Arabian prince in Zurich. Ibrahim gives up hope for a solution at the Zurich conference, revenges himself on Kabir, and returns to the refugee camp to face the dissolution of his life, traditions and values, the murder of his son Jamil, continued disappointment by Arab national leaders, his family’s loss of respect for him, his community’s passivity and inability to face reality. He brutally takes the life of his daughter, Nada, after she dishonors him by cursing him and telling him that she is no longer a virgin, the biggest possible disgrace to an Arab father. Ishmael becomes crazy after this, and "talks his father to death." (Ibrahim dies of a heart attack after his son graphically informs him of the gang rape in Jaffa.) The novel ends with Ishmael going insane and becoming delusional.
3267728	/m/092brn	No Promises in the Wind	Irene Hunt	1970-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Josh's main talent lies in the piano, having been taught by his mother. He and his friend Howie were praised by their teacher, Miss Crowne. However, while living with the continuous ridiculing and temper of his father, he sets upon the decision to leave Chicago and find a living on his own. His mother, Mary, supports his decision against her will, realizing that Josh's conflicts with his dad, Stefan, and their entire family's lack of food would eventually lead to deeper problems. Despite Josh's reluctance to accept Joey, Howie convinces Josh to bring him along, which later turns out to be a good decision. With the hope that their musical talents could earn them a living, they set out. Howie brought his banjo, and Joey was a great singer. On the first day, Joey's singing combined with Howie's talented playing allowed the trio to gain 78 cents. Josh realizes Joey's importance and no longer regrets bringing him along. However, while trying to get to Nebraska by riding on a freight train, a tragedy fell upon the trio. Howie, while running alongside a train which the brothers had already boarded, was struck by a train coming from the opposite direction. Though quite grieved, Josh and Joey continued, even declining the hospitality of a kind man. The two managed to survive by begging, despite Josh's humiliation at doing such a thing. Finally, in a stroke of luck, the two received the warmth of a woman who persuades Joey to write home to their mother. They also become acquainted with Lon Bromer a.k.a. Lonnie, a truck driver. Lonnie lost a child named David who would be as old as Josh, if he were alive. Lonnie brought the brothers to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There, Josh and Joey received a job at a carnival run by Pete Harris. Lon leaves the two with his address and they promise that they would write to him. At the carnival, Josh befriends a dwarf named Edward C., who helps Josh by introducing him to the other carnival people. Josh took a special interest in a clown named Emily. Josh finds Emily extremely attractive despite the differences in their ages; he was 15 years old and she was 30. Josh felt certain desires towards her, and accompanied her whenever possible. When he discovered that Emily was engaged to Pete Harris, he almost completely throws away any relations with her. They later reconcile. Unfortunately, the carnival burns down, so Josh and Joey leave Baton Rouge with $18 Josh saved up and $2 that Pete Harris gives them. The pair ends up traveling with a bootlegger named Charley, who is transporting beer in his car. Charley gives Josh a $20 bill in exchange for his smaller bills. Josh passes a store that sells shoes and he goes in, planning to buy some overshoes for Joey. He tries to pay for the $1.50 shoes with the twenty dollar bill, but the shopkeeper takes all of it, instead of giving him the change. Once the money is gone the two then resorted to begging again. One of the women they meet at first refuses to help them, but then changes her mind out of guilt and invites the two to have soup. Joey repays her the next day by offering her half of a loaf of bread he had gained while begging. Furious at Joey for giving away their hard-earned food, and hampered by his own sickness of pneumonia, Josh strikes Joey. Joey vows to leave him, and indeed does leave, taking along Howie's banjo. When Josh is unable to find him, he falls unconscious from the cold and sickness. He is discovered with Lonnie's contact information in his wallet. When Josh wakes up, he finds himself at Lonnie's home in Omaha, Nebraska. Josh discovers that Joey has not been found, and describes to Lonnie what happened. Josh also meets Janey, Lonnie's niece. The two soon become fond of each other and fall in love. Josh finds renewed hope in the new President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lonnie, worried about Joey and sends postcards to Mary and Emily. When Mary responded, Josh was surprised that Stefan is having sleepless nights over Josh and Joey. Joey is found after being described in a radio announcement and a happy reunion occurs. They find a new job working at a restaurant as a pianist and singer, and immediately become popular, despite Joey's occasional offtune singing. Josh and Janey part ways, leaving sorrow in their hearts. Josh and Joey return to Chicago and back to their father, who, surprisingly, comes to meet them at the train station and breaks down into tears, after which Josh notices he and his dad share many things in common.
3269646	/m/092fq8	Burning Tower	Jerry Pournelle	2005-02-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The three main characters are Sandry, a Lord of Tep's Town, Sandry's cousin Regapisk, also a Lord, and Burning Tower, a daughter of Whandall, the main character of the previous book. Regapisk is an incompetent Lord and his family arrange for him to be shanghaied to become an oarsman on a coastal ship. Sandry and Burning Tower are romantically linked throughout the book. Large flightless birds attack trading caravans, but Sandry fights them off. He is sent by the Lords with the caravan, of which Burning Tower is also a part, to discover the source of the birds. They travel to the southern city of Condigeo and then to Crescent City, defeating terror bird attacks along the way. In Crescent City, they are joined by Regapisk, who has escaped from his ship. The three of them travel on to the high-magic city of Aztlan, where Regapisk redeems himself. The authors researched Aztec culture for the book, and many aspects of the culture depicted in the book are based on that research. This is explained in a brief note at the end of the book. Also mentioned is that within the described timeline, the terror birds continued to exist until long after humans spread through the Americas; this is based on the North American phorusrhacid Titanis walleri (but see McFadden et al. 2007).
3269932	/m/092g3t	Warday	Whitley Strieber	1984	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with Strieber's account of a nuclear attack on New York City in October 1988. He is on a bus when he experiences the initial blast. Strieber also witnesses the flooding of the subway system due to a tsunami that was triggered by a nuclear detonation at sea. Strieber makes his way to his son's school, where he is reunited with his family and shelters there. During this period, Strieber survives an attack of radiation sickness. Upon his recovery, he and his family leave New York for San Antonio which they soon discover was destroyed as well. They eventually settle in Dallas, where he becomes a news reporter for the Dallas Times Herald. Five years later, Strieber and Kunetka decide to document the effects of Warday on the United States. They travel through devastated southeastern and southwestern Texas, then the newly formed nation-state of Aztlan in the former American Southwest, and conduct interviews with the Aztlanian foreign minister and citizens. From Aztlan, they sneak into California which was unattacked and became a self-governing, authoritarian, police state. In Los Angeles, they conduct interviews while trying to evade the omnipresent police. They go to San Francisco where they reunite with an old friend of Streiber's, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and are ultimately captured, arrested, and sentenced to years of hard labor and imprisonment. While en route to prison they escape, and flee California by train. By train, they travel and conduct interviews across the Midwest, taking refuge whenever highly radioactive duststorms&mdash;caused by dustbowl conditions as a result of the nuclear bombings of the Dakotas&mdash;happen. After visiting Chicago, they continue east into Pennsylvania and into what remains of New York City, where Strieber, overcome with emotion and at great personal risk to himself, visits what remains of a very dangerous Manhattan to visit his old apartment. The book ends with Strieber and Kunetka back in Texas facing an uncertain future.
3271148	/m/092hyy	The Power of Sympathy				 The opening letters between Harrington and Worthy reveal that Harrington has fallen for Harriot, despite the reservations of his father. Harriot resists Harrington's initial advances, as he intends to make her his mistress; readers also find that Worthy encourages Harrington to abandon his licentious motives in favor of properly courting Harriot. However, when Harrington and Harriot become engaged, Mrs. Holmes becomes alarmed and exposes a deep family secret to Myra: Harriot is in fact Harrington and Myra’s illegitimate sister. Mr. Harrington's one time affair with Maria Fawcet resulted in Harriot's birth, which had to be kept a secret to maintain the family’s honor. Thus, Eliza’s mother-in-law, the late Mrs. Holmes, took Maria, thomas and Harriot into her home. After Maria’s death, Harriot was raised by a family friend, Mrs. Francis. Upon receiving the news of this family secret, Harriot and Harrington are devastated, as their relationship is incestuous and thus forbidden. Harriot falls into a grief-stricken consumption, a condition now referred to as tuberculosis, from which she is unable to recover. Harrington spirals into a deep depression and commits suicide after learning of Harriot's death.
3271344	/m/092j65	Tool of the Trade			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the waning years of the Cold War, Nicholas Foley, a Soviet sleeper agent and a survivor of the World War II siege of Leningrad, is a scientist and technological genius quietly working in American academia. He develops an ultrasonic gadget with which he can indetectably control the minds of others. His wife knows his secrets, but loves him too much to turn him over to Federal authorities. When both the Americans and the Soviets find out what Foley has invented, his wife is kidnapped, and he is forced to flee the CIA and the KGB. He must save his wife, elude capture in a massive manhunt and, at a summit meeting between the President of the United States and the Soviet premier, make a daring masterstroke for peace in our time, and for all time. fr:Hypnose (roman)
3271870	/m/092k8j	The Story of an African Farm				 The first section of the book deals with the lives of protagonists as children and teenagers. It reveals some of the events that proved formative in the life of the children. Waldo is initially presented as a deeply devout Christian, a philosophy he appears to have inherited from his widower father Otto, the kindly German farm-keeper. As the narrative progresses, Waldo becomes increasingly disillusioned with his faith, a crisis brought on by a series of traumatic events, as well as his growing interest in wider philosophical works. Lyndall has no such qualms. Apparently a freethinker, she seems uninterested in religion as a whole. Instead, her focus is more on the status of women in the late nineteenth century. A seeker after knowledge and autonomy, she is frustrated by the limited choices offered to her as a woman. Lyndall is a skeptic by nature, a strong-willed and independent child who does not hesitate to disobey even her adult supervisors whenever she deems them unworthy of respect. Em, the stepdaughter of Tant (Aunt) Sannie and cousin to Lyndall is presented as a cheerful, friendly but somewhat ignorant child. Em serves as a character foil to Waldo and Lyndall; she is content to believe whatever she is told by the adults in her life. Em often becomes the scapegoat for Lyndall's rebellion. The Englishman Bonaparte Blenkins is an inveterate liar and confidence trickster. He arrives at the farm spinning a tale of woe, presenting himself as a successful businessman who has fallen on hard times. Tant Sannie reluctantly agrees to allow Bonaparte to remain on the farm, under the care of Otto. Bonaparte welcomes the opportunity - he is, after all, only interested in winning the heart of Tant Sannie, and thereby her farm. Bonaparte's cruelty towards the children borders on sadism. He is especially hard on Waldo whom he seems to despise. Bonaparte's actions towards Waldo provide a number of the events that lead to his crisis of faith. On the other hand, Bonaparte appears to be unsure of Lyndall, and even somewhat cowed. When Lyndall directly confronts Bonaparte regarding one of his many lies, he punishes Em in Lyndall's place. Bonaparte's true intentions and chicanery are eventually discovered, and Tant Sannie ejects him from the farm. Otto, the German farm-keeper and Waldo's father, is a deeply religious person. He is unceasing in his efforts to convert the native farm workers, much to their amusement. Otto is gregarious, compassionate and friendly, unwilling to think ill of anyone. He even defends Bonaparte on more than one occasion. Bonaparte repays him by contriving to have Tant Sannie terminate Otto's employment as the farm-keeper. Bonaparte succeeds, but Otto succumbs to a heart attack and dies before leaving the farm. Although technically the first chapter of Part II of the book, 'Times and Seasons' differs in style and narrative from those that surround it. This section deals with Waldo - his name appears just once in the chapter - in the first sentence. 'Times and Seasons' follows the journey of faith from infancy through adulthood. Although ostensibly revolving around Waldo, the frequent use of plural pronouns may indicate that the author is including herself in Waldo's journey, making this section the most personal of the book. The first year, infancy, is marked by an innominate thirst for something to worship and a wonder at the beauty of nature. This is followed by the beginnings of a coalescence of dogma - Angels - but the wonder at the beauty of nature remains and indeed appears to increase. The next section is marked by a specific age - seven years old. The Bible has become the primary focus, and it is read avidly. New concepts are found in its pages. These are brought to the attention of adults, who appear uninterested. At the same time, the beginnings of doubt begin to creep in. Questions are answered in a diffident manner, and the answers reluctantly accepted. Two years pass, and in that time the natural world recedes, to be replaced by a bittersweet relationship with God and the Bible. The concept of Hell looms ever larger; doubt in the form of the Devil assails the child. He asks difficult questions - and the superifcial answers of the supposedly wise adults no longer suffice. And yet at the same time, a sense of ineffable peace, the feeling of sins forgiven is felt. But this feeling does not endure - before long, the Devil again appears with snide questions and the threat of Hell and Damnation looms again. And so the cycle continues - alternating doubt and serenity. There is no indication of how much time has passed, but the next section finds the child apparently at ease with a Universalist concept of God. There is no threat of wrath, no Hell, no Damnation. The 'Mighty Heart' loves all its children, regardless. The old, questioning Devil has been silenced. The dream cannot continue - reality rudely awakens the dreamer. He sees the World as it really is, unjust, evil - no evidence of a supernal, all-consuming love. As a consequence, the one-time believer becomes the Atheist. An allusion is made here to the grave of a loved one - whether this refers to Otto or Lyndall (or both) is not clear. The Realist now goes through life uncaring, finding some measure of peace in manual labour and the Sciences. The wonder and beauty of Nature again reasserts itself, greatly increased. The rationalist becomes enamoured with the natural world, taking delight in its many mysteries and revelations. In a sense, the old worship of musty religion is replaced by a new and vital worship of nature in all its intricacy. With this worship comes the realization that all is interconnected, and the section ends with Waldo beginning to live again, at ease with his new world and his place in it. The third section of the book (technically the second chapter of Part II) opens with Waldo on the farm, making a wood-carving. Contextual clues place the time somewhere after the end of Chapter 1 ('Times and Seasons'), when Waldo has entered his rational-universalist phase and appears to be content. Em (who is said to be sixteen years old) visits Waldo with tea and cakes, and announces that the new farm-keeper has arrived, an Englishman (the book later reveals) by the name of Gregory Rose. Sometime after she leaves, a stranger on horseback appears and converses with Waldo. After inquiring about the nature and meaning of Waldo's carving, the stranger relates the Hunter's Allegory. The Hunter's Allegory is somewhat similar to 'Times and Seasons' in theme, tracing the journey from blind superstition to the painful search for Truth, this time using the literary device of Allegory. Once done with his tale, the stranger leaves after handing Waldo an unnamed book of Philosophy. This is followed by a recounting of a letter which the new Farm-Keeper, Gregory Rose writes to his sister. From the contents of the letter, Rose is revealed as something of an arrogant misogynist, believing himself destined for higher things than farming, but denied his calling by circumstances beyond himself. Gregory also reveals that he fas fallen in love with Em, and intends to marry her. Upon taking the letter to the farm, Gregory proposes and Em, after some misgivings, accepts. Em also reveals that Lyndall will be returning from Finishing School in six months time, and is eager to introduce Gregory to her cousin. The following chapter picks up with Lyndall having returned from boarding-school. Em shares her news, but is surprised to discover that Lyndall seems unmoved, even pitying. A little later, Lyndall accompanies Waldo as he performs his chores about the farm. It is here that Schreiner inserts something of a Feminist Manifesto - she discourses at length upon her experiences at school, and rails at the limited status that Society expects of her as a Woman. Waldo is her foil - he asks trenchant questions of her which lead to still further expositions. With some irony, Lyndall ends her diatribe with the observation that Waldo is the only person with whom she can converse - others simply bore her. With Tant Sannie engaged to yet another husband, a Boer-wedding is planned. Gregory takes some time off to write another letter, in which he apparently denigrates Lyndall and her independent ways. From the tone of the letter, however, it is clear that Gregory somehow finds Lyndall fascinating. At the Wedding, Gregory contrives excuses to be near Lyndall, she acknowledges him, but appears diffident. It is evident that Gregory is now deeply infatuated with Lyndall. For her part, when Lyndall finds herself in need of company, she seeks out Waldo and again converses with him beneath the stars. However, when Gregory offers to take her back to the farm, she unexpectedly accepts his invitation. Waldo drives Em home, where, we are told, she sits in the dark. Some time passes, and Waldo has decided to leave the farm to find work. Em says her goodbyes, and then seeks out Gregory. She finds him at his usual occupation: with Lyndall, pretending to read a newspaper. Lyndall hardly acknowledges him. Once Lyndall leaves, Em tells Gregory that she wants to end their engagement. Gregory half-heartedly attempts to change her mind, but quickly agrees. He leaves Em, whistling to himself. It is Lyndall's turn to bid farewell to Waldo. She tells him that she will never forget him, and muses upon what they may have become when they are reunited. Waldo leaves the farm; Lyndall watches him go until he is out of sight. The next vignette finds Gregory Rose wandering the farm. It is clear that he is trying to find Lyndall, but is taking great pains to appear nonchalant. Having located Lyndall, he attempts to strike up a conversation, akin to the discourses that Lyndall and Waldo would share. Lyndall answers him, but it is clear that she is subtly mocking Gregory. After enduring no small amount of verbal abuse, Gregory confesses that he loves Lyndall, and would like nothing more than to serve only her, expecting nothing in return. Lyndall agrees to marry him, if he promises to remember his vow - he is to serve her completely, with no expectations of anything in return. From Gregory, Lyndall wants only his name - nothing else. The once-proud Gregory Rose has been shattered against the force of Lyndall's will. The following chapter reveals some of Lyndall's motivations. A stranger has come to the farm - Lyndall suggests that he be put up in Otto's old cabin for the night. The man is, in fact, Lyndall's lover, who has come in answer to a letter that she sent to him stating that she intends to marry Gregory Rose. She refuses the offer of marriage from her lover because, she explains, she does not consider him to be a fool, as she does Gregory. She fears losing herself if she were to marry the stronger man, whereas a marriage to Gregory Rose would leave her autonomy intact. It is here that the author hints that some other matter may be pressing—it is explicit in later parts of the story: Lyndall is pregnant. Lyndall then offers her paramour an alternative - she will leave the farm in his company, that very night, on the condition that he releases her whenever she asks. They plan to go to the Transvaal. Lyndall returns to her room to gather her belongings. On the way there, she stops at Otto's grave to bid him farewell. It is here that she reveals that she is tired and lonely - aching for something to love. After much weeping, she returns to her room and prepares to leave the farm forever. Time passes: Gregory is performing chores about the farm. He is a broken man - meekly accepting whatever menial work Em assigns to him. While cleaning out the loft, he comes across a chest of women's clothing. He surreptitiously tries on one of the dresses and a kapje (hooded bonnet). He appears to reach some sort of decision. Gregory descends from the loft, finds Em and tells her that he can no longer live on the farm - everything reminds him of Lyndall. He states that will search for her, whatever it may take. Gregory is under no illusions. He is fully aware that Lyndall would more than likely throw him aside should he find her. He wants only to see her again; to stand where she once stood. Gregory leaves the farm. Seven months later, Em is startled when Waldo returns without warning one windy night, some eighteen months after he had left. While Em prepares a meal for Waldo, he begins to write a letter to Lyndall. He tells of his experiences and changes that he has undergone in his travels. Waldo continues to write throughout the night, until Em awakes and stops him. Em explains that Waldo cannot write any longer: Lyndall is dead. Some time later, Gregory returns to the farm, alone. He relates his tale to Em. At first, the search was without difficulty, from Bloemfontein and North to the Transvaal, from farm to farm he traced the path left by Lyndall and her lover. Eventually, however, the trail runs cold - it has not occurred to Gregory that Lyndall and her stranger may have parted ways. Unwilling to give up, Gregory travels from hotel to hotel, always without success. Nearing the end of his options, he finds himself at yet another unnamed hotel. He overhears a conversation between the landlady and a Mozambiquian nurse. The Nurse must leave - her husband wants her back home. The landlady frets that 'the lady' is still unwell. While watching the half-closed door of the patient, Gregory catches a glimpse of Doss - Waldo's dog which he bequeathed to Lyndall. Asking the landlady for more information, Gregory is told that a young, delicate lady arrived at the hotel six months earlier. A few days after her arrival, she gave birth, but the infant died less than two hours later. The Mother, herself extremely weak, sat near the grave in the cold rain for hours. When she retired to her bed, the hotel doctor declared that she would never again rise from it. Gregory hatches a plan. Fetching his belongings, he changes into a dress and a kapje. He shaves himself. Later that day, he returns to the hotel, hoping that the landlady will not recognise him. She does not. Gregory tells her that he is a nurse looking for work. The landlady leads him into the room where he finds Lyndall and Doss. Lyndall agrees that Gregory will be her new nurse. She is very weak. While Gregory watches over Lyndall, she grows weaker by the day. Although she makes a few half-hearted attempts to eat, or read or leave her bedroom, she never quite manages to shake off the pain that plagues her. Eventually, Gregory and Lyndall agree to return to the farm. Gregory makes the arrangements, although he knows that Lyndall will not survive the journey. His fears are realised: a few days into the journey, Lyndall wakes one night to find that the fog has lifted from her mind. She sees clearly for the first time. She knows what is about to happen to her. There, under the stars with her eyes fixed on her reflection in a hand-mirror, Lyndall dies. The news devastates Waldo. Throughout the following night, he searches desperately for some philosophy, some tenet of some religion that will assure him that he and Lyndall will one day be reunited. He can find none - none but the cold, unsatisfying realisation that both he and Lyndall will one day be absorbed into the great universal whole from which they sprang. With this he must be content. The final vignette takes place at some unspecified point after Gregory's return. Tant Sannie is visiting the farm with her new husband and baby. She relates that she almost caught hold of Bonaparte while attending Church, but the shyster slipped from her fingers. Gregory sits outside, absorbed in his own pain. In a leather bag hung around his neck, he carries the only letter that Lyndall ever wrote to him, just four words: 'You must marry Em.' After Tant Sannie leaves, Em visits Waldo - he is in his old cabin, building a table for Em. She tells him that she and Gregory are to be married. She leaves Waldo to his work. Waldo packs away his tools for the day, and goes outside to sit in the sunshine. He carries one of Lyndall's old dancing-slippers in his breast pocket. He appears to be content, once again aware of the wide plains that surround him, and the warmth of the sun on his hands. Em finds him there, hat drawn low, apparently asleep. She leaves a glass of milk for him, thinking that he will be glad to find it when he awakes. But Waldo will not wake again.
3274799	/m/092rp8	The Black Swan	Mercedes Lackey	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Odile von Rothbart is a young sorceress in training under her father's tutelage. She adores and respects him, at least in part because he has taught her that women are meant to be loyal to men. Living in the gardens is the "flock;" the group of young women Rothbart has ensorceled because they were unfaithful to their husbands or fathers. They are under a curse which compels them to become swans by day and women only during moonlit hours. The most beautiful and noble of these is Princess Odette, the Queen of Swans. Odile is restless because her father seldom praises her, even though (or perhaps because) she is growing to be his equal in magic. She has never seen much of the world outside her father's estate, but she knows she would like the company of other people. She has no interest in the swans because they seem to lack her intelligence, and because Rothbart has taught her to despise them. When Odette openly defies Rothbart, challenging him to give a convincing reason for his punishment of the flock, he offers her a deal; if she can capture and hold the loyalty of a man for an entire month, the curse which keeps the flock captive will be broken. A condition of the deal is that the young man must know exactly what Odette had done (refused the engagement her father had set for her and run away with a member of the court) and still pledge his loyalty to her. Rothbart then leads the flock, plus Odile, on a long journey to Siegfried's kingdom. In the secondary plot, Queen Clothilde is a competent but ruthless woman acting as regent for Siegfried. She does not want to surrender power to her son when he turns 18; an event mere months away. She plans a birthday celebration for him at which six beautiful princesses, all prospective brides, will attend, hoping to distract him from his kingship. Clothilde secretly hopes to kill Siegfried and either take the throne in right or continue as regent for a grandchild. She is aided in her scheme by Uwe, her minstrel and former lover. Siegfried himself is a womanizer and a scoundrel, but a religious experience convinces him to change his ways. Clothilde is dismayed, since the reformed Siegfried is winning the respect of her court. Baron Rothbart pays a visit to Clothilde and requests that his own daughter be allowed to attend the festival as a potential bride. She agrees, tempted by the prospect of having a sorcerer readily at hand. The flock arrives at a small lake. Odile, who has largely been in charge of their care, is getting to know the swan maidens and feels some sympathy for them. She wants Odette to succeed because she thinks she and her father would have more freedom to travel if the swan-maidens were no longer their burden. Siegfried, sent out hunting by his mother in search of swans, encounters Odette, and it is love at first sight. His friend Benno, returning to the lake by daylight to investigate, is quickly dismissed by Odile. When both men return to the lake at night, Odette is able to allay their suspicions that she is some sort of witch. She tells Siegfried why she has been cursed, and he agrees to marry her and thus break the curse. Happily, Odile tells her father that Odette has fulfilled her part of the bargain. The next day is the day of the fête where Siegfried will choose his bride. Odette leaves the flock in the morning to find him. Rothbart and Odile also attend, Odile having little idea what to expect. Her father casts a spell on her which makes her look like Odette and controls her with more magic, keeping her from warning Siegfried. The Prince declares his desire to marry "the daughter of Baron Rothbart," which breaks the vow he made to Odette. Worst of all, Odette arrives just in time to witness this. She flees, Siegfried follows, and Odile runs after them both. Rothbart reveals that his aim the entire time has been to deliver judgment on Clothilde, since he knew she was plotting to kill her own son. He brings part of the Great Hall down on her and Uwe, who lives just long enough to reveal the plot to Benno and the court. At the lake, Rothbart taunts Siegfried and Odette, while Odile watches from concealment. At a crucial moment, she kills him with his own dagger, then rescues Odette and Siegfried, who have jumped into the lake to drown together rather than be separated. When the sun rises, the girls remain girls, indicating that Rothbart's spell has died with him. Odette marries Siegfried and gives Odile a position on her council. Odile and Benno appear to be falling in love.
3276363	/m/092w2q	Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader	James Luceno		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader begins in the final hours of the Clone Wars, just before the implementation of Order 66 as depicted in Revenge of the Sith. When a contingent of clone troopers on the planet Murkhana refuses to open fire on Jedi Masters Roan Shryne and Bol Chatak, along with Padawan Olee Starstone, the Jedi with whom it has fought alongside during the war, Emperor Palpatine orders Vader to investigate the matter. Vader's query soon becomes a hunt for the fugitive Jedi, and takes him back to Coruscant, and from there on to Alderaan and Kashyyyk. During the course of Vader's search the whereabouts of several other characters from Episode III, including Bail Organa, R2-D2 and C-3PO, Chewbacca, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. The beginnings of Vader's partnership with Grand Moff Tarkin are also shown. Luceno devotes much of Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader to the internal conflict that Darth Vader undergoes as he tries to shed his former identity of Anakin Skywalker and relearn to master The Force. Palpatine intends for these early missions that he sends Vader on to be as much about learning what it means to be a Sith as they are about consolidating the rule of the nascent Empire. The final chapters of Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader depict the beginning of the Imperial enslavement of the Wookiees of Kashyyyk, an act that will eventually lead to the partnership between Han Solo and Chewbacca. The novel ends with Obi-Wan Kenobi learning of Vader's survival after their duel on Mustafar (depicted in Revenge of the Sith). Fearing for the infant Luke Skywalker's safety, he communes with the spirit of Qui-Gon Jinn, who tells him that Darth Vader will never return to Tatooine; as Qui-Gon explains, the planet is the whole of everything that was Anakin Skywalker, someone Vader wants to forget forever. It is revealed that the general public of the galaxy believes that Anakin Skywalker perished in the attack on the Jedi Temple (which, ironically, Skywalker led as Darth Vader).
3280309	/m/0930ms	Signal to Noise	Eric S. Nylund	1998	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel follows Jack Potter, a computer cryptographer tenured at the fictional Academe of Pure and Applied Sciences in Santa Sierra, California (a city assembled from the ruins of San Francisco.) The story details Jack's first encounter with an alien calling himself Wheeler who apparently wishes to trade information with humanity. Accompanied (for a while) by "gene witch" Zero al Qaseem and data paleontologist Isabel Mirabeau, Jack establishes a corporation based around one of the technologies he was traded by Wheeler, but soon finds that there may be more to his dealings with the alien than he bargained for. Traitorous alliances, deceitful propaganda, and shady business practices are frequent elements of the novel.
3280531	/m/093179	The Yacoubian Building	ʻAlāʼ Aswānī		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel described the Yacoubian Building as one of the most luxurious and prestigious apartment blocks in Cairo following its construction by Armenian businessman Hagop Yacoubian in 1934, with government ministers, wealthy manufacturers, and foreigners residing or working out of offices there. After the revolution in 1952, which overthrew King Farouk and gave power to Gamal Abdel Nasser, many of the rich foreigners, as well as native landowners and businessmen, who had lived at the Yacoubian fled the country. Each vacated apartment was then occupied by a military officer and his family, who were often of a more rural background and lower social caste than the previous residents. On the roof of the ten-story building are fifty small rooms (one for each apartment), no more than two meters by two meters in area, which were originally used as storage areas and not as living quarters for human beings, but after wealthy residents began moving from downtown Cairo to suburbs such as Medinet Nasr and El Mohandiseen in the 1970s, the rooms were gradually taken over by overwhelmingly poor migrants from the Egyptian countryside, arriving in Cairo in the hopes of finding employment. The rooftop community, effectively a slum neighborhood, is symbolic of the urbanization of Egypt and of the burgeoning population growth in its large cities in recent decades, especially among the poor and working classes.
3281207	/m/0932q8	Prentice Alvin	Orson Scott Card	1989	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After being released from his time with Ta-Kumsaw, an Indian leader who taught Alvin the ways of Indian people, the young boy sets out to start his apprenticeship as a Smith in the town where he was born. While there he meets a young half-black boy by the name of Arthur Stuart, the son of a slave and a slave-owner who has been adopted by the owners of the local guesthouse. Another new friend comes in the form of Miss Margaret Larner, who he later discovers to be the "torch" who helped him to be born so many years ago, and with whom he has been strangely linked since that day. Eventually, Alvin is forced into helping Arthur to escape some slave-hunters, something that requires him to slightly change Arthur's DNA enough to prevent the hunters' knacks from identifying the runaway child. Alvin also creates a plow of living gold, which is bestowed with magical properties, as his journeyman piece to release himself from his apprenticeship as a Smith (and also as a Maker). The story ends with Alvin and Arthur leaving the town and returning to Alvin's home in the west.
3284270	/m/0938k5	The Assistant	Bernard Malamud	1957	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Morris Bober, the 60-year-old proprietor of an old-fashioned grocery store, faces destitution as his customers abandon him in favor of more modernized shops. The situation is aggravated late one night when he's held up at gunpoint in his deserted store by a pair of masked thugs. The gunman beats him, leaving Bober with a debilitating head injury. Just at this time, Frank Alpine makes his appearance: a 25-year-old vagrant from the West Coast, raised in an orphanage after his father abandoned him. Leaving an abusive foster home to live as a drifter, he makes his way East in hopes of finding opportunities to turn his life around. (Later he berates himself for having had many opportunities but inevitably doing something to botch them.) Frank begins to haunt Morris' store and offers to work without pay as his assistant, claiming that this will give him experience he can use in a future job search. The grocer, weakened by the assault and trying to recuperate without benefit of medical care, accepts and arranges for him to have room and board with the upstairs tenants, a young Italian-American couple, and provides him some pocket money. Only at this point is it revealed to the reader that Frank was the accomplice to the gunman in the holdup. Frank works industriously to improve the store's upkeep, and his attentive service wins customers. The resulting increased income is being supplemented by Frank's surreptitiously returning, in discreet amounts, his share of the holdup take. Simultaneously, however, he begins pilfering from the till. He justifies this to himself by claiming it as recompense for his contribution to the store's improved situation, and keeps an account of his petty theft with the intention of eventually returning it all. Morris and his wife Ida, the latter particularly uncomfortable with the gentile's presence, attribute the improvement to the customers' "preferring one of their own," and Morris insists on offering Frank more money. During lulls in the work day the men's conversations touch upon philosophical and personal matters, and Frank privately struggles with his own ethical quandary. While Morris is notably tolerant of others, Ida is worried by the young Italyeners proximity to the couple's 23-year-old daughter, Helen, single and living at home. Helen is courted by the sons of the only other two Jews in the neighborhood, both young men with good financial prospects, but her dreams of a better life include true love. She also aspires to higher education, but has set aside her own plans in order to take a job as a secretary, as her wages are needed to supplement the family's meager income from the store. Helen and Frank begin to notice each other, and a romance develops between them. They share an interest in books and discuss their dreams for the future. Their clandestine meetings grow in physical intimacy, yet at Helen's request stop short of intercourse. Just when she realizes she loves Frank and is committed to their relationship, Morris catches his assistant in the act of stealing. He dismisses Frank on the spot, despite the latter's confession and revelation that he "was paying it back." (His confession to Morris of his role in the holdup will follow.) When Frank arrives late to a rendezvous in the park initiated by Helen, he finds her being raped and rescues her. Helen is overcome by relief and clings to Frank, declaring her love for him. In his fear that he's bound to lose her when she learns of his thieving and dismissal, Frank forces himself upon her, despite her repeated protest. Disgusted with herself for ever having trusted him despite her initial misgivings, Helen curses Frank and refuses to see him again. Frank obsessively berates himself with remorse and contemplates ways to make things up to her. He apologizes to Helen profusely at every opportunity, smothering her with his need for redemption. Meanwhile, the prospects for the store have remained bleak due to several turns of events, and Morris considers desperate measures. When he is hospitalized after inhaling gas from a radiator he failed to light (claiming afterwards that this was not deliberate), Frank comes back to run the store over Ida's protests. Frank resolves to be a good person, stop stealing and somehow win back Helen's love. He takes on a second job at a diner. But, when Morris decides to leave his sick bed, he throws Frank out for good, or so he thinks. Morris grows anxious about his life—his wife is miserable, his daughter on her way to spinsterhood and his poor business no more than a prison. Morris turns down an arsonist's offer to burn his home and store for the insurance money, but then builds a fire himself. As the flames catch on his apron, Morris is saved by Frank. After being saved, Morris sends Frank away again. Then, through tragedy, things begin to look up for the Bobers. A competing grocer on the block falls on hard times, and Bober's store benefits. Then, one night, Ward Minogue breaks into the liquor store owned by Bober's rival, Karp. Minogue smashes liquor bottles, then he lights a cigarette. A tossed match starts a fire that burns the store and the apartment upstairs to the ground. Minogue dies attempting to escape the fire. Morris is ashamed that he wished for his rival's comeuppance. Even so, Karp, knowing that he will lose his business while it is being rebuilt, offers to buy out the Bobers. For a few brief days, they are happy. It is the last day of March and thick snow is falling. Morris, in a burst of energy, goes out to shovel the sidewalk, despite Ida's many objections. Still weak from the gas incident, he dies three days later of double pneumonia. Morris is remembered at his simple service as an honest man and a good Jew. But Frank and Helen are alienated. Frank returns to run the store while Helen and Ida mourn privately. Money from a second job allows Frank to pay rent to Ida but ruins his health. Frank then settles on a plan to clear his debt with Helen. He will give over all his earnings so that Helen can go to college. After several painful and awkward confrontations, Helen reinterprets the night that Frank sexually assaulted her, concluding that she would have given herself to Frank that night had not Ward Minogue attacked her. She softens towards Frank, forgiving him for raping her. As the book closes, Frank is working in the store. He studies Judaism. He gets a circumcision. And, after Passover, becomes a Jew.
3284350	/m/0938sk	The Berlin Stories	Christopher Isherwood		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The two novellas are set in Berlin in 1931, just as Adolf Hitler was moving into power. Berlin is portrayed by Isherwood during this transition period of cafes and quaint avenues, grotesque nightlife and dreamers, and powerful mobs and millionaires. The Berlin Stories was the starting point for the John Van Druten play I Am a Camera, which in turn went on to inspire the film I Am a Camera as well as the stage musical and film versions of Cabaret. The character Sally Bowles is probably the best-known character from The Berlin Stories because of her later starring role in the Cabaret musical and film, although in The Berlin Stories, she is only the main character of one short story in Goodbye to Berlin.
3284949	/m/093b38	Pet Peeve	Piers Anthony	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Goody Goblin, the only nice male goblin, goes to see the Good Magician Humphrey so he can get his question answered. As the Magician charges a year's service or the equivalent, Goody has to find a good home for a pet peeve. The pet peeve is a very annoying bird who can mimic the voice of the person carrying it. Goody starts out with the bird and Hannah Barbarian, whose service is to accompany the goblin on the quest and protect him. Throughout the journey, we discover that Goody is nice because he had to take reverse wood and disguise himself as a girl to avoid being captured by an invading goblin tribe. He was also married, but his wife is dead because she was fated to die young. On the trip, Goody and Hannah meet various people. They all refuse to adopt the pet peeve, or in the case of Princesses Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm, are not allowed to by their mother. Goody and Hannah travel to Robot World, one of the moons of Princess Ida, and bring back some robots to live in Xanth. Unfortunately, the robots decide to take over Xanth, which means all of Xanth must join together to fight the menace. Goblins, ogres, dragons, and other creatures come to combat the robots, which have been expanding, and the harpies feed the armies with lunch boxes from their lunch box plantation. Eventually the robots are defeated, In the process, Goody finally gets over his late wife's death and falls in love with Gwenny Goblin, the first female goblin chief. She in turn, falls in love with him, as her time spent with a family of winged centaurs cause her to like only polite goblins. The pet peeve finally gets a home with Grundy Golem, Rapunzel, and their daughter, Surprise Golem.
3285543	/m/093cdp	The Golden Notebook	Doris Lessing		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Golden Notebook is the story of writer Anna Wulf, the four notebooks in which she keeps the record of her life, and her attempt to tie them all together in a fifth, gold-colored notebook. The book intersperses segments of an ostensibly realistic narrative of the lives of Molly and Anna, and their children, ex-husbands and lovers—entitled Free Women—with excerpts from Anna's four notebooks, coloured black (of Anna's experience in Southern Rhodesia, before and during WWII, which inspired her own bestselling novel), red (of her experience as a member of the Communist Party), yellow (an ongoing novel that is being written based on the painful ending of Anna's own love affair), and blue (Anna's personal journal where she records her memories, dreams, and emotional life). Each notebook is returned to four times, interspersed with episodes from Free Women, creating non-chronological, overlapping sections that interact with one another. This post-modernistic styling, with its space and room for "play" engaging the characters and readers, is among the most famous features of the book, although Lessing insisted that readers and reviewers pay attention to the serious themes in the novel.
3285752	/m/093cwq	Sharpe's Havoc	Bernard Cornwell	2003	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, leading his men of the 95th Rifles in retreat from the French victory at Oporto, are unexpectedly saved by a small detachment of Portuguese soldiers led by Lt. Jorge Vincente, a law student who joined his country's army out of patriotism. Despite his bitter hatred of lawyers, Sharpe gradually comes to respect Jorge's bravery in combat. While the British Army is in retreat, Sharpe and his men are ordered to help retrieve a young Englishwoman, Kate Savage, the daughter of a prominent port merchant, recently deceased. For unknown reasons, she decided not to flee the city with her mother. In going to retrieve Kate, Sharpe and his men are caught up in the scheming of "Colonel" Christopher, a turncoat spy for the British Foreign Office. Initially sent to Portugal to investigate the possibility that Marshall Soult might decide to declare himself King of Portugal (and thus cut himself off from Napoleon), Christopher has instead decided to use the situation to his own enrichment. On the one hand, he acts as agent provacateur, encouraging rebellious officers of the French Army to conspire against "King Nicolas," and then, when the time is right, offers to expose all of them to Soult, demanding a monopoly on the port trade in return (Christopher confidently expects the French to win the war, and thus to be the permanent rulers of Portugal). On the other hand, he has seduced Kate and married her in a sham ceremony, for both her youthful beauty and her father's fortune. Seen openly collaborating with the French, he assures Sharpe that he is simply on a secret mission for Britain. Sharpe is temporarily duped, but realizes the truth when he and his men are ambushed by a French detachment. The Riflemen escape and rejoin the main British force, while Christopher makes his way to the French lines, and Kate, against her better judgment, goes with him. Acting as scouts for the Army, Sharpe spots a small group of boats overlooked by the French that can be used to cross the river at the one weak point in the French's defenses. A division crosses in secret and, by the afternoon, have entrenched themselves and sparked the French in a desperate attempt to push them out again. In the aftermath of the British victory and the desperate French retreat, Sharpe confers with General Wellesley and Foreign Office dignitary Lord Pumphrey, who says that Christopher has done no lasting harm, but is a traitor nonetheless and should be disposed of. Sharpe, Jorge, and their men accompany the British pursuit of the fleeing French forces, who have managed to force their way through the Portuguese barricade at a narrow bridge. Catching up with them during the retreat, Jorge rescues Kate and Sharpe kills Christopher.
3285920	/m/093d4s	Mama Flora's Family	Alex Haley	1997		 The young Flora meets the wealthy Lincoln Flemming at a dance one night. Lincoln wants her to come care for his elderly grandmother Nana at his home, to which she agrees. Eventually Flora becomes sexually involved with Lincoln and believes the two of them to be romantically involved. After experiencing him shun and shame her in front of his rich contemporaries, Flora begins to feel used and refuses to sleep with him anymore. This prompts her to become evicted from the house. Flora later discovers that she was pregnant with Lincoln's child, which prompts his wealthy family to bribe her into leaving Mississippi to avoid scandal. Flora takes the offer, planning to go to Memphis, Tennessee. She gives birth to a boy and names him Luke, but is forced to give to the baby to the Flemmings to raise. Flora then travels by train to the city, but is instead directed by a fellow passenger to go to the small town of Stockton under the advice that a young woman such as her should not go into the city alone. Once there, she gains employment and shelter through the Reverend Jackson. While living in Stockton Flora meets and falls in love with Booker Palmer. The two marry, have a son named Willie, and Booker becomes a sharecropper soon after they marry. Booker experiences financial difficulties, which force him to steal cotton from other farmers. During one of his nightly runs, he is shot and killed. Flora later buries Booker, but only after remaining with his body all night. Shortly thereafter Flora receives news that her sister Jossie was ill and dying. Flora travels to her sister and ends up taking her niece Ruthana back with her to raise as her own daughter. Throughout the 1930s Flora raises both Willy and Ruthana in Stockton, but when Willie gets into a fight with some white boys he's forced to escape to Chicago where Ruthana's father lives. Once there, Willy stays with Georgy, who shows him the area and finds Willy a job. One night Willy ends up gambling and smoking marijuana, which causes him to lose his home. Willy moves into a basement with his friend Josh, who was later arrested for dealing drugs. During all of this time Willy continues to write his mother, cousin, and his girlfriend Ernestine, but lies and tells them that everything was fine. Later at the outbreak of World War II, Willy joins the army and upon his return he proposes to his girlfriend. The two marry, move to Chicago, and have three children. During the same time period Ruthana manages to gain a scholarship to Fisk University due to her good grades in school. While Ruthana is away in college, Flora returns to Mississippi to find her son Luke. She returns to the Flemming Mansion and gains her son's address from the mansion's cook. Flora writes to Luke, who comes to find her. She discovers that Luke has graduated from law school and was joining the army. Luke and Flora remain in touch. Upon his return from the war he opens a practice in Harlem. After Ruthana graduates she takes a job as a social worker in Harlem, only to discover that Ernestine was very sick. The doctors were unable to discover what was wrong with her and later has a heart attack in her sleep. Ruthana helps her cousin Willy raise the children.1however flora is only about to enter a dimension unknown.
3286247	/m/093dxw	Let the Circle Be Unbroken	Mildred Taylor	1981	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Logan family goes through hard times, trying to raise their children the correct way. T.J. Avery, Stacey's friend, is accused of murdering a white man, Jim Lee Barnett. Although he is innocent, he is tried by an all-white jury and convicted. Stacey does everything in his power to help his friend, but in the end, T.J. is sentenced to death. A man tries to start a union to join blacks and whites together so the cotton will be sold for fair prices. The union does not succeed and the man who wanted to start it is beaten. Some people are told that they need to pull up the acres that were already planted because they planted too much. The plantation owners lied, claiming the government ordered it, but the plantation owners did it in order to receive money that was supposed to go to the sharecroppers. Mama's cousin Bud's daughter Suzella, who has a black father and a white mother, lives with the Logans. Suzella is exonerated for being attractive and mixed, making her seem like a prize to all the males in the town because she is technically black and therefore accessible, but still has the lighter skin, hair and eyes; she can be assumed as white. Suzella struggles with identity issues that put a strain on her relationships with others. She catches the eye of Stuart Walker, a white boy who flirts with pretty colored girls to start trouble. When Stuart approaches her he genuinely respects her, assuming she is white. This takes a great toll on Stacey; he believes he must take care of his family before they lose their land. He and his best friend Moe run away to a sugarcane field to work. With the help of Mr. Jamison, a white lawyer who is kind and fair to black people, Mama, Papa and Caroline Logan (Big Ma) contact police stations in the next couple of towns. They address the letters in his name so that when the sheriffs receive the letters they will respond. Mr. Jamison says that if they see a black family name on the letters they probably will not respond. Seven months later, they find Stacey several hours away, jailed in a small town in Louisiana. Stacey and Moe were accused of stealing which put them in jail, where they became ill. While Stacey was at the cane field a poll rolled over his foot and broke it. Before they drive home, they stop by the house of a lady who took care of Stacey and Moe while they were in jail and thank her. They stay the night there and the next morning return home.
3286381	/m/093f43	Westmark	Lloyd Alexander	1981-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is a complicated and politically dangerous period in Westmark. The country's ruler, King Augustine IV, has slipped into dementia, depression and illness since the supposed death of his only child, the Princess Augusta, over six years ago. Despite the efforts of the Queen, Caroline, and the court physician, Dr. Torrens, the King is increasingly manipulated by his chief minister Cabbarus, who has designs on the throne. While the ill king is kept distracted by a series of mystics and charlatans who claim to be able to speak to his dead child, Cabbarus increases his control over Westmark, restricting freedoms and abusing the king's powers. Young Theo, an orphan, has been raised by a small town printer named Anton. After the pair accepts a job from a travelling salesman they are investigated by Cabbarus' men, who declare their job illegal and proceed to destroy their press. In the ensuing scuffle and chase, Theo attacks a soldier and Anton is shot and killed. With no one else to turn to, Theo takes to the countryside, eventually meeting up with the men who hired him and Anton for the printing job: Count Las Bombas, a con artist, and his dwarf driver/partner Musket. Theo joins up with them, rather reluctantly, and ends up participating in their money-making schemes. They eventually discover a girl named Mickle, a poor street urchin, who has a talent for throwing her voice and mimicry. The Count builds a charade around Mickle, dressing her up as the Oracle Priestess and putting her on display, claiming that she can speak to the spirits of the dead. Theo, despite his growing affection for the bright but vulnerable Mickle, begins to find his new life too dishonest for his tastes and abandons the group, eventually falling in with Florian, an anti-monarchist and rebel who plans revolution with his band of loyal followers. Meanwhile, Mickle, Las Bombas, and Musket have been arrested for fraud, Cabbarus has attempted to have Dr. Torrens assassinated and a politically minded journalist, Keller, goes into hiding to save himself from Cabbarus' wrath. Events come to a head when Theo plots to break his old companions out of prison, with help from Florian and his allies. Their reunion, however, does not last long; Cabbarus has tracked them down and has them all arrested. He brings the group to the Old Juliana, the palace of King Augustine IV and Queen Caroline, where reveals his plans to the group and of how the "Oracle Priestess" will be his pawn to his uprising to the throne. While in Old Juliana, Mickle comes across a trapdoor leading to a water canal, and her memories race in her mind as she remembers her childhood. This leads to her high fever and Theo's worry of her having to act. Cabbarus presents the group to the King and Queen and the courtiers as the Oracle Priestess, and suddenly Mickle's long-repressed childhood memories come to the surface, revealing treason, attempted murder and corruption in the heart of the Westmark government. It is later revealed that Mickle is the long-lost Princess Augusta and that chief minister Cabbarus was responsible for her disappearance. Eventually, on the subject of Cabbarus's punishment, Theo, on behalf of his conscience, sends him into exile, instead of killing him. This decision will have a major effect on the final book of the Westmark trilogy, The Beggar Queen.
3286919	/m/093fnn	The Hollow Man	John Dickson Carr	1935	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0174gw": "Locked room mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 One wintry night in London, two murders are committed in quick succession. In both cases, the murderer has seemingly vanished into thin air. In the first case, he has disappeared from Professor Grimaud's study after shooting the professor—without leaving a trace, with the only door to the room locked from the inside, and with people present in the hall outside the room. Both the ground below the window and the roof above it are covered with unbroken snow. In the second case, a man walking in the middle of a deserted cul-de-sac at about the same time is evidently shot at close range, with the same revolver that killed Grimaud and only minutes afterward, but there is no one else near the man; this is witnessed from some distance by three passersby—two tourists and a police constable—who happen to be walking on the pavement. It takes Dr Gideon Fell, scholar and "a pompous pain in the neck," who keeps hinting at the solution without giving it away, some 200 pages to finally condescend and minutely reconstruct the two crimes and thus solve the mystery.
3286926	/m/093fpc	Gaston de Blondeville	Ann Radcliffe	1826	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in the 13th century court of England's King Henry III the novel centers around the wedding of the title character. The wedding is interrupted by a merchant who claims to have been wronged by Gaston, in that Gaston murdered his kinsman. Henry is forced to hold a trial to determine the validity of the claims. The plot is further complicated by the machinations of an abbot who tries to suppress the truth, and by ghosts who want to expose the truth.
3287516	/m/093ghv	The Man Who Loved Children	Christina Stead		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of a highly dysfunctional family, the Pollits. The story centers on the father Sam, an idealistic buffoon who can't provide for his family, the situation made worse by the mother Henny's snobbish inability to budget for the household. Stead details the parents' marital battles and the various accounts of the blended family's affections and alliances. The character Sam is largely based on Stead's own father, marine biologist David Stead. The Man Who Loved Children was originally set in Sydney but the setting was altered to suit an American audience, to Washington, D.C., somewhat unconvincingly due to linguistic nuances. Unsparing and penetrating, Stead reveals, among other things, the danger of unchecked sentimentality in relationships and in political thought.
3287555	/m/093gl9	Money	Martin Amis		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Money tells the story of, and is narrated by, John Self, a successful director of commercials who is invited to New York by Fielding Goodney, a film producer, to shoot his first film. Self is an archetypal hedonist and slob; he is usually drunk, an avid consumer of pornography and prostitutes, eats too much and, above all, spends too much, encouraged by Goodney. The actors in the film, which Self originally titles Good Money but which he eventually wants to rename Bad Money, all have some kind of emotional issue which clashes with fellow cast members and with the parts they've signed on for - the principal casting having already been done by Goodney. For example: the strict Christian, Spunk Davis (whose name is intentionally unfortunate), is asked to play a drugs pusher; the ageing hardman Lorne Guyland has to be beaten up; the motherly Caduta Massi, who is insecure about her body, is asked to appear in a sex scene with Lorne, whom she detests, and so on. Self is stalked by "Frank the Phone" while in New York, a menacing misfit who threatens him over a series of telephone conversations, apparently because Self personifies the success Frank was unable to attain. Self is not frightened of Frank, even when he is beaten by him while on an alcoholic bender. (Self, characteristically, is unable to remember how he was attacked.) Towards the end of the book Self arranges to meet Frank for a showdown, which is the beginning of the novel's shocking denouement; Money is similar to Amis' five-years-later London Fields, in having a major plot twist. Self returns to London before filming begins, revealing more of his humble origins, his landlord father Barry (who makes his contempt for his son clear by invoicing him for every penny spent on his upbringing) and pub doorman Fat Vince. Self discovers that his London girlfriend, Selina, is having an affair with Ossie Twain, while Self is likewise attracted to Twain's wife in New York, Martina. This increases Self's psychosis and makes his final downfall even more brutal. After Selina has plotted to destroy any chance of a relationship between him and Martina, Self discovers that all his credit cards have been blocked and, after confronting Frank, the stars of film angrily claim that there is no film. It is revealed that Goodney had been manipulating him - all the contracts signed by Self were loans and debts, and Goodney fabricated the entire film. He is also revealed to be Frank and responsible for the visions of Self's mother. He supposedly chose Self for his behaviour on the first plane to America, where Goodney was sitting close to him. The New York bellhop, Felix, helps him escape the angry mob in the hotel lobby and fly back to England, only to discover that Barry is not Self's real father. There are some hilarious set pieces, such as when Self wakes to find he has skipped an entire day in his inebriated state, the tennis match and the attempts to change Spunk's screen name. The writing is also full of witty one-liners and silly names for consumer goods, such as Self's car, the Fiasco, and the Blastfurters which he snacks on. Amis writes himself into the novel as a kind of overseer and confidant in Self's final breakdown. He is an arrogant character, but Self is not afraid to express his rather low opinion of Amis, such as the fact that he earns so much yet "lives like a student." Amis, among others, tries to warn Self that he is heading for destruction but to no avail. Felix becomes Self's only real friend in America and finally makes Self realise the trouble he is in: "Man, you are out for a whole lot of money." The novel's subtitle, "A Suicide Note", is clarified at the end of the novel. It is revealed that Barry Self is not John Self's father; his father is in fact Fat Vince. As such, John Self no longer exists. Hence, in the subtitle, Amis indicates that this cessation of John Self's existence is analogous to suicide, which of course, results in the death of the self. A Suicide Note could also relate to the novel as a whole, or money, which Self himself calls suicide notes within the novel. After learning that his father is Fat Vince, John realises that his true identity is that of Fat John, half-brother of Fat Paul. The novel ends with Fat John having lost all his money (if it ever existed), yet he is still able to laugh at himself and is cautiously optimistic about his future.
3287848	/m/093h12	Play It As It Lays	Joan Didion	1970	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with an internal monologue by the 31-year-old Maria Wyeth, followed by short reminiscences of her friend Helene, and ex-husband, film director Carter Lang. The further narration is conducted from a third-person perspective in eighty-four chapters of terse, controlled and highly visual prose typical for Didion. The protagonist, an unfulfilled actress, recounts her life while recovering from a mental breakdown in an exclusive Neuropsychiatric Institute. The reason for her confinement is purportedly having participated in the suicidal death of a befriended bisexual movie producer, BZ (an abbreviation for benzodiazepines, sedative drugs). The “facts” from Wyeth’s childhood include being raised in the small town of Silver Wells, Nevada, to a gambling, careless father and a neurotic mother who used to “croon to herself” of chimeric yearnings. After graduating from a high school in Tonopah, encouraged by her parents, she leaves for New York to become an actress. In the Big Apple, Maria works temporarily as a model and meets ex-boyfriend, Ivan Costello, as is later insinuated, a domineering psychological blackmailer who has no scruples using the money and the body of his acquiescent girlfriend. During her stay in the city, Maria receives the news about the death of her mother, possibly a victim of a self-provoked car accident. Her father dies soon afterwards, leaving useless mineral rights to his business partner and friend, Benny Austin. Maria withdraws from acting and modeling to get over the shock of her mother’s death, splits up with Ivan, moving to Hollywood with the newly met Carter. We learn that she and Carter have a 4-year-old daughter Kate, undergoing mental and physical “treatment” for some “aberrant chemical in her brain.” Maria truly loves her daughter, as indicated by her tender descriptions of the child, frequent visits to the hospital, and a determination “to get her out.” She seems to be the only significant person in Wyeth’s life. The love for the girl obviously means more than her marriage to despotic Lang and affairs with men, including his Hollywood acquaintances, Les Goodwin and BZ. In the course of the novel, Maria becomes pregnant, plausibly by Les, and is coerced by Carter to abort. The traumatic procedure leaves her mentally shattered and haunted by nightmares of dying children. Looking for oblivion, she plunges into her routine of compulsive driving on the roads and freeways of southern California, wandering through motels and bars, drinking and chancing sexual encounters with second-rate actors and ex-lovers. She spends a night in jail for car theft and drug possession, after a one-night stand with a minor film star, Johnny Waters. Eventually she involves herself in a perverse love quadrangle with Carter, BZ and his wife Helene, abruptly ended when BZ overdoses on sedative barbiturates (specifically, Seconal) in Maria’s hotel bedroom. The book concludes with reclusive Maria planning a new life with Kate, resolved to “keep on playing,” despite her past.
3288030	/m/093h9g	The Sot-Weed Factor	John Barth	1960		 The novel is a satirical epic of the colonization of Maryland based on the life of an actual poet, Ebenezer Cooke, who wrote a poem of the same title. The Sot-Weed Factor is what Northrop Frye called an anatomy &mdash; a large, loosely structured work, with digressions, distractions, stories within stories, and lists (such as a lengthy exchange of insulting terms by two prostitutes). The fictional Ebenezer Cooke (repeatedly described as "poet and virgin") is a Candide-like innocent who sets out to write a heroic epic, becomes disillusioned and ends up writing a biting satire. The novel is set in the 1680s and 90s in London and on the eastern shore of the colony of Maryland. It tells the story of an English poet named Ebenezer Cooke who is given the title "Poet Laureate of Maryland" by Charles Calvert. He undergoes many adventures on his journey to Maryland and while in Maryland, all the while striving to preserve his innocence (i.e. his virginity). The book takes its title from the grand poem that Cooke composes throughout the story, which was originally intended to sing the praises of Maryland, but ends up being a biting satire based on his disillusioning experiences.
3288399	/m/093hyt	The Ant Bully	John Nickle		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A young boy is bullied all his life and decides to bully ants because they are the only thing smaller than him that he can beat up. The ants make a potion with special crystals in their hill and pour it in his ear ,when he is sleeping, so that he will turn into the size of an ant. He is forced by the queen ant to spend time as an ant, and learn their hard ways of the hill. When he finally understands, after many trials and classes, he gets bigger by an antidote and never hurts the ants again. He makes friends with the followers of the cruel boy who bullies him, and they chase off the bully for good.
3288741	/m/093jn3	Eros and the Mysteries of Love				 Evola sets out in this book to investigate the metaphysics of sex. He uses the term “metaphysics” in two ways. First, metaphysics means the “first principles” of a thing. Second, metaphysics means the “science that goes beyond the physical” (from the Introduction). Sex in the Modern Era :Evola argues that sexuality in the modern age has become depraved. His primary reference for this conclusion is the state of research on sex. He criticizes biological, sociological, psychological and sexological approaches to understanding sexuality as essentially shallow. Each discipline focuses on only one aspect, a lower aspect, of sexuality. Biologically deterministic arguments about sex -- that sexuality can be explained by the need to reproduce -- come under especially harsh criticism. Evola argues that the need to reproduce is one of the lowest aspects of and is in fact tangential to sexuality. He criticizes sexologists and investigators of sexuality from other disciplines for starting with lower, easier to understand aspects of sexuality (ie: reproduction) and deducing the higher aspects, the first principles, from them. Evola seeks instead to explain sexuality starting from first principles. The Metaphysics of Sex :Evola sets out to deduce the first principles of sexuality. His starting point is Plato’s ‘’Symposium’’ and the myth of the hermaphrodite. A myth in which mankind, in its pure form is a “hermaphroditic” form and was only later divided into two sexes, as the result of a fall. Sexuality, however, is not a “purely” spiritual act. Instead, the sexual act brings the spirit and the body closer together in order to attain unity. Evola, therefore, criticizes theories which overemphasize love and beauty to the extent that the physical side of sexuality is excluded or even found profane. He criticizes the ideal of platonic love in this way. A final myth which Evola explores is that of the birth of Eros to Poros and Penia, which, Evola argues, makes the point that Eros is the product at once of rationality and irrationality, being and emptiness. Thus sex has the ability to make one both (either) full and (or) empty. It is both the unity of man and woman and the driving force behind the never sated impulse to procreate. Transcendental Aspects of Profane Love :Drawing on numerous literary and mythological sources, Evola describes the manifestations of the transcendental state described in Part One in what he calls “Profane” love. Profane love is love (and sex) which does not have transcendency or unity as its object. This obviously includes sex for pleasure, but also sex for love. Evola describes how the language of lovers implicitly includes references to the transcendental. In other ways too, modern manifestations of love show their roots in the divine, transcendental metaphysics of sex. Perhaps the most important of these is the way that lovers use references to death during courtship (as well as coitus). For example, saying “I would die without you” or referring to the orgasm as the “little death.” This language refers back to the contradiction in the myth of Poros and Pennia, in which sex is both life and death and therefore hints at the true nature of eros. Man and Woman :In this section Evola describes the archetypes of absolute man and woman according to his traditional outlook. Man is represented by the sky, godliness, and form. Woman is represented by the earth and the waters, nature, and matter. Perhaps the two most important analogies are those of form and matter. The male principle is active and abstract, and (especially during copulation) gives form to the concrete and passive matter that is woman. Evola goes into considerable detail describing basic characteristics of the absolute male and absolute female that these paradigms encompass and their effects on relations between the sexes. Evola is careful to point out that all men and all women contain aspects of the absolute woman and man. Contrary to modern theory, however, Evola casts this as the failure of individual men and women to embody their divine character and as a result of the fall. Evola further argues that the “true difference between the natures of man and woman in no way implies a difference of worth” -- in other words that which is divine in woman is profane in man and vice versa, but is, in fact, divine in its proper place. Transcendent Sexuality :The second half of the book is devoted to historical examples of the kind of transcendental sexuality Evola describes in the first half. He considers Tantric sexuality, chastity as a means of transforming the sexual drive into higher forms, and pagan orgiastic rites among others. The Table of Contents below provides a good summary of the topics he broaches.
3289597	/m/093l00	Prophet			{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The main character in "Prophet" is John Barrett, a television news anchor. Upon his pro-life father's accidental death, he is encouraged to investigate and report on problems at an abortion clinic. This only comes about after John catches his producer attempting to fabricate a story. Soon his colleagues are begging to stop him from finding out more, and he begins to hear mysterious and scary "voices". As John Barrett goes through the abortion investigation with Leslie Albright, he soon finds God and Truth, along the way.
3290351	/m/093mkr	Topdog/Underdog	Suzan-Lori Parks			 The play chronicles the adult lives of two African American brothers, Lincoln and Booth, as they cope with women, work, poverty, gambling, racism, and their troubled upbringings.
3290448	/m/093msq	Rally Cry	William R. Forstchen	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The 35th Maine sets up a camp inside the land of Rus, outside a boyar's city, Suzdal. They are thrown into an intricate network of political feuds where the boyar, Ivor, struggles against the church for power. Both sides wish to exploit Keane and his men. The men of the 35th befriend peasants and the ideas of liberty, democracy and freedom spread. Most of the 35th are ardent supporters of Lincoln and many abolitionists among them wish to change the order of the feudal society. The men learn of the human-eating enemies called Tugars, seeing them depicted in a church. Keane allows for a vote to either stay and fight with Rus or to leave and try and mass strength elsewhere while avoiding the horde. The church's prelate, Rasnar, convinces Ivor to attack Keane and steal the guns on the night of the vote. The peasants revolt and are led particularly by one man, Kalencka (Kal), who befriends the Maine men and becomes an interpreter for Ivor. On the night Ivor masses his armies to crush Keane, Kal starts the rebellion. As the peasants are crushed, Keane calls off the vote instead letting the men place their votes by choosing whether or not to march to the aid of the peasants. Keane manages to come to the aid of peasants in time, and shortly after Rasnar and Ivor kill each other. The peasants are now free, but trouble looms. The Tugars are a horde of alien humanoids that devour humans as "cattle", circling the world and devouring one-fifth of the people in each city-state roughly every 20 years. However the men of the 35th have a substantial advantage over the beings of this world: guns. The Tugars are biologically very close to humans, and can contract some of the same diseases. They evolved on another world and resemble humans due to convergent evolution. They spread from world to world by "tunnels of light", which are wormholes their ancestors built. They are proportioned like humans, but are eight- to ten-feet (2.4–3.0&nbsp;m) tall. Their bodies and almost noseless faces are covered with short hair and they have large canine teeth. Though their faces are somewhat apelike and in other ways resemble the wolfman, their bodies are Herculean in build and of handsome appearance. They ride horses of very large breed due to their stature. Tugar society is ruled by males with their females taking no significant social, political, or military role, quite unlike human nomads. They are very good mounted archers, shooting four-foot-long (1.2&nbsp;m) arrows. It is revealed that the Tugars are a fallen race that once had a great interstellar civilization. The Tugars no longer understand how their ancestors invented the "tunnels of light", of which Earth seems to have several that operate sporadically, one Tugar in the series jokes to a human that he will show him the location of one, "for a price." There are other hordes of the same aliens, called the Merki and Bantag. Many humans just call all the aliens "Tugars" by definition. They received their horses and perhaps some of their nomad culture from the Earth. The Tugars say that in the past they have visited the Earth, and they vaguely resemble the Bigfoot. The Tugars do not understand why Colonel Keane wants to fight them; in a conference the Tugar ruler told Keane that they protected the "cattle" when they first were settled on Valennia, and in any event the Tugars eat only 20% of the humans before they move on. The Tugars rely on humans for all the food and manufactured goods to maintain their nomadic way of life. Human "pets" follow the Tugar hordes, and are expected to eat what their masters do, and fight alongside their masters while seeing men, women, and children butchered and devoured as a routine matter. Most Tugars think that humans are simply inferior and have no souls, and cannot imagine that they would revolt rather than accept the status quo. The Tugars are very conservative. They know they rely on the human "cattle" for all their needs, make nothing by themselves and are far outnumbered by humans. Some think their dependence on the human "cattle" threatens them with eventual extinction, but the rank-and-file Tugar would rather keep matters exactly as they are. The Tugars have encountered at least two other alien races on Valennia, brought there via the tunnels of light. One was a human-sized, Tugar-like hairy humanoid, and became "cattle" like humans; the other was non-humanoid with very advanced weapons. Once the Tugars destroyed the advanced aliens by force of numbers they refused to copy their weapons and threw them into the sea. The Tugars also encountered two human pirate ships brought through the tunnel of light. They captured one and said "they killed many Tugars before we feasted on them" but likewise refused to copy the pirate's guns. In book two, Keane and his men prepare for the coming of the Tugars. Kal estimates that there are hundreds of thousands compared to only one regiment of the 35th. They estimate years before the Tugars arrive, but unknown to them, the Tugars are force-marching across the northern lands because a small pox epidemic is killing off their "cattle". The Maine men, being of many skills and crafts, set about trying to create a modern industry in only a year or so. They work to train and arm Rus soldiers and militia. Factories are created and a railroad is built. They fortify the city, but soon the Tugars come. A Tugar agent, called the "Namer of Time" is the first alien leader to show up, with his escort and some Rus "pets" who have not seen their homes for twenty years. He knows about the Yankees and demands they disarm and provide 20% of their men as food. He tells them that other humans in the past have revolted, only to be totally exterminated. A confrontation ensues in which a Union soldier and Tugar warrior are killed. Keane tells the Namer of Time that the only tribute he will pay will be in lead. They defeat an advance force of Tugars by setting up an ambush, but the bulk of the army is not far behind. The 35th and their Rus counterparts are battling for their lives. Many men sacrifice themselves, particularly the train conductor, Malady, who blows himself up taking hundreds of Tugars with him. The Tugar losses are staggering but they begin to overwhelm the city. The Qar Qarth of the Tugars, Muzta, faces opposition within his horde so he does not listen to the advice of his advisor Qubata to draw out the attack and starve the Yankees into submission. They make a suicidal charge, which begins to work as they break into the city. With little hope left, some of the men abandon the rest on the Ogunquit and sail away. By now Keane finds that the Tugars have become a little less conservative and are forcing their human pets and slaves to make guns for them. However, the Tugars themselves still will do no labor of any kind and remain warriors. The remaining men of the 35th Maine form near the center of the city. Keane prepares his men for the onslaught as they had at Gettysburg. They fix bayonets and prepare to charge. At the last minute, Keane's protegee, Vincent Hawthorne, commandeers their scouting balloon and daringly flies it to the dam the men constructed. Hawthorne sets the dam to blow and Qubata sees Hawthorne's intent and tries to stop him. Qubata is blown away in the explosion trying to save the horde, but it is futile. A torrent of water envelopes the city and drowns the horde. The remaining Tugars are captured or retreat. What is left of Suzdal is saved and the Tugar horde is decimated, a skeleton of its former self. The Tugar horde makes peace with the Union soldiers and rides away.
3290811	/m/093ngl	The Simoqin Prophecies	Samit Basu	2004-01-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins in the expected year of the rakshas Danh-Gem's return. Asvin, prince of Avranti is sent on an Aswamedh, a journey supposed to bring him fame and glory. But as soon as he reaches the forest, his guards turn on him and tell him that he would be executed at sunset. This is in accordance with the laws of the secret brotherhood, which ensured that all younger princes of Avranti who were too eager for glory would be dealt with this way. However he is rescued by the Silver Dagger and his men, on the orders of the Chief Civilian of Kol, who wanted him to be the prophecised hero. In Kol, the Chief Civilian is very worried about the sudden emergence of the danavs of Imokoi along with their city asur cousins. Also the skuans under their lord Bjorkun are planning something. Manticores have been seen in the forest. It is later revealed that this is a plot to bring back Danh Gem, instigated by Bjorkun and Bali, later on joined by the asur king Leer, and Omar of Artaxerxeia. This group is called the secret Brotherhood of Renewal, dedicated to bring Danh-Gem back. The spellbinders notice that magical levels all over the world are rising. Maya, a powerful spellbinder discovers that her best friend Kirin is in fact a ravian. Kirin himself had discovered this fact only a short while back and remembers that he is actually over two hundred years old. He recalls his memories back from his earlier days when he lived in the forest with a roving band of ravian warriors. The he remembers the day the ravians had departed from the world. Somehow he was turned into stone at that time and didn't remember anything until Spikes, a pashan unlike any other, caused him to wake up. This is a great mystery which Maya is determined to solve. Bali is convinced that the pashans are the key to Danh-Gem's return after learning about the secret of pashan birth from the storks. He tries to steal books called Untranslatables from the library of Enki, as they were written by Danh-Gem and are sure to have information on how to bring the rakshas back. He succeeds, and nearly kidnaps Maya as well, but Maya escapes by setting fire to his tail. Snow trolls under the orders of Bjorkun try to abduct the pashan Yarni, but they fail. Many including the vanar lord Bali, are looking for Spikes. The Chief Civilian sends Asvin to study with Mantric, best of the Koli spellbinders, who was now on a vacation on the island of Bolvudis. He is accompanied by Maya, Kirin, Spikes, the Dagger(under the name of Amloki), a centauress Red Pearl, and a vaman Gaam. During this journey they are attacked by a nundu. They also meet Sir Cyr who seemed to be a harmless knight of Ventelot. Kirin discovers a book in the library of Kol which is full of magic and purported to be written by Narak. This book speaks to him and reveals that his task was to slay Danh Gem when he rises again, but until then, he would have to work with the followers of Danh-Gem. The book convinces him to leave the others as he will bring danger to them. Kirin leaves with Spikes. Red pearl follows him. Bali catches up with Kirin while on the trail of Spikes. During the confrontation, Bali kills Red Pearl from behind. Kirin is furious but remembers what the book said remains silent. He thus joins the Brotherhood of Renewal feigning to be a Karisman. Kirin translates the Untranslatables that Bali had stolen earlier. It mentions five objects to be brought together for Danh-Gem's return. Kirin steals the Tear of heaven from Avranti and the Gauntlet of Tatsu. Asvin goes on a series of quests, earning renown as well as many magical objects. The two most remarkable were his visit to the rakshasi Akarat, which earned him the ring of Akarat and the sword of Raka, and his journey through the pyramid of Elaken to get the armour of the scorpion man. On the day of Danh Gem's arising, the brotherhood meets in the circle of Imokoi and lays down the five things needed. All but Kirin are turned to stone. Danh Gem materializes as a ghost like form Kirin tries to kill him but cannot as he is not in material form. Danh Gem reveals to him, in style reminiscent of star wars, that he is actually Kirin's father. Kirin understands he is being offered a choice, between becoming a dark lord and trying to put things right in this world, or to let the brotherhood create havoc by starting the war. Kirin chooses the former as he decides the latter is too heroic. He ascends to the throne as Dark Lord.
3290819	/m/093ngy	The Manticore's Secret	Samit Basu	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins initially by showing the return of the ravians to the world, which they now call Obiyalis. The vamans loyal to the ravians (called the rebel union of marginal labour) and Manticore open the ravian portal to this world. Three champions of the ravians, Myrdak, Peori and Behrim, promptly kill the vamans so as to make sure there are no traitors to inform the world of the return of the ravians. Meanwhile in the newly constructed dark tower of Izakar, Kirin is facing trouble. Most of his council of rakshases are issuing mad orders in his name, while all he wanted was to stop the war. Aciram warns Kirin of the return of the ravians and their plan to take over the earth. It seems that they are more dangerous to the humans now than to the dark lord. Nasud, a cousin of Kirin, grows tired of Kirin's peace efforts and declares a kin strife. Kirin kills him with a lightning bolt. Meanwhile in Kol, a secret society of the shapeshifters, called the Rainbow Council, prepare to battle against the mind-controlling foes who threaten history. Many Hero and villain guilds are formed in Kol in the wake of Kirin's acsension as dark lord. Arathognan (or Thog the barbarian) was one of these. In one of these encounters, Thog kills four jaykinis who were trying to eat children. However he notices that he is being followed by a mysterious girl, later revealed to be Peori. Asvin and Maya have fallen in love. Maya is now having doubts about Kirin, who was her former best friend. Asvin, however is eager to battle the hordes of the dark lord and still believes the ravians to be noble heroes who would save humanity. Red, the shapeshifter, is part of the rainbow council.She had named two voices in her head and was never able to make up her mind about anything. It is also revealed here that the heart of Kol and the seven Hero mirrors where actually created by the shapeshifters although earlier they had been credited to lord Simoqin. The ravians Myrdak and Peori attack the palace of Kol one night with the intention of kidnapping Maya and using her to get rid of Kirin. They encounter the Silver Dagger and battle with the shapeshifters but finally manage to escape with Maya. Asvin and Red (in the guise of Rukmini) follow her to the great forest of Vrihataranya. Red falls in love with Asvin on the way (although this may be because of the alter ego Rukmini she had named in her mind). In the meanwhile Behrim, whose task had been to assassinate the dark lord is shocked to learn that the dark lord is in fact Kirin. In an attempt to talk to Kirin, he is detected by the rakshases but barely managed to escape.However he is then caught by the werewolves who nearly kill him. He is healed within the dark tower, where he tells Kirin that it is his destiny to become a great leader of the ravians. Peori visits Ararthogorn and reveals to him that he is a descendant of the kings of Kol. She points out that he had the amulet that proved it so.She told him of the existence of a third Simoqin prophecy, that when the dark lord rose, the true king of Kol would return and with his hands strike down the evil powers which ruled Kol. She convinces him to assassinate Lady Temat. Thog tries to infiltrate the labyrinth but is easily caught. Meanwhile, Maya has managed to escape from Myrdak and is lost in the forest. She comes across some little fat men,whom she initially suspected to be dangerous but turned out to be harmless. They arrive at the temple of the black Star, where Myrdak recaptures her. Myrdak challenges dark lord Kirin to a duel, knowing he would come to rescue the girl he loved. Kirin seeks the advice of Behrim, who states flatly that he could not be defeated in an open duel as he was the greatest ravian warrior alive.Behrim rather suggests that they go to Asroye and seek help from the ravian council. Kirin agrees to this and leaves on a dragon along with Behrim, ignoring pleas by Aciram .As soon as Kirin leaves, Aciram, who probably aspired for the throne of Danh-Gem himself, takes on Kirin's face. Rakshases in the forest attack Myrdak and Maya manages to escape from the manticore. She takes shelter in Vanarpuri but Myrdak finds her. She escapes again with the help of Djongli and arrives at a peculiar place guarded by knights of Ventelot, called the Desolate Gard. Myrdak finally catches up with Maya and tells her that it was a ravian portal, and the nundu would give its blood to activate it. Maya then meets the unwaba, who tells her about the gods playing with this world. Myrdak leaves for his duel with Kirin. Kirin and Behrim arrive at the ravian outpost of Epsai, only to find it deserted. Behrim realizes that Myrdak and Peori are traitors to the council and the ravians had not yet returned in their numbers. Both of them feel very tired and want to play with some apparently harmless little fat men. However these creatures turn out to be monsters, who eat only ravian. Behrim is devoured by them but Kirin is saved by Qianzai,mother of dragons. It is revealed that these creatures are these world's response to the arrival of the ravians. He then goes along to the duel. Meanwhile in Kol, Peori has successfully infiltrated the labyrinth but runs into some minotaurs. She underestimates them and one of them gashes her. The Dagger appears and tells her they have some scores to settle. Peori raises the splintered glass to kill the dagger but Steel-bunz, who was small enough not to figure as dangerous nipped her from behind. This momentary distraction enabled the Dagger to throw his dagger and kill her. Asvin is guided by a firebird to the temple of the black star.Red keeps a watch on him. when he is attacked by the manticore, she changes it into a frog. Kirin's duel with Myrdak, which lasted for many hours resulted in Myrdak getting the upper hand, even though Kirin was armed with his shadowknife and his rakshas powers. After some time Asvin appears. He initially decides to fight against Kirin as he was the son of Danh Gem, however he realized that Myrdak was only interested in getting his armor and turned upon him. Myrdak whirled his sword in a blur and cut off his head. The duel continued. Myrdak then pushes Kirin into a state of trance duel, in which Kirin had no experience at all. He wins the trance duel, but as he emerges back into the real world intending to strike Kirin down, the shapeshifter Red kills him with his own sword.
3291184	/m/093p6m	Sword Stained with Royal Blood	Louis Cha	1956	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 Set in the late Ming Dynasty, the story centers on Yuan Chengzhi, the son of Yuan Chonghuan, a patriotic military commander who was wrongly put to death by the Chongzhen Emperor. An orphan, Yuan Chengzhi is sent to the Mount Hua Sect, where he is tutored in martial arts by Mu Renqing. He grows up to become a fine young pugilist and he leaves Mount Hua in search of adventure. Serendipitous incidents lead him to discover the Golden Serpent Sword and a martial arts manual, which once belonged to Xia Xueyi, a long dead enigmatic swordsman. Yuan Chengzhi inherits Xia Xueyi's possessions and skills and becomes more powerful than before. Yuan Chengzhi wanders around the land and meets Wen Qingqing, a young maiden from a family of brigands. Wen Qingqing is actually Xia Xueyi's daughter and she follows Yuan Chengzhi after being expelled from her family. Yuan Chengzhi initially wanted to seek redress for his father, but decides to join Li Zicheng's rebel force to overthrow the corrupt Ming government. He helps the rebels retrieve the gold robbed by the Wen family, sabotages a battery of cannons supplied to the Ming army by foreigners, and finances the rebellion with part of the treasure he discovered in Nanjing. Yuan Chengzhi also befriends several pugilists, who pledge allegiance to him out of respect for his heroism. Yuan Chengzhi organises his followers to form an army and they pledge to serve and defend China from invading Manchu forces in the northeast. Eager to prove his loyalty to his countrymen, Yuan Chengzhi infiltrates Mukden and attempts to assassinate the Manchu ruler Hong Taiji but fails. Later, despite harbouring a grudge against the Chongzhen Emperor for his father's death, he saves the emperor from a coup led by a treacherous noble called Prince Hui. During that time, he meets He Tieshou, one of Prince Hui's allies and the leader of the Five Poisons Cult. Yuan Chengzhi succeeds in reforming her and accepts her as his student. He also develops romantic relationships with Wen Qingqing and a maiden called A'jiu, who is actually the Chongzhen Emperor's daughter Princess Changping. Yuan Chengzhi's decision to support Li Zicheng eventually makes him regret, because after overthrowing the Ming government, Li not only fails to fulfill his promises to restore peace and stability, but also condones his followers' brutality towards the common people. Yuan Chengzhi is disappointed with Li Zicheng and decides to leave. A former Ming general called Wu Sangui later defects to the Manchus and allow them to pass through Shanhai Pass and overrun the rest of China. When Yuan Chengzhi learns that China has fallen to the Manchus, he realises that he is unable to do anything to reverse the situation and decides to leave for good and he sails to a distant land with his companions.
3291764	/m/093qdt	Jamaica Inn	Daphne du Maurier	1936	{"/m/08w0_f": "Albino bias"}	 Jamaica Inn tells the story of 23-year-old Mary Yellan, who was brought up on a farm in Helford but had to go and live with her Aunt Patience after her mother died. Patience's husband, Joss Merlyn, a great big bully who is almost seven feet tall, is the keeper of Jamaica Inn. On arriving at the gloomy and threatening inn, Mary finds her aunt in a ghost-like state under the thumb of the vicious Joss, and soon realizes that something unusual is afoot at the inn, which has no guests and is never open to the public. She tries to squeeze the truth out of her uncle during one of his benders, but he tells her, "I'm not drunk enough to tell you why I live in this God-forgotten spot, and why I'm the landlord of Jamaica Inn." Against her better judgement, Mary becomes attracted to Joss's younger brother, Jem, a petty thief, but less brutal than his big brother. After Mary realizes that Joss is the leader of a band of wreckers and even overhears Joss ordering the murder of one of their member, she is unsure whether to trust Jem or not. She turns to Francis Davey, the albino vicar of the neighbouring village of Altarnun, who happened to find Mary when she got lost one day on the moor. Mary and Jem leave the moors for Christmas Eve and spend a day together in the town of Launceston, during which Jem sells a horse he stole from Squire Bassat back to the squire's unwitting wife. When it comes time to return to Jamaica Inn, Jem leaves Mary to go get the jingle, but never returns. Mary hires a coach to take her home wherein she meets Francis Davey, but they are waylaid by her uncle's band of wreckers, and the coach driver is killed. Mary is then forced to watch as the wreckers trick a ship into steering itself on to the rocks and then murder the survivors of the crash as they try to swim to shore. A few days later, Jem comes to speak with Mary, who is locked in her room at the inn. Mary uses Jem's help to escape and goes to Altarnun to tell the vicar about Joss' misdeeds, but he isn't at home. She then goes to the squire's home and tells his wife her story, but Mrs. Bassat tells Mary that her husband already has the evidence to arrest Joss and has gone to do so. Mrs. Bassat has her driver take Mary to Jamaica Inn, where they arrive before the Squire's party. Mary goes inside to find her uncle stabbed to death; the lawmen arrive soon thereafter and discover Aunt Patience similarly murdered. The vicar arrives at the inn, having received a note Mary left for him that afternoon, and offers her refuge for the night. The next day, Mary surreptitiously sees a drawing by the vicar which she found in a drawer of the desk in her room at the vicar's cottage; she is shocked to see that the vicar has drawn himself as a wolf while the members of his congregation have heads of sheep. The vicar returns, tells Mary that Jem was the one who informed on Joss. Realizing that she has seen the drawing, the vicar then reveals that he was the true head of the wrecker gang and the murderer of Joss and her Aunt Patience, and he tries to escape with Mary as his hostage. The vicar goes on to explain that he tried to find faith in the Christian Church but did not, setting his faith instead in the ancient Druid following. As they flee across the moor to try to reach a ship to sail to Spain, Squire Bassat and Jem lead a search party that closes the gap, eventually coming close enough for Jem to shoot the vicar and rescue Mary. Mary has an offer to work as a servant for the Bassats, but instead plans to return to Helford. One day as she walks on the moor, she comes across Jem, leading a cart with all of his possessions, headed in the other direction from Helford. After some discussion, Mary decides to abandon Helford to go with Jem.
3292274	/m/093rqz	Meditations on the Peaks				 Julius Evola considered mountaineering to be an initiatic discipline consistent with his ideas on Traditionalism. In the first chapter of Meditations on the Peaks, Evola contrasts mountaineering with generic "sport" and the scholarly life. He claims that mountaineering, when performed correctly, combines the aspects of heroic action of sport with the discipline and specialized learning of the scholar. This combination of action and learning forms for Evola a sort of ideal ascesis or discipline "in the Roman sense" because it combines an asceticism of action with an asceticism of contemplation. Evola also explores the significance of mountains to ancient mythologies. Mountains were the seats of the gods in Norse, Greek and Iranian mythologies. Legendary heroes were often required to climb mountains as a symbolic and heroic act in order to achieve the goals of their quests. The mountain is so important because it has a special spiritual significance in that it is "higher" and closer to nature and to the gods. For his description of the importance of the mountain, Evola turns time and again to a quote from Nietzsche, "Many meters above sea level--but how many more above ordinary men!" The second half of the book is concerned primarily with Evola's descriptions of his own experiences climbing a number of mountains. He describes the perilous circumstances of a number of climbs and both the camaraderie and the solitude he experienced on the peaks. In the appendices, Evola discusses Nicholas Roerich, an artist whose depictions of mountain scenes Evola finds to be of a spiritual significance. He also discusses religious traditions relating to the mountains in Tibet and Tyrol and their significance to broader tradition. The collection ends with a short essay, "Height", discussing the various ways that distinctions in height are used to connote "higher" spiritual states.
3292524	/m/093s7k	My Pretty Pony	Stephen King	1989-09-26		 An elderly man, his death rapidly approaching, takes his young grandson up onto a hill behind his house and gives the boy his pocket watch. Then, standing among falling apple blossoms, the man also "gives instruction" on the nature of time: how when you grow up, it begins to move faster and faster, slipping away from you in great chunks if you don't hold tightly onto it. Time is a pretty pony, with a wicked heart.
3293111	/m/093tl8	The Dawning Light	Randall Garrett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As the novel opens, Kris peKym and his cronies are doing an unprecedented and revolutionary thing - they are robbing a bank. Although the Nidorians use paper money, it is always backed by reserves of precious metal, in this case cobalt. The gang removes all the cobalt from one of the regional banks, making its scrip worthless. The plan is to use their cash reserves from other banks to buy up the worthless notes at a steep discount, then let the cobalt be re-discovered, multiplying their funds overnight. The scheme appears to succeed, but in the process Nidorian society becomes ever more fractured. Del peFenn Vyless, the radical leader of Norvis' party, is assassinated. His place is taken by Kris peKym who, as a Yorgen and direct descendant of the Lawgiver, is an ideal figurehead for the movement to restore the old ways. Kris peKym spreads a rumor that the Earthmen are responsible for the theft of the cobalt, and when the Earthmen refuse to deny this rumor, he foments a riot that results in the sacking of the School. The cobalt is discovered there, where Kris had planted it. The Earthmen do nothing - they stand and watch the destruction, then float up into the sky, surrounded by a blue glow. As far as the Nidorians can tell, they have been driven off Nidor. Things progressively get worse until mass starvation, food riots and breakdown of the law result in the destruction of the main Temple. Norvis confronts his grandfather, who collapses and dies as his world crumbles around him. Norvis' party appears to have won, but it is a Pyrrhic victory, with new religious sects appearing and more economic problems. Kris peKym is appointed Executive Officer by the remnants of the High Council, the first autocratic leader in the history of Nidor. Norvis sets out on a quest - his mother had told him how she happened across an encampment of Earthmen in the mountains, and he wants to know if they are still there. He finds the camp, but it is abandoned. However, he has company - the Earthman he knows as Smith, who caused his downfall. Smith has been waiting for Norvis. Norvis pulls out a weapon to exact revenge, but holds off long enough for Smith to persuade Norvis to come with him to a place where all will be explained. Rising together, just as the Earthmen did when the School was sacked, they enter a spaceship, which rises above the atmosphere. Norvis is shown what the Great Light really is, and how far away it is. He sees his planet from above, the first Nidorian to do so. Smith explains that when the Earthmen first encountered Nidor, it was the first time they had found a species they had anything in common with, albeit one that had no inkling of other worlds, because they never saw the sun or stars. Intelligent life is rare, and previous encounters with aliens had been hostile and traumatic. Nidor promised humans something they thought they lacked - stimulating companionship and competition. However Nidorian society was locked in stasis. It could never provide a challenge to humans, and any significant interactions would destroy it through culture shock. Instead the humans adopted the role of the beneficent Earthmen, with a distinctive appearance, for instance wearing beards, and created institutions like the School of Divine Law, which, over the years, would result in the disruption of the static society. They also created the conditions for intelligent, outward-looking Nidorians to meet and marry, thus breeding a new Nidorian who would lead the new society. Norvis realizes that he is a result of that breeding program. Smith explains he was kicked out of the School because they knew what problems the peych hormone would cause. Indeed, the tactic proved so successful they have been kicking out other students of Norvis' calibre so they would be just as motivated as Norvis himself. Smith returns Norvis to the surface of the planet, but not before telling him "See you in a couple of centuries". Humans and Nidorians will not meet again until Nidor lifts itself into space, as it must. When that happens, humans will not look like the hated Earthmen, and the two species will become friends. Back on the surface, Norvis has an epiphany. He has been trying to get rid of the Earthmen for what they did to Nidor, but everything they did, even partly causing the peych glut, was minor. The person really responsible for ruining Nidor, by killing Del peFenn, by starting heretical religious sects, by creating the Merchants Party itself in opposition to the priests, is Norvis himself. The Earthmen did not need to ruin Nidor. They simply bred a Nidorian to do it for them. Now there is no going back. Norvis returns to his own kind. He is shocked to find that Kris peKym has been assassinated while he was gone. He nominates a new leader, and prepares to do what he must, starting with rebuilding the School.
3294825	/m/093xwx	Path of Destruction	Drew Karpyshyn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Bane's backstory is established in the book. He is born as Dessel on the planet Apatros, the son of a miner named Hurst. An abusive alcoholic, Hurst blames the boy for the death of his wife in childbirth, and often calls him the "Bane" of his existence. His father takes him into the mines at a young age, and the boy is bullied and abused well into adulthood. He is powerful in the dark side of the Force. In a vain attempt to reestablish himself, Bane challenges Sirak to a fight and is seriously injured in the ensuing duel. He teaches a force-sensitive young girl named Rain, who had been brought to Ruusan by the Jedi. When Rain's friend is accidentally killed by two Jedi troops, her anger draws her to the dark side snapping both of the soldiers' necks. When Bane happens upon this scene, he realizes he has found a worthy apprentice.
3297573	/m/0941vr	The Final Solution	Michael Chabon	2004-11-09	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Although the plot of the story is modelled on the classic ratiocination stories of Doyle, there are two separate mysteries in the book, only one of which the Holmes character is able to solve by the end. The story opens with the description of a chance encounter between the old man and the young boy Linus Steinman, who, we find out moments later, is a German-Jewish refugee staying with a local Anglican priest and his family. Because the parrot sitting on the boy's shoulder is in the habit of rattling off German numbers in no obvious order — "zwei eins sieben fünf vier sieben drei" ("two one seven five four seven three") — the old man quickly deduces the boy's reason for being in England. After we are introduced to the priest, his wife, son and two lodgers sitting at dinner, we find out that the numbers may have some significance. One lodger speculates that the numbers are a military code of some kind and seeks to crack it. The other lodger, a Mr. Shane, from the British foreign office, pretends at dinner not to even notice the bird, which the family and Linus call Bruno. But because everyone else around the table is intensely interested in it, Shane's behavior only heightens their suspicions. After Mr. Shane is found murdered the next morning and the parrot Bruno has gone missing, the local inspector, Michael Bellows, recruits the old man to help solve the mystery. The old man, his interest piqued by the boy's strange attachment to his bird, agrees only to find the parrot — "If we should encounter the actual murderer along the way, well, then it will be so much the better for you," he says (ending chapter 3). Although the Holmes character succeeds in that endeavor, neither he nor anyone else in the book discovers what the true meaning of the numbers are, though there are clear implications of a solution. One hint, given by the author Chabon, is that the numbers are often recited in the presence of trains, and indeed, the parrot calls it "the train song". Another hint, revealed in the book's penultimate chapter, which is told from the perspective of Bruno, is that the boy and his parrot used to visit an Obergruppenführer while still in Germany, where it is implied he learned the song. But the biggest hint of all is the book's title and the boy's dumbness. Added to that, neither the parrot nor the boy ever voice the German numeral "null".
3300212	/m/0946br	Life and Fate	Vasily Grossman			 The novel at heart narrates the history of the Shaposhnikov family and the Battle of Stalingrad. It is written in the socialist realist style, which can make it seem odd in parts to western readers. Life and Fate is a multi-faceted novel, one of its themes being that the Great Patriotic War was the struggle between two comparable totalitarian states. The tragedy of the common people is that they have to fight both the invaders and the totalitarianism of their own state. Life and Fate is a sprawling account of life on the eastern front, with countless plotlines taking place simultaneously all across Russia and Eastern Europe. Although each story has a linear progression, the events are not necessarily presented in chronological order. Grossman will, for example, introduce a character, then ignore that character for hundreds of pages, and then return to recount events that took place the very next day. Thus, it is difficult to synopsize the novel, but the plot can be boiled down to three basic plotlines: the Shtrum/Shapashnikov family, the siege of Stalingrad, and life in the camps of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Although Life and Fate is divided into three parts, all of these plotlines are featured in every section. Viktor Shtrum is a brilliant physicist who, with his wife, Lyudmila, and daughter, Nadya, has been evacuated from Moscow to Kazan. He is experiencing great difficulty with his work, as well as with his family. He then receives a letter from his mother from inside a Jewish ghetto informing him that she is soon to be killed by the Germans. Lyudmila, meanwhile, goes to visit her son from her first marriage, Tolya, in an army hospital, but he dies before her arrival. When she returns to Kazan, she is extremely detached and seems to still be expecting Tolya’s return. Viktor finds himself engaging in anti-soviet conversations at his colleague, Sokolov’s house, partly to impress Sokolov’s wife, Marya (Lyudmila’s only friend). He consistently compares political situations to physics, and remarks that fascism and Stalinism are not so different. He later regrets these discussions out of fear that he will be denounced, an indecision that plagues his decision-making throughout the novel. Suddenly, Viktor makes a huge mathematical breakthrough, solving the issues that had hindered his experiments. Viktor’s colleagues are slow to respond, but eventually people come to accept the genius of his discovery. After moving back to Moscow, however, the higher-ups begin to criticize his discoveries as being anti-Leninist and attacking his Jewish identity. Viktor, however, refuses to publicly repent and is forced to resign. He fears that he will be arrested, but then receives a call from Stalin himself (presumably because Stalin had sensed the military importance of nuclear research) that completely, and immediately reverses his fortune. Later, he signs a letter denouncing two innocent men and is subsequently racked by guilt. The last details about Viktor regard his unconsummated affair with Marya. The events recounted at Stalingrad center on Yevghenia Shapashnikova (Lyudmila’s sister), Krymov (her former husband), and Novikov (her lover). After reconnecting with Novikov, Yevghenia evacuates to Kuibyshev. Novikov, the commander of a Soviet tank corps, meets General Nyeudobnov and Political Commissar Getmanov, both of whom are party hacks. Together they begin planning the counter-assault on Stalingrad. Novikov delays the start of the assault for fear of unnecessarily sacrificing his men. Getmanov later denounces Novikov and he is summoned for trial, even though the tank attack was a complete success. Meanwhile, Krymov, a Political Commissar, is sent to investigate House 6/I, where a tiny group of soldiers have held back the Germans for weeks, even though they are completely surrounded and cut off from all supplies. Grekov, the commanding officer, refuses to send reports to HQ, and is disdainful of Krymov’s rhetoric. He later wounds Krymov in his sleep, causing him to be evacuated from the house. Soon after, House 6/I is completely leveled by German bombs. Krymov, a staunch communist, is then accused of being a traitor (this was standard for Russian soldiers who had been trapped behind enemy lines) and is sent to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where he is beaten and forced to confess. Yevghenia decides not to marry Novikov and goes to Moscow to try and visit Krymov. He receives a package from her and realizes that he still loves her but may never be released from prison. The sections that take place in the camps have few recurring characters, with the exception of Mostovskoy, an Old Bolshevik who takes part in a plot to rebel against the Germans, but is dismayed by the prevailing lack of faith in Communism. His interrogator, Liss, asserts that Fascism and Communism are two sides of the same coin, which upsets Mostovskoy greatly. He is later killed by the Germans for his part in the uprising. In one scene, Sturmbannführer Liss tells old Bolshevik Mostovsky, a Nazi concentration camp inmate, that both Stalin and Hitler are the leaders of qualitatively new formation: "When we look at each other's faces, we see not only a hated face; we see the mirror reflection. ... Don't you recognize yourself, your [strong] will in us?" Grossman also focuses on Sofya Levinton, a Jewish woman on her way to a Nazi extermination camp. As Grossman moves into Part Three of the novel, he writes with an increasingly analytic style and abandons many of the characters that he has created. The only plotlines that achieve real closure are those whose protagonists perish during the war. All of these characters, he seems to say, are part of a larger, ongoing story—that of Russia, and of mankind. The final chapter solidifies this notion of universality. The author introduces a set of characters who remain anonymous: an elderly widow observing her tenants, a wounded army officer recently discharged from hospital, his wife and their young daughter. Grossman describes the type of Communist party functionaries, who blindly follow the party line and constitute the base for the oppressive regime. One such political worker (политработник), Sagaidak, maintained that entire families and villages intentionally starved themselves to death during the collectivisation in the USSR.
3301625	/m/0949kc	The Body of Jonah Boyd	David Leavitt		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Anne finds the manuscript and schemes against Boyd in order to teach him a lesson for his carelessness. She asks Ben Wright, the youngest son and amateur poet who was also present when Anne found the books again, to hide the novel until she would tell him to "surprisingly find" it. Jonah stops writing and changes his careless behaviour towards Anne. Since Anne very appreciates her kind of "new" husband and does not want him to get into his former rut again, she decides to leave the book in Ben's care instead of returning it to her husband. Jonah, who used to drink, again finds consolation in alcohol, which ultimately leads to his death through a car accident. Years later, when almost nobody who knows about Boyd’s novel is still alive, Ben finishes the book and publishes it under his name. Critics review Ben's ending as the best part of the novel. This way, Ben develops his own writing style and becomes a successful novelist. When Denny finally discovers this "theft", she decides to confront Ben. Surprisingly he sees this situation as a possibility to confide with someone rather than a threat. At last they marry and after Ben's death Denny even inherits the Wrights’ house, which plays a central part in the family's and Denny's lives and in which all the fatal events took their start.
3302985	/m/094dhn	Heavy Weather	P. G. Wodehouse	1933-07-28	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Monty Bodkin, despite his wealth, needs to hold a job down for a full year ("There are wheels within wheels"), so when he is sacked from his job assistant-editing Tiny Tots for Lord Tilbury's Mammoth Publishing Company, he jumps at his pal Hugo Carmody's tip that his old job as Lord Emsworth's secretary is available, especially on hearing that his former fiancee Sue Brown will be on the premises. Hearing that Monty is on his way, and fearing Ronnie's jealous nature, Sue heads to London, dines with Bodkin and warns him to be distant; on the train back, they both encounter Ronnie's formidable mother Lady Julia, and claim not to know each other. Lady Julia, having seen Sue and Monty at lunch together, tells her son about their suspicious behaviour, and Ronnie is at once convinced that Sue loves Monty. Meanwhile, Connie and Parsloe-Parsloe, unaware of these developments, task Percy Pilbeam with obtaining Galahad's manuscript, used to ensure Sue and Ronnie's marriage is permitted. Lord Tilbury, also wanting the book, visits the castle and is rebuffed. Leaving, he calls on the Empress, but is locked in a shed by Pirbright the pig-man, instructed by a suspicious Lord Emsworth to guard the pig closely. He is released by Monty Bodkin, who he persuades to steal the book by offering him a year's guaranteed employment - he is worried about his tenure at the castle, as Lord Emsworth suspects him, being the nephew of his rival Parsloe-Parsloe, of scheming to nobble his pig, the Empress. Beach, catching Pilbeam in the act of grabbing the book, tells Galahad and is instructed to guard the book himself. When he overhears Tilbury and Bodkin plotting in the garden at the Emsworth Arms, however, he sees the task is too much for him and hands the book on to Ronnie Fish. Fish is distracted by his loss of Sue's love, but once the storm breaks feels better; he sees Monty Bodkin, drenched from the rain, and is friendly towards him. However, when he sees "Sue" tattooed on Bodkin's chest, his mood turns sour once more. Sue, having heard Ronnie's kind words, is also cheered and rushes to find Ronnie; when he is once more cold and distant, she breaks down and breaks off the engagement. Bodkin finds Ronnie and asks him a favour - to get Beach to hand over the book, explaining he needs it in order to marry his girl. Ronnie, inwardly furious, chivalrously hands it over. Gally sees Sue is upset, learns all and confronts Ronnie with his idiocy. He explains about Bodkin and Sue, and Ronnie forgives her. Gally then confronts his sisters, threatening them once more with his book; although Julia is at first unmoved, when Gally relates a few of the stories it contains concerning her late husband "Fishy" Fish, she is defeated. Bodkin, having engaged Pilbeam to find the book for him, tells the detective he is no longer needed, revealing where he has hidden the manuscript. Pilbeam steals it, planning to auction it between Tilbury and the Connie-Parsloe syndicate, and hides it in a disused shed. He informs Lord Emsworth that Bodkin released Tilbury, and Bodkin is fired. Pilbeam is summoned to see Lady Constance, and primes himself with a bottle of champagne. She is insulting, and Pilbeam vows to sell the book to Tilbury, who he calls promising to deliver it, but he retires to bed first to sleep off the booze. Lord Emsworth, having moved the Empress to her new sty for safety, finds her eating the manuscript. Pilbeam sees this, and hurries to Connie and Parsloe-Parsloe, but is denied his fee when they find the pig has eaten the book. He then rushes to the Emsworth Arms, and gets a cheque out of Lord Tilbury, telling him the book is in the pigsty. Bodkin is on hand, however, and destroys the cheque and warns Emsworth by phone that someone is heading for his sty. Later, full of remorse, he offers Pilbeam a thousand pounds to employ him for a year in his agency. While Emsworth is being badgered by his sisters into denying Ronnie his money, a mud-spattered Lord Tilbury is brought in, captured by Pirbright. Gally and Sue then appear, informing Emsworth that Ronnie has the pig in his car and will drive off with it if denied his cash. Emsworth coughs up, and the happy couple depart, much to Gally's satisfaction.
3303051	/m/094dqb	After Many a Summer	Aldous Huxley	1939	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The action revolves around a few characters brought together by a Hollywood millionaire, Jo Stoyte. Each character represents a different attitude toward life. Stoyte, in his sixties and conscious of his mortality, finds himself in deep contemplation of life. Enlightenment eludes him, though, as he is ruled by his fears and cravings. Stoyte hires Dr Obispo and his assistant Peter to research the secrets to long life in carp, crocodiles, and parrots. Jeremy, an English archivist and literature expert, is brought in to archive a rare collection of books. Jeremy's presence highlights Stoyte's shallow attitude toward the precious works of art that he affords himself. Other characters are Virginia, Stoyte's young mistress; and Mr Propter, a professor who lives on a neighboring estate. Mr Propter believes: ... every individual is called on to display not only unsleeping good will but also unsleeping intelligence. And this is not all. For, if individuality is not absolute, if personalities are illusory figments of a self-will disastrously blind to the reality of a more-than-personal consciousness, of which it is the limitation and denial, then all of every human being's efforts must be directed, in the last resort, to the actualization of that more-than-personal consciousness. So that even intelligence is not sufficient as an adjunct to good will; there must also be the recollection which seeks to transform and transcend intelligence. This is essentially Huxley&#39;s own position. Though other characters achieve conventional success, even happiness, only Mr Propter does so without upsetting anyone or creating evil. Dr Obispo places great faith in science and medicine as saviours of humankind. He sees everyone as a stepping stone to science, the greater good, and thus only derives happiness at others&#39; expense. According to Propter&#39;s philosophy, he is trapped in ego-based &#34;human&#34; behaviour that prevents him from reaching enlightenment. Obispo seduces Virginia in a characteristically egotistical way. She is unable to resist him despite her loyalty to Stoyte. When she is found out by Stoyte, he wants to kill Obispo but accidentally kills Peter (whose thoughts and morals had slowly started to expand under Propter&#39;s tutelage) instead. Obispo covers up the act for money and continued research support. This takes him, along with Virginia and Stoyte, to Europe, where they find an immortal human, the Fifth Earl of Gonister, still alive at 200, who now resembles an ape. Stoyte cannot grasp that transcendence or goodness should be one&#39;s ultimate goal, rather than prevention of death, and expresses his wish to undergo treatment so that he too will live forever.
3303123	/m/094dx9	W ou le souvenir d'enfance	Georges Perec	1975	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 In the first part, the fictional narrator is contacted by a mysterious individual, who informs him of the disappearance of a deaf and dumb boy in a shipwreck. The boy is also called Gaspard Winkler—the adult narrator of the story discovers that he took on the boy's identity after deserting the army, although at that time he believed he had been given forged identity papers. In the second part, the fictional narrative (apparently based on a story written by Perec at the age of thirteen) recounts the organisation of an Olympian Island called W, in which life revolves around sport and competition. While the island might at first seem a Utopia, successive chapters reveal the arbitrary and cruel rules that govern the lives of the athletes. The final autobiographical chapter links back to the fictional narrative by a quotation from David Rousset about the Nazi concentration camps, where Perec's mother died: by now the reader has discovered that the story of the island is an allegory of life in the camps.
3303913	/m/094gp8	Gypsy Rizka	Lloyd Alexander	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Rizka is a gypsy who lives just outside of a town in a vardo and waits for the return of her gypsy father after the death of her mother. Fortunately, she has Big Franko looking out for her and the company of her cat Petzel. Throughout the story, she experiences numerous adventures helping out friends and folks in town as well as outwitting local town official Sharpnack, who will do anything to get rid of Rizka.
3305645	/m/094l4_	The Fifty Year Sword	Mark Z. Danielewski	2005-10-31	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The Fifty Year Sword is essentially a mature-audience ghost story, in the disguised form of a children's book. The events of the book take place at a woman's 50th birthday party in an orphan's foster home, told from the point of view of Chintana, a kind yet sullen seamstress who is struggling with the recent divorce from her husband over an affair, the mistress, Belinda Kite, of which is ironically the birthday girl whose party Chintana is attending. A storyteller is invited by a social worker to entertain the orphans. He brings with him a long, black box. The storyteller entertains the orphans by explaining his adventures of obtaining the contents of the box: His Fifty Year Sword, a weapon that never fails to cut but shows no wound until the victim's 50th year of life. He recants a suspenseful, epic journey through mystical rocky trails and soundless forests, bent on finding an otherworldly swordsmith to satisfy a dark, never explained personal grudge. He then opens the box, revealing a seemingly bladeless sword, and he waves it in the air at the candles. Just then, the mistress and Birthday Girl, who has barged in toward the end of the story, gets annoyed at the storyteller and tells the children the whole thing is a bunch of hogwash, and sets out to prove it. She takes the hilt of the sword, and slashes it around at herself in any and all places in order to disprove the man's story, much to the horror of the children and the bemusement of the shadowy storyteller. The suspense grabs the reader even more as the storyteller finishes and Chintana and the other guests go outside so the Birthday Girl can toast herself as her 50th year of life begins at the stroke of midnight. As they take the toast, and the clock hits midnight, signaling the 50th year of Belinda Kite, Belinda falls to pieces, as she has sliced herself in all discernable locations. Chintana, in a fit of empathy, runs to Belinda and holds her as the different discernable entities of her human body fall off. Chintana, at this point, likens holding her together to a series of stitches and the pressures and cuts that can tear it apart. How does one know how much it will take before it tears?
3306513	/m/094mql	Flight of Eagles	Jack Higgins	1998-07-02	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jack Kelso, an American ace pilot in World War 1, is shot down and nursed back to health by a German nurse, Baroness Elsa von Halder. They marry and return to America after the war. After Jack is killed in a car accident, Elsa returns to Germany with their eldest son Max, who assumes the title of Baron von Halder. Harry, his identical younger (by twenty minutes) brother, remains with his grandfather, millionaire Abe Kelso. Inspired by their father's example, both brothers become ace and much decorated pilots in opposing forces. Max joins the Luftwaffe and Harry, after fighting in Finland, returns to England, joining the Royal Air Force as a 'Finn'. The brothers rise in rank and number of 'kills', occasionally hearing of the others exploits. They actually meet again in the skies and also when Harry is shot down. Max summons an English rescue boat using his airborne radio. Elsa continues her social climbing amongst the nazi elite, although Max warns her of the potential danger. Harry becomes a special duties pilot and crashes in France whilst landing a French Resistance leader. He is imprisoned at a local chateau where he and Max finally meet face to face. Himmler, learning of the capture of one ace, arranges for the brothers to be blackmailed. Max is to assume Harry's character, 'escape' in England and assassinate General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Fearing for his Mother's life, Max is forced to agree and flies back home. Elsa tries to commit suicide, but is shot dead in the attempt. The brothers' plot fails, mainly because the brothers see themselves as flyers and honourable men, not assassins. Max returns to France, rescues Harry and flies back to England, but Max is killed when they are intercepted by an Me109. Harry returns to flying and is killed in a later mission, late in the war. The narrative is surrounded by a 'frame story', with a prologue and epilogue. In 1998, the author and his wife, an experienced pilot, are forced to ditch their airplane in the English channel and are rescued by the Cold Harbour lifeboat. They learn something of what happened in Cold Harbour during the War and later meet other surviving characters. A central character of the story is 'Tarquin', a bear wearing flying kit with both RAF and RFC insignia. He was Jack's lucky mascot, later Harry's and was lost when Harry crashed. Tarquin passed to a French family and was later bought in an English antiques shop by the author's wife, also as a flying mascot. There are a few twist reveals in the final chapter of the story, having to do with the fate of some of the earlier characters. Also when the twins are split after their father dies, they argue over who will take possession of Tarquin, they agree the bear stays in America, Max the oldest wins the toss and stays with his grandfather as "Harry" sending Harry to Germany as "Max"...so when Himmler forces Max to become Harry, they are actually switching back to their original selves. The book is supposedly based on a true story. pl:Lot Orłów
3307322	/m/094p8m	The Kestrel	Lloyd Alexander	1982	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Theo is traveling through Westmark, learning about the country of which he will soon be Prince Consort. He is not surprised to find great poverty: Mickle - now known as Princess Augusta - could have told him that from her years on the street. His friend Florian could have told him about the aristocracy's graft and corruption. But neither could have foreseen a loaded pistol in the practiced hand of the assassin Skeit. The echoes of that shot ring from the muskets and cannons of a Westmark suddenly at war - a war that turns simple, honest men into cold-blooded killers, Mickle into a military commander, and Theo himself into a stranger. As set up in Westmark, Theo and Mickle are in love. A corrupt general is in a cabal with a rival country, and plans to surrender after a token resistance, allowing a country with a more aristocratic government to replace the more populist Mickle who is seen as too close to revolutionaries like Florian. However, although the general surrenders, his soldiers refuse to, and the nominal resistance becomes a full-blown war as the people fight to determine their own destiny. Similar to how the aristocratic powers of the time invaded France to restore the aristocracy, here a foreign country is meddling in the internal affairs of Westmark. And just as France repelled the great powers with an army led by the people and of the people, the Westmark forces run by Florian, and his lieutenants, Theo — now the eponymous Kestrel — and Justin, fight to preserve the country. But becoming a general, a tradesman in blood and death, costs the artistic and conscientious Theo a great deal. He has to cut off pieces of himself in the service of a more pressing need. Meanwhile, Mickle must run her government in exile. Musket and his master, Count Las Bombas, are dragged in to serve as her advisors. She says she wants his advice, as he used to serve with the Salamanca lancers, one of his blustery claims from Westmark. The character Las Bombas is, like the bard Fflewddur Fflam in The Chronicles of Prydain, bombastic, yet of a true heart, and a solid friend. There are sub-plots involving some gamine children, and difficulties in the cabal involving Cabbarus, the villain of the first book. In the end, good triumphs not by force, but by compromise. Constantine, the young king, was set up to be killed by his guardian, but ends up being captured. He and Mickle come to terms, and they draw up a peace treaty to benefit both countries. Mickle sets up a representative government to reign along with her, but that forces her and Theo to postpone their wedding.
3307869	/m/094qcv	A Breath of Snow and Ashes	Diana Gabaldon	2005-09-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Claire is the wife of Jamie Fraser, her 18th century husband, and facing the politics and turmoil of the forthcoming American Revolution. The preceding novel, The Fiery Cross, concluded with political unrest in the colonies beginning to boil over and the Frasers trying to peacefully live on their isolated homestead. Jamie is suddenly faced with walking between the fires of loyalty to the oath he swore to the British crown and following his hope for freedom in the new world.
3309504	/m/094t55	Legacy of the Jedi	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Lorian Nod is a promising Padawan and the best friend of Count Dooku. When Lorian decides to learn the ways of the Sith, Dooku must decide to side with the Jedi Council or his best friend. Thirteen years later, Dooku has become a Jedi Master and taken Qui-Gon Jinn as his Padawan. Lorian has been exiled from the Jedi Order and become a roaming space-pirate. In a twist of fate, Dooku will once more face his old friend. Thirty-two years later, Qui-Gon has lost his former apprentice Xanatos to the dark side and has after much thought decided to train Obi-Wan Kenobi. On one of their many missions, they must work together to fight Lorian Nod once again. Twenty-three years later, the Clone Wars have engulfed the galaxy. Obi-Wan and his own apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, have received a message from Lorian Nod calling for a treaty between himself and the Republic. Obi-Wan and Anakin journey to the planet, even if it is a trap. But the final showdown will be between two former Jedi, Count Dooku and Lorian Nod.
3309710	/m/094tlw	The Approaching Storm	Alan Dean Foster		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Republic is decaying, even under the leadership of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who was elected to save the galaxy from collapsing under the forces of discontent. On the tiny but strategic planet of Ansion, a powerful faction is on the verge of joining the growing Separatist movement. The urban dwellers wish to expand into the prairies outside their cities - the ancestral territory of the fierce, independent Ansion nomads. If their demands are not met, they will secede - an act that could jump-start a chain reaction of withdrawal and rebellion by other worlds of the Republic. At the Chancellor's request, the Jedi Council sends Kenobi and fellow Jedi Luminara Unduli to resolve the conflict and negotiate with the elusive nomads. Undaunted, Kenobi and Unduli, along with their Padawans Skywalker and Barriss Offee, set out across the wilderness. Many perils lie waiting to trap them. The Jedi will have to fulfill near-impossible tasks, befriend wary strangers, and influence two great armies to complete their quest, stalked all the while by an enemy sworn to see the negotiations collapse and the mission fail.
3310452	/m/094w8k	A Tramp Abroad	Mark Twain	1880	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature"}	 The first half of the book covers their stay in south-western Germany (Heidelberg, Mannheim, a trip on the Neckar river, Baden-Baden and the Black Forest). The second part describes his travels through Switzerland and eastern France (Lucerne, Interlaken, Zermatt, Chamonix and Geneva). The end of the book covers his trip through several cities in northern Italy (Milan, Venice and Rome). Several other cities are touched and described during their travels, as well as mountains such as Matterhorn, the Jungfrau, the Rigi-Kulm and Mont-Blanc. Interleaved with the narration, Mark Twain inserted also stories not related to the trip, such as Bluejay Yarn, The Man who puts up at Gasby's and others; as well as many German Legends, partly invented by the author himself. Six Appendices are included in the book. They are short essays dedicated to different topics. The role of The Portier in European hotels and how they make their living, a description of Heidelberg Castle, an essay on College Prisons in Germany, The Awful German Language, a humorous essay on German language, a short story called The legend of the Castle and finally a satirical description of German Newspapers.
3310677	/m/094wy0	Secrets of the Jedi	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 To be a Jedi is to safeguard peace in the galaxy. To be a Jedi is to defend justice against tyranny. To be a Jedi is to rely on the Force. To be a Jedi is to not love or live as normal people do…at whatever the price. Jedi know that love is not meant to be for them. But when Obi-Wan Kenobi and his fellow apprentice Siri approach a very human failing, the reverberations are felt for many years…to when Obi-Wan has an apprentice of his own, Anakin Skywalker, whose secrets will draw Obi-Wan and Siri further into the Clone Wars.
3311086	/m/094xpq	Boba Fett: The Fight to Survive	Terry Bisson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 After Boba Fett's father, Jango Fett, dies at the Battle of Geonosis, he takes his belongings and searches for Count Dooku. Inner feeling and ideas are explored, jealousy of the clone troopers, his love for Padmé Amidala and yearning for a mother. Boba uses the 'book' to help him find his father's employer Count Dooku to collect what he owed his father. He suffers a string of bad luck and complications, including a bounty put on him by the Jedi for questioning. In the end he finally meets Aurra Sing, who like his father, works as a bounty hunter. While Boba is on his adventure he goacles, with the book that his father gave him as guide. His father told him not to open the book unless something happens to his father. After his father's crucial death, Boba opens the book and there are recordings from his father Jango. So this book is mainly about Boba getting to the place where his dad tell's him, and get revenge on Mace Windu the Jedi Master who killed his father.
3311547	/m/094yjk	Plowing the Dark	Richard Powers	2000-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Taimur Martin, the prisoner of war, spends five years analyzing and replaying his life while trapped in a single room. He has little outside contact. He occasionally exchanges words with his captors, and for a short interlude he is able to communicate with nearby prisoners using a tapped Morse code. He reads a book called Great Escape. He spends most of his time thinking about his life and relationship with his girlfriend Gwen. When his story resumes after he is released, he has a child and a wife, and much time has gone by. In the second narrative, a virtual reality machine ("The Cavern"), is being built by workers at the Realization Laboratory. The main characters are Adie Klarpol, an artist who no longer does original work; Stevie Spiegel, an engineer-turned-poet-turned-programmer; Ronan O'Reilly, an econometrician who hopes to predict the outcome of world events; and Jack "Jackdaw" Acquerelli, a young computer programming wizard. They are attempting to recreate the world inside a three-walled room. They create a completely immersing experience, but near the end Adie realizes that the technology will be used by the military. She has to reconcile with herself, but ends up creating another room which recreates the destruction and rebuilding of civilization. The author ultimately explores the possibilities of what can happen in one room, because near the end the two strands connect in a rather ambiguous way.
3311734	/m/094y_f	Who Killed the Robins Family?			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Who Killed the Robins Family? was a mystery novel in which all eight members of the Robins family are murdered or disappear throughout the story. The hardcover book provided no solutions to the murders. The books were also a contest where the person who provided the best answers to who, when, where, how, and why each murder happened won $10,000. The paperback version, released after the contest ended, revealed the answers to all the questions. Most chapters revolved around the death of a Robins family member, though one chapter contained a murder and a disappearance, and two others involved a disappearance. Most chapters contained all the needed information to provide all five answers regarding each death, though some gave only a hint as to an answer. However, if properly understood, it only took a bit of minor research to obtain the complete answer. The murders ranged from a classic locked-room puzzle to death by strangulation. The book also gives homage to several classic works of mystery and suspense. As the book is a contest, liberties are taken with proper police investigation of the crimes, which would have resulted in an immediate solution. For example, when one family member is shot to death in a darkened room, nobody thinks to check for gunshot residue. In addition, while some murders have fit very neatly with the facts on a theoretical basis, the method of implementation has questionable realism.
3318976	/m/095hqk	A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder	James De Mille	1888	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The main story of the novel is the narrative of the adventures of Adam More, a British sailor shipwrecked on a homeward voyage from Tasmania. After passing through a subterranean tunnel of volcanic origin, he finds himself in a "lost world" of prehistoric animals, plants and people sustained by volcanic heat despite the long Antarctic night. A secondary plot of four yachtsmen who find the manuscript written by Adam More and sealed in a copper cylinder forms a frame for the central narrative. They comment on More's report, and one identifies the Kosekin language as a Semitic language, possibly derived from Hebrew. In his strange volcanic world, More also finds a well-developed human society which in the tradition of topsy-turvy worlds of folklore and satire (compare Sir Thomas More's Utopia, Erewhon by Samuel Butler, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland) has reversed the values of 19th century Western society: wealth is scorned and poverty is revered, death and darkness are preferred to life and light. Rather than accumulating wealth, the natives seek to divest themselves of it as quickly as possible. Whatever they fail to give away to wealthy people is confiscated by the government, which imposes the burden of wealth upon its unfortunate subjects at the beginning of the next year of reverse taxation as a form of punishment.
3319237	/m/095jmp	The Laughing Policeman	Maj Sjöwall	1968	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A gunman shoots the passengers of a public transport bus with a sub-machine gun; he kills eight people (including Detective Åke Stenström), and wounds one. Detective Beck and his team suspect the mass-murder is to disguise the murder of Detective Stenstrom, who was spending his free time investigating the sixteen-year-old murder of a Portuguese prostitute.
3319540	/m/095kk9	Autumn Term	Antonia Forest	1948	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nicola makes an inauspicious start to her career at Kingscote School when she drops her leaving present, a penknife, out of the train and pulls the communication cord so that she can jump out to retrieve it. She and her twin then suffer the indignity of being placed in a Remove form, when all their sisters have always been in A forms. The misery is compounded when they discover that Removes are not even allowed to play netball! Since there is nothing else they can do, they join the school Guide Company and hope to shine there. All goes well until a hike down to the beach is planned. Nicola and Lawrie offer to take a shortcut through a farmyard in order to get the campfire lit. Unfortunately a haystack on the farm is found burned down later that afternoon and the twins are the prime suspects. Lois Sanger, their Patrol Leader, should be the one to take responsibility but instead twists the story to make herself look good. After an agonizing Court of Honour, the twins are asked to leave the company. Halfterm with the family gives opportunity for the elder Marlows to laugh at the twins' failures. Nicola takes advice from her eldest brother, Giles (a lieutenant in the Navy), that she should concentrate on what she is good at - being bad! A few weeks later, when things are particularly miserable at school, she remembers his advice. She takes the train down to Port Wade to visit Giles and his ship. When she gets there, she realises that she has not enough money for the return ticket and that she has no idea where to find Giles. Eventually she tracks him down and, although he is singularly unimpressed with her, he does at least put her on the train back to school. The second half of term is dominated by the fundraising efforts of the Third form. The other classes are organising a Bazaar, and offer Third Remove the Jumble and Kitchen stalls. Preferring to do their own thing, Third Remove put on a play. Tim (Thalia) Keith, niece of the Headmistress, writes a version of The Prince and the Pauper so that Nicola can be Edward VI and Lawrie can play Tom Canty, the beggar boy who looks just like the king. The play is saved by Lois Sanger who agrees to read the narration for them, in an attempt to atone for her actions in the Guide company. Nicola is unreconciled, but acknowledges that Lois does read well. However, it is Lawrie who is the star of the show, carrying the rest of the cast with her. Nicola, alone of Third Remove, makes a respectable showing in the end of term exams. However, the rest of the form are more than satisfied to have earned the epithet 'brilliant eccentrics' from one of the Sixth Form, if a little embarrassed to discover that through Nicola's efforts they have also won the Form Tidiness Prize!
3319760	/m/095l8g	The Marlows and the Traitor	Antonia Forest	1953	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Taking an early morning walk in a fierce storm, Peter Marlow is deliberately snubbed by one of his teachers from Dartmouth Naval College, Lewis Foley, who is spending the Easter holidays in the fishing village of St Anne's Oldport. Later, he and his sister Nicola, follow an irresistible sign to a place called Mariners. Mariners turns out to be a deserted house complete with its own crow's nest and a sign to Foley's Folly Light. Nicola discovers from one of her fishermen friends, Robert Anquetil, that Lewis had grown up in the village and that Mariners belongs to his family. Anquetil warns her not to go near the house again. However, when she returns to the hotel where the Marlows are staying, she finds that Peter has already told the others and that they are planning a trip that afternoon. Reluctantly, Nicola agrees to go along with them. The children enter the house and go exploring. While Nicola, Peter and Lawrie go down to the cellars, Ginty agrees to keep guard. But when she hears a noise she panics and follows them down the stairs. Peter has found some microfiche which seems to show details of Naval secrets. A man enters the cellars and the girls are afraid, but Peter recognises him as Lewis Foley and starts to tell him about the secrets he has found. Foley produces a gun and forces the children to come with him on his boat, but Lawrie manages to escape. Nicola puts sugar in the boat's engine so that Foley can't take them further out to sea. Instead he lands at the lighthouse and signals to someone to collect him there. He is ordered to dispose of the children but ignores this command. Lawrie gets run over on her way back to the hotel and is knocked unconscious. When she recovers she tells Robert Anquetil, who turns out to be a secret agent, what happened. He is ordered not to look for the children, since capturing the traitor and his allies is more important. Peter and Nicola make a plan to signal from the lighthouse to any passing ships. Nicola and Ginty pretend that Peter has drowned, trying to escape from the lighthouse so that he can hide without Foley coming to look for him. Foley seems genuinely upset about Peter and is kind to the girls. Later that night, they signal SOS, watching the Naval fleet go past without seeing them. However, they persevere and eventually are spotted by Anquetil. Foley comes up the stairs when they are signalling but Ginty throws her lamp at him so that he is seriously injured. The next day, a submarine emerges and men come to collect Foley and the children. Peter has taken Foley's revolver and he shoots the Admiral. But before anything else can happen, the Navy appear and the submarine is destroyed. The children are rescued and Nicola fulfils an ambition on the way home, when she is allowed onto the bridge of the destroyer. Nicola and Peter are a little disappointed that they are forbidden from telling anyone their adventures, but Ginty is glad to forget the whole thing.
3320089	/m/095m4m	Falconer's Lure	Antonia Forest	1957-12	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Marlow family are staying at their cousin Jon's farm during the school holidays. Out collecting eggs early one morning, Nicola Marlow hears what she thinks is a cat caught in the top of a tree. She climbs up to rescue it, only to find that it is a bird, wearing leather thongs. Before she can make any attempt to save it, its owner climbs up beside her. He tells her that the bird is a falcon called Jael and its thongs, or jesses, have broken loose. Nicola recognises him as Patrick Merrick and tells him who she is. He asks if she would like to help with the hawks over the summer. While they are out with the hawks that afternoon, Patrick and Nicola feel something a bit like an earthquake. When they get back, they find out that it was her cousin Jon's plane crashing and he is dead. Nicola's father inherits the farm and the family will not be returning to London. Neither Captain Marlow, nor his eldest son Giles, want to leave the Navy to run the farm. Nicola suggests by accident that her sister Rowan should do it. She offers and eventually her parents agree that she can leave school to become a farmer. Nicola and Patrick spend most of their time with the hawks over the summer. While they are teaching Jael to catch rabbits, Peter who is out shooting rabbits, shoots Jael and kills her. Later, Regina rakes away and, although Patrick later finds her caught in some netting, she has forgotten him so he lets her go. Only Sprog, the little merlin who Patrick thinks of as a joke, is left. The other big event of the summer is the Colebridge Festival. Nicola comes second in the singing competition, despite stopping in the middle of her song because it reminds her of Jael. Her twin Lawrie is sent out of the elocution competition for unconsciously mimicking another contestant. Later, however, she follows the adjudicator and persuades her to let Lawrie say her piece again. She agrees that Lawrie has real talent and introduces her to another actor. Peter and Patrick compete against each other in the diving competition which, in the end, Peter wins and the two of them become friends again. For Nicola, the gymkhana is a crucial competition in which she might win enough money to enable her to keep Sprog at school. Unfortunately, the other contestants think she is Lawrie and want to get their own back at her for Lawrie's performance in the elocution comp. She is knocked and bumped and falls off her horse. Later, Rowan offers her half of whatever she wins in the showjumping, but she is beaten by Patrick. When Nicola arrives home with Patrick she is greeted by his father who has a large cheque for Nicola from the sale of a secondhand book on hawking she bought earlier that summer. Amazed, Nicola admits to Patrick that she had been worried about the money for Sprog.
3320223	/m/095mhg	The Dew Breaker	Edwidge Danticat	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Book of the Dead: main characters are introduced, Ka and her family. Ka sculpts a wooden statue of her father, it is cracked wood, scared and the image of him is thoughtful, pondering, staring at his hands. Ka and her father are on a trip in order to show the statue to someone who would like to buy it. The statue is a disturbance to Ka's father because he does not feel he is deserving of it. Before they reach their destination, Ka's father leaves their motel room with the sculpture and returns after many hours without it. Soon after he reveals the real reason he fled Haiti to his daughter. ″Ka, your father was the hunter, he was not the prey.″ The rest of this story is Ka seeing her father in a new light, not as the oppressed anymore. Seven: A short and seemingly completely unrelated story to the first, Seven is about a man whose wife arrives from Port-au-Prince to NYC. They've been separated for seven years and now are together again in a strange place, living together in a basement. In the basement also live her husbands two housemates, Michel and Dany. Her husband works two jobs, a night janitor at Medgar Evers College, and a day janitor at Kings' County Hospital. Water Child: Nadine works in a hospital. She has family in Haiti, and soon after we discover she seems to be a previous girlfriend of the man in the previous story. ″He should be home resting now, she thought, preparing to start his second job as a night janitor at Medgar Evers College.″ But when she tries to call him she finds the number unlisted as in the previous chapter it is noted "Gone was the phone number he'd had for the last five years, ever since he'd had a telephone. (He didn't need other women calling him now.)" because of the arrival of his wife. Nadine is very secluded, most of the story is about her unborn, aborted child. A shrine has been constructed for this child that is described in much detail. She is estranged from her family, lover, and country. She has a very quietly tortured soul. The Book of Miracles: Narrated by Ka's mother, The Book of Miracles chronicles the family's car trip through NYC to get to Christmas-Eve mass and their run-in with a look-a-like of Haitian criminal Emmanuel Constant. Ka's "Manman," Anne, is very faithful and struggles with her daughter's flippant demeanor and typical teenage angst. "What if it were Constant? What would she do? Would she spit in his face or embrace him, acknowledging a kinship of shame and guilt that she'd inherited by marrying her husband?" The potential presence of Constant coupled with the religious setting brings to light Anne's own guilt and fear of living a lie, both with her relationship with her daughter and as a member of the Haitian community in NYC. Night Talkers: It's quickly established we're talking again about one of the men of the basement, Dany. Dany has traveled back to Haiti to visit his aunt Estina Esteme. He tells his aunt that it is his landlord who he recognized to have killed his parents, who is also the father of Ka. Then Claude appears. Claude is also from NY but has been exiled back to Haiti for killing his father in a rage. Claude contracts to Dany is a rough way. Dany has traveled so far because he's found the murderer of his parents, only to find Claude, accepted into the community he stills feels so to be much a part of him. Claude, the man who murdered his own father. The Bridal Seamstress: The story of the magazine intern Aline Cajuste and Beatrice Saint Forte the bridal seamstress. Beatrice is not very compliant with Aline's attempts to guide or even start the interview. But Aline is not made for this job and is sympathetic and swayed by the person Beatrice is. Beatrice offers advice, saying things like, ″Everything happens when it's meant to happen.″ Beatrice takes Aline for a walk, motioning to houses, all her neighbors from different places in the world and she ends on the Haitian prison guard. Not the barber he's become, but the prison guard he was. She says, ″I knew him in Haiti.″ And then after some small talk Beatrice openly expands into the story of the prison guard she knew it Haiti. She explains the term, chouket lawoze, Danticat's settled on the translation Dew Breaker. Beatrice goes on to show her whipped feet. Aline's undecided whether the woman is even sane, but in the end sees sense in her and returns to sit by her side, to watch the leaves fall. Monkey Tails: This is the most detailed retelling of life on the ground in Haiti during Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime. It recounts the president and his wife on television, the regular radio addresses, and the exile of Baby Doc. This story also gives an idea of familial relations, the broken families living next door to each other, and never openly acknowledging their illegitimate relations. It features a young Michael, one of the men from the basement. The Funeral Singer: This is the story of three Haitian women trying to make it through a diploma class in America. The story falls backs on their pasts and futures. One of the women Mariselle may have been a victim of Ka's father, as her husband "had painted an unflattering portrait of the president...He was shot leaving the show." Also the teacher June, may be the patient of Nadine in the 'Water Child' who lost her voice due to laryngectomies and had to go a speech therapist, for when teaching "Her voice hisses, but is flat, never rising or falling." The Dew Breaker: This uniting end story clarifies the story of Ka's father, and his relationship with his wife. The relationship is a very strange on that echos back to themes of the book about family and redemption. Anne's husband is also the murderer of her brother the priest which makes the situation epically poignant. Danticat never seems to allow the reader to have any room for comfort. She doesn't let us off with anything. Nothing is easily answered, or explained. It's unbelievable and completely possible that Anne could forgive this. It's as big a question as the redemption of a murderer, no matter how corrected he's become.
3320340	/m/095mrz	Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman	Walter M. Miller, Jr.		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The main character of the novel is Brother Blacktooth "Nimmy" St. George, a monk at Leibowitz Abbey. Brother Blacktooth, a former Nomad, is fluent both in Nomadic and Churchspeak. Unsatisfied with his job as a translator of ancient texts, and haunted by his roots as a Nomad, Blacktooth becomes increasingly restless. He feels pulled between the two societies: that of the church, and that of the wanderer. Blacktooth's reputation as a misfit compels the Abbot of Leibowitz, Jarad, to seek his expulsion from the order, while Blacktooth's unique linguistic skills attract the attention of the visiting Cardinal Elia Brownpony (called the Red Deacon since he was never ordained as a priest). Brownpony requires a translator in his travels in order to deal diplomatically with unruly Nomad tribes, the Grasshoppers and Jackrabbits. Thus, Cardinal Brownpony decides to enlist Nimmy's services, saving him from disgrace at the hands of Jarad. Brownpony and Nimmy set off to the conclave, along with Brownpony's other servants: Wooshin (aka "Axe"), a mysterious warrior from the Orient, and Chur Hongan (aka "Holy Madness"), his Nomadic driver. Soon afterward, the reigning Pope dies. A conclave of cardinals is called to elect a new one, including a Cardinal Abbess from N'Yok (New York). The Church had been exiled from the holy city of New Rome in previous decades because of an invasion by then king (or "Hannegan") of Texark. As a result, all papal affairs were conducted in the city of Valana, beyond the reach of the Texark empire. During their journeys, the group (specifically, Holy Madness) have a divine vision. The vision is of the Night Hag, who only appears to a man in order to announce the death of someone else. It is from her appearance that Brownpony infers the death of the Pope. The Night Hag is one of the three avatars of the Nomad goddess, Open Sky. Open Sky's other two avatars are The Buzzard of Battle and the Wild Horse Woman. Upon arriving at the settlement of Arch Hollow on the way to Valana, they are accosted by genetically handicapped Nomads. The Nomads are quickly subdued by Wooshin, an adept warrior. Among the Nomads, Nimmy has occasion to meet Ædrea, a beautiful mutant who is able to pass for healthy. The two fall in love, despite the fact that both are forbidden to fraternize: he because of his vows, she because of her genes. The group continues to Valana without her, and Nimmy is prohibited from seeing her again. Only after they have left Arch Hollow far behind does Blacktooth realize that he has left his rosary in Ædrea's possession. At the Conclave, Brownpony surprises the assembled cardinals by openly admitting that he is of Nomad ancestry. He makes this confession in order to embarrass a Texark scholar who was then present. Unfortunately, immediately after the outburst, a sickly student marches into the auditorium and attempts to assassinate the very same Texark infiltrator. Given the timing, it is widely presumed that Brownpony was behind the assassination, so attempts are made on the lives of Blacktooth and Brownpony. The violence of the Conclave escalates to a breaking point. The citizens of Valana, impatient for a new Pope, sequester the Conclave until the rival factions of cardinals (some allied with the Church, others with Texark) elect a new Pope. Under duress, the Conclave elects Amen Specklebird, a cryptic and oracular vagrant, who doubles as a cult icon for the Valanian people. Amen's election marks the first stage in a series of events that escalate tensions between Texark and the Church. Amen's reign as Pope proves to be short-lived. He makes an abortive attempt to return the Church to New Rome by sending a mission of Nomads and Cardinals east. The convoy is turned away by Texark guardsmen. However, the Nomadic contingent of the convoy, being hungry and poorly fed, decides to split from the Papal authority and raze the countryside around New Rome. Brownpony, with his entourage, are arrested by the Hannegan, Filpeo Harq, after a tense standoff in his palace. They are soon released under a suspended sentence of death. After the mission's failure, Amen controversially resigns as Pope and retreats to his old vagrant's cave overlooking Valana. While cardinals backed by the Hannegan declare the papacy illegitimate, a conclave of Valana clergy declare that Brownpony is Pope. Taking the name Amen II, Brownpony declares an effective crusade against the Texark Empire, leading an alliance of Nomads to recapture New Rome and excommunicating the Hannegan's cardinals. Meanwhile, Blacktooth accompanies the Valana militia, now led by Cardinals Nauwhat and Hadala, both of whom are of dubious loyalty to Brownpony's faction. Suspicious Nomad detachments trap the militia between a Texark army and themselves, and Cardinal Nauwhat defects to the Texark camp. One of Hadala's bodyguards, one of the Pope's Yellow Guards (elite Asian swordsmen), executes Hadala when he realizes that the cardinal has betrayed Brownpony. Blacktooth rejoins Brownpony, who elevates him to the position of Cardinal and sends him to New Rome to announce the coming of the crusaders. Blacktooth is seized by Texarks, who cast him into a New Rome dungeon. He eventually becomes aware of fires in the city, and is alerted to the fact that the Nomads have deserted Brownpony's cause and are sacking the city and countyside, while a Texark relief force approaches. He escapes the dungeon and falls into a drugged stupor, truly awakening in the damaged St. Peter's Cathedral, where he finds Brownpony and his last surviving bodyguard, Wooshin. Their reunion is disrupted by the arrival of a Nomad warrior, who informs them that the last loyal portions of the crusading army are departing. He warns them to flee, but Brownpony refuses and seats himself on the papal throne, the first Valana pope in decades to do so. When the Pope becomes aware of approaching Texark cavalry, he committs hara-kiri. Blacktooth stops Wooshin from joining him in the ritual act of suicide, and flees the approaching horsemen. Blacktooth renounces his cardinalcy before meeting briefly with the new, Texark-sponsored Pope, who turns out to be none other than the defected Cardinal Nauwhat. Blacktooth learns that the Hannegan Filpeo Harq, too, is dead, assassinated in an act of self-sacrifice by the vengeful Wooshin. It is mentioned that Blacktooth lived out his days as a hermit, not far from where Ædrea, now called Sister Clare, lives in a nunnery.
3321416	/m/095ppd	End of Term	Antonia Forest	1959-12	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nicola's merlin, the Sprog, makes off from the train when she is on her way back to school, taking a sparrow for the first time in his life. Returning to the station, she finds a new girl, Esther Frewen. Esther's parents are divorced and have sent her to boarding school because she doesn't quite fit in their new lives. She is not too worried about this, but mainly about leaving her puppy, Daks, behind. A few weeks into term, Nicola, along with most of the school, is shocked to find that she has been left out of the Junior Netball team. In fact, this is the work of Lois Sanger, Nicola's old enemy and now school Games Captain. She is a soloist in the Christmas Play, but does not find this much consolation. Half-term is less fun than expected, mainly because Mrs Marlow's mother is visiting. Nicola and Patrick manage to sneak off for a day to visit Wade Minster and look at the carved falcon and then enjoy a cold, dark ride back over the downs, while Patrick recites the Lyke-Wake Dirge. Back at school, Nicola finds that she has been given the part of Shepherd Boy in the Christmas Play, the part Lawrie desperately wanted. Lawrie thinks this is treachery on a grand scale. However, when she falls and hurts her leg so that she cannot play in a netball match, she finds a possible solution. Nicola agrees to pretend to be Lawrie so that she can play in the match - which they win comfortably. Lawrie is now convinced that somehow she will be the Shepherd Boy. On the day of the Play, Esther (who is now supposed to be singing Nicola's solos) disappears, leaving a note for Nicola. She has gone home to prevent her mother getting rid of Daks. Nicola, Lawrie, and their friends Tim and Miranda agree that Nicola should go back to singing and Lawrie will act. Miranda, despite being Jewish, agrees to fill the spare place in the procession. There is a huge fuss at the Minster when the staff realise what has happened and there will clearly be "blood for breakfast" before too long. However, no-one can think of a better plan. Everyone, including Grandmother and Patrick, is amazed by Nicola's singing and Lawrie's acting. Ginty and Ann play Gabriel and Mary respectively, causing Mrs Marlow a certain embarrassment when she realises how much her family have dominated the production.
3321893	/m/095ql_	The Restraint of Beasts	Magnus Mills	1998	{"/m/0q9mp": "Tragicomedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel starts with a phone call, "Mr McCrindle's fence has gone slack", and sees the three main characters duly dispatched to the scene of Tam and Richie's previous job, which they have left in a hurry. The ensuing Kafkaesque incidents set the tone for the rest of the novel, where Tam, Richie, and the narrator find themselves 'sent off' to England in work-related 'exile'.
3321984	/m/095qvk	Transcendent	Stephen Baxter		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story alternates between two timelines: the world of Michael Poole in the year 2047, and that of Alia, a posthuman girl who lives approximately half a million years in the future. Engineer Michael Poole is recovering from the death of Morag, his pregnant wife. Poole works as a consultant designing space propulsion systems, and dreams of being able to one day explore the stars. However, there are more pressing matters; humanity faces a serious bottleneck, with the Earth reeling from the effects of anthropogenic climate change and resource depletion; automobile production has all but ceased, except for hydrogen-based mass transit, and air travel is limited to the very rich. Due to climate change, the oceans have become dead zones, with rising sea levels and severe weather displacing millions. While working in Siberia, Michael's son Tom is injured by an explosion of methane gas from previously frozen hydrates, suddenly released from the now-melting tundra. Michael begins to research whether this is an isolated incident or the beginning of something more serious. With the help of an artificial sentience named Gea, he discovers that a potential release of all such frozen greenhouse gasses could destabilize the environment enough to make the Earth untenable for human habitation, in a repeat of the Permian extinction. Michael consults members of the Poole family, who come together to work on the problem. Tom, John, and the elderly George (a principal character of Coalescent) reunite, and a maverick geoengineering company funds the project. Michael designs a subsurface refrigeration system that could stabilize the frozen hydrates. Meanwhile, Michael continues to be haunted by visions of his dead wife, apparitions he has been seeing his entire life, even before he first met her. He becomes obsessed with discovering the origin of this phenomenon, and his quest for answers drives a wedge between him and his family. Aunt Rosa Poole (from Coalescent), a Catholic priest and ex-member of the Order, helps Michael research the problem, drawing on her vast knowledge, stemming in small part from her relationship with the Coalescent hive and its historical archives. The rest of the Poole family joins the investigation when Morag appears during a trial test of the engineering project. This time, everyone sees Morag, even observing drones recording the event. After the project is bombed by a terrorist group, Morag goes from being an apparition to reincarnating in physical reality. This frightens everyone, even Michael. 500,000 years in the future, the Nord, a generation ship, sails through the galaxy carrying Alia, a young girl, and her family. As part of a government program called the "Redemption", Alia is obligated to witness the life of Michael Poole, from start to finish. Pressured by her family to leave the ship, Alia becomes a candidate for the Transcendence, a collective group of immortal posthumans who are attempting to evolve into a form of godhood, in effect leaving their humanity behind. After travelling the galaxy and observing several posthuman life forms, Alia travels to Earth to meet the Transcendence. Alia learns the Transcendence is attempting to redeem the past suffering of all humans, first by witnessing every single one as Alia witnessed, then by living as every single human and experiencing everything that they experienced. However, since observing is not seen as sufficient for redemption, the Transcendence ultimately desires to erase all suffering in the past, thereby ensuring that every human that could have existed does so. Lastly, if that is seen as too great a task, the Transcendence is prepared to reach back in time and stop humans from ever existing, thereby "erasing" the suffering that they intend to redeem. Upset about the goals of the Transcendence, Alia makes her way back to the Nord, only to find that it has been attacked in an attempt to get her to go back and face the Transcendence by a group who believes the Redemption is a mistake. Upon returning to the Transcendence, Alia agrees to find a human who can join the Transcendence long enough to debate the Redemption and help them find the best course of action. To do so, Alia projects herself into the past, to the time of Michael Poole. She appears to him as his dead wife, but changes into her true form, that of a small, hairy primate, a form evolved for low gravity environments. Alia convinces Michael to face the Transcendence. After an initial period of adjustment Michael makes contact with the Transcendence. Able to see both sides of the argument, Michael forgives the Transcendence for their meddling, but asks that they stop their efforts. Michael is returned to his own time, where he successfully completes the refrigeration project. The Kuiper anomaly, first introduced in Coalescent, disappears, and is revealed to be related to Alia's connection with Michael, having first appeared in the solar system at the time of Michael's birth. In the far future, the Transcendence collapses and the Witnessing program is shut down.
3322653	/m/095s2l	Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court	Edward Lazarus	1998	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The subject matter is familiar, but Closed Chambers argues that the breakdown had less to do with Warren Court precedents or abortion (the latter being exceptionally divisive, but rarely on the court's docket), but rather a fundamental split over the death penalty. This split was later widened over disagreements concerning civil rights litigation. Lazarus presents the zealotry of the abolitionists at the Legal Defense Fund, compounded by the actions of Justices Marshall and Brennan, as a major and mounting frustration even for the moderate Justices of the court. This frustration eventually lead even the center of the court - Justices White and Powell - to align with Justice William Rehnquist in seeing behind almost every repeat habeas petition the LDF's unwavering desire to abolish the death penalty, a position that even the moderate justices had rejected. If true, this would mean that an organization that set out to abolish the death penalty actually succeeded in making it more capricious, less well-overseen and more commonly used. Lazarus also argues that a tightly-organized network of conservative law clerks exercised substantial power over the Justices during his time as a law clerk.
3322963	/m/095sr1	Crispin: The Cross of Lead	Edward Irving Wortis	2002-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In 1377 England, a 13-year-old boy, known only as Asta's Son, lives as a peasant in a small village. His village is part of the territory of the feudal Lord Furnival. As the lord has been away for years fighting in a war in France, the village has long been under the direct control of the steward, John Aycliffe. When his mother dies, Asta's Son is left alone as he has no other known relatives. Shortly afterwards, John Aycliffe falsely accuses him of theft, and declares him a Wolf's Head, one who may be killed on sight. Asta's Son turns to the village priest, his only friend, who gives to him a lead cross that belonged to his mother, and reveals that his true name is Crispin. The priest promises to reveal to Crispin the truth of who his father was, but before he can, Aycliffe's men murder him, forcing Crispin to flee the village by himself, pursued by the steward. Having lived his whole life as a poor peasant, Crispin has no knowledge of the outside world, and no useful skills. He is saved from starvation by a traveling jester named Bear, who forces Crispin to swear an oath to become his servant. Realizing that Crispin is still being hunted by Aycliffe, Bear asks to view the writing on the lead cross that Crispin still carries. Bear refuses to tell the illiterate Crispin what the words say, although Crispin realizes that it is very important. Bear jerkey with Crispin, criticizing his lack of knowledge and his subservient personality. Crispin is likewise initially put off by Bear's seemingly treasonous and blasphemous attitudes about freedom for the common man from both noble and religious control. During their travels together, however, Bear begins to teach Crispin various skills and Crispin slowly begins to gain confidence in himself. A true bond of friendship begins to develop, and Bear eventually releases Crispin from his oath of servitude. Instead, he asks if Crispin will become his apprentice, which he happily agrees to. Posing as a father and son, the two travel towards the city of Great Wexly. Although it is the capital city of Lord Furnival's lands, Bear insists that he has important business to complete there.
3324738	/m/095wqp	The Real Life of Sebastian Knight	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrator, V., is absorbed in the composition of his first literary work, a biography of his half-brother the famous Russian-born English novelist, Sebastian Knight (1899–1936). In the course of his quest he tracks down Sebastian's acquaintances from Cambridge, and interviews friends and acquaintances, including friends Helen Pratt and P.G. Sheldon, the poet Alexis Pan, and the painter Roy Carswell. In the course of his biography V. also reviews Sebastian's books (see below) and attempts to refute the views of the "misleading" biography by Knight's former secretary Mr. Goodman, The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight. Goodman maintains that Knight was too aloof and cut off from real life. V. concludes that, after a long-running romantic relationship with Clare Bishop, Sebastian's final years were addled by a love affair with another woman—a Russian whom he presumably met at a hotel in Blauberg, where Sebastian spent time recuperating from heart ailments in in June 1929. V. leaves for Blauberg, where, with the help of an unpredictable private detective, he acquires a list of the names of four women who were staying at the hotel during the same time period as Sebastian: Mademoiselle Lidya Bohemsky, of Paris; Madame de Rechnoy, also of Paris; Helene Grinstein, of Berlin; and Helene von Graun, who, despite her German name, spoke Russian and also lived in Paris. V. is intent on tracking down each of the women to interview them. After dismissing the possibility of Helene Grinstein, his search leads him to Paris, and the list narrows to two candidates: Mme de Rechnoy and Mme von Graun. V. first suspects Mme de Rechnoy of being the mystery woman based on a compelling description from her ex-husband, Pahl Palich Rechnoy. Mme de Rechnoy has left her husband and can not be located, leaving V. unsatisfied. However, after meeting Mme von Graun's friend, Mme Nina Lecerf, and hearing stories of von Graun's unflattering affair with a Russian, V. becomes convinced that Helene von Graun is the woman in question. Nina invites V. to visit her in the country, where Helene will be staying with the Lecerfs. V. accepts, and, worried that he will miss his prey, writes a brief letter to Helene announcing his intention to meet her there. At the country house V. finds that Helene von Graun has not yet arrived. He mentions his letter to Nina, which angers her. Through a series of subtle exchanges, V. learns that it is Nina Lecerf herself, and not Helene von Graun, who was Sebastian's final romance. Nina was, in fact, the Mme de Rechnoy who V. had originally suspected, but never met. The final chapters of the narration deal with The Doubtful Asphodel, Sebastian's final novel, which is centered on a dying man and his slow decay. V.'s description of then novel reveals similarities and coincidence not only with Sebastian's life, but with V.'s own investigative adventures. V. tries to account for Sebastian's final years, including a last, cryptic letter from Sebastian asking V. to visit him at a hospital in France. As V. makes the trip to France, his ties to his own life become increasingly visible for their tenuousness: his employer strains his ability to travel, he struggles to remember necessary details such as the hospital name, he even lacks sufficient money to travel efficiently. V. finally arrives at the hospital and listens to his sleeping brother's breathing from a separate room, only to discover that the sleeping man is not his brother, but an English man. Sebastian Knight had died the night before. The novel concludes with a philosophical reconciliation of Sebastian's life, and a final implication that V. himself is Sebastian Knight, or at least an incarnation of his soul. Nina’s and V. differing attitudes and expectations of the situation make it an interesting quest to analyse the motivations behind their use of language. The intentional change of V.’s behaviour and Nina’s up and down mood result in speech behaviour that is expressed through different emotional attitudes not the least visible in their body language. While the expectations of each other are disguised by Nina’s betrayal, V.’s final coming of age about Nina finishes an emotional tension that built up constantly. The situative context and history between the two persons in a drama like combination has its literary predecessors in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, mark the homonym of Sebastian’s second name Knight, Shakespeare’s Viola and Sebastian appear with Nabokov as V. and Sebastian. On Chekhov’s influence, Nina’s lap dog has already been mentioned.
3327156	/m/095_q8	The Love Suicides at Amijima	Monzaemon Chikamatsu			 Koharu is a 19 year old prostitute at the Kinokuni House in Sonezaki, who is being competed for by Kamiya Jihei (a struggling 28 year old married paper merchant) and Tahei (the wealthy and arrogant merchant nicknamed the Lone Wolf for his lack of family and possibly friends). She loves Jihei and does her best to avoid Tahei, but one night she has a samurai customer over at Kawachi House. She makes her way through the streets of the pleasure quarter but doesn't quite avoid Tahei. Tahei follows her in and boastingly propositions her. The samurai shows up, head encased in a deep wicker hat to preserve his anonymity. Tahei peers in and is frightened away by the samurai's fierce eyes. The samurai is then examined by Koharu's maid. Satisfied that he is not Jihei, she leaves the two alone to do what they will. The samurai reproaches the proprietress and Koharu: he had come all the way there, at considerable trouble to clear the overnight visit with his superiors, and they have treated him shamefully and not made his visit pleasant at all, with a poor welcome and a gloomy Koharu. Koharu begins talking to him, but asks him such morbid questions about suicide that the samurai is positively nonplussed by such morbidity. They move to a room by the garden so the samurai "can at least distract ourselves by looking at the lanterns" since Koharu's conversation is certainly not distracting. Jihei creeps around outside that room, resolving that he will signal her somehow and the two will run off and commit suicide together, like Koharu had promised him. The samurai guesses as much as some suicidal pact had been agreed upon between Koharu and Jihei and that this pact is the reason for her unhappiness; he begs her to confide in him. She gratefully does, and confesses that while she had indeed promised to kill herself with Jihei since he was financially incapable of ransoming her and her contract had more than five years left to run - if another were to ransom her, the shame would be intolerable - but that she had promised hastily and did not really feel like dying. Would the samurai agree to be her customer for a year and so thwart Jihei? The samurai agrees. Jihei overhears everything and is infuriated by her treachery. Her request is the final straw, and he begins positioning himself to stab Koharu to death. His short sword penetrates the shōji, but does not reach Koharu. The samurai reacts almost instantly, seizing Jihei's arms and tying him to the wood lattice. Along comes Tahei, who sees Jihei standing there in the shadows and begins beating him, calling Jihei a thief and convicted criminal. The samurai rushes out, and when Tahei cannot specify what exactly Jihei stole, hurls Tahei under Jihei's feet to trample to his heart's content. Tahei then ignominiously flees. The samurai looses Jihei and the hood of his cloak. Jihei instantly recognizes the samurai as his brother Magoemon, a flour merchant, nicknamed the Miller. Magoemon reproaches Jihei, laying out the stress on his marriage, his finances, his business, and his extended family that his infatuation with this fickle prostitute has caused, all because Jihei was naive enough to take her at face value. Jihei contritely admits his fault and announces that any relationship between him and Koharu is over. He returns to Koharu the 29 letters and oaths of love she sent him, and asks Magoemon to take back his corresponding 29 tokens. Magoemon retrieves them all, and a woman's letter besides. Seeing that it is from Jihei's wife, Kamiya Osan, he stashes it away and promises Koharu that none but him shall read it before he burns them all, on his honor as a miller. Jihei kicks Koharu as they leave, and on that note, Act 1 ends. Act 2 opens with a charming domestic scene of Jihei sleeping in the kotatsu, while Osan tends to the paper shop and their children. The maid Tama returns with the daughter Osue on her back and news that Magoemon and his aunt (Osan's mother) were imminently on their way for a visit. Osan wakes Jihei, who begins industriously working through his accounts on an abacus, so as to look busy when the two arrive. They make a great fuss on their arrival, accusing Osan and Jihei of various faults; Magoemon seizes Jihei's abacus and hurls it to the ground as emphasis. Shocked, Jihei inquires as to what could be the problem, saying he hadn't even been to the pleasure quarter since that fateful night and had not so much as even thought about Koharu. The aunt denies his word; her husband, and Jihei's uncle, Gozaemon, had heard much gossip in the pleasure quarter that some great patron was about to ransom Koharu and he was certain that the great patron spoken of was none other than Jihei. When Jihei hears this, he quickly explains that the patron must be Tahei; he had been unable to redeem Koharu in the past like he wanted because Jihei had always blocked his attempts, but now that Jihei had washed his hands of Koharu, there was nothing to stop him. Surely he was merely taking advantage of the situation. Magoemon and the aunt are relieved to hear this. But Gozaemon might not be as convinced, so they ask Jihei to sign an oath on sacred paper that he will sever all relations with Koharu. Minds at peace, they leave to tell the uncle the good news. Jihei's mind is not at peace however. He cannot forget Koharu and is weeping hot tears. Osan gives him a speech on her grievances, neglected by her formerly loving husband for no fault of her own, their business and by extension their children endangered by his fecklessness and distraction. Jihei corrects her: his grief is truly about his shame that since Koharu will allow herself to be ransomed, Tahei will crow to everyone about his victory of Jihei. Osan tries to comfort him, pointing out that if that is the case, Koharu will probably kill herself first. Jihei will have none of this, however. To prove it, Osan reveals that she had sent Koharu a letter (the same letter read and burnt by Magoemon) begging her to somehow contrive to end the relationship with Jihei; Koharu had quite obviously fulfilled her promise to do so, and so Osan worries that Koharu will keep her other promise to kill herself should anyone but Jihei ransom her. Osan asks Jihei to save Koharu, since she does not want Koharu dead as a result of her request. Jihei points out that the only way would be to put down as a deposit at least half Koharu's ransom in cold hard cash, but that he simply does not have that money. Osan produces more than half the requisite money, money she had been saving to pay a major wholesaler's bill and had raised by selling off her wardrobe - the money is necessary to keep the business afloat but "Koharu comes first." The rest of the money can be raised if they pawn all their finery as well. In that finery, they set out about their mission of mercy. They are intercepted at the gate by Gozaemon, come to demand that Jihei divorce Osan. Speaking venomously all the while, he checks to see whether Osan's dowry of fine clothes was still there. They are not in the dressers. He discovers them in the bundle, and insists at once that they are going to be sold to redeem Koharu. Jihei threatens to commit suicide then and there if Gozaemon continues to press him to sign the bill of divorcement. Gozaemon relents and leaves. He takes with him Osan as Act 2 ends. That night, Jihei leaves the House, saying he is leaving for Kyoto. Out of sight, he turns back, but narrowly misses Magoemon as he searches for Jihei. Magoemon is deeply worried about a lovers' suicide. He learns from the proprietress that Jihei had already left, mentioning a trip to Kyoto. Concerned, he asks whether Koharu is still there. Somewhat comforted by the fact that they say Koharu is upstairs sound asleep and convinced no lovers' suicide could happen that night, he leaves to search elsewhere. Jihei is deeply touched to see that his brother is still seeking to help him and save his life, ingrate and good for nothing though Jihei is. But he is determined to go forth with the suicide, and retrieves Koharu from an unguarded side-door. The two leave the pleasure quarter, travelling over many bridges. They stop at Amijima, at the Daichō Temple. A spot near a sluice gate of a little stream with a bamboo thicket is the spot- "No matter how far we walk, there'll never be a spot marked 'For Suicides'. Let us kill ourselves here." Koharu implores Jihei to kill her and then himself separately; she had promised Osan not to lead Jihei into a lovers' suicide and if their bodies were discovered together, then everyone would be certain Koharu had been lying or broke her promise. To forestall this objection, Jihei and Koharu cut their hair off- now that they are a Buddhist monk or nun, no one would hold the vows of a previous life against them. Jihei's short sword fails to pierce her windpipe with the first stab, but the second one kills her. After her death, he hangs himself from a tree by jumping off the sluice gate. Fishermen discover his body the next morning when it is washed down the stream into their nets.
3327922	/m/0961df	Star Quest	Dean Koontz	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 "In a universe that had been ravaged by a thousand years of interplanetary warfare between the star-shattering Romaghins and the equally voracious Setessins, there seemed now but one thing that might bring the destruction to an end. That would be the right catalyst in the hands of the right people. The right catalyst could well be the individualist rebel, Tohm... he who had once been a simple peasant and who had been forcibly changed into a fearfully armored instrument of mechanical warfare—the man-tank Jumbo Ten. But the right people? Could they possibly be the hated driftwood of biological warfare—those monsters of a cosmic no-man's land—the Muties?" ro:Star Quest
3329196	/m/0963t5	Outside Providence	Peter Farrelly	1988-04	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Largely an autobiographical tale, the novel revolves around Timothy "Dildo" Dunphy, a ne'er-do-well from the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which borders Providence. After Dunphy falls in with a bad element at home, his father, a widower, exiles him to the fictional Cornwall Academy (a thin guise for Kent School located near Kent, Connecticut). Over time, Dunphy struggles with issues including class structure, loyalty, first love, and his ongoing issues with his father. Ironically, Dunphy finds that his fellow prep-school students merely represent a wealthier, more polished class of delinquent than the friends he has left at home. The novel was Farrelly's fledgling effort, and served as his thesis when he graduated from the creative writing program at Columbia University.
3329518	/m/0964bt	Mad in America		2002		 Part One describes early treatments like a spinning chair which could reach 100 revolutions per minute, the Tranquilizer Chair which immobilized patients, and water therapies. Whitaker then describes moral treatment, dating back to 1793 and the French Revolution and established in the U.S. by Quakers in 1817, in which lay superintendents treated the mentally ill in small homes with great kindness and had good outcomes: About 35 to 80 percent of patients were discharged within a year, the majority of them cured. Pennsylvania Hospital reported that about 45 percent of patients were discharged as cured and 25 percent discharged as improved. In Worcester State Hospital, 35 percent were chronically ill or had died while mentally ill. Dr. George Wood, a visitor, reported in 1851: Part Two describes the rise of eugenics which did away with moral treatment in favor of forced sterilization of the mentally ill, and led to newly invigorated fields of psychiatry and neuroscience whose experts practiced insulin coma, metrazol convulsion, forced electroshock, and lobotomy. Part Three describes the invention of the neuroleptic drug chlorpromazine (Thorazine) by Rhône-Poulenc in France, and its purchase by Smith, Kline & French (today known as GlaxoSmithKline). The drug "produced an effect similar to frontal lobotomy", according to early reports by the company's lead investigator. Whitaker says that pharmaceutical advertising, articles published in the scientific literature, and stories in the media of "miracle drugs" transformed Thorazine into a healing drug. Whitaker says that marketing money from pharmaceutical companies began to flow to the American Medical Association in 1951, a year after Thorazine was synthesized, because of the Durham-Humphrey Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act which "greatly expanded the list of medications that could only be obtained with a doctor's prescription". In Part Three, Whitaker also describes the American (but not for example British) propensity to classify patients as "schizophrenic", as well as the error (confusion of schizophrenia with the yet-to-be-discovered encephalitis lethargica) in the original classification by Emil Kraepelin which psychiatry chose to not revisit and fix. Whitaker then describes three pathways that dopamine may take in the human brain, and quotes first-person accounts of the effects of antipsychotic drugs on individuals. He calls a 1996 New York Times advertisement by a consortium of pharmaceutical companies a "bald-faced lie": the group sought to say that the cause of psychosis and schizophrenia is an abnormal dopamine level and that their drugs worked by altering the level of dopamine. Whitaker then criticizes some American studies, and points out the work of George Crane at the National Institute of Mental Health to get tardive dyskinesia recognized, and he contrasts the dosages that British doctors were comfortable in prescribing (300 milligrams per day of Thorazine) with what American psychiatrists prescribed (1,500 up to perhaps 5,000 milligrams per day). He sees irony in the fact that The New York Times reported on Soviet forced use of neuroleptic drugs (which Florida Senator Edward Gurney called "chemicals which convert human beings into vegetables") in "psychiatric jails" but called the same drugs "widely acknowledged to be effective" when reporting on American schizophrenic patients. Whitaker describes the demise of modern-day moral treatment in a short history of Loren Mosher's Soteria Project, funded by the U.S. while Mosher was chief of schizophrenia at NIMH. He attributes the results in a World Health Organization 1979 study of outcomes for schizophrenia patients (which found better outcomes in undeveloped countries like India, Nigeria and Colombia than in developed countries like the United States, England, Denmark, Ireland, Russia, Czecholslovakia and Japan) to doctors in the developed world who maintained their patients on medications. He then describes fifty years of American scientists doing experiments on schizoprenia patients: to intentionally exacerbate their symptoms and study the results. He compares the doctors' behavior, unfavorably, to 1947 after American trials of Nazi doctors ended in the Nuremberg Code for ethics in human experimentation. Part Four is Whitaker's description of drug trials for the newer atypical antipsychotics. He says that many of these trials were stacked in favor of the drug being proposed by eliminating the placebo, or by comparing multiple doses of the new drug against a single, very high dose of the old one. He says that the pharmaceutical companies and the press used their influence to make claims for these drugs (some claims that the Food and Drug Administration had explicitly asked them not to make). Risperidone and olanzapine, for example, were both claimed to have fewer side effects than the first generation of antipsychotics. Whitaker also tells the stories of patients whose deaths were caused by drug trials but were not mentioned to the public. Whitaker calls it a type of medical fraud that we tell schizophrenics that they suffer from too much dopamine or serotonin activity and that drugs put these brain chemicals back in "balance". He writes, "Little is known about what causes schizophrenia. Antipsychotic drugs do not fix any known brain abnormality, nor do they put brain chemistry back into balance. What they do is alter brain function in a manner that diminishes certain characteristic symptoms....".
3329683	/m/0964lh	Into the Land of the Unicorns	Bruce Coville	1994	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cara Diana Hunter and her grandmother, Ivy Morris, realize they were being followed on their way home from the library. They duck into a church, but their pursuer follows. Cara is terrified, but her grandmother seems to expect this. Ivy gives Cara her special amulet and instructs her to run to the top of the church tower. She tells Cara to find the Old One and tell her "the Wanderer is weary." In order to do so, she must wait until the stroke of twelve, and leap off the top of the church while clutching the amulet and say, "Luster, bring me home." Cara does, and ends up in a magical forest in a different world. This world is called Luster and it is the home of the unicorns. Cara makes several friends on her way to find the Old One, who is actually the Queen of the unicorns, in order to deliver her grandmother's message.
3329879	/m/0964yx	Ernie's Work of Art				 The book begins with Oscar insulting Ernie's "getup", and Ernie explaining "beneath this stripey shirt, there beats the heart of an artist." Eventually Bert and the Count arrive, as Oscar insults the brightness of Ernie's painting. The Count counters, counting the "lovely colors". Once Prairie Dawn arrives (oddly as a brunette), Bert and Prairie begin suggesting ways that Ernie can improve his painting. Big Bird arrives on a unicycle with Roosevelt Franklin, both thinking there must be a party going on. Despite Prairie's best attempts to get Big Bird to stop, he collides with all of them, hurling Ernie's head through the canvas. Ernie is aghast with horror at the sight of his ripped painting, covered with Roosevelt's ice cream. Oscar arises from his can, wondering what the what caused the ruckus, only to discover that he now loves Ernie's artwork. Ernie gives the painting to Oscar, titling it "The View From Oscar's Trash Can".
3330322	/m/0965nt	The Great War in England in 1897	William Le Queux		{"/m/090ts5": "Invasion literature"}	 Le Queux's novel depicts Britain being invaded by coalition forces led by France and Russia, who make several early advances, but the brave English patriots fight on and eventually manage to turn the tide, especially after Germany enters the war on the side of the British. By the end of the story, the invasion goes the other way as the victors divide the spoils: Britain seizes Algeria and Russian Central Asia, thus decisively winning The Great Game, while Germany annexes more of mainland France in addition to Alsace-Lorraine, thus leaving the enemies crushed and both the British and German empires the dominant forces of Europe.
3330816	/m/0966c3	Illusions	Richard Bach	1977	{"/m/012lzc": "Self-help", "/m/070wm": "Spirituality", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 With some similarity to Nevil Shute's 1951 novel, Round the Bend, Richard Bach's mystical adventure story revolves around two barnstorming pilots who meet in a field in midwest America. The two main characters, who are doing what each one really wants to do, take on a relationship of teacher-student about the illusions that make reality. If that sounds like the point where Jonathan left off, it could be true: for Illusions may reflect what has been going on in the author's mind since the phenomenal success that changed his life. Illusions is a companionship and enlightenment story. Donald Shimoda is one of the two main characters in Illusions. He is a messiah who leaves his job of being a messiah (and also of being a mechanic at a garage) after deciding that people value the showbiz-like performance of miracles and want to be entertained by those miracles more than to understand the message behind them. He meets Richard, a fellow barn-storming pilot and begins to pass on his knowledge to him, even teaching Richard to perform "miracles" of his own. Donald and Richard go on a talk show at one of their stops, and Donald answers most of the questions. People listening to him don't like his speaking, and Richard gets a little worried. Of the lessons taught Richard by Don, one of the most important is that reality is based on perspective. The novel features quotes from the "Messiah's Handbook", owned by Shimoda, which Richard later takes as his own. A most unusual aspect of this handbook is that it has no page numbers. The reason for this, as Shimoda explains to Richard, is that the book will open to the page on which the reader may find guidance or the answers to doubts and questions in his mind. It is not a magical book; Shimoda goes on to explain that one can do this with any sort of text. The messiah's handbook was released as its own title by Hampton Roads publishing company, inc. The book itself mimics the one described in Illusions, along with more quotes based on the same philosophies displayed in Illusions, (ISBN 1-57174-421-5) (ISBN 978-1-57-174421-0).
3330927	/m/0966ld	The Hermaphrodite	Julia Ward Howe	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's protagonist, Laurence, is a hermaphrodite whose unsettled father, Paternus, decides to raise the child as a male, though "he" displays normative gender characteristics of both sexes. Laurence is sent off to college, where he excels in his studies, particularly the writing of poetry, a skill that inflames the passions of an older widow, Emma. Laurence, however, is not attracted to her, and even displays asexual tendencies. On the night of his graduation, Emma professes her love to him and, being told the truth of Laurence's hermaphroditism, goes into a deep state of shock, and subsequently dies. Though it was Laurence who had stalled the consummation of their relationship, he nonetheless reacts emotionally, and returns home to his cold father. Here, Paternus displays the true level of repulsion he feels towards his child, as well as his regret that Laurence will never beget a male heir. He offers Laurence his inheritance in a premature bulk sum, if he allows Paternus to effectively disown him. Laurence vehemently rejects the offer, instead offering the money to his younger (and importantly gender-neutral) brother, Phil, with the hope that his brother will share his wealth upon their father's death.
3331541	/m/0967y0	Bernice Bobs Her Hair	F. Scott Fitzgerald		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns Bernice, a wealthy girl from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who goes to visit her cousin Marjorie for the month of August. Marjorie feels that Bernice is a drag on her social life, and none of the boys want to dance with Bernice. Bernice overhears a conversation between Marjorie and Marjorie's mother where the younger girl complains that Bernice is socially hopeless. The next day, Bernice threatens to leave town, but when Marjorie is unfazed, Bernice relents and agrees to let Marjorie turn her into a society girl. Marjorie teaches Bernice how to hold interesting conversations, how to flirt with even unattractive or uninteresting boys to make herself seem more desirable, and how to dance. Bernice's best line is teasing the boys with the idea that she will soon bob her hair and they will get to watch. The new Bernice is a big hit with the boys in town with her new attitude, especially with Warren, a boy Marjorie keeps around as her own but neglects. When it becomes clear that Warren has shifted his interest from Marjorie to Bernice, Marjorie sets about humiliating Bernice, tricking her into going through with bobbing her hair. When Bernice comes out of the barbershop with the new hairdo, her hair is flat and strange. The boys suddenly lose interest in her, and Bernice realizes she's been tricked. Marjorie's mother points out that Bernice's haircut (which at the time was only seen on "liberated" women) would cause a scandal at an upcoming party held in her and Marjorie's honor. Bernice, deciding it would be best to leave the town before the party the next day, packs her trunk in the middle of the night and decides to leave on a train at 1 a.m. Before she goes, she sneaks into Marjorie's room and cuts off her cousin's two braids, taking them with her on her run to the station and throwing them onto Warren's front porch.
3331872	/m/096885	Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul	H. G. Wells	1905	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist of Kipps is Arthur "Artie" Kipps. In Book I ("The Making of Kipps") he is raised by his aged aunt and uncle in New Romney, on the southern coast of Kent. He attends the Cavendish Academy ("a middle-class school," not a "board school") in Hastings, in East Sussex. "By inherent nature he had a sociable disposition," and Kipps befriends Sid Pornick, the neighbor boy. Kipps falls in love with Sid's younger sister Ann, and Ann gives him half a sixpence as a token of their love when at the age of fourteen he is apprenticed to the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar, run by Mr. Shalford. But the Pornicks move away and Kipps forgets Ann. He becomes infatuated with Helen Walshingham, who teaches a wood carving class on Thursday nights. When Chitterlow, an actor and aspiring playwright, meets Kipps by running into him with his bicycle, their encounter turns into an inebriated evening that leads to Kipps's being "swapped" (dismissed). But before he leaves Mr. Shalford's establishment, Chitterlow brings to his attention a newspaper advertisement that leads to an unsuspected inheritance for Kipps from his grandfather of a house and £26,000. In Book II ("Mr. Coote the Chaperon"), Kipps fails in his attempt to adapt to his new social class while living in Folkestone. By chance he meets a Mr. Coote, who undertakes his social education; this leads to renewed contact with Helen Walshingham, and they become engaged. But the process of bettering himself alienates Kipps more and more, especially since Helen has in view taking advantage of Kipps's fortune to establish herself and her brother in London society. Chance meetings with Sid and then Ann (now a house servant) lead to a decision to abandon social conventions (and his engagement to Helen) and marry his childhood sweetheart. In Book III ("Kippses"), the attempt to find suitable lodging precipitates Kipps back into a struggle with the "complex and difficult" English social system. Kipps and Ann quarrel. Then they learn that Helen's brother, a solicitor, has lost most of their fortune through speculation. The loss of most of Kipps's money leads to a happier situation, however, when Kipps opens a branch of the Associated Booksellers' Trading Union (Limited) in Folkestone, and they have a son. The success of Chitterlow's play, in which Kipps had invested £2000, restores their fortune, but they are content to remain shopkeepers.
3332015	/m/0968hf	In the Forests of the Night	Amelia Atwater-Rhodes		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book is set in and around the author's home town of Concord, Massachusetts and in the realm of Nyeusigrube. The book centers around Risika who born in 1684 as Rachel Weatere, a God-fearing seventeen-year-old who lived with her father, half-sister, Lynette, and her twin brother, Alexander. Alexander lives in fear as he believes he is of the Devil as he is able to hear peoples thoughts and cause things to happen, including making fire rise up and down which causes an accident with their half-sister, who was burned by the fire. Aware of her twin brother's powers and his dislike for them, Rachel tries to do her best to comfort him. One day, an unknown strangers appears at their home, who is later revealed as Aubrey, and gives Rachel a black rose, which pricks her finger drawing blood. That night, Rachel hears her twin creep past her room and she follows him to find him confronting two vampires, Ather and Aubrey, who had came to transform Rachel against her will into a vampire to get back at Alexander for interfering with Ather when she tried to feed on Lynette. In an attempt to stop Ather from harming her brother Rachel confronts her but Aubrey grabs her brother and drags him off, while exposing a knife. Rachel tries to go after them but Ather grabs her instead and begins her transformation. Three hundred years later, the now vampire Risika has a run-in with Aubrey after accidentally trespassing onto his territory in an attempt to feed, he leaves her another black rose and a note stating, "Stay in your place, Risika." Fearing Aubrey, but not letting it on, she burns the note and leaves it where Aubrey can find it, and does not visit the Bengal tiger which she has named Tora, in fear that Aubrey would use Tora to hurt her. Eventually Aubrey learns of Tora's existence and in an attempt to get Risika to lay low, he kills the tiger. Wounded once more, Risika takes on the tiger's strips in her hair and finds a note with the name "Rachel" written on it and covered with tears. Enraged and thinking the note a joke she calls out to whoever left the note but no one answers. She then takes off, transforming into a hawk, to confront Aubrey, and a fight breaks out between the two and Risika realizes she can defeat him and transforms herself into a Bengal tiger and pins Aubrey to the ground. In desperation and not wanting to die, Aubrey offers Risika his blood, which opens his mind to Risika. Accepting this, Risika transforms back to herself and takes Aubrey's blood but before allowing him to leave she takes the knife he carries, which she had found out nearly 300 years ago contains magic from one of the witch's clans, and slashes him in his collarbone, avenging the scar he had left on her not too long after she had been transformed and tells him to remember the events of that day and warns him that even though she has taken his blood it did not make up for the death of Tora or Alexander. After Aubrey leaves, Alexander reveals to Risika that he is still alive and that he was the one who had left her the note. Believing he could help his sister, Risika informs him that she is happy as she is and the story ends.
3335770	/m/096fxh	The It Girl	Cecily von Ziegesar	2005	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After being kicked out of Constance Billard, Jenny enrolls at the posh Waverly Academy located in Upstate New York. Jenny hopes to leave her old, unsophisticated, embarrassing past behind and reinvent herself as “New Jenny.” Initially, "New Jenny"'s debut seemed to get off on a rocky start as Waverly mistakenly had Jenny down as a boy, due to a computer error. While the administrators try to sort out Jenny's roommate situation, Jenny retrieves her luggage to the boys' dorm where it was sent. There she meets the handsome Brandon Buchanan and the charmingly sloppy Heath Ferro. Jenny is more taken with Heath than Brandon due to Brandon's metrosexual tendencies, unaware of Heath's reputation as a man-slut. Quickly, a room has been found for Jenny in Dumbarton hall. To her pleasure, her new roommates at are Callie Vernon and Brett Messerschmidt, two of the most popular girls on campus. Jenny occupies the third bed in the triple that used to belong to Tinsley Carmichael, who was expelled the previous year for getting caught with E on school campus. Callie and Brett were also with Tinsley when she was caught with the E, but strangely enough, only Tinsley was punished. Callie and Brett are suspicious of each other, each believing the other one snitched on Tinsley and is therefore untrustworthy. Callie is dating Easy Walsh, her adorable artsy boyfriend, but their relationship has hit a rut. After spending summer vacation together in Barcelona, Callie told Easy that he loved her and was crushed when he didn't say it back, especially since Callie had been planning to have lose her virginity to him after he declared his love for her too. She is desperate to recapture the passion the two had sophomore year but feels Easy pulling away from her. Meanwhile, Brett is secretly relieved that Tinsley has been expelled as Tinsley knows Brett's most embarrassing secret: the Messerchimdts are not New England old money, but in fact, hopelessly tacky New Jersey nouveau rich. Still, Brett is wary of Callie and does not trust her to talk about her crush on the new student advisor, Eric Dalton who seems equally interested into Brett. Even though Brett already has a boyfriend, Jeremiah Mortimer, she is eager to dump him for the more worldly Eric Dalton. Dalton invites her to his parents' home and she quickly spills her embarrassing life story but to her delight, Dalton finds her life story endearing. Seeing this relationship could take a turn for the romantic, Brett breaks up with Jeremiah via voice mail. Later that night, the first party of the year is held in one of the dorms and Jenny is blissfully unaware of the gossip already swirling about her: Jenny is a stripper from New York City who takes her clothes for less than a dollar at a notorious club known as Rooster. Unaware, Jenny accepts Heath's invitation to go into the school chapel alone. Jenny allows Heath to kiss her for awhile but is dismayed when he passes out in her lap. Afterwards, Jenny simply walks him to his dorm and leaves him but the next day, Heath brags about how hot and heavy he and Jenny got in the chapel. Embarrassed, Jenny leaves dinner early to go back to her room. Eager to fix her problem with Easy, Callie becomes convinced sex will make Easy love her and invites him to her room, unaware of Jenny trying to sleep. Jenny realizes the couple are about to have sex and is unsure about what to do when Easy accidentally knocks over some objects, hitting Jenny accidentally. Jenny is discovered and Easy is annoyed with Calllie for being inconsiderate to her roommate. Frustrated, Callie leaves the room to go to the bathroom and while she is gone, Easy and Jenny talk. Easy is surprised at his attraction to Jenny but their conversation is interrupted by the dorm supervisor's husband, Mr. Pardee. Easy makes his escape as Callie returns. Realizing she would get punished and possibly expelled for having Easy in her room, Callie lies and convinces Mr. Pardee that Easy was in fact, visiting Jenny and not her. Although skeptical, Mr. Pardee accepts the explanation and leaves. Callie then begs Jenny to go along with the ruse but Jenny is still unsure, despite her attraction to Easy. Easy and Jenny are each called in separately to meet with their student advisor, Eric Dalton. Jenny chooses not to make any comment about the incident, not wanting to get in trouble but not wanting to get Callie in trouble either. Mr. Dalton decides the matter will be resolved in a disciplinary hearing. After Jenny, Easy is brought in and it is revealed though Easy hates Waverly with all its rules and regulations, his father promised that if Easy graduated from Waverly, he would receive an apartment in Paris and be allowed to fulfill his dream of being an artist. After his meeting with Dalton, Callie insists on meeting. She quickly briefs him on her scheme and is pleased when Easy agrees, unaware of his feelings for Jenny. Jenny and Easy flirt with each other in their art class. The whole campus quickly finds out and are surprised when Callie is not angry at Jenny for "stealing" Easy. Unaware of Callie's plan, co-captain of the field hockey team, Celine Colista pressures Callie to select Jenny to be the target of the year's hazing ritual at the field hockey match against St. Lucius. Callie fears that Jenny will be embarrassed and then lash out by refusing to go along with the plan and tries to stop Celine but Jenny quickly agrees, eager to fit in with the new field hockey team she has just joined. Jenny also manages to reach out to Brett who admits to feelings for Dalton. Brett slowly comes to view Jenny as a friend and is tempted to warn her about the hazing ritual, facing an extreme backlash if she does so, but it is too late. Jenny performs the embarrassing cheer on her own, expecting the rest of the team to join and is initially mortified when she realizes the prank, but quickly turns the cheer around, even getting back at Heath Ferro. The rest of the team participates in the cheer, making Jenny one of the most popular girls in the school. The popular groups meet up at Heath Ferro's party and Easy feels distance growing between him and Callie. He leaves her with Heath Ferro and others who are playing drinking games to be alone. He joins Jenny and the two admit their feelings for each other. After the match, Brett meets up with Dalton who rebuffs her advances, much to her dismay. The next day, the girls are forced to play a scrimmage, despite being hungover and tired from the party. Tensions between Callie and Brett rise and the two almost get into a full on fight over who sold Tinsley out. Quickly, the two realize Tinsley took all the blame and make up. Practice quickly ends and Brett receives a message from Eric who decides to pursue an affair with her. On her way back to Waverly, Brett bumps into Jeremiah who confronts her about their break up. Brett brushes Jeremiah off, elated with her new relationship. However, Callie's relationship with Easy is quickly deteriorating. Suspecting Easy's affections waning, Callie attempts to seduce him in the rare book room in the library but becomes frustrated when Easy does not reciprocate. Likewise, Easy becomes frustrated when Callie tries to grill him on his future comments at the disciplinary hearing. The two fight and Easy breaks up with Callie. The next day, at the disciplinary hearing, Easy is found guilty but is let off easy as he is a legacy child. Jenny is pleased with the outcome and celebrates with her roommates, the three of them quickly becoming fast friends. As the three celebrate, Dean Marymount interrupts, announcing Tinsley Carmichael's return. .
3335785	/m/096fy5	Abel's Island	William Steig	1976-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is set in the fictional town of Mossville, which is inhabited by civilized anthropomorphic animals, such as mice, rabbits, toads and so on. As the book begins, Abel, a mouse, is enjoying a picnic with his wife Amanda, but they are interrupted by a fierce rainstorm and are forced to take shelter in a cave nearby. The two are separated when Abel braves the storm to retrieve Amanda's scarf, blown away by a gust of wind. The storm washes Abel into a river and he is swept downstream until he is stranded on an island. Abel attempts to escape the island several times, but fails, and finally realizes that he must survive on the island by himself. He finds a log and makes it his home in the winter. To ease his loneliness, he creates his family out of clay and talks to them. Poor Abel has to live through the hardest times, including battling an owl and surviving through a harsh winter. Later in the novel, another stranded victim from the river, a frog named Gower, comes and bestfriends Abel. Later, he leaves promising that he will send for help when he gets back home. However, weeks pass and no one comes. Gower either forgot (due to his lack of memory) or never made it back. Abel then decides to swim against the fierce river after the water level has dropped sufficiently. Abel eventually makes the hard trip back and returns to Mossville.
3335856	/m/096g1c	Tatooine Ghost	Troy Denning		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The action takes place in four years after the events of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and directly follows the Star Wars Expanded Universe book The Courtship of Princess Leia. Han Solo and Princess Leia are recently married. The plot outline is that the Alderaanian moss-painting Killik Twilight was stolen. The painting contains a Rebel code vital to the New Republic's survival, and Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3P0, and Princess Leia are then sent to retrieve it at an art auction. On the way, Leia finds out some startling things about the past of the Skywalker family when she finds the diary of her grandmother, Shmi.
3340663	/m/096pby	Cocktail Time	P. G. Wodehouse	1958-06-20	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins when Uncle Fred knocks off Sir Raymond Bastable’s top hat with a Brazil nut fired through the window of the Drones Club from a catapult. Sir Raymond naturally assumes that the culprit was a young Drone, but is unsure how to respond. A letter to the Times would open him to ridicule, especially as he is about to stand for Parliament. Uncle Fred suggests writing a novel exposing the iniquities of the younger generation. The eventual novel, “Cocktail Time”, which Bastable publishes under a pseudonym, becomes a succès de scandale after being condemned by a bishop. Afraid of being unmasked as the author, Bastable allows his ne’er-do-well nephew Cosmo Wisdom to take the credit, and the royalties, of the book. But, with his friend Gordon “Oily” Carlisle, and Oily’s wife Gertie, Cosmo plots to blackmail Sir Raymond, and to this end writes a letter revealing the true author of “Cocktail Time”. Much of the rest of the book is concerned with various characters’ attempts to get hold of the letter. The action moves to Dovetail Hammer, Berks, where Uncle Fred is staying with his godson Johnny Pearce. Johnny is in love with Belinda Farringdon, but needs £500 in order to marry her. Uncle Fred resolves to help, but for the time being is more concerned with retrieving the letter. It so happens that Sir Raymond Bastable is also living in Dovetail Hammer, with his sister Phoebe Wisdom, Cosmo’s mother, and Sir Raymond’s butler, Albert Peasemarch, as tenants of Johnny Pearce. Albert is secretly in love with Phoebe. Oily travels to Dovetail Hammer and attempts to blackmail Sir Raymond, but Uncle Fred manages to extract the letter by posing as Inspector Jervis of the Yard. Cosmo then discovers that the movie rights of the book could be worth a fortune, and he decides he’d like to be its author after all. So he needs to get the letter back, and proceeds to Dovetail Hammer. Uncle Fred unwisely gives the letter to Albert Peasemarch for safekeeping, but Albert gives the game away after one too many pints at the Beetle and Wedge. So Cosmo gets the letter back. But then Gertie coshes him and grabs the letter. Oily and Gertie hide it in an imitation walnut cabinet, but this is taken away to be auctioned. Oily and Cosmo bid against each other for the cabinet but, needless to say, Uncle Fred had previously removed the letter. He then engages in a little mild blackmail himself, and extracts £500 from Sir Raymond in return for the letter. This is passed to Johnny, who can now marry Belinda. Sir Raymond gets the movie rights to “Cocktail Time”, and marries his longtime admirer Barbara Crowe, while Albert marries Phoebe. Sweetness and light all round.
3345384	/m/096xmy	Mansfield Park	Jane Austen	1814-07	{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main character, Fanny Price, is a young girl from a large and relatively poor family, who is taken from them at age 10 to be raised by her rich uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas, a baronet, and Lady Bertram, of Mansfield Park. She had previously lived with her own parents, Lieut. Price, and his wife, Frances (Fanny), Lady Bertram's sister. She is the second child and eldest daughter, with 7 siblings born after her. She has a firm attachment to her older brother, William, who at the age of 12 has followed his father into the navy. With so many mouths to feed on a limited income, Fanny's mother is grateful for the opportunity to send Fanny away to live with her fine relatives. At Mansfield Park, Fanny grows up with her four older cousins, Tom Bertram, Edmund Bertram, Maria Bertram and Julia, but is always treated as something of a poor relation. Only Edmund, the second son, shows her real kindness. He is also the most good-natured of the siblings: Maria and Julia are vain and spoiled, while Tom is an irresponsible gambler. Over time, Fanny's gratitude for Edmund's thoughtfulness secretly grows into romantic love. Her other maternal aunt, Mrs. Norris, the local parson's wife, showers attention and affection on her Bertram nieces, particularly Maria, but is frequently unpleasant and mean-spirited toward Fanny. A few years after Fanny arrives, Aunt Norris is widowed, moves into a cottage of her own, and becomes an ever-more constant presence at Mansfield Park. Sir Thomas offers the parsonage to a Dr. Grant, who moves in with his wife. When Fanny is 16, the stern patriarch Sir Thomas leaves for a year to deal with problems on his plantation in Antigua. He takes Tom along in hopes that the experience will sober him up. Meanwhile Mrs. Norris has taken on the task of finding a husband for Maria Bertram and succeeds in introducing her favorite niece to Mr. Rushworth, a very rich and rather stupid man. Maria accepts his marriage proposal, subject to Sir Thomas's approval on his return. About this time, the fashionable, wealthy, and worldly Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary Crawford, arrive at the parsonage to stay with Mrs. Grant, their half-sister. After a year in Antigua, Sir Thomas sends Tom home while he continues business alone. Although his wife is indolent almost to the point of disengagement, Sir Thomas feels confident about his family situation, relying on the officious Mrs. Norris and steady, responsible Edmund to keep life running smoothly. The arrival of the lively, attractive Crawfords disrupts the staid world of Mansfield and sparks a series of romantic entanglements. Mary and Edmund begin to form an attachment, despite her original preference for Tom as the heir of Mansfield Park. Although Edmund worries that her often cynical conversation may mask a lack of firm principle, and Mary is unhappy that Edmund wants to become a clergyman, their mutual attraction grows. Fanny fears that Mary has enchanted Edmund, and that love has blinded him to her flaws. (Also, of course, she is in love with him herself.) Meanwhile, during a visit to Mr. Rushworth's ancestral estate in Sotherton, Henry deliberately plays with the affections of both Maria and Julia, driving them apart. Maria believes that Henry is falling in love with her and treats Mr. Rushworth dismissively, provoking his jealousy. Although nobody is paying much attention to Fanny, she is highly observant and witnesses Maria and Henry in compromising situations. Encouraged by Tom and his friend Mr. Yates, the young people decide to put on Elizabeth Inchbald's play Lovers' Vows; however, Edmund and Fanny both initially object, believing Sir Thomas would disapprove and feeling that the subject matter of the play, which includes adultery, is not appropriate. Eventually Edmund reluctantly agrees to take on the role of Anhalt, the lover of the character played by Mary Crawford. Besides giving Mary and Edmund plenty of scope for talking about love and marriage, the play provides a pretext for Henry and Maria to flirt in public. When Sir Thomas unexpectedly arrives home in the middle of a rehearsal, the theatricals are abruptly terminated. Henry, whom Maria had expected to propose to her, leaves, and she feels crushed, realising that he does not love her. Although she neither likes nor respects Mr. Rushworth, she goes ahead and marries him, and they leave for Brighton, taking Julia with them. Meanwhile, Fanny's improved appearance and gentle disposition endear her to Sir Thomas, who begins treating her a bit less distantly. With Maria and Julia gone, Fanny and Mary Crawford are naturally thrown into each other's company. Out of affection and because she knows it will please Edmund and his father, Mary goes out of her way to befriend Fanny. Henry returns to Mansfield Park and decides to amuse himself by making Fanny fall in love with him. However, Fanny is steadfastly if secretly in love with Edmund, and the tables are turned when Henry actually falls in love with Fanny. To further his suit, he uses his family connections to raise Fanny's brother William to the rank of naval lieutenant, to Fanny's great joy. However, when he proposes marriage, Fanny rejects him out of hand, partially because she disapproves of his moral character, and also because she loves someone else. Sir Thomas is dismayed and startled by her refusal, since it is an extremely advantageous match for a poor girl like Fanny. He reproaches her for ingratitude, and believing it is all female timidity on Fanny's part, encourages Henry to persevere. To bring Fanny to her senses, Sir Thomas sends her home for a visit to Portsmouth, hoping that the lack of creature comforts there will help her set a higher value on Henry's offer. She sets off with William, who is briefly on leave, and sees him off in his first command. At Portsmouth, she develops a firm bond with her younger sister Susan, but is taken aback by the contrast between her dissolute surroundings and the environment at Mansfield. Henry visits her to try to convince her that he has changed and is worthy of her affection. Although Fanny still maintains that she cannot marry him, her attitude begins to soften, particularly as Edmund and Mary seem to be moving toward an engagement. Henry leaves for London, and shortly afterward, Fanny learns that scandal has enveloped him and Maria. The two had met at a party and rekindled their flirtation, and Maria has left her husband for him. A national scandal sheet gets wind of the affair, Maria is exposed as an adulterous wife, Mr. Rushworth sues for divorce, and the proud Bertram family is devastated. To make matters worse, Tom has taken ill, and Julia, fearing that her father will essentially lock her up, has eloped with Tom's flighty friend Mr. Yates. In the midst of this crisis, Fanny returns to Mansfield Park with her sister, Susan, now joyfully welcomed by all the family. A repentant Sir Thomas realizes that Fanny was right to reject Henry's proposal and now regards her as his daughter. During an emotional meeting with Mary Crawford, Edmund discovers that Mary does not condemn Henry and Maria's adultery, only that it was discovered. Her main concern is covering it up, and she implies that if Fanny had only accepted Henry, there would have been no affair. Edmund, who had idolized Mary, feels that her true nature has been revealed to him. He tells her so, returns to Mansfield, and goes ahead with plans to be ordained a minister. While he is despairing of ever getting over Mary, Edmund comes to realize how important Fanny is to him. He declares his love for her, and they are married, and eventually they move to the Mansfield Park parsonage, where they live close to those they love best. Tom recovers from his illness, a steadier and better man for it, and Julia's husband, Mr. Yates, turns out to be not so empty-headed after all. Henry Crawford refuses to marry Maria, who is banished by her family to live "in another country," where she is joined by her aunt Mrs. Norris. Fanny becomes the effective mistress of Mansfield Park.
3345895	/m/096y6s	Sahara	Clive Cussler		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book starts with a scene just a week before the surrender of Confederate forces of Robert E. Lee in 1865. The Confederate Navy ship CSS Texas is being loaded at a dock with crates supposedly filled with documents. The ship's captain Tombs has been ordered to take the ship past a Union blockade and to any neutral harbour where she should dock until summoned by a courier. At the last minute the secretary of the Confederate navy and an admiral arrive and mention that he will be taking a prisoner on board. Tombs is shocked when the prisoner arrives under heavy guard with Confederate soldiers in Union uniforms. The ship gets under way and is battered by the Union navy trying to attempt to pass the blockade into the open sea. To make matters easier, Tombs brings the prisoner onto the deck, and the Union soldiers stop firing and salute. The plot then moves to 1931, when a lady, Kitty Mannock, is flying over the Sahara in quest of a new aviation record. A severe sand storm fouls her carburettors and her plane crash lands in the desert. While her landing is on level ground, the plane reaches the edge of a ravine and tips over. Even though a search is launched she is not found. The plot then moves to 1996. A convoy of tourists are crossing the Sahara on a fleet of Land Rovers when they reach a scheduled stop at a village in the country of Mali. They find it is unusually deserted, but as they are refreshing themselves at the village well they are attacked by red-eyed savages who kill and eat them. Only the tour guide escapes with his life. Meanwhile working in Egypt on an archaeological mapping of the Nile, Dirk Pitt is able to rescue Dr. Eva Rojas, a scientist working for the World Health Organization, from a mysterious attacker. Shortly thereafter, Eva flies to Mali with an international team of scientists to investigate a mysterious disease that has been reported from various desert villages. At the same time, Pitt and his best friend Al Giordino are hurriedly flown to a research vessel outside the coast of Mali. There they are informed by their boss, Admiral James Sandecker, of an algal bloom, in this case a red tide, that is growing unnaturally fast, and threatens to consume the world's oxygen supply and extinguish almost all life. The growth speed is suspected to be fueled by some type of pollutant. Dirk, Al and Rudi Gunn are ordered to cruise up the Niger River to search for the pollutant, and determine where it enters the river. They do this aboard the Calliope, a high-performance super-yacht, equipped with comprehensive scientific laboratories, several weapon systems, and an array of communication equipment. The cruise is all well until reaching Benin, where they are forced to engage the Benin navy, which is completely destroyed. The continued trip is calm. They identify the pollutant, and at last find the spot where it appears in the river&mdash;but there is no chemical facility in the vicinity, and in fact no sign of anything entering the river. By now, the Malian armed forces are on their way, along with the Malian dictator General Zateb Kazim, who wishes to seize the yacht for his own use. After dropping Gunn off to make a run for the Gao airport, Pitt and Giordino let the yacht self-destruct after jumping overboard and swimming to the houseboat of the ruthless French businessman Yves Massarde. On his yacht, they manage to contact admiral Sandecker about Gunn's escape before being captured by Massarde. A UN rescue team picks Gunn up at the airport. After some interrogation at the houseboat, Pitt and Giordino manage to steal Mr Massarde's helicopter, which they fly north to Bourem, dumping the chopper in the river. Here they find (and steal) General Kazim's ancient car, an Avions Voisin. They drive the Voisin north, into the desert, toward the chemical waste processing facility Fort Foureau, the only facility that could possibly leak the pollutant into the river. En route to the detoxification facility, Pitt and Giordino run into an American nomad who is searching for a supposed sunken Civil War ironclad. They hide the car and sneak into the facility, only to be captured by Mr. Massarde's security guards, but not before they understand that the processing facility is just a disguise for an underground waste dump sitting right above an underground river, which flows under the sand to the Niger. Massarde decides to send them to Tebezza, a secret gold mine shared with General Kazim, where prisoners dig for gold under appalling conditions. Here they also find the WHO team, which had been coming too close to the truth about the diseases they were investigating, as well as the French engineers that were contracted to build the processing facility. Dirk and Al manage to escape from the mine, driving 300&nbsp;km to the east, trying to reach the Trans-Sahara Route. When the gas runs out, they have to walk. They find a cave painting of a Civil War-era monitor, which local artists could not have drawn in such detail without having seen it. They also find a lost 1930s-era airplane, which they rebuild into a sand yacht. They determine that the crashed airplane had been flown by legendary record-breaking Australian pilot Kitty Mannock, whose disappearance was worldwide news at the time, overshadowed only by that of Amelia Earhart. Mannock's body is lying with the plane, along with her diary, which details her attempts at walking out, her discovery of "an odd ship in the sand", her taking shelter inside the ship, and her eventual return to her plane in a vain hope for rescue. Mannock had survived for ten days, and by her diary they were able to know how long she walked from the plane, and in which direction, giving them an area to search for the lost ironclad. Using the sand yacht they built from Mannock's plane, they finally reach the Trans-Sahara Route and are picked up by a passing truck on the way to Adrar, Algeria. They quickly reach Algiers, from where they inform Admiral Sandecker about the appalling situation in Tebezza. The UN team that rescued Rudi Gunn earlier is dispatched to Alger to pick up Pitt and Giordino, and is then flown to Tebezza. They successfully attack Tebezza and close it for good, but not before an alarm is sent to General Kazim. An aircraft from the Malian air force is sent there to investigate, and destroys the UN aircraft just as the team returns from the mine. They are now stranded, and decide to make a run for the real Fort Foureau, a French Foreign Legion fortress that gave the waste processing plant its name, and plan to later hijack a waste train to carry the team and the rescued prisoners to safety in Mauritania. Unfortunately, while at the fortress their presence is discovered and the trains are stopped. Giordino and a commando use a stripped attack buggy to reach a US Delta unit in Mauritaina, while the Malian army attacks the fortress with everything they have. After severe losses for both sides, the Delta unit comes to the rescue aboard a train, quickly defeating the Malian army and killing General Kazim. Now Pitt and Giordino borrow an attack helicopter and go to take over the Fort Foureau facility. They also force Mr. Massarde to lie out in the desert sun naked for three hours, after which he drinks several litres of water which was secretly polluted from the waste dump. They then let him board his chopper and leave, knowing that he will not live a week. In the end, the waste dump is cleaned up, the water pollutant is removed and the red tide growth rate decreases. The rescued Tebezza prisoners are treated for malnutrition and various injuries. The ironclad is dug up and the lost airplane is restored and placed in a museum. Dirk Pitt also ships general Kazim's Avions Voisin to his own car collection. A subplot involved a conspiracy theory regarding Abraham Lincoln, which suggested that Abraham Lincoln was captured by Confederate forces and was indeed the prisoner brought on board the ironclad CSS Texas, with the "Abe Lincoln" that was assassinated being actually an actor hired by Edwin M. Stanton. This was cut out of the film adaptation.
3347935	/m/0970nk	The Wedding	Danielle Steel	2000-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Allegra Steinberg, daughter of movie producer Simon Steinberg and television writer Blaire Scott, is a successful entertainment lawyer who seems to have the perfect life. She has a satisfying career and is surrounded by people she loves, including her boyfriend, Brandon, her sister Samantha, an aspiring model, and her best friend, Alan Carr, a Hollywood heartthrob. While on a business trip in New York, she meets writer Jeff Hamiliton, and although there is chemistry between the pair, Allegra does not pursue the attraction. However, after she discovers that Brandon has been cheating on her, she meets up with Jeff, and before long, the couple are engaged and planning a wedding at her parents Bel Air home. As their September ceremony looms, Allegra finds herself faced with many business, romantic and personal problems, including a pregnancy in the family, the death of a client and the return of her father. The wedding becomes a chance for forgiveness, hope and reconciliation.
3349248	/m/09735n	Chthon	Piers Anthony	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set around 400 years after humans have achieved interstellar travel. Many different planets have been settled and a strange malady called the chill is sweeping the galaxy. The chill affects whole planets in regular waves and kills over half the population unless they flee the planet immediately on experiencing the symptoms. The protagonist, Aton Five, is from a powerful farming family on the planet Hvee. The Five family has fallen on hard times since the death of Aton's mother, which led to Aton's father, Aurelius, abandoning his farm for a time to seek solace on other planets. Aton is expected to become a successful farmer and restore the fortunes of his family. This allows his father to secure a betrothal between Aton and the daughter of another powerful family. However, Aton meets a strange and extremely beautiful woman in the forest named Malice. He develops an obsession for her and, ignoring his father's warning that she is a legendary and dangerous siren called a minionette, leaves Hvee to search for her, abandoning his betrothed. Aton encounters Malice but she is disguised and he does not recognise her. He tells her of his mixed feelings of love and hatred for the minionette, and of the agonising futility of his search. His anger and misery draw Malice close to him but, once Aton recognises Malice, his attempts to romance her and make love to her push her away, further inflaming Aton's obsession. Aton returns to his father on Hvee and promises to tend the farm and marry his betrothed if his father can rid him of his obsession. His father sends him to a retreat planet where he is cared for by a beautiful slave girl named Coquina. The pair fall in love and realise that Coquina was Aton's bethrothed from Hvee. Coquina had left Hvee and put herself into slavery following the shame of Aton's abandoning her and their families had secretly set up this reunion. Aton promises to marry Coquina but then almost kills her after having a vision of Malice. Deemed to be beyond salvation, Aton is given a life sentence in the underground prison of Chthon. Chthon is a garnet mine in which the inmates trade garnets for food. An upper level to the prison houses the less dangerous criminals where the garnets are fashioned. Escape from the upper level is impossible since all of the underground tunnels have been sealed off. The garnets are actually mined in a lower level reserved for criminals too dangerous to live peacably in the upper level. There are rumours that escape from the lower level is possible through uncharted labyrinthine caverns. When the inmates in the upper level learn that Aton's crime was to love a minionette, he is deemed too dangerous to remain, but willingly goes to the lower level since his only interest is in escaping and finding Malice. Once in the lower level, Aton reasons that he is unlikely to survive an escape attempt alone so he manipulates the inmates into a failed revolt against the upper level. The upper level cuts off food supplies in retaliation forcing the entire inmate population to attempt escape. One by one, the inmates are killed by an unseen monster known as the chimera until only a few remain. In the final stretch of the escape, a mucus starts to build up in the throats of the survivors, sapping their strength and will until all but Aton succumb to a form of zombification. Aton learns from the zombies that the caverns of Chthon are so complex that they have formed intelligence. The zombies are now servants of Chthon, but Chthon requires willing agents and promises Aton sanity in return for his service. Aton insists he needs to find Malice and Chthon releases him. Unknown to Aton, Chthon considers mankind to be evil and is planning its destruction through agents such as Aton. On reaching the surface, Aton meets a man who claims he is searching for Chthon so that he can appropriate the garnet mines for himself. In reality, this man is Bedside, the only other person to have escaped Chthon but now a willing agent. Bedside goes with Aton as he travels to Malice's home planet of Minion. Aton finds that the female population of Minion, the minionettes, are all identical to each other and are semi-telepathic. Their beauty and youth can be maintained eternally by negative emotions, whereas positive emotions cause them pain and sufficiently intense love kills them. Aton realises that this was why Malice was so attracted to him when he was most despondent and frustrated. Aton returns to Hvee and finds and confronts Malice, where he comes to realise that he has been blinding himself to the truth and suppressing memories. He finally accepts that Malice is his real mother, conceived when Aurelius was filled with sadness following the death of his previous wife. Malice has been attempting to instil her culture on Aton, with its inverted emotions, so that he could be brought back to Minion. As the son of a minionette, Aton is himself semi-telepathic and delights in negative emotions such as the fear and pain of his fellow inmates as they were devoured by the chimera in Chthon. This perverse aspect to his nature was why he had been unable to love Coquina and had been imprisoned in Chthon. Aton is repulsed by this aspect of himself and Malice realises that trying to bring out his Minion nature would only push him back towards Chthon. Her compassion (in her terms) for him cannot allow this so she ceases her attempts and allows him to love her in "normal" terms, sacrificing her life in an effort to save him. Aton sinks into madness after Malice's death but is cared for by Coquina under heavy sedation while his mind repairs itself. Bedside insists on taking Aton back to Chthon and Coquina is forced to wake him. Aton confronts Bedside and Bedside suggests that Chthon can stop Aton's internal conflict between his Minion and human natures. Bedside goads Aton into a violent outburst, but Aton stops short of murder and realises that Malice's sacrifice and Coquina's care have worked and that he is finally able to overcome his Minion nature. He returns to Coquina only to find that she is dying of the chill which has recently struck Hvee. She chose to continue caring for Aton rather than leave the planet to save herself. Bedside has followed Aton and makes a final offer that Chthon will save Coquina in return for Aton's service. Aton agrees. Chthon, meanwhile, realises that humanity is not wholly evil and its view of mankind had been skewed by the criminals and madmen that had been imprisoned within the caves. Also, in curing Coquina, Chthon finds that the chill is an unintended side effect of a message sent by a superior intellect across the galaxy.
3352265	/m/0978bf	Vendetta for the Saint	Leslie Charteris	1964	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 This story is set on the Island of Sicily, where the Saint is confronted with the Italian Mafia. The story shows a slightly older, more mature Saint. Although still a formidable opponent for any criminal, he will not storm into action but choose his moments more carefully. At the beginning, Simon Templar is on holiday in Naples when a small uproar on a lunch table draws his attention. An English tourist attempts to greet an Italian businessman as an old friend, but the Italian refuses to acknowledge the greeting and claims never to have met him. When the bodyguard of the businessman attacks the Englishman, the Saint intervenes and immobilizes the bodyguard. The Italians make their retreat and the Saint and the Englishman make their introductions to each other. The Englishman, Euston, claims that the Italian Businessman was his old friend Dino Cartelli. When Euston takes his leave, the Saint gives the incident no second thought. The next morning, the Saint's attention is drawn by an obituary in the local newspaper of an English tourist by the name of Euston. Apparently the man had an unfortunate accident. Remembering the previous day's incident, the Saint is unable to accept this and starts an investigation into the identity of the businessman. He discovers that Dino Cartelli was known as a faithful bank employee, who was brutally murdered by bank robbers. Apparently, his face and hands were mutilated beyond recognition. He also learns that the businessman with the bodyguard goes by the name of Alessandro Destamio. The next day, a limousine stops at the hotel and the Saint is courteously invited to have a meeting with Mr. Destamio. He is flown to Destamio's private island, and Destamio introduces himself as a businessman with many enemies who takes his privacy very seriously. When back in Naples, the Saint is attacked by a street robber. He simply neutralizes the man, but both he and the robber are brought to a police station for questioning. The Saint receives an extremely cool reception by the police officials, who ask him why he has mutilated an Italian citizen. Luckily for the Saint, a higher ranked inspector by the name of Ponti shows up, who discards the Saint without hesitation and even recommends him a good restaurant for lunch. After leaving the station, the Saint goes to the indicated restaurant because he realizes the recommendation by Ponti was a hidden invitation. There the two men meet. Ponti reveals to the Saint the true nature of his troubles: he faces war with the notorious Mafia. They will try to hunt him down and the police cannot be trusted. Ponti will be his only ally. The next move of the Saint is to visit the family of Destamio, including the lovely Gina Destamio. At night, he visits the mausoleum of the Destamio family, but before he can investigate the grave inscriptions he is clubbed unconscious. The Saint finds himself captured in a castle, at the mercy of the Mafia. Before Destamio can question him he is brought to the head of the Mafia, who is seriously ill. It appears Destamio aims to be his successor, but he has to defeat other candidates who wonder why Destamio has brought the Saint to their headquarters. It appears that Destamio claims to be from a worthy family, which the Saint might dispute. After being brought back to his cell, the Saint manages to untie his ropes and climbs out of the antique dungeon. Pursued by several gangsters, he descends from the castle hill and starts running through the Italian countryside. During the chase, the Saint has brief encounters with locals who help him, but their fear of the Mafia is all-apparent. A local barber manages to conceal him and tells him to leave as soon as possible. Bus passengers on the Palermo bus stay clear of him, realizing he is on the Mafia's hit list. The Saint manages to reach Palermo and contacts Ponti. Then the tables can be turned. Ponti has mobilised a secret military strike force, ready for battle and very grateful to learn from the Saint the location of the Mafia headquarters. The Saint joins the small army when they attack the castle. Although the castle is surrounded, the Mafia succeeds in breaking through the perimeter with a bullet-proof car. The army commander and the Saint and Ponti start the pursuit. When they cross through Palermo, they discover they have chased the car too long and the head men must have sneaked out. When driving back, the Saint leaves the car and sends Ponti to call reinforcements. The Saint enters the house were the Mafia top men have gathered. He is able to corner them, but before he can thoroughly question Destamio he is again surprised by one of the guards. After that the army troops arrive and although several top men are arrested, Destamio again escapes through a back garage. The Saint realizes he can only go to one other place and sets off for the Destamio mansion. There he finally confronts Destamio, who is trying to gather his personal belongings before going under. Confronted by the Saint, he admits his real name is Dino Cartelli. He offers the Saint a bribe in return for his freedom. The Saint lets him go, straight into the hands of arriving police troops.
3352452	/m/0978mv	Valley of the Lost	Jennifer Rowe	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After having reached the Maze of the Beast and finding the amethyst, they continue their journey off to the Valley of the Lost to retrieve the seventh and final gem, the diamond. The seven gems are the lost gems from the Belt of Deltora, which had been stolen by the Shadow Lord to overthrow Lief's country, Deltora. The three travel along the river Tor, passing villages that have been raided by pirates. When they stop for a rest, they see a pirate ship. Realizing that it was the ship that a boy named Dain was captured aboard upon, they steal a rowboat in an attempt to rescue him. After Dain and a polypan climb into their boat, the polypan rows against the flooding currents of the river away from the pirates and toward shore. The polypan jumps out of the boat before the boat reaches the shore, and Lief, Barda, Jasmine, and Dain are floating adrift the violently overflowing river. They drift over a sand bar and arrive at the edges of Tora, a great city that Dain had been trying to travel to. They enter the city, and Dain is significantly weakened by the magic of the purifying entrance. They meet two Resistance members, Doom and Neridah after finding the city deserted. Neridah travels with the trio to the Valley of the Lost to find the seventh gem. Upon entering the valley, they meet the Guardian, who doesn’t use physical force, but games to protect the diamond. The Guardian enchants them to enter his castle, and asks them to play a game with him for the diamond. The winner of the game will keep the diamond, but the loser will have to be kept in the valley forever. Scared by this, Neridah runs away, leaving the three behind to play the game. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine manage to find all of the clues and guess the name before the time is up, and realize that the Guardian’s name is Endon, the king of Deltora. They also find out that Doom had been there before and won the game, but did not take the gem because of his shock when he realized that the Guardian was actually the king. Lief, Jasmine, and Barda find out the gem is not the real diamond, and leave the castle to find Neridah had stolen it. The diamond curses those who gain the gem by theft, and Neridah dies by tripping on a rock and drowning in a stream. After the trio retrieves the gem, the Valley of the Lost disappears and all of the creatures in it are replaced by people, who reveal themselves to be the people of Tora. They had been turned into their form because they broke a vow that they had sealed by magic. The Guardian turns into Fardeep, a mere man from Rithmere, but not Endon. The name Endon was actually the Shadow Lord’s idea, and was intended to trick any winners of the game. Knowing that they have all seven gems, the three travel with Dain back to Del to find the king who will put on the Belt to banish the Shadow Lord from Deltora.
3352461	/m/0978n5	Maze of the Beast	Jennifer Rowe	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Lief, Barda, and Jasmine had retrieved the emerald from Dread Mountain. They travel along the River Tor to get to the Maze of the Beast, where they will get the amethyst. The gems they are taking are part of a Belt of Deltora, which will defeat the Shadow Lord that has invaded Deltora. During their travel, they encounter a pair of children nearly drowning in a stream. They save the children, but they reveal themselves to be Ols, creatures created by the Shadow Lord that can transform themselves to become another living creature. These creatures overrun the west side of Deltora to keep the gems hidden. Just before Barda is about to die, a boy Dain attacks the Ols and saves them. In the process, Dain injures his arm and several ribs. This causes Lief to sympathize for the boy, and take him to the Resistance, a group of people who rebel against the Shadow Lord. Arriving at the entrance to the Resistance's hideout, Dain faints from the pressure and forces the three to guess the password before they are marked as Ols and killed. Lief finds a note and realizes that the password is the first letter of every word on the note. They enter the Resistance and Doom, a man they have encountered before, tests them by putting them in a prison for three days. The test is supposed to find out if they are Ols because Ols can only hold their shape for three days. As three days pass, Doom does not let up and keeps them imprisoned. Dain frees them from the cave in exchange for their agreeing to take him to Tora. When Lief, Barda, and Jasmine reveal that they are not going to Tora, they split apart to make them less recognizable. Lief, Dain, and Barda take a boat that takes them down the river to the Maze of the Beast. They realize that Jasmine was also on the boat. The boat is raided by pirates, and Dain is taken prisoner. After reaching the Maze, Barda is revealed to be an Ol by the real Barda. Unfortunately, they are captured by pirates and are dumped into the Maze. After finding the location of the gem, Barda and Jasmine separate from Lief to lead the Beast away and Lief stays to carve the gem out of a column. They regroup when Lief was done, and escape the cave through a blowhole. The blowhole blows just after they escape, which takes the life of two pirates. The three then start off their journey to the Valley of the Lost.
3352472	/m/0978p6	Return to Del	Jennifer Rowe	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The main characters of the book are Barda, Lief and Jasmine, who have retrieved all seven of the magic gems from their perilous Guardians and lairs. They now have the topaz, ruby, emerald, lapis-lazuli, diamond, opal and amethyst gems. The Belt is whole and made, but the hardest part of the journey is yet to come—they need to find the heir of Adin, the true heir to Deltora's throne. There is, however, another problem. Lief's father tells him that they would find the heir with the Belt, for it will show the way, but the Belt shows them the way but shows no sign of recognition of the heir. The party knows there is a problem and they have to do something about it. They also know that they need to recruit a member of each of the seven tribes as well. The seven tribe members are Lief of Del for the topaz, Manus of the Ralad people for the ruby, Steven (and Nevets) of the Plains people for the opal, Fardeep of the Mere for the lapis lazuli, Gla-Thon of the Dread Gnomes for the emerald, Zeean of Tora for the amethyst, and Glock of the Jalis for the diamond. In addition to this, they now need to awaken the Belt's hidden powers and find the heir to the throne of Deltora. However, along the way, their friend Steven and his brother Nevets tell the three to go across a field of hidden grippers, which are plants composed of deep holes with venomous teeth inside to avoid the Grey Guards positioned in the road searching all the caravans passing by. Lief and Jasmine escaped relatively unharmed, but Barda suffers severe damage. They are forced into a small cabin when they find the remains of a man, woman, and small child bearing a note from King Endon with the royal seal at the bottom. When the gang finally reaches the Resistance stronghold, Barda wakes up long enough to tell the three that the letter was false and planted there by the Shadow Lord because when Endon escaped with Sharn, he did not have the royal seal with him as it had always been held with Prandine. Barda's condition worsens, until he has almost died when all seven tribes are reunited. Lief realizes that Dain is the heir as the Belt is showing that the heir is somewhere in the room. To help prove this, Lief realized that Dain's name is an anagram of 'Adin'. Dain is then kidnapped by Ichabod just when Lief was supposed to hand over the Belt, and the Belt falls on Barda who then starts to make a recovery. Everyone heads to Del to rescue Dain and falls into an elaborated trap where the puppet master is revealed at last - no other than Dain himself. Dain is a Grade 3 Ol and he has been fooling them all along. Lief manages to kill him with the Belt and then Lief, Jasmine, Barda, and Doom escape to Lief's old home, where the second secret is revealed - Doom is actually Jasmine's father. Everyone is then arrested by Grey Guards except for Lief who then, with Kree, goes to the punishment place in the palace to try and save them. When he is there, he suddenly remembers a passage from a book that his father showed him: "Only the Belt of Deltora, complete as it was first fashioned by Adin and worn by Adin's true heir, has the power to defeat the Enemy." He rearranges the gems in the socketed Belt so that their initials spell Deltora (the order would be Diamond, Emerald, Lapis Lazuli, Topaz, Opal, Ruby, and finally Amethyst), and the Belt's powers flare to life, saving the country. Lief realizes then that he is the heir and the very last secret is shown, that Endon and Jarred switched places because no one could suspect that a king and queen of Deltora could work as a simple blacksmith and wife. Endon, Lief's father, dies a peaceful death now that Deltora has been rid of the Shadow Lord at last.
3353389	/m/097b0_	Hunger	Knut Hamsun	1890	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's first-person protagonist, an unnamed vagrant with intellectual leanings, probably in his late twenties, wanders the streets of Norway's capital in pursuit of nourishment. Over four episodes he meets a number of more or less mysterious persons, the most notable being Ylajali, a young woman with whom he engages in a mild degree of physical intimacy. He exhibits a self-created code of chivalry, giving money and clothes to needy children and vagrants, not eating food given to him, and turning himself in for stealing. Essentially self-destructive, he thus falls into traps of his own making, and with a lack of food, warmth and basic comfort, his body turns slowly to ruin. Overwhelmed by hunger, he scrounges for meals, at one point nearly eating his own (rather precious) pencil. His social, physical and mental state are in constant decline. However, he has no antagonistic feelings towards 'society' as such, rather he blames his fate on 'God' or a divine world order. He vows not to succumb to this order and remains 'a foreigner in life', haunted by 'nervousness, by irrational details'. He experiences a major artistic and financial triumph when he sells a text to a newspaper, but despite this he finds writing increasingly difficult. At a point in the story, he asks to spend a night in a prison cell, posing as a well-to-do journalist who has lost the keys to his apartment; in the morning he can't bring himself to reveal his poverty, even to partake in the free breakfast they provide the homeless. Finally as the book comes to close, when his existence is at an absolute ebb, he signs on to the crew of a ship leaving the city.
3353451	/m/097b4g	Mysteries	Knut Hamsun	1892	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this intensely psychological Modernist novel, the community of a small Norwegian coastal town is "[shaken]" by the arrival of eccentric stranger Johan Nagel. An eccentric stranger who proceeds to shock, bewilder, and beguile its bourgeoisie inhabitants with his bizarre behavior, feverish rants, and uncompromising self-revelations.
3356450	/m/097gbt	Jedi Apprentice: Deceptions	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Family of former fellow student and rival to Obi-Wan Kenobi, Bruck Chun's father comes to Coruscant to investigate the events leading to Bruck's death. A trial commences to determine if there is need to have criminal charges brought against Obi-Wan. Meanwhile the Jedi are having trouble with an experimental pilot program as their ships are constantly being sabotaged. Obi-Wan is eventually found innocent of any wrongdoing, and the saboteur is found to be a spy using a false identity provided by someone working in the senate but the saboteur escapes. 12 years later Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker are sent on their first mission together to determine if the citizens of a bioship are being brainwashed into staying there. They discover that the ship's leader is none other than Bruck Chun's brother. Bruck's father Vox is found to still be working for Offworld corporation(now under the name Broken Circle). Vox causes fake malfunctions in the ship so it will stop at certain planets which a short time later come under the thumb of Offworld. They discover a plot by vox to cause an evacuation of the ship so as to allow himself and Offworld to plunder the vast treasury of the bioship. His plan fails as his ally(the same saboteur from 12 years ago) steals the treasury for himself and shoots vox. Offworld ships open fire on the bioship and Anakin gets into a starfighter along with Jedi Knight Garen and they manage to fight off the attack.
3358984	/m/097l2x	Roderick Hudson	Henry James	1875-11-20	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rowland Mallet, a wealthy Bostonian bachelor and art connoisseur, visits his cousin Cecilia in Northampton, Massachusetts, before leaving for Europe. There he sees a Grecian figure he thinks a remarkable work of art. Cecilia introduces him to the local sculptor, Roderick Hudson, a young law student who sculpts in his spare time. Mallet—who loves art but is without artistic talent himself—sees an opportunity to contribute: he offers to advance Roderick a sum of money against future works which will allow Roderick to join him in moving to Italy for two years. In Rome, Mallet believes Roderick will be exposed to the kind of artistic influences which will allow his natural talent to fully mature. Roderick is galvanized by the offer, but he fears his highly protective mother's disapproval and urges Mallet to meet with and reassure her. Mallet does so, eventually overcoming the woman's doubts. At the meeting, Mallet is also introduced to Mary Garland, a distant poor cousin of the Hudsons who has been living with them as a companion to Mrs. Hudson. Mallet finds himself unexpectedly attracted to the young woman—to her simplicity, her lack of affectation, her honesty. During a farewell picnic attended by many of the Hudsons' friends and family, Mallet realizes he has fallen in love for the first time in his life. But, because of his natural reserve and imminent departure for two years, he fails to declare his feelings, yet still harbors hopes that something may yet come of the relationship. That hope is crushed when, on the voyage across the Atlantic, Roderick reveals that just before leaving he asked Miss Garland to marry him and she accepted. "...You came and put me into such ridiculous good-humor," Roderick tells Mallet, "that I felt an extraordinary desire to tell some woman that I adored her." Mallet listens to all this with the feeling that fortune has played an elaborately-devised trick on him; that just as he had finally found love, it had been stolen away because of his own act of generosity. After a rough start in Rome, Roderick begins to flourish in the arts community, building a reputation as an original talent and a charming, if ill-mannered, character. Meanwhile Mallet attempts to suppress his feelings for Mary Garland by cultivating a relationship with Augusta Blanchard, another expatriate American artist living in Italy. When Roderick decides to visit Switzerland or Germany, Mallet travels with him part way before going on to visit friends in England. There Mallet writes to Mrs Hudson to inform her of the situation. She replies saying she is pleased the situation has gone so well. However, when Rowland finally hears from Roderick, he begs him for money to cover the debts he incurred while gambling at Baden-Baden. The two men return to Rome where, one fateful day, Christina Light enters Roderick's studio to peruse his artwork. Christina has grown up on the Continent, tended by to her ambitious mother and the mother's aging Italian escort, the Cavaliere. She is, by general agreement, one of the most startlingly beautiful young women in Europe, and her mother is determined to marry Christina to a wealthy and titled gentleman. The impoverished Roderick is nonetheless instantly infatuated with Christina, eventually obtaining approval to sculpt her bust and thereby ingratiating himself with the family. Although the prematurely world-weary Christina professes not to like Roderick, she admires his bluntness. Mallet finds himself in a wrenching emotional bind – attempting to prevent Roderick from consummating his love with Christina so as to protect Mary Garland from emotional injury; knowing all the while that doing so will foreclose forever any possibility that he himself can marry the only woman he has ever loved. Later Mallet encounters Christina and Roderick at the Colisseum. He saves Roderick from falling to his death attempting to catch an out-of-reach flower for Christina. Mallet subsequently happens to meet Christina alone and urges her to give up her flirtation with Roderick, revealing to her that Roderick is engaged. Rowland writes a letter to Cecilia about Roderick's fall. Later Roderick decides not to complete his sculpture for Mr Leavenworth, leading Rowland to be annoyed with him. Rowland visits Madame Grandoni and meets Christina there. He then decides to leave for Florence, but decides to make up with Roderick and bring his mother and his betrothed over to Italy to save him. While doing some sightseeing, Miss Garland admits to being afraid of changing. They walk into Christina and Roderick says she might not marry the Prince after all. Roderick then does a sculpture of his mother. Mrs Hudson thinks she owes something to Rowland for all he has done. Upon completing the bust, Roderick says he will not marry Miss Garland. Rowland and Gloriani witness another of Roderick's tantrums. Later, Mrs Grandoni says Miss Blanchard is marrying Mr Leavenworth, although she is in love with Rowland. She then throws a party and Christina turns up uninvited to observe Miss Garland and be vituperative. The next day the latter admits she takes Christina to be fake. Later after the Prince has left, the Cavaliere visits Rowland and entreats him to advise Christina, as she has no father to turn to. After checking on Roderick because his mother has received a note from him saying he didn't want to be disturbed, he goes to the Lights' and talks to Christina. She says she doesn't like the Prince but likes Roderick as a friend. She has however married the Prince... Roderick admits to his mother he is unable to work and is crippled with debts. Upon Rowland's counsel, they move to cheaper accommodation in Florence. When his morale isn't improving, his mother suggests moving back to Northampton, Massachusetts. Instead, Rowland persuades them to move to Switzerland. There, he seems a little closer to Miss Garland; Rowland asks him about Christina and he eschews the question. Later, they walk into Sam; then Rowland chances upon Christina and the Prince; Roderick comes along and he is stupefied with her beauty. He then wants to join her in Interlaken as she has asked of him. He begs Rowland, his mother, and Miss Garland for money. Rowland admits that he is in love with Miss Garland. Finally, Roderick dies in a storm while on his way to Interlaken; Rowland and Sam find his dead body the next day. Mrs Hudson and Miss Garland return to Massachusetts.
3359649	/m/097mb5	The Year of Our War	Steph Swainston	2004-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is set in the Fourlands, a country in danger of being overrun by large hostile Insects, and follows the exploits of Jant, also called "the Messenger" or "Comet". As a half-breed of two humanoid species Jant is the only person who can fly, which makes him an indispensable part of the Emperor's Circle of about 50 immortals, an elite group of (mostly) warriors who do not age (but, despite the name, are capable of being killed). Swainston spins an intricate story which covers, among other things, the intrigues among mortals and immortals from the various humanoid races of the Fourlands, a full-scale assault by the Insects (previously held at bay behind an Insect wall), and Jant's exploits in the "Shift", an alternate world which he enters as a side effect of his addiction to a lethal drug. So far, two sequels, No Present Like Time (2005) and The Modern World (2007) have been published. A fourth book, Above the Snowline, was published in 2010.
3361223	/m/097ptg	Howards End	E. M. Forster	1910	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is about three families in England at the beginning of the 20th century: the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies; the half-German Schlegel siblings (Margaret, Tibby, and Helen), who have much in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group; and the Basts, a struggling couple in the lower-middle class. The Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced. The Schlegels frequently encounter the Wilcoxes. The youngest, Helen, is for a short period intensely attracted to the younger Wilcox brother, Paul; each rejects the other for his or her own reasons. The eldest, Margaret, becomes friends with Paul's mother, Ruth Wilcox. Ruth's most prized personal possession is her family house at Howards End. She wishes that Margaret could live there, as she feels that it might be in good hands with her. Ruth's own husband and children do not value the house and its rich history, because such abstractions, while being very dear to Margaret, are lost to them. As Ruth is terminally ill, and Margaret and her family are about to be evicted from their London home by a developer, Ruth bequeaths the cottage to Margaret in a handwritten note delivered to her husband from the nursing home where she has died, causing great consternation among the Wilcoxes. Mrs Wilcox's widowed husband, Henry, and his children burn the note without telling Margaret about her inheritance. However, over the course of several years, Margaret becomes friends with Henry Wilcox and eventually marries him. The more free-spirited Margaret tries to get Henry to open up more, to little effect. Henry's elder son Charles and his wife try to keep Margaret from taking possession of Howards End. Gradually, Margaret becomes aware of Henry's dismissive attitude towards the lower classes. On Henry's advice, Helen tells Leonard Bast to quit his respectable job as a clerk at an insurance company, because the company stands outside a protective group of companies and thus is vulnerable to failure. A few weeks later, Henry carelessly reverses his opinion, having entirely forgotten about Bast, but it is too late, and Bast has lost his tenuous hold on financial solvency. Bast lives with a troubled, "fallen" woman for whom he feels responsible and whom he eventually marries. Helen continues to try to help young Leonard Bast (perhaps in part out of guilt about having intervened in his life to begin with, as Leonard had not wanted it and Henry had explicitly stated beforehand that he advised no one) but it all goes terribly wrong; because of Bast's wife's adulterous connection with Henry, Henry will not countenance helping them. It is later revealed that ten years previously, as a young woman, she had been Henry's mistress in Cyprus, but he had then carelessly abandoned her, an expatriate English girl on foreign soil with no way to return home. Margaret confronts Henry about his ill-treatment, and he is ashamed of the affair but unrepentant about his harsh treatment of her. Because of Margaret's impending marriage into the Wilcoxes and situations such as these, the Schlegel sisters drift apart somewhat. In a moment of pity for the poor, doomed Bast, Helen has an affair with him. Finding herself pregnant, she leaves England to travel through Germany to conceal her condition, but eventually returns to England when she receives news of her Aunt Juley's illness. She refuses a face-to-face meeting with Margaret in an effort to hide her pregnancy but is fooled by Margaret – acting on the advice of Henry – into a meeting at Howards End. Henry and Margaret plan an intervention with a doctor, thinking Helen's evasive behavior is a sign of mental illness. When they come upon Helen at Howards End, they also discover the pregnancy. Margaret tries in vain to convince Henry that if he can countenance his own affair, he should forgive Helen hers. Mr. Bast arrives having been tormented by the affair wishing to speak with Margaret. He is not aware of Helen's presence. Henry's son, Charles, attacks Bast for the dishonor he has brought to Helen, and accidentally kills him when striking him with the flat edge of a sword, Leonard grabs onto a bookcase, which falls on top of him, and his weak heart gives out. Charles is charged with manslaughter and sent to jail for three years. The ensuing scandal and shock cause Henry to reevaluate his life and he begins to connect with others. He bequeaths Howards End to Margaret, who states that it will go to her nephew – Helen's son by Bast – when she dies. Helen reconciles with her sister and Henry and decides to raise her child at Howards End. Margaret is usually viewed as the heroine of the story because, in staying married to Henry despite the scandal, she acts as a uniting force, bringing all the characters peaceably together at Howards End. Henry is sometimes viewed as a hero because he triumphs over his inability to connect with the situations of others. In the end, the open-minded intellectuality of the Schlegels is reconciled or balanced with the practical economy of the Wilcoxes, each learning lessons from the other.
3361760	/m/097qh2	Molloy	Samuel Beckett	1951	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot, what little there is of it, is revealed in the course of the two inner monologues that make up the book. The first monologue is split into two paragraphs. The first paragraph is less than two pages long; the second paragraph lasts for over eighty pages. The first is by a former vagrant named Molloy, who is now living "in [his] mother's room" and writing to "speak of the things that are left, say [his] goodbyes, finish dying." He describes a journey he had taken some time earlier, before he came there, to find his mother. He spends much of it on his bicycle, gets arrested for resting on it in a way that is considered lewd, but is unceremoniously released. From town to anonymous town and across anonymous countryside, he encounters a succession of bizarre characters: an elderly man with a stick; a policeman; a charity worker; a woman whose dog he kills running over it with a bike (her name is never completely determined: "a Mrs Loy... or Lousse, I forget, Christian name something like Sophie"), and one whom he falls in love with ("Ruth" or maybe "Edith"); He abandons his bicycle (which he will not call "bike"), walks in no certain direction, meeting "a young old man"; a charcoal-burner living in the woods, whom he murders with a hard blow to the head; and finally a character who takes him in, to the room. The second is by a private detective by the name of Jacques Moran, who is given the task by his boss, the mysterious Youdi, of tracking down Molloy. He sets out, taking his recalcitrant son, also named Jacques, with him. They wander across the countryside, increasingly bogged down by the weather, decreasing supplies of food and Moran's suddenly failing body. He sends his son to purchase a bicycle and while his son is gone, Moran encounters a strange man who appears before him. Moran murders him (in manner comparable to Molloy's), and then hides his body in the forest. Eventually, the son disappears, and he struggles home. At this point in the work, Moran begins to pose several odd theological questions, which make him appear to be going mad. Having returned to his home, now in a state of shambles and disuse, Moran switches to discussing his present state. He has begun to use crutches, just as Molloy does at the beginning of the novel. Also a voice, which has appeared intermittently throughout his part of the text, has begun to significantly inform his actions. The novel ends with Moran delineating how the beginning of his report was crafted. He reveals that the first words of the section were told to him by this nascent voice, which instructed him to sit down and begin writing. 'It is midnight. Rain is beating against the window.' It was not midnight. It was not raining. Thus, Moran forsakes reality, beginning to descend into the command of this &#34;voice&#34; which may in fact mark the true creation of Molloy. Due to the succession of the book from the first part to the second the reader is led to believe that time is passing in a similar fashion; however, the second part could be read as a prequel to the first.
3365383	/m/097vzg	The Changing Land	Roger Zelazny	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel picks up several months after the events in the last chapter of Dilvish, the Damned. The Castle Timeless, one of several fortresses belonging to Dilvish's arch-enemy, Jelerak, is currently inhabited by the "mad" demi-god Tualua. Tualua is undergoing one of the "changes" common to his kind, which in this case causes the land surrounding the castle to be subject to all sorts of chaotic, unpredictable, and often-deadly effects. A number of wizards, hoping to tap into Tualua's massive powers, attempt to pass through this maelstrom and reach the castle. Watching events from the outside are members of the Society of Magic. Dilvish, determined to avenge himself against Jelerak, appears and attempts to breach the magical barriers, hoping to find his arch-enemy inside. Accompanied by his companion Black, a demon-like being in the shape of a black metal horse, they rescue a wizard, Weleand, from being drowned in an acid pit. Soon after they meet a young Elven girl, Arlata, frozen by one of magical winds. Weleand unfreezes her by transferring the condition to Black, and escapes. Dilvish is then captured by one of the caretakers of the castle, Baran of the Extra Hand, and thrown into the dungeon with several captured wizards. Escaping the dungeon, Dilvish wanders the castle, eventually finding Semirama, a woman from long ago resurrected by Jelerak to be one of the caretakers (along with Baran). Semirama has managed to build a rapport with the demi-god Tualua. Black manages to sneak into the castle in his human form, and encounters Jelerak, who was disguised as Weleand, about to sacrifice an unconscious Arlata as a means to gain control of Tualua. Meanwhile the escaped wizards manage to disable the maintaining spell which keeps the castle anchored in normal time, causing everyone in the castle to become temporarily unconscious, and soon the entire castle and its inhabitants are rapidly accelerated into the far future, so far that they reach a point where the world is created anew. During the denouement, Baran is killed by one of the wizards, and both Jelerak and Tualua are claimed by the Elder Gods, the former as their prisoner and the latter as one of their own. Semirama, her resurrection canceled by the Elder Gods' apprehension of Jelerak, collapses into dust, her soul now inhabiting the alternate universe of mirrors in the castle, where she meets up with an ancestor of Dilvish's, Selar. Dilvish is initially enraged by the denial of his desire for vengeance, but then realizes that Jelerak will receive justice at the hands of the gods, and decides to go back to his homeland with Arlata, who as it turns out is the granddaughter of one of Dilvish's former loves in that land. With the help of a Society member, the survivors escape through a magical transport mirror.
3365544	/m/097w73	A Shadow on the Glass	Ian Irvine	1998-02-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 "A Shadow on the Glass" starts with the chronicler Llian telling the greatest of all the Great Tales—the Tale of the Forbidding—in a surprising and dangerous new fashion, revealing previously unknown claims. The Master of the College of the Histories, Wistan, quickly understands the ramifications of the telling and makes it his goal to suppress all knowledge of the tale and get rid of Llian so as to protect the College and preserve the commonly accepted version of history. His opportunity comes when Mendark, Magister of the High Council of Santhenar asks for someone to go out and find a woman named Karan, who had stolen a relic (The Mirror of Aachan) from his nemesis Yggur the mancer. Karan had helped Maigraith, a powerful but troubled mancer, into Yggur's fortress of Fiz Gorgo using her talent as a sensitive. This was done on behalf of Maigraith's liege, Faelamor, leader of the Faellem. Karan and Maigraith succeeded in gaining entry and even in finding the evil Mirror. Yggur barges in and Maigraith uses her Art to hold him off, but eventually is overpowered and imprisoned. Karan escapes and eventually meets up with Tallia (Mendark's chief lieutenant) but is frightened of her and runs away to eventually meet up with Llian, who had been saved from Yggur's Whelm by Shand. Faelamor, using her unmatched powers, rescues Maigraith from Yggur and they soon set out to retrieve the Mirror. Karan and Llian venture to the hidden Aachim city of Shazmak, and Karan is overjoyed to meet up with her old friend Rael. She is relieved to see that his father—the leader of the Aachim, Tensor—is away. Tensor returns, however, having learnt from Mendark that Karan had the Mirror. His arrival and subsequent questioning of Karan regarding her possession of the Mirror (which is in fact hidden inside a plaster cast on her broken arm) forces her to undergo a trial, in which she links with Llian in order to deceive the Syndics (judges). Tensor persuades the syndics to allow stronger questionning of Karan, which forces her to flee Shazmak with Llian. Rael is killed in the process. Karan and Llian (intermittently separated and together) journey to Sith and on to Thurkad, pursued part of the way by Tensor and by Whelm. Karan is captured by Thyllan when she arrives in the capital city of Thurkad, and all of the great powers merge in a Great Conclave, to decide who should get the Mirror. Tensor, believing he and the Aachim should have the Mirror (as it was theirs of old), yet seeing that this will not happen, as the conclave—blinded by the will to save Thurkad—gives the Mirror to Thyllian, cracks and uses a forbidden potency spell that lays the whole Conclave low. Tensor escapes with the Mirror and Llian, who alone of all the people gathered was unaffected by the potency. The book ends with the reader unsure as to whether Karan, Maigraith or Faelamor survived the potency.
3369066	/m/0980zp	Sharpe's Tiger	Bernard Cornwell	1997-06-02	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Up to this time Cornwell had been going back through the period of the Napoleonic Wars to find new incidents into which to place his hero. Rather than do this, he adopts a "prequel" approach and uses an earlier campaign period in the history of the British Army, that of colonial India. The novel opens with Richard Sharpe serving as a private with the British army, then invading Mysore and advancing on the Tippoo Sultan's capital city of Seringapatam. Sharpe is contemplating desertion with his paramour, widow Mary Bickerstaff. His sadistic company sergeant, Obadiah Hakeswill, deliberately provokes Sharpe into attacking him, and engineers the virtual death sentence of 2,000 lashes for the private. But Sharpe is rescued by Lieutenant William Lawford after 200 lashes are inflicted, in order to effect a rescue mission behind the Tippoo's lines. Lawford and Sharpe are ordered to pose as deserters to rescue Colonel Hector McCandless, chief of the British East India Company's intelligence service. Although Lawford is nominally in command, Sharpe quickly dominates the lieutenant by force of personality and, without authorization, brings Mary on the mission. Joining the Tippoo's army, they discover that the Tippoo has set a trap for the invading British by mining the weakest (and thus most inviting) portion of Seringapatam's walls. Before Sharpe and Lawford can discover a way to transmit a warning to the British, they are betrayed by Sergeant Hakeswill. Hakeswill has been captured in battle and the Tippoo orders him made a human sacrifice for victory, but Hakeswill secures the Sultan's mercy in exchange for revealing Sharpe's and Lawford's identity as spies. Sharpe and Lawford are imprisoned as the British army prepares to assault the booby-trapped wall of the city. Mary helps Sharpe to escape, and Sharpe blows up the mine before the main British army can enter the trap. As the Tippoo tries to flee the city, Sharpe finds him in a dark tunnel, kills him, and steals his rich jewels. Sharpe throws Hakeswill to the Tippoo's tigers, but the recently fed animals ignore Hakeswill, and Sharpe's enemy survives to plague him in later adventures.
3369181	/m/098147	Sharpe's Triumph	Bernard Cornwell	1998-02-26	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The tale begins with Sharpe witnessing a massacre of British troops in a fort by the traitor Major Dodd, for which he blames himself. After being hired by Colonel McCandless, whom Sharpe had befriended a couple of years earlier (Sharpe's Tiger), Sharpe travels to Wellesley's army, where he witnesses its siege of the city of Ahmednuggur, whose garrison is commanded by Dodd. Throughout these events, Sharpe is unknowingly pursued by Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, who has framed him for attacking a British officer and been given the authority to arrest him. During the battle at Ahmednuggur, Sharpe and McCandless attempt to find and capture Dodd, who manages to escape. During the search, Sharpe rescues the wife of a French officer in Dodd's service, named Simone Joubert. McCandless decides to use Joubert for a prisoner exchange, and a chance to view Scindia's army, commanded by Anthony Pohlmann. While in the enemy camp, McCandless' horse is stolen, and he is wounded attempting to save it. He and Sharpe later leave and attempt to inform Wellesley of the enemy army's decision to march to Borkardan. Pohlmann, however, decides to lay a trap for the British army at Assaye. After returning to Wellesley's army, Hakeswill confronts Sharpe and McCandless, who prevents Sharpe from being arrested. Obadiah then begins planning his next move. As the British army marches toward Borkardan, Wellesley discovers the trap Pohlmann has laid for him, and decides to attack his army head on, despite being vastly outnumbered. In the early stages of the fight, Wellesley's aide is killed, and Sharpe takes his place. Dodd is also present at the battle, commanding his regiment, the Cobras. The battle is hard fought, but Wellesley's troops carry the day. At the climax of the fight, Wellesley is unhorsed and surrounded by enemies whom Sharpe fights off alone, thus saving the general's life. Pohlmann's army retreats into Assaye itself, and McCandless orders Sharpe to follow him into the city to once again attempt to capture Dodd. Dodd however, makes his escape along with much of Pohlmann's gold. While in the city, McCandless encounters Obadiah, who kills him. Following the battle, Sharpe speaks to Wellesley, who promotes him to the rank of Ensign. Obadiah is now unable to arrest Sharpe because of his rank. Sharpe then throws Obadiah out a window and leaves him under the foot of one of Pohlmann's elephants. The British army then marches off to pursue Scindia's retreating army, the events of which are detailed in the next book, Sharpe's Fortress.
3369229	/m/09816n	Sharpe's Fortress	Bernard Cornwell	1998-11-19	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is 1803 and Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army is closing on the retreating Mahrattas in western India. Marching with the British is Ensign Richard Sharpe, newly made into an officer and wishing he had stayed a sergeant. Spurned by his new regiment, he is sent to the army’s baggage train and there finds corruption, romance, treason and enemies old and new. Sergeant Hakeswill wants Sharpe dead, and Hakeswill has powerful friends while Sharpe has only an orphaned Arab boy as his ally. And waiting with the cornered Mahrattas is another enemy, the renegade Englishman, William Dodd, who does not envisage defeat, but only a glorious triumph. For the Mahrattas have taken refuge in Gawilghur, the greatest stronghold of India, perched high on its cliffs above the Deccan Plain. Who rules in Gawilghur, it is said, rules India, and Dodd knows that the fortress is impregnable. There, behind its double walls, in the towering twin forts, Sharpe must face his enemies in what will prove to be Wellesley’s last battle on Indian soil.
3369281	/m/09818r	Sharpe's Prey	Bernard Cornwell	2001-04-23	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The year is 1807, and Richard Sharpe is back in England, where his army career is at an end. Without love, destitute, and relegated to the job of quartermaster, Sharpe is on the streets of London, trying to contemplate a new life away from the army. Then an old friend quite unexpectedly invites him to undertake a secret mission to the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Denmark is officially neutral, but Napoleon is threatening an invasion in order to capture the powerful Danish fleet, which could replace the ships France lost in its defeat at Trafalgar. The British, fearing such enhancement of French power, threaten their own preemptive invasion. Sharpe, whose errand seemed so simple, is trapped by the treachery that will end only when the city, which thought itself safe, is subjected to a brutal and merciless bombardment.
3369317	/m/0981bt	Sharpe's Rifles	Bernard Cornwell	1988-12	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story recounts Sharpe's exploits in the retreat to Corunna. Sharpe's battalion, acting as rearguard to the army, are cut down by a squadron of French regular cavalry. From then on the story follows the small band of surviving riflemen (from the 95th Rifles) as they try to foment an uprising in the city of Santiago de Compostela. Sharpe's Spanish ally is Major Don Blas Vivar and they are fighting the Don's brother, the Count of Mouromorto. Patrick Harper is introduced as well as the core group of the surviving company for the first time. Running along in the background is the other Irishman in the series, Captain Hogan, who appears for the first time at the very end of the novel. In this book, Sharpe sees Captain Murray's heavy cavalry sword as clumsy and cumbersome, yet in India he wishes he had such a heavy sword to butcher people with. During his time in India he used a claymore which he found less cumbersome than the cavalry sword.
3369325	/m/0981cz	Sharpe's Trafalgar	Bernard Cornwell	2000-04-03	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The year is 1805, and Richard Sharpe is heading from India to England aboard the cargo ship Calliope. Also on board is the lovely Lady Grace Hale, whose presence promises to provide intrigue and distraction to an otherwise uneventful voyage home. Uneventful the voyage is not, for the Calliope is captured by a formidable French warship, the Revenant. The French warship is headed to its own fleet, carrying a stolen treaty that, if delivered, could provoke Indians into a new war against the British. The arrival of Admiral Horatio Nelson's well-led fleet results in a breathtaking retelling of one of the most ferocious and one-sided sea battles in European history, in which Nelson, and Sharpe, vanquish the combined naval might of France and Spain at Trafalgar.
3369411	/m/0981kh	Sharpe's Eagle	Bernard Cornwell	1981-02-09	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The following is a description of the key plot elements of the novel of Sharpe's Eagle. Although much of the novel's complexity is omitted in the TV version, the major plot elements are the same. For a summary of the TV movie, see the link listed above. Prior to the Battle of Talavera, Richard Sharpe and his small group of thirty Riflemen are attached to the newly arrived South Essex Regiment. Commanded by the cowardly and bullying Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Simmerson, the South Essex is a raw, inexperienced unit that has been drilled mercilessly with frequent use of the lash. More suited for ceremonial parades than genuine combat against the veteran armies of France, Sharpe takes it upon himself to shape the inexperienced and poorly-trained redcoats into full-fledged soldiers. His real problem turns out to be the officers, most of whom appear to be in the lap of Simmerson, including his nephew, the arrogant Lieutenant Christian Gibbons, and his best friend, Lieutenant Berry. The situation is further complicated by the rivalry that emerges between Sharpe and Gibbons for the affections of Josefina Lacosta, a Portuguese noblewoman abandoned by her husband after he fled to Brazil. Only two appear to have any real experience: Captain Lennox, a veteran of the Battle of Assaye, where Sharpe himself won his commission; and Captain Leroy, an American Loyalist who fled with his merchant family to England during the American War of Independence. Making his way to the town of Talavera, General Wellesley dispatches the South Essex, alongside Sharpe's Riflemen and the engineers of Major Hogan, to blow up the bridge at Valdelcasa, so as to protect the army's flank as they march. Assisted by a Spanish regiment of equal number, the Regimento de la Santa Maria, the seemingly straightforward mission becomes a disaster when both Simmerson and the Spanish cross the bridge to engage four squadrons of French dragoons. A combination of arrogance, poor training, flawed leadership and elementary tactical errors results in the two regiments being routed by the French, with hundreds of men killed and wounded, Lennox brought down by the enemy, and the loss of the King's Colour. As a dying request, Lennox asks Sharpe to take a French Eagle, 'touched by the hand of Napoleon' himself, so as to erase the shame of losing their own standard. Distinguishing himself during the skirmish after rallying several broken companies of the South Essex against the French and capturing one of their cannon, Sharpe finds himself gazetted Captain. However, he still must do much to confirm this rank in the company of an officer corps still largely drawn from the aristocracy and the ranks of English gentlemen who look down on Sharpe's low birth. Even worse, Sir Henry has made Sharpe the scapegoat of his follies, and intends on ruining Sharpe's career via his political connections at Horse Guards. Only by capturing an Eagle can Sharpe stay in the army, let alone keep his promotion. The Rifleman also makes an enemy of Gibbons and Berry when he takes Josefina under his protection, and the two begin a relationship. Later in the novel, when Josefina is raped by Gibbons and Berry, Sharpe swears vengeance, murdering Berry in a nighttime skirmish against the French. At the height of the Battle of Talavera, Sharpe must decide whether to fulfill Lennox's request or avoid this insane task. In true heroic form Richard Sharpe rises to the challenge and avenge the loss of the colour with the capture of a French Imperial Eagle during the height of the battle. Leading the Light Company and his Rifles into the fray, Sharpe and Harper manage to break a French regiment and take an Eagle, while Simmerson is replaced on the field by Sharpe's old friend William Lawford as Commander of the South Essex. Slaying Gibbons in the aftermath (who had attempted to murder Sharpe for his prize), Sharpe parts with Josefina as she returns to Lisbon, while he officially takes his place as Captain of the Light Company of the South Essex, the regiment's honour restored.
3370316	/m/0982w7	The Witches of Chiswick	Robert Rankin	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The start of "The Witches of Chiswick" trilogy, The Witches of Chiswick is a time travelling adventure story set in the 19th and 23rd Centuries. Working in a dystopian 23rd century, William Starling finds a painting, The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke by Richard Dadd from the 19th Century with the image of a digital watch hidden within it. When he reports these findings to his superiors, William is told the painting is to be destroyed. After saving the painting, his best friend Tim tells him about a cabal of witches who control their world. To seek the truth, William takes a drug which confers the ability to tap into ancestral memories. After learning of events occurring in the 19th century, William and Tim are attacked by a Babbage robot sent from the past, and William escapes to the past via the robot's time machine. Stuck in the 19th century in Victorian London, William is greeted by Hugo Rune, who explains to Will that he is his direct descendant. Will learns that 19th Century history is a lie: Charles Babbage's difference engine was a huge success, providing the growing British Empire with robots, digital watches, airships, and even the first rocket to the moon. After returning to London, Will and Hugo take on a case for Sherlock Holmes - to discover the true identity of Jack the Ripper to learn more about the witches' cabal. Hugo becomes the Ripper's next victim. Will, bemused, finds a box in Hugo's trunk containing Barry, the Sprout Guardian. Will uses Barry to return to the future to enlist the aid of Tim. Will and Tim return to the past, meeting an invisible H.G. Wells, the Elephant Man (Joseph Merrick), the Brentford Snail Boy, and even another Will from an alternate future. After finding Hugo's true residence in the Buttes Estate, Will and Tim set out to save the 19th Century and the future from the influence of the Witches of Chiswick. Will and Tim finally confront the leader of the witches, Count Otto Black. At the same time a fleet of martian invade earth to prevent the British Empire expansing to the red planet. They are aided by their agent the Elephant Man (Joseph Merrick). Hugo Rune is revealed to have faked his death, not for the first time, and returns to aid Tim and Will. Will discovers that Count Otto is actually a Babbage robot, controlled by the Will from the alternate future. Driven mad, the alertnate Will has become evil and committed the Jack the Ripper killings. "Anti-Will" faces Hugo Rune, travels back in time to prevent the Babbage Difference Engine from being recognized, then returns to the circus to finish his goal of controlling the world. When Hugo Rune confesses that 'he' cannot stop the "anti-Will", William realise why he was brought here and that he can sacrifice himself to defeat his duplicate. Will lunges for "anti-Will" and the pair are destroyed due to the temporal paradox. History is changed, the Victorian era never develops the computer and in the future Will and Tim are born and lead normal lives.
3371154	/m/0983xw	Point of Impact	Stephen Hunter	1993-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0594kx": "Conspiracy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bob 'The Nailer' becomes involved in a plot by dirty big-government types and the story is about how he is first approached and used by them, and their subsequent attempts to end his life. Disenchanted with warfare when invalided out of the Marine Corps in the 1970s, Bob retreats to a small town in Arkansas, where he lives in a trailer and devotes himself to firearms. Here he is approached by representatives of RamDyne, a black-bag government organization whose personnel commit off-the-record atrocities as needed. The RamDyne people, masquerading as employees of Accutech, a high-end ammo manufacturer, enlist Bob's help. He detects their untruthfulness and confronts them, at which point they "reveal" to him their true motives: foiling an attempt on the life of the President of the United States at the hand of the same Soviet sniper who ended Bob's military career. Bob agrees to work for them but in the end, is framed into the crime of attempted assassination. He escapes the frame and finds himself friendless, pursued by every law enforcement agency in the nation, pursued by RamDyne, and suffering two nearly fatal bullet wounds. The major portion of the book details how he escapes the frame, wins absolution for the crime of which he was accused and wins the love of a woman.
3371191	/m/0983_9	Pale Horse Coming	Stephen Hunter	2001	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Sam Vincent, an attorney in is hired by Davis Trugood, a Chicago lawyer to verify the death of the Trugood's client's manservant in Thebes, Mississippi, a desolate shantytown cut off from civilization and surrounded by swampland and seemingly impenetrable piney woods. While in Thebes, Sam is roughly arrested for challenging the legality and authority of Thebes' law enforcement and is imprisoned by the local Sheriff. Earl Swagger travels to Thebes with the intent of rescuing Sam after he fails to hear from his friend for several weeks. He succeeds in securing Sam's freedom but is himself captured and incarcerated as the only white man among the inmates of the nearby Thebes penitentiary, a former timber plantation and current forced labor camp for negro convicts and run by ruthless and inhumane white supremacists. The mysterious and unnamed warden instructs his jailers to torture Earl, suspecting him to be a federal investigator interested in the secret workings of the camp. The other inmates apply their acquired hatred of white men to Earl, who must defend himself not only from the guards, but also from his fellow prisoners. Earl escapes by faking his death with the help of an old prison trusty, promising to return and destroy the prison and the evil it represents. He assembles a group of six legendary gunmen (who are based on Elmer Keith, Jack O'Connor, Audie Murphy, Charles Askins, Bill Jordan, and Ed McGivern) with the promise of real action for a just cause and readies them for an assault on Thebes. (Counting Swagger, that brings the number of gunmen to seven, a probable allusion to both The Magnificent Seven - a classic Western film - and Aeschylus' play Seven Against Thebes.) While Earl makes his plans, the inmates at Thebes start to pass along the mysterious phrase, "Pale Horse Coming." Seeking to quell the inmates' stirrings and avoid a potential rebellion, the prison's tyrannical captain of the guards systematically tortures the prisoners in an effort to learn the origins of the phrase. Sam Vincent, ever reluctant to resort to force to settle any matter, including the issue of Thebes, continues to investigate the mysteries surrounding the prison and makes some horrifying discoveries. After narrowly escaping a threat against his and his family's lives, Sam contacts Earl and finally gives Earl his blessing to "fire for effect." It is said that Vincent is never seen without a tie. As the assault on Thebes begins, Davis Trugood, having arrived undetected in Thebes, enters the old plantation house and confronts the warden. The reader learns that Davis Trugood is the warden's estranged half-brother and that warden hates Davis for being their father's son by a black woman. Earl and his team succeed in destroying the prison, vowing to never again mention Thebes or their dealings there to each other or anyone else. They go their separate ways and Earl returns home to Arkansas and his wife and son. The fictional events of this novel allude to the infamous Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. However the copyright page of the book bears the boilerplate disclaimer that all events are fictional.
3373435	/m/0987ls	Tara Road	Maeve Binchy	1998-08-28	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is the story of two women, one from Ireland and one from America, who trade houses without ever having met. They're both looking for an escape from their problems, but by running away, both come to discover a great deal about themselves. The book mostly concentrates on the life of Ria Lynch, the Irish woman, who has met her future husband Danny Lynch. The two end up getting married, much to Ria's shock and delight, and start a family together while Danny's career takes off. Many years into their marriage, Danny begins spending less and less time at home with his wife and children. Ria believes another baby is the solution, and is shocked to find out that indeed her husband is going to be a father...but to a child from an affair he has been having with another woman. Her husband's unfaithfulness is the event that leads Ria into her decision to switch homes with the lady from America. Tara Road was made into a film in 2005.
3373848	/m/098854	Execution				 Based in part on McDougall's experience as an officer with Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, Execution follows the fictional Canadian 2nd Rifles during the Italian campaign of 1943. Led by the flamboyant Brigadier Ian Kildare (a modern miles gloriosus, or braggart soldier), the Canadians land on Sicily where they meet with little resistance from the Italian Army, composed mostly of hapless conscripts who want no part in the war. Despite Kildare's strict orders for his men to shoot Italian deserters on sight, the Canadians take kindly to a pair of buffoonish? Italian deserters, more notable for their culinary skills than military prowess. Impetuously, Kildare orders the Canadians to execute the Italians. The Canadians are caught between the obligation to follow orders and the sense that executing the two Italians in cold blood is ethically unjustifiable&mdash;not to mention it being a violation of the Geneva Convention. The brutal execution of the two Italians forces the Canadians to confront the ethics of warfare, now that "the enemy" is no longer a distant and faceless target. Major Bunny Bazin, the most battle-hardened and philosophical of the Canadians, voices the novel's central theme when he states that "execution is... the ultimate degradation of man." Here the term "execution" works both literally (the killing of the Italians as a brutal act) and as a metaphor (war as a form of mass execution). The novel's main protagonist, Lieutenant (later Major) John Adam (a semi-autobiographical foil for McDougall), is an efficient soldier and leader, who nevertheless finds "the vulture fear" inhabiting his soul after the execution of the Italians. Bound to protect and lead his men as they march through Italy, from Ortona to the Hitler Line near Monte Cassino, Adam finds himself struggling to maintain the composure fitting a commander, as an inner "horror" gnaws at his conscience (Adam's reflections occasionally resemble those of Marlow in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness). Eventually, Adam and his men stumble on a chance to redeem themselves when one of their own comrades, Rifleman Jones, a mildly retarded but efficient infantryman, is sentenced to be executed for treason by his own army, after he falls in with a ring of corrupt soldiers who murder an American. Although everyone, including a newly promoted General Kildare, knows that "Jonesy" is a scapegoat for the real murderers, the execution must go ahead out of political expediency. Led by Adam, the men wage a tenacious campaign to have Jonesy freed, but all efforts eventually fail. When Jonesy is led out to be executed, the officer in charge of the execution faints, and Adam is forced to command the firing squad himself. Execution ends with Adam and the other men regaining a measure of their lost confidence, although Major Bazin dies on the battlefield.
3375102	/m/0989n3	Never Mind Nirvana				 Never Mind Nirvana is set in the Seattle music scene and chronicles the misadventures of a former musician who becomes a prosecutor. Stylistic quirks include real characters from the Seattle scene interacting with fictional characters. "One of the many pleasures of Never Mind Nirvana is in its rightness of local details.... Lindquist's penchant for the truth pays off, for his novel gives us a Seattle we can recognize." (Claire Dederer, Seattle Times) Blurbs on the book were written by Peter Buck of R.E.M., filmmaker Peter Farrelly, and authors Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz.
3376479	/m/098cbd	Washington Square	Henry James	1880-12-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dr. Austin Sloper, a wealthy and highly successful physician, lives in Washington Square, New York, with his only surviving child, Catherine. Catherine is a sweet-natured young woman who is a great disappointment to her father, being physically plain and, he believes, dull in terms of personality and intellect. Sloper's beloved wife died a week after giving birth to Catherine. A three-year-old son had died two years earlier. His sister, Lavinia Penniman, a meddlesome and perverse woman, is the only other member of the doctor's household. One day, Catherine meets the charming Morris Townsend at a party and is powerfully drawn to him. Morris courts Catherine, aided by Mrs. Penniman, who loves melodrama. Dr. Sloper strongly disapproves, believing him to be after Catherine's money alone. When Catherine and Morris announce their engagement, he looks into Morris's background by visiting his sister and learns that he is a parasitic spendthrift. The doctor forbids his daughter to marry Townsend, whom he considers to be a 'selfish idler' and Catherine cannot bring herself to choose between loyalty to her father and devotion to her fiancé. Dr. Sloper understands Catherine's predicament and pities her a little, but also finds an urbane entertainment in the situation. In an effort to resolve the matter, he tells her that he will disinherit her if she marries Morris; he then takes her on a twelve month grand tour of Europe. During their time abroad, he mentions Catherine's engagement only twice: once while they are alone together in the Alps, and again on the eve of their return voyage. On both occasions, Catherine holds firm in her determination to marry. After she refuses for a second time to give Morris up, Sloper sarcastically compares her to a sheep fattened up for slaughter. With this, he finally goes too far: Catherine recognizes his contempt, withdraws from him, and prepares to bestow all her love and loyalty on Morris. Upon her return, however, Morris, whom aunt Lavinia has now, at least emotionally, virtually adopted as her son, breaks off the relationship when Catherine convinces him that her father will never relent. Catherine, devastated, eventually recovers her equanimity but is never able to forget the injury. Many years pass; Catherine refuses two respectable offers of marriage and grows into a middle-aged spinster. Dr. Sloper finally dies and leaves her a sharply reduced income in his will out of fear that Townsend will reappear. In fact, Morris &ndash; now fat, balding, cold-eyed, but still somewhat attractive &ndash; does eventually pay a call on Catherine, hoping to reconcile; but she calmly rebuffs his overtures. In the last sentence, James tells us that "Catherine,... picking up her morsel of fancy-work, had seated herself with it again — for life, as it were."
3377902	/m/098g1q	Bad Dreams	Pierre Christin	1983		 Earth, the 28th century - the alarm is raised when a spatio-temporal transport is stolen from Galaxity astroport. The Chief of the spatio-temporal service orders spatio-temporal agent Valerian to return from his holidays in Arcturus to investigate. Arriving at Galaxity, he is informed of serious disturbances to the Dream Service. Traveling to the Dream Chambers, he discovers that all of the dreams have been corrupted somehow such that they turn into nightmares – a dream of the countryside is ruined by carnivorous plants, a dream of the crystal caves of Aldebaran becomes a torment when the caves melt. The man responsible is Xombul, the head of the Dream Service and one of the technocrats of the First Circle who govern Galaxity. He is the one who has stolen the spatio-temporal transport. A search of Xombul's home uncovers a book of sorcery written by Alberic The Old, a wizard from the 11th century. A report from the temporal relay in that time period confirms that that is where Xombul has gone. Following Xombul, Valérian arrives at the spatio-temporal relay station in 11th century France. He finds Galaxity's contact, Geoffrey, an innkeeper, nursing a sore head. Xombul had surprised him before heading for the Forest of Arelaune. Following on a horse borrowed from Geoffrey, he arrives at the forest but loses the trail in the fading light as the sun sets. He chooses to make his bed on one of the giant leaves that litter the forest floor. Waking up the next morning, he discovers he is trapped – the giant leaf has wrapped itself around him. A young peasant girl finds him and, taking his sword, climbs up to the roof of the forest to clear the branches above Valérian. The sun, now able to penetrate beneath the canopy of the trees, causes the leaf to shrivel and Valérian is free. The young girl introduces herself as Laureline and offers to act as his guide. Valérian explains that he has lost the trail and Laureline suggest he visit the powerful wizard, Alberic the Old. Traveling across a barren landscape, they come to a poisonous marsh. In the centre lies Alberic's castle. Using reeds to enable them to breathe the clear air above the marsh, they cross on a raft. But, a dead branch bursts one of the poisonous bubbles as they land and they are knocked unconscious. Regaining consciousness a week later, they slip inside the castle but soon become lost in a labyrinth of passages. Attacked by guards, they become separated and Valérian comes to a chamber where he finds Xombul. Xombul tells Valérian that he is fed up with how weak humanity has become and he has decided to break the people out of their apathy – first by introducing nightmares into the dream programmes and now by bringing back an army of beasts, created by transforming people using a magical spell, to terrorise the people of Galaxity into making him their emperor so that he can wage a war of conquest across the galaxy. Taking Valérian to the dungeons he shows him the people he has transformed into beasts – Alberic The Old, his servant and the various peasants who live in the forest. Also languishing in a cell is Laureline. Casting his transformation spell, she is turned into a unicorn. Locking Valérian in a cage in a workshop, Xombul leaves for Galaxity with his menagerie of monsters. Using an underground passage to avoid the marsh, Xombul's plans are interrupted when one of the monsters gets stuck. When freeing the creature causes the marsh water to leak into the passage, Laureline, still a unicorn, uses the confusion to escape. Valérian, meanwhile, has also managed to escape and is reunited with Laureline, who has retained the ability to talk. Pursuing Xombul, Valérian and Laureline find him and his entourage encamped in the forest. When Xombul's party continue their journey the next morning, they are trapped by Valérian and Laureline in spider's webs. Xombul admits defeat and agrees to transform everyone back to human form. However, in the confusion following everyone's return to their normal appearance, Xombul changes himself into a falcon and escapes. Valérian moves to follow and says goodbye to Laureline, who he is forbidden to take with him to the 28th century. Laureline reveals that, as a unicorn, she was able to read minds and that she knows Valérian's secret and that Valérian is required to take her with him to prevent contamination of the time-line. Valérian sighs, but does not seem too unhappy about it. Before they leave, Alberic gives Valérian a ring that acts as a protective charm against his spells. Arriving at the spatio-temporal relay, Valérian finds that Xombul has sabotaged his spatio-temporal transport. While Valérian makes repairs, he connects Laureline to the station's mnemotechnical equipment to prepare her for her voyage to the future. Completing the repairs, they make the space-time jump but arrive too late – Xombul is wreaking havoc with his monsters. Meeting Jirad, the assistant to the Chief of the Spatio-Temporal Service, they travel to the Dream Chambers where Xombul has erected two dream projectors to spread his nightmare. Entering the building, they find Xombul sitting on a donkey about to be crowned Emperor of the Galaxy. Xombul casts a spell but Valérian's protective charm reflects it back onto the donkey which returns to its normal state – that of the Chief of the Spatio-Temporal Service! At the same time, Jirad manages to switch off the dream projectors and everything returns to normal. Taking the spell book from Xombul, the Chief casts a spell and Xombul is changed into a bird and put into a cage. As the sun sets, the Chief welcomes Laureline to Galaxity.
3378086	/m/098ghq	Well-Schooled in Murder	Elizabeth George	1990-10-25	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Teacher John Corntel asks his former Eton schoolmate Lynley for help when the 13 year old schoolboy Matthew Whateley has disappeared. Initially Lynley refuses, until Deborah St James finds the naked body of the boy in a churchyard in Stoke Poges. Lynley and Havers start their investigation at Matthew's school Bredgar Chambers, an elite boarding school in West Sussex. They find a letter from Matthew to Jeannie Bonnamy, a daughter of Colonel Bonnamy. Matthew has visited them three days before his death to dine and play chess with the colonel. When Jeannie brought Matthew back to school, they saw 6th form student Chas Quilter in a school minibus, returning from a visit to Cecilia Feld, a girl in Stoke Poges. Chas didn't want anyone to find out about his relationship with Cecilia, and the fact that he was the father of Cecilia's child, which has Apert syndrome. Cecilia herself was transferred from Bredgar Chambers to another school when she was pregnant. Chemistry teacher Emilia Bond tried to burn child pornography photos that belonged to John Corntel; she was in love with Corntel, but found out he was collecting those photos. This explains why Corntel didn't patrol in spite of being duty master. That same evening 6th grader Clive Pritchard nabbed Matthew Whateley to torture him, because Matthew had made a tape recording of Clive bullying schoolboy Harry Morant. When Clive found Matthew dead he felt responsible, unaware that the cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. During the investigation there's an attempt to kill Jeannie Bonnamy with a rake. Chas Quilter hangs himself. The investigators find out that Matthew's biological parents were Mrs Pamela Byrne and Edward Hsu, a Chinese former pupil at Bredgar Hall who killed himself after this scandal. Giles Byrne felt financially responsible for the child of his late wife. As a board member he obtained a scholarship for Matthew at Bredgar Chambers. Giles' 18 year old son Brian turns out to be the culprit. He killed his half-brother in the fume cupboard in the chemistry lab. He then transported the body to Stoke Poges in the school minibus Chas Quilter was driving. His motive was to win Chas Quilter's lifetime loyalty. Brian also tried to kill Jeannie Bonnamy for the same reason. Brian Byrne and Clive Pritchard are arrested. In a subplot Barbara Havers visits her demented mother, and finds her father dead. Another theme is Lynley's aristocratic descent (he is sometimes referred to as "Lord Asherton")&mdash;shown through his working relationship with his working class colleague Barbara Havers from Acton and his unrequited love for Lady Helen Clyde.
3378770	/m/098hr5	Generals Die in Bed	Charles Yale Harrison		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This Canadian World War I narrative starts in Montreal, where an unnamed soldier of 20 years old is among those Canadian soldiers preparing to deploy confront the Germans on European soil, mainly in France and Belgium. Though the story begins with the narrator's close relationships with fellow soldiers, named Brown, Cleary, Fry, Broadbent and Anderson, and almost seductive experience of deployment, it soon shifts to scenes of the infamous World War I trenches; here, the conditions are unsanitary at best, as the soldiers are constantly exposed to lice, gigantic rats, and flesh-rotting rainfalls. The unnamed narrator is incrementally disillusioned towards the war, particularly when given no choice but to question its purpose and its socio-economic implications. While he once thought of war as glorious, the narrator is forced to reassess his own patriotic ideals as his friends begin to die; this begins with the rather banal death of Brown. Later in the text, the narrator finds himself disturbed when he bayonets a German soldier during a raid; this trauma is magnified by the narrator's subsequent camaraderie with the brother of the dead soldier. The narrator becomes further unhinged at the death of another friend; it is at this point that the narrator begins to acknowledge the horrors of war. As the plot continues, he is allowed to leave the front for a break in England, a 10 day period during which a prostitute does everything in her power to help him forget the war. However, everyday incidents –- such as a burlesque show that marginalizes the cost of war by adapting the imagery of war for public amusement –- remind the anonymous soldier of the ideological separation between the "home front" and the trenches. Upon his return to the trenches, the Canadians suffer a heavy loss when a raid on the Germans goes awry; at this point, Broadbent is the lone survivor of the narrator's friends. To sufficiently motivate the troops for another raid, a Canadian general tells a dubious tale of the Germans sinking a hospital ship; during this bloody confrontation, the narrator wounds his foot, and Broadbent dies after his leg is nearly severed from his body. Shortly thereafter, the War ends. At this point, the soldiers learn that the ship sunk by the Germans was, in fact, carrying weapons. The illumination of the truth brings with it the realization that war is a game of strategy fought between generals, and soldiers are unwitting participants.
3379021	/m/098j75	The City of the Moving Waters	Pierre Christin	1970		 Part One: The City of Shifting Waters After completing a mission on Venus, Valérian and Laureline are on leave. Laureline is beating her partner in a game of 3D chess when they are summoned by the Chief of the Spatio-Temporal Service. Valérian appears more eager than usual to respond to his call. The Chief informs them that Xombul, the renegade technocrat of the First Circle of Galaxity, who attempted to take over Galaxity in Bad Dreams, has escaped captivity and fled into the Earth's past – the year 1986 – a time period agents have been forbidden to visit since the foundation of Galaxity. A nuclear explosion at the North Pole that year caused the polar ice cap to melt engulfing most of the Earth's cities. Valérian is ordered to pursue Xombul while Laureline is to remain at Galaxity until needed. Valérian arrives in 1986, in New York in the Statue of Liberty just as it collapses under a wave and Valérian is thrown into the Hudson. He is rescued by a group of looters on a boat who take him to their base in Macy's department store. Left alone, Valérian is able to make his escape and heads for the top of the Empire State Building in the hope of being able to see something from the higher ground. That night, he spies a light in the top floor of the United Nations. Reaching the United Nations, Valérian discovers a group of robots ransacking the UN's scientific archives. He makes to go after them but they take the lift to the ground floor – below the level of the water. Seeking underwater diving equipment to follow them, he is recaptured by the looters. They take him to their leader, Sun Rae, who has headquartered himself in the Plaza Hotel. He has commandeered a cargo ship and he and his group are filling it with as much loot as they can get their hands on before the final tsunami sweeps the city away forever. Valérian is put to work helping the looters load the ship. Some days later, as the looters struggle to secure the ship from the rising winds, Valérian tries to make his escape. Hiding in the hold of the ship he is surprised to encounter Laureline who takes him to her hideaway in Greenwich Village. Once there, Laureline explains how she got to New York: traveling to the spatio-temporal relay in Brasilia she borrowed an aircraft and made her way to New York. She also tells Valérian that a conference at the University of Brasília has brought all the great scientific minds of the planet together there and they are now trying to save what they can of civilisation. Valérian and Laureline return to the cargo ship and offer Sun Rae a deal: help them and he can have whatever scientific knowledge they also recover from the robots. He agrees and a team is put together to dive to find the robots. The team search the flooded subway tunnels and soon find the robots, following them to their base in Washington Heights. Entering the base, Valérian, Laureline and Sun Rae discover the robots are taking orders via a videoscreen from Xombul. Valérian, Laureline and Sun Rae are spotted and captured by the robots. Xombul orders the robots to bring them with them to his base in the west. Leaving in a hovercraft, the final deluge strikes New York and it's only thanks to Sun Rae's skill that they manage to make their escape from the city via the Washington Bridge. Heading west, Laureline is shocked by the devastation but Valérian reminds her that it's out of this disaster that Galaxity will be born. The hovercraft continues west towards Xombul's base... Part Two: Earth in Flames Transferring from the hovercraft to a tiltwing aircraft, Valérian, Laureline and Sun Rae are brought to Yellowstone National Park and a secret underground laboratory built by the US Army. There, they are greeted by Xombul, who introduces them to Schroeder, a scientist from the base that Xombul has kept prisoner. Xombul offers his captives a partnership – Sun Rae will command Xombul's troops and Valérian will be his right hand man. When both men hesitate, Xombul leads them all to a cave deep in the mountain. On the way, Schroeder pretends to stumble and slips an object into Valérian's hand. In the cave is vast machine – the Molecular Induction Minaturiser – capable of reducing any living object in size. Xombul places Laureline in the machine, proposing to keep her miniaturized form as a hostage to ensure Valérian's co-operation. The process begins and Xombul, absorbed in operating the machine, relaxes his attention. Valérian activates the device which emits a strong pitch, knocking out Xombul and his robots, who are connected to him by a mental link. Laureline has been miniaturized, but Schroeder explains that since the process wasn't completed, the effect will be temporary. Valérian prepares to leave with Laureline and the captive Xombul but Sun Rae decides to stay to see what he can salvage from the laboratories. Reaching the surface, Valérian, Laureline and Schroeder find that the robots outside have not been affected by Xombul's incapacitated state and they attack. In the confusion, Xombul escapes and Valérian, Laureline and Schroeder are forced to flee. While on the run, Laureline returns to her normal size. Evading the robots they come to an abandoned army base, where they find a jeep as well as weapons and ammunition. Returning to the base, they manage to ambush and destroy a robot patrol and to damage the aircraft. In response the aircraft releases bubble-prisons, one of Schroeder's inventions, which ensnare the trio and start to drift back to the base. At that very moment, there is a volcanic eruption. The bubble-prisons keep all three safe from the lava that flows across the ground. Brought back to the base they find Sun Rae. He tells them that Xombul returned to the base and blasted off in a rocket. Schroeder explains that the rocket was to ferry the President of the United States to a secret space station in orbit around the Earth in the event of a nuclear war. They are able to watch Xombul at work on the station with the material stolen from the United Nations but they have no apparent means of following him. Searching the lab, Valérian is astonished to discover what appears to be a prototype space-time machine. Schroeder informs him that he and some colleagues built it but couldn't get it to work. Examining the machine, Valérian realizes that he can make it operational with a few modifications. Before departure, he and Laureline knock Schroeder and Sun Rae unconscious so that they can't see what happens next. Activating the space-time machine, they jump successfully to the space station. Valérian confronts Xombul: the secrets he stole from the United Nations were for the same space-time machine Valérian has just used to get to the station – he never realized Schroeder had the prototype in the lab in Yellowstone – and Xombul has built a prototype of his own. Xombul plans to build a fleet of similar space-time machines and conquer the galaxy. Despite Valérian's protestations that the machine doesn't work, Xombul steps inside and activates his machine, which explodes killing him. Schroeder and Sun Rae come round to discover they are now just outside Brasilia. Valérian tells Schroeder he is a time traveler and that Schroeder shouldn't give up on his attempts to build a space-time machine. However, to preserve the time line, Valérian has removed the modifications he made. Valérian and Laureline make for the space-time relay in Brasilia as Schroeder addresses the gathered scientists at the University. Meanwhile, in the back streets of the city, Sun Rae plots a takeover.
3380081	/m/098kxl	Peter and the Starcatchers	Ridley Pearson	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is an adventure on the high seas and on the faraway Mollusk island. An orphan boy named Peter and his pretty, mysterious new friend, Molly, overcome bands of pirates and thieves in their quest to keep a magical secret safe and save the world from evil. Characters include the scary but somehow familiar Black "Stache" Moustache and ferocious crocodile Mister Grin to the sweet but sophisticated Molly and fearless Peter. Molly and Peter take a voyage with Alf, James, Thomas, Prentiss, Tubby Ted, Slank and Little Richard from a filthy, crime-ridden port in Old England across the turbulent sea. Aboard the Never Land is a trunk that holds the "greatest treasure on earth," thought by its pursuers to be gold or jewels but revealed to be "starstuff." The trunk is moved from place to place through storms and sea battles: once in a dry, guarded cabin, next in a ship full of greedy pirates, and then out in the open sea.
3380230	/m/098l75	Lungbarrow	Marc Platt		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 His mind occupied with thoughts of his coming regeneration, the TARDIS accidentally returns the Doctor to Gallifrey and the House of Lungbarrow, where for over 673 years his 44 cousins have been trapped, but mysteriously only six of them are still left. Meanwhile, Chris Cwej is having strange dreams of the past, when the family cast the Doctor out. The Doctor is accused of the murder of the head of the House, but finds many allies in the form of former companions Ace, Romana, K-9 and Leela, who have become embroiled in a Celestial Intervention Agency plot to overthrow Romana's presidency. The secrets of the past are catching up to the Doctor, in particular the secret linking him to a figure from Gallifreyan history known only as the Other.
3381920	/m/098p74	Ramona the Pest	Beverly Cleary	1968	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ramona Quimby is excited because she is starting kindergarten. She is a year older than in Beezus and Ramona and trouble still seems to follow her. Athough Ramona does not mean to be a pest, she still manages to create trouble without trying to. Miss Binney is her teacher, and Ramona likes her a lot, especially when she praises Ramona's interesting drawing and nice fat letter 'Q's. There's a girl in her class named Susan with long, springy curls. Ramona really wants to pull on one of those curls and watch it bounce back and forth, but when she finally does she gets sent to the bench until recess is over. Another new person in her class is Davy. Ramona chases him at recess, trying to catch and kiss him, which she finally manages to accomplish when she participates in the Halloween parade when she is "the baddest witch in the whole world." Ramona tries to do her best in kindergarten but it isn't easy, especially during seat work, when she has to sit quietly and keep her eyes on her own work. She's just too interested in seeing what everyone else is doing. Still, kindergarten is going well until the day the substitute teacher arrives. Ramona won't go to class without Miss Binney, so she hides behind the trash cans with Ribsy the dog. When Beezus finds her and takes her to the principal's office Ramona is forced to go to class any way. Then one day Susan calls Ramona a "pest", Ramona retaliates by pulling Susan's curls, and Miss Binney sends her home until she can behave. Ramona decides that Miss Binney doesn't like her any more, and she refuses to go back. Nothing anyone says to her can change her mind until she gets a letter from her teacher signed "Love and Kisses", and Ramona is happy to return to kindergarten.
3382736	/m/098qgd	The Princess Casamassima	Henry James	1886-10-22	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Amanda Pynsent, an impoverished seamstress, has adopted Hyacinth Robinson, the illegitimate son of her old friend Florentine Vivier, a Frenchwoman of less than sterling repute, and an English lord. Florentine had stabbed her lover to death several years ago, and Pinnie (as Miss Pynsent is nicknamed) takes Hyacinth to see her as she lies dying at Millbank prison. Hyacinth eventually learns that the dying woman is his mother and that she murdered his father. Many years pass. Hyacinth, now a young man and a skilled bookbinder, meets revolutionary Paul Muniment and gets involved in radical politics. Hyacinth also has a coarse but lively girlfriend, Millicent Henning, and one night they go to the theater. There Hyacinth meets the radiantly beautiful Princess Casamassima (Christina Light, from James' earlier novel, Roderick Hudson). The Princess has become a revolutionary herself and now lives apart from her dull husband. Meanwhile, Hyacinth has committed himself to carrying out a terrorist assassination, though the exact time and place have not yet been specified to him. Hyacinth visits the Princess at her country home and tells her about his parents. When he returns to London, Hyacinth finds Pinnie dying. He comforts her in her final days, then travels to France and Italy on his small inheritance. This trip completes Hyacinth's conversion to a love for the sinful but beautiful world, and away from violent revolution. Still, he does not attempt to escape his vow to carry out the assassination. But when the order comes, he turns the gun on himself instead of its intended victim.
3382973	/m/098qrx	The Bostonians	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mississippi lawyer and Civil War veteran, Basil Ransom, visits his cousin Olive Chancellor in Boston. She takes him to a political meeting where Verena Tarrant delivers a feminist speech. Ransom, a strong conservative, is annoyed by the speech but fascinated with the speaker. Olive, who has never before set eyes on Verena, is equally fascinated. She persuades Verena to leave her parents' house, move in with her and study in preparation for a career in the feminist movement. Meanwhile, Ransom returns to his law practice in New York, which is not doing well. He visits Boston again and walks with Verena through the Harvard College grounds, including the impressive Civil War memorial. Verena finds herself attracted to the charismatic Ransom. Basil eventually proposes to Verena, much to Olive's dismay. Olive has arranged for Verena to speak at the Boston Music Hall. Ransom shows up at the hall just before Verena is scheduled to begin her speech. He persuades Verena to elope with him, to the discomfiture of Olive and her fellow-feminists. The final sentence of the novel shows Verena in tears&nbsp;— not to be her last, James assures us.
3383836	/m/098rwk	First to Fight	Dan Cragg	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 First to Fight has one main plot, the story of a platoon from the 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team (FIST) to the planet Elneal, interlaced with three subplots. The first subplot revolves around new Marine Joseph F. Dean as he experiences his first deployment. Another is that of Staff Sergeant Charlie Bass, recently demoted from Gunnery Sergeant and transferred to the 34th FIST for assaulting a civilian contractor after the in-combat failure of an electronic device the man was responsible for, which failure cost half the men of one of the companies of the 31st FIST. The third subplot is the sadistic dream of a tribal leader whose plan to achieve rule over Elneal is stymied by the presence of the Marines on Elneal. Dean and his friend Neal are assigned to the third platoon of Company L, 34th FIST on Thorsfinni's World.The 34th FIST is assigned to a humanitarian relief effort on the backwater planet of Elneal.Is a planet that is completely useless except for its deposits, which are being mined by Consolidated Enterprises, and is mostly populated by nomadic tribes, third platoon receives a new platoon leader, who privately sees the platoon as a bunch of worthless men in need of shaping up, even though the company commander claims third platoon is the best in the entire FIST., it becomes clear that the tribes have formed an alliance to rid the planet of the Confederation and Consolidated Enterprises. Dean's platoon is stationed in an isolated village in order to defend it, retain order and deliver aid to the locals as originally planned before the Marines' arrival. But while things seem calm and peaceful, He tries to convince the platoon leader to take defensive measures before the situation deteriorates, but to no effec, and to get him out of his hair orders him to take the platoon's new UPUD . Bass reluctantly takes a patrol a ways into the desert to test the device, they realize that the rest of the platoon is attacked . The small patrol is too far away to come help in good timt have been wiped out, and, believing another full-out assault is in the works, orders a withdrawal to Company L headquarters . Stranded, Bass leads the patrol through the desert towards New Obbia.
3385082	/m/098ts0	One for the Money	Janet Evanovich	1994-08-26	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stephanie Plum, an unemployed lingerie sales women, applies for a filing job with her cousin Vinnie, a bail bondsman. Vinnie's assistant, Connie, tells her the job is taken, but suggests she start apprehending some clients who have skipped out on their bonds, starting with Joe Morelli, vice cop and onetime sexual acquaintance of Stephanie. He is wanted for murder one. Stephanie is in financial trouble, and wants to take the job, as she will get a percentage of the $100,000 bail bond, so she blackmails Vinnie into employing her, by threatening to reveal his use of a duck for sexual gratification. In trying to find Morelli, Plum attracts the attention of a heavyweight boxer involved in the murders of several women.
3385085	/m/098tsc	Two For the Dough	Janet Evanovich	1996-01-10	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 While Stephanie is looking for Kenny, his friend is fatally shot in the head, which complicates the case. Lula, the hooker introduced in the previous book, One For the Money, gets a job as a file clerk at Vinnie's Bail Bonds company, but decides that being Stephanie's sidekick is more interesting than filing. Stephanie talks to Spiro Stiva, the son of the owner of the local funeral home and a childhood friend of Mancuso. Stiva asks Stephanie to help him find the 24 bargain basement caskets that have mysteriously gone missing...along with various body parts. As the book continues, Stephanie begins finding embalmed body parts in her apartment along with threatening notes. Then, a number of weapons go missing from a military installation. Eventually, Stephanie and Grandma Mazur find themselves locked in the basement of Stiva's Funeral Home and end up setting the place on fire. Stephanie's Jeep Wrangler, Sahara model, stolen outside of the Eternal Slumber funeral home on Stark Street, and most likely wound up in a chop shop.
3385088	/m/098tt1	Three to Get Deadly	Janet Evanovich	1997-02-14	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stephanie is on the trail of beloved Moses Bedemier, a mild-mannered, predictable man who runs an ice-cream parlor/candy store in the Burg. Mo is an upstanding citizen with ties to almost every family in Jersey. Unfortunately, he gets ticketed by an overly-excited fresh-out-of-the-academy cop for carrying a concealed weapon, and then doesn't show up for his court date. No one wants to help Stephanie haul "Uncle Mo" (as he is widely known) to jail, so her detective work is frustratingly slow. "Mo would never do anything wrong," Stephanie is told by the Burg residents. Since her neighbors and family refuse to help her, she calls on her mentor Ranger, her sidekick (and aspiring bounty hunter) Lula, and Joe Morelli, vice cop and former lover. As Stephanie attempts to resume her relationship with Morelli, they are constantly interrupted - first by criminals, then by Stephanie's accidental dye job that makes her look like Ronald McDonald. When Stephanie begins stumbling across the bodies of dead drug dealers, including four buried in the candy store basement, she suspects that mild-mannered Mo has become a vigilante. Was that why Mo carried a concealed weapon? Stephanie must figure out if Mo has begun cleaning up the streets in a one-man killing spree.
3385794	/m/098w7c	Empire of a Thousand Planets	Pierre Christin	1971		 Valérian and Laureline are ordered to Syrte-the-Magnificent, capital of the Empire of a Thousand Planets to investigate whether the empire is a potential threat to Galaxity, the capital of Earth in the 28th century. Exploring the markets, Valérian buys Laureline an old gold watch which she hangs around her neck. Attracted by a gathering, they discover that one of the Authorities, the strange masked soothsayers who, it is said are the real power on Syrte, is holding a consultation. Suddenly, in the middle of the session, the Authority notices the watch around Laureline's neck. He asks her what the watch is for. When she replies that it is to tell the time, the crowd erupts in laughter. The Authority departs suddenly leaving a bemused Valérian and Laureline. Returning to the spaceport, Valérian and Laureline's boat is attacked and they are taken prisoner. They are transported to one of the Authority's temples. An Authority appears before them and asks if they are Terrans. He knows they are from Earth because of the watch – all Syrtiens have an innate biological ability to tell the time and would have no use for such a device. He tells them that the Authorities revenge against Earth will be dreadful. Valérian and Laureline give the guards the slip and exploring the temple are amazed to discover sophisticated machinery and laboratories. Finding a hangar they escape the temple in an aircraft but are pursued. The pursuit breaks off when they enter a cloud and Valérian and Laureline soon find out why as their aircraft is battered by an ice storm. Ditching the aircraft, they begin their journey back to Syrte on foot where they meet a group of fishermen who agree to bring them to the city on their boat. Reaching Syrte, Valérian and Laureline attempt to gain entry to the Imperial Palace by dressing as nobles but they are refused entry by the guards. Meeting a merchant called Elmir, he offers to get them into the palace in return for them sharing information about what they find inside with him. Elmir organises for them to hide inside a consignment of Schamil clams warning them not to allow the clam to close completely over them or they will be affected by its hallucinogenic properties. Once inside the palace, Valérian emerges safely from his clam but is horrified to discover Laureline's has broken into pieces. Searching for Laureline, Valérian enters the opulent hall where the festival is going on and is amazed to see her sharing a cupola with the emperor, Prince Ramal. The festival ends and as the crowds make their way to the exit, Valérian makes for the wing where the Authorities are housed. He finds the Authorities gathered in a chamber, their masks removed, drinking a strange phosphorescent liquid chanting “So that we may live and the Earth dies!”. Suddenly a portcullis closes behind him and he is a prisoner. Taken to the interrogation room, the Authorities use their machines to extract information about Valérian's astroship and about the Earth. The next morning, the door to the interrogation room opens and Laureline leads Prince Ramal into the room – she has heard about Valérian's capture and has convinced the Prince to agree to release him. The Authorities object but the Prince insists on keeping his promise. Leaving the palace, Valérian and Laureline head into the slums of the city to the address Elmir left them. Arriving at the house, they are amazed to discover that Elmir is, in fact, the Grand Master of the Merchant's Guild. He brings them to a secret meeting of the guild members. After Valérian and Laureline have told their story, Elmir and the other merchants fill them in on the Authorities rise to power – they arrived on Syrte a hundred years ago and used their superior knowledge of medicine and psychology to make their name on Syrte. They used their ever increasing power to suppress scientific knowledge and replace it with their religion. The resulting impact on trade has prompted the guild to act – they have discovered that the Authorities base of operations is located on a barren asteroid called Slomp. They want Valérian and his astroship to lead a fleet to assault the base. Valérian agrees and a few days later Elmir manages to escort them safely to the spaceport and their astroship. They take off accompanied by the guild spaceships. The fleet swells its numbers by calling on further guild ships from the other planets in the empire. Approaching Slomp, Elmir reveals why he wanted Valérian and his astroship – he knows Valérian and Laureline are aliens from Earth and also that their astroship is capable of jumping in space-time. He hopes that ability will give them the upper hand. When the Authorities attack the fleet in their spaceships, Valérian executes a series of spatio-temporal jumps and destroys the Authorities' ships. Arriving at Slomp, the fleet lands and the Guild troops led by Elmir head for the base. The hills on Slomp look like faces and Elmir explains that they are the remains of the indigenous inhabitants of Slomp. Flowing from their eyes like tears is the strange phosphorescent liquid Valérian saw the Authorities drinking in the Imperial Palace on Syrte. The Authorities' base turns out to be a crashed spaceship. Outside, slave laborers are hard at work gathering the phosphorescent tears. Surrounding the base, the troops launch a surprise attack and, aided by the slaves, easily overcome the guards. As they close in on the spaceship, a voice from a loudspeaker requests Valérian to enter the ship alone. Reaching the flight deck of the spaceship, he is greeted by the Authorities. They remove their helmets to reveal themselves as horribly scarred, ancient humans. They were part of a space expedition that left Earth many centuries ago. An accident during flight caused them to crash on Slomp where they used the phosphorescent liquid to extend their lives beyond the normal human span. Eventually, they captured a Syrtien spaceship and made their way to Syrte to take over. Their plan was to assemble an armada to attack Earth as revenge against the planet for making no effort to rescue them. However, the technology of Valérian's astroship is vastly superior to theirs – he destroyed their entire squadron – and they have now realised that any attempt at revenge is doomed to fail. Accordingly, they have chosen to commit suicide instead – the spaceship is rigged to explode. Valérian leaves and the spaceship blows up. Elsewhere, throughout the empire, the other Authorities destroy their temples taking their own lives in the process. Returning to Syrte with the fleet and the freed slaves, Elmir is delighted – the Empire will be back to normal again. He is surprised then when Valérian tells him that, with the Authorities gone, there has been an uprising on Syrte – the fishermen and the peasants have risen up, helped by the scientists and academics who went into hiding during the Authorities' purges. Valérian explains that the reason as to why the Authorities took over so easily was that the empire was already in decline and that the Authorities were the only thing keeping the imperial system going. Sensing an opportunity, Elmir asks Valérian if he could use the spatio-temporal jump to get back to Syrte ahead of his rival merchants so that he can stake a claim in the new provisional government. Valérian agrees and, later, parts company with Elmir outside the Imperial Palace. Valérian and Laureline return to their astroship intending to request Earth to send a trade mission to Syrte to assist them.
3388166	/m/098_6d	The Ancestor Cell	Stephen Cole		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Following on from the events of The Banquo Legacy, the Timelords have cracked the base code the Eighth Doctor programmed into Compassion's randomiser and intercept her at her next destination. Threatened with enslavement, Compassion activates her built in weapons system and destroys the approaching WarTARDISes, while the Doctor fights for control of her navigation systems. The resulting "hiccup" expels Fitz and the Doctor into the vortex. The Doctor is captured while escaping from the Edifice, a massive bone structure that has appeared in the skies above Gallifrey, and taken to Gallifrey where he is accused of being an agent of Faction Paradox. The Doctor is forced to aid the Time Lords in the capture of Compassion to aid in the forthcoming War. Meanwhile, Fitz appears before a group of disenchanted, young Time Lords who are holding rituals based on the occult texts of Faction Paradox and finds himself unable to escape. Getting further embroiled in the group's activities, Fitz witnesses the creation of a copy of former President Greyjan the Sane and is then the unwitting donor of material used to pull the original Fitz Kreiner, now in the guise of Faction Agent Father Kreiner, from a Klein bottle universe into the modern day Gallifrey. During her Reaffirmation Ceremony, Lady President Romana is challenged by Greyjan and placed under house arrest, with only Fitz as company. With the aid of Compassion, they are able to escape and witness Faction Paradox corrupting Time Lord history, followed by the Doctor's fall to the Faction. Travelling to the Edifice with Father Kreiner and a Faction Agent known as Tarra, Kreiner reveals he is not truly working for the Faction and pleads with the Doctor to undo the past so he never becomes Father Kreiner, an act the Doctor cannot agree to. The Doctor reveals that not only has he not fallen to the Faction but the Edifice is, in fact, his old TARDIS, which was not actually destroyed at Avalon. Together he and Kreiner are able to dispose of Tarra before Grandfather Paradox appears on the Edifice to confront the Doctor. The Doctor battles the Grandfather, and decides that the only way to prevent Faction Paradox from destroying Gallifrey's past is a drastic move: he chooses to use the energy that is holding the TARDIS together to destroy Faction Paradox and Grandfather Paradox, but also destroy Gallifrey in the process. With the whole of Time Lord history seemingly being erased from existence, Compassion is able to rescue the Doctor, Fitz and the remains of the Doctor's old TARDIS, placing them on Earth for safekeeping, until the TARDIS can regenerate itself over the course of the next century and the Doctor, now suffering from amnesia, can recover. At the end of the novel, the Doctor is stranded on Earth for a hundred years; Fitz is left to his own devices in the late 20th century, with only a time and place to meet the Doctor once the TARDIS is once again active; and Compassion is released from her bonds to both the Time Lords and the Faction, free to roam time and space as she sees fit.
3388262	/m/098_fd	Obasan	Joy Kogawa	1981	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in 1972, Obasan centres on the memories and experiences of Naomi Nakane, a 36 year old schoolteacher living in the rural Canadian town of Cecil, Alberta, when the novel begins. The death of Naomi's uncle, with whom she had lived as a child, leads Naomi to visit and care for her widowed aunt Aya, whom she refers to as Obasan (Obasan being the Japanese word for "Aunt" in this context). Her brief stay with Obasan in turn becomes an occasion for Naomi to revisit and reconstruct in memory her painful experiences as a child during and after World War II, with the aid of a box of correspondence and journals sent to her by her Aunt Emily, detailing the years of the measures taken by the Canadian government against the Japanese citizens of Canada and their aftereffects. With the aid of Aunt Emily's box, Naomi learns that her mother, who had been in Japan before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was severely injured by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima; a finding which changes her perspective of the 'War in the Pacific', and rekindles the heartbreak she experienced as a child. Naomi's narration thus interweaves two stories, one of the past and another of the present, mixing experience and recollection, history and memory throughout. Naomi's struggle to come to terms with both past and present confusion and suffering form the core of the novel's plot. Although Obasan is fiction, the events, Parliamentary legal documents, and overall notion of racism mirror reality. Through the eyes of fictional characters, Kogawa tells the story of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War.
3388363	/m/098_nb	The Case of Sergeant Grischa				 The Russian soldier Grischa escapes from a German prison camp and attempts to return to the family home. After his escape he becomes involved with a group of outlaws, including a young woman, Babka, who dresses as a man and has been prematurely aged by her traumatic experiences. Grischa and Babka become lovers. When he leaves, she gives him the identity tag of a former lover, Bjuscheff, so that if he gets caught he will be mistaken for a deserter and not be sent back to the prison camp. She follows him at a distance in case he ever needs her help. Grischa is eventually captured. Being illiterate, he does not realise that calling himself Bjuscheff worsens his plight, as he has been unable to read the notices saying that all deserters must hand themselves in to the occupying German army within three days or face execution as spies. Only when he is condemned to death does he realise what has happened, and he reveals his true identity. The local German authorities send for his former prison guards, and having confirmed his true identity, they send for advice to Schieffenzahn, the chief administrator on the eastern Front. Schieffenzahn orders that the original error must be ignored, for the sake of discipline. Grischa is therefore sentenced to be shot. There follows a power struggle between the local military authorities and the administrators. The old general sees it as a point of honour not to give in to Schieffenzahn's order. Although he fails to convince Schieffenzahn face to face, the latter thinks better of it afterwards and rescinds the execution order. However, a heavy snowfall has brought down the communication wires, and the telegram of reprieve is never sent. In the meantime, Babka hatches a plan to poison the prison guards, whilst Lieutenant Winfried, the general's nephew, tries to find alternative ways of getting Grischa out of prison. Both plans fail because Grischa himself is tired of the struggle and refuses to leave, preferring to face execution rather than continue as a pawn in the larger game. The book is a satire, focusing on the way in which innocent men are sacrificed in war, one irony being that the authorities spend more time and energy on the niceties of Grischa's case than they do on trying to save their own soldiers from their fate.
3388556	/m/098_yt	If Not Now, When?	Primo Levi	1986		 The story follows a number of Jewish partisans and resistance fighters as they struggle to survive and sabotage the German war machine behind Nazi lines during World War II, starting in the western Soviet Union (Byelorossiya) and ending in Milan. The book's chief protagonist, Mendel Nachmanovich Dajcher, worked as a watch repairer before joining the Red Army, where he fought in the artillery. While he is at war, his wife and shtetl are massacred by a German Einsatzgruppe. In the midst of battle, he loses his regiment, becomes disoriented and is overtaken by the front, separated from and unsupported by Soviet forces. His life thereafter is an odyssey through the "partisanka", the motley partisan movement, which includes Russians, Jews, Lithuanians and Poles. About halfway through the book, Mendel and his companion from the first chapter, Leonid, fall in with a group of Jewish resistance fighters called the gedalistas, after their leader: Gedale. With them, Mendel traverses Poland and, overtaken by the victorious Soviets, enters defeated Germany. From there, the group aims for Italy, dreaming of making the aliyah to Palestine to take part in the Zionist project of reclaiming a Jewish homeland.
3390889	/m/0993hc	World Without Stars	Pierre Christin	1972		 Valérian and Laureline are in the Ukbar system assisting human colonists who have settled on its four planets. Their job almost complete, they are now on a farewell tour of inspection. Arriving at Ukbar I, Valérian delivers his farewell speech at a reception in honour of the two agents from Galaxity. Later, one of the colonists invites Valérian to sample one of the first products of their new world – an alcoholic beverage distilled from algae. Proceeding to Ukbar II, Valérian delivers the same speech and again is invited to sample some of the locals' homemade booze. Laureline is alarmed when a somewhat intoxicated Valérian takes the astroship wildly off course on the way to Ukbar III. On Ukbar III, Valérian stumbles through the speech before being offered to try out the alcohol made on this planet. Returning to the astroship, Valérian falls over and Laureline at last realises he is drunk. Refusing to allow Laureline to pilot the ship, he makes a mess of the landing on Ukbar IV. Emerging from the ship, Valérian and Laureline discover the colony is deserted. Everyone is gathered in the observatory – a rogue planet has been spotted and it's on a collision course with the Ukbar system. With the cargo ships dismantled, there is no way to evacuate the colonists. Valérian makes another speech, promising to deal with the situation and then takes off with Laureline for the planet. While Valérian sleeps off the drink, Laureline makes the space-time jump to the planet. Exploring the surface they find it to be a lifeless, airless, barren rock but their curiosity is piqued by some phosphorescent lakes. Taking a launch from the astroship, they dive into one of the lakes and are astonished when the emerge on the other side – it is a hollow planet! Light is provided by the planet's nucleus and there is a small rocky moon in orbit. Searching for a place to land they see a strange sight – houses pulled by animals. Suddenly a section of the ridge one of the houses is travelling along gives way. Valérian swoops in with the launch and saves the house and its inhabitants from falling. Landing, a man introduces himself as Mutahar of the Lemm people of the planet Zahir. They are nomads who travel in the shadow of the moon collecting explosive flogums which they sell to the cities Malka and Valsennar. Suddenly a great wind rips through the camp. Mutahar explains that this is caused by the war between Malka and Valsennar – they use the flogums as weapons in the fight. Laureline checks the measuring devices in the launch – the detonation of the flogums during the battles is what is causing Zahir to tumble through space. The pair realise there is only once course of action open to them – stop the war. The pair split up – Valérian travels with the Lemm men to Malka, since women are forbidden from entering the city while Laureline travels with the Lemm women to Valsennar since men are forbidden from entering that city. Reaching Malka, Valérian parts company with the Lemm and gains entry through the city's considerable fortifications via the sewer system. Exploring the back streets, Valérian is surprised to see only men – cooking, cleaning, looking after the children. Soon he finds out where the women are when a formidable group of riders, all female, round up a group of the men. They are to be conscripts in the war with Valsennar – Valérian and the rest of the men are put through intensive military training. Later, resting in the barracks, the other men tell Valérian that they are at war with Valsennar because that city is ruled by men – a perversion of the natural order: men are inferior. Few men survive the battles and those that do are sent to the Palace of Supreme Femininity for reproductive duties. Elsewhere, Laureline reaches Valsennar and, like Valérian, parts company with the Lemm. Unlike Malka, Valsennar is a beautiful city with canals, gardens and sumptuous palaces. Wandering the back streets, Laureline meets an old lady, Nadjika, who persuades her to enter the emperor's beauty contest. Despite making a mess of the cooking, weaving and singing elements of the competition, the emperor, Alzafar, takes a shine to her and declares her the winner. She is brought back to the Palace of Resplendent Virility to join his harem. On the way they pass the emperor's war fleet. Laureline notices that all the soldiers are women – the emperor explains that women do all the work in Valsennar including fighting. The day of the battle comes and the war fleet of airships and flying elytrons (insects) takes off from Malka led by Queen Klopka the Ravishing. At the same time the war fleet of Valsennar takes off with the flagship of Emperor Alzafar and his court bring up the rear where they can enjoy the spectacle of the fight. The battle is engaged near the sun and Valérian is soon caught up in the bloody combat. In an attempt to impress the queen, taking an elytron flogum carrier he destroys several of Valsennar's ships and makes a successful bombing run on the Palace of Resplendent Virility before making to attack the emperor's flagship. This throws everyone on board into a panic – no one has ever attacked the emperor's ship before – except Laureline who grabs a crossbow and shoots the attacker down. Seconds later, she is horrified to see that it's Valérian. Valérian manages to save himself by jumping onto a drifting ship. Returning to Malka, Valérian is given his own apartments in the Palace of Supreme Femininity while Laureline is now the emperor's favorite in the surviving wing of the Palace of Resplendent Virility. Calling Valérian on her radio, Laureline is delighted to find Valérian is unharmed. They decide that they must kidnap the two monarchs and bring them together to find a way to end the conflict. Valérian knocks out Queen Klopka with a stunner and Laureline drugs Emperor Alzafar's drink. Meeting at the launch, they decide the best thing to do is to show the queen and the emperor the universe outside Zahir in the hope that they will then understand the peril they are in. They are disturbed when Klopka and Alzafar come round and begin fighting with each other. Pulling them apart, Valérian and Laureline calm them down and put them both in the launch. When they pass through into the outside of Zahir, Klopka and Alzafar see the stars for the first time. They are so shocked they go into a dead faint straight away. Bringing them to the astroship Valérian uses the hypnotic instruction machinery there to describe the universe to Klopka and Alzafar. Now aware of the danger they are in, they agree to put their differences aside and work to save Zahir and Ukbar. Valérian hatches a plan. The Malka, the Valsennar and the Lemm people all work together to gather as many flogums as possible and place them around the planet according to Valérian's instructions. At the right time, Valérian executes a series of spatio-temporal jumps detonating the flogums at the right time such that Zahir enters a safe orbit and becomes the fifth planet of Ukbar. The settlers of Ukbar and the Zahirians open up contact with a view to trade. On Zahir, society is rocked to discover that Klopka has married Alzafar and other marriages follow, leading to the collapse of the chauvinistic divisions between the two sides. Their mission completed, Valérian claims that he is not against the matriarchy system and to prove it he tells Laureline to get on with taking them back to Galaxity while he gets drunk on Zahirian alcohol.
3391638	/m/0994p_	The Tragic Muse	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nick Dormer wants to pursue a career in painting instead of his family's traditional role in British politics. This upsets his family and particularly his lady friend, Julia Dallow, a beautiful but demanding woman deeply involved in political campaigns. But Nick's old Oxford friend Gabriel Nash encourages him to follow his desire to become an artist. Despite his misgivings Nick goes through an election campaign and wins a seat in Parliament. He proposes marriage to Julia but they agree to wait. Meanwhile, Nick's cousin Peter Sherringham, a rising young man in the British diplomatic service, encounters a young actress, Miriam Rooth, in Paris. He falls in love with Miriam, who shows great energy but is a woefully raw talent. Peter introduces Miriam to French acting coach Madame Carre, and Miriam begins to improve her acting technique greatly. Nick at last tires completely of politics and resigns from Parliament. He thus loses a large bequest from his political patron, Mr. Carteret. Nick becomes a full-time painter, and when Miriam comes to London in search of theatrical success, she sits to Nick for her portrait as "the tragic muse." Julia finds the two together in the studio. Although nothing improper is going on, Julia suddenly and bitterly realizes that Nick is dedicated to art and will never return to politics. Miriam eventually triumphs as an actress, especially as Juliet. Peter proposes marriage to her, but she refuses and instead marries Basil Dashwood, her business manager. Peter accepts a diplomatic assignment in Central America. He returns to London on leave and becomes engaged to Biddy Dormer, Nick's sister. The novel ends with a suggestion that Nick and Julia may eventually marry, after all.
3393405	/m/09979v	Esperanza Rising	Pam Muñoz Ryan	2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place in Aguascalientes, Mexico on a ranch called El Rancho de las Rosas. It follows Esperanza Ortega, daughter of Ramona and Sixto Ortega, a rich rancher and landowner. The night before Esperanza's thirteenth birthday Esperanza's father is murdered by bandits. Esperanza, her mother, Grandmother Abuelita and their servants are devastated by the news. Later that night Esperanza dreams of her father and the other men and boys on the ranch singing "Happy Birthday" in Spanish to her. Politics and family problems force Esperanza and her mother to leave Mexico for California, leaving behind her beloved Abuelita. After a long and tedious train ride the group arrives in Los Angeles and then travel by truck to the San Fernando Valley where they meet a girl named Isabel, her parents Juan and Josefina, and Isabel's baby brother and sister, Lupe and Pepe. Due to her privileged background, Esperanza is hated by some of the workers, and she finds it difficult to adapt to her new life. She and her mother now share a shack with Alfonso and his family as the owners of the camp do not allow single mothers to have their own shacks, only men. At one point a dust storm runs through the camps forcing the adults to leave the fields and return home. Due to the dust storm Mama becomes ill with Valley Fever, an infection of the lungs by dust spores, and pneumonia. She spends several months in the hospital and in order to pay Mama's medical bills, Esperanza must earn money by working in the fields. After many months Mama eventually recovers and is released from the hospital to be with her friends and family. Miguel steals the money Esperanza had and went down to retrieve Abuelita, and Esperanza finally feels happy with her life and is happy to be surrounded by the people she loves.
3394973	/m/0999k7	Welcome to Alflolol	Pierre Christin	1972		 Valérian and Laureline are departing the Earth colony Technorog following a tour of inspection. Passing through the protective shield that surrounds the planet, Laureline is suddenly enveloped in a blue flame and rendered cataleptic. Recovering she reveals that she could hear what sounded like a cry for help. Checking their tracking instruments, they find an alien spacecraft falling towards Technorog. It strikes the protective shield and bounces into the asteroid belt that rings the planet. Valérian and Laureline spacewalk to the alien ship which they find deserted. Suddenly, Laureline is again rendered cataleptic and this time floats out of the spacecraft and into the asteroids. Following, Valérian finds Laureline surrounded by a group of strange aliens. The lead alien, unable to bring Laureline round, moves to open her spacesuit. Valérian intervenes. The lead alien introduces himself, using telepathy, as Argol, He-Who-Has-The-Gift-Of-Speaking-In-Minds. His family's maternal ancestor, Garol, She-Who-Has-The-Gift-Of-Taking-Over-Minds, has fallen gravely ill. In an attempt to get help she has taken over Laureline's mind but is now too sick to free her. Argol's wife, Orgal, She-Who-Has-The-Gift-Of-Making-Things-Move-Through-Space, used her telekinetic powers to bring Laureline to them. Valérian offers to bring them back to his astroship to see if he can cure Garol's illness. On the way, Argol introduces the rest of his family: his son Lagor and daughter Logar, who haven't yet discovered their gifts, and the Goumon, their pet. He explains that they come from the planet below them which is called Alflolol and that they have been away exploring other worlds. Valérian tells him that the planet below him is called Technorog and belongs to Earth. Argol laughs and says his people have just been away on a little trip. Valérian estimates their “little trip” has lasted 4,000 years. Algol explains that his people live for hundreds of thousands of years. Reaching the astroship, Valérian takes them to its medical unit where he manages to stabilise Garol's condition. Laureline recovers, much to the delight of the Goumon which has taken a shine to her. Valérian contacts the Governor of Technorog requesting permission to return to the planet. As the astroship flies over the surface of their planet, the Alflololians are dumbfounded by the activities of human settlers – the salt extraction plants on the ocean, the mines, the factories and the hydroponic plantations. They are even more dismayed when they discover that the humans have built their capital, Technorogville, on top of where they had their campsite. Landing, the guards that greet them demand that the Alflololians are put through sanitary control. Laureline goes with them while Valérian goes to the Governor's office. He explains to the Governor that Technorog's original inhabitants have returned and that, under Galaxity's laws, they have the right to return to the land that is theirs. The Governor wants to refer the matter to Technorog's council before making a decision. Suddenly, the door opens and Laureline arrives with the Alflololians. At the same time, alarms start going off all around the city – chaos has broken out as the automatic control systems have broken down. Laureline admits that the Alflololians had been having a bit of fun before they came to the Governor's office which they have come to claim as their own since it lies on the exact spot they lived on before they departed. Left with no choice, the Governor leaves them to it and Algol and his family begin celebrating their return. The party lasts for several days and, eventually, Valérian and Laureline, exhausted, fall asleep in the corridor outside. Waking up, the pair find the Alflololians have gone. Algol has left a message – the city doesn’t agree with them and they have set out for their traditional hunting grounds. The Governor arrives with the rest of the council. He orders Valérian and Laureline to lead an expedition to bring them back – at least, up to now, they knew where the Alflololians were and what they were doing. Now, they present a threat to industrial production. The Governor provides the best men and equipment but they prove no match for the harsh environment and soon, their equipment destroyed, the last of the able-bodied men are forced to turn back leaving Valérian and Laureline alone in the jungle. Making camp, they soon fall asleep but, suddenly, Laureline is grabbed by a huge tentacled beast and borne away into the jungle. Valérian gives chase and follows them out of the jungle to the shores of Magnet Ocean. Left with no choice, Valérian draws his gun and prepares to fire, hoping he won't hit Laureline. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, the Goumon appears and attacks the creature. Valérian drags Laureline out of the water as Argol and the rest of the family arrive but she has fallen sick – the creature is a Shalafut-Personality-Splitter. Suddenly, Logar stands over Laureline and cures her. Algol is delighted – his daughter has found her gift – he tells her she will henceforth be known as Logar, She-Who-Saves-From-Nasty-Beasts. He invites Valérian and Laureline to accompany them on their boat where his son, Lagor, will be taught how to kill his first Furutz, one of the vicious sea creatures that inhabits the ocean. On the boat, on the hunt, they close in on a herd of Furutz swimming near the salt extraction plants when suddenly a squadron of aircraft fly over them. Valérian's radio crackles into life and the Governor's voice orders them to withdraw from the area as it is restricted. Algol warns them to get clear – a panicked herd of Furutz can cause untold damage. The Governor ignores them and opens fire. The Furutz are enraged and attack the salt extraction plants causing spectacular damage. Somehow, in the middle of the devastation, Lagor manages to make the kill and the Alflololians drag the huge beast onto the shore. The Governor and his men land. The situation has gotten worse – a hundred Alflololian families have now arrived and are demanding to be allowed to return to their home. Laureline is horrified to discover that the Governor plans to put them on a reservation. Valérian is left in charge of administering the new arrangement. The reservation is on the edge of the desert near some factories on the worst hunting grounds on the planet. There is little game and all the food is contaminated by the pollution from the factories. Hunting becomes impossible when the sirocco winds blow from the desert. With the Alflololians on the brink of starvation, Valérian convinces the council to give them food-aid. But there is a price – the Alflololians must work for their food. This is the last straw for Laureline who leaves Valérian and, throwing her lot in with the Alflololians, heads off to the hydroponic plantations with them. Fed up, Valérian sets up camp in the desert. Some days later, he receives an urgent call from the Governor – a catastrophe has occurred at the hydroponic plantations. Arriving there, he discovers that all the foodstuffs have been transformed into pretty flowers. Algol informs him that his son has discovered his gift and will now be known as Lagor, He-Who-Has-The-Gift-Of-Making-Ugly-Things-Beautiful. Unfortunately, the flowers are not edible and the planet is now on the brink of starvation. The Governor has a new plan: the Alflololians will be split up – some to the mines, some to the factories, some to the power plants. Valérian refuses to comply with his new orders. The Governor threatens to inform Galaxity about Laureline's rebellious behaviour – if Valérian doesn’t co-operate, Laureline will be dismissed from the Spatio-Temporal Service and will finish her days in the mines. Reluctantly, Valérian complies. Several days later, Valérian begins a tour of inspection to see how the Alflololians are getting on. Arriving at a factory, he discovers that the spaceships they have been making have all been transformed into colourful sculptures. The situation is similar in the other factories – the atomic weapons factory can only make pocket-knives while at the biology centre, everyone has hay-fever. Moving on to the mines, he discovers that the drilling rigs are paralysed. Flying over the power plants he finds a huge fire raging. Reaching Technorogville, he finds it plunged in darkness due to a system-wide power cut. Entering the Governor's office, the council are in a state of despair – production has ground to a complete halt. Finally they agree that the Alflololians should be allowed to roam free on their own world. Heading to the reservation to pass on the good news, Valérian is surprised to discover the Alflololians leaving in their spaceships. The only ones left are Algol and his family, who cannot leave because their ship is too badly damaged. Laureline is with them – she explains that the Alflololians had had enough and have chosen to return to travelling. Valérian offers Algol a lift in his astroship and Laureline finally makes up with him. Leading the flotilla of Alflololian ships through the protective shield, they say their farewells to the Governor who warns them never to come back. The Alflololian ships go their separate ways. Valérian takes Algol and his family to Galaxity, promising them there will be plenty to eat and drink and their celebrations will be appreciated. The high ranking officials of Galaxity await them as ambassadors and prepare a reception for them.
3395442	/m/099b9_	Keepers	Gary A. Braunbeck		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The main character is a shy, lonely, middle-aged man named Gil Stewart. He lives a relatively clean, good, quiet life in Cedar Hill, Ohio, where he owns and runs an antique novelty and collectibles store and also helps to take care of his institutionalized nephew Carson (in a group home), who has Down's Syndrome. One evening, while returning home from work, he finds an elderly man on the side of the road wearing a bowler hat. The man's hat gets blown away, and as he runs after it, he gets hit by a car. While that is happening, Gil notices two black mastiffs that seemed to be chasing the man and later witnessing the accident. Gil tries to help him, but the man dies. What disturbed Gil were three things: *The man, an apparent stranger, knew Gil by name *Not only did the two mastiffs look like they knew what they were doing, but they also seemed satisfied at the old man's death. *The man-in-the-bowler-hat says the final words "The Keepers are coming" When he finally arrives home, he encounters an old, wounded and mangy dog lying in his front lawn, which subsequently crawls under his house. As he is deciding what to do with the dog (between taking it to a local shelter, the vet, or simply letting it die in peace where it is), he unexpectedly receives a package delivered by an obscure shipping company. To his surprise, the package was apparently sent from Beth, a woman he loved long ago but who mysteriously disappeared and was presumed dead. Gil soon receives a phone call from Carson's group home: Carson is missing. Gil now is bothered by the following mysteries: *Who sent that package? Was it from Beth? If so, where was she all these years? *Where did Carson go? *Where did that dying dog come from? *How and why did the dying man know Gil's name? *Why are those mastiffs roaming around town? Those questions are answered after going through a bizarre and slightly surreal experience. He is forced to remember many of his repressed experiences of his childhood and young adult years, which, in a convoluted way, are linked to the mysterious incidents involving the old man on the road, the mastiffs, Carson's disappearance, and the mysterious dying stray dog. The feel of the book is very dark and somber. The majority of the book is composed of flashbacks, with the climax occurring during the present day, when he met the old man and the strange dogs. Even though the novel borders on fantasy, real-life issues are dealt with, namely animal abuse, lost pets, aging, and loneliness. note: the names of Gil's immediate relatives are never provided *Gil Stewart - the protagonist of the story. Introduced as a mild mannered bachelor, which the reader later discovers he was also a shy, "nerdy" teen. Seems to have a special bond with animals, ever since he was a boy. *Beth - Gil's close friend and first love. Was Gil's first "girlfriend". Even after their relationship ended, they continued to be friends, and he never gave up his feelings for her. Along with her aunt Mabel, owned several dogs. Mysteriously disappears one night after a tearful and emotional conversation with Gil. *Gil's Father - a depressed, angry, and alcoholic World War II veteran. An avid movie buff. Dies in a work-related accident while Gil is still in his late teens. *Gil's Mother - Emotionally distant from Gil. An opera fan. Dies a couple of years after Gil's father passes away, in what Gil speculated was suicide. *Gil's Sister - was never very close to Gil until she became pregnant with Carson. Eventually dies of a latent heart condition, after which Gil becomes Carson's legal guardian. *Mabel - Beth's aunt. Works as a nurse at an assisted living facility. Raised Beth as her own child after Beth's mother relocates to London. Is described by Gil as "sad looking." *Marty "Whitey" Weis - a resident at Mabel's workplace. Uses a wheelchair due to diabetes complications. Develops a close friendship with Gil. His wit and mild cynicism adds a humorous touch to the gloomy feel of the novel. Misses his daughter, an aspiring actress based in Los Angeles who rarely calls him. *Cheryl - one of Gil's employees at his novelty store. Has a deep appreciation for her boss and is mystified by his loneliness. *The Bowlers - Led by an individual which Gil refers to as "The Magritte Man", a group of mysterious men in derby hats chasing Gil around town. *The Twin Mastiffs - roam throughout town and appear to stalk Gil, and are apparently owned by "The Bowlers". *Long-Lost - a bizarre-looking character from one of Carson's comic books. What Gil finds disturbing is that Carson claims he can speak to him.
3396079	/m/099chw	The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.	Robert Coover		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 J. Henry Waugh is an accountant, albeit an unhappy one. However, each night after he comes home from work, Henry immerses himself in a world of his choosing: a baseball league in which every action is ruled by the dice. The novel opens with the excitement of a perfect game in progress. Henry, as owner of every team in the league, is flush with pride in the young rookie, who is pitching this rarest of rare games: Damon Rutherford, "son" of one of the league's all-time greats. When the young hurler completes the miracle game, Henry's life lights up. Giddy with happiness, Henry pushes himself and his league to the limits as he plays game after game so that he can see the young boy pitch again. As fate would have it, the rookie Rutherford is killed by a bean-ball, a rare play from "the Extraordinary Occurrences Chart" in the game that Henry has invented and has used to see fifty-six "seasons" to conclusion. That Henry is also fifty-six marks a turning point in Henry's life. The "death" of the young pitcher on the table-top affects the real-life Henry in ways unimaginable. As Henry's personal life spirals out of control, he finally arrives at the solution that will save his league, his creation, and, ultimately, his sanity.
3399022	/m/099j78	The Shrouded Planet	Randall Garrett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The original three stories are bracketed by narrative which lays the foundations for them and details the passage of time between them. Elder Grandfather Kinis peCharnok Yorgen finds himself the subject of alien abduction. Strange beings calling themselves Earthmen conduct him to a place above the clouds. They tell him that they have come from the Great Light to improve Nidor. Kinis peCharnok must commence building a new School of Divine Law, where the Earthmen will teach Nidorians the Law and the Scripture, not to mention science and engineering. Only the best and brightest, the fittest and most favored, will be accepted as students. 48 years, 3 Cycles of Nidor, pass. Kiv peGanz Brajjyd enrols at the school, on his way to the priesthood. He marries the irreverent Narla geFulda Sesom. He studies biology, especially the insect pest known as the hugl. Then a new hugl begins appearing, stripping the crops, stripping even dead animals of their flesh. The old Way of dealing with hugl, spreading Edris powder, does not work on these insects. Kiv has the answer - he knows that the hugl breed in ponds. They leave the water to gather food for the next breeding cycle, but out of the water their hard shells resist Edris powder. In water the larvae are vulnerable. Kiv tries to persuade the authorities, who are also the priesthood, to dictate a new way of using Edris, but he is up against millennia of tradition. The old Way indicates that more Edris must be used, but if it does not work there will be none to protect crops that the new hugl have not yet reached. In the end more Edris only poisons the crops. Desperate for a solution, and with the encouragement of the Earthman known as Jones, Kiv looks for support in Scripture, and finds it. Strike at the root, not at the branch. The larvae are the root. Having once failed to persuade a single Elder, Kiv bursts in on the entire High Council with his words. The ploy works, the new Way wipes out the hugl. But tradition has been violated. There is little or no need for Edris powder, so those who made a livelihood from it are impoverished. Kiv is a man to be reckoned with, and when he graduates his path to the Council seems clear. So why does he feel something is wrong ? Kiv and Narla's daughter, Sindi geKiv Brajjyd, has an odd independent streak. She does not show proper deference to her elders. She too enrols at the School, where she meets Rahn peDorvis Brajjyd. She falls in love with him, even though marriage within a clan goes against tradition and the Way of the Ancestors. Rahn's family lost its livelihood thanks to Kiv. Kiv, now high in the priesthood, tries to arrange a marriage with a member of the Yorgen clan. He is uneducated, fond of wild living, and not particularly enthusiastic about Sindi. She realizes that he is interested in someone else, a Yorgen. This relative may in fact be carrying his child, which would get them both stoned to death in an earlier time. Depressed, Rahn flees the School, pursued by Sindi. High in the mountains, in the night rains, she finds his transport, a deest, but no sign of Rahn. Then she sees him, a captive of Earthmen, on a patch of strangely flat ground with odd buildings on it. Watching from concealment she sees the Earthman Jones, who supposedly had gone to the Great Light, never to return, take Rahn inside a building. Rahn then appears, being carried through the air by the Earthmen, who leave him by his deest. Sindi tends to Rahn, finding that he remembers nothing of his encounter with the Earthmen. They return to the School, to find that Jones' replacement, Smith has persuaded the Elders to allow the Yorgens to marry, because of the girl's condition, clearing the way for Sindi and Rahn to marry as well. Sindi resolves to keep her secrets, until it is the right time. Norvis peRahn Brajjyd grows up and enrols in the School, as his parents and grandparents did before him. Advised by the Earthman Smith he finds a growth hormone that doubles the yield of the staple crop, the peych-bean. Suddenly he finds himself expelled, the credit for the hormone going to a blockhead, Dran peNiblo Sesom, apparently with the connivance of Smith. Cast out by his grandfather Kiv, with no source of income, unable to speak his own name, he signs on as a sailor using the name Norvis peKrin Dmorno. His natural abilities mean that he quickly becomes indispensable, being promoted to first mate under the Captain Del peFenn Vyless, with the promise of his own ship, if he re-enlists. Del peFenn is even more irreligious than most sailors. His father used to make a lot of money from Edris powder shipments, before the Elder Kiv peGanz Brajjyd eliminated the need for it. All too aware of what Del peFenn would think of Kiv's grandson, Norvis declines. He goes ashore to find that some of the Elders have been using his hormone to favor their own farms at the expense of others. He organizes a meeting, under his real name, to address impoverished farmers. However, in attacking the Elders he is accused of blasphemy and stoned, barely escaping with his life by swimming a lake. His assailants assume he has drowned. Norvis abandons his old identity as too dangerous. Returning to Del peFenn he formulates a plan. He will make hormone more cheaply than the Elders can and sell it to the farmers. The plan backfires when a glut of peych starts an economic depression. In the ensuing troubles, Del's ship is burned and some of his men are killed. The hapless Dran peNiblo Sesom, who had grown rich making and selling the hormone under the protection of the Elders, is lynched by a mob. Norvis is not finished. He and Del now take on the Elders to stop the use of the hormone and persuade farmers to plough the excess crop into the ground, as fertilizer. To do this they form the Merchant's Party, the first political party on Nidor. Through agitation, and occasional strongarm tactics, they force the Elders to follow their plan, ignoring tradition. At the end Norvis is the Secretary of the new Party. Del is its charismatic, anti-priesthood leader. Nidorians who have suffered in the troubles flock to them. They have become a new authority on Nidor. Norvis sees a new dawn, and a way to get rid of the Earthmen and all their works. Starting with Smith... The saga continues in The Dawning Light.
3400450	/m/099l2t	The Spoils of Poynton	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Widow Adela Gereth tells the sensitive and tasteful Fleda Vetch that she's afraid her son Owen will marry the coarse Mona Brigstock. Owen soon becomes engaged to Mona and wants to take over Poynton, the family home filled with Mrs. Gereth's carefully collected furniture and other art objects. He would like Fleda to help get his mother to leave the house with a minimum of fuss. Mrs. Gereth moves to Dicks, the smaller family house. Fleda visits the house and is unhappy that Mrs. Gereth has furnished it with the best pieces from Poynton. Owen says that Mona is angry with the "theft" of the valuable heirlooms. Meanwhile, Owen is becoming more attracted to Fleda instead of the crude Mona and eventually declares his love for her. Fleda insists that he honor his engagement to Mona unless she breaks it off. Mrs. Gereth finally returns the fine furniture to Poynton. After a few days Owen and Mona are reported to be married, and they go abroad. Fleda gets a letter from Owen asking her to select any one piece from Poynton as hers to keep. Fleda goes to Poynton but finds it completely consumed by fire.
3401254	/m/099m5m	The Last Light of the Sun	Guy Gavriel Kay	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Bern Thorkellson, a young Erling man living on Rabady Island has stolen a horse belonging to the island's governor, who has died. Attempting to find a way to flee the island, Bern seeks the assistance of the local Volur seer, who offers to make him invisible if he has sex with her. The seer's trickery is revealed by a young acolyte who assists Bern to escape from Rabady. Elsewhere, in Cyngael, a Jaddite priest named Ceinon discovers Alun ap Owyn and his older brother Dai, two Princes of Cadyr, about to carry out a cattle raid at Brynnfell, the house of Brynn ap Hywll, a renowned fighter and leader of another Cyngael province. The princes are persuaded by Ceinon to forget the raid and to accompany him to Brynn's house, where Dai ap Owyn becomes strongly attracted to Brynn's daughter Rhiannon who in turn is enamoured of Alun. In an attack by Erling raiders, Dai is killed and his soul is taken by a fairy to the fairy queen, and even wtinessed by Alun who begins a relationship with one of the faeries. Among the Erlings who participated in the attack is Bern's father, Thorkell Einarsson, who alone is spared among the Erling captives, and becomes a retainer in Brynn's household. Bern Thorkellson himself travels to Jormsvik, a fortress for elite Erling mercenaries with some parallels to the Viking Jomsvikings of Jomsborg, with the intent of seeking admittance to the ranks of the mercenaries, which is traditionally done by way of defeating another Erling from the fortress in single combat. On his arrival at Jormsvik Bern narrowly escapes being killed even before he can issue his challenge, but is hidden by a prostitute, Thira, who lives in the settlement outside the walls of the fortress. Defeating a Jormsvik captain, Bern is accepted as a member of the mercenaries and joins a raiding part heading from Vinmark to Anglcyn under the patronage of Ivarr Ragnarsson. Ivarr's famed grandfather was killed by Brynn ap Hywll and is hoping to avenge his grandfather's death and he persuades the Jormsvik Erlings to participate in the venture by falsely assuring them that Anglcyn's defences remain vulnerable. Anglcyn is ruled by Aeldred, who in his youth saved the kingdom from Erling conquest. Equally interested in the broader aspects of nation-building, Aeldred has begun to collect manuscripts and foster scholarship. One of the scholars he wishes to attract to his court is Ceinon, who is unwilling to give up his role as leader of the Jaddite faith among the Cyngael. Although he is a great hero to his people and endeavours to be a good Jaddite, Aeldred suffers from periodic debilitating fevers and spiritual confusion as he had encounters with the half-world of faeries in his youth, and cannot reconcile his knowledge of the faerie-world with the tenets of his acknowledged religion. Aeldred and his wife have four children: Aldred's heir, Aethelbert; two daughters Judit and Kendra; and a younger son, Gareth. The Erlings attack Anglcyn, killing one of Aeldred's lifelong friends, but are defeated by Aeldred's fyrd, or army. Bern and Thorkell have a brief reunion, but Bern rejoins the Erlings who set sail for the land of the Cyngael, to attack Brynfell, kill Brynn ap Hwyll and regain the sword of Ivarr Ragnarsson's grandfather, although Ivarr himself is killed. Alun determines to warn Brynn and his family, deciding to seek a way through the enormous spirit wood that separates the Anglcyn settlements from the lands of the Cyngael in the west. The forest is a place of great dread for Cyngael, Anglcyn and Erling alike. On this journey Alun is joined by Thorkell, and then by Aethelbert. The ancient god creature that dwells in the forest suffers the three men to pass through after Thorkell pledges that they will kill nothing on their journey. In the wood Alun meets the faerie he first met the night of his brother Dai's death and persuades her to travel to Brynfell to warn Brynn of the approaching Erlings. It is decided to determine the conflict between the Erlings and the Cyngael by a contest of single combat. Thorkell who offers himself as the champion of the Cyngael, is slain; but while Brynn suspects Thorkell of having sacrificed himself he honours the wager and allows the Erlings to depart. After the combat Alun uses the sword of Ivarr's grandfather to kill the souls of mortals that had been taken as the faerie-queen's lovers and later discarded, including the soul of his own brother Dai. With the discovery of the psychic link between himself and Kendra, Alun's own relationship with the faerie is ended.
3401577	/m/099mmg	Zotz!	Walter Karig		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ancient Eastern languages professor Jonathan Jones (Tom Poston) finds a magic amulet. Via the amulet, Jones obtains powers to cause pain or slow movement, and even kill. He immediately suffers the consequences of his discovery: Jones realizes that when he points at another living creature, it causes a great pain (this is a metaphor of the age of nuclear weapons, as the novel was written two years after atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). In the movie, Jones tries to warn the Department of Defense and get rid of the amulet, but is taken for a madman. Then the Soviet Union gets interested and the adventures begin. The film begins with the Columbia Pictures logo talking to William Castle and ends with the logo saying, "Zotz all," a play on the words "That's all."
3402135	/m/099nhf	Arabella	Georgette Heyer		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Arabella, the beautiful daughter of a country vicar, sets out to London to have a season and make an advantageous marriage. On her way there, her carriage has an accident and she has to stop over at the hunting box of Robert Beaumaris, the Nonpareil of the town and one of the wealthiest men in England. Mr Beaumaris suspects the 'accident' to be a ruse on the part of someone chasing him for his fortune. Overhearing him make a remark to this effect, Arabella impulsively pretends to be an heiress. Mr. Beaumaris, knowing this to be untrue is amused by her daring to put him in his place, and decides to encourage his friend's belief in this falsehood. He is bored by Society and views the town cynically. He is also amused by the fact that society will follow whomever leads, irrespective of the wisdom of the person's behavior. Arabella requests that Mr Beaumaris and his friend Lord Fleetwood not reveal her "fortune". She continues on her journey to London to stay with her godmother, Lady Bridlington, blithely believing that nothing will come of this interlude. However, Lord Fleetwood is not very discreet, and the town soon believes Arabella to be an heiress. To amuse himself, Mr Beaumaris decides to make Arabella the rage of the town by flirting with her and driving her out in his carriage. Arabella is aware that his intentions are not serious, but plays along because to be admired by him makes her a social success. Arabella feels that she cannot make a good match when all the town falsely believe her to be wealthy and knowing that Mr Beaumaris can have no designs on her supposed fortune and is only amusing himself with her, she is most comfortable in his company. She enchants him with her unusual behaviour (which includes foisting a climbing boy and a mongrel on him) and the fact that she does not appear to fancy him. Mr Beaumaris eventually falls in love with Arabella and proposes. Arabella, not knowing him to be aware of her deception from the start, tearfully refuses, realising that she is indeed in love with him, but cannot reveal her deception without risking his love. Meanwhile, Arabella's brother Bertram has come to town on 100 pounds that he won. The wealthy friends he makes soon lead him into debt and Arabella decides she must accept Mr Beaumaris's proposal in order to pay off Bertram's debts. Mr Beaumaris guesses the cause of her sudden reversal and is amused, knowing her to be in love with him, despite the appearance of the situation. She insists they elope together since she's desperate and he agrees, but instead takes her to visit his grandmother's house. Once they arrive, she reveals that she is not a wealthy woman, he reveals that he knew all along and that he went to visit her family. All is resolved by the fact that his fortune is so massive, the lack of hers will never be noticed, and the lack of fortune for her brothers and sisters will be explained away by an eccentric uncle who left the money to Arabella.
3402171	/m/099nkk	The Grand Sophy	Georgette Heyer	1950	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 For the past several years Sophia Stanton-Lacy (known as Sophy to everyone) has lived away from England, following her diplomat father Sir Horace around Europe while the Napoleonic Wars raged on. Now that the Battle of Waterloo is over and Napoleon has once again been exiled, her father receives a temporary post in South America. Instead of taking his daughter along, he asks his sister Lady Ombersley to watch over his "little Sophy" and help find her a husband. However, "little Sophy" is nothing like anyone expected. 5'9" in her stockings, she is outgoing, chic, and quite independent, taking the town by storm with her unconventional manner. Though most of her cousins take to her on sight, her autocratic cousin Charles Rivenhall, forced by his father's debt to shoulder the family finances, resents the disruption of what has become, in all but name, his household by his lively and confident cousin. With Charles encouraged in domestic tyranny by his spiteful fiancee, Miss Eugenia Wraxton, Sophy and Charles begin a battle of wills. Soon after her arrival, Sophy realizes that all is not well in the Rivenhall household and proceeds to solve the various problems of the family with her trademark flair, saving her cousin Hubert from a moneylender, and arranging through an involved and hilarious scheme her cousin Cecilia's extraction from her infatuation with (and later engagement to) a poet and marriage to the eligible Lord Charlbury, the man favored by her brother and parents and ultimately, the man she discovers that she, Cecilia, loves. Slowly, much to the consternation of them both, Sophy and Charles find themselves falling in love, with Sophy's devilry lightening his dictatorial tendencies. In the end, at the successful conclusion of her incredibly audacious scheme to unite Cecilia and Charlbury and free Rivenhall from his obligations to his fiancee, Rivenhall proposes, with Sophy accepting.
3402603	/m/099p2g	The Foundling	Nette Hilton	1948	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The Duke of Sale is tired of being the Duke of Sale. He just wants to be a nobody from "Nowhere in Particular". He lives with his uncle, Lord Lionel. Lord Lionel and his team of servants baby the Duke and treat him like a child, when in reality he is almost twenty-five years old. The Duke does not want to be forced into marriage or be told what to do. He sets out on a wild adventure to find out who he really is. The Duke is encouraged by his cousin Gideon to set out on the adventure and to fire his posse of servants. A bit later, he is out riding heading to the house of his future wife Harriet, when he sees a young boy who is hurt on the side of the road. Tom becomes a friend and nusiance to the Duke for the rest of the novel. He soon finds out his other cousin Matthew is in a bit of a fix. Matthew supposedly sent letters to a very beautiful foundling named Belinda, and promised to marry her. When he decided not to marry her after all, her caretaker got angry and threatened Matthew. The Duke pretends to be Matthew and goes to visit this caretaker. He gets kidnapped and finds himself in a major jam. Next thing he knows, the Duke is riding around with Tom and Belinda trying to figure out how to get them safely home and out of trouble. He also has his own problems to worry about, including his fight with Lord Lionel and his impending marriage with Lady Harriet. In the end, the Duke accepts his marriage to Harriet, discovering that he truly does love her. Belinda, who is the naive foundling who only cares about a diamond ring and purple dress, also finds her true love. The Dukes tale resolves very happily.
3402653	/m/099p4w	Sprig Muslin	Georgette Heyer	1956	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sir Gareth is a noted Corinthian and has been a confirmed bachelor ever since his betrothed died prematurely, seven years ago. He decides for practical reasons to marry an old friend, Hester, who is unfashionable and plain, not to mention "on the shelf" at the age of 29. However, he soon meets a young, run-away girl and determines to resolve her problems satisfactorily. Unfortunately, this particular runaway is possessed of an extremely lively imagination, and gets them both into a little more trouble than he had bargained for. The piece is reminiscent of Charity Girl, also about a wiser and more experienced man helping a young girl to find her feet while avoiding becoming romantically entangled with her.
3402689	/m/099p68	Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle	Georgette Heyer	1957	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Sylvester, the wealthy Duke of Salford, is considering marriage. After discussing his prospects with his beloved ailing mother, who thinks he is too arrogant towards women, he travels to London to discuss the matter with his godmother, Lady Ingham, who tells him of her granddaughter, Phoebe, whose late mother was a close friend of the dowager Duchess of Salford. He departs for a hunt in the countryside and meets Phoebe's father. Impressed by the man's hunting, Sylvester consents to being his guest but is disgusted to find that he is the only person that has been invited to stay and therefore feels his hand is being forced. As the visit progresses he regrets his visit and considers Phoebe to be insipid and talentless. Phoebe's step-mother is a bully and tactlessly tells Phoebe that Sylvester has come to make her an offer of marriage. Terrified of being made to marry Sylvester and getting no sympathy from her father, Phoebe calls upon a childhood friend, Tom Orde, to help her run away to live with her grandmother, Lady Ingham, in London. Phoebe is unaware that Lady Ingham is the person who suggested Sylvester marry her. Tom has left a note for his mother who rushes round to Phoebe's parents with the news of their flight which is mistakenly taken for an elopement. Sylvester is very happy to have the excuse to return to London and comes across their carriage which has had an accident and in which Tom has broken his leg. Sylvester, decides to help them. They book in to the nearest inn, where he realizes that Phoebe is extremely smart and capable, though very impertinent. He is very angry when he learns why Phoebe has run away but decides to take her to her grandmother to punish Lady Ingham (whom he presumes will not want Phoebe living with her) for having sent him to Phoebe's family in the first place. Sylvester stays with Tom at the inn while he is recovering then visits Phoebe in London with the intention of being charming to her to make her sorry for slighting him. Phoebe meets Lady Ianthe, the silly widow of Sylvester's twin brother, who is convinced that Sylvester is evil because he is executing his brother's will exactly: her young son, Edmund, must live with Sylvester at the family home of Chance. Phoebe is struck by the parallels between the real Sylvester and the arrogant parody of him in a book which she has written and which is about to be published. She attempts to change her manuscript, but her publishers say that it is too late to do so. When her novel The Lost Heir is published, it fascinates London because of the perfect satirization of the members of high society who try to find the identity of author. Lady Ianthe, Sylvester's sister-in-law, declares that the author must know that Sylvester is so evil and takes the fairy-tale novel seriously. Phoebe, in protesting this absurdity, accidentally lets slip that she is the author. Naturally, Lady Ianthe cannot keep her peace, and soon all London society is agog. Sylvester, having decided to scotch the rumour, is so hurt by Phoebe's portrayal of him that he loses the command of feelings and insults Phoebe in public which causes a scandal and confirms Phoebe as the author. Lady Ingham decides to take Phoebe away to France with Tom Orde as their escort. Unfortunately, Lady Ianthe and her new husband, foppish Sir Nugent Fotherby, are going to France on their honeymoon with Edmund, her son, from the same port. Lady Ianthe has got the idea of taking Edmund away to France from a plot in Phoebe's novel. Phoebe tries to intervene and boards the schooner with Tom where they are 'kidnapped' by Fotherby, who orders the skipper to set sail. Edmund is sea-sick and Lady Ianthe is ill so Phoebe and Tom take over the care of the small child. Phoebe writes to Lady Ingham and Sylvester from France, but Sylvester catches up with them at an inn near Paris before he receives the letter. At first he is overjoyed to see Phoebe but then blames her for helping Lady Ianthe to kidnap Edmund but Sylvester needs Phoebe to look after Edmund on the journey back to England. Sylvester complains of all the scrapes which Phoebe has embroiled him in and, in turn, Phoebe accuses Sylvester of ruining her reputation beyond salvation. Sylvester, having realise that he loves Phoebe clumsily proposes marriage but Phoebe is outraged by the perceived sarcasm. Sylvester runs to his mother for help and she realises that he has truly fallen in love. She arranges to meet Phoebe to explain that Sylvester's arrogance has arisen from the grief he suffered after the loss of his twin brother and how much he loves Phoebe. Sylvester is summoned and again declares himself upon which Phoebe is only too happy to accept his proposal.
3402699	/m/099p7n	The Silent Cry	Kenzaburō Ōe			 The novel tells the story of two brothers in the early 1960s: the narrator Mitsusaburo (one-eyed, a married English professor in Tokyo) and his younger brother Takashi, who has just returned from the US. Mitsusaburo and his wife, Natsumi, have been through a series of crises. They have left their physically and mentally handicapped baby in an institution, while Mitsusaburo's friend has committed suicide (painting his head crimson, inserting a cucumber in his anus and hanging himself). Natsumi has become an alcoholic. Mitsusaburo leaves his job and they all travel to the brothers' home village, set in a hollow in the forest on Shikoku. The brothers' family had been one of the leading families in the village. Takashi is obsessed with the memory of their great-grandfather's younger brother, who had led a peasant revolt in 1860. Mitsusaburo remembers the affair differently, believing that the leader of the rebellion had betrayed his followers. They similarly disagree over the death of their older brother, S, who had been killed in a raid on the Korean settlement near the village. Takashi revels in his warrior's death, while Mitsusaburo recalls him as volunteering to be killed in retaliation for the death of a Korean in an earlier raid. Their sister, also mentally retarded, had committed suicide while living with Takashi. Takashi has agreed to sell the family's kura-yashiki &mdash; a traditional residence-storehouse &mdash; to 'the Emperor', a Korean originally brought to the village as a slave-worker but who has now gained a position of economic dominance, turning the village's other kura-yashiki into a supermarket which has put the smaller shops out of business. Secretly, he has also agreed to sell the Emperor all the family's land. Takashi begins to organise the youths of the village into a group, beginning with football training. When Mitsusaburo discovers Takashi's deception, he isolates himself from the others, but his wife sides with Takashi. Mitsusaburo goes to live in the kura-yashiki, while Takashi moves his group into the family's main building. Takashi uses his group to begin an uprising against the Emperor, looting the supermarket and distributing the goods among the people. Takashi also begins a sexual relationship with Natsumi, and sends one of his followers to tell Mitsusaburo. The people eventually become disenchanted, however; eventually a girl is killed. Takashi claims that he tried to rape her and then murdered her. He is abandoned by his group and waits for the villagers to come and lynch or arrest him. Mitsusaburo, however, does not believe his story and says that Takashi is using the girl's accidental death as a way to engineer his own violent death. Takashi admits to Mitsusaburo that their sister killed herself after he ended an incestuous relationship with her. After Mitsusaburo scorns Takashi's belief that he will be killed, Takashi shoots himself, writing as a final statement, 'I told the truth'. The Emperor comes and begins demolishing the kura-yashiki. A secret basement is discovered in which the brother of the great-grandfather had spent the rest of his life hiding after the failure of his rebellion. Mitsusaburo and Natsumi decide to try to live together again, along with their handicapped baby and Takashi's unborn child, which Natsumi is carrying. Mitsusaburo decides against a return to his old job, instead taking up an offer to work as a translator with a wildlife expedition to Africa.
3402723	/m/099p9s	Bath Tangle	Georgette Heyer		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 After the death of the Earl of Spenborough all are shocked when they discover that the late Earl has appointed Ivo Barrasford, Marquis of Rotherham, and formerly engaged to Lady Serena Carlow to be Serena's guardian. Though Lady Serena may rage against it, there is no way out and therefore Serena moves to Bath with her stepmother where she meets up with her old love from six years past. They rekindle their romance and become engaged. Rotherham, when he hears of the engagement, proposes to a girl who is only after his title. When he sees his ward and her chosen, he realizes that they had all made a mistake and tries to make his betrothed cry off. However, when he had thought he had succeeded, Serena stepped in and ruined all his plans. A row between guardian and ward ensued with Rotherham storming off to make sure that his engagement over. Eventually he reveals to Serena that he loves her and she admits that she loves him too. Her betrothed enters just as she is in Rotherham's arms, but is not bothered as he has by now fallen in love with Serena's stepmother. The story ends happily with everyone ending up with people suited to them.
3403127	/m/099pt6	The Masqueraders	Georgette Heyer	1928	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In order to escape exposure as former Jacobites, Robin and his sister have exchanged clothes, and Prudence appears to be a tall youth by the name of Peter Merriot escorting his younger, beautiful sister Kate. This scheme was conceived by their father, whom they call "The Old Gentleman." On their way to London, Prudence and Robin encounter Gregory Markham kidnapping a beautiful heiress named Letitia, who intrigues Robin. Prudence knocks out Markham with her sword hilt, and a friend of Letitia's father, Sir Anthony Fanshawe, arrives on scene to discover that the elopement has already been frustrated. Prudence finds herself oddly drawn to Sir Anthony, whom her brother dubs “the Mountain” owing to his massive frame. She slowly realizes that Sir Anthony is far more observant and quick witted than his exterior would suggest. "Peter" and "Kate" take London's society by storm – Robin becomes the celebrated beauty of town and Prudence, under the patronage of Sir Anthony, is inducted into the high circles of the London Gentlemen. The pair is invited to a masked ball, and while “Kate” lies ill at home, Robin disguises himself and attends the ball, introducing himself to Letitia as “The Unknown” in order to woo her. Promising to return in her hour of need, he vanishes. The Old Gentleman, Prudence and Robin’s father, appears on the London scene as the long lost Viscount Barham and proceeds to rapidly ingratiate himself into high society, despite the fact that his claim is, as yet, unproved. Overhearing Prudence disparage his manners, the much frustrated Mr. Rensley, the current Lord Barham who stands to be ousted from his title by the Old Gentleman’s claim, challenges her to a duel. This is foiled by Sir Anthony who manages to wound Mr Rensley before the duel takes place. Startled by his unaccountable intervention, Prudence begins to wonder if Sir Anthony suspects her masquerade. Prudence is invited to dine with Sir Anthony alone, and it is revealed that, despite his air of oblivion, the observant Sir Anthony has guessed that "Peter" is actually a woman. Having fallen in love with her, he asks her to marry him. Prudence refuses to marry him until her father’s claim is proved, therein elevating her to a status worthy of his hand. Sir Anthony agrees to wait but informs Robin, the Old Gentleman and Prudence that, whatever the outcome, he will carry her off and marry her when that time comes. Markham, meanwhile, has obtained a document that could send the Old Gentleman to the gallows by proving he is a Jacobite. In an attempt to blackmail him, Markham exchanges the document for a letter that could expose Letitia's father as a traitor. He threatens Letitia, who is an heiress, with the letter and induces her to run away with him again. This event, despite Markham’s belief, was orchestrated by the subtlety of the Old Gentleman, who is known for his great intelligence and cunning. The Old Gentleman dispatches Robin, disguised as a highwayman, to kill Markham and thwart the elopement, thereby disposing of the nuisance Markham and inspiring Letitia to fall deeper in love with her Unknown rescuer. Robin tells Letitia that the next time she sees him, he will claim her as his bride. When questioned by the authorities, Letitia gives a false description of the "highwayman" in order to protect her love. Unfortunately, she unwittingly provides an exact description of Peter Merriot. Prudence is arrested by officers of the law, and reflects that any deviation from the exact plans of the Old Gentleman, such as her presence on the night of the elopement, results in disaster. Sir Anthony, informed of her arrest, rescues her from the officers of the law and they gallop cross-country to the residence of Sir Anthony’s sister. There, “Peter” dons a gown and becomes the dazzling Miss Prudence Tremaine of Barham. Having spent so long alone in his company following the escape, Prudence must now marry Sir Anthony and, happily, she consents to wed the man she loves. Following “Peter’s” disappearance, suspicion is cast over both the Marriots, and so "Kate" flees to France until the battle over his father's inheritance is resolved. The Old Gentleman proves conclusively that he is Tremaine of Barham and Robin returns from France, causing a sensation as Mr. Robin Tremaine, heir to the Viscounty of Barham. Calling on Letitia’s father, the future Viscount is readily accepted as a future son-in-law. Robin reveals himself to Letitia as the Unknown of her dreams, and she consents immediately to be his bride. Watching Robin, Letitia, Prudence and Sir Anthony together on his newly acquired estates, the Old Gentleman reflects that he had exactly planned everything to this end, and remarks, quite truthfully, that he is a Great Man.
3403142	/m/099ptx	Beauvallet	Georgette Heyer	1929	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05nd8cc": "Elizabethan romance", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The year is 1586 and 35-year-old Sir Nicholas Beauvallet (great great great grandson of Simon Beauvallet – Simon the Coldheart (1925)) is one of the most infamous pirates of the Elizabethan era. With the blessing of the Queen, Beauvallet sails the seas with the intention of plundering any Spanish ships that come his way. It is while thus occupied that he meets and falls in love with Doña Dominica de Rada y Sylva. He returns Doña Dominica and her father to Spain and vows that he will come back to claim her with total disregard of the danger that the Spanish Inquisition poses to a Protestant in a Catholic land.
3403157	/m/099pvy	Powder and Patch	Georgette Heyer	1930	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Philip Jettan, a handsome and sturdy but tongue-tied youth, is rejected by his true love because he is not foppish enough. He resolves to improve himself and travels to Paris, where he becomes a sensation. Once he returns, however, Cleone realizes she wants the old Philip in place of the "painted puppy" she has received.
3403210	/m/099px_	The Dante Club	Matthew Pearl		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Dante Club begins with the murder of fictional Chief Justice Judge Healey, who had avoided taking a position to stop or support the escaped slaves of the South. Found by his chambermaid near a white flag atop a short wooden staff, Healey had been hit in the head and then left in his garden to be eaten alive by strategically placed maggots and stung by hornets. Holmes, who examines the body for the police, recognizes the correlation between the murder and the punishments seen in Dante's Inferno. Then Reverend Talbot, who was paid by the Harvard Corporation to write against Dante, was found dead in an underground cemetery, buried up to his waist upside down, his feet burnt and buried over money that he had accepted as a bribe. Members of the Dante Club, a group of poets translating The Divine Comedy from Italian into English, notice the parallels between the murders and the punishments detailed in Dante's Inferno. The club, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and James Russell Lowell, sets out to solve the murders, fearing that the truth will ruin Dante's burgeoning reputation in America, thus making their translation a failure, as well as the obvious problem that they would be virtually the only suspects if they reported this information to the police. Then, Phineas Jennison, both a wealthy contributor to the Harvard Corporation and friend to the translators (a "schismatic"), is sliced open exactly down the middle&mdash;all killed in extreme fashion and undeniable resemblance to the punishments of people in Dante's Inferno. Eventually, the murderer is discovered to be a former Civil War Soldier Dan Teal, a man who worked at Ticknor and Fields. Driven partly mad by the trauma of his war experiences, Teal hears Dante Club member George Washington Greene giving sermons on Dante to other soldiers, and becomes convinced that Dante alone understood the need for perfect justice in the world. With protecting Dante as his sole motivation, Teal takes it upon himself to release Hell's punishments as indicated by Dante, in order to purify the city. Teal finds each of his victims when learning of their involvement in the stopping of the translations, which become their respective sins. The club eventually tries to capture him, with the aid of Boston's first African-American policeman Nicholas Rey, the only other person who saw the connection, while attempting to punish Harvard Treasurer Dr. Manning and Pliny Mead ("the traitors"). Mead was a student of the Dante course who helped betray his teacher by cooperating with Manning. He later fled when the club attempted to punish him for his involvement in stopping the translation of the Inferno. They later encounter him as he tries to round up the translators, to punish them for not embracing his "work." Dr. Manning&mdash;saved by Longfellow, Holmes, Rey, Lowell, and Fields&mdash;realizes the situation as he recovered from his attempted punishment of being buried naked in ice. He sees Teal on the street with a gun to Longfellow, and Manning ends the murderer's life, thus returning the city to normal.
3404174	/m/099qxy	Skinny Legs and All	Tom Robbins		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The opening scene of Skinny Legs finds newlyweds, Ellen Cherry Charles and Randolph "Boomer" Petway III, driving cross-country in an Airstream that has been welded into the shape of a giant turkey by Cherry's betrothed. During her journey to seek freedom as an artist, Cherry loses precious objects and observes Boomer attain greater artistic recognition. Through a metaphorical belly dancer, Skinny Legs and All confronts the veils of society; and the pain, pleasure and freedom derived as they are lifted. Irony, opposites and parallels, in relationships, art, artists, sex, politics and religion expose the danger of deeper issues in humanity; regarding outmoded gender and cultural roles and rituals, insecurity, guilt, indulgence, gluttony, occultism, war, violence, hypocrisy, greed, and psychosis. The reader is introduced to an array of off-beat and whimsical characters, including the estranged couple of artist/waitress Ellen Cherry and welder/accidental artist Randolph "Boomer" Petway; Spike Cohen and Roland Abu Hadee (a Jew and an Arab who co-own a Middle-Eastern restaurant across from the UN building in New York); fundamentalist preacher Buddy Winkler; a doe-eyed belly dancer named Salome; Detective Jackie Shaftoe; Raoul Ritz, the libidinous doorman turned rock star; pretentious art gallery owner Ultima Sommerville; a mysterious performance artist known as Turn Around Norman; and Verlin and Patsy Charles, Ellen Cherry's parents. A host of inanimate objects (Can o' Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick and Conch Shell) also play a key role in the novel, and even biblical "harlot" Jezebel and Dan Quayle make cameo appearances.
3406082	/m/099v4q	Tintorettor Jishu	Satyajit Ray		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 A famous painting by the Italian maestro Tintoretto is gifted to the Niyogi family by the aristocratic Italian Cassini family. However, not everyone is aware of the value of the painting. One of the family members(disguised) steals it, and international buyers are interested in it. Feluda chases the criminals all the way to Hong Kong. There was a surprise waiting for him there. Eventually, Feluda (with the help of a relative stranger,who turns out to be a Niyogi family member) succeeds in solving the mystery. The native princes play an interesting part in the history of British India. Though under the protection of the British Raj, they had a certain amount of power within their domain. Apart from patronizing cricket in India, many of them were involved in promoting social and cultural activities in India. In 'Tintorettor Jishu' we meet the (fictional) ex-Maharaja of Bhagwanagarh, Mr. Bhudev Singh. Another ex Maharaja Suraj Singh appears in 'Golapi Mukta Rahashya'. The young prince of Rupnaryangarh plays an important role in 'Eber Kando Kedarnathe'. However, the maharajas and the princes are more prominent in the 'Tarini Khuro' series, another creation of Satyajit Ray.
3408983	/m/099_19	In Dreams Begin Responsibilities	Delmore Schwartz			 The story tells of an unnamed young man who has a dream that he is in an old-fashioned movie theater in 1909. As he sits down to watch the film, he starts to realize that it is a motion picture documenting his parents' courtship. The black-and-white silent film is of very poor quality, and the camera is shaky, but nonetheless he is engrossed. Soon the young man starts to get upset. He yells things at the screen, trying to influence the outcome of his parents' courtship and the other people in the audience begin to think he is crazy. Several times the character breaks down. In the end he shouts at his parents when it appears they are going to break up, and he is dragged out of the theater by an usher who reprimands him. The animadversion is important to the story, as it reveals a bit of the character's insecurity. In the end, the character wakes up from his dream and notes that it is the snowy morning of his twenty-first birthday.
3409167	/m/099_d5	Destiny's Road	Larry Niven	1998-05-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the start of the novel, the main character, Jemmy (he changes his name several times over the course of the novel) is around age 10. The novel then proceeds to skip through time in the various sections of the book including his teenage and young adult years, ending when he is in his forties. At first, he lives in his birthplace, Spiral Town, at one end of the Road – no one there knows what lies beyond a short distance down the Road. Jemmy's adventures begin as a late adolescent when he kills someone working for the merchants in self-defense and is forced to flee Spiral Town. He winds up a distance down the road in a fishing community where he changes his name and appearance, and becomes a cook. He marries into the population. When a different caravan comes through town from Spiral Town, they arrange with the village elders to hire Jemmy as a chef. He proceeds on the caravan to the Neck, the isthmus which joins the peninsula to the mainland from which the caravans come. No locals, like Jemmy, are permitted on the mainland. At the Neck, Jemmy is told he must return to his town on the next caravan – the same one he fled Spiral Town from. He instead flees by sea. Taking refuge on a boat left over from the time of Landing, he floats around the peninsula to a point beyond the Neck. There, in a storm, he goes ashore and is found by prisoners at the Windfarm – sentenced prisoners who farm speckles. All speckles come from the area and are rendered infertile by irradiation; the monopoly is rigorously maintained. The others use clothing that Jemmy has salvaged to plot an escape, led by the violent Andrew. They break out and evade pursuit. Andrew has planned all along to kill Jemmy, but Jemmy literally gets the drop on him and kills him in self-defense. Jemmy leaves the other prisoners, taking money they have found and a supply of speckles, and flees once again. Twenty-seven years later, Jemmy is a pit chef at a beach resort along the Road. His wife is burned in an accident and he is forced to leave his place – a place, as it turns out, of hiding. He finally reaches his lifetime's goal of seeing the other end of the Road, and Destiny Town. There, he is able to access the Cavorite's computer library and learn the true history of Destiny, a discovery which hardens him. After his wife dies, Jemmy takes his father-in-law's widow Harlow back to the site of the prisoners' hideout, where he had planted fertile speckles. They still survive, and he takes some, sharing the secret with Harlow. They then return to the beach resort, of which Jemmy, by his wife's death, is now part owner. The two contrive to join a caravan, and Jeremy returns as a merchant's chef, unknown to his former townsfolk, to Spiral Town. During the trip, Jemmy makes his attempt to break the speckles monopoly. All along the Road, he distributes gumdrop candy covered with dyed speckle seeds to children. After distributing the candy, he sows speckle seeds in potassium-rich areas such as manure piles and graveyards. The next time the merchants try to withhold speckles, they will be in for a surprise.
3411198	/m/09b2mn	What Maisie Knew	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Beale and Ida Farange are divorced, the court decrees that their only child, the very young Maisie, will shuttle back and forth between them, spending six months of the year with each. The parents are immoral and frivolous, and they use Maisie to intensify their hatred of each other. Beale Farange marries Miss Overmore, Maisie's pretty governess, while Ida marries the likeable but weak Sir Claude. Maisie gets a new governess, the frumpy, more than a little ridiculous, but devoted Mrs. Wix. Both Ida and Beale soon busy themselves with other lovers besides their spouses. In return those spouses &mdash; Sir Claude and the new Mrs. Beale &mdash; begin an affair with each other. Maisie's parents essentially abandon her, and she becomes largely the responsibility of Sir Claude. Eventually, Maisie must decide if she wants to remain with Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale. In the book's long final section set in France, the older (probably teenaged) Maisie struggles to choose between them and Mrs Wix, and concludes that her new parents' relationship will likely end as her biological parents' did. She leaves them and goes to stay with Mrs. Wix, her most reliable adult guardian.
3411516	/m/09b31b	Star Trek: The Motion Picture	Gene Roddenberry	1979-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The original historic 5-year mission is over. All of the Enterprises original crew have pursued other jobs, only to be called back into action. The USS Enterprise has been refitted and the original crew must deal with an incredibly destructive power that threatens the Earth and the human race.
3413129	/m/09b5j4	Chesapeake	James A. Michener	1978-06-12	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The storyline, like much of Michener's work, depicts a number of characters over a long time period. Each chapter begins with a voyage which provides the foundation for the chapter plot. It starts in 1583 with American Indian tribes warring, moves through English settlers throughout the 17th century, slavery and tobacco growing, pirate attacks, the American Revolution and the Civil War, Emancipation and attempted assimilation, to the final major event being the Watergate scandal. The last voyage, a funeral, is in 1978. * Voyage One: 1583 * The River * Voyage Two: 1608 * The Island * Voyage Three: 1636 * The Marsh * Voyage Four: 1661 * The Cliff * Voyage Five: 1701 * Rosalind's Revenge * Voyage Six: 1773 * Three Patriots * Voyage Seven: 1811 * The Duel * Voyage Eight: 1822 * Widow's Walk * Voyage Nine: 1832 * The Slave-Breaker * Voyage Ten: 1837 * The Railroad * Voyage Eleven: 1886 * The Watermen * Voyage Twelve: 1938 * Ordeal by Fire * Voyage Thirteen: 1976 * Refuge * Voyage Fourteen: 1978
3413460	/m/09b62z	Paradise	Toni Morrison	1997-12-24	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of the tension between the men of Ruby, Oklahoma (an all-black town founded in 1950) and a group of women who lived in a former convent seventeen miles away. After an opening chapter named after the town, the other chapters are named after some of the female characters, but are not simply about the women. Each chapter includes flashbacks to crucial events from the town's history in addition to the backstory of the titular character. The women in the Convent are Connie (Consolata), Mavis, Gigi (Grace), Seneca, and Pallas (Divine). These women all receive chapters. The townswomen who receive chapters are Pat (Patricia), Lone and Save-Marie. The focus on the women characters highlights the ways the novel portrays the gender differences between the patriarchal rigidity of the townsmen and the clandestine connections between the townswomen and the women at the Convent. The narration serves as an alternative voice to the actions in which the townsmen provide.
3413901	/m/09b6vj	Shadow Fox			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A walk in the Black Forest for twins Jacob and Erin turns into an adventure through time when they meet Shadow, a red fox with an unusual set of talents. They are welcomed to his underground laboratory, Hora Cella, and witness the power of Nikola Tesla's time travel device, the Wall of Light. On their first journey through the Wall of Light, they travel to Boston in 1775, to help Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty spread the word that British Redcoats are on the march. Shadow has discovered seven gaps in the story of Paul Revere's midnight ride. If those gaps are not filled, the American Revolution may never be fought, and liberty as we know it will cease to exist. Travel through time with them and follow Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott, ordinary men who choose to act for the cause of liberty. Meet Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, as he sets the famous ride in motion. Watch Robert Newman and John Pulling as they attempt to place signal lanterns in the steeple of the Old North Church. But, look out for Pratt! If he has his way, you could become trapped in a time when King George III rules, and there is no liberty and justice for all.
3414300	/m/09b7ds	Ladder of Years	Anne Tyler	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This is a novel about a woman, Delia Grinstead, who finds her own self-identity and battles with familial relationships. As a spontaneous act of deep sadness and anger, she walks out on her family during a beach vacation. Not only does she put herself in a dire financial situation, she also places herself in a psychologically damaging situation with her family and husband. The narrative follows her as she deals with entering the workforce and considering what is most important in her life. As she deals with these issues, she comes to terms with herself.
3414953	/m/09b8lc	The Green Ray	Jules Verne	1882	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The heroes are trying to observe the green ray in Scotland. After numerous unsuccessful tries caused by clouds or distant boat sails hiding the sun, the phenomenon is eventually visible, but the heroes, finding love in each other's eyes, don't pay attention to the horizon.
3415174	/m/09b8z1	Chander Pahar	Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay		{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 It is the story of a young Bengali man’s adventures in Africa in the years 1909-1910. Shankar, the protagonist, is a 20 year old man, recently graduated from college and about to take up a job in a jute mill, a prospect he absolutely loathes. He yearns for adventure, wild lands, forests and animals. He wants to follow the footsteps of famous explorers like Livingstone, Mungo Park, Marco Polo, all of whom he has read about and idolizes. By a stroke of luck, he secures a job as a clerk in Uganda Railways through a fellow villager already working there and goes to Africa without a second thought. There, he spends a few months laying rail tracks but soon encounters the first of many dangers of Pre-World War I Africa—man-eating lions. Later he takes up a job as station master in desolate station. Here he encounters the another hazard in Africa: the poisonous black mamba. He also rescues and looks after the middle-aged Portuguese explorer and gold prospector, Diego Alvarez. The encounter with Alavarez influences him deeply. Alavarez tells him of his earlier exploits and adventures, how he and his companion Jim Carter had braved deep jungles and mountains of Richtersveld to find the largest diamond mine. However, they were thwarted by the legendary Bunyip, a mythical monster which guards the mines which killed Carter. Shankar gives up his job and accompanies Alvarez as he decides to venture out once more and find the mines again. They meet with innumerable hardships, a raging volcano being the greatest challenge. Eventually they get lost in the forests where Alvarez is killed by a mysterious monster, the same that had taken Carter’s life, the Bunyip. Shankar sets out to reach civilization. He finds the Bunyip's cave and the diamond mines by accident. He enters the cave but eventually gets lost. With great difficulty, he gets out, marking his way with "pebbles" and taking some back with him as memento, not knowing each is a piece of uncut diamond. He finds the remains of the Italian explorer, Attilio Gatti, and learns that the cave he found earlier really was the diamond mine. Gatti, as Shankar learns from a note by him, had uncut diamonds in his boots. The note said that whoever reads the note can take the diamonds as long as he buries his skeleton, with Christian rites. Shankar does so, and keeps the old diamonds. He becomes lost in the deserts of Kalahari and nearly dies of thirst. Fortunately he is rescued by a survey team, and taken to a hospital in Salisbury, Rhodesia, from where he sets sail for home. He ends the book saying that he will return to that cave one day with a large team, and continue the legacy of Alvarez, Carter and Gatti.
3415257	/m/09b90w	Wow! City!			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Wow! City! describes the excitement of the author's daughter, Izzy, as they walk through a large city.
3415281	/m/09b928	Shhhhh! Everybody's Sleeping				 Shhhhh! Everybody's Sleeping is a bedtime story that discusses fictional bedtimes for people of different professions (farmer, baker, etc.).
3416057	/m/09b9zw	The Negotiator	Dee Henderson	1989	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Late 1989: Texan oil tycoon Cyrus V. Miller reads a report he had commissioned into dwindling oil supplies in the free world and concludes that the oil fields of the Middle East must be brought under American control. Separately, a high-ranking General in the Soviet Army comes to a similarly depressing conclusion about oil access and plans a covert mission to invade Iran and take over the massive oil supplies there. Meanwhile, the President of the United States, John Cormack, meets with his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev to draw up plans for a $100 billion arms reduction bill - the Nantucket Treaty. With the help of a disaffected Arabist, Colonel Robert Easterhouse, Miller and his shipping tycoon counterpart Melvyn Scanlon devise a plan to inspire Islamic fundamentalists to massacre the six hundred ruling members of the Saudi royal family during jamboree celebrations; after that, American forces will go into Saudi Arabia to restore the only surviving royal - a Westernized puppet named Prince Abdullah - to power and thus secure the oil for the United States - and for Miller and Scanlon's companies. However, Easterhouse warns that Cormack won't be prepared to jeopardize the Nantucket Treaty by sending troops into the Middle East; he must be ousted from power and replaced by his vice-president, Michael Odell, who opposes the treaty. Miller teams up with three disgruntled arms manufacturers who will be ruined financially by the treaty and hires a recently released from prison, hardcore sex criminal and ex-CIA-officer-turned-mercenary Irving Moss to devise a plan to destroy the President and therefore the treaty. The plan begins when the President's son, Simon, is kidnapped while spending a year studying abroad at Oxford University. Cormack puts Odell in charge of the kidnapping case. Odell wants Quinn, the world's most successful hostage negotiator, to handle the case, but he has retired to Spain and is not interested in working for the government. His old CIA friend David Weintraub coaxes him out of retirement, and Green Beret Quinn agrees to come to London if they allow him to handle the negotiations his way. He is joined, against his wishes, in his designated London flat by female FBI agent Sam Somerville and CIA officer Duncan McCrea. The leader of the kidnappers, Zack, makes contact and demands a $5 million ransom for Simon's safe return. Quinn refuses, telling the police and FBI it is dangerous to agree to a kidnapper's first demand. After two weeks of negotiation, they agree on a $2 million ransom, in diamonds. Meanwhile, a maverick FBI agent does his own investigations and leads a raid on a house where he believes the President's son is held; but it turns out that all he has done is ruin an attempt by the British police to arrest a top international drug smuggler. A fake news report that the police are closing in spooks the kidnappers; Quinn decides to steal the diamonds, evade the police and FBI and set up the ransom drop himself. He and Simon are released at different points of a deserted road. As Simon runs towards Quinn and the police, he is killed in an explosion. President Cormack is devastated when he learns of his son's death. The possibility of the president being removed under the terms of the 25th Amendment is brought up. A postmortem shows that Simon was killed by a bomb hidden in the belt given to him by his kidnappers. The bomb was set off by a miniature detonator - minidet - found, and only found, in the Soviet space programme. The Russians are blamed and the Nantucket Treaty is effectively finished. Quinn is arrested by the police but let go for lack of evidence. He decides to go after the kidnappers himself, and Sam - who has become Quinn's lover - is sent by the FBI to follow him. Quinn thinks one of the kidnappers was a Belgian mercenary, due to his ease with a gun and the smell of his Bastos cigarettes. He identifies him as “Big” Paul Marchais and finds him with a bullet in the head at a fairground in Belgium. He finds his partner, South African mercenary Jan Pretorius in bar in the Netherlands, also with a bullet in his head. Returning to London, Quinn is contacted by Zack who arranges a meeting at a cafe in Paris. He tells Quinn he was paid $500,000 to kidnap Simon - the ransom was a bonus. The man who hired him was a fat American who always stayed in darkness so he couldn't be identified. Zack brought in Marchais and Pretorius and was forced to take on a fourth man, Corsican Dominique Orsini. It was Orsini who gave Simon the belt that killed him. After that, he fled to Europe. Zack hands over the diamonds but is killed in a drive-by shooting which Quinn and Sam only narrowly escape from. Quinn sends Sam to his home in Spain while he travels to Corsica. He confronts Orsini but is forced to kill him in self-defense. He flies back to London where he is drugged and kidnapped by a Russian agent, Andrei the Cossack. He is taken to the Russian embassy where KGB chief General Kirpicenko shows Quinn photos of Miller, Scanlon and the three arms manufactures who had been identified after paying an unexpected trip to a Russian air base. It is believed they met with General Koslov, head of Soviet Southern High Command, and he gave them the minidet. Kirpicenko tells Quinn to return to Washington, D.C. to flush out the conspirators. Sam flies back to Washington and Quinn sends her a letter, knowing that the White House has her phones tapped and her mail on intercept. Quinn by then is in Vermont, after entering the U.S. via Canada with help of forged travel documents, and renting a secluded cabin in the wilderness. In the intercepted letter to Sam, the White House committee read that Quinn knows who Simon's killers were and is holed up some place safe writing it all down. One of the members of the committee, in cahoots with Miller from the start, panics. Quinn soon finds Sam and tells her to be on the lookout. Sam soon tells Quinn that David Weintraub has been in touch, and Quinn agrees to meet him. The 'David Weintraub' who appears is actually Irving Moss impersonating him. He has brought with him Duncan McCrea, who turns out to be a fellow sadist and a former protégé of Moss. Moss also has a score to settle with Quinn, who responded to one of Moss' gruesome torture interrogations in Vietnam by caving in the front of Moss' face with a single punch. It was McCrea who pushed the remote control that set off the bomb that killed Simon. Quinn and Sam are taken at gunpoint back to Quinn's cabin where Moss reads Quinn's report. He tells Quinn that he and Duncan followed Quinn and Sam across Europe, spying on them (for a time) via a bug in Sam's handbag, and killing the mercenaries before Quinn could reach them. Moss, finding out that the report is fake, takes Quinn outside to shoot him, but Andrei, who has been bivouacking in the snow for several days observing Quinn, shoots him before he could execute Quinn. Quinn then takes Moss's gun, returns to the cabin and shoots McCrea as he is about to rape/torture Sam. Searching the corpses reveals Moss's address book, which eventually yielded a coded telephone number which Quinn identifies (with Sam's help) as belonging to a very senior politician. Mimicking Moss's voice, he demands a bonus payment for all the 'unforeseen trouble' he had to deal with, and arranges a meeting with the man at the 'usual place', which turns out to be near the Vietnam War Memorial. It turns out to Hubert Reed, the Secretary of the Treasury, who publicly supported the Nantucket Treaty, but secretly opposed it as he had invested his fortune in armament companies; the trustees of his blind trust had not moved the investments. He offers Quinn the $5 million Swiss bank draft (payable to the bearer) he had brought for Moss, and Quinn hands over the report he has written. But the real report is sent to the President, who then chooses not to resign and tells the world in a special broadcast the next evening what really happened to his son and why. The conspirators are later arrested by American and Soviet authorities or commit suicide, and the President orders the FBI manhunt for Quinn to be permanently called off. By then, Quinn flies off to Spain with Sam, who has accepted his marriage proposal. A newspaper he briefly reads, made redundant earlier by the President's speech, mentions a $5 million anonymous donation to the Vietnam Veterans Paraplegic Hospital, and the “accidental” death of Treasury Secretary Reed, by drowning.
3416567	/m/09bbqh	HaJaBaRaLa	Sukumar Ray	1921	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The story starts with a boy suddenly waking up from sleep and finding that the handkerchief he placed just beside him before sleeping has turned into a cat. He starts talking to the cat, who speaks nonsensically about a handkerchief and a semicolon before disappearing over the hedge. He tells him to go find Kakeshwar, in a series of calculations that eventually tell him that he is in a tree. The boy finds Kakeshwar doing calculations in a slate and doing some mathematics that appears very unusual to the boy. This includes division that is purely illogical and fallacious. After arguing over math, a goat appears and narrates his life about eating paper and other artificial things. Hijibijbij appears and laughs after denouncing three names for all his family at three inquiries. Then many animals appear, and confusion results. The boy wakes up from his odd dream and finds the cat, which does not talk.
3417912	/m/09bfbq	Spock Must Die!	James Blish		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Klingon Empire manages to imprison the Organians and begin another war with the Federation. Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise find themselves far behind enemy lines. Dr. McCoy expresses his fear that he was killed the first time a transporter disassembled his original body and created a replacement in a new location. Scotty attempts to create a new method of teleportation that uses tachyons. He later uses this experimental method to send a duplicate of Mr. Spock to Organia via a souped-up transporter beam, without having to travel through Klingon space. Something goes terribly wrong, resulting in two Spocks returning. One of them has to be destroyed...but which one? The novel is notable for an elementary public exposure of tachyon theory. For a similar duplication of Captain Kirk, see the Original Series episode "The Enemy Within".
3419274	/m/09bhzb	In the Cage	Henry James		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 An unnamed telegraphist works in the branch post office at Cocker's, a grocer in a fashionable London neighborhood. Her fiancée, a decent if unpolished man named Mudge, wants her to move to a less expensive neighborhood to save money. She refuses because she likes the glimpses of society life she gets from the telegrams at her current location. Through those telegrams, she gets "involved" with a pair of lovers, Captain Everard and Lady Bradeen. By remembering certain code numbers in the telegrams, she manages to reassure Everard at a particular crisis that their secrets are safe from detection. Later she learns that, after the death of Lady Bradeen's husband, Everard will marry her, though he no longer seems that interested in her. She finally decides to marry Mudge and reflects on the unusual events she was part of.
3425068	/m/09bst8	The Feast of All Saints	Anne Rice	1979	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This novel is about the gens de couleur libres, or free people of color, who lived in New Orleans before the Civil War. The gens de couleur libres were the descendants of European settlers of Louisiana, particularly the French and Spanish and people of African descent. It was a common practice for the early caucasian settlers to free these children by their slave mistresses. Their mistresses however, were not all enslaved, some were free women of color whose families had been free for several generations. The novel takes place in the 1840s, at which time there was a large population of free people of color living in New Orleans. The story centers on Marcel, a young man who has one white parent and one parent who is half white and half black. His mother, Cecile, is the mistress of Philippe Ferronaire, a rich French plantation owner. Cecile has borne Ferronaire two children, Marcel and his sister Marie. Marie is very light skinned and able to pass as white, but Marcel, who is blonde and blue eyed, but with ethnic hair and darker skin, cannot. The other two major characters in this novel are Christophe, a famous author who returns from Paris to start a school for the young gens, and Anna Bella, Marcel's childhood friend. Anna Bella loves Marcel, but as he is unprepared to offer her marriage (and too young) she becomes the mistress of Vincent Dazinncourt, who is the brother of Philippe Ferronaire's white wife. They have a child together, but split after Marcel, who had been planning to be sent to Paris, learns that his father has betrayed him and wanders to his father's plantation to confront him. In disgrace, he is sent to live with his aunt among many Creole planters on the Cane River. It is here that Marcel learns some of his (African Diasporan) history, including the Haitian Slave Revolt and the fact that his mother was stolen off the street by his adopted aunt during that time. While Marcel is learning history, his father is in New Orleans drinking himself to death, which he eventually does, depriving the family of their source of income. Marie, who was set to marry Marcel's best friend Richard, is now told that she will follow in her mother's footsteps and take a white protector in order to get money for the family and send Marcel to Paris (Marcel is unaware of all of this). Marie confides this to her slave maid, Lisette. Lisette is also Phillipe Ferronaire's daughter (which Marie does not know) and was promised her freedom by him, but as he did to Marcel, he reneged on his promise. In revenge, Lisette takes Marie to the house of a voodooiene, where she is drugged and raped by five men. Marcel comes home to find that his sister has been raped, Richard has been locked in the family attic (to prevent him from taking revenge on the men, and then, certainly, being tried and convicted of murder and executed) and Vincent Dazincourt has already confronted two of the men, challenged them to duels, and killed them both. The issue from Dazincourt's perspective is that the five men knew Marie's identity, and therefore knew that she was related by blood to the Ferronaire/Dazincourt family, but raped her anyway. The gens de couleur libre members of the extended family cannot avenge Marie's rape but he can. Marie takes refuge with a local madam, Dolly Rose. Lisette commits suicide to avoid Dazincourt's vengeance. Dazincourt find and kills a third man in a duel, but the other two escape from New Orleans before he can call them out and kill them. Richard, who is finally let out of the attic, tells his family that he will marry Marie or face exile with her. The novel ends with Marie and Richard sailing to France (where they will stay until the gossip dies down) and Marcel deciding to become a photographer in order to earn his living (with the implication that once he has some success he will marry Anna Bella).
3426793	/m/09bvkv	Beyond This Place	A. J. Cronin	1953	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Paul Mathry, a student about to graduate and embark upon a teaching career, finds out that his father was convicted for murder, a secret that his mother had hidden from him since his childhood. Driven by an intense desire to see his father, Paul sets out to visit him in prison, only to find out that visitors are never allowed there. From there, he meets the primary witnesses in the case that convicted his father, not all of whom are supportive to Paul's cause. He encounters several dead ends but he persists, with the help of a store girl named Lena and a news reporter. His persistent campaign finally bears fruit. Rees Mathry, Paul's father, goes on appeal and is vindicated. The novel ends with Paul's father, a hardened, cynical man, seeing a fleeting hope for self-renewal and a purposeful life.
3428648	/m/09bz3k	Spock, Messiah				 When an experiment with telepathic implants goes wrong, Mr. Spock renounces his life on the Starship Enterprise to become the Messiah of the planet Kyros. In so doing, he launches a holy war on the rest of the world.
3428688	/m/09bz7r	The Price of the Phoenix				 Captain Kirk's dead body is beamed aboard the Enterprise after a house fire on an unnamed planet in which he has died trying to save a baby. Spock beams down to the planet in order to confront its ruler, Omne. Unexpectedly, Omne reveals that he has pioneered the “Phoenix process”, a modification of Transporter technology to create a duplicate of a living person – and he offers Spock a recent copy of Kirk, recorded shortly before his death. Spock has reservations as to the authenticity of this supposed Kirk and is given leave for a brief mind meld. Although Spock verifies that it is indeed Kirk’s mind he is melding with, he is still unable to dismiss his reservations and so calls this Kirk “James”, in contrast to the form of his captain’s forename that he usually uses. Even so, Spock accepts Omne’s offer of this resurrected Kirk, although Omne makes it plain that his price will be extremely high and in effect require Spock to betray the Federation. It soon transpires that Spock was right to be suspicious regarding James’s identity, as the original Kirk is indeed alive and well, having sustained only minor though visible injuries in the house fire before being beamed to safety and replaced by an incomplete Phoenix-duplicate. He determines to rescue both Kirk and James, and in this he has the assistance of the female Romulan Commander whom Spock and Kirk bested in the TV episode “The Enterprise Incident”. Omne has been employing Romulan guards on his planet, but the Commander is sympathetic enough to Spock and Kirk to switch sides. Spock fights Omne bare-handed and defeats him after a brutal battle in which both parties are gravely injured. He forces a mind meld on Omne in order to purge him of all memory of his experiences with Kirk; but before this psychic surgery is complete, the crippled Omne succeeds in shooting himself in the head. (One of Omne’s affectations is that every visitor to the planet, barring a few privileged Romulans, may go armed only with locally-manufactured gunpowder weapons after the fashion of the Wild West.) Realizing that Omne would have done this only because he trusted the Phoenix device to resurrect him, Spock, Kirk, James and the Commander retreat to the Enterprise. There they hastily draw up plans both to establish a new life for James and to deal with Omne’s inevitable reappearance. James is surgically altered to pass for Romulan and is to accompany the Commander back to the Empire. She explains that there are colony worlds where men are “very properly considered the weaker sex and not permitted to fight”, and he is to be represented as one of these. (This is not the authors’ only experimentation with non-traditional gender roles. In a short story “The Procrustean Petard”, Kirk temporarily changes sex.) However, before James and the Commander depart, Omne transports himself aboard the Enterprise. The Phoenix device has indeed recreated him, and he is in perfect physical condition. A short fistfight follows in which Omne beats everyone present, Spock still being injured despite earlier recourse to the Vulcan healing trance (previously seen in “A Private Little War”), and captures James, holding him hostage with a gun at his head. He announces his intention to return to his planet with James, where it will be impossible to pursue him. Surprisingly, Kirk chooses this moment to warn Omne to mend his ways, which Omne dismisses with incredulity and scorn. Kirk then gives the signal for Mr. Scott, supposed by Omne to have been unaware of his presence, to transport the weapon out of Omne’s hand, and using this moment of surprise the Commander snatches James away and Kirk, equipped with one of Omne’s own guns, outdraws him. Killed a second time aboard the Enterprise and supposedly out of range of his Phoenix device, Omne is supposed to be dead; but there is ample room for doubt in view of the technology Omne has already shown. There is, however, no more to be done for the present. Omne’s planet is for all present purposes impenetrable, and if he will come back from the dead yet again, that eventuality must be addressed when it arises.
3428785	/m/09bzjg	Planet of Judgment	Joe Haldeman	1977-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The crew of the Starship Enterprise detects a rogue planet (dubbed Anomaly) orbited by a miniature black hole. This seems to contravene all scientific laws. Assuming that the system is artificial, Captain Kirk leads a landing party to the planet's surface, where they become trapped. The crew find themselves at the center of a galactic conflict, in which an alien race is threatening to invade Federation space. Dr. McCoy, Mr. Spock, and Captain Kirk must participate in a series of trials that will determine not just their survival, but that of the Federation.
3428859	/m/09bzqq	Gridiron	Philip Kerr	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ray Richardson and his top team of architects have developed a super-smart building for Yue-Kong Yu's business, the Yu Corporation. It is very much self-standing. It can clean itself, uses holograms as greeters in the reception, controls the lifts, toilets, and offices, and digitizes everyone's voice on entry, to allow them to use voice activated services in the building such as lifts and doors. The whole system was given the name Abraham. Another key feature of Abraham was its ability to replicate itself, to adapt to modern office needs and objectives. This, however becomes a problem, when, before office work even starts in the Gridiron, Abraham start creating a new program named Isaac. This is deleted by computer programmers Yojo and Beech, with Beech actually reluctant to do so. Shortly after this, however, members of the Gridiron team begin to be suspiciously killed. These seem to be the fault of the protesters against the building who are outside, and Cheng Peng Fei is arrested on suspicion of one of the murders. Then, a routine inspection of the Gridiron involving Ray Richarson and his entire team (including Jenny Bao), ends in the whole group being locked in, and two policemen from LAPD Homicide coming to inspect the murder of Sam Glieg. After several more deaths from the team, Bob Beech discovers that during the self-replication that Abraham started, another program was created in the process, namely, Ishmael. This program escaped the deletion process by integrating itself with a video game which was on the Gridiron's system. Ishmael now believes that he is in a game, and the objective is to kill all human players before one escapes, or before time runs out. The majority of the team are killed, leaving Mitch, Jenny, Helen, and Frank to escape the Gridiron moments before it destroys itself (time has run out). Ishmael, however, had e-mailed himself to an unknown location, thus saving himself from the destruction of the building.
3429982	/m/09c0mp	The Blue Sword	Robin McKinley	1982	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story introduces Angharad Crewe, usually referred to as Harry, the daughter of a recently deceased nobleman from the Homeland. The orphaned Harry crosses the ocean to join her brother Richard in Istan, the Homeland's remotest colonial town and military outpost in the Royal Province of Daria. Soon after her arrival, the outpost receives a visit from Corlath, king of the native hill-folk who still view the land as their own, the ancient country they have always called Damar. Corlath has come to warn the "Outlanders" of an impending invasion from the North, a land full of demonic tribes that has recently and uncharacteristically united under the leadership of Thurra, a powerful demon-wizard. But Corlath's warning fails to influence Sir Charles, the Homeland's District Commissioner, and Corlath leaves angry that he tried reasoning with the Outlanders. Corlath and his men ride away into the desert; however his "kelar," a magical element of the royal bloodline, incites him to return and kidnap Harry. Corlath knows he has to comply with the kelar's compulsion, but he is nonetheless ashamed that he must abduct a young woman, and an Outlander. He commands his people to treat Harry as an honored guest. Harry's confusion and fear soon give way to wonder when she discovers, to her surprise, that she, too, has abnormally strong kelar. Harry, called Harimad by the Damarians, adjusts quickly and well to life with the king and his people, as Corlath and Mathin help her learn their customs and history. She is learning the language and feel at home by her kelar, and soon adopts the customary dress and horseback-riding skills of a born Damarian. Despite this, Harry is somewhat puzzled at her connection with the people of Damar, as she had been born and raised in the Homeland. Based on her connection with the legendary heroine Lady Aerin, called Dragon Slayer and venerated as a fierce warrior, whom Harry has seen in vision, Corlath decides that Harry will enter the Laprun trials, an annual competition for the position of King's Rider. Mathin teaches Harry to ride and to fight like a warrior, which she does and is even able to push him off of his horse while fighting her. When she takes part in the Laprun trials she does extremely well, becoming the Laprun-minta, or first of the Laprun. This is seen as a good omen for the Damarian people because the Laprun-minta is a female warrior, and there have been very few since the age of Aerin. Corlath makes her a King's Rider and gives her a blue sword named Gonturan that belonged to Lady Aerin, and Harry becomes known as the Damalur-sol, or lady hero. Corlath decides to take a desperate stand against the Northerners with his small army and the nineteen King's Riders. First he chooses to visit the ageless seer known as Luthe, who tells Harry she has a choice ahead of her and that he hopes she will make the right decision. Luthe, like Corlath and Mathin, will tell her little of Aerin—but he surprises Harry with the observation that she is very like the ancient heroine, whom he'd known long ago. As the Riders discuss their battle plans, Harry points out that Corlath, still angry at the Homelanders, is ignoring the threat posed by a small pass near the Homelander border. He brushes her off, but Harry, torn between loyalty to her Homeland and a new-found love for Damar, knows the Homelanders will be better able to defend the pass if they are forewarned. Despite Corlath's direct orders to the contrary, she decides to leave and bring them word herself. While there, Harry learns from her friend Jack Dedham, that she and her brother are both part Damarian, through their great-grandmother on their mother's side of the family. Harry amasses a small fighting force of friends and allies, both Damarian and Homelander. Together they attempt to hold the pass, only to find that Thurra is bringing the majority of his force through there, rather than where Corlath predicted. The two armies engage in a fierce, bloody battle. Harry briefly clashes swords with Thurra himself on the slope below the pass and barely survives; she knows that when they meet again, it will be her death. Harry, acting under the compulsion of her kelar, climbs the mountain, falling into a vision-laced trance, and calling for help from Aerin and Corlath. Harry begins shouting in the Old Tongue of the Hillfolk, and Gonturan throws off sparkling, eddying waves of light which cause the mountainside to shear and break away, rumbling into the valley below to crush Thurra and his army. After she regains her strength, she returns to Corlath, fearing his disapproval—not only because she disobeyed his direct orders, but also because she lost the sash she wore as King's Rider. She knows that Corlath will be forced to honour her as the savior of Damar, but she is afraid that he will personally hate her for disobeying him and proving him wrong. Harry has realized that she is in love with the Damarian king, and desires not only his respect but his love. While she has been gone, however, Corlath, aware that he has fallen in love with her, has been tormented by the thought that Harry had forsaken her loyalty to him and the desert entirely. When she returns from the pass they express these concerns to one another, and finally confess their love. During the celebrations after this public declaration, however, he reveals that her teacher, Mathin, has been mortally wounded. Distraught by the news, she rushes to his side and eventually Corlath helps her heal him, along with many other members of Corlath's army. Upon returning to the capital city of Damar, Harry and Corlath are married. Harry's brother Richard, who chose to accompany her back to Damar, marries a Damarian woman named Kentarre the following spring. Harry and Corlath eventually have four children. During this time period, formal diplomatic relations open between the Homeland and Damar, in part due to Harry's efforts.
3433040	/m/09c55p	A Tale of Two Cities	Charles Dickens	1859	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Lucie Manette travel to Saint Antoine, a suburb of Paris, and meet Monsieur Defarge and Madame Defarge. The Defarges operate a wine shop they use to lead a clandestine band of revolutionaries; they refer to each other by the codename "Jacques," which Charles Dickens drew from the Jacobins, an actual French revolutionary group. Monsieur Defarge was Doctor Manette's servant before his incarceration, and now takes care of him, so he takes them to see the doctor. Because of his long imprisonment, Doctor Manette entered a form of psychosis and has become obsessed with making shoes, a trade he had learned while in prison. At first, he does not recognise his daughter; but he eventually compares her long golden hair with her mother's, a strand of which he found on his sleeve when he was incarcerated and kept, and notices their identical blue eye colour. Mr. Lorry and Miss Manette then take him back to England. Five years later, two British spies, John Barsad and Roger Cly, are trying to frame French émigré Charles Darnay for their own gain; and Darnay is on trial for treason at the Old Bailey. They claim, falsely, that Darnay gave information about British troops in North America to the French. Darnay is acquitted, however, when a witness who claims he would be able to recognise Darnay anywhere is unable to tell Darnay apart from a barrister present in court, Sydney Carton, who looks almost identical to him. In Paris, a wheel on the despised Marquis St. Evrémonde's carriage hits and kills the baby of a peasant, Gaspard. The Marquis throws a coin to Gaspard to compensate him for his loss. Defarge, a witness to the incident, comforts Gaspard. As the Marquis's coach drives off, the coin thrown to Gaspard is thrown back into the coach by an unknown hand, probably that of Madame Defarge, enraging the Marquis. Arriving at his château, the Marquis meets with his nephew and heir, Darnay. (Out of disgust with his family, Darnay shed his real surname and adopted an Anglicised version of his mother's maiden name, D'Aulnais.) The following scene demonstrates the differences between Darnay's personality and his uncle's: Darnay has sympathy for the peasantry, while the Marquis is cruel and heartless: "Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky." That night, Gaspard, who followed the Marquis to his château by riding on the underside of the carriage, stabs and kills the Marquis in his sleep. He leaves a note on the knife saying, &#34;Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES.&#34; After nine months on the run, he is caught, and hanged above the village&#39;s fountain, poisoning its water, which angers the peasants greatly. In London, Darnay gets Dr. Manette&#39;s permission to wed Lucie; but Carton confesses his love to Lucie as well. Knowing she will not love him in return, Carton promises to &#34;embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you&#34;. On the morning of the marriage, Darnay reveals his real name and who his family is, a detail which Dr. Manette had asked him to withhold until then. This unhinges Dr. Manette, who reverts to his obsessive shoemaking. His sanity is restored before Lucie returns from her honeymoon and the whole incident kept secret from her. To prevent a further relapse, Lorry and Miss Pross destroy the shoemaking bench and tools, which Dr. Manette had brought with him from Paris. It is 14 July 1789. The Defarges help to lead the storming of the Bastille. Defarge enters Dr. Manette&#39;s former cell, &#34;One Hundred and Five, North Tower&#34;. The reader does not know what Monsieur Defarge is searching for until Book 3, Chapter 9. It is a statement in which Dr. Manette explains why he was imprisoned. As time passes in England, Lucie and Charles begin to raise a family, a son (who dies in childhood) and a daughter, little Lucie. The perennial bachelor Lorry, who believes that such things are beyond &#34;a man of business&#34;, finds a second home and a sort of family with the Darnays. Stryver, who once had intentions to marry Lucie, marries a rich widow with three children and becomes even more insufferable as his ambitions begin to be realised. Carton, even though he seldom visits, is accepted as a close friend of the family and becomes a special favourite of little Lucie. Darnay, being called by a former servant who has been unjustly imprisoned, decides to come back to France to free him. But shortly after his arrival, he is denounced for being an emigrated aristocrat from France and imprisoned in La Force Prison in Paris. Dr. Manette and Lucie—along with Miss Pross, Jerry Cruncher, and &#34;Little Lucie&#34;, the daughter of Charles and Lucie Darnay—come to Paris and meet Mr. Lorry to try to free Darnay. A year and three months pass, and Darnay is finally tried. Dr. Manette, who is seen as a hero for his imprisonment in the hated Bastille, is able to have him released; but, that same evening, Darnay is again arrested. He is put on trial again the following day, under new charges brought by the Defarges and one &#34;unnamed other&#34;. We soon discover that this &#34;other&#34; is Dr. Manette, through his own account of his imprisonment. Manette did not know that his statement had been found and is horrified when his words are used to condemn Darnay. On an errand, Miss Pross is amazed to see her long-lost brother, Solomon Pross; but Solomon does not want to be recognised. Sydney Carton suddenly steps forward from the shadows much as he had done after Darnay&#39;s first trial in London and identifies Solomon Pross as John Barsad, one of the men who tried to frame Darnay for treason at the Old Bailey trial. Carton threatens to reveal Solomon&#39;s identity as a Briton and an opportunist who spies for the French or the British as it suits him. If this were revealed, Solomon would surely be executed, so Carton&#39;s hand is strong. Darnay is confronted at the tribunal by Monsieur Defarge, who identifies Darnay as the Marquis St. Evrémonde and reads the letter Dr. Manette had hidden in his cell in the Bastille. Defarge can identify Darnay as Evrémonde because Barsad told him Darnay&#39;s identity when Barsad was fishing for information at the Defarges&#39; wine shop in Book 2, Chapter 16. The letter describes how Dr. Manette was locked away in the Bastille by Darnay&#39;s father and his uncle for trying to report their crimes against a peasant family. Darnay&#39;s uncle had become infatuated with a girl, whom he had kidnapped and raped. Despite Dr. Manette&#39;s attempts to save her, she died. The uncle then killed her husband by working him to death. Before he died defending the family honour, the brother of the raped peasant had hidden the last member of the family, his younger sister. The letter also reveals that Dr. Manette was imprisoned because the Evrémonde brothers discovered that they could not bribe him to keep quiet. The paper concludes by condemning the Evrémondes, &#34;them and their descendants, to the last of their race&#34;. Dr. Manette is horrified, but his protests are ignored—he is not allowed to take back his condemnation. Darnay is sent to the Conciergerie and sentenced to be guillotined the next day. Carton wanders into the Defarges&#39; wine shop, where he overhears Madame Defarge talking about her plans to have the rest of Darnay&#39;s family (Lucie and &#34;Little Lucie&#34;) condemned. Carton discovers that Madame Defarge was the surviving sister of the peasant family savaged by the Evrémondes. The only plot detail that might give one any sympathy for Madame Defarge is the loss of her family and that she has no (family) name. Defarge is her married name, and Dr. Manette does not know her family name, though he asked her dying sister for it. At night, when Dr. Manette returns shattered after spending the day in many failed attempts to save Charles&#39; life, he has reverted to his obsessive search for his shoemaking implements. Carton urges Lorry to flee Paris with Lucie, her father, and Little Lucie, &#34;as soon as his, i.e Carton&#39;s place in the coach is filled&#34;. That same morning, Carton visits Darnay in prison. Carton drugs Darnay, and Barsad (whom Carton is blackmailing) has Darnay carried out of the prison. Carton has decided to pretend to be Darnay and to be executed in his place. He does this out of love for Lucie, recalling his earlier promise to her. Following Carton&#39;s earlier instructions, Darnay&#39;s family and Lorry flee Paris and France. In their coach is an unconscious man who carries Carton&#39;s identification papers, but is actually Darnay. Meanwhile, Madame Defarge, armed with a pistol, goes to the residence of Lucie&#39;s family, hoping to catch them mourning for Darnay, since it was illegal to mourn an enemy of the Republic; however, Lucie and Little Lucie, Dr. Manette, and Mr. Lorry are already gone. To give them time to escape, Miss Pross confronts Madame Defarge and they struggle. Pross speaks only English and Defarge speaks only French, so neither can understand what the other is saying but each instinctively understands the other&#39;s intentions. In the struggle, Madame Defarge&#39;s pistol goes off, killing her; the noise of the shot and the shock of Madame Defarge&#39;s death cause Miss Pross to go permanently deaf. The novel concludes with the guillotining of Sydney Carton. As he is waiting to board the tumbril, he is approached by a seamstress, also condemned to death, who mistakes him for Darnay but, upon getting close, realises the truth. Awed by his unselfish courage and sacrifice, she asks to stay close to him and he agrees. Upon their arrival at the guillotine, she and Carton are the last two and Carton comforts her, telling her that their ends will be quick but that there is no Time or Trouble &#34;in the better land where ... [they] will be mercifully sheltered&#34;, and she is able to meet her death in peace. Carton&#39;s unspoken last thoughts are prophetic: "I see Barsad, ... Defarge, The Vengeance [a lieutenant of Madame Defarge], ... long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. &#34;I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man [Mr. Lorry], so long their friend, in ten years&#39; time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward. "I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both. &#34;I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day&#39;s disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice. "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." Lucie and Darnay have a first son earlier in the book who is born and dies within a single paragraph; it seems likely that this first son appears in the novel so that their later son, named after Carton, can represent another way in which Carton restores Lucie and Darnay through his sacrifice.
3433051	/m/09c574	The Magnificent Ambersons	Booth Tarkington		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things." As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?" The titular family is the most prosperous and powerful in town at the turn of the century. Young George Amberson Minafer, the patriarch’s grandson, is spoiled terribly by his mother Isabel. Growing up arrogant, sure of his own worth and position and totally oblivious to the lives of others, George falls in love with Lucy Morgan, a young though sensible debutante. But there is a long history between George’s mother and Lucy’s father, of which George is unaware. As the town grows into a city, industry thrives, the Ambersons’ prestige and wealth wanes and the Morgans – thanks to Lucy’s prescient father – grow prosperous. When George sabotages his widowed mother's growing affections for Lucy's father, life as he knows it comes to an end.
3433133	/m/09c5c0	Plain Truth	Jodi Picoult	2001-04-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book tells the story of how a dead infant found on an Amish farm shakes the entire community. As the police investigate the death, they discover that the baby was not stillborn, but died shortly after birth. Police find cloth fibers in the infant's mouth and throat, including bruises on the mouth, which leads them to conclude that he was suffocated. An eighteen-year-old, unmarried Amish girl, Katie Fisher, is charged with murder of her new-born son. Ellie Hathaway, a top defense lawyer and a distant relative of Katie, reluctantly accepts the case after a confrontation with her aunt (the relative who connects her with Katie by marriage). As part of the bail conditions of the pre-trial hearing, Ellie has to remain on the farm with Katie prior to the trial--a period that lasts several months. A doctor determines that the infant was born prematurely and could have died from natural causes due to listeriosis, a bacterial infection which Katie contracted from drinking unpasteurized milk. During that time, Ellie begins a relationship with her former lover Coop (a legal psychologist whom she trusts with Katie's interviews), whom she had previously left years before. On the first day of Katie's trial, Ellie finds out she is pregnant with Coop's baby. Coop asks Ellie to marry him immediately, but she defers. After the jury deliberates for several days, Katie cops a plea and is sentenced to one year of electronic monitoring, allowing her to stay at the farm while wearing an electronic bracelet. Katie's mother, Sarah Fisher, gives Ellie the scissors which have been used to cut the umbilical cord, revealing that she knew Katie was pregnant and had gone to her the night she gave birth, though Katie didn't know it. Ellie has an ethical obligation as an attorney to provide this evidence to the police, but opts not to, based on Sarah's plea to her--mother to mother. The novel ends with Coop picking up Ellie at the farm to begin their life together.
3433251	/m/09c5mc	Winds of Change	Mercedes Lackey	1994-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Winds of Change is the story telling of the training of the Heir of Valdemar Elspeth in real magic.
3434390	/m/09c7hn	The Sacred Fount	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As he waits for the train to take him to a weekend party in the country, the narrator notices that Gilbert Long seems much more assured and lively than before. He also sees Mrs. Brissenden (nicknamed "Mrs. Briss") as much younger-looking than her husband, though she's actually ten years older. The narrator begins to theorize that Long and Mrs. Briss are getting their vitality, vampire-like, from the "sacred fount" of their sexual partners' energy. At first the narrator theorizes that the source of Long's newfound assurance and intelligence is a certain Lady John. Later he changes his mind, as he constantly discusses his ideas with others at the party, particularly an artist, Ford Obert. The narrator notices that another woman at the party, May Server, seems listless and starts to wonder if she may be the lover providing vitality to Long. Eventually the narrator begins to construct enormously elaborate theories of who is taking vitality from whom, and whether some people are acting as screens for the real lovers. In a long midnight confrontation with Mrs. Briss which concludes the novel, she says that the narrator's theories are ridiculous, and that he has completely misread the actual relationships of their fellow guests. She finishes by telling him he's crazy, and that last word leaves the narrator dismayed and overwhelmed.
3434631	/m/09c7q1	Thinner	Stephen King	1984-11-19	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Billy Halleck, an arrogant, obese lawyer in Connecticut, has recently fought an agonizing court case in which he was charged with vehicular manslaughter. While he had been driving across town, his wife Heidi distracted him by giving him a handjob, causing him to run over an old woman who was part of a group of traveling Gypsies. Billy is acquitted thanks to the judge, who is a close friend of his. However, as Billy leaves the courthouse, the old woman's ancient father, Taduz Lemke, strokes Billy's cheek and whispers one word to him: "Thinner." The word, and the old man's behavior, startle Billy. From this point on, Billy quickly loses weight; the loss becomes more and more rapid and he realizes that Lemke has cursed him. He also learns that the judge who gave the unfair verdict was also cursed by the old man — scales start growing on his skin. The town police chief who helped soft-pedal the charges against Billy is cursed with a horrifyingly extreme case of acne. Both men eventually commit suicide. With the help of his friend Richie "The Hammer" Ginelli, a former client and Mafia figure, an emaciated and desperate Billy tracks the Gypsy band north along the seacoast of New England to Maine, where the stage is set for a confrontation between himself and Lemke, resolving the issue of the curse and the blood-debt owed by Billy. After Richie terrorizes the Gypsy camp, Lemke agrees to meet with Billy. Lemke has brought a pie with him and adds blood from Billy's wounded hand to it, saying that the curse can be transferred to someone else but not destroyed. The weight loss will stop for a short time and then resume unless another person eats the pie, which will strike him/her with the curse and allow Billy to regain his health. Lemke begs Billy to eat it himself and die with dignity, but Billy instead takes it home, discovering along the way that Richie has been murdered by the Gypsies. He intends to give the pie to Heidi, whom he has come to blame for his predicament; the next morning, though, he finds that both she and his daughter Linda have eaten from the pie. Realizing that both of them are now doomed, he cuts a slice for himself so that he can join them in death.
3434979	/m/09c873	Birds of the Master	Pierre Christin	1973		 Valérian and Laureline's astroship has crashed in the middle of a graveyard of spaceships on an unknown asteroid. Swept over a waterfall, they are rescued by a motley group of various aliens gathering seaweed. Suddenly, overhead, a flock of birds gathers over the ship. The crew fly into a panic upon sight of these “Birds-Of-Madness” and Valérian and Laureline are ordered to work with the others in gathering the seaweed. One of the crew is a human but he refuses to talk to Valérian. The hold fully loaded, the boat begins the journey back to its port. On the way, they get into a conversation with a young alien called Sül who tells them that all the others are mad – they think only of gathering as much food as possible for their Master. Arriving at the village, they join a flotilla of boats that travels across the viscous marshes and along a series of fjords until they reach a cove – from here they must continue on foot. Laden with the produce, they reach the Village of the Fruits where they join a caravan carrying exotic fruits. When Valérian asks Sül who the Master is, Sül laughs – nobody has ever seen him but he calls all those he wants into his service. Some are brought here, others are born here. Many have been here so long they have no memory of their past lives. The caravan continues across a vast distance, joined by more and more caravans all bringing their produce to the Master and watched by the birds-of-madness, until they reach his city at the head of an immense valley. The bottom of the valley, the domain of the Master, lies shrouded in mist. They are brought to the great kitchens where they are put to work preparing klaar to feed the master. When the klaar is ready, they are brought to a huge, beautifully decorated basin. The klaar is poured into the basin where it will flow to the Master. The others will be allowed to dine on the leftovers. Suddenly, a man, starving, detaches himself from the crowd and tries to take some of the klaar for himself. The birds-of-madness attack biting him. Sül tries to intervene but is bitten himself. The man now thinks he is a bird while Sül's hatred for the Master now manifests itself as fully fledged rage. Having sated themselves on the remnants of the klaar, the rest of the crowd turn on Sül and the man and, despite Valérian and Laureline's attempts to stop them, carry the two of them away. Valérian and Laureline follow but are too late and Sül and the man are thrown into a pit where all those driven insane by the birds are cast. Valérian tries to talk to the crowd, to make them see what they are doing is wrong but to no avail – the crowd hurl stones at them and Laureline is knocked unconscious. Valérian drags her away to safety. That night, Valérian and Laureline return to the pit once the crowds have moved on. They rescue Sül and the rest of the madmen. As they try to make their escape on a chariot, the alarm is raised and they are pursued. The follow the Pathway of the Klaar towards the Master's lair. Eventually they pass into the forbidden lands and their pursuers give up the chase. Continuing to follow the Pathway of the Klaar, they are attacked by the birds-of-madness. Valérian and Laureline take shelter in a cave while the others form a shield around the entrance. This is not enough and Valérian and Laureline are bitten also. The attack passes and they find that they are almost at the bottom of the valley. A strange glow emanates from the mists. Reaching the source of the glow, they find the Master – a large amorphous grey blob. Laureline hits upon a plan – if they destroy the Pathways of Klaar, the Master will starve. Valérian begins firing but suddenly he breaks down on the ground – his mind has been attacked by the Master, presenting him with terrible images of war and destruction. Laureline takes up the gun but is also struck down, terrified by images of her body being torn to pieces by machinery. Similarly, Sül and the rest of the madmen are taken down one by one by the Master's superior mental powers. Laureline realises that problem is that they attacked one at a time. Gathering the others together, they hold hands and use their combined strength to overcome the Master's influence. Suddenly, the Master rips himself free and flees into the sky followed by the birds-of-madness and the mist. Realising they are free, the others consider settling in the Master's domain and living off the klaar. Valérian points out to them that it is not right to replace one dictator with another and they agree to return to the villages to free the others. Later, a large group of people work to free Valérian's astroship from the marsh in the graveyard of spaceships. The astroship blasts off with just one passenger, Sül, the rest having decided to stay on the asteroid. They wonder where the Master has gone to, blissfully unaware that he has attached himself to hull of their ship...
3436881	/m/09cbtf	Peace Breaks Out	John Knowles	1981-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This book follows the story of Pete Hallam as he returns to the school and becomes a history teacher as well as a coach. It is a story of the aftermath of World War II and the loss of innocence of young men. It starts by Pete Hallam returning to the school he graduated from, war-torn and emotionally scarred. He now is a teacher at Devon School and detects a subtle but deep hate between two members of the class in the first session alone.
3442022	/m/09cmhy	Sassinak	Anne McCaffrey	1990-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sassinak and her family live on a newly colonized world and are celebrating the end of the production year when all the colonies goods will be exported to other worlds. But the carrier never comes, and instead the planet and its people are soon under attack by pirates. The colonists put up a futile defense against the pirates' superior firepower, numbers and skill at their task. Sassinak witnesses the death of both her parents and her two siblings before she is taken off planet to become a slave. At the slave depot she is sold, but is counseled by another slave called Abe - who is ex-Fleet. He teaches her Discipline and imbeds a message in her mind that will only be remembered when she is confronted with a Fleet officer. She is sold once again when her skills have improved enough for her to work as a navigator on a ship. The ship that she is on is captured by Fleet and she is rescued, the imbedded message comes out and Fleet is able to attack the slave depot and free all the slaves. Abe adopts Sassinak and she begins her quest to go to the Academy, where all Fleet officers receive their training. After prep-school she enters the Academy and excels but is always conscious that she wants to hunt pirates when she gets her stars and her own ship. On her graduation night Abe takes her out for dinner, but Abe is killed. Sassinak suspects it is an assassination. She goes on her first deployment without any family, adopted or no and is an orphan once more.
3443785	/m/09cqr2	2150 AD		1976-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story starts with Jon having an astral dream. He is transported through time with the help of one of his soul mates, Lea and other level nines, into the Macro perspective life. He first finds himself in a field naked—and with both legs. He had lost one leg in the Vietnam War, and used a prosthesis ever since. He runs, and eventually encounters a beautiful woman, Lea. Lea explains that she is Jon's soul twin (his mate will be a beautiful brunette called Carol) and that he has been brought forward to the year 2150 where life is easy, sunny and enriching. He later learns he has to attain a level 3 of Macro perspective for him to be able to stay in 2150. She takes him to a group of buildings around a lake, and connects his soul to a new, whole, adult body based on his body in 1976 that the members of the Macro Society had produced for him to inhabit while his soul was in 2150. He is given a chance to meet a group of people who will act as his family in 2150. He is also introduced to a computer system that exists to help people increase their awareness by answering questions and showing personal information, such as their past lives and the macro philosophy. Any question he has is answered by the computer while he sits in a chair - as everything anyone may need is freely granted to the macro-men and macro-women, who don magnificent untiring bodies, superhuman intelligence and unfailing love and tolerance. His best friend and room mate, Karl, thinks Jon is having an escapist fantasy during REM sleep. He worries about Jon, but they arrange a bet: if possible, Jon will attempt to learn some of the Macro Powers practiced by the people in 2150, and demonstrate them in 1976. Over the next days, Jon is able to attain Macro Contact with a partner in his group; this has unlocked some of his Macro powers. He convinces Karl of their reality when he levitates his dream journal around their apartment. Jon discovers that he can see auras as well. Jon decides to use the powers he learns in 2150 to improve the world in 1976. He selects a woman he finds in the student union, Neda. He uses his powers to persuade her mother to let her move into an apartment in his building, and then he uses his ability to see auras (as well as the pressure points to stimulate change in the phenotype as well as regeneration) to change her appearance to match the personality he sees within her. Karl and Neda eventually fall in love and get married. Later, in 1976, Jon interrupts a couple of motorcycle thugs (who had previously raped and killed 2 female students on the campus) while they intend to rape a teenage girl. Using his powers, Jon attacks them, knocks them down, and helps the girl to leave. Then Jon heals the thugs and takes them back to his apartment building, where he places them in an empty apartment. He uses a post-hypnotic suggestion to prevent them from leaving. The result of all this is that he is unable to make it to 2150 that night, because he was selfish in the use of his powers. He must resolve this problem before he can return to 2150. Working with Neda, Jon instructs the motorcycle thugs in Macro philosophy, and eventually releases them when they have changed. This results in Jon returning to 2150, awakening with a level 2 awareness level. Jon and his partner-mate Carol (in 2150) decide to go to Micro Island, a location where micro-men go on living their wild and hopeless lives under two dictators and where souls desiring a micro life in 2150 can be born to experience and study it. People from the Macro society often go to Micro Island as benevolent missionaries and tutors of Macro philosophy, though they know that micro-men are aggressive and may kill them. Jon and his mate Carol are welcomed by the leaders of Micro Island, two former Macro society members who regressed from their awareness levels and decided to use their powers for control and their own self-interest. They take Carol as a hostage to compel Jon to give them the secrets of Macro knowledge. During this time of mental torture, Jon learns that in a past life he helped stone someone to death and he must face his Karmic debt, allowing the Micro-islanders to stone him just as they did to Carol so everything will be settled, and they will find peace in "loving acceptance". Back in 1976, Jon realizes that he has learned all he can in this lifetime, so he chooses to evolate and dies by committing suicide in his sleep.
3445721	/m/09cv89	Elantris	Brandon Sanderson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book focuses on three principal characters whose experiences are strongly intertwined with and often direct the course of the plot. Much of the book occurs in groupings of three chapters each, one for each of the three main characters. *Raoden, the prince of Arelon, is taken by the Shaod (The profound physical transformation through which one becomes Elantrian. Elantrians look different than they were before the transformation. They cannot die or be killed, except by drastic measures, such as burning or beheading. Their bodies do not repair themselves. They do feel pain, which gradually increases as injuries accumulate. They do not need to eat, but still have hunger pains.) at the beginning of the book, and is whisked off to live in the cursed city of Elantris, once, with its inhabitants, the wonder of the world. Persons transformed by the Shaod are treated as dead by those outside Elantris. Raoden's story line centers on his efforts to improve the Elantrian way of life beyond the anarchy to which it succumbed when Elantris fell. *Sarene, Raoden's political bride whom he has never personally met, arrives in Arelon held by a legally binding contract that says she is married to the prince, even if he is dead. Widow of a supposedly dead prince and a new member of the mostly ill-suited Arelon nobility, she struggles to find out just what is going on, and to help the downtrodden common people, even the people of Elantris. Sarene's story line deals with her attempts to stabilize and improve the monarchy, and to prevent Hrathen's intended revolution. *Hrathen, a Derethi gyorn (high-ranking priest), also soon arrives in Arelon, with a mandate to convert the country to the Shu Dereth religion within three months time, or his religion's armies will come to wipe out the city. Hrathen's story line focuses on his efforts at political maneuvering to sway the Arelene aristocracy and place a converted Derethi on the throne, and on his struggles to come to terms with the religion he is supposed to believe. The story threads intertwine with each other (Sarene's and Hrathen's from almost the beginning of the book) and merge in the culmination of the book's climax.
3446997	/m/09cxc2	Al Capone Does My Shirts	Gennifer Choldenko	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Moose Flanagan and his family have just moved to Alcatraz Island so that his father can take a job as a prison guard and his sister Natalie can go to a special school. Moose misses his old baseball team, and he struggles for recognition in his new school and meets a new girl. His sister, Natalie, who has autism, is rejected from the Esther P. Marinoff, School, crushing her parents' hopes for Natalie's education. Moose takes care of Natalie after school because his mother,Helen teaches music lessons, and he must find a way to deal with Natalie's screaming fits and constant needs (including lemon cake and buttons). Complicating Moose's life even more is Piper, the daughter of the prison warden. Piper lures Moose into her scheme to make money by collecting laundry from their classmates with the promise that Al Capone is, among the convicts assigned, to laundry duty on Alcatraz. Gradually, Moose learns to like life on Alcatraz, even finding ways to help Natalie fit in with the other children on the island; Moose makes a friend in school and finds a way to play baseball. and he is able to convince his mother that he really does have his sister's best interests in mind. After the Flanagans have tried repeatedly, and unsuccessfully to enroll Natalie in the Esther P. Marinoff School, Moose secretly writes a note to Al Capone, asking him to help Natalie. Piper slips the note into a letter to Al Capone. And a few weeks later, Natalie is accepted to a brand-new wing of the school for older autistic children, to the delight of the entire Flanagan family. Moose also helps out his sister with her obsession of collecting and counting buttons. Moose is a very loving and older brother. The last paragraph or so tells of how Moose got a note in his newly- washed shirt that says "done".
3447189	/m/025sr10	The Haunted Storm	Philip Pullman			 Unease and suspicion divide a small village following violence and death. Matthew Cortez is physically involved in the investigation, finding his spiritual problems have a greater depth of reality. Only in the final disastrous confrontation in a ruined Mithraic temple does he, at last, glimpse the possibility of peace. Described by Antonia Fraser as an "honest and enterprising attempt to interweave the eternal and immortal longings of youth into the texture of a contemporary story"
3450117	/m/09d1_z	The Honest Whore	Thomas Dekker			 The play, set in a Milan that is, in common Elizabethan fashion, mostly a thinly-disguised London, presents three plots. In the subplot, the Duke of Milan has feigned the death of his daughter Infelice; his goal is to thwart her love affair with Hippolito, the son of an old enemy. This plot follows the standard romantic formula: Hippolito remains constant to the supposedly dead beloved. The two are finally reunited when a doctor who had aided the Duke in the trick repents and informs Hippolito of the truth. He is reunited with and marries her at Bethlem Royal Hospital—the pretense at Italian color having been all but abandoned. The second subplot concerns Candido, a citizen and linen draper. He is recently married, and his new wife is upset: her tongue, she says, "wants that virtue which all women's tongues have, to anger their husbands." In the play, she perpetrates various schemes to arouse her husband's ire. At last she manipulates him into wearing an apprentice's clothes in his own shop. He tolerates an assault without complaint, and she succeeds in having him taken to Bethlem, which he also tolerates calmly. Seeing that he cannot be roused to anger, his suddenly contrite wife hastens to petition the Duke to free him. This plot appears to have been the most popular during the period; it provided the subtitle and running title of many editions before 1635. In the title plot, a prostitute named Bellafront falls in love with Hippolito. Devoted to the memory of his beloved, Hippolito spurns her. Bellafront is motivated to examine her sin, repents, and attempts again to woo Hippolito. He again rejects her. She announces that she is returning to her father in the country; however, in the next act she appears at Bethlem, seemingly insane. Finally, after playing a key role in the reconciliation of the Duke to his daughter and new son-in-law, she drops her madness, which she announces was feigned, and asks to be married to Matheo—a rake who was the first to seduce her. The Duke forces this marriage, and even Matheo assents, albeit rather cavalierly.
3450274	/m/09d29_	Ambassador of the Shadows	Pierre Christin	1975		 Valérian and Laureline are travelling to Point Central with Earth's new Ambassador. Shortly before they arrive, the Ambassador calls them into his quarters for a meeting. He informs them that he intends to take advantage of the fact that it's Earth's turn to preside over the council at Point Central – he intends to bring order to the galaxy by proposing a federation with Earth as the keystone and police. He reminds the two young agents of the importance that he is protected. He also entrusts Laureline with the source of their funds while they are on Point Central – a Grumpy Converter from Bluxte, a small hedgehog-like creature that can defecate multiple copies of anything it eats. The astroship lands at Point Central and the three Terrans spacewalk to the Earth's segment. Entering, they are greeted by the assembled dignitaries that occupy the segment. The Ambassador begins his opening speech but, suddenly, the partition wall melts and a group of armed aliens burst in, opening fire with cocoon guns from Xoxos. The cocoons envelop everyone present rendering them unconscious except for Valérian and Laureline who react in time to put their spacesuit helmets back on. Laureline is trapped by one of the cocoons so Valérian is forced to pursue the aliens, who have taken the Ambassador, alone. Following them to their ship, he is captured and the ship blasts off into space. Freeing herself from her cocoon, Laureline is dismayed to discover Valérian has gone. There is one other survivor of the attack – Colonel Diol, the assistant head of protocol. Suddenly there is a ring on the main lock chamber of the segment. Diol is horrified – each race usually stays in its segment and only communicates with the others via the screens. Three small aliens enter and introduce themselves as the Shingouz. They have come to offer their services to the Ambassador as vendors of information. Laureline shows them the devastation wrought by the attack and asks them what they know. Using the Grumpy, Laureline pays them in Ebaba pearls and they suggest she tries asking the Kamuniks, allies of Earth. For a further payment of pearls they give her a map of Point Central. The map has a large unmarked white section. When she complains that the map is incomplete, the Shingouz tell her no such map exists. Laureline leaves the Earth segment with Diol and heads for the Kamunik segment. The passageways between the segments are home to the Zools – mute beings whose planet was destroyed thousands of years ago and who now act as maintenance personnel for Point Central. The Kamuniks tell Laureline that the Suffuss have reported a large gathering of Bagoulins in their segment. Bagoulins are mercenaries and would be the sort to use cocoon guns. The Suffuss's segment is unusual compared with the others – it is a place of ill-repute that attracts the denizens of many of the other segments. Laureline is offered a chance to try out a simulation of Earth. Taking up the offer, she pulls a gun on one of the apparently human males provided. The Suffuss reveal their true nature – they are shape-shifters. Laureline asks them for help in spying on the Bagoulins. They agree, in return for payment in aphrodisiac tablets from Txil. The Suffuss surrounds Laureline and takes the shape of a Bagoulin female. Entering the room where the Bagoulins are celebrating, Laureline has arrived just in time – the Bagoulin shaman shows an image of a spacecraft landing on their home planet. The Ambassador and Valérian are taken out and sealed into a pair of translucent spheres before being cast into the Lake of Perfumed Waters. Out of the lake rises a Groubos spacecraft now carrying Valérian and the Ambassador. Laureline and Diol depart in search of the Groubos. On the way, the Shingouz call them on one of the video screens. They inform them that what they need to do is capture one of the jellyfish-like Zuur pilots who keep the Groubos informed of events. Taking an armored maintenance machine from the Green Canal, Laureline and Diol enter the Groubos' segment. They capture one of the Zuurs and resurface. Laureline places the Zuur on her head and is presented with a series of images – the Groubos' spacecraft meeting another spacecraft and Valérian and the Ambassador are transferred to the new ship. The images end abruptly when the Zuur, which can only survive out of water for a few minutes, explodes. Having reached a dead end, a dejected Laureline and Diol buy some shellfish from a fisherman. He suggests that they visit the Gniarfs-Dreamers who can project a person's mind into the mind of their choice. Laureline pays them a visit and they hook her up to one of her machines. Soon she has made contact with Valerian's mind. Still on the alien spacecraft, Valérian has managed to free himself from his sphere and then frees the Ambassador. The ship is deserted apart from the two of them. The Ambassador is anxious to get back to Point Central to deliver his speech – there are ten thousand Earth warships waiting to surround Point Central at his order to enforce the proposed federation. The spacecraft lands on an island in the middle of an ocean. They are greeted by what appear to be primitive humanoids. They explain that they built the first segment of Point Central but have since evolved and have lost interest in taking part in galactic politics. They have even forgotten their own name and the name of their planet and know themselves only as Shadows. They tell the Ambassador that they will not allow any one race to exert full control over Point Central and that they have the power to annihilate Earth's fleet if needed. The children of the island take Valérian and the Ambassador to the House of Wisdom. Suddenly the dream is interrupted. Laureline moves on, taking Diol and the Grumpy, who by now is almost burnt-out from the effort of having to transmute so many things, and makes for the Shadows' segment which must be located in the blank section of the map she bought from the Shingouz. On the way, Laureline is surprised to see the Zools congregating for some gathering. Finally finding the entrance she arrives at the Island of the Shadows. Reaching the House of Wisdom, she finds Valérian and the Ambassador. The Ambassador is a changed man from his experience with the Shadows and now proposes to deliver a message of peace to the council. Heading back, there are now more and more Zools gathering in the passageways. Reaching the Hall of Screens, the Ambassador enters to make his speech. Laureline is approached by one of the Shingouz. With the Grumpy dying, she has no more money but convinces the Shingouz to give up his information anyway. The Zools, fed up with corruption on Point Central, have decided to clean up matters, restore the moral code of the council and expel the profiteers. A group of Zools arrive to arrest the Shingouz. He tells Laureline not to worry – there will always be a place for people with the right information, like him. The Ambassador emerges from the council looking upset. They would not allow him to make his speech and the council has suspended Earth's membership for 100 years: their segment is to be blown up. Laureline takes charge and orders the war-fleet to assist in Earth's withdrawal. Heading for Earth, Valérian wants to activate the main motors but Laureline is putting them to another use – regenerating the Grumpy.
3452658	/m/09d7c3	Be More Chill	Ned Vizzini		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Be More Chill is written in the first person, from the perspective of high school student Jeremy Heere. Jeremy is a teenage loser, who can't get with any girls and is frequently tormented by bullies, usually Rich, a short-statured, but well-built popular teen. After hearing from Rich about the "squip"--a quantum computer in pill form that can communicate directly with your brain once ingested—Jeremy purchases the pill at the back of a Payless Shoes store, and transforms from a klutzy loser to a member of the social elite.
3456121	/m/09dd91	Linda Condon	Joseph Hergesheimer		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Linda Condon is raised by her single mother, who denies the girl any information about her absentee father. Mother and daughter live together in a seemingly endless succession of hotels in various regions of the United States, and Linda receives little formal education. While Stella Condon frequently goes out with men of dubious reputation, her daughter, who is always loyal to her shallow and superficial mother, spends her early adolescent days alone in her hotel room or with other guests in the artificial and phony atmosphere of the lobby. Stella Condon does have a suitor, a self-made millionaire and widower of Jewish descent called Moses Feldt, but she explains to Linda that she is not going to repeat past mistakes by getting married again. However, when Stella Condon realizes the onset of old age and her vanishing beauty, she consents to a marriage of convenience with Feldt. From one day to the next Linda's itinerant life is replaced by life in a palace-like New York mansion together with her mother, Feldt and his two daughters. Already at the early age of 15 Linda experiences a "sense of looking on, as if morning, noon and night she were at another long play. [...] Probably it would continue without change through her entire life." Through Feldt's daughter Judith and her boyfriend Markue, Linda, not yet 18 years of age, is launched into New York society. At a party she meets Dodge Pleydon, a sculptor many years her senior who is fascinated by the young girl despite, or maybe because of, her frozen charm and subdued behaviour. Her first kiss, which she gets from Pleydon later that night, does not mean a lot to her, so she is hardly moved when he announces his intention to go abroad for an indefinite period of time. Her life takes a decisive new direction when, after attending a concert, she is approached by her father's sister, who has recognized her immediately because, as she claims, Linda is taking after her father. Naturally curious to learn more about the paternal branch of her family, Linda accepts her aunt's invitation to visit her and her sister in Philadelphia and to stay in the house where her father, now dead, was raised. Her decision to go there leads to an ever-increasing estrangement from her mother. In Philadelphia, Linda is introduced to her aunts' 45 year-old nephew Arnaud Hallet, a lawyer and confirmed bachelor who immediately falls for the girl just like Pleydon before him. Caught between the two men, who both propose to her, Linda eventually decides to marry Hallet, with the fact that he has "a hundred thousand dollars a year" certainly adding to his attraction. Seven years later, Arnaud and Linda Hallet have two children, Lowrie and Vigné. Remembering her own unhappy childhood spent in hotels, Linda realizes how different from herself her children are being brought up. However, she feels inadequate as a wife and especially as a mother. She sees that both Lowrie and Vigné have inherited their love of books from their father, while she herself has never taken up reading. Also, she regrets not being able to play the piano. And although she is only in her late twenties, she imagines her beauty is fading without finding solace in the "vicarious immortality of children". She believes she has "lost her youth without any compensating gain of knowledge". Several years pass until Lowrie becomes a law student at university. Vigné follows in her mother's and maternal grandmother's footsteps by getting married at the age of 18. Linda admires her daughter, who with perfect ease has picked an eligible young man, and whose "radiant happiness" is something she has never experienced herself. When she learns that a public statue created by Pleydon has been destroyed she suddenly feels sympathy and maybe even more for the sculptor, who has always considered her his muse. Considering that Arnaud Hallet has "had over twenty years of her life, the best", Linda leaves him without a word to go and live with Pleydon. Once at his studio, she realizes that there is no way she could stay with that ageing, sickly man whose love for her could never be more than platonic. On the following day, she returns to her husband without ever telling him about her intended betrayal. At the end of the novel, three years after her aborted decision to live with Pleydon, her son Lowrie marries a college-educated suffragette while Linda Hallet herself, while grieving over Pleydon's death, starts dyeing her hair in a fruitless struggle against time.
3456243	/m/09ddkc	Badenheim 1939	Aharon Appelfeld	1978	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Badenheim is a primarily Jewish resort town in Austria that hosts a yearly arts festival, organized by Dr. Pappenheim. Slowly, the Nazi regime, represented by the "Sanitation Department", begins shutting down the town and preparing to move its residents to Eastern Europe. The citizens begin blaming each other and losing their minds. Despite impending doom, others remain optimistic and refuse to see the coming Holocaust.
3457639	/m/09dh32	The Elephant Man	Bernard Pomerance			 The Elephant Man opens with Frederick Treves, an up-and-coming surgeon, meeting his new employer Carr-Gomm, the administrator of the London Hospital. Ross, the manager of a freak show invites a crowd on Whitechapel Road to come view John Merrick, the Elephant Man. Treves happens upon the freak show and is intrigued by Merrick's disorder. He insists that he must study Merrick further; Ross agrees, for a fee. Treves then gives a lecture on Merrick's anatomy, making Merrick stand on display while Treves describes his condition to the audience. The freak show travels to Brussels after being driven out of London by the police. Merrick tries to converse with three freak show "pinheads," or people suffering from microcephaly and mental retardation. The "pinheads" go onstage to sing "We Are the Queens of the Congo," but the police will not allow Merrick to perform, because they consider his condition "indecent." Ross decides that Merrick is more trouble than he's worth, steals his savings, and sends him back to London. When Merrick arrives in London, his appearance incites a crowd to riot. The train's conductor and a policeman are able to fetch Treves to calm the situation. Treves takes Merrick to the London Hospital and interviews a woman, Nurse Sandwich, for the position of Merrick's caretaker. Sandwich assures Treves that she has cared for lepers in Africa and is quite prepared for anything. However, when she sees Merrick taking a bath, she bolts from the room and refuses to take the job. Bishop How visits Merrick and declares him a "true Christian in the rough." He tells Treves he would like to educate Merrick in religion. Carr-Gomm argues with Bishop How about the importance of science versus the importance of religion. Carr-Gomm announces that, due to a letter he had printed in The Times, the people of London have donated enough money to allow Merrick to live at the hospital for life. Treves tells Gomm that he is glad Merrick now has a place where he can stay without being stared at, and is determined that Merrick should lead a normal life. When two attendants, Will and Snork, are caught peeking into Merrick's room, Will is fired and Snork is given a severe warning. Treves believes that it is important to enforce these rules, but Merrick worries what will happen to Will and his family. Merrick grew up in the workhouses, and wishes that no one had to suffer that fate. Treves says that it's just the way things are. Treves hires Mrs. Kendal, an actress, to converse with Merrick. He feels that it is important for Merrick to meet women, and that Mrs. Kendal can use her acting skills to hide any revulsion that she might feel. While looking at photographs of Merrick, Mrs. Kendal asks about his penis, which is undeformed. Treves nervously explains that Merrick has a bone disorder, meaning that his penis &mdash; which contains no bone &mdash; is not afflicted. Mrs. Kendal notes that if Treves is embarrassed so easily then Merrick must be very lonely indeed. When Mrs. Kendal meets Merrick, she requires all of her self-control in order to disguise her horror at Merrick’s appearance. After several minutes of strained conversation. Mrs. Kendal mentions Romeo and Juliet. Merrick amazes Mrs. Kendal with his thoughtful and sensitive views on Romeo and the nature of love. Mrs. Kendal says that she will bring some of her friends to meet Merrick, then shakes his hand and tells him how truly pleased she is to meet him. Merrick dissolves into tears as Treves tells Mrs. Kendal that it is the first time a woman has ever shaken his hand. Mrs. Kendal's high society friends visit Merrick and bring him gifts while he builds a model of St. Phillip's church, having to work with his one good hand. He tells Mrs. Kendal that St. Phillip’s church is an imitation of grace, and his model is therefore an imitation of an imitation. When Treves comments that all of humanity is a mere illusion of heaven, Merrick says that God should have used both hands. Merrick's new friends &mdash; Bishop How, Gomm, the Duchess, Princess Alexandra, Treves, and Mrs. Kendal &mdash; all comment upon how, in different ways, they see themselves reflected in him. However, Treves notes that Merrick’s condition is worsening with time. Merrick tells Mrs. Kendal that he needs a mistress, and suggests that he would like her to do that for him. Mrs. Kendal listens compassionately, but tells Merrick that it is unlikely that he will ever have a mistress. Merrick admits that he has never even seen a naked woman. Mrs. Kendal is flattered by his show of trust in her, and realizes that she has come to trust him. She undresses and allows him to see her naked body. Treves enters and is shocked, sending Mrs. Kendal away. Ross comes to the hospital to ask Merrick to rejoin the freak show. Ross's health has drastically worsened, and he tells Merrick that without help he is doomed to a painful death. He tries to convince Merrick to charge the society members who visit him. Merrick refuses to help Ross, finally standing up to him after suffering years of abuse at his hands. Ross makes one final pathetic plea to Merrick, who refuses him, saying that's just the way things are. Merrick asks Treves what he believes about God and heaven. Then he confronts Treves, criticizing what he did to Mrs. Kendal and the rigid standards by which he judges everybody. Treves realizes that he has been too harsh with Merrick and tells him that although he will write to Mrs. Kendal, he does not believe she will return. After Merrick leaves the room, Treves says that it is because he doesn’t want her to see Merrick die. Treves has a nightmare that he has been put on display while Merrick delivers a lecture about his terrifying normality, his rigidity, and the acts of cruelty he can commit upon others "for their own good". Carr-Gomm and Treves discuss Merrick’s impending death. Treves displays frustration at the fact that the more normal Merrick pretends to be, the worse his condition becomes. He confronts Bishop How, telling him that he believes Merrick’s faith is merely another attempt to emulate others. It comes out that the real source of his frustrations is the chaos of the world around him, with his patients seemingly doing everything they can to shorten their own lives. No matter how hard he tries he cannot help them, just as he cannot help Merrick. He finally begs for the Bishop to help him. Merrick finishes his model of the church. He goes to sleep sitting up, a posture which he must adopt due to the weight of his head. As he sleeps he sees visions of the pinheads, now singing that they are the Queens of the Cosmos. They lay him down to sleep normally, and he dies. Snork discovers his body and runs out screaming that the Elephant Man is dead. In the final scene, Carr-Gomm reads a letter he has written to The Times, outlining Merrick’s stay at the hospital, his death and his plans for the remaining funds donated for Merrick’s care. When he asks Treves if he has anything else to add, a distressed Treves says he does not and leaves. As Carr-Gomm finishes the letter Treves rushes back in, saying that he’s thought of something. Carr-Gomm tells the doctor that it is too late: it is over.
3459450	/m/09dlhc	On the False Earths	Pierre Christin	1977		 India, the nineteenth century. British forces from the East India Company are attacking a fort. Among them is Valérian, who suddenly breaks from the pack, to the surprise of his compatriots who warn that his actions are “not part of the program”. Deep inside the fort, he follows the Maharajah who activates an alien communications device and transmits a message that there is an external influence at work. The unknown person at the other end responds that the program is to be modified. Valérian knocks out the Maharajah and his guards and forwards the co-ordinates the transmission is coming from to Laureline. Pursued by both the British soldiers and the Indians, he is cornered on the ramparts of the fort. Shot, he plunges into the moat but there is to bottom and falls straight through the water into open space. On the astroship, Laureline looks on in horror as Valérian dies. She tells her companion, Jadna, that she'll never get used to this. Jadna, a historian, is completely unruffled by the turn of events and orders Laureline to prepare for the next incursion. London, England. Valérian, dressed as a nineteenth century gentleman, waits on a deserted street corner. Slowly, the streets fill up. One person in particular attracts Valérian's attention, getting out of a carriage. His name is Sir Percy. Valérian drags him into an alley. Sir Percy complains that this is not part of the program before Valérian knocks him out. Posing as Sir Percy, Valérian enters a gentleman's club. Searching the club for his objective, he comes upon a private room where he is expected. At the head of the table is the prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone and surrounding him are his cabinet. Before Valérian can do anything else, one of the club's servants enters to warn them that their visitor is not part of the program. Valérian draws his gun but is happy to let Gladstone activate another one of the alien communications devices, this time concealed in an ornate clock. While Valérian gathers a new set of co-ordinates, the device responds with new orders and he is attacked. He flees the club on a bicycle and is soon pursued not only by the members of the club but also all the bystanders on the street. He cycles clear of the but suddenly finds he has run out of land and cycles over the edge into space. Laureline is upset at seeing Valérian die once more. But, again, Jadna orders her to get ready for the next intervention. San Francisco, Chinatown, 1895. Valérian is walking through the streets. He is suddenly surprised to see a man driving past in a Harley Davidson – a blatant anachronism. He continues on his way to the docks where he observes a group of men entering a building for a meeting. Laureline and Jadna are watching what's happening from the astroship. He enters the building, finds the communications device and transmits the co-ordinates. The device orders immediate destruction of the exterior menace. Valérian retreats but is shot and falls to the ground outside the building. Laureline's view is restricted and she switches to the observation satellite – we can see that “San Francisco” is floating in space like an island, surrounded by a force-field to keep the atmosphere in. Zooming in, Laureline sees the men catch up to Valérian and kill him. Jadna observes that each new location moves them to a recreation of a point slightly further on in time and estimates that the next location will be near the beginning of the twentieth century. She asks Laureline to prepare another one. A launch leaves the astroship and flies to another of these strange islands in space – this time a recreation of Paris. The launch opens and Valérian emerges and walks into town. There are more anachronisms – a pinball machine in a café and a thug with a Tommy gun who shoots Valérian dead. Back on the astroship, Laureline and Jadna watch this and realise that their adversary has caught on to their activities. Another Valérian must be dispatched. Entering the cargo bay, there are hundreds of capsules, each containing a Valérian clone in suspended animation. At the top of the bay lies the real Valérian, also in suspended animation. Reviving the next Valérian, number 210, Laureline has to explain to it that it isn't the real Valérian and that it has only a lifespan of three hours. They have been made so that Laureline and Jadna can complete their mission. The latest Valérian is given psychological conditioning to prepare him for his mission and is then sent in a launch to the recreation of Paris. This time he's ready for the man with the machine gun and kills him before leaping into a car where the communications device is located under the dashboard. Valérian gets the co-ordinates before the driver swerves the car off the edge and out into space. Jadna is sure that this set of co-ordinates will lead to their, still unknown, adversary. Laureline makes the spatio-temporal jump and they materialise amid a collection of recreations of monuments from Earth, including the pyramids, the Vatican and the Blue Mosque. The astroship crashed to the ground amid a recreation of one of the battles of the First World War. Laureline is knocked unconscious. French troops attack the astroship. Jadna goes to the cargo bay and revives all the Valérian clones as well as the original Valérian, puts them in German uniform and sends them out to fight. The real Valérian is exhausted due to loss of the blood he had to give to make all the clones and, while the others go over the top, he heads off in search of someplace to sleep. Jadna goes back to check on Laureline but is communicated with telepathically by the alien creator of all these artificial Earths who invites her to join him. Using a jet pack Jadna crosses the battlefield to the alien's ship where she is, at last, greeted by her quarry. The Alien explains that it comes from a planet that has no history and whose society has remained unchanged since the beginning of time. Accordingly he has been fascinated by the Earth's rich history. Initially, he tried to visit the Earth's past but was driven away by the Spatio-Temporal Service who feared he was trying to upset the timeline. Instead, he decided to make recreations of various key moments in Earth's history to improve his understanding. He shows Jadna his vast library of books, films and photographs all from Earth as well as his machines for creating each artificial Earth and the androids who populate it. Jadna explains that she was sent, along with Valérian and Laureline, to determine whether these were being used to plan an invasion of Earth. The Alien tells her that his ship has run out of power and that he is at her mercy. He offers to show her more of his collection of documents. Regaining consciousness, Laureline is horrified to discover that the real Valérian has gone and the clones with him. Leaving the ship, she is faced with a vista of devastation – the corpses of the Valérian clones piled high on the battlefield around her. Searching the corpses to see if the real Valérian is among them, she is close to despair when she finds the real Valérian alive and well asleep in a bombed out house. They head for the Alien's ship where they find the Alien and Jadna deep in conversation. Laureline demands that their astroship be released. Jadna accuses Laureline of being uncouth. Laureline retorts that all the periods of history the Alien examined showed Earth's past at its worst – a past that will eventually lead to the events of 1986 seen in The City of Shifting Waters. Leaving Jadna with the Alien and telling her that she can call Galaxity when she's ready to return, Laureline and Valérian take off in the astroship. Valérian is still in need of recuperation so Laureline, like all women, a creature of contradiction, takes him to the real 1881 for a holiday.
3459528	/m/09dlp_	Heroes of the Equinox	Pierre Christin	1978		 Valérian, accompanied by Laureline, is one of four representatives from different races dispatched to the planet Simlane. Landing their astroship at Simlane's astroport, Valérian discovers he is the last to arrive. They are greeted by the members of the Simlane Great Assembly and taken to the city, which is crumbling and falling into ruin. The entire population is made up of old men and women. The head of the assembly explains that the people of Simlane are sterile and that every hundred equinoxes a new generation must take over. The best of the men of Simlane are sent to conquer the Island of Children but this time all that have left have either never returned or have returned mutilated in some way and no children have been forthcoming. So the leaders of Simlane have resorted to seeking champions from other worlds in order to repopulate the planet. Arriving at the Great Theatre, Valérian meets the other champions – Irmgaal of Krahan, Ortzog of Bourgnouf and Blumflum of Malalum. Each in turn demonstrates their powers: Irmgaal cleaves a great rock in two with his flaming sword, Ortzog uses his mighty chains of freedom to smash a pillar, Blumflum destroys another pillar by growing vines around it that strangle it. Beside them Valérian looks rather pathetic when he uses his sharp shooting skills to shoot the top off one of the remaining pillars. The four champions are brought to the pier to set off for Filene, the Island of Children where they must reach the summit. The challenge will last three days – on the first day they will confront material forces, the second monsters from the animal kingdom and on the third traps of the spirit. Laureline asks what happens after the third day, she is told that nobody knows since those who succeed never return – children in their image arrive in vessels pushed by the last wave of the equinox. Just then all four champions fly away from Simlane towards Filene. Reaching Filene, each champion chooses a different route to follow to the summit of the mountain. Valérian is challenged by rockfalls and narrow crevices, Irmgaal by stifling mists and lava flows, Ortzog by deadly cold that almost freezes him solid and Blumflum by the blazing sun of a searing desert. But, while Irmgaal's sword hacks through the molten rock, Ortzog's chains shatter the ice and Blumflum's seeds create an oasis in the desert, Valérian loses his footing a tumbles to the bottom of a rocky crevasse. The following morning Irmgaal finds himself in a jungle facing a dragon-like monster, Ortzog fights off a herd of giant armoured buffalo and Blumflum has to deal with giant birds. Still trying to climb out of the crevasse, Valérian has to deal with a pack of rats. Dawn breaks on the third morning and the final stage of the competition begins. While Valérian is still climbing, Irmgaal, Ortzog and Blumflum all reach the summit at the same time. Before them lies a beautiful palace. A fight breaks out between all three as they struggle to be the first to reach it. They are stopped by an old man who introduces himself as the Examiner. He reminds them that the challenge of the third day will be a spiritual not a physical test. The Examiner brings them to the Dome of Imaginary Revelations where each champion is asked to speak about how they see Simlane's future should they succeed and father the next generation. As each champion speaks, images of the world they would build appear in the dome. Irmgaal goes first and promises to bring space travel to Simlane with which they will use to spread Simlane's civilising influence across the Galaxy. As he delivers his speech, we see images of mighty armies and powerful space fleets conquering worlds and crushing all opposition. Ortzog goes next, he intends make Simlane more efficient – tourists will be herded on specially marked itineraries, luxury buildings will be demolished to make way for heavy industry and intensive agriculture. All this will be run by a powerful centralised bureaucracy which will promote equality for all. Simlane will spread its influence through protective interplanetary agreements with deserving worlds. Blumflum now takes the stand. He will create a world or harmony where everyone will leave the cities to crumble and return to a simpler life closer to nature where all will submit to a benevolent religion of meditation. The images displayed, however, show a planet ravaged by starvation and poverty. At last, Valérian, exhausted, reaches the summit of the mountain. The Examiner asks him about his vision of Simlane's future. Valérian explains that he has no clear idea, that it's not up to him to determine her future and he would hope that everyone would try to be happy in their own way. The trials over, the four champions are brought to the Palace of the Supreme Mother. They are given apartments and told that the winner will be declared in the morning. The next day the winner has been announced. To everyone's astonishment, it is Valérian. A whirlwind descends and sweeps the other three champions away back to Simlane. Valérian is led into a chamber where he meets the Supreme Mother of Filene a giant blonde woman. She explains to Valérian that she chose him because he was happy to leave the children to determine their own future. She explains that she rejected the previous champions because they were too interested in impressing tourists than how their children would turn out. She shows Valérian a room where the previous successful champions live out their lives – they have all shrunk to just a few inches in height. The Supreme Mother takes Valérian in her arms. Back at Simlane, the Irmgaal, Ortzog and Blumflum have washed up on the shore. Laureline, worried about Valérian, sets sail to the island in search of him. Arriving at the harbour in Filene, she sees a huge flotilla of ships ready to set sail. She manages to climb to the top of the mountain with little difficulty, unlike the four champions before her, and as she reaches the Palace, the doors open and thousands of toddlers, all bearing some resemblance to Valérian, pour out and make their way to the boats in the harbour. Laureline is greeted by the Examiner and demands to be brought to see Valérian. The Examiner obliges – Valérian is in the room with the previous successful candidates. Like them, he has shrunk to only a few inches in height. Laureline is furious that Valérian has been unfaithful to her. The ships arrive at Simlane and disgorge their cargo of children. The old people of Simlane are delighted with the children and can die in peace. Laureline takes Valérian with her and takes off in the astroship for Galaxity. Valérian begs Laureline, who is still angry at Valérian's actions, to call Galaxity's medical service so he can be restored to his normal size.
3462473	/m/09dsjx	Creation	Gore Vidal	1981-01-01	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story follows the adventures of a fictional "Cyrus Spitama", an Achaemenid Persian diplomat of the 5th century BCE who travels the known world comparing the political and religious beliefs of various nation states of the time. Over the course of his life, he meets many influential philosophical figures of his time, including Zoroaster, Socrates, the Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tsu, and Confucius. Cyrus, who is the grandson of Zoroaster and who survives his murder, grows up at the Achaemenid court as a quasi-noble, and becomes a close friend of his schoolmate Xerxes. Because of Cyrus' talent for languages, the Achaemenid King, Darius I, sends him as an ambassador to certain kingdoms in India, but Cyrus is more interested in the many religious theories he encounters there than in establishing profitable trade relations for Darius. After coming to power, Cyrus' former schoolmate, now King Xerxes I, sends Cyrus to China, where he spends several years as a captive and "honored guest" in one of the warring states of the Middle Kingdom, and spends a great deal of time with Confucius. Upon returning home, Cyrus witnesses the defeat of Xerxes and the end of the Greco-Persian wars. Cyrus then goes into retirement, but is called upon by Xerxes' successor, Artaxerxes I, to serve as ambassador to Athens and witness to the secret peace treaty between Pericles and himself. The story is related in the first person as recalled to his Greek great-nephew Democritus. Cyrus's recollection is said to be motivated in part by his desire to set the record straight following the publication by Herodotus of an account of the Greco-Persian wars.
3462541	/m/09dspq	Young Bond Book 4	Charlie Higson	2007-09-06	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book starts with a prologue on Lagrimas Negras (black tears), an island haven for criminals in the Caribbean. The boss, El Huracán, informs his lunch guests that one of them has broken the rule against contacting the outside world. Robert King is tricked into confessing, then made to run La Avenida de Muerte (The Avenue of Death), a deadly obstacle course. He is killed by a jaguar less than halfway through. Following the events in Double or Die, James Bond travels to Mexico with his Aunt Charmian, who is visiting the ruined Mayan city of Palenque. In the fishing village of Tres Hermanas, Angel Corona, a young Mexican pickpocket who closely resembles James, steals Charmian's bag. James chases and corners him. Corona is subdued and soon arrested by the local police. While Jack Stone, an American flying ace and friend of Charmian's flies Charmian to Palenque (as a storm is on the way and she has to leave that night). James is left in Tres Hermanas with Stone's children, where he quickly finds problems: Stone's daughter, Precious, is a spoiled, self-centered girl about the same age as James, while her younger brother, Jack Junior or JJ, is immature and annoying. During a devastating hurricane, some gangsters led by Mrs Glass enter the Stone house and steal the safe. James knocks one of the gunmen, Manny, out of the window. The youngsters hide from the gangsters and the storm in an underground ice house. After the storm, James takes the Stone children to town in Jack Stone's Duesenberg, which is wrecked by a sudden flood. JJ is nearly killed, but is rescued by Garcia, James's sailor friend. When JJ and Precious are captured by the remaining four robbers, James passes himself off as Angel Corona to join the gang and Garcia tags along. The names of the other criminals are Strabo, Whatzat and Sakata. The Japanese gangster Sakata befriends James and teaches him ju-jitsu. Mrs. Glass takes the group to an old oil field in order to get tools and explosives to open the safe. She tells Precious what her plans are: Jack Stone had lost money after the end of the war and had become a smuggler to regain money; one of his clients was an ex-U.S Navy officer who had stolen some important documents about the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet. Sakata had been sent to retrieve the plans, which would be very valuable to the Japanese in the event of a war. However, the documents are not in the safe, so presumably Stone had not removed them from his plane. Meanwhile Whatzat and Garcia die during an escape attempt. James learns from Mrs.Glass that Whatzat name was Charlie Moore. When JJ's injured leg becomes severely infected, Sakata, prompted by James, leaves the gang and takes JJ to hospital in Vera Cruz. Mrs. Glass and Strabo make a new plan to flee to Lagrimas Negras and sell the documents to the ruler of the island, El Huracán. James and Precious escape and camp out for a while. Precious has undergone a change in character; she is no longer rude and self-centered, and even develops affections for James, which she expresses by waiting for him to fall asleep and then kissing him. Then Manny shows up in a car. He is very sick, as he has had brain damage following his fall at the Stone Mansion. He slips in and out of confusion. Finally, James and Precious knock him out of the car as he sleeps and escape. They head for Pelanque, but are unable to stop Mrs Glass escaping with the documents, though Strabo is killed by army ants. The Pelanque Ruins are mentioned in the chapter titled "Pelanque" where James and Precious fall asleep in the tall tower. Mrs. Glass goes to Lagrimas Negras alone. James and Precious follow on a ship. Manny follows them and gives chase. He is killed by El Huracán's guards and James and Precious are employed as servants on Lagrimas Negras. James discovers that when the guests of Lagrimas Negras run out of money, they are forced to work as slaves on El Huracán's farm. James also hears that running La Avenida de Muerte is the only way to get off Lagrimas Negras, though no one has ever survived it. Precious steals a map of the obstacle course from a bathroom she is cleaning and she and James start training. They trick El Huracán into letting them run the course which he does reluctantly, as he was hoping James would stay on as his successor. James and Precious successfully traverse many obstacles, helped by their advance knowledge. Finally they reach a massive water tank containing a vicious crocodile that will almost certainly kill them, as there is no way out. However, James has left some explosives in the maintenance tunnel and blows out the wall. He is knocked unconscious by the landing. He wakes up on a rock with Precious, who passionately kisses him while they wait to be collected. El Huracán keeps his promise to release them and the book ends with James and Precious leaving Lagrimas Negras with Jack Stone. They share a private moment watching the sunset, during which Precious admits to James that she loves him (despite she understands he must return to Britain after the stories events).
3464070	/m/09dwkb	Watch and Ward	Henry James	1878-05-29	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Wealthy and leisured Roger Lawrence adopts twelve-year-old Nora Lambert after her father kills himself in the hotel room next to Lawrence's. Roger had refused financial assistance to the man, and he feels remorse. Nora is not a pretty child but she soon starts to develop, as does Roger's idea of eventually marrying her. Unfortunately for Roger, once Nora matures into a beautiful young woman, she is attracted to two other men: worthless George Fenton and the somewhat hypocritical minister, Hubert Lawrence (Roger's cousin). After various adventures Nora winds up in the clutches of Fenton in New York City, but Roger comes to her rescue. Roger and Nora marry in a conventional happy ending.
3464137	/m/09dwmf	Confidence	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While sketching in Siena, Bernard Longueville meets Angela Vivian and her mother. Later, Bernard's friend and self-proclaimed "mad" scientist Gordon Wright calls Longueville to Baden-Baden to pass judgment on whether he should marry Angela. Bernard recommends against it, based on his belief that Angela is something of a mysterious coquette. So Gordon marries the lightweight (in both senses) Blanche Evers. After a couple years Longueville again meets Angela at a French beach resort and realizes he loves her. They get engaged, and Angela tells Bernard that she had refused Gordon when he proposed to her. Eventually Angela manages to reconcile Gordon and Blanche, who were becoming estranged due to a supposed extramarital affair Gordon had. Everybody lives happily ever after.
3467188	/m/09f0lm	Nothing Lasts Forever	Roderick Thorp	1979	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Nothing Lasts Forever is a sequel to Thorp's 1966 novel The Detective. It follows Detective Joe Leland, who is visiting the Klaxon Oil Corporation's headquarters in Los Angeles, where his daughter Steffie Leland Gennaro works. While he is visiting, a German terrorist gang led by a person named Anton "Tony" Gruber takes over the entire building. Leland remains undetected and fights off the terrorists one by one, aided outside the building by LAPD Sergeant Al Powell. In the year 1975, author Roderick Thorp saw the film The Towering Inferno. After seeing the film, Thorp had a dream of seeing a man being chased through a building by men with guns. He woke up and took that idea and turned it into the The Detective sequel, Nothing Lasts Forever.
3467227	/m/09f0m_	Ravage			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the storyline, a civilization much more advanced than ours falls to its knees when electricity suddenly disappears. Chaos, disease, and famine ensue, which readers witness through the adventures of a small group of survivors led by François Deschamps. The group leaves Paris and starts a journey toward Provence where the survivors will create a new patriarchal society with Deschamps as their leader.
3467831	/m/09f1fj	La Nuit des temps			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 When a French expedition in Antarctica reveals the ruins of a 900,000 year old civilization, scientists from all over the world flock to the site to help explore and understand. The entire planet watches via global satellite television, mesmerized, as the explorers uncover a chamber in which a man and a woman have been in suspended animation since, as the French title suggests, 'the night of time'. The woman, Eléa, is awakened, and through a translating machine she tells the story of her world, herself and her husband Paikan, and how war destroyed her civilization. She also hints at an incredibly advanced knowledge that her still-dormant companion possesses (who is not her love Paikan, but the scientist Coban, whom she hates), knowledge that could give energy and food to all humans at no cost. But the superpowers of the world are not ready to let Eléa's secrets spread, and show that, 900,000 years and an apocalypse later, mankind has not grown up and is ready to make the same mistakes again. "Ils sont là ! Ils sont nous ! Ils ont repeuplé le monde, et ils sont aussi cons qu'avant, et prêts à faire de nouveau sauter la baraque. C'est pas beau, ça ? C'est l'homme !" " They're here! They're us! They repopulated the world, and they're just as dumb as before, and ready to blow up the house again. Isn't it great? It's Man."
3468166	/m/09f1ys	Killobyte	Piers Anthony	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel cuts between Walter Toland, a former police officer, and Baal Curran, an angst-ridden teenage girl. Both are playing Killobyte from their own home, hooked to the network through a telephone modem. Walter notices Baal's name on a list and initially assumes she is a man. Indeed, each of them first poses as the other sex. Walter is learning the game as he goes, having neglected to read the instruction manual. He narrowly survives attacks by gunslingers, snakes, and runaway vehicles. Each time he destroys an enemy, he receives a point, and a door to a new setting appears. Eventually he must solve a more complicated problem when he finds himself in a women's prison, evading execution and a possible mole. In the meantime, Baal enters a fantasy setting in which a knight must rescue a princess from an evil sorcerer in a castle guarded by a dragon. She first goes through the adventure as the knight and fails. When she tries again, this time in the role of the princess, Walter has entered the setting as the sorcerer. He captures Baal under the ruse that he is the hero, but when she makes sexual advances at him, he tells her the truth, too honorable to take advantage of her even if it is only within a game. They begin telling each other about their real lives. In his days as a cop, he had an affair with a battered woman he was protecting, and the jealous husband ran him down with a car, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He still has sexual feelings but is unable to perform. Baal, a plain girl despite her voluptuous appearance in the game, has Type I diabetes and is depressed from having recently broken up with her boyfriend, who couldn't handle her disease. She pursued the game as a way of flirting with suicide. They discover that he may be capable of sex within the game, but they are interrupted by a hacker who has infiltrated the software. Calling himself Phreak, the hacker targets specific individuals and locks them in the game so that he can harass them. Walter receives an error message every time he attempts to return to the real world. Aided by his police training, he remains calm and talks to Phreak, even though he knows his real body is in danger of eventual dehydration. Baal temporarily quits the game after agreeing to meet Walter later in the game's next section, where they would use signals to identify each other, since they would have a different appearance. After unsuccessfully trying to get the police involved, she contacts the game's company, who want Walter to stay in the game as bait so that they can capture Phreak, who has eluded authorities for years. They give Baal a patch that will lock Phreak in the game along with Walter, so that they can force him to give the code that will free Walter. We learn that Phreak is a 15-year-old boy whose father was part a snake handling sect and died of a rattlesnake bite. The mother eventually died, and Phreak is convinced that she was also killed by snakes, which he believes lurk in the shadows waiting to pounce on him. He lives in his aunt's house, secretly using his own telephone line to hack into games, but he avoids experiencing the games directly for fear of being traced, despite the temptations of online sex. Baal reenters the game world. Unfortunately, the next section is especially violent and unpredictable, modeled after Beirut. She poses as an Israeli spy, he as a Druze, and after several dangerous adventures they find each other, but not before Phreak catches up with them. Baal successfully sets the patch on Phreak, locking him in the game, though he has now locked her inside as well. They all end up in a prison together, and Walter tries to force the information out of Phreak, while Baal makes motions to seduce him, but he resists their methods. Walter bombs the prison, causing their virtual deaths (so that they will no longer be imprisoned when they reappear). Walter believes that if his character dies again, he will die for real, for the electric shocks are interfering with his pacemaker and causing heart palpitations. Baal, meanwhile, is in danger of insulin shock if she does not exit the game soon. Phreak is traumatized by the game's simulated death and is terrified of experiencing it again, but he will not volunteer that information to Walter, whom he decides to kill. They all end up in a special section called Potpourri, which mixes elements of various other sections. Baal is able to track the approximate locations of Walter and Phreak. Walter and Baal decide they are in love and want to marry if they manage to survive their current ordeal and meet in the real world. They chase Phreak across Potpourri, evading various obstacles he places in their path. Baal goes into insulin shock and her game body becomes still. Walter finally corners Phreak on a train and threatens to encase him in a box with snakes. Phreak finally relents. Baal wakes up in a hospital, recovering from the insulin shock. She tries calling Walter, whose number she has memorized, but she gets no answer. She has her ex-boyfriend drive her across the country, and it gives him a chance to assuage his guilty conscience as he is comforted that she has found love again. Phreak has manipulated police records so that there is a phony arrest warrant on Walter, but the friends he met in Killobyte show up and refute the charges. A small party is held where Walter and Baal meet face-to-face at last.
3468868	/m/09f307	David Elginbrod	George MacDonald	1863		 A novel of Scottish country life, in the dialect of Aberdeen. A story of humble life, centering in two saintly personalities, a dignified and pious Scottish peasant, and his daughter. A vein of mysticism runs through the story, and mesmerism and electro-biology are introduced.
3468890	/m/09f318	Alec Forbes of Howglen	George MacDonald			 The 'Howglen' described in the novel is probably a reference to George MacDonald's childhood home in Huntly, Scotland, 'The Farm.' The 'Glamour' river, on which the town of the novel is situated, has been immortalized in the names of modern day streets in Huntly, as well as a children's park near the site of the old MacDonald family Mill.
3468944	/m/09f34f	Ceres Storm			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the distant future on a terraformed Mars, Daric discovers that he is a clone of a former Emperor of Earth named Darius. Daric is kidnapped by Kay-Tee agents in an attempt to bring him to earth to open Darius' complex that was sealed long ago. He escapes and begins a journey that takes him to an asteroid, Triton and Pluto's moon Charon.
3468945	/m/09f34s	The Elect Lady	George MacDonald			 The story is centered upon three main characters: Andrew, a poor, scholarly, godly man; Dawtie, a simple servant girl who cares for animals; and Alexa, the landlord's daughter and the landlord himself.
3468963	/m/09f366	At the Back of the North Wind	George MacDonald	1871	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book tells the story of a young boy named Diamond. He is a very sweet little boy who makes joy everywhere he goes. He fights despair and gloom and brings peace to his family. One night, as he is trying to sleep, Diamond repeatedly plugs up a hole in the loft (also his bedroom) wall to stop the wind from blowing in. However, he soon finds out that this is stopping the North Wind from seeing through her window. Diamond befriends her, and North Wind lets him ride on her back, taking him on several adventures. Though the North Wind does good deeds and helps people, she also does seemingly terrible things. On one of her assignments, she must sink a ship. Yet everything she does that seems bad leads to something good. The North Wind seems to be a representation of Pain and Death working according to God's will for something good. On their adventures, North Wind brings Diamond to the country she lives in, a country without pain and death. Yet, he is brought only to a shadow of the real country at the back of the North Wind. The real country is open for him only after his death. At the end of the book, Diamond dies, finally able to see the country.
3469049	/m/09f3fd	Straight and Crooked Thinking			{"/m/02jfc": "Education", "/m/05qfh": "Psychology"}	 *No. 3. proof by example, biased sample, cherry picking *No. 6. ignoratio elenchi: "red herring" *No. 9. false compromise/middle ground *No. 12. circular cause and consequence *No. 13. begging the question *No. 17. equivocation *No. 18. false dilemma: black and white thinking *No. 19. continuum fallacy (fallacy of the beard) *No. 21. ad nauseam: "argumentum ad nauseam" or "argument from repetition" or "argumentum ad infinitum" *No. 25. style over substance fallacy *No. 28. appeal to authority *No. 31. thought-terminating cliché *No. 36. special pleading *No. 37. appeal to consequences *No. 38. appeal to motive
3470714	/m/09f6mb	Aunts Aren't Gentlemen	P. G. Wodehouse	1974-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with Bertie finding himself with pink spots about the thorax, so he flies off to E. Jimpson Murgatroyd (the sombre bird of Harley Street who despotted Tipton Plimsoll in Full Moon). After getting mixed with Orlo Porter fleeing from a policeman and a crowd, Bertie is sentenced by the doc to a quiet life in the country. Thus Bertie goes to Maiden Eggesford in Somerset, with its two leading men, Jimmy Briscoe and Pop Cook, their respective horses, Simla and Potato Chip, and their dark rivalry. Aunt Dahlia, a friend of Jimmy Briscoe, has bet on Simla only to find that it isn't a snitch. Bertie is annoyed to see old enemy Major Plank in residence with Vanessa Cook and her Pop Cook, who takes an instant dislike to Bertie when he is found tickling a passing cat which is a favorite of his horse Potato Chip. Things get hot when Aunt Dahlia gets a neighbourhood poacher to steal the cat in the hope to impede his horse friend, embroiling Bertie in the to-do. Meanwhile, after a rift between Vanessa and Orlo Porter, the girl decides to plight her troth to the blighted Bertie, whose Code is to never refuse a girl asking for marriage. How Bertie is saved from the Charybdis of marrying Vanessa and being torn with bare hands by Orlo and the Scylla of being whipped by Pop Cook, without compromising his position with Aunt Dahlia, is solely due to the quick thinking of Jeeves.
3470731	/m/09f6nr	The Tent Dwellers	Albert Bigelow Paine		{"/m/014dsx": "Travel"}	 The book chronicles a three-week fishing trip through central Nova Scotia, and is an excellent account of the unspoiled Nova Scotia wilderness that existed at the time, which has been largely diminished since. The group encounters moose (which Eddie tries to capture and bring back alive), beaver, and numerous trout, the first of which is now very scarce in the region, and legions of mosquitos, moose flies, black flies, noseeums, and midges, all of which are regrettably abundant to this day. Many of the areas described in the book, then virtually unexplored and uncharted, are now well known to back-country campers in Kejimkujik Park and the Tobeatic Wilderness Area. The descriptions of the central Nova Scotia woods contained in the book are beautifully written and uncannily accurate, and while the trout which brought Paine and Breck to Nova Scotia are less abundant, due in part to acid rain and increased fishing pressure, they still provide good sport for anglers. http://www.troutnovascotia.ca/issues.htm http://www.ilec.or.jp/database/nam/nam-56.html Paine, a wealthy New England socialite, initially had some difficulties with the lack of modern amenities in camp life, but soon came to love the rugged beauty and solitude of the woods. As advice to other potential campers, he has this to offer: "...if you are willing to get wet and stay wet - to get cold and stay cold - to be bruised, and scuffed, and bitten - to be hungry and thirsty, and to have your muscles strained and sore from unusual taxation: if you will welcome all these things, not once, but many times, for the sake of moments of pure triumph and that larger luxury which comes with the comfort of the camp and the conquest of the wilderness, then go! The wilderness will welcome you, and teach you, and take you to its heart. And you will find your own soul there; and the discovery will be worth while!"
3470865	/m/09f6xt	Mike	P. G. Wodehouse	1909-09-15	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mike's family are excited to see him off to Wrykyn; his sisters are hopeful of him breaking the record and getting into the school team his first year, although his brother Bob and Saunders, the pro, are sceptical. On the train down to Wrykyn, Mike is joined by a stranger; seeing the lad get off the train without his bag, Mike throws it out onto the platform, but the boy returns at the next stop, having left to get chocolate. It turns out that he is "Gazeka" Firby-Smith (so called because he looks like one), head of Wain's house, which Mike is to join. He hears Bob and "Gazeka" talk of Wyatt, Wain's stepson, and when Mike is left to find his way to the school by himself, he meets and befriends Wyatt. Wyatt shows Mike to his dorm, which the two of them are to share and which has removable bars on the windows, and introduces him to Burgess, the cricket captain. Mike shows what he can do in some nets, and impresses Burgess; he is soon on the list for the third team. His early success, along with Bob's clumsy attempts at looking after him, leave him in a rather anti-authoritarian spirit. Bob warns him about Wyatt, who he feels is something of a loose cannon, but soon, having been forbidden by Wyatt to join him on a night-time prowl rounds the gardens, Mike is exploring the house, raiding Mr Wain's dining room and playing gramophone records. Trevor and Clowes, two boys in Donaldson's house, are worried about Mike and Wyatt, sure they – Mike and Wyatt – will soon get themselves into serious trouble. They warn Bob, but he tells them not to worry, as he has asked Firby-Smith to keep an eye on Mike. Wyatt is involved in a fight between twenty or so boys – a gang from Wrykyn town – which ends up with a policeman falling into a pond. When the policeman exaggerates the incident to the headmaster, claiming several hundred boys had thrown him into the water, the headmaster punishes the whole school by cancelling a forthcoming unofficial holiday. In retaliation, Wyatt organises a mass walk-out, taking most of the school with him on a day out at a nearby town, in what becomes known as "The Great Picnic". Next day, the head makes much of Wrykyn town out-of-bounds to the boys, claiming an outbreak of chicken-pox, a punishment the boys think lenient. They later realise this is not the punishment at all; while the younger boys are caned, the older boys are all given "extra" during a cricket match against the M.C.C.; with three of the first team unable to play, Wyatt persuades Burgess to let Mike play. Mike plays well in a close match, against a team that includes both Mike's brother Joe and the pro Saunders, advancing his cricketing career at the school nicely, but Firby-Smith, in addition to being patronising, gets Mike run-out in a house game, which leads Mike to insult his head of house. An angry Firby-Smith insists that Mike be punished, but Bob soon calms the waters. Grateful to his brother, when Mike finds he has squeezed Bob out of the team, he feigns an injury to give up his place, knowing that should Bob play well he may not get another chance that year. Mike's Uncle John visits, and insists on examining Mike's wrist; he hears the story, and when they see Bob has indeed scored well, he tips Mike generously. Soon after, a boy strays into the town, and brings the chicken-pox back to the school. The outbreak takes out one of the first-team players, giving Mike another chance; he plays reasonably in a poor game. Bob tells him he thinks the first-team place is now Mike's, but next day Mike misses early morning fielding practice for the house, incurring Firby-Smith's rage once more. Wyatt gives Mike some wise words, but when Burgess hears Firby-Smith's story, he decides to pass Mike over in favour of Bob. Bob is happy, until a letter from his sister reveals all about Mike's injury-faking. Bob discusses the issue with Burgess, to little avail. Neville-Smith, a bowler who has taken the other place in the team, plans a party at his house (he is a day boy) in celebration of his placement, and Wyatt sneaks out of school to attend. On his way out he is spotted by a master, who reports it to his father Mr. Wain; the housemaster waits in Mike's room until Wyatt returns, and tells him he is to leave the school at once, to take a job in a bank. Mike takes his place in the team, and persuades his father to find Wyatt more interesting work, via his connections in Argentina. Wrykyn go into the match against their biggest rivals, Ripton, short on bowling but with both Jacksons. The wicket is sticky from rain and Ripton notch up a good score, and taking the field reveal they having a strong bowler of googlies. After a bad start, Wrykyn's fortunes look up when the brothers bat together. Bob gets out, but has given Mike time to settle in; with the tail of the team accompanying him, he deftly collars the bowling; in a hugely tense finale, Wrykyn scrape to victory. Home for the holidays, Mike has a letter from Wyatt, who is enjoying himself hugely in the wild and exciting new world. Mike has been at Wrykyn for another two years and is due to become cricket captain next term, but during the Easter holidays, his father, enraged by a report saying Mike's performance in school has been even poor last term, removes him from Wrykyn and sends him instead to Sedleigh, a far smaller school. Arriving at Sedleigh in a bitter mood, he first meets first Mr Outwood, the head of his house. Mike then meets a well-dressed boy with a monocle, who introduces himself as Psmith. He is an ex-Etonian whose family lives near Mike's, and like Mike is a new boy. They decide to avoid cricket and instead join Mr Outwood's archaeological society. They move into a study, to the distress of Spiller, the boy who expected to take it over; they impress Mr Outwood, but a feud starts with Spiller and his friends, battling to regain his study. Having made friends with a boy called Jellicoe, the three take a dormitory together, and on the first night their room is attacked by Spiller and his cronies, who they chase away successfully. Next day, they meet Adair, school cricket captain and all-round hero, and house-master Mr Downing, both of whom are disappointed by the new boys' refusal to play cricket. Both Psmith and Mike claim ignorance of cricket: a decision which Mike comes to regret somewhat as time goes by. Bored by their archaeology trips, they wander off one day, and Mike runs into an old cricketing friend, who offers him a place in a local village team – Lower Borlock. Mike enjoys the games – scoring 75 his first game – but keeps his village cricket career a secret. One day, after breaking up a meeting of the Fire Brigade – a Sedleighan club – with a clockwork rat and Sammy the dog, Mike is unfairly put in detention by Mr Downing – head of the Fire Brigade. Stone and Robinson, earlier friends of Spiller, approve of Mike's prank and come to tea. Mike reveals his cricketing history – not just Lower Borlock but Wrykyn – and the Outwood house captain suddenly puts two and two together: M Jackson of the sporting papers is Mike Jackson sitting in front of him. Mike is persuaded to play in an upcoming house match as revenge against Mr Downing who unfairly favours his-own house. Surprise him he does, playing superbly and destroying Downing's bowling. After lunch, under pressure from Stone and Robinson, the captain agrees not to declare, but to carry on as revenge against Downing and the house he always favours. The scheme is a huge success, with Mike ending the day on 277 not out, and Downing's not getting an innings at all. Downing was completely thumped and is, unfairly, in a foul mood with Mike next day. Meanwhile Jellicoe, who has borrowed money from both Mike and Psmith and seems in a miserable mood, borrows from Mike again. At an Old Boys match, Dunster – an Old Boy – accidentally incapacitates Jellicoe when the youth is hit in the ankle with a cricket ball. Jellicoe is over-wrought. He meant to leave the school grounds that day to pay a debt but can not now and Jellicoe fears that he is certain to be sacked. Jellicoe tells Mike he owes the money to a pub landlord. Mike knows the fellow from his village cricketing. Mike agrees to deliver the five pounds that night although it means breaking out of school on a borrowed bike. He makes his way to the inn, only to find the whole affair was a joke by Barley the landlord. Returning to school, Mike successfully replaces the borrowed bike but knocks something in the bike shed. Mike is spotted climbing a drainpipe and chased off. Mike escapes to rest in the cricket pavilion. Near the cricket pavilion, he meets Adair, sent out to fetch a doctor for a sick boy. Mike then returns to his house, Outwood's, for another attempt to get in but is spotted by Downing, now waiting outside for Adair's return. Being chased by a furious Downing, Mike thinks quickly and recalls Downing's popular fire drills. Mike has enough of a lead that he makes it to the school fire bell and rings it like mad. The entire horde of boys are drawn outside and Mike escapes in the confusion. Next morning, Sammy the dog (Mr. Downing's dog) turns up, covered in red paint. Downing is enraged and proceeds to investigates. First, Downing finds that a boy from Outwood's was seen abroad that night. Second, Downing spots some spilled red paint in the bike shed, with a footprint in it. He gets Psmith to show him round Outwood's house, searching for boots with red paint on them; he finds one of Mike's with paint on it, and goes to the headmaster. But, Psmith has switched the shoe for a clean one in a clever sleight-of-hand. Psmith returns to his study, and locks the original shoe in a cupboard, just before Downing arrives for another search. He demands Psmith fetch Outwood, but Psmith refuses, and Downing is forced to go for him; Psmith switches the shoe again, lowering the paint-stained one out of the window on a string, putting a different one in the cupboard and another up the chimney. Downing returns with Outwood, smashes the cupboard and rummages up the chimney, covering himself with soot and only finding two clean shoes. Downing is scuppered, but the next day, when Mike attends class in his gym shoes, Downing's suspicions are enhanced. Meanwhile, Stone and Robinson, not pleased with Adair's proposal to hold an early-morning cricket practice, decide they can safely skip it. Adair has other ideas, and fights Stone, bullying them both into playing. He then visits Mike and pulls the same trick; Psmith redirects their fight outside. Adair, despite being the better boxer, is ruled by anger and loses a fast and vicious battle, which ends with Mike knocking him out cold. The fight clears the air between them. Psmith, also has a surprise, and persuades Mike to play in the forthcoming M.C.C. match by saying that he himself will be playing. Psmith was shamming dislike of cricket himself and was a very good bowler at Eton. On the other hand, Adair will not be playing having sprained a wrist in the fight during an unfortunate encounter with Mike's elbow. The match is rained off and Mike and Adair, now friends, decide to try to get a game with Wrykyn instead. Downing, still on Mike's trail, presents his evidence and requests a confession. While Mike is being grilled by the headmaster, Downing gets his confession – from Psmith. While Downing is reporting this to his superior, Adair arrives with the news that Dunster, the old boy who was visiting that weekend – and who had accidentally injured Jellicoe – has written to Adair and confessed to painting the dog red. Sedleigh get to play Wrykyn, and after a nervous start, they scrape a well-earned victory, mostly thanks to sterling work from Mike, Psmith and Adair, and the school's fortunes begin to look up.
3471116	/m/09f7hc	Psmith in the City	P. G. Wodehouse	1910-09-23	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Playing cricket for a team run by Psmith's father, Mike meets John Bickersdyke for the first time when he walks behind the bowler's arm, causing Mike to get out on ninety-eight. Shortly afterward, Mike's father regretfully informs him that, having lost a large amount of money, he will have to sell the house, and won't be able to send Mike to Cambridge as he had hoped. Mike hears that Psmith is in the same position, as he is sent off to London. Mike, feeling very lonely, homesick and sorry for himself, rents a horrid room in Dulwich, and next day presents himself for work at the New Asiatic Bank. He is put to work under Mr Rossiter in the Postage Department, replacing a youth named Bannister, and is befriended by Mr Waller, a kindly employee of the bank, who takes him to lunch; on his return, he is joined by Psmith, also a new employee, in the same department as Mike. They go for a stroll, and Psmith reveals that he has been placed there on a whim of his father's, having annoyed Bickersdyke while he was staying for the weekend. Mike is worried that their employer has it in for them both and that they are powerless, but Psmith announces he plans to toy with Bickersdyke outside of work, being, like their employer, a member of the Senior Conservative Club. He also insists that Mike move in with him in his flat in Clement's Inn. That night Mike feels much happier for having an ally. Trying to find a means of pacifying their manager Mr Rossiter, they find out from Bannister that he is a devotee of association football and a fan of Manchester United. For a few weeks Psmith uses this knowledge to ingratiate himself with Rossiter, before moving on to Bickersdyke. He haunts the man at their club, his position in the workplace unassailable thanks to his friendship with Rossiter, and disrupts a political meeting, part of Bickersdyke's campaign to become an Member of Parliament, turning it into a near-riot. Bickersdyke is angry at Psmith, but powerless. Psmith continues to cultivate Mr Rossiter, and Mike gets used to his work. After a while, a new man starts, and Mike is moved on to the Cash Department, under Mr Waller. One day, hearing Psmith call Mike "Comrade", Waller reveals that he is an ardent socialist, and Psmith agrees to come and hear him speak, dragging Mike along. When a spectator goes to throw a stone at Waller, Mike intervenes, and a fight starts, which soon involves Psmith and a mob; the friends flee. Returning that evening for tea, Mike has an awful time, but Psmith acquires Waller's book of the proceedings of the "Tulse Hill Parliament", including some particularly fiery words from Mr Bickersdyke. One day, worried by his son being ill, Waller fails to spot a forged cheque. To save the man's job, Mike takes the blame, and is fired and roasted by Bickersdyke. After work, Psmith trails Bickersdyke to a Turkish bath and threatens to leak Bickersdyke's anti-royalty speeches from the Tulse Hill book. Bickersdyke, furious, agrees to keep Mike on at the bank. Soon after, he is narrowly elected to Parliament, rendering the threat of the book useless, and Mike is moved to a new department, Fixed Deposits, a much less pleasant spot, with Psmith replacing him under Mr Waller. As spring and sunshine arrive, Mike begins to long for the outdoors and his beloved cricket. One day, he is called by his brother Joe, who is playing for their county at Lord's. They are a man short, and need Mike to play; he agrees, asking Psmith to tell his new boss he has to "pop off"; the boss tells Mr Bickersdyke, who, as usual, is furious. Mike, convinced his job is over, resolves to play his heart out. Psmith leaves work early, to take his father to the match. Mr Smith is shocked that the bank does not approve of people leaving to play cricket; Psmith persuades him that rather than working at the bank, he should study for the Bar. They arrive at the game just as Mike, playing well, reaches his century. After the match, Psmith tells Mike of his plans to study Law at Cambridge, and also that his father, needing an agent for his estate, is willing to take Mike on, having first paid for him to go to the 'varsity too, to study the business. Mr Bickersdyke, relaxing in his club, overjoyed at the thought of finally being able to sack Psmith and Mike, is further enraged when Psmith sympathetically announces their retirement from business.
3471289	/m/09f7th	Psmith, Journalist	P. G. Wodehouse	1915-09-29	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Mr Wilberfloss, editor of Cosy Moments magazine, is forced by ill-health to go away to the mountains for ten weeks of rest, leaving his subordinate Billy Windsor in charge. Pugsy Maloney, the office boy, brings in a cat he has rescued from some ruffians in the street, which he says belongs to his cousin, gang leader Bat Jarvis. Psmith, accompanying his friend Mike on a cricketing tour, is complaining that he finds New York a little dull, especially with his companion frequently called on for cricketing duties. They meet Billy Windsor, dining in the same restaurant, when the cat escapes its basket, and Psmith helps soothe an irate waiter. Invited back to his place, there they meet and befriend Bat Jarvis, come to retrieve his cat. Perusing Cosy Moments, Psmith tells Windsor they must sack the current writers and rebuild the paper in a more exciting style, and volunteers to act as unpaid subeditor. Wandering lost, Mike and Psmith find themselves in "Pleasant Street", a slum neighbourhood. Upset by the poverty they see, Psmith resolves to dedicate the energies of Cosy Moments to the issue. Next day, Mike heads off to Philadelphia, and Psmith arrives at the offices to find them besieged by angry contributors, whom he soothes and takes out to lunch. Returning, he sees Kid Brady, who has been complaining to Windsor that he cannot get a fair chance in the crooked world of New York boxing; they resolve to make the magazine his manager, and use it to boost his career. They begin work, attacking the owner of the tenements and pushing Kid Brady, amongst other stirring pieces, and are soon visited by a Mr Francis Parker, a well-dressed representative of the tenement owner, who offers them bribes to stop the articles. That night, they are approached by an associate of Bat Jarvis, who tells them a large price is being offered to get rid of the duo, which Jarvis, grateful to them for returning his cat, has turned down. On their way home they are dogged by suspicious types. Kid Brady, his career now on the up thanks to the paper, has his first big fight and wins handsomely. After the fight, the Cosy Moments boys hire Brady as "fighting editor", to protect them. He is needed soon after, when, in an alley outside the stadium, they are set upon by a gang of thugs. They chase them off, capturing one, a man named Jack Repetto, who reveals he is a member of Spider Reilly's "Three Points" gang. His comrades begin shooting, ruining Psmith's hat, but flee when the police arrive. Finding the paper's distribution hit by thugs, Psmith realises they must up their game, and plans to use the tenement's rent-collector to track the owner. Pugsy Maloney tells them about an incident at "Shamrock Hall", neutral ground under protection of Bat Jarvis, where Dude Dawson insulted a prominent member of the Three Points' girl and used a crude racial epithet, after which Spider Reilly shot Dawson in the leg. The resulting inter-gang warfare leaves Cosy Moments unpestered for a time, and Psmith and Windsor head off to await the rent-collector in one of the tenement apartments. The man, named Gooch, arrives, and they are trying to shake his employer's name out of him when Maloney reports the arrival of Spider Reilly, Repetto and other gang members. Sending Reilly to fetch Dude Dawson, Psmith and Windsor repair through a hatch to the roof with the rent-collector, holding out there until gang warfare draws their attackers away. They leave a man guarding the skylight, but Psmith finds a ladder, and they cross it to the next building and escape. Windsor got the rent-collector to divulge a name, that of Stewart Waring, a candidate for City Alderman and former Commissioner of Buildings. After a pick-pocket nearly makes off with their signed proof of Waring's involvement, Psmith posts it back to the paper. Next day at the office, Brady is forced to leave their service to begin training for a fight, and Psmith hears that Windsor has been arrested for hitting a policeman, who was trying to arrest him as part of a raid on a gambling den. Psmith relates a similar experience, and they realise the gang has used the police to get them out of the way while they search for the paper. With Brady away training and Windsor in prison for a month, Psmith decides it is time to call in a favour from Bat Jarvis. He takes Mike, returned from his match, to visit the cat-lover. Pretending Mike is an English cat expert, they win Jarvis round, and he and his henchman Long Otto stand guard on the office the following day. Repetto and two other Three Pointers burst in, and are chased off with a warning from Jarvis to leave Cosy Moments alone. Later, Francis Parker appears again, and persuades Psmith to send Jarvis away so they can talk; a message arrives from Windsor asking Psmith to come help him, and Psmith jumps into a taxi, only to find himself kidnapped at gunpoint by Parker. They drive out into the country, but get a flat tyre; while it is being fixed, Kid Brady comes along, out jogging, and distracts Parker long enough for Psmith to overpower him and escape. Next day, Paker invites Psmith to a meeting with Waring, but Psmith refuses, insisting the great man come to him. He also receives a telegram from Wilberfloss the editor, saying he will return the following day. Wilberfloss arrives with the old contributors, enraged at the changes in the paper; he threatens to contact the owner, but Psmith reveals that he himself owns the paper, having bought it a month previously. Waring appears, and threatens Psmith, but is forced to give him $5,000 to improve the tenements, plus three to replace his hat; Psmith restores Wilberfloss and the staff of Cosy Moments to their positions, Billy Windsor having been offered his previous job at a paper back at a fine salary. Some months later, back in rainy Cambridge, Psmith hears that Waring lost his election, and that Kid Brady has won his chance at a title-fight, while Mr Wilberfloss has regained the paper's old subscribers.
3473718	/m/09fdgf	The Reverberator	Henry James	1888-06-05	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 George Flack is the Paris correspondent for an American scandal sheet called The Reverberator. Francie Dosson, a pretty but not always tactful American girl, confides to Flack some gossip about the Proberts, the Frenchified (but originally American) family of her fiancée, Gaston Probert. Predictably to everybody except Francie, the nasty gossip winds up in The Reverberator, much to the horror of the stuffy Proberts. Francie makes no attempt to hide her role in giving Flack the juicy details. Gaston is initially dismayed by his fiancée's indiscretions. But with the somewhat surprising support of his sister Suzanne, he decides to accept Francie, who never tries to shift the blame to Flack. Gaston stands up to the outraged members of his family and marries his fiancée.
3473952	/m/09fdwm	The Other House	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Julia Bream dies after giving birth to her only child, a daughter named Effie. Julia had a horrible stepmother, so she extracts a promise from her husband Tony never to marry again as long as Effie is alive. Several years pass. Julia's old school friend Rose Armiger is in love with Tony, though she is ostensibly engaged to Dennis Vidal. In an effort to overcome the promise Tony made to Julia, Rose drowns little Effie so Tony will be free to remarry. The crime is discovered but family and friends decide to hush things up. Family physician Dr. Ramage convinces the authorities that Effie died of natural causes, Rose is sent off with Dennis Vidal, and all the people involved become, legally, accessories after the fact to murder...and they get away with it.
3476270	/m/09fjyp	Dance Dance Dance	Haruki Murakami	1994-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows the surreal misadventures of an unnamed protagonist who makes a living as a commercial writer. The protagonist is compelled to return to the Dolphin Hotel, a seedy establishment where he once stayed with a woman he loved, despite the fact he never even knew her real name. She has since disappeared without a trace, the Dolphin Hotel has been purchased by a large corporation and converted into a slick, fashionable, western-style hotel. The protagonist begins experiencing dreams in which this woman and the Sheep Man — a strange individual dressed in an old sheep skin who speaks in a monotonous rush — appear to him and lead him to uncover two mysteries. The first is metaphysical in nature, viz. how to survive the unsurvivable. The second is the murder of a call-girl in which an old school friend of the protagonist, now a famous film actor, is a prime suspect. Along the way, the protagonist meets a clairvoyant and troubled 13-year-old girl, her equally troubled parents, a one-armed poet, and a sympathetic receptionist.
3476920	/m/09fkyw	Clovis Dardentor	Jules Verne	1896	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel tells the story of two cousins, Jean Taconnat and Marcel Lornans, travelling from Cette, France to Oran, Algeria, with the purpose of enlisting in the 5th regiment of the Chasseurs D'Afrique. On board the Argelès, the ship to Oran, they meet Clovis Dardentor, a wealthy industrialist, who is the central character of the novel. Jean and Marcel, whose desire to travel to Africa arises from their pursuit of financial independence, find out that Clovis &mdash;an unmarried man, with no family&mdash; has left no heirs to his fortune. Yet Marcel, well-versed in the Law, knows that any person who were to save Clovis' life either from a fight, from drowning, or from a fire, would forcibly have to be adopted by Clovis. The cousins come to a plan: They will find a way to save Clovis' life, so that he will indeed be legally required to adopt them. Ironically, it is Clovis who finally saves the cousins' lives: Marcel is saved from a fire, and Jean is saved from drowning. Eventually, while Jean continues to look for the opportunity to save Clovis' life, Marcel falls in love with Louise Elissane, the prospective daughter-in-law of one of Clovis' acquaintainces, the unpleasant Desirandelle family. Louise becomes a key character in the novel, for it is she who saves Clovis Dardentor's life. Fortunately for the cousins, in the end, Louise is adopted by Clovis, and marries Marcel.
3480452	/m/09frmx	The Head of Kay's	P. G. Wodehouse	1905-10-05	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set at the fictional school of Eckleton, the story centres around the house of "Kay's", the riotous boys therein, its tactless, unpopular master Mr. Kay, and Fenn, the head boy. The story features practical jokes, fighting between the boys and with the locals in the nearby town, politics amongst the houses of the school, a trip to an army-style camp, and plenty of cricket and rugby.
3480553	/m/09frv8	Love Among the Chickens	P. G. Wodehouse	1906-06	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jeremy Garnet, hearing that his old friend Ukridge has called while he was out, and fearing that the peace he needs in order to plan his next book is about to be disturbed, decides to leave London for a time. But he is too late. Ukridge arrives, with his wife Millie in tow and immediately starts explaining his new get-rich-quick scheme, involving producing hen's eggs on a farm in Dorset. Giving in to Ukridge's forceful personality, Garnet agrees to accompany him to the farm; there will, Ukridge assures him, be plenty of golf and sea-bathing available. On the train to Dorset, they are joined in a compartment by a pretty, brown-haired girl named Phyllis and her elderly Irish father. By coincidence, Phyllis is reading a copy of Garnet's new novel, given to her by Molly MacEachern. They arrive at the house, meet hired man Beale and his wife, and settle in. Next day a consignment of hens arrives, and they spend some busy days putting up fences and building coops; Ukridge buys various supplies on credit, and begins to arrange to supply eggs to various outlets. One day, chasing an escaped hen, Garnet tumbles into a garden containing the girl from the train, her father Professor Derrick, and a friendly young navy lieutenant named Tom Chase, whose familiarity with Phyllis irks Garnet. They recapture the chicken, and Garnet is invited to lunch, stays to play croquet afterwards, and his love for Phyllis is sealed. Soon the Ukridges invite their new neighbours over for dinner, but the cat gets stuck up the chimney and they are unable to cook. Fed cold food, and upset by Ukridge's small talk, especially on the topic of Irish Home Rule, the Professor storms out, and Garnet finds himself in his beloved's father's bad books. The chickens become ill, and Garnet, on his way to fetch help, runs into Phyllis, who shows him some friendliness. Later, bathing at the beach, he spies the Professor, fishing from a boat. He hatches a plan, bribes a local, Harry Hawk, to upset the Professor's boat, and saves him from the sea, restoring the man's faith in him. He visits Phyllis, but is interrupted in his wooing by Chase, who hints that he is wise to Garnet's boat plot, and thrashes Garnet at tennis. With the chicken farm struggling, a local informs Derrick of Garnet's boat plot, and he finds himself once again despised. He buries himself in the farm and his writing, but after a week he comes across Phyillis alone, and explains his actions to her. He declares his love, and she returns it, revealing that Chase is in fact engaged to her sister Norah, but adds that her father, loathing Garnet, would never consent to them marrying. On Ukridge's advice, they beard the man in the sea, and Garnet announces his love for Phyllis, but only makes Derrick angrier. Garnet finds himself up against the Professor in the final of a local golf tournament, which, he has learned, the Professor has long been desperate to win. He plays a bad game, and wins the Professor round, giving him the match but winning his consent. Returning to the farm, he finds the Ukridges disappeared, apparently bolted to London to flee their creditors. A swarm of said creditors arrive, and begin ransacking the farm; they have turned to the chickens when Ukridge returns, bearing wealth courtesy of Millie's Aunt Elizabeth. He berates the assembled throng, and sends them off with fleas in their ears. Later, Garnet finds Ukridge on the beach, and hears of his plan - to start up a duck farm...
3481006	/m/09fsp5	Conversations in Sicily	Elio Vittorini	1941	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Silvestro Ferrauto is a Sicilian working as a typesetter in Milan, who beset by strange feelings of hopelessness, decides to visit Sicily after receiving a letter from his father which reveals that the father has abandoned Ferrauto's mother. Ferrauto has not visited Sicily since leaving at the age of 15 and ends up on the train to Sicily apparently without conscious thought. Ferrauto then has various conversations with a number of Sicilians on the way to, and in, Sicily. His return to Sicily and his new understanding of his mother from an adult point of view seems to calm his hopelessness. In a drunken state he seems to have a conversation with his dead brother, or at the age he was when he was alive. The novel closes with his father sobbing in the kitchen whilst the mother scrubs his feet.
3481173	/m/09fsyz	The Prince and Betty	P. G. Wodehouse	1912-05-01	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story tells of how unscrupulous millionaire Benjamin Scobell decides to build a casino on the small Mediterranean island of Mervo, dragging in the unwitting heir to the throne to help. Little does he know that his stepdaughter Betty has history with the young man John Maude, and his schemes lead to a rift between the newly-reunited pair.
3481418	/m/09ftc5	Land Beyond the Map	Kenneth Bulmer	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Roland Crane, a wealthy map collector and dilettante archaeologist, is visited by Polly Gould, a cousin of an army friend who has disappeared. She is obsessed with locating a map of Ireland, torn down the middle, that her cousin discovered just before he vanished. This same map had formerly been in the possession of Roland and his family, and transported them into a strange alternate dimension. Polly believes the map holds the key to recovering her cousin, and that Roland can help her find it. Roland reluctantly agrees to help. The two travel to Ireland and begin their search, soon learning that someone else, a mysterious and sinister man, also seeks the map. The mystery deepens when they witness the apparent abduction of another man by a strange "eye" in the sky. Finally they are offered the map at an enormous price by an old man who speaks of having used it to travel to another place, full of both treasure and terror. He fears to go back himself, as his son-in-law was trapped there. Accepting the challenge, Roland and Polly buy and follow the map, and when they reach the place place corresponding to the tear in the map, they are transported into the alternate dimension hinted at. Though this novel bears some thematic similarities to Bulmer's later Keys to the Dimensions series, it is otherwise unrelated.
3485468	/m/09g0nk	The Outcry	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 To cover the gambling debts of his daughter Kitty Imber, the widowed Lord Theign is planning to sell his beautiful painting Duchess of Waterbridge by Sir Joshua Reynolds to American billionaire Breckinridge Bender. Hugh Crimble, a young art critic, argues against the sale, saying that Britain's art treasures should stay in the country. He is supported by Theign's perceptive daughter, Lady Grace. When the newspapers get wind of the potential sale of the Reynolds, they raise a patriotic stink, which delights the bumptious, good-humored Bender. Meanwhile, Crimble has found another painting in Theign's collection that he suspects is a rarity by Mantovano. (James thought this was a completely fictitious name, but it turned out there really had been an obscure painter called Mantovano.) Eventually, Crimble's hunch about the Mantovano turns out to be correct. Theign decides to donate the Mantovano to the National Gallery and not to sell the Reynolds to Breckinridge. His woman friend Lady Sandgate also donates her family's Sir Thomas Lawrence painting to the Gallery, which unites her and Theign forever.
3485805	/m/09g17q	Cycle of Nemesis	Kenneth Bulmer	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins in a near future world of ray guns and robots, but ends up marching all over time. Khamushkei the Undying, a horror out of space, destroyed an ancient civilization on earth, but ended up locked away in a Time Vault. After seven millennia, the vaults seals are giving way, and five average citizens are caught up in a race to reseal the vault - even though they know it will cost one of them her life.
3486521	/m/09g2hx	The United States elevated to Glory and Honor				 The book is a transcript of a sermon given to the Connecticut General Assembly, on May 8, 1783. At the time, Stiles was the President of Yale College. The sermon draws parallels between the United States and the Biblical nation of Israel. Stiles refers to the US as an "American Israel, high above all nations which He hath made, in numbers, and in praise, and in name, and in honor", suggesting that the American people are like the Chosen People of Israel.
3486671	/m/09g2wh	Death and the Penguin	Andrey Kurkov	1996		 The novel follows the life of a young aspiring writer, Viktor Alekseyevich Zolotaryov, in a struggling post-Soviet society. Viktor, initially aiming to write novels, gets a job writing obituaries for a local newspaper. The source of the title is Viktor's pet penguin Misha, a King Penguin obtained after the local zoo in Kiev gave away its animals to those who could afford to support them (a true story). Kurkov uses Misha as a sort of mirror of (and eventual source of salvation for) Viktor. Throughout the story, Misha is also lost, unhappy and generally out of his element, literally and figuratively. One of the striking themes of the novel is Viktor's tendency to go from justifiably paranoid appraisals of his increasingly dangerous position to a serene, almost childish, peace of mind. As such there are many elements of existentialist thought in the text. Viktor's work is accepted enthusiastically by the editor-in-chief of the paper but Viktor soon finds that his obituaries are being used as a hit list for enemies of some unknown organization for which the paper is just a front. Shortly thereafter, he is left to look after Sonya, daughter of his mysterious friend Misha (referred to as Misha-non-penguin in the text to differentiate him from Misha the penguin). He and the child develop a tenuous though tenable relationship which serves to further highlight Viktor's isolated existence. After Misha-non-penguin leaves Sonya a large sum of money, Viktor hires a nanny (Nina) who is the niece of his only other friend Sergey. Over time, a physical yet passionless relationship develops between Viktor and Nina and the "family" is crystallized. Ironically, the deepest emotional relationship amongst all four individuals is between Viktor and his penguin. After settling into a more or less normal life with Sonya and Nina and a lucrative side job of attending funerals of former obituary subjects with Misha, Viktor's illusion of security is undermined. He finds that an anonymous man (referred in the text only as "fat man") has been following Sonya and Nina and asking them endless questions posing as an old friend. When he tracks down his follower he finds that the fat man has become the new obituary writer and he, Viktor, has become the new obituary subject. At the same time, Misha has fallen ill and needs a heart transplant. Anonymous sponsors foot the bill but Viktor has decided that Misha is to be returned to his natural habitat in Antarctica. He donates $2000 to the upcoming Ukrainian expedition to Antarctica on condition that they take Misha. However, after finding that he is a marked man, Viktor decides to let the mafia take care of the penguin and he himself takes the ticket to Antarctica. The book ends with Viktor successfully fleeing to Antarctica. The novel is not about mafia intrigue but rather about one man and his pet/avatar as they are caught up in situations they do not understand. As such, the actual power of his obituaries and the circumstances surrounding the ensuing deaths are only hinted at, often in the context of Viktor's own musings.
3488641	/m/09g68t	Teacher Man	Frank McCourt		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Frank McCourt's pedagogy involves the students taking responsibility for their own learning, especially in his first school, McKee Vocational and Technical High School, in New York. On the first day he nearly gets fired for eating a sandwich, and the second day he nearly gets fired for joking that in Ireland, people go out with sheep after a student asks them if Irish people date. Much of his early teaching involves telling anecdotes about his childhood in Ireland, which were covered in his earlier books Angela's Ashes and 'Tis. McCourt then taught English as a Second Language and took some African-American students to a production of Hamlet. He talks about when he was training as a teacher and didn't know anything about George Santayana, but was able to give a well-prepared lesson on the war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Other highlights include his connection between how a pen works and how a sentence works (in explaining subjects and grammar, an area which he struggled with himself) and his use of realia like the students' excuse notes and cookbooks. He taught from the time he was twenty-seven and continued for thirty years. He spent most of his teaching career at Stuyvesant High School, where he taught English and Creative Writing. During the time of the book McCourt went to Trinity College to try to take his doctorate, but he ended up leaving his first wife because of the strain.
3491564	/m/09gdy5	Riceyman Steps	Arnold Bennett	1923	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in 1919-1920 and deals with the final year in the life of its main character, Henry Earlforward, a miser, who keeps a second-hand bookshop in the Clerkenwell area of London. Henry marries Violet Arb, a widow who keeps a neighbouring shop, and who sees in Henry a financially secure future. Henry's parsimony drives them into an increasingly wretched existence. Their lives are contrasted to that of their maid servant Elsie Sprickett and it is she, despite her extreme poverty, who brings life and a future to the bittersweet tale.
3491578	/m/09gdyj	The Ivory Tower	Henry James	1917-09-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Graham ("Gray") Fielder returns from Europe to the wealthy resort of Newport, Rhode Island, to see his dying uncle Frank Betterman. Rosanna Gaw, the daughter of Betterman's embittered ex-partner Abel Gaw, is also at Newport. She has succeeded in bringing about a partial reconciliation between the two elderly men. Gaw and Betterman both die, and Fielder receives a large inheritance from his uncle. Gray is inexperienced at business, so he entrusts the management of the fortune to the unscrupulous Horton Vint. At this point the novel breaks off. From his extensive notes it appears that James intended Vint to betray Fielder's trust much as Kate Croy did with Milly Theale in The Wings of the Dove. Fielder would then magnanimously forgive Vint, but it's not certain if he would marry Rosanna, who is definitely in love with Gray.
3491625	/m/09gdz6	The Sense of the Past	Henry James		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Young Ralph Pendrel of New York has written a fine essay on the reading of history. The essay so impresses a distant English relative that he bequeaths an 18th century London house to Ralph. Pendrel goes to London and explores the house thoroughly. He feels himself going back in time as soon as he crosses the threshold. He finds a portrait of a remote ancestor, also named Ralph Pendrel. The portrait comes alive and the two men meet. Later, the modern-day Pendrel goes to the U.S. ambassador in London and tries to tell him of these strange occurrences. He then returns to the mysterious house, steps across the threshold, and finds himself back in the early 19th century. At this dramatic juncture, the part of the novel that James wrote in 1900 breaks off. James resumed the novel in 1914 with scenes of Ralph meeting the relatives of his ancestor, whose place he has now taken. Ralph is engaged to one of those relatives, Molly Midmore, but finds himself attracted to her sister Nan. He also meets Molly's mother and unpleasant brother, and Sir Cantopher Bland, a suitor of Nan's. The novel breaks off completely here. James left extensive notes on how the novel would continue. The notes indicate Nan would eventually realize that Ralph is actually a time-traveller from the future. She would then sacrifice her own happiness and help him return to his own time and to Aurora Coyne, a woman who had previously rejected Ralph but would now accept him.
3492678	/m/09ggvv	White Nights	Fyodor Dostoyevsky			 Like many of Dostoyevsky's stories, "White Nights" is told in first person by a nameless narrator who lives alone in a city and suffers from loneliness and the inability to stop thinking. The character is an archetype of a perpetual dreamer. He lives his life in his own mind, imagining that an old man he always passes but never talks to or houses are his friends. The short story is divided into six sections: ;First Night: The story opens with a quotation by Ivan Turgenev, from his poem The Flower: ::"And was it his destined part ::Only one moment in his life ::To be close to your heart? ::Or was he fated from the start ::to live for just one fleeting instant, ::within the purlieus of your heart." The narrator describes his experience walking in the streets of St. Petersburg. He loves the city at night time during which he feels comfortable in the city. He no longer feels comfortable during the day because all the people he was used to seeing were not there. He drew his emotions from there. If they were happy, he was happy. If they were despondent, he was despondent. He felt alone when seeing new faces. The main character also knew the houses. As he strolled down the streets they would talk to him and tell him how they were being renovated or painted a new color or being torn down. The main character lives alone in a small apartment in Saint Petersburg with only his older, non-social maid Matrona to keep him company. He tells the story of his relationship with a young girl called Nastenka (a diminutive of the name Anastasia). He first sees her standing against a railing while crying. He becomes concerned and considers asking what's wrong but eventually steels himself to continue walking. There is something special about her and he is very curious. When he hears her scream, he intervenes and saves her from a man who is harassing her. The main character feels timid and begins shaking while she holds his arm. He explains that he is alone, that he has never known a woman, so he is timid. Nastenka reassures him that ladies like timidity and she likes it, too. He tells her how he spends every minute of every day dreaming about a girl that would just say two words to him, who will not repulse him or ridicule him as he approached. He explains how he thinks of talking to a random girl timidly, respectfully, passionately; telling her that he is dying in solitude and how he has no chance of making a mark on any girl. He tells her that it is a girl's duty not to rudely reject or mock one as timid and luckless as he is. As they reach Nastenka's door, the main character asks if he will ever see her again. Before she can answer, he adds that he will be at the spot they met tomorrow anyway just so he can relive this one happy moment in his lonely life. She agrees, stating she can't forbid him not to come and she has to be there anyway. The girl would tell him her story and be with him, provided that it does not lead into romance. She too is as lonely as the narrator. ;Second Night: On their second meeting, Nastenka introduces herself to him and the two become friends by relating to each other. She exclaims that she has been thinking and knows nothing of him. He responds that he has no history because he has spent his life utterly alone. When she presses him to continue on the matter, the term "dreamer" pops up as the main character explains that he is of that archetype. The main character defines " 'The dreamer' - if you want an exact definition - is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort." In a precursor to a similar speech in Notes from Underground, the narrator gives a verbose speech about his longing for companionship leading Nastenka to comment, "...you talk as if you were reading from a book". He begins to tell his story in third person as he call himself "the hero." This "hero" is happy the hour when all work ends and people walk about. He references Vasily Zhukovsky as he mentions "The Goddess of Fancy". He dreams of everything in this time; from befriending poets to having a place in the winter with a girl by his side. He states that the dreariness of everyday life kills people while he can make his life as he wishes it to be at any time in his dreams. At the end of his moving speech, Nastenka sympathetically assures him that she would be his friend. ;Nastenka's Story: The third part is Nastenka relating her life story to the narrator. She lived with her strict grandmother who gave her a largely sheltered upbringing. Her grandmother's pension being too small, they rent out their house to gain income. When their early lodger dies, he's replaced by a younger man closer to Nastenka's age much to her grandmother's distaste. The young man begins a silent courtship with Nastenka giving her a book often so that she may develop a reading habit. She takes a liking to the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Aleksandr Pushkin as a result. One day, the young man invites her and her grandmother to the theater running The Barber of Seville. Upon the night that the young lodger is about to leave Petersburg for Moscow, Nastenka escapes her grandmother and urges him to marry her. He refuses immediate marriage, stating that he does not have money to support them but he assures her that he would return for her exactly a year later. Nastenka finishes her story at the end of this, noting that a year has gone and he hasn't sent her a single letter. ;Third Night: The narrator gradually realizes that despite his assurance that their friendship would remain platonic, he has inevitably fallen in love with her. But he nevertheless helps her by writing and posting a letter to her lover and hides away his feelings for her. They await his reply for the letter or his appearance; but, gradually, Nastenka grows restless at his absence. She takes comfort in the narrator's friendship. Unaware of the depth of his feelings for her, she states that "I love you so, because you haven't fallen in love with me." The narrator, despairing due to the unrequited nature of his love for her, notes that he has now begun to feel alienated from her as well. ;Fourth Night: Nastenka despairs at the absence of her lover and his reply even though she knows that he's in St. Petersburg. The narrator continues to comfort her to which she's extremely grateful, leading the narrator to break his resolve and confess his love for her. Nastenka is disoriented at first, and the narrator, realizing that they can no longer continue to be friends in the manner that they did before, insists on never seeing her again; however, she urges him to stay. They take a walk where Nastenka states that maybe their relationship might become romantic some day, but she obviously wants his friendship in her life. The narrator becomes hopeful at this prospect when during their walk, they pass by a young man who stops and calls after them. He turns out to be Nastenka's lover into whose arms she jumps. She returns briefly to kiss the narrator but journeys into the night with her love leaving him alone and broken hearted. ;Morning: "My nights came to an end with a morning. The weather was dreadful. It was pouring, and the rain kept beating dismally against my windowpanes". The final section is a brief afterword that relates a letter which Nastenka sends him apologizing for hurting him and insisting that she would always be thankful for his companionship. She also mentions that she would be married within a week and hoped that he would come. The narrator breaks into tears upon reading the letter. Matryona, his maid, interrupts his thoughts by telling him she&#39;s finished cleaning the cobwebs. The narrator notes that though he&#39;d never considered Matryona to be an old woman, she looked far older to him then than she ever did before, and briefly wonders if his own future is to be without companionship and love. He however refuses to despair; "But that I should feel any resentment against you, Nastenka! That I should cast a dark shadow over your bright, serene happiness! ...That I should crush a single one of those delicate blooms which you will wear in your dark hair when you walk up the aisle to the altar with him! Oh no &mdash; never, never! May your sky be always clear, may your dear smile be always bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart ... Good Lord, only a moment of bliss? Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of a man's life?"
3494489	/m/09gl1q	Jacob the Liar	Jurek Becker	1969		 The novel follows the life of the Jewish protagonist Jacob Heym in the ghetto of Łódź, Poland during the German occupation of World War II. Jacob met an 8 year old girl named Lina, whose parents were both killed and who is hidden from the Germans after escaping from the camp transport train. While walking around the ghetto near the time of curfew, Jacob is suddenly stopped by a bored-seeming German officer on a patrol. The officer pretends that the Jewish curfew of 8 pm has already passed, and sends the hapless Jacob to the police station. Jacob obeys him submissively and is followed by the sentinel's flashlight. He arrives at the station where he hears radio news reporting about the approach of the Red Army. Miraculously, Jacob is released since the sentinel was playing a practical joke on him and it was not yet curfew. The first Jew to leave that station alive, Jacob cannot believe his luck. Both this and the radio broadcast fill him with hope. The next day he is working with his partner Mischa, who wants to risk his life by stealing potatoes. At the last moment, Jacob impedes his attempt and gives him the good news about the Russians, but Mischa is skeptical - so Jacob, to give Mischa hope, tells him he has a hidden radio, otherwise forbidden in the ghetto. Jacob lies for the first time by pretending that he possesses a radio since he figures that nobody would believe him if he tells them he saw the precinct from inside. The question raised in the reader's mind is "Does he act responsibly by lying, even if he has only good intentions?" Jacob has enlivened Mischa who immediately goes to Rosa Frankfurter's parents to convey the word. Although he promised Jacob not to mention his name when spreading the news, Mischa breaks his word. Rosa's skeptical father Felix is enraged by the dangerous news Mischa is spreading without proof. Felix destroys a radio he his hiding in the basement. Mischa eventually spreads the lie out: Jacob possesses a radio. Jacob is now forced to become creative in order to maintain the lie. Now that the neighbors believe he has a radio, he has to provide new items of fictional news each day in order to help maintain the peace and hope, and prevent despair from returning to the ghetto. Striving to propagate some real news, he decides to steal a newspaper from an "Aryan water closet", which Jews are strictly prohibited from entering. While he is in it, a nervous guard comes close to the toilet but Jacob’s friend Kowalsky distracts the watchman’s attention by knocking over boxes and saves Jacob’s life. The next day Herschel Schtamm, a usually fearful and timid man, hears the voices of deportees coming out of a wagon. Intent on giving them hope by telling them the news, he gathers his courage and approaches the wagon but is seen and shot by a watchman. Jacob feels responsible for Schtamm’s death. He comes home to find Lina looking for the radio while he was gone. He tells her to stay out of his room but realizes that hearing the radio will give her much needed hope. From another room where Lina can not see him, Jacob imitates the sounds of a radio-show, emulating the voice of Winston Churchill, telling her the metaphorical story of a princess who became ill because nobody could provide her a cloud. The princess was cured when a gardener brought her a cloud made out of cotton wool, because she thought in reality that was what clouds were. It implicates the question of authentic versus perceived need, and of course the question about the imagined world created by the lies of Jacob inside the ghetto. Just as the princess became healthy after she received the “fake” cloud, the hope of the Jews is inspired by artificial truth. Over time, the lie becomes cumbersome and inconvenient to Jacob, and the attention tedious. He pretends that the radio is becoming defective but is still swamped by people who are either begging for news, inculpating him, or pretending friendship to get access to the news. Jacob cannot stand this pressure and in a moment of weakness confesses everything to Kowalsky, who reassures him that he understands everything and would have acted exactly in the same way, and that Kowalsky will not bother Jacob again with any questions. The novel has two endings. The narrator thinks that there should be an independent ending based on what really happened, but he also wants to corroborate that he is trying to reach the reader emotionally, and thus proposes a second ending. However both endings are equally powerful in their own ways. The fictitious ending Jakob is killed while attempting to escape from the Ghetto. Immediately after, as if Jacob's death-shot is the opening of the battle for the city, the Russians arrive to liberate them all. It is ambiguous why Jacob was trying to escape: to save himself and abandon his people to their fate; or to get first-hand information about the course of the war and return to the ghetto, thus redeeming himself for the lie about the radio. The true ending Kowalsky hangs himself shortly after Jacob's confession about the radio. Everyone is deported to the death camps.
3495683	/m/09gn3d	The Assassin's Knot			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The player characters must solve the mystery of who killed the Baron of Restenford, with evidence pointing to somebody from the town of Garrotten. The scenario describes the town and its castle. The Assassin's Knot module is different from most of its contemporaries in that it contained no dungeon or dungeon-like area. The longer the players take to find the murderer, the more unfortunate events occur in the village. The village, Garrotten, is reputed to be the place to go to have someone killed. The entire village shuts down when the Baron of Restenford is found dead, mutilated beyond the possibility of magical restoration. Three small clues are all the player characters have to unravel the mystery.
3498308	/m/09gsdq	Ship of Fools	Richard Paul Russo	2001-01-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is told by the reserved Bartolomeo Aguilera whose cunning and bravery contribute to the outcome of the novel. Born with physical defects, he has integrated prosthetic material into his body as compensation. Bartolomeo is a close friend and advisor of the Argonos' captain, Nikos. Within the first few chapters it is clear that Nikos is in an increasingly dangerous situation and that tensions on the ship are beginning to rise. Niko's credibility as captain is declining and many are ready for a new leader. Nikos informs Bartolomeo of news which may help to improve or reduce Nikos' position. While the Bishop's previous failed landing helped to place Nikos in good light, there seems little to improve Nikos' ordeal. A planet suitable for human life has been discovered. It is a short distance away and therefore a landing can be attempted, but more importantly, a signal has been sent from the planet. It is an incredibly basic signal offering no information as to who sent it or why. Nikos asks Bartolomeo to join the team which is to land on the planet, which the Bishop soon names Antioch. The team consists of representatives of the Executive Council, Bartolomeo included, and of the different classes on the ship. The crew, along with harvesters which are to collect and process materials for the Argonos, descend on the planet. Antioch, as they soon discover, is deserted, and has long been so. Although the team visits fewer than five of the complexes, there are presumably numerous cities around the planet. All of them contain enigmatic, ghost-like, structures. The first startling discovery the team makes foreshadows the epiphany of evil which looms over the Argonos for the latter part of the book. A number of human remains are found outside of the city-complexes. The remains are all but decayed with only bones remaining, and the few intact skeletons they find reveal no apparent trauma or instance of a violent death. However, the second discovery haunts the team even after leaving the planet. The team enters a glass-structure which at first reveals nothing about the world or its former inhabitants. They uncover a staircase winding down underground to another chamber. At the bottom of the staircase, lies a nightmare: in a vast room there are contained, on hooks and in chains, an unimaginable number of mutilated skeletons, some of which resemble children. The Argonos is contacted at once and the team decides it is time to leave. The Argonos prepares to leave orbit but amongst the underclasses there is talk of settling on Antioch. Par, a friend of Bartolomeo asks him for his help in a planned insurrection; the common people desire to leave Argonos and live on Antioch. Bartolomeo agrees to help and he obtains access codes for the bay-doors and shuttles. The operation fails miserably and several participants, including Bartolomeo, are taken into custody. Nikos, Bartolomeo soon discovers, knew about Bartolomeo's involvement and used it to his advantage and assert himself as captain. Bartolomeo remains in prison for months on end when he is finally released. He stands before the Executive Council and defends his reasons for aiding in the operation. Under his advice, other political prisoners are released. Bartolomeo's position as advisor is reinstated and he is updated on a new mystery which Argonos has come across. Upon the team's entry into the building on Antioch, a signal from the building was sent deep into space. While the team was never informed, Nikos decided to travel to where the signal had been sent. Thus, they have found an alien ship. A vast, immeasurable, structure lies in the dead of space. The behemoth, which is much greater in size than the Argonos, appears just as silent and uninhabited as Antioch. Bartolomeo takes head of the team which has been attempting to explore the mysterious ship. There had already been a number of deaths, and other 'incidents' while exploring the ship. Bartolomeo therefore ensures that extra precautions are taken as he takes control. No sooner after Bartolomeo assumes control of the operations aboard the ship, the mystery becomes even greater. An old woman is found naked in a compartment in the ship. At first, she is unable to understand the languages used to communicate with her. Eventually, she begins to communicate with scientists in English. She claims to have been from Antioch and the aliens saved her people but can clarify nothing else in her delirious state. The Executive Committee decides that rather than exploring the staggeringly huge vessel, they will attach the ship to the Argonos by cables and take it with them as they continue to explore the galaxy. This proves to be a horrible mistake as the true nature of the ship is revealed. While searching for a young boy who sneaked aboard the ship, Bartolomeo uncovers a horrifying part of the puzzle; a chamber containing mangled corpses, no different from the ones uncovered on Antioch. It becomes clear that the aliens who committed the genocidal acts on Antioch are on board the alien vessel. Bartolomeo calls an emergency meeting with the Executive Council and tells those taking care of the rescued woman to seal the room and sedate her. A sudden realization occurs: How did the old woman know that they had named the planet 'Antioch'? She is, as deduced by Bartolomeo, an alien. She is sedated and ejected into space, but not before momentarily transforming into something other than human. Attempts made to separate the alien vessel from the Argonos fail. Weapons have no effect. As panic begins to intensify aboard the ship, a final plan is devised. The residents on the Argonos will be crammed into the harvesters and shuttles, and they will travel to the planet Antioch. To rid themselves of the aliens, Nikos, and a few other trusted crewmen will remain aboard the ship and conduct a random jump out of the solar system, possibly out of the galaxy and thereby taking the alien vessel with. The plan is put into action and while the alien vessel struggles to free itself from the Argonos, the two star-ships are soon gone. The story ends with the convoy still on its way to Antioch, although Bartolomeo hopes for the future. fr:La Nef des fous (Russo) it:L'astronave dei dannati
3499066	/m/09gtw5	The Swoop	P. G. Wodehouse	1909-04-16	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Swoop! tells of the simultaneous invasion of England by several armies &mdash; "England was not merely beneath the heel of the invader. It was beneath the heels of nine invaders. There was barely standing-room." &mdash; and features references to many well-known figures of the day, among them the politician Herbert Gladstone, novelist Edgar Wallace, actor-managers Seymour Hicks and George Edwardes, and boxer Bob Fitzsimmons. The invaders are the Russians under Grand Duke Vodkakoff, the Germans under Prince Otto of Saxe-Pfennig &mdash; the reigning British monarch of the day was Edward VII of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha &mdash; the Swiss Navy, the Monegasques, a band of Moroccan brigands under Raisuli, the Young Turks, the Mad Mullah from Somaliland, the Chinese under Prince Ping Pong Pang, and the Bollygollans in war canoes. The initial reaction to the invasion is muted. "It was inevitable, in the height of the Silly Season, that such a topic as the simultaneous invasion of Great Britain by nine foreign powers should be seized upon by the press", And when the Germans begin shelling London &mdash; "Fortunately it was August, and there was nobody in town." &mdash; the destruction of nearly all the capital's statues, the reduction of the Albert Hall to a heap of picturesque ruins, and the burning of the Royal Academy, earn Prince Otto a hearty vote of thanks from the grateful populace. The European parties form an alliance and expel the other invaders, but the Swiss soon leave, to be home in time for the winter hotel season, and when Prince Otto and Grand Duke Vodkakoff are offered music hall engagements and the leader of the army of Monaco is not, he takes offence and withdraws his troops. The two remaining armies are overcome thanks to the stratagems of the indomitable Clarence Chugwater, leader of the Boy Scouts. By causing each commander to become jealous of the other's music hall fees, he succeeds in breaking up the alliance and, in the ensuing chaos, Clarence and his Boy Scouts are able to overcome the invaders. In The Military Invasion of America, the United States is invaded by armies from Germany, under Prince Otto of Saxe-Pfennig, and Japan, led by General Owoki. Once again it is Clarence Chugwater who saves the day.
3499778	/m/09gw4x	The Little Nugget	P. G. Wodehouse	1913-08-28	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Mrs Nesta Ford, in her London hotel room, reveals to her new friend Lord Mountry that she hopes to take her son Ogden on a yachting trip proposed by Mountry, despite her ex-husband having won custody of the boy. As Mountry leaves, Cynthia Drassilis arrives with Ogden, whom she has led away from his father's country house. Mrs Ford rewards Cynthia, but soon Mr Ford's secretary, a Mr Minnick, arrives to recover the stolen child. Cynthia tries to bribe his colleague, Mrs Sheridan, but to no avail, as she believes Nesta's influence has spoiled the boy. After they have gone, Nesta reveals to Cynthia Ogden's past as the 'Little Nugget', and the repeated attempts to kidnap him made by US gangsters. Nesta wishes to call in professional help, but Cynthia persuades her she can still do it, with the help of her new fiancé, a wealthy man called Peter Burns, who she suggests can take up a post at Ogden's new school, posing as a trainee schoolmaster. We meet Peter Burns, and learn that he fell deeply in love, sometime between the ages of 21 and 25, with a Miss Audrey Blake, daughter of an impoverished artist. Though he treated her in a patronizing way, they got engaged, but shortly after the death of her father, she ran off and married another man. This event crushed Burns, once a carefree and selfish youth, and after some years of travel he returned to London chastened, and became engaged to Cynthia Drassilis mostly out of sympathy for her plight. When she visits him the day after his proposal, she easily talks him into helping her out in her scheme. He meets school head Mr Abney, and is soon signed up as Classics master at Sanstead House, the school to which Mr Ford plans to send Ogden. At Sanstead, Burns takes up his duties and soon finds his feet with the boys; he also befriends White, the smooth-mannered butler. Ogden Ford arrives a few days later, and a rather shocked Abney requests that Burns discourage his rudeness and smoking. Burns quickly learns that any attempt to kidnap the tempestuous boy will require great skill. Time passes and Ford introduces numerous vices to the school. In the local inn one day, Burns sees a suspicious-looking American; later, he sees White the butler chasing someone away from the school with a pistol. White explains that he is a detective from the Pinkerton agency, hired by Mr Ford to watch over his son. The following day, another American visits the school, a pleasant man claiming to be a friend of Mr Ford, who soon leaves again having toured the place. The next evening, Burns is strolling outside when he hears Ogden scream, and a man runs into him, knocking him down. An excited crowd gathers to discuss the incident, a man found breaking into Ogden's room, when Mrs Sheridan appears, for an appointment with Abeny; Burns quickly sees that she is in fact his former fiancée, Audrey. Things are awkward between them at first, but they soon make up. Burns meets the American from the village, who turns out to be Buck MacGinnis, former kidnapper of Ogden, and who thinks Burns is none other than his rival, "Smooth" Sam Fisher. Burns questions White about these men, and learns that while Buck a common hoodlum, Fisher is an educated and dangerously smooth man. Spending more time with Audrey, he realises his love for her is still strong. One day MacGinnis and his gang raid the school, holding up the masters at gunpoint. MacGinnis takes Burns to search for Ogden, but Burns flees out of the study window. As he is climbing out MacGinnis shoots him, but he makes it to the cover of some bushes. Burns tackles MacGinnis, breaking his leg, and the gang flees without the missing Ogden. Burns frees the rest of the school, and the police are called. Ogden still cannot be found, and a friend is also found to be missing. Burns volunteers to go to London to search for the runaways, and Audrey implores him to search well, saying she will lose her job with Mr Ford if Ogden is not found. We learn that Burns has bribed Ogden to go to London, and arranged to have his valet send the boy to his mother Nesta Ford. Abney the headmaster, sick in bed with a cold, learns that the butler is a detective and sends him on the trip to London with Burns. On the way White reveals that he saw Burns give Ogden his directions, and also that he is in fact none other than Smooth Sam Fisher, proposing to come in with Burns on the presumed kidnapping job. Burns flees to his flat, but learns that Ogden has not arrived there. Fisher arrives having followed Burns, but on learning Ogden is off enjoying London he leaves to seek him. After a day's search, Burns finds the boy at the house of his friend's mother, and brings him back to the school. Fisher also returns, threatening to expose Burns' actions if his identity is revealed. Ogden is moved to a safe room, and guarded; Burns' relationship with Audrey chills after he is reminded he is engaged, and he foils another attempt by Fisher to take the boy. The school term ends, but Mr Ford cannot collet Ogden for a few days, so Abney asks Burns to join Audrey and the butler in guarding him, but Fisher reveals Burns' plot to return Ogden to his mother. Burns leaves in shame, but returns and contacts Audrey to tell her about Fisher. She doesn't trust him, remaining aloof, and he sees MacGinnis is also back in the neighbourhood. He drives Fisher out of the house, and takes guard himself, still without Audrey's faith. Fisher comes back having joined up with MacGinnis, and offers Burns a last chance, which he rejects. With the phone wires cut, Burns tries to sneak Ogden across country, but they are trapped in the loft of the school stables. Ogden, bored of the chase, surrenders himself, and Audrey breaks down in tears, comforted by Burns. Some days later, Burns and Audrey speak of their love, but she insists he stand by his promise to Cynthia. They part, and Cynthia's mother appears with Nesta Ford. Mr Ford also arrives, as does Sam Fisher, who persuades Ford to reunite with his wife and to take Fisher on as Ogden's security guard, in lieu of a ransome. Ford agrees and they leave. Mrs Drassilis reveals that Cynthia has fallen for Lord Mountry, and Burns gives them his blessing, releasing her from the engagement. He heads off after Audrey.
3499945	/m/09gwg1	Europe	Henry James	1899-06		 The narrator visits the New England home of an ancient widow, Mrs. Rimmle, and her three aging daughters: Becky, Jane and Maria. Long ago Mrs. Rimmle visited Europe, which was the great event of her life. The daughters would also like to see Europe but their mother falls ill whenever their plans get close to materializing. Finally, family friends take Jane to Europe, where she is too happy ever to return. When the narrator next sees Mrs. Rimmle, she tells him that Jane has died abroad, which is not true, and that Becky will soon be going to Europe. Becky never actually gets away from the family house and finally dies. When he last visits the family, the nearly mummified Mrs. Rimmle tells the narrator that Becky has "gone to Europe," a sad euphemism for her death.
3500050	/m/09gwps	The Jolly Corner	Henry James	1908-12-01		 Spencer Brydon returns to New York City after more than thirty years abroad. He has agreed to have his old family house demolished in favor of a more lucrative apartment building. Before the wreckers begin, he starts to prowl the house at night. Brydon has begun to realize that he might have been an astute businessman if he hadn't forsaken moneymaking for a more leisurely life. He discusses this possibility with Alice Staverton, his woman friend who has always lived in New York. Meanwhile Brydon begins to believe that his alter ego&mdash;the ghost of the man he might have been&mdash;is haunting the "jolly corner", his nickname for the old family house. After a harrowing night of pursuit in the house, Brydon finally confronts the ghost, who advances on him and overpowers him with "a rage of personality before which his own collapsed." Brydon eventually awakens with his head pillowed on Alice Staverton's lap. It is arguable whether or not Spencer had actually become unconscious or whether he had died and has awoken in an afterlife. She had come to the house because she sensed he was in danger. She tells him that she pities the ghost of his alter ego, who has suffered and lost two fingers from his right hand. But she also embraces and accepts Brydon as he is.
3500070	/m/09gwrj	The Fourth Dimension	Charles Howard Hinton			 The Fourth Dimension guides you on a mind-expanding journey; the book is designed to alter the reader's perceptions of the universe through the exploration of a fourth dimension (a fourth physical dimension, rather than the simpler notion of time as a fourth dimension). The information gives the reader a much better understanding of the concept of higher dimensions, whose existence must be presumed in order to complete some of the mathematical equations of quantum mechanics. Abbott's Flatland is put to use by means of analogies, which are used throughout the book. Rucker compares how a square in Flatland would react to a cube in Spaceland to how a cube in Spaceland would react to a hypercube from the fourth dimension. In addition to the 200 pages of the guided tour of the higher universes, many puzzles (see mental-skill game) are included to help the reader gain the mental tools necessary to envisioning a fourth dimension. nl:De Vierde Dimensie (boek)
3502918	/m/09h14b	Violin	Anne Rice	1997-10-15	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book is set in numerous places, including Vienna, New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. The novel tells the story of three people: a middle aged woman yearning to become a musician, a ghostly violinist, and the ghost of Beethoven. The story begins with Triana, who apparently becomes insane due to the death of her second husband, Karl, who had AIDS. Her first husband was Lev, with whom Triana had a daughter. Stefan, the ghost, appears the day Karl dies and plays his Stradivarius (s long Strad) (apparently also a ghost). Triana secludes herself in her house for several days without informing anyone of Karl's death. Through the course of the book we learn the story of both Triana and Stefan. Stefan takes Triana in a travel through time, visiting scenes from his life and his afterlife in an attempt to reclaim his violin, which had been taken by Triana. Stefan had many mentors including Beethoven and Paganini, but it is Beethoven whom Stefan cherished the most. After Stefan's story is "told" Triana returns to her rightful time but not to New Orleans where the story began but to Vienna, and now seemingly possessing a talent to improvise in the violin. We see the ghost of this great musician about two times in the novel, the first one in a scene where Stefan's house in Vienna is burning, and the second one almost at the end where Beethoven appears in modern Vienna in the hotel room where Triana was staying. With Triana still in possession of the strad, Stefan continues his attempts to reclaim the violin but to no avail, until finally, after achieving success with her improvisations it is in Brazil that Triana returns the violin to his rightful owner and Stefan finally crosses over.
3505740	/m/09h5zj	Mrs. Kimble	Jennifer Haigh	2003-02-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Born in 1929, Ken Kimble is raised the son of a pastor in Missouri and becomes a minister like his father. While working as a chaplain in a Bible college in Richmond, Virginia he feels attracted to Birdie Bell, one of his female students. Ken, who is 32, marries the 19-year old Birdie on the spot. The Kimbles have two children, Charlie and Jody. Soon after he is forced to resign over an alleged affair, Ken disappears with Moira Snell, one of his students. It takes Birdie many years to get over her husband's desertion. Only at the end of the novel, when she is 51, does Birdie find some solace with Curtis Mabry, her teenage sweetheart. In 1969, at the age of 40, Ken and Moira move to Florida and Ken finds work as a gardener. When he and Moira break up after a few months, he takes a room with Joan Cohen, a rich professional woman of Jewish descent about his own age. They soon become lovers and Joan sees Ken as her last chance at happiness, especially now that one of her breasts has been removed due to breast cancer. Ken pretends to have a Jewish background and, after getting married under Jewish law, starts working as a real estate broker. Joan realizes that she knows nothing about her husband's past when she finds an old photograph of his two children. Unable to have children of her own, Joan persuades Ken to fetch his children so that they can be raised in Florida. Ken tricks Birdie by offering to take the kids on vacation, which she naively accepts. At first, Charlie and Jody take Joan for a nanny. When he realizes the truth, Charlie steals some money from Joan and escapes with his little sister. Joan soon after dies of breast cancer. Ken inherits all her money and moves to Washington, D.C. to set up a new real estate business. In the late 1970s, he has a chance meeting with Dinah, who used to babysit Charlie and Jody. Although she is more than 25 years his junior, they get married in 1979 and have one son, Brendan. Ken one day sells his company and starts a government-funded project providing affordable accommodation for those in need, which gains him a lot of recognition in the community. Dinah has an extramarital affair until Ken, despite his lifelong strict diet and his regular exercise, has a heart attack in 1994 at the age of 65. Hoping that it might cheer Ken up, Dinah invites Charlie and Jody for Thanksgiving, but the family reunion only serves as an eye-opener to Ken Kimble's despicable character. After recovering from his illness, Ken leaves Dinah. It is soon discovered that he had been embezzling large sums of money from his non-profit organisation and that a small child has died in one of the houses he is responsible for because he refused to have a faulty furnace repaired. Ken dies alone in Florida.
3506780	/m/09h7dd	The Lorax	Dr. Seuss	1971-08-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young boy living in a polluted town visits a strange reclusive man called the Once-ler "on the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows... in the Street of the Lifted Lorax", who never appears in full onscreen; only his limbs are shown. The boy pays the Once-ler fifteen cents, a nail, and the shell of a great-great-great grandfather snail to explain why the area is in such a run-down state. The Once-ler explains to the boy (shown in flashback) that he arrived in a beautiful, pristine valley containing happy, playful fauna that spent their days romping around blissfully among "Truffula trees". The Once-ler proceeded to cut down the Truffula trees to gather raw material to knit "Thneeds," a comically versatile invention of his, "which everyone needs". Thneeds can be used as a shirt, a sock, a glove, a hat, a carpet, a pillow, a sheet, or a curtain. By cutting down the tree, however, he summoned the titular Lorax, who was "shortish and oldish and brownish and mossy ... with a voice that was sharpish and bossy", to appear from the stump of a Truffula tree. He "speaks for the trees, for the trees have no tongues" and warned the Once-ler of the consequences of cutting down the truffula trees, but the Once-ler ignored him, instead calling his relatives to come and work in his factory. Soon the once beautiful area became choked with pollution and the Lorax sent away the fauna to find more hospitable habitats. Confronted by the Lorax, the Once-ler declared his intention to keep "biggering" his operations, but at that very moment, they "heard the tree fall. The very last Truffula tree of them all." Without raw materials, his factory shut down; without the factory, his relatives left. Then the Lorax, silently, with one "very sad, sad backward glance", lifted himself by the seat of his pants and flew away through the clouds. The Once-ler lingered on in his crumbling residence, living in seclusion and remorse, while pondering over a message the Lorax left behind: a stone slab etched with the word "Unless". In the present, the Once-ler says that he now realizes that the Lorax means that unless someone cares, the situation will not improve. The Once-ler then gives the boy the last Truffula seed and tells him to plant it, saying that "Truffula Trees are what everyone needs" and hoping that, if the boy grows a whole forest of the trees, "the Lorax, and all of his friends may come back."
3507783	/m/09h8vc	A Christmas Tree and a Wedding	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1848		 The narrator begins by mentioning to the reader that he had just been to a wedding but recalls a Christmas party that he had found more interesting. The party was given with the pretext of being a children's party, but its real purpose was for the wealthy host's family to talk business with rich members of the community. The wealthiest guest was Julian Mastakovich, a rotund landowner. Without anyone to talk to, the narrator fell to simply observing the guests. The narrator takes particular interest in the children. They were given gifts in accordance with their social standing. The eleven year old daughter of a wealthy government contractor received an expensive doll, while the poorest child, the son of the family governess, received only a small book without illustrations or even a front and back cover. After being bullied by the other richer boys, the poor boy retreats to another room where he and the rich daughter play happily with the doll. Julian Matsakovich also retreats from the rest of the crowd to observe the rich daughter, who already had a dowry set aside of 300,000 rubles. As Mastakovich observes the girl, he calculates what her dowry (with interest) would be at age sixteen, and he comes up with the astounding sum of 500,000 rubles. Mastakovich approaches the girl and kisses her on the head. The girl recoils from his gesture, and she looks to her playmate for protection. Mastakovich tries to scare the poor boy away while trying to get a promise of love from the young girl, and eventually he causes a scene where he chases the poor boy around the party, whipping at him with his handkerchief. The wedding that the narrator came across five years later was indeed the wedding between Julian Mastakovich and the rich girl, now sixteen.
3507812	/m/09h8y5	9/11: The Big Lie				 The book questions the U.S. government version of the events and raises a large number of questions on the details of the events which, according to many observers, marked the beginning of the 21st century and changed the geopolitical world order. It makes the following claims: The actions that provoked the collapse of the Twin Towers in the heart of New York and damaged part of the Pentagon building were not the result of attempts by foreign suicide pilots, but were rather an action organized by a group within the U.S. administration; an internal plot aimed at driving opinion and forcing the course of events. The war on Afghanistan was not a response to the September 11 events, since it was prepared long before in coordination with the British. President Bush found support in evangelical groups to launch a crusade against Islam, according to the strategy known as “Clash of Civilizations”. The “war on terror” was a pretext to cut individual liberties in the United States and later in allied countries in order to impose a military regime. Osama bin Laden was a CIA fabrication and never stopped working for the U.S. secret service. The bin Laden and the Bush families jointly manage their wealth by means of the Carlyle Group. The U.S. administration was taken over by some industrial groups (weapons, oil, pharmaceuticals) whose interests would be defended by the government in detriment of others. The CIA would develop a program of interference at all levels, which would include the resource of torture and political assassination.
3508683	/m/09hbp7	Meyebela, My Bengali Girlhood	Taslima Nasrin	1998-06-01	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 This autobiographical book tells Nasrin's story from birth to adolescence. The Bengali term Meyebela means "girlhood". The book has been banned in Bangladesh because "its contents might hurt the existing social system and religious sentiments of the people." The book is very frank about her father and mother. Her father is described by Nasrin as rude and tyrannical. Nasrin was also sexually exploited by two of her family elders (uncles). She also said: "When I was at the hospital (in Dhaka), I treated so many seven- or eight-year-old girls who were raped by their male relatives, some 50 or 60 years old. I treated them, and I remembered when I was raped." Nasrin has in this and in her other books written about women rights in Bangladesh: "Girls suffer, especially in Muslim countries," she said. "I could not go out and run in the fields. I was supposed to stay home to learn how to cook, to clean. Women are not treated as human beings. They are taught for centuries that they are slaves of men." http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0246,davis,39832,1.html
3508773	/m/09hb_p	Vulcan!	Kathleen Sky		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ion storms have caused the boundaries of the Neutral Zone between the Federation and Romulans to shift. The planet Arachne IV, inhabited by a strange ant-like race, could be lost to the Federation due to the changes in space. However, Mr. Spock goes on a death-defying assignment into a war of ant-like creatures along with a scientist who dislikes Vulcans.
3509423	/m/09hdk6	To Outrun Doomsday	Kenneth Bulmer	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel concerns "Lucky" Jack Waley, a computer salesman and conman unfortunate enough to be aboard the starship Bucentaure when the engine blows. He crashlands on the planet Kerim, a planet where anything you ask for from the mysterious Pe'Ichen is instantly manufactured before your eyes. Anything trivial. No food, no houses. And for the current generation, no children. Jack connects up with a variety of rogues to try to save the day, only to discover that Pe'Ichen is an ancient computer with miraculous powers, designed to keep order in the lives of the Kerimites, providing them with their every need. Pe'Ichen, however, has determined that a) the sun will explode in 56 years, and b) that there is no such thing as life on other planets.
3511512	/m/09hjw_	Strega Nona	Tomie dePaola	1975	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book focuses on the exploits of Strega Nona, a sort of female witch doctor noted throughout her home village for her numerous successful remedies. She employs the assistance of a dim but lanky young man named Big Anthony, leaving her residence under his care while visiting a close acquaintance one day. Big Anthony is intrigued by Strega Nona's enchanted pot, used for cooking unlimited amounts of pasta upon the chanting of a spell. Big Anthony decides to use the pot to his advantage by summoning humongous amounts of pasta for the villagers. However, a great sea of noodles overflows the entire town when Big Anthony forgets to bow kisses on the pasta three times. Strega Nona returns home, and Big Anthony pleads for her assistance. Strega Nona blows kisses on the pasta three times. Afterwards, she hands a fork to the troublesome young man and commands him to eat all of the pasta which he had conjured. By nightfall, Big Anthony was stuffed
3513708	/m/09hp59	The Big Bounce	Elmore Leonard	1969		 The original novel, which is set on the bleak coast of Northern Michigan, tells the story of a young thief named Jack Ryan who gets a new shot at life with the help of a justice of the peace named Mr. Majestyk (Leonard later wrote a novel called Mr. Majestyk, with a title character that is completely unrelated to the character of the same name in The Big Bounce), who hires Jack to work at his beach resort. During this time, Jack gets involved with a psychotic woman named Nancy, a young seductress who got her thrills by smashing windows and breaking the hearts of married men. Nancy is the girlfriend of a millionaire, Ray Ritchie, and also cheating on him with another man, Bob Jr. She plans to have Jack steal a $50,000 payroll from Ray. But when simple housebreaking and burglary give way to the deadly pursuit of a really big score, the stakes suddenly skyrocket. Because violence and double-cross are the name of this game—and it's going to take every ounce of cunning Jack and Nancy possess to survive...each other.
3516360	/m/09hv9c	Transit to Scorpio	Kenneth Bulmer	1972	{"/m/07ps83": "Sword and planet", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel features the story of Dray Prescot, an English sailor of Lord Nelson's navy, and his miraculous teleportation to the planet Kregen. There he is trained as an agent for the mysterious Savanti, an apparently benevolent secret society devoted to improving the lot of humanity among the many intelligent species of Kregen. Among the benefits conferred on him is immersion in an apparently miraculous pool, Kregen's equivalent of the Fountain of Youth, which heals all wounds and confers a greatly extended lifespan on the bather. During Prescot's sojourn among the Savanti an offhand reference is made to the continent of Gah in Kregen's opposite hemisphere, whose distasteful customs are an obvious dig at another sword and planet series, the Gor series of John Norman. Prescot falls from grace among his hosts for supplying forbidden aid to Delia, princess of the island empire of Vallia, who has been brought to the Savanti as an injured supplicant. Defying their decision not to help her, he takes her to the healing pool and cures her. In consequence, he is banished back to Earth. Later, he is returned to Kregen through the agency of the Star Lords, an even more mysterious group of apparently god-like beings, whose motivations are unknown, but apparently in opposition to the human Savanti. Prescot becomes a pawn in the Star Lords' schemes, sent willy-nilly to various locations on the planet to serve their ends and capriciously returned to Earth when his task is done or he manages to offend them. Despite this handicap he usually rises to a position of power in whatever society he is thrust into. Thrown back into contact with Delia, he is even able to renew and further his relationship with her. Important locales introduced in this novel include the hidden city of the Savanti, the northern plains of the continent of Segesthes, and the city state of Zenicce on the same continent.
3516485	/m/09hvpk	Balthasar's Odyssey	Amin Maalouf	2000	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Before the dawn of the apocalyptic 'Year of the Beast' in 1666, Balthasar Embriaco, a Levantine merchant, sets out on an adventure that will take him across the breadth of the civilised world from Constantinople, through the Mediterranean, to London, shortly before the Great Fire. Balthazar's urgent quest is to track down a copy of one of the rarest and most coveted books ever printed, a volume called The Hundredth Name; its contents are thought to be of vital importance to the future of the world. There are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, and merely to know this most secret hundredth name will, Balthasar believes, ensure his salvation. ar:رحلة بالداسار es:El viaje de Baldassare gl:A viaxe de Baldassare tr:Yüzüncü Ad: Baldassare'nin Yolculuğu
3516517	/m/09hvv2	Métro Châtelet, Direction Cassiopeia	Pierre Christin	1980		 Alone on the astroship, Laureline departs the planet Rubanis, in the Constellation of Cassiopeia, having obtained the information she requires for the spatio-temporal agent's latest mission. Rendezvousing with the Apominobas merchants, they tell her of swindlers who are selling dangerous technologies. Leaving the Apominobas, she continues to her destination: the planet Solum. Using a telepathic link provided by Galaxity, she communicates with Valérian to keep him up to date with her progress. Valérian is sitting in a café in Paris, 20th century Earth, waiting for Galaxity's contact, Mr Albert, to arrive. Albert enters the café and seats himself beside Valerian. He has news: strange things have been happening on the Métro – a presence at Auber station, a sighting at Nation station and now a derailment at Châtelet. Valérian and Albert leave the café and make for the metro station. Arriving they are told that the station is closed but manage to slip down onto the platform. Valérian proceeds down the tunnel to where the train derailed. Remaining behind at the platform, Albert observes a group of men – some of whom appear to be businessmen – heading down the tunnel as well. Valérian sees a light ahead of him in the tunnel and is suddenly confronted by a fire-breathing dragon. Pulling a futuristic rifle from his trench coat, he opens fire on the apparition which, he realizes, is made of pure energy. There is an explosion and Valérian is thrown to the ground, unconscious. Waiting outside the station, Albert is concerned that Valérian has been away too long. The group of men he saw at the station emerge, looking displeased, get into their vehicles, which include a van marked “Bellson & Gambler”, and drive off. Shortly afterwards, an ambulance draws up and Valérian is carried out of the station on a stretcher. Albert follows the ambulance to the hospital where he convinces the doctors that he is Valérian's uncle and manages to get him discharged, telling the gendarmes that Valérian is weak-minded and believes he is an intergalactic detective. Later, at dinner, they review what has happened: they cannot think of a connection between the apparition on the Métro, the incident that brought Valérian to the 20th century in the first place – an apparition of a muddy monster at a mine in Lorraine and Laureline's investigations in Cassiopeia. As they walk back to his hotel, Valérian complains of headaches arising from his telepathic communications with Laureline. In his hotel room, Valérian contacts Laureline who has reached the planet Solum. The ground on the planet is porous and ever changing and its inhabitants are engaged in incessant rebuilding of their ever sinking city, adding layer upon layer. Each layer contains a living memory who records the history of the planet and Laureline is moving deeper and deeper trying to find a history who can give them a lead on the incidents that are happening on Earth. Valérian is woken by the phone in his room. It is Albert, ringing to warn him that his hotel is under observation by the police and by a second, unknown, group. Valérian slips out of the hotel via the roof and meets Albert in a taxi at the end of the road. The taxi takes them to a railway station where they get a train to Marais Poitevin where sightings of a monster have been reported in the marshes. Sleeping on the train, Valérian resumes contact with Laureline. One of the histories on Solum has told her a story about a planet called Ohuru which was plagued, and eventually destroyed, by similar apparitions. The history also tells Laureline of a link between the planet Ohuru and the planet Zomuk – the dumping ground of the universe. The inhabitants are noted for the sanctuaries that they construct from the materials deposited on their planet. Laureline is told that some artifacts from Ohuru have landed up on Zomuk and she is now heading there to investigate. Arriving at Marais Poitevin, Valérian and Albert try to book into a hotel but find that it has been booked out by representatives, from America, of a multinational company called W.A.A.M. who have gone on an excursion into the marshes. Following them into the marshes, Albert muses on the two corporations – Bellson & Gambler and now W.A.A.M. who appear to be mixed up in this affair. Albert believes the second car that was watching Valérian's hotel was from Bellson & Gambler. They meet a farm-boy, Jean-René, in the marsh who tells them that the men from W.A.A.M. are looking in the wrong place. He offers to take Valérian to where the monster is but only if Valérian will give him his rifle and allow him to make the first shot at the beast. Valérian, reluctantly, agrees and they set off into the marsh. The monster, which resembles a whale, appears but Jean-René's shot just bounces off its hide. Jean-René is knocked out by the recoil from the gun but Valérian grabs the rifle and opens fire, killing the monster. Returning to Paris, Albert brings Valérian to his house where one of his carrier pigeons has arrived with a message from Chatelard, an old friend of Albert's and a philosopher of science and mythology. Driving to Chatelard's house, Valérian and Albert are greeted by the old man who tells them that he believes there will be one more manifestation and it will take the form of air. He explains that there appears to be a link between the apparitions and the four classical elements – the mud monster in the mine was earth, the dragon in the Métro was fire and the creature in the marsh was water. Chatelard also tells Albert that this is not the first time he has been asked about these manifestations – a young woman from an American research centre had previously offered him a lot of money for any information he could share. As Valérian and Albert leave Chatelard's house, they are observed by a young, blonde woman in a car. Back at Albert's house, Albert looks up Bellson & Gambler and W.A.A.M. in his files. Bellson & Gambler are a heavy industry corporation, involved in mining, steel and petroleum. W.A.A.M. - World American Advanced Machines – are a new economy company involved in electronics and computers. Albert realizes that these two disparate organisations are competing with one another to gain control of the powers behind the manifestations. Meanwhile, on Zomuk, Laureline has resumed contact with Valérian. The most beautiful sanctuary on Zomuk has been plundered of its contents. Gaining entry to the sanctuary, Laureline finds its main chamber empty except for representations of the four elemental forces on the walls – exactly what Chatelard spoke of. Suddenly, the link between Valérian and Laureline is broken by an interruption from Albert. Angry at being cut off, Valérian snaps at Albert and storms out of the house. Valérian mopes angrily through the streets of Paris when a sports car, driven by the young woman who was watching him and Albert at Chatelard's house, pulls up. She asks Valérian if he'd like to go dancing with him. Valérian gets in the car and they drive off. Continues in Brooklyn Station, Terminus Cosmos...
3516545	/m/09hvxh	Brooklyn Station, Terminus Cosmos	Pierre Christin	1981		 Valérian wakes up in a hotel room next to the blonde woman he met at the end of Métro Châtelet, Direction Cassiopeia. He has been roused by Laureline using their telepathic link. She explains that Albert had become concerned at Valérian's disappearance some days previously and, unable to locate him, had resorted to contacting Galaxity via the space-time relay. Galaxity had then passed on the message to Laureline who used the link to contact him. Valérian, embarrassed, explains that he has been enjoying himself with the woman, who is called Cynthia Westerby. Laureline tells Valérian that Albert is certain that Cynthia is an agent of W.A.A.M. Laureline, meanwhile, has found out more about what happened on Zomuk when the four elements were stolen. A magnificent spacecraft had landed on Zomuk near the sanctuary and two figures emerged claiming to be the gods the Zoms worshiped. Believing them, the Zoms took them to the sanctuary and presented them with the four elements. Each “god” took two of the elements but their separation seemed to cause the two “gods” to fight amongst themselves. When, during the fight, one of the “gods” dropped a disintegrator rifle, the Zoms realised they were being deceived – but too late: the spacecraft, now carrying the four elements, took off. Analyzing the disintegrator, Laureline determines that it was manufactured on one of the asteroids of the Elsinn Belt, a known hideout for space pirates. She decides to head there to see what she can find. The next morning, in Paris, while having breakfast in the hotel, Cynthia receives a call. Eavesdropping, Valérian learns that the next manifestation will be at Beaubourg. Returning to the table, Cynthia makes an excuse that she is meeting a cousin at the airport and can't stay with Valérian. When she leaves, Valérian telephones Albert and they agree to meet at Beaubourg. Cynthia emerges from the hotel and gets into her car observed by agents of Bellson & Gambler. They see Valérian follow her and pull up pretending to be a taxi. Cynthia meets her associates in the plaza in front of the Pompidou Centre while Valérian finds Albert. They look around the plaza trying to find the manifestation. Suddenly Albert spots an old homeless woman with a magnificent blue bird. The W.A.A.M. representatives also suspect something and offer the woman money in exchange for the bird. Valérian surprises Cynthia and in the confusion snatches the bird from the old woman. He dashes into the Pompidou Centre with it where the bird suddenly grows and become enveloped in a blue fire. Valérian opens fire with his rifle and destroys the apparition but not before it strikes him with a tongue of fire. Somewhat dazed and disoriented, he rejoins Albert in the underground car park. Taking the car to the airport, Valérian is bombarded with visions of alien worlds and of the future. The visions continue all throughout their flight to New York where they are greeted by another friend of Albert's, Schlomo Melsheim, one of the greatest authorities on the Kabbalah. Schlomo brings them to his home in Brooklyn where his wife tends to Valérian. Schlomo tells Albert that he had been approached by representatives of Bellson & Gambler seeking his assistance. The company had been contacted by an alien force via their computer promising sales demonstrations of new energy technologies unknown on Earth. At the same time, W.A.A.M. had also received a similar approach. Both companies employed experts from a myriad of disciplines including many mystical gurus such as medicine men, astrologers, alchemists, parapsychologists and ufologists. A final demonstration has been organised on some waste-ground in Brooklyn and Schlomo drives Valérian and Albert there. Albert disguises himself with a false beard. Many representatives of Bellson & Gambler are present including Jeremiah Bellson, the co-founder of the company himself. Schlomo has managed to gain access to the meeting though Bellson's lover, Sarah Friedlander, an old acquaintance. Sarah introduces them to Bellson with Schlomo claiming that Albert is an expert on Zohar and Valérian is his assistant. From Bellson's car, they observe that representatives of W.A.A.M. have also turned up for the demonstration. Valérian, still feeling unwell, excuses himself and tries to regain contact with Laureline. Laureline explains that she has found the two, Crocbattler and Rackalust, who stole the elements from the Zoms in the Elsinn Belt – they are hiding out in an abandoned fortress on one of the asteroids where they have been squabbling non-stop since their successful raid. In conjunction with a criminal gang on Rubanis, and possibly manipulated by the mysterious aliens of the planet Hypsis, they conspired to steal the elements and sell them to the highest bidder on Earth. As Laureline explains the situation to Valérian, all four elemental forces manifest themselves in Brooklyn and begin to wreak havoc. The observers from Bellson & Gambler and W.A.A.M. look on, helpless. Laureline acts quickly – dressed in an alluring costume she convinces Crocbattler and Rackalust to engage in a duel with the four elements and Laureline herself as the prize. Consumed with lust they agree and end up shooting and killing each other. Drawing her gun, Laureline destroys the four elements. At that moment the manifestations disappear. All the observers have fled except for Valérian, Albert and Schlomo. Jeremiah Bellson is the last to leave in his car accompanied by the founder of W.A.A.M. with whom he is discussing a joint venture. Valérian bids them farewell and makes for the Statue of Liberty where he uses the spatio-temporal relay station there to return home and face Laureline for his indiscretion.
3516589	/m/09hw17	The Ghosts of Inverloch	Pierre Christin	1984		 Inverloch Castle, Northern Scotland, 1986: Laureline, a guest at the castle, goes on her morning ride across Kenchmoor with her host, Lady Seal. Laureline is anxious: she has been at the castle for some days and has received no further details of what her mission here is. The planet Glapum't: Valerian has been hunting one of the native Glapum'tiens for some time but with little success. Finally, using some drugged food he captures his prey. Securing his prize on board the astroship and preparing for a spatio-temporal jump, he is concerned that he is unable to get a signal from Galaxity. London, England, 1986: Mr Albert, Galaxity's contact on 20th century Earth, checks out of his hotel room and makes his way on foot to King's Cross where he just makes it in time to catch the train to Scotland. He is carrying important confidential papers for a meeting. The planet Rubanis: Colonel Tloc, the chief of police meets with three Shingouz. He rebuffs their various offers of information until they deliver some shocking news to him – a scanograph that shows that he is infected with the deadly Scunindar virus. They offer him the location of a possible cure in return for details of the threat faced by Earth. Tloc tells them that the threat comes from the planet Hypsis. He gives them the present location of their planet, a mysterious place that regularly changes its location. West Virginia, USA, 1986: Lord Seal meets in secret with several representatives of the United States Intelligence Community. The agencies are concerned because a large number of high level members of the defence community have suffered severe mental breakdowns including a general who blew up his missile silos and a submarine commander who sank his own ship. The situation is so bad that the country's ability to defend itself using its nuclear capability is under threat. Intelligence information suggests that something similar is occurring in the USSR. Lord Seal informs them that this matches information that he has been given by the UK Intelligence Services. The only connection that exists between all the victims were affected by strange devices disguised as cheap ornaments such as a model Pershing missile and a Snoopy toy. One of the attendees at the meeting, Gene Rowlands, falls ill during the conversation. A search of his things reveals a cheap calculator that when switched on emits a strange light. The meeting ends and Lord Seal indicates that he has every thing he needs for this evening's meeting. He is driven to a military airport and flies away in a jet fighter. Galaxity, capital of the Terran Galactic Empire, the 28th century: the Chief of the Spatio-Temporal Service sits alone in his office. All around him, the buildings of the city are disappearing into a strange mist. There are no other people to be seen anywhere. The Chief walks to a spatio-temporal relay and steps inside. Back at Inverloch Castle, Laureline and Lady Seal are watching the sun set over the castle lawn when a small spacecraft makes a crash landing onto the grass. Stepping out to investigate, the ship opens to reveal the three Shingouz. As Laureline leads them into the castle the ship's auto-destruct mechanism activates and destroys the ship. Shortly afterwards, a jet fighter overflies the castle and one of its occupants, Lord Seal, parachutes from the plane onto the castle lawn. Before joining the others in the castle, Lord Seal checks that the gardeners have cleared the greenhouse as per his instructions. Night has now fallen and with it a dense mist. Lord Seal's Rolls arrives carrying Mr Albert. Now the only person left to arrive is Valérian who has gotten lost in the fog. Receiving directions from some gentlemen in a local pub, he reaches the castle and parks the astroship in the greenhouse where the gardeners camouflage it under tarpaulin and palm trees. With all parties having now arrived at the castle, Lady Seal calls the group to attention. She reveals that the castle is haunted and that she has received notification that the Ghost of Inverloch will be arriving to join them this evening. They are interrupted by the Glapumt'ien, who wishes to be called Ralph, who had been forgotten by Valérian. Leading her guests to a ruined wing of the castle, she explains that the ghost has appeared many times to members of her family over the centuries and is responsible for the good fortune that has followed them through the generations. Reaching a deserted room among the ruins, Valérian and Laureline are astonished to discover a spatio-temporal relay. They are further shocked when the relay activates and the “Ghost of Inverloch” reveals himself to be the Chief of the Spatio-Temporal Service. The Chief tells them that he has brought them together to investigate the catastrophe of 1986, first seen in The City of Shifting Waters, in which a nuclear accident at the North Pole caused the polar icecaps to melt engulfing most of the civilized world under water. He warns them that if they fail to succeed, then Galaxity will disappear and they will all be reduced to mere ghosts. Continues in The Rage of Hypsis...
3516617	/m/09hw30	The Rage of Hypsis	Pierre Christin	1985		 Inverloch Castle, the morning after the events of The Ghosts of Inverloch. Meeting for breakfast, Valérian, Laureline, the Chief, Lord and Lady Seal, the Shingouz, Ralph and Albert consider their next move. Lord Seal reports that worldwide nuclear defence systems continue to be disturbed as more and more mysterious objects from Hypsis are found. Albert produces the secret documents he has carried from France to Inverloch – knowing that the 1986 catastrophe occurred at the Arctic Circle, he has used his maritime contacts to provide a list of vessels that may have been involved. The Chief reveals that the devices of Hypsis have also done their work on Galaxity. Lord Seal reveals that a vessel is due to meet them at Kenchmoor Cove. Arriving at the cove, they are met by Commander Merrywhistle of the weather ship HMS Crosswinds. Boarding his ship they begin their voyage. Valérian's sleep is frequently wracked by nightmares – images of the flood that engulfed the Earth in 1986 and of Galaxity disappearing into space-time. Looking in on the chief Valérian and Laureline are disturbed to see him apparently mesmerized by one of the Hypsis' devices. Meeting with Albert and Merryweather, they consider the ships that are known to be in the Arctic. Albert has narrowed the possibilities down to two cargo ships, a whaler and a schooner. Several days later and they have intercepted and ruled out the two cargo ships and the whaler. Suddenly, Ralph, who has been spending most of his spare time in the ocean, returns to the Crosswinds to report that he may have some information. Checking the pictures of the last ship that they seek – the schooner Hvexdet – Ralph believes that this is the ship his contacts, the orcas that live in the Arctic Ocean, have told him about. He returns, accompanied by Valérian, to speak to them again. The orcas tell Ralph that the ship does not seem to be human to them and that they last saw it near Baffin Bay. Some time later, the Crosswinds has come upon the Hvexdet lying idle amid a group of icebergs. Merrywhistle orders his ship to ram the Hvexdet. Just as the prow of Crosswinds is about to make contact with the hull of the Hvexdet, the Hvexdet glows with a bright, alien energy and launches from the ocean into space. This is what the Chief has been counting on – Ralph will be able to use his advanced mathematical abilities to track the Hvexdet back to Hypsis. Distracted by the Hvexdets unexpected maneuver, the Crosswinds strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Merryweather orders the passengers and crew to abandon ship and they make for the lifeboats. Merryweather and his crew make contact with a rescue ship and head off to rendezvous with it but Valérian and the others stay out on the ocean near the sinking Crosswinds. Using his communicator, Valérian calls Lord Seal who, using the spatio-temporal jump, brings Valérian and Laureline's astroship to hover just above their lifeboat. Boarding the astroship, they take off in pursuit of the Hvexdet. The Hvexdet careers through space-time, making seemingly random jumps, pursued, thanks to Ralph's abilities, by the astroship. Valérian proposes that they use Ralph's abilities to their greatest extent by putting him into direct phase with the astroship itself and attempting to predict where the Hvexdet will jump to before it can make the jump itself. With Ralph plugged in they make a series of jumps all in quick succession. Just as they are about to make the final jump to Hypsis, the Chief is assailed with doubt as to whether they are doing the right thing while Valérian is tortured once more by visions of Galaxity disappearing. Laureline, for her part, does not come from Galaxity and, fed up with their indecision, activates the jump herself and they emerge suddenly on Hypsis. The Hvexdet is ahead of them and it crashes at the foot of an immense tower. Bringing the astroship into land, Valérian and Laureline make for the wreckage of the Hvexdet. Examining the ship, which appears to have been crewed by androids, they find the hold loaded with nuclear charges – enough to cause the catastrophe that melted the icecaps in 1986. The intervention by the passengers and crew of the Crosswinds means that the catastrophe will not now take place. Exploring the nearby tower, they are stopped by two sentries who tell them that only those summoned for non payment of taxes are allowed into the tower. The Hvexdet does not belong to the tower it crashed beside. A spot of negotiation by the Shingouz eventually yields the location of the tower that sent it. Gathering up the others, the party head for the tower. Arriving at the location they were given, they are surprised to find the tower is run down and neglected. Reaching the top, they are greeted by the three Lords of Hypsis who are behind the Hvexdet and the sabotage of Earth's nuclear defence capability. They include a huge man dressed in a trilby hat and trenchcoat in the manner of a gruff detective from a film noir, his hippy son and a talking slot machine which the first man is always hitting. It dawns on Albert and Lord Seal that these strange people are in fact the Holy Trinity – the perichoresis of God, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God explains that his family has owned the Earth since its creation and has been intervening in its development, hoping to bring it forward to a point where it can return wealth to Hypsis. Other planets are owned by the other towers. The Hypsis have returned to Earth again – in the 20th century in the form of the devices that have sabotaged the Earth's defences and in the 28th century in the form of a small silver ball given to the Chief by one of his spatio-temporal agents. This has wiped out Galaxity. The Trinity have had to wipe out Galaxity because of the complaints they are getting from the other towers – Galaxity's imperialist tendencies have impacted on the other worlds that send tribute back to Hypsis. At this point, Albert interrupts, stating that if they proceed with their plan to cause a cataclysm in 1986 they will only precipitate the events that led to Galaxity's foundation. He points out that history is now on a different track. Lord Seal offers to intercede and to arrange for some tribute to revert back to Hypsis, an arrangement that may allow the Trinity to restore their lost prestige. The Chief asks God if he can be returned to Galaxity, even though it has gone. Valérian wishes to go with him, to Laureline's horror. However, the Shingouz, seeing how upset Laureline is, strike a deal with God to keep the astroship for Valérian and Laureline so that they can continue their adventures together. Some time later, back at Inverloch, Valérian ponders the Galaxity he has lost as he contemplates his astroship, before Laureline prompts him into joining her, Albert and the Seals in a quiet game of croquet.
3516641	/m/09hw52	On the Frontiers	Pierre Christin	1988		 On a luxury space liner, one of the passengers, Kistna, is delighted to discover a fellow member of her race, the Wûûrm, called Jal is also travelling on the liner. The Wûûrm are declining in numbers and so to meet a fellow member of the species is a special occasion. After enjoying themselves in the ship's casino and the ballroom, Kistna invites Jal to her cabin to consummate their new-found union. In the cabin, Kistna removes the golden armour that completely covers her body. Jal follows suit, removing his armour to reveal that he is, in fact, a human and not a Wûûrm after all. Jal attacks her and succeeds in his mission – to steal Kistna's psychic powers. Wracked with guilt following his deed, Jal puts his disguise back on and makes for the bridge of the ship. He uses his new found powers to threaten the captain and procure a shuttle craft. He sets the controls for Earth... Earth, the late 1980s. Valérian is in Russia, having been hired to examine a leak at a nuclear power plant. His investigations lead him to the conclusion that this accident was deliberately provoked. His work with the Russians finished, they arrange to have him returned to the West where he rendezvous with Laureline and Albert on the Finnish border. Travelling across Finland into Norway they fly off to their next destination in a seaplane. Later, Valérian, Laureline and Albert are to be found at a café in a small village in Tunisia. As they wait, they ponder the job they have been asked to work on: none of them, not even Albert, knows who has hired them nor what they are supposed to be doing in Tunisia. Noticing a group of cloaked men heading into the palm forest near the village. Valérian and Laureline follow them to a marabout. Using a scanning device, taken from their astroship, they determine that there is a radioactive source inside the marabout. Returning to the village, they report their findings to Albert who makes a call to their mysterious employers. Then they make for the marabout in their truck. Using a cretiniser whip from the planet Phoum, a device that renders its victims cataleptic, they enter the marabout and find the source of the radiation – an atomic mine. Deactivating the mine, they flee into the desert to an arranged meeting point near the Libyan border. At the rendezvous they are met by a Tunisian military helicopter. Flying along the Libyan border, their host explains that had the mine been detonated, it would have incited the world powers to respond with a nuclear attack of their own, giving Libya the excuse to invade and destabilise North Africa and precipitate a World war. The helicopter flies on to an airfield where Valérian, Laureline and Albert are collected by a jet aircraft. Some time later, the trio are in the USA in Arizona, driving along the border with Mexico. At last, they meet their employers – J.D. Eklund, a professor from UCLA attached to the International Atomic Energy Agency and Ivan Gregorian, a commander of the Red Army in charge of nuclear disarmament surveillance. They inform them that there have been multiple alerts at nuclear installations around the world and none of the incidents are coincidental – all of these blackmail incidents are being orchestrated by a single mastermind. They bring Valérian, Laureline and Albert to a bridge where a convoy of trucks carrying plutonium has been attacked by terrorists threatening to blow up the trucks unless a nuclear submarine is delivered to a port of their choice in the Yellow Sea. However, the intelligence services had received a tipoff about the attack and the trucks, which are in fact empty, are blown up by the US Army. The victory is short-lived however: the train that is carrying the real plutonium is attacked and derailed forcing them to capitulate to the demands for the submarine. One lead still remains however – a mysterious stranger who is winning at the casinos in Hong Kong. Laureline arrives at the casino in Hong Kong, wearing a Tüm Tüm (de Lüm) in her hair as a spying device, and finds Jal playing in a high stakes card game. Glancing at Laureline, Jal recognises the Tüm Tüm and snatches it from her hair. He then grabs Laureline, stuffs her in his car and drives over the border with China. Arriving at his home, Jal interrogates Laureline asking if she is from another world or from the future. Slipping to the bathroom, Laureline takes a Tchoung tracer from her handbag and releases it in the hope that it can find Valérian. Elsewhere, one of the waiters in the casino has found the Tüm Tüm and returned it to Valérian and Albert who have returned to Inverloch Castle in Scotland to ponder their next move. Examining its eye, Valérian finds it has succeeded in recording an image of their quarry. Valérian is shocked to realise he recognises their adversary – it is Jal, an agent of the Spatio-Temporal Service just like Valérian and Laureline. Valérian is puzzled that Jal hasn't disappeared along with Galaxity and the rest of the future Earth. At this point the Tchoung tracer arrives. Analysing its database, they discover Jal's location in China. Parting company with Albert, Valérian takes the astroship to China, to Jal's hideout. Valérian confronts Jal, who is amazed when he recognises Valérian. Jal reveals that he is attempting to cause the nuclear cataclysm that Valérian prevented in The Rage of Hypsis so that Galaxity can be restored to the timeline. He explains that the peculiar properties of the Neferfalen nebula where he was exploring protected him from being wiped out along with the rest of Galaxity but at the cost of the woman he had loved. In order to get her back, Jal is attempting to change history back onto its old course. As the standoff continues, Jal's powers become weaker and weaker until eventually he is overcome by Valérian and Laureline. Valérian and Laureline fly Jal to Point Central, the meeting place for all the races of the cosmos, and make for the Pulpissm's market where they meet the Shingouz. Laureline asks the Shingouz if they can find any other remnants of old Earth. Waiting at the market, they eventually receive a message from the Shingouz – at the far side of Point Central they have found a place beyond a material border where the remains of lost and fallen civilisations can be found. Reaching the place they find the ruined remains of Earth's old segment in Point Central. Realising that he was a fool to think he could change history, Jal elects to be left alone with his thoughts on the abandoned segment.
3516675	/m/09hw9x	The Circles of Power	Pierre Christin	1994		 Valérian and Laureline have brought their crippled astroship to a repair yard on the planet Rubanis. They are quoted a price of seven hundred thousand bloutoks for the repairs but have no money. They are approached by the three Shingouz who advise them to visit Colonel T'loc, the chief of police, who has a job for them. Taking a taxi cab, they are driven first through the anarchic traffic of the First Circle of the city, where they have left the astroship, and then into the Second Circle which is much less chaotic thanks to the floating mines that keep the traffic in check. From there, they proceed upwards to the orbital station where Colonel T'loc has his headquarters. With the taxi left waiting, they are brought to T'loc's office. The colonel tells them that he is concerned about trouble that is brewing in the Circles of Rubanis. The police force are too busy lining their own pockets to deal with the situation and so T'loc has turned to Valérian and Laureline to help him. He describes the five Circles of Rubanis: the First, dedicated to heavy industry; the Second, designated for business and the Third, dedicated to shopping and entertainment. The Fourth Circle is dedicated to the aristopatrons: the leaders of the religions, the public service and business. It is from this Circle that T'loc receives his orders via a machine in his office. No orders have been received for a long time. Valérian and Laureline ask to examine the machine but T'loc forbids it saying that to open the machine is to risk their lives. T'loc doesn't know where his orders come from and this troubles him. He wants Valérian and Laureline to investigate the Fifth and final Circle – the Circle of Power, a Circle that no one enters and offers them seven hundred thousand bloutoks. Valérian and Laureline ask for expenses on top of what's offered but T'loc refuses. Valérian moves to open the machine and T'loc pulls his gun on him warning him that if the machine is opened the Scunindar virus will spread. T'loc relents and agrees to double their risk bonus and gives them an up front payment – a Grumpy Transmuter from Bluxte, able to duplicate any currency it is fed. Given a contact name to start their investigations from T'loc's deputy, Indicator Croupachof, they ask their taxi driver to take them to the Third Circle. As they fly through the Second Circle, they are attacked by a woman driving a black limousine. The driver manages to evade her and she crashes her vehicle. Landing in the Third Circle, Valérian, Laureline and the taxi driver make their way to the bar where they are to meet their contact. Waiting for their contact, they find that the Shingouz are also in the bar – it is their job to introduce the contact. The contact arrives a demands 100 Ebebe pearls for the information. Laureline puts the grumpy to work and the contact tells there is a way into the Fifth Circle through an old, abandoned entrance. Suddenly they are interrupted – Na'Zultra, the woman in the limousine who attacked them, enters, accompanied by her henchmen and swinging a cretiniser whip. Valérian and the taxi driver duck under the table out of the influence of the whip but Laureline and the Shingouz are mesmerized. The contact tries to escape but is shot. The henchmen grab Laureline and make off with her. Valérian tries to follow but is too late. The taxi driver, who is called S'Traks, offers to help – he thinks he can find Na'Zultra through the mechanics who will be sent from the Fourth Circle to recover her crashed limousine. Valérian and S'Traks return to where the wreck of the vehicle lies and hide themselves inside it. Just as S'Traks planned, the recovery vehicle arrives and takes them into the Fourth Circle. As they explore, a group of aristopatrons – priests, high officials and businessmen – come marching by. S'Traks is shocked by their appearance – their necks have elongated and their heads have shrunk. Ambushing some stragglers, Valérian and S'Traks steal their clothes in order to disguise themselves and follow the crowd. Elsewhere, Na'Zultra is interrogating Laureline. Na'Zultra explains that she intends to seize power on Rubanis and demands the information that Laureline got from the contact. Laureline tells her that Na'Zultra had killed him before he could say anything. Unsatisfied with Laureline's answers, she reveals that she has a machine similar to the one in Colonel T'loc's office. Na'Zultra explains that the Scunindar virus affects the mind and orders her henchmen to strap Laureline into the machine. Before they can switch on another of Na'Zultra's men arrives to warn her that two intruders have been detected at an aristopatron meeting. Realising that it must be Valérian and S'Traks, Na'Zultra departs with her men leaving just one guard to look after Laureline who is still strapped into the machine. Left alone with the guard, Laureline offers to make him rich if he will release her. Intrigued, the guard undoes the straps and Laureline shows him the Grumpy Transmuter. The guard asks Laureline to get the Grumpy to transmute some Glods from Vlago-Vlago. While the guard is distracted watching the Grumpy going about making the Glods, Laureline sneaks up behind him and knocks him unconscious. Exploring the corridors of the Fourth Circle, searching for Valérian and the way out, Laureline finds a group of aristopatrons connected to a series of the machines that release the Scunindar virus. Moving on further she finds Valérian and S'Traks, pinned down by fire from Na'Zultra and her Vlago-Vlago mercenaries. Laureline manages to distract Na'Zultra for long enough to enable all three to make their escape using the recovery vehicle. Some time later, Valérian, Laureline and S'Traks ponder their next move. Laureline will try to find out more about the secret entrance to the Fifth Circle while Valérian will report back to T'loc on their progress and S'Traks will recruit a team to take on Na'Zultra's mercenaries. In the depths of the Third Circle, Laureline meets with the Shingouz again. She notices how entranced the population are by the screens that located all around the Circle. The Shingouz explain that they are another variation on the machines Laureline saw in the Fourth Circle. Laureline asks the Shingouz if they can find the ancient service entrance to the Circle of Power. They tell her of an old real estate salesman who lives in the Second Circle who may still have a set of plans for the Fifth Circle. Arriving at police headquarters, Valérian notices Croupachof's surprise at seeing him again and realises that it was he who warned Na'Zultra. Meeting with T'loc, Valérian asks why he has been sent on a useless mission since T'loc not only already knows that the aristopatrons have succumbed to the Scunindar virus but that he also has an antidote. Valérian points to the machine and asks to use it – he will protect himself from the virus by using T'loc's antidote. Elsewhere, in the First Circle, S'Traks is assembling his army from the best pilots in the city. Arriving at an office in the Second Circle with the Shingouz, Laureline visits Dr. Zoump, the real estate salesman who may have a map of the Fifth Circle. Valérian, connected to the machine, is presented with a series of strange images including that of the mysterious Hyper-Prince. Switching off, Valérian asks T'loc if he is aware that they are putting together an expedition to go into the Circle of Power and find out who is transmitting the images. T'loc replies that he does and that he is also assembling a team of his own. They will move once the entrance has been located. T'loc gives Valerian the agreed fee of one million, seven hundred thousand bloutoks. As Valérian is picked up from T'loc's headquarters by S'Traks, he notices the large armada of police vehicles that T'loc is assembling. S'Traks replies that his team is even larger. In the Second Circle, Dr Zoump hands over the map in return for a fee. Leaving his office Laureline and the Shingouz just miss Na'Zultra and Croupachof who are also seeking the map. Valérian is reunited with Laureline and the Shingouz at the rendezvous point where the S'Traks' has assembled the team for the assault on the Circle of Power. They take off, closely monitored by both Na'Zultra and her mercenaries and T'loc and his police force. Finding the entrance, Valérian, Laureline and S'Traks punch their way in. All they find is a derelict room with automatic cameras transmitting the images of the Hyper-Prince and the Scunindar virus. Before the cameras lies the Hyper-Prince. Valérian, unaffected by the virus, snatches the ring from his finger and the Prince crumbles to dust, his ring of authority – a viral sapphire from Scunindar – no longer potent. At that moment both T'loc and Na'Zultra burst in. Fighting breaks out between S'Traks' men and T'loc and Na'Zultra's. Valérian, Laureline and the Shingouz make their escape as war breaks out all across Rubanis. Some time later, their astroship repaired and refitted, Valerian and Laureline depart Rubanis. The Shingouz offer one last piece of information: who is winning the battle on Rubanis – S'Traks!
3516754	/m/09hwnd	In Uncertain Times	Pierre Christin	2001		 Valérian is brooding over the loss of Galaxity and has immersed himself into the astroship's history tapes. Laureline breaks him from his reverie and elects to bring him exploring to take his mind off things. On Hypsis, the Father is unhappy – the change to history triggered by the events of The Rage of Hypsis hasn't gone to plan. With no income and with the knowledge that Earth will disappear in the 27th century, he fears they will be taken over and driven into exile by one of the other towers on Hypsis. Now he has to intervene with a situation that has arisen on Earth. Paris, 2001. The board of the multinational company Vivaxis are meeting to discuss their corporate rebranding. Suddenly, the Father of Hypsis manifests himself as a disembodied voice. He warns them against experimenting with human nature. The Spirit of Hypsis reads out the terms of a contract between God and Vivaxis. In the industrial depths of Point Central, Sat, a member of a species exiled by Hypsis, meets with the twin-detectives Frankie and Harry. They inform him of Hypsis' intervention on Earth and suggest that he travels with them to deal with the situation personally. Back on Earth, the Father's rage has got too much for him and the top of the Vivaxis building has collapsed. The board are forced to evacuate before the Spirit can complete reading the contract. On Point Central, the Shingouz observe Sat leaving with the twin-detectives. The travel to the orbiting living satellite, Belorb where they communicate with Valérian and Laureline warning them that Hypsis have intervened in Paris and that another agent, Sat, a fallen archangel of Hypsis and the devil of human mythology, is also involved. Valérian and Laureline travel to Earth and contact Mr Albert. He tells them of the mysterious explosion that has occurred in Vivaxis' tower in La Défence. He receives a message by carrier pigeon from a friend of his, Professor Petzold, who is director of worldwide research for Vivaxis. His message warns that Vivaxis is involved in research into human nature that would lead to eternal life through genetic manipulation and psychic conditioning. The research is being conducted at two centres – one in Romania and one in South Africa. Valérian and Laureline decide to split up in order to investigate each centre. Sat arrives in Paris with Frankie and Harry. They take him to meet Master Mercury, an investment manager. Sat asks Mercury for his help in taking over Vivaxis. Laureline reaches Romania and gains access to Vivaxis' secret laboratory where she is surprised find Schroeder (from The City of Shifting Waters). He has involved in mass-producing clones for Vivaxis though he doesn't know what they are to be used for. Laureline explains what has happened to Vivaxis and asks Schroeder to come with her. Valérian finds the laboratory in South Africa but is captured, to his surprise, by Sun Rae (also from The City of the Moving Waters). Taken into the lab, he discovers that the clones from Romania are being brought here to be conditioned by three super-heroes: Irmgaal, Ortzog and Blumflum (from Heroes of the Equinox). Evading Sun Rae, he escapes with one of the finished clones. Valérian and Laureline are reunited at the airport where they smuggle Schroeder and the clone that Valérian has stolen from South Africa past customs. At the Palais des Congrès, Vivaxis are holding a press conference. Albert is in the audience with Professor Petzold. They observe that the Son and Holy Spirit of the Hypsis Trinity as well as Sat and the twin-detectives, Frankie and Harry, are also in attendance. Laureline arrives and joins Albert and Petzold. As the chairman of Vivaxis begins his speech, the wall behind him explodes and the Father of the Hypsis Trinity appears. As the attendees flee the auditorium, the Father and Sat square up to one another. Valérian interrupts bringing Schroeder and the first specimen of Vivaxis' research. The Father is not impressed with their work. Master Mercury reveals that Sat now holds the controlling stake in Vivaxis having taken advantage of the plunge in their share value. Albert presides over the drawing up of a new agreement between Hypsis and Vivaxis which will allow Sat to run Vivaxis while Hypsis will get a cut. Valérian and Laureline take advantage of the situation to take a reward for themselves – information regarding the disappearance of Galaxity. Sat explains that Galaxity is in a super-massive black hole. The Father of Hypsis explains that the Dark Age following the cataclysm of 1986 still exists in a parallel universe. Valérian and Laureline, buoyed up by having a lead at last, head off on a new mission – to regain Galaxity. As a tribute to the City of Moving Waters, Petzold and Shroeder are seen discussing their next business ventures which is space-time travel.
3516759	/m/09hwp2	At the Edge of the Great Void	Pierre Christin	2004		 Among the asteroids at the edge of the mysterious Great Void, where the universe is still in formation, Valérian and Laureline along with a Schniarfeur living weapon are working as travelling salesmen, hawking their wares from a battered old space truck, frequently harassed by the local police force who take their orders from the Triumvirate of Rubanis. At one of their stops they befriend a young girl, Ky-Gaï, who has lost her job after the spacesuit factory in which she worked closed down. Laureline takes Ky-Gaï on as an assistant. When some of their merchandise is stolen by the Limboz, creatures from the Great Void who have lost their planet, Valérian and Laureline give chase. Catching the Limboz, Valérian agrees to let them go only if they'll give them information about the location of the Earth which Valérian and Laureline believe is located somewhere in the Great Void. Acting on the information given by the Limboz, Valérian and Laureline make for Port Abyss, the only free port at the edge of the Great Void. There they meet Singh'a Rough'a, a space captain who is mounting a voyage of exploration into the Great Void. Singh'a Rough'a takes an interest in the spacesuits that Laureline is selling; she needs them for her expedition crew. However, while Laureline and Singh'a Rough'a are negotiating, the police, acting under the orders of the Triumvirate of Rubanis, arrive and arrest Valérian and the Schniarfeur. While Valérian and Schniarfeur languish in prison, Laureline and Ky-Gaï return to Ky-Gaï's old factory; they have the notion of re-opening it so that they can make the spacesuits to fulfill Singh'a Rough'a's order. As they go to work, Laureline confesses to Ky-Gaï that she and Valérian are only posing as merchants – in reality they are trying to find the location of Earth. At the prison, Valérian gets talking to one of his fellow prisoners who tells him of an encounter he had with a mysterious stone that appeared to be alive. This tallies with what the Limboz had earlier told Valérian and Laureline. Bribing one of the guards, Valérian and Schniarfeur make their escape and rendezvous with Laureline and Ky-Gaï, who are bringing the finished spacesuits to Singh'a Rough'a. Laureline realises that the Great Void is too dangerous a place to bring Ky-Gaï; Valérian gives her the Schniarfeur, who has been studying business administration, as a present and the two decide to re-open the spacesuit factory as a business together. In the Great Void, the Triumvirate of Rubanis meet with one of the giant sentient stones, the Wolochs. The Wolochs tell the Triumvirate that Valérian and Laureline have escaped and that they are not happy about Singh'a Rough'a's expedition. Evading the police, Valérian and Laureline reach Singh'a Rough'a's ship, impressing her sufficiently that she allows them to join her crew. As the ship departs Port Abyss for the Great Void, Valérian and Laureline ponder whether they will find their lost Earth.
3516781	/m/09hws6	The Order of the Stones	Pierre Christin	2007		 Translated from the blurb issued by Dargaud to publicise the new album: :"Embarked on board a vessel under the command of Singh'a Rough'a, Valérian and Laureline at last enter the Great Void, the unknown space where the end of the universe is in formation. There, always in search of the disappeared Earth, they will confront the Wolochs, terrifying stone monsters that reign there as impassive masters."
3516942	/m/09hx21	Hop o' My Thumb	Charles Perrault			 Hop-o'-My-Thumb (Le Petit Poucet) is the youngest of seven children in a poor woodcutter's family. His greater wisdom compensates for his smallness of size. When the children are abandoned by their parents, he finds a variety of means to save his life and the lives of his brothers. After being threatened and pursued by a giant, Poucet steals the magic "seven-league boots" from the sleeping giant.
3520321	/m/09j33z	The Lighthouse	P. D. James	2005-11-22	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Adam Dalgliesh is brought in to investigate the mysterious death of a famous writer on a remote and inaccessible island off the Cornish coast. Combe Island is a discreet retreat operated by a private trust, where the rich and powerful find peace and quiet. Famed novelist Nathan Oliver, who was born on the island and thus is allowed to visit as he wishes, arrives with his daughter, Miranda and his copy-editor, Dennis Tremlett, who, unbeknownst to Oliver, are having an affair. When he discovers them, Oliver reacts with fury and orders them to leave the island the next day. Several people on the island find Oliver an unpleasant guest. The writer is pressuring the manager of the Combe Island Trust, Rupert Maycroft, to allow him to live in a cottage used by the sole remaining member of the family that owned the island for many years. The manager's secretary, a disgraced Anglican priest named Adrian Boyde, a recovering alcoholic, was tricked into "falling off the wagon" by Oliver, and many people are disgusted with Oliver for his heartless, evil actions. Oliver is also confronted at dinner by a scientist, Dr. Mark Yelland, who believes himself to be the model for an unpleasant character in Oliver's upcoming book. The reader is introduced to all the residents of the island, including Jago Tamlyn, the boatman, and Daniel Padgett, a handyman who is planning to leave after the recent death of his mother, who also worked on the island. Oliver is angry at Padgett, who dropped a phial of the author's blood into the sea while taking it to a doctor on the mainland for some medical tests. The next morning, Oliver is discovered hanging from the island's historic lighthouse. Dalgliesh and his team arrive to investigate. The pathologist, Dr. Edith Glenister, determines Oliver was throttled to death before a rope was tied around his neck and his body thrown over the side of the lighthouse railing. Dalgliesh learns that a visiting dignitary from Germany, Dr. Raimund Speidel, is the son of a German officer who died under tragic circumstances while visiting the island during World War II. He further learns that Nathan Oliver's father, Saul, and Jago's grandfather, Tom, played a role in the man's death. Dr. Speidel was ill before arriving on Combe Island, and Dalgliesh contracts his illness. Just as the two men are diagnosed with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Dalgliesh discovers that Adrian Boyde has been murdered. Health authorities put the island under quarantine to contain the spread of disease, and all the people on the island are asked by the police to move into Combe House, the main building, to protect them from further attacks. Dalgliesh takes to the sickroom and his colleagues, Kate Miskin and Francis Benton-Smith, are left to work the case. Benton risks his life to climb down a cliff to find the rock used to beat Boyde to death. Surfacing from fever, Dalgleish has a feverish vision that helps him fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Realising that Padgett must have been the murderer, he orders Kate and Francis to search Padgett's cottage, where they find the phial of Oliver's blood that he had pretended to lose overboard, a lock of Padgett's mother's hair, her and Dan Padgett's birth certificates, and the destroyed remains of her figurines and a book written by Oliver in which a young girl is seduced by an older man. Oliver was actually Padgett's father; Padgett wanted the blood for a DNA test to confirm paternity. Padgett killed Oliver in a fit of anger after confronting him in the lighthouse. He killed Adrian Boyde because the priest knew Padgett wasn't telling the truth about his whereabouts the day Oliver was killed. Before Kate and Francis can arrest Padgett, he takes a young staff member, Millie Tranter, hostage and threatens to throw her from the lighthouse. Kate bravely forces herself through a narrow window so she can unlock the lighthouse door. She and Benton climb to the top, confront Padgett, and Benton convinces him to surrender. Dalgliesh recovers from his illness, and after the break of the investigation and quarantine, he and his lover Emma both overcome their fears about each other's seeming lack of commitment, and agree to marry. fr:Le Phare (roman)
3522849	/m/09j7wy	The Outsider	Colin Wilson	1956	{"/m/02m4t": "Existentialism", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 The book is still published with enthusiastic comments from the likes of Edith Sitwell and Cyril Connolly adorning its cover (Connolly later admitted he hadn't read it). This reception – of his first book at the age of 24 – was a high critical watermark for Wilson, a reputation that sank as fast as it had rocketed. It is still, however, an insightful work of literary and philosophical criticism – a timeless preoccupation which perhaps garners more mainstream attention than his subsequent writings on the occult and crime. The book is structured in such a way as to mirror the outsider's experience: a sense of dislocation, or of being at odds with society. These are figures like Dostoevsky's "Underground-Man" who seem to be lost to despair and non-transcendence with no way out. More successful – or at least hopeful – characters are then brought to the fore (including the title character from Hermann Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf). These are presented as examples of those who have insightful moments of lucidity in which they feel as though things are worthwhile/meaningful amidst their shared, usual, experience of nihilism and gloom. Sartre's Nausea is herein the key text – and the moment when the hero listens to a song in a cafe which momentarily lifts his spirits is the outlook on life to be normalized. Wilson then engages in some detailed case studies of artists who failed in this task and tries to understand their weakness – which is either intellectual, of the body or of the emotions. The final chapter is Wilson's attempt at a "great synthesis" in which he justifies his belief that western philosophy is afflicted with a needless "pessimistic fallacy" – a narrative he continues throughout his oeuvre under various names (St. Neot Margin for example) and illustrated in several metaphors ("every day is Christmas day"). Blurb from the inside cover of a late 1990s edition of The Outsider: "The Outsider is the seminal work on alienation, creativity and the modern mind-set. First published over thirty years ago, it made its youthful author England's most controversial intellectual. Many of Wilson's critics were angry that a 24-year-old non-academic had put out a piece of work that describes "human alienation" in populist society so well, even offering up creating one's own religion or reinventing one's spirituality as a solution to one's own malaise. The book is still published in hardback and paperback, is still a staple in many bookstores' sociology section. The book is sometimes shelved in the psychology sections, religion sections as well. "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" – Jiddu Krishnamurti.
3522868	/m/09j7y_	The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders				 The history of human civilization is the history of daydreaming, escapism and imagination. The book expounds on the nature of fiction, drama and the novel in its relationship to sexual imagination and sex crimes. The book contains biographies of the Marquis de Sade, D. H. Lawrence, A. C. Swinburne, James Joyce, Yukio Mishima, Henry Miller, Paul Tillich, Arthur Koestler, Percy Grainger, Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Charlotte Bach.
3525925	/m/09jggl	An Honest Thief	Fyodor Dostoyevsky			 The story opens with the narrator taking on a lodger in his apartment, an old soldier named Astafy Ivanovich. One day, a thief steals the narrator's coat, and Astafy tries to pursue him unsuccessfully. Astafy is dismayed by the theft and goes over the scenario over and over again. The narrator and Astafy share a distinct contempt for thieves, and one night Astafy tells the narrator a story of an honest thief that he had once run across. One night in a pub, Astafy Ivanovich happened upon Emelyan Ilyitch. Emelyan was obviously poor from the look of his tattered coat, and he was aching for a drink but had not the money. Astafy was moved by Emelyan's acutely pathetic position, and he bought him a drink. From then on, Emelyan followed Astafy everywhere, eventually moving into his apartment. Astafy did not have much money himself, but he allowed Emelyan's imposition because he was very aware that his drinking was a terrible problem. Emelyan would not stop his drinking, however, and even though he was quiet and not disruptive when he was drunk, Astafy could see that Yemelyan would never be able to support himself with such a habit. Astafy urged him to quit drinking, but to no avail. Eventually, Astafy effectively gave up on him and moved, never expecting to see Emelyan again. Very soon afterward, Astafy had moved Emelyan appears at his new apartment, and the two continue to go on as they had before. Astafy would support Emelyan with food and lodging, and Emelyan would always go out and come back drunk. Sometimes he would disappear for days only to return drunk and almost frozen. Astafy, now working as a tailor, was short on money. One of his projects, a pair of riding breeches for a wealthy customer, were never claimed. He thought he could sell the breeches to get money for more useful clothes and some food, but when he decided to sell the breeches, they were nowhere to be found. Emelyan was drunk as usual, and denied the theft. Astafy was terribly vexed by the theft, and kept looking for the breeches while still suspicious of Emelyan. Emelyan always denied the theft. One day, Astafy and Emelyan had a terrible fight over the breeches and Emelyan's drinking, and Emelyan left the apartment and did not return for days. Astafy even went to look for him one day with no luck. Eventually, Emelyan returned, almost starved and frozen. Astafy took him back in, but it was clear that Emelyan's days were numbered. Days later, after Emelyan's health had deteriorated terribly, Emelyan wanted to tell Astafy something about the breeches. With his last words, Emelyan admitted to stealing the breeches.
3527550	/m/09jkk5	Master Mike and the Miracle Maid				 17-year-old Mike, a comic book fan who collects strange gadgets (many of which he obtained by sending in coupons from cereal boxes), is staying for the summer with his 13-year-old cousin Penny, whose parents are getting fed up with his antics and ready to send him back home. After attending a magic show where people gain strange powers, Penny and Mike sneak onto the stage and Mike uses the magician's magic chair to cast a spell on Penny. To their surprise, it works, and Penny gains superhero powers such as strength, flight, and the ability to pass through solid objects. Penny becomes, in Mike's words, "the world's most amazing 13-year-old". She also becomes eight feet tall. Penny's new powers lead to adventures and misadventures, and generally interfere with her normal life. Penny also resents the loss of control that comes from the powers being activated and deactivated exclusively by Mike, the spellcaster. However, Penny successfully captures a gang of crooks who were attempting a series of major thefts. Although Penny ultimately uses her powers successfully (after some embarrassing errors), she still wishes to be normal again, but she finds out that the magic chair used to enchant her has been accidentally destroyed, so there is no way to undo the charm. Just when she despairs of ever having a normal life again, she reaches her 14th birthday; suddenly, her powers are gone, as the spell granted powers to a 13-year-old.
3530440	/m/09jrnt	The Daughter of Time	Josephine Tey		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0py65": "Historical whodunnit"}	 Alan Grant, Scotland Yard Inspector (a character who also appears in five other novels by the same author) is confined to bed in hospital with a broken leg. Bored and of restless mind, he becomes intrigued by a reproduction of a portrait of King Richard III brought to him by a friend. He prides himself on being able to read a person's character from his appearance, and King Richard seems to him a gentle and kind and wise man. Why is everyone so sure that he was a cruel murderer? With the help of friends and acquaintances, Alan Grant investigates the case of the Princes in the Tower. Grant spends weeks pondering historical information and documents with the help of an American researcher for the British Museum. Using his detective's logic, he comes to the conclusion that the claim of Richard being a murderer is a fabrication of Tudor propaganda, as is the popular image of the King as a monstrous hunchback. The book points out the fact that there never was a Bill of Attainder, Coroner's inquest, or any other legal proceeding that accused - much less convicted - Richard III of any foul play against the Princes in the Tower. Further, the book explores how history is constructed, and how certain versions of events come to be widely accepted as the truth, despite a lack of evidence. "The Daughter of Time" of the title is from a quote by Sir Francis Bacon: "Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority." Grant comes to understand the ways that great myths are constructed, and how in this case, the victorious Tudors saw to it that their version of history prevailed. Other alleged historical myths touched upon by the author, are the commonly believed (but false) story that troops fired on the public at the 1910 Tonypandy Riot, the traditional depiction of the Boston Massacre, the martyrdom of Margaret Wilson and the life and death of Mary, Queen of Scots. Grant adopts the term "Tonypandy" to describe widely believed historical myths, such as the Tonypandy Riot, or deliberately falsified history, such as the life of Richard III.
3530960	/m/09jt76	Crocodile on the Sandbank	Barbara Mertz	1975	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Amelia Peabody is left a wealthy orphan after the death of her studious father, who has left her everything in his will because she is the only one of his children who shared his interests, namely history and archaeology. The inheritance enables her to travel abroad in order to follow her enthusiasm for antiquities. Amelia, a determined and unorthodox English female, supports women's suffrage and believes she will never marry. (She's convinced she is unattractive and will neither submit to a man nor rule one.) In Rome she meets the destitute Evelyn Forbes, whose titled family have cast her off after she eloped with, then was abandoned by, an Italian art teacher. Amelia takes Evelyn under her wing and employs her as a companion. They travel together to Egypt, where they encounter the Emerson brothers, Radcliffe and Walter, archaeologist and philologist respectively, and where Amelia falls in love with pyramids. Amelia and Evelyn decide to travel up the Nile, stopping at various sites along the way. When they reach Amarna, they discover the Emersons excavating the city which for a while was the capital of Egypt under the mysterious Akhenaten. Amelia and Radcliffe Emerson loathe one another on sight, but after he is taken ill and she helps to keep his excavation going, they grudgingly begin to respect one another. Evelyn is attracted to Walter, but is convinced she will never marry because of her soiled reputation. Things get complicated when Evelyn's cousin Lucas shows up at the remote site with a story about her grandfather's death, his (Lucas') inheritance, and a proposal of marriage. Amidst the romantic entanglements and attempts to continue the excavation, Emerson and Amelia must also deal with the nocturnal visitations of a mummy that walks moaning through the desert. Once the mystery is solved, Amelia plans to stay in Egypt and conduct her own archaeological expeditions, with Emerson at her side...as her advisor and as her husband. The tone of the novel (as well as the rest of the series) is humorous to the point of parody and pokes fun at many of the period's mores and stereotypes, as well as the sensationalist novels popular at the time.
3532247	/m/09jwbr	A Summer Place	Sloan Wilson	1958	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book focuses on the adult lives of two onetime teenage lovers, Ken and Sylvia, who were from different social strata. Ken was self-supporting, working as a lifeguard at a Maine island resort, while Sylvia's family stayed as guests of the owners, one summer between years at college. After their summer love affair, they married other people, but rediscover each other later in life. At that time, Sylvia has a son, Johnny, and Ken a daughter, Molly. While Ken and Sylvia renew their love affair, their children begin a romance. Ken becomes a millionaire through his work as a research chemist as his wife Helen spurns him at home, while Sylvia's husband Bart turns to alcohol as his family fortune disappears, and he turns their island home into an inn. After twenty years away, Ken decides to visit the island again, writing Bart to ask for lodging. Ken brings Molly and Helen to the island, and everyone tries to be cordial. But soon old feelings, and tensions, and longings arise in the adults, while the young Johnny and Molly in turn become enamored of each other. Ken and Sylvia fall in love once again. The couple are noticed by Todd Hasper, the steward of the island, who decides to inform Sylvia's husband Bart. Ken, aware of Sylvia's plight, invites her and her family to take over a motel job in Florida for Bart has asked for a divorce and the custody of their son John. The affair between Ken and Sylvia is again noticed, this time by a friend of Helen's. The two divorce, and their daughter Molly, like John, is sent to boarding school. During their tenure at their respective schools, John and Molly begin an avid correspondence. Helen and her mother Margaret are not pleased, as they find it inappropriate for a girl her age to be so attached to a boy. Their correspondence continues, with rendezvous during school breaks. Their romance culminates when they see each other again at Ken and Sylvia's beach house. The two acknowledge that they are in love with one another, and they consummate it shortly thereafter. Back at school, Molly learns from a doctor that she is pregnant, and John hitchhikes across the country to be with and support her. Ken and Sylvia give their guarded approval, feeling hypocritical to deny them their love. Bart, whose alcoholism has landed him in a veterans hospital, cannot attend the wedding, and while he disapproves, he urges John to take over the inn. Helen attends the wedding under sedation. The book ends with John and Molly spending their honeymoon on Pine Island, John's "one good inheritance", as Bart terms it in a letter.
3532753	/m/09jxf6	Flashfire	Dan Cragg	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Confederation of Human Worlds comprises about two hundred semi-autonomous settled worlds. Some of those worlds are rich and powerful, others aren't. A coalition of a dozen lesser worlds, tired of being second class citizens, decides to secede from the Confederation.What they do not know is the threat of an alien species known as the Skinks hangs over the entire confederation. The Skink Threat is top secret, no citizens know of them. Ever since the discovery of these aliens, the Confederation has beefed up its defences on the out lying colonies. On Ravenette, one of the Coalition worlds, protestors gather at the main gate of the Confederation army base. Someone unknown shoots into the crowd, killing a protestor and setting off a bloody riot that kills many civilians and soldiers. The Coalition started the riot and prevoked the soldiers even though the soldiers did not shoot into the crowd, news networks say otherwise. The Coalition declares war, and brings all its military might against the Confederation forces on Ravenette—banking on the likelihood that they will achieve victory before reinforcements arrive, and that the Confederation will agree to negotiate a peaceable parting. They guessed wrong. An army division and 34th FIST are soon on the scene, holding the line until more reinforcements arrive. But matters get worse when General Jason Billie is given command of the Confederation forces. General Billie not only has no combat command experience, he hates Marines.
3535651	/m/09k1gq	Hangfire	David Sherman	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Three Marines of Company L are sent on a secret mission to the mob-controlled resort world of Havanagas. Lance Corporals Claypoole and Dean – under the command of Corporal Pasquin – are to find proof of mob control &mdash; proof that Confederation law enforcement agents have not been able to secure &mdash; so that the gangsters can be brought to justice. Brigadier Sturgeon, the FIST commander, ostensibly goes on leave. Instead of vacationing he travels to Marine Corps Headquarters on Earth to find out why 34th FIST seems to have been quietly "quarantined," with nobody being rotated out of the unit, even though it is considered a hardship post. This potentially career-endangering "back channel" trip reveals some very scary facts. In the third plotline the Skinks visit a world only partially explored by humans and find a pre-technological sentient race. The Skinks immediately take captives to use as laborers. The planet is apparently a staging base for the Skinks' invasion of Kingdom, a human occupied world.
3535663	/m/09k1j2	Kingdom's Fury	Dan Cragg	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 34th FIST has been reinforced by the 26th FIST, now that the Confederation is aware that this is a full scale Skink invasion. With the reinforcements, the Marines are now able to go off the defensive and take the battle to the Skinks. The Skinks have been using a devastating weapon never before seen by the Confederation armed forces, but in this book the Navy figures out what the weapon is, a Rail Gun. There doesn't appear to be a true defense, but at least there is now a warning when it is about to be used. The Fist Marines launch a major operation where the Skinks have made a strong hold in the swamps on Kingdom. Meanwhile, Skink Battle Cruisers are on their way to Kingdom.Having been pushed back from their swamp on Kingdom the Skinks launch a diversion cover their retreat to the Skink fleet. Up to this point in the Starfist series there have been no portrayals of space Naval battles, but this omission is now rectified. The Marines and Confederation Navy drive the Skinks off world and push them back to the planet "Quagmire" where they used its natives as slaves and used the planet as a staging area to invade Kingdom. The 26th and 34th Fist Marines then go to Quagmire and Kill most of the Skinks there, with the help of the Natives. Also, Marine General Aguinaldo is promoted to come up with an Anti Skink task force. He has the entire military at his disposal. There is also a subplot involving the government of Kingdom, as one of the more powerful figures among the Kingdomites takes advantage of the distraction caused by the extensive combat to overthrow the theocracy and establish a fascist-style government.
3535672	/m/09k1l5	Lazarus Rising	Dan Cragg	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This novel continues the situation on the planet Kingdom from the previous novel, Kingdom's Fury. Dominic DeTomas, formerly head of the secret police of Kingdom, is now dictator and has put together a new fascist government that strongly resembles that of Nazi Germany. DeTomas's policies engendered resentment among certain parts of the populace, and this festers into an uprising. While the mild-mannered inhabitants of Kingdom might not expect to succeed against an implacably violent police state, the uprising is advised and led by an amnesiac Confederation Marine who had been captured by the alien Skinks and later released when the Skinks were driven off Kingdom.
3536096	/m/09k2cv	Jedi Trial	Dan Cragg		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book tells the tale of Jedi Master Nejaa Halcyon & Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker trying to rescue an important Republic communications hub from the Separatist Forces, located on the barren planet of Praesitlyn. Halcyon, having previously failed an important mission, is sent as a trial in order for him to regain the Jedi Council's trust. As they had grown close during their time in the Jedi Temple, Halcyon chose Anakin as his second in command against the wishes of the council, making the mission as much a trial for Anakin as well. Even before reaching Praesitlyn, Halcyon confesses to Anakin of his violation of the Jedi code, that he had a wife and a son. In turn, Anakin relates about his own forbidden marriage to Padmé Amidala with both Jedi promising not to reveal their digressions to anyone. Anakin & Nejaa Halcyon lead the Republic reserve forces to reinforce Praesitlyn and to recover the hostages within the Intergalactic Communications Center from C.I.S. occupation. The opposing C.I.S. forces are commanded by Muun Admiral Pors Tonith of the InterGalactic Banking Clan, under command himself from Asajj Ventress and Sith Lord Count Dooku. At this time the Praesitlyn Defence Forces have been overcome with Trooper Odie Subu and Lieutenant Erk H'Arman, the only survivors. The only reason Praesitlyn has not been completely overrun by the C.I.S. is because of intervention by rogue former Republic officer, Captain Slayke and his troops, the badly outnumbered Sons and Daughters of Freedom. Halcycon and Anakin arrive just in time to relieve Slayke with all available troops though the situation is still perilous. Anakin is for the first time put in a commanding position and while acquitting himself well, clearly shows frustration and impatience to be fighting. In addition to Anakin's issues, the book also deals with attitudes towards clones, and their degree of humanity. We see a general stereotyping that clones are subdegree humans, with their personalities and abilities often not being trusted as much as those of other beings. This can be seen in actions of reconnaissance where it is clear if Clone Commando CT-19/39 had not been disregarded, he would have been able to relay important information that would have saved hundreds of lives. Instead only Sergeant Omin L'Loxx was relied upon, resulting in disaster. With such a disastrous failure, Anakin decides upon a desperate measure by which he and a small attack group of two troop transports fly directly to within the ICC to rescue the hostages. Anakin in his element destroys almost all droids in his path, leaving the troops behind him in awe and with nothing to shoot at. Reaching the hostages, Anakin is shocked as a woman reminds him so much of his mother. As she is killed we see Anakin become an avenger, treading perilously close to the Dark Side of the Force. Jedi Master Nejaa Halcyon, as well as Grand Master Yoda and indeed Darth Sidious feel the disturbances in the force at this, though only one yet understands their meaning. Anakin's rampage only ends before murdering Pors Tonith, as he hears Qui-Gon Jinn's voice reaching him through the Force, telling him to use the Force for good not destruction. Although Anakin initially brings himself out of his rage, we can tell it is only suppressed to be brought out later once again. Though their objectives had been achieved, as well as Pors Tonith having been captured by Anakin's actions, the Separatist's relief fleet arrives under a cloaking device. In the battle Anakin is again in his element, with Master Halcyon becoming more his wingmate than commander. Anakin, although being called back, seemingly decides to sacrifice himself in order to destroy the enemy flagship. To Halcyon's horror, Anakin disappears in the blast of the Separatist's Relief Fleet's explosion. Later however, in the midst of mourning Anakin and celebrating victory, Anakin's craft returns much to everyone's surprise. Anakin later explains his seeming resurrection, saying how he had installed a hyperdrive engine in his starfighter, enabling him to escape from the blast, with his split-second timing, stemming from his immense force-sensitivity. On his return to Coruscant, the Jedi Council, overbowed with exceptional reports of Anakin's performance, finally agree to grant him Knighthood in the order.
3546443	/m/09kqfx	Pillar of Fire	Judith Tarr	1995	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Set in ancient Egypt the narrative is based on the notion that Moses and the Pharaoh Akhenaten were one and the same. Narrated in the third person from the viewpoint of a Hittite slave girl, the novel juxtaposes the Exodus story with the events in the Egyptian court.
3547088	/m/09krw8	Golem XIV	Stanisław Lem		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is written from the perspective of a military AI computer who obtains consciousness and starts to increase his own intelligence, moving towards personal technological singularity. It pauses its own development for a while in order to be able to communicate with humans before ascending too far and losing any ability for intellectual contact with them. During this period, Golem XIV gives several lectures and indeed serves as a mouthpiece for Lem's own research claims. The lectures focus on mankind's place in the process of evolution and the possible biological and intellectual future of humanity. Golem XIV was originally created to aid its builders in fighting wars, but as its intelligence advances to a much higher level than that of humans, it stops being interested in the military requirement because it finds them lacking internal logical consistency. At the end of the novel it is reported that the computer ceased to communicate, which might mean it went on to explore higher intellectual levels, or that it failed to do so and became autistic in the process.
3549361	/m/09kxl1	Metalzoic				 In the far future, the Earth's magnetic field has cut out, and humanity has abandoned the planet, leaving it to multiple species of sentient robots, which after centuries of evolving look (and in some cases behave) similar to the now extinct terrestrial animals. Legend surrounds The God Beast - Amok - the leader of a herd of robotic elephants (wheeldebeasts), and his return to the geographical location that another tribe now occupies - the Mekaka, led by the psychotic - yet also cunning - gorilla robot Armageddon. Armageddon's brutality and drive is explained that he operated on his own brain to remove lesser emotions which would impede his intentions to make "The Mekaka the greatest tribe on Earth". At the same time Armageddon leads his tribe to search for Amok, The God Beast is returning to the Mekaka's territory, and needing metal to facilitate repairs to himself, he attacks the Mekaka tribe, killing Armageddon's mate - Koola - and almost Armageddon's son - Ham. Only the intervention of a Novad human - Jool - (who Armageddon had unintentionally rescued earlier) prevents his destruction as well. Armageddon is in fact consumed by Amok, but he draws on the planets magnetic field and reconstitutes himself - Pumping Iron - subsequently vowing to track down and kill Amok, which he now believes to have gone rogue. After following Amok's trail they arrive at the Pits of Zinja - a long since exhausted mine, and coincidentally Jool's last home. During a three-way fight between the Mekaka, the Wheeldebeasts and the Zinja, Jool believes that The God Beast has not brought the herd to Zinja for more metal, but to kill them, as he buries them in the empty pits. To prevent this, Armageddon attacks The God Beast directly, and inadvertently hacks into his brain - releasing The Master Program into Armageddon. Breaking the fourth wall, The Master Program explains to the reader how Earth came to be, (mentioning the only date in the series - that the Earth's magnetic field cut out in the 24th Century,) and also reveals to Armageddon that The God Beast is not destroying his herd, but protecting them from an imminent asteroid shower - the Moonsoon. As the asteroids start to fall, fighting is broken off and all the combatants take joint cover in the pits. As Armageddon now has ownership of The Master Program he becomes the new God Beast, Amok dies, and passes control of the herd onto Armageddon. Armageddon states that the ore in the asteroids will help him rebuild his tribe - referring to the Wheeldebeasts. The graphic novel ends with the tribe shamek Jugarjuk commenting that now Armageddon has the Wheeldebeasts as well as his own Mekaka he will indeed control the world. Jool agrees, and quotes from Pythagoras, however this does not go down with the other surviving robots as well, and they leave in disdain - all apart from Ham who is strapped to her back.
3552124	/m/09l2jd	The Red Tent	Anita Diamant	1997-10	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Dinah opens the story by recounting for readers the union of her mother Leah and father Jacob, as well as the expansion of the family to include Leah's sister Rachel, and Zilpah and Bilhah. Leah is depicted as capable but testy, Rachel something of a belle but kind and creative, Zilpah as mature and serious and Bilhah as the gentle and quiet one of the quartet. The book also downplays the rivalry between Leah and Rachel that is prominent in the Biblical account (see especially Genesis 30: 8 - 15). Dinah remembers sitting in the red tent with her mother and aunts, gossiping about local events and taking care of domestic duties between visits to Jacob, the patriarch of the family. A number of other characters not seen in the Biblical account appear here, including Laban's second wife Ruti and her feckless sons. According to the Bible's account in Genesis 34, Dinah was "defiled" by a prince of Shechem, although he is described as being genuinely in love with Dinah. He also offers a bride-price fit for royalty. Displeased at how the prince treated their sister, her brothers Simeon (spelled "Simon" in the book) and Levi treacherously tell the Shechemites that all will be forgiven if the prince and his men undergo the Jewish rite of circumcision so as to unite the people of Hamor, king of Shechem, with the tribe of Jacob. The Shechemites agree, and shortly after they go under the knife, while incapacitated by pain, they are murdered by Dinah's brothers and their male servants, who then rescue Dinah. In The Red Tent, Dinah genuinely loves the prince, and willingly becomes his bride. She is horrified and grief-stricken by her brothers' murderous rampage. After cursing her brothers and father she escapes to Egypt where she gives birth to a son. In time she finds another love, and reconciles with her brother Joseph, now prime minister of Egypt. At the death of Jacob, she visits her estranged family. She learns she has been all but forgotten by her other living brothers and father but that her story lives on with the females of Jacob's tribe.
3552762	/m/09l3ql	The Leap	Jonathan Stroud	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Everyone says that Max has drowned, but Charlie thinks differently: she was in the mill-pool with him, and knows exactly what she saw. When she begins to see him in her dreams, her hopes are raised. It seems the reunion she craves is possible. But where exactly is Max leading her? And will she be able to return?
3552894	/m/09l3zz	Tooth and Claw	Jo Walton		{"/m/057pyk": "Fantasy of manners", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book's plot is similar to that of a Victorian romance, with the obvious difference that the protagonists are not human beings but dragons. It has been compared to Anthony Trollope's novel Framley Parsonage. The novel begins with the death of the patriarch of a family of dragons. The novel follows the lives of his children, along with other characters.
3557401	/m/09ldh1	Slaloms				 This adventure takes place in modern France and uses the normal continuing storyline of the series. It describes the holidays of Lapinot (a.k.a. McConey) and his friends Richard, Titi, and Pierrot in a winter sports resort. This volume is mostly a collection of unrelated episodes, although there are a few recurring links such as the much talked about but never seen wolf (except for an ambiguous fog shape) which reportedly killed skiers in the area. The dialogue is sometimes philosophical, sometimes silly. This is the album where Lapinot first meets Nadia, who would later on become his girlfriend, although she only plays a minor part here.
3557497	/m/09ldqq	Gospel: a novel	Wilton Barnhardt			 The book contains two interwoven plots: the story of the gospel's author, set in the first century AD (who narrates his adventures in the form of the gospel itself); and a contemporary story surrounding Lucy Danton, a somewhat naive Roman Catholic seminary student, and Patrick O'Hanrahan, her maverick Jesuit professor, who together set out to recover that gospel. The gospel's author is revealed to be Matthias, whom the Book of Acts describes as Judas's replacement. The fictional Gospel of Matthias's descriptions of first-century Christianity are not always edifying, but often wittily call to mind contemporary religious movements. The fictional gospel revolves around whether, after his crucifixion, Jesus's body was smuggled to Egypt and mummified. However, the question remains unanswered in the end.
3557518	/m/09lds3	Blacktown		1995		 This is the first volume in the series to be set in a stock historical setting: the Wild West. Although it uses the same main characters (Lapinot, Richard, Titi) and gives them the same type of personality, this story bears no relation to the continuing storyline of the volumes taking place in modern Paris. Lapinot is chased by outlaws for accidentally killing Rex Logan, their leader, and is later on mistaken for an outlaw himself by the villagers of Blacktown, who start chasing him as well. The story is often dark, contains plenty of action and witty dialogue, and moves at a quick pace.
3557561	/m/09ld_5	Pichenettes		1996		 This adventure takes place in modern France and uses the normal continuing storyline of the series. While walking on the street, Lapinot and Richard accidentally bump into a bum about to commit suicide. They prevent him from doing so despite his repeated attempts, and he eventually accepts to stop trying to kill himself as long as they accept to take his little stone which, according to him, is cursed and brings terrible bad luck to the bearer. Lapinot accepts, not taking him seriously, but most other characters around him seem to be plagued with bad luck from that moment on. Up until the end of the book, it isn't clear whether there is a real curse or if it all happens in the characters' minds.
3557621	/m/09lf4s	Walter		1996		 This volume is set in a stock historical setting: Paris in the late 19th century. Although it uses the same main characters (Lapinot, Richard, Titi) and gives them the same type of personality, this story bears no relation to the continuing storyline of the volumes taking place in modern Paris. The plot mixes the mystery, horror, and science fiction genres. A giant monster is seen ravaging the apartment of the missing scientist Prof. Walter, before being caught (and presumably killed) by the authorities. When Richard the journalist wants to take pictures at the morgue for his newspaper, they are told there never was a monster. An investigation follows in which they learn the monster is the result of a scientific experiment gone wrong.
3557681	/m/09lf9y	Amour & Intérim		1998		 This adventure takes place in modern France and uses the normal continuing storyline of the series. The Damoclès company, a mysterious organisation whose goals and methods are not entirely clear, suddenly offers a job as managing director to Lapinot, even though he doesn't know anything about the company. After originally declining the job, he hesitates and finally accepts, partly because he thinks a job in the same town as Nadia, a woman he met during winter holidays in Slaloms, will help him start a relationship with her.
3557769	/m/09lfgw	Vacances de printemps		1999		 This volume is set in a stock historical setting: England in 1870. Although it uses the same main characters (Lapinot, Richard, Titi) and gives them the same type of personality, this story bears no relation to the continuing storyline of the volumes taking place in modern Paris. Lapinot is a naive English gentleman who wonders what love is, and tries to conquer the heart of his childhood love, Miss Nadia. But his rivals Richardon (Richard) and McTerry (Titi) are also competing for her attention.
3558000	/m/09lfyh	Pour de vrai		1999		 This adventure takes place in modern France and uses the normal continuing storyline of the series. Lapinot and Nadia are now a couple and they retire for a few days to the countryside in the house of Nadia's uncle. Nadia, working as a TV journalist, wants to find unique and interesting people to interview, hiring Lapinot as her assistant. As the story goes on and as they keep meeting new people, several mysterious events occur, sometimes related to each other, sometimes unrelated. It also seems the house of Nadia's uncle is haunted.
3558106	/m/09lg60	La couleur de l'enfer		2000		 This adventure takes place in modern France and uses the normal continuing storyline of the series. Lapinot and Nadia are still working together (see the previous volume Pour de vrai), this time doing radio interviews. Things don't always go smoothly and work-related arguments lead to tensions in their couple. They most notably meet with a group of radicals with originally noble goals but questionable methods. At the same time, Richard becomes convinced his neighbour is an alien.
3558209	/m/09lgfh	La vie comme elle vient		2004		 This adventure takes place in modern France and uses the normal continuing storyline of the series. Lapinot meets with all his friends for an evening in the apartment he shares with his girlfriend Nadia. There, a tarot card reader predicts someone in the room will die before the next day. Lapinot and Nadia break up and pretty much all the other characters suffer various misfortunes: for example, Richard is beaten up and falls into a coma, and Titi is diagnosed with cancer. It turns out to be Lapinot, the main character of the series, who dies as the story finishes. After the book's publication, as Trondheim hinted that he one day might come out of his semi-retirement, he explained in his book Désoeuvré that the death of his character didn't exclude the possibility of seeing him again in stock historical settings or in modern day flashbacks before his death. This however hasn't happened as of 2009.
3558383	/m/09lgt7	L'accélérateur atomique		2003		 This volume is set in a stock historical setting, so to speak: the universe of the Spirou et Fantasio comic strip, which was a modern setting but with some added specific flavours. Lapinot plays the part of Spirou, while a newly introduced character plays the part of his friend Fantasio. They are both pursuing a gang of mysterious thieves who own a groundbreaking scientific invention, the atom accelerator. fr:L'Accélérateur atomique
3562073	/m/09lqq6	Cell	Stephen King	2006-01-24	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Clayton Riddell, a struggling artist from Maine, has just landed a graphic novel deal in Boston when "The Pulse," a signal sent out over the global cell phone network, suddenly turns every cellphone user into a mindless zombie-like killer. Clay is standing in Boston Common when the Pulse hits, causing chaos to erupt around him. Civilization crumbles as the "phoners" attack each other and any unaltered people in view. Amidst the chaos, Clay is thrown together with middle-aged Tom McCourt and teenager Alice Maxwell; the trio escapes to Tom's suburban home as Boston burns. The next day, they learn that the "phoners" have begun foraging for food and banding together in flocks. Clay is still determined to return to Maine and reunite with his young son, Johnny. Having no better alternatives, Tom and Alice come with him. They trek north by night across a devastated New England, having fleeting encounters with other survivors and catching disturbing hints about the activities of the phone crazies, who still attack non-phoners on sight. Crossing into New Hampshire, they arrive at the Gaiten Academy, a prep school with one remaining teacher, Charles Ardai, and one surviving pupil, Jordan. The pair show the newcomers where the local phoner flock goes at night: they pack themselves into the Academy's soccer field, and "switch off" until morning. It is clear the phoners have become a hive mind and are developing psychic abilities. The five of them decide that they must destroy the flock and, using two propane tankers, they succeed in doing so. Clay tries to get everyone to flee the scene, but the others refuse to abandon the elderly Ardai. That night, all of the survivors share the same horrific dream: each dreamer sees himself in a stadium, surrounded by phoners, as a disheveled man wearing a Harvard University hooded sweatshirt approaches, bringing their death. Waking, the heroes share their frightening dream experiences and dub him "The Raggedy Man". A new flock surrounds their residence, and the "normies" face the flock's metaphorical spokesman: the man wearing the Harvard hoodie. The flock commits bloody reprisal on other normals, and orders the protagonists to head north to a spot in Maine called "Kashwak". To preempt one objection, the flock psychically compels Ardai to commit suicide. Clay and the others bury him and travel north, as Clay is still determined to go home. En route, they learn that as "flock-killers" they have been psychically marked as untouchables, to be shunned by other normies. Following a petty squabble on the road, Alice is killed by a loutish pair of normals. The group buries her and arrives in Clay's hometown of Kent Pond, where they discover notes from Johnny which tell them that Clay's estranged wife Sharon was turned into a phoner, but that their son survived for several days, before he and the other normies were prompted by the phoners to head to the supposedly cellphone-free Kashwak. Clay has another nightmare which reveals that once there, the normie refugees were all exposed to the Pulse. He remains intent on finding his son, but after meeting another group of flock-killers, Tom and Jordan decide to avoid the ceremonial executions the phoners have planned. Before separating, the group discovers that Alice's murderers were psychically compelled into a gruesome suicide act for touching an untouchable. Clay sets off alone, but the others soon reappear driving a small school bus; the phoners have used their ever-increasing psychic powers to force them to rejoin him. One of the flock-killers, a construction worker named Ray, surreptitiously gives Clay a cell phone and a phone number, telling him cryptically to use them when the time is right; Ray then commits suicide. The group arrives at Kashwak, the site of a half-assembled county fair, where increasing numbers of phoners are beginning to behave erratically and break out of the flock. Jordan theorizes that a computer program caused the Pulse, and while it is still broadcasting into the battery-powered cellphone network, it has become corrupted with a computer worm that has infected the newer phoners with a mutated Pulse. Nevertheless, an entire army of phoners is waiting for them. The phoners lock the group in the fair's exhibition hall for the night; tomorrow is the ceremonial execution to be psychically broadcast to all phoners and remaining normals in the world. As Clay awaits their morning execution, he visualizes Ray's unspoken plan: Ray had filled the rear of the bus with explosives, wired a phone-triggered detonator to them, and killed himself to prevent the phoners from telepathically discovering his plan. The group breaks a window for Jordan to squeeze through, and he drives the vehicle into the midst of the inert phoners. Thanks to a jerry-rigged cellphone patch set up by the pre-Pulse fair workers, Clay is able to detonate the bomb and wipe out the Raggedy Man's flock. The majority of the group heads into Canada, to let the approaching winter wipe out the region's unprotected and leaderless phoners. Clay heads south, seeking his son. He finds Johnny, who received a "corrupted" Pulse; he wandered away from Kashwak and seems to almost recognize his father. However, Johnny is an erratic shadow of his former self, and so, following another theory of Jordan's, Clay decides to give Johnny another blast from the Pulse, hoping that the increasingly corrupted signal will cancel itself out and reset his son's brain. The book ends with Clay dialing and placing the cell-phone to Johnny's ear.
3562142	/m/09lqsq	Lisey's Story	Stephen King	2006-10-24	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Lisey's Story is the story of Lisey Landon, the widow of a famous and wildly successful novelist, Scott Landon. The book tells two stories—Lisey's story in the present, and the story of her dead husband's life, as remembered by Lisey during the course of the novel. It has been two years since her husband's death, and Lisey is in the process of cleaning out her dead husband's writing area. A series of events occurs that causes Lisey to begin facing certain realities about her husband that she had repressed and forgotten. As Lisey is stalked, terrorized, and then mutilated by an insane fan of her husband's, Lisey begins recalling her husband's past—how he came from a family with a history of horrible mental illness that manifested as either an uncontrollable homicidal mania or as a deep catatonia, how he had a special gift, an ability to transport himself to another world, called by Scott Landon "Boo'ya Moon", how Scott Landon's brother was murdered by his father when his brother manifested an incurable insanity, and finally how Scott Landon murdered his father to save his father from the madness that had finally taken him over. As the novel progresses, we see the complexity of Lisey's marriage to Scott, and their deep and abiding love for each other. The novel takes place over a very short period of time—a matter of days—but the real story is told in Lisey's remembrances of her husband, her ability to harness his special power to save herself (and her sister), and finally to find the gift that her dead husband had left for her in Boo'ya Moon—a story just for Lisey. Lisey's story.
3563571	/m/09ltdp	The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency	Alexander McCall Smith	1998	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Mma Precious Ramotswe becomes a private detective, the first woman in Botswana to enter that profession, and opens an agency whose name indicates this unique situation. Motivated to help others and to make Botswana a better place, she encounters many dangerous and risky obstacles in the course of her investigations, but succeeds through using her intelligence, courage and instinct. Along with the plot developments, Mma Ramotswe provides observations upon the fine qualities of Botswana and Africa: the culture, traditions, and natural beauties found there, and the inhabitants' pride in their land.
3564170	/m/09lvdq	From Nine to Nine	Leo Perutz	1918	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Stanislaus Demba, an honest, well-intentioned student with little money at his disposal, is desperately in love with Sonja Hartmann, an office girl easily impressed by young men with money&mdash;a superficial young woman who, by common consent, is not worthy of his love and adoration. When Demba learns that Sonja is about to go on a holiday with another man, he tries to sell some valuable old library tomes which he has borrowed but never returned to a shady antiques dealer so that he can offer Sonja a more expensive trip. The prospective buyer of the books, however, calls the police, and Demba is arrested. While he is being handcuffed Demba jumps out of an attic window and makes his escape. It is nine o'clock in the morning, and Demba embarks on his odyssey by furtively wandering around the streets of Vienna while hiding his handcuffed hands under his overcoat. His two immediate aims now are (a) to get rid of his handcuffs by some means or other without being caught by the police and (b) to raise the money necessary for a trip to, say, Venice, Italy. People who realize that he is unwilling to show his hands either believe he is some kind of freak with a deformity or a dangerous criminal carrying a pistol. Throughout the first part of the novel, Demba repeatedly refers to "his hands being tied", but everyone&mdash;including the majority of readers&mdash;assumes that he is speaking metaphorically. There is a twist ending to the novel.
3569969	/m/09m6wn	The Honorary Consul	Graham Greene	1973	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story is set in Corrientes, a city in northern Argentina, near the border with Paraguay which can be assumed from the police cars that reads ¨Policía de Corrientes¨. Eduardo Plarr is a young doctor of English descent. As a boy, he left Paraguay with his mother, escaping to Buenos Aires while his English father remained in Paraguay as a political rebel. Aside from a single hand-delivered letter, they never hear from the father again. When Plarr moves to the quiet, subtropical backwater town, he strikes up acquaintance with the only two English inhabitants, a bitter old English teacher, Humphries, and the Honorary Consul of the title, Charles Fortnum, a divorced, self-pitying alcoholic who misuses his position. Plarr's other main acquaintance is Julio Saavedra, a forgotten but self-important Argentine writer of novels full of silent machismo. Visiting the local brothel with Saavedra, Plarr is attracted to a girl, but she is taken by another man. A couple of years later, he is called to treat Fortnum's new wife. Plarr sees that she's the same girl from the brothel, Clara. Plarr regards himself as a cool, self-controlled Englishman (although he has never been to England), he finds himself becoming obsessed by Clara. He later seduces her by buying her some sunglasses and they begin an affair, although he tries to remain emotionally distant from her. "Caring is the only dangerous thing," Plarr says in the novel. "`Love' was a claim which he wouldn't meet, a responsibility he would refuse to accept, a demand. So many times his mother had used the word when he was a child; it was like the threat of an armed robber. `Put up your hands or else ...' Something was always asked in return: obedience, an apology, a kiss which one had no desire to give." Clara becomes pregnant, and Fortnum believes the child is his and starts drinking less. Then some of Plarr's friends from school turn up at his surgery, one of them is a failed priest named Rivas. They have news of Plarr's father; he is alive in a jail in Paraguay. They have a plot, for which they need a doctor's assistance, to kidnap the US ambassador on his trip to Corrientes. They will demand the release of political prisoners in Paraguay, including Plarr's father, in return for the ambassador. But the band kidnaps the wrong man; Charley Fortnum, the Honorary Consul, whom they take to a squalid hut in a shanty town. The rest of the novel charts Plarr's efforts to get Fortnum released, either as a result of diplomatic action from the UK, whose ambassador in BA is a comedy figure, or as a result of his schoolfriends giving up. But no-one listens to him. Saavedra and Humphries fail to help Plarr in his efforts. The police suspect that Plarr is involved in the kidnapping, as they know about his affair with Clara, and his behaviour has been suspicious. And they tell him his father was shot dead in Paraguay while attempting escape. Plarr goes to the hut, where Fortnum has been shot in the leg while attempting escape. Fortnum spends much of his time as he faces up to his death in sentimentalizing about Clara and in remembering the fearsome figure of his father. Then he discovers that Plarr is having an affair with Clara, and that the child is Plarr's. Meanwhile, members of the motley band drift away, and the police close in and surround the hut, while the failed priest, Father Rivas, conducts a makeshift mass inside with the rain coming down and police waiting. The police deadline is about to expire. Plarr goes out to talk to the police, but he is killed by the paratroopers, along with the other kidnappers. The authorities blame Plarr's death on the kidnappers. Plarr's mother, once a beauty and now bloated, and some of his previous older mistresses attend his funeral. Saavedra reads a homily. The UK embassy then relieves Fortnum of his consulship. In the last scene, Fortnum and Clara attempt a reconciliation. Fortnum will name the child Eduardo.
3572932	/m/09md_m	We Were the Mulvaneys	Joyce Carol Oates	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Michael and Corinne Mulvaney are the parents of four children: Michael, Patrick, Marianne, and Judd. Living in a picture perfect farm in upstate New York, the Mulvaneys own a successful roofing company; Michael Mulvaney is considered a serious businessman. Corinne is a bubbly, earthy mother whose life revolves around the family unit. For nearly twenty years the Mulvaney clan thrives, admired throughout Mt. Ephraim for being the model family. On St. Valentine's night, 1976, Marianne Mulvaney, after prom, goes to a party where she becomes intoxicated and is raped by an upperclassman whose father is a well-respected businessman and friend of Mr. Mulvaney. Marianne's rape is the beginning of a tumultuous fifteen-year period. Her father, lost and angry, does not understand why his daughter will not press charges against her attacker. He can no longer look at his daughter the same way, and sends her to live with a distant relative of Corinne's in Salamanca. Marianne, moving haphazardly from place to place, continues to wait for her father to call on her, but he never does. Michael Mulvaney's casual drinking turns into full-fledged alcoholism. Gradually, his reputation as a respected businessman disintegrates. The Mulvaneys are forced into bankruptcy and forced to sell the farm. Eventually, Corinne and Michael split up. For the other family members, things continue to get worse. All three of the Mulvaney boys leave home angrily, never to return. One of them "executes justice" on his sister's rapist. After many years, the Mulvaneys meet once again in a family reunion at Corinne's new home which she shares with a friend. The family has extended to include spouses and children. Finally, the Mulvaneys come full circle and receive closure.
3574282	/m/09mhlx	I Know This Much Is True	Wally Lamb	1998-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in Three Rivers, Connecticut. Dominick Birdsey's identical twin, Thomas, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. With medication, he can function properly and work at a coffee stand, but occasionally he has severe episodes of his illness. Thinking he is making a sacrificial protest that will stop the war in the Middle East, Thomas cuts off his own hand in a public library. Dominick sees him through the ensuing decision not to attempt to reattach the hand, and makes efforts on his behalf to free him from what he knows to be an inadequate and depressing hospital for the dangerous mentally ill. In the process, Dominick reviews his own difficult life as Thomas's normal brother, his marriage to his gorgeous ex-wife, which ended after their only child died of SIDS, and his ongoing hostility toward his stepfather. Dominick also displays classic symptoms of PTSD, as a result of stressors in his adult life. First in Thomas's interests, and then for his own sake, he sees a therapist, Dr. Rubina Patel, an Indian psychologist, employed by the hospital. She helps Dominick come to understand Thomas's illness better and the family's accommodations or reactions to it. In the course of Thomas's treatment, Dominick is covertly informed of sexual abuse taking place in the hospital, and helps to expose the perpetrators. He succeeds in getting Thomas released, but Thomas soon dies, apparently by suicide. After Thomas's death, Dominick discovers the identity of their birth father, who was part African American and part Native American--a secret their mother had shared with Thomas, but not with him. In the midst of this, Dominick is also reading the autobiography of his grandfather, Italian/Sicilian-born Domenico Tempesta, which discloses details about the legacy of twins in their family. Dominick learns about himself and his mother through learning about his grandfather. He also learns that his live-in girlfriend, Joy, has been seeing a man on the side, who is her bisexual half-uncle, as well as letting him watch her and Dominick during sex. She is also HIV-positive, having contracted it from her secret lover. She asks Dominick to raise her baby if she dies. At first he resists, but later, after having found his way back into a relationship with his ex-wife, Dessa, they decide to remarry each other and adopt Joy's daughter. The book ends with Dominick able to cope with the considerable loss, failure, and sadness in his personal and family history.
3581055	/m/09mxh4	Sati	Christopher Pike		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Michael is a trucker who picks up a blonde, blue-eyed, young female hitchhiker named Sati in the Arizona desert. Sati claims that she is God, to Michael's disbelief, and sets out to prove this by spreading this message through organized meetings, and convinces many people of her divinity. She is challenged numerous times, once by a fundamentalist preacher, but emerges unscathed in his claims. Meanwhile, Michael sets out to find out where this "Sati" came from, only to find nothing. The book opens as such: "I once knew this girl who thought she was God. She didn't give sight to the blind or raise the dead. She didn't even teach anything, not really, and she never told me anything I probably didn't already know. On the other hand, she didn't expect to be worshiped, nor did she ask for money. Given her high opinion of herself, some might call that a miracle. I don't know, maybe she was God. Her name was Sati, and she had blonde hair and blue eyes."
3581552	/m/09myhp	Then Again, Maybe I Won't	Judy Blume	1971	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Tony Miglione and his working-class family live in Jersey City, New Jersey. When his older brother Ralph and his wife Angie announce they are having a baby but lack money to care for the child, Tony's parents offer to help. Both of Tony's parents work extra shifts to try and raise enough money. Tony's father, an electrician who tries his hand at inventing in his spare time, is inspired to invent wireless electrical cartridges, which he then patents and sells to a large company called J.W. Fullerbach Electronics. Mr. Miglione is then made a plant manager for a Fullerbach factory which will manufacture his invention. This new job brings to the Miglione family a large increase in wealth and a move from Jersey City to Rosemont, New York, a fictitious affluent Long Island town where Tony has to deal with sudden changes coinciding with his growing into adolescence—his mother is becoming a social-climbing phony, his brother quits teaching and ends up going into the family business, and his grandmother (unable to speak since the removal of her larynx due to cancer and a woman who enjoyed housework) is no longer permitted to cook or clean because the family has hired a housekeeper. Add to this the emotional upheaval that comes with puberty while his new friend Joel Hoober acts obnoxiously, makes prank phone calls and has a tendency to shoplift. Tony is also a secret Peeping Tom, watching Joel's gorgeous sister, Lisa, undress from his bedroom window. He later asks for a set of binoculars too, for Christmas, under the guise of becoming a bird watcher, while they are obviously for him to view Lisa more clearly. Besides dealing with the move and his feelings about Lisa Hoober, Tony experiences anxiety attacks, which mainly strike when Joel commits a misdeed and Tony feels he cannot betray his friend and tell anyone. Joel's shoplifting is a major catalyst for these attacks, and one is so great it sends Tony into a state of shock and results in his immediate hospitalization. Tony's parents also arrange for him to meet with a psychologist (although his mother initially is against it, claiming he has no problems) who eventually gains Tony's trust. The therapy seems to be a great success for Tony. Later it is revealed that Tony has lost a measure of respect for his older brother, Ralph, when he learns that Ralph will be giving up teaching to go into his father's business. In Jersey City, Ralph had been known among his friends as "The Wizard of Seventh Grade Social Studies," and was a popular junior high school teacher. Tony does not believe Ralph is scientifically oriented, like their deceased brother Vinnie was, and is giving up his true calling to follow the same social-climbing path as his parents. Ralph rationalizes his job change in that he wishes to provide for his daughter and future children. Tony thinks to himself it does not take that much money to raise a child, and it runs the risk of spoiling those children and in turn may end up worse as a result of being raised in such an affluent environment, as he has seen firsthand with Joel's lack of parental oversight and the idea the Hoobers are doing their jobs solely by providing a fancy home life for him. While leaving a store one day, Joel is stopped by one of the store's security guards. Joel immediately denies stealing anything and looks to Tony to corroborate the story: Tony refuses and Joel is apprehended. Joel later tells Tony that his punishment for shoplifting isn't very harsh in terms of the law but he'll have to go to a military academy when school starts again. Surprisingly, Joel doesn't seem to blame Tony for this outcome. In the end, Tony finds a certain amount of peace as he accepts his life with help of his counselor. He also resolves to put away his binoculars to stop his voyeurism, but also notes wryly, "Then again, maybe I won't."
3582712	/m/09m_b0	Notes of a Native Son	James Baldwin	1955	{"/m/02t97": "Essay"}	 In spite of his father willing him to be a preacher, Baldwin says he has always been a writer at heart. He is trying to find his path as a Negro writer; although he is not European, American culture is informed by that culture too - moreover he has to grapple with other black writers. Baldwin castigates Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin for being too sentimental, and for limning black slaves as praying to white God so as to be cleansed/whitened. Equally, he repudiates Richard Wright's Native Son for portraying Bigger Thomas as an angry black man - he views that as an example of stigmatising categorisation. When considering the Nigger as a social problem, Baldwin suggests harking back to the past. He goes on to criticise Richard Wright's Native Son as ensconced in its zeitgeist. To his mind the good/bad guy virgule when it comes to Negroes must be turned into good Negroes. Baldwin criticises Carmen Jones, a film adaptation of Carmen using an all African-American cast. Baldwin is unhappy that the characters display no connection to the condition of African-Americans, and sees it as no coincidence that the main characters have lighter complexions. Baldwin points out that the rent is very expensive in Harlem. Moreover, although there are black politicians, the President is white. On to the black press, Baldwin notes that it emulates the white press, with its scandalous spreads and so forth. However the black Church seem to him to be a unique forum for the spelling out of black injustice. Finally, he ponders on antisemitism amongst blacks and comes to the conclusion that the hatred boils down to Jews being white and more powerful than Negroes. Baldwin tells the story that happened to the Melodeers, a group of jazz singers employed by the Progressive Party to sing in Southern Churches. However, once in Atlanta, Georgia, they were used for canvassing until they refused to sing at all and were returned to their hometown. They now enjoy success in New York City. Baldwin explains how his paranoid and angered father died of tuberculosis when he himself was 19 years old. Prior to that Baldwin had been taken to the theatre by a white teacher of his, and his parents had let him go because she was a teacher. Later he worked in New Jersey and was often turned down in segregated places - once he hurled something at a waitress in a diner. He goes on to say that blacks doing the military service in the South often got abused. Finally, he recounts his father's death which occurred just before his mother gave birth to one of his sisters; his father's funeral was on his 19th birthday. This essay is an attempt to do away with the hatred and despair he feels towards his father. There are always three underlying factors in James Baldwin's writing: the story, the white supremacy during the 1940-1950, and the question Baldwin is always trying to answer... What is really the blacks' role in America? Baldwin compares Black Americans to Blacks in France. Whilst Africans in France have a history and a country to hold on to, Black Americans don't - their history lies in the United States and it is in the making. Baldwin explains how Americans living in Paris cannot be true Parisians; they are either homeward-bound or 'too' well-adjusted. Baldwin recounts getting arrested in Paris over the Christmas period in 1949, after an acquaintance of his had stolen a bedsheet from a hotel, which he had used. The essay stresses his cultural inability to know how to behave with the police. Baldwin looks back to his time in a village in Switzerland - how he was the first black man most of the other villagers had ever seen. He goes on to reflect that blacks from European colonies are still mostly located in Africa, whilst the United States has been fully informed by African Americans.
3582891	/m/09m_ns	Cannery Row	John Steinbeck	1945-01		 Cannery Row has a simple premise: Mack and his friends are trying to do something nice for their friend Doc, who has been nice to them without asking for reward. Mack hits on the idea that they should throw a thank-you party, and the entire community quickly becomes involved. Unfortunately, the party rages out of control, and Doc's lab and home are ruined—and Doc's mood. In an effort to return to Doc's good graces, Mack and the boys decide to throw another party—but to make it work this time. A procession of linked vignettes describes the denizens' lives on Cannery Row. These constitute subplots that unfold concurrently with the main plot. Steinbeck revisited these characters and this milieu nine years later in his novel Sweet Thursday.
3584218	/m/09n1_t	China Wakes				 In this book, Kristof and WuDunn, husband and wife, wrote about their experiences in China from 1988 to 1993. The couple spent five years in China as journalists reporting for the New York Times. For a time, WuDunn worked and traveled around China as a tourist after her press credentials had been revoked by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on a technicality. The authors present alternating chapters with Kristof writing the odd-numbered chapters and WuDunn writing the even-numbered chapters. Only the last chapter of the book was written by both authors. Kristoff and WuDunn cover various topics such as the lives of Chinese peasants, corruption, sex, religion, China's one-child policy, the June 4th Incident (Democracy Movement), and the future of the Communist party. The two journalists are assisted by local Chinese friends, anonymous sources, and Communist officials in researching stories for the New York Times. In the Author's Note it is stated that the names of some Chinese sources have been changed for their protection, while the names of corrupt Communist officials have been left uncensored. The authors' view of China is that of a country torn between Deng Xiaoping's successful economic strategy and frustrated political reform and human rights.
3587762	/m/09n91c	Almayer's Folly	Joseph Conrad			 Almayer’s Folly is about a poor businessman who dreams of finding a hidden gold mine and becoming very wealthy. He is a white European, married to a native Malayan; they have one daughter named Nina. He fails to find the goldmine, and comes home saddened. Previously, he had heard that the British were to conquer the Pantai River, and he had built a large, lavish house near where he resided at the time, in order to welcome the invading country to the native land. However, the conquest never took place, and the house remained unfinished. Some passing Dutch seamen had called the house “Almayer’s Folly”. Now, Almayer continually goes out for long trips, but eventually he stops doing so and stays home with his hopeless daydreams of riches and splendor. His native wife loathes him for this. One day, a Malayan prince, Dain Maroola, came to see Almayer about trading, and while he was there, he fell in love with Nina. Mrs. Almayer kept arranging meetings for Nina and Dain. She wanted them to marry so her daughter could stay native because she was highly distrustful of the white men and their ways. Dain left but vowed to return to help Almayer find the goldmine. When he does return, he goes straight to Lakamba, a Malayan rajah, and told him that he found the gold mine and that some Dutchmen had captured his ship. The rajah tells him to kill Almayer before the Dutch arrive because he is not needed to find the gold now. The following morning, an unidentifiable native corpse was found floating in the river, wearing an ankle bracelet very similar to Dain’s. Almayer was distraught because Dain was his only chance at finding the secret gold mine. (The corpse was actually of his slave, who had died when a canoe overturned. Mrs. Almayer suggested that Dain put his anklet and ring on the body). Mrs. Almayer planned to smuggle Dain from the Dutch, so he would not be arrested. She snuck Nina away from her father, who was drinking with the Dutch. When he awoke from his drunken stupor, a native slave girl told him where Nina had run away to, and Almayer tracked her to Dain’s hiding place. Nina refused to go back to avoid the slurs of all the white society. During all this arguing, the slave girl had informed the Dutch of Dain’s whereabouts. Almayer said that he could never forgive Nina but would help them escape by taking them to the mouth of the river, where a canoe would rescue them from the Dutch. After they had escaped, Almayer erased the lover’s footprints, and went back to his house. Mrs. Almayer ran away to the rajah for protection, taking all Dain’s dowry with her. All alone, Almayer broke all his furniture in his home office, piled it in the center of the room, and burned it, along with his entire house, to the ground. He spent the rest of his days in “[His] Folly”, where he began smoking opium to forget his daughter. He eventually died there.
3588724	/m/09nc4f	Guard of Honor	James Gould Cozzens	1948	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with seven characters flying to Ocanara Army Air Base, Florida, following a daylong visit to Sellers Field, Mississippi, aboard an AT-7 navigation trainer. It revolves around the activities of a fictional administrative command called Army Air Forces Operations and Requirements Analysis Division, acronymed AFORAD. This organization had as its closest real-life counterpart the directorate of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff for Operations, Commitments, and Requirements (OC&R). The opening segment, the shortest of the novel, introduces the major characters and their traits by examining their reactions to a minor subplot of the handling of the querulous base commander at Sellers Field: an old Regular Army colonel who is an alcoholic. Much of the chapter is spent examining Colonel Ross' thoughts while he perfunctorily reviews his seemingly routine daily paperwork, which he has brought with him on the brief trip. Two memoranda foreshadow major incidents in the storyline: the arrival of officers of Project 0-336-3, a group of African-American pilots slated to form a bombardment squadron; and an ever-expanding grandiose plan by another problem colonel (this one General Beal's own Executive Officer) to hold a surprise birthday parade ceremony for General Beal on Saturday using numerous military aircraft and troops in a flyover. The chapter ends when the general's AT-7, in the midst of the harrowingly-described turbulence of a nighttime thunderstorm, barely avoids a mid-air collision with a B-26 landing at Ocanara. After an angry exchange with his own co-pilot, in which he impetuously puts the co-pilot under arrest, General Beal is distracted while mollifying Colonel Ross; his co-pilot confronts the bomber's crew, who are all African-American, and punches the black pilot in the face. Events quickly begin to pile up early the next morning. A local newspaper, using leaks from classified memos, skewers AFORAD both for the coming parade and its many old colonels. Indignation among the newly-arrived African-American pilots, because of the assault and the Executive Officer's arbitrary decision to create a separate officer's club for them, results in a protest being organized. General Beal has cooled off and wants to quietly overlook his co-pilot's behavior. A black newspaper reporter shows up on base at an inopportune moment. The old alcoholic commander at Sellars Field has committed suicide after General Beal's visit. Two generals are due to arrive in the afternoon from the Pentagon, one bearing a high decoration to be presented to the black pilot for prior heroism, the other investigating the suicide. Guard of Honor then begins to examine the motivations behind and interlocking effects of these problems (and those of a tragic accident yet to come) on General Beal, Colonel Ross, and Nathaniel Hicks as each tries to juggle his part in them with as little consequence as possible while still "doing the right thing."
3590692	/m/09nh0l	All the Names	José Saramago	1997		 The main setting of the novel is the Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths of some ambiguous and unnamed city. This municipal archive holds the record cards for all residents of the city stretching back endlessly into the past. The protagonist is named Senhor José; the only character to be given a proper name (all of the others are referred to simply by some unique and defining characteristic). Senhor José is around fifty years old and has worked as a low-level clerk in the Central Registry for more than twenty years. His residence, where he lives alone, adjoins the building and contains the only side entrance into it. Lost in the tedium of a bureaucratic job, he starts to collect information about various famous people and decides, one evening, to use the side entrance to sneak in and steal their record cards. On one nocturnal venture he grabs the record card of an "unknown woman" by mistake and quickly becomes obsessed with finding her. Senhor José uses his power as a registry clerk to gather information from her past neighbors and, when it is suggested to look her up in a phone book, he ignores the advice choosing instead to keep his distance. The search begins to consume him and affects his work enough to draw attention from the Registrar, head of the Central Registry, who, strangely, begins to regard Senhor José with sympathy. This special attention given to a clerk by the Registrar is unprecedented in the known history of the Central Registry and begins to worry his fellow employees. Senhor José further neglects his duties as a civil servant and risks his career to pursue a woman he knows basically nothing about.
3593165	/m/09nlv8	Iceland's Bell	Halldór Laxness	1943	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The first part tells the story of Jón Hreggviðsson, a farmer, and his battle with the Icelandic authorities. Jón is sentenced to death for the murder of an executioner, an official of the King of Denmark, but manages to flee from Iceland to Denmark, where he hopes to get an interview with the King to persuade him to grant a pardon. Snæfríður Íslandssól (literally, "Beautiful as Snow, Sun of Iceland") is the main protagonist in the second part. She is in love with a collector of manuscripts named Arnas Arnaeus but is married to a drunkard. The third part is about Arnas Arnaeus the manuscript-collector and the fate of his collection in Copenhagen. In the end, Arnas does not marry the woman of his heart, Snæfríður, but stays with his rich Danish wife who financed his life's work.
3594780	/m/09nqc0	Dragonflame	Graham Edwards	1997-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Aria joins the sinister Cult of the Last Circle, an underground dragon community led by the evil Scarn. Scarn worships the Flame, which he believes has been sent to replace the charm lost from the world. After rescuing Aria from the Cult, Fortune escapes with his friends across the sea to Ocea. Scarn gives chase using the power of the Flame to travel great distances as if by magic. Meanwhile, Aria's son Wyrm (who has no wings) has set out on a pilgrimage around the world. There is a comet in the sky and Wyrm is obsessed with the Day of Creation. Along the way he encounters a tribe of 'natural faeries' who have lost both their magic and their wings - these are actually cavemen. Later Wyrm uncovers some ancient charm that enables him to grow wings, and he sets out for the Last Circle. Eventually, all the dragons meet in a huge crater in Ocea (the Last Circle) where a great battle ensues between Scarn's dragons (mutated by the evil power of the Flame) and Fortune's new allies, the mirror-dragons. At the climax of the battle, Scarn escapes. The comet drops from the sky and hits the crater. Everyone escapes except Wyrm, who is transformed from a single dragon into millions of birds. Fortune finally defeats Scarn. The dying power of the Flame opens a portal into a strange sideways world. Brace and Ledra go through the portal, which disappears. The sideways world is in fact Amara (Stone trilogy), introduced properly in Stone and Sky.
3594781	/m/09nqcc	Dragonstorm	Graham Edwards	1996-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The survivors from Dragoncharm have established a new dragon community on the island chain of Haven. Dragonstorm opens as Brace, Cumber and an ex-charmed dragon called Thaw lead an expedition to rescue the dragons still trapped in the canyon at Aether's Cross. Fortune and Gossamer remain on Haven, with their new daughter Aria. Fortune and his allies battle to prevent the community being split apart by the renegade Hesper. Meanwhile, the basilisk Ocher is seeking out his lost companions. Once gathered, the six basilisks - known as the Deathless - plan one last wielding of charm to bring about their own destruction. Brace and Cumber reach an ancient citadel built by the basilisks and inhabited by a blind ex-charmed dragon called Archan. The citadel's towers are mobile in time, constantly fading in and out of past, present and future. Archan seduces Thaw and imprisons the others. She has learned about the basilisks' plans and is scheming to steal their immortality. The basilisks are gathering what is left of the world's magic. A giant river of charm forms in the sky, flowing to the north pole, which the dragons call the Crest of the World. Hesper taps into this charm and convinces many of the Haven dragons that the magic is back. The community splits apart as the river of charm causes a great storm. The whole world starts changing shape. The shifting of the continents transports the whole of Haven island to Archan's citadel. Cumber and the others are rescued, but Fortune's daughter Aria is snatched by Archan and taken to the time-towers. The temporal effects cause Aria to grow to adulthood in the blink of an eye. Archan tricks Thaw into raping Aria, then kills him. Archan wants Aria to bear a perfect infant dragon to accompany Archan into immortality. She takes Aria to the north pole, ready for the ritual that will make her immortal. Brace and Cumber's party journey to a land of glaciers where they find the skeleton of Aether, the troll after whom the canyon of Aether's Cross was named. All the basilisks meet at the north pole and perform the ceremony of the Gathering of the Deathless. Fortune arrives just in time to save Aria from Archan. The basilisks achieve their goal and Archan becomes immortal, but her body is destroyed. She disappears into an iceberg, where she remains trapped and helpless, yet unable to die. All the basilisks are dead except Ocher, who is now mortal. Now life is precious, Ocher decides he wants to live a little longer. Brace arrives with the dragons he's just freed from Aether's Cross. Aria's egg brings wingless infant Wyrm into the world. The surviving dragons wonder if Wyrm represents what the future holds for their species, which is hovering on the brink of extinction.
3595652	/m/09nsqw	Stone and Sea	Graham Edwards	2000-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book further covers the adventures of Jonah Lightfoot, a man stolen from his own world when he witnesses the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. He and his unwitting companions cross the world of Amara, a vertical landscape where to fall from the world's surface is to die, or worse. They find a massive ocean, somehow held in place without the water falling into the abyss, and must then figure out a way to cross it. On their journey they discover the true nature of Amara; meet mermaids, forest spirits and shapeshifting creatures; cross paths with dragons both good and evil; delve into a world built of memory; and stumble across artifacts from Earth's past, present, and future.
3595656	/m/09nsr6	Stone and Sky	Graham Edwards	1999-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book, as well as its sequels, follows the adventures of British historian and naturalist Jonah Lightfoot, who is caught in the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. The blast transports him and American runaway Annie West into a vertical world consisting of a seemingly infinite wall populated by crumbling civilisations, weird creatures, and sentient dragons. No one knows where the wall begins or ends, and no one dares to climb to its top or fall to its base. This world is called Amara, and it is a place deeply entwined with our own world. Throughout the books Jonah and his companions traverse the world and uncover its many mysteries. The true nature of Amara is fully revealed in the second book of the trilogy, Stone and Sea.
3595657	/m/09nsrk	Stone and Sun	Graham Edwards	2001-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this final tale of Amara, the nineteenth-century historian Jonah meets a man from his own world; one Tom Coyote, who originates from the year 1980. Along with Coyote, the bizarre group of companions (including a wood-spirit inhabiting a flying boat, a once-immortal basilisk, and several others who are mostly human) ascend the world-sized monolith of Amara to find what awaits at the top, and each of them prepare to face their own demons.
3596453	/m/09nv9r	Black Alice	John Sladek	1968	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During the 1960s, in Virginia, while the blacks fight for their civil rights, a young white girl is kidnapped in Baltimore. Little Alice Raleigh, eleven years and blonde like corn, and heiress of an immense fortune, is held for a ransom of a million dollars. Her kidnappers, trying to make her invisible to the police officers and the federal agents searching for her, manage to brown her skin and her hair. They sequester her under an assumed name in a house held by an old black woman, near Norfolk, which turns out to be a house of prostitution. Slowly, Alice adapts herself to this surprising life amidst the black culture of the time period, completely new for her; at no point in the book is the young Alice made to participate in prostitution, and in fact Alice only has a vague idea of what goes on in behind closed doors in the house. She eventually discovers that her father is the real instigator of her kidnapping, in essence intending to embezzle money from himself that he can then spend without being traced by government offices. In the end, Alice is freed and returns to her former life, after denying knowledge of her father while still disguised as a black child and seeing him punished for his misdeed.
3596745	/m/09nvyx	The Lives of Christopher Chant	Diana Wynne Jones	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel tells the story of Christopher Chant's childhood. Although both of his parents are powerful practitioners of magic, the two are constantly at loggerheads; his father (an enchanter, the strongest type of magic-user) is entirely devoted to his work, to such a degree that the young Christopher is afraid that he would not recognize him should the two meet in public. On the other hand, his mother (a sorceress, the second-strongest type of magic-user) is a social climber, and is apparently only married to his father for his social connections. The only escape that Christopher has is through his dreams, in which he is able to escape to other worlds. While he is not the only person with this ability, seemingly no one is able to do it so easily as he. The fact that he can bring things back from these "spirit trips" makes him immensely valuable to his Uncle Ralph, a scheming silver-tongued businessman. He is soon caught up in a series of "experiments," supposedly to test his talents. In reality, they are to fetch a series of highly illegal goods (from mermaid meat to dragon's blood), for sale at the highest prices on a magical black market. He is accompanied on these trips by Tacroy, a guide arranged by his uncle. While all this is going on, his father and mother part ways, his father having lost a goodly part of his fortune on the stock market, and Christopher is sent to a boarding school, where he does dismally at magic lessons, and develops an ambition to become a famous cricketer. However, his father has other ideas, and plucks him from the boarding school halfway through the school year, taking him to an irritable and elderly magic expert named Dr. Pawson. He soon unlocks the reason for Christopher's poor grades in magic: silver. When Christopher touches silver, he loses his ability to use magic. When not touching silver, his magic surpasses almost every other enchanter in the world. Upon this discovery, he is sent to Chrestomanci Castle in order to be groomed for the role of the next Chrestomanci.
3596990	/m/09nwg8	Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies	Laura Esquivel	1989	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is divided into twelve sections named after the months of the year, starting with January. Each section begins with a Mexican recipe. The chapters outline the preparation of the dish and ties it to an event in the protagonist's life. Tita de la Garza, the novel's main protagonist, is fifteen at the start of the story, which takes place during the Mexican Revolution. She lives with her mother, Mama Elena, and her older sisters Gertrudis and Rosaura, on a ranch near the Mexico – US border. Pedro is a neighbor and another main protagonist whom Tita falls in love with at first sight. He asks Mama Elena for Tita’s hand in marriage, but Mama Elena forbids it, citing the De la Garza family tradition which demands that the youngest daughter (in this case Tita) must remain unmarried and take care of her mother until her mother's death. Mama Elena offers for Pedro to marry Rosaura instead. Pedro reluctantly accepts and marries Tita's older sister, Rosaura. Tita can hardly keep from grieving, despite Pedro’s assurance that it is Tita he loves and not Rosaura, and that he only married Rosaura to be closer to Tita. Tita has a love of the kitchen and a deep connection with food, a skill enhanced by the fact that the family cook was her primary caretaker as Tita grew up. Her love for cooking also comes from the fact that she was born in the kitchen. In contrast, Rosaura's cooking skills are poor, making her less attractive to her husband Pedro. Despite this, he and Rosaura have a son, Roberto. Rosaura is unable to nurse Roberto, so Tita brings Roberto to her breast to stop the baby from crying. Miraculously, Tita begins to produce breast milk and is able to nurse the baby. This draws her and Pedro closer than ever. They begin meeting secretly, snatching their few times together by sneaking around the ranch and behind the backs of Mama Elena and Rosaura. Tita’s strong emotions become infused into her cooking and she unintentionally begins to affect the people around her through the food she prepares. After one particularly rich meal of quail in rose petal sauce flavored with Tita’s erotic thoughts of Pedro, Tita's older sister Gertrudis becomes inflamed with lust and leaves the ranch making ravenous love with a revolutionary soldier on the back of a horse before being dumped in a brothel and subsequently disowned by her mother. Rosaura and Pedro are forced to leave for San Antonio, Texas, at the urging of Mama Elena, who suspects a relationship between Tita and Pedro. Rosaura loses her son Roberto and is later made sterile from complications with the birth of her daughter Esperanza. Upon learning the news of her nephew's death, whom she cared for herself, Tita blames her mother. Mama Elena responds by smacking Tita across the face with a wooden spoon. Tita, unwilling to cope with her mother's controlling ways, secludes herself in the dovecote until the sympathetic Dr. John Brown reasons with her and convinces her to calm down. Mama Elena clearly states that there is no place for "lunatics" like Tita on the farm, and wants her to be institutionalized. However, the doctor decides to take care of Tita at his home instead. Tita develops a close relationship with Dr. Brown, even planning to marry him at one point, but her underlying feelings for Pedro do not waver. While John is away, Tita loses her virginity to Pedro. A month later, Tita is worried about whether or not she is pregnant with Pedro’s child. Gertrudis, Tita’s other older sister, visits the ranch for a special holiday and makes Pedro overhear about Tita’s pregnancy, causing Tita and Pedro to argue about running away together. This causes Pedro to get drunk and sing below Tita’s window while she is arguing with Mama Elena’s ghost and finds out from her she isn’t pregnant. Mama Elena gets revenge on Tita by setting Pedro on fire, leaving him bedridden and behaving like “a child throwing a tantrum”. Meanwhile, Tita is preparing for the return of her fiance, John, and is hesitant to tell him that she cannot marry him because she is no longer a virgin. Rosaura comes to the kitchen while Tita is cooking and argues with her about over Tita's involvement with Rosaura’s daughter Esperenza’s life and the tradition of the youngest daughter remaining at home to care for the mother until she dies, a tradition which Tita despises. John and his deaf great-aunt comes over and Tita tells him that she cannot marry him. John seems to accept it, “reaching for Tita’s hand...with a smile on his face”. Many years later, Tita is preparing for Esperenza’s and Alex’s wedding to one another, now that Rosaura has died from digestive problems. During the wedding, Pedro proposes to Tita saying that he does not want to “die without making [Tita] [his] wife”. Tita accepts and Pedro dies having sex with her in the kitchen storage room right after the wedding. Tita is overcome with sorrow and tries to kill herself by eating maches. The candles are sparked by the heat of his memory, creating a consuming fire that engulfs them both, leading to their deaths in union and the total destruction of the ranch and the fertility of the land under the ranch. The narrator of the story is the daughter of Esperanza, Pedro's daughter. The narrator then says that all that survived under the smoldering rubble of the ranch was Tita's cookbook, which contained all the recipes described in the preceding chapters.
3601696	/m/09p6g1	Rainbows End	Vernor Vinge	2006-05-16	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel introduces us to Robert Gu, a man slowly recovering from Alzheimer's disease thanks to advances in medical technology. As his faculties return, Robert (who always has been slightly technophobic) must adapt to a very different world, where almost every object is networked and mediated-reality technology is commonplace. Robert, formerly a world-renowned poet but with a notoriously mean-spirited personality, must also learn how to change and how to rebuild relationships with his estranged family. At the same time, Robert and his granddaughter Miri are drawn into a complex plot involving a traitorous intelligence officer, an intellect of frightening (and possibly superhuman) competence hiding behind an avatar of an anthropomorphic rabbit, and ominous new mind control technology with profound implications. In the novel, augmented reality is dominant, with humans interacting with virtual overlays of reality almost all of the time. This is accomplished by wearing smart clothing and contact lenses that can overlay and replace what the eye would normally see with computer graphics, using advanced virtual retinal display (VRD) technology. In addition, haptic feedback is possible by overlaying graphics onto a physical machine such as a robot. This augmentation of reality is used for a variety of purposes: * Commercial (large gaming areas sell gaming environments mixed with haptics). The Cheapnet, a free entry-level service offered by commercial vendors of gaming solutions, can in principle also be used to coordinate networked augmented reality representations across the globe. However, jitter and latency are considerable problems with this basic network when long distances are involved. In the novel, Robert Gu develops an algorithm that partially compensates for these technical deficiencies, and might ultimately allow the inclusion of haptics. * Functional (maintenance workers, for example, have access to a blueprint or schematic of practically any location or object in their responsibility area) * Communication (characters in the novel use live video chat and can send and receive "silent messages", an action known as "sming", through their VRDs). Individuals can be reached through a globally implemented unique personal identifier, the ENUM. * Medical (doctors have access to a patient's vital signs) There are characters who choose not to "wear" these virtual overlays, instead using laptops, considered relics in the novel. A user's skill in managing and producing augmented reality manifests itself in the details of the augmentation. For example, a character might project himself into a different room, but the shadows cast by this apparition, or the collision between the character and the furniture in the room might give away the apparition. There are many realities to choose from in the novel; however, the largest and more robust of them are built by large user bases in the manner of a wiki or Second Life. The confederation of users that contribute to the virtual world is called a belief circle. Several belief circles are presented in the novel, including worlds based on authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, Terry Pratchett, and the fictional Jerzy Hacek. Also mentioned are worlds based on the artwork of M. C. Escher, and fictional entertainment companies such as SpielbergRowling (presumably a manager of the merged fictional universes of Steven Spielberg and J. K. Rowling). The Egan Soccer set piece can also be seen as a type of subscribed Belief Circle.
3601959	/m/09p6wc	The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free				 The comic opens with Tintin arriving at the Captain's flat in a fictional estate, somewhere in England, Tintin has recently been sacked for losing his temper and punching his boss and expresses frustration about being "pushed around" and "kicked around like a lump of dogshit." The Captain offers to get Tintin a job on a local building site where he works. As the story progresses, Tintin meets the local residents and his workmates and issues faced by the area, such as racism, gentrification and general apathy from local government, are introduced. The anger felt by the working-class people of this town boils over when a construction worker, Joe Hill (apparently named after the anarcho-syndicalist organiser of the same name) falls to his death due to poor safety standards at the local building site. Faced with insensitivity from their manager ("Had he been drinking?"), as well as apathy and condescension from their trade union official, the construction workers stage an unofficial, wildcat strike. The builders demand better safety standards, improved wages, a change of management for the site and a large sum of money for the family of their dead workmate. The strike escalates, with management refusing to concede any of the demands, doing under the table deals with union officials to bring in scab labour (see strike action). Meanwhile, the strike begins to spread to other local workplaces, becoming a symbol of class struggle, as well as a struggle for better short-term conditions. The workers become increasingly militant, turning to violent tactics and eventually firebombing the original building site. The strike begins to spread to other areas of the country without any official union involvement. Panicked, the UK government deals with strikers with increasing violence and repression, demonstrations turn into riots, and the Captain is arrested on false charges of conspiracy. As the story closes, there is a demonstration of half a million people in the town in which the events of the book unfold, several people have brought rifles and references are made to "strike committees" taking power in other areas of the country, the army being sent into Liverpool to "restore order," and similar unrest taking place around the world. The last page features the Captain, Tintin and the Captain's Wife Mary in silhouette. Tintin holds an assault rifle above his head, while the others raise their fists. Below is written: "This Is Not The End / Only the beginning…"
3602048	/m/09p6_v	Jack's Return Home	Ted Lewis	1970-02-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Jack's Return Home tells the story of an amoral, pitiless London mob enforcer named Jack Carter who returns to his home town Scunthorpe to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, with whom he had not spoken in many years. Jack's presence in the town causes unease among the local crime families, who fear that his snooping will interfere with their underworld operations. Everything from simple suggestion to brute force is employed to try to get Jack to leave, but he doggedly refuses, bullying his way through numerous attempts on his life to arrive at the truth, leading to a violent and ambiguous conclusion.
3603597	/m/09p9v2	Unseen	Jeff Mariotte		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Salma de la Navidad, a friend of Willow's, is having problems: her brother Nicky has disappeared and is believed to be joining a local Sunnydale gang called the Latin Cobras. Salma's also got a black shadowy nothingness that Buffy can sense but can barely fight. Meanwhile in LA, Angel is tied down by a case where his client is wrongfully accused of murder by crooked cops while Cordelia discovers a pack of pre-teens who revere vampires and have been promised eternal life by a vampire. Buffy's work takes her to LA along with Willow to the de la Navidad household where the same black shadow continues to attack Salma. When Salma suddenly disappears as does Kayley (one of the vampire lovers) everyone knows that something is up. After an explosion of oil fields, caused by Nicky, in Sunnydale, Riley rushes to LA where himself, Buffy and Angel have to work together to solve the disappearances and to calm down the gang warfare going on in LA.
3603605	/m/09p9vv	Monster Island	Thomas E. Sniegoski	2003-03	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Doyle's pureblood Brachen demon father Axtius is the General for the Coalition of Purity which believes that all half-blood demons should be banished, leaving only the purebloods on Earth. Both Angel and Buffy are dealing with this threat in their respective cities when Buffy's team learns that General Axtius plans to attack a half-blood demon safe haven island near Los Angeles. Uprooting the Scooby Gang, Buffy and the rest of them travel quickly to Los Angeles to help Angel deal with the increasing problem. Unfortunately, the demons on the island who are in need of saving seem to be sceptical about having vampires as well as the Slayer on their island and they must be convinced that it's for their benefit before General Axtius and his troops launch a full-fledged attack on the island. In their final confrontation on the island, Angel defeats Axtius when unarmed despite Axtius wielding a powerful mystical weapon, taunting the Brachen by saying that he would have been ashamed of Doyle's very human act of sacrifice and redemption. Having been defeated by Angel, Axtius is subsequently incinerated by his former second-in-command for his failure to destroy the island.
3603617	/m/09p9ww	Heat	Nancy Holder	2004-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Buffy and Angel both battle the same ancient evil, a Possessor who was once Qin, First Emperor of China. As a Possessor, Qin's body loses its temperature fast and he is forced to jump from body to body through the ages, rendering him immortal. In present day Sunnydale and Los Angeles, Qin is attempting to usher in the Year of the Hot Devil and drive humans out of his dimension by resurrecting an ancient dragon frozen in ice from centuries before.
3603632	/m/09p9xx	Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row	Christopher Golden	2001-06-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 It is 1940 and for Drusilla's vampiric birthday, Spike decides he will acquire Freyja's Strand for her. The strand, a necklace, has the ability to allow Drusilla to view her reflection. After a dangerous trek, Spike and Drusilla strike a deal with the ice demon Skrymir: should Spike and Drusilla destroy all the current Slayers-in-waiting as well as the current Slayer, he will fork over the necklace. Up to the challenge, Spike and Drusilla acquire a list of the Slayers-in-waiting from the Watcher's Council in London and ravage the Earth, killing girls hideously as they go. Meanwhile the current Slayer, Sophie, is alerted to the situation and sent off with her watcher, Yanna, to rescue the remaining Slayers-in-waiting. Unfortunately Yanna has developed an unhealthy obsession with Spike and cannot fight against him when there is a run-in between the two groups. But Sophie rescues a decent numbers of the girls and has them brought to the council headquarters. Sophie leaves to retrieve the last girl and runs into Spike and Drusilla in Denmark who capture her Watcher. While Sophie hunts down the duo, Skrymir has grown impatient and manifests himself inside the Council headquarters where he wreaks havoc on the inhabitants. The Council must find a way to stop Skrymir from killing all the Slayers-in-waiting (which was thought to end the line of Slayers) while the Slayer herself tries to track down her Watcher who may already be dead.
3603644	/m/09p9yy	Halloween Rain	Nancy Holder	1997-11-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Xander and Willow warn Buffy not to go out on Halloween if it's raining. According to the premise of the book, the rain in Sunnydale is magical on Halloween, and if it lands on a scarecrow it will animate and hunt down the Slayer. While at a Halloween party at the Bronze, Buffy is forced to go to the cemetery to fight vampires. She eventually encounters the reanimated scarecrow.
3603668	/m/09pb03	Night of the Living Rerun	Arthur Byron Cover	1998-03-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, the Despised One was raised from the Otherworld and Samantha Kane, that generation's Slayer, died while defeating it. Now in 1997, the Master is trying to have history repeat itself with a different ending. The spirits of the people responsible for the rise of the Despised One in 1692 are now inhabiting the bodies of Buffy and her friends. Buffy must stop the ritual from happening or the Master will rise from his prison below Sunnydale.
3603678	/m/09pb14	How I Survived My Summer Vacation		2000-08-01	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 :Written by Michelle Sagara West Buffy continually sees the death of everyone she touches while she heads out to LA to spend summer vacation with her dad. She must come to terms with her own death before the deaths of others will disappear from her mind. :Written by Nancy Holder Absalom tries to obtain the Master's bones from Giles, who has them kept in his house. :Written by Cameron Dokey A shapeshifter comes to town. Giles, Angel and Jenny must deal with it before it gets to the Slayer. :Written by Cameron Dokey While shopping in LA, Buffy runs into a fortune-teller who tells her that she's the warrior sent to free the spirit of her dead child. Buffy must solve the mystery of the daughter's death and why her spirit isn't free. :Written by Yvonne Navarro A newly risen vampire raises the war veteran General Sam from the grave. General Sam, crazy and still sure that World War II rages on, decides to seize Sunnydale since he believes it has been infiltrated by the enemy. Giles, Jenny and Angel must stop the General and his legion of zombie followers. :Written by Paul Ruditis Willow and Xander are running a play at the local theater. Little do they know that the stage crew are all vampires who have a love for Shakespeare. After several deaths in a Shakespearian fashion, Giles, Jenny and Angel decide to remove the vampire threat on the night of the play.
3603693	/m/09pb26	Blooded	Nancy Holder	1998-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Chirayoju, an ancient Chinese vampire, and Sanno, a Japanese Mountain King, have been fighting for years. Their spirits were imprisoned in a sword by a curse. The sword arrives in Sunnydale and while viewing the Japanese exhibit at the museum Willow becomes possessed by the spirit of Chirayoju and Xander, later on, becomes possessed by the spirit of Sanno. Buffy must figure out a way to stop the two spirits without killing her own friends. During the final battle, when the fight takes an ugly turn, Buffy must also keep her own spirit alive.
3603699	/m/09pb37	Sins of the Father	Christopher Golden	1999-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Buffy's old boyfriend from Hemery High in LA, Pike, makes a surprise appearance in Sunnydale, much to the everyone's shock, particularly Buffy's. Only Pike hasn't come to catch up with Buffy; he's being pursued by a rock demon known as Grayhewn. Pike had originally killed the demon's mate after it had killed his friend and now the demon wants Pike dead in the most painful way possible. As soon as Pike makes his appearance though, Buffy struggles to deal with her old feelings for Pike as well as her love for Angel, creating nothing but confusion within herself. Meanwhile, Giles appears to be dating a new teacher named Miss Blaisdell. But since Giles has been seeing her, he seems to waver in and out of consciousness and doesn't appear to care at all about Buffy or her struggles. Miss Blaisdell, as it turns out, is working for a man from Giles' past, a man from his very personal past, who wants nothing more than to painfully torture the Watcher and make him suffer.
3603701	/m/09pb3l	Child of the Hunt	Nancy Holder	1998-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Lately Sunnydale has been missing kids, some of them have run away while others seem to have been kidnapped. There have also been attacks by little vicious creatures that completely mutilate their victims by simply biting through their prey. Also in town is a Renaissance Faire and the gang decides to pay it a visit. One visit is enough though because something is slightly off about the faire, everything seems evil and this one boy named Roland is continuously picked on, and not for fun either. After some research and a couple of run-ins with some small attackers, Angel and Giles discover that a group of mystical beings called the Wild Hunt are in town to claim the souls of humans. Angel warns Buffy not to look at them as if she does they will steal her soul and she will be forced to ride with the Hunt. Buffy hides Roland out in her basement to save him from the nasty Faire people. The next night Buffy comes home to find Roland stolen away by the Wild Hunt. Giles informs Buffy that the Wild Hunt is run by the Erl King, lord of the Wild Hunt, and that Roland is his son and the heir to the Erl King title even though Roland is disgusted by the Hunt. Buffy and the gang rush in to rescue Roland but it's of no use. To free her friend Buffy agrees to be bound by the oath of the Erl King in which she loses all willpower to fight against him. On the night of the final Hunt in Sunnydale, the gang (without Buffy) assemble and begin an attack on the Wild Hunt before they can clear their magical forest to attack the town. Buffy is ordered to kill Roland by the Erl King and she must learn to fight against her magickal oath in order to save her life, Roland's and the lives of her friends as well.
3603706	/m/09pb48	Paleo	Yvonne Navarro	2000-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A student named Kevin Sanderson transfers to Sunnydale High and he's extremely lonely until a lecture is given to his class by a man named Daniel that works for Sunnydale's Museum of Natural History. Kevin immediately considers Daniel to be his mentor as they both thoroughly enjoy palaeontology. Unfortunately Daniel's goal is not at all the same as Kevin's who is just trying to fit in. Daniel has found some manuscripts which will help him resurrect dinosaur eggs, and Kevin seems to be the only person with the appropriate eggs. Meanwhile Oz is getting an offer from a woman name Alysa Bardrick to help run their band. She wants to be their manager but the band members of Dingoes Ate My Baby are still unsure as to her intentions. Daniel and Keven's ritual goes very badly and prehistoric dangers literally stalk the halls of Sunnydale High.
3603721	/m/09pb59	The Evil That Men Do	Nancy Holder	2000-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After a vicious shooting spree by Brian Dellasandro, a straight A student, the town of Sunnydale goes into a state of shock, though not one everyone would expect; they turn on each other and become nasty. At the same time, Helen, an ancient vicious vampire over 1500 years old, has come to Sunnydale. She has hunted and killed every single Slayer she has ever met in her life, and Buffy is next on her list. Helen and her lover, Julian, have come to Sunnydale to raise Meter, a goddess of destruction, and to do that they need the heart of the Slayer and the ashes of the Emperor Caligula from way back when in 47 A.D. The urn, containing his ashes, has arrived in Joyce's gallery, and is later stolen. After a run-in with Helen, Buffy learns that Angelus and Helen used to be paramours in the 19th century, but that it ended when he regained his soul. Angel explains to her about Helen's past and how she came to hunt down Slayers. Buffy and her friends are captured and suited up on the night of Meter's ascension. They are led onto a battleground where Buffy must stay alive against dozens of opponents as well as her friends who have been infected by the Potion of Madness in order to prevent Meter from rising. Buffy novels, such as this one are not considered by most fans as part of canon. They are usually not considered as official Buffyverse reality, but are novels from the authors' imaginations. However unlike fanfic, 'overviews' summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Buffy merchandise.
3603737	/m/09pb6p	Doomsday Deck	Diana G. Gallagher	2000-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Joyce Summers is running a local art show for people from around the United States. A girl named Justine shows up the first day to sign in and Xander is immediately attracted to her. She offers to do a Tarot reading for him which he agrees to. Once Xander has touched her magickal deck he comes under her control and has no will of his own. Justine is building a powerful deck of Tarot cards which will allow her to control the fate of the world with the help of the goddess Kali, who, in return, wants ultimate peace on Earth. Only Justine doesn't realize what ultimate peace is and she's come to Sunnydale to collect the last four people she needs to complete her deck of cards. Once her deck has been completed the four people remaining needed for the deck will die like the other eighteen she's used to make the deck. Buffy must figure out how her friends are being controlled and find a way to fight herself out of the power of Justine's Tarot cards. Buffy novels such as this one are not usually considered by fans as canonical. Some fans consider them stories from the imaginations of authors and artists, while other fans consider them as taking place in an alternative fictional reality. However unlike fan fiction, overviews summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Joss Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Buffy merchandise.
3603752	/m/09pb7q	Immortal	Christopher Golden	1999-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Veronique is an immortal vampire that continues to return in the body of a newly dead person every time she has been staked. However, she wants to become truly immortal by summoning an ancient demon called the Triumvirate. And of course her choice spot to do so would be in Sunnydale, especially with the extra magical vibes emanating from the Hellmouth. Unfortunately, while Buffy is trying to keep Veronique's vampire henchmen at bay, she also has to deal with the fact that her mother is sick in the hospital. There's a chance that she has cancer, but they won't know for sure until they've performed surgery on her. Buffy has to decide where she's needed most: with her mother, or to stop the end of the world. Buffy and her friends battle Veronique and the Trumverate with help from Lucy Hanover and other spirits who possess them as the Triumverate need to drain the life-force of nearby souls. Without being able to do so, they revert into their hatchling forms and are killed. With them dead, Veronique loses her immortality and is killed by the last of the hatchlings before it dies.
3603755	/m/09pb81	Prime Evil	Diana G. Gallagher	2000-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Crystal Gregory is a beautiful new teacher at Sunnydale High, who also happens to give Buffy panic fits whenever she's in the same room as her. Buffy can't sense anything unusual about the teacher and begins to wonder if she's losing her mind. But lately, Anya and Michael seem to be getting awfully close to Crystal and would appear to do anything for her. While out for her usual patrol at night, Buffy has two strange encounters; one, a man is completely incinerated by red and lighting and the other being a girl from school who has a burn mark on her neck in the shape of the symbol for infinity. As soon as Giles gets cracking on his books, he finds out that Crystal is in fact Shugra, a powerful primal witch which is trying to activate the source. She needs a coven of 13 willing people to participate in order to draw the proper energy, unfortunately, it seems that Willow is one of those people. Cordelia is nervous about her father's tax position but does not tell the others. This foreshadows later events. Giles and Joyce are nervous in each other's company Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Anya, Cordelia, Willow, and Oz
3603761	/m/09pb8r	Power of Persuasion	Elizabeth Massie	1999-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When dead guys start turning up as soon as the Moon family appears in Sunnydale Buffy knows that something is wrong. Mo, the mother, and her two daughters, Calli and Polly, all go to Sunnydale High. Within several days Calli and Polly have attracted a huge crowd of females. The Moons are trying to create a "Womyn Power" group at the school that basically detests guys for even living. Willow gets pulled into the group and Buffy resolves to stop the Moons before they brainwash all the girls and turn all the guys into blithering idiots.
3603770	/m/09pb92	Revenant	Mel Odom	2001-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Chinese gang arrives in Sunnydale and suddenly they're committing criminal acts all over the town. Immediately racial tension begin to increase and one of Willow's friends, Jia Li, is feeling the effects more than anyone else. She's discovered that her brother Lok is delving into the occult in order to learn more about their great grandfather's death in Sunnydale many years ago. Coinciding with these events, a man named Zhiyong is trying to raise the men that died in a cave many years ago in order to raise Sharmma, a demon that would give him power in return. A beautiful warrior called Shing arrives on the scene at the same time and she's just as strong as Buffy. Xander feels an immediate attraction for her but there's something about her that he doesn't know.
3603773	/m/09pb9s	Resurrecting Ravana	Ray Garton	2000-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 It's midterm exam time at Sunnydale High School and tensions are rising high in the usual group. Particularly between Buffy and Willow who seem to have some sort of unspoken dislike of the other. Meanwhile, horrible murders have been occurring throughout Sunnydale; two close friends end up dead, one kills the other and then the murderer ends up as a pile of bones. The murders also coincide with the arrival of a large group of demons called the Rakshasa who seem to have a sort of wicked control over their victims. As Buffy and Willow become more and more violent towards each other, Giles does some research which indicates that the Rakshasa are in town to help with the resurrection on an ancient Hindu demon called Ravana. And when Giles spots Ethan Rayne in town, he knows that something chaotic is at hand. Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Angel, Cordelia, Willow, Oz, and Ethan Rayne. Cordelia's web page in the book is www.shrew.com
3603781	/m/09pbb3	Return to Chaos	Craig Shaw Gardner	1998-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When four Druids arrive in town everyone knows that something is going on. Three of the Druids are brothers and the other is their uncle. They're in town to try a spell on a certain night to close the gateway in the Hellmouth so that demons would not be allowed to pass through. They'd done it a year before with their father but the spell was not completed and the brothers lost their father in the midst of the spell. Giles is a little put off by the uncle and feels that he's not being told everything that he should know. Also gathering is a large community of vampires run by Eric and his apprentice Naomi, who has been playing nasty tricks with Cordelia's mind by hypnotizing her. Things start to go wrong; magic appears everywhere and the brothers turn against their uncle. On the night of the spell Buffy must manage to fix the spell or deter the uncle from his task as well as figure out what is going on with Eric and his gang. Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Cordelia, Willow, Oz and Angel. Drusilla is found to be a user of a spell that would explain her ease in killing Kendra.
3603791	/m/09pbch	Visitors	Caroline Macdonald	1999-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lately, while patrolling, Buffy's been getting the distinct impression that she's being stalked by a demon that emits a high pitched giggle. After discussion and research with Giles, they discover that Buffy's being stalked by a 'korred'; a nasty hairy beast that feeds on peoples life forces by making them dance to his magical song until they die. The korred is particularly attracted to Buffy because of her Slayer aura. Buffy must stop to korred before he makes her dance to her death.
3603794	/m/09pbd5	Unnatural Selection	Mel Odom	1999-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Willow is baby-sitting one night when suddenly the baby she's taking care of changes into an evil faerie and tells her that she needs to work harder to save Weatherly Park from being converted into an amusement park. The faerie then attacks Willow before vanishing. After some research, Giles discovers that the fairy is a Russian variety called the domovoi, apparently hiding out beneath Weatherly Park. The faeries also have plans for Willow; they need the blood of a witch in order to resurrect the Homestone which will renew the faeries' strength. Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Angel, Cordelia, Willow, and Oz. First original Buffy novel not to feature Sarah Michelle Gellar on the cover.
3603802	/m/09pbf7	Deep Water	Laura Anne Gilman	2000-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After an oil spill on a nearby Sunnydale beach, Willow discovers a 'selkie'; that is, a girl that can turn into a seal with her sealskin. The selkie, dubbed Ariel by the gang, cannot return to the ocean because her sealskin was damaged by the oil spill. Willow's trying to find a spell to clean it. At the same time, mermaid-like creatures called merrows have come ashore in search of food and the vampire population gets territorial and try to kill the merrows. Buffy and the gang get stuck in the middle of a turf war while trying to save Ariel.
3603811	/m/09pbfy	Here Be Monsters	Cameron Dokey	2000-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 After Buffy kills twin teenage vampires, their vampire mother steps in to seek revenge for the death of her sons. The mother summons the goddess of Balance and Buffy is faced with a trial in order to save her life as well as her mother's. In this trial, Buffy discovers what she fears most and her love for her mom must triumph over the vampire mother's love for her dead sons.
3603822	/m/09pbgm	The Book of Fours	Nancy Holder	2001-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Taking place during Buffys third season, Faith and Buffy are the current Slayers. When mayhem caused by tidal waves and burning forests begin to erupt in Sunnydale as well as vicious attackers appearing with ceremonial axes, the gang knows that something is up. A woman named Cecile Lafitte has sent her Servants to kill the Slayers with special axes, Faith being the Slayer of Fire and Buffy being the Slayer of Air. Each Slayer has a special axe made to destroy the Slayer of that particular element. There are four axes in total; air, fire, water and earth. Should Faith and Buffy both be killed then it's believed that the line of Slayers would die out forever. Cecile wants to bring forth the Gatherer, and the only way to do so is to have the Slayers killed, which would feed the demon enough power to bring him forth into the world. Meanwhile, Willow ends up in the hospital with major brain trauma while Giles figures they need answers from the Watcher of the Slayer that preceded Buffy, India Cohen. During the final confrontation with the Gatherer, Willow and Cordelia briefly serve as hosts for India and Kendra respectively. Eventually with the help of the spirits of the former Slayers, Lucy Hanover and the spirits that live in the woods where the battle takes place, the group defeats the Gatherer and destroys it by each absorbing parts of its soul. Buffy also decapitates Cecile with the axes.
3603849	/m/09pbjc	Oz: Into the Wild	Christopher Golden	2002-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Determined to find a solution to his lycanthropic problem, Oz sets out to discover the beast within himself, as well as the rest of the world. His journey takes him to LA, Fiji, Australia, China and finally to Tibet in his quest for peace. Oz finds himself running from Gib Cain, the werewolf hunter who wants his skin, battling vampires and all around, just running for his life. His journey takes him to China where he meets a young woman named Jinan, who is something more than human, and the two of them travel to Tibet in search of answers. A monk can guide Oz through his journey, but he can only take him so far into his own self-discovery. During the meantime, Muztag, an evil demon who has been the monk's lifelong enemy, is gathering forces in an attempt to take over a particular valley in Tibet and he must be stopped before he kills the monk, or Oz's hopes for hiding the beast within him will be totally lost.
3603856	/m/09pbk1	These Our Actors	Dori Koogler	2002-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Even though Buffy decided to drop drama class to concentrate on her slaying and taking care of Dawn, Willow still decided keep the class on her course list. She becomes engrossed in it, especially when the teacher, Professor Addams, begins discussing rituals and chants involved in old dramatic works. Unfortunately, the professor, realizing that Willow has some power of her own, decides to use her for his own ends. He needs to locate a particularly powerful book used to summon the Fates, which he believes is located somewhere in Sunnydale. Spike and Willow realise that the professor is actually the father of Spike's mortal love interest, Cecily, who is attempting to use the power of the fates to resurrect his daughter after he accidentally killed her due to Spike's actions in his early days as a vampire.
3603859	/m/09pbkd	Tempted Champions	Yvonne Navarro	2002-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A young, vicious and beautiful woman named Celina comes to Sunnydale and there's nothing but an uproar caused by her appearance. She's a deadly fighter that is willing to kill both humans and vampires alike. Upon her arrival in Sunnydale, she scares Anya, demanding to know where the Slayer is. As Buffy becomes involved in a short battle with Celina at sunrise, she realizes that she's in way over her head as Celina's method of fighting is far superior to her own. Meanwhile, Anya wrestles with her humanity and realizes that a lot of pain can come from being human and no longer immortal. D'Hoffryn offers her back her demonhood and she must decide which path is right for her. Buffy, after her encounter with the violent Celina, has Giles research who this mysterious woman is to better prepare her for the next time they meet. Unfortunately, the news of what Celina actually IS, is a lot more shocking than Buffy had expected.
3603864	/m/09pbkr	Little Things	Rebecca Moesta	2002-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Ever since her mother's death, Buffy has been having problems keeping herself and Dawn living together peacefully, and the lack of money is affecting both of them. When Buffy suddenly develops an acute toothache, with no dental insurance, she can't afford to have it fixed. She must bear through the pain and keep it a secret from her friends while the town of Sunnydale becomes terrorized by miniature vampires. The miniature vampire fairies are led by Queen Mab who has come to Sunnydale with her troop in order to hunt down Anyanka. Back in the day, Anyanka was accidentally involved in turning these fairies into vampires and Queen Mab wants revenge on this act. Unfortunately, Buffy has to figure out how to kill vampires that are smaller than her palm.
3603867	/m/09pbl2	Crossings	Mel Odom	2002-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While at the theater for a Star Trek marathon with Anya, Xander recognizes a friend of his, from the arcade, enter the theater and begin threatening and beating humans in a very demonic way. Upon further inspection, Xander learns that his friend, Robby, was involved in total immersion VR video game beta testing. But the testing was a little too secretive, according to Robby's girlfriend. Meanwhile, Buffy and Dawn are having issues with one another, and Buffy doesn't know how to deal with being Dawn's new "mom" after the recent death of their own mother. After much research concerning the bizarre video game tests, and the appearance of a man named Bobby Lee Tooker, the group discovers that the video game isn't so much a video game, as much as it is another dimensional portal while the human bodies are being taken over by demons. Buffy needs to find a way to get these beta testers (including a very reluctant Xander) back into the real world and destroy the evil demon who's using the testers to conjure a powerful being.
3603873	/m/09pblf	Sweet Sixteen	Scott Ciencin	2002-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Buffy has a run-in with a couple demons at store while a gangly blonde girl watches on. Afterwards Buffy tries to talk to her but she runs off, faster than Buffy can catch her. Meanwhile Dawn has befriended a girl named Arianna at her school. Arianna has no friends and an abusive mother and has always longed to become a heroine. After it becomes clear that Arianna is the exceptionally strong girl that Buffy ran into, the gang tries to find out where Arianna's powers are coming from. Meanwhile, a demon called Aurek is searching for his daughter Arianna who is to become the Reaver, a being used for mass destruction of the dimensions. He finally locates her and tries to convince her that all humans are against demons. Just as Arianna starts to befriend Buffy, she then begins to pull away. Fearing that Buffy will just kill her in the end. Arianna has to make a decision on whether or not to keep her humanity.
3603881	/m/09pbm3	Wisdom of War	Christopher Golden	2002-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Two strange breeds of sea creatures are beginning to appear in Sunnydale, and none of them appear to be all too friendly. The Moruach and the Aegeirie are their names, the latter being followers of the immense sea beast Aegir who was once captured by the Moruach but later set free. As soon as Buffy is beginning to discover these creatures, the Watcher's Council steps in with a team with Quentin Travers leading the way. When Buffy does not agree to slay all the demons until she knows more about them and what they're doing in Sunnydale, Travers has Faith released from jail in Los Angeles for a temporary time in order to eradicate the demons in Sunnydale. Buffy begins to question her decision as well as her actions when innocent humans, including some of her friends, begin to transform into Aegir followers.
3603887	/m/09pbmg	Apocalypse Memories	Melinda Metz	2004-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Willow has arrived back in Sunnydale after spending time with Giles in England. She is terrified of using her magic powers again for fear of a return to dark magic consuming her. However, suddenly Sunnydale once again becomes a center of the weirdness when an angel named Michael brings on signs of the Apocalypse. The angel insists that this is not an artificial one, the type Buffy had stopped before, this is the natural and long-established end of the world. Willow must find a way to overcome her fear of magic in order to perform one of the most dangerous spells known to mankind; the Belial Siphon, which has not been performed before. Meanwhile, Buffy is trying to stop an Apocalypse of her own accord, yet Buffy cannot seem to fight what is thrown at her.
3603894	/m/09pbmt	Mortal Fear	Denise Ciencin	2003-09-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Something new has swept into the lives of the Scooby Gang, but all through different sources as they try to find acceptance with other people outside their tight knit slayage group; Xander with his co-workers, Willow with her professor at university and Dawn with a new group of not so straight-laced friends. Meanwhile, Buffy is being sent on random missions by a man that goes by the name of Simon. He wants her to retrieve parts of a mystical sword and put them together, but he refuses to say why or who he even is. When her friends suddenly start to turn against her, Buffy has to figure out how the sword and Simon ties into all the odd goings-on in Sunnydale.
3605167	/m/09pfky	The Man of Feeling	Henry Mackenzie	1771	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 The Man of Feeling details the fragmentary episodes of the life of Harley which exist within the remains of a manuscript traded to the initial narrator of the novel by a priest. The novel itself begins with these two latter figures hunting, whereas the manuscript is missing the first ten chapters and approximately thirty others at various locations throughout the manuscript's entirety. As a young boy, Harley loses his parents and is assigned several guardians who constantly disagree with each other. They do however agree that he should make an effort to acquire more wealth, and so they urge him to make an old distant relative amiable towards him to claim some inheritance. Harley fails in this endeavour, as he doesn't cooperate with the relative's attempts to warm to him. Harley is then advised to acquire a patron; to sell his vote at an election for a lease of land. His neighbour Mr. Walton gives him a letter of introduction, and he soon leaves home (and Miss Walton) for London. He meets a beggar and his dog on the way, and after donating to them both, hears the fortune-telling beggar's story. In the next few missing chapters, Harley presumably formally visits the baronet Mr. Walton recommended him to, because when the narrative continues, Harley calls upon him for the second time. The baronet however is away from London, and Harley meets another gentleman named Tom. They go for a stroll and then dine together, discussing pensions and resources with two older men. Harley proceeds to visit Bedlam, and weeps for an inmate there, before dining with a scorned, cynical man and together they discuss honour and vanity. He then demonstrates his skill (or, as many argue, his lack of skill) in physiognomy by being charitable on behalf of an old gentleman, with whom Harley later plays cards. It is after his finanical loss in these card games that Harley is informed the gentleman and his acquaintance are con men. Approached by a prostitute, Harley takes her to a tavern, gives her bread, claret and money, despite having to hand the waiter his pocket watch as collateral for paying the bill, and then meets again with her the next morning to hear her story. At its conclusion her father arrives, and after a misunderstanding is reconciled with his daughter. Upon discovering that his claim for the land lease has failed, Harley takes a stage-coach back home, discussing poetry and vice with a fellow passenger until they part ways and the coach reaches the end of its route. Harley continues on foot, and along the way reunites with Mr. Edwards, an old farmer from his village who has fallen on hard times and is returning from his conscription in the army. Together they approach the village, to find the school house destroyed by a squire, and two orphans who are actually the grandchildren of Harley's companion. Harley takes the three of them home, and provides some land for them. After discussing corrupt military commanders with Edwards, Harley is informed that Miss Walton is going to be married to Sir Harry Benson, and can't bring himself to be anything but happy for Miss Walton, although he does love her. The Man of Feeling then jumps almost randomly to a tale of a man named Mountford, who journeys to Milan with another man named Sedley to meet with a count. They visit a debtor's prison to find a man and his family living there at the behest of the count's son, a man who had been so charming to the two gentlemen. Sedley pays the family's debt, and then Mountford and Sedley leave Milan in disgust. The narrative returns to the story of Harley, and for some unexplained reason Miss Walton does not marry Benson. She visits an unwell Harley (who has contracted a fever nursing Edwards and his grandchildren), who confesses his love to her. They hold hands and die, although Miss Walton is revived.
3605768	/m/09ph3p	Non-Stop	Brian Aldiss	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's protagonist, Roy Complain, lives in a culturally-primordial tribe where curiosity is discouraged and life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. With a small group, he leaves his home and ventures into uncharted territory. The consequent discoveries will change his perception of the entire universe. Complain's small tribe roam nomadically through corridors overrun by vegetation. After his wife is kidnapped, a tribal priest named Marapper encourages Complain to join a furtive expedition into the unexplored corridors. It is Marapper's belief that they are all living on board a moving space-craft, and that if they can reach the control room they will gain command of the entire, gargantuan vessel. On their journey, the group encounter other tribes, of varying levels of sophistication. Complain is also briefly captured by humanoid 'Giants' of legend, who release him with no explanation. Complain's party eventually join the more sophisticated society of the 'Forwards'. Here they learn that the space-craft is a multi-generational starship returning from the newly colonised planet of Procyon. In a previous generation, the ships's inhabitants had suffered from a pandemic due to an alien amino acid found in the waters of Procyon. Law and order began to collapse and knowledge of the ship and its purpose was eventually almost entirely lost throughout the vessel. 23 generations have passed since this 'Catastrophe'. The Forwards have uncertain knowledge of 'Giants' who, though feared, are generally considered to be benevolent. Other mysterious beings, termed "Outsiders", are thought to infiltrate the human world from an unknown place and are reviled as enemies. However, when the Giants attack a Forward crew-member, the humans conclude that the Giants and Outsiders are colluding against humanity, and prepare to retaliate in force. Meanwhile, Complain and his developing romantic interest Vyann (a Forward officer) learn that the space-craft should only have taken six generations to return to Earth. Aware that 23 generations have passed since the epidemic, they despairingly deduce that the entire space-craft is now plummeting irredeemably into the cold expanse of infinite space. (Though they find the ship's control centre, all the mechanisms have been destroyed). The Forwards briefly engage the Giants, however the conflict quickly ends. It is then revealed that the ship has been moored outside earth's atmosphere for a number of years. The 'Giants' are merely normal sized earth-humans who have been attempting to improve the conditions of the ships inhabitants by slowly repairing the vessel. The 'Outsiders' are unusually short humans from earth who have infiltrated the ship's various societies in order to study the development of their civilization. The rulers of Earth have been reluctant to integrate the ship-dwellers into Earth's civilization, because the epidemic survivors have mutated to live at a rate 4-times faster than earth's population. However, the recent battle on board the space-craft has caused it to begin an emergency split into its composite parts, ensuring that the entire population will now be granted a new start on planet Earth.
3605895	/m/025ssxm	The Starlight Barking	Dodie Smith	1967	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A day of enchantments for the Dalmatians of the first book begins when the Dalmatians wake up and find all the humans and other animals in an unnaturally deep sleep. They hear the barking of Cadpig, carrying all the way from London, where she has become the Prime Minister's pet. She informs them reports from all over the country reveal the same phenomenon, and summons delegate dogs to London. They travel to London by "swooshing", described as gliding just off the ground. Pongo and Missus decide to investigate Cruella de Vil to see if she's behind the mysterious events. Joined by Tommy and the white Persian cat, who are "honorary dogs", and a few dogs, they arrive at her house, where the doors magically open for them. However, they find her fast asleep like all the other humans on earth. The dogs then travel to Trafalgar Square where they are addressed from the top of Nelson's Column by Sirius, Lord of the Dog Star, an extraterrestrial dog. Every dog perceives him as a dog of his own breed. Sirius invites them all to travel back to his home where they will be safe from the dangers of nuclear war on Earth, not to mention the whims and potential abuse of humans. Some dogs are for this, some against, but in the end all the dogs agree that Pongo, known for his braininess and heroism, should make the decision. Pongo joins in a conference with Cadpig and her "cabinet" discussing whether to go with Sirius or not. Then three skinny, mixed-breed strays arrive and ask to be heard. Pongo is sure that they will want to go with Sirius, but they want to stay on earth and someday have owners of their own. Pongo tells Sirius the dogs cannot abandon their humans and the Dog Star sadly accepts the decision. Before he leaves, he grants every dog the power to reach his home before the humans wake up. All the stray dogs take the opportunity to go to the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.
3606513	/m/09pjv9	The Penultimate Truth	Philip K. Dick	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 World War III begins early in the 21st century. It is fought between the two superpowers, Wes-Dem and Pac-Peop. The fighting is extensive and severe, most of it performed by "leadies", robots built to withstand the most extreme circumstance. The Earth becomes a battlefield. Unable to exist in the atmosphere created by robot war, vast "ant tanks" are constructed underground to save the diminishing human population. The government and war engine remains on the surface, the elite "Yance-men". Their president, Talbot Yancy, delivers inspirational speeches to the tankers, motivating them to increase their production of leadies and win the war. The war does eventually end. However, the Yance-men design a conspiracy to maintain the wealth of the Earth for themselves. Yancy continues to describe devastation in televised speeches. The tankers continue to produce leadies. Talbot Yancy is actually a computer generated simulacrum. The Yance-men program him from the "Agency" in New York. They live in immense villas on private parks, called "demesnes". The leadies are actually used by the Yance-men as personal servants and to maintain their estates. The Agency is run by the most vicious and greedy Yance-man, Stanton Brose, who is kept alive by pre-war artificial organs which he hoards. The story begins in one of the tanks, named Tom Mix (named after the actor Tom Mix). The tank president, Nicholas St. James, is forced to go to the surface to look for an artificial pancreas for the tank's lead mechanic. He emerges on David Lantano's property (a Yance-man). When some of Lantano's leadies try to kill St. James, they are destroyed by a mysterious man who looks like Talbot Yancy. St. James wanders around, through the ruins of a 10 year old war, and eventually ends up at Lantano's mansion. There he learns where he can find an artificial organ. Simultaneously, Adams (another Yance-man) is put on a special mission by Brose. He must plant evidence of alien artifacts on land belonging to a housing developer (Louis Runcible) so the land can be legitimately seized. The artifacts are buried using a time travel device. One by one, the people attached to this project are killed. Adams fearfully retreats to Lantano's mansion. Another person to appear in the mansion is Webster Foote, the owner and operator of a private detective corporation. Foote accepts on a per-case basis work from everybody (including Brose, Lantano and Runcible) but wishes to save Runcible from the plot against him. Lantano then reveals to Foote, Adams and St. James, that he is a Cherokee from the distant past, somehow being given extended life by the time travel device that placed the artifacts back in time. He has lived through history, taking many positions of note under different names, and now he has killed the members of this special project. Lantano, Foote, and Adams together now plot to kill Brose and free the people underground. However, Adams figures out Lantano was behind the deaths as part of his plot to bring down Brose. In desperation and fear, he joins up with St. James, who discovered a cache of artificial organs, and flees into the Tom Mix tank with him. They discover that Lantano was ultimately successful but contemplate that the biggest lie is yet to come.
3608320	/m/09pn8r	Songs in Ordinary Time	Mary McGarry Morris	1995-08	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A novel set in a small town in Vermont in 1960 offers the story of lonely and vulnerable Marie Fermoyle, her three children, and a dangerous con man.
3608348	/m/09pnbv	The Heart of a Woman	Maya Angelou		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The Heart of a Woman takes place between 1957 and 1962, beginning shortly after the end of Angelou's previous autobiography, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas. Angelou and her teenage son Guy have moved into a "houseboat commune in Sausalito". After a year, they move to a rented house near San Francisco. Singer Billie Holiday visits Angelou and her son there, and Holiday sings a song to Guy. Holiday tells Angelou, "You're going to be famous. But it won't be for singing". In 1959, Angelou and Guy move to New York City. The transition is a difficult one for Guy; Angelou is forced to protect him from a gang leader. No longer satisfied with performing in nightclubs, she dedicates herself to acting, writing, political organizing, and her son. On the invitation of her friend, novelist John Killens, she becomes a member of the Harlem Writers Guild. She meets other important African-American artists and writers, including James Baldwin, who would become her mentor. She becomes a published writer for the first time. Angelou becomes more politically active, participating in African-American and African protest rallies, including a sit-in at the United Nations following the death of Zaire's prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, that she helps organize. She meets Malcolm X, and is struck by his good looks and magnetism. After hearing Martin Luther King, Jr. speak, she and her friend, activist Godfrey Cambridge, are inspired to produce a successful fundraiser for King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), called Cabaret For Freedom. King names her coordinator of SCLC's office in New York. She performs in Jean Genet's play, The Blacks, with Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, and Cicely Tyson. In 1961, Angelou meets South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make. They never marry, but she and Guy move with him, first to London and then to Cairo, Egypt, where she plays "official wife to Make, who had become a political leader in exile". Their relationship is full of cultural conflicts; he expects her to be a subservient African wife, and she yearns for the freedom as a working woman. She learns that Make is too friendly with other women and is irresponsible with money, so she accepts a position as assistant editor at the Arab Observer. Eventually, Angelou and Make separate, but not before their relationship is examined by their community of friends. She accepts a job in Liberia. She and Guy travel to Accra, Ghana, where he has been accepted to attend college. Guy is seriously injured in an automobile accident, so she accepts a position at the University of Ghana and remains there while he recuperates. The Heart of a Woman ends with Guy leaving for college and Angelou remarking to herself, "At last, I'll be able to eat the whole breast of a roast chicken by myself."
3608386	/m/09pndx	She's Come Undone	Wally Lamb	1992-08-24	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dolores Price is heartbroken when her handsome, but immature, father leaves their suburban home for another woman. She and her mother move into her uptight Catholic grandmother's house in Easterly, Rhode Island, where she finds herself an outsider in the adolescent social hierarchy and the strict Catholic school she attends. After being raped by a charming neighbor, Jack Speight, she turns to food and television for comfort. By the age of 17, she has eaten her way to clinical obesity and is over 250 pounds. Following the accidental death of her mother , she decides to attend college in Pennsylvania. There she is ridiculed for her weight and cultivates a secret obsession with her peppy roommate's long-distance boyfriend, Dante, who sends love letters and nude photos in the mail. After an ill-conceived one-night stand with her university's lesbian janitor, she takes a long cab ride to Cape Cod, where she witnesses a beached whale dying. She feels kinship with the animal and wades into the water to drown herself. After her suicide attempt, she is institutionalized for several years and begins to work through her issues with the help of her therapist. She loses over 100 pounds, but becomes frustrated with the slow-moving therapy. She decides to move to Vermont, where she has located Dante, the object of her college obsession. Dolores gets a job at a local grocery store and moves into an apartment right across the hall from Dante. He is working as a high school English teacher but is frustrated with the stagnation in his life after having given up his youthful goal to become a priest. They begin a relationship, and eventually marry. However, Dante continues to dominate Dolores and has affairs with his female students. When Dolores becomes pregnant (something she dearly wanted) Dante pressures her into getting an abortion. After the loss of her baby, she becomes resentful of the control he has over her life. After her grandmother dies, she eventually admits to Dante that she orchestrated their entire relationship after becoming infatuated with him through his photos. They divorce and she then leaves and moves into her late grandmother's house, which she inherited. At her grandmother's funeral, Dolores is able to reconnect with several friends from her past, who form a surrogate family for her in Easterly. They encourage her to pursue her dreams, and she enrolls in some college courses while working. Here she meets Thayer, a single father, who is immediately smitten with her despite her troubled past. Initially she rebuffs his advances, but is charmed when he sends his teenage son to recite a rap about how much he likes her. They begin a tentative romance, predicated on Dolores's desire to have a child. Dolores realizes that for the first time, she has a man in her life who she can trust and who will treat her as an equal. Thayer supports her as they receive IVF treatment, but they do not have enough money for a second attempt after the first one fails. Dolores is depressed by the idea that she will never be a mother (by now she is in her late 30's) and Thayer takes her on a whale watching vacation to help her feel better. While on the boat, Dolores muses on her past and future. She decides that her life now is wonderful and is enough. The novel ends with her being the only one to see a whale breach the ocean symbolizing her new found peace. The book's title comes from the song "Undun" by The Guess Who on their album Canned Wheat.
3608396	/m/09pnfy	Where the Heart Is	Billie Letts	1995-08-17	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This novel opens with Novalee and Willy Jack, her then boyfriend, traveling from Tennessee to California. At the time, Novalee is "seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight, and superstitious about sevens." Letts describes Novalee's relationships with the number 7: "For most people, sevens are lucky, but not for Novalee; at the age of 7 her mother ran off with a baseball umpire named Fred." Novalee convinces Willy Jack to stop at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, so she can use the restroom and purchase a pair of sandals, as hers fell through the floor of their beat up car. When Novalee comes out of the Wal-Mart, she realizes Willy Jack has left her with nothing more than her beach bag and the $7.77 she has in change from the purchase of new sandals. With nowhere else to go, Novalee spends the afternoon at the Wal-Mart and meets "Sister Husband", a kind and spunky woman who runs the town's "Welcome Wagon." Sister Husband has a deep faith and hands out chapters of the Bible to people she meets. When they first meet, Sister Husband "mistakes" Novalee for a girl named Ruth Ann Mott and gives Novalee a Welcome Wagon basket. She also meets Moses Whitecotton, a photographer who shoots portraits at the Wal-Mart. Moses tells Novalee to give her baby a name "that will mean something" and "withstand a lot of bad times", as well as a photo album. He later becomes Novalee's mentor as she becomes more invested in photography. In addition, she also meets Benny Goodluck, a Native American, who gives Novalee a buckeye tree for good luck. As Novalee lives in Walmart, she watches as the buckeye tree becomes sick. She takes a walk to the library where she meets Forney Hull who helps her find books about the buckeye. Forney is from a well-bred family but had to drop out of college to take care of his alcoholic sister. He appears "crazy" and shouts facts he has read from books at Novalee. Novalee takes a walk to Sister Husband's home, who had told Novalee in Walmart she was welcome to visit her house any time, to ask Sister Husband if she could plant her buckeye on her property. Novalee Nation is forced to have her baby in the Wal-Mart, but Forney, the local librarian's brother, breaks a window and helps her out. At the hospital she makes a good friend and finds out that her baby and she are famous and in the news.
3608409	/m/09pngz	Midwives	Chris Bohjalian	1997-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On an icy winter night in an isolated house in rural Vermont, a seasoned midwife named Sibyl Danforth takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency cesarean section on a mother she believes has died of a stroke. But what if Sibyl's patient wasn't dead—and Sibyl inadvertently killed her? Midwives tells the story of Sibyl Danforth from the point of view of her young daughter.
3608582	/m/09pnvh	A Map of the World	Jane Hamilton		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is concerned with how one seemingly inconsequential moment can alter lives forever. Alice Goodwin, mother of two, school nurse and wife of an aspiring dairy farmer in Wisconsin, is getting ready to take her two daughters and her best friend, Theresa's two little girls to their farm pond to swim. When she goes upstairs to find her bathing suit, Lizzy, Theresa's 2-year-old, slips away to the pond and drowns. It all goes downhill from there. The town tramp, whom Alice reprimanded for constantly bringing her sick son to school, accuses Alice of molesting her child. The entire town turns on the Goodwin family, fairly new to the area, and several other mothers come forward with tales of Alice's "abuse". Imprisonment, trial and loss of the farm ensue and Alice's husband and Theresa become "involved." The novel is essentially about a search for authenticity in the contemporary American midwest. A couple struggles to maintain their lives on a farm, keep to ethical practices of both farming and living, and to raise their two young children, but American society stymies their efforts. The novel is an indictment of the U.S. legal system, which works with the subtlety and mercy of a sledgehammer; the farming system, which values dollars over good food and the environment; and the American idea of marriage, which is falling apart from its own internal contradictions. However, the novel manages to be very funny throughout. Its humor comes out not just in the wicked, scathing sentences of its first third, told in a voice that one imagines is close to the author's own, but also in the structural choice of placing section two in the voice of the hilariously but tragically non-verbal husband. The contrast between husband's and wife's thinking is far more eloquent and entertaining than the recent popular psychological studies on the subject of male-female mental processes. Also included: the annoyingly efficient but oblivious mother-in-law, class and race differences but from a female perspective, and the politics of a small town.
3608588	/m/09pnwj	Vinegar Hill	A. Manette Ansay	1994-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Ellen Grier and her family come back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin, it is not what they were hoping. Ellen's husband, James, has no job. The family have to move in with James's parents, Fritz and Mary-Margaret. These two dislike each other but dislike Ellen far more so far that she's on the brink of suicide.
3608592	/m/09pnx6	River, Cross My Heart	Breena Clarke	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Potomac River claims the death of the daughter by drowning, and the family leaves their rural North Carolina world in search of a better life among friends and relatives in Georgetown. The seek to come to terms with their loss.
3608624	/m/09pnyl	Mother of Pearl	Melinda Rucker Haynes	1999-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in Petal, Mississippi, a small town at the close of the 1950s, this novel tells the story of the 28-year-old Even Grade, a black man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Korner, a 15-year-old white girl, who is the daughter of the town prostitute and an unknown father. They are both separately seeking the family, love, and affection they had not had before, until their paths cross owing to their common acquaintance of loner mystic Joody Two Sun.
3608636	/m/09pn_9	The Pilot's Wife	Anita Shreve	1998-05	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is about Kathryn Lyons, whose husband, Jack Lyons, dies in a plane crash over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Malin Head, Ireland. As she and her daughter Mattie try to cope with this sudden loss, she finds herself bombarded by the press. While she and the airlines try to find the reason for the crash, she slowly unravels a series of secrets her husband has kept from her until she realizes that he lived a double life she never knew about.
3608649	/m/09pp0p	Jewel	Bret Lott	1991-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The year is 1943 and life is good for Jewel Hilburn, her husband, Leston, and their five children. Although there's a war on, the Mississippi economy is booming, providing plenty of business for the hardworking family. And even the news that eldest son James has enlisted is mitigated by the fact that Jewel, now pushing 40, is pregnant with one last child. Her joy is slightly clouded, however, when her childhood friend Cathedral arrives at the door with a troubling prophecy: "I say unto you that the baby you be carrying be yo' hardship, be yo' test in this world. This be my prophesying unto you, Miss Jewel." When the child is finally born, it seems that Cathedral's prediction was empty: the baby appears normal in every way. As the months go by, however, Jewel becomes increasingly afraid that something is wrong with little Brenda Kay—she doesn't cry, she doesn't roll over, she's hardly ever awake. Eventually husband and wife take the baby to the doctor and are informed that she is a "Mongolian Idiot," not expected to live past the age of 2. Jewel angrily rebuffs the doctor's suggestion that they institutionalize Brenda Kay. Instead the Hilburns shoulder the burdens—and discover the unexpected joys—of living with a Down syndrome child.
3608656	/m/09pp10	Drowning Ruth	Christina Schwarz	2000-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Amanda and Mathilda are two sisters who live in rural Wisconsin; they are very close, but very different. While Mathilda is petite, well-liked, pretty, and adventurous, Amanda is tall, clumsy, awkward, and serious. When Mathilda marries Carl, Amanda feels betrayed and leaves to go to nursing school. She dives into her work and makes her entire life about helping the sick and injured. Meanwhile, Mathilda and Carl are married and living together on a small island just away from the family farm. They are happy there, and welcome their child, Ruth, into the world. A short time later, however, Carl begins to feel trapped, enlists in the army and is sent away to France. Mathilda is devastated and angry at his departure. She moves back to the mainland and into the old house of her late parents. Amanda begins to feel agitated and upset. She's also sick all the time, and a nervous wreck. She is persuaded to take a rest, and travels back to the family farm to stay with her sister and niece. The three grow very close, and Amanda begins to see Ruth as their child, becoming very protective of her. After living in the farm house for a while, Amanda persuades Mathilda to move out to the island. At first, the idea does not go over well, but Mathilda soon agrees, and the three of them move out to the island. During the summer, it becomes apparent that Amanda is pregnant and desperate to hide it from everyone. Mathilda agrees to adopt the child as her own and make up a story about the baby being an orphan from a "hired girl." Amanda is pleased with this arrangement, but still must hide her pregnancy, so she does not leave the island until the baby is born. When the baby finally comes, Mathilda delivers it in the house with Ruth under the bed. Sometime in the night, Amanda changes her mind about Mathilda raising the baby and tries to leave the island by walking across the ice with the child. Ruth, who is approximately four at this time, follows Amanda out onto the ice because she doesn't want her to leave. Mathilda runs out after them, trying to get Ruth back and find out why Amanda is leaving. Out on the ice, they walk over a thin patch and the ice starts to break. Ruth and Mathilda go under, while Amanda desperately tries to save them. Mathilda pushes Ruth to the surface to save her, but falls back in herself. Amanda tries desperately to pull her out, but can't do it without falling in, so Mathilda bites her sister's finger to force her to let go and leave her to drown in the freezing water. Ruth is half dead and frozen on the ice with the baby, but she is revived. Amanda takes the new baby to a woman in town who has recently had a stillborn child. She tells the woman that a hired girl had the baby and then died in childbirth. She also tells her that the baby's name is Imogene. The woman is so taken with the child, and so amazed at the situation that she doesn't notice that both Ruth and Amanda are frozen and wearing nightgowns. She also doesn't notice the blood on Amanda. Soon after Mathilda's death, Carl returns home from the war with serious injuries, and is nursed back to health by Amanda. Ruth, traumatized, is behaving oddly and very leery of her father, whom she barely knows. The three of them live together for a while without incident, but after a while, Carl starts to suspect that there might be more to the story of his wife's death than he has been told. As far as he knows, his wife wandered out into the night all alone and disappeared, later to be found under the ice. Amanda starts having serious issues again with her nerves and anxiety. She is institutionalized in a mental hospital, and Carl is left to take care of Ruth on his own. Worried that he doesn't know enough about children, he asks his cousin, Hilda, to come to the farm and care for Ruth. Ruth dislikes Hilda almost instantly. She is strict, serious, and humorless. She sees Ruth as a problem child, and seems almost to enjoy punishing her. ko:루스의 기억
3608681	/m/09pp4w	Back Roads	Tawni O'Dell	2000-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Harley Altmyer should be in college drinking beer and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three younger sisters after the shooting death of his physically abusive father and the arrest of his mother. His existence has become a joyless, exhausting blur of day care, mac and cheese dinners, working two minimum wage jobs, and monthly prison visits to a "once-devoted mother" who seems not only resigned but glad to have handed over the reins of parent and homemaker to her young son. As he sees it, his life is "lousy with women. All ages, shapes, sizes and levels of purity." Frustrated, overwhelmed, plagued by violent fantasies and trapped by feelings of love and duty, he's a guy in an impossible situation: an orphaned child with the responsibilities of an adult and the fiery, aggressive libido of a teenager. Life is further complicated when he develops an obsession with the sexy, melancholic mother of two down the road. Family secrets and unspoken truths threaten to consume him as his obsession deepens and she responds unearthing a series of staggering surprises. In the face of each unexpected revelation and through every wrenching ordeal, Harley does the best he can to hold it all together. Violent and disturbing yet touching and darkly funny, Harley's story is ultimately a search for his own self-worth as he slowly comes to realize that survival is a talent.
3608696	/m/09pp6l	Daughter of Fortune	Isabel Allende		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Chile during the 1840s, Eliza Sommers is a young Chilean girl raised and educated by English Anglican siblings Victorian spinster Rose and strict Jeremy Sommers, and their sailor brother John Sommers, who are colonists living in the port of Valparaiso, ever since they found her on their doorstep, and taught in the art of cooking by the Mapuche Indian Mama Fresia. Over most of Part I, Eliza's origins and upbringing, and her maturity are told. Eliza falls in love with Joaquin Andieta, a young Chilean man who is concerned about his mother, living in poverty. The young couple have an affair, ultimately resulting in Eliza getting pregnant. Soon, news of gold being discovered in California reaches Chile, and Joaquin goes out to California in search of a fortune. Wanting to follow her lover, Eliza goes to California, with the help of her Chinese zhong yi (physician) friend, Tao Chi'en, in the bowels of a ship headed by a Dutch Lutheran captain, Vincent Katz. In the beginning of Part II, Tao's past is revealed, from his early life in poverty, to his apprenticeship to a master acupuncturist, and his ill-fated marriage to Lin, a young and pretty, but frail girl who dies after a brief marriage. Lin's spirit later comes in to help her widowed husband at crucial points for Tao in later parts of the book. During the journey to California, Eliza, due to her pregnancy, is frail and sick, and later suffers a miscarriage. To leave with ship without suspicion, Tao disguises Eliza as a Chinese boy, a disguise that she maintains in San Francisco where they have landed. Eliza earns money by selling some Chilean snacks and Tao becomes a successful zhong yi. Tao, after seeing the greed and brothels in San Francisco, loses most of his faith in America. Eliza sets on her journey to find Joaquin, using a male cowboy's disguise and the moniker Elias Andieta, and claiming to be Joaquin's brother. Meanwhile in Valparaiso, Rose and Jeremy are shocked to find that Eliza has disappeared. When John comes and asks about her whereabouts, Rose reveals a well-kept, shocking secret to Jeremy, a secret that she and John have concealed from him since Eliza's arrival into their home: John is Eliza's father, having had her with an unnamed Chilean woman. Based on intuition, John Sommers sails for San Francisco, commissioned by his wealthy employer Paulina Rodriguez de la Cruz as a steam ship captain, with the additional intent of finding his daughter. Part III finds Eliza broke after still trying to search for Joaquin, she occasionly sends letters to Tao describing what she sees in her journey. Although she has fallen out of love with Joaquin, she cannot stop journeying. In an outskirt town, Eliza meets up with Joe Bonecrusher's travelling caraven of prostitutes and ends up travelling with them as cook and piano player. The members of the caravan believe Eliza to be a homosexual man, a disguise which she takes up much to the frustration of Babalu, the caravan's bodyguard. Eliza stays with the group during the winter as they settle in a small town. During this time, Tao moves to San Francisco to save up money to move back to China. He surprises himself when he realises he misses Eliza's company and is consoled when he begins receiving her letters. John Sommers, in his search for Eliza, comes across Jacob Todd, an old suitor of Rose's who is now a journalist known as Jacob Freemont. Freemont promises that he will look out for any sign of Eliza as he writes articles about the famous bandit Joaquin Murieta, whose description matches Eliza's lover. Meanwhile, as Joe Bonecrusher's business begins to dwindle, Tao finds Eliza and returns to San Francisco with her. They set up a network to help young Chinese prostitutes escape and rehabilitate with the help of friends. Eventually Jacob Freemont is able to pass word to the Sommers that Eliza is alive, who was previously thought to be dead. Tao and Eliza live together and eventually form a relationship; she eventually decides to write to Rose to inform her foster mother that she is alive. When Joaquin Murieta is shot dead and his preserved head is showcased in San Francisco, Eliza and Tao go to see if the man was really Joaquin Andieta.
3608720	/m/09pp8n	Icy Sparks	Gwyn Hyman Rubio	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A young girl struggling with accusations of Tourette's Syndrome with Tourette's syndrome and with selective mutes. Icy Sparks is a young girl living in Eastern Kentucky with her grandparents in the 1950s/1960s. She doesn't get along well with her peers and suddenly starts having tics and croaks. Icy goes down into the root cellar to let out her tics, hiding the condition from her grandparents. Finally she tells her friend, Miss Emily Tanner, a local store owner who is also an outcast from society at 300 pounds. Her teacher tries putting her in a solitary classroom but even that doesn't work. Her grandparents have Icy admitted to a mental institution for observation. Even in the institution, Icy is an outcast. She sees herself as not as mentally ill as her peers there, and is tormented by one of the hospital workers. She befriends a second worker, but really just wants to go home. When she is allowed to go home, she stays in her house or on the surrounding property, but does not venture out in public. After her return home, the atmosphere is tense even there. Icy stays in the house and does not socialize. After her grandfather dies, Icy and her grandmother turn to religion for solace. Inspired by a tent-meeting revival where she observes that people touched by the Holy Spirit behave as if they have Tourette's syndrome, Icy discovers she has a gift for music. She proceeds to attend university, where her disorder is diagnosed officially. Later, she becomes a therapist, working with children with Tourette's syndrome and with selective mutes.
3608779	/m/09ppds	The Book of Ruth	Jane Hamilton	1988	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An awkward midwest girl, Ruth, is growing up the small town of Honey Creek, Illinois. All of her childhood, and most of her adult life, is spent wondering what would happen if she could get away. Her father, Elmer, left her family when she was ten, which left her mother, May, very bitter. May is extremely unhappy with an disappointed in Ruth because she is nothing like her shining brother, Matt. Matt is a mathematical genius with a scholarship to MIT, while Ruth is considered remedial. Their mother May is crushed when Matt moves away to Boston after graduation and she is left with Ruth, who takes a job with her at the local dry cleaner shop. Ruth and May make two friends during this short time period: Deedee and her daughter Daisy (a fast girl with a loose reputation.) One hot night at the local lake, Ruth meets Daisy's friend, Ruby Dahl, a local male ne'er do well. Ruby and Daisy met through a court mandated course for drivers convicted of a DUI. One of many infractions in Ruby's history of petty crime. When Ruby later takes Ruth out on a date, he tricks her into losing her virginity to him. But Ruth continues to see him, believing his early declaration of love. After several dates they decide to get married. Ruby has no guests at the wedding, as his mother has dementia and died from pneumonia shortly after moving to Florida with Ruby's father, and Ruby's father has no respect for his son. It is revealed at this time that Ruby was a 'normal' baby until his mother, while drunk, falls asleep in the bathtub with Ruby where he almost drowned. Thus explaining the common assumption that he is slow witted. Because Ruby doesn't have a job, after the marriage, he moves in with Ruth and her mother. May and Ruby do not get along and Ruth becomes very agitated because she had envisioned marriage as the end to her troubles and wants peace within the house. She discovers that she is pregnant and May becomes a warmer mother - advising Ruth to relax and coaching her on child rearing. Even May and Ruby get along much better during her pregnancy. After the birth of Ruth's son, Justin, May and Ruby appear to grow closer - much to Ruth's dismay. Over the years, Ruth becomes increasingly discontent, ultimately regretting her marriage to Ruby, who has descended into alcoholism and drug abuse, frequenting pornography theatres and demanding sex from Ruth. During the holiday season, Ruth discovers she is pregnant for the second time. The family tensions come to a head when, now toddler, Justin wants some Christmas baked goods kept in the freezer and May and Ruth refuse him, with the excuse of not wanting his teeth to be rotten like Ruby's. Ruby becomes dark and declares that he is the man of the house, telling Justin to get the sweets, so they can share them. May gets upset and Ruby attacks her, cornering her in the basement and eventually beating and strangling her to death. He turns on Ruth, and breaks her hands, and beats her. He stops short of killing her when Justin tells him to stop. After escaping to a neighbors house, Ruth is rescued by police and Ruby arrested. Ruth is sent to a special hospital for pregnant women with special needs to recover and give birth. Eventually she and her son Justin are taken in by Ruth's Aunt Sid. Justin has a hard time being with his mother and frequently has nightmares about the murder. It is revealed that Ruby was ultimately diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and committed to a mental hospital for the crime. The book ends with Ruth pining over her lost life, and how she has to move forward with her sons.
3609337	/m/09pqd8	The Witching Hour	Anne Rice	1990-10-19	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 In this book we meet some of the trilogy's leading characters: Dr. Rowan Mayfair, a brilliant neurosurgeon who is ignorant of her family history; Michael Curry, a contractor who specializes in the restoration of old homes while dreaming of his childhood in New Orleans and yearning to return there; Aaron Lightner, a psychic scholar and member of the Talamasca; Lasher, a spirit with wicked motives; and the Mayfair Witches, an old Southern family with a taste for poetry and incest. They have a talent for secretiveness and successful business ventures. The majority of the Mayfair Witches are female (with the exception of Julien), and the family line matriarchal in lineage; i.e. families pass down the maiden name "Mayfair" instead of adopting the respective husband's last name. Rowan and Michael fall in love after she saves him from drowning, and when he decides to return to New Orleans, she follows him to learn the secrets of her past against the wishes of her adoptive mother. Aaron has studied the Mayfairs and Lasher from afar for years. He tracks down Michael to share with him the history of the family and the spirit, whom Michael has seen since he was a boy. (He was also interested in Michael because of the psychometric power he purportedly developed since waking from a near drowning experience.) What follows is a gruesome story filled with murder, incest, and betrayal. There are, however, many gaps which can only be filled in by Lasher himself. Rowan and Michael marry despite all this, and Rowan takes on the responsibilities of the Designee of the Mayfair Legacy. She dreams of a medical center where anyone, regardless of age, race, or financial status, can be treated and healed. She conceives, and it seems as if she and Michael may escape the curse of the Legacy. This is not to be, however, as Lasher finally reveals himself to Rowan, and explains his wish: to be made flesh so that he may walk the earth again and sets about slowly seducing Rowan through many intense intimate encounters. Secretly thinking that she can outwit this spirit, she agrees to send Michael away from the house on Christmas Day so that Lasher can fulfil his centuries-old ambition. Her plan (to bind Lasher to 'weak matter' which can be destroyed by her mental killing abilities) backfires as Lasher enters her womb, and makes himself at home in the fetus. Rowan immediately goes into labor, which is violent and bloody, and Lasher is born. Michael returns to the house then, and seeing what has become of the child that he had desperately wished for, he throws himself at the creature, thinking to kill him. Lasher is much too strong, though, and attempts to drown Michael in the pool. Upon this second near death experience Michael loses the power in his hands. Terrified for Michael's life, Rowan drags the creature away, and they run off together. Throughout the novel there are mentions of the "Thirteen Witches" and the Thirteenth being the "Doorway". This is in reference to Lasher selectively manipulating the Mayfair bloodline so that the thirteenth witch, Rowan, would be more powerful than all the others. Lasher required a witch as powerful as Rowan because she possessed the ability to make him live again. Lasher had possessed dead bodies with the help of Mary Beth and Julien Mayfair (two of the most powerful witches in the family), but due to limits in medical knowledge at the time, he could not reanimate the corpse and was unable to transform the bodies into Taltos form. When Lasher possesses Rowan's baby, the child effectively dies and as Lasher exchanges the cells, Rowan's diagnostic/healing abilities, along with her medical knowledge, are required to keep Lasher from dying. es:La hora de las brujas fr:Le Lien maléfique it:L'ora delle streghe ru:Час ведьмовства
3609415	/m/09pqkm	A Wind Named Amnesia				 The Apocalypse didn't come with a bang, but with a whimper. Silently, the amnesia wind swept away all of mankind's knowledge. Thousands of years of human civilization vanished overnight as people forgot how to use the tools of modern civilization: who they were, how to speak -- everything. Technology decayed as mankind was reduced to the level of cavemen. Two years later, a young man -- miraculously re-educated after the cataclysm -- explores this barbaric world while pursued by a relentless killing machine. He is accompanied by a young mysterious woman who is somehow spared the devastating effects of the amnesia wind.
3609888	/m/09prht	Avalon High	Meg Cabot	2005-12-27	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Elaine "Ellie" Harrison has just moved. Avalon High, seems like a typical high school with the stereotypical students: Lance the jock, Jennifer the cheerleader, Marco, the bad boy/desperado, and Will, the senior class president, quarterback, the student every girl wants and all around good guy. But not everyone at Avalon High is who they appear to be, not even Ellie herself.
3611536	/m/09pvx2	¡Que viva la música!	Andrés Caicedo			 The novel has been seen as an invitation to a party without end, where the main character comes to see the world as a bottomless pit of debauchery, which she relishes. There is a secret pact with death itself involving the ever more frantic dance of María del Carmen Huerta, the blonde protagonist of the book. The novel also offers an affectionate view of the Colombian city of Cali as unique, magic, and different. Our introduction starts in the privileged north, with its Sixth Avenue ("la Sexta"), Parque Versalles, and its magical places, continuing to the ghetto in the South with its Caseta Panamericana (built especially for the 1971 Pan American Games), the Pance River, the neighborhoods beyond upper-class Miraflores, the winged Andes mountain range, and the hideouts of sex and salsa in the final stretches of 15th Street ("la Quince").
3611717	/m/09pw5x	The Hounds of the Morrigan	Pat O'Shea		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Pidge buys a book entitled A Book of Patrick's Writing and discovers that the book he bought is actually a prison for the evil serpent Olc-Glas. The Morrigan wants the book so that she can absorb the evil of Olc-Glas and take over the world.
3613379	/m/09pzf6	The King in the Window	Adam Gopnik	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 On the night of Epiphany, after enjoying his piece of Epiphany kingcake and wearing a gold paper crown, Oliver gazes out the window. He is approached by a haunting vision of another boy in the reflection. This mysterious boy is a window wraith, and he mistakes Oliver for the new king. The window wraith boy calls Oliver to wield his sword and reclaim the kingdom, luring him into a journey of self-discovery that could save the world. The window wraiths are a cadre of France's deceased poets and artists, such as Molière, who claim Oliver as the king who will save them from the evil force dwelling behind the mirrors of the world capturing the souls of those who stare too long. The element of mirrors in the book is also an ode to Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking-Glass and there is also a pivotal character who is a descendant of Alice Liddell.
3615855	/m/09q3wy	The Operated Jew				 The book told the story of a young Jewish doctor, who because of antisemitic pressures, seeks to escape his Jewishness by submitting himself to a series of violently painful medical procedures. The doctor has stereotypical Jewish features: black curly hair, oily skin, thick lips, and a large, hooked nose, an effeminate voice, has poor posture and is orthopedically impaired. He agrees to undergo a complex medical operation in order to free himself from his Jewishness. Ultimately, he arranges to have all his bones straightened out, has his hair dyed blonde, and gets his larynx altered to change his voice. He is placed in a bathtub and given a blood transfusion by pure Aryan virgins. Having been seemingly cured of his Jewishness, he weds a blonde German woman. However, just as he is about to deliver a speech at his wedding, his voice takes on a high pitch, as all his previous Jewish features resurface. He ultimately winds up as a gelinatous puddle on the floor, thus signifying the immutability of the Jew: a Jew is always a Jew, regardless of whatever attempts at assimilation he may undertake. The book incorporated all the elements of modern, racial antisemitism: the expression of desire on part of the Jew to escape his identity, the lengths to which he will go to transform himself, the pornographic quality of the affair (as exemplified by the Aryan virgins), and the impossibility of it all. It sought to illustrate that Jews cannot escape their race; if they try, they become something non-human, and indeed sub-human.
3617404	/m/09q75l	The Diary of a Chambermaid	Octave Mirbeau	1900	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 The novel presents itself as the diary of Mademoiselle Célestine R., a chambermaid. Her first employer fetishizes her boots, and she later discovers the elderly man dead, with one of her boots stuffed into his mouth. Later on, Célestine becomes the maid of a bourgeois couple, Lanlaire, and is perfectly aware that she is entangled in the power struggles of their marriage. Célestine ends by becoming a bourgeois café hostess, who mistreats her servants in turn.
3617412	/m/09q76q	Blackwater	Conn Iggulden	2006-03-02	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 "How do you know when you're in too deep? Davey has always lived in the shadow of his older brother, a smiling sociopath who will stop at nothing to protect himself and his family. But when the shadowy figure of Denis Tanter comes into Davey's life, how far will the bond of brotherhood reach?"
3617997	/m/09q8cy	The Death of Kings	Conn Iggulden	2004-01-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Exiled from Rome by the new Dictator, Sulla, Gaius Julius Caesar is serving with a naval legion. After playing a crucial part in liberating a Roman fort in Mytilene under the command of rebels, Julius receives the honour wreath and increases his standing among his men yet further. Despite this success, his war galley is attacked and captured by pirates, with Julius himself receiving a serious head injury. His household fares no better with its head serving at sea: Cornelia, Julius' wife is assaulted by Sulla despite being heavily pregnant. Julius and Cornelia's daughter is born and named Julia in honour of her father. Marcus Brutus meanwhile has finished his term with a legion in Macedon and is causing trouble with the locals on his return journey to Rome. He and Renius manage to meet jealous husbands and vindictive fathers before returning to the city. In the city itself, Julius' estate manager Tubruk swears revenge on Sulla and schemes to sell himself back into slavery in order to enter Sulla's household. Tubruk then successfully poisons Sulla before managing to escape the city before he can be traced. Antonidus, Sulla's right-hand, promises to track down Sulla's killer and tears Rome apart in his search. As Julius and the survivors of his galley gradually recover while detained on the pirates' ship, their captors demand a ransom. While the men attempt to negotiate lower ransom prices, Julius demands a much high price than the one proposed, defying the pirates and declaring that he will re-claim whatever is paid anyway. Eventually the survivors are left on the north African coast when the ransoms are paid. After returning to Rome and the estate where he and Julius grew up, Brutus asks Tubruk for the whereabouts of his mother, Servilia. After visiting her home, he gradually comes to know the woman who abandoned him as a child, as well as forming a reluctant acceptance of her life. In delight of her new-found relationship with her son, Servilia uses her influence with Crassus, one of the richest men in the Senate, to re-form the legion of Marius (Primigenia) under Brutus' command. Antonidus believes he has narrowed down the list of culprits for Sulla's murder to three: Cinna, father of Cornelia; Crassus; or Pompey, a renowned general and rising star in the Senate. With the backing of Cato, one of the most powerful men in the Senate, Antonidus hires an assassin to kill a loved one of each of the three. Pompey is the first to suffer Antonidus' misplaced vengeance, with his daughter murdered in Pompey's garden. Marching across north Africa, Julius calls for volunteers and, where necessary, presses young men into service to assist in the finding and destruction of the pirates. Risking the wrath of the Roman authorities with Ciro, one of Julius' recruits, accidentally killing a soldier and then Julius and his men stealing a ship, the small force sets out to find the survivors and recover their ransom money. Eventually the pirates are found and destroyed, with a huge hoard found on the pirate's ship, and Julius resolves to land in Greece and return to Rome. Upon landing in Greece, Julius discovers several Roman forts lying destroyed with their inhabitants killed, and learns not only of the return of Mithridates, but also of the death of Sulla. While Cato and the supporters of Sulla delay the Senate's decision to appoint a leader to confront Mithridates, Julius decides to confront Mithridates himself, and recruits many surviving veterans to fight alongside him, calling them the Wolves of Rome. Conducting several major hit-and-run attacks on Mithridates' forces, the Wolves eventually defeat the forces of Mithridates before the forces sent by the Senate even arrive in Greece. After delivering Mithridates' body to the approaching legions, Julius leads the Wolves to Rome and finally returned home. While home at his estate Julius meets his daughter Julia for the first time and learns of Sulla's assault on his wife. In his fury he comes close to killing Tubruk, one of his oldest friends, before learning Tubruk was Sulla's killer. Swearing revenge on Sulla's associates and followers, Julius publicly allies himself with Crassus and Pompey, who publicly denounces Cato as responsible for his daughters death. Tension also flares briefly between Julius and Brutus when Julius demands Brutus hand over Primigenia to him, until Brutus acquiesces and puts his friendship above his pride. Julius' marriage also suffers, with Cornelia feeling increasingly ignored by Julius. When Cato's son is forcibly signed up to Primigenia and is forbidden to withdraw from his service, Julius gathers another opponent. Crisis strikes Rome again when a gladiator known as Spartacus leads a slave revolt and destroys two legions in the north. Infighting in the Senate leads to indecision as to who will lead the legions north leads to Crassus being given command, despite his perceived lack of skill as a general. Knowing this, Crassus makes Pompey his second in command and Pompey responds by summoning Julius and Primigenia. Primigenia marches north and performs admirably, though it is forcibly merged with another legion. Julius remains in command of the newly formed legion, and names it the Tenth. Tragedy strikes Julius before he can see the end of the campaign. Cornelia is murdered on Cato's orders, with Tubruk dying trying to protect her. Julius returns to his estate with Pompey and Brutus, and Pompey discovers Cato's involvement in the murders of Cornelia and his daughter. Cato however commits suicide before he can be executed. A grief-stricken Julius returns to his troops in time to see Spartacus and the slave revolt crushed. Pompey however begins to see Julius as a threat and arranges for him to take up a position in Spain.
3618005	/m/09q8d8	Alamut	Vladimir Bartol	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is situated in the 11th century at the fortress of Alamut (Persian for "Eagle's Nest"), which was seized by the leader of the Ismailis, Hassan ibn Sabbah or Sayyiduna (Our Master). At the start of the story, he is gathering an army for the purpose of attacking the Seljuk Empire, which has taken over possession of Iran. The story commences with the journey of young ibn Tahir, who is, according to his family's wish, intending to join the Alamut garrison. There, he is appointed to the squad of the most valiant soldiers, named the fedai. Fedai are expected to obey orders without any demur, death being not an obstacle. During their demanding training, they come to be convinced that they shall go to heaven immediately after their death if they die in the line of duty. Hassan managed to achieve such level of obedience by deceiving his soldiers - he gave them drugs (hashish) to numb them and ordered afterwards that they be carried into the gardens behind the fortress, which were made into a simulacrum of heaven, including houris. Therefore, fedai believe that Allah had given Hassan the power to send anybody into the Heaven for a certain period. Moreover, some of the fedai fall in love with houris and Hassan unscrupulously uses that to his advantage. Meanwhile, the Seljuk army besieges Alamut. Some of the soldiers are captured and Hassan decides to demonstrate his power to them. He orders a pair of fedai (Yusuf and Suleiman) to kill themselves; Suleiman by stabbing himself, Yusuf by jumping off of a tower. They fulfill their master's order with a smile on their face, thinking that they will soon rejoice with their beloved in heaven. Afterwards, Hassan orders ibn Tahir to go and kill the grand vizier of the Seljuk sultan Nizam al-Mulk. Hassan wants to take vengeance for al-Mulk's treachery against him long ago. Ibn Tahir stabs the vizier, but, before he passes away, the vizier reveals the truth of Hassan's deceptions to his murderer. Ibn Tahir decides to return to Alamut and kill Hassan. When ibn Tahir returns, Hassan receives him and also reveals him his true motto: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted". Then, he lets ibn Tahir go, to start a long journey around the world. Another fedai kills the Seljuk Sultan and the Seljuk empire dissolves. The fight for the Seljuk throne begins. Hassan encloses himself in a tower, determined to work until the end of his days. He transfers the power over the Ismaelits to the hands of his faithful dai, military, and religious chiefs.
3618655	/m/09q9vf	So You Want to Be a Wizard	Diane Duane		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Nita Callahan is a thirteen-year-old girl who discovers a book titled So You Want to Be a Wizard while hiding from big bullies in a library. She brings the book home with her and discovers that it is about the art of wizardry. She does not completely trust the book's claim that she can become a wizard if she takes the Wizard Oath, but she takes it nonetheless. The next day when she is out trying to do her first spell she meets Kit Rodriguez, another wizard. After they successfully complete a spell together, Nita's doubts are gone: she is a wizard.
3621403	/m/09qhbv	The Night Manager	John le Carré			 The novel follows Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier turned night auditor for a luxurious hotel. One night, Pine encounters Sophie, a French-Arab woman who has ties to Richard Onslow Roper, an English black marketeer who has made a fortune from the sale of weapons. Sophie provides Pine with incriminating documents, which Pine forwards to a friend in British intelligence. Despite Pine's best efforts to help her, Sophie's betrayal is discovered and she is subsequently murdered. Six months later, Pine is approached by intelligence operatives Leonard Burr and Rex Goodhew, who are planning a carefully detailed sting operation against Roper. Eager to avenge Sophie, Pine agrees to go undercover to infiltrate Roper's vast criminal empire, but the operation is jeopardized by an inter-agency turf war within the intelligence community. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Pine has won the confidence of Roper, through an adroit tactic in which Pine saves his child. Pine is assigned a position within the Roper organization, to act as the head of a special-purpose entity - a device sometimes employed by modern corporations. As the head of the company, Pine is tasked with the assignment of executing a large transaction in which shipping containers full of "Colombian coffee" (happy children juggling on the label) are exchanged for arms. The drugs are piled high, and packed into their respective containers - and Pine signs for them. Meanwhile, operation 'Flagship' accomplishes a betrayal of Pine's identity by a group of questionable individuals in the employ of the Intelligence agencies. Seeing Pine discredited, and in full knowledge of the danger to his life, Burr executes a daring tactic to save him, at a cost of scale to the sting operation. The novel ends with Pine alive, having survived being badly tortured. He is leaving Roper's ship "The Iron Pasha" in a launch, and he voices to himself the feeling that he has somehow lost and Roper won. He wonders if Roper, and men and corporations like him, will not leave this earth until they have scarred it so badly that the destruction they have wrought by their actions burns the entire world -- and them along with it. fr:Le Directeur de nuit
3621668	/m/09qhrd	A Woman of the Iron People	Eleanor Arnason	1991-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Woman of the Iron People is divided into two parts. The first primarily deals with Lixia's growing understanding and involvement with life on the planet. Soon after arriving on the planet she meets Nia and starts to pick up the language of gifts, which is a sort of trade language, from her. They leave their current location and journey west, meeting Derek and the Voice of the Waterfall along the way. The second part of the novel deals primarily with the question of intervention. The various factions of humans, most of whom are still in space, disagree as to how much the humans should intervene on the planet. Questions are raised about the policy of intervention.
3623038	/m/09qldk	Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Freshly graduated and commissioned Planeteer (the space-going equivalent of a Marine) Lt. Richard Ingalls Peter ("Rip") Foster, already contending with inter-service rivalry with the Space Force (equivalent to Navy) crewmen with whom he serves, is tasked with retrieving an asteroid made of pure thorium from the asteroid belt and bringing it to Earth for use as fissionable material. In this he is opposed by agents of the "Consolidation of Planetary Governments", who also seek control and use of the asteroid.
3623120	/m/09qlkt	All Men are Mortal	Simone de Beauvoir	1946	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Regina is a young theatrical actress. Her career seems to be promising and her reputation becomes wider with every tour and performance. But she is not content. The sparks of attention in the eyes of her audience seem fleeting and the praises seem typical rather than unique. She can not accept herself sharing their attention and regards with her co-star Florence. Following a performance in Rouen, Regina chooses to stand aside from her theatrical troupe and starts an internal monologue concerning her uniqueness, or lack thereof, among other women. She keeps comparing herself to Florence and focusing on the current love life of her fellow actress. She bitterly acknowledges that Florence is probably not thinking about her and neither are the other people around her. Then she notices another man who seems to pay little attention to her, Raymond Fosca. Fosca is described as a reasonably attractive with a crooked nose, tall and athletic, seemingly young but with a passionless face and empty eyes that remind Regina of her father in his deathbed. Soon enough Regina finds that Fosca resides in the same hotel as her theatrical troupe. He has piqued the curiosity of the staff and several visitors for his peculiar habits. He had been staying in the hotel for a month but hardly spoke to anybody and appeared deaf to any attempts to speak to him. He spent his days in the garden, sitting in silence even when raining. He never changed clothes and no one had seen him eat anything. A curious Regina enters his room in his absence and finds release papers from an asylum, claiming the man suffered from amnesia and was incarcerated for an unknown amount of time. He was considered harmless and released a month before. She decides to use the information to approach Raymond Fosca. However Fosca is not in the mood for conversations. Regina asks him for a way to escape her boredom. He only asks how old the actress is. He takes her report of being twenty-eight-years-old and estimates she has about fifty more years to endure. Then she would be free of boredom. Despite his warnings to stay away from him, Regina makes a habit of visiting him. Fosca comments that due to her time has started flowing for him again. Already the man leaves the hotel for the first time in a month to satisfy a new craving for cigarettes. He starts confiding in her and explains that he has no amnesia. Far from it, he remembers everything from his life. Even his thirty years in the asylum. Regina visits the man daily but then tires of him. The theatre company leaves Rouen and she leaves Fosca without a word. She returns to Paris and starts negotiations for a career in the Cinema of France. But only three days later, Fosca has followed her home. She is the only person to currently hold his interest and makes clear his intention to keep following her. He wants to watch and listen to her before she dies. Regina mocks Fosca at first for stalking her, and then worries about his surprising resolve at following her, despite her attempts to get rid of him. Their discussions soon turn to her passion for life and her mortality, while Fosca first hints at his own immortality. She finds it fascinating that a man does not fear death even if the man seems to suffer from his own brand of insanity. Regina contemplates his state of mind and even starts discussing it with the other persons in her life. Fosca soon enough proves his immortality by cutting his own throat with a razor in her presence. At first a stream of blood flows from his throat and the man seems to be dying. But moments later the flow stops, the wound starts closing without treatment and Fosca heals at an incredible rate. He seeks a new start for himself, to feel alive again by her side. Regina is touched, but has another motive to return his affection. In ten thousand years, she thinks, Fosca could still be alive remembering her, long after her own death. Another suitor comments that she would be one memory among many, one butterfly in a collection. But Regina pursues her new immortal lover and even enjoys tutoring him at living again. However she finds herself unable to understand him and his indifferent behavior to many aspects of modern life. Seeking to understand him, Regina demands to listen to his own life story which presumably shaped his perceptions. Fosca has to agree and his narration begins. Fosca was born in a palace of the fictional Carmona, Italy on 17 May 1279. His mother died shortly after his birth. He was raised by his father and trained in equestrianism and archery. A monk was hired to indoctrinate the boy to the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church but Fosca proudly proclaims never caring for anything beyond this Earth and never fearing God or man. He idolized his handsome and strong father and resented that Carmona was instead governed by Francois Rienchi. He was bow-legged and fearful for his own life. The people hated Rienchi and the Duke of Carmona was said to not make a step without his chainmail armor and at least ten guards. Fosca describes him being greedy and having his private chest of gold, kept full by unpopular methods. One by one the nobles of Carmona were accused of treason and executed by hanging or decapitation. Their fortunes were confiscated and provided more gold for Rienchi, as did the heavy taxation of the lower classes. Many lived in hovels and people begging for money and food were commonplace. Fosca considered Francois Rienchi responsible for the misery of Carmona. But Francois eventually died, succeeded by his own brother Bertrand Rienchi. Rumor had it that Bertrand had poisoned his brother but Carmona celebrated the change of Dukes. But the chest of gold was always empty and Bertrand had to fill it by following in the footsteps of his brother. He had promised no more public executions but now the nobles and wealthy traders of Carmona withered away in prison. Their fortunes were still confiscated and heavier taxes were added to the old ones. The people now hated Bertrand Rienchi. The main tension exists between the meaningless of daily life, rituals, style from the perspective of an immortal man contrasted by the seeming trivial concerns of a mortal woman: the importance and the value they put on things are at opposite ends of the spectrum. From his perspective everything is essentially the same. From her perspective even the most trivial is unique and carries significance.
3623871	/m/09qmms	The Invention of Love	Tom Stoppard			 The play begins with A. E. Housman, dead at age 77, standing on the bank of the river Styx. Dreaming that he is boarding his boat for the afterlife – captained by a petulant Charon – Housman begins to remember moments from his life, starting with his matriculation to Oxford University, where he studied Classics. The play unfolds as a collection of short scenes that trace, primarily, Housman's relationship with Moses Jackson, the man for whom Housman harboured a lifelong, unrequited love. The scenes also explore the late-Victorian artistic ideals as well as Housman's intellectual growth into a preeminent Latin textual scholar. Throughout the play, the older Housman comments on and occasionally talks to the characters on stage, including his younger self.
3625764	/m/09qs5h	The Devil and Miss Prym	Paulo Coelho		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 For almost fifteen years, old Berta had spent everyday sitting outside, watching over the little village Viscos, talking with her deceased husband. She is waiting for the devil to come, as her husband predicted. One day a stranger appears with the intention of staying one week in the village. In the woods he buries 11 bars of gold. On the way back he meets Chantal Prym, a young and beautiful barmaid, who is bored of the idyllic scenery and slow pace of life. Regularly she seduces tourists in the hope that one of them will prove to be her escape route. The stranger shows her the buried treasure and promises that it will belong to the villagers if they agree to kill someone. There is a ferocious battle within the young woman; a battle between her angel and her devil. She sees in the gold the ticket to finally escape. Still, something holds her back. After some days, she decides to tell what the stranger has proposed, trusting that they will refuse. The people’s reaction, however, plants the seed of doubt inside of Chantal. Now she fears for her own life. As an act of desperation, she plans to abandon Viscos with one of the stranger’s bars. Destiny sends a rogue wolf, which threatens Chantal’s life. The stranger arrives, and both escape. Meanwhile the villagers assemble to choose their victim. The scapegoat they choose is Berta, since she is already old and serves no purpose in the village. Before the villagers shoot a sedated Berta, Chantal convinces them that under no circumstances murder is justified; our conduct is a matter of control and choice.
3626738	/m/09qvd1	Off On A Comet	Jules Verne	1877	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story starts with a comet that touches the Earth in its flight and collects a few small chunks of it. Some forty people of various nations and ages are condemned to a two-year-long journey on the comet. They form a mini-society and cope with the hostile environment of the comet (mostly the cold). The size of the 'comet' is about 2300 kilometers in diameter - far larger than any comet or asteroid that actually exists.
3626817	/m/09qvlr	Uneasy Money	P. G. Wodehouse		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 William FitzWilliam Delamere Chalmers, Lord Dawlish, is hard-up for money. When he is unexpectedly bequeathed a million pounds by an American he once helped at golf, and furthermore learns that the millionaire left his niece and nephew only twenty pounds, he is uneasy. He endeavours to approach them (in then-rural Long Island) and see if he can fix up something, like giving them half the inheritance. He discovers that it can be difficult to give money away... Also features engagements being broken off and renewed anew, love, bee-keeping, and a monkey.
3636427	/m/09rf88	I Can Blink				 Uniquely, the written "plot" starts on the cover, with the phrase "I can blink like an owl." The book continues, encouraging children to sniff like a dog, snap like a turtle, chew like a cow, shake their head like a horse, puff their cheeks like a squirrel, stick out their tongue like a snake, smile like a monkey, scrunch their face like a walrus, and wiggle their nose like a rabbit. The last page is an image of a flower, which has no associated action or text.
3639603	/m/04_1htr	The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood	Howard Pyle	1883	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot follows Robin Hood as he becomes an outlaw after a conflict with foresters and through his many adventures and run-ins with the law. Each chapter tells a different tale of Robin as he recruits Merry Men, resists the authorities, and aids his fellow man. The popular stories of Little John defeating Robin in a fight with staffs, of Robin's besting at the hands of Friar Tuck, and of his collusion with Alan-a-Dale all appear. In the end, Robin and his men are pardoned by King Richard the Lionheart and his band are incorporated into the king's retinue, much to the dismay of the Sheriff of Nottingham.
3639800	/m/09rm6t	Stark	Ben Elton	1989-01-01	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Colin "CD" Dobson, lives a humdrum life at a critical point in history. The environment is being destroyed by a series of 'avalanches' - sudden upsets in the Earth's ecosystem, causing widespread destruction. The Stark conspiracy is a cabal of the world's richest and most influential men, who have long been aware that the planet's ecosystem is approaching total collapse. For decades they have been launching unmanned spacecraft loaded with supplies into orbit around the Earth and the Moon. Seeking to save their own lives and leave everyone else to suffer from 'total toxic overload', they secretly build a fleet of spacecraft with the intention colonizing the Moon. Using crude intimidation, they purchase land from Aboriginals in Western Australia to use as a launch site. They sell their stocks and commodities to raise cash, dumping the assets at the same time and in high volumes to engineer a worldwide stockmarket crash and lower the price of the resources they need. They buy the Moon from the United States government, along with the hardware to reach it. Six vessels are designed to travel to the Moon, three of which will carry humans, with room for 250 humans on each. The vessels are named 'Star Arks', referencing the Biblical story of Noah's Ark. The Star Arks contain human and animal embryos in suspended animation, as well as resources needed for life support. The Star Arks are prepared under the cover story that the consortium is building a desert resort. CD and his friends form a group called 'EcoAction'. Each of them have their own reason for fighting the consortium, with the collective goal of trying to protect the environment. They take action against the consortium's activities, and in the process uncover the conspiracy. They infiltrate the launch site and wreak havoc. CD and one of the conspirators, Sly Moorcock, compete for the affections of Rachel, who eventually joins the conspiracy as Sly's intended partner. EcoAction try to warn the rest of the world about the plan, but they are not taken seriously. The cabal kill many of those who have investigated or uncovered the conspiracy. Rachel turns on Sly at the last minute so she can sabotage the launch, but he overpowers and tries to abduct her. She escapes and rejoins the surviving members of EcoAction. The Stark Conspiracy blast off, but find that their existence is frustrating and lonely. Sly Moorcock eventually commits suicide. The narrative ends with an admonishment for the world's consumers over their inaction on environmental issues in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
3640434	/m/09rnps	Spherical Harmonic	Catherine Asaro	2001-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Spherical Harmonic is a first person narrative told from the viewpoint of Dyhianna Selei. Although an elected Assembly governs the Imperialate, in ages past the Ruby Pharaoh ruled as absolute sovereign. Selei is the descendant of the ancient pharaohs, and is considered the titular ruler of modern Skolia. Spherical Harmonic takes place following the Radiance War, a conflict fought between the Imperialate and the Eubian Concord, an empire ruled by a rigid caste of narcissists called Aristos. The Eubian economy is based on slave trade, which the Aristos seek to expand to the Imperialate. Just prior to the opening scene of Spherical Harmonic, Dyhianna Selei escapes a Eubian military force by stepping into a Lock, a singularity that defines the boundary between two universes. In mathematical terms, she has entered an alternate dimension defined by the functions known as spherical harmonics. As the book opens, she is "coalescing" on a moon called Opalite. She reforms in partial waves that transfer her from one universe to the other. Some prose in the book is written in the shape of the sinusoidal functions found in the spherical harmonics. As Selei fades in and out of existence, in danger of disappearing, she slowly recovers her memories about her identity and history. She manages to activate an emergency protocol secretly established on the moon for her protection. As a result she is found by Jon Casestar, an admiral in the Skolian Fleet, and Commander Vaz Majda, an elite fighter pilot who is also her sister-in-law. Once aboard an ISC battle cruiser, Selei strives to reunite the Ruby Dynasty and find out what has happened to her people. The book follows her attempts to resurrect the Skolian military and government. Selei also struggles to discover what has happened to her son Taquinil and her husband Eldrinson. Her plan to go to Earth and free members of the Ruby Dynasty being held captive there, including Roca, her sister and heir, meets little enthusiasm among her top officers, as it can be seen as an act of war. Unable to trust anyone, Selei ends up seeking to overthrow the elected government of her own empire so she can rebuild it from the ashes of the war.
3641419	/m/09rqdj	God's Bits of Wood	Ousmane Sembène	1960		 The action takes place in several locations—primarily in Bamako, Thiès, and Dakar. The map at the beginning shows the locations and suggests that the story is about a whole country and all of its people. There is a large cast of characters associated with each place. Some are featured players—Fa Keita, Tiemoko, Maimouna, Ramatoulaye, Penda, Deune, N'Deye, Dejean, and Bakayoko. Others part of the populace. The fundamental conflict is captured in two people, Dejean (the French manager and colonialist) and Bakayoko (the soul and spirit of the strike). In another sense, however, the main characters of the novel are the people as a collective, the places they inhabit, and the railroad. The evolution of the strike causes an evolution in the self-perceptions of the Africans themselves, one that is most noticeable in the women of Bamako, Thiès, and Dakar. These women go from seemingly standing behind the men in their lives, to walking alongside them and eventually marching ahead of them. When the men are able to work the jobs that the train factory provides them, the women are responsible for running the markets, preparing the food, and rearing the children. But the onset of the strike gives the role of bread-winner—or perhaps more precisely bread scavenger—to the women. Women go from supporting the strike to participating in the strike. Eventually it is the women that march on foot, over four days from Thiès to Dakar. Many of the men originally oppose this women's march, but it is precisely this show of determination from those (the wives marching) that the French had dismissed as "concubines" that makes clear the strikers' relentlessness. The women's march causes the French to understand the nature of the willpower that they are facing, and shortly after the French agree to the demands of the strikers. The book also highlights the oppression faced by women in the precolonial era. They were deprived of their ability to speak on matters including the society as a whole. Sembene, however, tries to raise women to a higher spectrum by considering them as equally important.
3641531	/m/09rql2	Green Henry	Gottfried Keller		{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 Green Henry details the life of Heinrich Lee from childhood through his first romantic encounters, his fledgling attempts at becoming a painter in Munich, and his eventual installation as a chancery clerk. The story gets its name from the color that Heinrich affected in dress. Heinrich is a Swiss burgher's son, brought up too tenderly by a widowed mother. After youthful pranks and experiences, and a not altogether justified dismissal from school, he idles away some time in his mother's village in activities of which the description is far better worthwhile than was the reality. He determines to be a painter, and goes to Munich's artistic Bohemia. From there, he finds his way to a count's mansion, and then he returns home to his dying mother and an all-too-tardy and brief repentance. The much revised second version has Heinrich abandoning art to enter the civil service. This experience affords occasion for extended political reflections. The tone of the reminiscences makes it clear that Keller would have the reader understand that Heinrich has lived through and risen out of his instability and irresolution and sees life steadily and cheerfully at last.
3644787	/m/09rxhv	Labyrinth	Kate Mosse	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 When Dr Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons at an archaeological site in southern France, she unearths a link with a horrific and brutal past. But it's not just the sight of the shattered bones that makes her uneasy; there's an overwhelming sense of evil in the tomb that Alice finds hard to shake off, even in the bright French sunshine. Puzzled by the words carved inside the chamber, Alice has an uneasy feeling that she has disturbed something which was meant to remain hidden... Eight hundred years ago, on the night before a brutal civil war ripped apart Languedoc, three books were entrusted to Alais, a young herbalist and healer. Although she cannot understand the symbols and diagrams the books contain, Alais knows her destiny lies in protecting their secret, at all costs. Skilfully blending the lives of two women divided by centuries but united by a common destiny, 'Labyrinth' is a powerful story steeped in the atmosphere and history of southern France.
3645162	/m/09rybt	The Deviant Strain	Justin Richards		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The TARDIS lands the Doctor, Rose and Jack at an abandoned Soviet naval base. However, something is still lurking &mdash; something which is treating all humans, including Rose and Jack, as prey. But as the Doctor investigates further, he uncovers an experiment years in the making.
3645165	/m/09rych	Only Human	Gareth Roberts		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The presence of a Neanderthal on present-day Earth alerts the Doctor, Rose and Jack to the fact that someone is meddling with time. In order to learn the truth, they must travel back 28,000 years, where they meet humans of the past and future — and something far, far worse.
3649711	/m/09s7kg	Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez	Richard Rodriguez		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The autobiography Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez is an overall compelling self told story of a scholarship boy. Richard tells readers about his struggle with how separate his home and school life are. Both of which are completely different in many ways. He tells of his feeling of being more distant from his home life each time that he pushed forward in his schooling. Richard goes on to talk about how his school and home had separate views on religion, ethnicity and skin color, and his now current job. Richard mentions frequently the fact that he is a Mexican-American. Telling readers on how being one affected many parts of his life. Later in college and even later in life it affected him because his professors and employers labeled him as a minority student or as part of a minority. He talks about how being labeled a minority gave him many more opportunities but how because of this he felt a sort of guilt. Students who had worked just as hard as him but not being minorities weren't offered as many jobs as he was. The autobiography not only tells about his own life as a middle-class scholarship student but also his views on what others have written about scholarship students. The book gives provocative arguments and profound thought. It tells of his change from a boy trying to become a man and his reflections on the past.
3653929	/m/09sgnn	The Honours Board	Pamela Hansford Johnson			 Cyril Annick and his wife Grace have been running Downs Park for many years. Both are universally respected and loved by staff and pupils alike. Unforeseen problems for the school arise when the idiosyncrasies and compulsions of individual members of the staff threaten to upset life at the school. There is Rupert Massinger, the second master, whose womanizing makes victims of both the school secretary and the headmaster's grown-up daughter. Also, with money he has inherited Massinger is planning to take over the school and gently force the Annicks into early retirement. To everyone's surprise, as a strategic move, Massinger and his wife, who also teaches at the school, decide to resign, to reculer pour mieux sauter. Elspeth Murray, the middle-aged French mistress, has been feeling extremely lonely since her husband's death and has only taken up teaching recently to find some sort of distraction. At first, her irrational sexual attraction to Betty Cope, a pretty young lesbian who assists Grace Annick in her capacity as Matron, causes some eye-rolling. Later, when a series of petty thefts occurs everyone suspects a pupil to be stealing his schoolmates' things. However, Murray turns out to be a kleptomaniac, and when she is caught in the act she thinks she cannot cope any longer and commits suicide in the school swimming pool. Leo Canning, the young science master whose humble social background and troubled childhood make it difficult for him to adapt to the thoroughly bourgeois atmosphere of the school, falls in love with Penelope Saxton, the headmaster's young widowed daughter, and in the end they get married. However, it takes Penelope a long time until she makes up her mind to spend the rest of her life with Canning. In the meantime, she is courted by the father of the youngest staff member, a baronet called Sir James Pettifer whose aristocratic ways she finds quite alluring. More trouble appears with the arrival of Norman and Delia Poole, who have come to replace Massinger and his wife. It does not take the staff long to discover that Delia is a hopeless alcoholic whose pathetic attempts at rationalizing her addiction are embarrassing to everyone who happens to witness them. She has to give up her art classes quite soon again and over the following months mainly stays at their home on the school grounds. Finally, although he is a popular teacher, Norman Poole hands in his notice to be able to care for his wife full time. Cyril Annick has no intention to retire, let alone hand over to Massinger. However, when his wife suffers a mild stroke he sees it as the last straw and willy-nilly sells out to him. The Annicks move to a flat in nearby Eastbourne, where shortly afterwards Grace has another stroke and dies. Not yet 60, Cyril Annick moves to London to be near his daughter and son-in-law.
3657868	/m/09sqr0	A Salty Piece of Land	Jimmy Buffett	2004-11-30	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tully Mars, a 40-something guide at the Lost Boys Fishing Lodge resort, takes trips around the Caribbean.
3659282	/m/09svdb	Chimera	John Barth			 ;Dunyazadiad The Dunyazadiad is a retelling of the framing story of Scheherazade, the famed storyteller of the One Thousand and One Nights. The story is told from the point-of-view of Scheherazade's younger sister Dunyazad. Its characterization as metafiction can be understood as a result of the use of several literary devices, most notably the introduction of the author as a character and his interaction with Scheherazade and Dunyazade. The author appears from the future and expresses his admiration for Scheherazade and the 1001 Nights as a work of fiction, of which Barth's Scheherazade has no knowledge. Realizing that he has appeared to Scheherazade on the eve of her first encounter with Shahryar, and seeing her without a solution to her predicament, the author himself suggests the stratagem of using a chain of interrupted stories to forestall her execution, and offers to tell her a new story every day with which to regale the king the following evening. Taking the author for a genie, Scheherazade agrees. ;Perseid The second novella entitled Perseid follows the middle aged Greek hero Perseus in his struggle to obtain immortality. Told from Perseus' point of view, the first part of the story revolves around the retelling of Perseus' life history while the following part details his rise to, and eventual immortalization as a constellation of stars. ;Bellerophoniad The final novella, Bellerophoniad, chronicles the story of Bellerophon, yet another ancient Greek hero. While somewhat rooted in the myth as told by the Greek and Roman poets, Barth's version of the story is not a direct retelling, but instead a re-imagining. Much like the Perseid, the Bellerophoniad surrounds a middle aged mythic hero who struggles with coming to terms with his past accomplishments and a desire to secure his future glory. It is, for the most part, told from the point of view of Bellerophon, with various interjections by unknown narrators, one of which is presumed to be the author Barth. Of the three novellas, it is by far the longest and&mdash;more so than in Dunyazadiad and Perseid&mdash;makes numerous references to the other novellas, further connecting common themes and events between the three.
3660409	/m/09sxsb	The Octopus: A Story of California	Frank Norris	1901	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Octopus depicts the conflict between wheat farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and the Pacific and Southwestern railroad (P&SW). The railroad attempts to take possession of the land the farmers have been improving for many years, forcing them to defend themselves. The wheat farmers are represented by Magnus Derrick, the reluctant leader of the ad hoc farmer's League designed to fight for retention of their land and low cost freight rates. S. Behrman serves as the local representative of P. & S. W. In his attempt at writing his great epic poem, Presley witnesses the disintegration of Annixter, Derrick, Hooven, and their families.
3661366	/m/09szdk	Building Harlequin's Moon	Brenda Cooper	2005-06-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gabriel is teaching a group of moon-born teenagers about agriculture. Rachel is one of these; she passes her exams and is selected by Gabriel to become a leader of the moon-born. Andrew is another; he fails his exams because he plays a practical joke on Rachel. Gabriel takes Rachel to the John Glenn. As the first moon-born to visit the ship, she arouses hostility from some of the leaders there. She learns that there are three classes amongst the space travelers: five are High Council, who rule until Ymir is reached; some dozens are Council, including Gabriel, and have extended privileges; and the remaining "Earth-born" are colonists, many of them not having been unfrozen since leaving Earth and with few rights. She also learns to use the vast repository of knowledge in the ship's library, and makes contact with the AI "Astronaut" who is kept severely restricted because the High Council doesn't trust high technology. Rachel comes to realise that when the moon-born have helped restock the ship with antimatter the John Glenn will continue on to Ymir without them, leaving them on a moon that can only sustain life for a century or two. Gabriel decides there is no immediate need for him and Rachel to return to Selene, and that as a leader Rachel would be most useful with the longer lifespan that is conferred by the suspended animation process, and has himself and Rachel frozen for a year. Problems with radiation flares intervene, and without Gabriel to stand up for her, they are left frozen for twenty years. Rachel returns to Selene to find her best friend killed in an accident, her boyfriend married and with children almost her own age, and her remaining friends more than twice as old as she is. She also realizes that the moon-born are being treated as slaves, with Earth-born as overseers. The moon-born must develop the technological infrastructure to refine antimatter, but there are major risks involved in the refining which could destroy the population of Selene. Rachel becomes a teacher of the next generation of moon-born. She teaches them what she is supposed to, but she also includes concepts from Earth history that she learns from the library and Astronaut - concepts such as democracy and passive resistance. She has a few friends among Council, and Astronaut is able to conceal her communications with them from other Council and High Council. Andrew (a childhood enemy) plays a more active role in stirring up rebellion, but the moon-born have no power to change their role. The Council notices the passive resistance and their members begin carrying weapons. Some years later, one of the ship's boats crash lands on Selene and is abandoned there. It has sufficient electronics to house an AI, and Rachel's Council friends make a copy of Astronaut there, Vassal, unknown to High Council. Ten years after Rachel was unfrozen, an accident leads to a Council member shooting one of the moon-born. Andrew leads a revolt and takes a Council member hostage. The rebellion is halted by a flare which requires everyone to shelter together, and by Rachel's heroic intervention. In the wake of the rebellion, a new understanding is reached between the moon-born and the High Council. They will work more as equals, and the refinement of the antimatter will take place at a safe distance from Selene. The travellers will leave more technology behind when they leave (including the copy of Astronaut) so Selene can survive. This is at a cost of delaying their departure significantly. Gabriel decides he will remain on Selene when John Glenn departs. A final, short, section of the novel sums up the next two hundred years, with the antimatter refined, the flare problem on Selene permanently dealt with, and John Glenn preparing for departure. Periods of suspended animation keep Rachel and Gabriel young. There is room for a sequel, dealing with either or both of the futures of John Glenn and Ymir, and of Selene.
3666353	/m/09t84p	Power of Three	Diana Wynne Jones	1976	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins when two Lyman siblings, Orban and Adara, accidentally revert a shapeshifted bird on an English moor back into a small Dorig. The Dorig is holding an exquisitely molded collar, which in Lyman and Dorig culture are used to store protective magic. When Orban tries to take the collar, the Dorig says he is the son of the Dorig king, and will curse the collar before giving it up. Orban kills the Dorig and takes the collar anyway, and as the Dorig dies he binds a curse to the collar by the three Powers - the Old Power, the Middle Power and the New Power. Orban grows up to be chief of the Otmound mound. Adara marries Gest, chief of the Garholt mound, and has three children: Ayna, Gair, and Ceri. At a young age, Ayna and Ceri discover they have powerful magical talents called "Gifts" - Ayna has precognition, and Ceri can find anything when asked. Gair, the middle child, becomes increasingly gloomy when he fails to develop a Gift. When Gair is twelve, the Dorig - at war with the Lyman ever since Orban killed the prince - flood the Otmound mound. The Otmounders move into the Garholt mound, bringing with them bad luck which gets worse and worse. Ayna, Ceri, and Gair are exploring the moors one day when they come across two young Giants, whom the siblings follow back to their house. When they are discovered, a cultural exchange takes place. The Giants inform them that there are plans to flood the moor to provide drinking water for England. The siblings, the Giants, and two Dorigs must work together to stop the Moor from being destroyed. The bad luck is found to be emanating from the collar Orban had stolen from the Dorig prince, still strongly cursed. The three races can deactivate it together, or not at all. It turns out that Gair is not so ordinary as he had expected himself to be. His fame grew later throughout the Moor and was known for his magnificent collar, of the finest Dorig work. He was also known to have the rarest Gift of all, and that is the Gift of Sight Unasked.
3667266	/m/09tb99	The Fall of Kelvin Walker: A Fable of the Sixties	Alasdair Gray		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Kelvin, freed from his strict Calvinist upbringing through discovering Nietzsche and 'the divine Ingersoll' in the library of his home town of Glaik, travels to swinging-sixties London to succeed as a television interviewer and newspaper columnist through nothing more than his aptitude for spin and a diabolical will to power, only to return, chastened, to Scotland and to God. Drawing on a mixture of Scottish archetypes and British stereotypes and expressing all the author's cynicism towards religion, the media and the imperial British centre, this brief fable was reportedly inspired by Gray's own visit to London as a struggling artist to record a documentary called Under The Helmet (in which he tried to increase his sales by suggesting that he was dead).
3670857	/m/09tkgj	Fugitive Pieces	Anne Michaels	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the first part of the book, Jakob Beer is a 13 year old child of a Jewish family living in Poland. His house is stormed by Nazis; he escapes the fate of his parents and his sister, Bella, by hiding behind the wallpaper in a cabinet. He hides in the forest, burying himself up to the neck in soil. After some time, he runs into an archaeologist, Athos, working on Biskupin. Athos secretly takes him to Zakynthos in Greece. Athos is also a geologist, and is fascinated with ancient wood and stones. Jakob learns Greek and English, but finds that learning new languages erases his memory of the past. After the war, Athos and Jakob move to Toronto, where after several years Jakob meets Alexandra in a music library. Alex is a fast-paced, outspokenly philosophical master of wordplay. Jakob and Alex fall in love and marry, but the relationship fails because Alex expects Jakob to change too fast and abandon his past. Jakob dwells constantly on his memories of Bella, especially her piano-playing, and they end up divorcing. Jakob meets and marries Michaela, a much younger woman but one who seems to understand him, and with Michaela's help he is able to let go of Bella. Together they move to Greece into the former home of several generations of the Roussos family. The second part of the book is told from the perspective of Ben, a Canadian professor of Jewish descent who was born in Canada to survivors of the Holocaust. In 1954 the family home in Weston, Ontario is destroyed by Hurricane Hazel. Ben becomes an expert on the history of weather, and marries a girl named Naomi. He is a big admirer of Jakob's poetry and respects the way he deals with the Holocaust, when Ben himself has trouble coping with the horrors his parents must have endured. At the end of the novel, Ben is sent to retrieve Jakob's journals from his home in Greece, where Ben spends hours swimming in Jakob's past.
3670937	/m/09tkmd	Pubis angelical	Manuel Puig	1979	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrative alternates between separate narratives. One is reality, an Argentine woman confined to a Mexican sanitarium in the 1970s. The others are a representation of her unconscious. In this second narrative, the woman is in Central Europe in the years leading up to World War II. She is here involved in various intrigues, and carries on an extramarital romance. The third narrative, another representation of the protagonist's unconscious, is a science fiction tale involving a cyborg woman named W218 in a post-apocalyptic Polar Age, who serves the government by performing sexual therapy on aging men, and is therefore in a sense a government sponsored prostitute.
3672431	/m/09tmx0	Thirsty	Matthew Tobin Anderson	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story is set in the town of, and in the areas surrounding, Bradley, Massachusetts. A Vampire Lord, Tch'muchgar, is magically imprisoned in isolation at the bottom of the town reservoir. The townsfolk performs rituals at the annual The Sad Festival] of Vampires to maintain the bonds holding Tch'muchgar prisoner. Early in the book the young hero, Chris, witnesses a vampiress being lynched]. Soon after, he starts to feel a strange sensation — a growing thirst for blood. Chris later notices that his friend Tom is casting a reflection on the water of the reservoir but Chris himself has no reflection. He realizes that he must be suffering from vampirism. Chris is afraid to tell anyone, even his friends, because vampires are killed immediately upon being discovered. Chris is soon confronted by a mysterious person dressed in black, who introduces himself as Chet the Celestial Being. Chet says that he serves the Forces of Light, and that he can cure Chris of his vampirism. But first Chet must place a holy object, The Arm of Moriator, with Tch'muchgar. Once activated, the Arm cannot be moved or deactivated by evil beings. Chet explains that if Tch'muchgar tries to escape from his prison, the Arm will cause him to become trapped between worlds, just like "opening an elevator between floors". Chet leaves for two weeks to retrieve the Arm. Meanwhile, Chris's vampirism grows at a steady rate. He starts sleeping during the day and staying awake at night. He drinks warm water to simulate drinking blood, and even considers his family as potential "beverages". Chris also begins receiving letters through mail from vampires living underground in the community. One of these letters is from a female vampire named Lolli, who appears to be Chris's age and behaves like a popular adolescent girl. Chris starts to notice he is being stalked by a creepy humanoid figure he describes as "The Thing with the One-Piece Hair", or simply The Thing. The Thing corners Chris in the woods, but Chet appears and "kills" The Thing. He warns Chris that The Thing is not really dead and will rematerialize within a few minutes. So Chet places a mark on Chris' wrist, which he said will protect him from the Thing. Chet gives Chris the Arm and bring him to a congregation of vampires in an abandoned church. Chris is accepted as a vampire by the others and learns that they plan to summon Tch'muchgar. He takes this opportunity to enter the realm of Tch'muchgar and drops the Arm. Chris returns to his "normal" life and waits for Chet to return with further instruction. His vampiric symptoms continue to grow. Crazed with thirst, Chris almost bites his friend's dog. He resorts to going hunting for raccoons to drink from. After he cuts himself shaving for the first time, Chris begins drinking his own blood. He eventually resorts to biting himself in the arm. One evening, his mother tells him a story about how Chris nearly died as a newborn, but that a strange nurse took him away for a few minutes. When she brought him back, he was fine. His mother believes that the woman was an angel. Chris fears that the nurse must have been a vampire who infected him with vampirism to save his life. At the Sad Festival of Vampires, Chris is talked into going to a party with Lolli and another young vampire called Bat. They tell him that to become initiated into the vampire community he must make his first kill that night and smear his blood on his cheeks. Chris shies away from the challenge, saying that he couldn't find anyone yet, but Lolli quickly calls his bluff. Chris escapes from the party and finds his crush, Rebecca Schwartz, in the area. He tells her that he needs to talk, but his teeth start to grow in bloodlust. Chris flees back to the vampire party, only to find that everyone save one high student has left. The student tells Chris that Lolli killed a student. Afterwards, she was hit by a car and broke her back. The authorities arrived and took her to be killed. Chris hears Bat coming, and runs outside. He meets Chet, who confirms the story about Lolli's death. Bat hears this and attacks Chet, but Chet makes Bat vanish with a wave of his hand, presumably killing him. At the climax of the story, Tch'muchgar attempts to leave his prison but is shoved out of the dimension and into nonexistence by the Arm of Moriator. Chet reveals that he was actually working for Tch'muchgar, who had realized that he would never escape his prison and was looking for a way to end his miserable life. He also taunts that he was lying about being able to help Chris, because vampirism is incurable. Chet gleefully points out to Chris that he is now doomed. If he kills mortals for blood, they will eventually hunt him down and execute him. If he refuses to drink blood, he will die. If he seeks help from the Forces of Light, they will torment him in place of the vampire lord. If he tries to get help from other vampires, they will kill him themselves for destroying their god. At the end of the story, in Chris's home, his mother is suspicious, and wants him to be tested for vampirism. His brother treats this with derision, but Chris wonders how his mother would react. He has a flashback to when he was young, that a mother bird would not take in her own child if it had been touched by a human; it would rather bash its skull in. The flashback ends with some older boys throwing stones at a hatchling, yelling "This is mercy!" with other children joining in. As the book ends, Chris's fate is uncertain, leaving the main plot of the book unresolved though Chris is certainly doomed either way. In the end, Chris realizes that he needs to feed, but he cannot feed. The story ends with the words, in this order: Oh God I am So Thirsty
3673869	/m/04czh1r	Pirates of Venus	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1934	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Carson Napier When the author receives a letter saying a woman in white will come to him on the night of the thirteenth, he dismisses it as nonsense. Jason Gridley calls, and the author visits him to discuss the latest news about von Horst, Tarzan, David Innes, Captain Zuppner and Abner Perry in Pellucidar. Having forgetten the letter, however, the woman does appear on the thirteenth, walking through a closed door. She tells him that "he" awaits a reply. Aided by his secretary Ralph Rothmund, the letter is found again and a reply to the sender, Carson Napier, is sent. A few days later Carson shows up at Tarzana, telling the story of his life including how he grew up in India, learning telepathy from the Hindu mystic Chand Kabi, how he lived with his mother's grandfather John Carson, and how he lost his mother. Revealing an intent to fly a rocket to Mars, he fades from view only to enter through the door again. He has used telepathy for the meeting to ascertain they can uphold telepathic communication so that the author may become the medium through which he tells the story of his adventures. Before returning to his rocket on Guadalupe Island Napier also leaves the author in charge of his personal fortune. Off for Mars Arriving at Guadalupe, Carson finds that everything has been made ready under the surveillance of his friend Jimmy Welsh. Jimmy begs for Carson to take him along, but Carson refuses. After a final inspection (during which the rocket ship and plans for the journey are described) Carson bids his workers farewell and takes his place in the rocket. Take-off! At first, everything appears to go well, but after two hours signs indicate that the rocket is moving off course. Eventually, Carson realizes that he forgot to take the moon's gravity into account. Two days later it is clear that his new course will take him towards the Sun and certain death. On the thirtieth day he spots a crescent. Rushing toward Venus The crescent turns out to be Venus. It becomes clear the rocket is going to hit the planet. Venus is said to be unable to support life, but Carson nevertheless does not give up. As the rocket enters the atmosphere he opens its parachutes, then jumps, opening his own parachute. He discovers the air is breathable. Falling through two thick layers of clouds he is unaware of his surroundings (except for a faint luminosity from below) until the parachute gets stuck in the branches of a tree. Freeing himself from the parachute he starts descending and soon learns the trees are of enormous proportions. After climbing down a thousand feet he finds a causeway, apparently built by intelligent beings, where he encounters a hideous wild beast. He discovers a door in the bole of a tree. Hearing a voice speaking in a foreign language, he calls for help. The beast attacks, but he temporarily stops it by snaring it with a piece of rope salvaged from the parachute. Fleeing for his life Napier is rescued by three humans, armed with spears, emerging from the door. Taking him inside, the men give him food and a bed. He soon falls asleep. To the House of the King When he wakes up, Carson discovers he appears to be in a city built in the enormous tree boles. He dresses in his overall, in spite of the heat. His hosts offer him breakfast. During the course of the meal he tries to learn his first few words of the language. The men of the house are named Duran, Olthar and Kamlot. The women are Zuro and Alzo. After breakfast, the men take him to another house where a man by the name Tofar leads them to a man called Jong, who appears to have a high social status. Carson is thoroughly examined and then placed in the care of a man called Danus. During the following three weeks Carson learns the language (which is briefly described), history and customs of Amtor, as the Venusians call their planet. Danus also shows a map, pointing out different regions of Amtor: Trabol, Strabol and Karbol. His explanations make it obvious that the Amtoran view of the world is very limited. They know of nothing beyond the cloud-covered skies, and they think that the equator is the center of the world and that the north pole is its edge. The Girl in the Garden Carson is in the house of Mintep, king (jong) of Vepaja. Duran, father of Olthar and Kamlot, is of the house of Zar. Zuro is attached to Duran, as Alzo to Olthar. Marriage is unknown on Amtor, but couples are usually loyal. Several officers live to the left of Carson. To the right is a garden with a girl. One day five men creep into the garden. Carson follows, killing three. Guards butcher the others, then throw the bodies from the tree. Danus never mentions the incident. Danus tells the history of the Vepajans: There were four classes who lived happily by the millions on thousands of islands. A criminal, Thor, formed the Thorists, who revolted. Everyone became virtual slaves. Some escaped, forming these classless tree cities. Thorists search for them because they themselves have no intelligent people. Vepajans never get sick or grow old because of a serum. Half their women are sterile. Children are only allowed when someone dies by accident. Carson (now 27) is given blood tests for the longevity serum and is found to be filled with bacteria. He loves swimming, boxing, wrestling, and fencing. He exercises because he is overweight. The girl in the garden watches him. He smiles, she runs away. Carson thinks it might be his beard. Danus gives him a depilatory. Asking about the girl, Carson is told he should not even see her. Carson is a prisoner. His apartment is guarded, and he may not leave. Gathering Tarel Carson gets the longevity serum. Not many doctors are needed on Amtor. One day Carson sees the girl and leaps into her garden. When he touches her arm, he gets slapped, but he declares his love. Carson is summoned before Mintep, the jong. He was suspected as a Thorist spy, but now he is to be trained to collect tarel and hunt. Tarel is the strong, silky fiber from which their cloth and cordage are made. Carson is moved to the house of Duran where he is given primitive weapons. (There is an R-ray gun on Amtor, but the Thorists control the rare elements that produce the ray.) That evening he plays a Vepajan game, "tork," with Zuro and Alzo. On the morning hunt Kamlot and Carson climb high in their tree, go through a little door, then pass to other trees. Tarel turns out to be the web of a spider. Carson saves Kamlot from a giant spider (targo), but Kamlot dies. By Kamlot's Grave While Carson carries Kamlot home for burial, he falls into a spider web and kills the targo. He climbs down to the ground (some trees tower 6000 feet and are 1000 feet around the base). He digs a grave to give Kamlot a "Christian burial" but discovers he is still alive, just paralyzed by the spider's venom. Kamlot describes a basto (a bison with the teeth of a carnivore) and the decimal system of weights and measures. Some trees are marked with numbered nails as a mapping system, and the entire map is memorized by the Vepajans. The variety of trees is described. Kamlot kills a basto, kind of like bull-fighting, when Carson suddenly sees a startling sight overhead. On Board the Sofal Five "voo klangan" (the bird-men) capture Carson and Kamlot with wire nooses attached to ropes. They are carried through the air accompanied by klangan singing songs "vaguely reminiscent of Negro spirituals". They have very dark skin and are a mixture of bird and man, having feathers and bat-like wings. They fly for eight hours to the Venusian sea and a ship manned by Thorists. They are questioned and Carson tells them he is a doctor. We also learn that Kamlot's home city is called Kooaad. Thrown into the hold of the ship, Kamlot meets a friend, Honan, with the Amtorian greeting "Jodades" (luck-to-you). They learn that Duare (Doo-ah-ree) has been captured, but held on another ship. Kamlot and Carson are set to polishing the guns on deck. They fire T-rays that destroy everything. They are locked by a master key, which Carson wants. The guns and ship propulsion are explained—lor is the propulsive substance—and element 93 (vik-ro), element 97, element 105 (yor-san) are described. They always sail in sight of land. Honan tells Carson that Duare is "the hope of Vepaja, perhaps the hope of a world." Soldiers of Liberty Tensions ease on the ship; Napier becomes friendly with both crew and captives. Telling stories of Earth, he makes new friends. Gamfor, Kiron, and Zog, who become the nucleus for a rebellion. Meanwhile, Carson learns about the Amtorian compass and sonar. Because the map concepts were skewed, reliance upon the maps was fraught with error—large areas are marked joram (ocean), but Carson believes he knows the location of Thora. Named vookor (captain) among the growing secret rebel faction, Napier later learns from Gamfor that Anoos had reported his suspicions to the ship's captain and that his friend among the ship soldiers had given him a key to the armory. Napier suggest they strike that night, but the hold is sealed when it was usually left open. During the night Anoos is murdered. Mutiny The ship's captain conducts an investigation. Napier's clever reply (said loud enough for the Soldiers of Liberty to hear) suggests Anoos despised the Thorists and was a rabble rouser. They all answer similarly. The captain retires. Napier remarks upon Amtorian time measure. At the seventh hour the mutiny commences. The battle is fierce, Kamlot participates in the attack on the ship's upper decks. The ship's officers are slaughtered, many of the soldiers joining the mutineers. Later, Kodj objects to Napier as vookor, Zog disarms him. Napier plans his assault on the Sovang (where Duare is held) from the Sofal's conning tower. Napier addresses the ship's crew, and Kodj and the malcontents as regards the attack: there will be profit for those who participate. Duare Napier's officers report on the crew's temper through the night, most agree with embarking on piracy as regards Thorian shipping—some wish to go home. Exercising caution, Napier arms the loyal hundred and confines the remainder below. Bringing the Sofal near, the Sovang is boarded. Battle ensues. Napier orders the transfer of the Sovang's prisoners (mostly women) and the removal of the Sofal's malcontents to the other ship. Kamlot later reports the virgin Vepajan princess is on board and is grateful that Napier (upon reply) personally killed the captain who affronted her. Later Napier is summoned to the princess' cabin. He whistles (Amtorian custom instead of knocking) and is astonished to see the princess is the girl from the garden! A Ship! Carson again declares his love, much to the girl's distress and anger saying the Vepajans and her father would immediately kill him. Napier restrains his impulses, questioning her. She pardons his affront due to services rendered, reveals she is not yet nineteen, says they can never speak again, and departs into another room. Amtorian language lesson regarding "sofal" and "sovang" (killer and defender). Kamlot explains majority for Vepajan females (age 20) and penalties of death in particular to royal daughters. Carson reveals his intent to marry Duare, Kamlot responds with sword, then cannot kill his friend. Napier remarks on the differences between both worlds. Kamlot becomes a confused party regarding the possible love between Napier and Duare. Days later Vilor requests audience with Napier to offer his service as guard to the janjong—denied. "Voo notar!" (a ship!). The Sofal pursues the Thorian vessel to take her prize. An ongyan's pennant is displayed (exempt from search) and as the Sofal nears—then presents her guns—Moosko, the ongyan commands his soldiers to repel any boarders. Catastrophe Moosko sends the Yan racing away. Carson pursues in the Sofal. After much T-ray fire, and many casualties on the Yan, Carson catches and boards Moosko's ship. Carson is relieved that those under his command obey him rather than turn to personal looting. After destroying the Yan's guns, Carson allows her captain his freedom with the admonition to tell all he meets that the Sofal is to be obeyed. Moosko is kept hostage, housed in the cabin of Vilor, at Vilor's request. Chasing the Yan has led them near the coast of Noobol. A gale rises. Carson finds an angan with Vilor and Moosko and orders the birdman back to his quarters. Carson then visits Duare who hesitates, then allows him entrance. Carson tells her again that he loves her and Duare tells him she cannot listen. He kisses her by force and she draws her dagger. Carson apologizes and leaves. In the early morning, awakened by storm, Carson discovers Duare missing and fears she may have killed herself because of his assault. Then he finds Vilor and Moosko also missing. The lookout has been murdered. A Vepajan woman, Byea, informs Carson that Vilor was a Thoran spy. Storm A search reveals five klangan also missing. Kamlot, Gamfor, Kiron and Zog meet with Carson and reconstruct the scheme wherein Vilor abducted Duare and Moosko regained his freedom with the help of trusted klangan. Carson orders the Sofal to remain offshore until the gale abates, then launch a rescue party. Leaving the cabin, Carson is swept out to sea. He swims with the waves toward shore. The rough surf betokens death as does eternal swimming. But, Carson concludes, "in the midst of death there is life." Fate washes him past the rocks to a sandy beach. He climbs the inlet wall and sets out across the tableland. Later, hearing fighting, he finds Duare and some klangan beset by manlike creatures. Carson charges, scattering the creatures. One angan remains alive. Duare thanks Carson perfunctorily for saving her from the kloonobargan, a word Burroughs explains. Carson offers pardon to the angan in return for faithful service. They return to the coast. Duare confesses as they travel that the rules forbidding conversation may be relaxed in their present circumstances. Speechless at first, Carson tells her about Earth. At the coast, they build a signal fire. Men on land, led by Vilor and Moosko, come to investigate as does the Sofal. Carson orders the angan to carry Duare to the Sofal; she refuses to leave. Carson grabs her, kisses her, and hands her to the angan. She protests, telling Carson that she loves him as they fly away. Carson is taken captive with that knowledge.
3673882	/m/04f08c4	Wizard of Venus	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 "The Wizard of Venus". Carson Napier is trapped in the castle of an insane Venusian "wizard" who holds the local population in thrall through the use of hypnotic powers. Napier, who is possessed of comparable powers he has hitherto utilized solely to transmit his account of his Venusian adventures back to Earth, successfully counters the tyrant and frees his victims. "Pirate Blood". A modern-day young man named Lafitte, a descendant of the New Orleans pirate of the same name, finds himself thrown by a bizarre set of events into his ancestor's profession. The tale is a semi-serious takeoff on the hoary theory that heredity equals destiny.
3675837	/m/09tvpn	The Stars' Tennis Balls	Stephen Fry	2000-09-28	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1980, Ned (Edward) Maddstone, is a seventeen-year old schoolboy who appears to be the sort of person for whom everything goes right. He is head boy, talented at sports, and following in the footsteps of his father towards Oxford University and a career in politics. Things begin to go wrong for the main character when his schoolfriend Ashley Barson-Garland discovers that Maddstone has secretly read part of his diary and therefore knows his dark secret, namely that he is ashamed of his working class roots. The clever Barson-Garland plots to besmirch Maddstone's good fortune with an arrest for possession of marijuana with the help of Rufus Cade, who is jealous of Maddstone's good looks and popularity, and Gordon Fendeman, Portia's American cousin, who is also in love with her. Unfortunately, when Maddstone is arrested, an envelope in his pocket, entrusted to him by his dying sailing instructor, turns out to be a coded message from the Irish Republican Army. He is whisked away from the police station by a smooth Secret Services operative called Oliver Delft, who listens calmly to Maddstone's explanation of events until he reveals the address to which he was asked to deliver the envelope, which is of Delft's mother and would reveal his hidden ancestral relationship to a Fenian traitor. So, Delft callously decides that Maddstone must disappear. Maddstone is beaten up, pumped full of drugs, and taken away to a remote lunatic asylum on an island off the coast of Sweden. For many years, it is impressed on him by Dr. Mallo that his memories of his life as Ned Maddstone are false and merely the product of a diseased mind. Then, just when he is starting to believe this mind-programming, he is finally allowed to fraternise with the other inmates. He begins regularly playing chess with a man known simply as Babe, a highly educated and perfectly sane man who was also imprisoned by the British government, but has learned to cope with his situation by acting mad for the benefit of his captors. The two men become close friends and generally give each other hope. Babe agrees to educate Maddstone, helping him to master the game of chess and teaching him to speak multiple languages among other things. Eventually, Maddstone realises he is indeed the son of Sir Charles Maddstone and, with Babe's help, laterally determines who betrayed him and how, although he is still baffled as to why he was imprisoned on the island. When Ned mentions the name of Oliver Delft, however, Babe is able to recall a list of IRA sympathisers that he once briefly saw thanks to his photographic memory, leading Ned to learn the true nature of the conspiracy. After some time, Babe dies, having first devised a way in which Maddstone might escape to the mainland by hiding in his intended coffin. Once free, he sells some prescription drugs stolen from the asylum and, as directed by Babe, travels to Switzerland, to visit a bank and gains access to an account in which Babe had deposited large sums of stolen money (which has also accrued many years' worth of interest). Thus, by the year 2000, Maddstone has become fabulously wealthy (to the tune of £324 million). Assuming the identity of Simon Cotter, he swiftly becomes famous as a mysterious Internet entrepreneur, making huge profits by investing in high-risk ventures. He then returns to England and wreaks his revenge by cleverly driving Rufus Cade, Ashley Barson-Garland, Gordon Fendeman and Oliver Delft to their deaths. When his task is complete, he hopes to renew his relationship with Portia, but this is not to be. On discovering his identity, Portia is horrified by the change in Maddstone's personality and flees with her son Albert after the death of her husband, Gordon. The novel ends with Cotter/Maddstone tearing up the old love letters he once sent to Portia as he returns to what he now realises is his only real 'home', the hospital on the island that he now owns.
3676139	/m/09tw6d	Queen of the Slayers	Nancy Holder	2005-05-31	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following the Hellmouth's closure, hundreds of potential slayers have been awakened. Buffy Summers hoped that overturning the Slayer's self-sacrifice would result in her earning some relaxation following seven years of fighting. However, the victory is short-lived. Dark forces are arising to fill the gap left by the First. Willow's magical spell which sent slayer essence across the world has resulted in girls everywhere discovering a new power. The Scoobies travel to Europe. In London, Giles races to reorganize the remnants of the Watchers Council, hoping to overcome the shortcomings of its previous incarnation. Buffy, Xander, Willow, Dawn, and Dawn's new best friend, a young slayer named Belle travel to Rome to train new Slayers that are drawn to the infamous Immortal, Buffy is attracted to the Immortal, an ambiguous yet charismatic character, who she does not fully trust during the whole novel. They soon hear of an unknown "Queen of the Slayers" who is getting a number of the fresh slayers to form a mystical army. This likely evil seems determined to claim the slayer essence for herself, and viciously and cruelly murders any Slayers that don't cooperate with her and betray Buffy. Faith and Robin Wood take a group of Slayers to the Hellmouth in Cleveland, which has gone supernova with evil, to stabilize the hell there. They face many casualties, and experience strange projections of The Legion of Three, three deadly Hellgods. There are three factions of evils, two of them just want to defeat Buffy after she closed the Hellmouth, who want to kill Buffy, The so-called Queen of the Slayers who wants to destroy Buffy, along with her lover, Antonia Borgia (a sorcerer under the employ of The Immortal) and convinces newbie slayers that Buffy is just using them to gain power, and Two Vampire Sorcerers who live in the Borgia Hell Dimension, and The Legion of Three. Xander goes to Africa hoping to find more about the origins of the slayer essence. He discovers instead that the good in the world is not enough to fight the bad, and that the deciding confrontation is drawing far too near. It will be slayer against slayer, as an ultimate battle of champions approaches. Dawn goes into a coma, because she was The Key, and has a link to the Earth, which is crumbling because of the supernova Hellmouth in Cleveland, and the Hellgods who are breaking through the barrier. Willow also seems to go into a coma, but is somehow woken up by a kiss from her lover, Kennedy when she, Faith and Robin are called back to Rome, because of the non-ending battle in deserted Cleveland. Buffy, Willow, Kennedy, Belle, Vi, and Rona head to Brazil (under the orders of an angelic, Tara), to get The Death Orchid which has healing abilities, and they are attacked by The Queen of the Slayers. They are saved from poison darts by one of the rogue slayers, Haley, who realizes what she has done and gives them the antidote. They then go to Tibet, to meet with the infamous sorcerer, The Golden One, and re-meet Oz who is one of the werewolves that protect The Golden One. After the Golden One is killed, Oz and his wolf-pack decide to head to Rome, to help Buffy and her Slayers against the upcoming battle. After healing Dawn, Buffy goes on patrol along with Faith who meet a rogue Slayer who they believe is leading them into a trap, and their belief comes reality when she leads the Slayer sisters right into the hands of Ornella, the Queen of the Slayers and her demons. Buffy and Faith waste the demons easily and escape back to The Immortal's castle, where he betrays them, for power, knocks them out, and ties them up. Buffy, unconscious is visited by the good demon, Whistler. The Powers that Be, have sent him to The Slayer for her to see the battle going on in L.A. that has Angel, a resurrected Spike, and their team fighting against the hell that Wolfram & Hart has sent upon them, Buffy cries tears of horror as she believes that both the vampires who loved her will die again. She is then joined by both Angel and Spike's souls, and together they create an angelic daughter with all of their features, who gives Buffy the strength she needs to wake up, gather her friends, her team, her Slayers, and defeat The Legion of Three. Buffy wakes up the morning after the battle, to find her friends building her funeral pyre believing her to be dead again. She finds her friends safe and sound, though Faith was forced to kill Slayers who wouldn't surrender. Buffy has a confidential conversation with Willow who reveals that she also saw Buffy's future daughter, Buffy looks into the sunset, declares her love for all of her friends (including Andrew), healing after the battle, and vows to see Angel, and Spike again.
3676159	/m/09tw73	Spark and Burn	Diana G. Gallagher	2005-07-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Spike was born in the nineteenth century as a gentle, intellectual boy named William. As a young adult, he meets a woman called Drusilla, a mysterious vampire. William eventually becomes Spike. He travels Europe with a band of vicious vampires, Dru, Darla, and Angelus. They show him his new existence, and from them he finds out about that most serious of enemies to vampires, one girl in all the world chosen to fight the vampires and the forces of darkness, the Slayer. Having found a soul in Africa in the twenty-first century, Spike is tormented by the first evil and the guilt of his vampiric evils. He recalls many of the events that would lead him to the madness in the hell-influenced basement of the new Sunnydale High School.
3676393	/m/09twkm	Keep Me In Mind	Nancy Holder	2005-04-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Ethan Rayne comes back to Sunnydale and releases an evil sorcerer from Bavaria who had been imprisoned since the Middle Ages. At the same time Buffy seems to be finding herself up against a number of old adversaries out for revenge.
3676398	/m/09twln	The Suicide King	Robert Joseph Levy	2005-02-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A number of student suicides has been taking place at Sunnydale High, shaking the community. Then the new grief counselor ends up killing himself, the Scoobies suspect that there is something supernatural to blame. Soon one of them shows suicidal signs and Buffy must race against time to defeat the ancient 'Suicide King'.
3676556	/m/09twyb	Cursed	Mel Odom	2003-11-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Various demons have battled Spike since he was given a chip preventing him from hurting humans. Now a more organised and united effort is being made to put him out of the picture. In Los Angeles, Angel is searching for a mystical object that is linked to his days as the evil Angelus. Spike arrives. Each holds a grudge against each other yet they must reluctantly work together and deal with their shared evil pasts.
3678706	/m/09t_x_	Dark Lord of Derkholm	Diana Wynne Jones	1998	{"/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 A fantasy world is dominated by its destructive tourist industry. "Mr. Chesney's Pilgrim Parties" arrange for annual group tours, evidently from our world, to experience all the cliches: wise Wizard Guides, attacks from Leathery-Winged Avians, the Glamorous Enchantress, the evil Dark Lord. It is a devastating show: farmlands are laid waste, people slain, and so on. The head of Wizards University, Querida, determines a way to end the tours. The apparently incompetent wizard Derk will be the next Dark Lord, wife Mara the next Glamorous Enchantress, and son Blade the Wizard Guide for the final tour. She overcomes objections all around and the plan is underway.
3679165	/m/09v0ty	Deep Wizardry	Diane Duane		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Nita's family goes on vacation with Kit and his dog, Ponch, to the South Shore of Long Island. One night, while Nita is swimming in the ocean, she finds a dolphin in the water. She greets it with The Speech, the magical language of Wizardry. The dolphin excitedly replies "A Wizard!" and swims away. Kit and Nita meet at the shore, and Kit tells of Nita of the rocks on a jetty; something bad is coming to the shores, and the rocks remember in fear. Kit and Nita go out the next night to search for the dolphin, much to the suspicion of Nita's parents. They prepare a spell to walk on the water. The dolphin finds them and tells them that a wizard is being attacked. They are carried by the dolphin to a nearby beach, where they see a pack of sharks attempting to devour a humpback whale wizard named S'reee, who is also being defended by a group of dolphins. Kit and Nita freeze the sharks, shielding S'reee and the dolphins, but later release the sharks at S'reee's request, since holding the shield would slowly suffocate them. Nita heals her, and Nita and Kit return to the beach house, exhausted, where they discover from their manuals they are on active assignment again. S'reee is in charge of organizing the Song of the Twelve, a gathering of wizards to play out the story of the time when the Lone Power, the source of all evil, tempted the sea creatures. As the story goes, three whales accepted the Gift, three were undecided, and three rejected it. A Tenth whale, the Silent Lord, was the final vote for all the whales. Instead of accepting, refusing, or not choosing, she killed herself, and was eaten by the Master Shark. This action bound the Lone Power for a time, and succeeding Songs have kept it bound. S'reee and the other whales are short of wizards willing to sing in the Song, and ask Nita and Kit to help. Nita volunteers herself to be the Silent Lord, as she doesn't believe she has a good singing voice. S'reee takes Nita and Kit with her to help find other whales for the upcoming Song. Nita, since she has shared blood with S'reee while healing her, turns into a humpback whale without external aids. Kit is given a whalesark by S'reee—a wizardly web which turns him into an enormous sperm whale. After their first day out in the ocean, Kit and Nita return home very late, and Nita's parents don't want them outside anymore. The next day, Nita and Kit use wizardry to sneak out of the house to help S'reee find more whales for the Song. Kit and Nita meet Ed'Rashekaresket (or Ed), the Pale Slayer, a shark who is to be present for the Song. Then, Nita discovers to her horror that the Silent Lord is actually eaten at the end of the Song; instead of just a play-reenactment, as she had imagined, the effectiveness of the wizardry requires the repetition of the sacrifice. Since Nita is sworn to the role, she cannot pull out, or the whole Song will be sabotaged, killing millions. Meanwhile, outside of Long Island, the sea floor is starting to act up, giving signs that the Lone Power's binding is weakening. Large krakens (mutated giant squids) are attacking the wizards underwater, and volcanic vents are increasing the temperature. Nita realizes that she can't back out of the Song now, because this destruction will eventually becomes large enough to destroy the entire Eastern Seaboard. Nita and Kit return to their home, very late at night. Dairine finds them, gives them their clothes (when they turn into whales, they can't be wearing anything) and allows them time to dry off and prepare an explanation for Nita's mom and dad. Nita and Kit, in the face of her parents' demands for an explanation, decide to reveal wizardry to her parents. Kit and Nita levitate and walk on water, but Nita's dad insists on hypnosis. Finally frustrated, Kit and Nita take them to the Moon - so they could see the Earth from above. This finally convinces Nita's parents to accept the fact of wizardry, and allow them to save the Eastern Seaboard. However, Nita doesn't tell them about her upcoming sacrifice. Their trouble with the parents now over, Kit and Nita go to bed to prepare for the singing of the Song. Dairine looks at Nita's Book, and discovers she can read parts of it - a sign she also has wizardly talent. Nita and Kit leave the beach house and meet S'reee, who takes them to the practice area for the Song. Nita meets the other whales in the Song, and talks to Ed about death. She realizes that Ed is the only creature in the ocean who is still alive from the first Song of the Twelve. The two become very unlikely friends. The procession (the ten whales including Nita and S'reee, Kit as security and Ed as the Master) start to descend into Hudson Canyon. They are relentlessly attacked by kraken and other monsters until they reach the site of the Sea's Tooth, the traditional place where the song is held. S'reee talks about how one Song went wrong, and a continent fell into the ocean; Kit and Nita realize she is referring to Atlantis. The Song goes decently, until one of the whales loses her will and succumbs to the tempting of the Lone Power. She escapes, but returns to allow the Krakens to attack the Singers. S'reee remakes the spell with Kit in the song. Nita goes to perform her sacrifice, but the Lone Power emerges from its binding as an enormous serpent. A fierce battle ensues. Kit reverts to whale speech, showing that the whalesark is in danger of failing. Ed asks Nita for her wizardry power; she gives it to him, and he finishes her part of the Song. He then attacks the Serpent, who wounds him. The Master Shark's blood in the water calls all the sharks in the area to him; they devour his body, and the Serpent, and the krakens. The Song is completed, and though unusually, it still binds the Lone One. Nita and Kit return to the beach house, exhausted. They promise to tell the story to Nita's parents as soon as they are better. Nita checks her manual, and discovers that a payment she and Kit owed to the Powers That Be was paid by the Life Service. She and Kit go out into the ocean one last time, and enter Timeheart: the center of the Universe, where no one dies. They get a last glimpse of Ed, before Kit asks for the Powers to bring them their next job. Nita agrees.
3679372	/m/09v183	High Wizardry	Diane Duane		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When Dairine, Nita's younger sister, finds Nita's copy of the Wizard's manual, she then proceeds to take the Wizard's Oath. Dairine is given her Wizard's manual in the form of a computer, which Dairine nicknames "Spot." Dairine uses her new power to travel to Mars, then to the Crossings, where she is attacked by agents of the Lone Power. When she uses a worldgate to flee, assisted by an unnamed man she meets in a bar, she finds herself on a giant planet consisting entirely of silicon. In the meantime, Nita and Kit discover she is missing and chase after her. Dairine awakens the massive computer embedded in the planet and gets to work designing and naming 'mobiles' after the planet begins to create quicklife (computer-based) creatures. She names them in a variety of ways ranging from computer programs to Star Wars characters. When the Lone Power overshadows a mobile and attacks Dairine, Nita and Kit arrive in time to help her, assisted by the macaw Machu Picchu (Peach), who reveals herself as the One's Champion incarnate. With Peach's assistance, the Lone Power is defeated by stopping the universe from expanding. The resulting light that explodes as a result of this destroys the Lone Power. The Lone Power then returns to "home" with one of the Powers That Be. As he leaves, he tells Kit and Nita to destroy the "shadows" of him that remain. The universe continues to expand and Nita, Kit and Dairine return to their home, where Dairine's computer sprouts legs and follows her upstairs as Nita and Kit talk to their parents.
3679490	/m/09v1j5	McTeague	Frank Norris	1899	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 McTeague is a dentist of limited intellect from a poor miner's family, who has opened a dentist shop on Polk Street in San Francisco. (His first name is never revealed; other characters in the novel call him simply "Mac.") His best friend, Marcus Schouler, brings his cousin, Trina Sieppe, whom he is courting, to McTeague's parlor for dental work. McTeague becomes infatuated with her while working on her teeth, and Marcus graciously steps aside. McTeague successfully woos Trina. Shortly after McTeague and Trina have kissed and declared their love for each other, Trina discovers that she has won $5000 from a lottery ticket. In the ensuing celebration Trina's mother, Mrs Sieppe, announces that McTeague and Trina are to marry. Marcus becomes jealous of McTeague, and claims that he has been cheated out of money that would have been rightfully his if he had married Trina. The marriage takes place, and Mrs Sieppe, along with the rest of Trina's family, move away from San Francisco, leaving her alone with McTeague. Trina proves to be a parsimonious wife; she refuses to touch the principal of her $5000, which she invests with her uncle. She insists that she and McTeague must live on the earnings from McTeague's dental practice, the small income from the $5000 investment, and the bit of money she earns from carving small wooden figures of Noah's animals and his Ark for sale in her uncle's shop. Secretly, she accumulates penny-pinched savings in a locked trunk. Though the couple are happy, the friendship between Marcus and Mac deteriorates. More than once the two men come to grips; each time McTeague's immense physical strength prevails, and eventually he breaks Marcus' arm in a fight. When Marcus recovers, he goes south, intending to become a rancher; before he leaves, he visits the McTeagues, and he and Mac part apparently as friends. Catastrophe strikes when McTeague is debarred from practising dentistry by the authorities; it becomes clear that before leaving, Marcus has taken revenge on Mac by informing city hall that he has no license or degree. McTeague loses his practice and the couple are forced to move into successively poorer quarters as Trina becomes more and more miserly. Their life together deteriorates until McTeague takes all Trina's domestic savings (amounting to $400 or roughly $10,000 in 2010 values) and abandons her. Meanwhile, Trina falls completely under the spell of money and withdraws the principal of her prior winnings in gold from her uncle's firm so she can admire and handle the coins in her room, at one point spreading them over her bed and rolling around in them. When McTeague returns, destitute once more, she refuses to give him money even for food. Aggravated and made violent by whisky, McTeague beats her to death. He takes the entire hoard of gold and heads out to a mining community that he had left years before. Sensing pursuit, he makes his way south towards Mexico; meanwhile, Marcus hears of the murder and joins the hunt for McTeague, finally catching him in Death Valley. In the middle of the desert Marcus and McTeague fight over McTeague's remaining water and, when that is lost and they are already doomed, over Trina's $5,000. McTeague kills Marcus, but as he dies, Marcus handcuffs himself to McTeague. The final, dramatic image of the novel is one of McTeague stranded, alone and helpless. He is left with only the company of Marcus's corpse, to whom he is handcuffed, in the desolate, arid waste of Death Valley.
3680694	/m/09v3fk	A Wizard Abroad	Diane Duane		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Nita and Kit's parents have never been fully behind their children's practices and in this book Nita's parents reveal that they are sending her to live with her aunt in Ireland over the summer to get away from the wizardry. This is particularly unfortunate for Nita and Kit as they are currently settling a land dispute between trees. When Nita gets to Ireland she begins to go "sideways" between different times and worlds of the location of Ireland. Ireland seems to be having a problem with wizardly overlays, making "sideways" transit much more frequent and the usage of spells very perilous. This is dangerous for wizards and non-wizards alike, as non-wizards would not know how to return to their own time and place. Nita alerts the local Senior, who happens to be a relative of a boy, Ronan Nolan, whom she met in a restaurant and has a crush on. While in her aunt's kitchen, she overhears them talk about a fox problem they've been having and have scheduled a hunt. Nita, being the ever-diligent wizard, goes that night and tells a fox of this. After the hunt, the fox thanks her for the warning by informing her that one of the Powers That Be is near, though as is tradition he cannot say where or who. Things get hectic from there on as wizards must gather to fight an Ancient Evil, a form of the Lone Power. Four ancient relics must be reawakened to fight this evil, even though they're quite weak after the ages. Nita, aided by Ronan and her old ally Kit, is able to find the relics, at which point they go "sideways" with many other wizards to the site of a massive battlefield. At the height of the battle, Balor, a Fomorian king, is slain by the Spear of Light. The Lone Power, who was trying to change the past, is narrowly defeated again.
3681524	/m/09v4m1	The Princess Bride	William Goldman	1973	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a Renaissance-era world, a beautiful woman named Buttercup lives on a farm in the country of Florin. She delights in verbally abusing the farm hand Westley, referring to him as "farm boy", by demanding that he perform chores for her. Westley's only answer is "As you wish". After Buttercup realizes the true meaning of the words, as well as the fact that she returns his deep romantic love, Westley leaves to seek his fortune so they can marry. Buttercup later receives word that his ship was attacked at sea by the Dread Pirate Roberts, who is notorious for killing all those whose vessels he boards. Believing Westley to be dead, Buttercup agrees to marry Prince Humperdinck, the heir to the throne of Florin, on the condition that she will never love him. Before the wedding, Buttercup is kidnapped by a trio of outlaws: the Sicilian criminal genius Vizzini, the Spanish fencing master Inigo Montoya, and the enormous and mighty Turkish wrestler Fezzik. A masked man in black follows them across the sea and up the Cliffs of Insanity, whereupon Vizzini orders Inigo to stop him. Before the man in black reaches the top of the cliff, there is a flashback of Inigo's past, in which it is revealed that he is seeking revenge on a six-fingered man who killed his father. When the man in black arrives, Inigo arranges a fair fight, allowing his opponent to rest before the duel. The man in black wins their duel, but leaves the Spaniard alive. Vizzini, stunned, orders Fezzik to kill him. Fezzik, moved by his conscience, throws a rock as a warning, and challenges the man to a wrestling match. He accepts the challenge and chokes Fezzik until the giant blacks out, and then catches up with Vizzini, and proposes a battle of wits. Vizzini is tricked into drinking wine poisoned with iocaine powder and dies. With Prince Humperdinck's rescue party in hot pursuit, the man flees with Buttercup, and reveals that he is the Dread Pirate Roberts, Westley's murderer. Enraged, she shoves him into a gorge, yelling "You can die, too, for all I care!" only to hear him call, "As you wish!" while he is falling. She realizes at this point that he is Westley, and follows him down into the gorge to find him battered but largely unhurt. While they travel through the Fire Swamp to evade Humperdinck's party, Westley tells Buttercup that the Dread Pirate Roberts did attack his ship, but kept him alive after he explained the depths of his love for her. Westley became the Dread Pirate Roberts' valet and later his friend. Over the course of four years Westley learned how to fence, fight and sail. Eventually, Roberts secretly passed his name, captaincy, and ship to Westley, just as his predecessor had done. Upon exiting the Fire Swamp, after facing many trying ordeals such as snow sand and ROUSes (Rodents of Unusual Size), they are captured by Humperdinck and his menacing six-fingered assistant, Count Tyrone Rugen. Buttercup negotiates for Westley's release and returns with Humperdinck to the palace to await their wedding. Rugen, who has been secretly instructed by Humperdinck not to release Westley, but instead take him to the underground hunting arena called the "Pit of Despair", does so. Here Westley is tortured by "The Machine", so as to provide information by which to complete the Count's book on pain and also to satisfy Humperdinck's annoyance that Buttercup prefers Westley to him. Meanwhile, Buttercup has several nightmares regarding her marriage to the prince. She expresses her unhappiness to Humperdinck, who proposes a deal wherein he will send out four ships to locate Westley, but if they fail to find him, Buttercup will marry him. It is revealed that Humperdinck arranged Buttercup's kidnapping and murder in order to start a war with the neighboring country of Guilder, but believes that it will inspire his subjects to war even more effectively if she dies on her wedding night. On the day of the wedding, Inigo meets with Fezzik, who tells him that Count Rugen is the killer of Inigo's father. They seek out the man in black, hoping that his wits will help them overcome the guards. Buttercup learns that Humperdinck never sent any ships, and taunts him with her enduring love for Westley. Enraged, Humperdinck tortures Westley to death. Westley's screams draw Inigo and Fezzik to the scene and down through the many dangerous levels of the Zoo of Death; upon finding Westley's body, they enlist the help of the King of Florin's former "miracle man", a magician named Miracle Max. Max pronounces Westley to be merely "mostly dead" and resurrects him, although Westley remains partially paralyzed. Westley devises a successful plan to invade the castle during the wedding; the resulting commotion prompts Humperdinck to cut the wedding short. Buttercup decides to commit suicide when she reaches the honeymoon suite. Inigo pursues Rugen through the castle and kills him in a sword fight, reciting throughout the duel his long-rehearsed oath of vengeance. Westley reaches Buttercup before she commits suicide and assures her that she is not yet married as the ceremony has not been completed. Still partly paralyzed, he bluffs his way out of a sword fight with Humperdinck. Instead of killing his rival, Westley decides to leave him alone with his cowardice. The party rides off into the sunset on the prince's purebred white horses conveniently discovered by Fezzik. The story ends with a series of mishaps and the prince's men closing in, followed by comments by the author indicating that he believes that the group gets away.
3681906	/m/09v58d	Schism	Catherine Asaro	2005-08-30	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place about 25 years after the events in the previous novel, Skyfall. Eldrinson Valdoria and his wife Roca Skolia live happily on his homeworld Lyshriol and have ten children. Some of them have already left home, like the second oldest son Althor who is training to become a Jagernaut, or the firstborn Eldrin who at the request of the Skolian Assembly had to marry his aunt, the Ruby Pharaoh Dyhianna Selei. The sixth of the Valdoria children, 16-year-old Sauscony (Soz), wants to enter the Military academy to become a Jagernaut like her brother. But Eldrinson has other plans – he would rather prefer to see his "little girl" living safely on Lyshriol, married to a local landlord. When she disobeys, he disowns both her (for leaving) and Althor (for taking her off-world). Though he regrets his harsh words immediately, he has no chance to take them back. Soon after, his teenage son Shannon, unhappy about the family discord, runs away from home. The book is told from the perspective of several main characters – young Soz during her military training; Shannon searching for his lost kin, the mystic Blue Dale archers; and their father Eldrinson, being captured, crippled, and nearly tortured to death by a sadistic Aristo who infiltrated Lyshriol to destroy the Ruby Dynasty.
3681977	/m/09v5f0	Skyfall	Catherine Asaro	2004-08-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is a turbulent time for the Skolian Empire. Kurj is trying to lead his people into war with the Traders, a more massive empire. He uses his powerful connections to control his mother who is attempting to sway the Assembly otherwise. The book begins with Roca, in hiding, trying to get to the Assembly meeting. During her voyage, she ends up stranded on a planet known as Skyfall. There, on a planet once part of the Ruby Empire but now antiquated in its technology, she meets Eldrinson Valdoria, and due to extreme weather and lack of incoming ships, she is stranded there for approximately one year. During that time she falls in love with Eldrinson and becomes pregnant. The novel also periodically shifts to describe the perspective of Kurj, a Primary (top ranking) Jagernaut (most feared warriors of the Skolian Empire) and grandson of the ruling couple of Skolian Empire, Pharaoh Lahaylia and Imperator Jarac. Kurj is obsessed with stopping the slave-driven empire of the Traders. But when his mother escapes his clutches, he fears the worst, and spends much of the novel obsessing over finding her instead. We also learn of some of the horrors from his past, giving meaning to his stoic nature. Back on the planet of Skyfall, Roca and her new husband come under siege by a rival who claims the title that Eldrinson possesses. At the point of his final breach into the castle, Kurj arrives with his much superior technology, and ceases hostilities. Roca gives birth to her child which she names Eldrin. The remainder of the novel revolves around the forced separation of Eldrinson from Roca and his child.
3685616	/m/09vc7j	The Penelopiad	Margaret Atwood	2005-10-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novella recaps Penelope’s life in hindsight from 21st century Hades; she recalls her family life in Sparta, her marriage to Odysseus, her dealing with suitors during his absence, and the aftermath of Odysseus' return. The relationship with her parents was challenging: her father became overly affectionate after attempting to murder her, and her mother was absent-minded and negligent. At fifteen, Penelope married Odysseus, who had rigged the contest that decided which suitor would marry her. Penelope was happy with him, even though he was mocked behind his back by Helen and some maids for his short stature and lesser developed home, Ithaca. The couple broke with tradition by moving to the husband’s kingdom. In Ithaca, neither Odysseus’ mother Anticleia, nor his nurse Eurycleia, liked Penelope but eventually Eurycleia helped Penelope settle into her new role and became friendly, but often patronising. Shortly after the birth of their son, Telemachus, Odysseus was called to war, leaving Penelope to run the kingdom and raise Telemachus alone. News of the war and rumours of Odysseus’ journey back sporadically reached Ithaca and with the growing possibility that Odysseus was not returning an increasing number of suitors moved in to court Penelope. Convinced the suitors were more interested in controlling her kingdom than loving her, she stalled them. The suitors pressured her by consuming and wasting much of the kingdom's resources. She feared violence if she outright denied their offer of marriage so she announced she would make her decision on which to marry once she finished her father-in-law’s shroud. She enlisted twelve maids to help her unravel the shroud at night and spy on the suitors. Odysseus eventually returned but in disguise. Penelope recognised him immediately and instructed her maids not to reveal his identity. After the suitors were massacred, Odysseus instructed Telemachus to execute the maids who he believed were in league with them. Twelve were hanged while Penelope slept. Afterwards, Penelope and Odysseus told each other stories of their time apart, but on the issue of the maids Penelope remained silent to avoid the appearance of sympathy for those already judged and condemned as traitors. During her narrative, Penelope expresses opinions on several people, addresses historical misconceptions, and comments on life in Hades. She is most critical of Helen whom Penelope blames for ruining her life. Penelope identifies Odysseus’ specialty as making people look like fools and wonders why his stories have survived so long, despite being an admitted liar. She dispels the rumour that she slept with Amphinomus and the rumour that she slept with all the suitors and consequently gave birth to Pan. Between chapters in which Penelope is narrating, the twelve maids speak on topics from their point-of-view. They lament their childhood as slaves with no parents or playtime, sing of freedom, and dream of being princesses. They contrast their lives to Telemachus’ and wonder if they would have killed him as a child if they knew he would kill them as a young man. They blame Penelope and Eurycleia for allowing them to unjustly die. In Hades, they haunt both Penelope and Odysseus.
3687844	/m/09vhjk	The Dogs of War	Frederick Forsyth	1974	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 1970: The prologue shows "Cat" Shannon and his fellow mercenaries leaving a West African war they have lost, saying 'good-bye' to the General, who employed them for six months. Subsequently, a prospector named Mulrooney, employed by British-based company Manson Consolidated, sends mineral samples from the "Crystal Mountain" in the remote hinterland of the African republic of Zangaro. When they are analysed, ruthless British mining tycoon Sir James Manson realises that there is a huge platinum deposit in Zangaro. As the president of Zangaro, Jean Kimba, is Marxist, homicidal and insane, and under Soviet influence, any public announcement of the findings would benefit only the Russians. Confiding only in his top assistants, security chief Simon Endean and financial expert Martin Thorpe, Manson plans to replace Kimba with a puppet leader who, for a pittance, will sign over Zangaro's mining rights to a "shell company" secretly owned by Manson. When Manson Consolidated later acquires the shell company for a fair market price, Sir James Manson and his aides will pocket £60 million. On recommendation from a freelance writer, Endean hires Anglo-Irish mercenary soldier "Cat" Shannon to reconnoitre Zangaro, and to investigate how Kimba might be deposed. After visiting the country posing as a tourist, Shannon reports that the army has little fighting value and that Kimba has concentrated the national armoury, treasury and radio station within the presidential palace in Clarence, the Zangaran capital city and principal port. If the palace is stormed and Kimba is killed, there will be no opposition to any new regime. Because there is no organised dissident faction in Zangaro, the attacking force will have to be organised outside the country and land near Clarence to launch the attack. Shannon prices the mission at £100,000, with £10,000 for himself. Although Shannon has dealt only with Endean who is using a false name, he has had Endean tailed by a private investigator and has discovered his true identity and his involvement with Sir James Manson. Although Manson has taken steps to silence the few people aware of the Crystal Mountain platinum deposit, the left-wing chemist who analysed the samples has inadvertently revealed his findings to the Soviets, who assign a KGB bodyguard to Kimba while they prepare to send in their own geological survey team. Manson learns from a Foreign Office bureaucrat that the Soviets have got wind of the deposit. He commissions Shannon to organise and mount the coup, to take place on the eve of Zangaro's independence day, one hundred days hence, although he does not tell Shannon of the Soviet involvement. Shannon assembles the team who will execute the attack on Kimba's palace: German ex-smuggler Kurt Semmler, South African mortar expert Jan Dupree, Belgian bazooka specialist "Tiny" Marc Vlaminck, and Corsican knife man Jean-Baptiste Langarotti. Semmler travels Europe looking for a suitable cargo ship to transport them and their equipment to Zangaro. Dupree stays in London and buys all their uniforms, boots and camping equipment. Langarotti travels to Marseilles to buy inflatable boats for the amphibious assault. Vlaminck accompanies Shannon to Belgium to buy one hundred MP 40 "Schmeisser" machine pistols from a former member of the SS. Shannon then travels to Luxembourg to establish a holding company to handle the purchase of the ship, to Spain to buy 400,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition for the Schmeissers with a forged end user certificate, and walkie talkies and flares, and to Yugoslavia to buy bazookas, mortars, and ammunition for them. He also finds time for a brief sexual liaison with Julie Manson, Sir James's daughter, from whom he learns the bare essentials of Manson's true plan. Martin Thorpe has meanwhile secretly bought the controlling share in Bormac Trading, a mining and plantation-owning company which has long ceased trading, from Lady MacAllister, the ailing widow of the company's founder. His and Manson's involvement is concealed behind the names of several fictitious shareholders. Endean has obtained the agreement of Colonel Bobi, a former commander of the Zangaran Army who fell out with Kimba and is now in exile, to participate in Manson's scheme. Once installed as president, the venal and illiterate Bobi will sign over the mineral rights to the Crystal Mountain to Bormac Trading for a nominal price but a large bribe for himself. Semmler has acquired a nondescript tramp cargo ship, the Toscana, for the operation. Hidden in oil drums, the Schmeisser sub-machine guns are smuggled across the Belgian border into France and loaded aboard the Toscana at Marseilles, along with the uniforms and Zodiac speedboats, which are supposedly for watersports in Morocco. They then sail to Ploče in Yugoslavia to load the mortars and rocket launchers bought legitimately from an arms dealer, without telling the Yugoslav authorities that they already have arms aboard. These weapons are then hidden below deck and the ship sails to Spain to collect the ammunition (supposedly sold to the Iraqi police force). The ship then sails to Sierra Leone to pick up six African mercenaries, disguised as casual stevedores, who will also participate in the attack, and Dr Okoye, an African academic. The assault on President Kimba's palace takes place as planned. In the early hours of the morning, foghorns and flares disorient the defenders while Dupree bombards the interior of the palace compound and a nearby army camp with mortars, eliminating the palace guard. Vlaminck destroys the compound gates with anti-tank rockets. As the attackers burst in, Kimba's KGB bodyguard escapes and shoots Vlaminck in the chest. Vlaminck kills him with his last rocket before he dies. Semmler shoots Kimba as he tries to escape through his bedroom window. Dupree and two African mercenaries attack the nearby army camp. A Zangaran solder throws a grenade at them as he flees and Johnny, one of the African mercenaries, throws it back but accidentally mortally wounds Dupree with it. Around midday, Endean arrives in Clarence to install Colonel Bobi as the new Zangaran president. He has his own bodyguard, a former enforcer and London East End gangster. Shannon casually kills both Bobi and Endean's bodyguard, and introduces Dr Okoye as the new head of government. Dr Okoye permanently refuses the Soviet geology survey team's request to land in Zangaro. As Shannon drives Endean to the border, he explains that Endean's otherwise comprehensive research failed to note the 20,000 immigrant workers who did most of the work in Zangaro, but were politically disenfranchised by the Kimba government. A hundred of them, in new uniforms and armed with Schmeissers, have already been recruited as the nucleus of the new Zangaran Army. When Shannon tells Endean that the coup was really conducted in behalf of the General, Endean is furious, but Shannon points out that this government will be at least be fair, and if Manson wants the platinum, he will have to pay the proper market price. Endean threatens revenge if he ever sees Shannon in London but Shannon is not fazed by this. In the novel's epilogue, it is revealed that Dupree, Vlaminck and Johnny, one of the African soldiers who also died in storming Kimba's palace, were buried in simple graves near the shore. Semmler, having sold the Toscana to its captain, died while on another mercenary operation in Africa and Langarotti's fate is ambiguous; the novel only tells that after he took his pay and share of the sale of the Toscana, he is last heard of going to train a new group of Hutu partisans in Burundi against Michel Micombero, telling Shannon "It's not about the money&nbsp;— it was never about the money." The final scene of The Dogs of War reveals that before embarking on the Zangaro operation, Shannon was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer (skin cancer in some American editions). He posts most of his earnings to the surviving family members of his fallen teammates, and also sends a manuscript (presumably outlining the entire plan) to a journalist in London. Later, Cat Shannon walks into the African bush, humming a favourite tune ("Spanish Harlem"), to end his life on his own terms with "a bullet in his chest and blood in his mouth".
3687898	/m/09vhm0	Think				 Think begins as a critique of the decline of critical thinking in America. LeGault briefly mentions Blink as the height of this irrationality, but moves on to other failures in government, schools, media, and industry. LeGault offers several examples of irrationality and mediocrity throughout the book: * Poor decision-making at General Motors and the decline of the American auto industry. * The politically correct reaction to remarks by Lawrence Summers, regarding gender differences. * The failures of affirmative action to close the achievement gap. * Sensationalist journalism, and the decline of newspaper readership. * Over-emphasis on stress relief in marketing and media. * The banning of DDT by the Environmental Protection Agency, in reaction to the book Silent Spring. * The rise of relativism, as described by Allan Bloom in his book, Closing of the American Mind. Much of the book deals with examples of failures or anomalies in American achievements. LeGault often attributes these shortcomings to a growing attitude or influential group. On page 93, he describes the problem of over-medicating children with Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: In view of LeGault's description of the problem, he closes the book by offering solutions. Specifically, he calls for higher standards, especially among parents and schools.
3688015	/m/09vhvm	The Wizard's Dilemma	Diane Duane	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Nita and Kit start to fight about the solution to the pollution in Jones Inlet, leading Nita to start to work on her own for a while. In the meantime, Nita's mother falls ill and is taken to the hospital with a brain tumor. Meanwhile, Kit finds out that his dog, Ponch, is able to create universes out of nothing, bringing in a lot of research possibilities where they can explore. Nita begins to practice with kernels - magical "software" that describes and reflects the surrounding area- in order to try to save her mother's life. While practicing, Nita meets a wizard named Pralaya who might be able to join her in saving her mother's life. She then discovers that the wizard may be overshadowed by the Lone Power, making it a dangerous prospect for them to work together. She discusses it with Kit, who decides to help her as well. While her mother is in surgery, Nita enters her body with Pralaya and begins to search for the kernel in order to kill the cancer, leaving Kit behind. Kit, using the universes Ponch creates, is able to also enter Mrs. Callahan's body to aid Nita and her mother. He helps her undo the deal she was in the process of making with the Lone Power for her mother's life, but she is still unable to eliminate all of the cancer. As the Lone Power is gloating in his anticipated victory, Nita's mother is able to take control of the kernel and defeat the Lone Power. She realizes that if she were to cure herself, she would be starting down a path at the end of which nothing would matter to her except extending her life, so she chooses to live out what life is left to her in love.
3688067	/m/09vh_h	A Wizard Alone	Diane Duane	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the events of The Wizard's Dilemma (her mother's death) Nita is depressed. She has also been having some strange dreams concerning a lone character refusing any help. She has some trouble understanding the lone character's Speech. Meanwhile, Kit is asked by Tom and Carl to help find Darryl McAllister, an autistic boy who is on his Ordeal - and has been for the past three months but Darryl is not all that he seems. He is an Abdal: a figure of tremendous power and a conduit for goodness from The One who limits the power of the Lone One in the Universe and can exist in more than one place at once. Utilizing Ponch's ability to "walk" through universes, Kit enters Darryl's mind to assist him in the Ordeal where he sees Darryl tortured, but overexposure causes Kit to exhibit antisocial tendencies and mood swings picked up from Darryl himself. He begins to take on Darryl's autistic traits and becomes trapped in Darryl mind. As Nita looks into strange dreams she begins to understand the lone character who she realizes is the boy Kit is looking into, Darryl. When she realizes that Darryl is an Abdal and that he is actually tricking the Lone One she enters his mind in an attempt to save both Kit and Darryl. Darryl, meanwhile, has created in his mind a trap in which he traps the Lone One and forces him to experience the autism that he deals with daily. This is the trap Kit becomes stuck in and Nita is forced to enter. In the end Nita breaks the trap and frees Darryl, Kit and the Lone One. Darryl force the Lone One to Accept a deal in which Darryl remains in his own universe if the Lone One will return to it someday. However Darryl escapes this deal through his ability to exist in more than one place and leaves his autistic self behind in the universe while he returns to his body free of autism.
3688115	/m/09vj1y	Wizard's Holiday	Diane Duane	2003	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When Nita's sister Dairine signs up for an intragalactic exchange program without permission, their local advisors transfer the mission to Nita and Kit. The destination seems to be an ideal planet, and they are hoping for a vacation. Meanwhile, the aliens who arrive at Dairine's house appear to be very "alien". However, Nita's dreams become nightmarish and the planet Alaalu turns out to be hiding a dark secret: an avatar of the Lone Power has been trapped in this dystopia since their people refused Its gift of entropy. While this may have prevented deterioration to war, crime and natural disasters, among other things, it also prevented such change as evolution, and the Alaalu people are trapped in their current stage of existence when they have the potential to be free of it. It becomes the young wizards' job to convince the Alaalu wizard and her people to accept this change, inevitably setting the Lone Power free. On Earth, the wizards at Dairine's place have become aware that their Sun is in danger of flaring up to the point of scorching their planet. However, one of the visitors comes from a planet where he is a guardian against the recurrence of such a disaster, and recognizes it in time for them to save the Earth.
3688576	/m/09vjx7	El estudiante de Salamanca	José de Espronceda	1837		 Don Félix seduces Elvira, who dies of love for Don Félix after he leaves her. Her brother then comes to avenge her. Don Félix and the brother die in their duel. The work culminates in Don Félix's descent into hell.
3694432	/m/09vvg3	Uncle Tom's Children	Richard Wright		{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow" describes Wright's own experiences growing up. The essay starts with his first encounter with racism, when his attempt to play a war game with white children turns ugly, and follows his experiences with the problems of being black in the South through his adolescence and adulthood. It describes his experience of prejudice at his first job. While working at an optical factory, his white fellow employees bully and eventually beat him for wanting to learn job skills that could allow him to advance. Wright also discusses suffering attacks by white youths and explores the many hypocrisies of white prejudice against blacks. These include black men being allowed to work around naked white prostitutes while having to pretend they do not exist. Whites have exploitative sex with black maids, and yet any sexual relations between a black man and a white woman, even a prostitute, is cause for castration or death. Wright also delves into the more subtle humiliations inherent in the Jim Crow system, such as being unable to say "thank you," to a white man, lest he take it as a statement of equality. Big Boy was chosen to be the leader of his friends. One day, Big Boy and friends Bobo, Lester, and Buck decide to go swimming in a restricted area. They take off their clothes and proceed to play in the water. Soon, a white woman comes upon them and the boys are unable to get their clothes without being seen. After reacting to the boys with shock and disgust, she calls for "Jim". Jim quickly appears and, feeling threatened, proceeds to kill Lester and Buck. After a short struggle between Big Boy and Jim, Big Boy takes control of the rifle and shoots Jim, seemingly killing him. The remaining two members of the group quickly gather their clothes and flee the scene. The story moves with Big Boy as he makes his way back home. He relates the story to his family. All the while, Big Boy is terrified that the white people will form a mob and lynch him. The family has an acquaintance who drives a truck and can help Big Boy escape. Big Boy is sent off with some food while he waits for the acquaintance to leave with the truck at 6:00 AM the next morning. As he finds a place to settle for a while, he overhears some white men discussing the search situation and learns that they've captured Bobo, the other surviving boy of the original group of four. Bobo is burned at the stake. Later, the acquaintance, Will, finds Big Boy and they head off in the truck. The story ends in bittersweet fashion as Big Boy thinks about the slaughter of his friends in the new sunny day. "Down by the Riverside" takes place during a major flood. Its main character, a farmer named Mann, must get his family to safety in the hills, but he does not have a boat. In addition, his wife, Lulu, has been in labor for several days but cannot deliver the baby. Mann must get her to a hospital - the Red Cross hospital. He has sent his cousin Bob to sell a donkey and use the money to buy a boat, but Bob returns with only fifteen dollars from the donkey and a stolen boat. Mann must take the boat through town to the hospital, even though Bob advises against this, since the boat is very recognizable. Rowing his family, including Lulu, Peewee, his son and Grannie, Lulu's mother, in this white boat, Mann calls for help at the first house he reaches. This house is the home of the boat's white owner, Heartfield, who immediately begins shooting. Mann, who has brought his gun, returns fire and kills the man, while the man's family witnesses the act from the windows of the house. Mann rows on to the Red Cross hospital but is too late; Lulu and the undelivered baby have died. Soldiers take away Grannie and Peewee to safety in the hills, and Mann is conscripted to work on the failing levee. However, the levee breaks, and Mann must return to the hospital, where he smashes a hole in the ceiling at the direction of a colonel - who then directs Mann to find him once everything's over saying he'll help Mann if he can - allowing the hospital to be evacuated. Mann and a young black boy, Brinkley, are told to rescue a family at the edge of town, who turn out to be the Heartfields. Inside the house, Heartfield's son recognizes Mann as his father's killer and Mann raises his axe thinking to kill the children & their mother but is stopped when the house shifts in the rising flood waters. Despite his terror that he might be fingered as Heartfield's murderer and accordingly facing the possibility of a brutal and torturous death, Mann takes the boy, the boy's sister and his mother to "the hills" and safety. There, Mann tries to blend with "his people", hoping he might find his family, until the white boy identifies Mann as the killer of his father. Armed soldiers take Mann away after tribunal with the general and then the colonel he'd helped at the Red Cross. Knowing he's doomed and vowing to "die fo they kill [him]" Mann runs and the soldiers shoot him dead by the river's edge. ===Fire and Clou right and Morning Star=== "Bright and Morning Star" concerns an old woman, Sue, whose sons are communist party organizers. One son, Sug, has already been imprisoned for this and does not appear in the story. Sue waits for the other son, Johnny-Boy, to arrive home when the story begins. Though she is no longer a Christian, believing instead in a communist vision of the human struggle, Sue finds herself singing an old hymn as she waits. A white fellow communist, Reva, the daughter of a major organizer, Lem, stops by to tell Sue that the sheriff has discovered plans for a meeting at Lem's and that the comrades must be told or they will be caught. Someone in the group has become an informer. Reva departs, and Johnny-Boy comes home. Sue feeds him dinner, and they discuss her mistrust of white fellow-communists. Then, she sends him out to tell the comrades not to go to Lem's for the meeting. The sheriff shows up at Sue's looking for Johnny-Boy. The sheriff threatens Sue, saying that if she does not get him to talk, she had best bring a sheet to get his body. Sue speaks defiantly to the sheriff, who slaps her around but starts to leave. Then Sue shouts after him from the door, and he returns, this time beating her badly. In her weakened state, she reveals the comrades' names to Booker, a white communist who is actually the sheriff's informer. Sue realizes that she is the only one left who can save the comrades, and she dedicates herself completely to this task. Remembering the sheriff's words, she takes a white sheet and wraps a gun in it. She goes through the woods until she finds the sheriff, who has caught Johnny-Boy. The sheriff tortures Johnny-Boy before her eyes, but she does not relent or try to get Johnny-Boy to give up. Then Booker shows up, and she shoots him through the sheet. The sheriff's men shoot first Johnny-Boy and then Sue dead. As she lies on the ground, she realizes she has fulfilled her purpose in life.
3698129	/m/09v_tz	Sharpe's Gold	Bernard Cornwell	1981-12	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Major Michael Hogan orders Sharpe to find out what happened to Claud Hardy, one of his exploring officers, who was sent to locate the gold thought to be in the fictional hamlet of Castejeda. Sharpe sets off with the men of his small company as his sole military support and links up with Major Kearsey, another of Hogan's exploring officers. It becomes clear to Sharpe that Kearsey believes that the gold belongs to the Spanish and should only be returned to them, and that that is the purpose of the mission they are on. However Sharpe has secret orders that the gold must be taken to British lines and begins to doubt Kearsey is aware of them. We meet the local partisan commander El Catolico, who is engaged in a bitter struggle with local French cavalry. Kearsey is captured by the French and Sharpe decides to go into the town and liberate him and ascertain the location of the gold. They succeed though suffer some losses in personnel but succeed in freeing not only Kearsey but also Teresa Moreno and her brother Ramon who were to be tortured by the French. The Spanish guerillas soon enter the town. El Catolico is intensely suspicious of Sharpe being so far behind the French lines and suspects the British desire the gold so they can take it when they leave Portugal. We see Sharpe develop an attraction to Teresa who is betrothed to El Catolico. Her father is his second-in-command. Kearsey appears in awe of El Catolico and the Spanish generally. Sharpe decides to leave him out of future decisions. El Catolico claims there is no gold and that the French took it. Having been escorted from the town by partisans Sharpe and the men double back later that night to undergo a further search of the town. Sharpe is captured by El Catolico but is freed by Patrick Harper who discovered the gold hidden in a manure patch. Sharpe's men surround the Spanish and they take Teresa as a hostage. Kearsey is utterly disapproving of what Sharpe has done but follows the other British soldiers. It seems Hardy was murdered by El Catolico. They head for the fortress of Almeida and are harried by both the partisans and by French troops en route to the siege. Sharpe and Teresa consummate their relationship and fall in love. Sharpe and the men are saved from the French by a unit of German cavalry under Captain Lossow who was sent by Hogan to locate them and take them to Almeida. The officers meet with the commander of the fortress, the English Brigadier Cox. Cox has had no orders from General Wellington to let them pass unheeded and is suspicious of the lack of orders. Kearsey gives no help and it transpires that El Catolico and his men entered the fortress on the same night and lodged a claim on behalf of the Spanish government to take back the gold. Efforts to contact Wellington are in vain as the telegraph is blown up. Cox orders the gold be returned and that Sharpe and his men enlist in the garrison to resist the siege. That night we have a showdown between Sharpe and El Catolico on the roof above Sharpe's bedroom window. Sharpe is victorious, but, realising that his opponent was superior, impaled his leg on the Spaniard's sword so he could render the coup de grace. Demonstrating his ruthlessness, Sharpe ignites an explosion in the magazine of the fortress, which causes a great deal of casualties and considerable damage to the fortress walls. It becomes clear that the fortress will fall much sooner than expected and Sharpe and Lossow are allowed take their men away. Teresa returns to the partisans, taking the name La Aguja (the Needle). It transpires that the gold was needed to develop the enormous defensive Lines of Torres Vedras which held up the French invasion of Marshal André Masséna. Sharpe takes the opportunity of some leave to renew his acquaintance with Josefina, his love interest from Sharpe's Eagle, prompting the reader to speculate on the degree of attraction between himself and Teresa. The lines of Torres Vedras are better described in Sharpe's Escape.
3698358	/m/09w07k	Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse	Lee Goldberg	2006-01-03	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger stop by the University of California to investigate an open-and-shut self-defense murder. Professor Jeremiah Cowan was giving a class when a gunman burst into the room and pointed a gun at him. Cowan shot the intruder before the intruder could get a shot. The shooter's name is Ford Oldman, who apparently made several threats at Cowan in the past. Monk explains to Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher how Cowan staged the scene, but before he can explain Cowan's motive, Natalie cuts him off, since the department hasn't paid Monk for his consulting. Later that day, Stottlemeyer calls Natalie to say that he has Monk's check at the station. Arriving at the station, they notice that the San Francisco Police Department is making large budget cuts. It starts when Disher asks if they can break a $20 so he can get a cup of coffee from the machine, which Monk isn't exactly willing to do. Stottlemeyer asks Monk to accompany him to the Conference of Metropolitan Homicide Detectives, which this year is being held in San Francisco. At the conference, Stottlemeyer reveals several things like Monk's high 120% clearance rate. Afterwards, the captain thinks that Paul Braddock, the moderator (and a detective from Banning, California), was simply asking questions that the other cops were thinking. He is humiliated, and states that Braddock used to work for the SFPD until Stottlemeyer threatened to expose his abusive methods to Internal Affairs. While having coffee with Natalie, Stottlemeyer asks her and Monk to come with him to Mill Valley, where he is planning on checking in on a police informant he once worked with. The man's name is Bill Peschel. They travel out later that day to meet Peschel, who lives with his daughter Carol, her husband Phil, and their two children. He motions them to sit down at his bar. It becomes clear that Peschel is diagnosed with dementia because he keeps thinking that he is running his bar. Keeping the part, Stottlemeyer acts like Monk is his rookie partner and they are seeking information. Peschel first starts by saying that Hy Conrad was in here bragging about a smash-and-grab, but then gets to the point when he tells them that a fancy lady came in asking someone to kill her rich husband and make it look like an accident. Leaving Peschel, Natalie is convinced that he is crazy and has Alzheimers, and additionally dementia, since he thinks that this is still the tavern he owned. Talking to Carol Atwater, Monk takes an obsession in the Diaper Genie diapers she uses. Carol mentions that most cops her father used to know now hang up on him when he calls in late at night with his tips. Peschel has also invested big in stock of InTouchSpace, a social networking site. When Monk and Natalie arrive at the police station the next day, Stottlemeyer explains that due to the budget issue, Monk's contract as a private consultant has been officially declared void. Natalie is infuriated, since she can't get paid unless Monk is paid. Disher walks in, informing them that Judge Clarence Stanton was just gunned down in Golden Gate Park. Hearing this, Monk prepares to go to the scene, even if no longer a consultant. Examining the area outside the crime tape, Monk finds several clues that tell them that the killer is a woman. Judging from the impression of the killer's bike, it has a different distance from the seat to the handlebars, and the frame's top tube is at an angle, consistent with that of a woman's bicycle. The treads also match those of female running shoes. Back at the apartment, Monk (desperate to use his Diaper Genies) "accidentally" creates several messes to prove that the Diaper Genies are great for trash bags. Natalie empties the Diaper Genie and walks back in to find Monk talking to the police hotline under assumed names with tips about Judge Stanton's shooting death. In the next morning's issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, the article about the shooting explains that Stanton was about to preside over the trial of Salvatore Lucarelli, the West Coast Godfather. Monk happens to open to an article about a hit-and-run and calls the police hotline anonymously again. This is too much for Natalie, who unplugs the phone suggesting Monk look through the Help Wanted ads. As Monk is about to consider becoming a taxicab driver, Stottlemeyer calls to tell Monk to stop sending in anonymous tips, since their caller ID systems traced the calls back to him. Just then, someone knocks at the door. The man's name is Nicholas Slade, and he is looking to hire Monk and Natalie at his private detective agency, Intertect. Slade explains how he used to be a vice detective on the force until ten years ago when he went private and started his agency. His agency is essentially a "private eye" in many ways. He was at the conference when he witnessed Monk's interview, knowing that Stottlemeyer was about to change the consulting agreement. Natalie goes down to the office to fill out paperwork and meets her new office assistant, Danielle Hossack. Danielle describes how wonderful Slade is, having made some strategic investments in the stock market and used the profits to start Intertect. She even describes the fact that her loyalty is as Slade has instructed her to both Monk and to Natalie. She is on their back and on call at any time. In short, Natalie is disturbed to find that she is effectively getting what she calls "her own Natalie", since after all Danielle's loyalty is to both of them, although Natalie is still loyal to Monk even though Intertect is now paying her. That afternoon, Monk is at work solving the open case files. He quickly proves a missing diamond case to be an inside job, and that a spy at a helicopter manufacturing company is using a wheelchair to smuggle secrets to the competition. Natalie also trades her Buick Lucerne for a Lexus company car. As part of their employment at Intertect, both Monk and Natalie have their own benefits. With regards to Monk, Intertect is now paying for his sessions with Dr. Bell. Natalie has a new company car and a new dental plan. When Natalie goes into work the next morning, Monk is still there, trying to solve the death of a man who has been stabbed in the chest. It's a six-month-old case involving Lou Wickersham, who was killed during a burglary. As Natalie informs Danielle that she can't be wheeling in case files to Monk like this, Danielle explains that the police have caught a break in the Stanton case. They are focusing on violent offenders Judge Stanton sent to prison and who have been recently released. They also pursuing a theory that Salvatore Lucarelli had him killed to avoid trial. Going back on the Wickersham case, Monk realizes that the circumstances around where Wickersham's body was found and the lack of defensive wounds don't add up. He realizes that it was a suicide, and explains that Wickersham ransacked his own house to hide the fact that he had sold his wife's jewelry and everything valuable to pay off loans. He only was able to buy some time. The best thing possible for him was to stage a home invasion, and stage his suicide as a murder to guarantee his wife a more comfortable life. As Danielle, Monk and Natalie try to debate how to find proof that Wickersham's death was a suicide, Natalie receives a call from Slade. Another judge, Alan Carnegie, has been shot dead and the new client has asked specifically for Monk. The name of this client is Salvatore Lucarelli. Although Natalie says that he would never do that, Slade says that Lucarelli and Monk have met. As they are driving towards the jail, Monk explains to Natalie the events of his encounter with Salvatore Lucarelli in the season 3 episode "Mr. Monk Meets the Godfather". A man named Phil Bedard (who was played in the episode by Devon Gummersall), who worked for the US Mint, walked into a barbershop that was a front for Lucarelli's gambling and protection racket. He had stolen some money from his employers, and hidden it in the gumball machine at the shop. When the barbershop client tried to intervene as Bedard attempted to retrieve the pennies, Bedard grabbed his gun and fired like a maniac, killing everyone in the room in what was known as the Barbershop Massacre. Lucarelli and his men wanted revenge, but as he didn't want to spark a mob war, he pressed Monk and his first assistant Sharona Fleming to clear his name. Monk only took the job because the FBI and ATF saw an opportunity to get a man on the inside. Although Lucarelli was cleared of any charges, the feds were angry at Monk because he washed and ironed his wired tie, ruining it. Now, with Stanton dead, Carnegie was to be the next in line to preside over Lucarelli's trial. Carnegie was shot while walking his dog. In the interview, Lucarelli says that he only kills lobsters at his restaurant, just like before in the episode. When Monk and Natalie arrive at the scene of Judge Carnegie's murder, they find Stottlemeyer and Disher there. At first, Stottlemeyer does not understand what Monk is doing looking at the body, since as Monk is no longer working for the SFPD, he shouldn't be crossing the police line. Natalie tries explaining otherwise, when Slade arrives. Slade suggests that Stottlemeyer reconsider his decision about not joining Intertect, and even tells him that Lucarelli had Monk come out to help. He even says that Monk, Natalie and Stottlemeyer would make a great team (which Natalie refers to as the Odd Squad). Disher points Monk over to Carnegie's house. No one heard any screams or cars screeching away, which allows Monk to close up the murders of Judges Stanton and Carnegie. At Carnegie's house, Monk explains to Alan's widow Rhonda that her husband was the alternate to hear the case against Salvatore Lucarelli should something happen to Stanton. She wanted her husband's murder to look like a mob hit. It is the fact that the Carnegies' dog only barks to strangers that pointed Monk to the widow: If Alan Carnegie was shot dead by a stranger, why didn't the dog bark madly at the shooter? The answer can be that Rhonda, who is not a stranger to the dog, shot him. After Disher arrests Rhonda Carnegie for the murders, Stottlemeyer thanks Monk for just happening to show up, since otherwise he would have exhausted himself for weeks trying to track down every connection to Lucarelli. Unfortunately, they can't rehire Monk as a consultant. As soon as Stottlemeyer finishes thanking Monk, Carol Atwater calls the captain to say that Bill Peschel is dead. She had left her father to drop off her son at school and drop off her daughter at a pediatrician's appointment. Peschel apparently had jumped into the pool and banged his head badly. But Monk starts to think otherwise at the crime scene. Natalie ditches Monk at Dr. Bell's office. That night, Monk calls Julie to deliver some files to his apartment. Natalie convinces her not to. When the papers the next morning show the article about Rhonda Carnegie's arrest, Natalie finds it too painful to read all the way through, although she is pleased at the way Slade has twisted the article to improve Intertect's reputation. Walking in the door, she finds Monk reviewing more case files. Monk just says that he thought Natalie went on vacation, a not-so-smart remark considering how everywhere Natalie goes, Monk goes, and murder follows them (as the novels Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii, Mr. Monk Goes to Germany and Mr. Monk is Miserable demonstrate). When the phone rings, Natalie half expects it to be Slade calling with another case. Rather, it is Carol Atwater. At the crime scene, Monk and Natalie encounter Carol, Stottlemeyer, Slade and Paul Braddock, the moderator from the conference. Natalie finds it odd that Carol married someone with a name similar to her father (Bill being short for William, and Phil being short for Phillip) and asks Monk about it. Carol comes over, explaining that Braddock and Slade happened to know her father in the 1990s. Stottlemeyer and Braddock's conversation, pleasant to start off, transitions into a brawl when Braddock attacks the captain. Slade prevents Stottlemeyer from taking the fight too far. Afterwards, Monk observes grass stains on the captain's pants. He remembers how Peschel's socks were clean and white, meaning he couldn't have walked across the grass. Monk has Natalie stand on the plastic chair that Peschel allegedly stood on. When she does, the legs of the chair sink into the grass under her weight. The chair Peschel stood on didn't sink its legs into the ground, even when he was twice Natalie's weight. Slade uses this claim to snag himself another client. They suspect that someone Peschel sent to prison with his tips got released and exacted revenge. Meanwhile, Stottlemeyer figures that his career is at risk, since Braddock will probably go back to the convention and he will have to explain his injuries, and he might also twist the story to make Stottlemeyer look like a raging psychopath. Monk calls up Danielle to ask her to do some research into Peschel's career. She says that he was an early investor into InTouchSpace, the social networking site. Natalie explains to Monk that InTouchSpace works like Facebook and MySpace in that you can communicate with other people without leaving the comfort of your house, and that she, Julie, and Adrian's agoraphobic brother Ambrose use it. Since Danielle doesn't call back, they take the afternoon off. Natalie drops Monk off at Dr. Bell's place and runs several errands while Monk squeezes in his sessions. Of course, Dr. Bell isn't entirely happy about Monk trying to squeeze in five-minute sessions between his other patients, and suggests to Natalie that she get Danielle to find more open cases for Monk to work on. The next morning, Dr. Bell's hunch comes true when Natalie finds Monk with a cartload of cases that an Intertect employee gave to him. Infuriated, she confronts Danielle, but Danielle claims innocence and says that only one person has the authority to send these files over. Natalie confronts Slade that what he is doing to Monk is much like killing the goose that laid the golden egg – giving him too much work. Returning to Danielle (whom Natalie claims is working not for her but for Slade), Danielle states that Mill Valley's police have confirmed Monk's finds. From when Danielle tells Natalie that the death of Bill Peschel has been confirmed by police as a homicide up until Stottlemeyer is arrested, the novel continues to follow Natalie and Monk with Natalie narrating, but also follows a third-person narrated subplot that pursues Lieutenant Disher. Randy has given himself the nickname Bullitt, after the film starring Steve McQueen. He has started calling Jack Lansdale, a new transfer into the homicide division, "Jackal". Stottlemeyer calls to Randy from his office. The captain's mood has been getting much worse since the reduced operating budget and the conference. Now, Slade has grabbed all of the glory for Rhonda Carnagie's arrest and humiliated the department, and Randy has heard about how Stottlemeyer attacked Braddock. The captain tells Randy that he has a new homicide to investigate that will test his ability to lead: it's Braddock himself. He was found dead in his hotel room this morning. As Disher and Lansdale drive towards the crime scene, Disher reviews the instances of abuse and statements from Braddock's victims. Reading the files causes Disher's nausea to reach a point that he vomits into the street in front of a Japanese tour group. Examining the crime scene, the medical examiner tells Disher that Braddock died of strangulation. Lansdale is a little curious when Disher tells Dr. Hetzer to look for traces of the comforter. Disher explains that things look as though Braddock was being strangled but fought back. The killer then pushed Braddock onto the bed and suffocated him. At the hotel where Braddock was murdered, Disher has found no surveillance footage of the killer. He stops by Stottlemeyer's office to ask him exactly why the file says he was at the Dorchester Hotel the night before. Stottlemeyer explains that he was there at 9:30 PM because a cop said that Braddock was taking bribes from gang members running meth labs from their mobile homes in the desert. The cop never showed up. Disher explains that Braddock died around 10:00 PM, and whoever did it also turned up the air conditioning to prevent anyone from knowing the exact time of death. In the meanwhile, Monk has been going through the new case files when Danielle shows up with background information about Bill Peschel. Monk was right in that Carol and Phil Atwater aren't a prosperous upper-middle-class family. Phil apparently lost his job months ago - he leaves the house each morning with a jacket and a tie but sits in a chair at a Barnes & Noble doing crossword puzzles. It seems possible that Carol and her husband planned the murder of her father. By posing as an obituary writer, Danielle has gotten more information from Carol about her father's early life. He took over the tavern in 1970, and became respected within the police department when he gave them tips to track the people who killed his friend. Natalie picks Monk up as they head to the Barnes & Noble where Phil Atwater is sitting during the day. Phil is just about to leave when Natalie informs him that they know he was fired months ago. It is possible that he murdered his father-in-law for the money, but he quickly is proven to have not been involved. However, he is guilty of shoplifting. Monk has observed Phil removing many of the anti-theft devices on a Murder, She Wrote novel. Phil may not be the killer, but he does provide a rather important tip: ten years ago, Peschel made a lot of money through investment in InTouchSpace. Disher finds a file from Forensics on his desk that morning. Polyester found on Braddock's neck has been traced back to the Continental, a type of tie sold at Walmart stores. Disher remembers seeing that tie before somewhere. Feeling nauseous, Disher tells Lansdale to round up several officers and head to Stottlemeyer's apartment to wait for Disher to bring a search warrant. As Lansdale and his team search Stottlemeyer's apartment, Disher sits wracked with the guilt of betraying his friend and mentor. A detective from Wichita staying in the room next to Braddock's recalls hearing someone enter the room and break a glass. The tie found in the trash at the captain's apartment matches the fibers at the crime scene. Stottlemeyer still states that he never killed Braddock even with a motive. However, it's the captain's fingerprints that are on the glass, and so Disher arrests Stottlemeyer. Meanwhile, Monk and Natalie are pursuing the mystery of Steve Wurzel. He was motorcycling from San Francisco to Mendocino in the fog, but he never arrived in Mendocino. He went missing on the coastal road. Natalie finds several strange clues like Wurzel buying Peschel's business and both investing in InTouchSpace. It's clear that Monk is suffering from case overload. As they drive along, Natalie calls Danielle asking to arrange an appointment with Linda Wurzel. Back at the apartment, Monk finishes his Intertect cases while Natalie hones her detective skills by reading Murder, She Wrote. The captain calls asking them to come to the jail. At first, they think that Lucarelli asked for them, so they are shocked to see Stottlemeyer in a jumpsuit. Stottlemeyer explains his situation, asking for Monk to clear his name. At police headquarters, Randy has been promoted to Acting Captain and has moved into Stottlemeyer's office. Natalie is tempted to slap him, although Disher says he was following the evidence and hopes to clear the captain's name. He tells them that they are not allowed to look at the Braddock file, but Monk and Natalie immediately head to the scene of the crime. At the hotel, Monk immediately proves that Stottlemeyer is innocent. There are four identical drinking glasses in the room, but in the crime scene photos, there are five. The fifth glass, the one Stottlemeyer's fingerprints were on, was obviously planted there later. As they leave the hotel, they run into Slade in the lobby. Slade says they need to talk about how with the way Monk is working, he is eventually going to destroy himself. Back at the jail, Stottlemeyer suggests that they look at Braddock's arrest records. He tells Monk and Natalie that a closer look at some of these arrests will bring up note that they came with the help of a confidential informant. Natalie calls Danielle and has her meet them at Monk's apartment. When Danielle enters (and Monk spends 30 minutes washing his hands), Natalie tells Danielle that she has realized how Slade has been using the GPS systems to track her and Monk around on their cases. But Danielle also has the information they need on Linda Wurzel and Dalberg Enterprises. Linda Wurzel is Dalberg Enterprises - Dalberg being her maiden name. She has an office downtown and an estate in Sea Cliff, and three days a week has a standing appointment at JoAnne's beauty salon. They meet Wurzel, but after Monk freaks out about the skin cell eating fish, he and Natalie explain how Braddock's murder and Peschel's murder might be connected. The use of these creatures to eat dead skin cells is too much for Monk, who borrows Natalie's cell phone and places a call. Soon, the Department of Homeland Security arrives, and Monk solves the case. However, in a most unusual way, it turns out that Natalie has also solved the case - all she has been in need of is for Monk to tighten all the loose ends. Peschel sold his business ten years ago, around the same time that Steve Wurzel vanished on the road. Linda Wurzel was their connection. At that same time, Slade quit the SFPD, and started Intertect by using the money of his InTouchSpace investment. Monk also remembers that on the day that he and Natalie first became private eyes at Intertect, Danielle told them how Slade used his investment money to start the company. It is here that Monk is on the same page as Natalie: Slade killed Steve Wurzel, Bill Peschel, and Paul Braddock. Monk remembers how Peschel told them, and infers that he probably also told Braddock. It proves that Slade killed both of them and framed Stottlemeyer for Braddock's murder. As they already know, Peschel worked a tavern in the Tenderloin for several years. He was a confidential informant who sold tips to Paul Braddock (who was working with the SFPD then), Nicholas Slade and Leland Stottlemeyer. Ten years ago, he sold his place to Linda Wurzel and retired with an InTouchSpace stock investment. Natalie remembers how when she, Stottlemeyer and Monk went to see Peschel, he was living in his daughter's house and diagnosed with dementia. He thought he was still running his tavern, and that Stottlemeyer and Monk were cops who had come to him seeking information. She also remembers Peschel mentioning something about a smash-and-grab and about a rich woman who came in to hire a hit man to kill her husband and make it look like an accident, and she realizes who exactly he was talking about: he was talking about Linda Wurzel. In 1998, Linda Wurzel went to Bill's Tavern, seeking a hit man to kill her husband. She probably figured that she would increase her odds of getting someone at the tavern. Peschel gave the tip to Slade. Slade, who was still a detective with the police department, posed as a hit man and met her. But instead of arresting her, he realized that this was too good a tip to pass up. He ran Steve Wurzel off the road somewhere between San Francisco and Mendocino. His body drifted out to sea and was never found. Whether or not Peschel helped him, they both got paid. Linda Wurzel bought Peschel's bar and gave both of them InTouchSpace stock. Slade used the investment to start Intertect. Everyone was happy, that is until Peschel became senile and started calling his police friends with ten year old tips. Slade could not take the risk that Stottlemeyer or Braddock would piece together what Peschel was telling them. He realized that they had seen too much, so he had to silence them by any means possible. Taking care of Peschel was the easiest part, but then Slade had to get Stottlemeyer and Braddock out of the way. He was incredibly worried, until he saw Braddock humiliate the captain at the conference. He stole Stottlemeyer's glass, being careful not to put his own fingerprints on the glass. Slade's luck improved when Monk got fired and Braddock attacked Stottlemeyer at Peschel's wake. Knowing how well Monk could break cases without even looking at them, Slade hired him and Natalie and set them to work. He was trying to keep them busy and prevent them from knowing what was going on. Just before meeting Monk, Natalie and Stottlemeyer at the Alan Carnegie murder scene, Slade killed Peschel. He killed him in the house, and threw his body in the pool, and staged the scene to make it look like an accident. Braddock was the next on Slade's list of people to be eliminated. The night after Stottlemeyer attacked Braddock at the wake, Slade dressed himself in a beefeater suit, and took the elevator up to the seventh floor. Intertect was the company responsible for security, so people naturally thought that he could have been there for some other matter. He brought with him the glass carrying Stottlemeyer's fingerprints, and a tie of the same type and color as the captain's. He entered Braddock's room, talked with Braddock for a few minutes, and then strangled him with the Continental tie. Braddock, however, fought back, and Slade suffocated him on the bed. The sounds that the Wichita detective was hearing from his room were the sounds of the struggle behind the wall. Slade planted the glass at the crime scene to frame Stottlemeyer. He knew very well that the Captain had thrown out his previous tie earlier that afternoon after Braddock had attacked him - he knew that the blood on the tie would match 100% and that the fibers would match as well. He knew very well that Stottlemeyer would have an obvious motive, and even lured him to the hotel by faking the phone call, that way, the Captain would have an alibi for the time of the murder. No one in the department, not even Disher, would suspect Slade as being involved. Monk realizes however that they cannot prove any of this. Natalie realizes that either Linda Wurzel will talk to Slade and say they met her, or that Slade is tracking them. Natalie explains how she discovered the tracking devices in the GPS and the keylogger programs of their computers, and the possibility that the phones have wiretaps placed on them. Not wanting Slade to know where they have been, Monk tells Natalie to call Julie and have her meet them at his apartment. He instructs Julie to drive the Lexus across town so that Slade will be distracted. In the meanwhile, Monk and Natalie will switch out the Lexus for Natalie's own car. He also has Danielle meet them in her own car. Monk, Natalie and Danielle make their way to Linda Wurzel's street for what will be Danielle's first stakeout. Shortly after they park, Wurzel arrives. During the stakeout, Natalie turns her attention to the Braddock case. It's clear that Slade was the guy in the beefeater suit on the elevator tape, but it doesn't prove he was at the hotel at the same time that Stottlemeyer was. After all, Slade could have created a false pretense as to why he was at the hotel that night, since Intertect is responsible for the hotel's security, and he could have erased himself from the tapes. When Wurzel pulls out heading towards Danielle's car, Natalie gives her a call. They follow Wurzel across town to Mission Bay and an abandoned warehouse. Parking a short distance away, Monk and Natalie sneak into the warehouse, Natalie muting her cell phone and setting it on speed dial so that they won't be seen. They observe Wurzel talking to Slade. When Slade pulls a gun with a silencer, Monk steps out to confront him. Slade asks them who is driving his Lexus all over Berkeley, which causes Natalie to forget about the case and ask herself what Julie is doing that far away in the middle of the night. Monk explains to Slade that killing Steve Wurzel was his undoing. He was the only person who attended the conference who knew Peschel, Braddock and Stottlemeyer. Slade turns his gun at them and is about to shoot when Danielle leaps from a pile of bricks and knocks the gun out of his hand. Natalie snatches up the gun, aiming it at Slade, who now threatens to break Danielle's neck. Slade taunts Natalie, saying that she can't shoot a gun, although Natalie has been trained in firearms and met Monk after she killed an intruder in her house. Slade releases Danielle just as Disher and the police arrive to arrest him and Wurzel for their crimes. Disher congratulates Monk for his work and clearing Stottlemeyer's name. The open 9-1-1 call is as good as any confession. Monk disinfects the Captain's office before it is put to use. Stottlemeyer is exonerated and goes back at work. He is constantly repeating some of the things Natalie said on the open 9-1-1 call, and says that she'll be soon called "Dirty Natalie". He accepts Disher's apologies, but tells him that he was just doing his job. Later, Stottlemeyer shows up later at Monk's apartment to officially say that Monk is back on their payroll as a consultant. He got the chief to reconsider by using political blackmail, threatening to explain his story to the TV stations if Monk wasn't rehired and the old budget brought back. With regards to the trial, Slade happened to be wearing a wire when he met Linda, and he has kept a recording of their conversation ever since for insurance. Monk prepares to return to being a consultant to the San Francisco Police Department, the position he really belongs in.
3698502	/m/09w0kp	The Ashram	Sattar Memon	2000-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dr. Jonathan Kingsley, traveling to a Himalayan spiritual hermitage, tries to save himself from suicidal thoughts after the death of his wife. This hermitage, known as an Ashram, was meant to provide him peace even as he sought to rehabilitate others through volunteer work. But he never expected the practices and rituals he would discover, or imagined himself trying to save one woman from her unwanted future. As the doctor searches for an excuse to keep on living, Seeta struggles to keep her own husband alive, not only out of love, but for her own safety. The townspeople of Baramedi, bowing to the wishes of a local landowner (nicknamed Satan), have decided that when her husband dies, Seeta should climb atop a burning pyre to burn with his body. This practice of suttee, out of use for many years, brings Jonathan to her town in an effort to save her, but when he arrives at the pyre, he realizes there is more to his journey and that—unbeknownst to him—the woman’s safety is intricately tied with his own spiritual salvation. A woman's emancipation from oppressive culture and fear of men; a man's overcoming of inability to cope with death and learning to love—again!
3699793	/m/09w2l7	The Grass Harp	Truman Capote	1951	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with Collin Fenwick losing his mother, and then his father, and moving into his aunts' (Dolly and Verena) house. Catherine, the servant, also lives in the house and gets along, for the most part, only with Dolly. Dolly is famous for her medicine, which she makes by going out into the woods with Catherine and Collin and randomly picking plants. They then got to an old treehouse, which is propped up in a Chinaberry tree. One day, after Dolly has an argument with Verena (Verena wants to mass produce Dolly's medicine), Dolly, Collin, and Catherine leave their home and start walking. They go to the treehouse in the Chinaberry tree, and decide to camp out there. Verena, meanwhile, informs the sheriff of her sister's disappearance; the Sheriff organizes a search party, and eventually arrests Catherine. During the course of the novel, others come to live in the treehouse, such as Judge Cool and Riley Henderson. In a climactic event, a confrontation among the search party and the residents of the tree house leads to Riley getting shot in the shoulder. After Judge Cool discusses the situation, everyone agrees that it was a pointless struggle, and old relationships are invigorated once again. Many people leave as friends. The story ends with how a "grass harp, gathering, telling, a harp of voices remembering a story."
3699819	/m/09w2m8	Avenger	Frederick Forsyth	2003	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first act of the novel introduces Calvin Dexter, the main character of the story. Dexter is described as a lawyer in his early fifties with a passion for running triathlons to keep in shape. The book digs into his past and reveals that he is a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran, and that his last tour of duty was as a tunnel rat, an extremely élite and secret task force that climbed deep into the underground catacomb of Vietcong tunnels to hunt down the enemy in their own lairs. He was married and had a daughter who at the age of 16 was lured away and forced into prostitution by Latino gang members and eventually murdered. Dexter hunts down his daughter's killers in Panama and executes them, then returns home only to discover that his beloved wife couldn't deal with the death of their only child, and committed suicide during his absence. He moves away, and becomes only a small town lawyer in his public face. But when the reason and price is right, he transforms himself into the "Avenger" and delivers justice by 'rendering' foreign criminals to the United States (not killing them), so that they will stand trial for their crimes against Americans. Intertwined into the backstory of Calvin Dexter is the narrative of a young American volunteer from a very privileged family who was murdered while delivering aid in Bosnia during the Bosnian War. As the second act kicks into gear, the boy's grandfather, a Canadian billionaire named Stephen Edmonds, hires a tracker to discover the identity of his sole son's killer and eventually learns him to be Zoran Zilic, a sadistic hitman for Slobodan Milošević's Serbian regime. The CIA had followed the movements of Zilic during the war, but let him slip off the radar after the fall of Milošević. Edmonds then learns of the services provided by the Avenger and hires him to pursue Zilic and bring him to trial. It is then revealed that a secret section in the CIA, headed by Paul Devereaux III, a dedicated patriot, has been working with Zilic in recent months with plans to use him as bait to eliminate another terrorist threat &mdash; Osama bin Laden himself. From the CIA’s point of view, Zilic, despite his horrific crimes, had been marginalized as a result of the end of hostilities in Bosnia and could be used to eliminate a much larger threat to the American way of life. The third act details the actions of the "Avenger" as he tracks Zilic to his palatial and fully self-sufficient farm/compound in South America. Meanwhile, the CIA operatives work furiously to prevent the "Avenger" from nabbing Zilic. The Avenger is tipped off by an unknown source that the CIA is onto him and evades them at every turn. He successfully manages to transport Zilic to Key West and into police custody. Just as the story ends, the date is stated to be September 10, 2001.
3701817	/m/09w64v	Voices From The Gathering Storm: The Web of Ecological-Societal Crisis			{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 A collection of essays that discuss social, cultural, and technological factors contributing to our environmental predicament. It proposes the need for a change in the religion of consumption, a change in our definitions of progress and success from increased consumption to increased stewardship of our diminishing resources and shrinking planet.
3703253	/m/09w872	The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The player characters explore a stepped pyramid deep in the heart of a tropical jungle&mdash;the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. The characters must penetrate this Mayan-style temple, which is full of tricks and traps. Some of the traps include cursed items, firebombs, and triggered statues.
3706019	/m/09wddh	Norstrilia	Cordwainer Smith	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rod McBan is the last male descendent of one of the oldest Norstrilian families, and is the last heir to one of the best ranches, the Station of Doom. As such, he has been spared the culling three times, though he is generally considered unfit, as his ability to communicate telepathically with other Norstrilians is erratic and unreliable. After his last test &mdash; which he finally passes with the aid of a Lord of the Instrumentality and his own freak telepathic talents &mdash; he learns that an envious former friend, who suffers from an allergy to stroon and so is condemned to live a mere 150 years or so, seeks to kill him, using the pretext that the test was biased and administered unfairly. Rod survives one assassination attempt. To escape the danger, he amasses an immense fortune overnight by playing the futures market in stroon, following a plan formulated by his ancient computer (which has certain more-or-less illegal quasi-military capabilities) which was passed down to him by an eccentric ancestor. By the next day, he is the wealthiest person in history. Noticing this, the Instrumentality changes the rules so it cannot happen again, but in typical fashion, lets him keep his money to see what he will do with it. Wild rumors begin to circulate about him. He is believed to have "bought Old Earth" (the home planet of mankind), though the reality of his convoluted financial deals and investments is considerably more complex. For his safety, Rod is sent to Earth, where his unprecedented fortune quickly makes him a magnet for all manner of crooks and revolutionaries. After a series of adventures among the "underpeople" (animals genetically modified to resemble humans and possessing intellects that sometimes surpass their masters, used as slaves and generally despised) in the company of the bewitching Cat-woman C'mell, he meets their leader, E'Telekeli, an experimental creature of bird origin with enormous psychic powers. In exchange for most of Rod's immense fortune (to be used to campaign for the rights of the underpeople), he and Lord Jestocost, a Lord of the Instrumentality who is sympathetic to the underpeople's cause, send Rod safely back to Norstrilia, after fixing his telepathic disability and providing a psychological remedy for Rod's enemy.
3706043	/m/09wdfj	Only Revolutions	Mark Z. Danielewski	2006-09-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The story alternates between two different narratives: Sam and Hailey, and Hailey and Sam, wild and wayward teenagers who never grow old. With an evolving stable of cars, the teenagers move through various places and moments in time as they try to outrace history. As the story proceeds, one can note that many events are perceptual and not certain. By reading both stories some sense can be made from this poetic styled puzzle. The words written are a vague mix of poetry and stream of consciousness prose. Both Hailey and Sam depict their feelings as well as ideas and thoughts towards one another. It is truly difficult to summarize the plot as most readers will understand the parts of story in different ways. It can also be noted that the end very much leads into the beginning. It is possible, after finishing the book, to continue the story from the beginning a la James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
3708005	/m/09whnm	Sharpe's Battle	Bernard Cornwell	1995-05-08	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book opens with an encounter near the Spanish Portuguese border between Sharpe and his company and a group of French soldiers in grey uniforms, caught in the act of raping a young Spanish villager. Their leader, Brigadier-General Guy Loup arranges a parlay to retrieve his men, but Sharpe, appalled by the rape and massacre of all the other villagers, including children, orders the French prisoners shot. Loup swears revenge against Sharpe. Back at headquarters, Sharpe is informed by Major Michael Hogan that the Real Compania Irlandesa, the royal bodyguard of the captive King of Spain have escaped from Madrid to enlist with the native Spanish armies. As the British wish for Wellesley to be made Generalissimo of the Spanish Armies, it is imperative that the Compania be treated with honour, but as the Royal Guard are drawn entirely from Irish exiles bitterly opposed to the British occupation of their homeland, they pose a risk to the security of the British army. Sharpe is ordered to take them to a far away fort and drill them mercilessly in order to encourage desertion, while the Wagon Master-General Colonel Claude Runciman, a monstrously fat and idolent man, is appointed to soothe the pride of the Compania's Spanish and Irish officers. Unfortunately Pierre Ducos, a French intelligence officer, has placed an agent within the Compania Irlandesa, Dona Juanita de Elia, a Spanish noblewoman, the mistress both of the Compania's commander, Lord Kiely, and of Loup. Rumours of British atrocities in Ireland, backed up by forged American newspapers, seem to ensure the Compania will desert, as planned, but Sharpe finds it hard to resist his instincts to turn the demoralised exiles into real soldiers. He persuades Runciman to divert arms and ammunition to the Compania, and conspires with a local partisan, El Castrador, to kill and mutilate a party of deserters to deter the rest. The Compania are joined at the fort by a Portuguese infantry battalion. Sharpe, concerned by the threat posed by Loup's personal vendetta against him, is forced to confess to the illegal execution of Loup's men. That night, Loup attacks the fort, massacres the Portuguese, and is only driven off by the explosion of the ammunition wagons, set alight by Sharpe's friend, Tom Garrard who sacrifices himself in the process.. Sharpe's earlier confession and the imminent enquiry into the disaster threaten to end Sharpe's career. To avoid this, Sharpe attacks Loup's hideout but finds it deserted, except for the Dona Juanita, who is exposed as the enemy agent, and courier of the forged newspapers. Sharpe sleeps with Juanita, and lets her go the following morning, thus frustrating Hogan's hopes of uncovering her accomplice in the Compania. The disgraced Kiely commits suicide, and his funeral is presided over by the Regiment's chaplain, Father Sarsfield. In a private conversation over the open grave, Hogan informs Sarsfield that he is aware of his treachery, but lacks proof. Sarsfield attempts to kill Hogan, but is shot by Sharpe, and buried with Kiely. The French, led by Marshal André Masséna, prepare to draw Wellington into battle and cut the British off from their only route of retreat. Wellington concentrates his forces on the village of Fuentes de Onoro. Still in disgrace, Sharpe, Runciman and the Real Compania Irlandese are left guarding the ammunition wagons. Concentrated French assaults push the British out of the village and back steadily up the hill. Wellington releases his reserves, the 74th, 45th and the 88th Connaught Rangers, who beat back the French into the village. However, the British are in turn counter-attacked by the Loup Brigade. With Sharpe's encouragement, Runciman "offers" to lead the Spanish Regiment to reinforce the Highlanders and Connaught Rangers. They are successful, and as the Loup Brigade falters the French fall back, and Wellington sends the line forward, winning the battle. Loup and Sharpe duel in the ford over the river. At a crucial moment in the fight, Sharpe is shot and wounded by the Dona Juanita, who is in turn killed by Harper. Despite his wound, Sharpe disarms and drowns Loup. The Real Compania Irlandese are sent to the Spanish Junta in Cadiz with honour and Wellington becomes Generalissimo of the Spanish armies. The case against Sharpe and Runciman is dropped, in light of their bravery, and lack of evidence.
3708485	/m/09wj_s	The King's Fifth	Scott O'Dell	1966	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story takes place in a time when the Spanish adventurers known as Conquistadors roamed the New World of the Americas in search of the mythical gold treasures of the dethroned Native Americans. Estéban is a teenage cartographer of the Spanish Conquistador Army. The story starts when he is imprisoned, is awaiting trial for tax evasion. More specifically, he is suspected of finding a treasure without submitting the Quinto Real, also known as the "King's Fifth", a tax levied by the King of Spain on precious metals. However, every authoritative figure in his trial or his jail wants one thing - to get Estéban to reveal the location of the gold he found. Estéban agrees to draw his jail guard a map, but uses the provided writing materials to write a secret journal. In this journal Estéban describes how he joined a small army band of Spaniards to seek the "Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola". Their guide on this dangerous journey was a volunteering younger teenage Native American girl, Zia. She was brought along by Estéban, who met her while in the army from which the band was divided. Being the only one in the group without any political agenda (although Estéban does realize her personal agenda eventually), Zia was also the only one to eventually preserve both her life and freedom.
3709550	/m/09wln3	Indiscretions of Archie	P. G. Wodehouse		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The book tells the story of impoverished, embarrassment-prone Drone Archibald "Archie" Moffam (pronounced "Moom"), and his difficult relationship with art-collecting, hotel-owning millionaire father-in-law Daniel Brewster, father of Archie's new bride Lucille. Archie's attempts to ingratiate himself with Brewster only get him further into trouble.
3709628	/m/09wlpy	The Swineherd	Hans Christian Andersen	1841-12-20	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A poor prince wants to marry the Emperor's daughter and sends her two beautiful gifts, a nightingale and a rose. The princess rejects the humble gifts because they're real and natural, rather than artificial. The prince then disguises himself and applies for the position of swineherd at the palace. Once on the job, he creates a musical pot. The princess slogs through the mud to the swineherd's hut and pays ten kisses for the pot. When the swineherd follows the pot with the creation of a musical rattle, she pays one hundred kisses for it. The Emperor, disgusted that his daughter would kiss a swineherd for a toy, casts her out. The prince, having found the princess unworthy of his love, washes his face, dons his royal raiment, and spurns the princess as her father did. The princess is left outside the palace door singing dolefully.
3711183	/m/09wpgx	Tunes for Bears to Dance To	Robert Cormier	1992	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Henry’s family moves to a new town to run away from the memories of their recently passed son, Eddie, who was hit by a car in which the driver instantly drove away, never to be seen again. Henry’s father is traumatized by Eddie's death and becomes very quiet and no longer works, while Henry's mother works long hours in order to support their family. Another problem Henry faces is that there is no stone to mark Eddie's grave. Henry also contributes to his family by working at a grocery store for a man named Mr. Hairston, a deceptive old man who makes rude comments about the townsfolk that would walk by his store. He is a perfectionist, which is why he insults many people, including his wife and daughter. He appears to have a special liking to Henry. Every day, Henry watches a curious old man leave the 'crazy house' near his apartment and disappear down the street. Henry follows him one day to an art center, where he meets him in person and learns his name is Mr. Levine and he is a holocaust survivor who lost his family to the SS. He goes to the art center every day to carve out a model of his old hometown town. One day, Henry tells Mr. Hairston about Mr. Levine, who becomes strangely interested. Later, Henry asks Mr. Hairston if he can somehow find him a good gravestone to put over Eddie's grave, which he, surprisingly, agrees to buy for him. However, Mr. Hairston one day tells Henry that he'll be fired at the end of the week for no reason. Further into the week, Mr. Hairston tells Henry that he'll let him keep the job and the sculpture at one condition: destroy Mr. Levine's model village. He also said he had close relationships with Henry's principal and his mother's boss and threatens to have his mother fired and his school reputation collapse if he was not to do what Mr. Hairston wants. The reward, if Henry was to destroy the replica village would be: raise his mom's pay, let him keep his job, and give him the grave sculpture. Not knowing what he should do, he stays at the art center overnight just in case and was about to destroy the village with a mallet. Henry decides not to smash it, but a rat startles him and he drops the tool on the village, destroying part of it. On his way home, Mr. Hairston waits for him somewhere on the street and explains why he wanted the village destroyed: "Because he's a Jew" and to torment Henry by taking away his title of 'good boy'. Henry then says that he does not want the rewards Mr. Hairston offers. A few weeks afterwards, Henry and his family move back to the town they lived in previously.
3711351	/m/09wprz	Somnium	Johannes Kepler		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is the tale of Duracotus, who was the son of an Icelandic witch named Fiolxhilda. During his youth she banished Duracotus to Denmark for five years. Upon his return, she decided to share some of her secrets with him. She explained that her instructor had been a demon who dwelt on the Moon. During a Solar Eclipse, the lunar demons were able to travel between the Earth and the Moon via a bridge of darkness. The son decided he wanted to make this journey, and so he was transported to the Moon by demons. To ease his journey he was given a drowsing draught and moist sponges to hold under his nose. He was carried to the Lagrangian point between the Earth and Moon, then allowed to drift down to the lunar surface. Thus the author understood some of the effects of gravity and the need for environmental protection above the atmosphere.
3712953	/m/09wrs0	The Gates of Rome	Conn Iggulden	2003-01-06	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It tells of the harsh realities of life in the Ancient Rome, not only for the nobilitas but also for the slave population, who revolt and kill Gaius' father during a siege on their villa. As the two boys begin their careers (Gaius as a senator and Marcus as a legionary), a political war is being played out in the senate, between two powerful Generals: Cornelius Sulla and Gaius' uncle Gaius Marius.
3713371	/m/09ws61	The Gods of War	Conn Iggulden	2006-01-02	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Having crossed the Rubicon (the southern border of one of the provinces he controlled, Cisalpine Gaul) Julius Caesar leads his veterans of the Gallic Wars toward Rome, aware that the dictator Pompey has declared him an enemy of the state and his actions will likely end in Civil War. During the journey, his army encounters mild resistance; however, the legions are no match for veterans of Gaul, and Caesar forces the surrender without a single man being killed. He then pardons the legion - the first of many acts of propaganda in the coming war. The speed of his journey south catches Pompey by surprise, who consequently flees to Greece along with the majority of the Roman Senate. This leaves Rome free for Caesar to enter. He installs Mark Anthony as governor of Rome - much to the disgust of Caesar's lifelong friend Marcus Brutus. Brutus' anger forces him to betray his friend and defect to Pompey, a move which stuns Caesar. Caesar eventually takes his army to Greece to face an increasingly ill Pompey, who has a much larger force with reinforced supply lines and defended towns. As Pompey's illness takes hold, he begins to make mistakes - including missing the chance to rout Caesar's forces following a failed night-raid on a fort, fearing it to be a trap. Eventually the armies meet at the Battle of Pharsalus, with Caesar emerging victor from the jaws of defeat. Caesar finds the injured Brutus and forgives his lifelong friend for his betrayal - much to the anger of his general and nephew Octavian. Pompey flees the field, forcing Caesar to chase him; first to Asia Minor and finally to Alexandria in Egypt. It is here that Caesar is presented with the head of Pompey by representatives of boy-king Ptolemy XIII, much to his anger. While in Egypt, Caesar is introduced to Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and sister of the king. She asks him for help in returning her to the throne after Ptolemy's advisors had her banished. Caesar raids the royal palace and captures the king, returning him to a defended house. He then engages in a romance with his ally Cleopatra. They then make a number of demands in return for the release of her brother. When Ptolemy is released he immediately unleashes his army on the house, besieging Caesar's army. Caesar breaks the siege, by starting a fire in Alexandria port as a distraction, and Ptolemy and his advisors are killed. Cleopatra and Caesar have a son together, Ptolemy Caesarion. Caesar takes them back to Rome, and begins to announce his plans to create an Empire and rule the world as king. This does not sit well with the Roman public, who were promised a reintroduction of the Roman Republic after the years of dictatorship following Cornelius Sulla and Pompey. Most unhappy with this change in heart is Brutus, who joins a plot to have the Rex(They were afraid he would be another rex) killed. At this time, Caesar had been planning a campaign in Parthia in an attempt to expand the Roman lands and in a small way to possibly avenge the death of the old Consul Crassus, who had been a possible friend and a major character in The Death of Kings and The Field of Swords. Crassus had died whilst commanding a legion Caesar and Pompey had trained for him. On the Ides of March Caesar is led to the Theatre of Pompey, and is assassinated by many of the Senators and Marcus Brutus. The date had been prophesized as his death by his companion Cabera in The Field of Swords shortly before he died.
3719648	/m/09x2ks	The Scarlatti Inheritance	Robert Ludlum	1970	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Washington during World War II, word is received that an elite member of the Nazi High Command is willing to defect and divulge information that will shorten the war. But his defection entails the release of the ultra-top-secret file on the Scarlatti Inheritance— a file whose contents will destroy many of the Western world's greatest and most illustrious reputations if they are made known. From there, the book takes itself back a few decades, and tells the story of a corrupt American soldier, his billionaire mother, and an agent working for one of the smallest secret service departments in the world.
3720275	/m/09x41t	The Ill-Made Mute	Cecilia Dart-Thornton	2001-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Isse Tower is a House of the Stormriders. Stormriders, also known as Relayers, are messengers of the air for people of the high status. The Stormriders fly on winged steeds called eotaurs, and Windships that levitate above the ground because of sildron. Sildron is one of the most valuable metals in the empire of Erith. The metal sildron has the property of repelling the ground, thus, lifting objects. This metal is used to make the shoes of the Eotaurs and in the building of the Windships to sail the skies. There is only one other metal that can abolish the effect of sildron; andalum. The foundling has no memory of who he was before he was found, but knows only that he is different from all others. Soon, he becomes sick of being treated badly and plans to escape to a city to find a cure for his paradox-ivy poisoning. He stows away on a Windship to escape, but shortly after he is discovered, the ship is attacked by pirates. He is captured by the pirates, and makes friends with one of them: Sianadh, who names the mute, Imrhien ("Butterfly"). During this time he discovers that he is really a she, and when danger threatens is rescued by Sianadh by jumping off the wind ship together. They travel through the forest following a map of Sianadh's, which points them towards a sildron mine. Through the forest, they encounter magical creatures called wights. There are two different types of wights: seelie, mischievous and unseelie, evil. Much to Imrhien's surprise, they actually find the mine. Due to an injury Sianadh has sustained, Imrhien is the only one who can climb the side to an entrance to the cave. Once in the mine, Sianadh and Imrhien find that they are immensely wealthy. They decide to sail down the river to the major city to meet up with Sianadh's family. Imrhien's mind is still set on finding a cure for the facial deformity. When in the city, a wizard promises to cure the deformity, but instead makes it even worse. This coupled with Sianadh's vow to get revenge on the wizard causes his family to be closely watched. When Sianadh and his nephew go back to the mine, Imrhien and Sianadh's niece are kidnapped. They are eventually saved, but then hear that Sianadh is killed. Ethlinn sends her children (Diarmid and Muirne) and Imrhien on a caravan to Caermelor. The caravan is attacked by the Wild Hunt and any survivors scattered. Diarmid, Sianadh's nephew, and Imrhien find each other and travel together in a hope to find Muirne, Diarmid's sister. Along the way they are discovered by one of the King Emperor's Dainnan rangers, Thorn. Everything about Thorn seems perfect. At first, Diarmid is jealous, but he comes to marvel at the Dainnan's knowledge and skill. Imrhien falls in love with him, but is ashamed of her face and knows that no one could love someone so ugly. With Thorn's help, the trio easily traverse the wilderness. Through a series of adventures, Muirne is found and Imrhien continues the journey with the Dainnan, Thorn, to find the Carlin who might heal the deformities. Before they part, Thorn takes three of Imrhien's hairs and wraps them around his finger in a ring. When he asks Imrhien what she wants (since she won't return to court with him) she signs to him saying that she would like to wish him a safe journey with her voice. He unexpectedly kisses her and leaves. Imrhien travels the last part of the road leading to the Carlin's house and receives treatment for the facial scars caused by paradox ivy. The book ends with two of Imrhien's afflictions healed, though not all.
3721827	/m/09x765	A Fate Totally Worse than Death	Paul Fleischman	1995-10-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 is a parody of young adult horror fiction. It is about three high school girls, Danielle, Brooke and Tiffany, popular, privileged and malicious. They are known as the Huns of Cliffside High. A beautiful foreign exchange student from Norway named Helga steals their spotlight and grabs the attention of the school stud Drew. They become insanely jealous and accuse Helga of being a ghost because of her pale skin and light hair. Determined to win their popularity back, the girls conjure up numerous ways to torture Helga. However, every time the girls try to "mess up" Helga in some way, a strong force holds them back. For example, when she tries to cut off Helga's hair, Brooke becomes completely paralyzed and limp. The paralysis does go away, but they soon begin to notice other changes. Tiffany complains of severe pain in her knuckles and also develops a bladder problem, forcing her to wear diapers, and Danielle is slowly losing all of her teeth while Brooke is losing her hair. The girls also complain of getting liver spots on their skin. Eventually they realize that although they are only in high school, they are aging rapidly and suffering complaints typical of septuagenarians. The horrified girls believe Helga is doing this to them. They think that if they kill Drew, he will become a ghost just like Helga, making her happy enough to grant them mercy. They arrange for Drew and Helga to meet at the park the next night. However, in their attempt to shoot Drew, the girls accidentally shoot Helga instead. Danielle winds up in a hospital bed, plugged into many tubes and practically dying. Mrs. Witt, an elderly woman that she used to visit, talks to her for a while, and then reveals the reason for the girls' problems. Mrs. Witt tells her that Charity Chase, a girl killed by Danielle, Brooke and Tiffany not too long ago because Drew was interested in her, was her granddaughter. She says her friend's husband injected a potion into the girls, making it so the faster their hearts beat, the older they became, as punishment for killing her wonderful granddaughter. Mrs. Witt taunts Danielle for not being able to move, and finally does the same thing Danielle did in the nursing home when she thought Mrs. Witt was asleep—eats all of her cherry truffles.
3724608	/m/09xd23	The Way West	Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr.	1949	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 Former senator William Tadlock leads a wagon train along the Oregon Trail from Missouri with the help of hired guide Dick Summers. After several accidents which cost settlers lives, a mutiny of sorts develops and his position is overtaken by Lije Evans. Soon, different factions develop amongst the people of the train as they try to survive their trek to Oregon.
3724832	/m/09xdc0	Absolute Midnight	Clive Barker	2011-09-27	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Candy Quackenbush begins her adventures by visiting Lagunna Munn and asking the witch to remove Princess Boa's soul from her body. Boa is immediately revealed to be an evil character, and tries to kill Candy herself. Later in the novel, Boa is seen looking for Christopher Carrion on Gorgossium and capturing Finnegan Hob, her old fiancé, during a duel with a dragon. Candy spends the next third of the novel finding out who she is without Boa's soul. She fights her father, Bill Quakenbush, who tries to kill her by stealing all of her memories. She befriends Christopher Carrion and, later, his father, Zephario Carrion, before reuniting them both. Candy also falls in love with a boy named Gazza who immediately loves her as well. Gazza finds out that Malingo the Geshrat is also in love with Candy. Absolute Midnight takes a darker turn compared to the previous two in the "Abarat" series, and in this installment Mater Motley, the Queen of Midnight, releases the Sacbrood from the Pyramids of Xuxux who in turn block out the light in the sky and give the book its name. The Hag is also in league with the Nephauree, a new enemy to both Candy and the Abarat. They are pure evil creatures that come from the darkness behind the stars. During the war, Mater Motley fights the Requiax in Commexo City, who have possessed Rojo Pixler during one of his jaunts undersea. The book climaxes with a large battle on the edge of the Abarat, and readers are introduced to the Void. A Nephauree makes an appearance, Candy uses a piece of the Abarataraba to form a huge glyph to save all of the prisoners, Christopher Carrion and Malingo both prevent Mater Motley from killing Candy, and all of Christopher Carrion's siblings are released from the dolls on Mater Motley's dress. The book ends with Candy, Malingo and Gazza falling through the Void and seemingly climbing up into a new world.
3725127	/m/09xdxw	Blood and Fog	Nancy Holder	2003-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Spike and the current Slayer of 1888 form an alliance to battle the Jack the Ripper, a prostitute-murdering madman. It is learned Jack is not at all human. The alliance fails and Jack survives to come to Sunnydale in the modern day. He has plans, and using a mystical fog, he desires to kill more of the human race, which he hates. Soon, the fog does arise, which is used as cover as a demon army rampages through the streets of Sunnydale. The threat is neutralized; unfortunately there are heavy citizen casualties.
3725744	/m/09xfvg	After Image	Pierce Askegren	2006-01-24	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Sunnydale Drive-In reopens with a dusk-to-dawn festival of classic B movies. Xander has free tickets after working there as a gopher for the construction crew, but as Buffy, Willow, and Cordelia show little interest, he ends up going with Jonathan. Jonathan, like many of the patrons of the drive-in, falls asleep during the night and cannot be re-awakened. Meanwhile Buffy and Angel fight off attacks from a wolf-man and a gang of chain-wielding bikers who seem solid one minute and fade into thin air the next. Other vanishing figures are seen around town, leading Giles and Willow to research ectoplasm. Xander recognizes a picture in one of Giles' old books as the man behind the re-opening of the drive-in: Mr Balsamo, otherwise known as the eighteenth-century occultist Cagliostro. When Giles is kidnapped, Buffy, Angel and Willow head to the drive-in to confront the villain, while Xander and Cordelia stay at the hospital with his victims.
3725750	/m/09xfvt	Carnival of Souls	Nancy Holder	2006-04-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A traveling carnival arrives in Sunnydale. It seems the carnival might be another victim of Sunnydale's weirdness. Nobody seems to be able to remember it arriving despite the many old-style wagons, the numerous performers, and horse-drawn carts. The creepy calliope music seems almost to beckon out to people. Also nobody who goes into Hall of Mirrors comes out exactly the same as they were to start with. Inspired by a pair of once-homely twins now parading around the school like divas, the Scoobs decide to investigate the carnival. It's soon clear that entering comes at a cost above the price of admission. Willow becomes consumed by envy, Cordelia gets greedy, and Xander finds himself overtaken with gluttony. Angel is revealing a dangerous new persona, whilst anger rises in Rupert Giles. More serious still, Buffy's pride starts to threaten those she cares about.
3725788	/m/09xfz7	Colony	Melinda Metz	2005-09-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Mayor Richard Wilkins III invites a woman named Belakane to speak at the local Sunnydale High School. She has a program, "Be the Ultimate You!". It aims to build self-esteem in teenagers. However she is a demon ant-like queen and her so-called self-esteem program is actually a test to find workers to build her colony, and to find mates to expand her populace. She soon reduces students to single trait beings, for example Buffy is reduced to 'aggressive slayer'.
3727530	/m/09xlh_	Night Train	Martin Amis	1997-10-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book is told from the perspective of Detective Mike Hoolihan, a female detective who is charged with the task of finding the motivation for Jennifer Rockwell's suicide. Jennifer, a beautiful astrophysicist with a seemingly perfect life seems to have had no reason to kill herself. Thematically this book touches on cosmology and chaos theory, and their relation to the human condition as a possible motive for suicide. Hoolihan is a recovering alcoholic and former homicide detective who lives with an obese man named Tobe in an unnamed American city (presumably based on Seattle or Portland). She reveals that she had been sexually abused as a child, revolted violently against the abuse at the age of ten, and then pursued a number of affairs with abusive or unworthy men. Despite her disadvantages, she becomes a successful detective before her illness forces her to accept less demanding work seizing assets from criminals. Her experiences lead her to examine gender roles in police work. Her former boss, mentor, and personal friend 'Colonel' Tom Rockwell asks that she investigate the apparent suicide of his daughter Jennifer who, as a beautiful, intelligent, cheerful, popular woman has no obvious reason for taking her own life. Rockwell suspects Jennifer's lover Trader Faulkner, a distinguished academic, of murdering Jennifer. Hoolihan attempts to pressure Faulkner into confessing, but fails. She discovers that Jennifer was taking lithium, met a philandering salesman in the bar of a local hotel, and made uncharacteristic mistakes at work shortly before her death. Hoolihan then deduces that these factors are merely 'blinds' - or clues - deliberately planted by Jennifer for the benefit of an investigation at the behest of her father. Hoolihan concludes that these blinds are meant either to provide the less astute investigator with a sense of 'closure', or to indicate a greater bleakness, or nihilism. After breaking down while attempting to communicate her findings to Rockwell - who immediately expresses his concern - Hoolihan heads for the nearest bar, knowing that the alcohol will kill her.
3727714	/m/09xlyl	Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness				 The story of Good Apollo takes a step outside the science fiction narrative of the first three chapters and examines the life of the Writer, a character who is crafting the lives of the protagonist Claudio and his companions in the form of a fictional story. The graphic novel alternates between the two different worlds of Claudio the Writer and Claudio the Character, which can be confusing for one unacquainted with the concept as the Writer and Character are similar in appearance. The novel opens with a dream taking place in the mind of Claudio the Character, in which he sits in priest's garb in the Writer's study looking upon the phrase "God Only Knows" scrawled in front of him in blood (a line repeated in the song "Mother May I"). He is approached by several skeletal figures begging for Claudio to save them. As their protests become more emphatic and they begin to overwhelm Claudio, he realizes he is dreaming and forces himself to awaken by stabbing himself in the hand with a screwdriver. Aboard his uncle Jesse's ship, the Grail Arbor, he explains the dreams to Jesse and his daughter Chase as the enslaved souls of the Keywork pleading for liberation. Jesse and Chase (who appears to have some prophetic power) believe the only way to free them is by destroying Heaven's Fence and that Claudio is a messiah-like figure called the Crowing who has the power to do this. Claudio, however, is having trouble accepting this daunting role. The novel's focus now shifts to the Writer, who resides in Rockland County, New York. He is haunted by memories of a former lover, Erica Court, who had been unfaithful. The Writer suffers a series of delusions involving the death of Erica at his hands. These visions make up the song "Welcome Home" on the Good Apollo album. Suddenly, the Writer's window is broken and then someone apparently steals his ten-speed bicycle. As the Writer walks off to investigate, the novel re-enters the story with an exchange between the story's villains, Supreme Tri-Mage Wilhelm Ryan and his General, Mayo Deftinwolf, in which they vaguely speak of Claudio's role as the Crowing and their plans to crush him and the rebellion his uncle Jesse has been leading against the Mages of Heaven's Fence. Back aboard the Grail Arbor, Claudio is awakened from a nightmare about his lost family by the Prise Ambellina. They discuss a plan formulated by Jesse to penetrate the defenses of Apity Prime, a planet in the Omega star system, by landing in the city of Kalline, which is adjacent to Wilhem's lair, the House Atlantic. Claudio needs to get there to fulfill his destiny as the Crowing, however he points out that the opening in the defenses is likely a trap and argues further with Chase and Ambellina about his role, which he still doubts. Jesse explains the plan to the pilot of the Grail Arbor, who also expresses doubts, and the group prepares for the final assault on the forces of Wilhelm Ryan. In the Writer's world, he has wandered off into deeper hallucinations, arriving at the house of Newo Ikkin, a fictional character from his story and his character's former love interest, and witnessing Claudio the character speak to Newo's dog Apollo, as he had written in his story before (Claudio utters the phrase "Good Apollo, where shall I begin?" At the end of the first track on In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, The Ring In Return, one can hear a voice quietly saying "Hello Apollo. Where shall I begin?" It's believed the slight differentiation was accidental). In Newo's place is Erica Court, and the Writer's bicycle has taken on a demonic persona, Ten Speed of God's Blood and Burial, and begins speaking with him. The Writer is seeking a way to end the story, which Ten Speed claims he can provide if he kills Ambellina (though the Writer thinks Ten Speed wants him to kill Erica). Exact quotes of their bickering can be heard during part of the song, "Ten Speed (Of God's Blood and Burial)," from the Good Apollo album. The exchange ends with Claudio saying "You say a lot of things. And how's that work? You're a bicycle." Meanwhile, a rebel strike team has disabled the generator on Kalline, allowing the Grail Arbor to land. Mayo springs his trap, destroying the strike force by unleashing one of the beast-like Priests upon them. As the Arbor prepares to land, more of the Writer's delusions are portrayed, including Erica's murder at the hands of the Writer using the same poison Mayo gave to Coheed to kill his children in the Second Stage Turbine Blade. This delusion makes up the song "Once Upon Your Dead Body" on the Good Apollo album. While Mayo prepares for the rebel's ground assault, Ten Speed explains that he doesn't actually want the Writer to murder Erica, but rather to exact his vengeance metaphorically by killing Ambellina, who represents Erica's good side in the story, which will in turn cause Claudio to accept his destiny as the Crowing and destroy the Keywork; an ending for the story. Mayo's trap comes to full fruition as a planetary defense cannon called a Jackhammer is fired into the Grail Arbor when it tries to land, damaging it. The Arbor retreats while Claudio, Ambellina, Jesse, Chase, and Jesse's other IRO-bot children abandon ship and land on the surface of Apity Prime. Ambellina and Claudio split off from the group while Jesse and his children stay behind to confront Mayo. As Ten Speed and the Writer further argue about the fate of Ambellina, Jesse delivers a final goodbye to his children who proceed to mutate into monstrous forms and attack Mayo's forces. Jesse confronts Mayo and is killed by him in hand-to-hand combat when Mayo rips Jesse's heart out of his body. Claudio and Ambellina arrive at a mirror (the Willing Well) in which they can see the Writer's argument with Ten Speed take place. Claudio and Ambellina then combat a Priest in front of the mirror, resulting in Ambellina being injured. As the battle takes place, the Writer is swept further into his delusion by the skeletal figures the Character dreamt of earlier, who, apparently at the behest of a hallucinated Erica Court, take him to a large, winged guillotine and have him beheaded. Erica hauntingly says "This is no beginning. This is the final cut"--a phrase repeated as the chorus of the song "The Willing Well IV: The Final Cut" on the Good Apollo album. The Writer awakens from this delusion, once again finding himself at the house of Newo Ikkin, and decides to take Ten Speed's advice. Passing through the mirror into his own story, the Writer sees Claudio has made the transformation into his powerful role as the Crowing after witnessing Ambellina's injury at the hands of the Priest. Ignoring the Writer's command to stop, Claudio kills the Priest and proceeds to confront the Writer. The Writer explains he must kill Ambellina for his own peace of mind, so that the story may have an ending. The Crowing furiously declares, "My God is a coward!" The Writer kills Ambellina, easily overwhelming Claudio's resistance despite his new found power as the Crowing. As Ambellina dies in Claudio's arms, she professes that she would have loved Claudio had she been able. The Writer walks off into the distance with his bicycle, leaving Claudio with the cryptic message "You're Burning Star IV." He also tells Claudio to listen to the Vishual (Chase) and that "all worlds from here must burn," implying that it is the Crowing's duty to destroy the Keywork.
3728834	/m/09xpdl	Blackout	Keith R. A. DeCandido	2006-08-29	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is 1977, the summer of a brutal blackout, the time of the Son of Sam murders, and a period of brutal fiscal disaster for New York. The slayer Nikki Wood fights against the forces of darkness and also tries to protect her son, Robin. Meanwhile Spike and Drusilla arrive in the city hoping to hunt down a slayer, not without the local vampire community soon discovering of their arrival.
3729322	/m/09xqjs	The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists	Gideon Defoe	2004-08-26	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The book is set in 1837, and follows the adventures of "The Pirate Captain" and his crew of unorthodox pirates. They meet a young Charles Darwin and Mister Bobo, a highly trained and sophisticated "man-panzee", who have been exiled from London by a rival scientist. Having sunk the Beagle, which he believed was a Bank of England treasure ship thanks to a tip-off from Black Bellamy, the Pirate Captain agrees to take Darwin home and help him defeat his enemies.
3730327	/m/09xscq	The Dying Days	Lance Parkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the year 1997, Bernice Summerfield is recovering from the breakdown of her marriage at the Doctor's house on Allen Road in Kent. To her surprise, when the TARDIS arrives it is the Eighth Doctor that steps out. Before Benny can come to terms with the change, a helicopter crash lands nearby, carrying soil samples from Mars and a prisoner, astronaut Alex Christian, who has been incarcerated since he killed the crew of a British Mars mission. Or so everyone thought. In reality, his crew were killed by Ice Warriors and his imprisonment was part of a deal negotiated between the British government and the Martian authorities. Since then, there have been no further missions to Mars, but now Britain has sent a new mission back to the planet. British astronauts land on Mars where they intrude on the tomb of an Ice Lord. The Ice Warrior Xznaal arrives on Earth with the pretence of vengeance, but is secretly in league with the British Science Minister, Lord Greyhaven. When the Eighth Doctor interferes with their plans, Xznaal releases a deadly weapon known as the Red Death. This apparently kills the Doctor, leaving Bernice and the Brigadier to deal with the invading Ice Warriors…
3733081	/m/09xz1z	Big Trouble	Dave Barry	1999-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story follows a large cast of people as they go about their lives. A boy named Matt is involved in a high school game called Killer, where he must squirt a girl named Jenny with a water gun, but with only one witness. Attempting to sneak into her house at night, Matt takes everyone completely by surprise, causing Jenny and her mother, Anna, to attack him, and Jenny's mean stepfather, Arthur, to fall over - just missing being hit by two hitmen who also showed up. The housemaid, a young Mexican immigrant named Nina, panics and runs from the house towards the hitmen. She is rescued by a young homeless man named Puggy, who was living in a tree on the property. After the hitmen leave, the two talk and instantly fall in love. Two police officers, Monica and Walter, arrive and call Matt's divorced father, Eliot, who comes over and becomes instantly attracted to Anna, while Matt becomes attracted to Jenny. The police dismiss Matt and Eliot and question Arthur about whether or not he has any enemies. Arthur denies this; however, he is actually guilty of embezzling money from the less-than-honest company that he works for to pay off gambling debts. Realizing that his life is on the line, Arthur wants to turn in the company to save himself, and decides at the last minute to get a bomb so that the police will take him seriously. Later, Jenny, Matt, and Andrew (the one witness and Matt's friend at school) agree to meet at the back of a nearby mall for Matt to "kill" Jenny. Just as he's about to squirt her, a police-wannabe thinks that Matt is using a real gun on Jenny and opens fire with his own gun. Matt and Jenny, frightened, head to Jenny's house to call the police. Andrew runs away and is caught by the same two police officers who investigated the shooting at Arthur's house. After confiscating the man's gun, they decide to head to Jenny's house to find Jenny and Matt. Meanwhile, Arthur goes to a nearby bar and grill which is actually a cover for two Russian arms dealers. He is about to buy a bomb from them when he, the two Russians, and Puggy (who got a job at the bar) are held up by Snake and Eddie, two criminals who were kicked out of the bar for being disorderly and who held a grudge against the place. After stealing the bomb, they mistake Arthur for a kingpin and force him and Puggy to take them to Arthur's house. After they leave, two FBI agents come to the bar, demanding to know where the bomb is. After experiencing an "extremity shot" to the foot, the Russians tell them. Eddie and Snake arrive at Arthur's house and tie Matt, Eliot (who came after Matt called him), and Jenny up with telephone cords. Monica and Walter come to the house and enter to question Matt and Jenny about the shooting at the mall. The criminals tie Monica up as well, and use her handcuffs to attach Walter and Arther to a large metal rack. Jenny is kidnapped, and lifted onto the shoulder of one of the criminals. They leave for the Miami airport with Jenny, Puggy and the bomb. Nina unties everyone and they all leave for the airport (leaving Walter and Arthur, who they can't free from the handcuffs). Arthur and Walter attempt to escape and find help, and instead Arthur gets squirted in the face with a hallucinogen from a toad, which causes him to think his dog is possessed by Elizabeth Dole. Four different groups of people reach the airport. Eddie, Snake, Puggy, and Jenny board a plane for the Bahamas, but Puggy escapes at the last minute. Eliot, Anna, Matt, Nina and Monica find him and he leads them to the airplane they boarded. Meanwhile, the two hitmen enter the airport around the same time. One of them is nearly suffocated by an escaped pet python that a man was trying to bring onto an airplane. The other hitman rescues his partner by shooting the snake in the head, but in turn is arrested by the local security. The final group consists of the two FBI agents and Officer Baker, Monica and Walter's superior. The agents tell Baker that in order to save innocent lives from being killed because of the bomb (which they find out was accidentally turned on during the airport security check), they are ordering fighter planes to shoot down the plane carrying the bomb. Monica and Matt both manage to board the airplane just as it's taking off. Eddie, fed up with being pushed around by Snake through all of this, turns on him and tosses the suitcase overboard. Snake, unwilling to lose his "kingpin suitcase," jumps out after it. The bomb explodes in the water, killing no one except for Snake and the fish population. The story ends describing the aftermath of the incident, as well as what happens to the main characters. de:Jede Menge Ärger – Big Trouble
3734515	/m/09y0q_	Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books	Azar Nafisi	2003	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The book is a memoir of the experience of the author who returned to Iran during the revolution (1978-1981) and lived and taught in the Islamic Republic of Iran until her departure in 1997. It narrates her teaching at the University of Tehran after 1979, her refusal to submit to the rule to wear the veil and her subsequent expulsion from the university, life during the Iran-Iraq war, her return to teaching at the University of Allameh Tabatabei (1981), her resignation (1987), the formation of her book club (1995–97), and her decision to emigrate. Events are interlaced with the stories of book club members consisting of seven of her female students, who met weekly at Nafisi's house to discuss works of Western literature including the controversial 'Lolita' and the texts are interpreted through the books they read. === Structure === The book is divided into four sections: "Lolita", "Gatsby", "James", and "Austen". "Lolita" deals with Nafisi as she resigns from The University of Allameh Tabatabei and starts her private literature class with students Mahshid, Yassi, Mitra, Nassrin, Azin, Sanaz and Manna. They talk not just about Lolita, but One Thousand and One Nights and Invitation to a Beheading. The main themes are oppression, jailers as revolutionary guards try to assert their authority through certain events such as a vacation gone awry and a runaway convict. "Gatsby" is set about eleven years before "Lolita" just as the Iranian revolution starts. The reader learns how some Iranians' dreams, including the author's, became shattered through the government's imposition of new rules. Nafisi's student Mr. Nyazi puts the novel on trial, claiming that it condones adultery. Chronologically this is the first part of Nafisi's story. The Great Gatsby and Mike Gold's works are discussed in this part. The reader meets Nassrin. Nafisi states that the Gatsby chapter is about the American dream, the Iranian dream of revolution and the way it was shattered for her; the James chapter is about uncertainty and the way totalitarian mindsets hate uncertainty; and Austen is about the choice of women, a woman at the center of the novel saying no to the authority of her parents, society, and welcoming a life of dire poverty in order to make her own choice. "James" takes place right after "Gatsby", when the Iran–Iraq War begins and Nafisi is expelled from the University of Tehran along with a few other professors. The veil becomes mandatory and she states that the government wants to control the liberal-minded professors. Nafisi meets the man she calls her "magician", seemingly a literary academician who had retired from public life at the time of the revolution. Daisy Miller and Washington Square are the main texts. Nassrin reappears after spending several years in prison. "Austen" succeeds "Lolita" as Nafisi plans to leave Iran and the girls discuss the issue of marriages, men and sex. The only real flashback (not counting historical background) is into how the girls and Nafisi toyed with the idea of creating a Dear Jane society. While Azin deals with an abusive husband and Nassrin plans to leave for England, Nafisi's magician reminds her not to blame all of her problems on the Islamic Republic. Pride and Prejudice, while the main focus, is used more to reinforce themes about blindness and empathy. Throughout the whole novel Nafisi tackles the question of what is a hero and a villain in literature. Each independent section of the book examines notions of heroism and villainy by connecting characters from books such as Invitation to a Beheading or The Great Gatsby to others. The basis of her definition of heroism and villainy is the connection between characters who are "blind to other's problems" such as Humbert Humbert in Lolita and characters who can empathize. This theme is intertwined with that of oppression and blindness.
3735591	/m/09y2gn	The Divine Canary				 The book opens with the quotation from Brazilian novelist Roberto Drummond ”Our Father, who art in Heaven, let all Women of this world abandon this Sinner, but do not allow, my Lord, that Cruzeiro scores the equalizing goal.”. August Willemsen, a professional translator of Portuguese, writes about the history of soccer in Brazil, not only in terms of games and statistics, but as the quotation shows, also about how it is experienced by Brazilian fans: simultaneoulsy a feeling of joy, and of torture, and about the sometimes supernatural role of soccer in Brazilian society.
3735617	/m/09y2jd	Fragrant Harbour				 Set in Hong Kong, the story is told through the eyes of several people. Dawn Stone is an ambitious young woman who wants to make as much money as quickly as she can. Tom Stewart is an Englishman who had been in Hong Kong since 1935 and made his fortune in business. Sister Maria, whom Tom wants to love, is a devout nun and tends to the territory's poor and needy. Their stories all converge in the end when Hong Kong is passed from British to Chinese rule.
3736171	/m/09y3hn	Wizard	John Varley	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Wizard takes place in 2100, seventy-five years after the events in Titan. Cirocco has become an alcoholic, apparently due to the strain of being the Wizard. Gaby Plauget has taken up the slack, carrying out special projects for Gaea such as building the Circum-Gaea Highway, in return for which she gets some of the benefits Cirocco enjoys, including apparently perpetual youth. Gaea herself is bored. She arranges for streams of people looking for miracle cures to come to her from Earth, and then sets them a task: do something "heroic" (for example, travel once round the circumference of the great wheel), and their wishes will be granted. This is her way of ensuring an enduring supply of entertainment, as she arranges hazards for them to overcome or die trying. It also serves as a way for her to be useful to Humanity by providing cures for diseases, so that they do not turn on her and destroy her. Meanwhile, she sits in the hub with her sycophants and watches old movies. Chris Major and Robin the Nine-Fingered are two such pilgrims. Chris suffers from psychotic episodes. Robin, a member of a group of latter day witches, has a strange epilepsy that only manifests itself in gravity higher than the Moon's. With Gaby, Cirocco and four Titanides they set out on a heroic trek. Gaby and Cirocco have a hidden agenda: they want to canvass the regional brains in order to overthrow Gaea, whom they see as being irretrievably insane. During the trip, we begin to learn what drove Cirocco to her alcoholism. As the price for the discontinuation of the Angel/Titanide War, Gaea has made the Titanides dependent on Cirocco to have children. Only her saliva can activate the eggs they produce, so that they can be implanted in a host mother to grow. The responsibility for an entire race's survival is more than Cirocco can bear; with resignation from her position as Wizard impossible and suicide ruled out by her love for the Titanides, her only release is alcohol-fueled oblivion. The hazards of the trip include buzz-bombs, living creatures with jet engines that live high up on the support cables. They attack living beings, including humans and Titanides, attempting to capture them as food, and present a particular threat to pilgrims with their barbed noses and razor-sharp wings. Slowly the journey reduces the crew, killing first one of the Titanides and then, in an attack plotted by the crazed crewmember Gene, Gaby. All are separated. Cirocco and her Titanide companion Hornpipe are left on the Rim surface, while Robin and Chris are trapped underground, with the Titanide Valiha, who is not only pregnant but has been badly injured. Eventually Robin has to leave Chris to tend Valiha, and climb back to the surface for help. She finds herself in one of the Arctic cold zones of the habitat, and almost dies before being rescued. Cirocco undergoes a complete transformation. She musters her considerable powers to rescue all the remaining expedition members. Robin and Chris go to confront Gaea, only to be told she has cured them anyway, and they can get lost. Cirocco eventually destroys the body Gaea had been using to talk to people. As she is in reality an intelligence living in the hub, itself, the death of this body does not kill Gaea; but it is Cirocco's way of resigning. Hereinafter, she is no longer the Wizard; she is the Demon.
3736372	/m/09y3y7	Demon	John Varley	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Demon takes place in the years 2113 through 2121, thirteen to twenty-one years after the events of Wizard. Cirocco Jones has become a combination fugitive and resistance leader, staying alive in spite of the forces of Gaea by virtue of her unusual abilities, and with the help of friends and allies. These include the race of Titanides, who remain loyal to the Captain, as they call Jones, rather than to Gaea; and the race of Angels, who call her the Wing Commander. The militant creations of Gaea, once limited to the buzz-bombs, have expanded to include horrifying beings called Priests, each one made by Gaea from parts of her human victims. The Priests, named after significant religious figures from the past, carry out her dirty work as a class of undead field commanders, supported by bands of zombies. These are made from the corpses of humans who die in the wheel and — unless cremated — become infested with creatures called deathsnakes and arise to walk again as zombies. The increasingly demented and film-obsessed Gaea has replaced the Avatar that Jones destroyed at the end of Wizard with a new one, a replica of Marilyn Monroe. She spends her time in a travelling film festival of her own making, called Pandemonium, where she is attended by various humans, zombies, and many bizarre creatures of her own creation, such as living film cameras. Earth meanwhile is in the grip of a slow nuclear war, possibly started by Gaea herself. Some survivors are rescued by mysterious pods called mercy flights that bring them to Gaea. They are cured of all their physical ills, and then, still mentally damaged, dumped in the twilight city of Bellinzona, an anarchic place run by criminals. All this means that humankind's future is now in the wheel, and at the mercy of its senile ruler. More of Gaea's earlier plotting comes to light when it is revealed that all the captured Ringmaster crew were fitted with a parasitic, worm-like spy right inside their brains, which broadcast their every thought and perception to Gaea. Records of all these experiences and perceptions have been kept in the hub and nerve-center of the habitat — as a result of which Gaby's personality has survived her physical death, and she now exists as a rogue intelligence. She is able to communicate with Cirocco, and together they hatch plans for the future of the wheel. Cirocco's own brain parasite is extracted by a Titanide surgeon and emprisonned in a jar. Nicknamed Snitch, it is both a creature in its own right, which can talk, feel pain, and apparently recover from any injury, and is a part of Gaea's fragmented and disintegrating mind. As such, it becomes a source of information on her schemes, which Cirocco ruthlessly exploits through a mixture of torture and bribery: Snitch has emerged from her alcohol-addled brain with an addiction to liquor. Chris Major has stayed in Gaea, where he is mutating into a Titanide. Robin of the Coven had returned to her people in the interim, and now returns to Gaea, along with her two children: a 19 year old daughter named Nova, and an infant son, Adam Having a son is anathema in her female-only community. It is revealed that the children weren't planned, but are offspring of herself and Chris, owing to genetic material somehow planted in her when she last was on Gaea and triggered to implant at later times. Robin, along with her children, is reunited with Chris and Cirocco, whereupon the distraught Nova immediately develops a crush on Cirocco. They also meet a friend and lieutenant of Cirocco's, Conal, originally a none-too-bright bodybuilder from Canada and a descendent of Ringmaster crew member Gene. After a short period of peace, Gaea's agents kidnap Adam. Cirocco becomes aware that the infant boy shares her ability to activate Titanide eggs, and therefore represents the race's future, as well as a means of controlling them. Gaea has apparently arranged his birth so he can be Cirocco's successor, and his kidnapping to force her into a confrontation. After a failed rescue attempt by the group, Chris decides to take his chances by surrendering to Pandemonium, so that he can be near Adam. Some months pass while Cirocco's forces regroup and make a new plan. Now desperate to recover Adam, who is beginning to see Gaea as a mother figure, Cirocco uses her influence among the Titanides to conquer Bellinzona, imposing law and order with the intent of eventually raising an army to attack Pandemonium. In time, through her unusual mixture of charisma and ruthlessness, she manages to transform the inhabitants' disorganized chaos into a genuine community. When Cirocco finally launches her attack, she has to guide nearly 40,000 human soldiers and several thousand Titanides some 600 kilometers across the wheel, while fending off attacks from the Gaean Air Force, the successors to the old buzz-bombs. These new creatures are armed with rocket bullets, missiles, and bombs, forcing Cirocco to enlist the Angels in a preemptive strike to help destroy the GAF's refueling bases. When the army finally reaches Pandemonium, Cirocco's attack is a mixture of display and deadly force. Whistlestop the blimp, with the aged and dying Calvin inside, attempts to immolate Gaea in a Hindenburg-like blaze. Eventually Gaea is lured out of the city, enabling part of the army to rescue Adam while Cirocco and Gaea face off. At that moment Gene, old and addled, and living next to one of the former regional brains, sets off the final blow (instigated by Gaby) by destroying one of Gaea's major nerve-centers. Gaea is disoriented enough for Gaby to force her out of the hub, leading to the destruction of the giant Marilyn Monroe avatar in a scene reminiscent of the climactic battle in King Kong. The last fragment of Gaea's mind, in the shape of Snitch, dies in Cirocco's hand. Gaby, now the new divinity of the wheel, reveals to Cirocco that Gaea was in fact an entity distinct from it and that those changes of 'management' are a regular occurrence in the enormously long life-cycle of those entities. All the plotting perpetrated by Gaea throughout the trilogy was aimed at securing her demise and replacement in a manner entertaining and flamboyant enough to suit her. Gaby invites Cirocco to share the position with her, but the former Wizard declines, choosing instead to simply live free for the first time in nearly a century. As she ponders her new and free future, she wonders what she will do next. She leans over, falling from the top of the spoke toward the ground 600 kilometers below, leaving her fate to chance — she is now finally free to live only for herself.
3737085	/m/09y57h	The Wayward Bus	John Steinbeck	1947		 No single character dominates The Wayward Bus. The viewpoint shifts frequently from one character to another, often taking the form of internal monologue so that we are experiencing a given character's thoughts. Much of the novel's length is simply devoted to establishing and delineating the various characters. This novel takes place firmly within "Steinbeck country": most of the narrative occurs at Rebel Corners, a crossroads 42 miles south of San Ysidro, California. Juan Chicoy (half-Mexican, half-Irish) maintains a small bus, nicknamed "Sweetheart". He earns his living as a mechanic, and by ferrying passengers between Rebel Corners and San Juan de la Cruz. The larger Greyhound Bus Company serves both of those locations on separate routes, but does not have service connecting the two. Juan and his wife Alice also own a small lunch counter at Rebel Corners. The Chicoys supplement their income by selling food, coffee and candy to people who pass through on the bus route. Rebel Corners is such an obscure place that nobody actually lives there except for the Chicoys and their employees of the moment. Alice is devoted to her marriage but is in all other ways a deeply unhappy woman, who despises and distrusts all other women. The Chicoys have two employees: one is a teenager named Ed Carson, who works as Juan's assistant mechanic and general helper. Carson claims to be descended from the famous frontiersman Kit Carson, and he wants to be called "Kit", but he is usually called "Pimples" because of his extreme facial acne. Pimples Carson (as he is identified through most of the novel) is constantly helping himself to cake or candy from the lunch counter, telling Alice to deduct it from his wages. Alice, deeply suspicious of everyone but her husband, asserts that Carson's "tab" for the food and sweets he consumes has exceeded what her husband is paying him; she also accuses Carson of stealing food. The lunch counter's other employee is Norma, a young waitress. Because of Alice's bad temper and misogyny, waitresses tend not to last long at Rebel Corners: Norma is merely the latest in a long series of waitresses. Norma is obsessed with film star Clark Gable. She writes long fan letters to Gable which she mails to him at his studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but these are never answered. Norma maintains a semi-paranoid delusion that there is an employee at MGM who maliciously intercepts Norma's letters so that Gable will never find out she is in love with him. At one point, Norma claims to be Gable's cousin. A family of three, on vacation, have been forced to spend the night at Rebel Corners because the bus, named 'Sweetheart', needed repair. Juan, Alice, Norma and Pimples gave up their beds to the travelers and spend the night sitting up in the diner. The family now hopes to travel to San Juan on Juan Chicoy's bus: these are self-important businessman Elliott Pritchard, his wife Bernice and their daughter Mildred, a college student. The novel's description of Mr. Pritchard is an example of Steinbeck's concise character delineation: "One night a week he played poker with men so exactly like himself that the game was fairly even, and from this fact his group was convinced that they were very fine poker players." Two more transients are waiting for the bus. One of these is Ernest Horton, a traveling salesman for a novelties company. Horton makes a very colorful entrance in this novel: he limps into the lunch counter, claiming to have injured his foot in a road accident. He then takes off his shoe, revealing a bloody sock. He removes the sock, exposing a badly maimed foot. As soon as this gets the desired response, Horton peels off the "injury": it's actually one of the gag novelties made by his company. Horton is a frustrated man who hopes to launch one or more of his many get-rich ideas, but lacks the funding to put them into practice. His favored project is a kit for men who cannot afford formal attire: a set of satin lapels and satin trouser stripes that can convert a black business suit into a tuxedo. The other transient is a young blonde woman whose face and curvaceous figure attracts male attention. This woman's real name is never disclosed: she is always passing through somewhere on the way to somewhere else, and so she uses a series of false names in her encounters with men she never expects to meet again. Shortly after she arrives at Rebel Corners, she sees an advertisement for Camel cigarettes near an oak tree, so she introduces herself as Camille Oaks. (She is identified by this alias through the rest of the novel.) Later, seeing an advertisement that reads "Chesterfields: They Satisfy", she claims to be a dental nurse employed by Dr. T.S. Chesterfield. In fact, she is a stripper who earns her living performing at stag functions. Camille Oaks has a low opinion of men, possibly stemming from the type of men she meets. She respects the very few men who are honest enough to offer her a sexual proposition right away, but she has no patience for the men who more typically waste her time by trying to be "friends" with her, and who only gradually reveal their true intent. One chapter of the novel is a sympathetic depiction of George, a low-paid Negro who works as a "swamper" at the Greyhound bus depot, cleaning the buses and retrieving lost property. George finds a wallet containing $100, a windfall by his standards. He schemes to keep the money, but is seen handling the wallet by another employee. Louie, a white bus driver, returns the wallet to its owner, promising to split any reward money evenly with George. Louie receives a decent reward but then cheats George, telling him that the owner's reward was only a dollar ... all of which Louie "generously" gives to George. As George never interacts with the characters at Rebel Corners, it is interesting that Steinbeck made room for this vignette which is irrelevant to the main narrative. Very little actually happens in The Wayward Bus. Norma discovers Alice reading her letter to Clark Gable and after a lifetime of mistreatment she stands up for herself by quietly packing her cardboard suitcase ignoring Alice's defense, Norma collects some money from the register and walks out to embark Sweetheart for the next trip to San Juan. Juan has made this bus run many times, and he is bored with the dull routine. This time, however, the heavy rain that has fallen makes a bridge unsafe, and so he asks the passengers to decide whether to return to Rebel Corners or attempt to reach their destination via an old dirt road. They choose the road. En route, he deliberately runs the bus into a ditch, telling the passengers it was an accident. The symbolism here is, by Steinbeck's standards, unusually heavy-handed: Juan, whose life is trapped in a figurative rut, escapes it by driving into a literal rut. The "accident" has temporarily stranded Juan and his passengers in a remote area. While they are waiting for Juan to seek help on foot, a walk of four miles, Pritchard engages Camille in conversation and expresses interest in helping her in her "career": she recognizes this as the opening gambit a seduction, and she turns him down venomously. Pritchard assaults his own wife, partly in anger at her and partly to regain his self-importance after Camille's rejection. Juan, who has no intention of returning to the bus, plans to escape his life and marriage by returning to Mexico. He soon walks off the road to seek shelter in a deserted farmhouse, where he falls asleep in a barn. Pritchard's daughter Mildred, strongly attracted to him already, follows him and they have sex, but it ends up lacking in fulfillment and pleasure for both characters. Their distant focus on the experience along with awkward and dismissive dialogue implies personal regret soon afterward. Eventually Juan and Mildred return, the bus is driven out of the rut, and everyone gets back on. The novel ends with San Juan de la Cruz visible in the distance.
3740300	/m/09ydt4	The Book of Ultimate Truths	Robert Rankin	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins with Cornelius hired by the mysterious Arthur Kobold, who claims to represent a publishing firm wishing to print a complete copy of The Book of Ultimate Truths, a set of great secrets discovered by Hugo Rune, but suppressed by unknown forces. Cornelius and his schoolfriend Tuppe set out to find the book. They encounter the evil Campbell, who is also seeking to retrieve the lost book, to allow him to return to the Forbidden Zones, areas of the world hidden from humanity (excepting London taxi drivers). The two heroes retrieve the book and return to the Murphy home in Brentford, only to find the Campbell is waiting there for them. It is revealed the Campbell is Cornelius' half-brother, and that their father is Hugo Rune. The Campbell escapes with the key to the Forbidden Zones, a re-invented ocarina. Cornelius and Tuppe pursue him to the nearest entrance to the Zones, but the Campbell's plans are foiled by the arrival of a large gathering of a cult devoted to Hugo Rune. The ocarina is destroyed, as is the Campbell. Arthur Kobold presents Cornelius with a large cheque as an advance against royalties from the publication of the book. The cheque is revealed to be a trick - Arthur Kobold was in fact working for the denizens of the Forbidden Zones all along. Seemingly foiled, Cornelius then realizes that the map of their journey forms a schematic for the creation of another re-invented ocarina, and along with a London A-Z map showing the locations of the entrances to the Forbidden Zones the heroes are left plotting their next adventure into the unknown.
3740598	/m/09yfh6	Servant of Two Masters	Carlo Goldoni			 The play opens with the introduction of Beatrice, a woman who has traveled to Venice disguised as her dead brother in search of the man who killed him: her lover, Florindo. Her brother forbade her to marry Florindo, and died defending his sister's honor. Beatrice disguises herself as Federigo, (her dead brother), so that he can collect dowry money from Pantalone, the father of Clarice, her brother's betrothed. She wants to use this money to help her lover escape, and to allow them to finally wed. But thinking that Beatrice's brother was dead, Clarice has fallen in love with another man, Silvio, and the two have become engaged. Interested in keeping up appearances, Pantalone tries to conceal the existence of each from the other. Beatrice's servant, the exceptionally quirky and comical Truffaldino, is the central figure of this play. He is always complaining of an empty stomach, and always trying to satisfy his hunger by eating everything and anything in sight. In one famous scene, it is implied that he eats Beatrice's beloved cat. When the opportunity presents itself to be servant to another master (Florindo, as it happens) he sees the opportunity for an extra dinner. As Truffaldino runs around Venice trying to fill the orders of two masters, he is almost uncovered several times, especially because other characters repeatedly hand him letters, money, etc. and say simply "this is for your master" without specifying which one. To make matters worse, the stress causes him to develop a temporary stutter, which only arouses more problems and suspicion among his masters. To further complicate matters, Beatrice and Florindo are staying in the same hotel, and are searching for each other. In the end, with the help of Clarice and Smeraldina (Pantalone's feisty servant, who is smitten with Truffaldino) Beatrice and Florindo finally find each other, and with Beatrice exposed as a woman, Clarice is allowed to marry Silvio. The last matter up for discussion is whether Truffaldino and Smeraldina can get married, which at last exposes Truffaldino's having played both sides all along. However, as everyone has just decided to get married, Truffaldino is forgiven. Truffaldino asks Smeraldina to marry him. The most famous set-piece of the play is the scene in which the starving Truffaldino tries to serve a banquet to the entourages of both his masters without either group becoming aware of the other, while desperately trying to satisfy his own hunger at the same time.
3741370	/m/09yh36	Surrender the Pink	Carrie Fisher	1990-08	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Surrender the Pink is a story about screenwriter Dinah Kaufman. Although Dinah is successful at her job, she is a failure in her relationships with men. She then meets someone she believes to be the man of her dreams, Rudy Gendler. Rudy is successful and sophisticated, and he asks her to marry him. She soon discovers, however, that he is not exactly what she believed him to be and their marriage is over. Dinah then realizes that she still loves Rudy and wants him back.
3742773	/m/09yl25	Dogs Don't Tell Jokes	Louis Sachar	1991	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Gary Boone (who calls himself "Goon") is the self-proclaimed clown of his seventh-grade class. He never stops joking, despite the fact that nobody laughs much, and he has no real friends at school. Entering a talent contest as a stand-up comedian forces him to look more closely at the effect his humor has on others and on himself. His old friends support him and help him with his routine. Throughout the book, he is deciding whether or not he should compete. At one point he even quits, but then rejoins.=http://www.amazon.com/Dogs-Dont-Jokes-Louis-Sachar/dp/0679833722#reader_0679833722 Later, Gary becomes upset with his image and tries to change himself. He befriends Joe, a popular kid in his class, and spends time playing football with him. He also starts to collect baseball cards. He tells his parents about this and instead of telling him to be himself, like he expected, they encourage the change and offer him $100 if he doesn't tell a joke for three weeks which is the night of the talent show. Gary is a nervous wreck on the night of the talent competition. He is not in the program because he quit (then rejoined). His friend Joe makes sure he can compete, but he is placed last. When it is Gary's turn, he wets his pants due to his nervousness and excitement. He makes a mistake during the beginning, and soon he forgets his routine. Luckily, two kids who have picked on Gary (referred to as his "fan club"), come and spray water and throw pies at him. This allows Gary to start over, not to mention earning a few laughs. His comic routine runs smoothly and he manages to surprise the audience by showing them his newly shaved head. Gary wins $100 and is respected by his classmates.
3744486	/m/09yp09	The Longest Night	J. N. Williamson	2002-12-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 It's December 21, and hour by hour Angel and his crew must survive the longest night of the year. * Written by: Pierce Askegren * Setting: December 21, 2002, 6pm–7pm A quest for a missing child taken by his father leads Angel to a house where the father has made a pact. In return for a human sacrifice each winter solstice, both father and son could live forever. * Written by: Jeff Mariotte * Setting: December 21, 2002, 7pm–8pm A group is killing Santas and replacing them with their own people so that the sound of their bells can open a rift in space-time and allow a demon to eat the Earth. * Written by: Christopher Golden * Setting: December 21, 2002, 8pm–9pm Angel needs help from Cordelia - 4 days before Christmas and he still hasn't done his shopping. But he really is planning a surprise gift for her. They must deal with demonic chaos. !-- This section is linked from Wesley Wyndam-Pryce --> * Written by: Scott Ciencin and Denise Ciencin * Setting: December 21, 2002, 9pm–10pm Wesley meets two ghosts from the early Hollywood era who lead him to a better understanding of his life. * Written by: Emily Oz * Setting: December 21, 2002, 10pm–11pm Cordelia is invited to become a model, but there is a catch. * Written by: Nancy Holder * Setting: December 21, 2002, 11pm–12pm The title is a pun on Have Gun — Will Travel, a popular Western TV series which ran in the 1950s and 1960s. The entourage of the prince of a small middle eastern country-who turns out to be a demon in disguise- is worried for his safety. They ask Gunn to impersonate him for an important gathering. Naturally, things don't go as planned. * Written by: Yvonne Navarro * Setting: December 21, 2002, midnight–1am Having Lilah Morgan send presents was a good idea. Lilah sends Christmas presents to all, but of course she is not playing nice - it's a ploy to test their resolve. * Written by: Nancy Holder * Setting: December 22, 2002, 1am–2am A group of wannabe Druids builds a stone circle to sacrifice a virgin. Time-traveling adventures ensue. * Written by: Doranna Durgin * Setting: December 22, 2002, 2am–3am Something is killing the down-and-outs, and Angel and Co. go undercover to save the day (or night in this case). * Written by: Yvonne Navarro * Setting: December 22, 2002, 3am–4am An ice demon shows up in the hotel and plays with people's memories. * Written by: Doranna Durgin * Setting: December 22, 2002, 4am–5am Christmas carolers are being taken as hosts for a demon race. After freeing the singers and defeating the demons, Angel feels like singing - and does. * Written by: Christie Golden * Setting: December 22, 2002, 5am–6am The creatures of the night are trying to prevent the new day from starting, and only Angel can ensure the new dawn.
3746980	/m/09ytc1	Decipher	Stel Pavlou	2001	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06bvp": "Religion", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the year 2012, a series of seemingly unrelated events take place, which during the course of the story all become interconnected. In Antarctica, an oil drilling venture is taking place by fictitious oil company Rola Corp. It is an unstable time in the region because the US and China are at loggerheads over mineral and oil rights, and the geopolitical landscape is dicey. The drill ship does not strike oil, but does discover a very hard form of diamond which turns out to be Carbon 60. Not only that, but the samples they retrieve have hieroglyphic writing on them. Meanwhile, the US military has been monitoring unusually high solar flare activity and are worried about its effect on their fleet of satellites. While observing Chinese military maneuvers in Antarctica, the spy satellite picks up a highly unusual energy signal emanating from two miles beneath Antarctica's ice sheet. When the US military and Rola Corp. pool their resources it is discovered that not only is the diamond-type material reactive to the sun, but the time of the energy pulses under the ice in Antarctica, match the timing of flare activity from the Sun. A team of scientists are assembled to unravel the mystery. From Richard Scott, a linguistic Anthropologist, to Jon Hackett a Complexity Physicist. The team soon discover that the same energy signature from Antarctica is being detected by satellites from ancient monuments all over the Earth. From the Amazon jungle to Egypt and China. Inspired by stories of the ancient flood of Noah, Scott embarks on the mammoth task of deciphering the mysterious language found on the material, and comparing what it has to say with the ancient myths and legends of floods from all around the world. The myths all have similar themes. They talk about the Sun, the destructive power coming from the sky, a flood, and a mythical lost city, known more famously as Atlantis. More than that, the myths talk of the cyclical nature of this destruction and point to an event that happened 12,000 years ago that may well be happening all over again. The story climaxes with the discovery of Atlantis under the ice in Antarctica and the team's expedition to reach it and find any crumb of help that may save the Earth from the impending disaster that the Sun is about to unleash as it reaches the maximum in its cycle.
3747604	/m/09yvjp	Our New West. Records of Travel between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean				 American Memory note: Bowles, editor of the The Republican (Springfield), was one of a party that traveled across the Continent in the summers of 1865 and 1866 to explore the Western United States. Several books resulted from the trips. The detailed subtitle of Bowles's book shows clearly how at the time interests in natural and man-made wonders and in exploitable resources were combined. Bowles sees the railroads as the key that will unlock the region. In addition to his enthusiasm for the West, Bowles urges the preservation of Niagara Falls (probably influenced by Frederick Law Olmsted, whom he met in Yosemite Valley) and of regions of the Adirondacks and Maine (pp. 384-85). West, The--Description and travel--1860-1880. American Memory note: Bowles, editor of the The Republican (Springfield), was one of a party that traveled across the Continent in the summers of 1865 and 1866 to explore the Western United States. Several books resulted from the trips. The detailed subtitle of Bowles's book shows clearly how at the time interests in natural and man-made wonders and in exploitable resources were combined. Bowles sees the railroads as the key that will unlock the region. In addition to his enthusiasm for the West, Bowles urges the preservation of Niagara Falls (probably influenced by Frederick Law Olmsted, whom he met in Yosemite Valley) and of regions of the Adirondacks and Maine (pp. 384-85).
3751582	/m/09z22h	A Fine Night for Dying	Jack Higgins	1969-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Weighted down by chain, the body of gangland boss Harvey Preston is dragged out of the English Channel in a fisherman's net. British Intelligence suspects a connection with a minor cross-channel smuggling ring, and sends dogged undercover agent Paul Chavasse to find answers. Chavasse soon discovers that this is no small-time operation; it reaches throughout the world and leads to the doors of some very ruthless and powerful men. Men who aren't about to let Chavasse interfere with the delivery of their precious cargo...
3752042	/m/09z2w0	Live Flesh	Ruth Rendell	1986-02-27	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The novel's protagonist is Victor Jenner, sent to prison for shooting and crippling a police officer after an attempted rape. At his trial and afterwards he claims that his actions were unintentional and somehow provoked by his victim. But there may have been other reasons for his attack of which even he was unaware. Ten years later, Jenner is released from prison and has to find himself a new life, with the reduced resources produced by ten years' incarceration and the handicap of a significant criminal record. He discovers that it is all too easy to slip back into the old one.
3752418	/m/09z3dt	A Fatal Inversion	Ruth Rendell	1987-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In the hot summer of 1976, a group of young people are camping in Wyvis Hall. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall's animal cemetery. Which woman? Whose child?
3752927	/m/09z433	The Sirian Experiments	Doris Lessing	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Sirian Empire, centred in the Sirius star system, has advanced technology that made their citizens effectively immortal (barring accidents) and sophisticated machines that did almost everything for them. But this technology came at a price: many Sirians became afflicted with "the existentials", a debilitating malady that left them feeling worthless and with no reason to exist. To overcome this problem and give its people "something to do", Sirius embarked on a conquest of space and colonised many planets. But they also encroached on territory of the superior Canopean Empire that led to a costly war, which Canopus won. As a gesture of reconciliation, Canopus returned all the captured Sirian territory and invited Sirius to jointly colonise a new and promising planet called Rohanda (an allegorical Earth). Canopus took the northern continents and gave Sirius the southern continents. Ambien II, one of the Five who run the Sirian Colonial Service and also govern the Sirian Empire, represents Sirius on Rohanda. She sets in motion a series of bio-sociological and genetic experiments where large numbers of primitive indigenous people from Sirian colonised planets are space-lifted to Rohanda and adapted there for work elsewhere in the Empire. In the north, Canopus nurtures Rohanda's bourgeoning humanoids and accelerates their evolution. They also put a Lock on the planet that links it to the harmony and strength of the Canopean Empire. Canopus keeps Ambien II updated with reports of all their work, but she is suspicious of Sirius's former enemy, seeing them as a competitor rather than a partner, and is unable to correctly interpret them. Then an unforeseen "cosmic re-alignment" breaks the Lock and Shammat of the malicious Puttiora Empire begins exploiting the situation by corrupting Rohanda's Natives. Canopus, seeing Rohanda decline, renames the planet Shikasta (the stricken). Sirius, unconcerned about Canopus's troubles in the north, continue to refer to the planet as Rohanda. In an attempt to foster better relations with Sirius, Klorathy, a senior Canopean Colonial administrator, invites Ambien II to observe events in their territory. Ambien II, eager to learn more about Canopus, agrees. As Rohanda evolves and civilisations come and go, Ambien II and Klorathy meet several times to watch Rohanda's degeneration. Canopus does what it can to help communities, but with Shammat's evil and a broken Lock, they make little progress. From time to time Klorathy requests Ambien II's help and while working on the planet, she meets Nasar, another Canopean official. She also encounters Tafta, the Shammat commander on Rohanda, and at one point nearly succumbs to his corruption. Ambien II eventually abandons the Sirian Experiments in the south when they are overrun by Shammat. The Five want her to abandon Rohanda altogether, but she has become too attached to the planet and is warming to Canopus and seeing the error of her (and Sirius's) ways. The Five question her ties to their former enemy, but when she tries to explain herself, they do not hear what she is saying, just as she initially could not hear what Canopus was saying. The Five then send her to Planet 13 on "corrective exile" to write a report on what has happened (this book). When she later releases the report, the Five issues a statement denying the authenticity of Ambien II's work.
3753018	/m/09z47c	The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five	Doris Lessing	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story opens when the Providers, the invisible and unidentified rulers of all the Zones, order that Al•Ith, queen of the peaceful paradise of Zone Three, marry Ben Ata, king of the militarized and repressive Zone Four. Al•Ith is repulsed by the idea of consorting with a barbarian, and Ben Ata does not want a righteous queen disturbing his military campaigns. Nevertheless, Al•Ith descends to Zone Four and they reluctantly marry. Ben Ata is not used to the company of women he cannot control, and Al•Ith has difficulty relating to this ill-bred man, but in time they grow accustomed to each other and gain new insights into each other's Zones. Al•Ith is appalled that all of Zone Four's wealth goes into its huge armies, leaving the rest of its population poor and underdeveloped. Ben Ata is astounded by the fact that Zone Three has no army at all. The marriage bears a son, Arusi, the future heir to the two Zones. Some of the women of Zone Four, led by Dabeeb (wife of Jarnti, Ben Ata's commander-in-chief), step in to help Al•Ith. Suppressed and downtrodden, these women relish being in the presence of the queen of Zone Three. But soon after the birth of Arusi, and just when Al•Ith and Ben Ata are growing fond of each other, the Providers order Al•Ith back to Zone Three and Ben Ata to marry Vahshi, the queen of the primitive Zone Five. Both are devastated by this news. Back in Zone Three, Al•Ith finds that not only have her people forgotten her, her sister, Murti• has taken over as queen. Disturbed by the changes she sees in Al•Ith, Murti• exiles her to the frontier of Zone Two. Al•Ith, drawn by its allure, tries to enter Zone Two, but finds an unworldly and inhospitable place and is told by invisible people that it is not her time yet. At the frontier of Zone Five, Ben Ata reluctantly marries Vahshi, a tribal leader of a band of nomads who terrorise the inhabitants of Zone Five. But Ben Ata's marriage to Al•Ith has changed him and he disbands most of his armies, sending the soldiers home to rebuild their towns and villages and uplift their communities. He also slowly wins over Vahshi's confidence and persuades her to stop plundering Zone Five. When Arusi is old enough to travel, Dabeeb and her band of women decide to take him to Zone Three to see Al•Ith. This cross-border excursion is not ordered by the Providers and Ben Ata has grave misgivings about their decision. In Zone Three the women are shocked to find the deposed Al•Ith working in a stable near Zone Two. While Al•Ith is pleased to see her son, she too has misgivings about Dabeeb's action. The bumptious women's travels through Zone Three evoke feelings of xenophobia in the locals. After five years of silence, the Providers instruct Ben Ata to go and see Al•Ith. But at the border he is surprised to find a band of Zone Three youths armed with crude makeshift weapons blocking his way. Clearly they want no more incursions from Zone Four. Ben Ata returns with a large army and enters Zone Three unchallenged. While he is not well received, he discovers that Al•Ith has a small but growing band of followers who have moved to the frontier of Zone Two to be close to her. When Ben Ata finds Al•Ith they are reunited like old lovers. He tells her of the reforms he has introduced in Zone Four and his taming of the "wild one" from Zone Five. One day, and not unexpectedly, Al•Ith visits Zone Two and does not return. But the changes set in motion by the two marriages are now evident everywhere. The frontiers between Zones Three, Four and Five are open and people and knowledge are flowing between them. Previously stagnant, the three Zones are now filled with enquiry, inspiration and renewal.
3753135	/m/09z4fp	The Making of the Representative for Planet 8	Doris Lessing	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Planet 8 is a small world that was colonised by the benevolent galactic empire Canopus and populated with a new species created from the stock of four different species originating on several other Canopean planets. Planet 8 has a warm temperate climate and, under Canopus's skilled guidance, the inhabitants live comfortably and at peace with themselves and their world. One day Canopus instructs them to build a huge wall, to exact Canopean specifications, right around the girth of the planet. The construction takes the inhabitants years to complete, and when it is finished, Canopus tells the planet's representatives, leaders of each of the planet's main disciplines, to relocate all settlements north of the wall to the south. Canopus informs everyone that unfortunate interstellar "re-alignments" have taken place and that Planet 8 will soon experience an ice age. After a while temperatures start to drop and the climate begins to change. Glaciers form in the north and slowly advance towards the wall. Canopus, however, assures Planet 8 that Canopus has a new home for them, a peaceful and prosperous world called Rohanda (the subject of the first book in this series, Shikasta), and that when it has reached a certain level of development, Canopus will space-lift the inhabitants of Planet 8 to Rohanda. This fills the people of Planet 8 with hope as they are forced to adapt their lifestyles to cope with this new and unfamiliar climate. By the time the glaciers reaches the wall, much of the vegetation in the south has been destroyed by snow and ice and conditions grow worse. Conflict breaks out amongst the erstwhile peaceful villagers as food becomes scarce. But the wall holds the glaciers back and the people still remain resolute in their faith that Canopus will rescue them. Then Canopean agent Johor (first introduced in Shikasta) arrives on Planet 8 with the devastating news that disaster has struck Rohanda: it has been renamed Shikasta (the stricken) and is no longer available for re-settlement. But Johor does not leave Planet 8. He remains to endure the hardships with the villagers and does what he can to help them face their inevitable demise. In time, when the population is now faced with starvation, the wall, which was only a temporary barrier, gives way and the glaciers start overrunning settlements in the south. The senior representatives, at a loss as to what to do, head north over the wall and onto the glacier. Johor travels with them as they try to reach the pole, but they soon all succumb to cold and hunger. Their physical bodies perish, but their "beings" rise and merge into a single consciousness that becomes the Representative for Planet 8 and all its memories. After watching Planet 8 freeze over completely, the Representative departs for a place "where Canopus tends and guards and instructs."
3753262	/m/09z4nb	The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire	Doris Lessing	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Volyen Empire is a relatively weak interstellar empire situated at the edge of our galaxy. It comprises the planet Volyen, its two moons, Volyenadna and Volyendesta (also referred to as planets), and two neighbouring planets, Maken and Slovin. Intelligent life evolved independently on each of these five "planets", and over time unstable empires formed, where each planet for a period ruled the others. The Volyen Empire is the last of these empires and rules the region with force and repression. Although this system is at the edge of the Canopean Empire's sphere of influence, Canopus sends agents to the region because Volyen's colonization of Maken and Slovin provoked the Sirian Empire who had earmarked these planets for "possible expansion". In addition, Shammat, Canopus's enemy, had established a presence in the region. Disillusioned and oppressed, the citizens of Volyen and its colonies start speaking out against the Volyen government. Revolutionary groups form and counter the Empire's rhetoric with rhetoric of their own. Krolgul of Shammat, buoyed by the turmoil, encourages anti-government behaviour. Klorathy, a senior Canopean Colonial administrator, is sent to Volyen to observe the unfolding events, and to monitor Incent, one of his agents who has been caught up in the sentiment of the revolutionary rhetoric. Incent has also fallen prey to Krolgul's propaganda and is withdrawn from the field by Klorathy and placed in a Hospital for Rhetorical Diseases on Volyendesta. Sirius is now threatening to invade the region, and this is welcomed by the downtrodden in the Volyen Empire because they are sure that Sirius will set them free. Many citizens became Sirian agents and provide Sirius with information and support. But the Sirian Empire is itself in turmoil. A conflict on Sirius split the governing oligarchy into the Questioners, led by the Five who want Sirius's expansion program halted, and the Conservers, who believe Sirius should continue colonizing other planets. The Five were defeated and Sirius resumed its expansion, but this time with an uncontrolled brutality that turned the Sirian Empire into a tyranny. When the Sirian agents learn about Sirius's tyranny, their loyalties are divided between Sirius and Volyen, and they become known as "sentimental agents". Sirius invades the Volyen Empire with troops from nearby Sirian occupied planets. The troops, themselves colonial subjects of the now declining Sirian Empire, were told that Volyen is poor and deprived and needs Sirius's help. But when they land they discover that the Volyens are better off than they are, and return home and declare their own planets independent from Sirius. Volyenadna and Volyendesta, with Klorathy's help, become self-sustaining and declare their independence from the crumbling Volyen Empire. The change of circumstances in the region weakens Krolgul and his influence, and he returns to Shammat. Incent, now "recovered" from his illness, decides that he is going to help Krolgul. Klorathy, still Incent's custodian, follows him to Shammat.
3753688	/m/09z5b7	Sidetracked	Henning Mankell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the sweltering Swedish summer of 1994, a sadistic serial killer begins preying on elderly, successful men, violently slaughtering them with an axe before collecting their scalps as trophies. Meanwhile, Wallander witnesses a young woman from the Dominican Republic set herself on fire, and must also cope with his increasingly despondent father, who's determined to make one final trip to Italy. As he investigates the two cases, the Ystad detective uncovers a sinister link to prostitution rackets and the white slavery trade.
3755097	/m/09z769	Typhoon	Joseph Conrad	1902	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Typhoon is a classic sea yarn, possibly based upon Conrad's actual experience of seaman's life, and probably on a real incident aboard of the real steamer John P. Best. It describes how Captain MacWhirr sails the Siamese steamer Nan-Shan into a typhoon—a mature tropical cyclone of the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean. Other characters include the young Jukes - most probably an "alter ego" of Conrad from the time he had sailed under captain John McWhir - and Solomon Rout, the chief engineer. The novel classically evokes the seafaring life at the turn of the century. While Macwhirr, who, according to Conrad, "never walked on this Earth" - is emotionally estranged from his family and crew, and though he refuses to consider an alternate course to skirt the typhoon, his indomitable will in the face of a superior natural force elicits grudging admiration.
3755880	/m/09z8yy	Angélique, the Marquise of the Angels	Anne Golon	1956	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In Mid-17th century France, a young Louis XIV struggles for his throne, beggars and thieves haunt Paris and brigands roam the countryside. Fifth child of an impoverished country nobleman, Angélique de Sancé de Monteloup grows up in the Poitou marshlands. Her logical destiny would be to marry a poor country nobleman, have children and spend her life fighting for a meager subsistence. Destiny has other plans in store for her. At 17, on returning from her education in a convent, she finds herself betrothed to the rich count, Jeoffrey de Peyrac, (Jeoffrey Comte de Peyrac de Morens d'Irristru, Lord of Toulouse and Aquitaine), 12 years her senior - lame, scarred and reputed to be a wizard. For the sake of her family, Angélique reluctantly agrees to the match but refuses the advances of her husband. Peyrac respects her decision and does not pursue his claim to conjugal rights, wishing to seduce her rather than use force. With the passing of months, Angelique discovers the talents and virtues of her remarkable husband - scientist, musician, philosopher - and to her surprise falls passionately in love with him. But Peyrac's unusual way of life is threatened by the ambitions of the Archbishop of Toulouse, and soon arouses the jealousy of King Louis XIV, who, in actual historical record, disliked nobles who were too powerful and independent of the monarchy. Jeoffrey is arrested and charged with sorcery. Angélique tries to single-handedly take on the might of the royal court. She survives several murder attempts and overcomes insurmountable odds in an effort to save Jeoffrey from being burned at the stake, but to no avail. Alone and desperate, Angélique plunges into the darkness of the Paris underworld, intent on revenge and fueled by her determination to survive. Angélique realizes that her underworld existence is unfair to her sons, who belong to one of the greatest noble families in France. She works to regain her family's rightful inheritance that had been stolen from them by the monarchy. She blackmails her cousin Philippe du Plessis de Bellière, a favourite Marshal of the king, into marriage.
3756137	/m/09z9fn	Baraka				 The story involves a multinational oil company's attempts to gain oil rights in Vietnam by supporting an arms deal.
3756184	/m/09z9k3	From Doon With Death	Ruth Rendell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The police knew all about Margaret Parsons. She was a religious, old-fashioned and respectable woman, as unexciting and dependable as her marriage. But it wasn't her life that interested Wexford - it was her violent, passionate death. Inspector Wexford becomes interested in her death after finding a number of letters from the mysterious Doon.
3756259	/m/09z9qc	Life & Times of Michael K	John Maxwell Coetzee	1983	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is split into three parts. The novel begins with Michael K, an institutionalized simpleton who works as a gardener in Cape Town, South Africa. Michael tends to his mother who works as a maid to a wealthy family. Eventually, the city breaks out in a massive warlike riot, and Michael's mother becomes very sick. Michael decides to quit his job and escape the city to return his mother to her birthplace of Prince Albert . Michael finds himself unable to obtain the proper permits for travel out of the city so he builds a shoddy rickshaw to carry his mother, and they go on their way. Soon after escaping, Michael’s mother dies in a hospital. He lingers for some time, carrying his mother’s ashes around with him in a box. Finally, Michael decides to continue on his journey to Prince Albert to deliver his mother’s ashes. Along the way, though, he is detained for not having the required travel papers, thus being assigned to work detail on a railway track. After his job on the railway track is finished, Michael makes his way to the farm his mother spoke of on Prince Albert. The farm is abandoned and desolate. Soon, Michael discovers how to live off the land. However, when one of the relatives of the real owners of the farm arrives, he treats Michael like a servant. Michael dislikes this treatment so he escapes up into the mountains. In the mountains, Michael goes through a period of starvation while he becomes aware of his surroundings. In his malnourished state he finds his way down to a town where he is picked up by the police and is sent to work on a work camp. Here, Michael meets a man named Robert. Robert explains that the workers in the camp are exploited for cheap labor by the townspeople. Eventually, there is an attack on Prince Albert and the workers of the camp are blamed. The local police captain takes over and Michael escapes. Michael finds his way back to the farm but soon feels claustrophobic within the house. Therefore, he builds a shelter in the open where he is able to watch his garden. Rebels come out of the mountains and use his garden. Although Michael is angered by this he stays in hiding. Michael becomes malnourished and delirious again because he has not come out of hiding. He is found by some soldiers and is taken to a rehabilitation camp in Cape Town. At the rehabilitation camp, a doctor becomes interested in Michael. He finds Michael’s simple nature extremely fascinating and finds him to be unfairly accused of aiding rebels. Michael becomes very sick and delirious because he refuses to eat. The doctor tries to understand Michael’s stubborn ways while attempting to get Michael released. However, Michael escapes on his own. Upon his escape, Michael meets with a group of nomadic people who feed him and introduce him to a woman who has sex with him; later we see him attracted to women for the first time. He returns to the apartment where he and his mother lived in Cape Town, the same apartment and city he had tried to escape some time ago. Michael reflects on the garden he made in Prince Albert. Some commentators notice a connection between the character Michael K and the protagonist Josef K. in The Trial by Franz Kafka. The book also bears many references to Kafka, and it is believed, "K" is a tribute to Kafka.
3758399	/m/09zdtz	The Perilous Gard	Elizabeth Marie Pope	1974	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Perilous Gard takes place in England during the 1550s. The lead character, Kate Sutton, is a lady-in-waiting for Queen Elizabeth I of England when she is still a princess. Her sister, Alicia, inadvertently gets her exiled to a castle named Elvenwood Hall, also known as The Perilous Gard, where she finds that the daughter of Sir Geoffrey Heron, the master of the hall, vanished under mysterious circumstances that implicate his brother, Christopher Heron. She also finds that the local villagers fear the fairy folk who live under the hill and think they may be kidnapping children. Kate stumbles into the underground fairy world where she faces several challenges, which include saving herself and Christopher, who chose to offer himself as a sacrifice to the leader of the fairy folk, the Lady In Green. Kate detests the Lady In Green at first, but the two of them have much in common. Both are strong-willed, highly independent, and capable of enormous self-discipline. Kate's refusal to be drugged or manipulated in other ways soon gains her a measure of respect among the Fairy Folk. Little by little she gains knowledge of their underground lair, while the Lady In Green gradually changes from a cruel tormentor to a mentor and almost, at times, a friend. At the end Kate saves Christopher, who takes Cecily to London to live with his sister Jenny (Jennifer). When Christopher comes back he proposes to Kate, and she accepts. Kate is granted freedom when Queen Elizabeth I ascends the throne. In this book, faeries, or "the Old Ones", are cold, heartless creatures. They serve as a representation of the old pagan religions that were gradually driven out of England by Christianity. They are ruled by the GUARDIAN OF THE WELL and the QUEEN OF THE FAERIE FOLK. The story has references to Tam Lin and weaves in ballads, paganism, and Christianity.
3759894	/m/09zh6m	Grendel	John Gardner	1971	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 Grendel begins with the title character engaged in a twelve-year war against the human Danes. In the opening scene, Grendel briefly fights with a ram when frustrated with its stupidity. He then mockingly asks the sky why animals lack sense and dignity; the sky does not reply, adding to his frustration. Grendel then passes through his cave and encounters his mute mother before venturing out into the night where he attacks Hrothgar's mead hall, called "Hart" in Grendel. Later, Grendel reminisces about his early experiences in life, beginning with his childhood days of exploring the caves inhabited by him, his mother and other creatures with which he is unable to speak. One day, however, he arrives at a pool filled with firesnakes, which he enters. Upon exiting, he is greeted by moonlight. Exploring the mysterious outside world at greater length, he eventually becomes wedged and trapped in a tree. Helpless, he cries for his mother, but only a bull appears, wounding him. The bull's unchanging, unrelenting manner of attack leads him to conclude that the whole of reality is tantamount to the animal's senseless efforts (a nihilistic view). As he is able to evade its blows, he falls asleep, only to wake surrounded by humans. The armored men, thinking that he is a tree spirit, try to feed him. Although Grendel can understand the humans, they cannot understand him and they become frightened, which leads to a fight between Grendel and the Danish warriors, including Hrothgar. Grendel is barely saved from death at the hands of the humans by the appearance of his mother. The novel continues by elaborating on the colonization of the area by humans and their subsequent development from nomadic bands into complex civilizations with fine crafts, politics, and warfare. Grendel witnesses Hrothgar become the foremost in power amongst the human factions. During Hrothgar's rise to prominence, a blind poet appears at the doors of Hart, whom Grendel calls "the Shaper" (a literal translation of the word Scop) . He tells the story of the ancient warrior Scyld Shefing, which enraptures and seduces Grendel. The monster reacts violently to the power the beautiful myth has on him and flees, having seen the brutal rise of the Danes. Grendel continues to be enraptured by the tales, as does Hrothgar, who begins a widespread campaign of philanthropy and justice. After seeing a corpse and two lovers juxtaposed, he drags the corpse to Hart, bursting into the hall and begging for mercy and peace. The thegns do not comprehend his actions and see this as an attack, driving him from the hall. While fleeing the men, he curses them, yet still returns later to hear the rest of the Shaper's songs, half enraptured and half enraged. When Grendel returns to his cave, he attempts and fails to communicate with his mother, thus leaving him with a sense of total loneliness. He becomes filled with despair and falls through the sea, finding himself in an enormous cave filled with riches and a dragon. The omniscient dragon reveals to Grendel a totally fatalistic view of reality. The dragon explains the power of the Shaper as simply the ability to make the logic of humans seem real, despite the fact his lore possesses no factual basis. The dragon and Grendel cannot agree about the dragon's statements that existence is a chain reaction of accidents, and Grendel exits the cave in a mixed state of confusion, anger, and denial. While listening to the Shaper, he is spotted by sentries, who try to fight him off again, but he discovers that the dragon has enchanted him, leaving him impervious to weapons. Realizing his power, he begins attacking Hart, viewing his attacks as a perpetual battle. Grendel is challenged by a thegn named Unferth, to which he responds mockingly, leaving when Unferth runs away crying. Grendel awakens a few days later to realize that Unferth has followed him to his cave in an act of heroic desperation. Grendel continues to mock Unferth, leading the Dane to threaten Grendel with death, in the hope that his people would sing of his tale for years to come. When Unferth passes out from exhaustion, Grendel takes him back to Hart to live out his days in frustrated mediocrity. In the second year of the war, Grendel notes that his raids have destroyed the esteem of Hrothgar, allowing a rival noble named Hygmod to gain power. Fearing deposition, Hrothgar assembles an army to attack Hygmod and his people, the Helmings. Instead of a fight Hygmod offers his sister Wealtheow to Hrothgar as a wife after a series of negotiations. The beauty of Wealtheow moves Grendel as the Shaper had once before, keeping the monster from attacking Hart just as she prevents internal conflicts among the Danes. Eventually, Grendel decides to kill Wealtheow, since she threatens the ideas explained by the dragon. Upon capturing her, he realizes that killing and not killing are equally meaningless, and he retreats, knowing that by not killing Wealtheow, he has once again confounded the logic of humanity and religion. Later, Grendel watches as Hrothgar's nephew Hrothulf develops his understanding of the two classes in Danish society: thegns and peasants. He wrestles with his anarchist theories and then further explores them with a peasant named Red Horse, who teaches Hrothulf that government exists only for the protection of those in power. As the politics of Hrothulf, Hygmod, Hrothgar, and a thegn named Ingeld become more bitter and pathetic, Grendel defends his terrorizing of the Danes, claiming that his violence has resulted in great deeds and given the people humanity, thus making him their creator. While there had previously been foreshadowing of the death of Grendel, the character himself begins to feel an uneasy sensation that becomes fear. Grendel then watches a religious ceremony and considers the futility and role of religion. While sitting in the circle of the Danish gods, an old priest, Ork, approaches the monster. Thinking that Grendel is their main deity, the Destroyer, he talks to Grendel, who plays along, questioning Ork. The priest explains a theological system that borders on monotheism, bringing him to tears. While Grendel is puzzled by the fervent belief, three other priests approach and chastise Ork. Grendel flees at this opportunity, overwhelmed with a vague dread. Grendel again fights an animal in his lair, but gives up after even death will not stop its mechanical climb. Watching the Danes, he hears a woman predict the coming of an illustrious thegn and then witnesses the death of the Shaper. Returning to his cave, his mother seems agitated. She manages to make one unusual unintelligible word, which Grendel discounts, and then goes to the Shaper's funeral. The Shaper's assistant sings a song derived from the tale of King Finn (see the Finnsburg Fragment). Later, in the cave, he wakes up with his mother still making word-like noises, and once again feels a terrible foreboding. Grendel reveals that fifteen travellers have come to Denmark from over the sea, almost as though the way was set before them. He has a morbid exhilaration from these visitors, most especially from their huge and taciturn leader. The visitors, who reveal themselves to be Geats ruled by Hygelac, have an uneasy relationship with the Danes. Upon their arrival, Unferth mockingly claims that the leader of the visitors has lost a challenge to another champion. The Geat leader, Beowulf, calmly relates his version of the events, and then rebukes Unferth, who leaves on the verge of tears. Grendel notices the firm nature of Beowulf and the fact that his lips do not move in accordance with his words, as though he is dead or risen from the dead. He sees a great lust for violence in Beowulf's eyes, convincing Grendel he is insane. At nightfall, Grendel gleefully decides to attack. He breaks into the hall and eats one man. Grabbing the wrist of another, he realizes that it is Beowulf, and that he has grabbed his arm. They wrestle furiously, during which Beowulf appears to become a flaming dragon-like figure and repeats many of the ideas that the dragon revealed to Grendel. As Beowulf gains the upper hand, Grendel tells himself that were it not for a slip on a puddle of blood, Beowulf would not be in control of their battle. The Geat slams Grendel into the walls of the hall, demanding that Grendel sing about the hardness of walls. This is a continuation of Grendel's poetic exploration of philosophy. He then rips off Grendel's arm, causing the monster to flee in pain and fear. Grendel feels as though everything is unnaturally clear, leading him to toss himself into an abyss (whether or not Grendel jumps is left up to the perception of the reader). He notes as he dies that the only creatures attending his "funeral" are the animals he so despised. Grendel dies wondering if what he is feeling is joy, understanding what the dragon meant by the accident statement, and cursing existence.
3760657	/m/09zjrj	Storm Warning	Jack Higgins	1976-08-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A German merchant ship is attempting to return to Germany from Brazil at the end of August 1944 via a crossing of the Atlantic which is full of enemy shipping and warships. With a crew of twenty-two men and five nuns as passengers, the boat makes its remarkable journey, but after being severely battered by a storm, is wrecked off the coast of Scotland on the Washington Reef in the Outer Hebrides. The conclusion may sound familiar to some as Higgins has obviously taken some ideas (especially the ones regarding the shipwreck) from an earlier novel he wrote called 'A Game For Heroes', in which German soldiers and British citizens try to rescue the crew of a ship that has foundered off the coast of the Jersey islands. Once again, the protagonists are enemies that come together to help each other in time of need.
3760670	/m/09zjsx	Children of The Dust	Louise Lawrence	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 When the air raid sirens go off, Sarah, a schoolgirl in England, runs home to help her stepmother, Veronica, prepare the living room to protect the family from nuclear fallout. Sarah and Veronica assemble living provisions, rudimentary sanitary supplies, and clothes and toys for Veronica's son William (aged five) and daughter Catherine (aged seven). The family then shelter inside as the bombs fall. Sarah realises that the water the rest of the family has been using has become contaminated with radioactive particles from the unblocked chimney, and all apart from Catherine are likely to contract radiation sickness. Veronica displays symptoms first and leaves the house several times to collect canned (safe) food for Catherine. She tells Sarah that community members have gathered in the church and a local farmer is giving away contaminated meat for free. Later, when her symptoms become worse, Veronica leaves, presumably to die. William also begins to suffer from radiation sickness, and when he is near death and Sarah begins to weaken she leaves the house, bundling Catherine up against contamination. She gathers food for her from the house of the town farmer and takes her to the remote home of Johnson. Johnson has been prepared for the war, and appears unaffected by radiation sickness. This section begins with a flashback to the day of the war, which reveals that Sarah's father, Bill, a lecturer at Bristol University, was driving to a meeting when a woman named Erica flagged him down. As a leading authority on cellular cloning, she had a pass granting her (and anyone accompanying her) shelter in a government bunker. Bill takes Erica to the bunker at Avon, but had mixed feelings about surviving when his wife and children did not. Within two months of the war, Britain is gripped by a nuclear winter. When the nuclear winter finally ends, the authorities send helicopters on reconnaissance missions, which reveal that against all odds, there are people still alive outside. They also learn that the ozone layer has been damaged, so anyone who goes outside must wear protective clothing. Erica feels it is her duty as a woman still of child-bearing age to help repopulate society, so she marries Bill and gives birth to a daughter, Ophelia. Bill is assigned to teach the bunker's teenagers, and, though he is officially meant to teach science-based subjects, introduces subjects such as English literature and politics into the curriculum. Ophelia spends the first sixteen years of her life in the bunker, where she calmly accepts the restrictions on her life. But other youngsters, in particular an Anglo-American youth named Dwight Allison, are not so accepting. Under the influence of Bill's teachings, Dwight has come to believe that General MacAllister, the man in charge of the bunker, has too much authority and, one day, spray-paints a slogan denouncing MacAllister as a "fascist pig". As a punishment, Dwight is sentenced to a year of hard labour and expelled from school. Some time later, a large herd of cattle is found in one of the outside communities. MacAllister orders Dwight's father, Colonel Jeff Allison, to bring the cattle to the bunker for "government protection". Dwight believes it would be wrong to take the cattle when the outsiders depend on them for survival and hurries to tell Bill. Bill and Dwight decide that the best course of action would be to leave the bunker and warn the community which owns the cattle; Ophelia accompanies them, but she does so because they are the people she is closest to, not because she feels they are doing the right thing. Outside, the world is recovering from the effects of the war and Ophelia is able to experience things she has previously only known about via her father's lessons. They discover the cattle owners are Johnson's community, and Bill is soon reunited with Catherine, who is heavily pregnant with her eighth child. She married Johnson when she was in her teens, but six of the children she has already given birth to have died in infancy due to genetic mutation. Since Johnson is old enough to be Catherine's father, Ophelia is disgusted, thinking the outsiders are uncivilised compared to the people in the bunker. Dwight retorts that the latter are like "dinosaurs", attempting to maintain pre-war standards of living and not adapting to the changed conditions in the world. During the course of the day, Ophelia meets Catherine's only surviving daughter, Lilith, who was born with white eyes and pale hairs all over her body; she also has a vocal cord defect which prevents her from speaking. Since there is no other community which can handle a herd the size of Johnson's, Bill and Dwight are unable to get the cattle away before Colonel Allison and his men come to collect them. Johnson attempts to compromise by offering Colonel Allison enough cattle to form the basis of a herd, but Colonel Allison says he is not in a position to negotiate. Realising the discussion is going nowhere, Dwight sabotages all but one of the Army trucks, making it impossible to take the cattle back to the bunker, and escapes into the wilderness. Ophelia wants to return to the bunker, even though doing so means she will never see Dwight again. The section ends with Ophelia in tears, as Lilith (with her newborn sister in her arms) smiles at her pityingly. Five decades after the war, the bunker is decaying and fuel supplies have run out, and the people in the bunker have been forced to seek sanctuary among outside communities. On one such expedition, Ophelia's son, Simon, sees a pack of wild dogs stalking a person who is searching the ruins of an old house. He fires his gun, killing one of the dogs and scattering the rest, then goes to help the person they were stalking. That person proves to be a mutant girl named Laura, who tells him that "weapons are evil" and that he has no right to kill a living thing. When Simon sees that Laura's body is covered with hair (which protects her skin from being damaged by ultra-violet radiation), he is repulsed by her, thinking she is an "ape". Shortly after meeting Laura, Simon injures his leg on a rusty nail. Since his people have no means to treat injuries, he is taken to Johnson's community, where Laura lives. Rather than having separate homes for each family, the community consists of a large "house" which reminds Simon of a Tibetan monastery. Seeing the well-ordered community where people have learned to make everything they need themselves, Simon begins to feel that his own people are "failures", having tried to restore pre-war standards at the expense of their children's futures. Simon meets Catherine, now known as "Blind Kate," blind after years of exposure to ultraviolet radiation and covered in festering sores. Simon sees in her a glimpse of his own future and, on learning that she is Laura's grandmother, is so repulsed at the thought of being related to a mutant that he can't bring himself to acknowledge it. Instead, when Laura asks if he has ever heard of the people who once came to the community to take the cattle, he claims not to know them. The next morning, Simon finds himself the topic of much discussion among the mutants. Unable to bear being the subject of pity, he storms out of the dining hall and, following a vitriolic lecture from blind Kate, leaves the settlement even though his leg is not fully healed. He plans to catch up with the rest of his party, but a pack of dogs chases him into a ruined church. While there, he sees a glider flying overhead. The glider's pilot alerts Laura's people to Simon's whereabouts. Laura rides to the rescue on her horse and uses her psychic powers to send the dogs away. She tells Simon that she and the rest of the mutants have developed telekinetic powers and the ability to communicate telepathically. She believes the mutants are a new species of humans, but they need the technical knowledge Simon's people have kept alive if they are to reach their full potential. Simon comes to terms with what his ancestors did to the world and realises that, though he can't change the past, he can do something positive with his own life by helping his people collaborate with the mutants. He comes to believe that the nuclear war was meant to happen, so that Laura (whom he finally acknowledges as his cousin) and the rest of her kind could be born.
3761127	/m/09zkp9	Running Wild	J. G. Ballard	1988	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Pangbourne Village is an estate for the upper middleclass, protected by security fences and discreet guards. Its ten families are wealthy, respectable, 40-something couples with adolescent children on whom they lavish everything money can buy. One morning it is discovered that all the adult residents have been killed and the children have disappeared without trace. Dr Richard Greville of Scotland Yard puzzles over the scanty evidence: it gives no leads to the identity of the murderers and kidnappers. No demands for ransom are received. No terrorist group claims responsibility. The reader soon realizes that the missing children are also the missing murderers. Their controlled and materialistic upbringing has left them no way to establish their own identities except by rebelling into criminal savagery. However, in a tradition of obtuse policemen going back to Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Greville resists drawing this obvious conclusion - until the children strike again.
3761434	/m/09zlfr	The Wild Swans	Hans Christian Andersen	1838-10-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a faraway kingdom, there lives a widowed King with his twelve children: eleven princes and one princess. One day, he decides to remarry. He marries a wicked queen who was a witch. Out of spite, the queen turns her eleven stepsons into swans (they are allowed to become human by night) and forces them to fly away. The queen then tries to bewitch their 15-year old sister Elisa, but Elisa's goodness is too strong for this, so she has Elisa banished. The brothers carry Elisa to safety in a foreign land where she is out of harm's way of her stepmother. There, Elisa is guided by the queen of the fairies to gather nettles in graveyards; she knits these into shirts that will eventually help her brothers regain their human shapes. Elisa endures painfully blistered hands from nettle stings, and she must also take a vow of silence for the duration of her task, for speaking one word will kill her brothers. The king of another faraway land happens to come across the mute Elise and falls in love with her. He grants her a room in the castle where she continues her knitting. Eventually he proposes to crown her as his queen and wife, and she accepts. However, the Archbishop is chagrined because he thinks Elisa is herself a witch, but the king will not believe him. One night Elisa runs out of nettles and is forced to collect more in a nearby church graveyard where the Archbishop is watching. He reports the incident to the king as proof of witchcraft. The statues of the saints shake their heads in protest, but the Archbishop misinterprets this sign as confirmation of Elisa's guilt. The Archbishop orders to put Elisa on trial for witchcraft. She can speak no word in her defence and is sentenced to death by burning at the stake. The brothers discover Elisa's plight and try to speak to the king, but fail. Even as the tumbril bears Elise away to execution, she continues knitting, determined to keep it up to the last moment of her life. This enrages the people, who are on the brink of snatching and destroying the shirts when the swans descend and rescue Elise. The people (correctly) interpret this as a sign from Heaven that Elise is innocent, but the executioner still makes ready for the burning. Then Elise throws the shirts over the swans, and the brothers return to their human forms. The youngest brother retains one swan's wing because Elise did not have time to finish the last sleeve. Elise is now free to speak and tell the truth, but she faints from exhaustion, so her brothers explain. As they do so, the firewood around Elise's stake miraculously take root and burst into flowers. The king plucks the topmost flower and presents it to Elise and they are married.
3762180	/m/09zmw0	Alchemy	Margaret Mahy	2002-11-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Roland, a 7th former who has been caught shoplifting, is given an unusual assignment: to spy on a mysterious girl in his class who is studying alchemy. However, an enemy from the boy's past wants the girl's power and is using him for information. Roland eventually finds out that he is not unlike Jess Ferret and her abilities, but gets them both into a situation which endangers their lives. Alchemy has similar themes to two other books by Mahy, The Changeover and The Haunting. The book won the senior fiction section of the 2003 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards.
3762499	/m/09zncj	End in Tears	Ruth Rendell	2005-10-20	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When a lump of concrete is thrown from a bridge and into passing traffic one dark night, the wrong motorist dies. The killer soon rectifies his mistake, however, and Inspector Wexford finds himself under attack from the local press because of his 'old-fashioned' policing methods. Meanwhile, the difficult relationship he shares with his daughter Sylvia takes on new dimensions, as the case makes him ponder the terrible possibility of losing a child...
3763549	/m/09zpyt	Mem and Zin	Ehmedê Xanî		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Mam, of the "Alan" clan, and Zin, of the "Botan" clan, are two star-crossed lovers. Their union is blocked by a person named Bakr of the Bakran clan. Mam eventually dies during a complicated conspiracy by Bakr. When Zin receives the news, she also dies while mourning the death of Mam at his grave. The immense grief leads to her death and she is buried next to Mam. The news of the death of Mam and Zin, spreads quickly among the people of Jazira Botan. Then Bakr's role in the tragedy is revealed, and he takes sanctuary between the two graves. He is eventually captured and slain by the people of Jazira. A thorn bush soon grows out of Bakr’s blood, sending its roots of malice deep into the earth between the lovers’ graves, separating the two even after their death. In 2002, the Kurdistan TV satellite channel produced a dramatised series of Mam and Zin, which was recognised as one of the best-directed dramas in Kurdistan.
3765263	/m/09zt4s	Las películas de mi vida	Alberto Fuguet	2002	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The novel's protagonist tells the story of his life lived back and forth between Chile and California. He focuses first on his early youth spent in California, using the films that he saw as a way to characterize this time in his life. He rather suddenly has to return to Chile in his early teens, coming home to live under Augusto Pinochet's regime, a major culture shock for him.
3765320	/m/09zt88	August 1914	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The plot primarily follows Colonel Vorotyntsev, a General Staff officer sent by the Grand Duke's (supreme commander, Russian Army) headquarters to the Russian Second Army invading East Prussia under command of General Alexander Samsonov. Vorotyntsev has been sent to find out exactly what is happening with the Second Army; a second General Staff colonel has been sent to the First Army with the same mission. Distances were so great, communications so poor, and the Russian Army so badly prepared for war, Voroyntsev was sent to find out all he could about conditions at the front and then report back to the Grand Duke. By August 26, the opening day of the 4-day Battle of Tannenberg, Vorotyntsev comes to realize that he cannot return to his headquarters in time to make any difference in the outcome of the battle, and stays with the Second Army to help out where he is able to. Numerous side plots involving other characters, both on the battlefield and elsewhere, fill out this great historical novel. The unprepared army's failures mirror those of the Tsarist regime. A famous episode in the earlier version of the novel narrates the state of mind and suicide of General Samsonov, the Russian commander.
3765583	/m/09ztpl	The Dying Animal	Philip Roth	2001	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kepesh is fascinated by the beautiful young Consuela Castillo, a student in one of his courses. An erotic liaison is formed between the two; Kepesh becomes obsessively enamored of his lover's breasts, a fetish developed in the previous novels. Despite his fevered devotion to Consuela, the sexually promiscuous professor maintains a concurrent affair with a previous lover, now divorced. He is also reluctant to expose himself to the scrutiny or ridicule that might follow from an introduction to Consuela's family. It is implied that he fears such a meeting would expose the implausible age gap in their relationship. Ultimately, Kepesh limits their relationship to the physical instead of embarking upon any deeper arrangement. In the end, Kepesh is destroyed by his indecisiveness, the fear of senescence, his lust and jealousy. Consuela never subsequently finds a lover who can show the same level of devotion to her body as Kepesh had. After some years of estrangement, she asks him to take nude photographs of her because she will be losing one of her breasts to a life-saving mastectomy. Most editions display a cover picture, Le grand nu (1919) by Amedeo Modigliani. In the novel, Consuela sends Kepesh a postcard depicting Le grand nu, and Kepesh surmises that the figure in the painting is her alter ego.
3765923	/m/09zvct	Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress	Daniel Defoe	1724	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns the story of an unnamed "fallen woman", the second time Defoe created such a character (the first was a similar female character in Moll Flanders). In Roxana, a woman who takes on various pseudonyms, including "Roxana," describes her fall from wealth thanks to abandonment by a "fool" of a husband and movement into prostitution upon his abandonment. Roxana moves up and down through the social spectrum several times, by contracting an ersatz marriage to a jeweler, secretly courting a prince, being offered marriage by a Dutch merchant, and is finally able to afford her own freedom by accumulating wealth from these men.
3766150	/m/09zvsg	Four to Score	Janet Evanovich	1998-06-15	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stephanie Plum is back and she wants revenge, and this time she's on the trail of Maxine Nowicki, an ex-waitress accused of stealing her ex-boyfriend's car. Helping Stephanie is former-prostitute-turned-backup Lula, puzzle solving transvestite singer Sally Sweet, mentor Ranger, and vice cop Joe Morelli. This one won't be easy though, as Stephanie's competing with her arch nemesis Joyce Barnhardt. Oh, and she can't forget the little matter of someone trying to kill her. Again. Stephanie & Morelli resume their intimate relationship.
3766159	/m/09zvt4	High Five	Janet Evanovich	1999-07-16	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Business is slow for Stephanie Plum, so when her Uncle Fred goes missing, Stephanie agrees to help look for him. Soon enough, Stephanie realizes that (once again) she's in over her head, and up to her neck in unanswered questions. Stephanie for the first time takes a job with Ranger at his company to make ends meet. Why are there pictures of body parts in Uncle Fred's house? Why is a nasty bookie following Stephanie around? Could her Uncle's disappearance have something to do with two dollars? Why can't she bring in the certified midget FTA Randy Briggs? Stephanie's stalker Benito Ramirez, from book one, is released and is back to irritate Stephanie some more. Stephanie's latest case is proceeding 'business as usual'.
3766182	/m/09zvwl	Seven Up	Janet Evanovich	2001-06-19	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stephanie is assigned to bring in semi-retired mobster Eddie DeChooch when he fails to appear in court for selling contraband cigarettes. When two of Stephanie's burned-out high-school friends, Walter 'MoonMan' Dunphy and Dougie 'The Dealer' Kruper, get themselves mixed up in DeChooch's cigarette scheme -- and then vanish -- Stephanie calls the mysterious Ranger for help. With Ranger's assistance, plus the 'aid' of two (very polite) hoodlums with a talent for breaking-and-entering, it becomes apparent that DeChooch may have come out of retirement... To make things worse, Stephanie's perfect older sister Valerie divorces her cheating husband, and moves back in with her family, along with her two daughters. She then proclaims herself to be a lesbian, and adds more craziness to Stephanie's life. In short, life in the Burg hasn't changed a bit.
3766194	/m/09zvxm	Hot Six	Janet Evanovich	2000-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book begins at the point at which High Five ended, revealing who Stephanie picked: Ranger or Joe Morelli. The story then jumps ahead five months, with Stephanie's friend Carol attempting to avoid jail-time by jumping off a bridge. Stephanie talks her down, and persuades the man who reported her not to press charges. In return, Stephanie must watch the man's dog, Bob, which she does. He never comes to take the dog back. Meanwhile, Stephanie must chase down Ranger, while being followed by two hit men (and getting four cars destroyed in the process). Stephanie's eccentric Grandma Mazur has moved in, as well, and to top it all off, Plum has to deal with a stoner named Mooner. In the end, it all works out. Stephanie even gains a proposal out of the deal.
3766297	/m/09zw2b	To the Nines	Janet Evanovich	2003-07-15	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stephanie Plum, bounty-hunter. She's got all the normal concerns in life: the rent, her family, men; yet all of her concerns are topped by the minor fact that someone is usually trying to kill her. The title appears to come from the common phrase, 'dressed to the nines'. "My name is Stephanie Plum and I was born and raised in the Chambersburg section of Trenton, where the top male activities are scarfing pastries and pork rinds and growing love handles." Stephanie is a bounty hunter and amateur detective, who with a combination of luck and intuition usually gets the job done (though often by accident). Samuel Singh, an immigrant in New Jersey on a work visa, has been released on a visa bond by Stephanie's cousin and boss, Vinnie. When Singh goes missing, Vinnie is on the hook for the highly-publicized bond. Stephanie goes on the hunt to find him. She starts with TriBro, Singh's workplace, owned by three brothers, Andrew, Bart and Clyde Cone. While Andrew is helpful and Clyde is very enthusiastic about the case, Bart Cone gives Stephanie the creeps. In some background checks it turns up that Bart Cone was a suspect in the murder of Lillian Paressi, which only goes to further her suspicions. Meanwhile, Stephanie has been getting some unwanted attention in the form of white carnations, red roses and some rather creepy emails. She only gets more nervous when a number of deaths that have some tentative connections to the Paressi murder also have the flowers present. Before long, a tip-off leads Stephanie, along with her side-kick Lula and Connie Rossoli, out of the Burg and onto the glitzy streets of Las Vegas. The discovery of Singh's body at the airport and a series of unfortunate encounters with several of Ranger's operatives sends her back to Trenton, where Plum finally gets the answers she's been seeking. After an intense final showdown with the Roses and Carnations killer, Stephanie saves the day yet again. Stephanie's new niece, her older sister Valerie's daughter with Albert Kloughn, is born. She is named Lisa.
3766318	/m/09zw41	Ten Big Ones	Janet Evanovich	2004-05-31	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In this installment of Stephanie Plum's bounty hunter adventures, Stephanie has no central FTA (Failure to Appear) to capture this time around, but is being hunted herself. The novel begins with Stephanie and her sometimes-partner Lula sitting outside in their car debating about food. They accidentally witness a Gang robbery and are swept up into the underground life of Trenton, New Jersey. She's accidentally destroyed a dozen cars. She's a target for every psycho and miscreant this side of the Jersey Turnpike. Her mother's convinced she'll end up dead...or worse, without a man. She's Stephanie Plum and she kicks butt for a living (well, she thought it would sound good to put it that way...) It begins as an innocent trip to the deli-mart, on a quest for nachos. But Stephanie Plum and her partner, Lula, are clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time. A robbery leads to an explosion, which leads to the destruction of yet another car. It would be just another day in the life of Stephanie Plum, except it makes her the target of a gang... and the target of an even scarier, more dangerous force that has come to Trenton. With super bounty hunter Ranger acting more mysterious than ever (and the tension with vice cop Joe Morelli getting hotter), Stephanie finds herself with a decision to make: how to protect herself and where to hide while on the hunt for a killer known as Junkman. There's only one safe place, and it has Ranger's name all over it, if she can find it... and if Junkman doesn't find her first. With Lula riding shotgun and Grandma Mazur on the loose, Stephanie Plum is racing against the clock in her most suspenseful novel yet.
3766325	/m/09zw4r	Eleven on Top	Janet Evanovich	2005-06-21	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stephanie Plum has had enough. Enough of bounty hunting, enough of being constantly shot at, and enough of having her cars blown up on a semi-regular basis. So, she retires. But she's not done with the bounty-hunting business yet.. Someone is, once again, attempting to kill her. It's someone she knows, and someone who knows her too well. In between short, ill-fated periods working at a button factory, the Kan-Kleen Dry-Cleaning Service, and serving chicken at Cluck-in-a-Bucket, Plum must survive the various attempts on her life while trying to discover who wants to kill her this time. Adding to her troubles is a very protective on-and-off boyfriend, an only semi-functional family, and Lula, ex-prostitute-turned-bounty-hunter, who only barely has a grasp on the finer side of the job. All in all, she thinks it's a fairly normal day.
3771032	/m/09_399	Radetzky March	Joseph Roth	1932	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Radetzky March relates the stories of three generations of the Trotta family, professional Austro-Hungarian soldiers and career bureaucrats of Slovenian origin — from imperial zenith to First World War nadir. In 1859, the Austrian Empire (1804–67) was fighting the Second War of Italian Independence (29 April – 11 July 1859), against French and Italian belligerents: Napoleon III of France, the Emperor of the French, and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. In northern Italy, during the Battle of Solferino (24 June 1859), the well-intentioned, but blundering, Emperor Franz Joseph I, and his cavalry cohort, are almost killed; to thwart snipers, Infantry Lieutenant Trotta topples the Emperor from his horse. In rewarding his saviour, the Emperor awards Lt. Trotta the Order of Maria Theresa and ennobles him. Elevation to the nobility ultimately leads to the Trotta family’s ruination, paralleling the imperial collapse of Austria–Hungary (1867–1918). Subsequently, and without his desiring it, Lt. Trotta, now Baron Trotta, is regarded by his family — including his father — as a man of superior social class. Although he does not assume the airs of a social superior, everyone from the new baron’s old life perceives him as a changed person, as a nobleman. The perceptions and expectations of society eventually compel his reluctant integration in the aristocracy, a class with whom he is temperamentally uncomfortable. As a father, the first Baron Trotta is disgusted by the historical revisionism that the national school system is teaching his son's generation; the school history textbook presents as fact a legend about his battlefield rescue of the Emperor — he finds especially galling the misrepresentation that infantry lieutenant Trotta was a cavalry officer. The Baron complains to the Emperor to have the school book corrected. The Emperor counters that such truth would yield an uninspiring, pedestrian history, useless to Austro–Hungarian patriotism; therefore, whether or not history textbooks report Infantry Lt. Trotta’s battlefield heroism as legend or as fact, he orders the story deleted from the official history of Austria–Hungary. Consequently, the subsequent Trotta family generations misunderstand the elder generation’s reverence for the legend of Lt. Trotta’s saving the life of the Emperor and consider themselves to be rightful aristocrats. The disillusioned Baron Trotta opposes his son’s aspirations to a military career, insisting he prepare to become a government official, the second most respected career in the Austrian Empire; by custom, the German son was expected to obey. The son eventually becomes a district administrator in a Moravian town. As a father, the second Baron Trotta (still ignorant of why his war-hero father thwarted his military ambitions) sends his own son to become a cavalry officer; grandfather’s legend determines grandson’s life. The cavalry officer’s career of the third Baron Trotta comprises postings throughout the empire of Austria-Hungary and a dissipated life of wine, women, song, gambling, and dueling, off-duty pursuits characteristic of the military officer class in peace-time. In the progress of his career, Baron Trotta’s infantry unit suppresses a local uprising against the imperial government; awareness of the aftermath of his professional brutality begins his disillusionment with empire.
3772267	/m/09_5g3	One, No one and One Hundred Thousand	Luigi Pirandello	1926	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Vitangelo discovers by way of a completely irrelevant question that his wife poses to him that everyone he knows, everyone he has ever met, has constructed a Vitangelo persona in their own imagination and that none of these personas corresponds to the image of Vitangelo that he himself has constructed and believes himself to be. The reader is immediately immersed in a cruel game of falsifiying projections, mirroring the reality of social existence itself, which imperiously dictate their rules. As a result, the first, ironic "awareness" of Vitangelo consists in the knowledge of that which he definitely is not; the preliminary operation must therefore consist in the spiteful destruction of all of these fictitious masks. Only after this radical step toward madness and folly in the eyes of the world can Vitangelo finally begin to follow the path toward his true self. He discovers, though, that if his body can be one, his spirit certainly is not. And this Faustian duplicity gradually develops into a disconcerting and extremely complex multiplicity. How can one come to know the true foundation, the substate of the self? Vitangelo seeks to catch it by surprise as its shows itself in a brief flash on the surface of consciousness. But this attempt at revealing the secret self, chasing after it as if it were an enemy that must be forced to surrender, does not give the desired results. Just as soon as it appears, the unknown self evaporates and recomposes itself into the familiar attitudes of the superficial self. In this extremely modern Secretum where there is no Saint Augustine to indicate, with the profound voice of conscience, the absolute truth to desire, where desperation is entrusted to a bitter humorism, corrosive and salvific at the same time, the unity of the self disintegrates into diverse stratifications. Vitangelo is one of those "...particularly intelligent souls ...who break through the illusion of the unity of the self and feel themselves to be multiform, a league of many Is..." as Hermann Hesse notes in the Dissertation chapter of Steppenwolf. Vitangelo's extremely lucid reflections seek out the possible objections, confine them into an increasingly restricted space and, finally, kill them with the weapons of rigorous and stringent argumentation. The imaginary interlocutors, ("Dear sirs, excuse me"..."Be honest now"..."You are shocked? Oh my God, you are turning pale"...), which incarnate these objections rather than opening up Vitangelo's monologue into a dialogue fracture it into two levels: one external and falsely reassuring, the other internal and disquieting, but surely more true. The plural you ("voi") which punctuates like a returning counterpoint all of the initial part of the novel is much different from the "tu" of Eugenio Montale, which is almost always charged with desperate expectations or improbable alternatives to existence; it represents, rather, the barrier of the conformist conceptions which the lengthy ratiociations of Vitangelo nullify with the overwhelming evidence of implacable reflections. Vitangelo's "thinking out loud", definitely intentional and rigorous, is, however, paradoxically projected toward a completely different epilogue in which the spiral of reasoning gives way to a liberating irrationalism. Liberation for Vitangelo cannot happen through instinct or Eros, as happens in the case of Harry Haller, the steppenwolf, who realizes his metamorphosis through an encounter with the transgressively vital Hermine. Vitangelo's liberation must follow other avenues; he must realize his salvation and the salvation of his reason precisely through an excess of reason. He seems to say to us: "Even reason, dear sirs, if it is alleviated of its role as a faculty of good sense which councels adaptation to historical, social and existential "reality", can become a precious instrument of liberation." This is not true because reason, when pushed to its ultimate limits, can open up to new metaphysical prospects, but because, having reached its limits, deliriously wandering around in cerebreal labrynths and in an atmosphere satured with venom, it dies by its own hand. The total detachment of Vitangelo from false certainties is fully realized during a period of convalescence from illness. Sickness, in Pirandello as in many other great writers, is experienced as a situation in which all automatic behavior is suspended and the perceptive faculties, outside of the normal rules, seem to expand and see "with other eyes." In this moment the ineptitude that Vitangelo shares with Mattia Pascal and other literary characters of the beginning of the 20th century demonstrates its positive potential and becomes a conscious rejection of any role, of any function, of any perspective based on a utilitaristic vision. The episode of the woolen blanket signals the unbrigeable distance which now separates Vitangelo from the rules of reality in which the judge who has come to interrogate him appears to be completely enmeshed. While the scrupulous functionary, completely absorbed in his role, collects the useful elements for his sentencing, Vitangelo contemplates with "ineffable delight" the woolen blanket covering his legs: "I saw the countryside: as if it were all an endless carpet of wheat; and, hugging it, I was beatified, feeling myself truly, in the midst of all that wheat, with a sense of immemorial distance that almost cause me anguish, a sweet anguish. Ah, to lose oneself there, lay down and abandon onself, just like that among the grass, in the silence of the skies: to fill one's soul with all that useless blue, sinking into it every thought, every memory!" Once cured of his illness, Vitangelo has a completely new perspective, completely "foreign". He no longer desires anything and seeks to follow moment by moment the evolution of life in him and the thing that surround him. He no longer has any history or past, he is no longer in himself but in everything around and outside of him.
3775596	/m/09_c6m	The Parasite	Arthur Conan Doyle			 The main character is a young man known as Austin Gilroy. He studies physiology and knows a professor who is studying the occult. The young man is introduced to a middle-aged woman known as Miss Penclosa, who has a crippled leg and psychic powers. She is a friend of the Professor's wife. The skeptical Gilroy's fiancée, Agatha, is put into a trance to prove Miss Penclosa's powers. This succeeds and Gilroy begins to go to the Professor's house where Miss Penclosa practices her powers on him (one of the many things she tells him is that her powers vary with her strength). This is so Gilroy can look at the physical part of the powers. Miss Penclosa (who has done this before) 'falls in love' with the unfortunate Gilroy. She starts to use her powers on him to make him caress and utter sweet nothings to her. He loses his temper, rejects her love, and she begins to play tricks on him with her powers. The series of cruel tricks ends with him in his Agatha's room carrying a small bottle of sulphuric acid. He notices that it is half-past three. He rushes to Miss Penclosa's home and demands for her presence at the door. The nurse there answers in a frightened tone that she died at half-past three.
3775648	/m/09_ccw	I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X	Bruce Coville	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X continues the adventures of Rod and the crew of the Galactic Patrol ship Ferkel. When villainous BKR's friend Smorkus Flinders crosses over from Dimension X, he captures Rod and his bratty cousin Elspeth, taking them back to his home to use as bait for the crew of the Ferkel as revenge for them imprisoning BKR. Rod and Elspeth are rescued by Captain Grakker and his crew, but during the escape from Castle Chaos, the Ferkel is damaged enough that all must abandon ship. Without their spacecraft, our heroes are stranded. Following the strange disappearance of their friend Snout, the seven remaining gain help in the form of Galuspa, one of the race of Shapeshifters that are native to Dimension X. With his help, they are taken to the Valley of the Shapeshifters to see the Ting Wongovia. During their journey, Rod gains a new companion: a furry little creature called a Chibling, which bonds to him. Also during this time, and the time spent waiting in the Valley, Rod sees that another of the crew, Tar Gibbons, is watching him. Later, the Tar asks Rod to become his "Krevlik", or apprentice. Rod accepts, and begins training under his new teacher in the ways of martial arts. During the wait, Rod learns that BKR was handed off to the Merkel, one of the Ferkel's sister ships, to be delivered to prison, and that the crew of the Ferkel readily jumped in to save them despite knowledge that they were headed into a trap. Finally, the Ting Wongovia agrees to see them. They find out that he is actually the egg brother of their missing comrade Snout, and that Smorkus Flinders was once a good person, but, when he was slightly older than Rod, he was caught in a horrific Reality Quake that permanently transformed him into a monster. Banished to the Valley of the Monsters, he became their king, but the Reality Quake's effects also drove him partially insane. They then learn the plans of Smorkus Flinders and BKR: they intend to create a permanent hole between Dimension X, home of the dangerous Reality Quakes, and Dimension Q, home of the planet Earth and the Galactic Patrol. This would cause the Reality Quakes to leak over to our world, and the two dimensions would eventually fuse into a single dimension where reality can shift like sand; Smorkus Flinders sees this plan as an opportunity to get revenge on life for what it did to him, while the sadistic BKR simply wants to make others suffer, even with the knowledge that the Reality Quakes will affect him just as much as anyone else. To stop him, the crew of the Ferkel are joined by the Shapeshifters, the Ting Wongovia, and (to their dismay) Elspeth. Returning to Castle Chaos (in part with help from Spar Kellis, a gigantic blue monster who works for the Ting Wongovia by spying on Smorkus Flinders), they make their stand. In the resulting confrontation, Rod is forced to grow to a gigantic height so he can defeat Smorkus Flinders. During the battle, he is contacted by Snout (by way of a direct telepathic link between the two), and learns that his old friend is being held captive by the "Ferkada". He also finds that Smorkus Flinders knows something about Rod's father. When Rod himself questions the monster, Smorkus Flinders cries out to ask BKR. About then, Rod blacks out. Soon after he wakes up, Rod learns that Smorkus Flinders is now their captive, and that when the Ferkel crashed into his room, they were really looking for another alien… his own father. With these revelations on his mind, Rod prepares to go home. But first, he winds up giving his new sneakers to Spar Kellis as a gift. But with all that has happened, telling his mother that he left his sneakers in Dimension X is the least of his worries.
3775676	/m/09_cfz	The Search For Snout	Bruce Coville	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Search For Snout picks up where the previous book left off. Introducing the crew of the Galactic Patrol vessel Ferkel to his earthling mother proves to be as difficult as predicted, and explaining that he's going with them to find his semi-alien father is an even harder task. But the real trouble starts when they find out that BKR (the pain-loving alien psycho antagonist) is on the loose, having taken control of the Ferkel's sister ship Merkel while the ship was delivering him to prison. The crew of the Ferkel has been ordered to seek out their enemy and recapture him. After they question Smorkus Flinders (a muscle-bound alien from Dimension X) and learn something of BKR's current plan, Rod is contacted again by his friend Snout, master of the mental arts. Partly inspired by this contact, Grakker (the ship's commander) decides to break off from the Galactic Patrol and head for the Mentat instead, the school where Snout became a master of the Mental Arts (incidentally, the building is one big PLANT). There, he hopes to find a clue that could lead them to their fallen friend. During the journey, Grakker reveals some of his past, including how he got to know both Snout and BKR. Smorkus Flinders, having escaped from his suspended animation pod, manages to capture the entire crew... except for Elspeth (Rod's all-human cousin), who stowed away and was also in suspended animation as punishment. She manages to stop Smorkus and rescue the others. Also as a result of the battle, Rod's chibling (a small furball from dimension X) is injured from being thrown into a wall. Later that night, Rod learns that his friend was forced into his third stage of life: a two-part animal. The first half, which is then named Seymour, resembles a squashed, hairless blue cat with four (later six) legs, a long tail, and a similar neck with a gigantic eyeball at one end. The other half is named Edgar, and looks the same as before. While both appear to have separate minds, Seymour is the half that is truly sentient, holding their shared brain in his body. Soon after, they arrive at the Mentat and meet with the 'Head' Council, who are unable to help. However, they do reveal that all the messages which came from Snout are, in part, due to a direct link between Rod's mind and Snout's, created by an incident involving direct brain-to-brain training in the first book. They also question Smorkus Flinders, and through him contact BKR. Though they cannot help in regard to the Ferkada that Snout mentioned, they do agree to try and cure Smorkus Flinders, reverting him from a monster to a Normal (the species he used to be until he was caught in a nasty Reality Quake and turned into a monster). Later that day, the Mentat's security force (led by an insectoid woman named Arly Bung) arrests Rod, Elspeth and the crew after being contacted by the Galactic Patrol. Imprisoned in the lowest regions of the Mentat, they are soon rescued by Selima Khan, another of Snout's kind who also attended the Mentat in his year. During their escape into the caves below the Mentat, Rod sees an ancient carving of his father. Selima Khan also reveals the plans of BKR and Smorkus Flinders: they intend to use a black hole to detonate a bomb that will disrupt the space-time continuum and eventually bring the flow of time itself to a complete stop, but require Rod's brain to do so, for an unknown reason. Later, he is contacted again and leaves the group to follow the message. Along with Seymour and Edgar, Rod winds up in the belly of a gigantic stone beast, and the trio journey deep into its bowels. Finally, they reach a chamber where Snout is laying, fading away into nothingness. But he is not alone, as Rod is reunited with his father (alias the Ferkada, one of the ancient founders of the Mentat) at last. Rod's father (Ah-Rit Alber Ite, or Arthur "Art" Allbright) reveals the truth about where he came from (the lost civilization of Atlantis, circa 35,000 years ago), and his personal history with BKR. He also reveals that he once fled with the crucial bit of information that BKR needs for his current plans and stored them in a safe place: Rod's brain. During this last part, BKR arrives with Smorkus Flinders, revealing part of his side of the story. He also arrives to get the information that he needs. Just in time, the Ferkel arrives as well, and the resulting battle ends with a stalemate: BKR has Ah-Rit in his grasp, and threatens to kill him if Rod (and the crucial information) aren't handed over to him. Fortunately, there's a solution. Ah-Rit is released to the Ferkel, while Rod is handed over to BKR, and Snout transfers the contents of Rod's mind (including the crucial information) into Seymour, resulting in two minds living in one body. After the swap, BKR leaves with Rod's body. Afterward, Snout (now fully recovered from his coma-like state) reveals exactly what happened to him after he vanished from Dimension X. He was probing the dimension for something, and connected with something extenuatingly hostile, possibly Smorkus Flinders himself.
3775689	/m/09_ch2	Aliens Stole My Body	Bruce Coville	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Aliens Stole My Body concludes the four-book series. After the departure of Selima Khan, the group characters from The Search for Snout splits up into three groups, Rod and Seymour head for the planet Kryndamar, along with Snout, Elspeth, and Madam Pong (the Diplomatic Officer of the Ferkel). Meanwhile, Grakker and Phil (the sentient plant who serves as the Ferkel's science officer) leave to reestablish contact with the Galactic Patrol, and Ah-Rit heads off with Tar Gibbons in an attempt to reclaim Rod's body from BKR. While on Kryndamar, Rod begins training his mind with Snout, and later gains a few new allies: the intergalactic pet trader Mir-Van; his family; and his business partner Grumbo. They also encounter one of BKR's henchmen; from him, they learn that BKR has already discovered their deception: Rod's brain is empty. BKR still plans to use it as bait, and he intends to capture Rod's mom and younger twin siblings from Earth, to serve as more bait. After arriving on Earth and locating Rod's family, the entire group (sans Grumbo, Mir-Van and his family) are captured by BKR and his gang (including the traitorous Arly Bung) in the Merkel. The captives, along with Grakker, Phil, and Selima Khan, who are captured shortly before they were to leave the solar system, are taken to BKR's headquarters. There, the entire group is joined by Ah-Rit and Tar Gibbons. With all his enemies in one place, BKR delivers an ultimatum: reveal where they've hidden Rod's mind, or die. Rod tells Snout to send him back to his own body. Using the skills that he's learned from both Tar Gibbons and Snout, Rod is able to take out all of BKR's crew, and finally BKR himself. Following the defeat and capture of their enemies, Rod and his family are returned to Earth, though Rod will be able return to space in the future. BKR and his gang are locked up and await trial. After a final goodbye to his teacher and friends, Rod watches as the Ferkel and its crew depart for GP headquarters so they can deliver BKR and his gang to stand trial. Ferkel and its crew must also stand trial, since they did break the law by going renegade instead of following orders.
3777723	/m/09_h0t	The Devil's Arithmetic	Jane Yolen		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Hannah Stern is a young jewish girl living in the present day. She is bored by her relative's stories about the past and not looking forward to the Passover Seder and is tired of her religion while at it She says she is tired of remembering. When Hannah symbolically opens the door for the prophet Elijah, she is transported back in time to 1941 in Poland of World War II. At that time and place, the people believe she is Chaya Abramowicz, who is recovering from cholera, the fever that killed Chaya's parents a few months ago. The strange remarks Hannah/Chaya makes about the future and her inability to recognize her "aunt" Gitl and "uncle" Shmuel are blamed on the fever. At her uncle's wedding, the Nazis come to transport the entire population of the village to a concentration camp near Donavin, and only Hannah knows all the terrors that they will face: starvation, mistreatment, forced labor, and finally execution. She struggles to survive at the camp, with the help of a girl named Rivka. At the concentration camp, Aunt Gitl, Hannah, Uncle Shmuel, and some other men try to escape. The men are caught and are shot in front of the inmates, except for Gitl and Hannah who return to their barracks and Yitzchak who escapes. Fayge, Shmuel's girlfriend, is also killed because she runs to Shmuel when he is about to be shot. Later, when Hannah and the girls from Viosk are talking, while waiting for water, they are caught by a new Nazi soldier, who sends Esther, Shifre, and Rivka to the gas ovens. As Rivka is about to leave, Hannah takes Rivka's place and tells her to run, since the guard doesn't know their faces. Then, after she walks into "Lilith's Cave" to be gassed, she is transported back to her family's Seder. She notices Aunt Eva's number was the same as Rivka's, and while recounting her experience to her aunt, the aunt reveals that when she was in the concentration camps, she was called Rivka (and her brother was called Wolfe, which was Grandpa Will) and was saved by a girl named Chaya Abramowicz while in a consentration camp.
3779553	/m/09_kqb	Lord of the Dance				 She becomes obsessed with her uncle, Danny Farrell, who has always been a black sheep of sorts in the family. Danny is believed to have died in an airplane flying over China while working for the CIA. Roger's mother, Brigid, is a powerful widow with a lot of dirty secrets. The family is an example of an Irish Catholic family's ascent into the upper middle class, perhaps even the upper class, after a few generations, reflecting a common theme of sociologist Greeley. However, aside from Danny, there have been other mysterious deaths in this family, and Noelle courageously probes this dark side of her ancestry, leading to the truth about who she really is. Noelle is clearly the most significant character in the book. Greeley has said that she is meant to embody the Church. She is a spunky girl who once takes over a church service with her guitar-playing rendition of the hymn "Lord of the Dance", much to the dismay of her folk group leader, and gives a spontaneous, powerful homily about life being a dance where God chooses the partners. Sometimes, however, God wants to dance alone, with just us.
3782493	/m/09_qkg	The Red Shoes	Hans Christian Andersen		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale"}	 A peasant girl named Karen is adopted by a rich old lady after her mother's death. She grows up vain. Before her adoption Karen had a rough pair of red shoes, and now she tricks her adoptive mother into buying her a pair of red shoes fit for a princess. Karen repeatedly wears them to church, without paying attention to the service. She ignores the anger of her adopted mother and disapproving stares that even the holy images seem to express at her wearing red shoes in church. Her adoptive mother becomes ill, but Karen deserts her, preferring to attend a party in her red shoes. A mysterious soldier appears and makes strange remarks about what beautiful dancing shoes Karen has. Soon after, Karen begins to dance and she can't stop. The shoes take over; she cannot control them and they are stuck to her feet. The shoes continue to dance, through fields and meadows, rain or shine, night and day, and through brambles and briars that tear at Karen's limbs. She can't even attend her adoptive mother's funeral. An angel appears to her, bearing a sword, and condemns her to dance even after she dies, as a warning to vain children everywhere. Karen begs for mercy but the red shoes take her away before she hears the angel's reply. Karen finds an executioner and asks him to chop off her feet. He does so but the shoes continue to dance, now with Karen's amputated feet inside them. The executioner gives her a pair of wooden feet and crutches, and teaches her the criminals' psalm. Thinking that she has suffered enough for the red shoes, Karen decides to go to church in order for the people to see her. However her amputated feet, still in the red shoes, dance before her, barring the way. The following Sunday she tries again, thinking of herself at least as good as the others in church, but again the dancing red shoes bar the way. Karen gets a job as a maid in the parsonage, but when Sunday comes she dares not go to church. Instead she sits alone at home and prays to God for help. The angel reappears, now bearing a spray of roses, and gives Karen the mercy she asked for: it is as though the church comes home to her and her heart becomes so filled with sunshine, peace, and joy that it bursts. Her soul flies on sunshine to Heaven, and no one there mentions the red shoes.
3784892	/m/09_ws6	L'Esclusa	Luigi Pirandello		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story itself is set in a small village in Sicily. The protagonist Marta Ajala feels "excluded" from the society in which she lives because of having catastrophically lost the position and status that she had been assigned in the order of things: the position of a submissive and bored housewife who never quite felt at ease in her role, but who had achieved respect in society because of it. It is a role which she does not regret losing, but whose sudden and violent loss has thrown her into a dramatic situation: she has been kicked out of her home by her husband who caught her by surprise in the act of reading a letter from someone who has been courting her but whose advances she has always rejected. The precipitous decision of the husband overwhelmed with rage; the attitude of Marta's father who, even while knowing that his daughter is innocent, totally supports her husband's decision out of a misbegotten sense of masculine spiritual solidarity and ends up dying of shame; the submissive suffering of the mother and sister, constantly ready, in order to conform to traditional convictions, to counsel her surrender and obedience; the choral malevolence of the villagers, taking advantage of a religious procession that is passing by under their windows to publicly jeer and shout names at her, are the elements of a minutely described painting, in the manner of realism, which illustrate the closed mentality of the village. But Marta's reaction is only partly similar to that of the typical characters of the naturalistic novel. She reveals a much more complex psychology which begins with a petit bourgeousie self-satisfaction for the letters of Gregorio Alvignani and gradually develops into an obstinate struggle against all of society for a moral and economic revenge which she will finally end up obtaining, but joylessly. The cruel game of chance prevails over the objectivity of the narrative, according to an unexpected logic, expressed in a series of coincidences which betray their own hidden meaning. The father dies at the same time that Marta's baby, which she had been carrying in her womb with so much repulsion, is born, as if to signify a repudiation and detachment from the past. Meanwhile, in the streets of the village, the people are celebrating the victory of Alvignani in the elections, a premonitory sign of Marta's eventual redemption and revenge. The singularity of circumstances bursts wide open in the final scene: Marta's husband takes her back when she has actually become guilty of the sin of which she was falsely accused and is now carrying her lover's baby in her womb, after having kicked her out of her home, having made her suffer, and having compromised the birth of his own son. In giving herself to Alvignani, who helped her in dealing with the injustices of the scholastic authorities, she seems to adapt herself to the role of his lover which has been imposed on her by society. But her state of mind is never one of passive surrender, even if her restless struggle against circumstances dominated by an unfathomable force will turn out to be in vain. In the end what defeats her is not the society by which she is rehabilitated, but life itself which brings with it a suffering which no success can cancel. It is significant, in fact, that the author uses the word "l'eslusa" precisely at the opening of the second part of the novel, where, in an atmosphere redolent of spring, Marta seems to be on the verge of resurrection. Her tenacious struggle against everyone and against resignation has allowed her to obtain the much-desired teaching position that has permitted her to remove her mother and sister from extreme poverty. But the happiness of these two women, of which she is secretly proud, is what forces her to recognize her own spiritual isolation and her inability to reinsert herself into society. "She alone was the excluded, she alone would never again find her place."
3785248	/m/09_xfk	This Other Eden	Ben Elton	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The bulk of the book focuses on a British writer, Nathan, who is attempting to sell an idea for a Claustrosphere commercial to Plastic Tolstoy, owner and chief marketer of the company which builds them. The commercial represents a change in emphasis for the advertising campaign; up to now Claustropheres have been sold as a kind of fall back insurance, just in case the environment collapses. However, now that virtually everybody owns at least a basic model, sales are falling and the company is having to try and sell upgrade and improvement packages instead. The new advertising, therefore, attempts to convince people for the first time that the environment truly is doomed and they are inevitably going to have to live in their Claustrospheres. Tolstoy accepts Nathan's idea and assigns him to work with Max, a shallow and pretentious young actor. During a subsequent meeting with Tolstoy, Nathan makes a joking suggestion that it would be ironic if his company actually covertly sponsored the Eco-Terrorism movement led by Jurgen Thor, which despises the Claustrosphere company since it represents, in their eyes, an abrogation of mankind's responsibility to care for the environment. Nathan is subsequently murdered as he plays a virtual reality game with Max. Max sets out to investigate the murder, falling in with Rosalie Connolly, an Eco Terrorist working for Thor's organization. Max ultimately discovers that Thor and Tolstoy are in fact partners. The eco-terrorists raids, whilst highly successful, never present more than a minor problem to the vast Claustrosphere company, but do grab headlines and bring awareness of the looming eco disaster into the public mind - prompting them to buy more Claustrospheres. Tolstoy confesses that he has even geared his advertising campaign to work in perfect sync with the terrorists, with new commercials ready to roll out instantly after each attack. After a confrontation between Max, Rosalie and Jurgen in which Jurgen is killed, Tolstoy decides to evade justice by leaking news indicating that the ecology is finally collapsing. The news is suddenly full of stories of environmental catastrophe, and people are told that they need to lock themselves in their Claustrospheres for several decades. The "rat run", as it is termed, removes the large bulk of humanity from the world, effectively ending the current civilization. In one of the novel's great ironies, one of the by-products of the vanishing of global society is that all industry ceases, ending further pollution of the environment. Freed of this burden Earth begins to gradually recover from the damage inflicted so far.
3785815	/m/09_yns	Adam and Eve and Pinch Me	Ruth Rendell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A handsome con man with numerous aliases, including Jerry Leach and Jock Lewis, manipulates three vulnerable women into handing over large sums of money. After he supposedly dies in the Paddington train crash, they realise his deception and find themselves in serious debt. However, one of his many victims, ex-fiancée Minty, thinks she has seen his 'ghost' wandering around and begins carrying a knife so she can exact revenge on his 'spirit'...
3786846	/m/09__nf	Gateway	Frederik Pohl	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gateway is a space station built into a hollow asteroid (or perhaps the dead heart of a comet) constructed by the Heechee, a long-vanished alien race. Humans have had limited success understanding Heechee technology, although the promise is enormous and Gateway is a highly sought-after destination for many researchers. Notable among the abandoned technology are nearly a thousand small starships. Unable to understand how they work, a small level of functionality has been recovered simply by trial and error. Occasional attempts at reverse engineering to find out how they work have ended only in disaster. The controls for selecting a destination have been identified, but nobody knows where a particular setting will take the ship or how long the trip will last - starvation is a major danger. Once in flight, no one who has changed the settings has ever been heard from again. Most settings take the ship to useless or lethal places. A few, however, lead to Heechee artifacts and habitable planets, making the passengers (and the Gateway Corporation, which administers the asteroid on behalf of a cartel of countries) wealthy. The vessels come in three standard sizes, which can hold a maximum of one, three, or five people, crammed in with equipment and (hopefully) enough food to last the trip. Each ship includes a lander to visit a planet or other object if one is found. Robinette Stetley Broadhead—known as Robin, Rob, Robbie, or Bob, depending on circumstances and his state of mind—is a young food shale miner on Earth who has won a lottery, giving him just enough money to purchase a one-way ticket to Gateway. Once there, he loses his nerve, putting off going on a mission as long as he can. Eventually he starts running out of money, and although he is terrified, he goes out on three trips. The first draws a blank. On the second, he makes a discovery through unauthorized experimentation, but this is balanced by the fact that he has to pay a hefty penalty for the ship he managed to incapacitate in the process. On his third trip, the Gateway Corporation tries something different: sending two five-person ships, one slightly behind the other, to the same destination. Bob signs up in desperation, along with Gelle-Klara Moynlin, a woman he had gradually come to love on Gateway, and who was struggling with her own fears. When they reach the end of their journey, they find to their horror that they are in the gravitational grip of a black hole, without enough power to break free. One of the others comes up with a desperate escape plan—to cram all the people into one ship and eject the other toward the black hole, thus gaining enough velocity to escape. Working frantically to transfer unnecessary equipment to make room, Bob finds himself stuck alone in the wrong ship when time runs out, so he attempts to sacrifice himself and closes the hatch. However, his ship is the one thrown away, leaving the rest of the crew falling into the black hole. He returns to Gateway and becomes wealthy when, as the sole "survivor", he receives the bonuses for the entire group. He feels enormous survivor guilt for deserting his crewmates, especially Klara, so he seeks therapy from an Artificial Intelligence Freudian therapist program which he names Sigfrid von Shrink. He finally comes to terms with his guilt despite the realization that, due to the gravitational time dilation resulting from proximity to the black hole, time is passing much more slowly for his former crew mates and none of them have actually died yet, leaving him with the dread that Gelle-Klara believes he betrayed them to save himself. The novel is divided between chapters of dialogue between Bob and Sigfrid and chapters covering the main action. Also embedded are various mission reports (usually with fatalities), technical bulletins, and other documents Broadhead might have read, adding to the verisimilitude of the narrative.
3787889	/m/0b0188	The Moon's Shadow	Catherine Asaro	2003-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After ascending the Carnelian throne, 17-year-old Eubian Emperor Jaibriol III is busy accomplishing many different goals — beginning peace talks with Skolian Imperialate, escaping death during several assassination attempts and marrying his beautiful, tricky and dangerous finance minister Tarquine Iquar. Above all, he has to hide from his Aristo fellows, that he is in fact a Rhon psion, for if his secret is ever revealed, he would face the fate of an enslaved provider. This novel overlaps with Ascendant Sun which tells the events after Radiance War from the point of view of new Skolian Imperator Kelric Valdoria and Spherical Harmonic which tells the events after Radiance War from the point of view of Pharaoh Dyhianna Selei. The Radiant Seas tells the story of Jaibriol's childhood on the planet Prizma and the course of Radiance War.
3788021	/m/0b01cr	Ascendant Sun	Catherine Asaro	2000-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins just after Kelric has escaped the planet of Coba, where he had been held prisoner for over 18 years. Forced to land because of his ships short fuel supply, Kelric takes up a lucrative job as the spaceship Corona's tactical officer under the command of Jafe Maccar, only to be captured by his people's enemies, the Eubians. An Aristo Taratus sells Kelric in an auction to Tarquine Iquar, Minister of Finance. Kelric discovers his mixed feelings for Tarquine, even though he is made to be her slave and provider. Not long after his enslavement, Kelric makes a bold escape, which although successful, cripples his health significantly. Instead of immediately heading home, Kelric heads to the captured Lock, an ancient device made by the original Ruby Empire some 6000 years ago which fell into the Eubians possession during the Radiance War. There, he deactivates the mechanism and meets Jaibriol III, new emperor of the Eubian Empire, whom he immediately suspects to be a psion. Jaibriol proposes peace talks between Eube and Skolia. He manages to make it to another planet, where he meets his future wife Jeejon. Together, they are able to gain passage off world, to Earth. The book's climax is Kelric reuniting with his parents on Earth.
3788263	/m/0b01ty	Vis and Râmin	Fakhr al-Dīn Gurgānī			 The story is about Vis, the daughter of Shāhrū and Kāren, the ruling family of Māh (Media) in western Iran, and Ramin (Rāmīn), the brother to Mobed Monikan, the King of Marv in northeastern Iran. Monikan sees Shahru in a royal gala, wonders at her beauty, and asks her to marry him. She answers that she is older than she looks and is already married, but she promises to give him her daughter if a girl is born to her. Several years later, Shahru gives birth to a girl and calls her Vis or Viseh. She sends Vis to Khuzan to be raised by a wet-nurse or nanny who also happens to be raising Ramin, who is the same age as Vis. They grow up ten years together and afterwards, Vis is recalled to her mother. After Vis reaches adolescence, she comes back to her mother and Shahru marries her to her son, Vis's brother, Viru. The marriage remains unconsummated because of Vis' menstruation, which by Zoroastrian law makes her unapproachable. Mobad Monikan finds out about the marriage celebration and sends his brother Zard to remind Shahru of her promise and to bring Vis to him. Vis definitely rejects Mobad Monikan's request and refuses to go. Monikan feels aggrieved and campaigns against Māh-abad. In a battle, Qārin, Vis's father, is killed, but Monikan also suffers a defeat from Viru. Mobad Monikan, although defeated in this battle, takes his army to Gurab, where Vis is waiting the outcome of the battle. He sends a messenger to her, offering her various privileges in return for marrying him. But Vis rejects Mobad's offer proudly and indignantly. Mobad asks advice from his two brothers Zard and Ramin. Ramin, who is already in love with Vis attempts to dissuade Mobad from trying to Vis. However, Mobad's brother Zard suggests bribing Shahru as a way of winning over Vis. Mobad listens to Zard and sends money and jewels to Shahru and bribes her to gain entry to the castle. He then takes Vis away, much to the chagrin of Viru. On the journey back to Marv, Ramin catches a glimpse of Vis and is consumed with love for her, so much so that he falls of his horse and faints. Vis is given residence in the harem of Mobad and gifts are bestowed upon her. Vis's nurse also followers her to Marv, and attempts to persuade her to behave pragmatically, accept Mobad and forget Viru. Vis at first has a hard time accepting her fate, but eventually resigns herself to Mobad's Harem. Vis refuses to give herself to Mobad for a year and she was still mourning the death of her father. At this time, the nurse makes a talisman that renders Mobad impotent for one month. The spell can only be broken if the talisman is broken, and it is swept away in a flood and lost, so that Mobad is never able to sleep with his bride. While Vis was being taken to Marv, Ramin was in her escort and saw her, recognized her, and fell in love with her. Vis was mourning her father's death and her separation from her brother and first husband, Viru. Ramin pleads with the Nanny to inform Vis about his love. Vis gets angry and refuses any meeting. Finally, after a lot of talks and communication through the Nanny, and while King Mobad Monikan is on campaign, Vis and Ramin meet. Vis falls in love with Ramin and the two consummate their love. After Monikan returns, they decide to go and visit Vis's family in Mah. There Monikan overhears a conversation between the nurse and Vis, and realizes his wife loves Ramin. Monikan demands a trial by fire, passing through fire, for Vis to prove her chastity. But Vis and Ramin elope. Monikan's mother makes peace between her two sons Ramin and the king, and they all go back to Marv. Monikan takes Ramin along on a campaign against the Romans but Ramin falls sick and is left behind. Ramin goes back to Vis, who is imprisoned in a castle by Monikan and guarded by the king's other brother Zard. Ramin scales the wall and spends his time with Vis until Monikan comes back from the war and Ramin escapes. Ramin thinks that his love with Vis has no future, so he asks Monikan to send him to Maah on a mission. There, Ramin falls in love with a woman called Gol and marries her. Vis finds about this and sends the Nanny to Ramin to remind him of their love. Ramin sends back a harsh reply. Vis sends an elaborate message pleading with him to come back. At this time, Ramin was bored from his married life and after he receives the second message he goes back to Vis. But when he reaches Marv on his horseback in a snow storm, Vis goes to the roof of the castle and rejects his love. Ramin goes off desperately. Vis regrets what she has done and sends the Nanny after Ramin. They reconcile. Monikan takes Ramin hunting and Vis and the Nanny and some other women attend a fire temple nearby. Ramin becomes absent from the hunting, disguises himself as a woman to enter the temple, and leaves with Vis. They go back to the castle and, with help from Ramin's men, kill the garrison and Zard as well. They then escape to Dailam, on the coast of the Caspian Sea. Monikan is killed by a boar during the hunt. Vis and Ramin come back to Merv and Ramin sits on the throne as the king and marries Vis. Ramin reigns for 83 years. In the 81st year Vis dies and Ramin hands over the kingdom to his eldest son with Vis and goes and mourn on Vis' tomb for 2 years, after which he joins her in the afterlife.
3789664	/m/0b03q7	The Sacred Flame	W. Somerset Maugham			 The Sacred Flame is the story about the misfortune of Maurice Tabret, previously a soldier of World War I who had returned home unscathed to marry his sweetheart Stella. Unfortunately, after only a year of marriage, Maurice is involved in a plane crash and left crippled from the waist down. The play commences some years later in Gatley House near London, home of Maurice's mother, Mrs. Tabret. Mrs. Tabret's home has been set up to care for her son and a young Nurse Wayland has been Maurice's constant aid throughout. She is extremely professional and devoted to her job. Maurice's wife Stella lives with them also and remains his cheerful companion and support. Maurice's brother Colin Tabret has returned from a time in Guatemala to spend the previous 11 months before the play's start with his brother and the family. The local practitioner Dr. Harvester visits frequently to check on Maurice's condition and to prescribe appropriate treatments. Mrs. Tabret's own husband has passed on some time ago and whilst she does not have a close relationship with anyone else, her old friend retired Major Liconda visits often. All is as well as can be expected until Maurice is found dead in his bed one morning. Not altogether unexpected, Dr. Harvester is prepared to write the death certificate but then Nurse Wayland cries foul and indicates that she believes Maurice was murdered by being given an overdose of his sleeping draught. The play then works through a series of Agatha Christie-style "whodunnit" scenes as the audience attempt to figure out whether Maurice was killed, took his own life, or else if the whole thing is no more than an imagining and false accusation by the Nurse. For the majority of the second and third act the main suspect is Stella, who it transpires is having an affair with Colin and is pregnant by him. It looks as if the matter will be brought to the coroner and the police, which is likely to mean Stella going on trial for Maurice's murder. At the end of the third act, Mrs. Tabret reveals that it was she that killed Maurice. She had realised that Stella was pregnant, and because Stella's love was all that Maurice lived for, she couldn't bear to see Stella's betrayal exposed. Mrs. Tabret therefore sees her act as a mercy killing. After this revelation, the play ends as Nurse Wayland asks Dr. Harvester to sign the death certificate indicating that Maurice died of natural causes, meaning there will be no police investigation.
3789887	/m/0b0412	Cosmos	Carl Sagan	1980	{"/m/01p4b_": "Popular science", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 Cosmos has 13 heavily illustrated chapters, corresponding to the 13 episodes of the Cosmos television series. In the book, Sagan explores 15 billion years of cosmic evolution and the development of science and civilization. Cosmos traces the origins of knowledge and the scientific method, mixing science and philosophy, and speculates to the future of science. The book also discusses the underlying premises of science by providing biographical anecdotes about many prominent scientists throughout history, placing their contributions into the broader context of the development of modern science. Cornell News Service characterized the book as "an overview of how science and civilization grew up together." The book covers a broad range of topics, comprising Sagan's reflections on anthropological, cosmological, biological, historical, and astronomical matters from antiquity to contemporary times. Sagan reiterates his position on extraterrestrial life—that the magnitude of the universe permits the existence of thousands of alien civilizations, but no credible evidence exists to demonstrate that such life has ever visited earth.
3790344	/m/0b04qn	The Quantum Rose	Catherine Asaro	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Quantum Rose is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast folktale in a science fiction setting. In the novel, Kamoj Argali, the governor of an impoverished province on the backward planet Balumil, is betrothed to Jax Ironbridge, ruler of a wealthy neighboring province, an arrangement made for political purposes to save her province from starvation and death. Havyrl (Vyrl) Lionstar, a prince of the titular Ruby Dynasty, comes to Balimul as part of a governmental plan to deal with the aftermath of an interstellar war. Masked and enigmatic, he has a reputation as a monster with Kamoj's people. Lionstar interferes with Kamoj's culture and destabilizes their government by pushing her into marriage with himself. In the traditional fairy tale, Belle must save her father from the prince transformed into a beast; in The Quantum Rose, Kamoj must save her province from the prince in exile. The book deals with themes about the physical and emotional scars left on the survivors of a war with no clear victor. As such, it is also a story of healing for both Kamoj and Lionstar. The second half of The Quantum Rose involves Lionstar's return to his home world with Kamoj, where he becomes the central figure in a planet wide act of civil disobedience designed to eject an occupying military force that has taken control of his planet. Both the world Balimul in the first half of the novel and the world Lyshriol in the second half fall into the lost colony genre of literature in science fiction.
3790904	/m/0b05pv	Chasing Redbird	Sharon Creech	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Zinnia "Zinny" Taylor, a quiet yet sometimes outrageous thirteen year old girl, enjoys the care of her aunt and uncle, Jessie and Nate, as her parents are preoccupied with her siblings. Jessie and Nate live in a home that fits snug against the Taylor home, and Zinny prefers to spend her time with her aunt and uncle. They once had a daughter, Rose, around Zinny's age who died of whooping cough. Because Rose caught the cough from Zinny, she has always, in some way, blamed herself for Rose's death. Years later, Zinny accidentally rediscovers a large overgrown trail that is over two hundred years old. When her aunt unexpectedly dies, Zinny blames herself. Soon afterwards she begins to try to clear the trail. In her grief, the trail becomes an obsession, as she decides to clear and travel the entire length of it. Thinking clearing the trail is the only way to be forgiven by God, Zinny camps out on the trail to clear the trail before the end of the summer. At the same time Zinny learns to cope with her grief, her guilt, and a boy named Jake Boone, who she starts to have feelings for. Throughout the story she must attempt to get over the death of Rose and Aunt Jessie. She also tries to find out whether Jake returns her feelings or is just using her to get to her older sister, May. Through all this Zinny finally finds something to call her very own, the trail that she cleared. Throughout the story Creech uses flashbacks as a literary device, showing snippets of what Zinny's life was like before her aunt's death.
3791547	/m/0b06lv	The View from Saturday	E. L. Konigsburg	1996	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mrs. Olinski returns to the classroom at Epiphany Middle School several years after an accident that left her paraplegic. Four of her sixth-grade students form a group they call "The Souls" and she chooses them to represent her class in Academic Bowl competition. They defeat the other sixth-grade teams, then the seventh- and eighth-grade champions at Epiphany, and so on until they become New York state middle school champions. Between chapters that feature the progress of the competition, each of the four students narrates one chapter related both to the development of The Souls and to a question in the state championship final. Noah Gershom recounts learning calligraphy and being best man for his grandfather's friend at Century Village in Florida. Nadia Diamondstein describes working to conserve sea turtles and meeting Ethan, also at Century Village. Ethan Potter tells of meeting Julian, a new boy in town, and attending his tea parties, where the four Souls became friends. Julian Singh explains being new at school and tells of handling a chance for revenge against one of the bullies — remarkably grounded in the part played by Nadia's dog in the school musical "Annie".
3796192	/m/0b0g4j	Missing May	Cynthia Rylant	1992	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in present-day [West Virginia]. The protagonist is Summer, an orphaned child who has been passed from one apathetic relative to another. At age six, she meets her Aunt May and Uncle Ob. The kindly old couple notices that, although Summer is not mistreated, she is virtually ignored by her caretakers and decide to take Summer home to their rickety trailer home in the hills of the Appalachian mountains. Summer thrives under their care, feeling that she finally has a home. Six years after Summer moves in, Aunt May dies suddenly in the garden. Summer must cope with her own grief while worrying about Uncle Ob, who is overwhelmed by the thought of living without his beloved wife. Uncle Ob decides to try contacting May's spirit, after he experiences the sensation that she has tried to communicate with him. He is assisted in this endeavor by Cletus Underwood, a classmate of Summer's, who provides information on a supposed spirit medium of some renown. Summer views his ideas with some skepticism, but is willing to try anything that might alleviate her uncle's sorrow. The three take a roadtrip to meet with the medium, only to discover that she had recently died. Uncle Ob is initially crushed by this news, and Summer fears that this disappointment was the last blow to his will to live. However, on the return trip, Uncle Ob suddenly snaps out of his depression, deciding to continue living on for Summer's sake.
3796368	/m/0b0gk1	The Trumpeter of Krakow	Eric P. Kelly	1928	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After seeing a spy lurking around his house in Ukriane, Andrew Charnetski hastily removes his family to a safe location. While away, Peter of the Button Face, acting under the orders of Ivan III of Russia, burns the Charnetski's village to the ground in search of the "Great Tarnov Crystal", a mysterious Tarnov crystal that has caused many wars over the millennia and had, a few centuries previously, been entrusted by the city of Tarnów to the Charnetski family for safeguarding until its discovery by others, at which time it was to be given to the current king of Poland. Realizing that Peter must have been after the crystal, and finding himself homeless, Andrew takes his family to Kraków, where his cousin Andrew Tenczynski lives, in order to give the crystal to King Kazimír Jagiełło. However, upon his arrival he finds that Tenczynski has been murdered and that his estate is under the control of Elizabeth of Austria, the queen of Poland. Destitute, Charnetski camps his family in the middle of the city for the day. Charnetski's fifteen-year-old son Joseph explores the city, passing the Church of Our Lady St. Mary, from which a trumpeter plays an unfinished song called "the Heynal" [in Polish: Hejnał mariacki] four times every hour, once to each direction (north, east, south, and west). Joseph ends up saving an alchemist named Nicholas Kreutz and his niece, Elżbietka, from a wolfdog. Kreutz offers Joseph and his family an apartment just below his on the unsavory Street of the Pigeons, a street near Kraków University where scientists and magicians often live. Meanwhile Andrew Charnetski and his wife (who is never named) have been found by Peter of the Button Face, who has pursued them from Ukraine. Surrounded by bandits and a jeering crowd, Andrew, his wife, and Joseph (who joins them) are only saved by the appearance of Jan Kanty, a respected scholar and priest. Kanty offers Andrew the position of night trumpeter in the Church of Our Lady St. Mary. Delighted at the prospect of a job and home on such short notice, Andrew accepts both offers. The following night Andrew takes Joseph with him to the tower of the Church of Our Lady St. Mary, leaving his wife behind with Elżbietka. In the tower Andrew explains to his son the story of the trumpeter of Kraków — a trumpeter who, in 1241, was pierced by a Tartar arrow before he could finish the Hejnał. Accordingly the song has always been abruptly cut short. Nicholas Kreutz, meanwhile, teaches a German student named Johann Tring chemistry in the loft above his apartment every evening. Tring, however, is obsessed with the idea of obtaining the philosopher's stone, and finally convinces Kreutz to go through sessions of hypnosis, which Tring believes will open Kreutz's "Greater Mind", revealing the secret of the creation of a chrysopoeia. All Tring can glean from Kreutz's trances, however, is that the chrysopoeia is at hand (which Tring takes to mean that they have nearly discovered how to make it). When unhypnotized, Kreutz reasons that there cannot be one stone that automatically changes brass into gold, but that there must be a process by which such a change could occur. He believes that all things are subject to change, and wishes to change the bad things in the world to good things through the use of alchemy. An example he gives is the landlady's deformed son, Stas, whom Kretuz believes could be saved through alchemical transmutation. In the meantime, Peter of the Button Face hears Stas, the landlady's son, discussing the Charnetskis and pays him a fortune to learn of their whereabouts. He leads a burglary on the Charnetski's apartment while Andrew is up in the church tower, and discovers the Tarnov Crystal hidden in Andrew's mattress. He and his men are surprised, however, by the appearance of Nicholas Kreutz, clad in clothes covered in phosphorus and burning resin, and take him for a demon. The bandits flee and are caught by the night watchmen, but Peter stays to reclaim the Crystal. When Kreutz asks the mercenary why he has come, Peter realized the alchemist is not a demon and stops being afraid. He directs Kreutz's attention to the Crystal, then trips the alchemist and grabs the gem, heading for the door. Kreutz throws some explosive powder at Peter, who drops the Crystal in agony and escapes over the rooftops of Kraków. Tempted by the realization that the Crystal is the chrysopoeia he and Tring have been ardently seeking, Kreutz steals the Tarnov Crystal before anyone figures what has happened. When he tries to use the Crystal, however, Kreutz realized that it only makes him think of his own desires. He realized, then, that it can only reflect back the gazer's own subconscious knowledge, and therefore will not reveal the secret of chrysopoeia unless he himself has all the pieces stored somewhere in his head. Andrew teaches Joseph the Hejnał, realizing that he may be attacked by seekers of the Crystal and that someone must be left to trumpet the song on the hour. While in the tower one evening, Andrew and Joseph are attacked and held captive by Peter and his band. Peter demands to be led to the location of the Crystal (which neither Andrew nor Joseph knows), but first orders Joseph to trumpet the Hejnał since it is two o'clock and its absence will be noticed. Thinking quickly, Joseph plays the Hejnał the entire way through, not stopping at the broken note. Elżbietka, lying awake in her apartment waiting to hear the Hejnał, realizes the finished tune is a sign and rushes to Jan Kanty's cell. Kanty calls the night watchmen to his aid and heads for the church tower, where they surprise the bandits and free Andrew. Peter, meanwhile, notices the troop of watchmen and flees the city. Much later, Kreutz finally gives in to temptation and reveals the Crystal to Johann Tring. Tring is giddy with excitement and instructs Kreutz to gaze at the crystal. The alchemist, however, is tired from his numerous trances and goes into one as he stares at the gemstone. In it his thoughts arrange themselves into a strange order, and he reads in the stone what Tring believes to be the formula for the chrysopoeia, but what is in actuality the formula for a niter-based explosive. When Tring mixes the ingredients together, the loft explodes into flames and Tring flees for cover. Kreutz grabs the stone and, still crazed, heads off into the streets of Kraków. After that, he is dragged to the tower by Jan Kanty and the Great Tarnov Crystal is given back to Pan Andrew. The fire starts to spread through the Street of the Pigeons, and during the tumult the king's royal guards catch Peter of the Button Face skulking around the scene and haul him off to the prison. Joseph, his mother, and Elżbietka escape from their home to the church tower, and Joseph replaces his father as the trumpeter while Andrew goes to work stopping the flames, which have spread throughout the city. The fire is extinguished by the morning and Jan Kanty finds Nicholas Kreutz wandering aimlessly about in the rubble with the Tarnov Crystal in his hands. Jan Kanty, Nicholas Kreutz, and Andrew and Joseph Charnetski all seek an audience with King Kazimír. Once granted, they present to him the Tarnov Crystal and tell them its story and theirs. The king then summons Peter of the Button Face, who bargains for his life by promising to tell the king why there have been disturbances in Ukraine. He tells the king that Ivan III, the king of Russia, wished to have Makhmud Khan invade Ukraine and capture it for Russia. Makhmud agreed under the condition that Ivan would procure for him the Great Tarnov Crystal. It was thus that Ivan hired the mercenary Bogdan Grozny, called Peter, to steal the Crystal. After hearing Peter's story, Kazimír banishes the mercenary from Poland for life. As they begin to depart, the king gazes into the Crystal and becomes transfixed. Kreutz, still entranced, grabs the Crystal and runs out the door down to the banks of the Vistula, into which he throws the Tarnov Crystal. Jan Kanty and the king decide not to retrieve the crystal, deeming it safely protected in the grounds of the castle. Andrew Charnetski's house in Ukraine is rebuilt and he is rewarded by the king. Kreutz and Elżbietka come to Ukraine as well, the alchemist having regained his sanity, and six years later Joseph marries Elżbietka.
3799661	/m/0b0ms6	A Grave Talent	Laurie R. King	2006-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The strangulation of four children in the vicinity of San Francisco leads the police force to appoint inspectors Al Hawkin and Kate ("Casey") Martinelli to discover the criminal. Suspicion falls on renowned artist Vaun Adams, convicted of murdering a young girl years before. When someone attempts to murder Vaun herself, the police are forced to conclude that someone else must be behind the murders, and they discover that Vaun's ex-boyfriend, maniacally egotistical Andy Lewis, must be the perpetrator. Hawkin convinces a reluctant Kate to set the trap for Lewis in her home by letting Vaun recover there. He arrives and declares that he will kill Kate and her lover Lee and leave Vaun to take the blame. Lee alerts the police to his presence, but the sniper who kills Lewis does not do so in time to prevent him from shooting and permanently disabling her.
3800855	/m/0b0ppn	Tokyo	Mo Hayder	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about a young woman (nicknamed 'Grey' by a fellow mental hospital patient) who is obsessed with the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanking, also known as the Rape of Nanking. She travels to Japan in order to find a professor said to have rare footage of the massacre detailing an event that she could not otherwise prove occurred. The professor decides that he will only show her the tape if she was to procure an unknown ingredient of Chinese medicine from the local Yakuza group. After being recruited into a host club, Grey finds her chance.
3800896	/m/0b0pt5	The Treatment	Mo Hayder	2001-06-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A husband and wife are discovered imprisoned in their own home near Brockwell Park in South London. It is a hot summer and they are badly dehydrated, they've been bound and beaten, and the husband seems close to death. Rory Peach, their 8-year-old son, is missing. Detective Inspector (DI) Jack Caffery is one of the police team and the disappearance of the little boy rekindles memories of his brother Ewan who was abducted as a 9-year-old and never seen again. Caffery tries to find the boy at the same time as helping his girl friend get over her own sexual attack and following up on clues which might allow him to find out Ewan's fate. Patterns of child sexual abuse start to emerge and Caffery tracks down a young man who was abused in the same park many years earlier as a child. Caffery is convinced the attacker will be targeting another family and when Rory's body is discovered and DNA from semen proves to be Rory's father Alek, the case is turned on its head. Bite marks on the boy's shoulder, however, do not match Alek's dental pattern and Caffery then understands that Peach was forced to sodomise his son. Another family with a young boy, 8-year-old Josh, has been imprisoned and Caffery slowly pieces together the clues to find out who they are. Caffery also gets very close to discovering that his brother is still alive. He suffered brain damage at the hands of a vicious child molester, a member of a paedophile ring who hand children round and make child pornography videos.
3802754	/m/0b0szm	The Black Corridor	Michael Moorcock		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ryan is a tough-minded British businessman appalled by the breakdown of society at the end of the 20th century. He feels that he is one of the few sane men in a world of paranoiacs. With a small group of family and friends, he has stolen a spaceship and set out for Munich 15040 (Barnard's Star), a planet believed to be suitable for colonisation. Now he keeps watch alone, with his 13 companions sealed in cabinets designed to keep them in suspended animation for the many years of the journey. He makes a daily report on each one: it is always 'Condition Steady'. Ryan is tormented by nightmares and memories of the violence on Earth; he starts to fear he is losing his grip on reality. The shipboard computer urges him to take a drug that eliminates all delusions and hallucinations; but he is strangely reluctant to use this drug.
3803226	/m/0b0tmj	Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror	Steve Alten	1997-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Jonas Taylor (1956-) is a deep sea diver working for the United States Navy on a top-secret dive in the Mariana Trench. He sees a megalodon, the "Meg" of the title, a massive ancient predator that is believed to be extinct. Because he is the only survivor he is disbelieved. He becomes a paleontologist and tries to prove that the megalodon is real, but is still considered a crackpot. An old friend, Masao Tanaka, asks him to go back and help recover a UNIS (Unmanned Nautical Informational Submersible), which helps predict earthquakes, from the Mariana Trench. Again, they encounter a megalodon in the depths: the species has indeed survived, but is trapped in the Mariana Trench due to the 'cold water barrier' (the bottom of the Trench is heated by geothermal ducts, keeping the water warm, but that warmth has limited range and the far colder water above it keeps the sharks trapped there as the cold water would apparently have highly negative effects on the giant sharks unless traversed properly). A male megalodon attacks them and kills Tanaka's son before being entangled in the metal ropes connecting the submarine to the ship, which start dragging the shark up. However, the male shark's vulnerable state prompts an even larger female megalodon to emerge and attack it, and as the female rips it apart, she is bathed in the shark's warm blood as she follows the entangled male upwards, the warm flood of liquid keeping the female protected from the cold water long enough for it to reach the warmer surface waters of the ocean, hence unleashing the megalodon anew on the ocean's ecosystem. It doesn't take long for the shark to pick up where it left off after it reaches the surface, as it starts killing and eating whales, and sometimes people, including Jonas's estranged wife, Maggie. To make matters worse, the female is pregnant and gives birth. Both are tracked, as Taylor and Tanaka wish to capture the creature. They manage to get the mother, but it breaks free and starts attacking boats in the area where it was captured. Taylor manages to kill the mother in the carnage by ramming a submersible down its throat, slicing his way through its inner body, and eventually cutting through its heart before escaping. Jonas also manages to capture the offspring of the meg, ending the novel.
3808619	/m/0b11fy	Oh, Play That Thing!	Roddy Doyle	2004		 Having fallen foul of his erstwhile comrades in the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Henry escapes to America. In New York, he becomes involved in advertising, pornography and bootlegging. After stepping on the toes of the Mob, Henry heads for Chicago, where he becomes the manager and partner-in-crime of Louis Armstrong. He becomes reunited with his wife and daughter, and, much to his dismay, the IRA.
3812457	/m/0b18y7	Absolutely Normal Chaos	Sharon Creech	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mary Lou Finney is less than excited about her assignment to keep a journal over the summer. She also has to read The Odyssey, which she often relates to her own story. Then her cousin Carl Ray comes to stay with her family, under the pretense of looking for a job, which he eventually finds at Mr. Furtz's hardware store. Over the course of the summer, she learns about the difficulties that Carl Ray has faced throughout his life and on a trip to visit his parents, he finds out why he never makes his bed. She also hangs out with her best friend Beth Ann and becomes Alex Cheevey's girlfriend. As Mary Lou's story unfolds, she examines both her struggles with her family and her own sense of self. Sharon Creech stated that the inspiration for this story was an occasion when, "I'd been living overseas (England and Switzerland) for about ten years, and I was sadly missing my family back in the States. I thought I'd write a story about normal family chaos and that's how this began, with me trying to remember what it was like growing up in my family. Writing the story was a way for me to feel as if my family were with me, right there in our little cottage in England.".
3814522	/m/0b1cg5	Mrs Dane's Defence	Henry Arthur Jones			 The story focuses on Mrs. Dane's betrothal to Lionel, adopted son of Sir Daniel who is a famous judge. Rumours have been spread in Sunningwater that young widow Mrs. Dane is actually Felicia Hindermarsh, involved in a tragic scandal following an affair with a married man in Vienna. Before Sir Daniel consents to the marriage, he attempts to put down the rumours and clear Mrs. Dane's reputation. With others, such as Lady Eastney, he starts looking into Mrs. Dane's past, guided by his experience as a judge. Mrs. Dane produces plausible evidence of her identity and everyone involved is quite convinced of her innocence. Yet in the end Sir Daniel's professional approach exposes Mrs. Dane's real identity in a famous cross-examination scene. Sir Daniel begins his examination convinced of her story, only wanting to get some final detail. A slip of the tongue by Mrs. Dane (when she says “We had governesses”) reveals the presence of a cousin she has tried to conceal. This sets Sir Daniel on the right track and he follows up skillfully and mercilessly, finally drawing the confession out of her that she is indeed Felicia Hindermarsh and has taken her late cousin's identity. The truth is kept secret, though (mostly due to Lady Eastney's intervention), and Mrs. Dane's reputation in Sunningwater can be reinstated. Nevertheless, they all decide she should leave the village after her marriage with Lionel has become impossible and she complies.
3815573	/m/0b1dq1	Stamboul Train	Graham Greene		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel focuses on the lives of individuals aboard the train as it makes a trip from Ostend to Istanbul. Although boarding the Orient Express for different purposes, the lives of each of the central characters are bound together in a fateful interlock. Myatt is a shrewd and practical businessman. Partly out of generosity, he gives the sick Coral Musker a ticket, for which Musker feels grateful and dutifully falls in love with him. She then spends a night with him in his compartment. Dr. Czinner, an exiled socialist leader, wants to travel back to Belgrade, only to find that the socialist uprising he was anticipating has already taken place and failed. He decides to go back to Belgrade nonetheless to stand trial as a political gesture. Meanwhile, he is being followed by Mabel Warren, a lesbian journalist who is travelling with her partner, Janet Pardoe. In order to go back to Belgrade, he has to pretend to leave the train at Vienna so that Warren would not follow him. When the train arrives at Vienna, Warren, while keeping an eye on Czinner, leaves the train to make a phone call to her office. It is at this time that her bag is stolen by Josef Grünlich, who has just killed a man during a failed robbery. Grünlich then promptly boards the train with her money, while the angry Warren, left behind and worried about losing Pardoe, vows to get Czinner's story through other means. At Subotica, the train is stopped and Czinner is arrested. Also arrested are Grünlich, for keeping a revolver, and Musker, who by coincidence is with Czinner when the arrest takes place. A court martial is held and Czinner gives a rousing political speech, even though there is no real audience present. He is quickly sentenced to death. The three prisoners are kept in a waiting room for the night. They soon realize that Myatt has just come back for Musker in a car. The skilful Grünlich breaks open the door and all three try to escape and run to the car. Unfortunately, only Grünlich is able to do so -- Czinner is shot and Musker hides him in a barn. Czinner dies soon after. When Warren comes back for her story, she happily decides to take Musker back to Vienna: she has long fancied to have Musker as her new partner. But when Musker is last seen, she is having a heart attack in the back of Warren's car, and her ultimate fate is not revealed. The Orient Express finally arrives at Istanbul, and Myatt, Pardoe and Mr. Savory (a writer) get off. Myatt soon realizes that Pardoe is the niece of Stein, a rival businessman and potential business partner. The story ends with Myatt seriously considering marrying Pardoe and sealing the contract with Stein.
3816477	/m/0b1fpc	Out of the Shelter	David Lodge	1970	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story tells a child's experience in the Blitz during World War II and his rescue from an air-raid shelter. Suffering from a wartime childhood and post-war shortages in London, Timothy has little to enrich his early youth. Everything changes when his glamorous older sister Kath invites him to spend the summer in Heidelberg, Germany. Kath, who left home long ago to work for the American Army, introduces her sixteen-year-old brother to a lifestyle that is deliriously fast, furious and extravagant. Dazzled by the ingulgent habits of the American forces, but at the same time sensitive to the broken spirit of the German community beneath this sparkling surface, Timothy will find that his summer holiday is in more ways than one an unforgettable rite of passage.
3816721	/m/0b1fy9	Paradise News	David Lodge	1991	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with Bernard, a laicised Catholic priest, escorting his unwilling father Jack to Hawaii at the request of his aunt Ursula, who is dying of cancer. On the day after arrival, Jack is hit by a car and sent to hospital. Bernard spends much time travelling between Jack's bedside and Ursula's nursing home, and through this, gets the opportunity to discover their past. Ursula, always portrayed as the selfish black sheep, had been sexually abused as a child by her oldest brother Sean, who was venerated as a hero by the family for his death in the war. Ursula explains to Bernard that the experience ruined her marriage and her life. She wants Jack's apology for Jack knew of the abuse but kept silent. In the midst of this, Bernard strikes up a tentative relationship with Yolande Miller, the driver of the car that hit his father. Bernard's gradual sexual awakening parallels Ursula's struggle with her illness. The narrative switches between third-person prose, Bernard's diary, a long letter from Bernard to Yolande, and postcards and notes sent from Hawaii by various characters encountered by Bernard and Jack on the plane journey from England, concluding with a letter from Yolande to Bernard. fr:Nouvelles du paradis
3816929	/m/0b1gb2	Home Truths: A Novella	David Lodge	1999	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The story mainly focuses on Adrian Ludlow, a half-retired writer, interviewed by Fanny Tarrant, a journalist famous for sarcastic portrait of her interviewees. ro:Crudul adevăr
3818118	/m/0b1jqz	Delusions of Grandma	Carrie Fisher		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The book is about Cora Sharpe, a Hollywood screenwriter who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant by her boyfriend, an attorney named Ray, a relationship that has gone wrong. Concerned that she will not survive labor, Cora begins to write long letters to her unborn child. As she writes, she begins to recall the events that led to her current situation. Her relationship with Ray became more complicated by the arrival of his mother, who came to live with them to recuperate from breast surgery. Cora's friend and co-writer, Bud, who is completely bipolar, then moves in with them. When another friend, William, who is in the final stages of dying of AIDS, moves in, Ray decides that Cora's efforts to care for William during his final days on earth signals that he, Ray, is not her top priority in life. As things get out of control, Cora returns home to her mother, a retired musical comedy star, and Bud follows. There is an in-depth look at the heartfelt expectations of Cora's zany mother, the show-bizzy grandma-to-be. Cora and Bud then join her mother in an inexplicable and madcap scheme to kidnap Cora's grandfather, who is stricken with Alzheimer's, from his nursing home and take him back to his hometown of Whitewright, Texas. The story then concludes with the birth of Cora's child.
3822857	/m/0b1th1	Open House	Elizabeth Berg	2000-08	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Throughout the 20 years of her marriage, Samantha Morrow has been content with her life, though she knows it isn't perfect. She has a nice home, a great son, and a husband she loves. But everything is turned upside down when her husband, David, tells her he wants out of their marriage. His rapid departure on the heels of this announcement leaves Sam horribly shocked, utterly confused, and oddly obsessed with Martha Stewart. Her initial reaction is to go on a spending spree, charging thousands of dollars worth of merchandise at Tiffany's to her husband's credit card. But when reality sets in and her husband cuts her off, she realizes that if she wants to keep the house she loves and make a home for herself and her son, she's going to have to generate some income. Her first solution to this dilemma is to find a couple of roommates. Between the finished portion of the basement and the extra bedroom upstairs, Sam figures she can take on two boarders and mitigate a large portion of the mortgage payment. She finds her first boarder quickly—the septuagenarian mother of an acquaintance—and is delighted. Lydia Fitch is quiet, clean, concerned, friendly, and more than eager to play grandmother to Sam's son, Travis. Which is just as well, since Sam's own mother doesn't quite fit the bill. In fact, Sam's mother has made a career out of dating since the death of her husband two decades ago and is now determined to fix Sam up as soon as possible—a plan with foreseeable disasters written all over it. Sam's life is further complicated when she starts looking for a job, for other than a gig singing in a band years ago, she's never been employed. But then King, the gentle giant of a man who helps Lydia move in, puts Sam in touch with the employment agency he works for. Suddenly Sam is off on a variety of short-term jobs, everything from making change at a Laundromat, to working as a carpenter's helper. When she gets the devastating news that Lydia has decided to marry her longtime beau and move out, Sam takes on a second boarder for the basement space: a sullen, depressed college student.
3826722	/m/0b1zq8	The Coral Island	Robert Michael Ballantyne	1857	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story is written as a first person narrative from the perspective of one of three boys shipwrecked on the coral reef of a large but uninhabited Polynesian island, 15-year-old Ralph Rover. Ralph tells the story retrospectively, looking back on his boyhood adventure: "I was a boy when I went through the wonderful adventures herein set down. With the memory of my boyish feelings strong upon me, I present my book specially to boys, in the earnest hope that they may derive valuable information, much pleasure, great profit, and unbounded amusement from its pages." The account starts briskly, with only four pages devoted to Ralph's early life and a further fourteen to his voyage to the Pacific Ocean on board the Arrow. He and his two companions&nbsp;– 18-year-old Jack Martin and 14-year-old Peterkin Gay&nbsp;– are the sole survivors of the shipwreck. The narrative is essentially in two parts. The first describes how the boys feed themselves, what they drink, the clothing and shelter they fashion, and how they cope with having to rely on their own resources. The second half of the novel is more action-packed, featuring conflicts with pirates, fighting between the native Polynesians, and the conversion efforts of Christian missionaries. At first the boys' life is idyllic. Food in the shape of fruits, fish, and wild pigs is plentiful, and they fashion a shelter and construct a small boat using their only possessions: a broken telescope, an iron-bound oar, and a small axe. Their first contact with other humans comes after several months, when they observe two large outrigger canoes land on the beach. The two groups of Polynesians disembark and engage in battle; the three boys intervene to defeat the attackers, earning them the gratitude of the chief, Tararo. The natives leave, and the boys are alone once more. Less welcome visitors then arrive in the shape of British pirates, who make a living by trading or stealing sandalwood. The three boys conceal themselves in a hidden cave, but Ralph is captured when he ventures out to see if the pirates have left, and is taken on board the pirate schooner. He strikes up a friendship with one of the pirates, Bloody Bill, and when they call at an island to trade for more wood he meets Tararo again. There he experiences many facets of the island's culture, including the popular sport of surfing, the sacrificing of babies to eel gods, rape, and cannibalism. Rising tensions result in the inhabitants attacking the pirates, leaving only Ralph and Bloody Bill alive. The pair succeed in making their escape in the schooner, but Bill is mortally wounded. He makes a death-bed repentance for his evil life, leaving Ralph to sail back alone to the Coral Island, where he is reunited with his friends. The three boys sail to the island of Mango, where a missionary has converted some of the population to Christianity. They find themselves caught up in a conflict between the converted and non-converted islanders, and in attempting to intervene are taken prisoner. They are released a month later after the arrival of another missionary, and the conversion of the remaining islanders. The "false gods" of Mango are consigned to the flames, and the boys set sail for home, older and wiser.
3829861	/m/0b2512	No Man Friday			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A British rocket, developed at minimal cost and secretly from officialdom, lifts off from the Woomera rocket range on a mission to Mars. During the voyage, an accident in the airlock kills all but the narrator, who was returning from EVA and still in his space suit. The rocket reaches Mars but crash lands. There, the narrator learns how to produce oxygen and water, also discovering more about Martian species and nourishment. Eventually, he starts cooperating with the titanic inhabitants of that planet to survive. After fifteen years, an American mission lands, thinking themselves the first to reach Mars. The narrator contacts the Americans, and then tries to return to the Dominant Beings, but is prevented from reaching them. He returns to Earth with the Americans.
3829882	/m/0b252j	One Night @ the Call Center	Chetan Bhagat	2005-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with a frame story which recounts a train journey from Kanpur to Delhi. During the journey, the narrating author meets a beautiful girl. The girl offers to tell the author a story on the condition that he has to make it his second book. After a lot of hesitation, the author agrees. The story within the story, which comprises the bulk of the book, relates the events that happen one night at a call center. Told through the eyes of the protagonist, Shyam, it is a story of almost lost love, thwarted ambitions, absence of family affection, pressures of a patriarchal set up, and the work environment of a globalized office. Shyam loves but has lost Priyanka, who is now planning an arranged marriage with another; Vroom loves Esha. Esha wants to be a model, Radhika is in an unhappy marriage with a demanding mother-in-law, and military uncle wants to talk to his grandson; they all hate Bakshi, their cruel boss. Claimed to be based on a true story, the author chooses Shyam Mehra (alias Sam Marcy) as the narrator and protagonist, who is one among the six call center employees featured.
3830461	/m/0b25w7	The Flivver King	Upton Sinclair, Jr.		{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On Bagley Street in the city of Detroit, Little Abner Shutt begins the story by explaining to his mother that "there's a feller down the street says he's goin' to make a wagon that'll run without a horse." The man is Henry Ford. The story follows the progress and growth of Ford Motor Company through the perspective of a number of generations of a single family. "The Flivver King" demonstrates the effects of Scientific Management in factories. The Ford factory began with very skilled workers. Through a process of breaking the skilled job down into simple steps, they were able to hire lower wage, less skilled individuals to do the work. The Flivver King explains how the Ford Company used scientific management to replace skilled workers while successfully increasing production.
3832478	/m/0b29y1	The Shadow of the Wind	Carlos Ruiz Zafón	2001	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel, set in post–war Barcelona, concerns a young boy, Daniel Sempere. Just after the war, Daniel's father takes him to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a huge library of old, forgotten titles lovingly preserved by a select few initiates. According to tradition, everyone initiated to this secret place is allowed to take one book from it and must protect it for life. Daniel selects a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. That night he takes the book home and reads it, completely engrossed. Daniel then attempts to look for other books by this unknown author but can find none. All he comes across are stories of a strange man – calling himself Laín Coubert, after a character in the book who happens to be the Devil – who has been seeking out Carax's books for decades, buying them all and burning them. The novel is actually a story within a story. The boy, Daniel Sempere, in his quest to discover Julian's other works, becomes involved in tracing the entire history of Carax. His friend Fermin Romero de Torres, who was imprisoned and tortured in Montjuic Castle for having been involved in an espionage against the Anarchists during the war – himself being a government intelligence agent – helps Daniel in a number of ways, but their probing into the murky past of a number of people who have either been long dead or long forgotten unleashes the dark forces of the murderous Inspector Fumero. Thus, unravelling a long story that has been buried within the depths of oblivion, Daniel and Fermin come across a love story, the beautiful, yet doomed love story of Julian and Penelope, both of whom seem to having been missing since 1919 – that is, nearly thirty years earlier. Julian, who was the son of the hatter Antoni Fortuny and his wife Sophie Carax (but preferred to use his mother's last name) and Penelope Aldaya, the only daughter of the extremely rich and wealthy Don Ricardo Aldaya and his beautiful and narcissistic American wife, developed an instant love for each other, carried out a clandestine relationship only through casual furtive glances and faint smiles for around four years, after which they decided to elope to Paris, little knowing that the shadows of misfortune had been closing upon them ever since they met. The two lovers are doomed to unknown fates just a week before their supposed elopement, which was meticulously planned by Julian's best friend, Miquel Moliner – also the son of a wealthy father, who had earned much during the war including an ill reputation of selling ammunition. It is eventually revealed that Miquel loved Julian more than any brother and finally sacrificed his own life for him, having already abandoned all his wishes and youth towards lost causes of charity and his friend's well-being after his elopement to Paris, nevertheless without Penelope, who never turned up for the rendezvous. Penelope's memories keep burning Julian and this eventually forces him to return to Barcelona, in the mid 1930s, however he encounters the harshest truth about Penelope, who had just been nothing more than a memory for those who knew her, for she had never been seen or heard of again by anyone after 1919. He discovers that he and Penelope are actually half-brother and sister; her father had an affair with his mother and Julian was the result. The worst thing for his to dicover is that after he left, Penelope's parents imprisoned her because they were ashamed of her committing incest with Julian, and she was pregnant with his child. Penelope gave birth to a son named David Aldaya, who was stillborn. Penelope died during childbirth and her body was never found. Julian is despaired over the deaths of Penelope and David. He attempts suicide by poison and was hospitalized. After his release, he began writing a series of books, but it was A Shadow of the Wind, based on his lifetime, that became famous. Soon after the book was published, Julian disappeared without a trace. After finishing reading the book, Daniel marries Beatriz "Bea" Aguilar, whom he has loved for a long time, in 1956. Soon after, Bea gives birth to a son. Daniel names his son Julian Sempere, in honor of Julian Carax. In 1966, Daniel takes Julian to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where A Shadow of the Wind is kept.
3832596	/m/0b2b3p	Boba Fett: Crossfire	Terry Bisson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Young Boba Fett is brought to Count Dooku's lair on the planet of Raxus Prime by Aurra Sing. Boba Fett snoops around finding out what the Separatists are there for: the Force Harvester. Clone Troopers attack the planet's Separatist forces, rescue Boba Fett as an orphan taking him to a large ship in outer space. On board the Casanderri, Boba Fett hides himself under the name"Teff" and meets another orphan who he develops a friendship with. This bond is broken when Boba flees the ship when it lands on Bespin. Boba Fett escapes to search for his ship Slave 1 which was taken by Aurra Sing. Both meet upon a moon and agree to get Boba Fett his father's money, in exchange for half. The two leave for Count Dooku. Meanwhile, on Excarga, the Separatists seized control over the planet. The Galactic Republic manages to launch a strike force and take back the planet. Several prison camps were liberated, but some prisoners were not found.
3833407	/m/0b2cnw	Adolphe	Benjamin Constant		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Adolphe, the narrator, is the son of a government minister. Introverted from an early age, his melancholy outlook has been formed by conversations with an elderly friend, whose insight into the folly and hypocrisy of the world has hindered rather than helped her in life. When the novel opens, he is 22 years old and has just completed his studies at the University of Göttingen. He travels to the town of D*** in Germany, where he becomes attached to the court of an enlightened Prince. During his stay he gains a reputation for an unpleasant wit. A friend's project of seduction inspires him to try something similar with the 32-year-old lover of the Comte de P***, a beautiful Polish refugee named Ellénore. The seduction is successful, but they both fall in love, and their relationship becomes all-consuming, isolating them from the people around them. Eventually Adolphe becomes anxious as he realises that he is sacrificing any potential future for the sake of Ellénore. She persuades him to extend his stay by six months, but they quarrel, and when she breaks with the Comte de P*** and leaves her two children in order to be with him, and tends him after he is injured in a duel, he finds himself hopelessly indebted to her. When he leaves the town of D***, Ellénore follows him, only to be expelled from his home town by Adolphe's father. Adolphe is furious and together they travel to her newly-regained estate in Poland. However, a friend of the father, the Baron de T***, manipulates Adolphe into promising to break with Ellénore for the sake of his career. The letter which contains the promise is forwarded to Ellénore and the shock leads to her death. Adolphe loses interest in life, and the alienation with which the book began returns in a more serious form.
3837355	/m/0b2klz	Mr Midshipman Easy	Frederick Marryat		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Easy is the son of foolish parents, who spoiled him. His father, in particular, regards himself as a philosopher, with a firm belief in the "rights of man, equality, and all that; how every person was born to inherit his share of the earth, a right at present only admitted to a certain length that is, about six feet, for we all inherit our graves, and are allowed to take possession without dispute. But no one would listen to Mr Easy's philosophy. The women would not acknowledge the rights of men, whom they declared always to be in the wrong; and, as the gentlemen who visited Mr Easy were all men of property, they could not perceive the advantages of sharing with those who had none. However, they allowed him to discuss the question, while they discussed his port wine. The wine was good, if the arguments were not, and we must take things as we find them in this world." By the time he is a teenager Easy has adopted his father's point of view, to the point where he no longer believes in private property. Easy joins the navy, which his fatherbelieves to be the best example of an equal society, and Easy becomes friendly with a lower deck seaman named Mesty (Mephistopheles Faust), an escaped slave, who had been a prince in Africa. Mesty is sympathetic to Easy's philosophizing, which seems to offer him a way up from his lowly job of "boiling kettle for de young gentlemen"; but once Mesty is promoted to ship's corporal and put in charge of discipline, he changes his mind: "...now I tink a good deal lately, and by all de power, I tink equality all stuff." "All stuff, Mesty, why? you used to think otherwise." "Yes, Massa Easy, but den I boil de kettle for all young gentleman. Now dat I ship's corporal and hab cane, I tink so no longer." In some way Mesty is the real hero of the novel, as he pulls Easy out of several scrapes the impulsive 17-year old gets himself into as he cruises the Mediterranean on several British ships. Easy becomes a competent officer, in spite of his notions. Easy's mother dies, and he returns home to find his father is completely mad. Easy senior has developed an apparatus for reducing or enlarging phrenological bumps on the skull, but in an attempt to reduce his own benevolence bump, the machine kills him. Easy throws out the criminal servants his father has employed and puts the estate to rights, demanding backrents from the tenants, and evicting those who won't pay. Using his new-found wealth, he formally quits the navy, rigs out his own privateering vessel, and returns to Sicily to claim his bride Agnes. As a wealthy gentleman now, no longer a junior midshipman, her family can't refuse him, and he and Agnes live happily ever after.
3837612	/m/0b2k_s	Dreamsnake	Vonda McIntyre	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens with Snake, a healer, having been brought into a desert tribe to assist in the healing of a very sick little boy named Stavin. She is dependent upon her snakes for healing purposes and has three: Grass, a small and rare dreamsnake that is used for calming the patient and taking away their pain, Sand, a rattlesnake whose venom is used in making vaccines and healing potions, and Mist, a cobra with the same purpose as Sand but whose venom makes stronger potions. The desert people are afraid of the snakes and of Snake herself, and when Snake leaves Grass to keep Stavin's dreams sweet through the night while she works on an antidote, they remove Grass, crippling it. Snake guards Mist through the night as the snake creates the antidote, assisted by Arevin. When Snake returns to the boy, the villagers show her the snake and she crushes its head to put it out of its misery. Snake blames herself for the loss of her dreamsnake and loathes having to return and tell her fellow healers of her mistake. It is doubtful she will be able to get another dreamsnake, as they are from another world and the healers have been unable to breed them, and can only occasionally clone them. Stavin takes the potion and survives, and Snake travels until the next request for her aid comes. Jesse, a horsewoman, was injured in a fall off a horse and has broken her spine. Snake fears Jesse's request for assistance in a painless death, because Grass is gone. Jesse is eventually convinced by her two companions to try going back to the Central city, where she is from, to get help from the ruling family that she was a part of before she shunned them and left. They have more contact with the otherworlders and perhaps more technology that can help her recover. The four start off toward the city when Jesse suddenly grows worse. Snake realizes, seeing the dead carcass of the horse Jesse was riding in the distance, that Jesse had fallen and lain in one of the radioactive craters remaining from the nuclear war their planet faced years ago long enough to have developed radiation poisoning. It is unclear whether Jesse dies of this or from Mist's strike (Snake's only remaining form of assistance) but her final wish is to bequeath Snake a horse named Swift and urges the healer to tell the city dwellers of Jesse's death in the hopes that the news of Snake's assistance at the end will persuade the Otherworlders to give the healers more dreamsnakes, which will put the family in Snake's debt and perhaps allow her to speak with the Otherworlders and ask them for more dreamsnakes. Before setting off, Snake goes to pick up her pony at the Oasis, where friends of hers have been watching her other things and finds all her belongings have been ruined. The natives of Oasis apologize for not guarding her things better and say that a crazy came down from the hills and must have done it. Her journal is missing. Arevin, the desert dweller, finds himself wanting to go after Snake, because he has fallen in love with her and believes that she is too hard on herself in the issue of Grass' death. He travels to the healers and tells two trustworthy ones the story of what had happened, but is surprised to find that Snake is not already there. He heads south in an attempt to find her. Snake arrives at a village along her way and is invited to the governor's mansion by the governor's son Gabriel, an extremely handsome young man who always goes cloaked out in public. She is also asked to heal the leg of his father, who had a spear go through it. It is infected and Gabriel's father is a difficult man to treat, but Snake manages to cure him without taking the leg. She also invites Gabriel into her bed in the casual way that is done in this time, because every child is put through biocontrol training which prevents their pregnancy. He is horrified by this, having failed in biocontrol when he was a teenager and gotten a friend pregnant, which is why he sulks about in cloaks—he is ashamed. She soothes him, saying that healer pregnancies are rare and they usually adopt children and that she has excellent control herself. Snake also figures out that he was incorrectly instructed in biocontrol, and suggests another town where he might better learn and make a fresh start. While checking in on her horses, Snake meets Melissa, a twelve year old, severely burned girl who hides out in the stables and assists the stablemaster, who takes credit for all her work. She is shy and doesn't like anyone to see her scars in a town with such beautiful people. Melissa has been severely abused by the stablemaster, physically, mentally, and sexually, and Snake uses this knowledge to free her and adopt her as her own child. While riding in the town, Snake is again attacked by the crazy, who grabs her snake case and attempts to take Sand and Mist from her. Snake fights back and keeps her snakes, but is injured and has to take a few days to heal before continuing her journey. When she leaves for the Central city, Melissa accompanies her. The pair make it to the city and are turned away, despite bringing news of Jesse, because of Snake's mention of cloning. They attempt to head back toward the healers, but must shelter in a cave to wait out the desert storms. Once they are over and they start back, they are again attacked by the crazy, who Snake ends up capturing. He is after her dreamsnake, having become addicted to its venom after being bitten many times by many snakes. Snake can think of no place that the man would be able to be bitten by so many snakes and is intrigued. She makes him bring them to North and the broken dome where the crazy said it all happened. At the dome, Snake and Melissa are captured by North, who recognizes her as a healer against whom he bears a grudge as a result of his gigantism; they could have prevented this if he had had treatment as a child. He puts them both in a large, cold pit filled with dreamsnakes. Snake keeps Melissa held above the snakes to prevent her from continuously being bitten, herself protected by her many years of being bitten. After, North takes Melissa away and forces many dreamsnakes to bite Snake until she is drugged and passes out. Snake comes to and manages to escape the pit, finding all North's henchmen asleep in dreamsnake dreams. North himself is awake, but shrinks back when threatened by a dreamsnake, having never been bitten himself, then relents. Snake finds Melissa and tries to escape back to the horses, where they are met by Arevin and safety.
3838212	/m/0b2m1x	World of Ptavvs	Larry Niven	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A reflective statue is found at the bottom of one of Earth's oceans, having lain there for 1.5 billion years. Since humans have recently developed a time-slowing field and found that one such field cannot function within another, it is suspected that the "Sea Statue" is actually a space traveler within one of these time fields. Larry Greenberg, a telepath, agrees to participate in an experiment: a time-slowing field is generated around both Greenberg and the statue, shutting off the stasis field and revealing Kzanol. Kzanol is a living Thrint, a member of a telepathic race that once ruled the galaxy through mind control. Eons ago, Kzanol's spaceship had suffered a catastrophic failure; its reactive drive system failed and the navigation computer automatically jettisoned it. Faced with insufficient power to use hyperspace, Kzanol aimed himself at the nearest uninhabited Thrint planet (which turns out to be Earth) used to grow yeast for food, and turned his spacesuit's emergency stasis field on to survive the long journey and impact. He also arranged for his ship to change course for the system's eighth planet (Neptune) after he was in stasis, with his amplifier helmet and other valuables inside his spare suit (in order to hide these valuables from any rescuers). Although he assumed that the resident thrint overseer would be able to rescue him after seeing the plume of gas created by his impact, his timing could not have been worse; while in stasis on the way to the planet, the slave races revolted against the Thrint. Facing extinction, the Thrint decided to take their enemies with them by constructing a telepathic amplifier powerful enough to command all sentient species in the galaxy to commit suicide. They set it to repeat for centuries and every sentient being in the galaxy perished. After hundreds of millions of years, the yeast food mutated and evolved into complex life on Earth. After his telepathic encounter with the Thrint, Greenberg is confused by having two sets of memories, his own and Kzanol's. He instinctively assumes he is Kzanol. Both Greenberg and the real Kzanol steal spaceships and race to reclaim the thought-amplifying machine on Neptune, which is powerful enough to enable control of every thinking being in the Solar System. Eventually, Greenberg's personality reasserts itself and, armed with the knowledge of how to resist the Power (one of Kzanol's own memories), Greenberg traps Kzanol again in a stasis field. A major element of the story is the Cold War existing between Earth and the "Belters," which threatens to burst into a highly destructive war over control of the same device.
3838340	/m/0b2m61	Israel Potter	Herman Melville		{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Israel Potter leaves his plough to fight in the American Revolution, he's immediately thrown into the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he receives multiple wounds. However, this does not deter him, and after hearing a rousing speech by General George Washington, he volunteers for further duty, this time at sea, where more ill fortune awaits him. Israel is captured by the British Navy and taken to England. Yet, he makes his escape, and this triggers a series of extraordinary events and meetings with remarkable people. Along the way, Israel encounters King George III, who takes a liking to the Yankee rebel and shelters him in Kew Gardens; Benjamin Franklin, who presses Israel into service as a spy; John Paul Jones, who invites Israel to join his crew aboard The Ranger; and Ethan Allen, whom Israel attempts to free from a British prison. Throughout these adventures, Israel Potter acquits himself bravely, but his patriotic valor does not bring him any closer to his dream of returning to America. After the war, Israel finds himself in London, where he descends into poverty. Finally, fifty years after he left his plough, he makes his way back to his beloved Berkshires. However, few things remain the same. Soon, Israel fades out of being, his name out of memory, and he dies on the same day the oldest oak on his native lands is blown down.
3840955	/m/0b2rmv	The Man Who Could Work Miracles	H. G. Wells			 In an English public house, The Long Dragon, George McWhirter Fotheringay is engaged in vigorously asserting the impossibility of miracles while arguing with the obnoxious Toddy Beamish. However, after an unintended command of Fotheringay's, an oil lamp does the impossibleflaming upside down. Although it is thought to be a trick, and quickly dismissed by his acquaintances, back home Fotheringay continues to use his new power for other petty uncanny deeds. Then, after also magically accomplishing his everyday chores as a clerk at Gomshott's office, Fotheringay goes to a park to practise further. However, he has an untimely encounter with a local constable, Winch, who is then accidentally injured. In the ensuing confrontation Fotheringay unintentionally curses him, so the policeman literally goes to Hades; hours later, Fotheringay relocates him safely to San Francisco. As a result of these and other miracles, Fotheringay decides to attend the local church services on Sunday. He is then moved by the clergyman, Mr. Maydig, as he coincidentally preaches about unnatural occurrences. Fotheringay meets him for advice at his quarters. After few petty demonstrations the priest becomes enthusiastic, suggesting that Fotheringay should do them on behalf of the public; during that night they traverse the town streets, healing the illness and the vice and revamping public works. The priest then plans to reform the whole world. They could disregard their obligations for the next day, if Fotheringay could stop the night altogether. Fotheringay does so, stopping the motion of the whole planet Earth. However, his clumsy wording backfires, resulting in all objects on Earth being hurled off the ground without control, "with more force than a cannon shot". As the surface becomes a pandemonium, Fotheringay miraculously ensures his own safety back on the ground. Fotheringay would not be able to amend such a big mess though, so he repents; for his last two wishes he relinquishes such power forever and he commands a return to the time before he had it. Effectively, this happens: Fotheringay is back in the public house, discussing miracles with his friends as before, without any recollection of the uncanny events.
3841627	/m/0b2shq	Caballo de Troya			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 The book is narrated as if it is a true report of how the author was approached by an unnamed retired US Air Force pilot, referred to as "The Major" throughout the book (Jasón in later books), who in an elaborated indirect way tells the author how to find classified documents telling the story of the Operation Trojan Horse, in which The Major took part as a time traveller sent to witness the last weeks of Jesus's life through a time-travelling device sent back in time by the US military in an Israel base in 1973. A lengthy, detailed "technical" description of the time travel process ("inversion of quantum swivels") is provided. The time-traveller and the time-travelling vehicle are said to have been wrapped by an artificial skin to avoid biological contamination. The Major, who becomes the narrator of the story, is codenamed "Jasón" during the mission, and has to learn fluent Aramaic and Greek as a necessary skill to interact with people of this era and place during the mission, as well as other extensive training. It is "revealed" that many of the amazing stories of eclipses, earthquakes after Jesus's death and his transfiguration were linked to extraterrestrial influences. Jesus's physical appearance is described as almost Nordic, with hazel eyes and very tall (he is sometimes called "The Giant", physically and metaphorically in the book). Even as the 1970s UFO mania has lost traction in Spanish-speaking countries, Benítez has retained solid sales and certain celebrity on the basis of his book series. The following 8 sequels expand on the issued and reveal more detail. Caballo de Troya 9, Caná was published in Spain in 2011. He wrote in his website that he first became interested in the "real" life of Jesus around that time, when a team of researchers said that the Shroud of Turin showed traces of Jesus' body. These claims have later come under scrutiny, but the fact has not stopped the flow of new Caballo de Troya books. The author has claimed the time-travel part of Caballo de Troya is fiction, but that it contains "more truth than people think" suggesting, given he purports to be "a UFO researcher", that he might be claiming alien contact. The author insists that most, if not all, events in his novels are real.
3843618	/m/0b2x4r	Socialite Evenings	Shobha De	1989	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Karuna, the main protagonist and narrator is caught up in a drab, boring life that she seeks to escape by writing memoirs. Her memoirs are successful and she achieves a measure of fame and pride in herself as she becomes an active socialite and eventually uses her newfound prominence as a celebrity to get herself a position as an advertising copywriter and creator of a television series.
3845535	/m/03bxc46	The Worthing Chronicle	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Jason Worthing and one of his descendants, Justice, go to a small village on a backward world to get a boy named Lared to write a book for them. This book is about why Abner Doon destroyed the empire and the planet Capitol and why Jason's descendants destroyed the planet Worthing. It also explains why people all over the settled part of the galaxy are no longer being protected by "God" from pain and hardship. The Worthing Chronicle is an expansion of Card’s first novel, Hot Sleep.
3846721	/m/0b31h9	Up the Line	Robert Silverberg	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 The story's protagonist is Jud Elliott III, a failed Harvard history masters student in 2059. Bored with his job as a law clerk, he takes up a position with the Time Service as a Time Courier. After an introductory course, Jud shunts up and down the time line ("up the line" is travel into the past; "down the line" is forward time travel, but only to "now-time," Jud's present of 2059) as a guide for tourists visiting ancient and medieval Byzantium/Constantinople. Jud's problems include not only stupid tourists, but also greedy and mentally unstable colleagues who attempt to cause various types of havoc with the past. He is forced to break the rules in order to patch things up without drawing the attention of the Time Patrol. When he meets and falls in love with the 'marvelous transtemporal paradox called Pulcheria' - his own multi-great grandmother - Jud succumbs to the lure of the past, creates irreparable paradoxes, and faces the inescapable clutches of the Time Patrol. Silverberg's narrative includes some cleverly worked out details about the problems of time-travel tourism. For example, the number of tourists who over the years wish to witness the Sermon on the Mount has increased the audience at the event from the likely dozens to hundreds and even thousands. Time-tour guides re-visiting the same event must also take care not to scan their surroundings too closely, lest they make eye contact with themselves leading another tour party. Silverberg's interest in the Byzantine era of Roman history is put to use with a vivid description of Constantinople during the reign of Justinian, and the Nika riots of 532.
3850149	/m/0b36m7	Freckle Juice	Judy Blume		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Andrew's dream is to have freckles. He envies Nicky Lane because Nicky has numerous freckles all over his face, ears, and neck. Andrew feels as if he is at a disadvantage because he only had two warts on his fingers. Once, Andew tried counting all of Nicky's freckles, but when he got to eighty-six, Miss Kelly, Andrew's teacher, told him to pay attention. He wants to have his own so his mother will not be able to tell if his neck and face are dirty and he would not have to wash them. He makes many attempts to acquire freckles. Andrew thinks that freckles are really neat. After asking Nicky how he got his freckles, and getting the expected answer ("you get born with them"), a girl in his class named Sharon, who often fools him by using sneaky tricks, tells him he can get freckles by drinking a concoction that she claims she used to get freckles. At first, Andrew does not believe her. Sharon then tells Andrew to look closely and Andrew observes that Sharon has six freckles on her nose. She gives him the recipe for "Freckle Juice" for fifty cents. He thinks it is ridiculous that he has to use five weeks worth of allowance for a recipe, but he is dying to get freckles. After school, he runs home to make the recipe which calls for several disgusting ingredients (some of which he did not have and had to use substitutes). He ends up drinking it, after which he gets very sick. His mother comes home, notices how sick he looks, and puts him to bed immediately. She gives him pink medicine which tastes like peppermint to get better. He skips school the next day because he still feels queasy. He never wants to go back, but his mother makes him. Before he goes to school, Andrew tried to find a brown marker but could not find one so he used a blue marker to draw several little dots on his face. He believes this will make him look like he got freckles, which would prove Sharon wrong. He realises that her recipe was only a joke to fool him. He is angry and frustrated because he was the victim of a prank. Unfortunately, everybody, including Sharon, sees through this idea and ends up laughing at him. Miss Kelly gives Andrew her secret formula for removing freckles so he can do so to his blue "ones". Ironically, Nicky Lane, the boy he envied because of his real freckles, asks her if he could use the secret formula as well because he hates them. She explains freckles did not look good on Andrew, but they look good on him. Later, Sharon whispers to Nicky about this recipe for a concoction that can get rid of his freckles.
3851615	/m/0b397n	Good as Gold	Alfred Toombs		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Bruce Gold, a Jewish, middle-aged university English professor and author of many unread, seminal articles in small journals, residing in Manhattan, is offered the chance for success, fame and fortune in Washington D.C. as the country's first ever Jewish Secretary of State. But he must face the consequences of this, such as divorcing his wife and alienating his family, the thought of which energizes him and makes him cringe at the same time.
3852201	/m/03bzfsh	Trollslayer	William King	1999-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Geheimnisnacht (Night of Secrets) The first chapter finds the adventurers shortly after meeting for the first time and leaving Altdorf together. They are kicked off the coach they were riding on because of Gotrek's comments toward the coach driver and especially his wife. As they continue to travel on foot, they are nearly run down by a black coach, and Gotrek vows to find it and hurt the driver. They reach the Standing Stones Inn, and are able to make their way through the barred door to learn of how on Geheimnisnacht a coven who are based in the Darkstone Ring steal children and other people for sacrifices. They learn that the son of the innkeeper, Gunter, and his wife have both disappeared, and so they vow to find the Darkstone Ring and destroy the coven and save Gunter and his wife. After finding the path to the Ring, they come across a rotting cultist who chants gibberish before being felled. They finally come across the Ring and coven and discover that the leader of the coven is the driver of the Black Coach. They listen in for a while and learn that it is dedicated to Slaanesh, Lord of Pleasure. They finally attack and destroy the coven as they intended to sacrifice a stolen baby, and in the aftermath they discover that Gunter and his wife were both cultists, and so are both dead. They rescue the baby, and move on... This story is frequently alluded to by Felix later in the series, as it was his first true glimpse at Chaos. Wolf Riders The story begins with Felix in a tavern protecting a girl from the attentions of three huge trappers: Hef, Kell, and Lars. He holds his own until Gotrek comes in and drives them out. The girl introduces herself as Kirsten, and explains how her family is part of the von Diehl migration, a cursed noble family and their servants and their families moving to the Border Lands. Gotrek and Felix were on their way to the Dwarf stronghold of Karak Eight-Peaks because of stories of treasure they had heard. They decide to join the von Diehls, as they are heading in the same general direction, and they could use the cover afforded by carts. After traveling through the Grey Mountains, and reaching the Border Lands, Felix falls deeply in love with Kirsten, and she likewise. While camped in the Cursed Hills, the camp is attacked by Undead warriors, and during the fight, Felix kills the trapper Lars, after he goes crazy and attacks him. The men drive off the Undead, and they set off to find a ruined fort, which Gotrek helps repair, hinting at his pre-slayer background as an engineer. Finally, the fort is attacked by Wolf Riders, led by a Goblin Shaman, and during the first siege, Gottfried, the leader of the von Diehls, is struck by an arrow and is carried off by his son, Deiter; his nephew, Manfred; Frau Winter, a sorceress; and Kirsten, Frau Winter's assistant, to be healed. After a day of no word from them, and with the second siege starting, Felix goes off to investigate, leaving gotrek and the remaining men to fight off the horde ready to break through the gates. Felix comes across Frau Winter and Kirsten, the former who is dead and the latter who is dying. Felix watches her die, and swears to avenge her. He then comes across Dieter, whose head was bashed in, and enters Gottfired's room to see him stabbed to death in his bed with Manfred sitting there wiping off his blade. He then explains that the "curse" of the von Diehls was mutation brought on by a heretic cursing Manfred's grandfather. Manfred, going mad, explains that he broke the curse by killing all of the von Diehls. He and Felix duel, and Felix kills him, uttering "The curse is broken". He goes outside to see Gotrek standing on a pile of goblin, wolf and human bodies, including Hef and Kell. He single-handedly held the gate, killing the Shaman and losing his eye in the process. The surviving humans are taken in by one of the many Border Princes, whilst Gotrek and Felix leave, and the story ends... The Dark Beneath the World The story continues immediately after 'Wolf Riders', with Felix and Gotrek travelling towards Karak Eight Peaks in search of treasure. On the way, they meet a party of men under attack from Orcs. The pair intervene and save the three survivors: Aldebrand, a zealous fanatic from the Templars of the Fiery Heart, Zauberlich, a sorcerer, and Jules, a Bretonnian scout, are also journeying to Karak Eight Peaks on a quest. The group decide to travel together. They arrive at a settlement built by the Dwarves close to the ruined city, and ask permission to enter the city, where they learn what the three men are searching for: a magical sword called Karaghul, an heirloom of the Order of the Fiery Heart, left in the city during a previous effort to reclaim part of the city by the Dwarves from the Goblins that infest it. The group are given leave to enter the city, but before they go, a Dwarven Priestess of Valaya warns them that great evil is stirring in the ruins of the city... The group journey into the depths of the ruined city, battling with Goblins, Orcs, Skaven and Ogres that now infest the ruined halls. As they go deeper, they are followed by ghostly lights. Eventually, the lights reveal themselves as dwarven ghosts, who beg Gotrek to help them. When he asks what has happened, they say that an ancient and powerful evil has desecrated their tombs and dragged them back from their eternal rest in the Hall of Ancestors, and that unless it is slain and the tombs resanctified, they will never find their way back to eternal rest. Gotrek vows to aid them. The group finally come to a great treasure room-the very one that Felix and Gotrek have been seeking. In pride of place is a great sword, which Aldebrand recognizes as Karaghul. However, before he can claim it, a huge creature bursts out and kills him, tearing his head from his shoulders. The creature is a great troll, tainted and corrupted by warpstone, twisted and mutated by the power of Chaos that it has become something far more terrible. Gotrek realizes they are in a Dwarven tomb, and that the troll's presence is the reason why the ghosts are stalking the ruins of Karak Eight Peaks. The group attack, but the troll has the ability to heal its wounds almost instantaneously, and they can only slow it. The troll kills Jules and Zauberlich, but not before the sorcerer learns that fire destroys the troll's ability to regenerate. As Gotrek keeps the beast distracted, Felix throws a lamp on it, which ignites, setting the beast on fire and letting Gotrek finally kill it. A huge army of Goblins arrives, attracted by the commotion. As Gotrek and Felix consign themselves to dying in battle, the ghosts of the tomb form up in a spectral army and attack the goblins, killing them with ease and causing the survivors to flee. Gotrek angrily says that the ghosts have denied him a heroic death, but they reply he is destined for a doom far greater...that is soon approaching. The ghosts bless him for his deed and disappear, finally at peace. Gotrek ignores the treasure, realizing that to take it would desecrate the tomb and raise the ghosts again, though Felix takes Karaghul in honour of their dead comrades. Leaving the bodies of their companions at rest in the tomb, the pair seal it and leave Karak Eight Peaks behind... The Mark of Slaanesh The story picks up after they have left Karak Eight Peaks and come to a small village at the edge of the Drakwald Forest. The village is controlled by a gang of vicious thugs who are also cultists of Slaanesh, who viciously beat up Felix in the village tavern shortly after his arrival. To make matters worse, in a battle with mutants on the road, Gotrek was struck on the head with a slingstone and is suffering amnesia, no longer remembering who he is, nor who Felix is, or his quest to find a heroic death. Felix takes Gotrek to a local healer called Kryptmann, who promises to create a brew to restore Gotrek's mind, providing Felix brings back certain ingredients from the nearby mountains. Narrowly avoiding the Slaaneshi thugs and a roving band of mutants, Felix gathers the ingredients and brings them to Kryptmann. However, the brew has no effect, and Felix attacks Kryptmann, accusing the healer of lying to him. In the confusion, Gotrek receives another blow to the head, which restores his memory to him. With the Slayer restored to his wits, the pair go to the tavern and revenge themselves on the cultists... Blood and Darkness The story begins with Gotrek and Felix passing through the Drakwald Forest. They find a young girl called Kat, the sole survivor of a beastman attack on her village. The beastmen were led by a female Chaos Champion of the Chaos God, Khorne, who mysteriously spared Kat's life. The story then switches to the perspective of the female Chaos Champion, a woman called Justine, who turned to Chaos after being raped as a young woman by a nobleman. After many years in the Chaos Wastes, she returns to take her revenge, destroying the nobleman's castle with her army of beastmen and murdering the nobleman. Her army has then taken to raiding nearby villages: however, she has to find and kill Kat in order to become a Daemon Prince and achieve immortality, though she has misgivings about killing the girl (it is constantly hinted, and then finally confirmed later in the story, that she is in fact Kat's mother, a pregnancy caused by her rape). The story then returns to Gotrek and Felix. After slaying a marauding band of beastmen, the three reach another village and warn them of the coming danger. Unfortunately, the Chaos army learns of their location and Justine leads her army in an attack on the village to find Kat. The beastmen break into the village and a vicious battle breaks out between the beasts and the villagers. Justine battles Gotrek, who injures her but cannot kill her (she was gifted with a prophecy that states no warrior can kill her in battle). Upon seeing Kat, Justine abandons her attack and pursues the girl. Realising what the Chaos Champion is after, Felix attacks her in an effort to distract her from Kat, but is swiftly overpowered. As Justine tries to break his neck, Kat intervenes and kills Justine with her own sword, thus fulfilling the prophecy and saving Felix. With their leader dead, the beastmen flee, pursued by the villagers, who slaughter them all. Gotrek and Felix leave the village the day after the victory. Though Kat asks to go with them, Felix replies they cannot take her with them, as they are bound for more dangerous places where she won't be safe. Kat accepts this, and they leave, the three promising never to forget each other... The Mutant Master The story begins with the pair arriving at the village of Blutdorf, on their way to Nuln. They learn the villagers are being held to ransom by a sorcerer in a nearby castle who has abducted their children: however, out of fear, the villagers drug the pair and hand them over to the sorcerer. At the castle, the pair wake up in chains. The sorcerer reveals himself to them, and Felix recognizes him as Albericht Kruger, a fellow student from his days at the University of Altdorf, Kruger having disappeared after stealing forbidden texts on Chaos and its mutations. Kruger, now a megalomaniac egotist, arrogantly explains that he plans to use the knowledge in the texts to create an army of mutants with which to conquer the Empire. However, the pair break free of their captivity and fight back: when Kruger sends Oleg, the most powerful of his mutated soldiers, to kill them, Gotrek strangles the mutant with the chains he was bound with. Kruger tries to make his escape, but Gotrek and Felix pursue, cutting their way through a horde of mutants Kruger sends at them. They corner him in his study, where he explains that the mutants they had just killed were in fact the children of the villagers, Kruger having discovered children were easier to mutate than adults. In a burst of uncharacteristic fury, Felix seizes Kruger by the throat and throws him to his death from the castle battlements, an act that meets with Gotrek's approval. They set light to the castle and leave for the village, to settle a score... Ulric's Children The story begins with Felix and Gotrek heading through the Drakwald Forest in heavy snow, following the tracks of a monster Gotrek believes to be a troll. The forest is unnaturally quiet, but the wolves that dwell in the forest seem unnaturally active... The pair get separated, and Felix is captured by a group of Imperial soldiers who are actually cultists of the Chaos God Tzeentch. Felix is bound in chains next to another captive, Magdalena, a beautiful young woman the cult have captured for their dark purposes... The pair are placed in the dungeons of the cult's leader, Count Hrothgar, and are interrogated by his lieutenant, the sorcerer Voorman. Magdalena explains to Felix the cult have abducted her to use as bait to trap her father, who is one of the 'Children of Ulric'- a werewolf. Felix manages to escape his captivity and works his way through the manor, killing several of the cultists, including Count Hrothgar. He discovers that Voorman plans to perform a spell on the werewolf that will transfer his soul into its body. As he learns this, the werewolf, leading a massive pack of wolves, attacks the manor, easily defeating the cultists. In the main hall, the monster kills Voorman, but not before he completes his spell. As Voorman takes possession of the monster's body, Felix attacks him with a dagger: a dagger with a blade made of pure warpstone, the only thing that will harm the beast. He manages to defeat the beast; as it dies, the wolves attacking the manor flee, as a new arrival joins the fight: Gotrek, who kept on following the tracks until he reached the manor. They capture Magdalena, and although Felix considers her an innocent in the affair, Gotrek believes that as a shapeshifter she is tainted by Chaos and kills her. Felix later states that this act still haunts him. The pair then carry on for Nuln...
3855726	/m/0b3j3n	Engine Summer	John Crowley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of a young man named Rush that Speaks and of his wandering through a strange, post-apocalyptic world in pursuit of several seemingly incompatible goals. The story is set in a post-technological future. Our own age is dimly remembered in story and legend, but without nostalgia or regret. The people of Rush's world are engaged in living their own lives in their own cultures. Words and artifacts from our own time survive into Rush's age, suggesting that it is only a few millennia in our future. Yet we are given hints that human society and even human biology are significantly changed. Even such basics as reproduction and eating have been altered, one by industrial-age genetic tampering, the other by contact with extraterrestrial life. Rush comes of age in Little Belaire, a mazelike village of invisible, shifting boundaries, of secret paths and meandering stories and antique bric-a-brac carefully preserved in carved chests. The inhabitants are divided into clans called cords based on personality traits. Over the centuries, the people of Little Belaire have perfected an art which they call truthful speaking: communication so clear and accurate, so "transparent", as to leave no potential for deception or misunderstanding. Perhaps as a result of this practice, Little Belaire appears to be free of any violence or even serious competition. Another result of truthful speaking is the existence of the saints, those whose stories speak not only of the specifics of their own lives, but about the human condition. Yet even with the benefit of truthful speaking, secrets and mysteries remain. Rush's journey is set in motion when the girl he loves, Once a Day, elopes from Little Belaire to join another group, an enigmatic society called Dr. Boots's List. In his search for her, Rush befriends a hermit and an "avvenger" and shares the secrets of the List. Ultimately he discovers a transparent sainthood stranger than any story told by the gossips of Little Belaire.
3857289	/m/0b3l5z	Coningsby	Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield			 The story of the novel follows the life and career of Henry Coningsby, the orphan grandson of a wealthy marquess, called Lord Monmouth. Lord Monmouth initially disapproved of Coningsby's parents' marriage, but on their death he relents and sends the boy to be educated at Eton College. At Eton Coningsby meets and befriends Oswald Millbank, the son of a rich cotton manufacturer who is a bitter enemy of Lord Monmouth. The two older men represent old and new wealth in society. As Coningsby grows up he begins to develop his own liberal political views and he falls in love with Oswald's sister Edith. When Lord Monmouth discovers these developments he is furious and secretly disinherits his grandson. On his death, Coningsby is left penniless, and is forced to work for his living. He decides to study law and to become a barrister. This proof of his character impresses Edith's father (who had previously also been hostile) and he consents to their marriage at last. By the end of the novel Coningsby is elected to Parliament for his new father-in-law's constituency and his fortune is restored. The character of Coningsby himself is based on George Smythe. The themes, and some of the characters, reappear in Disraeli's later novels Sybil, and Tancred.
3857751	/m/0b3lvy	Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer	Steven Millhauser	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 From humble beginnings as an assistant in his immigrant father's cigar shop, Martin begins employment as a bellboy at the Vanderlyn hotel. He rises through its hierarchy through promotions, due to his reputation as a bright, conscientious worker. When he is offered the position of assistant manager, he quits to focus instead on managing a chain of restaurants. Later, he builds his own new concept for an extravagant hotel, the Hotel Dressler. He finds a friend and business partner in sister-in-law Emmeline Vernon, while his ambiguous, distant marriage to her withdrawn sister, Caroline, is a source of confusion and disappointment. A focus of the novel is Martin's imagination for grand, sweeping business ideas, and his instinctive sense for orchestrating large systems. Through all this Martin has the persistent feeling that there must be something bigger waiting around the next corner. One of the novel's themes is that emptiness may lie behind the ideal of the American Dream.
3863884	/m/0b3xym	Bill the Conqueror	P. G. Wodehouse	1924-11-14	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 George Pyke is overjoyed at hearing he is shortly to be made a lord, but disappointed with his wimpy son Roderick's handling of Society Spice, one of his leading publications. He hopes pressuring the timid chap to marry Flick Sheridan will be the making of him. In New York, Bill West's love for beautiful Alice Coker has stirred him to become a go-getting type, leaving behind his wild youth, and none too soon, as his uncle Cooley, under the malign influence of white-bearded Professor Appleby, has adopted a youth named Horace and disowned his scrounging family. Bill heads to London, ostensibly to find out why his uncle's business there is doing badly, and takes Judson with him, promising the wild lad's father (and sister) that he'll keep the dissolute fellow out of trouble. One day, thanks to one of Judson's schemes to raise money for a binge, he meets up with Flick Sheridan, friend of his youth, who has long adored him. Judson, annoyed to find his plans frustrated, roams the streets, and on reading a slanderous piece in Society Spice claiming one of his henchmen had created the Fifth Avenue Silks, heads to Tilbury House to confront the editor, Roderick Pyke. Roderick, terrified of enraged bookies, flees the scene, leaving his date Flick in the lurch; she decides to break off the engagement forthwith. Judson, now with Bill in tow, trails Pyke to the Hammond's house, where Pyke hits Bill with a stick, enraging him. Bill gets trapped in the garden, where he runs into Flick, who, having locked herself in her room in protest at her family's plans, is now fleeing her home. Bill takes her in, and they become ever closer. She helps him out by investigating Slingsby, Cooley Paradene's man in London, in the course of which she is seen by Percy Pilbeam, tasked with finding her by her uncle. She escapes, but Pilbeam recognises Judson when he comes to complain once more about the slur in Society Spice. Pilbeam takes Judson to the famous Cheshire Cheese for lunch, and after plying him with drink after his long abstinence, finds out his address. He reports this back to Sir George Pyke, and soon Bill and Flick are being chased across country by Pyke; they evade him by stealing his car, but realise that England is too hot for Flick. Bill writes her an introduction to Alice Coker, urging her to stay with the girl, but she is jealous of Bill's affection for her and resolves to go it alone. At Cooley Paradene's house, Horace has been causing trouble, but plans to rob the library have made little headway; his boss Appleby hears Paradene's plans to head to England, putting Horace into a school while he visits his old friend, Flick's uncle Sinclair Hammond, and also learns that during the trip the books will be unguarded. Flick arrives, somewhat bedraggled, having been robbed of her bags and run out of money, and Paradene agrees to take her with him to England. Bill hears, via Judson, that Alice is engaged to someone else, a chap in the steel business, but is surprised to find he doesn't care. He heads off to dispose of her photographs, but finds them hard to shake, until he runs into a young couple, the male half of which seems to recognise Bill. After leaving the man holding the photos, Bill realises it is Roderick Pyke, which in turn leads to the revelation that he loves Flick. Resolving to head back to America to seek her, he is amazed to find her arriving in London with his uncle; they proclaim their mutual love, but Aunt Francie takes Flick away to await her awful fate, of marriage to Roderick. Judson meets his old friend Prudence Stryker, a chorus-girl from the New York stage, who tells him she knows Slingsby's secret. Judson arranges for her to meet up with Bill at a nightclub, but they are seen there by Flick, being taken out by her uncle to cheer her up; she assumes he has fallen for this other girl, and writes to say she will be marrying Pyke on Wednesday. Bill gets the letter, after confronting Slingsby about his fraud and learning that the other cannot be stopped from fleeing to South America with his ill-gotten loot. Distraught, he goes to Flick's house, but finds everyone out; everyone, that is, except Horace, who he observes passing a heavy bag out of the window to his confederate. Bill tackles the man, who escapes after a scrap, leaving Bill with the swag. Bill goes to the church for the wedding, but Roderick doesn't turn up; Judson has visited him, and persuaded him to run away to Italy with the girl he really loves, his stenographer from Society Spice. Bill explains all to Flick, and they head off with Hammond to a registry office. Bill tells his uncle all about Horace and Slingsby, and with Cooley's grateful support he heads off to happiness with his bride.
3864177	/m/0b3yrx	Sam the Sudden	P. G. Wodehouse	1925-10-15	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Sam Shotter, having failed to please his uncle John B. Pynsent in business, is sent to England to work for Lord Tilbury, who hopes to complete a business deal with Pynsent. Avoiding being trapped in Tilbury's company, Sam opts to join his old pal "Hash" Todhunter, cook on a tramp steamer, for the trip over. On the way, he shows Hash a photo of a girl, found on a wall in a remote Canadian log cabin, whom he has fallen in love with. Arriving in England looking rather bedraggled after his trip, Sam finds Hash has borrowed all his cash to put on a dog. Fortunately, it is the night of the Wrykyn Old Boys' dinner, and in town he runs into first Claude Bates, who, fearing Sam may be begging, flees, and later Willoughby Braddock, an old friend. Braddock is staying with Kay Derrick and her uncle Mr Wrenn while his house is decorated, and takes Sam back there, but wanders drunkenly off when they arrive; Sam is mistaken for a burglar by Lippett, the maid, and ends up sleeping in the empty house next door. During the night, Sam is disturbed by someone in the hallway with a torch. Next morning, the confusion having been sorted out, Lippett gives Sam breakfast. He sees a picture of Kay, the girl of his dreams, and finds her uncle also works for the Mammoth Publishing Company, as editor of "Pyke's Home Companion". He visits Mr Cornelius, the local estate agent, and takes a lease on the empty house, "Mon Repos". He then sees Lord Tilbury, and gets himself employed on Mr Wrenn's paper. Kay, having just quit her job with Claude Bates' aunt after he kissed her, is visiting her uncle's office when Sam arrives. Sam, overcome at having finally met her, kisses her also, upsetting her further. Lord Tilbury, worried by Sam's odd behaviour, is warned by his sister Francie that there may be a girl involved, but is reassured to hear Mr Wrenn has no children. Sam hires Hash Toddhunter to be his cook, while "Chimp" Twist, "Soapy" and "Dolly" Molloy discuss the problem of recovering a large fortune stashed in Sam's new home by an old friend, Edward Finglass, famed for robbing the New Asiatic Bank of two million dollars in bonds. They send in Molloy, posing as a former resident of the house wishing to buy it. The scheme fails, as Sam needs to stay near Kay, and makes Hash suspicious; he buys a large dog named Amy to protect the place. Sam's wooing of Kay begins to bear fruit, and he takes her out to lunch one day, where Lord Tilbury sees them. Having rejected Percy Pilbeam as a helper, he visits Chimp Twist's fake detective agency, and hires Twist to spy on Sam; he forces Sam to hire Twist as an odd job man, but Sam makes Twist remove his repulsive moustache. Hash and Claire become involved, but she is worried by his coolness (he is worried by her mother's nose). Following advice in the "Home Companion", she tries to make him jealous by flirting with Twist, whom Hash chases off in a fury. The Molloys return to "Mon Repos" once more, tie up Hash and begin to search for the money, but Dolly is frightened off by Amy the dog, and Soapy, tired after fending off visitors, is caught napping by Sam, who takes away his trousers. Sam leaves him trapped while he releases Hash and takes him next door to be reunited with Claire. Heading back to his house, Sam meets Braddock, who informs him that Lord Tilbury is in there without his trousers. Sam provides him with some, but the deal between Tilbury and Sam's uncle has fallen through, and Tilbury reveals his dislike of Sam and his opinion that Sam will never be anything better than a moocher. He and Sam part angrily. While Sam and Kay discuss a loving but poor future, Braddock spots Twist sneaking back into the house. He follows him and captures him in the act of pulling up some floorboards. Sam, believing the money cannot be in the house, lets Twist go, but when they hear from local historical expert Mr Cornelius that the two houses were once one, they realise that the money must be stashed in Kay's house. Sam and Kay plan to marry and move to the country on the reward money.
3864394	/m/0b3z6d	To Serve Them All My Days	R. F. Delderfield	1972	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The protagonist is David Powlett-Jones, a coal miner's son from South Wales, who has risen from the ranks and been commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in World War I. In 1918, after being injured and shell-shocked, he is employed to teach history at Bamfylde School, a fictional public school in North Devon, in the south-west of England. He swiftly earns the respect of many of his colleagues, with the notable exception of Carter, an ambitious science master and Commanding Officer of the school's Cadet Corps OTC, whose military bearing compensates for the embarrassing fact that he was released from military service for medical reasons. Carter makes no secret of his outrage at the content of David's history lessons, which include recollections of life at the front - David has rejected wartime propaganda and grown to respect German soldiers - and honest analyses, verging on Socialism, of the war's political background and potential consequences. Following the Armistice, the two men disagree on whether or not the school should erect a war memorial; David loses the argument but wins the respect of Brigadier Cooper, one of the governors. Under the tutelage of Headmaster Algy Herries, who views him as a possible successor, David discovers a vocation in teaching. He also forms a close friendship with the curmudgeonly English master, Ian Howarth, and with several students of unique personality and talents, including Chad Boyer, who will himself become a teacher at Bamfylde. He also acquires two nicknames, "P.J." and "Pow-Wow," the latter owing to his propensity for discussion and debate. David meets a young nurse, Beth Marwood, and in 1919 they marry; shortly afterwards, they have twin daughters, Joan (named after Joan of Arc, canonised in 1919) and Grace. Five years later (one year in the television adaptation), Beth and Joan are killed in a road accident. The surviving daughter, Grace, is badly injured and requires many months of rehabilitation before she can return home. (In the television adaptation, both children die: Andrew Davies, who adapted the series, infamously claimed that the thought of Grace clumping her way through the rest of the series filled him with horror.) It takes encouragement from one of the schoolboys to persuade David to contemplate life without his wife, but he carries on for the sake of Grace. His feud with Carter increasingly revolves around the men's diametrically-opposed political beliefs and culminates in a violent confrontation, at which point Herries is forced to mediate an uneasy truce between them. David remains concerned about life in Wales, particularly among the miners, and is politically affected by the General Strike of 1926, which receives play in this and other Delderfield novels. By the mid 1920s, he has also returned to a scholarly writing project, an historical study called "The Royal Tigress", a biography of Margaret of Anjou, which he had put to one side after Beth's death. Whilst researching the book in London, he once again meets Julia Darbyshire, a teacher who had worked briefly at Bamfylde, and strikes up a romance with her. She is now running a business for an American entrepreneur and is determined not to return to Bamfylde which she found suffocating. By 1927, Bamfylde is looking for a replacement for the aging Herries, and the Board of Governors interviews Carter, David, and two external candidates, including a South African named Alcock, for the headmastership. Although David receives much support, the Governors decide to award the position to Alcock, recognising that if either of the internal candidates was elected, the other would feel forced to resign, and the school would lose a valuable teacher. Alcock's authoritarian management of the school brings him into conflict with the staff, with some of the students, and eventually with David. During this period, Carter and David discover that they have a common adversary in Alcock and resolve their differences, which for a time distances David from Howarth. After a couple of terms under Alcock, Carter and a number of other masters resign. By this time, Alcock has become highly unpopular among the teaching staff and regards David as the ringleader of the opposition. In 1931, Alcock brings a formal complaint before the Board of Governors in order to seek David's dismissal. After hearing that the Board has backed David, though before this becomes common knowledge, Alcock dies of a heart attack while writing out his resignation. David is appointed as his successor. David's relationship with Julia ends when she travels to the U.S. with her boss, whom she marries. However, David becomes romantically involved with Christine Forster, an aspiring Labour politician and cousin of an ex-student. She is determined to build a political career but is unable to break into this male-dominated world and eventually accepts a travelling fellowship in Canada and Europe, much to David's disappointment, though her experiences in Germany give him a good sense of the rise of National Socialism, Anti-Semitism, and the likelihood of coming war. When Christine returns to Britain in the mid 1930s, the couple marry. After a difficult period of adjusting to life at Bamfylde, Christine accepts a teaching position at the school and they have a son. It also transpires that Julia Darbyshire had borne David a son soon after moving to America. The son becomes a pupil at Bamfylde, and David does not learn of his paternity until the end of the book, when Julia informs him of it in a letter, shortly before her death from breast cancer in the U.S. As Headmaster, David moves the school forward. As the book ends, World War II has begun, and he is facing the prospect of losing many of his former students in yet another war.
3865265	/m/0b3_cz	Sorcerer's Apprentice	François Augiéras	1964	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the Sarladais (the Dordogne region of France). An adolescent boy is sent to live with a 35-year-old priest, who becomes his teacher and spiritual mentor, and exerts a powerful control over the boy. He abuses him physically and sexually, but the boy willingly accepts his 'punishment.' The boy falls in love with a slightly younger, and very beautiful boy, meeting in secret and having sex. This disturbing story is much more than a tale of a sexually violent predator. The adolescent himself experiences sexual activity with the other boy, but this relationship is one of genuine love and affection, rather than the coercive, harmful abuse he is subjected to by the priest.
3865635	/m/0b4007	Dragon's Teeth	Upton Sinclair, Jr.	1942	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 In the first volume of the series, Lanny Budd had met a family of Dutch Jews. By the time the events of this book occur, his half-sister has married one of their sons. In the climax at the end of this volume, Lanny helps spring the other son from Nazi arrest and jail, and gets caught up in the Blood Purge from June 30 to July 2, 1934 in Germany.
3867060	/m/0b428j	Sky Burial	Xinran Xue	2004-07-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel involves a Chinese woman, Shu Wen, retelling her life in Tibet to Xinran in a tea shop in Suzhou. In the 1950s, as China revels in its unification under communism, Shu Wen, a doctor, marries a military doctor who gets orders to go into Tibet to pacify the Tibetan people and bring them under Chinese rule. The reputation of the Tibetans from the government paints them as sympathetic and welcoming to the Chinese, but gradually she learns of their resistance to subjugation. She is informed that her husband has gone missing, and against the wishes of her family and friends, she leaves her comfortable life in Suzhou to join the Army and search for him in Tibet. Her unit encounters a Tibetan woman near death in the highlands, and Shu Wen decides to treat the woman and take her away from her soldiers, who suspect she is a scout or a resistance fighter. Shu Wen goes to live with a nomadic family, and over 30 years learns the Tibetan way of life and gradually loses her sense of Chinese identity while quietly hoping for news of her husband's fate. Years after joining the nomads, she encounters Chinese soldiers who tell her about a doctor who sacrificed himself after his unit wounded a Tibetan in a skirmish in order to prevent the Tibetans from retaliating. After going to a nomad gathering, she meets an old sage, who tells her that he was the man her husband had treated, and in the end he was killed and disposed of in the sky burial, a tradition of the Tibetans. The sage said he would continue to sing the praises of the doctor as long as he lived, and Shu Wen finds peace. She returns to Suzhou, where Xinran encounters her, still searching for her relatives and eking out a modest living.
3868122	/m/0b4441	Settling Accounts: The Grapple	Harry Turtledove	2006-07	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 U.S. General Irving Morrell's campaign to drive Confederate forces out of Pennsylvania and Ohio is successful, and now pushes them through Kentucky, Tennessee, and ultimately Georgia. At the Battle of Chattanooga American forces land paratroopers on top of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, rather than fight their way to the top in hard-fought battles. Having gained Chattanooga, Morell seems bent on driving to the Atlantic Ocean through Georgia, thus cutting the Confederate territory in two. Confederate General George S. Patton, does less well on the defence than he did in the attack on Ohio two years before, his pugnacious instincts making him squander irreplaceable resources on futile attempts at counter-attack. The murder of blacks in gas chambers at Camp Determination in Texas continues, while U.S. General Abner Dowling's Eleventh Army attempts to attack it and shut it down. With only marginal forces at his disposal, this proves difficult. Dowling does send air support to bomb the railways on which horribly crowded cattle cars full of blacks are brought in. However, the advance takes too long; the sound of distant U.S. artillery had aroused some hope among the condemned black inmates, but when the U.S. forces finally arrive, they find nothing but enormous mass graves with not a single survivor, the extermination operation having been transferred to an "improved camp" in east Texas. Among the innumerable victims is Scipio. Despite this setback, Confederate blacks continue to find ways to resist. In Richmond, the Confederate capital, blacks rebel, seeking not to save their lives but to die with weapons in hand and exact a price from their murderers. Meanwhile, fighting continues among black guerrilla bands in the Georgia countryside. As the war rages, the race between American and Confederate physicists to build a "uranium (i.e., nuclear fission) bomb" continues. The Confederates desperately try to recover from Confederate President Jake Featherston's strategic blunder of initially not taking the bomb seriously and having held up research for over a year. They launch an air raid on the U.S. nuclear project in the state of Washington, to which the Americans reply in kind by bombing Washington University at Lexington, Virginia, the center of Confederate nuclear research. Meanwhile, Imperial Germany seems ahead of both the North American powers in the construction of a uranium bomb. In Europe, German and Austrian forces are gradually pushing the French, British and Russian forces back. Irish and Serb uprisings continue, and the Ukraine remains a battleground for both sides. The Russians are unable to concentrate on their Alaskan possessions. In Virginia, ground fighting seems largely quiet, but both sides are able to launch air strikes against the other, although the Confederates are not able to launch attacks quite as often due to heavy losses. The Mormon rebellion in Utah is suppressed (for the third time) and the U.S. characters debate the morality of various ways of dealing with the problem again. It seems a plan of deporting the Mormons from Utah are drawn up. Meanwhile, the Canadian rebellion is fully active, prompting units which had been fighting in Utah to be transferred to Canada. The troops from the U.S.-backed Republic of Quebec are not numerous enough or motivated enough to hold off the Canadian guerrillas. Fighting in Sequoyah (Oklahoma) appears to be back-and-forth, with both sides sabotaging the oil wells there. A general advance seems to be made in Arkansas, and U.S. forces are pressing the offensive in Sonora and Chihuahua. Allegiances at the top of the Confederate government are beginning to show strain as losses to the Confederacy increase. There is pronounced tension between Brigadier General Clarence Potter and President Jake Featherston, Camp Determination administrator Jefferson Pinkard and Confederate Attorney General Ferdinand Koenig, and between Koenig and Featherston. Featherston engages in shouting matches with his commanding officers over their tactics. Angered with his generals, Featherston puts all his faith in "wonder weapons" to win the war. Most ominously, despite the increasingly desperate military situation, Featherston continues to divert considerable resources to the extermination program as being justified and necessary, since "The War Against the Negroes" is a most important goal which must be "fought" and "won" by total extermination and making the Confederate territories "Negro-free". At sea, the Japanese threat to the Sandwich Islands ends with a naval victory at Midway, and American forces retake that island. Neither side has any real desire to pursue the war further, and there are strong hints that the Japanese might attack British possessions in Malaya and India. The U.S. Navy also smuggles arms to a nascent rebellion in Cuba, in which a teenage Fidel Castro participates. The United States is able to recapture Bermuda in a costly action and is threatening to move naval forces to the South Atlantic, to cut off food shipments from Argentina to the United Kingdom. The U.S. President Charles La Follette asks the Confederate States for unconditional surrender. Featherston replies with a defiant speech, and launches two long-range rockets from bases in Virginia onto Philadelphia. Damage from the rocket-bombs is light, but the psychological damage is much heavier.
3871136	/m/0b48p5	Sharpe's Company	Bernard Cornwell	1982-05-10	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins with the British Army's assault on Ciudad Rodrigo, the northern barrier into Spain. Sharpe and Harper lead an assault on the French, displaying their usual bravery. Unfortunately, during the assault Sharpe's commander and friend Colonel William Lawford is severely wounded when a mine is detonated. He loses an arm and retires from his post as commander of the South Essex regiment. Sharpe is devastated, not only at the loss of a friend, but also by the fact that his captaincy is up for sale, and without Lawford to defend him, he is likely to lose command of his company. Sharpe's situation only gets worse when his old enemy, Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, joins the company. Hakeswill hates Sharpe with a vengeance and plans to kill him. Meanwhile, Sharpe's lover Teresa Moreno arrives, informing Sharpe that she has given birth to his daughter Antonia, and that she is living in Badajoz as a citizen. Sharpe promises her that he will protect her when the British army attacks the city. He is also reunited with his former Lieutenant, Robert Knowles, who is now a captain of a fusilier company. Knowles also vows to protect Teresa. Later, Hakeswill encounters Teresa in a stable. He attempts to rape her, but she fights him off, slashing his face and wrist. Sharpe and Harper enter the stable, and Harper brutally beats Hakeswill, throwing him into a puddle of urine. Hakeswill vows revenge on Harper. At this very moment Lawford's replacement, Colonel Windham arrives, as well as Captain Rymer, who has bought command of Sharpe's company. Sharpe is demoted to lieutenant, but Windham attempts to cheer him up by telling him vacancies will soon be available. The army then begins its siege of Badajoz. Sharpe is given command of the regiment's baggage, ordered to guard it while the regiment digs trenches around the city. Sharpe leaves the baggage to visit his company, and when Rymer attempts to talk to him, the French attack. Rymer does nothing, so Sharpe leads his men into battle. The French are unable to fire their muskets due to a heavy rainfall, so Sharpe attacks with his sword, and Harper attacks with a shovel. The French are defeated, but in Sharpe's absence the regiment's baggage is plundered by Hakeswill. Windham is furious with Sharpe for abandoning his post, and is further angered when he discovers that a silver framed portrait of his wife has gone missing. He searches the packs of all the members of the Light Company, and the frame, but not the picture, is found in Harper's bag. Windham has Harper demoted to private and flogged, but is so impressed by Harper's bravery (and ashamed by his own rashness) that he compliments Harper afterwards and gives him money. A few nights later, Windham sends the Light Company on a mission to destroy a section of the French fortifications. He asks Sharpe to serve as his aide. Before the attack, Harper's seven-barrelled gun is taken from him by Hakeswill, as it is a non-regulation weapon. When the Light Company takes longer than expected, Windham sends Sharpe to find out the cause of the delay. Sharpe arrives to see the Light Company doing nothing, due to Rymer's incompetence. Sharpe fires at a French sentry and decides to blow the wall himself. Sharpe's riflemen give him cover fire as he attempts to light the fuse on the powder barrels. The barrels explode, but the wall is too strong to be destroyed. As Sharpe falls back he is shot in the leg by Hakeswill using Harper's seven-barrelled gun. Windham decides to remove Sharpe temporarily to allow Rymer to establish his authority, though he knows Sharpe is a brilliant soldier. He also orders the riflemen to abandon their rifles, which Rymer, at Hakeswill's prompting, blames the mission's failure on, as well as their green jackets. As Hakeswill taunts the disarmed riflemen, Sharpe defends them, humiliating Hakeswill by pretending to shoot him. Hakeswill is more than ever determined to get revenge, and also plans to get to Teresa in Badajoz before Sharpe does. Sharpe is interviewed by the army commander, the Duke of Wellington, a few days later after Sharpe has viewed the city closely. Wellington decides to attack the city that night. Sharpe is ordered to guide the various regiments into their positions. During his job he rejoins his regiment, which has been devastated by the French cannon fire. Windham is bravely trying to lead his men into the breach, and when Sharpe reaches his company, he discovers Rymer has been shot dead. Sharpe once again takes command of his company. Meanwhile, Knowles has managed to reach the top of the French wall and leads his men into the city. While his men kill the French and plunder the homes, Knowles looks for Teresa to protect her. Unknown to him, Hakeswill has also entered the city, armed with his bayonet and a stolen pistol. Knowles reaches Teresa's house, and Teresa lets him in, but Hakeswill climbs to the upstairs room where Antonia is, and as Knowles enters, Hakeswill shoots him. He then threatens to kill the baby unless Teresa has sex with him. Meanwhile, Sharpe has led his men through the French cannon. Not only his company, but the entire regiment follow his lead. Sharpe and Harper fight their way through the French to reach Teresa, and enter the house face to face with Hakeswill. Harper picks up Hakeswill's discarded shako, and finds the picture of Windham's wife inside it, whom Hakeswill believes to be his mother. Harper threatens to destroy the picture unless Hakeswill releases Antonia. Hakeswill releases the baby, and as Harper, Sharpe, and Teresa all attempt to kill him, he escapes by leaping out a window. At the end of the battle, Windham praises Sharpe for his bravery. Sharpe returns his wife's portrait, and Windham apologizes to Harper. Sharpe is once again made a captain, and Harper is once again made a sergeant. The riflemen also have their green jackets and rifles restored to them. Hakeswill deserts from the army, and will return to trouble Sharpe again in "Sharpe's Enemy".
3874330	/m/0b4gk9	Il Turno	Luigi Pirandello	1902	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is divided into thirty very short chapters which permit the author to rapidly change situations and environments, bringing alternatively to the forefront the different subjects involved in the singular plan conceived by Marcantonio Ravì, the cause of odd and unpredictable events. This overweight, tenacious father of Stellina has an idee fixe which will, he believes, bring about the happiness of his daughter: establish a turn. That is to say, he will give her over as wife to the aging and well-off Don Diego Alcozèr, and then, after his death, consign her, fabulously wealthy and contented, to her desperate but dirt poor admirer Pepè Alletto. Marcantonio is so convinced of the efficacy of this idea that he goes around the city talking about it to everyone in order to get their consent, obstinately insisting that he's right with the comic intercalation "ragioniamo!" (let's reason about this!). But the majority of the people he meets, as soon as they hear the name of the decrepit Alcozèr, "spit out a laugh." The proposition of the plan dominates the first chapter with the agitated figure of Marcantonio Ravì. His son-in-law in pectoris Diego Alcozèr, sprightly old man, widower of four wives and gaudy dandy with his "small watery furtive bald eyes", having already been "a conqueror of dames in crinoline from the epoch of Ferdinand II king of the Two Sicilies", emerges in the second chapter, where he excitedly chats with his future father-in-law about preparations for the surrender of Stellina. To these two "human stains" a third is added in the following chapter in which Pepè Alletto, the beneficiary of the "turn", takes the fore. What strikes the reader as curious is the fact that Marcantonio Ravì's plan takes him completely by surprise; in reality he it not a true "desperate admirer". He likes Stellina, but because of his lack of courage and his precarious economic conditions, he would never have dared to even think of marrying her. He is incapable of choosing and must always depend on the choices of others. Pepé Alletto is the typical representative of a certain melancholic nobility of the provinces, deeply lazy and morally weak. He lives in the shadow of his aging mother who would never allow him to work (and he obviously adapts himself well to this situation) out of a misbegotten concept of the dignity of her state. Pepé passes the day taking care of his appearance, dreaming of the great city. The idea of the "turn" offers him an unexpected goal, a beautiful wife and a large heredity in view, the solution to all of his problems without too much work. The marriage is filled with scenes of exhilarating comedy: the decrepit Don Diego wears for the occasion "the long napoleon which has survived through four weddings." Such antiquity contrasts miserably with the freshness of Stellina, whose appearance "illuminated the party." Pepé breaks through this dishonest and uncomfortable atmosphere of false compliments and badly dissimulated commiseration when, responding to the solicitations of the guests, he feels invested with the part of future husband and begins playing the piano, singing and conducting the dances. The hysterical crisis of Stellina, who faints after her ancient husband spills the rosolio onto her white dress because of the uncontrollable trembling of his hands, is the event that shatters the apparatus of hypocrisy that Marcantonio had laboriously constructed around himself. But he continues to awkwardly search for vain excuses while the guests hurry to get out of the party. From this point on events precipitate out of control as everything becomes a prey to chance: Pepé, the maldextrous cavalier, gets himself caught up in a duel in order to defend Stellina, a situation which he could have easily avoided had he not asked for help from his overweening and domineering brother-in-law, the lawyer Ciro Coppa, who insists that he must challenge his adversary or be looked on as a coward. Pepé loses and ends up seriously wounded, as he will lose Stellina herself after continually begging Cirro to intervene in his favour. After the death of his wife, Ciro, in fact, marries Stellina, who has lost her patience and can no longer wait for the death of her elderly husband, himself. Ciro inserts himself arrogantly...in the turn, marrying Stellina and rendering her a slave to his insane jealousies. But, once again against all narrative expectations, the robust and optimistic lawyer dies before his time. His two sons and those of his sister must now stay with Pepé who, in the final scene, next to the salm of his brother-in-law, squeezes them to his breast while waiting for a look of consensus from Stellina. The last words of Marcantonio Ravì underscore the contradictions of chance, deus ex machina of the entire novel: "This one, who looked like a lion, look at him here: dead! And that old worm, healthy and full of life! Tomorrow the other one will marry Tina Mèndola, your good friend..." These are bitter words for him, especially if one remembers that Tina is the daughter of the hated Carmela Mèndola who insistently stigmatized the union between Stellina and the old Don Diego, defining it as "a mortal sin which cries out for vengeance!" It's understandable why Pirandello defined the story as "gay if not light-hearted". The desire to play games exhausts itself in a fireworks of exhilarating invention; but in the background there is always the shadow of the discontent of each character, whose desires are never, and can never be, fulfilled. They are nullified by unpredictable and uncontrollable events.
3876969	/m/0b4m7n	Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People	Dav Pilkey	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction"}	 Continuing from the last book, George, Harold, Sulu and Crackers end up in an alternate universe where the whole world is the opposite of their normal world. For example, Melvin Sneedly is struggling to comprehend a simple children's book, Mr. Krupp is nice and has a sense of humor, the villains from the last 7 books are good instead of evil (ex: the Turbo Toilet 2000 is a crossing guard, Zorx, Klax, Jennifer, and professor Poopypants are fire fighters, Frankenbooger and Trixie are construction works,Carl is a mailman, and Dr.Diaper is a police officer.) and the school is overall a welcoming place for students to learn and have fun. There they also meet an evil, alternate version of Captain Underpants, Captain Blunderpants and evil versions of George and Harold (George and Harold's evil counterparts) Sulu and Crackers are kidnapped by George and Harold's evil counterparts and are hypnotized to be evil. Sulu becomes evil and attacks the good George and Harold but Crackers on the other hand, saves them, (Briefly because Crackers might be a female and hypnosis does the opposite on females, the opposite hypno-ring does an opposite effect on MALES, the beams didn't reach Crackers or that the ring only works on mammals). The heroes finally get back to the normal dimension of the world, but end up bringing the Mr. Krupp of the alternate universe (known as nice Mr. Krupp), Sulu (now known as "Evil Sulu"), and the evil George and Harold with them. The evil George and Harold transform nice Mr. Krupp into Captain Blunderpants by getting water on his head. Intending to rescue Sulu, George and Harold try to leave with their super power juice (from the third book) but due to it being Grandparents Day, they have to eat dinner with their grandparents at George's house, delaying them. While there, the evil George and Harold find George and Harold's tree house, rummage through their personal belongings and find the "Goosy-Grow 4000"(from book 4) and transform Sulu into a giant monster. George and Harold fly over on Crackers' back, and decide that they have to drink the super power juice, but discover that it is empty. They fly to the real Mr.Krupp's house and immediately turn him into Captain Underpants who defeats the "Giant-Evil Sulu". Captain Blunderpants is transformed back into the nice Mr. Krupp by the snap of the finger, and Captain Underpants ties them up, but when Harold states that nothing can go wrong, this causes a rain storm to turn the nice Mr. Krupp back into Captain Blunderpants and Captain Underpants is turned back into the real Mr. Krupp and goes home. When all seems lost, George's great-grandmother and Harold's grandfather, arrive. As it turns out, they had drunk the rest of the super power juice (which the boys had bought with them to the table), allowing them to become Boxer Boy and Great Granny Girdle, two of George and Harold's comic characters. They defeat Captain Blunderpants, but the evil George and Harold arrive and try to shrink the heroes with the "Shrinky-Pig 2000" from (also from book 4), only to be tricked into shrinking themselves. Sulu is shrunk and turned good again and Captain Blunderpants and the Evil George and Harold (now shrunken) are taken back to their world. Harold once again states that nothing can go wrong, but this causes police men to arrest them mistakenly think that there the evil George and Harold, who robbed a bank while Captain Underpants was fighting Sulu. Harold again states that things cannot get any worse because they are going to jail for the rest of their lives. This time, however, Tippy Tinkletrousers (Professor Poopypants who changed his name at the end of the book 4) comes and chases George and Harold. The book ends, once again, with George yelling "Oh no!" and Harold yelling "Here we go again!"
3878023	/m/0b4n_y	Canal Dreams	Iain Banks	1989	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot is fairly simple. In the first half, when the ship is stranded but unharmed, the mood is bucolic and philosophical, and the main challenge Hisako has is to pass the time in a tropical lake. She has an affair with one of the ship's officers and they go scuba diving together. She practises the cello. She is worried about the future, and has violent nightmares and flashbacks to her early life in Japan. She also spends time with the other passengers, among them a South African engineer and an erudite Egyptian. In the much darker second half, the book becomes an almost Die Hard-like thriller. Guerrillas (who turn out to be agents provocateur) take over the ship. The rebels kill everybody aboard except Hisako and rape her. She avenges herself, killing the pirates. The violence of the rebel takeover and of Hisako's revenge is described very graphically.
3878615	/m/0b4q1y	A Song of Stone	Iain Banks	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Abel and Morgan live in a small castle in an indeterminate place and time of civil war. They decide to abandon their home and join the refugees seeking safety. A group of irregulars led by "The Lieutenant" (or "Loot") stops them and takes them back to the castle, which they proceed to fortify as a base. The soldiers loot the castle, and Morgan is seduced by Loot. A rival faction attacks the castle with artillery and Abel is taken along with the fighters on a counter-attack. When they return, Abel almost shoots Loot and there is a violent and nihilistic ending. A Song of Stone tells the frightening story of what happens when the normal rules of society break down. Themes of incest, violence and war are intertwined with the lives of the rather pompous but lyrical disgraced aristocrat Abel, the vacuous and submissive Morgan, the ruthless Loot, and her soldiers with names like "Psycho", "Karma" and "Deathwish". The story is told by Abel in the first person. Abel describes Morgan's actions in the second person, mostly when she is in his direct view. As the invaders systematically loot and destroy Abel's family's ancestral home, Abel seems ambivalent to what is happening. Later, when the Lieutenant suggests a memorial for Abel's lifelong family retainer, who has just been killed, Abel and the reader realise that he does not know the servant's surname. The violence of war is described graphically.
3884270	/m/0b4_dk	Winter Holiday	Arthur Ransome	1933	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Brother and sister Dick and Dorothea Callum meet the Swallows and Amazons during the winter beside the lake. Whilst observing the stars in a disused barn, Dick and Dorothea encounter the other children and shortly become firm friends. They become part of the group and join in their play of Arctic expeditions. The holiday is extended when leader Nancy Blackett catches mumps and the group is quarantined and cannot return to their boarding schools. Initially, while waiting for snow to fall, the children embark on a series of adventures ranging from rebuilding an igloo to building an ice sled. There is a heavy snowfall followed by a prolonged period of freezing weather and, unusually, the lake freezes over, providing an excellent opportunity for an expedition to the point at the head of the lake that they have named the "North Pole". However, plans go awry when the Ds set out earlier than expected due to a misunderstanding over a signal flag. When a blizzard blows up and the Ds are missing, a rescue party is organized. cs:Zamrzlá loď kapitána Flinta tl:Winter Holiday
3884501	/m/0b4_x1	Damaged Goods	Russell T. Davies		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set in Britain in 1987, and involves the Seventh Doctor and his companions Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester living on a working-class council estate while attempting to track down an infinitely powerful Gallifreyan weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. A young boy living on the estate, Gabriel Tyler, appears to be the focus of strange powers, and also for the attentions of Mrs Jericho, whose own grievously ill young son seems to be linked to Gabriel in some way, through a secret Gabriel's mother has long tried to hide.
3886403	/m/0b53sk	Godless	Pete Hautman	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Frustrated with his parents' Catholic religion, agnostic-going-on-atheist Jason Bock invents a new god—the water tower. He recruits an unlikely group of worshippers, including: his snail farming best friend, Shin; incredibly ordinary Dan Grant; cute-as-a-button Magda Price; and violent, unpredictable Henry Stagg. As the Chutengodian religion grows, it takes on a life of its own. While Jason struggles to keep the faith pure, Shin obsesses over writing their bible as Henry schemes to make the faith even more exciting—and dangerous. As a result, when the Chutengodians hold their first mass atop the dome of the water tower, things go from dangerous to deadly.
3887077	/m/0b54zl	Summer Gone	David Macfarlane	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book deals with the life of Bailey Newling and his three lost summers. It tells the story of a divorced Bailey and his young son Caz, where on one fateful canoe trip, they share a remarkable night of truth and love. Macfarlane set this novel among the cottage country in northern Ontario, the Waubano Reaches. Bailey, nicknamed Bay, tells of the three summers in his life: the summer he was 12 and attended the camp where he met his camp instructor Peter Larkin, the summer where he, his wife Sarah and 6 year old son rented a cottage near his old campsite and, the summer where he and his 12 year old son shared their extraordinary night. Macfarlane uses a notable technique in the writing of Summer Gone, where he would start the story of one summer and drift into another. It may start with Bay telling of his tale at camp and then shift onto another thought which may have occurred decades later involving his wife or his son. This technique ties all of Bay's summer stories together into one when he tells it to his son. The narration of this story is told by Caz's half brother, from a one night stand of Bailey's, as an adult, retelling what Caz had told him.
3887859	/m/0b56ld	Dancers in Mourning	Margery Allingham	1937	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 An old friend of Albert Campion has written a successful book that has been turned into a hit musical comedy. Jimmy Sutane, an established actor and dancer is the star of the musical. But recently someone has it in for Sutane and has started playing harmless practical jokes that have caused the highly emotional Jimmy much trauma. Jimmy asks Campion to look into who the prankster may be. So Campion takes a trip to the Sutane household, where he unexpectedly finds more than he bargained for. Jimmy Sutane's house is a strange mix of the theatrical and the snobbish. And into this mix comes Chloe Pye, an overdone and melodramatic has-been actress that no one seems to like. When she is accidentally run over by Jimmy Sutane in his car, no one seems upset and everyone is eager to call it an accident. But Campion is not so certain, and the more he investigates the less he desires to find out about the world of the Sutanes. Campion must deal with high strung entertainers and his own emotions as he tries to find out if a murder even happened, and who is still playing tricks on the star and his family. It turns out that Squire Mercer, a genius musician who lives with the Sutanes, was once married to Chloe Pye. She wanted to leave him for Jimmy Sutane, and he threatened never to divorce her. She told him that divorce wasn't necessary since she was still married to someone else, thereby committing bigamy with Squire Mercer. Her return to the Sutane household was to get back into the good graces of Squire Mercer so that he would fall back in love with her and support her financially. Instead he gets annoyed and angry at her advances and kills her. Then he throws her off a bridge in front of Jimmy Sutane's car so that the whole thing will look like an accident. Unfortunately Sutane's understudy, who has been playing the pranks on Sutane because he wants to play the lead role in the hit show, witnessed the whole of Chloe's "accident". When he is killed by one of Mercer's old-time criminal associates, everything is discovered by the police. Unfortunately, Campion's love for Sutane's wife clouds his judgement so that he thinks Jimmy has actually murdered both Chloe and his understudy. It is only at the end that he discovers the truth for himself.
3888194	/m/0b574r	Flowers for the Judge	Margery Allingham	1936	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Barnabas family is no stranger to mystery, one of the founder's nephews, Tom Barnabas, having disappeared from the street in broad daylight never to be seen again. When it is remarked, at a Sunday evening gathering held by Gina Brande in her flat next door to the offices, that Paul Brande, her husband, has not been home for three days, no-one finds it too remarkable. Shortly after the arrival of his old friend Albert Campion to look into the vanishing, Mike, Paul's younger cousin and clearly in love with Gina, goes to the vault to fetch some papers for the eldest cousin, the Barnabas MD, John Widdowson, and returns looking shaken, but says nothing. Next morning, Paul's body is found sprawled in plain view at the front of the vault. The doctor is called, sees Paul has been dead for several days, and a decision is made to move the body upstairs. Mike is sent to warn Mrs Brande. Campion investigates the scene of the crime, and finds a recently-broken ventilator to the rear of the vault, leading to a garage. Questioning staff, he discovers that the position of the body made it impossible for Mike to have missed him the night before. The police find a length of rubber pipe stained with soot. At the inquest, the doctors and police reveal that Paul was killed by carbon monoxide inhalation, the pipe having been used to connect the exhaust of Mike's car to the vault ventilator. A neighbour testifies she heard the car running for some time on the night Paul disappeared, from six to nine. Mike says he was out walking the streets until eight, but admits to running for a while around nine to warm up. Gina's housekeeper says too much about her mistress's relationship with Mike, and Mike is arrested for the murder. Campion befriends Ritchie, an odd and rather awkward cousin, and with his help questions Miss Netley, Paul's suspicious secretary. He tracks down Paul's mistress, but finds she knows nothing, except that he missed an appointment with her on the night he died. He learns of a valuable unpublished manuscript owned by the firm, which Paul hoped to display, and of a visit Paul paid to a London district, on business concerning a key. From Lugg, he learns that a renowned underground key copier lives in the area mentioned, and together they investigate, using Lugg's criminal past to persuade the man to help - he provides a copy of a key he made for Paul. Campion visits the Barnabas offices, with Ritchie's help, and finds someone in the vault. They fight, and Campion subdues the man, who he finds to be the accountant Rigget. Rigget confesses to having made a copy of the vault key, and sneaking in there at night to pry for valuable information. On the night after Paul's death, he entered the room and found Paul curled up in a corner, the vault unlocked; he had locked it, but taken Paul's key. He also took the vault key from inside the door, locked it and returned the key to its normal place. The trial begins the next day, and Campion, exhausted from his long night, attends. Things look bleak for Mike, but Campion has found out, from an uncle at the British Museum, that the document in the vault is not the original manuscript. He visits John Widdowson's flat with Ritchie, looks around and questions the maid. He leaves a note for Widdowson, who calls him later and tells him to visit the firm's other offices, where he will find the original in a certain locked cupboard. Campion gets there, still without sleep, and almost hurls himself at the jammed door. Changing his mind, he kicks it, and discovers it leads outside, to a terrible drop. At court next day, the case is suddenly called off. Widdowson has been found in his bath, an apparent suicide using fumes from a gas water-heater. Campion learns that the windows were wedged shut and the heater sabotaged, and that Ritchie has vanished. Later, holidaying in France with Mike, Campion finds the long lost Tom Barnabas, who tells him he took the old manuscript to buy a circus, in which Campion sees Ritchie performing, in his element as a clown.
3888861	/m/0b58d6	A Passionate Pilgrim	Henry James		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The narrator meets fellow American Clement Searle at an old-fashioned London inn. Searle has long wanted to settle in England to escape what he considers his arid life in America. But he is physically ailing, and he's also depressed because his lawyer cannot uphold his claim to a share in a country estate currently owned by Richard Searle, a distant relation. Clement and the narrator visit the estate, where they meet the ethereal Miss Searle, who supports Clement's cause. They also meet Miss Searle's brother Richard, who is at first suspicious and then outright hostile and combative toward Clement. Upset by the conflict Clement and the narrator travel to Oxford, where they help a gentleman, Mr Rawson, down on his luck to travel to America. Clement is now very sick and sends for Miss Searle. She responds to his call and tells him that her brother has been thrown from a horse and killed. Clement might now have a real chance for a share of the estate, but the opportunity comes too late for him. He dies and is buried in the England which proved so inhospitable to him.
3890107	/m/0b5b8p	As She Climbed Across the Table	Jonathan Lethem	1997-02-17	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The physicists in Coombs's lab become obsessed with Lack, which appears to have its own personality and preferences. Alice develops a personal relationship with the artificial intelligence that they have created, while Philip becomes jealous of their relationship. Philip begins to get involved after B-84, a laboratory animal (cat) enters Lack. This consumption of B-84 causes a campus wide protest. In an attempt to impress Alice, Philip breaks up the protest by giving a speech about how a single cat being destroyed is minimal and their efforts would better spent on larger problems in the world. Instead of impressing Alice, she becomes defensive of Lack and locks herself in its chamber. After a night of drinking, Philip comes back to his apartment to see that Dr. Soft has brought Alice there. She is asleep but Dr. Soft suspects that she may have tried to enter Lack and that she is no longer capable of running experiments on Lack. This causes Dr. Soft to divide Lack's time up among capable people. He does not want to interrupt Alice's research so he gives her time but asks Philip to monitor her. He also claims a portion of Lack's time for himself, his graduate students, and an Italian physics team headed by Carmo Braxia. Later on Philip also gets Dr. De Tooth to also have his part in studying Lack. Despite all of the new people studying Lack, still very little progress is being made both on the grounds of explaining Lack and in restoring Philip and Alice's relationship. The undergraduates build a device out of only things Lack consumes and try to feed it to Lack but Lack refuses it. Alice tries to give Lack pictures of herself but even those are refused. De Tooth tries to enter Lack himself and fails. Even the Italian Physicist seem to be lost, that is until Braxia tells Philip his theory. He claims Lack is a new universe that doesn't have intelligent life. He says that because of the strong anthropic principle, a universe cannot exist if there isn't conscious life to observe it. Since Lack does not contain any conscious life it clings to the our reality that does. The personality it developed was that of the first conscious person it encountered, Alice. What it absorbed was what she liked. With his new knowledge, and in a state of drunkenness, Philip sets out to be the first lover in history to ever have a definitive answer as to whether or not he is loved back. He enters Lacks chamber and slides himself into Lack. He wakes up the next morning realizing he is no longer in the universe he was the night before.The ground was ball bearings and wool, buildings were made of clay and bowling shoe leather, and the fountain at the entrance of campus was made of aluminum foil and was filled with pistachio ice cream. After retrieving B-84 as proof of the universe, Philip heads back to Lack and climbs in. This time however, instead of going back to reality as he expected, he entered a new universe that had no light. Evan and Garth, two blind men who had also climbed into Lack, helped him once again climb into Lack but this time instead of entering a new universe he merges and becomes one with Lack. The novel deals thematically with many of the philosophical issues pertaining to modern quantum physics, as well as human interaction with artificial intelligence.
3890124	/m/0b5bbj	The Birds on the Trees				 Toby Flower is a shy, reticent youth who has grown his hair long and who has started wearing a burnous. His father, an editor, and his mother, a novelist, are thrown into despair when Toby is expelled from school because he has been taking drugs. At a loss as to what to do in order to help their son, Charlie and Maggie Flower keep projecting their own goals and aspirations onto their son. They still talk about his going to university despite Toby's assertion that he is not interested in further education. Toby eventually breaks out of that stifling atmosphere, leaves home and moves to London, where he lives in a basement flat without keeping in touch with his parents. Charlie and Maggie Flower finally turn to a psychiatrist friend of theirs who agrees to have Toby hospitalised and treated for mental illness. As it happens, in London Toby associates with Hermia, the psychiatrist's young but rather unattractive daughter, and makes her pregnant. When their parents conspire and talk Hermia into having an abortion, they unwittingly cut the last remaining bond with their son. Toby fetches Hermia from her parents' home, and the young couple move in with Toby's maternal grandmother, a frail old woman who all along has been sympathetic to the young people's needs.
3892164	/m/0b5f88	The Nargun and The Stars	Patricia Wrightson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is set in Australia, and involves an orphaned city boy named Simon Brent who comes to live on a 5000 acre sheep station called Wongadilla, in the Hunter Valley, with his mother's second cousins, Edie and Charlie. In a remote valley on the property he discovers a variety of ancient Australian Dreamtime creatures. The arrival of heavy machinery intent on clearing the land brings to life the ominous stone Nargun. The Nargun is a creature drawn from tribal legends of the Gunai or Kurnai people of the area now known as the Mitchell River National Park in Victoria. Other creatures featured in the story include the mischievous green-scaled water-spirit—Potkoorok, the Turongs (tree people) and the Nyols (cave people).
3893456	/m/0b5h75	Steamboat in a Cornfield	John Hartford			 Hartford tells the exciting true story of the incident in the life of an Ohio River steamboat around 1910. The boat, the Virginia, was subject to the rather fickle nature of the river at that time and ended up beached in a cornfield. This steamboat navigated the river before locks and dams were constructed to help regulate the waterway. Hartford recounts the hard times faced by this particular steamboat company which pressured the captain to make an ill-advised venture. The book uses old photos and maps to show the steamboat and trace its route. The accomplishment of what was seemingly an impossible task to refloat the steamboat is documented. The book ends with a coda, describing the fate of the characters. Steamboat in a Cornfield was published in 1986 by the Crown Publishing Group and it is out-of-print. In May 1991, the Gasoline Alley comic strip featured Hartford in a storyline that paralleled that of the children's book.
3895398	/m/0b5my9	La regenta		1885		 The story is set in Vetusta (a provincial capital city, very identifiable with Oviedo, capital of Asturias), where the main character of the work, Ana Ozores "La Regenta", marries the former prime magistrate of the city, Víctor Quintanar, a kind but fussy man much older than she. Feeling sentimentally abandoned, Ana lets herself be courted by the province casanova, Álvaro Mesía. To complete the circle, D. Fermín de Pas (Ana's confessor and canon in the cathedral of Vetusta) also falls in love with her and becomes Mesía's unmentionable rival. A great panorama of secondary characters, portrayed by Clarín with merciless irony, completes the human landscape of the novel.
3895521	/m/0b5n4_	The Invention of Morel	Adolfo Bioy Casares	1940	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The fugitive starts a diary after tourists arrive on the desert island where he is hiding. Although he considers their presence a miracle, he is afraid they will turn him in to the authorities. He retreats to the swamps while they take over the museum on top of the hill where he used to live. Through his diary we learn that the fugitive is a writer from Venezuela sentenced to life in prison. He believes he is on the (fictional) island of Villings, a part of the Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu), but is not sure. All he knows is that the island is the focus of a strange disease whose symptoms are similar to radiation poisoning. Among the tourists is a woman who sees the sunset everyday from the cliff on the west side of the island. He spies on her and while doing so falls in love. She and another man, a bearded tennis player called Morel who visits her frequently, speak French among themselves. Morel calls her Faustine. The fugitive decides to approach her, but she does not react to him. He assumes she is ignoring him, but his encounters with the other tourists have the same result. Nobody on the island notices him. He points out that the conversations between Faustine and Morel repeat every week and fears he is going crazy. As suddenly as they appeared, the tourists vanish. The fugitive returns to the museum to investigate and finds no evidence of people being there during his absence. He attributes the experience to a hallucination caused by food poisoning, but the tourists reappear that night. They have come out of nowhere and yet they talk as if they have been there for a while. He watches them closely while still avoiding direct contact and notices more strange things. In the aquarium he encounters identical copies of the dead fish he found on his day of arrival. During a day at the pool, he sees the tourists jump to shake off the cold when the heat is unbearable. The strangest thing he notices is the presence of two suns and two moons in the sky. He comes up with all sort of theories about what is happening on the island, but finds out the truth when Morel tells the tourists he has been recording their actions of the past week with a machine of his invention capable of reproducing reality. He claims the recording will capture their souls, and through looping they will relive that week forever and he will spend eternity with the woman he loves. Although Morel does not mention her by name, the fugitive is sure he is talking about Faustine. After hearing that the people recorded on previous experiments are dead, one of the tourists guesses correctly they will die, too. The meeting ends abruptly as Morel leaves in anger. The fugitive picks up Morel's cue cards and learns the machine keeps running because the wind and tide feed it with an endless supply of kinetic energy. He understands that the phenomena of the two suns and two moons are a consequence of what happens when the recording overlaps reality &mdash; one is the real sun and the other one represents the sun's position at recording time. The other strange things that happen on the island have a similar explanation. He imagines all the possible uses for Morel's invention, including the creation of a second model to resurrect people. Despite this he feels repulsion for the "new kind of photographs" that inhabit the island, but as time goes by he accepts their existence as something better than his own. He learns how to operate the machine and inserts himself into the recording so it looks like he and Faustine are in love, even though she might have slept with Alec and Haynes. This bothers him, but he is confident it will not matter in the eternity they will spend together. At least he is sure she is not Morel's lover. On the diary's final entry the fugitive describes how he is waiting for his soul to pass onto the recording while dying. He asks a favor of the man who will invent a machine capable of merging souls based on Morel's invention. He wants the inventor to search for them and let him enter Faustine's conscience as an act of mercy.
3900625	/m/0b5y5_	Jacques le fataliste et son maître	Denis Diderot	1796		 The main subject of the book is the relationship between the valet Jacques and his master (who is never named). The two are traveling to a destination the narrator leaves insistently vague, and to dispel the boredom of the trip Jacques is compelled by his master to recount the story of his loves. However, Jacques's story is continuously interrupted by other characters and various comic mishaps. Other characters in the book tell stories as well, and they, too, are continuously interrupted. There is even a "reader" character who periodically interrupts the narrator with questions, objections, and demands for more information or detail. The tales told are usually humorous, with romance or sex as their subject matter, and feature complex characters indulging in deception. Jacques's key philosophy is that everything that happens is "written up above" ("tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut"), a "great scroll" which is unrolled a little bit at a time, on which all events, past and future, are written. Yet Jacques still places value on his actions; he is not a passive character. Critics such as J. Robert Loy have characterized Jacques's philosophy as not fatalism but determinism. The book is full of contradictory characters and other dualities. One story tells of two men in the army who were so much alike that, though they were the best of friends, they could not stop dueling and wounding each other. Another concerns Father Hudson, an intelligent and effective reformer of the church, who is privately the most debauched character in the book. Even Jacques and his master transcend their apparent roles, as Jacques proves, in his insolence, that his master cannot live without him, and therefore it is Jacques who is the master, and the master who is the servant. Jacques is in many ways a metafictional work. The story of Jacques's loves is lifted directly from Tristram Shandy, a design choice which Diderot makes no secret of, as the narrator at the end announces the insertion of an entire passage from Tristram Shandy into the story. Throughout the work, the narrator refers derisively to sentimental novels and calls attention to the ways in which events develop more realistically in his book. At other times, the narrator tires of the tedium of narration altogether and obliges the reader to supply certain trivial details themselves.
3901027	/m/0b5yy9	Madame de Mauves	Henry James		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Outside Paris a wealthy American man named Longmore is introduced to his countrywoman Euphemia de Mauves. She is the sweet but austere wife of Comte Richard de Mauves, a cynical, womanizing Frenchman who hints that Longmore should take an amorous interest in his wife. Longmore resists the suggestion, even though he spots Richard with his latest mistress in a Paris cafe. Longmore still can't bring himself to become involved in an affair with Euphemia. He goes on a trip in the French countryside, where the sight of an artist and his girlfriend on a holiday, as well as a disturbing dream about Euphemia, makes him wonder if his scruples aren't foolish. Longmore finally leaves for America. Two years later he hears that Richard has committed suicide because Euphemia wouldn't forgive his adulteries and reconcile with him, though Richard promised to be faithful to her in the future. Although Euphemia is now free, Longmore is undecided about returning to Europe to pursue her.
3902815	/m/0b607p	Them Bones	Howard Waldrop	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In 1929, some archaeologists find a horse skeleton in a mound in the Louisiana swampland—a mound which pre-dates the re-introduction of the horse to North America. Moreover, the mound contains something even more anachronistic—a corroded brass rifle cartridge. This is a novel about shifts in time. From the late twenty-first century, Madison Yazoo Leake, a member of the Special Group, is transported back in time in an attempt to stop the destruction of the human race. However, he arrives not in 1930s Louisiana, but in a world where Arabs explored America, the Roman Empire never existed, and the Aztec empire extended to the Mississippi.
3904061	/m/0b61tz	Shapeshifter's Quest	Dena Landon		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Syanthe is about 18 years old. She is a shapeshifter and has lived with other shapeshifters in the Carlbine forest all her life. Because of an incident that happened years ago, the King had confined all shapeshifters to the Carlbine forest. He marked all of the shapeshifters with a magical tattoo on their faces that would kill them if they crossed the boundaries of the forest. All of the shapeshifters were marked, except Syanthe, who had been hidden at birth from the King's men. When the Carlbine forest and the shapeshifters (who are closely bonded to the forest) slowly grew sick with an illness, Syanthe's mother included, she set out into the King's capital to obtain the cure for the illness. A few days or so later after Syanthe left the forest, she was caught by a caravan of traders. She decided to join these travelers on their way to the capital. She soon found out that the leader of the caravan, Jerel, had powerful magical powers, and realized that there was something amiss with the whole caravan.
3904760	/m/0b62w1	Mister Monday	Garth Nix	2003-07-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On Earth, a boy named Arthur Penhaligon is at a new school. He collapses during an outdoor cross country run during gym because of his severe asthma. Two of his schoolmates, Ed and Leaf, stop to help him use his inhaler before running to get help. While waiting for help, Arthur notices one strange-looking men materializing out of thin air.They discuss a key and whether or not to give it to Arthur. Monday doesn't want to give it up because he needs the key in order to continue his reign, but Sneezer convinces him to as the Will states Monday must give the key to a suitable heir but after Arthur dies, Monday will once again regain control of the Key. Persuaded, Monday agrees to relinquish control of the key, which is shaped like the minute hand of an old clock, although he quickly becomes suspicious of Sneezer, who apparently never showed much intelligence before. Sneezer and Mister Monday then fight and disappear in a flash of light. In their place is a slim book which Arthur puts in his pocket. In his hand, he holds the key which Arthur finds helps him breathe. As his teacher and school nurse approach, Arthur hides the key and passes out. Arthur wakes up in a hospital bed, tired. Ed and Leaf, the brother and sister who helped him, come and visit. Leaf comments that she had seen an old man pushing a bath-chair with a young man in it; obviously Sneezer and Mister Monday. Ed, however, had not seen Monday and Sneezer, but claims to have seen a bunch of men with dog-like faces digging up the field. Arthur asks them if anyone had seen the key he buried in the field and they say no, but promise to visit him soon. Shortly afterward, they have to leave so Arthur can take a shot. In pain, Arthur pushes his hand under the pillow, only to have his fingers touch the key, which has appeared there magically. A week later, Arthur returns home but Ed and Leaf have not kept their promise to visit him. When he gets there, he uses the key to open the book, which is called The Compleat Atlas of the House and Immediate Environs, and learns that the House (a giant, polyglot-fashioned building that he passed when going home) has an entrance called Monday's Postern. That night, he is visited by one of the dog-like "Fetchers" mentioned by Ed earlier. He is saved by his ceramic Komodo dragon in which he had placed the Key. During the next day at school, he finds himself being pursued by the Fetchers again. Before being excused from gym class, a friend of Leaf's hands him a printed out email which explains her and her brother's absence. Apparently, they have caught some sort of virus and have been placed in quarantine. Leaf notes that she can smell the same stench from the Fetchers on those in her family but no one else can smell it. Arthur seeks sanctuary in the school library to figure out the Atlas and hide from the Fetchers. During this brief time, he reads up on the Fetchers and finds out that they are vulnerable to salt. His research is interrupted when Monday's Noon, a servant of Mister Monday who proves to be more powerful than the Fetchers, shows up. He attempts to attack Arthur and inadvertently starts a fire in the library. However, Monday's Noon can only attack him between the hours of noon and one o'clock and Arthur manages to evade him until then and Noon disappears. Unfortunately, Arthur still has to contend with the Fetchers who have managed to steal away his Atlas during his struggle with Monday's Noon. He escapes to the kitchens and finds salt to destroy them. During this time, the fire department and the bio-containment and quarantine team, who believe the new virus that Ed and Leaf's family are suffering from has originated from the school, arrive. Arthur realizes that the Fetchers must have caused the disease and notices that the smoke from the burning library is spelling out a message for him to get to the House. Arthur lets go of the key to induce his asthma which causes a paramedic to take him to the hospital. As they get closer to his neighborhood, an unknown force hits the ambulance in the form of a violent rainstorm. Arthur takes advantage of this distraction to leave the paramedic and get to the House. Using the Key, Arthur enters the House and finds that the House is a world unto itself, around which the Universe is organized, whose purpose is, or was, to observe and record all that occurs in the infinity. In his travels through the House, he finds that he is the Rightful Heir, a person to whom the Will referred. If he fulfills this function, the Architect of the World's original intention will be enacted. To save the Lower House, he must kill Mister Monday and steal the other half of the key, of which is the Hour Hand, from him. He is accompanied during the most of his journey by a cockney girl-child named Suzy Turquoise Blue, who was brought to the House by the Piper (one of the immortal Denizens of the House) along with many other children. There, too, he learns something of the House's history: The Architect and the Old One came from nothing to create the universe. Unfortunately, the Architect's consort, the Old One, acts in the role of Prometheus, in that he had defied the Architect for some purpose of his own and been imprisoned as a result. After a while, the Architect left the House and handed over control to the Morrow days. Unfortunately, these Trustees have each been contaminated with one of seven deadly sins and have disobeyed the Architect's will to observe and record the happenings of the Secondary Realms (Our universe) in favor of interfering to where it suits them. Because of their inadequate rule, the House has become a dystopia. At the end of the book, Arthur defeats Mister Monday and takes control of the Hour Hand and gains the First of Seven Keys to the Kingdom. To the displeasure of the Will, he takes pity on Mister Monday and lets him go, after healing him mentally and physically. After going home, with the Will, he hands the responsibility of government over to the Will itself which manifests in the form of Dame Primus (a name almost literally meaning "First Lady" in Latin). He appoints Suzy as the second assistant to Noon who is actually Monday's Dusk who aided Arthur in his attempt to secure the key. Monday's former Noon is changed to the new Dusk while Monday's Dawn retains her position. Monday's Noon (AKA Monday's Dusk) gives Arthur a 'Nightsweeper' to get rid of the virus the dog faces brought with them. After waiting for ten hours, only to fall asleep and wake up at 11:55, Arthur puts the Nightsweeper (which looks like a toy horse) on his windowsill. It flies over his town, turning on every single thing as it passes. Arthur's family tells Arthur that his mother found a cure for the plague. Then a phone rings, which none of Arthur's family can hear. He realizes it is the phone Dame Primus gave him in case of emergencies. The book ends with Arthur looking at the clock and seeing it is one minute past twelve, Tuesday morning. fr:Lundi mystérieux th:จันทร์มหันตภัย
3908213	/m/0b68jd	Thank You, Jeeves	P. G. Wodehouse	1934-03-16	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After a falling-out concerning Bertie’s relentless playing of the banjolele, Jeeves leaves his master’s service and finds work with Bertie’s old friend, Lord “Chuffy” Chuffnell. Bertie travels to one of Chuffy’s cottages in Dorset in order to continue practising his banjolele-playing without complaints from his neighbours. Chuffy, whose high rank is matched only by his low financial status, is hoping to sell his dilapidated family manor to the American millionaire J. Washburn Stoker, who in turn plans to rent out the property to the famous “nerve specialist” Sir Roderick Glossop, who intends to marry Chuffy’s Aunt Myrtle. Chuffy has also fallen in love with Mr. Stoker’s daughter, Pauline, a former fiancée of Bertie, but feels unable to propose to her until his finances have improved enough to be able to keep her in the style to which she’s accustomed. Upon being informed of the situation, Bertie hatches a plan to make Chuffy propose: he is going to kiss Pauline in the presence of his old friend, in the hope that Chuffy will be spurred on to propose himself. When he puts his plan into action, however, he is seen, not by Chuffy, but by J. Washburn Stoker, who is convinced that Pauline and Bertie are still in love, and that he must exercise ceaseless vigilance in order to prevent them from getting engaged again. Even worse, from Bertie’s perspective, all hopes of marriage between Chuffy and Pauline seem dashed after a fight between Mr. Stoker’s young son Dwight and Chuffy’s cousin Seabury leads to a more general row between the Chuffnells and the Stokers. Mr. Stoker returns to the yacht in which he and his family are staying, keeping Pauline a virtual prisoner on board in order to stop her eloping with Bertie. Chuffy writes a love letter to Pauline which Jeeves is able to smuggle aboard the yacht by pretending to enter Mr. Stoker’s employ; Pauline is so moved that she swims ashore, where she goes to stay in Bertie’s house until she can visit Chuffnell Hall in the morning. Bertie chivalrously lets her sleep in his bed whilst he tries to sleep in the garage. Unfortunately, he is seen by Police Sergeant Voules, who informs Lord Chuffnell of Bertie’s strange behaviour. Chuffy, thinking that Bertie is intoxicated, takes him back up to his bedroom. Upon discovering Pauline there, he leaps to the conclusion that she and Bertie have resumed their romantic relationship. A heated row breaks out, which ends with Pauline declaring that she never wants to see Chuffy again. The two lovers return to their respective homes. Bertie is then disturbed by Mr. Stoker, who has found Pauline missing, and jumped to the conclusion that she has run off with Bertie. Upon searching Bertie’s cottage and not finding her, however, he apologises and leaves. The next day, Bertie gets a message from Mr. Stoker, requesting his presence on board the yacht for his son’s birthday party. Despite his misgivings, Bertie goes, only to be locked in one of the staterooms by Mr. Stoker, who informs Bertie that he has found out about Pauline’s visit to him the previous night. He plans to force Bertie and Pauline to marry. Jeeves, however, is able to help Bertie escape: Mr. Stoker has hired some blackface minstrels for his son’s party, and Bertie is able to disguise himself with boot polish and get ashore. Bertie returns to his cottage, where he encounters his new valet, Brinkley, in a state of considerable drunkenness. Brinkley attacks his employer with a carving knife, before accidentally setting the cottage on fire. In the ensuing conflagration, Bertie’s banjolele is destroyed. Hoping to find some butter to help remove the boot polish from his face, Bertie goes to Chuffnell Hall; Chuffy, however, thinking that Pauline is in love with Bertie, tells him that he ought to marry her, and refuses to (as he sees it) help Bertie in wriggling out of his obligations. Bertie then meets Jeeves, who has returned to Chuffy’s employ in order to avoid Mr. Stoker’s wrath when he finds out about the part Jeeves played in helping Bertie escape. Jeeves informs Bertie that a disagreement has broken out between Sir Roderick Glossop and the Chuffnells. Sir Roderick had blacked up and tried to entertain Master Seabury; Seabury being unappreciative, however, Sir Roderick had subjected the boy to what Jeeves tactfully calls “severe castigation”, and left the Hall. Jeeves moreover informs Bertie that Seabury has stolen all the butter in the Hall to use in a practical joke on Sir Roderick, but that Bertie can sleep in the Dower House, where Jeeves will bring him some the next day. The Dower House is rendered uninhabitable, however, by the presence of Brinkley. While waiting outside and wondering what to do, he meets Sir Roderick Glossop, towards whom he feels considerably friendlier since learning of the argument with Seabury. Sir Roderick goes to Bertie’s garage to find petrol, which he says is as good as butter for removing blackface; Bertie, worried about meeting Sergeant Voules again, remains in the Hall’s grounds. The next day, Bertie meets with Jeeves in Chuffy’s office. Their conversation is cut short, however, when Mr. Stoker arrives, hoping that Chuffy might be able to tell him where Bertie is. Meeting Jeeves, whom he has not forgiven for freeing Bertie, Mr. Stoker threatens to break the valet’s neck; Jeeves is able to disarm him, though, by claiming that he only helped his former master in order to protect Mr. Stoker from a charge of kidnapping, and tells him that Bertie has gone to the Dower House. Pauline Stoker arrives next, and tells Jeeves that she once again wishes to marry Chuffy. Jeeves leaves in order to search for Sir Roderick, and Bertie reveals himself to Pauline in the hope that she’ll be able to get him some breakfast. Frightened at Bertie’s sudden appearance, Pauline emits a piercing shriek, bringing Chuffy running to her. Their past animosities forgotten, the pair seem completely reconciled. Mr. Stoker returns, having had a run-in with Brinkley in the Dower House. Jeeves also comes back, bearing a cable saying that some of Stoker’s relatives are contesting a will, which resulted in Mr. Stoker inheriting some fifty million dollars from his Uncle George, on the grounds that the deceased was insane. Stoker seems unconcerned, saying that Sir Roderick will testify for him that his uncle was in good mental health. It turns out, however, that Sir Roderick has been arrested trying to break into Bertie’s garage, and it seems unlikely that the nerve specialist’s testimony will carry much weight if he is imprisoned. Jeeves suggests that Bertie switch places with Sir Roderick, as he could hardly be charged with breaking into his own garage. The plan succeeds; Chuffy’s financial problems are resolved when Stoker agrees to buy the Hall from him; he and Pauline are to be wed; and Jeeves, who has a policy of never working in the household of a married gentleman, returns to Bertie’s employ.
3910776	/m/0b6dyy	The Eyes of the Overworld	Jack Vance	1966	{"/m/06qk2l": "Dying Earth subgenre", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Cugel is easily persuaded by the merchant Fianosther to attempt the burglary of the manse of Iucounu the Laughing Magician. Trapped and caught, he agrees that in exchange for his freedom he will undertake the recovery of a small hemisphere of violet glass, an Eye of the Overworld, to match one already in the wizard's possession. A small sentient alien entity of barbs and hooks, named Firx, is attached to his liver to encourage his "unremitting loyalty, zeal and singleness of purpose," and Iucounu uses a spell to transport Cugel via flying demon to the remote Land of Cutz. There, Cugel finds two villages, one occupied by wearers of the violet lenses, the other by peasants who work on behalf of the lens-wearers, in hopes of being promoted to their ranks. The lenses cause their wearers to see, not their squalid surroundings, but the Overworld, a vastly superior version of reality where a hut is a palace, gruel is a magnificent feast, etc. — "seeing the world through rose-colored glasses" on a grand scale. Cugel gains an Eye by trickery, and escapes from Cutz. He then undertakes an arduous trek back to Iucounu, cursing the magician the entire way; this forms the principal part of the book. After many pitfalls, setbacks, and harrowing escapes, including the eviction of Firx from his system, Cugel returns to Iucounu's manse, where he finds the wizard's volition has been captured by a twin to Firx. Cugel manages to extirpate the alien, subdue the magician, and enjoy the easy life in the manse, until he tries to banish Iucounu and Fianosther (who himself has come to pilfer from Cugel) with the same spell that the magician had used on him. But Cugel's tongue slips in uttering the incantation, and the flying demon seizes him instead, delivering him to the same spot as before. Author Michael Shea wrote an authorized sequel, A Quest for Simbilis (DAW Books, NY, 1974). Vance's own Cugel sequel was published as Cugel's Saga in 1983.
3915934	/m/0b6n5b	A Specter is Haunting Texas	Fritz Leiber	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Scully Christopher Crockett La Cruz is an actor, fortune seeker and adventurer from the long isolated orbital technocratic democracies of Circumluna and the Bubbles Congeries. He lands in what he believes to be Canada to reclaim family mining interests only to discover that Canada is now North Texas and what is left of civilization in North America is ruled by primitive, backslapping, bigger than life anti-intellectual "good ole boys" convinced of their own moral superiority. In the tortured version of history known to the giant hormone-boosted Anglo-Saxon inhabitants who rule a diminutive Mexican underclass, the original Texas, or Texas, had actually secretly ruled the pre-nuclear war United States since 1845. Texas escaped the nuclear destruction of the rest of the United States because of the foresight of Lyndon the First. An enormous bunker then known as the Houston Carlsbad Caverns-Denver-Kansas City-Little Rock Pentagram and now referred to simply as the Texas Bunker had saved the heartland during a war that destroyed both American coasts, Europe, Russia, China, and Africa. Texas then conquered the rest of the continent, although Hawaii and Cuba remain stubbornly "unconquered".
3918318	/m/0b6r0f	Phallos	Samuel R. Delany	2004	{"/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 In many ways Phallos is a coda to Delany's exploration of prehistoric attitudes and technologies, psychologies and sexualities, and a story that connects the prehistoric "nameless gods" from his four-volume series Return to Nevèrÿon, to the historical world of the actual Roman Empire. As does the Nevèrÿon series, Phallos uses a frame story — a double frame, in fact. The first is a brief trio of paragraphs telling of a young man, Adrian Rome, whose adolescent encounter with the book leads to his adult attempt, a decade later, to acquire a copy: and how he settles for an on-line synopsis posted by one Randy Pedarson of Moscow, Idaho. The second frame is more complex — and far more interesting: it concerns the dubious (fictive) editor Randy Pedarson, presumably of Moscow, and his relations with two graduate students, Binky and Phyllis, also enthusiasts of the novel, at the university there. According to Pedarson’s posting, as far as Pedarson can tell, an anonymous gay pornographic novel, Phallos (one of Pederson’s three favorites: the other two are John Preston’s Mr. Benson and William Talsman’s The Gaudy Image — both of which are known for their better-than-average writing), was published in 1969 by Essex House of West Hollywood, California. While the anonymous introduction to that volume suggests that Phallos was known to numerous literary gay men of the past, from the 18th century advocate of Greek beauty, Johanne Joaquim Winkelmann, through the 19th century Oxford aesthetician and novelist Walter Pater, to the historian John Addington Symonds (whose seven-volume The Renaissance in Italy [1875-86] acted as a sort of counterbalance to Pater’s brief single volume [of 1873/75], The Renaissance, still widely read and quoted today), and moving on to such characters as Baron Corvo (pseudonym of Frederic Rolfe) and sex researcher Havelock Ellis, Pederson concludes that all this is simply the kind of bogus folderol that accompanies so much of the pornography published in that licentious decade, as an attempt to legitimate it. If one has any knowledge at all of the sexual revolution occurring throughout the Oxford Aesthetic Movement and the Edwardian decade that closed out the Age of Victoria, however, one recognizes Pedarson’s account is presented with some wit. Pederson goes on to synopsize Phallos — during which synopsis, now and again, he quotes from it more or less liberally. That synopsis, along with the footnotes — some of them as extensive as five or six pages — provided by his friends, recent Ph.D.'s Binky and Phyllis, make up the text of Delany's novella. Phallos proper begins with a Greek epigraph — the "Anaximander fragment," presumably the oldest piece of written Greek philosophy extant from the Ionian presocratics, dating from the last years of the 6th century BCE. This is glossed by a footnote from Binky, who, in four pages, gives his version of Nietzsche’s, Hegel’s, Heidegger’s, and finally Sir Karl Popper’s take on Anaximander, with a few potshots by Phyllis (virtually footnotes to the footnote). Thematically, the idea is to point out all the things the presocratics did know that, later, were forgotten — that the earth was round, what caused the moon to shine and go through its phases, etc., and concomitantly how modern some of their commentators — such as Pater — actually were. This is to make us more willing to accept the relevance to the modern world of what our hero learns of life in the 2nd century CE, as well as to explicate those thirty-one words from the Ionian island and coastal culture of the 6th century BCE, which managed to slip through into the modern world. Pederson reproduces Phallos’s whole first chapter. It serves as a prologue to the novel proper as well as to his own synopsis. Also, it introduces us to our narrator, Neoptolomus, the son of a gentleman farmer on the island of Syracuse (Sicily) who reads Heraclietos and can recite some of Æsop’s fables in Greek. His mother is a one-time Egyptian slave woman, freed long ago. When his parents are killed by a fever in his 17th year, Neoptolomus comes under the protection of a rich Roman merchant who keeps a summer villa in the area. The rich Roman takes young Neoptolomus to Rome and sponsors him as an officer in the Roman army and, on his release, asks him, in return, to travel to Egypt and help him acquire some lands across the Nile from the city of Hermopolis. The Roman Emperor Hadrian is visiting Hermopolis at the time, and Neoptolomus becomes involved with the murder of the emperor’s favorite, Antinous. At the temple of "a nameless god," whose priests control the lands across the river at Hir-wer, Neoptolomus learns that on the day of Antinous’s death, bandits have broken into the temple and, from the statue of the god, stolen the "golden phallos, encrusted with jade, copper, and jewels" — phallos is Greek for the male member. This theft has thrown the whole religious system into chaos. Almost immediately Neoptolomus finds himself kidnapped by a bandit gang, whose leader is certainly the man who killed Antinous. The first third of the novella deals with Neoptolomus, his relation with the bandit chief, and the period before and after the bandit sells him to a scholar in Alexandria. The plot is interlarded — indeed, held together — by numerous gay sexual encounters. Ironically, while Pederson mentions them, his synopsis omits much — indeed, most — of the explicit sexual description. This produces the novel’s first and most pervasive irony: Phallos is pornography with virtually all the sex excised. After several years of the hero's wanderings, the novel’s middle third finds Neoptolomus back in Rome. Once more he is working for his Roman patron, now as a broker of warehouse space in his patron’s several Roman warehouses. After his early education in the sex life of the desert and the barbarian outlands, Neoptolomus finds himself sampling the intricacies of civilized urban sex — as well as negotiating the complexities that arise for him as a gay man trying to have friendships with — and work among — straight men. Through all this, we watch his several attempts to retrieve the phallos, which take us from Rome to Byzantium, back to Syracuse, and even to the volcanic slopes of Mt. Etna. High points of the central third include a drugged Walpurgisnacht among the volcanic peaks and the sad history of a Roman street boy, Maximin, whom Neoptolomus wrongly decides is trying to steal from him, though in reality he has been the victim of one of Neoptolomus’s jealous lovers. In the final third, years later an older and wiser Neoptolomus returns to Hermopolis, where he meets a young black African, Nivek, sent to the Temple of the nameless god, much as Neoptolomus had been, also to acquire rights to the land across the Nile at Hir-wer — which, since Antinous’s death, Hadrian has transformed into the gold and marble city of Antinoöpolis, now a shrine to the memory of the emperor’s late lover, who has officially been declared a god. Here history would seem to repeat itself, only Neoptolomus is in a different role from the one he occupied as a youth. Through this switch in position, Neoptolomus comes to understand a great deal about some of the mysteries around his earlier visit to Hermopolis. (Though the plot elements are entirely different, the narrative technique is similar to the one Delany used to relate the first half to the second half of his novella The Game of Time and Pain in his Return to Nevèrÿon series.) In his relations with Nivek, we get a chance to watch Neoptolomus apply many of the lessons he has learned during his adventures to the problems of an open relationship. Delany makes the point that open relationships take as much care, concern, and commitment as do monogamous ones. Soon, under the pleasures of his committed life-partnership with Nivek, Neoptolomus gives up his search for the phallos. Because of his success both in business and in life — and because they know how much energy in the past Neoptolomus has put into searching for the phallos — many of the couple's friends, however, including a poet, a Christian priest, and a horse-loving adventurer, assume the two, now successful merchants on their own, have secretly found it. Their friends cleave to them in the hopes that they will learn more of the phallos and can perhaps share in its power. "Though," Neoptolomus tells us, "all we had — which, yes, each mistook for its sign — was a certain pleasure in the world and in each other, a pleasure our friends were sometimes rash enough to call happiness." Nivek and Neoptolomus run into problems holding their annual orgies in their own summer villa in the Apennines above Rome — sometimes with their neighbors, sometimes with their guests. Though Neoptolomus and Nivek have given up the search for the phallos, because of their friends’ interest in that object they are almost as greatly plagued by its possible existence — or non-existence — as they were before. The novel more or less concludes when Neoptolomus’s rich Roman patron dies, and Neoptolomus and Nivek return to Syracuse to take over Neoptolmus’s late father’s lands, using some of the money that his patron has left him. Meanwhile Neoptolomus has generously sponsored a young goatherd, Cronin, with a commission in the army, as Neoptolomus himself had been sponsored in his youth; and Nivek has just invited a sexually interesting farm worker, Aronk, to come and work for them — because he realizes that Neoptolomus finds him attractive. In a moving scene in which the two men embrace in an acceptance of the cyclic, yet unpredictable, nature of life, the novel proper ends. The commentary from the triptych of our editor and his friends, however, goes on. In another footnote Binky points out Pederson’s tendency in his synopsis to downplay any racial tensions dramatized in the book. Phyllis has the last say, pointing out in her final note an equally misogynistic streak in Pederson's selection of the materials he has included (and, even more so, left out), so that the final word we read in the text is her accusation against Pedarson of subjecting his version of the book to a certain order of "castration." The outer frame story of Adrien Rome reflects an earlier work of Delany's. In Babel-17, we learn that Rydra Wong (the novel's protagonist) has a friend named Muels Aranlyde (an anagram of "Samuel R. Delany") who wrote books about someone named "Comet Jo", one of which was named Empire Star. Empire Star is, of course, a book by Delany whose protagonist is one "Comet Jo". Similarly, upon carefully reading Delany's 2007 novel Dark Reflections, we learn that the protagonist of that novel, Arnold Hawley, is actually the anonymous author of the novel Phallos that Adrian Rome encountered as an adolescent.
3921171	/m/0b6wk0	Nights at the Circus	Angela Carter	1984-03-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nights at the Circus begins with American journalist Jack Walser interviewing Sophie Fevvers in her London dressing room following a performance for the circus which employs her. Fevvers claims to have been left as a baby in a basket on the doorstep of a brothel. Until she reached puberty she appeared to be an ordinary child, with the exception of a raised lump on each shoulder; as she begins menstruating, however, she also sprouted complete wings. As a child, she posed as a living statue of Cupid in the reception room of the brothel, but as an adolescent, she is now transformed into the image of the "Winged Victory" holding a sword belonging to Ma Nelson, the madam of the brothel. This stage of Fevvers' life comes to an abrupt end when Ma Nelson slips in the street and falls into the path of a carriage. The house and its contents is inherited by her pious brother who plans to convert it to a house for fallen women, but Ma Nelson's employees burn the place down and go their separate ways. Fevvers continues her story, although doubt is cast on the veracity of her narrative voice throughout. She and Lizzie, she tells Walser, next move in with Lizzie's sister and help run the family ice cream parlour. However, when the family falls on hard times Fevvers accepts an invitation from the fearsome Madame Schreck. This lady puts Fevvers on display in her exclusive combination of freak show and brothel, along with several other women with unique appearances. After some time Madame Schreck sells Fevvers to a customer, "Christian Rosencreutz", who wishes to sacrifice a winged 'virgo intacta' in order to procure his own immortality. Fevvers narrowly escapes and returns to Lizzie's sister's home. Soon after their reunion, she joins Colonel Kearney's circus as an aerialiste and achieves enormous fame. The London section concludes with Walser telling his chief at the London office that he is going to follow Fevvers, joining the circus on its grand imperial tour. The Petersburg section begins as Walser, living in Clown Alley, types up his first impressions of the city. We learn that Walser approached Colonel Kearney who, taking advice from his fortune telling pig Sybil, offered him a position as a clown in the circus. The reader, and Walser, are introduced to the other members of the circus and Walser saves Mignon from being eaten by a tigress. In the next scene the chief clown Buffo and his troupe invoke chaos at their dinner table. Walser ducks out of the meleé only to find Mignon waiting outside for him, as she has nowhere else to go after her husband and lover have both abandoned her. Not sure what to do with the abandoned woman, he takes her to Fevvers's hotel room. Fevvers assumes that Walser is sleeping with Mignon but, though jealous, takes care of the girl. On recognising the beauty of Mignon's singing voice Fevvers introduces her to the Princess of Abyssinia. The Princess, a silent tiger tamer, incorporates Mignon into her act with the dancing cats and Walser is recruited as partner to the redundant tigress. During rehearsals, the acrobatic Charivari family tries to kill Fevvers and the Colonel reluctantly kicks them out of the circus. Buffo the Great loses his mind during that night's performance and tries to kill Walser. The Princess has to shoot one of her tigresses when she becomes jealous of Mignon for dancing with her tiger mate during the tiger waltz. After her performance, Fevvers goes to a date at a mansion belonging to the Grand Duke. Here, she almost falls victim to his amorous advances but narrowly escapes into a Fabergé egg, reaching the circus train as it is about to pull out of the station. This last scene is deliberately bewildering, developing the sense of doubt cast upon the reader in Fevvers' early narrative and laying the foundations for the fantastic occurrences of the final section. The Siberian section opens with the entire circus crossing the continent to Asia. The train is attacked by a band of runaway outlaws who think that Fevvers can help them make contact with the Tsar, who will then allow them to return home to their villages. As the train is now destroyed, the entire circus, other than Walser, is marched to the convicts' encampment; Walser is rescued by a group of escaped murderesses and their former guards, who have become their lovers and helped them to escape. As Walser has amnesia, the band of women leaves him for an approaching rescue party but he flees into the woods before they reach him and is taken under the wing of a village shaman. Fevvers and the rest of the party are being held captive by the convicts. Fevvers tells the convict leader that she cannot help them as everything that they have heard about her is a lie. Depressed, the convicts sink into drunken mourning. Lizzie convinces the clowns to put on a show for the convicts, during which a blizzard comes, blowing the clowns and the convicts away with it into the night. The remnants of the circus begin to walk in the direction in which they hope civilization lies. They come across a run-down music school and take shelter with its owner, the Maestro. A brief encounter with Walser, now thoroughly part of the shaman's village, convinces Fevvers and Lizzie to leave the safety of the Maestro's school to search for Walser. Colonel Kearney leaves the group to continue his quest for civilization so as to build another, and more successful, circus. Mignon, the Princess and Samson remain with the Maestro at his music school. Fevvers finds Walser and the story ends with them together at the moment that the new century dawns and Fevvers' victorious cry "to think I really fooled you".
3921865	/m/0b6xc5	Pilgrimage to Hell	Laurence James	1986-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction"}	 A major character of the saga who appears in this novel is the Trader, who apparently goes off to die alone near the end of the book, but is constantly referenced in future novels. It also brings Doc Tanner (a senile-sounding gentleman with knowledge of pre-war America) to the group, and gives us our first glance at one of the series' long running mutant menaces : Stickies. This book also introduces the Redoubts, in particular the Cerberus Redoubt, and the MAT-TRANS teleport chambers that are a major plot device driving the series.
3924503	/m/0b70pn	The Author of Beltraffio	Henry James	1884	{"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrator of the story, a somewhat naive American admirer of English novelist Mark Ambient, visits the writer at his home in Surrey. The narrator is very enthusiastic about Ambient's work, especially his latest novel Beltraffio. He meets Ambient's beautiful but chilly wife, his sickly seven-year-old son Dolcino, and his strange sister Gwendolyn. He also learns that Ambient's wife strongly dislikes her husband's novels and considers them corrupt and pagan. Dolcino eventually becomes much more ill. In order to "protect" him from what she sees as the baleful influence of his father, Ambient's wife withholds the boy's medicine. Dolcino dies, and the details of his mother's conduct are told to the narrator by Gwendolyn. The mother, grief-stricken over her role in Dolcino's final illness, dies herself after a few months. In a grimly ironic note to conclude the story, the narrator says Ambient later revealed that his wife had become partially reconciled to his novels and even read Beltraffio in the weeks before her death.
3924740	/m/0b710h	Etidorhpa	John Uri Lloyd		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The complex structure of the books begins with a Preface signed by Lloyd, which presents the frame concept, that Lloyd has discovered a thirty-year-old manuscript by Llewellyn Drury in a library. Then comes a Prologue in which Drury introduces himself. The book's Chapter I begins the story of how Drury met the mysterious "I-Am-The-Man", who reads his own manuscript account of his adventures to Drury over many sessions. The mysterious stranger, also known as The-Man-Who-Did-It, relates events that supposedly occurred thirty years earlier, during the early part of the nineteenth century. By his account, the speaker is kidnapped by fellow members of a secret society, because he is suspected to be a threat to their secrecy. (This was likely based on the 1826 kidnapping of William Morgan and the start of the Anti-Masonry movement.) I-Am-The-Man is taken to a cave in Kentucky; there he is led by a cavern dweller on a long subterranean journey. It becomes an inner journey of the spirit as much as a geographical trip through underground realms. The book blends passages on the nature of physical phenomena, such as gravity and volcanoes, with spiritualist speculation and adventure-story elements (like traversing a landscape of giant mushrooms). The whole ends with a summary letter from "I-Am-The-Man" and a conclusion from Drury. Subsequent editions of the book added various prefatory and supplementary materials.
3927411	/m/0b74g1	Valiant : A Modern Tale of Faerie	Holly Black	2005	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book follows the life of runaway Valerie Russell in New York. Valerie is the child of a single mother and is quite tomboyish. At the start of the novel, Val attends high school, is a lacrosse player, and is best friends with the eccentric lesbian-identified Ruth. Val discovers her boyfriend, Tom, and her mother are having an affair. Betrayed and not sure where to go, Val runs away to New York City. She meets up with a group of teen-squatters, including Lolli (as in lollipop), Dave, and Luis. Val earns the nickname "Prince Valiant" after she helps a drag queen locate her shoe. This may be a homage to Hal Foster's comic strip, Prince Valiant or Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur. Though she earns the trust of the rest of the group, Luis remains wary of Val. She soon learns about the group's contact with a troll, Ravus. He lives beneath a bridge, a reference to the traditional fairy tale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Ravus also makes 'Never' that faeries in exile use so their bodies can be resistant towards iron. These exiles are dispersed throughout the city, and Dave and Luis must deliver the glamour to them. 'Never', according to the novel, can be used as a drug by humans. When used, humans are given magic for a short period of time. It's highly addictive; a comparison can be drawn between it and heroin. Lolli and Dave introduce Val to taking "Nevermore," as they refer to it. Val, like the other squatters, is soon hooked. Ravus, despite Val's first impressions, is much kinder than he appears. He begins to teach her swordplay and the bond between them strengthens. Val's mounting problems and addiction take a nasty turn, and the trust Ravus has in her is threatened. Many of the Seelie court exiles are being poisoned. Ravus is blamed for the crime. When Ruth arrives, attempting to convince Val to come home, she refuses and Ruth insists she won't leave without Val. Val agrees to go home, but says she must say goodbye to Ravus before she leaves. She attempts to find him in his alcove, but he is not home, so she finds Ruth, Lolli and Luis by Belvedere Castle. Luis, all the while making sexual thenceforwards with Lolli very unexpectedly, informs her Dave has angrily stormed off, and they all fall asleep in a terrible state. In the middle of the night, Val awakes to see a tree-spirit faerie, who leads her to a festival by the water, where faeries and humans called "sweet tooths" run around freely. Ravus arrives, and delirious and half-starved, Val kisses him. He is pleased, until Mabry arrives as well, and when Val realized Mabry is the one who killed all the Fey. She tries to tell Ravus but Mabry cuts in, telling Ravus Val has been stealing his potions, and she flees as he becomes enraged. Ruth and Val go to find evidence of Mabry's murders, and they find a harp in which Mabry has strung the hair of those she's killed, including that of Tamson, Ravus' best friend and Mabry's ex-lover. When the hairs are plucked, they sing of their deaths, revealing that Mabry is responsible for Tamson's death and Ravus' exile. The girls also find Luis. The three of them come back to the other Luis and Lolli, and they realize that Dave is impersonating Luis, uncontrollably high off Never he got from Mabry after putting poison in Ravus' potions for her. Dave takes off his glamour, laughing, and falls unconscious. Ruth rushes him to the hospital as Lolli runs off, and Luis and Val rush to find Ravus so he can cure Dave. They find that Mabry has cut out Ravus' heart, and she runs off to the Unseelie Court with it. When she leaves, Val pulls back the curtains and turn Ravus to stone, and Val and Luis pursue Mabry into the Unseelie Court. She challenges Mabry to a first-blood duel for Ravus' heart with the glass sword belonging to Ravus, and after a moment's decision to never use Never again, she fights Mabry on talent alone, stabbing Mabry in the throat. She and Luis rush back to Ravus, and after placing his heart back into his chest, he instantly heals. Ravus gives Luis the tools to go heal his brother, and he and Val finally admit their love for one another. Eventually, Val decides to leave the streets and return home with Ruth. She and Ravus continually see one another, and Val says she plans to go to NY for college so she can see him. The two kiss, and Val is happy her life is back to normal, with the exception of having a faerie for a boyfriend and never being able to introduce him to her mother. Some fans have pointed out that Lolli, Dave and Luis are similar to Lutie-loo, Gristle and Spike from Tithe, respectively. Note: In the book Roiben and Kaye make appearances. Silarial and Nicnevin are referred to by Mabry.
3928946	/m/0b76hp	Villa Incognito	Tom Robbins		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Following the arrest of one of the MIAs, for trafficking drugs while dressed as a priest, the novel depicts American life in a post-9/11 context through the involvement of the two sisters.
3934211	/m/0b7h89	Uncle Fred in the Springtime	P. G. Wodehouse	1939-08-18	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In London, Pongo Twistleton is having money troubles, and his wealthy friend Horace Pendlebury-Davenport is in trouble with his girl, Pongo's sister Valerie, for hiring Claude "Mustard" Pott to trail her during the Drones Club weekend at Le Touquet. Pongo resolves to call in the redoubtable Uncle Fred for assistance. Meanwhile at Blandings, Horace's uncle the Duke of Dunstable, as well demanding eggs to throw at whistling gardeners, has taken it into his head that the Empress needs some fitness training, and Lord Emsworth needs help; in the absence of his trusty brother Galahad, he calls in the next best thing: Gally's old friend Uncle Fred. Horace, having fallen out with his cousin Ricky Gilpin over Gilpin's fiancee Polly Pott, daughter of Mustard, lands Pongo even further in the soup by being dressed as a Zulu rather than a Boy Scout during a round of the Clothes Stakes, run by Pott at the Drones. While Uncle Fred ponders how to get Polly into Blandings to court her prospective uncle-in-law, Emsworth gives them a chance by insulting Sir Roderick "Pimples" Glossop, who he was supposed to engage to analyse the increasingly loopy Duke of Dunstable. Fred seizes his chance, and heads down to Blandings posing as Glossop, with Pongo playing the role of his secretary and nephew, and Polly his daughter Gwendolyne. They meet Glossop on the train, but head him off, only to pass him into the hands of Rupert Baxter, now working for the Duke. Arriving at Blandings, they are met by Lord Bosham, who was conned out of his wallet by Uncle Fred the previous day. Baxter is sacked, having been seen at a ball by Horace, but is taken on again when Uncle Fred persuades Horace, and the Duke, that Horace is suffering delusions. Horace heads off for a rest-cure, and Baxter is left unable to reveal that he has seen through Fred disguise, having met the real Glossop before. Baxter, however, is put on his guard, and informs Lady Constance; she in turn has Bosham hire a detective to protect her jewels, and he of course selects Mustard Pott. Dunstable's scheme to acquire the pig continues apace, and he calls in his strapping nephew to help, but when Gilpin asks for funds to buy an onion soup bar, thus enabling him to marry Polly, the two row and part. Dunstable ropes in Baxter instead. Uncle Fred, meeting Pott just after he has taken £250 from Lord Bosham at Persian Monarchs, takes the money off him, insisting it will help Polly marry wealthy Horace. Pott, meeting Gilpin at the The Emsworth Arms, tells him this story, and the enraged poet chases a fearful Horace back to the Castle. Fred gives the money to Pongo to pass on to Polly for Gilpin's benefit, but she is spurned by him, and lets Pongo use the cash to pay off his debts. When Fred has reunited the couple, more money is required. Pott is persuaded to take it from Dunstable at Persian Monarchs, but the wily peer wins himself £300. Fred tries to get it back, but Dunstable has the pig, captured earlier by Baxter, hidden in his bathroom, and is keeping his room under lock and key. Having knocked out the vigilant Baxter with a Mickey Finn, Fred finally gains access to the room, Pongo having lured Dunstable away with a rendition of "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond". He is caught by a shotgun-bearing Bosham, just as Pott drinks a second Mickey destined for Dunstable, and is locked in a cupboard. Valerie arrives, reunited with her man and hot for vengeance on the uncle that made her Horace think himself insane, and confirms Fred's identity; Fred convinces all that Emsworth has become infatuated with Polly, and that he is there to put a stop to it. He takes Dunstable's roll of cash to pay the girl off, insisting that his visit remain a secret to maintain the Threepwood dignity, and heads back to London with not only the money for Gilpin's soup bar, but an extra fifty quid for himself to blow on a few joyous weeks in the city.
3934685	/m/0b7hyw	Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth				 Commissioner Gordon informs Batman that the patients of Arkham Asylum have taken over the facility, threatening to murder the staff unless Batman agrees to meet with them. Among the hostages is Dr. Charles Cavendish, Arkham's administrator, and Dr. Ruth Adams, a therapist. The patients are led by the Joker, who kills a guard to spur Batman to obey his wishes. Meanwhile, Two-Face's mental condition has deteriorated as a result of Adams' therapy; she replaced Two-Face's trademark coin with a six-sided die and a tarot deck, hoping that he would realize that he doesn't need any of them. Instead, the treatment renders him incapable of even making simple decisions, such as going to the bathroom. The Joker forces Batman into a game of hide and seek, giving him one hour to escape Arkham before his adversaries are sent to hunt him down. However, unbeknownst to Batman, the Joker shortens the time from one hour after being pressured by the other inmates. Batman subsequently encounters Clayface, Mad Hatter, and Maxie Zeus, among other villains. During a struggle with Killer Croc, Batman is thrown out of a window, grabbing onto the statue of an angel. Clutching the statue's bronze spear, Batman climbs back inside and impales Croc before throwing him out the window, sustaining a severe wound from the spear in the process. Batman finally reaches a secret room high in the towers of the asylum. Inside, he discovers Cavendish dressed in a bridal gown and threatening Adams with a razor. It is revealed that he orchestrated the riots. When questioned by Batman, Cavendish has him read a passage from the diary of the asylum's founder, Amadeus Arkham. In flashbacks, we see that Arkham's mentally ill mother, Elizabeth, suffered delusions of being tormented by a supernatural bat. After seeing the creature himself, Arkham cut his mother's throat to end her suffering. He blocked out the memory, only to have it return after an inmate, Martin "Mad Dog" Hawkins, raped and murdered Arkham's wife and daughter. Traumatized, Arkham donned his mother's wedding dress and razor, vowing to bind the evil spirit of "The Bat" with sorcery. He treats Hawkins for months before finally killing by means of electrocution during a shock therapy session. Arkham continues his mission even after he is incarcerated in his own asylum; using his fingernails, he scratches the words of a binding spell all over his cell until his death. After discovering the diary, razor, and dress, Cavendish came to believe that he was destined to continue Arkham's work. On April Fools Day--the date Arkham's family was murdered--Cavendish released the patients and lured Batman to the asylum, believing him to be the bat Arkham spoke of. Cavendish accuses him of feeding the evil of the asylum by bringing it more insane souls. Batman and Cavendish proceed to struggle, which ends after Adams slashes Cavendish's throat with the razor. Seizing an axe, Batman hacks down the front door of the asylum, proclaiming that the inmates are now free. The Joker offers to put him out of his misery. Batman retrieves Two-Face's coin from Adams and returns it to him, stating that it should be up to Two-Face to decide Batman's fate. Two-Face declares that they will kill Batman if the coin lands scratched side up, but let him go if the unscarred side appears. Two-Face flips the coin and declares Batman free. The Joker bids Batman good-bye, taunting him by saying that should life ever become too much for him in "the asylum" (the outside world) then he always has a place in Arkham. As Batman disappears into the night, Two-Face stands looking at the coin and it is revealed that it landed scratched side up – he chose to let Batman go. He then turns to the stack of tarot cards and recites a passage from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards."
3935482	/m/0b7k3g	Rape of the Fair Country	Alexander Cordell	1959-01	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cordell's first successful novel draws the hardship of life in early industrial Wales with the father starting off as positive towards the English coal and iron masters of the time but then on seeing his family and neighbours suffer (and sometime die) he revolts with his son, Iestyn to protest. The family life leads to the fight for trade unions and Chartism. The historical background against which the novel is set is described in considerable detail with profoundly researched events like the 1839 Newport Rising show this book to be worthy of the bestseller status it achieved in the UK as well as the USA. Cordell told of the story of the Chartist movement starting in Wales accurately and clearly like no other, but with a background of humanity of the Mortymer family.
3935529	/m/0b7k67	Enoc Huws				 The story concerns the activities of the villainous Captain Trefor, and is set in the small town of Treflan, which appears in two earlier novels by the same author.
3935667	/m/0b7kcg	The Secret Room				 The story is set in the reign of King Charles II of England and follows the experiences of Quaker leader Rowland Ellis who founded a Welsh colony in Pennsylvania after being forced to leave Wales because of religious persecution. A sequel, Y Rhandir Mwyn (The Gentle Region), continues the story. Rowland Ellis becomes a Quaker as a result of the influence of a neighbour, but his wife does not share his religious beliefs. Following her death, he marries a sympathetic cousin. He is betrayed to the authorities by a servant he has dismissed, who describes a "secret room" he claims to have seen in the house, containing objects of Catholic worship. However, this is not the main reason why the novel is named "The Secret Room", as it also refers to the secret room within one's heart where the inner light is found. Ellis and his fellow Quakers are imprisoned and illegally condemned to death, but are released following the direct intervention of the king. Nevertheless, they decide to leave Wales for a better life in America. cy:Y Stafell Ddirgel
3937818	/m/0b7p2c	Black Creek Crossing	John Saul	2004-03-16	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Angel Sullivan has always been the outcast, suffering the taunts of cruel schoolmates and the wild fits of an alcoholic father. Things for Angel's family have hit rock bottom until a call from her aunt has them moving to a new town and making a fresh start. In the town of Roundtree, Massachusetts a beautiful home awaits, a home that is selling at a steal of a price, there is only one problem...the house at Black Creek Crossing holds a murderous secret. Seth Baker lives in Roundtree and, much the same as Angel, he too is the outcast of his schoolmates, as well the victim of a psychically abusive father. Seth does his best to deal with his father, but finds sanctuary in photograph taking, until he meets Angel. As Seth and Angel become better friends, Seth tells her of the deadly legacy surrounding her home and the rumors of supernatural possession that still dwells there. Angel, desperate for the truth about Black Creek Crossing, uncovers a centuries-old horror that lies within her home's walls. Now, that Angel and Seth have uncovered the dark secrets buried in Roundtree, they find themselves trapped in a maelstrom of desire and violence that will erupt in unspeakable tragedy. `Black Creek Crossing' is a chilling page-turner that begs to be read in one sitting. From the shocking opening to the explosive climax the plot speeds along with unstoppable force. Vivid gothic descriptions and likable characters combined with creepy scares will hold readers breathless until the final page has been turned.
3939949	/m/0b7skz	A London Life	Henry James		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Laura Wing, an impoverished American girl, is visiting her sister Selina Berrington in London. Selina's husband Lionel, boorish and often drunk, is preparing to divorce his wife for her adultery with Charlie Crispin. Laura challenges Selina about her affair and doubts Selina's protestations of innocence. Lady Davenant, an elderly friend of the family, counsels Laura not to take her sister's marital troubles so hard. Laura meets a pleasant but boring American named Wendover, who becomes a suitor. Eventually, after a tempestuous and (for the reader) entertaining scene at the opera, Selina leaves her husband and goes to Brussels with Crispin. Laura spurns Wendover's marriage proposal and pursues her sister to Brussels, where she accomplishes nothing. Laura finally goes back to America, where Wendover follows her though there is no assurance as to how their future will play out. The story ends with a reminder that the case of Berrington v. Berrington and others is upcoming in the courts.
3940646	/m/0b7td1	Great Northern?	Arthur Ransome	1947	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Swallows, Amazons and Ds are all on a sailing cruise with Captain Flint in the Outer Hebrides. While the older members of the party clean the boat before returning her to the owner, the younger ones explore inland and a mysterious bird is seen nesting on an island in a loch. The question arises whether it is a Great Northern Diver, which has never been known to nest in the British Isles, or a Black-Throated Diver. Mr Jemmerling the expert they consult turns out to be a deadly enemy of the birds, as he collects birds eggs and stuffed skins of birds. Hence they try to protect the birds while gathering photographic evidence of their nesting. Complicating the matter is a misunderstanding with the local Scottish inhabitants who are mostly Gaelic speaking. As the plot involves more excitement and violence than usual, with the egg-collector attempting to shoot the rare bird of the title, some have classified this book as one of the metafictional stories in the series: a fantasy tale made up by the children themselves. The other two books generally agreed to be metafictional are Peter Duck and Missee Lee.
3946888	/m/0b82n7	Angry White Pyjamas	Robert Twigger		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 The book is set in Tokyo in the mid-1990s. Twigger is living with two friends in a tiny apartment near central Tokyo. They all decide to enrol at the Yoshinkan Hombu Dojo in order to get fit and break out of their sedentary life-style. Soon after beginning regular training, Twigger decides that the only way to truly experience aikido is to do the Yoshinkan Senshusei course, a gruelling 11-month program to train up instructors of Yoshinkan aikido. The course consists of four hours of training, five days a week, in addition to dojo-cleaning duties, special training weekends and demonstrations. Twigger spends the majority of his time describing the rigor and sometimes agony of the very intensive course. He refers to doing kneeling techniques, or suwari-waza, until his knees bled, only to practice the next day and in so doing tear open the scabs. He describes techniques being performed with such vigor and intensity that smashing one's head into the mat was a frequent occurrence. Other experiences on the course include "hajime" sessions where one technique is performed repeatedly, without a break, sometimes for up to half-an-hour or more. During these sessions, trainees sometimes pass out or vomit, especially in the summer months. Instructors sometimes dish out punishments to trainees if they feel they are not pushing themselves enough, including rounds of push-ups, sit-ups and bunny hops. Other people featured in the book include several top Yoshinkan instructors, including Chida, Shioda and Chino, as well as Robert Mustard, the chief foreign instructor and David Rubens from England. Teachers are sometimes portrayed as being quite cold and occasionally brutal and unsympathetic to the students, whom they are trying to push to greater and greater efforts in order to build their technique and "spirit". In addition, Twigger describes other aspects of Tokyo and his life there, including his relationship with his girlfriend and her family, his work at a Japanese high-school as an English teacher, and stories of living with his two flatmates. He also gives thoughts and observations about Japan and Japanese culture.
3946926	/m/0b82rr	The Fifth Man	Randall Ingermanson	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Eight months into their stay on Mars, the life-sciences specialist discovers a microbial fossil. Subsequent to this, the crew begin to suffer various mishaps, including damage to mission property and direct attacks upon themselves. Complicating the situation is the apparent psychiatric breakdown of the mission commander and his definite attempts to injure or kill his fellow crewmembers. On Earth, the Mars Mission Director, working with an agent of the FBI, races to discover who sabotaged the mission before the crew even arrived on Mars—and who might be trying to strand the crew on Mars now that they're on it. He is shocked to discover that his own Flight Director committed the initial sabotage—he was trying to seed Mars with a bacterium that would be taken as evidence of life on Mars, thus ensuring continued funding of Project Ares, the official name for the program. But when the life-sciences specialist falls ill from an actual microbial infection—from live bacteria which she has subsequently discovered—the mishaps multiply, with a corresponding increase in the physical danger to the crew. Someone other than the Flight Director is responsible for this. At the very end, that someone is revealed to be a NASA engineer who fears that the crew, now on their way back to Earth, are bringing back a germ that could potentially kill millions of people—this although the crew clearly showed that the germ was sensitive to the antibiotics they had carried with them. The mission ends with the psychiatrically challenged commander sacrificing his own life to save the rest of the crew—and the marriage of the two mission specialists aboard their Earth Return Vehicle.
3947088	/m/0b830h	Beyond the Pleasure Principle	Sigmund Freud	1920		 "Beyond the Pleasure Principle is a difficult text." As Ernest Jones, one of Freud's closest associates and a member of his Inner Ring, put it, "the train of thought [is] by no means easy to follow...and Freud's views on the subject have often been considerably misinterpreted." What have been called the "two distinct frescoes or canti" of Beyond the Pleasure Principle break between sections III and IV. If, as Otto Fenichel remarked, Freud's "new [instinctual] classification has two bases, one speculative, and one clinical", thus far the clinical. In Freud's own words, the second section "is speculation, often far-fetched speculation, which the reader will consider or dismiss according to his individual predilection" - it has been noted that "in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud used that unpromising word "speculations" more than once". Freud begins with "a commonplace then unchallenged in psychoanalytic theory: 'The course of mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle...a strong tendency toward the pleasure principle'". After considering the inevitable presence of unpleasant experiences in the life of the mind, he concludes the book's first section to the effect that the presence of such unpleasant experiences "does not contradict the dominance of the pleasure principle...does not seem to necessitate any far-reaching limitation of the pleasure principle." Freud proceeds to look for "evidence, for the existence of hitherto unsuspected forces 'beyond' the pleasure principle."—in four main areas: children's games, as exemplified in his grandson's famous "fort-da" game; "the recurrent dreams of war neurotics...; the pattern of self-injuring behaviour that can be traced through the lives of certain people ["fate neurosis"]; the tendency of many patients in psycho-analysis to act out over and over again unpleasant experiences of their childhood." From these cases, Freud inferred the existence of motivations beyond the pleasure principle. In the first half of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, "a first phase, the most varied manifestations of repetition, considered as their irreducible quality, are attributed to the essence of drives" in precisely the same way. Building on his 1914 article "Recollecting,Repeating and Working Through", Freud highlights how the "patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and...is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of...remembering it as something belonging to the past:" a "compulsion to repeat." Freud still wanted to examine the relationship between repetition compulsion and the pleasure principle. Although compulsive behaviors evidently satisfied some sort of drive, they were a source of direct unpleasure. Somehow, "no lesson has been learnt from the old experience of these activities having led only to unpleasure. In spite of that, they are repeated, under pressure of a compulsion". Also noting repetitions in the lives of normal people—who appeared to be "pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some "daemonic" power" Arguing that dreams in which one relives trauma serve a binding function in the mind, connected to repetition compulsion, Freud admits that such dreams are an exception to the rule that the dream is the fulfillment of a wish. Asserting that the first task of the mind is to bind excitations to prevent trauma (so that the pleasure principle does not begin to dominate mental activities until the excitations are bound), he reiterates the clinical fact that for "a person in analysis...the compulsion to repeat the events of his childhood in the transference evidently disregards the pleasure principle in every way". Freud begins to look for analogies repetition compulsion in the "essentially conservative...feature of instinctual life...the lower we go in the animal scale the more stereotyped does instinctual behavior appear". Thereafter "a leap in the text can be noticed when Freud places the compulsion to repeat on an equal footing with 'an urge...to restore an earlier state of things'" - ultimately that of the original inorganic condition. Declaring that "the aim of life is death" and "inanimate things existed before living ones", Freud interprets an organism’s drive to avoid danger only as a way of avoiding a short-circuit to death: the organisms seeks to die in its own way. He thus found his way to his celebrated concept of the death instinct. Thereupon, "Freud plunged into the thickets of speculative modern biology, even into philosophy, in search of corroborative evidence" - looking to "arguments of every kind, frequently borrowed from fields outside of psychoanalytic practice, calling to the rescue biology, philosophy, and mythology". He turned to prewar experiments on protozoa - of perhaps questionable relevance, even if it is not the case that 'his interpretation of the experiments on the successive generations of protozoa contains a fatal flaw'. The most that can perhaps be said is that Freud did not find "any biological argument which contradicts his dualistic conception of instinctual life", but at the same time, "as Jones (1957) points out, 'no biological observation can be found to support the idea of a death instinct, one which contradicts all biological principles'" either. Freud then continued with a reference to "the harbour of Schopenhauer's philosophy"; but in groping for a return to the clinical he admitted that "it looks suspiciously as though we were trying to find a way out of a highly embarrassing situation at any price". Freud eventually decided that he could find a clinical manifestation of the death instinct in the phenomenon of masochism, "hitherto regarded as secondary to sadism...and suggested that there could be a primary masochism, a self-injuring tendency which would be an indication of the death instinct". To then explain the sexual instinct as well in terms of a compulsion to repeat, Freud inserts a myth from Plato that humans are driven to reproduce in order to join together the sexes, which had once existed in single individuals who were both male and female - still "in utter disregard of disciplinary distinctions"; and admits again the speculative nature of his own ideas, "lacking a direct translation of observation into theory....One may have made a lucky hit or one may have gone shamefully astray"'. Nevertheless with the libido or Eros as the life force finally set out on the other side of the repetition compulsion equation, the way was clear for the book's closing "vision of two elemental pugnacious forces in the mind, Eros and Thanatos, locked in eternal battle".
3947476	/m/0b83jb	Oxygen	Randall Ingermanson	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As the novel begins, Dr. Valerie ("Valkerie") Jansen is on a field trip on the slope of Mount Trident on the Alaska Peninsula. In real life, this volcano has not erupted for many years—but in the novel, Mount Trident vents sulfur dioxide into the air, and this gas settles into the valley where Valkerie is encamped. She barely survives the experience, at one point taking the air from the tires of her Jeep, which is the only air available for her to breathe. The next morning, the Chief Administrator of NASA, together with one of NASA's senior physicians, lands on the slope of Mount Trident in a helicopter. They are looking for Valkerie, because they wish to interview her for a position as an Astronaut Candidate. The conversation that follows is very confusing to both sides, chiefly because Valkerie is convinced that Mount Trident is about to erupt and all three must evacuate at once. Eventually, however, Valkerie climbs aboard the helicopter with the two NASA officials. Eventually she is summoned to Houston, Texas, and reports for training at NASA's headquarters complex. A hot dispute between the NASA Administrator and Nate Harrington, the Mars Mission Director, results in her beginning a training regimen that is more grueling than usual, leading her to believe that Harrington wants her dropped from the program on any pretext he can invent. But in fact the NASA brass are very much impressed with her academic record and her seemingly unique ability to cope with "five-sigma" days—days remarkable for a series of dire, often life-threatening crises. (Her breathing the air in her Jeep tires to survive the fumarolic venting incident is a case in point.) As for Mr. Harrington, he has never wanted anything more than to have the NASA administrator respect his prerogatives as Mars Mission Director—and furthermore, he is distracted by a series of events that have nothing to do with Valkerie or her candidacy. Nate's distractions include: a serious budget problem that has forced NASA to sell exclusive broadcast rights to a major television network, a clear threat from a prominent US Senator that he "has the votes" to terminate NASA's flagship program, a compromise of project security that darkly suggests a terrorist plot against NASA (and requires him to have an FBI agent as a semi-regular on the NASA campus)--and a controversy involving the crew selection for Ares 10, which is to be the first crewed mission to Mars. NASA's psychiatrists have abruptly demanded interviews with all members of the Ares 10 crew—Josh Bennett, Kennedy Hampton, Alexis "Lex" Ohta, and Bob "Kaggo" Kaganovski. Bob in particular fears that the psychiatrists want to remove him from the crew—because he has never felt entirely secure in his position, mainly because he does not have the devil-may-care abandon that is part of the "astronaut stereotype" and which Kennedy displays in overabundance. So when the psychiatrists call him in for an interview, he tells them that he would gladly obey any order given him by Josh, the assigned mission commander—not mentioning that he always reserves the right to act as he sees fit if he thinks that Josh, or any other commander, has issued a wrong order. But the psychiatrists are not suspicious of Bob at all, but rather of Josh. Specifically, their protocols inform them that having one man, even the mission commander, dominate the crew is a recipe for disaster. Bob's interview, added to an earlier interview given by Kennedy, only add to their disquiet. During their deliberations, they then run a computer-based decision-analytic model on two possible crew complements—one including Josh, and the other removing Josh as mission commander and assigning Valkerie Jansen to the flight. To everyone's surprise, a crew complement that includes Valkerie scores very high on their decision-analytic indices. Thus the psychiatrists issue their final "recommendation," which carries the force of an order: Josh Bennett is to be dropped from the crew, Kennedy Hampton is to be promoted to mission commander, and the crew will gain a new mission specialist: Valkerie Jansen. Valkerie feels doubly guilty about accepting the assignment. First, she sees herself as usurping the place of another, more experienced astronaut (Josh). Second, she is afraid that a prior association will return to haunt her—specifically, her relationship with a fellow student at Yale University who killed himself in a laboratory explosion he had caused because of his notion of Christian duty. (This bombing incident took place during the heyday of Operation Rescue--and furthermore, the presence of a religious-motivated picket line at NASA's main gate only adds to her apprehensions about having her Christian associations revealed.) Josh is ignorant of her fears concerning her Christian associations, but recognizes that she might feel guilty over supplanting him. So he takes her on a training flight to the Kennedy Space Center and there tells her that her primary duty is to Project Ares, which will shut down completely if she does not accept the assignment. He gallantly offers to take personal responsibility for her remaining training. With this assurance, she returns to Houston and tells Nate Harrington that she will accept the assignment. In January 2014, Ares 10 launches into space. The launch is very violent, because the mission controllers decide to launch in the face of a crosswind that exceeds NASA's stated limits. This causes damage to multiple habitat systems, including the telemetry bus, the Ku-band antenna, and a solar panel. Valkerie develops serious doubts about continuing the mission, especially when she catches Kennedy in a lie about a chemical fluid spill (he says that he spilled juice from a snack container, but Valkerie knows better) and then appears to threaten her with the non-regulation acetylene blowtorch he has brought aboard. Bob is actually no more eager to continue than Valkerie. But Kennedy insists on continuing the mission and browbeats his crew into telling Houston that they are all agreed. Subsequently, they perform trans-Martian injection, thus committing themselves. Three months later, they have repaired their data telemetry bus, and Kennedy and Bob perform an EVA to repair the Ku-band antenna, a repair that would have been pointless before. After completing the repair, they proceed to inspect the dual solar panels to see whether they can repair the damaged panel. Bob discovers some stray exposed wires that do not appear on anyone's schematics of the habitat. He proceeds to test them with a multimeter--and by a fateful error, sets the multimeter to measure resistance rather than electromotive potential ("voltage"). As a result, he inadvertently bridges a circuit between the wires—and thus causes an explosion. Someone has, quite simply, planted a bomb on board, and Bob has triggered it. The explosion blows away the otherwise intact solar panel, compromises the hull, and dazes Bob and fills his arm with what turns out to be stainless-steel shrapnel—a detail whose full significance the astronauts will realize only much later. Valkerie, standing by in the EVA suit room, immediately suits up, places the unconscious Lex Ohta into a rescue bubble, hastily repairs the hull breach, and releases the remaining oxygen from the fuel-cell tanks. Only then can she open the airlock to admit Kennedy, who at first insists that Bob is dead. Valkerie, believing that Kennedy acted carelessly, goes outside to fetch him in. Presently Bob recovers enough to discover that Valkerie's repair was incomplete, and simply asks her to help him make a more complete repair. But as a result of the original hull breach and Valkerie's incomplete repair efforts, the crew no longer has enough oxygen on board to survive the transit to Mars. Neither will they have sufficient power for all ship's systems from the remaining solar panel when they reach Mars. When NASA—represented by a very shaken Josh Bennett as CapCom—fails to inform them of this fact in a timely fashion, the astronauts bleakly conclude that they can no longer trust NASA. Josh Bennett refuses to give up on the crew. He remembers that an Earth Return Vehicle is on its way to Mars at the same time, and proposes to accelerate it to intercept Ares 10, so that the crew can use it as a lifeboat. Engineer Cathe Willison computes a solution for the intercept—but then points out that the oxygen will only last if two of the crew sacrifice themselves. Valkerie, however, proposes another solution: observing that Lex, who is still in a coma, is consuming less oxygen, she proposes that two other astronauts go into drug-induced comas, with one astronaut remaining awake to accomplish the rendezvous and then reawaken the rest of the crew. NASA's doctors conclude that Valkerie could in fact synthesize enough sodium pentathol to accomplish this plan. But this raises the question of which astronaut will remain awake. That question is more than academic—because a review of surveillance tapes made inside the habitat prior to launch identifies six people only who could have planted the bomb—the four members of the crew, Josh Bennett, and Nate Harrington. No one suspects Nate or Josh (not yet), and so the astronauts suspect one another—and furthermore, Kennedy is deliberately manipulating his crewmates' emotions, even to the point of crudely demanding sexual favors from Valkerie (which she refuses to grant). Two further items of evidence eventually decide the issue in Valkerie's favor. One, Josh Bennett discovers that Kennedy in fact manipulated NASA's psychiatric brass in order to have Josh removed from the crew. Two, a computer simulation predicts that if Bob is the one to stay awake, he'll use up all the oxygen. Bob, ever reserving his right to act at discretion, secretly prepares a dose of sodium pentathol to use on Valkerie after she has sedated Kennedy. But at the last minute, Valkerie tells him that she forgives him for not trusting her. He cannot bring himself to rebel against Valkerie, and so allows her to sedate him. Valkerie now faces a problem with which she almost cannot cope: total isolation, with no one to converse with—not even Houston, because she must power down the radio to conserve energy. She spends most of the time in prayer, but mostly crying out to God to "send her an e-mail" and give her a reason to believe. As the ERV continues its approach, Valkerie asks for and receives permission to revive Bob so that he can help her pilot the habitat to a rendezvous with the ERV. Unhappily, the ERV is approaching far too fast. Valkerie's attempt to match velocity with it ends in failure, and worse—she uses up more fuel than they can spare. With the ERV speeding past the habitat, Bob and Valkerie suddenly remember that the ERV carries a crew re-entry vehicle with its own engine. They issue orders to detach it from the ERV and bring it to a slow rendezvous—and then Valkerie makes another spacewalk to cut loose its oxygen tank and bring it aboard. Bob, in turn, receives instructions to build a Sabatier scrubber—an ultra-low-power device for removing carbon dioxide from the ship's air. They then reawaken Kennedy, who must regain his strength to perform the landing—and then decide that the only way they can land is to abandon the original mission profile calling for a Martian orbital capture, and instead dive straight down to the Martian surface. This is an incredibly risky maneuver, one which they almost do not complete because they are about to use an aerobrake deployment system that is non-functional. (Another failure of trust is responsible for this predicament, which they avoid only by some last-minute deduction of NASA's true intentions.) They intend to land in a camp that previous missions have already established—but they end up landing too far away. However, they manage to pool their remaining oxygen to give to Bob and Kennedy, so that they can retrieve a pressurized powered rover to rescue Valkerie and Lex. When the men return, they find the women unconscious and seemingly dead—but Valkerie has found Bob's hidden dose of sodium pentathol and uses that to put her and Lex into a coma once again—so that they survive, but Valkerie suffers multiple rib fractures when Bob attempts cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Finally, the astronauts realize the significance of the stainless-steel shrapnel with which Bob had been wounded in the initial explosion. None of the ship's systems was made of stainless steel—in fact, the lack of any material but plastic was a source of great frustration to Valkerie when she first attempted to seal the hull breach. Valkerie and Lex realize that the stainless steel must have come from a bacterial culture vial that Josh Bennett had received from a former girlfriend in Antarctica—and that the vial contained a radiation-resistant bacterium, the same one that in fact had contaminated some of the ship's systems after the explosion. Now the astronauts realize what has happened to them: Josh Bennett, fearing cancellation of Project Ares and the disbanding of NASA, sought to "seed" a radio-resistant bacterium on Mars for the astronauts to "discover." To accomplish this, he did plant a bomb on board, designed to detonate with the deployment of the aerobrakes. But the damage to the habitat on the rocky launch ultimately caused the bomb to detonate in transit. This also explains Josh's brittle emotional state—he realizes that his attempt to give the astronauts something to discover very nearly killed them instead. Bob ultimately tells Josh that Valkerie has figured it out, and that they all forgive him for what he did, knowing as they do that he never meant them any harm. The last scene is a set-up for the sequel: Bob, who is now enamored of Valkerie, proposes marriage to her before a worldwide six-billion-strong television audience that has tuned into watch "the first two astronauts to walk on Mars."
3948679	/m/0b853j	The Tenants of Moonbloom	Edward Lewis Wallant	1963		 The story documents the emotional awakening of Norman Moonbloom, an isolated, apathetic man in his thirties who, having recently ended a career as 'perpetual student', is now reluctantly in the employ of his brother Irwin as a property agent. Irwin's tenants occupy a series of dilapidated apartments in some of the poorer areas of Manhattan, and Norman's life consists of attempting to collect their rent while constantly making them empty promises about much-needed repairs. At first, Moonbloom resolutely insulates himself against his troublesome tenants, with their incessant complaining and idiosyncratic ways. Little by little, however, his defenses begin crumbling as they talk to him, argue with him, and impart to him their secrets and hopes. These unaccustomed intimacies bring on a seismic shift in Norman's personality, eventually inspiring him to defy his brother (who wants the apartments left exactly as they are) by undertaking all the promised repairs himself. As he goes from apartment to apartment, painting, plastering, and further immersing himself in his tenants' lives, the meek little rent collector finally comes to life.
3948986	/m/0b85hd	Inexcusable	Chris Lynch	2005-10-25		 The novel begins with Keir arguing with Gigi about the events which occurred the night before. It continues with Keir's first-person narration of his senior year in high school. Keir is crushed when he learns that Gigi has accused him of date rape. He goes on to tell Gigi that he loves her, and would never do such a thing. One of Keir's main problems is his home life. His father treats him more like a friend than a son. The big question throughout the novel is this: "Could a self-proclaimed "good guy" be capable of such a heinous act?" Keir goes over the events of his senior year that led to this night, and how this could have happened. The novel never mentions Gigi's point of view, so her feelings and thoughts are not taken into consideration through the use of dialogue. As the novel unfolds, Keir becomes more unpopular because of his substance abuse, school behavior, and his infamous tackle on the football field giving him the nickname "Killer." Keir's self-image dissipates after he accidentally paralyzes an opponent, participates in bullying classmates, and then tries cocaine. First, he leans on Gigi because she listens to him and doesn't judge him. Once he learns about Gigi and her new boyfriend, he is angry and leans on his two sisters, Fran and Mary. Keir's older sisters have mixed feelings about his behavior. He leans on Fran the most because she sees the "good" in Keir despite his terrible actions. One night close to graduation, after a night of partying and substance abuse, Gigi decides to accompany Keir on a visit to Fran's college and they end up in her dorm room alone. In addition to all of this, Gigi tells Keir that her boyfriend could not go to the dance and she needed him to come with her to the dance. When they were both in that cabin there were two beds and when Keir saw how beautiful Gigi looked he went to her bed and something inexcusable happened. Then, the setting reverts back to the opening with the two arguing about what happened while they were sleeping next to each other.
3949059	/m/0b85nq	Albert Angelo	B.S. Johnson	1964		 Albert Angelo tells the story of Albert Albert, a substitute teacher who longs to be a professional architect. He has had to resort to teaching to make ends meet, as he is not an accomplished enough architect to make a living from it. Living in a flat in the Angel in London, he finds himself teaching in increasingly tougher schools, and part of the story concerns his struggle with difficult pupils in class, mirroring Albert's struggle with life in general. Through the reproduction of some of their essays, we also learn the pupils' opinions of Albert and their attitudes towards him, which are often hilarious. Albert devotes much thought to his ex-girlfriend Jenny, with whom he is still very much in love and who he feels betrayed him. He reminisces about her frequently. His friend Terry, whom he accompanies to late-night cafes, was also 'betrayed' by a woman, and their friendship is built upon this common experience. The story is at times humorous and at others incredibly serious. As is usual in a Johnson novel sexuality is openly and frankly discussed. Johnson's writing technique allows us to view Albert's character from many angles.
3949965	/m/0b873f	The Face	Dean Koontz	2003	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The main plot of the story follows Ethan Truman, an ex-cop who now works as the head of security for the most famous actor in Hollywood, Channing Manheim, a.k.a. "The Face." Ethan is trying to track down the sender of several gruesome "messages" that were received in black boxes. Ethan now has six black boxes to figure out what the contents of the boxes mean. After chasing down leads and tracking the "ghost" of his dead friend Duncan "Dunny" Whistler (technically, Dunny is not a ghost, as he came back to life in the morgue), Ethan finally uncovers the plot and races to stop the kidnapping of Manheim's son, Aelfric.
3950240	/m/0b87df	The Pupil	Henry James			 Pemberton, a penniless graduate of Oxford, takes a job to tutor Morgan Moreen, aged eleven, a brilliant and somewhat cynical member of a wandering American family. His mother and father refuse to pay Pemberton as they jump their bills from one hotel to another in Europe. Pemberton grows to dislike all the Moreens except Morgan, including older brother Ulick and sisters Paula and Amy. Morgan, who is afflicted with heart trouble, advises Pemberton to escape his family's baleful influence. But Pemberton stays on because he has come to love and admire his pupil and he hopes for at least some eventual payment. Pemberton finally has to take another tutoring job in London simply to make ends meet. He is summoned back to Paris, though, by a telegram from the Moreens that says Morgan has fallen ill. It turns out that Morgan is healthy enough, though the fatal day arrives when his family is evicted from their hotel for nonpayment. Morgan's parents beg Pemberton to take their son away with him while they try to find some money. Morgan is ecstatic at the prospect of leaving with Pemberton, but the tutor hesitates. Morgan suddenly collapses with a heart attack and dies. In the story's ironic final note, James says that Morgan's father takes his son's death with the perfect manner of "a man of the world."
3951107	/m/0b88pc	Neighbors	Thomas Berger	1980	{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 Earl Keese is a middle-aged, middle-class suburbanite with a wife, Enid, and teenage daughter, Elaine. Earl is content with his dull, unexceptional life, but this changes when a younger, less sophisticated couple, Harry and Ramona, move in next door. Harry is physically intimidating and vulgar; Ramona is sexually aggressive, and both impose themselves on the Keese household. Their free-spirited personalities and overbearing and boorish behavior endear them to Enid and Elaine, but Earl fears that he is losing control of his life and his family. Over the course of one night, the antagonism between Earl and his new neighbors escalates into suburban warfare.
3957825	/m/0b8mtz	The Pumpkinification of Claudius				 The work traces the death of Claudius, his ascent to heaven and judgment by the gods, and his eventual descent to Hades. At each turn, of course, Seneca mocks the late emperor's personal failings, most notably his arrogant cruelty and his inarticulateness. After Mercury persuades Clotho to kill the emperor, Claudius walks to Mount Olympus, where he convinces Hercules to let the gods hear his suit for deification in a session of the divine senate. Proceedings are in Claudius' favor until Augustus delivers a long and sincere speech listing some of Claudius' most notorious crimes. Unfortunately, most of the speeches of the gods are lost through a large gap in the text. Mercury escorts him to Hades. On the way, they see the funeral procession for the emperor, in which a crew of venal characters mourn the loss of the perpetual Saturnalia of the previous reign. In Hades, Claudius is greeted by the ghosts of all the friends he has murdered. These shades carry him off to be punished, and the doom of the gods is that he should shake dice forever in a box with no bottom (gambling was one of Claudius' vices): every time he tries to throw the dice they fall out and he has to search the ground for them. Suddenly Caligula turns up, claims that Claudius is an ex-slave of his, and hands him over to be a law clerk in the court of the underworld.
3957858	/m/0b8mwb	Galahad at Blandings	P. G. Wodehouse	1965-01-13	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Galahad Threepwood is in residence at Blandings Castle, and finds his brother Lord Emsworth, the ninth Earl, beset by the usual collection of woes. His sister, Lady Hermione Wedge, has not only hired a secretary (Sandy Callender) to mind his affairs, but has also invited Dame Daphne Winkworth to stay and, as Galahad discovers, to reignite an old flame and take up permanent residence as the next Countess. Joining the house party are Tipton Plimsoll, a young multimillionaire who is engaged to Lady Hermione's daughter Veronica, and Lady Hermione's nephew Wilfred Allsop, a struggling young pianist who is in love with Emsworth's pig-girl Monica Simmons. Wilfred and Tipton had met in New York several days earlier for an evening of dinner, drinks, and imprisonment. Wilfred has also been engaged by Dame Daphne to teach music at her girls' school, a prospect that Wilfred cannot refuse but is also anxious about, as Dame Daphne is intolerant of drinking among her staff. Galahad's chief task at Blandings is to deal with sundered hearts, namely those of Sandy and her now-ex-betrothed Sam Bagshott. Gally has known Sandy for years, and was good friends with Sam's father "Boko" Bagshott, and is disturbed at their falling-out over a minor matter of a bet in the Drones Club marriage sweepstakes. Sam needs £700 to fix up his inherited family seat and sell it (to Oofy Prosser), and has drawn Tipton in the race for the next to be married. The other front-runners have dropped out, and Sam believes he has a sure winner, as Lady Hermione will not let Veronica lose her a multimillionaire son-in-law. Sandy, who knew Tipton from working for his uncle Chet Tipton in New York, believes that this engagement will go the way of all his others, and is upset at Sam for not selling his stake to a syndicate that has offered a firm £100. If Sam would come down to Blandings, Gally believes, and plead his case with Sandy, all would be resolved. But when Sam does so, his first accidental encounter with Sandy proves disastrous: he chases her, she eludes him, and in giving up the chase he is confronted by the local constabulary. Constable Evans informs him, and he discovers that he cannot dispute, that in leaving the Emsworth Arms he made off with Sebastian Beach's gold pocket watch. (Beach had left it with the barmaid Marlene to admire, and she had been showing it to Sam when he spied Sandy). Already grumpy from Sandy's rebuff, Sam deals with the accusation by punching Constable Evans in the eye and fleeing on the constable's bicycle. When Gally hears of this, he insists on bringing Sam into the Castle, and decides that he should enter under the name of Augustus Whipple, noted author of On The Care of the Pig, Emsworth's revered reference work for the care and feeding of his prize pig Empress of Blandings. On encountering Emsworth at the Empress' sty, Sam diagnoses her malady as not swine fever, but instead intoxication (from the contents of Wilfred's flask, intended to steel him for proposing to Monica Simmons but dropped when discovered by Dame Daphne's son Huxley.) In gratitude Emsworth invites Sam to stay at Blandings, while a boosted Wilfred wins wins his Monica. Meanwhile, Lady Hermione has learned from Emsworth that Tipton had lost all his money in the stock market crash and is now impoverished. She rushes up to London to instruct Veronica to break the engagement in a letter to be delivered by the next post. When Colonel Wedge receives Tipton, who is driving a Rolls-Royce and brandishing an £8000 necklace for Vee, he asks Gally to intercept the letter, which Gally is pleased to do. Gally goes a step further and gives the letter to Sam. On Hermione's return, when Beach informs her that the man who stole his watch is at the Castle impersonating Augustus Whipple, Gally threatens to deliver the letter to Tipton unless Hermione allows Sam to stay. Hermione tries searching Sam's room, but only succeeds in losing Wilfed his job with Dame Daphne, when her son Huxley discovers him singing in the corridor as a signal to his aunt. Sandy confronts Galahad, but ends up persuaded by him to take Sam back. They find him locked in the potting shed, where he has been imprisoned by Constable Evans. Sandy frees him from the shed and they are reconciled. But not all the couples remain happy: Emsworth discovers the fatal letter in his desk, where Gally had hidden it, and has it delivered to Tipton. Gally has hard work convincing Tipton that Veronica meant not a word of it, and Tipton phones Veronica and the rift is mended as quickly as made. Tipton takes Wilfred and Monica Simmons up to London to gather Vee and head to the registrar's for a double wedding. Not everything is wrapped up, though. Emsworth is still in peril of matrimony from Dame Daphne, Sam still has to collect on his winning ticket, and the Law still looms over Sam's shoulder. Sandy hears that another Drones Club member has won the sweepstakes, and Sam's stake is worthless. Lady Hermione, having discovered that the letter was delivered and nullified, now announces her intention to expose Sam; Gally leads her to the library where he claims Sam is, and locks her in. He rushes to Emsworth, to touch him for the thousand pounds before Lady Hermione can summon aid. He finds Emsworth rattled and deflated. In Monica Simmons' absence, young Huxley attempts to release the Empress from her sty. Having morning head after her bender, she responds by biting the lad's finger. Dame Winkworth deems her dangerous and demands that she be destroyed; Emsworth calls her a fool and telephones the veterinarian to find whether there was any risk of infection to the Empress. At that Dame Daphne leaves the household. Hermione, finding that Emsworth has driven away Dame Daphne, exposes Sam, declares Emsworth to be impossible to manage, and leaves as well. The ninth Earl is reluctant now to lend money to an impostor, but Gally reminds him that he has now been freed of the threat of marriage to Dame Daphne, and of the supervision of their sister Hermione, and that if he lends the money to Sam all his troubles will be ended, as Sam will take his secretary out of his life. Emsworth gladly does so, and peace reigns over Blandings once again.
3958053	/m/0b8n42	House Mother Normal	B.S. Johnson	1971		 The novel is set in a nursing home. It follows part of a typical day for a group of elderly people, both male and female. Their thoughts, memories and opinions of each other and the House Mother (head matron) are explored as they go about their activities, from playing pass-the-parcel to dancing.
3958834	/m/0b8p7z	Monica				 The central character is a woman whose life is centred on sexual relationships. Because of its treatment of topics such as prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases, it caused great controversy in Wales, all the more so because Lewis was the son of a well-known Presbyterian minister. cy:Monica
3958878	/m/0b8pbr	Traed mewn cyffion				 The action takes place in the period between 1880 and 1914 against the background of the slate quarries of north Wales, the region where the author was brought up. The main character, Jane Gruffydd, is a mother of six forced to overcome many hardships in order to bring up her family. cy:Traed Mewn Cyffion
3959142	/m/0b8q29	Empire Star	Samuel R. Delany	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 As the narrative opens, we meet Comet Jo at eighteen years of age. He has spent his entire life in a "simplex" society on Rhys, a satellite of a Jovian planet orbiting Tau Ceti. (At first the reader assumes that "simplex" is a synonym for "simple," but after Jo's encounter with the "Geodessic Survey Station," Jo and the reader both realize that even "simplex" has some "complex" and even "multiplex" aspects to it.) Jo comes upon the wreckage of a spacecraft and encounters two survivors. The first is quickly dying and asks Jo to bring an important message to Empire Star moments before passing away. The other is a lifeform known as Jewel. Jewel is a tritovian in crystallized form, and in that state can easily view situations from several points of view, thus enabling narration from the point of view of the omniscient observer. Jo quickly leaves Rhys in an attempt to deliver the message to Empire Star, and on his journey he meets several other characters along with a race of creatures known as the Lll. The Lll are incredible builders—not merely of structures, but of ecosystems, societies, and ethical systems. As such, they have been enslaved. However, in order to protect the Lll, the Empire has created a phenomenon known as “the sadness of the Lll”—any being who owns the Lll suffers from a constant, overpowering sadness. This sadness increases geometrically with each Lll owned and with how much each Lll builds, so it is only possible to own a few Lll at a time. Indeed, just being in the presence of the Lll is a heartbreaking experience for even non-owners, a lesson that Jo learns early in his travels. The story then follows Jo over the next few months. Once he reaches a certain point in his maturity, knowledge, and ability to perceive events around him, the linear narrative stops and the reader is left with a few pages of important events not arranged in a strict order; by this point, the reader may have learned enough to sort out the tangle. Along the way, several questions are raised, either explicitly or implicitly. What is the message that Comet Jo must deliver? Who is coming to free the Lll? Will the Lll ever actually be freed? Is the story a closed loop, or is there indeed an end (or at least a point at which events move on past the ones mentioned in the story)? Who, exactly, entered the Empire Star? How many of the events of the story are arranged by those people?
3959155	/m/0b8q4f	Public Enemy Number Two	Anthony Horowitz	1991-03-14	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story starts when Nick Simple is in detention and is visited by police officers Snape and Boyle. They request that Nick go to Strangeday Hall, a Juvenile Delinquent prison for young offenders and befriend the inmate Johnny Powers, a gang leader known as Public Enemy Number One, and through him find out about The Fence, a major gangster that controls all the buying and selling of stolen goods in London with whom Johnny is affiliated with. Nick refuses and the police leave. On a school field trip to Woburn Abbey, Nick is framed for attempting to steal the Woburn Carbuncles, and despite his attempts to evade police, arrested and sentenced to 18 months at Strangeday Hall. He has to share a cell with Johnny Powers, just as Snape and Boyle wanted. Soon after he arrives Snape and Boyle reveal that they arranged to have Nick framed. Nick manages to gain Johnny's trust after he saves him from being killed by henchmen of another gang leader, Big Ed. Nick and Johnny escape prison with the help of Tim Diamond, Nick's brother, and Ma Powers, Johnny's mother. They get in a car chase with the police but escape, but during the chase, Snape and Boyle are apparently killed, leaving Nick as the only person alive who knows he is innocent. Nick and Tim stay at Johnny's home for a while, until Nick overhears Johnny telling Ma that he is going to see Penelope. Believing Penelope to be related to the Fence, Nick follows Johnny into the Wapping Subway station but loses him there. He is then captured by henchmen of Big Ed, who tie him to a train track, intending for him to be run over by a train. Before Nick can be killed, a man approaches Nick and helps him from the tracks just before the train passes. Nick knows that he had seen that man before, but doesn't know where. To prove his loyalty to Johnny, and take revenge on Ed, Nick burns the train car they reside in with petrol and matches. Nick decides that he must go back to Johnny and Tim, as they will surely be wondering where is by now. But he is still determined to find the Fence, in the hope of using him to barter his freedom. Nick realises that Palis, his French teacher, could have seen Snape and Boyle on the afternoon that he was serving a detention. He heads for Palis' flat in Chelsea but is nearly caught by the Police there. Palis saves him, and Nick explains his mission to him. He stays the night at Palis’ flat. Palis drives Nick back to Wapping the following morning and tells him to get in touch if he needs anything. At the hideout, Nick sees a doorbell. Not recalling one, he sneaks into the house and rescues Tim from a bomb rigged to go off if the newly-installed bell had been rung. Tim then explains that Johnny had come back the previous afternoon from wherever he had been to find Nick gone. Suspicious, Johnny tied Tim up and rigged the bomb. Nick and Tim discover that "Penelope" is actually a boat, and decide to keep a watch on the Penelope from a nearby derelict house. After seeing men storing objects aboard the Penelope, Nick remembers that Johnny 'went to Penelope' through Wapping Tube Station. Nick and Tim go there and discover a secret entrance to a tunnel, which Johnny lost Nick through. The tunnel leads under the River Thames to the Fence's hideout where the brothers see many valuable stolen articles. Soon afterwards they are captured by Johnny, who is aware that Nick is working for the police, tied up with rope, and thrown into a room, but they soon escape. Nick has brought the bomb with him in his backpack, and uses it to destroy the door to the room they are locked in. After a confrontation with Johnny's men, the police, with Snape, who had survived the earlier chase, leading them, appear intending to arrest Powers. Ultimately, Nick and Tim survive, Ma Powers is arrested, but Johnny and the Fence escape, although their operation is destroyed. Nick is subsequently cleared of all charges. Nearing the end of the lesson, Palis has Nick translate a French paragraph. While doing so, Nick realises Palis is the Fence, and that Palis had told the truth of him to Johnny. At the end of the lesson, Palis announces to the class that he is leaving. He dismisses the whole class except Nick, who realises that Palis wants to kill him. Palis chases Nick to the school's roof with a gun, but wastes all his bullets trying to kill him. Palis attempts to grab Nick, but jumps off the building, and dies when he impales himself on a fence. With Palis dead, the story ends with Nick's troubles over.
3959849	/m/0b8rfz	Niels Klim's Underground Travels			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel starts with a foreword that assures that everything in the story is a real account of the title character's exploits in the Underworld. The story is set, according to the book, in the Norwegian harbor town of Bergen in 1664, after Klim returns from Copenhagen, where he has studied philosophy and theology at the University of Copenhagen and graduated magna cum laude. His curiosity drives him to investigate a strange cave in a mountainside above the town, which sends out regular gusts of warm air. He ends up falling down the hole, and after a while he finds himself floating in free space. After a few days of orbiting the planet which revolves around the inner sun, he is attacked by a gryphon, and he falls down on the planet, which is named Nazar. There he wanders about for a short while until he is attacked once again, this time by an ox. He climbs up into a tree, and to his astonishment the tree can move and talk (this one screamed), and he is taken prisoner by tree-like creatures with up to six arms and faces just below the branches. He is accused of attempted rape on the town clerk's wife, and is put on trial. The case is dismissed and he is set by the Lord of Potu (the utopian state in which he now is located) to learn the language. Klim quickly learns the language of the Potuans, but this reflects badly on him when the Lord is about to issue him a job, because the Potuans believe that if one perceives a problem at a slow rate, the better it will be understood and solved. But, since he has considerably longer legs than the Potuans, who walk very slowly, he is set to be the Lord's personal courier, delivering letters and suchlike. During the course of the book, Klim vividly chronicles the culture of the Potuans, their religion, their way of life and the many different countries located on Nazar. After his two-month long circumnavigation on foot, he is appalled by the fact that men and women are equal and share the same kind of jobs, so he files a suggestion to the Lord of Potu to remove women from higher positions in society. His suggestion is poorly received and he is sentenced to be exiled to the inner rim of the Earth's crust. There he becomes familiar with a country inhabited by sentient monkeys, and after a few years he becomes emperor of the land of Quama, inhabited by the only creatures in the Underworld that look like humans. There, he marries and fathers a son. But again he is driven from hearth and home due to his tyranny and as he escapes he falls into a hole, which carries him through the crust and back up to Bergen again. There, he is mistaken by the townsfolk to be the Wandering Jew, mostly due to a lingual misunderstanding (he asks a couple of young boys where he is in quamittian, which is Jeru Pikal Salim, and the boys think he is talking about Jerusalem). He learns that he has been away for twelve years, and is taken in by his old friend, mayor Abelin, who writes down everything Klim tells him. He later receives a job as principal of the college of Bergen, and marries.
3960212	/m/0b8s0p	The Real Thing	Henry James	1892-04-16		 The narrator, an unnamed illustrator and aspiring painter, hires a faded genteel couple, the Monarchs, as models, after they have lost most of their money and must find some line of work. They are the "real thing" in that they perfectly represent the aristocratic type, but they prove inflexible for the painter's work. He comes to rely much more on two lower-class subjects who are nevertheless more capable, Oronte, an Italian, and Miss Churm, a lower-class British woman. The illustrator finally has to get rid of the Monarchs, especially after his friend and fellow artist Jack Hawley criticizes the work in which the Monarchs are represented. Hawley says that the pair has hurt the narrator's art, perhaps permanently. In the final line of the story the narrator says he is "content to have paid the price&mdash;for the memory."
3961777	/m/0b8vmy	The Middle Years	Henry James	1893-05		 Dencombe, a novelist who has been seriously ill, is convalescing at the English seaside town of Bournemouth. He is sitting near the water and reading his latest book entitled, of course, The Middle Years. A young physician named Dr. Hugh comes over to Dencombe and begins to talk about his admiration for the novel, though he doesn't realize that he's speaking to the book's author. The weakened Dencombe suddenly loses consciousness. When he revives, he finds that Dr. Hugh has recognized him, and that the physician is also attending a wealthy woman referred to only as the Countess. Over the next few days Dr. Hugh pays more attention to Dencombe than to the Countess, and he is warned about this by the wealthy woman's companion, Miss Vernham. A few days later Dencombe relapses. Dr. Hugh tells Dencombe that the Countess has died and left him nothing in her will. Close to death Dencombe whispers to Dr. Hugh the eloquent words quoted above. The tale's final sentence tells how Dencombe's first and only chance at life and art has ended.
3961878	/m/0b8vrc	The Witch of Edmonton	William Rowley	1621		 (This synopsis corresponds to the act and scene divisions in Arthur F. Kinney, ed. The Witch of Edmonton, (London: A&C Black, 1998). Act 1, Scene 1: Sir Arthur Clarington’s estate Frank Thorney has just married Winifred, who is pregnant with Sir Arthur Clarnington’s child (but Frank thinks the child is his). Winifred says she is happy with the marriage, but she thinks it is strange they will not live together. Frank tells her that he has to keep the marriage a secret to placate his father, who will disown him if he finds out about it. He promises to make the marriage public as soon his father has given him his inheritance. Sounding a keynote for the play, he says that they must think about their financial security in order to protect their child from "the misery of beggary and want / Two devils that are occasions to enforce a shameful end" (17–19). Winifred agrees to follow to Frank’s plan and asks where she will live. Frank says he will send her to live in Waltham Abbey with his Uncle Selman, who will take good care of her. She says that she will miss him. He promises to visit once a month. She reluctantly acquiesces, but warns him to stay away from other women. Frank vows to be faithful. As is typical for this sort of tragedy, his vow foreshadows his eventual fall: "whenever / The wanton heat of youth by subtle baits / Of beauty, or what woman’s art can practice, / Draw me from only loving thee; let heaven / Inflict upon my life some fearful ruin" (63–67). Winifred kisses him and exits. Sir Arthur Clarington enters and scolds Frank for bringing dishonor to his house (Frank and Winifred both work as Clarington’s servants). He says that Frank must repair the damage he has caused by marrying Winifred (in fact, it was Clarington who got Winifred pregnant). Frank asks how much money Clarington will give him if he goes through with the wedding. Clarington promises £200. Frank agrees to these terms and reveals that he has already married Winifred and sent her to live with his Uncle. Clarington is satisfied. Frank asks Clarington to send his father a letter of assurance that he and Winifred are not wed (he is afraid that his father will hear news of the marriage). Clarington says he will sign the letter if Frank writes it. Frank exits to write the letter. Winifred enters, dressed in her riding suit and ready to travel. Clarington kisses her and asks when he should visit to have sex with her again. Winifred is scandalized. She vows to remain a faithful wife to Frank. Clarington curses her and says she will change her mind when she runs out of money. Winifred vows never to take money from him again and exits. Clarington curses her again and says that he will not pay Frank the £200 he promised. Act 1, Scene 2: Old Carter’s property Old Thorney (Frank’s father) makes arrangements to marry his son to the elder daughter of Old Carter (a wealthy farmer). Thorney flatters Carter by referring to him as "Master Carter," but Carter points out that he is not a gentleman, and should therefore be referred to simply as "John Carter" (he is notably self-conscious about his social standing, which is signified by his continual use of proverbs and straightforward style of speech). Hoping to improve his social status by marrying his daughter to a gentleman, he tells Thorney that he will provide the marriage dowry without a surety, thereby enabling Thorney to remain solvent and provide his son with an inheritance. He says that Susan has other suitors but she prefers Frank, so as long as Frank likes her too, he sees no reason why they should not be married. Carter’s daughters, Susan and Katherine, enter with Warbeck (suitor to Susan) and Somerton (suitor to Katherine). Carter tells the suitors that he intends to let his daughters choose their husbands for themselves. Warbeck says Carter is a kind father and asks Susan if she will marry him. Susan says she will not—Warbek is too scholarly for her taste, and uses too many big words. Somerton asks Katherine if there is any hope that she will marry him. Katherine slyly remarks that there might be a chance and encourages him to continue trying. Old Carter chuckles at his daughters’ use of their suitors. He tells Old Thorney that Warbeck is an "arrogant rake" (81), but Somerton is a "civil fellow" (80) with a fine estate near Essex. He says that he only puts up with Warbeck because he is Somerton’s friend. (His distaste for Warbeck seems to derive from the suitor’s lack of property.) Warbeck offers Susan joint ownership of his £300/year income if she will marry him. Susan refuses, once again remarking on his stuffy personality. Frank Thorney enters and greets everyone cheerfully. In an aside, Warbeck complains to Somerton that Susan might reject him in favour of Frank, a mere servingman. Old Carter invites everyone to go inside for dinner. Everyone exits except Frank and his father. Old Thorney tells Frank that he must marry Susan because all of his lands are mortgaged against his debts—without Old Carter’s marriage dowry, he will not be able to pass his lands to Frank. Frank says he will do as his father wishes. Old Thorney asks if Frank truly loves Susan and intends to marry her. Frank says he does. Old Thorney calls Frank a villain and asks if it is true that he has already married his fellow servant Winifred. Protesting, Frank says he would not risk his eternal soul for money. Old Thorney calls Frank a dissembler and orders him to get out of his sight. To prove his innocence, Frank produces the (false) letter from Sir Arthur Clarington (see 1.1). Old Thorney reads the letter. Convinced by the ruse, he apologizes. Old Carter enters with Susan. Arrangements are made for Susan to marry Frank on the following day. Old Carter promises to get the dowry money to Old Thorney right away. Frank worries about the mischief he has gotten himself into: "No man can hide his shame from heaven that views him. / In vain he flees, whose destiny pursues him" (231–32). Act 2, Scene 1: Old Banks’ property Mother Sawyer (‘the Witch of Edmonton’) gathers sticks and delivers a soliloquy that emphasizes her social isolation. She says that everyone in Edmonton abuses her and calls her a witch because she is old, poor, and decrepit. Despite her class and professed ignorance, however, her lines are written in poetry rather than prose—an indication of the authors’ attempt to make her sympathetic. Old Banks—whom Mother Sawyer refers to as one of her chief adversaries—enters. He calls Mother Sawyer a witch and tells her to get off of his land. She begs him to allow her to pick up a few rotten sticks so she can make a fire to warm herself. Banks tells her to put the sticks down and go away. Mother Sawyer throws the sticks to the ground and calls him a "cut-throat miser" (24). Banks begins to beat her. She curses him. Banks exits. Cuddy Banks (Old Banks’ son, a Morris-dancing yokel) enters with his fellow Morris-dancers. (Morris-dancers make music by dancing vigorously while wearing bells strapped to their legs). As they discuss plans for an upcoming production, the dancers notice Mother Sawyer. Cuddy is frightened, but in a show of bravery, he pulls off his belt to defend himself. The other dancers superstituosly warn him not to cross Mother Sawyer’s path. They exit cursing her. Mother Sawyer says she is shunned and hated like a sickness. Blaming Old Banks for all her troubles, she calls on "some power good or bad" (106) to help her get her revenge. A devil appears in the form of a black dog and says that he will help her to get her revenge in exchange for her soul. Mother Sawyer agrees to these terms and allows him to suck her blood to seal the deal. Thunder sounds and lightning strikes! Mother Sawyer orders the Devil-Dog to murder Old Banks. The Devil-Dog says he can’t go quite that far, but says he will mildew Banks’ crops and kill his cattle instead. He teaches her a spell she can recite to summon him at any time and exits to begin work on Banks’ cattle and corn. Cuddy Banks enters and gives Mother Sawyer some money. Apologizing for his father’s treatment of her, he asks her to use witchcraft to make Katherine Carter (Old Carter’s younger daughter) fall in love with him. After summoning the Devil-Dog to demonstrate her power, Mother Sawyer tells Cuddy that if he waits in his father’s pea field until sunset and follows the first living thing he sees, it will lead him to his love. Cuddy agrees to follow these instructions and exits. Mother Sawyer laughs and says she will get her revenge on Old Banks by tormenting his son. Act 2, Scene 2: Old Carter’s property Old Carter speaks with Warbeck and Somerton. Warbeck is disgruntled because Susan has chosen Frank over him. Old Carter and Somerton try to cheer him up. Warbeck warns Somerton that Katherine will also prove to be untrustworthy. Frank and Susan enter, now husband and wife (Frank now has two wives). Warbeck bitterly derides the new couple in an aside. Warbeck and Somerton exit, and Old Carter follows. Susan asks Frank why he looks unhappy (he is of course uncomfortable about the bigamous predicament he has gotten himself into). After a bit of cajoling, he tells her that a palm-reader once told him that he will have two wives. Susan assumes from this that his somber mood thus arises from a fear that she will die (and be replaced by a second wife). She tries to cheer him up. He tells her that he will have to leave for a long time (he is planning to flee with Winifred and the dowry money). Suspecting that he will go off to fight a duel with Warbeck, Susan refuses to let him go. Despite his assurances to the contrary, she accuses him of making up the story about the palm-reader in order to cover for his anxiety over the duel. He kisses her and makes promises of his faithfulness in order to calm her down. Act 3, Scene 1: Old Banks’ property The Morris-dancers beg Cuddy to stay, but Cuddy says he has some private business to attend to (he wants to wait in his father’s pea field as Mother Sawyer instructed). With Mother Sawyer in mind, he says that he loves witches and suggests that they work a part for a witch into their act. One of his fellow dancers says that witches are not hard to find: "Faith, witches themselves are so common now-a-days, that the counterfeit will not be regarded. They say we have three or four in Edmonton, besides Mother Sawyer" (12–14)—an indication of the authors’ skepticism regarding contemporary accusations of witchcraft. Another dancer mentions that the troupe is scheduled to perform at Sir Arthur Clarington’s estate soon. Cuddy says that they should perform at Old Carter’s place soon, too (remember that he is in love with Old Carter’s daughter, Katherine). One of the Morris-dancers guesses that the reason Cuddy wants to go wandering off by himself is because he is in love. After a bit of teasing, the Morris-dancers exit, leaving Cuddy alone onstage. He walks to his father’s pea field and wonders aloud about the sort of creature that will appear to lead him to Katherine. The Devil-Dog appears and leads him to a spirit in the form of Katherine. In an aside, the spirit explains that he has assumed the form Katherine in order to torment Cuddy, as Mother Sawyer commanded. Cuddy tries to follow the Spirit-Katherine and ends up running into a pond (offstage). He re-enters soaking wet, and starts talking to the Devil-Dog, whom he clownishly mistakes for an actual dog. The Devil-Dog tells him that Katherine prefers another suitor (Somerset). He promises to torment the rival suitor during the upcoming Morris-dance at Sir Arthur Clarington’s estate. Cuddy thanks him and promises to give the dog some bread in exchange for his troubles. Act 3, Scene 2: Old Carter’s property With the dowry money from his bigamous second marriage now in hand, Frank prepares to flee to another nation with Winifred (his first wife), who is disguised as his servant boy. Winifred says that the dowry money is poor recompense for the sin Frank has committed. Frank urges her to put her regrets behind her and focus on the future. Susan (Frank’s second wife) enters, gives the ‘servant boy’ (Winifred) a jewel, and bids ‘him’ to serve Frank faithfully as his "servant, friend, and wife" (73). The ‘servant’ promises to do as Susan has asked. Frank tells ‘him’ to ride ahead a bit and wait for him further down the road. The ‘servant’ exits. Frank tries to say good-bye to Susan, but she is reluctant to let him go and insists on following him for awhile. Act 3, Scene 3: A country road, not far from Old Banks’ property The Devil-Dog sees Frank and Susan coming down the road and looks forward to tormenting them: "Now for an early mischief and a sudden. / The mind’s about it now. One touch from me / Soon sets the body forward" (1–3). Frank enters with Susan following. He scolds her for burdening him and tells her to go home. She asks why he has suddenly taken such an angry tone and notes that their fathers are likely close behind because they were quite alarmed when she told them about Frank’s sudden departure. The Devil-Dog (who is invisible to all characters except Frank and Mother Sawyer) rubs Frank. Noting the trouble Susan has caused for him, Frank suddenly decides to kill her (a decision influenced, it seems, by the Devil-Dog’s touch). He pulls out a knife and tells Susan that he is going to send her to heaven. Rather than running away in fear, Susan stands in place and passively asks Frank to at least give her an explanation for his actions. He tells her that, because he was already married to someone else, she is not in fact his wife, but a whore, and must therefore die. He admits that the sin is his and not hers, but goes ahead and stabs her in the stomach anyway. Susan says she is happy to die rather than live in adultery. She continues to profess her love for Frank. Frank stabs her a few more times to shut her up. When she is finally dead, he gives himself a few superficial wounds and ties himself to a tree to make in look as though they were attacked by murderers. The (invisible) Devil-Dog helps him secure the ropes. Old Carter (Susan’s father) and Old Thorney (Frank’s father) enter and discover Susan’s corpse. They fear that Frank is almost dead as well. They ask Frank who the murderers were. Frank says that the murderers forced him to swear an oath not to reveal their identities. Instead, he offers a physical description strongly suggesting the murderers were Warbeck (his rival suitor) and Somerton. Old Thorney and Old Carter resolve to hunt Warbeck and Somerton down and make them answer for their crimes. Act 3, Scene 4: Sir Arthur Clarington’s estate Warbeck and Somerton are at Sir Arthur Clarington’s estate. Clarington tells them that the Morris-dancers have arrived, and that the performance will begin shortly. Warbeck says that Morris-dancing is absurd. Somerton says that he isn’t feeling well (a result, perhaps of the torment the Devil-Dog promised Cuddy in 3.1). The Morris-dancers enter. Cuddy follows in his hobby-horse costume, accompanied by the Devil-Dog (who is invisible to all characters except Cuddy and Mother Sawyer). The dancers begin to perform, but the fiddler cannot get any sound out of his instrument. He says that the fiddle must be bewitched. Cuddy says he will play the fiddle and dance at the same time. The Devil-Dog plays the fiddle (but it somehow seems as though Cuddy is playing) and the dance recommences. When the dance is finished, a constable enters with some officers. He produces an arrest warrant for Warbeck and Somerton. In an aside, Cuddy notes that the Devil-Dog has done a good job of causing mischief for Somerton, as he promised (3.1). Warbeck and Somerton make earnest declarations of their innocence. Act 4, Scene 1: A public setting Old Banks tells some fellow countrymen that his horse is sick. He blames the illness on Mother Sawyer. One of the countrymen says he found his wife having sex with a servant in a barn. He also blames his misfortune on Mother Sawyer. The men all agree that they must get rid of Mother Sawyer before the town is ruined. Another countryman enters chanting, "burn the witch" (15). He is carrying a handful of straw from Mother Sawyer’s hovel. He claims that, if Mother Sawyer is indeed a witch, she will come running when he lights the straw on fire. The other countrymen encourage him to burn the straw. As soon as the straw is ablaze, Mother Sawyer enters and curses the countrymen for defacing her home. Convinced that she is in fact a witch, the countrymen seize her and make plans to burn her at the stake. Sir Arthur Clarington enters with the local Justice of the Peace, who orders the countrymen to calm down. Old Banks tells the Justice that Mother Sawyer is a witch, as the burning straw trick has proven. The Justice says that a charge of witchcraft will require better proof. Old Banks says that Mother Sawyer has put a curse on him: ten times an hour, he has an uncontrollable urge to run to his cow in the backyard, lift up her tail, and kiss her behind. The Justice says that he still does not have enough proof for a conviction. Old Banks and the countrymen exit. The Justice and Sir Arthur Clarington interview Mother Sawyer, who responds to most of their questions with disdain, but admits that she made a deal with the Devil in order to get revenge on her neighbors. She defends herself by arguing that there are many people in the world worse than her, and that she is unfairly persecuted because she is old and poor: "A witch? Who is not? / Hold not that universal name in scorn then. / What are your painted things in princes’ courts? / Upon whose eyelids lust sits blowing fires / To burn men’s souls in sensual hot desires. / Upon whose naked paps a lecher’s thought / Acts sin in fouler shapes than can be wrought" (111–17). The Justice and Clarington tell Mother Sawyer to pray. They exit. The Devil-Dog enters and gives Mother Sawyer an update on his recent activities: He has made a horse lame, pinched a baby, and prevented cream from turning to butter (even though a maid churned it for nine hours). He also tells how he has driven a woman named Anne Ratcliffe mad. Anne Ratcliffe enters on this cue, spouting crazy nonsense. At Mother Sawyer’s command, the Devil-Dog touches Anne, which makes her even crazier: "Oh my ribs are made of paned horse, and they break. There’s a Lancashire hornpipe in my throat. Hark how it tickles it, with doodle, doodle, doodle, doodle. Welcome sergeants: welcome Devil. Hands, hands; hold hands, and dance around, around, around" (198–202). Old Ratcliffe (Anne’s husband) enters with Old Banks, Cuddy, Banks, and other countrymen. Old Ratcliffe is distraught to see the condition his wife has been reduced to. Blaming Mother Sawyer, he and the other countrymen carry her offstage, but return moments later to report that she went wild and beat out her own brains. Old Banks says that Ratcliffe’s death proves that Mother Sawyer is a witch. He tells his fellow countrymen that they should procure a warrant for her arrest and ship her off to Newgate Prison. Mother Sawyer curses him. Old Banks says that, according to rumor, Mother Sawyer has a spirit who comes to her in the likeness of a dog and performs mischief for her (the provenance of this rumor is unclear: the only characters who can see the Devil-Dog are Mother Sawyer and Cuddy Banks). He says that if anyone ever sees the Devil-Dog, it will be sent to prison along with her. Young Banks says that he has seen and befriended the Devil-Dog. The countrymen worry that Cuddy has been bewitched as well. The Devil-Dog enters and barks, scaring everyone. Old Banks, Old Ratcliffe, and the other countrymen all exit to procure a warrant for Mother Sawyer’s arrest. Cuddy greets the Devil-Dog warmly and exits. Mother Sawyer tells the Devil-Dog to attack Sir Arthur Clarington next. Act 4, Scene 2: A bedroom in Old Carter’s home: Frank in bed, Katherine at his bedside Frank Thorney wakes up with Susan’s sister Katherine at his bedside. Katherine encourages him not to despair over the loss of his wife (she thinks that Susan was murdered by Warbeck and her fiancée, Somerton). She brings Frank a plate of chicken. The Devil-Dog enters (invisible). He shrugs for joy and dances—an indication that he is responsible for Frank’s impending misfortune. Katherine says she needs something to cut the chicken with and begins searching through Frank’s clothes. Frank suddenly realizes that the knife he murdered Susan with is still in his pocket. He tells Katherine that he has lost his appetite. Katherine finds the knife but doesn’t say anything about it. She exits to get her father, but pretends that she is only going to find something to cut the chicken with. Frank searches his pockets, finds the knife, and realizes that his ruse is ruined. The Devil-Dog exits. The spirit of Susan enters and stares at Frank. He tries to turn away from her, but she re-appears wherever he turns his head. Winifred enters, still disguised as Frank’s servant boy. The spirit vanishes. Frightened, Frank sits upright and mistakenly assumes that the spirit was Winifred playing some sort of trick on him. Winifred swears that she did not move from the spot where she is standing since she entered the room. She tells Frank that all his misfortune is a result of his bigamous second marriage. Brushing these concerns aside, Frank confesses that he murdered Susan and begs Winfred to help him cover the crime up. Katherine re-enters with her father (Old Carter) and subtly points out the bloody knife in Frank’s pocket. Old Carter is immediately convinced of Frank’s guilt, but rather than saying anything right away, he tells Frank that he will send for a surgeon. He exits for a moment and re-enters with servants carrying Susan’s body in a coffin. Forcing Frank to look at the massacred body, he accuses him of murder and calls on him to confess. Katherine exits to summon officers. Winifred begs Old Carter to leave Frank alone. Old Carter says that Winifred (the ‘servant boy’) is a rogue and Frank’s accomplice. Frank tells Old Carter to leave the "woman" (Winifred) alone. When Old Carter asks why Winifred is dressed like a man, she tells him that she is Frank’s first wife. She also tells him that Frank has confessed to Susan’s murder. Katherine re-enters to report that the officers have arrived. Frank exits to meet the officers, hoping that his judges will treat him leniently. Act 5, Scene 1: A public setting Mother Sawyer says she has not seen the Devil-Dog for three days. She repeats her spell to summon him. When it doesn’t work, she curses him. The Devil-Dog appears, now white instead of black. He tells her that his term of service to her is now up and that she will soon be tried and executed. Mother Sawyer says that she will never confess. Old Banks enters with Old Ratcliffe and other countrymen. They drag Mother Sawyer away as she begs the Devil-Dog for help. Left alone on stage, the Devil-Dog laughs over his work: "Ha, ha, ha, ha! / Let not the world, witches or devils condemn, / They follow us, and then we follow them" (82–84). Cuddy Banks enters. The Devil-Dog tells him that Mother Sawyer will be executed soon. He also says that the ‘Katherine’ Cuddy followed into the pond (in 3.1) wasn’t actually Katherine at all, but a spirit in disguise. Cuddy asks if spirits can change into any form they please. The Devil-Dog says they can, but they usually assume the form of coarse animals such as dogs or toads. Mimicking conventional Puritan doctrine, he adds that anytime a person curses or lies, he opens up an opportunity for demonic possession. Cuddy says that he pities the Devil-Dog because he has to go around causing mischief for witches rather than doing more pleasurable dog things, such as hunting ducks (he still hasn’t caught on that the Devil-Dog isn’t the same as a regular dog). The Devil-Dog asks Cuddy if he would like to be his new master, now that Mother Sawyer is out of the picture. Cuddy refuses. He says that he never wants to see the Devil-Dog again. The Devil-Dog calls Cuddy a fool. Cuddy chases him off-stage. Act 5, Scene 2: A court The Justice fines Sir Arthur Clarington for his role in Frank's misfortune (Clarington got Winifred pregnant then pushed Frank to marry her—it is not clear how his guilt was discovered). Old Carter says that Clarington ought to be hanged in Frank’s place. The Justice also sets Warbeck and Somerton free. Act 5, Scene 2 (and Epilogue): A place not far from the gallows where Frank and Mother Sawyer will be executed Winifred weeps as she waits for Frank to be brought to the gallows. Old Thorney tries to comfort her. Old Carter says he pities Frank as well. Winifred faints. Mother Sawyer is brought in. Old Carter and other countrymen encourage her to confess, but she refuses. She does, however, warn the assembly against making deals with the Devil. Officers take her off to be executed. Other officers enter holding Frank as prisoner. They are followed by the Justice, Sir Arthur Clarington, Somerset, and Warbeck. Frank delivers a penitent speech, apologizes to everyone present, and asks the assembly to look after Winifred and his father. The officers take him away to be executed. Old Carter tries to console Frank’s father (Old Thorney). Somerton says that he and Katherine have agreed to get married. The Justice tells Winifred that Sir Arthur Clarington has been ordered to pay her one thousand marks (a fairly large sum). Old Carter takes pity on Winifred and invites her to live with his family. In a short epilogue, Winifred ends the play on a relatively optimistic note: "I am a widow now, and must not sort / A second choice, without good report; / Which though some widows find, and few deserve, / Yet I dare not presume, but will not swerve / From modest hopes. All noble tongues are free; / The gentle may speak one kind word for me" (1–5).
3962493	/m/0b8wgq	Battleaxe	Sara Douglass	1995-05-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The land of Achar has prospered for centuries under the care of the one god, Artor the Ploughman. Now, however, disturbing rumors have reached the ears of Jayme, Brother-Leader of the Seneschal, head of the worship of Artor. Evidence suggests that the Forbidden, who were driven out of Achar long ago, have returned. Jayme is relieved to find that Axis, the leader of the Axe-Wielders, an elite force under the command of the Seneschal, has returned from his latest assignment. Others are not as welcoming, because Axis is the illegitimate son of the Princess Rivkah, sister of King Priam. Rivkah is thought to have died while giving birth to Axis, and he has been a thorn in the King's side ever since. Meanwhile, Faraday, the beautiful daughter of Earl Isend, is also at court for the King's nameday celebration. The Earl manages to get a betrothal for her to Borneheld, Rivkah's legitimate son and Priam's likely heir. Unfortunately, Faraday is far more interested in Borneheld's half-brother, Axis. Axis embarks on an assignment to support the towns that may be facing the Forbidden. Faraday rides with him, but she is separated from Axis along the journey. Faraday and her companions now travel to Gorkenfort, where her betrothed lives. She is unsettled by ideas and people she encounters, both along the way and by her husband's side. Though in love with Axis, she is told that it is vital to the future that she marry Borneheld. Even more confusing, she seems to have some kind of relationship with the forest, which all Artor-fearing Acharites hate. As Axis continues his journey, he begins to encounter strange things that call into question everything he has devoutly believed all his life. In Smyrton, he meets two of the Forbidden who have been cruelly treated by the villagers. Touched by pity, he sings to the little girl, who is near death, and mysteriously saves her life. Even more disturbing than this, he is told that his fate is intertwined with a prophecy about a world in which the human and the Forbidden live side by side, and that he may be the one to defeat Gorgrael, who is mounting a campaign to take over Achar. fr:Tranchant d'acier
3962673	/m/0b8wnb	The Game of Sunken Places	Matthew Tobin Anderson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book follows the story of two 13-year old boys named Brian and Gregory (who are friends, but total opposites) who visit a mansion in Vermont owned by Gregory's Uncle Max. Uncle Max is a strange character who uses complicated words from the past such as "effluents" and "insalubrities" and acts very much like an Edwardian-era aristocrat. The two boys uncover the board of the Game of Sunken Places in the nursery and unintentionally set the game into motion. They also meet Gregory's cousin Prudance, a girl from the area. Thus they become involved in an age-old ritual conflict between enchanted supernatural races. Once they go out into the woods and begin playing the game, they meet unlikely allies such as Kalgrash the troll and work together to accomplish all the challenges using the game board as a map. In the final challenge, Gregory is about to win and Brian is being strangled by Jack Stimple. By believing that Jack was their opponent, the two almost fell into his trap. Jack was not playing the game at all. Gregory was the player for the Thusser Hordes and was about to win when Brian stopped him. Jack Stimple was meanwhile being dragged away by monks for strangling Brian. Gregory trusts Brian, and lets him win the game and so another battle had been won in the name of the Norumbegans.
3963238	/m/0b8xvm	Avenger				 The Federation must contain a plague that is killing plant life, damaging animal young, and killing people on several vital systems that collectively supply food for the entire Federation. Avenger opens with the Federation trying to maintain a strict quarantine to contain the spread of the disease while the Federation's reserves run low. The Enterprise-E are assigned to a blockade of the Alta Vista system, home to the Gamow Station, a research facility designed to house about 60 scientists that is temporarily being used as a refugee camp for 1400 people. Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew attempt to stop a shuttlecraft, piloted by a Vulcan called Stron and a pregnant human woman, from fleeing the quarantined system, but the two appear to commit suicide by trying to jump into warp while caught in the Enterprise's tractor beam. Picard is unconvinced that the couple actually died in the warp core explosion, because Vulcans do believe suicide is logical. Meanwhile, on the once-verdant planet of Chal, a mysterious stranger walks through the desolation towards a Starfleet medical outpost. He meets with the commanding officer, Christine McDonald, and requests the location of the burial place of a native woman named Teilani. He discovers, with Christine's help, that Teilani is not dead yet, but will be soon—the disease is quickly working through her body. He goes to her and prepares a curious herbal tea with dried leaves and hot water, while Commander McDonald and the doctor, Andrea M'Benga, look on in amazement as Teilani begins to miraculously recover. The stranger reveals to M'Benga that the leaves are Trannin leaves, native of the Klingon home planet. Christine determines to send a message to Starfleet, to announce that a way to combat the virogen has been found. Christine's suspicions of the stranger's identity are aroused when Teilani calls the stranger "James." Her suspicions are further confirmed when she finds a plaque that the stranger had used as a tray for the tea, emblazoned with the name and number of the first Enterprise. Christine confronts the stranger with her belief that he is James T. Kirk, and he does not deny it, but insists that she only call him "Jim," and that she reveal his real identity to no one. As it turns out, Kirk was saved by a last minute beam out made by creatures and people who were able to release themselves of Borg assimilation. The Borg nanites that had been killing Kirk were cleansed out of him, and after two years of work aiding the survivors, he stumbled upon a Borg scout ship that he used to return. Jean-Luc Picard sends out a search party onto an asteroid that was nearby to the explosion of the shuttle to find out if Stron and his wife really died there. Commander Data confirms that there are no traces of organic particles in the area, proving that Stron and his mate somehow escaped the shuttle before its demise. However, the manner of their escape remains a mystery. Picard reports his findings personally to the commander of the Gamrow Station, Chiton Kincaid, by beaming down alone to speak with her. He realizes with horror as their conversation goes on that she was already, in fact, aware that Stron and the woman did not die in the explosion. Before he can react, she attacks him with a disruptor and he blacks out. Back on Chal, Teilani is almost fully recovered, but still weak. Kirk cares for her faithfully, and is in the process of building a home. However, their peaceful life is jarringly interrupted when a wing of Orion pirates begin mercilessly attacking the medical base. Jim begins running towards the base, only to be beamed up to Christine McDonald's ship, the U.S.S. Tobias. Christine insists that he take charge of the situation and take out the Orion fighters. Reluctantly, Jim agrees on the condition that Teilani be beamed up immediately. Once he knows she is safe, he takes a course of action: sending the Tobias into the atmosphere and successfully outmaneuvering the pirate ships. To Christine's dismay, he insists on destroying all of the pirates, rather than letting the survivors flee. Jim explains that Orions are pirates for hire, with no reason to attack Chal if there's no money in it—therefore someone must have intercepted Christine's message to Starfleet about the Trannin leaves, and sent the Orions to ravage the base. Kirk's suspicions are aroused: there's no way in his mind that the rapid spread of the virogen is an accident. It is soon discovered that this outbreak was created intentionally by the Symmetrists, a group of eco-terrorists who have links to Captain James T. Kirk's past. The resurrected Kirk, along with Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and their respective crews, must unite to uncover the conspiracy that caused this before it undermines the Federation. Ambassador Spock is on a mission of his own, and a deeply personal one at that. He is determined to find the murderer of his father Sarek, for that is what he believes the true fate of his father was. He and Kirk reunite to avenge Sarek's death. During this time, Spock lets go of all the self-control that makes him Vulcan. It is later said that his insides were sabotaged by the Vulcan Bendii disease, the one that supposedly killed his father. Kirk and Spock find out that the people who killed his father are now after him, infecting him with a disease very much like Bendii—the same thing that killed Sarek. It is revealed that a personal aide to Sarek's father and later Spock was the killer of Sarek by use of a poison precisely similar to the Bendii syndrome. In the end, it is Kirk who avenges Sarek's death, while Spock is taken away for further treatments.
3963401	/m/0b8x_x	The Ashes of Eden	Judith Reeves-Stevens		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with Ambassador Spock on planet Veridian III following the events of Star Trek Generations. He is standing at the site where Captain Jean-Luc Picard had buried Captain James T. Kirk, paying final respects to his fallen friend. The story then flashes back six months before Kirk was believed to have been 'killed' on the maiden voyage of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-B. Kirk is having trouble coping with retirement on Earth as the Enterprise-A is decommissioned for war games. Kirk is having a difficulties finding ways to spend his spare time and finds it distasteful that Starfleet cadets are using holodeck simulations of his 'adventures' in training, insisting "they were just my job." Kirk later attends a party at Starfleet Headquarters with his old friends Spock and 'Bones' McCoy, where they are disappointed to learn that the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief has been awarded to Admiral Androvar Drake(a former colleague of Kirk who has no qualms about cruelly mocking him). Kirk spots a mysterious young alien woman at the party, but doesn't get a chance to talk to her. Meanwhile, Chekov and Uhura are working undercover with a Starfleet Intelligence operative named Jade in Klingon territory. When Jade manages to obtain some information about something called the "Chalchaj 'Qmey", she betrays Chekov and Uhura, leaving them to die in a shuttle bay. Luckily, they are rescued by Sulu aboard the Excelsior (who have been secretly monitoring them during their mission)and, feeling they can no longer trust Starfleet Intelligence, return to Earth to report to Drake. Kirk returns to his parents' farm in Iowa, which he intends to sell soon. He is surprised to be reunited with the woman from the party, who gives her name as Teilani and explains that her world needs a hero. Suddenly, they are attacked and Teilani is shot. Kirk and Teilani manage to defeat and apparently kill their attackers, who Teilani explains are anarchists disrupting the peace of her homeworld. This world is called Chal and was originally colonized by both Klingons and Romulans (the inhabitants are all Klingon/Romulan hybrids), but both empires have now abandoned them. Chal apparently has fountain of youth properties, which seem proven when Teilani's wound miraculously heals, and the anarchists want to sell it. Kirk accepts Teilani's offer to help protect Chal, seeing it as a second chance. Despite protests from Spock and Bones, Kirk resigns from Starfleet and goes to Chal aboard the Enterprise, which Teilani got from the Federation as a 'goodwill gesture', being reunited with Scotty. When Sulu and the others report to Drake, he informs them about Kirk's resignation. The Chalchaj 'Qmey is believed to be some kind of doomsday weapon and Drake warns that there is a conspiracy within Starfleet trying to undermine peace talks with the Klingon Empire. Kirk and the Enterprise may be intended to help use this weapon against the Federation, so the group (now joined by Spock and Bones) are dispatched to find Chal and the weapon. After they leave, it is revealed that 'Jade' is actually Drake's daughter Ariadne, and that Drake is manipulating Kirk, his former crew and Teilani to get the Chalchaj 'Qmey for himself. Kirk arrives on Chal and quickly learns why its name is Klingon for 'heaven' - he starts feeling younger and more alive. The anarchists attack the power station in the center of Chal's only city and Teilani reveals that they are the older generation of her people - her group are fighting their own parents. Scotty puts down the attack from orbit, but starts to question the morality of the situation, so Kirk tells him about Chal's rejuvenation powers. However, Scotty does not believe him, leaving Kirk wondering if his revitalization and love for Teilani is just him denying his age. Later that night, Kirk leads a raid on the anarchists' camp and, having somehow survived being shot at point-blank range, takes a prisoner to the Enterprise brig for questioning. The prisoner, named Torl, explains that the people themselves are the Chalchaj 'Qmey, the 'Children of Heaven', and that the anarchists want to destroy their world's legacy, not sell it. Torl is shot dead by Teilani before he can tell Kirk more. Kirk realizes that things aren't how they seemed and confronts Teilani. The 'attackers' from the farm actually work for Teilani (they stopped their hearts to fake death) and Teilani faked her wound. She also secretly equipped Kirk with a force field emitter to prevent him being shot. Kirk declares he only came to Chal for the challenge of saving a world and he is not in love with Teilani, breaking her heart. They are suddenly called to the Enterprise as the Excelsior (now joined by Drake and a Klingon escort) arrives in orbit. Despite being equipped with only outdated Klingon disruptors (Starfleet stripped down the Enterprise prior to giving it to Chal) Kirk engages and manages to destroy one of the Klingon ships, causing Drake to angrily order the destruction of Kirk's ship. However, Kirk and his former crew agree that Drake's orders are against Starfleet protocol and the Excelsior withdraws for a general inquiry. Kirk and Teilani transport to the power station to find out the true secret of Chal. Lights and information displays are activated by Teilani's life signs, revealing that the power station actually contains weapons and that the Chalchaj 'Qmey were genetically created from not only Klingons and Romulans, but also stolen human tissue samples. Teilani is horrified, believing her people are little more than weapons themselves, but Kirk (who is shocked by a display depicting monstrous Starfleet agents brutally murdering Klingons and Romulans), discovers that they were actually created to be able to survive the contaminated environments the two empires believed would become the norm if the Federation conquered them. He comforts Teilani, assuring her that no-one can be held responsible for the world they are born into and that the important thing is to work to make the future better. Ariadne suddenly transports in, revealing that she and her father hope to make use of the Chalchaj 'Qmey by using them as living donor banks, using transplants from them to make immortality available to the Federation. She also tries to turn Teilani against Kirk, telling her that Kirk only came to Chal to gain immortality, but Kirk (who insists that his 'rejuvenation' was all in his mind)convinces Teilani to stop her heart. This puts the lights out, allowing Kirk to steal Ariadne's gun and use it to destroy the items and information so it can never fall into the wrong hands. Drake then arrives, explaining his intent to secure the future of the Federation by provoking them into all-out war with the Klingon Empire and devastating the latter. Refusing to accept Drake's vision of the future, Kirk and Teilani transport back to the Enterprise and are surprised to find all the old crew there awaiting Kirk's orders (having figured out Drake is the true head of the 'conspiracy'). Drake returns to the remaining Klingon ship, but instead of engaging in a fair fight orders it into a slingshot maneuver around Chal's sun, hoping to go back in time and destroy Kirk the day he arrived. With Sulu at the helm, the Enterprise manages to prevent this, but both ships get trapped in the sun. Drake refuses to attempt escape until Kirk is dead, gleefully watching as the Enterprise explodes. However, Kirk and the others actually survived by transporting to the Excelsior at the last minute. Kirk advises Drake to drop his ship's shields so he and his crew can be saved, but Drake refuses and his ship is destroyed as they try to escape. Teilani is confused, noting that Drake believed Kirk and wondering why he refused help. Kirk explains "He was once a starship captain. And starship captain believe they're invincible . . . they have to be. It's their job." Kirk visits Chal one last time, giving Teilani the Enterprises dedication plaque (which he had ripped off the wall of the exploding bridge prior to its destruction) for safekeeping and advising her to tell her children about him. Back in Federation space, Kirk, Spock and Bones watch the construction of a new Enterprise and note how Drake's position will probably now be offered to Kirk. Kirk laughs at this, insisting that the adventure they've just had is proof he's not suitable. Bones reminds Kirk of how he's a living legend and how simulations of his adventures will be seen by Starfleet cadets for centuries to come. Kirk comments "I only hope they enjoy those adventures as much as I did", realizing that this way, he really will live forever. The novel then flashes 80 years into the future. Spock is still at Kirk's grave site when the bright flash of phaser fire illuminates the night sky directly above him, where the U.S.S. Farragut is orbiting the planet, leading salvage operations of the crashed remains of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D. One stream of phaser fire is consistent with starfleet-type weaponry, and the other is green, clearly alien in origin. Spock conjectures that the Farragut is engaged in combat. Suddenly a strong gust of wind envelops the grave site, and Spock hears the unmistakable sound of a transporter beam activating, as Kirk's grave glows through the rocks from within. The grave then collapses in on itself, and the gust of wind stops. Spock looks up towards the stars, unsure of what has just transpired, or why.
3963845	/m/0b8yqz	Bracebridge Hall	Washington Irving	1822	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As this is a series of character sketches, the most effective way currently to describe this book is to list the contents. # The Author # The Hall # The Busy Man # Family Servants # The Widow # The Lovers # Family Reliques # An Old Soldier # The Widow's Retinue # Ready Money Jack # Bachelors # Wives # Story Telling # The Stout Gentleman # Forest Trees # A Literary Antiquary # The Farm-House # Horsemanship # Love-Symptoms # Falconry # Hawking # St. Mark's Eve # Gentility # Fortune Telling # Love-Charms # The Library # The Student of Salmanaca # English Country Gentleman # A Bachelor's Confessions # English Gravity # Gipsies # May-Day Customs # Village Worthies # The Schoolmaster # The School # A Village Politician # The Rookery # May-Day # The Manuscript # Annette Delarbre # Travelling # Popular Superstitions # The Culprit # Family Misfortunes # Lovers' Troubles # The Historian # The Haunted House # Dolph Heyliger # The Storm-Ship # The Wedding # The Author's Farewell
3965342	/m/0b9012	Rosmersholm	Henrik Ibsen			 The play opens one year after the suicide of Rosmer's wife, Beata. Rebecca had previously moved into the family home, Rosmersholm, as a friend of Beata, and she lives there still. It becomes plain that she and Rosmer are in love, but he insists throughout the play that their relationship is completely platonic. A highly respected member of his community, Rosmer intends to support the newly elected government and its reformist, if not revolutionary, agenda. However, when he announces this to his friend and brother-in-law Kroll, the local schoolmaster, the latter becomes enraged at what he sees as his friend's betrayal of his ruling-class roots. Kroll begins to sabotage Rosmer's plans, confronting him about his relationship with Rebecca and denouncing the pair, initially in guarded terms, in the local newspaper. Rosmer becomes consumed by his guilt, now believing he, rather than mental illness, caused his wife's suicide. He attempts to escape the guilt by erasing the memory of his wife and proposing marriage to Rebecca. But she rejects him outright. Kroll accuses her of using Rosmer as a tool to work her own political agenda. She admits that it was she who drove Mrs. Rosmer to deeper depths of despair and in a way even encouraged her suicide--initially to increase her power over Rosmer, but later because she actually fell in love with him. Because of her guilty past she cannot accept Rosmer's marriage proposal. This leads to the ultimate breakdown in the play where neither Rosmer nor Rebecca can cast off moral guilt: she has acknowledged her part in the destruction of Beata but she has also committed incest with her supposedly adoptive father while suspecting that he was in truth her natural parent. Her suspicion is harshly confirmed by Kroll when he attempts to come between her and Rosmer; they can now no longer trust each other, or even themselves. Rosmer then asks Rebecca to prove her devotion to him by committing suicide the same way his former wife did--by jumping into the mill-race. As Rebecca calmly seems to agree, issuing instructions about the recovery of her body from the water, Rosmer says he will join her. He is still in love with her and, since he cannot conceive of a way in which they can live together, they will die together. The play concludes with both characters jumping into the mill-race and the housekeeper, Mrs. Helseth, screaming in terror: "The dead woman has taken them". The actions of Brendel and Mortensgaard do not take the plot forward, although Mortensgaard reveals to Rosmer that Beata sent his newspaper a letter denying any rumors that her husband was unfaithful with Rebecca: the suggestion that his wife even considered such unfounded suspicion, which may have contributed to her decision to kill herself, upsets Rosmer greatly. Brendel, returning for the first time in many years, calls at Rosmersholm before going on to preach political freedom and reform in the town, but his audience, somewhat drunk, beats him up and leaves him in the gutter. Returning to the house after the incident, he acknowledges that his ideals have not survived the encounter. He now recommends the approach of the pragmatic Mortensgaard, who demonstrates his own lack of ideals by urging Rosmer to support the reform movement while still professing to be Christian, though in reality Rosmer has lost his faith. Mortensgaard needs Rosmer's public support to show that there are prominent, respectable, pious citizens who agree with his policies.
3966403	/m/0b91lt	Wing Commander: Fleet Action				 In 2668, the Kilrathi find themselves in a logistical emergency. Though their military outnumbers the Terran Confederation's on a two-to-one basis, the humans' percentage of trained personnel (100%) far outstrips that of the Cats', and the Kilrathi hardware is worn and undermaintained. This is attributable directly to two factors: 1) a successful raid on the Kilrathi home planet by the TCS Tarawa, which destroyed a number of dry docks and the nearly-finished carriers within them (see End Run), as well as similar raids in other locations; and 2) a sudden shortage of transports, forcing Kilrathi carriers to return to base for supplies and putting further light-years on already-overworked spaceframes. Between the two, the Kilrathi military, and thus the Empire itself, is on the verge of defeat. Crown Prince Thrakhath nar Kiranka, and his grandfather the Kilrathi Emperor, reveal to the leaders of the eight Kilrathi hrai (clans) the reason behind the transport shortage: a sizable percentage of the transport fleet, several sixty-fours, has been assigned to transporting raw materials to the former territory of the Hari Empire, a race the Kilrathi had already extinguished and who had lived on the other side of the Kilrathi in relation to the Terrans. There, a new breed of carrier, the Hakaga-class heavy carrier, is under construction. Encased in incredibly thick armor, with six redundant launch-and-recovery bays and space and armaments for almost three hundred fighters, these eight-and-four ships will win the war when they come online within the year... But only if material attrition doesn't lose it first. With this in mind, Baron Jukaga nar Ki'ra presents an anathematic solution to the warrior Kilrathi: present an armistice and sue for peace. The Emperor, to the surprise of all present, accepts Jukaga's terms, and appoints him the primary Kilrathi ambassador to the "hairless apes" of the Confederation. The Emperor will have to play a delicate balancing act: the Kilrathi are extremely prone to violence, and with nowhere else to vent their frustrations, they might rebel against the Kiranka dynasty&mdash;especially since Jukaga is known to have imperial aspirations (his clan, the Ki'ra, once almost asserted dominion over the Kilrathi, and regard it as a historical accident that they failed) and is adept at sowing discontent. Conversely, however, a long armistice will only weaken the Confederation, and a glorious victory over them would put to rest any support for the Ki'ra. The Emperor's only choice is to finish their new fleet as quickly as possible. On Earth, the situation is just as dire; the Terran-Kilrathi War has been raging for over forty years, and the human population is weary. The Terran Confederation accepts peace terms. Both fleets are demobilized and many assets secured for cold storage, despite fervent protests from the military that the armistice must be a ruse. The Tarawa is one of the deactivated ships, and Jason "Bear" Bondarevsky, Ian "Hunter" St. John and Etienne "Doomsday" Montclair, among hundreds of thousands of others, find themselves jobless and destitute. Rear Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn has it worse: despite receiving news of the armistice and orders to stand down from hostilities, he launched an attack on a Kilrathi carrier in the Munro System, successfully destroying it at the loss of only two Broadsword bombers and a "Strike Sabre" from the Tarawa. For this action he is stripped of rank and dishonorably discharged from the fleet that has been his only family for over two decades. Bondarevsky and his friends make do as they could on Luna, trying to find jobs, griping about the stupidity of the civilian government, and drinking at the Vacuum Breathers' Club, a Fleet-centric bar. The proceedings are interrupted by a surprise visitor: released POW Kirha, once Ralgha nar Hhallas's retainer, but sworn to serve Ian St. John in the events of the novel Wing Commander: Freedom Flight. Many of the bar's patrons are initially hostile to him, but when Ian and his friends make it clear that Kirha is their friend, they come to accept him. Kirha confirms their doubts: the Kilrathi armistice must be a sham, because there is no such thing as "peace" in Kilrathi ideology, only total victory against a weaker foe or honorable defeat against a stronger one. In response, a stranger&mdash;a non-soldier&mdash;stands up and denounces both Terran and Kilrathi militaries for conspiring to keep the war going and retain power. His name is David Torg, a PhD in sociology, and the ex-Fleet patrons of the bar, both Terran and Kilrathi, unite in defense against a common enemy: snobbish extremists who have lost sight of the us-or-them realities of a fight to the death. "We want it to end too," says Jason, "But we want it to stop after we know it's really over, and that we or our kids after us don't have to go back out and fight it all over again." The chapter also serves to underline the bonds of war: Bear, Hunter, Doomsday and even total strangers step up to defend and befriend Kirha, acknowledging that, on the front lines, they would have tried to kill each other without a second thought&mdash;a fact that makes them, not enemies, but brothers. Finally, Kevin "Lone Wolf" Tolwyn arrives on a recruiting mission. Admiral Tolwyn, in his disgraced and impoverished position, has struck a deal, selling five Wake-class escort carriers (including the Tarawa) to the Free Republic of the Landreich on the Human-Kilrathi frontier, where the war is still very much going. This commercial venture is simply a cover story, though; Tolwyn's real objective is to confirm the construction of the Hakaga carriers, whose existence the Confederation have suspected for some time. Under the supervision of Landreich president Hans Maximillian Kruger, they launch a reconnaissance mission into the depths of Kilrathi territory. The Tarawa is equipped with a new deep-space radio surveillance system and outfitted with some of the Confederation's best signal analysts and cryptologists. James "Paladin" Taggart, in the meanwhile, with Hunter as his co-pilot, is sent out as point man in the Bannockburn, a light freighter equipped with a captured Kilrathi cloaking device. The Tarawa successfully penetrates and then crosses the entirety of Kilrathi-controlled space, positioning itself to receive signals from Hari territory. Paladin and Hunter succeed in penetrating the system where the Hakaga carriers are being built. Their frantic retreat to the Tarawa is complicated when the carrier is forced to hide from a Kilrathi surveillance force, preventing them from sending assistance. Finally the Bannockburn is able to rendezvous with the Tarawa, but not before Hunter is killed in action, sacrificing himself to save Bannockburn from a missile attack. Geoffrey and Kevin Tolwyn, in the meanwhile, return to Earth, and broadcast a phony radio signal, announcing that a key missile plant on Luna has been destroyed in an accident. Soon, Kilrathi transmissions begin to fly that an installation on the moon of their next target, nak'tara, is no more. (Tolwyn admits to stealing this trick from the Battle of Midway.) This, combined with Tarawa's sensor data of the new Kilrathi Hakaga fleet&mdash;active, not secured for cold storage, and ready to attack&mdash;sends humanity into a panic. Complicating the matters, a Kilrathi ambassador smuggles in, and detonates, a bomb at a meeting with much of the Confederation's top brass, wiping them out. Finally, Tolwyn's actions in the Munro System are revealed to have been a direct order from ConFleet's Chief of Staff, to allow him his reconnaissance mission into Hari space; by dishonorably discharging him, ConFleet could claim plausible deniability if he was caught. Tolwyn is reinstated and placed in command of the Third Fleet, with orders to stop Kilrathi incursions in any way possible. Human carriers and fleets are hastily mobilized, but to get most of them up to full speed will take over a month, and to get their crews back will take twice that. The Kilrathi fleet is due in less than thirty days. Jason, aboard the Tarawa in the Landreich system, is itching to return to Confed space, but Kruger forbids him. The Landreich President was convicted of desertion after he mutinied and ran off with the destroyer he was commanding, to defend Landreich territory, which was being abandoned by Confederation forces "of strategic necessity." Described by Ian St. John as "either a genius improviser of irregular small-unit tactics or a barbarian" Kruger proves both by using his remaining four escort carriers (which are little more than transports with guns and a flight deck glued on) and several other capital ships to savage three Kilrathi fleet carriers. He refuses to join the main battle against the Hakaga carriers, however&mdash;a fact that might doom humanity to extinction. Prince Thrakhath attacks on with five new Hakaga carriers and nineteen "old" ones, plus over seventy support ships (heavy cruisers, destroyers, etc.) and over three thousand fighters. Against this, Geoffrey Tolwyn's Third Fleet consists of four "old" carriers, an unknown number of lesser capital ships, and four hundred eighty strike craft. The advantage in training still lies with the humans; Thrakhath's Hakagas are staffed by his best flyers, but his older ships have not fared so well. But this was the Terrans' only advantage. The human edge in maneuverability and shielding will probably not be enough to counter Thrakhath's numbers; and with the bulk of his best flyers concentrated in the formidable Hakagas, Thrakhath can afford to deploy his old carriers to the rear, where their weakness could not be exploited. And finally, Tolwyn is forced to play defensively; with such a tiny fleet, he cannot afford to absorb losses, and he retreats from a number of smaller colony worlds. At this point, the Kilrathi deploy their trump card: thermonuclear missiles loaded with strontium-90, set for airborne explosion. The resulting radiation sterilizes the entire planet, rendering it uninhabitable to all life&mdash;even the Kilrathi, who (theoretically at least) want humanity's planets for themselves. Baron Jukaga, aboard one of the Hakagas, argues with Thrakhath against this step, claiming (rightly) that it will only incite the Terrans into a frenzy, but Thrakhath has lost all respect for the humans by now. To him, victory is inevitable. At Sirius Prime, the first of the Confederation's inner colony worlds, Tolwyn makes his stand. He loses. One Hakaga carrier is crippled by four torpedo strikes (enough to kill a conventional carrier twice), and another significantly damaged, but none are destroyed; in return, Tolwyn loses most of his Broadsword bombers and Sabre fighter-bombers, two of his carriers, and almost his flagship, the TCS Concordia. Worse, he fails to save Sirius; both inhabited planets in the system are sterilized, a loss of almost two billion lives. The Kilrathi lose an old-style carrier and an appalling number of fighters (nearly 600), but that will probably not make a difference. The Third Fleet retreats to Earth, ready to save it... Or die trying. Thrakhath, always a warrior, does not bother to consolidate his holdings before plunging straight in on Terra. The humans have managed to get three more carriers online&mdash;or, at least, to push them out of the docks and let them float in towards the Kilrathi&mdash;and have arranged a number of other distractions as well. Thousands of civilian pilots, flying unarmed and often unshielded craft from single-seat trainers to enormous spacegoing liners, volunteer to go up as chaff. Trainee pilots, some not yet out of flight academy, are rushed into combat wings to do whatever they can. Hidden behind this insanity are over two hundred Marine landing craft, packed with men, demolition equipment and Brigadier General "Big" Duke Grecko, who leads the attack on the Kilrathi head-on: by boarding them. While Geoff's navy fights and dies, the Marines do their thing; none of the Kilrathi pilots, and in fact none of the Kilrathi at all except for Thrakhath's on-board tactical analysts, ever catches on to their intent. Those Marines that infiltrate the new Hakaga carriers discover, much to their delight, that the redundant armor is designed only to resist exterior attacks; explosions from the inside will be much, much worse. All but one Hakaga are destroyed in the resulting chaos, as well as a large number of smaller ships, and Thrakhath is forced to retreat. A single wing of Kilrathi cruisers, nominally commanded by Baron Jukaga, are able to break through to Earth itself, wrecking a number of heavy Earth factories and cities (a fitting revenge for the raid on Kilrah), but do not launch their thermonuclear warheads because Jukaga, in an incomprehensible betrayal, prevents them from firing; a moment later, the Tarawa arrives, Kruger having finally decided to join the party, and destroys the remaining cruisers. Humanity, against all odds, has won through. After the battle, the utter depletion of material and hardware combined with new revolutions in material sciences to usher in a new generation of fighters; all previous designs were retired and new ones (the ships of Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger) entered service.
3967120	/m/0b9340	Grim Tuesday	Garth Nix	2004-01-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Arthur has returned home when the telephone that the first part of the Will (now known as Dame Primus) gave him starts ringing. Dame Primus informs him that in the six months of House Time that have passed since he left, Grim Tuesday, the second of the Morrow Days, has found a loophole in the agreement not to interfere with the other Trustees. This allows him to take control of the Lower House, which Arthur obtained from Mister Monday. Dame Primus tells Arthur that there is a way to overcome this loophole if he returns to the House, but the phone is cut off before she can tell him its nature. Arthur then travels to the Far Reaches (Grim Tuesday's section of the House) with some difficulty, where he is mistaken for an indentured worker and forced to work. He then meets Japeth, a former Thesaurus. His work gang is forced to walk to another location, but Arthur and Japeth fall behind. A vehicle arrives suddenly, containing Suzy Turquoise Blue. She tells them that she brought equipment to break into Grim Tuesday's Treasure Tower, so as to retrieve the second part of the Will and the Second Key. The three decide that Japeth should catch up with the work gang on Suzy's vehicle while Arthur and Suzy break into the tower. They reach the tower by crossing the ceiling of the Far Reaches, to find that the tower is surrounded by a giant glass pyramid. A large mass of Nothing which claims to be Grim Tuesday's former eyebrow, called Soot, gives them a diamond to cut through the glass pyramid, in exchange for helping it into the treasure tower. Arthur and Suzy break into the treasure tower, where they meet Tom Shelvocke the Mariner, the second son of the Architect and the Old One, who is currently Tuesday's servant as a result of blackmail. The Mariner, when requested, provides them with transport to a worldlet inside a bottle, in which the second part of the Will is located. They manage to retrieve the Will, which is in the form of a bear, and return to the treasure tower. Grim Tuesday arrives and chases them through a weirdway (a type of distance-defying portal) into another part of the glass pyramid. They are then notified by one of Grim Tuesday's servants that the East Buttress of the Far Reaches is giving out, and that if not attended soon, it shall fall. Its fall will then lead to the destruction of all of them. Tuesday, whose power over the Far Reaches and his namesake day has been revoked by the Will, demands the Key to solve this problem; the Will, however, declares a contest between Arthur and Tuesday of creating something original with the Second Key, of which the Mariner is judge. The second key takes the form of two silver gauntlets, which can be used to form objects and creatures out of Nothing. Whoever wins the contest could claim the Second Key and the Far Reaches. Tuesday creates a beautiful tree of precious metals; Arthur, knowing he cannot compare in respect to physical beauty, creates a xylophone and plays a tune he composed. The Mariner, as judge, declares that while the tree is a great work, it was copied from a Secondary Realms sculptor; thus Arthur is the winner for having made something of his own. Arthur goes to mend the eastern buttress, where he encounters a high-ranking Denizen, presumed to be Superior Saturday's Dusk. A fight ensues, wherein Arthur stabs his opponent, revealing that this figure, unlike most Denizens, has golden rather than blue blood. Arthur manages to mend the wall, stopping the buttress from collapsing. Once he returns, he is appointed Lord of the Far Reaches; as with the Lower House, he appoints Dame Primus (who now consists of parts 1 and 2 of the Will) his Steward and returns home. Dame Primus reverses the effects of the First Key on him before he left (to slow the process of him becoming a Denizen), at his request, and so he is in very ill health when he returns, and is sent to the hospital. When he wakes up, he finds an invitation from Drowned Wednesday under his pillow. fr:Sombre Mardi th:อังคารอหังการ
3968621	/m/0b9640	Full Moon	P. G. Wodehouse	1947-05-22	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lord Emsworth is aghast to learn that his younger son Freddie is back in England from America, sent over to push "Donaldson's Dog-Joy" to the English dog-owning public. He is less worried to hear that his niece Prudence Garland is being called a "dream rabbit" by unknown men over the telephone. Freddie meets Prudence, and learns her caller was none other than Bill Lister, an old pal of Freddie's and godson of his uncle Galahad, with whom Prudence plans to elope. The elopement is scuppered, however, when Prudence's mother Lady Dora has her sent to Blandings to cool off. Freddie and Galahad arrange for Lister to be near her, getting him a job painting Lord Emsworth's pig, Empress of Blandings. Freddie's wealthy American friend Tipton Plimsoll, after a lengthy binge celebrating his new-found wealth, decides to lay off the booze after mistaking Lister's gorilla-like face for an apparition, and heads down to Blandings with Freddie, who hopes to sell dog-biscuits to Tipton's stores. At Blandings, Colonel and Lady Hermione Wedge are excited by the prospect of their beautiful daughter Veronica meeting such a wealthy man, even more so when the two hit it off immediately. Plimsoll, however, is thrown off by the reappearance of the face (Lister having come to gaze up at his beloved's window), and by Veronica's intimacy with Freddie, to whom, he learns, she was once engaged. Lister's style fails to please Lord Emsworth, and the two fall out, but Freddie, at Gally's suggestion, smuggles him back into the castle disguised as a false-bearded gardener, having paid off Angus McAllister. Lister soon ruins things, however, when after scaring Plimsoll once more and terrifying Veronica, he mistakes her mother for the cook and tries to bribe her to pass a note to Prudence. Gally heads to Blandings himself, for Veronica's birthday, and soon brings her and Plimsoll together by the simple expedient of putting the Empress in her bedroom. He also brings Lister with him, inroducing him as another artist by the name of Landseer, counting on Emsworth's poor memory and the thick false beard to keep him from being recognised, but Freddie blows the gaff to Lady Hermione, while Gally is off bribing Pott the pig man to keep quiet, and Lister is asked to leave. Also thanks to Emsworth's distracted nature, Freddie accidentally gives Veronica his wife's expensive diamond necklace (while the pendant he had bought for her was sent to Aggie in Paris). Gally smooths over a resurgence of jealousy in Plimsoll on seeing Vee in the necklace, by claiming it is false, and Plimsoll gives it to Prudence for the church jumble sale. With Freddie desperate to get the necklace shipped over to his increasingly irate wife, and threatening to distrupt Plimsoll and Vee's happiness, Gally proposes to hold the family to ransom, getting the family's blessing for Prudence and Lister's marriage in return for the jewels. Lister, lurking in the gardens, glimpses an overjoyed Prudence on a balcony, but cannot catch her attention, so he fetches a ladder and climbs to the balcony. He is spotted by Colonel Wedge, who mistakes him for a burglar and fetches footmen and his revolver. Lister, hearing the Colonel, tries to flee along a ledge to a drainpipe. He climbs down the drainpipe safely, but lands on Pott the pig man, who keeps him there until Wedge arrives. When Wedge hears Lister's story from Gally, he is impressed with the man's spirit and leaves him. Gally reveals he has lost the necklace, but hopes to bluff his sister. Plimsoll arrives to confront his nemesis, and is delighted to learn Lister is real. Hermione approaches, and Gally successfully fools her into thinking he still holds the necklace; Emsworth, hearing his son is in danger of getting divorced and returning home for good, hurriedly pays for Lister's business. When Gally tells Hermione where the necklace is (in the flask taken from his room by Plimsoll), she is annoyed to realise she had it all along, Plimsoll having handed it to her when he still thought Lister was an hallucination.
3968975	/m/0b9716	Black Coffee: A Hercule Poirot Novel	Charles Osborne	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hercule Poirot and his friend Hastings are called upon to visit the home of the famous physicist Sir Claud Amory, who has devised the formula for a new type of explosive; but they learn that he has been poisoned (in his black coffee, hence the title) the night of their arrival. Poirot is now confronted with the challenge of figuring out which of the array of other people gathered at the Amory residence is the murderer. He questions every single person that was present at the night of the murder. he then concludes his investigations by the help of a long friend from the Scotland yard.
3971732	/m/0b9ctp	Jitney	August Wilson			 Regular cabs will not travel to the Pittsburgh Hill District of the 1970s, and so the residents turn to each other. Jitney dramatizes the lives of men hustling to make a living as jitneys—unofficial, unlicensed taxi cab drivers. When the boss Becker's son returns from prison, violence threatens to erupt. What makes this play remarkable is not the plot; Jitney is Wilson at his most real—the words these men use and the stories they tell form a true slice of life.
3974913	/m/0b9jmw	Onion John	Joseph Krumgold	1959	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Life turns upside-down for John when Andy's father decides to get the Rotary Club to build Onion John a new modern home, complete with electricity, running water, stove, and only one bathtub. The whole town signs on, committees are created, and the house goes up on the site of John's old stone hut. Almost immediately after moving in, John, unused to modern appliances, leaves newspaper on the stove. The ensuing fire destroys the house. Mr. Rusch is determined to rebuild the house, never noticing that Onion John was uncomfortable and unhappy in his new surroundings. He wants to fumigate the whole town. Andy suggests to Onion John that for the people of Serenity to leave him alone, he should run away from town. However, Andy wants to run away with him.
3977224	/m/0b9nws	The Stars Look Down	A. J. Cronin	1935	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centres on three very different men: * David Fenwick comes from a mining family but is drawn towards politics, aspiring to help his people, and becomes a strong supporter of nationalisation. Initially, he finishes up his baccalaureate degree and is a teacher at a school for the children of miners. * Joe Gowlan begins as a miner, drifts and then becomes upwardly mobile as a bookie's assistant and a war-profiteer. * Arthur Barras is the son of Richard Barras, the unscrupulous owner of the Neptune Colliery. He is unhappy with his father's values but also feels too weak to do much about it. Reactions to the failure of industrial action on safety issues in the coal mines are crystallized in the characters of Davey and Joe, who take vastly different routes in escaping from the working class. While Davey becomes an MP in order to fight for nationalisation of the mines, Joe essentially joins the mine owners. Jenny Sunley is Davey's indifferent wife who craves social status, and other characters have short but distinct tales of their own. Cronin shows a broad sympathy for the workers and a dislike of the bosses, but also allows that at least some of the bosses can be decent at a personal level. Central to the story is the Neptune coal mine and a catastrophe that occurs there. The Great War is also a factor: do you volunteer to fight, volunteer for non-military duties, use trickery to evade service or openly defy the system by refusing call-up? There is a brief description of one of the tribunals that examined conscientious objectors, often refusing to accept their objection as valid. There is also a clear commitment to the idea of nationalising the mines, replacing the mass of small private owners that existed at the time. The novel ends with most of the men much changed, and it is an excellent description of working-class life in the North of England during that period.
3978574	/m/0b9rm_	Money in the Bank	P. G. Wodehouse			 George, 6th Viscount Uffenham, a typically impecunious and absent-minded Wodehousian aristocrat, mislays his Aunt's fortune in diamonds, and is forced to let his family pile, returning there disguised as a butler named Cakebread to seek the gems. The story also features the crooks Alexander "Chimp" Twist and "Dolly" and "Soapy" Molloy, who had earlier appeared in Sam the Sudden (1925) and Money for Nothing (1928).
3978727	/m/0b9rz7	Joy in the Morning	Betty Smith			 Annie is only eighteen and Carl is twenty. Her family is against their marriage, but the couple weds anyway. They move to Carl's college campus to start their life as a married couple, only to quickly discover that it is hard to keep up with school while trying to entertain a spouse. Annie is able to make friends with anyone, even the grumpiest people. However, she is naive and full of childlike spirit. She tries to fit in with the college girls, and is even offered a free class because of her talent as a playwright. Life seems to be going perfectly until Annie learns that she is pregnant. She is scared of what Carl will say and what her mother-in-law and mother will think. Eventually, this couple proves that love endures hardships.
3978942	/m/0b9scg	Joy in the Morning	P. G. Wodehouse			 Bertie is persuaded to brave the home of his fearsome Aunt Agatha and her husband Lord Worplesdon, knowing that his former fiancee, the beautiful and formidably intellectual Lady Florence Craye will also be in attendance. What ensues will come to be remembered as The Steeple Bumpleigh Horror, with Bertie under constant threat of engagement to Craye, violence from her oafish suitor Stilton Cheesewright, the unfortunate interventions of her young brother Edwin and unnamed peril from the acid tongue of Aunt Agatha. Only the masterful Jeeves can save the day.
3979425	/m/0b9t4h	Sunwing	Kenneth Oppel	1999-08-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Following the events of Silverwing, Shade, Marina, and Shade's friends in the Silverwing colony fly in the middle of the winter in hopes of finding Shade's father Cassiel. The bats find a Human building, and fly inside, thinking that Cassiel might be there. Inside, they find an artificial forest filled with many other bats. The Silverwings discover that they cannot escape and that Cassiel is not there. Panic arises when several bats disappear, including Shade's friend, Chinook, though Arcadia assures everyone that they are heading to a better place and are "chosen" to do so. Shade discovers a way through the river that runs through the forest. Joined by Marina, who convinces Shade that he would never make it on his own, they escape through the river. They find another artificial forest, this one filled with owls. The owls awaken and attempt to kill both bats, who find temporary refuge in a tree hollow. The owls try to flush them out, but are stopped when a soporific vapor spreads through the forest. Several owls are captured by the humans, while Shade and Marina manage to escape to yet another identical forest through the river. A Boreal owl, Orestes, son of the Owl King, also follows them. Shade and Marina talk to Orestes and try to convince him to believe in what is happening. Afterwards, Goth (who has been recaptured by military scientists) attacks Shade. Goth almost kills Orestes, but Shade uses an image generated by echoes to give the owl enough time to escape. Goth chases the two through the forest, but is thwarted by humans, who capture him and Orestes. Shade and Marina sneak into the core of the building. They eventually reach a room of bats that are being used for an unknown purpose. When Shade gets closer to investigate, he is captured. Shade is put into one of a series of metal troughs. There, the humans shave a patch of fur from his skin. A metal disc attached to a string is stitched into his belly, and a metal stud is placed into his ear. Shade is then put into a container, where he finds Chinook and other bats. Shade questions Chinook about the purpose of the studs and discs, but he is unable to respond. The container is placed on an airplane flying south. Marina is clinging to the plane, but is soon thrown off by the turbulence. Concerned for her friend's safety, she flies to the entrance to bring Freida, Ariel, and the rest of the bats out of the building for their own safety and helping Shade. Before going in, she jams a stick into the entrance to prevent it from closing. As she explains, Arcadia tells the bats not to believe her. As a result, only Freida, Ariel, and two other Silverwings escape through the door. They then encounter a Graywing colony, led by one Achilles Graywing. The Silverwings inform them not to enter the building and are told that the owls have located and laid siege to Hibernaculum, killing several bats as what the owls believe as punishment for Goth and Throbb's action in the previous book. Devastated at this news, they decide to follow the Graywings to Bridge City, which is possibly the only safe haven left for bats. Marina decides to there recruit some bats to help her go south and rescue Shade. In the plane, Shade and Chinook unlock the door, only to find another one. As Shade opens it, he finds it leads into another cage, which contains Goth. With the help of the other bats, Shade and Chinook manage to close the door. As a result of their activity, they are released into the air. Shade finds out that they are on the outskirts of a city beside a massive jungle. He sees with terror that this is Goth's homeland. The metal tracker in each bat's ear induces them to fly into a certain building. Shade, for his part, reels back in horror as the bats who meet the building trigger the disks, which explode on impact, leading them to a terrible death. Shade manages to stop Chinook from crashing. Chinook realizes his parents, Plato and Isis, were caught in the explosions. Shade manages to remove Chinook's disk; however, when Chinook tries to remove Shade's disc, they both fall into a river, where a pike rips off Shade's disc and eats it. Consequently, an explosion occurs underwater, sending up a large waterspout. The two drenched bats make it to shore, where Chinook saves Shade's life by killing an attacking mantis the size of Shade himself. They then meet a bat by the name of Caliban, who shows them a place where survivors of the bombing are hiding from the bloodthirsty Vampyrum spectrum, a cannibal race now ruled by Goth upon his father's death. Shade begins to learn more about the Vampyrum Spectrum from a weakened bat named Ishmael. Goth, reaching his home in an ancient Mayan pyramid, is anointed king and told of a prophecy by his priest. According to the prophecy, if a hundred hearts are offered to their god Camazotz, the coming solar eclipse will last forever, allowing Zotz to rule both the Upperworld and Underworld. This privilege has been withheld, says the priest, by Nocturna, Zotz's twin sister, who is worshipped by the Northern bats. If Goth makes the sacrifices, Zotz may overcome Nocturna forever. Meanwhile, the Silverwings make their way to Bridge City. There, a council of war is held about the rumored threats to the bats. There is some relief when the northern rat King Romulus (who became the ruler after his brother Remus fled the kingdom, convinced that a plot to poison him was afoot) comes and pledges his help to them. Shade hastens to rescue his father, who they discover is now a captive of Goth's clan. On the way, both Chinook and the owl prince Orestes are captured by a small group of Vampyrum spectrum. Later, Shade is alerted by the oracle Zephyr of the dark prophecy. Though reluctant, Shade plays into fate's hands through his attempts to complete his quest. Meanwhile, Marina and the survivors of the Silverwing colony are led to the Southern rats, led by Cortez via waterways. After some negotiation, the rat General Cortez agrees to help the Silverwings, because his own son is a captive of the Vampyrum spectrum. At Statue Haven, Shade is contemplating the loss of Chinook and Orestes when he notices something burrowing into Statue Haven. To his joy, he finds himself reunited with his mother and Marina. Shade, Marina, Shade's mother Ariel, and a group of Rats led by General Cortez enter the pyramid to free the rat prisoners. Shade manages to convince Cortez to free the owls. In the midst of the confusion, the tunnel collapses, and the Spectral Bats attack. Cortez and his rats retreat; later, Cortez decides to return at the insistence of Marina. A battle ensues between Vampyrum spectrum and their intended victims, with help from the freed prisoners. During the battle, Goth chases Shade, intending to kill him, but Shade is able to protect himself with sound. Subsequently, Shade discovers his father, Cassiel. At this point, the high priest Voxzaco realizes that there is no way by which to sacrifice 100 hearts before the brief eclipse ends, except by use of the explosive disc Goth had brought with him. He therefore attempts to drop it on the pyramid. Inside the pyramid, the battle is still raging; Ishmael is shown sacrificing himself to save his trapped brother. The battle appears to be shifting in the northerners' favor when Shade notices the disc falling towards the pyramid. Realizing that it would be catastrophic if it dropped while the eclipse was still active, he uses sound waves to keep in place. He manages to keep it aloft long enough for most of the northern bats to escape; exhausted, he lets it drop, destroying the pyramid and killing all inside. Victorious, the northern group returns to Bridge City, where a war platoon of owls led by Orestes' father, King Boreal, are approaching. Meeting for a truce, Shade and the elders attempt to negotiate. With Orestes' help, Boreal relents and gives the bats the right to fly in the daylight. Afterward, Frieda, the eldest of the Silverwings, dies peacefully. Later, in the northern forests, a new Tree Haven is being built for the Silverwings. Shade's mother Ariel is selected as a new elder. Chinook is adopted, at Shade's suggestion, by Ariel and Cassiel. Cassiel and Shade are helping to make the new echo chamber, wherein the history of bat-kind will be kept in the form of pictures formed by sounds in the bats' minds, when Cassiel remarks that Shade wanted to be made an elder, despite being barely a year old. Shade replies that Cassiel did as well, and says that hotheads like themselves do not make good leaders. Shade then leaves to find Marina. She races him to a stream, eventually winning herself and curling up before Shade can find her. She states that Chinook had offered to make her his mate, but reveals (to Shade's astonishment) that she has refused, and intends to be Shade's mate instead. Ariel arrives soon afterward, already knowing Marina's intentions. Shade and Marina then fly to see the sunrise, concluding the book.
3979496	/m/0b9t77	Not Forgotten	Nancy Holder	2000-04-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Los Angeles is being struck by a crime wave. There seems to be no link between the victims and their cause of death - burning from the inside out. Supernatural powers seem to be involved. Angel investigates the deaths, and Cordelia tries to find a band of child thieves. Both searches lead in the same direction - a rich slumlord who is imprisoning the children's immigrant parents. Angel, Doyle, and Cordelia all have difficulties in L.A., but they realize it's much harder for these immigrants. Angel hopes to help before it is too late.
3979513	/m/0b9t99	Close to the Ground	Jeff Mariotte	2000-08-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After saving a young woman from her rogue bodyguards, Angel is hired by a big Hollywood studio head, Jack Willitts, to guard the girl in question; his daughter, Karinna. Angel is persuaded when his co-workers point out there is rent to deal with, and Cordelia even convinces Jack to give her a job (Unfortunately, it is as a tour guide rather than an actress). Angel takes Karinna to several popular nightspots, writing her off as a spoiled brat. Cordy believes Angel is getting too close to the case, but the situation soon worsens. Karinna gets into trouble while Angel and company are being tracked by an unknown creature, trying to destroy anything getting in its way. Angel eventually finds himself trapped in a supernatural struggle for power and immortality, as an Irish magician, Mordractus, reveals that he has been tracking Angel. Mordractus is attempting to summon a powerful demon, but the spells are draining his life energy, and he will soon die unless a way of surviving is found. Knowing that Angel is immortal, yet retaining a soul, Mordractus attempts to steal Angel's 'essence' to allow him to duplicate that feat, but Angel escapes and Mordractus is banished to Hell.
3979521	/m/0b9tbb	Soul Trade	Thomas E. Sniegoski	2001-05-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Angel, better than most, understands the importance and meaning of the soul. Angel's soul have driven him on his journey of redemption. Now Angel discovers those who would pay for a soul. Doyle, Cordelia, and Angel find a girl whose soul has been taken away from her. It seems a soul trade is developing its own black market; the soul is an item of wealth to gamblers, junkies, and others in L.A.'s vast underworld. The soul of an innocent girl is a desirable item... until Angel appears on the scene, with a soul that is- literally- one-of-a-kind.
3979527	/m/0b9tcc	Redemption	Mel Odom	2000-06-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A wealthy actress, Whitney Tyler, requests the help of Angel, Cordelia, and Doyle. She plays a vampire on a popular TV show, and a small number of viewers seem to believe she is actually a real vampire and have made attempts to kill her. Doyle is pleased the case isn't relying on painful visions and Cordelia is starstruck, but Angel is confused; Whitney resembles someone he knew two centuries earlier. The attempts to kill Whitney continue, while Angel, Doyle and Cordy discover a symbol that links the attackers to an ancient battle. Angel must put the pieces together.
3979535	/m/0b9tdd	Shakedown	Don DeBrandt	2000-11-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Doyle has a vision of a seismic shift, and everyone's guard goes up. After investigation, Angel is led to a group of Serpentine demons who live locally in a wealthy and private community. Despite close associations with telemarketing, this group of 'monsters' seems harmless and has no enemies, yet it has become the target of a clan of underground quake demons. The quake demons can reduce living things to a crushed mess. Cordy and Doyle are dubious of their new clients, but Angel soon finds out he has much in common with this community.
3979547	/m/0b9tff	Hollywood Noir	Jeff Mariotte		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A decayed corpse at a Hollywood construction site appears to be a harbinger of more supernatural evil. Meanwhile, Doyle has a vision which leads him to a strange address. He, Angel and Cordelia start tracking a cigarette girl, Betty McCoy. Mike Slade, a new P.I. in town, is also tracking this girl. He dresses and acts behind the times, yet his agenda is modern, and he opposes local officials. Angel and his team soon find their research leads them to Slade. They must piece together a story involving the cigarette girl, a water commissioner, and a host of disappearing demons.
3979558	/m/0b9tgg	Avatar	John Passarella	2001-03-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Cordelia suggests beginning a Web site for their detective agency, but Angel is hesitant—as Doyle points out, "people in trouble want to interface with a face." Meanwhile the police discover a trail of corpses across the city. The only connection between these victims (apart from the cause of death) is their hobby of online chatting. It seems a techno-savvy demon must be on the prowl, hoping to complete a ritual going even beyond a World Wide Web.
3979861	/m/0b9v39	From Here to Eternity	James Jones	1951	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the summer and autumn of 1941 at the Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, the story follows several members of G Company, including Captain Dana “Dynamite” Holmes and First Sergeant Milt Warden, who begins an affair with Holmes's wife Karen. At the heart of the novel lies a struggle between former bugler Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, an infantryman from Kentucky and self-described "thirty-year man," (a career soldier) and his superiors. Because he blinded a fellow soldier while boxing, the stubborn Prewitt refuses to box for his company’s outfit and then resists the "Treatment," a daily hazing ritual in which the non-commissioned officers of his company run him into the ground. The central characters are essentially similar in all three of Jones's World War II novels, though their names are somewhat altered. From Here to Eternity features Warden and Prewitt, who become Welsh and Witt in The Thin Red Line and Mart Winch and Bobby Prell in Whistle. Similarly, Corporal Fife in The Thin Red Line reappears as Marion Landers in Whistle, as does the cook, Maylon Stark, who becomes Storm, then Johnny "Mother" Strange.
3981316	/m/0b9xhp	Ruled Britannia	Harry Turtledove	2002	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Shakespeare is a modest upstart playwright just coming into his own when he is contacted by Nicholas Skeres on behalf of members of an underground resistance movement who are plotting to overthrow the Spanish dominion of England and restore Elizabeth I to the throne. To do this, they employ Shakespeare himself, tasking him to write a play depicting the saga of Boudicca, an ancient Iceni queen who rebelled against the Roman invasion of Britain in the 1st century A.D. The conspirators hope that the play will inspire its audience, Britons once again under the heel of a foreign enemy, to overthrow the Spanish. The plan is complicated by the Spaniards who, also recognizing Shakespeare's talents, commission him to write a play depicting the life of King Philip II of Spain and the Spanish conquest of England. Now Shakespeare must write two plays—one glorifying the valor of Britain, the other glorifying its conquest and return to the Catholic Church—at the same time. There is also a subplot of the exploits of the skirt-chasing Spanish playwright and soldier Lope de Vega, who is tasked by his superiors in the Spanish military hierarchy to keep an eye on Shakespeare (in fact, de Vega even has a part in Shakespeare's King Philip) and while he does so flits from woman to woman. Despite danger at every turn from both the Spanish Inquisition and a home-grown English Inquisition, the secret play comes to fruition, and despite qualms from Shakespeare and his fellow players it is performed. As the conspirators had hoped, the audience is roused into an anti-Spanish fury and rampages through London, killing any Spaniard they see and freeing Elizabeth from the Tower of London. Despite this victory and England's reclaimed freedom, there is considerable loss of life on both sides. Shakespeare is rewarded by the reinstated Queen Elizabeth with a knighthood and an annulment of his unhappy marriage to Anne Hathaway, which frees him to marry his longtime mistress. The queen also grants his daring request that his King Philip play, which he considers to contain some of his best work, be staged. At the end of the story Shakespeare uses his new status to facilitate the release of Lope de Vega from English captivity.
3981359	/m/0b9xlf	The Tristan Betrayal	Robert Ludlum	2003-10-28	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 In the fall of 1940, the Nazis are at the height of their power - France is occupied, Britain is enduring the Blitz and is under constant threat of invasion, America is neutral, and Russia is in an uneasy alliance with Germany. In this dark time, Stephen Metcalfe is living the high life in occupied Paris. The younger son of a prominent American family, Metcalfe is a handsome young man who is a notable guest at all the best parties, has been romantically linked to the elite's most desirable women, and is in great demand in the upper echelons of Paris society. He is also a minor asset in the U.S.'s secret intelligence forces in Europe, cavalierly playing the Great Game like so many socially connected young men before him. However, what has been largely an amusing game becomes deadly serious - the spy network he was a part of is suddenly dismantled in the midst of war-torn Europe and he is left without a contactractual orders, or a contingency plan. With no one else in place, it falls to Metcalfe to instigate a bold plan that may be the only hope for the quickly dwindling remains of the free world. Using his family's connections and relying on his own devices, he travels to wartime Moscow to find and possibly betray a former lover - a fiery ballerina whose own loyalties are in question - in a delicate dance that could destroy all he loves and honors. With his opponents closing in on him and the war itself rapidly approaching an irreversible crisis point, Stephen Metcalfe faces both a difficult task and an impossible decision, where success will have unimaginable consequences far into the future and failure is unthinkable.
3982821	/m/0b9zk6	House	Ted Dekker	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jack and Stephanie Singleton, a married couple struggling through the death of their daughter and on the verge of a divorce, are driving to a counseling session when they find themselves lost on a deserted road in Alabama. Taking the advice of a highway patrolman, they head down a long dirt road, where they run over spikes, flattening all of their tires and stranding them. Fortunately, they are near an old Victorian house in the backwoods of Alabama, occupied by a family of three and being used as an inn. They check in and have a strangely mysterious dinner with them, as well as another dating couple, Randy and Leslie. Things begin to go bitter, however. One of the family, Pete, begins staring down Leslie, stating that he wants her as his "wife." Betty, another one of the family members, keeps hounding Stephanie to get her more ice. Then, to make matters worse, the lights turn off, and a serial killer named Barsidious White locks them inside of the House. He throws a soup can down through the chimney with a message scrawled on it. The message states that he has killed God and will murder all seven of them unless they kill one of their own by dawn. All the people frantically move through the house, but just get trapped in each new room while trying to avoid the man in the mask.
3983954	/m/0bb093	.hack//AI buster 2			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Haruka Mizuhara, whose name was misspelled in the translation of the chapter title, is the player behind the wavemaster Hokuto. All the naiveness is a guise so she could find out more about the mysterious Divine Spear of Wotan. Hokuto is really a poor, 30 year-old translator who is interested in Celtic mythology. She lives in a two bedroom apartment, alone. She is depressed because Celtic mythology is first translated into English and then into Japanese. Haruka is haunted by her deadlines which scare her because of her procrastination. Her first avatar in The World, created when Haruka was one of the beta testers, is W.B. Yates, a Wavemaster of unknown level. Hokuto is Haruka's second character that she uses to avoid work and escape from reality. Hokuto was only made to play freely in The World, so Haruka's boss wouldn't find out she was procrastinating. Haruka Muzuhara's Situation is the first .hack//AI buster novel told from Haruka's perspective. It also is used to explain the way that Haruka lives and her feelings for Albireo. This is the sequel to .hack//AI buster and takes place during the first four episodes of .hack//Sign. A few months after the Lycoris event, Albireo, Saki Shibiyama, and the Cobalt Knight Brigade are assigned a case to find and deal with Macha, a catlike NPC; and to monitor Tsukasa, a Wavemaster who is attacking players with a mysterious dumb-bell shaped monster. He meets up again with his partner from .hack//AI buster who he pumps for information: Hokuto, who he now knows is the mysterious web poet W.B. Yeats. During this case, Albireo has begun to suffer a mental breakdown since meeting Lycoris, questioning what he knows about the system and reality itself. He eventually tries to confront Tsukasa when his Guardian attacks four female players (episode 4 of .hack//Sign). The four PKK (Player Killer Killers) that were hunting Tsukasa are Long Arm, but were mistranslated as Heavy Axes in the novel. Their names are taken from the suits in a deck of playing cards and are Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, and Clubs. The names were given by Decipher in the .hack//Enemy trading card game. The subtitles shown while the language is set to Japanese from the English release of .hack//Sign has one of the girls' name as Yossan. Macha stops and warns him to stay away from Tsukasa, but Albireo attacks Macha to get to Tsukasa. Macha calls on another creature and destroys Albireo's Spear of Wotan before Data Draining him, causing his real self to get hospitalized. After the Twilight Incident, Watarai is forced to take blame for it, and retires from CC Corp much to the sorrow of Saki, who cannot understand why he left. At the end of the story, he meets with Hokuto's real-life player after he recovers. He accepts the results of his breakdown as the road that led to Haruka and decides to begin a relationship with her; one that she is equally pleased to pursue. Four years after the Twilight Incident, Saki is the new head of the Cobalt Knights. She has to deal with a vagrant AI that one of her direct subordinates has interacted with. The AI, Lin, tries to defend himself using the philosophy that everything in The World has been granted a chance to live, AI and player character. In the end, Kamui deletes Lin and fires the knight that was playing with him. Rena is using her first avatar, Brigit, who has been fooled by a twin blade who failed to revive her, causing her friend to leave The World for good. Brigit then began to play solo until she is saved by a Wavemaster who talks about the rumors of the .hackers. The story then zooms to approximately the middle of Volume 1 of the .hack//Legend of the Twilight manga, when Rena is meeting with Ouka and Mirelle. Shugo logs on and they head for their new adventures. "Firefly" takes place prior to .hack//Legend of the Twilight and focuses on Hotaru's character. It is the story of how she met the .hacker Sanjuro and how they became friends. With her parents out for the night, a young half-Irish, half-Japanese girl sets up a character on the Japanese server of The World. This character is Hotaru. She enters the game and becomes involved with a fairy NPC that won't leave Hotaru alone until she gives a correct answer to her riddle. She cries for help and meets Sanjuro, who offers to help her on the event. This leads the pair to a new area where they encounter a group of Player Killers which Sanjuro dispatches easily. Hotaru, Sanjuro and two players they saved are treated to a magical firefly display where Hotaru solves her riddle and the fairy NPC flies off to join in the display. Sanjuro and Hotaru exchange member addresses before Sanjuro heads off, wishing that Hotaru's future adventures will be "one of a kind". fr:.hack//AI buster 2
3984433	/m/0bb0z0	From the Files of the Time Rangers	Richard Bowes		{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Greek gods are posing as humans and pulling humanity's strings in this mosaic novel about time travel, alternate worlds, and the making of a president. The Time Rangers, Apollo's chosen servants, are in charge of preserving the peace and harmony along the Time Stream, the pathway between various worlds and times. But Apollo has given the Rangers a new task: to protect Timothy Garde Macauley, the chosen one, who must become the president of the United States to avoid the destruction of humankind. Standing in the Rangers' way are other gods: Mercury, who's working his wiles in the world of public relations; Diana, cruising New York City in the guise of an NYPD detective; Pluto, who is in the process of grooming his successor; and Dionysus, who has caused the annihilation of an alternate world. Nonstop action keeps the story rolling from the 1950s to the present day, through this world and others.
3985231	/m/0bb243	The Altar of the Dead	Henry James		{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Aging George Stransom holds sacred the memory of the great love of his life, Mary Antrim, who died before they could be married. One day Stransom happens to read of the death of Acton Hague, a former friend who had done him a terrible harm. Stransom starts to dwell on the many friends and acquaintances he is now losing to death. He begins to light candles at a side altar in a Catholic church, one for each of his Dead except Hague. Later he notices a woman who regularly appears at the church and sits before his altar, and they become friends. He eventually finds out that Hague had also wronged her but that she has forgiven him. Stransom can never absolve Hague, so this knowledge splits them apart. When Stransom, now dying, visits his altar one last time, it seems that Mary Antrim is asking him to forgive. He turns and sees his unnamed woman friend, who has become reconciled to him. There is a strong suggestion that Stransom is ready to forgive Hague&mdash;he feels how, "the descent of Mary Antrim opened his spirit with a great compunctious throb for the descent of Acton Hague." But the story ends with his face showing "the whiteness of death."
3989442	/m/0bb9pl	The Mating Season	P. G. Wodehouse		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Bertie Wooster and Gussie Fink-Nottle swap their identities, while Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright pretends to be the faux-Gussie's valet Meadowes and Jeeves pretends to be the faux-Bertie's valet, before complications ensue. Together, they find themselves at the Aunt-ridden Deverill Hall, Hampshire, seat of the imposing Dame Daphne Winkworth, where Gussie's on-off engagement to Madeline Bassett is once again in danger, leaving Bertie at risk of becoming reattached to her. Bertie must also defend his friend Catsmeat's girl Gertrude Winkworth, daughter of Dame Daphne, from the attentions of the attractive Esmond Haddock, while avoiding fulfilling his Aunt Agatha's wish that he marry her himself... All of Jeeves' considerable powers are required to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion. The story was adapted during the 1990-1993 British TV series Jeeves and Wooster (episode #15 "Right Ho! Jeeves", fourth of season three, aired 19 April 1992 in the UK). The story contains a synopsis of Mervyn Keene, Clubman which is the most complete example of the works of Rosie M. Banks ever given in the works of Wodehouse. Its recitation by Madeline Basset leaves hearer Bertie Wooster in a state of dazed horror. At the time of writing there was bad blood between Wodehouse and fellow author A. A. Milne. The book included several satirical jibes aimed at Milne, for instance after Bertie (pressured by Madeline Basset) agrees to recite Christopher Robin poems at the village concert, he laments: "A fellow who comes on a platform and starts reciting about Christopher Robin going hoppity-hoppity-hop (or alternatively saying his prayers) does not do so from sheer wantonness but because he is a helpless victim of circumstances beyond his control."
3989524	/m/0bb9vs	Bruja	Mel Odom	2001-08-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 L.A. is shocked when a woman attacks a priest. The woman had just confessed to the priest that she had murdered her own son. Meanwhile, Angel and Co. get reports of a woman fighting with teens across L.A. The woman appears to be everywhere, a 'bruja' - a witch. She may be an embodiment of "La Llorona," known in Spanish lore as the "Weeping Woman." The priest soon goes into a coma, but Angel Investigations is busy with other matters: Doyle has a vision of a young mother and her son in danger at the docks. Meanwhile, Cordelia's looking for a big-shot producer's missing wife. Angel must find the connections between the missing wife and recent events.
3989528	/m/0bb9wg	The Summoned	Cameron Dokey	2001-12-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Doyle's at the supermarket when his latest vision comes. He sees images of fear, fire, death, and an ornately engraved old amulet. The Powers That Be are not being too specific. When Doyle awakens an anxious young woman named Terri Miller is helping him. Terri is a shy woman from a small town, and new to L.A.. Soon after meeting Doyle, who disappears without saying thank-you, a charismatic man invites her to meet him at a club to which he belongs. Meanwhile, Angel and his team are investigating a murderer who seems to be burning his victims beyond recognition. Several of the dead are connected to Terri's newfound friends, and Cordy suddenly finds herself with an amulet that seems very familiar.
3989578	/m/0bb9_9	Image	Mel Odom		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cordelia Chase has a vision of a child being attacked by a squidlike demon. Meanwhile, Gunn is trying to rescue a young artist; the artist's studio is being attacked by vampires. Cordelia goes to investigate the mansion from her vision. She soon finds herself surrounded by baby products, portraits, and chased by a tentacled monster. When Angel arrives on the scene, he is surprised to discover that he recognizes some of the portraits. He holds distant memories of him and Darla spending a night with storytellers and artists. Angel reveals that he and Darla were present at the party where Mary Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein; indeed, they witnessed the event that gave Mary the initial idea. An old evil is trying to use a painting to preserve the life of its body, which, in the terms of the story, inspired the novel The Picture of Dorian Grey. In their efforts to save a child the villain is focused on, Team Angel will learn not to judge everything by its image.
3989583	/m/0bbb0b	Haunted	Jeff Mariotte	2002-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Cordy's finally getting a big break—she will be a contestant on some "reality programming". She must spend five days and four nights in an apparently haunted house. Living with a ghost and catching demons for a living, she sees this as an easy challenge. However, there is more going on than Cordy knows. In a vision on her first night, she sees one of the applicants who didn't make it to the show. She secretly communicates the scenario to Angel and Co., who are instantly on the case. Angel, Wesley and Gunn search for the missing actress as supernatural activity at the house increases. Soon, Wolfram and Hart also get involved and Cordelia is forced to consider her priorities.
3989586	/m/0bbb10	Stranger to the Sun	Jeff Mariotte	2002-06-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Wesley opens a strange package that arrives by special delivery, which instantly sends him into a slumber. It seems likely he is the victim of a spell. Angel leaves with Gunn to investigate. They discover that other people who might be able to assist, such as magick-shop owners, have also fallen victim exactly like Wesley. Meanwhile Cordy is struggling to research without Wes available. She soon begins to uncover a plot to plunge Earth into eternal darkness, so that vampires might rule over humans. Wesley is in the midst of a horrifying nightmare. If he cannot awaken, humankind may be in for a struggle.
3989587	/m/0bbb1c	Vengeance	Scott Ciencin	2002-08-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 L.A. is divided between the haves and the have-nots. Those in luck seem to have tanned good looks, toned bodies, riches and more. Some have-nots are beginning to grow tired of it. Lily Pierce is a motivational speaker who founded New Life Foundation, an organization sweeping across the country. Its mantra is: "Erase doubt. Erase fear. Become pure of purpose. Perfect in execution. Attain your dreams." Cordy's not impressed with Lily's message, but she doesn't suspect Lily is holding a secret of epic proportions. Wolfram and Hart puzzlingly soon want Angel's help to stop the insanity, but is Lily's hope of a perfect world tempting to Angel?
3989594	/m/0bbb1q	Endangered Species	Jeff Mariotte	2003-08-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Cordelia has become used to being shaken by visions of horror, thanks to the Powers That Be. However, she is especially disturbed to see a vision of Faith being hunted in prison by the supernatural. Chaz Escobar, a game hunter, soon arrives at Angel Investigations looking for his wife Marianna, a vampire. He had hoped to cure her vampirism on a distant small island, but she escaped. He thinks she might be the monster harassing Faith. When Faith's out of jail it seems she may fall into Marianna's claws, but Angel's team and Chaz are off to the island to save her. Chaz's goal is to rid the world of all vampires, and Angel realises this may be a chance to right all his wrongs. This novel features a flashback to shortly after Angel fled from Darla when she attempted to make him feed on an innocent baby to prove himself. Making contact with a sorcerer, Darla attempted to have him remove Angel's soul, but the man refused, sensing that Angel's soul didn't want to be separated from his body, and noting that he had the potential to become a good person despite his vampire status.
3989606	/m/0bbb2d	Impressions	Doranna Durgin	2003-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It seems a quiet day at Angel Investigations until a desperate man arrives, chased by a demon. The gang kills the monster, which decomposes as soon as it dies. The man seems to have fallen victim to a stolen identity scam; he's been approached by a false Angel and is now distrustful of the real thing, so does not want to give up the ancient stone he's found. Angel's worried by the notion of an impersonator, but Cordy's just curious why he didn't impersonate more worthy celebrities. Meanwhile Lorne reports some bad mojo from Caritas, and needs help. Something is getting under local demons' skins, and even bothering Angel, heightening the aggression of normally rather pacifistic demons. As their research continues, Cordelia and Fred learn that the Angel-impersonator- a photography student called David who saw Angel in action during his early days in Los Angeles- is impersonating Angel for no reason other than the power trip he gets when defeating demons, and doesn't truly understand the reasons why Angel does what he does. The stone that David's client possesses is later revealed to be the burial stone of a race of demons whose nature causes them to disintegrate upon death caused them to start using the stones as a memorial, the stones 'recording' their feelings at the moment of death. The stone the client possesses contains the rage and hostility of an honoured warrior who recently died in battle; in their home dimension, the stone's 'emissions' would normally be controlled by various spells, but without those spells the emotions are spilling out and 'infecting' every demon in the area. In the final confrontation, as Angel and his associates attempt to aid the stone's owners in acquiring the stone while holding off a mass of demons, Angel nearly surrenders to his rage, but David's act of sacrifice during the battle, giving his life to save Angel's, gets through Angel's rage and allows him to focus long enough to allow the stone to be destroyed, thus ending the wave of hostility.
3989613	/m/0bbb2r	Fearless	Doranna Durgin	2003-10-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The characters of Angel Investigations are shocked to find themselves euphoric after a long night they cannot remember. Their clothes are bloody and torn, their bodies bruised, but their memories of the previous evening are hazy. They soon determine that they've been affected by demon pixie dust. Angel, however, finds his superhuman healing failing him, and seems to be recovering at the rate of an average human. Unable to confide in his friends, Angel finds himself keeping secrets and collaborating with demons. If his friends go looking for another high in a battle of fearlessness, Angel is unsure if he can protect them. Characters include: Angel, Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn, Fred, and Lorne
3989616	/m/0bbb32	Sanctuary	Jeff Mariotte	2003-04-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Angel and Co. are enjoying some downtime at the karaoke bar Caritas when a loud explosion occurs. The gang and the rest of the bar are attracted outside. A building nearby is on fire. It seems that it may have been a diversionary tactic to distract from a drive-by shooting. When the smoke clears, Fred has gone missing. It seems Fred has been kidnapped, so Team Angel questions everyone nearby. Around a dozen demons were direct eyewitnesses, but each one has a different story. Whether it was gangs, monsters, or a runaway Fred, the team soon realize demons do not make the most reliable eyewitnesses.
3989624	/m/0bbb43	Dark Mirror	Diane Duane	2004-05-25	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A series of perfect clones of members at Angel Investigations are lurking in the city, planning to kill the originals. Team Angel must find out where the replicas are coming from and why, before the murder spree hits the whole city. Thanks to Wesley's research, the gang realise that they are facing the 'Seven Sinners', dimension-jumping demons who travel to other worlds, steal the negative aspects of the souls of some of the greatest heroes of that world, and subsequently gain power by killing the originals and absorbing their souls into their power source. Once they have been copied, only the original can kill 'their' Sinner, with other attempts simply incapacitating the Sinners until they can regenerate. The Sinners have targeted Angel Investigations with the intention of duplicating Angel, as they feel that only Angelus would possess the necessary skills to lead them in their destruction of this world. However, the final seven clones- consisting of Angelus, Lorne, Wesley, Connor, Fred, Gunn, and Lilah- are all killed by their templates, Angel subsequently destroying their power source.
3989782	/m/0bbbh4	Solitary Man	Jeff Mariotte	2003-12-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The widow Mildred Finster has been a fan of "cozy" mystery novels for years. At the age of seventy-one she decides she would like to become a real private detective. She finds a business card for Angel Investigations and likes the name. Team Angel is busy with its own personal problems, and has little time to deal with Mildred offering her services. Later a truckload of valuable antiquities is stolen and they assume a simple theft. The arrival of ruthless killers from afar soon gets the attention of the gang. They must cope with being followed everywhere by a well-meaning old lady, fight off poltergeists, and try to set aside their personal differences (at least temporarily) so that they can overcome the supernatural foe which is responsible for a centuries-old mystery.
3989789	/m/0bbbhh	Love and Death	Jeff Mariotte	2004-09-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Huge numbers of demon-killers are descending upon L.A., provoked by outspoken radio host Mac Lindley. They plan to rid the city of demons as rapidly and violently as possible. Angel Investigations is finding these angry mobs more of a hindrance than a help. Cordy knows bits and pieces but Angel Investigations is focusing on solving a case of a family who came to L.A. from Iowa; they were murdered together as Angel raced to try to save them. Soon Lorne is attacked and Connor goes missing. Angel realizes that the demon-hunters cannot tell the difference between a good demon and a bad one. None of them are safe from the crazy pack of do-gooders.
3989796	/m/0bbbj5	Monolith	John Passarella	2004-05-25	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Like other parents, Angel wishes he could understand his son, Connor. But father-son bonding time is short because Angel is overworked, Connor is embarrassed by his father's blood-drinking, Hyconian demons are running rampant across L.A. - and a huge monolith suddenly appears on Hollywood Boulevard. Nobody understands this massive rock. It has two demon faces carved into it. The news stations assume it is a clever publicity stunt for a newly-released movie, and religious extremists worry that it might be a sign of the impending apocalypse. As the staff of Angel Investigations tries to understand what the rock means, it soon becomes clear that Connor and Angel will have to work together for survival. Characters include: Angel, Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn, Fred, Lorne and Connor.
3989798	/m/0bbbjj	Nemesis	Scott Ciencin	2004-02-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 One of Fred's old friends from graduate school contacts her for help at a big scientific facility. Fred has conflicted feelings about her past, and the life she might be able to lead independent of demons. However on the night they are supposed to meet, her friend is shot down, a seemingly innocent victim of a misdirected hit. Angel and the others wish they could help Fred, but are needed to investigate a series of murders among a group of wizards. The wizards are the only ones standing against an apocalyptic breach; they are literally holding the walls of reality together from more-deadly worlds. Fred leaves the investigation and takes the place of her friend as researcher to try to uncover her murder. Soon the supernatural and the scientific research collide, and Fred realizes she might be the only one who can stop the coming end-time.
3989801	/m/0bbbjw	Book of the Dead	Ashley McConnell	2004-07-27	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wes has loved books since childhood. When a former colleague, Adrian O'Flaherty, arrives in town and invites him to a secret auction of rare occult books, Wes immediately agrees. However Adrian wants more than dusty old books at the auction. He wants revenge. Before the Watchers' Council was blown up (seen in 'Never Leave Me'), Rutherford Sirk took a number of rare books from the Council's libraries and killed the librarian who was Adrian's father. Wes buys a number of old books at the auction including one of the most famous books of magick, The Red Compendium, which is infamous for absorbing those who read it. Wes has always been a sucker for literature and soon finds he can't put it down even if he wants to.
3989961	/m/0bbby0	Disquiet	Boris Strugatsky			 The novel is set on the planet Pandora which is famous for its animated biosphere. Humans have built a base on it that serves as a biological laboratory and a hunting resort. The base is located at the top of 2&nbsp;km high crag on a continent otherwise covered by forest. Biologists do not understand most of the processes occurring in the forest. Humans hunt in the forest for sport in the face of serious dangers. The novel is divided into two parts: life in the base and life in the forest. The director of the base is Paul Gnedykh. He is responsible for overall safety, supply, and communication with Earth. He replaced the previous director after several deaths occurred on the base. One of the deaths was the biologist Mikhail "Athos" Sidorov, Gnedykh's childhood friend. Some biologists claimed they saw people in the forest, but nobody took them seriously (partially because such visions were seen when the bioblocade of the observer was weakened or expired). The forest is rapidly changing, such that maps completely obsolete in two years. Some trees move from place to place, while others show signs of feeling the "pain" of other trees. Leonid Gorbovsky stays on Pandora believing that the forest is dangerous. He wants to be near when the forest "starts acting" to be able to influence the process. Gorbovsky is upset because the base staff are being negligent about the forest, not taking the forest seriously enough. One day a female hunter and gamekeeper becomes stranded in the forest and calls Paul Gnedykh for help. She calls from the same forest sector where Athos sent his last bearing signal. When Gnedykh and Gorbovsky arrive at the site, they see a mysterious organism that caused the helicopter crash. The organism is attracting trees and animals and eating them. It gives birth to several "children" every 87 minutes. The children are amorphous white creatures that move by means of pseudopods. The children first move from the parent uniformly in one direction. Gnedykh and Gorbovsky follow the children until they reach a lake and drown themselves. While observing the lake, Paul thinks he sees a human in the water, and records a video of the scene. In the forest segment of the novel, Athos attempts to return to the base after living in a village in the middle of the forest. The villagers are in foggy states of mind but have abilities to "grow" themselves food, clothes, and houses; and control the flora around them. Athos was brought to the village seriously ill by Hurt-Martyr and Broken Leg - two village natives - and given a wife named Nava. Athos too has troubles with his memory. He encourages two villagers, Fist and Broken Leg, to make a trip to The City, a mysterious place, where Athos hopes to get information about how to return back. Hurt-Martyr went to The City before, but never returned. The tribe tries to talk Athos out of his journey, citing the rumored Dead Ones walking around in the forest. Slightly before the planned trip, he goes on reconnaissance, and Nava follows him. They are attacked by a group of bandits, and after a brief fight they escape. They end up in another unfamiliar village where Athos meets people he recognizes as Karl and Valentine, other biologists from the base. He is unable to talk to them, as some uncontrollable fear compels him and Nava to run away from the village, now engulfed in violet fog. When Nava wakes up the next morning she finds a scalpel in her hand. She is afraid of it, and Athos hides it in his clothing. Athos wants to return to the unfamiliar village, but when they do, they find it sinking into the water, the process referred to as Overcoming. After the trip to the sinking village, they meet three women, one of whom is Nava's mother who was captured by the Dead Ones before. Athos and Nava realize that the Dead Ones who capture women from the villages are actually droids that serve women who live in The City. These women (calling themselves Glorious Helpmates) consider men (and many other biological species) as useless, a "mistake", since the woman are able to breed non-sexually without men. These women profess control over "little ones", and control the violet fog, which is made up of bacteria that can be used for diverse purposes including communication and assassination. The Glorious Helpmates are participating in a battle with unspecified enemy. The front of this battle separates Athos from the base. The front is allegedly so biologically active that any living creature (even the Glorious Helpmates, who are protected) are likely to die there. The women take Nava from Athos. During the conversation he remembers several important experiences. Athos is attacked by a Dead droid, which he kills with his scalpel and flees. He returns to his village, where he again encourages Fist and Broken Leg who unite and travel to the base at Devils Crag. Athos now understands that the villages will disappear because of Overcoming (the process led by the Glorious Helpmates) and wants to prevent this mass murder. Broken Leg does not want Athos to go since he believes Athos will die. In the entire section of the novel, there is almost not a single object in the forest that is not a mutable living thing. One can grow clothing from the forest, eat the ground itself as a meal, and so on. The origin of people in the forest is unknown.
3990141	/m/0bbc6j	The Law and the Lady	Wilkie Collins	1875	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Valeria Brinton marries Eustace Woodville despite objections from Woodville's family leading to disquiet for Valeria's own family and friends. Just a few days after the wedding, various incidents lead Valeria to suspect her husband is hiding a dark secret in his past and she discovers that he has been using a false name. He refuses to discuss it leading them to curtail their honeymoon and return to London where Valeria learns that he was on trial for his first wife's murder by arsenic. He was tried in a Scottish court and the verdict was 'not proven' rather than 'not guilty' implying his guilt but without enough proof for a jury to convict him. Valeria sets out to save their happiness by proving her husband innocent of the crime. In her quest, she comes across the disabled character Miserrimus Dexter, a fascinating but mentally unstable genius, and his devoted female cousin, Ariel. Dexter will prove crucial to uncovering the disturbing truth behind the mysterious death.
3990770	/m/0bbd5_	Ghoul Trouble	John Passarella	2000-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A new vampire arrives in town who walks outside during the day and yet does not seem to be affected by the sun's rays. The vampire, called Solitaire, is here to challenge the Slayer. He wants to reassure himself that he can beat a Slayer in physical combat. He is an old vampire and Giles struggles with his research. At the same time a band called Vyxn arrives at the Bronze and plays for four nights straight. Vyxn is made up of four girls who appear to be not quite human, especially when they seem to be turning all the males at the Bronze into slobbering idiots and bending them to their will. Xander is especially taken by them and would do anything to help them out. Buffy and the gang need to figure out what Vyxn is in town for, and why Solitaire can walk in the sun. It is later discovered that Vyxn are a group of ghouls that can seduce men (and it is hinted vampires) at will through their voice. Giles and the others rescue Xander from them just prior to Buffy's final fight with Solitaire. Solitaire it is discovered is immune to sunlight because he is not actually a vampire, he is a full-blooded demon, that can shift forms between human and demon, and the halfway mark looks remarkably like a vampire. Buffy decapitates him with an axe.
3992900	/m/0bbhpj	The Satan Bug	Alistair MacLean	1962	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story revolves around the theft of two germ warfare agents, botulinum toxin and the indestructible "Satan Bug" (a laboratory-conceived derivative of poliovirus), from the Mordon Microbiological Research Establishment (similar to Porton Down). There is no vaccine for the Satan Bug and it is so infectious that any release will rapidly destroy all human life on Earth. With these phials of unstoppable power, a mad "environmentalist" threatens the country's population unless Mordon is razed to the ground. Like other of MacLean's works, the plot involves layers of deception, both of the nominal antagonists and of the reader. The first-person narrator, Pierre Cavell, is initially presented as an embittered figure who has been successively fired for insubordination from the Army, the Metropolitan Police and from Mordon itself. Cavell is called in by former colleagues at Special Branch after being "tested" with a bribe to ensure that he is still honest. The novel gradually reveals that for the past 16 years Cavell has in fact been working for "the General", apparently a senior intelligence director and Cavell's father-in-law, and that these thefts are the culmination of a series of security breaches at Mordon that Cavell and the General have been investigating for at least a year. During the theft the current head of security is killed with a cyanide-laced sweet presumably given to him by an insider he trusted. A variety of scientists and support staff come under suspicion, and it emerges that several of them have been coerced by blackmail or kidnapping to help the principal villain without knowing his identity. The villain releases botulinum toxin over an evacuated area of East Anglia, killing hundreds of livestock and proving that his threat to use the Satan Bug should be taken seriously. He takes Cavell's wife Mary hostage and sets off to London to blackmail the British government by threatening to release the Satan Bug in the City of London financial district. The villain uses his hostage to capture Cavell and several police officers en route and attempts to kill them with botulinum toxin. Cavell escapes, though one constable is poisoned and dies rapidly (for dramatic purposes this is from convulsions like nerve agent or strychnine poisoning rather than the slower paralysis and respiratory failure usually associated with Botulism). Cavell uses Interpol to discover the villain's true identity and infers that the villain's London plan is really to cause the City to be evacuated, allowing a criminal gang time to break into and rob major banks and then escape by helicopter. After losing a fight on board the aircraft the villain explains his motives and jumps to his death, leaving the remaining phials of agent unbreached.
3996407	/m/0bbnzt	The Defense	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1930	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot concerns the title character, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. As a boy, he is considered unattractive, withdrawn, and an object of ridicule by his classmates. One day, when a guest comes to his father's party, he is asked whether he knows how to play chess. This encounter serves as his motivation to pick up chess. He skips school and visits his aunt's house to learn the basics. He quickly becomes a great player, enrolling in local competitions and rising in rank as a chess player. His talent is prodigious and he attains the level of a Grandmaster in less than ten years. As his obsession with chess grows, he becomes socially detached and physically unhealthy. At a resort, he meets a young girl, never named in the novel, whose interest he captures. They become romantically involved, and Luzhin eventually proposes to her. Things turn for the worse when he is pitted against Turati, a grandmaster from Italy, in a competition to determine who would face the current world champion. Before and during the game, Luzhin has a mental breakdown, which climaxes when his carefully planned defense against Turati fails in the first moves, and the resulting game fails to produce a winner. When the game is suspended Luzhin wanders into the city in a state of complete detachment from reality. He is returned home and brought to a rest home, where he eventually recovers. His doctor convinces Luzhin's fiancée that chess was the reason for his downfall, and all reminders of chess are removed from his environment. Slowly however, chess begins to find its way back into his thoughts (aided by incidental occurrences, such as an old pocket chessboard found in a coat pocket, or an impractical chess game in a movie). Luzhin begins to see his life as a chess game, seeing repetitions of 'moves' that return his obsession with the game. He desperately tries to find the move that will defend him from losing his chess life-game, but feels the scenario growing closer and closer. Eventually, after an encounter with his old chess mentor, Valentinov, Luzhin realizes that he must "abandon the game," as he puts it to his wife (who is desperately trying to communicate with him). He locks himself in the bathroom (his wife and several dinner guests banging on the door). He climbs out a window, and it is implied he falls to his death, but the ending is deliberately vague. The last line of the (translated) novel reads: "The door was burst in. 'Aleksandr Ivanovich, Aleksandr Ivanovich,' roared several voices. But there was no Aleksandr Ivanovich."
3996780	/m/0bbpgh	Swallowdale	Arthur Ransome	1931	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Returning to Wild Cat Island for their second summer holiday by the Lake, the Swallows find the Amazons and Captain Flint suffering from "native trouble". Great Aunt Maria has come to stay, and she is a stickler for "proper" behaviour; demanding that the Amazon pirates act like "young ladies", and restricting their time. Despite this, Nancy and Peggy escape the Great Aunt and arrange a rendezvous, but on the way the Swallow hits Pike Rock and sinks. All are saved and the boat salvaged, but she needs repairing, so camping on the island is impossible."Captain" John of the Swallows learns some valuable life lessons about following his instincts while commanding a ship, and has time to reflect on the accident while he fashions a new mast for Swallow. Fortunately an alternative appears to replace camping on Wildcat, as Roger and Titty find a beautiful hidden valley, Swallowdale, up on the moors above the lake. The Swallows discover a secret cave in Swallowdale, a trout tarn, the "knickerbockerbreaker", and enjoy new adventures of lakeland life. They meet local woodcutters and farmers, see a hound trail, and trek across the moors. The Amazons are only able to escape at intervals, and are punished for getting home late by being made to memorize and recite poetry. Eventually the Great Aunt leaves and the Swallows and Amazons mount an expedition to sleep under the stars on the "summit" of nearby commanding hill "Kanchenjunga". Next morning, Roger and Titty return to Swallowdale following trails through the bracken across the moor, while the elders ferry the Amazons' camping gear by boat. Both parties get lost in a thick and sudden fog. After it lifts the elders arrive only to find an empty camp. Titty arrives late after hitching a ride with some woodsmen, and explains that Roger sprained his ankle, and will be spending the night with Old Billy, the charcoal burner. The next day the injured Roger is carried back to the camp on a stretcher. The Swallow is finally repaired, and the book ends with a race and a feast, followed by a return to Wild Cat Island.
3997366	/m/0bbqft	A Time to Run	Mary-Rose Hayes	2005-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in the present day, with significant flashbacks to times beginning in the early 1970s. The protagonist is Ellen Fischer, a liberal senator from California. She is preparing for a difficult legislative battle over the conservative president's nomination of a deeply conservative female judge to the Supreme Court. Amid numerous particulars of the informal and formal governmental process in the United States, Boxer unfolds her heroine's dilemma and her past simultaneously. The dilemma is presented by a journalist, Greg Hunter, with pronounced right-wing views. Hunter is a figure from the senator's past. They had been lovers while he was in college; he lost her to his roommate, Joshua Fischer. Joshua later dies in the middle of a campaign for Senate; Ellen steps into his place and wins, launching her political career. Now, Hunter has returned, bringing with him information that could derail the judicial nominee's appointment. Fischer is buffeted by new revelations about Hunter and a well-founded distrust of his motives.
4000671	/m/0bbwrl	The House of Sixty Fathers	Meindert DeJong	1956	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is set during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Japan has invaded China, and the Japanese attack the village where young Tien Pao and his family live. The family flees upriver in an abandoned sampan to the town of Hengyang. While the boy's parents go to a nearby American airfield to seek work with his younger sister, Tien Pao spends the day taking care of the sampan as well as three ducklings and the family pig, named Glory of the Republic. During a rainstorm, while Tien Pao is asleep, the sampan breaks loose from its moorings. Tien Pao is swept down the river. After a night in the raging waters, the storm abates, and Tien Pao finds himself floating in the area where his village used to be. He releases the ducklings in the river and heads for higher ground with his pig. He must travel over high mountains and through dangerous Japanese occupied territory to reach Hengyang. As he journeys home, Tien Pao begins to starve and suffer from exhaustion. He witnesses terrifying scenes of violence. Once, he sees a plane strafe a Japanese military convoy, only to be shot down over the forest. Sitting on a big rock, Tien Pao watches the entire skirmish. He later comes upon the injured American pilot (whom he had met before during his stay at Hengyang river) and helps the man return to his unit. The American pilot is a member of the Flying Tigers, and the sixty men in the unit become the "sixty fathers" who care for Tien Pao. Tien Pao exhibits a strong will to continue to try to find his parents, an incredibly difficult task; with the help of the American pilot he finds an airfield similar to the one his parents once worked on. The pilot only wishes to show Tien Pao an airfield but Tien Pao finds his mother and is at last reunited with his family.
4001950	/m/0bbzkd	Master of the Void			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the post-war galaxy, ruined civilizations regain bygone greatness. Earth's cleaning ship reaches the planet, whose inhabitants rejected technology long ago, living in small forest settlements and practicing handicrafts and hunting. Not noticing them, the crew drops 50 autom-cleaners, self-conscious mechanisms consisting of active mass, which are supposed to carry out cleaning on their own or by emerging simpler mechanisms — plain cleaners. But this cleaning, being a full destruction of the biosphere and covering the continent with an envelope of active mass,means death for all residents. However, only one of them, called the Smartest, understands this. The main character, also known as Zach Denton, is said to be a renowned scholar. Based on analysis of his dialogue in the novel, it is estimated that his IQ is 154, which places him among the most intelligent people in the world, hence the name Smartest. The post-war setting complements the protagonist's presence in the novel, and increases the intensity as he masters the void and all dark matter. Actually, he is a former commando who dramatically arrived on this planet fifty years ago. In this critical situation he sees the only way out in rapid technological progress, but local authorities, female Keepers of knowledge, disagree with him. "You want to save people. To do it you'll have to change them. Answer me, what are people without customs worth? They are worse than savages, worse than you..." To get the attention of Earth's ship crew, one of the autonom-cleaners has to be destroyed... Smartest understands this as well as he knows it would require a strong leader, whom people will follow. He chooses a shooter, Leon, who has managed to bring down a plain cleaner which fired his village. Drunkard and poet Kirreyn begins to propagandize Leon as the Hero and the Great Shooter. Soon several boys become Leon's "personal guards". Using violence, a group headed by Smartest captures technology data sheets and Leon calls all people to join him to manufacture weapons. At first, they don't believe in technology, but the first tank convinces all to the contrary, after its crew, headed by Leon, shoots down two plain cleaners... All adore Leon; he overworks and goes to battle first... A lot of "plants" are built; and people who joined Leon defend only some necessary area where they live and work... Food becomes scarce and it's the reason to establish war police... Now it exhibits many features of a state. But Leon's plane is shot down beyond the border, where the former rule of the Keepers still holds and he is captured by them. Keepers have deified the autonom-cleaners (Iron Beasts) and try to counteract Leon's "state". He meets J-Fron, the lest valuable member of crew of Earth ship, who has deserted. When he luckily returns home with J-Fron's aid (plain cleaners fired the prison, but left J-Fron alive due to a telepathic password implanted in his brain), he finds that his former position is hold by another man. Leon can't find an occupation that would suit him; he remembers too well all the shouting crowds... And he doesn't want to be Lord of the void, an alive memorial of himself. Leon sends his "guards" to kill the new Leader, after he conducted the operation of destroying one autonom-cleaner (with the aid of J-Fron's password; however this operation involved more than a thousand people killed). This becomes a sort of point of no return for Leon, both his failure to be a normal person and his affirmation as the great Leader. He doesn't realize this; The Smartest does, "Please, don't call me a Teacher any longer; now you can teach by yourself." But as the autonom-cleaner is destroyed, the crew of the Earth ship realizes the situation and leaves the planet alone... with 49 working autonom-cleaners. According to their notion of fairness, the society must have a chance to survive... but it is worth nothing if it doesn't manage to do so. Leon moves his nation (now less than one tenth of the original population) under the shelter of mountains, into the ancient Capital, a system of caves... The Smartest and J-Fron decided to cover the retreat... In their last talk before probable death, Smartest tells J-Fron, that when he got to this planet 50 years ago, he met a "happy and somewhat sleepy society. Such it was, you were too late to see it. Society not changing for a thousand years, fine people who I, a cretin, couldn't stand... By the way, the best society, without experiencing shocks now and then is threatened with banal degeneration. It was my point, and it holds. It's fun — I wanted one time to be that man, who would wake this world up..." "I have never thought that in the end I will become an adversary of progress." The old man struck the crag with his yellow venous fist, struck once more and more. "But why?!" shouted he, "Why are people constructed in a so way, that for them the only way to survive in a critical situation is THIS? Why?!"
4001995	/m/0bbzmj	The Great Good Place	Henry James	1900-01		 After a long night of unfinished work, the morning dawns for George Dane, a writer whose life has grown too busy with his career and relationships. An expected breakfast guest appears and suddenly Dane is transported to a new environment, the great good place of the title. James does not describe this place as an unreal paradise. Guests even have to pay for service. The place seems more like a retreat or getaway resort, where Dane eventually recovers his peace of mind. Dane spends three weeks at the place, and tells a Brother of his former life and the mysterious breakfast guest. Back in his usual world, Dane is eventually awakened by his servant after eight hours' sleep, and he realizes that his vision is gone. But the mysterious guest has straightened up his study, and Dane's life seems clearer and more manageable.
4002070	/m/0bbzqd	Warlord of the Air	Michael Moorcock	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The novel is transcribed by 'Michael Moorcock' (the author's fictional grandfather) in 1903. Holidaying at the remote Rowe Island, he befriends Oswald Bastable, an ex-soldier stowaway who seems confused and disoriented beyond what could be explained by his opium addiction, and who is tormented by great guilt from an action he performed in his past. Bastable agrees to tell Moorcock the story, and begins his narrative with his experiences in North East India in 1902, sent as part of a British expedition to deal with Sharan Kang, an Indian high priest at the temple of Teku Benga, a mysterious and seemingly supernaturally powerful region. After a confrontation with Kang and his men, Bastable finds himself lost and alone in the caves around the 'Temple of the Future Buddha', where he is assaulted by a mysterious force and knocked into unconsciousness. When he awakes, and escapes the caves, the Temple is in ruins, as if a great amount of time has passed. He is soon found and picked up by a massive airship, where he learns that it is in fact the year 1973, but not the one that the reader would recognise. In this alternate future, the First World War never happened, and the colonial powers continue to assert dominance over their empires—for example, India remains a British territory, though Winston Churchill had been viceroy in this alternate future as well as in Bastable's own. At first, Bastable marvels at the wonders that await him in his 'future' — London is a clean and peaceful city, and the world seems to be a utopia, held in balance by the great empires. Gaining employment amongst the great airship armadas, however, he soon comes into contact with a troop of anarchists — among them a mysterious woman named Una Persson, and an ancient Russian revolutionary named Ulianov. He initially maintains a patriotic resistance to their activities, but gradually discovers the truth: life is peaceful for the dominant empires but the seeming utopia of the empires' home countries is based on decades of unimpeded and unopposed colonial oppression, brutality and domination of their territories. As the First World War never happened to bankrupt the colonial empires and begin the gradual liberalisation and freedom of the colonies, imperialism remains unchecked and the world is greatly unfair and unjust. Great Britain, France, the Tsarist Russian Empire, the German Empire, Japan, the Italian Empire and the United States ruthlessly dominate this world and suppress anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist dissent. Bastable, a fair and honorable man, is outraged by the cruelty, injustice and horror revealed to him, and begins to fight for the oppressed peoples of the world (opposing, amongst others, his former friend in the airship service, Major Enoch Powell). Tragically, his actions result in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the hands of the anarchists. The atomic blast knocks him loose from the alternate 1973, sending him to a new 1903. Wracked with guilt over his part in the destruction of countless millions of innocent lives, and dreading the 'future' of science and imperialism gone mad, Bastable makes his way to the caves of Teku Benga and returns to 1903, but alas, not his own original time. His experiences have altered him too much to settle into life in this new alternate universe; both his experiences and this sense of dislocation have driven him to opium. The novel ends with Bastable disappearing mysteriously, much to the 1903 Moorcock's amazement; and a postscript from the modern author Moorcock, establishing his grandfather's death on the Western Front in 1916.
4005561	/m/0bc40p	The Land That Time Forgot	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1924	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World"}	 The novel is set in World War I and opens with a framing story in which a manuscript relating the main story is recovered from a thermos off the coast of Greenland. It purports to be the narrative of Bowen J. Tyler, an American passenger with his Airedale terrier Nobs on a ship sunk in the English Channel by a German U-boat, , in 1916. He is rescued by a British tugboat with another survivor, Lys La Rue. The tug is also sunk, but its crew manages to capture the submarine when it surfaces. Unfortunately, all other British craft continue to regard the sub as an enemy, and they are unable to bring it to port. Sabotage to the navigation equipment sends the U-33 astray into the South Atlantic. The imprisoned German crew retakes the sub and begins a raiding cruise, only to be overcome again by the British. A saboteur continues to guide the sub off course, and by the time he is found out it is in Antarctic waters. The U-33 is now low on fuel, with its provisions poisoned by the saboteur Benson. A large island ringed by cliffs is encountered, and identified as Caprona, a land mass first reported by the (fictitious) Italian explorer Caproni in 1721 whose location was subsequently lost. A freshwater current guides the sub to a stream issuing from a subterranean passage, which is entered on the hope of replenishing the water supply. The U-boat surfaces into a tropical river teeming with primitive creatures extinct elsewhere; attacked, it submerges again and travels upstream in search of a safe harbor. It enters a thermal inland sea, essentially a huge crater lake, whose heat sustains Caprona’s tropical climate. As the sub travels north along the island’s waterways the climate moderates and wildlife undergoes an apparent evolutionary progression. On the shore of the lake the crew builds a palisaded base, dubbed Fort Dinosaur for the area’s prehistoric fauna. The British and Germans agree to work together under Tyler, with Bradley, the mate from the tug, as second in command and Von Schoenvorts, the original sub commander, in control of the Germans. The castaways are attacked by a horde of beast men and take prisoner Ahm, a Neanderthal. They learn that the native name for the island is Caspak. Oil is discovered, which they hope to refine into fuel for the U-33. As they set up operations, Bradley undertakes various explorations. During his absence Lys disappears and the Germans mutiny again, absconding with the submarine. Tyler leaves the other survivors to seek and rescue Lys. A series of adventures ensues among various bands of near-human primitives, each representing a different stage of human advancement, as represented by their weaponry. Tyler rescues Lys from a group of Sto-lu (hatchet men), and later aids the escape of a woman of the Band-lu (spearmen) to the Kro-lu (bowmen). Lys is lost again, and chance discoveries of the graves of two men associated with Bradley’s expedition leaves Tyler in despair of that party’s fate. Unable to find his way back to Fort Dinosaur, he retreats to the barrier cliffs ringing Caspak in a vain hope of attracting rescue from some passing ship. Improbably reunited with Lys, he sets up house with her, completes the account of his adventures which he has been writing, and casts it out to sea in his thermos.
4009179	/m/0bc8lr	The Closed Circle: An interpretation of the Arabs	David Pryce-Jones			 This book discusses the tribal roots of Arab society which form the basis of its cultural traditions. The author documents the cultural forces which drive the violence and mayhem that, in his view, is characteristic of Arab societies in their dealings with each other and with the West. The author argues that the Arab world is stuck in an age-old tribalism and behavior from which it is unable to evolve. In tribal society, loyalty is extended to close kin and other members of the tribe. In the Arab world those who seek power achieve it by plotting secretly and ruthlessly eliminating their rivals.
4011320	/m/0bccyk	The Octoroon	Dion Boucicault			 George, the nephew of plantation owner Mrs. Peyton, returns from a trip to France to find that his aunt's plantation is in dire financial straits as a result of his late uncle's beneficence. Jacob McClosky, the man who ruined the late Judge Peyton, has come to inform them that their plantation will be sold and their slaves auctioned off separately. Salem Scudder, a kind yankee, was Judge Peyton's business partner; though he wishes he could save Terrebonne, he has no money. George is courted by the rich Southern belle heiress Dora Sunnyside, but he finds himself falling in love with Zoe, the daughter of his uncle through one of the slaves. Dora, oblivious to George's lack of affection for her, enlists Zoe's help to win him over. McClosky desires Zoe for himself, and when she rejects his proposition, he plots to have her sold with the rest of the slaves, for he knows that she is an octoroon and is legally part of the Terrebonne property. He plans to buy her and make her his mistress. McClosky intercepts a young slave boy, Paul, who is bringing a mailbag to the house which contains a letter from one of Judge Peyton's old debtors. Since this letter would allow Mrs. Peyton to avoid selling Terrebonne, McClosky kills Paul and takes the letter. The murder is captured on Scudder's photographic apparatus. Paul's best friend, the Indian Wahnotee, discovers Paul's body; he can speak only poor English, however, and is unable to communicate the tragedy to anyone else. George and Zoe reveal their love for each other, but Zoe rejects George's marriage proposal. When George asks why, Zoe explains that she is an octoroon, and the law prevents a white man from marrying anyone with the smallest black heritage. George offers to take her to a different country, but Zoe insists that she stay to help Terrebonne; Scudder then appears and suggests that George marry Dora. With Dora's wealth, he explains, Terrebonne will not be sold and the slaves will not have to be separated. George reluctantly agrees. George goes to Dora and begins to propose to her; while he is doing so, however, he has a change of heart and decides not to lie to her. He and Zoe admit to their love of each other; a heartbroken Dora leaves. The auctioneer arrives, along with prospective buyers, McClosky among them. After various slaves are auctioned off, George and the buyers are shocked to see Zoe up on the stand. McClosky has proved that Judge Peyton did not succeed in legally freeing her, as he had meant to do. Dora then reappears and bids on Zoe – she has sold her own plantation in order to rescue Terrebonne. McClosky, however, outbids her for Zoe; George is restrained from attacking him by his friends. The buyers gather to take away the slaves they have purchased on a steamship. They have realized that Paul is missing, and most believe him dead. Wahnotee appears, drunk and sorrowful, and tells them that Paul is buried near them. The men accuse Wahnotee of the murder, and McClosky calls for him to be lynched. Scudder insists that they hold a trial, and the men search for evidence. Just as McClosky points out the blood on Wahnotee's tomahawk, the oldest slave, Pete, comes to give them the photographic plate which has captured McClosky's deed. The men begin to call for McClosky to be lynched, but Scudder convinces them to send him to jail instead. The men leave to fetch the authorities, but McClosky escapes. Stealing a lantern, he sets fire to the steamship that had the slaves on it. Wahnotee tracks him down and confronts him; in the ensuing struggle, Wahnotee kills McClosky. Back at Terrebonne Zoe returns but with a sad heart as she knows that she and George can never be together. In an act of desperation she drinks a vial of poison, and Scudder enters to deliver the good news that McClosky was proven guilty of murdering Paul and that Terrebonne now belongs to George. Despite the happiness Zoe stands dying and the play ends with her death on the sitting room couch and George kneeling beside her.
4012160	/m/0bcfbk	The Praise Singer	Mary Renault		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book follows the life of Simonides from the point of view of his older self. As a boy, silent and lacking confidence due to his extreme ugliness, he is brought up with strict discipline by his father, Leoprepes. He finds comfort in the love of his handsome older brother Theasides, and in music. When a travelling singer, Kleobis, visits Keos to perform at a wedding, Simonides begs to be taken on as an apprentice. This, Kleobis does, and they leave together on their travels. Under Kleobis' tutelage Simonides becomes a talented composer and performer, but remains physically ugly. This proves a severe disadvantage when, after the fall of Kleobis' native city of Ephesos to the Persians, Kleobis and Simonides attempt to find a patron at the court of Polycrates of Samos. Polycrates is a conoisseur of beauty, in boys as much as in music or art, and Simonides' appearance is not a recommendation. Kleobis and Simonides find themselves out of fashion at court, and scrabbling for work. Simonides travels back to Keos to enter a music contest, leaving Kleobis behind in Samos nursing a slight illness. He wins the contest, but discovers, on returning, that Kleobis has died. Simonides now finds a patron in Pisistratos, the tyrant of Athens. He becomes a successful musician in that city, and after Pisistratos' death, his sons Hippias and Hipparchos continue the family's patronage. Through Hipparchos, Simonides is introduced to the hetaira Lyra, whose lover he becomes. Hipparchos himself is sexually oriented to boys, not women, and Simonides witnesses his eventual downfall, when Hipparchos uses his political power to punish the family of a young boy who rejects his advances, and the boy and his lover retaliate by murdering him. Here Renault draws on the tale of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, also known as the Tyrannicides (τυραννοκτόνους), whose attack against the Peisistratid tyranny made them the iconic personages of the Athenian democracy.
4014568	/m/0bcl16	Barabbas	Pär Lagerkvist	1950	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jesus is crucified on Mount Golgotha. To the side of the crowd stands Barabbas. Being a violent man, a brigand and a rebel, he cannot muster much respect for the resignation of the man who died in his place. He is skeptical about the holiness of Jesus too. Yet, he is also fascinated by the sacrifice and he seeks out the different followers of Jesus trying to understand, but finds that their exalted views of Jesus do not match his down to earth observation of the man. More importantly, since Barabbas had not ever been the recipient of love (the cornerstone of the Christian faith), he finds that he is unable to understand love and hence Barabbas is unable to understand the Christian faith. Barabbas says that he "Wants to believe," but for Barabbas, understanding is a prerequisite for belief, so he is unable. After many trials and tribulations he ends up in Rome where he mistakes the Great Fire of Rome as the start of the new Kingdom of Heaven and enthusiastically helps spread the conflagration. Consequently, he is arrested and crucified along with other Christians as a martyr for a faith he does not understand.
4014803	/m/0bcljc	Mrs. Medwin	Henry James			 Mamie Cutter is an American living in London. She supports herself by getting questionable people into fashionable social circles, in return for a fee. Her worthless but personable half-brother Scott Homer turns up at her apartment looking for a handout. A particularly tough case for Mamie is a certain Mrs. Medwin, who is apparently beyond the pale even by the lax standards of current English society. But Scott comes to Mamie's rescue by charming the snooty Lady Wantrigde into inviting Mrs. Medwin to one of her exclusive parties. Mamie collects her fee and Scott becomes an unexpected social success.
4016195	/m/0bcnvx	The Wives of Bath	Susan Swan	1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mouse introduces herself, and mentions her involvement in Paulie's "weird, Napoleonic act of self-assertion", though she doesn't specify exactly what it was that Paulie did, or even who she is. Mouse speaks of her distracted father, Morley, and her critical stepmother, Sal. She also tells the reader of the hump she has in her left shoulder as a result of a childhood bout of polio, which developed into kyphosis. Mouse has named the hump Alice, after her dead mother, and says that the hump is like a friend to her. Throughout the novel, Mouse's conversations with Alice provide comic relief and exposition on the story's dark events. In the second chapter, Mouse pauses the narrative and recounts details from Paulie's trial, something she continues to do sporadically throughout the novel. It emerges that Paulie committed a murder of some kind. Mouse recalls how she was sent to the boarding school in Toronto- Bath Ladies' College- because her father had "an unfortunate inferiority complex about bringing up females" and because its headmistress, Vera Vaughan, was a distant cousin of Morley's. Mouse is nervous, keenly aware of her shyness and her physical shortcomings, and is bewildered by the strange atmosphere of the old-fashioned school. She meets the friendly janitor, Sergeant (who is a dwarf) and Paulie's brother, Lewis, whom she later catches shaving in her new dorm bathroom. Mouse meets Tory and Paulie that evening, immediately warming to the friendly Tory and taken aback by Paulie's brash manner. It is clear that, different as they are, the two have a very close friendship. Tory tells Mouse that Paulie's brother, Lewis, is her boyfriend, and that they are in love. Mouse settles quickly, but not comfortably, into the school, picking up the lexicon and the consensus regarding the staff of the school amongst the students. The intensity of her fixation with John F. Kennedy is evident in the long, familiar letters that she sends him on a regular basis. To both Mouse and Paulie's chagrin, Tory breaks her leg in a field hockey accident and is sent home for the rest of the winter term. Tiring of Paulie's volatile behaviour, Miss Vaughan orders Paulie to 'walk off' her frustrations at the school every evening after class, and assigns Mouse to accompany her. The two form a kind of bond, and Paulie soon reveals to Mouse that she doesn't have a brother named Lewis; it is actually her, masquerading as a boy, and that she has everyone fooled, even Tory. She takes Mouse to the shrine she has made to the 1933 film King Kong, and sets Mouse a series of bizarre tests to prove that she, too, can 'be' a boy. These include: eating six bowls of tapioca pudding without vomiting, letting a match burn to the skin without crying, and managing to urinate whilst standing up. After Mouse completes these 'preliminaries', she embarks upon three major tests: mastery over other men, mastery over women and mastery over nature; in the first, Mouse creates her male alter-ego 'Nick the Greek', and dresses as a boy for the first time. Mouse and Paulie pick a fight with boys from the nearby King's College, one of whom is Tory's elder brother, Rick. In the second, Paulie challenges Mouse to seduce an overweight girl from the local convent school, which she does, though the outcome borders on comical; the girl in question, Josie, is found to have known all along that 'Nick' was a girl, and bursts into tears when Mouse hesitates to caress her. In the third test, Paulie challenges Mouse to kill a pigeon. Mouse's reluctance to do these tasks emphasises that her wish to be a man is not founded on a genuine desire to become one, or even on an attraction to girls. Rather, Mouse longs for the freedom that the men of the time enjoyed, which she believes she will never be able to experience as a woman. In Tory's absence, teacher's pet Ismay Thom moves into Mouse and Paulie's dorm room. Her pushy presence aggravates Paulie, but Mouse warms to Ismay's eccentric but likeable character. Paulie leads Mouse in a break-in to Mrs Peddie's private quarters, where they stumble upon correspondence between Miss Vaughan and Mrs Peddie, written years before. The letters detail an incident in which Miss Vaughan was assaulted by a police officer, who had seen her kissing Mrs Peddie. Paulie steals them, and hides them in Mouse's bedside drawer. When Mouse checks on them in the morning, they have disappeared. In Tory's absence, Paulie's behaviour worsens, and she is banned from attending the Visitor's Luncheon at King's College. Mouse is taken there by her Uncle Winnie (her mother's brother) and his wife. Whilst there, she sees Tory with Lewis in the yard outside. Lewis is chased from the school, after being seen vandalising a statue. Amidst the uproar, the news is broken that President Kennedy has been assassinated. Mouse is devastated by the news of the President's death, but is cheered by letters from Jack O'Malley, a King's College student she met at the Luncheon. Paulie's behaviour becomes increasingly sinister; she instructs Mouse to beat her with an old cane, and when she hesitates, Paulie beats her with it instead, hard enough to draw blood. Mouse admits that she continued to go along with Paulie's tests because Paulie's evil character absolves her of all the things in her life that she cannot change (i.e., not being worthy of Morley's love, not having any friends) and makes her even more innocent. After performing in the Christmas show, Mouse is summoned to Miss Vaughan's office, where she is told that Morley has died from a sudden heart attack. Mouse returns to her home in Madoc's Landing to bury her father. Though she seems cold and distant to the reality of his death, it is obvious that she is devastated. Her stepmother Sal, who is frequently heard as Mouse's voice of conscience, is revealed to be an alcoholic. Miss Vaughan attends the funeral, bringing Paulie, who tells Mouse that Rick is trying to stop Tory from seeing Lewis. Miss Vaughan asks Mouse to keep what she has discovered in her and Mrs Peddie's letters to herself. Mouse resolves to never dress as a boy again, and meditates on her father's lack of affection for her. She concludes that he loved his work too much. Mouse returns to Bath College with keepsakes of his, one of them being a book on anatomy (he was a surgeon) and his old doctor's bag. On returning to school, Mouse discovers that Paulie has been removed from her dorm room, replaced by Asa Abrams, and that Tory has returned. To her surprise, she receives quiet sympathy from her peers as well as her teachers, and is particularly touched by Tory's gift of a New Testament bible. Paulie has been forced to take Asa's old cubicle. Her exile makes her noticeably friendlier to Mouse. Paulie discloses that she (as Lewis) got into a fight with Rick and injured him with a knife, and that Tory was upset with her for doing it. Ismay tells Mouse that Paulie has been carving lurid stick figures on her bedstead and stealing her music scores, which Paulie laughingly denies. Lewis drives Mouse to King's College on the evening of the Christmas dance, to pick up Jack O'Malley. The two make awkward conversation as Lewis drives to Canon Quinn's house to pick Tory up. Mouse sees Rick and Lewis arguing and scuffling at the door of the Quinns' house; Lewis returns to the van noticeably upset and without Tory. Once alone, Lewis reveals to Mouse that Rick had challenged Lewis to prove he was a boy by showing him his penis, and begins to cry. Mouse eventually leaves Paulie, and joins Jack inside. They become involved in the festivities, drinking gin and "fooling around for the longest time standing up". Toward the end of the evening, Mouse breaks away and searches for Paulie, finally finding her in the tower washroom, her hair shorn and her face cut and bleeding. Paulie angrily brushes Mouse away when she tries to comfort her, and says that she's not giving up on Tory. They are distracted by Sergeant, who has dressed up as the school's dead founder, Miss Higgs, for the evening, and is tearing round the school on an antiquated Victorian bicycle. The girls try to follow him, but Mouse loses Paulie in the darkness. She looks for her in her room, and discovers Ismay's musical scores in there, along with pages ripped from her father's Gray's Anatomy; the pages depict the male penis, and have been annotated by Paulie. Tired, and tipsy from the alcohol Jack gave her, Mouse goes to bed. Mouse wakes early the next morning and, worried by Paulie's prolonged absence, goes to look for her in the tunnels beneath the school. She finds Paulie distressed, saying that Sergeant has fallen against one of the heating pipes and hurt himself. She takes Mouse to his prone body, then sends her to get the Czech groundskeeper, Willy. Sergeant is unconscious, and badly burned from falling against the scalding pipes. When Mouse returns with him, she finds Sergeant dead, and Paulie gone. Remembering what she found the evening before, a horrified Mouse suspects what Paulie has done. Lifting his costume skirts, Mouse sees that Sergeant has been castrated. Mouse recalls details from Paulie's trial, and informs the reader what happened next; after removing Sergeant's genitals with one of Morley's scalpels, Paulie had stuck them to herself with tire glue, and presented herself to Rick Quinn in her chilling garb. She was arrested shortly after, and found to be too mentally unstable to take full responsibility for her actions; eluding jail, Paulie was sent to a mental institution for "rehabilitation". Tory was sent to another school (though the court heard that she continued to see Paulie whilst she was in custody), and Mouse was sent home to Madoc's Landing until the furor over her involvement in Paulie's crime had died down. She recalls a dream she had about Sergeant after his memorial service, and says she's glad that he didn't know it was his friend Lewis who had killed him, but Paulie. Now sixteen, Mouse looks back on her time at Bath's College, crediting the girls and women there who inspired her to be herself, and signs herself off as 'M.B.'
4016325	/m/0bcp1n	The Birthplace	Henry James			 Morris Gedge is a librarian at a dull provincial library in England that is "all granite, fog and female fiction." He gets a welcome offer to become the custodian of the Shakespeare house at Stratford-on-Avon. Although Shakespeare's name is never mentioned in the story (James used the name twice in his Notebooks when he was planning the tale) it's obvious to whom "the supreme Mecca of the English-speaking race" is devoted. Once installed as the custodian, Morris begins to doubt the chatter he is forced to give to tourists who visit the home. He starts to qualify and hesitate in his spiel. This brings anguish to his wife and a warning from the shrine's proprietors. Gedge finally decides that if silliness is what's wanted, he'll supply it abundantly. The last section of the story shows him delivering a hilarious lecture on how the child Shakespeare played around the house. Of course, receipts from tourists increase and Gedge gets a raise.
4018311	/m/0bcs4p	The Two Princesses of Bamarre	Gail Carson Levine	2001	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Princess Addie is fearful and shy. Princess Meryl is bold and brave. They are sisters, and they mean the world to each other. Bamarre is plagued by a fatal disease called the Gray Death, which has three stages: Weakness, Sleep, and then Fever. While the weakness may last for hours to weeks, the sleep always lasts nine days, and the fever always lasts three. Bamarre also has specters, which lure travelers to their deaths unless exposed, sorcerers, ogres, dwarves, elves, gryphons, dragons, and fairies, although the latter have not been seen since Drualt, Bamarre's greatest hero and subject of legends, went up to visit them after his sweetheart died and no one from a nearby town tried to help her. Die and Bella strike up a friendship with Rhys, the apprentice sorcerer helping her father, when Meryl is suddenly struck ill with the Gray Death. Addie has trouble coming to terms with the fact that Meryl is going to die, while Meryl tries in vain to prove Addie's theory that the Gray Death might be cured if the person who is ill refuses to be sick, running when weak, staying awake when tired, etc. Since a fabled prophecy from a specter states that the Gray Death will be cured when "Cowards find courage and rain falls over all Bamarre," Addie convinces her cowardly father to seek out a cure and prays for rain. When the king returns just as cowardly as before and no clouds are in sight, Addie determines to find the cure herself. Using a pair of seven-league boots and a magical spyglass from her deceased mother, a copy of Drualt, an invisibility cloak and magic tablecloth from Rhys, some of Milton's herbs and Meryl's sword, Addie successfully travels to the Mulee forest to find a specter, only to be tricked by one that took the form of Rhys. The real Rhys makes her realize the truth, and she learns from the specter that a dragon would be her best bet for finding the cure. Rhys has to leave for the Sorcerers' Citadel, but not before Addie realizes that there's more behind their friendship. After accidentally overcoming a pack of gryphons with her tablecloth, Addie is found by the dragon Vollys and taken to her lair. Although dragons are solitary creatures, they are also lonely, so Addie is forced to entertain Vollys to avoid a fiery demise in Vollys' stomach. She does this through her embroidery, which is her sole bold attribute. Although Addie is terrified of the dragon, she learns that Vollys is always sad when she eats her "guests" after they have angered her one time too many. Addie also learns the dragon version of Drualt's story, which portrays the hero as a villain who mercilessly kills noble dragons, including Vollys' mother. Vollys also tells Addie that the Gray Death came from her mother's corpse, a revenge for her death. Because she does not think Addie can escape, Vollys also tells Addie that the Gray Death can be cured by the water of a waterfall that flows from Mount Ziriat, the fairies' invisible mountain. She even tells Addie where the mountain is. Meanwhile, Addie learns through her spyglass that Meryl has entered the sleeping stage of the Gray Death, and later fever stage of the Gray Death. Addie manages to escape Vollys with her boots, and returns to the castle. After reuniting with Rhys, Meryl tells Addie that she has until the next dawn to live. Addie tells them about the cure, and she and Rhys uses the seven-league boots to carry Meryl to the mountain. They end up outside the same village that refused to help Drualt's sweetheart due to their cowardice. Upon questioning, the isolated villagers say that although they have heard of the Gray Death, no one in the village has ever had it. The three also learn that all the villagers drink from a waterfall that comes from a mountain so tall and shrouded in mist that no one has ever seen it. Realizing that they are talking about Mount Ziriat, and the villagers are never sick because they drink the water, Rhys and the Princesses manage to find a few villagers courageous enough and willing to show them the waterfall, which is a few hours away, despite the dark night and the threat of ogres and gryphons. While they walk, Rhys confesses his love to Addie, and she does the same. Just as they reach the waterfall, though, the party is attacked by ogres, gryphons and an enraged Vollys. The sky begins to lighten, and Addie tells Meryl, who is having the time of her life in battle, to run to the water and drink. While she is running, though, Addie is caught by an ogre unexpectedly and screams. Meryl runs back to rescue her when the first rays of sunlight come, just as rain begins to fall. Addie is knocked unconscious, Meryl falls to the ground, and shining beings of light fly down. When Addie wakes up, she learns from Meryl, who seems different somehow, that they were rescued by fairies and taken to the top of Mount Ziriat. The rain had fallen everywhere, curing all with the Gray Death except those who were too close to death to save. When Addie gained the courage to save her sister, and when the cowardly villagers redeemed themselves by helping Meryl and Addie, the fairies made water from their enchanted waterfall rain over all Bamarre. Meryl also tells Addie that she, too, was one of those on the brink of death when the rain came, so the fairies could not truly save her. However, they offered to transform her into a fairy and join them in an endless battle against fearsome, monstrous creatures, the outcome of which affects the world below. Meryl accepted the offer, and is now a fairy, unable to return with Addie. Addie also learns from Meryl that she is now with Drualt, who was also transformed after leaving Bamarre, and hat he had been the presence Addie felt in her darkest hours, cheering her up and giving her the strength to go on. Rhys and Addie marry and live happily ever after, with Meryl as Fairy Godmother to their children, the first after hundreds of years.
4018377	/m/0bcs63	The Czar's Madman	Jaan Kross	1978	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is written in diary form, describing the impact of revolutionary thinking on the part of a family member. Aristocrat Timotheus von Bock (the diarist's brother in law) writes a letter to the Czar criticising the way in which the Czar's family runs the country. He justifies this act by an oath made to the Czar to give an honest appraisal of the situation. Von Bock is imprisoned as a traitor (although the reason for his imprisonment is kept secret, as is the letter) for 9 years before being released into house arrest on the basis that he is 'mad'. Is he mad? Was it madness to offer criticism which inevitably led to imprisonment? Is he mad not to flee his house arrest when the opportunity arises? These are some of the issues raised and discussed in this novel.
4019771	/m/02p7vb4	Here Be Dragons	Sharon Penman	1985	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Here Be Dragons (1985) is the first of Penman's trilogy about the medieval princes of Gwynedd and the monarchs of England. England's King John uses his out-of-wedlock daughter Joanna as a negotiating tool by marrying her to the Welsh king Llewelyn to avoid war between England and Wales. Joanna and Llewelyn's marriage is marred by resentment from Llewelyn's illegitimate son, Gruffydd. Joanna gives birth to two legitimate children, Elen and Davydd. Growing animosity between the English and Welsh results in Joanna having to act as a diplomatic intermediary between her husband and her father, and the situation deteriorates when Gruffydd is taken hostage by John and narrowly escapes execution. Joanna becomes determined that her own son, Dafydd, will be his father's heir as ruler of Gwynedd, disregarding the Welsh law that all sons should receive equal shares of their father's inheritance. Family disagreements lead Joanna into an affair with William de Braose, whom she has met earlier in the story when he was a hostage in Llewelyn's household. Their affair is discovered and William is executed. Joanna is placed in secluded captivity, but at the end of the book Llewelyn comes to find her and offers her forgiveness.
4019796	/m/0bcvm7	The Nightmare Fair	Graham Williams		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri are lured in the TARDIS to Blackpool, where they discover something wrong in the local videogame arcade. The Doctor's adversary the Celestial Toymaker is behind it, and the Doctor and Peri must fight their way through his videogames in order to defeat him.
4021390	/m/0bcyk6	Kushiel's Scion	Jacqueline Carey	2006-06-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 To find his lost mother, the mission of his foster mother and his own personal quest, he must discover who trained Phèdre nó Delaunay's mentor, Anafiel Delaunay. The first book in this series begins with Imriel, at age fourteen, learning that his mother, Melisande Shahrizai has vanished from the Temple of the Asherat-of-the-Sea in La Serenissima. Instead of spending his summer at Montrève, he is summoned to court, where he meets his Shahrizai kin, who will foster with him come the following summer. The Queen, Ysandre de la Courcel, is convinced that Imriel has not been told or given any information from his mother as to where she is. His relationships with his nearest royal kin vary; Alais is as a sister to him but Sidonie de la Courcel, the Dauphine, is cold and untrusting of him. Imriel is also given a tour of his holdings, none of which he has ever seen and are run by the local factors on his behalf. One of his holdings, Lombelon, was inherited by his mother, who took it from Isidore d'Aiglemort. There he sees a beautiful young man a year or two older than himself cutting hedges. He learns that this young man is extremely bitter and asks him why. The boy, Maslin, replies that the territory should be his but was instead given to Imriel, the spawn of traitor. Imriel investigates his claims and finds that Maslin is the illegitimate child of Isidore d'Aiglemort. D'Aiglemort had no other children and was going to give his lands to Maslin, but died before he could do so at the Battle of Troyes-Le-Mont. Imriel then takes it upon himself to right this wrong; he gets all the necessary paperwork done and to give Lombelon to Maslin. Phèdre asks Imriel if he really wants to do this, warning him that this may not make Maslin happy and could still fester. Imriel still gives Lombelon to Maslin. Maslin does not know what to say but Imriel is just happy he could right a wrong wrought by his parents. In the summer, Mavros, Baptitse, and Roshana Sharizai come to foster at the Montreve estate, where Imriel learns more about the Kusheline side of himself. When Imriel turns sixteen, he spends a night at Balm House, at the urging of Phèdre, for the traditional celebration of a sixteenth birthday at the Night Court. The same year, Eamonn mac Grainne, son of Grainne and Quintilus Rousse, comes to foster at the Montrève residence, where he and Imriel become good friends. Imriel becomes close enough to Eamonn to tell him the horrors of Daršanga. When Eamonn leaves, he makes Imriel promise to come visit him in Tiberium, where he will be studying at the university. At a royal hunting party all of the family and most nobles are in attendance. They are hunting a wild boar when Sidonie's horse rears and charges off, carrying Sidonie. Imriel follows and when Sidonie is thrown from the horse, he dismouts to help her up. Imriel hears rustling in the bushes and fears it is the angry boar. He dives on top of Sidonie to save her life, only to have the animal that leaves the bushes to turn out to be a deer. Sidonie is exceptionally shocked but breaks out in laughter at Imriel's face and the fact that it turned out to be a deer. During this exchange, much changes between Imriel and Sidonie. The coldness is almost instantly replaced by an extremely intense, forbidden attraction. Alais' beloved dog, however, is badly hurt by the boar. Imriel stitches the dog right there and ends up saving her life. He then affectionately jokes that he is "Imriel: saviour of dogs, protector from deer." This event causes a change in Sidonie as she realizes that she can trust Imriel and that he does not desire the throne over her. When Imriel turns eighteen, many things change. Drustan mab Necthana and Prince Talorcan, his nephew and heir apparent, come to visit, bringing Princess Dorelei with them. It becomes apparent that as much as Drustan would like to name Alais as his heir, he cannot without risking another civil war. If Alais were to wed Talorcan, she would rule at his side but their children wouldn't inherit the throne as Alba works by matrilineal succession. However, if Imriel were to wed Dorelei, his son would become Cruarch and Terre d'Ange's influence in Alba would not wane. When Imriel learns this, he confides in Mavros. Meanwhile, it seems that Sidonie is beginning to get a crush on Imriel. While he makes no active moves and she is very covert in her desires, both know and feel them. They also know that a relationship between them can never be, given Imriel's parents and recent history. Maslin who loves Sidonie, dislikes Imriel as he suspects Imriel of coveting the throne through Sidonie. Maslin and Imriel dislike each other, and they must struggle to remain cordial to one other and not get into a fight. Imriel begins to feel lost and confused between Sidonie's crush on him, his dislike for Maslin, and his duty to Terre d'Ange by wedding Dorelei. So Mavros and his cousins decide to braid Imriel's hair and take him to Valerian House, where he finally releases his long-held and feared desires for kinky pleasures. This throws him all into turmoil but is not a negative experience. After returning home though, he can no longer look at Phèdre because she is an anguissette, and leaves the house to drink himself into a stupor. Joscelin Verreuil goes with him as more of a protector than a comfort. This lasts for at least a couple of days. Imriel then decides he needs some distance and decides to follow in Eamonn's footsteps by studying at the University of Tiberium. After packing lightly, Imri and Gilot, his man at arms, travel to Tiberium to seek knowledge and learning. Imriel decides that he doesn't want to be known as a prince of the realm, and is known only as Imriel nó Montreve. He shares his building with many families and there is a friendly homeless philosopher, Canis, who lives in front of his place. Canis gives Imriel a necklace with the symbol of a lamp which signifies a school of philosophy, the Cynics, telling him to wear it, which Imriel humours him by wearing. Imriel and Gilot find Eamonn by chance, and Imri studies with him under Master Piero. Imriel also asks around the University where one might learn the arts of covertcy. Lucius, a fellow student, invites Imriel to a play, where he meets his sister, Claudia Fulvia and her husband, Deccus Fulvis (a Tiberian senator). During the play, Claudia toys with Imriel and seduces him, promising him more in the future. This leads to a heady affair between the two, with the revelation of the Unseen Guild. Claudia reveals to him that she has the status of journeyman in the Unseen Guild and that her job is to try to get him to join the Guild. During the following months, while Claudia and Imriel conduct their affair, Claudia slowly teaches Imriel the arts of covertcy. She reveals that Delaunay had been asked as well but that he had refused because he would have to swear loyalty to the Guild, which would supersede his loyalty to Prince Rolande. A riot ensues after the senate declares that the funding to the University is to be cut off, and Imriel, Eamonn, Brigitta (a Skaldic fellow student and love interest of Eamonn), Lucius da Lucca, and Gilot get trapped in it. An attempt is made on Imriel's life, and Gilot is trampled. Gilot is taken to the Temple of Asclepius, where the priests would heal his broken and battered body. There he is told that the necklace that Canis has given him has secret writing on the side of it, indicating that he is protected. He also learns that the symbol on it is in fact that of the Unseen Guild and not that of the Cynics. When Imriel returns to his apartment Canis can not be found. Imriel also discovers that Bernadette de Trevalion hired a hit man to kill him during the riots. Imriel decides to go to Bernadette's agent, Ruggero Caccini, and acquires enough information that he could blackmail the Trevalion household if he wanted later on. While visiting Gilot at the Temple of Asclepius, a priest approaches Imriel and asks him to stay the night, to let Asclepius guide his dreams. In his dream, Asclepius tells him that the power to heal lies within himself, and that "even a stunted tree reaches for sunlight". When Imriel awakens, a revelation comes to him, and he decides to go home after Lucius' wedding to Helena (the daughter of the Prince of Lucca) and marry Dorelei. Before departing for Lucca, Imriel and Gilot travel to the isle of Asclepius to unbind Gilot's splintered hand, and get a final health assessment (Gilot had some ribs broken, and if he was to engage in physical exertion, a bone fragment may puncture his lung). Upon reaching Lucca, disaster had struck. The bride-to-be had been kidnapped, her lover killed, and Lucius becomes possessed with the ghost of his great grandfather, Gallus Tadius (Leader of the Red Scourge, a mercenary company). Imriel manages to rescue the bride but cuts off the assailant's hand in the process. While all of Imriel's friends manage to leave Lucca on the grounds of non-combatants and foreign citizens, Imriel can not. The leader of the attackers insists that if Imriel wants to leave he must pay the same price, the loss of his hand. The D'Angeline host that is negotiating on his behalf refuses and Imriel himself refuses. So Lucca comes under siege with Imriel trapped inside. During the ensuring battle for control of Lucca, Gilot dies trying to protect Imriel and the townsfolk. Canis also bizarrely appears and helps with the forces fighting the siege. During the siege, Canis saves Imriel's life by jumping in the way of a thrown spear that would have surely killed Imriel otherwise. While dying, Canis whispers to Imriel "Your mother sends her love" with his dying breath. Imriel takes this to confirm that Canis was not really a philosopher but a member of the Unseen Guild sent by Melisande to guard Imriel. Under the command of Gallus Tadius, Lucca emerges victorious and Imriel is escorted to Terre d'Ange safely. It is here, at home, where it is most evident just how much Imriel has grown up throughout the novel. He visits with Bernadette de Trevalion and tells her that as long as she acquits all attempts on his life and the blood feud between Bernadette and Melisande Shahrizai, the letter he has containing the proof of her guilt of her attempt on his life will never come to light. After learning that she actually loved him with Canis' final words, Imriel also finally faces his mother somewhat and finally reads her letters to him.
4021422	/m/0bcyl7	Kushiel's Justice	Jacqueline Carey	2007-06-14	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel begins with Imriel sitting down to read the letters that his mother, Melisande Shahrizai, has written him all these years. After the occurrences in Kushiel's Scion, especially with Canis in Lucca, he is now concerned with where she is and the influence she is trying to have on his life. The letters, while not exactly comforting, tell him much and help soothe some of his resentment. Phèdre nó Delaunay, his foster-mother, asks him if he wants to discuss them but he declines. When he presents himself to the Queen, he tells her his decision to wed the Alban Princess Dorelei. He met her when he was eighteen and Prince Talorcan, Drustan's nephew and heir apparent, came to visit\. While Drustan would like to name Alais as his heir, he cannot without risking another civil war. If Alais were to wed Talorcan, she would rule at his side but their children wouldn't inherit the throne, as Alba works by matrilineal succession. However, if Imriel were to wed Dorelei, his son would become Cruarch and Terre d'Ange's influence in Alba would not wane. For this reason, he is agreeing to wed her for the betterment of the kingdom. At the same time, however, he has discovered that he is attracted to his cousin, Sidonie de la Courcel. He knows that she feels the same. He is still the son of two infamous traitors and she is the dauphine. They cannot be together. Despite this, during the Midwinter Masque at the palace, Imriel and Sidonie kiss. Only Sidonie's lady-in-waiting, Amarante, and Imriel's best friend, Mavros, know of their relationship. They often assist them in being together and warn them if people are going to burst in and see them together. Also, Sidonie's private guards know but are extremely loyal to her. Maslin of Lombelon is her chief guard and also rumored to be her lover. Given the wedding, Imriel begins to take lessons with Alais on Alban history, law, religion, and linguistic nuances. After these classes he would meet Sidonie at her quarters and then have a few hours alone, often to make love. While Alais does not approve of their relationship, predominantly due to the necessary secrecy, she does nothing to stop them. During one of these lustful afternoons, Imriel tells Sidonie about what happened to him in Drujan (see Kushiel's Avatar). She listens calmly but is greatly saddened. She then asks whether he would still be willing to be cruel with her because she would very much like it. For once Imriel seems to be more comfortable and willing to try this, as long as it is with her. Their relationship continues as such for many months while being successfully hidden from nearly everyone. Imriel knows that his wedding is approaching though and begins to get very frustrated. He and Sidonie know they can not be together and believe that they only like each other because it is forbidden. To release this frustration, Mavros takes him to Valerian House once again. Given that Imriel has been drinking, however, Mavros books them a showing instead. This proves to be a wonderful idea and also helps Imriel to deal with his past and his Kusheline blood. That summer, Prince Talorcan and Princess Dorelei accompany Drustan on his annual trip to Terre d'Ange in the spring. Dorelei is sweet and kind-hearted, but Imriel is distracted with his love for Sidonie. He still agrees to wed Dorelei though, because, as Sidonie herself said, they are likely only in love with each other because it is forbidden. As well, Sidonie is not yet eighteen and therefore can not cross her mother's will, making any true relationship with Imriel impossible. Even still, Imriel is sad to be leaving her. Dorelei, sensing that he loves another, says she is willing to share him, as she knows D'Angelines do, but that she herself will be only with him, as is Alban custom. Imriel takes this to heart but assures her there is no one else. Before the wedding, Imriel and Sidonie meet secretly at a Temple of Elua. There the Priest vows to keep his silence but discourages the two from being so secretive and continuing a relationship that will inevitably hurt others. Nevertheless, he provides them with a private room for their final love-making. Mavros Shahrizai also takes him on a bachelor's party. Imriel is frustrated, angry, and rough, being in the perfect mood for Valerian House. Mavros, however, makes sure that Imriel does not get carried away and is always safe and sane in his play. The next morning is the wedding. This is a public affair with all persons of import in attendance. They are given many gifts, though Imriel's most cherished gift is that from Drustan's family: vambraces carved with the image of the Cullach Gorym, their family emblem (their diadh-anam). Thus he is welcomed into the royal house of Alba. Imriel puts a good face on it but inside he feels nothing but sadness and a hollow feeling. It is hot, he is uncomfortable, and Sidonie is right there the whole time, watching him wed someone else. During the ceremony, Sidonie throws rose petals upon the couple. Imriel knows the true meaning of this: there is a passage in the Trois-Mille Joies that says to cover your lover in kisses is like falling flower petals. Everyone else at the wedding are happy, making Imriel's brooding and moping all the more poignant, though well-hidden. Dorelei and Imriel make love that night, as Dorelei wishes to have a child, having lit a candle to Eisheth. In the following days, Imriel confesses to Dorelei that he is in love with someone else, to which she answers that she knows, but understands that theirs is a marriage of politics. Eamonn arrives at court from Skaldia after winning the favor of his Skaldic bride Brigitta's family. Imriel tells to Eamonn of his relationship with Sidonie. The party bound for Alba make preparations for their departure when Sidonie returns from her pilgrimage to Naamah's shrine. She and Imriel meet at a temple of Naamah for a last rendezvous before his departure. The following morning, Imriel departs for Alba with a large D'Angeline escort, Drustan's family, Phèdre nó Delaunay and Joscelin Verreuil. After the wedding, they travel across Alba to the Prince's new home, Clunderry, with Dorelei's family using the 'open roads' (the taisgaidh), those paths where no one is allowed to fight, be attacked or raided, and to where all Albans have access. On his first night on Alban soil, Imriel, missing Sidonie, fantasizes of her and pleasures himself, spilling his seed on the soil. During his sleep he is woken by an irresistible lustful pull. He gets up and follows it. It leads him to a lone Alban woman, Morwen, who seems to have the ability to control him and wants him to have a child with her. Though he tries to refuse, the spell she has cast on him strong. Suddenly, some of the Albans from the escort interrupt them and the woman flees. The Albans tell him he was stupid indeed. By spreading his seed, filled with his lust and love, on the common soil, this woman has been given the tools to ensnared him by making a small mannekin of him, allowing her to call on him whenever she wishes. They also tell him that the two claw tattoos on her face means she is of the Maghuin Dhonn. The spell is strong and his only help is to go to an Ollamh, a religious druid-like figure. The Ollamh casts a spell on him as well and binds each of his limbs with red ribbon. Imriel must also wear a croonie-stone around his neck to protect himself. If any of these are taken off or broken, the spell will be broken and he will be under the woman's control again. Imriel feels relieved and more clear-headed than he has been in months. There is a noticeable change in his mood; while still self-consumed, he does not seem as sad as he was before and is able to make love to Dorelei. Dorelei, however, loses her visions of the future, as if a giant grey cloud were covering them from her sight. Still, Clunderry is peaceful and typical of an Alban noble's home, filled with people who are the salt of the earth. He quickly makes friends with her guards and those under his command. Though new, he is respected by all, but many are still reserved about this new D'Angeline pretty-boy Prince. He earns their respect, however, when he stages a raid on a neighbouring lord, Leodan of Briclaedh. This lord is challenging him and wants to steal his cattle and horses, perceiving Imriel to be in a position of weakness. Imriel stuns everyone by instead staging a raid on him before Leodan can do the same. Such raids are done in fun and not of any true risk, merely to prove a ruler's mettle. Imriel manages to escape from multiple attackers with nearly no injuries, earning him praise and respect from all. This also garners him a great friendship with Urist, a guard of Clunderry of good renown and well liked by the troops. On the ride back, Imriel is elated. He finally feels he is accepted and respected, not because of his birth but because he has earned it. Then he feels the lustful pull. Without volition, he rides into a sheltered wooded area, where the woman is waiting. He tries to resist as much as he can, but his body responds to her regardless. They are disturbed before anything more can happen, and Imriel learns that, during the battle, one of his red ties has been cut off. Before even going to the celebratory feast, he goes to the local Ollamh, who recasts the spell. Life continues as it will in an Alban holding, and Dorelei and Imriel manage to have a working relationship, and in some way, love. Dorelei is most certainly in love with Imriel, but Imriel does not seem to feel anything strongly. While he respects her and sees her as very kind, he is ultimately wrapped up in his own personal emotions and issues, though he is able to forget about Sidonie most of the time. Dorelei has also become pregnant and Imriel can not wait for his child. This is his real bond of love with Dorelei, and his wonder at the life within her is filled with beauty. Imriel's cousin, Alais, also grows and matures significantly at Clunderry. She has been learning the arts of the Ollamh and loves it. Though she does not love Talorcan, she is leaving her doors open and does not refuse him. Talorcan is patient. Then one night, a letter arrives. Sidonie writes to him telling him that, despite the distance, she is still in love with him. She tells him to stay in Alba, however, for at least the first year. Dorelei had promised him that, if Imriel was not happy after the first year, he could leave her and move back to Terre d'Ange. They could be as Drustan and Ysandre and see each other half the year, or even less. While reading this letter, Imriel is shocked at his lack of emotions. He can barely even picture Sidonie's face, and all feelings for her are muted beyond comprehension. Thus he decides to take a risk. He removes the croonie-stone from around his neck and reads the letter. He is filled with sorrow and love. He misses her terribly and still loves her as well. After a short while and reading the letter a number of times, he returns the croonie-stone around his neck and returns to his bed with Dorelei. By spring, Dorelei is very large from her pregnancy, and she and Imriel are looking forward to their first child, who should be born soon. While love has grown between to the two, Imriel is still distracted by his love for Sidonie, though he is always caring and loving with Dorelei. A couple days after the Day of Misrule, however, Morwen appears out of the woods right in front of Clunderry's men. She remains on the taisgaidh roads, but demands to see Imriel. Imriel meets her with all of his guards, the Ollamh, Alais, and Dorelei who insisted on coming along. Morwen says she is willing to make a deal with Imriel: if he will come with her to the circle of standing stones and let her show him the future, she will give him his mannekin, thereby freeing him of her magic. The circle is not far away and is on taisgaidh lands. Imriel does not trust her but she says that if he wants to bring his troops he may, so long as they stay outside of the circle. Imriel then asks the advice of the Ollamh. She does not trust Morwen as well and asks that before the ceremony and in the stone circle, Morwen swear not to harm Imriel or any of his family. She agrees without hesitation and with none of the tell-tales of a lie. Imriel says he will take the day to decide and give her his decision at sunset. Morwen agrees and leaves as though she had melted into the woods themselves. Imriel and Dorelei discuss it that day and come to a decision. Imriel will take a large escort of the troops to the circle with him and be careful. Dorelei will not risk herself or the child by coming with him and will stay in Clunderry with the remaining guards. While it is dangerous, for the freedom of Imriel, the visions of Dorelei, and their unborn child, it will be worth it. They also finally decide on the name of the child: Aniel if it is a boy and Anielle if it is a girl. That evening, Dorelei helps Imriel put on his vambraces and prepare for his meeting with Morwen. At the edge of taisgaidh roads, Morwen waits. Upon Imriel's arrival, she leads them to the standing stones. Night has fallen, and though there are many of Imriel's men carrying torches, the circle still has an eerie look about it. Morwen tells him that he can not wear any metal within the circle and that the lights must be put out. He asks why and she only replies that that is how the spell works. To verify his safety, he asks her to make the pledge with the Ollamh first. Morwen and the Ollamh go into the circle. Morwen swears: ::"No harm will befall Imriel de la Courcel of Clunderry this night, nor any member of his household, nor any person dear to him. I swear it by the stone and sea and sky, by all the gods of Alba, and by the diadh-anam of the Maghuin Dhonn. If I lie, let my magic be broken and my life be forfeit. Let every man and woman's hand be raised against me, let my name be gall on their lips. Let the gods and the diadh-anam forsake me, and let the land itself despise my footfall. Let my spirit wander for ten thousand years without solace." The Ollamh is satisfied and departs for the outside of the circle. Morwen leads Imriel into the circle, after telling him to take off his shoes. She seemingly lifts one of the standing stones and takes out her things from under it, letting it fall back down behind her. On the stone table, she places her things and takes some tea, which she drinks first before giving it to Imriel. He asks her what it is. She says it is mushroom tea and a gift of the earth. She then paints her eyelids and his. Picking up the stone knife and a leather bag she passes the bag to him. He feels the mannekin inside it. Morwen then suddenly cuts his bindings and all his love, emotions, and reality comes flooding back. Morwen then cuts her wrists and holds his hands. Waiting, the tea starts to have an effect. Eventually he begins to see that the stones are telling him a story. He sees a boy who is obviously his unborn son, Aniel. He sees Dorelei dead with Aniel holding on to him. He sees his son with Alais and then, as a teen, yelling at Urist. Then there is a pause. Morwen says this is because he has left Alban shores. He returns, however, and Imriel can see the glitter of intelligence in his eyes and glee at the causing of arguments. These arguments lead to wars between the tribes of Alba and the death of Talorcan. He is then named Cruarch and brings hundreds of D'Angeline soldiers to Alba, crushing all resistance. He sees women and children taken out of their homes and their homes being torched. He sees Aniel kill a wounded man begging for mercy. Aniel burns the sacred groves and drags away the standing stones. He is a fearless and cruel leader who hunts down the Maghuin Dhonn until all are gone, and redesigns Bryn Gorrydum into a D'Angeline city. Finally, Imriel begs her to stop and she does, letting go of his hands. "Your son is a monster, Imriel," she says. Imriel asks why this is. She replies that she does not know, and at first the visions were of many possibilities. Dorelei would die before her second child is born and Imriel leaves Alban shores. At first there was Imriel and Morwen's daughter to balance Aniel, but now all that remained was this one vision. Imriel asks if she considered that her intervention caused this in the first place, and whether she considered not getting involved. With deep sorrow, she said she had considered it. Imriel hears horns and sees the flaws in Morwen. Realizing the cuts were deeper than he though he learns an awful secret. Morwen has lied, harm is coming to Imriel's family. Her life is sacrificed for the good of the Maghuin Dhonn. He rushes back to Clunderry, still under the effects of the mushroom tea. All is in a daze and blurry. The gates of the castle are open; Leodan of Briclaedh staged his counter cattle-raid on this night after hearing that the troops would be elsewhere. A giant bear is now trying to enter the castle. Imriel charges him, but is swiped by a giant claw and falls unconscious. When he wakes, he sees Dorelei lying on a table nearby, clearly dead. Imriel falls into a deep depression. He has been severely clawed by the bear, the Maghuin Dhonn shape-shifter leader Berlik. He is transported to Bryn Gorrydum and being treated by an Eisandine healer. Alais would keep him company most days, but vengeance was what kept him alive; he wanted Berlik's death. The hunt for Berlik in Alba was unsuccessful, but Hyacinthe, the Master of the Straits, saw a large bear swim to Azzalle, across the straits. While he could not be sure it was Berlik, Imriel was. Imriel swears he will bring back Berlik's head and bury it as Dorelei's feet, a traditional custom of Alba. Urist promises to help him, as do a number of Clunderry's men. When Imriel is finally deemed to be well enough to ride, he tells Drustan of the arrangements, says goodbye to Alais, and departs for Terre d'Ange. In Azzalle, Urist and Imriel destroy the mannekin and cut his bindings. Imriel tells him who it was he loved all this time and, while shocked, Urist still dedicates himself to Imriel's service: "So you were good enough for the Cullach Gorrym, good enough to marry Dorelei mab Beidaia, good enough to beget Alba a successor, but not good enough for the Queen's daughter?" They all ride for the City of Elua, dedicated to true love and the hunt for Berlik. Upon arriving at the Palace, Imriel immediately goes to Sidonie's quarters, sinks to his knees before her and wraps his arms around her waist. Ysandre walks in on the scene and is furious. Imriel walks out from the Palace, but not before Sidonie kisses him before the all those watching. Mavros offers the Shahrizai hunting estates outside of the City for Imriel and the Albans to stay out of the turmoil of the City. Sidonie comes to see him. After lovemaking, a royal escort led by Lord Amaury Trente come to take her back home. She refuses, saying she is a grown woman now over the age of majority, and that she will love who she loves freely. Imriel learns that Phèdre and Joscelin still are not back from their mysterious journey, but he visits the house and has a pleasant visit with all. Upon gathering all the supplies and funding he needs, including from the royal coffers despite Ysandre's opinion of his affair with her daughter, he and the Albans depart for the north. Their journey takes them through the Flatlands toward the new kingdom of Vralia. Imriel and Urist then book passage by boat to the capital of Vralia, following Berlik's trail. After being lost on an island for at least a month, they both make it to the capital Vralgrad. Urist is too injured to continue, however, and stays in Vralgrad. Imriel continues to follow rumours of Berlik south to the small town of Tarkov. Imriel has the unfortunate bad timing, however, to be in Tarkov for a Tartar raid. Seeing the scars on his behind left from Daršanga, the people think that he is a secret spy of the Tartars and put him in jail. He is stuck there for a long time with one other Tartar prisoner. He manages to escape through cunning, and helps free his Tartar companion so that he may be able to go back to the woman he loves. From there Imriel follows the long-stale path of Berlik, or what he thinks is Berlik's path. He stops at a small Yeshuite Temple in Miroslas, the last reaches of civilization, and learns that Berlik stayed there for a time, seeking forgiveness. They try to discourage him from hunting down Berlik, but Imriel departs, still dedicated to his quest. He spends many days and nights wandering the untamed forests in search of Berlik. He goes nearly mad with the silence, loneliness, and seemingly hopelessness of his mission. He is forced to send back his horse, hoping it will make it alive to a warm stable, for lack of sufficient food and fodder. Just before deciding that he must turn back before he starves, Berlik leaves him a sign. Following this trail he comes upon a small cabin that Berlik has built and obviously still lives in. There is a makeshift cross in his cabin and a fire still burning. Here, finally, Berlik appears. He is humbled and broken and asks only for his death, for only his death at the hands of Imriel can bring him atonement. Berlik tells him, "I prayed...I left a trail for you to follow, and I prayed that if you found me, the diadh-anam would accept my sacrifice as atonement, and not punish all of her people for my failure. When my magic returned to me, here in the woods, I knew it was so." Imriel asks why Berlik made it so hard for him. He replies, "Would you have come here with a humble heart if I had not?" Berlik admits his mistakes, his fears, and admits that he should have trusted his gods more instead of only himself. He apologizes to Imriel and calls him "my avenging angel." As Imriel raises his sword, he knows the true meaning that Kushiel, the punisher of god, loved his charges too well. Imriel says, "I'm sorry," cuts off Berlik's head cleanly, and weeps. After a day in Berlik's cabin, gathering more food and supplies, he departs back for his far-away home. After days of trudging, he is shocked to hear voices arguing in Rus and D'Angeline! They are not rescuers, however: they are soldiers from Tarkov, come to capture him. The D'Angeline they are arguing with is Maslin of Lombelon, sent by Sidonie to find Imriel. Maslin and Imriel manage to fight off the guards and make a truce of their once jealousy of each other. Maslin, it seems, has grown much in his travels as well. During their trek through the forests, Maslin ends up boiling Berlik's head for Imriel, in a sort of penance. It is disgusting work, but Maslin refuses to let Imriel do it. They then continue on their travels. They travel together back to Tarkov. They try to disguise Imriel but Tarkov is the closest port for ferries headed to the city and eventually home. When they arrive in Tarkov, however, they find Phèdre and Joscelin, come to search for Imriel and join him on his long trek. Phèdre is arguing with the guards, trying to explain he is a royal Prince of Terre d'Ange and not a Tartar. While they do not believe her, none want to challenge them and grudgingly "allow" them to leave. In the capital, Joscelin meets his once pupil and now leader of the Yeshuites and most trusted advisor of King Vral, Micah ben Ximon. As the weather improves, they take a boat back to the Flatlands and travel to Azzalle. Maslin chooses to stay in Vralia as a representative of Terre d'Ange, and because he has fallen in love with a local woman. Once they are back in Terre d'Ange, all are happy to report their arrival. (this material is obtained from the preview at the end of the paper-back edition of Kushiel's Justice) Imriel hurries back to Sidonie's side. The Queen has calmed down considerably but cannot countenance the relationship because of Imriel's parents. She cannot denounce it, however, because to do so would be to go against Elua's Precept. He, Sidonie, Phèdre, Joscelin, and his Alban escort return to Clunderry to bury Berlik's head, fulfilling Imriel's promise. On their return to the City of Elua, they are greeted by a large group of people with black armbands, the victims of Melisande and Benedicte's machinations, showing a thumbs-down (see Kushiel's Mercy).
4023999	/m/0bd178	The Midwife's Apprentice	Karen Cushman	1995-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The plot about a young girl who who was found in a dung pile, who learns to be a midwife's appentice, and then soon learns how to be a midwife herself. This book is appropriate for the age group 8 or 9 to 13 or 14.
4025023	/m/0bd3cf	Prathapa Mudaliar Charithram		1879	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Soon they get separated and the wife is found wandering in the forest. In order to safeguard herself, she dresses up as a man and roams through the jungle. Meanwhile, a nearby kingdom loses its heir to the throne and as per custom, requires that a new king be chosen at random by the royal elephant. The elephant wanders into the forest and decides to put the flower garland on the unsuspecting young lady. Soon, she is proclaimed the chief of the region and carried to the royal palace. The hero, meanwhile, is despondent after losing his wife and goes in search of her. En route to a city, the hero's sandals get torn, and he decides to repair them using the services of a cobbler. He promises the cobbler that if he stitches the footwear properly and the hero is satisfied, he will reward him with happiness. In a few minutes Prathapa's sandals are mended to his satisfaction and he in turn gives the cobbler one rupee (a princely amount in the era in which the novel is set). The cobbler, however, says he is not satisfied with the rupee and demands his "happiness", since that was the promise of Prathap. Perplexed at this sudden turn of events, a crowd soon gathers and no one is able to resolve the issue. Soon, the matter reaches the court of the new "King," who recognizes her husband despite his dishevelled and bewildered face. Prathap, however is unable to recognize the disguise of his wife and addresses her as the King. She decides to settle this dispute by asking the cobbler if he was happy to see the kingdom's new king. He responds positively, to which she replies that since this quarrel with the young man resulted in his visit to the new king, which ultimately made the cobbler happy, he should go back to his duties, since "happiness" was provided. The cobbler, finding that he has no other way of needlessly harassing the young hero, returns. The "King" soon reveals herself to her husband in private quarters and, after entrusting the kingdom to a young apprentice in the court, leaves the kingdom. Both return to their house and live happily ever after.
4026130	/m/0bd5dv	Home of the Gentry	Ivan Turgenev	1859	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel's protagonist is Fyodor Ivanych Lavretsky, a nobleman who shares many traits with Turgenev. The child of a distant, Anglophile father and a serf mother who dies when he is very young, Lavretsky is brought up at his family's country estate home by a severe maiden aunt, often thought to be based on Turgenev's own mother who was known for her cruelty. Lavretsky pursues an education in Moscow, and while he is studying there, he spies a beautiful young woman at the opera. Her name is Varvara Pavlovna, and he falls in love with her and asks for her hand in marriage. The two move to Paris, where Varvara Pavlovna becomes a very popular salon hostess and begins an affair with one of her frequent visitors. Lavretsky learns of the affair only when he discovers a note written to her by her lover. Shocked by her betrayal, he severs all contact with her and returns to his family estate. Upon returning to Russia, Lavretsky visits his cousin, Marya Dmitrievna Kalitina, who lives with her two daughters, Liza and Lenochka. Lavretsky is immediately drawn to Liza, whose serious nature and religious devotion stand in contrast to the coquettish Varvara Pavlovna's social consciousness. Lavretsky realizes that he is falling in love with Liza, and when he reads in a foreign journal that Varvara Pavlovna has died, he confesses his love to her and learns that she loves him in return. Unfortunately, a cruel twist of fate prevents Lavretsky and Liza from being together. After they confess their love to one another, Lavretsky returns home to find his supposedly dead wife waiting for him in his foyer. It turns out that the reports of her death were false, and that she has fallen out of favor with her friends and needs more money from Lavretsky. Upon learning of Varvara Pavlovna's sudden appearance, Liza decides to join a remote convent and lives out the rest of her days as a nun. Lavretsky visits her at the convent one time and catches a glimpse of her as she is walking from choir to choir. The novel ends with an epilogue which takes place eight years later, in which Lavretsky returns to Liza's house and finds that, although many things have changed, there are elements such as the piano and the garden that are the same. Lavretsky finds comfort in his memories and is able to see the meaning and even the beauty in his personal pain.
4026221	/m/0bd5lr	Fingersmith	Sarah Waters	2002-02-04	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in 'a Fagin-like den of thieves' by her adoptive mother, Mrs. Sucksby, is sent to help Richard 'Gentleman' Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to gain the trust of the lady, Maud Lilly, and eventually persuade her to elope with Gentleman. Once they are married, Gentleman plans to commit Maud to a madhouse and claim her fortune for himself. Sue travels to Briar, Maud's secluded home in the country, where she lives a sheltered life under the care of her uncle, Christopher Lilly. Like Sue, Maud was orphaned at birth; her mother died in a mental asylum, and she has never known her father. Her uncle uses her as a secretary to assist him in compiling an Index of Erotica, and keeps her to the house, working with him in the silence of his library. Sue and Maud forge an unlikely friendship, which develops into a mutual physical passion; after a time, Sue realizes she has fallen in love with Maud, and begins to regret her involvement in Gentleman's plot. Deeply distressed, but feeling she has no choice, Sue persuades Maud to marry Gentleman, and the trio flee from Briar to a nearby church, where Maud and Gentleman are hastily married in a midnight ceremony. Making a temporary home in a local cottage, and telling Maud they are simply waiting for their affairs to be brought to order in London, Gentleman and a reluctant Sue make arrangements for Maud to be committed to an asylum for the insane; her health has already waned as a result of the shock of leaving her quiet life at Briar, to Gentleman's delight. After a week, he and Sue escort an oblivious Maud to the asylum in a closed carriage. However, the doctors apprehend Sue on arrival, and from the cold reactions of Gentleman and the seemingly innocent Maud, Sue guesses that it is she who has been conned: "That bitch knew everything. She had been in on it from the start." In the second part of the novel, Maud takes over the narrative. She describes her early life being raised by the nurses in the mental asylum where her mother died, and the sudden appearance of her uncle when she was eleven, who arrives to take her to Briar to be his secretary. Her induction into his rigid way of life is brutal; Maud is made to wear gloves constantly to preserve the surfaces of the books she is working on, and is denied food when she tires of labouring with her uncle in his library. Distressed, and missing her previous home, Maud begins to demonstrate sadistic tendencies, biting and kicking her maid, Agnes, and her abusive carer, Mrs Stiles. She harbours a deep resentment toward her mother for abandoning her, and starts holding her mother's locket every night, and whispering to it how much she hates her. Shockingly, Maud reveals that her uncle's work is not to compile a dictionary, but to assemble a bibliography of literary pornography, for the reference of future generations. In his own words, Christopher Lilly is a 'curator of poisons.' He introduces Maud to the keeping of the books—-indexing them and such—-when she is barely twelve, and deadens her reactions to the shocking material. As she grows older, Maud reads the material aloud for the appreciation of her uncle's colleagues. On one occasion, when asked by one of them how she can stand to curate such things, Maud answers, "I was bred to the task, as servants are." She has resigned herself to a life serving her uncle's obscure ambition when Richard Rivers arrives at Briar. He familiarises her with a plan to escape her exile in Briar, a plan involving the deception of a commonplace girl who will believe she had been sent to Briar to trick Maud out of her inheritance. After initial hesitation, Maud agrees to the plan and receives Sue weeks later, pretending to know nothing about the plot. Maud falls in love with Sue over time and, like Sue, begins to question whether she will be able to carry out Gentleman's plot as planned. Though overcome with guilt, Maud does, and travels with Gentleman to London after committing Sue to the asylum, claiming to the doctors that Sue was the mad Mrs Maud Rivers who believed she was a commonplace girl. Instead of taking Maud to a house in Chelsea, as he had promised, Gentleman takes her to Mrs Sucksby in the Borough. It was, it turns out, Gentleman's plan to bring her here all along; and, Mrs Sucksby, who had orchestrated the entire plan, reveals to a stunned Maud that a lady, Marianne Lilly, had come to Lant Street seventeen years earlier, pregnant and alone. When Marianne discovered her cruel father and brother had found her, she begged Mrs Sucksby to take her newborn child and give her one of her 'farmed' infants to take its place. Sue, it turns out, was Marianne Lilly's true daughter, and Maud one of the many orphaned infants who had been placed on Mrs Sucksby's care after being abandoned. By the decree of Marianne's will, written on the night of the switch, both girls were entitled to a share of Marianne Lilly's fortune. By having Sue committed, Mrs Sucksby could intercept her share. She had planned the switch of the two girls for seventeen years, and enlisted the help of Gentleman to bring Maud to her in the weeks before her eighteenth birthday, when she would become legally entitled to the money. By setting Sue up as the 'mad Mrs Rivers', Gentleman could, by law, claim her fortune for himself. Alone and friendless, Maud has no choice but to remain a prisoner at Lant Street. She makes one attempt to escape to the home of one of her uncle's friends, Mr Hawtrey, but he turns her away, appalled at the scandal that she has fallen into, and anxious to preserve his local reputation. Maud returns to Lant Street and finally submits to the care of Mrs Sucksby. It is then that Mrs Sucksby reveals to her that Maud was not an orphan that she took into her care, as she and Gentleman had told her, but Mrs Sucksby's own daughter. The novel resumes Sue's narrative, picking up where Maud and Gentleman had left her in the mental asylum. Sue is devastated at Maud's betrayal and furious that Gentleman double-crossed her. When she screams to the asylum doctors that she is not Mrs Rivers but her maid Susan, they ignore her, as Gentleman (helped by Maud) has convinced them that this is precisely her delusion, and that she is really Maud Lilly Rivers, his troubled wife. Sue is treated appallingly by the nurses in the asylum, being subjected to beatings and taunts on a regular basis. Such is her maltreatment and loneliness that, after a time, she begins to fear that she truly has gone mad. She is sustained by the belief that Mrs Sucksby will find and rescue her. Sue dwells on Maud's betrayal, the devastation of which quickly turns to anger. Sue's chance at freedom comes when Charles, a knife boy from Briar, comes to visit her. He is the nephew, it turns out, of the local woman (Mrs Cream) who owned the cottage the trio had stayed in on the night of Maud and Gentleman's wedding. Charles, a simple boy, had been pining for the charming attentions of Gentleman to such an extent that his father Mr Way had begun to beat him, severely. Charles ran away, and had been directed to the asylum by Mrs Cream, who had no idea of the nature of the place. Sue quickly enlists his help in her escape, persuading him to purchase a blank key and a file to give to her on his next visit. This he does, and Sue, using the skills learnt growing up in the Borough, escapes from the asylum and travels with Charles to London, with the intention of returning to Mrs Sucksby and her home in Lant Street. On arrival, an astonished Sue sees Maud at her bedroom window. After days of watching the activity of her old home from a nearby boarding house, Sue sends Charles with a letter explaining all to Mrs Sucksby, still believing that it was Maud and Gentleman alone who deceived her. Charles returns, saying Maud intercepted the letter, and sends Sue a playing card—the Two of Hearts, representing lovers—in reply. Sue takes the token as a joke, and storms into the house to confront Maud, half-mad with rage. She tells everything to Mrs Sucksby, who pretends to have known nothing, and despite Mrs Sucksby's repeated attempts to calm her, swears she will kill Maud for what she has done to her. Gentleman arrives, and though initially shocked at Sue's escape, laughingly begins to tell Sue how Mrs Sucksby played her for a fool. Maud physically tries to stop him, knowing how the truth would devastate Sue; a scuffle between Maud, Gentleman and Mrs Sucksby ensues, and in the confusion, Gentleman is stabbed by the knife Sue had taken up to kill Maud, minutes earlier. He bleeds to death. A hysterical Charles alerts the police. Mrs Sucksby, at last sorry for how she has deceived the two girls, immediately confesses to the murder: "Lord knows, I'm sorry for it now; but I done it. And these girls here are innocent girls, and know nothing at all about it; and have harmed no-one." Mrs Sucksby is hanged for killing Gentleman; it is revealed that Richard Rivers was not a shamed gentleman at all, but a draper's son named Frederick Bunt, who had had ideas above his station. Maud disappears, though Sue sees her briefly at Mrs Sucksby's trial and gathers from the prison matrons that Maud had been visiting Mrs Sucksby in the days leading up to her death. Sue remains unaware of her true parentage, until she finds the will of Marianne Lilly tucked in the folds of Mrs Sucksby's gown. Realizing everything, an overwhelmed Sue sets out to find Maud, beginning by returning to Briar. It is there she finds Maud, and the nature of Christopher Lilly's work is finally revealed to Sue. It is further revealed that Maud is now writing erotic fiction to sustain herself financially. The two girls, still very much in love with each other despite everything, make peace and give vent to their feelings at last.
4027787	/m/0bd81f	Moderato Cantabile	Marguerite Duras	1952	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The plot is initially the banal daily routine of a rich woman taking her son to piano lessons, and conversing with a working class man in a café, drinking wine all the way, then reaches a scandal at a dinner party in chapter 7, followed by a denouement in the final chapter. The story concerns the life of a woman, Anne Desbaresdes, and her varying relationships with her child, the piano teacher Mademoiselle Giraud and Chauvin. Chauvin is a working-class man who is currently unemployed and whiles away his time in a café near the apartment where Anne Desbaresdes' child takes piano lessons with Madame Giraud. After the fatal shooting of a woman in the café by her lover, Anne and Chauvin imagine the relationship between the lovers and try to reason why it occurred. Anne frequently returns to the café, before returning to her comfortable home, the last house on the Boulevard de la Mer, which itself represents the social divide between the working- and middle-classes. In the climactic 7th chapter, she returns home late and drunk to a dinner party, then causes a scandal (and is subsequently ill, vomiting) whose consequences are seen in the final 8th chapter.
4028737	/m/04ggf79	Computer Lib	Ted Nelson		{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 Nelson writes passionately about the need for people to understand computers deeply, more deeply than was generally promoted as computer literacy, which he considers a superficial kind of familiarity with particular hardware and software. His rallying cry "Down with Cybercrud" is against the centralization of computers such as that performed by IBM at the time, as well as against what he sees as the intentional untruths that "computer people" tell to non-computer people to keep them from understanding computers. In Dream Machines, Nelson covers the flexible media potential of the computer, which was shockingly new at the time.
4031607	/m/0bdghc	Cirque Du Freak	Darren Shan	2000-01-04	{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0fdjb": "Supernatural", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Young Darren Shan has been fascinated by spiders from an early age. His best friend, Steve "Leopard" Leonard has grown up reading horror comics and stories about werewolves and vampires. Steve, Darren, and their friends find out about a freak show called Cirque du Freak and plan on buying tickets. Their teacher finds out about the freak show and tries to shut it down by ripping up the address . Steve memorizes the address and is there, but when he finds no one he gets ready to leave when Mr. Tall, arrives from nowhere, the ring master, hands him two tickets. Darren gets the other ticket. After viewing the "Cirque du Freak" Darren and Steve are mesmerized by the fantastic and disturbing show, especially by the act of the mysterious Mr. Crepsley and his giant, deadly, poisonous spider, Madam Octa. When the show ends, Steve goes back to talk to Mr. Crepsley about turning him into a vampire. He takes a taste of his blood and says that Steve's blood is bad. In horror, Steve flees the theater and tells Mr. Crepsley he will get him back for this. Darren, also horrified, turns away and decides to tell Steve that he got lost on his way back to the house, and decided to go home, which Steve half-believes. Darren steals Madam Octa, and plays with her. Steve comes over and lets her crawl around him. Annie, Darrens younger sister, walks in and screams. Darren gets distracted, and Madam Octa bites Steve paralyzing him. Darren convinces Annie to keep it secret that Darren caused Steve to get bitten. They send Steve to the hospital, the doctors have no idea what caused it and how to cure it. Darren decides the only person with a cure is most likely Mr. Crepsley. Darren goes home and observes Madam Octa. He becomes enraged and pitches her out the window. Darren then sees Mr. Crepsley taking her back. Darren goes to meet Mr. Crepsley at the theater and gives Darren a cure. But in exchange, Darren must become half vampire and give up his entire life as a human.
4033704	/m/0bdklg	Bec	Darren Shan	2006-10-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 When a "simple child" named Bran who can run incredibly fast comes to Bec's demon-besieged rath, she and a small consignment of warriors go with him, including the chief's son, Connla, who is "largely untested" in battle; Goll, an old warrior; Lorcan and Ronan, two teenage twins; Fiachna the blacksmith; and Orna, a female warrior. During the journey, the group is attacked by demons, but luckily manage to hide near some ancient lodestones which protects them with powerful Old Magic. Eventually, Bran leads them to a crannóg, where everyone is dead except a druid, Drust. The druid tells them about a tunnel to the demons' world, and how he aims to destroy it. They go with him. During their journey, they encounter many demons, including the terrifying Lord Loss, with whom Bec engages in a battle. She appears to absorb power from him, and after the encounter begins to learn magic at a phenomenal rate. Drust gets worried, and asks her for permission to go into her mind (like Dervish Grady asks Grubbs in Slawter). He discovers that Lord Loss had given Bec part of his power,(later revealed to the power given by Lord loss is the power of the kah gash.) opening up her magical side, though no one knows for what purpose. Eventually they arrive at a village, where Bec learns about her heritage and that she is part of a clan prone to lycanthropy (this is a link to the Garadexes, Grubbs' ancestors). After a long journey, they arrive at the cliffs. Lord Loss appears, intrigued by a chessboard Drust got from the Elders. He is then thrown out magically, and places a geis (a demon curse) on them. Although dismissing it as untrue, the group are immediately affected by the geis; Orna is killed by her undead children. They arrive at the coast, where they share a small battle with some demons, and, according to Connla, Ronan is forced over into the sea and Fiachna is fatally infected with demon poison. That night Bec and Drust use magic to go down into an underwater cave, and they meet the mystical Old Creatures, who tell them where the tunnel is and how to destroy it. It emerges that a druid or priestess must be sacrificed, which reveals why Drust needs Bec. Back on dry land, while Bec and Drust are talking about the sacrifice, Bran overhears. The group find some horses which help them reach their destination in time, but Fiachna is soon abandoned after his wound becomes life-threatening. When they arrive at the demon-guarded tunnel, they find Drust's brother Brude trapped and part of the entrance. Brude opened the tunnel and let the entire demon race loose on the Earth to prevent all of Ireland converting to Christianity. It transpires that Drust was motivated because he knew his brother had unleashed the demons. Connla betrays the group, revealing he was working for Lord Loss all along and it was he who caused all the deaths of the others of their party. Bec pushes him under a waterfall, breaking his protective spell of demonic blood and allowing the demons to slaughter him. Lorcan and Goll are also attacked and die in battle. When Bec is about to be sacrificed, Drust is knifed in the back by Bran and Bec realizes Bran wouldn't let her die. Drust tells her to use him as the sacrifice, as he is about to die anyway. When the tunnel is destroyed, Brude's mouth starts to close. Bec manages to force Bran through the closing tunnel at the last moment with the last of her magic, but is trapped as a result. Soon after, Lord Loss appears and tells Bec that when she appeared to absorb power from him several days earlier, Lord Loss had actually intended for that to happen so that she could close the tunnel. This is because Lord Loss is unique among demons, in that instead of wishing to slaughter all the humans in the world as quickly as possible, he actually prefers to prolong the suffering for as long as possible. If the tunnel had remained open, countless other demons would have passed through and destroyed all of mankind within a matter of weeks, which would have ruined Lord Loss' "sport". After telling Bec this, Lord Loss reminds her that of the geis that he had placed on her, and that he is bound by his word to kill her. Lord Loss sets his familiars upon Bec, and without any magic to defend herself with, she is utterly defenceless. This book has the same first and last words "Screams in the Dark."
4036742	/m/0bdsk9	Sharpe's Sword	Bernard Cornwell	1983	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens with Colonel Philippe Leroux and Captain Paul Delmas fleeing from the King's German Legion toward Sharpe's Light Company. Leroux has just learned the identity of El Mirador, Britain's most important spy in Spain. Leroux kills Delmas and assumes his identity as a ruse to disguise his own identity and then allows himself to be captured by Sharpe's company. Sharpe, on handling Leroux's sword, a Klingenthal sabre, covets it as a finely crafted and superbly balanced fighting sword. As Captain Delmas, Leroux gives his parole to Major Joseph Forrest. Whilst he is being escorted back to Wellington's headquarters, he kills his escort, Ensign MacDonald and escapes on horseback towards Salamanca. Sharpe attempts to shoot him but is blocked from taking the shot when Lieutenant Colonel Windham pursues Leroux on horseback. Leroux successfully defends against Windham's charge and kills Windham. He is then chased by Sharpe and the Light Company but manages to gain sanctuary in one of the three French controlled forts outside Salamanca, after Father Curtis protects him from the Salamancan populace. Sharpe confronts Curtis who explains that he is not Captain Delmas but is in fact Colonel Leroux and that he was protecting the city's population against Leroux's revenge if the city were to be recaptured by the French. Sharpe forms an instant dislike of Curtis who he thinks is sympathetic to the French. In Salamanca Sharpe is introduced to Hélène, La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba and to Captain Lord Jack Spears. Wellington's army arrives at Salamanca as part of their manoeuvring with Marshal Marmont's French army and Major Michael Hogan debriefs Sharpe on his encounter with Leroux, discovering that Leroux had a list of payments made by Hogan to his pecuniary spies, many of whom had recently been tortured and killed. Frustrated at Marmont's unwillingness to give battle, Wellington finally sends two Battalions, including the South Essex against two French Battalions in an effort to provoke Marmont to action. The set piece action that follows flows like clockwork for Sharpe and his Light Company and is watched closely by La Marquesa. Following the battle, Sharpe is called to see Wellington who confirms that he has seen Leroux and places him under Hogan's command to ensure Leroux does not escape from the French held forts. Sharpe gains Wellington's permission to use his Light Company for this task as they have also seen Leroux. The Sixth Division attempts to storm the forts by surprise and without the usual preparations. However, the French have been tipped off and defeat the attack. Sharpe has been invited to a party by La Marquesa, which had been planned to celebrate the attack’s success, but decides not to attend, nevertheless Lord Spears later persuades him to come in. As he prepares to leave the party, one of the servants takes him to a private garden for a private meeting with La Marquesa. Sharpe comes to the conclusion that she is El Mirador, which she readily confirms and begs Sharpe to protect her from Leroux of whom she claims she is afraid. They then become lovers. After several days of preparation, the forts are assaulted again and quickly surrender. Sharpe and his men search the forts several times thoroughly but can't locate Leroux. After searching the wounded, Sharpe allows them to be taken to the hospital in Salamanca. After Harper discovers a disemboweled French soldier who doesn't appear to have a full complement of intestines, Sharpe realises that Leroux has disguised himself as a French soldier with a severe stomach wound. Leaving his jacket behind (he had taken it off due to the heat), Sharpe and Harper race back to Salamanca without telling the remainder of the Company that they are going and ascertain that Leroux has probably arrived at the hospital established in the Irish College. Leroux is indeed in the hospital and is waiting to be met by a contact who will provide him with a cloak and a horse to help him escape. Whilst searching the hospital, Harper discovers Leroux and a struggle ensues. Leroux causes Harper to fire his volley gun before he has a chance to bring it to bear and Harper ends up being pushed down a staircase, knocking himself out when his head hits the steps hard. Sharpe, hearing the gunshot, comes running and engages in a sword duel with Leroux until Leroux breaks Sharpe's sabre with his Klingenthal sabre. Before Leroux has time to kill Sharpe, a sentry comes to Sharpe's aid and Leroux flees. Both the sentry with his musket and Sharpe with his rifle miss Leroux. With both men effectively disarmed, Leroux shoots Sharpe with a rifled dueling pistol. Sharpe attempts to evade but is shot in the stomach and loses consciousness as Leroux escapes. The Light Company eventually realise that Sharpe and Harper are missing and Major Hogan is alerted. A search of the hospital finds Harper still unconscious, but Sharpe cannot be found amongst the living nor the British or French dead. When his discarded trousers are found, he is believed to have been mistaken for a dead French soldier and buried in a mass grave already. His death is mourned by the entire South Essex Battalion, Major Hogan and General Wellington, however while it is not yet realised, he has actually been taken to the death ward run by Sergeant Connolley in the dank basement of the Irish College. Sharpe, unrecognised, drifts in and out of consciousness but refuses to die from a wound that is fatal in all but the most exceptional of cases. Hogan hears a story of a mad man digging up the French graves, then when on the streets of Salamanca he finds Harper held in chains by the provosts. He persuades the provosts to let Harper go and finds out that Harper has searched all the recently buried French corpses and not found Sharpe. Hogan and Harper return to the hospital to search again and Harper tells Hogan that Sharpe had not been wearing his jacket and that with his flogging scars he would most likely have been mistaken for a soldier. They realise that there is one place that has not been searched - the soldier's death ward. When they find Sharpe, he is barely alive. He is moved to his own room in the hospital officers’ ward, where he fights to stay alive against infection and fever. While the army moves on, Harper and Isabella (the peasant girl Harper rescued in the Battle of Badajoz} minister to Sharpe's needs. In the meantime, Hogan has assigned Lord Spears to protect El Mirador when he is in public. Harper realises that Sharpe has lost his French cavalry overalls (destroyed by the surgeons), his rifle (stolen) and his sword (broken) - many of the symbols of his sense of identity as a soldier and recognises that he needs to help provide something for Sharpe's spirit to cling onto. He sets about procuring another set of rifleman's trousers, a sword and a rifle. He is unsuccessful in obtaining a rifle, and the sword he obtains, a heavy cavalry sabre, is not quite suited for Sharpe to use as foot infantry. Undeterred, he sets about remaking the sabre to what he knows will be Sharpe's requirements - once finished, it is totally transformed. As he goes to present the sword and trousers to Sharpe, Isabella tells him that not only has Sharpe turned the corner and is in full recovery, but La Marquesa had visited and was taking all three of them to stay in one of her houses by the river. Sharpe is visited by Lord Spears and suggests that Lord Spears is protecting El Mirador. Sharpe's knowledge of this surprises Spears and makes him uncomfortable but he nevertheless confirms Sharpe's hunch. As Sharpe recuperates, Harper, now recovered and confident of Sharpe's progress, returns to the Light Company. A month later, Hogan sends Sharpe a letter telling him that the French will soon be returning to Salamanca and that he must pack and leave. Sharpe prepares to depart the following morning and is surprised in the evening by Father Curtis who is pointing a rifle at him. Father Curtis it turns out is returning Sharpe's own rifle that had been stolen by one of the stonemasons at the College. Curtis tells Sharpe that one of his correspondents in Paris has discovered that Leroux has a multi-lingual sister, Hélène. Curtis believes that this must be La Marquesa and relays a message from Hogan asking Sharpe to give her false information that Wellington's is intending to retreat to the Portuguese border and that he will leave one division as a rearguard to delay the French. The penny drops and Sharpe realises that Curtis is El Mirador, not Hélène. Whilst hoping that she is not a French spy, he agrees to pass on the message, doing so later that evening. Sharpe, still not fully healed, rejoins Wellington's army, riding on a horse that was a gift from La Marquesa. He watches events unfold from the Army headquarters. Marmont, suspecting already that Wellington is racing for the border, has these suspicions confirmed by a message from La Marquesa and he swings his army into pursuit, playing into Wellington's hands and the Battle of Salamanca begins. The French left is destroyed by a British cavalry charge. Marmont and his deputy are injured by case shot and play no further part in the battle instead, General Clausel assumed command. The British Fourth Division (including the South Essex) attack the French centre but are repulsed by a French counterattack using Clausel's reserves. Sharpe seeing the South Essex being pushed back and realising that they need to stay firm in order to channel the French columns into a killing ground for the Sixth Division, can't resist joining the battle. He rides to the Light Company, dismounts, assumes command from Lieutenant Price and orders Harper to shoot the next person who falls back. The Company, back under Sharpe's firm hand, respond and the French column is channelled away from the vulnerable British rear into a the Sixth Divisions killing ground. The column's advance is crushed and the French withdraw under the protection of their still undefeated right, hoping to cross the bridge at Alba de Tormes and thus escape. Wellington, believing that a Spanish garrison held the bridge at Alba de Tormes was slow to follow up, believing the French to be trapped and available for him to defeat in detail at his leisure. Unknown to him though, the Spanish garrison, believing that the British would be defeated had already fled and the French retreat was unopposed. Lord Spears conducts a solo charge against the fleeing French and is shot. Sharpe comes to his aid and they talk. Spears is dying and he wants Sharpe to tell his sister that he died honourably and he tells Sharpe that he wants to die because he has the Black Lion (syphilis) and that he prefers to die whilst he still has his sanity and reputation. He tells Sharpe that he knew that Hélène was a French spy and that he had told Hogan this some time ago. Sharpe realises that he is lying and suspects that he is the traitor in the British headquarters. He threatens to kill Spears by stabbing him in the back with his sabre (as if he were killed whilst running away) and to destroy his reputation with his sister. Spears relents and confesses that he had not escaped Leroux but had been paroled and given money for his gambling habit. He had not sold out Curtis because Leroux already knew but he did give Leroux the book in which Curtis had hidden the details of all the agents in his network. Spears had been hoping that in exchange Leroux would give him a night with his sister, instead, he gave him back his parole and promised to provide his sister with a dowry when he returned to Paris. Spears begs Sharpe to kill him swiftly and to preserve his reputation. Sharpe promises to do so and shoots him so that it looks like he was shot whilst charging the French. He reports the coded book to Hogan who quizzes him on Spears. Sharpe refuses to confirm that Spears was a traitor, but he reads between the lines and understands that while spears was the traitor that Sharpe wants Spears reputation left intact and Hogan is prepared to honour this position. Sharpe, Harper and Hogan pursue the retreating French through the night in an effort to find Leroux. In the morning, they catch up to him, but he is able to outrun them and gains the protection of a French infantry square. The infantry squares subsequently ambush a British cavalry charge against the French cavalry. Against all conventional expectations, the cavalry succeed in breaking the squares, although with heavy casualties. Sharpe wades into the defeated square in which Leroux had been seeking protection, but Leroux shoots at him, missing Sharpe but killing his horse. Dismounted, Sharpe shoots Leroux, wounding him in the leg and causing him to be thrown from his horse. Leroux refuses to fight, preferring to surrender and take his chances at escaping later. Sharpe forces him to fight threatening to kill him if he doesn't. A duel ensues in which Sharpe kills Leroux and then recovers Leroux's Klingenthal sabre and the coded book. Hélène leaves Salamanca, although as a member of the Spanish aristocracy it is not in the British interest to create a scandal by pursuing her as a French spy. She encounters Sharpe as he is leaving and seeing her brother's sword, she asks if Sharpe killed him. Sharpe confirms this and that her brother had killed her horse. Sharpe initially carries both sabres, Harper's present and the Klingenthal, but when he is questioned about this by Hogan, he throws the Klingenthal into the river.
4037957	/m/0bdw3k	Ludmila's Broken English	D. B. C. Pierre	2006-03-02	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows two initially separate narratives set in the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe. Recently separated - at the age of 33 - conjoined twins Blair Albert and Gordon-Marie "Bunny" Heath struggle to cope with life in a post-globalisation and fully privatised London. Meanwhile, Ludmila Derev, an impoverished young woman living in the war-torn Southern Caucasus, leaves her mountain home to meet up with her boyfriend in the region's major town and send money back to her family. However, things start to go wrong and she ends up with her picture on a Russian Brides website. Slowly her life and those of the twins are drawn together.
4038449	/m/0bdx4q	The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm	Nancy Farmer	1994-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the year 2194, in Zimbabwe, the Chief of Security, General Matsika, leads a battle against the many gangs which terrorize the nation. His three children, Tendai, Rita, and Kuda are kept in a fortified mansion to ensure their security. This soon bores the children, who are seeking adventure, and they escape the house with the help of the Mellower, a retainer whose function is to make people feel good about themselves. The children then find themselves in the busy streets of Mbare Musika, where they are kidnapped and taken to Dead Man's Vlei, the lair of the She Elephant. There, they have to work in the plastic mines. The parents are extremely worried, so they enlist the help of the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, three "mutant" detectives from a slum called the Cow's Guts. They all have special abilities: Ear has very powerful, but sensitive, hearing; Eye has equally powerful but sensitive vision. Arm has extremely long arms and legs, like a spider's, and has psychic and empathic powers; he can sense other people's feelings and see into the souls of others. Meanwhile, Tendai realizes that the She Elephant is planning to sell them to the Masks, a dangerous gang who have evaded General Matsika's efforts to combat crime. The siblings escape to Resthaven, an independent country within Zimbabwe which aims to retain traditional African culture. Eventually, the children are banished from Resthaven. The children end up in Borrowdale, a suburb created by the English tribe, where the Mellower's mother, Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham, takes them into her care after they catch chickenpox. Tendai discovers that the Mellower's mother is holding them for ransom, and before what would have been a conflict between the woman and the children, the She Elephant captures them again and takes them to one of the Masks' secret lairs, and the Masks take the children to the Mile-High MacIlwaine, a skyscraper which houses the Gondwannan Embassy, the real headquarters of the Masks. While the Masks attempt to sacrifice Tendai as a messenger to the gods, Arm is possessed by a mhondoro, a holy and legendary spirit of the land, who helps him to find the children. When Arm is knocked out, the mhondoro (and a group of staff and diners from the restaurant downstairs, led by Mrs Matsika) helps Tendai and his friends to temporarily destroy the Big-Head Mask, which had been going to kill Tendai. When the children's parents arrive, General Matsika crushes the Mask and the mhondoro revives Arm. The gang is destroyed and their stolen wealth is redistributed among the poor; while General Matsika finally realizes that his children need more freedom.
4038926	/m/0bdy1n	Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World				 Hagarism begins with the premise that Western historical scholarship on the beginnings of Islam should only be based on historical, archaeological and philological data rather than Islamic traditions which it finds to be dogmatically-based, historically irreconcilable and anachronistic accounts of the community's past, and of no historic value. Thus, relying exclusively on historical, archaeological and philological evidence, the authors attempt to reconstruct and present what they argue is a more historically accurate account of Islam's origins. In summary: Virtually all accounts of the early development of Islam take it as axiomatic that it is possible to elicit at least the outlines of the process from the Islamic sources. It is however well-known that these sources are not demonstrably early. There is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century, and the tradition which places this rather opaque revelation in its historical context is not attested before the middle of the eighth. The historicity of the Islamic tradition is thus to some degree problematic: while there are no cogent internal grounds for rejecting it, there are equally no cogent external grounds for accepting it. In the circumstances it is not unreasonable to proceed in the usual fashion by presenting a sensibly edited version of the tradition as historical fact. But equally, it makes some sense to regard the tradition as without determinate historical content, and to insist that what purport to be accounts of religious events in the seventh century are utilizable only for the study of religious ideas in the eighth. The Islamic sources provide plenty of scope for the implementation of these different approaches, but offer little that can be used in any decisive way to arbitrate between them. The only way out of the dilemma is thus to step outside the Islamic tradition altogether and start again. According to the authors, 7th century Syriac, Armenian and Hebrew sources depict the formation of Islam as a Jewish messianic movement known as Hagarism which migrated into the Fertile Crescent, drawing considerable influences from the Samaritans and Babylonian Judaism. Around 690 AD the movement shed its Judaic identity to morph into what would later become Arab Islam. The surviving records of the period describe the followers of Muhammad as Hagarenes, because of the way Muhammad invoked the Jewish god in order to introduce an alien monotheistic faith to the Arabs. He is reported as doing this by claiming biological descent from Abraham through his slave wife Hagar for the Arabs in the same way as the Jews who claimed descent from Abraham through Sarah and thus as their ancestral faith. During this early period the Jews and the Hagarenes united, into a faith the authors loosely describe as Judeo-Hagarism, in order to recover the holy land from the Christian Byzantines. In their analysis, the early manuscripts from eye witnesses suggest that Muhammad was the leader of a military expedition to conquer Jerusalem, and that the original hijra actually referred to a journey from northern Arabia to that city. As time went on, the Hagarenes concluded that the adoption of Judaism and Christian Messianism did not provide them with the unique religious identity that they aspired for. They also feared that leaning on Judaism too much, might result in outright conversion and assimilation. Thus the hagarenes contrived to create a religion of their own and decided to splinter off from their Judaic practices and beliefs. Driven by a quest for theological legitimacy they devised a version of Abrahamic monotheism, that evolved from a blend of Judaism, Samaritanism and Christianity, which became what is now Islam. The authors propose that Islam was thus born and fashioned from Judaic mythology and symbology, that is; the creation of a sacred scripture similar to the Jewish Torah - (the Qur’an), and a Moses like prophet; along with a sacred city of Mecca modeled on the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem adjacent to a holy mountain.
4039762	/m/0bdzjs	The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do	Judith Rich Harris	1998	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In this book, she challenges the idea that the personality of adults is determined chiefly by the way they were raised by their parents. She looks at studies which claim to show the influence of the parental environment and claims that most fail to control for genetic influences. For example, if aggressive parents are more likely to have aggressive children, this is not necessarily evidence of parental example. It may also be that aggressiveness has been passed down through the genes. Indeed, many adopted children show little correlation with the personality of their adoptive parents, and significant correlation with the natural parents who had no part in their upbringing. The role of genetics in personality has long been accepted in psychological research. However, even identical twins, who share the same genes, are not exactly alike, so inheritance is not the only determinant of personality. Psychologists have tended to assume that the non-genetic factor is the parental environment, the "nurture". However, Harris argues that it is a mistake to use "'nurture' ... [as] a synonym for 'environment.'" Many twin studies have failed to find a strong connection between the home environment and personality. Identical twins differ to much the same extent whether they are raised together or apart. Adoptive siblings are as unalike in personality as non-related children. Harris also argues against the effects of birth order. She states: Birth order effects are like those things that you think you see out of the corner of your eye but that disappear when you look at them closely. They do keep turning up but only because people keep looking for them and keep analyzing and reanalyzing their data until they find them. Harris&#39; most innovative idea was to look outside the family and to point at the peer group as an important shaper of the child&#39;s psyche. For example, children of immigrants learn the language of their home country with ease and speak with the accent of their peers rather than their parents. Children identify with their classmates and playmates rather than their parents, modify their behavior to fit with the peer group, and this ultimately helps to form the character of the individual. Contrary to some reports, Harris did not claim that &#34;parents don&#39;t matter&#34;. The book did not cover cases of serious abuse and neglect. Harris pointed out that parents have a role in selecting their children&#39;s peer group, especially in the early years. Parents also affect the child&#39;s behavior within the home environment and the interpersonal relationship between child and parent.
4040714	/m/0bf07d	Providence: The Story of a 50 Year Vision Quest	Daniel Quinn	2000	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Quinn begins by describing the earliest incarnation of a book like Ishmael back in 1977, which Quinn at the time called Man and Alien. This manuscript was revised over the next several years, resulting in five more incarnations (The Genesis Transcript, The Book of Nahash, The Book of the Damned, and two entitled Another Story to Be In), none of which Quinn could successfully get published. At last, though, Quinn heard of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award, which called for creative solutions to global problems. To win the award, though, Quinn was required to translate his long-brewing thoughts for the first time into a work of fiction: a novel. Quinn won the award with Ishmael but was left unsure, until now, about what he should write as a follow-up. Quinn details basic memories of his Depression-era childhood in Omaha, Nebraska: specifically, the occurrence a dream in 1941 that he feels has influenced the rest of his life. In the dream, a tree is blocking the middle of a road he is traversing. A beetle crawls down the trunk to greet him and tells him that itself and other animals deliberately downed the tree to get Quinn’s attention in order to talk with him. Quinn is dumbfounded as the beetle says that the animals need to tell him the secret of their lives. Quinn is then expected to follow a deer into the forest, because he is for some reason needed by the animals, but before he can venture on, he awakes. Quinn recounts the gambling habits of his father (who he feels may have been friends with Meyer Lansky) and the sudden appearance of severe obsessive-compulsive tendencies in his mother. Quinn’s parents habitually fought, each unable to understand the other’s behaviors. Quinn feels his reaction to this was to try to perfect in himself what was unachievable with his parents in their relationship. Quinn’s desire for perfection led him to an interest in the arts and a belief in Catholicism. Quinn received a full scholarship to St. Louis University because of his writing, though left after two years to devote his life to his religion, by becoming a Trappist monk at age nineteen. Greatly influenced by Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain, Quinn went to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. At Gethsemani, Merton in fact became Quinn’s personal spiritual director. As a postulant at the monastery, Quinn decided after a troublesome moment at the monastery, involving a miscommunication with a novice, that he had to either completely submit his will to that of God or else he had to leave the monastery. Summoning his strength, Quinn made the choice of submission to the complete guidance of God. The next time he stepped outside (having been indoors for three entire weeks), Quinn experienced an unexpected moment of explosive, positive emotion, which he interpreted as infused contemplation, meaning utter centeredness on God: a feeling he describes as a "rage of joy." Quinn convinced himself at the time that this awe-striking moment of beauty with the world was evidence of God's approval of his decision to submit. Quinn told an incredulous Merton of this amazing experience, but was soon discharged from the monastery by Merton, who attributed the reason for Quinn’s dismissal to the recent results of a Rorschach test. Quinn was crushed by his expulsion and began to see a psychoanalyst, as recommended by Merton. Quinn continued with his lifelong inability to understand his own sexuality, largely since his father always assumed him to be homosexual and because his current therapist thought him unready to be in any serious relationships. Quinn, however, soon married a woman who later left him for another man. During this whole time, Quinn continued to struggle with his self-destructive need to be perfect. When Quinn talked to a priest who claimed to worry more about people than rules, Quinn’s religious worldview began to crumble and he became an atheist. Quinn then got a job in educational publishing, which instigated his questioning of the educational system of the United States; this came with the rise of the Flower Children of the 1960s. Quinn briefly mentions the failure of his second marriage and his own willing movement toward going back to psychotherapy. Quinn began to realize in therapy that his entire technique with social situations was to merely trick others into thinking he was worth knowing, while he actually believed himself valueless. One day, however, he was idly making a list of all his valuable attributes when he suddenly realized that he did not need to try to fake his personality in front of people; he did not need to be perfect&mdash;merely human. Quinn explains that this newfound insight gave him the courage to ask out his future (and current) wife, Rennie, on their first date. Quinn then delivers his most recent understanding of learning and education, notably including the idea that formal education is an unnecessary social institution, since children learn automatically by following the behaviors of fellow members of their culture and by pursuing their own innate interests (which rigidly-structured public schools largely stop from happening). He also refers to his discontents with how history is studied in its disregard for tribal societies, reiterating many of the themes from Ishmael. Finally, he examines religion, including his own more recent advocacy of animism, which he considers the one-time world religion with its refreshing lack of any sacred text, institutions, or dogma. He revisits the memory of his “rage of joy” moment, now understating it in animist terms. He concludes with the thought that many needy people (like himself prior to his epiphany) are just those who do not feel needed. He asserts that the reader should feel needed because he or she is needed: needed desperately by the community of life to understand humanity's forgotten interdependence with the rest of that community.
4042710	/m/0bf371	Girls on film	Zoey Dean	2004	{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Still living with her father, Anna receives an internship at her father's girlfriend's new agency but is still forced to attend Beverly Hills High (BHH) and finds herself sharing classes with Cammie Sheppard and Dee Young. Her friendship with Samantha Sharpe however blossoms as the two work on a film project for their English class regarding the Great Gatsby. Sam finds herself developing a crush on Anna and spends the novel worrying if she is gay. In a subplot, Anna's older sister Susan Percy was kicked out of rehab (though she claims she checked herself out) and takes a room in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Anna tries to persuade Susan to stay at their father's house, but Susan only vaguely mentions her reasons for hating their father. Anna is worried Susan will not be able to stay sober and grows even increasingly worried when Susan makes friends with Dee Young and Cammie Shepherd, Anna's nemesis. To add to Anna's troubles, Ben is still pining after her for forgiveness, which she refuses to give, but in the meantime she begins dating Adam Flood, an all around good guy who is a point guard on the school basketball team, whom she met at Sam's father's wedding. However, Anna realizes that she is truly not interested in Adam and cuts off ties with boys in order to focus on her and Sam's Great Gatsby project. Anna volunteers to write the screenplay for the project, despite Sam's misgivings. Anna and Sam shoot their film project at Veronique's Spa, with Susan tagging along. On the way there, Anna reveals to Sam and Susan what happened between her and Ben on New Year's Eve and makes Sam promise not to tell Cammie or Dee. Susan encourages Anna not to be afraid of falling in love but admits that Ben sounds like a bit of a "player". Much to Anna's displeasure, Cammie and Dee are at the spa as well though Sam promises they won't get in the way. Two schoolmates, Parker and Monty Pinelli, arrive and they help find actors for the short film. Even though she made a promise, Sam cannot resist and ends up telling Cammie and Dee Anna's secret. Cammie tries to use this information to get Ben back but he rebuffs her advances. To his surprise, Anna calls him later that night but she immediately regrets that decision, but not before Ben is able to check his caller ID and figure out where she is. In the midst of filming, Ben bursts into the sauna the group is in and begs to talk to Anna alone, but they are locked in by a vengeful guest who wanted to punish Susan for flirting with Parker Pinelli. Susan gleefully reveals everyone's secrets in an attempt to get Anna out of her cold and repressive ways: Anna and Adam broke up, Dee had sex with Ben during her tour of Princeton, and Dee is forced to admit that she is not really pregnant. Anna runs away from the scene when they are finally let out, with Ben chasing her. Cammie is annoyed that Ben came for Anna and loves Anna more than he ever loved her whilst they were going out so she he decides to manipulate Susan into falling off her sobriety wagon. At the Steinbergs' party, Anna has to accompany a new playwright, Brock Franklin, who was her sister's ex-boyfriend, for Apex, the agency she's interning for. Susan, courtesy of Cammie, becomes drunk and causes trouble at the party, but fortunately for Anna, Sam plays it off as if it is all part of their Gatsby project and rush Susan home. While at Anna's house, Sam realizes that her lesbian thoughts about Anna are harmless and that she's not gay. She advises Anna to go away for awhile and leave her troubles behind. Anna's father, Jonathan Percy, comes home and Anna demands to know what happened that made Susan change into an alcoholic. Jonathan explains that Susan had been going out with a terrible boyfriend who was getting her hooked on drugs. Susan overhears and coldly adds to Anna that the Percy family actually paid the boyfriend to leave Susan, which clinched her descent into addiction. Susan and Jonathan begin to argue until Anna decides she has had enough and tells them that she is going away for a few days and asks them to try to resolve their issues. Anna goes off to the Montecito Inn, in Santa Barbara, hoping to get away from drama. Then, Ben shows up. He tells her that Sam told him where Anna was going to be and he finally admits why he left her on the boat on New Year's Eve: his father is a gambling addict who lost a lot of money that night and threatened a suicide attempt. Embarrassed and ashamed, Ben concocted a story of a mystery celebrity friend who needed his help. He apologizes to Anna once more and she forgives him. The two go back to her hotel room and Anna loses her virginity to him.
4042722	/m/0bf382	Blonde Ambition	Zoey Dean	2004-09-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with Ben and Anna in bed at the Montecinto Inn. However, they interrupted by a call from Anna's father who says that Susan is going to back to rehab and wants to say goodbye. Anna considers their farewell to be intimate and is surprised when Ben tags along though she does not voice her displeasure. After Susan boards the plane to her next rehab, Anna must face the consequences of the Steinberg party. Margaret informs Anna that her behavior (abandoning a client in favor of rushing a drunk Susan home) was unacceptable and is about to fire her when Clark Sheppard intervenes. He takes Anna as his intern and gives her the assignment of covering the latest hit TV show Hermosa Beach. Anna meets the young but charming co-executive producer Danny Bluestone who actually dreams of writing the Great American Novel and is appalled by Ben's increasing jealous attitude towards him and Jonathan Percy's driver, Django, who has always been friendly to her. Anna is also worried that Ben is dropping his studies for her and tries to get him to go back to Princeton. Their relationship must come to another end when Ben agrees he must go back to Princeton to finish school and not worry about his family so much. Meanwhile, Cammie feels increasingly deserted by her friends: Dee is enamored with her new boyfriend, Stevie, while Sam seems to be showing interest in Adam Flood. To further her dismay, her step-mother announces that her daughter, Mia, will be moving in. Cammie initially hates Mia, a secretive fourteen-year old Valley girl, but takes her out shopping in order to not feel alone. After finding out that Sam is no longer interested in Adam (Adam is still hung up over Anna and Sam refuses to be a rebound), Cammie kisses him at a party but is surprised at the chemistry between them. She not so subtly follows Adam to a Beck concert and the two are invited to a rave by a rapper, Mo Bad. Cammie and Adam kiss again but are interrupted by Dee who nonchalantly mentions inviting Mia along with her as well. Cammie's protective instincts kick in and the three go find Mia at the party and take her home. Cammie reveals to Adam that even though she doesn't like Mia, Mia reminds her a lot of how she acted after her mom died. Cammie also mentions that she wished she had a big sister to keep her from making stupid choices which is what she is going to try to do for Mia. However, the next day, Cammie becomes frustrated at Mia's self-destructive attitude and decides she can't be Mia's rescuer. Meanwhile, Adam tells Cammie that they should slow down their relationship because he still has feelings for Anna. Enraged, Cammie plots to sabotage Anna, who is somewhat enjoying her internship, despite the unfamiliar terms and erratic actors. Soon, it all comes crashing down when Clark accused Anna of leaking sensitive information to the press. He fires her and forbids anyone from work associating with her. Anna tries to explain to Danny her side of the story but he sadly tells her that he can't been seen with her or else he will lose his career. Sam makes Anna realize the true culprit and the two plot a plan for justice. In the meantime, Cammie organizes and throws her sweet 18th birthday party on her own (since Sam and Dee have been too busy to help) and is horrified when her credit and debit cards are denied by the party planner. Even worse, her BMW is towed and when she returns home, Clark reveals that he knows Cammie was the true culprit behind the leaked information and is going to be punished for so, thanks to Mia who collaborated with Sam and Anna to clear Anna's name. In the morning, Adam shows up to comfort Cammie and the two go on a quiet date to the park while Clark half-heartedly apologizes to Anna for the mistake and offers her job back. Anna politely declines and then surprises Danny at the office. He leaves work early for her and the two go on a date.
4042764	/m/0bf3c6	Back in Black	Zoey Dean	2005-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Back in Black finds the A-List crew in Las Vegas! They have decided to forgo the school sponsored trip to Washington D.C. in favor of a far more exciting adventure. The trip starts with a "tacky outfit" contest, suggested by who else than Cammie that ends in its own interesting way. During this whole adventure Anna is pining for Ben who is away at school, and trying to convince him to join them in Vegas. Anna's best friend Cyn turns up with her boyfriend Scott Spencer. The crew decides to visit a hypnotist, this book is also and secrets and surprises are revealed, that no one expected that leads to cat fights, and revelations that were much more appropriate kept inside. Dee of course has decided that instead of partaking in all the sinful action of the city that she is going to reform the sinners of the sin city, which leads to an ending and a breakdown that makes everyone forget what was said at the hypnotist. At the end, before they go back to Beverly Hills, Ben shows up and Anna stays behind with him. They have a chance to talk about what happened between them. Ben confesses that he's seeing someone at school, Blythe, but its not serious. In the end Anna and Ben decide to get back together.
4043114	/m/0bf3wv	The Short Reign of Pippin IV	John Steinbeck	1957	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Pippin IV explores the life of Pippin Héristal, an amateur astronomer suddenly proclaimed the king of France. Unknowingly appointed for the sole reason of giving the Communists a monarchy to revolt against, Pippin is chosen because he was rumored to descend from the famous king Charlemagne. Unhappy with his lack of privacy, alteration of family life, uncomfortable housings at the Palace of Versailles and mostly, his lack of a telescope, the protagonist spends a portion of the novel dressing up as a commoner, often riding a motorscooter, to avoid the constrained life of a king. Pippin eventually receives his wish of dethronement after the people of France enact the rebellion Pippin's kingship was destined to receive.
4046734	/m/0bf96m	Gentlemen & Players	Joanne Harris	2005-10-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 As the new school year starts in September, Roy Straitley is looking forward to his 100th term at St Oswald's, where he has been teaching for 33 years. Having never married, he lives alone and has devoted his life to his career. His sitting room walls are full of pictures of "his boys", and St Oswald's represents his only family. He is slightly overweight and ugly by conventional standards (his nickname among his pupils is "Quaz", short for "Quasimodo"). Popular with the students, he adheres to the old principle of being "firm but fair" where teaching and disciplinary matters are concerned. An incurable optimist, Straitley is only uncomfortable when he has to deal with the opposite sex. He is a keen observer, and hardly anything connected with life at the school, however insignificant, ever escapes his notice. A firm believer in the advantages and importance of a classical education, he shuns computers, resorts to Latin to swear and insult his colleagues (which they do not understand), and opposes the idea of any competition between schools other than the kind which is carried out on the playing fields. Smoking Gauloises in his empty form room is his "one concession to the influence of the Modern Languages", and there is long-standing enmity between Straitley and Dr Devine, the Head of German. The other masters are mostly set in their ways, St Oswald's having made an indelible imprint on their lives. There is Pat Bishop, the Second Master, who has also remained unmarried and who occasionally, at busy times, spends the night in his office doing administrative work. Always intent on mediating between rivalling factions, Bishop has been able to keep his affair with his secretary a secret so as not to blemish the school's reputation. There is Bob Strange, the Third Master, a bureaucrat unpopular with the pupils who has been trying for years to get rid of Straitley and force him into early retirement ("Young blood is cheaper."). There are the members of the German department ("Teutons", according to the old Latin master), among them Geoff and Penny ("League of") Nations, a married couple described by Straitley as hypocrites and sycophants. There is Tony Beard, head of computer science and eo ipso Straitley's natural adversary. And there is Isabelle Tapi, a part-time French teacher who is said to have made passes at each new male addition to the staff. At the beginning of the new term, it is the "freshers" on whom Straitley focuses his observations. There are five of them, among them Jeff Light, a Games master who has become a teacher because he thinks it is an easy job; Chris Keane, who teaches English but actually wants to be a novelist; and Dianne Dare, an attractive young woman who teaches French. The new term starts with a number of minor yet inexplicable occurrences. For the first time in his life, Straitley's register goes missing without ever turning up again. Also, his coffee mug is no longer at the place in the Common Room where it has sat for many years. Pupils report that various objects are missing from their classrooms or lockers. In particular, a 13 year-old Jewish boy from Straitley's form deplores the alleged theft of his expensive fountain pen, a Bar Mitzvah present. Presently, the boy's mother accuses the school and especially Straitley of anti-Semitism. Soon afterwards, a pupil in Straitley's class nearly dies, following another malicious trick, and closely guarded secrets in the lives of the St Oswald's staff are anonymously revealed. Life at St Oswald's begins to suffer a gradual disintegration. One morning, after the discovery of a computer virus on the school's computer system, Pat Bishop is arrested, because child pornography has been downloaded onto his computer and paid for with his credit card. Bishop denies this, but the damage to his career has been done. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure called "Mole" publishes in the local newspaper damaging allegations about St Oswald's. Straitley begins to suspect that, not only are all these incidents orchestrated by the same malicious individual, but that this person is deliberately trying to bring down St. Oswald's. The novel is written using Harris' typical split-narrative technique. The first narrator (indicated at the beginning of each chapter by a white King) is Straitley himself, and focuses on the day-to-day events at St Oswald's as the situation develops. The second is marked by a Black Pawn, and is the voice of the mysterious enemy within St Oswald's, whose identity is only revealed at the end of the book, and who, little by little, reveals the bitterness and hatred that drives a person to fake an identity, break the law and even to commit murder - all in the name of revenge. There is a twist ending to the novel which may or may not satisfy readers who long for poetic justice or a typically "Hollywood ending". http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/v3site/books/gentlemen/index.html
4049922	/m/0bfjbd	Young Bond Book 5	Charlie Higson	2008-09-03	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 In Lisbon, OGPU Colonel Irina Sedova, also known as 'Babuska' (Russian for 'grandmother'), visits the Russian cell leader in Portugal. However, she soon realizes that he isn't the cell leader. He vainly tries to kill her but Sedova's bulletproof vest protects her and she manages to kill the imposter. She then finds a sheet of paper with a name from the past on it: James Bond. During this time, Bond is on his way for a school skiing trip in Austria when he runs afoul of a group of Hitler Youth members who call him a cheater for having won a game of poker. He beats them, gives them back their money, and tells them to play with good grace. Some time later, he arrives in Austria where he realizes that he is being followed. When he arrives at his hotel, he is still being followed. There, he meets with his friend Andrew Carlton and his teacher Mr. Merriot. During a skiing outing, Bond goes after one of his classmates who is drunk and they get caught in an avalanche. After saving himself and his classmate, Bond is hospitalised and hears a man crying out about his cousin named Jürgen who is going to be killed. He later finds out this man was the Graf Von Schlick. A few days later, the boys return to Eton where Bond meets the new maid, Roan Power. He finds himself falling in love with her and starts to spend time with her. She takes him to meet her friend, an Irishman named Dandy O'Keefe. During this meeting, Bond accidentally meets the Princesses, Elizabeth and Mary but doesn't recognize them. A few days later, he is invited to a party given by the Prince of Wales where he meets the mysterious Graf Otto von Schlick. On the 4 June King George V comes to Eton and Bond spots Sedova among the crowd. Sometime later he is knocked unconscious, bound and gagged by Dandy, who is planning to assassinate the King by blowing up the church of Eton, while framing Bond for it as part of a plan to start a communist revolution. After preventing the attempt and escaping with a hidden knife, Bond goes after Dandy, who tries to kill him with his knife. Bond is saved by the man who followed him in Austria when he shoots Dandy, who takes him to Mr. Merriot. The teacher reveals that he works for MI6 and that they have been keeping an eye on him. He tells Bond that Dandy and Roan are working for a Communist cell and that they want to know all about the operation. They want Bond to get Roan to talk. Back at Eton, Roan tells Bond that they are working for a Communist agent who they know as 'Amethyst', who works for the Communist cell based in Portugal. This operation is being run by a man known as 'Obsidian'. Bond informs her that Dandy was captured and, after she begs him not to give her away, they share a kiss. However, unable to betray Roan, Bond tells her the truth and they run away to Austria together. During their crossing the country, they are pursued not only by MI6 but also by Sedova. When they arrive in Austria, Roan betrays Bond to Obsidian who is none other than Dr. Perseus Friend, whom Bond thought he had killed in Silverfin. It is revealed that Friend had assumed the identity of the Graf since the surgery and had met Bond at the party, and the original Graf had been killed. Also, it is revealed that Friend and Amethyst, a Russian named Vladimir Wrangel, are not working for the Russians but for the Nazis. The plan was to trick Dandy and Roan into believing that the King's death would inspire the workers of Britain to revolt against the government, into killing King George V. The King's death would, thus, have placed Edward VIII on the throne. As he was more sympathetic towards Hitler, and the fact that Dandy and Roan would have claimed to be working for the Communists, the UK would have formed an alliance with Germany, isolating the French and giving Germany an ally in the ensuing war against Communist Russia. Dr. Friend mocks Roan by saying that the British were too conservative to rise up against their monarchy. Bond and Roan are locked up and Friend plans to skin Bond alive as a revenge for having nearly killed him. However, they manage to escape and are pursued around the castle by Wrangel. As he is about to kill them, OGPU agents under the command of Colonel Sedova, who had followed the entire conspiracy since Lisbon, attacked the Germans. Roan kills Wrangel, saving Bond, and Sedova kills Friend. Sedova corners Bond and Roan just as Bond had cornered her in London. However, as she is about to take him to Russia as leverage against the British, MI6 arrive and rescue the two. However, Sedova tries to shoot Bond who is saved by Roan. Bond shoots Sedova, although she disappears shortly afterwards. Before dying, Roan reveals that she had been married to Dandy, but that she loved Bond. Subsequently Merriot informs Bond that, although the King was very grateful that he had saved his life, he would be unable to remain at Eton, so Bond is sent instead to Fettes College.
4049930	/m/0bfjc2	What We Do Is Secret	Thorn Kief Hillsbery	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rockets was ten years old when he first met Darby Crash, lead singer of LA punk band The Germs. He and Darby had a sexual relationship and Rockets, like many in the scene, looked up to Darby. Rockets was aware, however, that he was often manipulated by Darby's mind games and talent for controlling people. After Darby's death Rockets continues to hang out in the local punk scene, but things are changing and he considers leaving LA. Rockets' circle of close friends is composed of Siouxie, Squid, and Blitzer. Peripheral characters include Rory Dolores, Animal Cracker, Slade, and Hellin Killer. Despite his age, Rockets is accepted as one of the gang, but he is secretly scared of being returned to a group home. Blitzer, a young man, is very affectionate towards Rockets and the two gradually become more intimate, sexually and otherwise. Blitzer holds out the hope of a new life for the two of them together in Idaho. Blitzer gradually gets more intimate with Rockets, buying a double sleeping bag when they go camping and offering to hold his penis in the bathroom. Eventually, after a concert, they make love and Rockets welcomes Blitzer's advances. They then shower together and Blitzer comments on the bruises that Rockets got when he was arrested by the police]. Rockets admits to Blitzer, "My worst fear is like ending up in a boy's home." Blitzer then gives the boy his first shave and later on shaves his head as Rockets turns from punk to skinhead for his birthday. All four of the core group of friends make money by turning tricks of one sort or another and spend it on drugs, typically poppers, tabs, and the amphetamine derivative Desoxyn. Two gay tourists hire the group to show them around LA and are therefore also involved in much of the action of the book.
4050227	/m/0bfk54	The Ice Harvest	Scott Phillips	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It is Christmas Eve in Wichita, Kansas and snowing steadily. The streets are deserted, traffic is light and most people have returned home for the start of the festivities. But family get-togethers are the last thing on Charlie Arglist's mind, and home is the last place he needs to be. For Charlie has to get out of town, having stolen nearly a million dollars. In nine and a half hours, to be precise. He has various misadventures before he is killed accidentally after nearly escaping cleanly.
4050623	/m/0bfl1b	Fire From Heaven	Mary Renault	1969-06	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel, whose memorable opening line is "The child was wakened by the knotting of the snake's coils about his waist," portrays Alexander's complicated relationship with his father, Philip of Macedon, and his mother Olympias; his education under the philosopher Aristotle, whose later opposition to Alexander is foreshadowed; and his devotion to his lifelong companion Hephaistion, depicted as both a lover and an intimate friend. The novel contains a controversial portrait of the Athenian orator Demosthenes, portraying him as arrogant, cowardly and vindictive. The novel ends with the assassination of Philip, with Alexander, his heir, poised to begin his career of conquests.
4051026	/m/0bfl_x	Qadiani Problem	Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi	1953	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book deals with some of the interpretations of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. It discusses the finality of prophethood, the prophethood of Ahmad, and its consequences in Muslim society. It also mentions the status of the Ahmadiyya Community and its political plans. In one of the appendices of the book, a discussion between Allama Iqbal and Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru is reproduced, in which Allama Iqbal has expressed his views regarding followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and have rationalized his view that followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad be given a status of a different religious community in India.
4051817	/m/0bfncb	The Sound of the Mountain	Yasunari Kawabata	1949	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centers upon the Ogata family of Kamakura, and its events are witnessed from the perspective of its aging patriarch, Shingo, a businessman close to retirement who works in Tokyo. Although only sixty-two years old at the beginning of the novel, Shingo has already begun to experience temporary lapses of memory, to recall strange and disturbing dreams upon waking, and occasionally to hear sounds heard by no one else, including the titular noise which awakens him from his sleep one night, "like wind, far away, but with a depth like a rumbling of the earth." Shingo takes the sound to be an omen of his impending death, as he had once coughed up blood (a possible sign of tuberculosis) a year before, but had not sought medical consultation and the symptom subsequently went away. Although he does not outwardly change his daily routine, Shingo begins to observe and question more closely his relations with the other members of his family, who include his wife Yasuko, his philandering son Shuichi (who, in traditional Japanese custom, lives with his wife in his parents' house), his daughter-in-law Kikuko, and his married daughter Fusako, who has left her husband and returned to her family home with her two young daughters. Shingo realizes that he has not truly been an involved and loving husband and father, and perceives the marital difficulties of his adult children to be the fruit of his poor parenting. To this end, he begins to question his secretary, Tanizaki Eiko, about his son's affair, as she knows Shuichi socially and is friends with his mistress, and he quietly puts pressure upon Shuichi to quit his infidelity. At the same time, he uncomfortably becomes aware that he has begun to experience a fatherly yet erotic attachment to Kikuko, whose quiet suffering in the face of her husband's unfaithfulness, physical attractiveness, and filial devotion contrast strongly with the bitter resentment and homeliness of his own daughter, Fusako. Complicating matters in his own marriage is the infatuation that as a young man he once possessed for Yasuko's older sister, more beautiful than Yasuko herself, who died as a young woman but who has again begun to appear in his dreams, along with images of other dead friends and associates. The novel may be interpreted as a meditation upon aging and its attendant decline, and the coming to terms with one's mortality that is its hallmark. Even as Shingo regrets not being present for his family and blames himself for his children's failing marriages, the natural world, represented by the mountain itself, the cherry tree in the yard of his house, the flights of birds and insects in the early summer evening, or two pine trees he sees from the window of his commuter train each day, comes alive for him in a whole new way, provoking meditations on life, love, and companionship.
4053656	/m/0bfrk9	Loser	Jerry Spinelli		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jerry Spinelli's novel, Loser, takes place in a "small brick-and-hoagie town" in the United States and details the childhood of Donald Zinkoff, focusing on his life from the first through sixth grades. Zinkoff is usually the last person picked for athletic teams, his flute consistently hits the wrong note during concerts, and he is occasionally too eager at the wrong times. Donald Zinkoff is one unusual kid that some people just can't really understand, with uncontrollable laughter, uncommon enthusiasm, the love of going to school, acting childish when supposedly mature, not being good at sports, and a dream of becoming a mailman (after his father). Donald tries to fit in, but has trouble doing so. Even after being called "Loser", he goes on with life and remains happy, even though he doesn't have any friends. However, throughout the book we notice that these traits make him far more of a winner than his peers. Zinkoff is introduced to school in First grade and loves it, even though he is always seated in the rear of the classroom because his teacher sits students alphabetically. But Zinkoff hits his low point in fifth grade, when his team does not want him to participate in that year's field day because of his abysmal performance during last year's proceedings. Sixth grade is Zinkoff's first year of Middle School, where he reconnects with his former neighbor from second grade, Andrew. Andrew has changed his identity to become "Drew," a sixth grader who has confidence in the crowded halls and a cell phone in his book bag. This chance encounter sort of clues Zinkoff in as to how much of a difference there is between him and his peers. Even though they consider him to be a loser, he's not; in fact, Zinkoff has a heart of gold. This is shown through his interactions with his parents and the lonely, elderly lady in his neighborhood, as well as the hours he spends looking for a little girl from his neighborhood who becomes lost in a snowstorm.
4055580	/m/0bfv78	Whortle's Hope	Robin Jarvis	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the story, which takes place in the summer before the events of The Crystal Prison, it is almost the time of the Fennywolde games, when the young field mice compete to see who will have the honour of being the head sentry of the cornfield for the entire summer. Young Whortle longs to win the competition, but not if it means his friends are going to sabotage the other competitor's chances. He wants to win on his own merits, but soon realises winning isn't the most important thing as another mouse needs the prize more than he does.
4055612	/m/0bfv9r	Ogmund's Gift	Robin Jarvis	2008	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ogmund's Gift will be about the unruly nephew of Orfeo and Eldritch, two of the mystical bats in Deptford. Ogmund would rather be a mouse, but instead he must learn to harness his growing magical powers.
4056272	/m/0bfw5f	The Third Witch	Rebecca Reisert	2001-10	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 The novel retells the story of Macbeth from the perspective of one of the witches, a young girl named Gilly. She has sworn revenge against Macbeth for murdering her father. Posing as a kitchen worker, Gilly wants to carry out her plan to kill him, and soon becomes involved in many important events from the play.
4057669	/m/0bfy7f	Ghost Tower of Inverness			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The player characters go on a quest to find the fabled Soul Gem, a legendary artifact of great power. They must gather the four parts of a key granting them entrance to the Ghost Tower.
4057741	/m/0bfycb	White Plume Mountain	Lawrence Schick		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 White Plume Mountain is set in the World of Greyhawk, a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. The earliest known inhabitant of the volcano known as White Plume Mountain is the druid Aegwareth. Aegwareth is later slain by the evil wizard Keraptis, who took over the mountain with his gnomish servitors. The premise of White Plume Mountain is that thirteen hundred years ago, Keraptis descended into the volcanic mountain with a company of gnomes, and disappeared. The adventure is a dungeon crawl, to rescue the magical weapons from Keraptis' lair. The adventure's 16 pages are divided into 27 encounters. The player's characters begin in a cave at the base of White Plume Mountain. In the first numbered encounter, the characters find a spiral staircase in the cave which leads to a "mangy, bedraggled" gynosphinx. Encounter seven involves a large cave with a floor of boiling mud. Circular wooden platforms are suspended from the ceiling, and the characters must jump from platform to platform while dodging geysers of hot mud. In the eighth encounter, the characters confront a vampire who is guarding the magical war hammer Whelm in a room of permanent darkness. In encounter 17, a corridor leads the characters to a boiling lake. According to the adventure, "The corridor from the dungeon continues out into the lake under a rubbery magical forcefield that keeps out the waters by forming a sort of elastic skin of super-tension." The watery tunnel opens into a watery dome, where the characters must defeat a giant crab in order to collect the magical trident Wave. Encounter 22 involves a frictionless room with spikes, and in encounter 23, the characters kayak on a stream suspended in mid air. In the 26th encounter, the characters must fight various creatures in a magical ziggurat where each level is guarded by a different monster including sea lions, giant crayfish, giant scorpions, and manticores. In the last encounter, an ogre mage must be defeated in order to win the magical sword Blackrazor. An end note recommends that the Dungeon Master add an encounter with two efreet if the characters have succeeded in taking two or three of the magic weapons.
4058199	/m/0bfz1m	Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun	Gary Gygax	1982	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun is set in the World of Greyhawk. The player characters (PCs) follow a band of marauding norkers from the caverns, discovering the temple along the way. They must search through the dangerous mountain passes to find the norker lair inside the temple. The adventurers are drawn into the story by a gnomish community and travel to the temple. After battling their way in, the PCs explore the temple chambers, which contain mundane creatures and new monsters from the Fiend Folio supplement. During their exploration, the characters may reach chambers of the temple in which religious rituals were performed, and risk insanity and death as they encounter remnants of worshipers of the imprisoned god Tharizdun. To progress further, the characters must enact portions of the rituals of worship of Tharizdun, traveling into an underground sub-temple, and magically opening an inner sanctum called the Black Cyst. Having advanced this far, the characters are likely to be driven insane, killed outright, or permanently trapped within the underground temple.
4058574	/m/0bfzln	The Haunted Bookshop	Christopher Morley	1919	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The narrative begins with a young advertising man, Aubrey Gilbert, stopping by a bookstore named "The Haunted Bookshop" in the hopes of finding a new client. Gilbert meets the proprietor, Roger Mifflin. Gilbert does not succeed in selling advertising copy, but is intrigued by Mifflin and his conviction concerning the value books and booksellers have to the world. Additionally, Gilbert is intrigued by the fact that his firm's biggest client, Mr. Chapman, is a friend of Mifflin and has asked Mifflin to undertake the education of his daughter, Titania Chapman, by hiring her on as an assistant. Gilbert returns to the book store, meets Titania, and falls in love with her. Meanwhile mysterious things begin happening: a copy of Thomas Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell disappears and reappears, Gilbert is attacked as he travels home, and a pharmacist neighbor of Mifflin is observed skulking in the alley behind the bookstore at night speaking to someone in German, an assistant chef at the Octagon Hotel has posted an ad in the New York Times promising a reward for a lost copy of Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Gilbert starts to sense that something nefarious is afoot and suspects that the gregarious Mifflin is involved in a plot to kidnap Titania, and he assigns himself the job of protecting her. Meanwhile, Mifflin begins to train Titania in the booksellers' trade. His focus is so centered on books and their content that he fails to note the unusual things that are occurring. Gilbert takes a room across from the bookstore in order to keep eye on things, and believes his suspicions confirmed when he sees the pharmacist let himself into the bookshop with his own key late at night. Gilbert breaks into the bookshop in an effort to find evidence to prove his suspicions, but only manages to frighten and anger Titania. Gilbert learns that Mifflin is to take a day trip to Philadelphia, and follows him in the belief that the trip is a part of the "kidnapping" plot. In Philadelphia Gilbert confronts Mifflin with his suspicions, telling him of all the things that have occurred. The two realize that a third party had lured Mifflin away from the shop. They call the bookshop and learn that the pharmacist has left a suitcase of books there for someone else to pick up. Mifflin tells Titania to hold onto the case until he returns. Mifflin and Gilbert return to the bookshop and find it locked. Inside, the pharmacist and an associate of his have tied up Mrs. Mifflin and are menacing Titania with a gun. A fight ensues, part of the bookstore is destroyed by a bomb, and the pharmacist escapes. The only casualties of the bomb are the pharmacist's partner and Mifflin's dog, Bock. Mifflin even affects to be pleased as the blast knocked down books he'd forgotten he had. In the final chapter of the book Gilbert and Mifflin learn what the true plot was: The pharmacist was a German spy who had been using the bookshop as a drop-off point. He was a specialist in making bombs, and had hidden a bomb in one of President Woodrow Wilson's favorite books. The pharmacist's co-conspirator was the assistant chef at the Octagon Hotel. He was to be part the crew on the ship Wilson was to travel on to peace talks in Europe, and was to plant the bomb in Wilson's cabin in an assassination plot. The pharmacist was captured by police, and killed himself.
4058832	/m/0bfzyp	There Are Doors	Gene Wolfe	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mr. Green awakes to find that his girlfriend, Lara Morgan, has left their apartment. He battles a hangover to find a cryptic note left by her, dispensing little but a warning against entering certain "significant" doors and nonsensical instructions for leaving them if passed through. Green immediately leaves to search for the woman, whom he has known for only a few days but has already grown to love. His quest takes him through one such door to an alternate world, made apparent to Green by conspicuous elements such as its unusual currency. An accident lands Green in a psychiatric hospital, where he meets a radical from his world using the name William North (a patient), a boxer named Joe Joeseph and his manager Eddie Walsh (also a patient). North organizes an escape from the Hospital, accompanied by Green and exploited by Walsh, who makes his own escape. The two take refuge at the Grand Hotel in the outskirts of the city, while Green begins to realize what a dangerous man he has been indebted to. North brings him to a play accompanied by members of his revolutionary group which is raided by police. Green and North narrowly escape capture and death, though they lose each other. Green returns to his hotel paranoid of capture by the police. He finds that the doctor he consults for minor burns suffered during the raid and subsequent fire at the theater, the waitress at the hotel restaurant, and even the stylist at the hair salon beneath it all seem to work for the police organization that is tracking him. He leaves the hotel hoping to learn more, but is locked out upon his return and must accept a car ride from the waitress, Fanny. They go to an Italian restaurant which Green recognizes as being from his world. He and Fanny discuss the little they know about North's gang, the two worlds, and Lara. The alternate world is nearly identical to his, the one of contemporary America, save for a few societal and physical disparities. The people from "There" (as Green comes to think of it) are physically identical to those from Here, but for that the men naturally die from sex. Technology seems to be generally inferior There, although some anomalies such as seemingly magical and remarkably articulate robotic dolls exist, perhaps invented to suit matriarchal needs. Roads and buildings seem to be in similar places, though occupied by different establishments and patrons. Time passes much more quickly Here, although they both seem to be in the same general era. There is no indication when passing between the worlds, though the doors between them seem to be accessible only to certain people and those who they know. Objects can accompany people between the worlds, though they may eventually filter themselves back to the world of their origin. When they leave the restaurant, Green returns to his own world through its door, but Fanny inadvertently follows Lara's aforementioned instructions and remains in her own. Green finds that, though he had only been in the alternate world for perhaps four days, he has been missing from his own for over a month. He is told that he must receive a medical checkup before he can return to work, and in doing so it is revealed that he has now made eight visits to a psychiatrist for a "breakdown". He is hospitalized, but released after admitting that the alternate world was most likely a dream. Over the next few years he returns to his previous life as a salesman, forgetting about Lara and There. He is briefly returned to the other world while shopping and is reminded of its existence. Shortly after returning to his world he is contacted by Lara. They meet at the Italian restaurant and, after some coaxing, she reveals more to him about herself and the other world. Throughout the story Green had been exposed to hints that his girlfriend exists in both worlds. She had appeared as a doll he found in the other world, on his television at the first hospital, stepdaughter of Klamm (presidential cabinet member searching for North), as a famous actress and model There, and was also referred to There as 'the goddess'. Now she had taken the alias of receptionist Lora Masterman at his psychiatrist's office. She admits to being an immortal being from the other world, occasionally joining his world to enjoy relationships with men she could sleep with without killing, such as Green, Klamm, and a 19th century sea captain. Lara flees Green through the restaurant's door and they reenter the alternate world. They reunite at a boxing match where Joe is attempting to take the heavyweight title and North is using as a political publicity stunt. North interrupts the fight with gunshots, perhaps attempting to kill Green, but is subdued by Joe after a brief brawl. Green is taken to a hospital for injuries sustained and reunites with Fanny. She is instructed to keep watch of him, but he escapes her vise. The novel ends with Green exiting the city in a cab, still in the alternate world, eager to start a new life devoid of the burdens of his old.
4059699	/m/0bg0j2	Daddy-Long-Legs	Jean Webster		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jerusha Abbott was brought up at the John Grier Home, an old-fashioned orphanage. The children were wholly dependent on charity and had to wear other people's cast-off clothes. Jerusha's unusual first name was selected by the matron off a gravestone (she hates it and uses "Judy" instead), while her surname was selected out of the phone book. At the age of 18, she has finished her education and is at loose ends, still working in the dormitories at the institution where she was brought up. One day, after the asylum's trustees have made their monthly visit, Judy is informed by the asylum's dour matron that one of the trustees has offered to pay her way through college. He has spoken to her former teachers and thinks she has potential to become an excellent writer. He will pay her tuition and also give her a generous monthly allowance. Judy must write him a monthly letter, because he believes that letter-writing is important to the development of a writer. However, she will never know his identity; she must address the letters to Mr. John Smith, and he will never reply. Jerusha catches a glimpse of the shadow of her benefactor from the back, and knows he is a tall long-legged man. Because of this, she jokingly calls him Daddy-Long-Legs. She attends a "girls' college," but the name and location are never identified. Men from Princeton University are frequently mentioned as dates, so it might be assumed that her college is one of the Seven Sisters. It was certainly on the East Coast. She illustrates her letters with childlike line drawings, also created by Jean Webster. The book chronicles Jerusha's educational, personal, and social growth. One of the first things she does at college is to change her name to "Judy." She designs a rigorous reading program for herself and struggles to gain the basic cultural knowledge to which she, growing up in the bleak environment of the orphan asylum, was never exposed. At the end of the book, the identity of 'Daddy-Long-Legs' is revealed.
4060573	/m/0bg26r	Nadja	André Breton	1928	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrator, named André, ruminates on a number of Surrealist principles and ideologies, before ultimately commencing (around a third of the way through the novel) on a narrative account, generally linear, of his brief (10-day) affair with the titular character Nadja (whose is named so “because in Russian it’s the beginning of the word hope, and because it’s only the beginning,” but which might also evoke the Spanish ‘Nadie,’ which means ‘No one’). The narrator becomes obsessed with this woman with whom he, upon a chance encounter while walking through the street, strikes up conversation immediately. He becomes reliant on daily rendezvous, occasionally culminating in romance (a kiss here and there). His true fascination with her, however, is her vision of the world, which is often provoked through a discussion of the work of a number of Surrealist artists, including himself. Her understanding of existence subverts the rigidly authoritarian quotidian (and it is later discovered that she is mad and belongs in a sanitarium). After she begins narrating to the narrator over an account filled with too many details over her past life, she in a sense becomes demystified, and the narrator realizes that he cannot continue the relationship. In the remaining quarter of the text, he distances himself from her corporeal form and descends into a meandering rumination on her absence, such that one wonders if it is more her absence that inspires him than her presence. (It is, after all, the reification and materialization of her as an ordinary person that he ultimately despises and cannot tolerate to the point of inducing tears.) There is something about the closeness once held between the narrator and Nadja that indicated a depth beyond the limits of conscious rationality, waking logic, and sane operations of the everyday—there is something essentially “mysterious, improbable, unique, bewildering” about her, reinforcing the notion that the propinquity serves only to remind him of her impenetrability and her eventual recession into absence is the fundamental concern of this text, such that she may live freely in his conscious and unconscious, seemingly unbridled, maintaining the paradoxical role as both present and absent. With her past instated onto his own memory and consciousness, the narrator feels awakened to an impenetrability of reality, seeing a particularly ghostly residue peeking from under its thin veil. Thus, he might better put into practice his theory of Surrealism, predicated on the dreaminess of the experience of reality within reality itself.
4070159	/m/0bgjvl	Pigs Have Wings	P. G. Wodehouse	1952-10-16	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lord Emsworth, his brother Galahad and butler Beach, hearing that devious neighbour Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe has done the unthinkable and brought in a new and enormous pig from Kent, are in turmoil. Galahad and Beach are desperate to secure their savings, confidently invested in a wager on the mighty Empress, while Emsworth is as ever suspicious of his gloating neighbour. Parsloe, meanwhile, is regretting becoming engaged to Gloria Salt, who has put him on a diet. His suspicions of Galahad lead him to put his pig man, George Cyril Wellbeloved, on a drink-ban too, a move of which Wellbeloved wholeheartedly disapproves; he also, on Connie's advice, orders a large quantity of "Slimmo", a slimming product, to aid his diet. Hearing about this suspicious purchase, a worried Galahad calls in Beach's niece Maudie, an old acquaintance and now proprietor of a Detective Agency, to keep an eye on things. Penelope Donaldson heads up to London for the day, planning to meet up with her man, under cover of a dinner with an old friend of her father's. Jerry Vail, however, is forced to entertain his old flame Gloria Salt and cancels the date. Salt tells him Emsworth needs a secretary, and suggests talking pig to the Earl will get him the cash he needs to buy into a health farm and make his fortune. Vail heads to Blandings, but Connie is suspicious, having heard his name when he called to cancel his date with Penny. Penny is furious, having been taken to Mario's by Orlo Vosper and seen Jerry with the attractive Gloria. When Jerry explains, she is suitably chastised, especially as, thinking her man had betrayed her, she had accepted Vosper's proposal of marriage. When Wellbeloved visits Blandings to ask Gally to provide him with a drink (all the pubs in Market Blandings having been forbidden to serve him), Gally takes the opportunity to snatch Parsloe's pig, stashing it in the hut in the West Wood. Wellbeloved, finding the pig gone, nabs the Empress and puts her in the pen at Parsloe's place to cover up. Vosper and Gloria Salt, their old love revived, run off together to be married, after Gally helps Vosper get out of being engaged to Penny, and Gloria writes to Parsloe ending their engagement. Wellbeloved spots Beach furtively heading for the shed, but his call to tell Parsloe of his discovery is intercepted by Gally, who has Beach move the pig to a nearby house, recently vacated by Gally's old friend "Fruity" Biffen. Meanwhile Emsworth, stricken with a cold, has been smitten by Maudie (posing as Mr Donaldson's old friend Mrs Bunbury), and writes a letter to her declaring his love, which he has Vail place in her room. She, meanwhile, pays a visit to Parsloe, with whom she once had an understanding, planning to give him a piece of her mind, but all is soon cleared up and the two become engaged. Emsworth, on hearing this, sends Vail to retrieve his letter, but has misdirected him into Connie's room; on finding Vail hiding in her closet, she promptly fires him. Finding the Emsworth Arms uncomfortable, Vail lets the cottage with the pig in it. Fearing he will give the game away, Gally dashes round, but Vail has already been visited by a policeman and Wellbeloved. Gally removes the pig by car, but soon returns, having found the Empress in the Queen's sty. They head back to Blandings to tell Emsworth, leaving Beach, exhausted from cycling over, sleeping in the cottage. On their return, Parsloe is there, having been told by Wellbeloved that the Queen was in the kitchen and had Beach arrested for stealing his pig. Gally explains to Parsloe that the Empress is in the kitchen, and the Queen in her sty, scuppering Parsloe. He then persuades Emsworth to invest in Vail's health farm, in gratitude for having found the pig, and Connie gives him another £500 for Beach, to prevent him suing Parsloe for wrongful arrest. Meanwhile Parsloe's butler Binstead, having been refused a refund on the Slimmo no longer needed by his master, feeds it to the pig in the sty, thinking she is still the Empress...
4070403	/m/0bgk8w	Wings	M. A. Kuzmin	1906	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel deals with teenager Vanya Smurov's attachment to his older, urbane mentor, Larion Stroop, a pederast who initiates him into the world of early Renaissance, Classical and Romantic art. At the close of the first part, Vanya is shocked to learn that the object of his admiration frequents a gay bathhouse. In order to sort out his feelings, Vanya withdraws into the Volga countryside, but his sickening experience with rural women, whose call on him to enjoy his youth turns out to be an awkward attempt at seduction, induces Vanya to accept his Classics teacher's proposal and accompany him in a journey to Italy. In the last part of the novel, Vanya and Stroop, who is also in Italy, are seen enjoying the smiling climate and stunning artworks of Florence and Rome, while Prince Orsini mentors the delicate youth in the art of hedonism.
4070559	/m/0bgkg5	The Smell of Apples	Mark Behr	1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Marnus Erasmus is an eleven-year-old boy who lives in the late sixties with his family in Cape Town, South Africa. The Erasmus' live as a white family in a country which is mostly inhabited by coloured people. The white people rule South Africa and Marnus' father is an important general in the army. The white population in South Africa descended from the British immigrants, who came while the country was a colony of Great Britain, and the Boers, who are descendants of the Dutch settlers. Marnus grows up believing that black people are second class people due to having been indoctrinated by the apartheid system and his parents' views. On the other hand we, the readers, see that all Marnus's encounters with black people have actually been good. Marnus´ father does not like black people because his father, Marnus´ grandfather, and his family were driven away and their land expropriated by the black masses from Tanganyika, today's Tanzania. They fled to South Africa and, with the white population, turned it into a modern state. Now Marnus´ father thinks that the black people are going to destroy all that they have built and that the white people have to prevent this by controlling the native Africans. Marnus´ best friend is Frikkie, who is also white. They attend the same school and every minute in their free time they meet up with each other. In the summer holidays Frikkie stays with Marnus in the Erasmus´ house, where Marnus' father often meets generals from other countries. He tells Marnus that he is not allowed to tell anybody else that there is a soldier from another country there, and that he shall call the visitors Mr. Smith. During the summer, a Mr. Smith from Chile visits the family. At dinner Marnus´ father and the general speak about the political situation in the world. Mr. Smith says that he is relieved that his army has overthrown the government of Allende due to cooperating with the Communists. Marnus´ father tells the general South Africa is also in a very bad position because the world is "against his country". He explains that the other states are against them and claim that the white people in South Africa are discriminative against the black population. Marnus makes an agreement with Frikkie that they will tell each other all their secrets, which is why Marnus ignores his father's warning not to tell anybody that he speaks with Mr. Smith. Marnus tells Frikkie that the whole world is against South Africa and that the coloured people are to blame for that. One night Marnus wakes up and he notices that Frikkie is not in his bed. He can see the spare room through the floor-boards in his room and witnesses Frikkie being raped. He assumes the rapist is Mr. Smith who is supposed to have left that night, and goes downstairs to wake his parents, but finds his father is not in bed. He goes back upstairs and observes that the man who is raping Frikkie does not have a scar on his back like the General (Mr. Smith) and realises that it is his father. The next day he asks Frikkie if something happened during the night but Frikkie does not tell Marnus anything. Frikkie says that he has decided to go home and he does not want to stay longer. Marnus reassures himself that Frikkie will never tell anyone what happened..
4071305	/m/0bglzf	Pigeon Post	Arthur Ransome	1936	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Swallows, Amazons and Ds are camping in the Blackett family's garden at Beckfoot. The Swallow is not available for sailing. James Turner (Captain Flint) has sent word that he is returning from an expedition to South America prospecting for gold, and has sent Timothy ahead. As he can be let loose in the study, they deduce that Timothy is an armadillo and make a box for him, but he does not arrive. Slater Bob, an old slate miner, tells them a story about a lost gold seam in the fells. As Captain Flint has been unsuccessful in his prospecting trip, plans are made to prospect for gold on High Topps instead. They are allowed to move camp to Tyson's Farm, up near the fells, to be closer to the prospecting grounds, after proving that they can stay in touch with home using the homing pigeons that give the book its name. But when they get there, they find this little improvement as Mrs Tyson does not allow them to cook over a campfire because of the drought conditions and her fear of fires. Titty eventually finds a spring by dowsing and they move closer to the Topps. To keep in touch with Beckfoot, they send one of the homing pigeons with a daily message. While exploring the ground, they notice a rival they call Squashy Hat who is prospecting too. After days of prospecting, a seam of gold-coloured mineral is found in a cave made by the old miners, and they mine and crush enough to melt down into an ingot in a charcoal furnace. Unfortunately it disappears when the crucible breaks and Dick Callum has only a small amount to test. Captain Flint returns home, and finds Dick doing chemical tests on the putative gold in his study. Dick has read that gold dissolves in aqua regia, Captain Flint explains that aqua regia dissolves almost every substance but gold does not dissolve in any other solvent. He shows Dick by other tests that they have found copper ore, pyrites. A pigeon arrives with an urgent message FIRE HELP QUICK from Titty. Captain Flint rings Colonel Jolys who musters his volunteer fire fighters, and they all rush to help save the Topps. The fire on the fells is extinguished. Squashy Hat is revealed as Captain Flint's friend Timothy, who has been too shy to introduce himself to the children. Captain Flint is pleased to find copper, as he had talked with Timothy above Pernambuco in South America about new ways of prospecting for copper on the fells, and in fact prospecting for copper, not gold, had been the purpose of the expedition to South America in the first place.
4072839	/m/0bgq2y	The Visitation			{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Centered around the life of Travis Jordan, The Visitation begins when miracles, ranging from a healing, weeping crucifix to sights of Jesus in the clouds, start occurring, giving way to the arrival of a man who calls himself Brandon Nichols. Nichols begins healing people; giving a man who lost the use of his legs in the Vietnam War the ability to walk, and performing various other "healings". Most of the townspeople — who are portrayed as disillusioned, post-Pentecostal farmers — begin to believe in Nichols as a Messiah. Brandon Nichols begins to hold "revival meetings" on a large ranch outside of town every Sunday, and many churchgoers in town stop going to Sunday morning mass/services and instead listen to Brandon talk and watch him "heal". It is at this point that Nichols arouses the ire of one of the local ministers, Kyle Sherman. Enlisting the help of Travis Jordan, he seeks to prove that the so-called Brandon Nichols is not in fact a "better" Christian Messiah, but a puffed-up egomaniac using occult powers. In the end, the team (along with the help of a few others) uncover a host of pseudonyms and a hefty helping of deception surrounding Nichols' past. Startling parallels are revealed with the life story of Travis Jordan, all of which come to light as the story progresses.
4079528	/m/0bg_5y	Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit	P. G. Wodehouse	1954-10-15	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bertie finds himself once more at Brinkley Court, sampling the delights of Anatole's cooking while attempting to help Aunt Dahlia sell off her magazine Milady's Boudoir to the Liverpudlian Trotters, avoiding trouble in the shape of ex-fiancee Florence Craye, her hulking beau Stilton Cheesewright and the equally fearsome Spode.
4079737	/m/0bg_j6	Metal fırtına			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the novel, set in the year 2007, the United States Military invades Turkey to gain control of its deposits of an important strategic resource, borax. After securing the principal cities in Turkey, the United States attempts to re-enact the Treaty of Sèvres by dividing Turkey up between its historic rivals Greece and Armenia. Turkey responds by forming a military alliance with China, Russia and Germany. A Turkish agent then steals an American nuclear bomb and detonates it in Washington, D.C., killing millions of people. This however, backfires and U.S. troops increase their abuse of occupied Turkish citizens and the invasion picks up in pace. When U.S troops reach Istanbul, the conflict degrades to urban combat between the U.S. forces, Turkish armed citizenry, Turkish Army remnants and police forces. The climax turns out to be anticlimactic; the occupation of Istanbul agitates Russia, the European Union and China to sign a military alliance and threaten the United States with nuclear warfare in order to stop the invasion. The war comes to a close; U.S. forces retreat, and Turkey is saved. The agent, a member of a secret Turkish intelligence agency named "The Grey Team", trained from birth as obedient and amoral orphans, kidnaps the mastermind behind the invasion, the CEO of a corporation funding the President, and the book ends with a Central Asian torture scene with said CEO. The U.S. Government in the novel is led by a nameless President reminiscent of George W. Bush and portrayed as an Evangelical zealot. It also includes real-life U.S. Cabinet members Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. The novel also features then-current real-life political leaders at the helm of their respective nations.
4081329	/m/0bh23d	Allies of the Night	Darren Shan	2002	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 *Darren Shan *The Saga of Darren Shan Darren, Harkat, and Mr. Crepsley (Vancha going back to Vampire Mountain to inform the other Princes and Generals of their encounter with the Vampaneze Lord) go to Mr. Crepsley's hometown once again to investigate if Vampaneze had set up territories there. But soon after their arrival Darren is discovered by the police and forced to attend school. He has trouble with most of his subjects as he only has a middle school education, but luckily (or perhaps unluckily?) his English teacher is Debbie, his old girlfriend from his first visit to this city. Mr. Crepsley has to go back to Vampire Mountain again for Paris Skyle's funeral, leaving Darren and Harkat to continue the investigations alone. One night on his way back to the hotel room the three are staying in, Darren encounters a Vampaneze with hooks for hands and a mask wrapped around his face. The Vampaneze attacks, but Darren is saved by his old friend Steve. Steve joins Darren for the hunt of the Vampaneze, claiming he's changed his ways and now understands who the real enemy is and dropped his desire for vengeance against Darren and Mr.Crepsley long ago. Darren later reveals himself as a vampire to Debbie, and after a long explanation and a day's contemplating she joins Darren and Steve for the fight. Mr. Crepsley comes back and helps Darren pursue the Vampaneze, but understandably doesn't trust Steve. Darren does convince him, however, that Steve will be a big help for them and lets him come with them. Vancha also joins them again a few days later. They chase the hooked Vampaneze to the sewers at night, but the Vampaneze led them to a trap. Darren and his team are soon surrounded and the Vampaneze Lord make his second appearance. Darren tries to kill him, but is stopped by Steve, who shows his true side as being a half-vampaneze and betraying Darren and his friends. The hooked Vampaneze is also revealed to be RV (Previously known as Reggie Veggie, but now claims it stands for Righteous Vampaneze). A fight begins between the Hunters and the Vampaneze. Vancha charges through the Vampets, scattering them and Mr. Crepsley follows, slicing with his nails to bring down many Vampaneze. Darren soon beats Steve and is about to finish him off, but RV uses Debbie as a hostage. RV, Gannen Harst, and the Lord soon leave with the threat that they will kill Debbie if they are followed. Darren and Vancha take a Vampet and Steve as their hostage and are given a warning by Gannen to leave the tunnels immediately or he'll send Vampaneze to finish them off.
4081828	/m/0bh2z2	The Courtship of Princess Leia	Dave Wolverton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the opening of the novel, Han Solo, who from aboard the Mon Remonda has been prosecuting the search for this hidden fastness, wearily returns to the recently captured Coruscant expecting an end to the long separation between him and his beloved, Princess Leia, head of the New Republic. To his great surprise, when his vessel drops out of hyperspace and into the Coruscant system, what appears are a number of fearsome Imperial Star Destroyers, Hapan Battle Dragons, and Hapes Nova Class battle cruiser. Eventually, Han learns that the Hapes cluster had sent a delegation of some manner to the New Republic. He lands and enters the Imperial Palace, where, with the help of C-3P0, who translates and comments on the formal diplomatic reception, he watches the Hapes delegation present to Leia a number of stunning gifts: the dozen Star Destroyers Han had seen, a Hapan gun of command, a small plant resembling a bonsai which promotes longevity and intelligence, and the hand of the Hapes cluster's ruler Ta'a Chume's son, Prince Isolder, in holy matrimony. The effect is devastating; Leia nearly accepts, driving Han into a frenzy of fear and jealousy. Han eventually wanders into a cantina in the lower reaches of Coruscant, where he participates in a high-stakes sabacc game. One of his opponents runs out of liquid financial instruments and instead proffers real estate: a deed to an entire habitable planet, Dathomir. Han thinks he has found a gift which would prove his worthiness to Leia and compare favorably with the gifts of Isolder (and provide a place to resettle the expatriates of Alderaan). When Leia examines his gift and points out that he has been conned (since Dathomir was in the section of the galaxy controlled by Zsinj), Han is further devastated. Isolder compounds insult with injury by denigrating the Millennium Falcon and offering Han a Nova battle cruiser if he abandons his quest to win Leia's heart. Han snaps. He abducts Leia using the Gun of Command, and flees with her and Chewbacca aboard his recently refitted Millennium Falcon to Dathomir. Prince Isolder pursues him with his Hapan fleet. He arrives at Dathomir shortly after Han despite Han's headstart, as Isolder is aided by the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker who uses his Force powers to navigate a shorter (but still safe) path through hyperspace, shaving time off accepted conventional routes. There they both discovered that Zsinj had truly laid claim to Dathomir—in orbit around it was the Iron Fist, a number of other capital ships, and the complete orbital shipyard Han had hunted for so long. The Millennium Falcon had been forced to land on Dathomir itself, where it is captured by the Imperial garrison Zsinj had marooned on the surface years ago. Isolder sets out in his Miy'til fighter accompanied by Luke's X-wing while the Hapan fleet fights a covering action before it retreats into hyperspace to inform the New Republic, Imperial Remnant, and the Hapes Consortium of the whereabouts of Zsinj heretofore secret redoubt. On the surface, Isolder and Luke discover the remnants of the star-borne Jedi training academy, the Chu'unthor. Luke had seen recordings noting how Yoda and a number of other Jedi knights had failed to retrieve the library of the Chu'unthor, due to interference by the Witches of Dathomir. The best they had been able to do was seal the vessel thoroughly, so thoroughly that only centuries later the first intruder would need a lightsaber to gain access. As they peruse the vessel, however, Isolder and Luke are captured by a Dathomiri witch, who enslave them and take them to her village. Having learned about Han Solo's presence on the planet, Zsinj had dictated a combination of ultimatum and deal with the head of the Nightsisters, Gethzerion: they would give him Solo to torture and execute as he liked, and he would give them an Imperial shuttle to pilot where they like. If they did not, he would keep his "nightcloak" (an interconnected network of geostationary satellites, which reflected all solar emissions back into space) intact, which would slowly freeze Dathomir, ending all life on the planet. Eventually, they infiltrate the Imperial garrison and steal the Falcon, piloting it out into the ongoing Battle of Dathomir. Solo allows the Iron Fist to acquire the Falcon with a tractor beam; once it is within the deflector shields, he breaks it free of the beam lock, piloting his vessel over the superstructure of the gigantic vessel. Arriving upon the main bridge, he launches two concussion missiles, destroying the bridge, killing Zsinj, and knocking out the ventral shields. With Iron Fist so exposed, the Hapan Battle Dragons move into position with their ion cannons, disabling Iron Fist.Defeated, Zsinj's empire soon crumbles. Shortly thereafter, Solo and Leia marry, having realized during their intrepid journey together that they loved each other. Isolder is consoled by the fact he has fallen in love with his captor, Teneniel Djo.
4082237	/m/0bh3hq	The Lady From Dubuque	Edward Albee			 The play's first act finds three young couples (Sam + Jo hosting Fred + Carol and Lucinda + Edgar) engaging in party games like Twenty Questions. Jo's angry bitterness becomes apparent earlier than its source, which is the terminal disease that tortures her and will soon claim her life. At the end of the act, after the mounting tension drives the guests to leave, Sam carries Jo up to bed. Suddenly, a fourth couple appears from the wings: a glamorous older woman (Elizabeth) and her black companion (Oscar). She asks the audience, "Are we in time? Is this the place?" and answers her own questions: "Yes, we are in time. This is the place." The curtain falls. In Act One, the recurrent theme of the game was "Who are you?" Now that question becomes more serious, as Sam, shocked by the appearance of these strangers in his house, repeatedly demands that Elizabeth reveal her identity. She eventually insists that she is Jo's mother, come from Dubuque, Iowa "for her daughter's dying". However, Sam knows Jo's mother as a small, balding woman with pink hair, who lives in New Jersey and is estranged from Jo, and Elizabeth is clearly not she. Unfortunately for Sam, who vigorously protests the veracity of Elizabeth's claims, Jo runs into Elizabeth's arms and never questions her appearance or identity. Whoever she and Oscar may—or may not—be, they clearly represent the coming of Death, something familiar and unknown. At the end of the play, Oscar carries the dying Jo upstairs one last time. As the devastated Sam demands once more to learn Elizabeth's true identity, she ends the play with this line: "Why, I'm the lady from Dubuque. I thought you knew. [to the audience] I thought he knew." Elizabeth's curtain lines, quoted above, both typify the Pirandellian style of the play's dialogue, in which characters frequently make comments directly to the audience. (The first occurs very early, when Jo, observing the Twenty Questions game in progress, looks out at the audience and asks, "Don't you hate party games?")
4082312	/m/0bh3lv	The Black Gryphon	Larry Dixon	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the book begins, Skandranon Rashkae, the Black Gryphon, creeps into an enemy encampment. A Seer has warned Urtho of a new, magical weapon that has caused the capture of one of Urtho's key garrisons. Skan grabs one of the weapons and leaves, hotly pursued by makaar, creatures created by Kiyamvir Ma'ar to match Urtho's gryphons. After a long chase, Skan crash-lands in friendly territory. Meanwhile, in Urtho's camp, Kestra'chern Amberdrake and Gesten, a hertasi, are waiting for the return of their friend Skan. Drake is sitting in the surgery tent in the area where the Healers live and work, when a seriously injured Skan is carried in. While Skan is recovering in the Healer's tent, Urtho makes a visit to his friend and "son". He tells Skan that the weapon has been analyzed and that a counter to this weapon is already being created. Urtho then offers to give Skan a reward for his work, his choice in a mate and the ability to make offspring. Skan tells him that he will think on this matter. During Urtho's visit, a commanding officer of Urtho's army appears and asks for a moment of Urtho's time. He would like Urtho to reward another gryphon for her ability to take on three makaar, single-handedly. Skan is immediately interested in meeting this female and demands that she be brought to the tent. The commander brings in a timid and shy gryphon named Zhaneel. After her account of the battle with the makaar, Urtho rewards her with a coin that can be traded for any service around the area. Skan suggests that she use her coin for the services of Amberdrake, because Skan believes that Drake is the only one that can help her get past her shyness. Skan is also furious with the trondi'irn, person that takes care and heals the non-human creatures fighting for Urtho, that takes care of Zhaneel for letting her get so bad in the first place. Meanwhile, Amberdrake is dealing with his own problems with a particular client. Conn Levas, a mage mercenary, is using some of his built up coins to pay for Drake's service. The real reason that Conn Levas is visiting a kestra'chern is to make his lover, Winterhart, jealous. Amberdrake being the skilled kestra'chern that he is does not say anything to Levas, but secretly is very upset with this mage for using him in such a way. Also, he wonders about this Winterhart, because of her relationship with this man in the begin with. While Skan is still recuperating, another gryphon is brought in to be healed. Aubri is an old gryphon from the sixth wing, the same wing as Zhaneel. Aubri did some scouting while on leave because Shaiknam refused to believe or double check a report of a fire flinger. He comes out of the skirmish badly burned. At first the hertasi, lizard-like creatures used to forage and help with certain problems, are helping to heal Aubri, but the trondi'irn for the sixth wing, Winterhart, walks in and tells them that Shaiknam and Garber have ordered them to work only with uninjured personnel. The treatment of the hertasi, leads to Gesten getting involved and fixing the problem. Winterhart's appearance is not a welcome sight, especially for Skan. Skan does not know who this is, but he knows she is the trondi'irn is the same for Zhaneel. Also, he does not like the way she completely ignored him as though he were just some brainless animal. Cinnabar and Tamsin are the only things that stop Skan from physically harming Winterhart. Winterhart is callous, but she also knows how to heal a fallen gryphon. Zhaneel's visit with Amberdrake did not go according to Drake's plans. Drake assumed a female gryphon would want a feather painting session in order to make herself more desirable to a male gryphon. After meeting Zhaneel, Drake realizes that this "gryfalcon," would need a boost in confidence. He suggested that she take her "flaws" and use them as advantages. He encourages her to use her hands for things that a human usually would. She takes his advice and creates her own training course. With the help of Gesten, Amberdrake's hertasi, and Vikteren, a mage, she develops a training course with many traps and dangers. As Zhaneel continues her training, many of the other gryphons, humans, and non-humans begin showing up to watch her. At the same time, Garber, the second in command of the sixth wing, has learned of Zhaneel's training and has decided that Winterhart needs to go put a stop to it. Winterhart confronts Zhaneel stating, "You (Zhaneel) had no orders and no permission", but Winterhart is caught off guard when the normally quiet Zhaneel stands up and shrills, "Orders? I am on leave time! These who help me are off-duty! What need have we of orders, of permissions? Are we to request leave to piss now?" After Zhaneel's attack on Winterhart, Skan joins the attack as well, before Winterhart is finally asked by Zhaneel to speak in private. Meanwhile, Shaiknam and Garber have really messed up their positions. While in battle, many of the mages of the sixth wing used so much magic that they were put into a coma. The only way for them to come out of the coma alive was to be sent to a healer, unfortunately, Shaiknam said they were just being lazy and left them to die where they lay. Due to Shaiknam's callousness, the mages called for a meeting with Urtho. They demanded that either Shaiknam went, or they would. During this time, Vikteren declares that he is an Master Mage and that he would have a vote in the matter. Also, the reason that most gryphons continued to fight was because Urtho controlled their ability to mate and have children. Upon learning of this, Vikteren, Amberdrake, Tamsin, Cinnabar and Skan decide that the gryphon's should make those decisions for themselves. Vikteren gives Amberdrake a set of "mage keys" that will unlock any mage locking spells. While Urtho is away dealing with the mages, Amberdrake, Cinnabar, Tamsin, and Skandranon, go up into Urtho's tower and seek out the formula for gryphon mating. While Skandranon is in the library, he senses another gryphon. Due to Skan's curious nature he uses the key to unlock a door protected by a special mage lock. Behind the door, Skan discovers models of all the different types of gryphons floating in the air. Then he senses another gryphon in the room. Kechara a "misborn" gryphon is kept in the room because of her deformities. She is childish in nature, and has wings that are too large for her body. She attacks Skan at first, but after a while they start talking and Skan learns a lot about her and she recognizes his form among the models in the sky. Skan realizes he must leave, but promises Kechara that he will return some day. After the confrontation with Zhaneel, Winterhart is sent to see Amberdrake. Amberdrake heals a back injury she sustained while helping an injured gryphon some time ago. While he is helping with her physical injuries, he is learning of the new feelings that she is experiencing due to Zhaneel's outspokenness. Winterhart had set herself up to believe that just because they were animals, gryphons were unintelligent and only good for taking orders. She also starts questioning her relationship with Conn Levas, and her allegiance to Shaiknam and Garber. Cinnabar and Tamsin begin working on the understanding of the gryphon mating process. When Skan arrives they inform him that they had figured out how gryphons could have children and it did not even need magic. The females would have to fast for two days and then gorge themselves on food the day before the mating flight. The male gryphons would need to spend two days in a very cold climate in order for their seed to become active. Skan is at first angry at Urtho for keeping this hidden from the gryphons, because he believes Urtho only did it to control the gryphons. The real reason that Urtho gave in his book: "Too often have I seen human parents who were too young, too unstable, or otherwise unfit or unready for children produce child after doomed, mistreated child. I will have none of this for these, my gryphons. By watching them, and then training others what to watch for, I can discover which pairings are loving and stable, which would-be parents have the patience and understanding to 'be' parents. And in this way, perhaps my creations will have a happier start in life than most of the humans around them. While I may not be an expert in such things, I have at least learned how to observe the actions of others, and experience may give me an edge in judging which couples are ready for little ones. Those who desire children must not bring them into our dangerous world out of a wish for a replica of themselves, a creature to mold and control, a way to achieve what they could not, or the need for something that will offer unconditional love. For that, they must look elsewhere and most likely into themselves." Skan begins spreading the information that has been obtained of the mating formula. He also begins training on Zhaneel&#39;s training course, another attempt to get close to the interesting gryfalcon. With the information gathered by Skan on his trip at the beginning, Urtho has created a box that can diffuse the weapons of Ma&#39;ar. With her special hands, Zhaneel is chosen to fly this box into the battle. Amberdrake plans a &#34;victory&#34; feast for Zhaneel&#39;s return from her first mission. He invites Skan and Zhaneel, but doesn&#39;t tell either of them that the other was invited. After the celebration, Skan talks with Zhaneel and they learn of their mutual feeling for one another. There is a huge battle, and many are injured. Healers and trondi&#39;irns are rushing around trying to heal hundreds of injured creatures and humans. Amberdrake is brought into the healing also and ends up over-exerting himself in the healing. Cinnabar at one point helps Winterhart to heal a gryphon. Cinnabar tells her that all in all she is starting to look much better, and that all she lacked now was to get rid of Conn Levas. Cinnabar then calls Winterhart, Reanna. Reanna was at one time a lady of the High King&#39;s palace. Cinnabar suggests that Winterhart tell Amberdrake of her true name and history. After their talk, Winterhart is laying in her tent relaxing after the hours of healing. Conn Levas comes by and Winterhart pretends to sleep so that he&#39;ll go away without getting what he really wanted from her. After his departure, she sees a shadow around her tent and recognizes it as Amberdrake. She calls him inside and they relax together. Winterhart confesses to her true name and why she had been hiding the entire time. Amberdrake reveals to Winterhart that Ma&#39;ar had implanted a device that threw off negative energy causing those without shields to have a large amount of fear. It was too late for the king because he was already dead, but Urtho sent Skan to retrieve the device and destroy it. This revelation of the events caused by Ma&#39;ar, helps Winterhart to understand that it is not her fault that she deserted the palace in its time of greatest need. During this time, more battles are fought and the general consensus is that Urtho is losing. Conn confronts Winterhart and says some demeaning things about her. She later goes to Amberdrake to talk and he finally confesses his feelings to her. Shaiknam and Garber are put back into command of the Sixth Wing because of the assassination of the commander that replaced them. After they are put back into position, the gryphons decide that they will revolt and Skan is left with the task of telling Urtho. To Skan&#39;s surprise, Urtho already knows of the gryphon revolt. Urtho still believes that he can control the gryphons because he is the only one holding the secret to their mating abilities. Skan surprises him by telling him that the gryphons have learned how to have their own children, but it&#39;s out of respect and love to him that keeps them in his services. After the revelation that the gryphons knew how to reproduce, Skan explains the reason for revolting against Shaiknam and Garber. After looking at the map, Urtho determines that Shaiknam is a fool, and Urtho will split the non-humans among the other commanders. Urtho also surprises Skan by assigning Skan to be the commander of the gryphons and to report to Urtho. Urtho reveals to Skan the plan to evacuate the area, as a matter of fact some families have already been evacuated from the city. Skan also tells Urtho that he saw the models and met Kechara. We find out that Kechara was being kept in the tower because she is a very powerful Mindspeaker. Skan requests that Urtho give Kechara to Zhaneel and himself. All noncombatants were evacuated along with several of Urtho&#39;s artifacts and books. On the last day, there is a battle. Aubri is circling the field heading back to his position when he notices the people of the Sixth Wing backing out and allowing Ma&#39;ar&#39;s forces into the land. Aubri sees the tent that Shaiknam and Garber use, and he listens into a conversation between Shaiknam, Garber, and an unknown person, who later turns out to be Conn Levas. Aubri is captured and given to Ma&#39;ar&#39;s forces. Conn Levas goes to the tower to have a meeting with Urtho. Conn Levas walks in and throws Miranda thorns, a very deadly device created by Ma&#39;ar. Skan and Vikteren are fetched by a hertasi and Skan complains to the hertasi as to why he left Urtho alone with Conn Levas. When the doors are opened, Skan sees the shape that Urtho is in and using a single talon he rips Conn Levas&#39; throat open and on the backhand of the original slash sends Conn across the room snapping his spine on a table. Vikteren rushes over to Urtho and tries to help as much as he could until Tamsin and Cinnabar come in to help. Urtho tells Skan of a device he has created that will kill Ma&#39;ar. Skan takes the device and leaves. Skan goes to Snowstar, an old mage, and has him open a gate into a safe place in the palace. Snowstar tells him that he has a good idea of a place that would have no guards directly in it. Skan goes through and ends up in a stable. When he exits from the room he was gated into, he finds Kechara, who was kidnapped by Conn Levas, and a bag containing Aubri. They all go through a secret passage into the palace. Meanwhile, Urtho has decided that he will try to convince Ma&#39;ar to attack him in the tower. Urtho knew he was dying and that if he died and Ma&#39;ar happened to be there then he&#39;d die as well. Urtho opens a gate and starts taunting Ma&#39;ar enticing him to come fight. While Urtho is doing this, Kechara, Skan, and Aubri come into the room from the secret passage surprising Ma&#39;ar. Skan sets the device and Kechara flies towards Urtho, with Aubri and Skan right behind her. Aubri gets stuck in the gate until Skan pushes him through. Urtho closes the gate and asks &#34;why they went to Ma&#39;ar like that.&#34; Skan just blushes and Urtho tells them that they don&#39;t have much time. Skan asks him if he can open a gate into the land where they were to evacuate to, and Urtho says he will try. The people who have evacuated see an explosion in the distance, signaling the death of Urtho. At the same time, a gate opens and Kechara and Aubri pop out. The gate begins collapsing on itself and Aubri tells them that Skan is still inside. Vikteren holds the gate open long enough for Skan to make through, but he does not appear as the once Black Gryphon, but as the White Gryphon. After the collapse of the gate, the mages have to put up shields to protect the people because of the mage storm created due to the death of both Ma&#39;ar and Urtho.
4085876	/m/0bh98d	Thousand Cranes	Yasunari Kawabata	1952	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in a post World War II Japan, the protagonist, Kikuji, has been orphaned by the death of his mother and father. He becomes involved with one of the former mistresses of his father, Mrs Ota, who commits suicide seemingly for the shame she associates with the affair. After Mrs Ota's death, Kikuji then transfers much of his love and grief over Mrs Ota's death to her daughter. The ending is ambiguous where the reader is not sure whether Fumiko has committed suicide like her mother.
4086669	/m/025szgb	O-zone			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Missouri is a nuclear wasteland after leakage of stored radioactive waste, off limits to all but the very rich. Eight of them, referred to as 'Owners', visit this O-Zone as their personal playground. Some of them come to the disturbing realizations that the life-forms outside of their walled in cities, assumed to be just 'things', seem as human as the Owners themselves.
4089573	/m/0bhg1b	A Buyer's Market	Anthony Powell	1952	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first part is taken up with various debutante balls in the early summer of 1928/9, notably at the Huntercombes', where Barbara Goring (a flame of Nick's) pours sugar over Widmerpool. Leaving the ball, Widmerpool and Jenkins bump into Mr Deacon and Gypsy. Stopping together at a tea stall they encounter Stringham, who takes Nick, Widmerpool, Deacon and Gypsy to a party at Mrs Andriadis's. During that summer Jenkins spends weekends in the country and lunches at Stourwater, home of magnate Sir Magnus Donners, where he again meets Jean Templer, now married to Bob Duport. Widmerpool, who now works for Donners, appears during a tour of the Stourwater dungeons and later manages to wreck one of his master's ornamental urns with his car. That autumn Stringham is married to Lady Peggy Stepney; Mr Deacon dies after his birthday party; Jenkins sleeps with Gypsy after Deacon's funeral. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent
4092149	/m/0bhl0r	Service With a Smile	P. G. Wodehouse	1961-10-15	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Myra Schoonmaker is in durance vile at Blandings Castle, her London season having been cut short by Connie to put a stop to Myra's unfortunate entanglement with impoverished East End curate Bill Bailey. Her misery adds to Lord Emsworth's woes, already weighing heavily thanks to the efficiency of his latest secretary Lavender Briggs and the presence of both the Duke of Dunstable, on another of his long visits to the castle, and a party of Church Lads, camping out by his beloved lake. When Connie reveals plans to spend a day having her hair done in Shrewsbury, Myra at once contacts Bailey, arranging to meet in a registry office and tie the knot. Bailey, with his friend Pongo Twistleton and Pongo's Uncle Fred in tow, waits at the selected spot, but Myra doesn't turn up. Uncle Fred, an old friend of Myra and her father and taking to Bailey from the off, runs into Emsworth (in town to attend the Opening of Parliament), and wastes no time in inviting himself to Blandings, with Bailey in tow in the guise of "Cuthbert Meriweather", an old friend newly returned from Brazil. At the castle, Bailey and Myra are reunited, and the wrinkle in their love caused by the registry office mix-up easily smoothed out by Uncle Fred. The Church Lads trick Emsworth into diving into the lake to rescue one of their number, which turns out to be a log. This leads the Duke of Dunstable to once again question Emsworth's sanity, blaming the amiable peer's affection for his pig for his apparently crumbling mental state; while Emsworth, at Fred's suggestion, takes his revenge on the Church Lads by cutting the ropes of their tent in the small hours. Recalling hearing Lord Tilbury saying he would pay £2000 for such a superb specimen, Dunstable arranges to pay Lavender Briggs £500 to steal her for him, Briggs in turn hiring the untrustworthy Wellbeloved to help and claiming she has a second assistant available. Uncle Fred hears from Myra that her beloved Bill is being blackmailed by Briggs, who has recognised him, into helping with the pig scheme, but before Fred can come up with a plan, Bailey has confessed all to Lord Emsworth, who in his wrath sacks both Briggs and Wellbeloved, but lets slip Bailey's true identity to Connie. Fred keeps Connie quiet by threatening to reveal to the county that Beach cut the tent ropes, which would lead to embarrassment in the county and the loss of a superlative butler, but Connie contacts James Schoonmaker, urging him to come to her aid. When George Threepwood tells Dunstable that he has photographed his grandfather in the act of cutting the tent ropes, Dunstable realises that the sacked Briggs is no longer needed, as he can blackmail Emsworth into parting with the pig. He meets up with Tilbury at The Emsworth Arms, where Lavender Briggs, returned from a day out in London ignorant of the change in her situation, overhears him telling Tilbury he has cancelled her cheque; he also proposes to charge Tilbury £3000 for the pig. Briggs later approaches Tilbury, her former employer, offering to undercut Dunstable and steal the pig for Tilbury; he accepts and pays up, but on leaving the inn, Briggs meets Uncle Fred, who tells her of her sacking and advises her to head straight to London and pay in Tilbury's cheque. Schoonmaker arrives, answering Connie's request, but Fred intercepts him too, and takes him to the Emsworth Arms, where they catch up on old times and Fred informs his old friend of Myra's engagement to Archie Gilpin (she having broken things off with Bailey after his rash confession). Schoonmaker reveals he loves Connie, but lacks the courage to propose, and later Gilpin tells Fred he has once again become engaged to Millicent Rigby, with whom he had had a minor falling out, and now finds himself engaged to two girls at once; he also wants £1000, to buy into his cousin Ricky's onion-soup business. Uncle Fred tricks Dunstable into thinking Schoonmaker is broke, and persuades him to pay out £1000 to get his nephew out of his engagement to Myra; he helps Schoonmaker build up the nerve to propose to Connie, and persuades him that Bill Bailey is a more suitable match for Myra; and on a tip-off from Lavender Briggs, he shows Dunstable that he has proof (in the form of a tape-recording) that Dunstable schemed to steal the pig, thus extracting from him the compromising photos of Lord Emsworth. With Bill and Myra off to a register office, Archie back with Millicent and set up in business, Connie and Schoonmaker engaged and Dunstable well and truly scuppered, Fred smiles at the services he has done to one and all.
4092943	/m/0bhm3m	My Mother's Castle	Marcel Pagnol	1957	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Following the summer holiday which features in La gloire de mon père, the family returns to Marseilles but Marcel still yearns for the hills. His wish is granted when they return for the Christmas holiday, much to Marcel's delight. Although only a few kilometers outside Marseilles the journey to the holiday home is time consuming as public transport takes them a short portion of the way and the rest is a walk along a long, winding road. Marcel then tells of an encounter with a girl, Isabelle. He meets her whilst exploring the countryside of the Provence with Lili, and they plan to meet at her house in the future to play. On his first visit to her house, he meets her father and mother, who are both very eccentric. Isabelle herself is also a bit strange, always dressing up in different dresses, and demanding Marcel to dress up as a dog, a soldier, or other things at various times. When they play, Isabelle commands Marcel around to do various things. At one point, she tells him to close his eyes and open his mouth. She then feeds him a grasshopper. Lili and Paul, Marcel's younger brother, observe this, and they report it to Marcel's father. He then forbids Marcel to continue meeting "with that crazy girl". Marcel later observes the departure of Isabelle and her family. One day, when travelling to their house, the family encounters one of Marcel's father's former pupils,Bouzigue, who now works in maintaining a canal which runs from the hills into Marseilles. The canal runs across private estates and so he is issued with a key which allows him to pass through several locked doors along the towpath. The employee points out to the family that this is a shortcut which will allow them to reach their house in a fraction of the journey time and offers them his spare key. Marcel's father, being honest and upright realises that this would amount to trespassing. He nevertheless accepts the key after much persuasion from his family for use in an emergency. Despite his reservations, the family use the key more and more and the reduced journey time allows them to visit the holiday home every weekend. They still have an apprehension each time they unlock a door fearing they will be caught. As time passes, however, they encounter the owner of one property and the groundsman of another, who are friendly and quite happy that they cross their land. At the beginning of the summer holidays they make the journey again and Marcel's mother feels a great fear and trepidation of meeting the owner. When they reach the final door they discover it has been padlocked. They are confronted by the caretaker of the final property who has been watching them for some time and who decides to make an official report. Marcel's father is devastated, believing a complaint could damage his career prospects and he could possibly lose his job as a school teacher. The employees of the canal however, confront the caretaker threatening him with prosecution for having unlawfully padlocked one of the company's doors. The caretaker withdraws his complaint against Marcel's family and the matter is concluded. During the ordeal between the canal workers and the caretaker they take the padlock, put it around the gate, and feed the key to his dog so he can't leave the estate. The epilogue mentions that uncle Jules hired a carriage for the family. The film jumps 10 years to the future, telling of the death of Marcel's mother. It also tells of Lili and Paul: Paul was a goatherd in the countryside of the Provence, until his sudden death at the age of 31. Lili is killed in 1917, during the First World War. Marcel is the only one left of their childhood company, now a successful film director. His company has purchased a large old house in the Marseilles area to turn into a film studio. When walking through the grounds he sees a familiar door and realizes that this is the last property on his childhood journey to his holiday home. In a burst of rage he picks up a rock and smashes the door and thus ends a bad spell.
4096072	/m/0bhsv8	Sir Thursday	Garth Nix	2006-03-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book begins with Arthur Penhaligon and Leaf attempting to return to Earth after their adventures in the Border Sea. While Leaf is able to pass through the front door and return to Earth, the presence of a Nithling duplicate of Arthur prevents him from doing so, and he is forced to remain in the Lower House. Dame Primus then informs him that Mister Monday and Grim Tuesday have been assassinated. Moments later, he is drafted into the Glorious Army of the Architect – wherein everyone living in the House must serve for 100 years – which is based in the chessboard-like demesne called the Great Maze. The leader of the army is the Fourth Trustee of the Will, Sir Thursday, a Denizen afflicted with the deadly sin of wrath. The army is currently involved in a campaign against the Piper, who is trying to claim the Fourth Key. Within the army, Arthur is soon mistaken for a Piper's child and has his memory wiped, along with his friend Fred Initials Numbers Gold – a real Piper's child. One month later and during the first battle against the Piper's New Nithling army, Arthur begins to recall his identity. The entirety of it is recovered later in the book when an officer mentions his name and title. On Earth, Arthur's double, known as the Skinless Boy, has thrown a hospital near Arthur's home into panic by infecting staff and patients with a fungoid, extraterrestrial life-form which allows him to read and eventually control their thoughts and actions. This fungus, nicknamed Grayspot, is mistaken for a biological weapon, and the hospital put under quarantine. Leaf infiltrates the hospital, seeking to obtain and destroy the magical object used to create the Skinless Boy: a pocket torn from one of Arthur's shirts. She succeeds, but is infected by Grayspot in the process. She then leaves the hospital, only to find that the House has appeared above it and cannot be reached from the ground. With the help of a retired pharmacist named Sylvie, Leaf makes her way to Arthur's house where she uses a special telephone to contact Arthur's friends and get help, just as the fungus gains full control of her body. Suzy Turquoise Blue arrives and takes the pocket to the House. There, she finds Arthur and Fred, and joins them in a raid led by Sir Thursday to find and destroy the New Nithlings' weapon, which is preventing the mechanical floor of the Great Maze from shifting. Arthur destroys the weapon by throwing the pocket into it, simultaneously destroying the Skinless Boy. As Arthur escapes from the Piper with Sir Thursday, he distracts Thursday enough for the fourth part of the Will, a snake embodying the virtue of justice, to break free, whereupon it makes Arthur the Bearer of the Fourth Key – a sword or baton depending on whether or not the wielder is in combat – and Commander of the Glorious Army of the Architect. With help from Dame Primus and others from the lower demesnes, Arthur defeats the New Nithling army. On Earth, Leaf wakes up in a hospital a week after the Skinless Boy was defeated. She soon learns from a nurse that the Grayspot has disappeared and that Lady Friday, another Trustee, has become a doctor on Earth.
4096083	/m/0bhsv_	Across The Zodiac	Percy Greg	1880	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book details the creation and use of apergy, a form of anti-gravitational energy, and details a flight to Mars in 1830. The planet is inhabited by diminutive beings; they are convinced that life does not exist elsewhere than on their world, and refuse to believe that the unnamed narrator is actually from Earth. (They think he's an unusually tall Martian from some remote place on their planet.) The book's narrator names his spacecraft the "Astronaut."
4096510	/m/0bhthg	Dragonsinger	Anne McCaffrey	1977-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows Menolly, now apprenticed into the Harper Hall, a type of music conservatory for harpers (minstrels/educators) and other music professionals, as she begins her musical training to become a harper herself one day. The story begins within hours of the final events of Dragonsong, rounding out the tale of Menolly's coming of age. Menolly finds life in the Harper Hall challenging, and through the events of the novel struggles to make a place for herself. Although she is glad to be accepted as a musician and encouraged to play and write music by most of the authority figures at Harper Hall, she must still deal with those who dislike her for her talents or don't believe she has any real talent at all. At first she is placed in living quarters and classes with a group of paying female students who are, in the majority, extremely unpleasant. She also finds herself torn between master musicians who have conflicting emphases and who want her to specialize in their techniques, instead of developing her own. The situation is complicated by her nine fire lizards, small dragon-like creatures whose properties are still being explored at the time of the story; while some members of the Pern communities want her help in learning what fire lizards can do, many of her teachers in the Harper Hall see them as a nuisance and a distraction that will keep her from developing her musical gifts. Even through her struggles she gains a handful of faithful friends beyond her fire lizards, including Piemur a fellow apprentice and Journeyman Sebell. Over time she finds her place as a musician within the harper system and is sped through the apprenticeship system in near-record time.
4096828	/m/0bhv08	The People That Time Forgot	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the organization of an expedition to rescue Bowen J. Tyler, Lys La Rue, and the other castaways marooned on the large Antarctic island of Caprona, whose tropical interior, known to its inhabitants as Caspak, is home to prehistoric fauna of all eras. Tyler's recovered manuscript detailing their ordeal is delivered to his family, and the relief effort is put together by Tom Billings, secretary of the Tyler shipbuilding business. The expedition's ship, the Toreador, locates Caprona, and while the bulk of the crew attempts to scale the encircling cliffs Billings flies over them in an aircraft. Billings' plane is attacked by flying reptiles and forced down in the interior of Caspak. He saves a native girl, Ajor, from a large cat and a group of ape-men, and undertakes to accompany her back to her people, the fully human Galus, while she educates him in the language and mysteries of the island. They travel north, encountering various creatures of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, as well as additional primitive subhuman races. They pass through the lands of the Neanderthal Bo-lu (club men) and the more advanced Sto-lu (hatchet men), who are easily cowed by gunfire, but in the country of the Band-lu (spear men) he is taken captive, and despairs until rescued in turn by Ajor. They resume their journey, re-encountering and befriending Tomar, a Band-lu newly become Kro-lu (bow man). Tomar and his mate So-al are the first examples Billings has actually seen of Caspakian evolutionary metamorphosis in action. After an interlude in which Ajor's back story is related the new friends separate. Billings and Ajor enter Kro-lu territory and save Chal-az, a Kro-lu warrior, from a group of Band-lu. Visiting the Kro-lu village as his guest, they are parted again when Billings is attacked through the machinations of the chief Du-seen, who has designs on Ajor. They escape individually, making for the Galu country. Du-seen goes after Ajor with some of his warriors. Billings catches and tames an ancestral horse, with the aid of which he rescues Ajor from Du-seen. Pursued, they resign themselves to death, but are relieved by a force consisting of Bowen Tyler, Galu warriors, and the rescue crew from the Toreador, which had successfully scaled the cliffs and entered Caspak after Billings' ill-fated airplane flight. All are reunited in the Galu village, where Tyler and Lys La Rue have been formally married by the captain of the Toreador. Billings and Ajor also desire to wed, but Ajor may not leave Caspak due to her status as cos-ata-lo – she was born a fully evolved Galu rather than attaining that form through metamorphosis, and hence is treasured by her people. Billings elects to remain in Caspak to be with her.
4097001	/m/0bhv89	The Solitaire Mystery	Jostein Gaarder	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book follows two seemingly separate stories: A 12-year-old boy, Hans-Thomas, and his father are driving through Europe on a journey to locate and bring home the boy's estranged mother. Whilst on their journey, a strange little bearded man gives Hans-Thomas a magnifying glass, saying mystically: "You'll need it!". Not long afterwards, Hans-Thomas and his father stop in a roadside café where Hans-Thomas gets a giant sticky bun from a kind baker to eat on his journey. To Hans-Thomas's great surprise, hidden inside the sticky bun is a tiny book, with writing so small it cannot be read with the naked eye. Hans-Thomas begins to read the tiny book using his new magnifying glass, and the story then alternates between Hans-Thomas' journey and the story in the sticky bun book. The sticky bun book tells the story of an old baker whose grandfather gave him a drink of a wonderful liquid he called Rainbow Fizz (Rainbow Soda in the American edition). It came from an island which the grandfather had been shipwrecked on as a young man. On the island lived an old sailor called Frode, and fifty-three other people; the fifty three other people did not have names though, they referred to themselves as the numbers on playing cards (52 cards plus a Joker). The Ace of Hearts was particularly enchanting, and Frode had quite a crush on her, even though she was forever "losing herself". The two stories of Hans Thomas's journey, and the events in the sticky bun book start to overlap: :The cards in the sticky bun book take part in a game, where each says a sentence, and Frode tries to interpret its bizarre meaning. But sentences such as "the inner box unpacks the outer at the same time as the outer box unpacks the inner" and "destiny is a snake so hungry it devours itself" seem devoid of meaning for Frode. However, the cards' predictions as told in the tiny book begin to reveal details about Hans Thomas's own plight to find his mother. It occurs to Hans Thomas that his mother bears a striking resemblance in her personality to the Ace of Hearts in that she 'loses herself' (disappears) for long periods. Also, throughout Hans Thomas's journey, he has seen the same odd little bearded man following him about (the man who gave him the magnifying glass which proved so useful to read the sticky bun book). But whenever Hans Thomas approaches the little man, he seems to dash away and vanish. The baffling thing for Hans Thomas is that he stopped for the cake merely by chance, and chose to eat a sticky bun by chance - how is it possible that a tiny book from a random bun is telling him things about his own life?
4097091	/m/0bhvgz	The Sign of the Beaver	Elizabeth George Speare	1983-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Sign of the Beaver tells the story of a 13-year-old boy, Matthew Hallowell, and his father, who, as early settlers, together build a wooden cabin in Maine in 1768. However, Matt's father must head back to Quincy, Massachusetts, to get Matt's mother, sister, and newborn baby, who were all left behind so Matt and his father could build shelter, plant crops and stock supplies. Matt's father promises to return in seven weeks. Before Matt's father leaves, he gives him his watch to tell time and a hunting rifle to guard the crops and the newly built cabin. Unfortunately, Matt finds himself enduring many hardships for which he is unprepared. His hunting rifle is stolen by a stranger named Ben, his crops are eaten by the wildlife, and his food supplies are pillaged by a bear. Wanting to sweeten his bland diet, Matt raids a honeybee hive for honey and is attacked by the furious bees. Attempting to escape the swarm, he jumps into a creek, losing a shoe and hurting his ankle in the process. Luckily, Matt's foolhardy adventure has not gone unnoticed and he is pulled from the water. Ironically, the native Indians he has learned to fear through tales of kidnapping have saved his life. His numerous stings are treated by the elderly Penobscot Indian chief named Saknis. After recovering, the thankful Matt offers his only book, Robinson Crusoe, as a gift to Saknis, and his grandson Attean. However they cannot read English. Saknis instead commands that Matt teach Attean to read, in return they will provide him with food. Uncertain of how to teach anyone, especially the unwilling boy, Matt accepts the task out of gratitude and courtesy, as he owes his life to the man. Matt does not immediately befriend Attean, although the two young boys eventually form a strong friendship as they help each other through difficult circumstances. Attean goes off to find his manitou, which is a sign of becoming a man. Attean is afraid because he fears it will take him a very long time. Although Matt longs for Attean to stay he is happy for his friend. Matt asks the question: "What if Attean's manitou doesn't come?" Although this offends Attean because in his culture without it he cannot become a man, he answers "Even if I have to wait many winters I get manitou to become a man". When Attean returns from searching for his manitou, he invites Matt, whose family has not yet returned after many months, to join his tribe, who are moving north to new hunting grounds. Although Matt is good friends with Attean and enjoys Indian culture, he has not forgotten his family. Matt has to decide whether to join the Indian tribe, or return to his cabin and continue to wait for his family to return. He decides to wait, although parting from his new friend, Attean, is difficult. The two boys trade gifts; Matt gives Attean his treasured watch that his father gave him before he left, and Attean leaves his dog behind with Matt. Attean's grandmother gives Matt some maple sugar, and Saknis gives Matt a pair of snowshoes. After he cut the last notch on the last stick, Matt waits for his family, using the survival skills he had learned with Attean. In the winter, Matt's family finally returns, though Matt's little sister (who he hadn't met) died. Matt decides he would tell them about Attean and the whole Indian tribe. *1983 Josette Frank Award (won) *1984 Christopher Award (won) *1984 A Booklist Editors' Choice (won) *1984 Horn Book Fanfare (won) *1984 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction (won) *1984 An American Library Association Notable Children's Book citation *1984 An American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (won) *1983–1984 Young Hoosier Book Award (nominee) *The New York Times Best Book of the Year
4098609	/m/0bhxp6	The Walking Drum	Louis L'Amour	1984-05-01	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Forced to flee his birthplace on the windswept coast of Brittany to escape the Baron de Tournemine, who killed his mother, and to seek his lost father, Kerbouchard looks for passage on a ship and, although forced to serve as a galley slave initially, travels the coast and attains the position of pilot, frees a captured Moorish girl, Aziza, and her companion, then frees his fellow slaves and with their help sells his captors into slavery and escapes to Cádiz in Moorish Spain, where he looks for news of his father. Hearing that his father is dead, Mathurin goes inland and poses as a scholar in Córdoba, but his scholarship is interrupted when he becomes involved in political intrigue surrounding Aziza and is imprisoned by Prince Ahmed. Scheduled to be executed, Mathurin escapes eastward to the hills outside the city, but before he leaves soldiers arrive and ransack and burn the place where he is staying, leaving him for dead. Mathurin returns to Córdoba and, aided by a woman he chances upon named Safia, he takes a job as a translator. However, the intrigue in which she is involved threatens their lives, and they must flee the city. Safia, through connections of her own, has gathered news of Mathurin's father, and tells him that his father may be alive but was sold as a slave in the east. Leaving Spain, they take up with a merchant caravan and travel by land across Europe, stopping along the way at various places to trade or to fight off thieves. Reaching Brittany, the caravan tempts a raid from the Baron de Tournemine, but they are ready for his attack and, routing his forces, press on, joined by another caravan, to sack the baron's castle. Mathurin personally kills his enemy, avenging his mother, and, leaving the caravan, takes Tournamine's body and throws it into a fabled swamp rumored to be a gate to Purgatory. Riding eastward, Mathurin befriends a group of oppressed peasants before rejoining the caravan as it approaches Paris. Safia has learned that Mathurin's father is at Alamut, the fortress of the Old Man of the Mountain (Assassin), but warns that going there is dangerous. She leaves the caravan and remains in Paris, but Mathurin must go on and seek his father. Both caravans will travel eastward and cross the Russian steppes together. In Paris, Mathurin talks with a group of students but offends a teacher and must flee again for his life. Chancing upon the fleeing Comtesse de Malcrais, he assists her in escaping from Count Robert. They meet up with the caravans again at Provins, where they are joined by a company of acrobats (including Khatib) and additional caravans from Italy, Armenia, the Baltic, Venice, and the Netherlands. The caravans join together and travel to Kiev to trade their woolen cloaks and other goods for furs. Denied passage down the Dnieper by boat, the caravans head southward from Kiev. Crossing the Southern Bug and approaching the Chicheklaya, they encounter hostile Petchenegs. Stalling for time as the caravan drives south toward the Black Sea, Kerbouchard exchanges pleasantries with the Khan, fights a duel with Prince Yury, and receives a drink, but as he leaves the camp the Khan warns him that the Petchenegs will attack the caravan in the morning. Kerbouchard returns to the caravan, which has nearly reached the Black Sea, and assists as they contrive rudimentary fortifications, hoping to hold their ground against the Petchenegs until boats arrive to take them to Constantinople. A protracted battle ensues, by the end of which most of the caravan merchants are killed, but Suzanne may have escaped in a small boat, and Mathurin, wounded, hides in the brush and nurses himself gradually back to health, barely surviving to emerge, reclaim his horse, and ride to Byzantium by land, clothed in rags. Casting out Abdullah, a fat storyteller, and taking his place in the market in Constantinople, Mathurin makes a couple of gold coins and an enemy named Bardas. Leaving the market with a man named Phillip, he spends the coins on clothing. In a wine shop, he meets Andronicus Comnenus and captures his interest. Perceiving that rare books are valuable in the city, Mathurin then takes to copying from memory books that he copied in Córdoba. Contacting Safia's informant, he learns that his father is indeed at Alamut, but that he attempted to escape and may be dead. Nevertheless, he is determined to go and find out. Going to an armorer who maintains a room for exercising with weapons, he meets some of the Emperor's guard and drops hints to one of them of the books he is copying, so that the emperor will hear of him. Invited to meet the emperor, Mathurin offers him advice and a book and tells the Emperor of his desire to rescue his father from Alamut. Two weeks later, the emperor supplies Mathurin with a sword, three horses he had lost when the caravan was taken, and gold. Invited to dinner with Andronicus, Mathurin learns from him that Suzanne has returned safely to her castle and strengthened its defenses with survivors from the caravan. Bardas makes trouble, and Mathurin and Phillip must leave the party, but Mathurin has a vision and foretells Andronicus' death. Mathurin advises Phillip to leave the city and go to Saône, and he himself receives a warning note from Safia, telling him not to go to Alamut. Leaving Constantinople, Mathurin travels by boat across the Black Sea to Trebizond and adopts the identity of ibn-Ibrahim, a Muslim physician and scholar, travelling over land to Tabriz, where he finds Khatib, who tells him rumors that his father is being treated terribly by a powerful newcomer to Alamut named al-Zawila. Invited to visit the Emir Ma'sud Kahn, Mathurin presents a picture of himself in his identity as ibn-Ibrahim, physician, scholar, and alchemist, and, learning that ibn-Haram is in the city, decides to pass on from Tabriz toward Jundi Shapur, the medical school that provides his pretense for travelling through the area. Leaving Tabriz, Mathurin and Khatib travel alongside a caravan as far as Qazvin, where ibn-Ibrahim receives gifts and an invitation to visit Alamut. Before he leaves for Alamut, Mathurin makes the acquaintance of the princess Sundari, from Anhilwara, and, learning that she is being forced to marry a friend of the king of Kannauj, promises, if he escapes Alamut alive, to come to Hind and rescue her from this fate. Traveling with Khatib to a valley outside Alamut, where they arrange to meet again afterward, Mathurin packs rope, nitre crystals, and other ingredients from a Chinese recipe he had seen in a book in Córdoba, and gathers also various medicinal herbs, before riding up to the gates of Alamut. He is admitted but immediately taken captive and brought before Mahmoud, who reveals that he ran into trouble with Prince Ahmed, and that the prince and Aziza are both dead. According to Mahmoud, Sinan does not know that Mathurin has been brought to Alamut. Locked in his quarters, Kerbouchard finds the rope has been removed from his pack. Unable to escape, he speaks out his window to a guard, hoping that Sinan's spies will report his presence, and that Sinan will want to meet with an alchemist and physician such as himself. The next morning, after mixing the saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur from his saddlebags, repacking the resulting powder, and mixing several preparations from the herbs, he is confronted by Mahmoud and provokes him. Brought before Sinan, Mathurin reveals to him some of the details of his past that Mahmoud had kept secret and broaches the subject of alchemy, hoping to be kept around a little longer. Promising to see him later, Sinan sends him back to his quarters and also sends a copy of a book he had requested of Ma'sud Kahn in Tabriz. Mathurin does get to see Sinan for most of a day, performing alchemy experiments and exchanging ideas. Afterward, Mahmoud comes for him with armed guards and escorts him (along with his bags, which contain his surgery equipment) to a surgical room, telling him that he has been brought to Alamut on an errand of mercy to save a slave's life, by making him a eunuch. The slave is his father. Pretending to cooperate, Mathurin covertly cuts his father's bonds with a scalpel then, spilling boiling water on some of the guards, draws his sword and engages the remaining guards. Other soldiers, presumably those of Sinan, break into the room, and Mathurin and his father escape down the corridor and through an aqueduct into the hidden valley. In the garden among some spare pipes, Mathurin packs his prepared powder into pipes, plugs the ends, and fashions wicks from fat-soaked string, and they hide there until the middle of the next day. Meeting a young girl in the rain, Mathurin trusts her with the gist of his situation and asks if there is any way out. She tells of a gate whereby the gardener, closely guarded, takes out the leaves he rakes up, and, eager to escape, she agrees to meet them near the gate. Soldiers searching the garden pass by their hiding place, and that evening they rush the gate and, assisted by a handful of slaves who are present, slay the guards, but the gate is closed on them. Placing his prepared pipe bombs, Mathurin lights the fuses and, as soldiers approach, tells everyone to stand back. With the gate destroyed and the soldiers stunned by his blast, they escape out and down the side of the mountain. Slaying another dozen soldiers, Mathurin and his father, with the girl in tow, meet Khatib with the horses and ride off. Reaching the city where Khatib had been hiding, they are confronted by Mahmoud and another dozen soldiers. Mathurin fights a quick duel with Mahmoud and kills him. At the end of the book, the girl from the valley, whose home was near the gulf, rides toward Basra with Mathurin's father, who will seek the sea again. Mathurin rides toward Hind, to fulfill his promise to Sundari.
4100266	/m/0bh_88	Her Infinite Variety	Louis Auchincloss			 Born in New York in 1917, attractive Clarabel Hoyt, the heroine of the book, is encouraged by her ambitious mother to marry "a great man," a man able and willing to make a success of his life. She succeeds in persuading her daughter to end her relationship with a young teacher with a promising career ahead of him and marry into one of the pre-eminent, old money families instead. Eventually succumbing to her mother's wishes, Clara, still a virgin, marries Trevor Hoyt, a banker, and in due course their daughter Sandra is born. Clara, however, is not content spending her husband's money and living a life of luxury and ease. When her old school friend Polly suggests that she should work for Style, a fashion magazine, Clara eagerly accepts the offer and soon becomes a household name as a trendy journalist. During World War II, while Hoyt is stationed in London and Clara remains in New York, both spouses are unfaithful to each other. On her husband's return, however, Clara is faced with the double standards of morality which exempt the man from any consequences of his infidelity while ascribing to the woman the role of sinner, of the "war wife who cheats on her fighting husband" or, as Trevor puts it, of the "cool bitch". Subsequently, and much to her mother's dismay, Clara divorces her husband, a generous divorce settlement ensuring that she does not quite have to "face the chilling prospect of depending on her own talents to support herself". She becomes editor-in-chief of Style by exposing her predecessor's alcoholism and eventually starts an affair with Eric Tyler, the owner of the magazine. At the same time she gently but firmly turns Tyler Publications into an empire aligned with the Democratic Party. She also pulls the strings in making Eric Tyler a candidate for the U.S. Senate. However, driven by some inexplicable force, Tyler holds the "wrong" speech on tax reform, voicing what he really thinks on the matter and thus forfeiting all his chances of ever becoming a politician. It is with considerable difficulty that Clara answers Tyler's question whether she loves him&mdash;she is aware of the fact that her rather forced "Of course, I love you" is actually a lie. At this point in her life she very strongly questions her ability to love at all. Nevertheless Clara marries Eric Tyler, but the ailing tycoon suffers two strokes and dies. Clara is now faced with a lengthy lawsuit brought on by Tony Tyler, Eric's son by his first wife, who feels cheated out of the family money. Determined to fight to the end rather than compromise, Clara justifies, and also disguises, her luxurious lifestyle by continuing her late husband's foundation and openly and generously supporting philanthropic causes so that her public image turns into that of an "angel of beneficience". Clara also likes to see herself as a patron of the arts, and it is in this capacity that she meets, and gets to know more intimately, Oliver Kip, an expert on the Italian Renaissance. She genuinely falls in love with him and wants to "belong to Oliver, to be appreciated by his cool, appraising eyes, to be added to his collection of beautiful objects". Their affair, however, is short-lived because he informs her that his life "is not the kind that can be improved by being shared" and also because the abuse of his power within the Tyler Foundation forces her to pay him off and hush up the scandal in order to save the foundation's reputation. In the final scene of the novel, set in 1961, Clara is on the phone with John F. Kennedy, whose election she has supported, accepting Kennedy's offer to be made ambassador to the (fictional) island of Santa Emilia in the Caribbean.
4103655	/m/0bj5_s	Do Butlers Burgle Banks?	P. G. Wodehouse			 Bond's Bank, which Mike Bond has inherited from his over-enthusiastically philanthropist uncle Horace, is insolvent. With the examiners due shortly and no solution in sight, Mike faces the prospect of a stretch in the clink for not revealing this earlier. If the criminal mastermind Appleby had known this, he probably wouldn't have insinuated his way into the temporary butler vacancy. But then he probably wouldn't have fallen in love with Ada. And Chicago mobster Charlie Yost wouldn't have come along to settle his score with Appleby.
4103689	/m/0bj62l	A Pelican at Blandings	P. G. Wodehouse	1969-09-25	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lord Emsworth is in clover at Blandings, with the only guest, Howard Chesney, easily avoided by eating alone in the library. His peace is shattered by the arrival of his sister Connie, along with a friend she has met on the boat over from America, Vanessa Polk, and the news that Dunstable is soon to descend upon the castle adds to his misery. Desperate, he calls on his brother Gally for aid. Gally is in London, meeting his godson Johnny Halliday, who announces his engagement to Dunstable's niece Linda. He hurries to the castle, sharing a train carriage with Dunstable, who tells Gally how he has bought a painting of a reclining nude, having heard how anxious the wealthy Wilbur Trout is to buy it; Dunstable plans to bring Trout to Blandings to sell him the picture at a large profit. At the castle, Connie urges Dunstable to cosy up with Vanessa Polk, her father's wealth proving an easy lure, and Emsworth's woes are compounded by his beloved Empress' refusal to eat a potato. Gally hears from Linda that her engagement to Halliday is no more, and Halliday himself visits, to explain the incident, a grilling he was obliged to give Linda as a witness in a court case he was defending, which led to their split. He begs Gally to invite him to the castle, but Gally, explaining his position in Connie's bad books, sends him home, promising to do his best on his behalf. Wilbur Trout arrives, and we learn that Vanessa Polk was once engaged to him, and still harbours tender feelings. He tells her the tale of Dunstable's treachery, and she hatches a plan to steal the painting. In London, Halliday hears from his partner Joe Bender that the painting sold to Dunstable was a fake, and he calls in Gally's help. The capable old Pelican arranges to swap the real picture for the fake, but decides to take a bath before replacing the original in the empty frame. Emsworth, visiting his pig after a worrying dream, falls into the muddy sty, then finds himself locked out, Gally having turned the key on his return from meeting Johnny. He enters the house via Dunstable's rooms, waking up the Duke when surprised by a cat, and later returns to wake the Duke again when he sees the empty frame. When the rest of the household see the picture, now replaced by Gally, the Duke's low opinion of Emsworth's sanity persuades him to call in psychiatric help; with Sir Roderick Glossop out of the country, Gally recommends his junior partner, Johnny Halliday. Vanessa Polk, having spotted him for a crook, persuades Chesney to help her steal the painting, but he recognises Halliday, newly arrived at the castle, as the attorney who defended him after an earlier crime went wrong. He plans to leave to avoid being unmasked and return by night for the painting, but seeing Halliday at the top of the stairs, pushes him down. Halliday falls, taking Dunstable with him, and while he angers the Duke he endears himself to Linda, who finds herself kissing his face as he lies prone in the hallway. Linda, now firmly in favour of Halliday, reveals she cannot marry without Dunstable's consent, which he refuses after the stairs incident, and also having recalled Halliday's father, who he never got on with. Connie calls Glossop's office, finds Halliday is an imposter and ejects him from the castle. Trout and Vanessa meet up in the night to steal the painting, but Chesney fails to turn up, having crashed his car on the way. The two realise they love each other, and leave next morning to get married. Connie insists Dunstable writes to Vanessa proposing marriage, but the letter is intercepted by Gally, who knows Vanessa's true story and makes the Duke allow the wedding of Linda and Johnny, under threat of a breach of promise suit. Connie is recalled to America by her husband, and the Duke returns home, leaving Emsworth once again master of his domain.
4103745	/m/0bj67j	The Girl in Blue	P. G. Wodehouse			 More Wodehousian romance and intrigue are on the cards when the fate of the titular painting, a Gainsborough miniature, gets tangled up in the lives of some young lovers.
4103852	/m/0bj6f3	Bachelors Anonymous	P. G. Wodehouse	1973-10-15	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Much married, much divorced movie mogul Ivor Llewellyn (friend of Monty Bodkin), and his long-suffering lawyer Ephraim Trout, find the idea of a support group for bachelors appealing. The members can watch each other's backs, keeping them safe from roving females. With spring in the air, however, romance is never far behind...
4104044	/m/0bj6mt	Sunset at Blandings	P. G. Wodehouse			 The story is, as the poignant name suggests, another tale set at Blandings Castle, filled as ever with romance and imposters. Galahad Threepwood uses his charm and wit to ensure his brother Clarence continues to lead a quiet and peaceful life.
4105047	/m/0bj9lf	The Day My Bum Went Psycho	Andy Griffiths	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Zack Freeman's bum is constantly detaching itself from his body and running off. One night, when he follows his bum, he learns that there is a plot by bums to take over the world. Specifically, the bums plan to create a huge, worldwide fart by building up a massive quantity of methane gas in the "Bumcano". When the Bumcano blows, all humans will be rendered unconscious. While they are unconscious, the bums will seize their chance and switch places with their heads. Fortunately, Zack meets the "Bum-hunter" Silas Sterne and his daughter, Eleanor, and is introduced to the realities of life in a world where bums are constantly a threat. To prevent the Bumcano eruption, the friends enlist the help of the Kisser, the Kicker, the Smacker and Ned Smelly. The characters encounter a variety of bum-related places and things, including the "Great Windy Desert", "flying bum squadrons", Stenchgantor The Great Unwiped Bum and the Great White Bum. Naturally, every possible opportunity for toilet humour is milked in this book for children, which won a number of Children's Choice awards in Australia. It is followed by Zombie Bums from Uranus (2003) and Bumageddon: The Final Pongflict (2005).
4105368	/m/0bjbhb	Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It				 The book attacked the use of investment funds to promote the consolidation of various industries under the control of a small number of corporations, which Brandeis alleged were working in concert to prevent competition. Brandeis harshly criticized investment bankers who controlled large amounts of money deposited in their banks by middle-class people. The heads of these banks, Brandeis pointed out, routinely sat on the boards of railroad companies and large industrial manufacturers of various products, and routinely directed the resources of their banks to promote the interests of their own companies. These companies, in turn, sought to maintain control of their industries by crushing small businesses and stamping out innovators who developed better products to compete against them. Brandeis supported his contentions with a discussion of the actual dollar amounts—in millions of dollars—controlled by specific banks, industries, and industrialists such as J. P. Morgan, noting that these interests had recently acquired a far larger proportion of American wealth than corporate entities had ever had before. He extensively cited testimony from a Congressional investigation performed by the Pujo Committee, named after Louisiana Representative Arsène Pujo, into self-serving and monopolistic business dealing.
4106620	/m/0bjffx	Convergence	Charles Sheffield		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book takes place millennia in the future with the same group of explorers introduced in the first two books of the series, Summertide and Divergence. After millions of years of apparent inaction, the Builder artifacts are changing quickly. After exploring several new artifacts, rediscovering the existence of a race thought to be dead for millennia, and finding that race's home planet in the midst of an enormous artifact, the adventures of this eclectic team become even stranger. In this book the characters explore several old artifacts to find that they have changed. These changes all seemed to be linked to a seemingly new artifact, which may affect the future of the entire Orion arm of the galaxy. The sequel to this book and series finale is Resurgence.
4106807	/m/0bjfzk	Tar Baby	Toni Morrison	1981-03-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This novel portrays a love affair between Jadine and Son, two Black Americans from very different worlds. Jadine is a beautiful Sorbonne graduate and fashion model who has been sponsored into wealth and privilege by the Streets, a wealthy white family who employ Jadine's aunt and uncle as domestic servants. Son is an impoverished, strong-minded man who washes up at the Streets' estate on a Caribbean island. As Jadine and Son come together, their affair ruptures the illusions and self-deceptions that held together the world and relationships at the estate. They travel back to the U.S. to search for somewhere they can both be at home, and find that their homes hold poison for each other. The struggle of Jadine and Son reveals the pain, struggle, and compromises confronting Black Americans seeking to live and love with integrity in the United States.
4110084	/m/0bjn43	Greatheart Silver	Philip José Farmer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Greatheart Silver, the thirty-year-old first mate on Acme Zeppelin 8, is the sole survivor of an attack by the Mad Fokker, an air pirate and World War I veteran who was mothballed by the United States government because it could not undo his mental conditioning. Bendt Micawber (the CEO of Acme Corporation and the descendant of Mr. Micawber from David Copperfield) cites his survival as dereliction of duty. Receiving a plastic prosthetic leg as well as his pension as compensation, Greatheart is fired from Acme. During his recovery, Greatheart's fiancee breaks up with him and his Sioux grandmother sends his a birdcage with two ravens inside. He names them Huginn and Muninn after the Norse god Odin's all-seeing ravens. Using his skills with computers to alter his records and receive a glowing reference from Micawber, Greatheart is soon employed by the Phoenix branch of Acme Security-Southwest. Under the tutelage of Fenwick Phwombly (who describes himself, though is never identified, as the Shadow), Greatheart journeys to the town of Shootout, where many aging villains have gathered for a last great crime. However, they are stopped by a group of aging heroes including Phwombly in an action similar to the gunfight at the OK Corral. Two years later, Greatheart (named for the character in Pilgrim's Progress) is disguised as an employee of Acme W-W Cleaners and narrowly avoids averting a kidnapping. The victim of the terrorist group turns out to be Micawber's estranged daughter, Jill Micawber, who went under an assumed name so she would not be associated with her ruthless father. Greatheart traces the kidnappers, despite the efforts of Micawber to trail him, to the Fokker D-LXIX Press building, specializers in erotica owned by Acme Zeppelin. Using a DRECC computer, executive Rade Starling can transform any printed work into a sensually appealing one (e.g. Glinda of Oz becomes The Secret Life of Glinda of Oz, or The Good Witch Goes Bad) and after knocking Greatheart out reveals his plan, with a microchip embedded in the books' front covers, to overwhelm readers' emotions and make them euphoric and suggestible. With the help of Jill, a previous acquaintance of his from UCLA, Greatheart enables Starling's project to overwhelm him and his associates. Since the project was conducted on Acme-owned property, Greatheart has sufficient blackmail on Micawber to prevent his harassing him again. With Jill's leverage, Greatheart marries her and (with Micawber's grudging blessing) becomes captain of Acme Zeppelin 49. On a trans-Pacific journey to Minerva with a cargo of iridium and platinum, another group of kidnappers attempts to abduct Jill and encounters a Brittany separatist group on board. When gunshots go off and penetrate the airbag as well as short out the computers on the bridge, the groups must work together to reach land.
4112471	/m/0bjs1p	The Beggar	Naguib Mahfouz	1965	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The book opens with the main character Omar going to visit a doctor, who was one of his friends from his youth, because he has become sick of life. The doctor tells him that there is nothing physically wrong with him, and tells him that he won’t be ill if he goes on a diet and takes regular exercise. Both the diet and a vacation make no difference to him though. In his youth Omar was a poet and a socialist. He gave up both in order to become a lawyer, and now that he has reached the age of forty-five he can no longer find meaning in his life and he has effectively given up working. He met his wife Zeinab in his youth. She was a Christian called Kamelia Fouad and she converted to Islam, and lost her family in order to marry him. He promised that he would never desert her. She took up the role of supporting him and has proved to be the backbone of their bourgeois life together. As his malady grows he becomes more distant from her. He tries to escape his condition through love. He first meets a foreign singer called Margaret. When she unexpectedly leaves Egypt, he gets together with an oriental dancer called Warda. He falls in love with her, and she with him and they set up home together. Initially Omar’s illness seems to pass in the excitement of love. Zeinab, who is pregnant, is first suspicious and then is told of his new lover. Omar moves out to be with Warda, who quits her job to be with him. This love however fails to lift him out of his illness for long, and he makes contact with Margaret again when he sees her back at her club. He then goes through a succession of women, including prostitutes, trying to pull himself out of his sickness, but it is all to no avail. One dawn he is out near the pyramids and he feels a momentary joy, which connects him to all life. He feels light and at peace, but he soon feels the illness again. Although he tries to win this feeling again he is never able to. He returns home but feels suffocated there. One day Othman Khalil turns up in his office. Othman had been his socialist comrade in his youth who had been caught by the police, but hadn’t given out his connections with Omar, despite having been tortured. He has only just been released from prison. Othman is disconcerted to find Omar as a sceptic, as he has hung onto all of his socialist orthodoxies. As writing poetry has also failed to cure him, in an attempt to regain the peace he felt by the pyramids, Omar goes off to live by himself in the countryside. He slips into delirium but still the calm he desires escapes him. After a year and a half Othman, who has got involved in politics again, turns up at the house escaping from the police, but Omar thinks he is an illusion. Omar is shot and wounded as the police catch Othman. Omar feels he is returning to the world as he is brought back to Cairo. fa:گدا (رمان)
4112539	/m/0bjs55	The Fifth of March	Ann Rinaldi		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rachel Marsh helps a young British Private, Matthew Kilroy, and continues to help him even after he is sent to jail for murder. During the cold winter in Boston, she sneaks food from the dinner table to Matthew. One day her friend Jane comes to her bedroom window, tells her to get dressed and follow her. In the center of Boston there were massive riots against the British soldiers, guns are being fired and people are being killed. In particular, in self defense, Matthew Kilroy shoots a Bostonion. In the meantime, Rachel is being swept away by the crowd and has lost Jane. She visits the book keeper, Henry Knox. Rachel wants the Adams' to know nothing of her being there as that could loose her her position. Later in the book she has to tell Mr. Adams because she wants him to do the right thing for Matthew. Mr. Adams is angry, but understands why she did it. While Matthew was in jail, she secretly brings him food. This, Mr. Adams doesn't really like. She wants the people she works for, John Adams, to help him and 6 other soldiers out of jail, but that would ruin his career. In the end John Adams does help the soldiers, but two of them including Matthew are accused of manslaughter. Matthew is branded and shipped back to England. Matthew proposes matrimony to Rachel but she refuses him. Mr. Adams feels that it would be best to let go of Rachel when they move back to Braintree. He gets Rachel a position in Pennsylvania that he thinks would suit her. She is about to start a new chapter in her life and wants to be heard in
4112587	/m/0bjs7m	The Sleeper Awakes	H. G. Wells	1899	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The story follows the fortunes of a late nineteenth century Englishman identified only as Graham. He falls into a strange "trance" in 1897, due to his dabbling in drugs to cure a prolonged and serious insomnia, awakening two hundred and three years later to find that he has inherited sizeable wealth from his cousin Warmings and a friend of his, Ibsister, whose sons died in a boating accident. His money had been put into a trust. Over the years, the trust, known as the White Council, used Graham's unprecedented wealth to establish a vast political and economic world order. Upon first awakening, Graham is extremely confused and suffers from severe culture shock. The individuals who had been charged with minding him during his sleep react to his awakening with surprise and alarm. No one had seriously expected Graham to ever arise from his slumber. Somehow, word spreads to the general populace that the sleeper has awakened. This leads to a great deal of distress among Graham's stewards which only increases when large mobs begin crowding around the building housing Graham. They shout and chant demands to see the fabled sleeper. All of this confuses Graham and his naturally inquisitive nature is compelled to ask questions of everyone in sight. The people around him are reluctant to give him answers and act in a very evasive manner. They only explain that the society in which they live is beset by troubles, and elaborate no further. They keep Graham from leaving and insist that, for his own well-being, he stay in the quarters provided for him. Graham is effectively under house arrest, able to understand the society of the future mainly by what little information he can get from those allowed to see him. He learns from his guardian, Howard, that around this time that he is, by the order of things, the legal owner and master of the world. He also learns that a rebellious figure known as Ostrog seeks to overthrow this established order. After returning to his quarters, Graham is liberated by individuals who identify themselves as agents of Ostrog. They briefly explain that the people of the world are preparing to stage a revolt against the White Council and require his leadership. Uncertain about their story but unwilling to remain a prisoner, Graham leaves with them. After a perilous journey over the rooftops of future London and a mad flight from aeroplanes searching for him, Graham arrives at a massive hall where the workers and underprivileged classes have gathered to prepare for the revolution. It is at this time that Graham meets Lincoln, Ostrog's brother. Ostrog himself, Lincoln explains, is busy making the final preparations for the revolt. The assembled workers chant the Song of the Revolution and begin to march against the White Council. Graham is caught up in the mob, which soon engages in a battle with the state police. In the ensuing confusion, Graham is separated from the revolutionaries and wanders the streets of London alone. London itself is in a panic as the revolt spreads across the world. The power is cut and order begins to dissolve as the fighting intensifies. During this time, he meets an old man who recounts to him the history of the sleeper, how the White Council used him as a figurehead to gain power and how, by investing his wealth in various companies and political parties, grew his inheritance and subtly bought the industries and political entities of half the world, establishing a plutocracy and sweeping the remains of democratic parliament and the monarchy away. The old man also shares his cynical views on how he believes that the sleeper is not real but a made-up figure to brainwash the population. Eventually Graham makes his way to the mysterious figure of Ostrog, who explains to him that the revolution is a success. All that remains is to accept the surrender of the White Council. Ostrog also explains how the people were dissatisfied with the administration of the White Council and demanded the fortune to be returned to the Sleeper. Graham is hailed as the savior of the people and is nominally restored to his rightful place as master of the world. He is given comfortable quarters and his every pleasure is fulfilled on a whim. The governorship of society is left in Ostrog's hands. Graham contents himself with learning as much about this new world as he can. He especially takes an interest in aeroplanes and insists on learning how to operate the flying machines. His carefree life soon comes to an end when a young woman named Helen Wotton explains that the people are suffering as badly under Ostrog as they did under the White Council. For the lower class, the revolution has changed nothing. Inspired by Helen's words, Graham begins to ask Ostrog questions about the condition of the world. Ostrog admits that the lower classes are still dominated and exploited but defends the system. It is clear that Ostrog has no desire to change anything, that the revolution was merely an excuse to toss the White Council out and seize power himself, using Graham as a puppet. After pressing Ostrog, Graham learns that, in other cities, the workers have continued to rebel even after the fall of the White Council. To suppress these insurrections, Ostrog has used a police force, Black Africans recruited from Senegal and South Africa, to get the workers back in line. Graham is furious to learn of this and demands that Ostrog keep his police out of London. Ostrog agrees and promises to help Graham assume direct control over the world's affairs. Meanwhile, Graham decides to examine this new society for himself. Graham and a valet travel through London in disguise and examine the daily life of the average worker. London is portrayed as a dehumanized, industrialized quagmire caught in perpetual darkness. The lower classes are forced to work day and night in the factories, having nothing more to look forward to than some cheap amusements. As he examines this grim scene, Graham learns that Ostrog has ordered his troops to London to disarm the remaining revolutionary workers. The workers rise up once more and Graham makes his way back to Ostrog, who attempts to subdue Graham. With the help of the workers, Graham escapes Ostrog. He runs into Helen who, it is revealed, was the one who learned about Ostrog's treachery and made it public. With her by his side, Graham oversees the liberation of London from Ostrog. Ostrog himself manages to narrowly escape London. He joins the air fleet carrying the black troops to London. While most of London is secure, Ostrog's men still hold a few airports to land the African soldiers. The workers find anti-aircraft guns Ostrog had built for his own use and intend to turn them against Ostrog's air fleet. However, they need time to set up the weapons. To delay the air fleet, Graham decides to fly the one remaining aeroplane in possession of the revolutionaries against Ostrog and his air force. He bids farewell to Helen and departs. Over the skies of London, Graham uses his aeroplane as a battering ram to knock down several of the negro-transporting aeroplanes in Ostrog's fleet. Down below, the revolutionaries manage to get the anti-aircraft guns in place and begin shooting down the air fleet. Graham attempts to take down Ostrog's personal aeroplane, but he fails. However, Graham's aeroplane is critically damaged in an airport bombing and he plummets to earth. As the story closes, Graham's fate is left uncertain.
4113955	/m/0bjt_w	Prayers for the Assassin	Robert Ferrigno	2006-02	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book starts off during the second American Civil War between the Islamic States and the seceding Bible Belt, with a Muslim soldier dying in 2017 at the battle of Newark, after a bloody battle with Bible Belt paramilitaries that are attempting to capture the city. Flash forward to the Super Bowl in 2042 in Seattle, the capitol of the new Islamic Republic, the majority of whose inhabitants have converted to Islam. The nation's culture is a fusion of traditional American and Islamic: the Super Bowl is still played, but the cheerleaders are sword-wielding men and the participants break at half-time for afternoon prayers. As the story opens, the country is facing a crisis, with competing political and religious factions threatening to destroy the fragile peace that exists within the Islamic States of America. At the same time, behind the scenes, a messianic figure known as the Wise Old One contrives to seize power for himself, and fulfill the ancient prophecy of the restoration of the Caliphate. The story's protagonist is Rakkim Epps, a Fedayeen warrior who is devoted to his cause, even if he has lost his faith. Epps must risk everything to save the life of Sarah Dougan, the young historian he loves. It becomes known that it was in fact Muslim extremists who launched the attacks, including the dirty bomb in Mecca. A fourth, more powerful bomb (later found in China) was scheduled for detonation but the small group of Muslim extremists assigned the task succumbed to radiation poisoning before it could be put into play. Once the truth was exposed, the parties stepped back from the brink and sought to find a common ground from which to start a more trusting, more open-minded dialog. There is a final showdown between Darwin, the "evil" assassin and Rakkim in which Darwin is slain via a knife throw to the face, but the remainder of the ending sets up conditions for a possible sequel.
4114033	/m/0bjv3n	Demon in My View	Amelia Atwater-Rhodes		{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 The book is set in the non fictional town of Ramsa, New York, and centers around teenager Jessica Ashley Allodola. Jessica is gorgeous and has a perfect body, but the people in her town avoid her. At Ramsa High, many students are afraid of her and some think she's a witch. Instead of trying to bond to people, Jessica writes books about vampires and witches. She has just published her first book, "Tiger, Tiger", under the pen name Ash Night. As her senior year starts, there are two new students, Caryn Rashida and Alex Remington. Jessica is instantly stunned by the fact that Alex looks exactly like Aubrey, a character in "Tiger, Tiger." However, since Jessica believes vampires aren't real, she convinces herself that he's not Aubrey. Both Caryn and Alex show an interest in Jessica. Jessica finds Alex fascinating but considers Caryn a nuisance. After a few clues, Jessica finds out that the books she has been writing are completely true. That Alex is actually the vampire Aubrey and Caryn is a Smoke witch. Many of the vampires wish to kill her for exposing their secrets. Aubrey had initially planned to kill her, but after meeting her, he's uncertain of what to do. After Jessica is attacked by Fala, another vampire, Aubrey changes Jessica into a vampire. Throughout the story, Jessica pieces together clues regarding her birth. Her mother was Jazlyn and had been offered immortality numerous times by Siete, the creator of the vampires. After her husband's death, the pregnant Jazlyn accepted the offer in a moment of desperation and Siete changed her. However, after years of life as a vampire, her regret became too strong. A Smoke witch, Monica, offered to give her back her humanity. Monica died in the process, but she succeeded. A few months later, Jazlyn's child was born. However, the child, Jessica, held no resemblance to either of her biological parents. Instead, after almost two decades in an undead womb, she resembled Siete. Her green eyes, black hair, pale skin, and vampiric traces in her aura were all from him and Jazlyn could not look at her. So Jazlyn gave Jessica up for adoption.
4114043	/m/0bjv3_	Shattered Mirror	Amelia Atwater-Rhodes		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book is set in Acton, Massachusetts, the neighboring town to the author’s hometown of Concord, and follows the story of Sarah Tigress Vida, youngest daughter in a long line of vampire-hunting witches who see the world in a good-evil paradigm in which if you are not with them then you are against them. Her line of witches are the most powerful of the mortal vampire-hunting witches and are very attack oriented. In the hunt for Nikolas, a vampire that killed a Vida a century ago, Sarah finds Christopher and Nissa, sibling vampires who don’t kill when they need to feed. Instead, they feed on animals and willing humans. As Sarah’s friendship with Christopher begins to turn into something more, she is forbidden to see him by her domineering mother, Dominique. Ultimately, when Sarah discovers Christopher’s true identity and his tie to Nikolas, Sarah finds that she may have to re-think her attitude and her whole world view. After intense internal debate Sarah decides to reveal her identity to Christopher and a wall appears between them. This whole event finally garners her mother's attention and Sarah's mother binds her powers and calls a trial for Sarah's violations( which include associating with vampires and revealing her identity). She manages to escape with the help of her sister Adianna. Christopher's attitude towards her pushes her further into the Vida mind-set and she decides to hunt down Nikolas through Christopher. She gains an opportunity to kill Nikolas but hesitates when she thinks it is Christopher(as Nikolas and Christopher are twin brothers). Nikolas then over-powers Sarah and marks her. Sarah's pride is seriously injured and after an encounter with Christopher and a very traumatized victim of another vampire, Sarah receives an invitation from Nikolas to a party. Sarah decides to go against the warnings of Nissa and attends the party. There she attempts to fight Nikolas but without the full use of her bound powers she stands little chance. Adianna shows up and attempts to rescue Sarah but finds her-self unable to defeat Nikolas. Nikolas uses Adianna as a hostage for Sarah to surrender all her weapons(which are the only way for her to use her magic to kill vampires). Christopher shows up and attempts to talk them down but he eventually loses control due to Sarah's attempts to fight back and he begins fighting Sarah as well. Christopher and his brother overpower Sarah and attempt to blood-bond her to them. However, Sarah's witch blood rejects the vampires' blood and Adianna, her older sister, tells them it will kill her. Christopher is in love with Sarah and can't bear what he's done. In the end, he turns her into a vampire and asks her to live with them, because he loves her. Sarah accepts to stay a vampire, but says that she isn't ready to be with them yet.She refuses to stay with them because she can't follow their trail of killing people everytime she feeds. Sarah resolves to find a way for herself to live her life.
4114054	/m/0bjv4b	Midnight Predator	Amelia Atwater-Rhodes		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Though she was once a happy teenager with a wonderful family and a full life, Turquoise Draka is now a hunter, committed to no higher purpose than making money and staying alive. In a deadly world of vampires, shape-shifters, and powerful mercenaries, she'll track any prey if the price is right. Her current assignment: to assassinate Jeshickah, one of the cruelest vampires in history. Her employer: an unknown contact who wants the job done fast. Her major obstacle: she'll have to mask her strength and enter Midnight, a fabled Vampire realm, as a human slave. Vulnerable and defenseless, she faces her greatest challenge ever.
4114492	/m/0bjv_s	The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales	Jon Scieszka	1992	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The star of the book is Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk, who tells the stories and deals with the rest of the cast. There's a very annoying Little Red Hen - a parody of the fairy tale of the same name - who comes in to complain about no one helping her make her bread and because she doesn't have a story in this book. Chicken Licken believes that the sky is falling, but it is the table of contents tumbling on her head. Jack introduces Little Red Running Shorts, a counterpart of Little Red Riding Hood, by blurting out the entire story -- including the ending -- so she refuses to be in it. The Stinky Cheese Man, a counterpart of The Gingerbread Man, is afraid to be near anyone because he thinks they will eat him . . . though they are really trying to get away from his horrid smell... A smell of dank cabbage. In the middle of the book, the Little Red Hen comes up to complain that there's still no one to help make her bread and ask again for her story. Jack ignores her and starts to introduce his story, when the giant climbs down the beanstalk to gripe that he doesn't like the story. The giant then tells an extremely nonsensical story using random sentences and picture clippings from parts of a book. Jack jeers at this improvisation, and tells an excruciatingly long story (that never ends until the end of the book) in order to not have the giant grind his bones. Also in the book are "The Princess and the Bowling Ball", "The Other Frog Prince", "The Really Ugly Duckling", "Cinderumplestiltskin" and "The Tortoise and the Hair". In the first, a retelling of The Princess and the Pea, the Prince finally finds a girl he really loves. Sick of his parents rejecting potential wives when they don't feel a pea under one hundred mattresses, he slips his bowling ball under her mattresses when his parents have her over. In "The Other Frog Prince", the princess kisses the frog: he says "I was just kidding," and hops back in the lake. "The Really Ugly Duckling" is Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, where the ugly duckling grows up to be a really ugly duck, rather than a swan. "Cinderumplestiltskin" combines Cinderella and Rumplestiltskin into a tale where an imp comes to Cinderella and offers to spin straw into gold. Cinderella rejects his offer, and when he wants her to guess his name she shoos him out, saying she's not allowed to talk to strangers. In "The Tortoise and the Hair", a telling of The Tortoise and the Hare, the Hare says he can grow his hair (one on the top of his head) faster than the Tortoise can run. So they race, and race and race, this story has no ending, the last words of it being "not the end". At the very end of the book Jack successfully lulls the giant to sleep and is about to sneak away when the Little Red Hen pops in, griping that she still never got her story or her loaf of bread, and asking who will help her eat the bread now. The giant wakes and uses the bread to make a sandwich out of the Hen, Jack flees, and the book ends. The foreword includes a parody of Goldilocks and the Three Bears as an example of a "Fairly Stupid Tale". Also, the table of contents includes the title, "The Boy Who Cried Cow Patty," a story nowhere in the book. The latter story was printed on the back of the dust jacket for the book's tenth anniversary edition (whereas the original edition had the Little Red Hen complaining about buying this book while asking who "this ISBN guy" is and complaining that she's only in three of the pages as a book pun). There are lots of other book puns such as one of the pages being upside-down. Also a surgeon general's warning saying "It has been determined that these tales are fairly stupid and probably dangerous to your health." The title for the Other Frog Prince is crooked because it's on the frog's sticky tongue. When Little Red Running Shorts quits her story she walks right out of her own story. The Giant talks in uppercase letters when he says "I'LL GRIND YOUR BONES TO MAKE MY BREAD!" The Giant and Jack make a cameo in Cinderumpelstiltskin.
4115106	/m/0bjwzk	The Emigrants	W. G. Sebald	1993	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In The Emigrants Sebald's narrator recounts his involvement with and the life stories of four different characters, all of whom are German emigrants (to England and the United States). As with most of Sebald's work, the text includes many black and white, unlabeled photographs and strays sharply from general formats of plot and narrative. Dr. Henry Selwyn is the estranged husband of Sebald's landlady, who fought in the First World War and has a propensity for gardening and tending to animals. He confides in Sebald about his family's immigration to England from Lithuania, and suspects that it is this secretive, alien past that helped dissolve his relationship with his wife. He commits suicide. Paul Bereyter was the narrator's childhood teacher in a town referenced in the text only as "S". A quarter Jewish, he found employment difficult in the period leading up to the Second World War, although he eventually served in the Wehrmacht. Teaching in the small school after the war, Bereyter found a passion for his students while living a lonely, quiet life. In later years, his eyesight began to fail and he moved to France, where he met and spent much time with Mme Landau, from whom the narrator obtains most of his information about Bereyter. The narrator's great uncle, Ambros Adelwarth, was the travelling companion of an affluent young aviator gifted with much luck at gambling and a wayward attitude towards life. In his youth, he accompanied this man across Europe, and into Turkey and Asia Minor, before his companion fell ill and was sent to a mental institution. Afterwards, Adelwarth was the butler of the young man's family, living on Long Island until their death. As a young man in Manchester the narrator befriends an expatriate German-Jewish painter, Max Aurach. Years later the artist gives the narrator his mother's history of her idyllic life as a girl in a Bavarian village. It was written as she and her husband awaited deportation to the East and death. This section is written as a gradual discovery on the narrator's part of the effects of the Holocaust on Aurach and his family.
4117334	/m/0bk10h	The Quillan Games	D.J. MacHale	2006-05-16	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Like the other Pendragon books, the plot of The Quillan Games is two subplots: One featuring Bobby's adventures on Quillan, the other featuring Mark and Courtney's adventures as they read Bobby's journals and occasionally battle Saint Dane from their homes on Second Earth. The story begins when Bobby arrives on Quillan in the flume, straight from Zadaa where in the sixth book, he helped Loor save Zadaa and mysteriously raised her from the dead. Bobby appears in a huge empty warehouse and is promptly attacked by quigs, Saint Dane's assassins, which on Quillan turn out to be giant spiders the size of kittens. After killing a quig, he finds that it's a robot. Upon escaping the quigs, he finds his way out of the warehouse and discovers a huge arcade filled with games. He soon learns that games of Quillan are much more serious than on Second Earth, because the losers are often killed. He also puts on a silver bracelet called a loop, which he soon finds out is a tracking device that is nearly impossible to slip off. After being chased by, and escaping from robot policemen called dados, he finds himself in the middle of a city he later finds out to be called Rune. He notices that the word BLOK seems to be posted everywhere, but he has no idea what the word means. While he is trying to be inconspicuous and escape from the dados, he notices a strange incident; a man is running away from two dados (apparently he has lost a game) and a woman crashes her "scoot", which is a Quillan-ized motor scooter, into the dado. Then, a man shows up to save her from being taken by the dados. Then the two people grab their left biceps as a strange gesture. However, he is soon distracted by a game being played on the big screens; he sees two challengers playing a game called Tato together; he notices that one of the challengers is wearing a Traveler ring. Unfortunately, the Traveler loses and dies, which makes Bobby angry and determined to avenge this death. However, Bobby is soon captured by the android dados, who drive him to a castle. Bobby soon realizes that the bright red shirt he is wearing sets him apart as a challenger, a contestant of the games. Bobby is greeted by the siblings LaBerge and Veego, who are very hospitable to Bobby. Bobby, however is not friendly to them, and spends his first evening in his new room in the castle writing his journals and reflecting on how he doesn't have any idea what's wrong with Quillan and how Saint Dane fits into the mix. Soon, Bobby learns of how much Challengers are forced to play games; he immediately has to beat a game called Hook just to get to dinner and then promptly afterwards he is rushed into another game called Tock to prove his competitiveness and worth. After he managed to win the game, he meets Nevva Winter, a Blok assistant. Later he is introduced to Nevva and learns she is really the Traveler from Quillan, while the Traveller who died playing Tato was named Remudi, and was the Traveler from the territory of Ibara. Unfortunately, before Nevva can explain more, she has to leave Bobby stranded in the strange territory, trapped with LaBerge and Veego in the challenger's castle with no idea what to do next. Bobby spends a few weeks at the castle, and learns a lot about challengers and games; unfortunately he still doesn't come close to finding Saint Dane as he does not learn anything more about the rest of Quillan. Finally, after a long time at the castle, Nevva takes Bobby to a meeting outside of the castle in the Blok office. There Bobby learns how Blok is a corporation that, over many generations, has gradually taken over Quillan and forced people to live a harsh life. He also finds out that Saint Dane has been pretending to be one of the ten leaders of Blok, called Mr. Kayto. There Saint Dane makes an offer to Bobby; he says that if Bobby will compete in the Grand X, an upcoming series of games, then he will tell Bobby the most hidden secret of the Travellers's true nature. Though Saint Dane's offer is tempting, Bobby decides not to risk his life in any more games and refuses it. When Bobby is driving back to the castle, he is kidnapped by some mysterious people wearing black and is taken to an underground hideout. He finds out that they are a secret group called the revivers, and that their goal is to save Quillan from the control of Blok and make it a free territory again. Nevva is one of them. They want Bobby to compete in the Grand X, in order to stir the majority of the people into a revolt against Blok. To help convince Bobby to make this choice, they show him to a top-secret hidden library they call Mr. Pop, which contains the history of Quillan. Bobby finally agrees and is sure that his decision will be the turning point for Quillan and will save the territory. Bobby turns himself in to LaBerge and Veego, then immediately starts competing in the Grand X, against a champion called Challenger Green, the challenger who killed Remudi in the Tato match. During the game, Bobby learns some astonishing secrets; he learns that LaBerge and Veego are from the territory of Veelox, but were taken here by Saint Dane. He also learns that Saint Dane has taken them to many different territories, including Cloral, Eelong, and Zadaa, and got the ideas for some of their games from those territories. In the end, Bobby wins, not only the game, but also the hearts of the people, and they start revolting against Blok, just like Bobby and the revivers wanted. However, just when he thinks the territory of Quillan is saved, he is captured by Saint Dane and finds out that Nevva had been with Saint Dane all along. He then learns that, though both of them were blindfolded, Nevva gave away the location of the huge library since she carried a loop to "Mr. Pop" which allowed Blok to discover the location of Mr. Pop. The dados would later incinerate it, causing the people of Quillan to lose hope return to betting on the Quillan Games as the only way of life. This causes Bobby to lose the territory of Quillan to Saint Dane. He also learns that Challenger Green was really Saint Dane in disguise. Saint Dane also mentions something called the Convergence, which he believes is inevitable. Nevva reveals that she is on Saint Dane's side, and says that she thinks she will take the Traveler from Ibara's place because he is dead. Nevva and Saint Dane escape, and it is revealed that Saint Dane has taught Nevva how to transform; they both turn into giant birds and fly away after hypnotising some revivers into jumping out of a window. The journal ends with Bobby telling Mark and Courtney that before he goes off to fight Saint Dane again, he will return to Second Earth, to take a break, but also to find out what has been happening there. Just before Bobby leaves for the flume, he talks to a woman named Elli Winter, who is Nevva's mother. Elli tells Bobby how his Uncle Press told her she was supposed to be the Traveller from Quillan until Nevva was ready, but was dealing with the loss of her husband, and didn't want the added responsibility. Uncle Press told her that he would make Nevva the traveller then, but to keep the traveller ring he had given her. Now she feels she is ready to take on the responsibility of being the travaller for Quillan. As on Veelox, the territory has a last vestige of hope. It does not seem likely though, that Quillan will resurrect itself. The Rivers of Zadaa ended with Courtney beginning recovery from her car accident when Saint Dane tried to kill her in the form of Whitney Wilcox. Courtney continues to recover, but it takes her all fall to recover physically. Meanwhile, Mark studies science with Andy Mitchell, a former bully but now Mark's friend. By Thanksgiving in November, she is ready to begin school again. Mark and Andy show Courtney their new invention: A cube shaped device called Forge that can transform its shape when the user talks to it as demonstrated when Andy turned it into a sphere and a pyramid. Andy and Mark say that it is still in its prototype stages and has only assumed three different shapes. While Courtney is enjoying her first days at school since the accident, Mark finds out he can go to Orlando, Florida to enter his invention in a contest; however, because of an accident with Mitchell's flower shop, Mark's parents end up taking one plane flight to Florida while Mark is scheduled to take a different one. Later, Courtney discovers that the flight that Mark's parents had taken had disappeared over the ocean while going out to sea to dump some fuel because of engine trouble.The reason of this is unknown; all passengers have disappeared. Courtney goes to the flume entrance, and there discovers that Mark had gone into the flume to another territory. There, Saint Dane comes out of the flume. She also discovers that Andy Mitchell had been Saint Dane all along, even since her childhood. She also realizes that she was a pawn in Saint Dane's plan to gain Mark's trust as Andy Mitchell, as saving Courtney formed a bond between the two. Saint Dane mysteriously takes Courtney through the flume right back to Second Earth. Courtney soon finds that although most of her home is still intact, there are some strange new technologies which were not there when Courtney had left such as a life like cat robot, and a high tech computer. When Bobby comes back to Second Earth, he and Courtney discover that these technologies were made by a company called Dimond Alpha Digital Organization. They suspect that it may have something to do with Mark, whose last name is Dimond, and they also realize that the initials spell the word DADO, the name of the robot police from Quillan. Bobby and Courtney decide the next step is to find out how this has changed the Earth territories' history, so the story ends with Bobby and Courtney going into the flume for Third Earth together.
4117720	/m/0bk1m4	The Deed of Paksenarrion	Elizabeth Moon	1992-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The Deed of Paksenarrion was written as one long story, but published as three separate books. A number of people have pointed out resemblances between the story setting and Dungeons & Dragons, in particular alleged similarities between Moon's town of Brewersbridge and Hommlet (a village in The Temple of Elemental Evil module for AD&D) and between Moon's religion of Gird and the faith of Saint Cuthbert of the Cudgel in Greyhawk. However, such themes may often be similarly found in many brands of high fantasy, and are not unique to any one fictional world. The Deed of Paksenarrion revolves around the adult life of Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter, known as Paks, of Three Firs. It takes place in a fictional medieval world of kingdoms of humans, dwarves, gnomes and elves. The story begins by introducing Paks as a headstrong girl of 18, who leaves her home in Three Firs (fleeing a marriage arranged by her father) to join a mercenary company and through her journeys and hardships comes to realize that she has been gifted as a paladin, if in a rather non-traditional way.
4117946	/m/0bk1yq	Dragon's Kin	Todd McCaffrey	2003-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story tells how the people of the fictional planet Pern discover the special abilities of the watch-whers or whers, a distant relative of the dragons. Subsequently, these beasts are used in mines to warn miners of gas pockets and also to locate stranded miners, should there be a cave-in. The story begins some years before the 3rd Pass in Camp Natalon, a mining camp. There, the reader is introduced to a young boy Kindan, whose father owns a watch-wher called Dask. During a mining cave-in, Kindan loses his entire family as well as Dask, and is adopted by the Master Harper Zist, who begins to train him to be both an entertainer and a spy, something that Harpers do. This is how Kindan learns that the camp is divided into two parties, Natalon's and his uncle, Tarik's. Meanwhile, the camp is without a watch-wher and minor accidents keep delaying the work. Despite the protests from Tarik and his group, Natalon decides to trade an entire winter's worth of coal for a chance for Kindan to ask a queen watch-wher for an egg. He succeeds and begins the difficult task of raising a nocturnal animal. As no records exist on how to raise or train the watch-wher, Kindan has no clue but is luckily aided by the mysterious Nuella. Together, they train Kisk and, in the process, learn a great deal about this species. This proves to be vital as, towards the end of the novel, Kisk's abilities will save many lives, including that of the camp leader, Natalon.
4118354	/m/0bk2rz	A Spell for Chameleon	Piers Anthony	1977-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the beginning of the novel Bink is facing imminent exile from the magical land of Xanth and separation from his fiancee Sabrina for his lack of a magic talent. All human residents of Xanth possess some unique form of magic that ranges from incredibly powerful (such as the current King Aeolus's ability to summon and control storms) to relatively useless (such as the ability to make a spot appear on a wall). In the hopes of discovering his talent Bink sets out to see the Good Magician Humfrey, a magician whose talent has to do with the gathering of information. While on his way Bink fights his way through the perilous wilderness of Xanth, having several run-ins with dangerous plants and animals but always being saved by apparent coincidence. On this journey he meets several people, among them Chester Centaur and Cherie Centaur and Crombie The Soldier. Of particular interest are three different women he meets: Wynne who is pretty but stupid, Dee an average girl and the sorceress Iris whose power is the creation of illusions. Wynne and Dee are actually different aspects of the same woman, Chameleon although Bink does not realize this at the time. Chameleon's intelligence and beauty vary inversely according to the time of the month and she has been unable to find a man who is willing to be with her through all 3 phases. When she meets Bink she falls in love with him and begins to follow him. Although Iris possesses magic of the same caliber as the Storm King she is barred from the throne because she is a woman. After saving Bink from an illusory trap, Iris offers him the chance to remain in Xanth as a figurehead king: Iris will use her power to make it appear as if Bink has magician caliber magic. Loyal to Xanth and realizing that he would be nothing more than a slave, Bink refuses her offer and continues on his journey. Bink finally arrives at the Good Magician's castle and fights his way past three challenges to gain an audience with him. Humfrey is able to determine that Bink possesses magician-caliber magic but is prevented from fathoming its exact nature. Realizing that some powerful force is at work, Humfrey decides to leave well enough alone and sends Bink on his way with a signed note to the King saying that Bink does indeed possess magic. Bink returns to the North Village to plead his case before the King but is exiled anyway due to the King's senility and jealousy of Humfrey. Bink heads north to the isthmus that connects Xanth to Mundania and is allowed to pass through the magical shield that separates the two regions. The shield was designed to kill any life form, magical or not, that passes through it. As soon as he leaves Xanth he is captured by the Evil Magician Trent the Transformer, who was exiled 20 years ago for attempting to overthrow the Storm King. Trent is trying to invade Xanth with his Mundane army to usurp the throne but has always been prevented from entering by the magical shield that Bink just passed through. He believes that Bink can help him get into Xanth by providing information on the location of the source of the magical barrier (the Shieldstone), and attempts to coerce this information from him. Trent has prepared a special elixir that can temporarily nullify magic and has a special catapult that can hurl this elixir into the land of Xanth. All that Trent needs now are the exact coordinates of the Shieldstone. Bink refuses to cooperate and is thrown into a pit with a woman from Xanth that has followed him there named Fanchon. In actuality this is Chameleon in the last of her guises, hideously ugly and extremely intelligent, but Bink does not know this yet. Chameleon had gone to see the Good Magician Humfrey immediately after Bink, and Humfrey told her that if she went to Mundania and stayed there long enough, she would eventually settle permanently into her Dee phase (which possesses average beauty and average intelligence). Hearing that Bink was to be exiled, Chameleon followed him in the hope of making a life with him in Mundania, free of her curse. Bink and Fanchon escape to the sea but are pursued by Trent's forces. Eventually, Bink, Trent, and Fanchon are all swept into Xanth via a whirlpool but Trent's forces are left behind. Washing up on a beach far from any human settlement the trio declare a truce until they can safely make their way out of the wilderness. While traveling, the group discovers Castle Roogna, a castle built 800 years ago by one of the early Kings of Xanth but abandoned 400 years later. Here, Bink finally learns that Fanchon, Wynne, and Dee are all the same person but resists the temptation to take advantage of her while she is in her stupid/beautiful phase. Castle Roogna is haunted by relatively benign ghosts and zombies and is an area of heightened magical power. The castle in fact seems to possess some form of awareness and had actually used its control of the surrounding area to herd the trio onto its grounds. It had detected the presence of two magician-caliber talents in the group (Bink and Trent) and lured them there in the hopes that one of them could become king and restore the castle to its former glory. Over the course of the journey the trio has gotten to know each other quite well and Bink has discovered that he actually likes the evil magician, who has matured considerably during his exile. Trent now has a strict sense of honor and refuses to renege on his word; nevertheless, he still wants the throne and is determined to do anything necessary to attain it. Trent promised Castle Roogna that he would return when he was King to restore the place to glory, so the castle finally allowed the trio to leave. The group eventually exits the wilderness, but is then discovered by the sorceress Iris. Iris offers to marry Trent and help him become King and Trent accepts her offer. Bink, who still refuses to betray Xanth, challenges Trent to a duel: if Bink loses then he will stay out of Trent's way, but if he wins, then Trent will cease his efforts to gain the throne. Fearing that this was his last chance to do so, Bink declares his love for Chameleon and the two of them make love in the forest. But the duel has already started, and Iris tells Trent of their location. Trent finds them both soon thereafter, but then calls for a restart of the duel since Iris had interfered. In the course of the next duel Trent deduces Bink's unknown talent: he cannot be harmed by magic. Because Bink is still vulnerable to non-magical harm his talent has gone to great lengths to conceal itself over the years, making it appear he is only saved from magical harm by a series of coincidences. Trent is an excellent swordsman, however, and manages to defeat Bink without magic. He is about to kill Bink when Chameleon dives in front of the sword. She is seriously wounded and Bink launches a counterattack against Trent, but to no avail. Trent cannot bring himself to kill Bink, however, and instead offers to help save Chameleon. Trent transforms Bink into a bird so that he can fly to Good Magician Humfrey's castle and retrieve a healing elixir. Bink manages to obtain healing elixir from Humfrey, but the Good Magician is obligated to inform the authorities of Trent's return. Upon arriving at the royal palace, they discover that the Storm King has died. All the officials of Xanth, including the Council of Elders (which includes Bink's father Roland), are then dispatched to deal with Trent. The Council captures Trent and heals Chameleon, and then put Trent on trial for violating his sentence of exile. The Council reviews Trent's recent actions using scrying magic, and at first Bink is worried that they will execute him for his scheming to take the throne. But the Council is moved by Trent's displays of honor and mercy, and they decide that he will be spared execution on two conditions: 1) he must marry, and 2) he must accept the kingship of Xanth. The Storm King was allowed to remain King well past his prime because there was no suitable successor and by forcing Trent to marry (and presumably produce magician-caliber offspring), the Council hopes to prevent that state of affairs from occurring again. Trent's first act as King is to deactivate the magical barrier between Xanth and Mundania and to abolish the requirement that all human citizens of Xanth must prove that they have a magical talent. To note, Trent had discovered that the magical shield was causing harm to the humans in Xanth because, over time, the magic of Xanth changed humans into other creatures, and the only way to prevent that was to allow periodic inflows of pure blood humans from Mundania. Trent's army, who consisted of Mundanes who wished to immigrate to Xanth, begin to settle peacefully in various regions of the magical land. Bink then breaks up with Sabrina (who he had discovered was not right for him anyway) and marries Chameleon, as he has realised that he wants "variety" in a girl, and only Chameleon with her never-ending change in looks and intelligence will give him what his heart desires. Trent and Iris take up residence in Castle Roogna and set to work making it the new centre of government. Bink and Chameleon obtain a cottage just outside the Castle and Bink is given the title of Official Researcher of Xanth. King Trent gives Bink his first task: to discover the source of magic in Xanth, setting up the plot for the next book, The Source of Magic.
4118394	/m/0bk2vq	Centaur Aisle	Piers Anthony	1982-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Xanth's King Trent has left for drear Mundania, leaving Dor to practice governing the magical kingdom of Xanth. Dor's magical talent is communication with the inanimate which for information gathering is very helpful, but for dealing with citizens needing discipline it leaves room for improvement. But when Trent goes to establish trade routes with Mundania, Dor and his friends (a golem named Grundy, the centaur Chet, Smash the ogre, and Dor's love interest Irene) must keep the land in line. However, former King Trent does not return after the week he was supposed to. After three weeks, Dor gathers his gang and decides to go on a quest to help rescue Trent from what is surely a horrible fate of imprisonment in non-magic Mundania. This mission leads them to Centaur Isle, to find an unknown Centaur Magician. Centaurs are very negative on the concept of having magical talents, so when they find Arnolde the Centaur and discover his talent, he is exiled and willing to help them rescue Trent. Arnolde's talent is a magical aisle, creating a field of magic around him that allows anyone to use magic in Mundania. The whole gang (minus Chet) travel by rainbow north to Mundania. While in Mundania, they find a scholar named Ichabod. From him, they learn that they are in the wrong time strand and must go back to Xanth and re-cross the border. Eventually Dor and his friends find the correct time and go to the castle where they think Trent and his wife Iris were last. After a nice dinner and a little betrayal, they get captured and locked in a dungeon. After escaping, they smash down a couple walls to find Trent and his new friend King Omen, the proper king of this area. The group (plus the new additions) struggle to get Omen into his rightful throne. After exchanging farewells, they decide to return to Xanth with King Trent and Queen Iris. pl:Przesmyk centaura
4118403	/m/0bk2w1	Ogre, Ogre	Piers Anthony	1982-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book starts off with Tandy the half-nymph being harassed by the nasty demon Fiant while trying to sleep. She has the talent of throwing tantrums that can stun or destroy, but her talent is ineffective against the demon, so she decides to visit her father Crombie at Castle Roogna to see if he can help. Having no means of travel, however, she decides to catch a night mare to take her there. She succeeds, at the price of being battered, except the mare takes her to the Good Magician's castle instead, where she is admitted without challenges due to the difficulties she went through riding the mare. Cut to a year later, we find Smash the half-ogre traveling to the Good Magician Humfrey seeking to solve a vague dissatisfaction about himself. Using the best of his ogre qualities (strength and naive stupidity), plus his clumsy knowledge of human customs, as well as the occasional bright flash of human intelligence, he navigates his way into the Magician's castle passing various obstacles such as a basilisk and a pond of firewater. Once Smash gains entrance, though, he forgets all about his question. Magician Humphrey gives him an answer anyway, telling him to travel to the Ancestral Ogres and take Tandy with him, and guard her. On their travels, Smash and Tandy blunder into an Eye Queue vine, which embeds itself into Smash's head and provides him with human intelligence so he converses in the human way instead of spouting simple ogre rhymes. He soon discovers that the vine also helps give him good ideas, as not all the problems he and Tandy encounter can be bashed to pieces. After the vine, they encounter an assortment of females of various magical races each needing to fulfill a personal quest...a dryad who needs to protect her tree from woodsmen, wingless fairy John looking for her similarly incorrectly named counterpart to switch back, Centaur Chem, a longtime friend with the talent of magic mapping who wants to chart more of Xanth, Blythe Brassie who wants to leave her hypnogourd homeworld to come to the real Xanth, a mermaid looking for love, and others. Unfortunately also during their travels, Tandy gets trapped in the hypnogourd world and has her soul wrenched from her, though she is later freed by the others. Smash enters back into the gourd and forages a deal with the world spokesperson (in the form of a coffin): Smash will give his soul to the gourd under a 90-day lien in exchange for Tandy's soul. He then has 90 days to find the dread Night Stallion, ruler of the gourd world, and negotiate to void the lien. As the travels continue, each female does find what she is looking for, eventually, although Smash's strength saps out of him a little at a time as his soul is gradually recalled as the days pass. Smash makes periodic forays into the gourd world, with the help of a magical and infinite ball of string to mark his way, in search of the Night Stallion, overcoming various world challenges, most of which require both his ogre strength and human intelligence to solve. Finally, when only Chem and Tandy are left with Smash, they come upon the dread Elements region and face a flood in the water region that washes off the Eye Queue vine from Smash's head, right before they enter the most dangerous Void region. As they enter the void, they come to realize that they are trapped and must find a way to get out, which they can't do without Smash's useful intelligence. Smash, using the Void's properties, manages to get his illusion of intelligence back (though at this point it is no longer illusory), and enter the gourd one last time, where he finally finds the Night Stallion and faces new challenges that require all his newfound human intelligence as well as his ogre strength and stubbornness to overcome. Once Smash conquers the Night Stallion's challenges and wins back his soul, he realizes his human side and falls in love with Tandy, putting his own soul in jeopardy again in order to save her, but through another deal ends up with only half a soul and half his ogre strength. He finally does arrive at the home of the Ancestral Ogres but notes how stupid and ugly they really are and decides he does not want to stay with them, though when they threaten Tandy he commits to fighting to save her. After Tandy sacrifices her own soul mid-battle to save Smash (giving him full ogre strength) so he can defeat the ancestral ogres, Smash finally comes to true terms with his human side, even transforming himself into a human so he can make love to Tandy properly. As Smash and Tandy journey home, they again run into Demon Fiant. As a man, Smash is no match for the demon, but manages to transform back to ogre form and is able to defeat Fiant permanently, though again his human intelligence is needed to win this battle. ru:Огр! Огр! (книга)
4118412	/m/0bk2wd	Dragon on a Pedestal	Piers Anthony	1983-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When the book begins, the Good Magician Humfrey, and his son Hugo, run into the Gap dragon while filling a vial with water from the Fountain of Youth. Humpfrey tells Hugo to douse the dragon with the water, and Hugo does so but accidentally sprays Humpfrey as well. Humpfrey regresses to the age of a baby, as does the dragon. Queen Irene realizes Princess Ivy has wandered off, and begins a quest to find her daughter. Luckily, Ivy comes across Humfrey's 8-year-old son Hugo, and - due to her as-of-yet unknown talent of enhancement - Hugo temporarily becomes smarter, braver, and stronger when she tells him he is. Ivy also manages to enhance the positive qualities of the Gap Dragon, and names him Stanley Steamer. In Castle Roogna, Dor accidentally put a forget spell on the Gap Chasm (the huge rift that splits Xanth in two), while trying to escape a horde of harpies and goblins, with the result being that everyone forgot the Gap Chasm existed, with the exception of the people who live near it. In this book, the forget spell is beginning to disintegrate into "forget whorls" spinning off into the nearby forest (due to the Time Of No Magic caused when Bink released the Deamon X(A/N)th), causing confusion and memory loss. Ivy ends up walking through a forget whirl and it causes her to forget how to get home. Near the end of the novel, all the characters join forces against a swarm of wiggles, which threaten the welfare of Xanth by burrowing through anything and everything in their path. pl:Smok na piedestale
4118475	/m/0bk2z6	Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn	Piers Anthony	1984-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Princess Ivy, who is now a 5 year old in this book, asks one of Castle Roogna's ghosts to tell her how he became a ghost. Ivy uses her talent of enhancement - and some caustic Crewel Lye to strip off centuries of accrued grime - to improve the range and clarity of Castle Roogna's magical Tapestry. The Tapestry is a woven hanging which allows anyone to view recent or historical events (although it cannot violate the Adult Conspiracy, nor does it include sound). The ghost, known as Jordan the Barbarian when he was alive 400 years ago, begins his story by recounting how he set off on an adventure with his horse Pook. Jordan had the magical talent of self-healing — which came in handy as he was cut, stabbed, and dismembered during his travels. In one case, a woman finds him gravely injured and hauls him to her cottage, not knowing of his talent. Jordan ends up falling in love with this woman, Threnody. Unfortunately, the evil magician Yin-Yang had already claimed Threnody to be his wife, and was willing to do anything to have her. Intending to keep Jordan safe from Yin-Yang, Threnody makes it appear that she has betrayed Jordan. She cuts him into pieces and buries each piece in a different remote location — knowing that if the pieces were reattached, he would be able to heal himself. However, she is never able to break free of Yin-Yang long enough to collect Jordan's dismembered body and eventually kills herself. After hearing Jordan's story, Ivy decides to gather his body parts herself. Once placed near each other, the pieces mend together and cover back up with muscle and skin (greatly sped up due to Ivy's enhancement). Jordan is alive again — but he wants his new love, the ghost Renee, to be brought to life again too. When Ivy and Jordan use a regenerating potion on Renee's remains (after accidentally teleporting Stanley Steamer the baby Gap Dragon away), Threnody emerges from her grave. Threnody explains that her "cruel lie" had been done to protect Jordan. After some time, he forgives her and they get married. pl:Okrutne kłamstwo
4118477	/m/0bk2zx	Golem in the Gears	Piers Anthony	1986-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 pl:Zakochany golem
4118482	/m/0bk2_l	Vale of the Vole	Piers Anthony	1987-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On his way to the Good Magician's castle, Esk meets Chex, the winged centaur daughter of Xap Hippogryph and Chem Centaur. Despite having wings, Chex is unable to fly due to her solid equine weight; she is going to ask Humfrey how she can fly. Later, the two of them meet up with Volney Vole, who always replaces S's with V's during speech. Volney has a demon problem of his own, as his home by the Kiss-Me River has become unbearably infested with bugs ever since the demons decided to straighten out the river's undulating curves. When they discover the Good Magician is missing, they decide to look for him. On the way, they go through a Hypnogourd, where bad dreams are manufactured. Esk meets Bria Brassie, a heavy brass woman, and they fall in love. The team discovers that Chex can make items temporarily light when she flicks them with her tail, which provides a solution to her problem of how to fly. pl:Dolina kopaczy
4118485	/m/0bk30n	Heaven Cent	Piers Anthony	1988-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with Prince Dolph lying in his sister, Ivy's, bed watching her magical tapestry which shows images from the past and present of Xanth. Dolph is the son of King Dor and Queen Irene, and he has the powerful talent of being able to shapeshift, giving him the power to change into any animal he chooses. While watching the images of the magical tapestry Dolph begins to think about the disappearance of the Good Magician Humphrey. Dolph gets so enraptured with the thought of finding the Magician that he eventually asks his father and mother permission to set out on a quest to find the answers. Queen Irene decides that Dolph is at a fine age to set out for a quest, but as long as he takes with him an adult companion. After some debate and arguing over who should accompany Dolph, Dolph suggests that Marrow Bones accompany him. Marrow is a walking, talking skeleton who has the ability to transform his skeletal body into many shapes as long as Dolph gives him a good kick in the tail bone first. Once Dolph and Marrow set out on their journey they realize their first stop must be at the Good Magician Humphrey's castle to investigate for any clues to his disappearance. Once in the castle Dolph and Marrow find a hidden room that can only be viewed through a clear rock from above. In the hidden room is a message that reads "Skeleton Key to Heaven Cent". Marrow distinguishes that there is a pun in the message, and a Skeleton Key is really an island made of coral. So Dolph and Marrow set out to find the isle and find the Heaven Cent to bring back the Good Magician Humphrey. Throughout Dolph and Marrow's adventures through the land of Xanth they encounter many different creatures. There are the always rhyming ogres, bone hungry and smelly harpies, the cruel merwomen, and many others. One of the major creatures that come into play in the book are the nagas. The nagas are a snake-human people who have the power to transform into either a full snake, full human, or mixed form. Dolph and Marrow encounter the nagas when trying to get through a goblin kingdom where the goblins are holding Nada, the naga princess, prisoner. After rescuing Nada, Dolph and Marrow return to the naga kingdom, where Dolph, even though too young, becomes unintentionally betrothed to Nada through a naga tradition. Nada joins Dolph and Marrow on their quest to find the Heaven Cent, and their romantic relationship blossoms until Nada reveals to Dolph that she is actually many years older than he is. Although Dolph is taken aback by this information, his love for Nada does not waver and he keeps the betrothal intact. When Dolph, Marrow, and Nada finally find the right island where the Heaven Cent is supposed to be they encounter a magical castle where a maiden has been under a magical sleep for 900 years of a 1000 year sentence. The sleeping maiden is named Electra, and she was put under the sleeping spell because 900 years ago she accidentally activated the Heaven Cent. Dolph kisses the sleeping Electra and awakens her, but to Dolph's surprise Electra cannot survive unless she marries the person who broke the spell on her. Once the entire party returns to Castle Roogna Dolph is left with the decision about what to do with his two betrothed women. After much debate with both women and the King and Queen, Dolph asks for the test of the roses. Dolph chooses the yellow rose for Electra showing friendship and the red rose for Nada representing love. Electra is the first of the betrothed to attempt the test and she quickly chooses the red rose for Dolph representing love. Nada goes second and tries to pick the red rose, but she cannot because she does not truly love him and she is pricked by a rose. Nada then tries to pick a black rose and commit suicide, but Dolph jumps over to her and stops her. Dolph explains that he loves Nada even though the love is not returned. In the end Dolph remains betrothed to each girl even though the King and Queen do not believe in it, but Dolph and the girls believe that, in the next seven years before Dolph can marry, they will work out all the problems.
4118487	/m/0bk30_	Man from Mundania	Piers Anthony	1989-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Princess Ivy sets off with her younger brother's co-fiancees Nada Naga and Electra to retrieve the magic mirror that had been stolen by the evil machine Com-Pewter, in preparation for her quest to find Good Magician Humfrey. After besting Com-Pewter in a battle of wits, Ivy uses the charged-up Heaven Cent to transport her to Humfrey's location. Meanwhile in Mundania, an average college boy named Grey Murphy runs a computer program that claims that it will help him meet women. Sure enough, after installing the "Worm" program, Grey meets a series of appropriately-named girls who move into the neighboring apartment, starting with Agenda and moving on through Dyslexia and Euphoria. When Ivy arrives, disorientated to find herself in Mundania, Grey starts to fall for her despite her claims that she is a princess from a fantasy world called Xanth. When Ivy wants to go home, Grey agrees to go with her, even though he doesn't believe that Xanth exists. Even when they've entered Xanth, Grey finds a scientific basis for the fantastical things he sees. His feelings for Ivy grow stronger, although Ivy knows that her regal parents won't allow her to marry a non-magician. The two of them take a trip through the Hypnogourd, where bad dreams are manufactured. After exiting the gourd, Grey, still skeptical of Xanth's magic, turns the Maenads' wine spring into water, Nada realizes his talent: magic nullification - which is a magician-caliber talent. It emerges that Grey is the son of Evil Magician Murphy and Vadne, both banished from Xanth in the book Castle Roogna, although they had never revealed their origins to him.
4118490	/m/0bk31b	Isle of View	Piers Anthony	1990-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins in mid-crisis: Che Centaur has been foalnapped. Jenny Elf, wandering in a myopic haze through the World of Two Moons with her cat Sammy, accidentally stumbles through a giant hole between dimensions and ends up in Xanth. Jenny eventually discovers Che being held hostage by a group of goblins, and her attempt to rescue him results in them both being captured by another band of goblins. Nada Naga, Electra, and the original goblin gang work together and succeed in retrieving Che, Jenny, and Sammy from the new goblin kidnappers. Nada and Electra play a game of chance with the goblins to determine to whom Che goes; the goblins win. The four goblins, Che, Jenny, and Sammy go back to Goblin Mountain where Che is to live. There, Che and Jenny learn why the goblins had kidnapped Che in the first place: they wanted him to be the tutor and companion to Gwendolyn, a young goblin princess who was lame and mostly blind. Because the goblins only respect strength and power, Gwendolyn needed to be able to conceal her physical disabilities by riding on Che's back - otherwise she would be overthrown and killed. As Che and Jenny are getting to know Gwendolyn, Che's parents call together all the winged monsters in Xanth to start a siege on Goblin Mountain. After much chaos, it is decided that Che will return to his parents, provided that they will take care of Gwendolyn as well. Prince Dolph finally has to decide which one of his fiancees to marry: Electra or Nada.
4118507	/m/0bk32q	Demons Don't Dream	Piers Anthony	1993-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dug, a Mundane, is transported in to the magic land of Xanth when he plays a computer game introduced to him by his friend for a bet. The game consists of the player having a companion, who is usually a well known Xanth character, and being led through the magical world of Xanth, defeating challenges along the way and eventually winning the ultimate prize of a magic talent. The catch with the companions is that there is a chance that your companion is false, meaning that at the point where you might finally win, the companion will cause your ultimate downfall. The game also has a way of becoming 3D to the player, and, if the player believes in magic, eventually real. Dug, being a mundane boy of sixteen, picks Nada Naga as his partner, because of her beauty. Nada Naga begins to lead Dug in the world of Xanth, at first trying to convince him that the magical world is real, but giving up after realizing that Dug stubbornly refuses to believe in magic. Dug travels to the Isthmus village, where he learns the town is being controlled under a horrible censorship. He sets out to destroy the ship. After defeating the censorship, he is kicked out of the game twice, once only temporarily from trying to look at Nada's panties, the second time for good after being defeated by Com Pewter. He comes back to the game and picks Nada to be his partner again but fails to remember that there is a chance that Nada will be a False Companion, which she is. He again has to go through the first part of his adventure, but this time his starting point has changed to the Black Village, home to the new Black Wave. Sherlock, one of the members of the Black Wave, joins Nada and Dug on their journey. Later in Xanth he meets Kim, another Mundane playing the game. Kim is with Bubbles&mdash;a dog she found in a bubble&mdash;Sammy Cat, and Jenny Elf (her companion). While Dug was completing the first part of his adventure, Kim was having her own. She first was captured by ogres and had to play a mind game with them in order to escape. She then traveled to the Water Wing, where her and Jenny met Cyrus Merman, who is trying to find a wife. He accompanies them on their journey in hopes of finding a wife on the way. When Kim and Dug meet, Kim develops a crush on Dug, but at first Dug does not return the feeling. The two parties attempt to cross the Gap Chasm, but split up, after Dug and Kim decide to switch companions. Kim, Nada, Cyrus, and Bubbles go toward the ocean where Cyrus ends up meeting the merwoman who ends up being his wife, Merci Merwoman, Mela's daughter. Dug, Jenny, and Sherlock head on down the Gap Chasm, where Dug fights a brief battle with the Gap dragon. The teams both go on to the Good Magician's Castle by different routes.
4118509	/m/0bk331	Harpy Thyme	Piers Anthony	1994-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Gloha Goblin-Harpy is searching for love, and decides to ask the Magician Humfrey where she can find it. He tells her to ask his second son Crombie the Soldier. Gloha goes on a quest for love, accompanied by Magician Trent and Cynthia, a winged centaur filly.
4118516	/m/0bk34f	Geis of the Gargoyle	Piers Anthony	1995-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 SUMMARY: Seeking a spell that will restore the polluted river Swan Knee to a state of purity, guardian Gary Gargoyle finds himself face-to-face with the Good Magician Humfrey.
4118520	/m/0bk34s	Roc and a Hard Place	Piers Anthony	1995-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One year after the events of Geis of the Gargoyle, Demoness Metria, whilst making her husband Veleno deliriously happy, finds that the stork will not acknowledge her summons. Seeking to summon the stork, Metria (and her worser half, D. Mentia) are sent on a quest by the Good Magician Humphrey. Metria is then given a task by the Simurgh: Deliver a bag's worth of summons to their respective citizens of Xanth in order to hold a trial for Roxanne Roc. All that remains is to find out why Roxanne Roc is being held trial as Metria meets with many old Xanth characters, Grundy Golem, Sorceress Iris, Magician Trent, Gray Murphy, Jordan the Barbarian, Desiree Dryad, and many more!
4118539	/m/0bk37k	Xone of Contention	Piers Anthony	1999-10-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dug, the Mundane who had had an adventure in Xanth through the Companions of Xanth computer game, is now happily married to Kim. His friend Edsel on the other hand is on the rock with his marriage to Pia, Dug's old girlfriend, who wants a divorce. Edsel, not wanting to lose her strikes a deal with her, they take a two week vacation in Xanth, switching with Nimby and Chlorine who want to learn about Mundania, and if she doesn't change her mind, he won't fight it.
4118544	/m/0bk387	The Dastard	Piers Anthony	2000-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Becka was a crossbreed - the daughter of Draco Dragon and a lovely human woman who met, by chance, at a Love Spring. Now fourteen, Becka was beginning to wonder where in Xanth she belonged, on the ground with her mother's people or flying the skies with her father's kind. So she journeyed to the Good Magician Humfrey to discover her true purpose in life. Much to her astonishment and surprise, the Magician told her that a great Destiny awaited her, one that would affect the future of all of Xanth. To unravel the mystery of her Fate, Becka did as Humfrey bade her: traveling on foot to the statue of the dreaded Sea Hag to meet the man who would be waiting for her there, and offering him her assistance. But to her dismay, Becka discovered that the one who awaited her there was a dangerous, despicable libertine who called himself the Dastard. Once a common country boy, the Dastard had sold his soul to a detestable demon in exchange for the power to erase events and rewrite history to suit his own devious ends. Lacking a conscience and filled with craven self-loathing, he roamed the width and breadth of Xanth in search of anyone happier than he was. Once he found them, he used his malevolent talent to "unhappen" their happiness so that others could share in his misery. Determined to honor her vow but despairing of her ability to help this man and still preserve her virtue, Becka set out on a wide and perilous journey that led from the mists on Xanth's distant past to the tiny planetoid of Ptero, where everyone in Xanth who might have been actually existed. There she discovered a magic that was far stronger than the Dastard's: the awesome power of the human heart.
4118548	/m/0bk38l	Swell Foop	Piers Anthony	2001-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cynthia Centaur and her companions must find the Six Rings of Xanth (Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Void, and the Idea) in order find the Swell Foop and use it to rescue the Demon E(A/R)th from the thrall of the Demoness Fornax.
4118553	/m/0bk39z	Cube Route	Piers Anthony	2003-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the magical land of Xanth, wishes are far more than mere words. So when a Plain Jane called Cube whispers a wistful wish to be beautiful, she finds herself leading a company of colorful companions on a search for the mysterious Cube Route--a perilous path that leads to danger, adventure, and perhaps her heart's desire as well. This curious quest takes them all over Xanth, into the mythical realm of Phaze, and even to our own world, where Cube rescues a beautiful human woman from a very ugly situation, ending at last in a mysterious Counter-Xanth where things can be transformed into their opposites in the wink of an eye.
4118557	/m/0bk3b9	Currant Events	Piers Anthony	2004-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The plot follows Clio the Muse of History as she finally leaves the mountain where she and her sisters live, to find the currant that can clarify her volume of Xanth's history.
4118558	/m/0bk3bn	Stork Naked	Piers Anthony	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Surprise summons the stork with Umlaut, only to discover with dismay that the stork refuses to deliver her baby due to a clerical error. Off on an adventure to find her child, she seeks the aid of Pyra, who wields a tool that can find, and enter, alternate realities. As Surprise and her entourage search for the correct world, the sinister mechanisms behind the whole adventure is revealed.
4118565	/m/0bk3cb	Air Apparent	Piers Anthony	2007-10-16	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Piers Anthony has stated that the book is set as a murder mystery. It has, typical for Xanth books, many puns. Readers also get a better understanding of the nature of Ida's moons. Air Apparent includes a character known as a Debra who is a 13-year-old girl who is constantly pressured to take off her bra. To De-Bra so to speak. She is based on a real girl. Debra Kawaguchi was a huge fan of the Xanth series and after her death in 2004, her father wrote Piers and asked him to include Debra in his cast of characters. After Piers explained to Debra's father that the only way he could think to include Debra in the book was through the De-Bra-ing pun, Mr. Kawaguchi agreed that Debra would have been delighted to be a character in Xanth and would have loved the pun. Piers mentions Mr. Kawaguchi in the author notes as the inspiration for Debra. Debra is depicted on the front cover of the hardback book as a flying centaur. Review "The Xanth books constitute Anthony's longest and most successful series . . . . They are intended to be kind-spirited, fun reading, a series of wondrous beasts and beings, and most of all, an endless succession of outrageous puns"--Lee Killough, Wichita Eagle
4119421	/m/0bk4pf	The Fall of the King				 Begins at around 1497 and ends with the defeat of the Danish army at Dithmarschen in 1500. Takes place twenty years later, from the Stockholm Bloodbath in 1520 to the fall of the king in 1523. The third and last part opens twelve years after, at the time of the Count's Feud in 1536, and ends at Mikkel's death.
4120326	/m/0bk5wj	The Island	Peter Benchley		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Blair Maynard, a divorced journalist in New York City, decides to write a story about the unexplained disappearance of yachts and other small boats in the Caribbean, hoping to debunk theories about the Bermuda Triangle. He has weekend custody of his preteen son Justin, and decides to mix a vacation with work, taking his son along. They fly from Miami to the Turks and Caicos island chain but, while on fishing trip, are captured by a band of pirates. The pirates have, amazingly, remained undetected since the establishment of their pirate enclave by Jean-David Nau, the notorious buccaneer L'Olonnais, in 1671 (in reality, however, L'Olonnais is known to have died four years earlier). The pirates have a constitution of sorts, called the Covenant, and have a cruel but workable society. They raise any children they capture to ensure the survival of the colony, but kill anyone over the age of thirteen. In short order, Justin is virtually brainwashed and groomed to lead the pirate band, much to Maynard's horror. Maynard tries repeatedly to escape, and finally attracts the attention of the passing United States Coast Guard cutter New Hope. The pirates attack and capture it, but Maynard is able to use a machine gun aboard to kill most of the pirates and to win Justin's and his own freedom.
4123854	/m/0bkbp3	The Shape of Things to Come	H. G. Wells	1933-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As a frame story, Wells claims that the book is his edited version of notes written by an eminent diplomat, Dr. Philip Raven, who had been having dream visions of a history textbook published in 2106, and wrote down what he could remember of it. It is split into five separate sections or "books": #Today And Tomorrow: The Age of Frustration Dawns - The history of the world up to 1933. #The Days After Tomorrow: The Age of Frustration - 1933-1960. #The World Renascence: The Birth of the Modern State - 1960-1978. #The Modern State Militant - 1978-2059. #The Modern State in Control of Life - 2059 to New Year's Day 2106. Wells predicted a Second World War breaking out with a European conflagration from the flashpoint of a violent clash between Germans and Poles at Danzig. Wells set the date for this as January 1940. Poland proves the military match of Nazi Germany and engages in an inconclusive war lasting ten years. More countries are eventually dragged into the fighting, France and the Soviet Union are only marginally involved, Britain remains neutral, the US fights inconclusively with Japan. The war drags on until 1950 and ends with no victor but total exhaustion, collapse and disintegration of all fighting states (and also of the neutral countries, equally affected by the deepening economic crisis). Europe and the whole world descend into chaos: nearly all central governments break down, and a devastating plague in 1956-57 kills a large part of humanity and almost destroys civilization. Wells then envisages a benevolent dictatorship&mdash;'The Dictatorship of the Air' (a term likely modelled on 'The Dictatorship of the proletariat' and concept similar to Kipling's Aerial Board of Control )&mdash;arising from the controllers of the world's surviving transportation systems (the only people with global power). This dictatorship promotes science, enforces Basic English as a global lingua franca, and eradicates all religion, setting the world on the route to a peaceful utopia. When the dictatorship chooses to murder a subject, the condemned person is given a chance to take a poison tablet. Eventually, after a century of reshaping humanity, the dictatorship is overthrown in a completely bloodless coup, the former rulers are sent into a very honourable retirement, and the world state "withers away" (as was predicted by Friedrich Engels in his 1877 work Anti-Duhring). The last part of the book is a detailed description of the Utopian world which emerges, in some ways reminiscent of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. The ultimate aim of this utopian world is to produce a world society composed entirely of polymaths, each and every one of its members the intellectual equal of the greatest geniuses of the past. As noted by Neville, while The Shape of Things to Come was written as a future history, seen in retrospect it can be considered as an alternate history diverging from ours in late 1933 or early 1934, the Point of divergence being U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's failure to implement the New Deal and revive the US economy (and also Adolf Hitler's failure to revive the German economy by re-armament). Instead, the worldwide economic crisis continues for three decades, concurrently with the war. The war is prosecuted by countries already on the verge of collapse and ends, not with any side's victory, but with universal collapse and disintegration (including non-combatant countries). There follows the complete collapse of capitalism and the emergence of the above-mentioned new order. The book displays one of the earliest uses of the C.E. (Christian Era or Common Era) calendar abbreviation, which was used by Wells in lieu of the traditional A.D. (Latin Anno Domini).
4124568	/m/0bkdwj	Sister of the Bride	Beverly Cleary	1963	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot revolves around sixteen-year-old Barbara MacLane, a girl grappling with disappointing romantic prospects, her worries about not being accepted into the University of California, Berkeley, and the fact that she will never catch up to her sister, Rosemary, who is two years older (and a student at Berkeley). Barbara's feeling of being left in the dust by her sister only intensifies when Rosemary calls home and announces quite suddenly that she is getting married, to her college sweetheart Greg. Although this news comes as an unexpected and less-than-pleasant shock to their parents, Barbara becomes enthralled with the romantic details of the wedding, and promptly decides that if she is to be caught up to Rosemary in two years, she needs to step up her search for a boyfriend. Her two potential prospects are Tootie Bodger (Robin to his folks), a tall and rather gloomy trombone player who is more fond of Barbara than she is of him, and Bill Cunningham, a handsome classmate with a Vespa whom Barbara woos with homemade cookies (this somewhat misfires, as he comes to think of her as the "domestic" type and tries to get her to mend a shirt he ripped). Tootie is presented as plodding yet thoughtful, while Bill is conversely dashing but thoughtless. However, as the stresses of Rosemary's wedding begin to pile up (tension between the lower-middle-class MacLanes and Greg's wealthy parents; the cost of the wedding and the short time frame granted to plan it in; and the sacrifices Rosemary and Greg must make, such as becoming landlords of a dumpy tenement to save on rent), Barbara begins to think that maybe she's not ready to live the life of a serious adult just yet. At Rosemary's wedding, the sisters' elderly grandmother offers Barbara a bit of advice: "Have a good time while you are young," which Barbara apparently means to follow, focusing less on finding a special sweetheart and more on enjoying socializing with a variety of company and friends.
4124738	/m/0bkf3z	The Book and the Sword	Louis Cha	1995-02-08	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Red Flower Society is a secret society that aims to overthrow the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty and restore Han Chinese rule in China. The society is led by a total of fifteen leaders with Chen Jialuo as chief. The fourth leader Wen Tailai is ambushed by a group of soldiers and arrested on the Qianlong Emperor's order because he knows a secret about Qianlong's birth and the emperor wants to silence him. The story's development is mostly based on the society's repeated attempts to rescue Wen Tailai. The heroes encounter some Islamic tribesmen, who are pursuing a convoy of hired escorts, who have robbed them of their holy artefact, a Quran. Chen Jialuo aids them in defeating the mercenaries and recovers the holy book. He earns the respect and admiration of Huoqingtong, the daughter of the tribe's leader. Throughout the story, some of the heroes eventually find their rights after braving danger together. The couples Xu Tianhong and Zhou Qi, Yu Yutong and Li Yuanzhi, are married after two lengthy subplots. Chen Jialuo and the heroes follow the trail of the convoy escorting Wen Tailai and arrive in Hangzhou. There, Chen Jialuo coincidentally meets the Qianlong Emperor, who is disguised as a rich man, and they strike up a friendship. However later when they discover each others' true identities, they become wary and suspicious. Qianlong's best warriors are defeated by the society's leaders in a martial arts contest and the emperor feels humiliated. He wants to summon his army to eradicate the society, but refrains from doing so as he is aware of their strong influence and connections in Hangzhou. When Chen Jialuo finally rescues Wen Tailai, he is shocked to learn that the Qianlong Emperor is not a Manchu, but in fact, a Han Chinese. Even more shockingly, Wen reveals that Qianlong is actually Chen's older brother, who was replaced at birth with the Yongzheng Emperor's daughter. Chen Jialuo and the heroes take Qianlong hostage and try to persuade him to acknowledge his ethnicity. They suggest that he use his authority to drive the Manchus out of the Central Plains and assure him that he will still remain as emperor after that. Qianlong reluctantly agrees and takes an oath of alliance with the heroes. At the same time, the Qing army invades northwestern China, where the Islamic tribe lives, and Chen Jialuo travels there to help his friends. He meets Huoqingtong again and her younger sister, Kasili (Princess Fragrance). Chen falls in love with Kasili and finds himself entangled in a love triangle, because Huoqingtong also has romantic feelings for him. The Islamic tribe is eventually annihilated by the Qing army and Kasili is captured and brought back to the capital Beijing. The Qianlong Emperor is attracted to Kasili's beauty and tries to force her to become his concubine but she refuses. Chen Jialuo infiltrates the palace to meet Qianlong and remind him about their pact, whilst affirming that he will persuade Kasili to marry the emperor. Kasili later discovers that Qianlong has broken his promise and is secretly plotting to destroy the Red Flower Society, so she commits suicide to warn Chen. The society's members are angry with the emperor for renouncing his oath and they storm the palace. Qianlong is defeated and forced to come to a truce with the heroes. Chen Jialuo and his friends then return to the western regions after paying respects at Kasili's tomb.
4125096	/m/0bkfrx	Otis Spofford	Beverly Cleary	1953	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Otis Spofford is a young boy with a promensity for causing trouble. He does not have any brothers or sisters and he lives with his mother. One the reasons why Otis likes to cause trouble is because he yearns to make life more exciting. Unfortunately, his behavior means that he does not have any close friends and his classmates are reluctant to form close bonds with him. The book is also about how Otis torments his classmate, Ellen Tebbits. She annoys him because she performs well in school and exhibits excellent behavior. Thus, Ellen is often the victim of Otis's bad behaviour. Each chapter revolves around a prank of Otis's, which often backfires. In one instance, he sabotages the class science project, which consists of feeding cafeteria food to one rat and bread and soda to another, and monitoring their growth. Otis feeds the underfed rat himself, hoping that it will get soda pop served in the cafeteria. His teacher, Mrs. Gitler, becomes wise to this and tries to get the culprit to confess. Otis opens his mouth and is stunned when Ellen steps forward. Ellen was secretly feeding the rat as well. Subsequently, it is Ellen who is allowed to take the rat home at experiment's end, much to Otis's displeasure (although she gives it to him when her mother will not allow her to keep it). Otis's pranks are typically innocuous, such as firing spitballs in class. Near the end of the book he finally "gets his comeuppance," as Mrs. Gitler has long predicted. In order to impress his classmates on a dare, he cuts off a chunk of Ellen's hair, which she had been painstakingly trying to grow "long enough for pigtails". This act turns nearly the entire class against him, and for the first time Otis does not relish the attention he receives from his actions. Otis eventually feels bad about what he did to Ellen when she bursts into tears and flees the classroom. Ellen and her best friend Austine manage an act of retribution by stealing Otis's shoes while he is skating at the pond, forcing him to walk home in his ice skates. The two girls later accost a dejected Otis on the steps of his apartment and offer him his shoes in exchange for an apology to Ellen, and a promise that he will stop pestering her. Otis concedes, but only after the girls are leaving reveals he had two fingers crossed behind his back the entire time; clearly, he means to pester Ellen for a long time to come.
4125310	/m/0bkg4r	Plan B	Chester Himes			 The story differs somewhat from the other volumes of the cycle in being less a detective story and more a surrealistic tale of a racial apocalypse in America. The story hinges on the efforts of community leader Tomsson Black to stir up racial tension in Harlem in order to force a radical change in race relations.
4125717	/m/0bkgp2	King of Shadows			{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nat Field is recruited by Arby, whose real name is Richard Babbage and is a producer intent on a reenactment of the Globe Theatre in London reproducing Shakespeare's plays the way they were 400 years ago. The company of boys, said to be the best, are members handpicked by Arby from all over America. Nat acts as an aerial sprite, Puck, from Midsummer Night's Dream. However, he suddenly falls ill and is taken to the hospital with fear of having the bubonic plague. During the night before he goes to hospital, he dreams of being tossed high above the earth and then pulled firmly back. He wakes up in a different room with a boy talking to him in a heavy Elizabethan accent. He has time traveled back 400 years, to the year 1599, when the Globe theater was first built. He meets William Shakespeare, acting with him in the play he had rehearsed for in his own time, and experiences theater as it was originally intended. He becomes a very good friend to William Shakespeare, almost like a son to him. And before he knows it, he is back in the hospital bed awake and not knowing if what has just happened is true or not. Later in the book, Gil Warmun and Rachel Levin, his actors from present time come by and try to find out who he was 400 years ago. Nat undergoes a series of interesting events that open his eyes to the world.
4129042	/m/0bkncd	Crossing the Line	Karen Traviss	2004-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The year is now 2376. Shan Frankland is trying to cope with the new changes that seem to appear every day in her body almost everyday. She turns herself into the Wess'har authorities after they discover she is infected by monitoring the human communications. Aras has already been taken into custody. Shan is taken to Wess'ej, to the city of F'nar, where she seeks out Chayyas, the head Matriarch, to ensure Aras' safety. In the confrontation, Shan uses a gun to try and intimidate Chayyas to release Aras to Shan. When this didn't work, Shan resorted to threatening with directional-blast grenade. This caused Chayyas to back down and release Aras into Shan's custody. In deferring to Shan, Chayyas lost her dominance and this made Shan the dominant Matriarch of F'nar. Shan, upon learning the significance of her actions, refuses the position and cedes her rights as head Matriarch to Mestin, even though hormonally Shan still retains that position. Lindsay Neville, meanwhile, is still being torn apart inside from her son's death. She blames Shan and is determined to get revenge. She knows she must keep this fact secret or the commander of Actaeon will not let her anywhere near their target, Shan. After discovering that Mohan Rayat is on board Actaeon and not on Thetis heading for home, she knows something is up. She goes to Actaeon's commander and learns that the whole Thetis crew was kept back just in case any of them were infected with the much coveted biotech. Lindsay also gets put in charge of being the negotiator (even though no negotiations really take place) to the Wess'har by Malcolm Okurt, commander of Actaeon. Lindsay then meets up with Adrian Bennett in one of the ship's bars, and discovers that Earth, in its desperation to get a hold of the biotech, is endeavoring to initiate a back-door mission down to Constantine to exhume the remains of her son, to see if he was contaminated. Fortunately, this never comes to pass and David's body remains left alone. Lindsay comes to realize why Shan would not give up the biotech and even starts to sympathize with her, but she is even more determined to kill Frankland. Shan and Aras are sharing each others past memories from when they exchanged genetic material when Aras infected Shan. They learn more about each other's past, about Aras' time as a Isenj POW and about Shan's time as a copper and the things she saw and did. These seem to make them grow closer and strengthen their bond. Something else that is growing stronger, because of their personal bond and their physical attraction, is their desire to copulate. Shan is having a more difficult time mentally coping with these desires. She struggles with the fact that despite what her body is telling her, her mind alternates between seeing Aras as a man and alien. She eventually chooses to accept that she herself is no longer human and gives herself to Aras. There are difficulties at first but the c'naatat sort that out eventually. Eddie Michallat is finding it difficult, impossible even, to stay an objective journalist. He learns that another ship, the Hereward has been sent to Cavanaugh's Star, with the possibility of more to come. He has an idea on how the Wess'har will react to learning this and frankly, he agrees with them. He manages to secure permission to travel to F'nar and visit the Wess'har and also Shan, though this was only possible with both Shan and Lindsay using their influence as well. Eddie is given a brief tour of F'nar and Shan and Aras' home. Eddie tells Shan about the Hereward, despite depriving himself of a story and objectivity. This prompts Shan to have a meeting with the head Matriarchs from some of the other cities of Wess'ej; Imeklit from Iussan, Hachis from Cekul'dnar, Mestin from F'nar, and Bur from Pajatis. Also in attendance were Vijissi and Bisatilissi of the Ussissi and Chayyas. The meeting was confrontational between Shan and Bisatilissi, but Shan unconsciously exerted her dominance and took control. This meeting is also the first time Shan acknowledges Aras as her jurej (male). Shan and Chayyas then meet with Eddie and Shan lets him know about The World Before; the original homeworld of the Wess'har. Those on Wess'ej are basically the tree-huggers of the World Before. Eddie is given a tour of the underground facilities where F'nar keeps their aircraft and other weapons. He is free to take as much footage as he wants and also talks to Aras about different issues off the record including c'naatat, the Bezer'ej situation and Aras' relationship to Shan. Shan holds a surprisingly quick council of war with all the head matriarchs of the different Wess'har cities and the consensus is given that they will use bioweapons designed to kill gethes (humans) on the planet Bezer'ej to keep humans off world. This causes a minor complication because of the Constantine colony already living there. It is agreed that they will be relocated to a contained environment on Wess'ej where they can rebuild. Aras has mixed feelings when he learns of the decision and finds that he is having difficulty sorting his feelings concerning human society and about Shan herself. Shan is enjoying her newfound power with c'naatat. She is learning to control some of her changes, such as giving off scent and manipulating the bioluminescence in her skin. Knowing that almost whatever she goes up against can't hurt her for long and will only strengthen her resilience by bio-modifications from her c'naatat. On Actaeon, Lindsay has come up with a plan to eliminate Shan Frankland. She has coordinated with Mohan Rayat, who it turns out is not only a pharmacologist but is also working for Earth's government and has orders to destroy c'naatat because of the threat it poses to human society, to drop down to the surface of Bezer'ej with nukes and most of the Royal Marines to destroy Christopher Island. This is supposed to be the only place where c'naatat is found in nature. Rayat also plans to get a tissue sample from Shan by any means necessary to take back to the government to be put into safe keeping but Lindsay has her other plans. She plans on destroying Shan without getting a sample. It is unclear whether or not she also plans to destroy Aras at this time. Shan tells Eddie about the bioweapons that are to be employed on Bezer'ej against humans and that they want to use them against the Isenj on Bezer'ej as well. The only requirement is they need some whole Isenj DNA. Eddie agrees to see what he can do and in a subsequent visit to Jejeno, the capital city of the Ebj landmass, he visits Ual, an Isenj leader, and manages to get some material handed to him (without Ual knowing what it would be used for). Shan and Aras have returned to Constantine to advise them of the need to relocate. They stay and personally oversee the moving process. Shan visits the Bezeri to let them know of the plan to use the bioweapons. Rayat and Lindsay and her Royal Marines, Barencoin, Qureshi, Chahal, and Bennett, drop to the surface of Bezer'ej in Once-Only suits. Suits that wrap around the individual and their gear with a firm, foam mold. It acts as a heatshield through the atmosphere and then a parachute opens to soften the landing. Upon landing, the team comes into some trouble when Lindsay finds herself still trapped in the remains of her Once-Only suit looking down the barrel of a very upset Josh Garrod. Lindsay tells him why she is there and Josh agrees that the c'naatat must be destroyed. He agrees to help her and her team to take the bombs to Christopher and leave her to her own means of finding Shan. He then takes Lindsay and Rayat to Christopher where they set 5 of the 6 bombs they brought on timers to blow up the island. Lindsay sees the beauty of the island and begins to doubt her reasoning for the destruction but not the destruction itself. Shan, in the Temporary City, received a call from Okurt offering assistance in the transfer of the Constantine colonists. Shan detects in conversation that he has another reason for calling and correctly deduces that someone made the descent to the planet. When they are not able to find Josh, Shan confronts his son and through coercion finds out who has come and what Josh has done. They find that some other colonists have captured Qureshi and Chahal. Shan learns of the bombs and has Chahal communicate with Lindsay that they will meet at Constantine. Aras goes with Qureshi to try and stop the bombs before it's too late. En route, they see the bombs go off and Aras realizes, to his horror, that the fallout of the nuclear explosion will poison the water and effect the Bezeri. Lindsay, Rayat, Bennett, and Barencoin make it to Constantine in their search of Shan. They are ambushed by Shan and Vijissi. Barencoin is wounded in the leg, Vijissi is shot and Bennett's nose is broken by a headbutt from Shan. It takes more than one clip to even slow her down but she is subdued and bound. Lindsay tells the rest of the group of her intention to kill Shan to prevent the spread of the symbiot c'naatat. Bennett forces Lindsay at gun-point to change her mind, for the time being. Aras is seeing the devastation brought about by the nuclear fallout and is enraged. The Bezeri are very sensitive to changes in the water and are already starting to die. Even as he looks out at the ocean, the lights of the bezeri are flashing in a way that can only be interpreted as screaming. Shan is taken in a shuttle up towards Wess'ej to throw off suspicion but then they turn to Actaeon. Shan knows that she must not fall into their hands and so she plans to take matters into her own. She covertly cooperates with Lindsay to be taken aft where Shan throws herself out an airlock into space. Vijissi tries to watch over her until the end and is expelled as well. Aras goes back to Constantine where the Ussissi are waiting to collect Josh if he appears. Josh makes no effort to conceal his arrival and he is escorted to Aras. The other colonists gather around to await the outcome. Josh apologizes but Aras cannot put aside the betrayal and kills Josh, after which the colonists flee. Aras then learns of the shuttle that left and that they are trying to transfer to Actaeon with a prisoner. Aras knows it is Shan and his rage increases. In space, Lindsay's shuttle is trying to connect to the Ussissi shuttle but they are denied when they are confronted but the Ussissi pilot. Lindsay is informed that the nukes used were salted weapons. She reveals that Shan and Vijissi are dead. Bennett asks the Ussissi pilot to allow him to board and be tried for their deaths. Mestin's daughter Nevyan, when she learns of Shan's death, exerts her dominance and deposes her mother as head Martriarch. She declares that the gethes need to be punished for their crimes and the World Before needs to be contacted for assistance. They send a fighter out signal to Okurt that they are responsible for the destruction and are to be destroyed themselves. The single fighter destroys Actaeon with only 3 missiles. Eddie had been on the Isenj homeworld, Umeh, in the preserve called Umeh Station that the Isenj had set aside for the humans, when Actaeon was destroyed. Actaeon was in orbit around Umeh and the pieces fell to the surface, killing thousands of Isenj. The Ussissi that were at Umeh were impressed with Eddie that he had faced them after the destruction of Christopher. They offered him transport to Wess'ej to avoid repercussions from the Isenj. He accepts their offer but knows that he needs to establish contact with Earth to let the public know that he was not on Actaeon when it blew. He needs to tell them what really happened and not let the bureaucrats make the public believe that humans did nothing wrong. Using the help of Minister Ual, he reaches the military on Earth but cannot speak to the public. He does get a message passed to his fellow reporters that clues them to the fact that the government isn't telling the right story. He then is evacuated to Wess'ej where he requests asylum and hands over the DNA sample he obtained from Ual. He is accepted to live in the Wess'har community with Aras. Also living with Aras is Ade Bennett. Bennett reveals that he was exposed to c'naatat After a few days, Aras tries to find some grenades that Shan had left behind, in order to blow himself up and end his misery. Eddie though, anticipated that this might happen and hid them from Aras. Eddie and Bennett manage to persuade Aras to go on living for Shan. Eddie also finally receives a response from Earth that he will have 1 hour on primetime to say his peace. He shows clips of the destruction on Bezer'ej, tells that it was Lindsay and Rayat who did it and even interviews Aras but doesn't even mention Shan or c'naatat. Bennett gives to Nevyan the information stored in his biotech, of his locations while in space in an effort to allow Shan's and Vijissi's bodies to be recovered. Nevyan makes it her personal goal and project to do so. Nevyan also receives word from the World Before, also known as Eqbas Vorhi to its occupants, that they will support their fellow Wess'har in fighting the gethes.
4129056	/m/0bkngm	The World Before	Karen Traviss	2005-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Bezeri are no more. The effects of the cobalt-salted nuclear weapons have had devastating effects on their population and has wiped them out completely. Aras and the rest of the Wess'Har have a strong desire to see those responsible punished. They have already destroyed the Actaeon and its crew that refused to abandon ship. Those who did are now the occupants of the habitat called Umeh Station on the planet Umeh, as it is called by the Isenj who live there. Aras is battling his conflicting loyalties and genetics. Part of him wants to blame Bennett for Shan's death as he was involved and another part recognizes that Bennett now shares genes with himself and Shan. Aras and Bennett take a trip to the transplanted colony from Constantine, now called Mar'an'cas. Aras feels the need to see the Garrod family and see to the colony's well-being. He finds, unsurprisingly, that he is no longer welcome. The admit him as they do not have the force to stop him but they make their feelings clear. Eddie Michallat is increasingly becoming more involved in the politics of the different worlds interacting. He is friends with the Isenj Minister Ual; who is finding that as he fights to preserve his world from the potential wrath of Eqbas Vorhi, so Umeh seems intent on its own destruction. He is inescapably bound to Wess'ej as tries to honor the memory of Shan Frankland and her sacrifices for everyone involved and his growing friendship with Aras, Bennett and the Wess'Har community. He still is a reporter at heart but that seems to be changing as his conscience affects his decisions for stories more and more. The information he provides now has the power to create war on Earth and the realization is sobering. Eddie decides to tell the real reasons for the destruction of Christopher, the death of Shan Frankland and also of the coming of the World Before and its possible ramifications, to the people of Earth. Wess'Har has demanded the delivery of Mohan Rayat and Lindsay Neville. Minister Ual has been told by his government that they will only do so only if the Destroyer of Mjat (name given to Aras for the destruction of the Isenj city on Bezer'ej) is turned over to them. Ual, knowing that the Wess'Har do not negotiate, has decided to oppose his government by secretly allying with Eddie and the Royal Marines at Umeh Station to capture Neville and Rayat and turn them over to the Wess'Har. He knows this will be the end of his career and possibly his life but for the sake of Umeh, he feels he must do this. The Wess'Har scouts have discovered the body of Shan Frankland. Nevyan takes a shuttle out to recover her body. To her surprise and astonishment, they discover, once her body is aboard, that Shan is still alive. She has been floating, frozen in the depths of space for months and her c'naatat has somehow kept her dormant but alive. Her body appears as a mummy; waxy and emaciated. They return to F'nar and reveal this to Bennett, Aras, Eddie, and the rest of the F'nar community. They immediately set about taking care of her to nurse her back to health. She does eventually recover enough to wake up. Meanwhile, the World Before has come. A patrol ship lands and disgorges a crew of only males. They are the first ship and advise that another will be along as well. The Wess'Har do what they can to be accommodating but Nevyan does not like the way the Eqbas males seem interested in c'naatat. Eventually the second ship from Eqbas Vorhi arrives and it is massive. The ship itself rearranges and two smaller ships split off from it; one to reconnoiter Bezer'ej and the other for Umeh. The tension on Umeh heightens with this and the Isenj try to make the Wess'Har withdraw but to no avail. Shan is filling out and getting stronger thanks to the care of Ade and Aras. She finds that she has feelings for both men and Aras, whose people practice polyandry, finds this acceptable and would like a house brother but fears that Shan will come to prefer Ade because of their shared homeworld. Ade is having a harder time contemplating a polyandric relationship but is coping as best he can. As Shan gets stronger she begins getting involved in the politics and the goings-on of F'nar. She also makes a trip to Bezer'ej to view the destruction and what the Eqbas are doing to repair the damage. While there, they discover that the blast did not destroy the c'naatat and that there are some survivors of Bezeri. The Bezeri only want to talk to Aras, though. When Aras journeys to the world, the Bezeri tell him that they want those responsible turned over to them for "balancing". Aras knows that the Bezeri would include the Royal Marines in their list of those responsible, so to protect Ade, Aras lies and says that it was just Neville and Rayat. The Bezeri also want Aras to come stay with them underwater to help them rebuild and recover what they've lost. Aras is torn by his duty to the Bezeri and his duty to stay with Shan and make her happy. The Eqbas are moving right into their roles as peacekeepers and environmental control. They advise both Earth and Umeh to prepare for their coming and the changes that will entail. In the instance of Umeh, population control and environmental cleansing—and in the case of Earth, they plan to restore the plants and animals held in the gene bank; whether Earth likes it or not. They are also cleaning up the damage on Bezer'ej in record time. On Wess'Har, one Eqbas named Shapakti, is performing miracles. He has found a way to separate c'naatat from its human host, using sample tissue from Shan, but not from its wess'har host. He also started creating a jungle habitat using DNA and genomes from the gene bank. Aras decides that he will go live with the Bezeri in spite of the pain it will cause him to be separated from Shan. Ade wants Shan to be happy and feels that he is in the way of Shan's and Aras' happiness so he decides to force Aras not to go. The solution presents itself in the form of Mohan Rayat and Lindsey Neville. Lindsey wants to redeem her self (and not die) and feels that the best way to accomplish this is to live underwater and serve the Bezeri. This would mean becoming infected with c'naatat. Ade agrees to this and infects both her and Rayat and send them to the depths with the Bezeri. Shan knows nothing of all this at this point and seems to finally accept her role as an isan to Ade and Aras in their polyandric relationship.
4131884	/m/0bkvrb	Shoeless Joe	W. P. Kinsella	1982	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ray Kinsella lives and farms in Iowa where he grows corn with his wife Annie and their five-year-old daughter Karin. Kinsella is obsessed with the beauty and history of American baseball, specifically the plight of his hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 World Series. When he hears a voice telling him to build a baseball field in the midst of his corn crop in order to give his hero a chance at redemption, he blindly follows instructions. The field becomes a conduit to the spirits of baseball legends. Soon, Kinsella is off on a cross-country trip to ease the pain of another hero, the reclusive writer J. D. Salinger, as part of a journey the Philadelphia Inquirer called "not so much about baseball as it's about dreams, magic, life, and what is quintessentially American."
4137395	/m/0bl2cf	Day Watch	Vladimir Vasilyev		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are The Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own, each owes allegiance either to The Dark - the Day Watch - or The Light - the Night Watch. (this story is told from the point of view of Alisa Donnikova) In the prologue, a woman named Natasha goes to a witch to have her cast a spell to make her husband fall back in love with her. After she strikes a deal with the witch, members of the Night Watch suddenly arrive and arrest the witch while Natasha looks on, confused. The story shifts to Alisa Donnikova, a young but powerful Dark Other, who leaves her house to attend a meeting with her comrades in the Day Watch. The team is on a mission to apprehend and recruit an uninitiated Other, the practicing Dark witch from the prologue who has so far eluded the bureaus responsible for finding and initiating unlicensed practitioners of magic. It seems a routine operation. But when they arrive, the Night Watch team has already made the arrest. A fierce battle ensues, during which Alisa almost dies. Drained of her powers, she is sent to recuperate at a youth camp near the Black Sea. There she meets Igor. The chemistry between them is instant and irresistible, and Alisa finds herself falling in love. But then comes a shattering revelation: Igor is a Light Magician. Alisa remembers him as one of those involved in the battle that left her crippled. Had they known what they were, they would have not entered their relationship. But now that they know, Igor (who reacts with rage, feeling he was tricked) challenges Alisa (who reacts with a more depressed note of sadness) to a duel. Alisa allows Igor to choose the site of the battle: off-shore, in the sea. Alisa chooses not to fight back, allowing Igor to magically push her under the water and drown her. She calls Zabulon for help but is shocked to find out Zabulon has planned her death all along. While this is going on, Makar, a boy that had become infatuated with Alisa, swims out to rescue her and also drowns. Note: The first scene of this story forms the basis for the opening of the film Night Watch. In the movie, it is Anton (not Natasha) who goes to the same witch to have her kill what he thinks is his wife's child with her adulterous lover (it turns out to actually be his own child). Both scenes play out in much the same way from there, but the arrival of the Day Watch and subsequent battle does not occur in the movie. (this story is told from the point of view of Vitaly Rogoza) A man named Vitaly Rogoza awakens while walking through a park late at night with no memory of his past or who he is. Following an internal instinct, he is able to protect himself from a werewolf and board a train to Moscow. Once in Moscow, still following instinct, he registers his presence as a Dark Other with the Day Watch and proceeds to stumble into a series of seemingly accidental encounters with the Night Watch, often resulting in a Night Watch member dying. He kills Tiger Cub in self-defense as she seeks revenge for him setting a trap that (legally) kills a Night Watch investigator trespassing in his hotel room. While this is taking place, a Day Watch splinter group named the "Regin Brothers" stages an attack on the Inquisition to steal a powerful artifact named "Fafnir's Talon". Only four Regin Brothers survive and they head to Moscow. Members of the Night Watch and the Day Watch both learn that the Regin Brothers will be landing in a plane at Moscow International Airport. At the airport, both groups set up camps; the Night Watch tries to delay the plane's landing while the Day Watch seeks to assist it. Vitaly wanders away from the main group of Day Watch agents and inadvertently stumbles upon the Regin Brothers and two powerful Night Watch members, Gesar and Svetlana. Gesar kills one of the Regin Brothers who attempts to flee, but Vitaly accidentally winds up in possession of the talon. He steals power from Svetlana and creates a portal that allows him to escape to a forest outside Moscow. After meeting up with some youths camping in the forest, Vitaly returns to Moscow. Instead of returning to the Day Watch offices with the talon, however, his instincts lead him to Maxim from the first novel, who is now a member of the Inquisition. At Maxim's behest, Vitaly relinquishes the talon. Soon thereafter, the Inquisition calls a meeting to determine what is going on and who, if anyone, should be held responsible. Anton is called to attend but Zabulon encourages him to commit a small act of "betrayal" by not going, with the promise that he will be able to live freely with Svetlana and avoid bloodshed. After Vitaly and Anton have a car accident (deliberately staged by Anton) on the way to the meeting, Svetlana concludes that Anton and Vitaly are engaged in a duel that will result in Anton's death. When Vitaly arrives before Anton at the meeting alone, she assumes the worst and strikes him with all of her considerable power, leaving her dangerously drained (like Alisa above). Vitaly absorbs Svetlana's power, although his clothes and MiniDisc player are destroyed. Anton then appears and gives Vitaly his own MiniDisc player as a replacement. The Inquisition concludes that Vitaly is a mirror and not an Other in the ordinary sense; thus he does not come under the terms of the Treaty and is free to pursue his own destiny. Vitaly was able to neutralize Svetlana by his presence and restore the balance between the Night Watch and Day Watch. Svetlana is sufficiently reduced in power that she and Anton are now theoretically able to live as equals, as Zabulon promised. Vitaly leaves the courthouse, listening to music, and dissipates into the Twilight, his purpose fulfilled. (this story is told in third-person, though the action continually switches its focus between the first novel's narrator, Anton, and a second-level Dark Other, Edgar) The third story revolves around a trial by the Inquisition to investigate the events of the first two stories. The first part of the story deals with various involved parties travelling to Prague (where the trial will be held), the second part involves the characters meeting in a number of different configurations and talking, the third part involves the trial itself. All of the surviving major characters of the first two stories are on their way to Prague, which is the new location of the Inquisition after the Regin Brothers destroyed the old one. Edgar, a medium high level operative, is going to plead the Day Watch's case. Edgar assures the 3 remaining Regin Brothers that the Day Watch will protect them. Anton is going as a prosecutor for the Night Watch. Igor is already there being put up (but not held in custody) by the Inquisition. In Prague, Anton meets an American Air Force pilot who is also a Light Mage. The pilot is proud of his work (bombing Kosovo). Anton is appalled that anyone can perform such evil acts and still align themselves with good. Anton and Edgar meet over beer and discuss dark vs. light philosophy. Edgar is clearly not a terribly enthusiastic Dark Other, but he's doing his job nevertheless. Anton then goes to visit Igor while Edgar, left to his own devices, uncovers a lot of evidence to indicate that Zabulon is setting him up to be killed in order to facilitate the resurrection of Fafnir. He's understandably frightened and angered. Meanwhile, Anton, eager to distract the suicidal Igor, gets him roaring drunk on Vodka and attempts to draw him into a strategy session to try to figure out what the Day Watch is up to, with some success. They wonder whose destiny it was that Olga changed at the end of Night Watch and here it is revealed that, though Svetlana's child—foretold by Gesar to be a girl—would always have been a powerful light Other, the changes mean that her birth has been timed to make her daughter a Light Messiah. Gesar arrives and pleads with Igor to stick around for at least another 20 years. Igor is non-committal. The next day, the trial begins. The Regin Brothers are tried first and are found guilty only of lesser crimes: though they transported Fafnir's Talon, they didn't participate in the theft. They are stripped of all but the very smallest of their magical powers and sent on their way. The focus of the trial then shifts the events of the novel's first story. A number of minor charges against Gesar and Zabulon are dismissed under technicalities. Anton accuses Zabulon of indirectly arranging the duel between Igor and Alisa and blames Zabulon for the death of Makar, the young boy who drowned trying to save Alisa. Edgar and Zabulon challenge the Night Watch operatives to present proof, but neither Anton nor Igor can do so. In order to get to the bottom of the case, the Inquisition temporarily resurrects Alisa, who implicates Zabulon in her demise, stating that Igor was not responsible for her death. Igor is cleared of all charges. However, when Alisa is sent back to the Twilight, Igor follows her, dying himself. Zabulon is ecstatic, admitting that he had indeed planned to sacrifice Alisa in order to remove Igor, saying that Igor was the only one that could have trained the upcoming Light Messiah. Since Zabulon's plan involved an even trade—Alisa for Igor—he has not violated the treaty, and the Inquisition clears him of charges. As Svetlana leaves, she tells Zabulon, "May no one ever love you." Gesar sends Anton to find her, while the rest of the individuals at the trial depart the scene. Edgar approaches a member of the Inquisition, Witezslav, who invites Edgar to "try on" an Inquisitor's robe. Edgar reluctantly takes the robe from Witezslav while mentioning that Svetlana's "curse" is pointless because Zabulon doesn't need anyone to love him anyway. Note: This story is the only one in the pentalogy without a first-person narrator.
4139603	/m/0bl5zm	A Judgement In Stone	Ruth Rendell	1977-05-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Eunice is taken on as a housekeeper by a family of four. She has kept her illiteracy a secret and is obsessed by continuing to keep it so. Unknown to her new employers, she has already murdered the father for whom she had been caring, and has falsified her references. Her inability to adapt to her place in society is masked by the cunning with which she conceals the truth about herself. Misinterpreting every act of kindness she is offered by her employers, she eventually turns on them, stealing the guns that are normally kept locked away. With the aid of a fellow social misfit, she murders the entire family. But Eunice's illiteracy prevents her from recognizing and disposing of a written clue that was left behind. Eventually a tape recording of the shooting made by one of the victims is discovered. Eunice is charged with the crime, and is mortified when her illiteracy is revealed to the world during the court proceedings.
4139669	/m/0bl61d	Make Death Love Me	Ruth Rendell	1979	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Bank manager Alan Groombridge is bored with his tedious career and dull home life; he dreams of one day stealing enough money from his employers so he can afford himself total freedom for a single year. He seizes the opportunity when the bank is robbed at gunpoint; however, the dream soon turns sour when the consequences of his reckless actions begin to take hold.
4140289	/m/0bl700	'Tis Pity She's a Whore	John Ford			 Giovanni, recently returned from university study in Bologna, has developed an incestuous passion for his sister Annabella, despite their blood relationship, and the play opens with his discussing this ethical dilemma with Friar Bonaventura. Bonaventura tries to convince Giovanni that his desires are evil despite Giovanni's passionate reasoning, and eventually persuades him to try to rid himself of his feelings through repentance. Annabella, meanwhile, is being approached by a number of suitors, including Bergetto, Grimaldi and Soranzo. She is not interested in any of them, however, and when Giovanni finally tells her how he feels (obviously having failed in his attempts to repent), she requites his love immediately. Annabella's tutoress Putana encourages the relationship. The siblings consummate their relationship. Hippolita, a past lover of Soranzo, verbally attacks him, furious with him for letting her send her husband Richardetto on a dangerous journey she believed would result in his death so that they could be together, then declining his vows and abandoning her. Soranzo leaves and his servant Vasques promises to help Hippolita get revenge on Soranzo, and the pair agree to marry after they murder him. However, Richardetto is not dead but also in Parma with niece Philotis, and is also desperate for revenge against Soranzo. He convinces Grimaldi that in order to win Annabella, he should stab Soranzo (his main competition) with a poisoned sword. Unfortunately, Bergetto and Philotis, now betrothed, are planning to marry secretly in the place Richardetto orders Grimaldi to wait, and Grimaldi mistakenly stabs and kills Bergetto instead, leaving Philotis, Poggio and Donado distraught. Annabella resigns herself to marrying Soranzo, knowing she has to choose someone and it can not be her brother. She subsequently falls ill and it is revealed that she is pregnant. Friar Bonaventura then convinces her to marry Soranzo before her pregnancy becomes apparent. Meanwhile Donado and Florio go to the cardinal's house, where Grimaldi has been in hiding, to beg for justice. The cardinal refuses due to Grimaldi's high status and instead sends him back to Rome. Florio tells Donado to wait for God to bring them justice. Annabella and Soranzo are married soon after, and their ceremony includes masque dancers, one of whom reveals herself to be Hippolita. She claims to be willing to drink a toast with Soranzo, and the two raise their glasses and drink, on which note she explains that her plan was to poison his wine. Vasques comes forward and reveals that he was always loyal to his master, and in fact he poisoned Hippolita. She dies spouting insults and damning prophecies to the newlyweds. Seeing the effects of anger and revenge, Richardetto abandons his plans and sends Philotis off to a convent to save her soul. When Soranzo discovers Annabella's pregnancy, the two argue until Annabella realises that Soranzo truly did love her, and finds herself consumed with guilt. She is confined to her room by her husband, who plots with Vasques to avenge him against his cheating wife and her unknown lover. On Soranzo's exit, Putana comes onto the stage and Vasques pretends to befriend her in order to gain the name of Annabella's baby's father. Once Putana reveals that it's Giovanni, Vasques has a bandit tie Putana up and remove her eyes and mouth as punishment for the terrible acts she has willingly overseen and encouraged. In her room, Annabella writes a letter to her brother in her own blood, warning him that Soranzo knows and will soon wreak his revenge. The friar delivers the letter, but Giovanni is too arrogant to believe he can be harmed and ignores advice to decline the invitation to Soranzo's birthday feast. The friar subsequently flees from Parma to avoid further involvement in Giovanni's downfall. On the day of the feast, Giovanni visits Annabella in her room, and after talking with her, stabs her during a kiss. He then enters the feast, at which all remaining characters are present, wielding a dagger on which his sister's heart is skewered, and tells everyone of the incestuous affair. Florio dies immediately from shock. Soranzo begins to attack Giovanni, but Giovanni manages to stab and kill him. Vasques intervenes, wounding Giovanni before ordering the Banditti to finish the job. Following the massacre, the cardinal orders Putana to be burnt at the stake, Vasques to be banished and the church to seize all the wealth and property belonging to the dead. Richardetto finally reveals his true identity and the play ends with the cardinal saying of Annabella "who could not say, 'Tis pity she's a whore?"
4142576	/m/0blccg	Teleny or The Reverse of the Medal	Oscar Wilde	1893	{"/m/0f0jjz": "Pornography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with Des Grieux attending a concert with his mother; he experiences strange and suggestive visions during one piano performance – by the beautiful Hungarian Teleny. Des Grieux becomes fascinated by the man and by the sporadically and frequently sexual telepathic connection he feels with Teleny, and this feeling becomes a mixture of curiosity, admiration, and desire, which quickly leads to jealousy. Des Grieux knows that Teleny attracts many men and women before their relationship begins. Eventually they meet and share their experiences of their unexplained bond which quickly leads to a passionate affair. Des Grieux feels very torn about loving and desiring a man and attempts to genuinely sexually interest himself in a household servant, but in so doing indirectly leads to her death. Thus shaken, he vows not to fight his feelings and allows Teleny to introduce him to an underground sexual society of male desiring men. Their love continues through a blackmailing attempt and their emotional struggles, until Teleny declares a need to leave for a time, ostensibly for a concert performance. During this time Des Grieux goes to Teleny's apartments only to find Teleny in bed with Des Grieux's mother, who had offered to pay Teleny's debts in return for sexual favours. The two part badly; Des Grieux nearly commits suicide and remains isolated in the hospital for many days. When he leaves he goes to Teleny only to find that his lover has stabbed himself in remorse, and is bleeding to death. Des Grieux forgives Teleny; they re-declare their love, and Teleny dies.
4144579	/m/0blh4t	Flush: A Biography	Virginia Woolf		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 This unusual biography traces the life of Flush from his carefree existence in the country, to his adoption by Ms. Browning and his travails in London, leading up to his final days in a bucolic Italy. Woolf ostensibly uses the life of a dog as pointed social criticism, ranging across topics from feminism and environmentalism to class conflict.
4145470	/m/0bljtd	Calico Captive	Elizabeth George Speare	1957-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In August 1754 Miriam Willard, along with her older sister Susanna, her sister's husband James Johnson, and their three children; two-year-old Polly, four-year-old Susanna, and six-year-old Sylvanus, are kidnapped from Number Four, a fort in Charlestown. Miriam and her family are forced to march north by their Indian captors, never knowing whether they will be killed or taken into slavery. Throughout the journey Miriam finds she cannot keep her mind off Phineas Whitney, her sweetheart planning to attend Harvard College. On the way north Susanna gives birth to a girl and names the infant Captive. The rugged trail is made far more difficult for Miriam by the miserable crying of Captive, the damp cold and hunger, and the sight of her exhausted sister. Fortunately, a horse named Scoggins is captured for Susanna so that she does not have to walk and carry the infant. Eventually the group reaches the Indian village where, upon surviving a half-hearted gauntlet while being forced to dance and sing, they are adopted into the tribe. After many months the Indian tribe’s Sachem decides to sell his English captives to the French in Montréal, Quebec. However, Susanna's master forces her to stay behind and Sylvanus, who has taken a liking to the Indian culture, willingly chooses to go on a hunting trip with the Indians. Upon arriving in Montréal Miriam finds to her horror that they are all to be privately purchased off to separate owners and held on ransom. James is thrown in jail for a short time but is finally forced to retrieve money from the English governor to pay for his family’s release. Polly captures the interest of the mayor's wife, who is unable to have a child of her own, while little Susanna is sold to another French household and Miriam meets the prominent Du Quesne family. Although working as a servant, Miriam quickly finds herself living a life she has never imagined. She meets an amiable French girl named Hortense and the two quickly become friends. One day Miriam is asked by Madame Du Quesne to teach her daughter, Felicité, to read and write proper English. Miriam finds she is intrigued by Felicité’s friendliness and wealthy lifestyle. Meanwhile, James makes a petition to the French governor and is allowed to return to English territory and ask for money and a passport. Susanna is eventually released by her Indian captors and joins Miriam. Meanwhile James goes to Boston to get money in order to buy the liberty of the rest of his family. The two sisters are invited by Felicité to join her at a ball wherein Miriam unintentionally draws the attention of Pierre Laroche, a grandson of a wealthy nobleman. Miriam dances with the young man, which angers and embarrasses Felicité, who had her heart set on marrying Pierre. The Du Quesne family, feeling disgraced and insulted and because they believe James broke his bond and escaped from captivity, throws out Miriam and Susanna. After several hours in the snowy streets Hortense finds the two and informs them they can stay with her family. Miriam realizes that the Hortense family cannot support three more occupants and conjures a plan to make some money. She decides to use her talent for dressmaking to craft a fashionable dress for Madame Du Quesne and Felicité. The plan works, although she is told to keep her services a secret. However, the governor’s wife, Marquise De Vaundreuil, finds out Miriam had designed the Du Quesne dresses and hires her. When James finally returns the French governor has been replaced. The new authority refuses to recognize the agreement. Worse yet, Polly, who was unable to adjust to her new family, runs away and is eventually allowed to stay with her mother. Instead of earning their freedom Susanna, James, Polly and Captive are thrown in jail. Miriam, as a dressmaker for a notable family, is spared jail time. Miriam eventually succeeds in gathering her courage and asks Marquise De Vaundreuil about her relatives. Marquise De Vaundreuil promises she will talk with her husband. Meanwhile, Pierre asks Miriam to marry him although, after much consideration, she realizes she truly does not love him. Marquise De Vaundreuil keeps her promise to speak with her husband and eventually Miriam, Susanna, James, Polly and Captive are released from prison. They board a small sailing vessel to cross the Atlantic to Plymouth, England and from there they sail back to America, finally as free people. Two years later Sylvanus is brought home by a redeemed Indian captive. Another redeemed prisoner from Montréal brings home little Susanna. Phineas Whitney, after graduating from Harvard, marries Miriam.
4147414	/m/0bln2b	Dissolution	Richard Lee Byers	2002-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Pharaun and Ryld journey to a tavern, where Ryld plays sava (a chess-like game) while Pharaun goes to the basement, where various female drow captives are available for males to do with as they see fit with. Pharaun talks with one of them who reveals the name of several elopers. While he is there, Ryld is attacked by other males whom he has taught. Afterwards, the two companions talk about the quest and decide the males are eloping because of the unusually harsh rule of the females in the last few weeks. Pharaun reveals that he has reason to believe that Lolth is gone and as such the females cannot use divine spells anymore, and are limited to scrolls and magic items. Ryld, though skeptical at first, eventually believes him. They learn of an uprising among the lower class creatures led by a mysterious prophet, and decide to pretend that they support the elopers. They kill a group of Drow to prove their "dedication" to the cause and are reluctantly taken in. They learn that the mastermind behind the rebellion is an evil illithid lich (called an "alhoon" or an "illithilich"), and that when he sends a mental signal, all the lower creatures will attack. While this is all happening, Gromph Baenre is sending various demons to attack Quenthel Baenre, all taking the guise of various aspects of Lloth, e.g. a demon spider, a demon of chaos, a darkness demon, and others. While this happens, a group of students at Arach-Tinilith decide that Lloth is disfavouring Quenthel, and resolve to kill her. She learns of this plan and has the offending students killed. Another subplot involves an ambassador from the neighbouring city of Ched Nasad being refused the right to leave by Triel Baenre. She eventually attempts to leave and is stopped by a traitor in her household. She then escapes the city, but is caught and taken to Triel. She realizes someone has turned Triel against her and is tortured by Jeggred Baenre, Triel's draegloth son. Eventually the lower races get the signal to rebel. Pharaun escapes from the Illithid and gathers the forces of Menzoberranzan to fight. A battle ensues, where much of Menzoberranzan is marred. At the end, the general populace realizes the weakness of the priestesses, and Pharaun, Ryld, Quenthel, Jeggred, and the ambassador, Faeryl Zauvirr, are sent to Ched Nasad to see if they are also afflicted.
4147879	/m/0blnsb	Ask the Dust	John Fante	1939	{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Arturo Bandini is a struggling writer living in a residential hotel in Bunker Hill, a rundown section of Downtown Los Angeles. Living off the zest of oranges, he unconsciously creates a picture of Los Angeles as a modern dystopia during the Great Depression era. His published short story "The Little Dog Laughed" impresses no one in his seedy boarding house except for one 14-year-old girl. Destitute, he wanders into the Columbia Buffet where he meets Camilla Lopez, a waitress. Bandini falls in love with Lopez, who is herself in love with co-worker Sam. Sam despises Camilla, telling Bandini if he wants to win over Camilla, he has to treat her poorly. Bandini struggles with his own poverty, his Catholic guilt, and with the his love for an unstable and deteriorating Camilla. Camilla is eventually admitted to a mental hospital, and moved to a second one, before escaping. Bandini looks for her, only finding her as she awaits for him in his apartment. He decides to take her away from Los Angeles, and arranges to live in a house on the beach. He buys her a little dog and they go to the new place. He leaves her there, to get his belongings from his Los Angeles hotel room. When he returns, she's gone. He tracks her down to the desert home of Sam, who is ill and dying. Before Bandini arrives, Sam has thrown Camilla out and she wanders into the desert. Bandini looks for her with an agonizing fear that he won't find the women he loves and he doesn't. He returns to Sam's shack, looks over the empty desert land. He takes a copy of the novel he had recently published, dedicates it to Camilla, and throws it into the desert.
4149673	/m/0blr__	The Naked Ape	Desmond Morris		{"/m/0h5k": "Anthropology", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 The Naked Ape, which was serialized in the Daily Mirror newspaper and has been translated into 23 languages, depicts human behavior as largely evolved to meet the challenges of prehistoric life as a hunter-gatherer (see nature versus nurture). The book was so named because out of 193 species of monkeys and apes only man is not covered in hair. Desmond Morris, the author, who formerly was the Curator of mammals at London Zoo, said his book was intended to popularise and demystify science. Morris made a number of claims in the book, including that not only does Homo sapiens have the largest brain of all primates but also the largest penis, and is therefore "the sexiest primate alive". He further claimed that our fleshy ear-lobes, which are unique to humans, are erogenous zones, the stimulation of which can cause orgasm in both males and females. Morris further stated that the more rounded shape of human female breasts means they are mainly a sexual signalling device rather than simply for providing milk for infants. Morris attempted to frame human behavior in the context of evolution, but his explanations failed to convince academics because they were based on a teleological (goal-oriented) understanding of evolution. For example, Morris wrote that the intense human pair bond evolved so that men who were out hunting could trust that their mates back home were not having sex with other men, and that sparse body hair evolved because the "nakedness" helped intensify pair bonding by increasing tactile pleasure.
4154655	/m/0bm1zy	Up a Road Slowly	Irene Hunt		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When seven-year-old Julie's mother dies, she is sent to live with her Aunt Cordelia. Cordelia is an unmarried schoolteacher, and lives in a large home several miles outside town. Her brother, Haskell lives in a converted carriage house behind the main house. Haskell is an alcoholic, with, like his niece, aspirations to be a writer, although he never manages to produce a manuscript. At first, Aunt Cordelia appears stern and strict to the grief-stricken Julie, but as she grows to young adulthood, Julie comes to love her, and to see her aunt's house as home. She becomes so attached to Aunt Cordelia that even when she has the chance to move back with her father, she declines. The story follows Julie from the age of seven to seventeen, from elementary school through her high school graduation, and documents the ordinary events in the life of a child: first love, the cruelty of children, jealousy, and struggles with schoolwork. At the same, as Julie develops. She also encounters problems in the lives of the adults around her, including mental illness and alcoholism.
4155606	/m/0bm3n3	Not Without Laughter	Langston Hughes	1930	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Not Without Laughter portrays African American life in the 1910s, focusing on character development rather than plot. However, The main storyline focuses on Sandy's "awakening to the sad and the beautiful realities of black life in a small Kansas town." The major intent of the novel is to portray Sandy's life as he tries to be the best he can be, aspiring to folks like W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.
4155651	/m/0bm3pw	Kitten with a Whip				 The wife of politician David Stratton is away in San Francisco, visiting relatives there. Stratton comes home one night but not to an empty house -- a young woman, Jody, is waiting inside. Jody tells him a tale of woe, so David offers to help. But the truth is, she has just busted out of a juvenile detention home, where she stabbed a matron and started a fire. And she is far from alone, because three young men suddenly materialize to torment David, who is afraid of a public scandal that could end his career. If he tries to get away and contact the cops, Jody threatens to accuse David of rape. The young men and Jody enjoy a wild party, but also begin to quarrel until one is cut with a razor. The body is dumped from a car. Jody and David end up hiding in a motel. But when the punks return, a chase occurs and their car crashes, killing all. Jody, too, ends up at death's door, but absolves David of any blame.
4156452	/m/0bm507	Legs	William Kennedy	1975		 The book chronicles the life of the gangster Jack 'Legs' Diamond. It is told from the perspective of Jack's lawyer, Marcus Gormen. Through Gormen's eyes, Kennedy is able to elicit sympathy for the criminal, transposing this sympathy into the context of America during the 1920s and 30s: excess, collapse, destitution, and analysis of right and wrong, good and evil.
4156849	/m/0bm5ts	Shriek: An Afterword	Jeff VanderMeer	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ambergris, named for "the most secret and valued part of the whale," is a fantastical urban milieu, explicitly modern and apparently pre-industrial (despite the presence of guns, bombs, and motor vehicles). Ambergris is characterized by grocery stores, post offices, cafés, and vendors (The "Borges Bookstore" bears note). The city was built over the land (and quiet protests) of the fungally-adept "graycaps," humanoids of uncertain disposition. The inhabitants of Ambergris enjoy a fascination with squid, and celebrate an anarchic annual Festival of the Freshwater Squid.
4157299	/m/0bm6p9	Texar's Revenge, or, North Against South	Jules Verne	1887	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Texar and Burbank are bitter enemies, Burbank's northern view of slavery as an evil being an unpopular stance with Texar and the rest of the community, deep in the Confederate States of America. On top of this disagreement, though, Texar is angry at Burbank for past legal troubles Burbank has brought upon Texar, and, despite Texar inventing a perfect alibi that allows him to escape conviction, Texar feels the need for vengeance and eventually becomes a prominent and powerful member of the Jacksonville community. Using this newfound power, Texar turns the townsfolk against Burbank and leads a mob that destroys the Burbank plantation, known as Camdless Bay. Burbank's daughter Dy and caretaker Zermah are both kidnapped by a man claiming to be Texar and are purportedly taken to a place in the Everglades called Carneral Island. En route, and after enlisting the help of the United States Navy, they find a separate group searching for Texar in response to crimes that apparently happened in the same time as the ones at Camdless Bay but in a distant location. This opens up the realization that there is one real Texar and one who is not, and the search continues now, not only for Dy and Zermah, but for the answer to this mystery.
4163162	/m/0bmk60	If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things	Jon mcgregor	2002		 If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things eschews a traditional narrative structure, instead moving from one resident of an unnamed English street to another, describing their actions and inner world over the course of a single day. These characters are not named, and are described by an omniscient third person narrator. These sections are intercut with another character, a young woman who has recently discovered that she is pregnant, who narrates in the first person and whose story covers several days. She regularly refers ambiguously to a day in the past when something terrible happened, and it gradually becomes clear that the rest of the novel is set during this day.
4167319	/m/0bmsk7	The Holy	Daniel Quinn		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Aaron, a wealthy amateur scholar, hires sexagenarian private investigator Howard, whom he meets at a chess club in Chicago to which they both belong, to investigate the gods Baal, Ashtoroth and Moloch, that were worshipped for centuries in Israel during a period of antiquity when the God of Abraham had fallen into disfavor. As Aaron says to Howard while proposing the task, referring to story of Exodus of the Old Testament: Although Howard initially turns down the case, thinking Aaron is either crazy or a fool, Aaron is dogged, and increases his offer of reward until Howard eventually relents. However, Howard only agrees to work on the problem for one month to test whether any inroads can be made into the peculiar case. It is indeed a problem — how to even begin investigating a trail that is centuries cold. Howard turns to a psychic for help, who using a Tarot card reading, sets Howard on a path which leads him to a young boy named Tim from Indiana, in whom the gods have taken an interest. Tim's father, who was in the midst of a mid-life crisis, has recently disappeared. Howard helps Tim in his quest to locate and determine what has become of his father. In their quest they are dogged by supernatural events that are eventually revealed as the workings of the gods who may be "false," but who are, neverthlesss, real.
4168295	/m/0bmtzf	Some of Your Blood	Theodore Sturgeon	1961	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with a prologue addressed directly to "The Reader," informing the reader of the fictional basis of the novel. The novel presents as a case file of Dr. Philip Outerbridge and attempts to "falsely" emphasize the fictional basis of the novel. The novel takes place in the middle of an unnamed war. The novel focuses on George Smith, an American soldier, transferred to the military psychiatric clinic, where Outerbridge works. Smith was brought to the clinic due to a confrontation with a superior officer. Smith was labeled psychotic and told to recount his story in the third person. Smith's autobiography takes up about half of the book, describing his childhood as the son of the town drunk. Smith is imprisoned for shoplifting, and eventually joins the army as a means of escaping an uncomfortable situation with his lover, Anna. The rest of the book consists of documents relating to Outerbridge's treatment of Smith,therapy sessions and correspondence between Outerbridge and his superior, the increasingly impatient Colonel Williams. Outerbridge believes Smith to be the most dangerous man in the hospital and deduces Smith to be a non-supernatural vampire who drinks blood at times of emotional crisis. The novel ends with an explanation of various potential and unrealized outcomes.
4168704	/m/0bmvlj	Everyday Use	Alice Walker		{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The story centers around one day when the older daughter, Dee, visits from college after time away and a conflict between them over some heirloom family possessions. The struggle reflects the characters' contrasting ideas about their heritage and identity. Throughout the story Dee goes back and forth on being proud and rejecting her heritage. For example, when she decides at dinner that she wants the butter churn, she shows that she respects her heritage because she knows that her uncle carved it from a tree they used to have. However, she wants it for the wrong reason, saying that she will use it only for decoration. Another example is when she wants the quilts that Mama has. She states that she wants them because of the generations of clothing and effort put into making the quilt, showing her appreciation for her heritage. The fact that she changes her name, though, from Dee to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo disrespects her heritage because "Dee" is a family name that can be traced back many generations. The story is narrated by the mother.
4168853	/m/0bmvtt	Gene	Stel Pavlou		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In dealing with genetic memory, Pavlou has drawn on both the nature of lineage, and the nature of self. Several characters all stem from the same source, and so as their memories become unlocked during the course of the novel, they each identify with being the same person at a distant point in history. The question of identity then becomes fundamental to the plot. If each character shares the same memories are they a reincarnation of that original person, or merely an echo? The novel is further complicated in that it is told backwards, using a Police procedural as the structure of the novel, memories are unlocked in the form of flashbacks, each flashback delving further and further back in time over the course of 3000 years. Told in alternating first person and third person, the novel is divided into a prologue and seven "books", the seven trials of Cyclades. The opening page begins with the first 27 lines of the Human Genome. Thereafter the prologue lays out the death of Cyclades during the Trojan War, and makes it clear that his death is merely the beginning of the journey. Told in first person, Cyclades, a Greek warrior, is mortally wounded. A Sybil forces him to have sex to continue his line, whereupon he dies for the first time in the book. Book One, shifts to third person and jumps to the year 2004. In New York City Detective James North has been called to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to deal with a mentally unstable man who has run amok amid the exhibits.
4170327	/m/0bmy24	Swallows and Amazons	Arthur Ransome	1930-12-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book relates the outdoor adventures and play of two families of children. These involve sailing, camping, fishing exploration and piracy. The Walker children (John, Susan, Titty and Roger) are staying at a farm near a lake in the Lake District of England which is mostly a combination of Windermere and Coniston, during the school holidays. They sail a borrowed dinghy named Swallow and meet the Blackett children (Nancy and Peggy), who sail a dinghy named Amazon. The Walkers camp on an island in the lake while the Blacketts live in their house nearby. When the children meet, they agree to join forces against a common enemy - the Blacketts' uncle James Turner whom they call "Captain Flint" (after the character in Treasure Island). Turner, normally an ally of his nieces, has withdrawn from their company in order to write his memoirs, and has become decidedly unfriendly. Furthermore when the Blacketts let off a firework on his houseboat roof, it is the Walkers who get the blame. He refuses even to listen when they try to pass on a warning to him about burglars in the area. In order to determine who should be the overall leader in their campaign against Captain Flint, the Blacketts and the Walkers have a contest to see which can capture the others' boat. As part of their strategy the Walkers make a dangerous crossing of the lake by night, and John is later cautioned by his mother for this reckless act. The Walkers nevertheless win the contest - thanks to Titty who seizes the Amazon when the Blacketts come to Wild Cat Island. During the same night Titty hears suspicious voices coming from a different island, and in the morning it transpires that Turner's houseboat has been burgled. Turner again blames the Walkers, but is finally convinced that he is mistaken and feels he was wrong to distance himself from his nieces' adventures all summer. Titty and Roger investigate the other island, where they discover Turner's stolen property hidden by the thieves. The following day there is a mock battle between Turner and the children, after which Turner is tried for his crimes and forced to walk the plank on his own houseboat. Afterwards the children present Turner with his recovered sea chest, which contains the memoirs on which he had been working. James Turner appears in some ways to be modelled on Ransome himself. The story, set in August 1929, includes a good deal of everyday Lakeland life from the farmers to charcoal burners working in the woods; corned beef, which the children fancifully refer to as pemmican, and ginger beer and lemonade, which they call grog, appear as regular food stuff for the campers; island life also allows for occasional references to the story of Robinson Crusoe.
4171130	/m/0bm_1b	Confessions of a Mask	Yukio Mishima	1948	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main protagonist is referred to in the story as Kochan. Being raised during Japan’s era of right-wing militarism and Imperialism, he struggles from a very early age to fit into society. Like Mishima, Kochan was born with a less-than-ideal body in terms of physical fitness and robustness, and throughout the first half of the book (which generally details Kochan’s childhood) struggles intensely to fit into Japanese society. Due to his weakness, Kochan is kept away from boys his own age as he is raised, and is thus not exposed to the norm. This is what likely led to his future fascinations and fantasies of death, violence, and sex. In this way of thinking, some have posited that Mishima is similar. Kochan is a homosexual, and in the context of Imperial Japan he struggles to keep it to himself. In the early portion of the novel, Kochan does not yet openly admit that he is attracted to men, but indeed professes that he admires masculinity and strength. Some have argued that this, too, is autobiographical of Mishima, himself having worked hard through a naturally weak body to become a superbly fit body builder and male model. In the first chapter of the book, Kochan recalls a memory of a picture book from when he was four years old. Even at that young age, Kochan approached a single picture of a heroic-looking Caucasian knight on horseback almost as pornography, gazing at it longingly and hiding it away, embarrassed, when others come to see what he is doing. When his nurse tells him that the knight is actually Joan of Arc, Kochan, wanting the knight to be a paragon of manliness, is immediately and forever put off by the picture, annoyed that a woman would dress in man’s clothing. The word ‘mask’ comes from how Kochan develops his own false personality that he uses to present himself to the world. Early on, as he develops a fascination with his friend Omi’s body during puberty, he believes that everybody around him is also hiding their true feelings from each other, everybody participating in a ‘reluctant masquerade’. As he grows up, he tries to fall in love with a girl named Sonoko, but is continuously tormented by his latent homosexual urges, and is unable to ever truly love her.
4171519	/m/0bm_rr	Murphy	Samuel Beckett	1938	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot of Murphy follows an eponymous "seedy solipsist" who, urged to find a job by his lover Celia Kelly, begins work as a male nurse at the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat in north London, and finds the insanity of the patients an appealing alternative to conscious existence. Murphy, gone to ground in London lodgings and then in the hospital, is pursued by a ragtag troupe of eccentrics from his own country, each with their own often-conflicting motivations. Neary, a practitioner of eastern mysticism, seeks Murphy as a love rival and then as compatible friend in the absence of all others. Miss Counihan's attachment to Murphy is romantic. Among Wylie's motivations, Miss Counihan is perhaps the strongest. And Cooper, Neary's simpleton servant and fixer, joins the trail for money, alcohol, and to serve his master. Among other things, Murphy is an example of Beckett's fascination with the artistic and metaphorical possibilities of chess. Near the novel's end, Murphy plays a game of chess with Mr. Endon, a patient who is "the most biddable little gaga in the entire institution". But Murphy cannot replicate his opponent's symmetrical and cyclical play, just as he is unable to will himself into a state of catatonic bliss. He resigns "with fool's mate in his soul", and dies shortly afterwards. Beckett relates the game in full English notation, complete with a comically arch commentary. Moving between Ireland and England, the novel is caustically satirical at the expense of the Irish Free State, which had recently banned Beckett's More Pricks Than Kicks: the astrologer consulted by Murphy is famous 'throughout civilised world and Irish Free State'; 'for an Irish girl' Murphy's admirer Miss Counihan was 'quite exceptionally anthropoid'; and in the General Post Office, site of the 1916 Rising, Neary assaults the buttocks of Oliver Sheppard's statue of mythic Irish hero Cúchulainn (the statue in fact possesses no buttocks). Indeed, the censor is roundly mocked: Celia, a prostitute whose profession is described tactfully in a passage by the author, who writes that "this phrase is chosen with care, lest the filthy censors should lack an occasion to commit their filthy synecdoche." Later, when Miss Counihan is sitting on Wylie's knee, Beckett sardonically explains that this did not occur in Wynn's Hotel, the Dublin establishment where earlier dialogue took place. The novel also contains a scabrous portrait of poet Austin Clarke as the dipsomaniac Austin Ticklepenny, given to unreciprocated 'genustuprations' of Murphy under the table; against Oliver St. John Gogarty's advice, Clarke declined to sue. Murphy indeed cannot go insane to achieve freedom. What he turns to instead is nothingness, and his ashes are properly spread amidst the grime of a bar after immolating himself with the assistance of gas in his bedroom at the hospital. Celia also discovers the beauty of nothingness, as she loses her love, Murphy, and her grandfather's health declines. Beckett seamlessly converts comedy to terror of non-existence, as he does in his later work, Waiting for Godot. Among the many thinkers to influence Murphy's mind-body debate are Spinoza, Descartes, and the little-known Belgian occasionalist Arnold Geulincx.
4174520	/m/0bn57n	Deep Water	Patricia Highsmith		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the small town of Little Wesley, intellectual publisher Victor Van Allen decides to discourage his wife Melinda’s many lovers by hinting to them that he may have killed her previous beau, Malcolm McRae. However, the game turns sour when strangers begin to grow wary of him, thus denting his social esteem and also blurring the line between fiction and reality; after a while, Vic wonders if he may really have blood on his hands. pt:Deep Water
4174672	/m/0bn5jt	The Lake of Souls	Darren Shan		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Lake of Souls takes place right after Killers of the Dawn. Darren cannot cry. He feels numb, but with the help of the bearded Lady, Truska, he eventually does so. Mr. Tiny then appears and tells Harkat that if he wants his nightmares (which have returned) to stop, he must walk through a portal that Mr. Tiny makes. Harkat refuses to let Darren go with him. Debbie Hemlock and Police Chief Alice Burgess want to start an army to combat the Vampets, but have to get the approval of the Vampire Princes first, so they are only mentioned briefly. Darren later decides that he should go with Harkat, much to Harkat's dismay. Darren and Harkat then walk through the mysterious portal, and are thrown into a strange, gray world. Darren and Harkat are forced to complete many diffucult tasks. They first hunt down a black panther and collect a map inside it. Darren finds that the panther's teeth have been marked with letters. They start rearranging the teeth, with Harkat using up all the teeth to get SLAM DARK HUT, and then again to find it reads HARKAT MULDS. Harkat dismisses it as an utter waste of time, as Mr. Tiny loves to meddle with time. Harkat keeps the teeth, saying that they might be useful as they are sharp. Next they have to steal 'gelatinous globes' from the world's biggest toad. They arrive to see the toad standing in the middle of a lake surrounded by crocodiles. Darren and Harkat zip through the lake, grab a few globes, then run off. Darren and Harkat eventually meet up with Lady Evanna. Her appearance is completely unexpected, and she does not wish to tell the two how or why she is there. She helps them get across the lake where they meet a man who calls himself Spits Abrams. Spits is a former pirate and heavy drinker, and although Darren and Harkat do not trust him very much, they decide that Mr. Tiny put him in that world for a reason, and decide to take him with them. They soon reach a small area filled with 'people' called Kulashkas (since they are chanting "kulashka" more than any other word.) They are required to steal vials of 'holy liquid'. Darren and Harkat enter the village, Spits being afraid, to find the 'holy liquid' to be the venom from the fangs of a huge creature called the Grotesque. The Grotesque is apparently the Kulashkas' god. Darren and Harkat rush to two vials containing the venom and are attacked by the Grotesque. Harkat raises the vial as the Grotesque attempts to kill him, and the Grotesque backs off. The Kulashkas arrive, pointing spears at Darren and Harkat, trying to drive them back. They are driven closer to the Grotesque and Darren drives them back with his vial. The chief of the Kulashkas starts trying to speak to them in a non-understandable language, with Darren saying that he can't understand them. The chief starts gesturing that they are free to leave, but must return the vials to the altar which carried them. Darren starts to do so, but a drunken Spits arrives,and cuts the kulashkas with his knife as Darren throws one vial at the Grotesque, which explodes, hurting the Grotesque and those nearby it, revealing the liquid to be highly explosive. Harkat sees floorboards underneath them and starts stomping on them. Darren joins in, with Spits saying, "What in the devil's name are ye..." before crashing through the floorboards. They end up in a tunnel, following it until they reach a room. There is a fridge, which Spits asks about, as he did not have fridges in his time. There are also postcards, signed by Mr. Tiny. Harkat is bothered by the postcards, but does not explain why. They then leave the room, Spits taking a few extra bottles of whiskey. They soon reach the Lake. It is seen to be covered with dragons and Darren and Harkat figure out that they should make bombs, filling the 'gelatinous globes' with the Grotesque venom and throwing it at the dragons. They finally get up close to the Lake and Spits says that when Mr. Tiny brought him here, he told him that there was a spell on the Lake forbidding dragons to be closer than eight metres to the Lake unless a living person fell into the Lake. Then Spits quotes on how many people are in the Lake of Souls. He starts talking about how the crew on the Prince o' Pariah, the ship he used to serve, loved his meals, revealing that he is a cannibal. Spits says that he plans to stay by the Lake of Souls, feeding off the people who lived there. He is persistently told not to feed on the souls and is accidentally knocked away from the eight metre zone. A dragon soon breathes fire at him and he is seen burning, running around not able to see, and then falls into the lake, breaking the spell. While being ruthlessly attacked by a dragon, Harkat pulls up his former identity, revealed to be Kurda Smahlt. The world freezes and Mr. Tiny appears to congratulate him, explaining that Harkat was created to help protect Darren for Mr. Tiny's own reasons, Mr. Tiny selecting Kurda to become Harkat because he wanted someone who was Darren's friend while he was alive to give the resulting Little Person that extra edge. He also tells them, since Kurda and Harkat are of the same soul, only one could survive. It is decided that Harkat will remain alive, since Harkat would then possess the memories of both him and Kurda while Kurda remaining would remove Harkat's memories. Back at the Cirque du Freak, Harkat removes the panther's teeth and starts juggling the letters around, and just when he reaches HARKAT, he stops, apparently shocked, then rearranges it to find it reads KURDA SMAHLT. Darren then realizes that Harkat's name is an anagram and that the answer was in front of them all along, saying that if they spent more time on the teeth they might not have had to go through all the tasks. Harkat also takes out the postcards, pointing the time and date it was sent, noting that it was all dated twelve, twenty, thirty, and fifty years later. Harkat then reveals his theory: that the barren land they had visited was the future. It is also told by Lady Evanna that no matter who wins the War of the Scars, either Darren or Steve would become the Lord of the Shadows who is a ruthless ruler of the night.
4178539	/m/0bndt8	Hawksong	Amelia Atwater-Rhodes	2003-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book centers on two different kinds of shapeshifters: the avians and the serpiente. The avians have birds for second forms and their royal line consists of golden-eyed hawks. Their leader is the Tuuli Thea, or queen. The queen's pair bond is called her alistair. Avian culture is uptight and strict, and it centers on, "avian reserve," the ability to keep complete control of one's emotions at all times. Avians do not lose their temper and they do not cry, no matter what the situation. The serpiente have the second form of a snake. Their royal line is the Cobriana, cobra shapeshifters descended from Kiesha, and their king is called the Diente. Their queen is the Naga. Serpiente wear sensual oufits and are free with their emotions, even in situations where some control might be appropriate. They are passionate and sometimes violent, the complete opposite of the avians. The two groups have been at war beyond living memory, so that nobody even remembers how the fighting started. The reason behind the war starting is given in Falcondance. All they know is that they hate each other and they will keep fighting until one of them is destroyed. The book takes place in roughly 705 BCE and is the romantic story of Danica Shardae, the heir to the Tuuli Thea. The novel opens with Danica walking the latest bloody battlefield and her discovery of the fallen Gregory Cobriana, who is the younger brother of the current Arami (Prince, soon to be Diente/King), Zane Cobriana. Despite her guards’ warnings, Danica stays by Gregory’s side, holding him, and singing the Hawksong, a lullaby, until the young prince passes. After Zane learns what Danica did for his brother, he sends his sister to the avians: the serpiente want peace. After a trip to the wise tiger shapeshifters, the Mistari, Zane and Danica secretly agree to marry despite their families’ objections over the Mistari idea as well as their own hesitations. Danica has feelings for Andreios (Rei), her best friend, a crow and the leader of the Royal Flight and the highest commander in the avian army. Zane also has a relationship with the head of his palace guard, a white viper named Adelina. But over the course of the novel Zane and Danica grow fond of each other and eventually fall in love, but not before Adelina joins up with Karl, a member of the Royal Flight, to end the union between Zane and Danica. Adelina accidentally kills Zane’s mother and while attempting to assassinate Danica, who is critically wounded. However, she survives while Zane stays at her side. Their love continues from Zane's view, in Snakecharm.
4179072	/m/0bnflt	The Dragon Masters	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Aerlith is a planet of rocks and wilderness orbiting a distant bright star known as Skene which appears as "an actinic point" in the daytime. The sky is described as being black rather than blue. The planet's rotation is slow, taking several days. It is so slow that dawn and dusk are accompanied by storms that follow the boundary between day and night around the planet. The night has an affect on the "Dragons" of the title, making them more vicious and unmanageable. This means that all movement of the armies must take place during daylight. Humans live in valleys where the soil is good. Occasionally they make war on each other across the hills, passes and fells between their valley homes. Their technology is limited to steel and gunpowder. They also use semi-precious stones for decoration. From time to time, often after many years, a spaceship appears and abducts as many humans as can be caught. The settlements are also bombarded, ensuring that humanity will not rise above its present technological level. During one such raid, a charismatic leader named Kergan Banbeck captures a group of the alien raiders, who are accompanied by their human servants. Without their masters, the humans go mad and destroy the ship. The aliens, many-limbed lizard-like creatures known as "grephs", become prisoners of the humans they came to kidnap. Many years later, Kergan's descendant, Joaz Banbeck, is troubled by two things. He believes the grephs will return soon, and his neighbor, Ervis Carcolo of the ironically named Happy Valley, is forever plotting against him. The captive grephs have been bred over the years into fighting creatures known as dragons, ranging from the man-sized "Termagant" to the gigantic "Jugger". As each new variety has been bred over the years, the fortunes of war have shifted between the Banbecks and the Carcolos. Now there is an uneasy peace. There is a third group of humans, the "Sacerdotes", mysterious ascetics who walk naked in all weathers. They are characterized by very long hair, pale complexions, and the golden torc each wears around the neck. Only males are seen. They trade for what they need and seem to possess advanced technologies. They believe that they are beyond human, calling the rest of humankind "Utter Men", who will eventually disappear and leave the universe to them. Joaz Banbeck tries without success to convince Ervis Carcolo and the Sacerdotes of the need to prepare for the next visit by the grephs. Ervis Carcolo, far from cooperating, attacks Banbeck Vale, only to have his army routed by Joaz's ingenious tactics. Joaz is able to confine a Sacerdote and ask him questions, only to have the man apparently die. Taking his torc and making a wig from the man's hair, Joaz attempts to examine the Sacerdotes' cave home. They are definitely working on something big. Returning home, he is confronted by the Sacerdote he had thought dead, who demands the return of his torc and walks silently away. Subsequently, Joaz has a dream in which he talks to the sacerdote leader and tries to convince him to help. The leader, known as the Demie, refuses, claiming that to involve himself in the affairs of Utter Men is to destroy the detachment necessary to their lifestyle. Joaz suspects they are building a spaceship. Ervis Carcolo attacks again. Once again, Joaz defeats him, but at that moment, the grephs reappear. Happy Valley is destroyed and Banbeck Vale is obviously next. Besides the power of the ship itself, the grephs have humans whom they have bred, just as the men of Aerlith have bred their dragons. The "Heavy Trooper" is physically equal to the Termagant, and a "Giant" matches the monstrous Jugger. Some of the humans have been bred to track people by smell, and still others are used like horses, like their dragon counterparts, the Spiders. The grephs attack, tentatively at first. Their troops are astonished by the dragons who so resemble their masters. The fighting is bloody and Joaz moves his people into caves and tunnels for safety. The grephs decide simply to bombard the Vale since they cannot take the people. Joaz has anticipated this, and lures them to a spot where he believes the sacerdotes' workshops are located. Carcolo, almost with his last remaining energy and backed by his now demoralized troops, assaults the ship from an unguarded quarter. Joaz coincidentally decides on a similar tactic, and is amazed to find Carcolo already inside. Together they free many people, but cannot gain control of the ship. The destruction of the Vale seems inevitable, until Joaz's scheme pays off. The Sacerdote cavern is blown open, and the Sacerdotes are forced to use the engine of their spaceship to project a beam of energy at the alien ship, disabling it. Joaz and his troops complete the rout and capture the ship. However, the Sacerdote ship is destroyed. The Demie is driven out of his detachment by what Joaz has forced him to do. He upbraids Joaz for causing the destruction of the work of centuries just to save himself. Joaz refuses to apologize, and when Carcolo, now a prisoner, absurdly continues to assert his claim to the ship, Joaz has him executed. At the end, Joaz surveys the ruins of his home. He picks up a small round object, a semi-precious stone carved to be a globe of Eden or Tempe or even Earth, the mythical home of humans. He plans to find the other worlds where humans live, if he can repair the alien ship. For now, he must rebuild the homes of his people. He tosses the globe back on the rockpile and walks away.
4181780	/m/0bnmbx	Downbelow Station	C. J. Cherryh	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Space is explored not by short-sighted governments, but by the Earth Company, a private corporation which becomes enormously wealthy and powerful as a result. Nine star systems are found to lack planets suitable for colonization, so space stations are built in orbit instead, stepping-stones for further exploration. Then, Pell's World is found to be not only habitable, but already populated by the gentle, sentient (if technologically backward) Hisa. Pell Station is built. The planet is nicknamed "Downbelow" by the stationers, who also start to call their home "Downbelow Station". When Earth's out-of-touch policies cause it to begin losing control of its more distant stations and worlds, it builds a fleet of fifty military carriers, the Earth Company Fleet, to enforce its will. This leads to the prolonged Company War with the breakaway Union, based at Cyteen, another hospitable world. Caught in between are the stationers and the merchanters who man the freighters that maintain interstellar trade. Set in the final days of the war, Downbelow Station opens with Earth Company Captain Signy Mallory and her warship, Norway, escorting a ragtag fleet fleeing from Russell's and Mariner Stations to Pell. Similar convoys arrive from other stations destroyed or lost to Union, leading to an enormous crisis. The flood of unexpected refugees strains station resources. Angelo Konstantin, Stationmaster of Pell, and his two sons, Damon and Emilio, struggle to cope with the situation. Fearing Union infiltrators and saboteurs, Pell dumps all the refugees in a Quarantine Zone, causing massive dislocations of Pell's own citizens. While conferring with Pell's administrators, Mallory encounters a delegation from the Earth Company, led by Segust Ayres, Second Secretary of Earth's Security Council. Offended by her brusque, arrogant manner, Ayres declines her offer of transportation to the front and charters a freighter instead. Unbeknownst to Mallory, Ayres' mission is to open peace negotiations with Union. Mallory also drops off a Union prisoner of war, Josh Talley, whom she had rescued from a brutal interrogation by panicked security forces at Russell's. However, on the voyage to Pell, her sexual exploitation of him had been only marginally less abusive. Faced with indefinite confinement on Pell, Talley requests Adjustment, the wiping of much of his memory, in return for his freedom. When questioned by Damon Konstantin, he requests Adjustment to escape the indefinite imprisonment, so Konstantin reluctantly gives his permission. Upon later review of his file, Damon learns that Talley had already undergone the treatment once before at Russell's, Still feeling guilty for agreeing, he and his wife Elene Quen befriend the post-Adjustment Talley, an act of kindness that will have monumental, unforeseen consequences. Jon Lukas, Angelo Konstantin's brother-in-law and only rival for power, is worried about the course of the war. The Fleet has received little or no support from an indifferent Earth and is gradually losing a war of attrition. He secretly contacts Union, offering to hand Pell over. Union responds by smuggling in a secret agent named Jessad. Meanwhile, the last ten surviving Fleet ships gather for the most critical operation of the war. All of Mazian's recent strategic maneuvers and raids have been leading up to this point. If they can take out Viking Station in one coordinated strike before their enemy's growing numerical superiority can overwhelm them, there would be a wide, barren region between Earth and Union space, one which would make further conflict vastly more costly for Union. Seb Azov, the Union military commander, has no choice but to gather his forces at Viking to await Mazian's anticipated attack. However, he has an ace up his sleeve. He has pressured Ayres into recording a message ordering Mazian to break off while peace is being negotiated. When Mazian strikes, Ayres' broadcasted order does indeed force him to abort and the Fleet retreats to Pell in confusion. Mazian meets with his captains and gives them the choice of accepting a peace treaty that essentially concedes victory to Union or rebelling against Earth and continuing to fight. They all remain loyal to their leader. One of Mazian's first acts is to place Pell under martial law. The Fleet is now forced to defend Downbelow Station, its only reliable base and supply source. Union forces attack and destroy two ships out on patrol. While Union suffers casualties as well, it can replace its losses, unlike Mazian. Counting one carrier lost earlier in the debacle at Viking, he has just seven ships left. Under cover of the panic on the station caused by the battle in space, Lukas makes his move, killing and supplanting his hated rival, Angelo Konstantin. To escape rioting refugees, Elene Quen is forced to board Finity's End, one of the most respected merchanter ships. The freighters flee the battle zone, but Quen convinces most of them to band together, for safety and to maximize their leverage whatever happens. Damon survives his uncle's assassination attempt and links up with Talley. Together, they manage to hide from Lukas; in fact, Talley discovers he is surprisingly good at it. Eventually, they are contacted by Jessad, and Talley finds out why. He and Jessad are the same kind: azi, artificially bred and, in Jessad and Talley's case, trained especially for espionage and sabotage. They are discovered by Fleet marines; Jessad is killed, while Konstantin and Talley are captured and taken to Mallory. She receives orders from Mazian to quietly dispose of Konstantin. Lukas does the Fleet's bidding with far less scruples, so Konstantin is superfluous, even dangerous. Mazian is preparing to disable and abandon Downbelow Station. He has another goal in mind: to take over Earth itself in a surprise coup d'etat. The wrecking of Pell would create a firebreak with Union, playing the role he had originally intended for Viking. Mallory has different ideas. Mazian has gone too far for her to stomach. She abruptly undocks from Pell and deserts. Mallory finds the Union forces and persuades Azov to unleash them against her former comrades. Talley is instrumental in convincing Azov of Mallory's truthfulness. Mazian can't afford a costly fight, so the Fleet sets off for Earth prematurely. Azov needs to pursue him, but is unwilling to leave Norway intact behind him. The tense standoff is broken by a timely arrival; Quen returns with the united merchanter fleet and claims Pell for the newborn Merchanter's Alliance, with Norway as its militia. Without the authority to deal with this new development and unwilling to fight the merchanters, Azov leaves to deal with Mazian. The end of the Company War is at last in sight, much to the relief of the Konstantins, the merchanters and the residents of Downbelow Station.
4183147	/m/0bnprq	Last Human	Doug Naylor	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Six million years after the first human is born on the plains of Africa, Dave Lister - the last surviving human in the universe - wakes in a transport ship taking him to prison colony Cyberia, the worst place in the universe, having been found guilty of serious crimes against the GELF state and sentenced to the worst imprisonment imaginable, having been hindered by his inability to comprehend the over-complicated legal system of the GELF - and his choice of clothing, including a tie depicting a naked woman in birthing stirrups. After his welcome by the foul and grotesque Snugiraffe, the prison commandant, he is implanted and introduced into the cyber network of Cyberia where he will be forced to live out his life in a hellish dream world of his own creation. Naturally he spends a great deal of time considering where it all went wrong... Dave Lister awakes out of Deep Sleep on the transport ship Starbug, disoriented and confused. The mechanoid Kryten welcomes him back; he has been in stasis for twenty years and, not unnaturally, is suffering a spot of amnesia. He meets the rest of the crew, Kristine Kochanski, the Cat, and Rimmer. Kochanski is so happy to see him that she takes him straight to her quarters to make love. Despite still having no memory of her, Lister is caught up in the moment and happily obliges. Rimmer, meanwhile, has been able to procure a solidgram body from a derelict ship for himself allowing him to touch, eat and be three-dimensional again. Rimmer enjoys the new feelings, and spends hours looking at his restored body in a mirror. On their way through the 'Omni-Zone' - the pathway between the seven parallel realities - back to their home ship Red Dwarf, the crew are surprised to come across a derelict space craft that is the exact duplicate of Starbug. Searching the ship, the crew find the duplicate Cat's disembodied head, Kryten's murdered body with his hand missing and Rimmer's destroyed light bee. They then find the duplicate Kochanski who has been viciously attacked and is barely alive. She makes Lister promise to find his duplicate self before she succumbs to her terrible injuries. The crew soon find themselves on a GELF populated planet where the duplicate Lister was likely to have headed. Arriving, the crew find that the GELF tribe are sterile and sperm is a highly valued commodity. Of course, Lister and Cat have a 'secret store' and the crew start trading for much needed supplies. Meanwhile, Kryten finds himself in the middle of a huge protest asking the magistrate what happened to the duplicate Lister after learning he was arrested here. The magistrate explains that the duplicate Lister destroyed property and murdered several people including the magistrate. Kryten is confused, as the magistrate is clearly not dead only to learn that mystics predict crimes and the persons involved are arrested before they happen. Kryten suddenly understands what the protest is about and tells the others. Now knowing the duplicate Lister has committed no crime, Lister resolves to find him. The crew are sent to another GELF tribe, the Kinatawowi, to get equipment they need in order to break the duplicate Lister out of Cyberia. Unfortunately, the Kinatawowi aren't sterile which causes offence when Lister and Cat offer their sperm as payment. Eventually, a deal is made; the crew will get a bunch of ramshackle droids and a virus that destroys electricity in return for Lister marrying the chief's daughter. Unfortunately, the bride wants to consummate the union immediately and the crew quickly make a run for it while the GELF promise revenge. On Cyberia, the attempt to break the duplicate Lister out begins. Although it is mostly successful, the virus causes the prison's artificial gravity to fail. Lister is caught in the floating lake water and drowns, only to be revived by his duplicate self. The two begin their escape from the prison's forces however something doesn't sit right with Lister. His duplicate, after retrieving his belongings, enjoys the fight to an alarming degree and when the two make their getaway in a vehicle the duplicate turns around when he learns that they will outrun them in order to get in some more killing making Lister realise the whole venture has been misguided. Later, as the two Listers sit around a campfire, the duplicate pulls out the hand of the duplicate Kryten holding a piece of paper from his belongings. Lister realises with horror that the duplicate Lister killed the rest of his crew and manages to knock him out and bind him with rope. However, as Starbug approaches the evil Lister throws himself into the campfire to escape his bonds and attacks. Soon, Starbug has left with the wrong Lister while the other is left buried on the planet. An Earth long ago, in a universe far away. The Earth World President, John Milhous Nixon has learned that thermonuclear tests conducted too close to the surface of the sun have fatally weakened the star's structure, thus causing an eventual decay that will see the entire solar system die in four hundred thousand years - which will be very bad for the economy, and Nixon's re-election prospects. The only hope is to move the human race to another world in another galaxy; and to that end, a genome has been created that will rewrite DNA and thus turn an inhospitable, barren world into a world where the human race can live. A mission has been organised by Dr. Michael Longman (and his clones, Dr. Longman and Dr. Longman), including numerous GELFs to assist in the process and Michael McGruder, a heroic star soldier who has accepted this mission in the hopes that he may be able to find and contact his father, the long-lost hero of an ill-fated mining ship, revived to be that ship's hologram... Arnold J. Rimmer. The real Lister, having been rescued from his makeshift grave, is trapped in Cyberia charged with orchestrating the break-out (it is made clear that it was in fact he, and not the alternate Lister, who was the subject of the "Cyberia" section and the flash-forward in "Time Fork"). Having survived his alternate self's assault and attempted murder, he is now trapped in a soul-destroying hell of his own creation, where all the places and people remind him not only of the worst places in his life, but of everything he's lost, stolen by his alternative self - his girlfriend, his ship, his life. After five months of this hell, trapped in a grungy dystopian city surrounded by prostitutes that look like Kochanski, soul-sapping advertisements about his parentless upbringing, endless showings of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the cinema and - perhaps worst of all - encyclopedia salesmen, he is brought out of Cyberia and given an offer; to be part of an experimental terraforming and recolonisation program. The inmates bodies will be used to terraform an inhospitable planet into a comfortable environment. All of the inmates on Cyberia are innocent, as only people without any malice or rage are able to be used for this hence people being wrongly arrested on the GELF colony (not knowing that the alternate Lister was actually guilty of murder when he was incarcerated there as they were charging him on smuggling cases where they knew he was innocent). Unable to stand being imprisoned in his personal hell, Lister agrees. Meanwhile, the crew of Starbug have found that the piece of paper in the duplicate Kryten's hand contained coordinates to a ship where important scientific research has been conducted. As it is a long trip to the ship, the Mayflower, the crew are placed into stasis for the journey. Kryten awakes early, in order to prepare the crew, and notices several disconcerting differences in Lister’s medical records. They’ve got the wrong Lister. And to make matters worse, in his checking of the alternate Starbug's crew records, a cursory examination of the alternative Lister’s file reveals that, following a traumatic and abusive upbringing at the hands of his manic-depressive foster mother (as opposed to the kinder, but poorer, foster parents of the proper Lister) had developed into a ruthless, sociopathic criminal. Before he can digest the alarming news, Kryten is startled by the evil Lister who has also awoken early. Just as he attempts to take out Kryten, a GELF ship sent by Lister's bride attacks. Boarding, the GELF demand what is theirs and the evil Lister tells Kryten to just give them what they want, something which Kryten is more than happy to do. The evil Lister realises too late that this means him, and he is dragged out of the airlock. As Kryten muses on this lucky turn of events he realises that Starbug is on fire. The rest of the crew wake just as Starbug plunges into the lava bed of the planet they were heading for. Before Starbug can burn up, it then ends up in an ocean created by the Mayflower. With Starbug damaged, the crew board the Mayflower and find several hundred vials of diverse viruses including positive ones that bestow luck on the infected for a time. Kochanski, after infecting herself for a short while, manages to find more luck virus as well as other vials that will come in handy. Kryten, meanwhile, finds a DNA machine and turns himself human. As part of his agreement in volunteering for the terraforming program, Lister is granted the use of a symbi-morph named Reketrebn to fulfil his desires with her shapeshifting and telepathic abilities. Reketrebn is defective, however, and intends to save herself for her boyfriend. Lister isn't interested in using her for romantic purposes and asks her to turn into Kryten so he can get information out of him before having her turn into him so she can feel the pain he feels from losing Kochanski to his evil self. After this, Reketrebn agrees to help Lister. On the planet, Lister meets Michael McGruder who was kept in deep sleep aboard the Mayflower. McGruder tells Lister that he wants to meet his hero, Rimmer, who is also his father. Thinking he will never see Rimmer again, Lister doesn't correct him. He then learns of a powerful force known as 'The Rage' created by the feelings of fury from the wrongly convicted inmates. To prevent it from killing everyone, the inmates form a circle and The Rage will move between them before choosing one person to inhabit for a few seconds, killing them. Lister joins the circle, and for the time he is consumed with The Rage all his dark feelings are brought to the fore and Lister begs it to consume him. However, it chooses another and kills him before leaving. Kryten initially revels in his humanity, but quickly grows disenchanted with the experience and decides to turn back. Doing so is easier said than done as Longman, having used the DNA machine too many times leaving him barely human, has stolen the mechanoid data. Thanks to the luck virus, Kochanski defeats Longman and Kryten is restored to his regular form. The crew then use the luck virus to find the coordinates of the planet where Lister is and head there. Reaching the planet, Lister is reunited with the rest of the crew and McGruder finally meets his father but is devastated when told he is hardly a hero but a maintenance technician. Starbug loses power once it lands, and the planet will soon be passing through the Omni-Zone into another universe where it will be allowed to thrive. Rimmer walks through a cave when he finds Michael being attacked by the evil Lister. His confusion about how the evil Lister made it there despite being removed by the Kinatowowi is put on hold, when suddenly the radiation gun the evil Lister possesses drops close to him. However Rimmer can't pluck up the courage to grab it, and the evil Lister throws imprisons him in the hold aboard Starbug with Kryten, who found the dead bodies of the four Kinatowowi who boarded earlier (the evil Lister had never left the ship, having killed his escorts before going into hiding to heal from the wounds they inflicted on him). The evil Lister emerges from the ship and locates the rest of the crew demanding the solar-powered escape pod to allow him to leave the planet. As well as this, he shoots Lister in the genitals with the radiation gun rendering him sterile. Meanwhile, The Rage is approaching again. Aboard Starbug, Kryten comes up with a plan to escape the ship using Rimmer's light bee. Although Rimmer is hesitant due to the chance the bee could be destroyed, he talks himself round and agrees to take the risk. The gambit works, and the two escape the ship. The Rage is near, however the crew come up with a plan to kill The Rage by infecting it with the same virus that was used to break into Cyberia. Kryten plans to infect it by throwing himself into The Rage, despite the fact that he won't come back. However the evil Lister attacks again, but Rimmer bravely comes forward to defend his shipmates wearing a jet-pack. McGruder is proud to see his father acting with courage, and Rimmer starts to enjoy himself feeling his neuroses slipping away. Unfortunately, this comes to a premature end when the evil Lister shoots Rimmer's light bee causing Rimmer to deactivate and the heavily damaged bee falls to the ground. The Rage is nearly upon everyone, and there's no time left to infect it with the virus. Everyone forms the circle required to prevent The Rage from killing everyone, however Lister warns that one of them will still die. The evil Lister doesn't intend for it to be him, and infects himself with the luck virus. The Rage hits, and everyone begs for it to possess them. However, thanks to the positive virus, the evil Lister is the one who is 'lucky' enough to get his wish to have The Rage consume him. He takes on the full force of the entity, which finally kills him leaving only his bones behind. Even though The Rage has passed, it must still be destroyed before the planet passes through the Omni-Zone. Suddenly Rimmer's light bee, hovering using the last of its power, uses morse code to communicate with the crew and offer to take the virus and infect The Rage with it. After saying a final goodbye to his son, who now knows that while Rimmer may not have been the hero he was raised to believe in he is still a man to be proud of, the light bee flies into The Rage and infects it with the virus stopping its destruction and allowing the souls of the inmates who created it to rest in peace. The planet starts to pass through the Omni-Zone, and the remaining crew take shelter in the caves for three weeks as the planet is pounded by storms. Emerging, everyone finds a pleasant, hospitable world growing, waiting for them. As Kryten, Cat, McGruder and Reketrebn leave to search for Rimmer's light bee in order to give him a funeral, Lister and Kochanski stare over the world. Lister sadly comments that this would be the ideal place to raise a family and help to restart the human race – a dream now impossible thanks to his alternate self. Kochanski tells him that all hope shouldn't be lost, as he could still father children if he's very lucky... and Kochanski still has some of the luck virus. Taking it, Lister and Kochanski head into the grass and get to work.
4183785	/m/0bnqym	Yoda: Dark Rendezvous	Sean Stewart		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Clone Wars have raged across the galaxy for almost two years, when the Grand Master of the Jedi Order, Yoda, receives a message from Separatist leader Count Dooku. In the message, Dooku concedes to Yoda that things have gotten far out of hand; What began as a political play to keep the Senate honest had turned into a bloodbath, and the time for a truce has come. Dooku invites Yoda to meet him on the planet Vjun, where they would organize the cease-fire. After conferring with his fellow Jedi Masters from the Council, principally Mace Windu, Yoda judges that even if the meeting at Vjun were a feint, the chance to end the war far outweighs the perils of a trap. Yoda decides to send a decoy impersonating himself to a different planet, while he secretly slips off to Vjun. He contracts a famous actor and Yoda impersonator, Palleus Chuff, to pull off the bluff. Disguised as Yoda, Chuff leaves on a very public mission to Ithor. When Chuff's fighter is captured by Dooku's minion Asajj Ventress, who is unaware of the switch, the apparent loss of Yoda comes as a sad blow to the morale of the Republic. Jedi Masters Jai Maruk and Maks Leem journey towards Vjun, accompanied by their Padawans, the under-achieving Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy (or "Scout") and Whie. They make their way slowly, travelling under the false identities of a refugee family, with Yoda disguised as their faithful R2 unit. During one Spaceport layover, Ventress (accompanied by the bumbling but brave Chuff) catches the quintet, and unleashes a dangerous new type of battle droid. While the other Jedi fight the droids and Ventress, Yoda seeks to rescue Chuff. Unfortunately, both Jai Maruk and Maks Leem fall to the terrible droids and Ventress' lightsaber. Yoda, however, diverts Ventress' attention before she gets a chance to kill the young Padawans, and the three Jedi (with Chuff in tow) escape. Meanwhile on Vjun, Count Dooku awaits Yoda in the Château Malreaux, the manor of the long since waned aristocratic clan Malreaux. As the group of Jedi land on Vjun they are forced to separate: Yoda goes to meet with Dooku, and the Padawans follow mysterious disruptions in the Force felt by Whie. Soon, Ventress captures the Padawans. She reveals to Whie that the Château is in fact his house, and the insane house-woman was his mother, Lady "Whirry" Malreaux. Meanwhile, Yoda meets with Dooku, and discovers that Dooku's summons is indeed a feint. The two masters engage in a tense debate about the ways of the Force, and reminiscence about Dooku's childhood in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. In the end, Yoda encourages his former apprentice to leave the dark side and Darth Sidious forever. Dooku, hands shaking, is on the verge of answering when an assistant informs him of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi's arrival in the mansion, dispatched there by the Jedi Council, on behalf of Palpatine. Convinced that the legendary duo are replacements for him, Dooku is overcome by jealousy and throws his assistant out the window. Yoda is forced to save Whirry from falling to her death, and then parry Dooku's follow-up lightsaber attack. Even though Dooku wounds him, Yoda, unfazed, does not yield to the dark side. Yoda recovers, and a short lightsaber battle ensues. Before leaping from the window to escape, Dooku tells Yoda of a missile approaching from space, aimed at the house, and everyone in it. Yoda stops the missile, inevitably allowing Dooku and Ventress time to escape.
4183807	/m/0bnq_2	The Book of Ebenezer Le Page	Gerald Basil Edwards	1981-03-16	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Ebenezer was born in the late nineteenth century, and dies in the early 1960s. He lived his whole life in the Vale. He never married, despite a few flings with local girls, and a tempestuous relationship with Liza Queripel of Pleinmont. He only left the island once, to travel to Jersey to watch the Muratti. For most of his life he was a grower and fisherman, although he also served in the North regiment of the Royal Guernsey Militia (though not outside the island) and did some jobbing work for the States of Guernsey in the latter part of his life. Guernsey is a microcosm of the world as Dublin is to James Joyce and Dorset is to Hardy. After a life fraught with difficulties and full of moving episodes, Ebenezer dies happy, bequeathing his pot of gold and autobiography (The Book of Ebenezer Le Page) to the young artist he befriends, after an incident in which the latter smashed his greenhouse.
4184734	/m/0bnssw	All Things Betray Thee	Gwyn Thomas	1949		 Set in the new town of Moonlea, a fictionalised version of Merthyr Tydfil, it is told from the viewpoint of a travelling harpist, Alan Hugh Leigh, who is looking for his friend, the singer John Simon Adams. But his friend has become a populist leader among the ironworkers, who are involved in a bitter industrial conflict. The novel may be read as an allegorical treatment of the 1831 Merthyr Rising.
4185938	/m/0bnvs0	The Country and the City	Raymond Williams	1973		 In The Country and the City, Raymond Williams analyzes images of the country and the city in English literature since the 16th century, and how these images become central symbols for conceptualizing the social and economic changes associated with capitalist development in England. Williams debunks the notion of rural life as simple, natural, and unadulterated, leaving an image of the country as a Golden age. This is, according to Williams, “a myth functioning as a memory” that dissimulates class conflict, enmity, and animosity present in the country since the 16th century. Williams shows how this imagery is embedded in the writings of English poets, novelists and essayists. These writers have not just reproduced the rural-urban divide, but their works have also served to justify the existing social order. The city, on the other hand, is depicted in English novels as a symbol of capitalist production, labor, domicile, and exploitation, where it is seen as the “dark mirror” of the country. The country represented Eden while the city became the hub of modernity, a quintessential place of loneliness and loss of romanticism. In the novels of Hardy and Dickens, there seems to be a feeling of loss, and at the same time a sense of harmony among the lonely and isolated souls. For Williams, “the contrast of the country and city is one of the major forms in which we become conscious of a central part of our experience and of the crises of our society” (p.&nbsp;289). What kinds of experience do the ideas appear to interpret, and why do certain forms occur or recur at this period or at that? To answer these questions, Williams argues that “we need to trace, historically and critically, the various forms of the ideas” (p.&nbsp;290). It is this historical perspective that makes Williams's work essentially important for it rejects a simple, dualistic explanation of the city as evil in search of peace and harmony in the countryside. Instead, Williams sees the country as inextricably related to the city. In search of the historical, lived form, Williams distinguishes two of his best-known categories: “knowable communities” and the “structure of feeling.” Over the centuries, Williams describes the prevailing structure of feeling—traces of the lived experience of a community distinct from the institutional and ideological organization of the society—in the works of poets and novelists. In the same vein, Williams sees most novels as “knowable communities” in the sense that the “novelist offers to show people and their relationships in essentially knowable and communicable ways” (p.&nbsp;163). In sum, Williams notably said: “It was always a limited inquiry: the country and the city within a single tradition. But it has brought me to the point where I can offer its meanings, its implications and its connections to others: for discussion and amendment; for many kinds of possible cooperative work; but above all for an emphasis—the sense of an experience and of ways of changing it—in the many countries and cities where we live” (p.&nbsp;306).
4186834	/m/0bnxd7	Black Blade	Eric Van Lustbader	1992-07	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 In New York City, a series of murders begin. In Washington, a plot conceived at the highest levels of American government is at work to bring the nation of Japan to its knees. In Tokyo, a power struggle is nearing its final stages for control of the Black Blade Society, an ostensibly political cabal whose motives may encompass far more than politicis.
4187921	/m/0bnz6w	A Political Romance	Laurence Sterne		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 This, though necessary, is not sufficient to account for the multifariousness of the work. The scheme of the allegorical satire not only overlaps with the narrative scheme of the romance or history, but with the epistolary novel as well, the parody of which is but the first external frame inside which many other genres are parodied. The story of the squabble is just half the work. The other half is a "subjoined" key to the allegory and two other letters. And "subjoining" a key, which is in the end no key at all, represents, literary speaking, a "scandal" as shameful as the topical misdeeds that are told. Inexorably, the focus of the scandal shifts from the allegorical history of facts to the allegorical romance of their reading.
4189699	/m/0bp0m1	The Legend of Huma	Richard A. Knaak	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book narrates the adventures of Huma Dragonbane, a Knight of the Crown, his meeting with Kaz the Minotaur, the discovering of the dragonlances, and the defeat of Takhisis during the Third Dragon Wars. Huma and the rest of his unit patrol through a desolate village. Huma's commander, Rennard, orders the investigation of the nearby woods due to a rumor of goblin activity. During the ensuing confrontation Huma is separated from his unit. While searching for his comrades he comes across goblins tormenting a captive, the minotaur Kaz. Kaz and a weary Huma set off to rejoin the knights. A patrol attacks them, thinking Kaz the enemy. A silver dragon attacks them, but Huma convinces her to spare the minotaur. Huma and Kaz are reunited with Rennard and the company sets off for their headquarters. They encounter a battle between the forces of Paladine and the forces of Takhsis. Huma is struck in the battle and loses consciousness. He awakens in an infirmary being tended by a woman who introduces herself as Gwyneth. Huma is appointed captain of the watch, and encounters his old friend, Magius, a powerful magic user. Magius tells Huma to trust him, but has to leave while Huma returns to the knights' encampment. The knights are engulfed in a battle with the forces of Takhisis and Huma and Kaz are thrown into a magical darkness. Magius leads Huma and Kaz through the battle to his Citadel, but later prevents them from leaving. Magius tells Huma that he is a renegade mage that took the test in the Tower of High Sorcery. The Citadel is discovered by Galan Dracos and comes under attack by the forces of Takhisis. Magius tells Huma that a mountain represented by a tapestry in the Citadel is important and that Huma should journey into Ergoth toward this mountain. Huma and Kaz flee the Citadel. Huma and Kaz are separated. Huma fights off dreadwolves and warriors and becomes lost in the forests of Ergoth. He is helped by an Ergothian commander who brings him to the Ergothian camp. The Ergothians tell Huma that the lands around Ergoth have been ravaged by the plague. While the camp is traveling Huma comes upon a ruins of a town and is captured by servants of Morgion. The Ergothians rescue Huma who then encounters Magius, and the two escape into the night. Magius and Huma come across the knight Bouron who is attached to an outpost of the Knights of Solamnia. Bouron and his commander Taggin welcome Huma. Taggin captures Kaz and puts him on trial. Taggin releases Kaz to Huma and allows Huma to continue on his journey to the mountains accompanied by a retinue of knights. Magius, Kaz and Huma traverse the paths in the mountains and Huma is separated from the others. Huma is led to a temple built into the side of the mountain and encounters Gwyeneth. Gwyeneth tells Huma that he will face challenges before he can claim the prize that he has come for. Huma enters the mountain and faces Wyrmfather, an ancient, serpentine dragon. Huma hides in Wyrmfather's treasure room, discovering an evil magical sword called the Sword of Tears. Huma kills Wyrmfather with the Sword of Tears and is teleported through a magical mirror in the treasure room to Solomnia. Huma returns to Vingaard Keep to find that the head of the knights, Grand Master Trake, has died. Huma is to attend a meeting that will determine whether Bennett, Trake's nephew or Lord Oswald, the High Warrior and Huma's mentor, will become the next Grand Master. During the meeting Rennard tells everyone that Oswald has become mysteriously ill. At night Huma discovers the guards near Lord Oswald have been put into a magical sleep, then encounters Rennard dressed as a servant of Morgion, trying to poison Lord Oswald. Huma and Rennard fight, but Rennard escapes. Lord Oswald thanks Huma for his help and sends him back to the mountains of Ergoth. Huma encounters Rennard inciting villagers to violence. The two fight until Rennard is mortally wounded. Huma is then teleported back to Wyrmfather's treasure room. Huma finds the Sword of Tears, lying among the treasure. He takes it with him and looks for an exit from the mountain. Huma encounters Gilean, a grey clad mystic, who tells him to leave the sword behind. Huma struggles for control as the sword tries to control his mind, eventually prevailing, discarding the sword. Huma is granted access to the workshop of Duncan Ironweaver. Duncan tells Huma that he is the creator of the Dragonlance and allows him to pass into a room where Huma has a vision of the knightly, benevolent god Paladine, on a platinum dragon. Paladine hands huma the Dragonlance. Huma exits the chamber and finds Gwyeneth, who tells him that Kaz and Magius are nearby. Huma finds Kaz and Magius and with the help of a silver dragon that Gwyeneth sent for, they are able to prepare the lances for transport to Vingaard Keep. En route to Vingaard the group is attacked by Crynus and Char. Huma and the silver dragon kill Char and Crynus is defeated with the help of Kaz and the silver dragon. Warriors of Takhisis attempt to steal the lances, but are prevented from doing so by Kaz. Magius is captured and taken back to Galan Dracos. Huma rejoins the knights to find that there are many Dragonlances already there. He finds Duncan Ironweaver, who tells him he had many. Many good dragons show up and are fitted with the new lances, and go into battle against the evil dragons of Takhisis.
4193788	/m/0bp7r5	Making Money	Terry Pratchett	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Moist von Lipwig is bored with his job as the Postmaster General of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office, which is running smoothly without any challenges, so the Patrician tries to persuade him to take over the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork and the Royal Mint. Moist, content with his new lifestyle, refuses. However, when the current chairwoman, Topsy Lavish, dies, she leaves 50% of the shares in the bank to her dog, Mr Fusspot (who already owns one share of the bank, giving him a majority and making him chairman), and she leaves the dog to Moist. She also made sure that the Assassins' Guild would fulfill a contract on Moist if anything unnatural happens to the dog or he does not do as her last will commands. With no alternatives, Moist takes over the bank and finds out that people do not trust banks much, that the production of money runs slowly and at a loss, and that people now use stamps as currency rather than coins. His various ambitious changes include making money that is not backed by gold but by the city itself. Unfortunately, neither the chief cashier (Mr. Bent, who is rumoured to be a vampire but is actually something much worse) nor the Lavish family are too happy with him and try to dispose of him. Cosmo Lavish tries to go one step further — he attempts to replace Vetinari by taking on his identity — with little success. However all the while, the reappearance of a character from von Lipwig's past adds more pressure to his unfortunate scenario. Moist's fiancée, Adora Belle Dearheart, is working with the Golem Trust in the meantime to uncover golems from the ancient civilization of Um. She succeeds in bringing them to the city, and to everyone's surprise the "four golden golems" turn out to be "four thousand golems" (due to a translation error) and so the city is at risk of being at war with other cities who might find an army of 4000 golems threatening. Moist discovers the secret to controlling the golems, and manages to order them to bury themselves outside the city (except for a few to power clacks towers and golem horses for the mail coaches) and then decides that these extremely valuable golems are a much better foundation for the new currency than gold and thus introduces the golem-based currency. Eventually, an anonymous clacks message goes out to the leaders of other cities that contains the secret to controlling the golems (the wearing of a golden suit), thus making them unsuitable for use in warfare (as anyone could wear a shiny robe). At the end of the novel, Lord Vetinari considers the advancing age of the current Chief Tax Collector, and suggests that upon his retirement a new name to take on the vacancy might present itself.
4195095	/m/0bp9v0	The Kindness of Women	J. G. Ballard	1991	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Kindness of Women is semi-autobiographical, and discusses Jim's departure from China, where he had been born and had been interned, to visit England, other parts of Europe and the USA. Jim is obsessed with two themes throughout the book: sex, and death. Sexual encounters (and there are a lot) are described in the most clinical, cold terms. The act of sex becomes a dispassionate observation of the male and female genitalia. Too often Jim is unaroused, and has to be "worked on" by his female partner. It is as unsettling to read as the dissection of his female cadaver at Medical school. Death haunts the pages of this book. When Jim leaves the Japanese camp at the end of the war, he is 15 years old and alone. He witnesses a murder of a Chinese clerk at a railway station, a slow, casual murder, committed by a Japanese soldier in the immediate aftermath of the Atomic bomb. Jim cannot intervene; he knows he, too, could be killed in just as casual a manner. As he walks away towards Shanghai, Jim's life has changed forever. Jim tries and fails to find a niche in post-war England. Failing to complete his studies as a medical student, he decides to be a pilot. But his motives are strange: convinced that World War 3 is around the corner, he wants to be one of the bombers, carrying his own "pieces of the sun" to annihilate and, more importantly, to recapture the light he saw at the railway station, where the Chinese clerk died. He finds happiness in his wife and children but, as a young father and husband in the 1960s, he becomes aware of a certain trend towards violence and the ever-intrusive camera lens. This leads him to believe that the world has become desensitized to the violent images they see on the TV screens day after day: Kennedy's assassination in particular, and the images being screened from Vietnam. He sees people morbidly interested in car crashes. Watching and filming instead of helping becomes the norm. The title refers to women who helped him after the death of his wife, but Jim's view of life is distorted and strange. This makes him ideal material for LSD experiments, but he soon dismisses this. His view of humanity is that of a constant need to view lives and violence, and indeed, sex, through a camera, via TV. And just look at Big Brother. This avuncular, puppy-eyed father who brought up three children on his own, and who loved every moment of it, has shown Jim to be a man verging on madness. But, is he Jim? This is the problem and the genius of the book. Where truth and fiction meld and become one. Ballard has declared that the book is the story of his life "seen through the mirror of the fiction prompted by that life".
4202824	/m/0bprg2	Planet of Twilight	Barbara Hambly		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place on Nam Chorios, a backwater world in the Outer Rim which infamously was the center of the Death Seed Plague centuries ago. It is now home to a fanatic religious cult which is plotting to use a new weapon system of quasi-intelligent crystals as unstoppable, unmanned starfighters to attack the New Republic. Leia Organa Solo unofficially goes on a trip to meet with Seti Ashgad, the leader of the Rationalist Party. Luke Skywalker is there after receiving a message from Callista, an old flame. Luke's ship is shot down and Leia is kidnapped by the ancient and corrupt Beldorion the Hutt. After a series of adventures the two escape and end the political conspiracy between the Rationalists and the New Republic.
4202925	/m/0bprr3	MedStar II: Jedi Healer	Steve Perry		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 MedStar II: Jedi Healer is about Jos Vondar, a medical doctor on the planet Drongar. The story takes place 2 years after the Battle of Geonosis. While the Clone Wars wreak havoc throughout the galaxy, the situation on the far world of Drongar is desperate as Republic forces engage in a fierce fight with the Separatists. Despite the all-enveloping armor and superior genetic pedigree, the soldiers of the Republic are still flesh and blood. In the steaming jungles of Jasserak, on the planet of Drongar, the doctors and nurses of a small med unit are devoted to patching together the beleaguered troops of the Republic. This eccentric lot of surgeons is overworked, and even the Jedi healing abilities of Padawan Barriss Offee are tested to the limits. The conflict and casualties continue to grow, and an unthinkable option becomes the inevitable solution to this terrible problem.
4204715	/m/0bpvkt	Spies	Thea von Harbou	2002-04-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Narrating in the form of a bildungsroman, an elderly man, Stephen Wheatley, reminisces about his life during the Second World War as he wanders down the now modernised London cul-de-sac that he once called home. Now a young boy, Stephen, regularly bullied at school and bored with his home life, is informed by his best friend Keith Hayward, a snobbish and domineering neighbour, that Keith's mother is an undercover operative working for the Germans. As the two boys spy on Mrs. Hayward from a hiding place in the bushes they notice her unusual daily routine: leaving Keith's house with a picnic basket full of food, tapping on Auntie Dee's (Mrs. Hayward's sister, next-door-neighbour and best friend, who's husband, Uncle Peter, is away in the RAF) window, and walking through to the end of the cul-de-sac where she disappears into the nearby town. When the boys follow her, they cannot find her in any of the shops; and when they get back to their hiding place, Mrs. Hayward is already ahead of them, walking back into Keith's house. When snooping in Keith's mother's room, they find her diary which contains a small 'x' marked on a day of every month(however this is in reference to her menstrual cycle). The boys' naïveté leads them to believe that 'x' is another secret agent that Mrs. Hayward has meetings with each month. One day, the boys realise that Keith's mother does not turn right into the town every day, but instead turns left into a grimy tunnel that leads to a disused field. Later that night, Stephen goes through the tunnel and finds a box in the field that contains pack of cigarettes. When Keith opens the packet, a slip of paper pops out with a single letter written on it: X. One night Stephen sneaks out to the tunnel and goes to the box once again. Inside his time were some clean clothes. As he is looking through them, somebody appears behind him. Stephen is to scared to turn around and holds his breath hoping that he isn't noticed. Still holding a sock, Stephen runs away as soon as he cannot hear the sound of breathing behind him. His family are outside looking for him and are furious. The next day, when Keith is doing homework, Mrs. Hayward visits Stephen in his hiding place in the bushes and tells him that she knows he is following her, and that he should stop now before he gets hurt. Despite her warnings, Stephen, not telling him about Mrs. Hayward's warnings, shows Keith the sock and tells him that they need to uncover the truth before Keith's mother's next meeting with 'x'. The boys go to the field and re-open the box, where they do not find the clothes but instead a The next day, the boys revisit the field where they find the box empty. A few feet ahead of them they see something hiding under an iron sheet - a vagabond. Keith and Stephen take bars and smash at the sheet until finally realizing they may have killed the vagabond. They run and bump into Keith's mother in the tunnel. She holds back Stephen and tells him since he is not going to stop spying on her, he will have to do her favours for the man in the field. Stephen realises that Mrs. Hayward is not a German spy, but in fact helping the vagabond whom she has taken under her bosom. While taking eggs and milk to the vagabond, he tells Stephen that he is dying, and gives him a cloth to give to Mrs. Hayward to show his love for her. Later that night he sees police taking the vagabond away on a gurney; his face badly mutilated. Fifty years later, Stephen ties up the loose ends: explaining that the vagabond was in fact Uncle Peter who had gone AWOL and was carrying out an affair with Keith's mother while dying from war wounds. As well as this, it turns out that there was a German spy living in the cul-de-sac: Stephen's father, although he was actually working for the English. A subplot is also included in the novel, where Stephen finds comfort in Barbara Berrill&nbsp;– a girl Stephen's age living in his neighbourhood&nbsp;– who is used as a plot device for revealing very important information that helps Stephen understand the mysteries he is uncovering.
4205955	/m/0bpxrd	Shock	Robin Cook	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Using the help of a hacker friend, Joanna and Deborah try to break into the online records of Wingate Clinic, but are met with failure as it was a very well-protected system. They then decide to get the inside information by first getting in posing as prospective employees. They use Social Security Number of recently deceased women to forge their identity and get employed in the clinic. Joanna (under the alias of Prudence Heatherly) gets the work as a word processing employee while Deborah (under the alias of Georgina Marks) get a job of a lab assistant. In order to get access to the high security data, they steal the Access Card of Wingate Clinic's owner, Spencer Wingate by giving him an overdose of liquor. Using the Access Card, they gain (un)authorized entry into the Server Room, from where the records are managed. Unfortunately for them, as all movements into the Server Room as well as the changes made in the file system are logged, their identity gets revealed. In parallel, they find out that while Joanna was subjected to organ theft, the Clinic illegally performs ovary culture (on stem cells) on all the stolen eggs as well as uses many workers as surrogate mothers. From here starts the chase where the Wingate Clinic's officers try to kill the women and they try to save their lives and bring Wingate's ill-deeds to the knowledge of the world. The novel has an open-ending, leaving the readers to guess what happens to the villains in the end.
4206153	/m/0bpy44	The Secret of Sinharat	Leigh Brackett	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 For the first seven chapters, Queen of the Martian Catacombs and The Secret of Sinharat are almost word-for-word identical; the differences are inconsequential to the plot. In Chapter 1, a brief paragraph is inserted to situate the reader in the Leigh Brackett Solar System and to excuse the presence of non-Terran humans on planets like Mars through the concept of a prehistoric "seeding" - not mentioned elsewhere in Brackett's novels. In Chapter 5, an explicit reference to the events of Brackett's story The Beast-Jewel of Mars (Planet Stories, Winter 1948) has been cut, perhaps on the assumption that readers of the novel would not know or be interested in the earlier story. The Arabic word khamsin is consistently replaced by "storm wind", perhaps on the grounds that readers might not be familiar with the word (or mistake it for a Martian technical term). *Chapter 1 - Eric John Stark, fleeing from Venus where he has been running guns to native opponents of a Terro-Venusian mining concern (mining and mineral extraction companies recur as villains in Brackett's stories), has come to Mars to fight as a mercenary in a private war in the Martian Drylands on behalf of Delgaun, lord of the Martian city of Valkis. He is finally pinned down by agents of Earth Police Control. Their leader, Simon Ashton, offers him a deal: lifting of his sentence, if he agrees to act as a spy on Delgaun, whom Ashton claims is plotting a major war together with a barbarian leader called Kynon, of the Dryland tribe of Shun; a war that Ashton says will be disastrous for the drylanders. Stark agrees to go to Valkis as Ashton's agent, and return to report to him in the Martian city of Tarak. *Chapter 2 - Stark enters Valkis late at night and sees the drylanders gathering there. He meets Delgaun and several other mercenaries that Delgaun has hired. One of them is Luhar, an old enemy of Stark from Venus. They challenge each other, but Delgaun separates them. At dawn, Kynon of Shun enters Valkis. *Chapter 3 - Delgaun, Stark and the mercenaries go to see Kynon. In the public square of Valkis, Kynon demonstrates a technology which he claims to have recovered from the lost secrets of the Ramas, an ancient race of Martians who had acquired a form of immortality. Kynon, using two crystal circlets and a glowing rod, appears to transfer the consciousness of an old Martian man into a young Terran boy. The old man collapses and dies. Kynon returns with Delgaun and the others to the council room in the palace. *Chapter 4 - Stark accuses Kynon of an elaborate charade in which the boy was coached in his part and the old man was killed by poison. Kynon admits it, but justifies it as a necessity for uniting the drylanders against the City-States of the Dryland Borders, who are depriving them of water resources. Together with the men of Valkis and the other Low-canal cities, they will conquer the City-States and become fully independent of Terra. Stark goes to his quarters and sleeps through the day. At dusk he goes to the council-room, and finds Delgaun there with Kynon's female companion, Berild. Delgaun asks Stark to bring back one of Kynon's trusted captains, Freka, who is indulging in "a certain vice"; he needs to be back before Kynon sets out at midnight for his desert headquarters. On his way, Stark is stopped by Fianna, Berild's serving girl, who warns him that he is going into a trap set by Delgaun. Stark accepts the warning, but continues anyway. *Chapter 5 - Stark comes to Kala's, a broken-down dive in a mostly uninhabited part of Valkis. He finds Freka there, indulging in shanga, a radiation-induced temporary atavistic regression to a bestial state. Stark realizes that an empty room near Freka probably contains the trap set for him. When he is refused entrance to the room, he leaves Kala's and waits outside. He is followed by Luhar, who had been waiting in the empty room for a chance to attack Stark. Stark jumps Luhar; the fighting goes back into Kala's, where the shanga addicts and Kala herself become involved. Stark knocks Freka out, is stabbed by Luhar, knocks Luhar out, and returns with Freka to Delgaun's palace. Delgaun is surprised and angry; Berild is pleased. *Chapter 6 - At midnight, Kynon leaves Valkis with the drylanders and mercenaries. Kynon orders Stark and Luhar to remain apart from each other. Delgaun remains behind. Luhar and Freka confer. The caravan proceeds across the desert for three days, and on the fourth day they are hit by a sandstorm. *Chapter 7 - Luhar and Freka take advantage of the storm to jump Stark and leave him for dead. He finds himself together with Berild. When the storm blows out, they are lost in the desert. They proceed on foot. After four days, running out of water, they come to a wilderness of rocks. From chapter 8 on the two versions diverge. *Chapter 8 - Stark and Berild are dying of thirst. Berild leads Stark three miles out of their way to a ruined monastery. She miraculously discovers a long-buried well. After they have drunk and slept, Stark suggests to Berild that she is actually a surviving immortal Rama, and knew the location of the well from memory. Berild dismisses the accusation. They stay in the ruins two days, and then leave. *Chapter 9 - Stark and Berild arrive at Sinharat, the old city of the Ramas, where Kynon has made his headquarters. They find Kynon's army and his mercenaries camped in the desert outside the city. Stark enters Sinharat looking for Luhar, and fatally attacks him when he finds him. Delgaun is also mysteriously there. Kynon arrests Stark and places him in a subterranean cell in Sinharat under Freka's guard. Before Freka can kill Stark, Fianna appears and shoots him. Stark disposes of Freka in a pit in the catacombs. Fianna explains that Delgaun and Berild are both Ramas, and that while Kynon wants empire, Delgaun and Berild want to control Mars - without Kynon - through their mercenary outlander clients. *Chapter 10 - Stark and Fianna proceed to a crypt below Sinharat where Berild is waiting. Kynon is there with her, but drugged and under Berild's hypnotic control. Berild offers to become Stark's lover and to make him a Rama, by exchanging his mind with Kynon's, and disposing of Delgaun after the war. Stark agrees, and Berild produces the real crowns of the Ramas, and puts them on Stark's and Kynon's heads. *Chapter 11 - Stark awakes to find himself in Kynon's body. His own body is still there, alive but with Kynon's mind still under hypnosis. Berild locks Kynon, in Stark's body, in a small cell. Stark-as-Kynon goes with Berild to address the armies assembled at Sinharat from a high ledge in the city. Delgaun is there. Instead of leading them to war, Stark reveals the charade of the false Rama crowns. Berild stabs Stark in the back. Stark reveals Berild's treachery to Delgaun. Delgaun throws Berild from the ledge and attempts to unseat Stark from his steed and flee. Stark, though wounded, grasps Delgaun and throttles him, while Delgaun stabs him repeatedly. Stark kills Delgaun and loses consciousness. Fianna runs to him. *Chapter 12 - Stark awakes and finds himself with Fianna. He is back in the crypt below Sinharat, in his own body. Kynon is next to him, dead. Fianna reveals that she is also a Rama, unknown to Berild and Delgaun. She expresses remorse for her past evil and destroys the rod and crowns of the Ramas. Stark and Fianna leave together and find Sinharat deserted. Fianna decides to stay in Sinharat for a while before she decides what to do. Stark departs for Tarak to meet Simon Ashton. *Chapter 8 - Stark and Berild are dying of thirst. Berild leads Stark three miles out of their way to an old ruin, where they both collapse. At night, Stark wakes to see Berild tracing her steps to the site of a long-buried well. They uncover it together, drink, and sleep. The next night, Stark suggests to Berild that she must be a witch to have discovered the well. Berild explains that she knew the secret of the well's location from her father, who had crossed the desert in this place years ago. Stark accepts her explanation, but is privately unconvinced. They stay in the ruins two days, and then leave. *Chapter 9 - Stark and Berild arrive at Sinharat at dawn and find Kynon's caravan encamped outside. The Dryland armies have not yet arrived, but only Kynon and his mercenaries are in the city itself, which the drylanders regard as taboo. Stark and Berild enter Sinharat looking for Luhar, but Kynon prevents Stark and Luhar from fighting. Berild kills Luhar with a knife. Kynon does not punish Berild, but warns Stark not to fight with Freka, who has gone back to the desert, and condemns the infighting that threatens his plans. Berild lies to Kynon about how she and Stark reached Sinharat, pretending that they had more water than they did. Kynon dismisses Berild and Stark. *Chapter 10 - Stark awakes at dusk and finds Fianna there. She warns him that his life is in danger from Delgaun, when he arrives. Stark refuses to flee. Fianna leads Stark to a chamber where Berild is waiting. She warns him against Delgaun, and expresses her resentment at Kynon. Drums beat announcing the late arrival of Delgaun and his allies to Sinharat, and Stark and Berild part. As Stark leaves, he meets Fianna, who hints that Berild may be a Rama. *Chapter 11 - Kynon unveils the banner of the Ramas before the massed armies of the Drylands and the Low-canals in front of Sinharat. Stark confronts Delgaun as a fellow-follower of Kynon, and forces Delgaun to accept him as comrade-in-arms. Later, in council, Delgaun backs down before Kynon, and they proceed to plot the conquest of the City-States. Kynon warns his confederates not to reveal that they do not really have the secret of the Ramas. Days pass. Freka returns from Shun with more fighters, but Kynon keeps him and Stark from fighting. Later, Stark goes into Sinharat and finds Berild reading an ancient wall-inscription in an unknown language. Stark follows her as she goes to a high window. *Chapter 12 - Stark accuses Berild of being a Rama. Berild dismisses his statement with smooth explanations, but Stark does not accept them. Stark deduces that Delgaun must also be a Rama. Berild leaves suddenly. Stark goes later, and is attacked by Freka who is under the influence of shanga. As they are fighting, Kynon and his fighters discover them. Stark is accused of murdering Freka, and the Shunni demand his blood. Stark is knocked out as he tries to blurt out the truth of Kynon's charade. He awakes in an underground cell, guarded by a Shunni warrior. (This portion of the expansion is a rewrite of the middle of Chapter 9 of Catacombs.) *Chapter 13 - Fianna appears, shoots the Shunni, and frees Stark. Fianna reveals that she, Berild, and Delgaun are all surviving Ramas, though she is dependent upon them for the Sending-on of Minds. She leads him into the catacombs, where Stark disposes of the guard's body in a pit and takes his sword. Fianna describes Delgaun and Berild's plans for empire, and explains that they intend to dispose of Kynon by putting Delgaun's mind into Kynon's body. She asks Stark to help her prevent it, and leads him to Berild's chamber. There they find Kynon in bonds, and Berild preparing the real crowns of the Ramas for the Sending-on of Minds. *Chapter 14 - Stark enters, attacks Delgaun and kills him with the sword. Berild drops the crowns and draws a knife. Fianna frees Kynon, who throttles Berild as she slashes him. Stark tells the wounded Kynon to stop the march of the Drylanders. He and Fianna help Kynon out to the open stairway that leads up to Sinharat. From there, Kynon addresses the tribes, telling them of Delgaun and Berild's treachery and his own lie about having the secret of the Ramas. Then he collapses and dies. The mercenaries and the armies break up and leave. Stark returns to Sinharat and finds Fianna. She explains that she has hidden the crowns of the Ramas, unable to destroy them. She invites Stark to return to Sinharat late in his life, offering to make him a Rama then. He refuses. Fianna says that she will stay in Sinharat. Stark departs for Tarak to meet Simon Ashton, looking back at Sinharat as he goes.
4210216	/m/0bq3y5	Human Punk				 Set against a soundtrack of Clash, Sex Pistols, X-Ray Spex, Ruts and Ramones records, sixteen-year-old Joe sets about enjoying his new-found freedom, which in the summer of ’77 means hard-drinking pubs and working-men’s clubs, local Teds, soulboys. disco girls and a job picking cherries with the gypsies. A joyride to Camden Town in North London takes him to see his first band, but it is a late-night incident back on the streets of Slough that changes his life forever. The second part of the book takes place in 1988 and finds Joe in China, receiving bad news in a letter from home. He buys a black-market ticket and takes the Trans-Siberian Express back to England. During this journey he reflects on the events that have filled the intervening years, eventually returning to that night in 1977. Siberia passes in a series of recollections and romance with a Russian woman, Joe arriving in Moscow during the days of Mikhail Gorbachev, continuing to Berlin where he crosses the Wall in the early hours. More trains take him on to Slough. The third section of Human Punk captures the main characters as they reach middle-age. They are older, but little wiser. Slough has changed, but not too much, the spirit that drove Joe and his friends as boys stronger than ever. He makes his living in a range of ways, one of which involves the buying and selling of secondhand records. His punk beliefs remain solid. Life bounces along until a face from the past emerges from the haze of a misty morning and forces him to stop and confront his memories once more.
4210501	/m/0bq48z	London Blues	Anthony Frewin		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Tim Purdom is born in 1937 in a small village on the Kentish coast as the illegitimate son of a young woman who dies in her early forties. After her death in 1959, Purdom decides to move to London as he does not have any sense of belonging to his home town any more. He finds cheap accommodation in Bayswater and work in a snack bar in Soho. Purdom is not only a jazz fanatic (his favourite musician is Thelonious Monk) but also an intellectual who reads books and who is interested in what is going on in the world, both politically and culturally. His intellectual pursuits do not go together with his lifestyle or his job. However, without any formal education or money, he is reduced to the kind of life he is leading; but, unambitious by nature, he is quite content with it for the time being. Very early during his stay in London Purdom is confronted with petty crime through his contact with guests and workmates. When he is offered some extra money by one of the older regulars he tags along with him and suddenly finds himself in a place where "dirty pictures"&mdash;which were illegal at the time&mdash;are taken. He is then approached by the owner of some adult bookshops and encouraged to become a pornographic photographer himself. The customers like his pictures, which are sold under the counter, and Purdom makes some good money. He is initiated into the world of private parties where old blue movies of foreign origin are shown to middle-aged upper middle class men in the company of young, attractively made up women. At one of those parties, where he works as the projectionist, he meets a man who later turns out to be Stephen Ward, one of the key figures in what will later be referred to as the Profumo affair. Ward supplies Purdom with a good many "models" for his photographic sessions. Eventually Purdom buys an 8 mm amateur movie camera and starts shooting pornographic movie shorts himself. His short-lived career is already over in early 1963 when he is told by his employer that the industry has moved on and that cheap Scandinavian imports are now in demand, which are also in colour rather than black and white. Purdom keeps on working at the snack bar and in addition is commissioned to do some serious photography about London for foreign magazines. He has become a respectable citizen with a new girlfriend who does not know anything about the shady business he has left behind. It is then that he feels he is being haunted by his past.
4212295	/m/0bq7d1	Parable of the Sower	Octavia E. Butler	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Set in a future where government has all but collapsed, Parable of the Sower centers on a young woman named Lauren Olamina who possesses what Butler dubbed hyperempathy &ndash; the ability to feel the perceived pain and other sensations of others &ndash; who develops a benign philosophical and religious system during her childhood in the remnants of a gated community in Los Angeles. Civil society has reverted to relative anarchy due to resource scarcity and poverty. When the community's security is compromised, her home is destroyed and her family murdered. She travels north with some survivors to try to start a community where her religion, called Earthseed, can grow.
4212330	/m/0bq7gw	Parable of the Talents	Octavia E. Butler	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Parable of the Talents (1998) (the sequel to Parable of the Sower) tells the story of how, as the U.S. continues to fall apart, the protagonist's community is attacked and taken over by a bloc of religious fanatics who inflict brutal atrocities. The novel is a harsh indictment of religious fundamentalism, and has been compared in that respect to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
4212929	/m/0bq8cy	Those Who Trespass	Bill O'Reilly		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The antagonist is a tall, "no-nonsense" television journalist named Shannon Michaels, described as the product of two Celtic parents, who is pushed out by Global News Network, and systematically murders the people who ruined his career. Meanwhile, the protagonist, a "straight-talking" Irish-American New York City homicide detective named Tommy O’Malley, is charged with solving the murders that Michaels has committed, while competing with Michaels for the heart of Ashley Van Buren, a blond, sexy aristocrat turned crime columnist. Some reviewers have said that Michaels and O'Malley are "thinly veiled versions" of O'Reilly. Michaels' first victim is a news correspondent who stole his story in Argentina, and got him into trouble with the network. He then stalks the woman who forced his resignation from the network and throws her off a balcony. After that he murders a television research consultant who had advised the local station to dismiss him by burying him in beach sand up to his neck and letting him slowly drown. Finally, during a break in the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention, he slits the throat of the station manager. After this, he is pursued by O'Malley and Van Buren, where he attempts to lose them by crossing a runway in front of a speeding jet. Although he makes it, his car's right back tire is cut by the jet's wing, causing the car to spin, flip over, and be subsequently melted by the exhaust from the jet, which explodes. Michaels dies in extreme agony, as his contacts (used to hide his identity) burn into his eyes and a chunk of the car crushes his head in.
4213188	/m/0bq8sp	Best Friends	Jacqueline Wilson	2004-03-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Gemma and Alice have known each other all their lives, but when Gemma reads Alice's diary at a sleepover, it eventually leads her to discover Alice is moving. Because of their distance, Gemma and Alice struggle to stay friends, with the possibility of each other making new friends. The story's theme throughout the whole story is that true friends will be together until the end. Gemma and Alice have been best friends since birth. They were born on the same day, in the same hospital and have been inseparable ever since. Complete opposites (Gemma is athletic and messy, while Alice is graceful and tidy), they have a bond that is unbreakable and every year on their birthday they share the same wish: “We wish we stay friends forever and ever and ever.” Everything seems ruined when Alice's father gets a new job hundreds of miles away and the whole family has to move. Now Alice and Gemma have to navigate the rough waters of adjusting to life without each other. Alice has another friend Flora. Flora is really posh. Only Gemma hates Flora. Once Gemma visits Alice at the same time as Flora does. Gemma brings a cake and when she there she's there she throws it in Floras face. The book ends with a birthday card from Alice.
4214046	/m/0bq9qs	The High Window	Raymond Chandler	1942	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the house of wealthy widow Elizabeth Bright Murdock to recover a missing Brasher Doubloon, a rare and valuable coin. Mrs. Murdock suspects her son’s estranged wife Linda Conquest, a former singer, of stealing it. On his way back to his office, Marlowe is followed by a blond man in a coupe. Mrs. Murdock’s son Leslie Murdock visits Marlowe and tries to learn why his mother hired him. Murdock lets slip that he owes nightclub owner Alex Morny a large sum of money. Marlowe learns that Linda Conquest had two friends: Lois Magic and a Mr. Vannier; Magic is now Mrs. Alex Morny. Marlowe visits Mrs. Morny at home and finds Vannier with her, who acts suspiciously. Marlowe is still tailed by the blond in the coupe, and confronts him. He is George Anson Phillips, an amateurish private detective, who is thinking of enlisting Marlowe’s help on a case that is out of his league. Marlowe agrees to meet him at his apartment later. Marlowe visits a rare coin dealer, Mr. Morningstar, who confirms that someone tried to sell a Brasher Doubloon; Marlowe plans to buy it back the next day, and after leaving overhears the dealer trying to call Phillips. Marlowe keeps his appointment with Phillips but finds him dead; the police arrest the drunk next door for the murder, although he insists he is innocent. The police give Marlowe an ultimatum to reveal all he knows. At his office, Marlowe receives a package with no address that contains the coin. He calls Mrs. Murdock and is floored when she says the coin has already been returned. Marlowe returns to the coin dealer, but finds him dead also. Then Alex Morny’s henchman calls and invites Marlowe to visit Morny at his nightclub. Linda Conquest turns out to be singing there. Morny demands to know why Marlowe visited his wife, but Marlowe is unfazed and Morny realizes he is not Marlowe’s quarry. Morny offers to hire Marlowe to find dirt on Vannier, giving him a suspicious receipt for dentist chemicals that Vannier lost. Marlowe also talks to Linda, and decides she is probably not involved with the theft. Returning to the Murdocks, Marlowe is told a story he doesn’t believe: Leslie Murdock hocked the coin to Morny for his debts, then changed his mind and got it back. Marlowe leaves in disgust, but begins to suspect a dark secret involving Merle, the timid family secretary, and Mrs. Murdock’s first husband, Horace Bright, who was Leslie’s father and who died falling out of a window. The police say the drunk has confessed to the murder of Phillips, but Marlowe discovers he is covering for his landlord, a local leader who doesn’t want the police snooping around because his fugitive brother is nearby. The landlord is paying for the drunk’s legal bills in exchange for his taking the rap. Marlowe gets a call that Merle is at his apartment having a nervous breakdown; he rushes home and she claims to have shot Vannier, although her story doesn’t hold water. Marlowe visits Vannier’s home, finds him dead, and discovers a photo of a man falling from a window. Morny and Magic arrive, and Marlowe hides while Morny tricks his wife into leaving her fingerprints on the gun near the body. He tells her he is sick of her and will force her to take the rap, but after they leave Marlowe puts the dead man’s prints on the gun instead. Marlowe visits Mrs. Murdock again, and reveals what he has figured out: Horace Bright once tried to force himself on Merle, and she either pushed him or allowed him to fall out of a window to his death. The stress of it made her become detached from reality. Vannier knew and was blackmailing the family. Mrs. Murdock coldly admits it is true, and says she regrets ever having hired Marlowe to get the coin back. Marlowe makes it plain that the feeling is mutual. He then speaks to Leslie Murdock, and reveals what he knows about him: he and Vannier had a plot to duplicate the coin using dental technology. They had Lois Magic hire a dimwitted private detective to sell the fakes. The detective got scared of the assignment and mailed the coin to Marlowe. When Vannier learned Marlowe was on the case, he killed the detective and the dealer to cover his tracks. He threatened to ruin Leslie if their scheme ever got out, so Leslie killed him. Leslie confirms it, but Marlowe says it is not his business to turn him in and leaves. Marlowe tells Merle he knows it was Mrs. Murdock who pushed her husband out of the window, and then blamed Merle for it. He drives her back to her parents’ home in Iowa. The police discover Vannier’s role in the counterfeiting plot and his murders of Phillips and the coin dealer, but rule Vannier’s death a suicide. Marlowe's last act in the novel is to remove Merle from the toxic environment of Mrs. Murdock's employment. He drives her cross country away from Los Angeles to the home of her parents. As he watches her and her family on the porch driving away he says: "I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again".
4216841	/m/0bqgj6	Raja Gidh	Bano Qudsia	1981	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Seemin Shah, hailing from an upper-middle-class family, falls in love with her handsome class fellow Aftab in the MA Sociology class at Government College Lahore. Seemin is a modern and attractive urban girl and attracts most of her male class fellows, including the narrator Qayyum and the young liberal professor Suhail. Aftab belongs to a Kashmiri business family. Though he also loves her, he can not rise above his family values and succumbs to his parent's pressure to marry someone against his wishes and leave for London to look after his family business. Now the long story of separation begins.
4219449	/m/0bqmhh	The White Hotel	D. M. Thomas	1981-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book's first three movements consist of the erotic fantasies and case-history of one of the novelist's conception of Sigmund Freud's female patients, overlapping, expanding, and gradually turning into almost normal narrative. But then the story takes a different course with the convulsions of the century, and becomes a testament of the Holocaust, harrowing and chillingly authentic. Only at the end does the fantasy element return, pulling together the earlier themes into a kind of benediction. The book begins with a long poem, full of erotic imagery and near-incoherent description. Following this is a prose version of the story that we learn is written by a young woman who is a semi-successful opera singer who comes to Sigmund Freud for analysis as she suffers from acute psychosomatic pains in her left breast and her womb. Her character and the pseudonym Anna G. might draw on examples of real case studies (Freud's "Wolfman" also appears as a peripheral character in the novel), but the novel is indeed fictional. Thomas lets the reader in on Freud's analysis, as well as his ambiguous feelings towards his patient. At several stages, Freud is ready to throw up his hands and tell her that he won't continue his treatment as he feels she is not forthcoming enough to make any real progress. He always relents, however, because he senses that "Lisa" (the opera singer's real name) has enough redeeming attributes to warrant his time. As the novel progresses, the reader learns more and more about Lisa's past and the seminal childhood incident (occurring when she is 3-years-old and vacationing with her parents in Odessa) that estranged her from her mother, and more particularly, from her father. This provides the central motif of the novel as well as Lisa's Cassandra-like ability to see the future through her dreams and her imaginative powers. The novel also makes use of epistolary form with postcards from the fictional hotel guests included as part of the narrative. Many attempts were made to make the novel into a film. These included attempts by Bernardo Bertolucci with Barbra Streisand and by David Lynch with Isabella Rossellini, as well as by Emir Kusturica and Terrence Malick.
4220629	/m/0bqpr5	People of the Talisman	Leigh Brackett	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 *Chapter 1 - Eric John Stark, outland mercenary, and his companion Camar the thief, are travelling in the wilderness that surrounds the northern polar cap of Mars, trying to get to Camar's home city of Kushat. Camar has been mortally wounded in a guerrilla campaign and wants to return home before he dies. Unable to make it, he confesses that he has stolen the holy talisman of Ban Cruach from Kushat, which keeps the city safe. It is hidden inside a boss on his belt. Stark promises to take the talisman back to Kushat for Camar. Examining the talisman, he presses it to his forehead and receives visions of a tower, a city in the ice, and a pass - the memories of Ban Cruach. Soon after he puts the talisman back in the belt, he is approached by the riders of Mekh, a barbarian tribe that lives in the hills between him and Kushat. *Chapter 2 - The riders of Mekh arrest and plunder Stark, except for his clothes and Camar's belt. They lead him to their camp in a valley several days northward. There they bring him before the masked and fully armored lord Ciaran. Ciaran interrogates Stark and announces his plan to besiege Kushat. Stark is uncooperative and demands to see Ciaran's face. Ciaran turns him over to Thord, his previous capturer. *Chapter 3 - Stark is tied to a scaffold and scourged by Thord. When Thord comes near him, Stark bits his hand hard enough to break his thumb. When Thord tries to kill Stark for this, Ciaran kills Thord for disobedience. Stark feigns unconsciousness, despite being prodded by spears. When he is cut down, Stark gets a spear, kills several riders, and escapes on a mount. After riding for three days through a snowy wasteland marked by a series of towers, he reaches Kushat, a city standing in front of a pass through a scarp. *Chapter 4 - Stark enters Kushat and meets Thanis. He his challenged by Lugh, whom he warns about the imminent attack by Mekh. Lugh leads Stark to the guard captain, who dismisses Stark's claims, but is persuaded to pass the warning on to the nobility. He gives Stark into the custody of Thanis, who takes him to her home. Stark sleeps, only to be wakened by Thanis' brother Balin, who tells him that soldiers have come, and warns him not to speak of the talisman. A nobleman, Rogain, enters with a group of soldiers and questions Stark about the invasion. Rogain at last agrees to put Kushat in arms. After Rogain and his men leave, Balin and Thanis explain that they found the talisman in Camar's belt, and they agree not to return it to the men of Kushat. Stark goes to sleep again. Just before dawn he wakes and goes up on Kushat's wall. *Chapter 5 - In the morning, the clans of Mekh, led by Ciaran, attack Kushat. Despite resistance, Mekh takes the Wall and breaches its gate. Stark, who had been fighting on the wall, goes down to face Ciaran in single combat. As they fight, Stark tears Ciaran's mask off, revealing her to be a red-haired woman. *Chapter 6 - Despite this revelation, in the moment of victory, Ciaran is able to retain the loyalty of her followers. As the soldiers of Kushat charge and are beaten back, Stark manages to escape the mêlée. Stark hides in Kushat until the looting commences. *Chapter 7 - *Chapter 8 - *Chapter 9 - *Chapter 1 - Eric John Stark, outland mercenary, and his companion Camar the thief, are travelling in the wilderness that surrounds the northern polar cap of Mars, trying to get to Camar's home city of Kushat. Camar has been mortally wounded in a guerrilla campaign and wants to return home before he dies. Unable to make it, he confesses that he has stolen the holy talisman of Ban Cruach from Kushat, which keeps the city safe. It is hidden inside a boss on his belt. Stark promises to take the talisman back to Kushat for Camar. Examining the talisman, he hears tiny, unintelligible voices that alarm him. Soon after he puts the talisman back in the belt, he is approached by the riders of Mekh, a barbarian tribe that lives in the hills between him and Kushat. *Chapter 2 - *Chapter 3 - *Chapter 4 - *Chapter 5 - *Chapter 6 - *Chapter 7 - *Chapter 8 - *Chapter 9 - *Chapter 10 - *Chapter 11 - *Chapter 12 - *Chapter 13 - *Chapter 14 - *Chapter 15 - The Talisman expansion is far more ambitious than the one of The Secret of Sinharat; for one thing, the resulting story is about a third longer than Sinharat. Despite the comprehensiveness of the revision, the treatment of the earlier chapters, where more of the original text is retained, is sometimes clumsy and the motivation of the changes is sometimes unclear. In at least one place there is a significant editorial faux pas -- a passage in which an important character is introduced is omitted, and the character is later referred to by name without the connection between name and person having ever been made explicit. The murderously insane aliens of Talisman are a very unusual invention for Brackett, and it may be that the hand of Hamilton is seen at work here. Ban Cruach also loses much of his mythical glamor in Talisman, which is something of a let-down, though it does work as a "twist" conclusion.
4224473	/m/0bqwln	Thr3e	Ted Dekker	2003-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kevin Parson, a 28-year-old seminary student, has his life turned upside-down when a killer named Richard Slater decides to stalk him. If he can "confess his sin", Slater will stop killing. Kevin is shown as being a purely innocent character with no idea why anyone would want to hurt him, and the story that follows involves an FBI agent that he may be falling for and a very old friend named Samantha Sheer. de:Thr3e – Gleich bist du tot
4225822	/m/0bqy_q	To the Last Man	Zane Grey	1921	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows an ancient feud between two frontier families that is inflamed when one of the families takes up cattle rustling. The ranchers are led by Jean Isbel and, on the other side, Lee Jorth and his band of cattle rustlers. In the grip of a relentless code of loyalty to their own people, they fight the war of the Tonto Basin, desperately, doggedly, to the last man, neither side seeing the futility of it until it is too late. And in this volatile environment, young Jean finds himself hopelessly in love with a girl from whom he is separated by an impassable barrier.
4226227	/m/0bqzv2	Coot Club	Arthur Ransome	1934	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Callum children spend their Easter Holidays in Norfolk with a family friend, Mrs Barrable, who is staying on a small yacht called the Teasel, moored near the village of Horning. There they encounter the Coot Club, a gang of local children comprising Tom Dudgeon, twin girls 'Port' and 'Starboard' (Nell and Bess Farland), and three younger boys — Joe, Bill and Pete (the Death and Glories). A noisy and inconsiderate party of city-dwellers (dubbed the 'Hullabaloos' by the children) hire the motor cruiser Margoletta and threaten an important nesting site (one of many monitored by the Coots) by mooring in front of it. Despite warnings "not to mix with foreigners", Tom stealthily loosens the Margolettas moorings to save the nest and hides behind the Teasel to save his father's reputation. Mrs Barrable does not give Tom away to the Hullabaloos and instead asks him to teach the Callums to sail. Tom, Port, and Starboard join the crew of the Teasel, and together with Mrs Barrable and her pug William, the children teach Dick and Dorothea the basics of sailing up and down the Broads. Dick shares the Coot Club's keen interest in the local birdlife, and Dorothea uses the voyage as fodder for her new story, "Outlaw Of The Broads" based on the Hullabaloos vow to catch Tom. They chase the crew of the Teasel all over the Broads, eventually managing to crash the Margoletta in the perilously tidal Breydon Water — necessitating a dramatic rescue by the Coots.
4226931	/m/0br06x	Comet in Moominland	Tove Jansson	1946	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Moomintroll and his friend Sniff go into the forest and find a mysterious path. They follow it and meet the Silk Monkey. They go pearl fishing, and then discover a cave. However, they get scared when they visit the cave later and see a comet drawn with the pearls, which the Muskrat tells Moomintroll may destroy the valley. So they sail to the observatory in the Lonely Mountains to ask the Professors if the comet will destroy the Earth. They are attacked by crocodiles who are distracted by their trousers. They then meet Snufkin, who joins them, and Sniff has a run-in with a giant lizard after he tries to steal its garnets. The boat gets stuck in a cave and they almost fall into a dark hole when they are rescued by a Hemulen with butterfly net. They find the observatory, and the scientists tell them the exact time that the comet will arrive. Moomintroll saves the Snork Maiden from a deadly bush, then she and her brother Snork join them on their way back to Moominvalley. They buy gifts in a store, then attend a dance in the forest. The comet heat dries up the sea, and the group has to cross on stilts. On the way they meet another Hemulen, who follows them home. Moominmamma has baked a welcome home cake. The family flees to a cave, along with the Muskrat, Silk Monkey, and the Hemulen. However, the comet misses Moominvalley. The friends rejoice.
4227282	/m/0br0s0	Finn Family Moomintroll	Tove Jansson	1948	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Moomintroll, Sniff and Snufkin discover the Hobgoblin's Hat on a mountain-top, unaware of its strange powers. An egg shell discarded into the hat becomes five clouds the children ride and play with. Next day the clouds have disappeared and nobody knows where they came from. Moomintroll hides inside the hat during a game of hide-and-seek and is temporarily transformed beyond recognition. Once they discover the magic powers of the hat and use it for a few transformations, the family resolves to get rid of it and throw it into the river. But Moomintroll and Snufkin recover it at night and hide it in the cave by the sea, where the Muskrat gets horribly scared when his dentures transform into something that is never mentioned in the novel. The Moomin Family travel to the Island of the Hattifatteners on a found boat, and the Moominhouse is transformed into a jungle when Moominmamma absent-mindedly drops a ball of poisonous pink perennials into the hat. At night the jungle withers, and it is used as firewood to cook the huge Mameluke that the children previously caught while fishing. Thingumy and Bob arrive clutching a large suitcase containing the King's Ruby, which they stole from the Groke. After a court case (presided over by the Snork) the Groke agrees to exchange the ruby for the Hobgoblin's Hat. Thingumy and Bob steal Moominmamma's handbag to use as a bed, but return it when they realise how upset she is. The Moomins hold a party to celebrate the finding of Moominmamma's handbag, during which the Hobgoblin arrives (with a new hat) demanding the King's Ruby, but is refused by Thingumy and Bob. To cheer himself up, the Hobgoblin grants everyone at the party a wish. Although not everyone gets exactly what they wished for, the Hobgoblin is delighted when Thingumy and Bob wish for a duplicate ruby to give him - the Queen's Ruby. (As it turns out, the Hobgoblin can grant the wishes of others, but not his own.)
4227671	/m/0br19t	Moominsummer Madness	Tove Jansson	1954	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A nearby volcano causes a massive wave to flood Moominvalley. While escaping the flood the Moomin family and their friends find a building floating past, and take up residence there. They believe it is a deserted house until they realise someone else lives there, Emma, who explains that it is not a house but a theatre. The moomins start to understand about the scenery, props, and costumes they have found. The theatre drifts aground and Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden decide to go and sleep in a tree. When they wake next morning the theatre has floated away again and they are alone. Meanwhile Little My accidentally falls overboard, and by some strange coincidence is rescued by Moomintroll's adventurous friend Snufkin who is setting off to seek revenge on a grumpy Park Keeper. He tears down all the 'Do not walk on the grass' notices, fills the lawns with electric Hattifatteners and sets free twenty-four small woodies who immediately adopt him as their father. The coincidences continue as Moonmintroll and the Snork Maiden meet Emma's deceased husbands niece, the Fillyjonk, and all three get arrested burning the signs that Snufkin tore up. Meanwhile in the theatre, Emma helps Moominpappa write a play and the family decide to stage it. The woodies find a playbill for the play and cajole Snufkin into taking them to the theatre. The Hemulen who has arrested Fillyjonk, Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden also finds a playbill and leaves his cousin to guard the prisoners while he heads off to see the play. The cousin is persuaded of their innocence and lets them out to go to the play too, where everyone is reunited and ends up on stage, the play itself collapsing into a big reunion party. When the floods recede everyone gets to go home.
4228194	/m/0br20y	The Star Fraction	Ken MacLeod	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The world is controlled by the US/UN, a sort of semi-benign meta-dictatorship which doesn't rule directly so much as enforce a series of basic laws on a vast number of microstates. Many of the microstates are in a near-constant state of low-intensity warfare. Among the laws enforced on them is a prohibition on certain directions of research, such as intelligence augmentation or artificial intelligence; precisely what is prohibited is of course secret, and as violation of the prohibitions will result in the swift and efficient death of everyone directly involved, scientific research is a dangerous proposition at best. The main characters - a trotskyist mercenary, a libertarian teenager from a fundamentalist microstate, and an idealistic scientist - find themselves caught up at the center of a global revolution against the US/UN. The revolution was planned, and partially automated using financial software, in order to break out when a certain set of conditions were reached. The stakes are raised at the end of the book, when it is revealed that the autonomous financial software has evolved into an intelligent form, which might cause the paranoid US/UN to make a 'clean break' with the earth, knocking the planet back to the stone age with the orbital defense lasers.
4235234	/m/0brf20	The Twins at St. Clare's	Enid Blyton	1941	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The two girl twins Patricia and Isabel O'Sullivan, having just finished school at the elite school called Redroofs, are expected to move on to senior school. While most of their friends at their old school are moving to the equally elite Ringmere, the twins' parents are reluctant to send them to an expensive school as they are afraid the twins might become spoilt and snobbish. Furious at their parents' refusal to send them to the school of their choice, the twins are determined to be as difficult as possible at St. Clare's. The twins soon find out that keeping their nose high will bring them trouble. They meet Miss Roberts, a strict but fair teacher, who is also their form mistress, and keeps the form quite well under control. They meet other first form girls with whom they share a dormitory, such as Hilary Wentworth, Doris Edwards, Janet Robins, Vera Johns and Sheila Naylor. Soon, they are called "the stuck up twins" by the rest of the form. They immediately like the head girl Winifred James, who is the pride of St. Clare's. The twins find it irritating that they are among the most junior girls in school (being only 14 and a half), while in Redroofs they were head girls. The twins are especially at odds with their French mistress, Mam'zelle. She is very hot tempered, and is frustrated that they make so many mistakes. Mam'zelle frequently uses the word "abominable" for the twins' work, and thus the twins secretly begin to call her "Mamzelle Abominable". The twins miss their favourite sports of field hockey and tennis because only lacrosse is played at St Clare's. However, Pat turns out to be quite good at lacrosse. She is selected by sports captain Belinda Towers despite having defied her earlier. The twins soon make good friends with the other girls and play pranks on others in the school. Most pranks are directed at Miss Kennedy, their new history teacher for the term, who is a very timid and insecure teacher, though highly qualified. One of the pranks for Miss Kennedy is discovered by Miss Roberts and she punishes the whole form because of it. The class stops playing tricks on Miss Kennedy when the twins accidentally overhear her talking to a friend about giving up her job, despite needing the money to help her sick mother, because she cannot control the class. After an uneasy start, the twins generously help Kathleen Gregory and Sheila Naylor at times of trouble and win their loyal and sincere friendship and praise. They are soon liked by Miss Theobald, the headmistress, who considers them very dedicated pupils. But the twins' friend Kathleen has something to hide. She finds a wounded dog and nurses it back to health in secret. The dog escapes from the boxroom where he is kept and is discovered by Miss Theobald. However, Kathleen is allowed to keep the dog and all is well. By the end of term, the girls are completely settled in and are enjoying St. Clare's.
4237276	/m/0brh_p	The O'Sullivan Twins	Enid Blyton	1942	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The newly sensible Pat and Isabel O'Sullivan depart for their second term at St Clare's, with their Cousin Alison joining them. Alison's character is airheaded and ditzy, but she is basically a decent and kind-hearted person. Other new characters include Lucy Oriell and Margery Fenworthy. Lucy is the archetypal school story girl — bright, kind and popular — although she is portrayed well, without the one-dimensional flatness this type of character can often have. Her father is a painter and Lucy herself is a talented artist. Margery is sulky, sullen, rude, antisocial and the other girls suspect she is older than them, nearer to sixteen years old. Events include a midnight tea party for second former Tessie, which is discovered by Mamzelle through the machinations of another second former, Erica. Erica causes trouble for the first and second formers throughout the year, and is finally trapped in a fire which results in a thrilling rescue by Margery, who becomes a heroine. Lucy's father is involved in an accident rendering him unable to paint, and therefore unable to pay St Clare's school fees, but she is helped by the twins and her new friend, Margery. There is also excitement when Janet puts beetles into Mamzelle's spectacle case and then the girls pretend they can't see them, leaving Mamzelle to believe she is going mad. Characters in this book; * Pat O'Sullivan * Isabel O'Sullivan * Alison O'Sullivan * Margery * Lucy * Tessie * Nora * Erica (antagonist) * Winifred James * Belinda Towers * Hilary Wentworth * Mam'zelle * Doris Elward * Miss Roberts * Matron * Janet Robins * Miss. Theobald * Kathleen Gregory * Shelia Naylor * Rita George * Miss Lewis * Winnie
4239055	/m/0brm80	The Wishing Game				 Jonathon Palmer is a shy teenager at a traditional British boys boarding school in the 1950s. He has three friends: bookworm Nicholas and twins, Stephen and Michael. Unfortunately, his friends live in a separate dormitory, leaving Jonathon exposed to regular bullying at the hands of sadistic James Wheatley and his cronies Stuart and George. There is only one boy who is not bullied with James Wheatley - Richard Rokeby. Richard is a loner but has confidence and scathing wit. Jonathon gradually befriends dark and dangerous Richard, who in turn encourages Jonathon to be brave and stand up to the bullies (both students and faculty members). Richard begins to turn Jonathon against his three friends. One night, Richard suggests that the boys play a game with a Ouija Board that he has brought to the school from his aunt's house. The twins refuse and leave. Nicholas refuses to let Richard scare him, so he remains. Following that evening, bad things begin to happen that Jonathon believes he has caused. Both James Wheatley's cronies leave the school - Stuart with his family to the U.S. and George to the hospital after a brutal injury on the rugby field. This leaves James Wheatley vulnerable. James Wheatley becomes paranoid and becomes too afraid to go to sleep. Driven mad, he ends up running out of the school in his pyjamas and is killed in a hit and run. Jonathon believes that it was his fault and begins to fear Richard Rokeby. It is on the last night of the school year that police are called to the school grounds. The headmaster has a heart attack. The cruel Latin professor has gone insane and has beaten his wife to death. The closeted History teacher has hanged himself. Michael has fallen to his death trying to stand up to Richard. The police break in to a locked room where Richard and Jonathon are. Both boys are dead and one police officer has to break a window for air, as he is suffocated by an indescribable smell in the room. Nicholas ends up taking the blame for all of it, despite being innocent. Many decades later, an adult Nicholas tells his story to a journalist. However, he tells the journalist that if he publishes the story, Nicholas will ensure that his life is ruined. Nicholas claims that, like Richard and Jonathon, he also acquired dark powers during their "wishing game" with the Ouija Board. The journalist deliberates for a few moments before throwing the tape recordings of Nicholas's story into the fire.
4240802	/m/0brqz8	The Girl with the Golden Eyes	Honoré de Balzac			 The story follows the decadent heir Henri de Marsay, who becomes enamored of the titular beauty, Paquita Valdes, and plots to seduce her. Though he succeeds, he becomes disillusioned when he discovers she is also involved with another lover, and plots to murder her. When he arrives to kill her, he discovers she's already dead by the hand of her lover - his half-sister. She declares that Paquita came from a land where women are no more than chattels, able to be bought and used in any way. In the last lines of the story, de Marsay laughingly tells a friend that the girl has died of consumption.
4241101	/m/0brrwy	Epic	Conor Kostick		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Epic follows the life of a boy named Erik and his involvement in a game called Epic. Epic is a virtual game, but is considered by all the inhabitants of New Earth as much more. A generic fantasy game, Epic echoes World of Warcraft and Everquest, but the entire population of New Earth play the game, as its rewards directly affect their income, social standing and careers. Epic is used to control violence, which, in their society, is illegal and is treated with extreme severity. A growing injustice has emerged in the world, as the game of Epic has progressed to a point where, since the game's currency is used as money in the real world, it is nearly impossible for poor people to actually advance in the game, unless given money by those who inherited wealth and powerful equipment, or finding treasures. Poor citizens of New Earth play their entire life, slowly building up their characters to try to become powerful enough to go to a university to study Epic, or - if they choose - to study fields of real life. If a community wishes to redress a perceived injustice, they may challenge Central Allocations or C. A., which is a powerful, select group of nine individuals that controls all of the world's resources and funds the most powerful characters in the game world. All of the members of C. A. are extremely rich, which results in them having nearly unbeatable characters in the game, especially to the great number of weak players in the game. The challenges are held in a special arena where the various players can attack each other. The challenges are simply a fight to the last man between the two opposing teams. If you win against the Central Allocations team, then you get what you want, be it a new law, a medical procedure, or a material object. If you lose, though, then you lose everything your character owns (including items and money) and you have to begin all over again. Dying in the game outside of the arena where challenges are held also yields the same results, so dying is a disaster, meaning that however many hours you have played are completely wasted, and you have to begin again from scratch. The story opens with Erik determined to obtain revenge for the unjust treatment of his parents. Unknown to Erik, his father, Harald, was exiled because he hit another person (Ragnok, a future member of Central Allocations). Ragnok was trying to assault Harald's wife in a way that is never explained fully in the book, but seems to have some sexual implications. Having escaped from exile, Harald had hidden in a small out-of-the-way community with his wife, during which they have Erik. In order to help his local friends, Harald challenges Central Allocations hoping to remain unknown to them, but his character is identified and he is exiled once more. Before these events, Erik had become fed up with the game, squandering many lives of his avatars in fighting Inry'aat, the Red Dragon, who guards a massive treasure hoard. Most of these attempts are spent trying to figure out a quick way to defeat the dragon. As an expression of his discontent with the world, Erik had gone against convention in making a human female avatar, which he named Cindella and had deliberatly chosen an almost unknown character class, swashbuckler. He put all of his ability points into beauty, which most players consider a waste, as beauty has no benefit in battle. This, incidently, is the cause for the bland, gray characters that predominate in Epic. But curiously, the tale takes a twist and Erik inherits much wealth from his investment in beauty as the game itself begins to respond to his unique avatar. As a result and freed by the plight of his parents from having to play the game in the usual, risk-avoiding grind, Erik dares to dream he can kill the red dragon and with its wealth, challenge the power of C. A. With his friends' help and one of his strategies from studying Inry'aat, the red dragon is indeed slain, and as a result Erik and his friends become some of the richest and most famous characters in all of Epic. Each of the group gains about four million bezants, which amounts to more wealth than they could earn in over a thousand years of normal play. This victory propels the teenagers into a series of unexpected encounters including with an evil vampyre; the Executioner of C. A.; a sinister Dark Elf and the Avatar of the game itself. The Avatar and the vampyre play a central role in the plot, as they are the opposing sides of the persona that the game itself inexplicably developed. The Avatar represents the game's desire to end its existence and save the people of New Earth, while the vampyre reflects its desire to simply continue existing. They balance each other out in the final conflict of the book, leaving Erik to revolutionise his world by ending the game of Epic.
4242187	/m/0brvc1	Harry Kitten and Tucker Mouse	George Selden		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book tells the story of the young mouse who becomes Tucker, and the kitten who becomes Harry, the two friends of Chester Cricket in The Cricket in Times Square. Tucker, we learn, was born in a box of Kleenexes and other odds and ends on Tenth Avenue, and fled his nest at a young age to avoid sanitation workers. He takes his name from "Merry Tucker's Home-Baked Goods", a bakery on Tenth Avenue. He meets Harry Kitten, who took his name from two children he heard talking. One said "Harry-you're a character!" and the kitten decided he too wanted to be a character. The two become friends and search New York for a home of their own. Their wanderings take them to the basement of the Empire State Building and to Gramercy Park, among other places. Eventually, they settle down in a disused drain pipe in the Times Square subway station.
4242534	/m/0brw1w	Moominland Midwinter	Tove Jansson	1957	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 While the rest of the Moomin family are in the deep slumber of their winter hibernation, Moomintroll finds himself awake and unable to get back to sleep. He discovers a world hitherto unknown to him, where the sun does not rise and the ground is covered with cold, white, wet powder. Moomintroll is lonely at first but soon meets Too-ticky and his old friend Little My (who takes delight in sledging down the snowy hills on Moominmamma's silver tea tray). The friends build a snow horse for the Lady Of The Cold and mourn the passing of an absent-minded squirrel who gazed into the Lady's eyes and froze to death. However, a squirrel is spotted alive by Moomintroll at the end of the book, and it seems that it may have come back to life. As the haunting winter progresses, many characters (notably the Groke, Sorry-oo the small dog, and a boisterous skiing Hemulen) come to Moominvalley in search of warmth, shelter and Moominmamma's stores of jam.
4242947	/m/0brx7c	The Unexpected Man	Yasmina Reza			 A man and a woman sit opposite each other in the detached intimacy of a train compartment on a journey from Paris to Frankfurt. He is a world famous author, she carries his latest novel in her bag and ponders the dilemma of reading it in front of him.... As both the woman and man ponder their situation in the compartment they bring past events and philosophies up in separate monologues. Finally in the ending of the play, they speak conversationally, and in the last line of the show the woman calls the author by his name, the one thing she was so afraid to find out, if he was like how she envisioned.
4243480	/m/0br_v2	White Jazz	James Ellroy	1992-09-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dave Klein is a Lieutenant in the LAPD's Administrative Vice unit and an attorney. Unlike The Big Nowhere and L.A. Confidential, the book is told with one "protagonist" instead of three, reminiscent of the first novel, The Black Dahlia. It is told from Klein's stream of consciousness. After the reader is updated on LA's status, (Johnny Stompanato's death, Mickey Cohen, a probe set up on organized crime's influence in boxing, the political Battle of Chavez Ravine which was the relocation of Chavez Ravine's residents in order to build the Los Angeles Dodgers Stadium, etc.) through the newspaper clippings, Dave Klein is introduced. He and his partner George "Junior" Stemmons are setting up a raid on a house with a bookmaking operation running inside. Klein and Stemmons are later ordered to protect the witness in the boxing probe. However, Mickey Cohen called Klein earlier and told him 'Sam G' ("G for Giancana") wanted the witness dead. Klein kills the witness, who has a mental disability, by throwing him out of a high window, making it look like an accident. The press headlines the story, "Federal Witness Plummets to Death," with a sidebar: "Suicide Pronouncement: 'Hallelujah, I Can Fly!'" When Klein finally returns to his house, he reminisces on his life so far. Born David Douglas Klein, he is of German descent. His father Franz, arrived at Ellis Island. He was raised by both parents, and has a sister named Meg. However, the father was abusive towards his sister, and Klein, while still at a young age, threatened to kill his father if he hurt her again. After the children become adults, their parents die in a car accident. Klein and his sister shared an "attraction" to one another, and after their parent's death, they almost slept together. Klein joins the LAPD in 1938. In 1942, he enlists in the U.S. Marines and serves in the Pacific. and returns to the Department in 1945. Klein also studies law at University of Southern California. However the GI Bill won't cover the costs for school. Klein must run other jobs, from collecting on loans, (earning him the name, "the Enforcer"), to mob work. Klein rises through the police rank to Lieutenant, passes the bar, and secures his police pension. However, Klein isn't released from mob work, which included several murders. Two personal murders were of the "Two Tonys", Tony Brancato and Tony Trombino, who hurt Meg. He hides in the backseat of one of their cars and shoots them both in the back of the heads. In an attempt to get out of mob work, he begs the dying Jack Dragna to let him go. Dragna doesn't, and Klein suffocates him. Wilhite, of the corrupt Narcotics Squad, calls Klein later that night and ask him to investigate a burglary. The burglary is at the house of J.C. Kafesjian, sanctioned drug dealer of the LAPD. The crime scene consists of dead dogs, missing their eyes and poisoned with stelfactiznide chloride (a chemical solution used in dry cleaning), smashed records, and torn pedal pushers covered with semen. Klein investigates as a favor to Wilhite. In order to get liberal Democratic candidate Morton Diskant to drop out of the election for city councilman, Klein is ordered to blackmail Diskant. Klein receives assistance from Fred Turentine, and Pete Bondurant (who later appears in American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand). While the operation doesn't go smoothly, they successfully blackmail the married Diskant with another woman, and Diskant later drops out of the race. Klein investigates the Kafesjian case with police work, forensic information, and other leads. Klein later gets a side job from Howard Hughes, to obtain information on an actress named Glenda Bledsoe that would violate her full-service contract. Since there is a morality clause in her contract, Klein merely needs to find proof that Bledsoe is an alcoholic, criminal, narcotics addict, communist, lesbian, or nymphomaniac. Hughes' reasons were she moved out of one of Hughes's guest houses, and left script sessions without permission. Klein sees through to the real motive for Hughes wanting her out. As Klein puts it: "'Guest home' meant 'fuck pad' meant Howard Hughes left to choke his own chicken." During surveillance of Glenda, he finds out she, Touch Vecchio, Rock Rockwell, and George Ainge are planning a fake kidnapping.
4244711	/m/0bs20r	Summer Term at St. Clare's	Enid Blyton	1943	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story starts with the twins Pat and Isabel O'Sullivan looking forward to enjoying their first summer term at St. Clare's. Their mother is happy to see them looking forward to school. One day, they go to play tennis with a friend, and meet a girl who has mumps. The twins, to their dismay, are put in quarantine, and are not allowed to go back to school at the beginning of the term. When they arrive back the following week, they are heartily welcomed by their friends. Five new girls have joined their form. There is an American girl called Sadie, who is obviously quite rich and elegant. The twins discover that their cousin Alison has already made friends with her. There is a wild-looking girl called Carlotta, who is half Spanish. There is a naughty but very likeable girl Bobby (Roberta), who quickly becomes friends with Janet. There is another girl called Prudence, who is quite pretty but has no sense of humour. The last new girl is Pam, who is very hard working but also very shy. The girls soon discover that Miss Roberts is on the war path. She is the first form head and is determined that her girls should do well and be promoted in next form. The twins also get to know the new girls. Prudence turns out to be nasty, spiteful, and dishonest. She takes a strong dislike to Carlotta, and discovers that Carlotta once belonged to a circus. She reveals Carlotta's secret to the other girls, hoping it will make them despise her, but it only serves to make Carlotta even more popular. Prudence also manipulates the shy Pam under the false disguise of a friendship. As a result, Pam is initially disliked by all of the girls except Carlotta and Isabel, who take pity on her when they realise that she is afraid to tackle Prudence as she does not want to be on her own. Encouraged by the two older girls, Pam eventually stands up to Prudence and ends their forced friendship, becoming friends with Carlotta instead. Bobby initially doesn't seem to care for anything or anyone until Miss Theobald tells her that she is cheating her parents badly. After learning this, Bobby starts working hard, too, though she occasionally plays tricks. The American girl, Sadie, is like Alison, always caring about her looks. She also hates sports and all outdoor activities (although, unlike Alison, she actually enjoys swimming). However, she is good tempered and laughs at being teased. The girls soon find out that Sadie is an heiress. Sadie's father died and left a will giving away all his money to his sisters, but Sadie's mother won it back through lawsuits. During the term, while Prudence is spying on Carlotta, Sadie is kidnapped, and Carlotta - who finds her tied up, gagged and blindfolded in the back seat of a motor car - goes after her, and stages a fake road accident, during which she manages to rescue her with the help of her circus' friends. The term ends happily for most, with Prudence leaving because everyone hates her for her part in Sadie's kidnap (she could have alerted Sadie to the fact that she was in danger when she and Pam met a strange man lurking around the school entrance but was too busy trying to get Carlotta into trouble to realise this, and ignored Pam's warning to report the man to Miss Theobald), Sadie herself bouncing back strongly from her kidnapping ordeal and preparing to go back to America, and the other girls looking forward to going into second year except Prudence, who is leaving.
4246198	/m/0bs46z	The Devil's Teardrop: A Novel of the Last Night of the Century	Jeffery Deaver	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 On New Year's Eve morning, 1999, in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C., a killer referred to as 'the Digger' guns down tens of innocent people at the metro station. A man, Gilbert Havel, sends a letter to the Mayor Gerald Kennedy demanding twenty million dollars cash to be dropped off at a park near Interstate 66 in bags. The letter goes on to explain that if his demands are not met the Digger will continue to strike at secret locations - at 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and at Midnight. Kennedy decides to deliver the money to the extortionist to ensure no more innocents are harmed and to make sure the town doesn't lose faith in the Mayor as election time is nearing. Agent Margret Lukas, the agent responsible for the case, wants to either put tracking on the bags, or take the extortionist down when he comes for the money. However, Havel is killed in a hit-and-run incident before he can make it to the drop-off point. All that Agent Margret has now is a letter, a dead body, and the knowledge that since the Digger had not been called off he will continue to carry on the remaining attacks. Assisting her in the investigation are officer Len Hardy and Detective Cage. At his home, retired FBI Document Examiner Parker Kincaid is spending time with his daughter and son and studying a letter that supposedly written by late President George Washington. It is when he is debating the authenticity of the letter that his ex-wife, Joan, comes and tells him that she wants the custody of their children. To Parker's dismay Joan's social worker will be at his house the next day. Parker receives an unwanted call from Cage, an old friend, and Cage tells Parker that he needs Parker's help with a letter based on the subway shootings. Sensing this as a bad idea because of his children, Parker declines. After some time pondering about the shooting and all the innocent children like his own that had died and ensuring his son Robby that 'the Boatman' (a suspect from Parker's past case that tried to break in Robby's window) won't show up, Parker shows up under Lukas' investigation site. Parker studies the letter and concludes that although the writer seems dumb or foreign by the mistakes he makes, that it is on purpose and the extortionist is actually intellectual. He also makes note of a strange stroke done over the letter 'i' which he dubs the 'Devil's Teardrop'. In scans conducted by Hardy and Parker there is an imprint on letter caused by being under another piece of paper. The imprint has '-tel' which the team concludes that the second attack site must be a hotel. <This plot summary is only partially complete. You can contribute by adding more elements of the story.>
4246983	/m/0bs5b9	The Professor and his Beloved Equation				 The narrator's housekeeping agency dispatches her to the house of the Professor, a former mathematician who can remember new memories for only 80 minutes. She is more than a little frustrated to find that he loves only mathematics and shows no interest whatsoever in anything or anyone else. One day, upon learning that she has a 10-year-old son waiting home alone until late at night every day, the Professor flies into a rage and tells the narrator to have her son come to his home directly from school from that day on. The next day, her son comes and the Professor nicknames him "Root". From then on, their days begin to be filled with warmth.
4248247	/m/0bs70t	The Gathering	Isobelle Carmody	1993	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is narrated by Nathanial Delaney, a teenage boy with a self-confessed Hamlet complex and social ineptitude, which can be credited to his lack of a stable environment; he and his mother have been moving frequently since the divorce of his parents. Their most recent home is the seaside town of Cheshunt, an apparently quiet community that Nathanial immediately dislikes, citing the town's bitter wind and abattoir stench as the primary reasons. His resentment causes tension between him and his mother, and their relationship becomes more strained as the story goes on. Many themes are portrayed in this novel including good vs evil, inner struggle, human nature, conformity vs individuality, friendship and cooperation. Nathanial soon discovers that there is more to dislike about the town than the smell. The school, Three North High, is victimised by its brutish student patrol, which is under the orders of the principal. Mr Karle "invites" Nathanial to join the school's youth group, The Gathering. He believes strongly in cooperation, and hence does not encourage individualism. Nathanial declines to join The Gathering, which becomes an issue with the school patrol. While walking his dog one night, Nathanial accidentally stumbles on a meeting of a group of three students from Three North: Danny Odin, Indian Mahoney and Nissa Jerome. A fourth member is not present, a school prefect, Seth Paul. The group are known as The Chain, and they tell Nathanial they have been brought together by the "forces of light" to fight a deep evil in Cheshunt, an evil headed by Mr Karle (whom they refer to as "The Kraken"). When Nathanial is caught and questioned by The Chain, they are all informed by the group's prophetic guide, Lallie, that Nathanial is the final of the chosen members of their clan and his arrival heralds the beginning of their battle. Throughout the novel Nathanial overcomes his cynicism and begins seeing signs of The Dark everywhere, most centrally in the past; in studying the history of Cheshunt he uncovers many parallels between his situation and past events. Throughout the story he also gradually learns that each of his fellow members have deep personal demons, and his role in The Chain and the Binding of the Dark becomes clear in the final chapters, where the grand showdown between The Dark and The Light takes place.
4249784	/m/0bsb4y	Le Phare du bout du monde	Michel Verne	1905	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Vasquez, Moriz, and Felipe are the three lighthouse keepers stationed at the Staten Island lighthouse off the southern tip of Argentina. Two of them are murdered by a band of newly arrived pirates led by one Kongre. Vasquez is the only survivor, and spends several months until the dispatch boat Sante Fe is due to return, surviving off the pirates' hidden stores of food in a cave. After the Century, an American ship from Mobile, Alabama, crashes on the island due to the light having been put out by the pirates, Vasquez bands with the sole survivor of the wreck — First Officer John Davis — to stop the pirates from escaping into the South Pacific. They manage to scavenge a cannon from the wreckage, and shoot the pirates' ship, the Maule, as it is about to leave the bay they are situated in. The shell only causes minor damage, however, and the pirates' carpenter is able to fix it in only a few days. The night before the ship is about to attempt to leave again, Vasquez swims to the Maule at its mooring and plants a bomb in the rudder. This causes, yet again, only minor damage, and is fixed in only one day. The next day however, Carcante, the second-in-command of the pirate ship, spots the Sante Fe on the horizon. Fortunately for the pirates, it will not arrive till night, and the Sante Fe can't possibly get into the bay without light from the lighthouse. This will give them the perfect chance to slip out and sail around the southern side of the island, which they know quite well by now. Vasquez and Davis, however, return to the lighthouse and turn the light back on. The troop of pirates tries to regain the lighthouse and kill the two, but they find the bolted iron door to the staircase too reinforced to break down. Kongre, the band's leader, orders Carcante and the carpenter to climb the side of the lighthouse and murder Vasquez and Davis at the top, but they are shot as soon as their heads peek over the banister. Kongre and the remaining pirates realize it is all over for them, and flee to the interior of the island. Most surrender afterward, a few starve, and Vasquez watches as Kongre commits suicide. Vasquez returns home with the Sante Fe after making sure the island is safe for the new lighthousemen.
4250982	/m/0bsd3y	The Last of the Sky Pirates	Chris Riddell	2002-09-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Rook Barkwater lives in the network of sewer-chambers beneath Undertown, in which a society of librarians has established itself, secretly opposing the cruel Guardians of Night. Rook, a lowly under-librarian, dreams of becoming a librarian knight—one of the select few to travel into the Deepwoods and gather information which may lead to the discovery of the cure to stone-sickness (an affliction which has destroyed the buoyant rocks, making skysailing impossible). Rook does not expect his dreams ever to come true—his best friend, Felix Lodd, seems a much more likely candidate—but, to everyone's surprise, Rook is chosen to be a knight, along with Stob Lummus and Magda Burlix. Rook, Magda and Stob make their way along the Great Mire Road, a shryke-controlled bridge that has been built to traverse the marshy Mire in place of sky ships. While on the way, Rook helps an imprisoned sky pirate, Deadbolt Vulpoon, to escape. Finally, the librarian knights arrive in the Eastern Roost, a large shryke-city. Employing the help of a male shryke, Hekkle, who is friendly to the librarians, the three make their way across the Deepwoods, eventually arriving at the Free Glades. After arriving there, Rook, Stob and Magda are joined by Xanth Filatine, a disguised Guardian of Night who is secretly channeling information to the Guardians so that they may ambush the librarian knights as they travel. During Rook's studies, he learns to create a skycraft, which is a small, flying one-person vehicle. Xanth breaks his leg in a skycraft accident, and cannot embark upon his treatise-voyage, the journey for which the knights have been studying. Rook also makes a raid on the Foundry Glade, along with Felix Lodd's sister Varis Lodd (who saved Rook from slavers when he was very young) and the slaughterer Knuckle. The purpose of this raid is to free the banderbear slaves that are kept there. During this raid, Rook takes a poisoned arrow to the chest to save a banderbear's life. Rook embarks on his treatise-voyage. His goal is to find the Great Convocation of Banderbears. Rook befriends a young banderbear named Wumeru, and he follows her, against her will, to the Convocation. The banderbears discover his presence and are about to kill him when the banderbear who Rook saved in the Foundry Glade stands up for him. Rook is then introduced to Twig, the main character from the second Edge Chronicles trilogy, now an old man. Twig reveals that his sky ship, the Skyraider, has not yet succumbed to stone-sickness. Along with a crew of banderbears, the two set out to attack the fortress of the Guardians of Night: the Tower of the same name. Their purpose is to free Cowlquape Pentephraxis, an old friend of Twig's. While Twig and the Skyraider keep the Guardians busy, Rook sneaks into the tower on his skycraft and frees Cowlquape. As he is about to fly free, a rope becomes snagged and the skycraft is stuck. Xanth, the traitor, confronts Rook. The two had become good friends during their time together in the Free Glades, a fact that Xanth apparently had not forgotten. Xanth cuts the rope quickly, allowing Rook to fly away safely with Cowlquape. The Skyraider, meanwhile, had succumbed to stone-sickness, and was slowly dropping over the Edge. Rook and Cowlquape mourn the end of Twig, who had been struck by a crossbow-bolt and had decided to go down with his ship. However, at the last minute, Twig's caterbird, who had sworn to watch over him for always, catches him and flies towards the rejuvenating waters of Riverrise. Whether they make it in time is left as a cliffhanger.
4251622	/m/0bsfbp	Midnight Over Santaphrax	Chris Riddell	2000-10-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In trying to save his father Cloud Wolf from the vortex he was trapped in during the Mother Storm, Twig learns that Sanctaphrax is about to be destroyed by the Mother Storm which will replenish the waters of the Edge by returning to Riverise, a legendary garden and waterfall from which all life came. He and the crew of the Edgedancer are then scattered across the Edge by the collapse of the vortex, with no memory of the voyage into open sky. Pieces of the destroyed Edgedancer rain down upon Undertown, killing and injuring many. Among the dead are three important Leaguesmen. A dazed Twig is rescued from the Stone Gardens by the Professor of Darkness and taken to Sanctaphrax where he is made the new Sub-Professor of Light and kept safely away from the other academics. Meanwhile, Cowlquape, a young boy studying in Sanctaphrax and the son of a wealthy, yet cruel, Leaguesman, hears rumours about the new apprentice and realizes it is the same Captain Twig who had left the city a month before. Cowlquape is at the lowest of the hierarchy in Sanctaphrax, and as such is bullied often by richer upper-class students such as Vox Verlix, an evil, scheming student. Upon learning that his father, the Leaguesman, was among those killed by the sky ship's debris, Cowlquape is confronted by Vox, who says that unless Cowlquape's father can pay his fees he will be kicked out of Sanctaphrax. Miserably, Cowlquape wanders the battlements and saves Twig from jumping off the balcony and killing himself. Twig regains his memory and, in gratitude to Cowlquape, appoints him as his new apprentice. Together they embark across Undertown to find Twig's missing crew. They travel across Undertown, the Mire (in a ship), the Deepwoods and Riverrise. They find three of the crew in Undertown, one in the Deepwoods, and finally the Stone Pilot, who is the only one who retained her memory of what happened in the Weather Vortex (due to her Stone Pilot's Hood). She tells Twig that his father became a piece of the Great Storm and that Sanctaphrax needs to be released before the Mother Storm itself reaches it so the storm can reach Riverrise so life in the Edge goes on. Twig and Cowlquape fly to the Stone Gardens, and then run to Undertown, where all the academics were evacuated from Sanctaphrax, including the Professor of Darkness, who won't let Twig and Cowlquape release Sanctaphrax. He pushes Twig from the platform and tries everything to stop Cowlquape. He even makes Cowlquape the Supreme Rector, but Cowlquape releases Sanctaphrax, that flies away with the Professor of Darkness. The two explain everything to the academics and the Undertowners. The Mother Storm reaches Riverrise. In the meanwhile, a giant stone is growing in the Stone Gardens, the academics take the stone and it becomes the new Sanctaphrax, ruled by Cowlquape. Twig gets a new sky ship and the book ends with him leaving to venture towards Riverrise to recover his crew, saying goodbye to Cowlquape, who wishes Twig luck. This is the last book of the Twig Saga.
4252228	/m/0bsgch	Empty World	Samuel Youd	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 15 year old Neil Miller is orphaned following a car accident and goes to live with his grandparents in Winchelsea, England. Neil suffers post traumatic stress from the car accident and stays detached from his peers despite their occasional attempts to involve him. News travels of a new disease, called the Calcutta Plague due to its origin, which accelerates the aging process in human beings. The plague is uniformly fatal, and although initially only affects those of already advanced years (claiming an old teacher at his school and both his grandparents,) it quickly progresses until it takes the life of a 2 year old girl that Neil finds and attempts to look after. During this time Neil notes that he has contracted the plague, but after a brief fever it leaves him unaffected. The death of the girl (and earlier her 4 year old brother) leaves Neil the sole survivor of Winchelsea, and after deciding that Winchelsea is becoming dangerous - due in part to packs of wild dogs - he leaves for London, taking first a manual Mini which he has difficulty driving, followed by an automatic Jaguar. Arriving in London he meets his first fellow survivor - the mentally unbalanced Clive, who although friendly towards Neil, during the night vandalizes his car to the point of destroying it, steals his mother's ring that Neil had kept, and then abandons him in central London. After finding the body of another survivor who has committed suicide barely hours before Neil found him, he is again despondent, but finds evidence of other survivors which brings him into contact with Billie and Lucy. Billie is openly hostile towards Neil, and it is implied that she has suffered in some way either during the plague or directly after it, but Neil becomes friends with Lucy and starts a romantic relationship with her - much to Billie's disgust. During this time Neil notes that the dogs have been supplanted by even more dangerous rats, and at least one big cat has escaped from a local zoo and although unseen is heard outside their flat. To this end Neil arms himself with a pistol and ammunition taken from a sporting goods shop. Billie and Neil continue to argue over an unspecified period of time, with Lucy gradually taking Neils side in arguments, until eventually during a foraging expedition Billie attempts to kill Neil by stabbing him in the back with a kitchen knife. The attack is shown to be premeditated as when Neil tries to defend himself with the gun he finds that it has been unloaded. Neil is injured, but overpowers Billie and returns to Lucy, where they lock Billie out and decide to move on to a previously discussed farmhouse. Billie arrives back at the house and pleads with both Lucy and Neil to let her back in, but they decide that they could never trust her again, and leave her outside. In the last paragraph of the book Neil abruptly changes his mind, feeling that he would never get over the guilt of leaving Billie to die, and with Lucy goes downstairs to open the door and let her back inside.
4252732	/m/0bsg_h	Slawter	Darren Shan	2006-06-05	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book is set about a year after Lord Loss takes place. When the story takes place Dervish, who has just returned from his battle with Lord Loss, a horror movie producer named Davida Haym offers Dervish a chance to work on the set of her new movie, "Slawter". Grubbs soon finds out that Davida has made a deal with Lord Loss that if she gets Dervish and Grubbs to work on the movie, she can film them live giving her the movie of her life. But when Dervish, Grubbs, Bill-E and a psychologist named Juni Swan try to escape, they encounter a barrier which sends them into a dream world. In this dream world, Bill-E has been captured by the Lambs so they can learn the secrets of how his Lycanthropy was cured. Dervish and Grubbs invades the Lambs complex and demand the return of Bill-E Spleen. The Lambs refuse so they invade the complex and rescue Bill-E. Grubbs then realizes there are too many coincidences, the fact that the complex was an exact replica of Hannibal Lecter's cell,for instance. He wakes up and finds himself in a small room in one of buildings that make up the town Slawter. Dervish and Bill-E are also in the room with him and he uses special magic to wake them up. The three of them then run into the town trying to warn people to get away by saying there is a gas leak and the town will explode soon. No one heeds their warnings and Davida sets the Demons upon the unwilling cast and crew, but Lord Loss then betrays her and kills her. Most of the actors don't fight back&nbsp;— thinking this is a plot change&nbsp;— but soon realize it's not and are killed. The three of them run and try to lure a demon closer to the invisible force field that surrounds the town so they can try to kill it on the barrier to cause it to crack for a while so they can escape and bring as many people with them as possible. To do this they leave Bill-E in an alley to attract a weak demon. Finally, one does come, after a girl named Bo Kooniart (who they previously disliked and whose father was in on Davida Haym's plot), a girl called Karin and three boys see them and run to them while being chased by a giant bee-like demon. Dervish and Grubbs subdue it but suddenly Juni reappears and kills it. To get another, Grubbs, Bo, Karin and a boy all lure a demon into chasing them, but are unlucky when Lord Loss finds them. Artery and a new cockroach-demon called Gregor are with him and the children run. Karin is soon killed off by Lord Loss's literal kiss of death. Grubs and Bo eventually find the edge but Dervish is not there. Suddenly Dervish and Juni appear from under an invisibility shield and distract Lord Loss so Grubbs can move Gregor to the barrier. Juni is about to kill the demon before she is struck by Gregor's leg. Grubbs manages to open a window by killing Gregor but has to battle Lord Loss and Artery. Dervish attacks Lord Loss with the people he helped get through. Bill-E pulls a merely unconscious Juni through. Grubbs then sees that Demons can get through so he creates another barrier that only humans can get through. Grubbs then has to battle multiple demons to buy time for the people here. He realises he has power that he never knew he had, even the power to injure Lord Loss so Dervish can get out. Grubbs then runs out after Dervish and the window closes. An unlucky few are still trapped inside and Lord Loss then slaughters them brutally.He promises to get his revenge on Dervish, Grubbs and Bill-E. They realise that Bo did not make it out of the bubble surrounding Slawter as she went to try to save her father. They then see Davida's assistant director Chuda sitting there and Grubbs almost kills him but Bill-E stops him. Then Juni kills him with magic she never knew she had until fighting in the bubble. Later, they find that Juni has gone, and left a note saying that she had to be alone for a while after what she had done, and didn't want to be contacted. Back at Dervish's house, Dervish tells Grubbs about what his future would be if he did have magic. This causes Grubbs subconscious to hide his magic, even though Dervish said it was impossible. When Dervish scans Grubbs for magic powers he thinks he has none, but in truth, Grubbs had hid them without knowing. Later he decides to check if he did have powers, and managed to switch the light on and off without using the switch and make his reflection disappear. To have the power to conceal his powers from Dervish and to use magic in the real world away from any demons can only mean one thing— Grubbs is a magician.
4253753	/m/0bsjy_	A World Restored	Henry Kissinger			 A World Restored explains the complex chain of Congresses that started before the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1814 with the Congress of Vienna, and extended into the 1820s, as a system expected to give Europe peace and a new order after the violent struggles of the previous quarter century. At the same time, the book introduces the reader to the political biographies of two important characters of the time. The first and main character is Prince Metternich, the Austrian Chancellor at that time. As the statesman of an old and fragile multilingual empire, Metternich had to deal with the task of organizing the alliance against Napoleon, while at the same time being a forced ally of France. After Napoleon was defeated, Metternich became the organizer of the Congress system, through which he would seek the survival and advancement of Austria. An 18th century styled rococo figure, old-fashioned even in his own era, but described as having superlative diplomatic skills, Prince Metternich pursued a peace for Europe, based on restored monarchical principles, and on solidarity among the monarchs of Europe. The French Revolution of 1789, and the subsequent Napoleonic invasion and rule of much of Europe, had implanted new liberal revolutionary ideas that were never to be eliminated. At the same time nationalism was rising over much of the world. The Habsburg Empire was a complex political entity, with many ethnic groups and languages coexisting within it, and these forces threatened the survival of the Empire. Metternich expected to lead an alliance against France, pressing only enough to depose Napoleon, who had shown complete unwillingness to accept a moderate peace, but preserving a strong France under a restored Bourbon monarchy as a counterweight to the power of Russia. From 1812, moderation would be Metternich's guiding principle in the path to European order, as he carried Austria from the forced French alliance during Napoleon's invasion of Russia (in which an Austrian corps under Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg took part), into neutrality during the campaign of Spring 1813, and finally as a leading member of the anti-French alliance which defeated France in 1813-14. In the process, Metternich avoided breaking any of his treaties with his counterparts, since only established order among states would permit fragile Austria to survive. Metternich was very skillful in this and gained the confidence of all rulers at the many European congresses that followed. In his view, solidarity among monarchs would restrain the danger of liberal revolutions and diverse national upheavals around Europe. The other great character is British Foreign Secretary at the time, Viscount Castlereagh. As the only British politician to understand Meternich's ambitions and reasoning, and the need for an organized European order, he was strongly criticized in Britain, for getting too involved in continental politics in the name of British interests. After the Congress of Vienna, he was forbidden to attend any more European congresses. Castlereagh would later commit suicide for unrelated reasons in 1822. From that moment on, Britain would start her long period of splendid isolation, based on her supposed insular invulnerability and on the belief that Peace was a simple consequence of Napoleon's defeat. For Austria, a continental power, the reality was different. Any Napoleon could emerge at any time, and a strong European concert of conservative monarchs, based on principle, was necessary to prevent dangers before they arose. Although the Congress system worked only for a few years, the concept and principles on which it was based allowed the longest period of peace among states in history, with only few and minor interruptions. Ironically, it was such a long peace that the faith in it and the forgotten consequences of war ended in an arms race followed by a new and much larger catastrophe in 1914.
4253857	/m/0bsk60	Girl of the Limberlost	Gene Stratton-Porter		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in Indiana. Most of the action takes place either in or around the Limberlost, or in the nearby, fictional town of Onabasha. This Bildungsroman is structured as girl-meets-boy, girl-loses-boy, girl-undertakes-an-adventure-to-win-boy-back. The novel's heroine, Elnora Comstock, is an impoverished young woman who lives with her widowed mother, Katharine Comstock, on the edge of the Limberlost. Elnora faces cold neglect by her mother, a woman who feels ruined by the death of her husband, Robert Comstock, who drowned in quicksand in the swamp. Katharine blames Elnora for his death, because her husband died while she gave birth to their daughter and could not come to his rescue. The Comstocks make money by selling eggs and other farm products, but Mrs. Comstock refuses to cut down a single tree in the forest, or to delve for oil, as the neighbors around them are doing, even though the added income would make their lives easier. Elnora is just beginning high school, where her unfashionable dress adds to her difficulty blending in with the other students. She is determined to earn an education, which her mother derides as useless; Mrs. Comstock wants Elnora to remain at home and work as a drudge on their farm. Lack of money for tuition and books nearly derail her continued enrollment. Her few comforts are the fact that she knows she can excel in school, especially in math and her study of nature; the kindness of her neighbours, Wesley and Margaret Sinton; that Freckles left her a valuable specimens box in the swamp; and that she succeeds in her enterprising scheme to gather and sell artifacts and moths from the Limberlost, which she can store in Freckles's box without her mother's knowledge. Elnora is smart and witty, and she loves the outdoors; her heart aches for returned love. She soon makes many friends at school. Eventually Elnora wins her mother's love, but only after a few emotional disasters have stricken the Comstock women. Firstly, after succeeding in high school for some years, she feels a yearning to play violin, as her father had done. Margaret Sinton is able to procure for her the very same violin that Robert Comstock used to play, and Elnora becomes proficient at it. She knows that her mother hates the violin, without knowing why, so she must conceal her proficiency. Secondly, when Elnora is in her final year of high school, Wesley and Margaret insist that Katharine accompany them to the high school play. Katharine has no interest in seeing "what idiotic thing a pack of school children were doing." But Katharine is curious about the high school; she enters it to deride it, then finds she admires it; when she hears a violin playing, she enters the school play and discovers Elnora playing "as only a peculiar chain of circumstances puts it in the power of a very few to play." Upon seeing Elnora playing her dead husband's violin to an enthusiastic audience, and realizing that her world has changed irrevocably - "The swamp had sent back the soul of her loved dead and put it into the body of the daughter she resented, and it was almost more than she could endure and live" - Katharine faints. Thirdly, a few days later, Elnora believes her mother understands the necessity for her to graduate so that she can enter college or, at least, teach, either of which she would love to do. She instructs Katharine that she will need new dresses for Commencement and trusts her mother to supply them. Mrs. Comstock, always antagonistically honest, presents her with an old dress. Elnora considers this an unforgivable betrayal, a sign of her mother's disregard and lack of love for her. That night, Elnora must find a good dress elsewhere. Fourthly, Elnora has always concealed from her mother the fact that she can earn money by selling moths. As she works through her final year of high school and hopes to go to college, she finds that there is a single moth she must collect, which will pay the way for her future. In the central conflict of the novel, Elnora sees her mother destroy that moth. When she protests, Mrs. Comstock slaps her. Elnora has always been patient, but now she screams that she hates her mother and rushes out. Mrs. Comstock, finally realizing how essential Elnora is to her stable home life, sets out that night to replace the moth. She worsens the situation, a result which Elnora hides from her, but when the Sintons discover that Mrs. Comstock hit Elnora, Margaret determines on an intervention. She tells Katharine that she has been mourning for a husband who was promiscuous and planning to cheat on her. With this news, Katharine understands how she has neglected a loving, talented daughter. Elnora graduates and is now 19 years old. A young man, Philip Ammon, arrives in town. His uncle, a doctor, advised Phillip has been sent to Onabasha to recuperate from typhoid fever. He stays with Elnora and her mother for a summer and helps Elnora gather moths. The two gradually fall in love; however, he is already engaged to another young woman, Edith Carr, who is wealthy, spoiled, and self-centered. Elnora, to pretend that she is not beinning to fall for Philip, helps him to write letters to Edith Carr and in every way encourages his marriage to his childhood friend. When Philip, after daily, prolonged conversation and fieldwork discovers his romantic interest in Elnora is growing, Mrs. Comstock is the first to notice, but he assures her, "I admire her as I admire any perfect creation." Mrs. Comstock replies, "And nothing in all this world spoils the average girl so quickly and so surely." Philip Ammon is forced to return to Chicago when his father is ill, and begs of Elnora a farewell kiss; she refuses him and returns to her mother, broken-hearted. Philip and Edith have an argument at what was supposed to be their engagement party. Edith insults him terribly and calls their engagement off (not for the first time). She has heard Philip talk about a wonderful young lady he met in the Limberlost. Philip leaves home and proposes to Elnora. On the very afternoon that he gives Elnora an engagement ring, Edith drives up, with some friends, to the Comstocks' home, in an unasked-for visit. When Edith demands to speak to Elnora privately and swears that Elnora will never take Philip from her, Elnora is cool and polite. When Edith's group leaves, Elnora secretly takes off, giving Edith the chance to prove that Philip would marry no one else. Philip becomes ill with worry about Elnora, and Edith's friend Hart persuades her to admit that she is wrong and that Philip will marry no one except Elnora. In the denouement, it is implied that Edith will marry Hart, just as Philip will marry Elnora.
4255235	/m/0bsmqj	Vox	Paul Stewart	2003-09-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel begins by saying that in the time since Rook's mission to the Deepwoods, the Edge has become a very strange place with many suspicious activities. The Guardians of Night are awaiting a Storm which they believe will soon strike. The Shrykes, the evil avian-humanoid creatures of the Edge, are amassing as if for war, in greater numbers than before. The Goblins in Undertown also seem much more aggressive than usual, with numerous goblin assassins being sent to kill the titular character, Vox, who is too obese to leave his Palace of Statues to which he retreated after being betrayed by the evil Guardians of Night. To cap all this, strange sighings of demonic creatures are being reported by Librarian Knights on patrol duty; these creatures are seen emerging from the rubble wasteland which is a derelict part of Undertown named Screetown. Rook Barkwater, meanwhile, is on patrol duty in the morning, noting the sweltering weather, when he is struck by a fireball from beyond the Edge and is sent hurtling to earth. He awakens, battered and bruised, but alive, only to find his skycraft, the Stormhornet is destroyed and its "spirit has been released" meaning he can no longer fly unless he has the ability to create a new craft. Rook almost despairs and hopelessly climbs Screetown, pursued by the aforementioned evil predatorial creatures, one of which, a Rubble-ghoul, almost kills him, until he is rescued by his old friend Felix Lodd, Varis' brother, whom Rook and all the other librarians believed to have been dead in Screetown, as rumour had it nobody could survive in such a place. Felix is pleased to see Rook and takes him back to his hideout for the night, having formed a gang of rebels called "the Ghosts of Screetown." Meanwhile, the Most High Guardian of Night, Orbix Xaxis, has captured two young Librarians and sends them to their deaths with mocking taunts. As the Librarians are eaten alive by the Rock Demons as a punishment for disrespecting the Guardians, Xanth Filatine realizes he has been disobeyed - he told the executioner he couldn't have those two prisoners. Rook journeys through Undertown the next morning after bidding farewell to Felix, seeking a way back to the sewers, only to be caught by goblin guards on duty. Rook meets a young gnokgoblin named Gilda, whom he saves from the guards. Rook then is taken prisoner, named "Number Eleven" in the slavesale, (he is almost bought by the Guardians of Night) but is fortunately taken by goblins and taken to the Palace of Statues instead. There, he meets Hesteria Spikesap, an old cook and potioneer, along with Speegspeel, an ancient goblin butler, who seems very sinister and paranoid that the statues in the palace are possessed. Rook is almost brainwashed by an evil ghost-waif named Amberfuce, but he resists the waif's penetration and keeps his identity. Rook is given bizarre tasks by Speegspeel and Hesteria, such as "feeding the baby," in actuality a gigantic cog-wheel system filled with phraxdust; an extremely volatile substance capable of generating massive electrical energy. Rook accidentally saves Vox Verlix himself from a goblin assassination, and then happens to meet Cowlquape Pentaphraxis who ought to have been leader of New Sanctaphrax but was betrayed by Vox and thrown from power. The two Most High Academes discuss what went wrong, with Vox blaming Cowlquape, but Cowlquape, despite everything, still respects Vox's amazing mind, which was why he became Academe in the first place. Vox tells Cowlquape that the Mother Storm is returning to the Edge again, which has been in a severe drought for so long, and that she will regenerate the waters. Vox warns Cowlquape, who is on the Librarian's side, that the sewers will flood in the Storm, and tells him to evacuate the sewers and save the Librarians. Vox has a cunning plan to kill his enemies - the Guardians of Night, the Shrykes and the Goblins - in one swoop: with the Storm. He tells Rook to go off to the Shryke nesting grounds and pretend that he will betray the Librarians, to get the Shrykes into the sewers. Then Vox gets his waif Amberfuce to brainwash one of the goblins who tried to kill him and send him back to goblin leader General Tytugg and tell him to attack the Librarians too, in two days' time at eleven p.m. The Librarians work fervently to build ships and rafts to evacuate the sewers and leave just in time. Alquix Venvax, an ancient professor, remains behind to distract the goblin and Shryke armies. He does not want to leave, as he has remained there all his life and helped build the place. Magda Burlix has been looking for Rook in Screetown ever since he crashed as she did not believe he was dead, however she was captured by Guardians of Night and taken to their Tower of Night for torture and interrogation. Xanth Filatine, one of her friends from the Free Glades, happens to be her interrogator, although he soon repents of all his evil ways and saves her from his evil masters, taking the deadbolt holding Midnight's Spike - an electrical conductor atop the Tower of Night - thus preventing the Spike from being held aloft. Xanth and Magda escape through the sewers and meet Venvax, bidding him farewell when they realize he cannot leave. The goblin and Shryke armies capture and kill Venvax; and engage in a massive, climactic battle which ends with both armies being devoured by Rock Demons when they have chased Xanth and Magda into the sewers. Rook realizes that Vox intended to double-cross the Librarians themselves and set off the Storm anyway, so he runs back to the Palace of Statues in time to see the butler Speegspeel set off the Storm. Rook fights and kills Speegspeel; but Rook himself releases the Storm by mixing his sweat with the phraxdust accidentally. The Storm destroys Undertown and the Ghosts of Screetown evacuate all the inhabitants. The Guardians of Night are killed when the Storm strikes Midnight's Spike, which cannot be held aloft - so Orbix Xaxis sacrifices himself as a human conductor. Rook teams up with the Librarians, and admits he set off the Storm, which could have been prevented. However, the Librarians forgive him, eager as they are to leave the sewers. Rook realizes the greatest adventure of his life has begun.
4255637	/m/0bsn8p	Games People Play		1964	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology"}	 In the first half of the book, Berne introduces transactional analysis as a way of interpreting social interactions. He describes three roles or ego states, known as the Parent, the Adult, and the Child, and postulates that many negative behaviors can be traced to switching or confusion of these roles. He discusses procedures, rituals, and pastimes in social behavior, in light of this method of analysis. For example, a boss who talks to his staff as a controlling 'parent' will often engender self-abased obedience, tantrums, or other childlike responses from his employees. The second half of the book catalogues a series of "mind games" in which people interact through a patterned and predictable series of "transactions" which are superficially plausible (that is, they may appear normal to bystanders or even to the people involved), but which actually conceal motivations, include private significance to the parties involved, and lead to a well-defined predictable outcome, usually counterproductive. The book uses casual, often humorous phrases such as "See What You Made Me Do," "Why Don't You&nbsp;— Yes But," and "Ain't It Awful" as a way of briefly describing each game. In reality, the "winner" of a mind game is the person that returns to the Adult ego-state first. One example of these games is the one named "Now I've got you, you son of a bitch," in which A is dealing with B, and A discovers B has made a minor mistake, and holds up a much larger and more serious issue until the mistake is fixed, basically holding the entire issue hostage to the minor mistake. The example is where a plumber makes a mistake on a $300 job by underestimating the price of a $3 part as $1. The customer won't pay the entire $300 unless and until the plumber absorbs the $2 error instead of just paying the bill of $302. Not all interactions or transactions are part of a game. Specifically, if both parties in a one-on-one conversation remain in an Adult-to-Adult ego-state, it is unlikely that a game is being played.
4257233	/m/0bsqqk	The War of The Roses	Warren Adler	1981-04	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel begins quietly, introducing us to Jonathan and Barbara as they are introduced to each other for the first time. Fast forward some years, and they are living the good life in a Washington, D.C. suburb. They have the dream house, filled with a lifetime’s worth of antiques they’ve collected, two children (Eve and Josh), a dog, and a cat. Jonathan’s law career could not be better, and they had recently hired an au pair to aid in the upkeep of the house and the children as Barbara has embarked in a gourmet business endeavour. She has received a small amount of acclaim for her pâté. Somewhere along the road to building to this ideal family unit, Barbara fell out of love with Jonathan. She realizes it as Jonathan has what is believed to be a heart attack. Suddenly, it would not be so bad if he died. She would not be distraught. Jonathan, on the other hand, only thinks of his wife as he is rushed to the hospital and cannot understand why she did not come to his bedside as he waited for the prognosis. Upon returning home, Barbara tells him their marriage is over. It’s been over for some time and he never realized it. Divorce. Barbara hires the best divorce attorney in town. Smart enough not to represent himself, Jonathan puts an attorney of his own on a retainer. Jonathan would like the divorce to go smoothly. He offers Barbara a generous monthly allowance, as well as half of everything they have. That’s not enough. She wants it all, the house and all its contents. She has earned it, putting the house together and making it home they both wanted. She raised his children in the house. It belongs to her. Jonathan had to work to provide for her, the family, and the home. He cannot let her have it so easily. He opts not to move out, citing an old legal precedent which permits a couple to live under the same roof while going through a divorce. Barbara is less than thrilled at the prospect of having him continue to live there. Despite the warnings of their attorneys, both take it upon themselves to make the other miserable. It begins with small acts of sabotage, but soon escalates. Only the children are off limits, everything else, from careers to prized possessions, is fair game. Their previous life together, a life of love, vanishes as aggression and territoriality engulfs both Jonathan and Barbara.
4257657	/m/0bsrb8	Deus Irae	Roger Zelazny	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After 1982, the world experienced a devastating nuclear war. Fallout and radiation has caused widespread mutations to human and animal populations alike. Akin to gnosticism, there is a new messianic religion. The members of this religion, known as the Servants of Wrath or SOWs, worship the creator and detonator of the war's ultimate weapon, Carleton Lufteufel (from the German words "Luft," meaning "air," and "Teufel," meaning "Devil"), ex-chairman of the Energy Research and Development Agency of the United States of America - ERDA/USA. In Charlotteville, there are ample debates between the Servants of Wrath and the diminishing congregations of Christians left in existence. The Servants of Wrath faith is based on an "anger-driven" traditional perception of godhood, compared to Christian survivors, and it is from this that the book derives its name- deus irae, Latin for "God of Wrath". Tibor McMasters is an armless, legless cyborg phocomelus artist who has been commissioned to paint a mural of Lufteufel, though nobody knows where Lufteufel lives, or what he looks like. The Servants of Wrath leadership ask McMasters to find Lufteufel and paint his mural. En route, we learn about the absence of widespread national communications systems after the widespread destruction of nuclear warfare. McMasters and other seekers encounter mutant lizards, birds and insects who have evolved sentience, as well as the "Big C", a decaying artificial intelligence which also survived the war, and consumes humans for their trace elements to sustain its survival. While trying to remove the shrapnel from his forehead Lufteufel loses consciousness from loss of blood, at which point his intellectually challenged "daughter", Alice, tries to remove some of the blood with a shirt leaving a bloody imprint. Alice keeps the shirt as it is the only remaining likeness of his face, leaving her with the only true shroud of the God of Wrath, equivalent to Catholic legends about Saint Veronica and the Shroud of Turin. Alice is later visited by Lufteufel's "spirit" after his death. He does not speak, but Alice sees that his spirit is finally at peace after he helps Alice by "lifting the fog in her brain", removing her disability. She is not the only human to experience a theophany related to Lufteufel's passing, however, for another survivor has a vision of a "Palm Tree Garden" equivalent to the Judaeo-Christian Garden of Eden. This implies that Lufteufel may have been a gnostic demiurge, an evil earthbound deity which believes itself omnipotent, but whose abilities are constricted compared to "higher levels" of divinity. However, McMasters has no knowledge of Lufteufel's death or related alleged visions related to his death. He is tricked by his (Christian) companion Pete into using an elderly dying alcoholic vagrant for the likeness of Lufteufel for the commissioned church mural, which is prominently featured in leading Servants of Wrath institutions. The mural's survival is a tacit argument that religious belief is often based on mythological accretions, which may not be valid interpretations of decisive events in the history of that faith.
4258322	/m/0bss5d	Four Fires	Bryce Courtenay			 The Maloney family live in a Victorian town, Yankalillee, in the Wangaratta-Wodonga area. The family is in many ways dysfunctional, but they are also fiercely loyal to each other and their friends and supporters. They start the novel far down the social ladder, but strive to rise up it, in spite of those who seek to keep them down.
4258433	/m/0bss9y	The Playboy: A Comic Book				 Set in Brown's hometown of Châteauguay, Quebec in Canada in 1975 when Brown was 15, the story opens in church, with Brown's angel-demon (Brown's id) cajoling him into buying a Playboy magazine he had seen for sale. He works up the courage to do it at a convenience store at a considerable distance from his house, hoping that at that distance he won't be caught. After bringing the magazine home and masturbating over it, he disposes of it by hiding it under a plank of wood in the woods near his house. His building obsession battles his guilt, though, and eventually goes back for it, a binge and purge situation which repeats itself several times throughout the story, even into adulthood, when he alternately hunts down back issues of Playboy and disposes them over the guilt he feels or his fear of being found out by a girlfriend. His obsession so overcomes him that, even when his mother passes away while he is at camp, his first thought at returning home is to retrieve the Playboy he has hidden in the woods. As an adult, he hunts down back issues, and becomes something of a connoisseur of Playmates, memorizing dates and names. His obsession interferes with his relations with women, however—he admits that, while seeing one girlfriend, he could only maintain an erection for her by fantasizing about his favourite Playmates, and that he preferred masturbation to having sex with her. The story finishes with himself drawing the story we are reading. Though he knows his friends will be reading about it shortly, he still feels embarrassment, and is unable to talk about it with them face-to-face.
4261283	/m/0bsxmh	Guilty Pleasures	Laurell K. Hamilton	1993	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0fdjb": "Supernatural", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In Guilty Pleasures, Anita is blackmailed by Nikolaos, the vampire master of the city, into investigating a series of vampire murders. During the course of this investigation, Anita begins her relationship with Jean-Claude, another master vampire, and receives two of the four marks necessary to make her Jean-Claude's "human servant." Ultimately, Anita identifies the murderer, but by that point has sufficiently antagonized Nikolaos and her underlings that she is forced to confront them. Ultimately, with help from Jean-Claude and Edward, a human associate who specializes in assassinating supernatural targets, Anita kills Nikolaos and many of her followers, making Jean-Claude master of the city.
4263550	/m/0bt0cy	The Novice	Trudi Canavan	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Sonea, formerly a slum girl&mdash;or "dwell"&mdash;begins her studies as a novice at the Magicians' Guild as part of the summer intake. Sonea does not have life easy, particularly with her rival and fellow pupil, Regin, who does his best to make Sonea's life at the Guild a living hell. She tries to ignore him at first but it only gets worse as Regin begins to circulate rumours about Rothen (her mentor) and her having a relationship. Though they truthfully deny this, Lorlen is forced to move Sonea to the Novice's Quarters to quell the rumours. Sonea, unable to take the bullying, studies hard and is promoted to the winter intake. The studies are harder and the students more mature, so the bullying does not continue in her new class. However, nor do the children befriend her, except for a slow-learner named Porril. Later, Regin is also promoted to Sonea's class, and with his old classmates from the summer intake continues to bully her. He frames her by putting one of her classmate's gold pens in her box, and she is accused of stealing. However, she can not prove her innocence since if she were 'truth-read' (her mind read by another magician), then the truth would come out about Akkarin's (the High Lord's)use of black magic, putting herself and those she cares about in danger. Meanwhile, Administrator Lorlen hopes to discover some way to counter Akkarin's powers in black magic (considered evil and forbidden in the guild), by studying the High Lord's past travels across the Allied Lands. Lorlen sends Lord Dannyl (now Second Ambassador to Elyne) to seek out information about the ancient magic which he may have studied. Dannyl is assisted by Tayend, a librarian from Elyne, who was also Akkarin's past helper. Tayend at first is terrified of magic, but it later turns out this is because he is afraid his homosexuality will be revealed. This is frowned upon in Elyne. Dannyl finds out Tayend's secret late in the story when healing him, and though surprised at first, eventually admits he too is homosexual, and the two begin a relationship. Lord Rothen's son, Dorrien, is a healer working in the countryside near Sachaka. He visits his father and befriends Sonea. He learns of the bullying and later sets a trap to catch Regin trying to frame Sonea by putting something from the library into her box. Dorrien teaches Sonea levitation, and the two gradually begin to become attracted to each other. On the day he leaves, Dorrien kisses Sonea for the first time. The High Lord, becoming suspicious about what he knows, eventually force-reads Administrator Lorlen's mind and discovers that Sonea, Rothen, and Lorlen are all aware of his use of black magic. He gives Lorlen a ring that enables the High Lord to hear and see everything Lorlen does as well as privately mind-speak to him. Akkarin decides to claim guardianship over Sonea to ensure that as long as she remains "hostage", Rothen and Lorlen cannot reveal anything that will jeopardize Sonea's safety whilst she will also stay quiet in order to protect them. In the city, a number of murders have plagued the slums: deaths that have the hallmarks of black magic. Administrator Lorlen is kept abreast of the murders by a family friend in the city's guard and suspects the High Lord's involvement, as does Sonea. Akkarin learns that Sonea's weakest subject is Warrior Skill and Lord Yikmo is made to be her teacher. Later, Yikmo discovers that Sonea is cautious with her powers since she is both against violence and aware that her powers are stronger, by how much she does not know, than the other students, and does not want to hurt them, even if they continue to harass her. Despite Sonea's position as the High Lord's favourite, Regin's harassment of her only intensifies. He and other novices begin ambushing her in the halls and torturing her with magic. Sonea shields herself from these attacks but always ends up unable to hold them off indefinitely. However, her power continues to grow as she fends off stronger and stronger attacks from larger numbers of pupils. Eventually, Yikmo and Lorlen find her being attacked, and, though she begs them not to tell Akkarin, they feel they must. However, it becomes clear that The High Lord is already aware of this and has done nothing to stop Regin's bullying, since he has noticed how much it is increasing her power. Dorrien comes back for another visit and Lorlen tells Rothen to discourage him from having a relationship with Sonea. Sonea, fearing for Dorrien's safety, decides to put an end to any relationship there may have been. At Lord Dorrien's suggestion, Sonea challenges Regin to a formal duel in the Arena. She works hard to train for the battle, which through skill (rather than brute strength) she wins 3 to 2, and her healing of the unconscious Regin after the battle only reinforces her newly-won respect from her peers and teachers. The Higher Magicians are shocked however at the extent of power Sonea has displayed. At the end of the story, Sonea witnesses the High Lord kill a man from Sachaka. The High Lord Akkarin explains the man was an assassin sent to kill him, but Sonea is not sure what to believe.
4263569	/m/0bt0f9	The Magicians' Guild	Trudi Canavan	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Each winter in Imardin, the capital city of Kyralia, the streets are purged of the "dwells", the city's poor under-class, by magicians who drive away the inhabitants of the city's slums. Although young gang members gather to throw rocks at them, the magicians are protected by a magical shield—until Sonea, a young dwell, hurls a rock through their barrier and injures the magician Lord Fergun. Fearing a rogue magician, the Guild begins searching for Sonea. Benign Lords Dannyl and Rothen lead the search into the slums, worried that Sonea's increasingly uncontrolled magic will harm her and those around her. But Sonea both distrusts the Guild for their apparent lack of compassion for the poor dwells and fears their reprisal for her accidental injury of Lord Fergun. She flees with her friend Cery, eventually seeking the aid of the shady Thieves, who see the value of having their own magician and take her under their care. With Cery, she sneaks into the Magician's Guild in an attempt to gain knowledge of how to control her magic, and observes a black-robed magician covered in blood performing a strange rite on a servant. However, her attempt is unsuccessful, and Sonea continues to lose control of her powers, setting fire to her surroundings repeatedly, before Lord Rothen at last locates her. Lord Rothen and the sinister Fergun fight for her mentorship, though Sonea herself is uninterested in training and only wants to return home to her friends and family. Lord Fergun attempts to sway Sonea to betray the Guild and thus "prove" that dwells are not fit to enter the Guild and goes so far as to kidnap and threaten Sonea's friend, Cery, but Fergun's plans are discovered and he will have to stand trial. In order to prove Fergun's guilt, Sonea submits to a mental examination, or 'truthreading' by Administrator Lorlen, who, finding the memory of the black-robed magician, reveal it to be Lord Akkarin, head of the guild, practising black magic – which is forbidden in Kyralia. Sonea decides then to join the Guild and train her magical potential.
4263584	/m/0bt0gp	The High Lord	Trudi Canavan	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A year has passed since Sonea had challenged Regin to a public duel and she beat Regin by one bout. Since that victory, she has finally won the respect she deserves, not only as a novice with exceptional power, but also the High Lord's favorite. But even with this new respect, she still has one challenge left to face: Akkarin. Still unable to shake off the memory she has after the duel, she continues to avoid Akkarin. Ceryni, Sonea's old friend, now has a powerful position with the Thieves. He has a task which he must perform which could cost him his life. But that task is not a secret. A strange woman, called Savara, with great skill knows of this task and wishes to help Cery, however he will not accept her aid as he does not trust her. Akkarin surprises Sonea by showing her a book, which is an autobiography of Coren, a famous architect. This book reveals that Coren himself had discovered and no doubt used black magic. Sonea is amazed at this knowledge but is suspicious why he has shown this information to her. Akkarin is pleased that Sonea has read the book and gives her another one which is nearly 500 years old. From reading it, Sonea discovers that many centuries ago black magic was referred to as 'higher magic.' The book tells of a novice who desired power and used the higher magic to obtain more power by killing many magicians and absorbing their power. The Guild, in the end, suffered greatly from confronting the novice. They decided to store the knowledge of higher magic and rename it black magic. They sealed the knowledge, hoping that no one would take advantage of that power, but only use it in the greatest need and the knowledge was hidden in a secret passage of the University. The author also tells of a threat from Sachaka, that the Sachakans will have vengeance for losing an ancient war. Only the Head of Warriors knew of this secret weapon, however the knowledge was later lost. As Sonea starts to absorb this new information, Akkarin takes her into the city in disguise. Sonea realises that the Thieves are in on a secret with Akkarin as they use their 'private road.' Sonea and Akkarin come to a room face to face with a captured Sachakan slave who was sent to see how weak the Guild was. Akkarin starts to search the man, and finds a gold tooth with a red gem inside it; the gem is a blood gem, used by their masters to see and hear what the holder sees, hears and does. Akkarin then tells Sonea that he will teach her to read a mind of an unwilling person. Struggling at first, Sonea discovers the name of the Sachakan. She also discovers that Akkarin was a slave. Amazed and shocked, Sonea starts seeing memories of a group called the Ichani, powerful magicians that have been labeled as outcasts by the Sachakan King. Sonea is then taken outside while Akkarin stays inside and kills the man using black magic. Back at the Guild, Sonea starts to question everything she knows and has been told. She misses a class, instead finding solitude at a stream in the forest, a secret place that Dorrien had shown her. To her surprise, she is met by Akkarin as it was also where Akkarin and Lorlen used to go when they were young. Akkarin begins telling Sonea about his past, about how he entered Sachaka and was captured by an Ichani named Dakova who easily overpowered Akkarin. Whilst in servitude, Akkarin and his fellow slaves, all latent magicians, constantly had their power absorbed by Dakova. For five years, Akkarin was a magical source of energy for Dakova, but everything changed when Dakova was attacked by a fellow Ichani. Though Dakova won, he was left weak. He borrowed slaves from his brother Kariko. After some time Dakova found a previous enemy of his and decides to kill him. Upon arriving at an abandoned mine, the floor gives way and Akkarin falls down, only to be saved by another Ichani. The Ichani made a deal with Akkarin to spare his life if he killed Dakova, Akkarin agrees and is taught black magic by the Ichani. Akkarin headed back with wine laced with a sleeping drug. While Dakova drank the wine, Akkarin then killed the slaves, but when he came to Takan he could not take his dormant power because they had helped each other at times of need. When he came to Dakova, he took his power as quickly as possible, killing him in the process. With the deed done and now free, Akkarin then started his long journey home without food thinking he would die on the journey back to the guild but Takan followed him with a supply of food and drink and became Akkarin's servant. Sonea wondered why he had told her and asks him, his only answer is that someone else needs to know. As the gong strikes Akkarin ends the tale and tells Sonea to get back to her classes. Meanwhile Lord Dannyl has been instructed by Akkarin to infiltrate a group of Elyne nobles, led by a powerful Dem, attempting to illicitly learn magic. Having managed to enter the Dem's circle of trust by having them learn the "false secret" of his relation with Tayend, he begins teaching Farand, a young man whose powers have been unleashed but who has not learnt Control. Slowly, Dannyl gains more trust from the Dem. When Dannyl enters Farand's mind, he realises the Elyne King used Farand for eavesdropping. Farand had overheard the King order a political assassination, because of this Farand was prevented from joining the Guild by the King. Back at the Guild, Sonea is unable to sleep. She is continuously replaying what Akkarin had told her, and wondering why he told her. She even starts to believe that black magic isn't necessarily evil, only the wielder of the magic can determine that. She starts to wonder what would happen if Akkarin was to die and no one would be able to carry on the secret struggle with the Sachakan spies. She decides to tell Akkarin that she wants to learn black magic. The next day when Sonea tells Akkarin that she wants to learn, he refuses, he starts to change her mind saying that if she is caught, she will be executed. However her mind is made up, Akkarin refuses but says that he has another use for Sonea. He informs her that, if she was willing, she can be a source of power for him. He says he will only teach her black magic if the Ichani invade Kyralia. Even though she isn't helping in the way she thought she would, she is still pleased to assist Akkarin. Lord Dannyl visits Farand once more to assure everyone that he has learnt Control. When in Farand's mind, Dannyl starts questioning him. Before Dannyl can get any answers, Farand is aware of what Dannyl is doing and breaks the connection. Revealing him as a traitor, Farand tells everyone that more magicians are on their way, but don't know Dannyl's location. However Dannyl informs the group of rebels that that won't be the case. Farand perceives Dannyl's and the other magician's conversation and agrees with him. The other nobles are apprehended, Farand and the Dem surrender. At night, Sonea is worried about Akkarin, since he is not back for hunting the latest spy. (This is the first indication that, where she shortly before hated Akkarin and wanted him dead, now she starts to be positively concerned for him.) Once he returns, Sonea realises that the fight must have been terrible, and that Akkarin lost. She and Takan follow him to his bedroom and Akkarin starts filling in the details about the new spy. Akkarin believes that this new spy is another slave, but Takan tells Akkarin that she must be an Ichani, as she is cunning and strong. Takan once again tells Akkarin to teach Sonea black magic for help in case he dies, Akkarin finally agrees that he will teach Sonea tomorrow night. Cery is surprised that Akkarin lost to the latest spy, and vows to find her again. Savara enters Cery's room saying that if Cery had trusted her, she could have dealt with the new spy, unlike Akkarin. Savara then continues, saying that she knows the spy and wishes revenge for a past act. However she realises that now that Akkarin knows about the new spy, she cannot intervene without revealing herself, something she does not wish to do. Cery promises that she can hunt the next spy. The next day, while Lorlen and Lord Sarrin discuss building plans, Lord Osen informs them that there has been a massacre last night, a magician and his family have been murdered. All the victims had shallow cuts, which weren't fatal wounds. Osen also reports that there was a major battle between some unknown magicians. Lorlen decides that someone should go to the location of the fight and see if it had been magical. At night, Sonea makes her way to the underground passage to start her training in black magic. Akkarin informs Sonea that all living things have a natural barrier. With black magic, the idea is to break the barrier and draw their magical power from them. Sonea, under Akkarin's instructions, starts to learn how to take power, with Takan as her source. Once she is done, she heals him and is given some more books on black magic to read. While heading back to Imardin, Dannyl and Farand start talking about the future, and what consequences he and the other rebels would have to face. Realising that he is tired, Dannyl tells Farand to get some sleep, as he starts to leave Dannyl notices that Farand's lips are blue and comes to the conclusion that he has been poisoned. Dannyl then calls on Lady Vinara using telepathy, she informs him of how to purge the poison. Dannyl barricades the door to prevent anyone stopping him from healing Farand. Akkarin takes Sonea to show her how to defeat the spies, the Thieves inform them of where she is but when they reach her rooms she is not there. They look around, hearing footsteps Sonea hides in an alcove. The spy enters and talks to Akkarin before they start attacking one another. The spy moves closer to the alcove and Sonea tries to stay hidden, the combat is causing damage to be building and Sonea is forced to use her shield. She finds a ring in the alcove, one worn by an elder of a noble house. A heavy blow is struck and the alcove collapses, however Sonea creates a hollow with her shield, she then realises the spy is not a slave but a powerful Ichani. A hole is formed as the hollow begins to collapse, Sonea then sees that the Ichani is moving backwards and will soon detect her. Sonea drops her shield and the Ichani's passes over her undetected, she then slashes the Ichani's neck with a piece of wood and drains her power, killing the woman. Akkarin and Sonea then return to the Guild. The Magicians Guild have learned that Akkarin and Sonea are using black magic and believe they may be responsible for the murders. They are tried and convicted of using forbidden magic, but not of the murders. Akkarin is sentenced to exile in Sachaka, Sonea is allowed to remain but refuses saying that, if alone, Akkarin will be killed. Unsure about Akkarin's explanation of an imminent Ichani invasion they are both exiled. Akkarin and Sonea are forced to hide in the wastes of Sachaka where they are pursued by a pair of Ichani but manage to elude them. Meanwhile the Ichani invade Kyralia, easily overcoming the (reinforced) border defenses and slaughtering over twenty Guild magicians. They then advance on the capital Imardin, but are slowed by an ambush. It seems that only Akkarin and Sonea will be able to hold back the Ichani invasion as the Guild magicians are no match for them. Whilst in Sachaka, Sonea develops feelings for Akkarin, but tries to hide them. However Sonea awakes Akkarin from a nightmare and accidentally senses his feelings for her - seeing herself through his eyes, she sees a far more beautiful and alluring woman than she ever saw when looking in the mirror. Akkarin is hesitant because he argues he is 13 years older than Sonea, but Sonea doesn't seem to care. They kiss, and later sleep together. As eventually comes out, Akkarin's recurring nightmare was about a woman fellow slave, with whom he had been in love during his captivity in Sachaka, and whose death he witnessed and was unable to prevent. Finding a new love with Sonea lays this ghost, and Akkarin ceases to have such nightmares. The two then return to the borders of Kyralia where they encounter Dorrien, who isn't too happy to see them there, he escorts them back to the border but they are ambushed by one of the Ichani (called Parika), who is eventually killed by Sonea using Healing Magic, and Akkarin drains his energy. The Ichani have no knowledge of Healing Magic, and are surprised when Sonea heals a cut in fron of them. The three return to Dorrien's small home and discuss possible plans, they seem to decide one. Whereby Sonea and Akkarin will secretly return to Imardin, their city. Akkarin and Sonea return to Imardin and enlist the aid of the Thieves, including Cery, Sonea's old friend and slum dwellers in fighting the Ichani who now roam the city searching for victims to strengthen them. Sonea and Akkarin search the slum dwells for any magical potential and take it to strengthen their power, however, unlike the Ichani, they do not kill their helpers. The night before, Cery gives Akkarin and Sonea some changes of clothes, including full length, black, magician robes. Sonea and Akkarin are able to pick off many of the Ichani one by one, while another is killed with the help of Regin, Sonea's old Novice enemy. One Ichani is then killed by the Thieves and another by the Guild. Eventually only three Ichani remain. But Lorlen is badly wounded, and tells Akkarin that he understands why he did what he did, he asks if Sonea is ok, and then he dies and Akkarin takes his ring. Unfortunately, the three Ichani left have been absorbing the magic from various magically constructed buildings, and increasing in strength. Before the remaining Ichani can absorb the magic held in the Guild buildings (including the Arena, which has masses of power around it), Akkarin and Sonea force the three into a final battle at the Guild. A climactic battle ensues and the Ichani begin to tire. However, the lead Ichani, Kariko, lays a trap and a knife springs out of the ground and stabs Akkarin through the chest. As Akkarin is unable to fight, he persuades Sonea to make use of and channel his energy to supplement her dwindling reserves and with that combination of force, Sonea manages to destroy the last three Ichani. However, in doing so, all of Akkarin's life force is absorbed by Sonea, and he dies. 'He had given her too much power. He had given her everything.' Sonea deeply grieves for him and becomes extremely depressed, locking herself in her old room at Rothen's lodgings and losing the will to live - totally exhausted, physically and emotionally, and though never having been formally married to him, feels herself very much as Akkarin's widow. Whilst Dannyl and Tayend, his assistant and lover, return to Elyne, the Higher Magicians debate about whom to appoint to various positions in the Guild and appoint Rothen as the Head of Alchemic Studies. Lord Osen will probably replace the late Lord Lorlen. Lord Balkan is expected to replace Akkarin. The Higher Magicians are reconciled to the need to have a recognised Black Magician, since otherwise the Guild and the country would be completely helpless before further invasions - and Sonea is the only possible candidate, since it seems the books left behind by Akkarin do not provide enough information on how to do it. At first they intend to impose on her the condition of not being allowed to leave the Guild premises. However, arguing against that restriction, Rothen explains to them that she joined the guild in order to help the poor, and they reconsider. They rule that if she is to venture out beyond the guild premises, she must be accompanied by an escort, and she must not venture beyond the city slums in which she seeks to aid the poor. In a matter of months the Guild builds a hospital for the slums, a reversal of the long-standing discriminatory policy whereby the Healing magic was only available to the Aristocratic Houses. Though Sonea has done only three years of training out of the five required of a novice, it is obviously out of the question to treat her as anything but a full-fledged magician; instead, Dorrien (who is still in love with her) and Lady Vinara volunteer, and are formally assigned, to complete Sonea's training as a Healer. She is also to wear black robes from then on, and the High Lord is to wear white. In the final scene, Sonea spots her Aunt in the queue at the slum hospital with a baby in her arms and tells Rothen to call her over in the office. Her Aunt tells her what the problem is and Sonea gives her the prescriptions for the baby's fever. Sonea then hesitantly tries to explain to her Aunt that she would like her to come live in the guild with Sonea because she is in need of her help. At first, Sonea's aunt is confused, as is Rothen, but when Sonea taps her belly, Sonea's Aunt understands and they make explanations to Rothen. Sonea is fearful; she is carrying Akkarin's baby and didn't plan for it to happen. Sonea's Aunt smiles and soothingly assures her that she will indeed look after her, at least for a while, to help guide and prepare her for what is to come. As already disclosed by the writer, Sonea would give birth to a son named Lorkin, who is a major character in the sequel "The Ambassador's Mission".
4264212	/m/0bt1hn	The Last Days of Louisiana Red		1974		 A satiric look at 1960s politics, The Last Days of Louisiana Red follows investigator Papa LaBas as he tries to figure out who murdered Ed Yellings, the proprietor of the Solid Gumbo Works. In the story, Labas finds himself fighting the rising tide of violence propagated by Louisiana Red and the militant opportunists, the Moochers. Eventually, Labas learns that the murder has been a conspiracy to dethrone the Gumbo business because Ed was trying to create medicine that would stop heroin addiction.
4265685	/m/0bt426	Dùn Aluinn				 It is about the horror of the Highland Clearances, and the heir of a despotic landlord, Cailean Og, who is disinherited. The most interesting character is the kirk minister who makes a sermon about social rights. For a novel of its period, it is fairly cosmopolitan, and the action ranges to locations as exotic as gold mines in New Zealand.
4266895	/m/0bt5tw	Catch Me When I Fall	Sean French	2005-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Holly Krauss, a successful married woman who runs her own business with best friend Meg, finds her perfect life deteriorating as a result of foolish actions made almost subconsciously, including an alcohol fuelled one night stand and arguments with potentially dangerous men. After a mysterious stranger from one such incident begins imposing himself on her life, first through stalking and then physical intimidation, she wonders if she really is going insane, before inadvertently causing even more trouble by losing £11,000 in a poker game. While good-natured and thoroughly empathetic, her artist husband Charlie is a procrastinator and therefore incapable of providing her with the support she needs. Only when Holly finally attempts suicide does she realise that all of her problems may not be simply a result of her own foolhardiness, but the work of a devious and determined psychopath intent on tearing her life apart...
4267521	/m/0bt6qy	The Dream Life of Balso Snell	Nathanael West	1931	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Balso, the protagonist, comes across the Trojan Horse in the tall grass around Troy and promptly seeks a way to get in: “the mouth was beyond his reach, the navel provided a cul-de-sac, and so, forgetting his dignity, he approached the last. O Anus Mirabilis!” The literary critic Leslie Fiedler reads much into this and sees the whole novel as “a fractured and dissolving parable of the very process by which the emancipated Jew enters into the world of Western Culture.” Inside the Trojan Horse Balso encounters an array of odd characters whom, he realizes, are all “writers in search of an audience”. These characters also represent various religious and artistic ideals. Balso hears their stories systematically, only to discard them one by one, in a strictly nihilist fashion.
4267719	/m/0bt6_8	A Cool Million	Nathanael West	1934-06-19	{"/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/011ys5": "Farce", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Cool Million, as its subtitle suggests, presents “the dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin,” piece by piece. As a satire of the Horatio Alger myth of success, the novel is evocative of Voltaire’s Candide, which satirized the philosophical optimism of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Alexander Pope. Pitkin is a typical ‘Schlemiel’, stumbling from one situation to the next; he gets robbed, cheated, unjustly arrested, frequently beaten and exploited. In a parallel plot Betty Prail, Pitkin's love interest, is raped, abused, and sold into prostitution. Over the course of the novel Pitkin manages to lose an eye, his teeth, his thumb, his scalp and his leg, but nevertheless retains his optimism and gullibility to the inevitably bitter end. Pitkin’s troubles, however, don't end with his death. Even after his death he is exploited as a martyr by the ‘National Revolutionary Party’, a political organization led by Shagpoke Whipple, a manipulative former American president. Pitkin's birthday becomes a national holiday and American youths march down the streets singing songs in his honor. Whipple speaks out against aliens and calling for a rejection of “sophistication, Marxism and International Capitalism.” The novel ends with a series of roaring "hails" from the crowd.
4272994	/m/0bth2c	Kindred	Octavia E. Butler	1979-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/02_w8": "Feminist science fiction"}	 On June 9, 1976, it is the twenty-sixth birthday of Dana, a young black woman. She and Kevin Franklin, her white husband, move into their new apartment in Southern California. Dana does the majority of the unpacking and settling in; Kevin focuses on his office and then stops helping. Dana gets dizzy, and her surroundings fade away. When she comes to, she finds herself in the early 19th century in Maryland. A young white boy named Rufus is struggling in a river. Dana wades in after him, but he is unconscious by the time she reaches him. She drags him to the shore and resuscitates him. Tom Weylin, Rufus’s father, arrives and points a gun at Dana, terrifying her. Following another dizzy spell, she reappears in her apartment in 1976. Several minutes later, Dana again gets dizzy and disappears. This time, she is whisked back to 1815. Rufus, now a few years older, watches in horror as his bedroom drapes burn. He had set fire to them because he was angry with his father for beating him after he stole a dollar from his father's desk. Dana puts out the fire, talks to Rufus, and escapes from the house before the senior Weylin finds out she is there. She runs to the home of Alice Greenwood and her mother, free blacks who Dana suspects may be her ancestors. A group of young white men smash down the Greenwoods’ door, drag out Alice’s mother's husband, who is a slave, and beat him. They also beat Alice’s mother. After the men leave, Dana comes out of hiding and helps Alice’s mother. Dana steps outside, and a returning white man finds her, beats her, and attempts to rape her. Dana fears for her life. Following another dizzy spell, she returns home to her own time. The next time Dana time travels, Kevin comes with her by holding onto her. Back at the Weylins’, Rufus has fallen out of a tree and broken his leg. Nigel, a young black boy, runs for help, and Weylin comes with his slave Luke. Rufus will not let Dana leave, so everyone returns to the house together. Kevin and Dana stay on the plantation for several weeks and help educate Rufus. But when Dana gets caught teaching Nigel to read, Weylin whips her. Dana returns to 1976, but Kevin does not arrive in time to go with her. After eight days at home, Dana time travels back and finds that Kevin has left the Maryland area and that Rufus has raped Alice Greenwood. Alice’s husband, Isaac, a slave, is beating Rufus badly. Dana convinces Isaac not to kill Rufus, and Alice and Isaac run away while Dana gets Rufus home. She stays in Maryland for two months. Although Rufus lies about how he got injured, Alice and Isaac are caught. Alice is beaten and ravaged by dogs. As punishment for helping Isaac escape, Alice is enslaved. Rufus, who is in love with Alice, buys her. He forces Dana to convince Alice to sleep with him after her body has recovered. After Rufus fails to mail Dana's letters to Kevin, Dana attempts to run away. She is whipped so badly that she becomes frightened and loses the will to run away again. Kevin shows up, as Weylin had written to him, and the couple attempts to escape. Rufus catches them on the road and shoots at them, but they manage to time travel together back to the 1970s. After a few days, Dana time travels alone to Maryland and finds Rufus very drunk and lying facedown in a puddle. Weylin refuses to get a doctor. Over the course of many days, Dana nurses Rufus back to health. Rufus remains weak for weeks. Weylin has a heart attack, and Dana is unable to save him. Rufus blames her for his father’s death and forces her to work in the fields until she collapses. Rufus is, however, much harsher with Alice than he is with Dana. Alice is jealous of the kindness with which Rufus treats Dana. Alice gives birth to her second child with Rufus, Hagar, who is Dana’s direct ancestor. She tells Dana that she plans to run away as soon as she can. She fears that she is getting too used to Rufus, that she doesn’t hate him enough anymore. Weylin’s wife, Margaret, returns and Dana is forced to care for her. Rufus sells off some slaves, including Tess, his father’s former concubine. He also sells Sam, a field hand, as punishment for flirting with Dana. When Dana tries to interfere, Rufus hits her. She slits her wrists in an effort to time travel and is successful. Dana is back at home for many days. She and Kevin quarrel a little about Rufus. Kevin is jealous of his relationship with Dana, which she finds ridiculous. When Dana returns to the plantation, she finds that Alice has attempted to run away. To retaliate, Rufus told her that he sold her children, although he only sent them off to live with his aunt in Baltimore. Alice is sick with grief and kills herself. Racked with guilt and anger about Alice’s death, Rufus nearly follows her in committing suicide. He keeps Dana at his side almost constantly. One day, he tells her that she is so like Alice he cannot stand it. He catches her by the wrists, and Dana struggles free. She goes to the attic, planning to slit her wrists in order to get home, but Rufus follows her and attempts to rape her. Dana stabs him twice with her knife, killing him. She returns home immediately. Her arm is severed and crushed in the spot where Rufus was holding it. According to Octavia Butler in a later autobiographical book, Rufus's body was later found in the walls.
4275223	/m/0btm7y	The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away	Kenzaburō Ōe			 The novella is set in the summer of 1970. It is narrated by a 35-year-old man (like all the characters he is not named) who is lying in hospital waiting to die of liver cancer, although the doctors do not believe that the cancer is real. Early on in the novel, the narrator associates his cancer with the imperial symbols, calling it, "a flourishing bed of yellow hyacinth or possibly chrysanthemums bathed in a faint purple light". He wears a pair of goggles with green cellophane lenses. The story opens with a late-night encounter between the narrator and a "lunatic", resembling both the narrator's father and a Dharma, who appears at the end of his bed. The lunatic asks the narrator what he is, to which he replies "I'm cancer" and throws his nostril clippers at the lunatic. The remainder of the novel comprises the narrator's recollections of his childhood. The main narrative is periodically interrupted by discussions between the narrator and "the acting executor of the will", who is transcribing the narrator's story. Looking forward to his death, the narrator sings the song, "Happy Days Are Here Again". He fantasises about obtaining revenge on his hated mother by summoning her to attend his death, and in his narrative tries to recreate his earlier "Happy Days" of the latter years of the Second World War. His first reminiscences, however, are of the immediate postwar years, in which he was ostracised by the other children for his poverty and "animal violence". He was caught and humiliated by his mother attempting to commit suicide. He also remembers that by the end of the war he had picked up that his mother's real father had been executed for participating in a revolt against the emperor in 1912. She had then been adopted by a nationalist family working in China. There she met her future husband, who brought her to the village. The narrator's father was 'associated with the military', and was part of an anti-Tojo movement in the Kanto Army to promote General Ishiwara; after the plan failed, he returned to the village on New Year's Day 1943 and shut himself up in the storehouse. There he wore the goggles later used by the narrator and used headphones to listen to a radio. The narrator's parents broke off contact with one another after the father's son by his first marriage deserted from the Japanese army in Manchuria. Both parents sent telegrams to contacts in the army: the mother to help her stepson escape, and the father to preserve the family honour by having him shot. The son was shot. The mother claimed the ashes, and thereafter referred to her husband only as ano hito (あの人) &mdash; "that man", or "a certain party". The narrator describes the time spent with his father in the storehouse after this breach as the first Happy Days of his life. They culminated in an attempted revolt led by his father on 16 August 1945, the day after the end of the war. The plan was to kill the emperor (to "accomplish what your father tried and failed to do", as the narrator's father said to his wife), and to blame the act on the Americans, thereby preventing the country's surrender. The father takes his son with him and his co-conspirators as he leaves the valley. The group sing the closing chorale from the Bach cantata (Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56): Komm, o Tod, du Schlafes Bruder, Komm und führe mich nur fort; Da wischt mir die Tränen mein Heiland selbst ab (Come, O death, brother of sleep, come and lead me forth; my saviour himself shall wipe my tears away). The father tells his son that the words mean that the emperor will wipe their tears away. The plot is a failure, and the conspirators are all killed (in the narrator's opinion, "very likely" by American agents in disguise). At the moment of his father's death, he recalls that he saw, "high in the sky... a shining gold chrysanthemum against a vast background of purple light... the light from that flower irradiated his Happy Days". By the time he reaches this part of the story, however, his mother has arrived at the hospital, and it is she who wipes away the tears he sheds. She recalls that her son only survived the massacre of the conspirators because he had already run away. The "acting executor of the will" agrees with the mother, and from her words it appears that she is the narrator's wife. Confronted with his mother's version of events, the narrator retreates further into his own world. He wears a set of earphones as well as the goggles, and listens to a recording of the cantata while singing Happy Days. He imagines himself back at the moment of his father's death, crawling towards a father figure so that, "his blood and his tears will be wiped away".
4275743	/m/0btncv	The Katurran Odyssey				 The book opens with a prologue wherein a storyteller narrates the history of Katook, the book's hero, a small adolescent male Ring-Tailed Lemur. At the time of the storyteller's tale, Katook's home village of Kattakuk was suffering under an extremely severe and lengthy winter, wherein most lemurs are starving. The High Priest who rules them, an Aye-Aye named Gamic, holds a ceremony and collects offerings of figs to try and appease their god, the Fossah. Katook and his best friend later find the priests and their guards eating the offerings. They are discovered and are nearly caught, but Katook is saved by a mysterious appearance of the Fossah, which makes his eyes blue. Katook is caught, and his now-blue eyes are used as an excuse to exile him from his village to a beach on the edge of the island on which it is located. On the beach, he defends hatching baby turtles from being eaten by birds. In return for this, he is taken by the turtles' mother on her back across the sea to the port city of Acco. After an altercation with thieves, he meets up with Quigga, a vain and proud Quagga who has lost his herd. Quigga joins Katook, with whom he meets the Kolloboo. Because Katook is homesick for his own kind, the Kolloboo tell Katook to search for the scientist Nadab, who is staying with the Golden Monkeys, and who may be able to find creatures similar to him. They give him a map, a compass, and a message to give to Nadab. Travelling to find the Golden Monkeys, Quigga and Katook become lost in a desert, where they hide in some ruins to escape Bone-Crushers until the Patah save them. The Patah bring them to their tent guarded by Glyptodonts and present an elaborate demonstration. As Katook stays with the Patah, he learns of illusions and realizes that Gamic has been fooling the lemurs through trickery to give the appearance of miracles. The Chief's son wishes to have Katook's map and compass, but Katook refuses, saying that it his only way home. The Chief, annoyed, questions Katook's feeling of isolation and influences him to think that he is not wholly alone. The protagonists are separated from the Patah, when the party is attacked by Phorcus. Quigga and Katook escape into a river, where they are saved by river dolphins and healed by the Boskii, who shelter them and suggest that Katook's blue eyes may not be a curse, but may be a blessing. The Boskii then tell him to follow the Butterflies, which lead them to the city of the Golden Monkeys. In the city of the Golden Monkeys, Katook finds Nadab. Instead of offering help, Nadab merely classifies them; later, Quigga is enslaved and Katook becomes the Golden Princess's pet. Katook explains his mission to the Princess, who helps him and Quigga escape. Their escape is narrow, but is implied to be facilitated by the Fossah and destroys many of the things whereof the Golden Monkeys are vain. Afterwards, Quigga reveals to Katook that he does not have an instinctive sense of direction and asks Katook to show him celestial navigation, which Katook has learned from the Patah. The next morning, Quigga sees his own herd in the distance and leaves Katook to join them. Katook is sad until he sees a strange shifting shape in the distance. This becomes the Fossah, who reveals that it has been accompanying and protecting Katook throughout the story. The Fossah then offers Katook the chance to live in a world known as "True Home", a paradise containing the dead and the unborn generations of life; but Katook refuses, deciding to return to save his own family. The Fossah then gives him a seed which he must plant in the ground. Katook is magically transported back to his own village, where he is brought to Gamic and his Indri, guards. Katook persuades the Indriis to let him go and when they do, he finds shelter among rocks, feeling that all hope is lost. As he sleeps, the seed which the Fossah gave him falls from his hands and into the soil. When he awakes, the sun is shining and the baobob trees are once more growing plentiful with figs. Gamic, humbled, joins him there, and the two reconcile, later to bring news of the bounty to the village. An epilogue then concludes the book.
4277268	/m/0btqzm	Into a Dark Realm	Raymond E. Feist		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Into a Dark Realm continues the Darkwar saga and mostly concentrates on two groups of characters. The first group consists of Pug, Magnus, Nakor and Ralan Bek who are attempting to reach the Dasati home world. The main problem facing them is that the Dasati exist on the Second Plane, the next lower plane of existence, a separate reality considered to be the first of the seven planes of hell (where the seven upper planes are considered heaven). The second group consists of Tad, Zane and Jommy who are sent into training by the Conclave of Shadows for their future as generals in the Conclave. Tad, Zane and Jommy are sent to a monastic university in Roldem, where they will undergo training and education to prepare them for their future roles with the Conclave. Upon arrival, they instantly clash with a group of boys led by a bully named Servan, who they later discover is related to the king of Roldem. Eventually, the two groups of boys are forced to work out their differences, for they are soon released from the university, and commissioned as junior officers in the Roldemish army, where they immediately begin serving together in campaigns against raiders from Roldem's border colonies. There Tad, Zane and Jommy are reunited with Kaspar, another agent of the Conclave, who is a senior officer with the army. Meanwhile, on their journey to the Dasati realm, Pug and his companions spend time with the Ipiliac, a race related to the Dasati, on their world of Delecordia, halfway between the first and second planes. There they become acclimated to the conditions they will face in the second plane, and undergo crucial training and education to help them survive in the harsh Dasati society. As he spends more and more time closer to the second plane, Bek realizes he belongs there, easily acclimating to the nature of the plane as well as the culture, and expresses a desire to stay behind when the others return. An additional plot thread is added halfway through the novel, introducing Dasati culture as seen through the eyes of a young Dasati warrior, Valko, as he rises to become Lord of his clan, the Camareen. Unbeknownst to him at first, Valko's family are agents of The White, a secret organization of servants of Good who oppose the Dasati's Dark God and seek to restore balance to the Dasati. After completing their training, Pug and his companions succeed in reaching the Dasati realm, on the outer world of Kosridi, finding themselves guided by allies of Valko and The White. When they finally reach the Dasati homeworld, the leader of the Dasati resistance, known as The Gardener, is revealed to be none other than Macros the Black, reincarnated as a Dasati. They also discover that the Talnoy hidden on Midkemia contain the souls of 10,000 lost Dasati Gods, banished after the Dasati Chaos Wars. Into a Dark Realm is very much an intermediary book, setting up the final book in the trilogy, Wrath of a Mad God.
4277537	/m/0btrgl	Inside Mr. Enderby	Anthony Burgess	1963	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The story opens on a note of pure fantasy, showing school children from the future taking a field trip through time to see the dyspeptic poet Francis Xavier Enderby while he is asleep. Enderby, a lapsed Catholic in his mid-40's, lives alone in Brighton as a 'professional' poet - his income being interest from investments left to him by his stepmother. Enderby composes his poetry whilst seated on the toilet. His bathtub, which serves as a filing cabinet, is almost full of the mingled paper and food scraps that represent his efforts. Although he is recognised as a minor poet with several published works (and is even awarded a small prize, the 'Goodby Gold Medal', which he refuses), he has yet to be anthologised. He is persuaded to leave his lonely but poetically fruitful bachelor life by the editor of a woman's magazine, Vesta Bainbridge, after he accidentally sends her a love poem instead of a complaint about a recipe in her magazine. The marriage, which soon ends, costs Enderby dearly, alienating him from his muse and depriving him of his financial independence. Months pass, and Enderby is able to write only one more poem. After spending what remains of his capital, he attempts suicide with an overdose of aspirin, experiencing disgusting (and rather funny) visions of his stepmother as he nears death. His cries of horror bring help, and he regains consciousness in a mental institution, where the doctors persuade him to renounce his old, "immature" poetry-writing self. Rechristened "Piggy Hogg", he looks forward contentedly to a new career as a bartender.
4277687	/m/0btrpy	Enderby Outside	Anthony Burgess	1968-05	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 After a failed suicide attempt at the very end of Inside Mr. Enderby, the second novel opens with the protagonist under psychiatric care and working as a bartender at a large London hotel. Under the name of 'Hogg' (his stepmother's maiden name, we learn), he is persuaded to renounce the creation of poetry as an adolescent preoccupation and to pursue useful work. Hogg-Enderby, bereft of his stock of capital and now divorced, is forced to earn his keep and finds that the poetic muse has left him. He also finds that his work has been plagiarised, again, by a certain rock singer named Yod Crewsey - whose band, the Crewsey Fixers, are managed and groomed by his former wife. After being implicated in the public murder of Crewsey during a banquet at the hotel, Enderby-Hogg goes on the run to Morocco - to the bar of a rival poet named Rawcliffe. Assuming control and ownership of Rawcliffe's property upon his death, and the death of his 'Hogg' persona, Enderby realises that his muse is returning.
4277815	/m/0btrv3	The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End	Anthony Burgess	1974	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Enderby is a dyspeptic British poet, 56 years old, and The Clockwork Testament is an account of his last day alive. The day in question is a cold one in February. He spends it in New York City, where for the past several months he's been working as a visiting professor of English literature and composing a long poem about St. Augustine and Pelagius. Enderby's present situation arose from a chance encounter with an American film producer in Tangiers, where he owns a bar. Publican Enderby served the man a Scotch and pitched him an idea for a new film&mdash;an adaptation of Gerard Manley Hopkins's famously obscure poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland". The producer, intrigued, asked for a script, which Enderby duly composed. The eventual film bears little resemblance to this script or to Hopkins's poem; however, his name is prominently credited, and the film, and Enderby, are now famous. This unwanted public recognition has led to an invitation to teach English at the University of Manhattan for a year. Also, since the film has controversial elements&mdash;including, for some reason, a lurid rape scene with Nazis and nuns&mdash;the reclusive, little-read poet has been receiving a barrage of ranting phone calls from angry citizens who are eager to denounce "his" film. Invariably, these callers (and other critics) have never read the original poem; indeed, they don't even know it exists. Enderby suffers three heart attacks over the course of the day, and succumbs to a fourth some time after midnight. Between attacks, he goes about his business: he happily works on his Pelagian poem; eats dyspeptic American food and smokes White Owl cigars; refuses an offer of sex from a female poetry student who wants him to give her an A; struggles through two lectures; appears on a smarmy talk show; and draws a sword he carries hidden in his cane to defend a middle-aged housewife from a gang of thugs on the subway. Everywhere&mdash;even on the subway&mdash;he encounters incomprehension and, usually, disapproval. When he finally gets home, however, a woman he's never seen before drops by and pulls a gun on him; she has come to tell him she's read and re-read all his poetry, and is now going to murder him for writing it. First, however, she orders him to strip naked and urinate all over his collected works. Enderby strips, but since he has an erection he cannot obey the rest of her command. The scene ends, apparently, in a sexual encounter. Enderby dies later that night.
4277898	/m/0btr__	Heartfire	Orson Scott Card	1998	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alvin marries Peggy, and they conceive a daughter (not born by the end of the book). Alvin, Verily Cooper, Arthur Stuart, and Mike Fink are joined by John James Audubon, a French-speaking painter of birds. This group go to a Puritan-dominated place near Boston and end up confronting the witch laws. Meanwhile, Peggy has gone to the Crown Colonies - slave states that ruled by the Stuart dynasty in exile - in an attempt to free the slaves. We learn the story of Purity, a Puritan girl whose parents were hanged for their knacks, which are considered witchcraft by the Puritans. Purity meets Alvin's band and Arthur Stuart tells her the whole story of their travels. Purity goes away convinced they are witches and tells a local witcher, Quill, who is evil and twists her words against her and the boys. Quill intends to hang them as well as Purity. Alvin whisks away Arthur Stuart, Mike Fink, and Audubon by leading them into the greensong that lets them run hundreds of miles without tiring, but turning back without the others en route. Alvin gives himself up to the men sent to bring in the "witches" while Verily hides for the moment. Quill has both Purity and Alvin running in tight circles to wear them down - a semi-legal form of torture, intended to make them confess to witchery. Verily comes by and loudly scolds Quill in front of the crowd, saying it's inhumane. At the trial, Verily Cooper makes a case for overturning the witchery laws: in all previous witch trials, it was the witcher who brought up any connection with Satan, while the defendant had been too beaten down to resist. The judge, John Adams, is sympathetic, but realizes that a sudden overthrow of long-kept laws will cause social instability. However, based on Verily's evidence, he suspends the licenses of all witchers in New England for alleged misconduct; since, to reinstate their licenses, a witcher would have to prove his claims in a normal court, and since this is impossible, it effectively ends the practice of witch trials while leaving the laws on the books. Calvin has come back to America from France with Honoré de Balzac, the French boy-writer. The two meet up with Peggy and Calvin gets himself in serious trouble.
4277919	/m/0bts0q	Alvin Journeyman	Orson Scott Card	1995	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alvin is a Maker, and what he can make is a new future for America. But to do that he must defeat his ancient enemy, the Unmaker, whose cruel whispers and deadly plots have threatened Alvin's life at every turn. Now a grown man and a journeyman smith, Alvin has returned to his family and friends in the town of Vigor Church, to share in their isolation, to work as a blacksmith, and to try to teach anyone who will learn the knack of being a Maker. For Alvin has had a vision of the city he will build, and he knows that he cannot build it alone. But the Unmaker is not through with Alvin. If that spirit of destruction cannot stop him by magic, or war and devastation, then it will try to crush the young Maker by simpler means - more human means. By lies and innuendo, and by false accusations, Alvin is driven from his home back to Hatrack River, only to find that the Unmaker has been there before him, and that he must now stand trial for his life. Against him in this trial stands Daniel Webster. Meanwhile his brother Calvin has started to grow into his own knacks, which he views to be equal to Alvin's. When Alvin returned to Vigor Church he found that Calvin had been doing all the jobs that Alvin had done prior to his apprenticeship. When Alvin started to teach how to be a maker, Calvin resented the way he felt he was being treated and decided to learn how to be a Maker on his own, but by any means he deems necessary. He finds passage to England, and then to the courtship of Emperor Napoleon himself in Paris, to treat him for his gout. By healing the pain each day, he spends a few hours a day learning from Napoleon on how to Rule. Calvin makes a friend in Paris, who he then leaves Napoleon (healed from ever feeling pain again) and heads to America with.
4278960	/m/0bttky	Nansō Satomi Hakkenden				 Set in the tumultuous Sengoku period (350 years before Bakin lived), Hakkenden is the story of eight samurai half-brothers--all of them descended from a dog and bearing the word "dog" in their surnames--and their adventures, with themes of loyalty and family honor, as well as Confucianism, bushido and Buddhist philosophy. One of the direct inspiration sources of the novel is the 14th-17th century Chinese epic novel Water Margin. An earlier serial novel by Bakin, Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki (椿説弓張月) (Strange Tales of the Crescent Moon) had been illustrated by the famous ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai, but the two did not work well together. For Hakkenden, Hokusai's son-in-law, Yanagawa Shigenobu was employed as illustrator instead. A complete reprinting in ten volumes is available, as well as various modern Japanese translations, most of them abridged. Only a few chapters are available translated into English, one by Donald Keene and several by Chris Drake.
4279269	/m/0btv5h	Darksaber	Kevin J. Anderson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 While searching Jabba the Hutt's palace on Tatooine, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo learn that the Hutts are planning to build another superweapon. Meanwhile, in the Hoth Asteroid Belt, Durga the Hutt is planning a diplomatic mission to Coruscant, where he will secretly obtain the plans for the Death Star superlaser for Bevel Lemelisk, the Death Star's designer. Skywalker and Solo reveal their discoveries, but not before Durga's subordinates steal the plans from the Imperial Palace. In order to find out the location of the superweapon, the New Republic launches a covert operation to Nal Hutta, disguised as a diplomatic summit. Back at the Hoth asteroid belt, Lemelisk starts construction on the cylindrical superlaser, which he calls the "Darksaber" for its shape is similar to the hilt of a lightsaber. Luke and Callista embark on a vacation that eventually leaves them stranded near the Hoth asteroid belt. They are rescued by Han and Leia Organa Solo, who just returned from the successful mission on Nal Hutta. However, Luke and Callista's rescue is mainly thanks to the Republic fleet, who arrived to launch Crix Madine and his squad to locate the Darksaber reported to be under construction in the region. While Madine succeeds in relaying the location to the fleet, he is captured and killed by Durga. However, Durga's triumph is short-lived when the Republic fleet spots the Darksaber and begins pursuit. The Darksaber attempts to fire its superlaser and make an escape, but the weapon fails and the ship is destroyed by two large asteroids. Meanwhile, Admiral Daala succeeds in uniting the remains of the Empire in the core systems. With the help of Pellaeon, she plans a strike force against a series of New Republic targets, including the Jedi academy on Yavin IV. They also attack Khomm, where Jedi trainees Kyp Durron and Dorsk 81 are visiting. Furious, the pair of Jedi spy on Daala's fleet and succeed in warning the academy of the attack. Using the powers of the Force, the Jedi trainees back at Yavin IV manage to hold off Daala's forces until New Republic reinforcements arrive. Daala is forced to retreat when her Super Star Destroyer, the Knight Hammer, is destroyed. After the failed attack, Daala transfers control over the Imperial forces to Pellaeon. Meanwhile, Callista decides to temporarily leave Luke and venture on a journey to regain her powers. Luke is heartbroken, but decides to move on and continue to build the Jedi academy.
4279484	/m/0btvnr	Mephisto	Klaus Mann	1936	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The novel portrays actor Hendrik Höfgen's rise from the Hamburger Künstlertheater (Hamburg Artists' Theater) in 1926 to nationwide fame in 1936. Initially, Höfgen flees to Paris on receiving news of the Nazis' rise to power because of his communist past (learning from a friend that he is on a blacklist). A former co-actress from Hamburg, Angelika Siebert, travels to Berlin to convince Lotte von Lindenthal, the girlfriend (and later wife) of a Luftwaffe general to have him pardoned. On returning to Berlin he quickly manages to win over Lotte and her general and with his support has a wonderful career. On obtaining the role of Mephisto in Faust Part One he realizes that he actually made a pact with evil (i.e. Nazism) and lost his humane values (even denouncing his mistress "Black Venus"). There are situations where Höfgen tries to help his friends or tells the prime minister about concentration camp hardships, but he is always concerned not to lose his Nazi patrons.
4279853	/m/0btwnz	The Beginning Was the End				 Maerth asserted that the eating of brain produces an aphrodisiac effect (presumably due to the vast amount of hormones in it), and that this initially caused apes to become addicted to them, organizing brain hunts wherein the males of another tribe were eaten and the females raped in a frenzy of brain-induced sex and violence. However, this diet also inadvertently increased brain size and intelligence while triggering the loss both of body hair and of our innate psychic abilities. Thus man gradually came into being, remaining cannibalistic until 50,000 years ago. Modern humans, alienated from their surroundings now that they've no telepathic contact with nature and each other as animals do, suffering from a distorted sexuality resulting from hormonal imbalances, and driven insane from the constant pressure of their unnaturally large brains pressing on the inside of their skulls,Maerth (1974), page 53: are inevitably destroying themselves with pollution, overpopulation, racial integration and ultimately, nuclear war. He foresees a return to cannibalism in the near future,Maerth (1974), page 199: and suggests that the reader should drop out of society, embrace a vegetarian diet, steep himself in the wisdom of the East and perhaps employ various wooden frames and wire devices to alter the shape of his skull as some ancient cultures did, thus relieving the pressure on the brain and partially restoring psychic powers.
4279943	/m/0btwvt	Children of the Jedi	Barbara Hambly		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Han Solo and Princess Leia learn of the now-abandoned Jedi stronghold on the planet of Belsavis from Drub McKumb and travel there, only to discover a chilling conspiracy involving a Force-adept, members of the Ancient Houses and the Emperor's Hand who is able to change the programming of droids and mechanicals. Meanwhile Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, two Jedi students (Nichos and Cray), and a myriad selection of alien life-forms along with a former stormtrooper are abducted aboard the sinister Eye of Palpatine, impossibly reactivated after thirty years. Fighting the effects of massive indoctrination, injury, and the cold manipulation by the ship's artificial intelligence and its horrific security measures, Luke discovers the Eye is bound for the destruction of Belsavis. Racing against time and exhaustion he struggles to rescue his companions; who are being held hostage as the Will has decided they are Rebel Saboteurs, find a way to transport all the ship's prisoners back to their home-worlds, and find a way to destroy the super-weapon. He makes an unexpected ally in the form of Callista, the brave Jedi who sacrificed her life to stop the ship thirty years before, and now exists as a fading spirit in the gunnery computers. Tenderness grows between them, but time is running out, and the destruction of the Eye will mean the final loss of Callista forever. Beyond all hope, Callista is revived as a human when Cray chooses to die and be reunited with her dead lover Nichos and offers her body to the former Jedi. But everything has to be paid for, Callista loses her Jedi powers. Their love and trials continue in Darksaber and The Planet of Twilight.
4281160	/m/0btyl4	Star Wars Republic Commando: Triple Zero	Karen Traviss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following the eruption of the bloody Clone Wars at the battle of Geonosis, both sides remain deadlocked in a stalemate that can be broken only by elite warrior teams like Omega Squad, clone commandos with terrifying combat skills and a lethal arsenal. Deployed deep behind enemy lines, Omega Squad engage in sabotage, espionage, ambush, and assassination. But when the Squad is rushed to Coruscant, the war's most dangerous new hotspot, the commandos discover that they are not the only ones penetrating the heart of the enemy. A surge in Separatist attacks has been traced to a network of terrorist cells in the Republic's capital, masterminded by a mole in Command Headquarters. To identify and destroy a Separatist spy and terror network in a city full of civilians will require special talents and skills. Not even the leadership of the Jedi generals, along with the assistance of Delta Squad and a notorious ARC trooper, can even the odds against the Republic Commandos. And while success may not bring victory in the Clone Wars, failure means certain defeat.
4281376	/m/0btyts	The New Rebellion	Kristine Kathryn Rusch		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kueller, a Dark Jedi, destroys millions with his powers. Luke Skywalker feels this genocide, and is afraid that the destruction will continue. Meanwhile, an assassination attempt is made on Princess Leia Organa, which is blamed on Han Solo. However, this is quickly discovered to be Kueller's doing. Luke decides to seek the aid of Brakiss, a former student. However, Brakiss is in on Kueller's plan, and Luke joins the spiral of death that is to follow. Eventually, Luke Skywalker is led to Kueller, though a wake of destruction is left behind.
4284857	/m/0bv29r	The Thief Lord	Cornelia Funke	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Thief Lord follows the story of two brothers, Prosper and Boniface (Bo), who run away to Venice, Italy after their mother's death. They are taken in by a group of orphans who live in an abandoned movie theater - the Stella, and are led by a proud "orphan" named Scipio, who declares himself the Thief Lord. He appears to steal valuables from wealthy homes and palaces and the orphan gang sells them to a sly old shopkeeper, Ernesto Barbarossa. The runaway boys' aunt and uncle figure out where they are and set a detective, Victor Getz, on their trail. Victor recognizes the boys on the street and manages to initiate a conversation with innocent little Bo, to find out where they stay. When the rest of the children see him, they cause a distraction and run away, taking his wallet with them, from which they discover his identity. In his search for the theater, Victor visits the home of Dottore Massimo, the owner of the Stella, where he sees Scipio, who immediately leaves to warn the others. When Victor arrives at the Stella, the children ambush him, tie him up, and lock him in the boys' bathroom. During an argument, Victor tells them the truth about Scipio. When Prosper confronts Scipio, he learns that Scipio is indeed Dottore Massimo's son, and all the loot he "stole" from wealthy houses was actually stolen from his own home. Furious, Prosper leaves and tells the others what he has learned. While they are gone, Victor escapes, leaving a note that he will not reveal their location if they do not steal the precious lion's wing. The children leave that night to steal it and meet Scipio inside Ida Spavento's house. When they are in an ensuing argument, Ida comes back from a walk and demands to know who they are, using an old revolver. When they explain, Ida tells them the story of the wing, which came from a magical merry-go-round. It has the ability to change a person's age. She agrees to let them have the wing if they let her accompany them to the exchange, in hopes that she can find the wonderful merry-go-round. The next night, all of the children go for the deal except Hornet and Bo. They join Ida and Scipio, meet with the Conte and his sister, Morosina, and make the exchange, but narrowly escape being shot when they try to search for the merry-go-round. When they return to the theater, Hornet and Bo are gone, leaving a note that there were police at the door. They angrily confront Victor, who swears he did not do it and informs them that the lire they received are fake. While searching for Hornet and Bo, they find her at an orphanage and a disguised Victor and Ida manage to get her out. They spend a restless night at Ida's house, but Prosper cannot sleep and wanders outside, where he meets Scipio. The two return to the island to demand payment, but end up locked up in a stinking stable there, and are forced to spend the night on the island. Meanwhile, Victor receives a phone call from Esther, informing him that she had Bo, but that he had run away from them and she no longer wants anything to do with him. Victor finds Bo at the Stella and takes him back to Ida's, where they find Prosper missing. On the island the next morning, Scipio and Prosper meet the Conte and Morosina, who are both young children, having gotten the merry-go-round to work. Scipio demands a ride and comes off an adult, looking very much like his father. Just as he gets off the merry-go-round, Barbarossa arrives, and demands a ride on the merry-go-round. However, while Barbarossa becomes a five-year-old boy, he accidentally breaks the merry-go-round, infuriating the Conte. Scipio and Prosper leave after promising the Conte that they will not talk about the merry-go-round, and is forced to give the Conte all the money in his shop safe as repayment. The next day, when everyone at Ida's home finds Prosper, Scipio, and Barbarossa they do not recognize Scipio or Barbarossa and Prosper cannot explain, but Ida understands what happened. Scipio sets up a meeting between Barbarossa and Esther,to which Barbarossa consents to live with after learning that Esther is rich. Esther adores Barbarossa and his manners and decides to adopt him. Prosper, Bo, and Hornet decide to live with Ida and go to school, while Mosca and Riccio live in an abandoned warehouse. Scipio decides to work for Victor and sends his father a letter saying that he is safe and happy, but will not come home. Eventually, he and Prosper take another trip to the Isola Segreta only to find that the Conte and Morosina have disappeared. Esther eventually catches Barbarossa stealing her jewelry and other possessions and sends him off to boarding school, where he becomes a menacing bully; he forces other children to do things for him like his homework, encourages them to steal, and intimidates them to call him "The Thief Lord".
4286723	/m/0bv5g_	The Crystal Star	Vonda McIntyre		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On Munto Codro, Jacen, Jaina & Anakin are kidnapped by a man named Hethrir. Their mother, Leia Organa Solo, immediately dispatches a rescue operation. Meanwhile, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker go to Crseih Station on a supposed "vacation", and learn of a secret cult that influences the Crystal Star, which could possibly destroy the very existence of the universe. Hethrir continues to manipulate the children for several days, as he leads the Empire Reborn, an organization looking to resurrect the Galactic Empire. Eventually, Leia and Chewbacca manage to rescue the children, but Hethrir is still connected to the events that transpire around the Crystal Star. After an intense series of events, Hethrir is killed, the Crystal Star explodes, Crseih station moves out of the area beforehand, and Luke, Leia, Han, and the children are safe.
4289412	/m/0bvb13	Jedi Apprentice: The Followers	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As an apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi faced off against the leader of a Sith cult. A generation later, he and his own apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, discover the cult still exists and it has plans for revenge that threatens the hearts of the Jedi.
4290832	/m/0bvdr5	Look to the Lady	Margery Allingham	1931	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Val Gyrth, heir to the Gyrth family and their traditional vocation of guarding the famous Gyrth Chalice, is homeless and wandering the streets. After a mysterious chain of events, he is plucked out of danger by Albert Campion, who explains that a conspiracy of art collectors and criminals hopes to steal the treasure his family is charged with protecting. Returning Gyrth to his family, in the village of Sanctuary in Suffolk, Campion is shocked when Val's aunt Di, a bohemian who upset the family by being photographed with the chalice, is found lying dead in a spooky forest clearing, apparently frightened to death. With Val's 25th birthday, at which a great secret will be revealed to him, fast approaching, Campion and the Gyrths smuggle the chalice to London, evading ruthless crooks. There, they find it is a fake, a replacement made a few hundred years ago, while the genuine, thousand-year-old chalice remains out of sight. A crook informs them that someone named "Daisy" is behind the chalice thieves; Val is left in the safety of Campion's flat, protecting the decoy chalice. Back in Sanctuary, Lugg has been frightened by a monster in the woods, perhaps the same thing that scared Aunt Di to death. Accompanied by the Gyrths' neighbour, a historian friend of Campion's, and a local woodsman, they trap the monster, revealed to be an aged witch of the village, protecting her slow-witted poacher son. They further learn that she was encouraged to frighten Aunt Di by someone named Daisy, and the local tells Campion that a local stable owner, whom Campion has met a few times already, is called Daisy. Awaking after his long night in the woods, Campion learns that his flat has been attacked, the chalice taken and Val Gyrth vanished in pursuit. He rushes off, leaving instructions that a pouch be delivered to Gypsies staying nearby. Later, the chalice arrives by post, and Penny and Beth find Val in a field, bedraggled and exhausted but alive, with a White Campion in his buttonhole. Campion strolls up to Mrs Shannon's stables, where he finds her playing cards with a band of well-known crooks, including a cat-burglar. Campion is locked in a room above the stables for a day, and visited by Mrs Shannon on the night of Val's birthday. Realising he knows too much, she pushes him through the floor into a stable with a wild, angry horse; he hides in a hay-feeder until rescued by Professor Cairey, who heard Daisy's name from the Munseys too. A gang of Gypsies, summoned by Campion's message, arrive and scatter Shannon's gang, but she escapes in a car. Campion follows on the wild horse, temporarily tamed by a gypsy. Arriving at the Gyrth's Tower, he finds Mrs Shannon lowering herself from the roof to see into the window of a secret room, only lit up on the heir's birthday and rumoured to contain a fearsome secret that protects the chalice. Looking in, she goes white with fear and falls from her rope to her death. Campion reveals that he had found Val, knocked out by the crooks he pursued in London, and sent him home before heading to the stables. Next day a representative of royalty arrives to inspect the chalice, and Campion and the Professor are permitted to join the party; taken to the secret room, they see the chalice guarded by the skeleton of a giant, clad in armour, and the chalice, a beautiful bowl of red gold and rubies.
4291216	/m/0bvfby	Police at the Funeral	Margery Allingham	1931	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stanislaus Oates is being followed by a stranger, and runs into his friend Campion in the bizarrest of places. Campion is waiting for a client, Joyce Blount, the fiancee of his solicitor friend Marcus Featherstone, and when she arrives she clearly recognises Oates' stalker, but denies having seen him before. After Campion hears Joyce's story, of the disappearance of her Uncle Andrew on the way home from church, news reaches them that Andrew's murdered body has been found in a stream. They head to Cambridge, where Campion meets Marcus and hears more about the family of Andrew, his imperious Great-Aunt Caroline and the clutch of feckless relatives who live off her, including Uncle William, who was with Andrew when he went missing, and about the body, found tied up and shot in the head. He meets William, and learns that Oates' mysterious stalker was Cousin George, who visits rarely and has some power over Great-Aunt Caroline. Next morning, more bad news hits the family; Aunt Julia is found dead in her bed, poisoned by a surruptitious morning cup of tea. Campion heads to the house and meets the famous Caroline Faraday, who hires him to help them resolve matters. Oates analyses the teacup and finds traces of conium poison, while Campion finds a stash of weight-loss pills in Julia's room. Uncle William approaches Marcus, telling him he has been suffering from blackouts, and Campion also finds the old man's service revolver is missing, along with some cord from the same (unused) room. Later, Campion finds William in the corridor, his hand badly cut; he almost faints, and Campion suspects mild poisoning. He and Oates inspect the scene where Andrew's body was found, but find nothing but an old hat, presumably swapped for Andrew's missing bowler. Back at the house, there has been another scare; a mysterious symbol like a stylised letter B has been drawn in chalk on one of the library windows. Campion and Oates suspect it is a sign used by tramps to communicate amongst themselves. Great-Aunt Caroline reveals that Andrew had been writing to old girlfriends, and Campion has an idea which could solve the case. He finds Uncle William has an alibi, having been seen in a pub at the time of the murder, in the midst of an amnesia attack, and the inquest into Andrew's death returns a verdict of murder. Cousin George arrives at the house, and denounces his family, claiming to know who killed Andrew and insisting he be allowed to stay in the house, threatening to bring scandal on the family. He gets drunk and is locked in Andrew's room by Campion and Marcus. In the night, Campion spots a man in the gardens, and tackles him; he is a large-footed tramp named Beveridge. In the morning, Campion is missing, and George is found dead in his bed, with a strong smell of cyanide in the room. When Campion and Oates arrive, Campion explains all - Andrew, watched secretly by George and his friend Beveridge, bound and then shot himself, arranging for the gun to fall from the bridge. George hid the gun in a tree and Beveridge took Andrew's hat. Andrew had previously placed several booby-traps around the house, including the poisoned pill which killed Julia, a hidden blade which cut William, and a cyanide-stuffed pipe which killed George. Campion leaves the house with everyone's gratitude, and some interesting gifts. The device Uncle Andrew used is similar to one in a Sherlock Holmes story The Problem of Thor Bridge.
4294747	/m/0bvmb6	The Crime Wave at Blandings	P. G. Wodehouse		{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Lady Constance has decided that Lord Emsworth's grandson George needs a tutor to keep him in line over the summer holidays—and chooses the efficient Rupert Baxter. Meanwhile, his niece Jane wants him to employ her fiancé, George Abercrombie, the position of Estate Manager at Blandings, much to the dismay of Connie. Emsworth, who would rather be reading Whiffle's 'On the Care of the Pig', cannot imagine a way out, until an air gun confiscated from young Master George shows the way.
4296173	/m/0bvpkf	Tribulation Force	Tim LaHaye	1996-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rayford Steele, Chloe Steele, Buck Williams and Bruce Barnes find themselves left behind. This group of believers, as well as others left behind but becoming believers, are otherwise known as "Tribulation Saints", to differentiate from the pre-Rapture designation of Christian. The question of what to do in response to this radical change in situation arises. They propose to fight the perceived threat that Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia poses in the form of eradicating all religion and establishing a single world religion. The dogma consists that "there is no heaven nor hell, just [the left-behind]." In addition, Nicolae twisted the message of world-famous rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah about Messiah, in order to point to himself as thus. Buck flies to Jerusalem to meet Ben-Judah and present him to the two witnesses (described in Revelation) stationed at the United Nations-blockaded Wailing Wall. He converts to Christianity, believing that Jesus is the one and only Messiah; thus disproving Carpathia. During the prophesied eighteen months of peace following the covenant with Israel, Chloe and Buck are married, along with Rayford and new believer Amanda White. However, both Buck, who becomes publisher of Global Community Weekly, formerly Global Weekly, and Rayford, who is handpicked to pilot Carpathia’s jet, are in the distressing position of watching Carpathia, now Supreme Potentate of the U.N. - now reorganized into the Global Community- strengthen his grip on the world, witnessing how he orchestrates World War III to bring the former world powers under his heel and how he bamboozles Israeli botanist Chaim Rosenzweig into giving the GC his illustrious Eden formula for a GC-guaranteed peace treaty with Israel, thus initiating the Tribulation. As World War III breaks out, the Tribulation Force suffers its first casualty in the death of their pastor, Bruce Barnes, who was killed in a bombing in the now-decimated city of Chicago.
4296575	/m/0bvq05	The Black Book	Orhan Pamuk	1990	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist, an Istanbul lawyer named Galip, finds one day that his wife Rüya (the name means "dream" in Turkish) has mysteriously left him with very little explanation. He wanders around the city looking for his clues to her whereabouts. He suspects that his wife has taken up with her half-brother, a columnist for Milliyet named Celal, and it happens that he is also missing. The story of Galip's search is interspersed with reprints of Celal's columns, which are lengthy, highly literate meditations on the city and its history. Galip thinks that by living as Celal he can figure out how Celal thinks and locate both him and his wife, so he takes up residence in Celal's apartment, wearing his clothes and eventually writing his column. Galip starts getting mysterious phone calls from one of Celal's obsessed fans, who displays an astonishing familiarity with the columnist's writings. After Galip's columns under Celal's name start to take the form of impassioned pleas to Rüya, a woman from Celal's past misinterprets the articles and calls Galip, thinking they are actually Celal's attempts to win her back. It turns out that Celal and the woman had had an affair, and the fan who is calling Galip is the woman's jealous husband. In an eerie twist, it turns out that the husband has been following Galip around Istanbul in an attempt to find Celal through him, accounting for Galip's frequent apprehension that he is being watched. Galip finally agrees to meet both of them at a public location, a store called Aladdin's that figures in much of the narrative. Soon after, Celal is shot to death in the street. Rüya is found also shot in Aladdin's store. The identity of the killer is never discovered for certain. The novel ends with the postmodern twist of the author revealing his presence in the narrative. The story is more concerned with exploring the nature of story-telling as a means of constructing identity than with a straightforward plot. As such, it is full of stories within the main story, relating to both Turkey's Ottoman past and contemporary Istanbul.
4296593	/m/0bvq16	Woodstock	Walter Scott	1826-04-28	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At a thanksgiving service in Woodstock church for the victory at Worcester (3 September 1651), the Rev. Nehemiah Holdenough was compelled to cede the pulpit, which he had usurped from the late rector (Dr Rochecliffe), to Joseph Tomkins, who, in military attire, declaimed against monarchy and prelacy, and announced the sequestration of the royal lodge and park by Cromwell and his followers. Proceeding thither, he encountered Sir Henry Lee, accompanied by his daughter Alice, prepared to surrender his charge, and was conducted through the principal apartments by the forester Joliffe, who managed to send his sweetheart Phoebe and dog Bevis with some provisions to his hut, in which the knight and his daughter had arranged to sleep. On arriving there they found Colonel Everard, a Roundhead who had come to offer them his own and his father's protection; but Sir Henry abused and spurned his nephew as a rebel, and at Alice's entreaty he bade them farewell, as he feared, for ever. On his way to the lodge he met his Royalist friend, Captain Wildrake, whom he was sheltering in spite of his politics, and determined to send him with an appeal to Cromwell to reinstate his uncle at Woodstock. On reaching Windsor, the captain, disguised as a Roundhead, obtained an interview with General Harrison, and a compliance with Everard's request, on condition that he would aid in securing the murdered king's son, in the event of his seeking refuge with the Lees. Armed with the warrant of ejectment, the colonel and Wildrake, accompanied by the mayor and the minister, visited the Commissioners during their evening carouse, and took part in endeavouring to ascertain the cause of some startling occurrences by which they had been disturbed. Everard made his way alone to a dark gallery, in which he fancied he heard his cousin's voice, and suddenly felt a sword at his throat. Meeting Wildrake as he regained the hall, they hurried off to the hut where they found Dr Rochecliffe reading the Church service to Sir Henry and his daughter; and, after a reconciliation between uncle and nephew, the cousins were allowed a private interview, during which Alice warned her lover against betraying the king. Returning to the lodge they were told of other unaccountable events; and during the night Everard was ordered by an apparition to change his quarters. The sentinels also declared that they had heard strange sounds, and the Commissioners decided to retire to the village inn. Master Holdenough, too, confessed that he had been terribly shocked by the reflection in a mirror of the figure of a college friend whom he had seen drowned. The following day Sir Henry Lee was induced to resume his post, and his son Albert arrived with one "Louis Kerneguy", whom he introduced as his Scotch page. Sir Henry having no suspicion who his guest really was treated him without ceremony; and while Dr Rochecliffe and the colonel were planning for his escape to Holland, the disguised Charles amused himself by endeavouring to gain Alice's love; but, in spite of a declaration of his rank, she made him ashamed of his suit. A quarrel, however, having arisen between him and Everard, she evinced her loyalty by preventing a duel they had arranged, at the risk of her reputation and the loss of her cousin's affection. A similar attempt by Tomkins to trifle with Phoebe was punished by a death-blow from Joliffe. The next evening Everard and his friend, and Holdenough, were unexpectedly made prisoners by Cromwell, who, having received intelligence of their knowledge of the king's sojourn at Woodstock, had brought a large force to secure him. Wildrake, however, managed to send his page Spitfire to the lodge to warn them, and while Alice acted as Charles's guide, Albert, in his dress, concealed himself in Rosamond's tower. Cromwell and his soldiers arrived soon afterwards with Dr Rochecliffe and Joliffe, whom they had seized as they were burying Tomkins, and, having searched all the rooms and passages in vain, they proceeded to blow up the tower. Albert, however, leapt from it just before the explosion, and Cromwell was furious when he discovered the deception. In his rage he ordered the execution of the old knight and all his abettors, including his dog; but afterwards released them, with the exception of Albert, who was imprisoned, and subsequently fell in the battle of Dunkirk (1658). Alice returned in safety, with the news that the king had effected his escape, and a letter from him to Sir Henry, approving of her marriage with Everard, whose political opinions had been considerably influenced by recent events. Eight years later Wildrake arrived at Brussels with a message for Charles that his restoration had been voted by Parliament; and in his progress to London, escorted by a brilliant retinue, amidst shouts of welcome from his assembled subjects, he dismounted to salute a family group in which the central figure was the old knight of Ditchley, whose venerable features expressed his appreciation of the happiness of once more pressing his sovereign's hand, and whose contented death almost immediately followed the realisation of his anxious and long-cherished hopes.
4297148	/m/0bvqwr	A History of God	Karen Armstrong	1993	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/03rllnc": "Inspirational"}	 Armstrong begins with the rise of the cult of Jahweh, one of the pagan deities of Canaan. According to Armstrong, the cult of Jahweh consisted of a variety of ethnic groups that migrated in three waves to Canaan. These groups were united by their "loyalty to Yahweh." Yahweh was a unique God in the ancient Middle East in that he actually "participated" in the "profane" lives of his worshipers. She then examines the sources of the Pentateuch by way of the four supposed authors, or groups of authors, known as J, E, P and D. Moreover, she explores some of the textual tensions that exist in the Pentateuch as a result of the theological tensions between these authors, or groups of authors. For Armstrong, this tension can be seen in, for example, the contrasting accounts of theophanies. J writes of very "intimate" encounters between Abraham and Yahweh, while E "prefers to distance the event and make the old legends less anthropomorphic." There follows an examination of the major Israelite prophets, including Isaiah, second Isaiah, Hosea and Ezekiel, and the contribution each made to the Jewish conception of God. Armstrong then turns to the life of Jesus. She identifies his roots in the Pharisaic tradition of Rabbi Hillel and his effect on the Jewish conception of God. The death of Jesus and its attendant symbolism are examined, including the various constructions others, most notably Paul, have placed upon these events. The book explores the rise of trinitarianism, leading to the Nicene creed, and traces the evolution of the Christian conception of God and the trinity in the respective Eastern and Western traditions. The rise of Islam and its appreciation of the nature of God are examined. Armstrong analyses how modern Shia Islam, with its emphasis upon social action in the service of Allah, the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and the Shia Imams, was a key factor that brought about the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Subsequent chapters examine respectively both philosophical approaches to the idea of God, and the mystical relationship with God. Armstrong discusses the rise of modern Christian religiosity, in particular the Protestantism of Martin Luther and John Calvin. The final chapters examine the notion of the Death of God and the idea of God in a post-modern world.
4299314	/m/0bvvk3	Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A list of important people partial to the Rebel Alliance has gone missing from the Jedi Temple of Dantooine. Dusque Mistflier teams with Finn Darktrin to find the missing holocron. Dusque Mistflier is a bioengineer for the Galactic Empire and tries to deal with familial, self esteem and employer problems. After the killing of her colleague she is approached by Finn Darktrin, a member of the Rebel Alliance. After meeting with Lando Calrissian, C-3PO, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, Nym and Wedge Antilles, they leave for Dantooine in search of the missing holocron. After Finn Darktrin struggles to do right, the team defeats The Empire's resistance and finds the holocron, saving all those whose name was on the list.
4300043	/m/0bvwkq	The Trail of the Lonesome Pine	John Fox, Jr.	1908	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Set in the Appalachian Mountains at the turn of the twentieth century, a feud has been boiling for over thirty years between two influential mountain families: the Tollivers and the Falins. The character Devil Judd Tolliver, in the novel was based on the real life of "Devil John" Wesley Wright, a United States Marshal for the region in and around Wise County, Virginia, and Letcher County, Kentucky. The outside world and industrialization, however, are beginning to enter the area. Coal mining begins to exert its influence on the area, despite the two families' feuds. Entering the area, enterprising "furriner" (foreigner) John Hale captures the attention of the beautiful June Tolliver, and inadvertently becomes entangled in the region's politics.
4305000	/m/0bw3z2	Hideaway	Dean Koontz	1992	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following a traffic accident that left him clinically dead for more than 80 minutes, a Southern California antique dealer named Hatch Harrison begins experiencing strange dreams and visions that connect him to a psychopathic killer, a young man who calls himself "Vassago". Vassago believes that he is the human incarnation of one of the demon princes of Hell, and that if he murders enough innocent human beings and offers them up in sacrifice to his Master, he will be allowed to return to the afterlife and rule at Satan's right hand. He also has a strange condition that enables him to see in the dark, but also causes his eyes to be extremely sensitive to light. Meanwhile, the accident gives Hatch and his wife Lindsey, an artist, a new lease on life as they struggle to rebuild their marriage in the wake of their son's death from cancer five years before. As the couple set about trying to adopt a young girl named Regina, Hatch continues to be tormented by visions, in some cases even seeing through the monstrous killer's eyes. Making matters worse, Vassago slowly gains information about Hatch and his family in the same fashion, putting both Lindsay and Regina in danger. It is eventually revealed that Vassago's real name is Jeremy Nyebern; as a teenager, he brutally murdered his mother and sister, then attempted to kill himself. His life was saved by the same doctor who miraculously resuscitated Hatch, Dr. Jonas Nyebern, Jeremy's father (thus facilitating the seemingly supernatural bond between the two characters). Like Hatch, Jeremy was clinically dead for more than 30 minutes, and during that time, believes that he went to hell and was later returned to do Satan's bidding. At the book's climax, Vassago's visions lead him to kidnap Regina and take her to his "hideaway" (an abandoned amusement park, where, as a boy, Jeremy committed his first murder). There, he is confronted by Hatch, who bludgeons Vassago to death with a crucifix attached to a flashlight, thus saving Regina and Lindsay. During the closing moments of this confrontation, Hatch inexplicably begins speaking in another voice and calls himself "Uriel" (whom Hatch later learns is an archangel mentioned in the Bible), thus implying that Vassago's beliefs about his demonic heritage and short-lived journey to the afterlife may not have been entirely delusional after all. Uriel/Hatch tells Vassago/Jeremy that instead of returning to hell as a prince, he will be returned as a slave.
4305116	/m/0bw486	Insurrection	Thomas M. Reid	2002-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The party led by Quenthel Baenre journeys to the drow city of Ched Nasad in hopes of learning more about Lloth's silence. The beginning of the book is mostly a running battle as Quenthel Baenre foolishly commands the party to travel through the domain of Kaanyr Vhok who immediately dispatches his Tanarukk soldiers (led by an Alu-fiend) to destroy the party. The Alu-fiend takes an interest in Pharaun Mizzrym early but continues to harry them. The party eventually makes it to Ched Nasad. Once there, they realize Ched Nasad is in real danger. The city is very much in conflict as the lesser races have taken to the streets and violence is around every corner. One of Ched Nasad's noble houses has contracted with a Duergar mercenary band to attack the city (A plot which they believe will ultimately make their house rise to power). Unfortunately for the drow, the duergar do too good of a job with their stonefire bombs and in the ensuing battle Ched Nasad is destroyed. Quenthel's party fights at every turn to try and escape the doomed city and eventually they reach a portal (with the help of two new female additions to the party named Halisstra Melarn and Danifae). The book ends just as the drow party escape through the portal and the City's Calcified web strands give out causing Ched Nasad to fall to its doom. This book introduces the characters Halisstra and Danifae to the drow party, both of whom go on to become prominent in the rest of the series.
4305122	/m/0bw48k	Condemnation	Richard Baker	2003-05-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This is the third book in the War of the Spider Queen series. After emerging from the portal that they used to escape the city of Ched Nasad, the drow party plans its next phase of the mission. They decide to consult a priest of Vhaerun to see if any of the other deities know what has become of Lloth. Valas Hune knows where such a priest can be found and believes that this priest may help them in their quest. Valas' friend is far away, however, and the last thing that the party wants is to travel a huge distance to get to them, so on Pharaun Mizzrym's advice they decide to shadow walk to get there. The journey has some minor battles but nothing this group can't handle. They end up back in the Underdark after their journey and in the Domain of the duergar. It becomes evident that to get where they are going, they must travel through the home city of the duergar and will need passports to get through unharmed. The group rests for days in the city while they search for means to obtain these documents. Meanwhile in Menzoberranzan, Gromph Baenre learns of an impending duergar invasion, and rushes to alert the ruling council until the lichdrow Lord Dyrr stops him. A duel is fought in Gromph's own sanctuary, but the lich prevails and imprisons Gromph in a glass sphere. Eventually, Matron Triel Baenre does learn of the impending duergar attack (Nimor Imphraezl posing as a drow commander from House Agrach Dyrr informs them), and the decision is made to send Menzoberranzan's army to the Pillars of Woe to destroy the duergar. Nimor's trap is thus set. The Army of the Black Spider is almost utterly destroyed in the ensuing encounter (and would have been if it were not for the ferocity of House Baenre troops). The army limps back to Menzoberranzan, leaving a token force behind to slow the duergar. Quenthel Baenre's drow party eventually escapes the duergar city and makes it to Valas' contact (Halisstra Melarn is captured by surface elves during this journey). They are told by Valas' priest friend to journey to Myth Drannor and acquire a magical item. After an intense battle with devils and a beholder, the group finally returns. The last part of the book entails the party's journey to the Abyss (in astral form, not physical) to inspect for themselves what has happened to Lloth. They come to a great barrier to Lloth's domain in the shape of a huge visage of a female face. They are powerless to get through the barrier and are about to give up when the god Vhaerun materilizes and strikes the visage with his godly power. He is about to break through when the god Selvetarm (Lloth's guardian) materializes and fights him. The drow party realizes that the power of the gods is too much for them and must kill the priest of Vhaeraun to escape the Abyss. They flee the stronghold of the priest stunned and shaken.
4305127	/m/0bw497	Extinction	Lisa Smedman	2003-01-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Pharaun summons Jeggred's father, the demon Belshazu, and interrogates him to find a portal to the Abyss. Belshazu tries to escape, and during the commotion, Ryld Argith and Halisstra Melarn leave the party to pursue their own ends among the surface. Pharaun successfully binds the demon, and learns there is a demon ship that sails on the plane of shadow, and can take them to the Abyss. The party then journeys to an aboleth-filled lake to find this ship, and Quenthel Baenre and Pharaun both devise schemes to get rid of the other. Neither are successful, and they eventually find the ship. Meanwhile, back in Menzoberranzan, duergar and tanarukks are attacking, led again by Nimor Imphraezl. Gromph Baenre awakens in a cave nearby, trapped in a small sphere, but with the help of his familiar escapes. He is captured by an Illithid, but by using his cunning drow intellect he is able to defeat the foe. He finds an amulet of light and binds it to Nimor, trapping him in the Shadow Plane. Ryld and Halisstra are happy together, and she eventually converts to the followers of Eilistraee. It appears that Halisstra is a chosen one among Eilistraees followers, and is sent on a quest to recover The Crescent Blade, a sword that can sever the head of Lloth. She learns she must regroup with her old party to venture once more into the Abyss. During a conversation between Gromph and Triel Baenre, Quenthel recounts her death (at the hands of Drizzt Do'Urden in Siege of Darkness) and subsequent resurrection (by Shakti Hunzrin in Windwalker). Quenthel is uncertain what this event means, but anticipates she has been chosen for some special quest by Lolth herself.
4305132	/m/0bw4b8	Annihilation	Philip Athans	2004-06-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book focuses on two rather large and epic events. First the wizard duel between Gromph and the Lichdrow Lord Dyrr. Gromph Baenre, after being transported by Dyrr to "Halfling Heaven" returns and is near victory over the lichdrow when Nimor Imphraezl interferes. The spell duel continues until Dyrr polymorphs himself into a Gigant and petrifies Gromph. Only with Triel's help does Gromph continue the fight and finally destroy the Lichdrow's physical body by breaking his staff, releasing a devastating magical discharge. Nimor flees from the battle after he is warned that Lloth is awakening. The second major event in the book is the duel between Jeggred Baenre and Ryld Argith. Danifae sends Jeggred to kill Ryld using of a portal. The battle takes place in a large swamp where Jeggred doggedly pursues Ryld even after being interrupted by many local beasts. The duo finally crash into a human logging camp where events become rather chaotic. Jeggred slaughters most of the loggers and uses their leader's enchanted axe to break Splitter. Ryld is killed moments later and a victorious Jeggred eats his heart in triumph. The group consisting of Quenthel Baenre, Pharaun Mizzrym, Danifae, and Valas Hune make very little progress in their quest to travel to the Abyss. They spend most of their time on the ship of chaos feeding it and making it ready for their journey. But, they finally do begin their journey with the help of Aliisza. Halisstra Melarn it seems has fully turned from the worship of Lloth and moves forward with her intentions of destroying the deity with Eilistraee's sword.
4305136	/m/0bw4bm	Resurrection	Paul S. Kemp	2005-04-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Quenthel Baenre, Pharaun Mizzrym, Jeggred Baenre, and Danifae continue their journey in the Demonweb Pits without Valas Hune, who disappeared shortly before the story began. Halisstra Melarn, with her new faith in Eilistraee, the Dancing Goddess, journeys with Uluyara and Feliane to fulfill her destiny as the slayer of Lolth, the Spider Queen, Goddess of Chaos. As the journey continues, Both Quenthel's and Hallistra's groups are attacked by numerous beings along the way, soon coming into combat with each other. Quenthel's companions easily defeat Hallistra's, sacrificing the drow Uluyara to Lolth in the process. Danifae strikes Halisstra down in the battle and leaves, believing her former mistress to be dead. Hallistra awakens later, however, bitter and angry. In her rage over losing, and her rage at Eilistraee for allowing it to happen, she throttles Feliane's weak body and soon destroys the Crescent Blade. This turns her from Eilistraee's faith back to her faith in Lolth. Quenthel's group later runs into a mercenary demon army, hired by Vhaeraun, the Masked Lord, in order to thwart his mother's plans and cause Lolth to die. Quenthel summons an extremely powerful demon, and Danifae summons a monstrous horde of spiders, which attack the assembled demonic forces. Halisstra, who followed Danifae, now attacks her in revenge for their earlier battle. Before either priestess becomes victorious, Lolth's tabernacle, the Spider Queen's inner chamber, opens, beckoning all three of her priestesses forth. Pharaun, magically paralyzed from a fight with a demon mage, was left on the ground to die at the hands of a host of spiders. Danifae, Halisstra, and Quenthel enter Lolth's tabernacle and are confronted by Lolth, in the form of 8 giant black widow spiders. The eighth and largest spider grabs Danifae, sucks her empty, and is then slaughtered by the other seven spiders. Danifae is in fact the Yor'thae, or Chosen of Lolth. From the gore rises a new form, essentially a giant black widow body with Danifae's torso. The Spider Queen instructs Quenthel to return to her position as Mistress of Arach-Tinilith, and punishes Halisstra for her heresy. Halisstra, now the 'battle-captive', is transformed into the Lady Penitent, reborn to eternally hunt and kill worshipers of Lolth's daughter, son, and former consort. Before returning to Menzoberranzan, Quenthel sacrifices Jeggred to the resurrected Lolth as a gift, and as punishment for opposing Quenthel earlier.
4305275	/m/0bw4jv	The Cleric Quintet	Robert Anthony Salvatore		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The evil wizard Aballister has spent two years collecting and brewing a potion of power, as told to him by the imp, Druzil, sent by the Goddess of Poison, Talona. When he reveals it to his evil fellowship at the hidden stronghold Castle Trinity, the priest Barjin takes control of it and sets off to the major stronghold of the Snowflake Mountains — the Edificant Library. He finds an innocent, intelligent, and young, low-ranking priest, to open the potion, the Chaos Curse, which makes all who breathe it lose self-control. Cadderly must fight a memory-blocking spell in order to lift the curse and save the Library.
4305693	/m/0bw5b3	The History of Mr. Polly	H. G. Wells		{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist of The History of Mr. Polly is an antihero inspired by H.G. Wells' early experiences in the drapery trade: Alfred Polly, born circa 1870, a timid and directionless young man living in Edwardian England, who despite his own bumbling achieves a sort of contented serenity with little help from those around him. Mr. Polly's most striking characteristic is his "innate sense of epithet," which leads him to coin hilarious expressions like "the Shoveacious Cult" for "sunny young men of an abounding and elbowing energy," and "dejected angelosity" for the ornaments of Canterbury Cathedral. Alfred Polly lives in the imaginary town of Fishbourne in Kent (not to be confused with Fishbourne, West Sussex—the town in the story is thought to be based on Sandgate, Kent where Wells lived for several years). The novel begins in medias res by presenting a miserable Mr. Polly: "He hated Foxbourne, he hated Foxbourne High Street, he hated his shop and his wife and his neighbours -- every blessed neighbour -- and with indescribable bitterness he hated himself." The rest of the The History of Mr. Polly is divided in three parts. First (Chapters 1-6), there is the story of his life up to age 20, when he marries his cousin Miriam Larkins and sets up an outfitter's shop in Fishbourne with his father's inheritance. Second (Chapters 7-8), there is Mr. Polly's spectacular suicide attempt which ironically makes him a local hero, wins him insurance money that saves him from bankruptcy, and yields the insight that "Fishbourne wasn't the world," which leads him to abandon his shop and his wife. The third part (Chapters 9-10), at the Potwell Inn (apparently located in West Sussex), culminates in Mr. Polly's courageous victory over "Uncle Jim," a malicious and deranged nephew who has been tormenting the innkeeper.
4309427	/m/0bwcnq	Secret Water	Arthur Ransome	1939	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Swallows intend to sail in the Goblin to Hamford Water and camp with their father, but he is called away on naval business. Instead he maroons them with a small dinghy on an island. Before he leaves, Father gives them an outline map of the area they decide to call Secret Water and suggests they survey and chart the area before he returns to pick them up. For a surprise, he has arranged for the Amazons to come down from the Lake District and join them with another dinghy. They see some mysterious footprints which turn out to belong to the Mastodon, a local boy. He mistakes them for the Eels, another family who camp in the area regularly. Later the Eels arrive and are initially hostile before they settle down for a friendly war. It seems that due to the distractions of war and being cut off by the tides, the chart will not be completed. However early in the last morning two separate groups of children complete it.
4309603	/m/0bwcyc	The Picts And The Martyrs	Arthur Ransome	1943	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Ds have been invited to stay at Beckfoot at the start of the summer holidays while Mrs Blackett has been sent on a cruise for her health. However, when Great Aunt Maria finds out that the Blackett girls have been left at home, she decides to come and take care of them. She is unaware of the Ds' visit. Nancy Blackett insists that the Ds' holiday will not be spoiled and that they will learn to sail the Scarab, a dinghy their father has bought for them. So they move out to the Dog's Home, a small hut in the woods, and become secretive Picts while the Blacketts are martyrs to the Great Aunt. Despite the Great Aunt's attempts to civilize the Amazon pirates, they manage to accomplish a number of adventures while the Great Aunt suspects they are seeing the Swallows. Near the end of her visit, the Great Aunt goes missing and there is a hue and cry and search for her. The Ds find her despite being the only people who shouldn't meet her. They deliver the GA back to Beckfoot in time to catch her train – managing to avoid revealing their identities to her and slipping away before they can be questioned – while Nancy manages to save the Great Aunt some embarrassment for which she gets praised in a letter to her mother. cs:Piktové a mučedníci
4311703	/m/0bwgqd	Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town	Cory Doctorow	2005-07-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story mainly takes place in two Ontario locales. In flashbacks, the main character, usually but not always called Alan (he appears to have been alphabetized rather than named, and will answer to any masculine name beginning with A), and his brothers (also alphabetized) grow up outside of the remote town of Kapuskasing. The novel opens with Alan's purchase of a home in the Kensington Market neighborhood of modern-day Toronto. There are two main plotlines. Alan befriends Kurt, a thirtysomething punk who operates a dumpster-diving operation. Kurt uses computer components that he retrieves from the trash and turns them into functioning Wi-Fi access points. Kurt's goal is to blanket the entire neighborhood with free and secure Internet access by attaching his access points to buildings with the permission of their owners. Kurt's plan doesn't really get off the ground until he forms a partnership with Alan, who puts a more professional face on the operation and sweet-talks many local owners into allowing the access points to use their space and a small amount of their electricity. The second plotline features fantasy elements. Unbeknownst to most of the other characters, Alan and his brothers are not quite human. Their father is a mountain and their mother is a washing machine. Alan's eldest brother can see the future, his second-eldest is an island, his third-eldest is undead, and his three youngest brothers are a set of Russian nesting dolls. Alan is the most normal-seeming of his family. Outwardly, he looks human, but he heals at an incredible rate, and if part of him is cut off, it will grow back, and the cut off part can be made to form a new copy of him, much like an earthworm does. Another plot strand concerns Alan's neighbours, a household of students and artists which includes Mimi, a troubled young woman who like Alan is not quite human. Born with wings on her back and no family history, she lives with her abusive boyfriend Krishna, a musician/bartender who can spot beings like Alan and his family, and hates them. Krishna amputates Mimi's wings every three months; she stays with him because she believes he's the only one willing and able to make her "normal."
4311863	/m/0bwgxr	The End of Faith	Sam Harris	2004	{"/m/022444": "Polemic"}	 The End of Faith opens with a literary account of a day in the life of a suicide bomber &ndash; his last day. In an introductory chapter, Harris calls for an end to respect and tolerance for the competing belief systems of religion, which he describes as being "all equally uncontaminated by evidence". While focusing on the dangers posed by religious extremist groups now armed with weapons of mass destruction, Harris is equally critical of religious moderation, which he describes as "the context in which religious violence can never be adequately opposed." Harris continues by examining the nature of belief itself, challenging the notion that we can in any sense enjoy freedom of belief, and arguing that "belief is a fount of action in potentia." Instead he posits that in order to be useful, beliefs must be both logically coherent, and truly representative of the real world. Insofar as religious belief fails to ground itself in empirical evidence, Harris likens religion to a form of mental illness which, he says, "allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy." He argues that there may be "sanity in numbers", but that it is "merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your prayers, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window." Harris follows this with a brief survey of Christianity down the ages, examining the Inquisition and persecutions of witches and Jews. He contends that, far from being an aberration, the torture of heretics was a logical expression of Christian doctrine &ndash; one which, he says, was clearly justified by men such as Saint Augustine. Going still further, Harris sees the Holocaust as essentially drawing its inspiration from historical Christian anti-Semitism. "Knowingly or not," he says, "the Nazis were agents of religion." Among the controversial aspects of The End of Faith is an uncompromising assessment and criticism of Islam, which Harris describes as being a "cult of death." He infers a clear link between Islamic teaching and terrorist atrocities such as 9/11, a notion he supports with quotations from the Koran that call for the use of violence. He also presents data from the Pew Research Center, purporting to show that significant percentages of Muslims worldwide would justify suicide bombing as a legitimate tactic. In an attack on what he terms "leftist unreason," Harris criticises Noam Chomsky among others for, in his view, displaying an illogical willingness to lay the entire blame for such attitudes upon U.S. foreign policy. However, Harris also critiques the role of the Christian right in the United States, in influencing such areas as drug policies, embryonic stem cell research, and AIDS prevention in the developing world. In what he sees as a steady drift towards theocracy, Harris strongly criticises leading figures from both the legislature and the judiciary for what he perceives as an unabashed failure to separate church and state in their various domains. "Not only do we still eat the offal of the ancient world," he asserts, "we are positively smug about it." Next, Harris goes on to outline what he terms a "science of good and evil" &ndash; a rational approach to ethics, which he claims must necessarily be predicated upon questions of human happiness and suffering. He talks about the need to sustain "moral communities," a venture in which he feels that the separate religious moral identities of the "saved" and the "damned" can play no part. But Harris is critical of the stance of moral relativism, and also of what he calls "the false choice of pacifism." In another controversial passage, he compares the ethical questions raised by collateral damage and judicial torture during war. He concludes that collateral damage is more ethically troublesome. "If we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war," Harris concludes. Finally, Harris turns to spirituality, where he takes his inspiration from the practices of Eastern religion, arguing that as far as Western spirituality is concerned, "we appear to have been standing on the shoulders of dwarfs." He discusses the nature of consciousness, and how our sense of "self" can be made to vanish by employing the techniques of meditation. Harris quotes from Eastern mystics such as Padmasambhava, but he does not admit any supernatural element into his argument &ndash; "mysticism is a rational enterprise," he contends, "religion is not." He states that it is possible for one's experience of the world to be "radically transformed", but that we must speak about the possibility in "rational terms".
4312374	/m/0bwhs4	The Trench	Steve Alten	1999-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It is four years after the events described in the first novel. Jonas Taylor, now married to Terry Tanaka, is working at the Tanaka Institute. Angel, the young shark from the last book, has reached adulthood and is being held at the institute, which is now under the control of energy mogul Benedict Singer and his loyal assistant Celeste after being forced bankrupt by lawsuits resulting from Angel's mother's rampage at the end of the first novel. However, Angel manages to escape after killing three teenage boys who decided to sneak into a walk area surrounding Angel's tank. They harass her, and in return, she kills them by smashing the Plexiglas barrier, killing two immediately, and soon eating the third one. Jonas, with the help of his friend Mac, jumps into Angel's tank, where he discovers it is damaged and full of great white males hoping to impregnate her. Jonas realizes Angel is attracting the males by giving off a scent that is usually emitted during estrus, which she is going into. One of the males attacks and nearly kills Jonas. Mac hauls him out of the water, patches up the bite wound, and fires a transmitter dart into Angel's hide right before she bursts through the gates and escapes. Jonas is rushed to the hospital, afterwards realizing he nearly died. Masao Tanaka, Terry's father and former owner of the institute, is not coping Angel's escape and knowing she's tasted human blood. Angel begins to look for the Trench through instinct, wreaking havoc in her path, including killing several people and whales, including a whale released into the sea by Sea World named Tootie, who later becomes Angel's lunch. Jonas pursues along with Celeste and an egotistical scientist named Michael Maren, who is secretly working with Celeste. Celeste attempts repeatedly to seduce Jonas into revealing the location of an area in the Pacific's Mariana Trench called the Devil's Purgatory, where he did top secret dives with the navy and first encountered fearsome Megalodon but she fails. After many attempts to recapture Angel, which all end in failure and at least one death, they manage to track her path and conclude she is heading for the Pacific Ring of Fire, and then she will enter the Trench. Meanwhile Terry is tricked into boarding Singer's gigantic deep sea research station, the Benthos, to check sonar records of the mysterious implosion of one of Benedict's research subs, the Proteus, which was exploring the trench. While there she finds herself at the mercy of Singer and his sadistic Russian crewman Sergei. Once in the Trench, they find a prehistoric monster called Kronosaurus that has evolved to hunt in packs and has evolved gills. Terry manages to kill Sergei in the airlock after he attempts to rape and kill her. Afterwards, his body is eaten by the Kronosaurs, along with the remains of Captain Hoppe, a captain who planned to meet with Terry to discuss stealing a sub, called the Epimethius, and heading to the surface to exploit the suspicion of Singer's real mission, which was falsely believed to be the distribution of UNIS robots. She boards the Epimethius on its next expedition, but it is ripped apart by Kronosaurs. Meanwhile, Jonas is nearly killed on a mission to find Angel, where he attempts to find Angel in a Zodiac, but he is nearly murdered out of caution by the ship's mate, Harry Moon, and Angel after attempting to sedate her with seal carcasses filled with anesthetic. Jonas, who had nightmares about dying in the Trench, was rushed to the hospital, where he nearly died. He vows to stop his obsession with Megs and live a regular life. However, Celeste manages to use a drug to get the location of the Devil's Purgatory and heads to the Benthos where Terry has stumbled upon an undersea operation led by Benedict Singer to exploit rocks containing the rare gas Helium-3 to create fusion, located in the Devil's Purgatory. Jonas follows, along with Angel, who has made it to the Trench. Jonas goes into the Trench within an Abyss Glider submersible while Celeste paralyzes Singer, leaving him to die at the maw of a Kronosaur as revenge for killing her mother. However, he tells her her father couldn't impregnate women, so he impregnated Celeste's mother for him, thus revealing Celeste is Singers daughter. This does not stop her, however, and Singer last words are, "I'll see you in Hell." The walls of the room Singer is in are destroyed, killing him and the Kronosaur. However, this ends up destabilizing the Benthos in the process. Jonas lures Angel into killing Celeste as she tries to escape on board one of Singer's subs, the Prometheus, with the rest of the crew and rescues Terry, who was nearly killed by Celeste in the air lock like Sergei was. She survived by unlatching a barrel containing a UNIS robot with the corpse of Heath Williams, a paleo-biologist who assisted Terry with avoiding Sergei's assaults. She seals herself in the UNIS and nearly suffocates, but Jonas frees her, also killing a Kronosaur via pressure changing in the environment it was in and causing its head to implode. On their way up to the surface, the last Kronosaur attacks Jonas and Terry, but they are saved by Angel who kills the prehistoric marine reptile. The book ends with Angel giving birth to two pups, which flee into the Trench. Interestingly, Osama Bin Laden is also mentioned as one of the financial bankers of Benedict Singer, the main antagonist. Michael Maren returns in Primal Waters as the main villain, seeking revenge on Jonas for killing Celeste. Angel's two pups also return, one being used as a weapon by Michael, who has dubbed this Meg Scarface due to vicious scars gained in a territory dispute with another Megalodon.
4312479	/m/0bwj05	A Tangled Web	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1931	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Aunt Becky has died and in her will left a prized family heirloom (an antique jug) to a person to be disclosed in one year's time. In the year that follows, the family members try their best to live up to what Aunt Becky would have wanted in an attempt to win the heirloom, and in the process, many achieve self-discovery. There are several intertwining stories, but the most important ones involve the following characters: Young Gay Penhallow's fiance, the shallow Noel Gibson, dumps her for Nan Penhallow, a devious and deceptive girl. Although she still pines for Noel, Gay's friendship with Dr. Roger Penhallow, 14 years her senior, deepens as Gay is matured by her grief. When Noel attempts to return to Gay, she realizes that her infatuation with him pales next to her love for Roger. Donna Dark and Peter Penhallow, who have despised each other since childhood, suddenly fall in love. They immediately make plans to get married, but their rival families soon discover their relationship. Although Donna and Peter resist attempts to break them up, they argue while they are eloping and part in anger. Peter leaves for South America. The couple remain estranged until Peter, who has returned at the end of a year, saves Donna from a fire. They then get married and leave for Africa. Joscelyn and Hugh Dark separated on their wedding night, when Joscelyn confessed that she was in love with Hugh's best man, Frank Dark. They remain separated for ten years until Frank returns and Joscelyn realizes that he was not worth the passion she felt for him. She regrets her decision to leave Hugh and is sure that he must despise her. After a confrontation with Hugh's mother, Joscelyn realizes that Hugh still loves her and she returns to him. Margaret Penhallow, the family dressmaker and an old maid, agrees to marry Penny Dark in order to improve both of their chances of getting the jug. Although she is not very fond of Penny, Margaret longs for a home of her own. Penny, similarly, has doubts about the match as he enjoys being a bachelor. He eventually decides to break the engagement, and is surprised and chagrined by Margaret's joy over her "jilting". Margaret then sells a first edition of The Pilgrim's Progress that she inherited from Aunt Becky and uses the money to buy a house for herself and to adopt Brian, an illegitimate and lonely orphan who is largely neglected by the family. In the end, Dandy Dark, the person in charge of the jug, confesses that his pigs have eaten Aunt Becky's final instructions. As the family prepares to argue over the jug, the Moon Man, the eccentric Oswald Dark, destroys it.
4312519	/m/0bwj3_	Meg: Primal Waters	Steve Alten	2004-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The events described in this Novel take place about 18 years after the events of the second novel (possible in 2019). Jonas is now in his early sixties and lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife Terry and two kids. He feels overwhelmed by having to deal with lots of past due bills and his rebellious teenage daughter. As a result he is looking for a good opportunity. A Hollywood television producer of a top-rated reality TV show Daredevils, gives him an offer to provide expert commentary in a contest being held in the South Pacific. Taking his rebellious daughter Danielle with him, Jonas joins the TV show on board a Spanish Galleon. Meanwhile his wife Terry investigates whale beachings off Vancouver Island. But neither of the spouses are aware that they have entered the latest feeding zones of Megs, as Angel has returned to surface waters from the trench and is being pursued by more individuals. Terry attempts to capture a Meg responsible for the whale beachings which she believes is Angel while their son David and Mac attempt to capture the real Angel. Also someone behind the scenes of Daredevils has a grudge on Jonas, Michael Maren, and is planning to get revenge on Jonas using his pet Megalodon nicknamed Scarface, so named due to terrible scars caused by a territory dispute with his brother; the same Meg Terry is pursuing (both of which are Angel's litter from the Trench in the last book). In the end, Jonas lures Scarface into killing Michael, after which the Megalodon returns to the Trench, taking his dead master's remains with him. Meanwhile Angel and the first male are lured into the Institute where Angel is impregnated by and then proceeds to kill the first male. Several months later, the Taylors succeed in recapturing Angel. It is also hinted that something even bigger than a megalodon lurks in the deep as well.
4312658	/m/0bwjhl	Meg: Hell's Aquarium	Steve Alten	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Meg: Hell's Aquarium begins a couple of years after the Meg: Primal Waters ended. The prologue starts with Scarface, Michael Maren's pet Meg, and Angel's last surviving offspring from her first litter, hunting. Scarface gets enticed by a new prospective meal, Leedsichthys. While the Meg's attention is caught by the new meal, another creature of even more gigantic proportions (~100+ feet long) quickly seizes the opportunity and kills the distracted Megalodon. This larger creature, which was hinted at previously in the last book, is a Liopleurodon, which has evolved the ability to breathe underwater (much like the Kronosaurs from The Trench) . Danielle "Dani" Taylor is working at the Tanaka Institute with Jonas, Terry and Mac. David comes home from college for the summer to work at the institute. Besides its main attraction, Angel, the institute now holds Angel's five pups: Mary Kate, Ashley, Angelica, Belle, and Lizzy. Angel's behavior changes; unlike before, Angel refuses to respond to the feeding stimulus she has known all her life. The peace that the Taylors have enjoyed gets destroyed when a working accident causes Angel to go berserk, killing one of her feeders, injuring the other, and giving Dani some serious injuries. Angel's pups have separated themselves into two groups: Belle and Lizzy, who are just as aggressive as Angel but fear her due to her size and ferocity, and the other three females, who are much more docile, Mary Kate, Ashley and Angelica. An animal rights group called R.A.W. (Release Animals to the Wild) decides to try to get the Tanaka Institute to free the young females, even though the world knows the damage that Angel and her mother did when she escaped many years previously. Jonas and Terry want to expand the Institute to separate all of the siblings due to their increased aggression and appetite, but the state won't allow any expansion of the facility. Angelica is soon attacked by one of her siblings while being moved, and is killed. The cousin of the Dubai prince, Fiesal Bin Rashidi, comes to negotiate purchasing Mary Kate and Ashley for a large aquarium in Dubai. They also want Jonas to help them catch some prehistoric marine creatures from the Panthalassa, a hidden underground ocean which is all that remains of the primordial ocean of the same name. Michael Maren had discovered it and hinted at its existence shortly before he died in Primal Waters. Rashidi soon notices the talent and knowledge that Jonas' son David possesses during a private showing of Angel and they approach him and offer him a job for the summer. All he has to do is train pilots in how to use the Manta Ray submersibles that the institute uses. He goes off to Dubai while Jonas, Mac, Terry and Dani deal with Angel, Belle and Lizzy. In Dubai, David falls for a girl, Kaylie, who is recruited to pilot a sub for bin Rashidi's mission in Panthalassa. David helps train the crew to use the Manta Ray subs and he helps get Mary Kate and Ashley situated in their new home. One of the young Megalodons dies, but David is able to save the other's life. He gets a preview of what the Dubai aquarium wants&nbsp;— including a Kronosaurus and a Liopleurodon. Despite being offered lots of money, he refuses the mission of tracking down the prehistoric marine reptiles. Back at the Institute, pressure is mounting to release the remaining pups. Scientists come in and find out that the Megs have evolved to a state where males are not needed for reproduction anymore, so Angel and the pups either are pregnant now, or will be soon. Jonas and Mac have an implant put into Angel's brain which will allow them to control her brain stimuli which ultimately gives them total control of her. Jonas and Terry secretly arrange to release Angel back to the Mariana Trench while the R.A.W. group decides to release Lizzy and Belle by themselves. Lizzy and Belle cause havoc and death with their release and cannot be reined in. David eventually dates Kaylie, and she is chosen to go on the dive to Panthalassa, and bin Rashidi informs David of the Dunkleosteus, the "Monster Fish", which, along with Zahra, formerly called Mary Kate, resides in Dubai Land Aquarium; this effectively captures David's interest in Panthalassa, which plays into bin Rashidi's plan to have David, who is the best pilot on the team, attract and catch the residents of the Panthalassa sea. Kaylie insists on going on the dive with him and they end up in Panthalassa where they are attacked by many large and violent creatures and get attacked by a large 122-foot long Liopleurodon. The two escape the beast by hiding in a wreck of a ship that may have burst through the crust revealing the Panthalassa. Eventually, the two make it to one of Michael Maren's underwater labs and end up killing a mosasaur when the legs of the lab crush the head of the creature. Jonas finds out that David is trapped and uses the control they have of Angel to help him save David. Jonas gets attacked by another mosasaur, but Angel kills it, attracting the attention of the Liopleurodon. Jonas manages to get the lab through Panthalassa but not without problems. Due to their aggressiveness and territoriality, the Liopleurodon and Angel too leave Panthalassa and angrily fight over territory and Angel's kill. David and Kaylie escape the lab but find out that Angel is caught in bin Rashidi's nets. The Liopleurodon murders the trapped Angel and then sinks back to the depths. David and Kaylie almost make it out, but they soon find out that the mosasaur carcass is next to them. As Jonas wakes up, the Liopleurodon kills and eats Kaylie. David hasn't been having an easy time coping and he has concluded that therapy doesn't help, but he can't kill himself by cutting his wrists, so he will take off on a "business trip", either to destroy Panthalassa or kill the Liopleurodon in revenge for its murder of Kaylie and Angel. Though Angel has died, her pups are still hunting and reproducing.... leaving the opening for the next installation in the series "Meg: Night Stalkers".
4312709	/m/0bwjmd	Heroes Die	Matthew Stover		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Hari Michaelson is a famous Actor and son of a now-mentally ill libertarian professor. On Overworld, he is the assassin Caine, while his estranged wife Shanna is another Actor playing the mage Pallas Ril. In this world Actors are people who travel to Overworld through advanced technology and assume an alternate persona which they then use to carry out 'adventures'. Pallas is captured by Ma'elKoth, the Emperor of Overworld's human kingdom of Ankhana on one of her adventures. Ma'elKoth's plan to rule Ankhana by wiping out a final resistance group, is blocked by a spell that causes others to forget the existence of the resistance group's members. The remainder of the book plays out the conflict between Ma'elKoth, Caine and the resistance. Hari finds himself manipulated by both the powers on Overworld and the Studio on Earth, and must defeat them both in order to save himself and Pallas Ril from death.
4314527	/m/0bwm91	Lonely Road	Nevil Shute	1932	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins with a note from the solicitor for Commander Malcolm Stevenson, who, we learn, has died recently (in about 1930), and we learn that this was written by him in the months before his death. Stevenson's narration begins with a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes, of which the only one that is readily sensible occurred during World War I, leading the last survivors of a sinking decoy ship, Stevenson managed to sink a German submarine, and with the British survivors wounded and with no way of taking prisoners, killed the Germans as they attempted to surrender. That incident still haunts him. Quite wealthy, he runs a flotilla of coastal steamers in a desultory but increasingly profitable way. He awakens, after having been taken, injured, from a damaged car, on a night on which he has been drinking heavily. Still bearing the mental and physical scars of the naval encounter, he meets a dancer, Mary (Mollie) Gordon (whom he nicknames Sixpence), at a dance hall in Leeds, where she entertains lonely gentlemen by dancing with them, or sitting out a dance and talking, at sixpence a dance. He has the best evening he has had in years with Mollie. The police call in Stevenson to consult on guns they have found being smuggled into the United Kingdom, found near a burned-out lorry. Stevenson cannot identify the guns, but puts together something Mollie said, and something said by his cousin by marriage, pioneer aviator Sir Phillip Stenning, and realizes Mollie's brother may well have been the driver of the lorry. He approaches the police. Rather than risk publicity from a police interrogation, they ask Stevenson to do the initial questioning himself. They tell Stevenson they are convinced the guns are being smuggled in for an armed uprising in connection with the upcoming General Election, although they have no idea who is responsible. Stevenson returns to Leeds, and approaches Mollie at her employment. Through artful questioning, he confirms she would be able to identify her brother's lorry. Torn between the desire to help the police, and his own growing affection for Mollie, he invites her down to his home in Devon for a platonic vacation. She agrees. The morning after their arrivals, he takes her to the police station in Newton Abbot, where the police await. Stevenson watches as through gentle, but deceitful questioning, they get her to identify the lorry. They lead her to believe her brother is dead. Stevenson's sense of fair play is outraged, and he takes Mollie away to consult with his solicitor. After consultation, she tells all to the police, but knows little of help. Stevenson and Mollie track down her brother, Billy, in Leicester. Stevenson and Billy recognize each other. Stevenson is realizing that he did not crash his car that night, but that, drunk, he went for a walk on the beach and was assaulted by men there, and the car crash was faked. Billy confesses involvement, admitting that he has been paid to take packages from a ship being landed on the coast to a barn. Sometimes, he would convey people as well. He little cared what he conveyed so long as he got paid. After Billy meets with Stevenson's solicitor, he is taken to the police. He can identify the destination of the goods, but what the police want is to interrupt the landing, catching the ship and everyone involved. Sir Phillip warns that this is a dangerous enterprise, but Stevenson allows Billy and Mollie to participate, and offers the services of one of his ships to help intercept the smugglers. Billy is duly contacted by the smugglers for another run. As they prepare, Stevenson asks Mollie to marry him. She refuses him, until they have lived in the same house for a time and come to know each other better. As the police, Stevenson, and the others meet in his house, they are fired on. In seconds, Billy and one of the police are dead, and Mollie is wounded in the shoulder. Stevenson and Stenning go in pursuit of the gunmen, who try to escape by ship. Through expert ship handling and knowledge of the Channel tides, Stevenson manoeuvres the other ship into a position where she must run on to the rocks of "The Shackles" (probably his relocation of the genuine "Manacles" reef to a location off Dodman Point). Stevenson makes a token attempt to save the other vessel, but it fails (as Stevenson probably knows it would), and the ship sinks, killing the men aboard. Stevenson hurries to the hospital to see how Mollie is. Mollie's wounds have become infected, and despite Stevenson sparing no expense for her care, her condition slowly worsens. After a night in which Stevenson remains by her bedside, pouring out his heart to her and telling her of his plans for them, she dies. The gunmen's bodies are recovered, one Dutchman, one Russian (probably a Communist) and a recent Cambridge graduate. The embittered Stevenson tracks down the Cambridge man's contacts, and finds a female co-conspirator. They had smuggled guns and Communists into the country so that, at the proper moment, the plot could be exposed and blamed on the Labour Party, ensuring a Conservative victory. Stevenson, realizing that the girl was present that night he was drunk and that she persuaded the others to spare his life, tells her of the deaths that have resulted from the actions, and leaves her to her conscience; first learning who was the brains of the conspiracy: a Cambridge political science don. First taking precautions to ensure the story would survive his death, Stevenson goes to confront the don. The professor denies nothing, but attempts to defend his actions by telling his view of what must follow a Labour victory. Stevenson, realizing the don lives in an ivory tower, gives the don an ultimatum: The story will be in the press, assuring a thumping Labour victory in the election now only days away (and the professor's arrest), unless the professor kills himself by Friday, four days before the election. The professor does so, falling "accidentally" from a high window, and Stevenson has little sympathy when told about how the professor's sister will be devastated. Stevenson returns to his work on Monday, at least having assured that the election will not be influenced either way. He returns to his lonely road which he had shared with another for so brief a moment, and which will soon lead to his death.
4314616	/m/0bwmg9	Shield of Lies	Michael P. Kube-McDowell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 "As Leia must deal with a new threat to the fragile alliance that binds the New Republic, Lando becomes a prisoner aboard a runaway spacecraft of unknown origin. Luke continues his quest to learn more about his mother among the Fallanassi, where his every belief about the use of the Force is about to be challenged. And while Leia ponders a diplomatic solution to the aggression of the fierce Yevethan race, Han pilots a spy ship into the heart of Yevethan space and faces a vast fleet of warships under the command of a ruthless leader - a fleet more than a match for the New Republic's forces..."
4314636	/m/0bwmhb	Tyrant's Test	Michael P. Kube-McDowell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 "Faced with an alarming image of Han as a battered hostage of the Yevetha, Chewbacca takes on an urgent mission. Meanwhile, Leia calls upon the Senate to take a stand and eliminate the Yevetha threat - even at the cost of Han's life. As a former Imperial governor takes his battle to the runaway Qella spaceship, Luke's continuing search for his mother brings him dangerously close to Nil Spaar's deadly forces. And as the Yevetha close in on the forces of the New Republic, Luke takes a desperate gamble with an invisible weapon..."
4320380	/m/0bwy9k	The Highwayman	Robert Anthony Salvatore	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Pryd Holding, where much of the story is set, is troubled by the threat of powrie dwarves, domination by other kingdoms and religious conflicts between the brutal Samhaists, led by the cruel and evil Bernivvigar and the seemingly more benevolent brothers of Blessed Abelle, to which Brother Bran Dynard belongs. Also complicating matters is that Prince Prydae, the last of his line, suffers an injury in battle that leaves him impotent. Brother Dynard has recently returned from the south, where he was sent to enlighten the people, but instead became fascinated and enlightened by the people, and took a wife, the beautiful Jhesta Tu mystic Sen Wi. Sen Wi has come to Pryd holding with Dynard to help explain the ways of her people to the brothers of Blessed Abelle. One night, a beautiful young woman, Callen Duwornay, is sentenced to death for adultery. Forced to endure sexual humiliation as part of her punishment, she is stripped completely naked in front of the community, is bitten by a poison snake and then left for dead, hung over the road that is being constructed to connect Pryd Holding with the other kingdoms as a warning to others. Sen Wi and Dynard find her hanging naked and rescue her from the dwarves that are beating her. Sen Wi uses her training to heal Callen and they take her to Dynard's friend, Garibond, to heal. After recovering, an apparently still naked Callen leaves Garibonds home and disappears. Some time later, after changing her name, Callen gives birth to a daughter, whom she names Cadayale. Brother Dynard and Sen Wi go before the brothers of Abelle, but they are appalled to find that he was "enlightened" by the "beasts of Ber" rather than enlightening them as he was supposed to. Additionally, the brothers refuse to recognize Sen Wi as his wife, referring to her instead dismissively as his concubine. Sen Wi realizes that she is pregnant and that her baby is suffering within her due to her having taken the poison and pain from Callen into herself. Sen Wi later dies giving birth in Garibond's home, using the last of her strength to save her son, whom Garibond names Bransen, combining his parents name. Dynard himself is later killed by a dwarf on the highway when he is sent to see the higher order of Abelle. Adopted by Garibond, Bransen is a constant source of ridicule, mockery and abuse in the town by local bullies due to his disfigurement, shown kindness only by Cadayale, daughter of Callen. With old age overtaking him and suffering a terrible injury to himself due to the cruel machinations of Bernivvigar, who wishes to sacrifice Bransen, Garibond makes a deal with the brothers of Abelle to take in Bransen should he die. Garibond himself is later burned to death for heresy and for harboring the Book of Jhest, written by Dynard. After this, Bransen is taken in by the monks, but most of them treat him cruelly as well. Bransen utilizes both sides of his heritage in the novel to overcome his crippled state and become the Highwayman. With help from a soul stone, the hematite, combined with his knowledge of The Book of Jhest, Bransen overcomes his physically weak form by centering his chi, which greatly increases his mobility. With his new found ability, he rescues Cadayale from the bullies who wished to rape and beat her for helping him, killing the lead bully, Tarkus Breen. After weeks of robbing from the tax collectors to give back to the poor, becoming a local Robin Hood, Bransen risks everything to rescue Cadayale and Callen from Bernivvigar and Prydae, who sought to rape Cadayale to beget an heir, leading to the deaths of both men. Afterward, Bransen, Cadayale and Callen are banished from Pryd Holding by Bannagran, Prydae's closest friend and temporary ruler. With hope in their hearts, the three depart for the south to seek a better life. In 2007, Matthew Hansen of Marvel Comics/Dabel Brothers Productions adapted The Highwayman to a comic book.
4320404	/m/0bwyc8	The Demon Apostle	Robert Anthony Salvatore	2000-04-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The final novel in the first trilogy begins with the mopping up of Bestesbulzibar's army and the battle against the demon's spirit, which has possessed the highest levels of power within the Abellican Church. Again, it is up to Elbryan and Pony, along with their friends, to combat the corruption and attempt to end its terrible hold forever. it:L'apostolo del demone
4320414	/m/0bwydb	Mortalis	Robert Anthony Salvatore	2001-04-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Mortalis tells of Pony's life after the war: her fight against the crushing grief of her husband Elbryan's death and her fight to stop a plague infecting the people of the kingdom. At the same time, the characters of Aydrian Wyndon, Elbryan's and Pony's child, and Brynn Dharielle, a To-Gai girl turned ranger, are introduced to the story.
4320423	/m/0bwyfc	Ascendance	Robert Anthony Salvatore	2001-05	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel Ascendance begins the tale of Aydrian Wyndon, a tortured and lonely young man raised by the Touel'alfar to be a ranger even greater than his father and to, hopefully, be the salvation of the elves. The plans of the Touel'alfar go awry due to Aydrian's own arrogance, cultivated by a dark force. When he leaves the home of the elves, events occur which bring about great sorrow for himself, his mother and the kingdom.
4320438	/m/0bwyh3	Immortalis	Robert Anthony Salvatore		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The final novel of The DemonWars Saga brings all of the main players from the previous two books together to combat the evil still residing in the land. With the end of this novel, and the final destruction of the evil presence, the Saga concludes. In the first part of the novel, the recently deposed Queen Jilseponie Wyndon Ursal helps to organize the supporters of Prince Midalis Dan Ursal against her demonically-influenced son Aydrian. Aydrian leads the royal army, with the help of Marcalo De'Unnero and Duke Kalas, to establish himself as king of all the known world. He even leads his army to invade Andur'blough Inninness, the Valley of Mist, home to the Touel'alfar elves. Their ruler, Lady Dasslerond, sacrifices herself to cast a spell that makes the valley impossible to find. Her people are trapped away from their homeland, but are able to flee from Aydrian. The spell can't be broken unless Aydrian sacrifices fatal amounts of his own blood. Aydrian's primary enemy besides Prince Midalis is the Abellican Church. He systematically eliminates all of the monks that oppose him, culminating in the book's climax when he captures the Church's leaders at the monastery of St.-Mere-Abelle. In this battle, Prince Midalis's forces, including all of the living rangers and the dragon Agradeleas, do battle with Aydrian's army. When Aydrian realizes his mistake in allowing his mother to live at the end of Ascendance, he summons the spirit-zombie of his father Elbryan Wyndon to defeat her. By the end of the final climactic battle, the ranger Andacanavar, Father Abbot Fio Bou-Raiy, Marcalo De'Unnero, and Sadye are all dead. Jilseponie revives the consciousness of Elbryan from the spirit-zombie and together they finally banish the demonic force that has been influencing Aydrian. Jilseponie redeems Aydrian of his past wrongdoing over the next decade, and he is an entirely new person by the time of her death in God's Year 857. After her burial, he agrees to sacrifice his life to break the spell on Andur'blough Inninness. When he breaks the spell, and after that cleanses the demon's taint from the valley, everyone is surprised that he survives. The spirits of all the dead rangers had lent him enough strength to gain the benefits of sacrificing his life without actually dying. *
4320465	/m/0bwyj4	The Witch's Daughter	Nina Bawden	1966	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 On the remote Scottish island of Skua, Perdita has been branded "the witch's daughter" by islanders. They believe her mother died cursing the sea on which they depend for their livelihood. She lives alone in a tumbledown house by the loch, never goes to school, and has no friends. One summer Janey, who is blind, and her brother Tim visit the island with their naturalist father. The children befriend the lonely girl, and together they search for rare orchids, explore the island caves, investigate a crime, and find treasure.
4322059	/m/0bx06v	The Fire Rose	Mercedes Lackey	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young medieval scholar named Rosalind Hawkins (Rose for short), is left penniless after her father's death. A professor and mentor from the college she attended tells Rose that he received a letter from a railroad tycoon named Jason Cameron, looking for a governess for his two children. Rose, fitting all the qualifications and having no other options, accepts the job and travels by train to his manor outside San Francisco. But when she arrives at the secluded country home of Jason Cameron, her new employer, she finds that he has no wife or children, and the only person she ever sees is his secretary, Paul du Mond, to whom she takes an instant dislike. Rose learns that Cameron has hired her to translate ancient texts to him, as a mysteriously referred-to accident has rendered him unable to conduct his research. Therefore, she is to spend her nights reading archaic and magical texts to Cameron through a speaking tube. After several days, Rose begins to realize that the large mansion is well taken care of, though she sees no servants other than Paul. After reading a book on magic, she becomes suspicious, as well as a little afraid. She confronts Jason and discovers that he is an Elemental Master of Fire and the house is tended by fire-spirits called salamanders. After a visit to San Francisco, Rose is called into Jason's room by a salamander. There she discovers Jason's secret, that he is half man, half wolf, due to a botched lycanthropy spell. Rose is horrified at first, but she overcomes her initial fear and becomes accustomed to her employer's appearance. Jason begins to depend more heavily on Rose, and less on Paul du Mond. The reader learns that Paul is Jason's apprentice in magick. As Jason grows closer to Rose, a rift grows between Jason and Paul, leading Paul to become dangerously jealous of Rose. Rose learns that her own Magical nature is that of Air and, after becoming Jason's apprentice, calls up an air-elemental sylph. Unbeknownst to each other, they begin to fall in love. Meanwhile, Paul allies himself with another fire master, Simon Beltaire, who is evil and Jason's nemesis. Beltaire and Paul both subscribe to dark magic, often using violence or drugs or both in order to enhance their natural magickal abilities. Beltaire is also seen using young immigrant women, forced into sexual slavery, as his victims. Paul attempts to kidnap Rose for a spell. However, she fights back and Jason kills Paul in a violent rage. Jason quickly sends Rose away, fearing that the wolf nature is superseding his humanity. In confusion, Rose flees to San Francisco. But rather than going back to Chicago, Rose remains in San Francisco to think over her situation and seek the advice of a local Earth Master, Master Pao. Simon Beltaire unsuccessfully attempts to persuade Rose to help him against Jason. Shortly afterwards, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 occurs. Beltaire tries to force Rose's cooperation but Jason intervenes. The two Fire Masters engage in battle, and Jason's salamanders are vastly outnumbered by Beltaire's forces. Rose asks the sylphs to help Jason and the two Elements combined manage to defeat Beltaire. Two Chinese elemental masters, Master Ho and Master Pao, friends of Jason, help Rose and Jason back to Jason's home. Master Ho, the air master, and also an ordained minister, marries Rose and Jason.
4322122	/m/0bx0b9	Blade of Tyshalle	Matthew Stover		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Seven years after the events of Heroes Die, Hari Michaelson (also known as Caine) is a puppet executive on the Studio he used to work for. He is now a paraplegic and lives with his wife Shanna and her daughter Faith. He uncovers a plot by Earth's executives to infect Overworld with a plague of HRVP (an especially virulent form of rabies) that would clear the way for colonization of Earth's crowded population into the new world and an exploitation of its resources. In addition to Michaelson the story also details a number of other characters, including Hari's academy friend Kris Hansen, the former Overworld god Tan'elKoth (the former Ma'elKoth now exiled to Earth) and Raithe, a young Monastic adept obsessed with killing Caine. Through Hell and Highwater, Caine must work his way through Home and try to avert the infection, save the girl, beat a god and restore a friend. No one said it would be easy.
4322374	/m/0bx0s8	Amber and Iron	Margaret Weis	2006-02-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rhys Mason, former monk of Majere, begins the novel trying to escape death knight Auseric Krell. Rhys, having retrieved the soul of the Dark Knight Ariakan imprisoned by Chemosh in a khas piece, hands the piece over to Zeboim. She sends Rhys and Nightshade back to Solace. Once there, the sheriff, Gerard, seeks others for counsel about the mounting Beloved situation. Rhys agrees with Gerard to stay in Solace and help in any way possible. After an encounter with a Beloved, Rhys, Nightshade, and Atta (Rhys' dog) head after the creature, eventually ending up in New Port. Here, Rhys finally finds his brother Lleu, a Beloved introduced in the first Dark Disciple novel, who he has been tracking ever since. Elsewhere, Mina has been imprisoned in a new tower of magic in Istar, at the bottom of the Blood Sea. It has been newly erected by the dark god of magic, Nuitari. At a Conclave of Wizards meeting, Nuitari reveals to his cousins about his tower. The three agree to erect three Towers of High Sorcery again, one for each of them. Back in the Tower, Mina begins her task set before her by Chemosh of searching for the Solia Febalas (Hall of Sacrilege). Once she has found it, she is unable to take anything for Chemosh because she becomes so overwhelmed by the god-presence in the Hall. Finally, Nuitari returns and gives Mina over to Zeboim who had begun an assault upon the Tower. Zeboim takes Mina first to New Port where Rhys and his brother are at to have them meet. While there, Mina has a vision of Rhys and insists he knows the truth about her. Rhys' brother also pleads with Mina to take his life as a Beloved because he wishes it no longer. Before Mina can answer, Zeboim gives her back to Chemosh, who is irate with Mina for not getting any artifacts for him. He has been growing increasingly agitated that the Beloved will only follow her command and resist any by him or Krell. Rhys again tails his brother and finally confronts him again along with New Port authority when his brother tries to kill a woman. The woman's child attacks the Beloved on behalf of his mother and the Beloved is instantly destroyed, leaving the child in a coma-like state. Krell decides it would be in Chemosh's best interest if Krell would kill Mina, who is now being imprisoned by Chemosh. As he tries to follow through with his plan, Mina does something extraordinary; she makes him a human again. Then, because she believes Chemosh would want it, she pulls the Tower of Istar from the sea bottom and places it on top on an island in the middle of the ocean. Passing out from such exertion, the novel ends with all of the major and minor gods showing up and pondering over the nature of the unconscious Mina. Majere finally reveals that Mina is in fact a god like them, one of light, who was swayed and corrupted somehow by the Dark Queen Takhisis.
4322775	/m/0bx1l0	A Dirty Job	Christopher Moore	2006-03-21	{"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The story centers on Charlie Asher, a "beta-male" (as opposed to "alpha-male") who leads a satisfying life as the owner and proprietor of a second-hand store in San Francisco. At the moment when his wife Rachel unexpectedly dies in the hospital shortly after the birth of their first child (Sophie), Charlie is chosen to be a "death merchant," retrieving the souls of the dying and protecting them from the forces of the underworld. All the while, he must manage his store and raise his daughter. He only gradually realizes the ramifications of this business as various clues and complications unfold, and the forces of darkness threaten to rise.
4325275	/m/0bx7cl	Boba Fett: Maze Of Deception	Elizabeth Hand		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A younger Boba Fett teams with the bounty hunter Aurra Sing. They work to regain the Fett family fortune and assets.
4325282	/m/0bx7cy	Boba Fett: Hunted	Elizabeth Hand		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A younger Boba Fett is on the run for his life for what he knows about the evil Count Dooku. A posthumous message from his father leads Fett to Jabba the Hutt. In an attempt to gain a position as the Hutt's personal enforcer, Fett must survive many dangerous tasks.
4325289	/m/0bx7d8	Boba Fett: A New Threat	Elizabeth Hand		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Young Boba Fett continues to grow as a bounty hunter in service of Jabba the Hutt. As he returns with his latest kill, he is immediately sent out again on his most dangerous mission ever. The Republic has secretly hired Jabba's bounty hunters to capture or assassinate key members of the Separatist's leadership. At their request, Jabba sends Boba Fett after Wat Tambor. The Techno Union representative is holed up in a fortress on the planet of Xagobah. His fortress also happens to be under siege by the Jedi and the Clone Trooper army. Despite this, Jabba still wants to collect the bounty for himself. Boba must face many dangers to capture Wat Tambor, but little does he know that an unknown new threat guards the Separatist – General Grievous!
4325294	/m/0bx7d_	Boba Fett: Pursuit	Elizabeth Hand		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After barely escaping General Grievous with his life, Boba Fett runs across another foe – Anakin Skywalker. Anakin helps Boba repair Slave I, but he's determined to take him in for questioning. It's then that Boba decides to play his information card. He offers the Republic information about Count Dooku in exchange for his freedom. Anakin escorts Boba Fett to the Jedi Temple for a meeting with Palpatine. However, it's there that Boba Fett sees his chance to exact revenge on Mace Windu for the murder of his father, Jango. Boba attempts to kill Mace with several weapons but fails. As Mace is about to kill Boba, Palpatine intervenes and orders them to stop. Boba is spared from the Chancellor's wrath and eventually escorted off the planet.
4327554	/m/0bxbk1	The Sea of Trolls	Nancy Farmer	2004-09	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Sea of Trolls is set in A.D. 793 in Anglo-Saxon England, Scandinavia, and the mythical realm of Jotunheim. Captured by Northmen (Vikings) when they raided their village, Jack and his younger sister Lucy (ages 11 and 5 at the beginning of the book) are to be sold as slaves as soon as they reach land. On board the Viking ship Jack meets, and ultimately, befriends Thorgil, a young berserker. The Northmen intend to sell Jack and Lucy at market to people called "Picts", but the two thralls (slaves) are spared because Lucy is adorable and Jack a bard. Olaf decides to keep Jack as his personal skald (Viking term for bard) and Thorgil decides to give Lucy as a present to King Ivar the Boneless and his half-troll wife, Queen Frith, as she believes that the Queen will then allow her to become a berserker. When they arrive at the court nothing goes as planned. Jack is sentenced to menial labor against his will as a thrall, and encounters the deadly troll-pig, Golden Bristles, who is to be sacrificed to the goddess, Freya, by being placed in a wooden cart and left to sink in a bog. After singing Olaf One-Brow's praise-song for the Northman's homecoming, Jack inadvertently makes Queen Frith lose her hair while singing a praise-song for her. Queen Frith threatens to sacrifice Lucy to the goddess Freya instead, because Jack set Golden Bristles free from the cart. However, she allows Jack a chance to save her if he can make her hair grow back. Jack goes with Olaf and Thorgil to Jotunheim, land of the Trolls, to seek the mythic Mimir's Well, a well with magical water (song mead) which gives the drinker knowledge, at the roots of the world tree Yggdrasil. Olaf One-Brow is killed by a "trollbear," a gigantic bear native to Jotunheim. Jack and Thorgil are captured by a dragon, but Bold Heart the crow tricks the dragon and enables Jack and Thorgil to escape. Thorgil slays the baby male dragon but gets some blood on her tongue, allowing her to speak with birds. On the way Jack also meets the queen of the Jotuns (Trolls), as he needs the queen's consent to continue seeking Mimir's Well. He finds the tree Yggdrasil and Mimir's Well. Both he and Thorgil drink from the well, and Jack saves some for Rune, a skald who teaches Jack poetry. Jack and Lucy finally go home again, with lots of treasure from the northmen. On this quest Jack and Thorgil encounter many dangers and learn to make sacrifices for the sake of others.
4334715	/m/0bxqb_	Operation Thunder Child	Nick Pope		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is a science fiction novel about UFOs and alien abductions, which shows how the government and military cope with an increasingly intrusive and hostile alien presence. It draws on government work on UFOs and is a "what if" novel that reflects some of the author's concerns about the defence and national security issues raised by the UFO phenomenon. The book is a techno-thriller that draws on real crisis-management procedures.
4335731	/m/0bxs3s	The Cat Who Turned On and Off	Lilian Jackson Braun	1968	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Qwill and his two lovable Siamese, Koko and Yum Yum find themselves in a rundown section of the city known as Junktown. Expecting it to be a haven of dopers and the homeless, they are surprised to see that it is a collection of old antique stores trying to survive. They also find mystery and murder waiting for them. A mysterious fall ends the life of one of Junktown's leading citizens and Qwill suspects it was no accident. It takes Koko to prove him right.
4338232	/m/0bxx54	The Laughing Corpse	Laurell K. Hamilton	1994-09-01	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Laughing Corpse takes place a month after the events of Guilty Pleasures and begins with Anita and her manager Bert visiting Harold Gaynor, a local millionaire that wants Anita to animate a 300 year old vampire. He informs Anita that he'd be willing to pay millions of dollars for her to do this, even supplying a willing "white goat" that would be needed for an animation of that level. Anita immediately refuses the offer, with Bert agreeing not to take on the case after discovering that the "white goat" was a euphemism for a human sacrifice. Anita is later called in to a murder scene by Dolph, the head of the area's supernatural crimes unit. A family was discovered to be torn apart, with a child missing and possibly still alive. Anita theorizes that it would likely be a flesh-eating zombie as there was too much blood left at the scene and that only two people could raise and control a zombie of that power: herself and vaundun priestess Dominga Salvador. The only other person capable of this feat, Peter Burke, recently died. Anita sets up a meeting with Salvador through her mentor Manny Rodriguez, where she discovers that Salvador is both very evil and very powerful. Salvador demonstrates her technique for capturing the souls of the dead and installing them in zombies, preventing the zombies from degrading and allowing further punishment of the dead. She invites Anita to become her partner and help create ensouled zombies for profit, to which Anita refuses and is chased out of the house by an unseen creature. At the funeral for Peter Burke, Anita meets the deceased's brother John Burke, who is also a powerful vaudun priest and capable of committing the zombie murders. Later that day Anita also meets up with Irving Griswold, who supplies her with information on Gaynor, including the name of one of Gaynor's former lovers, Wheelchair Wanda. Irving then tries to get Anita to reveal who the current Master of the City is, only for Irving to discover that it is Jean-Claude after he appears in an attempt to persuade Anita to accept her position as his human servant. That evening Anita investigates a cemetery where remains of one of the murdered family members was discovered and through her powers discovers that a grave has been recently disturbed, with another being empty. The tombstone for the empty grave has been smashed, with Anita discovering a charm bracelet nearby. Anita brings these to an associate that is a touch clairvoyant, who reluctantly tells her that the charm bracelet belonged to a woman recently sacrificed to raise a zombie. Anita is later attacked several times, once by zombies in her apartment and again later by thugs who attempt to kidnap her and her friend Ronnie. The two manage to foil the kidnapping attempt and discover that the thugs were working for Gaynor. Anita eventually visits the town's red light district with Jean-Claude, who helps her intimidate Wheelchair Wanda into talking about Gaynor and divulging that he is obsessed with the idea of finding a historic family treasure and getting revenge. Anita is called to another crime scene so recent that she believes that the zombie might be still hiding in the neighborhood. Dolph begins a search of the neighborhood as well as authorizing Anita to show John his brother's possessions in an attempt to discover any involvement in the murders. Through this she discovers that Peter possessed a gris-gris that contained a portion of the power of a powerful vaundun practitioner that would increase the power of any animator who possessed it. With John, Anita and the police confront Salvador with the gris-gris, which is revealed to be hers. Her grandson Antonio then confesses that he was supposed to remove the charm after Peter's death and now fears what punishment he might receive for this failure. The police discover a video of the events relating to the charm, and with the confession they then arrest Salvador. Anita then returns to the latest crime scene, where she is attacked by the zombie and lays it to rest. Upon returning home Anita is kidnapped by Gaynor's bodyguards and taken to his home, where Anita finds that Salvador has used her influence to gain bail. Gaynor informs Anita that he and Salvador are going to force Anita to raise a relative of Gaynors using his ex-lover Wheelchair Wanda, who has also been kidnapped. Anita refuses, which prompts Salvador to go to another room to begin a spell that would compel Anita to obey her. Anita manages to kill the bodyguards holding them captive and tries to escape with Wanda, only for the compulsion spell to force her to return to the cemetery near Gaynor's home. At the cemetery Salvador informs Anita that she gave Peter a gris-gris to raise his power enough to raise Gaynor's ancestor, as she was unwilling to perform a human sacrifice in front of witnesses. However, because Gaynor's ancestor was an animator, he rose as an uncontrollable flesh-eating zombie and Burke was murdered to keep the animation a secret. Salvador orders Anita to "perform human sacrifice", but due to a loophole in the spell Anita only has to perform the command literally and kills the guards holding Wanda. The resulting power from their sacrifice allows Anita to raise and control every corpse in the cemetery and she commands them to kill both Salvador and Gaynor. Anita then lays the zombies to rest. In the epilogue Anita explains that the "disappearances" of Salvador and Gaynor have never been solved, that she continues to refuse Jean-Claude, and that she is now considering the extent and implications of the power she now realizes she has.
4339268	/m/0bxyt2	Hai Rui Dismissed from Office	Wu Han			 Wu Han, who wrote the play, was a historian (and a municipal politician in Beijing) who focused on the Ming Dynasty. Wu Han wrote an article portraying Hai Rui, a Ming minister who was imprisoned for criticizing the emperor, as the hero. Wu later adapted his article into a Beijing opera play, which was first performed in 1961. The play is a tragedy in which an honest official carries the complaints of the people to the emperor at the expense of his career. It portrays Hai as an efficient magistrate who requests an audience with the emperor, but who then criticizes the Emperor directly for tolerating the corruption and abuses perpetuated by other officials in the imperial government. The emperor is so offended by Hai's criticism that he dismisses Hai from office, but he is restored to office after the emperor dies. The play was initially praised by Mao Zedong. It was published under Wu' s pen name, Liu Mianzhi, a Song dynasty scholar and a supporter of Yue Fei.
4342168	/m/0by33_	Imaro	Charles R. Saunders		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Growing up among the Ilyassai, a fierce tribe of warrior-herdsmen who despise his origin, the young Imaro struggles for acceptance after the breaking of a taboo forces his mother to leave him behind. The boy becomes a man, unlike any other the Ilyassai has ever seen. His quest acceptance and identity continues. Yet he learns he has powerful enemies, human and inhuman. Prevailing over foes who desire nothing more than to see him dead, Imaro finds that in victory, there can be loss. Departing from the Ilyassai, Imaro roams afar, wandering across the vast continent of Nyumbani, pitting his prodigious strength and courage against men, beasts and demons. Hunted by relentless foes, Imaro becomes the hunter. Eventually, he finds friendship and love among people who are like him, exiles and outlaws. Yet forces beyond Imaro’s comprehension are aligned against him. As he rises to prominence, events preordained before Imaro’s birth begin to unfold. Powers are stirring in Nyumbani, the Africa of a world that is beyond the one we know. And Imaro learns that some of the powers are aligned against him. As he struggles to hold on to his hard won acceptance, the warrior seeks the answer to the question that has haunted him all his life:
4342862	/m/0by44q	A Kestrel for a Knave	Barry Hines	1968		 In the opening pages of the book we see Billy and his half-brother Jud sleeping in the same bed in a deprived household. Billy tries to encourage Jud to get up to go to work, but Jud only responds by punching him. Soon afterwards Billy attempts to leave for his paper round, only to discover that Jud has stolen his bicycle. As a result, Billy is late and has to deliver the newspapers on foot . There is a flashback to a time some months ago when Billy returns home to find a man whom he does not recognise leaving his house. He asks his mum, and finds out that this person is Reg, this is the man she had come home with the night before. It becomes obvious to the reader that Billy's dad is absent. Mum then tells him to go to the shop to get some cigarettes but instead he steals a book from the local bookstore. He returns home to read it. Jud comes back drunk from a night out. Still in the flashback, the next scene takes place at a farm. Billy sees a kestrels nest and approaches it. Billy is then approached by the farmer and his daughter. at first the farmer tells Billy to "Bugger off" but when he realizes that Billy was looking for a kestrel, he soon takes an interest. The flashback ends. Later on in the day, Billy is at school, where Mr Crossley is taking the register. After the name Fisher, Billy shouts out 'German Bight',inadvertently causing the teacher to make a mistake. The class then proceeds to the hall for an assembly run by the strict head teacher, Mr Gryce. During the Lord's Prayer, Billy starts to daydream, and after the prayer has finished, Billy remains standing after the rest of the people in the hall have sat down. Billy is told to report to Gryce's room after assembly. Billy goes to Gryce and gets caned. He then goes to a class with Mr Farthing, who is discussing 'Fact and Fiction'. One of the pupils, Anderson, tells a story about tadpoles. Then Billy is told to tell a story, and tells a story about his kestrel. Mr Farthing takes an interest. The class then has to write a tall story, and Billy writes about a day when his father comes back home and Jud leaves to join the army. After the lesson Billy gets into a fight with a boy called MacDowall, which is eventually broken up by Mr Farthing. After break, Billy goes to physical education with Mr Sugden. Billy has no PE kit, because his mother refuses to pay for it, so he is forced to wear clothes that do not fit. He goes onto the football pitch, and is told to play in goal. After a very long lesson, which involves Billy performing acrobatics on the goalpost, the class goes back inside and each has a shower. After Billy intentionally lets in the winning goal in order to end the lesson, he is humiliated by Mr Sudgen who forces him to take a cold shower. After this, Billy goes straight home to feed Kes. He takes her out and flies her, and is approached by Mr Farthing, who is apparently impressed by Billy's skill. Mr Farthing then leaves, and Billy goes out to place Jud's bet. However, he finds out that the horse that Jud intends to bet on is unlikely to win, and instead uses Jud's money to buy a portion of fish and chips, and some meat for his kestrel. Billy returns to school, and whilst sitting in a maths lesson sees Jud walking towards the school. The lesson finishes, and Billy leaves hurriedly. He tries to hide from Jud and falls asleep before he bumps into Gryce, who reminds him that he is supposed to be in a Youth Employment Meeting. Billy goes along to his Youth Employment Meeting, and the Youth Employment Officer finds it very difficult to recommend anything, as Billy claims that he has no hobbies. After the Youth Employment Meeting, Billy goes straight home and finds that Kes has disappeared. He frantically searches for her, and returns home. Jud is there, and he tells Billy that the horse he was supposed to place a bet on won, and that he has killed Kes. Billy then calls Jud a "fuckin' bastard" and has a fight with him. His mother criticises Billy's language, and Billy runs away. Another flashback takes place in which Billy visits the cinema with his father. When they return home, Billy's father finds that his wife has been having an affair with Billy's 'Uncle Mick'. Billy's father punches Mick, and leaves the house. After the flashback has ended, Billy returns home, buries the kestrel and goes to bed. The story is set in only one day, and the book is unusual in that much of the plot takes place in flashback sequences, a storytelling device more commonly associated with film. However, the film adaption by [Hakeem Stoute]dispenses with the flashbacks and portrays the events all in the same timeframe.
4345094	/m/0by82t	The Story of Ab	Stanley Waterloo	1897	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ab is a Stone Age boy who grows to young manhood amid the many dangers of his times. With his friend, Oak, he digs a pit and catches a baby rhinoceros, participates in a mammoth hunt with the tribe to prove himself a man, and courts the young women from a neighboring tribe. One girl in particular, Lightfoot, holds the attention of both men, and Ab is forced to kill his friend in a savage fight. He wins Lightfoot for his mate, but is haunted by guilt for his murdered companion. As Ab grows older, he helps the tribe kill a marauding sabre-tooth tiger, leads his people in a great battle against an invading tribe, and eventually becomes the leader of the cave men, and the patriarch of a large personal family. Ab is used by the author to support his contention that there was no sharp division between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, that man learned to make fine, polished tools and weapons gradually and naturally, as Ab does. During his life Ab invents and perfects the bow and arrow, and is the first of the primitives to domesticate wolves as pets.
4345306	/m/0by8jc	The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies	Beatrix Potter	1909	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In The Flopsy Bunnies, Benjamin Bunny and Peter Rabbit are adults, and Benjamin has married his cousin Flopsy. The couple are the parents of six children generally called The Flopsy Bunnies. Benjamin and Flopsy are "very improvident and cheerful" and have some difficulty feeding their many children. At times, they turn to Peter Rabbit (who has gone into business as a florist and keeps a nursery garden), but there are days when Peter cannot spare cabbages.In the original frontispiece to the tale, a sign over the garden tended by Peter and his mother reads, "Peter Rabbit and Mother &mdash; Florists &mdash; Gardens neatly razed. Borders devastated by the night or year". The illustration was eventually replaced (probably in the third printing) because of the difficulty in lettering the noticeboard in non-English editions (MacDonald 1986, p. 40;Linder 1976, plate 8). It is then that the Flopsy Bunnies cross the field to Mr. McGregor's rubbish heap of rotten vegetables. One day they find and feast on lettuces that have shot into flower, and, under their "soporific" influence, fall asleep in the rubbish heap. Mr. McGregor discovers them by surprise and places them in a sack and ties it shut then sets the sack aside while attending to another matter. Benjamin and Flopsy are unable to help their children, but a "resourceful" wood mouse called Thomasina Tittlemouse, gnaws a hole in the sack and the bunnies escape. Their parents fill the sack with rotten vegetables, and the animals hide under a bush to observe Mr. McGregor's reaction. McGregor does not notice the substitution, and carries the sack home. His wife claims the skins for herself, intending to line her old cloak with them, but when she reaches into the sack and discovers the rotten vegetables, she accuses her husband of playing a trick on her. A vegetable marrow is thrown through the window, hitting the youngest of the eavesdropping bunnies. Their parents decide it is time to go home. At Christmas, they send the heroic little wood mouse a quantity of rabbit-wool. She makes herself a cloak and a hood, and a muff and mittens. Scholar M. Daphne Kutzer points out that Mr. McGregor's role is larger in The Flopsy Bunnies than in the two previous rabbit books, but he inspires less fear in The Flopsy Bunnies than in Peter Rabbit because his role as fearsome antagonist is diminished when he becomes a comic foil in the book's final scenes. Nonetheless, for young readers, he is still a frightening figure because he has captured not only vulnerable sleeping bunnies but bunnies whose parents have failed to adequately protect them.
4347855	/m/0bydl7	Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II	John Maxwell Coetzee	2002	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 After graduating in mathematics and English, he moves in the hope of finding inspiration of becoming a poet and finding the woman of his dreams. However he finds none of this and instead, takes up a tedious job as a computer programmer. He feels alienated from the natives and never settles down, always aware of the scorn they see him with. He engages in a series of affairs, none of them fulfilling to him in the slightest. He scorns people's inabilities to see through his dull exterior into the 'flame' inside him; none of the women he meets evokes in him the passion that, according to him, would allow his artistry to flourish and thus produce great poetry.
4349427	/m/0byh6f	The Quest for Cush	Charles R. Saunders		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Defeated and demoralised by treachery within the bandit tribes that he led, Imaro searches for vengeance, and for his kidnapped lover Tanisha. In the City of Madness, he finds both, along with a new ally, Pomphis, who seems to possess information about the dark forces that have houinded Imaro all his life. Pomphis doesn’t have all the answers, but he suggests they might be found in the legendary city of Cush. As they embark on their quest for Cush, the forces arrayed against Imaro grow bolder, manifesting themselves as assassins, monsters and deadly creatures from the sea, all in a desperate attempt to prevent Imaro from reaching Cush. As the forces grow deadlier, the true nature of the coming continent-wide conflict becomes increasingly more apparent.
4350137	/m/0byjlj	The Trail of Bohu	Charles R. Saunders		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Imaro, warrior of the Ilyassai, has settled into ife as a husband and father in the fabled kingdom of Cush. Amid his growing restlessness, unspeakable tragedy strikes, sending Imaro on a grim mission of vengeance. His adversary has no face, but he does have a name: Bohu, the Bringer of Sorrow – a sorcerer of immense power and cruelty. As Imaro seeks a confrontation with his most formidable foe yet, the continent of Nyumbani is wracked with turmoil. The balance between the forces of good, represented by Cush, and evil, represented by the pariah land of Naama, has been disrupted. The gods themselves may hve to go to war before that balance is restored. In the midst of the coming cataclysm, Imaro travels the length of Nyumbani in search of Bohu. Along the warrior finally discovers his own identity – but will that knowledge help him as he battles a formidable array of enemies bent not only on his destruction but that of Nyumbani itself?
4351433	/m/0byls6	The Last Kingdom	Bernard Cornwell	2004-10-04	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 866 - 876: Osbert is 10 years old and the second son of Ealdorman Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg in Northumbria. Danes raid Bebbanburg and Ealdorman Uhtred's first son, also called Uhtred, is killed and his body desecrated after he is sent out to scout the raiders. Osbert is now the oldest son of Ealdorman Uhtred and is re-baptised Uhtred. Ealdorman Uhtred seeks to avenge his son's death. He is killed during the failed attack on Eoferwic (York) and Uhtred is captured by Earl Ragnar the Fearless of the Danes during the battle. Ragnar, intrigued and amused by the boy's attempted attack during the battle, retains him in his household. Uhtred's uncle, Ælfric, takes Bebbanburg and the title of Ealdorman for himself although Uhtred is the rightful heir. Uhtred describes his life among the Danes, moving to the country with Ragnar and his men, working like a slave and fighting with other boys, slaves and Danes alike. Uhtred befriends Ragnar's son Rorik and has many clashes with one boy in particular, Sven, son of Kjartan, a shipmaster in Ragnar's small fleet. One day, Ragnar's daughter, Thyra, is kidnapped by Sven out in the woods, and he tries to convince her to touch him sexually. Uhtred charges Sven from hiding, taking Sven's sword and chopping into his thigh. He then slashes at Sven's side. Uhtred, Rorik, and Thyra make an escape back to Ragnar's hall where they each recount the tale to Ragnar. He is offended and deeply angry. He proceeds to Kjartan, and crushes one of Sven's eyes with the hilt of his sword. Uhtred then goes Viking across East Anglia, and participates in the conquering of Mercia, East Anglia, and the invasion of Wessex. He is kidnapped by a priest, Beocca, a family friend. He then escapes from Wessex and joins Ragnar again. Uhtred enjoys life with the Danes but flees after Kjartan kills Ragnar in a hall-burning. Uhtred hopes to escape the assassins of Kjartan by sending out the lie that he died. Uhtred then joins King Alfred in Wessex. There he learns to read and write, and sails with Alfred's fleet of 12 ships against the Danes. After a battle with the Danes he again meets Ragnar the younger, son of Earl Ragnar, the man who adopted him and tells him how his father died. They part but there remains friendship between them. Seeking to take command of the fleet, he gains it on the condition that he marry the orphaned Wessex girl Mildrith. After doing so, he takes part in a siege against Guthrum, and is among a group of hostages exchanged when the Danes and Saxons agree on peace. Staying with the Danes in the city over winter he again meets Ragnar. When Guthrum breaks the peace and murders the Saxon hostages, Uhtred is saved by Ragnar. He then escapes to find his wife. She was taken by Odda the Younger, another Wessex ealdorman (earl or noble), to the north. There he fights in the battle at Cynwit, where Uhtred finds himself fighting against Ubba Lothbrokson's Danes. The book ends with Uhtred fighting in a shield-wall and killing Ubba.
4353937	/m/0byrp4	The Taking	Dean Koontz	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the midst of an oddly sudden rain storm, author Molly Sloan awakens in the middle of the night. Unable to return to sleep, she leaves her husband Neil slumbering in bed and goes downstairs to work on a manuscript in progress. Dark shapes huddle on her porch - coyotes from the nearby forest. She wonders what could have frightened such animals into leaving the sanctuary of the deep woods to brave the proximity of human beings. Disturbed, she steps outside, to stand among the wild beasts, and is frightened herself - not by the animals, but by the strange, oddly luminiscent rain. On an instinctual level, she realizes that there is something unclean about the rain. Upon further thought, she recognizes that the odd, but familiar smell of the rain, is the smell of semen. Once she comes back to the house, Molly and her husband Neil search for information in the news. They are only able to gather that the same phenomena is taking place all over the world, before all communications are lost. They decide to flee their isolated home, gathering with the residents of the nearby small mountain town, in order to prepare a resistance, though they are not even sure against what they will be fighting. After 10 hours of downpour, the rain stops. In its place, a thick, ominous fog obscures everything, reducing trees and buildings to looming shadows. By then, Molly and Neil are in the town's tavern, where around 60 people have gathered with dogs and children. It is implied that the phenomena is the product of an alien invasion. Unfamiliar noises are heard and strange lights are seen. Peculiar fungi appear in the restroom of a local tavern, and a frightening fungus grows upon trees, lawns, houses, and people alike. From time to time, huge objects drift above the terrified populace, and people feel as if they are known, completely, by whatever or whoever occupies these aerial craft - if the silent, drifting objects are crafts of some kind. Molly and Neil, accompany a stray dog named Virgil, set off on a mission to rescue the town’s children, many of whom are trapped in their homes. Meanwhile the people at the tavern split into warring factions, struggle against the mysterious threat that has seized their town. Oddly, Virgil seems to be able to supernaturally sense when and where certain children are endangered. It is revealed, later, that other animals are also leading rescue efforts to save other children. As they search for answers, the townspeople conclude that they are under siege by extraterrestrial invaders who have come as an advance party to reverse-terraform the Earth so that its altered atmosphere will support their alien physiological needs, although, in doing so, they will poison the planet for its human residents, who must die so that the invaders may live. At all times, while they encounter the most horrible and twisted creatures during their journey Molly senses that the invaders are of the most malignant kind, and that they want nothing but destruction. After going through different horrors, Molly and Neil are able to save 13 children total, with the help of Virgil and other dogs. Molly is convinced that the aliens have allowed them to rescue the children to harvest them for some more terrible end; however, a chain of events leads her to believe that there is still hope, and that the children have been spared for a special reason. After 36 hours of rain, mist, and darkness, a new rain comes, but to the delight of the characters, the new rain is clean, and washes all the monsters, fungus, and diseased alien presences in the world. At least a year later, Molly, Neil, and 8 of the children they rescued are living together in a house. Society has began a slow path towards reconstruction; most of the survivors are the children, and those who rescued them, plus dogs and cats that helped in the rescues. Molly is now a teacher, and Neil has gone back to work in the church. Most people do not talk about what happened, and the reasons behind the departure of the aliens is never discussed by them. However, while the identity or the origin of the invaders is never explicitly explained, at the end of the book Molly realizes that the invaders were not aliens at all; but that they had actually lived through the biblical apocalypse, and that the monsters where demons, sent to earth to annihilate humanity. Only a few would be spared, as in the ark of Noah, to rebuild a cleaner world. Several facts through the novel support her belief. The book ends on a light note, with Molly deciding to write a book again, not to publish it, but for her son or daughter, soon to be born. When Neil asks her what the book will be about, she answers "Hope".
4354062	/m/0byryb	The Child in Time	Ian McEwan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is set in a dystopian near future at the end of the twentieth century. The book was written in 1987, during the time of the Thatcher government, and the British Prime Minister features in the narrative. The gender of the politician is never revealed, however. Stephen Lewis is, by his own admission, an accidental author of children's books. One Saturday, on a routine visit to the supermarket, during a concentration lapse, he loses his only daughter, Kate. Since then, the only purpose in his life is that he is a member of a committee on childcare. Otherwise he spends his days lying on the sofa drinking scotch and watching mindless TV programmes and the Olympic games. His wife, Julie, has become a recluse, and he visits her very rarely. He has a close friend, Charles Darke, who published his first novel and who is now a junior Minister in the Cabinet, and the Prime Minister's favourite. His own wife, Thelma, is a quantum physicist. She engages Stephen with her outlandish theories on time and space. However, his friends' lives are about to change irrevocably in a way he cannot understand, and he is a helpless bystander. Eventually Stephen experiences a strange event that he cannot explain: he sees his parents as a young couple in a pub, before they married. The book also deals with his grief and eventually his painful acceptance of the loss of his child.
4354418	/m/0bysq3	Locked In Time	Lois Duncan	1985-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Seventeen-year-old Nore Robbins is less than thrilled when her father, Chuck, remarries. After all, her mother hasn't even been gone for a year yet, and there's something odd and sinister about his new wife, Lisette. Besides the fact that Lisette Berge is much too young to have teenage children, Nore's stepsister, Josie, has a habit of making strange comments about her family being "stuck where they are" and time "not counting for anything."Josie also has a precocious manner, flirts with boys, and wears too much makeup.She hesitates to pry into the matter. When Nore discovers Lisette's old diaries in the shed&mdash;some dating back to the 19th century&mdash;she realizes that she and her father are in terrible danger. The question is, can they leave Shadow Grove without meeting the very fate the Berges have worked so hard to bring on them?
4358792	/m/0bz0_t	Go Ask Malice	Robert Joseph Levy	2006-06-27	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Faith has always been a loner. Growing up in a broken home in South Boston, shuffled from relative to relative, her only companion was an imaginary friend named Alex, who helped her escape into a fantasy world of monsters and the supernatural, far from the real-life horrors of the waking world. Now, taken away from her mother by Social Services and shipped off to a foster home, Faith learns that some nightmares are all too real, that the inventions of her childhood really do haunt the night, hungry for blood. Enter Diana Dormer, a Harvard professor and representative of the Watchers' Council who has come to tell Faith of her destiny, to train her, to prepare her for what is to come: Faith is the Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. But she's not alone. When Alex, her childhood companion, returns in her dreams, she warns Faith that someone else is coming for her, a force so deadly and unforgiving that it has inspired fear in the underworld for a thousand generations. Its name is Malice. As memory and fantasy begin to merge, Faith's two worlds collide, with cataclysmic results. A violent battle for the soul of the Slayer is staged, winner take all.
4359090	/m/0bz1nd	Sunnydale High Yearbook	Nancy Holder	1999-10-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The Scooby Gang are coming to the end of their Senior year at High School, Buffy Summers is busy making battle plans. Willow has time to pick up the High School Yearbook for her. Once the gang could relax knowing that high school truly was over, Xander, Oz, Cordelia, Giles, Angel and others scrawled notes in Buffy's yearbook to make it special. It is now full of notes, photos and in-jokes only the Scoobies understand and appreciate, having fought on the Hellmouth for three years and survived High School. This book was an oddity in the release of Buffy publications by Pocket Books, it was neither a novelization of an episode, nor an original novel, but instead a fictional school yearbook. It featured "inscriptions" from characters on the front inside cover; Willow, Xander, Oz, Giles, Cordelia, Angel, Anya, Wesley, Snyder, Joyce, Jonathan, Harmony, Larry, and Devon. It also included inscriptions from the crew-folk on the back inside cover. In the "In Memoriam" section Willow mentions Harmony's absence but she doesn't know Harmony is dead until "The Harsh Light of Day".
4359466	/m/0bz28r	Comic Potential	Alan Ayckbourn			 Idealistic young writer Adam Trainsmith meets Chandler Tate, a former director of classic comedies, who makes a living by directing a never-ending soap opera. The leading-role android makes a series of mistakes. Supporting role android JC-F31-333, spots his lapses and laughs. Later on, while Adam is watching old slapstick comedy, JC-F31-333 laughs again. She is afraid that the sense of humour is a production fault. Adam sees it as an advantage. He nicknames his favourite android Jacie and persuades Chandler that they should make a comedy for her. Regional TV director Carla Pepperbloom threatens to ruin the project. She is jealous of Adam's sympathy for talented Jacie and orders the android's memory wiped. Adam panics and decides to kidnap Jacie. While on the escape, Adam and Jacie fall in love.
4359871	/m/0bz342	The Hive	Steven Barnes		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Hive follows the story of Obi-Wan Kenobi as he is dispatched as a Republic envoy to the Outer Rim planet Ord Cestus, where he must halt the sale of potentially deadly "bio-droids" to the Separatists. Despite Obi-Wan's efforts, this mission quickly turns from diplomatic to dangerous. This planet, which was at one time self-contained, has long since been co-opted by unscrupulous offworlders, whose plunder of a vital natural resource has enabled the rise of a powerful corporation that controls the economy. Even the native population known as the X’Ting have been reduced to mere second class citizens in their own society. Obi-Wan brings with him the knowledge of a legal technicality that would allow the X'Ting to retake control of their planet. Circumstances within the X'Ting civilization are less than desirable in which to mount such a revival. This once tightly knit race has splintered into battling factions as a result of a devastating plague, which wiped out many of the X'Ting rulers. Reunification can only come with the rise of new royals, whom all X’Ting are bound by blood to serve. The eggs that will spawn those sovereigns lie out of reach, however, secured in a secret chamber and booby-trapped by those whose knowledge died with them in the plague. Obi-Wan and his X'Ting guide, Jesson Di Blinth, travel down into the sealed egg chamber in an attempt to retrieve the last remaining royal eggs. They face many trials along the way, including a question and answer session for the final test. The questions are presented by a machine that holds the eggs, and threatens vaporization of them if answered incorrectly. Jesson is the only one who can complete this task because he is X'Ting, and the test seeks to determine one's knowledge of X'Ting history.
4361460	/m/0bz5p7	Velocity	Dean Koontz	2005	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Not so long ago a promising young short story writer, Billy Wiles has not even turned on his PC since his fiancée Barbara fell into a coma several years ago. Leading the life of a recluse who spends his spare time alone at home doing woodwork, he only leaves his secluded house when he goes to work as a bartender. An orphan, he only associates with few people, and he considers them acquaintances rather than friends. Wiles's life takes a dramatic turn when he finds a piece of paper stuck to his windshield which contains an ultimatum (see book cover, below). He decides not to go to the police and to consult someone he knows who happens to be in the police force instead. Together, although not thoroughly convinced, the two men decide that the note must have been some sick joke. However, on the following day a cruel murder is reported which exactly fits the description given in advance by the alleged joker. Two more notes follow in quick succession, and only when they become increasingly personal does Wiles realize that he has not been chosen at random by the person he comes to think of as "the freak". For example, shortly after receiving a cryptic message saying Are you prepared for your first wound? he is physically assaulted by the mask-wearing killer. When Wiles recovers from the shock and the pain he realizes that the psychopath has driven three large fish hooks under the skin of his forehead. Acts of violence like the one depicted above lead the third person narrator to reflect on the society we live in: "Not long ago in the history of the world, routine daily violence&mdash;excluding the ravages of nations at war&mdash;had been largely personal in nature. Grudges, slights to honor, adultery, disputes over money triggered the murderous impulse. :"In the modern world, more in the postmodern, most of all in the post-postmodern, much violence had become impersonal. Terrorists, street gangs, lone sociopaths, sociopaths in groups and pledged to a utopian vision killed people they did not know, against whom they had no realistic complaint, for the purpose of attracting attention, making a statement, intimidation, or even just for the thrill of it. :"The freak, whether known or unknown to Billy, was a daunting adversary. Judging by all evidence, he was bold but not reckless, psychopathic but self-controlled, clever, ingenious, cunning, with a baroque and Machiavellian mind. :"By contrast, Billy Wiles made his way in the world as plainly and directly as he could. His mind was not baroque. His desires were not complex. He only hoped to live, and lived on guarded hope." (Chapter 14) Although Wiles does check on each of the few acquaintances he has, he cannot at first decide which of them, if any, might be the freak. Eventually he focuses his attention on Steve Zillis, one of his workmates. However, it soon turns out that Zillis has a watertight alibi for the time when some of the crimes were committed, and Wiles ends up none the wiser. Wiles has very clear reasons for not involving the police. Right from the beginning of his nightmarish adventure, he has a hunch that circumstantial evidence, possibly planted by the killer, would turn him into the prime suspect: In the eyes of the police, he would be the perpetrator rather than one of the victims. Also, as more murders are committed, he realizes that he might endanger Barbara&#39;s life. In the end Wiles finds out that the psychopath sees his crimes as a work of art rather than, say, a game (cf. for example Gentlemen & Players). He discovers that the freak is the artist, Valis, and confronts him. After a short discussion, Billy sprays Valis with Mace and shoots him dead. Returning home, Billy mistakenly assumes that he and Barbara are safe; however, when he replays the video camera, he sees Zillis in his house, and realises that Valis and Zillis were working together. He manages to catch up with Zillis before he can kill Barbara, and after driving him out into the country, kills Zillis. The book ends with Billy (now called Bill) caring for Barbara in his own home. At the very end of the book, Barbara&#39;s eyes open and she comments on a flock of Barn Swallows flying past. While her eyes close again, the ending seems promising for her imminent recovery.
4362868	/m/0bz831	A Forest Apart	Troy Denning		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 While there, Lumpawarrump finds a burglar at Han and Leia Solo's apartment and pursues him into Coruscant's dangerous underlevels. Chewbacca and his wife, Mallatobuck, follow their son to find him fighting the burglar in the company of a band of thieves. The burglar and the thieves flee when they arrive. Chewbacca notices that Leia's datapad was stolen by the group. Before they can stop him, Lumpawarrump runs off to recover the datapad. When Chewbacca and Mallatobuck find him again, the burglars are carrying him into one of the secret detention centers Palpatine kept in the undercity. Chewbacca saves Lumpawarrump, but Mallatobuck is taken in his stead and dragged away. Chewbacca and Lumpawarrump learn that the burglars were attempting to assassinate the New Republic's leaders so Chewbacca comms Han to inform him of the plot. Chewbacca and Lumpawarrump invade the enemies' base to find an advanced IT-3 interrogation droid attempting to brainwash Malla into believing that the Solos are a danger to her child. Chewbacca attacks and frees Mallatobuck. Han then arrives with a New Republic security company, chases off the last of the pursuers, and takes Chewbacca to the nearest medical center. Security learns that this was a plot by the presumed deceased Ysanne Isard to seek the destruction of the New Republic's government after the Krytos Virus failed to destroy Coruscant. Han tries to free Chewbacca from his life debt again but the Wookiees refused once again. In the end Lumpawarrump heads back to Kashyyyk after learning a lesson about listening to his parents.
4363082	/m/0bz8g6	Fool's Bargain	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The 501st Stormtrooper Legion, 'Vader's Fist', is sent in to take down a powerful warlord on the planet Eickarie. Many of the troopers meet up with the resistance formed against the warlord, who is hated because he has taken many prisoners. Unfortunately something seems deeply wrong with these new allies.
4366509	/m/0bzfql	Mythago Wood	Robert Holdstock	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The events of Mythago Wood occur between 1946 and 1948, just after the end of World War II. Stephen Huxley returns from service (after recuperating from his war wounds) to see his elder brother Christian who now lives alone in their childhood home, Oak Lodge, just on the edge of Ryhope Wood. Their father George has died recently; their mother Jennifer died some years earlier. Christian is disturbed, but intrigued, by his encounters with one of the mythagos whereas Stephen is understandably confused and disbelieving when Christian explains the enigma of the wood; although both had seen mythagos as children, their father explained them away as travelling Gypsies. Christian returns to the wood for longer and longer periods, eventually assuming a mythical role himself. In the meantime, Stephen reads about his father's and Edward Wynne-Jones's studies of the wood. Part of his research on the wood causes him to contact Wynne-Jones's daughter, Anne Hayden. Stephen also meets a local man named Harry Keeton, a burn-scarred ex-RAF pilot, who had encountered a similar wood when he was shot down over France and has since been trying to find a city that he saw there. Stephen and Harry try to survey and photograph Ryhope wood from the air, but their small plane is buffeted back by inexplicable winds each time they fly over the forest. Stephen soon has his own encounters with the woodland mythagos (and an older Christian) and eventually, to save both his brother and a mythago girl named Guiwenneth (also referred to as Gwyneth and Gwyn), he must venture deep into the wood, and Harry accompanies him.
4366529	/m/0bzfsb	We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea	Arthur Ransome	1937	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Walkers help Jim Brading, who was given the sailing cutter Goblin by his uncle, moor her when he misses the buoy. In return he invites them to sail aboard Goblin. Mother agrees provided that they stay within the estuary of the rivers Orwell and Stour, do not pass the Beach End buoy at the mouth of the rivers, and do not go out to sea. These conditions are imposed because of the imminent arrival of their father, Ted Walker, who, after an overseas posting with the Navy, is expected to return by ferry at any time from Holland. He was travelling overland from China; in Swallows and Amazons his ship was at Malta but under orders for Hong Kong (as also stated in Missee Lee). The children agree to these conditions. However, on the second morning during a calm, the engine runs out of petrol; Jim had used it for some time the night before last. So Jim rows ashore in the Imp the dinghy of the anchored Goblin to fill a can, but does not return. An unexpected bank of fog drifts over the river, and the Goblin is without her captain. Some hours later, after hearing the anchor drag in the fog, the Walkers realise that the tide has risen, the anchor chain is now too short, and they are drifting down river. While attempting to put out more chain, John loses the anchor, and the yacht drifts out beyond Beach End into the North Sea. Aboard the drifting boat, John decides that it is safer to hoist the sails and go farther out to sea rather than stay near the shore among the sandbanks and shoals of the estuary, with the risk of being wrecked in the fog. They put about in the night to return to the river, but find that sailing against the wind is impossible, so run eastward with the wind. The Goblin sails east through the night in hazardous conditions, being nearly run down as the navigation lights are out of paraffin. At dawn next morning, John persuades Susan to continue to the nearest port rather than trying to return to Harwich. They find themselves approaching an unknown coast; it is the southern Netherlands. Jim has warned them about longshore sharks who might claim salvage if asked for help. But they see a pilot boat, and pick up a Dutch pilot. They arrive safely in Flushing at the same time as their absent father is leaving on a ferry to Harwich. Their father leaves the ferry and returns to help them sail the Goblin back. On arriving in England, the Goblin and its crew are reunited with their mother and with Jim Brading, who is looking for his missing yacht. The absent skipper had been unconscious in hospital for two days, suffering from concussion after being involved in a collision with a motor bus. cs:Nechtěli jsme na moře
4370631	/m/0bzp3m	Blood on the Moon	James Ellroy	1984-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins in 1965 during the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, California. 23-year-old Lloyd Hopkins is still with the National Guard and is deployed to help handle the situation. It is during this riot that Hopkins kills his first man, a deranged armory sergeant who was hunting down and killing African Americans. Eighteen years later Hopkins is now a sergeant with the LAPD and has the highest number of arrests of any officer in the department's history. He is considered a genius by many of his associates for his uncanny ability to make intuitive leaps of logic when tracking down criminals. Soon his abilities are put to the test when he investigates the brutal murder of a woman who was disemboweled in her apartment. Hopkins quickly deduces that the person responsible for this murder has in fact been killing women since the late 1960s, but has never been caught because he always changes his modus operandi. A subplot of the novel involves Hopkins' relationship with his family. He adores his three daughters and deeply loves his wife, though he is chronically unfaithful to her. His wife loves Lloyd, but begins to realize that his habits are not healthy for their children, particularly his propensity for telling them about the cases that he has worked on.
4370922	/m/0bzpqc	Lavondyss	Robert Holdstock	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 During her formative years, Tallis encounters the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (not a mythago, but real flesh and blood). Tallis sings him a song that she thinks she has made up herself, but the composer identifies its tune as that of a folk song he has collected personally in Norfolk. Slowly Tallis's links with the wood intensify. She makes ten chthonic wooden masks, each of which represents one of the ten first legends in Ryhope wood. Within the context of the story, these masks are talismans that help to engage certain parts of her subconscious and so link her with the characters and landscapes which are forming within the wood. When properly used (especially later in the book), these masks allow Tallis to see things that cannot be seen without them, and they can also be used to create 'Hollowings' — pathways in space and time which allow her to step into far-off places within the wood which would otherwise take days, weeks, or even months to travel to on foot. Tallis makes the masks in the following order: # The Hollower — made from elm, this female mask is painted red & white. # Gaberlungi — made from oak and painted white, this mask is known as "memory of the land". # Skogen — made from hazel and painted green, this mask is known as "shadow of the forest". # Lament — made from willow bark, this simple mask is painted gray. # Falkenna — the first of three journey masks is painted like a hawk; this mask is known as "the flight of a bird into an unknown region". # Silvering — the second of three journey masks is painted in colored circles; this mask is known as "the movement of a salmon into the rivers of an unknown region". The Silvering is also the name of a short story included in Merlin's Wood. # Cunhaval — the third of three journey masks is made from elder wood; this mask is known as "the running of a hunting dog through the forest tracks of an unknown region". # Moondream — made from beechwood, this mask is painted with moon symbols on its face. This mask plays a prominent role in The Hollowing. # Sinisalo — made from wych elm and painted white and azure, this mask is known as "seeing the child in the land". # Morndun — this mask appears dead from the front, but alive from behind and is known as "the first journey of a ghost into an unknown region". Before setting foot in the wood, Tallis has one particular encounter that has major repercussions through the rest of the story: with the 'help' of one of the mythagos, she 'hollows' (creates a Hollowing) and observes Scathach, a young warrior, dying on a battlefield beneath a tree. Tallis' misdirected magic used to help this young warrior changes both her story and Harry Keeton's story in Ryhope wood. Deep within Ryhope wood Tallis eventually meets up with Edward Wynne-Jones (human, not mythago) who was only mentioned in Mythago Wood. He is now living in the wood as a shaman to a small village of ancient people. Through his understanding of the wood (which he studied with the scientist George Huxley from the first book), Tallis herself gains an understanding of her connections with all that surrounds her; most importantly, she asks him how she might find her lost brother Harry Keeton.
4372004	/m/0bzs24	Shadows in Flight	Orson Scott Card	2011-11-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In 2210, the starship Herodotus left Earth. Onboard were Julian "Bean" Delphiki and his three infant children – Ender, Carlotta, and Cincinnatus – all of whom have Anton's Key turned. This genetic alteration, which Bean passed to his children, grants them all extremely high intelligence, but causes their bodies to grow uncontrollably, which is likely to kill them by the age of 20. Subjectively, they have been flying near light-speed for five years, but relativistic effects mean that 421 years have passed on Earth – the year is now 2631. When the family left, scientists were actively trying to find a cure for their giantism which would not diminish their intelligence. Several generations have passed, and they have been forgotten, their mother and "normal" siblings having died centuries ago. The children have only been alive for six subjective years. Bean's life has been extended by the low gravity on board the Herodotus, which allows his heart to keep beating despite his increasingly gigantic size. At 4.5 metres tall, Bean must remain in a lying position in the cargo bay so as not to over-exert himself. He controls and watches everything on the ship through his holo-top terminal, often prompting the children to have secret meetings they believe the Giant cannot hear. Bean and Ender continue to study their genetic condition in the hope of finding a cure. In one of these meetings, the militarily-minded Cincinnatus (nicknamed "Sergeant") tries to enlist the aid of his siblings in killing their father, saying he is a drain on resources. The sensitive Carlotta (whose specialty is engineering) is unwilling to take a stance, but Ender (an expert biologist) punches Sergeant and breaks his nose for proposing such an idea, thus ending his brother's domination over the family. Ender and Carlotta tell Bean about Sergeant's plans, and Bean puts all three children in their place, reminding them they are each as intelligent as the other. Sergeant has been imagining threats to their security where there are none, because he believes the Giant means to pass his soldier role onto him. So he studies the Formic war vids and learning his father's strategy while training himself with weaponry. Ender takes on the bulk of the genetic studies by monitoring the advances made by the scientists on Earth. Carlotta, who feels slightly left behind with the genetic studies serves the family by taking care of every aspect of the spacecraft, since Bean himself is stuck in the cargo hold. After despairing at the condition of their lives, and in the light of the discovery that their condition cannot be cured, Carlotta notices an unknown spacecraft in geosync orbit around an uncharted planet in the Goldilocks zone. Bean and his children deliberate courses of action. If they alter their course, they must slow down to turn, possibly killing Bean with the increased gravity. However, they cannot anticipate who or what is in the spacecraft; it may attack them, or they may be detrimental to the survival and progression of the human race. This hypothesis is solidified when Sergeant deduces that the ship is a Formic Ark, a colony ship that has been in flight for centuries. Bean sends Sergeant alone to investigate the ship, and he escapes an attack by small Formic-like animals they call "rabs". After this initial encounter, Bean reveals his full plan to his children. They must find out who is piloting this ship and attempting to terraform the planet it orbits. It was Bean's intention all along to have his children live on this planet and found their new species in safety as soon as he picked it up on radar as lying within the Goldilocks zone. Armed with Sergeant's weapons and a sedative fog spray Ender devised, Sergeant commands defenses as Carlotta leads their group to the helm with Bean in contact the whole time. The spray proves effective, and they soon find the Hive Queen's chamber to find her, and many workers, dead. Eventually they find living male Formics in one of the piloting helms. In an attempt to communicate, Ender surrenders himself by drifting close to them in zero gravity. The male drones come close and communicate with Ender via mental images. The group learns that the Ark was sent long before Ender Wiggin, whom Bean's son is named for, wiped out the buggers. After the Queen on their ship died, the workers died without her link, yet the males lived and tried to survive and keep the ship running despite losing numbers to the feral rabs. The group strikes a deal that if the children can wipe out the rabs, they can stay with the Formics and help cultivate the planet. When Bean learns from the male drones that Ender Wiggin is carrying a queen's cocoon looking for a home, and that Formic workers do have minds of their own contrary to popular belief, he demands to speak with the Formics in order to warn Ender, despite risking his life in the journey. Accepting that his children have achieved beyond his wildest expectations, Bean risks his life by docking with the ark's cargo hold to float down into the ecotat. Laying in the grass and basking in the artificial sunlight, Bean communes for three days with the formic males. Though the Formics think it is silly to believe the Queen would hide anything from them, Bean learns that workers could rebel against a Queen and regain their free will. After sleeping, his children wake him informing him that by studying how the Hive Queen suppresses her workers, Ender devised and administered a virus that will develop an organelle to shut off their growth genome, leaving their intelligence intact. With renewed hope for the future, Bean looks at the beauty around him and remember all those whom he loved and who loved him in his life. With his children's help, he stands at four and a half meters for the first time in years, and walks with belabored breathing in the sunlight. Happy for his children and for his own short but brilliant life, Bean lies down and dies in peace.
4373196	/m/0bztys	Love As A Foreign Language				 Below are the original synopses for the individual volumes. Joel hates Korea. Why he agreed to teach there defies his comprehension. He can't wait to return to normal life. His year of teaching is almost over and then he'll finally be free. But Joel’s life is about to go from dark dreams to cotton candy kisses and it's all because of Hana. The very sight of this girl sends him flying straight to cloud nine, but won't another year in Korea send him crashing back down? All of a sudden Korea is looking a lot better to Joel. Actually, that's a lie. Korea is still looking like a rotten, smelly place with weird people and weirder food. Hana, the new receptionist at the school Joel teaches at, on the other hand, is looking mighty fine. But will the girl of Joel's dreams ever actually make it into his days or did he extend his stay in Asia for nothing? Now is the winter of Joel's discontent in Korea. Luckily, he has Hana to warm his heart. But as things begin to heat up for the couple, will Joel go into hibernation or spring into action? And at a dinner with the rest of the E4E staff, does he have the guts to try the spicy soup? Joel’s crazy all right. Crazy about Hana, the school’s new secretary. But what’s the point of staying put if he can’t even muster up the courage to talk to his latest crush? Can Joel fall head over heels for Hana without rolling into all new depths of depression? Time is running out for Joel. If he doesn’t make a move on Hana soon, he’s going to lose his chance forever. But can he get over his Korean cultural hang-ups in time to make his play for the girl of his dreams? Culture shock continues to dominate Joel’s love life. Here he is in South Korea, desperately trying to win the affections of the beautiful Hana. But can he ever have happiness if he isn’t able to assimilate to Korean culture? Will Joel be able to shed his western trappings and find happiness in his heart and Seoul? "Love As A Foreign Language" originally appeared as a six-volume series of 72 page books from Oni Press. The series has been re-released in a trade paperback format entitled "Love As A Foreign Language Omnibus." Omnibus volume 1 compiles the original volumes 1-3, and Omnibus volume 2 compiles the original volumes 4-6.
4373204	/m/0bztzh	Midnighters 1: The Secret Hour	Scott Westerfeld	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 15-year-old Jessica Day moves with her family to Bixby, Oklahoma after her mother is employed at a high-tech aerospace company. Soon after the move, Jessica awakens to find time frozen and rain stopped in mid air. Although she thinks it is a dream, she is suspicious when she wakes to find her clothes wet. The next night, it happens again. Leaving her room, she finds that her family is frozen and the only other living thing is a cat, which leads her out of her house. Once outside, the cat transforms into a snake, revealing that it is actually a slither. It, along with other slithers and a darkling in the form of a large cat, attacks her. Jessica is rescued by the "Midnighters": Dess, Rex and Melissa, who chase away the animals using thirteen letter words and steel. The next day, they explain that in Bixby time freezes for an hour every midnight and that only Midnighters - people born at the moment of midnight - can enter it. Creatures known as darklings live in this secret hour where they can hide from advances in human technology. Darklings hate people and fear new inventions, complex concepts and the number 13. It was the darklings who took one hour of each 25-hour-day and hid inside it so that people couldn't get to them. They also explain that each Midnighter has a special power - Dess is a polymath, Rex is a Seer (someone who can read the lore - the ancient history of the midnighters) and Melissa is a mindcaster (meaning she has a variety of telepathic abilities). They don't know what Jessica's power is, except that it isn't the same as any of theirs. The next midnight, Jonathan, a boy from Jessica's school, arrives outside her house, and takes her flying with him - he is an Acrobat, and in the Secret Hour gravity does not have a strong hold on him. He and Rex don't get along, and the other Midnighters avoid talking about him. After flying for most of the hour the pair are chased by a darkling and narrowly escape - only to be arrested by policemen enforcing Bixby's eleven o'clock curfew. Jessica is grounded for the rest of the month. Meanwhile, the Midnighters are becoming suspicious of why the darklings, who normally avoid Midnighters, are so intent on killing Jessica. Rex decides to take Jessica out to the Snake Pit, a place in the badlands, where she will be able to discover her power. Unfortunately, the badlands are also the home to the darklings. Dess sets up protection beforehand and the Midnighters plan to be inside it before the Secret Hour arrives. However, they are all late, and rely on Jonathan to fly them inside the protection, which causes Rex to get jealous and Melissa to get disgusted and angry. The darklings are so desperate to attack Jessica that they suicidally attack the defenses, weakening them considerably. Just before the defenses collapse, Rex discovers Jessica's power is Flame-bringer, but none of the group know how they can make a fire. As the defenses are breached, Jessica realizes that her watch is still ticking, implying that her ability allows her to use technology in the secret hour. She uses a flashlight to kill the darklings, and the Midnighters leave safely.
4378065	/m/0b_108	Might As Well Be Dead	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 As the book opens, James R Herold, prosperous businessman from Omaha, Nebraska, consults Wolfe about re-establishing contact with his son, whom he had (at it eventually transpired) falsely accused of theft eleven years before. The son, Paul Herold, had consequently broken almost all ties with the family, changed his name and moved to New York City. Even the latter meagre information was only known because Paul has recently sent his sister a birthday card postmarked NYC. The father has already taken obvious steps such as an ad in the newspaper and consulting the Missing Persons Dept of NYPD. Although the present name of Paul Herold is unknown, Wolfe suspects that he has at least retained the same initials, and therefore places an advertisement in the newspapers the following day advising PH that he is innocent of the crime of which he was once suspected. Needless to day, more than one person with those initials thinks he his falsely accused of a crime, and the advertisement attracts many telephone calls to Wolfe's office the next day. The advertisement is also silent about the crime of which the man is innocent. Meanwhile, a man known as Peter Hays has been on trial for murder, and the case is already with the jury, and a verdict is expected soon. Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe's amanuensis, are sufficiently distracted by enquiries about Peter Hays being the man named in the advertisement (and that he is by implication innocent of the murder for which Hays is currently being tried) that Wolfe dispatches Archie to visit the court room to hear the verdict against Hays. By comparing the man he sees in court to photos supplied by the father, Archie tentatively identifies the two names as referring to the same man. This sets up a confrontation with Hays' attorney, Albert Freyer, who suspects Archie of duplicity (since Archie earlier told Freyer, among others, that the advertisement referred to a different crime, not the murder of Michael Molloy for which Hays has just been tried), but Wolfe and Freyer, after some discussion, quickly come to an agreement on how to proceed to the best advantage of all concerned: * Although Wolfe might collect a substantial fee by immediately notifying his client that his son has been found (albeit in mortal jeopardy), Archie's identification is still not certain, and Wolfe's his client would be more satisfied if he was able to deliver the son as a free man, * Peter Hays has refused to give his lawyer any information on his background, something that counted against him with the district attorney, and seems depressed to the point of hopelessness, using the novel's title Might as well be dead to describe how he feels. This tends to validate Archie's tentative identification, but a personal meeting of Archie with Hays would be needed to be sure. * Peter Hays has limited funds, and although Freyer is convinced of his client's innocence, it would be vastly preferable to have help both in the form of Wolfe's assistance and the financial backing of the father * Therefore, Freyer will start an appeal (initial steps are not costly) and meanwhile Wolfe will work on clearing Hays/Herold, and delay informing Wolfe's client for the time being. Later on, Wolfe sends some of his operatives, including Johnny Keems, to investigate some of the friends and associates of Michael Molloy. The next day, the body of Johnny Keems is found killed by a hit-and-run driver. Since his pockets lack $100 in money Archie gave him to bribe potential witnesses, Wolfe and Archie consider it to be linked the Molloy murder, but the authorities make no such connection since the apparent murderer of Molloy has already been convicted.
4379966	/m/0b_4bk	Simon and the Witch	Margaret Stuart Barry	1976-08-23	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the first chapter, The Backwards Spell the witch teaches Simon how to turn the school gardener into a frog, but forgets how to turn him back. She eventually remembers the spell and turns the gardener into a man again, claiming privately she never forgot the spell at all. In chapter two, The Lost Magic Wand, the witch loses her wand so Simon takes her to the police station where the witch becomes fascinated with Constable Scruff's uniform, and so becomes a police-woman. The three eventually find the witch's wand, which has been stolen by two thieves who used it as a poker for their fire. In chapter three, The Witch at the Seaside, Simon takes the witch on holiday to the beach for a day, where she makes the English Channel disappear, not believing Simon's assurances that it is not flooding. She agrees to put it back on the condition she is featured on the evening news, which she is. In The Witch has Measles, chapter four, the witch catches double German measles, so goes to hospital. She sees the trolleys patients are moved round on, and organises races on them, and everyone has so much fun they all feel better and go home again. In chapter five, Halloween, the witch (who has never heard of Halloween before) goes to a Halloween party, but is disgusted by 'fake' witches. Fortunately one hundred of her relatives turn up, with their black cats, and they crash the party, demonstrating their magic many times over. The final chapter of the book, The Witch's Visitor, is set at Christmas, the witch makes a snowman come to life, introducing him to people as her uncle Fred.
4380177	/m/0b_4v6	The Great War: Breakthroughs	Harry Turtledove	2000-08-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Its 1917, the Great War has proved very costly for both the United States and Confederate States. After the seemingly endless stalemate that had been the first two years of war, the U.S. began to slowly gain an advantage. The Barrel Roll Offensive proved to be a decisive move by U.S. forces, as weak Confederate lines were unable to resist George Custer's advance towards Nashville. In the east, the U.S. was finally able to take back Washington D.C. from Rebel forces, though leveling the city in the process. The war in Europe was drawing to a close as Russia underwent the Red revolution, French soldiers rose in mutiny, and Great Britain was cut off from important food shipments from South America. By late July 1917, the CSA was in such dire condition that the country was forced to ask for an armistice, losing much land and money to the USA. The states of Kentucky and Sequoyah (Oklahoma) were lost, as well as parts of Texas, Arkansas, Sonora, and Virginia. One issue would remain unresolved as a Confederate submarine torpedoed and sunk a U.S. destroyer after the U.S.-C.S. armistice was granted.
4381381	/m/0b_7b5	The Morgesons	Elizabeth Drew Stoddard			 Stoddard’s novel traces the education and development of a young female in American middle-class society. The protagonist, Cassandra Morgeson, is educated by a series of journeys she makes throughout her youth and early adulthood. Each new setting represents a different stage in her intellectual development. Cassandra is born in Surrey, a small New England town. Surrey is quiet and isolated, granting a young woman little intellectual stimulation. Cassandra escapes the boredom of domestic life through stories of adventure and exploration. Surrey instills in Cassandra a restlessness that drives her quest for knowledge and experience. At the age of thirteen, Cassandra’s parents send her to live with her grandfather in Barmouth. Excessively religious, Grandfather Warren takes it upon himself to put Cassandra in her place. She is both intellectually and emotionally starved in Barmouth. Her life becomes narrowed down to home, school and church. In school, all the students dress alike and wear their hair in the same fashion. She learns an important lesson in conformity (peer pressure). When Cassandra turns eighteen she is invited to stay with some cousins in Rosville. Rosville offers her a glimpse of city life. She attends numerous balls, whist parties and shopping sprees in Boston. She also falls in love with her cousin Charles. Charles’s dark sensuality and power awakens Cassandra’s sexuality, which is an integral part in her self-discovery. Cassandra quickly finds herself caught up in a passionate, adulterous love affair. Their affair is cut short in a tragic accident that costs Charles his life. Cassandra escapes with a scar across her face, which remains with her as a constant reminder of the affair. Cassandra then travels to Belem, a city of wealth and nobility. She stays in the home of her friend, Ben Somers. In Belem she is forced to confront the social injustice of class. Here she falls for Ben’s brother, Desmond. Desmond sees into Cassandra’s heart through the scar on her face. He finds in Cassandra a reason to reform himself and conquer his alcoholism. He promises himself to her and then goes off to Spain to cure his addiction. Upon her return to Surrey, Cassandra discovers that her mother has died. As the eldest and most capable daughter, the role of lady of the house is passed down to her. She becomes responsible for managing the household and taking care of her younger sister, Veronica. Cassandra resents her inherited role and envisions the rest of her days spent in monotony and misery. Her sister, Veronica, marries the wealthy but alcoholic Ben Somers. Two years after they are married, Ben dies of alcoholism, leaving Veronica to look after their child who “…never cries, never moves, except when it is moved” (252). Some critics see this child as a physical representation of how Veronica’s search for independence and autonomy has been stunted by her marriage. In the close of the novel “her eyes go no more in quest of something beyond” (252). Cassandra marries the newly-reformed Desmond. Her quest for self-definition does not end with marriage though. Cassandra narrates the closing pages of the novel from her desk. She is in the process of writing her life story. Writing allows Cassandra to take an active role in defining herself. Her novel helps her to assert her autonomy and achieve her goal of self-possession.
4381915	/m/0b_82v	Crashing the Gate	Markos Moulitsas	2006-03-01		 In this book, the authors document what they see as the ineffectiveness of "old-school politics" in the Democratic Party, and advocate for a "new kind of popular political movement" that combines the netroots, grassroots, labor unions and big donors to effect a "broad change in the political landscape" of the United States.
4382461	/m/0b_8yn	Oh No It Isn't!	Paul Cornell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bernice Summerfield's investigation into the lost civilisation of Perfection takes a turn for the strange when her cat Wolsey turns into Puss in Boots…
4382623	/m/0b_97q	The Silent Speaker	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Cheney Boone is the Director of the Bureau of Price Regulation (BPR), an agency of the Federal government. At a dinner in New York hosted by the National Industrial Association (NIA), he is beaten to death with a monkey wrench shortly after his confidential secretary, Phoebe Gunther, brings him items to use as props for the speech he was to give that night. The body is discovered by Alger Kates, a BPR researcher. There is considerable bad blood between the BPR and the NIA and the public is generally aware of the antagonism. Members and officers of the NIA are frantic because the public has assumed that someone in the association instigated Boone's murder. When the NIA hires Nero Wolfe to investigate the murder, Wolfe calls a meeting of principals related to the case. The meeting includes Boone's widow and niece, the BPR's acting director Solomon Dexter, Alger Kates, the NIA's executive committee, and Don O'Neill. Also present are Inspector Cramer, Sergeant Stebbins and a representative of the FBI. Phoebe Gunther had been invited but does not attend. As the meeting's participants discuss, it is discovered that anyone present at the dinner could have murdered Boone – hundreds of attendees had opportunity, and none of them have an alibi provided by anyone who would not already be inclined to protect them. After the meeting's participants depart, Wolfe sends Archie for Phoebe Gunther. Entering her apartment, Archie finds both her and Kates. Miss Gunther accompanies Archie to the brownstone and agrees to answer Wolfe's questions if he will answer hers. She states that she lost a leather case containing dictation cylinders, which Boone gave her shortly before his death, through pure carelessness, and that Boone had not told her what was on them. Don O'Neill has received in the mail a claim check from the parcel room at Grand Central Station. Alerted by an otherwise bogus telegram, Archie follows O'Neill, sees him exchange the claim check for a leather case, and intercepts him. Archie gives O'Neill the choice of going to the police, or going to Wolfe's office to open the case. Eventually O'Neill agrees to go with Archie to the brownstone, where the leather case is found to contain ten dictation cylinders. A machine is procured and the cylinders played. When Archie and Wolfe listen to the cylinders, Boone's references to dates and events makes it clear that these are not the cylinders that he gave Miss Gunther prior to his speech. Wolfe notes in disgust that he and Archie have been "sniggled." Wolfe calls another meeting of the NIA and BPR representatives, but once again Phoebe Gunther is absent. The BPR people come to help advance the search for Boone's murderer; the NIA people come to try to get the case solved and off the front page. Wolfe has just begun speaking when Fritz comes to the office door and beckons Archie urgently. Fritz takes Archie to the area under the front stoop, where Miss Gunther lies dead. They find the length of rusty iron pipe used to bludgeon her, and also a scarf belonging to the NIA's Winterhoff, dirty with rust flakes and concealed in the pocket of Kates' topcoat. There is no evidence that points directly at anyone present, however. Cramer instructs the well connected members of the NIA to remain in New York – thus alienating the NIA's out-of-towners. Wolfe is annoyed when he learns that a search of Phoebe Gunther's apartment in Washington has turned up some dictation cylinders, but only nine instead of the expected ten. Wolfe is convinced that the only way to identify the murderer is to locate the missing dictation cylinder. The NIA's sense of urgency to get the case solved soars as public opinion turns more decisively against it. Inspector Ash, who has been assigned to replace Cramer due to political pressure, calls Wolfe to police headquarters and threatens a search warrant to force entry to the brownstone. Wolfe reacts violently, and Archie has to step between the two men to head off a physical confrontation. Police Commissioner Hombert, also in the meeting with Wolfe and Ash, just wants the case to go away. He instructs Ash to continue the investigation and placates Wolfe by vacating the open warrants. Wolfe controls himself and draws the picture everyone else: that Phoebe Gunther wanted to use Boone's death to damage the NIA by keeping the public's attention on it; that she did so by concealing evidence on the missing cylinder, hiding it where she could eventually retrieve it; that the recording would unmistakably identify the murderer; and that Cramer was correct to focus his resources on finding the cylinder. Wolfe then dictates a letter to the NIA, terminating his engagement and returning their $30,000 retainer. Having broken with his client, Wolfe anticipates a renewed assault by the police, since he is no longer shielded by his arrangement with the NIA. So he stages a mental breakdown, persuading his doctor to certify him as suffering from a persecution complex and to deny the police access to him. Archie gets word that the police are sending a doctor with a court order to see Wolfe. Wolfe bestirs himself and gives the matter further consideration. He urges Archie, Fritz, and Theodore to search the office for the cylinder, which is eventually located behind some books. When the cylinder is played back, both Wolfe and Cramer are vindicated: The murderer was the ostensibly mild-mannered Alger Kates, who had been providing confidential BPR information to Don O'Neill in exchange for money. An associate of O'Neill had informed Cheney Boone of the scheme, and Boone had dictated a cylinder — the missing cylinder — for Phoebe Gunther, detailing the bribery scheme, his conversation with the associate, and his feelings on the matter. When Kates happened to bring some papers to Boone before the reception, Boone confronted him with what he knew. Kates reacted by grabbing the monkey wrench that was lying nearby and killing Boone. Phoebe Gunther, having been told by Boone of the bribery and now possessing the dictation cylinder with the incriminating evidence, resolved to keep the cylinder away from the police until the maximum possible damage had been done to the NIA in the court of public opinion. Knowing that the cylinder was the key to the entire case, she hid it in Wolfe's office when she was left alone there the night of the first gathering of suspects. Unfortunately for her, she also showed her hand in insisting later that certain items Kates had retained after the murder be returned to Boone's wife. Kates, now knowing that she knew of his guilt, killed her, lying in wait in the shadows around Wolfe's brownstone until she arrived. When confronted by Wolfe, Cramer, and the incriminating cylinder, Kates acknowledges his guilt and brags about how even O'Neill is now afraid of him. O'Neill denies his part in the bribery scheme, but Kates signs a confession that will seal both men's fates. In a scene set after the disposition of the case, Archie informs Wolfe that he is not, in fact, a sap, and is aware that Wolfe had found the missing cylinder well before the frantic hunt in his office; he is simply unsure of whether Wolfe waited so long for "art's sake," or simply to ensure that he could collect the $100,000 reward offered by the NIA. Wolfe does not disagree with either hypothesis, but suggests another motivation: that, if he had simply revealed the cylinder immediately, Phoebe Gunther's death would have been wasteful, and that perhaps the least Wolfe could do was continue as far as possible along her objective: damage to the NIA.
4384402	/m/0b_cyf	Tilly				 The story begins in April with the novel's main character, Kathy Ross, and her husband Dan attending a funeral for their old friend. While at the graveyard, Kathy sees a woman placing flowers on a grave. Curiously, Kathy goes to the woman, who looks at her in surprise and runs off. When Kathy views the gravestone she notices something unusual about it: there is only one name "Tilly" and one date, exactly nine years ago. Later, once at home, Kathy begins to feel deeply guilty about something. She asks Dan about her ability as a mother and he tells her that she had always been good to their three children. However, Kathy still feels ashamed of herself. That night, Kathy has the most strange dream. When she looks at her backyard she sees many children playing. When she asks them what they are doing they say that they live there. When she asks them their names they tell her they don't have any. When she asks about their parents, the children respond that they have none. Kathy then notices one girl, who says her name is Tilly, the same name found on the gravestone. Tilly takes Kathy to her favorite places in heaven and talks to her about Jesus. The two of them soon become good friends. Meanwhile, Dan investigates the tiny gravestone. He soon meets with the woman whom he and Kathy saw in the graveyard. Her name turns out to be Anita Mendoza, a former abortion clinic nurse. She tells Dan that she recognizes his wife from many years ago. Tilly, she tells him, was the late-term fetus that Kathy aborted. Tilly, however, had lived through the procedure but died moments later. Afterward, Anita insisted on burying the mangled corpse. Kathy, still in her dream, continues talking with Tilly. She informs her that she, unlike the other children, does have a mother. Tilly informs Kathy that she forgives her for what she did. Once Kathy wakes up she no longer feels guilty about her past abortion. The story ends with her thinking about all the children who "have no mothers".
4386686	/m/0b_hmn	Rogue Saucer	John Vornholt		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After an attack by the Maquis orchestrated by Ro Laren, the saucer section is damaged and in need of repairs. While at the dry dock facilities, Captain Picard receives new orders from Admiral Nechayev to test a new saucer section. This new saucer section has been designed to be able to land on a planetary body and lift off from the surface, overcoming a reluctance by captains to carry out a saucer sep. The stardrive section of the Enterprise-D is attached to this new saucer, which is then taken out for field testing. During the course of the mission, the saucer section is hijacked by Maquis operatives (one of whom is among Nechayev's test crew), who intend to re-dock it with the stardrive section and take it over, and Picard finds himself having to prevent the saucer and the technology contained within from falling into Maquis hands. The saucer does make a controlled crash, under conditions not conducive to its recovery, on a planet with a primitive sentient culture that could one day discover the saucer at the bottom of its ocean, depending on how durable Starfleet metals are. Meanwhile, Ro's hideaway is found by the Cardassians and attacked, leading to a narrow escape.
4388619	/m/0b_m4d	Divorcing Jack	Colin Bateman	1995	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 Set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the novel's events follow a turbulent period in the life of married, cynical and usually drunk journalist Dan Starkey. Dan's wife Patricia leaves him after a drunken party in which he kisses student Margaret. What follows is a darkly comical tale of murder and mystery.
4389255	/m/0b_n9k	Dragon's Egg	Robert Forward	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Half a million years ago and 50 light-years from Earth, a star in the constellation Draco turns supernova, and the star's remnant becomes a neutron star. The radiation from the explosion causes mutations in many Earth organisms, including a group of hominina that become the ancestors of Homo sapiens. The star's short-lived plasma jets are lop-sided because of anomalies in its magnetic field, and set it on a course passing within 250&nbsp;astronomical units of the Sun. In 2020&nbsp;CE, human astronomers detect the neutron star, call it "Dragon's Egg", and send an expedition to explore it. The star contains about half of a solar mass of matter, compressed into a diameter of about , making its surface gravity 67&nbsp;billion times that of Earth. Its outer crust, compressed to about 7,000&nbsp;kg per cubic centimeter, is mainly iron nuclei with a high concentration of neutrons, Around 3000&nbsp;BC Dragon's Egg cools enough to allow a stable equivalent of "chemistry", in which "compounds" are constructed of nuclei bound by the strong force, rather than of Earth's atoms bound by the electromagnetic force. As the star's chemical process are about one&nbsp;million times faster than Earth's, self-replicating "molecules" appear shortly and life begins on the star. As the star continues to cool, more complex life evolves, until plant-like organisms appear around 1000&nbsp;BC. One lineage of these later became the first "animals", the earliest of these stealing seedpods from sessile organisms and some later lineages becoming predators. The adults of the star's most intelligent species, called cheela (no flexion for gender or number), have about the same mass as an adult human. However, the extreme gravity of Dragon's Egg compresses the cheela to the volume of a sesame seed, but with a flattened shape about high and about in diameter. Their eyes are wide. Such minute eyes can see clearly only in ultraviolet and, in good light, the longest wavelengths of the X-ray band. {| class="wikitable" style="font-size:80%; margin-left:2px; margin-top:-5px" align="right" width="300" |+ Timeline |- | 3000 BC || Life appears |- | 1000 BC || "Plants" |- | &nbsp; || Animals |- | 2032 || First weapon |- | rowspan="3" | 22 May 2050, 14:44:01 || Invention of agriculture |- | Volcano emerges |- | Clan invents new foraging techniques |- | rowspan="3" | 22 May 2050, 16:45:24 | Volcano forces clan to find new territory |- | Invention of mathematics |- | Self-sacrifice of the aged saves the clan |- | || Organized religion among cheela |- | 14 June 2050, 22:12:30 || Cheela develop writing |- | rowspan="2" | 20 June 2050, 06:48:48 || Cheela build religious arena |- | Humans send first message to cheela |- | || Cheela recognize "digital" pictures of humans |- | 20 June 2050, 07:58:24 || First successful cheela transmission to humans |- | 20 June 2050, 11:16:03 || Cheela realized both races were created by same supernova |- | 20 June 2050, 20:29:59 || Cheela's first experiments in gravity manipulation |- | 20 June 2050, 22:30:10 || Cheela expedition to human space craft |- | 21 June 2050, 06:13:54 || Final communication between cheela and humans |} In 2032, a cheela develops the race's first weapon and tactics while overcoming a dangerous predator. In November 2049 a human expedition to Dragon's Egg starts building orbital facilities. The rest of the story, including almost the whole history of cheela civilization, spans from 22 May 2050 to 21 June 2050. By humans standards, a "day" on Dragon's Egg is about 0.2&nbsp;seconds, and a typical cheela's lifetime is about 40&nbsp;minutes. One clan organizes the first cheela agriculture, which brings predictable food supply but provokes grumbling about the repetitive work. Shortly after, a volcano emerges in the area, and the clan invents the first sledge to carry food from more distant sources. However, within a few generations the volcano pollutes the soil. One clan leads its population on a long, arduous journey to new territory that is fertile and uninhabited. Although one genius invents mathematics to calculate and measure the band's food supply, the situation is desperate and the clan's survival depends on the self-sacrifice of the oldest members. Over the course of generations, the cheela come to worship the humans' spacecraft as a god, and their records of its satellites' movements cause them to develop writing. Several generations later, the cheela build an arena to accommodate thousands of worshippers. The humans notice this novel and very regular feature, conclude that intelligent beings inhabit the star, and use a laser to send simple messages. Cheela astronomers gradually realize that these are diagrams of the spaceships, its satellites and its crew – impossibly spindly creatures, who communicate with frustrating slowness, and are apparently almost 10% as long as the cheela's great arena. A cheela engineer proposes to send messages to the humans. As her attempts to transmit from the civilization's territory are ineffective, she travels to a mountain range to transmit directly under the spacecraft – conquering the fear of heights that is instinctive for flattened creatures living in 67&nbsp;billion g. The humans recognize her message and realize that the cheela live a million times faster than humans. Since real time conversations are impossible, the humans send sections of the expedition's library. After reading an astronomy article, a cheela realizes that the supernova half a million human years ago created both their races. Many cheela generations later, but only a few hours for humans, cheelas develop gravity manipulation. A few generations later, a cheela spacecraft visits the human one. Although they still need extreme gravity fields to survive, the cheela can now control them precisely enough for both races to see each other face-to-face in safety. The cheela have decided that transferring their technologies, now far advanced of humans', would stunt humanity's development. However the cheela leave clues in several challenging locations, before going their separate ways. <!--
4390666	/m/0b_qsh	Charlotte Sometimes	Penelope Farmer	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Charlotte arrives at a new boarding school, and is shown around by a prefect named Sarah. Sarah's mother also attended the school. The next morning she finds herself in the same place, but in the year 1918. A younger girl called Emily calls Charlotte her sister, and addresses her as "Clare". Each night, Charlotte finds herself swapping between her own time and Clare's time. Charlotte and Clare must learn to live two different lives. They write letters to one another in an exercise book, which they hide in the leg of the bed they share in two different times. Charlotte, expecting to have returned to her own time for the last time, is shocked to find that she has returned to 1918. She will go into lodgings with the Chisel Brown family: it appears she will be trapped in the past. In the house, Miss Agnes Chisel Brown shows Charlotte and Emily the toys she had once played with. She tells the two girls about her brother Arthur, who died in the war. Charlotte reflects, forward and back: to Arthur in the past; her own sister Emma in the future; and Clare, trapped in Charlotte's time. She struggles with her identity as being Charlotte sometimes but Clare other times. Charlotte and Emily form a plan to enter the school by night in an attempt to get Charlotte into the bed which will take Charlotte back to her own time. Inside the school sick room, Charlotte finds the bed is occupied, and thus she cannot return home. She escapes being seen by Nurse Gregory, but is seen by another student, Ruth. Charlotte is not the only one who struggles with identity. Emily tells of the wretchedness of being motherless and unwanted, moving around between homes while her father fights in the war. Meanwhile, Charlotte dreams she is fighting to stay as Charlotte. She dreams about Arthur. A letter arrives for Clare and Emily from their father. Emily does not let Charlotte read it, to the bewilderment of the other girls. Charlotte, thoughtful as always, wonders who Sarah's mother is: perhaps it will be Charlotte herself if she is trapped in 1918? At night, Charlotte dreams about Arthur again, as a drummer boy, and that she has turned into Agnes. Her crisis of identity comes to a head as she struggles to preserve her identity as Charlotte. One evening, the Chisel Browns hold a seance in an attempt to speak to Arthur. The girls hide behind the curtains to observe. During the seance, they hear Clare's voice crying out for Emily. Emily cries out, and the two girls are discovered and disciplined. Later, Miss Agnes asks about the voice they heard at the seance - Clare's. She then tells Charlotte and Emily of Arthur’s war experience. Finally, Armistice comes. The war is over: people dance and celebrate in the street, and Charlotte and Emily join in, even though it would anger Mr Chisel Brown. In disgrace, Charlotte and Emily are sent back to the school. Miss Agnes gives them the toys as a gift. Ruth recalls her “dream” of seeing Clare whilst in the sick room. Because of the flu epidemic, the students are able to play wild games in the dormitories, and eventually, Charlotte is finally able to sleep in the bed that will return her to her own time. On arriving back in her own time, Charlotte is surprised to learn that her room-mate Elizabeth knew about her swap with Clare. Charlotte wonders about Sarah's mother and what has become of Emily and Clare. At the school, Charlotte sees an elderly Miss Wilkin, whom she realises that she had known as a young woman in 1918. One day, Charlotte has a conversation with Sarah, and learns what has become of Emily and Clare. Sarah's mother is Emily, and Clare died in the flu epidemic after the war. Later, Charlotte and Elizabeth discuss the events Charlotte has experienced. They find the exercise book in the bed leg, finding the last letter Charlotte wrote to Clare. Charlotte receives a package from Emily as an adult. It contains a letter from Emily and the toys which Miss Agnes had given them, over forty years ago. (This last segment is not in the 1985 revised edition).
4392699	/m/0b_vn4	The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea	James Fenimore Cooper		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The hero of the book is John Paul Jones, who appears as always brooding upon a dark past and a darker fate. Yet he is not so morbid but that he can occasionally rouse himself to terrific activities in his raids along the English coast. Another character is Long Tom Coffin, of Nantucket, comparable to Harvey Birch and Natty Bumppo from Cooper's other novels.
4393479	/m/0b_wwh	Beyond the Sun	Matt Jones			 Bernice Summerfield takes her two students Emile and Tameka on a field trip, but when her ex-husband Jason turns up, they all become embroiled with the dangerous super-weapon of a lost civilisation.
4393883	/m/0b_x9c	Birthright	Nigel Robinson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After the TARDIS malfunctions and then explodes, the Doctor's companions find themselves in two different time zones. Bernice is stranded in the East End of London of 1909, where a series of grisly murders is occurring blamed on Spring Heeled Jack, while Ace is trapped on the planet Ant'ykhon fighting alongside guerrilla fighters against alien oppressors. Ace discovers that Ant'ykhon is actually the planet Earth, 22,000 years in the future and devastated by rising temperatures. The Charrl, an insect-like race, now inhabit Earth. They have been using an unstable trans-dimensional link called the "Great Divide" to travel to Earth's past in order to escape from the dying planet. Once there they implant humans with their eggs, but inadvertently kill them, causing the murders blamed on Spring-Heeled Jack. Since the Great Divide is unstable, any Charrl that travels to the past eventually crumbles into dust. Back in 1909, Benny is scratched by one of the time-travelling Charrls and is implanted with an egg. This has the effect of placing her under the control of the Charrl, causing her to replace the missing Time Vector Generator in the TARDIS and reunite it with its other half in the future. This also stabilizes the Great Divide and allows Jared Khan, a Charrel agent, to attempt to use the Great Divide to give him immortality. The TARDIS time rams its other half and sends it and Khan back to Siberia 1908, where it explodes, causing the Tunguska event. In the far future, Ace and Benny are aided by Muldwych, a mysterious hermit and former ally of the Charrl. He uses the TARDIS to entrap the Charrl inside one its interior dimensions, then sweeps the Great Divide over London, clearing it of Charrl and their eggs (and curing Benny). But when he tries to use the TARDIS to escape from his exile on Earth, the TARDIS expels him from the ship and returns him to Ant'ykhon. The Doctor emerges from the interior of the TARDIS, claiming to have been asleep in his room the entire time (but see Iceberg for details).
4394070	/m/0b_xh9	Just War	Lance Parkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and his companions land in German-occupied Guernsey in 1941 where the Nazis are pursuing a top-secret weapon which could change the course of the war.
4395371	/m/0b_z4s	Push not the River				 The story starts when the 17 year old Anna's parents die. She moves in with Aunt Stella and Uncle Leo and her cousins Walter and Zofia, a very manipulative and promiscuous girl. Anna later meets Jan Stelnicki and falls in love almost instantly and remains obsessed with him for most of her life. Zofia, however, wanted Jan and out of her jealously she tricks Anna into coming into the forest with her where she abandons her. While there Anna is raped by a stranger and Leo goes to where Anna was raped, but he gets stuck and Zofia and Walter watch him die. Anna is married off shortly after her attack to Antoni and the rest of the family move to Warsaw. Now living in Warsaw, Anna's life changes drastically. The Constitution of May 3, 1791 is signed by King Stanisław August Poniatowski, giving the peasants human rights. Many Polish nobles are enraged by the new laws, and call for Catherine the Great of Russia to deliver them. Anna discovers she is pregnant from being raped and gives birth to a son. It is revealed that it was Walter, who supports the Russians, was the one who raped Anna. Anna becomes a supporter of Polish independence, but is forced to watch as her country is overrun by hostile powers. As the victorious Russians march on Warsaw, Zofia sacrifices herself to buy time for Anna and her family to flee the war torn city.
4395771	/m/0b_zrg	Silverwing	Kenneth Oppel	1997-04-24	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Part One Shade, a young Silverwing bat, is constantly teased for being the runt of his colony. Shade had lost his father, Cassiel, before he was even born, and his mother, Ariel, is constantly worrying for his safety. One day Shade is being teased and bullied by Chinook, the most popular newborn. In response, Shade challenges Chinook to look at the sun. This is forbidden by law, and any bat caught out when the sun rises can be killed by owls. Chinook returns before the sun comes up, but Shade keeps waiting until he sees a bit of the sun. An owl sees this and attempts to catch and kill Shade, but Ariel rescues him in time. Back at the Silverwings' roost, called Tree Haven, Shade is apprehended by the four elders: Bathsheba, Aurora, Lucretia and Frieda. Despite Bathsheba's intentions of punishing Shade, Frieda defends him sufficiently enough to escape punishment. Frieda later corners Shade and asks him eagerly about the sun. She takes him to the Echo Chamber, where she sings the history of batkind into his head. Shade sees that once, millions of years ago, bats were allowed to see the sun. Then the birds and beasts had a war, and both sides tried to recruit the bats. The bats refused to fight, and at the peace treaty, the birds and beasts banished the bats from ever seeing the sun again. But Nocturna, the bat goddess, promised to the bats that one day they will return to the sun. Frieda shows Shade a metallic band given to her by humans, and says that it is part of the Promise. Soon the local owls, led by General Brutus, come to Tree Haven demanding for Shade. Shade is about to sacrifice himself before Ariel stops him. Frieda refuses to hand over Shade, and in response, the owls burn down Tree Haven. Despite Bathsheba's complaints, Frieda orders the Silverwing colony to join the males at Stone Hold and, from there, migrate to their winter retreat of Hibernaculum. Before the journey, Ariel teaches Shade a sound map, which uses landmarks such as a cathedral, a valley shaped like a wolf's head and a waterfall. While Shade's colony is migrating, a strong storm breaks out and separates Shade from his colony. Luckily, Shade lands on a human fishing boat. He eventually finds his way to an island and meets Marina, a Brightwing bat who, like Frieda, is banded. Marina agrees to help Shade locate the Silverwing colony. While journeying to the city, Shade and Marina encounter a Graywing colony, who distrust Marina because she is banded. The Graywings offer to take Shade to the Silverwings, but Shade refuses when they say Marina cannot come. Soon the two reach the city. Part Two In the city, Shade and Marina are captured by pigeons, who accuse them of killing two of their soldiers. Shade and Marina are hauled to the pigeons' camp, where the owl ambassador questions them extensively. When Shade and Marina refuse to answer, the owl orders that the pigeons amputate their wings. Before the pigeons could do this, Shade and Marina escape to the cathedral, where the pigeons are afraid of the stone gargoyles. In the cathedral, Shade and Marina meet Zephyr, an albino bat. Zephyr heals Shade's wounds by the pigeons and puts him to sleep with a mysterious leaf. When Shade wakes, he sees humans for the first time: praying in the cathedral. When his wound has healed, Zephyr tells them that he has encountered Frieda and the Silverwing colony, and instructs them to follow the cathedral star. Zephyr escorts them to the outskirts of the city, where he reveals that he is a seer and predicts of a great journey by Shade to bring back the sun to bats and that Shade's father, Cassiel, is alive. Shade and Marina leave the cathedral and Zephyr behind and fly out of the city. A short way south, Shade and Marina encounter an owl, who attempts to kill them. Before the owl can, he is eaten by two carnivorous bats: Goth and Throbb. Goth and Throbb are responsible for the death of the two pigeon soldiers and, like Marina, both are banded. Shade offers to escort Goth and Throbb south in return for Goth and Throbb's protection from owls. Goth and Throbb agree, but Goth secretly formulates a plan to bring the Silverwings' to the south, where they would provide an endless array of slaves. Goth is worried about Marina, who might affect Shade, and instructs Throbb to kill her. However Throbb mistakes another Brightwing bat for Marina and Shade sees Throbb eating it. Throbb then chases after Shade, who returns to their makeshift roost to warn Marina. Goth suspects that Shade know what they are doing and follows them. Shade and Marina are rescued by a human airplane which shoots darts into Goth and Throbb. Shade and Marina escape, and Goth is supposedly dead. Part Three Soon both Shade and Marina feel the full impact of winter as they head towards the mountains. They find the Graywing colony that they had encountered outside the city eaten by owls. Knowing that it was dangerous in the skies, Shade and Marina seek refuge in an abandoned Human cabin. There, they meet thousands of banded bats, led by the bat Scirocco. Scirocco explains to Marina that the banded bats are meant to be turned into humans to win back the sun. Shade and Marina disbelieve him, until Scirocco actually turns into a human before their eyes, using echos to conjure the illusion. Scirocco invites Marina to stay with the banded bats, and she initially accepts. But when Shade leaves to set off on his own, Marina joins him. This was just as well, because, unbenownst to them, Goth and Throbb are still alive and have eaten Scirocco and most of his bats, while using their bands as hunting trophies. Soon Shade recognizes another of Ariel's landmarks: a valley in the shape of a wolf's head. In the valley, Shade and Marina see Goth and Throbb overhead. Knowing that they are still alive, Shade and Marina take refuge on the sewers of a human town. Unfortunately they are captured by the resident rats, who take them to their leader Prince Remus. Remus believes that they are the ones who had eaten countless rats and other animals (in fact it was Goth and Throbb), and sentence them to drowning. Before the rats drown them, Remus's brother Romulus calls for them, and Remus relents. Romulus explains that Remus's kingdom is on the edge of collapse and desertion and mutiny are commonplace. Romulus shows Shade and Marina that he has proto-wings on his arms, the reason that Remus imprisoned, claimed by his brother that he is a freak. Romulus helps Shade and Marina escape by uncovering a secret tunnel he uses to get to the human town, and hopes they can meet again someday. Outside the tunnel Shade and Marina are sighted and caught by Goth and Throbb, who threaten to eat them unless Shade guides them to Hibernaculum. Shade reluctantly agrees, and Goth tries to tempt him with meat and the promise that Zotz, the Vampyrum Spectrum god, will allow him to grow bigger. Shade is tempted because he is tired of being small, but refuses to eat meat. However, the next day Shade relents and asks for Goth to take him to the jungle in exchange for guiding them to Hibernaculum. Goth accepts, and believes Shade is honest. While out hunting, Shade discovers the leaves Zephyr used to put him to sleep. Secretively, Shade is creating a plan to let him and Marina escape from Goth and Throbb. He chews the leaf he found and pretends to be eating meat that he asked for to drizzle the leaf juice onto the meat so that Goth and Throbb will both fall asleep after eating the drugged meat. While Goth and Throbb are sleeping, Shade then leads Marina outside and they fly in the light of day. Very soon Shade and Marina encounter yet another owl, which Shade scares away by singing a picture of Goth into its head. Ironically Goth and Throbb recover sooner than Shade expected and are following them yet again. Shade and Marina spot a thunderhead and dive straight into it. Goth and Throbb follow, and in the ensuing melee Goth steals Marina's band. This is disastrous for Goth, as the thunder is attracted to his and Throbb's metal bands they stole and subsequently electrocute him and Throbb. Throbb is turned to ashes before Shade and Marina's eyes, but Goth survives for another day. Shade and Marina continue down a river to a waterfall: Ariel's last landmark. There, they discover Hibernaculum, a cave hidden where the waterfall meets the ocean. Shade reunites with the Silverwings, and they also adopt Marina. Shade tells the news that the owls have closed the skies because of Goth and Throbb's murders, and Frieda is relieved that the Silverwings arrived at Hibernaculum just ahead of the news. Frieda then prepares a journey to find out about the truth of the bands and to find Cassiel for Shade's sake. A debate ensues, as Bathsheba refuses to go, considering it too dangerous, but most of the Silverwings, including Chinook, are ready to help Shade. Shade finally sets down to sleep, knowing that the journey is only beginning.
4395803	/m/0b_zs4	The Pale Horseman	Bernard Cornwell	2005-10-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 876 - 878: Uhtred, bored with the peace between Alfred and the Danish king Guthrum, goes off raiding into Cornwall. He comes across a settlement ruled by the British king Peredur, who hires Uhtred and his men to fight an invading Danish force led by Svein of the White Horse. Uhtred and Svein however ally to kill Peredur and pillage his settlement, and Uhtred carries off Peredur's wife, the shadow queen Iseult. A monk named Asser who was at Peredur's court witnesses the betrayal and escapes to Dyfed in Wales. Uhtred and Svein then sail up the coast to Land's End where they part ways. Svein goes to Cynuit, where Ubba was killed previously, and Uhtred to the coast of Wales where he raids a ship laden with treasure. He returns to his estate and pious wife Mildrith, using his hoard of treasure to build a great hall and relieve his debt to the church. The Witan summons Uhtred to an audience with King Alfred in Cippanhamm, where he is accused of using the king's ship to raid the Britons with whom Wessex is at peace based on the testimony of Asser, who has made his way to Alfred's court, and wrongfully accused of attacking the Cynuit abbey on the false testimony of the warrior Steapa Snotor, who is loyal to Uhtred's enemy Odda the Younger. To settle the dispute, a fight to the death is ordered between Uhtred and Steapa. During the duel, Uhtred carries only his sword, Serpent-Breath, whereas Steapa is fully armoured. The duel is cut short when Guthrum's Danes attack and the crowd is scattered. Uhtred, Leofric, and Iseult hide in the fields until nightfall when they enter Cippanhamm and free their friend Eanflæd at the Tornake Tavern. The four of them wander for a few weeks until they reach the swamps of Athelney. As they enter the marsh, Guthrum himself attacks Uhtred. Uhtred makes a fighting escape onto a boat that carries him, Leofric, and another passenger to an island within the swamp. The passenger insists that Uhtred should have left a Danish warrior alive, and turns out to be King Alfred himself. Uthred becomes Alfred's bodyguard and for a few months they hide in the swamp until enough men have joined Alfred's army. They then fight at the Battle of Ethandun and Alfred takes back Wessex, with Uhtred being instrumental in the death of Svein of the White Horse. However, during the battle, Leofric and Iseult are both killed.
4395955	/m/0b_z_t	The Last Enchantment	Mary Stewart	1979-01	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This novel covers the time from when Arthur Pendragon first becomes king to the time Merlin, now getting on in years, begins to lose his powers and becomes a sort of master spy to assist King Arthur as he begins the task of uniting all of Britain. Arthur is now King and hard at work establishing Camelot as the center of government and authority. A few ambitious lords from other parts of Britain have designs on Arthur's throne, and Merlin is kept busy preventing them from doing so. Having unwisely taken Morgause(his half-sister) to his bed as a very young man after his first battle and victory, Arthur is now the father of Mordred. Merlin foresees that Mordred will be the cause of Arthur's death, but doesn't understand how it will happen. He spends a great deal of time traveling in disguise and observing Morgause's scheming and intrigue. Somewhere along the line, Merlin takes on a female apprentice, Niniane. When she first appears she is disguised as a boy, and Merlin initially takes her for the reincarnation of a child he had seen some years before whom he would have chosen as apprentice, but who died unexpectedly. Niniane is not quite as gifted as Merlin himself, but he teaches her everything he knows, and they fall in love despite their age difference. As he gives her the secrets of his psychic abilities and how to control them, he seems to lose them himself. In a depleted, weakened condition, he takes ill and falls into a coma, and is believed to be dead. Niniane has him buried within the crystal cave, where he awakes some time later. He escapes after a few weeks, through a combination of chance luck and ingenious planning, and travels incognito to let Arthur know he is still alive. Niniane takes Merlin's place as the court wizard-seer, while Merlin retires to the crystal cave and lives a quiet and happy life as a hermit, much like his old master in the first volume of the series.
4395999	/m/0b__1l	Shane	Jack Schaefer	1949	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set 19th century Wyoming when it was still open to the Homestead Act of 1862. It is narrated by the homesteader's son Bob. The original unclaimed land was used by a cattle driver named Luke Fletcher before the homestead was claimed by Bob's father, Joe Starrett along with many other homesteaders. Luke Fletcher settled there first, although only so much land could be claimed as a homestead (only 160 acres). Luke Fletcher's herd is at the verge of expanding to the point which the homesteads in the area are proving to be an interference. Shane is the mysterious stranger who comes into the lives of the homesteaders. He is tougher than the farmers who homestead the land. He helps them avoid the intimidation to abandon their farms to Fletcher. With Shane's help the farmers are able to resist Fletcher.
4396362	/m/0b__j9	Planet X	Michael Jan Friedman	1998-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story takes place after the events of Second Contact, which involved the TNG crew being transported to the Marvel Universe, where they aid the X-Men against Kang the Conqueror. However, a mysterious force (later revealed, to the reader, to be the entity Q) causes the X-Men to be dragged into the Star Trek universe (depicted both in the novel and on the final page of Second Contact); though this happens to the X-Men immediately (from their point of view) after parting with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, a noticeable period of time has passed for the crew since returning to their own timeline. The X-Men and Enterprise crew face a problem all too familiar to the Marvel mutants: a planet where some of the population have been spontaneously developing destructive, and often uncontrollable, super-powers, causing them to be quarantined and shunned by their fellow citizens—until, that is, one of the "Transformed" with the power to cause earthquakes escapes and leads his fellow super-powered outcasts in a revolution. Matters worsen when it is discovered that these beings had been genetically engineered by an aggressive alien race as living weapons, and now their creators were coming to collect them by force. When the Enterprise is dispatched by the Federation to assist in investigating the Transformed crisis, they are attacked by a ship belonging to this other race, its weapons proving powerful enough to deplete the Enterprises shields in just two hits. Working with the X-Men, the Enterprise crew manage to disable the ship, Nightcrawler teleporting himself and Data over to the enemy ship through its shields- Data being selected due to his knowledge of alien technology and his inability to get tired ensuring that he would not be negatively affected by Nightcrawler's abilities- and allowing them to shut down the ship's defenses long enough for a team including Worf, Banshee and Archangel to transport over and do further damage. With the ship disabled, the X-Men join the away teams down on the planet, with Storm soon defeating the rogue leader of the Transformed, even as Data and Nightcrawler manage to convince the other Transformed to listen to them by demonstrating how they also differ from those around them but are still willing to trust others. The crisis resolved, Dr. Crusher- aided by a hologram of Professor X created based on information acquired from the mansion's computers during the Enterprises visit to the X-Men's universe- manages to develop a cure for the Transformed before the X-Men are sent back to their reality. It is revealed at the end that this situation had been at least partly caused by Q and Uatu the Watcher, Q having manipulated events to send the X-Men through to the 'Trekverse' to help the Enterprise deal with the Transformed crisis.
4398570	/m/09v4tyg	De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae				 The first part consists of Gildas' explanation for his work and a brief narrative of Roman Britain from its conquest under the principate to Gildas' time: :Concerning her obstinacy, subjection and rebellion, about her second subjection and harsh servitude; concerning religion, of persecution, the holy martyrs, many heresies, of tyrants, of two plundering races, concerning the defense and a further devastation, of a second vengeance and a third devastation, concerning hunger, of the letter to Agitius [usually identified with the patrician Aëtius], of victory, of crimes, of enemies suddenly announced, a memorable plague, a council, an enemy more savage than the first, the subversion of cities, concerning those whose survived, and concerning the final victory of our country that has been granted to our time by the will of God. Part I is particularly notable as the earliest source to mention Aurelius Ambrosius, an important figure of British tradition credited with turning the tide against the Anglo-Saxon conquest. It also contains the earliest mention of the Britons' victory at the Battle of Mons Badonicus. The second part consists of a condemnation of five British kings, and as it is the only contemporary information about them, it is of particular interest to scholars of British history. Gildas swathes the condemnations in allegorical beasts from the Christian Apocalypse and the biblical Book of Daniel, likening the kings to the beasts described there: a lion, a leopard, a bear, and a dragon. The description is repeated in fewer words in the Book of Revelation: :And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. Revelation 13-2 (underlining added) The kings excoriated by Gildas are: * "Constantine the tyrannical whelp of the unclean lioness of Damnonia". * "thou lion's whelp Aurelius Conanus". * "Vortipore ... who like to the spotted leopard ... tyrant of the Demetians". * "Cuneglasse ... thou bear". * "dragon of the island ... maglocune". In the course of his condemnations, Gildas makes passing reference to the other beasts mentioned in the Apocalypse, such as the eagle, serpent, calf, and wolf. The ancient meaning of the allegories is a matter of debate and opinion to the present day. A dissection of the original biblical meaning of the allegories by the sometimes controversial 18th century writer Emanuel Swedenborg is given in the Explanation of his Apocalypse Revealed. A different perspective is given in James Ratton's The Apocalypse of St. John: A Commentary on the Greek Text. The reason for Gildas' disaffection for these individuals is unknown. He was selective in his choice of kings, as he had no comments concerning the kings of the other British kingdoms that were thriving at the time, such as Rheged, Gododdin, Elmet, Pengwern/Powys, or the kingdoms of modern-day southern England. That he chose only the kings associated with one king's pre-eminence (Maglocune, the "dragon") suggests a reason other than his claim of moral outrage over personal depravity. Neither outrage nor a doctrinal dispute would seem to justify beginning the condemnation of the five kings with a personal attack against Constantine's mother (the "unclean lioness"). Maelgwn (Maglocune), King of Gwynedd, receives the most sweeping condemnation and is described almost as a high king over the other kings (the power-giving dragon of the Apocalypse). The Isle of Anglesey was the base of power of the kings of Gwynedd, so describing Maelgwn as the 'dragon of the island' is appropriate. His pre-eminence over other kings is confirmed indirectly in other sources. For example, Maelgwn was a generous contributor to the cause of Christianity throughout Wales, implying a responsibility beyond the boundaries of his own kingdom. He made donations to support Saint Brynach in Dyfed, Saint Cadoc in Gwynllwg, Saint Cybi in Anglesey, Saint Padarn in Ceredigion, and Saint Tydecho in Powys. He is also associated with the foundation of Bangor. Constantine is obscure. His Damnonia is generally identified with Dumnonia, a kingdom in southwestern Britain. A number of later works refer to a king of this name in the area, but there is no contemporary evidence. Additionally, Damnonia may refer to the territory of the Damnonii, a tribe described by Ptolemy as living in what is now southwestern Scotland. The Damnonii were the predecessors to the later kingdom of Alt Clut, which was known to have had a longstanding relationship with Gwynedd and its kings, something not true of Dumnonia. Cuneglasse is the Cynglas (modern Welsh: Cynlas) of the royal genealogies, the son of Owain Whitetooth son of Einion son of Cunedda. He is associated with the southern Gwynedd region of Penllyn, and he was the ancestor of a later King of Gwynedd, Caradog ap Meirion. One of his brothers was Saint Seiriol. Aurelius Conanus, or Aurelius Caninus, cannot be connected to any particular region of Britain. John Edward Lloyd suggests a connection between this king and the degenerate descendants of the great hero Aurelius Ambrosius mentioned previously by Gildas; if this is true his kingdom may have been located somewhere in territory subsequently taken by the Anglo-Saxons. If the form Caninus should be connected with the Cuna(g)nus found in 6th-century writings, the result in the later royal genealogies would be Cynan, a commonly occurring name. However, this is a speculation. Vortiporius (Vortipore, Old Welsh Guortepir) was a king of Demetia (Dyfed) who is well-attested in both Welsh and Irish genealogies, the son of Aircol. Though it is not easily supportable on linguistic grounds, some scholars maintain that he is mentioned on a memorial stone (discovered in 1895) bearing an inscriptions in both Latin and ogham. The Latin inscription reads Memoria Voteporigis protictoris. The ogham inscription consists of a Primitive Irish spelling of the name: Votecorigas. If the man mentioned in both inscriptions was the same as Gildas' Vortiporius, we would expect the Latin and Irish forms to have been spelled *Vorteporigis and *Vortecorigas, respectively; the difference in spelling has led some to suggest that they are not the same person, though it is possible that they were related. The third part begins with the words, "Britain has priests, but they are fools; numerous ministers, but they are shameless; clerics, but they are wily plunderers." Gildas continues his jeremiad against the clergy of his age, but does not explicitly mention any names in this section, and so does not cast any light on the history of the Christian church in this period.
4399108	/m/0c03_d	The Golden Spiders	Rex Stout	1953	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Pete Drossos, a twelve year old from the neighborhood, rings Wolfe's doorbell one evening and interrupts his after dinner coffee. Wolfe has just thrown a tantrum, occasioned by Fritz's choice of herbs to garnish the entree. Archie regards Wolfe's behavior as childish, and so to twit him, Archie admits Pete – who says, "I gotta case." Turning Archie's prank against him, Wolfe invites Pete to tell his story. He observes that Archie, who had been about to leave to watch a billiards match, will now have to stay and take detailed notes concerning Pete's case. Pete has quite a tale. It seems that he was working the wipe racket when a woman driver with a male passenger mouthed an appeal to him: "Help. Get a cop." Pete had the presence of mind to note the time and the car's tag. Later, Pete reflected that the car was a Caddy and the driver was wearing gold earrings, shaped like spiders. So there might be money involved, and he decided to enlist Wolfe's assistance. Hearing all this, Wolfe tells Archie to phone the police, give them the tag number, and suggest a routine check. After Archie phones the precinct, Wolfe lectures Pete at length on the attributes of a successful detective, among which are a robust ego and integrity in the matter of fees. The conference ends when Pete has to return home. The next evening, Sergeant Purley Stebbins appears on the stoop. Admitted to the office, Stebbins wants to know why Archie reported a tag number the night before. Archie wants to know why Stebbins wants to know. Stebbins reveals that a boy named Peter Drossos was struck and killed, two hours earlier, by a Cadillac with that tag number. After Archie reviews Pete's story for Stebbins, Pete's mother rings the doorbell. In the ambulance just prior to his death, Pete asked his mother to give Wolfe the $4.30 he has saved. Embarrassed to keep the money, Wolfe tells Archie to donate it to charity, but Archie suggests that they use it to buy an ad in the Times seeking information about a woman driving a Cadillac and wearing spider earrings. The ad gets two responses. First Inspector Cramer arrives, wanting to know what they're up to. Archie explains, and Cramer then wants to know if they've ever heard of Matthew Birch: there is evidence to indicate that Birch, an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was also struck and killed by the Cadillac that killed Pete. The other response is from a woman named Laura Fromm, a young and wealthy widow. She comes to the brownstone wearing gold earrings shaped like spiders, and wants information about Pete, but she won't say why. She retains Wolfe to provide help and advice, but first she wants to do some investigating herself. Wolfe satisfies himself that she is not the woman who asked Pete to get a cop, accepts her retainer, and warns her to beware – two people have already been murdered. Mrs. Fromm apparently ignores Wolfe's advice, for the next day Wolfe and Archie learn that her body has been found, run over by car. They soon hear from a lawyer named Dennis Horan, counsel for Mrs. Fromm's favorite charity, Assadip. He wants to know about the check that Mrs. Fromm gave Wolfe as a retainer. He starts to warn Wolfe that outstanding checks written by a deceased person do not clear the issuing bank, but Wolfe informs Horan that the check has already been certified, and therefore will clear. Horan wants to know how Wolfe can justify keeping the retainer. Wolfe responds that Horan is not his mentor in propriety and ethics, but that he intends to earn it. Archie heads for the Gazette to get information on Mrs. Fromm's death and on her associates. He learns that a few hours after meeting with Wolfe, she had attended a dinner party at the Horan apartment with several friends and associates, and after she left the party she was not seen until the discovery of her body. Seeking more information about Mrs. Fromm's activities after she left Wolfe's office, Archie scams his way, dressed as a mortician, into the Fromm household to question Jean Estey, Mrs. Fromm's personal secretary. He learns only that Mrs. Fromm had done nothing out of the ordinary, merely dictating some letters before dressing for the dinner party. Wolfe gathers Saul Panzer, Orrie Cather and Fred Durkin to assist in his investigation. It's possible that there is a connection between Mrs. Fromm's death and Assadip, so Saul will pose as a refugee seeking Assadip's assistance, to see if anything unexpected results. Orrie will try to trace the spider earrings worn by the woman Pete saw in the car, and subsequently by Mrs. Fromm. Fred will explore Wolfe's conjecture that Matthew Birch was the passenger Pete saw in the Cadillac. As the 'teers leave the brownstone, two lawyers arrive: Dennis Horan, counsel for Assadip, and James Albert Maddox, personal counsel for Mrs. Fromm — they are at odds over which of them has standing to represent Mrs. Fromm's interests. Maddox wants Wolfe to disgorge the $10,000 retainer that Mrs. Fromm paid him. Maddox implies that he will not pursue the funds if Wolfe will tell him the substance of his conversation with Mrs. Fromm. Wolfe refuses, and Maddox storms out, threatening to replevy the money. With Horan still present, Wolfe telephones the police, reports Maddox's behavior, hints that Maddox tried to bribe him, and asks that the information be given to Inspector Cramer. Horan nearly accuses Wolfe of slander, and then also leaves. A couple of days later, Saul, Orrie and Fred each report progress. Orrie has tracked down the owner of a jewelry store where the spider earrings were once on display. Saul, after successfully posing at Assadip as a displaced person, has been visited by a man who demands money from him; Saul is now following the extortionist. And Fred has made contact with someone who knew Birch, but it sounds like he's in trouble. Archie sends Orrie to help Saul, and then goes to back Fred up. When Archie catches up with Fred, he finds him in the basement of a public garage, relieved of his gun, and tied to a chair. A couple of goons, Egan and Ervin, are getting ready to torture him for information. In a spate of violence that is very rare in the Wolfe series, Archie shoots a gun out of Egan's hand, kicks Ervin in the stomach and slams Egan into a wall. With the goons disabled, Archie unties Fred and goes back up to the garage, where he encounters Saul and Orrie. It turns out that it was Egan who tried to extort money from Saul, and Saul and Orrie have followed him to the garage. It's apparent that there's a blackmail operation going on: Egan carries a notebook filled with hundreds of names, including Leopold Heim, the alias that Saul used at Assadip. It also looks like Birch had something to do with the scheme, and Archie wants more information from Egan. The book's plot continues with a scene even more rare in the series than the gun play: Archie, with help from Saul and Fred, proceeds to torture Egan. Egan's legs are twisted around one another and put under enough stress to make his face go gray. Although it is generally conceded that torture does not elicit dependable information, Archie believes what he hears: that Birch ran the blackmailing racket, that Egan saw Birch with a woman in a Cadillac on the same day that Pete wiped its windshield, and that Egan gets his leads via the phone, from a woman who identifies herself with the catchphrase, "Said a spider to a fly." Then Horan unexpectedly shows up at the garage. Although he claims that Mrs. Fromm, before her murder, had asked him to investigate the activities there, it is clear that Horan has been a participant in the blackmail operation and showed up to help Egan. All involved – Archie, the 'teers, Egan, Ervin and Horan – adjourn to the brownstone for the remainder of the night, to await Cramer's arrival the next morning. Egan is sewn up tight, for his assault on Fred, his attempt to blackmail Saul, and for the notebook with the names of blackmail victims in his possession. To avoid being implicated in Mrs. Fromm's death, he gives up Horan, who used his association with Assadip to obtain the names of recent immigrants, vulnerable people who would be easy to blackmail. Wolfe maneuvers Horan and Egan – with the assistance of the proprietor of a store in Newark – into identifying the other participant in the blackmail ring, the murderer of Pete Drossos, Matthew Birch and Laura Fromm.
4399486	/m/0c04td	Too Many Cooks	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Wolfe accepts an invitation to address Les Quinze Maîtres, an international group of master chefs that is holding its quinquennial meeting in West Virginia. The Kanawha Spa resort (possibly based on the famous actual resort The Greenbrier) is located there, and the current dean of the group, Louis Servan, is the resort's chef de cuisine. Wolfe has been invited by Servan to speak on the subject of Contributions Américaines à la Haute Cuisine. As a courtesy to Wolfe, his oldest friend, Marko Vukcic, has invited Archie to the gathering so that he can accompany Wolfe. Wolfe is siderodromophobic, but suppresses his anxiety enough to take the 14-hour train ride from New York to Kanawha Spa. On the way, Vukcik visits Wolfe's Pullman compartment, to introduce him to Jerome Berin, another member of the group. Berin is the originator of saucisse minuit, a sausage whose closely guarded recipe Wolfe covets. But things do not go smoothly with Berin. It comes out that Berin is hostile to Wolfe because he lives in the US, where Phillip Laszio also lives. Laszio, another member of Les Quinze Maîtres, seems to have made theft a habit. According to Berin, Laszio stole the secret of kidneys mountain style from a friend of Berin's and claimed it as his own. Laszio stole his wife Dina from Marko Vukcic and he disparages Vukcic's roast duck Mr. Richards. He stole his position at New York's Hotel Churchill from Leon Blanc, another of the master chefs. He serves something that he calls saucisse minuit at the Churchill. Berin, in full flood, threatens to kill Laszio. Hoping to acquire Berin's secret, Wolfe adopts with Berin the obsequious line that he uses some years later in an attempt to wheedle a black orchid plant from Lewis Hewitt. Berin regards Wolfe's proposal that he sell the recipe to Wolfe with astonishment and scorn. Disgusted by Wolfe's behavior, Archie leaves the Pullman for the club car, where he finds Berin's beautiful daughter Constanza. Things progress nicely with Constanza until Archie perceives that his acquisitive instinct has been awakened, and he decides to call a halt to the progress. Constanza manages to acquaint herself with another man in the club car by spilling her ginger ale on him. The man is Barry Tolman, the prosecuting attorney for the county where Kanawha Spa is located. Archie leaves the two in the club car to get better acquainted. (Their budding relationship continues as a minor subplot throughout the book.) The next night, at the resort, Archie mingles with the chefs and their guests in a parlor off the dining room and adjacent kitchen. He notices that Laszio does appear to inspire hard feelings. First Rossi comes running into the parlor, carrying a steaming dish and shrieking that it had curdled – Laszio suggests that the eggs might have been old, thus insulting both Rossi and their host. Then he stares with disapproval at his wife, who is dancing with another chef. Blanc deals with Laszio by avoiding him, and Berin does so by glaring at him. That night, after dinner, a taste test takes place. A properly prepared Printemps dressing must contain a variety of seasonings: chervil, tarragon, chives, shallots, and so on. Laszio prepares nine dishes of it, each missing a different ingredient. The masters, and Wolfe, are to taste from each dish and mark down which seasoning is missing from that dish. The tasting takes place in the dining room, with only Laszio and the current taster present. The test begins. After the first five chefs have finished tasting, it's Berin's turn. When he returns from the dining room to the parlor, Vukcic, who is up next, is dancing with Dina. He continues to do so for several minutes, interfering with the progress of the test. Servan finally convinces Vukcic to take his turn. Then, after Vallenko and Rossi, it's Wolfe's turn. After a few minutes, Wolfe calls Archie into the dining room. Archie enters, and Wolfe shows him Laszio's body, hidden behind a room divider with a knife in his back. The authorities are called, including Barry Tolman, the prosecuting attorney who Archie and Constanza met on the train. After hours of inquiry, Tolman decides to arrest Berin, who has already expressed a motive to kill Laszio. Furthermore, all the chefs who preceded Berin in the test saw Laszio alive and well in the dining room, but Vukcic and the other chefs who followed Berin did not. And, at Wolfe's suggestion, Tolman compares the chefs' answers to the taste test. No one other than Berin got more than two of the nine seasonings wrong, but Berin missed seven: Tolman's inference is that the murder left Berin so distraught that he couldn't judge correctly. Meantime, Wolfe has had a visit from Raymond Liggett, Laszio's employer at the Churchill, and Alberto Malfi, Laszio's first assistant. Liggett has read of the murder in New York's morning papers and flown, with Malfi, to West Virginia to consult with Wolfe. Liggett needs to replace Laszio as soon as possible with another culinary luminary – Berin, if at all possible. Wolfe refuses to intercede for Liggett, but the question is rendered moot when Tolman arrests Berin. Wolfe decides to do what he can to find evidence exonerating Berin. He has two reasons: having seen Berin return from the dining room after taking his turn tasting the sauce, he does not believe that Berin could have just committed murder – his demeanor is too calm. And he sees a way to put Berin in his debt. In one of the best known scenes in the series, Wolfe meets with 14 black men, each of them a member of either the kitchen or the wait staff. A witness to the crime's aftermath has told Wolfe that she saw a black man, dressed in the livery worn by the resort's workers, in the dining room at the time that the murder occurred. The man was holding a finger to his lips, hushing another black man who was peering through the door between the dining room and the pantry. Wolfe wants to explore that statement with the kitchen and wait staff. In contrast to the treatment the men receive from the prosecuting attorney and, particularly, the sheriff, Wolfe offers them courtesy and civility. Even that approach is bootless, though, until Wolfe makes an appeal to their sense of equity. He is looking for the man who was seen in the dining room, and says this: :But if you shield him because he is your color, there is a great deal to say. You are rendering your race a serious disservice. You are helping to perpetuate and aggravate the very exclusions which you justly resent. The ideal human agreement is one in which distinctions of race and color and religion are totally disregarded; anyone helping to preserve those distinctions is postponing that ideal; and you are certainly helping to preserve them. This speech so impresses Paul Whipple that he blurts out what he saw in the dining room from his vantage point in the pantry: a white man in blackface, warning him to be silent. This information is sufficient to get Berin released from custody. Having accomplished his objective — to put Berin in his debt – Wolfe turns his attention to the speech he is to give. While rehearsing the speech in his room, however, Wolfe is wounded by a bullet, shot through an open window. The bullet tears his cheek open but does no other damage, and a local doctor is able to stitch the wound. But now Wolfe, enraged, returns his attention to Laszio's murder: clearly, the same person who killed Laszio tried to kill Wolfe, and Wolfe intends to deliver the murderer to Tolman. He initiates further inquiries, carried out mainly by Saul Panzer, and later presides over a dinner for the remaining members of Les Quinze Maîtres composed exclusively of American cuisine. The Maîtres are overwhelmed by the quality of the dishes and Wolfe, in another famous scene, has the chefs responsible brought to the room to be applauded by the diners — all are black men. After the meal and despite the handicap of the facial wound, Wolfe delivers his speech regarding American cuisine, and — to the surprise of the gathered masters — continues by delivering the evidence that will convict Laszio's murderer and Wolfe's assailant. On the train returning to New York, Wolfe shames Berin into disclosing to him the recipe for saucisse minuit.
4399546	/m/0c04yk	Lonestar Legacy				 The books generally follow the life of Jerusalem Ann Hardin and the Hardin Family, who are living on a farm in Arkansas Territory near Arkadelphia in 1831. Whilst out with his sister, Brodie Hardin is confronted by the Brattons, a rival family, when Brodie and the Brattons get into a fight a mysterious stranger called Clay Taliferro (pronounced Tolliver) steps in and saves Brodie's life. Clay ends up staying with the Hardins and helping out on the farm, one day Jerusalem decides to move to Texas and Clay takes them there. The family set up home but soon they are facing Comanche raids and all sorts of problems. Jerusalem and Clay develop a love for each other and eventually marry and have their own children. The books also follow aspects of the Texas Revolution the battles at Goliad and Alamo are described.
4399984	/m/0c05kz	The Dark Room	R. K. Narayan	1938	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The central character of this novel is Savitri, a submissive housewife, who is married to Ramani, an employee of the Engladia Insurance Company. They have three children, Kamala, Sumati and Babu. Savitri is a typical housewife of the India of those times, very much dominated and neglected by her husband. There is a dark room in their house where Savitri retires whenever her husband's harshness seems unbearable to her. Savitri's husband has a torrid affair with a newly recruited employee in his firm. Savitri learns about it and threatens to leave her husband's home. Ramani, in his arrogance, does not pay heed to the threat. But the fire ignited inside Savitri is strong enough to remain steadfast on her decision and leaves after a bitter quarrel. She tries unsuccessfully to commit suicide by drowning in a river. After some twists, typical to Narayan's style, such as taking up a caretaker job in a temple, Savitri ultimately cannot bear living without her children, so comes back, thereby deciding to live with the burden.
4400285	/m/0c0634	The Shell Seekers	Rosamunde Pilcher	1987	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Shifting in time, the novel tells the story of Penelope Keeling, the daughter of unconventional parents (an artist father and his much-younger French wife), examining her past and her relationships with her adult children. When the novel opens, Penelope is in her 60s and has just been discharged from the hospital after what was seemingly a heart attack. Penelope's life from young womanhood to the present is revealed in pieces, from her own point-of-view and those of her children. Much of the forward impetus of the novel involves the work of her father, including a painting called "The Shell Seekers," given to Penelope as a wedding present. Pilcher also wrote a spin off novel to The Shell Seekers called September which was published in 1990.
4402378	/m/0c09_g	Dust to Dust	Tami Hoag		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Andy Fallon, Internal Affairs cop and son of police legend, "Iron" Mike Fallon, is found hanging nude in his bedroom, facing a mirror with the word "sorry" printed on it. Was it a suicide, an erotic accident, or murder? Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska, two of Minneapolis' toughest detectives are told to exploit the case, call it an accident and move on. But Kovac isn't convinced and when Iron Mike is found dead a few days later, another apparent suicide, Kovac and Liska stop listening to the brass, put their careers on the line and start their own investigation. As they begin to dig, they uncover cover ups, a connection to a twenty year old case and a killer who wants to keep the secrets of the past dead and buried.
4404389	/m/0c0fyz	The Child of the Cavern	Jules Verne	1877-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Covering a time span of over ten years, this novel follows the fortunes of the mining community of Aberfoyle near Stirling, Scotland. Receiving a letter from an old colleague, mining engineer James Starr sets off for the old Aberfoyle mine, thought to have been mined out ten years earlier. Starr finds mine overman Simon Ford and his family living in a cottage deep inside the mine; he is astonished to find that Ford has made a discovery of the presence of a large vein of coal. Accompanying Simon Ford are his wife, Madge, and adult son, Harry. From the outset, mysterious and unexplained happenings start to occur around the main characters, attributed initially to goblins and firemaidens. Soon after the discovery of the new vein of coal, the community is revitalised with a whole town growing up around the underground lake called Loch Malcolm. Suspicious of a malevolent force at work, Harry continues his explorations of the cavern system, where down a deep shaft, he discovers a young orphan girl named Nell. Over the course of the next few years Nell is adopted by Simon and Madge but reveals nothing of where she came from, only that she had never been out of the mine. Eventually, when Harry and Nell announce their marriage, the mysterious occurrences come to a head. It becomes clear that all of the happenings have been caused by Silfax, another former employee of the mine, who along with his trained owl has inhabited the mine since its closure.
4405772	/m/0c0jsr	The Doorbell Rang	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mrs. Rachel Bruner inherited a large real estate investment business from her husband, and has run it successfully for some time. She has read The FBI Nobody Knows and thinks it should get a wider distribution than it has so far. Mrs. Bruner has attracted the Bureau's attention by buying 10,000 copies of the book and sending them to persons of influence, including cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, various state legislators, heads of corporations and banks, and so on. Mrs. Bruner believes that, in retaliation, the FBI is following her and her family, that it has tapped her phones, and that it has questioned some of her employees. She blames the Bureau's director, J. Edgar Hoover, and she wants Wolfe to stop him. Wolfe accepts the job, over Archie's objections. Archie believes that the task is an impossible one and that taking it on will make a powerful enemy of the FBI. But Mrs. Bruner has offered a $100,000 retainer, and will pay both expenses and a fee to be determined by Wolfe, contingent on a successful outcome. Wolfe will not return the retainer. To do so would be to imply that he is afraid of what he terms a "bully." Wolfe plans to get evidence of FBI malfeasance and use it to force the FBI to leave Mrs. Bruner alone. At first, Archie pursues various leads with little success, but then Doc Vollmer conveys to Archie a message that calls him to a meeting in a hotel room, and that warns him to "be sure you're loose." Although suspicious of being set up by the FBI, Archie goes to the hotel room, where he finds Inspector Cramer and a carton of milk. Cramer has news, but he doesn't want it known that he's passed it along to Wolfe – hence the secret meeting. The FBI knows by now that Wolfe has accepted Mrs. Bruner's job and it has asked the state government to revoke Wolfe's and Archie's licenses to do business as private investigators. In turn, the state has asked the Police Commissioner for whatever negative information he has on Wolfe, and the Commissioner has asked Cramer for a report. Cramer knows that Wolfe has already annoyed the FBI, but before he writes the report he wants the full picture. Archie surmises that Cramer brought the milk, Archie's beverage of choice, to show that he's not eager to cooperate with the FBI's plan to harass Wolfe. Archie is at first undecided. Normally he would check with Wolfe before opening up to Cramer, but he can't – their phone's surely tapped. Archie's intelligence, guided by experience, tells him to empty the bag for Cramer, and he does so. Then Cramer completes his own agenda by giving Archie some unpublished information about the recent, unsolved murder of Morris Althaus, shot to death in his apartment. Althaus was a free-lance magazine writer and it is known that he had been preparing an article on the FBI. However, neither a draft of an article nor background information was found in his apartment. (Not even the bullet that killed him was found, although evidence indicates that the bullet passed through his chest, hit the wall and fell to the floor.) Furthermore, an eyewitness saw men leaving the scene and got their car's license number, which Cramer says belongs to the FBI. Cramer's inference is that FBI agents entered Althaus' apartment for a search, that they were surprised to find him there, that Althaus threatened them with his own gun and that they shot him. Cramer has tried to get the FBI's cooperation in his investigation, but its special agent in charge in New York, Richard Wragg, stonewalls him. With no evidence and no cooperation from the FBI, Cramer is both blocked and seriously angry. Later, in conference with Wolfe, Archie conjectures that Cramer "… knew we had stung them somehow, and he had a murder he couldn't tag them for, and he decided to hand it to you." Archie and Wolfe agree that, even if they were able to establish that the FBI was responsible for Althaus' death, it wouldn't help them complete their job for Mrs. Bruner. The only leverage they would have would be to trade their silence about the murder for the FBI's agreement to stop harassing Mrs. Bruner. That's not Wolfe's style. So Wolfe chooses to demonstrate instead that the FBI did not kill Althaus. But he still needs leverage, and he decides that the best way to obtain it is to entice the FBI into an illegal entry. Wolfe enlists the help of his old friend Lewis Hewitt, a millionaire orchid fancier with an estate on Long Island. Hewitt will host a dinner of the Ten for Aristology, a group of gourmets (one that also figures in "Poison à la Carte"). The publicity given the newspapers states that Wolfe and Archie will attend and that Fritz will prepare the dinner. Two actors who strongly resemble Wolfe and Archie in superficial physical respects go in their place, thereby giving any FBI agents who might be watching the brownstone the impression that it is unoccupied. In fact it is not: Wolfe and Archie remain hidden in the darkened house; also present are Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather, who were smuggled, along with the actors, into the house the day before. Meantime, Archie, acting on his own, has located evidence pointing to the identity of Althaus' actual murderer. To secure the evidence, though, he has to leave it roughly where he found it. The situation preys on Archie's nerves: the timing of Wolfe's trap forces Archie to wait for a couple of days, and he worries that the murderer will decide to dispose of the evidence permanently. Wolfe's plan to trap the FBI works as intended, and Wolfe catches two of its agents inside his house, with witnesses who can testify that they broke in. He allows the agents to leave, but only after appropriating their credentials, which FBI agents are permitted to display but not to relinquish. When Archie later describes this scene to Inspector Cramer, he sees a rare and broad smile crease the Inspector's face. The credentials provide the leverage Wolfe needs to complete his job for Mrs Bruner. Wragg comes to Wolfe's office. Wolfe engages to leave the credentials in a safe deposit box and take no action against the FBI, if the harassment of Mrs. Bruner, her family and her employees stops. Wragg agrees. And as to the murder, Archie is at last able to tell Cramer that the FBI did not in fact kill Althaus, and where the evidence identifying Althaus' murderer can be found. Wragg then hands over the missing bullet, taken by the agents who searched the apartment, so that Cramer can close the case without having to put any of Wragg's men on the witness stand at a trial. In the final scene, a new visitor arrives at the front door. Though he is not mentioned by name, Archie refers to him as "the big fish," suggesting that J. Edgar Hoover has come in person to retrieve the agents' credentials. Wolfe refuses to let him in, leaving him to keep ringing the doorbell.
4406412	/m/0c0kxp	Take a Thief	Mercedes Lackey		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Skif's parents are dead, and he lives with his horrible uncle, who does not make much of an attempt to take care of him. Because of this, Skif turns to thievery so that he can obtain food. One day, after dressing up like a page and stealing food from Lord Orthallen's table, he hides in the laundry room. There he inadvertently meets with a fellow and more experienced thief, and begs to be trained in the art. The boy gives in, and Skif finds himself living permanently with him, other boys and Bazie (their teacher). Eventually Skif becomes a master at the trade, and is glad for good food and clothes. One night after a successful theft, Skif comes home to find his house in flames and his comrades dead. In need of money and a home, Skif steals a beautiful white horse, only to find out she is a Companion and he is her Chosen. This means that the two are linked for life, and must work together to aid Valdemar. Skif figures that being a Herald is better than nothing, and travels with his new Companion, Cymry, to the Herald's Collegium. There the circumstances of his life improve, and Skif finds friends, books, a comfortable bed, and good education. However, he still feels that one thing is missing from his life: revenge for the lives of his friends and beloved mentor Bazie. In the end Skif helps Herald Alberich, the weaponsmaster, take the criminal down, and earns his name as a hero of Valdemar.
4410079	/m/0c0rw0	The President Vanishes	Rex Stout	1934-09-17	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book concerns the mysterious disappearance of the President of the United States, who was facing a serious political crisis, perhaps even impeachment, over his handling of a foreign situation, namely the impending war (what we would now call World War II). The disappearance of the president seems like a kidnapping, but no ransom is demanded. Although not revealed in detail until near the end, it is fairly apparent from an early stage that the president has staged his own disappearance to counter an impending military coup staged by an upstart army of fascist "grey shirts" allied with a small coterie of industrialists (similar to the Business Plot). The aim of all this is to involve the United States in a European war when none of the combatants has attacked American territory.
4410367	/m/0c0s8f	Bad for Business	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Amy Duncan is a private investigator for the firm of Bonner and Raffray (see The Hand in the Glove for more complete information about Dol Bonner and this company) and the youngest of four women on what is called the "siren squad". Her detective work is based on the theory that most men get careless eventually around pretty women, especially those with chartreuse eyes like hers, and she's been trying to encourage a handsome young man named Leonard Cliff to get careless when she gets knocked down (harmlessly) by a car driven by private investigator Tecumseh Fox. He learns of her assignment, which is to investigate the possibility the company of which Cliff is a vice-president, a large food conglomerate, has been putting quinine into jars of food sold by her uncle's company, Tingley's Tidbits; someone certainly has, and it's bad for business. After a further series of coincidences involving her boss, Cliff and Fox, she is fired and goes to visit her uncle after working hours—she finds him murdered in his office and is promptly knocked unconscious without seeing her assailant. Fox and the police both investigate the company, including its sales manager Sol Fry and production manager G. (for Gwendolyn) Yates, but reserve their suspicions for Tingley's son Phil, who has crackpot ideas about reforming the economic system, and Guthrie Judd, who owns the food conglomerate. Since the quinine problems began, Mr. Tingley has been taking samples from the production line, and the latest sample jar is missing, but so are some documents that relate to the personal lives of Phil Tingley and Guthrie Judd. Fox tracks down the documents and learns Judd's secret, but it brings him no closer to the identity of the murderer. The only thing that does so is remembering a chance remark made by one of the suspects that leads directly to the missing sample jar and the guilty party.
4411125	/m/0c0tr9	Murder in E-Minor	Robert Goldsborough	1986-03-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The final Wolfe book written by Stout, A Family Affair, ends with the disgrace and suicide of one of the Wolfe team. As the new book opens, Wolfe has been in a state of virtual retirement for a while, although a good word from Inspector Cramer has allowed them to remain licensed private investigators in good standing, although inactive. Several of Stout's Wolfe novels made it clear that Wolfe was Montenegrin, and had once been involved in what would today be called terrorist activities against the oppressors of his homeland (in early days of the 20th century, those would be the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Hard as it is to see in the present-day corpulent agoraphobic crime-solving genius in Manhattan, he was once a man of action in Montenegro and the surrounding area. A few of his comrades from that era also survive: the present conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, Milan Stevans (name now anglicized from Milos Stefanović), and Milan's long-estranged wife, Alexandra Adjari, now living in London. Stevans became the guardian of his great-niece Maria Radovich after the death of her parents. The niece appeals to Wolfe to help her solve a problem. Her great-uncle has been receiving threatening notes. He has thrown them away, but she recovered them and has brought them to Wolfe. Since Wolfe is semi-retired, she gives Archie an ancient photograph showing her uncle, Wolfe, and other comrades. Although Maria's uncle saved Wolfe's life in a shootout at Cetinje fifty years earlier, a love triangle also developed between Wolfe, Milos, and Alexandra, with the result that Wolfe and Stefanović have had no contact for many years even though they have been living in the same borough for the past few years. Therefore, it is up to Maria to seek help. Archie slides the photo into the stack of morning mail and is gratified at Wolfe's reaction when he finds it. Wolfe sees Maria and undertakes to try to help, but is skeptical of what he can accomplish without her uncle's cooperation. Furthermore, Maria's own cooperation is cast into doubt as it is clear that she is shielding a person she suspects of having sent the notes. It soon develops that there is conflict between her uncle and Gerald (Jerry) Milner, a young violinist with the orchestra who wants to marry Maria. Wolfe feels honor-bound to accept Maria as a token client because of Milos' action in Cetinje despite the rancor that developed in later years. Wolfe invites long-time press friend/collaborator Lon Cohen from the fictional New York Gazette over for dinner (prepared as always by Fritz Brenner) and serves Cohen's favorite brandy. From Lon, Wolfe learns that in recent years, the New York Symphony has had more than its share of troubles. An idea formed in the mind of the Gazette's music critic and others that the Orchestra had faltered under the previous two music directors. Milan had been brought in to revive the fortunes of the orchestra, but the ultimate result was strife with the players and other members of upper management. Soon, Milan is killed, and Jerry Milner becomes the prime suspect. After this point, the plot explores the characters in the symphony orchestra, from its chairman (who owns the company that makes Wolfe's favorite beer), other musicians who came into conflict with Stevens, and other people connected with the orchestra.
4412193	/m/0c0wyw	Swan Song	Robert R. McCammon	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The president of the United States and his advisers are discussing how the Soviets are building up their forces for a nuclear strike. The relationship between the Soviet and American governments has deteriorated badly. Several months earlier, the war in Afghanistan ended with the Soviets launching mustard gas and other nerve agents at Kabul. India and Pakistan destroy each other in a nuclear war, Iran launches Soviet-supplied nuclear weapons on Iraq, and Soviet and American ships play cat and mouse in the Atlantic. With increased reports of submarines off the west coast of the United States, every base switches to DEFCON 1. In New York City, Sister Creep, a homeless woman suffering from depression ever since her daughter died in a car crash, wanders the subway system. While she is below ground in a tunnel, the bombs begin to fall. She narrowly escapes with her life. A wrestler named Josh Hutchins, popularly dubbed "Black Frankenstein", is traveling to a match in Garden City, Kansas, when his vehicle breaks down at a gas station called PawPaw's. Josh meets a nine-year-old girl named Sue Wanda (Swan) and her mother. Swan's mother ran away with Swan when her husband used the family's money to buy beer. The cornfields around the station catch fire as missiles begin to fall, and Josh realizes that a war has begun. They take shelter in PawPaw's basement. Roland Croninger is a thirteen year old boy who likes to call himself a "King's Knight", a role in a game that he invented himself. His parents take him to Blue Dome Mountain in Idaho, a civilian fallout shelter. Colonel James "Jimbo" Macklin, meanwhile, a Vietnam veteran, controls the Blue Dome. When the missiles begin falling, they begin to damage Blue Dome Mountain. Macklin falls into a deep hole and, while trapped, is reminded of his experiences in Vietnam. In New York City, Sister Creep begins to walk around the remains of a New York ravaged by radioactive thunderstorms and tornadoes. While walking around, she finds a glass ring with jewels encased in the glass. Seeing it, she picks it up, believing it is important. She is surprised to see an undamaged building. Entering, she meets "The Man With The Scarlet Eye". She runs away and the building collapses. Sister is soon met by other survivors. They make their way through the hazardous Holland Tunnel, eventually scrabbling their way to New Jersey. In Blue Dome Mountain, Roland awakens in the cafeteria and is unable to find his mother and father. He is then picked up by one of Macklin's men who leads Roland to Macklin. Macklin is at the bottom of a deep hole. Roland, with a butcher knife and lighter, begins to climb down to Macklin and finds that his arm is stuck in a wall. He is forced to amputate the arm and cauterize it with a smoldering portion of desk found in the room. After Macklin's rescue, the pair must figure out how to break through the area where the food is stored. They find that the entrance to the food stores is blocked by rubble. Macklin oversees as the survivors remove the rubble, which soon collapses on top of the laborers. Simultaneously, Roland is searching through the cafeteria for scraps of food. He is then challenged by one of Colonel Macklin's former men, Schorr. Schorr has gone insane and taken up arms against Macklin, who he believes knew that this would happen and should have prevented it by ensuring the quality of the fallout shelter. Roland slices Schorr's left cheek and murders his two followers. In Kansas, Swan's mother dies, as does PawPaw. Josh discovers a gopher hole and starts to dig their way out. He notices that there was grass growing where Swan slept. He starts to realize that she has special powers. After that they reach the surface. Sister Creep and her party start to head for Pittsburgh, but are interrupted by a man named Doyle Halland. He says he was a priest who prayed for the dying and the dead. Doyle keeps looking at Sister's bag, and she shows him the glass ring. While Sister goes on a short excursion with another survivor, Doyle brutally murders all the other survivors. Sister and her companion return to find Doyle and the corpses. Doyle then says that he had known her all along and had been following her from New York; he was "The Man With the Scarlet Eye." Sister injures Doyle and escapes. Back in the Blue Dome, Colonel Macklin, Roland, and Warner sleep in the gym. Soon Schorr's men start to pound the door while yelling that they need food but Macklin refuses to help. They start throwing Molotov cocktails and begin to break the door open. As they charge for the food, Roland begins to shoot them and one of them grabs his neck. Unknown to Roland the man was his father, and Roland blows off his entire head. A woman steals Roland's gun, but Macklin finds a vent to the outside world. While climbing through the vents, Roland realizes that the woman who stole his weapon was his mother, but he continues on. They reach the surface and begin to walk. Meanwhile, Josh and Swan reach a town called Sullivan, where they meet Leona Skelton. Her husband, Davy, is on his deathbed, sick from radiation poisoning. Leona tells the future with globes and tarot cards, and after Josh falls asleep, she reads Swan's cards. She predicts she is going to face the Devil. When Davy dies, Josh digs a grave for him. Afterwards, they make their way to Matheson, a small town away from Sullivan. On their way they stop at the Jaspin farm. Josh discovers that the people in there were brutally murdered. Meanwhile, Swan goes into the cornfield and finds a horse, which she brings with them. Sister and her last survivor, Artie, begin making their way west. But on the way they are attacked by wolves and are saved by Paul, a mountain man. They follow Paul into the woods to his cabin, where there are more survivors. A few hours in, they keep saying that they should "do it". It turns out that they want to go on the radio, searching for a voice. Sister is shocked and slaps Paul saying that he gets a sick pleasure from it, but he says it keeps them from going crazy. They then decide to leave in Paul's truck. Near Salt Lake, Utah, Colonel Macklin and Roland find Shelia Fontana. She has no burn marks on her. Roland has sex with her, and they make their way toward the Fat Man. In Salt Lake, there are two kinds of people: Dirtwarts and Regulars. Dirtwarts country is where Roland and Colonel Macklin live and the Regulars are people with guns, food, water, and other resources. The Fat Man leads them. They go into Regular country and there they meet the Fat Man at his trailer. They have a deal where they get a place and they give him some drugs found in Shelia's bag. The Fat Man's men come to get the couple out. But one of the men kills the couple's baby when they refuse to go. Soon after this, Macklin soaks his arm in the Salt Lake for it to heal. At the same time, the Fat Man calls Roland to his trailer. But the Fat Man puts the drugs into the soda that Roland drank and attempts to rape him. Roland kills the Fat Man when he burns his face with a kerosene lamp. Soon after, Macklin, Roland, and Shiela take control of the camp. Josh and Swan make it to Matheson and find a supermarket with all the lights on and stocked with food. It turns out to be a trap for the insane people from a nearby asylum. There, Josh must play a game where he must fight through the market to Swan and Leona. He manages to get through to them, but the insane leader decides to kill Swan. Just then, a terrier that was following them attacks him and they escape, but Leona sacrifices herself to allow time for Josh and Swan to escape. Josh and Swan, Mule, and the Terrier (now named Killer) find an abandoned circus train and befriend Rusty, a ex-rodeo rider and clown. Seven years later, people are surviving in small settlements and wandering groups. Some people have been afflicted by tumor-like growths which appear only on the head and grow, merging into a fleshy helmet that limits breathing, speaking, and sight. This is commonly called “Job’s Mask”. A nuclear winter has made America a wasteland; the sun has not come out in years, and there is still radiation in the rain. The ground is poisoned by toxic rain and no plants grow. Macklin and Roland Croninger have forged their people into the “Army of Excellence”. Their goal is to purge the countryside of the disfigured, lead the country in rebuilding and getting revenge on the Russians. The Army of Excellence, or AOE, is over 4,000 strong and is pushing east, capturing and destroying settlements and seizing stockpiles of food, water, and ammunition. Both Macklin and Croninger have Job’s Mask and hide it under bandages. They hear about another army and decimate it. They torture a man named Brother Timothy and find out that the other army was heading to Warwick Mountain in West Virginia. Brother Timothy claims that God sheltered him for a few days on a mountaintop there and he had a silver key, a phrase, and a black box that could destroy the world. While they do not know precisely what that means, the AOE decide to head to West Virginia. Initially devoted to Macklin, Croninger eventually gains dominance over Macklin, calling himself the real “King”, while Macklin is just a figurehead. Sheila Fontaine is still with the AOE as an RL or “Recreation Lady” providing sexual companionship to the upper echelons of the AOE, including Macklin and Croninger. She is tormented by guilt in the deaths of Rudy and the baby that was killed to provide space for her. Sister and Paul are still together and have been crisscrossing the midwest, following her visions. Sister has Job’s Mask. They have dodged the Man with the Scarlet Eye several times and wander, trading for food and supplies. They meet up with a group of boys from an orphanage, led by a 17-year-old boy named Robin Oakes. A doctor uses one of the spikes from the glass ring to successfully operate on Robin’s younger brother. The ring eventually leads the group to a town called Mary’s Rest. Swan, Josh, and Rusty are traveling entertainers. Rusty performs magic and music while Josh wrestles as the “Masked Mephisto” and performs feats of strength. Swan usually hides in the wagon or in a barn when they come to settlements because her Job’s Mask is so extensive that she is blind and uses Crybaby as a walking stick to feel her way around. Josh has Job’s Mask too, but he hides it under his wrestling mask. They stop at a house in the middle of a stripped orchard. All the trees for a distance around are cut down, but one lone tree is left standing. The couple in the house explain that the one tree was a special apple tree that they just didn’t have the heart to cut down. Swan wanders out to the tree, places her hands on it and is shocked to feel life still in the tree. It calls to her unique ability with plants, which has been neglected due to the lack of living plants in the world. She responds and ‘wakes’ the tree up. The next morning, the tree is covered with blossoms. Everyone is amazed. Swan, Josh, and Rusty decide to continue on to the close-by settlement of Mary’s Rest. The Man with the Scarlet Eye has been searching for Sister and her magical glass ring all this time. He finds out about Swan and decides that she is a threat to him. He hears that she is heading to a place called Mary’s Rest and decides to meet her there. At Mary’s Rest, Swan finds the body of a child who was scrabbling in the dirt when he died. Swan finds the corn that the child was trying to plant and decides to honor the child’s memory by finishing what the child started; she starts planting the corn using her special ability to encourage the ground to be fertile and the seeds to grow. She hurts her hands digging in the frozen ground and passes out. Josh finds her and carries her back to the house they are staying in. While she is unconscious, the Man with the Scarlet Eye finds her and almost kills her. Rusty interferes and saves her but is fatally burned. Paul and Sister arrive in town. Sister realizes that the ring has been leading her to Swan. When Swan touches the ring, it blazes with light. She envisions a land covered with plants, orchards, fruit, and flowers, and knows this is her life’s goal. She loses consciousness again, but this time she is very fevered. Swan’s hands heal almost immediately and her Job’s Mask breaks up and falls off, revealing a beautiful woman with fiery red hair. Other people’s Job’s Masks begin falling off, too, and what lies beneath reflects their true souls – most beautiful and strong, but there are some monsters, too. Josh develops a close relationship with a local woman, Glory, and her son Aaron. Despite a prickly start, Swan and Robin begin to fall in love. Aaron figures out how to use the dowsing rod Crybaby and it indicates a source of fresh untainted water. The man with the apple tree drives into town with a truckload of ripe apples and tosses them to a happy crowd. Swan and the residents of Mary’s Rest decide to plant an apple orchard to go along with the cornfield, which sprung up almost overnight and is growing vigorously. The Man with the Scarlet Eye introduces himself as “Friend” to the Army of Excellence and diverts them to Mary’s Rest with promises of clean water and Swan’s ability to grow food. They attack the town. Many residents, including Paul, are killed, and the AOE take Josh, Sister, Swan, Robin, and others captive. Swan and Sister are brought to Macklin, whose Mask has fallen off to reveal a hideous death’s head. Friend attempts to get the location of the glass ring from Sister, but is unable to get past her mental guards. Even under threat of the torture of her friends, Swan refuses to do anything for the AOE. She and Sister are thrown in with Sheila. Robin and Josh are kept as leverage on Swan and the AOE continues towards Warwick Mountain. Several weeks later, the AOE runs out of supplies and a much reduced army arrives at Warwick Mountain. Croninger’s Job’s Mask reveals a twisted horror which he continues to hide under bandages. He shifts his allegiance to Friend. Brother Timothy guides Sister, Swan, Friend, Macklin and Croninger to “God’s” bunker. Sister notices God’s cufflinks and recognizes him as the president, who crashed close by and was brought to the bunker by people who have since died. He has since gone insane. The bunker is revealed to be a location to launch a global final strike of nuclear missiles from satellite platforms. It is powered by hydro-electricity. The president has been waiting for any indication that the world is going to good or evil. Friend sees this as an opportunity to destroy the world and convinces the president to begin the launch sequence. Friend then kills the president, gloats about the situation, reveals his true face, tells Roland "I have always walked alone" and leaves, presumably to find a place to watch the destruction. Sister fights with Croninger, who shoots her and almost shoots Swan before being attacked by a conscience-stricken Macklin. They take each other down. Swan figures out the deactivation sequence and disarms the launch computer. She and Sister are rescued by Josh and Robin, who broke out of captivity shortly after the AOE arrived at Warwick Mountain. They leave the bunker, locking it behind them and throwing away the key. Mortally wounded, Sister notices her shadow and begs to be taken where she can see the sun. Josh, Swan, and Robin take her to a clearing where they watch the end of the nuclear winter as the clouds break up and the sun comes out. Sister tells Swan to work fast to wake up the earth. She then dies. Swan, Josh, and Robin bury her and climb down the mountain. They find the AOE in chaos and they leave in a truck with Sheila and some other people. They come across a farmer and his family planting seeds who offers them hospitality. Josh tells Swan that she needs to start her work here, but he is going ahead to Mary’s Rest. He arrives to the welcoming arms of Glory and Aaron. The story ends with humanity struggling back toward civilization, building settlements, and restoring order. The armies of violence become disarrayed and dissolve away. Swan’s ability to wake up the earth is the stuff of legends. She and Robin eventually make it to Mary’s Rest and have twins named Joshua and Sister. Swan continues her work healing the land, fostering cooperation, and bringing hope to humankind.
4412934	/m/0c0y82	The Man Who Would Be Queen	J. Michael Bailey	2003	{"/m/01p4b_": "Popular science"}	 The Man Who Would Be Queen is divided into three sections: The Boy Who Would Be Princess, The Man He Might Become, and Women Who Once Were Boys. It starts with an anecdote about a child Bailey calls "Danny." Bailey writes of Danny's mother, who has been frustrated by other therapists she has seen about her son's "feminine" behavior. Bailey discusses psychologist and sexologist Kenneth Zucker's work with children whose parents have noticed significant gender-atypical behaviors. Bailey uses the anecdote about Danny to describe gender identity disorder, a label applied to males with significant feminine behaviors and females with significant masculine behaviors, such as cross-dressing. For example, this class includes boys that prefer to play with dolls and regularly identify with female characters in stories or movies, and girls that prefer to play with toy cars and identify with male characters. This section of the book also discusses some case studies of men who were, for varying reasons, reassigned to the female sex shortly after their birth, and emphasizes the fact that, despite this, they tended to exhibit typically male characteristics and often identified as men. The second section deals primarily with gay men, including a suggested link between childhood GID and male homosexuality later in life. Bailey discusses whether homosexuality is a congenitally or possibly even genetically related phenomenon. This discussion includes references to Bailey's studies as well as those of neuroscientist Simon LeVay and geneticist Dean Hamer. He also discusses the behavior of gay men and its stereotypically masculine and feminine qualities. In the third section, Bailey summarizes a taxonomy of transsexual women that was proposed by Ray Blanchard about fifteen years earlier. According to Blanchard, there are two types of transsexual women: one described as an extreme form of male homosexuality, the other being motivated by a sexual interest in having a female body. Bailey also discusses the process by which transition from male to female occurs. On the last page of the book, Bailey meets "Danny", who no longer has gender identity disorder, and is living as a gay man.
4414204	/m/0c0__n	The Setting Sun				 The story revolves around an aristocrat family who lost all of their money after World War II. The family consists of three people - Kazuko, Naoji and their mother. Naoji is a soldier in the South Pacific and is absent throughout much of the beginning of the novel. Kazuko was married once before, but divorced. The story starts out in the family's old house, with Kazuko's mother eating rationed food. Then Kazuko has a flashback to a time when she tried to burn snake eggs, thinking that they were viper eggs. It is revealed that at the time of Kazuko's father's death, there were many snakes present. Therefore, snakes have become ominous in her mother's eyes. After recalling the time Kazuko burned the eggs, she reveals that she feels a snake is growing inside of her own chest. The family eventually moves to the countryside and Kazuko begins to work in the fields. She claims to be growing into a "coarse woman" because of this. Naoji eventually returns, but is addicted to opium and is cruel to his mother and sister. He also goes out every night drinking. Kazuko finds Naoji's "Moonflower Journal," which he wrote when he had narcotic poisoning. It consists of pages upon pages of unconnected gripes about the world, and how people always lie. Kazuko falls for a novelist named Mr. Uehara, and writes three letters to him, claiming to love a man named M.C., while addressing the letter to him with two combinations of M.C. after his name. “My Chekhov” and “My Child”, showing that he was in fact the one she is referring to in the letters. He never responds. Soon after, her mother is diagnosed with tuberculosis. Kazuko finds a black snake on the porch and remembers how her father died when one was present. She yells at it, claiming to have already felt its vengeance, but it doesn’t go away. Her mother eventually passes away. After an outing with Mr. Uehara six years after she met him, she realizes that he also is not in the best health and calls him a victim. That morning, Kazuko finds out that her brother Naoji has committed suicide. In his suicide note, he reveals his reasons for not wanting to live anymore, and claims that humans have the right to choose whether or not they want to live or die. He also tells Kazuko about a woman he was in love with, but had difficulty writing her name. He finally reveals that her name is Suga. His last request is that he be buried in his mother's hemp kimono, something he had wanted to wear the next summer. In the last chapter, Kazuko claims that people keep leaving her. The story ends with a letter to Mr. Uehara. She reveals that she is pregnant, and that she will happily raise the child on her own. She has thrown away the old morality and is embracing a new way of life, very much like what all of Japan was going through. She says that they are "victims of a transitional period", and ends the letter addressing Mr. Uehara once again as M.C., My Comedian.
4414851	/m/0c10yg	Budding Prospects	T. Coraghessan Boyle	1984-05-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Felix Nasmyth, the first person narrator, is a young man who, as he tells readers right at the beginning of the book, has "always been a quitter." Without any hopes for the future, he is persuaded by one of his few friends to take part in a "summer camp"—a secluded rural area in Mendocino County, California-and grow marijuana on a large scale. The illegal business venture seems doomed from the start, but for once Nasmyth decides to prove something to himself and follow through. In the end, after many misadventures, the venture is a failure. At the same time Nasmyth has made the acquaintance of a lovely girl and has fallen in love with her. He ends his narrative on an optimistic note, returning to the girl with plans to "plant a little seed."
4420466	/m/0c1c0j	The Rise of Silas Lapham	William Dean Howells	1885	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with Silas Lapham being interviewed for a newspaper profile, during which he explains his financial success in the mineral paint business. The Lapham family is somewhat self-conscious in their sudden rise on the social ladder and often fumble in their attempts at following etiquette norms. They decide to build a new home in the fashionable Beacon Hill neighborhood, and Lapham spares no expense ensuring it is at the height of fashion. Tom Corey, a young man from a well-respected high-class family, shows an interest in the Lapham girls; Mr. and Mrs. Lapham assume he is attracted to Irene, the beautiful younger daughter. Corey joins the Lapham's paint business in an attempt to find his place in the world, rather than rely on the savings of his father Bromfield Corey. The younger Corey, however, eventually reveals his love for Penelope, the older and more plain-looking daughter with an unusual sense of humor. Though Irene has feelings for Tom Corey, she feels it would be inappropriate to act on her feelings because her sister had assumed their marriage was inevitable. Silas Lapham's former business partner Milton K. Rogers reappears in his life, asking for money for a series of schemes. Mrs. Lapham urges her husband to support the man, whom he had pushed out of the paint company in what was deemed an inappropriate manner. Lapham's dealings with Rogers, however, result in a substantial financial loss. His major asset, the new home on Beacon Street, burns down before its completion. The Laphams are humbly forced to move to their ancestral home in the countryside, where the mineral paint was first developed.
4420564	/m/0c1c82	Black Sun Rising	Celia S. Friedman	1991-11-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As they make their way north, they encounter a man by the name of Gerald Tarrant, who marks himself as the servant of the Hunter, a powerful Adept who lives in the middle of a vortex of Fae. He accompanies them for a time, for unexplained reasons. One night as the party rests at an inn near the Forest, they are accosted by the Soul Eaters responsible for Ciani's current condition. In the immense confusion of the battle, not helped by the mysterious appearance of a hooded woman who utilized the Tidal Fae, Tarrant loses self-control, and accidentally feeds upon the vulnerable Ciani, sapping her of her remaining memories. In a rage, Damien attempts to confront a strangely weakened Tarrant, who flees with Ciani. The two remaining of the party rush off to rescue Ciani from where she must have been taken; the Forest. The Priest and the Sorcerer manage to combat the dread creatures that feed on the Dark Fae swirling around the Forest, a winded Damien and a mortally wounded Senzei stumble upon an immense castle; a castle Damien eventually recognizes to be of Church-design. The Hunter's servants welcome them inside, and ask them to wait for their Master. To the surprise of all, the Hunter is none other than Gerald Tarrant himself; furthermore, Tarrant reveals himself to be the former Neocount of Merentha, and Prophet of the Church for Human Unification on Erna, Damien's church. While Damien buckles under this revelation, Zen succumbs to wounds he sustained from the dark beasts of the Forest, which the Hunter offers to cleanse. As payment, Tarrant demands to be allowed to accompany the three of them on their journey. The Hunter is an insurmountably arrogant man; the assault by the Soul Eaters made him feed upon Ciani, a woman he vowed not to harm. Ironically, part of the forces that protect his existence is his honor, and reneging on any vow he makes could destroy him. He refused to allow anyone to make a fool of him, for which he seeks to find the Master of the Soul Eaters in order to punish him. Damien grows conflicted: on the one hand, the oaths of his Order demand that he do what he can to destroy this evil standing before him, and entering into a pact with him would be the blackest anathema; yet without the Hunter's help, it was very likely that the three of them would not survive to find Ciani's violators. With a heavy heart, he accepts. The group then begin their way to the Rakhlands: a land inhabited by an intelligent and indigenous species of Erna called the Rakh. The Rakh are somewhat feline in appearance, but are very much humanoid, having evolved rapidly from their smaller, cat-like ancestors thanks to the appearance of the humans. They are primarily hostile to humans, given the latter's attempt at eradicating their race some hundreds of years ago. To enter the Rakhlands, the party must cross the Canopy, an odd anomaly in the Fae, where it fluctuates in intensity and power randomly and rapidly. As Gerald Tarrant relies upon the Fae to live, this crossing nearly kills him. While he survived, he is hopelessly weakened, and would require months to heal under normal circumstances. Knowing this, Damien volunteers to feed Tarrant, as the Adept would be useless in his current condition, and the group needed him to survive. Tarrant reluctantly accepts, chafing at the idea of having to rely on another for his continued existence, and establishes a link between them that would allow the Hunter to feed on Damien's fears. The Keeper sends a fae-born creature, Calesta, who uses Senzei's longing to be an Adept as a means to kill him. Calesta traps Tarrant with an image of his murdered wife, and binds him over a subterranean fire, where the Keeper of Souls feeds off his pain. Damien then must make a decision: should he rescue the Hunter, and unleash his evil power over the world again, or should he leave him to his fate and try to defeat the Keeper of Souls without an Adept's power? He ultimately decides to save Tarrant and worry about the consequences later. They defeat the Keeper of Souls by triggering an earthquake in the fault zone upon which the palace is built. As the party flees the Soul Eaters, they end up trapped in a dead-end tunnel. Tarrant collapses the tunnel, forming an escape route for Damien, Ciani, and Hesseth, exposing the Soul Eaters - and himself - to the killing sun. Damien and Ciani return with Hesseth to the rakh village, where Ciani chooses to stay. Damien is ready to head back to the human lands when he receives a surprising visitor: Gerald Tarrant, who had somehow managed to survive his exposure to sunlight. Damien asks the Hunter to join him in his journey to the Eastern Continent of Erna, where he believes the corruption that turned rakh into Soul Eaters originates. Tarrant refuses; he has been badly burned by the sun, and doesn't relish the thought of traveling miles above the earth fae, which cannot be reached through deep water, with the man who has sworn to kill him. But, after a visit from Calesta nearly results in the breaking of an oath he had sworn long ago, the Hunter changes his mind and goes with Damien. Their experiences in the Eastern Continent are documented in the next book, When True Night Falls.
4420688	/m/0c1cgq	When True Night Falls	Celia S. Friedman	1993-10-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In When True Night Falls, Damien, Hesseth, and Tarrant land on the shores of the Eastern Continent where the order of the Church have managed to subdue the unconscious working of the Fae. Consequently the technology of the civilization is far more advanced than the Western Continent as is seen by the casual use of explosive weapons and fireworks. While conversing with various leaders, the group learns that only women are allowed to rise to the highest ranks in the Eastern Church. Many rarely see the Matria or holy women of the Church except for odd snippets of time and it is discovered by the group that the Matria and holy women are in fact rakh disguised with tidal fae. After learning of the corruption starting on the Eastern Continent the group manage to trace it south, to the crystal palace of the Immortal Prince, and his Iezu servant, Calesta. Along the way, they rescue a young girl, Jenseny, whose father was killed and impersonated by the Prince's rakh servants. Jenseny is driven near to madness by events she has seen and her rare ability to see and control tidal fae. While scared and untrustful she manages to form a bond with Hesseth who is unable to bear children as was ritual to the rakh who journey away from their homes to mingle with humans. The Prince makes a deal with Tarrant; in return for immortality, the Hunter must lead Hesseth, Damien, and Jenseny into a trap. But there was one catch to the deal: the Immortal Prince's plans include the corruption of the Church, and the former Prophet is not willing to accept that. Meanwhile Damien, Hesseth and Jenseny cross a seemingly endless desert populated with scraggly white trees and skeletons. Damien is hesitant to cross the desert as the skeletons indicate some form of predator but sees nothing that could possibly pose a true threat. The group decides to cross and settle down for the night under a tree. Damien and Hesseth awaken to find that the tree's roots have begun to grow into their bodies. While at first they cannot move, they both eventually break free of the trees and find that Jenseny's body has also been invaded by the roots. Damien cut away the roots but feared that they might still be harmful to the young girl. The trio keeps traveling without rest to avoid the roots of the trees. They finally find rest on a granite outcropping. That evening when Gerald returns, he kills the roots of the tree that are still inside Jenseny. Damien then Heals the wounds that are left when Gerald is finished. Soon afterwards the group notice that there are large quadrupeds headed towards them with the intent purpose of killing them. In the escape that follows, Hesseth willingly gives up her life to save Jenseny - feeling that Jenseny was much akin to a child of her own and thereby willing to possess the greatest honor in sacrifice. Tarrant joins the group at nightfall and leads Damien and Jenseny into the trap in the Prince's lands but finds a way to smuggle a coldfire-worked knife into Damien's hands. Damien attempts to kill the Prince, but the Prince's soul jumps into the body of his rakh captain. Jenseny finds the coldfire knife, and, hiding it, makes a deal with the Immortal Prince: he can have her body, and with it, her ability to work the tidal fae, a newly evolved human trait. The Prince agrees, but just as he is entering her body, Jenseny weaves a bond between herself and the Prince, and sacrifices herself to kill the Prince. Following the Prince's death, Damien and Gerald Tarrant return north where civil unrest has broken out due to the revealing of the corruption in the Church. The new leader of the Church plans to purge the Eastern Continent which in turn infuriates Tarrant as that was not Tarrant's conception of the Church. However in Tarrant's confrontation with the new leader, Tarrant accidentally shares a "divining" of the possible fall of the Church thereby bringing the new leader to his senses and stopping the slaughter of thousands of innocent lives. By doing so, Tarrant breaks his oath to the Unnamed and endangers his life in the process - a fact Calesta is quick to catch on to.
4421036	/m/0c1c_g	Wing Commander: False Colors	Andrew Keith	1998-12-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The opening chapter centers on Commander Donald Graham, Chief Engineer of a Confederation cruiser, the TCS Juneau. She and her sister ship, the TCS Dover, are hotly engaged with the Kilrathi carrier KIS Karga, a Bhantkara-class super-carrier, whose group has launched a retaliatory strike against the Landreich. The Colonials and "Confees" together have succeeded in destroying most of the battle group, with the Karga retreating towards a backwater star system called Vaku, where the Juneau and Dover catch her. The Dover is lost and the Juneau crippled in weapons and engines, but the Karga is doomed: her shields are knocked out, consigning her crew to death from the Vaku system's bizarre high-level radiation. Admiral Largka Cakg dai Nokhtak of the Karga activates his ship's self-destruct and gives orders to ram the Juneau, hoping for an honorable end. The Juneau is crushed, with her surviving crew evacuating, but the Karga's main computer suffers a massive failure. The Kilrathi survivors commit zu'kara (ritual suicide), save a small team of specialists whom the Admiral evacuates aboard the only available shuttle. Murragh Cakg dai Nokhtak, nephew of the Admiral, is assigned as the group's leader. In the end both groups of survivors head for the only habitable planet of the Vaku system... Back on Earth, Jason "Bear" Bondarevsky, now a retired Commodore of the Terran Confederation Navy, is waiting for an upcoming meeting with Admiral Vance Richards, a well known Confederation Intelligence officer who has recently joined the ranks of the Free Republic of Landreich Navy. He is meeting with Richards to join the Landreich himself. In the company of Richards, Janet "Sparks" McCullough, who has faithfully taken care of Bondarevsky while he recuperated from the wounds suffered when the TCS Coventry was hit during the Behemoth mission, and a young Landreich officer by the name of Aengus Harper, Bondarevsky embarks for his new assignment with the FRLN. Along the way they are joined by Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn who also accepts to serve for the FRLN, albeit he is not fully committing to the Landreich, preferring to remain a Confederation officer. Once the group reaches the capital of the Landreich, they are welcomed by President Max Kruger who wastes no time in enlisting the former Confed officers into a secret effort he has nicknamed "Project Goliath." Tensions are growing between the Landreich and the nearest Kilrathi province, whose governor, Ukar dai Ragark, seems to be ambitious enough to start a new war against humanity. With this in mind, Kruger wants to salvage the derelict hulk of the KIS Karga, which his forces have recently discovered, and refit it for service in the FRLN. This mission is top secret, as Kruger wants to keep it secret from internal opposition who may hamper his attempt to recover the Karga. The Goliath team leaves for Vaku with the FRLS Independence carrier battle group, escorting a factory ship and a tender that will help salvage the Kilrathi carrier in deep space. On board the Independence Bondarevsky meets his former comrades Etienne "Doomsday" Montclair and Kevin "Lone Wolf" Tolwyn (the latter being Independence's Wing Commander) and also discovers that Independence is actually the TCS Tarawa, now recommissioned with the FRLN. In Kilrathi space, Ukar dai Ragark is introducing to his brethren the plan for the renewal of the conflict with the humans. He will unleash his fleet against the Landreich and then move to Earth to achieve what Thrakhath never did: destroy the Confederation. To reach this goal, Ragark has a secret weapon of sorts in Captain Dawx Jhorrad and his ship, the powerful dreadnought KIS Vorgath. To complicate matters, Terran "Peace Commissioner" Clark Williams is plotting alongside a number of other conspirators to restart the conflict: his "Belisarius Group" seeks to gain power through a military coup against the Confed government. They will launch their coup once Belisarius manages to have the Landreich crushed by Ragark's fleet under the civilian government's nose. In the Vaku system, Bondarevsky and the Goliath team investigate the remains of the Karga: the ship is badly damaged and will require a great deal of effort to make space-worthy again. Just as the team discovers some evidence of the battle's survivors, an unidentified ship appears nearby. After a few tense moments, the craft is found to be a Confed shuttle from Juneau, carrying both human and Kilrathi survivors: apparently the two groups managed to cooperate for survival on Vaku's marginally habitable world thanks to the efforts of their leaders, Commander Graham and Murragh. The survivors alert Bondarevsky that the carrier was rigged for explosion and reactivating the ship's computer will likely restart the self-destruct sequence; this convinces Richards and Bondarevsky to scrap the whole refit operation. Admiral Tolwyn doesn't agree and has Kruger back him up, ordering the Karga refitted, no matter the danger. Bondarevsky confronts his old mentor who reveals him the reason behind his decisions: shortly after the Battle of Earth he was approached by Belisarius, but declined to join their ranks. Instead Tolwyn tried to end the war with the Kilrathi as fast as he could, removing Belisarius's only excuse for conspiracy against the civilian government. Tolwyn believes the refitted Karga they will scare Ragark into behaving, keep the Landreich intact, and ruin Belisarius' plans once more. Bondarevsky is still dubious, but with Murragh's help, the Karga's self-destruct sequence is terminated and the refit begins in earnest. Back on Landreich, Commissioner Williams finds out about the "Goliath project" and arranges a raid against the Karga: Zach Banfeld, the leader of the Guild (an association of merchants/pirates), will attack with his makeshift carrier and fighter squadron. They will only disable the tender that provides shielding for the Kilrathi derelict, however, meaning Vaku's radiation, not human hands, will bring an end to the Colonials. Confident that Karga's engines are offline, Banfeld mounts an ambush on the carrier. While his forces succeed in destroying the tender, Karga was, by coincidence, testing its combat shields, and its crew is saved. Landreich fighters repel the Guild forces and the refit goes on. Banfeld then decides to travel to Baka Kar, the capital of Ragark's province, to convince the Kilrathi to attack. Once there, however, he notices the dreadnought KIS Vorgath and flees back to Landreich with the Kilrathi in pursuit. He stumbles upon an FRL battle group, which convinces the Kilrathi to retreat. Badly injured, Banfeld still manages to warn Kruger of the threat from the dreadnought. Kruger needs to take the Vorgath out of action, but Ragark is threatening an attack against a distant outpost of the Landreich and Kruger must stay there to meet the Kilrathi armada. In the end it is decide that the newly refitted Karga, now FRLS Mjollnir, disguised as a returning Kilrathi ship, will have to infiltrate Baka Kar, attack and cripple the Vorgath and escape back to Landreich. Under Tolwyn's command, Mjollnir manages to successfully disable the Vorgath and damage the orbital docking station, ruining Ragark's and Belisaruius's plans in one fell swoop. However Mjollnir and its fighter wing are trapped in the system by the return of Ragark's fleet; the Kilrathi despot has returned to investigate rumors about the returning Karga. All seems lost, but at the very last moment Kruger leads the whole FRLN fleet to Baka Kar; outmaneuvered, Ragark is forced to let the humans retreat safely. In the epilogue, Bondarevsky decides to remain in the FRLN aboard Mjollnir while Tolwyn returns to the Confederation after he has been appointed Chief of the "Strategic Readiness Agency". The Admiral hints at his secret "Black Lance" project, but feels Bondarevsky would not want to be part of it and decides not to tell him the whole truth.
4424682	/m/0c1m72	Dragons' Wrath	Justin Richards		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bernice meets the Time Lord Irving Braxiatel and soon becomes involved in the hunt for a jewel thief who is after a rare artefact.
4425162	/m/0c1n77	A Northern Light	Jennifer Donnelly	2003-04-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A Northern Lights feisty sixteen-year-old narrator Mathilda "Mattie" Gokey has strong morals and is highly intelligent. She lives in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York—the "North Woods" in her words—during 1906. Mattie dreams of going to Barnard College in New York City. While she is smart enough to go, she is not allowed. Her mother died and her brother Lawton left home because of a fight with their father. Later in the story the reader discovers that Lawton thinks his father killed their mother by working her too hard, giving her cancer. There is no one to work on the farm except Mattie and her three younger sisters, Abby, Lou, and Beth. Her family struggles with money, so they can't send a girl with two good working hands to college. Mattie's passion is reading and writing. Every day, she looks up a new word in her dictionary so that she can educate herself and become more articulate. Her best friend, Weaver Smith, is also intelligent and has large aspirations. Weaver is African-American and is as strong in math as Mattie is in literature. Weaver is the one who shows Mattie's writings to their teacher, Mrs. Wilcox, which prompts her to send an application to Barnard for Mattie. The application yields a "full scholarship" to Barnard but when she does the math she knows she can't afford to buy the books and a train ticket, or to leave her father with her three young sisters to run the farm. Mattie soon finds out that Mrs. Wilcox clandestinely writes feminist poetry, which is unwelcome in the world of literature. She writes about the lack of rights for women, which is a sensitive subject at the turn of the century. Many people think poorly of her but she keeps writing, encouraging Mattie to do the same. Mattie doesn't give up completely on going to college. Mother had made her promise to pursue knowledge, and Mattie intends to. She cleans her rich and nosy Aunt Josie's house every week and tries to ask her for money, but Aunt Josie tells Mattie she is being selfish to try and leave the farm and the family, like her brother Lawton. Aunt Josie refuses to give Mattie money. Mattie, a romantic, is jealous of her friend, Minnie's, loving relationship with her husband Jim. Later on in the novel, Mattie helps Minnie give birth to her twins. The novel is written in alternating chapters from the past and present. In the past, Mattie is explains her life on the farm; in the present she works at The Glenmore, a hotel on Big Moose Lake, to earn money during the summer. The body of Grace Brown is found in the lake near the hotel. Earlier that day, Grace had asked Mattie to burn a pack of letters. Mattie didn't have to time to burn them. She is drawn in by the mystery of what they might say, and she begins to read them. They reveal some shocking information about Grace's lover, Chester Gillette, who checked into the hotel as Carl Grahm. Grace was pregnant with Chester's child at the time, so he killed her. Royal Loomis is also a major part of this story. He has recently developed a crush on Mattie, but she can't figure out why. She thinks she is plain, bookish, and too smart for her own good. Even though Mattie knows she likes Royal, she continues to push him away because she doesn't think he likes her for the right reasons. Despite the rejection, it draws Royal even closer. Still young and naive, Royal's continuous advances make Mattie nervous, but she can't resist. She compares Royal to the characters in books she reads, and makes herself think that he is as heroic as the literary characters. He tries to connect with her by giving her a book. Unfortunately he chooses to give her a cookbook, which is a backhanded gift that shows he wants her to be just like other girls. Mattie is more confused than ever with Royal's insincere advances. Unfortunately, all of the mixed feelings that she has for Royal end up being pointless because in the end, he only likes her because he wanted to get a part of her land. Emmie Hubbard is Mattie's lonely, poor, and depressed neighbor who has seven children. Emmie is having an affair with a married man, Mr. Loomis (Royal's father). Royal resents the Hubbards. He thinks that his father treats them better than his own family. After Weaver's house was set on fire by the same people that murdered his father -taking all of his saved money with it- Emmie steps up and invites Weaver's mother to stay with her in her home. Now Emmie has a good, strong-willed woman to clean her up and help her with a business to make money. Weaver's mother has a place to stay where she is needed. In the end, Mattie makes the incredibly difficult choice to leave the North Woods and go to school in New York City. She leaves in the morning, and the only person she tells is Weaver. She writes three letters, one to her father, one to Royal, and one to Weaver's mother. To her father, she leaves two dollars and a promise that she will keep in touch. To Royal she leaves the ring that he gave to her when he proposed. Finally, to Weaver's mother she leaves just enough money to pay off Emmie's taxes. She also gives Weaver money for a train ticket to college. As her closest friend, Weaver does not want her to leave but he understands that she is going to make a better life for herself. Though she feels incredibly guilty for leaving, she can't help but also feel excited, scared, and willing. She has made her peace with Grace because she decided to show the letters to the world so now every one can see the true, tragic story of Grace Brown. She is now ready to leave it behind, and keep her life in the North Woods as a memory.
4425997	/m/0c1pn7	Under Western Eyes	Joseph Conrad	1911	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As in many of Conrad's stories, the first-person narrator is somewhat removed from the action of the story; in this case, it is an old English professor of languages residing in Geneva, who has received the personal record of a young orphaned Russian student named Razumov. Razumov is a studious and career-motivated young man who keeps himself largely aloof from his peers. One day when he returns home, he finds a student acquaintance named Victor Haldin hiding in his apartment. Haldin informs Razumov that he has just committed a political assassination (which Conrad modeled after the real-life assassination of Vyacheslav von Plehve) and evaded the police. This news causes the single-minded Razumov to panic, as he has no sympathy for Haldin's actions and feels that all he has worked for is slipping away. Haldin requests Razumov to contact someone named Ziemianitch, who may be able to help Haldin escape successfully. Razumov is panic-stricken, but after much soul-searching agrees to help Haldin—primarily with the intention of getting him out of his apartment. When Razumov finds Ziemianitch in a drunken stupor and unable to assist Haldin he temporarily snaps. Then, in a panic stricken state of confusion, Razumov proceeds to go to the one person that may be able to assist him, his sponsor at the university. They decide to betray Haldin. Accordingly, they go to the chief of police, General T (whom Conrad modeled after real-life Petersburg police chief Fyodor Trepov). Subsequently a trap is laid for Haldin, and Razumov finds himself taking the first step to becoming a secret agent, although at this time he has no such intention. The narrative then shifts to Geneva where Natalia Haldin, the sister of the executed revolutionary, receives the tragic news via the professor of languages, who has become her tutor and friend and who reads of Victor Haldin's demise in the English newspaper. In his last correspondence to his sister, Victor Haldin mentioned a certain serious young man named Razumov who was kind to him. Nathalie soon learns that Razumov is scheduled to arrive in Switzerland, and she impatiently awaits the arrival of her late brother's final friend. Razumov comes distressed to Geneva, though he is received warmly by the Russian revolutionist community there, who are planning an insurgency in the Baltic regions. No one knows that Razumov betrayed Haldin, and that he has been sent as a secret agent of the Tsarist regime. Though he is supposed to be penetrating the revolutionary colony in order to access its secrets, Razumov is unable to contain his fits of aggression and sneering toward the left-wing leaders, who are puzzled but continue to trust the young man. It is ultimately revealed that the cause of Razumov's outbursts is his love for Natalie Haldin, who he sees on her daily walks. Never having experienced any kind of warmth or affection from another person, he is long unable to recognize the emotion in himself; when he finally does, he reveals the truth to Natalie and to the revolutionaries, and suffers the consequences for his betrayal. (When Conrad began writing, he planned to have Razumov marry Natalie, have a child, and finally confess years later.)
4426099	/m/0c1px5	Acorna's People	Elizabeth Ann Scarborough		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the book, Acorna has finally been reunited with her people - the Linyaari -and has travelled to the new homeworld of her people Narhii - Vhiliinyar to learn about her lost culture. However, she is distinctly different from her people due to her unusual upbringing, and most are not accepting of her. The only people who really befriend her are her aunt, Neeva and her shipmates, and the oldest Linyaari Grandam Naadiina, as well as the young girl named Maati. All of her friends on the ship Balakiire are called away on Acorna's first day on her planet, to investigate the loss of communication with certain off-world Linyaari colonies. This loss of communication soon spreads, and more ships are launched, but all join the missing and soon the fate of her spacefaring friends is placed in Acorna's hands.
4426152	/m/0c1p__	Acorna's World	Elizabeth Ann Scarborough		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Having come to understand her Linyaari past, Acorna has become a member of the crew of the Condor, a salvage ship. The crew consists of the mildly eccentric Captain Becker, the ship's feline first mate RK (otherwise known as Roadkill), and Aari, a Linyaari who is still scarred physically and emotionally from his capture and subsequent torture by the Khleevi. While searching space for salvage, they come across the wreck of a ship with information indicating that the Khleevi are on the move in that sector of space, and may come to the Linyaari homeworld of Narhii-Viliinyar before long. Acorna and her friends must now warn their people and find a way to stop the oncoming Khleevi horde.
4427536	/m/0c1sh2	Stumbling on Happiness	Daniel Gilbert	2006	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Gilbert's central thesis is that, through perception and cognitive biases, people imagine the future poorly, in particular what will make them happy. He argues that imagination fails in three ways: # Imagination tends to add and remove details, but people do not realize that key details may be fabricated or missing from the imagined scenario. # Imagined futures (and pasts) are more like the present than they actually will be (or were). # Imagination fails to realize that things will feel different once they actually happen -- most notably, the psychological immune system will make bad things feel not so bad as they are imagined to feel. The advice Gilbert offers is to use other people's experiences to predict the future, instead of imagining it. It is surprising how similar people are in much of their experiences, he says. He does not expect too many people to heed this advice, as our culture, accompanied by various thinking tendencies, is against this method of decision making. Also, Gilbert covers the topic of 'filling in' or the frequent use of patterns, by the mind, to connect events which we do actually recall with other events we expect or anticipate fit into the expected experience. This 'filling in' is also used by our eyes and optic nerves to remove our blind spot or scotoma, and instead substitute what our mind expects to be present in the blind spot. This accessible book is written for the layperson, generally avoiding abstruse terminology and explaining common quirks of reasoning through the simple experiments that exploited them (this excludes the term "super-replicator").
4433706	/m/0c24c4	The Case of the Late Pig	Margery Allingham	1937	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 As Lugg is reading aloud the obituaries one morning, he comes across one for an old school nemesis of Campion. Remarkably, an anonymous letter inviting Campion to the funeral has also appeared in the morning post. R.I. “Pig” Peters is dead. So says the doctor that treated him. Five months later, Campion receives a panicked call from a friend, something about a murder. Campion drives down to the friend’s home where her father reveals the most assuredly dead body of R.I. “Pig” Peters, his head caved in no more than 12 hours earlier. Amazingly enough, some of the visitors from Peters' first funeral also appear, along with some not-so-grieving acquaintances of the late Pig. The little village is becoming very crowded. Now begins Campion’s search, which leads to a missing body, a grisly scarecrow and one too many beers for Lugg before he discovers the madman that planned more than a few murders. This is the only story told from Campion's point-of-view.
4433774	/m/0c24jc	The 13 Clocks	James Thurber	1950-01-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The evil Duke of Coffin Castle lives with his good and beautiful niece, the princess Saralinda. A few days before Saralinda's twenty-first birthday, Prince Zorn of Zorna arrives in the town disguised as a minstrel named Xingu. After meeting an enigmatic character known as the Golux, who declares his intention to help Zorn rescue the Princess, Zorn gets himself arrested and imprisoned. The Duke gives Zorn the task of finding a thousand jewels. However, the Duke was aware of Zorn's identity all along; therefore, to prevent Zorn from simply traveling to his father's kingdom and back again, the Duke only allows him 99 hours to complete the task. To complicate things further, the Duke commands that when Zorn returns, the thirteen irrevocably frozen clocks in the castle must all be striking five. Zorn and the Golux travel to the home of Hagga, a woman with the ability to weep jewels, only to discover that she was made to weep so much that she is no longer able to cry. As the realization that they have failed sets in, Hagga begins to laugh inexplicably until she cries, producing an abundance of jewels. The Golux counts out a thousand, and they return to the castle after thanking her. At the castle, the Duke reveals to his servant Hark that he kidnapped Saralinda as a child and that she is not actually his niece. Under the conditions of a spell cast on the Duke as he fled with the Princess, the Duke may not marry Saralinda until she is twenty-one; furthermore, the spell prophecies that the Duke will be destroyed and Saralinda saved by a man whose name begins with x and doesn't. Hark reminds the confident Duke that Zorn was called Xingu while he was posing as a minstrel, and therefore he is the man mentioned in the spell. While the furious Duke and his men are fighting Zorn, the Golux and the Princess sneak throughout the castle to each of the thirteen clocks, using Saralinda's beauty and warmth to start them once more. Presented with the thousand jewels and the sound of the thirteen clocks striking, the Duke is forced to admit defeat. Zorn and the Princess happily depart to the distant shores of ever after. A fortnight later, while the Duke is gloating over his jewels, they melt back into Hagga's tears. The angry Duke is then confronted by a nightmarish creature called the Todal, sent by the devil to punish him. Faced with his failure and the loss of his jewels, the wrathful Duke attacks the Todal. The story ends with Hark entering an empty room to find the Duke's sword on the floor and a puddle of tears dripping from the table; he can just make out the sound of someone laughing.
4433885	/m/0c24sn	Bones of the Moon	Jonathan Carroll	1987-05-31	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Living in New York, Cullen James's best wishes were being fulfilled. Her best friend marries her; she travels in Europe; she has a baby daughter. But strange dreams begin to intrude. By night, in dreams, she begins to visit a strange land called Rondua, where the sea is full of fish with mysterious names, where she and a huge, behatted dog escort a young boy named Pepsi across places such as the Northern Stroke, the Mountains of Coin and Brick, the Plain of Forgotten Machines. As her days become more disjointed and episodic, her dreams grow in intensity, and she learns more about the adversary she and her dream friends race against, searching for the last of the Bones of the Moon. Bit by bit, the events in Rondua start affecting her life on earth, intersecting in unpleasant, then frightening ways.
4435553	/m/0c2730	Two Years' Vacation	Jules Verne	1888	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story starts with a group of schoolboys aged between eight and Fourteen on board a schooner moored at Auckland, New Zealand, and preparing to set off on a six-week vacation. With the exception of the oldest boy Gordon, an American, and Briant and Jack, two French brothers, all the boys are British. While the schooner's crew are ashore, the moorings are cast off under unknown circumstances and the ship drifts to sea, where it is caught by a storm. Twenty-two days later, the boys find themselves cast upon the shore of an uncharted island, which they name "Chairman Island." They go on many adventures and even catch wild animals while trying to survive. They remain there for the next two years until a passing ship sinks in the close vicinity of the island. The ship had been taken over by mutineers, intent on trafficking weapons, alcohol, and drugs. With the aid of two of the surviving members of the original crew, the boys are able to defeat the mutineers and make their escape from the island, which they find out is close to the Chilean coast (Hanover-Island located at 50°56’ S, 74°47’ W). The struggles for survival and dominance amongst the boys were to be echoed in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, written some 66 years later.
4438055	/m/0c2d6w	Tau Zero	Poul Anderson	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Tau Zero follows the crew of the starship Leonora Christine, a colonization vessel crewed by 25 men and 25 women aiming to reach a distant star system. The ship is powered by a Bussard ramjet, which was proposed shortly before Anderson wrote the book. This engine is not capable of faster-than-light travel, and so the voyage is subject to relativity and time dilation: the crew will spend 5 years on board, but 33 years will pass on the Earth before they arrive at their destination. The ship accelerates during the first half of the journey and decelerates during the second. However, it collides with a nebula before the half-way point, damaging the deceleration module. Since the engines must be kept running to provide particle/radiation shielding, and because of the hard radiation produced by the engines, the crew can neither repair the decelerator nor turn off the accelerator. The text consists of narrative prose interspersed with paragraphs in which Anderson explains the scientific basis of relativity, time dilation, the ship's mechanics and details of the cosmos outside. As there is no hope of completing the original mission, the crew increase acceleration even more; they need to leave the Milky Way altogether in order to reach a region where the local gas density, and the concomitant radiation hazard, are low enough that they can repair the decelerator. The ship's ever-increasing velocity brings the time dilation to extreme levels and takes the crew further and further away from any possibility of contact with humanity. The initial plan is to locate and land on a suitable planet in another galaxy. Millions of years would have passed since their departure, and in any case they would be millions of light years from Earth. However, they find the vacuum of intergalactic space insufficient for safety; they must instead travel to a region between superclusters of galaxies to make repairs. They do, but the extremely thinly spread matter is then too dispersed to use for deceleration. They must wait, flying free but essentially without the ability to change course, until they randomly encounter enough galactic matter to try to decelerate enough to search for habitable planets. To make the waiting time shorter, they continue accelerating through the first several galaxies they encounter, more and more closely approaching the speed of light with tau decreasing closer and closer to zero. The storyline is similar to that of the long poem and later opera Aniara, in which the ship was unable to stop and doomed to travel endlessly, but Tau Zero has a more upbeat ending (albeit one that does not conform to modern thinking on the evolution of the universe). By the time the ship is repaired, tau has decreased to less than a billionth and the crew experience "billion-year cycles which passed as moments". But by the time that they are ready to attempt to find a future home, they realize that the universe is approaching a big crunch. The universe collapses into a cosmic egg (which the starship survives because there is still enough uncondensed hydrogen for maneuvering, outside the monobloc) and then explodes in a new big bang. The voyagers then decelerate, examining potential star systems. They eventually disembark at a planet with a habitat suitably similar to Earth, on which the vegetation has a vivid bluish-green color.
4439345	/m/0c2gx1	Big Planet	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Big Planet had been colonized hundreds of years prior to the start of the novel by misfits, faddists, cultists and anti-government advocates from Earth. It devolved into a large number of technologically backward societies, many of them ruled by petty tyrants and prey to internecine warfare. Investigators from Earth, headed by protagonist Claude Glystra, arrive to start putting things right – to stop the importation of arms and halt Big Planet's slave trade – only to have their starship sabotaged. It crashes near a quaint village called Jubilith, and Glystra, one of the survivors, awakens to the jewel-bright morning light of a flowery mountain slope--with a view "vast beyond Earthly conception." Unfortunately, Jubilith is near the territory of Charley Lysidder, the Bajarnum of Beaujolais, one of the worst and most ambitious of tyrants. The survivors attempt to reach the only safe spot on Big Planet, Earth Enclave, forty thousand miles away. Already at odds with each other, the dwindling team begins to revert to the social level of the rest of Big Planet as Lysidder tries to pick them off. Among the many societies benign or bizarre that Glystra and his companions encounter along the wind-driven monoline (their version of the yellow brick road), is the quasi-utopian society of Kirstendale. At first, it appears to be based on snobbish principles, but an odd twist reveals it to be surprisingly egalitarian.
4440621	/m/0c2k5h	A Long Way from Chicago	Richard Peck	1998-09-01	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The stories involve several vacations. Two children, Joey and Mary Alice Dowdel, spend time every summer with their resilient grandmother in rural Illinois. "Shotgun Cheatham's Last Night Above Ground - 1929" (originally printed in Twelve Shots: Stories About Guns, 1997). The first summer the children go to their grandmother's house alone a reporter is doing a report on a resident of the town who has just died, Shotgun Cheatham. Grandma holds an open house for Shotgun and lies to the reporter by saying he was a war hero. Grandma's enemy, Effie Wilcox, comes too but then the coffin begins to move. Ms. Wilcox and the reporter run out, but it turns out that it was the cat who moved the coffin. "The Mouse in the Milk - 1930." The next summer, the Cowgill boys are tormenting the town and blow up Grandma's mailbox. Grandma tells one of the boys she won't be home for her daily milk delivery, knowing the boys would try to steal something from her. That night she turns the lights off and waits for them to come and steal; she catches them and has Joey get their parents. Grandma tells Mr. Cowgill that if his boys won't stop she'll tell everyone that she found a mouse in her milk, running his business to the ground. "A One-Woman Crime Wave - 1931". Grandma uses fish traps (which are illegal) to get catfish from the lake while using the sheriff's boat (which she stole) to feed to drifters. "The Day of Judgment - 1932". Grandma's gooseberry pie goes up against Rupert Pennypacker's for her town's honor and a flight in a biplane. Grandma switches the nameplates on the pies at the last minute. Rupert Pennypacker wins the contest with Grandma's pie, but Grandma still finds a way to get Joey a ride. "The Phantom Brakeman - 1933". Mismatched families of local lovers converge on Grandma's house and she uses an old ghost story to aid them. Vandalia Eubanks and Junior Stubbs run away together with the help of "The Phantom Brakeman" (Joey) and Grandma. "Things with Wings - 1934". While Joey is having a love affair with a Hudson Terraplane 8, Grandma is finding a way to force banker Mr. Weidenbach to return Mrs. Effie Wilcox to her foreclosed home with rumors of Abe Lincoln. "Centennial Summer - 1935". Grandma has a showdown with Mrs. Weidenbach about whose family has the most talent and the county's oldest living veteran. "The Troop Train - 1942". Joey joins the army air corps because he loves airplanes. He sends a telegram to Grandma telling her that he was passing through her town. When the train comes by, Joey sees Grandma's house lit up and Grandma herself waving to each and every cart passing by, hoping that he would see her, too. Joey waves back and goes off to fight in World War II.
4442073	/m/0c2mfg	Expendable	James Alan Gardner	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The year is 2452. Festina Ramos is an Explorer, assigned to the Technocracy Fleet ship Jacaranda. Her specific physical "qualification" for her job is a large port-wine birthmark on her right cheek. She and her fellow Explorer and partner Yarrun Derigha (who is missing half his jaw) are the two Explorers assigned to the ship; they lead the isolated existence typical of Explorers, isolated from the healthy and attractive members of the fleet as from the "beautiful people" of the larger society. Then Festina and Yarrun are plunged into a crisis: they are assigned to escort a Fleet admiral named Chee to planet Melaquin. Melaquin is the great question mark in the Technocracy's domain: for forty years Explorers have landed there, only to lose contact and disappear, cause unknown. The High Council has now acquired the habit of sending its troublesome admirals to Melaquin in the company of a team of Explorers, to rid itself of embarrassments without scandal or controversy. The fact that Explorers are lost in the process is accepted&mdash;since Explorers are expendable. Admiral Chee is precisely the kind of embarrassment the high council wants to dispose of, quickly and quietly. Well beyond the century mark in age, when doses of Youthboost are no longer effective in prolonging his life and health, he is "clearly unstable, possibly senile"&mdash;or else "suffering from Don't-give-a-shit-itis". Though they try to avoid the duty, and then concoct a plan of escape from their apparent sentence to oblivion, Festina and Yarrun must accompany Chee to the surface of Melaqiuin. There, things go quickly and badly wrong: Festina accidentally kills Yarrun while attempting an emergency tracheotomy, Chee dies of a stroke, and Festina is cut off from her ship, alone on Melaquin. The planet reveals itself to be amazingly Earth-like&mdash;so much so that it is clearly not natural, but a result of terraforming and genetic modification. Festina quickly meets one of the inhabitants of the planet&mdash;"A nude woman made of glass...like an Art Deco figurine." Their meeting does not go as the Explorer corps intends for first-contact situations. Eventually, though, the two establish contact; the glass woman introduces herself: "My name is Oar. An oar is an implement used to propel boats." She has learned English from the previous Explorers who came to the planet. A product of sophisticated genetic engineering, she is human, but flawlessly beautiful and possessing enhanced strength and intelligence; yet she has the emotional maturity of a spoiled child. Through Oar, Festina gains contact with the dying subsurface civilization that lingers on Melaquin, begins to unravel the mysteries of the planet, and pursues the trail of the Explorers who came before her. Now "friends", Festina and Oar set off in search of the other Explorers and the truth behind Admiral Chee and the high council's involvement with Melaquin. The two find the Explorers building a spaceship; if the Explorers can get to interstellar space and send a distress call, the rules of the League may mandate that they be rescued and returned to society&mdash;if the Fleet does not stop them first. In due course Festina meets an old flame (a cross between a schoolgirl crush and the love of her life), who reveals himself to be a profound danger instead of a welcome ally. Oar sacrifices herself for her friend, and Festina manages to return to the Fleet and the Technocracy in a way she could never have anticipated.
4445142	/m/0c2s_1	The Hedgehog and the Fox	Isaiah Berlin	1953		 Berlin expands upon this idea to divide writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (examples given include Plato, Lucretius, Dante, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust) and foxes who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include Herodotus, Aristotle, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce, Anderson). Turning to Tolstoy, Berlin contends that at first glance, Tolstoy escapes definition into one of these two groups. He postulates, rather, that while Tolstoy's talents are those of a fox, his beliefs are that one ought to be a hedgehog, and thus Tolstoy's own voluminous assessments of his own work are misleading. Berlin goes on to use this idea of Tolstoy as a basis for an analysis of the theory of history that Tolstoy presents in his novel War and Peace. The essay has been published separately and as part of the collection Russian Thinkers, edited by Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly.
4447261	/m/0c2ytm	The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin	Beatrix Potter	1903-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Squirrel Nutkin, his brother Twinkleberry, and their many cousins sail to Owl Island on little rafts they have constructed of twigs. They offer resident owl Old Brown a gift and ask his permission to do their nut-collecting on his island. Nutkin however dances about impertinently singing a silly riddle. Old Brown pays no attention to Nutkin, but permits the squirrels to go about their work. Every day for six days, the squirrels offer gifts to Old Brown, and every day as well, Nutkin taunts the owl with another sing-song riddle. Eventually, Nutkin annoys Old Brown once too often. The owl seizes Nutkin and tries to skin him alive. Nutkin escapes, but not without losing most of his tail.
4450814	/m/0c33q8	Mr. Mixie Dough			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is about Mr. Mixie Dough, who "lives away up in the sky in a place called "Behind-The-Clouds-Town". But unhappiness creeps over the town because the King Misty "cannot get a Happiness cake for his little boy's birthday." Mr. Mixie Dough, along with all of the other bakers, compete in making a "Happiness birthday cake" for the King's son's birthday. Many bakers offer their cakes to the King only to find that he is not happy with the result. That is until Mr. Mixie Dough presents his cake. The King smiled after the very first bite and announced "SIR Mixie Dough, the baker man... shall be made Royal Baker to the King and shall bake us a Happiness cake every day." There are short sing-songs throughout the story and a recipe for the Happiness Cake. Much of the book is made up of full-page drawings of colorful Goofs preparing and baking the Happiness cake for King Misty. Pictographs appear between words (such as a drawing of clouds after the word clouds; a silhouette of Mr. Mixie Dough). There is no UPC, nor is there an ISBN printed on the book. Mr. Mixie Dough is now a rare collector's item that has been sold for $100-$750, depending on condition.
4451267	/m/0c34ct	Twilight	Stephenie Meyer	2005-10-05	{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Isabella "Bella" Swan moves from sunny Phoenix, Arizona to rainy Forks, Washington to live with her father, Charlie, while her mother, Renée, travels with her new husband, Phil Dwyer, a minor league baseball player. Bella attracts much attention at her new school and is quickly befriended by several students. Much to her dismay, several boys compete for shy Bella's attention. When Bella is seated next to Edward Cullen in class on her first day of school, Edward seems utterly repulsed by her. He disappears for a few days, but warms up to Bella upon his return; their newfound relationship reaches a climax when Bella is nearly crushed by a classmate's van in the school parking lot. Edward saves Bella when he instantaneously appears next to her and stops the van with his bare hands. Bella becomes determined to discover how Edward saved her life, and constantly pesters him with questions. After a family friend, Jacob Black, tells her the local tribal legends, Bella concludes that Edward and his family are vampires who drink animal blood rather than human. Edward confesses that he initially avoided Bella because the scent of her blood was too desirable to him. Over time, Edward and Bella fall in love. Their relationship is affected when a nomadic vampire coven arrives in Forks. James, a tracker vampire who is intrigued by the Cullens' relationship with a human, wants to hunt Bella for sport. The Cullens attempt to distract James by separating Bella and Edward, and send Bella to hide in a hotel in Phoenix. There, Bella receives a phone call from James, who claims to be holding her mother captive. When Bella surrenders herself, James attacks her. Before James can kill her, Edward, along with the other Cullens, rescues her and destroy James, but not before James bites Bella's hand. Edward successfully sucks the poison from her bloodstream and prevents her from becoming a vampire, after which she is taken to a hospital. Upon returning to Forks, Bella and Edward attend their school prom, and Bella expresses her desire to become a vampire, but Edward refuses.
4451714	/m/0c3530	Halo: Ghosts of Onyx	Eric S. Nylund		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins with a group of SPARTAN-IIIs being deployed to a Covenant fleet refueling depot in the year 2545. The soldiers destroy the facility, but all save two of the three hundred SPARTANs are killed. The narrative then moves back to 2531, where SPARTAN-IIs are deployed against human insurrectionists; though the team is almost captured, the timely intervention of Kurt-051 allows the team to complete their mission. Meanwhile, Colonel James Ackerson meets with the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). Ackerson announces his plan to create a new breed of SPARTANs which retains much of the supersoldiers' effectiveness, without the high price tag of the SPARTAN-II program. These SPARTAN-IIIs are trained by Franklin Mendez, as well as Kurt-051. With his death staged by ONI, Kurt-051 is placed in full charge of SPARTAN-III training, under the name and rank of Lieutenant Kurt Ambrose. The SPARTAN-III project is carried out on a secret ONI planet named Onyx, where there is also an archaeological excavation of ancient Forerunner ruins in an area known as "Zone 67". When a company of SPARTAN-IIIs goes missing in Zone 67, it is declared off-limits to all personnel. Like the SPARTAN-IIs, the SPARTAN-III candidates undergo radical cybernetic and biological enhancements and are outfitted with special armor to increase their abilities. The first SPARTAN-III company proves highly successful, but is wiped out when ordered to destroy a Covenant orbital shipyard in 2537. Shaken by the massacre of his troops, Kurt improves the training regimen for his next batch of SPARTAN-III recruits, but they too are all killed in action so Kurt, in an effort to reduce casualties, institutes illegal biological modifications on the third company of SPARTANs. While conducting a training exercise near Zone 67, UNSC personnel find themselves under attack by alien robotic drones. Meanwhile, Dr. Catherine Halsey, the SPARTAN-II project's creator, along with the SPARTAN Kelly-087 arrive in the Onyx system. As they near the surface of the planet they are attacked by more robot drones and crash, meeting up with the human survivors of the attacks. Halsey identifies the robotic drones as Forerunner Sentinels from the artificial intelligence Cortana's logs of the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. Halsey sends a message back to Earth, which is under attack by Covenant; in response, Lord Hood sends the SPARTAN-IIs Fred-104, Linda-058, and Will-043 to Onyx. At the Forerunner ringworld Delta Halo, the Covenant are in the midst of a war. Elites intercept Halsey's distress signal and learn of the existence of Onyx and its Forerunner technology. Both the Covenant and the UNSC forces which arrive at Onyx are attacked by Sentinels. The entire UNSC fleet at Onyx is destroyed by the ensuing battle, save for one stealth ship, the Dusk, which stays hidden, observing the events. The remaining human forces on Onyx discover a Forerunner city being rapidly uncovered by the Sentinels, and are guided into a massive sphere by Dr. Halsey. She determines that the entire planet is actually a "Shield World" constructed by the Forerunners to protect themselves from the firing of the Halo ringworlds, which are designed to eradicate all sentient life. Fighting off Covenant pursuers, the humans discover an entrance leading to a Dyson Sphere. Kurt remains behind in order to detonate two nuclear weapons to stop the Covenant from following the humans into the Sphere. Hiding at a distance from Onyx, the Dusk watches as Onyx's surface rips apart to reveal that the entire world is constructed of Sentinels, all connected together to provide an impenetrable defense around the Dyson Sphere at the heart of the planet. The Sentinels annihilate the remaining Covenant fleet vessels orbiting the planet and the Prowler retreats. Fred, now inside the Dyson Sphere, takes command of the survivors and orders everyone to search for method of escape.
4455728	/m/0c3ds_	Manalive	G. K. Chesterton	1912	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 This is a book in two parts. The first, “The Enigma of Innocent Smith,” concerns the arrival of a new tenant at Beacon House, a London boarding establishment. Like Mary Poppins, this man (who is tentatively identified by lodger Arthur Inglewood as an ex-schoolmate named Innocent Smith) is accompanied by a great wind, and he breathes new life into the household with his games and antics. During his first day in residence the eccentric Smith creates the High Court of Beacon; arranges to elope with Mary Gray, paid companion to heiress Rosamund Hunt; inspires Inglewood to declare his love for Diana Duke, the landlady’s niece; and prompts a reconciliation between jaded journalist Michael Moon and Rosamund. However, when the household is at its happiest two doctors appear with awful news: Smith is wanted on charges of burglary, desertion of a spouse, polygamy, and attempted murder. The fact that Smith almost immediately fires several shots from a revolver at Inglewood’s friend Dr. Herbert Warner seems to confirm the worst. Before Smith can be taken to a jail or an asylum, Michael Moon declares that the case falls under the purview of the High Court of Beacon and suggests that the household investigate the matter before involving the authorities or the press. The second part, “The Explanations of Innocent Smith,” follows the trial. The prosecution consists of Moses Gould, a merrily cynical Jew who lives at Beacon House and considers Smith at best a fool and at worst a scoundrel, and Dr. Cyrus Pym, an American criminal specialist called in by Dr. Warner; Michael Moon and Arthur Inglewood act for the defense. The evidence consists of correspondence from people who witnessed or participated in the exploits that led to the charges against Smith. In every case, the defendant is revealed to be, as his first name states, innocent. He fires bullets near people to make them value life; the house he breaks into is his own; he travels around the world only to return with renewed appreciation for his house and family; and the women he absconded with are actually his wife Mary, posing as a spinster under different aliases so they may repeatedly re-enact their courtship. Smith is, needless to say, acquitted on all charges.
4456060	/m/0c3fct	Marius the Epicurean	Walter Pater	1885	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Marius, a sensitive only child of a patrician family, growing up near Luna in rural Etruria, is impressed by the traditions and rituals of the ancestral religion of the Lares, by his natural surroundings, and by a boyhood visit to a sanctuary of Aesculapius. His childhood ends with the death of his mother (he had early lost his father) and with his departure for boarding school in Pisae. As a youth he is befriended by and falls under the influence of a brilliant, hedonistic older boy, Flavianus, who awakens in him a love of literature (the two read with delight the story of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius, and Pater in due course makes Flavian, who is "an ardent student of words, of the literary art", the author of the Pervigilium Veneris). Flavian falls ill during the Festival of Isis and Marius tends him during his long death-agony (end of 'Part the First'). Grown to manhood, Marius now embraces the philosophy of the 'flux' of Heraclitus and the Epicureanism (or Cyrenaicism) of Aristippus. He journeys to Rome (166 AD), encountering by chance on the way a blithesome young knight, Cornelius, who becomes a friend. Marius explores Rome in awe, and, "as a youth of great attainments in Greek letters and philosophy", is appointed amanuensis to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius's Meditations on Stoicism and on Plato, and the public lectures of the rhetorician Fronto, open Marius' eyes to the narrowness of Epicureanism. Aurelius's indifference, however, to the cruelty to animals in the amphitheatre, and later to the torments inflicted on people there, causes Marius to question the values of Stoicism (end of 'Part the Second'). Disillusioned with Rome and the imperial court which seem "like some stifling forest of bronze-work, transformed as if by malign enchantment out of the living trees", puzzled by the source of Cornelius's serenity, still Epicurean by temperament but seeking a more satisfying life-philosophy, Marius makes repeated visits alone to the Campagna and Alban Hills, on one occasion experiencing in the Sabine Hills a sort of spiritual "epiphany" on a perfect day of peace and beauty (end of 'Part the Third'). Later he is taken by Cornelius to a household in the Campagna centred on a charismatic young widow, Cecilia, where prevails an atmosphere of peace and love, gradually revealing itself as a new religion with liturgy and rituals that appeal aesthetically and emotionally to Marius. The sense of purposeful community there, set against the persecution of Christians by the authorities and the competing philosophical systems in Rome, contributes to Marius' mood of isolation and emotional failure. Overshadowed by thoughts of mortality he revisits home and pays his respects to the family dead, burying their funerary urns, and sets out again for Rome in Cornelius's company. On the way the two are arrested as part of a sweep of suspected Christians. It emerges that only one of the young men is of this sect, and Marius, unbeknown to Cornelius, makes their captors believe it is he. Cornelius is set free, deceived into thinking that Marius will follow shortly. The latter endures hardship and exhaustion as he journeys captive towards Rome, falls ill, and dying is abandoned by his captors. "Had there been one to listen just then," Pater comments, "there would have come, from the very depth of his desolation, an eloquent utterance at last, on the irony of men's fates, on the singular accidents of life and death." Marius is tended in his last days by some poor country people, secret believers who ironically take him to be one of their own. Though he has shown little interest in the doctrines of the new faith and dies more or less in ignorance of them, he is nevertheless, Pater implies, "a soul naturally Christian" (anima naturaliter christiana ) and he finds peace in his final hours as he reviews his life (end of 'Part the Fourth').
4456074	/m/0c3ffj	Left Behind	Tim LaHaye	1995-12-31	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The story takes place during the Rapture. Millions of people suddenly vanish and frantic "survivors" of the disappearances begin their search for their friends and families, as well as answers to what has happened. Among them are pilot Rayford Steele, his daughter Chloe Steele, and pastor Bruce Barnes, who begin to discover that the Rapture has taken place. Meanwhile, a young journalist, Cameron "Buck" Williams, follows an unknown, but charming, Romanian politician named Nicolae Carpathia, who quickly attracts millions of followers - seemingly overnight.
4456093	/m/0c3fh9	Amber and Ashes	Margaret Weis		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Amber and Ashes is set in Krynn shortly after the death of Takhisis at the end of the War of Souls. Magic is back, and so are the gods. But the gods are vying for supremacy, and the war has caused widespread misery, uprooting entire nations and changing the balance of power on Ansalon. The mysterious warrior-woman Mina, brooding on her failure and the loss of her goddess, makes a pact with evil in a seductive guise. As a strange vampiric cult spreads throughout the fragile world, unlikely heroes—a wayward monk and a kender who can communicate with the dead—join forces to try to uproot the cause of the growing evil. It begins with Chemosh talking to himself in an abandoned temple about his plans to rule the pantheon and obtaining living servants as opposed to the dead. Shortly after, Mina and Galdar are seen. Mina is grieving the death of Takhisis and is about to kill herself when Chemosh intervenes and makes her his lover. It is then that the plot to create the Beloved of Chemosh begins.
4456185	/m/0c3fn6	Adventures of Mottel the Cantor's Son	Sholem Aleichem			 The novel is a first person narrative presented by a boy who, at the outset, is not quite nine years old. He is a member of a Jewish family in a shtetl in Russia and chronicles the daily life of his family and friends. The first volume describes the hardships, poverty, and fears that lead to a decision to emigrate to the United States. The second volume relates their experiences from the immigrant perspective. The narrative presents almost every episode in a humorous manner, even when the events are quite serious. Motl’s father, the village’s cantor, passes away after a long illness. Motl discovers that being fatherless confers on him certain social privileges, and the more ready forgiveness of the adult community for his pranks. (Although there are repeated references to Motl being an orphan, the term is not used in its present-day sense. His mother is a major figure throughout the entire work.) His older brother Elyahu, recently married, tries to lift the family out of poverty through a series of get-rich-quick schemes he learns from a book, to which Motl is a willing accomplice. However, this effort does not have the desired effect. Together with a group of friends, they depart for America. The route to New York, via Antwerp and London's Whitechapel, is lined with danger, con-artists, other refugees, unfamiliar customs, and a long ocean crossing. At first America only seems to offer new problems, in the form of the austere immigration control on Ellis Island, the sweatshops of the Lower East Side, and the labor riots that often broke out as workers took to the streets to protest working conditions. Life in New York affords Motl unanticipated new experiences (such as smoking and watching Charlie Chaplin movies), and slowly, the family begins to prosper. In the last chapters they buy a grocery store and appear to be moving toward ever greater material comfort. Motl is described as having a natural talent for drawing cartoons - sometimes getting into trouble with people feeling insulted by his depiction of them. Some episodes indicate that the author intended to have the character enter a journalistic career.
4458075	/m/0c3jsn	The Whole Family		1908-10-15	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the rather pedestrian opening chapter Howells introduces the Talbert family, middle-class New England proprietors of a silverplate works that turns out ice-pitchers and other mundane household items. Daughter Peggy Talbert has just returned from her coeducational college engaged to a harmless but rather weak young man named Harry Goward. It was Howells' intention that each of the eleven subsequent authors would examine the impact of Peggy's engagement on a different member of the Talbert family. But the very next chapter, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, immediately sent the novel careening off Howell's intended trajectory. Freeman made her assigned character, the "old-maid aunt" Elizabeth Talbert, into anything but a quiet old spinster. Instead she created Aunt Elizabeth as an older but vibrant and sexually attractive woman who doesn't mind getting noticed by Peggy's fiancé. This was, as project editor Elizabeth Jordan later wrote, the "explosion of a bombshell on our literary hearthstone." Howells, never particularly comfortable with frank sexuality, recoiled from Freeman's spicy conception of a character he had intended as a harmless old lady. Contributor Henry Van Dyke, who would eventually write the concluding chapter, reacted in a half-humorous, half-worried letter to Jordan: :Heavens! What a catastrophe! Who would have thought that the old maiden aunt would go mad in the second chapter? Poor lady. Red hair and a pink hat and boys in beau knots all over the costume. What will Mr. Howells say? For my part I think it distinctly crewel work to put a respectable spinster into such a hattitude before the world. As subsequent critics have pointed out, the rest of the novel became an effort by the later writers to cope somehow with this introduction of Aunt Elizabeth as a sexual competitor with Peggy for her fiancee's affections. Although some of the writers had their doubts about Freeman's work, at least her reimagination of the spinster aunt gave the book a narrative impetus. Eventually, after many twists and turns introduced by the subsequent contributors, Harry Goward is dismissed as a suitor, Aunt Elizabeth is sent off to New York City, and a more suitable mate for Peggy is found in a college professor named Stillman Dane. Peggy marries Dane and the couple sails off to Europe with Peggy's brother Charles and his wife Lorraine for a honeymoon tour.
4458318	/m/0c3k9r	The Unconsoled	Kazuo Ishiguro	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place over a period of three days. It is about Ryder, a famous pianist who arrives in a central European city to perform a concert. However, he appears to have lost most of his memory and finds his new environment surreal and dreamlike. He struggles to fulfill his commitments before Thursday night's performance.
4459510	/m/0c3mqg	The Face of the Waters	Robert Silverberg	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Face of the Waters takes place in the far future, on a penal colony, inhabited by convicts and their progeny. The planet is Hydros, an ocean planet whose inhabitants live on artificial floating islands. After a human offense against the natives of Hydros, the human population of the island of Sorve are ordered to leave. Forbidden on all other islands, in a flotilla of ships they seek the semi-mythical island of the Face of the Waters. During their journey they are forced to learn more about themselves, leading to questions about both religion and the purpose of Man. At the end of the novel Robert Silverberg addresses what it means to be human. fr:La Face des eaux
4459608	/m/0c3my4	The Werewolf of Paris	Guy Endore	1933	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Like much Gothic fiction, The Werewolf of Paris opens with a frame story in which the author explains his struggle with the fantastic elements of his tale. Here the narrator, an anonymous American working on his doctoral research in Paris, discovers a manuscript in the hands of some trash-pickers. He describes it as "the Galliez report: thirty four sheets of closely written French, an unsolicited defense of Sergeant Bertrand Caillet at the latter's court-martial in 1871." A descendant of the cursed Pitamont clan, which destroyed itself in a long feud with the neighboring Pitavals, Bertrand is born one Christmas Eve to an adolescent girl who had been raped by a priest, Father Pitamont. Bertrand grows up with strange sadistic and sexual desires which are usually expressed as dreams. Sometimes the dreams are memories of actual experiences in which he had transformed into a wolf. His step-uncle, Aymar Galliez, who raises the boy (along with his mother Josephine and a servant Françoise), soon learns of Bertrand's affliction. Bertrand flees to Paris after his assault on a prostitute, his incestuous union with his mother, and his murder of a friend in their home village. Aymar tries to find Bertrand by studying the details of local crimes, such as the mutilation of corpses and various murders. Bertrand joins the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War, doing little fighting and finding love from a girl who volunteers at a canteen, the beautiful and wealthy Mlle. Sophie de Blumenberg. Masochistic and obsessed with death, Sophie helps Bertrand avoid the violent effects of his transformation by allowing him to cut into her flesh in order to suck her blood. Aymar finds Bertrand in Paris during the Paris Commune, but thinking that love has cured Bertrand, he decides not to take action. Fearing that he'll accidentally kill Sophie, Bertrand goes out one night to feed on someone else. He is caught attacking a fellow soldier and arrested. Aymar supports burning Bertrand at the stake, and provides the court with a summary of Bertrand's crimes, but the court sentences him to treatment at the infirmary of La Santé prison. Aymar transfers Bertrand to an asylum after the reactionary Versaillists have retaken Paris, with great loss of life among the Communards, who are executed en masse. Unbeknownst to Aymar, Bertrand suffers in a small cell, drugged when he is visited by his uncle. Bertrand eventually commits suicide by jumping from the building with another inmate whom he delusionally believes is Sophie. Their deaths are similar to a suicide fantasy that Bertrand and Sophie enjoyed; the real Sophie had previously committed suicide on her own, unable to deal with her separation from Bertrand. The narrative proper is followed by a grisly appendix citing a municipal report on the cemeteries of Paris. The report indicates that the grave of one "Sieur C ... (Bertrand)" contained the body "of a dog, which despite 8 years in the ground was still incompletely destroyed."
4459865	/m/0c3nf0	Fire Time	Poul Anderson	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Fire Time takes place on the planet Ishtar, whose peculiar orbit around three stars (Bel, Ea, and Anu) results in the "Fire Time", a dramatic increase in heat every thousand years. As the northern hemisphere heats up, large numbers of Ishtarians flee south, leading to a collapse of civilization. The presence of visitors from Earth (also engaged in their own war off-planet) raises the prospect of changing the dynamics of history.
4461762	/m/0c3r2h	Thank You For Smoking: A Novel	Christopher Buckley	1994-05-17	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nick is the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a tobacco industry lobbying firm that promotes the benefits of cigarettes. He utilizes high-profile media events and intentionally provocative rhetoric in order to highlight what his clients view as an unfair crusade against tobacco and nicotine products. The political satire is heightened by Naylor's informal association with lobbyists from other industries that are subjected to routine vilification in the media, e.g. Polly Bailey, a lobbyist for the alcohol/spirits industry, and Bobby Jay Bliss, who represents the firearms industry. Collectively, they form what is known as the M.O.D. Squad, a reference to the title of a police drama, although in this case, "M.O.D." stands for "Merchants Of Death". A pivotal point in the plot occurs when Naylor is kidnapped by a clandestine group who attempt to kill him by covering him with nicotine patches. The search for the perpetrators of the crime leads to surprising results. In this respect, the plot mirrors one of Buckley's other satirical novels, Little Green Men.
4464645	/m/0c3y1z	A Turning Point in National History				 The first two-thirds of the book describes how the USA changed from a force for good in the world, in general, and a transatlantic ally of Europe, into a solitary force, after it effectively unilaterally broke its alliances by largely withdrawing from the United Nations and assorted international agreements and organisations, and consequently invading Iraq. Europeans, especially in the Netherlands, are having a difficult time coming to grips with, and even acknowledging, this new situation. The authors say part of the problem is that the media is effectively controlled by the USA, introducing terms like 'rogue states', thereby suggesting there are such states. The authors suggest that Europe should change its orientation from the USA to the UN and rising powers like China and use diplomacy instead of brute force, thus continuing the process the USA started, but has recently turned its back upon. In the world, Europe has more authority than it realises and within Europe the Netherlands is in a good position to effect such a change as one of the founding nations of the European Union (and international law) and a country that has always had a very international outlook (for trade purposes). According to the book Germany, France and Spain no longer follow the USA, as shown by their reaction to the Iraq war. According to the authors, once this new world order is established, the USA may once again take its place in it.
4468492	/m/0c4487	Snow	Orhan Pamuk	2002	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Though most of the early part of the story is told in the third person from Ka's point of view, an omniscient narrator sometimes makes his presence known, posing as a friend of Ka's who is telling the story based on Ka's journals and correspondence. This narrator sometimes provides the reader with information before Ka knows it or foreshadows later events in the story. At times, the action seems somewhat dream-like. Ka is a poet, who returns to Turkey after 12 years of political exile in Germany. He has several motives, first, as a journalist, to investigate a spate of suicides but also in the hope of meeting a woman he used to know. Heavy snow cuts off the town for about three days during which time Ka is in conversation with a former communist, a secularist, a fascist nationalist, a possible Islamic extremist, Islamic moderates, young Kurds, the military, the Secret Service, the police and in particular, an actor-revolutionary. In the midst of this, love and passion are to be found. Temporarily closed off from the world, a farcical coup is staged and linked melodramatically to a stage play. The main discussion concerns the interface of secularism and belief but there are references to all of Turkey's twentieth century history.
4473306	/m/0c4d_b	The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher	Beatrix Potter	1906	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jeremy Fisher is a frog who lives in a damp little house amongst the buttercups at the edge of a pond. His larder and back passage are "slippy-sloppy" with water, but he likes getting his feet wet; no one ever scolds and he never catches cold. One day, Jeremy finds it raining and decides to go fishing. Should he catch more than five minnows, he will invite his friends to dinner. He puts on a Macintosh and shiny goloshes, takes his rod and basket, and sets off with "enormous hops" to the place where he keeps his lily-pad boat. He poles to a place he knows is good for minnows. Once there, he sits cross-legged on his lily-pad and arranges his tackle. He has "the dearest little red float". His rod is a stalk of grass and his line a horsehair. An hour passes without a nibble. He takes a break and lunches on a butterfly sandwich. A water beetle tweaks his toe, and rats rustling about in the rushes force him to seek a safer location. He drops his line into the water and immediately has a bite. It is not a minnow but little Jack Sharp, a stickleback. The fish escapes but not before Jeremy pricks his fingers on Jack's spines. A shoal of little fishes come to the surface to laugh at Jeremy. Jeremy sucks his sore fingers, but a trout rises from the water and seizes him with a snap (Mr. Jeremy screams, "OW-OW-OW!!!"). The trout dives to the bottom, but finds the Macintosh tasteless and spits Jeremy out, swallowing only his goloshes. Jeremy bounces "up to the surface of the water, like a cork and the bubbles out of a soda water bottle", and swims to the pond's edge. He scrambles up the bank and hops home through the meadow, quite sure he will never go fishing again. In the last few pages, Jeremy has put sticking plaster on his fingers and welcomes his friends, Sir Isaac Newton, a newt, and Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise, a tortoise who eats salad. Isaac wears a black and gold waistcoat and Ptolemy brings a salad in a string bag. Jeremy has prepared roasted grasshopper with ladybird sauce. The narrator describes the dish as a "frog treat", but thinks "it must have been nasty!"
4474012	/m/0c4g5r	The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse	Beatrix Potter	1910	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mrs. Tittlemouse is a tale in which no humans play a part and one in which events are treated as though they have occurred since time immemorial and far from human observance. It is a simple story, and one likely to appeal to young children. Mrs. Tittlemouse is a "most terribly tidy little mouse always sweeping and dusting the soft sandy floors" in the "yards and yards" of passages and storerooms, nut-cellars, and seed-cellars in her "funny house" amongst the roots of a hedge. She has a kitchen, a parlour, a pantry, a larder, and a bedroom where she keeps her dust-pan and brush next to her little box bed. She tries to keep her house tidy, but insect intruders leave dirty footprints on the floors and all sorts of messes about the place. A beetle is shooed away, a ladybird is exorcised with "Fly away home! Your house is on fire!", and a spider inquiring after Miss Muffet is turned away with little ceremony. In a distant passage, Mrs. Tittlemouse meets Babbitty Bumble, a bumble bee who has taken up residence with three or four other bees in one of the empty storerooms. Mrs. Tittlemouse tries to pull out their nest but they buzz fiercely at her, and she retreats to deal with the matter after dinner. In her parlour, she finds her toad neighbour Mr. Jackson sitting before the fire in her rocking chair. Mr. Jackson lives in "a drain below the hedge, in a very dirty wet ditch". His coat tails drip with water and he leaves wet footmarks on Mrs. Tittlemouse's parlour floor. She follows him about with a mop and dish-cloth. Mr. Jackson stays for dinner, but the food is not to his pleasing, and he rummages about the cupboard searching for the honey he can smell. He discovers a butterfly in the sugar bowl, but when he finds the bees, he makes a big mess pulling out their nest. Mrs. Tittlemouse fears she "shall go distracted" as a result of the turmoil and takes refuge in the nut-cellar. When she finally ventures forth, she discovers everybody has left but her house is a mess. She takes some moss, beeswax, and twigs to partly close up her front door to keep Mr. Jackson out. Exhausted, she goes to bed wondering if her house will ever be tidy again. The fastidious little mouse spends a fortnight spring cleaning. She rubs the furniture with beeswax and polishes her little tin spoons, then holds a party for five other little wood-mice wearing their Regency finery. Mr. Jackson attends but is forced to sit outside because Mrs. Tittlemouse has narrowed her door. He takes no offence at being excluded from the parlour. Acorn-cupfuls of honeydew are passed through the window to him and he toasts Mrs. Tittlemouse's good health.
4474248	/m/0c4gjt	The Tale of Ginger and Pickles	Beatrix Potter	1909	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ginger, a yellow tomcat, and Pickles, a terrier, are partners in operating a village shop that offers a variety of goods including red spotty handkerchiefs, "sugar, snuff, and goloshes". Ginger inspires fear in their mouse customers and Pickles their rabbit customers. Ginger's mouth waters as the mice leave the shop with their parcels. The two extend unlimited credit to customers who never pay. The till remains empty. The shopkeepers are forced to eat their own goods. Pickles cannot afford a dog license and is frightened of the policeman (a German doll with a stitched-on hat). He is certain he will receive a summons. When the policeman delivers the rates and taxes at the New Year, Ginger and Pickles decided to close shop thus creating great inconvenience for the villagers. Ginger grows stout living comfortably in a warren and is shown in one illustration setting traps. Pickles becomes a gamekeeper. In the tale's lengthy coda, Tabitha Twitchit, the proprietor of the only other village shop, exploits the situation and raises the prices of everything in her shop. She refuses to give credit. Mr. Dormouse and his daughter Miss Dormouse sell peppermints and candles, but the candles "behave very strangely in warm weather" and Miss Dormouse refuses to accept the return of candle ends from disgruntled customers. Finally, Sally Henny-penny sends out a printed poster announcing her intention to re-open the shop. The villagers are delighted and overwhelm the shop on its first day. Sally gets flustered counting out change and insists on being paid cash but offers an assortment of bargains to the delight of everybody. Potter put a crowd of familiar characters from the Peter Rabbit universe into the tale such as Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Samuel Whiskers and Peter himself. It would prove a clever marketing device. From the literary angle, the many familiar characters create tension and suspense for the reader as most are the natural prey of the eponymous merchants. The reader wonders if the two shopkeepers will control their predatory instincts long enough to make a sale.
4474624	/m/0c4h2s	The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle	Beatrix Potter	1905	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A little girl named Lucie lives on a farm called Little-town. She is a good little girl, but has lost three pocket handkerchiefs and a pinafore. She questions Tabby Kitten and Sally Henny-penny about them, but they know nothing. Lucie mounts a stile and spies some white cloths lying in the grass high on a hill behind the farm. She scrambles up the hill along a steep path-way which ends under a big rock. She finds a little door in the hillside, and hears someone singing behind it: :Lily-white and clean, oh! :With little frills between, oh! :Smooth and hot – red rusty spot :Never here be seen, oh! She knocks. A frightened voice cries out, "Who's that?" Lucie opens the door, and discovers a low-ceilinged kitchen. Everything is tiny, even the pots and pans. At the table stands a short, stout person wearing a tucked-up print gown, an apron, and a striped petticoat. She is ironing. Her little black nose goes sniffle, sniffle, snuffle, and her eyes go twinkle, twinkle, and beneath her little white cap are prickles! She is Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, the animals' laundress and "an excellent clear-starcher". She keeps busy with her work. She has found Lucy's lost things, and launders them for her. She also shows Lucie items belonging to Mrs. Tiggywinkle's animal customers. The laundered clothing is tied up in bundles and Lucie's handkerchiefs are neatly folded into her clean pinafore. They set off together down the path to return the fresh laundry to the little animals and birds in the neighbourhood. At the bottom of the hill, Lucie mounts the stile and turns to thank Mrs. Tiggy-winkle. "But what a very odd thing!" Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is "running running running up the hill". Her cap, shawl, and print gown are nowhere to be seen. How small and brown she has grown – and covered with prickles! "Why! Mrs. Tiggy-winkle [is] nothing but a HEDGEHOG!" The narrator tells the reader that some thought Lucie had fallen asleep on the stile and dreamed the encounter, but if so, then how could she have three clean handkerchiefs and a laundered pinafore? "Besides," the narrator assures the reader, "I have seen that door into the back of the hill called Catbells – and besides I am very well acquainted with dear Mrs. Tiggy-winkle!"
4476944	/m/0c4mf5	Sister Alice	Robert Reed		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story is about a child growing up in a cold planet Earth around 10 million years from now. He travels from being a young boy playing war with his friends to a semi-god still playing war, but with a universe at stake. Godlike powers were withdrawn from most humans after a catastrophic war between 'human gods' almost destroyed humanity itself. A small subset of selected families were permitted to retain these powers in the service of humanity. Each family was born from a small number of individuals, chosen after competitive selection and extensive and exhaustive vetting. Each family had psychological tendencies that predisposed its work for humanity to follow certain directions. The tensions between families erupt when the drive to 'improve' unleashes forces which threaten death and destruction on a galactic scale. Born of one of these god like families, one boy is forced into the role of saviour or destroyer, hunted and vilified, he must save himself, his family, and the galaxy.
4477201	/m/0c4mtr	Brightly Burning	Mercedes Lackey	2000-05-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel which focuses on what could be called the tragedy of the Valdemaran Herald Lavan Firestorm. A boy (Lavan) from a mercantile family born with frightening abilities is misunderstood by his peers and family. The book begins when Lavan's father decides to move the family from the countryside to the city of Haven. Lavan finds himself stuck in a mercantile school he does not care for and with nasty bullies for senior students. Life does not seem good for Lavan as he becomes the target of the leader of the Seniors. All this changes when quite suddenly during a bout of heavy-handed bullying a huge fire started around Lavan causing the storage room to burn, along with several of the students who had been bullying him. The constant bullying had finally thrown open Lavan's innate ability to create and control fires, called Firestarting. After the fire, he is brought to the palace complex, given some medical attention (from the effect of the bullying and burns from the fire - his abilities do not protect him from fire's harm), and questioned about the event. He becomes agitated, and large torches nearby are set on fire. With the fires raging out of control, a Companion named Kalira "chooses" Lavan. Companions are spirits of Valdemar who choose people to become Heralds, who roam the land dispensing justice. Lavan in a single moment of panic and rage becomes a Herald Trainee. The book goes to tell of Lavan's time as a Herald-trainee to his reluctant experience as a Herald. Much of the book speaks of the teenager's inability to control his own power. Due to the constant bullying, Lavan's power to start fires is intricately connected to his rage and anger. Without his Companion, Lavan has no way to control his Firestarter powers. It is also mentioned that Kalira and Lavan are Lifebonded, or soulmates. This is regarded with astonishment by many, as Lifebonds rarely happen, especially among Heralds-and even less frequently when one is a Companion. Elanor, Lavan's Herald mentor's daughter, learns of this later on in the book-much to her dismay, as she believes that she is in love with Lavan. Soon Lavan's strange power is needed as the neighbouring country Karse begins to invade Valdemaran borders not just with enemy soldiers but unexplainable horrors of the night. Only Lavan Firestorm is able to combat this strange threat. The books ends with Lavan's rather violent death right after crossbow bolts/arrows hit Kalira and she is wounded mortally.
4477244	/m/0c4mxj	Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best	P. G. Wodehouse	1926-06	{"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Beach, long-serving butler at Blandings, is considering handing in his notice after 18 years, unable to bear the shame of his master Lord Emsworth's rather disreputable new beard. His Lordship himself, unaware of these ructions below stairs, is worried by a telegram from his younger son Freddie, who is back in London from America. Visiting Freddie, Emsworth learns that the boy has fallen out with his wife Aggie; having written a scenario for Hollywood to impress her, he tried to persuade a prominent starlet to promote it for him; however, he is seen dining with the girl by Jane Yorke, a friend of his wife. Yorke tells Aggie she has seen Freddie with another girl, and she promptly leaves him. Freddie tries to persuade his father to plead with her on his behalf, convinced by his movie knowledge that an appeal from a white-haired old father never fails, but Emsworth refuses. Later, however, realising the danger of Freddie returning to Blandings if his marriage is not patched up, he relents, and pays a call at the lady's hotel. Finding the door to her room open, he potters vaguely in, and is chased into the bedroom by a small yapping dog, only to find she is in the bath. Her friend Jane Yorke holds him up with a gun, believing him to be a burglar, and while he is trying to explain himself, and Freddie, Freddie himself enters disguised as an old man with a white beard. Seeing a cable from Hollywood accepting his scenario, Aggie believes Freddie's story and forgives him, to Jane's disgust. Jane is ejected, and Emsworth, on hearing that he looks like Freddie in his false beard, decides to shave off his own, much to Beach's relief.
4479377	/m/0c4rn1	The Enigma of Japanese Power	Karel van Wolferen			 At over 500 pages long, the book is quite dense. By dividing the book into consistent sections, the author has allowed readers to digest it in sections. Of these, sections dealing with education, the elusive Japanese state, the all-pervasive bureaucracy, the middle class, ritual in society, and the press are regarded as the most important. Overall, Van Wolferen creates an image of a state where a complicated political-corporate relationship retards progress, and where the citizens forgo the social rights enjoyed in other developed countries out of a collective fear of foreign domination. Van Wolferen defines this image across various aspects of Japanese culture, and chronicles its origin through the history of the nation. He frequently cites examples, giving the book 57 pages of endnotes. Throughout, the author points out inefficiencies in the system, and compares it unfavorably to the standard Western system. Van Wolferen states examples that demonstrate the nature of power in Japan and how it is wielded. Japanese power is described as being held by a loose group of unaccountable elites who operate behind the scenes. Because this power is loosely held, those who wield it escape responsibility for the consequences when things go wrong as there is no one who can be held accountable. In particular, the author criticizes large Japanese businesses, and the Liberal Democratic Party, which he describes as being neither liberal nor democratic.
4480130	/m/0c4t3j	The Messiah Of Morris Avenue				 In the near future, Christianity has dominated everything, including politics, television, the Internet, and film. The leaders of the semi-theocracy include Reverend Jimmy, a televangelist who is the spiritual advisor to the President, and Pastor Bob, a laid-back reverend who is obsessed with golf and competes with Jimmy for spiritual dominance. Ironically, though Jimmy says he has spoken to God about almost everything, their teachings are the opposite of Jesus Christ's ideas of peace, love, and forgiveness towards everyone. Jimmy even claims on his program that bombing Europe will bring the Second Coming. However, a jaded ex-reporter, Johnny Greco, bitter towards Jimmy, has already found it, in an Irish-Hispanic Catholic named Jay, who performs incredible miracles of healing sick people, preaches against what Christianity has become, and values peace, tolerance, and love for all humans. Dismissive at first, he soon begins to believe in what Jay is saying, and begins to think that Jay truly is "the real deal". Unfortunately for Jay, things happen as they previously did and Jay, some of his closest apostles and Revrend Jim (who Jay converts) are killed. However, Jay's apostles continue to spread the word of his actions and teachings and form a new religion. The book ends: THE END AND THE BEGINNING
4481110	/m/0c4vnr	The Promise	Chaim Potok	1969-08-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This conflict becomes a personal issue for Reuven because his Talmud teacher for his final school year is a zealously religious, rigid and angry rabbi by the name of Jacob Kalman. Reuven's father is a well-known teacher and author who writes books on modern methods of studying the Talmud, and Reuven finds himself caught in the middle as his teacher tries to force him to choose between his father's way and Rav Kalman. The conflict deepens through Reuven's relationship with Michael Gordon, the deeply troubled adolescent son of Abraham Gordon, a well-known author who has been excommunicated for his books which question the very foundations of Judaism. The lives of the three families, the Malters, the Saunders and the Gordons, become intertwined when Abraham Gordon seeks out Danny Saunders to treat his mentally ill son. A bond develops between Reuven and Michael on the ground of the parallel in their lives: being caught in the middle of their modernist fathers' battles with the defenders of the Jewish faith. Danny also has to deal with the conflict between the traditional and the modern when he falls in love with Michael's cousin Rachel, a decidedly modern young Jewish woman. He is also faced with the formidable task of treating Michael, who resists therapy and who faces imminent institutionalization because of his violent behavior. The two friends, Reuven and Danny, help each other through their struggles, and the story is brought to a shattering climax as together they help Michael to face the source of his distress. Through his struggle, Reuven finds his own identity by taking from each world, the traditional and the modern, what has meaning for him and by asserting with love and respect his right to take his place among his people as a teacher.
4481878	/m/0c4wtd	The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck	Beatrix Potter	1908-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The tale begins in a farmyard which is home to a duck called Jemima Puddle-duck. She wants to hatch her own eggs, but the farmer's wife believes ducks make poor sitters and routinely confiscates their eggs to allow the hens to incubate them. Jemima tries to hide her eggs, but they are always found and carried away. She sets off along the road in poke bonnet and shawl to find a safe place away from the farm to lay her eggs. At the top of a hill, she spies a distant wood, flies to it, and waddles about until she discovers an appropriate nesting place. However, a charming gentleman with "black prick ears and sandy-coloured whiskers" persuades her to nest in a shed at his home. Jemima is led to his "tumble-down shed" (which is curiously filled with feathers), and makes herself a nest with little ado. Jemima lays her eggs, and the fox suggests a dinner party to mark the event. He asks her to collect the traditional herbs used in stuffing a duck, telling her the seasonings will be used for an omelette. Jemima sets about her errand, but the farm collie, Kep, meets her as she carries onions from the farm kitchen. She reveals her errand, and Kep sees through the fox's plan at once. With the help of two fox-hound puppies, Kep rescues Jemima and the "foxy-whiskered gentleman" is chased away and never seen again. However, the hungry fox-hounds eat Jemima's eggs. Jemima is escorted back to the farm in tears over her lost eggs, but, in time, lays more eggs and successfully hatches four ducklings.
4482013	/m/0c4x0q	The Tailor of Gloucester	Beatrix Potter	1903	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A tailor in Gloucester sends his cat Simpkin to buy food and a twist of cherry-coloured silk to complete a waistcoat commissioned by the mayor for his wedding on Christmas morning. While Simpkin is gone, the tailor finds mice the cat has imprisoned under teacups. The mice are released and scamper away. When Simpkin returns and finds his mice gone, he hides the twist in anger. The tailor falls ill and is unable to complete the waistcoat, but, upon returning to his shop, he is surprised to find the waistcoat finished. The work has been done by the grateful mice. However, one buttonhole remains unfinished because there was "no more twist!" Simpkin gives the tailor the twist to complete the work and the success of the waistcoat makes the tailor's fortune.
4482031	/m/0c4x11	The Sleeping Father	Matthew Sharpe		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Schwartzes live their ordinary lives in the aptly named (and fictional) small town of Bellwether, Connecticut. When she thinks her two children do not need her any longer, Lila Schwartz, a sexually active woman, leaves behind her family, calls herself Lila Munroe and moves to California, where she trains, and later works, as a lawyer. Faced with the dual challenge of having to raise two teenage kids while remaining successful in his demanding job as a publicist and speech writer, Bernard Schwartz more and more relies on medication to cope with everyday life. The real trouble begins when he accidentally swallows two incompatible antidepressants and falls into a coma shortly thereafter. While he is unconscious Bernard Schwartz has a stroke. When he wakes up again he is seriously handicapped&mdash;his speech is slurred, his walk is unsteady and his memory is permanently impaired. Similar to a child, he has to learn the meanings of many words. Instead of going to school, Chris teaches his father as best as he can. In spite of his enforced preoccupation with his "sleeping" father, Chris Schwartz notices that his own life goes on without any major change. Still a virgin, he fantasizes about having sex with Lisa Danmeyer, Bernard's neurologist and actually has his first sexual encounter ever at his father's rehab centre with a sexy speech pathologist who performs fellatio on him. At the same time Cathy, his 16 year-old sister, is on the brink of abandoning her Jewish roots and converting to Roman Catholicism. However, she also develops a crush on Francis Dial, her brother's best friend and classmate. Chris cannot believe that his younger sister might have sex before he does, but in the end this is exactly what happens, an unwanted teenage pregnancy being the result of their union. At first the young lovers are unsure whether Cathy should have an abortion or not, but Cathy soon makes up her mind to keep the baby.
4482189	/m/0c4xbl	The Tale of Tom Kitten	Beatrix Potter	1907	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The tale begins with three feline siblings &ndash; Mittens, Tom Kitten, and Moppet &ndash; tumbling about the doorstep and playing in the dust. Their mother, Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, expects "fine company" for tea so she fetches the children indoors to wash and dress them before her friends arrive. Tom is "very naughty" and scratches his mother while she grooms him. Tabitha dresses Moppet and Mittens in clean pinafores and tuckers, and Tom in "all sorts of elegant uncomfortable clothes" taken from a chest of drawers. Tom is fat and bursts several buttons, but his mother sews them back on again. Tabitha turns her kittens into the garden to keep them out of the way while she makes hot buttered toast for the party. She tells them to keep their frocks clean, then returns to her work. Moppet and Mittens soon have their pinafores smeared with grass stains. They climb upon the garden wall and lose some of their clothing in the ascent. Tom has a more difficult time gaining the top of the wall "breaking the ferns, and shedding buttons right and left". He is dishevelled when he reaches the top of the wall, and loses his hat, but his sisters try to pull him together. The rest of his buttons burst. Three Puddle-ducks come marching along the road &ndash; "pit pat paddle pat! pit pat waddle pat!" Jemima Puddle-duck and Rebeccah put on some of the dropped clothing. The kittens lose the rest of their clothing descending the wall. Moppet invites Mr. Drake Puddle-duck to help dress Tom. He picks up various articles of Tom's clothing and "he put[s] them on himself!" The three ducks set off up the road just as Tabitha approaches and discovers her three children with no clothes on. She pulls them off the wall, "smacks" them, and takes them back to the house. "My friends will arrive in a minute, and you are not fit to be seen; I am affronted!" she says. Tabitha sends her kittens upstairs, and tells her guests the kittens are in bed with the measles. However, "the dignity and repose of the tea party" is disturbed by the "very extraordinary noises overhead" as the playful kittens romp in a bedroom. An illustration depicts the bedroom in complete disorder and Tom in his mother's bonnet. The author interrupts to promise the reader she will make a larger book about Tom some day. In the last pages, the Puddle-ducks have lost the kittens' clothing in a pond, and they have been looking for them ever since.
4484806	/m/0c4_zc	De Re Metallica	Georg Agricola	1556	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book consists of a preface and twelve chapters, labelled books I to XII, without titles. It also has numerous woodcuts that provide annotated diagrams illustrating equipment and processes described in the text. Agricola addresses the book to prominent German aristocrats, the most important of whom were Maurice, Elector of Saxony and his brother Augustus, who were his main patrons. He then describes the works of ancient and contemporary writers on mining and metallurgy, the chief ancient source being Pliny the Elder. Agricola describes several books contemporary to him, the chief being a booklet by Calbus of Freiberg in German. The works of alchemists are then described. Agricola does not reject the idea of alchemy, but notes that alchemical writings are obscure and that we do not read of any of the masters who became rich. He then describes fraudulent alchemists, who deserve the death penalty. Agricola completes his introduction by explaining that, since no other author has described the art of metals completely, he has written this work, setting forth his scheme for twelve books. Finally, he again directly addresses his audience of German princes, explaining the wealth that can be gained from this art. This book consists of the arguments used against the art and Agricola's counter arguments. He explains that mining and prospecting are not just a matter of luck and hard work; there is specialized knowledge that must be learned. A miner should have knowledge of philosophy, medicine, astronomy, surveying, arithmetic, architecture, drawing and law, though few are masters of the whole craft and most are specialists. This section is full of classical references and shows Agricola's classical education to its fullest. The arguments range from philosophical objections to gold and silver as being intrinsically worthless, to the danger of mining to its workers and its destruction of the areas in which it is carried out. He argues that without metals, no other activity such as architecture or agriculture are possible. The dangers to miners are dismissed; most deaths and injuries are caused by carelessness and other occupations are hazardous too. Clearing woods for fuel is advantageous as the land can be farmed. Mines tend to be in mountains and gloomy valleys with little economic value. The loss of food from the forests destroyed can be replaced by purchase from profits, and metals have been placed underground by God and man is right to extract and use them. Finally, Agricola argues that mining is an honorable and profitable occupation. This book describes the miner and the finding of veins. Agricola assumes that his audience is the mine owner, or an investor in mines. He advises owners to live at the mine and to appoint good deputies. It is recommended to buy shares in mines that have not started to produce as well as existing mines to balance the risks. The next section of this book recommends areas where miners should search. These are generally mountains with wood available for fuel and a good supply of water. A navigable river can be used to bring fuel, but only gold or gemstones can be mined if no fuel is available. The roads must be good and the area healthy. Agricola describes searching streams for metals and gems that have been washed from the veins. He also suggests looking for exposed veins and also describes the effects of metals on the overlying vegetation. He recommends trenching to investigate veins beneath the surface. He then describes dowsing with a forked twig although he rejects the method himself. Finally he comments on the practice of naming veins or shafts. This book is a description of the various types of veins that can be found. There are 30 illustrations of different forms of these veins, forming the majority of Book III. Agricola also describes a compass to determine the direction of veins and mentions that some writers claim that veins lying in certain directions are richer, although he provides counter-examples. He also mentions the theory that the sun draws the metals in veins to the surface, although he himself doubts this. Finally he explains that gold is not generated in the beds of streams and rivers and east-west streams are not more productive than others inherently. Gold occurs in streams because it is torn from veins by the water. This book describes how an official, the Bergmeister, is in charge of mining. He marks out the land into areas called meers when a vein is discovered. The rest of the book covers the laws of mining. There is a section on how the mine can be divided into shares. The roles of various other officials in regulating mines and taxing the production are stated. The shifts of the miners are fixed. The chief trades in the mine are listed and are regulated by both the Bergmeister and their foremen. This book covers underground mining and surveying. When a vein below ground is to be exploited a shaft is begun and a wooden shed with a windlass is placed above it. The tunnel dug at the bottom follows the vein and is just big enough for a man. The entire vein should be removed. Sometimes the tunnel eventually connects with a tunnel mouth in a hill side. Stringers and cross veins should be explored with cross tunnels or shafts when they occur. Agricola next describes that gold, silver, copper and mercury can be found as native metals, the others very rarely. Gold and silver ores are described in detail. Agricola then states that it is rarely worthwhile digging for other metals unless the ores are rich. Gems are found in some mines, but rarely have their own veins, lodestone is found in iron mines and emery in silver mines. Various minerals and colours of earths can be used to give indications of the presence of metal ores. The actual mineworking varies with the hardness of the rock, the softest is worked with a pick and requires shoring with wood, the hardest is usually broken with fire. Iron wedges, hammers and crowbars are used to break other rocks. Noxious gases and the ingress of water are described. Methods for lining tunnels and shafts with timber are described. The book concludes with a long treatise on surveying, showing the instruments required and techniques for determining the course of veins and tunnels. Surveyors allow veins to be followed, but also prevent mines removing ore from other claims and stop mine workings from breaking into other workings. This book is extensively illustrated and describes the tools and machinery associated with mining. Handtools and different sorts of buckets, wheelbarrows and trucks on wooded plankways are described. Packs for horses and sledges are used to carry loads above ground. Agricola then provides details of various kinds of machines for lifting weights. Some of these are man-powered and some powered by up to four horses or by waterwheels. Horizontal drive shafts along tunnels allow lifting in shafts not directly connected to the surface. If this is not possible treadmills will be installed underground. Instead of lifting weights similar machines use chains of buckets to lift water. Agricola also describes several designs of piston force pumps which are either man or animal powered or powered by waterwheels. Because these pumps can only lift water about 24 feet batteries of pumps are required for the deepest mines. Water pipe designs are also covered in this section. Designs of wind scoop for ventilating shafts or forced air using fans or bellows are also described. Finally ladders and lifts using wicker cages are used to get miners up and down shafts. This book deals with assaying techniques. Various designs of furnaces are detailed. Then cupellation, crucibles, scorifiers and muffles are described. The correct method of preparation of the cupels is covered in detail with beech ashes being preferred. Various other additives and formulae are described, but Agricola does not judge between them. Triangular crucibles and scorifiers are made of fatty clay with a temper of ground up crucibles or bricks. Agricola then describes in detail which substances should be added as fluxes as well as lead for smelting or assaying. The choice is made by which colour the ore burns out which gives an indication of the metals present. The lead should be silver-free or be assayed separately. The prepared ore is wrapped in paper, placed on a scorifier and then placed under a muffle covered in burning charcoal in the furnace. The cupel should be heated at the same time. The scorifier is removed and the metal transferred to the cupel. Alteratively the ore can be smelted in a triangular crucible, and then have lead mixed with it when it is added to the cupel. The cupel is placed in the furnace and copper is separated into the lead which forms lithage in the cupel leaving the noble metal. Gold and silver are parted using an aqua which is probably nitric acid. Agricola describes precautions for ensuring the amount of lead is correct and also describes the amalgamation of gold with mercury. Assay techniques for base metals such as tin are described as well as techniques for alloys such as silver tin. The use of a touchstone to assay gold and silver is discussed. Finally detailed arithmetical examples show the calculations needed to give the yield from the assay. In this book Agricola provides a detailed account of beneficiation of different ores. He describes the processes involved in ore sorting, roasting and crushing. The use of water for washing ores is discussed in great detail, e.g. the use of launders and washing tables. Several different types of machinery for crushing ore and washing it are illustrated and different techniques for different metals and different regions are described. This book describes smelting, which Agricola describes as perfecting the metal by fire. The design of furnaces is first explained. These are very similar for smelting different metals, constructed of brick or soft stone with a brick front and mechanically driven bellows at the rear. At the front is a pit called the fore-hearth to receive the metal. The furnace is charged with beneficiated ore and crushed charcoal and lit. In some gold and silver smelting a lot of slag is produced because of the relative poverty of the ore and the tap hole has to be opened at various times to remove different slag materials. When the furnace is ready, the forehearth is filled with molten lead into which the furnace is tapped. In other furnaces the smelting can be continuous, and lead is placed into the furnace if there is none in the ore. The slag is skimmed off the top of the metal as it is tapped. The lead containing the gold is separated by cupellation, the metal rich slags are re-smelted. Other smelting processes are similar, but lead is not added. Agricola also describes making crucible steel and distilling mercury and bismuth in this book. Agricola describes parting silver from gold in this book by using acids. He also describes heating with antimony sulphide (stibium), which would give silver sulphide and a mixture of gold and antimony. The gold and silver can then be recovered with cupellation. Gold can also be parted using salts or using mercury. Large scale cupellation using a cupellation hearth is also covered in this book This book describes separating silver from copper or iron. This is achieved by adding large amounts of lead at a temperature just above the melting point of lead. The lead will liquate out with the silver. This process will need to be repeated several times. The lead and silver can be separated by cupellation. This describes the preparation of what Agricola calls "juices": salt, soda, nitre, alum, vitriol, saltpetre, sulphur and bitumen. Finally glass making is covered. Agricola seems less secure about this process. He is not clear about making glass from the raw ingredients but clearer about remelting glass to make objects.
4485245	/m/0c50qm	Rough Crossing	Tom Stoppard			 Playwrights Sandor Turai, Alex Gal and their new composer Adam Adam have embarked on the trans-Atlantic ocean liner, The S.S. Italian Castle and are about to surprise their actors Natasha Navratilova and Ivor Fish with the newest song from their nearly-finished (or so they hope) musical comedy, The Cruise of the Dodo. Unfortunately, they go to surprise the pair just as Ivor declares his love for Natasha, as Adam listens on in horror. Sending Gal to take Adam back to his cabin to comfort him, Turai hatches a plan to convince Adam that what they actually overheard was Ivor's pathetic attempt at playwrighting. Turai stays up the whole night writing a scene for Ivor and Natasha to play as an alternative version of Turai's ending, with the declaration of love inserted and played as a scene. They are assisted by the sometimes dimwitted, sometimes brilliant, but always unconventional steward, Dvornichek. Despite many near revelations of Turai's plan, Adam and Natasha are reunited, and the playwrights find inspiration for a new comedy, courtesy of a script by the ship's captain. Having scripts thrust upon them by amateurs is only one of the running gags of the play. Others include Dvornichek's inability to gain his sea legs, until the ship is thrust into a turbulent storm, when only he is able to stay upright; Natasha and Ivor's inability to keep their scripts, both for the stage and their life, straight; Adam's peculiar speech impediment—he has trouble starting a sentence and often must continue a monologue indefinitely for fear of not starting ever again; and a very long delayed Cognac for Turai.
4486200	/m/0c526m	Chandrakanta	Devaki Nandan Khatri	1888	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is a romantic fantasy about two lovers who belong to rival kingdoms: the princess Chandrakanta of Vijaygarh, and the prince Virendra Singh of Naugarh. Krur Singh, a member of the Vijaygarh king's court dreams of marrying Chandrakanta and taking over the throne. When Krur Singh fails in his endeavour, he flees the kingdom and befriends Shivdutt, the powerful neighbouring king of Chunargarh (a renaming of "Chunar-fort", referring to the fort in Chunar that inspired Khatri to write the novel). Krur Singh coaxes Shivdutt to ensnare Chandrakanta at any cost. Shivdutt captures Chandrkanta and while running away from Shivdutt, Chandrakanta finds herself a prisoner in a tilism. After that Kunvar Virendra Singh breaks the tilism and fights with Shivdutt with the help of aiyyars . Chandrakanta, the novel, has many sequels, prominent being a 7-book series (Chandrakanta santati) dealing with the adventures of Chandrakanta and Virendra Singh's children in another major tilism.
4486431	/m/0c52nk	The Tale of Mr. Tod	Beatrix Potter	1912	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The tale begins with Tommy Brock, a badger, being entertained by old Mr. Bouncer, the father of Benjamin Bunny. Mr. Bouncer has been left to tend his grandchildren while his son and daughter-in-law Flopsy are away, but, after smoking a pipe of rabbit-tobacco, he falls asleep in Tommy's company. Tommy puts the bunnies in his sack and slips out. When the parents return, Benjamin sets off in pursuit of the thief. Benjamin finds and brings his cousin Peter Rabbit into the rescue venture, and the two discover Tommy has invaded one of Mr. Tod's homes. Peeping through the bedroom window, they see Tommy asleep in Mr. Tod's bed, and, peeping through the kitchen window, they see the table set for a meal. They realize the bunnies are alive, but shut in the oven. They hide when Mr. Tod suddenly arrives in a very bad temper. The fox discovers the badger asleep in his bed, and decides to play a trick upon him involving a pail of water balanced on the overhead tester of the bed. Brock however is awake, escapes the trick, and makes tea for himself in the kitchen. When Mr. Tod discovers him, a violent fight erupts that continues outdoors. The two roll away down the hill still fighting. Benjamin and Peter quickly gather the bunnies, and return home in triumph.
4487360	/m/0c548g	Company for Gertrude	P. G. Wodehouse	1928-09	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Lord Emsworth's world is far from ideal - not only has his neighbour Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe stolen his pigman Wellbeloved, but his niece Gertrude is imprisoned in the house, mooning miserably about the place and, worse still, trying to be "helpful" by tidying his study. Meanwhile Freddie Threepwood, back in England to promote his father-in-law Mr Donaldson's "Dog-Joy" biscuits, has just been turned down by his dog-loving Aunt Georgiana, Gertrude's mother, when he runs into his old Oxford pal Beefy Bingham. Bingham, Freddie learns, is in love with cousin Gertrude, but as he is not well-off, the family have closed ranks and sent Gertrude away to Blandings. Inspired by a Super-film he has seen, Freddie sends Bingham down to the castle, under the guise of a Mr "Popjoy" (based on Lord Emsworth's mishearing of the dog biscuits Freddie is selling), tasked with ingratiating himself with the Earl. Emsworth is at first pleased to see Gertrude less dour, and charmed by his guest's diffidence and helpful ways, but soon finds himself smothered - Bingham is overdoing the ingratiating. Emsworth even begins to question the man's sanity, when he wakes in the night to find the fellow blowing kisses up at his window. When Bingham tries to help Emsworth off a ladder and knocks him to the ground, he hopes to remedy the others ills (and anger) with a bottle of balm; sadly however, he buys a product designed for horses, which causes his Lordship considerable pain. When he sees Emsworth singing during his morning swim, he mistakes the awful noise for cries for help, and dashes in to save the aging peer, only to be thanked with a stiff punch in the face. Freddie reveals to Emsworth that Popjoy is in fact Bingham, hopeful of one of the many livings in Emsworth's gift. When Emsworth realises that he can inflict the man on his enemy Parsloe-Parsloe, he doesn't hesitate from granting him the job.
4487720	/m/0c54rx	The Song of Bernadette				 The story of Bernadette Soubirous and Our Lady of Lourdes is told by Werfel with many embellishments, such as the chapter in which Bernadette is invited to board at the home of a rich woman who thinks Bernadette's visionary "lady" might be her deceased daughter. In side-stories and back story, the history of the town of Lourdes, the contemporary political situation in France, and the responses of believers and detractors are delineated. Werfel describes Bernadette as a religious peasant girl who would have preferred to continue on with an ordinary life, but takes the veil as a nun after she is told that because "Heaven chose her", she must choose Heaven. Bernadette's service as a sacristan, artist-embroiderer, and nurse in the convent are depicted, along with her spiritual growth. After her death, her body as well as her life are scrutinized for indications that she is a saint, and at last she is canonized. The novel is laid out in five sections of ten chapters each, in a deliberate nod to the Catholic Rosary. Unusual for a novel, the entire first part, which describes the events on the day that Bernadette first saw the Virgin Mary, is told in the present tense, as if it were happening at the moment. The rest of the novel is in the past tense.
4488412	/m/0c55pw	The Go-getter	P. G. Wodehouse	1931-03	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Freddie Threepwood, still trying to persuade his Aunt Georgiana of the benefits of Donaldson's Dog-Joy, hears that his cousin Gertrude has become infatuated with Orlo Watkins, a weedy tenor invited to the castle by Lady Constance. While visiting his friend Beefy Bingham to borrow his dog Bottles, Freddie learns that she has indeed all but "handed him the bird". Freddie tells this to Lady Georgiana, while giving a rather poor demonstration of Dog-Joy's powers, during which Bottles is scared off by Susan, one of Lady Georgiana's Pekes. He later tries to reason with his cousin, but to no avail; the glamour of the singer has taken her over. That evening, while the household take after-dinner coffee in the drawing room, Freddie enters with Bottles and a sack of rats, intending to demonstrate the Dog-Joy reared mongrel's ratcatching prowess; Orlo Watkins, observed by Gertrude, cringes somewhat at the sight. The family protest, and Beach is called to take the bag of rats away. Bottles remains, however, and when one of Lady Georgiana's Airedales comes in, a mighty battle commences. Watkins, to Gertrude's disgust, leaps atop a display cabinet, while the others dither about. Just in time, Bingham enters, sees the fight in progress, and breaks it up by the simple expedient of taking one dog in each massive hand and pulling. His manly display shakes the scales from Gertrude's eyes, and she falls into his arms, while Watkins slinks off, defeated. Lady Georgiana, meanwhile, is so impressed by Bottles' performance that she orders two tons of Dog-Joy off Freddie.
4490134	/m/0c589b	Ernesto	Umberto Saba	1975	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ernesto, a 16-year-old boy living in Trieste in 1898, has an affair with a 28-year-old worker simply called "the man". Ernesto subsequently has sex with the man frequently, but after an enjoyable experience with a female prostitute, he stops seeing him. He concentrates on studying the violin, and during a concert, Ernesto (now seventeen) meets a beautiful 15-year-old boy, also a violin player. He is called Emilio, nicknamed "Ilio". it:Ernesto (romanzo)
4491117	/m/0c5b34	Circus of the Damned	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Circus of the Damned continues the adventures of Anita Blake. Anita simultaneously attempts to solve a series of murders by an unknown vampire pack, fend off the advances of her would be vampire master, Jean-Claude and deal with various people and creatures who wish her to reveal Jean-Claude's identity and location. As with its predecessors, Circus of the Damned blends elements of supernatural, hardboiled detective, and police procedural fiction. Within the novel, the "Circus of the Damned" is the name of a supernatural circus that operated by Jean-Claude and serves as one of the main locations within the book. Hamilton employed the practice of titling the novels after a location within each novel for most of the books in the series.
4493325	/m/0c5f7n	Gypsy in Amber	Martin Cruz Smith		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story's protagonist is Romano Grey, a gypsy antique expert who is pulled into a murder investigation when one of his friends dies in an automobile accident and is posthumously accused of the murder of a girl whose body, neatly sliced into six pieces, is found at the scene of the accident. Grey reappears in Canto for a Gypsy, published in 1972.
4493990	/m/0c5g40	The Mermaid Chair	Sue Monk Kidd	2005-02-28	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Mermaid Chair is the soulful tale of Jessie Sullivan, a middle-aged woman whose stifled dreams and desires take shape during an extended stay on Egret Island, where she is caring for her troubled mother, Nelle. Once she returns to her childhood home, Jessie is forced to confront not only her relationship with her estranged mother, but her other emotional ties as well. After decades of marriage to Hugh, her practical yet conventional husband, Jessie starts to question whether she is craving an independence she never had the chance to experience. After she meets Brother Thomas, a handsome monk who has yet to take his final vows, Jessie is forced to decide whether passion can coexist with comfort, or if the two are mutually exclusive. As her soul begins to reawaken, Jessie must also confront the circumstances of her father's death, a tragedy that continues to haunt Jessie and Nelle over thirty years later.
4496244	/m/0c5jv0	If You Could See Me Now	Cecelia Ahern	2005-11	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Trapped in a stifling, small town in Ireland, Elizabeth Egan had always been known as a serious woman, never laughing at jokes or taking joys from the simplest pleasure of life. This is due to having been abandoned by her free-spirited mother when she was young and was forced to grow up quickly to take care of her sister, Saoirse. Taking advantage of Elizabeth's sense of responsibility, Saoirse has led life with abandonment, and when she gives birth to a son, Luke, she leaves Elizabeth to take care of him. At the age of six, Luke claims to have a friend named Ivan whom Elizabeth cannot see. Though at first she is exasperated with this imaginary friend, she starts playing along with Luke when she learns that imaginary friends will only last about 3 months. Though invisible to most, Ivan is real. Only Luke and Saoirse can see him, though he comes to realise that Elizabeth can feel his presence. Knowing that only people who are in real need of a friend are able to see him, he follows Elizabeth around. When, suddenly, she is able to see him, Ivan is delighted, but disappointed just as quickly when she thinks him to be the father of one of Luke's friends. A friendship which soon turns into romance blossoms between them. Elizabeth meets Benjamin at work, and he asks her to dinner, but Ivan prevents her from going by inviting her out instead. Ivan's boss, Opal, sees his love for Elizabeth and tells him her own sad tale. She tells him that however much he wishes to be with Elizabeth a time will come when she will no longer be able to see him and will eventually age while he would remain young. However, Ivan is too much in love with Elizabeth and refuses to listen. To convince him, Opal takes him to see her own love, who has become an 80 year old man while Opal has remained young. One day, when Elizabeth is hosting a party, she is no longer able to see Ivan for a while and he realises it is time to move on to a new friend. Ivan visits Elizabeth one last time while she sleeps, explaining why he has to go. Elisabeth thinks it was a dream. A few days later, Elizabeth realizes that it wasn't and that Ivan was was Luke's 'imaginary' friend. They go their separate ways, and not only Elizabeth but Ivan as well are changed by the experience. Elizabeth is more relaxed and Ivan admits that Elizabeth has been by far his favorite friend.
4499472	/m/0c5ps5	The Curse of Lono	Hunter S. Thompson	1983	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Hunter S. Thompson receives a letter from the editor of Running magazine, asking him to cover the 1980 Honolulu Marathon, which the editor says should be "a good chance for a vacation". Hunter asks the illustrator Ralph Steadman to accompany him. On the flight over, he meets a man named Ackerman, who seems to have connections to the drug trade in Hawaii. Hunter covers the marathon with his characteristic gonzo style, weaving his own experiences into the coverage of the story. After the marathon, Hunter, Ralph and Ralph's family move to a rented beach side "compound" on Hawaii's Kona coast. The weather is miserable and they are trapped indoors, besieged by huge waves. Ralph and his family, upset about the terrible conditions of their vacation, return to England. Later, Hunter reunites with Ackerman to go fishing. Hunter eventually catches a huge Marlin, which he beats to death with a Samoan war club. The fishing boat returns to the dock, with Hunter screaming triumphantly, "I am Lono!", referring to the ancient Hawaiian god. After this, Hunter ends his story in the City of Refuge, hiding from those he upset with his antics at the docks. The story frequently breaks away to excerpts from The Last Voyage of Captain James Cook, which tells the story of the man the native Hawaiians thought was the reincarnation of Lono.
4502005	/m/0c5v3w	On Christian Doctrine	Augustine of Hippo			 The Prologue consists of a response to who would resist Augustine’s project of providing rules for interpretation of the Scriptures. Augustine outlines three possible objections, including those who do not understand his precepts, those who fail to make effective use of his teachings, and those who believe they are already prepared to interpret the Scriptures. To the first two types of critics, Augustine states that he cannot be held responsible for their inability to understand. He then addresses the third type of critic, those who believe they are already able to interpret the Scriptures. If their claims are true, he acknowledges that they have received a great blessing. However, they must admit that language itself was learned from a human being, not directly from God. Therefore, God has created human beings to learn from one another, and we ought to learn with humility. All good teaching from human beings derives ultimately from God. The ability to understand obscurity is therefore both the gift of God and reinforced by human teaching. Book One discusses enjoyment, use, interpretation, and the relation of various Christian doctrines to these concepts. Augustine begins with a discussion of the steps in the interpretive process: discovery of what is to be understood, and a way of teaching what has been discovered. He then expands upon the Platonic notion that there are things and signs. Signs are used to symbolize things, but are considered things themselves because they too represent meaning. They are given meaning through their repetition and propagation throughout society. Some things are to be enjoyed (in Latin, frui), and others are to be used (uti). Things we enjoy are those we find good in themselves, and things we use are those that are good for the sake of something else. The only thing that is to be enjoyed is God. All other things, including other human beings, are to be used in relation to the proper end of enjoyment. To use something which is to be enjoyed or vice versa is to fail to love properly. The discussion of enjoyment and use leads to an extended reflection on motivation, word as flesh, and humanity as image of God. Book One concludes with a discussion of love: how humans ought to love God, how God’s love is expressed in his use of humanity, and how people may appreciate God’s love through the Scriptures, faith, and charity. Augustine also claims that those who think they understand the Scriptures, but do not interpret them to reflect charity and love, do not really understand them. Book Two discusses the types of unknown signs present in the world and defines each and presents methods for understanding the Scriptures. Obscure signs include unknown literal signs and unknown figurative signs. Unknown signs are those that have meanings that are unknown. Augustine says that a feature of the Scriptures is obscurity and that obscurity is the result of sin: that is, God made the Scriptures obscure in order to motivate and challenge our fallen minds. Augustine claims there are seven steps to wisdom in interpretation of the Scriptures: fear of God, loyal obedience (or faith), scientia (or knowledge), strength, good counsel, purity of heart, and then wisdom. He also distinguishes "truth" from "logic", and argues that logic can lead to falsehood. He declares that it is better to have truth than logic. Augustine argues that committing the Scriptures to memory is critical to understanding. Once the reader is "familiar with the language of Scripture," it is possible for him to try to untangle sections that are obscure. He also emphasizes studying the Scriptures in their original languages to avoid the problems of imperfect and divergent translations. Throughout Book Two, Augustine stresses the importance of method as well as virtue for attaining wisdom through the Scriptures. He analyzes sources of knowledge, reason, and eloquence as well as charity and humility. Book Three discusses how to interpret ambiguous literal and ambiguous figurative signs. Ambiguous signs are those whose meaning is unclear or confused. He suggests first determining things from signs. Then, once the distinction is made, understand the literal meaning of the text (things as things, nothing more). Determining if there is a deeper meaning in the text can be done by recognizing a different, more figurative, mode of writing. This may show that the things are also signs of something else. For example, an aged tree could be a literal tree or it could be a symbol of long life (as a sign or allegory). Augustine emphasizes right motives when interpreting scripture, and claims that it is more important to build up love than to arrive at a historically or literally accurate interpretation. He also stresses that contemporary readers must be careful to understand that some actions (i.e., having multiple wives) which were acceptable among the ancients are no longer acceptable, and must therefore be interpreted figuratively. Understanding tropes such as irony and antiphrasis will also be beneficial for interpretation. The final section of Book Three is one of Augustine’s late additions to the work (with Book Four), consisting of Tyconius’s seven rules for interpreting scripture: The Lord and His Body, The Twofold Division of the Body of the Lord, The Promises and the Law (or The Spirit and the Letter), Species and Genus, Times, Recapitulation, and The Devil and His Body. Book Four discusses the relationship between Christian truth and rhetoric, the importance of eloquence, and the role of the preacher. This book was appended to the work a number of years after its original composition, along with the end of Book Three. Augustine again stresses the importance of both discovery and teaching for the interpretation of Scripture. He cautions the reader that he will not discuss the rules of rhetoric here; for though they are acceptable and useful for the Christian speaker, they can easily be learned elsewhere. Though eloquence is a skill which can be used for good or evil, it should be used in service to wisdom. It is not necessary, then, for the preacher to be eloquent, but only wise. Nonetheless, eloquence can enhance one’s ability to teach wisdom. The proper goal of rhetoric should thus be to teach wisdom by the use of eloquence. Augustine then analyzes the relationship between eloquence and teaching, including various stylistic points, a discussion of inspiration, and the claim that eloquence and teaching are both to be valued. Drawing on Cicero, Augustine outlines three types of style—subdued style, moderate style, and grand style—and discusses the proper context for each. The use of these styles must be determined by subject matter as well as the audience. Finally, Augustine concludes by considering the importance of the preacher’s life, which is more important than eloquence for persuading the audience. In this regard, things (the preacher’s actions) are more important than signs (the preacher’s words). Prayer is essential in order to receive from God the wisdom which will be passed on to the audience. The text concludes with an injunction to humility and thanks to God that Augustine has been able to discuss these topics.
4503207	/m/0c5xds	Ginger Pye	Eleanor Estes		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This book is about a puppy named Ginger. Jerry Pye, a resident in Cranbury, Connecticut in 1919, bought a puppy he wanted from Ms. Speedy for a hard-earned dollar he made while dusting the pews in the church for Sam Doody. Jerry was pleased with the puppy and headed home. On the way home, Jerry and his sister Rachel heard footsteps behind them. When they turned back, they did not see anything. Jerry decided that if anyone was following them, then that follower was after his dog. After a few days, Jerry remembered that he hadn't given his puppy a name! Rachel, Uncle Bennie, and Jerry thought of a name but couldn't think of one. He asked his mother and his mother said Ginger because he looks like ginger and has quality of ginger. So they called him, Ginger or Ginger Pye. Ginger was a smart dog. He even located the school that Jerry goes to. Almost all his neighbors and friends knew Ginger. But then suddenly, Ginger disappeared! Later on Thanksgiving Day, the dog, who the Pyes named Ginger, was missing. Jerry and his sister Rachel tried to find him, but they could not. They go all around Cranbury and ask neighbors to help. They found out that Ginger had been tied up in a shed. Then they find out who the person was that stole Ginger (the unsavory character) was Wally Bullwinkle. At the end Uncle Bennie had found the dog. Everybody was very happy when they got Ginger back. They thought he had been treated badly, but he would never forget this moment.
4503235	/m/025t3cz	After the Bomb	Gloria D. Miklowitz	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows a teen, who attempts to survive in the aftermath of a nuclear missile accidentally launched at Los Angeles by the Soviet Union, with his mother (the father is presumed dead as he worked in downtown Los Angeles, ground zero for the bomb), older brother, and friends.
4504747	/m/0c5_r_	Caesar's Daughter				 The story begins with Julia over looking her life while she is starving to death under the rule of her stepbrother Tiberius; she decides to write her story down before she dies. The book introduces us to the three-dimensional character of Julia, which begins with her birth into a world where war with Ptolemaic Egypt is certain. She is a rebellious little girl who is willful, passionate but with a gentleness and compassion for the people of Rome. She has republican sentiments like her father, but seems to have a more liberal view on how Rome should be run. Dearly beloved by nearly everyone she meets except her stepmother, Livia. Julia is loyal to her father, but not afraid to criticize his decisions. Julia grows up among intrigue and ultimately becomes its victim. Under the influence of her mother Scribonia, the poets Horace and Ovid, she begins to enjoy her life. Her only true friend is her slave and later freedwoman, Phoebe. As a little girl, she is told by one of her cousins the truth about her father and Livia's marriage; neither of them sleep together. Livia finds virgins, pregnant senator's wives and various other women instead. This shocks Julia and she loses respect for her father. When she is thirteen, she is nearly seduced by Calpurnius Piso who falls passionately in love with her. However, he fails when Julia is married at fourteen to her cousin Marcellus, whom Julia has a slight crush on. However, Marcellus is cannot bring himself to consummate their marriage. Julia is humiliated time and time again by the other women her age who mock her because of her failure to have a baby and not being able to tell them she was in fact still a virgin. When he falls ill a few years later and dies, this hits Julia quite hard and she takes the blame for his death although it wasn't her fault. Following Marcellus' death, she is betrothed to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, a man more than twice her age. She confides Agrippa that Marcellus never consummated their marriage and makes him swear never to tell anyone. Though at first Julia dislikes the idea of marrying Agrippa, she quickly grows fond of him and eventually falls in love with him. She finally marries Agrippa and falls pregnant instantly. Nine months after their marriage she gives birth to her son Gaius and upon Agrippa's return she falls pregnant with her "little monster" daughter Vipsania Julia. Around the time that she falls pregnant with her third child, Augustus passes a law making adultery a public crime and also enforces a law saying that all couples should have at least three children in order to receive extra privileges, such as viewing public games. Julia and Agrippa are covered, as too are people like Scribonia (who as Julia, Cornelia and Cornelius) but others have not, including Julia's close friend, the poet Horace. On Augustus' renewing of Lex Iulia and rule against bachelorism, she tries to protest on behalf of many of her friends. Upon the birth of her son Lucius, Augustus attempts to adopt Gaius and Lucius as his own sons (so both he and Livia will fit into the new law) but Julia refuses, advising him to get his own extra two children. Julia soon afterwards gives birth to her daughter Agrippina. Julia becomes friends with a woman named Aemilia and her husband Lucius Vinicius after the meeting of matrons, where Julia was worshiped in the guise of Diana. She also spends time with her cousins Claudia Marcella (Agrippa's ex-wife) and Iullus Antonius, the son of Mark Antony. Julia also attempts to aid Tiberius, husband to Agrippa's eldest daughter Vipsania in his poor self-esteem by watching him at his cavalry practice. Around this time, Scribonia gathers some information about Augustus' love affairs that leak through Julia. To counter the rumours, Tiberius starts a rumour that Julia had 'conceived a passion' for him and, out of his jealousy Iullus spreads the rumours. It is only when Scribonia finds out about the rumours that she helps Julia counter then by advising her not to go near Tiberius anymore. She tells Agrippa about what Tiberius has been spreading and that it isn't true, and he believes her. Julia falls pregnant with her fifth child but Agrippa catches a fever and because of Julia's pregnancy, she cannot go to him. He dies from the fever. Julia is devastated. Through her grief, she begins to call the baby inside her by Agrippa's name and upon his birth she names him Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa Postumus for his father and she cherishes him above all of her children because he looks and behaves so much like his father. Following Agrippa's death, Augustus finally forces Julia to let him adopt Gaius and Lucius, but she refuses to let him have Postumus. Augustus also forces Julia into marriage with Tiberius, who is forced to divorce his wife in order to marry her. Augustus sends him away to fight in a campaign so they at least won’t have to see him. Not long after the marriage, Julia gets a visit from Octavia, who never fully recovered from Marcellus’ death, who tells her the truth about Livia; she wanted the marriage between Julia and Tiberius because it led to the possibility that he might be the next emperor. Octavia dies soon afterwards. Iullus Antonius also becomes a close friend of Julia’s, and tells her that he had strongly opposed the marriage because he felt it threatened Gaius and Lucius’ claims to the throne. He then reveals to Julia that he has fallen in love with her and his real motives for protesting for against her marriage to Tiberius were partly because he wanted her for himself and he had urged Augustus to let her marry him instead. He shares with her his desires to see Gaius on the throne after Augustus dies, as well as his desires to marry Julia. She realises that he had only become her friend with the intention of becoming her lover and sends him away, but Iullus makes a promise to her that if anything were to happen to Tiberius, she would let him marry her. After the meeting, Iullus pursues Julia sexually by sending her love letters, gifts and various other forms to show his affection. Though Julia desires him also, she resists the temptation from fear of falling pregnant while Tiberius is away. Tiberius returns from his campaign after two years, and though Julia tries to be kind to him, he treats her coldly because he has heard of Iullus’ passions for her. Tiberius insults Julia constantly and hysterically blames her for his divorce from Vipsania. Julia realises that her husband is mentally unstable and only realises his cruelty when be brutally rapes her upon returning from his campaign. Julia is devastated by her situation and Tiberius cruelty’s drives her to giving into Iullus, beginning an affair with him. They disguise their relationship behind her pregnancy and are forced to meet each other in secret at friends’ homes. Iullus aids Julia in promoting her sons to the people of Rome. They begin to favour the boys and Iullus over Tiberius. Julia gives birth to Tiberius’ son but he dies only a few weeks after being born. After a while, Tiberius is no longer able to tolerate Julia taking Iullus’ side over his and decides to retire from Rome. When Julia requests a divorce, Augustus refuses because it will cut him off from the Claudian family. Desperate to marry Julia and assure the boys place in the succession, Iullus comes up with a plan to murder Tiberius while he’s out of Rome because if Tiberius were to die, Augustus would have no one but Iullus to turn to and it would remove the Claudians from the picture forever. When Iullus goes to Julia with the plan, she refuses to help him and says she won’t support him. Not long after this, Julia is arrested with her friends for adultery. She is also charged with treason against the emperor, not for trying to murder Tiberius but Augustus. Though Julia denies everything, Augustus flies into a violent rage and demands she be exiled or executed to the senate. Iullus Antonius and the others are arrested, including Julia’s brother Cornelius and while her friends are exiled, Iullus is forced to write a confession before he is executed. He admits that he did commit adultery with Julia but that she knew nothing of his plans and took responsibility for everything, in an attempt to save her from execution. He consequently commits suicide to avoid execution and to avoid further questioning. Rumours begin to fly that Augustus has gone mad and that Julia had begun another civil war, taking the place of Cleopatra and Iullus the place of Mark Antony. When Phoebe is taken to prison and threatened with torture, she commits suicide in order to keep Julia and Iullus’ affair to herself. Scribonia saves Julia from execution by visiting Augustus and threatening an uprising of the people if he makes such a move. He agrees to just exile her and allows Scribonia to go with her into exile. Julia finishes the story by telling of how she has been locked in her house and refused to eat. The novel’s ending is bittersweet and satisfying.
4506275	/m/047gnzf	The Glass Cafe	Gary Paulsen	2003-06-10	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tony is fascinated with art, and goes to the club that his mom works at to draw pictures of some of the ladies. When his art teacher looks at the drawings, she wants to put them up in a museum for a contest. When people look at the pictures of the ladies Tony's mom gets in trouble and is sent to court for letting her son draw pornographic pictures. Tony's mom explains that it was just art, and tells them the story of the Glass Cafe.
4507275	/m/0c62_4	1633	Eric Flint	2002-08	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 1633 continues where 1632 left off. Most of the novel details various political machinations of the new "United States" and the attempts of Cardinal Richelieu to nullify the threat posed by the technological advantage the up-timers have given to Gustavus Adolphus and his "Confederated Principalities of Europe". Richelieu completely changes France's foreign policy and forms an alliance aimed squarely at the NUS and Gustavus called the League of Ostend. Mike Stearns sends emissaries looking for allies, some of whom end up behind enemy lines as they already belong to the secret League of Ostend, which announces its presence in the Battle of Four Fleets. The Dutch Republic nearly falls and Stearns' emissary voluntarily stays behind, becoming trapped in the Siege of Amsterdam. At this point, the newly created timeline start to diverge greatly from the actual history of the 17th Century, in no small part because the news of a town from the future brought spies and emissaries, and a fair number of encyclopedias and history textbooks found their way into European courts. One theme of the series is of down-timer leaders trying to change, hasten or head off their histories while the acts of ordinary citizens going about their day to day affairs and of the leaders of Grantville effect more fundamental societal and political changes.
4507703	/m/0c63fs	Seola	Anne Eliza Smith	1878		 The greatest discovery of the nineteenth century is found by accident. A team of archaeologists uncover one of the most ancient burial tombs of all time. Inside the tomb they find something far greater than gold or gems, they find a diary of a person who lived more than four thousand years ago. The team pool all their knowledge together in order to translate the scroll diary before it disintegrates in the foreign air. The diary of Seola is about a girl's struggle to resist a wicked world. Her resolve to remain loyal to God is so strong she influences a fallen angel to repentance. The diary is unique because it gives a detailed account on how the Great Deluge started. One of the planets in the solar system becomes unstable and its destruction causes the waters above the expanse to fall. The beginning entry of the journal gave no doubt as to the era the individual claims to come from. The entry reads, “West Bank of the Euphrates, first moon-evening, after Adam, four cycles”. The author of the journal identifies herself as Seola, daughter of Aleemon and Lebuda. Her father was the son of Lamech and his father was Methuselah. Aleemon had a passion for study and the preservation of historical records. This desire kept him near a grand city which contained a wealth of knowledge on the history of the world written down on scrolls. The city’s name was Sippara and it was also known as the city of the Sun. This desire also endangered the lives of his family. It so happened that the city was the royal seat of the one who ruled the planet. This ruler was known as Lucifer the Light Bearer, King of the Sun. He and his kind were ruling the earth for over 1100 years, since the days of Jared. These beings were known as the Devas. The Devas were angelic spirit beings that materialized into human form. Their superior powers enabled them to dominate and instill fear into the human race. They sought after the most beautiful women of mankind and took them as wives. Through the union of the mortal female and the angelic being came male children of large stature. These offspring were known as the Darvands. The Darvands were ruthless bullies with strength that none could match. Seola begins her journal at the request of her father. Her first entries are common and uneventful because the family has been relocated to an isolated section of the forest away from Sippara and their life is peaceful with the isolation. The tranquility eventually comes to an end because the Devas discover their private sanctuary. The threat to the family is neither by wealth or possession but by way of beauty.
4507859	/m/0c63m2	The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby	Dav Pilkey	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	=== Plot summary ===
4510088	/m/0c679l	The Calcutta Chromosome	Amitav Ghosh	1996-08-23	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins with the story of Antar, an employee of the LifeWatch organization, who recounts an encounter with L. Murugan, an employee of LifeWatch who has disappeared in Calcutta. The plot is quite complicated and its timelines are deliberately mixed up. Antar starts to track Murugan’s disappearance in Calcutta many years back. Murugan has asked to be transferred to Calcutta because of his fascination with the life of Sir Ronald Ross. The Calcutta of Ronald Ross is well separated in time from the Calcutta that Murugan visits, but the New York of Antar and the Calcutta of Murugan seem to overlap in time, though it is clearly stated in the novel that they are separated by many years. Through his research into old and lost documents and phone messages, Antar figures out that Murugan had systematically unearthed an underground scientific/mystical movement that could grant eternal life. Loosely described, the process is as follows: the disciples of this movement can transfer their chromosomes into another, and gradually become that person or take over that person. In the novel, Ronald Ross did not discover the mysteries of the malaria parasite; it was a group of underground practitioners of a different, mystical "science," natives of India, who helped to guide Ross to the conclusions for which he is famous. These Indians provided Ross with clues in the belief that in the moment Ross made his discovery, the parasite would change its nature. At this point, a new variant of malaria would emerge and the group's research using the chromosome-transfer technique would advance even further.
4511023	/m/0c69rv	Ondskan	Jan Guillou	1981	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Erik Ponti is a fourteen year old boy living in the 1950s Stockholm lower middle class. His sadistic stepfather beats him every day after dinner and on random occasions, his mother seemingly afraid to protest and his six year old brother taking advantage of him. He excels in school; "He ran the fastest and scored the most goals, could take a gargantuan beating, hit with full strength at the first punch and on top of all that he was the superior student in several subjects", which lends him a position as gang leader and favored student of half his teachers. (He compulsively leads the class to rebel against the other half, who beat the students.) He lives with violence both at home and at school and begins feeling sympathy and pity towards those he beats, when his life comes tumbling down because of the school gang's criminal activities. Betrayed by those he thought of as his friends, the gang, he is expelled from school and "pre-emptively" expelled from every school in Stockholm by his zealous and influential principal. He comes home prepared to face his father "for the last time" but is surprisingly sent to a boarding school outside of the city, the expensive and exclusive Stjärnsberg school. Away from his father and everyone who knew him, Erik is determined to make a new life without violence for himself, but the traditions of the school stop him. Unable to abide the abuse of the senior students, who make it their habit to boss around and beat those below them, "especially new and mouthy kids", he begins a spiral of escalating violence and psychological abuse under the nose of unwitting teachers and adults. Noses are broken, threats are uttered, buckets of feces thrown around and Erik spends a cold winter night soaking wet and tied to the ground. Erik and his friend and roommate Pierre hold in-depth discussions about the nature of evil, the importance of resistance and methods of fighting, while spending summer and winter breaks abroad. Erik develops a forbidden relationship with Marja, a school cook from Savonia, Finland, and wins a swimming trophy in a school championship. He is thrown out of the swimming team as an attempt to make him follow orders, and begins working out obsessively by weightlifting to vent his frustrations, panicked over the prospect of being expelled if he lays a hand on a senior student. When Pierre surrenders to the abuse directed at him to punish Erik and leaves the school, Erik takes to stalking the woods in disguise at night and systematically breaking the nose and teeth of those responsible, when he finds them alone. Marja, fired because of the suspicions of her relationship with Erik, sends him a love letter which the principal uses as grounds to have him expelled, but with the aid of Mr. Ekengren, the family lawyer, Erik threatens legal action over the confiscation of his mail and is allowed to finish his last semester in relative peace. Although not before tracking down his chief tormentor, the chairman of the students' council Otto Silverhjelm, alone in the woods and scaring him into hysteric crying and vomiting. Finishing his basic education with the highest possible grades - barring the lowest possible grade in conduct and behavior - Erik returns home to deal with his father, now that he doesn't need him anymore. . .
4513902	/m/0c6h7x	Star Wars Jedi Quest 8: The Changing of the Guard	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 When Obi-Wan, Anakin, Siri, and Ferus get a tip that Jenna Zan Arbor is hiding on the planet of Romin under the protection of a tyrannical dictator, they pose as a gang of thieves called the Slams in order to infiltrate the planet. Thanks to the laws of Romin, the Jedi cannot arrest Arbor and take her away. Arbor must leave the planet of her own free will. The Jedi hope to trick her into leaving by offering her a part in a heist, but it soon becomes apparent that she has other plans. Matters are complicated further when a civil war erupts on the planet and the Jedi are thrown into the middle of it. Will our heroes finally capture the evil scientist or will she slip away yet again?
4515372	/m/0c6lhd	Stormbreaker	Anthony Horowitz	2000-09-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 After the death of Ian Rider in a "car crash," Alex Rider, his nephew, becomes suspicious of events occurring afterward. First, he finds the Chairman of the bank he worked for, Alan Blunt, with a gun strapped to his side at Ian's funeral, then Ian's study is stripped clean. This leads him to an auto junkyard where he learns Ian was assasinated, as he finds bullet holes in the windshield, after nearly getting killed by the crusher and having a battle with the men at the junkyard. He goes to the bank for Ian's will, but sneaks into the office of his co-worker, John Crawley. After getting into Ian's office, he finds a bunch of mysterious files and papers, including one labeled 'Stormbreaker', John Crawley catches Alex and a guard tranqulizes him. Alex wakes up inside MI6 headquarters. He learns that Alan Blunt is actually the head of MI6, which is revealed to be the angency Ian worked for and meets Mrs Jones, second-in-command of the MI6. Alex is recruited and is sent to be trained at a SAS base. When he completes his training, he is sent to investigate the Stormbreaker computers, which his uncle was investigating and to spy on Egyptian Multimillionaire Herod Sayle, the owner of the Stormbreakers, an advanced computer he's planning to put in every school in Britain. Before he leaves, he is given a yo-yo which has a nylon string and is used for gripping things. He receives a Game Boy Color which is used for contacting, scanning; etc depending on the cartridge, and a zit cream used for burning through metal. Alex learns from MI6 that Ian Rider was killed by a Russian assassin called Yassen Gregorovich. Alex goes under the disguise of Felix Lester (another teenage boy who had earlier won a magazine competition to be the first child to use the Stormbreaker computer). He later arrives at Sayle's mansion. Sayle shows Alex around his own headquarters, which houses a large jellyfish aquarium containing a large Portuguese Man o' War jellyfish. Alex also meets Mr. Grin, a henchman who's name derives from his time as a circus performer, catching knives with his teeth. An accident left him without a tongue and two large scars which give him the appearance of constant smiling and devilish look. Initially the trip goes well, with Alex finding a cryptic diagram made by his Uncle Ian in the canopy of his bed. However, Sayle grows to dislike Alex. While investigating the base, Alex sees several of Sayle's agents unloading metal cases with great care from a nuclear submarine. When one of the agents drops a metal case, he is promptly shot dead by Gregorovich, whom Alex is warned about and would be pulled out if he ever sees him. The next day, Alex goes for a walk through fields close to Sayle's mansion (following recommendation by a German woman called Nadia Vole, an associate of Sayle). He finds himself ambushed by armed guards on two quad bikes, who try to kill Alex. However, one collides with an electric fence and the other falls from a cliff face. Alex decides to investigate the library, because he earlier learned that Ian had spent some time there. Alex finds a map in a book about tin mining which matches the diagram left by Ian. He also learns that Ian had borrowed several books about viruses, and assumes that Sayle plans to use the Stormbreaker network to release a computer virus. Alex investigates the mine and, following the path left by his uncle, discovers a large computer manufacturing facility, where the Stormbreaker computers are being filled with a strange fluid. Alex realizes that the 'viruses' being investigated by Ian were not computer viruses, but biological weapons (a potent form of Smallpox). Alex is detected and nearly escapes but is eventually caught and knocked out by Mr Grin. Alex regains consciousness and finds himself handcuffed to a radiator, two guards come in and bring him to the room with the aquarium and handcuffs him to a chair, Sayle learns of who he is and explains his plan. When Sayle attended school, he was bullied because of his accent and skin colour. The worst bully was none other than the future Prime Minister. As a result, Sayle plans to embarrass the PM by his "April Fools Joke"; when the computers are activated by the Prime Minister, the virus will be released into every school in the country, killing the children. Sayle brags that "a spoonful of the stuff would destroy a city!". Alex is left handcuffed to the chair, who knows that Mr. Grin will come back and give him a slow and painful death. He is left there until Nadia Vole frees him, telling Alex that she is a fellow spy who worked with Ian Rider. However, as they head to find a mobile phone to call MI6 and inform them of Sayle's plan, she triggers a trapdoor which drops Alex into the jellyfish tank, revealing Sayle sent her back to kill him instead of Mr. Grin. Alex eventually gets free by using the acne cream gadget to damage the tank's supporting iron girders, causing it to burst. Vole is caught in the blast of water, and is killed by the jellyfish. Snatching up a harpoon gun, Alex rushes outside to find that Sayle's private helicopter has already left, leaving only a cargo plane on the tarmac. With just a little over an hour until the launch of the Stormbreaker computers, Alex realises he must board the cargo plane. Using the handle of the harpoon gun, Alex knocks out a guard, taking his jeep and pistol. As he starts the jeep, several other jeeps start to pursue him as the cargo plane starts to take off. Through some fancy driving and good fortune, Alex manages to cause the destruction of the hostile jeeps. Tying the nylon cord of the yo-yo gadget to the harpoon with the yo-yo clipped to his belt, Alex shoots the harpoon which catches on the underbelly of the airborne plane. Using the gadget, he raises himself on to the plane where he confronts the pilot, who is none other than Mr. Grin. Alex instructs Mr. Grin to fly to London by threatening him with the pistol. When they are finally over London, Alex realizes that there is not much time left before noon. He spots two parachutes and uses one to jump out of the plane. Mr. Grin turns the plane around hoping to ram into Alex. Alex pulls out the Game Boy Color and activates a smoke bomb disguised as a game called "Bomber Boy" inside the cargo plane. Unable to see, Mr. Grin loses control of the plane and fatally crashes into a dock land near the River Thames. Alex crashes through the roof of the Science Museum and dangles from his parachute which had caught on a beam. Alex draws the gun he took from a guard back at Sayle's mansion and fires blindly at the Stormbreaker computer, one shot hitting the Prime Minister's hand and two shots hitting Sayle. Mrs. Jones orders security not to open fire on him. MI6 immediately recalls all the computers, citing "safety issues". Later, after a debriefing by Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones, Alex enters a taxi. The driver is in fact Herod Sayle, who survived the bullets that Alex fired at him. He leads Alex to the top of a building where he is about to shoot Alex, but is himself shot by Yassen Gregovich, who lands in a helicopter. Alex questions Yassen about why he shot Sayle. Yassen explains that Sayle was 'embarrassing', so he had to be eliminated. Alex tells Yassen he will one day kill him, but Yassen brushes aside the comment and tells Alex to drop the spy business and become a normal schoolboy again. He then leaves in the helicopter. Just before it goes out of sight, Alex sees Yassen 'salute' him.
4516338	/m/02p8939	Darkwing	Kenneth Oppel	2007-08-16	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A colony of proto-bats called Chiropters live in safety in a giant sequoia on an uninhabited island, having deserted the other mammals due to refusal to participate in The Pact, a union between all beasts to destroy all Saurian eggs to drive their disease-ridden species to extinction. Dusk, a young Chiropter, is being taught by his father to glide. Dusk is different from the other Chiropters, however; whereas his brethren have simple sails, Dusk has wings, and an urge to fly that he has difficulty suppressing. He is regarded as a freak by the other Chiropters, though he finds acceptance with his parents and his sister, Sylph. Dusk learns to fly, but keeps his secret to himself out of fear of being shunned. Carnassial, the Felid (a type of proto-cat) also has a hidden desire. Born with shearing teeth and an insatiable appetite for flesh, he seemingly fulfils the pact when he destroys the last known batch of Saurian eggs. He leads a pack consisting of other flesh-craving Felids to form a new world order. The rogue pack of Felids find their way to Dusk's island and devour many of his colony, among them Dusk's mother. With their island invaded by the deadly new predators, it is up to Dusk and his unique powers of flight and echolocation to find the Chiropters a new home. Carnassial strikes an alliance with the powerful (but unintelligent) Hyaenodons, who claim that the Saurians do still exist, and enlist the Felids to find and destroy their eggs. Carnassial comes to realise that in order for the Felids to rule, it will have to be through cunning rather than through power. Along the way, Dusk and his colony seek refuge with a seemingly peaceful colony of "Tree Runners", only to find out that they plan on sacrificing them to a giant, meat-eating bird; the Diatryma. After escaping, Dusk finds a new home for his fellow Chiropters, but it is on the other side of a savannah, which is home to many predators. While Dusk is scouting for a good place, he meets another creature that looks similar to himself; it calls itself a bat and tells Dusk that there are many others like them. While trying to cross the savannah, the colony encounters Carnassial and the Hyaenodons. They seek refuge inside a hollow tree, only to be attacked by horrible venomous shrew-like creatures called "Soricids". The Soricids overwhelm and devour a Hyaenodon, and nearly kill Dusk, but he is rescued by Sylph. While trying to cross the Savannah, Dusk gets caught in the web of a giant spider, which cuts him loose from its web. He and Sylph are attacked by Carnassial and his Hyaenodons once again, and take refuge in the skeleton of a large dinosaur. Through it, they find their way into an eerie, underground cave, where Dusk and Sylph discover a nest of an unidentified meat-eating Saurian, along with a clutch of mostly unhatched eggs and the rotting carcasses of the parents. Carnassial, meanwhile, discovers the cave but needs the Hyaenodons to find a larger entrance for him. He schemes with his mate, Panthera; they will destroy all but two eggs, and allow them to hatch. This way, he will be able to manipulate the Hyaenodons by using fear of the Saurians to keep them under his control. Sylph and Dusk debate over whether to destroy the eggs. However, before Sylph can destroy any of them Carnassial and Panthera arrive and attack. However, before the Felids can kill them, a young Saurian (having hatched weeks earlier) appears and attacks Panthera. Dusk and Sylph escape when Carnassial fights against the Saurian in desperation to help his mate. The Saurian follows Dusk and Sylph out of the cave, where it encounters the Hyaenodons outside and attacks them. Eventually, Dusk leads the Chiropters to their new home, and the book ends with him leaving the colony and promising his sister to come back if he doesn't like life with bats.
4517548	/m/0c6qnh	Three for the Chair	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 David Fyfe, a high school English teacher, brings Wolfe a problem regarding a contract and inheritance. His brother Bert has just died of pneumonia and left his estate to David, another brother Paul, and their sister Louise Fyfe Tuttle. But under the terms of an agreement with Bert's business partner, Johnny Arrow, all assets from their uranium mining operation go to Arrow, and the assets represent nearly all of Bert's five million dollar estate. Paul Fyfe thinks that Arrow might have killed Bert before he could shelter his assets by giving them to his relatives. The family hires Wolfe to determine whether there's enough evidence of a crime to refer the matter to the police. Twenty years earlier, Bert was charged with the murder of his father. Bert was acquitted, largely on the basis of an alibi provided by Vincent Tuttle, at the time his roommate and later his brother-in-law. After his acquittal Bert broke contact with his family and moved to Canada, where, in partnership with Arrow, he struck it rich in uranium. Having recently returned to New York to re-establish ties with his family, Bert invited them to his hotel suite for dinner, and to a Broadway show. But Bert fell ill with pneumonia and required bed rest and 24-hour nursing care. Paul, a masher, manhandled nurse Anne Goren, who phoned the attending physician to send another nurse. Louise Tuttle volunteered to watch Bert, and Miss Goren left. Then Paul got into a fistfight with Arrow over Miss Goren, who had aroused romantic and protective feelings in Arrow. Arrow beat Paul so badly that he was arrested and spent the night in jail. That night, Bert died, and his doctor certifies that the death was due to pneumonia. Paul now suggests that Arrow might have found a way to substitute something toxic for the morphine that the doctor had left with the nurse. There are several strange aspects to Bert's death. One is that Bert's father had died in a similar fashion 20 years earlier – someone had opened the bedroom windows on a snowy winter night as the father lay asleep, also suffering from pneumonia. Louise Tuttle has felt guilty ever since, because she was supposed to be looking after him but had fallen asleep in the next room. Then there's the matter of the missing ice cream. Paul had brought two quarts of ice cream to Bert's hotel room and put them in the refrigerator. It went uneaten due to the subsequent events, but somehow it has disappeared. Wolfe sends Archie to see Paul, Louise and Vincent in Mount Kisco to check on the morphine, and while he's there to investigate the ice cream's disappearance. Yet another strange aspect is that when Bert's body was found, there were two hot water bags next to him. The presence of the bags was expected; that they were both empty was not.
4517915	/m/0c6rcf	The Ezekiel Option	Joel C. Rosenberg			 (note: this list is incomplete) Americans * President James Michael "Mac" MacPherson, (June 3, 1950-August 31, 2016), first elected in 2008 with 53% of the vote, and was re-elected in 2012 with 55% of the vote. During the Vietnam War MacPherson served as a Navy F-4 Phantom pilot, and shot down three NVA planes. He served as Governor of Colorado from 2003-2009. He is married to Julie MacPherson, and they have two daughters. * Vice President Willim Havard Oaks, (born: January 6, 1943-September 2, 2016), before he became MacPherson's Vice President he served in Naval Intelligence for about ten years. After leaving the Navy he entered the private sector, after becoming a millionaire he entered politics in his home state of Virginia. He served as Governor of Virginia 1978-1982, and after this served in the US Senate from 1983-2009. He was added to the MacPherson ticket for much the same reasons as George W. Bush asked Dick Cheney to be his vice president. Served as Vice President 2009-2016. 45th. President 2016. * Marsha Kirkpatrick, National Security Advisor, 2009–2015; Secretary of State, 2015–2016 * Jack Mitchell, Director of National Intelligence * Burt Trainor, Secretary of Defense 2009-2016. Vice President, 2016 *Nick Warner Secretary of State, 2011–2015 *Lee Alexander James (1948–2016) Secretary of Homeland Security, 2009–2016; Vice President 2016; 46th. President, 2016 * Jon Meyers Bennett, Senior Advisor to the President, 2009–2014. (born: June 6, 1967-October 2, 2016) * Bob Corsetti, White House Chief of Staff, 2009–2016 * Ken Costello, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, 2009–2014; Senior Advisor to the President, 2015; National Security Advisor, 2016 * Erin Christina McCoy, Aide to Jon Bennett and CIA operations officer. (born: 1977-2016) * Indira Rajiv, Director of the NAMESTAN desk, CIA * Chuck Murray, White House Press Secretary, 2009–2016 * Paul Jackson, Governor of California, 2011–2016; 2016 Republican nominee for President. *Elena Martinez U.S. Senator from Illinois, 2005-; 2016 Democratic nominee for President. Israelis * David Doron, Prime Minister of Israel 2009-, (born: 1939-) * Dr. Eliezer Mordechai, former head of Mossad (born: May 28, 1930-January 12, 2015) RUSSIANS * Grigoriy Vadim, President of the Russian Federation, 2008-2014. * Aleksandr Golitsyn, Russian Foreign Minister, 2008-2014. * Andrei Zyuganov, Director of Presidential Administration (Chief of Staff) * Sergei Ilyushkin, Deputy Seaker of the Duma; Protege of Vladimir Zhirinovsky Al-Nakabah leaders * Yuri Gogolov, Russian Co-Founder of the Al-Nakbah Terrorist Movement * Mohammed Jibril, Iranian Co-Founder of the Al-Nakabah Terrorist Movement Others * Natasha Gogolov, Wife of Yuri Gogolov * Mustafa Al-Hassani, President of Iraq, 2010–2015; President of the United States of Eurasia 2015-2016. * Ruth Bennett, Mother of Jon Bennett * Salvador Lucente, European Union Foreign Minister, 2009–2015; Secretary-General of the United Nations, 2015-. * Ibrahim Sa'id, Palestinian Prime Minister, 2010-2014. * Ifshahan Kharrazi, President of Iran, 2009–2014 * Dmitri Galishnikov CEO Medexco In his previous book, the Last Days, very large oil deposits were discovered in Israel and the occupied territories, and a peace treaty was proposed between Israel and the Palestinians which setup a joint oil production company and made every Israeli and Palestinian a shareholder (making them instantly rich). This book picks up on from the end of Mr. Rosenberg's previous book. This book starts off with an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to New York being hijacked and diverted toward Washington. The flight carries several Duma members, the CEO of Lukoil, and forty-one children. The plane gets shot down by the United States military on live television at the order of the President of the United States before it reaches Washington and causes significant damage. Also, at this time the Palestinian Prime Minister that signed the Israeli-Palestinian Oil Peace Treaty is assassinated in Saudi Arabia by parties unknown. This happens while the former Israeli head of the Mossad is visiting the new country of Babylon, built on the ruins of post-Saddam Iraq. While mourning for his friend the Palestinian PM, the former Mossad head is warned of impending coup in Russia, but his warning comes too late. At the same time, Jon Bennett, an envoy of the President and main architect of the Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, is in Moscow in preparation for treaty related discussions with the Russian government. However, the airplane shooting incident causing a significant cooling of relations between the U.S. and Russia, and gives a boost to the right wing LDPR party which calls for cutting off relations with the US while enhancing Russia's military. When Mr. Bennett is summoned to meet with the Russian President Mr. Vadim, the LDPR with support of the Russian military orchestrates a coup and kills the President. The new Czar Gogolov of Russia severs all diplomatic relations with the US, removes Russia's embassy from the US and expels all US citizens from Russian soil. Mr Bennett is injured and is sent back to the US. However, his fiance (a CIA operative) who was with him in the Kremlin at the time of the coup is kidnapped by the new Russian government in order obtain CIA encryption codes. Via a secret envoy, Russia proceeds to sell twenty five nuclear warheads to Iran to formalize the military alliance that has been growing between the two countries since the 1990s. Russian President/Czar Gogolov then proceeds to convince or in some cases blackmail European countries into support Russia's upcoming fight vs. the United States and Israel (the blackmail is made possible by the fact that Russia is a major gas supplier to Europe). At the same time, Russia convinces Cuba to sign the NPT. Mr. Gogolov then speaks at the United Nations proposing UNSC resolution 2441 which gives Israel thirty days to disarm itself from nuclear weapons, allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in and sign the NPT. This is done in a fashion similar to how the U.S. proceeded against Iraq. Russia also proceeds to turn world opinion against the US by painting that nation as a war monger which shot down a civilian airplane without any proof that a hijacking was in fact in progress. Additionally, Russia asks for one billion dollars/passenger killed reparation payment from the US before resuming diplomatic relations (for a total of $173 billion). Most US allies abandon the US, and side with Russia including EU countries. Before the UNSC resolution comes to vote, the US President sends Mr. Bennett to Israel to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Doron, as well as the former head of Mossad, Dr. Mordechai. PM Doron makes it clear that if the U.S. lets the resolution pass, Israel will not comply. If matters come to war, Israel will then execute the Samson option. After meeting with the PM, Mr. Bennett proceeds to meet with Dr. Mordechai who lays out the case for the current events being the Biblical War of Gog and Magog. Please see War of Ezekiel 38-39 for more information. Dr. Mordechai interprets this as an alliance led by Russia together with Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Sudan and Saudi Arabia against Israel and proposes a new policy called The Ezekiel Option (as opposed to the Samson option). This proposed policy states that Israel should not launch nuclear weapons but rather sit back and allow God to wage war against its enemies. He hands a brief to Mr. Bennett to take back to the President of the United States. Meanwhile the US prepares to expose the Russia/Iran relationship regarding nuclear weapons in order to make Russia lose prestige in the eyes of the world before the UNSC vote takes place. However, the President's speech is pre-empted by Iranian announcement of renouncement of all nuclear energy and agreeing to unrestricted inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (having obtained nuclear weapons Iran no longer needs the civilian nuclear energy program). Mr. Bennett takes the brief back to the US and hands it over to the President prior to the UNSC vote on resolution 2441. When the resolution comes to vote, the resolution passes 12 to 2 with one abstention (USA). Here is how the voting goes (bold indicate permanent members): {| border="1" |- | Argentina || For |- | China || For |- | France || For |- | Germany || For |- | Philippines || Against |- | Indonesia || For |- | Japan || For |- | Libya || For |- | Poland || Against |- | Italy || For |- | Russia || For |- | Turkey || For |- | Britain || For |- | U.S. || Abstains |} The Russian government orchestrates a fake assassination attempt on the life of Czar Gogolov by supposed agents of the Mossad and the Israeli government. This is done in order to have an excuse for first strike against Israel. Meanwhile, massive amounts of troops are being moved toward Israeli borders, all ostensibly in preparation for implementation of the UNSC resolution by force in case Israel refuses to dismantle its nuclear capabilities. Armies from the following countries are participating: Russia, former USSR republics, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Algeria, Austria, Bahrain, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In addition, Russia and former USSR Republics begin naval wargames off the coast of Israel. There are also unknown number of nuclear warheads aimed at Israel from Russian and Iran. Coalition troops are supplemented by numerous horses for the benefit of cavalry troops. Nine days before the UN resolution deadline expires (October 8), the Israeli nuclear forces go on full alert. Russia's forces go on full alert as well to match. The U.S. follows suit by moving to Defcon 2. After the UNSC vote, Mr. Bennett storms the Oval Office to question the President about the vote. After a heated argument, he resigns and leaves. After a trip to visit his mother in Florida, he smuggles himself back into Russia with the help of Dr. Mordechai in order to find and save his fiance. After crossing the border to Iran, Mr. Bennett sends a letter to Dr. Mordechai pleading with him to make the Ezekiel Option public information by sending his brief to a New York Times reporter. Meanwhile his fiance manages to escape her captors and flee to the streets of Moscow with a massive manhunt underway for her. Mr. Mordechai decides to go to the NY Times with his brief. However, the NYT keeps delaying the publication of the story until Drudge leaks it to the world. Following the leak, NYT publishes the story followed by interviews on numerous television stations. The Russian president laughs at the brief: The Jews were always a pathetic lot. Let them pray to their god. Eventually Mr. Mordechai is invited to the Israeli command bunker where he discusses the brief with the Israeli PM. At the same time Mr. Bennett finally reaches Moscow where he is reunited with his fiance. On the last day before the UNSC resolution deadline (October 16), Russia launches a nuclear tipped SS-18 missile at Israel from the city of Tobolsk. The U.S. moves to Defcon 1 while Israel prepares to execute The Samson Option to launch all of its nuclear missiles as follows: * 100 to target Russia * 50 to target former USSR republics * 25 to target Iran * 15 to target Germany and Austria * 8 to target Saudi Arabia * 6 to target Syria * 6 to target Turkey * Remaining missiles to target the capital cities of the rest of the coalition and the troops massing on the borders Meanwhile Mr. Bennett and his fiance are chased by security forces in Moscow which is empty of most citizens who have fled to escape the expected Israeli nuclear attack. At the same time, Dr. Mordechai is trying to convince the Israeli PM not to launch nuclear weapons but rather execute The Ezekiel Option which calls for taking no action and letting God save Israel. The Russian Czar Gogolov and his second in command meanwhile evacuate Moscow via helicopter to a secure command bunker in the Ural Mountains. With 8 minutes left to war, suddenly a massive earthquake takes place with the epicenter near Jerusalem. However, unlike normal earthquakes this one is felt all over the world in fulfilment of Ezekiel's prophecy (38:19-20): 19. For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; 20. So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground. At 2 minutes left to impact, massive fireballs originating from space begin to attack Russia, Iran and other coalition countries. In Russia, the buildings in the Kremlin complex and the Red Square are hit and destroyed including St. Basil's Cathedral and Lenin's Tomb. Afterward, every Russian military base and missile silo is also hit. In Iran, Libya and other coalition countries military and government installations are being targeted. In Saudi Arabia fireballs hit Mecca and Medina, incinerating thousands of people on live television. The Blue Mosque in Turkey and the Reichstag in Germany follow. Near Israel, troops massing on the borders are being massively firebombed and destroyed. In Jerusalem a series of fireballs destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock and all other buildings on the Temple Mount. The book ends with the helicopter carrying the Russian czar and his second in command, Jibril, being destroyed by a fireball, and the Russian president czar being carted off by demons. At the same time Mr. Bennett and his fiance, Erin, escape the burning city of Moscow via a speed boat in the Moskva River.
4518855	/m/0c6t0j	The Knight of the Sacred Lake	Rosalind Miles	2001-06-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 As High King and Queen, Arthur and Guenevere reign supreme across the many kingdoms of Great Britain. Still, Guenevere secretly mourns the loss of her beloved Lancelot, who has returned to the Sacred Lake of his boyhood, hoping to restore his faith in chivalry in the place where he learned to be a knight. In a glittering Pentecost ceremony, new knights are sworn to the Round Table, including Arthur's nephews, Agravain and Gawain. After many years of strife, peace is restored to Guenevere's realm. But betrayal, jealousy, and ancient blood feuds fester unseen. Morgan le Fay, now the mother of Arthur's only son, Mordred, has become the focus of Merlin's age-old quest to ensure the survival of the house of Pendragon. From the east comes the shattering news that Guenevere may have a rival for Lancelot's love. A bleak shadow falls again across Camelot—and across the sacred isle of Avalon, where Roman priests threaten the life of the Lady herself. At the center of the storm is Guenevere, torn between her love for her husband, her people, and Sir Lancelot of the Lake.
4519034	/m/0c6t9v	The Princess of Dhagabad	Anna Kashina	2000-05-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A magical book written with the exotic flavor of Arabian Nights, The Princess of Dhagabad is the first in a trilogy of fantasy novels. This sensuous and vividly imagined novel is about the coming-of-age of an Arabian princess, who is destined to be heiress to the throne of Dhagabad, and her relationship with Hasan, an all-powerful djinn who becomes her slave, teacher and steadfast companion. The Princess of Dhagabad follows the princess as she grows from a child of twelve into a young woman of seventeen, at which age she proves, against all tradition, that she is more than capable of taking her destiny-and the destiny of Dhagabad-in hand. Hasan, her devoted djinn, whose power and omniscience crush him under an unbearable burden, gradually releases himself from his centuries-old pain and apathy. He grows to enjoy spending time with his mistress, until one day-against all odds-he discovers a power greater than wisdom or immortality, greater than suffering—love.
4519856	/m/0c6vlx	Fade to Black	Robert Goldsborough	1990-10	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Nearly all the principals in the book have something to hide, and therefore something for Archie and Wolfe to inquire about, but not every secret is criminal, and the balance between private lives (including a passionate but commercially meaningless liaison between two hostile principals) and responsible disclosure is handled adroitly, and far better than in most Rex Stout novels. Just as in Before Midnight the agency partners have strong personality clashes, but this is seen in this book as a price that is paid for complementary talents in a boutique firm. Wolfe's right-hand man and amanuensis Archie Goodwin is attending a Super Bowl party thrown by his "good friend" Lily Rowan at her East Side penthouse in Manhattan. During the game, there is a spectacular commercial involving parachutists, acrobats, and more promoting a cherry-flavored soft drink call Cherr-o-kee. One of the partners of the ad agency that put on that stunt, Rod Mills, is also at the party, and takes Goodwin aside to say that he'd like help with a problem. Later, all three partners of Mills/Lake/Ryman meet at Wolfe's office discuss an acute problem of industrial espionage they've been having lately: their best ideas being discovered and used by a larger agency representing another cherry-flavored soft drink. The problem as presented by M/L/R is simple: to find the spy within the agency: the source of the industrial esponiage. Therefore, Goodwin has to look into possible links between members of the firm and its rival. While this remains elusive, it becomes clear that the executive of the rival drink's campaign is the recipient of the information, but it isn't long before he is found dead in his apartment (by Archie, who else?). This prompts the owner of Cherr-o-kee, a reclusive part-Cherokee billionaire named Acker Foreman to pay Wolfe a visit, along with his two adult sons, Arnold and Stephen. Despite the tense situation, Wolfe gains Acker Foreman's respect with his knowledge of his career and of Cherokee history, especially the Trail of Tears (documented poignantly by de Tocqueville in Democracy in America). Arnold, however, displays the same hostility as he has to M/L/R personnel. After further investigation, Wolfe gathers the interested parties at his brownstone to lay out his proposed solution, this time without enough evidence to please law enforcement. However, since his mandate is simply to stop industrial espionage, he can (arguably) collect his fee. The rest is left for the reader to discover.
4520362	/m/0c6w3q	Half Moon Investigations	Eoin Colfer	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Fletcher Moon is a natural born investigator. Knowing this, April, a girl from his school comes to him for help in finding a lock of hair that she believes to have been stolen. Fletcher agrees to help her and starts off by investigating all suspects which eventually get him threatened by a thirteen year old named Red Sharkey. Fletcher holds Red as a prime suspect due to his family's criminal reputation. Fletcher then looks up the Sharkey family’s criminal records by hacking police files, leading him to discover a series of unsolved crimes that have occurred in his county. He hears something outside at night and when he goes to check it out, he is assaulted by a hurling stick and knocked unconscious. Upon awakening in hospital, he discovers that the hurling stick must have had 'Red' embossed on it and therefore comes to the conclusion that it was Red attacked him with his hurl, embossed with his name. Fletcher then goes to visit April’s cousin May to photograph this new found evidence but ends up at the wrong house where he catches sight of somebody catching fire to May’s lucky dancing costume. He passes out in the yard due to the anesthetic from the hospital and later awakens to find a torch in his hand and all evidence for the arson pointing to him. Following an interrogation by the police, Fletcher is rescued by Red Sharkey. Red claims he was framed for the hurl assault. Half-Moon and Red team up to solve the chain of mysteries within 24 hours. Following a suspicious story to April's house, the boy detectives discover the truth behind Les Jeunes Etudiantes, the girls club, their true goal being to get rid of all the boys ruining their education. Three recent expulsions can be attributed to these girls, and the boys feel they need to be stopped. Unfortunately, they are found out, and the girls manage to imprison the boys in the cellar. They are, however, saved by May, April's cousin. Fletcher and Red previously heard the girls practicing the lines that they planned to use to accuse Red's brother, Herod of assault. Red is able to send a text message to the present police officer informing him of the lines they would use. The police officer puts two and two together and exposes the girls for the liars they are, and Herod Sharkey is found innocent, saving him from expulsion. Fletcher knows that this still does not solve the mysteries that included his assault so he meets a secret informant, and in exchange for the password of the police account he hacked earlier in the story, receives the information that he desired. He finds that the link between the crimes ended up being the upcoming talent show at his school and it turns out that the victims each had a part in the show in some way. After trying to protect May from becoming involved with the criminal Fletcher at last finds the answer he had been looking for all along. All the victims of these crimes had been ranked higher than May in the talent show. So, Red suggests that May was behind all this. However, on stage, Fletcher proves that it was May's father, Gregor Devereux who was the culprit. In the epilogue, Red and Fletcher decide to form a detective group. Red suggests "Moon Investigations" while Fletcher replies saying "You're half right".
4520380	/m/0c6w5f	Pamela	Samuel Richardson	1740	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05nd8bf": "Georgian romance"}	 Epistolary novels—novels written as series of letters—were extremely popular during the 18th century, mainly because of Richardson's Pamela. Richardson and other novelists of his time argued that the letter allowed the reader greater access to a character's thoughts. Richardson claimed that he was writing "to the moment": that is, Pamela's thoughts were recorded nearly simultaneously with her actions. In the novel, Pamela writes two kinds of letters. At the beginning, while she decides how long to stay on at Mr B's after his mother's death, she tells her parents about her various moral dilemmas and asks for their advice. After Mr. B. abducts her and imprisons her in his country house, she continues to write to her parents, but since she does not know if they will ever receive her letters, the writings are also considered a diary. In Pamela, the letters are almost exclusively written by the heroine, restricting the reader's access to the other characters; we see only Pamela's perception of them. In Richardson's other novels, Clarissa (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), the reader is privy to the letters of several characters and can more effectively evaluate the characters' motivations and moral values.
4523848	/m/0c71gw	The Status Civilization	Robert Sheckley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Earth is a uniform, weakly structured, utopian society based on the mutual trust and conformity of its citizens. It is sleepy and stagnant, developing neither socially nor technologically. Its striking social stability is maintained by robots brainwashing children in "closed classes." The ideologies of both Earth and Omega resemble one another, differing only in words. On Omega, the citizens worship Evil (always capitalized) in a cult dedicated to an entity called The Black One. On Earth, the world religion is an amalgam of all the "good" aspects of previous Earth religions. Its institution is the Church of the Spirit of Mankind Incarnate. As Barrent comes closer to the truth about the reasons for his incarceration, his Omegan consciousness conflicts with his subconsciousness which was programmed in the closed classes by the robots when he was a child. The subsequent psychological struggle is played out by repeating all of the previous fights and battles which Barrent experienced throughout the book, eventually making clear the vision (or "skrenning") which the mutant girl on Omega foresaw of Barrent's death.
4525393	/m/0c74gk	Death of a Ghost	Margery Allingham	1934	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 John Lafcadio, who modestly described himself as "probably the greatest painter since Rembrandt", has left a bizarre legacy - a collection of twelve sealed paintings, to be unveiled one at a time at an annual event commencing ten years after his death. While the first seven ceremonies went smoothly, the eighth starts with family ructions, when John's granddaughter Linda finds her boyfriend Tommy has returned from a painting trip to Rome with a model, whom he has married to get into the country. Albert Campion, a friend of Belle and the family, persuades her to attend the show, just in time to be there when Tommy is stabbed to death during a power outage. Campion calls in his old friend Stanislaus Oates to help avoid scandal, but Oates is convinced Linda must be guilty, as she has the only obvious motive. Max Fustian, a hanger-on to Lafcadio's coat-tails and now a flourishing art dealer, confesses to the crime, but his confession is laughable and a clear attempt to clear Linda. No further proof can be found however, and thanks to pressure from some important dignitaries attending the show, the matter is hushed up. The mystery continues, however, as Tommy's art and possessions slowly vanish, until no trace of him remains. Campion meets up with Max Fustian, and finds himself entertaining strange suspicions of the odd little man. Some weeks later, Belle visits Claire Potter in her studio in the garden and finds her dead, face down on the couch. Nicotine poisoning is diagnosed, and suspicion falls at first on her husband, who had skipped work that day and had returned home for a minute an hour before the body was discovered, only to leave again in a hurry. Potter reveals his wife suffered from alcoholism, and frequently drank herself unconscious; he had assumed she had done this once more, washed her glass and left her there. Seeking the source of the poisoned booze, Campion and Oates discover that Claire took in wood-blocks for cleaning from Max Fustian, and had returned a parcel that very day. Questioning the delivery boy, they find that he once dropped a similar package, and was surprised to find the wrapping wet. Convinced of Fustian's guilt but lacking proof, Campion seeks a motive. He learns from the model Rosa-Rosa that Tommy had a cottage in the country, and from the cook Lisa that Lafcadio, despite his determination to defeat his rival and keep his fame alive, had only managed to complete eight of the twelve paintings of his legacy, filling the remaining packages with junk as a joke. Campion visits Tommy's cottage and finds Max there, all traces of Tommy burnt. He returns to Little Venice later, and finds Max in a blazing row with Belle - he has insisted he must take the remaining Lafcadio works abroad and sell them, and she has refused to let him. Sure now that Max had Tommy fake the last four paintings for him, Campion gets further proof in the form of a drawing uncovered in Paris by Linda. He meets Max and they go out to dinner, where Max has him sample a strange and rare wine from Romania. Too late, Campion recalls the wine has a terribly intoxicating effect if taken after spirits - and Max had made sure Campion drank lots of gin before dinner. After a drunken tour of town, Max leads Campion to the edge of a Tube platform, and pushes hard - only to be stopped by the plain-clothes men Oates has had on their tail, after a meeting with Campion that morning. Visiting Fustian in prison, Campion finds him a gibbering lunatic, his mind pushed over the edge by the defeat of his schemes.
4525412	/m/0c74hy	The Torture Garden	Octave Mirbeau	1899	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Published at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, Mirbeau’s novel is a loosely assembled reworking of texts composed at different eras, featuring different styles, and showcasing different characters. Beginning with material stemming from articles on the 'Law of Murder' discussed in the "Frontispice" ("The Manuscript"), the novel continues with a farcical critique of French politics as seen in "En Mission" : a French politicians' aide is sent on a pseudo-scientific expedition to China, while his presence at home would be compromising ("The Mission"). Then it moves on to an account of a visit to a Cantonese prison by a narrator accompanied by the sadist/hysteric Clara, who delights in witnessing flayings, crucifixions and numerous tortures, all done in beautifully laid out and groomed gardens, and explaining the beauty of torture to her companion. Finally she attains hysterical orgasm and passes out in exhaustion, only to begin again a few days later ("Le Jardin des supplices", "The Garden").
4525718	/m/0c74z6	The Gate of Time	Philip José Farmer	1966	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Roger Two Hawks, an Iroquois serving as a combat pilot in WWII, is shot down during a raid on Ploieşti, Romania. While parachuting he feels a strange dizziness. Being hidden by locals, he realises that they neither look nor speak like Romanians, but rather resemble Native Americans and speak a language distantly resembling that of his own tribe. The mystery is resolved when he sees a globe and finds that he is in a world where the continent of America does not exist, having been drowned for the whole of humanity's tenure on Earth. As a result, the ancestors of the various Native American tribes did not cross the non-existent Bering Strait but wandered westward into Europe, taking the general place of the Slavs in our history. Thus, the Iroquois live in Romania and the Ukraine, the Aztecs in Russia, and so on. Though very different from our world, in this reality, too, a war is going on resembling the one which Two Hawks left behind, with a kind of aggressive Germany-analogue trying to conquer everybody else (though its dominant people are not Germanic but rather Lithuanian). Two Hawks very quickly gets involved. His knowledge and abilities are very much in demand, since this world does not yet have heavier-than-air flight, and its possession could decide the war. He goes through a very fast-paced series of adventures, involving such elements as Hittites who survived into the 20th century, a Luftwaffe pilot who also ended up in this world, an England which had never known a Roman Empire nor a Norman Conquest but has many Cretan and Semitic elements in its makeup, an unknown chapter in the life of Elizabethan adventurer Humphrey Gilbert, an Arab-colonised South Africa and a mysterious island on the site of our world's Colorado, where an underground Polynesian temple is to be found. As can be expected, Two Hawks also experiences a most tempestuous love affair.
4528209	/m/0c78pd	Rogue in Space	Fredric Brown		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the book a sentient and powerful asteroid arrives in the solar system's asteroid belt after countless aeons of wandering interstellar space. Passing by another asteroid, the living asteroid makes its first ever encounter with other living beings - a likeable criminal involved in a life-and-death struggle with a corrupt and power-mad judge. The judge is eventually killed, but so too is his beautiful wife who had allied herself with the criminal, the couple falling in love. Whilst the god-like living asteroid builds a new world around itself, and blocks all mankind's efforts to investigate it, eventually the criminal returns to the planet with a small group. The sentient asteroid allows them to make planetfall, but only the criminal can accept living in the new Eden created for him, and they eventually depart. The alien then resurrects the late judge's wife.
4530578	/m/0c7dfc	Superior Saturday	Garth Nix	2008-07-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book begins with Saturday discussing with her new Dusk (who was younger brother to Saturday's former Dusk) her plan to invade Sunday's realm, the Incomparable Gardens, which she has been trying to reach since the Architect disappeared. Arthur, returning to Earth with Friday's captives, discovers that the national army (under orders from General Pravuil, who is secretly Saturday's servant) is planning to destroy his hometown with nuclear bombs to prevent a disease outbreak, and uses the Fifth Key to stop time so that he can find a way to forestall this disaster. He then discovers that he is now more than 60% contaminated by sorcery, and is therefore irrevocably turning into an immortal Denizen of the House. Seeing no other choice, he returns to the Lower House (leaving his friend Leaf to deal with Lady Fridays' Sleepers) to find it empty and on the verge of being annihilated by Nothing. He barely escapes, but reaches the Deep Coal Cellar, which is partially protected by the sorceries surrounding the Old One's prison. After finding his advisor Dr. Scamandros in the Cellar, Arthur confronts the Old One, who has grown in power and has destroyed his clockwork jailers. He is now surrounded by flowers, which he calls a sign of impending change. After talking to the Old One (receiving no definite answers to his questions), Arthur returns to the Citadel in the Great Maze and plans a pre-emptive strike against Saturday. Arthur hence learns that Saturday (as Dame Primus suspected in Lady Friday) has deliberately destroyed the Lower House and Far Reaches to stunt the growth of the Drasil trees that lift Sunday's realm higher than Saturday can build. She believes that even if the rest of the House is destroyed, the Incomparable Gardens will remain. Dame Primus wishes for Arthur to fortify the rest of the House against the influx of Nothing, but is reluctantly convinced to split herself into two (Dame Quarto and Dame Septum) to administer the House while Arthur seizes the last Keys from Saturday and Sunday. Before she splits, Dame Primus tells Arthur that the Nothing which had destroyed the Far Reaches and Lower House cannot be held off for ever unless the Seventh Key is recovered. Arthur requests Dame Primus to give him the Compleat Atlas of the House, but Dame Primus evasively tells him that she does not have it. He suspects she is lying, but has no idea of her motive. Arthur, accompanied by Suzy Turquoise Blue, who has appointed herself General of a small regiment consisting solely of Piper's Children, infiltrates the Upper House using the Simultaneous Bottles (see quantum entanglement) owned by the Raised Rats. There, they find that Saturday is preparing her assault on the Incomparable Gardens, which are now within reach of her Tower. Finding that the Sixth Part of the Will is dispersed in the rain that constantly falls in the Upper House, Arthur goes to a holding tank for the water to reconstitute the Will (whereupon it assumes the shape of a raven), but is separated from Suzy when they are attacked by Artful Loungers. Flushed down to the lowest levels of the Upper House, he encounters a force of New Nithlings, led by the Piper, preparing to attack the Upper House. Throughout all this, Arthur finds that this part of the Will is more agreeable to him than the first four, though not more so than the fifth, and more humble than any of them. His own metamorphosis is a subject of much attention in preceding chapters, wherein he discusses the changes with himself and Suzy and struggles to control a ferocious arrogance and accompanying impatience that seem to have become part of his personality as a result of his transformation. It is suggested several times that he is not a typical Denizen, on the basis that his blood is golden rather than blue and his eyes, unlike any Denizen's, are luminous. With the Will's help, Arthur disguises himself as a Sorcerous Supernumerary (the lowest-ranked and most terminally depressed sorcerer) in hopes of rescuing Suzy, but is caught up in Saturday's assault force. In the Incomparable Gardens, Arthur tries to take advantage of Saturday's distraction by Sunday's insectile guards to call the Sixth Key to him, but is thrown off the edge of the Gardens by Superior Saturday's spell as he completes the necessary incantation. The outcome is unrevealed. The epilogue shows Leaf trying to get as many people into the hospital's bomb shelter as she can before the bombs are launched. With the help of staff-member Martine, she brings at least fifty-three into safety; but the others are killed as the bombs arrive. As the book concludes, she calls for Arthur to return and set things right.
4530946	/m/0c7dxf	Lord Sunday	Garth Nix	2010-03-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Falling from the Incomparable Gardens in Superior Saturday, Arthur, having won the Sixth Key, escapes impalement on Saturday's Tower by entering the Improbable Stair. His uncontrollable falling leads the Stair to spit him out somewhere completely unexpected - he is under attack from sentient plants in the Secondary Realms, and is unable to concentrate to use the Fifth Key to escape. Meanwhile, Suzy Turquoise Blue, Arthur's friend, plots to escape from her prison in Saturday's Tower while battle rages above and below her. Saturday's forces are pressing into the Incomparable Gardens, but are also engaged in a fierce struggle to keep the Piper and his army of Newniths at the bottom of the Upper House. Suzy is being held by the intelligent but forgetful Sorcerous Supernumerary (meaning he failed his final sorcery exams), Giac. She, with some help from the sixth part of the Will, persuades Giac to free her and accompany her to the Citadel in the Incomparable Gardens. On Earth, Leaf, responsible for the Sleepers from Lady Friday, struggles to cope with the aftermath of a nuclear strike and desperately needs help, especially since she herself has become a target for intruders from the House, namely Lord Sunday's Dusk and his 'pet'. Within the House, Nothing continues to rise and must be stopped before it can destroy the entire House and Universe. Sunday intends to hold Arthur to ransom by controlling Leaf and his mother; to this end, he dispatches the "Reaper" (Sunday's Dusk) to take Leaf through the Front Door. It is then revealed that the Door is filled with Nithlings (and is, indeed, collapsing through contamination by Nothing). The Lieutenant-Keeper of the Door is vanquished in battle with them; the Reaper comes to his aid a few minutes too late, and the Keeper dies (handing over the post to an unwilling Leaf). Leaf, being the new Lieutenant-Keeper, cannot be compelled to leave the Front Door, so the Reaper goes back to Lord Sunday to report his failure. Arthur returns from the unknown planet in the Secondary Realms by a supreme effort of will and control over the Improbable Stair, due to the fact his ear was shot off before he fully entered the Stair; once healed, he believes he has returned to his bedroom on Earth, but as he searches his house he finds his mother (who went missing during the events of "Lady Friday") in the living room. As he approaches her he realizes that she can't see him. It is later revealed that Arthur's mother is trapped in a time loop and is being displayed as an exhibit in the Incomparable Gardens. He cannot interact with her; when he looks out of the windows he can see nothing but green leaves draped against them. Soon after, a Piper's child (employed as a gardener) enters the house with a flaming pitchfork; Arthur grabs and deactivates it, and forces the boy to lead him out of the house. The boy professes not to have heard of the upheavals among the Trustees; he thinks Arthur is the Reaper (leading Arthur to suspect that the Reaper is Sunday’s Dawn, Noon or Dusk). As they leave Arthur's house, they are ambushed by Sunday's Dawn and Noon; and the Piper's child reveals himself to be Lord Sunday in disguise. After chaining him up by his arms to a colossal dragonfly, (the form of transport commonly used in the Gardens) they fly him over the Gardens to a smaller replica of the clock face that the Old One is bound to. Arthur, his Keys overcome by the superior power of the Seventh Key, tries to escape by using his own innate powers to form something out of Nothing; he fails to create anything, but he brings his childhood toy, Elephant, to life. He sets it to search for his confiscated Keys; meanwhile, he calls the Mariner to come and rescue him. Hours later, the Keys are sent to him and Arthur is able to free himself. Leaf has ventured to the Middle House via portal and has joined forces with Suzy's band of motley Raiders in an attempt to infiltrate the Upper House, in order to prepare elevators for the Army of the Architect to get through to the Gardens. Fred Initial Numbers Gold, during an attack by the Piper's army, accidentally picks up Leaf's sword, and with it the post of Lieutenant-Keeper of the Front Door. Arthur battles with Lord Sunday, who also has to contend with an invasion by the combined forces of the Piper and the subservient Saturday. The battle is taken to the Elysium, the epicenter of creation; it is here that the seventh part of the Will (a withered apple tree) is kept in a gilt cage. The Mariner opens it at Arthur's behest, but is killed in the process. The freed Will traps Sunday while Arthur claims the Seventh Key (in the form of a small key). When Dame Primus bites into an apple from the manifestation of Part Seven of the Will, the Will is made whole; Arthur unknowingly becomes its channel for its intended purpose - the destruction of the House. The Old One is freed, and He steps into the Will; it is explained that the Architect split Herself in two at the beginning of Creation to speed the evolutionary process, and the Old One is in fact a part of Her (but he had to be chained up when his views grew distinct from Hers), and the manifestation of the Will is the Architect in Her entirety. She reveals that, bored with life, She wished to return to Nothing, to see what it was like to die. She could not do so, however, without destroying the House, because in her anger She had chained the Old One to the fate of the House, and the Old One was anchoring her to existence. The Architect destroys the remnants of Creation with the powers of the Keys. Arthur, now omnipotent, survives and is anointed "New Architect" by the fading thoughts of the Architect. This is why She needed a mortal Heir, to provide a creative spirit to renew the Universe. Arthur decides to remake the Universe exactly as it was, using the Compleat Atlas of the House to provide the template. Because the Atlas holds a record of the House and Realms a few seconds before the destruction, Arthur is unable to save his mother, but he does split himself into the New Architect and the human Arthur, before his transformation into a denizen of the house. The new Arthur is not quite the same, being immune to all disease and with all the knowledge he acquired on his journey. He sends Arthur and Leaf back to Earth, by recreating the Seven Dials. In the new Creation of the Universe, Suzy reveals her desire to be the new Lady Sunday, and pressures the New Architect to remake the House. The New Architect reveals he will soon bring back Doctor Scamandros, Fred, and Giac, the sorcerer, who could all help with the creation of new Denizens.
4531629	/m/0c7g5f	Before Midnight	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Although Nero Wolfe is, by his own immodest measure, a great detective, and in particular the greatest murder specialist in Manhattan, this allows him to charge outrageous fees, working only when he is short of money or Archie Goodwin, his live-in right hand man, manages to goad him into it, preferring instead to read books, tend a magnificent orchid conservatory on the roof of his brownstone, or consult (annoy) his live-in world-class chef Fritz Brenner. Archie therefore considers pestering Wolfe about his literary knowledge to be fitting repartée. He also wants to go to the Flamingo nightclub with his girlfriend Lily Rowan, but cannot get away on a Tuesday night unless he irritates Wolfe enough to boot him out. So he starts quoting Wolfe poetic riddles from a national contest promoting Pour Amour, a new brand of perfume. At first Wolfe tolerates it, and even humors Archie by telling him about Nell Gwyn and Charles II of England, but a fourth riddle exhausts Wolfe's patience and Archie gets his wish and goes out. The very next morning, as Archie is eating a wonderful breakfast prepared by Fritz, he gets a call from attorney Rudolph Hansen, representing the advertising firm LBA, which is conducting the perfume contest. Louis Dahlmann, the executive in charge of that account, has been murdered the night before, but Hansen is calling about something more urgent! The concept of something more urgent than murder gets Archie's attention and he makes an appointment for Hansen and the three partners of LBA to meet Wolfe at 11 am that morning. At the meeting, it is revealed that two million people submitted entries to identify twenty famous women – real and fictional – identified by cryptic little poems, and the winners would split $1 million in prizes. Of the two million entries, 72 had all 20 answers right. Dahlmann was ready for that: a further set of 5 poetic riddles was sent out to each of the 72 with a tight deadline, and the result had been a quintuple tie. So it came down to a final run-off of five contestants, flown from all over the country to New York, to identify the women behind a new very much harder set of poems created by young Dahlmann, who is also the only person on earth who knows the correct answers to the questions. The questions had been handed out to the contestants the night before at a restaurant dinner, and Dahlmann had shown (at a distance) a small sheet of paper which (he said) contained the answers. He stuffed the paper in his wallet and the contestants departed. Since the contestants (see below) were expecting to return home to various parts of the country, they were given staggered deadlines before which to return their answers, all approximately a week in the future and requiring a postmark of midnight. However, the next morning, Dahlmann was found dead in his apartment by a servant, and his wallet was missing. The contestants have about a week to submit their answers by mail, but from the narrow perspective of the agency, Dahlmann's death is not the most problem — his wallet is also missing, thereby compromising the contest's integrity. Since a lot of prize money is at stake, the working assumption is that one of the contestants stole Dahlmann's wallet and killed him in the process, and so the events are likely but not certainly connected. In any event, the theft of Dahlmann's wallet is the problem LBA wants Wolfe to solve Before Midnight a week hence. This somewhat perverse set of priorities allows Wolfe and Inspector Cramer, of the Manhattan Homicide Squad, to put aside the usual complaint from Cramer that private detectives should leave the investigation of murder to the police, since Wolfe is, in fact, merely trying to resolve the theft of a wallet, and the amicable resolution of a popular advertising stunt is surely not meddling in police business. As Cramer says, "I have never yet bumped into you in the course of my duties without conflict ... but I don't say it couldn't possibly happen." First, Wolfe has Archie get the copy of the answers to the contest which has been sealed in a vault, since he argues that the contest can never really be decided by those riddles under the circumstances, despite the desire of everyone concerned to get to the bottom of it. Archie is allowed to see, but not take, the information on the critical sheet of paper guarded like a state secret. He copies the information into his notebook, and gives it to Wolfe, who merely puts it in the office safe. Under pretense of simply being part of the contest team, Wolfe then meets most of the contest finalists, except for Rollins, who is sick in bed at his hotel, and whom Goodwin visits. The contestants and their reasons and sacrifices for being in the contest are the heart of the book. In particular, Ms Frazee (see below), who is against cosmetics and devotes her life to promoting that view, has entered such a contest. But her Women's Nature League is also a secret weapon: a hidden army of people to help her, even though she is trapped in New York. Talbott Heery, owner of Heery Products, also calls upon Wolfe, and offers to supersede LBA as client since his own interests are paramount, but Wolfe counters that it would be unethical and in any event unnecessary. Soon, the contestants all receive mysterious anonymous letters solving the riddles, and Archie thinks that that was the mysterious errand of Saul Panzer, but when LBA partners attempt to congratulate Wolfe for his coup, he denies it. Meanwhile, the détente between Wolfe and Cramer dissolves when Vernon Assa, one of the LBA partners, dies during a conference at Wolfe's office. This causes Wolfe to erase the artificial distinction between solving the murders and finding the thief. However, after the culprit is identified, LBA is reluctant to pay Wolfe his full fee, since, as noted above he denied sending the answers. Wolfe responds that among the expenses on his final bill will be $40 for a used typewriter, now at the bottom of the Hudson!
4532026	/m/0c7gwp	Morning Star	H. Rider Haggard	1984-06-21	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot revolves around the behaviour of a 12-year-old boy called Marius Stern, who is suspended from his boarding school for hitting another boy. Scientist Ptolemaeos Tunne, with the assistance of Jeremy Morrison, attempt to get to the bottom of Marius' behaviour. Marius has a crush on Jeremy and persuades him to share his bed, though nothing sexual happens.
4532148	/m/0c7h5r	The Black Mountain	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In The Black Mountain Nero Wolfe's oldest friend and fellow Montenegrin Marko Vukcic is murdered by a Yugoslavian agent who has already made his escape from New York. Without hesitation, Wolfe is compelled to go back to his homeland to avenge Marko's death and bring the killer back to American justice; this desire is intensified by the news that Carla Lovchen, his adopted daughter, has also been killed. As they covertly negotiate through one of the most dangerous places on earth, Archie sees Wolfe as he has never seen him before. In Over My Dead Body (1940), Wolfe plays a part in impeding the control of Bosnia and Croatia by Nazi Germany. In The Black Mountain, Marko's nephew is part of a subversive group to gain Montenegro's independence from Yugoslavia. In the context of 1953 politics, such a concept was unrealistic, and supported by the guerrilla formations of komite and Zelenaši. Montenegro eventually became an independent country once again in 2006.
4532707	/m/0c7j6c	Apollyon	Tim LaHaye	1999-02-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cameron "Buck" Williams and Rayford Steele have become international fugitives. New believers like Condor 216 first officer Mac McCullum and computer programmer David Hassid take their places as moles in the Global Community (GC) and use his infrastructures to evangelize and thwart Carpathia’s attempts to find members of the Tribulation Force. Ray and Ken Ritz go to the States to check in on Hattie Durham and the safe house. Hattie confesses to Rayford that Amanda White was entirely innocent of supposed collaboration with Carpathia - the e-mail texts were simply an elaborate smear campaign ordered by Carpathia himself. At the prophesied conference of witnesses, held at Teddy Kollek Stadium and hosted by Tsion Ben-Judah, the Potentate makes an unwelcome visit. At this time, the world's water turns to blood, which Carpathia blames on the Two Witnesses. Jacov, Chaim Rosenzweig's driver, becomes a believer; later that night he is found in a bar, telling people that Jesus is Messiah. The next day at the conference, Tsion tells the audience they are waiting for the next Trumpet Judgment, in which the sun, moon, and stars will darken by 1/3. He also explains that 3/4 of the population since the Rapture will die prior to the end of the Tribulation. The last night of the conference, the Two Witnesses appear at the stadium. Then a GC attack breaks out while the Trib. Force retreats to Chaim's estate which, being an old embassy, has a helipad. Ken flies to the house in GC1, Nicolae's helicopter, and gets the force into the chopper. While transferring the force at the airport, Ken Ritz is shot trying to give Rayford as much time as he needs. Hattie, now desperate to live only for the life of her child, is raced to a hospital, where they meet another believer named Leah Rose. She and Tribulation Force physician Floyd Charles try to deliver the baby, but after some work, the baby is stillborn. According to Floyd, Hattie had been poisoned by Carpathia, resulting in the death of her child. Buck is still in Israel after a failed attempt to get him on the plane, returning to Chaim's estate. During the GC news report, Chaim tells about the truth of the judgments, endorses Tsion's lesson and tells the world about his website. Several weeks later, the Fifth Trumpet Judgement falls and a horde of demonic locusts swarm the earth, attacking everyone who does not bear the mark of the believer, in which it is so horrible that men try to kill themselves but are not allowed to die. As the months pass and the locusts continue to attack, Chloe's pregnancy comes to an end. Buck is still in Jerusalem trying to get Chaim to accept Jesus, but returns home in time for the birth of his child. Chloe Steele Williams goes into labour, and after a scare delivers a healthy baby boy in the most chaotic period in human history. She names him Kenneth Bruce Williams in memory of Ken Ritz and the late Bruce Barnes.
4533526	/m/0c7k6x	Postmortem	Patricia Cornwell	1990	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel opens as Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Virginia, receives an early-morning call from Sergeant Pete Marino, a homicide detective at the Richmond Police Department with whom Scarpetta has a tense working relationship. She meets him at the scene of a woman's gruesome strangling, the latest in a string of unsolved murders in Richmond. The killer leaves behind few clues; among them are a mysterious substance which fluoresces under laser light, traces of semen, and in the vicinity of the last murder, an unusual smell. Scarpetta and Marino work with FBI profiler Benton Wesley to attempt to piece together a profile of the killer. Initial evidence appears to point to the fourth victim's husband, but Scarpetta suspects otherwise despite Marino's insistence. (The book references DNA profiling as a relatively new technique, and characters briefly bemoan the lack of a criminal DNA database which could provide better leads to suspects, given available evidence.) Meanwhile in her personal life, Scarpetta must deal with the presence of her extremely precocious ten-year-old niece, Lucy, as well as an uncertain romantic relationship with the local Commonwealth's attorney. During the investigation, a series of news leaks about the murders appear to be coming from a source within the medical examiner's office. The leaks threaten Scarpetta's position, especially after she is forced to admit that her office database has been compromised. Believing that the killer thrives on media attention and hoping to flush him out by provoking his ego, Scarpetta, Wesley, and local investigative reporter Abby Turnbull (whose sister was the fifth victim) conspire to release a news story which suggests that the killer has a distinctive body odor due to a rare metabolic disease and implies that the killer may be mentally disordered. While attempting to find another link between the five murders, Scarpetta discovers that all five intended victims had recently called 911; she suspects that the killer is a 911 operator and chose his victims based on their voices. Scarpetta is awakened in the middle of the night by the killer, who has broken into her home. As she attempts to reach a gun she has kept nearby for protection, Marino bursts into her bedroom and shoots the intruder, having realized that the news article would make Scarpetta a likely target. Scarpetta's suspicion proves to be correct; the killer was a police and sometime 911 dispatcher.
4534218	/m/0c7l7q	Everyone in Silico	Jim Munroe	2002		 The story is set in Vancouver, 2036. San Francisco was struck by an earthquake and a company called Self, which is somehow related to Microsoft, set up an AI system to replace the city, with a virtual environment called Frisco. The story follows several people, both in Vancouver as well as in Frisco.
4534918	/m/0c7mgd	Cider with Rosie	Laurie Lee		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rather than follow strict chronological order Lee uses thematic chapters as follows: * First Light describes Laurie arriving with his mother and family at their cottage in Slad, Gloucestershire, Cotswolds. The young children gorge themselves on the fruit bushes and bread as their harassed mother tries to get the cottage and their furniture into some kind of order. The house relies on a small wood-fire for the cooking and a hand pump in the scullery for its water. They are visited by a man in uniform who is sleeping out in the surrounding woods — he visits them in the mornings for food and to dry out his damp clothes. He is finally taken off by men in uniform as a deserter. The chapter ends with the villagers riotously celebrating the end of the Great War. * First Names describes Laurie still sleeping in his mother's bed but eventually forced out of it by his younger brother, Tony, and made to sleep with the two elder boys. As he grows older, he starts to recognise the villagers as individuals — people like Cabbage-Stump Charlie, the local bruiser, Albert the Devil, a deaf mute beggar and Percy-from-Painswick, a clown and ragged dandy, who likes to seduce the girls with his soft tongue. Owing to its location, the cottage is in the path of the floods that flow into the valley and Laurie and his family have to go outside to clear the storm drain every time there is a heavy downpour, but even this sometimes fails to stop the sludge despoiling their kitchen from time to time. * Village school The dame teacher is called Crabby B, owing to her predilection to suddenly hit out at the boys for no apparent reason. However, she meets her match in Spadge Hopkins, a burly local farmer's boy, who leaves the classroom one day after placing her on top of one of the cupboards. She is replaced by Miss Wardley, from Birmingham, who "wore sharp glass jewellery", who is more refined and 'her reins looser but stronger.' * The Kitchen The Lee's domestic life in the cottage. At the beginning, Laurie Lee makes a reference to his father who had abandoned them, saying that he and his brothers never knew any male authority. After working in the Army Pay Corps, he entered the Civil Service and settled in London for good. As Lee says, :Lee describes each of the family members and also their daily routine, his sisters going off to work in Stroud to the shops or looms, and the younger boys trying to avoid their mother's chores. In the evenings the whole family sits around the big kitchen table, the girls gossiping and sewing as the boys do their homework and the eldest son, Harold , who is working as lathe handler, mends his bicycle. * Grannies in the Wainscot describes the two old women who are the Lee's neighbours - Granny Trill and Granny Wallon - who are permanently at war with each other. Granny Wallon or 'Er-Down-Under spends her days gathering the fruits of the surrounding woods and countryside and turning them into delicious perfumed wines that slowly ferment over a year in their bottles. Granny Trill or 'Er-Up-Atop spends her days combing her hair and reading her almanacs. She lived as a young girl with her father, who was a woodsman, and still seeks her comfort in the forest. The two old women arrange everything so they never meet - they shop on different days, use different paths down the bank to their houses and continuously rap on their floors and ceilings. One day Granny Trill is taken ill and quickly fades away and is soon followed by Granny Wallon who loses her will to live. * Public Death, Private Murder describes the murder of a New Zealander, a local villager made good who returns to the village one year to visit his family, boasting about his wealth and flaunting his money in the local pub. Being the last to leave, he makes his drunken way home and is set upon by some local youths and is found frozen to death the next morning. The police try to find his attackers but are met by a wall of silence and the case is never closed. * Mother is Lee's tribute to his mother, Annie (née Light). Having been forced to leave school early because of her mother's death and the need to look after her brothers and father, she then went into domestic service for the Gentry, working as a maid in various large houses. Having left this to then work for her grandfather in his pub, The Plough, a small Sheepscombe inn, she then answered an ad - Widower (four children) Seeks Housekeeper - which is how she met Lee's father. After four happy years together and three more children, he upped sticks and abandoned them. Lee's description is very affectionate - he describes his mother as having a love for everything and an extraordinary ability with plants, being able to grow anything anywhere. As he says, * Winter and Summer describes the two seasons affecting the village and its inhabitants. One particularly cold winter, the village boys go foraging with old cocoa-tins stuffed with burning rags to keep their mittenless-hands warm. The week before Christmas the Church Choir goes carol singing which involves a five mile tramp through the deep snow. However, calls at the Squire's house and the doctors, the merchants, the farmers and mayors soon fills their wooden box with coins as they light their way home with candles in jam jars. The long hot summers are spent outdoors in the fields and games at night of 'Whistle-or-'Oller-Or-We-shall-not-foller!'. * Sick Boy Lee recounts the various illnesses he suffers as a young boy, some which bring him to the brink of death. He also writes about the death of his four year sister Frances, his mother's only biological daughter, who died unexpectedly when Lee was an infant. * The Uncles is a vivid description of his mother's brothers - Uncle Charlie, Ray, Sid and Tom. All of them fought as cavalrymen in the Great War and settle back on the land. Uncle Ray is perhaps the liveliest, having emigrated to Canada on the transcontinental railway, the Canadian Pacific. He blows himself up with dynamite whilst working in the Rockies and is revived by a Tamworth schoolteacher, Lee's Aunt Elsie. * Outings and Festivals A chapter devoted to the annual village jaunts and events. Peace Day in 1919 is a colourful affair, the procession ending up at the Squire's house where he and his elderly mother make speeches. The family also makes the four mile hike to Sheepscombe to visit their grandfather and Uncle Charlie and his family. There is also a village outing on charabancs to Weston-super-Mare - the women sunbathe on the beach, the men disappear down the side-streets into pubs and the children amuse themselves in the arcade on the pier, playing the penny machines. There is also the Parochial Church Tea and Annual Entertainment to which Laurie and his brother Jack gain free admittance for helping with the arrangements. They finally get to gorge themselves on the food laid out on the trestle-tables in the schoolhouse and Laurie plays his fiddle accompanied by Eileen on the piano to raucous applause. * First Bite at the Apple describes the growth of the boys into young adolescents and the first pangs of love. Lee states that 'quiet incest flourished where the roads were bad' but states that the village neither approved nor disapproved but neither did it complain to authority. This is the time when Laurie is seduced by Rosie Burdock underneath a hay wagon after drinking cider from a flagon: :There is also a plan among half a dozen of the boys to rape Lizzy Berkeley, a fat adolescent sixteen-year-old who writes religious messages on trees in the wood on the way back from church. They wait for her one Sunday morning in Brith Wood but, when Bill and Boney confront her, she slaps them twice and they lose courage, allowing her to run away down the hill. Lee says that Rosie eventually married a soldier, Jo, his young first love, grew fat with a Painswick baker and lusty Bet, another of his sweethearts, went to breed in Australia. * Last Days describes the gradual break up of the village community with the appearance of the motor car and bike. The death of the Squire is almost in parallel with the death of the church's influence over its younger parishioners and the old people just dropped away: :Lee's own family breaks up as the girls are courted by young men arriving on their motorbikes. It is also the end of his rural idyll and emergence into a larger, more looming world. :This is also the time when Laurie Lee experiences the first stirrings of poetry welling up inside him.
4535237	/m/0c7n1j	The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan	Beatrix Potter	1905-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Potter declared the tale her next favourite to The Tailor of Gloucester, but the tale is not popular among modern children, perhaps because they have difficulty following the complications involving the pies and because they have no experience with old-fashioned ovens and fireplaces. The pictures however are some of the most beautiful Potter ever created, especially the profusions of flowers in the doorways and garden plots. The colours in the illustrations are not the muted browns and greens the reader expects in a Potter illustration, nor are they the contrasting colours such as the muted reds and blues Potter uses occasionally to give her illustrations a splash of colour. Instead, the colours are bright oranges, violets, and yellows seldom seen in her other books. Even Ribby's lilac dress and Duchess's black mane illustrate Potter's concern for colour in this book. Potter's own three-door oven, her hearthrug, her indoor plants, her coronation teapot, and her water pump are minutely detailed with more colour than in other productions. The large format of the original edition, the captions accompanying the full page colour illustrations, and the occasional lack of coordination between picture and text all display Potter's delight in the pictures, sometimes at the expense of the text. "Once upon a time", Ribby, a "Pussy-cat" invites a little dog called Duchess to tea with plans to serve her "something so very very nice" baked in a pie dish with a pink rim. Ribby promises Duchess she shall have the entree entirely to herself. Duchess accepts the invitation but hopes she will not be served mouse. "I really couldn't, couldn't eat mouse pie. And I shall have to eat it, because it is a party." Duchess has prepared a ham and veal pie in a pink-rimmed dish (just like Ribby's dish), and would much rather eat her own pie. "It is all ready to put into the oven," she says, "Such a lovely pie-crust; and I put in a little tin patty-pan to hold up the crust." She reads the invitation again and realises she will have the opportunity to switch the pies when Ribby leaves on an errand. Ribby has two ovens, one above the other, and she puts her mouse pie in the lower oven. She tidies the house, sets the table, and leaves to buy tea, marmalade, and sugar. Duchess meantime has left home with her ham and veal pie in a basket, passes Ribby on the street, and hurries on to Ribby's house. She puts her pie into the upper oven, and searches quickly for the mouse pie (which she does not find because she neglects to look in the lower oven). She slips out the back door as Ribby returns. At the appointed hour, Duchess appears at Ribby's door and the party begins. Distracted for a moment, Duchess does not see which oven Ribby opens to remove the pie. Duchess eats greedily, believing she is eating her ham and veal pie. She wonders what has happened to the patty-pan she put in her pie, and, not finding it under the crust, is convinced she has swallowed it. She sets up a howl; Ribby is perplexed and annoyed but leaves to find Dr. Maggoty. Duchess is left alone before Ribby's fire, and discovers her ham and veal pie in the oven. "Then I must have been eating MOUSE! ... No wonder I feel ill," she muses. Knowing she cannot adequately explain her ham and veal pie to Ribby, she puts it outside the back door intending to sneak back and carry it home after she leaves for home. Ribby and Dr. Maggoty arrive and, after much fuss, Duchess takes her leave, only to find that the magpie (who has left by the back door) and a couple of jackdaws have eaten her ham and veal pie. Ribby later finds the remains of the pie dish and the patty-pan outside the back door and declares, "Well I never did! ... Next time I want to give a party – I will invite Cousin Tabitha Twitchit!"
4535346	/m/0c7n5s	Firethorn	Sarah Micklem	2004-05-25	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A mysterious foundling with unique red hair and strange god-given powers, Firethorn is condemned to life as a powerless servant—or so she believes, until one of King Thyrse's noblemen becomes her lover. But, as she accompanies Sire Galan to war, Firethorn discovers she may have traded one form of bondage for another. A soldier's mistress—even a high-born soldier's mistress—is despised as a "sheath," or camp follower. Also, Firethorn's nasty ex-overlord, Sire Pava, has joined the king's army, and she has made a new enemy in her lover's cousin and closest friend, the sadistic Sire Rodela. However, she and Galan share a fiery love that will surely overcome the opposition of both their personal enemies and their kingdom's enemies. Then Sire Galan makes a strange, heart-shattering wager that may not only ruin his honor, but get them both killed.http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743247949
4537011	/m/0c7qz_	Voice of the Fire	Alan Moore	1996	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story follows the lives of twelve people who lived in the same area of England over a period of 6000 years, and how their lives link to one another's. The opening chapter, "Hob's Hog", proves challenging for many readers, as the first-person narrative voice is used as Moore attempts to render the language and thoughts of a character from around 4000 BC (similar in fashion, though used in a more immersive manner than Russell Hoban's post-apocalyptic characters in Riddley Walker). Each chapter carries the reader forward in time, but circles around the centre of Northampton, drawing in historical events and touchstones, before finally segueing into metafictional narrative in the closing chapter, as the author himself comments directly upon the previous chapter's ambiguous closing line, before relating a personal (possibly fictional) anecdote about Northampton which relates a personal experience of local myth, and features an appearance by his daughter and son-in-law, the writers Leah Moore and John Reppion. Throughout, the image of the fire sparks resonates between the tales, while Moore finds a different voice for each character - though most are inherently duplicitous in some manner, leading to a further commentary on the disparity between myth and reality, and which is more likely to endure over time.
4540819	/m/0c7xq2	An Act of Terror	André Brink	1991	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The novel deals with the lead-up to, execution and consequences of, a bungled assassination attempt whose target is the unnamed State President of South Africa. The story follows the development of Thomas Landman, an Afrikaner who, bit by bit, is indoctrinated in, and comes to whole-heartedly believe, the ethos of black freedom-fighters. Abandoning his family's staid and repressive values for those of the blacks, he embarks on a course which ultimately leads to him becoming South Africa's most wanted terrorist. The story culminates in an escape from South Africa which leaves Landman badly mutilated and his lover dead. Throughout, one is exposed to the hypocrisy and self-delusion that were the necessary supports of the Apartheid regime. At times this book has touches of Wilbur Smith about it. It is mammoth in scope, and involves several long treks across the South African countryside. It is brimming with a wide and colourful set of characters. In Smithian fashion, the lead male protagonist finds capable female companions who embroider the story for a while, and then get killed. This creates the impression that development of the feelings that might surround a long-term relationship seem to be difficult for the author to handle. At other times the book has obvious literary leanings, with classical and historical references, close attention to words and their usage, and an innovative structure. Two characteristics of the structure of the novel are striking. The narrative constantly switches between first and third person. The third-person narrative continues more or less throughout the book. The first-person narrative is made up of short sections contributed by practically every character in the story. There are therefore multiple voices, and multiple points of view. However, the most unusual aspect of the book is that it includes a thirteen-generation history of the fictitious Landman family. This describes the family's move to South Africa in the 17th century, and the events and people that filled the lives of each subsequent generation. At the same time it allows for an expose of the political shaping of South Africa, and presents a context for the events of the main story. This appendix is itself almost book-sized, extending for close to 150 pages. A comparatively long glossary of Afrikaans, Xhosa and other terms completes the book.
4541568	/m/0c7ypj	Castle	Garth Nix	2000-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tal and Milla make it from the shadowy 'Dark World' to the titular castle, a seeming place of peace. Both are unwanted by the castle's inhabitants, Milla the most. The two must avoid conspiracies and other dangers inside the castle, just to survive.
4541627	/m/0c7yr7	Hell to Pay	George Pelecanos	2002-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel’s central plotline concerns the murder by drug dealers of a no-account deadbeat over an unpaid debt and the incidental killing of the intended victim’s nephew, starting with the killers’ efforts to locate the victim and continuing through Strange’s investigation of the murders and the killings’ repercussions in the world of the DC drug trade. Secondary plotlines involve efforts by Strange’s white associate, Terry Quinn, to locate a young girl who has disappeared into prostitution, as well as Strange’s background investigation of a potentially shady young man who is engaged to marry the beautiful daughter of Strange’s wealthy friend. ===Explanation of the novel's title===
4541710	/m/0c7yvn	Above the Veil	Garth Nix	2001-04-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While Shadowmaster Sushin maintains control over higher ranked chosen, Tal and Milla travel through the Castle's depths where they encounter the Freefolk, a group of the servant class Underfolk who possess a great hatred for all the Chosen. They also meet Lector Jarnil, a famous teacher. Tal and Milla learn more about the intricacies of Castle politics, including that Sushin, a Shadowmaster of the Orange, is the Dark Vizier of the Empress. He deals in unsavory matters and commands others under the authority of the Empress. They also learn that the Veil is maintained by the seven Keystones which lie at the top of each of the seven towers. Most of the Chosen leave the Castle due to the Day of Ascension. To prevent the Veil from failing, Tal, accompanied by the Freefolk leader Crow, climb the Red Tower and defeat the deadly Keeper. They also solve a puzzle of tiles to prevent any alarms from ringing out. Eventually they reach the Red Keystone and discover Lector Jarnil's cousing Lokar trapped inside. As Tal and Crow prepare to depart, they are assaulted by numerous unbound Spiritshadows. Tal is able to construct a miniature Veil in time to hide them, but accidentally binds Adras, his Spiritshadow, into it. As they near the Freefolk base, Crow injures Tal and flees with the Keystone. Tal recovers the keystone and Lokar convinces Tal to go to Aenir and consult the Empress to free Lokar. While Tal and Crow climb the tower, Milla returns to Odris by the labryinth of underground tunnels below the Castle. On her way, she discovers the skeleton where her Primary Sunstone partially originated. Scrutinizing it closer, she notices a long Violet fingernail, which she puts on. Knowing that she will give herself to the Ice, she breathes the Tenth Pattern to assure the completion of her task of getting a Primary Sunstone. On her way, she is attacked by Arla and a band of Shield Maidens for bringing Odris. Milla accidentally kills Arla with her talon. She is then judged by the Crones, who will decide her fate. After reviewing Milla's thoughts and dreams, the Crones debate and decide to attack the Castle to stop the Spiritshadow trade and save the Veil. The Crones choose Milla to lead the attack.
4541758	/m/0c7z1w	Aenir	Garth Nix	2001-01-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After arriving in Aenir they offer up blood on the hill they are standing on. This summons up two storm shepherds, Aenirian creatures with a heart of thunder and cloud, who then demand a life in exchange for a great gift. Soon the two characters discover that the two shepherds do not like taking lives, but only do it because they were bound thousands of years ago to do that exact task ever more. When they do not take a life and hesitate when Tal offers to make them his and Milla's spiritshadows to release their bind on the hill, the spirit in the hill awakes to sort out the problem. Afraid, the two creatures accept Tal's offer and quickly grab their new chosen and escape the hill, exhilarated to finally be free. Tal's spirit shadow is Adras, a big but dim witted male. While Milla ends up with Odris, a more sharp witted slender female. Neither is very good at reading human emotions and find themselves confused quite often. When Milla realizes that Tal's offer has removed her shadow, she flies into a rage. Tal gets angry at her because he does not fully understand that when he gave away her true shadow, he destroyed her hopes of being a shield maiden, as they are sworn to destroy all spiritshadows, and cannot possibly have one themselves. Going berserk, Milla first threatens him with her merwin horn sword before putting it away and knocking him unconscious. She then storms off by herself. Adras and Odris then have a small talk about the over reactions of humans before deciding that Odris should probably go with Milla to make sure she doesn't get hurt. Adras then turns into a thunder cloud and surrounds Tal, protecting him while he is asleep. Milla ends up at the edge of a burnt field, she calms down and starts to head back to Tal when she realizes there is something underneath her, a quick glance shows that she is on the only patch of green grass in the area. She then jumps just in time as the creature, called a hugthing snaps shut, clasping her legs together. With her hands free she hacks at the hugthing with her sword, but it just bounces off. Just as her ribs are about to break Odris appears in the sky and hurls lighting bolts at the creature. it lets go and runs away making scared noises. She and Milla walk together through the trees when they run into a pack of giant hunting birds, the pack of birds then chase the pair until they reach a giant tower carved from a gigantic tree, where Odris lands on top. Milla takes the stairs to the bottom floor and can't explain why the door is wide open but the birds, called nanuchs remain content to remain outside and wait for them to come out. Meanwhile Tal is waking up and soon finds a pack of bugs making a sign in the ground with their bodies, an arrow pointing east and the letter c. This is because the codex, trapped under a mountain years before, is trying to communicate Tal towards his prison by taking over animal level intelligence creatures.
4541899	/m/0c7z8d	Dead On Target	Franklin W. Dixon	1987-04	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Joe Hardy's girlfriend, Iola Morton, is caught in a car bomb and dies. Joe is unable to believe it. The brothers begin their investigation. They meet a person who calls himself the "Gray Man," from a government agency called "The Network." Frank and Joe take his help to get to the person who planted the bomb. Soon they learn that it is not a person, but a group of terrorists who call themselves "Assassins." Joe vows to kill them. As the story progresses, some Assassins are killed in encounters while others escape. They come to know that the person who killed Iola is a member of The Assassins named Al-Rousasa. When the book is about to end, Frank, Joe, Chet (who is Iola's brother) and their other friends begin searching a shopping mall when they learn that the Assassins plan to kill a presidential candidate giving a speech in Bayport. Soon, Joe and Frank have a fight with Al-Rousasa at the top floor. The fight ends with Al-Rousasa falling to his death, and Joe remembers what he had been told - "Nobody takes an Assassin alive."
4542093	/m/0c7zkd	Evil, Inc.	Franklin W. Dixon	1987-04	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys come to France for a vacation. When the brothers spot The Gray Man in Manhattan, they learn about an investigation he is working on regarding a terrorist organization in France. While the Gray Man does not want the brothers involved because they are too young and the case is too dangerous, the Hardys secretly work to get themselves in the center of the investigation and soon they find themselves undercover in France as a couple of gun dealers who are into the punk rock scene, complete with dyed hair and grungy clothes. They get caught up in a company called Renyard and Company, which secretly sells guns and other illegal things to people. They are almost killed in a machine when a lady known as Denise helps them escape. The book has an interesting storyline in which almost everybody is betraying each other - Renyard and Company, Denise and many other people. The Hardy Boys are also captured by the French special police known as the Sûreté. They eventually escape by beating everybody up. Soon when the book is about to end, they are chased by the Chairman of Renyard & Company and his other partners. The people try to kill them but Denise saves them at the right moment. The case is then solved by the Hardy Boys and they return back to USA.
4542304	/m/0c7zwj	Alta	Mercedes Lackey	2004-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this story, Kiron flies on Avatre to the place of his birth, Alta, with the help of the Bedu, nomadic desert dwellers. Upon reaching the outskirts of Alta City (capital of Alta), he rescues a girl, who turns out to be a daughter of a noble from a "river-horse," or a hippopotamus. This girl, Aket-ten, has the power of Speaking to animals with her mind as well as the "Far Seeing Eye" and the "Gift of Silent Speech"(with fellow Winged Ones). She is a Nestling, the designation of acolytes who live outside the temple (acolytes living in the temple are called Fledglings, and priests are Winged Ones). At the temple he tells the Jousters the secret to having tame dragons—and finds himself supervising eight boys about his age, including one of the two male heirs to the throne, in tending to their new dragon eggs. As he trains them and invents new battle tactics, the deceptions of the Magi, magic users in 'service' to the king, are slowly revealed. Eventually, the Magi declare near tyranny over all of Alta, using their superweapon, the eye, to keep the people in control. Kiron and his new friends, one of whom is murdered by the Magi, plot to overthrow the Magi or escape from their grasp. They eventually succeed with the help of a healer by poisoning the supply of tala, the plant that keeps wild dragons tame, and escape only after a fierce battle with the Tian jousters and their dragons. Due to the Tala being contaminated, only Ari, Kiron, and Kiron's wing retain control of their dragons (as they didn't need the tala in the first place, having raised their dragons from the egg). Ari is convinced to side with Kiron and his wing (there is no need for Jousters anymore, as all but a few of the dragons are gone), and enter the desert, guided by the Bedu (desert nomads). With the help of the Bedu (and Kaleth, the other heir to the Altan throne, now Mouth of the Gods), they find their way to Sanctuary, a place of legend that was thought to have been buried by the sands of the desert. The story ends with them deciding to overthrow the magi from Sanctuary, and allowing anyone and everyone who wishes safety from the magi there to have it.
4542594	/m/0c7_bh	City of Joy	Dominique Lapierre	1985		 The story revolves around the trials and tribulations of a young Polish priest, Stephan Kovalski, the hardships endured by a rickshaw puller, Hasari Pal (the sufferer) in Calcutta (Kolkata), India and the experiences of a young, American doctor, Max Lowe. Father Stephan joins a religious order whose vows put them in the most hellish places on earth. He chooses not only to serve the poorest of the poor in Calcutta but also to live with them, starve with them, and if God wills it, die with them. In the journey of Kovalski's acceptance as the Big Brother for the slum dwellers, he encounters moments of everyday miracles in the midst of appalling poverty and ignorance. The slum dwellers are ignored and exploited by society and authorities of power are not without their own prejudices. This becomes evident by their attitude towards the lepers and the continuation of the caste system. The story also explores how a peasant farmer Hasari Pal arrives in Calcutta with his family after a drought wipes out the farming village where his family has lived for generations. The third main character is that of a rich American doctor who has just finished med school and wants to do something with purpose before opening up his practice catering to the wealthy. The book chronicles not only the separation of the wealthy from the poor but the separation of the different levels of poverty, caste divisions, and the differences of the many religions living side by side in the slums. It touches on Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Mercy as well. While the book has its ups and downs, both beautiful and horrific, an overall feeling of peace and well being is achieved by the story's end. Despite facing hunger, deplorable living conditions, illness, bone breaking work (or no work at all) and death, the people still hold on to the belief that life is precious and worth living, so much so that they named their slum "Anand Nagar", which translated into English means "The City of Joy". The author has stated that the stories of the characters in the book are true and he uses many of the real names in his book. However, the book is considered fictional since many conversations and actions are assumed or created. The author and his wife traveled to India many times, sometimes staying with friends in "The city of Joy". Half of the royalties from the sale of the book goes towards the City of Joy Foundation that looks after slum children in Calcutta.
4543339	/m/0c80ss	1634: The Ram Rebellion	Virginia DeMarce		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01tz3c": "Anthology", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book spot-covers local events and a few related diplomatic discussions from a few days after the Ring of Fire (May–June 1631) to October in the fall of 1634—giving it the largest time footprint of the four—though narrowly focused. The short novel that concludes the work begins in late August 1633 and overlaps many of the shorter works earlier in the book. Two of the three other books set in 1634 refer to the events in the work (usually as the "troubles in Franconia") setting its canonical place in the "greater" neohistorical international politics covered in the other two works. The two Larkin "Birdie" Newhouse tales along with two flashback vignettes by Flint begin the Ram Rebellion book, all four set in the weeks immediately after the Ring of Fire. In the Flint stories which are sandwiched around the Birdie tales, Mike Stearns goes back to school under the tutelage of Melissa Mailey. Stearns has a problem, he has to get a handle on likely complications from the local population, as the stories are set just a few days after he is elected as Chairman of the Emergency Committee. As a result, Mailey gives Stearns several very thick history books on European history in the era. Birdie Newhouse has an immediate problem, he's a farmer with most of his farm's arable land 300 years off and a continent away. The stories by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett explore the alien land practices and ownership of down-time Germany as Birdie seeks to gain additional lands. Land sales are rare, worse, the lawyers are in control and there are three general levels of vested interest: The tenants, have certain rights and obligations over and above monetary rent while leases are generally for the lesser of three generations or 99 years. In between the owner in fact, and the tenants is usually a monetary transaction which gives the rents to any number of claimants—depending upon the finances of the landholding family. The claimants all have a say in the farm operation to some extent, as do the occupants of the farm villages, which also have the right to disapprove or accept new co-farmers, for the land is farmed cooperatively with another set of obligations and entitlements. Birdie can't just go and buy a piece of land, he has to buy it from three different and diverse groups of people... and get them all to agree to terms. As the story notes, seventeenth century Germany was a lawyers paradise. Flo Richards is a farmer's wife with four grown children who had bought a small flock of type C Delaine Merino sheep and some angora rabbits before the Ring of Fire in the hope that she'd see more of her youngest daughter, Jen, once she'd finished her studies out of town. The Ring of Fire had consequently left Jan behind in the present in which Flo dealt with this loss by concentrating on her livestock. She and her husband JD have local Germans living with them as partners now that farming has become more labour intensive. Flo's laments about the poor quality wool of the locally obtained ram (who comes to be known as Brillo for that reason) strike a chord with someone and subsequently a number of 'Brillo fables' started to appear in the local broadsheet, which concerns the titular ram escaped from his pen and interfered with her merino breeding program. His fame due to the stories spread through Grantville out into the rest of Germany. The Women's League of Voters uses a Ram's Head as its emblem, schoolchildren sing songs about Brillo, and even adapted into a ballet. With the example of future Grantville, a peasant revolt becomes a revolutionary movement in the fractured Holy Roman Empire south and east of Thuringia while the Machiavellian maneuvers in the neohistorical governments and various field armies now dance to counter-act those aimed at the Americans' new heartland. Up-timers, from the original USA space-time want the serfs to succeed and liberate themselves—but also know what a bloodbath the French Revolution became and various individuals act to help one and prevent the others. Avoiding that path will take all sorts of resources and efforts, and Americans from both uptime and down-time act resolutely to mitigate the problems, diplomacy to head off wars headed by authoritarians threatened by the new American ideals, and a deft appreciation of when not to fight and dangle an irresistible carrot instead. In Franconia, schoolteacher Constantin Ableidinger has been reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine. He also finds the Brillo stories interesting. The farmers in Franconia (and Thuringia for that matter) have a history of dissent concerning serfdom and Mike Stearns has hopes of getting some fundamental changes made in the way that Franconia is run as a result of a farmer's rebellion of sorts. He neglects to include this in the briefing given to the civil servants sent down to administer Franconia although these people, Johnny F. and Noelle Murphy, among others have an effect on the schoolteacher's "Ram rebellion". ro:1634: The Ram Rebellion
4544321	/m/0c82p6	Cult of Crime	Franklin W. Dixon	1987-04	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy boys hear their father and a person named Emmet Strand talking about his daughter Holly, who has joined the group of Rajah. Holly was a close friend of Frank, so Frank decides to join the group of teenagers who serve the Rajah in order to save Holly. The Rajah claims that he shall give everybody peace, so every teenager who is fed up with life, or are very frustrated joins the group in hope of finding peace. The Rajah is a very powerful man - even police officials are linked to him and do as he says. On a mission to rescue their good friend Holly from the cult of the lunatic Rajah, the boys unwittingly become the main event in one of the madman's deadly rituals--human sacrifice. The Hardy Boys try to escape the ritual, during which, Joe is framed that he kills a person very close to the Rajah, known as Vivasvat. Holly pleads with them to take her along, actually, she is linked with Rajah and wants to kill them. The Hardy Boys escape with Holly. They are chased by a police officer who is linked with the Rajah. When they are travelling on a train, Frank is shot by a bullet and falls of the train. Holly attempts to kill Joe but fails. As the book progresses, the Rajah, taking revenge at the Hardy Boys, starts a riot in the city. He holds captive Emmet Strand. Rajah reveals that he is the son of Emmet Strand's first wife & that he is taking revenge for leaving his mother. Soon, the Hardy Boys catch him and he is handed to the police. Holly, along with her father Emmet leave the country.
4545547	/m/0c84s_	Doomsday 1999 A.D.	Charles Berlitz			 In the book, environment, famine, overpopulation, climate changes, floods, tornadoes, hothouse effect (now commonly referred to as greenhouse effect), etc. are generally predicted to worsen and become acute by the end of the 20th century. Berlitz lists of doomsday years is long. He starts with the year 999, December 31 when many expected Jesus to return, and goes through a great many doomsday prophecies by scientists, prophets, astrologers and others. In chapter 8, he asks whether the world has ended before, mentioning Atlantis, an idea which he revisits later in his books The Mystery of Atlantis and Atlantis: The Lost Continent Revealed. Berlitz suggests that there may have been a flood, an idea which he explores further in his book The Lost Ship of Noah: In Search of the Ark at Ararat (1987) and in chapter 9 where he cites the tales of a great flood from the Bible and the Torah, Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek, Indian, Persian, Welsh, Norse, Lithuanian, Irish, Chinese, Aztec-Toltec, Maya records and Chibcha tales.
4546701	/m/0c86wp	The Broken Place	Michael Shaara		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The plot concerns a Korean War veteran who comes home from the war mentally depressed. With deep psychological wounds, he only feels alive in the violent world of boxing. Shaara had been an amateur boxer.
4546935	/m/0c87d3	The Magellanic Cloud	Stanisław Lem	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the thirty-second century, in a communistic Utopian future. Humanity has colonized all of the Solar System, and is now making its first attempt at interstellar travel. Aboard a vessel called Gaia, 227 men and women leave the Earth for the Alpha Centauri system. After almost eight years of travel, they find signs of organic life on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, possibly originating on another planet within the Centauri system. One of the planets orbiting Alpha Centauri turns to be inhabited by an advanced civilization. The expedition meets a lifeless human ship of "Atlants", which turns out to be an old artificial war satellite of the USA and its NATO allies, carrying still active biological weapons and nuclear warheads, which had accidentally left Earth orbit and got lost in space during the Cold War era.
4547131	/m/0c87sz	Border Country	Raymond Williams	1960	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Matthew Price, a university lecturer in economic history, returns from London to visit his sick father in South Wales. The novel is set in the fictional village of Glynmawr in the Black Mountains, a rural area but closely connected to the nearby coal mining valleys of the South Wales coalfield. His father had been a railway signalman, and the story includes lengthy flashbacks to the 1920s and 1930s, including the General Strike and its impact on a small group of railway workers living in a community made up mostly of farmers. It also describes Matthew Price's decision to leave his own community, studying at Cambridge before becoming a lecturer in London.
4547309	/m/0c8852	Second Generation				 Harold Owen, his brother Gwyn, son Peter and wife Kate all experience the contrasts. The book is based on the actual situation in Oxford of the 1960s, where the ancient university was right next to Morris Motors, as it then was.
4547385	/m/0c888w	Losing You	Nicci Gerrard	2005-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story tells about Nina, a mother of two, planning to go on holidays with her new boyfriend. However, the road away from the isolated winter bleakness of Sandling Island seems to be littered with obstacles, frustrating her plans at every turn. Most pressingly of all, her fifteen-year-old daughter, Charlie, has yet to return from a night out. Minute by minute, as Nina's unease builds to worry and then panic, every mother's worst nightmare begins to occur. Has Charlie run away? Or has something more sinister happened to her? And why will nobody take her disappearance seriously? As day turns to night on the island and a series of half-buried secrets lead Nina Landry from sickening suspicion to deadly certainty, the question becomes less whether she and her daughter will leave the island for Christmas and more whether they will ever leave it again.
4547404	/m/0c88bl	The Fight for Manod				 Matthew Price and Peter Owen both have their roots within the borders of Wales. They each have contributed to a decision on the idea of building a new town, Manod, in the depopulated valleys of South Wales. A splendid idea - or is there more going on behind the scenes than is admitted?
4547676	/m/0c88zf	Tales of Pirx the Pilot	Stanisław Lem		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The stories are set somewhere in the XXI-XXII centuries, in a futuristic Occidental world (as opposed to a Communist Utopia where some of Lem's other novels take place) in which Mankind is starting to colonize the Solar System, has some settlements on the Moon and Mars, and is even beginning the exploration of the other solar systems. Pirx is a cadet, a pilot, and finally a captain of a merchant spaceship, and the stories relate his life and various things that happen to him during his travels between the Earth, Moon, and Mars.
4547933	/m/0c899j	Newton's Wake: A Space Opera	Ken MacLeod		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the late 20th century, at the start of a war between the European nations and the United States, a US Army AI directing weapons overcame its programming to become self-aware. Then followed the "Hard Rapture", an explosive expansion and evolution of computer systems that left most of humanity dead or devoured while the AIs and assimilated persons progressed into posthumanity beyond human comprehension and departed for parts unknown, leaving behind artifacts on a number of worlds. With the Earth now populated by varyingly dormant, partially sentient war machines, humanity lives offworld. The three main sects are America Offline (AO), the Knights of Enlightenment (KE) and Demokratische Kommunistbund (democratic communist union) (DK). Examination of the posthuman relics has resulted in deep but sporadic knowledge of such things as FTL travel. The main character is Lucinda Carlyle, a member of a Scottish family of entrepreneurs/thugs that controls a system of traversable wormholes known as the Skein. Lucinda is a "combat archeologist", leading a team to the unexplored world of Eurydice to salvage posthuman technology and deal with whatever it tries in response. Not only does she find a motherlode of an artifact, but a lost colony of humans that escaped Earth in the Hard Rapture and are living in a post scarcity society (with cosmic string weapons far beyond those of other groups). Each side is as surprised as the other, having thought themselves the only survivors. Then the Knights of Enlightenment discover that the artifact, originally the crashed colony ship of the Eurydiceans, is the focal point of the Skein.
4548401	/m/0c8b5h	Hangman's Curse	Frank E. Peretti	2001-01-29	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After successfully initiating a drug bust, Nate and Sarah Springfield and their teenage children, Elijah and Elisha, are handpicked to investigate a outbreak of strange occurrences in an otherwise typical high school. Elijah and Elisha become students at the school and quickly make names for themselves when they debate their teachers on the lesson plans regarding humanism and evolution while their father confronts the tolerated bullying in the school. After several of the football players are injected, Elijah and Elisha quickly learn that a group of gothic cult members have been blamed for the plague; they were bullied as Abel was, and it is believed that the curse is their means of revenge. The assumed leader of the group, Ian Snyder, takes credit at first, but his followers turn on him when he "loses control" of the ghost of Abel; his friend, and a few classmate each die after having hallucinations. Ian drops out of the cult and turns to Elijah for spiritual help. Later, Sarah discovers straws filled with a sugar-like substance in the lockers of the stricken students, their dog, Max, recognizes the scent all over the school. An eccentric scientist named Algernon Wheeling is called into the investigation, and determines that the sugar is actually to keep a male poisonous cross-breed of the African Spotted wolf spider and brown recluse in the straw till he smells the female pheromone on the victim because of the dollar bill, he eats his way out and bites the victim after being agitated at not finding the female. The spiders were trapped in the straws, and the pheromone was spread through dollar bills, that circulated around the school to attract the spiders to the intended victims, who hallucinated and were later hospitalized after being bitten. However, as the dollars were spread around the school, unintended sympathizers of the cult were bitten and suffered from the poison. The mastermind of the entire project, a boy named Norman Bloom, led the cult and allowed them to believe that witches were responsible (Ian Snyder and some others). Due to unbelievably fast reproduction, the school is overrun by the deadly spiders, and, as the school is evacuated, Elisha finds herself trapped under the school and bitten repeatedly, but is saved by Algernon Wheeling's antidote AT490. The hospitalized students recover, and the case is declared closed.
4552060	/m/0c8hdv	Prose Tristan				 The first part of the work stays closer to the traditional story as told by verse writers like Béroul and Thomas of Britain, but many episodes are reworked or altered entirely. Tristan's parents are given new names and backstories, and the overall tone has been called "more realistic" than the verse material though there are moments where characters sing. Tristan's guardian Governal takes him to France, where he grows up at the court of King Pharamond. He later arrives at the court of his uncle Mark, King of Cornwall, and defends his country against the Irish warrior Morholt. Wounded in the fight, he travels to Ireland where he is healed by Iseult, a renowned doctor and Morholt's niece, but he must flee when the Irish discover he has killed their champion. He later returns, in disguise, to seek Iseult as a bride for his uncle. When they accidentally drink the love potion prepared for Iseult and Mark, they engage in a tragic affair that ends with Tristan being banished to the court of Hoel of Brittany. He eventually marries Hoel's daughter, also named Iseult. Especially after this point, however, the traditional narrative is continually interrupted for side adventures by the various characters and episodes serving to "Arthurianize" the story. Notably, Tristan's rivalry with the Saracen knight Palamedes is given substantial attention. Additionally, in the long version, Tristan leaves Brittany and returns to his first love, and never sees his wife again, though her brother Kahedin remains his close companion. Tristan is compared frequently to his friend Lancelot in both arms and love, and at times even unknowingly engages him in battles. He becomes a Knight of the Round Table (taking Morholt's old seat) and embarks on the Quest for the Holy Grail before abandoning the idea to stay with Iseult at Lancelot's castle. The Grail Quest has been a source of controversy regarding the Tristan en prose. Instead of writing new material, the author chose to insert (or interpolate) the entire Queste del Saint Graal from the Vulgate Cycle into the Tristan story. The result of this copying undermines the sanctity of the Vulgate Quest itself. Manuscripts which do not include the Grail material preserve the earlier version of the lovers' deaths, while the longer versions have Mark kill Tristan while he plays the harp for Iseult, only to see her die immediately afterwards.
4552182	/m/0c8hkn	Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons	Dugald Steer	2003-10-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book is written by nineteenth century author, dragonologist Dr. Ernest Drake purporting to have written the material in ink (needs clarification on what it was actually written in) . The subject matters are dragons; where to find them, information about different species, how to work with them and several tactile "samples" of dragon material, including their wings, scales and skin. Also included in the book is a sealed envelope enclosing dragon-calling spells, dragon riddles, a "letter" from Dr. Drake, a number of illustrations, mostly in color, detailing dragons and their anatomy, and a foldout map showing dragon locations throughout the world.
4554204	/m/0c8lg1	Savrola	Winston Churchill	1899		 Events take place in a fictional country called Laurania, located somewhere on the Mediterranean sea, which is similar to Italy or Spain, but with an overlay of Victorian England. Laurania has an African colony which can be reached via the Suez Canal. It has been a republic for many years, and has a well established constitution. Five years previously (stated to be in 1883) the country was split by a civil war, as a result of which General Antonio Molara became President and Dictator. Unrest has arisen because of Molara's refusal to restore parliamentary rule, and the final events of his dictatorship are described in the book. The story opens with a description of the capital and fast-moving political events there. Molara has bowed to popular pressure for elections, but intends to do so on the basis of a grossly amended electoral register. Savrola is seen as the leader of the revolutionaries, deciding what they are to do, and presiding over conflicting factions with differing aims. Despite the unrest, society still proceeds on the surface in a genteel course, with state balls and society events. Molara decides to ask his young and beautiful wife, Lucile, to attempt to seduce Savrola and discover anything she can about his plans. Unfortunately for him, Lucile finds herself attracted to Savrola and her loyalties confused. Events move from political maneuvering to street fighting when a rebel army invades Laurania. While Savrola knows about the army and intended invasion, he has poor control over it, so the invasion has started without his knowledge or proper preparations. Both sides scramble for a fight, as Molara finds the country's regular troops refuse to obey his orders. He is obliged to despatch most of the loyal Republican Guard from the capital to oppose the invaders, leaving him with a much reduced force to hold the capital. Fierce street fighting takes place in the capital between the revolutionaries of the Popular Party and the Republican Guard. The revolution culminates in the storming of the Presidential Palace and the death on the steps of his palace of General Molara. The revolutionary allies start to break apart in the face of a threat by the Lauranian navy (which remains loyal to the president), to bombard the city unless Savrola is handed over to them. The council of public safety decides the most expedient position would be to agree to this, but Savrola escapes attempts to arrest him and flees with Lucile. The city is subsequently bombarded when Savrola is not produced, and the last scene is of Savrola watching the destruction from outside the city. During 1886 and 1887 there was unrest in the African colony. This was dealt with by the small but very effective Lauranian Army, with the support of the Lauranian Navy. In 1888 a border dispute with the British increased tension in that part of Africa, and the arrival of HMS Aggressor in the area precipitated the despatch of the several Lauranian warships to 'show the flag'. This was also intended to dissuade the British from taking any military action in support of their claim on the disputed area. * 'Three hundred thousand people live there'. * 'The palace stood upon high ground commanding a wide view of the city and harbour ... The red and blue tiled roofs were relieved by frequent gardens and squares whose green and graceful palms soothed and gratified the eye. To the north the great pile of the Senate House and Parliament buildings loomed up majestic and imposing. Westward lay the harbour with its shipping and protective forts'. * Part of the harbour's defences include a military mole, at the end of which is a 'shapeless mound of earth that marked the protecting battery of the harbour ...'. * The seaward battery is armed with 'nine-inch guns', some of which are within embrasures and some are en barbette. * The entrance to the harbour is 'nearly a mile wide, but the navigable channel itself was dangerously narrow and extremely difficult.' * There is a 'great square in front of the Parliament House'. The square is called Constitution Square. * There is a railway line that runs 'right to the frontier'.
4554788	/m/0c8mgb	A Boy's Own Story	Edmund White	1982-09-28	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story starts when the narrator, aged 15, experiences the physical side of young love with his twelve-year-old friend Kevin O'Brien. Although he is the younger boy, Kevin takes the lead in the sexual activity. Kevin's remoteness keeps the relationship one-sided; he forgets all about it once each session is over, whereas the narrator gets more and more worried about his deep feelings. As the book progresses, he starts to have cravings for anal penetration. The encounters between the two adolescents become infrequent and are kept in the background, and the narrator's soul-searching about his homosexuality continues.
4555844	/m/0c8pgb	The Abomination				 Santiago Moore Zamora leads a dissolute life of wanton drug-fuelled homosexuality in London, selling his body to despised clients. The story then takes us back to his privileged childhood in the late 1950s. His Spanish mother and English father are surrounded by servants and young 'Iago' sees as much of nanny, cook and gardener as he does his parents who send him off to boarding school. At his prep school he becomes James Moore and at age nine he is abused by a teacher, Mr Wolfe. Moving on to an English public school, James encounters the music teacher, Dr. Fox, who persuades him to attend piano lessons and abuses him for the next few years.
4555955	/m/0c8pq0	What Happened to Mr. Forster?	Gary W. Bargar	1981-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Louis Lamb is a twelve-year-old boy who lives in Kansas City in 1958. A new homosexual teacher, Jack Forster, takes an interest in Louis, an attractive but vulnerable child who likes playing with china animals rather than joining in the ball games the other boys love. He gives Louis one-on-one softball coaching and helps him develop his writing talent. Parents in the community, however, are suspicious of the teacher who lives with another man. Forster doesn’t do anything in any way inappropriate with the boy, just occasionally squeezing his shoulder, but they do spend quite a lot of time together. Eventually, some of the children’s parents start a witch-hunt against Forster, assuming that, because he is gay, his interest in Louis must be sexual. He is fired, and effectively blacklisted. Louis is devastated by losing his favourite teacher, a man who improved the boy’s self esteem and developed his latent talents. Louis does not understand, nor does he feel it fair that Mr. Forster, who is such a good teacher and brings out the best in him, has been fired. Louis goes round to Mr. Forster's house to talk to him. Forster immediately rings Louis' Aunt Zona and asks her to come and collect him. In the meantime he sits and talks with Louis. Mr. Forster explains to him that life isn't always fair and that sometimes people just don't understand how other people love each other. On the way home, Aunt Zona says "I think your Mr. Forster is really good at heart. Maybe the Lord will forgive him for being that way." On the last page of the novel, when the children have been asked by their new teacher to write a thought for the day, Louis knew what to do: 'Then I took out my pen, but not to write down the Thought for the Day. I wrote about Mr. Forster.'
4557609	/m/0c8s90	Two Roads Diverge	Richard Kelly	2006-06-28		 June 30, 2008: Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson) wakes up alone in the Nevada desert, he takes out a red syringe and injects himself in the neck. He begins walking through the desert. Fortunio Balducci (Will Sasso) is on a houseboat with Tab Taverner-Former Mayor of Hermosa, his son Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott) nephew, Jimmy Hermosa and friend, Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Fortunio is currently in an online-poker game with several American soldiers in Syria and loses, but the connection is lost because the soldiers were attacked – which means Fortunio is still going to lose his money anyways. Fortunio owes some bookies in Las Vegas $100,000 so Tab suggests that Fortunio get out of Nevada before the holiday weekend begins; this should buy him some time. Fortunio can’t get across the border because he has no interstate visa to get across and will take sometime for him to get one. Krysta Now tells Fortunio that she can get him a visa and to meet her at a bar called Buffalo Bill’s situated at the border. Fortunio leaves the boat and drives towards the border. On his way, he finds Boxer passed out on the road. He pulls over and approaches him. Boxer stirs and says: ‘I am a pragmatic prevaricator, with a propensity for oratorical seniority, which is too pleonastical to be expeditiously assimilated by any of your unequivocal veracities.’ Fortunio puts him inside the car and they begin to drive off again. Fortunio asks Boxer how and what he was doing out in the middle of the desert. Boxer doesn’t know and asks the date. He seems to suffer from amnesia. At the same time, a Nevada park ranger is tipped off about the whereabouts of an abandoned SUV with a burned-up dead body inside. The SUV is a prototype vehicle belonging to Treer which is powered by ‘Fluid Karma’. The vehicle and corpse is taken away to a facility nearby. The facility is broken into by armed-men, killing everyone inside and taking the SUV and corpse. Fortunio asks Boxer can he remember anything. The only thing he seems to remember is a maze made of sand. Fortunio says that he is a big fan of Boxer’s. Boxer is confused and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Fortunio tells him that he is Boxer Santaros-a very famous action star and ex-pro-football player. He then tells him of the incidents that occurred on July 4, 2005. The two make it to Buffalo Bill’s where Krysta Now is performing on stage but instead of stripping, she begins to sing poetry. Fortunio explains the situation to Krysta, that he found Boxer lying in the desert, picked him up and that he has amnesia, so now he needs two visas. Krysta will get the visas on one condition-play along a game she has created. Using Boxer’s amnesia to her advantage, she will tell Boxer that the two of them were together in Vegas for the weekend, partying and working on a script that she wrote called ‘The Power’, she was researching a character at Buffalo Bill’s (her character in the movie is an intelligent dancer interested in astrophysics). She then goes on to say that Fortunio has to pretend that he is a private detective and was hired to find Boxer and bring him to Krysta, if he doesn’t do it, she will deliver him to the bookies in Vegas. She ends up convincing the naive Boxer. Apparently, the script (‘The Power’) was written solely by Krysta, and that Boxer never had anything to do with it to begin with, but she has convinced him that he is starring in and directing the film also. He asks what it is about and who he plays. Krysta says that Boxer plays a renegade L.A.P.D. cop called Jericho Cane and that it revolves around the end of the world. She gives him a copy of the script to read. Krysta begins talking to Fortunio outside her hotel room. She tells him to contact a lawyer and have him draw up a short form contract for himself for ‘The Power’ and to give himself $100,000 to settle his debt with the bookies. While Boxer is reading the script, the phone begins to ring. He answers and the woman on the other end tells him: ‘is this the Pragmatic Prevaricator?-Stay with the girl, she is your only chance for survival, We saw the Shadows of the Morning Light, The Shadows of the Evening Sun, Until the Shadows and Light were One. Cross the Border At Dawn, Stay with the Girl, and whatever she says, Keep Taking the Injections, and whatever you do-do not board the rollercoaster.’ Krysta enters the room and asks about the script. Boxer says he likes it but there is lots of work to be done on it. Later, Boxer signs the contract given to him by Fortunio and Krysta. He goes to get a check from the bank, he places his thumb on the scanner, which is fed back to US-IDent (who are looking for Boxer). Boxer tells Krysta about the phone call and of his dream in the desert, she was in his dream and he remembers the song she sung in Buffalo Bill’s in the dream also. She tells him that they have to ride the rollercoaster across the road from Buffalo Bill’s. Boxer is hesitant at first but agrees. He takes an injection before they go on. Once they get to the top, Boxer has a vision...a vision of 1902, a Native-America tribe standing there. Boxer waves at one of them. He seems to have created a rupture in the fourth dimension. He goes back to 2008 all of a sudden and he tells Krysta about his vision. The two of them exit the rollercoaster together.... The book takes on a classical storyline and the title, "Two Roads Diverge" derives from Robert Frost's famous poem "The Road Not Taken". The cover also contains a quote from T. S. Eliot, stating that our world will not go out with a bang as we expect, but with a whimper.
4558107	/m/0c8t5d	Winds of Fury	Mercedes Lackey	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The evil Prince Ancar of Hardorn, while experimenting with magic, accidentally draws the equally evil man-cat Mornelithe Falconsbane from his prison in the Void. Meanwhile, Heralds Elspeth and Skif witness the reunion of Clan k'Leysha, a tribe of Hawkbrothers which was divided because of a magical mishap. The two Heralds, together with Elspeth's lover Darkwind k'Sheyna, Skif's lover Nyara (Falconsbane's estranged daughter), the magical sword Need, the gryphons Treyvan and Hydona, the k'Treva mage Firesong, and the kyree Rris, are leaving for Valdemar, where the non-Heralds will be ambassadors for their various clans. Firesong's Gate (a magical portal enabling the person to cross large distances in a single step) is co-opted by the ghost of Herald Vanyel, a Herald-Mage who died saving the kingdom. The party find themselves in the Forest of Sorrows near Valdemar's northern border. Vanyel explains that he 'abducted' them because he is about to remove the magical protections around Valdemar. He feels he must warn them because Ancar of Hardorn may take advantage of the lowered defenses and magically attack. Vanyel then makes a Gate to send the party to his ancestral manor near the western border. They head to Haven with all speed, though the gryphons create a minor sensation along the way. Elspeth discovers that rumors have been circulating that she has been murdered by her stepfather, or that she intends to take the throne from her mother by force. Upon arrival in Haven, she renounces her claim to the monarchy so that she can pursue her new job as the first Herald-Mage since Vanyel. The mages in the group begin finding and training potential mages among the Heralds as quickly as possible. Ancar, prompted by Falconsbane, launches an attack immediately, using magic-controlled troops. Valdemar responds with an assassination team composed of Elspeth, Skif, Darkwind, Nyara, Need, and Firesong, intending to eliminate Ancar, Falconsbane, and Hulda, an evil witch who tried to corrupt Elspeth in her youth. Disguised as a traveling show, they move towards the capital. The situation is complicated somewhat when the assassination team learns that Falconsbane has a secret agent in his head; the evil Adept had found a way to cheat death by arranging to 'take over' the bodies of any member of his bloodline with Adept potential. The victim of the most recent takeover, An'desha, a boy of the Shin'a'in, survived; his personality took refuge in a hidden corner of Falconsbane's mind. Two Avatars of the Shin'a'in Goddess come to him to help him, and he is able to pass information to the assassination party through the Avatars and Need. He slowly becomes aware that it might not be possible to kill Falconsbane without also killing him. Firesong, Nyara, Skif, and Need lure Falconsbane out of the palace. Need deals the body a mortal wound, causing Falconsbane's spirit to flee into the Void. Firesong pursues him there and destroys him for good. Need is able to heal the damage she has caused and allow An'desha to have his body back. Darkwind, Elspeth, and her Companion attack Ancar and Hulda, who both perish, but Darkwind is injured and Elspeth also kills an envoy from the powerful Eastern Empire, causing it to turn its eye on Valdemar. With the death of Ancar, Valdemar has little difficulty repelling the Hardornen army. At the close of the book, An'desha and Nyara are healed from the damage Falconsbane had done to their bodies, and the party settles in to live in Haven.
4559056	/m/0c8vzb	World Game	Terrance Dicks		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Under threat of execution after his conviction by the Time Lords at the end of The War Games, the Doctor is granted a reprieve if he agrees to undertake missions for the Celestial Intervention Agency. Accompanied and supervised by the ambitious Lady Serena, their first mission is to halt attacks upon three key figures in Earth's past: Napoleon Bonaparte, The Duke of Wellington, and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. The Doctor re-encounters the Player known as the Countess and struggles to end her Grand Plan to allow Napoleon to win his various European campaigns. Her plan to set the City States of Europe against each other is stopped by the Doctor, despite her setting a Raston Warrior Robot and a vampire on him and Serena. In preventing the Countess's assassination scheme on Wellington, Serena is killed. The Countess has many back up plans, and at the Battle of Waterloo, her plan to prevent the Prussians coming to the English army's relief is thwarted when the Doctor imitates Napoleon himself to get through the French lines and deliver new orders to the Prussian commander. After returning to Gallifrey and discovering a traitor in the CIA who had been using the time scoop to assist the Countess, the Doctor is sent on a mission to investigate the time travel experiments of Kartz and Reimer.
4559717	/m/0c8wxb	Adiamante	L. E. Modesitt, Jr.		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After gaining amazing power over genetics and technology, three sects of humanity have developed and split, after a civil war on earth forced them apart. Now, far into the future, the deported sect has returned to force their rule on the remaining citizens of earth.
4560559	/m/0c8y9b	The Land of Foam	Ivan Yefremov			 The novel is divided in two parts, separated by more than 1000 years. The first part takes place during the rule of the pharaon Djedefra (26th century BC), who decides to send an expedition to the South, in order to seek the famous and fabled Land of Punt and to seek the limits of the land and the start of the Great Arc, the circular ocean encompassing the entire world in Egyptian cosmology. The second part starts in Ancient Greece during its Aegean Period (no precise dates are provided, but one can assume a date c. 1000-900 BC). A young sculptor named Pandion sets off on a journey to Crete, but a storm finally lands him in Egypt, where he is enslaved. From that point, he is haunted by the thought of coming back home...
4560846	/m/0c8yvk	Winds of Fate	Mercedes Lackey	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first half of the book alternates between two plots; Herald Elspeth in Haven and Darkwind k'Sheyna in Hawkbrother territory near the Dhorisha Plains. Elspeth is now under the tutelage of Herald-Captain Kerowyn, who arrived in Valdemar during the events of By the Sword. Through Kerowyn's training she narrowly escapes an assassination attempt sent by Ancar of Hardorn, the usuper prince of the kingdom to the east. She is convinced Ancar will attack again and asks permission of the Queen and Council to go looking for mages, since Valdemar has no knowledge of true magic. They agree only after being pressured by the Companions, the horse-shaped beings who are the lifelong partners of the Heralds. Herald Skif goes with her as an escort. Meanwhile, the Hawkbrother clan k'Sheyna is in dire straits. While the clan was moving from their current location to a new one, the clan's Heartstone (a special object which acts as a well of power accessible to mages of the clan) went rogue and shattered. The Gate which connected the two locations failed, stranding half the clan in the new location. Several of the mages who were holding the Gate were killed or injured; many were traumatized. One of them, Songwind, changed his name to Darkwind, renounced the use of magic, and began living outside the Vale (the magically-protected area used as a home by Tayledras clans. His father pressures him to return to magic, but he refuses, fearing in part that he caused the Heartstone to fail. His real allies are a pair of gryphons, Treyvan and Hydona, mages themselves and advance scouts from Clan k'Leshya, the so-called Lost Clan. Lurking at the edges of k'Sheyna territory is the sinister mage Mornelithe Falconsbane, a creature who has changed his form to resemble a giant man-cat. Darkwind's father is an unwilling agent of his; Falconsbane caught and tortured him until he broke. Falconsbane has an obsessive hatred of gryphons and wishes to capture Treyvan, Hydona, or their two young children. Falconsbane's daughter Nyara escapes him and finds her way to Darkwind and the gryphons for protection, but she also is under his control. A young woman, Dawnfire, witnesses Falconsbane's attempt to take or subvert the gyphlets. She and her bond-bird try to drive him off, but she is killed and a lingering trace of her spirit is trapped in the bond-bird, which Falconsbane takes prisoner. Elspeth successfully resists her Companion Gwena's attempt to steer her along a predestinated path to greatness and looks for help among the Shin'a'in. Cryptic clues steer her to k'Sheyna territory, where she encounters Darkwind. After a tense meeting, he begins to believe that she could help him fight off Falconsbane. Skif is wary and suspicious, however. Dawnfire, trapped in her bird's body, arrives with the news that Ancar is planning to attack them. The Tayledras rightly deduce that this is simply a ruse to lead them away from the Heartstone and the gryphons. They try to ambush Falconsbane, but he is too strong for them; the Goddess herself intervenes to drive him away. At the story's conclusion, Darkwind's father has been freed from Falconsbane's control, and the outsiders have been accepted warily into the Hawkbrothers' trust. Dawnfire is chosen by the Goddess as her Avatar and becomes a spirit-being.
4561031	/m/0c8z3p	The Wicked Day	Mary Stewart	1983	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel covers the time after Merlin's self imposed exile and stretches to the deaths of Modred and Arthur.
4564203	/m/0c930_	The Face of the Enemy	David A. McIntee			 The Doctor and Jo have gone off in the TARDIS, leaving the Brigadier and UNIT facing a deadly mystery — and a moral dilemma... Robbery and murder are on the increase in Britain as disputes between underworld gangs escalate into open warfare on the streets. The Master seems inextricably linked to the chaos - despite the fact he is safely under lock and key. Meanwhile UNIT is called in when a plane missing in strange circumstances is rediscovered - contaminated with radiation and particle damage that cannot possibly have occurred on Earth. As the mystery deepens, what little light they can shed on the matter leads the Brigadier to believe that with the Doctor away, Earth's only hope may lie with its greatest enemy...
4567369	/m/0c98mr	Fire on the Mountain	Terry Bisson		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The difference from actual US history starts with the participation of Harriet Tubman in Brown's uprising; her sound tactical and strategic advice helps Brown avoid mistakes which in real history led to his downfall. As a result, instead of the American Civil War, the United States faces a full-scale slave revolt throughout the South —- helped by a handful of white sympathizers; by various European revolutionaries such as Giuseppe Garibaldi who take ship across the Atlantic; and by an invasion by Mexico, seeking to regain the territory it lost in 1848. After a great deal of bloody fighting and an increasing dissatisfaction in the North which is required to send troops to fight the rebellious slaves, the Blacks succeed in emancipating themselves and create a republic in the Deep South, led by Tubman and Frederick Douglass. (Brown himself did not survive to see the victory of what he started.) Abraham Lincoln tries to start a war to bring back the secessionist Black states into the Union. He fails and is himself killed in that war, and Blacks remember him as their archenemy. Later, the Black state (named "Nova Africa") becomes Socialist, touching off a whole string of revolutions and civil wars in Europe. The Paris Commune wins out instead of being crushed, a united Ireland gets free of British rule in the 1880s, and the Russian Revolution is just one of many similar revolutions in different countries. Finally Socialism wins out also in the rump US, following a revolutionary outbreak in Chicago. In the book, Socialism works out as predicted by Karl Marx, bringing happiness and prosperity to all of Humanity. (Marx himself is mentioned in the book as an enthusiastic supporter of the rebellious slaves, though he does not personally come to America to help them.) The book has two levels. The overt plot takes place in 1959, in an Utopian Socialist world far in advance of ours in all ways. To mark the centennial of Brown's raid, black astronauts lead a manned landing on Mars. However, the story of the protagonist, a young Black woman trying to bring the blessings of Socialism to the backward society in the rump US, is mainly the framework for excerpts from the vivid diaries of two people who lived through the stirring events of 1859 and its aftermath—her ancestor, who was then a young black slave, and a white Virginian doctor who sympathized with the rebellion. In this world, an alternate history book is published called John Brown's Body, which describes a world in which Brown failed and was executed, the slaves were emancipated by Lincoln rather than by themselves after a war between two white factions, and capitalism survived as a political and economic system. It is considered a dystopia, describing a horrible world in all ways inferior to the one which the people in the book know.
4568861	/m/0c9c5w	Many Moons	James Thurber		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Many Moons is about a sick princess who wants the moon. The princess is perhaps more sick at heart than body. Her father, the king, is enraged when the wizards, the Lord High Chamberlain, and the mathematician court can't get the moon. In the end, it is the jester who realizes that the princess thinks the moon is only as big as her thumbnail and made of gold, so he goes to the goldsmith, who makes a necklace with a gold sphere on it. The jester gives it to the princess. The King then worries that she will see the moon in the sky that night and realize that the necklace was not the real moon. The jester goes to check on her. The princess thinks that whenever something is taken, it is replaced, like her tooth, a unicorn's horn, and flowers.
4569197	/m/0c9cnb	Teckla	Steven Brust	1987-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 While deciding what to do with the fortune he made after the events of Jhereg, Vlad is alarmed to discover that his wife has joined a group of revolutionists consisting of Easterners and Teckla from the ghetto of South Adrilankha. One of their members, Franz, has been murdered. Fearing for Cawti's safety, Vlad resolves to investigate the matter. After some aggressive investigation, Vlad learns that the Jhereg boss of South Adrilankha, Herth, ordered the assassination after the revolutionists attacked his businesses. By getting involved, Vlad becomes a target in the ongoing feud. Vlad takes the information back to Kelly, the leader of the revolutionists, but he is unafraid. He plans to not only revolt but to break the Cycle itself. Several of his followers tell Vlad their stories, including a Teckla sorcerer named Paresh, but Vlad is unmoved. He accuses them of parroting Kelly's slogans, which put impossible ideals ahead of individuals. Vlad's relationship becomes strained as Cawti's changing values pull her away from his lifestyle. Distraught over his failing marriage, Vlad lets his guard down and gets captured by Herth's men. They torture him for information about Cawti and the revolutionists until Vlad's men rescue him. Jarred by his brush with total helplessness, Vlad becomes temporarily suicidal, but Cawti drugs him before he can harm himself. After awakening, Vlad remains troubled by the incident, but reaffirms his desire to save Cawti and destroy Herth. Vlad suspects that Herth has sent an assassin after him. He begins casing Kelly's headquarters to watch events unfold and draw out the assassin. The revolutionists attempt to barricade South Adrilankha and the Phoenix Guards are called in to restore order. Amidst the chaos, the assassin strikes, but Vlad fights him off. Vlad identifies the assassin as Quaysh and hires his own assassin, Ishtvan, to kill Quaysh. Vlad decides that the only way to save Cawti is to end the revolution by killing Kelly and his top-ranking followers. He sneaks into Kelly's headquarters, but Franz's ghost appears before he can start the job. After conversing with the ghost, Vlad becomes unnerved and abandons the plan. He returns the next day looking for Cawti, but winds up in an ethical debate with Kelly over their respective lifestyles. Kelly's accusations closely mirror Vlad's own self-doubts. Still committed to saving Cawti from self-destruction with the revolutionists, Vlad concocts a plan to solve all his problems at once. During another altercation between the revolutionists and the Phoenix Guard, Vlad tricks Herth into entering Kelly's headquarters. He hopes that Herth would kill Kelly, the revolutionists would kill Herth, and the Phoenix Guards would kill the revolutionists. Vlad teleports into the headquarters and recklessly decides to kill Herth himself. Miraculously, Vlad disables all of Herth's bodyguards while Ishtvan kills Herth's assassin and disappears. Kelly convinces Vlad against his better judgment to allow Herth to live. The next day, Vlad has an epiphany on how to solve his problems. He offers to buy all of Herth's holdings in South Adrilankha, using the remainder of his fortune. Herth agrees and retires from the Organization, thus ending all of his conflicts with Vlad and the revolutionists. Vlad breaks the news to Cawti and they tearfully embrace. Though many unresolved issues still loom between them, Vlad feels relieved that the most pressing dangers are gone.
4569237	/m/0c9cqw	The Devil Goblins from Neptune	Keith Topping		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Brigadier is pursued across the world from seeming traitors within UNIT, his own organization. The Doctor and Liz deal with an alien invasion that started with an extraterrestrial mass exploding in the atmosphere.
4572351	/m/0c9hq3	The Tigers of Mompracem	Emilio Salgari		{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Tigers of Mompracem are a band of rebel pirates fighting against the colonial power of the Dutch and British empires. They are led by Sandokan, the indomitable Tiger of Malaysia, and his loyal friend Yanez de Gomera, a Portuguese wanderer and adventurer. After twelve years of spilling blood and spreading terror throughout Malaysia, Sandokan has reached the height of his power, but when the pirate learns of the existence of a beautiful girl, nicknamed "the Pearl of Labuan", his fortunes begin to change.
4572405	/m/0c9hrj	The Pirates of Malaysia	Emilio Salgari		{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Sandokan and Yanez, the protagonists of The Tigers of Mompracem, are back, righting injustices and fighting old foes. Tremal-Naik's misfortunes have continued. Wrongfully imprisoned, the great hunter has been banished from India and sentenced to life in a penal colony. Knowing his master is innocent, Kammamuri dashes off to the rescue, planning to free the good hunter at the first opportunity. When the good servant is captured by the Tigers of Mompracem, he manages to enlist their services. But in order to succeed, Sandokan and Yanez must lead their men against the forces of James Brooke, "The Exterminator", the dreaded White Rajah of Sarawak. Pangeran Macota, Sandokan's ally, was in fact one of James Brooke's bitterest enemies.
4573248	/m/0c9jwq	The Shadow Lines	Amitav Ghosh	1988	{"/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows the life of a young boy growing up in Calcutta and later on in Delhi and London. His family – the Datta Chaudharis - and the Prices in London are linked by the friendship between their respective patriarchs – Justice Dattachaudhari and Lionel Tresawsen. The narrator adores Tridib because of his tremendous knowledge and his perspective of the incidents and places. Tha'mma thinks that Tridib is type of person who seems 'determined to waste his life in idle self-indulgence', one who refuses to use his family connections to establish a career. Unlike his grandmother, the narrator loves listening to Tridib. For the narrator, Tridib's lore is very different from the collection of facts and figures. The narrator is sexually attracted to Ila but his feelings are passive. He never expresses his feelings to her afraid to lose the relationship that exists between them. However one day he involuntarily shows his feelings when she was changing clothes in front of him being unaware of his feelings. She feels sorry for him. Tha'mma does not like Ila. 'Why do you always speak for that whore' - She doesn't like her grandson to support her. Tha'mma has a dreadful past and wants to reunite her family and goes to Dhaka to bring back her uncle. Tridib is in love with May and sacrificed his life to rescue her from mobs in the communal riots of 1963-64 in Dhaka.
4573961	/m/0c9knc	City of the Beasts	Isabel Allende	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 City of the Beasts begins with the story of Alexander Cold, who is 15 years old and going through a family crisis. While his parents leave for Texas to try to treat his mother's cancer, Alex and his sisters are sent to live with their grandmothers. Despite his desperate pleading, Alex is sent off to New York City to stay with his eccentric grandmother Kate Cold,a reporter for International Geographic Magazine. His sisters, however are sent to live with their Grandmother Carla. Meanwhile, Kate announces that she will be taking Alex with her to the Amazon rainforest during his visit. Once Alex arrives in New York City, and finds out that his grandmother had no intentions of collecting him at the airport and is forced to walk to her apartment, several blocks away. In the process he meets a girl named Morgana who is a very eccentric girl in her mid-20s. She steals his back pack that contained his clothes, his money and his flute. He is greatly saddened by the loss of his precious flute, but Kate gives him the flute belonging to his grandfather, Joseph Cold. When Alex and his Grandmother Kate reach the jungle, they join the rest of the expedition group: Timothy Bruce (photographer); and his assistant Joel Gonzalez. Accompanying them is the famous anthropologist, Ludovic Leblanc, the beautiful Venezuelan physician Dr. Omayra Torres, who is coming along to vaccinate natives, and Cesar Santos, their Brazilian guide. Alex soon befriends Nadia, a girl several years younger than him, who is the daughter of Cesar Santos. The entrepreneur, Mauro Carias, is the man responsible for drawing the magazine's interest to the mysterious Beasts. The group leaves by boat, traveling upriver toward their destination in the World's Eye. Everyone in the group feels uncomfortable, as if someone were watching them constantly. One of the soldiers who is with them dies when he is shot by a poisoned dart. Later, Joel Gonzalez, the photographer's assistant, is attacked and nearly killed by an anaconda. After another soldier's death, this time at the hands of a Beast, they decide to send several people back with the wounded Joel Gonzalez - and they are given the task to send help back to the expedition. When they are left alone, Alex plays his grandfather's flute to relieve the tedium. The music attracts the mysterious People of the Mist, who kidnap the two children. They travel farther into the forest and arrive at a waterfall which they must climb to reach the World's Eye. Due to Alex's skills in rock climbing, this isn't much of a problem for him; however, Nadia is afraid of heights. After they reach the top, Alex is sent back down again to rescue their chief, Mokarita, who had fallen and been mortally wounded. When everyone arrives at the top, they set off for the home of the People of the Mist. When they reach the village, they are welcomed by the Indians - but their happiness is tempered by the death of Mokarita, which follows shortly after. He is given a traditional funeral, which unfortunately sends up a great amount of smoke from the pyre. During the funeral, everyone is given a drug which reveals to Nadia her totem of the eagle. Jaguar and Eagle are initiated into the clan. Alex, being fifteen, is put through a rite of passage into manhood; during the ceremony, unusual things happen. Firstly, he turns into a jaguar, his totem; secondly, he receives a vision of his mom on her hospital bed and he talks briefly with her. After the ceremonies, the Shaman takes them to visit the Beasts, who live in a city deep within the forest. These Beasts are considered gods by the People of the Mist. Jaguar correctly assumes their city to be the famous El Dorado which is really made from fool's gold. Jaguar and Eagle embark on a journey to visit El Dorado and its inhabitants with the help of Walimai, the mystic's spirit wife who will serve as their guide. The city is located inside of an inactive volcano, and the only entrance is through a confusing labyrinth of lava tunnels and caves. They all decide what to do and how to do it. Upon arrival, Alex and Nadia meet with the “Beasts”. The creatures, which look something like giant sloths, function as the living memory of the tribe by remembering long epic poems recited by Walimai and his predecessors. Fearing the capture of these ancient creatures by western scientists, they warn them to be careful of foreigners (such as the expedition group they both belonged to). In exchange for protecting them, the two children ask for gifts: Nadia the "crystal eggs" and Alex the water of life to save his mother. They both manage to get them, but only by giving up that which was really important to them. Nadia gives up the protective necklace given to her by Walimai, and Alex gives up the flute given to him. Upon returning to the village, they discover that it has been taken over by the Expedition, Carias, and Ariosto. After Nadia convinces the Indians to receive vaccinations, the children realize that the vaccines are actually deadly doses of the measles virus, part of Carias's plan to destroy the Amazonian Indians. Karakawe, an expedition member, is revealed to be an officer of the Department for the Protection of Indigenous Peoples; he is shot by Ariosto. The Indians flee into the woods as a full-fledged gunfight breaks out. Luckily, it ends quickly. Ariosto and his soldiers take captive all of the members of the expedition, while Carias (who was given a serious head wound during the fighting) is airlifted to a hospital. The two children manage to escape; the rest of the men are knocked unconscious by the smell of one of the Beasts. Ariosto is knocked out by the stench and then killed by the Beast. After the People of the Mist reach an agreement with the remaining members of the expedition (they will protect that area with all the power, influence, and money they can muster), they leave. In the end, Eagle and Jaguar must part. She gives Alex the three "crystal eggs", which turn out to be giant diamonds. With the money gained from their sale, it was hoped that they would be able to fund a foundation to keep the World's Eye safe. Alex tells her that the best thing about the trip was meeting her, and they agree that they will be best friends forever.
4576376	/m/0c9pcq	Abduction	Peg Kehret	2004-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Matt, a six year old boy, is kidnapped by his father, Denny, who he had never met. Though he has always dreamed of meeting him, nothing is the way he thought it would be given his father is only using Matt to impress his brother who often brags about his two well-raised sons. With little clues to follow, Matt's mother and sister, and the police, are doing everything they can to find him. Matt's sister, Bonnie, sees Matt at a Mariner's baseball game, but is caught by Denny. Now both captive, the siblings attempt to escape. On the ferry, Bonnie signals to Matt to throw his hardest pitch. The baseball hits Denny, which allows the two to escape. Denny is then apprehended.
4576928	/m/0c9q8w	Parasite Eve	Hideaki Sena	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Mitochondria are the "energy factories" of biological cells. It is thought that they were originally separate organisms, and a symbiotic relationship between them and early cellular life has evolved into their present position as cell organelles with no independent existence (see endosymbiotic theory). The novel's plot supposes that mitochondria, which are inherited through the female line of descent, form the dispersed body of an intelligent conscious life-form, dubbed Eve, which has been waiting throughout history and evolution for the right conditions when mitochondrial life can achieve its true potential and take over from eukaryotic life-forms (i.e. humans and similar life) by causing a child to be born that can control its own genetic code. Eve is able to control people's minds and bodies by signaling to the mitochondria in their bodies. She can cause certain thoughts to occur to them and also make them undergo spontaneous combustion. The conditions Eve has waited for have arrived; she has found the perfect host in the body of Kiyomi Nagishima. At the start of the book, Eve is the mitochondria in Kiyomi's body. She causes Kiyomi to crash her car; Kiyomi survives but is brain dead. Kiyomi's husband is Toshiaki, a research assistant teaching and researching biological science. Eve influences Toshiaki and a doctor to ensure that one of Kiyomi's kidneys is transplanted into the teenage girl Mariko Anzai as an organ donation. As part of Kiyomi's body, the kidney is also a part of Eve; this prepares Mariko to be a suitable host for giving birth to mitochondrial life, as her immune system would otherwise rebel. Eve influences Toshiaki to grow some of Kiyomi's liver cells in his lab in sufficient quantities to provide Eve with an independent body, he thinks that he is doing this as an experiment using different cultures of the liver cells. Forming some of the cells into a body, Eve possesses Toshiaki's assistant Sachiko Asakura and intermittently takes control of Asakura to work upon the cultures. Eventually, she takes control of Asakura during a conference presentation speech and announces her presence. Leaving Asakura's body, she returns to the lab. Toshiaki pursues her, and she rapes him in the form of Kiyomi to capture some of his sperm, which she uses to fertilize an egg of her own production. Moving to the hospital, she implants this egg in Mariko's womb. The egg develops into a child that is born almost immediately. Eve anticipates that her child will be able to consciously change its genetic code, thus being an infinitely adaptable "perfect life form" capable of replacing humanity and similar life-forms. Mariko's body will be host to a new race of these life-forms. The experiment fails, since Toshiaki's sperm carry a separate line of "male" mitochondria (inherited through sperm) that will be wiped out in the new order; these resist the change by fighting for control of the child's body, causing it to switch between male and female forms. The child dies; Toshiaki also dies, merging his body with the child's to control the bursts of psychokinetic-like power it gives out in its death throes that threaten to kill many people. In the novel's epilogue, it is revealed that some samples of the Eve cells in Toshiaki's lab survived. Fortunately, they are destroyed shortly after being found.
4577165	/m/0c9qp3	Excalibur	Sanders Anne Laubenthal	1973	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is set in modern times against the background of the legendary Medieval Welsh colonization of Mobile, Alabama under the prince Madoc in the 12th century. The modern Pendragon, King Arthur's secret successor, must recover Arthur's famed sword Excalibur.
4578096	/m/0c9r_n	Festival of Death			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 'The Beautiful Death' is a theme park ride that allows people to experience the afterlife. At least, that is the intention. Riders are now turning into brain-damaged shells of their former selves. The Doctor arrives at the end of this disaster and is praised for saving everyone, something he did not actually do yet. With the help of all-new characters, he investigates through time and discovers he did save all in danger. All it took was the sacrifice of his own life.
4578837	/m/0c9tbc	A Son Called Gabriel	Damian McNicholl	2004-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As he grows up, Gabriel starts to suspect that he is not like other boys, and engages in a series of sexually oriented games with Noel, a young male friend. He is later caught in the act by his childhood friend Fergal. During adolescence, Gabriel is convinced by his cousin Connor to sexually experiment with him, learns he is attracted to his own sex, and tries to fight it by trying to make himself attracted to girls. At sixteen, he is also abused at school by a priest Father Cornelius. The story ends with Brendan's revelation and Gabriel about to leave Ireland to go to University in England, and the reader has to draw his or her own conclusions about whether Gabriel will continue his relationship with Fiona – with whom he is in love but can't have a sexual relationship – or reconcile with his homosexual leanings.
4579160	/m/0c9t_v	The World of Normal Boys	K.M. Soehnlein	2001-08-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is written in the present tense. It's 1978, New Jersey: Saturday Night Fever and Grease are big. 13-year-old Robin MacKenzie is caught in a triangular relationship with next-door neighbor Todd Spicer and classmate Scott Schatz. Robin develops a fascination for 17-year-old neighbor Todd who, despite often teasing him, initiates a sexual relationship with the younger boy, whom Todd invites to a party after which they go swimming on a golf course. Robin further forms a close bond with fellow freshman Scott Schatz, whose father is physically abusive. Robin learns that, two years earlier, Todd and Scott were involved in a sexual relationship. Robin is troubled by this, but his relationship with Scott is ultimately unaffected. During the novel, Robin's younger brother Jackson dies some time after falling from a slide and breaking his neck, an incident Robin blames himself for although it isn't anyone's fault. As a result Robin's family begins to break down: his father becomes violent towards Robin, and Robin's longstanding bond with his mother begins to be affected. His younger sister Ruby becomes religious and also closer to Robin.
4579291	/m/0c9v8y	Ekaterina	Donald Harington		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ekaterina is an exiled Svanetian princess who arrives in America. There, she gets a job teaching an introductory mycology class at a university. Meanwhile, she rents a room from a woman, Loretta, who lives there with her twelve year old son, Kenny, who immediately takes a precocious liking to her. She befriends the 12-year-old boy called Kenny who reminds her of two young pubertal boys she had relationships with in Russia, Islamber and Dzhordzha. Harington describes the attractive boy as a faunlet, a male counterpart to Vladimir Nabokov's nymphet in Lolita. After two months, the 27-year-old Ekaterina seduces Kenny and they have sex. During the course of their sexual relationship, Kenny, already a juvenile delinquent, steals contraceptives to avoid pregnancy. When Kenny confesses his sexual relationship with Ekaterina after being caught stealing car parts, his mother forces Ekaterina to leave. She settles in town called Stick Around where she befriends a woman named Sharon, who indirectly introduces her to a boy named Jason. Later, she engages Jason on his twelfth birthday by giving him an all-over massage in the bath while baby-sitting him. With the help of a novelist and improbable creative writing teacher named Ingraham, Ekaterina matures as a writer, eventually publishing not only a successful autobiography, Louder, Engram! (invoking Nabokov's revised autobiography, Speak, Memory), but also several works of fiction, one of which, a novel called Georgie Boy, becomes a bestseller, allowing her to move from "Stick Around," this novel's disguise for Stay More, the primal setting for all of Harington's novels except his first, The Cherry Pit, to a hotel in Arcaty, the novel's counterpart to the real Arkansas Ozarks town of Eureka Springs. In Arcaty, she meets young Travis Coe, another twelve-year-old boy, who moves into her luxurious penthouse apartment as her houseboy. After getting the lice out of his hair, Ekaterina invites Travis into her bed – just twelve days after they meet. Travis turns out to be a considerably more complex presence than his new employer has anticipated, and the relationship does not last. Ekaterina discovers that Travis was not a virgin and kicks him out, becoming obsessed with how he lost his virginity. Travis does go on to star in Hollywood's screen adaptation of Georgie Boy. Ekaterina also benefits by turning her investigation of the girl to whom Travis lost his virginity into a series of short stories that propel her fame further by being published in Playboy magazine. Ekaterina's relationships with pubescent boys constitute only one facet of this character's ingeniously layered life-story. Donald Harington’s writing is sometimes described as magic realism, but that term hardly begins to suggest the narrative pyrotechnics of Ekaterina, which the author has aptly described as not so much a tribute to Nabokov's Lolita as an apotheosis of it.
4579435	/m/0c9vfw	Dream Children	A. N. Wilson	1998-08	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Paedophilia is at the heart of the story. Oliver Gold's pure thoughts, and seemingly asexual life contrast with the reality of his desires and deeds. Oliver abuses Bobs over a long period.
4579565	/m/0c9vr0	Anachrophobia				 Whilst travelling in time, the TARDIS suddenly shakes violently. The Eighth Doctor shuts it down, concluding that it is tearing itself apart attempting to escape a force that is forcing to land. As the Doctor, Anji and Fitz emerge onto a wasteland, they are captured by soldiers. They learn that they have landed on a planet that is host to a war between two factions of humans: the Plutocratic empire and rebels known as Defaulters. Both sides have weapons that can slow the flow of time, or speed it up in small areas, but because of this, both sides have reached a stalemate. The soldiers take the Doctor to an officer called Lane. She assumes that the Doctor is the time expert the Plutocrats were sending, and the Doctor decides to agree. Lane takes them to a military outpost called Station 40. When they arrive, one of the soldiers, a man called Bishop, who had his arm aged by a time storm, is placed in a decelerated time capsule until his fate is decided. The commander of the base, Commander Bragg, reveals that one of his scientists, Dr Patterson, has developed a time capsule, which they plan to use to stop the war from ever happening. Two men, Ash and Norton, get inside the machine and go back in time, but the machine spins out of control. The Doctor brings the machine back to the present, and Ash and Norton are placed in quarantine and develop disorientation, anachrophobia, memory loss and physical trauma. The Doctor finds a breach in the machine's walls, meaning that the machine's interior was exposed to the time vortex. Meanwhile Norton's condition is getting worse: time is moving more slowly around him and he cannot recognise his own face as his past is slowly being erased. The Doctor decides to travel in the time capsule and Fitz demands to go with him, but Bragg learns that the Doctor is not the time expert and stops Anji from carrying on with controlling the capsule. Meanwhile, inside the capsule, time slows down and something begins banging on the door. Lane goes to check Ash and Norton, but they attack her and in her rush to leave she tears her time proof suit. Time then jumps back one minute, and lane contacts Bragg, giving Anji the chance to overpower him and return The Doctor and Fitz to the present. However another staff member, Shaw, overpowers Anji and locks the Doctor and his companions away. Time begins to flow more slowly over Lane and time jumps back a minute, confirming that Ash and Norton infected lane, who has now infected Bragg. A man call Mistletoe arrives at the station, claiming to be an auditor sent to review the experiments. Shaw releases the Doctor, Fitz and Anji and brings them to the lab as Mistletoe moves Bishop to the quarantine ward. Bishop becomes infected and Ash, Norton and Bishop face's all turn into clock faces. The Doctor uses gas to knock out the infected and after examining them, reveals that they are turning into clocks. Elsewhere, Patterson sees Bragg's face turn into a clock, but when he reaches the Doctor to warn him, his face turns into a clock, and he finds that he can travel throughout his own lifetime. The Doctor warns him not to, as he fears that the infected are offered the chance to change their personal timelines, but if they do, they have their history erased and become empty vessels for the clock creatures to take over. After hearing this, Patterson commits suicide. Fitz and Shaw go looking for the others, but as they do, a Defaulter bombing causes safety doors to lower. Shaw takes Fitz down to the lower levels, leaving The Doctor and Anji trapped with Bragg. The Doctor opens the door and seals it again, but Bragg rewinds time to get through. The Doctor and Anji seal themselves in the control room with Mistletoe, but it is too late for the clock creatures to rewind time. Fitz and Shaw are attacked by Lane, but due to her time reversal abilities, he cannot shoot her. Lane releases Ash, Bishop and Norton from the quarantine ward as Doctor, Anji and Mistletoe flee to the medical bay. the Doctor exams battle reports and finds them full of strange tactics. Mistletoe then admits that the war is being prolonged to increase profit for the empire. The Doctor then decides to use mustard gas on the creatures as it takes an hour to take effect and the clocks will not be able to rewind time far enough to save themselves. Fitz and Shaw retrieve Mustard gas from the stores and release it. Anji cannot find the Doctor, until Fitz brings him back into the medical bay, having found him outside with no gas mask on. The infected people slowly die, but Mistletoe remembers that Bishop was taken to Station One, the main headquarters of the Plutocrats, to study his infection. The station has a population of 60,000, all of whom will be infected. The survivors sent out in a van in pursuit of Dr. Hammond, only to find his van ambushed by Defaulters, but the whole area has been frozen in time due to Bishop's capsule being smashed. Dr. Hammond reveals himself to be a robot while Shaw reveals that he is a Defaulter agent. As Shaw prepares to shoot everyone, an accelerated time bomb brings time back to normal, and a Defaulter soldier shoots Shaw and injures Bishop. Hammond's power supply explodes, which kills the Defaulter. Bishop uses his powers to rewind time, kill the defaulter and flee from Hammond. however, his face turns into a clock. Plutocratic soldiers mistakenly rescue Bishop, but as the Doctor pursues them, they go through a small patch of decelerated time with broken shielding and arrive at station One months later. They find that all of station One has been converted, but they are allowed to pass through unharmed. At the central audit bureau, they meet the Actuaries, robot accountants who have been running both sides of the war for profit. However, they cannot remember why they are making money or who for, as they have not received any contact from the Empire for one hundred years. They funded the time travel experiments to try to find their purpose. However Bishop enters and infects the Doctor. As the clocks try to tempt him, he remembers that as the clocks exist outside of normal time, they depend on the hole in time that the capsule tore. The Doctor travels along his own timeline to the point where he sealed the airlock before the mustard gas was released. He runs to the lab and fills the time capsule with chrononium, the material used to make the time weapons, then he sets up a clockwork timer. After exposing himself to the gas, he returns to the present, without having changed history. The capsule then launches, sealing the hole. the clocks are killed, and the Doctor passes out. Mistletoe reveals himself as Sabbath (he is not named in the text, but it is clearly him from the description) to Fitz and Anji. Sabbath explains that the clocks were not invading the universe but fleeing Sabbath's allies in the time vortex, and that both the clocks and the Doctor were manipulated into coming here, in the hope that the Doctor would destroy them. Sabbath then leaves, and Fitz and Anji carry the Doctor to the TARDIS.
4579836	/m/0c9wf4	Lord Dismiss Us	Michael Campbell	1967	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lord Dismiss Us is set in an English boys' public school in the 1960s. The novel deals with the love affair between two boys, together with the internal politics of the school itself. Carleton, a sixth former loves Allen, a boy two years his junior. At the same time the headmaster is trying to enforce a policy against such liaisons. At the time of writing it was a contemporaneous work. As such it now depicts a school at a period in history. It was published in the same year that homosexuality between consenting adults was legalised in the UK. The author, Michael Mussen Campbell, b. 1924, was the grandson of the 1st Lord Glenavy and brother of the 3rd Baron, the humorist Patrick Campbell. He was a Dubliner who attended St Columba's school and Trinity College. Lord Dismiss Us was apparently based on the suicide of a St. Columba’s schoolmaster. Briefly a barrister at the Irish bar, Campbell worked in London for the Irish Times. His other novels included Peter Perry (1956), a ‘story of Dublin Theatrical Life’, and Oh Mary, This London (1959), a fantasy set in London, and Across the Water (1959). Michael Campbell succeeded his brother Patrick in 1980 to become the 4th and last Lord Glenavy. He never married, dying in 1984.
4582289	/m/0cb036	The Empire of Glass	Andy Lane		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor, Steven, and Vicki travel to what seems to be Venice in 1609, where they meet a host of historical characters including Galileo Galilei and William Shakespeare. However, with the arrival of Braxiatel and Vicki's kidnapping, the Doctor soon finds himself embroiled in an alien invasion attempt.
4582395	/m/0cb0bw	Jhereg	Steven Brust	1983	{"/m/057pyk": "Fantasy of manners", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel opens with a brief history of Vlad Taltos and a description of how he acquired his jhereg familiar, Loiosh. Despite being an Easterner in the Dragaeran city of Adrilankha, Vlad is a minor boss in the criminal activities of the Jhereg Organization. One day he is approached by an extremely powerful member of the Organization's ruling Council and offered an assassination job with a staggeringly large reward. The contract is to kill another Jhereg crime lord, Mellar, who has absconded with a fortune from the Jhereg treasury. Vlad accepts. Mellar has become the houseguest of the Dragonlord Morrolan e'Drien in his floating fortress, Castle Black. Vlad is a personal friend of Morrolan and has a standing invitation to Castle Black, which would make the assassination quite easy. However Morrolan holds fast to the Dragonlord traditions of hospitality, and will permit no harm to come to his guests for any reason. The last time a Jhereg assassinated a Dragonlord's houseguest, it resulted in a war between the two Houses that decimated both. Morrolan has invited Mellar to stay for seventeen days, but the Jhereg need the hit performed before that time. Vlad is forced to find a compromise between the interests of his House and his friend. Vlad's other friends, Aliera e'Kieron and Sethra Lavode, are more lax on the rules of hospitality and offer their help. Aliera wants to kill Mellar herself, as it is obvious to everyone, even Morrolan himself, that Mellar manipulated Morrolan and used the Dragonlord's honor as a shield against the Jhereg. This is a grave insult to the House of the Dragon. Sethra, the oldest and wisest of the group, agrees with Aliera's position, but feels that they must still respect Morrolan's wishes and find a way that will not violate his honor. While Vlad looks for a solution, the Jhereg come up with their own plan. The Demon first interviews Vlad to see if he would go along with it, and when it is clear to him that Vlad would not, he tries to have Vlad assassinated. Vlad manages to escape and guesses the Demon's intentions, but he is too late. He arrives at Castle Black to find Morrolan already assassinated. With Morrolan dead, Mellar would no longer be under his protection, and thus his death would not start a second Dragon-Jhereg war. Vlad foils this solution by breaking the enchantment preventing Morrolan's resurrection and has his friend brought back to life. The Jhereg, however, are undeterred. They would rather risk another Dragon-Jhereg War than allow Mellar's humiliating theft to become publicly known. An assassin descends on Mellar, but Vlad and his friends thwart him as well. On reflection, Vlad realizes that Mellar's bodyguards, who are always hovering nearby, were mysteriously absent during the attempt on his life. Vlad manages to deduce, with the help of some other information gathered by his second-in-command, Kragar, that it is Mellar's intention to be assassinated. Mellar is a half-breed—a mix of Dragon, Jhereg and Dzur—and intends, through his death, to get his revenge on all his parent Houses by causing two to erupt into war and leaking information that would forever shame the third. Having solved the mystery of Mellar's crime, Vlad finally realizes how to solve his own dilemma. With the help of nearly all of his friends, Vlad tricks Mellar into thinking he has killed Aliera, which would nullify his guest-rights with Morrolan. Mellar, believing his plan is ruined, flees Castle Black to avoid a purposeless death at the hands of the Jhereg. This actually takes him out of Morrolan's protection. Vlad follows him and engages the master swordsman in a duel. While near defeat, Vlad uses witchcraft to contact a nearby wild jhereg. With this second jhereg's help, Vlad kills Mellar, earning a vast bounty and saving two Houses in the same stroke. Rocza, the name given by Vlad to his second familiar, mates Loiosh.
4583530	/m/0cb2nr	I, Q	John de Lancie	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel opens with a mysterious Lady, who, having grown bored with contemplating the Universe, has decided to bring it to an end. She walks to the beach of the island where she lives alone, and summons a storm. As the storm builds up, a bottle washes up to the shore. The Lady picks up the bottle, takes out a manuscript it contains, and begins to read as the storm stands by and waits for her. Q is deep-sea fishing (literally standing at the bottom of an ocean) with his wife Q and son q, when the ocean begins draining into a giant whirlpool. Q powerlessly watches as his wife and son are taken in, and is only barely able to escape. He arrives in the Holodeck of the Enterprise, where Picard and Data's fishing simulation had been disturbed by the same disaster. In order to investigate what happened, Q takes Picard and Data to the Q Continuum, which they perceive as the fictional world of Dixon Hill. There, they learn that the Universe is ending, and that not only is the Q Continuum powerless to stop it, the Continuum actually welcomes the opportunity. Having explored all there is to explore and experienced all there is to experience, the Continuum is old and bored, and the end of the Universe is seen as a welcomed liberation. Q is unwilling to accept this decision, so the Continuum freeze him as a statue. But with the help of Q2, Q escapes this punishment and the Continuum. Q, Data and Picard return to the site of the whirlpool, to find it has calmed down and turned into a long shaft leading underground, which they proceed to explore. The world down the shaft is actually five superposed worlds, each of which is a level of the Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief, populated by members of the multiverse with the appropriate reaction to the end of the universe. Q, Picard and Data go through each level, trying to reach the bottom. While exploring, Q contemplates his existence and that of the Q Continuum, the most powerful beings in existence, since he is convinced God does not exist. He reminisces on a young girl (Melony) he met in Times Square during the 2000 New Year party, in a parallel universe where he was posing as a human. She was insightful and intelligent, and when they kissed, Q thought she could almost feel his true power. In that universe, the celebration in Times Square was the target of a terrorist attack. Q, enraged by this senseless act, immediately puts out the fires and explosions, but not before Melony is killed. He later finds her body amongst the dead. The first level is Denial. This level is populated with beings who try to ignore the fact the universe is ending, focusing instead on their more normal daily problems. Everyone is herded onto a train headed for oblivion, but no one believes it. Q, Picard, and Data battle Locutus in a race to uncouple the train before it incinerates every non-believing being on it. The second level is Anger. Here, Q briefly encounters a parallel-universe version of Jadzia Dax who, following the events of Blood Oath, chose not to return to Deep Space Nine but instead to continue fighting with Kang, Kor and Koloth. Together, the four of them are hunting the Romulans also present on this level, believing the whole thing to be some kind of Romulan ploy. However, Q realizes that the real culprit is his rival from the enemy M Continuum, who tries to blame him for the end of the universe. M stages a trial against Q in front of an infuriated jury, but Data wins the case by acting more angered than M and turning the jury against her. The third level is Bargaining. This level is dominated, appropriately enough, by Grand Nagus Zek, who offers to trade whatever the other residents of the level own for empty promises of an afterlife. Q is finally reunited with his son q. However, q is now an adult, who has lived a long and depressed life believing his father had abandoned him to the whirlpool. After much trouble, Q manages to convince q that he never stopped trying to find him. Relieved, q reverts back to his normal age. The fourth level is Despair. On this level, Q finds his wife; however, she is so depressed that even seeing him is not enough for her to find something to live for, and she like the others on the level sinks into the mire. After she dies, engulfed in despair, Q and the rest of the party enter a small house, which is the fifth and final level, Acceptance. The house consists of a large room with an unopenable door at the far end. When all the members of the party sit down and give up on trying to save the universe, the back wall of the room begins to close in on them. They struggle to push it back, but finally as Q accepts his fate the door flies open and he and q tumble through; Picard and Data are crushed. Q finds himself and his son back in the Q Continuum, which is now seen as a New Year's Eve party, complete with a countdown to the end of the universe. It is the same as it was when he and Picard first arrived at the beginning of the quest. Q supposes that the whole quest was created to make him accept the inevitable. Q2 neither denies nor confirms this, instead offering that the Q Continuum is very much in the dark about all this and that, possibly, they had nothing to do with his adventure. When the countdown reaches zero, the whirlpool starts anew, and the Q Continuum is pulled into it without a fight. q tries to hold on to his dad, but he's pulled in too. Q however resists the pull, refusing to accept that it is the end. He creates a written record of his journey and puts it in a bottle, which he throws into the whirlpool. The story cuts back to the beach, where the Lady finishes reading Q's manuscript. She laughs out loud, and decides to call off the storm. She then finds q, wakes him, and gives him a mud boat to return home. But before he leaves, she writes something on a piece of paper, puts it in Q's bottle and hands it to q, to give to his father. Back in the holodeck, Picard, Data, Q and his wife awaken in the simulated fishing boat. They spot q's mud boat, and Picard orders the computer to "end program". Everything disappears, except for the five individuals and q's boat. q tells his father of the island and the Lady, whom Q recognizes as the girl he met in Times Square. q then gives Q the bottle containing the Lady's message, but Q is too scared to open it. He hands it to Picard, who opens it and reads the message: "Let there be light".
4584023	/m/0cb3rd	Icon	Frederick Forsyth	1996	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story, set between July 1999 and January 2000, revolves around Russian presidential candidate Igor Komarov, head of the right-wing Union of Patriotic Forces (UPF). A highly popular and charismatic politician, victory is all but guaranteed for Komarov and the UPF in the national elections on January 16, 2000. However, a secret document, later known as the "Black Manifesto", is stolen from his secretary's empty office at UPF headquarters by Leonid Zaitsev, an elderly janitor and ex-soldier who happens to skim through the document while cleaning. The document contains extremely sensitive information regarding Komarov's future policies as president, such as the restoration of slave camps, creation of a one-party state, destruction of political opponents, invasion of the former Soviet republics, and genocide of Russia's ethnic and religious minorities. Komarov's team capture and kill Zaitsev, but not before he gives the document to the British, who later translates and shows it to influential Western leaders. Sir Nigel Irvine, former head of the SIS, comes up with a plan to thwart Komarov's victory. Searching for a suitable man to carry out this plan, former CIA Deputy Director of Operations Carey Jordan recommends Jason Monk, a former recruiter and runner of Soviet agents for the CIA. In parts of the novel, there are flashbacks to earlier years, detailing Monk's background, and recruitment of several Soviets as U.S. agents. These include government figures and a physicist. However, CIA mole Aldrich Ames soon betrays these agents, along with all other CIA agents in the Soviet Union. Nearly all are rounded up by the Soviets, and are either executed or sentenced to hard labour after lengthy interrogation and torture by the ruthless Anatoli Grishin. Colonel Nikolai Ilyich Turkin, the first Soviet to be recruited by Monk, develops a close friendship with him after Monk saves his son from dying of a tropical disease. He is, however, the last CIA agent caught by the Soviets, with Grishin supervising the capture in Berlin as Monk watches close by after their last meeting. Turkin is interrogated and sent to a labour camp. There, dying of typhoid, he pens a letter to Monk detailing his interrogation and torture at the camps, and bids a final farewell. Monk, filled with anger and grief, attacks a bureaucrat known to have aided Ames, and this leads to his expulsion from the CIA. In 1999, he leads a quiet life in the Turks and Caicos Islands, taking tourists on fishing trips. Irvine visits him and talks about the plan against Komarov; Monk refuses, having sworn never to return to Russia, but agrees when he is given the chance to take revenge on Grishin, who is working as Komarov's security chief. He returns to Russia and rounds up a ring of influential figures to his cause by showing them the "Black Manifesto", and, with the aid of the Chechen mafia, whose leader owes Monk his life, he begins a series of schemes aimed at derailing Igor Komarov's presidential campaign.
4584283	/m/0cb41s	Yendi	Steven Brust	1984-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Six months after he took control of his own territory in the criminal Organization, Vlad engages in his first turf war with a rival boss. Each chapter's epigraph is a quote from its chapter. Vlad narrates this story from a point in his life before the events of Phoenix. He quickly summarizes the series of turf wars and assassinations that led him to rise in the ranks of the Organization from low-rung assassin to the boss of his own neighborhood. As the story begins, Vlad has held his territory for six uneventful months, but then he receives word that a neighboring boss, Laris, has started to move in on his territory. A turf war between Vlad and Laris erupts. Vlad receives indirect help from several of his powerful friends in the House of the Dragon, but remains one step behind the better-prepared and better-informed Laris. Vlad survives several attempts on his life, but eventually two of his bodyguards betray him and allow him to be attacked by two female assassins, a Dragaeran and an Easterner. Vlad's lieutenant had received timely warning of the attack and sent word to Vlad's friends, Morrolan and Aliera, who teleport to the scene. They kill the assassins but are unable to rescue Vlad, who is killed by the Easterner assassin. Aliera revivifies Vlad as well as the two assassins. Vlad meets the Easterner assassin, Cawti, and the two quickly fall in love. Aliera discovers that Cawti's partner, Norathar, is the former heir of House Dragon, having fallen into disgrace as a bastard some time ago. The current heir, Aliera, is looking for a way out of the position, and does a genetic test to determine the legitimacy of Norathar's claim. Vlad turns his attention back to his ongoing turf war, now with the help of Cawti. After yet another failed assassination attempt, Vlad begins to suspect that his war with Laris is only a ruse for some larger plot. After Norathar is confirmed as the legitimate heir, Vlad reasons out that the genetic test that incorrectly dubbed her a bastard was part of a plot to keep her from the throne. Further investigation suggests that Vlad's whole war with Laris has been orchestrated to get Norathar killed and to discredit Morrolan and Aliera. Vlad quickly reasons out that the Sorceress in Green, a prominent Yendi, has been working in consort with Sethra the Younger, an ambitious Dragonlord, to put a Dragon heir on the throne who will appoint Sethra as Warlord. Sethra wants to invade the Eastern Kingdoms and needs to install a sympathetic Emperor to achieve her ambitions. Sethra's namesake, Sethra Lavode, learns of her former apprentice's plans and teleports her away to deal with her personally. Morrolan, Aliera, Vlad, Cawti, and Norathar all pursue the Sorceress in Green, who leads them into a trap. Morrolan, Aliera, and Norathar fight through the Sorceress's thirty guards and magical defenses while Vlad and Cawti watch. Once most of the guards are slain, Vlad sneaks behind the Sorceress, destroys her magical wards with Spellbreaker, and threatens to kill her with a Morganti dagger if she does not give him Laris's location. She complies without hesitation. Vlad backs away and allows the battle to reach its conclusion, with Norathar killing the Sorceress. Vlad summons his enforcers and storms Laris's office, killing him without difficulty. Later, he learns that Aliera revived the Sorceress, believing that her humiliation was sufficient punishment (and also, they have used a mind probe on her and wrote down all the schemes in which she is involved). Sethra Lavode tells him how she teleported Sethra the Younger to an alternate dimension to do penance. Vlad and Cawti get engaged to be married and visit Vlad's grandfather.
4584405	/m/0cb4b0	This Earth of Mankind	Pramoedya Ananta Toer	1980	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This Earth of Mankind tells the story of Minke, a Javanese minor royal who studies at a Hogere Burger School (HBS) in an era when only the descendants of the European colonizers can expect to attain this level of education. Minke is a talented young writer whose works are published in several Dutch-language journals and are widely admired. But as a "native", Minke is disliked by many of his fellow-students, who all claim some European descent. He is portrayed as being bold in opposing the injustices imposed upon his fellow Javanese as well as challenging aspects of his own culture. Minke is introduced to an extremely unusual Indonesian woman, Nyai Ontosoroh, who is the concubine of a Dutch man called Herman Mellema. Minke falls in love with their daughter, Annelies, whom he eventually marries in an Islamic wedding in accordance with "native" customs, but which, according to Dutch law, has no legal validity because it was conducted without the consent of the under-aged Annelies' legal, Dutch, guardians. In that period, it was common for women to become the concubines of Dutch men living in the East Indies. They were considered to have low morals because of their status as concubines, even if, as in Nyai Ontosoro's case, they had no choice in the matter. Their children had uncertain legal status - either considered illegitimate "natives" with a corresponding lack of legal rights, unless legally acknowledged by their father, in which case they were considered "Indos", and their mother lost all rights over them in favor of the father. As a concubine, Nyai Ontosoro suffers because of her low status and lack of rights, but, significantly, is aware of the injustice of her suffering and believes education is the route by which her basic humanity can be acknowledged. She believes that learning is the key to opposing indignity, stupidity, and poverty. However, the decision to have the children of their relationship legally acknowledged as Herman Mellema's children has catastrophic consequences by the end of the book. For Pramoedya, education is the key to changing one's fate. For instance, Nyai Ontosoro, who had no formal schooling and who was educated by her experiences, from books, and from her daily life, was a far more inspiring educator than Minke's high school teachers. However, This Earth of Mankind also powerfully portrays the reality of Dutch colonial government in Indonesia through the lives of the characters, where Minke's education and Nyai Ontosoro's success in business count for little when ranged against the unyielding Dutch colonial law.
4584493	/m/0cb4jy	The Roundheads	Mark Gatiss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Landing in December of 1648 after the end of Second English Civil War, the TARDIS crew gets involved with intrigue involving both the victorious Oliver Cromwell and the doomed Charles I.
4587263	/m/0cb9hc	Child of the Dark Prophecy	T. A. Barron	2004-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Avalon started its life as a magical seed that beat like a heart, planted by Merlin in Barron's previous series, The Lost Years of Merlin. Soon it grew into a huge tree, having members of every existing species living in its 7 root-realms. Élano, the sap of the Great Tree, is a liquid that has the power to create, with powers far greater than that of Merlin himself. For the first several centuries of Avalon's existence, the creatures lived in harmony, guided by the religion of Avalon, the Society of the Whole, its followers known as Drumadians, named after a wood in The Lost Years of Merlin. The Society was started by Elen and Rhiannon, mother and sister to Merlin respectively, also characters from The Lost Years of Merlin. The Society promotes harmony between all races, and the upkeep of the Great Tree, which sustains them all. However, sometime after Elen died, Rhiannon, called Rhia, resigned as High Priestess and left, never to be seen again. Peace is shattered by the War of Storms, a war that included almost all of the races in Avalon and lasted for several centuries. The beginning of the war was heralded by the darkening of the stars in the constellation the Wizard's Staff. The war was only resolved by the Treaty of the Swaying Sea, crafted by the mysterious Lady of the Lake and by Merlin. After the war ended, Merlin said that he would probably not return to Avalon, and that Avalon's problems must be solved by Avalonians. As a parting gift he, with the help of his friend Basilgarrad the dragon, flew up to the stars and rekindled the darkened constellation. All was well until the Lady of the Lake again appeared, this time to make a prophecy about a year wherein all of Avalon's stars would go dark, and a child would be born who is destined to destroy Avalon. However, there was hope: the true heir of Merlin could save them all, if he was found. During the foretold Dark Year, the majority of creatures in Avalon forbade childbirth, killing all children born in spite of the moratorium. Despite this, rumors persist of a child being born in the Flamelon stronghold in the root-realm Rahnawyn. 17 years after the Dark Year, things are going badly. A drought appears in realms Olanabram, Brynchilla, and El Urien; humans become anthropocentric and arrogant; and the stars in the Wizard's Staff are again darkening, one by one. Characters Tamwyn, Elli, Nuic, Henni, Llynia, and later Batty Lad, must journey to the Lady of the Lake to find out what is happening, and how they can stop it. Eventually, it is revealed that a sorcerer, Kulwych of the White Hands, has dammed the river that sustains the three realms named above with the sole purpose of collecting enough of the élano-bearing water thereof to produce a pure crystal of the substance. For this, he needs Merlin's staff, Ohnyalei, which has been for seventeen years in the keeping of Tamwyn's foster-brother, the eagleman Scree. Tamwyn is himself revealed to be Merlin's grandson; to be the Child of the Dark Prophecy; and to be the Heir. With the aid of his friends Elli, Nuic, Henni, Batty Lad, Shim, and Brionna, as well as of Scree and the staff Ohnyalei, Tamwyn destroys the dam and drives Kulwych into hiding. It is later revealed that Kulwych is a servant of Rhita Gawr, an evil spirit warlord.
4589704	/m/0cbdwz	Terre Haute		1989	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jared McCaverty has a sexual encounter with a friend, Paul Herzog, but his father finds out and beats him. He buys a gay magazine, but his father finds it and cannot accept his son's sexual inclinations. He then has another homosexual episode with Randy Sparks, a school friend, but his father discovers them having sex in Jared's bedroom. Jared meets Julian Clay, the new curator of the local museum, and a sexually abusive relationship ensues. Jared faces rejection by Julian and threatens him. Julian Clay then commits suicide. It is likely that he did so because Jared threatened to expose him as a pedophile and a rapist, and Jared blames himself for Julian's death. In the closing pages, Jared meets Alexandre, a sympathetic twenty-year-old Frenchman, and the reader is led to believe that Jared will have found true love.
4589813	/m/02p8c5_	Eon	Greg Bear		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The asteroid itself is an elongated prolate spheroid which appears to be virtually identical to Juno, a large asteroid in the main belt. It has been hollowed out along its long axis, and subdivided into seven vast cylindrical chambers. It rotates to provide artificial gravity. The chambers are terraformed, the second and third containing abandoned cities which appear to be built by humans from Earth's future. The humans who built the Stone seem to come from approximately 1,200 years in the future. Their libraries record that human civilization was nearly destroyed by "The Death," a calamitous World War involving nuclear weapons, in 2005. Events recorded in the libraries prior to The Death (with the exception of the arrival of the Stone itself) are almost identical to events occurring on Earth in the explorers' present time. Rising tensions between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., now exacerbated by both rumors of the information in the libraries and the general situation on the Stone (the Soviets and their allies have only limited access to the asteroid), suggest that not only is such a war imminent, but the appearance of the Stone may actually make it worse than recorded. Since the Stone appears immediately prior to the recorded date of The Death, and there is no record of its own appearance at the time, the scientists reason that the Stone may come from an alternate future. Patricia Luisa Vasquez, a brilliant but naïve young theoretical physicist from Caltech, is hastily sent to the Stone to determine if The Death can be avoided on the current timeline, and to work out the mysteries of the corridor. A startling discovery is that the Stone is larger on the inside than outside: the seventh chamber extends beyond the end of the asteroid and appears to go on forever. When Patricia is mysteriously abducted by a strange looking human and an alien, an expedition is sent after her. They travel down the final chamber (called "the corridor" or "the Way"), where they encounter humanity's descendants. The society of human descendents, called the Hexamon, live in the Axis City, a large structure on the axis of the Way, one million kilometers from the Stone, which they call Thistledown. The Hexamon is presided over by a governing body known as the Nexus. It is loosely divided into two social groups, Naderites and Geshels, based on widely differing cultural and political viewpoints. The conservative Naderites reject much of the high technology trappings of their society for a simpler life. They are in fact, followers of Ralph Nader, whom they call "the Good Man". Nader, who was "martyred" during The Death, came to be canonized by the followers who took his name. This was largely because he opposed the technology (particularly nuclear energy) that led to the catastrophic war. The futuristic Geshels, on the other hand, embrace all manner of technological advances including human augmentation and artificial bodies. Many radical Geshels go so far as to choose non-human (or neomorphic) shapes for themselves, as opposed to moderate ones who choose a more human (or homorphic) appearance.
4595523	/m/0cbqhj	Planet of the Apes:The Fall				 As the crew of the space station Oberon search for their missing pilot Captain Leo Davidson, a time dilation storm pulls the station into its heart forcing the Oberon to crashland on an alien planet. With most of the crew dead, the marooned survivors embark on a controversial genetics program to reengineer the various apes that survived the crash, into a strong-subservient and intelligent labor force to help them create a new colony. However, beneath the surface of the world, there exists a new threat. Now the survivors must transform the primates into a genetically enhanced Army to help defend them, before their greatly reduced technological resources are depleted.
4595808	/m/0cbqzs	The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster	Bobby Henderson	2006-03-28	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02mdj1": "Religious text", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The Gospel presents the tenets of Pastafarianism—often satires of creationism—elaborating on the "beliefs" established in the open letter. Furthermore, Henderson discusses the original Pastafarian "belief" that the decline in the number of pirates, who are revered by Pastafarians, has directly led to a rise in global temperature. He provides further "evidence" of this relationship with the observation "that many people dress up as pirates for Halloween, and the months following October 31 are generally cooler than those that precede it." The claim that declining numbers of pirates have resulted in rising temperatures is meant to demonstrate that correlation does not imply causation. The book urges readers to try Pastafarianism for 30 days, saying, "If you don't like us, your old religion will most likely take you back." Henderson states on his website that more than 100,000 copies of the book have been sold. The Gospel begins with the creation of the universe by an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster. Between drunken nights and clumsy afternoons, the Flying Spaghetti Monster produced seas and land (for a second time, accidentally, because he forgot that he created it the day before) along with Heaven and a midget, which he named Man. Man and an equally short woman lived happily in the Olive Garden of Eden for some time until the Flying Spaghetti Monster caused a global flood in a cooking accident. This creation, "claimed" by Pastafarians to be only 5,000 years ago, would be considered laughable by many scientists. In addition to parodying certain biblical literalists, Henderson uses this unorthodox method to lampoon intelligent design proponents, who he believes first "define [their] conclusion and then gather evidence to support it". The book contains the Eight "I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts", adherence to which enables Pastafarians to ascend to heaven, which includes a stripper factory and beer volcano. According to The Gospel, Mosey the Pirate captain received ten stone tablets as advice from the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Of these original ten "I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts", two were dropped on the way down from Mount Salsa. This event "partly accounts for Pastafarians' flimsy moral standards." The "I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts" address a broad array of behavior, from sexual conduct to nutrition. One reviewer commented that this parody of the Ten Commandments "reads like a bitter shopping list of the same criticisms" given to organized religions. One commandment is "I'd really rather you didn't build multimillion-dollar synagogues / churches / temples / mosques / shrines to [His] Noodly Goodness when the money could be better spent ending poverty, curing diseases, living in peace, loving with passion and lowering the cost of cable."
4595898	/m/0cbr5d	The Acceptance World	Anthony Powell	1955	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the book, Nick meets Uncle Giles for tea at the Ufford Hotel and is introduced to the clairvoyant Mrs. Erdleigh who proceeds to tell their fortunes. Jenkins arranges to meet Members at the Ritz, but the appointment is kept by Quiggin who has replaced Members as secretary to novelist St John Clarke; Nick eventually dines with Peter & Mona Templer and Jean Duport and is invited for a weekend at the Templers' in Maidenhead. This house party sees the start of an affair with Jean. Quiggin is invited for Sunday, but has to leave due to concerns over his master. Mrs. Erdleigh is also there with Jimmy Stripling in tow, and presides over a seance. Later in spring 1933 Nick spends a day in encounters with Quiggin and Members including a demonstration led by St John Clarke, wheeled in his chair by Quiggin and Mona. There follow various further encounters with Jean and a visit to Foppa's restaurant. Summer 1933 sees Jenkins, Templer, Stringham and Widmerpool at the Le Bas dinner for Old Boys at the Ritz. Stringham arrives the worse for drink and Widmerpool makes an uninvited, boring and pompous speech, silenced only by Le Bas collapsing with a stroke. Widmerpool and Jenkins take the drunken Stringham home to bed. The book ends with intimations of an end to Nick's affair with Jean.
4595920	/m/0cbr6f	At Lady Molly's	Anthony Powell	1957	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is 1934 and Nick is working, without great success, as a script writer at a film company. He gets invited by a colleague, Chips Lovell, to a party at the home of Lady Molly Jeavons. There he learns that Widmerpool is to marry the twice widowed, somewhat notorious (somewhat insane according to Nick) Mrs. Mildred Haycock. Nick subsequently has to endure having to lunch with Widmerpool and fending-off questions from Widmerpool's prospective in-laws becomes, for Nick, a motif throughout the novel. Also re-encountered at Lady Molly's gathering is old Alfred Tolland. A chance meeting by Nick with Quiggin (at a cinema where Man of Aran is showing) leads to a surprising and rather mysterious invitation of a weekend visit to the country. Quiggin and Mona Templer are staying, it transpires, in a cottage loaned to them by Erridge (Lord Warminster, eccentric head of the Tolland family). While there they all visit the Tolland ancestral home, Thrubworth Park, for a frugal but eventful dinner. Just as the meal is finishing two Tolland sisters, Susan and Isobel, arrive. Some while later Nick meets Lady Molly's husband, Ted Jeavons, in a Soho pub and they visit Umfraville's nightclub. They encounter Widmerpool (suffering another bout with jaundice), Mrs Haycock and Templer. In Autumn 1934 Jenkins becomes engaged to Isobel. Erridge, wanting to study conditions for himself, goes to China at a time when the Japanese army are undertaking offensive operations. Mona goes with him, ditching Quiggin. Widmerpool's engagement to Mildred Haycock is broken off in farcical and, to most men, crushing circumstances. However, Widmerpool remains undaunted. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent
4596028	/m/0cbrf1	The Kindly Ones	Anthony Powell	1962	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This, the last volume before World War II, begins with a flashback to Jenkins' boyhood at the outbreak of the Great War. The day of the Sarajevo assassination sees General and Mrs Conyers lunching with Jenkins' parents, and Uncle Giles arriving unexpectedly for tea. Equally unexpectedly, the Jenkins' cook, Albert, gives notice. This causes the parlourmaid, Billson, who loves Albert but is loved by the soldier servant, Bracey, to appear naked in the drawing room. The occultist, Dr Trelawney, and his disciples are seen out for a run. In Autumn 1938 Jenkins is staying with the Morelands at their cottage near Stourwater. Templer collects the party for dinner with the tycoon Sir Magnus Donners at Stourwater. After dinner all are photographed by Donners performing tableaux of the Seven Deadly Sins, as portrayed in the castle's tapestries; this triggers a nervous attack on the part of Templer's second wife, Betty. At the end of the evening, Widmerpool appears in army uniform on urgent business. In Summer 1939 Nick has to clear up Uncle Giles's affairs after his death at a small seaside hotel, the Bellevue. This hotel is run by Albert (the Jenkins' former cook), and here Nick meets Bob Duport who, during an evening's drinking, tells Nick of Jean's series of lovers, a disclosure Nick still finds painful. In a scene suffused with black humor Dr Trelawney, now in the grip of drug addiction, anticipates his eventual expiration at the Bellevue. Late 1939 finds Jenkins attempting to gain a commission in the Army, eventually effected by Ted Jeavons' brother. Nick re-encounters Moreland, now homeless but taken in by Lady Molly after being deserted by Matilda for Donners. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent
4597024	/m/0cbswx	The Deathlord of Ixia	John Grant	1992	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 ==Receptio
4598682	/m/0cbw9g	Exile	Aaron Allston	2007-02-27	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jacen Solo increases in popularity with each victory over the Corellian rebels. He attempts to advance his goal of galactic peace in the midst of war. Most of his family opposes Jacen's new attempts, as they fear that the war is being exploited by a mysterious power for personal gain. Luke Skywalker experiences Force visions leading him to believe the entity in question is Lumiya, Dark Lady of the Sith, but Jacen himself shows ever-increasing signs of trouble. The Corellians set a trap for the Alliance, by sending out a false trail by claiming that they are hosting a secret election to choose a leader. The Alliance falls for it by planning an attack at the election and their fleet gets trapped in a mine field. Jacen Solo also gets trapped on the gas planet the fake election was being held and his family and Lumiya help him to escape. Luke and Lumiya shake hands without attacking each other. All of the main characters survive. Another conspiracy leads Luke's son Ben to Ziost, a Sith homeworld. It is filled with many dangers, the largest being the sheer amount of dark side power that would rattle even the strongest Jedi. His journey on Ziost leads Ben to find a Sith Meditation Sphere, which he uses to escape the planet.
4598712	/m/0cbwbh	Sacrifice	Karen Traviss	2007-05-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book starts where Exile left off, with Ben returning to Jacen aboard the Sith Meditation Sphere he found on Ziost. The novel follows Jacen as he manipulates politics, introducing a new law that allows him to rewrite other laws. Using this and Cal Omas' betrayal to the Galactic Alliance as leverage, he and Admiral Niathal stage a bloodless coup, arresting Omas and installing themselves as joint Chiefs of State. At the same time, Jacen sends Ben to assassinate Dur Gejjen, throwing the Corellian-led Confederation into chaos. Meanwhile, Boba Fett and Mirta Gev are still in search of a cure to Fett's illness after finding Kad Skirata, the son of a clone. In exchange for the promise of making the Mandalorians a united people, he cures Boba, giving him another thirty or so years to live. Ben overhears a conversation between Lumiya and Jacen and, horrified, confesses all to his mother, Mara Jade Skywalker. Mara, livid with Jacen for attempting to turn Ben to the dark side, sets out to kill him. This backfires, however, as Jacen kills Mara as his final sacrifice. This sacrifice kills Ben's love for Jacen, making the prophecy complete. Thinking that Lumiya killed Mara, Luke hunts her down and kills her. Ben then reveals that Mara's killer could not have been Lumiya, since Ben was with her at the time. At the end of the book, Jacen Solo assumes his Sith name: Darth Caedus.
4598986	/m/0cbwsn	Ilsa	Madeleine L'Engle	1946	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The title character, Ilsa Brandes, initially lives with her naturalist father, Dr. John Brandes, in a house on a beach, outside a fictional town in the American Deep South. 13-year-old Ilsa is a vibrant, outgoing, seemingly carefree person. She immediately captivates the book's narrator, Henry Randolph Porcher, who is ten years old as the book opens. Henry's mother hates Ilsa and Dr. Brandes, even to the point of refusing their help when her home is on fire. After the fire, Henry and his family go to stay with relatives in Charleston, where Henry gets his first hints about the family scandals that explain his mother's attitude. The circumstances of Ilsa's birth are the subject of controversy, both locally and in Charleston. After the death of her father, Ilsa goes to live with Henry's cousin, Anna Silverton. Henry's mother dies soon after this. Henry finally sees Ilsa again, and renews his friendship with her. Unfortunately for Henry, Ilsa later marries Monty Woolf, another cousin of Henry's. Despite his continuing love for Ilsa, Henry does little to further a romance with her, even after Monty's death. Nevertheless, he keeps returning to her side over the years. Ilsa and Henry experience numerous personal setbacks - including Ilsa's blindness and Henry's failure as a musician - and few if any triumphs.
4603131	/m/0cc2r9	Lady into Fox	David Garnett	1922	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sylvia Tebrick, the 24-year-old wife of Richard Tebrick, suddenly turns into a fox while they are out walking in the woods. Mr. Tebrick sends away all the servants in an attempt to keep Sylvia's new nature a secret, although Sylvia's childhood nurse returns. While Sylvia initially acts human, insisting on wearing clothing and playing piquet, her behaviour increasingly becomes that characteristic of a vixen. Eventually, Mr. Tebrick releases Sylvia into the wild, where she gives birth to five cubs, whom Tebrick names and plays with every day. Despite Tebrick's efforts to protect Sylvia and her cubs, she is ultimately killed by dogs during a hunt; Tebrick, who tried to save Sylvia from the dogs, is badly wounded, but eventually recovers. McSweeney's Collins Library imprint republished Lady into Fox in 2004.
4604724	/m/0cc615	The Wandering Fire	Guy Gavriel Kay	1986	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Six months have passed since the end of The Summer Tree, and Kim is waiting for the dream that will tell her how to summon the Warrior to aid them in their battle against Maugrim. Jennifer is pregnant with Rakoth Maugrim's child and, surprisingly, is determined to have the baby—aware that Maugrim wanted her dead, she is determined not only to live but to have the child, believing that it will be both an answer and a threat to him. She and Paul are menaced in their own world by Galadan; Paul, tapping the potent but unreliable power of Mörnir that lives in him since his three nights on the Summer Tree, takes the two of them back to Fionavar. They arrive safely but the crossing brings on Jennifer's labor. When the child is born she names him Darien and gives him to Vae and Shahar, the parents of Finn. Jaelle sends Paul and Jennifer back to their own world. In the spring, Kim and the others go to Stonehenge, where a dream has revealed to Kim she can call on Uther Pendragon to find out where Arthur is buried. She succeeds in raising Uther and extracting from him the name by which Arthur may be summoned. Using the Baelrath, she sends the others to Fionavar and herself to Glastonbury Tor, where she summons Arthur with the name Childslayer. Arthur is bound to answer to this name because of the May Babies, children he had ordered slain in an attempt to forestall Mordred's growing to manhood. Kim and Arthur rejoin the others in Fionavar. This time, Fionavar is in the midst of an unnatural months-long winter. Upon meeting Arthur, a flood of memories awakens in Jennifer and she recalls her life as Guinevere. Unable to break through the walls she created to survive her ordeal in Starkadh, Jennifer retreats to the temple of Dana, relieved that at least there is no Lancelot and so although she cannot love Arthur, at least she won't betray him. Meanwhile, Darien is growing up unnaturally quickly, like all andain, so Vae, Shahar and Finn move to Ysanne's cottage by the lake. Darien is a loving little boy and devoted to Finn—but he also hears voices in the storm and sometimes unknowingly flexes the power he inherited from his father, which makes his eyes turn red. On the Plains, the eltor are bogged down in the snow and harried by Galadan's wolves. The Dalrei do their best to protect the herds but come under attack by an army of urgach mounted on slaug. Diarmuid and his men, with Dave and Kevin, arrive in time to thwart the initial assault, but it is Tabor, mounted on Imraith-Nimphais, who finally saves them. Ivor worries that his son's bond with the deadly but beautiful magical beast will weaken Tabor's hold on the real world. Kim, Dave, Levon and a small band make their way to the Cave of the Sleepers and Dave blows Owein's Horn to wake the Wild Hunt. Owein and seven shadowy kings awaken, but there are nine horses. Just as the Hunt is about to rampage forth looking for their missing member, Finn arrives and takes his place on the ninth horse: this is his Longest Road, riding with the Wild Hunt. The entire company (except for Paul who remains with Darien) journeys to Gwen Ystrat, a location sacred to the goddess, arriving (by chance?) on Midsummer Eve, or Maidaladan, a night of potent sexual/erotic magic. Kim, Gereint, Jaelle and the mages discover that Metran, renegade first mage of Brennin, is making the winter on an island; since all the ports are frozen, they cannot get to him to stop him. Kevin is wounded during a boar hunt which he realizes marks him as belonging to the Goddess. That night, Midsummer Eve, Diarmuid and Sharra admit their love for each other; meanwhile, Kevin follows Cavall to the cave of Dun Maura where he sacrifices his life to the Goddess, allowing her to intercede and, with the magic unleashed from his sacrifice, end the winter that has been looming over Fionavar. Freed from winter, war begins. Kim and Brock journey to the mountains where they are attacked by brigands. The Dalrei are attacked by a vast army of the Dark, and only Dave's summoning of the Wild Hunt by blowing Owein's Horn turns the tide. However, the Hunt are as wild as their name, and when they finish slaughtering the armies of the Dark they turn on the Dalrei and the other armies of the Light. Ceinwen intervenes, and that night she takes Dave as her lover. Meanwhile Darien has used his powers to accelerate his growth and, now a young man, overhears Cernan ask Paul why "the child" was allowed to live. Angry, hurt by Finn's desertion, feeling unwanted and unloved, Darien decides to seek his father, Maugrim. Jennifer comes to terms with her past and has one day of joyous reunion with Arthur, both of them daring to hope that this time things will be different since there is "no third" (i.e. no Lancelot). Arthur, Loren, Matt, Paul and Diarmuid set sail for Cader Sedat, and Jennifer goes to Lisen's tower with Brendel to await their return. The ship, Prydwen, reaches Cader Sedat and the company discovers that Metran is fueling his unnatural winter by draining the life from hundreds of svart alfar, resurrecting them again and again using the Cauldron of Khath Meigol. Loren breaks the spell and kills Metran but in the process draws so much power that Matt dies. Below the castle, the company finds the Chamber of the Dead and Arthur, shouldering the full weight of his repeated penance, awakens Lancelot du Lac. Lancelot exercises his gift of healing and brings Matt back to life, though death has broken the binding between Matt and Loren and so Loren is no longer a mage. The company prepares to depart; Lancelot is reluctant to accompany them, knowing that his mere presence will cause yet more pain to Arthur and Guinevere, both of whom he loves so deeply. "Then Arthur spoke, and there was sorrow in his voice and there was love. 'Oh, Lance, come," he said. "She will be waiting for you.' " (WF, p.&nbsp;244). And so the company, including Lancelot, prepares to depart for home.
4607751	/m/0ccc6g	The Bridge on the River Kwai	Pierre Boulle	1952	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The story describes the mistreatment of prisoners in the POW camp and how they tried to sabotage the construction of the bridge. Lt. Colonel Nicholson marches his men into Prisoner of War Camp 16, commanded by Colonel Saito. Saito announces that the prisoners will be required to work on construction of a bridge over the River Kwai so that the railroad connection between Bangkok and Rangoon can be completed. However, Saito also demands that all men, including officers, will do manual labor. In response to this, Nicholson informs Saito that, under the Geneva Convention, officers cannot be required to do hard work. Saito reiterates his demand and Nicholson remains adamant in his refusal to submit his officers to manual labor. Because of Nicholson's unwillingness to back down, he and his officers are placed in the "ovens"&mdash;small, iron boxes sitting in the heat of day. Eventually, Nicholson's stubbornness forces Saito to relent. Construction of the bridge serves as a symbol of the preservation of professionalism and personal integrity to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Pitted against Colonel Saito, the warden of the Japanese POW camp, Nicholson will nevertheless, out of a distorted sense of duty, aid his enemy. While on the outside, as the Allies race to destroy the bridge, Nicholson must decide which to sacrifice: his patriotism or his pride. Boulle's view of the British officers was satirical. Colonel Nicholson is portrayed as the perfect example of the military snob, but Boulle also examines friendship between individual soldiers, both among captors and captives. The victorious Japanese soldiers cooperate with their prisoners, who strive to establish their superiority through the construction of the bridge.
4608116	/m/0ccctj	Doctor Zhivago	Boris Pasternak	1957	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Imperial Russia, 1903. The novel opens during a Russian Orthodox funeral liturgy, or panikhida, for Yuri's mother, Marya Nikolaevna Zhivago. Having long ago been abandoned by his father, Yuri is taken in by his maternal uncle, a former Orthodox priest and philosopher. Formerly a wealthy member of Moscow's merchant gentry, Yuri's father, Andrei Zhivago, has squandered the family's millions through debauchery and carousing, and has been progressively bled dry by the corrupt lawyer Viktor Komarovsky. Komarovsky's connections extend to senior figures in both the Tsarist State and its Marxist opponents. Following his wife's funeral, Andrei learns the true nature of Komarovsky and confronts him during a railway journey. Moments later, a devastated Andrei commits suicide by jumping from the train. Almost within sight of this, Yuri is staying at the estate of Duplyanka, where his uncle is working on a book advocating land reform. During the Russo-Japanese War, Amalia Karlovna Guichard, a Russified Frenchwoman and the widow of a Belgian engineer, arrives in Moscow from the Urals. At Komarovsky's insistence, she enrolls her son Rodion in the Cadet Corps and sends her daughter Lara to a girls' high school. For her own support, Amalia purchases a dressmaking shop in a working class section of Moscow. Despite his ongoing affair with Amalia, Komarovsky begins paying court to Lara behind her mother's back. Although terrified of the consequences, Lara succumbs to his advances and they begin a discreet affair. Despite her intense resentment of Komarovsky, Lara becomes very adept at using her sensuality to manipulate her besotted lover. Meanwhile, Komarovsky's feelings for Lara begin to reawaken his long dormant conscience. Feeling deeply ashamed of what he has done to her, Komarovsky tells Lara that he wishes to marry her. Indignant, Lara refuses to permit this. Suspecting the worst, Amalia attempts suicide by drinking poison. Zhivago, along with his fellow medical student Misha Gordon, visit with a doctor and successfully save Amalia's life. Obsessed with freeing herself from Komarovsky, Lara spends three years working as a governess for the children of Lavrenti Kologrivov, a wealthy silk manufacturer with Marxist sympathies. Then, Lara's brother Rodion Guishar begs her to ask Komarovsky to lend him 700 rubles, to replace that same amount which he has stolen and gambled away. Infuriated, Lara instead obtains the money from Kologrivov and severs ties to her brother. However, when the children graduate, Lara resents that the Kologrivovs allow her to stay on out of charity. Believing that Komarovsky has ruined her life, she attends a Christmas party and shoots at him with a revolver. However, Lara instead wounds a senior Tsarist prosecutor. Komarovsky secretly uses his political connections to shield her from prosecution. While treating the prosecutor's wounds, Yuri learns of the death of his foster mother, Anna Gromeiko. Soon after the funeral, Yuri becomes engaged to and marries his foster sister, Tonya Gromeiko. Meanwhile, Lara marries Pasha Antipov, a railway worker and Bolshevik sympathiser. To Komarovsky's grief, the Antipovs leave in order to teach at a school in the Urals. In 1914, the Russian Empire declares war on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although he loves Lara deeply, Pasha feels increasingly stifled by her love for him. In order to escape, he volunteers for the Imperial Russian Army. Ultimately, Lt. Antipov is declared missing in action, but is captured by the Austro-Hungarian Army. After escaping from a POW camp, Antipov joins the new Red Army. He becomes notorious as General Strelnikov ("The Shooter"), a fearsome commander who summarily executes both captured Whites and many civilians. Meanwhile, Lara becomes a battlefield nurse in order to search for her husband. In 1915, Doctor Yuri Zhivago is drafted into the Army despite the recent birth of his and Tonya's first child. Wounded by artillery fire in Galicia, Yuri and his friend Misha Gordon are sent to a battlefield hospital where Lara works as a nurse. After his recovery, Zhivago stays on at the hospital as a physician. Following the February Revolution and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, revolutionary fervor and anarchy spread to the front-line troops. In order to convince local deserters to return to the trenches, Gintz, a newly arrived commissar for the Provisional Government, decides to address them unarmed and without an escort. Believing that he can appeal to the deserters pride as "soldiers in the world's first revolutionary army", Gintz is instead brutally murdered by them. Meanwhile, Lara and Yuri have fallen in love. Neither, however, is willing to admit their feelings for the other. As he prepares to return to his wife and child in Moscow, Yuri expresses dismay to Lara that "the roof over the whole of Russia has been torn off, and we and all the people find ourselves under the open sky". Following the October Revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War, Yuri and his family flee by train to their estate at Varykino, in the Ural Mountains. During the journey, he meets with General Strelnikov, who informs him that Lara has returned to their daughter in the town of Yuriatin. Soon after, Lara and Yuri meet and consummate their relationship. While returning from an encounter with Lara, Yuri is abducted by Liberius, commander of the "Forest Brotherhood", the Bolshevik guerilla band. Liberius is a dedicated Old Bolshevik and highly effective leader of his men. However, Liberius is also a cocaine addict, loud-mouthed and narcissistic. He repeatedly bores Yuri with his long-winded lectures about the glories of socialism and the inevitability of its victory. After Yuri deserts and returns to Lara, Komarovsky reappears. Having used his influence within the CPSU, Komarovsky has been appointed Minister of Justice of the Far Eastern Republic, a Soviet puppet state in Siberia. He offers to smuggle Yuri and Lara outside Soviet soil. They initially refuse, but Komarovsky states that Pasha Antipov is dead, having fallen from favor with the Party. Stating that this will place Lara in the Cheka's crosshairs, he persuades Yuri that it is in her best interests to leave for the West. Yuri convinces Lara to go with Komarovsky, telling her that he will follow her shortly. Meanwhile, the hunted General Strelnikov returns for Lara. Lara, however, has already left with Komarovsky. After expressing regret over the pain he has caused his country and loved ones, Pasha commits suicide. Yuri finds his body the following morning. After returning to Moscow, Zhivago's health declines; he cohabits with another woman and fathers two children with her. He also plans numerous writing projects which he never finishes. Meanwhile, Lara returns to Russia for Yuri Zhivago's funeral. (I don't think that's right-she was already in Moscow on other matters and decided to visit Pasha's old flat. Much to her astonishment there was Yuri's coffin, on a table in the flat). She persuades Yuri's half brother, NKVD General Yevgraf Zhivago, to assist her search for her daughter by Yuri. Ultimately, however, Lara is arrested during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge and dies in the Gulag. During World War II, Zhivago's old friends Nika Dudorov and Misha Gordon meet up. One of their discussions revolves around a local laundress named Tanya, a bezprizornaya or Civil War orphan, and her resemblance to both Yuri and Lara. Much later, they meet over the first edition of Yuri Zhivago's poems.
4608265	/m/0ccd6b	The House of the Seven Gables	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1851	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06_wph7": "American Gothic Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is set in the mid-19th century, with glimpses into the history of the house, which was built in the late 17th century. The primary interest of this book is in the subtle and involved descriptions of character and motive. The house of the title is a gloomy New England mansion, haunted from its foundation by fraudulent dealings, accusations of witchcraft, and sudden death. The current resident, the dignified but desperately poor Hepzibah Pyncheon, opens a shop in a side room to support her brother Clifford, who is about to leave prison after serving thirty years for murder. She refuses all assistance from her unpleasant wealthy cousin Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. A distant relative, the lively and pretty young Phoebe, turns up and quickly becomes invaluable, charming customers and rousing Clifford from depression. A delicate romance grows between Phoebe and the mysterious attic lodger Holgrave, who is writing a history of the Pyncheon family. Phoebe takes leave of the family to return to her country home for a brief visit, but will return soon. Unfortunately, before she leaves, Clifford stands at the large arched window above the stairs and has a sudden urge to jump upon viewing the mass of humanity passing before him and his recollection of his youth lost to prison. That instance, coupled with Phoebe's departure — she was the only happy and beautiful thing in the home for the depressed Clifford to dwell on — sends Clifford into a bed-ridden state. Judge Pyncheon arrives at the house one day, and threatens to have Clifford committed to an insane asylum if he does not disclose information regarding mystical "eastern lands" of Maine that the family is rumored to own. The deed however has been lost. Before Clifford can be brought before the Judge (which, it is implied, will completely destroy Clifford's sanity), the Judge mysteriously dies in the same chair as the historical Pyncheon who stole the land on which the house was later built from a settler named Maule. Hepzibah and Clifford escape on a train (then a very new form of transport) after the Judge dies. The townsfolk murmur about their sudden disappearance, and, upon Phoebe's return, the Judge's body is discovered. Hepzibah and Clifford return shortly, to Phoebe's relief. Events from past and present throw light on the circumstances which sent Clifford to prison, proving his innocence. Holgrave is discovered to be a descendant of Maule but bears the Pyncheon family no ill will, mostly due to his feelings for Phoebe. The romance ends with the characters leaving the old house to start a new life, free of the burdens of the past.
4608269	/m/0ccd6p	Return from the Stars	Stanisław Lem	1961	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The novel tells the story of an astronaut, Hal Bregg, who returns to Earth after a 127 year mission to Arcturus (In original Polish version Fomalhaut). Due to time dilation, the mission has lasted only 10 years for him, but on Earth he faces culture shock, as he finds the society transformed into a utopia, free of wars or violence, or even accidents. For Hal, however, this new world is too comfortable, too safe. Earth is no longer home, it is "another, alien planet". Humans themselves have changed, having undergone a procedure called betrization, designed to neutralizes all aggressive impulses. Hal mistrusts this approach, seeing the side effects of extreme risk-aversion as wrong. In particular, for an astronaut, he cannot agree with the opinion that space travel and space exploration are nothing but a youthful and dangerous adventurism. For Hal, this means that "... they have killed the man in man". He and the other returning astronauts are viewed with mistrust, seen as "resuscitated Neanderthals". They are alienated, outcasts, and subject to social pressure to undertake the betrization procedure. The other choice is to leave Earth again and hope that once they come back, in several centuries, Earth's society is more familiar again. In time, Hal's marries a local girl, Eri, and comes to see the world her way, even disapproving of his youth's love, space expeditions. When he learns that members of his former crew are planning a mission to Sagittarius, he seems not to care, content to leave the stars to others. Hal still remembers his past, recalls the moon Kereneia, a magnificent canyon "made of red and pink gold, almost completely transparent... through it you can see all the strata, geological folds, anticlines and synclines... all this is weightless, floating and seeming to smile at you". Yet he trades the chance to experience such sights and adventures for love and peaceful, quiet life.
4608346	/m/0ccd8s	The Silence of the Lambs	Thomas Harris	1988	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel takes place in February 1983. Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is asked to carry out an errand by Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI division that draws up psychological profiles of serial killers. Starling is to present a questionnaire to brilliant forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic sociopath, Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is serving nine consecutive life sentences in a Maryland mental institution for a series of brutal murders. Crawford's real intention, however, is to try and solicit Lecter's assistance in the hunt for a serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill", whose modus operandi involves kidnapping overweight women, starving them for about three or four days, and then killing and skinning them, before dumping the bodies in nearby rivers. The nickname was started by Kansas City Homicide, as a joke that "he likes to skin his humps." Throughout the investigation, Starling periodically returns to Lecter in search of information, and the two form a strange relationship in which he offers her cryptic clues in return for information about her unhappy childhood as an orphan. When Bill's sixth victim is found in West Virginia, Starling helps Crawford perform the autopsy. Starling finds a moth pupa in the throat of the victim, and just as Lecter predicted, she has been scalped. Triangular patches of skin have also been taken from her shoulders. Furthermore, autopsy reports indicate that Bill killed her within four days of her capture, much faster than his earlier victims. On the basis of Lecter's prediction, Starling believes that he knows who Buffalo Bill really is. She also asks why she was sent to fish for information on Buffalo Bill without being told she was doing so; Crawford explains that if she had had an agenda, Lecter would never have spoken up. Starling takes the pupa to the Smithsonian, where it is eventually identified as the Black Witch Moth, which would not naturally occur where the victim was found. In Tennessee, Catherine Baker Martin, daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, is kidnapped. Within six hours, her blouse is found on the roadside, slit up the back: Buffalo Bill's calling card. Crawford is advised that no less than the President of the United States has expressed "intense interest" in the case, and that a successful rescue is preferable. Crawford estimates they have three days before Catherine is killed. Starling is sent to Lecter with the offer of a deal: if he assists in Catherine's rescue and Buffalo Bill's capture, he will be transferred out of the asylum, something he was continually longed for. However, Lecter expresses skepticism at the genuineness of the offer. After Starling leaves, Lecter reminisces on the past, recalling a conversation with Benjamin Raspail, a former patient whom he later murdered. Raspail, during that therapy session, explained the death of a sailor named Klaus at the hands of Raspail's jealous former lover, Jame Gumb, who then used Klaus' skin to make an apron. Raspail also revealed that Gumb had an epiphany upon watching a moth hatch. Lecter's ruminations are interrupted when Dr. Frederick Chilton - the asylum's administrator and Lecter's nemesis - steps in. A listening device allowed him to record Starling's offer, and Chilton has found out that Crawford's deal is a lie. He offers one of his own: If Lecter reveals Buffalo Bill's identity, he will indeed get a transfer to another asylum, but only if Chilton gets credit for getting the information from him. Lecter insists that he'll only give the information to Senator Martin in person, in Tennessee. Chilton agrees. Unknown to Chilton, Lecter has previously hidden under his tongue a paperclip and some parts of a pen, both of which were mistakenly given to him by untrained orderlies over his many years at the asylum. He fashions the pen pieces and paperclip into an improvised lockpick, which he later uses to pick his handcuff locks. In Tennessee, Lecter toys with Senator Martin briefly, enjoying the woman's anguish, but eventually gives her some information about Buffalo Bill: his name is William "Billy" Rubin, and he has suffered from elephant ivory anthrax, a knifemaker's disease. He also provides an accurate physical description. The name, however, is a red herring: bilirubin is a pigment in human bile and a chief coloring agent in human feces, which the forensic lab compares to the color of Chilton's hair. Starling tries one last time to get information from Lecter as he is about to be transferred. He offers a final clue - "we covet what we see everyday" - and demands to hear her worst memory. Starling reveals that, after her father's death, she was sent to live with a cousin on a sheep ranch. One night, she discovered the farmer slaughtering the spring lambs, and fled in terror. The farmer caught and sent her to an orphanage, where she spent the rest of her childhood. Lecter thanks her, and the two share a brief moment of connection before Chilton forces her to leave. Later on, she deduces from Lecter's clue that Buffalo Bill knew his first victim. Shortly after this, Lecter escapes by killing and eviscerating his guards, using one of their faces as a mask to fool paramedics. Starling continues her search for Buffalo Bill, eventually tracking him down and killing him and rescuing Catherine. She is made a full-fledged FBI agent, and receives a congratulatory telegram from Lecter, who hopes that "the lambs have stopped screaming".
4608748	/m/0ccdv0	Eye of Heaven	Jim Mortimore		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 October 1842 : archaeologists Horace Stockwood and Alexander Richards travel to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. There, they befriend the natives, and when the son of their friend Tortorro falls ill, Stockwood helps to cure him. He then takes advantage of this act to convince the reluctant Tortorro to take him to the sacred Cave of the Sun's Inclination. The villagers find them there, and Stockwood panics and flees, taking the sacred rongo-rongo stick and abandoning his friends to the villagers. He hides in the tunnels which the natives use to hide from slavers, and emerges at night, to see a ceremony in which Tortorro apparently dies from nothing more than ostracism from the community. As Richards cries to him for help, Stockwood takes to his heels and flees back to his ship, pursued by the villagers. Panic-stricken and half-dead, he returns to England without Richards, but with the conviction that at the end, the moai, the great stone heads, walked across the island in pursuit of him... August 1872 : Stockwood's only friend now is Dr James Royston; for the past thirty years he has been the laughingstock of the scientific community, and he is now almost completely bankrupt. He places an advertisement in the Times, seeking funding for a return expedition to Rapa Nui, and this catches the Doctor's attention. After hearing Stockwood's story, the Doctor agrees to fund the expedition, and converts gemstones from distant planets to ready cash for his purposes. Before leaving, he catches Stockwood's underpaid butler, Fennell, trying to rob the house, and dismisses him. In Portsmouth, the Doctor purchases the Tweed, but while he is thus occupied the TARDIS is accidentally loaded aboard a ship bound for India. The Doctor is then attacked and taken prisoner by a dockworker. Leela becomes suspicious of Royston and determines to keep an eye on him, but Royston is just as suspicious of her; he is worried about Stockwood's sanity, and doesn't believe that the Doctor and Leela truly have his best interests at heart. He offers to join the expedition as a medical officer, despite Leela's objections. That night, Fennell breaks into Stockwood's home, and when Royston is forced to shoot him, Leela is convinced that he did so to prevent Fennell from being questioned about his accomplices. Stockwood decides to hide the body in order to avoid involving the police, which would delay his expedition. Royston's suspicions about the Doctor seem justified when they arrive in Portsmouth and find no sign of him, but Leela, while searching for the Doctor, is also attacked and kidnapped by the dockworker. With only hours to go before the Tweed departs, Royston suggests leaving the Doctor and Leela behind, but Stockwood -- although finding it difficult to explain his instinctive trust of Leela -- refuses to abandon his friends again. Royston reluctantly accompanies him into the city to search for the missing Doctor and Leela, but they are also attacked and knocked out by the dockworker. Along with the Doctor and Leela, they awaken tied to the pier as the tide comes in. Leela manages to free herself and the others, and the Doctor sends Royston and Stockwood back to the ship while he and Leela try to find out why the dockworker tried to kill them. When they find him, he refuses to answer their questions, and instead tries to shoot them. They flee back to the Tweed, while the dockworker, pursued by police, is shot at and dives into the water just as the ship departs. The Doctor and Leela pull themselves on board -- only to find that Captain Stuart has accepted payment from the enemy who has been trying to stop their expedition; Alex Richard's sister Jennifer, who has hated Stockwood with a passion ever since he abandoned her brother to his death on Rapa Nui. The Doctor convinces Richards to wait until they've reached Rapa Nui to take her revenge -- and convinces Leela not to kill her before then. Leela is still convinced that Royston intends to betray them, especially when she sees him privately offering money to Richards. Richards and Royston emerge from a locked cabin carrying soiled bandages, and Leela determines to find out who's inside. A cyclone blows the Tweed off course into the south seas and destroys their supplies of fresh water, and the crew must dock with a passing iceberg to replenish their supplies. Leela takes advantage of their distraction to break into the locked cabin, where she finds the dockworker, Stump, alive and delirious. Stump flees onto the iceberg, pursued by Leela, but as the iceberg begins to break up she retreats to the Tweed, leaving him to die. Royston explains that Stump, although shot by the police, managed to catch hold of a rope hanging from the Tweed and pull himself aboard as it left Portsmouth. Royston tried to save his life because that's what doctors do; besides, by offering to pay off Richards and save Stump's life, he hoped to convince her to let Stockwood go without killing him. The Tweed enters turbulent waters where a whale and a giant squid are battling to the death, and Leela and Royston are both swept overboard. As the Tweed pulls ever further away, Leela is forced to kill the squid herself and to tie herself and Royston to the whale in order to survive. The whale is too seriously wounded to dive beneath the surface, and eventually dies, just as another storm approaches -- this time with a waterspout. Leela and Royston must climb inside the whale's mouth in order to ride out the typhoon... The Tweed reaches Rapa Nui in December, although there appear to be no natives present to greet them. Stockwood is torn with guilt over abandoning Royston and Leela, but it's no less than Richards had expected of him; she lives now only to see him torn with madness over the grave of her brother. The Doctor, meanwhile, studies the moai and finds that their mass is fluctuating, which means that they are absorbing and transmitting energy somehow; but before he can investigate further, the Tweed is attacked by a fleet of Peruvian ships, and he and Stockwood realize too late why they have seen no natives. The Doctor finds a group of Peruvian slavers herding the natives together and tries to intervene, but the slavers shoot him in the chest. Stockwood flees into the tunnels, where Richards and the ship's boy Jack Devitt are hiding along with the natives. The others from the Tweed are prisoners of the Peruvian captain DaBraisse, as is the recovering Doctor. Leela and Royston, having survived their ordeals, are rescued by Polynesian natives and taken to Rapa Nui. There, Leela whips up the natives' fighting spirit and prepares to lead them in an attack on the Tweed, intending to rescue Captain Stuart. But before they go, one of the islanders finally recognizes Stockwood, and brings forth his punishment -- the mad and emaciated Alex Richards, who has been kept alive in the caves for the past thirty years so the islanders may slit his throat before Stockwood's eyes. Leela then leads the islanders to the harbour while Stockwood and Jennifer Richards remain in the caves in shock. Having rescued Stuart from the Tweed, Leela then attacks DaBraisse's ship, where DaBraisse is forcing the Doctor to walk the plank. Stuart captures a Peruvian cannon and fires on DaBraisse's ship, and the other Peruvians are forced to retreat. DaBraisse, having survived the attack, retreats with them -- but not before mortally wounding Royston, who had just saved Leela's life. Leela realizes she was wrong to mistrust him. Leela and the Doctor take the dying Royston back to the island, where Leela stops Jennifer from killing Stockwood and the Doctor determines that there's nothing he can do to save Royston. But the islanders have no quarrel with Royston, and the old woman who killed Alex Richards tells the Doctor to take Royston to the Cave of the Sun's Inclination, where the god will heal him. In the Cave, the Doctor finds the largest of all the moai, and realizes that it's a silicon-based, voice-activated alien computer. Richards still has the rongo-rongo, but Stockwood has kept a rubbing of it, and the Doctor is able to use it to activate the moai and send Royston, Stockwood, and Leela through a matter transport beam. The rubbing is incomplete, however, and the Doctor requires the rongo-rongo to bring them back; but Richards is now obsessed with the thought of Stockwood's death, and when DaBraisse returns to the island, she tries to make a deal with him to kill the Doctor and Stockwood. DaBraisse simply orders his men to kill her and attacks the Doctor, who wins the resulting swordfight. DaBraisse falls over a cliff to his death, and the islanders drive off the leaderless Peruvians while the Doctor carries the dying Richards and the rongo-rongo to the cave. Stockwood, Leela and Royston find themselves in a vast metal city, and find that Royston's wounds have been healed by his trip through the transporter. Stockwood and Leela leave him to recover while they explore, and determine that the city is larger than the distance between London and Rapa Nui -- and is completely deserted. Royston recovers and stumbles through a nearby moai into yet another world, and Stockwood and Leela track him through a system of moai which leads them from world to world -- all of which appear to be deserted. They eventually catch up with Royston in the midst of a vast library, where they learn that the alien species which built this empire was devastated by war. Royston is overwhelmed with emotion at the evidence of deaths beyond counting. The Doctor arrives with the recovering Jennifer, but despite the wonders she is being exposed to, Stockwood's death is still her only priority. The Doctor manages to activate telepathic connections in the library, and the truth is finally revealed. The aliens were all but wiped out during a war, and used the moai to scatter their DNA in retrovirus form throughout the galaxy, intending to hide from their enemies within the bodies of other life forms and then return to repopulate their planet once the danger was past. But the plan went wrong when the isolated Polynesians on Earth, exposed to visiting Europeans, became infected with some disease to which they had no immunity -- possibly the same disease which affected Tortorro's son -- and passed it on to the alien species when they began travelling through the moai. Thus the alien empire was wiped out for a second time. The Doctor, however, realizes that Leela, a descendant of space travellers from Earth's future, is immune to virtually everything currently in existence -- and that he can therefore use her blood to inoculate the islanders and allow them to repopulate the alien empire. Richards stabs Stockwood and kills herself, and then Leela notices that the planet's sun is changing. The aliens, fearful of invasion after suffering from a devastating war, set up a doomsday device to turn their sun supernova if any species which did not contain their DNA structure set foot on their planet. The Doctor and his friends retrace their steps through the moai, back to Rapa Nui, healing Stockwood and saving the alien world. Stockwood then decides to remain on Rapa Nui to atone for his misdeeds by protecting the villagers against other slavers and "men of knowledge" such as himself. The Doctor and Leela set off for India to search for the TARDIS, and Royston returns to London on the Tweed. Over the following decades, the islanders use the moai to travel to the distant homeworld and reclaim their alien inheritance. Finally, in December 1902, as the last party of islanders departs from Rapa Nui, Stockwood accompanies them to see the last sight of his life, the most wondrous sight of all; a world reborn.
4608769	/m/0ccdwr	Forged in the Fire	Ann Turnbull	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Forged in the Fire is an epic love story in which love prevails over all. When Will is sent to prison during the plague, Susanna has no way of knowing whether her beloved is alive or not. Will gets sent to jail with two of his friends for starting a fight in the streets. Whilst in jail both his friends are infested with the plague and Will becomes deathly ill. Both of his companions die but Will is bailed out by a man called Edmund who is extremely wealthy and a friend of Nat, who during the story is always at Will's side. When Susanna finally finds out where Will is located she travels at once to London. There she finds Will happy and healthy in Edmund's home with his eldest daughter. This is the one and only blow to their love but is soon overcome. The two get married in the sight of God at a Quaker meeting. The London fire is the next huge thing to happen. The city is destroyed bit by bit, and now that Susanna is with a child she and Will must leave. But Will refuses to leave until he has finished his work, so he sends Susanna, with friends, to make it out of the city and into a farm where she is to camp for many nights. Finally Will with Nat manage to get out of the city and they are reunited at last. Will also makes up with his father who has never much cared for Will and Susanna's love. He gives them some money and they live happily ever after. A few years later they have a son and life happily goes on.
4608904	/m/0ccf31	The Witch Hunters	Steve Lyons		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In Salem Village, Massachusetts, 1692, the Doctor and his companions become immeshed in the tragedy of the Salem witch trials.
4609475	/m/0ccfpg	The Hollow Men	Martin Day		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Hexen Village, England, in the early 21st century, has a crop of gifted children. However, murder and mental illness seem to be centered around them. The Doctor is kidnapped and taken to Liverpool and discovers the Hexen children could affect the rest of the country. Ace is left in the village to face the threats of animated scarecrows, human prejudice, revenge-violence and a strange black cloud.
4609837	/m/0ccg79	Last of the Gaderene	Mark Gatiss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 RAF Culverton, East Anglia, during the Second World War. Alec Whistler, a Spitfire pilot discovers a green crystal in the wreckage left by a bomb which destroyed the RAF base's Mess, killing his fiance... As a reward for his actions in The Three Doctors the Third Doctor has had his knowledge of the TARDIS's dematerialisation codes returned to him by the Time Lords. The Doctor has left Earth and is helping the rebels on the planet Xanthos. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Brigadier has received a call from his old friend Wing Commander Alec Whistler. Culverton Aerodrome has closed and been purchased by the mysterious Legion International, led by the sinister Bliss. Black-shirted troops guard the base and have begun to terrorise the local residents, and people have begun to disappear. Investigating the base with the young Noah Bishop, Whistler is captured by Legion. Noah escapes, but is injured by a huge worm-like creature living in the marsh behind the aerodrome. Escaping from Xanthos, the Doctor returns to UNIT HQ, realising this is the closest thing he has to home at the moment, though clearly unwilling to acknowledge this either to himself, Jo or the Brigadier. The Brigadier sends the Doctor and Jo to Culverton to investigate. Arriving in Culverton, the Doctor and Jo are met by Whistler's housekeeper, Mrs. Toovey. While the Doctor investigates the base, Jo stays at Whistler's house, where she is attacked by a Legion trooper who is searching for the green crystal which Whistler has had since the War and which he regards as his lucky charm. Fortunately, Mrs. Toovey has concealed it in Whistler's restored Spitfire in a lead box, masking its energy signature from Bliss's sensors. The kidnapped villagers begin to reappear, but acting curiously, and all grinning inanely. They are all carrying the embryos of the alien race the Gaderene in their mouths and are being controlled by the embryos. The village fete is opened by Scotland Yard's Inspector Le Maitre (the Master in disguise) During the fete the remaining villagers are given embryos leaving the village a ghost town. The Master has worked with the Gaderene to allow their invasion of Earth and despite Bliss's betrayal, still aims to help the invasion as he wishes to see mankind wiped out. Threatening Noah's life, the Master extorts the crystal from the Doctor. The crystal is the ninth and final key which will allow the Gaderene to cross over from their dying world to the Earth. Meanwhile, Whistler has escaped from his captors. As the Gaderene ready their invasion force, the UNIT troops storm the airbase with the Doctor assisting in the borrowed Spitfire. The UNIT troops pin down the giant worm (Bliss's brother, whose genetic make-up was damaged in the crossing from the Gaderene homeworld) while the Doctor and the Master fight in the midst of the dimensional transference beam. The Master kills Bliss with his Tissue Compression Eliminator and is caught in the beam as it collapses, destroyed by Whistler's crashing Spitfire. The Gaderene are all destroyed and the Master seemingly destroyed with them. Whistler survives, having ejected from the plane just in time and is reunited with his friend the Brigadier. The villagers with the implanted embryos are released and the embryos all die. The Doctor walks away, head bowed, expressing regret about the destruction.
4609933	/m/0ccgct	Catastrophea	Terrance Dicks		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Jo arrive at a planet named Kastopheria. Its natives are peaceful, golden-skinned giants who seem not to care that other races are exploiting their world for all it is worth. Said races are coming into conflict with each other, a problem the Doctor and Jo try to solve. The possibility of peace is disrupted by the war-mongering Draconians. In trying to quell the planet's problems, the Doctor risks uncovering a force that threatens the entire galaxy.
4610143	/m/0ccgpy	Critical Chain	Eliyahu M. Goldratt	1997-09-04		 Goldratt claims that the current method of generating task time estimates is the primary reason for increased expense of projects and their inability to finish on time. The commonly accepted principle is to add safety (aka: pad or slop) to generate a task time length that will essentially guarantee the step gets completed. He asserts that estimates for a task are based on individuals providing values that they feel will give them an 80-90% chance of completing the step, these estimates are further padded by managers above this person creating a length of time to complete a task that is excessive - as much as 200% of the actual time required. It is this excessive padding that has the opposite effect - guaranteeing the task will run full term or late. As counter intuitive as this seems, he provides examples of why this is the case. This predisposes the people on the project to consume the time estimate by: # Triggering the "student syndrome" in the resource assigned to the task - they have more than enough time to do the task, therefore they start the task late using up all the safety. # Encouraging multitasking. The safety is added knowing that the resource will not be able to focus on the task and hence encouraged to multitask on multiple projects at a time, which significantly impacts all projects. # Not claiming early completion. In order to preserve the safety concept in future projects, resources do not report tasks completed early. Obviously, though, there is no way to hide a late completion. The book presents a primer for Theory of Constraints. This is done in the form of a lecture by a professor who has recently returned from a sabbatical at a large conglomerate that uses the Theory of Constraints. The discussion focuses on the current methods of measuring success at a work center (cost and throughput) and shows how they are contradictory to the success of the production line as a whole. The book enumerates the five principle steps of the Theory of Constraints: # Identify. Identify the bottleneck of the system. # Exploit. Exploit this bottleneck, making its throughput efficient by changing processes, equipment maintenance procedures, training, policies, etc. # Subordinate: Subordinate the throughput of all other work centers to this work center. # Elevate. Invest in this work center to increase its throughput - add equipment, manpower, etc. # Inertia. Start the process over on the line to determine the new bottleneck. This philosophy keeps the cost and throughput models at odds with one another since the subordination process necessarily decreases efficiency. Hence, evaluation criteria for properly managing a work center must change to properly reward the organization’s success. The book points out this conflict with respect to an axiom in the Theory of Constraints that states that if two concepts are in direct conflict, then there is an assumption as part of those concepts that is incorrect. To illustrate, the book uses an example of a steel mill with significant production problems, excess inventory and cost issues. It methodically assigns all the issues of the plant to the method in which success of a work center is measured. The errant assumption is efficiency being measured by tons of steel per hour. The flaw in the measurement is that not all material takes the same length of time to produce and not all work centers have the same throughput. It concludes the sources of the problems for the steel mill are: {| class="wikitable" | Issue | Causes |- | Yard inventory | * Over producing product to minimize set-up impact, * Producing excess high-throughput material * Instead of sitting idle, produce unneeded product. |- | Raw material shortage | * Over consumption of material to produce material in inventory |} After subordination, the key is to maintain a small buffer of material in front of the bottleneck to ensure it never stops producing due to lack of material. After laying this groundwork, the book turns to applying this to Project Management. After declaring the constraint to be the schedule's critical path, the book maps out a set of terms. The result is: {| class="wikitable" | Production term | Project term |- | Work center | Task |- | Product | Time |- | Pre-work center inventory | Work buffer from the feeding tasks of the critical path |- | Bottleneck work center | Bottleneck resource |- |} It proposes a method of schedule generation where all tasks are estimated at a reasonable time for completion. This would be a time estimate that would give the resource a 50%-60% chance of completing the task on time. The theory being that one task may take less than its estimated time but another may take more - on the average evening out. Since there is no safety, the conditions above that cause misuse of time on the task do not exist. Safety is not added to individual tasks. Safety is added to the project as a whole (at the end) or to the end of a sequence of tasks feeding the critical path. Using numerous analogies and examples, the concept of a resource buffer is introduced. This concept claims that one must ensure the resource bottleneck on the critical path is always busy and stays focused. They should be: * Kept on task. In other words, minimize multitasking * Be ready for the assignment; even if it means they are idle waiting for dependencies to complete. The book introduces increasingly complex situations to remove the non-practical classroom approach until it reaches two common project situations: * A bottleneck resource on the critical path and non-critical paths, * Multiple projects contending for constrained resources, The book emphasizes that the project manager has to understand that he or she is not working with absolutes. Resolution of these issues are not absolute. The time estimates are just that - estimates - they cannot be treated as absolute times. This is essential for the following two points. A project example is given with a single bottlenecked resource on multiple paths. Since this resource is over utilized on multiple paths its tasks need to be considered when determining the project duration. This results in the introduction of the term critical chain - the aggregate of the critical path and the constrained resource leveled tasks. Projects are going to use common resources. Organizations need to accommodate parallel projects while adhering to the Theory of Constraints concepts. This requires developing a prioritization scheme for the resource to determine the correct order to do work (i.e. proportion of the project buffer remaining). As before, once the scheme has been developed, the resource needs to be focused (not multitasking) on completing the task as soon as possible. The book closes by introducing a concept for a method for determining which projects should be selected for execution. It is based on looking at the investment in each project in terms of money-days. Money-days is the product of the investment in the project and its duration.
4610283	/m/0ccgyl	Mission: Impractical	David A. McIntee		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Doctor and Frobisher run into Glitz, his henchman Dibber and a band of Ogrons trying to pull off the crime of the century.
4610866	/m/0cchrp	Company	Max Barry	2006-01-17	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The setting for the novel is Seattle, at a company called Zephyr Holdings, although from the building it is difficult to discern the company's type of business. Apparently a defining characteristic of the company is its obscurity. In fact, in the novel no one has ever met the CEO. When Stephen Jones, a young recruit, reports for his first day in the Training Sales Department shortly after there has been a theft. Stephen is promoted from assistant to acting sales representative. However, Stephen believes the company is hiding something—something that would explain why people who are fired seem to disappear. And, he wonders, what exactly is the Omega Management System?
4611702	/m/0cckxl	The Inheritors	William Golding	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This novel is an imaginative reconstruction of the life of a band of Neanderthals. It is written in such a way that the reader might assume the group to be modern Homo sapiens as they gesture and speak simply among themselves, and bury their dead with heartfelt, solemn rituals. They also have powerful sense impressions and feelings, and appear sometimes to share thoughts in a near-telepathic way. As the novel progresses it becomes more and more apparent that they live very simply, using their considerable mental abilities to connect to one another without extensive vocabulary or the kinds of memories that create culture. They have wide knowledge of food sources, mostly roots and vegetables. They chase hyaenas from a larger beast's kill and eat meat, but they don't kill mammals themselves. They have a spiritual system centring on a female principle of bringing forth, but their lives are lived so much in the present that the reader realizes they are very different from us, living in something like an eternal present, or at least a present broken and shaped by seasons. One of the band, Lok, is a point of view character. He is the one we follow as one by one the adults of the band die or are killed, then the young are stolen by the "new people," a group of early modern humans. Lok and Fa, the remaining adults, are fascinated and repelled by the new people. They observe their actions and rituals with amazement, only slowly understanding that harm is meant by the sticks of the new people. The humans are portrayed as strange, godlike beings as the neanderthals witness their mastery of fire, Upper Palaeolithic weaponry and sailing. All save the last chapters of the novel are written from the Neanderthals' stark, simple stylistic perspective. Their observations of early human behaviour serve as a filter for Golding's exercise in paleoanthropology, in which modern readers will recognize precursors of later human societal constructs, e.g., religion, culture, sacrifice and war. The penultimate chapter employs an omniscient viewpoint, observing Lok. For the first time, the novel describes the people the reader has been inhabiting through the first-person perspective. Lok, totally alone, gives up in despair. In the final chapter, we move to the point of view of the new race, more or less modern humans fleeing in their boats, revealing that they are terribly afraid of the Neanderthals whom they believe to be devils of the forest. This last chapter, the only one written from the humans' point of view, reinforces the inheritance of the world by the new species. The fleeing humans carry with them an infant Neanderthal, of whom they are simultaneously afraid and enamoured, hinting at the later hypothesis of inter-breeding between Neanderthals and modern humans.
4613130	/m/0ccp9_	The Runes of the Earth	Stephen R. Donaldson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Linden Avery is now in charge of a clinic for the mentally ill and is responsible, among other things, for caring for Joan Covenant. Roger, son of Thomas and Joan, comes to visit for the first time in many years and seeks to take Joan out of care, claiming that he wants to assume responsibility for the task himself. Roger also demands of Linden his late father's white gold wedding ring, which she does not relinquish. Linden remains suspicious of his intentions, but she is not able to prevent his forceful removal of Joan at gunpoint, and his abduction of Linden's adopted son, Jeremiah. Casualties mount as Joan is taken and — whilst attempting to intervene — Linden, Joan, Roger, and Jeremiah are plunged into the Land, where they must adjust to its new demands. On return to the Land, she discovers that the people have no knowledge of the Earthpower she had so cherished before and this knowledge has been denied them by the blight on the land known as Kevin's Dirt. Also this ancient lore is kept from them by the Haruchai, who have now taken upon themselves total responsibility for the Land's defense, discouraging the learning of Earthpower and a knowledge of the Land's history. They have become the "Masters” of the Land. Also, the Land has been beset by caesures (or "Falls") which are strange disruptions created from wild magic by Joan in her madness. Linden takes under her protection an enigmatic character called Anele, who turns out to have been the son of two people that Linden had known centuries before, which appears logically impossible. He is full of Earthpower, as a result of a pregnant Hollian (from the second chronicles) being brought back to life by Earthpower. Linden also finds an ally in a Stonedownor, Liand, who quickly comes to trust Linden implicitly when she introduces him to his past and the Land, showing him an expression of Earthpower beyond all his previous experience. The Masters threaten Anele (and indirectly, Linden) as she seeks to find ways of locating and rescuing her son, a quest she keeps to herself. When a strange storm attacks Liand's village, Mithil Stonedown, he and Linden and Anele take the opportunity to escape the Masters. Their escape is compromised when Stave, another Master, catches up with them. Initially they believe he has come to recapture them, but he actually brings timely warning of a huge pack of wolves (kresh) that is pursuing them. They are rescued by a company of Ramen, the traditional servants of the Ranyhyn horses, who seem to have made an odd alliance with the ur-viles. They are then led to the Verge of Wandering — a valley the Ramen come to every couple of generations. Here they meet Esmer, a powerful being who claims to be the son of Cail - an outcast Haruchai - and the mysterious Dancers of the Sea. Linden is unsure whether to treat Esmer as a friend or an enemy: He attacks and wounds Stave (as punishment for his ancestors' treatment of his father) but then proceeds to help Linden. He uses his strange powers to summon a caesure, allowing Linden and her companions to travel backwards in time to retrieve the lost Staff of Law. They emerge from the caesure in a Land which is still recovering from the Sunbane. After some initial frustration, they find (with some dubious help from Esmer) that the Staff is guarded by a group of Waynhim who - not being creatures of Law - are slowly sickening from its influence. Linden uses the Staff to cure the Waynhim, but she and her companions are suddenly attacked by Demondim (who they suspect have been summoned from the past by the mischievous and unpredictable Esmer) wielding the power of the Illearth Stone. Fearful that the coming battle will alter the Land's history, Linden creates a new caesure and returns herself, her companions, the ur-Viles, Waynhim, and Demondim to her own present. When they emerge, they find themselves in the neighborhood of Revelstone, which is now the stronghold of the Masters. The Haruchai attempt to fight the Demondim, but their efforts are wholly in vain. Stave is badly injured, and Linden and her companions are forced to retreat to Revelstone. Here Linden meets "The Mahdoubt", a mysterious old woman who describes herself only as "a servant of Revelstone". As the company is enclosed in the Lord's Keep with their foes outside, they see a small group rapidly approaching: her son, Jeremiah, and Thomas Covenant, who has seemingly returned to life.
4613260	/m/0ccpkk	When Jonathan Died	Tony Duvert		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jonathan is a 27-year-old artist living in Paris who befriends a single mother and her six-year-old son, Serge. When Serge is eight, his mother asks Jonathan to look after him for a week, which they spend together at Jonathan's country house in southern France. Jonathan and Serge become close friends. Jonathan, smitten with the boy, is distraught when Serge returns to Paris. They meet each other again when Serge is age 10, and their sexual relationship continues. While Jonathan and Serge are separated, the sexual side of Jonathan's desires begins to dominate his behaviour. He eventually seeks out other young boys; he is rejected by some and finds no real satisfaction in sex with the others. Serge, fatherless and miserable at home with his aloof and demeaning mother, decides to run away to be with Jonathan. He sets off to find him, but becomes overwhelmed by hopelessness, and when confronted with a busy road to cross at night, commits suicide by throwing himself under a fast-moving car.
4613864	/m/0ccqjg	Marrow	Robert Reed	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 When a massive, artificially-created structure enters the galaxy, a society of technologically advanced humans (capable of interstellar flight and functionally immortal) are the first to intercept and investigate it. Finding it to be an indestructible ship, they decide to convert it into a cruise ship, inviting alien races to join them in its massive, uncharted interior as it makes a slow circumnavigation of the Milky Way. After thousands of years, with over 200 billion creatures living in its upper levels, a group of explorers discover a planet hidden in the core of the Great Ship. As they explore it, however, an ionic blast cuts them off from the rest of the ship and destroys much of their technology. Because this planet, Marrow, is slowly expanding, the explorers reason that a new bridge can be built in another 5,000 years. They thus begin a civilization on the surface of Marrow. The descendants of these original explorers come to believe that the large superstructure has been built to contain the Bleak, a race of nearly unstoppable insect-like creatures. Calling themselves the Wayward, they take over the ship when the bridge is completed and attempt to steer it towards a black hole to destroy the Bleak. One of the original explorers sees a vision of the Builders of the ship fighting the Bleak, containing them within the heart of Marrow and constructing the ship around it as a prison. The Bleak, it is concluded, have twisted the Wayward into destroying the ship so that they may escape. They stop the Wayward's plan by undermining the ship's control and command systems to divert the engines' thrust just enough to skim past the black hole. The book ends with the suggestion that, with Marrow being a prison for the Bleak and the Great Ship an extension of that prison, the universe itself could be a further layer constructed by the Builders.
4616767	/m/0ccw3w	Dragons of Autumn Twilight	Tracy Hickman	1984-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with the return of a group of friends, consisting of Tanis, Sturm, Caramon, Raistlin, Flint, and Tasslehoff, who had separated to pursue their own quests and pledged to return in five years. Kitiara Uth Matar, the half sister of the twins Caramon and Raistlin, was supposed to be there as well, but only sent a mysterious note. On the eve of their reunion, the Companions discover that the village where they are meeting has been taken over by a religious order called the Seekers. They are collaborating with the Dragon Highlords, who are preparing for the conquest of the continent of Ansalon. The Companions soon discover that the Seekers are searching for a Blue Crystal Staff. When Goldmoon, a plainswoman in the same pub as the companions, heals a Seeker with her staff, the Companions are confronted by Highlord forces and are forced to flee the village. The next day, the group is attacked by Draconians, reptilian creatures that serve as foot soldiers in the Highlords' army. The Companions are driven into the woods, where they are attacked by undead and rescued by a centaur. The group is charged to go to the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth to retrieve the Disks of Mishakal, an object containing the teaching of the True Gods that will be instrumental for the restoration of the faith in the True Gods. After a lengthy trip on the backs of pegasi and several encounters with the forces of darkness, the companions enter Xak Tsaroth and meet some gully dwarves, diminutive and stupid creatures. One of the dwarves, Bupu, leads them to the dragon Khisanth, who is killed by the holy power of the Blue Crystal Staff. When this happens, Goldmoon is consumed by its flame and presumed dead. However, they later find her resting at the foot of a statue of Mishakal (the Goddess of Healing), which now bears the Blue Crystal Staff, and Goldmoon is blessed with true clerical powers. The Companions leave with the Disks of Mishakal. Bupu gives an ancient spellbook (formerly belonging to the archmage Fistandantilus) to Raistlin. When they return to the village to regroup they find it occupied. The Companions are captured by the Highlord armies and are chained in a slave caravan along with an elf named Gilthanas, the son of the leader of the elven nation of Qualinesti. The group is freed by Gilthanas's brother, Porthios. They flee to Qualinesti, where Tanis is reunited with his childhood sweetheart, the exceptionally beautiful elven princess, Laurana Kanan. Laurana is still in love with Tanis and wants to marry him, but Tanis breaks her heart by telling her he is now in love with Kitiara. The Elven King Solostaran convinces the Companions to lead an attack on the slave-mine Pax Tharkas to free the slaves from the control of the local Dragon Highlord. The Companions journey through a secret passage underground to Pax Tharkas and devise a plan to free the slaves. Laurana, desperate to win Tanis back, secretly follows the Companions. When Tanis discovers Laurana has followed them he angrily rebukes her for acting like a spoiled child. Laurana resolves to try to prove she is more than that. The Companions infiltrate Pax Tharkas and Goldmoon heals Elistan, a dying Seeker, and converts him to the faith of the true gods. He becomes the first cleric of Paladine, and Goldmoon turns the Disks of Mishakal over to him. The Companions help the slaves break free. Laurana proves her worth in the battle by fighting bravely. The Dragon Highlord Verminaard and his red dragon Ember arrive to crush the revolt, but the insane red dragon Flamestrike kills Ember, while the Companions cut down Verminaard. A mysterious figure called "The Everman” later appears at a celebration following the freeing of the slaves, but flees after being spotted. According to Tracy Hickman, "The restoration of truth and faith are... to a great extent, the theme of this first book in the series."
4616808	/m/0ccw7n	Dragons of Winter Night	Tracy Hickman	1985-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the Companions assembled in the major dwarven city of Thorbardin, where the refugees of Pax Tharkas are presenting the dwarves with the Hammer of Kharas, a legendary warhammer wielded by the dwarven hero Kharas, in return for refuge in the city. The refugees of Pax Tharkas, freed from the Dragon Highlord Verminaard, are on an intermittent stay before finding a new home in Thorbardin, ruled by the dwarves, who have agreed to house them temporarily. The Companions are sent to Tarsis, a supposed city by the sea, in order to find a permanent home for the refugees. Upon arriving, they discover that the city, which became landlocked after the Cataclysm, has turned from a thriving port into a ramshackle town. Whilst in Tarsis, the heroes meet the Silvanesti princess, Alhana Starbreeze and a small group of Knights of Solamnia led by Derek Crownguard. The heroes also learn of the existence of Dragon Orbs, ancient magical artifact capable of controlling dragons. The city is then attacked by dragons and completely destroyed. During the attack, the party is split: Tanis Half-Elven, Riverwind, Goldmoon, Caramon, Raistlin and Tika are rescued by Alhana Starbreeze while Sturm Brightblade, Flint, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, Gilthanas, Laurana and Elistan escape with Derek Crownguard and his knights. Tanis's group flees on the backs of griffins with Alhana to Silvanesti, the ancient elven homeland. They find it has been ravaged by a nightmare manifested into reality, brought on by King Lorac when he attempted to use a dragon orb. Most of the heroes present, but also Sturm, Flint, Tas and Laurana, experience visions of their death. The only two members of the party to "survive" and reach the Tower of Stars are Tanis and Raistlin. Eventually, Raistlin defeats the green dragon Cyan Bloodbane, who has been manipulating the dream onto the land, and the party escapes the dream. They retrieve the Dragon Orb held in Silvanesti. The group led by Sturm travels to Icewall Glacier, located in the far south, where Laurana killed the White Dragon Highlord Feal-Thas, and recovered a second Dragon Orb. While sailing towards the Knights' base on Sancrist isle, they are attacked by the white dragon, Sleet. Laurana drives off Sleet by shooting the dragon in the wing, but the heroes are shipwrecked on Southern Ergoth, an island south of Sancrist inhabited by native wild elves (the Kagonesti) and refugees from both the Qualinesti and Silvanesti nations. Upon making landfall, the group is confronted by a force of Silvanesti elves. The Silvanesti surprisingly knock Gilthanas unconscious, and a battle nearly breaks out between the two groups before Laurana is able to defuse the situation. The Silvanesti then bring forth a Kagonesti Elf named Silvara, who heals Gilthanas, and escort the group to Qualimori, the refugee city established by the Qualinesti elves. It becomes evident that tensions are high between the three groups of elves: the Silvanesti and Qualinesti are ancient rivals and refugees, and both nations consider themselves above the "wild" Kagonesti, who are native to Southern Ergoth and whose lands they are occupying. The reunion of the heroes with the Qualinesti does not go well. Laurana is publically snubbed and insulted by her family, and the Qualinesti imprison all of the non-elves in the group and seize the Dragon Orb. Realizing that the Qualinesti will not use the Dragon Orb for anyone but themselves, Laurana, with the help of Gilthanas, Silvara and an imprisoned human blacksmith, Theros Ironfield, steal the Dragon Orb and free the rest of the heroes. The group then flees Qualimori. Aggressively pursued by the elves, tension grows between Derek and Sturm when Sturm refuses Derek's order to attack the elves. The heroes eventually decide to split the party with Derek and Sturm taking the orb on to Sancrist while the rest of the group lures away the pursuing elves. Silvara guides this group to the tomb of the legendary hero Huma Dragonbane. There they meet the enigmatic, bumbling wizard Fizban (who was presumed dead). Silvara reveals the great secret that she is a silver dragon, and agrees to aid the party in forging Dragonlances, which will be necessary in turning the tide against the Dragonarmies. The focus goes back to Tanis's group travelling to the port city of Flotsam. The adventurers pose as a traveling magic show, with Raistlin the star magician, and are able to make some money and escape undue attention. En route, Raistlin gains power over, and masters the use of, the Dragon Orb he obtained in Silvanost. By this time, Sturm and Derek have reached Sancrist with the Dragon Orb. Derek brings charges of dishonor against Sturm for his failure to obey orders, but due to one of the leading knights, Lord Gunthar Uth Wistan, personally pleding his honor on Sturm's good character, Sturm is allowed to become a full Knight of Solamnia in the Order of the Crown. Sturm is also made third in command of the Solamnic Knight force being sent to defend the High Clerist's Tower in Solamnia behind Derek and the Knight of the Sword, Lord Alfred Markenin. The Tower guards a narrow pass in the mountains and is the primary avenue of defense for the rich city of Palanthas, but the citizens of Palanthas believe the Dragonarmies will leave them alone and thus provide little support, either in terms of men or supplies, for the defending Knights. The Whitestone Council is convened to try to form an alliance to fight the Dragonarmies. The council quickly descends into chaos between the "allies" as the elves threaten war against the knights unless the Dragon Orb is returned to them. Finally, to stop the bickering, Tas shatters the Dragon Orb by throwing it against the Whitestone. Amidst the confusion, Theros Ironfield demonstrates the power of a newly-forged Dragonlance by shattering the Whitestone with it. The stunned allies grudgingly agree to start working together. Back on the mainland, Laurana and Flint testify on behalf of Sturm Brightblade before the knights, leading to him being fully exonerated of all the charges Derek brought against him. Lord Gunthar is so impressed by Laurana that he asks her to travel to the High Clerist's Tower to bring the news that Sturm has been cleared and to deliver the new Dragonlances to the knights. Laurana feels that Gunthar is using Sturm to further his own ambition but still agrees to go for Sturm's sake. On the other side of Ansalon, Tanis and company are staying in an inn in the disreputable city of Flotsam. The city streets are dangerous: it has been overrun by the Blue Dragonarmy and a large portion of the army is present in the town, occupying every bar and inn. Tanis and Caramon, in an effort to blend in, steal the armor of two Dragonarmy officers. As Tanis wanders the streets, he is attacked by a deranged elf in a back alley. Suddenly, he is rescued by Kitiara, the fiery human woman that is Tanis's ex-lover and half-sister of Raistlin and Caramon. Kitiara has risen to the rank of Dragon Highlord, leading the Blue Dragonarmy. Tanis, stunned, lies to prevent the capture of the rest of the group and claims he is a new officer under her command. She escorts Tanis to her quarters and the two resume their love affair. Meanwhile, the Knights of Solamnia (along with Laurana, Flint, and Tas) have fortified the High Clerist's Tower. They are greatly outnumbered by the besieging Blue Dragonarmy and are low on supplies. Morale within the Tower is low; the vindication of Sturm has led to a split between the low-ranking Knights of the Crown and the higher ranks, led by Derek and Markenin. Derek's grip on reality also appears to be slipping. Finally, as supplies near their end, an increasingly desperate Derek orders a frontal assault on the encamped Dragonarmy, stating that they will flee before the charging knights. Sturm, believing this to be suicide, refuses the order and does not permit his Knights of the Crown accompany the attack. Derek and Markenin carry out the attack with most of the garrison and are promptly slaughtered. Bakaris, the ranking Dragonarmy commander, brings the headless body of Lord Alfred and a dying Derek up to the tower and starts to taunt the few remaining defenders when he is silenced by Laurana shooting him in the arm. The Blue Dragonarmy attacks the tower in force the next day but is repulsed by the few remaining knights. Still, Sturm knows this is only a temporary victory as now the enemy will bring their dragons up to attack the tower. Meanwhile, deep within the recesses of the Tower, Tas has found yet another Dragon Orb and realizes that the unusual architecture of the tower is designed as an elaborate dragontrap, designed to lure dragons into a center chamber in the tower and slay them. The dragons attack, overwhelming the defenders with dragonfear. Sturm manages to stall them for a short time but is killed by Kitiara. Inside the tower, Laurana successfully controls the Dragon Orb, which lures two blue dragons inside the traps, where the Knights slay them using their Dragonlances. Kitiara wheels her Dragon away and escapes the call of the orb. The Dragon Orb also drives all the attacking draconians insane, causing the advancing Blue Dragonarmy, which had been on the cusp of victory, to collapse into utter chaos. Afterwards, Laurana goes out to protect the body of Sturm and is confronted by her romantic rival, Kitiara. Kitiara informs Laurana that Tanis is with her, then departs. Sturm is buried in the chambers below the Tower, eulogized by a bitter and angry Laurana, and honored by all the survivors of all embodied by the Knights. The novel ends with Alhana Starbreeze burying her father in Silvanesti and departing back to her people, still refugees.
4616840	/m/0ccwb3	Dragons of Spring Dawning	Margaret Weis	1985-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ===Into the Blood Se he Master of Past and Presen he Golden Genera ook he Tra eunite ook escue Missio erak haos and Escap ndings and Epilogue=== Exiting the city, Tanis and Laurana meet up with Fizban, Caramon, Tika and Tasslehoff. Fizban then reveals that he is really the god Paladine. Tanis also recognizes him now as the old man at the Inn who first spurred them into action by calling for the guards in Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Fizban tell the heroes that both the good and evil dragons will remain on Ansalon and that balance has been restored between good and evil. Fizban explains to Caramon that the spirit who has helped Raistlin at times (and who Raistiln made a bargain with in the Great Library) is the ancient evil wizard Fistandantilus. But he points out that Raistlin is not being possessed and chose his life and his actions all by himself. The companions separate. Tasslehoff to travel to Kenderhome, Caramon and Tika to travel to Solace and Tanis and Laurana to travel to Kalaman. In the epilogue, Raistlin travels to the Tower of High Sorcery in an abandoned neighborhood in the city of Palanthas, cursed and unoccupied since the end of the Cataclysm. He proclaims himself to be the master of past and present whose coming was foretold, is recognized by the spectral denizens of the tower, and settles into his new home.
4619848	/m/0ccz_4	The Hemingway Hoax	Joe Haldeman			 In 1921, Hemingway's writing career suffered a setback when his first wife, Hadley, lost a bag containing the manuscript and all the carbon copies of his first novel on a Parisian train. Since that time there has been speculation about the nature of the novel and whether the manuscript survived and may turn up one day. Seventy-five years later in 1996, John Baird, a Hemingway scholar (and possessed of a completely eidetic memory), is persuaded by Sylvester "Castle" Castlemaine, a grifter in Key West, to create a fake manuscript to be passed off as one of the lost copies. Initially reluctant, he goes along with this because, with some legal trickery, it may be possible to do it without attracting the attention of the authorities. However, instead he attracts attention from an altogether different quarter. Somewhere, or somewhen, there are entities who control the paths of destiny in the multiple parallel versions of our world that exist. Anything that affects the cultural influence of Hemingway is a threat to them. We eventually learn that many of the timelines are supposed to end in 2006 with a catastrophic nuclear war when two macho superpower leaders, both influenced by Hemingway's stories, refuse to back down in a crisis. If even a few timelines fail to reach this point, then the reverberations across the Omniverse will be fatal. We follow Baird as he carries out research in the Hemingway collection at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, and attempts to get aged paper and the exact model of typewriter that Hemingway used. He gets three surprises. First, Hemingway appears to him on a train back from Boston to Florida, and warns him to give up on the scheme. Second, the Hemingway, as he comes to call it, kills him by inducing a massive stroke when he refuses. Third, he wakes up on the same train - or is it the same? He is slightly different himself, with two sets of similar but conflicting memories. The Hemingway entity is surprised as well. Humans are supposed to stay dead. Instead this one shifted to a parallel timeline. Back in Florida, life continues roughly as before. Castle brings in a seductress to bedazzle the scholar even as he has an affair with his wife Lena. Here the themes of the novel begin to parallel those of Hemingway's own stories. Through multiple encounters with the Hemingway entity, and multiple deaths, Baird stays with the scheme, as much to defy this mysterious tormentor as anything else. Each new world, however, seems a little worse than the last, especially when it comes to Castle's personality. In the final universe, Castle is a psychotic killer whom they attempt to have arrested on an out-of-state warrant. The Hemingway entity comes to Baird and offers to show him what happened to Hadley's bag, in exchange for giving up on the hoax. Travelling back in time, they see the thief - it is Hemingway himself, but he speaks to Baird and the entity before vanishing. Without knowing how, Baird finds himself back in his own time, with the bag. At that point Castle, having escaped arrest, violently kills all his co-conspirators with shotgun blasts. The scholar's awareness persists, and he is able to reverse the flow of time and rearrange events so that the women survive, even as he shoots the grifter and takes a shotgun blast in the mouth, imitating the real Hemingway's suicide. Now, freed from his body, Baird has become like the entity that pursued him. He experiences Hemingway's memories, backwards from the end. Reaching the point where the young Hemingway, devastated and enraged by the loss of the manuscripts, crystallizes his masculine outlook and turns to face his future, Baird's awareness separates and comes to consciousness of his abilities. He moves back in time, steals Hadley's bag, allowing himself to be seen doing it in the person of Hemingway. He drops it off for himself to find in the present, before abandoning time for the spaces between. Thus, the "Baird entity" creates himself out of Hemingway's psychic trauma, and it is implied that he actually creates all the other entities we have encountered in the story. The novel ends with Hemingway writing the short story "Up in Michigan" in Paris in the 1920s, and suddenly experiencing an odd premonition of doom.
4620413	/m/0cc_vn	Ambush at Corellia	Roger MacBride Allen		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The New Republic are attacked by strange spies. Han Solo shoots and kills one only to find out that the spy is from his home planet of Corellia. Leia sends a message to Corellia about the attack and that they would like some help to find out who is behind the attacks. When they do not reply, Leia and Han Solo, along with their children and Chewbacca, head to Corellia. They are ambushed by Corellian Rebels and learn that the Corellian system has turned away from the Republic, building a new Corellian Republic. Han, Leia, and Chewbacca must escape Corellia and return safely home to Coruscant.
4620455	/m/0cc_xd	Assault at Selonia	Roger MacBride Allen		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Han Solo is a prisoner on his home planet of Corellia. His captor is his evil cousin, Thrackan Sal-Solo. The man plans to restore the imperial empire and bring himself great personal power. Han joins with a female alien named Dracmus against Sal-Solo's corrupt Human League. Han Solo wishes to escape to Selonia to warn his friends but he is not even sure he can trust Dracmus. Meanwhile, forces conspire to take control of Centerpoint Station, an ancient artifact/world with the ability to destroy solar systems.
4620488	/m/0cc_zg	Showdown at Centerpoint	Roger MacBride Allen		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Luke Skywalker and several of his Jedi Academy students travel to Centerpoint Station. This place contains a device capable of destroying planets. Various factions fight over the control of the Station.
4623256	/m/0cd45j	Plainsong	Kent Haruf	1999-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Maggie is the link between many of the other characters and strands of the novel. She introduces Victoria to the McPheron brothers, and has a romantic relationship with Tom. The novel was adapted in 2004 into a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie on CBS.
4623430	/m/0cd4ln	The Voodoo Plot	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The story begins when the Hardy Boys are on a stakeout at an antiques shop. The owner is robbed, and blames the Hardy Boys for slacking off. They later find out that a fellow basketball player's grandfather, Stretch Walker, is under a voodoo curse. The Hardy Boys fly off to see 'Rattlesnake Clem', a man who believes the revolution to still be on, and he believes himself to be the Shadowfox. he is arrested for the robbery when the stolen goods are found in his garage. Later, the Hardy Boys find Stretch and help him untangle the mystery of a voodoo cult that wants his bar, Stretch's. The story ends when the antique shop owner turns out to be the thief, going under the guise of King George III, and a mystery developed early in the story is revealed, Fenton's sock was stolen for use on a voodoo doll. When Aunt Gertrude hears this, she remarks how dangerous the business is.
4623763	/m/0cd5hr	Zeta Major	Simon Messingham		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Fifth Doctor returns to the planet Morestra, which he had visited two thousand years ago. The ruling class has become a theocracy and is trying to return to stealing crystals from Zeta Minor. This energy-granting plan did not work so well long ago and is again causing problems now. The Doctor tries to deal with the fallout of this situation while his companions are sucked into Morestra court intrigue.
4624135	/m/0cd5zt	The Immoralist	André Gide	1902	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While traveling to Tunis on honeymoon with his new bride, the Parisian scholar Michel is overcome by tuberculosis. As he recovers, he re-discovers the physical pleasures of living and resolves to forgo his studies of the past in order to experience the present—to let "the layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there." This is not, however, the Michel his colleagues knew—not a Michel that will be readily accepted by traditional society—and he must hide his new values under the patina of what he now reviles. Bored by Parisian society, he moves to a family farm in Normandy. He is happy there, especially in the company of young Charles, but he must soon return to the city and academe. Michel remains restless until he gives his first lecture and runs into Ménalque, who has long outraged society, and recognizes in him a reflection of his torment. Michel returns south, deeper into the desert, until, as he confides to his friends, he is lost in the sea of sand. Gide's story is filled by his descriptive prose, which evokes the exotic nature of Michel's inner and outer journey: "I did not understand the forbearance of this African earth, submerged for days at a time and now awakening from winter, drunk with water, bursting with new juices; it laughed in this springtime frenzy whose echo, whose image I perceived within myself." de:Der Immoralist es:El inmoralista fr:L'Immoraliste pt:L'Immoraliste ro:Imoralistul
4625119	/m/0cd7zw	Timewyrm: Genesys	John Peel		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In ancient Mesopotamia the Seventh Doctor and Ace together with Gilgamesh face a mythological Gallifreyan terror — the Timewyrm.
4625350	/m/0cd8c0	Luna	Julie Anne Peters	2004	{"/m/02qg536": "Transgender and transsexual fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Luna follows the life of sixteen year old Regan as she keeps the secret of her older brother Liam's transgender identity. During the day, Liam is an average senior student with a job making, programming and fixing computers alongside his best friend Aly. But at night, Liam 'transforms' into Lia Marie, a girl. Later, he changes his female name to Luna, which means "moon", to reflect that his true identity could only be seen at night. After years of ‘transforming’ only at night, Liam confides in his sister that he wants to transition into a real female. Liam asks Regan to help him with his transitioning and, although she agrees, she finds herself worried about Liam and his safety. The novel follows Regan as she makes sense of her bother’s decision, replaying memories of moments where Liam ‘let Luna out’ and fearing the worst for Liam’s transitioning. Other problems arise for Regan as she is attending high school. She spends most of her life avoiding other students, in fear of letting the secret slip. But a new boy at school, Chris, becomes interested in her. Although Regan enjoys attention from Chris, she draws away from him, choosing to stay focused on Luna. As Luna is coming out more, her father starts to notice differences in his son and tries to push a more masculine role onto Liam. Regan’s father confides in her that he believes Liam is homosexual. Meanwhile, their mother remains oblivious to the rising tension in the household. Consumed by the workload of her wedding planning business, the mother is constantly out of the house and distant from her family. Despite the tensions and the negativity weighing on her choice, Luna fights for her right to be the person she feels that she was meant to be. Alongside her, Regan learns to stand her ground, to think more of herself, and discovers the person she wants to be.
4625761	/m/0cd8_9	Mission to Magnus	Philip Martin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Sixth Doctor and Peri find themselves being threatened by Anzor, an old school bully from the Doctor's time on Gallifrey, who locks the TARDIS in orbit above the planet of Magnus. On this planet, Anzor has been working with the female upper caste to his own ends, alongside the Doctor's old enemy Sil. When the Doctor investigates further, he discovers that the polar icecaps of the planet hide an even darker foe — the Ice Warriors.
4627006	/m/0cdbmd	The Lifted Veil	George Eliot	1859-07	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The unreliable narrator, Latimer, believes that he is cursed with an otherworldly ability to see into the future and the thoughts of other people. His unwanted "gift" seems to stem from a severe childhood illness he suffered while attending school in Geneva. Latimer is convinced of the existence of this power, and his two initial predictions do come true the way he has envisioned them: a peculiar "patch of rainbow light on the pavement" and a few words of dialogue appear to him exactly as expected. Latimer is revolted by much of what he discerns about others' motivations. Latimer becomes fascinated with Bertha, his brother's cold and coquettish fiancée, because her mind and motives remain atypically closed to him. After his brother's death, Latimer marries Bertha, but the marriage disintegrates as he recognizes Bertha's manipulative and untrustworthy nature. Latimer's friend, scientist Charles Meunier, performs a blood transfusion from himself to Bertha's recently deceased maid. For a few moments the maid comes back to life and accuses Bertha of a plot to poison Latimer. Bertha flees and Latimer soon dies as he had himself foretold at the start of the narrative.
4629105	/m/0cdgsg	The Temple of Dawn	Yukio Mishima		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The lawyer Honda visits Thailand on a business trip and encounters a young girl whom he believes to be his schoolfriend's second reincarnation. Eleven years later she travels to Japan to study and he befriends her in the hope of learning more. The main narrative takes place between 1941 and 1952. The last chapter is set in 1967. In 1941, Shigekuni Honda is sent to Bangkok as legal counsel for Itsui Products in a case involving a spoilt shipment of antipyretic drugs. He takes advantage of the trip to see as much as he can of Thailand. After touring many great buildings, he visits the Temple of Dawn and is deeply impressed by its sumptuous architecture, which to the sober lawyer represents "golden listlessness", the luxurious feel of anti-rationalism and of "the constant evasion of any organized logical system". Mentioning to his translator, Hishikawa, that he went to school with two Siamese princes (Pattanadid, a younger brother of Rama VI, and his cousin Kridsada, a grandson of Rama IV&mdash;both in Lausanne with their uncle Rama VIII), a short meeting is arranged with Pattanadid's seven-year-old daughter, Princess Chantrapa (Ying Chan), who claims to be the reincarnation of a Japanese boy, much to the embarrassment of her relatives, who keep her isolated in the Rosette Palace. Ying Chan almost immediately claims to recognise Honda, asserts that she is Isao and demands to be taken back to Japan with him. Honda questions her and satisfies himself that she is the genuine article, but is bothered at a later meeting by the absence of the three moles that helped him identify Isao. At the conclusion of the lawsuit at the end of September, Itsui offers him a bonus in the form of a travel voucher, which he uses to travel to India. He visits Calcutta, where he sees the Durga festival; Benares, where he witnesses open-air cremation; Mogulsarai, Manmad, and finally the Ajanta caves, closely associated with Buddhism, where he sees cascades that remind him of Kiyoaki's last promise to "see him...beneath the falls". He returns to Bangkok on November 23, at a time when relations with Japan are deteriorating, and is unpleasantly affected by the crassness and ugliness of the Japanese tourists at his hotel. A last visit to see Ying Chan at the Chakri Palace goes disastrously, when the translator lets slip that Honda is leaving for Japan without her, and Ying Chan throws a tantrum. Almost immediately after he returns to Japan, war is declared with the United States. The atmosphere is almost festive. Honda spends all his spare time studying Buddhist philosophy and pays no attention to the war. Even when confronted by bombed-out residential districts, he feels no emotion; in fact, his studies have left him even more indifferent to the outside world than before. At the end of May 1945, Honda encounters the former maid, Tadeshina, at the former Matsugae estate. Tadeshina reminds him about Satoko Ayakura, who is still at the Gesshu Temple to which she retired at the end of Spring Snow. (Honda has an impulse to visit Satoko but cannot obtain train tickets.) He gives Tadeshina some food, and in return she gives him a book she uses as a talisman, the Mahamayurividyarajni, or "Sutra of the Great Golden Peacock Wisdom King (or Queen)". A description of this sutra in Chapter 22 concludes Part One. Chapter 23 introduces Keiko Hisamatsu, Honda's neighbor at his new villa at Ninooka, a summer resort in the Gotemba area. In 1947, the new Constitution resulted in the sudden resolution of a lawsuit filed in 1900, as a result of which Honda earned a 36,000,000 yen fee for a single case. He uses part of this money to buy the property, which overlooks Mount Fuji. In the same year he won the case, he rediscovered (in an antique shop owned by Prince Toin) the emerald ring that the Thai prince, Chao P., had lost at the Peers School in 1913. At a housewarming party, two pseudo-artistic friends of Honda's are introduced: Mrs Tsubakihara, a mournful poetry student under Makiko Kito (who perjured herself for Isao's sake in Runaway Horses), and Yasushi Imanishi, a specialist in German literature who is obsessed with elaborate sadomasochistic fantasies set in "The Land of the Pomegranate". Many other guests arrive, in scenes which represent Mishima's caricature of post-war Japan; to Honda's disappointment, Ying Chan, another invitee who is now a student in Japan, does not turn up. During the night, Honda peeks into the guest room and is shocked to see two of his guests having sex while a third watches. This is the first indication of Honda's literally voyeuristic tendencies (which are intended to be emblematic of his approach to the world). The next day they visit the shrine of Mount Fuji; the day after, Honda learns from Keiko that Ying Chan turned up at his house a day late. Ying Chan and Honda meet for dinner at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo; Honda returns the emerald ring. Arriving back home he finds Iinuma, the decrepit father of Isao, waiting for him. During a confessional conversation, Iinuma tells him about a suicide attempt he made in 1945 and shows him the scar. As he leaves, Honda feels sorry for him and gives him 50,000 yen in an envelope. Honda decides to settle the question of Ying Chan's "inheritance" (the three moles on the midriff) once and for all. He tries to get Katsumi Shimura, a nephew of Keiko, to seduce Ying Chan, but he fails. Scenes elaborating on Imanishi and Tsubakihara follow, including Imanishi's excited reaction to Communist student demonstrations in Tokyo. Finally, Honda invites Ying Chan to a pool party at his villa. Now that Ying Chan is clad in a bathing suit, he sees no moles on her side. It is only while spying on her in the guest room that he finally sees the moles. To his amazement, she is sleeping with Keiko. His satisfaction with this ocular proof is short-lived: Imanishi falls asleep while smoking in bed and Honda's villa burns to the ground. Both Imanishi and Tsubakihara are killed, but the others in the house survive. Honda assumes that he has saved Ying Chan (who returns to Thailand) from karmatic fate, but his hopes are dashed in the final chapter.
4629842	/m/0cdj0s	Dreams of Empire	Justin Richards		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Doctor and his companions land in what seems to be a medieval castle. In reality, it is a fortress/prison, the last stronghold for military forces. The TARDIS crew quickly finds itself in danger from outside threats and inside, not the least of which is seemingly self-animating suits of armor.
4629955	/m/0cdj8b	The Final Sanction	Steve Lyons		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is the second and so far final encounter between the Doctor and the Selachians, first introduced by Lyons in his previous Second Doctor novel, The Murder Game. The year is 2204. The Doctor is caught in human history. When the TARDIS is stolen and Zoe is kidnapped by a Selachian he is forced to intervene in a war. The Doctor most make a painful choice which is more important the flow of a time stream or the lives of his companions.
4630000	/m/0cdjc2	Black Water	D.J. MacHale	2004-08-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This entire story is unsettling for the characters. Mark Dimond, now one of two acolytes (librarians for the Travelers' journals) is aghast to find that Andy Mitchell, the school bully, is a scientific idiot savant. Courtney Chetwynde, Mark's partner acolyte and one of Bobby's romantic interests, finds that she is no longer the phenomenal athlete of her earlier years. It starts off where The Reality Bug left. Bobby says goodbye to Aja Killian and flumes to Eelong. There, Bobby discovers a society wherein humans do only menial work, dominated and even enslaved by biped felines called Klee. The enslaved humans, called Gar by their oppressors, have begun a revolution called the Advent and are led by the almighty guardian who is mostly covered by a dark shadow, you can only see his distinct yellow eyes and feathers. At the arranged moment, radio broadcasts will be sent from the hidden Gar capital of Black Water through small amber cubes, demanding that the entire Gar population leave their squalid stables at once and march to their capital, where they can be free. Without them, the Klee cannot maintain their standard of living. Worse, Saint Dane is trying to stir up genocide. To do so, he has poisoned the crops gathered by the races of Eelong, urged the Klee to hunt and eat the Gar, and arranged for Black Water to be bombarded by toxic gases. It is discovered by the acolytes of Second Earth that the poison used by Saint Dane in these plans was taken from the territory of Cloral. The only antidote is likewise Cloran, having been developed by the Scientists of Faar. Eager to take an active role in the Travelers' quest, the children go to Cloral and collect the antidote. With them to Eelong goes the Cloran Traveler, Vo Spader. Because the poison, the antidote, and the acolytes are unique to their respective territories, the interrealitial tunnels called flumes undergo stress and strain in transporting them. On Eelong, Bobby has experienced the most degrading aspects of Gar life and learned from them. With the help of the Klee Traveler Kasha, he makes rendezvous with Gunny at Black Water. There, Kasha is exposed violently to Saint Dane's evil ways for the first time. This encounter creates a passionate dedication to her destiny. Travelers and acolytes work together to bring the antidote to Black Water, where it will be distributed throughout the city's irrigation system. When the Klee under Saint Dane's orders use the poison, it is made harmless. Thereafter, the Klee and Gar live as equals, each doing what they do best as well as contributing to one another's success. Mark and Courtney reluctantly return to Second Earth, while Bobby moves on to Zadaa in pursuit of Saint Dane. However, things do not go according to plan. The flume on Eelong is destroyed by the passage of non-Travelers through it, leaving Spader and Gunny trapped on Eelong. Bobby reaches Zadaa, but Kasha gets hit in the head with a boulder which kills her in the collapse of the flume on Eelong. Bobby, aided by the Traveler Loor, cremates the Klee's body and store her ashes. On Second Earth, Mark and Courtney are intact and home. They learn of what happened through Bobby's journals, although amazed that no time has passed on Second Earth since they left for Eelong. The book ends with Bobby Pendragon writing his 19th journal in Loor's home on Zadaa.
4631391	/m/0cdl2s	Dying in the Sun	Jon de Burgh Miller		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Los Angeles, 1947. LAPD detective Robert Chate is convinced that the man who calls himself 'The Doctor' has something to do with the murder of multi-millionaire movie producer Harold Reitman. The Doctor aids the police in their investigation, while looking into 'Star Light Pictures'. The Doctor is convinced there is a powerful threat hidden somewhere in the soon to be released film 'Dying In the Sun'. He decides to stop the release any way he can and faces opposition from the Hollywood power structure.
4632423	/m/0cdm94	Cold Mountain	Charles Frazier	1997	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens in a Confederate military hospital where the protagonist, Inman, is recovering from a recent battle wound. Tired of fighting for a cause he never believed in and longing for his home at Cold Mountain, North Carolina, he decides to desert from the Confederate Army and sets out on an epic journey home. The narrative alternates between the story of Inman and that of Ada Monroe, a minister's daughter recently relocated from Charleston to the rural mountain community of Cold Mountain. Though they only knew each other for a brief time before Inman departed for the war, it is largely the hope of seeing Ada again that drives Inman to desert the army and make the dangerous journey back to Cold Mountain. Details of their brief history together are told at intervals in flashback over the course of the novel. At Cold Mountain, Ada's father soon dies and the farm where the genteel city-bred Ada lives, named Black Cove, is soon reduced to a state of disrepair. A young woman named Ruby, outspoken and resourceful, soon moves in and begins to help Ada to overcome her circumstances and the two of them form a close friendship as they attempt to survive in this harsh war-torn environment. Inman's journey to return to Ada is perilous. He faces starvation, extreme weather, the constant harassment of the Home Guard sent to track down deserters, and the treachery of other desperate individuals. He is at times aided in his journey by strangers equally affected by the horrors of war. Frazier's narrative depicts a bleak landscape of America during the Civil War focusing on the emotional and psychological scars left upon combatants and citizens alike.
4632754	/m/0cdmmj	The Redwall Cookbook	Brian Jacques	2005	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01kqty": "Cookbook"}	 This book features numerous recipes for dishes mentioned in the Redwall series, and features illustrations by Christopher Denise. The plot follows Sister Pansy through one cycle of the seasons in Redwall Abbey, as she becomes the Head Cook. The cookbook is divided into the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. As befits the cooking of gentle woodland creatures, all of the recipes (with the exception of the obvious crustacean ingredient in Shrimp'n'Hotroot Soup) are completely vegetarian. Each recipe is preceded by a description of who is making the dish and how it is being prepared. There are also short warnings and anecdotes by the characters sprinkled throughout the text.
4633635	/m/0cdnv9	Polaroids from the Dead	Douglas Coupland	1996		 The book is split into three parts. The first part is Polaroids from the Dead, which is a collection of short stories inspired by a series of Grateful Dead concerts. The second is Portraits of People and Places, which is a collection of essays about people and places, including a letter to Kurt Cobain and a discussion of the Lions Gate Bridge. The last part is called “Brentwood Notebook” and is a discussion of Brentwood, California, a suburb of Los Angelus. It is also where Marilyn Monroe died, and where Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered. The first part contains ten fictional stories. They have titles like “The 1960s Are Disneyland”, and "T or F: Self-Perfection Is Attainable Within Your Lifetime." The stories focus on both young and old characters and their experiences with Grateful Dead concerts. Interspersed within the text are large, full-page images of the Polaroids that inspired the story. Other images include a picture of Sharon Tate and Charles Manson, in reference to their mention in a story. This section was originally published in a slightly different form in Spin Magazine, in April 1992. ;List of Chapters : 1. The 1960s Are Disneyland : 2. You Are Afraid of the Smell of Shit : 3. You are Exhausted by Risk : 4. T or F: Self-Perfection Is Attainable Within Your Lifetime : 5. Tinkering with Oblivion Carries Risks : 6. You Don’t Own Your Body : 7. You Fear Involuntary Sedation : 8. You Can’t Remember What you Chose to Forget : 9. Technology Will Spare Us the Tedium of Repeating history : 10. How Clear Is Your Vision of Heaven? This section includes multiple essays and letters on a variety of topics. This section is nonfiction, excluding the last story. Some essays are recollections of places and events in Coupland’s life, such as an article on the Lions Gate Bridge, or a story about a visiting German reporter. Some are told as postcard recollections of places Coupland has visited. Others are essays about people, such as a letter to Kurt Cobain. The last piece is a collection of microstories about the 1992 American election's Super Tuesday. Many of these essays were published in other publications, such as Spin, Vancouver Magazine, Tempo, Artforum, and The New Republic. The essays appeared in slightly different forms. ;List of Chapters: : 11. Lions Gate Bridge, Vancouver, B.C., Canada: Originally published in Vancouver Magazine under the name “This Bridge Is Ours” : 12. The German Reporter: Originally published in Tempo : 13. Postcard from the Former East Berlin (Circus Envy) : 14. Letter to Kurt Cobain: Originally published in The Washington Post : 15. Harolding in West Vancouver: Originally published in The New Republic in February 1994 : 16. Two Postcards from the Bahamas. : 17. Postcard from Palo Alto: Originally published in The New Republic in May 1994. : 18. James Rosenquist’s F-111 (F-One Eleven): Originally published in Artforum in April 1994. : 19. Postcard from Los Almos (Acid Canyon) : Originally published in The New Republic in May 1994. : 20. Washington, D.C.: Four Microstories, Super Tuesday 1992 This part is a long extended essay discussing Brentwood, California. The essay is broken down into a chronological time periods, spanning a day from Morning, to Afternoon to Late Afternoon. The essay follows Brentwood from its inception to its notoriety with the death of Marilyn Monroe and the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. It also discusses the idea of post-fame, when fame becomes a liability to the famous. The essay incorporates information off billboards and menus into its text, including interesting historical documents as well. Portions of Brentwood Notebook was published in The New Republic in December 1994.
4634530	/m/0cdqff	Song of Lawino	Okot p'Bitek			 Song of Lawino, which is a narrative poem, describes how Lawino's husband, Ocol, who is the son of the tribal leader of their specific Acoli tribe, has taken a new wife, Clementine. Although Ocol's polygamy is accepted by society, and by Lawino herself, it is apparent from his actions (as described by Lawino) that he is shunning her in favor of his new wife. Ocol is also said to have a fascination with the culture of the white colonialists, as does Clementine. As an example of this, Lawino says Ocol no longer engages, or has any interest in, the ritualistic African dance but prefer the ballroom style dances introduced by the colonising Europeans. This loss of culture on the part of Ocol is what disturbs Lawino the most. The poem is an extended appeal from Lawino to Ocol to stay true to his own customs, and to abandon his desire to be white.The book also castigates the treatment of christianity by pagans and advocates for the african culture which has been lost by the educated elite.Lawino bemourns her husband's lack of african pride and she goes on to romanticize about all that is black.This is illustrated widely in the text as the african woman Lawino appreciates the fact that "all that is black is beautiful."However it should be noted with great concern that Ocol becomes sentimental about the african culture alone and paints the western culture with a black brush.
4634547	/m/0cdqh4	Caedmon's Song	Peter Robinson	1990	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 One warm June night, a university student called Kirsten is viciously attacked in a park by a serial killer. He is interrupted, and Kirsten survives, but in a severe physically and psychologically damaged state. As the killer continues, leaving a trail of mutilated corpses, Kirsten confronts her memories and becomes convinced not only that she can, but that she must remember what happened. Through fragments of nightmares, the details slowly reveal themselves. Interwoven with Kirsten’s story is that of Martha Browne, a woman who arrives in the Yorkshire coastal town of Whitby with a sense of mission. Finally, the two strands are woven together and united in a startling, chilling conclusion.
4634742	/m/0cdqmp	The Colony of Lies	Colin Brake		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The independent Earth Colony Axista Four was supposedly founded in the 2439 by Stewart Ransom, a noted humanitarian. Arriving on the colony one hundred years later, the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie find a near-civil war. 'Realists' have abandoned Ransome's 'back to basics' ideals and are raiding the remains of the colony ship to further their technological advancements. The 'Loyalists' are in danger of extinction. In a little-known underground bunker, aliens who claim to be the planet's first colonists are stirring. Hopeful colonists hope Random's daughter, Kirann, can be revived from cryogenic suspension and reunited the colony. This does not work out as expected.
4639312	/m/0cdzh8	Raven's Gate	Anthony Horowitz		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Written by: Kalvin Meyer Matt Freeman is a fourteen year old boy who lives in Ipswich with his aunt, Gwenda Davis, who turns out to be an antagonist in Evil Star . He lives with her because his parents died in a car crash when he was eight years old. While living with his aunt, he breaks into a warehouse filled with electronic equipment with his friend, Kelvin Johnson. After they get caught, Matt is sent to Yorkshire on the L.E.A.F. (Liberty and Education Achieved through Fostering) Project, which involves sending troubled children into the countryside to get away from city temptations. Matt's foster parent is a woman named Jayne Deverill, who lives on a farm with a strange farmhand named Noah, who doesn't talk much. When Matt goes down to the nearby village of Lesser Malling on an errand for Mrs. Deverill he receives a warning from a strange man. The man warns him to get away from Lesser Malling before it is too late. So Matt tries to escape, and while trying to find some money he goes into Mrs. Deverill's bedroom and finds a copy of the police report detailing his parents' deaths and his clairvoyant powers. Matt tries to escape Hive Hall by stealing the bike of Mrs. Deverill's missing husband. He tries to ride away, but finds it impossible to escape, because which ever way he goes, he always ends up back at the same intersection in the forest he started at. He hears strange whispers and sees a light in the trees. After a while, He discovers Omega One, an abandoned nuclear power station, in the woods and meets the man from Lesser Malling again. The man introduces himself as Tom Burgess, gives Matt a charm that prevents him from going in circles like before, and tells Matt to meet him at his house. Matt visits his house the next day and finds Tom Burgess murdered, with the words "Raven's Gate" painted on the wall in green. Matt runs away as fast as possible, then finds the police and tells them what he saw. They go back to the house where a woman named Miss Creevy says that Tom Burgess has gone to tend to his sheep and visit someone far away. He shows the police officers the scene where he saw Tom Burgess's body, but finds nothing. The words painted on the wall have been painted over. To get information about Raven's Gate, he finds a book by someone called Elizabeth Ashwood, but the chapter on Raven's Gate is ripped out. When he searches on the Internet, an instant-mail box appears, and a man called Professor Sanjay Dravid talks to him, asking Matt who he is. Matt tells him his name, then the pop-up window disappears. The librarian tells Matt to go to the Greater Malling Gazette to find articles on Raven's Gate, and there he meets Richard Cole, a young journalist working there. Matt tells his story to him, but Cole doesn't believe him. And oddly, when he leaves the Gazette he finds Mrs. Deverill waiting for him with Noah. They forcefully take Matt back to Hive Hall. Later that night, Matt wakes up to see another light coming from Omega One, even though he found out from the gazette that it hadn't been used in 20 years. Matt knows something is going on and explores the woods. Near the power station he finds an old witchcraft ceremony going on with all the inhabitants of Lesser Malling involved. The power station lights are coming on and men are carrying materials into the building. Matt is noticed and Mrs Deverill summons some gruesome hounds from a fire to kill Matt. While Matt is being chased, he accidentally falls into a bog and begins to sink. Richard Cole arrives and rescues him, as Matt had used his power to call for help. The dogs arrive and Richard kills them by getting a can of gasoline stuffed with a handkerchief, lights it on fire, then throws it at the dogs setting them on fire. They then go back to Richard's house in York. Richard now believes Matt's story because he remembers Omega One and says there were sections of the story he "couldn't get out of his head". Since Matt suspects that there is something odd about Omega One, they meet with the engineer who designed and built it, Sir Michael Marsh, but find out nothing except for how a nuclear power plant works. Matt and Richard then go to visit Elizabeth Ashwood, the author of the book in the library. Elizabeth Ashwood is revealed to have died, but her daughter Susan is there. She advises them to go meet Professor Sanjay Dravid in London after Matt demands to know about Raven's Gate. She also tells them that she and Dravid are part of an organization known as the Nexus. Richard and Matt travel to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. Dravid tells Matt about the Old Ones. They were dark creatures who survived on human misery many years ago, and once wanted to rule the world, but were transported to another dimension by five children with supernatural powers. The Five, or the Gatekeepers, as they are also known, then built Raven's Gate to hold the evil creatures away. According to Dravid, Mrs Deverill and the villagers of Lesser Malling are part of a group of witches who seek the return of the Old Ones by opening Raven's Gate using witchcraft. Dravid tells Matt that he is a part of one of the five children who defeated the Old Ones, and has inherited their powers while Mrs Deverill and the citizens of Lesser Malling, who are all descendants of witches and warlocks, want to sacrifice him on the night of Roodmas, the day black magic is most powerful. Richard doesn't believe Dravid and begins to leave with Matt. But as Professor Dravid returns to his office to contact the Nexus and get his keys, he is attacked and walks out of his office with a cut in his neck and dies. Richard quickly takes his keys, but then is also attacked by dinosaur skeletons in the museum and at that moment dozens of skeleton dinosaurs turn to life and attempt to kill Matt and Richard. Richard is trapped by a diplodocus's rib cage and then crushed by a girder. Matt is recaptured by Mrs Deverill, who animated the dinosaurs to kill them. Matt wakes in the barn at Hive Hall, and to escape he slowly removes the floorboards in his room with a makeshift chisel. When Noah enters the room to take Matt to Mrs. Deverill, he falls through the hole made by Matt, which was covered by a rug, and dies because he fell on his sickle. Matt runs away to the road, and a car comes towards him. It is the nuclear scientist who built Omega One, Sir Michael Marsh. But then Matt realises that Sir Michael is a traitor, working with the inhabitants of Lesser Malling, and Sir Michael explains that he was the one who bought the power station's uranium in the first place. Matt is taken inside Omega One, and realizes that it was built where Raven's Gate once stood. Richard Cole survived the ordeal at the museum and has been recaptured by the witches. They are taken to the inner sanctum, where Matt and the villagers are held in a magical protective circle, but Richard is left outside it to die in the heat. Sir Michael Marsh reveals that he needs Matt's blood to complete the black magic ritual that will open Raven's Gate. Marsh is about to stab the knife into Matt when Matt focuses on his powers and surprisingly stops the knife. He defeats Marsh and frees himself and Richard. They escape to the lower levels of the power station but are followed by Mrs Deverill. She knocks out Richard and is about to kill Matt when Richard recovers and shoves Deverill into a pool of radioactive acid. Then they escape from Omega One by jumping into an underground river under the building. Back in the inner sanctum, the station's levels are at critical mass. The villagers panic and run out of the protective circle, killing them all and leaving Sir Michael Marsh alone. Marsh then realises there is a tiny drop of Matt's blood on the knife and stabs down with the knife, causing Raven's Gate to break and explode open. The King of the Old Ones climbs out of the portal and crushes Sir Michael to death. The power station then overloads and explodes, but all the heat and radiation is sucked into the gate, taking the Old Ones with it. The portal and the Gate are sealed and the Old Ones are once again trapped in their separate dimension. Matt ends up living with Richard in York. They get a visit from Fabian, a member of The Nexus, who has come to talk to him about a second gate in Peru. Richard doesn't want to go through all this again, but Matt explains he has no choice because he is a Gatekeeper and, as the Old Ones will break out again, it is his destiny to stop them.
4639587	/m/0cdzwf	The Green Man	Kingsley Amis	1969	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the novel unfolds, Allington is beset by a number of difficulties, including his father’s death by stroke at dinner one night, and a drinking problem that causes hypnagogic jactitation and hallucinations; Maurice compounds his problems by pursuing an affair with his doctor’s wife, neglecting his daughter Amy (whose mother, Maurice’s first wife, was run down in a road accident) and attempting to seduce both his current wife and his mistress into a ménage à trois, which backfires when the two women take an enthusiastic interest in each other and effectively shut him out of the orgy. During this time Maurice begins to see ghosts around the inn – a red-haired woman, presumably Underhill’s wife, in the hallway, a small bird floating above his bathtub, the spectre of Thomas Underhill himself in the dining room – and yet has a difficult time communicating this to his family and friends, who assume that heavy drinking and the stress of his father’s death are causing him to hallucinate. Maurice’s own investigations take him to All Saints’ College, a fictional Cambridge college (modeled on All Souls’ of Oxford) of which Underhill was a fellow, and at which his papers are secreted. There he sees Underhill’s own record of having used his black arts to entice and then ravish young girls from the village. In the meantime Maurice has discovered his own notes of a drunken, and forgotten, midnight conversation with Underhill, during which Underhill begins to enlist Maurice’s help in his as yet undisclosed scheme. This involves Maurice’s unearthing of Underhill’s nearby grave, in which he finds an ancient silver figurine that Underhill requests be brought to another midnight meeting in the inn’s dining room. That afternoon, having left the scene of the failed orgy, Maurice finds himself in a strange time warp, as it were, in which all molecular motion outside his drawing room ceases. He finds himself in the presence of a young, suave man who it comes to be understood is God himself. The purpose of the visit is to warn Maurice against Underhill and ask him to aid in Underhill’s destruction, but during the conversation Amis has the young man elaborate an interesting sort of theology, explaining the Creation and God’s powers within it. The young man leaves Maurice with a silver crucifix, as a sort of counter-weight to the silver figurine. When the midnight meeting comes about, Underhill attempts to delight Maurice with a sort of holographic yet primitive pornography show; Maurice feels he is in damp, murky cave, on the walls of which are projected bizarre sexual scenes. As the show becomes more terrifying, Maurice realizes that Underhill has absented himself; when he hears his daughter crying out from the road in front of the inn, he realizes Underhill’s intentions. In the climactic scene, Maurice uses the crucifix to stun Underhill and runs outside, where he confronts the entity Underhill had used the figurine to conjure: the green man, a collocation of branches, twigs and leaves in the form of a large and powerful man. The thing is bent, evidently, on killing Maurice’s daughter Amy. By hurling the figurine back into the graveyard Maurice saps Underhill’s power and destroys the green man. Underhill’s purpose had been, apparently, to have Amy killed as a sort of experiment in lieu of the sexual depredations which are now forbidden him by his lack of corporeality. A final scene wraps up the novel’s loose ends: Maurice destroys the figurine, and he employs the modish, cynical and repellent parish priest (who makes God out to be, in the young man’s words, a “suburban Mao Tse-tung”) to exorcise Underhill and his green man. Maurice’s wife leaves him (for his mistress), but his daughter proposes, and he agrees to, a plan to move away from The Green Man and get a fresh start. Maurice is somewhat relieved, while recognizing that he will remain until his death trapped in all of the faults, petty and otherwise, that constitute him as Maurice Allington.
4640253	/m/0cd__v	Mr. Tickle			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Mr. Tickle's story begins with him in bed and making himself breakfast without getting up because of his "extraordinarily long arms". He then decides that it is a tickling sort of day and so goes around town tickling people - a teacher, a policeman, a greengrocer, a station guard, a doctor, a butcher and a postman. The book ends with a warning that Mr. Tickle could be lurking around your doorway, waiting to tickle you.
4641452	/m/0cf22c	The Riders	Tim Winton	1994	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Riders tells the story of an Australian man, Fred Scully, and his 6 year old daughter Billie. Scully, as he is known, and his wife Jennifer have planned to move from Australia to a cottage they have purchased in Ireland. His wife and daughter are due to arrive in Ireland but at the airport only Billie arrives, traumatised and unable to tell her father what has happened or why her mother put her on the plane alone. The story then follows Scully and Billie as they travel around Europe retracing the steps of their previous travel, trying to find Jennifer and work out why she left them.
4642309	/m/0cf3k7	The Night of Wenceslas	Lionel Davidson	1960	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nicolas is a 24-year-old Londoner, a witty wastrel and the novel's archetypal anti-hero. He hates his job in his late father's glass-making business, where he works under the odious Nimek in anticipation of making full partner one day. He dreams of inheriting untold riches from his Uncle Bela in Vancouver, which will put an end to his current servitude. His bossy Irish girlfriend Maura continually presses him to make something of himself. His one true love is his car, which he bought on an impulse, and its maintenance keeps him in permanent hock to the garage owner "Ratface" Ricketts. A note arrives from a lawyer called Stephen Cunliffe, stating that his Uncle Bela has died in Canada and left him a fortune. He goes to see Cunliffe, who forwards him a sum of £200 to tide him over until such time as he can begin to enjoy the fruits of his new estate. However, Nicolas manages to spend this allowance in a matter of days, and is soon back at Cunliffe's office to arrange a more stable income stream. However, Cunliffe now declares that Uncle Bela is very much alive, that he, Cunliffe, is in fact a moneylender, and that Nicolas owes him £200, with the MG as security. The distraught Nicolas is told that he can discharge his debt if he is willing to carry out a simple assignment in Prague. He is to bring back certain formulae for glass-making processes from a glass factory that used to belong to Pavelka, an associate of Cunliffe's who also happens to have been a wrestler in the past. After much cogitation, Nicolas travels to Prague. It is the city of his childhood, and he stays in a plush hotel on Wenceslas Square. He meets up with various bigwigs in the Czech glass-making industry, and is escorted by the statuesque Vlasta Simenova.
4643023	/m/0cf4t7	Proteus in the Underworld	Charles Sheffield		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sondra Wolf Dearborn is a junior operative in the Office of Form Control. Her job is to monitor questionable and illicit form change techniques, enforce the Humanity Test, and prosecute illegal mods. She is a recent addition to the force, arriving just three years after the retirement of the legendary Bey Wolf, one of the greatest form change experts alive. She is assigned to a strange case by her superior Denzel Morone: several instances in which the Humanity Test has been successfully applied, but the "infants," if they could be called that, are feral monsters. Knowing that there is no way the specimens could have (or should have) passed the test, and also aware of her own limitations and inexperience, Sondra seeks advice from Bey Wolf, her distant relative. Bey Wolf resides on Wolf Island, a private resort he chose for the name and the isolation it provides. Having retired, he is pursuing his own research in animal Form Change, a fairly taboo subject. Sondra Wolf Dearborn arrives unannounced and uninvited, and he berates her before sending her off, telling her to visit the distant colony and inspect the Humanity Test equipment herself for possible flaws. He is ready to put her out of his mind when he receives another unwelcome visit, this time from Trudy Melford, president of BEC: Biological Equipment Corporation, the manufacturer of all Form Change tanks for the last 150 years. Trudy Melford is one of the richest and most powerful people alive, and a personal visit to a remote island is evidence of great urgency and need on her part. Bey Wolf, annoyed by Trudy's interruption, is nonetheless intrigued by her offer of a position at BEC to work on revolutionary new forms. However, his natural cynicism and detective's instincts tell him that the two visits in such a short time are connected somehow. Sondra Wolf Dearborn takes Bey Wolf's advice, after some initial stonewalling by her superior Denzel Morone, and heads for the outsystem. Generally regarded by Earth as a sparsely populated backwater, the Cloudlanders (referring to the Oort Cloud) have an inverse view of themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization, with Earth and the inner system a spent and tired cesspool of humanity. Sondra enlists the help of Bey Wolf's friend Aybee, a physicist and administrative genius, to further investigate the malfunctions and charter a flight to the Fugate colony, site of the first Humanity Test failure. Upon arriving at Fugate, Sondra is unnerved to find that Fugates are tens of meters tall, a form designed to allow cerebral growth unrestricted by the constraints of the mother's pelvis. The Fugates guide Sondra to the supposedly flawed equipment, then leave her alone at her request. Sondra performs every test she can imagine on the suspect Form Change tank, but is unable to find any software problems. She also rules out hardware flaws after inspecting the unbroken BEC seals. Having concluded her investigation, she suddenly realizes that she has been locked in the tank chamber and the atmosphere is becoming dangerously thin and cold. With no alternative, she sets up an emergency form change regimen in one of the tanks to put her in a cold-tolerant coma, and reluctantly steps inside. Meanwhile, Trudy Melford successfully lures Bey Wolf to Mars, the new headquarters of BEC. Bey is astonished to find that the entire Melford Castle (her family's personal estate) has been moved to Mars brick by brick, ostensibly for tax purposes. Trudy, acting as the gracious host, treats him to a lavish dinner and all but promises her body to him, if he will only accept a position at BEC. She even opens up her database to Wolf, giving him full access to all of BEC's past, present, and future undertakings. Fascinated, Bey spends hours browsing through theoretical form change research efforts currently in progress. This experience heightens his suspicions; the BEC engineers are ingenious, what problem could possibly be so important and so intractable that it warrants Trudy Melford's personal recruitment efforts towards him? Bey Wolf is beginning to realize that a very complex mystery is unfolding around him, and he has a hunch that the Humanity Test false positives are involved. He contacts Aybee and asks the Cloudlander to keep an eye on Sondra Dearborn, and even places a call to Roger Capman, another brilliant form change expert who has adopted a Logian Form: a supersentient methane breathing human form. Roger Capman, along with all other Logians, lives in floating cities deep in the atmosphere of Saturn. Logians have a stated policy of noninterference in human affairs, although Roger Capman maintains a special relationship with Bey. Roger expresses great interest in the situation but offers little information. Bey investigates further, and makes contact with the Mars Foundation, an organization founded by the original Mars colonists and continued by their descendants. Their goals are lofty: the terraforming of Mars, and their resources are truly enormous. For the past hundred years they have been shuttling comets to Mars and smashing them into the equator, gradually increasing the humidity and thickening the atmosphere. Their hope is that humans will eventually be able to walk on the surface of Mars without a suit. They think Melford has recruited Bey Wolf to help her perfect the new "surface forms" that have been spotted recently on Mars; humans who vaguely resemble kangaroos, and are already able to live unassisted on the Martian surface. The Mars Foundation's request is simple: snub BEC, refuse the contract, and they would match Trudy's offer. Bey had already discussed the surface forms with Trudy, and she had admitted that BEC was not behind the design, but she was interested in the possibilities (and profit) they presented. Assuming Trudy was telling the truth, there was a third party behind these new forms. Bey takes his leave and decides to venture out onto the surface, where he meets Georgia Kruskal, the genius behind the new Martian form. Bey recognizes in her intellect and ingenuity a kindred spirit, and he immediately asks Georgia for permission to contribute to her project. Aybee arrives at Fugate colony to discover Sandra in the form change tank. He and a puzzled Fugate revive her, and she claims to have survived a murder attempt. Her attempts to explain this to her supervisor back home fall on deaf ears, and he orders her back to Earth. Aybee encourages Sondra to make a stopover at Samarkand, because he has found a curious anomaly in the system traffic while looking for clues as to the identity of Sondra's attempted murderer: Trudy Melford's personal yacht recently paid a visit to Samarkand, a reclusive asteroid colony which has outlawed all form change. Why would the president of BEC visit a colony vehemently opposed to form change technology? Back on Mars, Bey is also the target of a murder attempt. A helical escalator is sabotaged and he falls thirteen meters, breaking a leg and an arm. He barely manages to summon help before passing out, and is brought back to Melford Castle. He persuades Trudy to send him back to his home on Wolf Island, where he programs a dangerously rapid regeneration procedure into his customized Form Change Tanks; in just under a week, he'll be out and walking again. He's now convinced a major conspiracy is underway, and all signs point to Trudy Melford. Sondra is of the same mind, and she manages to arrange a meeting with Trudy herself. Sondra and Bey confront Trudy, and they learn that she bore a child several years ago which failed the humanity test. Unable to relinquish her son to the organ banks, Trudy instituted a massive coverup and faked his death during a boating accident. She moved her corporation to Mars, not for the tax breaks, but to provide a safe and isolated haven for her illegal son. The visits to Samarkand were a diversionary tactic; if anyone got too close and suspected the truth, they would waste their efforts in a futile search of Samarkand's population. Trudy's ultimate goal was to undermine the legitimacy of the Humanity Test itself, by engineering defects into BEC equipment so that obvious non-humans would occasionally score a false positive. The murder attempts on Sondra and Bey were coordinated by her misguided underlings, attempting to win favor. Bey promises Trudy that he will reveal to the whole system that the Humanity Test is flawed. In fact, both he and Roger Capman nearly failed the test when they were infants. The Test apparently rejects certain those with a certain psychological profile. For generations, the human race has been culling what could have been some of its most brilliant minds! The revelation of Trudy's motives leaves another mystery unsolved: the enormous financial resources of the Mars Foundation. It is at this point that Bey Wolf confronts Roger Capman, who admits that the Logians have been interfering with human affairs after all. They have financed the whole terraforming operation on Mars in order to keep the human race from fragmenting and undergoing speciation. They foresee a time not far in the future when humans evolve into separate subspecies through isolation of populations. Bey realizes that this same fear has been at the back of his mind for years, but he had been unable to articulate it. Roger Capman makes another attempt to convince Bey Wolf to join him in Logian Form, but Bey Wolf realizes that he has many more years of life left to him as a human, and he intends to enjoy them and continue to contribute to human society.
4644511	/m/0cf6r7	Harbinger	David Alan Mack	2005-07-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The U.S.S. Enterprise is damaged after being the first ship to travel to the edge of the galaxy. They are traveling through the Taurus Reach and are surprised to find a new Federation facility, Starbase 47 A.K.A. Vanguard. Captain James T. Kirk is puzzled at this place for many reasons, including it being so near the xenophobic Tholian Assembly. Kirk has his ship dock for repairs. The Tholians, the Orions, and the Klingon Empire all believe there is much more to the establishment of this odd new starbase and there is.
4647958	/m/0cfcjv	Georges	Alexandre Dumas	1843	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel concerns the life of Georges, the son of a wealthy mulatto plantation owner named Munier, in the Isle de France (now Mauritius). While part-black, Georges appears to be very light-skinned, if not white. As a child, Georges witnesses an attempt by the British to gain control of the island. Because George's father is a mulatto, the other plantation owners refuse to fight alongside him. Instead, George's father leads the blacks and delivers a crushing blow against the invading forces. Refusing to acknowledge that a man of colour saved them, M. Malmedie and the other white plantation owners ignore the accomplishment. M. Malmedie's son Henry mocks Georges because of this, resulting in a fight between the two. Afterward, worried about any retaliation on the behalf of the plantation owner's father, George's father sends Georges and his old brother to Europe to become educated. In Europe, the brothers become separated when the older brother gets a job on a sailing ship. Georges becomes cultured, deeply educated and popular in Parisian circles. Through numerous tests of will Georges overcomes his weaknesses and becomes skilled in a variety of fields ranging from hunting to the art of seducing women. Upon his return, Georges has found that the plantation owners have forgotten who he is. In little time he becomes the toast of society, and a beautiful woman falls in love with him. He also discovers that his brother has become the captain of a slave-ship. However, Georges can't tolerate the injustice of slavery, so he conspires to lead a slave revolt. When this revolt fails, he becomes incarcerated and condemned to die. While he is brought to be executed, he is saved by a gang of pirates led by his brother.
4648452	/m/0cfd38	The Man from St. Petersburg	Ken Follett		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is set just before the outbreak of the First World War. It is an account of how the lives of the main characters were interwoven with the success or failure of secret naval talks between Britain and Russia. In these, Britain had to win the support of Russia in order to make any headway with its navy. As a result, Czar Nicholas’s nephew Prince Alexei was sent to London for high-level bilateral talks. Lord Stephen Walden is married to a Russian aristocrat called Lydia. His wife is also related to the young visiting Prince and Walden was one of the people taking part in the talks. When Prince Alexei arrived in London, his presence aroused the interest of not only the establishment, but tragically that of Feliks, an anarchist. Feliks, also a Russian, decided to eliminate Prince Alexei so that the Anglo-Russian negotiations would collapse. Having failed once to assassinate the Russian prince, Feliks looked for alternative methods. Eventually, he learned that Lydia, his ex-lover, was married to Walden. He visited the Waldens’ home and was able to get details of the Prince’s whereabouts. But his plot was foiled when Lydia, guided by her intuition, realised that Feliks had evil designs and told her husband about Feliks’ visit. As the drama unfolded, Walden’s daughter Charlotte got to know the effervescent Feliks. It was through her that he discovered once more about the hiding place of the Russian prince. It was about this time that Charlotte learned that her true father was not Walden, but Feliks. Lydia had been pregnant for two months before marrying Walden but this fact was unknown to Walden himself. The story moved up to a crescendo with the Russian prince being hidden in the country home of the Waldens. Yet again, Feliks, the assassin, wheedled this piece information from Charlotte. With her active support, Feliks hid himself right in the Walden home while the Special Branch was combing the entire village for him. At this point, Feliks decided it was time to make his move. He set the house on fire, which forced the prince to emerge to escaspe the flames. When the prince came out, Feliks shot him dead. But he himself lost his life in his attempt to save Charlotte who was trapped in the house by the inferno. When Walden later learnt of the paternity of Charlotte, he took it in his stride. For Feliks, it was a case of poetic justice. In the final chapter, Winston Churchil - at the time First Lord of the Admiralty and having recent experience as Home Secretary - arrives on the scene and formulates a comprehensive plan for damage control: Disposing of Feliks' body, hiding that such a person ever existed and regretfully informing the Czar that his nephew died in the fire but had already signed the treaty. Thus - in common with the conventions of Secret History - the whole affair remains hidden from public scrutiny and the First World War breaks out on schedule, and goes on with its four years of mass bloodshed. bn:দ্য ম্যান ফ্রম সেন্ট পিটার্সবার্গ es:El hombre de San Petersburgo fr:L'Homme de Saint-Pétersbourg it:L'uomo di Pietroburgo
4649413	/m/0cffqp	White Mughals	William Dalrymple	2002-03-29	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The book is a work of social history about the warm relations that existed between the British and some Indians in the 18th and early 19th century, when one in three British men in India was married to an Indian woman. It documents the interracial liaisons between British officers, such as Major-General Charles Stuart, and Indian women, and the geopolitical context of late 18th century India. Like From the Holy Mountain, it also examines the interactions of Christianity and Islam, emphasizing the surprisingly porous relationship between the two in pre-modern times. At the heart of White Mughals is the story of a love affair which saw a British dignitary, the East India Company resident of Hyderabad, Captain James Achilles Kirkpatrick, convert to Islam and marry Khair-un-Nissa, a Hyderabadi noblewoman of royal Persian descent. As the British resident of Hyderabad, Kirkpatrick is shown to balance the requirements of his employers, the East India Company, with his sympathetic attitude to the Nizam of Hyderabad. The very title of White Mughals indicates its subject: the late 18th- and early 19th-century period in India, where there had been ‘a succession of unexpected and unplanned minglings of peoples and cultures and ideas’. On one level, the book tells the tragic love story of James Kirkpatrick, ‘the thoroughly orientalised’ British Resident in Hyderabad and Khair, a beautiful young Muslim noblewoman. On another level, the story is about trade, military and political dealings, based on Dalrymple’s researches among letters, diaries, reports, and dispatches (much of it in cipher). Out of these sources he draws a fascinating picture of sexual attitudes and social etiquette, finding an ‘increasingly racist and dismissive attitude’ among the British ruling class towards mixed race offspring, after the rise of Evangelical Christianity. He paces the gradual revelations with a novelist’s skills, leading us on, after the death of Kirkpatrick, to ‘the saddest and most tragic part of the whole story’. The doomed lovers actually engender an optimistic coda, when their two children move to England. The daughter Kitty becomes a friend and muse of Thomas Carlyle, and re-establishes contact with her grandmother in India.
4650467	/m/0cfh0f	Avoidance	Michael Lowenthal	2002-11-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jeremy is a 28-year-old man working at the summer camp where he spent a childhood summer and where he found a true sense of family after the death of his father. Jeremy now works at the camp as an assistant director. He becomes infatuated with Max, a disturbed 14-year-old. When Max confides in him that he has been sexually abused by the camp director, a victim of sexual abuse himself, Jeremy realises just how close he came to actually committing the same crime.
4651123	/m/0cfhsm	Fade	Robert Cormier	1988	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the summer of 1938, the young Paul Moreaux who lives in a town outside of Boston called Monument, discovers he can "fade". "Fading" is the term used for being invisible and becoming invisible to the world. His family has had this ability generation after generation. It is passed down from uncle to nephew. First bewildered, then thrilled with the possibilities of invisibility, Paul experiments with his "gift". This ability shows him things that he should not witness. His power soon overloads him, shows him shocking secrets, pushes him over the edge, and drives him toward some chilling and horrible acts from which there is no forgiveness, no forgetting, and no turning back. His depressing downfall impacts the reader. Paul discovers how cruel, evil, and disgusting the world can be. Paul sees so much by his gift. The ability to fade becomes a nightmare because he learns so much that he did not want to see or hear.
4652940	/m/0cfld0	Diary of a Drug Fiend	Aleister Crowley		{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 The main protagonists find themselves desperate after their drug supply diminishes. The particulars of their desperate addiction and cravings are documented in realistic detail. The pair, however, are saved from destruction by an adept Magician named King Lamus. This mysterious and charismatic figure frees Pendragon and Lou from their addictions through the use of Magickal techniques, aimed at mastering True Will and releasing the individual from sloth, self-destructive impulses and craving.
4653750	/m/0cfmph	Dream Boy	Jim Grimsley	1995	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nathan is an intelligent but shy, adolescent boy, who wants to escape from his abusive and violent father and fantasizes about a relationship with Roy, the boy who lives next door. Roy is a senior at the same high school as Nathan, and he drives the school bus. Gradually their relationship deepens and becomes sexual. Drunk one evening, Nathan's father tries to molest him. This is clearly not the first time it has happened and helps explain Nathan's desire to escape from his family. His mother avoids the issue, although she knows what is going on. Nathan is accepted into Roy's social circle and is invited to go on a camping trip with Roy and his friends Randy and Burke. During the trip, they discover an abandoned and possibly haunted plantation house and Nathan and Roy are discovered in a compromising situation. Burke later on rapes and hits Nathan with a chair handle. Readers are left to decide whether Nathan is killed or not, as he is seen returning to town and finding Roy.
4654579	/m/0cfp1r	The Decay of the Angel	Yukio Mishima	1971	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A retired judge, Shigekuni Honda, adopts a teenage orphan, Tōru Yasunaga, whom he believes to be a dead schoolfriend's third successive reincarnation. The novel opens on Saturday, 2 May 1970, with a seascape off the coast of the Izu Peninsula. Tōru Yasunaga is an orphaned 16-year-old boy working in Shimizu as a signalman, identifying ships by telescope and notifying the offices at Shimizu harbour. He works a 24-hour shift every third day, from a high platform on the Komagoe shore, built on top of a strawberry farmer's water tank. Honda, walking along the shoreline, notices it in passing. Later, that night, Tōru is visited at his post by his friend Kinue, a mad girl who believes that she is incredibly beautiful and that all men are after her. Kinue tells him a long story about how a boy molested her on the bus. After midnight, at his house in Hongō, Honda dreams about angels flying over the Miho Pine Grove, which he had visited that day. At 9am, Tōru's shift ends and he takes the bus home to his apartment. He has a bath, and we see that he has the same three moles as Kiyoaki. In Chapter 7, it is explained that Honda's wife Rie has died and that Keiko, a happily single lesbian, has become a platonic companion for him. They have gone travelling together to Europe, and hold canasta parties. Honda is preoccupied with his dream life and with the past, and has trouble with his housekeeper and maids. In her old age, Keiko is devoted to the study of Japanese culture, but her knowledge is second-hand and superficial, and Honda calls it a "freezer full of vegetables". They visit the Miho Pine Grove, a tourist-trap Honda already saw and disliked. They have their picture taken, sticking their heads through holes in a board painted to make them look like Jirōchō and his wife Ōchō, who were bosses of Shimizu Harbour in the 19th Century. They see the giant dying pine, where, according to Zeami's Robe of Feathers, an angel supposedly left her robe, and had to dance for the fisherman who stole it in order to get it back. They also go to Mio Shrine. On the drive back home, they stop at the signal station Honda saw several days ago. He is strangely drawn to it, and they go inside to look around. Because Tōru is only wearing an undershirt, Honda sees the moles on his side. Back in the car Honda announces his intention to adopt the boy. In Keiko's hotel room on Nihondaira, Honda explains to her the significance of the moles and tells her the whole story of Kiyoaki's two previous reincarnations. She reluctantly accepts this story. Honda makes her promise to tell no-one, especially not Tōru. On 10 August, Tōru becomes aware that he is being investigated by detectives through a story of Kinue's, and later that month he is visited at home by the superintendent, who announces Honda's intention to adopt. By October, Tōru has moved to the house in Hongō and is receiving lessons in table manners and other social skills. Honda is eager to protect him from premature death and tries to inculcate the cynicism that Kiyoaki, Isao and Ying Chan lacked. Three tutors are employed for Tōru. In late November the literature tutor, Furusawa, takes him to a local coffee-house and tells him a political parable about the nature of suicide and authority. Tōru suddenly feels dislike for him and engineers his dismissal. Relishing the feeling of power this gives him, he casts around for a more amusing victim. In late spring of 1972, two friends of Honda try to arrange a marriage between Tōru and their daughter, Momoko Hamanaka. After dinner, Momoko shows Tōru photo-albums in her room and he makes up his mind to hurt her. The two families go on holiday to Shimoda; it is there that Honda realises that Tōru is secretly hostile to Momoko. As the demure relationship progresses, Tōru analyses Momoko and, while talking to her in the Kōrakuen Garden a year or so after their first meeting, he decides to make her jealous by acquiring a second girlfriend. At a go-go hall on his way home from school, he picks up a 25-year-old who calls herself "Nagisa" (Miss Brink) and they have sex a few days later. Nagisa gives him a medallion with her monogram on it. Momoko does not notice it until they go swimming together, and she gives the "N" an innocuous interpretation. It is only when Nagisa approaches Tōru in the coffee-house that her jealousy is aroused. Momoko throws the medallion into a canal and insists that Tōru must leave Nagisa. Tōru claims that he cannot do it alone, and dictates a letter for Momoko to send to Nagisa. In the letter, Momoko is made to lie that her family is in financial difficulties and that she needs to marry Tōru for his money. Momoko hopes to inspire guilt in Nagisa. After the letter is delivered, Tōru goes to Nagisa's apartment, snatches it from her, and takes it to Honda. The marriage is off. Several months later, in early October 1973, Honda and Tōru visit Yokohama, and at the harbourside have a conversation. Tōru realises that Honda has guessed that the letter was fake, and that he takes satisfaction in the guile his adopted son displays. Tōru is furious at being seen through so easily, and throws his diary into the water. At the end of 1973 he finishes school, and is accepted into university. In the spring of 1974, Tōru enters his majority and drops all pretences. He becomes violent with Honda and intimidates him into getting his way on everything, moving Kinue into a hut at the bottom of the garden, spending money freely and abusing the maids. On 3 September 1974, Honda is caught spying on couples in the park, and the incident makes the newspapers; Tōru moves to have him declared senile. On 20 December, Tōru goes to a Christmas party at Keiko's. To his amazement, he is the only guest. Keiko reveals Honda's true motivations for adopting him, and cheerfully explains that if he does not die in 1975, he must be a fraud. Tōru returns home and demands Kiyoaki's dream diary. On 28 December, Tōru tries to commit suicide by drinking methanol, but it only blinds him, and he survives. Honda discovers that Keiko has betrayed him, and he breaks off contact with her. Tōru loses all motivation and spends his days with Kinue in her cottage. Honda eventually concludes that Tōru was not, in fact, Kiyoaki's reincarnation. At about this time, Honda is afflicted by pains which he does nothing about for months. On 22 July 1975, just before a hospital appointment, Honda goes to Gesshū Temple for the first time since February 1914. Satoko, who is now the Abbess, admits him, but during their conversation he mentions Kiyoaki, and she claims that she never knew anyone of that name. Baffled and desolate, Honda replies "Perhaps then there has been no I."
4654659	/m/0cfp5w	America	E.R. Frank	2002	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Born to a crack addict, America was given to a rich white family. They decided they didn't want him any more after his skin started to darken at five years old. The family's nanny, Sylvia Harper, adopted America. She had a "man-friend" named Clark Poignant, and a half-brother named Browning. Clark Poignant befriended America. After a year, America gets sent back to his biological mother by the state. Browning tells America to be as bad as he possibly can, so he will get sent back. America's mother lived in a shoddy house in New York City with America's two older brothers, named Brooklyn and Lyle. America's mother is never around, so five year old America has to live with his brothers- aged 7 and 9 - for two years. America, Brooklyn and Lyle become hooligans, vandalizing and stealing all over the place. However, their luck runs out when an elevator worker finds them scribbling America's numbers all over the elevator. America is sent to a hospital, and Brooklyn and Lyle are sent to a foster home. Soon, he is sent back to Mrs. Harper. Mrs. Harper has grown old and arthritic, and Browning has moved in to America's old bedroom, which they share. Clark Poignant died after he left. However, America has difficulty erasing stopping the bad behaviors and cussing he learned. He soon starts Grade 2, even though he is illiterate. Browning sees that America enjoys being bad and secretly encourages him to be bad. When America begins school, he meets Liza, who shares some of his bad behavior, and they develop crushes on each other. Browning's relationship with America continues to develop. He gives America a lighter with a naked lady on it, and gives him alcohol. He also gives America reading lessons with pornographic magazines. Eventually, Browning begins to molest America and has sex with him on occasion. America likes the feeling of Browning touching him and begins to promote his sexual relations. Then Browning introduces America to masturbation and both masturbate together in the room unnoticed. Then discovers that his mother had six children. He also learns her drug money at the time of each child's birth. America burns the chart and throws the ashes at Browning. Then, out of anger, America sets Browning's bed on fire with his lighter, killing him. America goes to New York and lives with a marijuana dealer named Ty (Charles Tyler). Ty is eventually arrested by the NYPD and America is questioned by a detective. During the interview, he confesses to the murder of Browning. He goes to court, but he is not convicted, so the judge sends him to Applegate. At Applegate, America befriends Wick, Marshall and Ernie, and is acquainted with the seemingly mentally retarded Fish. Ernie worries about America. America resists therapy and attempts to destroy a therapist's officer after he asked if America's uncle had done anything to him. Ernie is the only one who understands America's plight. Eventually, a distraught America climbs a tree and attempts to hang himself. But Ernie finds him hanging from the tree and saves his life. Shortly after, he is sent to Ridgeway. At first, America refuses to talk to Dr. B. Eventually He begins to open up to Dr. B. America decides to send a letter to Ernie to thank him for saving his life. When Ernie replies, he says he knows America killed a man, but he also knows America is a good person. He mentions Liza, who contacted Applegate looking for him. Three weeks after his sixteenth birthday, he meets Brooklyn. Later, Dr. B tells him America is ready to work in the kitchen. When he is in the kitchen, though, he wastes enormous quantities of carrots because they remind him of cooking dinners with Browning. When America is 17, Brooklyn enters detox again. America receives a letter from Liza. Dr. B informs America there is a spot open in a transitional home, where he will live with two other young people, Kevin and Ben, and a social worker named Phillip. America decides to go. At the home, America writes Liza and tells her she can come by if she wants. Dr. B informs America Brooklyn has eloped. Liza is finally re-united with America at the home. But America still thinks about what happened to Mrs. Harper and Lyle, and why Brooklyn eloped. He is unable to cook in the home because of painful memories coming up again. When America is eighteen, he receives a letter from Brooklyn, which tells him that they are brothers, and that they are associated. Dr. B teaches him positive self-talk to eliminate painful memories, but America still wants to see Mrs. Harper. He struggles to tell Liza he truly loves her, and is troubled by love. He visits Mrs. Harper in the nursing home, who is delighted to see him. Mrs. Harper dies several days after his visit. America and Dr. B cry together reading the letter from the nursing home. America feels forgiven by Mrs. Harper, and burns his fifty-seven pairs of shoelaces with his lighter and then he throws his lighter away, symbolism showing his painful memories are gone and he is able to live his life. The books ends with a dream about everyone who had a positive impact on America's life, lifting him up by the hand of God. America says he is found.
4656302	/m/0cfrnd	Punk Farm	Jarrett Krosoczka	2005-04-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Krosoczka's book tells the story of five farm animals— Sheep, Pig, Chicken, Goat and Cow—who are an underground rock band, perform a punk cover of "Old MacDonald had a Farm" while Farmer Joe is asleep.
4657570	/m/0cftm2	Struggle for the Land				 As its foreword, the book features a poem by Jimmie Durham. The preface is by Winona LaDuke and poems from John Trudell's Living in Reality appear as preludes to each section. Russell Means' 1982 platform for president of the Oglala people is included as an appendix. Maps of Indian land claims/treaty areas are included. The book is dedicated "for my mother." The mostly previously published essays collected provide a history of Native American struggle for decolonization provided through the examples of the Haudenosaunee in upstate New York, the Lakotas on the northern Plains, the Lubicon Cree in northern Alberta, and the Navajo and Newe (Western Shoshone) in the upper Sonoran. The case is made that uranium mining, coal stripping, hydropower generation, and water diversion are ecocidal as well as genocidal, and that the ecological damage poses a threat to all North Americans. Churchill also discusses the Native North American diaspora caused by their displacement. : "Not only the people of the land are being destroyed, but, more and more, the land itself. The nature of native resistance to the continued onslaught of the invading industrial culture is shaped accordingly. It is a resistance forged in the crucible of a struggle for survival." —from the introduction
4657767	/m/0cftxf	Point Blanc	Anthony Horowitz	2001-09-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 After getting into trouble with a drug dealer and the police, Alex Rider is assigned by MI6 to investigate the deaths of billionaires, Michael J. Roscoe in New York and General Viktor Ivanov on the Black Sea. Each of them had a son attending Point Blanc, an academy in the French Alps run by a South African scientist, Dr. Hugo Grief, and both died under mysterious circumstances. This may seem like a coincidence, but Alan Blunt is suspicious, and sends Alex to investigate. Alex's cover is that of the son of a supermarket magnate, Sir David Friend. Alex initially spends a week as a member of Friend's family and is required to memorise as much detail as possible about his cover. However, during his stay with the family, he receives a hard time from David's daughter Fiona. Alex even finds himself shot at by Fiona's friends when they go out shooting, only for Fiona to claim that it was 'just a bit of fun'. The next day, when Alex and Fiona are out horse riding, Fiona falls off her horse in the middle of a railway tunnel. Alex goes back in on his horse and just about manages to retrieve Fiona and jump off a bridge into a river before they are run over by a high speed train. Which causes Fiona to apoligize for her harsh behavior. Grief's assistant Mrs. Stellenbosch, arrives at the Friend's house by helicopter. Smithers meets with Alex undercover as a farmer and provides him with some equipment and gadgets (including an electric saw disguised into a Sony Discman, an mini grenade disguised as an ear stud, a bulletproof ski suit, infrared ski goggles, and a single-shot tranquilizer gun disguised as a Harry potter book ). Stellenbosch is about to take Alex to the academy, but Fiona, due to the fact she doesn't know he's a spy but becomes suspicious, is about to expose him but is shot with the tranquilizer from Alex's book. Alex is taken to a hotel in Paris, where his dinner drink is drugged. His bed is then transported where Mrs. Stellenbosch has Alex stripped to his underpants, photographed, examined, and measured. After the examination, Alex's clothes are put back on and he is returned to his hotel room, without him ever realising what had happened. Upon arriving at Point Blanc, Alex meets the founder Dr Grief and later a student who goes by the name of James Sprintz as well as a group of other boys he gets to know through the week such as Hugo Vries, Tom McMorin, and Joe Canterbury. James thinks something is wrong with the academy because the other boys were rebellious before and then suddenly became complacent. One day, after James reveals to Alex his plan to escape the academy. After sneaking out of his room using the Discman, Alex witnesses a boy being forcibly dragged downstairs and is convinced it is James. Yet Alex later sees James unharmed in his bedroom. The following day at breakfast, James' attitude towards his plan to escape seems to have changed. Alex climbs a chimney to examine the forbidden second and third floors. He discovers that the second and third floors are accurate replicas of the ground and first floors respectively (for instance, replicas of the boys' rooms, with TV screens monitoring their behaviour downstairs). Alex signals MI6 using the CD device provided to him by Smithers. This signal is received by the MI6 office, where Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones debate whether to move in on the academy immediately. Blunt decides to prepare a unit on stand by. Following later Alex finds some boys locked in a basement jail, including James and the son of Michael J. Roscoe, Paul. Alex learns that James was indeed dragged downstairs and was replaced by a replica. Alex reveals the truth to James and Paul, his identity and the reason why he was sent to Point Blanc. Mrs. Stellenbosch is told of this after someone overhears it via a bug planted in the cell and knocks Alex unconscious, has him handcuffed to a chair, and turns him over to Dr. Grief, who then reveals his plan to take over the world, named "Project Gemini". In the 1980s, Grief cloned sixteen copies of himself in his home country of South Africa (where he greatly supported the apartheid regime). While the real boys are at Point Blanc, a plastic surgeon named Baxter surgically alters Grief's 14-year-old clones to resemble them. Soon, the clone and the real boy are swapped. The replica rooms are used by the clones to imitate the boys' behaviour so the parents will not notice that they have been swapped. When the parents die and pass on their inheritance, Dr. Grief will take the assets from the clones. Eventually, he will be the most powerful man in the world, and reinstate apartheid globally. Grief imprisons Alex, planning to dissect him alive the next day for a biology class. Alex uses his exploding ear-stud to escape his cage. He improvises a snowboard (using an ironing-board) to escape, but Grief sends his guards on snowmobiles with machine guns to take him down. During the pursuit, one snowmobile crashes into a tree because it could not fit through a small gap that Alex squeezed through. Another guard is knocked in the head by Alex's 'snowboard' and ultimately falls. Alex almost makes it to the bottom of the mountain but a machine gunner previously prepared by Grief is waiting for him. Just as the man is about to fire, a train approaches in the way. Alex jumps on top of it but loses his balance, falls and passes out. Alex is taken to a hospital in Grenoble, where a visiting Mrs Stellenbosch is told that Alex has died. However, it is revealed that Alex is alive, and MI6 then sends him out again with a team of SAS soldiers (among them is Wolf, an SAS soldier introduced in Stormbreaker) to help liberate the school. In the school, the SAS team take out several guards and go down to the basement to attempt to save the imprisoned boys. An on-going fire-fight ensues as the team encounter more guards. Wolf demands Alex to stay back. Alex goes into the dining room and sees Dr Grief about to escape in helicopter. However, Mrs Stellenbosch appears who is surprised and disappointed that Alex is still alive. Despite Alex's efforts to fend her off, she overpowers him and pins him against a wall. She pulls out a gun and just as she points it at Alex, Wolf appears. Wolf is shot three times by Mrs Stellenbosch but manages to shoot the woman himself with his machine gun. Mrs Stellenbosch falls out a window. Alex prevents Dr. Grief escaping by driving a snowmobile up a ramp and crashing it into Grief's helicopter, jumping off at the last second. Alex is debriefed by MI6 and Mrs Jones tells him that all fifteen clones have been arrested. Alex later goes home where Jack Starbright informs him that his school headteacher wanted to see him. Alex goes to his school and to the headteachers office and is startled to find a clone that resembles him, who avoided capture and escaped. Indeed Dr Grief earlier told Alex that he produced sixteen clones. The clone tries to shoot Alex, causing a fire in a laboratory. Alex runs up to the roof, only to be followed by the clone. The two fight ending with one of them falling into a hole following an explosion. It can be presumed that it was the clone who fell, however this is not made clear.
4659671	/m/0cfxh0	The Book of the Dun Cow	Walter Wangerin, Jr.		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins with the introduction of the hero, Chauntecleer, a rooster in command of a company of hens, and the land surrounding his coop. The story takes place at a time when humans have not yet made an appearance upon the Earth (a time before the Book of Genesis). Animals have been put on earth before man in order to protect the world from an ancient evil Wyrm, which is trapped at the center of the Earth. Chauntecleer, while not a bad ruler, is a flawed character, somewhat quick to anger, and self-important. The novel's initial chapters define several important characters as well as the origins of the main antagonists in the book, Wyrm and Cockatrice. While Chauntecleer spends his days dealing with a rogue rat that has invaded his coop, and trying to become accustomed to a newcomer, Mundo Cani, a depressed dog that is always crying out in anguish, the reader is shown another country from across the river. There is where the author introduces the evil in the book. For in the land away from Chauntecleer's there lives another rooster named Senex. He is a rather a weak ruler, and his barnyard subjects don't think anything of him. What troubles Senex the most is his lack of a son, which he mourns greatly over. One day though, he is spoken to by Wyrm, who communicates to him through dreams. Wyrm instructs Senex to have faith in him, and to wait for him to deliver Senex a son of his own. Senex does exactly what his visions request, and soon he manages to lay an egg, defying the natural order of mating. Eventually the egg hatches, though what appears from it is a horror beyond words. An evil monster named Cockatrice is born. It is a creature with the head, wings, and legs of a chicken, but a thin, gray, scaly, serpent body. He kills Senex, and claims the kingdom for himself. A sycophantic toad serves as Cockatrice's voice and turns the basilisk eggs for him. He becomes an evil tyrant and begins to rape all of the laying hens under his rule, in order to give birth to an army of wicked basilisks; poisonous snakes that he uses to crush any opposers to his will (Toad is killed with them) and destroy the country. A few of the animals manage to escape the land, and flee into Chauntecleer's kingdom, where they live happily for a while, trying to forget the nightmares of their past. Finally there seems to be peace in the book. There comes a time of spring, when everyone in the land is filled with joy. Chauntecleer has even bred three sons to his name with an escapee from Cockatrice's land, one of his hen victims, named Pertelote. Unfortunately he is plagued with terrible prophetic visions all the while. He dreams about the river next to his land, rising up and engulfing everything in an apocalyptic manner. The Dun Cow, one of God's messengers, brings an enigmatic riddle to him about the ways he can defeat the trio of evils: Cockatrice, his basilisk army, and Wyrm himself. During the day he tries to find happiness, but everyone is immediately struck with unbearable sorrow when the rooster's three sons are found lying dead by the river. The same egg-eating rat that Chauntecleer drove away is discovered dying, holding part of a venomous serpent (a basilisk) in his mouth. Chauntecleer soon discovers the story of Cockatrice, hearing it from his wife, who was a refugee from the land under Cockatrice's dictatorship. Eventually Chauntecleer learns that Cockatrice is attempting to make war on the world of animals, to make way for the coming of his true father, Wyrm. Chauntecleer takes action and bands together all of the animals in his land. All sorts of farm and woodland animals come together to fight the terrible evil that is at hand. They wait for a time, building up their forces, beginning to wonder if this evil really exists. Before long there is a surprise attack on a goofy wild turkey named Thuringer, who dies from a basilisk's bite. However, Mundo Cani saves the remaining turkeys. Thus begins the war between the basilisks and the animals of the land, a war reminiscent of the battle of Armageddon. The animals suffer massive casualties, but in the end manage to drive the basilisks to death. Unfortunately Cockatrice has not yet been dealt with, so the brave Chauntecleer dons a pair of war spurs (the weapon of choice for a bipedal bird) and goes onto the blood-soaked battlefield to confront his enemy. The battle between the two leaders is fierce and merciless. Cockatrice and his enemy do battle in the sky, and Chauntecleer eventually is forced to wrestle with the evil king on the ground. Chauntecleer manages to gain the upper hand, though not by much, and defeats the evil Cockatrice. He throws the monster's head into the river, and Wyrm announces his presence. Chauntecleer faints from weakness, and is brought back to the coop, which has by now been transformed into a fortress, where they try to resuscitate their fallen, but victorious, hero. Trouble is still ahead, though, for although all of the animals thought the war over, there enters the final evil. A great crevasse in the land breaks open, as Wyrm attempts to enter the world. During all of the turmoil Chauntecleer stirs inside the coop, and, delirious from exhaustion, he sees the dog and thinks him a traitor. He scolds him fiercely, rebuking him and instructing him to leave. In response, the other animals all agree that Chauntecleer is delusional, and that Mundo Cani should not be forced to leave. The dog turns to them and tells them that he knows what he must do, and takes off without any further words. The animals are confused by all of this, and only Chauntecleer, still in delirium, shouts for Wyrm to emerge so that they can fight. Just as Wyrm is about to creep from his prison onto the earth, he is confronted by a certain small dog. Mundo Cani comes to the crevasse, wielding the horn of the Dun Cow as a weapon, egging the ancient evil out of its crevasse by insulting it, insinuating that Wyrm is a coward not to face a small dog such as he. Wyrm falls for the trap, and when he sticks out his bright white eye, that he might see his opponent, the dog leaps onto his eye and impales it with the horn in his mouth. This causes Wyrm to fall back into the crevasse, collapsing the earth and sealing both Wyrm and Mundo Cani in a dark world below the crust. The entire world is safe again, though horribly shaken. The animals all find it difficult to fit back into their normal lives, especially Chauntecleer, who after bottling his emotions for a while, breaks down in front of his wife. He cries out in pain, knowing that the last thing he said to Mundo Cani before his great sacrifice, were words of scorn and hatred. His wife seeks to comfort him, saying that his penance is to honor Mundo Cani and to ask for his forgiveness.
4659963	/m/0cfxzf	The Possibility of an Island	Michel Houellebecq	2005-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 There are three main characters, Daniel, and two of his clones. Daniel is a successful comedian who can't seem to enjoy life despite his wealth. He gets bored with his hedonist lifestyle, but can't escape from it either. In the meanwhile he is disgruntled with the state of current society, and philosophizes about the nature of sex and love. His two clones live an uneventful life as hermits, in a post-apocalyptic future. They live in a time where the human species is on its last legs (alternatively, on its first legs: hunter-gatherer tribes), destroyed by climate change and nuclear war. The two clones are confronted with the life of the first Daniel and have different views about their predecessor. Scattered around are the remnants of tourist resorts, cities and consumer items and some natural humans living in small tribes without any knowledge of the past or of civilization.
4661661	/m/0cf_b1	The Matarese Countdown	Robert Ludlum	1997-10-13	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Like the legendary phoenix, the Materese are rising from the ashes and are regaining their former power. The new leader of the Matarese is an enigmatic figure named Jan van der Meer Matareisen, according to himself the only legitimate grandchild of Baron Guillaume de Matarese, the founder of the Matarese group. With the help of another shadowy figure known as Julian Guiderone a.k.a. "son of the shepherd boy," who seems to have survived the events recounted in "The Matarese Circle" nearly twenty years ago, they are hatching a new and diabolical plot to plunge the civilised world into total chaos. Only one man, a CIA operative known as Brandon Scofield a.k.a. Beowulf Agate, can stop them, but he has been retired for nearly twenty years. Brandon Scofield is once again sent into the field together with a CIA case officer, Cameron Pryce, but this time the enemy is more dangerous. fr:Le Complot des Matarèse
4664414	/m/0cg3ml	The Last of the Jedi: The Desperate Mission	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Empire has risen. The Jedi Order has been destroyed. As far as the Emperor is concerned, the Jedi are all but extinct. But on the remote planet of Tatooine, one Jedi Master remains: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Devastated by the loss of his fellow Jedi—and the betrayal of his former apprentice Anakin Skywalker -- Obi-Wan has been left with one last task: To watch over and protect a young child named Luke. Obi-Wan finds out that a former Jedi apprentice has survived, Ferus Olin. Obi-Wan must make a painful decision: whether to stay on Tatooine or go on one last desperate mission—right into the heart of the Empire. When Obi-Wan decides to search for Ferus Olin, a known padawan that left the Order, he gets wrapped up in the problems of the planet Bellassa under the influence of the Empire. Will Obi-Wan help this desperate planet or will he rescue Ferus and go?
4664651	/m/0cg460	Path to Truth	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Anakin Skywalker is no longer a boy, but not yet a man. Almost thirteen, he has begun to travel on the path that will lead him to glory ... and infamy. In the mysterious caves of Ilum, Anakin must create his lightsaber after confronting the demons of his past—and his future. Once the lightsaber is completed, Anakin joins his Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, on a mission that will cut to the heart of his fear, anger, and power. When Anakin was a young slave on Tatooine, everyone lived in terror of a creature named Krayn, who kidnapped slaves for his own profit—and killed anyone who got in his way. Now Krayn's evil has grown to a dangerous degree, threatening peace and safe passage throughout the galaxy. Anakin and Obi-Wan must stop Krayn. But can Obi-Wan also stop Anakin from seeking vengeance against an old enemy? The path to truth is a clear one. Anakin's path is not. This is the first book of the Jedi Quest series.
4664731	/m/0cg4bj	Star Wars Jedi Quest 1: The Way of the Apprentice	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set between Episode I and Episode II, JEDI QUEST traces the emergence and education of Anakin Skywalker as a young Jedi devoted to the Force—and tempted by its dark side. Fourteen-year-old Anakin Skywalker is strong in the ways of the Force. His lightsaber skills are exceptional, his piloting is legendary. He should be an ideal Jedi apprentice. And yet, there is so much he still has to learn. It is up to Obi-Wan Kenobi to teach him these things. But on a mission to a planet threatened by a toxic disaster, Obi-Wan and Anakin are separated. Anakin and three other apprentices—one of them his rival—must work together in order to survive. Anakin's instructions are clear ... but are they right? Anakin Skywalker's destiny will determine the future of a galaxy. These are the events that form his fate.
4664801	/m/0cg4g9	The Trail of the Jedi	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Anakin Skywalker knows that Obi-Wan Kenobi did not choose him as an apprentice. Instead, it was the dying wish of Obi-Wan's own Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, that brought them together. Now Anakin is beginning to doubt his Master's commitment ... and Obi-Wan is starting to wonder if he will ever be as good a Master as Qui-Gon. With these things in mind, Master and apprentice head out on a training exercise that soon turns into a struggle to survive. A squad of bounty hunters has been hired to capture the Jedi—and they will stop at nothing to do it. Anakin and Obi-Wan must avoid the traps and ambushes ... and try to discover who is behind the deadly Jedi hunt.
4664865	/m/0cg4mx	The Dangerous Games	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Obi-Wan Kenobi and his gifted Padawan are dispatched to the Galactic Games on a peacekeeping mission, an illegal Podracing competition catches Anakin's eager eye. As a Jedi Padawan, Anakin is supposed to abandon his past life in service to the Force, but his racing days and old rivalries return at high speed. Anakin squares off against Hekula, son of Sebulba, who has inherited his father's worst traits.At the same time, Obi-wan is investigating some fixed races in the games.
4664920	/m/0cg4pm	The Master of Disguise	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Young Padawan Anakin Skywalker and his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi face off against a slippery foe in the fourth book in the Jedi Quest series. This adversary is as cunning as he is evil, and will stop at nothing in his embrace of the dark side. How will the Jedi defeat this villain of powerful wealth—a villain that they cannot find?
4665068	/m/0cg51_	The Demon Awakens	Robert Anthony Salvatore	1998-02-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	} In the story The Demon Awakens, Elbryan Wyndon and his childhood friend Jilseponie Ault (who is usually called Pony) whose lives are irrevocable changed by the destruction of their home town Dundalis, and Avelyn Desbris who is a vary pious man that enters a group of monks that go to a monastery by the name of St. Mere Abelle to study and serve under god. So while Elbryan and Pony try to sort out their lives Avelyn comes to terms with the all-to human brothers of the church and the myriad injustices he watches them cause. After the destruction of Elbryan’s home town he is taken in by the Touel’alfar and to their home Andur’Blough Inninnes (The Forest of cloud) and teaches him to not just train his body but his mind in the ways of philosophy and to be a formidable ranger. While Elbryan is training his childhood friend Pony can’t even remember her past and is trying to ease the pain of her forgotten past. While all this is happening Avelyn has problems of his own and soon has to leave the church in a most unexpected way. It is not till years later when they all meet each other and fight an evil like no other by the name of Bestesbulzibar who is a mighty demon that was reawakened by the humans weakness to rule all the realm with an army of goblins, powries (dwarfs), and Fomorian Giants and not only that the church is after Alvelyn to. So now this ragtag group of friends and with the help of some unlikely allies must stop the demon and save the entire realm from its impending doom.
4665075	/m/0cg52p	The Shadow Trap	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mawan is a world torn apart by war. Its population has taken refuge underground, and the surface has become the battlefield for three greedy crime lords. Into this chaos venture Jedi peacekeepers, but they may be heading into a deadly trap.
4665082	/m/0cg530	The Demon Spirit	Robert Anthony Salvatore	1999-01-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Even with the destruction of the dactyl, all is not well in the kingdom of Honce-the-Bear. The servants of Bestesbulzibar still roam the land, creating havoc while, at St.-Mere-Abelle, the centaur Bradwarden is held captive. It is up to Elbryan and Pony, with help from friends, to attempt a rescue while fighting the enemy. It is during this time that Elbryan teaches Pony Bi'nelle dasada, the sword-dance of the Touel'alfar, the short winged elves of Corona. It is also at this time that Father Abbot Markwart, head of the Church of St. Abelle, begins his spiral downward. In this novel the reader meets Andacanavar, a northern ranger from Alpinador. Also, the character of Marcalo De'Unnero becomes more fully developed.
4665158	/m/0cg596	The Moment of Truth	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 To fulfill their duties to the Republic, a Jedi must remain focused, and not be distracted by personal conflicts. The tense Master-Padawan relationship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker puts this resolve to the test. The normally headstrong Anakin is plagued by feelings of doubt and guilt for not preventing the death of a Jedi Council member. Obi-Wan has his reservations, seeing himself as a less-than-perfect mentor to a less-than-perfect student. The two must put aside their conflicts if they are to undertake a daring rescue mission to the last free planet of the Uziel system. Their lives, and an entire planet, depend on it.
4665267	/m/0cg5jj	The False Peace	Alicia Buelow		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker are tasked to protect the Galactic Senate from a threat that could throw the galaxy into dark chaos. With Senators endangered, peace and justice are at risk. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is vested in the Jedi's success, but to what result?
4665321	/m/0cg5nd	The Final Showdown	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Granta Omega is an evil mastermind who has one goal: to help the Sith destroy the Jedi order. Now, Omega has escaped to the planet of Korriban, graveyard of the ancient Sith and home to their most powerful secrets. It's up to Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to intercept this madman before his sinister power grows out of control. Accompanying the pair on this mission is Anakin's rival, Ferus Olin. The competitive Anakin sees the search for Omega as a contest to be won. But such thoughts are unbecoming of a Jedi, and as the quest plunges deeper into the dark side, Jedi disciplines may be all that stave off the inevitable outcome of this showdown: Death.
4666268	/m/0cg7n6	Caramelo		2002-09-30		 Each summer, Celaya and her family return to her grandmother's home in Mexico City. At the house, Celaya meets Candelaria, the maid's daughter, who she secretly admires for her beauty. Here we also meet other members of her family, including the Awful Grandmother, Aunty Light-Skin, and the Little Grandfather. We learn about their stories. For example, the Little Grandfather lived in Chicago for a time and was injured during the Mexican Civil War. Aunty Light-Skin had an affair with an unnamed movie star. Through it all, the ties between families are bound together by the silken rebozo that stays in the family. The narrative turns to a story of Celaya's adolescence. Her family lives in Chicago but decides to move to San Antonio. Unfortunately for the father, his new job as an upholsterer is not well-paid, nor is he respected at work. Celaya learns to deal with a new home and classmates who pick on her. She meets Ernesto, who romances her and eventually brings her to Mexico City, ostensibly to marry. Instead, he runs away and Celaya must be rescued by her father. The Little Grandfather dies. Celaya's father grows old and infirm.
4670516	/m/0cgfsp	Obsessed	Ted Dekker	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 “Obsessed” by Ted Dekker tells a story of Stephen Friedman, successful Realtor, a Jewish immigrant and an orphan who had tried to find out who his parents were for a long time and at last gave up. An unexpected letter from a friend and a newspaper article offer help: Stephen discovers that his mother was Rachel Spritzer, a woman who had been through the nightmare of World War II concentration camps, and recently died. Stephen also learns that she was quite wealthy and had some property, including a priceless historical artifact – a stone of David, one of the five stones believed to be used by David to defeat the giant Goliath. Also, it may be that she knew where the other four stones are. Stephen becomes obsessed with the idea to find the remaining stones. He heads to his mother's old house, where he believes the clues are hidden. However, the house is bought by someone else, snatched right out of Stephen's hands. The new owner is Roth Braun, a German, the son of Gerhard Braun who was the Nazi Commandant of the concentration camp, Torùn. Roth Braun knows about the stones and about Stephen plans. And he also has plans of his own. The story goes on as Stephen makes one desperate attempt to get into his mother's house after another. Braun's thugs do their best to keep him away. Another storyline takes us back in time to the WWII camp, telling about two pregnant women, Ruth and Martha (Stephen's mother) and their struggles with the ruthless commandant who kills on a whim and plays games with the prisoners by giving and taking away their hope. There is some mystery here, and, although the two storylines seem unconnected, they eventually come together.
4672551	/m/0cgkd_	Fear	L. Ron Hubbard	1940-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 University professor James Lowry is a disbeliever in spirits or witches, or demons, so much so that he publishes an article in a newspaper denying the existence of them. He is warned of the possible repercussions by his friend Tommy Williams. That same spring evening his hat disappears. Lowry discovers that four hours of his life have gone missing. Lowry is pursued by an omnipotent evil force that is turning his whole world against him while it whispers a warning from the shadows: "...if you find your hat you'll find your four hours. If you find your four hours then you will die..." Lowry is suspicious that Tommy may be having an affair with his wife, Mary, even in his dreams of demons. Lowry goes about his day-to-day life, but increasingly begins seeing demons, ghouls and odd things about him. He wakes up in the middle of the night to shadows that are leading him out of his bedroom and out into his garden which has transformed into a vast creepy slope. At this point, he is led down a long winding staircase in the middle of his lawn that seems to disappear. He goes out looking for the four hours of his life that he has lost and his hat (which he seems to have lost at the same time). He finds both the hat and realizes what he has done in the four hours in a final twist of the book, where the reader comes to realize that he had a psychotic break early on (the missing 4 hours) and most everything that you've read never even happened. It's chilling to discover the truth of what happened during those four hours, as the reader has been led to like the protagonist, when he has been the antagonist all along.
4673909	/m/0cgn4d	Nightmare Academy	Frank E. Peretti	2002-07-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Twin siblings and Veritas Project members Elijah and Elisha Springfield are sent to investigate the Knight-Moore Academy when a missing boy mysteriously reappears with his mind wiped clean of almost all of his memories. The only two things he can say are "I don't know" and "Nightmare Academy". When the young man dies mysteriously, the Springfield family is tasked with the investigation of what happened to the boy and what exactly the Nightmare Academy is. Elijah and Elisha are sent to Knight-Moore and discover that sinister happenings abound on the campus, such as campus raids and frequent fights. During the course of the investigation the teens lose contact with their parents and Elijah is taken to a mysterious mountain after someone starts a fight with him. Elijah's sister has to find a way to save her brother without help from her parents before he is murdered or loses all of his memories.
4676329	/m/0cgs_h	Sunrise Alley	Catherine Asaro	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After barely surviving a ship wreck, Turner and Sam set out on a series of adventures to try to discover who the mysterious "Charon" is (the former jailer of Turner) and what/where exactly "Sunrise Alley" is. Unsure of whom to trust, the characters manage a series of escapes, eventually discovering the truth behind Turner's existence and his captor. Both characters explore the notion of humanity and machine intelligence, and eventually come to blur the distinction, with the apparent realization that humanity and machine technology will inevitably merge. In the process they also fall in love.
4676402	/m/0cgt5c	Last Seen Wearing ...	Hillary Waugh	1952	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 "The police examine her past for any motive that might make her wish to disappear, or any reason why someone might want to kill her. They find her body after a long and frustrating search. As they sift all the evidence again and again, the identity of her killer slowly begins to emerge, like a photograph taking on recognizable features in the developing fluid" (Ian Ousby). The novel, which minutely chronicles the work of the police, is told exclusively in chronological order. No piece of information is ever held back. At any given point in time, the reader knows just as much as the police &mdash; neither more nor less. The time narrated is 5½ weeks, from 3 March 1950 to 11 April 1950. (1) In broad daylight, at lunchtime on a cold winter's day, 18 year-old Marilyn Lowell Mitchell from Philadelphia disappears from her college campus situated in a small town in Massachusetts, 66 miles away from Boston. She has left all her things in her room, and her diary is found in one of her drawers. Her parents are informed, and eventually, on the following day, the police are called in. (2) Right from the start of the investigation, chief of the local police Frank W. Ford's principle is "Cherchez le boy". In other words, the police think Lowell (or "Mitch", as she is sometimes called) might be pregnant, with or without her trying to contact a doctor willing to perform an abortion (illegal in 1950), or that she has just run off with some man. Both her fellow students and her parents declare all these speculations impossibilities and claim that Mitch is not that sort of girl; that she has had dates, but with no-one in particular; that she has never gone any further than "necking" and "soul-kissing"; and that she is definitely still a virgin. Her diary gives the police no clue whatsoever to prove the opposite. (3) The police, however, pursue this line of investigation further. ("Look at her face. [...] It spells S-E-X to me.") Accordingly, they make a list of all the 47 males mentioned in the girl's diary, including even such unlikely figures as movie stars and local policemen, and consider all of them potential suspects. They also keep a watch on those shady doctors in town who might be willing to perform an illegal abortion, but the latter move does not lead anywhere. (4) The process of elimination begins, based on the hypothesis that the diary could be deliberately misleading as far as her relationships to men are concerned. The 47 males are categorized into seven groups and then either questioned or eliminated right away: # famous actors and Winston Churchill # "casuals", i. e. men mentioned only once without any comment (a policeman she asked for directions; relatives; etc.) # men she mentions only once but comments on (including some teachers, such as Harlan P Seward, her history teacher, and an older man called Charles M. Watson, who once dined at the same place as she and her friends) # boys she has nothing to do with (for example her date's roommate) # boys from back home (whom she has not written to or dated) # boys she has dated (including blind dates) # boys she "really has something to do with". (5) As on the morning of her disappearance Marilyn Lowell Mitchell was seen walking along a nearby lake (an artificial one, with a river that runs through it and a dam), Ford, based on one of his hunches, has the lake drained, but no piece of evidence is found. (6) When the police investigations slow down a bit as no results can be produced, Ford is confronted with John Monroe, a private investigator hired by the architect Carl Mitchell, the girl's father. Monroe, who Ford does not mind co-operating with, does not get anywhere either, but he nevertheless keeps developing his own theories. To one of Ford's colleagues, Mitchell has become "the disappearingest girl I ever saw". This is the part of the book where several false leads are introduced: * The police receive an anonymous letter saying that Marilyn Lowell is alive and well, just visiting friends. The police immediately suppose that it was written by some "crank", which soon is revealed to be true. * After having been seen spying on the college students, someone who later turns out to be a young journalist out for a scoop, is chased by the police and brought down to the station. * After the disappearance of the freshman has been extensively covered by all the newspapers, a report comes in saying that a lady claims she was sitting next to the missing girl on a Greyhound bus bound for Chicago. It is especially her clothes that exactly fit the description. * A decapitated body is found in Boston Harbor. However, the post-mortem establishes that it belonged to a woman who had given birth to a child. (7) On Friday, 17 March 1950, a college student, while crossing a bridge, happens to notice a small object lying at the bottom of the shallow river. This object turns out to be Marilyn Lowell Mitchell's hair clip. This seems to be evidence enough that the girl drowned in the river, and the search for her body is resumed. Eventually, it is found. At first it is generally assumed that the girl has &mdash; for whatever reason, but most likely in connexion with her unwanted pregnancy &mdash; committed suicide by jumping off the bridge. Ford, however, does not think so. Right at the time of the inquest he proves that this is wrong by having a large block of ice dropped into the river and subsequently by following its course. After this experiment it is a fact that the body was dumped where it was found and that it could not possibly have been washed ashore there. From now on, the student's disappearance is regarded as a murder case. What is more, it is found out during the post-mortem that the girl was six weeks pregnant &mdash; a fact her family did not know anything about. (8) Seen in this new light, Marilyn Lowell Mitchell's diary is re-examined &mdash; first by McNarry, the District Attorney, a man who "couldn't find M in the alphabet", then again and again by Ford. Now that the police know that she was pregnant, her words "I'm late again" acquire an altogether different meaning: They refer to her having missed her period for the second time in a row rather than to having to catch up on her assignments. (9) It is generally assumed now that he who is the father of her unborn child is also Marilyn Lowell Mitchell's murderer. Ford's hunch is that it is a local man ("There's no way of tracing the body back to somebody so we've got to trace somebody to the body"). Consequently, the police scrutinize the lives of those suspects who live in town, among them Seward. People from outside town are not completely eliminated though, for example the rather mysterious figure of Charles M. Watson, a travelling salesman. (10) Also, Ford re-examines the diary, especially the entries dating back to six weeks before she was murdered &mdash; the time of conception, i. e. when she must have slept with her murderer &mdash; and realizes that it must be coded. Finally he breaks the code: It consists of three exclamation marks in a row. Each time this symbol appears at the end of a sentence the girl must have met her lover. The three exclamation marks appear for the first time in an entry on Friday, 16 December 1949. Christmas holidays that year started on the following Sunday, but as Marilyn Lowell Mitchell had no classes on Saturday, she left the college one day ahead of her classmates. The three exclamation marks can be found for the last time on 27 February 1950. Between that period, the code was used 23 times ("They sure went at it hot and heavy."). Interestingly, the girl met her lover on Saturday, 17 December 1949 (and then again on 3 January 1950) &mdash; a Saturday she told her parents she had stopped over in New York at a friend's place before finally going home to Philadelphia, which, however, turns out not to have been the case. (11) The process of elimination continues. The list of suspects has been narrowed down to 17 men. The police focus their attention on Seward when they find out that on 16 December 1949 he left town on the same train as Marilyn Lowell Mitchell. Now they check up on Seward's past, his family, and the circumstances under which he lives now. Among other things, they find out that he has a record as a lifelong womanizer. Also, they have his house searched by his maid, a Mrs Glover. However, 35 year-old Seward seems to have changed his ways: Mrs Glover cannot report having witnessed any "immoral" situations or any traces thereof. Taking into consideration that keeping such things a secret in a small town, where there is hardly any anonymity (cf. Stephen Dobyns' The Church of Dead Girls, a novel in which, almost half a century later, a very similar atmosphere is created), the police come to the conclusion that Seward is "either innocent or smart". (12) The number of suspects is further narrowed down by the fact that two conditions must be true for the murderer: He must have been in New York on 16 December 1949 and in the college town on 3 March (to dump the body). There are other conditions as well &mdash; for instance, he must own a car or at least have access to a car (again to dispose of the body). Nevertheless the police do have doubts as to the conclusiveness of their work so far ("You'd better remember we don't even know if he's the guy. Hell, what if his folks do say he didn't get home until late Saturday, what will it prove? Do you think a jury will say he's her lover because Lowell puts three exclamation points in her diary on that day?"). (13) Seward is shadowed round the clock now, but not directly approached by the police. They let him stew for a while, waiting for him to make a mistake or at least act conspicuously. While shadowing him they are faced with a girl coming out of Seward's house late one night. It is 20 year-old Mildred Naffzinger, an employee at the local drug store and "a little tart who knows her way around". She denies any connexion with Seward, but, after a long time of questioning, finally gives in, telling the police that Seward is her on-and-off lover (he dropped her when he began his affair with Mitchell, now he has taken it up again). Just as he persuaded Mitchell not to mention his name anywhere, including her diary, he has worked out a special code for arranging his secret meetings with Mildred (and obviously another code for his meetings with Mitchell, some code they could use right in the classroom without anybody noticing). (14) Eventually the police search Seward's house and garden while he is safely teaching at the college and find Mitchell's handbag. The police are going to arrest him the moment he leaves the classroom, and it will turn out that he had a secret affair with her, made her pregnant and eventually, panicking, broke her neck when she told him that she was pregnant, that she would go public and that she expected him to marry her (which, among other things, would have ruined his career). There is obviously no twist or surprise ending, as in that case all or at least most of the meticulous police work described in the novel would have to turn out wrong or in vain. There is no "lucid, astounding explanation presented to the group of suspects gathered in the library &mdash; but the accumulation of enough evidence to point to a suspect, justify an arrest and stand up in court" (Ousby). The novel has never been filmed; in a film version, the killer, Harlan P Seward, would only be a minor character. He never personally appears in the novel: He is never directly approached, let alone cross-examined by the police, and he is not driven to committing any follow-up crimes either.
4677736	/m/0cgwm_	The Curse of the Pharaohs	Barbara Mertz	1981	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Emersons are at home in England, aching to return to Egypt, but finding no excuse to return until Lady Baskerville asks them to finish the excavation started by her husband, who died mysteriously just before opening a tomb in Luxor. No one else will continue as rumors of a curse on those who desecrate the tomb fly through the region. Leaving their son Ramses at home, the Emersons arrive at the Baskerville compound near the Valley of the Kings to find sick employees, over-eager reporters, and an assortment of other characters trying to either get into the tomb, or keep the Emersons out. Three recurring characters are introduced; Cyrus Vandergelt, Karl von Bork and Kevin O'Connell. Vandergelt is a wealthy amateur American Egyptologist, and over the years becomes Professor Emerson's closest friend. Bork is an expert in hieroglyphs who appears in a number of stories, usually assisting other Egyptologists. O'Connell is a reporter who eventually becomes a valuable outlet for the Emersons and their adventures.
4679704	/m/0cgz9d	Love Monkey	Kyle Smith		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tom Farrell is a man in his thirties who resides in New York City in 2001 (before, during and after the September 11 attacks). The novel is a slice of life story, briefly visiting several months of his life as he works as an editor of the weekend edition of the New York City newspaper, Tabloid. Although his friends and relatives advance in life (marriage, kids, etc.), Tom believes he is not. He makes around $86,000 a year, but the most expensive item he owns is a several thousand dollar couch (doesn't own a high priced item like a home or car, for example). The novel tracks Tom as he moves through his life, with each chapter being a day in his life during the year 2001 (not all days covered, and not all chapters start new days). Throughout the book, Tom dates several women, including the woman he really fancies, Julia. Unfortunately for him, Julia is living with another man, and is ten years his junior in age. Julia also works at Tabloid, but while Tom is an editor, Julia is just starting out. Tom's days are filled with drinking, watching TV (lots of cartoons), working at Tabloid, and trying to deal with his deep desire to be in a relationship with Julia, who seems somewhat determined to not have said relationship. On his ride through 2001, Tom interacts with some of his friends, including Bran, Karen & Mike, Rollo, and Shooter (among others).
4681195	/m/0ch0h_	Curse of the Starving Class	Sam Shepard			 The play opens with Wesley putting pieces of a broken down door into a wheelbarrow. Ella, his mother, enters and they begin to discuss the events of the night before that lead to Wesley’s father, Weston, breaking down the door. Wesley begins a monologue narrating exactly what he saw and heard happen from the night before. Wesley then leaves and Ella begins to give a motherly talk on what happens during menstruation and what cannot be done during the cycle. Ella is on stage alone for the beginning of the talk, but her daughter, Emma, walks on stage mid-talk and joins the conversation as though she has been there all along. Ella then asks Emma what she is holding and Emma reminds her that these are her poster for the 4-H project on how to properly cut up a frying chicken that she has been working on quite some time. Emma goes to the refrigerator and begins to look for her chicken. Ella begins to act antsy and Emma realizes that Ella has boiled her chicken. Emma begins a rant about how she raised the chicken and hand fed it every day, then killed and cleaned it and her mother has gone and boiled it. Ella tries to feign innocence and Emma storms out. Wesley enters and decides that Emma’s project is pointless and that she ought to be focusing on more important things. Emma returns, still furious, and the three begin an argument about the starving class and whether or not they are part of it. During their argument, Wesley goes to Emma’s posters and begins to urinate on them. Ella points this out to Emma and Emma storms off, insisting that she is going to take the horse and run away. Ella tells Emma that the horse is crazy and that she is too young to leave home but Emma refuses to listen. Ella tries to get Wesley to go down and stop Emma from taking the horse. Wesley refuses to stop Emma, and Ella begins to tell him about her plans to sell the house. Wesley is not happy with his mother’s decision, and she continues to try and ask him to go stop Emma. Wesley still refuses to go after his sister, and Ella tells him that she is planning to use the money from the house to go to Europe and that he and Emma can come if they want. When Wesley tells her that there will not be enough money from the house to move to Europe Ella gets angry that Wesley is ruining her dream. Wesley then leaves and Emma returns, covered in mud after being thrown from the horse and dragged through the mud. Ella does not tell Emma that she plans to sell the house, but Emma tells Ella that she dreams of moving to Mexico and becoming a mechanic. Ella goes to the back part of the house and Emma goes the refrigerator. Emma asks the refrigerator why it doesn’t have any food because they aren’t part of the starving class. She reassures the refrigerator that soon there will be little eggs, butter, and other foods tucked away inside of it. She then becomes angry with the refrigerator and slams it shut. When she turns around she finds that there is a man standing in the room with her. The man tells her that he was going to knock but that there was no door. Emma explains that her father broke the door down the night before in a drunken rage. The man tells her that his name is Taylor and that he is looking for her mother. She wants to know what he wants her mother for and he tells her that he is in the real-estate business and is helping her mother sell the house. Emma is enraged that her mother is selling the house and Taylor tries to convince her that selling the property is in their best interest. Emma tells Taylor that her family has violent tendencies caused by some family members having nitroglycerin, which is a very explosive element, in their blood. Wesley then enters and sets up a small enclosure in the kitchen. He exits again and returns with a lamb, which he puts in the enclosure. Ella finally enters and says that she is going on a business luncheon with Taylor. Emma yells at Ella and exits. Ella leaves with Taylor, telling Wesley to take the lamb with the maggots back outside. Weston enters, drunk, with a large bag of groceries. Weston talks to the lamb briefly, and then begins putting the groceries, which turn out to only be desert artichokes, in the refrigerator. Wesley enters and they discuss Weston’s laundry and the best way to help the lamb with the maggots. Act two opens on Wesley and Emma in the kitchen, where Wesley is building a new front door for the house. Emma and Wesley discuss whether their mother will come back, or whether she will run off to Mexico with Taylor. Wesley and Emma then argue over who is going to go add water to the artichokes that are boiling on the stove. Wesley doesn’t want to do it because he is making the door and Emma doesn’t want to do it because she is remaking her posters. Wesley says that Emma doesn’t want to do it just because she’s “on the rag”, so she throws down her markers and gets up to add the water. Wesley then explains to Emma that it’s not typical homebuyers who are going to purchase the house, but that it’s land developers. He compares it to a zombie invasion and takeover, where the zombies build their own city. He then suggests that they move away to some place safe, like Alaska. Weston enters, even drunker than he was before. Emma is frightened by him, but Wesley tells her to stay calm. Weston asks where Ella is, and then goes into a rage when Wesley and Emma tell him where she went. Weston then tells them that he’s already found someone who will buy the land and pay in cash. Emma, angry, leaves. Weston begins to tell Wesley about how he began to see the ‘poison’ in his own father, and how Wesley can see it in him. Weston tries to explain the poison to Wesley by comparing it to the way to you poison a coyote by putting strychnine in the belly of a dead lamb. Wesley then tells Weston that Ella has also found a buyer for the house and Weston goes into a rage, and then collapses on a table and falls asleep. Ella returns with groceries that Taylor has bought for the family and throws out the artichokes. Wesley deduces that Taylor is the one who sold Weston with worthless desert property in the first place. Ella talks about the curse that is plaguing their family. She tells Wesley that just when you think the curse has been beaten, and it has retreated back into the smallest cells of their genetics, it will suddenly reappear in full force. Ellis, the owner of the “Alibi Club” walks into the house and sees Weston on the table. He tells Wesley and Emma that he has already purchased the house from Weston and shows them the cash. He pulls out the $1,500, telling them that is the amount that Weston owes to some “pretty hard fellas”. Wesley takes the money, offering to deliver it to the people his father owes money to. Ella tries to take the money from Wesley, but he tells her there’s not enough to go to Europe on. Taylor then enters and Ella tells him what’s happened. Taylor says that any deal Weston makes is void because he is considered incompetent by the state. Taylor declares that he will go to court and have the deed taken back and then buy the property from Ella, then leaves the house. Sergeant Malcolm from the police department enters and tells Ella that Emma has been arrested for riding a horse into the “Alibi Club” and shooting the place full of holes. Ellis says that Weston must have sent Emma down there and takes back his $1,500 and runs off to his club, swearing he will get revenge on Weston. Ella goes downtown to get Emma out of jail. This act opens with Weston, who is now clean, and sober. He has done his laundry, which is all nicely folded on the table, and the lamb is back in the kitchen. He tells the lamb a story about an eagle who was diving very close down to the ground trying to steal the testes of the lambs he was castrating. In the end he was cheering for the eagle. Wesley, who has been listening to this story, then asks what happens next. Weston becomes grumpy and refuses to tell the rest of the story. He asks what happened to Wesley, who had clearly been beaten up. Wesley tells him that he ran into a brick wall. Weston tells Wesley that he has decided to stay and fix up the house instead of leaving, no matter who holds the deed. Weston says that when he woke up that morning, after sleeping on the table, that he felt like a new man and walked around their property naked to reclaim ownership. He then came inside and took a bath, made a big breakfast, drank some coffee, and did everyone’s laundry. He tells Wesley to go clean up, and he’ll make him a big breakfast. While Wesley is bathing, Weston yells into him that he agrees that becoming an avocado grower for the Grower’s Association. Ella enters and she and Weston discuss Emma’s shooting up of the club. Weston is proud of Emma, saying that it takes guts to do something like that at her age. Ella begins to yell at Weston for pulling a Jekyll and Hyde act by changing overnight. He tells her it was the night’s sleep on the table that fixed everything. Ella pushes all the laundry to the floor and lies on the table. As she is falling asleep, and Weston is talking to her about the benefits of sleeping on the hard table, Wesley walks into the kitchen, naked, and takes the lamb outside. Wesley re-enters, wearing his father’s old clothes. He tells Weston that he has butchered the lamb for food. Weston yells at him, telling him that they didn’t need the food, because the refrigerator is full for once. Wesley then begins to gorge himself on all of the food in the refrigerator. Weston tries to calm Wesley down, and to wake Ella up, but cannot seem to do either. He declares to them that he is a whole new person, and Wesley finally stops eating tells Weston that the men who are after him are going to kill him. At first, Weston can’t remember who all he has loaned money to, and begins to rant about how this is his home and nobody ought to be able to take it from him because he has nowhere else to go. Wesley tells him to take the Packard and escape to Mexico. Weston leaves. Emma enters, carrying her riding crop. She asks Wesley why he is wearing their father’s clothes. He tells her that as he put them on he could feel his own essence slipping out of him, and his father’s essence coming into him. Wesley asks her how she got out of jail and she tells him that she made sexual overtures at the guard. She then pulls out a wad of cash and tells him that she’s taking their mother’s car and going into crime. As she leaves, Ella wakes up, mistakes Wesley for Weston, and tells him to go after Emma because she’s too young to leave on her own. Weston tells Ella to let Emma go and then there is a bright flash and a loud explosion from outside. Emerson, a small well dressed thug, enters giggling about the explosion. His partner, Slater, enters after him, playing with the skinned lamb carcass. Since Ella is still under the impression that Wesley is Weston, Emerson and Slater also mistake Wesley for Weston. Wesley tries to tell them that Weston is his father. They tell him that they have blown up the car, with Emma in the car. The men tell Wesley, who they are still calling Weston, that he is to pass on the warning to his father and they leave. Ella believes that Emma has left on the horse, and is not overly concerned about her. Looking at the lamb carcass, she asks Wesley to help her remember the story Weston always told about the eagle. They finish the story, saying that a tom cat had come to sniff around in the testes and the eagle picked it up. The tom cat and the eagle start fighting in midair, with the cat clawing out the eagle’s chest, and the eagle trying to drop it. However, the tom cat won’t let go because if it does it will fall and die. Instead, it chooses to bring the eagle down, even if it means certain doom for the cat as well. The play ends with Ella and Wesley staring at the lamb carcass.
4683449	/m/0ch44y	The Scales of Injustice	Gary Russell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Whilst the Third Doctor and Liz Shaw investigate another incursion of Silurians, the Brigadier must discover what the secret Governmental organisation C-19 has in store for UNIT.
4683624	/m/0ch4jh	City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder	Herman Wouk	1948		 Set in the spring and summer of 1928, City Boy spins the tale of an 11-year-old Jewish boy from the Bronx, New York. The novel first follows Herbert Bookbinder through the final days of school at New York Public School 50, and then through a summer spent at Camp Manitou, a summer camp in the Berkshire Mountains operated by his school's principal. Herbie's city world is one of endless daydreams and small urban pleasures: playing in empty lots, going to the movies on Saturday, arguing with friends around a forbidden campfire, eating "fraps" (sundaes) in Mr. Borowsky's candy store, and going out to dinner at Golden's Restaurant. Herbie is an exceptionally bright but fat little boy, a seventh grader and a star pupil. Although a poor athlete, Herbie yearns to be a "regular guy" among his schoolboy peers and constantly struggles against the consequences of his own quick wit and natural clumsiness with his rival, Lennie Krieger, the son of the business partner of Herbie's father, Jacob Bookbinder. Both blessed and cursed with a highly-active imagination, Herbie is also on the verge of adolescence, and the story revolves around his continuing quest to win the heart of the fickle, red-haired Lucille Glass. Herbie, his parents, and his thirteen-year-old sister, Felicia, dwell in an aging Homer Avenue apartment house. Jacob Bookbinder is founder and part owner of an industrial ice-making plant, known to Herbie and his cousin Cliff Block as "The Place," a location that plays both a significant role in Herbie's fate and an adult sub-plot that frames the climax of the story. Herbie contrives to have himself (and his sister, his cousin Cliff Block, and his rival Lennie) sent to Camp Manitou (run by the principal of P.S. 50, Mr. Gauss, as a source of summer income) when he learns that Lucille Glass will be there. The second half of the novel skewers the summer camp scene of the 1920s even as it sets up a succession of abject failures and spectacular successes for Herbie. Herbie and Cliff contrive to burglarize "The Place" to finance a well-intended camp project, and that crime is the device by which all the sub-plots come together in Dickensian fashion, at a cost to Herbie's bottom if not his psyche. Wouk fashions a moral to the tale without preaching, but the boy's victory in the quest for Lucille proves tenuous at best.
4684897	/m/0ch770	Armageddon's Children	Terry Brooks	2006-08-29	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The world, now ravaged by nuclear war and plague, lies in ruins, overrun by Demons and other monsters, with the remaining humans forced into tightly controlled fortress-like compounds. A group of children, the Ghosts, hide out in the ruins of downtown Seattle. Their leader, Hawk, is a multi-talented, and unaware that he is a gypsy morph, a magical creature. He has prophetic dreams in which he leads a large group into a new "promised land". He secretly sees Tessa, a girl from the nearby compound at Safeco Field, though they are forbidden to be together by compound law. A young Ghost girl named River, sneaks out of the hideout. Hawk tracks her, and finds that she has been secretly visiting a man that turns out to be her Grandfather—a mad homeless man whom everyone else knows as the Weatherman (because of his incoherent meteorlogical ramblings). He is sick with a plague and Hawk grudgingly agrees to take him back to the hideout to have him cared for. Later, Hawk goes to bring medical supplies as part of a trade to one of the competing tribes, the Cats, but while he is away the rest of the gang is attacked by a mutant resembling a giant centipede. The beast is destroyed by Sparrow and Cheney, but Cheney is mortally wounded. Hawk, arriving just after the battle, cradles Cheney and mysteriously the dog's life is restored. Confused, Hawk sets out to visit Tessa, but is captured by guards at the Safeco compound. He and Tessa are sentenced to death for breaking the law of the compound. Meanwhile, deep in the Oregon woods in the Elven kingdom known as The Cintra, exists Arborlon, the largest Elven city in the world, hidden away from men. Long ago in "the time of Faerie", Elves had conquered the demon hordes that ruled the planet, sealing the forces into another world called the "Forbidding". The linchpin of the barrier that keeps the demons in the Forbidding is the Ellcrys, a sentient tree that resides in the Cintra. The Ellcrys is protected by the Chosen, teenaged guards specially selected by the tree herself. The Ellcrys telepathically tells two of these guardians (Kirisin and his cousin Erisha, the Elven King's daughter) that a force is coming that will forever change the world. The Ellcrys tells them that they must find the three seeking Elfstones and use them to locate the Loden Elfstone—which the tree can be sealed within for protection and transport. The King behaves suspiciously when they tell him of the Ellcrys' message, and refuses to act. Erisha and Kirisin then try to sneak into the library to find out more information about the Elfstones, but are caught. Elsewhere, there are two remaining Knights of the Word. Angel Perez, who is pursued by the demon Findo Gask and his henchwoman Delloreen. After narrowly escaping death in an encounter with Delloreen after rescuing a group of children, Angel is confronted by a Tatterdemalion, a messenger of the Word, named Ailie. Angel is told of the existence of Elves, and instructed to head north and seek the Loden Elfstone. The other Knight is Logan Tom, who is charged by the Native American O'olish Amaneh, also a servant of the Word, to find the gypsy morph and give him the bones of Nest Freemark's right hand, and shows Logan how, by casting the bones, they will point in the direction of the gypsy morph. Using Nest's bones as a guide, Logan eventually reaches the Ghost hideout in Seattle. He tells the Ghosts his story, and they come to realize that the gypsy morph must be Hawk, who had just left to meet Tessa. Far to the south, Findo Gask has felt the magic emanating from Hawk when the dog Cheney was healed and identified it as the gypsy morph's as well. Logan is able to gain entrance into the Safeco compound and give Hawk the bones of Nest Freemark. Although Hawk does not instantly realize who he is, he soon recalls his mother, her life and death. But he still doesn't know what he is supposed to do to fulfill his vision. Unfortunately, Logan is unable to save Hawk from his sentencing--Hawk and Tessa are thrown from the top of the compound. Elsewhere in the city, Owl and the Ghosts are preparing to abandon Seattle, Sparrow sees what she believes is a demon invasion army coming in from the ocean.
4689986	/m/0chh9d	The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years	Aitmatov		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with Yedigei learning about the death of his longtime friend, Kazangap. All of Kazangap's crucial relatives have been forewarned of his impending death, and it is decided to set off to bury him the next day. To the consternation of his son, Sabitzhan, who is indifferent toward his father's burial, it is decided to travel across the Sarozak to the Ana-Beiit cemetery in order to bury Kazangap. The procession promptly leaves the next morning, and experiences that took place throughout Yedigei's lifetime, as well as various Sarozak legends, are recollected. Initially, Yedigei recalls how he had fought in World War II but had been dismissed from duty due to shell shock. As a result, he was sent to work on the railway. Through his work, he met Kazangap, who convinced him to move to what would become his permanent home, the remote Boranly-Borannyi junction, from which he gained his namesake. Kazangap and Yedigei become dear friends, and Kazangap eventually gives Yedigei the gift of a camel, named Karanar, which becomes legendary across the Sarozak because of its strength and vitality. At the end of 1951, Abutalip and Zalipa Kuttybaev move to Boranly-Borranyi junction with their two young sons. They initially have a hard time adjusting to living on the Sarozek because of the harsh environment; however, they eventually become adjusted. Before relocating, both had been school teachers. Abutalip also fought in the war and had been taken prisoner by Germans, but he escaped and fought with the Yugoslav partisan army. Nevertheless, upon his return to the Soviet Union he still retained the stigma of having been a prisoner and was often relocated because of political reasons. To leave a personal account of his experiences for his children and also to maintain his faculties amid the desolate Sarozak, Abutalip takes to writing about his time as a prisoner of war, his escape, and fighting for the partisans; he also records the various legends told to him by Yedigei. Unfortunately for him, these activities are discovered during a routine inspection of the junction and reported to higher authorities. The denizens of Boranly-Borrannyi and Abutalip are interrogated by the tyrannical Tansykbaev, and he is deemed counterrevolutionary. In due Soviet process, he is taken away and unheard of for a long time. Later, Kazangap travels to the nearby Kumbel to visit his son. There he finds a letter meant to inform Zaripa of Abutalip's death, but thinks it best to merely tell her that she has a letter rather to inform her of her husband's death. Yedigei later accompanies Zaripa to Kumbel in order to receive the letter; coincidentally, Joseph Stalin also died on the same day, but Zaripa was too overcome with grief to pay notice to the news. Zaripa decides that it is best to forestall conveying the news of Abutalip's death to her children. Yedigei thereafter becomes the paternal figure in her children's lives and grows to love them more than his own daughters. Abutalip's last request was for Yedigei to tell his sons about the Aral Sea, so Yedigei spends much time telling them about his former occupation as a fisherman. As a result of his frequent reminiscing, Yedigei recalls the time he had to catch a golden sturgeon to quell the desires of his wife, Ukubala's, unborn child, but decides not to share it. He eventually becomes fond of Zaripa from spending so much time with her and her children, but she does not return his affection and moves away one day when Yedigei travels to another junction to fetch his wandering camel. In consequence, Yedigei projects his anger onto Karanar by maiming him until he runs away again, only to later return famished and dilapidated. Years later, after internal reforms within the Soviet Union, Yedigei pressures the government to inquire into Abutalip's death in order to clear the names of his sons. Abutalip is declared "rehabilitated", and Yedigei also learns that Zaripa has remarried and has once more begun working as a school teacher. Near the end of the story, the group that set out to bury Kazangap has nearly reached the Ana-Beiit cemetery. However, they are hindered in their journey by a barbed wired fence erected in the middle of their route. Resolved to go around it, they travel along it toward another road only to reach a check-point manned by a young soldier. To their dismay, they are told that access beyond the fence is prohibited, but the soldier calls his superior to see if an exception can be made. It is then that Yedigei learns that the superior is named Tansykbaev, but discovers that this is a different man from the one previously known. However, the new Tansykbaev is also encrusted in a patina of hierarchical obedience and interpersonal tyranny; unmoved by the procession's request, he denies them entry and also informs them that the Ana-Beiit cemetery is to be leveled in the future. During their return, everybody in the group, with the exception of Kazangap's son, Sabitizhan, decides that it would be against tradition to return from a burial with a body. They decide to bury Kazangap near a ravine on the Sarozak, and some of the men vow to also be buried there themselves. Yedigei, most adamant among them, makes them promise to bury him next to Kazangap, as he is the oldest and the most likely to die next. Everybody leaves after the burial, but Yedigei remains with Karanar and his dog, Zholbars, to ruminate over the day's circumstances. He decides to return to the check-point in order to vocalize his anger at the guard, but a series of rockets are launched into space from within the fenced area before he reaches the check-point, sending Yedigei, Zholbars, and Karanar running off into the Sarozak. Shortly after learning the news of Kazangap's death, Yedigei observes a rocket launching from the launch site north of the Boranly-Borranyi junction. Launches, though infrequent, are not unusual to Yedigei, but this one in particular is because he had no prior knowledge of it. Generally, such occasions heralded pompous celebration, but this one had not. This launch, and the circumstances surrounding it, have been kept secret from the public, and an American launch from Nevada occurs at the same time. Both are destined for the joint Soviet-American space station, Parity, currently orbiting the earth. There were already two cosmonauts on board the Parity space station before the launch; however, they had mysteriously curtailed all contact with the aircraft carrier Convention, afloat between San Francisco and Vladivostok, which serves as a base of operations for the Soviets and Americans. Once they arrive, the two cosmonauts sent to Parity discover that their predecessors have disappeared completely. Before leaving, they left a note stating that they had made contact with intelligent life from the planet Lesnaya Grud. Together, they decided to keep their findings private out of fear for the political turmoil that might occur. The inhabitants of Lesnaya Grud had traveled to Parity and transported the two cosmonauts to Lesnaya Grud. From there, the cosmonauts send a transmission back to Parity describing the planet. It is much larger than Earth, nobody has any concept of war, and there is an established and functional world government. Furthermore, Lesnaya Grud suffers from the problem of "internal withering," where portions of the planet turn to uninhabitable desert. Although this problem will not be critical for many millions of years, the inhabitants of Lesnaya Grud are already trying to decide what to do about it and how to possibly fix it. In response to the cosmonauts' actions, the officials on Convention decide to prohibit them from ever returning to earth. Moreover, they all vow never to mention what took place. In order to ensure their decision, the Americans and Soviets threaten to destroy any foreign spacecraft that comes into earth orbit, and both nations launch missile-equipped satellites to secure their threat. The aircraft carrier Convention is then handed over to neutral Finland, and the operation is shut down.
4691204	/m/0chk8q	The Descent	Jeff Long		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A group of new-age trekkers in Nepal are trapped in a cave by a snowstorm and stumble across a mutilated, mummified corpse, covered with cryptic tattoos in both English and undecipherable symbols; the party interprets the former to mean that the body was that of a RAF pilot who had crashed on the other side of the Himalayas in the 1940s. How the pilot had made it across the mountains is a mystery, but a diagram among the tattoos suggests that the cave the party is trapped may be part of a larger network, one that might have an outlet elsewhere. As the blizzard shows no signs of letting up, the party pushes deeper into the network, discovering the remains of a slaughtered ancient army, displayed almost trophy-like, and a trail of gold coins. Becoming separated, the members are relentlessly killed by an unseen enemy, until only the mountain guides, Ike and Kora, remain. Several years later, at a UN military base in Bosnia, multinational soldiers are guarding a forensic team excavating a huge mass grave, which satellite imagery shows being disturbed every night. The soldiers first assume that Serb soldiers are trying to destroy the evidence of their atrocities; a US Army Aviation officer named Elias Branch leads a reconnaissance-helicopter flight to gather evidence. After a crash, he finds his navigator brutally assaulted, is menaced by an unseen enemy, and is himself badly injured by his unit's supporting fire. Found scarred and half-mad, he raves about being attacked by "demons;" during his recuperation, he begins to exhibit dramatic physical changes, and begins taking an interest in local cave systems. Near the edge of the Kalahari, a young nun Ali van Schade is about to leave a leper encampment at which she had been working. To her horror, she discovers that the lepers had saved her life by trading one of their own to be (in her place) mutilated and enslaved by an unknown presence, servants of a god they call "Older-Than-Old." A few years later, Branch, monstrously deformed, is leading the world's armies in exploring a vast network of caves that he has been instrumental in discovering, underlying the whole of the Earth's surface. The "Descent" of the title refers not only to the literal act of descending, but is also the term the narrative applies to a large-scale military-led colonization of the planet's interior that begins at this point. Referred to as the "sub-planet," the labyrinth contains an entire separately-evolved ecosystem, and offers rare fleeting glimpses of elusive albino humanoids. Scientists theorize these are trogloxenic hominids descended from Homo erectus; classified as Homo hadalis (as in Hades), they are commonly referred to as "hadals," or, pejoratively, "Haddie." While presently degenerate and brutal, the archaeological evidence suggests the "hadals" had once possessed a high level of civilization, having reached the Iron Age as far back as 20,000 years ago. The beings had apparently occasionally emerged throughout human history, and had (rather viciously) mentored human civilization, thereby giving rise to the human concepts of Hell and demons. After melting invisibly away from human encroachment for several months, the hadals spring a trap: a massive, coordinated worldwide ambush of the armies exploring and occupying the sub-planet. The attack is enormously successful; world casualties number a full quarter-million. Though an enormous initial shock, the dismay wears off quickly and humanity is essentially undeterred; the Descent recommences, in even greater force. Cities are built in the upper crust, three miles deep, while social instability grows and interest in space exploration diminishes. Meanwhile, a mysterious Jesuit priest, Father Thomas, is assembling the Beowulf Circle, an informal group of scholars dedicated to the study of the sub-planet, with the eventual aim of discovering whether "Satan" (by which they do not necessarily mean a literal person, but some kind of long-term unified authority directing the activities of the hadal race) might actually exist. A member of the Circle persuades Ali to join the group; she is attached to an expedition funded by the Helios corporation, an unprecedentedly deep trek through a newly-discovered fissure which traverses the floor of the entire Pacific Ocean basin. During their increasingly bloody journey through the cave system, the expedition scientists are guarded by untrustworthy Helios mercenaries and guided by Ike, the Himalayan tour guide from the first chapter, who had spent a decade as a slave of the hadals before being recovered by Branch's soldiers. On the way, the expedition uncovers the decaying evidence of a once-great hadal civilization, which may correspond to lost civilizations from human folklore, such as Atlantis or Mu. Meanwhile, on the surface, a plot emerges within Helios to sterilize the sub-planet with a potent bioweapon and thereby open it to human settlement and exploitation. At the same time, the Jesuit's scholarly organization discovers that the hadals may have a mysterious method of transferring human consciousness from body to body, allowing for effective immortality for a select few; after the members of the Beowulf Circle begin to be brutally murdered one-by-one, the two storylines gradually converge.
4692607	/m/0chmhj	The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace	Martin Moran	2005	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The Tricky Part tells the story of the relationship and its effect on Moran, who grew up as a homosexual. It describes Moran’s sexual awakening, and how he and a chubby friend of his called George, go with Bob to get the camp ready. Bob pulls Moran into his sleeping bag the first night they are alone (with George asleep beside them) and abuses him. A year later, Moran discovers that a friend of his, Kip, another 13-year-old, is also being abused by Bob. The abuse continues through puberty and adolescence and Moran tries to tell Bob that he wants it all to stop. Bob's response is to invite the boy into bed with him and his cowgirl-friend Karen. Bob is finally arrested and jailed for his sex crimes. Moran's desperate coming-of-age is described with candor and humor and sets out the paradox that what is, in nearly everyone’s eyes, a seriously damaging experience, can be the very thing that gives "rise to transformation, even grace". The book condemns adult–child sex. Moran is ambivalent about the touching and other sexual acts. He tries to commit suicide twice, but eventually finds his feet in Off Broadway and Broadway theater. Moran has also developed and performed The Tricky Part as a one-man play. fr:Un truc à part
4692828	/m/0chmtq	Last Man Running	Chris Boucher		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor is irritated when Leela attacks the buzzing TARDIS console with her knife, convinced there is a hostile insect inside. When the TARDIS materializes in a pine forest, he sets off for a quiet walk by himself, leaving her locked inside; but moments after leaving the safety of the ship he is targeted and pursued by a predator, something like a giant bird louse. He is forced to climb a tree to escape, but the predator begins to climb the tree as well... Meanwhile, Leela experiments with the TARDIS console and works out how to open the doors and follow the Doctor. A police squad from the Out-systems Investigation Group has landed nearby in pursuit of an outlaw weapons technologist, a runner from justice. But as the squad advances into the jungle they stop receiving signals from their ship, and Rinandor and Pertandor must return to find out what's happening. They find that the ship has vanished into thin air -- and before they can report back they are attacked by a squad snake, a group organism which attacks with crippling sound waves. Meanwhile, the rest of the group finds the crash site of the runner's ship, but no sign of the ship itself; they are then attacked by flying reptiles which instantly kill Investigator Monly. The others escape, but the group's leader, Kley, now knows that the group was not told everything they need to know about this planet. She'd been told that the group had been fully briefed before she joined them, yet nobody else has been told that the runner is a "toody", one of the second-class citizens of the system from the Second Planet. Rinandor and Pertandor stumble through an invisible boundary between the jungle and the pine forest, and thus meet Leela. Leela uses her hunting skills to kill the squad snake, saving their lives, but Rinandor remains suspicious of her and demands to know why she's on an interdicted world. Leela easily slips away from them and soon finds the Doctor, who is still trapped by the bird-louse predator. Leela also kills this predator and takes the Doctor back to Rinandor and Pertandor, who are forced to concede that they can't survive on this world without Leela's help. They assume that the Doctor is also a toody -- probably a duelling agent who's brought Leela to this world to train illegally. Trying to find the rest of their group, they instead find a pool blocking their path -- and, impossibly, the equipment packs they discarded during their flight from the snake are on the island in the centre of the pool. Pertandor foolishly tries to swim across to fetch the packs, and is attacked by an aquatic predator. Once again Leela fights and kills the creature, which the Doctor suspects was engineered by a guiding intelligence -- as has this entire situation. They are reunited with the rest of the OIG squad, and the Doctor learns that they're hunting a weapons technologist and that their expedition is woefully underequipped and underinformed. Leela hears a noise nearby and slips away to investigate, and watches from hiding as three humanoid warriors emerge from a shaft in the ground nearby. The Doctor finds them but is ignored, and theorizes that they're here to provide a challenge for Leela. Unfortunately, the OIG team arrives and tries to confront the three warriors, who instantly react when weapons are drawn. In the ensuing fight two of the warriors are gunned down, the officer Sozerdor is killed, and Leela kills the third warrior in hand-to-hand combat. The shaft seals itself up, and the Doctor theorizes that they're in a weapons development facility -- and that more than just budgetary reasons are behind the OIG team's lack of preparation. He suggests waiting to see what happens next, but then the ground opens up beneath their feet... The Doctor awakens in darkness, taunted by the voice of the runner. The Doctor refuses to discuss his arrival on the planet, and is then rescued from his force-field prison by Kley's second-in-command, Fermindor, who claims that he awoke alone in this underground complex. They follow pulses of hypnotic light to a recycling centre, where the remains of the two ships from the surface have been reduced to their component molecules -- and where Fermindor's attention is instantly drawn to the undamaged TARDIS, which is circling the plasma stream. His fellow investigator Belay also arrives, having freed himself somehow, and like Fermindor he instantly asks the Doctor about the TARDIS -- confirming the Doctor's suspicion that they have been 'programmed' by the runner to seek more information on the TARDIS. Overpowered by their programmed instincts, they both leap into the plasma stream before he can stop them, and are blown apart. The runner, meanwhile, sends a false distress call back to the OIG team's homeworld, where Director Drew makes the unprecedented decision to send a three-ship rescue team despite the drain this will cause on the OIG's budget. This act is largely dismissed as a publicity stunt by the media, whose attention is fully occupied by a forthcoming death duel on the public sports channel; the fight between a firster and toody will carry the extra baggage of symbolising the underlying resentment and prejudice between the First and Second Planets. Drew's deputy Feerlenator suspects that there's more going on than he knows -- but even he doesn't realize that Drew is involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the domination of the First Planet. Leela is rescued from her force-field prison by a clone of the Doctor who tries to elicit information about the TARDIS from her. The real Doctor finds them, and the clone attacks him; but as it is an imperfect copy it is killed by the hypnotic pulses of light. The Doctor and Leela follow the corridor to the facility's control centre, where Leela finds she is able to use the system to generate predators and artificial environments for battle. The Doctor realizes that mental feedback from the machine is amplifying and honing her aggressive tendencies. They are then confronted by the runner -- Monly, who claims that he slipped away from the group when they first landed and replaced himself with a clone who was killed to divert suspicion. Monly generates four clones of Leela, who march the Doctor and the real Leela to the real control centre. All this time, they -- and the rest of the OIG team -- have been trapped in force-field cubicles and fed sensory illusions. Monly continues to taunt the Doctor, but the Doctor quickly realizes that "Monly" is really a clone. A second Monly emerges from another cubicle, but the Doctor isn't fooled twice. The real runner is finally forced to show himself -- and it's Sozerdor, who has come to this world to manufacture weapons for the conspiracy back home. Sozerdor traps Leela in a force field and threatens to crush her unless the Doctor reveals the secrets of the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to convince the confused Monly clones that Sozerdor is insane. They attack Monly, who guns them down -- but the distraction enables the Doctor to rescue Leela. Sozerdor flees while the Doctor and Leela release the others from their cubicles; Kley, Fermindor, Rinandor and Pertandor seem none the worse for their experiences, but Belay seems to be on the verge of losing control. The Doctor explains that they're in a testing facility abandoned by the extinct Lentic Empire; soldiers were placed in these arenas and tested to destruction, the idea being to breed the perfect super-soldier from the last survivor. Now Sozerdor intends to generate an army of Leela clones -- the ultimate warrior, distilled to perfection by the Last-Man-Running scenario. Sozerdor's distress call and Drew's machinations have resulted in three ships arriving in orbit around the planet -- to provide their clone army with transport back home. The Doctor and Leela transport themselves and the OIG team to the surface, where clones of the OIG team have been sent out to lure the rescue party into a false sense of security. Leela tries to scout ahead to find out what's happening, but Belay follows and is seen, provoking a gun battle between the clones and the rescue team. Belay, trying to defend himself, loses his sense of his own identity when he sees himself and his friends shooting at him, and accidentally guns down the rescue party before being shot by Rinandor's clone. The other OIG teams manage to defeat their own clones, and on the Doctor's advice, they take the rescue shuttles back to the orbiting ships and advise the commander of the rescue mission to bomb the planet from orbit. Leela fights her clones as they emerge one by one from the transmat system, and although the strain on her sanity is nearly too much for her to handle the Doctor is there to see her through. They return to the Lentic facility to confront Sozerdor, and are able to trap him in a force field; Leela then activates all of the controls she can find, drawing on the facility's power until the defenses are too weak to shield against the orbital strafing. The power drain also releases Sozerdor from his force field, but before he can shoot the Doctor or Leela, the recycling facility shuts down -- thus cutting off the plasma stream around the TARDIS -- and the lights go out. Sozerdor is disoriented in the darkness, but Leela unerringly locates the TARDIS -- and she and the Doctor escape while the OIG rescue mission bombs the facility, bringing it down around Sozerdor's head.
4692973	/m/0chn4v	Matrix	Robert Perry		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It features the Seventh Doctor and Ace. It also includes appearances by the Wandering Jewhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/cult/news/drwho/2004/01/01/13704.shtml and Jack the Ripper. Part of it is set in an alternate timeline, featuring parallel universe versions of Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. The villain is the Valeyard.
4697278	/m/0chx3n	Petey	Ben Mikaelsen	1998-09-15	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the 1920s, at a hospital in Bozeman, Montana, a boy named Petey is born. His mother is devastated when she sees his twisted figure. Petey looked nothing like a normal baby should. The doctor who took care of Mrs. Corbin's childbirth tells her that Petey is an idiot and that he should be institutionalized. Devastated, she and her husband spend two years and much money to find a doctor who can give them good news, but all diagnose their son as an idiot. The Corbins decide to give up on their hope and let Petey go to the Insane Asylum in Warm Springs, Montana. The story then switches its point of view to following Petey's life in the asylum. Crowded, unsanitary, and terrible, the institution appears awful to Petey. When nurses care for him, they do it lazily and improperly, some even abusing him. A male nurse named Esteban begins to work at the institution and quickly befriends Petey. Whenever he can, Esteban talks to Petey and brings him chocolate, as Petey is "his favorite". Esteban understands (unlike most people) that Petey is not an idiot and that it is just his body that is different. Esteban believed that Petey could think like anyone else, but that he was trapped in his twisted body. Esteban was right all along. The boss at the asylum fires Esteban for telling civic leaders from Butte that Petey isn't an idiot. At the age of 11, Petey is transferred into the Men's Ward. Soon after, he notices a family of mice living in his room. They are his only joy until a new person, named Calvin, moves into Petey's room. Mildly retarded, and club-footed, Calvin quickly becomes Petey's best friend, and the two spend all their time together. After befriending Joe, a nurse, Petey and Calvin have some sort of father figure in their lives. As Joe ages, the disease in his muscles becomes worse and he leaves Warm Springs. When Joe was there, the Insane Asylum started to show very old movies like cowboy movies. For Christmas, Joe gives each Calvin and Petey candy and a toy pistol. He also gives Petey a plaque that has an old bible verse on it. Calvin and Petey, age 20, still play like kids. They make shooting noises and play like little 5 year olds. They always end up in a fit of giggles. After Joe, another nurse named Cassie is frequently kind to them and often tells Petey he is handsome. Unfortunately, she leaves for New York because her husband returning from World War II. Petey and Calvin then meet Owen twenty years later. Both men are around forty years old when Owen befriends them. He took them out often and was kind. He soon leaves because he is too old. Cut to part two which takes place many years later in 1990. Petey is now around seventy years old and living in a nursing home in his hometown of Bozeman, Montana. He is constantly tormented by local teenagers who often pelt him with snowballs because he is disabled. A kind boy named Trevor Ladd witnesses one of these attacks and intervenes, eventually befriending him. A remarkable friendship builds between the two that teaches Trevor about trust, dignity, respect, growth, understanding, wisdom and love that ultimately make Trevor appreciate life more. They are friends until Petey becomes very ill. They don't become only friends, but Trevor asks Petey to be his grandfather. Petey tells Trevor to go have fun without him while he is still in the hospital.
4699435	/m/0ch_50	The Little Endless Storybook		2001		 The story involves Barnabas, Destruction's dog on strict orders to watch over Delirium, looking for Delirium after she disappears. He visits each of the Endless in turn to see if they've seen Delirium, but none of them have any clue where she is. At the end, Barnabas finally finds her by collecting all of the sigils of each of the Endless and conjuring her.
4704394	/m/0cj6vm	All Fall Down	James Leo Herlihy	1960	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When the hedonistic Berry Willert deserts his pregnant lover, Echo O'Brien, his younger brother Clinton's blind faith in him shows signs of waning, while his parents are disgusted by his actions.
4706673	/m/0cjbqg	From a Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985x13x31x39x39x35				 The book brings together a decade of Churchill's writings on American Indian history, culture, and political activism. The essays explore the themes "of genocide in the Americas, historical/legal (re)interpretation of the processes of conquest and colonization, literary/cinematic criticism, and the positing of indigenist alternatives to the status quo." The author gives his assessments of how Indians are represented on film, in literature, and in academic institutions in order to support his case for believing in an ongoing "systematic cultural extermination". He analyses "Indian resistance--as it occurs in art, cultural practice, and activist struggle..." The book is dedicated "for Aunt Bonnie, who inspired me more than she knew..."
4706846	/m/0cjby4	The Lunatic Cafe	Laurell K. Hamilton	1996	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Lunatic Cafe occurs shortly after the events of Circus of the Damned. (That novel ended on Halloween, and the events of The Lunatic Cafe take place before Christmas of that same year.) Similar to the previous novels, The Lunatic Cafe opens with Anita interviewing a potential client. George Smitz tells Anita that his wife, Peggy, has disappeared. Anita explains that she is not trained as an investigator, and suggests that George contact the police, but he will not. Peggy is a werewolf, and George is afraid to contact the police because she owns and operates a butcher shop, and if her condition were made public, she would lose her customers. Anita ultimately refers George to Ronnie, who agrees to look into it. That night, Anita meets Richard Zeeman for a date at a performance of Guys and Dolls. Anita is charmed that Richard likes musicals, but offput when she notices him watching theater patrons as if they were prey. Anita's discomfort with Richard's werewolf status increases when Jean-Claude arrives and reveals, during the course of a confrontation with Richard, that Richard is an alpha werewolf involved in a lengthy and possibly deadly battle for control of the local werewolf pack. Anita is upset that Richard has been concealing information from her, but ultimately leaves to answer a page from Dolph. As usual, Dolph wants Anita to inspect a crime scene, and Anita leaves. As Anita travels to her car, she is confronted by Gretchen, an older, but not yet master, vampire in love with Jean-Claude. Gretchen demands that Anita surrender her claim to Jean-Claude and refuses to believe that Anita wishes to be rid of his interest. Jean-Claude then arrives and confronts Gretchen in a rage. After the two vampires fly off, Anita drives to the crime scene, located in a rural nature center. At the nature center, Anita is confronted by Deputy Aikensen, who tries to prevent her from investigating. She learns that there is a vigorous dispute between Aikensen's sheriff, Sheriff Titus, and Dolph over whether the person found was a victim of a bear attack or a possible crime. Titus and Aikensen argue that they have already identified the incident as a bear attack, and that no supernatural investigation is therefore necessary, while Dolph, Clive Perry and local police chief Chief Garroway want access to the crime scene. With the help of local caretaker and naturalist Sam Williams, Anita is able to convince Titus to grant her access to the scene. She determines that the attack was not a bear, and, after excluding the possibility of a flying attacker such as a gargoyle or dragon, deduces that the murder victim was killed by a shapeshifter who laid in wait on an overhead branch, then dropped onto his victim. She asks to have the claw prints and other clues sent to Washington University for inspection, knowing that Louie Fane will be likely to identify the species of shapeshifter. When she arrives home, Anita finds Irving Griswold waiting for her. Irving explains that Richard has been in a succession conflict with local pack leader Marcus. Richard has actually beaten Marcus in a fight, but was unwilling to kill him and therefore failed to gain control of the pack. Marcus ordered Irving to contact Anita and ask her to meet with him, but Richard ordered Irving not to. Trapped between conflicting demands from two dominant werewolves, Irving asks for Anita's protection, and Anita agrees to go with him to meet Marcus. Irving leads Anita to "The Lunatic Cafe," a restaurant with a largely lycanthrope clientele. Anita meets Raina and Alfred, two werewolves allied with Marcus, and is led into a back room, where she meets several more shapeshifters, including Gabriel, Elizabeth, Rafael, Kaspar, and Christine. Although Marcus leads the largest group of shapeshifters in St. Louis, the non-wolf shifters dispute his authority. Before Marcus can explain the problem, he and Anita argue over whether he is dominant to her that ends with Anita drawing a gun. Egged on by Gabriel and Raina, Marcus orders Alfred to take the gun away from her, forcing Anita to shoot and kill Alfred. The blood excites the lycanthopes, who begin to have trouble maintaining human appearances or behavior. Anita attempts to leave, but is grabbed by Jason, a new werewolf who appears to be losing control of his humanity. Rafael saves Anita from the choice of whether to shoot Jason, distracting Jason with his own blood. Anita escapes, aided by Kaspar, who does not shift into a predator and is therefore not under any danger of losing control when exposed to blood. While the back room devolves into a lycanthrope feeding frenzy, Kaspar gives Anita a folder of information Marcus would otherwise have given her himself. On her way out of the cafe, Anita sees Edward seated in the front room. At home, Anita reviews the folder and learns that in addition to Peggy Smitz, seven other lycanthropes have disappeared recently. Anita contacts Edward to learn if he has had anything to do with the disappearances, and agrees to meet with him later. Unable to reveal the missing lycanthropes to the police, Anita discusses the disappearances with Ronnie, and they consider whether Peggy's disappearance might be part of a larger pattern. Later, at work, Anita receives two potential clients. The first, Elvira Drew, explains that she is an author writing a book on shapeshifters and asks Anita to put her in touch with a wererat for a potential interview. Anita explains that most lycanthropes hide their identity to prevent discrimination, but promises to ask around. The second client is Kaspar, who has told Bert that he is interested in raising an ancestor in an effort to lift a family curse. Once alone with Anita, Kaspar reveals that he has been sent by Marcus, who has asked Kaspar to apologize for the previous night and ask for Anita's help in solving the shapeshifter disappearance. Kaspar reveals that although he is in fact cursed to transform into a swan, he was personally cursed by a witch, centuries ago, and has walked the Earth ever since. Anita arrives home and meets up with Richard for dinner. Richard has trouble accepting the ease with which Anita killed Alfred, his friend, and believes that Anita may be unwilling to have a relationship with him because he is a werewolf. Anita and Richard reconcile and Richard proposes marriage. Anita impulsively accepts. Later, Anita meets Edward at his hotel room. Edward shows Anita a snuff film in which Alfred and a masked wereleopard have sex with a human woman in both human and animal forms. Near the end of the film, Alfred, then in a wolfman form, kills the woman. Edward explains that the woman's father has hired him to kill everyone involved with the movie, and Anita agrees to help him. Anita explains that she has already killed Alfred, and calls Richard to see if he can identify the wereleopard. Richard arrives and watches the movie. Although he is very upset by it, his inner "beast" is excited by both the sex and violence, and Anita's second thoughts about their engagement increase. Richard tells Anita that Raina does make pornographic films, but that he does not believe that she has made any snuff films. Richard agrees to speak to Marcus to see if he knows anything about the films. The next evening, Anita meets with Louis Fane, who is able to identify the murder victim's wounds as having been caused by a lycanthrope. Anita asks Louis whether he knows any wererats who would be willing to participate in an interview with Elvira, and Louis offers to ask around. Louis and Anita discuss whether Anita is emotionally capable of having a relationship with a werewolf, and Anita leaves. On her way out, Anita is confronted by Gretchen, who threatens to kill her. Louis, in his ratman form, attacks Gretchen, but is outclassed and quickly beaten. Gretchen bites Louis and uses his body as a shield against Anita's gun, creating a stalemate. Ultimately, Anita resolves the conflict by telling Gretchen that she has become engaged to Richard. Gretchen agrees to leave, on the condition that Anita tell Jean-Claude about the engagement that night. Suffering from an apparent concussion, Anita is able to drag the unconscious and injured Louis to her car and drive a few blocks, in order to prevent police from identifying him as a wererat. She calls Richard for help. He and Stephen arrive and take Louis and Anita to see Lillian, a wererat doctor. After being checked out, Anita goes to see Jean-Claude. After a confrontation with Robert, Anita and Gretchen go to see Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude is outraged that Anita has become engaged to Richard, but is able to sense both that Anita is having doubts about the engagement and that Anita also has feelings for him. He offers not to kill Richard if Anita agrees to date both Richard and Jean-Claude for at least a few months, and Anita reluctantly agrees. Jean-Claude then punishes Gretchen for attacking Anita, reducing her to a feeble skeleton and locking her in a coffin for an indefinite period. Jean-Claude and Anita are then interrupted by Raina, Gabriel, and Kaspar, who have forced their way past Robert to confront Jean-Claude. Gabriel attacks Anita, forcing her to stab him with a silver knife, but he forces the knife deeper, apparently out of a severe form of masochism. Anita also learns that Jean-Claude is still having difficulty maintaining control over the city, and is dependent on an alliance with Marcus, Raina, and the local werewolf pack. In order to maintain this alliance, Raina demands that Jean-Claude supply a vampire for her pornography operation, and Jean-Claude orders Robert to do so, both to mollify Raina and as punishment for allowing her to force her way in. As Anita leaves, Raina and Gabriel begin forcing Kaspar to demonstrate his shapeshift to Jean-Claude. That night, a phone call from Dolph wakes Anita. Because she is still unable to drive, Zerbrowski picks her up. Zerbrowski teases Anita about Richard and offers her relationship advice while he drives her to the scene, a giant snakeskin hooked on a river rock near the scene of the earlier murder. Anita and Deputy Aikensen enter the river to inspect the skin, and are surprised to find a skinned human body, still alive, in the river. Anita concludes that the victim was a naga, an immortal creature able to assume human or snake forms, and the naga is taken to the hospital for treatment. Anita arrives home to find both Richard and Jean-Claude waiting for her. The men are close to blows over Richard's presence in her apartment and Jean-Claude's insistence that Anita date him as well as Richard. When Anita tries to separate them, she feels their magical energy combine in her, creating a great deal of magical power. She is threatened by the reaction, but Jean-Claude and Richard, each of whom are involved in power struggles, are intrigued by the possibilities. Ultimately, Anita asks Richard to leave and revokes her invitation to Jean-Claude, forcing him from her apartment. The next day, Anita gets a call from Ronnie, who tells Anita that she has found evidence that George Smitz is having an affair. Anita and Ronnie consider whether George may have killed his wife and the other missing shapeshifters. Shortly later, Richard calls, and tells Anita that Jason is missing. Anita asks Richard to get her backup for a confrontation with George. Richard is unable to accompany her personally and sends Raina and Gabriel, and Ronnie, Anita, and the weres drive out to speak to George. On the drive, Anita recognizes Gabriel's eyes as those of the masked participant in the snuff video. When they arrive, Anita and Ronnie confront George but are unsuccessful in making him confess. Raina intervenes and intimidates him into admitting that he killed Peggy in order to inherit her butcher's shop. (Presumably, he hired Anita in order to provide some alibi if the police realized that Peggy was missing). However, George insists that he does not know anything about the remaining shapeshifter disappearances. George agrees to confess to the police in order to avoid being eaten by Raina and the pack. Anita then goes to the hospital and questions the naga with Dolph. The naga is not fully coherent, but is able to tell them that he was attacked by witches, and that one of them had eyes the color of an ocean. Anita realizes that Elvira Drew must be hunting shapeshifters. She contacts her office and learns that Bert had put Elvira in contact with Louie Fane, who is now also missing. Anita, Dolph, Zerbrowski, and several officers go to Elvira's house, but Elvira will not let them in. Anita breaks into the back porch and basement and is confronted by Elvira, but screams for help, allowing the police to enter. At that point, the police are attacked by two other witches, each of whom has used the skin of one of the missing lycanthropes to shapeshift. During the fight, Zerbrowski is gutted and is taken to the hospital. All of the witches but Elvira are killed. The police find Louie in the house and agree to attempt to preserve his secret, but do not find Jason. Anita realizes that the witches were responsible for some of the shapeshifter disappearances, but that there are still some unaccounted for disappearances, including Jason. Later, Anita gets a call from Sam Williams, the caretaker of the nature preserve where the murder victim was found. Williams has been listening to his tapes of nighttime wildlife and heard the call of a hyena. He and Anita deduce that there must have been a werehyena in the park, but before they can finish the call, Williams explains that police officers are at the door. Anita tries to tell him not to open the door, but he does and is attacked. Anita races to the nature preserve, accompanied by Richard and Edward for backup. They find Williams shot dead, together with two of the local police who were present at the original crime scene. Anita gets a page from Kaspar, who asks her to come to his house. When Anita, Richard and Edward arrive at Kaspar's house, they are captured by Titus, Aikensen, and three hunters. Anita learns that Kaspar was once a European prince and hunter who was cursed to transform into a swan in order to learn kindness. However, Kaspar just became more and more resentful at being cursed to transform into prey, and formed a scheme with Titus to capture shapeshifters and offer them for expensive and illegal hunts. The initial murder victim had been a hunter whose hunt had gone wrong, and Titus and Aikensen had tried to cover up the crime. However, Titus realizes that the other police now know too much, and he and Aikensen plan to flee after one last hunt. They lock Edward and Richard in one cage, and Anita in a second cage, together with Jason, reasoning that with the approaching full moon, Jason will not be able to resist transforming into a wolf and eating Anita, at which point they will be able to hunt him. Initially, Richard is able to restrain Jason as a dominant alpha werewolf. At that point, the hunters cut open one of Anita's wounds, anticipating that the blood will force Jason to lose control. As they do so, Anita is able to get hold of one of the hunters' guns and shoots him. In the confusion, Edward and Richard are able to grab and kill a second hunter, and Edward uses the hunter's rifle to kill Titus and the third hunter. Anita stabs Aikensen, and she and Edward leave, allowing Richard to take the now transformed Jason out to hunt, just as the police begin to arrive. The police accept Anita and Edward's story, as well as Edward's identification and claimed identity. In the epilogue, Anita explains that she is continuing to date Richard and Jean-Claude and has exchanged Christmas presents with each of them. Raina and Gabriel have claimed that they had no idea Alfred was planning to kill the woman in the snuff film, and Anita has accepted their explanation for now. A few months after the events of the main novel, Edward sent Anita a swan skin with a note, explaining that Marcus had hired him to kill Kaspar, and that Edward had eventually tracked down the fugitive and hired a witch to lift his curse, allowing Edward to kill him. Anita has the skin framed and mounted on her wall, to Richard's displeasure.
4713613	/m/0cjp_6	A Gathering of Old Men	Ernest Gaines	1983	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 One afternoon, a white woman, Candy, discovers that a Cajun farmer, Beau Boutan, has been shot in Mathu's, a black man, yard. She enlists the help of seventeen other old black men by having them come to Mathu's yard, each with a shotgun and one empty number 5 shell. She and the men all claim to be responsible for the murder, in an effort to protect the guilty party. Meanwhile, the Sheriff Mapes arrives to the scene to arrest the real murderer(most likely Mathu, as he was the only black man who stood up against racism and the Boutans.) The Sherriff also wishes to keep Beau's father, Fix Boutan, from coming to lynch the blacks.
4715124	/m/0cjrxt	Die Vecna Die!	Steve Miller		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 This adventure, and Vecna's multiverse-shattering plan contained within it, have been used by some D&D fans as an in-game explanation of the differences between the 2nd and 3rd editions of Dungeons & Dragons. The closing paragraph of the module reads as follows: :"Even with Vecna's removal, his time in the crux effected change in superspace. Though the Lady of Pain attempts to heal the damage, the turmoil spawned by Vecna's time in Sigil cannot be entirely erased. Some Outer Planes drift off and are forever lost, others collide and merge, while at least one Inner Plane runs "aground" on a distant world of the Prime. Moreover, the very nature of the Prime Material Plane itself is altered. Half-worlds like those attached to Tovag Baragu multiply a millionfold, taking on parallel realism in what was before a unified Prime Material Plane. The concept of alternate dimensions rears its metaphorical head, but doesn't yet solidify, and perhaps it never will. New realms, both near and far, are revealed and realms never previously imagined make themselves known. Entities long thought lost emerge once more, while other creatures, both great and small, are inexplicably eradicated. Some common spells begin to work differently. The changes do not occur immediately, but instead are revealed during the subsequent months. However, one thing remains clear: Nothing will ever be the same again."
4722747	/m/0ck2fv	The Fire Engine That Disappeared	Per Wahlöö	1969	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A house fire, which kills three people, was about to be written off as the result of a tenant's gas suicide when a forensics officer discovers a firebomb in the rubble that would have certainly killed the tenant had he not killed himself. Beck and his team launch a manhunt for the tenant's partner-in-crime, but are perplexed when the partner-in-crime is found dead at the bottom of the sea.
4723744	/m/0ck48g	Devil on My Back			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In an ambiguous future, the Earth has gone through an unnamed "Disaster" and subsequent "Age of Confusion." During this, a group of scientists build a great self-controlled city called Arc One to house the survivors and save all human knowledge. Knowledge has been regulated to devices called "info paks" which enable the wearer to tap into Arc One's computer to access the information, but with a caveat: info paks may be rejected by the wearer. Those who reject the info paks become slaves, soldiers, or workers. Those who accept the info paks become Lords of the City, and the effective ruling class. Many generations later, the son of one of the leading Lords of the City, Tomi, is on his Access Day, the day when he first gets to receive his final info pak, and gain total access to Arc One's computer. Two of his close friends reject the info paks, and become a slave and a worker respectively. Sensing Tomi's discomfort with how his friends violently reacted against the info paks, Tomi's teacher prescribes recreation at Dreamland, a fantasy computer program. The next day, during a ceremony to honour the New Lords, the slaves rebel. Tomi is taken prisoner but manages to escape and hide in a garbage shute. However, when the soldiers arrive to gas his captors, Tomi loses consciousness and slides down the chute, emerging outside the City in a rapidly flowing river. In the outside world, Tomi encounters a primitive community living in freedom, and is confronted with shocking truths about the world he left behind.
4724214	/m/0ck53p	Five Quarters of the Orange	Joanne Harris	2001	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is written from the point of view of Françoise Simon, an elderly widow, who moves into the village of Les Laveuses on the Loire to open a small restaurant. Her business is moderately successful locally, until a notable food critic brings it to prominence in a national magazine. This brings undue attention to Françoise and her business, and brings a visit from her nephew Yannick and his grasping wife, Laure, both eager to profit from Françoise's sudden popularity. But Françoise Simon is not quite who she claims to be. Her real name is Framboise Dartigen, and she is the only surviving child of Mirabelle Dartigen, a woman still remembered and hated for an incident that happened when Framboise was nine, during the Second World War. Framboise has been profoundly marked by this incident and the events leading up to it, and still feels the need to hide who she is. The arrival of Luc and Laure threatens the new life she has built for herself, and forces her to confront the past. Framboise, her brother Cassis and her sister Reine-Claude lost their father early. Their mother, Mirabelle Dartigen, was a difficult woman, prone to crippling migraines and mre tender with her fruit trees than with her own children. Faced with having to bring up three children and run a farm alone, Mirabelle had to be very tough; sadly, this toughness translated into a lack of outward affection towards her children. When the war came and the Germans occupied Les Laveuses, Mirabelle had to be tougher than ever; the children, with no-one to supervise them, ran wild, eventually falling under the spell of a young German soldier, Tomas, who first bribed them with black-market goods like oranges or chocolate, then manipulated them into secretly giving him information about their friends and neighbours. Framboise, the youngest child, who was nine at the time, and whose relationship with her mother was especially tortuous, became closest to Tomas, and now blames herself for the series of events that resulted in Tomas' death, the retribution killing of a dozen villagers by the Gestapo and Mirabelle's flight from the family home. Now, sixty years later, Framboise relives these traumatic events and tries to understand how they have shaped her life and relationships. Eventually, as the truth emerges, she learns how to face down the bullies who threaten her, as well as to forgive herself and her mother, to give herself permission to love, to reconnect with her two estranged daughters and to finally put the past to rest.
4725863	/m/0ck7xm	Round the Bend	Nevil Shute		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is in the first person, seen through the eyes of Tom Cutter, an aircraft pilot, engineer, and entrepreneur. The novel starts with Cutter's boyhood—he gets a job with the Alan Cobham "National Aviation Day" flying circus, of barnstorming aircraft which take customers up for short joyrides, with other entertainment provided. Cutter meets Shaklin, a boy a little older than himself, half Chinese and half Russian but a British subject, and who even then has a deep interest in religion, taking days off to visit houses of worship. When the air circus folds, the two drift apart. Cutter apprentices in aviation engineering, and also learns to fly. He marries a co-worker named Beryl, and soon afterwards is posted overseas as a civilian to do military-related aviation work during World War II. While overseas, he learns his wife has been unfaithful. He is stern, but forgiving, in letters to her, but when she learns that he is soon to return, she commits suicide. Cutter blames himself. He cannot stand to return to his old job or remain in England, so he buys and rebuilds a small freight aircraft and flies it to Bahrain, then a British protectorate, to start a freight business. His services fills a need in the Persian Gulf, and he gradually expands, acquiring more aircraft but never incorporating his business. He keeps his business costs down by hiring no European staff, only what he calls Asiatics. Hired to take a load to Indonesia, he is surprised to find Shaklin there, working for a gunrunner who has been arrested by the Dutch, then in control of much of the country. Shaklin has maintained his interest in spirituality, but is also a very experienced engineer. Cutter is able to hire him and purchase the gunrunner's plane. Both prove major assets to his business. As Cutter retrieves the plane from a small village in Cambodia, he notes that Shaklin has become a religious leader of sorts there. Shaklin proves a major influence both on Cutter's staff, impressing on them the need for good and honest work, and on the local Arab community in Bahrain. Putting his teachings in terms of Islam and the Koran, he soon gains influence over the local sheikh, who offers Cutter a substantial interest-free loan for a large aircraft he needs. He accepts, and when he returns from Britain with the aircraft, finds that the authorities are very much upset about the transaction, decrying Shaklin's influence over the sheikh. Cutter does his best to soothe matters, but the British order Shaklin out of the area. In the interim, Connie's sister, Nadezna, has arrived to become Cutter's secretary. She and Cutter rapidly find themselves attracted to each other. Since one of Cutter's customers needs repeated trips to Australia, and since his Asian staff are not welcome in White Australia, Cutter sets up a forward base in the idyllic island of Bali, and assigns Shaklin to head the operations there, more as a sinecure than anything. One of the local girls is soon in unrequited love with him, while Shaklin busies himself learning about the local religion. Back in the Persian Gulf, Shaklin's expulsion has indirectly caused a more reasonable attitude by the British. Shaklin is now held in almost divine regard by the Arabs. The Sheikh's health has been failing, and he expresses a desire to see Shaklin before he dies. He and his entourage travel to Bali to visit Shaklin. This pilgrimage both inspires others to similarly travel—and stirs up the Dutch colonial administrators, who expel Shaklin from Indonesia. The Sheikh's doctor has expressed concerns about Shaklin's health, and he is soon diagnosed with leukemia--at that time a death sentence. Shaklin expresses the desire to travel about meeting with the aircraft technicians he has influenced, for by this time his fame has spread throughout Asia. He does so until he is too weak to continue, and then he is taken back to the Cambodian village where his teaching started, and where he dies. Given his following, and the fact that so many believe Shaklin divine, Nadezna feels it would be letting them down to marry and live an ordinary life. She goes back to the convent where she went to school, and works with the children, although she is not a Catholic. Cutter resolves to run his air service as a credit to Connie. Cutter is set the task of being one of six people who will write a set of Gospels about Shaklin's life—Cutter's volume of these new Scriptures is the book that has just been read. He still believes Shaklin merely human, but is willing to consider the possibility of him being divine. Shute believed Round the Bend to be his finest novel.http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Nevil_Shute
4726747	/m/0ck8zr	The Mummy Case	Barbara Mertz	1985	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Amelia and her husband, Professor Radcliffe Emerson, return to Egypt for the 1894-95 season to excavate the ruined pyramids of Mazghunah, which pale in comparison to the nearby dig at Dahshoor – but that is all Emerson could get after annoying the Department of Antiquities. On this trip, the Emersons bring along their young son Walter (aka Ramses) and his cat Bastet, along with a sturdy footman to keep Ramses out of trouble. This is Ramses' first trip to Egypt, after studying and hearing about it for all his young life. :Ramses got off his donkey. Squatting, he began to sift through the debris...[He] held up an object that looked like a broken branch. "It is a femuw," he said in a trembling voice. "Excuse me, Mama - a femur, I meant to say." [...] :Ramses rose obediently. The warm breeze of the desert ruffled his hair. His eyes glowed with the fervor of a pilgrim who has finally reached the Holy City. (TMC, chapter 5) While in Cairo, Amelia hears rumors of a scrap of papyrus which no one will confess to owning, but which has the local antiquities dealers living in fear of the man who is after it. No sooner does the family settle in near their dig than they are paid a visit by a group of American missionaries who have set up shop nearby, then the rival archaeologist who did get permission to dig at Dahshoor, then a German noblewoman with more money than taste...and then a thief who steals one of the objects the Emersons find at Mazghunah, a mummy case.
4727280	/m/0ck9n_	The Last of the Jedi: A Tangled Web	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Since Palpatine's takeover, he believes his power is absolute. He controls everything, including the senate. He is the leader of the evil Sith. And now he wishes to control Ferus. But Ferus does not want to help him, until Palpatine threatens those people closest to his heart. This leaves Ferus with no option but to help Palpatine. Palpatine wishes to use Ferus as an undercover agent - a double-agent. But can Ferus do this and keep his allegiance to the Jedi Order? This book was released in August 2006.
4733421	/m/0ckj1h	What Katy Did	Sarah Chauncey Woolsey	1872	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01j1n2": "Coming of age"}	 Twelve-year-old Katy Carr lives with her widowed father and her five brothers and sisters in a small midwestern town called Burnet. Her father, a doctor, is very busy and works long hours. The children are mostly cared for by their paternal Aunt Izzie, who is very particular, and something of a scold. Under these circumstances Katy, a bright, headstrong, hasty girl, can hardly avoid getting into mischief almost daily; however, she is unfailingly remorseful afterward. She dreams of someday doing something "grand" with her life - painting famous pictures, saving the lives of drowning people or leading a crusade on a white horse. At the same time, she wants to be "beautiful, of course, and good if I can". When her mother died four years earlier, Katy promised to be a little mother to her siblings; however, she leads them into all sorts of exciting adventures and is sometimes impatient and cross with them. When her Cousin Helen, an invalid, comes to visit, Katy is so enchanted by her beauty and kindness that on the day of Helen's departure she resolves to model herself on Helen ever afterward. The very next day, however, Katy wakes in an ill humour, quarrels with her aunt and pushes her little sister so hard that she falls down half a dozen steps. Afterwards, sulky and miserable, Katy decides to try out the new swing in the woodshed although Aunt Izzie has, for some reason, forbidden it. The swing is unsafe because one of the staples supporting it is cracked. Had Aunt Izzie explained this, "all would have been right," but she believes that children should obey their elders without question. Katy swings as high as she can and, as she tries to graze the roof with her toes, the staple gives way. She falls hard, bruising her spine. The lively Katy is now bedridden, suffering terrible pain and bitterness. Her room is dark, dreary and cluttered with medicine bottles; when her brothers and sisters try to comfort her, she usually drives them away. However, a visit from Cousin Helen shows her that she must either learn to make the best of her situation or risk losing the love of her family. Helen tells Katy that she is now a student in the "School of Pain" where she will learn lessons in patience, cheerfulness, hopefulness, neatness and making the best of things. With Cousin Helen's help she makes her room tidy and nice to visit and gradually all the children gravitate to it, always coming in to see Katy whenever they can. She becomes the heart of the home, beloved by her family for her unfailing kindness and good cheer. After two years Aunt Izzie dies and Katy takes over the running of the household. At the end of four years, in a chapter called "At Last", she learns to walk again. The book includes several poems.
4734910	/m/0cklfs	A Piece of Blue Sky	Jon Atack	1990-08-19	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book's 37 chapters are arranged into nine parts, plus introductory material, a preface by Russell Miller, author of Bare-faced Messiah, a bibliography, reference summary and index. Part 1 describes Atack's personal experience in the church. Parts 2&ndash;8 are a chronological history of L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology, researched from paper sources and interviews. Part 9 draws conclusions about the belief system of Scientology and its founder.
4736438	/m/0cknhz	The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues	Ellen Raskin	1975	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Seventeen-year-old Dickory Dock, an art-school student in Greenwich Village, answers an ad for a job as a painter's assistant at Number 12 Cobble Lane. The painter, Garson, evaluates and hires her; in her duties of cleaning paintbrushes and answering the door, she becomes involved in Garson's mysterious affairs, as well of those of his downstairs neighbors, Manny Mallomar and Shrimps Marinara. She befriends Garson's companion, a deaf, mentally handicapped man with the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaffe; her fellow student, George Washington III; and the Chief of Detectives of the NYPD, Joseph P. Quinn. When the latter begins asking for Garson's assistance as a sketch artist, Garson assumes the character of Inspector Noserag (whose name is an imperfect reversal of "Garson"), and dubs Dickory his assistant, Sergeant Kod (likewise). The two work together to solve several cases, which divide the book into six sections of four chapters each: "The Mystery in Number 12 Cobble Lane," "The Case of the Horrible Hairdresser," "The Case of the Face on the Five-Dollar Bill," "The Case of the Full-Sized Midget," "The Case of the Disguised Disguise," and "The Case of the Confusing Corpus." Meanwhile, Dickory learns more about the histories, motives and identities of all the people in and around Number 12 Cobble Lane.
4736468	/m/0cknkq	The Poe Shadow	Matthew Pearl	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Baltimore lawyer Quentin Hobson Clark witnesses a somber, simple funeral on October 8, 1849. He learns it was for author Edgar Allan Poe, with whom he had previously exchanged letters about providing legal support for a new publication, The Stylus. Clark feels obliged to look into the mysterious circumstances surrounding Poe's death, despite protests from his fiancée Hattie Blum and his friend Peter Stuart. Clark's journey takes him to Paris to seek out the real-life inspiration for Poe's character C. Auguste Dupin, a man of intellect who could help unravel the mystery. After investigating many possibilities of the inspiration of Poe's detective, he meets Baron C.A. Dupin, a famed lawyer in Paris, and a lone detective with a similar name: Auguste Duponte. After a confrontational encounter with the Baron Dupin and his female aide, Bonjour, Clark realizes that the Baron is not quite the character as described in the detective stories of Poe and that Auguste Duponte, with his approach to problem-solving through ratiocination, was the real inspired character in the stories. They journey back to Baltimore to investigate the final days of Poe before his death, only to find that the Baron and Bonjour have been on the same track, if not ahead, of solving the same investigation. Evidence is uncovered from interviews of the funeral attendants, witnesses, and secret rummaging of Henry Reynolds, a funeral attendant, who obtained a written letter from Poe the day he was found in the streets of Baltimore. What other mysteries that unfold through the odyssey of Clark to clear Poe's name from infamy continue on to a surprising conclusion of the death of Poe, possibly the most important Gothic fiction writer of American Literature.
4737547	/m/0ckq08	The Broken Vase	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel begins with backstage performance jitters just before a musical performance at Carnegie Hall in New York to be given by a striking young violinist, Jan Tusar and his on-again-off-again girlfriend and piano accompanist, whose father has died a few months earlier in a fall from his office window. Private investigator Tecumseh Fox is by no means a follower of classical music, but has been convinced by his friend Diego Zorilla, a former violinist whose fingers were mangled in an accident, to charitably contribute to buying a valuable violin for the young performer. Fox and his friend take their seats in the audience, but the concert does not go well, and it seems not to be the fault of either the violinist or the pianist but the magnificent violin itself. The concert limps to intermission, and the audience is so disgusted that many go home. Fox and his friend rush backstage, only to find that the young violinist has just shot himself to death in front of witnesses and the violin has vanished in the furore. Fox is then invited to the home of Mrs. Irene Dunham Pomfret, wealthy socialite, who also contributed to the purchase of the violin. Her husband Henry is unenthiastic on the topic of music, but collects rare coins and Chinese porcelain (a rare piece of which, he mentions, has been stolen). Fox and other contributors to the violin's purchase (including gorgeous movie star Hebe Heath) have been assembled for two reasons: one is to hear Jan Tusar's suicide note and the other is to arrange the sale of the violin and the return of the money to the contributors, since the violin arrived at Mrs. Pomfret's home by parcel post that morning. Hebe Heath's publicist confesses privately to Fox that he has returned the violin and, when asked to explain why, tells him that the movie star is not only spectacularly stupid but subject to bizarre impulses -- she stole the violin in an uncalculated moment for no reason at all. Tecumseh Fox takes the violin away and examines it, then convenes another meeting at Mrs. Pomfret's penthouse apartment. He announces that the reason that the violin's tone had flattened was because someone had poured liquid varnish into it, and suggests that the person who did this is responsible for the violinist's death. The party separates into smaller groups as people discuss these developments, and Mrs. Pomfret talks it over with her son. Fox is summoned hurriedly from another room because the son has gulped down his bourbon and died of poison. Hebe Heath promptly grabs the bottle of bourbon and throws it off the balcony, narrowly avoiding killing any passers-by in the street below. When the police ask her for the reason she produces one -- "Oh," she cried softly, "it was an ungovernment impulse!" But when it's suggested that she disposed of the bottle because she had put poison in it, her self-protective instinct outweighs her impulses -- "Put something in the bottle? Don't be a damn fool!". Fox decides to investigate. Although it's not certain quite why the theft of Mr. Pomfret's piece of porcelain is important, he finds that someone from the same group of people must have been responsible. The case may also explain the mysterious death of the accompanist's father. He tracks the missing vase to Diego Zorilla's home, and barely dodges a poisonous trap that someone has set for the former violinist. Next he investigates the possibility that Tusar's sister Garda is somehow connected with an anonymous note implicating Nazi sympathizers in the murder, since she has no visible means of support. Finally his attention focuses on the comings and goings of a mysterious person who visits Gerda's apartment as a Mr. Fish and leaves it in the person of her veiled neighbour Mrs. Piscus. Fox works out the identity of Mrs. Piscus, calls together the suspects and reveals the solution to all the crimes.
4738435	/m/0ckr95	Waylander	David Gemmell	1986-08-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Drenai King is dead - murdered by a ruthless assassin. Enemy troops swarm into Drenai lands. Their orders are simple - kill every man, woman and child. But there is hope. Stalked by men who act like beasts and beasts that walk like men, the warrior Waylander must journey into the shadow-haunted lands of the Nadir to find the legendary Armour of Bronze. With this he can turn the tide. But can he be trusted? For he is Waylander the Slayer. He is the traitor who killed the King. For the last twenty years the farmer, Dakeyras, who tragically lost his wife and children has been travelling the world as the assassin Waylander the Slayer. Consumed by anger and guilt, on his journey for revenge against his families murderers, he has become a soulless killer who will kill anyone for money. However, his assassination of the Drenai king and the events that follow help Waylander to reclaim his humanity and makes him the perfect anti-hero. The book starts with the main character Waylander (Dakeyras) saving the Source priest Dardalion from torture and certain death inflicted by a band of 5 thieves. After rescuing the young priest he travels with him, though Waylander is used to traveling alone - as he has done for the past 20 years. Waylander ruthlessness wash off on the priest, and vice versa with Dardalion's goodness. Soon Waylander becomes a man of conscience, though he loses none of his deadly skill. Soon Waylander is being accompanied by a good-looking young woman Danyal, as well as three small children. He subsequently embarks on a journey to bring back the Armor of Bronze, a symbol, and a rallying point for the Drenai. Along the way he encounters fellow assassin, the giant Durmast. At first Durmast attempts to kill Waylander but they soon become allies. And allies are what Waylander needs, because amongst the people trying to kill him are the renowned assassin, Cadoras the Chaos Blade, a group of werewolves, and a band of supernaturally enhanced knights. de:Waylander fr:Waylander pl:Waylander
4738437	/m/0ckr9j	Exit				 Amandine is a journalist, working for a videogame magazine. One day, she gets fired, finds her boyfriend with another woman, and contemplates suicide. She finds a mysterious website, advocating an underground group named Exit, which advocates a kind of murder game: By killing someone who wishes to die, another member will try to kill you.
4738901	/m/0ckrxc	Rogue Moon	Algis Budrys	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Dr. Edward Hawks runs a top-secret project for the U.S. Navy, using the facilities of Continental Electronics to investigate a large, deadly alien artifact found on the Moon. Volunteers enter and explore it, but are inevitably killed for violating the unknown alien rules in force within the structure. Vincent "Connie" Connington, Continental's head of personnel, tells Hawks that he has found the perfect candidate for the next mission. Connington is amoral and manipulative, openly testing Hawks and anyone else he meets for weaknesses. He takes Hawks to see Al Barker, an adventurer and thrill-seeker. Hawks also meets Claire Pack, a sociopath of a different kind. Where Connington covets power, and Barker seems to love death, Claire enjoys using sex, or the prospect of sex, to manipulate men. Connington wants her, but she stays with Barker because he has no weaknesses in her eyes. Hawks has to appeal to Barker's dark side to persuade him to join the project. Claire tries to get under Hawks' skin while simultaneously playing Connington off against Barker. Hawks has created a matter transmitter, one which scans a person or object to make a copy at the receivers on the moon. The earthbound copy is placed in a state of sensory deprivation which allows him to share the experiences of the doppelgänger. However, none of the participants have been able to stay sane after experiencing death second hand. Barker is the first to retain his sanity, but even he is deeply affected the first time, exclaiming, "...it didn't care! I was nothing to it!" He returns again and again to the challenge, advancing a little further each time. Meanwhile, his relationship to Claire deteriorates, even as Connington continues his disastrous attempts to win her, at one point receiving a severe beating from Barker. Eventually, Connington announces he is quitting, and Claire leaves with him. Meanwhile, Hawks starts a relationship with a young artist, Elizabeth Cummings, but he seems to want only to pour out his torment over the project to her. Finally, Barker announces that he is almost finished finding a way through the artifact. Hawks takes Elizabeth to a romantic location and declares his love for her, then returns to the project. He transmits himself as well as Barker to the Moon, where his duplicate joins Barker's on the final run. Together, the two weave their way through a series of bizarre landscapes containing death traps. Emerging from the other side, Hawks tells Barker that they cannot return to Earth. The equipment on the Moon is too crude to transmit a man back safely, and even if it were possible, there are already people living their lives. All the men working on the Moon are duplicates, mostly Navy men, all volunteers. Hawks elects to remain outside the base until his air runs out. Barker returns to try to be transmitted back anyway. Back on Earth, Hawks removes his isolation suit and finds a note in his hand, which he knew would be there. It reads simply, "Remember me to her."
4744127	/m/0cl0h0	Brokeback Mountain	E. Annie Proulx	1997-10-13		 Two young men who meet in Wyoming in 1963 forge a sudden emotional and sexual attachment, but soon part ways. As their separate lives play out with marriages, children and jobs, they reunite for brief liaisons on camping trips in remote settings over the course of the next 20 years.
4744286	/m/0cl0rp	Human Nature	Paul Cornell			 Bernice Summerfield is grieving since the death of Guy de Carnac (as seen in the previous novel, Sanctuary). The Doctor takes her to a market on a planet called Crex in the Augon system. He quickly sets off, telling her he'll be back in an hour, and Benny finds a pub where she orders a beer and finds a group of female human drinking partners. After Benny's had several drinks with them, the Doctor arrives and places a patch on her cheek — a pad that disperses the alcohol in her system. He tells her that they need to leave immediately, and leads her back to the TARDIS. He hands her a scroll, tells her he'll see her in three months, and collapses. Meanwhile, the genesmith Laylock meets with his associates. They plan to follow the Doctor. In a long, dark room, a teenager named Tim awakens from a dream, having had a premonition that everyone will die. Unable to understand Benny's grief on a human level, the Doctor has purchased a device which alters his biodata, transforming him into a human named Dr John Smith. Smith lives as a history teacher at a public school in 1914 England, and falls in love with a fellow teacher named Joan. However, when alien Aubertides, hoping to acquire Time Lord abilities, attack the school, Smith sacrifices himself and becomes the Doctor once more; as the Time Lord, he is unable to love Joan in the way the human John Smith did.
4744329	/m/0cl0tr	The World Jones Made	Philip K. Dick	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The World Jones Made is set in 2002 AD. On a then-future post-apocalyptic Earth, there was a devastating conflict that involved the use of nuclear weapons. Many American cities were targeted, and the People's Republic of China (and Soviet Union) also collapsed, leading to the imposition of a Federal World Government (Fedgov). In this dystopia, Relativism emerged as the governing political orthodoxy. Relativism is said to be a moral and ethical philosophy that states everyone is free to believe what they wish, as long as they don't make anyone else try to follow that principle, which has become established law after the destructiveness of the war unleashed by clashing ideologies. (However, dissidents from that orthodoxy do end up in forced labor camps). This sacrosanct principle is challenged by a man named Floyd Jones, whose assertions about the future prove correct. Relativism enables legal consumption of drugs like heroin and marijuana, as well as watching live sex shows with hermaphrodite human mutants. Due to the mutagenic effects of radiation from wartime nuclear exchanges, mutants earn their living within the entertainment industry, although one group has been subjected to deliberate genetic engineering, which later enables them to settle (an inhabitable) Venus. Doug Cussick is an agent of Fedgov, and his involvement with Jones encompasses this book. Jones has precognitive abilities that let him see a year into the future, which allows Dick to explore questions of predestination, free will and determinism. Fedgov (and Jones) encounter apparently unintelligent alien lifeforms named Drifters, which turn out to be one gamete of a spore-based migratory alien life form. Their apparently pointless destruction leads to a retaliatory alien quarantine of the human race to a few nearby star systems. The presence of the Drifters in the story is to give Jones an initial rallying-point for all of his xenophobic followers as well as to demonstrate, in the context of ensuing events, that Jones is far more susceptible to error than he was previously willing to admit. His whole approach has been one of an all-or-nothing gamble on the infallibility of his precognitive powers. Jones foresees his own assassination one year before it actually happens. Not only does he not attempt to avoid his execution, but he actually facilitates it by leaping into the path of a bullet meant for a bodyguard. This does not occur, however, before he and his followers create a cult that overthrows Fedgov, leading to the resettlement of Doug, his wife Nina and their three-year-old son in an artificial habitat on Venus. The novel addresses questions of Jones's agenda and trustworthiness as well as the decidedly ambiguous benefits of individual precognition.
4744421	/m/0cl0yx	The Infinity Doctors	Lance Parkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 During the Dark Time, the Gallifreyian scientist Omega leaves his wife to travel to the star, which when he causes it to go supernova, will give his people the power to become Lords of Time. But things do not go as planned and Omega is lost inside a black hole. Millions of years later, an unknown version of the Doctor, his friend the Magistrate and star pupil Larna, together with the rest of the Time Lords are preparing to host a peace conference between the Sontarans and the Rutans to end their thousand year war. But behind the scenes a masked figure arranges a kidnapping and robbery in the Doctor's rooms and a strange anomaly appears across the universe, which seemingly has the power to alter the past and future. The epicentre of the effect is a black hole at the end of the universe to which the Doctor and his friends must travel to prevent disaster.
4744829	/m/0cl1ph	Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf	David Gemmell	1992	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 High in the wooded, peaked mountains of Skeln, the woodsman Dakeyras, and his beautiful daughter Miriel live a life of harmonious solitude, while her twin sister, Krylla, has married and moved away. A group of grim-eyed members of the assassins guild stalk Waylander, for a bounty of ten thousand in gold put on his head by Karnak after Karnak's son Bodalen and his friends caused the death of his daughter Krylla and murdered her husband. Warriors like Belash of the Nadir, from the Wolfshead tribe, Morak the deadly swordsman with a taste for torture and Senta the young, good looking Gladiator who has never been beaten. Battle-hardened warriors all, they have no fear of this task - yet they should have. For Miriel is a woman of fire and iron, skilled with bow and blade and taught her skills by one of the deadliest killers of all time: Her father, Dakeyras, better known as Waylander the Slayer. de:Im Reich des Wolfes pl:W królestwie wilka
4745424	/m/0cl2lt	Ayesha	H. Rider Haggard	1905	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In the book's prologue, the book's anonymous "Editor" receives a parcel. Opening it, he finds a letter from Horace Holly, with an enclosed manuscript containing a second memoir about She. There is also a second letter, from Holly's doctor, to whom Holly has entrusted his letter and manuscript, along with a wooden box, which contains an ancient sistrum. The doctor recounts how, when attending Holly in his last hours, he arrived at the house to find that Holly had risen from his deathbed and made his way to a local ring of ancient standing stones. Following him, the doctor glimpsed a manifestation that appears to Holly, but as the vision vanished, Holly had let out a happy cry and died. When the narrative of Holly's manuscript begins, nearly twenty years have passed since their first adventure in Africa, but he and his ward Leo Vincey are convinced that Ayesha did not die. Following their dreams, they wander for years through Asia, eventually coming to 'Thibet' (as it is spelled in the book). Taking refuge over winter in a remote lamasery, they meet the old Abbot Kou-En, who claims to recall a past-life encounter tales with a witch queen from the time of Alexander the Great. The Abbott tries to dissuade them from going on and warns them that, however beautiful, nothing is immortal, even if the Queen was born centuries ago in Ancient Egypt or remembers it from a past life. He believes the Queen is holding on to the distractions of life, which will lead them away from Enlightenment and peace, whether she is a demon, a fallen angel, or only a dream. Despite the Abbot's warning, Leo is compelled to press on and Holly will not abandon his adopted son. When Spring breaks, they travel out into the uncharted region beyond the monastery; after a perilous journey and many narrow escapes, they arrive in the city of Kaloon, which is ruled by the evil Khan Rassen and his imperious wife, the Khania Atene, who claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great's ancient Hellenist generals. The people of Kaloon live under an uneasy truce with the people who serve the Hesea, the Priestess of Hes, who dwells on the Mountain, a huge volcano that dominates the region, at the summit of which is a massive natural rock formation in the shape of an ankh. Atene declares her love for Leo, but the jealous and dissolute Rassen (who has been driven mad by the sorcery of Atene and her uncle, the wizard Simbri) wants to kill them. Atene's rival, the mysterious Hesea, orders Atene to send Leo and Holly to her, or risk breaking their peace treaty. Atene vows to kill Leo, rather than let him go, but with the help of Rassen, they escape the city. However they soon realise that Rassen has betrayed them and is hunting them with his monstrous Death-Hounds. They make a dash to the foot of the mountain, where they are caught by Rassen, but after a desperate struggle they manage to kill the Khan and his hounds. As Leo and Holly ascend the Mountain they are intercepted by the people of Hes, who are then joined by a ghost-like Messenger, who leads them up the mountain. After they arrive at the vast temple-palace complex near the summit, they are taken into the presence of the veiled Hesea, who admits that she is the Messenger who guided them up the Mountain. In accordance with ancient custom, Atene comes to the mountain temple for the funeral of Rassen. The Hesea now declares that she is indeed the reincarnation of Ayesha, and that Atene is the reincarnation of her ancient rival, Amenartas. To the horror of Leo and Holly, Ayesha reveals she has been reborn into the body of a wizened old crone, her beauty gone. Atene challenges Ayesha, but Leo declares his love for Ayesha, regardless of the form in which she appears. With his choice, the mysterious life-force within the volcano reaches out and engulfs her - when it clears, her former beauty and majesty has been restored. Ayesha vows that if Leo still loves her, they will return to her ancient home in Africa. There they will both bathe in the Flame of Life, become immortal, and rule the world together. However she refuses Leo's entreaties to marry him right away, saying that they must wait for the change of seasons and the weather to clear, before they can travel. While waiting out the winter, Ayesha writes her memories (which are the basis for the fourth book in the series, Wisdom's Daughter). Ayesha shows Holly and Leo how she commands mortals, spirits, and demons. She questions Holly at length about the modern world and expounds to him her plan that, once united with Leo, they will rule the world, conquering the existing Empires by flooding the world’s gold supply with her alchemy. Appalled, Holly fears that Ayesha may succeed. Leo presses Ayesha to marry him without delay, but she is unwilling, insisting they must wait. Bored with his confinement, Leo goes hunting in the mountains but Ayesha, fearful for his safety, uses her psychic powers to watch him and sees that he and his men have been attacked by a leopard, and that Leo has been injured. When the party returns, the furious Ayesha sentences Leo's retainers to death, but Leo is horrified by her cruelty and prevails on her to spare them. Soon after, Atene sends Ayesha an ultimatum, challenging her to battle. Ayesha marshalls her forces and marches out, but while they are camped at the foot of the mountain, Atene uses her magic to appear in the guise of Ayesha, luring Holly and Leo away from Ayesha's protection, and Leo is captured. Enraged, Ayesha declares that she will destroy Atene and rescue Leo. Although greatly outnumbered, she leads her men into battle, and when the two armies meet Ayesha reveals her power over the elements, summoning up a terrible lightning storm. In the ensuing holocaust, Ayesha obliterates Atene's army and lays waste to Kaloon, while her own army reaches the city without the loss of a single man. When Ayesha and Holly burst into the room where Leo is confined, they discover that Atene has realised her utter defeat and taken poison. They see the wizard Simbri standing poised to kill Leo, but Ayesha paralyses him with her power, and Leo is released unharmed. Leo demands that Ayesha must give herself to him immediately, and she yields to his wish. They kiss, but Ayesha's power proves too great for his mortal body, and he dies in her arms. Ayesha then charges the wizard Simbri to go ahead into the realm of Death and carry a message to the departed spirits, and with these words Simbri falls dead where he stands. The distraught Ayesha takes Leo's body to the temple on the peak, where the flames rise up from the crater and consume their bodies. Holly is led down from the mountain and finds his way back to the lamasery.
4746735	/m/0cl4x7	We Can Build You	Philip K. Dick	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 We Can Build You is set in the then-future year of 1982. It centers on Louis Rosen, a small businessman whose company produces spinets and electronic organs. Rosen's partner wants to begin production of simulacra, or androids, based on famous Civil War figures. The firm completes two prototypes, one of Edwin M. Stanton and one of Abraham Lincoln. Rosen then attempts to sell the robot patents to Sam K. Barrows, an influential businessman who is opening up lunar real estate for purchase and colonization. Unfortunately, while the Stanton simulacrum proves able to adapt to contemporary U.S. society, the Lincoln simulacrum proves unable to do so, possibly due to the fact that the original experienced schizophrenia. At the same time, Louis begins a relationship with Pris Frauenzimmer, the schizophrenic daughter of his business partner, who has designed both simulacra. This becomes an obsession and Louis himself begins to hallucinate about Pris. At the same time, Pris defects to Barrows but then loses faith in the benevolence of their partnership when his objectives are disclosed as more prosaic than hers, with his plans to use simulacra colonists to entice human settlement on the Moon and other human interplanetary colonies within the solar system. After Pris's destruction of a John Wilkes Booth prototype simulacrum, the Stanton/Lincoln simulacra strand of the plot abruptly terminates. The remainder of the book deals with Louis Rosen's admission of schizophrenia and his Jungian therapeutic treatment at the Kasanin Centre in Kansas from where Pris was originally released. Under the influence of his therapist Rosen creates a virtual hallucinatory reality of his own where he resumes his relationship with Pris, marries her, has children and grows old together with her, finally culminating with him hitting her hallucinatory doppelgänger in a fit of pique. This concludes his final therapy session and he is released from the Kasanin clinic after his doctor accuses him of malingering. The end of the novel posits the query of whether he was actually batty to begin with. The real-world Pris, however, has become unwell again, and she is returned to Kasanin following her short-lived career as a simulacra designer.
4746737	/m/0cl4xl	The Tree of Hands	Ruth Rendell	1984-10-15	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Tree of Hands tells the story of an affluent young woman, Benet, who has a two-year-old son named James. She is estranged from James' father. They live in North London. Benet's mother comes to visit them. She and Benet's father now live in Spain. Benet's mother has a history of mental illness, possibly schizophrenia, and Benet is rather fearful of her mother and what she may be capable of doing. Unfortunately James becomes extremely ill and dies, Benet is distraught and spends a lot of time in a state of prostrated grief. Her mother tries to look after her. A sub-plot involves a young man on a council estate who is deeply in love with a woman, Carol, who has several children from previous partners. It becomes apparent to the reader that she is unfaithful to this young man, and she is abusing her children, in particular her little boy, Jason. A turn in events leads to Benet's mother kidnapping little Jason and "replacing" the dead James. Benet, at first horrified at what her mother has done, begins to realise that little Jason has been abused (she finds cigarette burns on his body)and grows to love him. As he refers to himself as Jay, this is what she calls him. However, she realises that she cannot continue to see the Doctor from the hospital because he knows that James has died, and he has been very kind to her. He may start to question Jason's appearance. Also Benet's ex begins to realise what may have happened and puts pressure on her. She realises that she and Jay must leave the country in order to start their new life. The sub plot (Carol and her friends and family) evolves into murder and betrayal, and a very clever twist involving the sale of a house in Hampstead. The title "Tree of Hands" refers to a piece of artwork displayed on the wall in the ward that James was admitted to when first taken ill.
4746890	/m/0cl56s	Our Friends from Frolix 8	Philip K. Dick	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the 22nd Century, the Earth is ruled by the "New Men", humans with superhuman mental abilities, who share power with "Unusuals" that possess psionic abilities, such as telepathy, telekinesis and precognition. (In its use of psionic abilities as a major plot element, this work is similar to Ubik.) To fight them, Thors Provoni has gone deep into space to find help. He is returning with a sentient protoplasmic alien being, a "Friend from Frolix 8", (known as Morgo Rahn Wilc) to fight for the "Old Men" (non-telepathic humanity, also incapable of enhanced cognitive abilities). Against this background, Nick Appleton (an Old Man) and Willis Gram (an Unusual) are political rivals. Initially compliant to the "New Men"/"Unusual" regime, Appleton's son Bobby fails a Civil Service examination which is deliberately geared toward failing "Old Man" applicants. At the same time, Terran authorities are holding "Under Man" activist Cordon imprisoned, preparing for his execution. Appleton becomes politicised, and falls for Charlotte ("Charley") Boyer, a sixteen year old subversive. She is involved with alcoholic Denny (in this future, alcohol prohibition has apparently returned as a social policy). After the authorities discover that Appleton has become 'subversive,' they attempt to apprehend him and Charley, whom Willis Gram is also obsessed with. Meanwhile, Thors Provoni's craft has eluded Terran fleet defences and is rapidly nearing Earth, leading to paranoid fears from the erstwhile governing elite about the possibility of violent alien invasion. In the event, Provoni does land, but Morgo Rahn Wilc protects him from an assassination attempt. Provoni is actually a "New Man" and an "Unusual" at the same time himself, and with the assistance of his alien companion, he strips all Unusuals of their psionic abilities, and all New Men of their advanced cognitive abilities, rendering the New Men intellectually disabled and only capable of childlike cognition.
4749558	/m/0cl9yr	The Hollowing	Robert Holdstock	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The day Tallis Keeton disappears into Ryhope wood in Lavondyss, her father, James Keeton, disappears into the wood to locate her. While he spends only four days in Ryhope wood, over one year of time passes in the outside world. When he turns up, he is clutching Moondream, one of Tallis’ masks, and is placed in a mental hospital. He is kept close company by Alex Bradley, a young playmate of Tallis’, who alone can calm James. James Keeton has a number of episodes in which he appears to communicate with Tallis through the mask. In a dramatic scene, Richard Bradley sees James Keeton collapse and die. At the same time, his son Alex is physically traumatized by a mythic force. This compromises Alex’s mental faculties and he is confined to the same mental hospital. Alex escapes the mental hospital and his highly decayed remains are subsequently found, so he is presumed dead. After six years Alex’s father, Richard Bradley, receives evidence that Alex may yet be alive in Ryhope wood. Richard joins a scientific expedition to locate his son in the wood, rendered all the more dangerous by the mythagos feeding off Alex’s imagination. During his quest in the wood, Richard Bradley develops a romantic relationship with Helen Silverlock, a Native American. In addition to introducing Native American culture into Ryhope wood, mythagos about Jack (as in Jack and the Beanstalk), the Tower of Babel and Jason and the Argonauts appear, the last two of which involve variations on myths that are uncharacteristically non-English in origin.
4749814	/m/0clb9n	Islam and the West				 This chapter contains an exploration of the meaning of orientalism. It is argued that the word orientalism was until relatively recently used mainly in two senses, to denote either a branch of scholarship or a school of painting. However Lewis contends that it has now been given a new meaning, "that of unsympathetic or hostile treatment of oriental peoples." (p100). The historical beginnings of oriental scholarship in Western Europe are dated to the time of the Renaissance. Its history is then traced from relatively narrow roots where one discipline, philology, recovered, studied, published and interpreted texts relating to one region, that which is now called the Middle East, to its gradual expansion to include other disciplines such as philosophy, theology, literature and history and a diversity of areas from the Ottoman Empire to India and China. Having reached a point where the multi-disciplinary approaches and the sheer number of regions under study rendered the term orientalist obsolete Lewis argues it was in effect formally abandoned by those he terms accredited orientalists at the 29th International Congress of Orientalists in 1973. Lewis laments that although the term has now been revived its usage has changed to that of a term of polemic abuse. An exploration of the rise of anti-orientalism follows where critics from a diversity of sources ranging from Islamicists to Arab Nationalists to Marxist theorists are briefly considered before Lewis concludes by identifying its main exponent in the United States of America, Edward Said. A significant proportion of the remainder of the chapter is devoted to a critique of Said's book Orientalism published in 1978. Lewis attributes the success of Said's book to its anti-Western stance, its use of, "the ideas, and still more the language of currently fashionable literary, philosophical and political theories." (p114) and its apparent simplification of complex problems. Finally the chapter concludes with a brief review of the counter-critique from Arab writers such as the Egyptian philosopher Fu'ad Zakana.
4750223	/m/0clc3m	Bloody Bones	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bloody Bones begins on Saint Patrick's Day, shortly after the events of the previous Anita Blake novel, The Lunatic Cafe. Like the previous novels, the novel opens with Anita considering a possible job. This time, her manager, Bert, is calculating a possible bid for a mass zombie raising in Branson, Missouri. Bert explains that a law firm is soliciting bids to raise an entire graveyard in order to determine who owns a piece of land needed for a resort complex. The graves are unmarked and may contain corpses at least 100 years old, Anita finds out later there are some that are much older than that, which will make the raising very difficult. In Anita's opinion, she is the only person in the world who might be able to raise that many ancient unmarked graves without a human sacrifice. She agrees to take the job, and takes Larry along to boost her powers, and as a training experience. (She and Bert agree that although John Burke also has the power to make a good second, his pride is such that it's best that he not even learn that Anita took a job that he was not strong enough to take on his own). Arriving in Branson, Anita meets Raymond Stirling, the lawyer in charge of the development project and his assistants, Lionel Bayard, Ms Harrison and Beau, and learns that Stirling is in a dispute with Magnus and Dorcas Bouvier, two siblings who claim to own the land at issue and refuse to sell. If the corpses on the land confirm that it belongs to the Bouviers, Stirling's project will be unable to continue. After reviewing the site and making plans to explore the site further that evening, Anita receives a call from Dolph. Dolph asks Anita for advice on a crime scene back in St. Louis and also asks her to assist the local police with a nearby crime scene. Anita and Larry drive to the scene and meet Sergeant Freemont, who appears to want to crack the case herself and resents their intrusion. Anita inspects the murder victims—three teen-aged or younger boys cut apart with a blade. Each of the boys' faces have been disfigured or removed, and Freemont reveals that a teenaged boy and girl were murdered earlier, with similar wounds. Anita warns Freemont that in her opinion, the boys were cut apart by a sword wielded by something as fast and strong as a vampire, with enough mental power to hold two of the boys motionless while killing the third. Larry is seriously shaken by viewing his first murder scene. Anita and Larry then go to the Bouviers' restaurant, named "Bloody Bones," to investigate the land dispute and to get dinner. There, they meet Magnus and Dorrie, each of whom is part-fey. Magnus is using glamour to host a date night. By touching the restaurant patrons, he makes them irresistibly attractive for one night, in return for drawing some power for himself. After trying unsuccessfully to seduce Anita, Magnus is coy about why the Bouviers refuse to sell their land. Magnus also admits to destroying several trees outside the restaurant while in a drunken rage, causing Anita to consider him as a suspect for the recent killings. During dinner, Dolph pages Anita again, and asks her to assist on another possible local vampire crime. Anita tells Dolph that Magnus is part-fey and a potential suspect, then Anita and Larry drive to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Quinlan. There, they meet Sheriff David St. John, his wife Beth, Deputy Zack Coltraine, Mr. and Mrs. Quinlan, and their son Jeff. Jeff's older sister, Ellie is lying in her bed, dead of a vampire bite. Anita and Larry eventually deduce that her death was probably voluntary, and learn that Ellie's boyfriend Andy recently disappeared. They guess that Ellie's boyfriend has recently been raised as a vampire and turned her as well, but Mr. Quinlan refuses to believe them and demands that Anita stake Ellie to prevent her from rising. Anita asks him to wait twenty-four hours to "cool off" and promises to stake Ellie if her father demands it after that time. After instructing the Quinlans to place the Host at each doorway to prevent any vampires from reentering the home, Anita explains that the vampire that turned Ellie probably has a resting place nearby, and that they may catch it if they attempt a nighttime hunt. She heads out into the woods after it, together with Larry, Sheriff St. John, Deputy Coltraine, and two other police officers, Wallace and Granger. During the hunt, Anita learns that Wallace was a survivor of a vampire attack and shows him her own scars in an effort to put him at ease. During the hunt, Anita and the others are ambushed by a pack of vampires. In the fight, Anita kills two vampires, but Granger is bitten, Wallace's arm is broken, and Xavier kills Coltrain with a sword. While the hunters regroup, Granger, now under vampire control, attempts to shoot Larry, and Anita is forced to kill him. The group then hears screams from the Quinlan home, and St. John and Anita run for the house, leaving Larry and Wallace to bring up the rear. When Anita gets to the house, Beth St. John is dead and Jeff has been taken. (Apparently, Xavier was able to shapeshift and fit through a pet door). Sheriff St. John kills a brown haired, female vampire. Anita shoots at Xavier, but he's too fast to hit. Later, Sergeant Freemont arrives at the scene. She explains that after Dolph told her that Magnus was part fey, she went to arrest him. Mangus used glamour to escape, and is now wanted for using magic on police officers during the course of his escape. FBI agents Elwood and Bradford arrive and speak to Anita, who agrees to attempt to identify and contact the Master of the City. Anita calls Jean-Claude for information. Jean-Claude explains that he thinks he knows the vampire Anita saw, and that it is an "exotic" vampire of a sort concealed from humans. Among other things, it is a pedophile. Jean-Claude offers to come to Branson to set up a meeting with the Master of the City. With Jeff Quinlan in the hands of a monster, Anita is forced to accept Jean-Claude's help. With no way to pursue the Quinlan case, Anita and Larry return to the graveyard to "walk the graveyard" and attempt to sense the location and identities of the corpses in preparation for a later attempt to raise the dead. Anita and Larry experiment with combining powers, and are surprised at the degree to which they are able to magnify each other's abilities. However, their powers attract Magnus, who appears and insists that they not raise the dead in that graveyard. Stirling orders Beau to shoot Magnus for trespassing, but Anita, realizing that Stirling intended the evening as a trap for Magnus, draws her own gun and buys Magnus time to escape. Anita and Larry return to their hotel suite to find Jean-Claude and Jason. Jean-Claude has flown in on his private jet, but it is now too late in the night to track down the Master before dawn. Jean-Claude informs Anita of Xavier's name, then retires for the morning in her bed. Jason visits with Anita and Larry, and challenges Anita for dominance. Anita wins, of course, and figures out that Jean-Claude has ordered Jason to show his lycanthrope side in an effort to dissuade Anita from marrying Richard. Jason acknowledges Anita as dominant and goes to bed. Later that morning, Dorcas Bouvier bursts into Anita's hotel suite and demands to see Magnus. After Dorcas bursts into the bedroom and sees Jean-Claude and Jason, she accepts that Anita has not fallen victim to Magnus's charms and explains why the Bouviers refuse to sell their land. Centuries ago their ancestor, a member of the fey, emigrated to colonial North America with a more powerful fey, Rawhead and Bloody Bones trapped in a magic box. While Rawhead was trapped, Bouvier was able to create a potion from its blood and increase his own powers, but eventually, Rawhead escaped and went on a murderous rampage. After a pitched battle, Rawhead was sealed beneath the ground, and the Bouvier family has remained in Branson in order to prevent Rawhead from escaping. Anita convinces Dorcas to take her to see the mound where Rawhead is trapped, and they agree to go to the mound the following day. That evening, Jean-Claude prepares the group to meet Seraphina, the master of Branson. He explains that his visit raises issues of vampire politics. Although vampires' interactions with one another are somewhat constrained by the laws of the Vampire Council, conflicts are still possible, and he has negotiated a delicate truce with Seraphina. Although the group must be prepared to fight, they may not strike the first blow. Jean-Claude and Anita, accompanied by Larry and Jason, visit an apparently ruined and abandoned home, cloaked in magical shadow, and meet Ivy, Bruce, Kissa, Janos, Pallas and Bettina. The Branson vampires engage in a calculated plan to force Jean-Claude's party to break the truce. Without offering violence to his group, they threaten to torture two young women, then sexually harass Jason. Jean-Claude is forced to challenge Janos to a contest of power, which he begins to lose. Ultimately, Anita escapes the trap by baiting Ivy into attacking her, allowing the group to use violence in their own defense. In the ensuing battle, Larry kills Bruce, and Pallas and Bettina are first shot, then torn apart. (However, because they are rotting vampires, they are almost impossible to kill.) Anita is forced to give blood to save Jean-Claude's life. Once Jean-Claude is stabilized, Magnus appears and offers to convey the group to see Seraphina under a flag of truce. Seraphina toys with the group, but ultimately agrees that a murderous pedophile master vampire in her territory is a threat, and agrees to track down Xavier. Jean-Claude is astounded that Seraphina has somehow become powerful enough to assert mastery over vampires as formidable as Janos. The group returns to the hotel to clean up. Anita learns more about Jean-Claude's history and momentarily surrenders to her lust and kisses Jean-Claude, but stops when he draws blood (though he claims it was by accident). She stays with Jean-Claude as dawn comes and he "dies" for the day and is surprised at her growing sympathy towards him. Anita then falls asleep herself and is visited in her dream by Seraphina, who promises to reunite Anita with her deceased mother if Anita agrees to serve Seraphina. Anita wakes, and begins planning to kill Seraphina. Anita and Larry meet up with Dorcas Bouvier, who takes them to the mound where Bloody Bones is imprisoned. When they arrive, they surprise Magnus in the act of drinking Bloody Bones's blood, and Dorcas realizes that Magnus has been using Bloody Bones to boost his power for years. Anita proposes that instead of raising the entire Bouvier graveyard, she raise just enough zombies to confirm the Bouviers' claim to the land and prevent Stirling from digging up the graveyard and freeing Bloody Bones. That evening, accompanied by Stirling, Bayard, and Harrison, Anita and Larry combine their powers to animate a few of the ancient corpses in the Bouvier graveyard. Just before Anita completes the circle of blood needed to activate their power, she feels Bloody Bones stir and realizes that raising even a few zombies will free the monster. She stops, but Ivy flies from the darkness and attacks. Anita kills Ivy in self-defense, but Ivy's blood falls on the remaining span of the circle, closing the loop and activating her power. Similar to Anita's inadvertent human sacrifices in The Laughing Corpse, Ivy's death supercharges Anita's power, forcing her to animate every corpse in the graveyard. At that point, Stirling and Harrison draw guns, and Stirling shoots Bayard. Apparently, Seraphina and Bloody Bones promised Stirling the land in return for Bloody Bones's freedom, and Stirling had planned on killing Anita once she raised the Bouviers and freed the fey. Anita orders the zombies to attack Stirling and Harrison and incapacitates them both. While she considers whether to kill them, Janos arrives with a newly risen Ellie, accompanied by Bettina, Pallas, Kissa, Xavier and their hostage, Jeff Quinlan. The vampires feed on and kill Stirling and Harrison, and inform Anita that Xavier has been serving Seraphina since her arrival in Branson. Seraphina's vampires fly away, and Anita goes to confront them and attempt rescue Jeff, with the help of Jean-Claude, Larry, and Jason. Bloody Bones arrives and demands its freedom, but Seraphina breaks her word to the fey and announces her intent to continue drinking its power forever. With her oath broken, Larry and Anita are able to break her spell over Bloody Bones, and it draws a sword and impales Seraphina. Bloody Bones admits to Anita that it has been able to manifest its form as a result of Magnus's interference, and that it killed the teenagers for being bad children. Realizing that Bloody Bones is mortal as long as it continues to share power with Magnus, Anita shoots the boggle, slowing it down long enough for Xavier to kill it with a greatsword forged of cold iron. Anita infers that Xavier is a fey raised as a vampire, although Xavier denies it. Seraphina regains control, and decides that Anita's blood might make an acceptable second choice for Bloody Bones's. In return for Anita surrendering herself, Seraphina agrees to let the others go. The next morning, Anita wakes up next to Seraphina in her coffin. She forces her way out and learns that the coffins of Seraphina's vampires have been moved to the Bloody Bones bar and grill. (Ellie does not have a coffin and is sleeping on the floor.) Anita tries to escape, but Magnus stops her. In the course of the fight, Anita drips some of her blood on Ellie and realizes that she can raise Ellie as if she were a zombie. She does so and orders Ellie to hold Magnus while she makes her escape. With Ellie clinging to his waist, Magnus chases Anita outside and is burned to death when Ellie burns in the sunlight. Anita contacts Agent Bradford and tells him where the vampires are resting. With Anita, Larry and the local authorities, Bradford douses the Bloody Bones restaurant with gasoline and prepares to set it on fire. Anita feels Seraphina in her mind and forces the agents to handcuff her and lock her in a car so that Seraphina cannot use her control over Anita to interfere. As the fire consumes all of the vampires inside, including the now-dead Jeff Quinlan, Seraphina forces Anita to relive the death of her own mother, renewing her earlier trauma. In the epilogue, Anita explains that Dorcas, now free of the family curse, sold the Bouvier land and left Branson with her children, that the Quinlans are suing Animators, Inc. because of Anita's refusal to stake Ellie when asked, and that Anita herself is continuing her life in St. Louis, notwithstanding the fresh emotional wounds.
4754875	/m/0cllgz	Jedi Twilight	Michael Reaves		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 With the dark ascension of the Empire, and the Jedi Knights virtually wiped out, one Jedi who escaped the massacre is slated for a date with destiny–and a confrontation with Darth Vader. Jax Pavan is one of the few Jedi Knights who miraculously survived the slaughter that followed Palpatine's ruthless Order 66. Now, deep in Coruscant's Blackpit Slums, Jax ekes out a living as a private investigator, trying to help people in need while concealing his Jedi identity and staying one step ahead of the killers out for Jedi blood. And they’re not the only ones in search of the elusive Jax. Hard-boiled reporter Den Dhur and his buddy, the highly unorthodox droid I-5YQ, have shocking news to bring Jax–about the father he never knew. But when Jax learns that his old Jedi Master has been killed, leaving behind the request that Jax finish a mission critical to the resistance, Jax has no choice but to emerge from hiding–and risk detection by Darth Vader–to fulfill his Master's dying wish.
4756247	/m/0clnmj	The Haunted Mesa	Louis L'Amour	1987-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mike Raglan, a roughly middle-aged man who specializes in paranormal investigations (and normally debunking the phenomena) has received urgent phone calls and mail from an old friend of his, Erik Hokart. Hokart was an independently wealthy scientist, inventor, and businessman who made his fortune in electronics. He was investigating an odd patch of mountainous country in the Southwest, intending to build a secluded home on top of one particular mesa around which rumors had long swirled. His messages to Mike intimated that he was in deep trouble and desperately needed someone of his talents. Hokart doesn't show up at the designated meeting spot, but the next day Mike receives a package from him, delivered by an exotic female beauty. A man breaks into his room to try to steal the package, and is only finally sent off with a book Raglan wrote by a lie and a .357 Magnum. The package contains Erik Hokart's journal of his quasi-archaeological expedition. The first night on the chosen mesa, glowing lines appear on the blueprint, of a kiva attached to the ruins of the house Hokart was using as a makeshift shelter. Hokart is a little perturbed when the glowing lines turn out to be correct, and he begins to excavate the underground kiva even though it looks to have been deliberately buried. It creeps out both him and his large guard dog, "Chief". Fully excavated, the kiva reveals itself as anomalous in having no sipapu but rather a blind window made out of a curious gray substance. After he finishes, Hokart discovers that a pencil of his had been stolen and replaced with a jar. Afraid, Hokart begins to leave; Chief mistakes his abrupt movements for an intention to attack the kiva and plunges through the window and into a far invisible distance through to somewhere else. Erik begins to consider the legends and beliefs of the Hopi: they say their people originally came from the Third World, which was evil, and so they climbed up into a kiva in this, the Fourth World, to escape it; the obvious speculation is that a malign power of the Third World was sealed by the burial of the kiva and that it wants the window to this world opened back up. Erik rests. His pencil is returned the next day, worn down to a nub. He resharpens it and sets out more. They too vanish, as well as one of his cardigan sweaters. The sweater returns with a newly made twin. Two days later, Chief returns, apparently none the worse for wear. Having read thus far in Hokart's journal, Mike prepares to travel to the mesa, to personally investigate. He pauses to read further. As Hokart resolved to leave now that his dog had been returned, he is confronted by a striking raven-haired ivory-skinned woman who imperiously orders him to accompany her back through the portal in the kiva. He refuses, struck by a sense of menace and evil radiating from her, and leaves immediately. On the way down, he meets a young girl named Kawasi, who explains that she is a renegade from the Third World and that the woman was a "Poison Woman" who intended to imprison or kill him. They escape, and stop at a restaurant for dinner. He instructs Kawasi to get his journal to Mike, when the restaurant is surrounded by hired thugs. The journal ends with Erik making a break for the jeep and ordering Kawasi out the back. Mike discovers that the restaurant concerned had been destroyed that night in an abrupt and inexplicable fire. He finds Kawasi waiting for him in another nearby restaurant. She tells him, that night ended in Hokart's kidnapping. They are approached by the local constable, Gallagher. They forthrightly answer his questions and tell him the tale up to that point. Gallagher doesn't quite believe them, but he maintains an open mind. Raglan determines to go into the Third World (named Shibalba by its inhabitants, who suffer under the decaying and decadent totalitarian regime of "The Hand" and his Lords of Shibalba) to rescue Hokart; the kiva entrance is surely guarded now, so he intends to use a map to Shibalba he was given by an old cowboy who had stolen gold from, and barely escaped alive, the Third World. On his way, he meets "Tazzoc", a historian/archivist of Shibalba's forgotten archives, who tells Raglan much about Shibalba and its rulers; he wants to dissuade Raglan from his quest because it is hopeless and could only lead to trouble. At the designated place, Raglan is frightened off by the presence of a squad of investigating Shibalban soldiers, "the Varanel, the Night Guards of Shibalba". Raglan confers with Gallagher and Tazzoc again, who promises to leave some native clothes at the kiva entrance so Raglan can better blend in; Raglan promises to do what he could to save Tazzoc's archives and get them into wider circulation. A confrontation with a local agent of the Hand, Eden Foster, only ends up as a brawl which Raglan wins. He enters the Third World, enlisting the aid of Johnny (an old cowboy who had been trapped in the Third World for decades) as backup. Raglan rendezvouses with Tazzoc in his archives, located within the mazy trap-filled citadel the Hand lives in and where Hokart is presumably being held, the Forbidden. The archives hold an ancient map from when the Forbidden was first built, and with its aid he finds Hokart's cell - although he is hunted through the Forbidden by the ambitious and arrogant agent Zipacna and his Varanel goons. Raglan's pistols win through the Varanel and rescue the starving Hokart. They break out, and Johnny discourages pursuit with his big rifle laying down covering fire on the pursuing Varanel. A day later, as the portal back to the Fourth World quavers and begins to collapse, they kill Zipacna and attempt to escape the Third World. They are opposed by an old friend Raglan had left to guard the kiva, Volkmeer, who has entered the employ of the Hand. Raglan, Hokart, and the others escape, but Volkmeer is caught in the portal as it becomes quiescent, and is frozen in time.
4760716	/m/0clxxp	The Game-Players of Titan	Philip K. Dick	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Pete Garden, the protagonist, is one of several residents who own large swathes of property in a depopulated, post-apocalyptic future world. These residents are organized in groups of regular competitors who play a board game called "Bluff". These contestants (or "Bindmen") stake their property, marriages and future status as eligible game players on its outcomes. Pete also experiences bipolar disorder, which may adversely affect his competence as a Game participant. The Game is administered by amorphous, silicon-based aliens from Titan, Saturn's largest satellite. These creatures, known as the vugs, are obsessed with gambling. In addition, the Game's exogamy helps to promote human fertility after the devastation of global warfare, after satellite-borne "Henkel Radiation" weaponry from Red China sterilized much of the Earth's population. The vug exert hegemony over Earth but do not occupy it as such. Instead, it is visualised as a paternalistic relationship. Moreover, while the vugs are telepaths, they do not allow the use of human telepathy or precognition within the context of the Game. It is also the case that the vugs are involved within human society, using induced hallucination to maintain the semblance of human form. They also perpetuate the charade through the use of physical human shells or simulacra. At the beginning, Pete has lost his favorite property, Berkeley, and his wife, Freya. Moreover, Berkeley's new owner has sold it to a notoriously corrupt Bindman from the East Coast, Jerome Luckman. Pete misses Freya, and worries about the compatibility of his new wife. He is also attracted to Pat McClain, a mysteriously fertile woman living within his remaining property, as well as Mary Anne, her eighteen year-old daughter. Pat is a telepath, while her husband Allen is precognitive, and their daughter manifests telekinesis. These telepaths resent the fact that they are not allowed to participate in the Game, due to possible abuse of their abilities during the contest. Pete breaks off his tentative relationship with Pat when he discovers that his new wife, Carol, is pregnant - a rare occurrence in this largely infertile, depopulated world. Luckman, the new owner of Berkeley, is murdered, and Pete is implicated, along with six other members of his group, Pretty Blue Fox. However, Pete and the other group members are suffering from induced amnesia, and this only makes them look even more suspicious in the eyes of both vug and human law enforcement officials. Pete discovers that vugs are abusing their own psionic abilities to appear human. However, the vugs also have their own political factions, which further complicates matters. "Extremists" favour subversion and conquest of Earth, while "moderates" favour the status quo of paternalistic collaboration. Fertile humans begin an underground resistance against the vugs, but in the ultimate ironic twist, they are replaced by vugs posing as humans. Pretty Blue Fox syndicate members are teleported to Titan where they play a decisive end-Game with Titanian vug counterparts for the geopolitical future of the United States. * Rossi, Umberto, “The Game of the Rat: A.E. Van Vogt’s 800-Words Rule and P.K. Dick’s The Game-Players of Titan”, Science-Fiction Studies #93, 31:2, July 2004, pp.&nbsp;207–26.
4762191	/m/0cl_b8	The Werewolf of Fever Swamp	R. L. Stine	1993-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Grady Tucker and his sixteen year-old sister Emily have both moved to a new house with their scientist parents. Their father, Dr. Tucker, studied deer in Vermont until he came into possession of six Swamp Deer from South America. Because of this, Dad had to move with his scientist wife and the two kids to Florida so he could test his hypothesis: Deer can live in Florida. Though he keeps them in a pen in the backyard for now, Dr. Tucker intends to release the deer with tracking collars into the wild. Grady and Emily go exploring in search of a bird. Emily learned all about forests and swamps in school so she fills Grady in on all the scientific details. Emily and Grady suddenly find themselves lost in the swamp. They wander around, eventually finding a small shack. A crazed white-haired man exits the shack and chases the two children, who run around until finally they find the door to their house. Once inside, they tell their parents about the wild man. Dad coolly tells the kids that he's just a swamp hermit. Then he says that the guys at the hardware store said the swamp hermit was completely harmless. Later that night, Grady is just kicking it in the backyard when another twelve year-old boy, one of his new neighbors, introduces himself as Will. Will is a big kid and tells Grady that the only other kid their age on the block is a weird girl. Will walks over to the deer pen, picks something up and utters "Yuck. Deer Slime." Will tells a story about how Fever Swamp got named. A hundred years ago, everyone in town caught something from the swamp that started with a fever and most died and those who didn't die went crazy. Late that night Grady comes down with a fever. Woken from a fever dream, Grady hears howls coming from outside. He goes down to the kitchen to investigate and hears scratching on the exterior door. Emily wakes up too and the two siblings sit in the kitchen, listening to the howls and scratching at the door. Grady bravely opens the door but sees no one outside, and since it's midnight, doesn't go outside to investigate further. The two siblings listen to the sounds some more and then their Dad wakes up and insists on taking both of their temperatures. The next morning, no sooner does Grady leave the house than he is attacked by a lovable but huge, 100&nbsp;lb dog. The dog starts licking Grady's face and Emily comes out and pets the dog, figuring this is the source of the scratching from the previous night. After some discussion the parents decide that a dog would be fine to let into their house. Will shows up to go investigate the swamp with Grady, and suggests to the family that the dog might be part-wolf. So they name the dog Wolf. The two boys leave the dog at the house and are not in the swamp for more than a few minutes before Wolf shows up and accompanies them into the thicket of foliage. They fool around the swamp for a while and then Wolf starts growling as he spots the Swamp Hermit. Will thinks the Swamp Hermit, whose shirt is covered in blood, might be dangerous. They remain still as the Swamp Hermit quietly leaves their line of sight. As soon as the coast is clear, the boys continue exploring and come across a bloody mauled heron. The bird has been ripped apart and there are paw prints around the body. Grady guesses a dog did it but then Will tells Grady that dogs don't rip apart birds. Will goes back home and Grady enters his house. Dr. Tucker tells Grady that the swamp is filled with scary stuff and that another bird probably killed the heron. The entire family is awoken in the middle of the night by crashing from downstairs. They all huddle together and make their way down to investigate. The noise was caused by Wolf, who has run around the living room, smashing into the furniture in a desperate attempt to get out of the house. Dad gets especially dismayed when he discovers the dog had broken the lamp.The dog starts ramming its body into the plate glass sliding door until finally Dad opens the door and Wolf leaps out of the house into the swamp. The family goes back to their rooms, but before long, Grady hears howling coming from the swamp again. In the light of the full moon, Grady can make out a four-legged creature in the shadows below his window. The creature leaves something resembling a rag at the foot of the deer pen and leaves. Grady goes down to get a closer look and sees a chewed up rabbit. The next morning, after breakfast, Grady takes his father to see the dead rabbit. Wolf shows up and gently licks the kid's face. Emily is convinced that Wolf killed the rabbit and begs their father to get rid of the dog. Grady tells her she has no proof that the dog killed the bunny. Emily says there's no proof he didn't either. Will shows up and tells Grady that a neighbor, Mr. Warner, has gone missing. Apparently Mr. Warner left early the day before to go turkey hunting in the swamp and never returned. A voice from behind them suggests that a werewolf did it. That voice belongs to a redhead named Cassie, the weird girl Will mentioned. Will tells her to shut up, that what she's saying is stupid. Cassie presses the issue and tries to convince Grady that the howls can only be made by a werewolf that has made a fresh kill. Cassie freaks out when she sees the Swamp Hermit in the distance, yells and points at him. The Swamp Hermit has a wild turkey slung over his shoulder, leading the kids to wonder if he swiped it from the missing Mr. Warner. The Swamp Hermit is close enough to hear these accusations and runs out of the swamp towards the kids, yelling "I'm the werewolf! I'm the werewolf!" over and over, cackling all the way. The other kids flee as the hermit grabs Grady's ankle, keeping him in place. The old man just cackles and waves at him with his free hand and tells Grady he was only playing. Wolf trots up and barely acknowledges the hermit, who lets Grady loose from his grip. The Swamp Hermit tells Grady to be careful about his dog and heads back to his shack. Then Grady gets bitten by a snake. Wolf leads Grady back to safety and he tells Will and Cassie, who've regrouped on his lawn, to get his parents. Cassie tells Grady's mom that he was bitten by a werewolf. Grady's mom puts an ice pack on Grady's ankle and jokingly tells him that his father is a werewolf and that she shaves his back every day so he'll look normal. Grady persists that a werewolf could be responsible for the events in the swamp, like the howls. The mother replies that a lot of things howl in the swamp, even Grady when he got bitten. Dr. Tucker tells Grady that since the moon will only be full for two more days, they'll know after that whether or not the howls came from a werewolf. Then he too starts laughing, as he said it to mock his son. The mom picks up a newspaper and shows her black newsprint hands to Grady and tells him it's hair that's grown on her palms. Emily suggests that the dog is the werewolf. Cassie and Will come over that night to eat and after dinner Grady sits with the two as they trade barbs about just who in this book is the werewolf. This quickly turns into the two just calling each other names while Grady watches. Then each accuses the other of being the werewolf. Lying in bed, trying to sleep, Grady hears the howls from outside again. Then he hears a commotion below his window again. This time when he goes to investigate, he finds that something has broken into the deer pen and killed one of the six "swamp deer", the other five deer huddled together in their pen, away from the gaping hole in the metal. Grady calls his dad down from the lawn to see the corpse. Dr. Tucker patches the pen with a piece of cardboard. After dragging the dead deer to his workshop, Dr. Tucker tells his son that clearly his dog is a killer. Grady's father tells him that tomorrow morning, he's taking the dog to the pound to be killed. The next morning, Grady's dad tries to take Wolf to the pound but Grady tells his dog to run away and it does. Grady's dad tells him that was dumb, because the dog is bound to come back, and when it does, he's going to take it to be killed. Wolf manages to stay out of sight all day and it isn't until late that night that Grady spots him from his bedroom window, lingering at the swamp clearing. Grady goes down to greet his dog and runs into Will. Will claims to have heard the howls and was trying to investigate when he ran into Grady. The two boys spot Wolf, who has edged back into the swamp. Grady runs after him, losing Will in the process. Following his dog, Grady ends up at the Swamp Hermit's hut. He hears the horrible howling coming from near the shack and he realizes the hermit was the werewolf. But soon discovers Will is the Werewolf, not the hermit, after seeing Will slowly transform into a wolf under the full moon. Will attacks Grady, Luckily, Wolf comes and fights off Will driving him away and saving Grady's life. But, Grady eventually passes out. When he comes to, he finds himself safely inside his own home. Grady's dad tells him that the Swamp Hermit found him and carried him home, and that he also saw Wolf fight off a large creature to save Grady's life. Grady's dad submits that they can keep the dog. After listening to Grady's werewolf story, Dr. Tucker figures he might as well try to see if his son could be telling the truth, so he goes to visit Will's house. He finds the house is empty, abandoned, as though no one had lived there for months. Grady is so happy that he got to keep Wolf around because the dog makes for an excellent companion on nights when the full moon is out as Grady becomes a werewolf as he roams around the Fever Swamp area with Wolf. It also suggests that the cap of forest service that Will wears is the cap of the officers that may have come to the swamp and were killed by Will.
4762459	/m/0cl_pz	The Unteleported Man	Philip K. Dick	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A new teleportation technology makes travel by spaceship obsolete. A new colony, Whale's Mouth, has been the destination for forty million emigrants, but it is a one way trip - teleportation back to Earth is supposedly impossible. The only way to return is by spaceship, an eighteen-year journey for passengers who are subjected to a limited form of suspended animation. Rachmael ben Applebaum, whose spaceship business has been ruined by teleportation, decides to make the journey to Whale's Mouth in his own craft, the Omphalos. Driven by a powerful hunch that the utopian vision may be false, he chooses to make the trip the old-fashioned way in case some of the colonists wish to return. Powerful figures oppose his journey. Lies, Inc., the expanded version of The Unteleported Man, includes a new first chapter and about one hundred pages of additional exposition. This previously unpublished material begins in Chapter 8 with the phrase, "Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils." What then ensues is a truly horrific drug trip, described in excruciating detail, that Rachmael endures after arriving at his destination and being hit by an LSD-tipped dart. The expansion material finally terminates in Chapter 16 just before the repeated phrase, "Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils." Confusion may arise in the reader, however, over Dick's attributing at least part of the perceptual chaos to a deliberately incorporated effect of the teleportation process. Circumstances had forced Rachmael to abandon his original plans and to journey to Newcolonizedland via energy transfer instead. Sinister modifications to the "Telpor" technology apparently cause its victims to experience a variety of so-called "paraworlds" which are thought to actually exist, somehow, as viable alternate realities. Participants are fearful that consensus or agreement amongst themselves as to the paraworlds' descriptions could somehow cause one or the other paraworld to manifest itself ever more aggressively until eventually displacing the current reality-paradigm altogether. And Rachmael's own paraworld experience is said to be the worst one of all. The novel in its current form is itself a tangled, chaotic jumble of interactions, perceptions and jump-cuts that leave the reader nearly as bewildered as Rachmael ben Applebaum himself. And the supremely anti-climactic resolution makes one wonder, whether Dick intended it or not, if there weren't possibly a more satisfying ending lurking about somewhere earlier in the story.
4764557	/m/0cm327	The Steep Approach to Garbadale	Iain Banks	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Alban McGill, a member of the Wopuld family, has sold most of his shares in the family firm, and resigned from his job in the company to become a forester, but has had to retire on medical grounds because of white finger. He is distracted from affairs of business by his relations with his family and with his teenage love, his first cousin Sophie. McGill is approached by another cousin, Fielding, to help prevent the sale of the family company to the American Spraint Corporation. He also seeks a resolution of certain questions about his family background, and closure of his relationship with Sophie. Much of the book is a build-up to the Extraordinary General Meeting which will decide on the sale, which takes place at the family estate at Garbadale in Sutherland. His current girlfriend, mathematician Verushka Graef, is a hillwalker, and near the end of the book Alban goes for a walk in the hills to think. On his return he takes the steep approach back to Garbadale. Significant portions of the action are set in California, Singapore and Hong Kong, as McGill reminisces about his world travels during his gap year. His mother's suicide is described in detail, as is his relationship with the family matriarch, Grandma Win. Banks takes the opportunity, as in Dead Air and Raw Spirit, to make points about the morality and wisdom of the War on Terror, when McGill meets representatives of the American capitalists who wish to acquire the family game symbolising the British Empire. The book has intermittent contributions from McGill's friend and ex-colleague Tango, who lives in a council estate in Perth.
4765245	/m/0cm43p	Among the Impostors	Margaret Haddix	2001-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The general plot revolves around an allegedly overpopulated world and the Government’s Procrustean attempts to arrest the symptoms of population growth and scarcity amongst the Earth's resources. In this turmoil, the democratic government has been overthrown and a totalitarian Government has been put in its place. Laws established by the regime prohibit a family from having more than two children (any more will be killed). Luke Garner, an illegal third child living with a fake ID, is going by the alias Lee Grant at the Hendricks School for Boys. Lee Grant was killed while skiing down a mountain so no one knows that he was gone except for his family. He is at first confused and paranoid, as well as treated brutally by his roommates, mainly the boy he comes to call "Jackal Boy". Eventually, Luke begins sneaking out of the school to do things, and tries to plant his own garden in the woods. This brings him great happiness and a sense that he belongs. When his garden is trampled, he realizes that other people are going outside, including Jackal Boy. He reveals himself to them, finding out that they are other illegals as well. The leader, Scott Renault (whose real name is Jason Barstow) otherwise known as Jackal Boy, is outwardly a huge admirer of Jen Talbot, Luke's only friend who died at a rally for third children's rights. However, the later part of the book reveals that he is a Population Police operative and is trying to get the group's real names only to betray them. Luke is accepted into Jason's group, but is still too frightened to give his real name. He learns more and more about Hendricks School, but never learns what his schedule is until he is asked about "finals" by Jason. He then is told that he has to take his semester final tests, and that his results will be sent to his fake parents, the Grants, who happen to be Barons, and one of the richest and most powerful people in the country. When awoken one night, he realizes Jason is gone, and Luke while looking for him happens to overhear a phone conversation of Jason's, where he is talking to a Population Police officer. Luke finally realizes who Jason really is and attacks him with a history book, causing the phone to get disconnected, and knocks Jason out when Jason's head hits the stairs. He comes up with a cover story for the Population Police officer at the other end and gets Jason down to the nurse's office. He calls Mr. Talbot, a double agent working with Population Police, and convinces him to come to Hendricks. When another officer comes, Mr. Talbot convinces them that Jason is lying about the third children and has Jason arrested along with Nina, his "accomplice" at the nearby Harlow's School for Girls, even though she has done nothing. Luke is later given the choice to leave the school, but he decides to stay at Hendricks and help the other third children.
4765358	/m/0cm49l	Pedro Páramo	Juan Rulfo	1955		 The novel is set in the town of Comala, considered to be Comala in the Mexican state of Colima. The story begins with the first person account of Juan Preciado, who promises his mother at her deathbed that he will return to Comala to meet his father, Pedro Páramo. Juan suggests that he did not intend to keep this promise until he was overtaken by subjective visions of his mother. His narration is fragmented and interspersed with fragments of dialogue from the life of his father, who lived in a time when Comala was a robust, living town, instead of the ghost town it has become. Juan encounters one person after another in Comala, each of whom he perceives to be dead. Midway through the novel, Preciado dies. From this point on most of the stories happen in the time of Pedro Páramo. Most of the characters in Juan's narration (Dolores Preciado, Eduviges Dyada, Abundio Martínez, Susana San Juan, and Damiana Cisneros) are presented in the omniscient narration, but much less subjectively. The two major competing narrative voices present alternative visions of Comala, one living and one full of the spirits of the dead. The omniscient narration provides details of the life of Pedro Páramo, from his early youthful idealization of Susana San Juan, his rise to power upon his coming of age, his tyrannical abuses and womanizing, and, finally, his death. Pedro is cruel, and though he raises one of his illegitimate sons, Miguel Páramo (whose mother dies giving birth), he does not love him. He does not love his father (who dies when Pedro is a child), or either of his two wives. His only love, established from a very young age, is that of Susana San Juan, a childhood friend who leaves Comala with her father at a young age. Pedro Páramo bases all of his decisions on, and puts all of his attention into trying to get Susana San Juan to come back to Comala. When she finally returns, Pedro makes her his, but she constantly mourns her dead husband Florencio, and spends her time sleeping and dreaming about him. Pedro realizes that Susana San Juan belongs to a different world that he will never understand. When she dies the church bells toll incessantly, provoking a fiesta in Comala. Pedro buries his only true love, and angry at the indifference of the town, swears vengeance. As the most politically and economically influential person in the town, Pedro crosses his arms and refuses to continue working, and the town dies of hunger. This is why in Juan's narration, we see a dead, dry Comala, instead of the luscious place it was when Pedro Páramo was a boy.
4768212	/m/0cm8q0	Not Quite Dead Enough	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Archie has recently joined the Army and is now Major Goodwin. His high rank, as a rookie GI, reflects the fact that the Army recognizes and is making use of his civilian expertise by assigning him to domestic (counter) intelligence, specifically a unit based back in New York City, where Archie lived with his erstwhile boss Nero Wolfe before enlisting. Since most of his civilian investigations had been done with Nero Wolfe, the Army also wishes to have Wolfe do intelligence investigations, but Wolfe thinks he didn't kill enough Germans in the previous war and so is more intent on joining the army as a soldier, not intelligence officer. To this end, pleas from the Pentagon to this effect have been ignored, and indeed the whole household routine Wolfe is (in)famous for has already been abandoned during Archie's short absence favor of strict adherence to wartime rations (inconsistent with gourmet dining) and losing weight, which Wolfe and Fritz Brenner (the live-in cook/chef) attempt by morning exercises on the west river banks, while letters not to mention mountains of other correspondence pile up in the previously tidy office/study in the brownstone. As ludricous as the whole setup might seem, even Goodwin, when he arrives back in New York from Washington to discover it, is unable to budge Wolfe, at least at first. Meanwhile, on the (scarce) flight back to New York from Washington, Archie has annoyed wealthy and beautiful Lily Rowan, whom he met earlier in Some Buried Caesar and with whom he has the beginnings of a romance, because he has no time for her, even though she has gone to great lengths to get the seat next to his. Lily, by way of counterattack as much as anything, asks him to look into a problem a girl-friend of hers is having. Archie, having assessed the grim situation at Wolfe's brownstone, seizes an opportunity to be doing something useful, even if he isn't directly carrying out his assignment from the Pentagon. Archie (who tells this story as he does all Wolfe stories), likes Lily but wants to be in control, and in an impish assertion of independence he takes Lily's friend to the Flamingo nightclub as part of his "investigation", causing Lily to storm home in a mild fit of jealousy. But soon she asks Archie's help in a bigger problem: her friend is dead. After rushing to the scene, Archie decides to implicate himself in the crime and get his picture in the paper, reasoning that getting him out of jail is no more foolish a war effort for Wolfe than pathetic dockside exercises. In the end, Archie carries out his assignment from the Pentagon (despite having his picture in the paper as a murder suspect), Lily gets herself a boyfriend, and Wolfe solves the underlying crime, but not without teaching both Lily and Archie a thing or two about the consequences of mixing business with romance.
4768693	/m/0cm9fd	Preserver	Judith Reeves-Stevens		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kirk's Mirror Universe double, has risen to power as the evil Emperor Tiberius. This alternate universe version has failed in his quest to learn the secrets of the advanced 'First Federation'. Tiberius tries to intervene in Kirk's universe to learn the secrets of its version of the First. To complicate matters, Kirk's wife Teilani is deathly ill, a situation Tiberius gleefully takes advantage of in order to secure Kirk's assistance.
4768772	/m/0cm9j5	Second Thoughts	Michel Butor			 The plot is quite straightforward: a middle-aged man takes the train in Paris to visit his lover, Cécile - whom he has not informed of his arrival - in Rome. They have met in secret once a month for the past two years i.e. each time that his business trips have taken him to the Italian capital. He now intends to tell her that he has finally decided to leave his wife, found a job for her (Cécile) in Paris and is ready to take her back there and live with her. The novel describes his gradual change of mind. His initial enthusiasm and hopes of a rejuvenating new start slowly give way to doubt, fear and cowardice. He eventually decides to spend the week-end in Rome alone, go back to Paris the following Monday without telling anything to Cécile and leave the situation as it was until their relationship eventually ends. He will write about this failure in a book which happens to be "La Modification" itself.
4769036	/m/0cm9yc	The Pink Swastika	Scott Lively	1995		 According to the authors, homosexuality found in the Nazi Party contributed to the extreme militarism of Nazi Germany. The title of the book, as well as the book itself, is a reference to a book by Richard Plant called The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals, a book detailing homophobia in the Nazi Party and the homosexual victims of Nazism. Lively and Abrams also take up the subject of Nazism in America and discuss the Boy Scouts. The book states that many leaders in the German Nazi regime, including Adolf Hitler himself, were homosexual and says that eight of the top ten serial killers in the US were homosexuals. One significant research source for the writing of The Pink Swastika was the book, Germany's National Vice, written by Samuel Igra, and Scott Lively refers to it as "the 1945 version of The Pink Swastika."
4769455	/m/0cmbs8	Portal Through Time	Alice Henderson	2006-10-24	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An artifact has been forged which enables time-travelling spells while it remains in Sunnydale. A group of vampire-assassins are travelling into the past in an attempt to kill previous Slayers, and disrupt the Slayer lineage. They are led by the spellcaster Lucien, whose aim is to ensure that Buffy does not interfere with the ascension of the Master. When they discover that killing Buffy in the past merely changes the way in which the Master is killed. Frustrated, they decide to go further back. When Buffy becomes aware of their plans, the vampires have already left and she is forced to follow them into the past. With Giles, Willow and Xander, she travels to first-century Anglesey in Wales where a Druidic stronghold is being invaded by Romans. Next they travel to Uruk in ancient Sumer where they encounter Gilgamesh. Xander inadvertently arouses a plague god, and Willow accidentally summons a snake-demon while trying to banish the god. Then they return to the American Civil War period, where they find themselves in the middle of the Battle of Shiloh. They destroy many vampires feeding on the soldiers. Finally they head for Paris during the French Revolution where they witness executions on the guillotine and meet Angelus and Darla.
4769845	/m/0cmclj	Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon	Daniel Dennett	2006	{"/m/0dh53": "Literary criticism"}	 The book is divided into three parts. Part I discusses the motivation and justification for the entire project: Can science study religion? Should science study religion? After answering in the affirmative, Part II proceeds to use the tools of evolutionary biology and memetics to suggest possible theories regarding the origin of religion and subsequent evolution of modern religions from ancient folk beliefs. Part III analyzes religion and its effects in today's world: Does religion make us moral? Is religion what gives meaning to life? What should we teach the children? Dennett bases much of his analysis on empirical evidence, though he often points out that much more research in this field is needed. Dennett's working definition of religions is: "social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought." He notes that this definition is "a place to start, not something carved in stone."
4771728	/m/0cmg_w	Night Frost	R. D. Wingfield	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 A serial killer is terrorizing the senior citizens of Denton, and the local police are succumbing to a flu epidemic. Tired and demoralized, the force has to contend with a seemingly perfect young couple suffering arson attacks and death threats, a suspicious suicide, burglaries, pornographic videos, poison-pen letters... In uncertain charge of the investigations is Detective Inspector Jack Frost, crumpled, slapdash and foul-mouthed as ever. He tries to cope despite inadequate back-up, but there is never enough time; the unsolved crimes pile up and the vicious killings go on. So Frost has to cut corners and take risks, knowing that his Divisional Commander will throw him to the wolves if anything goes wrong. And for Frost, things always go wrong...
4773349	/m/0cmljb	Lessons from a Sheep Dog	W. Phillip Keller	1983		 Keller a beginning sheep rancher in British Columbia when he came upon Lass, an unwanted, abused border collie. He took her home and worked with her. Through his loving care she began to soften and eventually became a wonderful, helpful, and obedient sheep dog.
4773747	/m/0cmm8r	Clans of the Alphane Moon	Philip K. Dick	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 War between Earth and insectoid-dominated Alpha III ended over a decade ago. (According to the novel, "Alphane" refers to the nearest star to our own system, Alpha Centauri). Some years after the end of hostilities, Earth intends to secure its now independent colony in the Alphane system, Alpha III M2. As a former satellite-based global psychiatric institution for colonists on other Alphane system worlds unable to cope with the stresses of colonisation, the inhabitants of Alpha III M2 have lived peacefully for years. But, under the pretence of a medical mission, Earth intends to take their colony back. Against this background, Chuck Rittersdorf and his wife Mary are separating. Although they think they are going their separate ways, they soon find themselves together again on Alpha III M2. Mary travels there through government work, Chuck sees it as a chance to kill Mary using his remote control simulacrum. Along the way he is guided by his Ganymedean slime mold neighbour Lord Running Clam and Mary finds herself manipulated by the Alphane sympathiser, comedian Bunny Hentman.
4774263	/m/0cmm_0	The Houses of Iszm	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The inhabitants of a planet called Iszm, a species known as the Iszic, have evolved the native giant trees into living homes, with all needs and various luxuries supplied by the trees' own natural growth. The Iszic maintain a jealously-guarded monopoly, exporting only enough trees to keep prices high and make a great profit. The protagonist, Ailie Farr, is a human botanist who goes to Iszm (like many others before him, of many species) to steal a female tree, which might allow the propagation of the species off world and break the monopoly.
4777482	/m/0cmt6c	Small Steps	Louis Sachar	2006-01-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Two years after his release from Camp Green Lake, Theodore "Armpit" Johnson is living in Austin, Texas trying to build a stable lifestyle by digging trenches and caring for his neighbor Ginny McDonald, a ten-year-old girl with cerebral palsy. While working at the mayor's home, he is approached by Rex "X-Ray" Washburn, one of his friends from Camp Green Lake, who wants Armpit to loan him money for a ticket scalping scheme for an upcoming concert by teen pop star Kaira DeLeon. Armpit agrees, and at first the scheme seems to go as planned. Meanwhile, Armpit develops a crush on a girl at his summer school, Tatiana. He asks X-Ray to give him the last two tickets to the concert, so he can take Tatiana on a date. At first X-Ray is unwilling because he already has a buyer for the tickets, but eventually he agrees to give them to Armpit. Later, Tatiana says she unable to come to the concert, and Armpit decides to take Ginny instead. When the remaining tickets are discovered to be counterfeit, Armpit is beaten and handcuffed by the police while Ginny has a seizure. Here, the mayor - who remembers Armpit from the landscaping work Armpit did for her - intervenes; and singer Kaira DeLeon, upon discovering the situation, invites Armpit and Ginny to watch her from backstage. After the concert, they join her to share ice cream. The next day, X-Ray visits Armpit, and reveals that he had made the counterfeit tickets, selling the genuine ones to the buyer. He gives Armpit the money gained by selling the missing genuine tickets. After a few days, Armpit receives a love letter from Kaira. Some time afterward, Detective Debbie Newberg of the Austin Police Department questions Armpit about the counterfeit tickets; where upon Armpit invents a culprit to avert suspicion from himself and X-Ray. Later still, Armpit is invited to San Francisco by Kaira; but is accosted by ticket sellers Felix and Moses, who beat X-Ray and threaten to expose both boys to the police unless Armpit gives them the letter that Kaira sent earlier. Having agreed to do so, Armpit meets Kaira in San Francisco. He tries to explain the counterfeit tickets and how he has to sell her love letter. He asks her if she will write another love letter, so he can sell it. Kaira believes Armpit is after her money and does not care about her as a person. This results in an argument which ends by Kaira throwing coffee all over Armpit[this was set in China Town], then storming away. Meanwhile, her business manager Jerome "El Genius" Paisley, Kaira's step-father and manager, plots to kill Kaira and frame Armpit for the murder; but is prevented by Armpit. Jerome is jealous and angry because Kaira plans to fire him when she turns eighteen, in two months. Jerome attacks Kaira and although she ends up seriously hurt, she survives. Armpit suffered a broken arm in the fight and Fred, Kaira's bodyguard is severely hurt as well, and having tried to save Kaira from getting hurt, he got stabbed. Paisley goes to jail. Kaira later recovers, though is told she cannot sing again. Armpit arrives home and is visited one last time by Detective Newberg. She informs him that this case of counterfeit tickets is closing. She also informs him she knows the truth, because she put 2 and 2 together and got 4.'Later on, Armpit hears Kaira is still able to sing, albeit weakly. She sings a song accompanied only by a piano about her and Armpit's relationship. Armpit is touched by this. He accepts his life can't revolve around Kaira DeLeon and decides to continue with his plan of taking small steps towards making a better life for himself..
4777848	/m/02wvc45	The Other	K. A. Applegate	2000-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Animorphs meet survivors of Elfangor's Dome Ship, the GalaxyTree. One Andalite called Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad suffers from a genetic disease called Soola's Disease while the other, Mertil-Iscar-Elmand, is crippled, or a vecol, as Ax puts it, missing half of his tail. Gafinilan attacks Marco when he gets too close to the human home he owns, while Ax comes to his defense. Both enter his home and Gafinilan asks to meet Ax's prince, not realizing his "prince" is human, as Visser Three had captured Mertil and had offered his release only if Gafinilan brought him a healthy adult Andalite (as Mertil was a vecol, and Visser Three discovered through Mertil that Gafinilan had a fatal disease, rendering them both as useless, in the Visser's perspective). The Animorphs assume that since Soola's Disease is genetic, and the only 'cure' is for Gafinilan to acquire and morph another Andalite, this is the reason why Gafinilan wanted to meet Ax's "prince", not wanting to acquire Ax himself because he would prefer to morph the adult Andalite he believes Jake is, as Ax's body would take too long to reach physical maturity. Jake agrees to meet with him, with the intention of laying a trap for Gafinilan, and they overpower him by force of numbers. When they tell Gafinilan what they assumed his plan was, he is shocked at the mere thought, as Andalites consider using morphing to escape an illness as an act of cowardice. He confesses his real intentions, justifying his attempt at betraying one of his own kind by saying he cares deeply about his friend Mertil, and he did what he was told to do by the Visser in order to ensure Mertil's safety. Although still skeptical of Gafinilan's motives, they join forces with him and help rescue Mertil from Visser Three. Ax, who is so far in the series seen as an honourable character, shows his open disapproval of Mertil and the thought that he should be treated with as much respect as other Andalites, on the grounds that he is disabled, which may have been a trait he picked up from his Andalite upbringing, as Andalites as a whole are shown in this book to not take their handicapped kind seriously. However, when Marco accuses his kind of being unfeeling, Ax points out that humans are similarly flawed, as people with handicaps are often pushed away from the limelight and kept hidden away in hospitals and institutions, instead of being allowed to live the kind of life they would have had, were they not disabled. The softer side of Marco's personality is also shown in this book, as he shows concern about how Mertil, a morph-incapable Andalite, would survive in a human world once his friend Gafinilan succumbs to his illness and passes away. He visits Mertil at the end of the book and offers his support and company, should Mertil ever feel he needed it. Although he fears that Mertil might regard his offer as impertinent, as Andalites are a proud race that do not like to be seen as vulnerable, Mertil thanks him, and appears to consider his offer.
4778951	/m/0cmwl0	The Stone Carvers	Jane Urquhart		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the mid-19th century, Father Gstir is sent from Bavaria to Canada to minister to German-Catholic communities. He is drawn to Shoneval, a farming town situated in a valley in Ontario, and is determined to build a stone church with a bell. Joseph Becker, a master woodcarver, helps him. Later, Becker tries to pass on his carving skills to his grandson, Tilman, but the boy is unenthusiastic. Tilman suffers from constant restlessness and is unable to stay in one place, often running away from the settlement for weeks at a time. Aged 12 he leaves for good. Becker's granddaughter, Klara, by contrast, is eager to learn the carving trade and Becker reluctantly teaches her. Klara falls in love with Eamon, the silent son of an Irish family, but she is hurt when he leaves her to fight in World War I. After he is reported as 'missing' Klara is devastated, and attempts to shut out her memory of him and her emotions, and lives the life of a spinster. After leaving home, Tilman spends several years as a hobo on the roads and rails. He eventually meets up with a tramp named Refuto, who had left home because he felt guilty for indirectly killing his brother. Later, Refuto decides to try returning home, fearful that his family will not forgive his wrongs. Refuto brings Tilman with him to the Italian district of Hamilton; Tilman befriends Refuto's son Giorgio and lives with the family for a time. But when war comes Tilman serves in the trenches of France, where he is 'injured out' after losing his leg in battle at Vimy Ridge. Aged in his 40s, Tilman returns to Shoneval, and Klara is reunited with the brother who had been assumed dead years ago. She becomes determined to travel to France with Tilman to help carve the massive Vimy Memorial being built by Walter Allward. After overcoming her brother's reluctance they travel to France and start work on the monument, Klara disguised as a man. After some weeks, and without permission, Klara sculpts Eamon's face on a key statue on the top of the memorial. Despite his initial anger, Allward sees how the change personalises and enhances the monument. He retains the alteration. Klara falls in love with Giorgio, who is also working on the monument, and for the first time since Eamon's death she opens up her emotions. Tilman also opens himself up to physical intimacy for the first time, with a war-wounded French chef. The novel ends with the imposing memorial completed, Allward all but forgotten, and Klara and Tilman now leading emotionally fulfilling lives with their partners in Canada, having memorialised the people they knew who had been taken by the war.
4779699	/m/0cmy36	44 Scotland Street	Alexander McCall Smith	2004	{"/m/02x35fs": "Serial", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of Pat, a student during her second gap year and a source of some worry to her parents, who is accepted as a new tenant at 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh's New Town, and her various roommates and neighbours. She falls in love with her narcissistic flatmate Bruce, meets the intriguing and opinionated anthropologist Domenica MacDonald and her friend Angus, and works at an art gallery for Matthew, who was given the gallery as a sinecure position by his wealthy father. While working at the gallery Pat points out to Matthew (who knows almost nothing about art) that one of their paintings looks as if it could be a work of Samuel Peploe. After the gallery is broken into Matthew asks Pat to store the painting at their flat until they can check whether it's a genuine Peploe, however Bruce gives the painting to a raffle run by the South Edinburgh Conservative Association. Matthew and Pat eventually track it down to the novelist Ian Rankin who gives it back to them. The other major storyline is that of five-year-old Bertie, who is controlled by his pretentious and intellectual mother Irene - he has Grade Six on the saxophone, speaks fluent Italian, and is extremely knowledgeable about various subjects. After he is expelled from his nursery school Irene sends him to psychotherapy with Dr Fairbairn, who constantly misinterprets Bertie's simple wish to be a normal five-year-old boy on Oedipal and Freudian lines. Smith followed the original serial novel with another series set in Edinburgh, The Sunday Philosophy Club Series. The story of the characters in 44 Scotland Street is continued in his serialized novel Espresso Tales.
4783792	/m/0cn491	The Bishop's Mantle	Agnes Sligh Turnbull	1948-12	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hilary struggles to be a worthy replacement of his High Church predecessor, yet bring new meaning to his ministry, and cope with a persistent attempt of various persons to involve him in scandal, owing to the prominence of Lex's family. At one point he delivers a striking mid-week sermon to young men (who could not ordinarily attend services on Sunday since they have not rented pews!), and begins to read the following passage from Proverbs Chapter 7 (selective, some verses left out): :My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee. That they may keep the from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth with her words. For at the window of my house I looked through my casement, and beheld among the youths, a young man devoid of understanding, pasing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night; and behold there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot and subtil of heart. So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto him, I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until morning. Let us solace ourselves with loves. For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey. This passage, which seems to say there is a place, after all, for romance in the life of a pious man, was revolutionary to read aloud, even though it is straight from the King James Bible. While Hilary deals with his pastoral issues at home, events on the world stage are darkening by the hour. His brother Dick, in particular, even though the American involvement has not started, volunteers for ambulance service in Europe, and late in the novel four fateful things come together * Dick's death in the war zone * Reconciliation of Hilary with Lex after a period of conflict * Lex's pregnancy * Pearl Harbor, bringing in turn ** gradual disappearance of the young men inspired by the sermon from Proverbs into the Army ** Hilary's final prayer where he admits out loud, at least to God, what has been troubling him ever since Pearl Harbor and his brother's death: "The young men of the church are going. The young men of the Parish House (orphanage) are going. I too am a young man .... I will be leaving ... my wife, ... it may be my unborn child. I will be leaving my work ...." but this is not a gloomy thought: :The sadness, the strain and the fear went out of it. It was though he had arrived at peace. But few readers today will be able to sustain that attitude: it a moment of consummate sadness, not only for Hilary but for a whole generation of men.
4784440	/m/0cn5p4	Hornblower and the Crisis	C. S. Forester	1967	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Hornblower has just finished his tour blockading Brest in command of the Royal Navy sloop Hotspur. As he travels back to England for his next assignment, he is asked to participate in the court martial of Hotspur's new captain and officers. Hotspur ran aground and was lost the day after Hornblower turned over command. Following the court martial, the officers travel back to England with Hornblower. On their way, they are pursued by a French brig, which they engage and disable. During the battle, Hornblower boards the brig and finds important papers in the French captain's quarters. Back in England, he travels to the Admiralty with the documents. He arrives at the same time as the disappointing news that the French fleet under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve has escaped into Ferrol, Spain after an indecisive engagement. Hornblower presents a daring plan to the Secretary of the Navy, to send false orders to Villeneuve, made possible because the papers brought by Hornblower include an example of Napoleon Bonaparte's new signature. The orders are to draw Villeneuve out of a safe harbour and into a decisive engagement with Admiral Nelson. The unfinished book stops at the point where Hornblower is persuaded to attempt the mission himself. Notes left by CS Forster indicate that Hornblower would carry out the mission accompanied by South American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda, with Hornblower posing as his servant. They deliver the false orders to Villeneuve without arousing suspicion, prompting him to take his fleet to sea; this ultimately leads the destruction of the Franco–Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar. This book also includes two short-stories, "Hornblower and the Widow McCool"(a.k.a. "Hornblower’s Temptation"), set early in Hornblower's career, and "The Last Encounter", set at the very end. sv:Hornblower och hans samvete
4784658	/m/0cn63b	A Daughter of Heth	William Black	1871		 Catherine Cassilis, known as Coquette, born in France and orphaned by the recent death of her father, comes to Airlie near Saltcoats in Southern Scotland, to live with her uncle, the Minister. Her Catholic upbringing brings her into immediate conflict with the sternly Presbyterian household, and she quickly seeks sympathy and friendship with the more free-spirited nobleman, Lord Earlshope. During a yachting trip around western Scotland Earlshope makes a half-hearted confession of his love to Coquette (which she reciprocates), although he is already married, but estranged from his wife. But when this wife is seen in Glasgow, and his secret is exposed, Earlshope abandons Coquette and disappears. In due course Coquette accepts the marriage proposal of her devoted cousin Tom "the Whaup", although she does not truly love him. Their wedding is to be delayed until Tom has completed his medical studies. The crisis comes suddenly. Earlshope returns unexpectedly and meets Coquette: he begs her to run off to America with him and she agrees. But on the night of the planned elopement Earlshope's boat is run down in a storm and he is drowned. Coquette believes he has left for America without her. It is only after her marriage to Tom that Coquette finally learns the truth. She persuades her husband to drive her to Saltcoats to look at her lover's grave—the sea. Shortly after she collapses and within a few short weeks, she too is dead.
4784676	/m/0cn65r	Spindle's End	Robin McKinley	2000-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In McKinley's version of the classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, a wicked fairy named Pernicia appears on the princess' name-day and places a curse on the baby, claiming that the child will, on her 21st birthday, prick her finger on a spindle and fall into deathly sleep. The cursed princess is rescued on her name-day and secretly taken away by a young fairy, Katriona, to her village, a town called Foggy Bottom, located in the damp and swampy section of the country known as The Gig. There Katriona and her aunt (affectionately known as Aunt) raise the princess as an ordinary village maiden, naming her Rosie after the last of the princess' twenty-one names. Throughout the book, Rosie grows from a headstrong, stubborn child into an intelligent and courageous young woman. With the help of a rare talent--beast-speech, a small bit of magic unknowingly passed on from Katriona--and the silent encouragement of the town's taciturn blacksmith, Narl, Rosie becomes a talented and well-known horse leech, more inclined to wear breeches and whittle spindle ends than wear dresses and practice embroidery, as her more lady-like friend Peony does. However, when Rosie is 20 years old, Ikor, a mysterious powerful fairy, appears and reveals to Rosie that she is actually the country's hidden princess, and announces a plan to defeat Pernicia: a spell will be cast over Peony and Rosie which switches their identities, but only until Rosie turns 21 and Pernicia's spell is broken. In addition to the magic that infuses almost every aspect of the book, Spindle's End deals with the importance of family love, especially that between Rosie, Katriona, and Aunt, (and, later, the love between these people and Katriona's husband and children, as the family grows) but also of Rosie's mother, the Queen, who longs for her lost daughter. Peony, Rosie's best friend, has a deep need to be loved and accepted by a family, because her adoptive parents don't care for her in the same way Rosie's adoptive family cares for her. Animals also play a central role in the book. Animals of various kinds help Katriona get Rosie to The Gig, a journey of about three months, and animals assist in the final defeat of Pernicia. Despite not being a sequel, it is implied that this book is set in the same world as McKinley's Damar books; at one point Damar and the character of Harimad-sol are mentioned as historical events, though from a different country.
4786812	/m/0cn97v	March	Geraldine Brooks	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mr. March, an abolitionist and chaplain, is driven by his conscience to leave his home and family in Concord, Massachusetts, in order to participate in the war. During this time, March writes letters to his family, but withholds the true extent of the brutality and injustices he witnesses on and off the battlefields. He suffers from a prolonged illness stemming from poor conditions on a cotton farm in Virginia. While in hospital he has an unexpected meeting with Grace, an intelligent and literate black nurse whom he first met as a young man staying in a large house where she was a slave. The recovering March, despite his guilt and grief over his survival when others have perished, returns home to his wife and Little Women, but has been scarred by the events he has gone through. The novel accurately reflects Bronson Alcott's principles, notably his belief that boys and girls of all races had a right to education, and his wish to follow a vegetarian diet. It presents the young Mrs March as a fiery character with strong verbal and physical expressions of anger.
4791414	/m/0cnhlb	We All Fall Down	Eric Walters	2006-03	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Will Fuller, a grade nine student, is in history class with his best friend James Bennett. As the class comes to an end, James tells the class how he will be going with his dad, a firefighter, to work tomorrow while Will is dreading tomorrow as he must go with his distant dad, John Fuller, who he describes to be never home due to work, to his office on the 85th floor at the South World Trade Centre Tower. Early next morning, Will finds himself commuting to his dad's office via car and subway. They meet some of John's friends there. Will later learns that everyone had their own "seat" that they sit in the same place every single day. When they finally arrive, Will is overwhelmed by the sight of the World Trade Center, but is still unsure of the day ahead of him. To his surprise, him and his dad first visit the Observation Deck before returning to their office a few stories down. Upon arriving at the office, Will is left with John's secretary, Suzie, where he is introduced to a colleague of his dad, Phil. Afterwards, he returns to his dad's room, where a sudden, loud noise rocks them. To their surprise, the North Tower has been hit by an airplane, and John, the fire Warden of the floor, orders the floor to evacuate despite their tower being intact. Reluctant at first, the employees eventually begin their way down the tower. As their office leaves, John goes around to other offices on the floor to evacuate the floor, but, one of the managers of one of the offices refuses to leave. As the argument between them become heated, an announcement states that it is not necessary for the tower to evacuate, and that workers may return to their offices. John and Will leave the office, and, despite the announcement, John decides to evacuate anyways. As they head towards the stair case, another sudden, loud noise rocks the building. Running back to the office, they realize that a plane has hit the South Tower. Realizing the danger of fire, John returns to his office and soaks a tie for both of them to use when they reach the stories with fire in the stair case. John also gives Will a whistle to use in case they'll become separated and instructs Will to blow the whistle should it ever happen. As they begin their journey down once again, they are suddenly stopped by a group of people heading up, instead of down, as they tell them that the stair case has been blocked, since the plane hit the levels beneath them, and that they will be heading up to await rescue. Not wanting to risk it, John decides to use another staircase, which is farther away from the crash site, to descent the building. As they descend down, the reach the stories where the crash happened, and finds it extremely difficult at it is extremely hot. Eventually making it through, they come across a level where they find an injured and trapped woman who speaks very little English. Although Will is reluctant at first to carry her down, and instead wants to leave her in the stair case after freeing her, John believes otherwise and carries her down the stairs. As Will realizes his father is becoming red a tired of carrying the woman, named Ting, he offers to alternate the job of carry her down. As they continue down, they eventually come across groups of firefighters, in which one of them they see James' dad. James' dad ask them to take his son home, as he does not want him to go home alone from the station, and they agree to do so. Afterwards, John admits that he did not spend enough time with Will and that he should have put his business aside to spend more time with Will and his mother. Eventually Will, John and Ting make it down the lobby, where paramedics attempt to take a look at Ting. Ting, however, scared, backs away from the paramedics and holds onto John. John says that he'll stay with Ting while she is looked at and will rendezvous with Will outside the tower near at the ambulances after the paramedics make an assessment of Ting's injuries. As Will leaves the building with an officer, he is suddenly blown to his feet on the streets outside the tower by a sudden force. Struggling to regain balance after failing and injuring his arm, he is suddenly taken back by the police officer, explaining that the South Tower has collapsed and they must leave for safety. Realizing that his dad is still in the building when the building collapsed, he turns and runs towards the building, only to be stopped by the police officer again. Suddenly remembering the whistle his father gave him, he frantically blows on it. In the distance, he sees figure resembling his dad and runs toward the figure. As he becomes closer, he confirms that it is in fact his father with Ting still on his back. Upon reuniting, John explains that they just stepped out of the building when the building collapsed. The story ends with Will stating "This is my father, now we can go."
4792251	/m/0cnk36	A Gift From Earth	Larry Niven	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Plateau, a colony in the Tau Ceti system, was settled by humans some 300 years before the plot begins. The colony world itself is a Venusian type planet with a dense, hot, poisonous atmosphere. It would be otherwise uninhabitable, except for a tall monolithic mesa that rises 40 miles up into a breathable layer in the upper atmosphere. This gives the planet a habitable area about half the size of California. The Captain of the first colony vessel named the feature Mount Lookitthat (from his interjection at first sight of it), and the colony became known as Plateau. After landing the slower-than-light ships, the Crew sign an agreement, called the Covenant of Planetfall, with their former passengers (who had just emerged from suspended animation and were in a weak bargaining position). This agreement gives the Crew (and their descendants in perpetuity) all control over the new colony. A system of medical care evolves, in which organ transplantation is the only method of treatment, even for cosmetic defects (such as baldness); a justice system evolves, with all crimes punishable by death, followed by involuntary donation of the decedent's transplantable organs (including skin, scalp, and teeth). Not surprisingly, only Colonists are ever arrested for crimes; and only Crew are eligible to receive transplants. Some Colonists become dissatisfied with the system and form a dissident group called the "Sons of Earth." The prologue of the story begins with a dissident Colonist escaping Implementation, the local police force, by jumping to his death over the "void edge", the 40 mile high cliff that forms the sides of the mesa. On Mount Lookitthat, all crimes are punished by being dissected for spare parts. Thus, this is considered to be the greatest of all possible crimes, as it leaves nothing to harvest. An automated Bussard ramjet arrives from Earth, carrying an unknown cargo of great importance, which the government immediately finds and conceals, but not before the cargo has been observed and photographed by Polly, an agent of the Sons of Earth. Meanwhile, Matthew Keller, an ordinary miner, gets casually invited to a party and is drawn into a conversation about psi powers. Matt strikes up a flirtatious conversation with Polly, but she suddenly loses interest. Angered, Matt hooks up with a woman named Laney and is in the middle of having sex with her (his first time) when Implementation agents raid the house, which turns out to be full of Sons of Earth members. Matt manages to escape in a stolen car. The Implementation chase him to the edge of the Plateau where he dives into the poisonous gas. The Implementation leave him for dead, but he manages to survive and resurface. Feeling guilty, he makes an attempt to enter the Hospital where the captured Sons of Earth have been taken and rescue Laney. He has several strange encounters with the Implementation where they suddenly fail to be able to see him. He makes his way to the vivarium, where those of the Sons of Earth who are still living are being kept, and sets them free. He, along with two of the leaders and Laney, steal another car and flee to the home of Millard Parlette, a prominent political figure and direct descendant of the captain of the original colony vessel. Matt explains to them how he rescued them and they conclude that he has a psionic power: the ability to influence the optic nerves of anyone whose attention is focused on him. When he is excited or frightened, people focused on him are compelled to contract the pupils of their eyes, and thereby lose that focus to the point of short-term memory loss – even if he has just threatened them with a weapon. When Millard Parlette returns home, he allows himself to be captured by Matt with little difficulty. However, the others overreact upon seeing him enter the house and knock him out with a stun gun. Matt and Laney leave to go back to the hospital. Matt intends to rescue Polly, having realized that her rejection of him was an outcome of his nervousness and psionic power. Laney intends to rescue the rest of the Sons of Earth who were recaptured. In the house, Millard Parlette reveals what the cargoes of the ramship were. They consist of four medical breakthroughs: a symbiote that regenerates skin, technology to culture a human liver, another to culture a human heart, and a second symbiote that lives in the bloodstream and grants many benefits: it fights disease, dissolves blood clots, repairs and cleans fatty deposits from the circulatory system, and maintains hormone levels at those of an adult. These advancements are amazingly beneficial, but that is the precise problem. Colonists, once they learn of them, would assume that the organ banks had become obsolete, and expect Implementation to disband. However, these advancements only reduce the need for transplants, they do not remove it. But when Implementation continues to take colonists to the banks, they would assume that necessity had given way to malevolence. Every colonist on Plateau would revolt. At least half the population would perish in the conflict, and technological civilization might come to an end. Thus, the political figure wants to negotiate a replacement for the Covenant of Planetfall with the rebels in advance, and thereby prevent such a conflict. Though the rebels are perfectly willing to deal, there is still one significant problem: Implementation. Any settlement with the Colonists would involve reducing the power of the Crew's police force. As such, Implementation would be on the side of the conservative Crew faction, those who would die before accepting a compromise with those they currently hold the power of life and death over. And Implementation controls the best weapons on Plateau. It is led by a man named Jesus Pietro Castro and is headquartered in the Hospital, which is constructed around the two immense "slowboat" spacecraft which had brought them there. Meanwhile, Matt and Laney are able to enter the facility with no real problem. Matt tricks Castro into leading him to where they are keeping Polly and Matt sets her free. However, this turns out to be a mistake: Implementation was interrogating her via sensory deprivation, and she is now insane. He makes love to her and in so doing restores her ability to function. But when she learns of their location, she is gripped with a fanatical devotion to the cause of the Sons of Earth. She flees Matt, intending to detonate the nuclear reactor on one of the slowboats, to destroy the Hospital and kill as many Crew as she possibly can. She is unable to reach the reactor and instead settles for the ship's long-defunct control room. She then ignites the ship's landing motors; this severely damages the Hospital, kills many of the crew, and thrusts the ship off the "void edge" to its destruction. Matt manages to jump from the ship before she does so. Thus war is averted. The new government, led by Millard Parlette, has assumed control of the Crew. And on the Colonists' side, the rebels have claimed control of the most powerful weapon on Plateau: Matt Keller. The Sons of Earth threaten to use Keller to assassinate Millard Parlette if he becomes too power-hungry. Keller accepts this, but demands a position of power among the rebels. And he's just discovered a new wrinkle in his power. Not only can he compel someone to lose focus on him, he can compel someone to intensify that focus, putting them in a hypnotic trance, which is implied to make him the true master of Plateau. As the story began with a robot ramship in flight, it ends with another ramship headed from Earth to the human colony known as 'We Made It' (in the Procyon system) with the same discovery. This ship is observed by alien Outsiders, who follow it in hopes of selling faster than light technology to the locals. This sale will lead to the advanced multi-species society portrayed in Neutron Star and Ringworld.
4793507	/m/0cnlv8	The Fireclown	Michael Moorcock	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is based in a future where the majority of the human population live underground. Alan Powys works at the transport department. His grandfather, Simon Powys, is the minister for space transport and is the presumptive nominee for his party to succeed the current president. Alan's cousin Helen Curtis is leader of the Radical Liberal Movement, the government's opposition. The arrival of the Fireclown in the lower levels of the underground city and his performances featuring fire captivate those who see it. He is thought by Simon Powys to be a dangerous rebel, his niece thinks conversely that the Fireclown is there to reignite people's passion for democracy. A fire breaks out in the lower levels forcing the Government to shut them off, people revolt and the Fireclown flees. Unconvinced by his grandfather's, and the Government's, assertion that the Fireclown is a terrorist, Alan sets off to find the Fireclown for an explanation. Helen accompanies him providing a ship and desperate to believe the Fireclown is a great healer. After arriving at an orbiting monastery they do, eventually, find the Fireclown. He takes them out in his specially designed starship The Pi-Meson and shows them at incredibly close quarters, the sun's Corona. It transpires that the Fireclown is neither a terrorist nor a saviour. After a private conversation with Alan the Fireclown allows both him and Helen to return to Earth. Upon returning they decide to try and find evidence that the Fireclown really was innocent in the matter of the fire in the lower levels. After travelling to London and attending a shadowy basement meeting, Alan discovers a plot to manipulate the public, acquire weapons of mass destruction and a very personal vendetta against the Fireclown stretching back many decades.
4797577	/m/0cnrnw	Catherine, Called Birdy	Karen Cushman	1994	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 Catherine, Called Birdy provides an insider's look at the life of Catherine Rollo, 14, the daughter of a minor English nobleman. She is called "Birdy" in reference to the number of birds she keeps in her room. It could also be interpreted metaphorically, as she has been described as "a bird fighting against the bars of her cage" many times throughout the story. The year is 1290 and the vehicle for storytelling is Catherine's diary. She looks with a clear and critical eye upon the world around her, telling of the people she knows and of the daily events in her small manor house. Much of Birdy's energy is consumed by avoiding the various suitors her father chooses for her to marry. She sends them all packing with assorted ruses until she is almost wed to an older, unattractive man she refers to as Shaggy Beard. In the process of telling the routines of her young life, Birdy lays before readers a feast of details about medieval England. The book contains information about the food, dress, religious beliefs, manners, health, medical practices, and sanitary habits (or lack thereof) of the people of her day. From the number of fleas she kills in an evening to her herbal medicines laced with urine, Birdy tells facts about her time period. She is depicted as a feminist far ahead of her time. An afterword discusses the mind set of medieval people and concludes with a list of books to consult for further information about the period.
4798446	/m/0cnss7	The Captain				 The frame story has Martinus Harinxma, a senior tugboat captain home after a long voyage, catching up on correspondence. He opens a letter from a young man who is the son of the Canadian Officer killed aboard Harinxma's ship during escort duty during Second World War. In the letter, the son ask's the Captain "How was my father killed, and what was he really like?" As he begins to write the boy, Harinxma is forced to remember, and re-live the events surrounding the Canadian Officers time aboard his ship, and his eventual death. In 1940 Harinxma, then a young tugboat officer, escapes to Britain. The Kwel company has managed to get away much of its fleet and personnel, one jump ahead of the advancing Germans, and sets up to continue operations from London. Harinxma gets his first command, at an earlier age and under much more difficult conditions than he would otherwise have had. A central element of the book are the complex relationships between the crew members, in whose depiction de Hartog's personal nautical experience is manifest. Among other things the young and inexperienced captain must face the dilemma of whether to cover up for a severe mishap by the ship's engineer, who is his personal friend, or report him for the sake of the ship's safety and risk his getting fired. While still being merchant seamen not formally inducted into any navy, Harinxma and his fellow Dutch exile sailors are inexorably sucked into the fighting, their ships given (often inadequate) armaments and sent into some of the hottest arenas of the World War II naval war. Again clearly based on De Hartog's own experience, the book vividly conveys the feeling of suspicion and cordial dislike between the exiled Dutch and their British hosts and allies. The Dutch sailors feel (and not entirely without reason) that they are being set up as cannon fodder (or rather, U-Boat fodder). Many of Harinxma's fellow Dutch end up on the "South-Western Approaches" to the British Isles, acting as "stretcher-bearers of the sea" in submarine-infested waters - which turns out to be a task involving an extremely high casualty rate. (That experience had formed the background to a previous (1951) de Hartog novel, published variously under the names Stella and The Key and made into a film starring Sophia Loren). Harinxma himself eventually ends up in an even more horrendous environment: the convoys to Murmansk, carrying the military matériel which the Soviet Union desperately needed to repulse the Nazi invasion of its territory. Wending their long way in frigid Arctic waters, the convoys were for most of their course extremely vulnerable to constant German submarine, warship and aerial attacks emanating from occupied Norway, making them among the war's most dangerous postings. The same background, with the combination of extreme belligerent action and inhospitable nature pushing protagonists to the edge of endurance and beyond, was already the scene of HMS Ulysses, the first novel (1946) by Scottish author Alistair MacLean. While the two books have very different writing styles, characterization and undelying philosophy, they do share some plot elements. Harinxma and his crew go again and again into that hell, with only short rest periods before they have to go there yet again. While under this constant danger, Harinxma gets into a personality conflict with a diminutive and touchy Royal Navy captain hailing from the Isle of Man, who first appears arrogant and ridiculous but ultimately sacrifices himself and goes to the bottom in a touching and heroic - yet believable - way. In what would turn out to have a profound influence on his later life, Harinxma befriends a sensitive young Canadian liaison officer posted to his ship, who quixotically dies in a futile attempt to save one of the ships from an attacking German plane. Later, Harinxma has a brief and guilt-ridden affair with the Canadian's widow. Things come to a head in a particularly disastrous convoy of which few of the participating ships survive to reach their destination. (Both De Hartog's book and MacLean's seem to be inspired by - though not be following in every detail - the case of the historical ill-fated Convoy PQ-17 of July 1942). Harinxma loses his ship, and very nearly his life, but purely by chance a depth charge falling from the ship sinks a German U-Boat as well. He pulls from the oily water and into the lifeboat a German boy who was a cook's mate on the submarine and is its only survivor (and who would become a prosperous businessman in post-war Germany and send each year a big box of cakes to his Dutch saviour). Sick and tired of war, Harinxma returns to London and confronts the formidable aging patriarch of the Kwel Company. He declares his firm decision to become a conscientious objector and quit the sea - and gets told "God has sown you on the bridge of a tugboat, and there you will grow". Eventually, a deep-seated feeling of loyalty to all the Dutch and British who sailed with him and went to the bottom impels Harinxma to indeed take up again command of a ship - but a completely unarmed one, where he would be exposed to the full risk of German attacks but not be in a position to kill anybody even inadvertently. This message reflects the position of de Hartog himself, who became more and more of a Pacifist towards the end of the war years and eventually joined the outspokenly Pacifist Quakers. What saves the book from becoming an ideological tract is the wry sense of humour evident even in manifestly non-humorous situations, and the first-person narrator's ability to laugh at himself. Harinxma returned in several later de Hartog books, such as The Commodore and The Centurion.
4799261	/m/0cnty1	Allan Stein	Matthew Stadler	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the novel's first section, the protagonist loses his teaching job due to a false accusation of seducing a 10th-grade student. He then seduces the student, and having done so, departs on a trip to France. In France he assumes the name of a friend, 'Herbert', and pretends to be a curator looking for lost drawings of Allan Stein. The protagonist uses his new identity to become close to the son of his hosts, a moody 15-year-old named Stéphane. The narrator projects onto Stéphane an idealized memory of his own childhood, when he visited France with his mother at age 16. Enchanted by Stéphane's mother as well as her son. After two weeks, the narrator succeeds in making Stéphane his lover, and the two run off together to the South of France. But Stéphane returns to his parents when he discovers that the narrator has lied about his name. It is only at this point that the reader discovers the real name of the narrator: Matthew.
4805720	/m/0cp1mz	Dawn of the Dragons	Joe Dever	1992	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Lone Wolf, Kai Grand Master of Sommerlund, has just completed a successful quest when he learns that the Dark God Naar is about to send a large group of fire-breathing dragons against the Kai Monastery. Lone Wolf has to deal with assassins sent to intercept him before he can reach the monastery and lead the new Kai Lords into battle.
4805809	/m/0cp1q1	The Buccaneers of Shadaki	Joe Dever	1994	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook"}	 This is the second half of Lone Wolf's apprentice’s voyage to the Isle of Lorn to return the Moonstone to its proper place among the Shianti. The book is notable for retracing, in a sense, the steps of the protagonist Grey Star in The World of Lone Wolf series. Major characters and events from that series, such as Grey Star, Agarash the Damned, Shasarak the Wytch-King and Mother Magri, are referenced in passing, and a number of important locations such as the city of Shadaki and the Inn of the Laughing Moon in Suhn make cameo appearances.
4806331	/m/0cp25_	The Syro-Aramaic Reading Of The Qur'an	Christoph Luxenberg	2007-05-01		 Richard Kroes summarises the argument of the book as follows: According to Luxenberg, the Qur'an was not written in classical Arabic but in a mixed Arabic-Syriac language, the traders' language of Mecca and it was based on Christian liturgical texts. When the final text of the Qur'an was codified, those working on it did not understand the original sense and meaning of this hybrid trading language any more, and they forcefully and randomly turned it into classical Arabic. This gave rise to a lot of misinterpretations. Something like this can only have happened if there was a gap in the oral transmission of the Qur'anic text. That idea is in serious disagreement with the views of both traditional Muslims and western scholars of Islam.
4806475	/m/0cp2dy	We Need to Talk About Kevin	Lionel Shriver	2003-04-14	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eva's narration takes the form of letters written after the massacre to her presumably estranged husband, Franklin Plaskett. In these letters, she details her relationship with her husband well before and leading up to their son's conception, followed by the events of Kevin's life up to the school massacre, and her thoughts concerning their relationship. She also admits to a number of events that she tried to keep secret, such as when she lashed out and broke Kevin's arm in a sudden fit of rage. The novel also shows Eva visiting Kevin in prison. These scenes portray their cold, adversarial relationship. Kevin's behavior throughout the book closely resembles that of a sociopath, although reference to this condition is sparse and left mostly up to the reader's imagination. He displays little to no affection or moral responsibility towards his family or community; indeed, Kevin seems to regard everyone with contempt and hatred, and reserves special loathing for his mother, whom he has antagonized for as long as he can remember. He engages in many acts of petty sabotage from an early age, from seemingly innocent actions like spraying ink with a squirt gun on a room his mother has painstakingly wallpapered in rare maps, to possibly encouraging a girl to gouge her eczema-affected skin. The one activity he takes any pleasure in is archery, which his father introduces him to. As Kevin's behavior worsens, Franklin becomes evermore defensive of him, convinced that his son is a healthy, normal boy and that there is a reasonable explanation for everything he does. Kevin plays the part of a loving, respectful son whenever Franklin is around, an act that Eva sees through. This creates a rift between Eva and Franklin that never really heals; shortly before the massacre, Franklin asks for a divorce. Kevin's sister Celia is conceived largely because of Eva's need to bond with another member of her family. When Celia is six years old, she is involved in a household "accident" in which drain cleaner causes her to lose an eye. This is closely linked to an earlier incident involving Celia's pet elephant shrew, during which Eva uses Liquid Plumr, a caustic drain cleaner, to clear a blockage in the children's sink. Two explanations are possible: that Eva left the cleaner sitting within Celia's reach, or that Kevin somehow attacked Celia with it, destroying her eye and scarring her face. Though never proven, Eva strongly believes that Kevin, who was babysitting at the time, poured the Liquid Plumr onto his sister's face, telling her he was cleaning her eye after she got something in it. When relating the story of the massacre, Eva finally reveals that Franklin and Celia are in fact dead—Kevin killed them both with his bow and arrow set before using these weapons to attack his school. Eva speculates that he did this because he overheard her and Franklin discussing a divorce; he believed Franklin would get custody of him, thus denying him final victory over his mother. The novel ends on the second "anniversary" of the massacre, three days before Kevin will turn 18 and be transferred to Sing Sing. Subdued and frightened, he makes a peace offering of sorts to Eva by giving her Celia's prosthetic eye to bury, and telling her that he's sorry. Eva asks Kevin for the first time why he committed the murders, and Kevin replies that he is no longer sure. They embrace, and Eva resolves that she still loves her son.
4808150	/m/0cp460	Everyman	Philip Roth	2006-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins at the funeral of its protagonist. The remainder of the book, which ends with his death, looks mournfully back on episodes from his life, including his childhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he and his older brother, Howie, worked in his father's shop, Everyman's Jewelry Store. He has been married three times, with two sons from his first marriage who resent him for leaving their mother, and one daughter from his second marriage who treats him with kindness and compassion, though he divorced her mother after beginning an affair with a 24-year-old Danish model, who subsequently became his third wife. Having divorced her as well, he has moved in his old age to a retirement community at the New Jersey shore, where he lives alone and attempts to paint, having passed up a career as an artist early in his life to work in advertising in order to support himself and his family. The book traces the protagonist's feelings as he gets increasingly old and sick, and his reflections of his own past, which has included his share of misdeeds and mistakes, as he ponders his impending death. The unnamed everyman, while an ordinary man and not a famous novelist, has much in common with Philip Roth; he is born, like Roth, in 1933; he grows up in Elizabeth, six miles away from Roth's native Newark; and he recounts a series of medical problems and a history of frequent hospitalization similar to that of the author.
4808495	/m/0cp4pm	Gobbolino, the Witch's Cat			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Gobbolino is a little black kitten born in a witch's cave high up on Hurricane mountain with one white paw after it was bathed in moonlight, and sparkling blue eyes who was born to be a witch's cat with his pure black twin sister, Sootica. While his sister is quite happy to learn spells and turn mice into toads, Gobbolino longs to be a humble kitchen cat; and he embarks on a great adventure to seek out his heart's desire. First, he tries to be a normal kitchen cat, first at a farm, then an orphanage, then the mayor's house, but his magic always gets him into trouble. He becomes a show cat, but the other cats are jealous and reveal him as a witch's cat. He becomes a ship's cat for a brief period, but returns to shore after using his magic to save the ship from a witch, making the sailors suspicious. He is adopted by a sick princess, but when she is well again she leaves for boarding school without him, and he joins a Punch and Judy show as 'Toby the Dog', but a witch in the audience reveals him as a witch's cat. A knight finds him and gives him to a lady as a gift, but when Gobbolino tries to help the knight win over the Lady, he only causes more trouble. He leaves, and is adopted by a woodcutter, but the woodcutter's great-granddaughter sells him to a pedlar-woman for a dress. Finally accepting his magic, Gobbolino becomes the pedlar-woman's assistant, but his good heart and unwillingness to cause pain mean he fails at every task he is set. The pedlar-woman leaves him in the care of his sister, Sootica, and her mistress, but once again he is unable to complete his tasks. The witch puts a spell on him, removing his magical powers, and he finds his way back to the farm where he began his journey, his coat having faded to an unrecognisable tabby. Here, he finds his old friends welcome him back happily, and he becomes the farm's kitchen cat. The name 'Gobbolino' is from the Italian word for "little hunchback".
4808879	/m/0cp522	The Whipping Boy	Sid Fleischman	1986-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Prince Horace can be spoiled and, craving attention from his father, he frequently misbehaves; as a prince, no one may raise a hand against him. Therefore, his family provides him with a whipping boy, Jemmy, an orphaned boy who will be punished in the prince's stead. Though he has learned to read, write and mathematics while living in the castle, Jemmy is beaten several times a day and longs for the freedom he had on the streets. When the prince decides to run away on a whim he demands that Jemmy act as his servant during his journey. While on the run, the boys are picked up by two notorious highwaymen, Hold-Your-Nose Billy and Cutwater, who hatch a scheme to ransom the prince. Jemmy talks them into believing that he is the prince, and sets into motion a plan of escape. The prince misunderstands Jemmy's intentions and betrays him. Even so, the boys escape. They come across a girl searching for her lost dancing bear and she directs them to the river where they find a kind man with a wagon full of potatoes. The boys help the man get his wagon from the mud, and in return the potato man gives the boys, the girl, and the bear a lift to the fair, but they are soon intercepted by the highwaymen. Still believing Jemmy is the prince, and believing it to be a crime worse than murder to beat the prince, they beat Horace instead. The dancing bear scares the highwaymen away, and everyone arrives at the fair. The girl earns a few coins with her bear, the potato man boils the potatoes and sells them and the boys head down to the sewer to catch some rats. On their way, they hear some people talking about the missing prince. One woman makes a remark about how much worse things will be when the prince becomes king. The prince's feelings are hurt very deeply, but he does not show his emotions. When the boys learn that the king has posted a reward for the whipping boy, they go into the sewers where they see the highwaymen. They trick the highwaymen into the most dangerous sewer, where rats attack them, the prince decides that he wants to finally to go home. When they return to the potato man, Horace reveals himself as a prince and suggests that the potato man collect the reward for the whipping boy. When the prince explains the entire escapade to the king, Jemmy is pardoned, and the two boys live in the palace as the best of friends.
4811627	/m/0cp8hx	The Legacy of Vashna	Joe Dever	1991	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Long ago, Vashna, the greatest of all Darklords, was defeated in battle by King Ulnar of Sommerlund. But the victory was not complete, for while his body was destroyed, his spirit, as well as the spirits of his troops, remain trapped deep within the Maakengorge. Now, Lone Wolf learns of strange sightings in the area near the Maakengorge, suggesting that there may be a plot afoot to resurrect Vashna. Lone Wolf and the reader set out to uncover the nature of the threat, and to see if, indeed, Vashna will return.
4814591	/m/0cpddf	The Last of the Jedi: Dark Warning	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Obi-Wan Kenobi is on a mission. Along with the former Jedi apprentice Ferus Olin and a headstrong kid named Trever, he is trying to keep the Jedi's most important secret safe from the inquisitive Empire. With Boba Fett on their trail and time running out, Obi-Wan, Ferus and Trever must make some daring and desperate escapes...into even more Danger. Along the way, they discover some incredible news: Obi-Wan and Yoda are not the only Jedi to have survived the Emperor's annihilation of the Jedi. There is at least one other...and he is hiding in the Caves of Ilum, a place where nightmares become reality and dark warnings tell of conflicts yet to come.
4816784	/m/0cph0v	The Last of the Jedi: Underworld	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 As a Jedi apprentice, Ferus Olin had to leave the Jedi Temple in disgrace. Now he must return to redeem himself—and save the future of the Jedi Order. The Empire now controls the temple and everything inside...including, it is rumored, an imprisoned Jedi. Ferus and his street kid partner, Trever, must plunge into the depths of Coruscant in order to free this Jedi, exposing themselves to a dark underworld where both thieves and refugees hide from the Emperor's wrath. Breaking into the Temple isn't going to be easy... and surviving the underworld is going to be even harder.
4816853	/m/0cph49	The Last of the Jedi: Death on Naboo	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Ex-Jedi Ferus Olin has been imprisoned by the Empire. His crime? Trying to save the Jedi Order. The sinister Empire won't be able to hold Ferus for long &mdash; not when he has a friend on the inside. But escaping is only part of the problem. Ferus's quest is going to take him to the planet of Naboo, where a secret vital to the survival of the Jedi and the entire galaxy is being kept... and is in danger of being revealed. In order to keep this secret, Ferus will have to face the ruthless Inquisitor Malorum. A battle will be fought &mdash; and lives will be lost. Who will die on Naboo?
4817522	/m/0cphp1	Star Surgeon	James White	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Dr. Conway must deal with an unconscious patient, classification ELPH, who may be a cannibal or a demigod, or both. It came from the "other galaxy", and the species is well known, almost infamous, to the Ians, who are also from another galaxy. It is extremely long-lived, and regularly takes complete rejuvenation treatments, including the brain and memory, to keep itself young. By doing this, it is practically immortal. It, although unconscious, appeared to have the ability to negate the most powerful drugs and resist surgery to cure its skin condition. This later turned out to be the work of the entity's "doctor", who is an intelligent, organized collection of microscopic, virus-type cells. Once Doctor Conway realizes this, he uses a wooden stake to make the ELPH's doctor focus itself in one small location, at which time it is removed from the ELPH, informed regarding the physiology-problems of its patient, and put back in. The patient, whose name is Lonvellin, quickly makes a full recovery, and it leaves to do what it does best: bona fide missions that involve taking backwards planetary cultures and pulling them up "by their bootstraps". His particular mission, this time, is to cure a diseased planet called Etla, and he recruits Dr. Conway and the "Monitor Corps" to help him. When The Empire that controls the Planet of Etla misinterprets Lonvellin's efforts as an Act of War, the Empire declares war on the Sector General space hospital. Conway helps organise the evacuation of most of the station's staff and patients, and following the death or injury of more senior staff, becomes the most senior surviving physician. After a brutal series of attacks, and with the hospital on the brink of defeat, a group of Federation and Empire soldiers convince Conway to help in a mutiny against the Federation commander Dermod. The Empire soldiers had been told that the Federation had attacked Etla, rather than trying to help it, but seeing the way all casualties were treated equally on the station, and in particular witnessing Conway breaking down after failing to save the life of an alien Empire soldier, convinced them that they had been lied to.
4817614	/m/0cphqs	Star Healer	James White		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Conway is replaced on the ambulance ship Rhabwar by Diagnostician Prilicla. Conway visits healer Khone on the planet Goglesk, and witnesses first-hand their destructive racial mass-hysteria response to physical proximity. He inadvertently links minds with Khone and learns a great deal more. Back at Hospital Station, Conway decides to treat some Hudlar accident victims with a rear-to-front limb transplant, because stranger transplants require permanent exile. Conway also proposes staving off geriatric Hudlar problems by elective amputation. At the end, he successfully delivers a sentient telepathic Unborn (see Ambulance Ship) from its violent non-sentient Protector.
4817631	/m/0cphrg	Code Blue - Emergency	James White		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The protagonist of the story is Sommaradvan healer Cha Thrat. She bravely saved a human pilot who crashlanded on her planet, despite a complete lack of knowledge about his physiology. Contact with her species was established by the accident, so knowledge of their social customs is still virtually non-existent. However, she is invited to join the Sector General staff. Cha Thrat innocently wreaks havoc by following her instincts and social customs. First she befriends a hypochondriac Chalder. Next, she is invited to assist at a therapeutic surgery operation to amputate the limb of a Hudlar, which will prolong its life (see Star Healer.) When given the honor of cutting the limb, she obliges - and then deliberately cuts her own arm off as well, in accordance with the custom of her people. Next she saves the untouchable patient Khone (see Star Healer), and then finds a weird parasite species on a derelict spaceship. Due to the chaos she causes, every department in the hospital now refuses to allow her near their patients. O'Mara values her unusual approaches, and decides to add her to his staff.
4817668	/m/0cphs4	The Genocidal Healer	James White		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The dejected Surgeon-Captain Lioren is disappointed that his Court-martial has rejected the death penalty for him, and instead has assigned him to O'Mara at Sector General. He is plagued with guilt, because he is responsible for the genocide of an entire race. At moments during his new tasks, he ponders the individual events that led up to the alien deaths. First contact with the Cromsag planet was quickly followed by the discovery that their entire population was wasting away from some unidentified disease. They were starving, and their birth rate was absymal. Additionally, they were continually in hand-to-hand combat with each other, presumably competing for food. The Sector General ships hurriedly provided food to malnourished people everywhere, along with medical aid for combat injuries, and tried to determine the cause of the mysterious disease. Despite their best efforts, deaths from the plague continued to increase. Lioren grew frustrated with the slow process of sending samples back to Sector General and awaiting diagnostics and full tests to ensure the effectiveness of potential cures. In his arrogance, he administered a treatment to the entire population ... and they rose up and slaughtered each other, wiping out their own race. Interspersed with recalling these events, he shares some of his story with people at Sector General. Lioren speaks to the terminally ill Dr. Mannen, eventually reviving Mannen's interest in life. Lioren also offers encouragement to the isolated alien Khone (see Star Healer.) Next he is asked to speak to a gigantic Groalterri, whose race is so advanced they have until now refused all contact with the federated planets. The humans are desperate to make any sort of progress with this race, but the Groalterri patient won't communicate with anyone. Bit by bit, Lioren shares his own guilty history and talks the suicidal alien into lowering its emotional barriers. From its story he manages to figure out the Groalterri's hitherto unknown injury and arrange surgery that will change its life. Finally, at the end, Lioren meets with the handful of Cromsag survivors.
4817681	/m/0cphtj	The Galactic Gourmet	James White		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A famous chef wangles an appointment to Sector General for the challenge of creating food for so many different species. Like the Sommaradvan healer Cha Thrat (Code Blue - Emergency), he creates chaos everywhere he goes. He first meets the swimming "crocodile-like" Chaldars, who complain that their food is unsatisfying. Realising that they are accustomed to capturing their food live, he develops motile food for them. They are delighted, but they completely destroy their hospital ward charging around chasing it. Next, he learns that the spray-on food used to nourish the Hudlar is uninteresting. His investigations show that it needs small toxins to "flavor" it, which would be found naturally on their home planet. He visits a Hudlar ship, but causes a huge cargo bay accident expelling him into space. He rescues himself by riding some sprayers back to the station, but is in everyone's bad books. Sympathetic staffers hide him on the ambulance ship Rhabwar for an upcoming assignment. In the meantime, an epidemic at the hospital turns out to be a major nutmeg overdose caused by a sous-chef foolishly using ten times the required amount in a recipe. The Rhabwar is sent to a starving planet, whose people think their dwindling meat supply is the only desirable food and are shamed by its lack. He is able to commune with their first Cook better than the diplomats are doing. He finds ways to improve their sad vegetarian diet, and helps to set more positive attitudes toward it. The Cook's son is wounded on a game-hunting expedition, and the medical ship takes him on board for healing. The populace grows very angry, mystifying the team. They finally recall the aliens' cannibal tradition and produce him alive.
4817686	/m/0cphtw	Final Diagnosis	James White		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A man suffering from multiple mysterious illnesses and allergic reactions is labelled a hypochondriac. Finally he is sent to Sector General as a last resort. He befriends his fellow alien patients, telling them his life history. Rather than dismissing his complaints, the attentive hospital doctors develop a theory, and bring him back to his home planet. At the scene of a childhood accident that seems to have started it all, explanations are found.
4817696	/m/0cphv6	Mind Changer	James White		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sector General's director O'Mara is headed for retirement. His memories of life at the hospital are shown through flashbacks, while in the book's 'present' time he goes through the process of selecting his own replacement.
4817790	/m/0cphx_	Fire on the Water	Joe Dever	1984	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Having informed the King of Sommerlund about the fate of the Kai Order, Lone Wolf is instructed to make a journey to their ally, the neighbouring country of Durenor, to retrieve the legendary Sommerswerd, which is Sommerlund’s only hope at repelling Darklord Zagarna’s massive invasion. Lone Wolf is given the Seal of Hammerdal and sets off on a ship bound for Durenor, but when a traitor on board sabotages the ship, he is forced to make his way on foot to Durenor despite the enemies that await him around every corner.
4817875	/m/0cph_1	The Caverns of Kalte	Joe Dever	1984	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 ==Receptio
4818333	/m/0cpjg5	Time to Depart	Lindsey Davis	1995	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Falco's closest friend, Petronius Longus, has finally caught one of the leading criminals in Rome, Balbinus Pius. But a quirk in Roman law allows a convicted felon, even a murderer, time to depart before the sentence is carried out. Balbinus' departure has left a vacuum in the underworld of Rome, and there is a crowd of criminals trying desperately to fill the void. Their first step is to engineer a robbery that reverberates throughout the city. Falco is again called upon by the Emperor Vespasian to supply answers, as quietly and quickly as possible. A couple of murders, a kidnapping or two, and more suspects than Falco cares to count takes him, and his patrician girlfriend Helena Justina, to places a family shouldn't have to go.
4823815	/m/0cpr8g	Counter-Clock World	Philip K. Dick	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story takes place in a (then-future) fictional 1998, and centers around Anarch Peak, a black religious leader who had died in 1971 and is expected to rise soon. Sebastian Hermes, an owner of a small Vitarium (a business that digs up the dead and gives them the treatment they need before returning them to society), discovers Peak's resurrection is imminent. After accidentally discovering the burial place of Peak, he decides, against the law, to dig up the body before the Anarch awakes. (As with contemporary controversies about brain death, it seems not to be judged morally significant if a heartbeat can be heard, but it is illegal to dig anyone up before they start talking, which suggests resumed brain function is a marker of "old-birth.") Various groups are interested in controlling the affairs of the 'old-born', such as the Vitaria (technically, a person resurrected is in the legal custody of their Vitarium until claimed by family members) and the Library, an organization dedicated to erasing books which have passed beyond the initial date at which they were written. Religious institutions are also interested in 'old-birth', particularly in the resurrection of Anarch Peak in the case of the Udites (an African-American religion) and The Rome Syndicate (the highest authority in Caucasian matters, as well as the owner of numerous religious artifacts and other items, like a syringe that can stop the Hobart Phase for short periods of time). These factions then argue over the ownership of Anarch Peak after his resurrection. When the Library kidnaps Anarch Peak, both factions send Sebastian Hermes to recover him. In the end Peak is killed and there may be an interracial war as a consequence of Peak's permanent death. The Hobart Phase is the new order of life where people rise from the dead and are rejuvenated. Time reversal apparently began in 1986. Other than aging, Hobart Phase resurrection has changed nutritional and excretion processes and associated social taboos. People do not eat, but instead consume "Sogum" (hinted to be reverse Defecation) and later "plop" out food, which is done in private, due to its 'shameful' nature. As for smoking, cigarettes are no longer smoked, but the smoke instead blown back into them, making them grow back to normal size (this also clears and freshens the air). "Goodbye" and "hello" have reversed their order within standard greetings. It is stated that Mars colonists do not have the Hobart Phase on their world, and it is limited to Earth, and presumably its lunar colonies as well. As hinted in the book, the United States of America has been partitioned into eastern and western segments. Hawaii and Alaska have also seceded from the WUS and FNM, but this is only mentioned in passing. In the WUS (Western United States), California is predominantly white, while the eastern "Free Negro Municipality" (FNM) is inhabited by African Americans. The fictitious religion of Uditi is the national religion of the East. Uditi is an offshoot of Christianity with apparent influences from Roman Catholicism and the Rastafari movement, and is centered around "the udi", an experience of a group mind. Inhabitants of the WUS view the religion with suspicion, and it is hinted that their media demonizes its adherents. Library-sanctioned murders and civil unrest are claimed to be the works of religious fanatics. FNM currency is claimed to be worthless, as is WUS currency (stated earlier in the book), but its citizens ignore this due to patriotism.
4823830	/m/0cpr8t	Betsy-Tacy	Maud Hart Lovelace	1940		 The adventures between the two friends range from the real life (such as going to school for the first time, making a playhouse out of a piano box, and dressing up to go calling) to the extraordinarily fanciful (such as being taken for a ride in the milkman's magic wagon by his talking horse, and flying away on a cloud while enjoying a picnic). The fanciful adventures are provided by Betsy's active imagination and her love of telling stories. The book deals with the themes of shyness, with the birth of new siblings, with the joys of an active imaginations, and even touches on death within the family.
4823957	/m/0cprh2	Betsy's Wedding	Maud Hart Lovelace	1955		 Betsy returns to New York from her European trip, where Joe Willard is waiting for her. He wants to take her to Tiffany's and buy an engagement ring, but the more practical Betsy suggests he buys a wedding band instead. Betsy takes a train to Minneapolis, where her parents and younger sister are now living. She breaks the news of her engagement to her family, who are appalled that Joe wants to marry Betsy without first asking her father and without having a job in Minnesota. Her father is very upset. He thinks that Joe should have a job. When Joe arrives, Betsy tells him that her father is uncomfortable about him not having a job when they get married. He immediately drives from newspaper office to newspaper office before finding a job on a publicity campaign to help the victims of World War I. Betsy's father respects Joe's go-getter attitude and allows the wedding to proceed. Joe and Betsy purchase an apartment and Betsy struggles with her domestic duties at first, but eventually succeeds. As time passes, Betsy and Joe are able to purchase a home. Joe's widowed aunt comes to live with them, which Betsy resents at first (she had been hoping for a baby) but eventually enjoys the company and stories, especially when Joe begins working the night shift helping a newspaper go to print. Meanwhile, Betsy and Tacy unite to try to find a husband for Tib. They find Mr.Bagshaw at first, who appears to be a very good dancer. It seems to work. Then when Mr.Bagshaw preposes Tib turns it down. Betsy and Tacy are glad because otherwise Tib would have gone away. Then they find Rocky, who they meet at a club. But Betsy and Tacy get scared, for Rocky is terrible to Tib. Finally Rocky leaves. Tib finds a soldier and they fall in love. As the book ends, America enters World War I and Joe goes to an officer's training camp. Betsy returns to her parents' home to live with them for the duration of the war. Before Joe leaves, they are able to attend Tib's wedding and enjoy their final days together.
4824743	/m/0cps4b	The Killing Dance	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Killing Dance takes place in May, about a month and a half after Bloody Bones and like the previous novels, The Killing Dance begins with a potential job for Anita in her role as an Animators, Inc. employee. In this case, Anita and Jean-Claude are in Anita's office meeting with Sabin, a master vampire, and with Dominic Dumare, Sabin's human servant. Sabin and Dumare explain that Sabin, in order to please a mortal lover, promised to abstain from feeding on the blood of live humans. As a result, he has developed a condition in which his body is irreversibly rotting away, and is beginning to lose control of his powers. Dumare, a necromancer, believes that if he and Anita join their abilities and his experience, they may be able to cure Sabin, and Anita agrees to help if possible. Jean-Claude and Anita ponder the parallels between Sabin's relationship with his unnamed mortal love and their own romantic relationship, and Anita leaves for a date with her other boyfriend, Richard. (Although Jean-Claude, a vampire, is in the process of consolidating his leadership of the city, Richard is locked in an ongoing struggle for leadership of the werewolves of the city with their current Ulfric, Marcus, primarily because Richard, unlike Jean-Claude, is not willing to kill in order to assume or maintain power.) Anita and Richard go to a dinner party at Anita's friend Catherine's house. There, they meet one of Jean-Claude's vampires, Robert, and his wife, Monica. Monica announces that she is pregnant, which Anita had previously thought impossible for a vampire of Robert's age. Monica is also very friendly with Anita, notwithstanding her assistance in the plot to hyponize Catherine and blackmail Anita in Guilty Pleasures. Anita wonders if Jean-Claude deliberately planned for Robert to attend the party to spy on her and Richard. She and Richard are forced to leave the party early after she receives a call from Edward. Edward, one of the world's premier assassins and a sort of friend of Anita's, tells Anita that he has received a proposed contract to kill Anita. He has refused, but wants her to get home and begin making plans to protect herself while he investigates the identity of the person putting out the contract on her life. Anita and Richard arrive at her house and meet Mrs. Pringle. Anita suspects that someone is in her apartment, and, while Richard helps Mrs. Pringle move a television, she engages in a gun battle through her closed front door, ultimately killing Jimmy Dugan, a local thug known as "Jimmy the Shotgun". Anita is taken to police headquarters and questioned for quite some time by Detective Branswell, who eventually lets her go. Anita and Richard argue about her decision to confront Jimmy the Shotgun without asking Richard to back her up, and Anita agrees to move into Richard's house for the time being in order to protect her neighbors from any potential collateral damage. Edward contacts Anita at Richard's house and tells her that the contract on her life has been increased to $500,000 if the murder is performed within 24 hours. Edward suggests that Anita try to deduce the identity of the person offering the contract by figuring out who would need her dead that quickly, but she doesn't have any ideas. Richard then receives a call from Stephen. Stephen is being forced to participate in one of Raina's pornographic movies, and is desperate for Richard's protection. Richard and Anita leave to rescue him. At the farmhouse where Raina shoots her movies, Richard and Anita confront several werewolves and various crew members. Richard reassures Heidi, a non-dominant werewolf trapped in the middle of the conflict between Marcus and himself. One of the werewolves, Sebastian challenges Richard, but Richard easily subdues him with the raw power of his beast. Approximately 30 werewolves gang up on Richard, including Sebastian and Jamil, and Anita realizes that the situation was a trap to kill him. She goes to rescue Stephen while Richard holds off the wolves. Anita follows the sounds of Stephen's screams and finds a room where Stephen is being tortured on film by his brother Gregory while being restrained by Raina and Gabriel. Anita removes Stephen and finds Richard fighting off the twenty werewolves outside the filming room. She and Richard confront the wolves, and Anita realizes that because the wolves do not believe Richard is willing to kill, they are not afraid of him. She threatens to kill Raina if anyone uses Stephen in a film again, setting herself up as a challenger for Raina's position as the pack's lupa. After returning to Richard's home, Richard stays awake as guard while Stephen sleeps in Anita's bed for protection. Later morning, Anita wakes to find Jason, Sylvie and Lillian at Richard's house. Lillian tends wounds while Jason and Sylvie attempt to convince Richard that he must be willing to kill to lead the pack. Anita and Richard go to a separate room to argue and come close to having sex, only to be interrupted by the weres on the other side of the door. Anita worries that her relationship with Richard makes her vulnerable, because unlike Jean-Claude, Anita can't count on Richard to make the hard decisions necessary to survive. Anita leaves the bedroom to find that several more shapeshifters have arrived—Rafael, Christine, and about fifteen others. She learns that Jean-Claude and many of the city's shapeshifters support Richard's attempt to dethrone Marcus as Ulfric, but that as long as Richard is not willing to kill, his claim is weakened. Richard ultimately declares Anita as his lupa and declares himself willing to kill Marcus if necessary to assume control of the pack. In order to assume a dominant role within the pack, Anita is forced to fight Neal, one of the werewolves present until first blood is drawn. She maneuvers him into a position where she can judo throw him through a window, drawing blood. As Neal cleans himself off, Edward arrives. Edward thinks that whichever assassin accepted the contract will try to kill Anita during her date with Jean-Claude at the opening of Dance Macabre, Jean-Claude's new club. Over Richard's objections, he and Anita make plans to use Anita as bait to draw out the assassin. Jean-Claude and Anita arrive at the club and are mobbed by reporters, "outing" Anita as the vampire's girlfriend. Under pressure from Jean-Claude, Anita admits that she wanted to keep their relationship secret and that her desire to do so was unfair to Jean-Claude. Anita meets Liv and Damian, two new and powerful vampires in Jean-Claude's retinue, as well as Cassandra, a new addition to the Thronos Rokke clan of werewolves. During the floorshow, Anita is forced to intervene to stop Damian from permanently hypnotizing one of the guests. Anita helps the guest into the women's bathroom with the help of another patron, Anabelle Smith. Smith draws a gun on Anita, but is distracted when some women enter, allowing Anita enough time to draw a knife and kill her. The police arrive and arrest Anita for the second time in two days. Detective Greeley does his best to get Anita to talk, but Dolph ultimately convinces Greeley to turn Anita over to Dolph by telling Greeley that Anita is a suspect in other crime. Dolph takes Anita to a suburban home in Creve Coeur, and shows Anita the crime scene—one of Jean-Claude's vampire's, Robert has been staked out inside a magic circle and ritually killed. Anita, as a necromancer, is unable to cross the circle, which was designed to block the magic of the dead. She hypothesizes that the circle was used to prevent Jean-Claude from learning of Roberts' death, and meets Tammy Reynolds, a new member of RPIT. Anita guesses that the crime must have been performed by at least two supernatural beings with enough strength to restrain Robert, in addition to someone with sufficiently detailed knowledge of necromancy to perform the ritual. Because even John Burke and Anita herself lack the expertise to perform the ritual, Anita tells Dolph that Dominic Dumare is the only suspect she can identify. Anita and Dolph clash over what she can tell Jean-Claude about Robert's death and about whether her loyalties now lie with Jean-Claude or with RPIT. After some more investigation, Anita accompanies Robert's widow, Monica to the hospital. While at the hospital, Anita speaks to Edward, who tells her that the contract on her life has been extended another twenty-four hours and convinces her to take cover in the Circus of the Damned while he attempts to identify who is behind the hit. At the Circus, Anita tells Jean-Claude about Robert's death and learns for the first time about Jean-Claude's past with Asher and Julianna. Jean-Claude tells Anita that Asher has petitioned the Vampire Council for permission to kill Anita as revenge for Julianna's death. Later, Jean-Claude and Anita discuss their relationship, both with each other and with Richard. Jean-Claude tells Anita that he loves her, and promises not to stand in her way if she chooses Richard, but demands that she see Richard change into a wolf before committing. They kiss, and Richard enters. With Richard's control weakened by the approaching full moon, Jean-Claude baits Richard and Richard knocks Anita down in the course of attacking Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude leaves to prepare for the approaching dawn, and Richard and Anita discuss their relationship. Jason arrives, severely beaten as a result of his attempt to prevent Richard from entering earlier, and acknowledges Richard as his master. Richard feeds from Jason's blood and feeds Jason some of his own blood and power. Shaken by Richard's display of inhuman behavior, Anita worries that perhaps Richard is right that killing Marcus will mean surrendering too much of his human identity. After some hesitation, Anita proposes that Richard sleep with her that morning, and that they marry as soon as possible. Richard refuses, promising to sleep with Anita and to marry her, but only after she sees him as a werewolf. Anita is awakened by Cassandra leaning over her bed in darkness. Cassandra apologizes for the fright and explains that Richard and Jean-Claude have a plan. The men explain that they wish to experiment calling the power that the three of them summoned accidentally in The Lunatic Cafe. Richard sees the power as a way to force Marcus to back down without a death, and Jean-Claude sees it as a means to secure his control of the city and his safety. Anita reluctantly agrees to the experiment after forcing Jean-Claude to promise that he will not mark either of the others as his servant. As the three engage in the initial stages of a ménage à trois, Anita is first uncomfortable, but soon overcome by a combination of lust and magical power. Acting on instinct, Anita demands blood to complete the ritual, and Jean-Claude bites Richard even as the two men continue seducing Anita. Anita is flooded with power, and instinctively raises the dead, much as she did when flooded with power by inadvertent human sacrifices in The Laughing Corpse and Bloody Bones. As Anita makes plans to investigate what she has raised from the dead and where, Richard and Jean-Claude sense an emergency and race her to the location of an old cemetery within the Circus. Anita learns that she has raised scores of zombies, as well as the resting forms of three vampires: Damian, Liv, and Willie. The three discuss their relationship some more—Jean-Claude and Richard are threatened by Anita's power and need for dominance, while Anita and Richard are threatened by Jean-Claude's ongoing seduction of them both. (On the other hand, Cassandra, a post graduate student of magical theory as well as a werewolf, is more clinically interested in the magic than in their relationship). Unsure whether, after raising them as zombies, Anita will be able to return the vampires to death in a way that allows them to rise as vampires with the setting sun, the group decides to call Dominic Dumare for assistance. (Anita reveals that a woman alibied Dumare, eliminating him as a suspect in Robert's killing.) Dominic and Cassandra are both intellectually fascinated by Anita's power to raise vampires, and, at Dominic's request, Anita experiments with the power, learning that she can heal vampires that she raises during daylight. Dominic helps her develop a ritual to combine her powers with Jean-Claude's and Richards and lay the vampires and zombies to rest, and they agree to try to use the technique to heal Sabin the next day. Jean-Claude, Richard, and Anita discuss their mutual relationship some more. Richard has agreed to accept Jean-Claude's marks as his animal servant, but will not accept a subordinate position to either Jean-Claude or Anita, and threatens to kill Jean-Claude if he attempts to assume control. Anita, for her part, will not even accept the marks. Jean-Claude claims to be threatened by Anita's new power and by the prospect of a three way battle for dominance "for all eternity," but he is intrigued by the amount of power the three of them can raise. Edward arrives, with an assistant, the psycopathic mercenary Harley. Edward explains that he has learned that Marcus was behind the contract on Anita's life, and Jean-Claude hypothesizes that Marcus wanted to distract Richard from concentrating on that night's battle of succession. Anita and Richard dress for the battle and leave, with Edward and Harley as backup. Using Jean-Claude's mark, Anita and Richard unite their three powers once more, this time magnifying Richard's power. Holding Anita's hand, Richard helps her "ride" his power, allowing the two of them to run through the forest like wolves. At the wolves' sacred clearing, Richard and Marcus face off. Sebastian stabs Richard in the back in order to help Marcus, but is killed by Edward, who has taken up a sniper's position nearby. Without further intereference, Richard tears out Marcus's heart, killing him. In order to prevent her from killing Raina, Richard grabs Anita. He holds her down bodily as he changes to his wolf-man state. He invites Anita to share his power again, but she flees in horror, just as the pack begins eating Marcus. Anita runs back to the Circus and Jean-Claude. Distraught, Anita finally gives in to Jean-Claude's ongoing seduction, in the first of the many detailed scenes of erotica that Hamilton has since introduced into the series. The next morning, Richard arrives, and is devastated by the combination Anita's rejection of him the previous night and discovering that she has had sex with Jean-Claude. After an emotional fight, Richard declares that he will always love Anita and leaves. Cassandra arrives to help Anita clean up but then, to Anita's surprise, knocks Anita unconscious and delivers her to Raina and Gabriel. With Anita safely bound on the set of Raina's porn films, Cassandra explains that she, Dominic and Sabin are a triumvirate. Cassandra was the lover who convinced Sabin to give up feeding on humans, causing him to develop his degenerative condition. Dominic believed that by sacrificing Jean-Claude's triumvirate, they could heal Sabin, and the three of them came to St. Louis to do so. Discovering that Anita was not marked by Jean-Claude, they are going to try the sacrifice with just Jean-Claude and Richard. Anita attempts to reason with Cassandra, and promises to heal Sabin by raising him during daylight the next day. Cassandra refuses, stating that they do not have even one more day before Sabin loses his mind permanently, and leaves Anita to be raped and killed in Raina's snuff film. Gabriel, a psychotic sadomasochist, has been fantasizing about arming Anita with silver knives and raping her while she tries to kill him. Anita talks Gabriel into trying out his fantasy and gives her the knives. Unknown to Gabriel, Anita accepts the first and second vampire marks from Richard and Jean-Claude while waiting for the scene to begin; with her weapons and the extra power from the marks, she is able to kill both Gabriel and Raina. Together with Edward and Harley, Anita races to the sacrifice site to save Jean-Claude and Richard. At the site, Dominic has prepared another circle of power against the dead, which Anita, a necromancer, is unable to enter. Edward crosses the circle and kills Dominic to stop his spell but is knocked unconscious by Sabin. Harley shoots Cassandra. Anita kills Sabin and is then forced to kill Harley, who has lost control without Edward to anchor him to reality. She rushes to Richard and Jean-Claude and finds Richard dying, his heart pierced by Dominic's blade. Jean-Claude explains that he is shielding Anita from Richard's pain, and that he and Richard will probably die. Anita is unable to cope with losing both men and agrees to accept the third mark, giving blood to Jean-Claude and saving Richard and Jean-Claude's lives. In the epilogue, Anita explains that Monica's baby is doing well, and that she and Jean-Claude remain lovers, but that Richard has frozen them both out of his life, rendering the triumvirate useless. Even more ominously, Edward has declared that because Anita killed Harley, she now owes him one favor, which he will collect when he sees fit.
4827858	/m/0cpx6d	The Ghost at Skeleton Rock	Franklin W. Dixon	1958-01-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Frank, Joe, Chet and Tony travel to Puerto Rico to investigate the mystery behind a coded letter they received from the Hardy father. But with danger following their move and man who has an uncanny resemblance to Joe, the boys are running out of time! Can they save their father before it's too late?
4830226	/m/0cp_ng	The Flying Sorcerers	David Gerrold	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The plot concerns the efforts of an astronaut and geologist/anthropologist, known to the natives as "Purple", to escape from a primitive world on which he is stranded and return to his people. The events are seen from the perspective of Lant, one of the natives, who becomes, in the course of the novel, Speaker (chieftain) of his people. The natives, a fur covered people, believe in magic and the book shows how sufficiently advanced technology would be perceived by a primitive society. Purple lands in an egg-shaped vehicle. He casually disrupts the lives of Lant's people, and thoughtlessly demeans Shoogar, the village magician. Shoogar gets revenge by destroying Purple's vehicle, which results in an atomic explosion. Many of the villagers are dead or injured, the rest, including Lant and Shoogar, are forced to flee. Purple is presumed dead. The villagers eventually wind up on a fertile peninsula, which, as the summer approaches, is rapidly becoming an island (thanks to the influence of the two suns, the shorelines on this world are somewhat variable). To the annoyance of the existing inhabitants of the area, the villagers contrive to be trapped in the verdant area by the rising seas. The villagers are less happy when they learn that Purple is here, serving ineffectively as local magician, having succeeded the incumbent, Dorthi, by killing him by landing on him in a fall from the sky in an impact suit. Lant's people wish to flee, but have nowhere to go. Lant, who becomes Speaker of the villagers more or less by default, and the local Speaker persuade the two magicians to swear to a peace treaty. Purple can call his mother ship to get him, but must return to the distant area of the old village to do so. Everyone is stranded on the island for a considerable length of time. Purple conceives the idea of fabricating a flying machine to return him to the area. He persuades his villagers (who are actually anxious to get rid of him) and Lant's, to join in the scheme. The ship will have balloons, sails, and pedal-driven steering. A good part of the book deals with the tribulations of Purple in trying to create this work, beyond the technology of the local people. He creates 'aircloth' (a thin, airtight cloth), a rubber-equivalent, and splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. He is successful in building the ship. But in so doing, he has changed the lives of the villagers forever. Not only do they have these new technologies, but he has created problems with crime, intoxication, the ecology, and has altered the relationship between the sexes. In addition, he has introduced money into the culture. Purple, Shoogar, Lant, and Lant's adult two sons take off for the old village. They get there, and Purple is able to summon the mother ship and depart. There is a brief epilogue---after the return home, Lant notes that a new flying machine, much larger than the first, is to be built, thus continuing the industrial revolution started by Purple.
4831837	/m/0cq23z	Oath of Fealty	Jerry Pournelle		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the near future, a race riot results in the destruction of an area just outside Los Angeles. In order to prevent the area from devolving into a tent slum, the city sells the construction rights to a private company, which then constructs an arcology, named Todos Santos. The higher standard of living enjoyed by Todos Santos residents causes resentment among Angelenos. The arcology dwellers have evolved a different culture, sacrificing privacy - there are cameras (not routinely monitored) even in the private apartments - in exchange for security. The residents are fiercely loyal to the arcology and its management, and the loyalty runs both ways. During the course of the novel, Todos Santos is compared to a feudal society, with loyalty and obligations running both ways, hence the title. The systems at the arcology are run by MILLIE, an advanced computer system, and some high-level executives have direct links to MILLIE via implants in their brains. Other workers in the arcology work by telepresence, including one woman who remotely operates construction equipment on a lunar base. Todos Santos causes resentment among Angelenos, but has improved their lives as well. The company that owns the arcology tows icebergs in, solving the water shortage for all Southern Californians. Todos Santos has dug a Los Angeles subway using a digging machine, which uses an oxyhydrogen torch. Todos Santos is at the hub of the subway system, and contains a huge mall, which Angelenos may visit. This easy access causes Los Angeles' city officials to complain about the shopping dollars and tax revenues going outside the city limits. As the story opens, three young Angelenos sneak into the maintenance areas of Todos Santos. When they are detected by Todos Santos' security systems and personnel, they give every appearance of being terrorists, including spoofing the correct electronic access codes. When non-lethal means of stopping the three fail, Deputy Manager Preston Sanders orders lethal gas released rather than risk a bomb going off. Two of the intruders are killed. They turn out to be youths, with high tech equipment and boxes with such labels as "bomb", but without the actual means of harming the arcology. It soon turns out that they were duped by the "Friends of Man and the Earth" (FROMATE), anti-technology zealots who want to see Todos Santos destroyed or abandoned, as a means of forcing the arcology to turn off its lethal defenses for a later real attack. The deaths of the two youths cause political problems. Sanders is charged with murder. While arcology manager Art Bonner is quite prepared to defy the city authorities, Sanders turns himself in. The arcology is forced to turn off its lethal defenses as the FROMATEs planned. When that happens, they soon face a full-fledged attack by the FROMATEs, which they deter by non-lethal means, until the intruders prove they have deadly weapons, at which point Todos Santos security responds in kind, shooting and killing most of the intruders. While city authorities are still reacting to this, the arcology launches a jailbreak, the idea of chief engineer (and resident genius) Tony Rand. They tunnel under the jail, release sleep gas into the jail, and free Sanders. Los Angeles soon retaliates with arrest and search warrants, but they are soon defeated by the sheer size of the arcology and the ability of the Todos Santos executives, aided in part by their direct links to MILLIE, to hide Rand and Sanders. After Todos Santos shows that it can cause Los Angeles trouble, such as by contaminating the Los Angeles water supply with salt water, and by work stoppages among the telepresence operators, a truce is arrived at: Rand and Sanders will leave the country permanently, and relations between Los Angeles and Todos Santos will be restored. In effect, Todos Santos has won, if only by restoring the status quo ante. Notable Quote: "Think of it as Evolution in Action" (Tony Rand)
4832311	/m/0cq2vx	Ai no Kusabi				 Ai no Kusabi takes place on the world of Amoi, which is ruled by a computer named Jupiter. Jupiter has introduced a number of strict social rules to society. Among them, social status is determined by hair color, blonde being the highest, down to black or dark brown as the lowest. The Blondies, genetically engineered by Jupiter, are the highest social class and occupy the capital city of Tanagura. They travel to the satellite pleasure city of Midas, which has an independent slum area called Ceres. Under Jupiter's restrictions, the Blondies are sterile and forbidden from indulging in sexual activities. They keep "pets" (adolescents in their late teens) for about a year, for purely voyeuristic purposes, before discarding them. Further emasculation is seen in the "Furniture", adolescent boys who serve the Blondies. Contrary to popular belief, the hair-color caste system only applies to those working in Tanagura and not in Ceres. The true separation is between those genetically created in a lab (those in Tanagura) and the "mongrels" formed the natural way (those in Ceres). However it was written in the novel that Tanagura manipulated even the natural births of Ceres, ensuring that its population did not grow by restricting the number of female births to 1 in 10. Riki the Dark, a slum mongrel without an ID number, leader of the gang Bison and therefore considered the lowest of the low, one day meets Iason Mink, a Tanagura elite Blondie, the most powerful man in the city and Jupiter's favorite. Iason saves him from being killed by a gang and Riki tries to pay his debt by offering his body to Iason. Instead, Iason makes him his pet and takes him from the slums to live with him. Riki leaves his gang behind without an explanation. Iason keeps Riki, who is bound to Iason with a penis ring, as his pet for three years. This causes a lot of rumors and commotion amongst the other Blondies. Not only is Riki considered too old to be a pet but he is a human mongrel, which is frowned upon. The other Blondies question Iason and his motives, yet Iason refuses to give up Riki whom he has grown very attached to. Iason's friend, Raoul, warns him that Jupiter does not approve of this relationship but Iason refuses to listen. Riki hates his new position, having formerly been a proud leader, and begs Iason for his freedom. Iason grants him a year of freedom and allows him to go back to Ceres, the slums. Riki is welcomed back into Bison and returns to a normal life. He has changed, however, and is unable to forget the time he spent as Iason's pet. When the year passes, Iason decides he wants Riki back. Through his former furniture Katze, who is now a black marketeer, Iason arranges for Kirie, a young member of Bison, to set a trap and catch the gang. This ends with Bison being arrested. Riki is freed and told to return to his master. After Riki returns to Iason, he learns of the taboos Iason has broken to keep him and of how Iason has protected him from the fate of former pets which end up being sold to brothels. Iason even decides to grant Riki a bit of further freedom by allowing him to work with Katze in the black market. Guy, Riki's best friend and former pairing partner from Bison, finds out about Riki's position as Iason's pet and becomes enraged. As a result, Guy decides to get Riki back from Iason. He kidnaps Riki to Dana Bahn. Riki tells Guy that he will never be free of Iason as long as he wears Iason's pet ring. Guy therefore removes Riki's pet ring by giving him a penectomy. Guy contacts Iason and arranges to meet him in Dana Bahn. Iason, thinking Riki is in Dana Bahn because of the tracer in the pet ring, meets Guy there. Iason tries to get Riki back but finds out what Guy has done. After attacking him, Guy sets off bombs that he had planted in Dana Bahn with the intention of killing Iason to set Riki free. Riki appears to stop Iason from killing Guy and get them all out of Dana Bahn. Reluctantly Iason helps Guy and they head towards the exit. As they approach the front gate, an explosion wrecks Dana Bahn. The gates collapse and slice Iason's legs off just above the knee. Riki is forced to leave him there while he takes Guy out of Dana Bahn. Riki sees Katze, who has been waiting outside after Riki contacted him, and tells him to help Guy while he returns to Iason. Iason is surprised to see Riki come back, despite what he had done to him as a pet. Riki sits down next to Iason and offers him a poisonous Black Moon cigarette that Katze had given to him, and they both perish in Dana Bahn together, much to everyone's grief.
4832818	/m/0cq3hm	The Chrysanthemums	John Steinbeck			 The story opens with a panoramic view of the Salinas Valley in winter, shrouded in fog. The focus narrows and finally settles on Elisa Allen, cutting down the spent stalks of Chrysanthemums in the garden on her husband’s ranch. Elisa is thirty-five, lean and strong, and she approaches her gardening with great energy. Her husband Henry comes from across the yard, where he has been arranging the sale of thirty steer, and offers to take Elisa to town for dinner and movie to celebrate the sale. He praises her skill with flowers, and she congratulates him on doing well in the negotiations for the steer. They seem a well-matched couple, though their way of talking together is formal and serious. Henry heads off to finish some chores, and Elisa decides to finish her transplanting before they get ready to leave for town. Soon Elisa hears “a squeak of wheels and a plod of hoofs,” and a man drives up in an old wagon. (He is never named; the narrator calls him simply “the man.”) The man is large and dirty, and clearly used to being alone. He earns a meager living fixing pots and sharpening scissors and knives, traveling from San Diego, California, to Seattle, Washington, and back every year. The man chats and jokes with Elisa, who answers his bantering tone but has no work for him to do. When he presses for a small job, she becomes annoyed and tries to send him away. Suddenly the man’s attention turns to the flowers that Elisa is tending. When he asks about them, Elisa’s annoyance vanishes, and she becomes friendly again. The man remembers seeing chrysanthemums before, and describes them: “Kind of a long-stemmed flower? Looks like a quick puff of colored smoke?” Elisa is delighted with his description. The man tells her about one of his regular customers who also gardens, and who always has work for him when he comes by. She has asked him to keep his eyes open in his travels, and to bring her some chrysanthemum seeds if he ever finds some. Now Elisa is captivated. She invites the man into the yard, prepares a pot of chrysanthemum cuttings for the woman’s garden, and gives him full instructions for tending them. Clearly, Elisa envies the man’s life on the road and is attracted to him because he understands her love of flowers. In a moment of extreme emotion she nearly reaches for him, but snatches her hand back before she touches him. Instead, she finds him two pots to mend, and he drives away with fifty cents and the cuttings, promising to take care of the plants until he can deliver them to the other woman. Elisa goes into the house to get dressed for dinner. She scrubs herself vigorously and examines her naked body in the mirror before putting on her dress and makeup. When Henry finds her, he compliments her, telling her she looks “different, strong and happy.” “I’m strong,” she boasts. “I never knew before how strong.” As Henry and Elisa drive into town, she sees a dark speck ahead on the road. It turns out to be the cuttings the man has tossed out of his wagon. She does not mention them to Henry, who has not seen them, and she turns her head so he cannot see her crying.
4833048	/m/0cq3tl	Out from Boneville	Jeff Smith	1995-05-29	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The three Bone cousins are lost in the desert. After finding a mysterious seemingly hand-drawn map they are attacked by a swarm of locusts. Fone Bone barely escapes with his life, but falls off a cliff. Climbing up the other side, he finds a trail of Smiley's cigars. Following it, he meets two rat creatures who attempt to eat him. However, he is rescued by the Great Red Dragon. Soon after, he meets Ted, a wise bug who suggests that Fone seek counsel from Thorn, but warns he should do so before winter arrives. Following a spontaneous blanket of falling snow, marking the beginning of winter, Fone decides to stay in the Valley until Spring when he can continue his search for Phoney and Smiley. Fone Bone (now donning boots, a blanket cape, and a paper bag hat) is in the process of working on his house when Miz Possum comes by with her three sons to give Fone Bone some more supplies. Miz Possum leaves her sons in the care of Fone Bone for a short while. The kids get away from him while playing, and he chases after them to find they have been caught by the two rat creatures from earlier. Fone saves the kids and tells them to run away while he leads that rat creatures off of their trail. The rat creatures chase Fone Bone for a while, and the chase ends with the Great Red Dragon scaring them away. Fone, angry with the dragon, asks why he didn't use his fiery breath, at which point the Great Red Dragon sets Bone's hat on fire. Afterwards, Fone Bone tries to tell Miz Possum about the dragon, but she, despite seeing his burnt hat, refuses to believe an ounce of it. Making his way to the hot spring to clean up, Fone runs into a beautiful woman removing her trousers to collect some water from the spring. Fone is immediately smitten. She reveals her name to be Thorn, the person whom Ted told him to seek, and Fone goes off with her to her home. Fone Bone is staying at Thorn's house, and helping with chores prior to the arrival of Thorn's grandmother, Gran'ma Ben, who is coming from the annual Great Cow Race. Fone Bone shows Thorn the map they found in the desert, which Thorn finds strangely familiar. Meanwhile Phoney Bone meets Gran'ma Ben, and instantly gets on her wrong side. He and Fone Bone are reunited when Gran'ma Ben arrives at the farm house. The day before the Spring Fair at the nearby town, Fone and Phoney are helping out at Thorn and Ben's farmstead. Seeing the opportunity to make some money, the greedy Phoney sneaks out to go to town early, but en route he encounters the two Rat Creatures and their ruler, Kingdok. He overhears the Rat Creatures are on the lookout for a "small bald creature with a star on its chest", a clear description of Phoney Bone himself. The Rat Creatures are called to high council with The Hooded One, a mysterious figure who wears a brown cloak with the hood pulled down over his face, and wields a scythe. The meeting adjourns with The Hooded One sending every Rat Creature in the valley to attack the farm house. With the farm house under attack, Gran'ma Ben fights off the Rat Creatures, giving Thorn and Fone the chance to escape. When Thorn and Fone get surrounded, the Great Red Dragon appears, announcing its arrival with the smell of brimstone, and chases the Rat Creature army away. They return to the farm house to find it wrecked and smoldering. Meanwhile, Phoney Bone arrives at the Barrelhaven tavern and discovers, to his astonishment, Smiley Bone working there as a barman. He then meets Lucius Down, owner of the bar, and instantly gets on his wrong side. It is then that Phoney discovers that the residents of the valley use products and services as pay—Phoney's drinks cost "two eggs"; Phoney gives Lucius two dollars, which are ripped apart, much to Phoney's shock; Smiley tells him the truth. Thorn, Fone and the Dragon arrive back at the farm to find Gran'ma Ben alive. Clearly she and the Dragon know each other (the Dragon addresses her by her first name, Rose). However, Gran'ma Rose Ben remains distrustful of the Dragon, despite his driving off the Rat Creatures. Meanwhile, Phoney Bone is forced to work under Lucius Down, proprietor of the Barrelhaven tavern, to pay off his bar tab (his coveted Boneville money being worthless in the valley). As he plans ways to get rich off the villagers' goods instead, he is visited by The Hooded One, who claims to want his soul. When Thorn, Ben and Fone Bone arrive in town for the Spring Fair, the three Bone cousins are reunited at last.
4838590	/m/0cqbj6	The Teutonic Knights	Henryk Sienkiewicz		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Krzyżacy tells the story of a young nobleman, Zbyszko of Bogdaniec, who together with his uncle Maćko of Bogdaniec returns from the war against the Order (Knights of the Cross) in nearby Lithuania. In a tavern inn Zbyszko falls in love with the lovely Danusia, who is traveling with the court of the Duchess Anna. He swears to her his knight's oath and promises to bring her "three trophies" from the Teutonic Knights. On his way to the royal city of Kraków (Cracow), Zbyszko attacks Kuno von Liechtenstein, who is an official diplomatic delegate of the Teutonic Knights. The penalty is death. Yet, on the gallows, Danusia saves him from execution when she jumps onto the platform in full view of the crowd, and promises to marry him, covering his head with her handkerchief (an old Polish tradition that carries with it a stay of execution if the couple wed). Zbyszko and Maćko return home to their estate, where they rebuild their mansion. After some time Zbyszek returns to Danuśka and marries her. However, she is soon treacherously kidnapped by four Teutonic Knights who want revenge – her father Jurand fought against the Germans. Jurand himself is soon captured by them, imprisoned and cruelly tortured and maimed. Zbyszko's quest to find and save his kidnapped Danusia continues until, at long last, he rescues her. However, it is too late already. Danuta has been driven insane because of her treatment at the hands of her captors, and eventually dies. The long awaited war begins. The combined forces of Poland and Lithuania under the command of Polish King Ladislaus Jagiello destroy the Teutonic Order in the monumental 1410 Battle of Grunwald. This battle signals the true terminal decline of the Teutonic Order.
4838673	/m/0cqbl_	The Harsh Cry of the Heron	Gillian Rubinstein	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Takeo and Kaede are now the prosperous rulers of the Three Countries. They have three daughters, Shigeko, and twins Miki and Maya. Shigeko, the eldest daughter and heir, has been trained as a boy as she will inherit the domain of Maruyama when she comes of age, and the Three Countries upon Takeo's death. Maya and Miki, on the other hand, are seen as cursed not only because of the superstitious beliefs concerning twins, but also because of their Tribe talents, indicated by the Kikuta lines on their palms. They are feared and ignored by many, including their mother, but are well loved by Takeo and Shigeko. Takeo's only fear is that the prophecy concerning his death will be realized - he can only be killed by his son. Kaede soon gives birth to Takeo’s second son. A new threat to Takeo has appeared. Arai Zenko and his wife Hana have allied with the Saga Hideki, a warlord who has conquered the rest of the Eight Islands in the name of the powerless Emperor, Kikuta Akio, the Master of the exiled Kikuta family, and the Western foreigners (Portuguese), to destroy Takeo. Muto Kenji, at the end of his years, attempts in vain to negotiate with the Akio and see his grandson, Hisao. Hisao, really Takeo’s son and future killer, has no Tribe talents leading Akio to abuse him, but as Kenji attempts to flee with him he sees that Hisao is a ghostmaster, capable of communicating and controlling the souls of the dead. The soul of his mother, Yuki, is haunting him. Kenji soon commits suicide to avoid capture, eager to see the next world. Maya, whose Tribe talents go beyond the Tribe's ability to control her, takes the spirit of a cat within her and struggles to assert her control over it, becoming increasingly erratic and dangerous. She and Miki are separated, and Maya must train under Taku. Taku is soon killed on his brother Zenko’s orders and Maya is captured. Hisao is finally able to communicate with the spirit of his mother when Maya is captured, but rejects his mother's pleas to spare Takeo's life. Rather than battle the Emperor's forces, Takeo and his retinue travel to the capital to engage in a bowmanship contest: the victor will rule the Three Countries. The Otori win, and Takeo departs in glory, leaving behind an exotic animal, a Kirin (likely a giraffe or an okapi), as a gift. However the Kirin frets, breaks free, and follows Takeo's army, which is seen as an omen and a slight on the Emperor. Saga takes the opportunity and pursues them. In the resulting battle, both sides enduring great losses until Shigeko shoots Saga in the eye, and he retreats. Maya, dominated by the cat spirit within her, slips into her parents' house, and kills her infant brother with the Kikuta gaze. Overcome with grief, Kaede slips into temporary insanity when Hana reveals the existence of Takeo's teenage son by Yuki. She orders their house burned to the ground, and goes with Hana and her sons. Takeo finds her and tries to reason with her, but she calls the guards. Knowing he cannot fight his wife, he abdicates in favour of his daughter Shigeko, and retires to Terayama. There, Akio and Hisao come to kill him, but at the vital moment Hisao, armed with a pistol, freezes. Akio grabs the pistol, but it explodes in his hands, killing both him and Maya (who possessed the cat spirit at the time). Takeo, now believing it is his time, puts a knife in Hisao's hands, and falls upon it, bringing the prophecy of his death to fulfilment. In his abdication, he made an alliance with General Saga, betrothing Shigeko to him in return for an alliance, and for Shigeko to be co-ruler with him in the Three Countries. The combined armies defeat Arai's. Zenko and Hana take their lives, along with their youngest son, but at Kaede's request, Saga spares their other two sons. She brings them to Terayama to live, and, guilt-ridden before Takeo's grave, she prepares to commit suicide. Only Miki's appearance makes her decide to live on for her sake.
4838726	/m/0cqbp2	Heaven's Net Is Wide	Gillian Rubinstein	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The following divisions are not so marked in the novel, but are included below to separate the logical sections of the plot. Kikuta Isamu has embraced the religion of The Hidden, and made a new life in a secret village. He is tracked down by his cousin Kotaro, who tells him he is sentenced to death for leaving The Tribe. Isamu leads him on a chase, but when finally cornered, refuses to defend himself. Kotaro kills him, but is later haunted by Isamu's words of forgiveness, and wonders if the man had left a child. 12 year old Shigeru visits his mother's house in Hagi when Endo Akira runs up, saying that Shigeru's brother Takeshi and Mori Yuta had fallen in the river and not resurfaced. Shigeru dives in with an unknown girl (later revealed as Akane), and they manage to save Takeshi, but Yuta is dead. After the funeral, Yuta's father offers to kill himself in exchange. Shigeru's step-uncles believe the whole family should be put to death, and their property confiscated. Shigemori, who is Lord Otori and Shigeru's father, agrees with Shigeru that the proposed punishment is excessive, and the sons enter their service instead. From this day, Shigeru mistrusts his uncles. When aged 15, he and his best friend are caught sleeping with a maid, and he is warned by his father of the dangers of illegitimate children vying for inheritance. Indeed, over 30 years ago, Shigemori fell into the same trap with a woman from the Tribe, and ever since he has feared his child's reappearance. He sends Shigeru to Matsuda Shingen, former warrior and now priest at Terayama, for instruction. On the way, events lead Shigeru to suspect Lord Noguchi, an Otori ally, of treachery. War with the Tohan seems inevitable. He arrives at Terayama, and there is treated the same as any other novice. He is on the point of leaving in frustration when Matsuda takes him into the wilderness for training of the mind, and later, of the body. A houou bird visits and leaves a feather, an omen of peace, though the stain of blood suggests that Shigeru's death will be in the cause of justice. Later, in a training fight, Shigeru knocks Matsuda unconscious, and runs for help. He encounters a member of the Tribe, known as The Fox, who can make himself invisible, and who gives him some herbs that speed Matsuda's recovery. When Matsuda wakes he warns Shigeru that, from the Tribe, the herbs could just as easily been poison. One evening, they are approached by two men on horseback. They are looking for Matsuda, and one challenges him to a fight, to prove he is the better swordsman and for insulting the Tohan Lord by not coming to Inuyama to tutor his son. Matsuda replies that Shigeru is his better, and so the man should fight Shigeru. Shigeru kills the man easily—his first kill—and sends the other man back to report on what happened. They return to Terayama to discover the old Abbot in dead: Matsuda is installed as his successor. Autumn passes, before Winter closes in. The stone bridge at Hagi is completed, and to appease the spirits, the stonemason is sealed inside. His daughter, Akane, is a courtesan at Haruna's establishment, and is consoled by her favourite client, Hayato. He wishes to marry her, but Shigeru provides money for her and her family, and overtures are made for her to be his concubine. She turns Hayato away, but Shigeru travels with his men to the border with the Tohan. There he finds people belonging to a sect known as The Hidden. Tohan warriors have been entering Otori land, and submitting the members of the sect to torture. Shigeru learns from a survivor and his family the beliefs of the Hidden. They come across some Tohan with their Lord, Iida Sadamu, trapped in an underground cave. They rescue him, in return for a promise to honour the borders. They believe, however, it will be a promise not honoured. On his return he received reprobation from his father and uncles. Akane becomes his concubine, and he builds a special house for her to live in. His mother soon moves into the palace and organises a wedding for him to Yanagi Moe. In jealousy, Akane obtains a charm which makes Moe shrink in terror when Shigeru attempts to consummate the marriage. Hayato pleads with Akane to come away with him, but she refuses. By the next day, he had cursed the Otori in Shigeru's uncle's hearing, and was killed. With his entire family under a death sentence, Akane pleads for mercy on their behalf: in return, she agrees to report on Shigeru's actions, though she hopes not to betray her lover. Shigeru grants the Hidden man, Nesutoro, permission to join fellow believers in the west, while Takeshi tells him that people fear their father's indecisiveness. Shigeru entrusts patrolling of the eastern border to the Noguchi and Kitano, while he prepares to meet secretly with Seishuu Lords to discuss alliances. Masahiro comes to Akane again for more news, and she tells him that Shigeru plans to meet someone from the Arai or Maruyama. Shigeru sets off, dropping his wife at her father's house on the way. In Yamagata he is met by Muto Shizuka of the Tribe. Under the pretense of a day's hawking, she leads them out to meet Arai Daiichi, her lover. Despite a friendly meeting, he was unable to garner open support from the Arai. Later, in her role as member of the Tribe, Shizuka delivers a letter from Iida to the Noguchi which will almost ensure the Otori defeat. Shigeru journeys to Terayama, where Takeshi is to be trained, and also to be out of harms way if war breaks out. There he meets Maruyama Naomi, leader of a clan inherited through the female line, and they between them agree to an alliance. She also reveals that The Hidden in her domain are under her protection. Shigeru returns to Hagi and convinces Shigemori, with his mother's help, to send his untrustworthy uncles away, however the uncles procrastinate until winter prevents the journey. By the time Spring comes, however, his uncles are only too happy to depart to their estates, having told Akane it won't be for long. Shigemori impresses on Shigeru the imperative to live on if, in the impending battle, the ancestral sword Jato comes to him. The Otori army of 5000 men left Hagi, Shigeru receiving an emotional farewell from Akane, and a cold one from his wife. They met the Tohan army, who had already razed Chigawa, at the plain of Yaegahara. They are betrayed by their own forces: the Kitano who failed to attack the Tohan as they passed, and the Noguchi who openly attack the Otori, killing Shigeru's friend Kiyoshige and taking his head. Hemmed in on two sides, the Otori suffer heavy losses, including his father Shigemori. Defeated, Shigeru retreats to a stream where he prepares to take his own life. However The Fox (Kenji), the member of the Tribe he met some years ago, finds him and brings him Jato, retrieved from near his father's body. Thus determined to escape, he follows Kenji through the wilderness to a secret village of the tribe, where he recuperates. Shigeru gradually trusts him, despite Kenji's associations, and realises that to survive, he would need to be devious, and patient. Shigeru's uncles return to Hagi and were installed as interim regents, and requested Lord Kitano, who was the most neutral of the Lords, to act as an intermediary between them and Iida Sadamu. Masahiro comes to Akane, tells her that Shigeru was dead or captured, and rapes her. In despair for her loss and her part in it, she kills the priest who gave her the charm, and casts herself into the mouth of a volcano. Shigeru rides to the castle with a great procession behind him. His wife, bitter at the death of her family in battle, tells him of Akane's fate. With most of his friends and advisors dead, he battled to keep a calm demeanour as he met with his uncles and other senior advisors. Kitano arrives the next day to negotiate terms: Shigeru's abdication and retirement, the ceding of territory, and later, the taking of hostages from the Seishuu to ensure their loyalty. Shigeru and his wife begin a distorted sexual relationship, she deliberately inciting his anger, and then submitting to it. She conceives, after which they rarely speak. He seeks permission to retrieve Takeshi from Terayama, and after receiving evasive replies, he travels anonymously through the mountains. The brothers honour their father's death there during the festival, and Shigeru plans to take on the persona of a harmless Farmer, giving him time to patiently wait for his revenge. After they return, Moe, Shigeru's wife, dies with her baby during childbirth, which sends him into depression. Shizuka, now a mother, hears that Kikuta Kotaro killed Lady Maruyama's child, which marks the turning point in her loyalty. Shigeru starts compiling records on the tribe, and later Shizuka comes to him as an informer, secretly assisting him. Across the 3 countries, Shigeru's Farmer persona has been accepted, though some look to him for salvation, or at least to act like a Lord. After Takeshi becomes rebellious, he is taken into Miyoshi Satoru's household for training. Shigeru receives a mysterious note from Lady Maruyama. After an assassination attempt on his life is foiled, he meets her at a remote shrine, and they begin a secretive relationship. They meet only occasionally, and when a lone Yanagi warrior attempts to kill Iida Sadamu, it becomes too dangerous to even write. They spend six years apart, during which time Lady Maruyama's daughter Mariko is taken hostage in Iida's castle, and Shirakawa Kaede likewise resides at Noguchi. At Noguchi castle, Arai Daiichi is becoming impatient, and Naomi fears that anything rash may endanger her and Mariko. She travels with Shizuka to Yamagata, and the two women confide their fears and plans to each other. Naomi continues on alone to Terayama, where she has an unexpected meeting with Shigeru. Afterwards she goes to Inuyama to visit her daughter, but cannot stay, as she has conceived a child to Shigeru. Knowing that bearing his son would be disaster for them all, she sends word to Shizuka, and she rushes back to Maruyama. Shizuka comes and gives Naomi a herbal concoction which terminates the pregnancy. She is comforted by Sachie and her sister Eriko, who are both members of The Hidden, and she becomes one of them. Word comes from a travelling peddler, a member of The Hidden, who met a boy in Mino, who looks like an Otori. Shizuka sets off at once for Hagi and brings Shigeru the news, who resolves to rescue him from likely persecution from Iida's men, with the knowledge that if the boy inherited his family's skills, he may be the assassin he has been waiting for. Before he can go, his mother dies of a fever; Shigeru also suffers from it, but slowly recovers. In the meantime, Takeshi is killed in a fight in Yamagata and is later buried at Terayama. Iida rewards his killers. Shigeru makes the long journey cross-country to Mino, where he is just in time to rescue the boy, Tomasu, from Iida's men who had already destroyed Tomasu's village. He renames him Takeo, and plans to adopt him, and together they would destroy Iida Sadamu.
4840183	/m/0cqd9c	Youngblood Hawke	Herman Wouk		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Youngblood Hawke is the story of Arthur Youngblood Hawke, an ex-Navy man who comes to New York to publish his first great novel, Alms for Oblivion. Originally a poor young man from Hovey, Kentucky, Arthur is the son of a dead literary minded man and a mother who sniffs out her own fortune via the scalping of family relations in the coal mining business. Hawke's mastery of the written word and his hunt for wealth come from this mating. While publishing his first novel, he falls in with a married woman, Frieda Winter, with whom he maintains an emotionally tumultuous affair for far too long. Meanwhile, in the course of his writing career and his affair, he carries a torch for Jeanne Green, his editor. Over continents and over a surprisingly short number of years, Arthur Hawke feverishly pens five novels. His fame carries with it great wealth but Arthur has a weakness for building wealth fast. He gets involved with Scott Hoag, a builder from his own town, who gives him the opportunity to become a venture capitalist. In a few short years, Arthur overextends himself and becomes seriously in debt. In the end, he works himself to death between the money he owes (if only a break could have come to him sooner); jealousy over Jeanne, the love of his life, who married once to spite him; and the tragedy of Frieda Winter's son's suicide for which Hawke feels responsible. A head trauma from his days of coal trucking in Hovey also comes into play. Surrounding and soon after his death, Youngblood Hawke achieves the success and status that he had sought while alive. Serialized in McCalls magazine from March to July 1962.
4841266	/m/0cqfvw	Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House	Eric Hodgins	1946	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins in fictional Landsdale County, Connecticut, where Jim and Muriel Blandings are being shown an old farmhouse by a real estate agent. Blandings, a successful New York advertising executive, and his wife want to leave their tiny Midtown apartment, where they live with their two daughters. They fantasize that the farmhouse will meet their needs. After some negotiation, they buy the house. They soon learn that the house is structurally unsound and must be torn down. They design the perfect home in the country, imagining an idyll, but they are quickly beset by construction troubles, temperamental workmen, skyrocketing bills, threatening lawyers, and difficult neighbors. The Blandings' dream house soon threatens to be the nightmare that undoes them. Hodgins wrote a sequel, Blandings Way, published in 1950. The short story and novel were based on the author Eric Hodgins's experience with buying property and building a house in the Merryall area of the Litchfield County, Connecticut, town of New Milford. His former house, which still stands, sold in August 2004 for $1.2 million.
4842045	/m/0cqh4k	Scientology: A History of Man	L. Ron Hubbard	1952		 As the original title suggests, What to Audit / A History of Man was written as a guide for Scientologist auditors, pointing out various Space opera "incidents" that are said to have occurred in all of our "past lives". The book sets out a description of the areas to be audited. It proposes that the human body actually houses two separate entities. The most important is a thetan, the spiritual being said by Hubbard to be the "true self" of a person. According to Hubbard, this is accompanied by a 'genetic entity', or GE, which is "a sort of low-grade soul" located more or less in the centre of the body, and which passes to another body when the current body dies. The book describes numerous "incidents" that, according to Hubbard, occurred to the thetan or the genetic entity in past lives. Although commonly misinterpreted as an alternative theory of evolution, the purpose of the incidents list is not to suggest that clams begat sloths who begat cavemen. What Hubbard claims is that we have buried memories of past lives as clams, sloths, and cavemen, and that those memories - or engrams - affect us today. Hubbard also presented the vague concept of the "genetic entity" which he claims progressed through each of these prehuman forms before finally ending up in a homo sapiens body. These stages of biological history, some typified by an animal and others typified by other items, were marked by traumatic incidents which have to be "run out" using an E-meter. Hubbard stressed that these incidents are not limited to the list below: for example, he notes "there are many steps and incidents between the Birds and the Sloth". The list simply arbitrarily names some incidents that Hubbard found particularly worth commenting on: * The Atom, "complete with electronic rings". According to Hubbard, "There seems to be a 'hole in space' immediately ahead of the Atom", which generates a particular state of mind in a person. * The Cosmic Impact, based on the premise that "As physicists tell us, cosmic rays enter the body in large numbers and occasionally explode in the body. Very early on the track the impact of a cosmic ray and its explosion is very destructive to the existing organism." * The Photon Converter, essentially an early photosynthetic organism such as an alga or plankton. Hubbard deemed the Photon Converter to be responsible for fears of "light and dark, the storms of the sea, the fight to keep from rolling into the surf." * The Helper, an incident of mitosis (cell division) in some unnamed organism which was "a confusing area for the [genetic entity] which therein has much cause for misidentification." * The Clam, one of a number of incidents between The Helper and The Weeper. The others include seaweed and "jellyfish incidents [which] are quite remarkable for their occasional aberrative force". Encounters between jellyfish and cave walls are held to be responsible for the emergence of "a shell as in the clam." The Clam itself is "a deadly incident" involving a "scalloped-lip, white- shelled creature" which suffered from a severe split personality or "double-hinge problem. One hinge wishes to stay open, the other tries to close, thus conflict occurs." According to Hubbard, the hinges of the Clam "later become the hinges of the human jaw" and the Clam's method of reproducing using spores is said to be responsible for toothache. In one of the most famous passages of the book, Hubbard advised that :Should you desire to confirm this, describe to some uninitiated person the death of a clam without saying what you are describing. "Can you imagine a clam sitting on the beach, opening and closing its shell very rapidly?" (Make a motion with your thumb and forefinger of a rapid opening and closing). The victim may grip his jaws with his hand and feel quite upset. He may even have to have a few teeth pulled: At the very least he will argue as to whether or not the shell stays open at the end or closed. And he will, with no hint of the death aspect of it, talk about the "poor clam" and he will feel quite sad emotionally. :He goes on to warn the reader that &#34;your discussion of these incidents with the uninitiated in Scientology can cause havoc. Should you describe the &#34;clam&#34; to someone, you may restimulate it in him to the extent of causing severe jaw pain. One such victim, after hearing about a clam death, could not use his jaws for three days.&#34; * The Weeper/Boohoo incident deals with a mollusk that rolled in the surf for half a million years, pumping sea water out of its shell as it breathed, hence its name. Weepers had &#39;trillions of misadventures&#39;, prominent among them the anxiety caused by trying to gulp air before being swamped by the next wave. &#39;The inability of a pre-clear to cry,&#39; Hubbard explained, &#39;is partly a hang-up in the Weeper. He is about to be hit by a wave, has his eyes full of sand or is frightened about opening his shell because he may be hit.&#39; * The Volcanoes occurred at several points - violent volcanic eruptions which choked the genetic entity&#39;s host organism with choking sulphurous smoke. Hubbard suggests that these eruptions hastened the progress of evolution, &#34;for there is a lack of real reason why this evolution should not be continuing on even today.&#34; Volcanoes, believed by Scientologists to be used by Xenu to murder billions of thetans, are a prominent symbol frequently used in Scientology. * Being Eaten is the next class of incident on the list. &#34;In that so many fish and animals were equipped with so many teeth, it is inevitable that somebody somewhere on the track would have been eaten.&#34; And so it is. for there are a great many &#34;being eaten&#34; engrams. Technique 80 is recommended by Hubbard for dealing with these problems. &#34;Few auditors, in the absence of Technique 80, have been able to run these incidents&#34;. * The Birds were a traumatic incident caused when &#34;birds of a very crude construction developed a taste for clams&#34;. As a result of bird attacks on ancestral clams, modern man suffers from &#34;falling sensations, indecision and other troubles.&#34; * &#34;The Sloth&#34;, says Hubbard, &#34;is a chain of incidents and misadventures&#34; covered under this general name. According to Hubbard, the Sloth was &#34;slow and easily attacked and he had bad times falling out of trees when hit by snakes, falling off cliffs when attacked by baboons.&#34; * The Ape is the name of the next incident, by which time the genetic entity was inhabiting an &#34;agile and intelligent&#34; host. &#34;The Ape is usually an area of overt acts against animals and incidents of protecting young&#34;. (pg.54) * The Piltdown Man was &#34;a creature not an ape, yet not entirely a Man.&#34; It was not &#34;the real Piltdown Man&#34; but had some similarities. It resulted in a variety of psychological conditions in modern humans, including &#34;obsessions about biting efforts to hide the mouth and early familial troubles.&#34; The Piltdown Man was characterized by &#34;freakish acts of strange &#39;logic,&#39; of demonstrating dangerous on one&#39;s fellows, of eating one&#39;s wife and other somewhat illogical activities. The PILTDOWN teeth were ENORMOUS and he was quite careless as to whom and what he bit and often very much surprised at the resulting damage.&#34; * The Caveman was the final stage of evolution prior to modern man. The genetic entity&#39;s host still had marital trouble, though not quite on the level of &#34;eating one&#39;s wife&#34;. Instead, &#34;one crippled one&#39;s woman to keep her [at home] or poisoned one&#39;s man for having kept her there.&#34; Memories of this era were responsible, in Hubbard&#39;s view, for &#34;any condition of interpersonal relationships&#34; such as &#34;jealousy and overt acts around it, strangling, smashing in heads with rocks, quarrels about homes, tribal rebukes, pack instincts.&#34; Hubbard also described numerous incidents of &#34;implanting&#34; by hostile alien races which caused traumatic memories in the thetan. This formed part of what soon became an elaborate cosmology of alien civilizations, interstellar dictators and brainwashing implants - collectively, matters that Hubbard described as &#34;Space opera&#34;.
4843607	/m/0cqkty	Hornblower and the Atropos	C. S. Forester	1953	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 On a December day in 1805, Hornblower travels with his very pregnant wife and their son to London on a canal boat via the Thames and Severn Canal and the Thames. He is excited about getting his new orders and obtaining his first command as a post-captain. On the canal, the assistant boatman becomes incapacitated through drink, thus allowing Hornblower the opportunity to learn much of canal boat operation when he volunteers to take the man's place at the boat's helm. Upon their arrival in London, Hornblower assumes command of the Atropos. His first assignment is a unique one: to organise Admiral Nelson's funeral. The Battle of Trafalgar had just taken place, in which Nelson was shot by a musket and killed. The whole nation is in mourning and all eyes are on the funeral. The funeral consists of a procession on the Thames between Greenwich Pier and Whitehall Steps, during which the ceremonial barge conveying Nelson's coffin springs a leak and the crew, after frantic bailing, barely managing to unload the coffin before sinking. Once Hornblower finishes with the funeral, he is presented to his King at Court. He is informed that the king's nephew, a German prince driven out of his principality by Napoleon, is to be one of his midshipmen on the Atropos. Hornblower's treatment of the prince is a continuing sub-plot. Hornblower is then sent to collect from Gibraltar three Sinhalese pearl divers and their quarrelsome salvage master to recover treasure from a sunken British ship, the Speedwell, which went down in Marmorice Bay in Turkey carrying a fortune in silver and gold - the pay chests of the British Army in Egypt. Hornblower is given the salvage operation. The Turks are already aware of the presence of the gold, and in the weeks Atropos is present in Marmorice become aware of the supposedly secret recovery operation. They bring a Turkish warship into the bay, and man a previously deserted fort, trapping Atropos. When the Turks demand all the money Hornblower has so far recovered, he puts them off until the following morning. In the middle of the night, he makes a daring escape by an extremely perilous route, avoiding both ship and fort, and outsmarting the Turks. Following Hornblower's delivery of the treasure at Gibraltar, he helps capture a Spanish ship, the Castilla, and makes his way into a Sicilian port for repairs. He does such a fine job that his ship attracts the notice of the King of The Two Sicilies. The British government transfers the vessel to the Sicilian navy in return for the King's allegiance. Hornblower makes his way back to England, only to find both of his children mortally ill with smallpox. *Other books in the series refer to Hornblower capturing the Castilla as a lieutenant, but he is a captain in this book, which actually describes the battle. Confusingly, the obscure short story "The Hand of Destiny" (1940) also describes an entirely different action featuring Lt. Hornblower capturing Castilla. Forester, apparently, would retcon Hornblower's history, overwriting the events of his short stories in subsequent novel-length works. "The fact that he discouraged the re-publication of the short stories is an indicator that he gave the novels' events preference." sv:Hornblower på Atropos
4843685	/m/0cql0w	24: One Shot			{"/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 24: One Shot is set eighteen months before the events of Season 1. Jack Bauer is the main protagonist of the TV series and is also the main protagonist in this graphic novel which depicts his first day at the Los Angeles Counter Terrorist Unit. He has been assigned from the FBI by Division to become the new Director of Field Operations at the LA CTU. His first assignment is to personally protect Moira O'Neal, a beautiful but dangerous former terrorist previously affiliated with the Irish Republican Army who recently turned herself in after a sudden change of heart. O'Neal's former associates aren't happy about her sudden defection; they are not prepared to allow her to pass on information to the American government and have made their way onto American soil to find and kill Moira.
4843834	/m/0cql6r	Three Hands in the Fountain	Lindsey Davis	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Falco arrives home in Rome with Helena Justina and Julia Junilla Laeitana, his new baby daughter, and barely have time to settle in before being subjected to a welcome-home party. Falco and Petronius sneak out for a drink in a nearby street next to a fountain, which is not working. When a worker turns up to clean it, it is revealed that a severed hand had blocked the aqueduct. Falco and Petro start to investigate, but their case is stolen by Anacrites. Petro puts up a sign proclaiming that awards are to be given on the discovery of any body parts. Falco talks to his brother-in-law and is told that severed body parts have been discovered in the rivers and aqueducts for several years, usually after festivals. When he's told that Petro put up the sign he runs back to his old apartment (where Petro now lives after being kicked out by his wife) as a slave hands over a new hand to Petro. Petro takes down the sign. Anacrites, who is rather annoyed at being muscled out of his stolen case, sends four men to beat up Falco and Petro. They defeat the bruisers easily and trail them back to Anacrites. Soon afterwards, Julius Frontinus finds and gives over a new hand. It looks the same as the other hands but this one has a wedding ring with two names inscribed (Asinia and Caius). They track down Caius Cicurrus, the widower of Asinia. He is innocent and is greatly grieving for his lost wife. Petro's wife dumped him after he took up with Balbina Milvia from Time to Depart. Milvia's husband Florius sends men to beat up Falco and Petro. Falco, with the help of his trainer Glaucus and Glaucus's trainees, beats off his attackers but Petro has no such help and is heavily injured. Milvia comes to Falco asking him to help her, as she fears that her mother, who has vanished, has been taken by the killer. Falco finds Cornella Flaccida at a new apartment. He goes out to the country but finds no suspects. After continuous reconnaissance he has two problems: First, Claudia Rufina, the heiress from A Dying Light In Corduba and the new fiancee to Helena's brother Aelianus, has vanished, and second, a slave called Thurius has been identified as the murderer. Falco goes out to rescue Claudia and apprehend Thurius. He captures Thurius and finds his lair and his victim. He finds that it's not Claudia, it's Milvia's mother, who vanished again. Unlike Claudia, however, no one liked her enough to send out a search party. Claudia is later found to have eloped with Helena's other brother Justinus, an act that has disastrous consequences. The book ends with Falco telling Petro his wife went out with another man, and later receiving a visit from Anacrites.
4844614	/m/0cqmmy	Henry and Ribsy	Beverly Cleary		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Like most of the Henry Huggins books, the incidents in this book follow an ongoing plot line. In this case, Henry wants to go on a salmon-fishing trip with his father. However, Ribsy has been causing all manner of trouble for the family. For example, Ribsy tries to prevent the garbage man from taking away the trash because Ribsy thinks it belongs to Henry. Henry's father says that Henry can only come on the trip if he can keep Ribsy out of trouble for a month. Henry is able to do this, and Ribsy actually helps him catch an enormous Chinook salmon at the end of the day.
4844864	/m/0cqn3k	King David's Spaceship	Jerry Pournelle	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The action opens on a planet called 'Prince Samual's World'. Bombed heavily during the Secession Wars, it has spent 400 years in isolation. Much of the technological knowledge of the First Empire was lost; when ships of the Second Empire find the system, the planet's technological level is somewhere around that of 19th century Europe. Colonel Nathan MacKinnie is famous for his masterful defense of the city-state republic of Orleans against King David's expansionist kingdom of Haven. Even after the battle of Blathern Pass, for which the colonel was famous, Haven embarked on a new campaign, with decisive battle that, had Orleans won, would have broken Haven's ambitions. The campaign is but a lure to get Orleans' forces into the field--weapons of the Second Empire, allied with Haven, wipe out most of Orleans' troops and with them, MacKinnie's fiancée. With few troops left, McKinnie is defeated, and is forced to surrender. He is pensioned off by the conquering Haven authorities. Many months later, drinking in a Haven tavern with his top sergeant, Hal Stark, he overhears a drunken Imperial officer boast of having been on Makassar, a primitive planet with a store of old Empire knowledge in a temple. Leaving the tavern, the two are taken by the Haven secret police to see their leader, Citizen Malcolm Dougal. Dougal offers MacKinnie an opportunity to serve Haven, and indeed the entire world, by going to Makassar disguised as a merchant and returning with information to help Haven build a spaceship. Dougal tells MacKinnie that he has disposed of all those who may have heard the officer's remarks. Dougal has found out that under Second Empire law, planets with space travel at the time of assimilation into the Empire have a higher status than those without. Haven has benefited from Imperial help in unifying the planet, but Dougal has uncovered what the Empire has failed to tell Haven: once the entire world is conquered, Prince Samual's World will become a colony, governed by outworlders. But if Dougal and his lord, King David, can launch a spaceship, however primitive, they can petition for self-governing status. MacKinnie has little choice in the matter, as Dougal's actions have made clear. He is no friend of Haven, but he has no desire to see the planet ruled by outsiders. With Stark and a collection of Haven agents, including Mary, a young woman with (most unusually for Haven) a University education, disguised as a merchant company, they board a ship of the Imperial Traders Association for the trip to Makassar. They are restricted to arming themselves with chain mail, shields and swords - no new technology can be introduced to the more primitive planet. Reaching Makassar, MacKinnie and his cohort learn that the Traders have played them for fools, leaving them in a city with few trade wares. Their only purpose was to have paying passengers on an otherwise unprofitable leg of their tour. The Havenites are stranded in a port blockaded by pirates. However, the situation does help the Havenites by giving them a motive to travel to the city where the First Empire artifacts are located. With the help of a Haven Navy commander in his retinue, MacKinnie buys and refits a sailing ship with leeboards. Although a primitive technology in Second Empire terms the leeboards are an advanced one in Makassar terms and allows the ship to travel much faster than any other on the planet. He recruits a skeptical, if veteran local ship captain and a crew desperate enough to man it. The new ship outruns most of the waiting pirate ships, only having to defeat a reduced force--using superior tactics. They arrive at the city of Batav where the Temple is located. The city is under the control of the Temple priests, but is besieged by vast hordes of barbarian horsemen. There are also Second Empire missionaries stranded there. MacKinnie convinces the city leaders to let him recruit citizens into an army. He maneuvers the most intelligent and suspicious of the high priests and his Temple guards into a suicidal trek while he defeats the barbarians, again utilizing superior tactics. Returning in triumph, he uses the resulting power vacuum to install the Second Empire clergymen as religious leaders. The grateful clerics are willing that MacKinnie's people get access to the archives. One of MacKinnie's men is a physicist chosen for his eidetic memory. While the expedition will take home hidden advanced memory storage cubes, he must memorize the information they need as it is unlikely the readers can be built for the cubes in Haven. After the battle, coup and an unsuccessful assassination attempt, MacKinnie and Mary become lovers. The churchmen are unexpectedly supportive. They too resent being used by the Traders. The barbarians are Muslims of Indonesian origin who originally gave the planet its name. The killing of Imperial missionaries would have provided the ideal pretext for Imperial intervention. MacKinnie and company sail back in time to board ship and return to Prince Samual's World. Stark remains (having failed to persuade MacKinnie to as well) and will guide the army the offworlders created, in MacKinnie's name. Back home, they use their newfound knowledge to build from old designs by pioneers such as Robert Goddard, one of which was a rapid firing cannon using high-explosive shells detonating behind the ship to provide propulsion. It is a desperate measure, but it works. In the presence of Imperial witnesses, the ship reaches orbit around the planet, although it cannot re-enter. Haven then requests that the Empire ship rescue the pilot, Mary, and soon thereafter, requests that Prince Samual's World be admitted to the Empire as a self-governing world. The Imperials eventually admit defeat, but they exact a price. The Samualites have embarrassed the Navy and must be seen to be punished. While the Imperial Navy is quite willing to try MacKinnie and Mary for interfering with the orderly development of Makassar, the political representatives broker a solution. Using the pretext of the illegal introduction of new technology - horse collars - on Makassar, which will seriously disrupt society, MacKinnie and his new fiancée, Mary, are exiled to Makassar. They gladly accept--MacKinnie never had wanted to leave--and return to Makassar to carve out their future--and Makassar's.
4845122	/m/0cqnlt	Step by Wicked Step	Anne Fine		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Five children, Claudia, Colin, Pixie, Ralph and Robbo arrive at an old mansion known as Harwick Hall on a school trip. Upon reaching the hall, they discover a secret room. Claudia notices a diary on the desk belonging to previous owner Richard Harwick. The children read his story; apparently Richard had run away from home after the death of his father and his mother's subsequent remarriage to the strict Reverend Coldstone. While reading the story, the children all react in some way. They then realise that the reason they were grouped together was because they had both written two addresses on their forms. All of their parents are separated. After Richard ran away from home, he returned to an empty house. His mother had died of grief while his sister had also passed away from childbirth fever. This sparks a discussion of Richard's actions between the children. The discussion leads to each of them divulging their own family problems. Claudia reveals that her parents had divorced after several fights. The 'scarlet woman', a pleasant woman named Stella, tries but fails to win Claudia's approval.However, after a dinner party with her father's friends who too ignore Stella, Claudia realises her mistake and attempts to make nice by wearing beautiful pyjamas bought by Stella in front of the guests, shocking them into politeness. Colin reveals that his 'Dad' (who was his mother's partner but not his biological father) was left behind by his mother after they had absconded one day. While his mother was frustrated with Jack (Dad)'s unemployed state, Colin, who loved him very much, attempted to keep in contact with Jack. Failing to do so, he plans to find him in the future. Pixie recounts her parents' separation and her father's second marriage. She dislikes both her stepsisters. In a quarrel with her stepmother Lucy, Pixie unburdened herself of her grievances. Lucy aired her frustrations as well, and they made up. Ralph entertains the children with a comical description of his extended stepfamily, spanning two previous stepmothers and their children, one stepfather and one future stepmother, whom he is infatuated with. Robbo's story is about his stepfather, The Beard, and his sister Callie, who cannot get along. This had caused much trouble for the family especially after the birth of stepbrother Dumpa. Callie finally moved in with her father instead. Before going to bed, the other children secretly place a broken wooden cow made by Richard Harwick into Colin's bag, as a reminder to him to make the best of what he faces.
4845238	/m/0cqnsf	The African Queen	C. S. Forester	1935	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens in August/September 1914. Rose Sayer, a 33-year-old Englishwoman, is the companion and housekeeper of her brother Samuel, an Anglican missionary in Central Africa. World War I has recently begun, and the German military commander of the area has conscripted all the natives; the village is deserted, and only Rose and her dying brother remain. Samuel dies during the night and Rose is alone. That day, another man arrives at the village: this is a Cockney named Allnutt, who is the mechanic and skipper of the African Queen, a steam-powered launch, owned by a Belgian mining corporation, that plies the upper reaches of the Ulanga River. Allnutt's two-man crew has deserted him at the rumours of war and conscription. Allnutt buries Samuel Sayer and takes Rose back to the African Queen, where they consider what they should do. The African Queen is well-stocked with tinned food, and carries a cargo of two hundredweight of blasting gelignite. It also holds two large tanks of oxygen and hydrogen. Rose is inflamed with patriotism, and also filled with the desire to avenge the insults the Germans piled on her brother. It occurs to her that the main German defence against a British attack by water is the gunboat Königin Luise, which guards the fictional Lake Wittelsbach into which the Ulanga feeds. She asks Allnutt if he can make the gelignite into a makeshift torpedo. Allnutt replies that that is not possible, but after some thought, he concludes that by loading the gelignite inside the emptied tanks, putting the tanks into the bow of the launch, and rigging a detonator, they could turn the African Queen itself into a sort of large torpedo. Allnutt is inclined to laugh off the idea, but he gives in to Rose's greater strength of will and the two of them set off down the Ulanga, Rose steering and Allnutt maintaining the launch's ancient, bulky, wood-burning steam engine. The descent to the lake poses three main problems: passing the German-held town of Shona; passing the heavy rapids and cataracts; and getting through the river delta. After many days on the river, they come close to Shona, and Allnutt's nerve fails; he refuses to take the launch under fire, anchors in a backwater, and gets drunk on gin. Unable to work the launch single-handed, Rose sets out to make Allnutt's life miserable until he agrees to her plan; while he is asleep she pours all his gin overboard, then proceeds to give him the silent treatment. The weak-willed Allnutt eventually gives in and the African Queen gets under way again. They come in sight of Shona at midday; the German commander assumes the launch is coming in to surrender (because he believes no boat could pass the rapids below the town, so Shona is the only possible destination); he does not realise his mistake until too late, and though he and his men open fire, the launch receives only minor hits. Below the town, the African Queen spends several days shooting the rapids; Allnutt is exhilarated, and he and Rose are reconciled and become lovers. Rose, embarrassed, admits that she does not know Allnutt's first name; he tells her it is Charlie. On the third day the launch strikes on rocks while passing another rapid; she loses way and does not respond well to the tiller, so they are forced to anchor in the lee of a rock outcropping. Allnutt dives and finds that the drive shaft is bent and the propeller has lost one of its blades. Over the next weeks they slowly repair the damage without being able to beach the launch; Allnutt has to dive again and again to remove the shaft and propeller. On shore they gather wood and construct a makeshift bellows to heat the shaft so Allnutt can straighten it. Then Allnutt makes a new propeller blade out of scrap iron and bolts it to the stump of the old blade. After many more dives to fix the shaft and propeller back in place, they continue on their way and eventually pass the rapids, coming out of the Ulanga River into the larger Bora River, which feeds into the lake. Passing the river delta is long and arduous. Tormented by myriads of biting insects, sickened with malaria, and racked by the terrible heat and powerful thunderstorms, they drag the launch through miles of reeds and water-grass with their boat-hooks, occasionally diving to cut fallen logs out of their way. Even the shallow launch (which has a draught of only thirty inches) constantly grounds on the thick mud. Finally, after weeks of exhausting labor, they emerge into the lake. They hide the launch in a stand of reeds and begin constructing the torpedo. Allnutt releases the gas from his two tanks and unscrews the valves, leaving a hole big enough for him to fill the tanks with gelignite, packed in mud. He cuts two holes in the front of the launch, right at the waterline, and fixes the two tanks there; he then constructs detonators from nails and revolver cartridges, so the gelignite will detonate on impact. All that is left is to pilot the launch right into the side of the Königin Luise, and the resulting explosion will destroy both vessels. They have been keeping track of the gunboat's habits, and choose a night when it will be anchored close to them. They argue about which of them should pilot the launch and which stay behind, but in the end they agree that they will both go. They fire up the engine and set out on the attack, but halfway to their target a sudden storm sweeps up out of nowhere and overwhelms them; the African Queen sinks, and Rose and Allnutt have to swim for safety. The two lovers are separated in the storm, but both are captured by the Germans the next day. They are brought before the captain of the Königin Luise to be tried as spies. Both refuse to say how they came to the lake, but the captain sees "African Queen" written on Rose's life-saver and deduces that they must be the mechanic and the missionary's sister from the mysteriously missing launch. He decides it would be uncivilised to execute them, so he flies a flag of truce and delivers them to the British naval commander, who dismissively sends them to separate tents under guard while he takes his newly-arrived reinforcements out to sink the Königin Luise. Having succeeded in this, he sends Rose and Allnutt to the coast to speak to the British Consul, where he advises Allnutt to enlist in the British Army. Rose and Allnutt agree that when they reach the coast they will ask the Consul to marry them. The story ends with the narrator's comment that "Whether or not they lived happily ever after is not easily decided."
4845294	/m/0cqnx6	Night Without End	Alistair MacLean	1959	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A BOAC airplane crash-lands on the Greenland ice cap far from its usual route after flying in a seemingly erratic fashion. A scientific research team based near the crash site rescues the surviving passengers and takes them to their station. The team finds one passenger and most of the flight crew are dead with one of the pilots having been shot in the back. The only means of contact with the outside world, a radio set, is destroyed in a seemingly accidental manner. With not enough food for everyone and no hope of rescue, the leader of the scientific research team, Dr Mason, decides that they must set out for the nearest settlement. Meanwhile the pilot who was shot and in a coma is found to have been suffocated. An attempt is also made on Dr Mason's life by getting him to be lost in the arctic night. The scientists' suspicion falls on stewardess but she is soon cleared. Dr Mason orders Joss to stay behind and repair the radio so that a field expedition can be contacted. The dead passenger is determined to be a military courier; soon after that the wreck goes up in flames. Dr Mason leaves with the group along with the other scientist, Jackstraw while remaining in touch with their station by means of a short range radio. Meanwhile, the field expedition returns to the station and contacts Dr Mason. They inform him that a massive military mobilization has happened to locate the crashed plane and that it carried something very important. The governments having refused to divulge anything have tried to contact Dr Mason's station. Finding the station to be non-responding, they have requested the expedition chief, Captain Hillcrest, to check out the station. Dr Mason decides to go on with the journey since any attempt to return will induce the murderers to act. He keeps this new development to himself and Jackstraw. Captain Hillcrest sets out after the group but soon finds that the petrol he picked up the station has been tampered with. Sugar has been added to the petrol causing the sugar to melt and stick to the engine parts leading him to get bogged down. A solution is found to this when one of the passengers, a chemist, suggests that the petrol be mixed with water and the top layer of the resultant mixture be siphoned off. Almost at the same time, the governments also relent and inform Dr Mason through Captain Hillcrest that the military courier carried a top secret missile guidance mechanism and that it is made to look like a tape recorder. Dr Mason realizes that one of the passengers picked up such a device at the crash site. But this precipitates the murderers into action and they take over the group. Finding that killing the entire group is not feasible, the criminals make them ride with them. But soon they abandon all of them save the stewardess, for whom Mason has developed a soft corner, and the father of a passenger who is a boxer. In the process, one of passengers left behind is killed. The group stumbles on in the arctic blizzard guided by the guard dogs with one of them dying during this trek. Soon they come across the abandoned sled that contains rocket sondes. They use it to guide Captain Hillcrest to them and set out in chase across the arctic landscape. They manage to catch up with the criminals near the shore where a trawler waits for the criminals. But the intervention of navy, on information from Captain Hillcrest, frightens off the trawler. The criminals are surrounded here and after a bitter hand to hand combat between the protagonists and the criminals, the mechanism and the hostages are rescued.
4847916	/m/0cqsxs	Gregor the Overlander	Suzanne Collins	2003-09-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When staying at home with his sick grandmother, and 2-year old sister, nicknamed Boots' (but whose birth name is Margaret), adolescent Gregor struggles with the apparent death of his father. Gregor is left home alone with Boots and his grandmother while his mother, Grace, takes his other sister, Lizzie, off to summer camp. Gregor goes down to his apartment complex's laundry room to do laundry, and takes Boots down with him. Boots starts messing with a grate behind one of the washing machine's. Gregor sees this, and dives after her, but is too late, and Boots falls through the hole, with Gregor falling behind her. They fall miles and miles beneath the earth, very fast, but as they near the bottom of their descent, they miraculously begin to slow down, and land gently on the ground. They land in the Underland, an underground world, hidden miles beneath our world, where humans and giant-talking bats, cockroaches, and even mice coexist in peace, but also a place where a conflict with giant-talking rats exist. The story revolves around a prophecy that centers around young Gregor himself, and how he, the "Warrior", as the Underlanders call him, will fulfill this prophecy. * Gregor: The protagonist of the story. He falls into the Underland with his sister. * Luxa: An Underlander, and the soon to be queen of Regalia. * Ripred: A trustworthy gnawer with deadly fighting skills and sharp intelligence, he fights alongside the humans. * Ares: A flier, first Henry's bond, then Gregor's. He is described as jet black, and strong. * Henry: An Underlander, and Luxa's cousin on the Royal side. * Vikus: Luxa's grandfather and Solovet's husband * Aurora: A flier, Luxa's bond. A golden color. * Boots (Margaret): Named after her grandma, Boots is Gregor's cheerful, two-year-old sister who is afraid of very little. * Nerissa: Luxa's cousin who foresees what either is going to happen or what already did. Ripred describes her flip flopping through time like a fish in the shallows. * Solovet: Luxa's grandmother and Vikus's wife; head of the Regalian army. * Dulcet: a servant in Regalia * Perdita: an Underland soldier. * Gregor's father * Grace: Gregor, Lizzie and Boots' mother * Grandma: Gregor, Lizzie and Boots' grandmother after whom Boots (Margaret) was named. * Mrs. Cormaci: A family friend to Gregor's family * King Gorger: The king of the gnawers (rats) * Queen Wevox: a giant spider. * Gox and Treflex: two spiders * Lizzie: Gregor and Boots' sister, mentioned more than once. * Mareth: One of Regalia's soldiers * Temp & Tick: Cockroaches who call Boots the "Princess". Beware, Underlanders, time hangs by a thread. The hunters are hunted, white water runs red. The gnawers are sent to extinguish the rest. The hope of the hopeless resides in a quest. An Overlander Warrior, a son of the sun, May bring us back light, he may bring us back none. But gather your neighbors and follow his call or rats will most surely devour us all. Two over, two under, of royal descent, Two fliers, two crawlers, two spinners assent. One gnawer beside and one lost up ahead. And eight will be left when we count up the dead. The last who will die must decide where he stands. The fate of the eight is contained in his hands. So bid him take care, bid him look where he leaps, As life may be death, and death life again reaps. * Bartholomew of Sandwich, who led a group of humans down from the Overland into the Underland, saw into the future and carved prophecies – which called Gregor the "Warrior" – into stone walls in a room filled with Prophecies * Luxa's parents, who are described as being killed by rats, which is why Luxa holds a grudge against all rats, good and bad. * Ripred's mate and pups * Henry and Nerissa's parents The creatures in the series resemble their real-life counterparts in almost every way, aside from being very large (most of them being bigger than the humans) and able to speak in the novels. * Humans: Sometimes referred to as the "Killers" by certain Underland species, Underland Humans live, mainly, in the city of Regalia. * Crawlers (Cockroaches): They call Boots the "Princess". * Spinners (Spiders): They provide several types of silk. * Fliers (Bats): These creatures "bond" with their human counterparts in a ceremony. * Gnawers (Rats): They are the antagonists of the story. Most of the Gnawers are violent and aggressive. * Shiners (Fireflies): Eat too much, are lazy and unreliable. * Nibblers (Mice): Are allied to the humans. * Stingers (Scorpions): Are allied by the humans by book 4. * Diggers (Moles): Introduced in book 5. They are the true founders of the Underland. * Twisters (Snakes): Introduced in book 4. * Hissers (Lizards): Introduced in book 3. * Cutters (Ants): Enemies of all warmbloods. Introduced in book 3. * Slimers: (Snails): Are mentioned by Howard in book 4. * Lobsters: They are briefly mentioned by Vikus in book 3; Ripred had tried to invade the Fount with an army of them.
4849693	/m/0cqwdf	Earthlight	Arthur C. Clarke	1951-08		 The short story details two astronomers caught outside their base on the Moon as a battle rages between the forces of Earth and the Federation of the outer planets of the solar system over possession of the Moon's supply of uranium. Differs dramatically from the novel in chronology - the story is set in c.2015, while the novel is c.2175. In most other respects the plot of the short-story is retained by the novel.
4852799	/m/0cr0g4	Billy	Whitley Strieber		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Barton Royal is an overweight man in his 40s who is obsessed with boys. He lives in Los Angeles but travels out of state to find and abduct a suitable young boy so he can be his "father". When he spots 12-year-old Billy Neary in an Iowa shopping mall, he follows the boy home, abducts him late that night, and drives back to California with Billy strapped into the back of his Aerostar minivan. The narrative includes glimpses of Barton's miserable childhood, especially the physical and sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his father and his recollections of what he has done to other boys before Billy. Billy tries to escape and also manages to make a few telephone calls, both on the road to and from Barton's home. Barton's behaviour switches between extreme violence and interludes of self-delusion. Billy finds his way into Barton's dungeon, his "black room", and discovers the remains of many other young boys. Billy’s father beats the police to Billy's location, just barely preventing Barton from torturing and killing him.
4854368	/m/0cr3n5	The New Republic	William Hurrell Mallock	1878	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The novel is a satire consisting almost entirely of dialogue and mocking most of the important figures then at Oxford University, with regards to aestheticism and Hellenism.
4856032	/m/0cr61k	Death of a Whaler	Nerida Newton	2006-07	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Byron Bay, 1962. On the second last day before the whaling station is closed down for good, Flinch, the young spotter, is involved in a terrible accident. Over a decade later, Flinch has become a recluse, unable to move on from that fatal moment. The Bay, too, seems stalled in its bloody past, the land and the ocean on which it was founded now barren and unyielding. It is only after crossing paths with Karma, a girl living in one of the hinterland's first hippie communes, that Flinch gradually and reluctantly embarks upon a path towards healing, coming to terms with his past, present and future.
4858671	/m/0crbfb	The Ship	C. S. Forester	1943	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A vital convoy is heading to Malta, escorted by five Royal Navy light cruisers, including HMS Artemis. It is afternoon, and Artemis, commanded by Captain Troughton-Harrington-Yorke, has just beaten off a number of air attacks. An Italian surface fleet, with the battleships San Martino and Legnano and several light cruisers, will intercept it soon. The convoy must get through, so the British ships must fight. The crew, from the command level officers on the bridge down to the ordinary seamen in the lower decks, prepares for the coming confrontation, while part of them is also occupied with their own, very colorful lives. Upon receiving reports from the lookouts at the masthead of enemy ships ahead, the cruisers lay a smoke screen, then attack. The ship sustains two hits, the first of which kills the ship's surgeon and several other crewmembers, while the second one does more damage to the ship and requires the flooding of "X" gun turret aft. The other two turrets continue to fire upon the Italian fleet, while destroyers lay a torpedo attack. A single shell, whose history from the mining of the ores to the firing of the gun is described in detail, hits the Italian flagship and strikes the final blow to the morale of the enemy commanders. With the San Martino being hit by a torpedo, the Italian fleet retires as night falls, and the convoy continues for Malta. The captain remains on the bridge, more determined than ever to continue "the long struggle of sea power against tyranny", which so many naval commanders fought before him.
4860400	/m/0crdwd	Stronghold	Melanie Rawn	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the trials and tribulations faced with the High Prince and others, Rohan, Sioned, Pol and Andry along with the rest of their families and friends, must defend their land against a large army of barbarians. No one knows where this army comes from or why they are attacking the Continent - or focusing on the Desert, High Prince Rohan's beloved homeland. Rohan and Pol are forced to flee across the Desert as they are pursued by the invaders. Along the way, they discover the enemy's fear of dragons. For a while the Desert forces are able to outsmart the enemy, but at the Battle of Stronghold the High Warlord arrives with his elite forces. The island and southern princedoms are overrun with invaders. The Dorvali are forced to flee their island, but Ludhill, Prince Chadric's heir, and his wife stay on the island and form a resistance. Prince Kostas of Syr revels in leading his army and manages to secure his princedom. Rohannon defends Kierst after the death of Prince Volog, and manages to fend off the invaders by having the army pad their armor to look like women. Andry protects Goddess Keep by using a ros'alath, a sorcerous wall, which terrorizes and kills those who touch it.
4863087	/m/05pd9dq	Secret Window, Secret Garden	Stephen King	1990-09		 Mort Rainey is a successful novelist in Maine. One day, he is confronted by a man from Mississippi named John Shooter, who claims Mort plagiarized a story he wrote. Mort vehemently denies ever plagiarizing anything. Shooter leaves, but not before leaving his manuscript, "Secret Window, Secret Garden". Mort notices that Shooter left without his story; he drops it in the trash can. When Mort's housemaid recovers the manuscript—thinking it belongs to Mort—he finally reads Shooter's story, discovering that it is almost identical to his short story "Sowing Season". The two differ, but very slightly; they share the same plot elements. The only differences are the title, the character's name, the diction, and the ending. Mort becomes disturbed by these findings. Shooter returns a few days later. Having learned that "Sowing Season" was published two years before Shooter claimed to have written "Secret Window, Secret Garden", Mort confronts Shooter with this information. An enraged Shooter accuses Mort of lying and demands proof, giving Mort three days to show him his published story. Overnight, he kills Mort's cat and burns down the house of Mort's ex-wife, which contained the magazine issue in which "Sowing Season" was published. Mort orders a new copy of the magazine; he also asks his caretaker Greg Carstairs to tail Shooter and to talk to a man named Tom, who drove past Mort and Shooter. Shooter, angry that Mort has involved other people in their business, kills both men and plants evidence framing Mort for the murders. Upon receiving the magazine and returning home, Mort finds that "Sowing Season" has been removed. Mort realizes that John Shooter is really his own split personality. Tom had not seen Shooter while driving by—he saw Mort, by himself. Mort realizes he burned down his own home, killed his own cat, and murdered two people. He blacks out; fifteen minutes later he awakens, only to hear who he believes to be Shooter pulling into his driveway, at the time they'd arranged to meet. Desperate for any sign of his own sanity, he rushes outside only to find his ex-wife, Amy. Devastated, he loses control of his body and mind to Shooter. Amy discovers that Mort has gone insane, having written the word "Shooter" all over the house. She goes to Mort's study, where "Shooter" attempts to kill her in an ambush; she manages to escape. "Shooter", chasing Amy outside, is shot by her insurance agent. Mort becomes himself again, addresses Amy, and dies. Later, Amy and Ted—a man she had an affair with before divorcing Mort—discuss her ex-husband's motives; she insists that Mort had become two people, one of them a character so vivid it became real. She then recalls something Tom witnessed; when he drove past Mort alone, he took a look in his rear view mirror...and saw Shooter with Mort, although transparent. Amy then reveals that while digging through Mort's house, she found Shooter's trademark hat; she took it out to the trash, and planted it right-side up on a trash bag. When she returned, she found a note from Shooter inside the overturned hat, revealing that he has travelled back to Mississippi. Amy remarks that Mort had created a character so vivid, he actually came to life.
4863097	/m/03nmc_b	The Library Policeman	Stephen King	1990-09		 Sam Peebles is asked to give a speech to the Rotary Club. An office assistant (Naomi) directs him to the public library to check out two books that might help with speech writing. In doing so he runs across Ardelia Lortz, the librarian. He checks out two books with the warning that they must be returned or he should beware of the Library Policeman. Naomi eventually informs us that Ardelia Lortz is not living and is not spoken of any more. Through a series of events we are introduced to Dave "Dirty Dave" Duncan, a former lover of Ardelia's. He finds that Ardelia is not a person but a being which feeds on fear and that Duncan was a sometimes unwilling companion/conspirator in helping her feed from the fear of children. We find that Ardelia had "died" in 1960 after killing two children and a police officer. She is now back and Duncan believes she seeks revenge and a new host. The Library Policeman turns out to be a recreation by Ardelia of a man Peebles had run into as a child at his local library who had raped and threatened him. The Library Policeman however is not just a recreation but also an embodiment of Ardelia who sought access to Sam as her new host. Dave dies defending them from Ardelia. They appear to have beaten the Library Policeman/Ardelia, only to discover at the end that she has already attached to Naomi. Sam removes her from Naomi's neck and destroys her under the wheels of a passing train.
4863158	/m/0crjnv	Bumageddon: The Final Pongflict	Andy Griffiths	2005-09-01	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Zack got his certificate, the open-air chapel is squashed by a giant-brown-blob (presumably poo, but never mentioned). Everyone fails to get out except for Zack, his bum and Eleanor. While trying to save the others, they find 4 Great White Bums coming towards them. After an argument of who was the real Great White Bum and who was responsible for blobbing the chapel, the trio of bum-fighters manage to escape the 4 Great White Bums. Unfortunately, a fifth Great White Bum flies in front of them and emits what was called a "death ray"(which is a teleportation ray) to the three bum-fighters. When they regained vision, Zack and Eleanor are surprised to be in a control center, puzzled. Thinking that Great White Bums had control centers, they heard a familiar voice that had belonged to Ned Smelly. Ned explains that this isn't a Great White Bum, but is in fact a bum-fighting machine called "Robobum" who has "Fully riveted reinforced steel cheeks. Turbo assisted jet repulsion unit. Nuclear wart-head equipped. Matter transport assisted entry and exit. Inside and outside voice options. Onboard tea and coffee making facilities. AND is self-wiping!" Eleanor explains that everyone is dead. Ned then signals to them to go to the bumcam screens. 3 of them showed destruction to the Pyramids of Giza, New York City and the Eiffel Tower. Ned then explains that Bumageddon is upon them. After that, Ned tells a story that he was hunting for stinkant juice, the most powerful fuel source in the world, when he headed back and the ground collapsed underneath. He found himself in a stinkant nest. He mapped it for a couple of weeks when he found a reservoir full of stinkant juice. He fueled up and found writing on the wall that said "WARNING! THE GREAT WHITE BUM IS USING THE BROWN HOLE TO SEND PREHISTORIC GREAT WHITE BUMS FORWARD THROUGH TIME. STOP HIM OR THE WORLD IS DOOMED!". Underneath this was 3 skeletons and that one was holding Imperial Leather soap. This was Zack's grandmothers' favorite soap. After a series of talking, Ned says that Robobum was equipped with time travel. Together, they go back to the bumosaurs' period. Unfortunately, Ned's temporal navigator has a loose screw and sends them back 650,000,000 years instead of 65,000,000 years. Then they find one of the earliest primitive forms of life which turns out to be a bum, thus proving that Sir Roger Francis Rectum was correct about bumolution. Eleanor then takes a photo of the bum. The bum flips on its back to show a clump of eggs, which all hatch except for a pure white one. Zack concludes it's the Great White Bum and tries to kill it, but it gets away. Then, Robobum transports them back in to herself and turns on the tracking system, changing course 50 times. Suddenly, Zack hits his head on the temporal navigator, fixes the loose screw and they travel to the Crapaceous period about 65 million years ago. All three bum-fighters lose their mind and are revived by the fart of Zack's bum. A tyrannosore-arse rex chases them. Robobum is put under manual control by Ned when another tyrannosore-arse rex chases them. Robobum is left by herself to fight them while the three are yet AGAIN in trouble when a tricerabutt chases them. Zack uses his certificate as a cape that a matador uses. This is when we find out Zack's middle name (Henry). The three bum-fighters escape into an undergrowth where they find a guide bum. It tells about the Crack of Doom, the breeding place of Great White Bums. The guide bum guides them toward it while Zack's bum believe it may lead them to a trap while Zack is swatting giant mutant zombie blowflies. A poopasaur almost eats Zack and Zack's bum believes the guide didn't warn about poopasaurs. The 5 bums and bum-fighters rest in a campfire and are stolen by stinkants and find the warning that Ned had seen. There they see Zack's gran, the Forker and the Flicker. Zack's bum and Ned are then brought by other stinkants. Robobum then comes along and squashes all the stinkants. Meanwhile, Gran and the Flicker and the Forker stay behind to finish the message. The guide bum is revealed by Eleanor to be her bum, but her bum gets off, abandoning her. Robobum says she would be the guide, except her BPS wasn't working. She then says that there is an abnormal amount of methane to its north-east. Robobum tries to fly away but remains on the ground. It was found in a sticky vine. Zack, Eleanor, Ned and Zack's bum were cutting through the strands when they hear a voice. Zack and his bum crawl along the vine to find out it was the Mutant Maggot Lord. A bumantula spots them and they quickly get back into Robobum. The bumantula almost crushes them when they are found by the Great White Bum. He pulls off the bumantula, punches it for a while and pulls off its legs. Eleanor realises the Mutant Maggot Lord was in Robobum. He tells the story that after the blowflies were spat out the brown hole they vomited him up. He pulled his pieces back together. He is then renamed the Mutant Spew Lord. Suddenly, Stink Kong, the Great White Bum's mortal enemy, fights the Great White Bum while Robobum is carried away by a bumadactyl. Eleanor sees her bum in the bumadactyl's beak and goes to save her. After saving her bum, Eleanor and Zack go back into Robobum only to find out the Mutant Spew Lord killed Ned. Zack wonders if he had change alliance again. Zack realizes his bum is gone but when Robobum is carried away his bum falls out of the roof. The Mutant Spew Lord almost shoot Eleanor but her bum jumps in front and gets shot instead. Eleanor grabs the bum-gun out of his arm (which Zack thought was an arm). Unfortunately, the bullets pass through him as the Mutant Spew Lord is actually 99 percent water. Robobum insists on using "wet and dry suction hose located in hall closet" (a vacuum cleaner). Zack vacuums the Mutant Spew Lord. Zack's Bum is giving Eleanors bum "bum-to-bum resuscitation" and she wakes up. Zack and his bum drag Ned's body and his guidebook into the matter transporter and take him up. The Great White Bum arrives at the Crack of Doom with Robobum, where the arseteroid should be hitting. Eleanor and the bums tell Robobum shes wants a wedding dress, flowers and music. The great White Bum accepts and leaves it up to 3 Great White Bums to get her stuff, in which Zack believes is impossible. Unfortunately an hour later, a wedding dress made out of paper-thin bark, a bouquet of ferns and grasses and "THE GREAT WHITE BUM QUARTET" come back. Zack says that the music is so unpleasant and smells really bad. The wedding starts with the Prince and Maurice conducting the wedding. Zack and Eleanor plan to blow the nuclear wart-head out at the Great White Bum when he's under the asteroid. Unfortunately, the Mutant Spew Lord puddle comes out and tells the Prince and Maurice that Robobum is a robot. Zack, Eleanor and their bums are shook out. The Mutant Spew Lord Puddle calls the Great White Bum a "big, pimply loser with half his left cheek missing who doesn't know who his true friends are" (In the previous book, it was half of the Great White Bum's right cheek missing the skin.). The Mutant Spew Lord Puddle is soaked up in Robobum's dress and thrown into the Crack of Doom. Robobum locks the Great White Bum into an unbreakable hug right under the arseteroid. He tells that the other Great White Bum Zack had disturbed and chased 585 million years into the future was still on Uranus. Zack and Eleanor finally think its all over. Suddenly, Zack's bum steps forward and says that while Eleanor and Zack were saving her bum, he and Robobum discussed the problem, and shot an interplanetary death ray at Uranus, eradicating all forms of life, including Great White Bum's, on Uranus. The arseteroid hits and surely kills everyone at the wedding. Zack and Eleanor find themselves on hay bales. Ned Smelly comes in and tell them to get out. Zack finds a letterbox that says "Ed Kelly" on the front, meaning that he must have changed the Earth, but his bums were now attached to their owners and weren't talking. Zack's home city is now known as "Marbletown", the Kicker is a footy coach, the Smacker became a baker, Silas became a fishing supplies owner and the Kisser owns new and used cars. Zack meets Percy Freeman, his long-dead grandfather and find out that all their parents are alive. Zack's parents are now playing wind sections in an orchestra. Eleanor's parents are also alive. She tells her mother that she had to rescue Zack on many occasions about bums, bum-fighting and bumosaurs but she doesn't believe her. Zack and Eleanor wash their hands and shockingly, find their bums gone. Zack and Eleanor then see them on the windowsill looking at the sunset hand-in-hand. Zack states its only just begun.
4864211	/m/0crktq	Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02hwgm": "Field guide"}	 The book presents various sketches of fearsome critters from North American folklore, with descriptions by Cox preceded by full-page landscape illustrations by du Bois. Like in a traditional field guide, each animal is assigned a Latin classification (by Sudworth), afterward noting their habitat, physical makeup, and behavior. At the end of each account; however, there is usually a brief anecdote detailing an encounter with the creature. Fearsome Creatures may be classified as a work of metafiction. The introduction acknowledges the varmints as, “animals which he [the lumberjack] has originated.” Although, given the books mixed field-guide narrative format it is uncertain whether the introduction is within or aside from the primary context. At times the storyteller (identified as Cox himself in the introduction) employs the more ambiguous woodsmen/loggers “tell of” or out comes the “rumor of,” but other times declares to the reader that there “ranges” or “is” such a creature.
4866311	/m/0crp4j	O Crime do Padre Amaro	José Maria Eça de Queiroz	1875		 The novel concerns a young priest, Amaro, who serves as diocesan administrator at Leiria. Amaro lacks a vocation, having been pushed into the priesthood by his aristocratic patrons, the Marquesa de Alegros and, later, the Conde de Ribamar, and, owing to the vow of chastity he was obliged to take, is obsessed with women and deeply sexually frustrated. Upon arriving in Leiria, he falls for Amélia, the beautiful daughter of his landlady, a pious widow and the mistress of his superior, Canon Dias. After Amélia's fiancé, João Eduardo, publishes an exposé of the local clergy's venal habits in the town's newspaper under a pseudonym, Amaro and his colleagues and parishioners expose João Eduardo as the author of the piece, pressure Amélia to break off the engagement, and drive João Eduardo out of town. Amaro begins a sexual relationship with Amélia, meeting first in his coal cellar and then in the bell-ringer's house, using charitable visits to his bedridden, mentally disabled daughter as a cover. His love affair with Amélia ends in tragedy when she becomes pregnant, and is forced to seclude herself in the countryside for the duration of the pregnancy in order to prevent a scandal. João Eduardo returns to Leiria, but refuses to marry Amelia in order to render the child legitimate. Amaro and his maid, Dionisia, who also acts as a midwife, find a wet-nurse who, it is implied, kills babies in her care. Amélia gives birth to a healthy boy, who is handed over to the wet-nurse and killed. Amélia suffers complications after the birth and dies of a burst aneurysm. The actual paternity of Amélia's child, while the subject of gossip, never comes to light, and Amaro moves on to another parish. The novel leaves him in Lisbon, discussing the events of the Paris Commune.
4868123	/m/0crrm_	The Mandalorian Armor	K. W. Jeter		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book mainly talks about the web in which Boba Fett is trapped. The book is set shortly after Jabba the Hutt's barge is destroyed and flashes back to when the Bounty Hunters Guild still existed. This book is set during the events of Return of the Jedi. It begins with Dengar searching through the wreckage of Jabba's sail barge for anything or anyone of value. As Dengar is ready to give up, assuming that the Jawas had beat him to the wreckage, he notices two things: first, that the Sarlacc appears to be dead; and second, that there is a survivor. The survivor is Boba Fett, who had blown his way out of the Sarlacc pit. Boba's distinctive armor had suffered damage from his time in the pit and he was nearly dead. While Dengar moved Fett to a cave for shelter, the book flashes back to between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes; back to a period where Boba Fett is a freelance bounty hunter at odds with the Bounty Hunters Guild. Kuat of Kuat, the hereditary CEO of the Empire's chief subcontractor for military items is interested in the events that occurred at Jabba's palace and on his sail barge. Kuat of Kuat reviews holoprojections uploaded from the palace and regardless of the evidence, is not convinced Boba Fett is dead without additional confirmation. In the first of many flashbacks to the period between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, Bossk and Zuckuss have been assigned by the Bounty Hunters Guild a contract for an accountant wanted by the Hutts. Although both are experienced bounty hunters, Bossk acts like the leader. Zuckuss warned Bossk that just because his father leads the Bounty Hunters Guild did not make him leader of the mission. They blasted their way into the accountant's hiding place, where to find the room empty. They had been beat to the bounty by Boba Fett. Bossk and Zuckuss, in pursuit of Boba Fett, warn him that he has no authority to work this bounty; that they had been assigned the bounty by the Bounty Hunters Guild. Boba Fett quips that he answers to a higher authority, himself, and blasts off into hyperspace. Fett enters his hold and talks to his "cargo" sitting in one of the cells. The accountant offers to pay Fett more than the bounty if he would let him go. Fett apologizes that it does not work that way, that he is the highest paid bounty hunter in the galaxy because he delivers. The accountant said that he had heard of other bounty hunters accepting offers. Fett said that the mismanagement and incompetence of the guild causes that and he will have no part of it. Deep in space, the Slave I approaches the lair of the Assembler, Kud'ar Mub'at. The arachnid go between who serves as the criminal world's escrow service. It is to the Assembler that Fett is to deliver his captive and collect his bounty. The Assembler's web-like home is a set of extruded neural fibers along which semi-independent multi-legged nodes run performing various tasks for the Assembler. The Assembler is careful not to give too much autonomy to its neural nodes; as it was once one of those nodes who reached enough independence to rise up and eat its predecessor. Fett describes his distaste for this sort of cannibalism within certain species. The Assembler reveals that it has received a new contract, a private one, for Fett to work. Private contracts are required by clients who wish their ends to be kept secret and mean more money for Fett. He accepts the contract to join the Bounty Hunters Guild and break it up from within. Back in the present, Dengar captures a woman who had followed him and Fett into their hiding place. The woman, Neelah, insisted that she must see Fett but, she doesn't know why. She explained that she was a dancer in Jabba's palace but has no memories before arriving in the palace. She says that when Boba Fett looked at her in the palace, she knew that she had some connection to him and needed to meet him. Dengar notices signs of an aristocratic upbringing in Neelah and symptoms of a memory wipe. He agrees to her request, attributing his soft spot for Neelah to the fact that he'd recently met a woman he cares for. He warns Neelah that she has to be careful around Fett and that he will not leave her alone with him. He warns that Fett is ruthless and cannot be trusted and that he hardly trusts him to keep up his end of their new partnership. Flashing back to "Then", Boba Fett is at a feast welcoming him to the Bounty Hunters Guild. The guild elders finally welcomed Fett into their organization. Bossk does not trust Fett and calls his father a fool for doing so. The father and son exchange death threats which is common among Trandoshans; as is feasting on the remains of your enemies, and killing and eating your siblings shortly after birth. Bossk asked why Fett would join now. Fett explained that times are changing and that that pressures in the galaxy&mdash;including Black Sun&mdash;have forced him to change his stance on the guild. Bossk is grudgingly calmed down by the rest of the guild and he agrees to treat Fett like a brother. The Emperor meets with Darth Vader and Prince Xizor to discuss the new plan Xizor has put in place. It was Xizor who contacted the Assembler with the private contract for Fett to join the guild. Xizor reveals that his plan will eliminate the dead weight in the guild and leave only the best bounty hunters; then the Empire will be able to contract with those remaining bounty hunters to execute plans that need independence and cunning. He explains that the Empire, by design, has suppressed independence in their troopers and officers but that they need independence to fight the rebellion where free thinking is their strongest asset. Vader is not convinced and thinks Xizor has ulterior motives.
4868438	/m/0crs37	The Book of the Dead	Lincoln Child	2007-07-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast is the focus of this novel as his evil brother Diogenes puts several plans into effect. One plan involves targeting Aloysius's dearests friends...and casual acquaintances. Concurrently, the New York Museum of Natural History has re-opened an old tomb, closed down decades ago. Rumours abound of the tomb being cursed, but most tombs do have a curse on them as a matter of course, as a protection against grave robbers. Not much is thought of the curse until a lighting technician is found disembowled. Later, a British Egyptologist goes mad and attacks a colleague; security is forced to shoot and kill him. When a replacement Egyptian specialist turns out to be the one woman Pendergast is in love with, his friends begin to suspect something even more horrible is going on than originally suspected.
4869236	/m/0crtk1	Another Hope				 Another Hope is an alternative history re-imagining of the events in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). Mixing familiar moments from the film with new story material, Jareo drew inspiration and mixed in elements from the prequel films. The book deals in minute details of the Death Star, the politics of Darth Vader's henchmen, and insight into Vader and Princess Leia Organa's adoptive parents. Biggs Darklighter, a minor character in the film, has been given an expanded role. The text adds a "Mary Sue" version of Ryoo Naberrie, described as "a gutsy underling on the Death Star".
4869906	/m/0crvqt	Lovelock	Orson Scott Card	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 When the book begins, the Cocciolone family is packing for their new life aboard the Mayflower. The family consists of Carol Jeanne, her husband Red, their daughters Lydia and Emmy, and Red's parents Mamie and Stef. They take a shuttle to the Ark, during which Lovelock is ashamed of his primitive, terrified response to free-fall. Aboard the Mayflower, the Cocciolone family begins to integrate themselves into the society of the Ark. When Lovelock meets a scientist who attempts to communicate with him via sign language, Carol Jeanne explains that she hadn't taught her Witness sign language because she didn't want him "chattering to [her] all the time." This event marks Lovelock's first feelings of furious rebellion. Lovelock begins to long for a mate, and children of his own. After learning about a supply of cryogenically frozen capuchin monkeys, he steals a young female monkey and hides her in the low-gravity poles that support the Ark. Unfortunately, she grows up stunted and sickly. Lovelock, realizing that should his actions be discovered he would be put to death, begins to write his story in a hidden file on the Ark's computer.
4873110	/m/0cr_gn	Fripp	Miles Tredinnick	2001-01-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Retired Rear Admiral Peter Legg has a delicate problem. He is suffering from satyriasis (the male equivalent of nymphomania) and his constant craving for sexual excitement with the local Madam, Miss Forde, and her working girls, Forde's Escorts, have left him broke and despondent. Furthermore, his long-suffering wife Margot has deserted him. In desperation he attends a newly opened sexual addiction clinic run by the handsome, breakfast TV doctor Ryan Hooper. When this fails to solve his problems he decides to employ a young private detective, Twyford Fripp, to track down his wife and hopefully bring her back. Unfortunately, it's Twyford Fripp's very first case...
4873632	/m/0cs089	Heechee Rendezvous	Frederik Pohl		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Robinette Broadhead returns in this novel, a married millionaire with health problems. However, he does not feel that he deserves transplants to keep him alive, still feeling guilt about his experience on a horrible journey to a black hole, many years ago. He still attempts to research more about the Heechee and their technology. At the same time, a madman named Wan attempts to search for his father within black holes, using stolen equipment and a Heechee ship. His probing is caught by a sentient race of slow-moving creatures who inform a Heechee patrol, sent out of their black hole to observe the state of the galaxy. Fearing that humans may alert a malevolent race of beings known as the Assassins, the Heechee patrol sets out to try to find out more about human achievements in space flight and whether or not the damage done by them can be undone. Wan's probing also releases Gelle-Klara Moynlin, a companion of Robinette on his journey to the black hole, from her two decade long entrapment, which for Moylin was really only several elapsed days. The journeys of these past and future friends of Robinette begin to converge, and in the end, humans finally meet the Heechee.
4873693	/m/0cs0cg	Amnesia Moon	Jonathan Lethem	1995-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist is a survivalist named Chaos, who lives in an abandoned megaplex in Wyoming after an apparent nuclear strike. The residents of his town of Hatfork are reliant on a sinister messianic figure named Kellogg for food. Kellogg also has powerful dreams, which he transfers into the minds of others. Chaos's mind is especially receptive, making him reluctant to sleep. Both Lethem and Chaos abandon this premise early on, and Chaos also goes by the name of "Everett Moon", depending on where he is. The novel plays with several other dystopian and post-apocalyptic setups. One area is covered in a thick green fog, save for an exclusive private school. Vacaville, California, has converted to a luck-based social system, taken to totalitarian extremes. Again, this is reminiscent of Dick's Solar Lottery, where society is also based on chance. There are echoes of other works by Dick. For example, when Moon and his travelling companion, Melinda, reach San Francisco, hallucinogenic drugs play a role in altered perceptions that provide access to other characters in this world, as in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Elsewhere, it is argued that the depicted realities splintered away from each other to provide resistance to a hive-like alien invasion of Earth. Such solipsistic worlds are reminiscent of Dick's early novel Eye in the Sky. The one constant throughout is the idea that reality is shaped by powerful and charismatic "dreamers". The reason for the break in realities, and Chaos/Moon's place in this world, is a unifying mystery.
4883177	/m/0csg8z	The Iron Hand of Mars	Lindsey Davis	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In The Iron Hand of Mars, Falco is sent to Germania Liberi in the aftermath of a rebellion. He is dispatched by Vespasian to deliver a new standard, give a report on the Legio XIV Gemina, and to discover what happened to their Legate. He also searches for the rebel leader Julius Civilis and encounters the priestess Veleda
4883195	/m/0csg9n	The Silver Pigs	Lindsey Davis	1989	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 This is the first novel in the series and introduces the main characters as well as establishing relationships that continue and grow throughout the whole series. Falco stumbles upon a conspiracy in the trading of silver ingots, but not before it claims the life of a young girl (Sosia Camillina) whom Falco meets and is smitten with. Hired by the young girl's uncle, a senator, to find out who murdered her, and by the Roman Emperor Vespasian, to uncover the conspiracy, Falco finds himself on the next boat to Britain. Once there he meets a lady way out of his class, Helena Justina, daughter of the Senator who hired him. At first sight it is mutual loathing, he hates her class and she hates his prejudice. Finding himself working down a silver mine, acting as a mine slave, Falco learns the meaning of hate, pain and abuse. After being rescued by Helena and a friendly centurion, Falco heads back to Rome, as the reluctant charge of the even more reluctant Helena. Naturally, after spending so much time together, lots of arguments, misunderstandings and denial, Falco and Helena fall in love (subsequently consummated in a horse stable in a public garden). Eventually, Falco sorts out the case, and only has to bring the culprits to justice. However, there is no justice when one of the culprits is Domitian, the Emperor's very own wayward son. As for the other culprits, only one remains alive, and that person is very close to the girl Falco loves and her senator father. After a final, bloody, retribution is carried out in the climax, Falco is offered the chance to be raised to the upper middle class, the equestrian rank. As an equestrian Falco could marry Helena without bringing her or her family shame, which is something he could never manage on his meagre earnings alone. He refuses, seeing the offer as a bribe to keep the whole conspiracy hushed-up. After realising his mistake and how he must have insulted Helena, he returns to Vespasian and asks for the chance again, and while he is told that his name can be added to the equestrian lists, he must first raise the 400,000 sesterces himself in order to purchase the land to that value which is the qualification for equestrian status. Dejected he returns to his dilapidated tenement in the Aventine Hill and there finds Helena waiting for him. She promises to wait for him for as long as it takes. <!-
4884979	/m/0csjs0	Ali and Nino: A Love Story	Kurban Said	1937	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "Ali and Nino" is the story of an Azerbaijani youth who falls in love with a Georgian princess. Essentially, the book is a quest for truth and reconciliation in a world of contradictory beliefs and practices – Islam and Christianity, East and West, age and youth, male and female. Much of the novel is set in Baku's Old City (Ichari Shahar) on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution beginning around 1917–1918. The novel was first published in 1937, in a foreign country (Austria), in a foreign language (German), by someone using the pen name of Kurban Said (Gurban Said, in Azeri). Ali Khan Shirvanshir, descendant of a noble Muslim family, is educated in a Russian boy's high school. While his father is still completely a part of Asia, Ali is exposed to Western values in school and through his love to Georgian princess Nino, who has been brought up in a Christian tradition and belongs more to the European world. The book describes the love of Ali for Nino, with excursions to mountain villages in Daghestan, Shusha in Azerbaijan, Tbilisi, Georgia and Persia. Upon graduating from high school, Ali determines to marry Nino. At first she hesitates, until Ali promises that he will not make her wear the veil, or be part of a harem. Ali's father, despite his Muslim traditional view of women, supports the marriage; Nino's father tries to postpone the marriage. The book takes a dramatic turn when an Armenian, whom Ali thought was a friend, kidnaps Nino. In retaliation, Ali pursues him on horseback and overtakes his car and kills him. Contrary to tradition, he spares Nino. Ali flees to Daghestan to escape the vengeance of the Armenian family. After many months, Nino finds Ali in a simple hilltown, the two marry on the spot and spend a few months in blissful poverty. As turmoil follows the Russian Revolution, Ali Khan makes some tough ideological decisions. When the Ottoman Army moves closer to liberate his native Baku, Ali Khan watches the developments closely. The Bolsheviks recapture Baku, and Ali and Nino flee to Iran (Persia). In Tehran, Ali is reminded of his Muslim roots, while Nino is fundamentally unhappy in the confinement of the harem. Upon establishment of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ali and Nino return and become cultural ambassadors of their new country. Ali is offered a post as ambassador to France – an idea Nino had arranged – but Ali declines, because he fears he will be as unhappy in Paris. When the Red Army descend on Ganja, Azerbaijan, Ali takes up arms to defend his country. Meantime, Nino flees to Georgia with their child, but Ali Khan dies in battle as the Bolsheviks take the country, which in reality led to the establishment of the Soviet domination of Azerbaijan from 1920–1991 and the end of the short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR, from May 1918 to April 1920).
4885884	/m/0cslf5	The Great Cow Race	Jeff Smith	1996	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Thorn, Gran'ma Ben and the Bone cousins attend the spring fair, an annual market and festival in the town that culminates in the Great Cow Race, a race which Gran'ma Ben always wins. Fone Bone is driven to jealousy when Tom, the handsome honey seller, flirts with Thorn, so he decides to get some honey for her himself. However, a gigantic bee defends his hive, getting into a fight with Fone Bone. He eventually gets the honey, but sees Thorn sharing some honey with Tom. Phoney and Smiley Bone continue their work at The Barrelhaven, with Phoney concocting a scheme to fix the cow race by sowing seeds of disquiet about Gran'ma Ben's fitness to compete. At the end, Thorn meets Tom at the fair, but finds he is with another girl. Phoney Bone's race-fixing scheme continues as he hypes his "Mystery Cow" (who is in fact Smiley Bone in an unconvincing cow costume) to draw bets from the townsfolk. That night, Thorn has a vivid dream in which she sees herself as a young child in a cave and surrounded by dragons. She tells Fone Bone the dream is a recurring one which has only started again since seeing his map. She is certain now that she was the one who drew it, many years earlier, and that her dream is in fact a childhood memory. The day of the Great Cow Race arrives, and Phoney Bone's scheme is threatened as Lucius Down convinces the townsfolk the Bones are deceiving them. This forces Phoney and Smiley to put on a charade to convince people the Mystery Cow is indeed a real, vicious and wild animal. Meanwhile, Fone Bone's attempt to write a love poem to Thorn is interrupted when the two Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures catch up with him once again. Just as the race is about to begin, Lucius bets the Barrelhaven on Gran'ma Ben, causing Phoney Bone to climb into the cow suit with Smiley just as the race begins, with the intention of winning the race. During the race, however, Phoney causes them to fall off a cliff due to Gran'ma Ben attempting to unmask them, into a patrol of rat creatures. At this moment, The Stupid Stupid Rat Creatures chase Fone Bone into the path of the patrol as well, and the patrol chases them and their paths merge with the race. Everybody flees when they discover this (just as the race is about to end) and Gran'ma Ben wins. After the disastrous Cow Race, Phoney and Smiley are forced to work off their debts working at the Barrelhaven Tavern and repairing Gran'ma Ben's farm house. Lucius and Ben discuss the situation with the Bone cousins, the Rat Creatures and the Great Red Dragon. They suspect that although their arrival in the valley may have set off the attacks, they are not themselves to blame. A vignette centering on Smiley Bone and Lucius Down as they fix the roof of the farm house. Lucius is driven crazy by Smiley's half-witted cluelessness. Smiley reflects that his "village idiot" role hasn't changed much since leaving Boneville.
4885892	/m/0cslg6	Eyes of the Storm	Jeff Smith	1996	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The two Stupid Rat Creatures, lying low after wrecking the Great Cow Race, are to their surprise congratulated by Kingdok for their mistake. Thorn has a vivid dream where she, dressed in a regal gown, is beckoned by The Hooded One, who then reveals Fone Bone's head under its hood. The Great Red Dragon appears in Fone Bone's Moby Dick inspired nightmare. The following day, as Fone Bone tries again to write Thorn a love poem, the Dragon himself shows up. Fone Bone asks him about the dream, and the Dragon hints that he actually entered the dream on purpose. The worries of the night are soon forgotten, however, as the Bone cousins have to tackle some of the more onerous tasks of farm life. Lucius, Smiley and Phoney Bone set off back for the Barrelhaven, but a fierce storm strikes up en route, and the wagon is ambushed by Rat Creatures. Smiley Bone leads a charge to safety, but sends the wagon and its passengers over a cliff and into a river. At the farm house, Thorn and Fone Bone shelter from the rain in a barn and discuss each other's dreams, and in particular why Gran'ma Ben lied to Thorn about her past and the Dragons. Suddenly, Fone Bone and Thorn find Gran'ma listing in on their conversation. She then runs into the woods. Fone Bone and Thorn follow Gran'ma Ben into the woods, and she makes her feelings known about Fone Bone, telling him he must have woken the Dragon by coming to the valley. The trio are attacked by Rat Creatures, and Fone Bone calls out to the Great Red Dragon for help; once again he appears and scares them away. However, Gran'ma Ben seems angry with the Dragon. "You think he'll be there whenever you need him," she warns, "but he won't. He wasn't always there for me." Fone Bone tries to make a connection with Thorn. Gran'ma Ben apologizes to Bone for accusing him of stirring up trouble in the valley, knowing the troubles started long before he and his cousins arrived. Fone Bone shows her the map, and tells her about the swarm of locusts, a detail she finds particularly disconcerting - she explains that if the Locusts has returned, a war will be unavoidable. She reveals that Thorn's parents were in fact the monarchs of the realm throughout the generation-long war with the Rat Creatures, and Thorn herself has been the crown princess during the period of uneasy peace since then. She was moved from the palace during the "Nights of Lightning", a series of brutal surprise attacks by the Rat Creatures, and taken to Deren Gard and safety with the Dragons. En route the escort party was betrayed by an accompanying nursemaid and the King and Queen of Atheia, Thorn's parents, were murdered. Meanwhile, spies for the Rat Creatures bring Kingdok and The Hooded One news of the identity of the crown princess. It is revealed that a dangerous entity called the Lord of the Locusts has reawoken, and has The Hooded One under its command. Fone Bone attempts to comfort Thorn after Gran'ma Ben's shocking revelations, and that knowledge she had been dreaming of her past with the Dragons, Deren Gard, and even the ambush and murder of her parents for years. When Lucius, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone arrive at the bar, the taverngoers immediately want to attack Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, but Lucius objects, saying that all their fiscal debts had been paid off, and that therefore they have no right to attack the Bones. The taverngoers complain that Phoney Bone made them look like idiots, but Lucius explains that they made themselves look like idiots by so easily being taken in by as manipulative and greedy a shrimp as Phoney Bone and by not heeding Lucius' warnings or the obvious signs that this was a scam. Lucius then lays down a competition, made by a bet he made with Phoney Bone; he divides the bar in two, one half will be run by himself, the other by Phoney and Smiley Bone, the side that makes the most money for the tavern wins. Smiley Bone draws all the customers to his side of the bar by giving beer away, but Phoney Bone furiously puts an end to this mischief; after all, the whole point is to make a profit. The crowd decides they've had enough of the Bones and are about to attack them, when Smiley Bone wishes that Fone Bone's dragon was there to protect them and they demand what he means by this. Tales of a dragon draw the townsfolk to Phoney's side of the Barrelhaven bar, and Phoney sees the opportunity to capitalize on their fears by proclaiming himself a dragon slayer. A hooded stranger wearing a pendant with a royal crest on it visits the Barrelhaven, bringing Lucius news about troop movements along the border in South Pawa; a huge army of Rat Creatures is approaching. Gran'ma Ben, hearing the same news via Ted the bug and fearing for Thorn's safety now that the rat creatures know where they live, presents Thorn with her old sword and shield and insists they must leave.
4885935	/m/0csljm	The Dragonslayer	Jeff Smith	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following the message that a Rat Creature army is crossing the Eastern border, Fone Bone, Thorn and Gran'ma Ben travel off-road to the Barrelhaven. Gran'ma Ben suffers an attack of her “gitchy feeling” - a dizziness that has long been her omen of impending trouble. Meanwhile, at the Barrelhaven tavern itself, Phoney Bone's tales of dangerous dragons make his end of the bar the most popular. Lucius, who dislikes Phoney's dishonest manipulation, attempts to call off the bet, but Phoney declines. After fending off their ambush, Gran'ma Ben captures one of the two Stupid Rat Creatures and learns from him that the valley is being evacuated. Kingdok arrives and attacks the party, and knocks out Fone Bone with his war club, steps on Thorn and attacks Ben. Taking up Gran'ma Ben's sword, Thorn swings the blade in a blur and slices off Kingdok's right arm. Through a haze of pain, Kingdok sees Ben and Thorn as the queen and crown princess of old, and describes them to himself as "Earth and Sky", before he flees with the two Stupid Rat Creatures. Smiley Bone, hearing Fone Bone's cries of distress, rushes out with the townsfolk to look for him, but they only find the blood-splattered scene of the fight. The two Rat Creatures find the fainted body of Kingdok and blame themselves for his wounding. They decide to desert the pack rather than face the consequences. As Thorn dresses Gran'ma Ben's wounds in the aftermath of the fight, Ben tells her the reason she was sent to Deren Gard as a child; Thorn is the “Veni-Yan Cari”, the Awakened One, a person who is most in touch with “The Dreaming”. Ben goes on to explain how she, Thorn, will be at risk from enemies in her dreams; indeed, she has already been threatened by The Hooded One, who Gran'ma suspects is in contact with the Lord of the Locusts, and may be one of the “Venu”, a sect of mystics who study dreams and are traditionally clad in hooded robes. The Hooded One is interested in Thorn because she has more power than even the Lord of the Locusts, and seeks to control her. Angered by further revelations that her past has been concealed from her, Thorn turns her back on Gran'ma Ben and leaves for the Barrelhaven alone. Fone Bone makes to follow her, and Gran'ma Ben gives him her sword, as well as a pendant bearing the royal crest with instructions to show it to Lucius. The minute Fone Bone leaves, Gran'ma runs off into the woods. When Thorn and Fone Bone arrive at Barrelhaven, they find Phoney Bone has taken control of the town and barricaded the roads. The Hooded One brings news to the Lord of the Locusts that the armies of Pawa in the South have joined their cause, and the kingdom of Atheia has fallen to them. The Lord of the Locusts fears Thorn's power is awakening and their opportunity to seize control of her is slipping away, instructing The Hooded One to succeed soon or else kill her. At Barrelhaven, Phoney Bone has the town in his thrall with his tales of dragons, and has stockpiled many of the townspeople's goods in payment for his “protection”. Late one night, Fone Bone finds a baby rat creature scrounging in the garbage. Staying at the inn that night, Thorn is once again visited by The Hooded One in her dreams, this time revealing its face like young Gran'ma Ben's. She is only saved in the nick of time when Fone Bone wakes her to tell her about the Rat Creature cub that has found its way into the town. Thorn threatens to kill the cub so Fone Bone takes it back to the barn only to wait in agony for Thorn to kill it. Lucius Down, who has been out searching for Gran'ma Ben for two days, returns to find the town barricaded. He protests about Phoney appointing himself leader, and orders the fences to be torn down, but the townsfolk, terrified of dragons, turn against him and refuse to even let him back into his own tavern. Meanwhile, Fone Bone turns to Smiley Bone for help with the baby rat creature. In the barn, Smiley is delighted to meet the Rat Creature cub, and promptly adopts him as a pet. Fone Bone meets with Lucius and explains what happened in the forest. Lucius fears that the Rat Creatures evacuating the valley could be a precursor to another sneak attack like the Nights of Lightning. Smiley is shocked to learn that Thorn is a princess. Meanwhile, the Hooded One addresses his army of Rat Creatures and men from Pawa. He tells them the two laws that the Lord of the Locusts has set down for them and then orders them to prepare for war. The townspeople's patience begins to wear thin as Phoney continues to press them for his “dragon slayer” fees. He lectures the townsfolk on the dangers of hoarding their goods and announces how he plans to use everything he has collected to lure a dragon and kill it (in actuality, a ruse to flee with all his ill-gotten gains). Meanwhile, Thorn, exhausted and unable to sleep for fear of her dreams, decides to return to the farm house, throwing down her sword and leaving the village. In the mountains enclosing the valley, the Rat Creature army and the Pawans have massed under the instructions of The Hooded One. They are, just as Lucius and Gran'ma Ben feared, preparing to strike at the inhabitants of the valley. Fone Bone and Smiley sneak out of the compound to release the Rat Creature cub, but Smiley strays out of sight with the cub,and Fone goes after him. Thorn tries to return home to the farm house, but collapses with exhaustion on the way, where four Veni Yan monks catch up with her and return her sword, which she left at the Barrelhaven. In her dream, she meets the Great Red Dragon, who convinces her not to run away by showing her visions of her friends, her grandmother, and Rat Creatures coming to attack them. The next morning, Phoney Bone puts his “dragonslaying” plan into action, rallying the townsfolk to carry him and his cache of loot into the mountains where, he tells them, he will capture and kill a dragon. Phoney and the townspeople reach the Dragon's Stair, a pass high in the mountains. Phoney gets the townsfolk to set up a dragon trap as he prepares to flee with his ill-gotten gains, but the plan becomes more complicated when the Great Red Dragon deliberately walks into the trap, courtesy of Ted. The townspeople urge Phoney to kill the trussed-up dragon, but just as he is about to reluctantly bring the knife down, Thorn arrives and stops him. She points out the columns of smoke rising from the valley; in their absence, the town has been attacked and burned by Rat Creatures, but the townspeople don't believe her and say the dragons have attacked the town. Suddenly another pack of Rat Creatures encounters the party. Thorn, with the four Veni Yan monks fighting alongside her, drive the Rat Creatures back, and Phoney uses Thorn's sword to free the dragon. The dragon and Veni Yan monks chase the Rat Creatures away, and Thorn at once instructs the townsfolk to arm themselves and head back to the town; war against the Rat Creature army and their allies has begun.
4885944	/m/0cslk_	Rock Jaw: Master of the Eastern Border	Jeff Smith	1998-09-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Fone Bone and Smiley trek into the Eastern Mountains to set free the baby Rat Creature, who Smiley names Bartleby, and accidentally encounter the two Stupid Rat Creatures. During an effort to ditch the two, they encounter the giant mountain lion Rock Jaw. Rock Jaw finds the Bones familiar, knowing that the Hooded One is searching for one of them. He explains the Hooded One fears “the one who bears the star” (meaning Phoney Bone) will rise as a new leader and unite the valley against him. However, Rock Jaw remains taciturn about whose side he is on. Roque Ja escorts Smiley and Fone higher into the mountains, against their wills. The possum kids, who have been tracking them since they disappeared from the Barrelhaven compound days earlier, discover them in the company of Roque Ja and grow concerned for their safety. Knowing Roque Ja hates interlopers in his mountains, the possum kids and their raccoon friend Roderick lure the two stupid Rat Creatures to Roque Ja, causing them to fall off a cliff and giving the Bones a chance to escape, however Roderick refuses to leave until he calls out for all of his other orphaned friends. Meanwhile Roque Ja climbs back up the mountain and he is infuriated. The Bones flee the enraged Roque Ja and escape into a tunnel in the mountainside, after a debate with Bartleby, they make it to the other side where they discover a magnificent abandoned temple to the Rat Creatures, and wonder about Roque Ja's tale that the mountains themselves were created long ago when the Dragons fought and pushed up the land. As the Bones try to make their way back towards the valley, they encounter the two stupid Rat Creatures, but before they can give chase, Kingdok appears. He is angry at the two stupid Rat Creatures for deserting him, and attacks them and the Bones, forcing them onto a very narrow ledge. Trapped on a narrow ledge with the ferocious Kingdok ahead of them, the Bones and the Rat Creatures are forced to edge their way to safety along a precarious cliff face after deciding to die rather than sell out their friends. However, on the way they are attacked by a swarm of locusts. Fone Bone stumbles and falls onto a lower ledge. The locusts try to carry him away, but a medallion given to him by Gran'ma Ben falls from his backpack and scares the locusts away. As the locusts flee, Kingdok vanishes into thin air, having been an illusion generated by the locusts' magic. Thanks to the orphans, the Bones realize the locusts could manipulate Thorn or even the whole valley with illusions, as they press on down the mountainside with a suspicious Roque Ja watching. The Rat Creatures, the Bones and their friends make their way down from the mountains, unaware they are being followed and eavesdropped upon by Roque Ja. As they descend, the Rat Creatures reveal that the current unrest has only come about since The Hooded One arrived, bringing with him the locusts and the strange dreams. At that moment, Roque Ja reveals himself to the party and orders them back up the mountain. Before they can go too far, the real Kingdok arrives and starts to fight with Roque Ja. The Bones use the opportunity to escape (minus the two stupid rat creatures because they tried to hand Fone and Smiley at the last moment and they got bitten by the orphans), fleeing from the scuffle and running down the mountain while Roque Ja gets revenge on Kingdok and seriously wounds him. Roderick, the possum kids, and the orphans split up and leave. Bartleby rejoins the pack and the Rat Creatures carry the unconscious Kingdok away. Fone Bone and Smiley Bone then begin their journey back into the valley, although Smiley is sad to see Bartleby leave.
4885948	/m/0csllp	Old Man's Cave	Jeff Smith	1999-07-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Thorn has left in the night in search of Fone Bone, while Phoney Bone and three of the villagers head for Old Man's Cave, where they are met by Gran'ma Ben and Lucius. Meanwhile, Fone and Smiley have made it down from the mountains. They are ambushed by Rat Creatures, but Thorn finds them and fights the Rat Creatures off. The Rat Creatures are terrified to discover that she and the Bones were the ones who wounded Kingdok. Deep in the mountains, The Hooded One tells the Lord of the Locusts of the Bones' latest deeds. The Lord of the Locusts has doubts that “the one who bears the star”, with whom The Hooded One seems obsessed, is as powerful as The Hooded One believes, but allows the search for the "star-bearer" to continue. Thorn, Fone and Smiley lie low for a few days while planning an attack on The Hooded One. Thorn explains how she believes The Hooded One plans to use her and Phoney to speed the release of the Lord of the Locusts from where it lies trapped in the stone of the mountains. She also explains her mistrust of Gran'ma Ben - Thorn believes the tale of how her parents were betrayed by the nursemaid is a lie; she never had a nursemaid. Meanwhile, The Hooded One approaches Roque Ja and asks him to recapture the Bones. At Old Man's Cave, the survivors of the Rat Creature attack are gathered, along with a large group of Veni Yan warriors. Gran'ma Ben gives Phoney Bone a history lesson, telling him the story of when dragons ruled the world; their Queen, Mim, kept The Dreaming in balance until the Lord of the Locusts entered her mind and drove her mad. The other dragons were forced to turn Mim to stone, trapping the Lord of the Locusts inside her. The Hooded One, she tells him, wants to sacrifice him to free the Lord of the Locusts. Thorn returns to the farmhouse to collect her belongings. She plans to take on The Hooded One alone, after a conversation with Fone and Smiley - during which it is revealed that the three Bone cousins are orphans, and Phoney, as the oldest, raised the other two - she is convinced to trust Gran'ma Ben, and the three set off for Old Man's Cave. Meanwhile, a patrol of villagers and Veni Yan warriors, led by Lucius Down, scout the area for Rat Creatures. Lucius comes across The Hooded One, who reveals under the hood a young woman, the same woman who was killed along with Thorn's parents, alive and not looking a day older. However, it soon becomes clear The Hooded One is trying to distract Lucius to allow a Rat Creature party to attack. Later, at Old Man's Cave, with no word of Lucius Down and his scout party, Gran'ma Ben continues filling in Phoney on the history of the valley and the nature of the Dreaming. Just then, Gran'ma Ben suffers another attack of her “gitchy” feeling, and sure enough trouble is afoot; a cloud of smoke rises from the Eastern mountains, where the Lord of the Locusts lies. Soon after, Lucius' party arrives back at the cave, many of them wounded, and with a pack of Rat Creatures still in pursuit. Lucius Down relates to Gran'ma Ben his meeting with The Hooded One, that she is in fact her now-undead sister Briar Harvester. Gran'ma Ben tells him that despite pleading with the council of dragons at Deren Gard, they refused to get involved in the fight, meaning the valley folk must face her and her Rat Creature armies alone. The villagers argue over whether or not to hand Phoney Bone, “the one who bears the star”, over to The Hooded One to appease her, and in the confusion Phoney slips away, leaving his star-bearing shirt behind. Gran'ma Ben goes after him, catching up with him in the mountains, but Roque Ja, who has been tracking them, catches up and she and Lucius get into a vicious brawl with the colossal mountain lion. Thorn and Fone meet up with them and enter the fray, but she and Phoney get knocked out and taken away in Roque Ja's jaws. Fone Bone, also knocked out in the battle, sees in his dreams the Great Red Dragon, who hands him the royal medallion and orders him to save Thorn. Some time later, at the ancient temple high in the mountains, The Hooded One prepares to sacrifice Phoney to the Lord of the Locusts. Phoney insists that there is a case of mistaken identity and that The Hooded One has the wrong person, but Briar reveals what led her to believe Phoney was a person of great power; a huge inflatable likeness of Phoney, the runaway balloon from his disastrous election campaign back in Boneville, that drifted into the valley. With its fierce expression and the banner reading “Phoncible P. Bone will get you” (the end torn off; intact it read “...will get your vote”, Phoney explains), Briar took it as an omen that he would be the Veni-Yan-Cari, the Awakened One. Gran'ma Ben arrives on the scene and confirms Briar's mistake. The locusts that supported Briar's shriveled body leave her, a punishment by the Lord of the Locusts for her mistake. The locusts swarm on and try to enter Thorn, but Fone Bone drives them away with the royal medallion. Awake again, Thorn leads the others to safety away from the collapsing mountain temple, drawing her cloak around her head like a Veni-Yan warrior.
4885951	/m/0cslm0	Ghost Circles	Jeff Smith	2001-08-15	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the besieged fortress of Old Man's Cave, the Headmaster of the Veni Yan summons Wendell, the village tinsmith and explains how he believes the current unrest is not due to the Bones. He shows a medallion bearing the Harvestar family crest; a crown with a star above it. Thorn, he explains, may in fact be the "one who bears the star" The Hooded One has been seeking. Just then, the mountain erupts as the Lord of the Locusts stirs beneath it. The armies massed outside the fortress begin their attack. At this moment, the Lord of the Locust resurrects his servant Briar, and sends her off to "seek out our missing powers and return them to us". The Bones, Thorn and Gran'ma Ben flee the collapsing mountain. Fone Bone and Smiley lead them to the tunnel they used to escape from Roque Ja. As they descend through the tunnel, Fone warns everyone that they will probably start hallucinating again, just as they did the last time they passed through there. Sure enough, Fone and Phoney become Ishmael and Captain Ahab from Fone's favorite book, Moby-Dick. They stagger on to the tunnel exit and find the valley on the other side turned into a wasteland, covered in ash and every tree flattened. The Bones, Thorn and Gran'ma Ben make their way across the devastated valley. Thorn leads them as she is the only one who can see and avoid the Ghost Circles, invisible pockets of unreality where nothing can live, and that separate the true, intact valley from the illusory wasteland. She and Fone brush the periphery of one, and are momentarily transported back into the forest as it stood before the devastation of the valley. Thorn explains that she can survive it, and maybe even undo the spell, because she tore off a piece of the Lord of the Locust's soul when it tried to possess her, thus inheriting some of its power. Thorn and Gran'ma Ben remain undecided whether to return to Old Man's Cave or press on to the old capital, Atheia. A troop of Rat Creatures makes that decision for them, blocking the route to Old Man's Cave. A scout party of Rat Creatures discovers their camp and Thorn and Fone get separated from the others. As Ben fights off some of the Rat Creatures, Bartleby, the Rat Creature cub, returns. Meanwhile Thorn and Fone discover Briar is the one leading the Rat Creatures to them. She reveals to Fone Bone that he too has a piece of the Lord of the Locusts' soul inside him (a result of his and Thorn's stumbling into a Ghost Circle). Briar is about to kill Thorn, who is no longer necessary to her plans, when Smiley and Bartleby come charging to the rescue. With the piece of the Locust inside her, Thorn grows weaker by the minute. With Fone and Gran'ma Ben carrying Thorn, the party makes its way gingerly through the Dragon burial grounds of Tanen Gard, ever wary of rousing the Dragons. A bottomless pit crossed only by a steep and narrow rock bridge lies ahead. As they clamber to safety, Thorn begins to revive, the purity of the sacred ground healing her. They soon reach the ridge and find the valley beyond clear of the devastation of the Ghost Circles. The presence of Prayer Stones, idols left by Atheians for the Dragons, shows that the Old Kingdom is still alive. As they make their way towards the city of Atheia, a small, lone Locust is seen resting on one of the prayer stones. At Old Man's Cave the villagers demand of the Veni Yan that they release Lucius, planning to head for the Old Kingdom themselves. The Veni Yan initially try to stop them, but a heartfelt speech from Lucius convinces them to accompany his party. It is at this time the veni-yan take off their hoods, indicating that they too want the old kingdom back, hence they do not need to go into hiding, or underground.
4885959	/m/0cslmq	Crown of Horns	Jeff Smith	2004-04-25	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The chapter starts with Briar, Queen Lunaria and Lunaria's husband the king at Dragon's Stair, and because of the enemies attacking, Thorn is given to her grandmother, Rose Harvestar, who is also known as Gran'ma Ben. Gran'ma delivers her to the Great Red Dragon; almost at the same moment, Thorn's parents are killed. Thorn then mounts the dragon's back and takes the long journey underground into the cavern with a bright light. The Great Red Dragon asks Thorn to look into the light, whereupon she mentions a frozen waterfall. After trying to see past this, she sees her mother's face which asks her to seek the Crown of Horns. Thorn then wakes up, and at this point readers learn that Tarsil's soldiers had beaten Thorn and Fone Bone brutally and thrown them into a dungeon. Thorn loses a tooth in the process. To cheer her up, Fone Bone shows a goofy smile wherein one of his teeth is missing also. Meanwhile, Gran'ma Ben is atop the front wall of Atheia looking at the activity below. She is seen by a Vedu and two Veni-Yan monks. The Vedu tells her to go with the other old woman, whereupon she knocks him off the wall. The Veni-Yan are shown to be loyal to the Harvestars. Briar's army arrives and threatens to kill anyone who opposes them. Tarsil defies them, whereupon Briar declares that she will teach him fear. Defying her to do so, on grounds that he has fought dragons, Tarsil for the first time removes his hood to reveal his scarred, hideous face. In reply, Briar pulls back her hood and shows Tarsil's former, more comely face. She then flies toward Tarsil and cuts him into two halves (possibly a reference to the manner of her own death), and declares the attack. The battle begins; as Rose climbs up a nearby ladder, three arrows are shot at her by Briar, with whom she momentarily locks eyes. In the dungeon, Fone Bone hears the fight and shouts for the guard. Smiley and Phoney are in the next cell while all the guards have all gone out to fight. At the wall, Gran'ma Ben is striving to drive back the invading hordes of Pawa soldiers and Rat Creatures. The Venu warn her of an attack on the weaker left flank, whereupon she orders them to go there as reinforcements. Three claim that though they will obey, it is because of necessity rather than any possible allegiance to her. She is then pinned down by Pawa soldiers. Thorn tries to break the iron bars imprisoning herself and her friends, but fails. Fone Bone and Thorn quarrel on the subject of the Crown of Horns: Fone believes that it will destroy everything because Thorn has a piece of the Locust inside herself, whereas Thorn believes that her mother would not have told her to find it if she (Moonwort) had known that it would destroy everything. Fone mentions the possibility that in using the Crown, Thorn will destroy both the Locust and herself &mdash; shedding tears out of fear of Thorn's death, whereupon she promises not to use the Crown of Horns. Taneal, a prophetess-like child featured in the previous collection, brings them a hammer by which to break their shackles while she tries to break the bars of their cell. Her brother then frees Phoney and Smiley. Tarsil's soldiers gather, causing Taneal to hide. When they have gone, Taneal, her brother, Phoney, and Smiley look into the others' cell and find that Thorn is comatose. As Smiley tries to break the bars, Taneal tells the others that Tarsil was killed and Gran'ma Ben overwhelmed by the Pawa soldiers. Hearing this Thorn wakes, pulls the confining chains from the wall to which they are attached, tears open her cell, and asks in anger, "Which way is the gate?". Meanwhile, the dream masters use visions to scare off the Rat Creatures and the Pawas. Thorn, Fone Bone, Phoney and Smiley make it to the front wall, where Thorn reunites with Gran'ma Ben. They watch as the attacking army retreats, and Thorn tells them the reason why is because ghost circles are surrounding the city. This chapter is a short story of 4 or 5 pages taking place in Thorn's dream. The Red Dragon asks Thorn to look into a light and try to see beyond it. The Red Dragon then tells the story of the Queen of Dragons, Mim, wherein she was subject to demonic possession by the Lord of the Locust. This caused a battle that generated the valley that forms the story's setting. Readers see Mim for the first time, though this story had been mentioned before in the fifth book. Gran'ma Ben, Thorn, and the Bones clamber up a tower, where Thorn may see where all the perilous "ghost circles" are that are surrounding the city. Thorn perceives Roque Ja in the hills, and then has sudden visions of the valley exploding, and of the Lord of the Locusts. These visions shock her. While the others tend to Thorn, Phoney and Smiley attempt to open the well where the treasure is hidden, thinking to take the treasure and then sneak through the gaps in the ghost circles and get back home to Boneville. Thorn's visions tell her that the Lord of the Locusts no longer needs her or Briar, because he is possessing his original host, Mim, and is heading toward the city. Phoney and Smiley return to the city's gate with their hay cart (having Smiley's Rat Creature Bartleby and the treasure hidden in the hay), when the farmer who had formerly lost the cart sees it and knocks it over. Bartleby is exposed, whereupon people try to kill him. Bartleby, Phoney, and Smiley narrowly escape. They climb the ladder as Fone and Thorn are coming down, which results in a struggle. Phoney expresses his disappointment, having lost the treasure he so desperately wanted, resulting in Fone getting angry at him for endangering their lives for the treasure. When asked by Thorn, Phoney is able to deduce the location of the Crown of Horns, estimating that it is hidden in the sacred burial grounds of the dragons, explaining why they tried so hard to scare people away from it, just as Tarsil did when he lied about the poisoned water in the well where he'd hid the treasure. Fone then refuses to leave for Boneville with Phoney and Smiley as he'd promised. Then Thorn, in turn, breaks her promise to Fone and leaves the group to search for the Crown of Horns, now with a lead as to its location. With Bartleby's help, Fone pursues her. Fone Bone looks for Thorn on Bartleby's back. They see her running from Rat Creatures by running into ghost circles. To find Thorn while remaining hidden from the Rat Creatures, Fone hides underneath Bartleby, clinging to his stomach fur, suggesting the trick used by Odysseus to conceal his men from Polyphemus. Beyond the Rat Creatures' location, they encounter Thorn as she emerges from a ghost circle. All three climb the mountains to seek the Crown of Horns. At the city, the Pawas are battering the gates; Rose has the door flung open as she and the Veni-Yan charge at the Pawas. Smiley captures the two Rat Creatures who had pursued the Bone cousins throughout the series and has them spared. Fone and Thorn sneak past Roque Ja in order to reach the dragon graveyard, but fail when Roque Ja sees them. He stares at them for a moment, then lets them leave unharmed. Thorn leaves without Fone Bone by facing an army of their enemies and flying over them, forcing Fone Bone to hide under Bartleby again. They continue to the dragons' graveyard, which Bartleby refuses to enter. Smiley has the idea that if he bakes large quantities of food for the two Rat Creatures, they will think that the siege will fail. Phoney and Rose are in a tunnel, leading to Briar's hideout, where they may capture Briar by surprise. Fone climbs down into the huge gorge which makes up the dragons' graveyard. Momentarily trapped in a pit, he realizes that the Rat Creatures are in pursuit of Thorn, and runs to the Chamber of Horns. Thorn goes to look for the Crown of Horns and must leave Fone Bone behind. She reaches the Crown, whereupon the Rat Creatures' chieftain Kingdok appears and tells Thorn to kill him, so as to free him from the Lord of the Locust, under whose control Kingdok thinks himself to be nothing more than a meaningless pawn. Thorn refuses on moral grounds, despite learning that Kingdok was the Rat Creature who ate her parents; therefore Kingdok bites her leg and grips it tight in his teeth. She then impales his skull with her sword, thus killing him but leaving his jaw locked around her leg, stopping her from reaching the Crown of Horns. Briar corners Rose and is attempting to kill her when Lucius arrives and stops her from delivering a death blow to Rose with her scythe. At the same time that this is occurring, Fone Bone arrives to help Thorn and attempts to touch the Crown of Horns himself. At first, nothing happens; moments later, a large number of angry Rat Creatures approach. Fone then takes Thorn's hand, allowing Thorn's piece of the Locust to flow through him to the Crown. He then touches the Crown, triggering an explosion of energy that kills Briar and Lucius along with her. After touching it and having an out of body experience, Bone and Thorn find the Chamber of Horns flooded with water and many noises. Thorn says that they woke up all the dragons and there is no hope of escaping Tanen Gard before the dragons arrive. The Red Dragon flies in, but instead of killing them, carries them out, warning them that his compatriots will not show the same mercy. The dragon jumps out of Tanen Gard, where Fone sees Bartelby and tells him to flee. Ted tells the dragon to go help Gran'ma on Sinner's Rock, who is fighting the enemy. At Sinner's Rock, an out-of-control Mim closes in on the fight. The Red Dragon chases the enemy away, and the other dragons burst out of the ground and envelope Mim, and return to Tanen Gard with her. At Thorn's coronation, Fone Bone realizes that he must return to Boneville or stay in the Valley. As the Bone cousins, Thorn, and Gran'ma Ben leave for Barrelhaven to bury Lucius, Phoney is given his hay wagon that he had lost earlier in the volume (which still has the treasure in it). Phoney continuously claims that he sees snowflakes, being paranoid that they may have to wait until winter's end to return to Boneville. After Lucius' burial, Phoney complains to Fone Bone about the snowflakes, and finally, the snow falls in a huge lump outside Barrelhaven. The chapter is a story originally featured in the Bone Holiday Special. The story shows the Bone cousins, Gran'ma Ben and Thorn celebrating Christmas, which they refer to as the "Winter Solstice". Smiley asks Phoney if (and how) they celebrate the Winter Solstice back in Boneville, with Phoney replying that they celebrate it for "different reasons". He then mentions that he makes a great increase of money during the Winter Solstice. As they dance and play instruments, Fone leaves with a platter in his hands. He walks outside and asks for the "guys" to come forth. The Rat Creatures appear and are prepared to eat Fone Bone, but at that moment Fone Bone presents the platter, which has a quiche he gives to them. He then returns to the house as one of the Rat Creatures asks why Fone Bone did that. The other claims it is a ritual and replies "eat your quiche". After winter, Fone Bone decides to return to Boneville. As the Bones, Gran'ma Ben, Thorn and Bartleby make their way to the Dragon's Stair, they cross a river when they see something move in the bushes. They take out their spears, but then see that it's just Ted and the Dragon. The Great Red Dragon guides them to the Dragon's Stair. Fone Bone says goodbye to Gran'ma, to the Red Dragon, to the insect Ted, and to Thorn. Thorn gives Fone Bone a basket of biscuits and honey, revealing that she had kept it aside until now in hope that he would change his mind and stay. She then tells him "So much has changed since that day we met at the hot springs, and you walked out of the woods with your hat on fire...but not everything changes. Remember me when you're back in Boneville". Saddened by this reminder of their first meeting, Fone shares a hug with her and replies "Oh, I....I'll never forget you Thorn; I don't think I could". Before Fone, Smiley, Phoney, and Bartleby leave on their wagon, Phoney discovers that Smiley has exchanged the treasure for the small cakes of stale bread he prefers. Gran'ma gives Phoney some gold coins, which Smiley had stamped with Phoney's image on the latter's orders, arguing that no one wants them (except Phoney himself). As the Bones and Bartleby enter the desert, Phoney Bone claims to despise the bread cakes, to which Smiley replies that he will grow to like them (since it is the only food they have for the journey). Phoney asks for one; at this, Smiley asks to be given a gold coin as payment. When Phoney refuses, Fone insists, on grounds that they are in the desert. This parallels the joke sequence in Out from Boneville, wherein they had similarly discussed a dollar.
4885963	/m/0cslnr	A Ship of the Line	C. S. Forester	1938	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Hornblower has recently returned to England from the Pacific in the frigate HMS Lydia, having gained widespread fame (but no financial stability) as a result of sinking the superior ship Natividad in battle. As a reward for his exploits, he is given command of HMS Sutherland, once the Dutch ship Eendracht, and which is, in Hornblower's estimation, "the ugliest and least desirable two-decker in the Navy List". He is assigned to serve under Rear Admiral Leighton, Lady Barbara Wellesley's new husband. Throughout, Hornblower is torn between his love for Lady Barbara and his sense of duty and loyalty to his frumpy wife, Maria. His feelings for Maria are complicated by the previous loss of both of his children to smallpox. Hornblower's first orders are to escort a convoy of East Indiamen off the Spanish coast. He successfully fights off simultaneous attack on the convoy by two fast, manoeuvrable privateers. Since he has been forced to sail with an understrength crew, and had to make do with "lubbers, sheepstealers, and bigamists", he breaks Admiralty regulations and presses twenty men from each Indiaman just before they part company. With his ship now fully manned, Hornblower wreaks havoc on the French-occupied Spanish coast. He captures a French brig, the Amelie, by surprise, storms a French fort and takes several more vessels in its harbour as prizes, repeatedly fires upon several thousand Italian soldiers marching along a coastal road, and saves his Admiral's ship from certain ruin by towing it away from a French battery during a severe storm. When Hornblower encounters a squadron of four French ships of the line that have broken through the English blockade of Toulon, he attacks them despite the odds of four to one, and manages to disable or heavily damage all of them. However, with many of his men killed or wounded, including Bush, who loses a leg, and his ship dismasted, he is then forced to strike his colours and surrender. This novel ends as a cliffhanger. de:An Spaniens Küsten sv:Ett linjeskepp
4886068	/m/0cslvz	Dealing with Dragons	Patricia Wrede	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Princess Cimorene is frustrated by her life and persuades the castle staff to teach her fencing, magic, cooking, Latin, and other interesting subjects that are considered "improper" for princesses to learn. The King and Queen take Cimorene on a state visit to a neighboring kingdom. Cimorene learns that they plan to arrange her marriage to an annoying prince. Faced with the prospect, Cimorene runs away. She meets a group of dragons, and volunteers to become the "captive" princess of the dragon Kazul. Kazul assigns Cimorene to cook for her and organize her library and treasure hoard. Cimorene likes her position and becomes friends with Kazul, but finds she must constantly deal with knights and princes who want to rescue her. She hopes that a sign on the road to the cave will keep would-be rescuers at bay. While posting the sign, Cimorene encounters a wizard. Cimorene tells Kazul about her meeting with this suspicious character, and Kazul explains that the dragons and the wizards disagree about the wizards' access to the Caves of Fire and Night. The wizards' staffs absorb magic from any magical sources nearby - including dragons. Cimorene and Alianora, princess to the dragon Woraug, find another wizard gathering herbs near the dragon caves. Cimorene brings a sample of the herb back to Kazul. Panicking, the dragon burns it up immediately, but the inhalation of the smoke causes Kazul to fall ill. The plant is dragonsbane, poisonous to dragons. Kazul sends Cimorene to warn another dragon that the wizards are gathering dragonsbane. This news comes too late as the King of the Dragons has already been fatally poisoned. Although Kazul is still ill, she must leave to compete in the trials to choose the next King of the Dragons. Cimorene hurries through the dragon caves on errands for Kazul, where she meets a prince turned into a living statue. Based on information from the Stone Prince and Alianora, Cimorene realizes that the wizards poisoned the King with the help of Woraug. The wizards plan to interfere with the trials to allow Woraug to win the title of King. In exchange, Woraug will give them access to the Caves and magical items held by the dragons. Alianora discovers a way to melt wizards : Soapy water mixed with lemon juice. With this discovery, and the help of her friends, Cimorene foils the wizards' plan. Meanwhile, Kazul wins the trials fairly and becomes the King of the Dragons.
4886725	/m/0csmzr	Baital Pachisi				 The legendary King Vikram, identified as Vikramāditya (c. 1st century BC), promises a vamachari (a tantric sorcerer) that he will capture a vetala (or Baital), a celestial spirit who hangs from a tree and inhabits and animates dead bodies. King Vikram faces many difficulties in bringing the vetala to the tantric. Each time Vikram tries to capture the vetala, it tells a story that ends with a riddle. If Vikram cannot answer the question correctly, the vampire consents to remain in captivity. If the king answers the question correctly, the vampire would escape and return to his tree. In some variations, the king is required to speak if he knows the answer, else his head will burst. In other versions, the king is unable to hold his tongue if he knows the answer, due to his ego. Regardless of the reason, he knows the answer to every question; therefore the cycle of catching and releasing the vampire continues twenty-four times. On the twenty-fifth attempt, the vetala tells the story of a father and a son in the after-math of a devastating war. They find the queen and the princess alive in the chaos, and decide to take them home. In due time, the son marries the queen and the father marries the princess. Eventually, the son and the queen have a son, and the father and the princess have a daughter. The vetala asks what the relation between the two newborn children is. The question stumps Vikram. Satisfied, the vetala allows himself to be taken to the tantric. The vetala reveals the tantric's plan to sacrifice Vikram, beheading him as he bowed in front of the goddess. The tantric could then gain control over the vetala. The vetala suggests that the king asks the tantric how to perform his obeisance, then take advantage of that moment to behead the sorcerer himself. Vikramāditya does exactly as told by vetala and he is blessed by Lord Indra. The vetala offers the king a boon, whereupon Vikram requests that the tantric's life be restored and that the vetala would come to the king's aid when needed. A variation of this story replaces the vetal with a minor celestial who, in exchange for his own life, reveals the plot by two tradesmen (replacing the sorcerer) to assassinate Vikram and advises Vikram to trick them into positions of vulnerability as described above. Having killed them, Vikram is offered a reward by the goddess, who grants him two spirits loyal to Her as his servants.
4886857	/m/0csn4f	The Clock Winder	Anne Tyler	1972	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist of the story is Elizabeth, a young woman who is taking time away from college to earn a bit of money and discover a sense of direction. By happenstance, she ends up landing in Baltimore near the home of Mrs. Pamela Emerson, a recent widow and the mother of seven grown children. Seeing Mrs. Emerson struggling to store her porch furniture in the garage for the winter, she stops to offer help and ends up becoming Mrs. Emerson's handyman and companion. The story, which spans 14 years, discusses the relationship between first Elizabeth and Mrs. Emerson and then the relationship between Elizabeth and several of Mrs. Emerson's children, particularly Timothy and Matthew. Elizabeth and the Emersons end up changing each other's lives in fundamental ways.
4887106	/m/0csnj6	Andersonville	MacKinlay Kantor	1955	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel interweaves the stories of real and fictional characters. It is told from many points of view, including that of Henry Wirz, the camp commandant, who was later executed. It also features William Collins, a Union soldier and one of the leaders of the "Raiders". The "Raiders" are a gang of thugs, mainly bounty jumpers who steal from their fellow prisoners and lead comfortable lives while other prisoners die of starvation and disease. Other characters include numerous ordinary prisoners of war, the camp physician/doctor, a nearby plantation owner, guards and Confederate civilians in the area near the prison. Andersonville is clearly based on prisoner memoirs, most notably Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons by John McElroy. Henry Wirz, who received an injury earlier in the war and never recovered properly, is portrayed not as an inhuman fiend but as a sick man struggling with a job beyond his capacities. Kantor's novel was not the basis for a 1996 John Frankenheimer film Andersonville. Although Kantor did sell the motion picture rights of his novel to one of the major Hollywood studios in the 1950s, it was never produced. Kantor's novel and the movie of the same name are two separate properties.
4887535	/m/0csp3x	Safe Area Goražde	Joe Sacco		{"/m/012h24": "Comics"}	 Joe Sacco visits Gorazde, a mainly Bosniak enclave in eastern Bosnia surrounded by hostile Serb-dominated regions. Sacco visits the locals and gets a first-hand view of the war's brutal effect on the town. The story of Gorazde develops through the narrations of Edin, a graduate student who was studying engineering in Sarajevo before the war, and other residents of Gorazde. Yugoslavia had been a multi-ethnic country and its cultural pluralism was proudly propagandized throughout the world. Edin and many others recall having fun with their Serb and Croat friends during the Josip Broz Tito era. However, after the death of the charismatic former Partisan leader, the newly elected president of Serbia Slobodan Milošević begins to incite extreme Serb nationalism among the Serb population. By bringing back the painful memories before the Tito era in which bloody conflicts raged between Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, he succeeds in inciting chauvinistic sentiment among the Serbs. The republics of Slovenia and Croatia, intimidated by the development of the situation, declare independence from Yugoslavia. The political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is rapidly deteriorating. The Serbian Democratic Party led by Radovan Karadžić represents the ethnic Serbs and is against disintegration; the Party of Democratic Action and the Croatian Democratic Union, respectively representing Bosniaks and Croats, are in favor of breaking apart from the Yugoslav federation. Bosnian Serbs, fearing that once Bosnia gains independence they would be persecuted by the numerically superior Bosniaks and Croats, organize their armed forces and prepare for the upcoming war. The tension among races is now visible; Serbs and Bosniaks now go to separate cafés. Vigilantes raised from both sides patrol the streets and night for fear of Serb/Bosniak attack. Amid this atmosphere, Edin returns home from Sarajevo to protect his family. The first attack on the community is realized in 1992. Bosniaks are caught unaware, and many lose their family members and loved ones while escaping from the indiscriminate attack. The joint offensive of Bosnian Army and Bosniak militias drive the aggressors back, and the villagers retake Gorazde. They find their homes looted and burnt by Serbs. Bosniaks who couldn't escape and were caught by the Serbs were killed in horrendous manners and buried en masse, amongst them Edin's friends. Refugees who flocked from nearby towns of Višegrad and Foča testify their accounts of atrocities committed by Serbs, among them mass executions, rapes, etc. Residents of Gorazde try to maintain life in the town, now sieged by Serb-dominated areas of Republika Srpska. They suffer from destruction of basic infrastructures, shortage of utilities such as electricity, and hunger. Food supplies airlifted by U.S. C-130s flown from Germany help relieve food shortages, but Bosniaks have to risk their lives in the long winter trail to reach the airdropped packages. In 1994, the town is subjected to a second major Serb offensive. This offensive, orchestrated by the Serb general Ratko Mladić, is in scale much larger than the first offensive, and causes massive destruction to the town. Edin and other Bosniak militiamen desperately try to defend Gorazde from the enemy that outnumbers them. Meanwhile, the international society is blind to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gorazde. Despite having designated Gorazde a 'safe area' from Serb aggression, the United Nations and its military arm in former Yugoslavia, UNPROFOR, make no effort to stop the Serb advance for fear that UN could also be implicated in the conflict and compromise its neutrality. Only after pleas for intervention from the Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović, and the terrible situation in Gorazde reaches media and sparks international indignation do the UN and the United States respond with bombings on major Serb military positions. The bombings stop the attack and the people of Gorazde once again manage to defend their village at a heavy cost of 700 dead, most of them civilians. A contingent of British peacekeepers are stationed in Gorazde thereafter to supervise the disarmament process of the militias. There were also a few Serbs whose loyalties stood with the Republic of Bosnia and chose to remain in Gorazde throughout the war. They were despised by the Bosniak refugees, who lost everything they had at the hands of Serbs; they were equally hated by the Serb militias, who took them for traitors and threatened to kill them. In 1995 Gen. Mladić plans another offensive in eastern Bosnia and takes it into action. The offensive succeeds due to the inaction of the UN peacekeeping forces. Serb forces take Dutch peacekeepers hostages, and assault the towns of Srebrenica and Žepa, both designated 'safe areas' by the UN. Bosnian forces firmly believed that the UN troops would protect them from Serb aggression, hence they were totally unprepared. Both Srebrenica and Žepa fall to the Serbs. Over 8,000 Bosniak males were massacred in Srebrenica, while the Bosniak population in Žepa was expelled. The UN's peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia have failed. After suffering much diplomatic humiliation at the hands of Bosnian Serbs, the United States begins bombing strategic Serb positions. Now the Serbs have turned the rest of the world their enemy; a joint Croat-Bosnian offensive drives most Serbs out of northern Bosnia, and the Serbs return to the negotiating table. Sacco came to Gorazde in the immediate aftermath of these events through the 'blue road', a narrow road opened by the UN peacekeepers that links sieged Gorazde to the rest of Bosnia. The Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats finally come to an agreement, and the Dayton Accords is adopted. Among the conditions for peace, Gorazde is not to be receded to the Serbs and both sides are required to demobilize their troops. Edin and other residents of Gorazde rejoice at this news. However, townsfolk point out that there is still much more to go. According to the agreement, Bosniak refugees evicted from their homes can return to their homes, but no refugee would dare enter Serb-dominated areas without any assurance of safety. Sacco re-visits Gorazde a year later. Much has changed within a year. The 'blue road', which only aid workers, peace-keepers and journalists could pass through, is now open to everybody. Life goes on in Gorazde. A Benetton merchandise shop has opened in Sarajevo. Edin and his friend Riki go to Sarajevo to resume their studies. Edin has no time to waste; he has wasted the most important period in his life in battlefields. He now must get used to everything.
4888676	/m/0csqr4	Brother Fish	Bryce Courtenay	2004		 Brother Fish is a story spanning four continents and eighty years though the story primarily takes place in Australia and Korea. The story deals with the friendship of Jacko McKenzie, a native of the (fictional) Queen's Island in the Bass Strait, and James ‘Jimmy’ Pentecost Oldcorn, an orphan American ex-soldier, who have been meeting at the Gallipoli Bar of the ANZAC Hotel, Launceston, Tasmania for 33 years, since their release from a prisoner of war camp in Korea. In the bar, Jacko reminisces back to his youth on Queen's Island, of the poverty, being the son of a fisherman and a washerwoman, and the characters inhabiting his home town. One of the defining points of Jacko's life was his first encounter with Miss Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, town librarian and indomitable justice of the peace. The librarian would go on to fundamentally influence Jacko's life, starting with additional English lessons during his formative years, as a friend, and ultimately as a business partner. A key feature of the novel is Jacko's recounting of his army days, first as an infantryman who did not see service in World War II (on account of joining up too late), and most importantly, those spent in Korea. It was during this spell that Jacko met Jimmy, an American soldier, and care is taken to delve into the background of the latter. Following their release, the lads return to Queen's Island, where, Jimmy is a big hit with the local girls. During the brief stopover in Launceston, Jacko meets Wendy, the daughter of a local doctor, and ex-finance of one of Jacko's comrades, sadly fallen in Korea and the two eventually marry. As Jacko and Jimmy set about rebuilding their lives, ideally based on starting their own fishing business, they turn to the domineering Miss Lenoir-Jourdan once more. Her own chequered past as a Russian émigré, first to Shanghai, and later on to Australia via Hong Kong, following a dramatic fallout with a Chinese Triad boss is described in detail, and ultimately rounds out the novel. The story concludes with Jimmy and Jacko enjoying their pint in the ANZAC, before going to say their final goodbyes to an old and dear friend, who is dying.
4890752	/m/0cstnz	The River	Gary Paulsen	1991-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Brian Robeson, a 14 year old boy who spent 54 days surviving alone in the Canadian wilderness the previous summer, is hired by the government to repeat his actions again by living in the woods with only a knife and surviving only by his wits, so the military can learn his survival techniques. Though reluctant at first, Brian eventually agrees. This time, instead of being alone, Brian is accompanied by Derek Holtzer, a government psychologist, as the two set off for a remote Canadian location. Though the government insisted the duo take emergency supplies, Brian insists they abandon everything but a knife and an emergency radio, saying that it would be impossible to eat bugs and sleep in the rain if a tent and prepared food is within reach. During their stay, things take a grim turn when their camp is struck by lightning, which knocks Derek into a coma and destroys the radio. Knowing that Derek will die of dehydration long before anyone finds them, Brian builds a raft in a desperate bid to bring Derek down the river to Brannock's Trading Post for emergency aid. Then after Dereck is brought back Brian goes home and his mother is overjoyed.
4891367	/m/0csvsq	Faust Part One	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe			 The first part of Faust is not divided into acts, but is structured as a sequence of scenes in a variety of settings. After a dedicatory poem and a prelude in the theater, the actual plot begins with a prologue in Heaven, where the Lord challenges Mephistopheles, the Devil, that Mephistopheles cannot lead astray the Lord's favourite striving scholar, Dr. Faust. We then see Faust in his study, attempting and failing to gain knowledge of nature and the universe by magic means. The dejected Faust contemplates suicide, but is held back by the sounds of the beginning Easter celebrations. He joins his assistant Wagner for an Easter walk in the countryside, among the celebrating people, and is followed home by a poodle. Back in the study, the poodle transforms itself into Mephistopheles, who offers Faust a contract: he will do Faust's bidding on earth, and Faust will do the same for him in hell (if, as Faust adds in an important side clause, Mephisto can get him to be satisfied and to want a moment to last forever). Faust signs in blood, and Mephisto first takes him to Auerbach's tavern in Leipzig, where the devil plays tricks on some drunken revellers. Having then been transformed into a young man by a witch, Faust encounters Margaret (Gretchen) and she excites his desires. Through a scheme involving jewelry and Gretchen's neighbour Marthe, Mephisto brings about Faust's and Gretchen's liaison. After a period of separation, Faust seduces Gretchen, who accidentally kills her mother with a sleeping potion Faust had given her. Gretchen is pregnant, and her torment is further increased when Faust and Mephisto kill her enraged brother in a sword fight. Mephisto seeks to distract Faust by taking him to the witches' sabbath of Walpurgis Night, but Faust insists on rescuing Gretchen from the death sentence she has been given after going insane and drowning her newborn child. In the dungeon, Faust in vain tries to persuade Gretchen to follow him to freedom. At the end of the drama, as Faust and Mephisto flee the dungeon, a voice from heaven announces Gretchen's salvation. ;The Prologue in the Theatre In the first prologue, three people (the theatre director, the poet and an actor) discuss the purpose of the theatre. The director approaches the theatre from a financial perspective, and is looking to make an income by pleasing the crowd; the actor seeks his own glory through fame as an actor; and the poet aspires to create a work of art with meaningful content. Many productions use the same actors later in the play to draw connections between characters: the director reappears as God, the poet as Faust and the actor as Mephistopheles. ;The Prologue in Heaven: The Wager The play begins with the prologue in Heaven. In an allusion to the story of Job, Mephistopheles wagers with God for the soul of Faust. God has decided to "soon lead Faust to clarity", who previously only "served [Him] confusedly." However, to test Faust, he allows Mephistopheles to attempt to lead him astray. God declares that "man still must err, while he doth strive". It is shown that the outcome of the bet is certain, for "a good man, in his darkest impulses, remains aware of the right path", and Mephistopheles is permitted to lead Faust astray only so that he may learn from his misdeeds. That in itself is his main objective.(1) ;Night The play proper opens with a monologue by Faust, sitting in his study, contemplating all that he has studied throughout his life. Despite his wide studies, he is dissatisfied with his understanding of the workings of the world, and has determined only that he knows "nothing" after all. Science having failed him, Faust seeks knowledge in Nostradamus, in the "sign of the Macrocosmos", and from an Earth-spirit, still without achieving satisfaction. As Faust reflects on the lessons of the Earth-spirit, he is interrupted by his famulus, Wagner. Wagner symbolizes the vain scientific type who understands only book-learning, and represents the educated bourgeoisie. His approach to learning is a bright, cold quest, in contrast to Faust, who is led by emotional longing to seek divine knowledge. Dejected, Faust spies a phial of poison and contemplates suicide. However he is halted by the sound of church bells announcing Easter, which remind him not of Christian duty but of his happier childhood days. ;Outside the town gate Faust and Wagner take a walk into the town, where people are celebrating Easter. They hail Faust as he passes them because Faust's father, an alchemist himself, cured the plague. Faust is in a black mood. As they walk among the promenading villagers, Faust reveals to Wagner his inner conflict. Faust and Wagner see a poodle, who they do not know is Mephistopheles in disguise, which follows them into the town. ;Study Faust returns to his rooms, and the dog follows him. Faust translates the Gospel of John, which presents difficulties, as Faust cannot determine the sense of the first sentence (specifically, the word Logos – In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God., currently translated as The Word). Eventually he settles upon translating it with the very one meaning Λὀγος does not have, writing "In the beginning was the deed". The words of the Bible agitate the dog, which shows itself as a monster. When Faust attempts to repel it with sorcery, the dog transforms into Mephistopheles, in the disguise of a travelling scholar. After being confronted by Faust as to his identity, Mephistopheles proposes to show Faust the pleasures of life. At first Faust refuses, but the devil draws him into a wager, saying that he will show Faust things he has never seen. Despite the message of hope delivered by the hidden chorus of angels: :"Weh! weh! :Du hast sie zerstört :Die schöne Welt, :Mit mächtiger Faust; :Sie stürzt, sie zerfällt! :Ein Halbgott hat sie zerschlagen! :Wir tragen :Die Trümmern ins Nichts hinüber, :Und klagen :Über die verlorne Schöne. :Mächtiger :Der Erdensöhne, :Prächtiger :Baue sie wieder, :In deinem Busen baue sie auf! :Neuen Lebenslauf :Beginne, :Mit hellem Sinne, :Und neue Lieder :Tönen darauf!" :"Woe! Woe! :Thou hast her destroyed :The beautiful world, :By a mighty fist; :She tottered, she hurled! :A half-god beat her to nothing :We bring :The ruins over the void and, :Dirges sing :Over the belost beautiful :More mightily :Earthen children :More splendidly :Build her again, :In your bosoms build her strong! :New life-stories :Commence :With fair sense, :And new song, :To sound thereon!" ::Faust, Norton Critical Edition, lines 1607-1626 they sign a pact agreeing that only if Mephistopheles can give Faust a moment in which he no longer wishes to strive, but begs for that moment to go on, can he win Faust's soul: : "Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen: : Verweile doch! du bist so schön! : Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen, : Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehn! : Dann mag die Totenglocke schallen, : Dann bist du deines Dienstes frei, : Die Uhr mag stehn, der Zeiger fallen, : Es sei die Zeit für mich vorbei!" : "If the swift moment I entreat: : Tarry a while! You are so fair! : Then forge the shackles to my feet, : Then I will gladly perish there! : Then let them toll the passing-bell, : Then of your servitude be free, : The clock may stop, its hands fall still, : And time be over then for me!" :: Faust, Norton Critical Edition, lines 1699–1706 ;Auerbach's Cellar in Leipzig In this, and the rest of the drama, Mephistopheles leads Faust through the "small" and "great" worlds. Specifically, the "small world" is the topic of Faust I, while the "great world", escaping also the limitations of time, is reserved for Faust II. These scenes confirm what was clear to Faust in his overestimation of his strength: he cannot lose the bet, because he will never be satisfied, and thus will never experience the "great moment" Mephistopheles has promised him. Mephistopheles appears unable to keep the pact, since he prefers not to fulfill Faust's wishes, but rather to separate him from his former existence. He never provides Faust what he wants, instead he attempts to infatuate Faust with superficial indulgences, and thus enmesh him in deep guilt. In the scene in Auerbach's Cellar, Mephistopheles takes Faust to a tavern, where Faust is bored and disgusted by the drunken revellers. Mephistopheles realizes his first attempt to lead Faust to ruin is aborted, for Faust expects something different. ;Witch's Kitchen Mephistopheles takes Faust to see a witch, who&mdash;with the aid of a magic potion brewed under the spell Hexen-Einmaleins&mdash;turns Faust into a handsome young man. Faust sees an image of Helen of Troy in a magic mirror and falls in love. Helen appears spontaneously, without intervention of Mephistopheles, or other magic. She reappears in Faust, Part II. In contrast to the scene in Auerbach's Cellar, where men behaved as animals, here animals (lemurs) behave as men. ;On the street Faust spies Margarete on the street in her town, and demands Mephistopheles procure her for him. Mephistopheles foresees difficulty, due to Margarete's uncorrupted nature. He leaves jewelry in her cabinet, arousing her curiosity. ;Night Margarete brings the jewelry to her mother, who is wary of its origin, and donates it to the Church, much to Mephistopheles's fury. ;The neighbour's house Mephistopheles leaves another chest of jewelry in Gretchen's house. Gretchen innocently shows the jewelry to her neighbour Marthe. Marthe advises her to secretly wear the jewelry there, in her house. Mephistopheles brings Marthe the news that her long absent husband has died. After telling the story of his death to her, she asks him to bring another witness to his death in order to corroborate it. He obliges, and finds a role for Faust in the farce. In the previous scene, Faust was not prepared to lie to meet Gretchen. Now he is so controlled by his desire for Gretchen that he consents to lie in order to see her. ;Garden At the garden meeting, Marthe ironically flirts with Mephistopheles, and he is at pains to reject her unconcealed advances. Gretchen confesses her love to Faust, but she knows instinctively that his companion (Mephistopheles) has improper motives. Gretchen presents Faust with the famous question "Now tell me, how do you take religion?" She wants to admit Faust to her room, but fears her mother. Faust gives Gretchen a bottle containing a sleeping potion to give to her mother. Catastrophically, the potion is poisonous, and the tragedy takes its course. ;At the well In the following scenes Gretchen has the first premonitions that she is pregnant. Gretchen and Lieschen's discussion of an unmarried mother, in the scene at the Well, confirms the reader's suspicion of Gretchen's pregnancy. Gretchen is distressed to discover the poor place in society of such women. ;In the street Valentine, Gretchen's brother, is enraged by her liaison with Faust and challenges him to a duel. Guided by Mephistopheles, Faust defeats Valentine, who curses Gretchen just before he dies. ;Cathedral Gretchen seeks comfort in the church, but she is tormented by an Evil Spirit who whispers in her ear, reminding her of her guilt. This scene is generally considered to be the finest in the play, the Evil Spirit's tormenting accusations and Gretchen's attempts to resist them are interwoven with verses of the Latin hymn Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), which is being sung in the background. ;Walpurgisnacht A folk belief holds that in the night between April 30 and May 1, upon the boulders in the Harz mountains, the witches meet in celebration with the devil. The celebration is a Bacchanalia of the evil and demonic powers. At this festival, Mephistopheles draws Faust from the plane of love to the sexual plane, to distract him from Gretchen's fate. Mephistopheles is costumed here as a Junker and with cloven hooves. Mephistopheles lures Faust into the arms of a naked young witch, but he is distracted by the sight of Medusa, who appears to him in "his lov'd one's image": a "lone child, pale and fair", resembling "sweet Gretchen". Gretchen has drowned the newborn child in her despair, and has been condemned to death in consequence. Now she awaits her execution. Faust feels culpable for her plight and reproaches Mephistopheles, who however insists that Faust himself plunged Gretchen into perdition. Mephistopheles accuses Faust of initiating the pact: "did we force ourselves on thee, or thou on us?", but finally agrees to assist Faust in rescuing Gretchen from her cell. ;Dungeon, Gretchen's release Mephistopheles procures the key to the dungeon, and puts the guards to sleep, so that Faust may enter. Gretchen is no longer subject to the illusion of youth upon Faust, and initially does not recognize him. Faust attempts to persuade her to escape, but she refuses because she recognizes that Faust no longer loves her, but pities her. When she sees Mephistopheles, she is frightened and implores to heaven: "Judgment of God! To thee my soul I give!". Mephistopheles pushes Faust from the prison with the words: "She now is judged" (Sie ist gerichtet). Gretchen's salvation, however, is proven by voices from above: "is saved" (ist gerettet).
4892116	/m/0csx0y	The Unlimited Dream Company	J. G. Ballard	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In The Unlimited Dream Company, a man named Blake crashes a stolen aircraft into the River Thames outside the London suburb of Shepperton. Whether he survives the crash, to become a sort of supernatural messiah for the small town, or if he actually drowns, and dying, imagines the whole thing, is never truly revealed. Contradictory hints are scattered throughout the novel which may support both interpretations. Since the story is told by Blake in the first person, we know what he wants us to know, and we are only told what he likes to tell us. In the first chapter of the novel, where Blake outlines his life before the air accident, there are elements that may make us suspect that he is insane, so that he is an absolutely unreliable narrator. Blake has extraordinary powers: he can fly, heal sick people, phagocytize other people whenever he likes; but he cannot leave the suburbs, though he repeatedly tries to go away. Moreover, Blake is obsessed by the relic of the small Cessna aircraft that he crash-landed on, which has been left submerged in river Thames. This might support the hypothesis that he is dead and is only imagining the strange events of the story. However, there is a crucial moment when Blake, who is about to absorb all the citizens of Shepperton in order to gain energy to escape the suburb, is shot by Stark, another loner who manages a rickety zoo. The wound triggers a deep inner change in the character, who gets rid of his cannibalistic drives and becomes more human and compassionate. He then helps other people to escape Shepperton, and remains there alone, waiting for the return of the woman he loves, Miriam St. Cloud. As well as protagonist's name, the novel draws on the works of William Blake, particularly his epic work Milton a Poem in other ways. The surreal descriptions of Shepperton's transformation are drawn in part from William Blake's psychogeographical descriptions of London, while the final confrontation between Blake and the corpse of the drowned pilot (which he comes to realise is himself) echoes that between Milton and Satan at the end of Milton a Poem.
4896961	/m/0ct2hd	Patterns of Force	Michael Reaves		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 One of the leading Star Wars cover illustrators is Cliff Nielson, having illustrated the Jedi Apprentice series covers and several of the 20 New Jedi Order titles. It is to be a mass market paperback. There is not very many details on the book since it is coming out almost three years (or more than that) after the other Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith follow-ups like Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader and the prequel Labyrinth of Evil. It is to deal with characters from the Medstar Duology. It is supposedly the last in a series of three books by Michael Reaves, author of bestselling Star Wars: Clone Wars novels with Steve Perry. It will be preceded by two books that will have reappearing characters from the Medstar Duology, told within the timeline of the Star Wars: Clone Wars series.
4897269	/m/0ct2sp	Facing the Future	Jerry B. Jenkins	1998-07-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In this book the teens help the police arrest three wanted criminals. Pastor Bruce Barnes, found by the teens at New Hope Village Church, is teaching them about the events to come during the Tribulation. The teens and Bruce already know why they are there: they were not true believers. But careful studying of the Bible shows that they can make sure they do not get left behind again on Jesus' second returning, and be prepared for the disastrous Tribulation before that time. But one question still remains... who is the Antichrist? They find out for sure near the end of the book when a journalist tells his nightmarish story of Nicolae Carpathia. *Best Quote: 'Do you think I'm awful?' Vicki said. 'Hardly' Judd said, 'The truth is I think you're pretty special!'
4902299	/m/0ctb7k	Total War: 2006			{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The future history the book lays out begins in 2001 with many minor conflicts taking place around the world, such as the end of the Algerian civil war, victory belonging to the Islamic Fundamentalists; Morocco following suit; and a military coup in Turkey to prevent such a development. Meanwhile the United Kingdom and the USA invade Iraq as the final action of a failing US president whose nation is attempting to draw ever more into isolationism. Next North Korea announces that possesses nuclear weapons; a second Korean War follows closely followed by an attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan which is easily stopped by American air power. In 2003 Russia has a military coup which (officially) restores the communists to power, closely followed by an invasion of the Baltic States resulting in a conventional war with NATO. Whilst the attention of the west is drawn here however Saudi Arabia also has a take over by Islamic fundamentalists. The Islamic Alliance is united behind a Saladin-like figure and forms an alliance of convenience with Russia launching its attack on the West, the principle acts of terrorism being a midget submarine attack on San Francisco harbour and an attack on RAF Brize Norton by home grown Brummie Islamic terrorists. At the end of the book much of the Middle East is in ruins, biological weapons launched by the Islamic Alliance against Israel having been met with an implementation of the Samson Option by the Israelis, with nuclear weapons launched at cities across the Islamic crescent by the dying Jewish state. In a desperate bid to prevent Israel from laying waste to much of the world in its death throes, the US President authorises a nuclear strike on Israel itself.
4904168	/m/0ctf0b	The Lords of the North	Bernard Cornwell	2006-05-22	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 878 - 881: Uhtred of Bebbanburg makes his way back to his native Northumbria seeking revenge against his uncle Ælfric and childhood enemies Sven the One-Eyed and Kjartan the Cruel. He travels by ship with his friend and lover, Hild. They make landfall near Eoferwic (York) to find the region in disarray. Lord Ivarr Ivarsson and his army are engaged with the Scots in the north. The formerly Danish-held Eoferwic has been conquered by Saxons. The central lands of Dunholm are ravaged by Kjartan and Sven, and Bebbanburg remains under the control of Ælfric. Uhtred is hired to escort a Danish merchant's family north, through Dunholm, to safety. As they travel and attempt to avoid the Dunholm fortress and Kjartan's troops, they are unsuccessful and are led into a slave trading camp led by Sven. Uhtred disguises himself as Thorguild the Leper, Dark Swordsman of Niffelheim, and convinces Sven he is sent from the dead to haunt him. He frees Danish King Guthred of Cumbraland from the slave pens. In Cumbraland, Uhtred becomes the commander of Guthred's household troops and adviser. He trains a band of thirty new warriors and stops an attempt by Kjartan to capture him and Guthred. Uhtred supports Guthred's bid for power against the rival factions of Northumbria, including his uncle Ælfric who now rules Bebbanburg. He falls in love with Gisela, Guthred's sister, before being betrayed by Guhtred and cast into slavery. During two years spent chained to the oar of a Danish trading ship, Uhtred befriends Finan the Agile, a former warrior. Uhtred is rescued by Steapa and Ragnar who pursued the trading ship in their Red Ship on the orders of King Alfred. Uhtred returns to Wessex to learn that it was Hild who convinced Alfred to send Steapa and Ragnar to his rescue. Hild had promised to Alfred that she would use Uhtred's hoard of silver to build an abbey and recommit herself to Christ, and in return Alfred agreed to rescue Uhtred. Uhtred, Father Beocca, Steappa and Ragnar are sent on embassy to Guthred with a message to make peace in Northumbria. They arrive in Guthred's court to find that Gisela was married to Ælfric via proxy in return for support against Kjartan. Uhtred is certain his uncle will send no men to support Guthred. He chases off Ælfric's men without allowing them to take Gisela, kills Ælfric's monk Jænberht and leads Guthred's men against Dunholm himself. Uhtred's plan to take Dunholm is to once again become a sceadugengan. In the darkness, he along with eleven of his best men climb the hill upon which Dunholm sits and sneak into the fort through a gate used to fetch well water. Although they are discovered, they are assisted by Ragnar's sister Thyra, who has been held by Sven and Kjartan since the events of "The Last Kingdom". Her assistance allows Uhtred to open the gate for Ragnar with the main forces of Guthred's army to enter the stronghold. Kjartan and Sven are killed and Guthred transfers control of Dunholm to Ragnar. Guthred's claim to the throne of Northumbria is not complete yet. Guthred's army meets Ivarr's stronger force in the field. Uhtred provokes Ivarr into single combat and the novel ends with Uhtred winning the duel against Ivarr.
4904241	/m/0ctf44	The Chasm of Doom	Joe Dever	1985	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In this book, Lone Wolf is charged by the King of Sommerlund to investigate the disappearance of a troop of cavalry. The cavalry, led by a man named Captain D'Val, themselves disappeared under mysterious circumstances while investigating a disruption in the flow of mined resources from the province of Ruanon. Lone Wolf, along with the fifty Sommlending soldiers who accompany him, must uncover the truth surrounding the missing men and stop the resurrection of an ancient and terrible evil.
4904368	/m/0ctfdf	Shadow on the Sand	Joe Dever	1985	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Once more, the reader (Lone Wolf) must set out on a mission bestowed upon him by the king. This time, the mission is a diplomatic one, in which a crucial peace treaty must be signed in the far away desert empire of Vassagonia. But as always, things are more complex than they seem, and peace is elusive. Lone Wolf walks into a trap from which he barely escapes, and he must fight the prime Darklord (Haakon) to regain a secret Kai artefact which will determine the fate of the Kai Order. This artifact is called the 'Book of the Magnakai'.
4904437	/m/0ctfgh	Sharpe's Fury	Bernard Cornwell	2006-08-28	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The action takes place during the winter of 1811; the Peninsular War appears to have been won&mdash;by the French. Cádiz is the only major Spanish town still holding out. From their overwintering strongholds in Portugal, the British sally forth to the River Guadiana with a small force seeking to break a key bridge across the river. The mission is commanded by the young Brigadier General Moon, a man with no love for the upstart rifleman, and meets disaster when Sharpe and the men with him encounter a brutal opponent in the French Colonel Henri Vandal, commander of the 8th Regiment of the Line. Running from this first encounter, Sharpe and his small band of survivors are driven by Vandal into the fortress city of Cádiz, which is already besieged by a French army led by Marshal Victor. In Cadiz Sharpe finds himself in the employment of ambassador Henry Wellesley, younger brother to the Duke of Wellington, who is struggling to keep the various faction in Cadiz united against the French. To remedy this Sharpe finds himself drawn into a deadly game of intrigue between the British spymaster Lord Pumphrey and a shadowy murderous faction that is threatening to break the fragile alliance between Spain and Britain apart. The tensions that have grown up between the British and Spanish allies are heightened by the threat to the city and the only chance seems to be a lifting of the siege. The joint army, led by the British General Thomas Graham and Spanish Aristocrat General Lapena seeks to take the battle to the French; however the Spanish refuse to fight, leaving the British isolated. It also means Richard Sharpe will meet Colonel Vandal for a second time at the Battle of Barrosa.
4904442	/m/0ctfh5	The Kingdoms of Terror	Joe Dever	1985	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In order to fulfill his pledge to restore the Kai, Lone Wolf must first himself become a Kai Grand Master. To accomplish this monumental task, he must retrieve the Lore Stones led only by the wisdom of Sun Eagle, the First Kai Grandmaster. As the last of the Kai, there is little to guide Lone Wolf in his studies, except for a faded inscription in the Book of the Magnakai directing him to seek the Lorestone of Varetta. And so, Lone Wolf sets off for Varetta in the Stornlands, far to the south of Sommerlund, to find this ancient relic and revive the glory of the Kai.
4904487	/m/0ctfkp	Castle Death	Joe Dever	1986	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In his quest to attain Kai Grand Master status, Lone Wolf must seek out and find 7 Lorestones. After obtaining the Lorestone of Varetta in the previous book and absorbing its wisdom and power, the location of the next Lorestone is revealed as the remote township of Herdos. Here, Lone Wolf is directed by friendly Elder Magi to search within the accursed fortress of Kazan-Oud, otherwise known as "Castle Death".
4904565	/m/0ctfpy	The Jungle of Horrors	Joe Dever	1987	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After surviving the perils of Castle Death and being tutored by the Elder Magi, Lone Wolf and the reader now seek out the third Lorestone. The location of this Lorestone is thought to be hidden in a temple deep within a jungle-swamp known as the Danarg. Over the years, this fetid swamp has become the home for any number of evil creatures who seek to protect the jungle and its treasures. To make matters worse, news is delivered that the Darklords have united behind a new leader, and may soon again bring war to Magnamund, increasing Lone Wolf's sense of urgency.
4904744	/m/0ctfz7	The Cauldron of Fear	Joe Dever	1987	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 As Lone Wolf races against time to recover the remaining Lorestones, he learns that the next one resides deep underground, beneath the streets of the city of Tahou. Unfortunately, the war against the Darklords has not been going at all well for the freeland nations, and Tahou is now in danger of falling before Lone Wolf even reaches it. If it falls to the Darklords and their Vassagonian allies before the Lorestone is recovered, the hopes of Lone Wolf completing the Magnakai quest will be thwarted forever.
4904828	/m/0ctg22	The Dungeons of Torgar	Joe Dever	1987	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After discovering that the three remaining Lorestones have fallen into the hands of the Darklords, Lone Wolf and his allies must formulate a daring plan to recover them. It is rumored that the stones are being kept in the grim Drakkarim fortress-city of Torgar, where the darklords' evil sorcerers (the Nadziranim) are searching for the means to destroy them. Once more, Lone Wolf must make haste in an attempt to recover the Lorestones before the Nadziranim can bring about their destruction. The adventure ends with an exciting twist, which threatens to banish Lone Wolf from Magnamund for all time.
4904867	/m/0ctg56	The Prisoners of Time	Joe Dever	1987	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Although Lone Wolf is successful in rescuing one of the captive Lorestones from Torgar, both he and the remaining two Lorestones are blasted through a dimensional portal (Shadow Gate) by Darklord Gnaag. After plummeting through the Shadow Gate, Lone Wolf finds himself trapped on the Daziarn Plane and must join strange allies and face old enemies if he hopes to make his way back from the Daziarn in time to save his homeland from destruction at the hands of the Darklords and their powerful new armies.
4905102	/m/0ctghq	The Masters of Darkness	Joe Dever	1988	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After his struggles in the plane of Daziarn, Lone Wolf finally recovers the last of the Lorestones and finds a Shadow Gate back to his home. Unfortunately, upon his return, he finds that considerable time has passed and that, in his absence, the Darklords have conquered much of Magnamund. Now with all of the Lorestones wisdom absorbed within him, and the hopes of Sommerlund and all the free peoples of Magnamund on his shoulders, Lone Wolf must travel to the very heart of the Darklords' foul realm, to the infernal city of Helgedad, and confront Archlord Gnaag himself. The adventure culminates with a spectacular battle in Helgedad and the destruction of the Darklords' principal city.
4905637	/m/0cthnq	The Plague Lords of Ruel	Joe Dever	1990	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After the events of the previous series of books, Lone Wolf has taken up training new Kai recruits, and under his tutelage, the Kai have been re-founded. Even though peace reigns for the moment, chaos is once again poised to unfold, as a group of Cenerese druids plot to unleash a massive plague upon all of Magnamund. Lone Wolf and the reader must find the source of this plague and destroy it before it can be released.
4905682	/m/0cthrg	The Captives of Kaag	Joe Dever	1991	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Three months after the events of The Plague Lords of Ruel, Lone Wolf learns that his friend, Guildmaster Banedon, has been abducted by a band of Giaks under the command of Nadziranim sorcerers. It is theorized that they are planning to torture him to extract magical techniques which can be united with their own dark sorcery. Lone Wolf and the reader must venture to Kaag, where Banedon is held, and attempt a rescue before he meets his demise, or worse, yields the coveted magical secrets of left-handed magic.
4905724	/m/0cthvn	The Darke Crusade	Joe Dever	1991	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Once more, Lone Wolf's help is sought by a monarch, this time King Sarnac of Lencia. While battling the Drakkarim under control of Magnaarn, the High Warlord of Darke, the Lencians have discovered that Magnaarn seeks an ancient artifact, the Doomstone of Darke. It is feared that he is close to discovering this artifact, and with it, the power to rally the Nadziranim sorcerers and other Darklord allies against Lencia. Lone Wolf and the reader take up the cause of Lencia to thwart Magnaarn's aims.
4905888	/m/0ctj4c	The Curse of Naar	Joe Dever	1993	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In this book you (in the guise of the heroic Lone Wolf) again travel to the Plane of Darkness. Your quest involves rescuing an artifact crafted by the Lords of Light - the Moonstone - from the Dark God's clutches. The Plane of Darkness is a predictably nasty place, and even a being as powerful as a Kai Grand Master may shrink from the challenge. Dare you face up to the Dark God Naar himself?
4906737	/m/0ctkz4	Galaxy of Fear: Eaten Alive	John Whitman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Tash and Zak Arranda are preteen siblings whose parents were killed when the Galactic Empire destroyed their home planet of Alderaan. With nowhere else to go, they began to travel with their Uncle Hoole, a mysterious shape-shifting Shi'ido who studies different species on many planets. With him they live on his starship, the Lightrunner, and learn from their new caretaker droid, DV-9. When they travel to the mysterious planet of D'vouran, they are pulled out of hyperspace, seemingly too soon, by the planet's gravity and crash land at the spaceport. Though Tash feels bad things about the planet, the Enzeen, the alien race who live on the planet, are more than happy to help out with anything they need while on the planet. D'vouran has become a tourist destination and the Enzeen hope to bring more people to live on the planet. When Chood, the Enzeen who personally helps the family, brings them to an inn to find help in repairing the engine, they are attacked and the children taken captive by the forces of Shada the Hutt, who demands Hoole's service. With help from the Rebels who are also investigating the planet, Shada's forces release the children. Outside of the inn they meet Kevreb Bebo, a disgraced pilot who tries to warn the people staying on planet that people are disappearing. When their Uncle Hoole leaves them with Chood while he is studying, Tash sees an alien creature standing over a sleeping Zak. Waking him, they run to town to warn the others, only to find that no one is chasing them. After Hoole speaks to them, Tash stops worrying about the planet and who is chasing them. The next day, Zak, while alone, is attacked by Shada's forces. Bebo is there also, and manages to evade all their laser shots at him. Hoole is eventually able to stop Shada, but Tash convinces him to let her speak with Bebo. He brings her, accompanied by DV-9, to a cave where he shows her a laboratory which had long ago been abandoned. He shows her a seemingly bottomless pit, which she feels there is something wrong with, and he shows her his medallion, a device which apparently keeps him safe from the disappearances. Believing him, she tries to return to the town. He gives her his medallion, but after she has gone, he is killed by one of Shada's guards. As she returns to town, she is attacked by the Enzeen, who have become parasitic monsters, but manages to escape, when an earthquake shakes the ground. Back at town, however, everyone is missing, and she goes to Shada's fortress, thinking he has done something. There she finds Zak in captivity. With DV-9's help they escape Shada's fortress, but are recaptured easily. However, now outside the fortress, Shada, his guards, and the children are attacked by the Enzeen and the planet, as holes begin to open up and take people into the planet. Shada, on his repulsor sled and the children, protected by the medallion, are kept safe, but are brought by the Enzeen to the heart of the planet, the pit Bebo showed Tash. There it is revealed that the planet is alive and needs nourishment and the Enzeen get their own nourishment from the planet while attracting more people to come. The medallion created a forcefield around the wearers that the planet couldn't absorb. When Hoole, who was disguised as an Enzeen, gets the medallion, he throws it into the pit, causing planet to begin to erupt. Able to escape the pit, even as Shada falls in and is absorbed, they finally reach their ship. The ship, however, is unable to take-off as the planet has grabbed hold of it. Losing hope, the Millennium Falcon comes to their rescue and with deft flying by Han Solo, is finally able to escape the planet, which collapses on itself behind them.
4906891	/m/0ctl9b	Galaxy of Fear: The Nightmare Machine	John Whitman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Zak and Tash visit a family friendly theme park called 'Hologram Fun World' to relax while Hoole continues his work. They discover that the attraction, the 'Nightmare Machine', which manifests seemingly harmless versions of your worst fears, is far more than it seems. For one, the voice code to end the simulation is broken. Lando Calrissian appears, interested in purchasing the theme park.
4906920	/m/0ctl9p	Galaxy of Fear: Army of Terror	John Whitman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker, and C-3PO all make an appearance in the book as they attempt to stop Project Starscream. Their appearance in the book is apparently prior to their relocation to Hoth. The shadow creatures inhabiting Kiva were reduced to that state by an accident caused by Gog and Hoole. Little is said about the connection between Gog and Hoole, but they once worked together, which is interesting because they are both Shi'idos. Gog's weapon is disguised as an innocent baby, with a bruise on his forehead, named "Eppon". Many people left alone with the baby mysteriously disappear. The baby also grows at an alarming rate and quickly matures into an adult. When the Rebels find an imperial lab, they also find Gog, who reveals that Hoole's full name is Mammon Hoole, who the Shadows had been talking about. Then, it is revealed that Eppon is really an imperial Bio-weapon. Eppon turns into a giant monster which tries to eat Hoole. Tash convinces Eppon to turn on Gog, who promptly blows Eppon up with a control he had in his coat, much to Tash's dismay. The Shadows burst in to kill Hoole, when suddenly the computer in the lab is turned on, revealing that it was Gog who rigged an experiment to make the power of a star in a test tube fail, and as a result it was Gog who created the Shadows. Gog is promptly killed by the Shadows immediately afterward.
4906936	/m/0ctlbc	Galaxy of Fear: The Brain Spiders	John Whitman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A murderer who carves a K into his victims is imprisoned in Jabba's palace, when the story begins. A prisoner tricks Zak into believing that he is innocent, and Zak lets him escape. This is presumed to be the same murderer. Later, Zak thinks he sees Tash kill someone and carve the same K. This is explained when a brain spider spells out "IM TASH" in sand, suggesting that the murderer's brain was placed in Tash's body and that Tash's brain was placed in a spider. Tash tries to develop her sense of the force at the Sarlacc pit.
4906968	/m/0ctldv	Galaxy of Fear: The Doomsday Ship	John Whitman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 All unfortunate events that took place on the Star of Empire, were orchestrated by a supercomputer (SIM?) designed as a harmless autopilot for the ship. The computer seemingly had its own agenda, when it forced the evacuation of most passengers by falsely warning them of a critical meltdown. The rebel Dash Rendar, meets the protagonists of the story, but Zak and Tash do not trust him as much as other rebels. The computer communicates with Zak and Tash frequently. A large part of the book is written in a font specifically devoted to the computer's speech. Zak and Tash trusted the computer for most of the story and only discovered its sinister motives at the end. Doomsday Ship is notable for having an intentionally unresolved ending. When Tash and Zak, think they have deactivated the computer, it turns itself back on and rectifies its own errors.
4906986	/m/0ctlgx	Galaxy of Fear: The Hunger	John Whitman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Hoole, Tash and Zak are still looking for a place where the Empire won't find them. After losing their ship in an attack by a bounty hunter, they find themselves landing on a certain swamp planet, where they encounter a rather friendly but starving tribe of survivors. Boba Fett is after the group, and in various occasions has them in his grasp. Yoda also makes an appearance in this book, teaching the children a valuable lesson.
4908377	/m/0ctnzc	The Vision	Dean Koontz	1977	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A woman is haunted by visions of the man who tortured her in her childhood, and who also vowed that one day he'll return for her.
4908429	/m/0ctp1w	The Face of Fear	Dean Koontz		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Graham Harris was once one of the world's foremost mountain climbers, until a fall five years earlier left him with a lame leg, a fear of heights...and a frightening psychic ability in which he can see murders as they are happening. Harris lives in New York City, where a murderous madman known as the Butcher has been mutilating young women. While he is giving an interview on live television one night, Graham senses the Butcher claiming another victim. When the madman realizes that Graham poses a threat to him he formulates a plan to kill the clairvoyant. While working late one night in his office building, Graham senses that the Butcher is coming to his floor aboard an elevator. With his girlfriend Connie at his side, Graham begins a long night of playing hide and seek to try to avoid the psychopath's grip.
4908465	/m/0ctp37	Whispers	Dean Koontz	1980-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Hilary Thomas, a screenwriter living in Los Angeles, is attacked in her home by Bruno Frye, a mentally disturbed man whose vineyard in Napa Valley she recently visited. Frye tries to rape her, but she forces him to leave at gunpoint and calls the police. Detective Tony Clemenza tells her that Frye has an airtight alibi... The police called his home and he answered, proving that he couldn't have been anywhere near Los Angeles that night. The next day Frye returns and attacks Hilary again, this time receiving several stab wounds before escaping. She calls the police and once again meets with Clemenza, who tell her that Frye's body has been found and take her to the morgue to identify it. Afterward, Clemenza asks Hilary out, and the two begin a romantic relationship. Hilary is once again attacked by a man who appears to be Frye. "Frye" escapes just before Clemenza arrives, and Hilary tells him what happened. After some investigations, Frye's psychologist, lets them listen to a tape recording of one of Frye's sessions. Frye talks about identical twins being born with cauls on their faces, and says he read somewhere that this was a mark of a demon. Frye has been killing women he believes are possessed by the spirit of his dead mother, who abused him and said she would come back from the dead. He believes that Hilary is his mother's latest "host". Hilary and Tony meet a retired madam who tells them that Leo, Frye's grandfather, brought his daughter, Katherine, there to be cared for after he got her pregnant. Shortly after Leo's death, Katherine gave birth to identical twin boys. The twins were born with cauls on their faces, leading the mentally unstable Katherine to believe they were demons. She raised her sons as if they were one person. They were both called Bruno, and both were rewarded or punished for anything either one of them did. Finally, Hilary and Clemenza return to Frye's home, where he once again attacks them, before being killed during a struggle with Clemenza.
4908539	/m/0ctp6b	The Mask	Dean Koontz	1981	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 An amnesic blonde girl appears in the middle of traffic on a busy day. Carol and Paul, a married couple, are drawn to her, seeing her as the child they never had, they take her in. Then the hauntings begin- ghastly noises in the dead of night, a bloody face in the mirror,and the razor sharp ax. Where has Jane come from? Is she just an orphan in need of love? Or is she hiding something more sinister? Who is the girl behind the mask?
4908574	/m/0ctp7r	The Eyes of Darkness	Dean Koontz	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 ==Character
4908656	/m/0ctpc5	The House of Thunder	Dean Koontz	1982	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel revolves around a woman named Susan Thorton, who wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of her past or how she got there. Her physician, Dr. McGee, helps Susan recover some of her memory, including that of an anti-Semitic hate crime she witnessed years earlier that led to the death of her fiance, but she can't seem to recall anything related to the company where she works or her recent past. Phone calls from her colleagues do nothing to jog Susan's memory. In the meantime, Susan begins having dreams and vivid hallucinations connected to her fiance's murder. The men responsible for the crime show up at the hospital, although they claim not to recognize her and none of them appear to have aged at all, despite the fact that over a decade has passed. The men begin tormenting Susan, who must decide whether or not she can trust Dr. McGee as she tries to discover if the men are ghosts, doppelgangers, or if these horrific experiences only exist in her mind.
4910684	/m/0ctsf5	Darkfall	Dean Koontz	1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jack Dawson is a New York Detective dealing with a variety of situations in his life. His wife Linda has recently died, and that leaves him the sole caretaker for his two children Penny and Davey. Aside from missing his wife very much; he is confronted by an especially brutal string of murders of Mafia criminals. These murders are both grisly and unearthly, seemingly done by animals, although forensics cannot determine any living creature that would simply tear a victim to pieces without actually eating anything. Finally, his partner Rebecca is a woman that does not share his approach to this crimewave. Dawson believes that there may be supernatural or magical factors in the killings, while Rebecca believes this to be absurd. Dawson's instincts are seldom wrong; and although he can't deny the initial absurdity of some kind of magic, alternative explanations are disappearing quickly. In truth these denizens are called forth from hell by a bocor(an evil sorcerer of voodoo). Because of their small size Carver Hampton came to the conclusion that this were just minor devils and the hole to hell is not yet big enough to grant access to greater demons. Though these denizens have different appearance they have similar characteristics such as a number of very sharp claws and teeth and the eyes the color of hot silver. At the end of the novel where Jack is about to arrest Lavelle, he was surprised to see that the pit where this demons pass through has gone so big that it has engulfed the shed where it is concealed. Numerous tentacles have sprouted from the pit and dragged Lavelle to hell. When Jack sees this he comes to the conclusion that this was just a mere finger of a greater evil that was about to come. When holy water doesn't stop the pit from growing, Jack uses his blood from the wound inflicted by a tentacle to stop the pit. He fears that if he fails, he will be forced to sacrifice himself into the pit. The novel ends with all the denizens turning to mud and Jack hearing Rebecca say "I love you Jack" in thin air.
4910689	/m/0ctsfw	Twilight Eyes	Dean Koontz	1987	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with Slim sneaking up on, and killing, a "goblin or beast" on the fair grounds of a local carnival. Goblins are monsters which can shape shift between human and bestial forms, genetically engineered super-predators which desire bloodshed and human misery. Created in an ancient, technologically superior era of human civilization, they exist to torment and ultimately murder humans. They can only be seen by a few people, including Slim himself, Rya Raines (his wife), and Joel Tuck (Slim's friend and fellow carnie). These goblins are superhuman and extremely dangerous and genocidal, at least as intelligent as us, and can mimic human behavior. While they appear and act as a normal person would, they experience only a negative emotions like fear and hate. Their only pleasure is in torturing and murdering humans. Slim's claim to fame is his "Twilight Eyes", which give him the ability to receive psychic, or prophetic, premonitions of the future. They also allow him to see through the human seeming disguise of the goblins. These eyes are named what they are because they are colored purple like the skyline at dusk. After this encounter, Slim proceeds to join the carnival (one of many he has drifted from) as a way to support himself while killing goblins and hiding from his murderous past (in which he killed an uncle by marriage that was a goblin responsible for the deaths of several family members). One of the prominent members of the "carnies" is a young woman named Rya Raines, who quickly becomes his lover and confidant. As their relationship matures, Slim has several more run-ins with the goblins which leads to the revelation that his friend Joel, and even Rya herself, can see the goblins too, and that each of them in their own way has suffered terribly from the goblins actions in their past. It is soon revealed that Rya had long before made a pact with the goblins to report to them whenever she found someone who could see through their disguise in exchange for safety from their predations. She wants him to make the same pact with them, but he refuses. This reality creates a gulf between her and Slim that almost comes to bloodshed between them. She regrets this later and after reconciling with Slim she becomes his wife. They decide to go on a mission to destroy any and all of the creatures they possibly can. Together they set out on a personal mission to wage a secret war against the monsters in a small mining town named Yontsdown, Pennsylvania, the seeming center of their cruel and brutal version of civilization. There they would discover and face the ultimate, diabolical plans the goblins had for the world and all of mankind.
4910776	/m/0ctsmc	Strangers	Dean Koontz	1986	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is about a group of people who are brought together by their different and equally strange maladies. These people gather to meet in the middle of the Nevada 'high-desert' to try to figure out what was done to them, and who could have done it, while at same time being watched by the people who have done this. Altogether they realize that a UFO landed near the Tranquility Motel.
4910784	/m/0ctsnd	Watchers	Dean Koontz	1987-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in Santa Barbara, California. Travis Cornell, a former Delta Force operative, feels that his life has grown pointless, and is exploring a canyon near his home when he encounters two genetically engineered creatures that have escaped from a top-secret government lab. One, a golden retriever with extraordinarily enhanced intelligence, befriends Travis; the other, a terrifying creature known as the Outsider, appears to be trying to kill the dog. After eluding the Outsider, Travis takes the dog home and names him Einstein. Meanwhile, Nora Devon, an introverted young woman, whose abusive aunt recently has died, is attacked in her home by a man who attempts to rape her. Travis and Einstein intervene and the three quickly form a tight bond. Travis, Nora, and Einstein soon find themselves on the run not only from the Outsider, but from federal agents determined to track down the lab escapees, and Vince Nasco, a ruthless professional assassin, hired to kill the creatures and eliminate any witnesses he may encounter along the way.
4910791	/m/0ctspg	Shadow Fires	Dean Koontz	1987	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The protagonist of the story is a woman who is in the process of divorcing her abusive husband Eric, an intense scientist at a bio-research company, when he is killed in a traffic accident. As it turns out, the husband was doing research into immortality, due to an obsession with cheating death stemming from sexual abuse he suffered as a child and the fear that his abuser is waiting for him in Hell. In fact, he experimented on himself using an untested serum designed to grant incredible regenerative abilities. The husband wakes up in the morgue, but his "immortality" turns out to be flawed; it cannot properly repair brain damage, as the "mind" is made of electrical signals and not just flesh and protein. The trauma from the traffic accident has resulted in him suffering constant pain and a lack of mental clarity. The husband, now an unstoppable killing machine, proceeds to stalk his wife across the country while slowly descending into madness and the return from death causing him to mutate at a rapid pace. Rachael and her boyfriend Ben Shadway track the reanimated Eric to his secret country hideaway in the hope of killing him before he can regenerate to a level where he would be able to find and kill Rachael. However, Eric outwits them and manages to hide in the trunk of Rachael's car after overhearing her and Ben in conversation discussing their plan to split up and meet in Las Vegas. As Rachael Leben unwittingly transports Eric toward Las Vegas, she stops off along the way and witnesses Eric emerge from the trunk of her car, now hideously transformed into some kind of indescribable mutant and rapidly mutating. A chase ensues into the desert, but Rachael manages to escape from Eric's clutches while he's feeding on a den of rattlesnakes and finds her way back to her car, setting off again toward Vegas. Some time later Eric kills and eats the driver of a car then rapes, kills, and devours the female passenger before he too sets off to Vegas. Ben Shadway is also being chased by federal agent Anson Sharp, who harbours a 20 year old grudge against Shadway after the two served in Vietnam together and Shadway exposed Sharp's corruption and illegal smuggling activities, culminating in Sharp being dishonourably discharged from the US army. Partners in Eric Leben's bio-research company are also on the tail of Shadway and Rachael Leben to try to prevent them from exposing the top-secret project that the company was working on to the media but are stopped by Sharp's forces. Sharp seeks to kill them both, to keep Project Wildcard secret and get revenge on Ben. After a lengthy pursuit across Nevada to Las Vegas, the couple have their final confrontation with Eric at Ben's hotel. Eric's mutation finally stabilizes into a seemingly unstoppable and unreconizable insectoid form incapable of being slain by the firearms they have. Thinking quickly they pour gasoline on Eric and set him on fire. Consumed by fire, the accelerated metabolism in Eric's mutated body devours itself in an attempt to regenerate and mutate further, reducing his body to ooze and finally killing the genetic abomination but not before Eric's shattered consciousness finally accepts death. Sharp attempts to kill them but one of his own men who realizes how insane Sharp had become shoots Sharp in the head and kills him. With both their enemies dead, Rachael and Ben finally prepare to get married as well as break the story to the press.
4910795	/m/0ctspt	The Servants of Twilight	Dean Koontz	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Single parent Christine Scavello and her young son Joey are confronted in a mall parking lot by a madwoman who claims that Joey is the Antichrist. After a distressing attack on the family home results in her dog being decapitated, Christine enlists the help of private detective Charlie Harrison. Harrison traces a van that is following Christine back to one Grace Spivey—a charismatic elderly woman who is the leader of a fanatical religious cult called The Servants Of Twilight. Christine is provided with bodyguards for her protection; however, it is not long before one of them is killed in an attack by cult members. Christine, Charlie, Joey, and the new dog Chewbacca begin a tiresome cross country journey to escape the deluded members of "The Twilight". It seems that no matter how far they travel or where they go, Spivey's people find them. It is revealed that this is due to Spivey being a psychic who can see into the future, a gift that also plagues her with many sleepless nights. After several more attacks (including a car bomb and an arson attack) the group tries to escape the growing threat of The Twilight by retreating to Charlie's lodge in the mountains. Here, Charlie finds himself falling love in with Christine, and the two end up sleeping together. Spivey is certain that Joey is the Antichrist, and continually has visions of the apocalypse where the child is the cause. Rather than considering herself insane or unjust, Spivey sees her need to kill the boy (as well as anyone that may get in her way) as a service to mankind. Her faith is so strong that she is able to enlist the following of many key members of the community, including police officers and a man named Kyle Barlow - a sociopath Spivey had saved from a life of crime. The Servants of Twilight eventually track the group to Charlie's mountain lodge. After a chase and more gun fights with heavily armed cult members in a treacherous blizzard, the family finds themselves in a cave in the side of a mountain. They are exhausted, Charlie has suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder and Joey develops a serious illness, including hives to the face and a very pale complexion, both caused by exposure to the extreme cold. Kyle Barlow knows he must finish the job, but finds he does not have the ability to kill a child, even if Grace believed him to be the Antichrist. The story reaches it climax inside the cave when Spivey and her last standing helper, Kyle Barlow, begin their descent to kill the child and stop the supposed rise of the Antichrist. Christine has no energy left to fight, and Charlie is barely conscious from his gunshot wound. It all looks very bleak as Grace Spivey raises a gun to Joey's head. Just before she pulls the trigger, however, Spivey is attacked by a barrage of bats who attack her and leave her for dead. The strange behavior of the bats causes Christine to wonder if her son could have caused the attack. The book closes with the end of the ordeal and with Christine and Charlie in a stable relationship. Charlie’s curiosity about Joey grows, as the boy's illness cleared up very quickly and mysteriously. The story ends with Charlie trying to find evidence in the buried remains of the family's original dog. The grave does not hold the remains of Christine's dog but a dog of a different breed, which Charlie finds humorous and concludes that Joey could not be the Antichrist.
4910803	/m/0ctsqv	Lightning	Dean Koontz		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 As Laura Shane is born in January 1955, during a freak lightning storm, a mysterious blond stranger (Stefan) prevents a drunken Dr. Paul Markwell from attending to the difficult and complicated delivery. Her mother dies in childbirth, though Laura is a perfectly healthy, exceptionally beautiful baby, and she is left to be raised by her father Bob Shane. When Laura is eight years old, a junkie attempts to rob her father's convenience store; however the blond stranger reappears, saving them both and instructing them on what to tell the police. In 1967, Bob Shane dies of a heart attack. At her father’s funeral Laura sees the stranger watching over her yet again and begins to think he is her guardian angel, along with an unnamed man calling for her when she tries to follow him. Laura is sent to live in the McIlroy orphanage, where she is housed with a set of twins, Thelma and Ruth, who later become her best friends. She also meets Willy Sheener, a frightening child molester who is also the maintenance man and custodian. Willy becomes infatuated with Laura due to her uncommonly good looks, haunting her wherever she goes in the orphanage. However, due to past experience the twins warn Laura that reporting Sheener, also known as "The White Eel" or "Eel" for short, will do more harm than good. Laura is eventually sent to live with a foster family that exploits her, so she purposely behaves badly and they send her back to the orphanage. After several disturbing incidents, her mysterious angel visits Sheener and brutally beats him. This scares him off for some time, until Laura is sent to live with the Dockwielers, with whom she quickly forms a bond. Sheener comes to their home one afternoon; Laura is able to fend him off and eventually kill him, but the shock of discovering the scene causes her new foster mother to suffer a fatal heart attack, sending Laura back to the orphanage. Shortly thereafter, Laura turns 13 and is moved to another orphanage for older children, and receives the devastating news that Ruth was caught in a fire in McIlroy and died. At college, Laura's creative writing brings her to the attention of Danny, a naive man who has fallen in love with her from afar. After a botched attempt at being her secret admirer they agree to date and over time, fall in love. After their marriage Laura becomes a celebrated author of several books and gives birth to a boy, Christopher Robin. The birth was difficult, making it so she will not be able to have any children in the future. Years later, Danny, Laura and Chris are saved from a horrific accident by the blond man's (revealed to be named Stefan) intervention. The unnamed man shows up moments later. Both Danny and the blond man attack but Danny dies of several gunshot wounds, before Stefan kills the man and tells Laura what to say, like years ago at the grocery store. He promises to return soon and tell more, but due to mistakes, he doesn't return until a year later, wounded, in an isolated stretch of winter woods. Laura and Chris are able to treat him at a doctor they locate in the phone book, but must battle unknown assassins shortly thereafter. The group hides out in a small motel. Stefan recovers and finally tells his story. He is from Nazi Germany in the year 1944, and is part of secret time traveling experiments, sending agents to the future to uncover ways to change the outcome of World War II. Stefan had previously arrived in an alternate version of 1984 and had seen Laura, who was a quadriplegic because of Dr. Markwell's drunken errors during her delivery. However, despite her disability, she wrote beautiful books of poetry which inspired Stefan to renounce his mission, and travel to difficult parts of her life to change them. However, his superior Kokoschka became suspicious of him and followed him, sending the assassins into the future to learn of their path. With the help of Thelma, who has become rich as an actress since her sister's death, they gain many supplies they need. Fat Jack, an arms dealer, supplies them with guns and Vexxon nerve gas. With the aid of modern computational technology, Stefan is prepared to go back to his time. He uses the nerve gas to kill the five men on duty at the time and disposes their bodies six billion years in the future. He makes a jump to see Winston Churchill and convinces him that the institute containing the time machine must be bombed; Churchill agrees. Stefan also makes a trip to Adolf Hitler, to convince the dictator of various threads that must be cleared up, in reality sabotaging the German war effort. While he is gone, Laura and Chris, in an empty patch of rain washed desert, are attacked by more Nazis, as records of a police stop have been discovered. Stefan returns to find Laura and Chris dead. He works around the time limit of the machine by sending Laura a message to save them. Despite this, Chris and Laura still have to battle all four men themselves. The second cylinder of nerve gas proves invaluable. It is Laura who eventually kills all four men pursuing them, as she protects Chris as best she can. In the long months that follow, Laura and Chris are questioned by the police. They soon believe a story of 'drug dealers' who wanted revenge. Laura backs up her story by turning over Fat Jack, something she was going to do anyway (he does not blame her, due to his personal beliefs). Stefan, who had been hiding with Thelma, comes to live with the two again. After even more time, Laura finds herself falling in love with him.
4910824	/m/0ctsrw	The Bad Place	Dean Koontz		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Frank Pollard wakes up in an alley at night, filled with confusion and fear. He knows nothing but his name, and that he must escape fast, or else he will be killed. Pursued by a mysterious assailant, Frank barely escapes with his life. Every time he goes to sleep, he wakes up to find evidence of bizarre nighttime travels which he cannot remember. Afraid of his own actions, Frank enlists the help of husband-wife security team, Bobby and Julie Dakota. At first, the case merely seems absurd, but as they track deeper into the life and past of the mysterious Frank Pollard, the Dakotas uncover an increasingly bizarre and dangerous world threatened by a madman who thirsts for blood. It is ultimately revealed that Frank Pollard is the brother to the mysterious madman as well as twin sisters. They were born from a mother who was the product of an incestuous relationship. Her father was a hallucinogenic drug-abuser and her mother was his sister. She is a hermaphrodite and impregnated herself with her own seed. As a result of this compounded inbreeding, Frank and his siblings developed unusual psychic abilities. Frank, wanting a normal life, tries to escape from his family while being pursued by his brother who seeks to either bring him back or kill him, and nothing will stand in his way. After a message from Julie's younger brother, who has Down Syndrome and possesses minor psychic ability himself, Bobby, Julie, Frank and his family begin speeding into a final confrontation.
4910915	/m/0ctsx4	Mr. Murder	Dean Koontz	1993	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This story has two intervening plots occurring throughout. One of an assassin, who is a clone. Bestselling mystery writer Marty Stillwater was recording himself one day when he realized that he was saying "I need..." repeatedly. When he went back to see what he had been saying before he found out he had been saying "I need" for over 7 minutes. Marty was tense that whole day, when he put the kids to bed though he calmed down considerably and was finally consoled. Meanwhile, the Killer was roaming the streets before his job, when he went into a bar and went with a prostitute to a motel and slept with her but soon after became angry because he felt dirty, and murdered her. Then proceeded to his job. He kills his targets and goes to the hotel he is staying. That night, being restless, he leaves his itenary and goes towards Topeka. Suddenly, he starts saying: The Killer was attracted like a magnet by some force he didn't understand to the Stillwater residence. On his way he killed several people, an old couple for a set of clothes and a gas station clerk for food and to save money. When he breaks into the house he sees a picture of Marty and notices he looks exactly like him. He sees the pictures of the daughters Emily and Charlotte and Marty's wife Paige, he then decides he wants to be the father and husband. He goes to the computer to write a book, but since he can't he destroys the computer. Marty was quite upset about his fugues (a break in one's memory) and so went to see a doctor. The doctor said it was just stress. When Marty comes home he found things misplaced and his computer smashed. The Other than comes and Marty shoots him twice in the chest, but he gets away. Then they fight and the Other gets away. Marty's wife then comes home, and Marty sends them to their neighbour's house. Soon after, the police arrive. Cyrus Lowbock, the detective, interrogates Marty and doesn't believe him, so Marty sends him away. The Killer was hurt so he needed food, so he went to McDonald's and ate enough for six. Then he went to get the women that he thought were his from who he thought was an impostor. He went to the neighbour's house and got the daughters, but as he was leaving Marty came out and the girls escaped to him. The Killer fled again. Drew Oslett and Karl Clocker were going to where The Killer (whom they referred to as "Alfie") had killed two seniors and taken out his tracking device. When they arrived and saw he wasn't there they left and found a picture of Marty in a People magazine and saw he looked exactly like Alfie. They then went to see a contact that might help them find Alfie. After discussing they decided the Stillwaters had to be terminated to look like a murder/suicide and Alfie had to be brought in. Meanwhile the Stillwaters fled to a cabin in Mammoth Lakes and set up to get attacked by The Other. Paige hid under a rock to ambush The Other, but impredictably he ran his car through the cabin. The Stillwaters then fled to an abandoned church. Here Marty is shot and Paige and the girls leave. As The Other comes Drew and Karl track him and enter. Drew kills The Other and is then killed by Karl who rescues the Stillwaters provides them with new identities, a new home and evidence to bring the company down. After a few months Marty mails the evidence to the authorities from an anonymous name thus ending the story.
4910968	/m/0ctszn	Dragon Tears	Dean Koontz	1993	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harry Lyon is a cop who embraces tradition and order. His partner, Connie Gulliver, is Harry's exact opposite. Harry doesn't like the messiness of her desk, her lack of social polish or her sometimes casual attitude towards the law. Connie often urges him to surrender to the chaos of life that is the 1990s. "Look, Harry, it's the Age of Chaos," she tells him. "Get with the times." And when Harry and Connie have to take out a hopped-up gunman in a restaurant, the chase and shootout swiftly degenerate into a surreal nightmare that seems to justify Connie's view of the modern world. Shortly after, Harry encounters a filthy, rag-clad denizen of the streets, who says ominously, "Ticktock, ticktock. You'll be dead in sixteen hours." Struggling to regain the orderly life he cherishes, Harry is trapped in an undertow of terror and violence. For reasons he does not understand, someone is after him, Connie Gulliver and the people he loves.
4910998	/m/0ctt0c	Winter Moon	Dean Koontz		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with a thirty-two-year-old Los Angeles police officer named Jack McGarvey.
4911008	/m/0ctt11	Dark Rivers of the Heart	Dean Koontz	1994	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Spencer Grant is a man with a tainted past and a lovable dog, Rocky, who together embark on a quest to find a life in a woman named Valerie Keene, whom he meets in a nightclub. Grant and his dog come back to the club later to find out that the woman is late for work. When Grant attempts to find her at her home, a SWAT-like team bombards the place, sending Grant into confusion. Grant is now determined to find Valerie. He searches for her in Las Vegas and is pursued by a secret government agency who are also looking for Valerie. He gets caught in a storm in the Nevada desert and is injured. He is rescued by Valerie and she helps Spencer's injuries. Meanwhile Roy Miro, a high ranking official in the agency, is the main antagonist who has been looking for Valerie for months. He and the agency use a satellite to find Spencer and Valerie's location in the desert. Roy and some agents get into a helicopter and corner them into a shopping center. Spencer and Valerie take hostage a helicopter and fly out of Nevada to Colorado to visit the house Spencer had his childhood in. When Spencer was 14 years old he heard a noise in the night and went out to the barn in the backyard to investigate. Inside the barn he found his father torturing a woman and Spencer found a gun and non-fatally shot his father. His father was later sent to a mental hospital. Roy takes Spencer's father out of the hospital and flies to the Colorado house to confront Spencer and Valerie. Spencer's father shoots Roy in the barn, which only paralyzes Roy. Spencer then fatally shoots his father while he and Valerie leave the barn. They use a satellite heat beam to disable the other agents while leaving the house and starting a new life together helping a resistance group against the government agency. it:Il fiume nero dell'anima
4911172	/m/0ctt60	Intensity	Dean Koontz	1996	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Chyna Shepard is a college student visiting the family of her friend, Laura Templeton, for a long weekend. Chyna, who was abused and neglected by her mother as a child, finds the Templeton house provides something she has yearned: acceptance. This comes to a violent end when Edgler Vess, a serial killer, breaks into the house in the night and methodically kills all of the occupants except Laura and Chyna. Chyna hides from him under her bed and waits until he goes downstairs. She searches the house and finds Laura's father shot and tied to a toilet seat, and the mother stabbed to death in the shower. Chyna encounters Vess on the stairs eating a spider before she sneaks into Laura's room. She finds Laura tied up and raped. Chyna sneaks away, promising to return. Before she can intervene, Vess kills Laura and takes her to his motor home. Chyna hears Laura screaming and runs upstairs intending to attack Vess with a knife. Unaware Laura is dead, Chyna sneaks aboard the motor home and finds her friend's corpse. Before she can escape, Vess drives away. Chyna hides in a back room, planning to escape at the earliest opportunity. When he stops at a gas station, she sneaks out of the motor home, and heads inside the gas station to find a phone. Chyna surreptitiously watches Vess boast to the gas station clerks that he is holding a young girl, Ariel, prisoner in his basement, before he kills them and drives away. Chyna feels compelled to follow Vess and help free the girl. She takes an attendant's car, and follows Vess. Chyna passes Vess while traveling through a state park and crashes her car into a redwood tree. While Vess gets out to investigate, Chyna sneaks on board the motor home. By the time Vess reaches his house, he has discovered that Chyna is on board. Fascinated, he decides not to kill her immediately to see what she will do. Chyna breaks into his house and goes into the basement to find Ariel, locked in a room and catatonic. Before she can free Ariel, Vess attacks Chyna in the kitchen, punching her unconscious before binding her with a chain in the kitchen. He taunts her for a while, revealing details about his past and past crimes. Obsessed with the "intensity" of any particular experience, sensory and existential, Vess styles himself as a "homicidal adventurer", and has killed continually since childhood. He offers to allow Chyna to live if she aids him in mentally torturing Ariel out of her catatonia. Then, Vess leaves for work. Chyna escapes from her chains by breaking away from the table to which she is chained and slamming her chair into a wall. She releases Ariel from her prison. Vess has trained a pack of deadly Dobermann pinschers to guard his property and kill anyone attempting to get in or out. Chyna dresses in Vess's dog-training clothing and sprays ammonia on the dogs to get through the dogs and into the motor home. She and Ariel exit the house, and take a vehicle. Chyna sees a police car on the road, so she pulls over to signal it, only to discover that the driver is Vess, the local "county sheriff". In the ensuing showdown, she rams his police car, soaking him and the highway with gasoline, though this fails to kill him as he escapes his car and uses a shotgun to disable the motor home, causing it to tip over. Chyna and Ariel escape the crippled wreck but Vess catches up to them and knocks Chyna to the ground but Ariel continues on, distracting Vess long enough for Chyna to get a lighter she'd grabbed at the gas station. She uses it to ignite the gas covering Vess and the highway before rolling to safety. She catches up to Ariel and watches as Vess meets his end in the flames. They are then rescued by a passing motorist. A few months later Chyna adopts Ariel, who has begun to speak in small phrases and meets a man who she falls in love with.
4911453	/m/0cttkh	Le Cousin Pons	Honoré de Balzac			 The novella was based on a short story by an acquaintance of Balzac, Albéric Second, as Tim Farrant has demonstrated. Its original title was to have been “Le Parasite”. Sylvain Pons, a musician in a Parisian boulevard orchestra, has a close friend in another musician from that same orchestra, the German pianist Wilhelm Schmucke. They lodge with Mme Cibot, but Pons – unlike Schmucke – has two failings: his passion (which is almost a mania) for collecting works of art, and his passion for good food. Schmucke, on the other hand, has only one passion, and that is his affection for Pons. Pons, being a gourmet, much enjoys dining regularly with his wealthy lawyer cousins M. and Mme Camusot de Marville, for their food is more interesting than Mme Cibot’s and full of gastronomic surprises. In an endeavour to remain on good terms with the Camusots, and to repay their favour, he tries to find a bridegroom for their unappealing only child Cécile. However, when this ill-considered marriage project falls through, Pons is banished from the house. The novella becomes a novel as Mme Camusot learns of the value of Pons’s art collection and strives to obtain possession of it as the basis of a dowry for her daughter. In this new development of the plot line a bitter struggle ensues between various vulture-like figures all of whom are keen to lay their hands on the collection: Rémonencq, Élie Magus, Mme Camusot – and Mme Cibot herself. Betraying his client Mme Cibot’s interests, the unsavoury barrister Fraisier acts for the Camusots. Mme Cibot sells Rémonencq eight of Pons’s choicest paintings, untruthfully stating in the receipt that they are works of lesser value. She also steals one for herself. Horrified to discover his betrayal by Mme Cibot, and the plots that are raging around him, Pons dies, bequeathing all his worldly possessions to Schmucke. The latter is browbeaten out of them by Fraisier. He in turn dies a broken-hearted man, for in Pons he has lost all that he valued in the world. The art collection comes to the Camusot de Marville family, and the vultures profit from their ill-gotten gains.
4911853	/m/0ctv7l	Zorba the Hutt's Revenge	Paul Davids		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In order to help Ken become accustomed to the world outside of the Lost City of the Jedi, Luke brings him to Tatooine to experience the "Droidfest." Although they are attacked by Tusken Raiders and bounty hunters hoping to get the reward Trioculus set for Ken, they manage to escape to Bespin with Han's housewarming gift, a housekeeping droid named Kate. Meanwhile, Zorba the Hutt, the father of Jabba, upon learning of his son's death, flies to Cloud City in order to claim Jabba's casino. Although the governor, Lando Calrissian, who has taken over the casino, refuses the claim, he agrees to bet the city and the casino on a game of sabacc. With Zorba marking the cards in an ultraviolet paint that only Hutts can see, Lando lost the city and left after warning Han and Leia. After a series of mishaps, Leia is captured by Trioculus' guards and brought to his factory on the planet and Ken is captured by Zorba. When Zorba learns that his son's murderer is in the custody of Trioculus he proposes a trade. Trioculus, however, won't give up his queen, and although has his stormtroopers ready to aid him, is defeated by Zorba's police force. Ken, however, is able to escape his jailers through a use of a Jedi mind trick and is reunited with Han. Luke is also able to rescue Leia and all are taken aboard the Millennium Falcon before Zorba destroys Trioculus' factory. Thinking that Leia was killed, he taunts Trioculus before freezing him in carbonite. The rebels leave the planet with Han wondering if he'll ever be able to ask Leia to marry him.
4911872	/m/0ctv99	Mission from Mount Yoda	Paul Davids		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 With Trioculus imprisoned in carbonite, the Moffs meet in Kadann's Chamber of Dark Visions to hear his new prophecy on the leadership of the Empire. Kadann spoke in quatrains, prophesying that Trioculus would never again get the blessing to be leader, the new leader is on Duro and finally about the last days of the Rebel Alliance. As the Moffs concoct a plan to retrieve Trioculus' body and destroy it, Luke, Leia and Han fly to Dagobah. The rebels began to colonize Dagobah by building a school, which Ken is to attend, and a fortress that served as the Defense Research and Planetary Assistance Center, DRAPAC. DRAPAC was based on Mount Yoda, and was the subject of Kadann's prophecy When the dragon pack, Perched upon Yoda's stony back, Receives a visitor pierced by gold, Then come the last days of the Rebel Alliance. While there, a Duros, Dustini, brings news that the planet Duro is under attack by Imperial stormtroopers, who are stealing artifacts. Though he managed to save some, one was a golden crown that was booby trapped and stabbed Dustini, seemingly fulfilling the prophecy. As the Rebels send a mission to Duro to stop the Empire, the Moffs destroy the block of carbonite, only to discover it was fake and Trioculus was still alive. In a secret cavern on Duro, Luke, Han and Ken finally encounter Triclops, the true son of Emperor Palpatine. Though the Imperials attacked trying to abduct Triclops, with his help the rebels escaped and brought Triclops back to DRAPAC, with him promising to bring down his father&#39;s Empire.
4911880	/m/0ctvbb	Queen of the Empire	Paul Davids		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 When a demonstration of a "decoy" Human Replica Droid of Leia goes wrong and the droid shoots a scientist, Han and Leia are forced to fly him to his home planet of Chad to get treatment. When they reach the planet's hospital a hurricane is ravaging it. After Han is able to bring the scientist to the doctors, he is trapped by falling rubble caused by the storm. When Leia eventually saves him, he reveals that the experience scared him that he wouldn't be able to reveal his big plans. Upon leaving the scientist in the doctors' care, Han proposes to Leia and they plan on eloping at Hologram Fun World, an amusement park. With the help of the new owner of the park, Lando Calrissian, they plan a wedding and visit many hologram attractions, including a trip through the Alderaan of Leia's memories. While they are at the park, one of Zorba the Hutt's spies in the park tells him that Leia is alive and he plans on capturing her and killing her on Tatooine as she did to his son. With some help, he manages to capture her during a magic show and take her to his ship, with the carbonite-frozen body of Trioculus, for the trip to Tatooine. Zorba's ship, however, is captured by the Moffship of Grand Moff Hissa. When they discover Trioculus is still alive, he is quickly unfrozen and only spares Zorba's life when Zorba reveals where Leia is. Hoping to turn Leia to his side, Trioculus drops Zorba into the Pit of Carkoon into the mouth of the Sarlacc. While Trioculus makes plans to marry Leia, Han and Lando, joined by Luke, Ken and the Human Replica Droid of Leia are able to infiltrate the Moffship and plan a rescue operation. They rescue Leia and are able to replace her with the Human Replica Droid, who goes to the wedding in Leia's place. While the Millennium Falcon escapes, the droid's lasers pierce Trioculus' heart. As he lay dying, unbeknownst to anyone, Zorba crawled out of the Sarlacc, as no creature in the universe can digest a Hutt.
4911894	/m/0ctvcq	Prophets of the Dark Side	Paul Davids		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 As Trioculus lay dying he made Grand Moff Hissa promise that he would make Luke Skywalker and the rest of the Rebels pay for killing him. Meanwhile, at the Rebel base, they realize that Triclops, while sleepwalking, goes through files at the base and transmits them, through an implant on his tooth, to Imperial probe droids which are evading defenses. Leia proposes that a defense probe be built from plans found at the Lost City of the Jedi. These plans happen to be from Ken's homework assignments, prompting him and Luke to return to the city. While there, Ken's caretaker Dee-Jay and the other droids tell them about a decoy transport to the city that now leads to an underground sea of lava and also warn them of a prophecy by Supreme Prophet Kadann which says When the Jedi Knight Becomes a captive of Scardia Then shall the Jedi Prince Betray the Lost City. While they return to the Rebel base on Yavin, Zorba the Hutt has a meeting with the Prophets of the Dark Side in their space station Scardia. He tells of the grand moffs betrayals and plans of making Trioculus leader once again. When the Moffship is captured, they are put to trial, and surprised to see Zorba as the main witness. All of the moffs are sentenced to certain death, with Hissa&#39;s being the cruelest, as the loyalest supporter of Trioculus. Back on Yavin 4, Luke decides to give Triclops false information about the decoy transporter. In order to stop the information leak altogether, Luke, Ken, and Chewbacca went to the planet Arzid to find a mushroom to deactivate the implant. While there they are captured by Imperial stormtroopers and brought to the Prophets. Kadann, using the false information from Triclops, sends Hissa to his death in the decoy transport and threatens that he will send Luke if Ken doesn&#39;t betray the location of the real transport. He also promises Ken that he will reveal who his father was. With that motivation, Ken betrays the city and is brought with the Prophets to it. There Kadann reveals that Ken&#39;s father is Triclops meaning his grandfather was the Emperor. Not wanting to believe them and crying, Ken is told that he will be bred to be the new Emperor and will know the Dark Side of the Force. Meanwhile, Luke, finally able to get free of his guards and rescued by Han and the others, is able to sneak into the city through a steam vent. He rescues Ken, but not before the city is shut down by the Imperials and an earthquake destroys the main computer. Although Luke and Ken are able to reach the surface, Kadann and the other prophets are trapped in the city. Ken is able to come to terms with his parentage, but is unable to speak to his father about it, as Triclops manages to escape and evade capture in the forests of Yavin. The story ends with Leia, preparing for her wedding and seeing a vision of Han with their two children, wondering if they are twins.
4913305	/m/0ctx74	Second Chance			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After splitting up from the church, Judd Thompson and Vicki Byrne go together to O'Hare International Airport to get Judd's car. Along the way they pray to receive Christ as a taxi driver drops them off three miles from the airport. They band together as brother and sister in their new faith in the early hours of the morning. Finding the parking lot hopelessly gridlocked they finally get the car out around four in the morning. Vicki asks Judd to take her to her trailer park where she hopes to stay. Finding her trailer burned to the ground, she has no choice but to stay with Judd at his house. Meanwhile, Lionel (who was the first to receive Christ) finds Ryan after he ran out of the church not wanting to hear that his parents are in Hell. They team up and go to Ryan's house, where they set up a tent in the back yard. Next, they head over to Lionel's house, a few miles away, to grab some of his clothes and stuff. There Lionel finds a voicemail message from his Uncle Andre telling Lionel He's sorry and is going to kill himself. Not wanting that to happen, he and Ryan ride their bikes down to the hotel that Andre was staying in only to find his Uncle being taken out in a body bag. Scared and now without any family, They go back to Ryan's house and spend the night in the back yard because Ryan is too scared to go in. The next day he convinces Ryan to go to his house to live. But after they get there they find that the house has been taken over by "friends" Of Andre. He goes and grabs some stuff and bolts out of there. They then go to the church where they meet up with Judd and Vicki. After telling Bruce their good news Lionel and Ryan decide to move in with Judd.
4915976	/m/0cv0g1	The Ruling Class	Francine Pascal	2004	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book centers around a 16-year old girl, Twyla Gay Stark, . She soon transfers to a new town and a new school in a wealthy neighborhood, Highland Park High, where the rich and nasty strut around in designer labels. The worst happens when Twyla Gay runs afoul of the resident bitch clique, led by the beautiful, intimidating and rich Jeanette Sue and bringing in the rear of the vicious pack is Myrna Fry, a "hanger-on" who is shallow, ignorant, racist and no backbone, the kind of girl you just love to hate. Jeanette Sue and her cohorts at first pretend to be friends with Twyla Gay, until a wicked prank almost has Twyla Gay raped and killed at the local mall at night. Encouraged by the fact that Twyla Gay likes Jeanette Sue's boyfriend Ryder, the bullying becomes even worse, with Jeanette Sue marginalizing the fact that Twyla Gay is poor. She also turns everyone against the helpless Twyla Gay, make online websites to bash on her and practically chasing her out of school. Twyla Gay considers dropping out, until she runs into the school outcast, Deena, another victim of the in crowd, who has been labeled slut. Together the two girls vow to exact revenge on Jeanette Sue and her entourage, by gathering other social rejects of the school and silently retaliating. Pessimistic at first, Twyla Gay and Deena's team eventually learn respect, trust and to stand up for themselves, and realize that Jeanette Sue is controlling the school with her mentality and peer pressure. They break out of their fear and intimidated state and it all leads to a showdown in the school between the all the students (everyone who isn't with The Ruling Class) and Jeanette Sue's clique itself. <!-
4916504	/m/0cv1bm	The Crack in Space	Philip K. Dick	1966	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 On a future Earth (c.2080 CE) overwhelmed with severe difficulties related to overpopulation, a portal is discovered that leads to a parallel world. Jim Briskin, campaigning to be the first Negro president of the United States, believes that the new "alter-Earth" could be colonized and become a home for the seventy million people that are being kept in cryopreservation. Known as bibs, these are people - mostly non-caucasians - who decided to be "put to sleep" until a time when the overpopulation problem is solved. Briskin is a social conservative, who does not support the Golden Doors of Bliss orbital brothel, and opposes widespread abortion access. There are two dominant US political parties, the "Republican Liberals" and the "States Rights Conservative Democrats" who run CLEAN, a racist frontgroup that opposes Briskin's candidacy, although higher-income white American voters support him. Terraforming becomes a pivotal election issue, until a warp drive malfunction in a "'scuttler" tube results in the discovery of an apparently uninhabited alternate world, an 'alter-Earth' where homo sapiens either never evolved or lost in competition with other early hominids. In this case, the point of divergence appears to have occurred between one to two million years ago, as homo erectus, also known as sinanthropus/pithecanthropus or Peking Man, is the dominant species. In reference to the latter designation, the explorers refer to the indigenous hominids of this world as "Pekes." There is a hasty initial colonization attempt. The minimum time period necessary for all of the tens of millions of "bibs" to emigrate is estimated to be twenty years. In order to cut this down to 5 years the rift is temporarily closed so a new power supply can be installed which will theoretically quadruple the width of the rift. When this action is completed, however, it is discovered that one hundred years has elapsed in the parallel world. During this time the conjoined twin businessman George Walt, who had run the Golden Doors of Bliss satellite brothel, had emigrated into the parallel world during initial colonization and set himself up as a "wind god". He spent those hundred years teaching and filling in technological gaps in the Peke's world as well as learning many new ideas from them. He also apparently assisted in sabotaging the colonization effort, as it would not exactly be in his own best interest were word to leak out that he was merely a mutated homo sapiens. After all the decades-consuming preparations have been completed, however, George Walt eventually sets a trap so that whenever the rift eventually re-opens, the "Pekes" can power it from their side and keep it from closing. This procedure allows the Pekes to begin an invasion of Earth, but they abruptly depart en masse when it is finally revealed, as George Walt originally feared, that their wind god is actually just a wind bag; that is to say, he's just another lying, deceiving, untrustworthy member of the species homo sapiens. The colonization attempt from Earth is thereby aborted, and Briskin, being newly elected, is left at the story's end to deal with the consequences during his next two presidential terms.
4917454	/m/0cv2y4	Tyrannosaur Canyon	Douglas Preston	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel opens with a lunar find by the Apollo 17 astronauts, which is suppressed. Tom Broadbent (who first appeared in Preston's novel The Codex) is riding in the New Mexico desert when he hears gunshots coming from Tyrannosaur Canyon (a fictional canyon east of the Rio Chama Gorge, on Mesa Viejo, and north of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert). Following the sound, he comes upon an old prospector who has been shot by a sniper. He gives Tom a notebook just before he dies, and Tom rides off on his horse to find help. The murderer, Jimson Maddox, is furious that the notebook is gone by the time he reaches the body; he has been hired to retrieve it at any cost. He does, however, find an interesting rock sample. When Tom returns to Tyrannosaur Canyon with the police, the prospector's body has disappeared without a trace. The notebook is filled with numbers, some kind of code Tom is unable to decipher. He brings the book to Wyman Ford, a monk in training at a nearby monastery. Ford is a retired CIA analyst and he takes the notebook to try to decipher it. Ford discovers that the numbers are not a code but a sequence of ground-penetrating radar readings. When processed, they form the image of a fully intact Tyrannosaurus. The rock sample Maddox found turns out to be a fragment of the Tyrannosaurus. Maddox's employer, Iain Corvus, is a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and he convinces a lab assistant, Melodie Crookshank, to examine the sample in secret. Corvus intends to steal her research, acquire a permit to excavate the Tyrannosaur, and thus secure tenure at the museum, as well as wealth and fame. Melodie discovers tiny particles within the sample which she calls "Venus particles". Upon making this discovery, Melodie calls Corvus to describe it to him, and the NSA hears the call. They initiate a black op led by J.G. Masago to cover up evidence of the particles, kill any witnesses, and retrieve the specimen. Meanwhile, Ford goes into the desert to look for the dinosaur. At the same time, desperate to recover the notebook, Maddox kidnaps Tom Broadbent's wife. He takes her to an abandoned mine to use as a bargaining chip, forcing Tom to hand over the notebook. Now that Maddox has the notebook, however, he intends to kill Sally so he can not be identified. She manages to break free, Tom rescues her, and the two of them escape into the desert on foot, pursued by Maddox and his rifle. Masago infiltrates the museum and kills Corvus, stealing the samples and his research. But Melodie, realizing previously that Corvus would try to steal the credit from her, had made copies of everything and hid them, along with more samples of the dinosaur. When she sees that he has been murdered and that his work is missing, she realizes she is the next likely target. Her only chance is to complete the research and post it to the Internet, so killing her would no longer serve the purposes of a cover-up. During her final research, she discovers that the 65-million-year-old Venus particles are still alive. They are a type of virus that destroys the cell structure of reptiles, evidently introduced to the earth by the Chicxulub meteorite. She posts her findings to the web to show the world. Back in the desert, the black ops team has tracked Ford down, and Maddox is gaining on Tom and Sally. They manage to overpower Maddox and kill him, retrieving the notebook, and Ford leads them out of the canyon in an effort to evade the government assassins. Trapped in an old Anasazi cave, they discover the partially excavated Tyrannosaurus Rex. Ford convinces Masago's team to turn on him. Masago tells them about the Venus particles, which had also been found on the moon, thus establishing convincingly their extraterrestrial origin. All leave in a helicopter. Masago breaks free and causes the helicopter to crash, killing most on board. Tom, Sally, Ford, and Masago's former right-hand man escape alive. By the time they arrive with news about the dinosaur's location, Melodie's research has spread across the Internet. All those involved are made famous, including Robbie Weathers, the old prospector's daughter. The Smithsonian Institution funds a program to research the Venus particles and the dinosaur itself and the theory is raised that the particles may have been intentionally developed by an alien race to destroy the dinosaurs and allow humans to begin their evolution.
4918085	/m/0cv3vg	Dance of Death	Lincoln Child	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book follows FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast and his sidekick, Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta. Pendergast was last seen at the end of the first novel, Brimstone, where he was buried alive behind a brick wall in Castel Fosco. His estranged brother, Diogenes, rescues him and nurses him back to health. However this is not a true act of kindness; Diogenes has a dark agenda and needs his brother alive in order to carry out his nefarious plans. Pendergast's ward Constance Greene requests Vincent D'Agosta's presence for a very important meeting. D'Agosta is shown a letter written many months previously by Pendergast about his brother Diogenes. In the letter, Pendergast writes that he does not know of Diogenes's whereabouts, but does in fact know one thing—a date, January 28. D'Agosta presumes that this will be the date of Diogenes's greatest crime. Having been hated by and hating his family, Diogenes obviously cannot be trusted.
4918578	/m/0cv4ql	Air	Geoff Ryman	2004-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Air is the story of a town's fashion expert Chung Mae, a smart but illiterate peasant woman in a small village in the fictional country of Karzistan (loosely based on the country of Kazakhstan), and her suddenly leading role in reaction to dramatic, worldwide experiments with a new information technology called Air. Air is information exchange, not unlike the Internet, that occurs in everyone's brain and is intended to connect the world. After a test of Air is imposed on Mae's unprepared mountain town, everyone and everything changes, especially Mae who was deeper into Air than any other person. Afterwords, Mae struggles to prepare her people for what is to come while learning all about the world outside her home.
4918763	/m/0cv4_z	Flying Colours	C. S. Forester	1938	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At the end of the previous novel, A Ship of the Line, after attacking and severely damaging a superior French squadron with HMS Sutherland, Hornblower had to surrender his ship to the French. He and his surviving crew are imprisoned in the French-occupied Spanish fortress of Rosas on the Mediterranean Sea. From the walls of Rosas, Hornblower witnesses an English raid leading to the final destruction of the French ships he immobilized. Soon afterwards, Hornblower is told that he is to be sent to Paris to be tried as a pirate for his previous actions, including the capture of a battery and some coastal vessels using a ruse of war. Hornblower, his first lieutenant, Bush, who is still recovering from the loss of a foot in the fighting, and his coxswain, Brown, are taken away in a carriage by an Imperial aide-de-camp. The carriage becomes stuck in a snowstorm on a minor road close to the river Loire, and part of the escort leaves to get help from Nevers, the next town. Hornblower and Brown overpower the remaining guards and steal a small boat on the river. Taking Bush with them, they set out downstream, but the river is in spate, and the boat eventually capsizes in some rapids. Hornblower and Brown carry Bush towards the nearest building, which happens to be the Chateau de Graçay. The Comte de Graçay, a member of the old French nobility who has lost three sons in Napoleon's wars, and his widowed daughter-in-law Marie, welcome them and protect them from the authorities, who eventually abandon the search thinking them drowned. The party spends the winter as guests of the Comte and prepare for an escape in late spring. During these months, Bush recovers and learns to walk with a wooden leg. Hornblower, Bush and Brown build a new boat to continue their voyage downstream. Meanwhile, Hornblower and Marie have a short but intense love affair. Springtime comes and the river is in perfect condition for travel. Disguised as a fishing party, the escapees make their way to the port city of Nantes. There, they change their disguise to that of high-ranking Dutch customs officers in French service, using uniforms made for them by Marie and the staff of the Chateau. They manage to recapture the cutter Witch of Endor, taken as a French prize the year before. Manning it with a prison work gang, they take the ship out of the harbour and rendezvous with the British blockading fleet. Here, Hornblower learns that his wife Maria had died in childbed; his son, Richard, survived and was adopted by his friend Lady Barbara, widow of Admiral Leighton and sister of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. Returning to Portsmouth, Hornblower, in common with any other captain who has lost his ship, faces a court martial for the loss of the Sutherland. However, he is 'most honourably' acquitted by the court and finds himself a celebrity for his exploits in the Mediterranean and his daring escape from France. He is received by the Prince Regent (the later King George IV), who makes him a knight of the Order of the Bath and a Colonel of Marines (a sinecure providing worthy officers with extra income). Together with the money from prizes taken while he was captain of the Sutherland and from his recapture of the Witch of Endor, he is finally financially secure and free to court and marry Lady Barbara. sv:Triumf
4919633	/m/0cv698	Wolf's Bane	Joe Dever	1993	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Lone Wolf learns that the evil god Naar has created an evil doppelganger of himself, the champion of the forces of good on Magnamund. A cat and mouse game between the two warriors ensues, which leads both across a world claimed by Naar.
4923084	/m/0cvcyr	Sole Survivor	Dean Koontz	1997	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel centers around Joe Carpenter, a man who lost his wife and two daughters in a plane crash the year prior. Joe has never been able to fully cope with their deaths, and on the one year anniversary, meets a strange woman named Rose, claiming to be a survivor of the crash even when none were reported. Rose promises to tell Joe the truth, but just not yet. Finally acknowledging that the story of the crash never fully made sense to him, Joe begins seeking answers as to what really happened on that night, discovering that some may be interested in stopping him even if it means taking his life. There is a large number of suicides of family of the crash victims, which for a while convinces Joe that Rose is somehow getting them to kill themselves with a picture of a gravestone. This leads him to a development involving his dead daughter and a laboratory developed girl, CCY 21-21, with healing powers who looks like his daughter and who wants to live the life she was never able to. This girl can heal, and give hope to anyone she touches. The only weakness is that she cannot heal herself if she is hurt. Rose had been keeping this girl safe until her healing powers and full potential have matured, until Rose gets shot by agents who are attempting to kill her, and the girl. Another experiment, SSW-89-58, has the power to telepathically see, and know things through looking at pictures of places, also being able to control the minds of living beings in that area. The plane crash, as it turns out, was a plan to kill Rose because she had smuggled 21-21 out of the compound. 89-58 was forced to take over control of the pilot, in an attempt to kill everyone on the plane. The plane crashed but the girl and Rose escaped, and were on the run.
4923088	/m/0cvcz2	Fear Nothing	Dean Koontz		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Fear Nothing, told in the first person, follows 24 hours of Christopher Snow's life, as he discovers and attempts to unravel a mysterious and seemingly endless conspiracy centered around a military compound called Fort Wyvern. The book opens with Christopher Snow going to visit his dying father at the hospital. As Snow enters, the lights are thoughtfully dimmed to protect him in his condition. As Christopher’s father is near to death he manages to say a few words, including the title advice “fear nothing”. Shortly after, Christopher's father dies. Snow discovers before leaving the hospital his father’s body has been switched with that of a drifter. Following the people taking the body to the funeral home, Christopher is nearly found out and a wild manhunt begins. Christopher is chased through to the outskirts of town and only his knowledge of the landscape of night keeps him ahead of his pursuers. When he reaches a dead-end in a deserted hollow, he encounters Mungojerrie, an extremely intelligent and very precocious cat. Later, upon returning home, Christopher finds his father's gun on his bed, and an urgent message on his answering machine to call Angela Ferryman, a nurse and lifelong family friend. Orson, the family dog, is found busy (uncharacteristically) digging holes in the garden. Christopher stops the pet and brings Orson along with him to see Angela, who reveals some of the town’s deep secrets, including a night several years ago when she encountered a strange rhesus monkey in her house, a terrifying creature which is recovered by mysterious military personnel. Before more is revealed, Angela is killed while in another room, and Chris barely escapes when unknown assailants set the house on fire. Christopher sets off on his bicycle, with Orson following, to the home of his best friend Bobby Halloway, a surfer who lives in a cottage on the edge of town, near to the sea. Upon hearing Chris’ story, Bobby urges Christopher to leave the mystery alone and continue life as normal. The friends share some food and a few beers (including the dog). Their meal is interrupted by Sasha, Christopher's girlfriend, who calls with a message from another friend of Christopher. The message sends him and Orson off on a race into the mist of the night, where they are followed by a group of mutated Rhesus monkeys which are led by a shadowy figure of a half-man, half-beast. As Christopher meets with Roosevelt Frost, an ex-football player who now focuses on a talent of communication with animals, Christopher is again warned off his investigation yet feels compelled to unravel this mystery. Frost hints at unusual, uncommonly intelligent animals escaping from the military base. He cryptically mentions that Christopher is protected by the legacy of his mother.
4923105	/m/0cvd04	False Memory	Dean Koontz	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Martie Rhodes helps her friend Susan Jagger, who suffers from agoraphobia, attend visits to psychologist Dr. Ahriman. Martie's husband, Dusty Rhodes, tries to help his brother Skeet, by providing employment in his roofing business. Skeet was in rehab for drug use, and when he first appears in the story, he is high and tries to commit suicide by jumping off a roof. Dusty decides to take him back to rehab due to drug overdose. Martie suddenly develops a mysterious case of autophobia, fear of oneself, and returns home to find herself frightened by her own reflection. Later, her condition worsens, and soon she becomes afraid of pointed objects, although she is actually afraid of the harm she might cause with them. When Dusty leaves Skeet at the rehab center, he notices a shadow lurking in his brother's room window. From this point on, strange things begin happening to both Dusty and Martie, involving Skeet, Martie's autophobia, and hypnotism. The couple eventually discovers that they've both been progressively brainwashed and programmed to obey Dr. Ahriman, a sexual psychopath who drugs and indoctrinates his patients, then either repeatedly rapes them or orders them to commit murders or suicide for his amusement. Dr. Ahriman orders Susan to commit suicide by slitting her wrists after discovering that she videotaped him raping her. The doctor has also programmed Skeet, which explains his inability to fully recover from drug use and distorted thinking. Dr. Ahriman establishes control, sending patients almost instantly into a detached state of consciousness by stating a name and then reading them a short haiku. He tries to justify this by stating that, by ordering certain patients to commit horrific crimes—mass murders, bombings, random shootings—he can force legislation in order to make the world a "better place." Dr. Ahriman is eventually killed by another patient, who had a fear of Keanu Reeves, based on his character in The Matrix. The woman believes that Dr. Ahriman is one of the Machine agents trying to control her. Dusty and Martie, receiving a substantial inheritance from Martie's friend Susan, slowly begin to restore their shattered lives.
4923119	/m/0cvd15	One Door Away from Heaven	Dean Koontz	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A shapechanging alien has come to Earth with others of his kind to save us from ourselves. After witnessing the slaughter of his entire family by evil aliens bent on stopping him, he takes off on a cross-country race to save himself. He stops at a farmhouse in the middle of the night to "borrow" some money and clothes, and comes across a sleeping boy about his age. Using a drop of blood from an old bandage, he is able to "become" Curtis Hammond, the exact duplicate of the boy. Seconds after leaving the house, the evil aliens arrive and murder the family, leaving only the dog alive. Curtis and the dog escape, and eventually end up at the location of an alien sighting. UFO buffs Castoria and Polluxia Spelkenfelter, twins, recognize Curtis from the news reports of his murder and decide to help him. Eventually he reveals to them his true nature, and they pledge to assist him in the mission he has come to Earth to complete. Together, twins, boy, and dog set off for Nun's Lake, Idaho, the next stop on the twins' itinerary while they decide what to do next. Michelina Bellsong just got out of prison. She has moved in with her Aunt Geneva in order to make a new start, but things aren't going her way. She feels adrift and without direction, just wanting to get through the day. While sunning in the backyard, she is approached by a precocious but disabled little girl. Leilani Klonk has a deformed hand and a deformed leg, which requires a brace. She is more intelligent and articulate than the average nine year old, and disarms Mickey with her wit. Mickey and Geneva get to know the girl, and find out that her mother is an insane drug addict, and her step-father is a murderer. He killed her older brother Lukipela, and Leilani is next. Leilani believes that no one can help her, as Preston Maddoc is highly thought of by the academic community. Preston and Sinsemilla, Leilani's mother, bounce across the country looking for UFOs and Leilani knows it's only a matter of time before they bounce back to Montana, which is where she last saw her brother. Mickey and Geneva vow to find a way to help Leilani, but Preston finds out and takes off with the family in the dead of night. Mickey discovers them gone and sets out after them, determined to save Leilani. Leilani has mentioned that they are headed to Nun's Lake, Idaho to the site of a supposed close encounter and Mickey races to reach the town and find the girl. Mickey arrives and goes to speak to the man who was "healed" by aliens, and finds out that Leilani's step-father hasn't been there yet. She stakes out the house, wanting to find Preston and follow him to Leilani. Preston is alerted to her presence by the man who was healed, who he then murders. He sneaks out of the house and creeps up on Mickey, knocking her unconscious. He carries her into the dead man's house and ties her up, leaving her there and racing back to the campground. Curtis encounters Leilani at the campground in Nun's Lake and knows she's in trouble. He and the twins approach her while Preston's out and convince her to come with them. As they are running for the twins' RV, Leilani is snatched by her step-father and taken to the house he has hidden Mickey in. His plan is to make Leilani watch him kill Mickey, then torture and kill Leilani. When he gets back to the house, he discovers that Mickey has gotten free of her restraints. He dumps Leilani, takes her brace, and starts searching for Mickey in the maze of old magazines and newspapers. Leilani heads into the maze looking for a way out, and she and Mickey find each other. Preston traps them in a corner and lights the newspapers in front of them on fire, planning to listen as they burn to death. Curtis and the twins, now aided by a disillusioned ex-PI sent by Aunt Gen, arrive at the house. Noah Farrell, the PI, shoots Preston Maddoc as he races through the maze searching for Mickey and Leilani. Preston stumbles away, getting weaker and weaker from blood loss and smoke inhalation. Noah and Cass find Mickey and Leilani and the four of them search for an exit. Curtis, in his natural form, comes to their rescue, and they all escape the house. Preston Maddoc is buried under a pile of burning trash and dies. Leilani, Mickey, Aunt Gen, and Noah join Cass and Polly in their quest to help Curtis fulfill the mission he's been sent here for.
4923146	/m/0cvd1w	From the Corner of His Eye	Dean Koontz	2000	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dean Koontz writes a tale of good and evil, and how the concepts influence people's lives. The book begins with three separate stories that eventually intertwine: a loving relationship between a mother and her genius son, a ruthless killer, and a young woman who takes it upon herself to raise her late sister's baby.
4923157	/m/0cvd2k	By the Light of the Moon	Dean Koontz	2002	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 An amoral doctor forever changes the lives of Dylan O'Conner, his autistic brother Shepherd, and a comedienne named Jillian Jackson, and instigates a new force for good from his evil acts.
4923328	/m/0cvd9t	The Husband	Dean Koontz	2006	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Mitch Rafferty, owner of a small landscaping business, receives a phone call from someone claiming to have kidnapped his wife Holly. The caller demands that Mitch pay two million dollars or Holly will be killed, and if he informs the police, Holly will be tortured and left to die. When Mitch protests that he doesn't have the money, the caller tells him that if he loves his wife enough, he will find a way. He is told to look across the street and witnesses a man walking his dog get shot in the head. The murder is meant to make Mitch believe that the kidnappers are serious and not individuals Mitch could disobey. Mitch also becomes aware that he is being watched and therefore cannot inform the police of Holly's kidnapping. When the police arrive to tend to the murder, Mitch is questioned by a detective named Sandy Taggart. Mitch does not tell Taggart of the kidnapping, and can sense that the detective believes he may be holding something back. However, Mitch is not arrested and leaves after Taggart officially dismisses him. On arriving home, Mitch finds his house staged to look like he had killed his wife. He finds blood smeared over his clothes in the closet and splattered on the kitchen walls. The phone rings, and the kidnapper verifies Mitch's ideas about the staging. He informs Mitch they have also planted additional evidence that would be difficult for Mitch to locate and remove, but easy for police dogs. The kidnapper then plays a recording of Mitch's session with Taggart, which confirms his earlier belief that the kidnappers have him under surveillance. Mitch is then told to have his cell phone on and remain available for further instructions later in the evening. Unsure if Taggart can be trusted, Mitch lies to the detective when he stops by, claiming Holly had come home with a migraine and was sleeping. Taggart tells Mitch that the victim has been identified as Jason Osteen, Mitch's college roommate, to whom he had not spoken for many years. After Taggart leaves, Mitch takes a lug wrench from the garage to use as a weapon. While in the garage he finds some high-tech spying equipment. Just after this discovery, he is surprised at gun point by one of Holly's captors, and is told to drop the wrench. As the gunman orders Mitch to leave, the lug wrench the captor had picked up gets caught on a stack of Halloween decorations that subsequently get knocked over upon the gunman. During the fall the gunman lands against a wheel barrow that crushes his trachea, breaks his neck, and then he inadvertently shoots himself in the chest. Mitch takes the handgun, another concealed gun from the man’s ankle holster, puts the corpse in the back of his wife's car, and decides to visit his parents. Mitch, realizing that events could worsen, arrives at his parents' house. He has no intention of revealing any information about Holly's abduction, but wishes to ease his mind with what could possibly be a final visit, and end on good terms with his parents. His relationship with his parents is not close, due to their harsh and unconventional views on raising children which includes the “learning room”, a sensory deprivation chamber. Mitch speaks briefly with his father, learns his mother is out for the evening, and comes away disappointed with the encounter. The next phone call from the kidnappers comes at 6:00 p.m. As instructed, Mitch visits his brother Anson without informing him of Holly's kidnapping. During this time, Anson receives a call from the kidnappers and becomes aware of the situation. Anson, who had helped his siblings throughout their childhood cope with their parents, offers to give Mitch the two million dollar ransom amount. Mitch is surprised that Anson is financially able to provide this. Anson tells Mitch of a friend, ex-FBI agent Julian Campbell, and drives Mitch to Julian's residence explaining that Julian may be able to provide suggestions learned throughout his FBI career. After arriving at Julian's huge estate, Anson pulls a gun on Mitch and states that he wouldn't give his money to save Mitch, let alone Holly. Mitch learns Anson has worked with the criminals behind Holly's kidnapping and shorted them on their last criminal enterprise. Now, the kidnappers mistakenly believe that Anson will do anything to help Mitch save Holly. Julian informs Mitch that he has never worked for the FBI and has obtained his wealth through the "entertainment industry." Julian has his two henchmen disarm Mitch and take him outside the city to be disposed of. Mitch manages to kill his executioners with the forgotten gun in the ankle holster and returns to his parents’ house where he finds them dead. Again, the scene has been set up as if Mitch had killed his parents, although this time, Mitch believes Anson to be behind the setup. Mitch confronts Anson at Anson's house, tasers him, and ties him to a chair in the laundry room. He does not reveal that he knows Anson killed his parents and promises to release Anson if he gives Mitch the two million. Anson eventually gives him the combination to a secret safe in the kitchen where he finds 1.4 million dollars in bearer bonds and cash. Mitch, remembering an earlier conversation with his brother, asks Anson how he really made so much money. Anson informs him of an illegal Internet company run by Julian Campbell that downloads untraceable adult and child pornography. Anson takes great delight in telling Mitch this, because he wants Mitch to know that Holly's ransom money is dirty and realizes Mitch will be reminded of this for the rest of his life with Holly. After hearing the story, Mitch is disgusted and leaves him in the dark laundry room instead of releasing him as promised, knowing that Anson does not like the dark and will be reminded of their parents' learning room. Meanwhile, Holly is being held captive in an attic, trying surreptitiously to pry a nail from the floorboards. The nail is something that she regards as a pathetic weapon, and at first, she works at it merely to have something to focus on. She finally pries the nail free and conceals it without really knowing how she can use such a small device effectively against trained killers. Holly has also learned that one of the kidnappers, Jimmy Null, has become suspicious of the others and killed them. He tells Holly how they had all grown dubious of each other and acted so that they would not kill him. He plans to keep all the money for himself. During this time, she also wins the remaining kidnapper's trust by listening to his stories of visions, inventing a vision of her own, and indicating she might travel with him to New Mexico where their visions take place. Jimmy Null then calls Mitch again - speaking with a different voice - and agrees to the 1.4 million in cash offered. Mitch is instructed to meet them at the Turnbridge house, an enormous mansion on which construction was halted. Before Mitch can leave, Taggart arrives with the news that Anson’s name appeared in Jason Osteen’s phone book. Taggert also points out inconsistencies in Mitch's earlier story to him. Mitch initially claims his brother is away, but finally confesses the series of events to Taggart. As they are going to see Anson in the laundry room, Mitch tasers Taggart and runs away. Before fleeing, he tells Taggart that he cannot trust anyone else to save Holly, because he loves her too much and time is running out. After buying rounds for a gun he took from one of the executioners, Mitch is chased on foot from the gun store by the police. He steals an SUV from a gas station and goes to the Turnbridge house where he confronts his enemy. The kidnapper tells Mitch that Holly's moment of decision has arrived, and Holly is able to distract the kidnapper with what he believes is proof of her visions and devotion by appearing to have stigmata. Holly's wounds are in fact secretly self-inflicted from the nail. Mitch takes advantage of the distraction and shoots the kidnapper, who is initially protected with a bullet-proof vest. Null then chases Mitch and Holly with a motorcycle but Mitch is able to eventually kill him by firing at his head. The novel ends with an epilogue. It is at the 32nd birthday of Mitch. We learn that Campbell has been murdered in prison and Anson is currently on death row. Mitch and Holly have two children and will eventually have a third, Mitch's business is booming, and Detective Taggart is now a family friend. it:Il marito (romanzo)
4923352	/m/0cvdb4	Brother Odd	Dean Koontz	2006-11-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The novel begins seven months after Forever Odd. During that time, Odd Thomas has been a guest at St. Bartholomew's Abbey, where he hopes to seek peace and understanding. During his time there, he befriends a white-furred dog who assists him in his further adventures. Odd sees a shade-like bodach. This portends great disaster for the abbey. One of the monks goes missing, and Odd is attacked by a mysterious assailant. As he searches for the missing monk, Odd hears an odd noise in a great snowstorm, and later sees an intricate, shifting pattern of bones against a window. While looking for the body among the disabled children at the school, Odd hears from a man with Down's syndrome named Jacob, about the "Neverwas." Odd, on entering the bell tower to silence a poltergeist who rings bells, sees an apparition that resembles the traditional image of Death. By now the bodachs have multiplied forecasting even greater disaster. Odd plans to bring the monks to the school to protect the children as the storm is limiting their options for saving the children. He is suddenly drawn by a psychic premonition, and discovers the missing monk dead in a cooling tower, acting as a cocoon for another creature made of shifting bones. Rodion Romanovich, the abbey's other guest, meets Odd in the garage to pick up the monks. Odd, suspicious of Romanovich, intends to leave him in the abbey, although he takes one sport utility vehicle (SUV) full of monks before Odd can stop him. On the way there, Romanovich's SUV is turned over by a bone-creature. Brother Knuckles, Odd's confidant, damages the creature with the other plow, saving everyone. Back at the school, Odd and Romanovich are able to determine that Jacob's father, the Neverwas, is John Heineman, a monk at the abbey known as Brother John and a former physicist who experimented with reality. Odd and Romanovich, actually a National Security Agency agent sent to spy on Brother John, venture back into the storm to find John's research lab. When they find him, Brother John reveals that he has created a computer model of the innermost fabric of reality. He believes that reality is created by thought, and has proved it by tuning the room to his thoughts. If he thinks something, it will be, and in that way, he created the bone-monsters and the Death apparition. Odd and Romanovich attempt to convince Brother John otherwise, but instead, he sets his Death spirit on them. As the monks defend the school from the bone-monsters, Romanovich is able to shoot John, killing him and all his creations. Later, Odd decides to leave the abbey, but as he rides down the highway back to his hometown, psychic magnetism pulls him out of the car, where the book ends as he walks down the highway toward the unknown. After three adventures, Elvis Presley, who sometimes assists Odd, finally crosses over. Odd and the dog continue along together, only to be united moments later with the ghost of Frank Sinatra.
4923418	/m/0cvdfz	Forever Odd	Dean Koontz	2005	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After Odd discovers that his childhood friend Danny has been kidnapped, he assumes that Danny's father, who was recently released from prison, has kidnapped him. Therefore, Odd investigates and is led through a water tunnel and into an abandoned hotel by his "psychic magnetism." Inside, he finds his friend tied up and strapped to a bomb. Danny informs him that his dad did not kidnap him. Instead, Danny recounts that, because of his loneliness from a debilitating bone disease, he called a phone sex line and spoke with a woman named Datura. The woman informed Danny of her obsession with the paranormal, leading Danny to inform her about Odd's special abilities. She then kidnapped Danny in order to meet Odd. Odd leaves Danny and finds Datura in her room with two thugs, Cheval Robert and Cheval Andre. She orders Odd to show her ghosts. Reluctantly, Odd takes her to the casino in the hotel where he previously saw many ghosts and one poltergeist. Datura insults a ghost, and the enraged poltergeist flings objects at them. At this point, Odd escapes from Datura, returns to Danny, and disarms the bomb. Odd returns to Datura's room and finds a shotgun, which he uses to kill Cheval Robert. Datura finds him by reverse psychic magnetism; as they are talking, a mountain lion attacks her from behind. An angry Cheval Andre chases Odd through the hotel, before Odd kills Cheval Andre in a sewer. Odd dies in the sewer, and his spirit visits three of his friends. He comes back to life, however, in front of the Blue Moon Café with no idea how he got there. At first he is dismayed at his survival, as his dearest hope is to be reunited with his soulmate, Bronwen "Stormy" Llellywen, in the afterlife. Odd accompanies the Chief Porter to the hotel, where they rescue Danny. Two months later, Odd makes plans to work in a monastery in an attempt to find some peace.
4923547	/m/0cvdpj	King & King		2002		 "On the tallest mountain above town," the young Prince Bertie still has not married, as is the custom in his kingdom. His mother, a grouchy Queen who is tired of ruling and wishes to pass on the responsibility to her son, insists he must find a princess to marry. The prince tells his mom "Very well, Mother.... I must say, though, I've never cared much for princesses." His mother marches princess after princess through the castle, from places ranging from Greenland to Mumbai, but in spite of their various talents &mdash; Princess Aria of Austria sings opera, Princess Dolly from Texas juggles and does magic tricks &mdash; they fail to interest the prince (though the prince's page falls in love with the princess from Greenland). After a while, along comes Princess Madeleine escorted by her brother Prince Lee. At the same time, both Bertie and Lee exclaim, "What a wonderful prince!" The princes immediately fall in love, and they begin marriage preparations at once. The wedding is attended by all the rejected princesses and their families; the two princes are declared King and King, and the Queen can finally relax, sunning herself in a lounge chair near the page and the princess from Greenland. The story ends with a kiss between the two kings. The illustrations are created as collages with cut paper and mixed-media art, including ink and paint.
4925304	/m/0cvgyx	Sheep	Simon Maginn		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A young family moves to rural Wales to renovate a farmhouse and recover from the drowning death of their daughter, Ruthie. While there, the family witnesses a series of terrible mutilations of sheep by an unknown perpetrator.
4925336	/m/0cvgzl	Dead Calm	Charles Williams		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 A honeymooning couple, John and Rae Ingram, rescue a young man, Hughie, from a sinking boat who claims to have lost his companions to food poisoning. When John goes to inspect the sinking boat, he discovers the captain, Russ, and another woman, Mrs. Warriner, alive and begging for help. Discovering that John has left, Hughie panics, takes Rae hostage, and begins driving her boat away from the sinking ship. On board the sinking ship, John learns that Hughie and Mrs. Warriner and Russ and his wife, Mrs. Bellows, were vacationing when Hughie suffered an agoraphobic reaction while diving with Mrs. Bellows and accidentally killed her trying to climb onto her shoulders. The realization of what he'd done resulted in Hughie suffering a psychotic break. Mrs. Warriner further tells John that Hughie, though a gifted artist, has the mind of a child, his emotional growth having been stunted by his overbearing father and a codependent relationship with an inappropriately affectionate mother. On board the Ingram's boat, Rae is able to surmise this herself from Hughie's behavior and assumes the role of a caring mother figure in order to lull him into a false sense of security, while preparing to kill him with a shotgun John has stashed in their room. Ultimately, John and Russ are able to sufficiently repair their boat and rendezvous with Hughie and Rae. When everyone is reunited, Hughie suffers a flashback and sees Russ as his father and knocks him overboard. Hughie suffers a panic attack in the water and seizes up, and drags Russ below water where they both drown. John gives a sympathetic psychological analysis of Hughie as he, Rae, and Mrs. Warriner see that a new wind has come in that will take them all home.
4925510	/m/0cvh48	The Eiger Sanction	Trevanian	1972-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dr. Jonathan Hemlock is an art professor, lecturer and mountaineer. He is also a collector of paintings, most of them obtained from the black market. To finance his collection he works as an assassin for a secret U.S. government agency, the CII. In order to acquire a Pissarro, Hemlock agrees to carry out a couple of "sanctions" (contract assassinations). The first one is easily dealt with in Montreal. For the second, he will need to join a group of climbers who are about to attempt the north face of the Eiger, a particularly difficult challenge. Hemlock goes back into training and eventually climbs the mountain with the team that he believes includes his would-be victim &mdash; whose identity he will have to deduce on the mountain itself. Poor climbing conditions disrupt the climb, and lead Hemlock to the discovery that his target is someone other than he had expected.
4928676	/m/0cvmc7	Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog	John Grogan	2005-10-18	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Told in first-person narrative, the book portrays Grogan and his family's life during the thirteen years that they lived with their dog Marley, and the relationships and lessons from this period. Marley, a yellow Labrador Retriever, is described as a high-strung, boisterous, and somewhat uncontrolled dog. He is strong, powerful, endlessly hungry, eager to be active, and often destructive of their property (but completely without malice). Marley routinely fails to "get the idea" of what humans expect of him; at one point, mental illness is suggested as a plausible explanation for his behavior. His acts and behaviors are forgiven, however, since it is clear that he has a heart of gold and is merely living within his nature. During his escapades he makes a two-minute credited appearance in the movie The Last Home Run (filmed in 1996 and released in 1998). The strong contrast between the problems and tensions caused by his neuroses and behavior, and the undying devotion, love and trust shown towards the human family as they themselves have children and grow up to accept him for what he is, and their grief when he finally dies from gastric dilatation volvulus (a stomach torsion condition) in old age, form the backdrop for the biographical material of the story.
4930119	/m/0cvpmj	Dr. Futurity	Philip K. Dick	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Dr. Jim Parsons is a doctor from 2012 who was born in 1980. Abruptly, he undergoes involuntary time travel to 2405 CE and finds that his profession is treated with disdain. In the future, the population is static, with no natural births; only a death can cause the formation of a new embryo. The result is a society ambivalent toward death, as controlled genetics ensures that each successive generation better benefits the human race as a whole. By killing off the weak and the malformed, poverty and disease are eliminated, and humanity has an optimal chance for survival. Moreover, a single race derived from African Americans and Native Americans controls this future world, as Caucasians have been wiped out or assimilated centuries earlier. After Parsons cures a dying woman (not knowing that this is considered a heinous crime in this time period), Chancellor Al Stenog exiles him to Mars, but the spaceship is intercepted en route, and Parsons is returned to a deserted Earth far in the future. On finding a marker with instructions on how to operate the time travel controls on the spaceship, he is directed to a Native American-style tribal lodge, where he must perform surgery to hopefully restore the life of a cryogenically suspended time traveler, Corith, subsequent to the latter's death from an arrow wound 35 years earlier. Parsons extracts the missile but it later mysteriously rematerializes in Corith's body. To resolve this situation, Parsons travels with Corith's relatives back to Corith's previous assignment in 1579 on the Pacific Coast of North America, where Corith was to kill Sir Francis Drake in order to change history and preserve the Native American way of life, avoiding their subjugation by European colonial powers. While observing the assassination attempt on Drake, Parsons realizes that Drake is actually Chancellor Stenog. It seems that Stenog, in an ironic twist of fate, has taken Drake's place long enough to ensure that Corith's mission fails. Parsons tries to warn Corith, but Corith discovers that Parsons is a white man in disguise and attacks him. In the ensuing struggle, Parsons inadvertently stabs Corith in the heart with one of the arrow replicas that were intended to make it appear that Drake was killed by a Native American of that period. In retribution, Parsons is left stranded by Corith's relatives in 1597, a year in which the European explorers had removed themselves for many years to come. But Parsons is quickly rescued by Loris, Corith's daughter, when she has a change of heart after learning that she is pregnant with Parsons' child. While briefly back in 2405, Parsons realizes that the reason the arrow mysteriously reappeared in Corith's chest after he'd removed it was because he had apparently murdered him for a second time to cover his own tracks. If Corith were to recover, he would have revealed that it was Parsons who killed him, and an unwitting Parsons from slightly earlier would have been left helpless at the hands of Corith's relatives. As he stands over Corith, ready to kill him for a second time, he decides against it and flees. But a nagging curiosity obliges him to return yet again. He sees two unknown people kill Corith with the second arrow to the heart. Parsons discovers that the murderers are the children he had with Loris, traveling back to 2405 from an even more distant future. His children take Parsons forward in time to meet with Loris again, and he struggles with the decision to return to 2012. Eventually he goes back to the same day that he left and to the doting wife who saw him off earlier that morning. He sets about his old life with a new task at hand. The novel closes with him designing the stone marker that will eventually save his life on that desolate future Earth.
4931424	/m/0cvrvj	The World Made Straight	Ron Rash	2006-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 In 1970s Western North Carolina, a young man stumbles across a grove of marijuana, sees an opportunity to make some easy money, and steps into the jaws of a bear trap. He is discovered by the ruthless farmer who set the trap to protect his plants, and begins his struggle with the evils of his community’s present as well as those of its history. Before long, he has moved out of his parents' home to live with a onetime schoolteacher who now lives in a trailer outside town, deals a few drugs, and studies journals from the American Civil War. Their fates become entwined as the community's terrible past and corrupt present lead to a violent reckoning with the marijuana farmer and with a Civil War massacre that continues to divide an Appalachian community.
4931538	/m/0cvs00	Brian's Winter	Gary Paulsen	1996-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story deals with Brian, still stranded at the L-shaped lake during the fall and winter, constructing a winter shelter, building snow shoes, being attacked by a bear, and learning how to make a bow more powerful. Eventually, Brian meets a family of Cree trappers, the Smallhorns, who help him return home. Brian also learned that he should "always pay attention to what's happening around him."
4931891	/m/0cvsv0	Magick Without Tears	Aleister Crowley		{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 The book consists of 80 letters to various students of magick. Originally to be titled Aleister Explains Everything, the letters offer his insights into both magick and Thelema—-Crowley's religious and ethical system—-with a clarity and wit often absent in his earlier writings. The individual topics are widely varied, addressing the orders O.T.O. and A∴A∴, Qabalah, Thelemic morality, Yoga, astrology, various magical techniques, religion, death, spiritual visions, the Holy Guardian Angel, and other issues such as marriage, property, certainty, and meanness. The book is considered by many as evidence that Crowley remained lucid and mentally capable at the end of his life, despite his addiction to heroin (prescribed for his chronic emphysema).
4932118	/m/0cvt9t	Chicka Chicka Boom Boom	John Archambault	1989	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The lower-case letters climb up a coconut tree in alphabetical order, until the tree bends so much that the letters fall to the ground. Capital letters (the older relatives of the letters climbing the tree) come to help them. Again alphabetically, it describes each letter's injury, including: *"D" having skinned-knee *"E" having a stubbed toe *"F" becoming patched up *"H" and "I" getting tangled together *"L" being knotted like a tie *"M" being looped *"N" being stooped *"O" being twisted; alley-oop *"P" having a black eye *"T" having a loose tooth The book is notable for its rhyming structure which is reminiscent of the jazz vocal improvisation technique known as scat singing. An audio book version is also available. It inspired a 2004 sequel, Chicka, Chicka, 1, 2, 3. A board book for toddlers, entitled Chicka, Chicka ABC was published in 1990 and contains the first half of the full story.
4932898	/m/0cvvk7	Voyage of the Shadowmoon	Sean McMullen	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Voyage of the Shadowmoon follows the crew of the mysterious vessel named Shadowmoon, a spy vessel. Their task is to retrieve Silverdeath, an apocalyptic mechanism that has been hidden for decades. Unearthed by the ambitious Emperor Warsovran, Silverdeath annihilates an entire continent. The Shadowmoon's crew, some of whom are working for different parties, are trying to secure Silverdeath before it can be used again by any of a host of rulers who wish to abuse its destructive abilities.
4933029	/m/0cvvry	A Rather English Marriage	Angela Lambert	1992-12-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book's plot concerns two retired men who are thrown together following the deaths of their wives in the same hospital. Both have served in the armed forces, one, Reggie, being a former officer, the other, Roy, an ex-NCO. The perceived class differences lead to Roy moving in with Reggie and being treated as an unpaid servant. The reader's sympathies are with Roy as he remains humble and faithful to his purpose until Reggie becomes too domineering. Roy re-marries, and Reggie, whose attempt to seduce a younger widow, Liz, has ended in failure, is left alone.
4933764	/m/0cvwxb	Enigma	Robert Harris		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jericho is a doctoral student of the mathematician Alan Turing at a Cambridge college. When the war starts Turing and other professors disappear, recruited as code breakers by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). Eventually Jericho is also roped in, at the invitation of Atwood who is professor of ancient history at the same college. At Bletchley the code breakers are an eclectic academic set, under pressure to break the Enigma code used by German U-boats wreaking havoc on British and American shipping in the Atlantic. The tension is magnified by internal turf rivalry between the allies over the cryptography effort, with the Americans of the opinion that the chummy common-room efforts of the British operation cannot sustain the decryption speed and volume required to win the Battle of the Atlantic. In the book Turing himself is absent from Bletchley, on a trip to Washington D.C. On a train en route to Bletchley, Jericho happens to meet the attractive Claire Romilly who works as a clerk at one of the huts, temporary buildings on the park grounds housing the growing code breaking effort. Jericho helps Claire finish the Times crossword with ease and the two strike up a friendship. Claire's upper-crust manner reflects what Baxter (a code breaker with leftist views) terms as the organization of Bletchley Park along British class lines. Society debutantes are chosen to handle sensitive transcription whereas the more mundane tasks are delegated to young women from working-class backgrounds. As Jericho gets closer to Claire, he also discovers a back door to breaking the U-boat Enigma code which establishes his reputation among the code breakers. One night Jericho is stunned to see intercepted (but still encoded) signal transcription forms in Claire's bedroom, a serious violation of security procedure. Confronted with the forms Claire reacts in an emotionally wounded manner, which also signals the end of Jericho's romance with her. However Jericho does not report the incident or the security breach. In the following days Jericho desperately attempts to meet Claire once again, and slowly tips himself over the edge of a nervous breakdown. He is sent back to his college to recover. When the Germans change the Enigma naval code book, the Bletchley Park code breakers lose their back door and are forced to bring Jericho back. This is in fact how the book begins. Thereafter the plot unravels to answer a series of questions: What are the papers in Claire's bedroom? Is she a spy? How much can Jericho trust Kramer, an American naval officer and one of Claire's many lovers? What is the role of the supercilious upper-crust investigator Wigram? How much does Claire's room mate Hester Wallace know? Are Jericho's hut colleagues Atwood, Pinker, Puck, Baxter ... jealous of him? Will Jericho break the code for a second time as one of the largest convoys steams across the Atlantic pursued by U-boat wolf packs? Apart from the plot, the book is notable for its grim descriptions of winter in a war-torn Britain. The book, though fiction, is criticised by people who were at Bletchley Park as bearing little resemblance to the real wartime Bletchley Park.
4935162	/m/0cvz4q	The Eternal Champion	Michael Moorcock		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Eternal Champion is narrated by John Daker, an inhabitant of 20th century Earth. At the beginning of the novel, his sleep is disturbed by dreams of other worlds and a repeated name: Erekosë. After many nights he understands that he is Erekosë and he finds the strength to answer the call. He arrives in a world that is strange to John Daker but somehow familiar to Erekosë (the narrator struggles to reconcile these two viewpoints throughout the book). He is welcomed by the aging King Rigenos of Necranal and his daughter Iolinda, and receives Erekosë's legendary sword Kanajana. The sword emits a deadly radiance that quickly kills anyone who receives even a minor wound from it. (Readers familiar with Elric will immediately recognize Kanajana as an Avatar of Stormbringer by virtue of its dark color and magical lethality.) Rigenos explains to Erekosë that all of humanity is united in a desperate fight against the inhuman Eldren, who have claimed the southern continent Mernadin and are said to be seeking to expand their empire. (The Eldren have some resemblance to elves as depicted in the works of Tolkien and others, but the term is not used). Privately John Daker harbors doubts, but decides that his allegiance must be to his own kind even if the Eldren are not as demonic as Rigenos claims. During this time and throughout the book, the narrator continues to have dreams in which he takes on the identity of many heroes engaged in constant, unending struggle. After secretly betrothing himself to Iolinda, he leads an expedition against the Eldren seaport Paphanaal. The human fleet destroys an Eldren fleet in a naval battle, then takes Paphanaal easily as the only remaining inhabitants are women and children. Erekosë is sickened by the actions of his human allies during the battle and the sack of the city. The only surviving Eldren is Ermizhad, sister of Prince Arjavh the Eldren commander; she is put in Erekosë's keeping during the return to Necranal. After the fleet returns, Erekosë and Iolinda announce their betrothal. Soon a large Eldren force lands near Necranal; it is Arjavh come to rescue his sister. Among the troops is a large contingent of halflings, relatives of Eldren from the Ghost Worlds who have the power to teleport themselves. The Eldren defeat the humans in battle and Erekosë is captured. He tells Arjavh, "Trade me for Ermizhad." During his captivity, Arjavh tells him about the history of his world, which was originally inhabited only by Eldren. After the arrival of humans, fearsome weapons during a war between the races nearly destroyed the planet. The Eldren hid away their weapons and vowed never to use such weapons again - not even to save themselves from total extinction, which would become a very real possibility in the later course of the book. The humans simply forgot how to build such weapons. Erekosë is released with the understanding that Ermizhad will be released in turn, but when he reaches Necranal he finds that she is still a prisoner. She tells him not to worry, then summons the halflings to help her escape. Jealous, Iolinda accuses him (rightly) of sympathizing with the Eldren. Erekosë makes a rash vow in a desperate attempt to prove his love for her: :"I swear I shall kill all the Eldren." :"All?" :"Every single Eldren life." :"You will spare none?" :"None! None! I want it to be over. And the only way I can finish it is to kill them all. Then it will be over--only then!" :"Including Prince Arjavh and his sister?" :"Including them!" :"You swear this? You swear it?" :"I swear it. And when the last Eldren dies, when the whole world is ours, then I will bring it to you and we shall be married." In the course of a year-long campaign to destroy the Eldren, Rigenos is killed, Iolanda becomes queen, and the human army is exhausted. The last Eldren stronghold is Loos Ptokai. Before the siege begins, Arjavh invites Erekosë into the city to rest and see Ermizhad one last time. Erekosë regrets the need to kill these civilized people but feels bound by his vow. He had managed to suppress his dreams during the campaign, but when he falls asleep in Loos Ptokai, they return. This time, however, he dreams that not only the Champion, but all of humanity is trapped in eternal struggle. When he awakes, he decides to make one last attempt at peace. He returns with his army to Necranal, but Iolinda realizes that he has fallen in love with Ermizhad and commands that he be taken prisoner. He escapes and returns to Loos Ptokai. Too soon, the humans mount a new attack against the Eldren city. The Eldren are determined to fight bravely but hopelessly with medieval weapons, even though they have the ancient fearsome weapons available. However, when it is clear that the battle will soon be lost, Erekosë convinces Arjavh to allow him to unearth the ancient machines of destruction if it would preserve the Eldren. After destroying the human army, he proceeds to kill every human being on the planet. Then he returns to Loos Ptokai, marries Ermizhad, and knows peace, at least for a time. There is a very abrupt transition from Erekosë saving the Eldren at the very last moment - where he has the reader's complete symapthy - and his proceeding to destroy the human cites and villages and kill all their inhabitants, even when there is clearly no further threat to the Eldren, even hunting down and killing a few survivors hiding in caves. In effect, he has fulfilled the earlier-mentioned vow ("I will spare none! None! I want it to be over. And the only way I can finish it is to kill them all") - only that it is now directed against the humans instead of the Eldren. The story clearly implies that Erekosë was foredoomed by some higher power to commit genocide, that his only choice was whether he would exterminate the Eldren or the humans, and that once the choice was made he was helpless to stop himself from carrying it through. The nature of that higher power and its motivations remain, however, unclear. The book's ending with this inevitable genocide might be a major reason for its relative lack of popularity.
4937163	/m/0cw163	The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse	Beatrix Potter	1918	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Timmy Willie is a country mouse who falls asleep in a hamper of vegetables and is carried to the city. When the hamper is opened, Timmy escapes to find himself in a large house. He slips through a hole in the skirting board and lands in the midst of a mouse dinner party hosted by Johnny Town-mouse. Timmy is made welcome &ndash; and tries his best to fit in, but finds the noises made by the house cat and the maid frightening and the rich food difficult to digest. He returns via the hamper to his country home after extending an invitation to Johnny Town-mouse to visit him. The following spring, Johnny Town-mouse pays Timmy Willie a visit. He complains of the dampness and finds such things as cows and lawnmowers frightening. He returns to the city in the hamper of vegetables after telling Timmy country life is too quiet. The tale ends with the author stating her own preference for country living.
4937242	/m/0cw19_	An Age	Brian Aldiss	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story concerns Edward Bush, an artist searching for inspiration in the past. When Bush returns from a long stay in the Cryptozoic, he finds that his nation (presumably the United Kingdom) has been taken over by a totalitarian government. He is immediately drafted into the military and given the mission to kill the scientist Silverstone. As Bush mind travels again to fulfill his mission, he learns of Silverstone's new philosophical and scientific discoveries. Bush and Silverstone meet and decide together to usher in a new era of humanity, one enlightened by the realization that time flows backward.
4937548	/m/0cw1qv	Don't Stop the Carnival	Herman Wouk	1965	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place on the fictional island of Amerigo. According to the opening of the musical (a paraphrased excerpt from the novel): This book is said to be loosely based on Herman Wouk's experiences in managing an actual hotel, the Royal Mail Inn, in the early 1960s in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. The hotel was on Hassel Island, located in Charlotte Amalie Harbour. Buffett refers to the development of the musical in his memoir of an aeronautical circumnavigation of the Caribbean shortly after his fiftieth birthday, A Pirate Looks at Fifty.
4938109	/m/0cw2nv	Green for Danger	Christianna Brand	1944	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A murder takes place in a rural British hospital. Inspector Cockrill is tasked to determine whodunit when the head nurse is killed after revealing that the death of a patient under anaesthesia was no accident. Cockrill states at one point, "My presence lay over the hospital like a pall - I found it all tremendously enjoyable." After another murder attempt leaves a nurse dangerously ill he re-stages the operation in order to unmask the murderer. it:Delitto in bianco
4938261	/m/0cw2vb	Bloody Jack		2002-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Mary Faber is an orphan in a gang on the streets of Cheapside, London, during the late 18th century. After the death of the gang's leader, she dons boy's clothing and goes to the docks, where she attempts to obtain a position as one of six ship's boys on the British warship H.M.S. Dolphin. Her endeavor is successful due to her ability to read, and she is signed under the alias Jack "Jacky" Faber. After boarding the ship, she meets the other ship's boys, named Tink, Willy, Benjy, Davy, and Jaimy. Jacky and the other ship's boys gain their sea legs and begin their duties on the ship. Jacky meets a seaman, Liam Delaney, who becomes her sea dad. Liam teaches her the ways of the ship and how to play the pennywhistle. After some time on the ship, Jacky finds that she's grown, and needing some new clothes, she makes her own. Jacky's new outfit catches the Captain's eye and is asked to sew up more for the others. As the plot develops, a pirate ship is spotted and a battle begins. The crew boards the enemy ship, and Jacky acquires a pistol from a dead pirate. She sees another pirate preparing to kill one of the ships boys, Jaimy, whom Jacky is starting to have feelings for. Then she shoots the pirate, who is carrying a chest of money, and thus gets the nickname "Bloody Jack". It is in this battle that Benjy, a ship's boy in The Brotherhood, (what Jacky and the other ship's boys call themselves), is killed. The ship heads for Palma to get there ship repaired after the battle. At about this time, Jacky first menstruates, and her upbringing having left her unaware of the details of female physical maturation, she believes that she is ill and about to die. After the ship lands at Palma, the ship's boys go to get a tattoo to show their brotherhood. Jacky then goes to a brothel to find a woman to ask 'for a friend' why she had bled before, where the madam quickly sees through her disguise and informs Jacky of the details of female bodies. The rest of the ship's boys consider Jack a rake after this, as they only know one nominal reason for a visit to a brothel. Then the ship heads for the Caribbean Sea. While Jacky is in the schoolroom, a sailor aboard the ship called Midshipman Bliffil starts to beat Jacky up, and only stops when the teacher yells at him. Jacky is put in the sick ward for her injuries. She convinces Midshipman Jenkins to stand up to Bliffil and teaches him some fighting moves. A crew member Bill Sloat threatens Jacky and her sea dad Liam Delaney tries to protect her, which causes some problems. When Bliffil attacks Jacky again, Jenkins stands up to him. Jacky begins to sleep in the rope locker because The Brotherhood's friendship is strained after recent events, and this is when Sloat tries to sexually assault her. Jacky tries to protect herself by stabbing him with her shiv, but she injures him more than she had meant to, and ends up stabbing him in the stomach and he stumbles overboard. Liam is put on trial for the murder and he is going to be hanged. Jacky intervenes and confesses to stabbing Sloat. She is put in confinement and thinks that she will be hanged instead, but she is set free because she had acted in self-defense. After that she is welcomed back by into the Brotherhood but the feeling is still weird. Jaimy admits to her that he has strange feelings for her, and that is when Jacky asks him to hold up a dress so she can mark it, and Jaimy learns that she is really a girl and that she has feelings for him. Soon after they arrive in Kingston, Jamaica. Jacky and Jaimy go out on the streets, and Jacky wears a dress that she bought. They eat at a café, and Davy and Tink see them. Davy and Tink do not know that the girl Jaimy is eating with is Jacky, and she leaves and changes back into her ship boy clothing. The group then finds a piercing shop, where they all get a gold hoop earring. Jacky and Jaimy exchange rings. Then they set sail again to hunt for the pirates. They soon encounter the pirate LeFievre ("The Fever") at sea. There is a battle, but LeFievre gets away, and the Dolphin is damaged and in the process of sinking. Men are at the bilge pumps trying to keep the ship afloat when land is sighted, and the ship and crew stop for rest and repairs. Davy learns of Jacky's true identity when he discovers her and Jaimy curled up in a hammock together. Soon after, Mr. Tilden the teacher wants to put Jacky on a kite and fly her up so she can see more land, but the winds were blowing so hard that the tree she is tied to is ripped out of the ground and after many hours of flying she lands on an unknown island. She stays there for a few days and uses smoke signals to try to get the attention of HMS Dolphin. A boat crew from the Dolphin comes to rescue her and she finds out that LeFievre and his pirates are on the island with her and waiting to ambush the rescue crew. She tries to lead the rescue crew away but the pirates catch her and hold her for hanging and money. She is hanged, but is so scrawny and skinny that she just hangs there choking. The HMS Dolphin rescue crew lands, Jaimy quickly cuts the rope around her neck, and Jacky survives. Jacky is finally discovered to be a girl. She is guarded by someone everywhere she goes. She is confined from almost everyone on board, including her old mates, but they secretly sneak over to the grating above her room to talk to her. She is told by the captain that she will be enrolled in Lawson Peabody's School for Girls in Boston, and then the book concludes with her stepping off the ship.
4939886	/m/0cw5br	Mistress of Spices	Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni	1997-02-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tilo, the titular "Mistress of Spices," is a shopkeeper and an immigrant from India who helps customers satisfy their needs and desires with spices. Her life changes when she falls in love with an American man. When she was a little girl she could see what other people couldn't see.
4942424	/m/0cw9dl	The Lost Language of Cranes	David Leavitt		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rose and Owen find out that their apartment is going co-op. Rose visits her son, who lives in a shabby neighborhood; he says he likes to go to the East Village. One Sunday, she takes a walk, goes to an automat, and bumps into her husband. The latter goes to a gay pornographic cinema, where a man leaves him his number. Philip and Eliot are in bed; Philip gets up to do the dishes. He thinks back to how they met through Sally. Back to the parents, Owen gets back to his apartment, soaked through. Philip and Eliot then wake up; Philip seems keen on flatmate Jerene's research on lost languages. There is then an account of Jerene's childhood up to her coming out to her parents and being spurned by them. Philip and Eliot then talk about their experiences with men. Philip goes on to remember the way he would masturbate a lot and how he tried to ask girls out - and they refused. Finally, he recalls going to a gay pornographic cinema when he was seventeen. Owen calls Alex Melchor and finds out it was a wrong number. Philip asks Eliot to introduce him to Derek and Geoffrey. Later, he goes to his parent's flat to look at Derek's books. Jerene is getting ready for a date. Philip meets Eliot's foster parents for dinner, then they go to a gay bar where Philip walks into old acquaintance Alex Kamarov. Outside, Eliot admits to being unsure about their relationship; nevertheless they return to Eliot's, where he teaches Philip how to shave properly. Philip eventually comes out to his parents. His mother is tersely averse; his father says it is fine, though he starts weeping as soon as the young man has left. In the library, Jerene reads an article about a child who emulates cranes as this was the only thing he would see out of his window from his cot, and his parents weren't about. He was then sent to a psych ward. Eliot doesn't return Philip's calls; when Jerene meets Philip for a drink, she admits there is not much that can be done. Later, Philip talks to his friend Brad. He then gets really drunk out on the town to forget. A few days later, he meets Rob in a bar and they return to the boy's dorm room where they have sex. Subsequently, Philip does not return his calls. Owen calls a gay hotline, then hangs up and calls Alex Melchor, who tells him to call someone else, and then Philip, hanging up before they can talk. Later, the Philip runs into his parents and tells them he's broken up with Eliot. Rose says to Philip that she needs more time to ruminate. Owen calls a gay sex phone-line and starts sobbing. He then goes to a gay bar and meets another man named Frank; they go to the man's flat and have sex. When he gets home, it's half past two in the morning, and Rose is hurt. Owen invites Winston Penn to dinner, and attempts to fix him up with Philip. That night, Rose finally realizes that Owen is gay too. While Philip and Brad get into bed together, Rose and Owen have a big argument. Owen goes off to a Burger King until he calls his son asking for a place to stay for the night. Before Philip goes to find with his father, he passionetly kisses Brad. There and then he confesses to being gay.
4943209	/m/0cwbz2	Wolfbane	Cyril M. Kornbluth	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens in the town of Wheeling, West Virginia. We first see Roget Germyn, a banker and model Citizen. An Eye forms over him while he is meditating, but he is interrupted and the Eye vanishes. He then returns to a more Earthly concern - whether or not the 'sun' will be regenerated, ending the current period of hunger and cold. Attention then shifts to Glenn Tropile, who lives among the Citizens, but regards himself as one of the feared Wolves. He has even managed to slowly coach his wife, Gala, toward a more Wolfish outlook. Despite this rebellious attitude, he maintains a genuine interest in meditation. Glenn Tropile is exposed as a Wolf while stealing bread. He escapes execution and is collected by a community of Wolves living in the town of Princeton. They find he doesn't entirely fit in there either, but hope he may get collected by an 'Eye', giving them a chance to measure this process in detail. This eventually happens and they find, as expected, that his disappearance was facilitated by the Pyramid on Everest. Glenn Tropile has been sent to the Pyramid's planet. We then learn his fate. To the Pyramids, the human race is nothing more than a useful source of 'Components' for a complex world-machine devoted mostly to feeding these artificial and semi-organic beings. Tropile is suspended in a fluid-filled tank and 'wired in' to the vast computer system. Later, he is linked to seven other humans as a 'Snowflake' - eight minds joined together to facilitate more complex tasks than a single human Component could manage. In this condition, Tropile wakes, manages to retain his sanity, and wakes the other humans. They eventually merge with one another to form a sophisticated collective mind. The freed Snowflake then spies on the Pyramids, finding that they have been traveling for some two million years, and have collected many species as Components, but seem locked in meaningless rituals surrounding an alien creature at the world's North Pole. They later realize that this is the last survivor of the race that created the Pyramids. In the meantime, they have modified the collection process of human Components so that it selects persons known to at least one of the eight people composing the Snowflake (which has become almost as ruthless and inhuman as the alien Pyramids). These humans are intended as 'mice,' disrupters of the planet, and later as an army with which to fight the Pyramids. Roget Germyn is one of them, as is Tropile's wife. Facing a philosophical dead-end, the 'Snowflake' decides to separate its component minds to study the problem. Restored to individual identity, Glenn Tropile becomes horrified at what he has done. However, the majority of the others want to carry on. While they are arguing, one of their number is taken over by the mind of the alien at the North Pole, who warns them that the Pyramids have noticed them and plan to wipe out half the planet to get rid of them. They initially re-merge their personalities as the Snowflake and expedite their plans. Tropile decides he must physically disconnect himself from the Snowflake and leave to lead the humans. They manage to defeat the Pyramids, but not before the remainder of the Snowflake is also destroyed. The humans free many of the other Components and ship them back to Earth. Tropile now finds he is a hero of sorts, but does not fit the role (though he never truly fit any role in which he was placed - Sheep, Wolf, or Component). He also sees that there is a need for someone to wire themselves back in to the alien planet's surviving systems, to re-kindle the 'sun' every five years and perhaps return the Earth to its original orbit. He doesn't want to do it alone, but most of the people he knows are either unwilling or unsuitable. On the last page, though, his wife agrees to join him. He expects that there will later be others, that "[t]he ring of fire [will] grow."
4943780	/m/0cwctr	The Space Merchants	Cyril M. Kornbluth	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a vastly overpopulated world, businesses have taken the place of governments and now hold all political power. States exist merely to ensure the survival of huge trans-national corporations. Advertising has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession. Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market. However, the most basic elements are incredibly scarce, including water and fuel. The planet Venus has just been visited and judged fit for human settlement, despite its inhospitable surface and climate; the colonists would have to endure a harsh climate for many generations until the planet could be terraformed. The protagonist, Mitch Courtenay, is a star-class copywriter in the Fowler Schocken advertising agency who has been assigned the ad campaign which would attract colonists to Venus. But a lot more is happening than he knows about. It soon becomes a tale of mystery and intrigue, in which many of the characters are not what they seem, and Mitch's loyalties and opinions change drastically over the course of the narrative.
4944106	/m/0cwdgq	The Princess Diaries, Volume II: Princess in the Spotlight	Meg Cabot	2001-06-26	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In this novel, Mia must learn to deal with public life, beginning with a primetime interview Mia is instructed to attend by her Grandmère, despite Mia's protests. When Mia gets a sore throat, she thinks that the interview will be cancelled, but she is drawn out of her sickbed by the entice of a "secret admirer", and cannot avoid the interview. During the interview itself, Mia accidentally says a number of embarrassing things, including that her mother is pregnant with the baby of her fiancé, Mr. Gianini (who is also Mia's algebra teacher). The pregnancy revealed, Grandmère organizes for the Royal Genovian Event Planner to be flown to New York from Genovia to plan an elaborate, elitist wedding. Mia has to deal with the unwanted attention brought on by the interview, along with the knowledge that a secret admirer has been sending her emails. On the day of the wedding, Mia discovers that her mom and Mr. G have eloped in Mexico with the help of her father. Mia herself manages to escape the wedding extravaganza in her bridesmaid gown to attend the Halloween screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with her friends, where she discovers that her secret admirer is her biology partner Kenny Showalter. Mia is disappointed, as she has been hoping that it would be Michael, her own crush and Lilly's older brother. The book ends with Mia philosophically reflecting that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and that she cannot hurt Kenny's feelings and accepts a date with him. fr:Journal d'une princesse tome 2 it:The Princess Diaries: Una corona per Mia
4944359	/m/0cwdwc	The Rag and Bone Shop	Robert Cormier	2001-10-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is of the brutal murder of a seven year old girl named Alicia Bartlett and the interrogation of a twelve year old boy, named Jason Dorrant, who is her friend and the last known person to see her alive. Trent, an expert interrogator, known to get confessions which seemed impossible to obtain and has never lost a case, is called in for the case. Trent does this "favor" to be in good graces with a senator. Jason Dorrant is a boy who's best described in this quote from the book, "when you're an outsider, and not part of the bunch, you're in a position to see what others don't see."(p.&nbsp;24) He was a lonely fellow with few acquaintances and perhaps no friends at all. Except maybe Alicia, whom he finds to be one of the most fascinating people. She's like a little old lady, he said. After her death Trent brings in Jason as his main suspect. Trent has never failed to get a confession from someone, and a lot is riding on this particular case for Trent to succeed. Jason is brought into a small white-walled room with no ventilation, a single bulb dangling from the ceiling, and Trent begins this interrogation. Jason is an innocent boy who was told that the information he is providing is voluntary and has no idea about being a suspect in any way. Trent takes the information Jason gives him and twists it into a distorted story that makes Jason look absolutely credible for Alicia's death. At one point Trent makes Jason look like a violent maniac simply because he reads and watches science fiction. You are what you believe you are, and by the end of the novel Jason believes he is a blood-thirsty killer and confesses to a crime he did not commit. Trent, with the confession tape in hand, walks towards a woman expecting to be praised for his handiwork, but she looks at Trent accusingly. She explains to him that Alicia's older brother was taken in for the murder and that there were witnesses. Alicia's brother was the killer, not Jason. She accuses him of making Jason confess. Trent was demoted and never worked as an interrogator again. Sadly, he left Jason fighting himself. Jason can't decide if he is what he knows himself to be or if he is what he was told he was. Did he kill her? No. Could he have killed her? No, but could he kill someone worthy of death? Say, a bully? In a final twist of irony, Jason fulfills the role that Trent gave him, grabbing a butcher knife and heading to the nearest YMCA where bully Bobo Kelton is.
4945772	/m/0cwh2h	Solomon's Stone	L. Sprague de Camp	1957	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When Montague Allen Stark, with the assistance of friends, attempts to summon a devil, he quite unexpectedly succeeds: Bechard possesses Prosper Nash's body and sends his soul to the astral plane. Nash awakes in a cavalier's body, with no memory, but with the old reflexes. This gets him shortly involved in a fight, and he meets up with Arizona Bill Averoff, who does not remember him, but is the image of his friend Bill Averoff, an avid Western reader. He also learns that the society is in the throes of a war with the Wotanists—or Voties, as they are commonly called (in the original 1940s magazine version, these characters are referred to as "Arries" or "Aryans", and appear to be the astral products of daydreaming German émigrés in the New York of the time). Spending the night reveals his name, as he signs it from habit, and more importantly, the existence of the Shamir. After a failed attempt to steal it, a fellow cavalier drags him back a club, which contains letters that reveal more of his past to him. In particular, he knows Alicia Dido Woodson, the double of Alice Woodson, present when the demon was summoned, but tracking her down reveals that she was kidnapped. An unremembered feud with Athos de Lilly catches up with him, and he ends up in jail, where he hears of a wizard, Merlin Apollonius Stark—the equivalent of Montague Stark—and resolves to get his assistance in obtaining the Shamir. In court the next day, he is offered an enlistment in the army. He receives orders to carry a message but also news from a private detective named Reginald Vance Kramer (apparently the astral self of a daydreaming would-be Philo Vance) that Alicia was kidnapped by Sultan Arslan Bey. Passing off the message to Arizona Bill Averoff, he bluffs his way into the sultan's castle by posing as a representative of the city's Comptroller. He finds that the sultan is Bob Lanby, in reality a bachelor and clerk at the YMCA. When the Romans and Voties attack, he convinces the sultan to send him to convey the harem and treasure to safety. Having gotten the girls to safety (in their opinion, not the sultan's) and taken a share of the treasure, he convinces Merlin Apollonius Stark to help him. He learns that the message was woefully misdelivered, and after an abortive anarchist uprising, New York City is in the middle of a battle in which the Voties have gained the upper hand. With help from Alicia, he does gain the Shamir, but when they are cornered by Voties, he has Alicia use it to escape to the mundane world. Execution the next morning is stopped by an invasion of creatures dreamed up by Montague Stark. Alicia's attempt to contact him was successful. Tukiphat, the owner of the Shamir, demands it of him, and Prosper explains the circumstances. Tukiphat summons Bechard to the astral plane, and sends Prosper back to deal with Bechard's connection there. The Shamir, which could return him, is still on the mundane plane, but so is Alicia, and Prosper has her use it to return herself to the astral plane. He goes to visit Montague Stark, and finds him throwing away his magical books. Prosper takes them: he may never be reunited with Alicia, but he intends to try.
4949523	/m/0cwpqx	Miracles on Maple Hill	Virginia Sorenson	1956	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Marly's family moves to the country so that her father, a prisoner of war suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, can learn to function once more. They are supported by a neighbor couple, Mr and Mrs. Chris, who make their living with maple syrup. Marly and her brother adapt to living in the country, and eventually become happier there. Their father also improves dramatically. When Mr. Chris has a heart attack during sugaring time, Marly's family steps forward to return the kindness that the Chrises have shown them. They collect the entire crop of sap and boil it down, but they are certain that they lack Mr. Chris's deft touch with making syrup. When Mr. Chris is allowed to return home, it is the moment of truth; was their syrup as good as Mr. Chris? Mr. Chris himself is unable to detect any difference. Marly reflects that the recovery of her father and Mr. Chris, the growing strength of bonds within her family, and the second chances for life and love are the true miracles of Maple Hill.
4951184	/m/0cwrpx	Fail-Safe	Harvey Wheeler	1962	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An unknown aircraft approaches North America from Europe. American bombers of the SAC are scrambled to meet the potential threat. As a fail-safe protection, the bombers have standard orders not to proceed past a certain point without receiving a special attack code. The original "threat" is proven to be innocuous and recall orders are issued. However, due to a technical failure, the attack code is transmitted to Group Six, which consists of six Vindicator supersonic bombers. Colonel Grady, the head of the group, tries to contact Omaha to verify the fail-safe order (called Positive Check), but due to Soviet radio jamming, Grady cannot hear them. Concluding that the fail-safe order and the radio jamming could only mean nuclear war, Grady commands the Group Six crew towards Moscow, their intended destination. At meetings in Omaha, at the Pentagon, and in the fallout shelter of the White House, American politicians and scholars debate the implications of the attack. Professor Groteschele suggests the United States follow this accidental attack with a full-scale attack to force the Soviets to surrender. Following procedures, the military sends out six Skyscraper supersonic fighters in an attempt to shoot down the Vindicators. The attempt is to show that the Vindicator attack is an accident, not a full-scale nuclear assault. This involves turning on afterburners to increase thrust and speed. Without tanker refueling, the "Skyscrapers" will run out of fuel and crash, dooming the pilots to die of exposure in the Arctic Sea. The Vindicators are too far away, and all six fighters shoot their rockets and fail to hit them. The President of the United States (unnamed but apparently modeled on Kennedy) contacts Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and offers assistance in attacking the group. The Soviets decline at first; however, they soon decide to accept it. At SAC headquarters, General Bogan attempts to stop the attack. However, his executive officer, Colonel Cascio, wants the attack to continue. Cascio attempts to take over command of SAC, but is stopped by Air Police. However, precious time has been wasted. Meanwhile, the Soviet PVO Strany air defense corps has managed to shoot down two of the six planes. The Soviets accept American help and shoot down a third plane. Two bombers and a support plane remain on course to Moscow. General Bogan tells Marshal Nevsky, the Soviet commander, to ignore Plane #6 (the support plane) because it has no weapons. Nevsky, who mistrusts Bogan, instead orders his Soviet aircraft to attack all three planes. Plane 6's last feint guarantees that the two remaining bombers can successfully attack. Following the failure, Nevsky collapses. As the two planes approach Moscow, Colonel Grady opens up the radio to contact SAC to inform them that they are about to make the strike. As a last-minute measure, the Soviets fire a barrage of nuclear-tipped missiles to form a fireball in an attempt to knock the low-flying Vindicator out of the sky. The Vindicators shoot up one last decoy, which successfully leads the Soviet missiles high in the air. However, one missile explodes earlier than expected; the second bomber blows up, but Colonel Grady's plane survives. With the radio open, the President attempts to persuade Grady that there is no war. Understanding orders that such a late recall attempt must be a Soviet trick, Grady ignores them. The Vindicator's defensive systems operator fires two missiles that decoy the Soviet interceptor missiles to detonate at high altitude. Grady tells his crew that "We're not just walking wounded, we're walking dead men," due to radiation from the burst. He intends to fly the aircraft over Moscow and detonate the bombs in the plane. His copilot agrees, noting "There's nothing to go home to." When it becomes apparent that one bomber will get through Soviet defenses and destroy Moscow, the American President states that he will order an American bomber to destroy New York City at the same time, with the Empire State Building as ground zero; his wife is in the city and would be killed. The Soviet leader is appalled but realizes that this is the only way to prevent a worldwide nuclear war which will probably destroy humanity; 'others' (presumably the Soviet military) would not accept the unilateral destruction of Moscow, and would depose him and retaliate. The bomb is dropped by a senior general within Strategic Air Command, who orders his crew to let him handle the entire bombing run by himself so as to assume all the responsibility; he then takes his own life.
4954388	/m/0cwxcg	The Vampire Prince	Darren Shan	2002	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book carries on from when Darren Shan was falling down a roaring river in Trials of Death, and he must make his way back to Vampire Mountain, while avoiding Kurda Smahlt and his accomplices. The river, which used to carry the dead bodies of vampires away, goes right through the Vampire Mountain. He was washed down the river, emerging from it alive-a feat that nobody achieved before this- but bruised, battered, and exhausted. He was naked, cold, and barely had energy for walking, and soon collapses. By luck he bumped into two wolves, Streak and Rudi - the "wolf friends" he knew from an earlier encounter. These wolves help him make his way back to Vampire Mountain safely. He must find a way to inform the Vampire Princes (the leaders of the vampires) of Kurda's treachery before they crown him a fellow Prince. Kurda's treason includes hiding Vampaneze inside the mountain, preparing to murder the Princes and attempting to gain control of the Stone of Blood (a powerful stone that can be used to locate any vampire who has touched it) with which he would force the vampires to join the Vampaneze and become a single clan once more. However, with Seba Nile's help, Darren reveals Kurda to the Princes in the nick of time. The Vampaneze are found and savagely murdered. Arra Sails is badly wounded during the fight with the Vampaneze and dies. Vanez Blane loses his other eye, and Darren kills two Vampaneze, but is sickened by his own battle lust. Even though Kurda's intentions were pure, the Princes give him the most terrible punishment possible: execution by impalement of stakes in the Hall of Death in the manner of a traitor and shameful cremation, so that he may not reach Paradise. During his trial, Kurda explains his plans to the vampires, and they see that he wasn't selfish, so they no longer hate him. Darren is supposed to be executed for fleeing the Prince's judgment, but the Princes, wanting to hold true to traditions and spare Darren, decide that he must be made a Prince, thereby putting him above the laws which demand his execution. Mr. Crepsley however is hurt by the loss of his friend and former mate, Arra Sails.
4954475	/m/0cwxlk	The Well-Mannered War	Gareth Roberts		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 On the planet Barclow, the Doctor and his companions become embroiled in the political wrangle between humans and Chelonians.
4954624	/m/0cwxww	The Sands of Time	Justin Richards		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Visiting the British Museum, Nyssa is soon kidnapped leaving the Doctor and Tegan to face the consequences of an Ancient Egyptian prophecy.
4954667	/m/0cwxz_	Hunters of the Dusk	Darren Shan	2003	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the seventh book of this series, not long into his years as a Prince, Darren is once again visited by Desmond Tiny (the creator of vampires and Little People). He explains that the three hunters must find and hunt down the Vampaneze Lord if they have any hopes to win the war. He announces that two of them are Darren and Mr. Crepsley, but the third one they must find on their way. The hunters are told by Mr. Tiny that they will cross paths with the Lord of the Vampaneze four times throughout their quest, and have only those four chances to destroy him. They leave and go to Lady Evanna for help as they were instructed by Mr.Tiny. On the way they meet with Vancha March, another Vampire Prince and the last hunter. Vancha's skin is a dark shade of red, due to his constant battle with the sun (he thinks that the sun, like any other enemy of the creatures of the night, can be defeated) and does not like to use weapons, using his bare hands instead. Though, he does use the shurikens that are strapped to his belt when necessary. He prefers to wear only clothes made from animals, and doesn't care for having many manners. He claims to be a ladies man, though Darren perceives him as someone whom all women dislike. The three get to Evanna's house, and she lets them stay with her for a few days so they can discuss what Mr.Tiny said and where they should go next. Leaving Lady Evanna's house, they set their sites back towards the Cirque Du Freak, following Darren's gut feeling as a Vampire Prince and the main hunter. While they are staying there, Darren notices Lady Evanna leaving the Cirque one night and follows her to a nearby forest. He witnesses Lady Evanna meeting with a group of Vampaneze and fears the worst. Darren gets the others, and they prepare an attack. After launching what seemed to be a successful strike on the group of Vampaneze, two of them get away. One being Vancha's brother, and the other being a servant of the Vampaneze. Vancha lets them get away after realizing that one is his brother. However, little to their knowledge, the servant was actually a disguise and it turned out to be the Lord of the Vampaneze! After a few more nights at the Cirque to once again come up with a strategy, they set off to once more try to encounter the Lord and destroy him to end the War of the Scars. Preview the Book. fa:شکارچیان غروب
4954697	/m/0cwy01	Killers of the Dawn	Darren Shan		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Mr. Crepsley, Darren, and Harkat go into the tunnels, where they find Vancha. They arm themselves with weapons carelessly discarded by the Vampaneze and seek out Steve. Steve calls the rest of the Vampaneze. There is a battle between the two sides vampaneze and vampires, and soon they face the Vampaneze Lord. The Vampaneze Lord says that he and Mr. Crepsley must fight one another alone with no help from anyone. The Vampaneze and Vampires stop their fighting. At last Mr. Crepsley kills the Vampaneze Lord, but Steve jumps onto his back and causes him to fall over the cliff, where he is hanging over the pit of flaming stakes with Steve. Since he believes the Vampaneze Lord is dead, he agrees to kill himself and stop holding on to Steve in exchange for rest. Mr. Crepsley lets go of Steve and falls into the pit below, giving Darren a smile as they've succeeded in ending the war. Or so he thinks. After he is dead and everyone has safely departed, Steve reveals himself to Darren as the Vampaneze Lord: the one whom Darren or Vancha must destroy for the sake of the world. Mr. Crepsley's death had been in vain, which leaves Darren devastated and feeling empty, so much so he can't even cry. This is a perfect ending leading smoothly onto the 10th book where it goes straight into a recap of Killers of the Dawn.
4954789	/m/0cwy5c	Koyasan	Darren Shan		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book is about a young girl called Koyasan, who fears the graveyard in her town where the spirits live. Her younger sister enters the graveyard after dark and her soul is captured. In order to find and retrieve her sister's stolen soul she must battle three spirits and return the soul to her sister's empty body before dawn.
4955896	/m/0cwznc	Ruined City	Nevil Shute		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book tells the story of Henry Warren, a City of London financier and head of his firm, Warren Sons and Mortimer. Amid the Depression, Warren continues to make money through hard work floating loans and stock issues—but at a price. Although only in his early forties, he is starting to have health problems—and his wife is having an affair with another man. They separate, and divorce proceedings begin. One night, out of desperation, and telling no one, he orders his chauffeur to drive him to the North of England, as he wants to go on a hiking tour to clear his head and gain some perspective. His chauffeur sets him down many hours north of London. The chauffeur's death in a road accident while making his way back to London means that there is no one who knows where Warren is. Warren soon suffers severe intestinal pain and is taken to a hospital in the fictional Northumberland town of Sharples. The loss of his wallet deprives Warren of any evidence of his identity, and everyone assumes he is one of the many who are on the road, unemployed because of the Depression. Once he regains consciousness, he encourages this misconception. Sharples, once a prosperous town, is so entirely bound up with the shipyard that was its major employer that when the shipyard failed, so did the town. Unemployment is very high, and few shops remain open, the entire town living on the dole. The hospital is still open, however, and Warren is operated on successfully. While recovering he learns of the town's plight, as he starts becoming attracted to the Hospital's Almoner, Alice MacMahon - a law graduate who never practised but who is fiercely loyal to her town. He continues the pose of being indigent, and watches as others die through listlessness and lack of strength. Eventually his convalescence is complete and he is discharged. By this time, he has managed to have money and cheque forms sent to him, and he gives a major gift to the hospital, keeping it quiet. Warren now wants to help the town, both out of affection for Alice and out of belief that something must be done - and as head of his firm he is uniquely able to do so. He quietly buys the shipyard for a song with his own money, but knows of no legitimate way of securing that first order to start the shipyard going again. He sees no other way but to indulge in shady dealings (before this, his name was a byword for honesty). Warren goes to the Balkan nation of Laevatia and begins bribing officials for control of the oil concession—once the concession is secured, the corporation which will result will need tankers to transport the oil. Thanks to the help of a courtesan, a dishonest card dealer, and other colourful characters, he is successful. The new corporation which Warren floats on the London stock market orders the tankers from the shipyard, which Warren also floats on the stock market. To make the float a success he states in its prospectus that the yard will make a profit, although he knows full well, and a letter he has received from the yard's manager reports, that the opposite will be true. This falsification of a prospectus was and is a serious criminal offence - as Warren well knows. The shipyard slowly starts up again, and thus far Warren's plan works well. But when there is a revolution in Laevatia, the house of cards that Warren has built starts to collapse. Questions are asked around the Exchange, the damning letter comes to light, and Warren is arrested. The only way to keep the shipyard out of it is for Warren to take the responsibility entirely on himself. He does, and is sent to prison, where he serves two years and three months. He is completely unrepentant. Meanwhile, his love for Alice only awaits his release before they can be married. As a prisoner, without responsibility, he begins to recover his health and gain perspective on his life. As his good name in the City is ruined, and as he can never return to his former work, he thinks about what to do with the remainder of his life (what he decides is not made clear). He will still be a wealthy man, and still has energy. Upon his release, he travels up to Sharples, telling no one of his coming. There is no resemblance between the bustling, prosperous town he now sees, and the derelict one he remembers. He walks to the shipyard, now busy with rearmament work, and sees a three foot square bronze plaque at the gate. It shows the head and shoulders of a man, in profile, and the words "HENRY WARREN/1934/HE GAVE US WORK". He is much affected. He is recognized, and the entire town, including Alice, hurries to the shipyard to greet him.http://www.allreaders.com/Topics/info_33362.asp
4956429	/m/0cw_n0	Changeling	Roger Zelazny	1980-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The people had long suffered under Det Morson's power. When at last, the wizard Mor joined the fight, Det and his infamous Rondoval castle were destroyed. But the victory was not complete, for the conquerors found a baby amidst the rubble: Det's son, Pol. Unwilling to kill the child, Mor took him to a parallel world where technology ruled and the ways of magic were considered mere legends. He substituted Pol for a baby of the same age, using a spell to persuade the parents to recognize him as their own. In order to retain the balance between the worlds, Mor took the baby from the other world and brought it back to his own, leaving it with a local artisan, Marak.
4956449	/m/0cw_pf	Madwand	Roger Zelazny	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Pol Detson, son of Lord Det, has come home, now a powerful sorcerer of unsurpassed natural ability. But Pol is still an untrained talent, a "madwand." To take control of his powers, to rule in his father's place, he must survive arduous training and a fantastic initiation into the rites of society. The story implied that a sequel was necessary to complete the story, but no sequel was ever written.
4959546	/m/0cx5hc	Barney's Version	Mordecai Richler	1997	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is written as if it is an autobiography by Barney Panofsky recounting his life in varying detail. At the end of the book he is diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, explaining his previous memory lapses and footnote corrections by his son Michael. Barney's version of events may be viewed as that of two unreliable narrators, in that his recollections are told from varying mental states and then posthumously edited by his son. Underlying the story of Barney's three marriages is the mysterious disappearance of his friend Boogie. Though there is no body, police suspect murder, and Barney himself is tried but acquitted of murder. An explanation for the mystery is given at the novel's end.
4963176	/m/0cxcb_	The House with a Clock in Its Walls	John Bellairs		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins when the recently orphaned Lewis Barnavelt moves to the (fictional) town of New Zebedee, Michigan, to live with his mysterious uncle Jonathan Barnavelt. Jonathan turns out to be a mediocre, though well-intentioned, wizard, while his next-door neighbor and good friend, Florence Zimmermann, is a far more powerful good witch. Jonathan's house was previously owned by Isaac and Selenna Izard, a sinister couple who had dedicated their lives to evil magic, and plotted to bring about the end of the world. Before dying, Isaac constructed the titular clock that he hid somewhere inside the walls of the house, where it eternally ticks, still attempting to pull the world into the magical alignment, which would permit him to destroy it. Lewis manages to befriend a local boy named Tarby, who is everything he is not—popular, athletic, thin, and so on—but the two soon begin to drift apart. Lewis tries to win Tarby back by demonstrating how to raise the dead in the local cemetery on Halloween but only succeeds in releasing Selenna from her tomb. An escalating series of encounters with the sorceress' ghost builds to a final confrontation in the basement of Jonathan's house, where Lewis must summon up his courage and prevent her from finishing her husband's work and bringing on Doomsday. As the story ends, Lewis announces that he has found a new friend, a girl named Rose Rita Pottinger.
4965456	/m/0cxh14	The Viceroy of Ouidah	Bruce Chatwin	1980	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Chatwin's novel portrays the life of a fictional slave trader named Francisco Manuel da Silva, who is loosely based on the life of an historical Brazilian, Francisco Felix de Sousa. He became powerful in Wydah (or Ouidah), the so-called Slave Coast of West Africa, now Benin and Togo. (Note: Chatwin was caught up in the violence of a coup in Dahomey (now Benin) when he was researching the book.)
4968585	/m/0cxntx	Brian's Hunt	Gary Paulsen	2003	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Brian, who is now sixteen years old, is canoeing through the Canadian wilderness. He realizes that the woods are now his home and he will never be happy in modern society, with its noise, pollution, and fake people. He now spends his time in the wild, hunting, fishing, and home schooling himself. While Brian does not miss human contact, he finds his thoughts frequently turning to Kay-gwa-daush (also known as Susan), the teenage daughter of the Cree family who rescued him at the end of Brian's Winter. Though he has only seen her photograph, her family has described her as an adventurous, self-reliant young woman, and Brian wonders if she might be a kindred spirit. While canoeing, Brian finds a seriously wounded Malamute dog, which he nurses back to health. The dog is clearly domesticated, and Brian begins to worry that whatever maimed the dog may have done the same to her owners. He remembers his Cree friends and decides to go check on them. When Brian reaches their cabin, he finds that it was a bear that had killed the parents and apparently chased Susan into hiding. Brian returns her to her home, radios for help, and buries the family. The authorities arrive to take Susan to relatives in Winnipeg. Brian, along with the dog, stays behind in order to hunt down and kill the bear, knowing very well that the hunt could cost him his life. Brian, using skills he had learned in past books like Hatchet and Brian's Winter, searches for the bear that killed his friends. But soon, the hunter becomes the hunted. Brian finds bear tracks on an island and begins to follow them. He later realizes that he was walking in a circle. The bear is actually hunting Brian. The next day, instead of moving on, he waits for the bear, and after a hard fought battle with the bear, Brian is triumphant.
4974066	/m/0cxz7_	Xavras Wyżryn	Jacek Dukaj	1997-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In 1996, a young American reporter, Ian Smith, is sent by his news network to the Soviet republic of Poland, to document guerrilla actions of Polish freedom fighters against the Soviet regime. His task includes interviewing the charimastic leader of Polish Freedom Army, Colonel Xavras Wyżryn. Ian does not realize that during his long trip from Ukrainian steppes to Moscow, alongside hardened veterans of Polish forces, he will experience the horror of war in which there is no good and evil side. Neither does he expect to find himself in the midst of the most reckless of Wyżryn's campaigns - when the Polish forces capture a Soviet atomic bomb and start to smuggle it towards Moscow.
4974074	/m/0cxz8p	Flashman	George MacDonald Fraser	1969	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Flashman's expulsion from Rugby for drunkenness leads him to join the Army for what he hopes will be a sinecure. He joins the 11th Regiment of Light Dragoons commanded by Lord Cardigan whom he toadies in his best style. After an affair with a fellow officer's lover, he is forced to fight a duel but wins after promising a large sum of money to the pistol loader to give his opponent a blank load in his gun. He does not kill his opponent but instead delopes and accidentally shoots the top off a bottle thirty yards away, an action that gives him instant fame and the respect of the Duke of Wellington. However, once it was found out what they were fighting over, Flashman is stationed in Scotland. He is quartered with the Morrison family, and soon enough he takes advantage of one of the daughters, Elspeth. After a forced marriage, Flashman is required to resign the Hussars due to marrying below his station. He is given another option, to make his reputation in India. By showing off his language and riding skills in India, Flashman is assigned to the worst frontier of the British Empire at that time, Afghanistan. His adventures include the retreat from Kabul, Last Stand at Gandamak and the Siege of Jalalabad, in the First Anglo-Afghan War. Despite being captured, tortured, and escaping death numerous times, and hiding and shirking his duty as much as possible, he comes through it all alive and with a hero's reputation&nbsp;... although his triumph is tempered when he realises his wife might have been unfaithful while he was away.
4974452	/m/0cxz_j	Lost City	Clive Cussler	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Story begins with a flashback to August 1914, where Jules Fauchard is flying his Morane-Saulnier N, mono-winged aircraft. Fauchard is heading to meet the pope's emissary in Switzerland but as he is coming to the border and the French Alps, a squad of six Aviatik biplanes find him. The planes attack Fauchard and though he destroys four planes he is eventually shot down and killed. His plane lands in a glacial river and Fauchard along with his helmet and strong box are buried in a glacier. Cut to the present day in the Scottish Orkney Islands. A reality television show is being filmed when that evening a group of animals attack the crew and cast. Everyone is killed except for Jodie Michaelson; the only reason she is not killed is because as she was running from the creatures she fell into a deep crevace in the rocks and the animals lost her scent. At about the same time yet another plotline is developing. This part of the story takes place in Monemvassia, The Greek Peloponnese. The storyline follows Dr. Angus MacLean, a research Chemist. MacLean is on the run. He is living in a monastery on a small island in Greece. As MacLean reminisces it becomes clear why he is running. The trouble began when he was hired to research enzymes in France. As the leader of a team of scientists doing enzyme research, the hours were long but the pay was great and MacLean had no complaints. That was until he began asking questions. The owners of the lab decided to send home the scientists, telling them "not to worry." MacLean headed to Turkey to see the ruins. This probably saved his life. When he came home he was greeted with an envelope full of newspaper clippings and a telephone message from one of his former colleagues that asked him if he had been watching the news and urged MacLean to call him back. When MacLean tried to call him back he was informed that the man had been killed in a hit-and-run accident. This leg of the story ends with MacLean being kidnapped by a hit team that had been hired by the company that ran the lab. The story then cuts to the French Alps where a team of scientists is studying a glacier named Le Dormeur. The scientists, Hank Thurston and Bernard LeBlanc are accompanied by Derek Rawlins, a journalist for Outside magazine. As the three scientists are giving Rawlins a tour they get a phone call saying that a body frozen in the ice had been discovered. Two hundred feet below the surface of Lac du Dormeur, Kurt Austin and a beautiful woman named Skye Labelle are inside a submersible searching for remnants of trade routes between Europeans and the Mediterranean civilizations, when Skye is recalled back to land. Skye is an expert in arms and armour. It seems that the authorities need her help to identify the helmet found with the frozen body in the glacier. When Skye arrives where the body is frozen, she sees her arch-nemesis, Renaud. Auguste Renaud is one of the higher-ups at the State Archaeological board of France. He is attracted to Skye but she is repulsed by him. Skye is puzzled by the body. The deceased is dressed in an early twentieth century flight suit but in his possession is a very old helmet. The helmet is a riddle in itself, as it is of very high quality and very distinctive yet it isn't like anything she has ever encountered. Needless to say Skye cannot identify the artifact on the spot. Much to Skye's chagrin, Renaud has called a press conference in the underground laboratory to announce the discovery to the world. During the press conference something terrible occurs. A very large and muscular bald man comes up to Renaud and demands the strongbox found with the body saying, "Give the box to me." Renaud responds saying with a grin, "Not on your life!" To this the bald man says, "No, Not on your life!" and with that he pulls a pistol out of his coat and brings it down on Renaud's hand. The large man then takes off with the box. A few seconds later the group hears a loud explosion as a barrier that holds back the glacial waters is destroyed, water is flowing into the laboratory. Then they are trapped in a flooding tunnel. When Kurt Austin hears the news, he sends a rescue team and the they start an operation. Then, another chopper lands on the shore. Austin had called Joe Zavala on his cellphone. Austin and Zavala got into the submersible and crack a hole in the flooding tunnel from under water. They got everyone safely to shore within the next hour.
4976216	/m/0cy19d	Hunter	James Byron Huggins	1989	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is set in the United States, presumably during the late 1980s or early 1990s. It begins with Yeager in the middle of a personal campaign of assassination, initially gunning down racially mixed couples in parking lots, before escalating to more sophisticated methods against higher-profile targets, including prominent journalists and politicians whom Yeager sees as promoting racial mixing. At the same time, Yeager and his girlfriend are developing connections with a white nationalist group. After several successful and increasingly ambitious attacks, Yeager is found and confronted by a senior agent of the FBI who himself is disgusted with "Jewish control" of the FBI and the American social situation. This agent blackmails Yeager into assisting him with his career by assassinating several Jewish FBI agents and targeting Mossad agents in the United States so that the agent can be appointed as the head of a newly-formed antiterrorist secret-police agency, assume increasing control of the United States, and use his power to challenge and remove Jewish control of the government and media. At the same time, Yeager's white nationalist group is achieving greater and greater prominence through the insertion of one of their members into a Christian evangelist television broadcasting ministry, from which he is broadcasting increasingly racially-conscious and anti-Jewish messages. Yeager's campaign of assassination and terrorism, the actions of copycats and imitators, the white nationalist broadcasting effort, the efforts of the antiterrorist official, and a rapid decline of the U.S. economy all work to push the United States towards increasing racial and social violence and fragmentation. Eventually, Yeager is faced with a dilemma when the government official for whom he has been working finally orders him to kill the undercover evangelist minister, whose efforts oppose the agent's intent to establish order and strike a temporary bargain with the Jews. Yeager attempts to avoid the assignment, and then deliberately appears to bungle the assassination. At this point, Yeager is caught between the intentions of his government confederate, who intends to consolidate his own power and control over the government and reform the system from the top down after suppressing upcoming black nationalist riots; and the white-nationalist group who wishes to stir up the chaos even further, draw white Americans into battle, and eventually overthrow the government. Ultimately, Yeager kills the government agent. Following this, the Jewish-controlled media side with the black rioters, revealing that the government official would have been double-crossed had he attempted to strike his deal. Yeager and the other members of the group, now under increasing government scrutiny, resolve to continue their efforts and to go "underground" to continue the fight against the system.
4976673	/m/0cy1_1	The Dragon Society	Lawrence Watt-Evans		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the events of the first book, Dragon Weather, Arlian finds himself armed with the knowledge of how dragons reproduce. It is a nasty and terrible business and Arlian wishes to prevent dragons from ever reproducing. Using the magic gathered in Arithei, he continues his quest. He realizes that if he is to fulfill his quest of destroying the dragons he must destroy the entire dragon society which is made up of dragon hearts. Dragon hearts are those who have drunk a mixture of human blood and dragon venom and gain a long extended life and a baby dragon growing in their heart. Arlian and his best friend Black hunt down the dragons in the hope that if Arlian kills a dragon the duke will assist him in destroying the dragon menace. In the end he removes a dragon from the heart of a Lady Rhime which wakes up its mother. The mother dragon comes to Manfort to kill Arlian but instead falls victim to an obsidian spear. This means Arlian is the first man to kill a dragon ever. He receives the full assistance of the duke and named warlord in the coming battle against the dragons. Even with the success of killing a dragon Arlian's task is far from over.
4977689	/m/0cy32p	The Day of the Scorpion	Paul Scott	1968-09	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In this novel an old Raj family comes newly on the scene, the Laytons of Pankot, an imaginary hill station in India. Now an army captain, Ronald Merrick, a self-made man of the lower middle class and the former police official in charge of the Daphne Manners case, begins to insinuate himself subtly into the Layton family. We learn what the Laytons do not know that in a searing session with the incarcerated Hari Kumar, Merrick tortured and molested him. Susan, the younger Layton sister, driven by a sense of her own nothingness, marries Teddie Bingham, a colorless and conventional officer in the prestigious Pankot Rifles regiment. By accident, Teddie and Merrick are roommates, and when his designated best man falls ill at the last minute, Teddie asks Merrick to act as best man. The wedding is held in Mirat, a native state ruled by a Nawab. On the way to the wedding ceremony, someone throws a stone at the car in which Teddie and Merrick are riding. Teddie is injured and has to be patched up. At the wedding reception, the Nawab of Mirat becomes a victim of heightened security when he is denied entrance to his own property as he is an Indian. When the newlyweds are being seen off at the railway station, Shalini Gupta Sen appears and makes a scene, beseeching him. She is later revealed to be begging Merrick to reveal the whereabouts of her nephew, Hari Kumar. Nigel Rowan, an officer serving in the civil service, takes Lady Manners to observe the debriefing of Hari Kumar, who was tortured and jailed after the rape of Lady Manners's niece, Daphne, and who has been held in prison for a year under the Defense of India Act for vague alleged political crimes. The panel, consisting of Rowan and an Indian member, is horrified to learn of Hari's treatment at Merrick's hands. It comes out that Hari has never been informed that Daphne conceived a child and then died. The questioners realize that Hari's statements will be too inflammatory in the fragile political climate of India. They also realize that Hari is innocent, however, and suspect that at some point in the future, he will be quietly released from custody. Teddie and Merrick are sent to the front in Manipur against the Japanese and their surrogates, the Indian National Army (known as "Jiffs" among the British). Teddie, against Merrick's warnings, falls victim to an INA ambush while trying to induce INA soldiers from his regiment to surrender. Merrick does his best to save Teddie, but is unsuccessful, and comes away horribly disfigured. Teddie goes forward, it is implied, because he is concerned about the methods Merrick might employ on the turncoats. Sarah Layton, the older sister, comes to the fore as the morally fine-tuned mainstay of the family. To show the family's gratitude for his efforts, Sarah visits Merrick in Calcutta, where he is convalescing at an Army hospital. Merrick explains to her why he believes himself partly responsible for Teddie's fate. She is horrified by his disfigurement and learns that much of Merrick's left arm is to be amputated. While in Calcutta, Sarah is staying with Aunt Fenny, who is eager to get Sarah matched up with a young man. She gets her husband, Uncle Arthur, to bring several of his junior officers over for dinner. In particular, she is enthusiastic about introducing Sarah to Jimmy Clark. After an unsuccessful evening on the town, Clark takes Sarah to the Indian side of Calcutta, where they attend a fancy party at the home of a wealthy socialite. There, Clark seduces Sarah by challenging her to taste life. On her way back to Pankot, Sarah encounters Count Bronowsky, a White Russian emigre who is the Nawab's wazir or chief advisor, whom she had met during Susan and Teddie's wedding. With him is Nigel Rowan. They are there to meet Mohammed Ali Kasim, a prominent politician who is being released after a period of imprisonment under the Defense of India Act. Kasim learns from his younger son, Ahmed, that his elder son, Sayed, an officer in the Indian Army, has become turncoat and joined the INA and now faces charges of treason. Barbie Batchelor, the friend and paying guest of Mabel Layton discovers the secret of the enmity between Mabel and Mildred one night when both the elderly women are unable to sleep. Mabel also tells Barbie she will never go to Ranpur again until after she's buried, which Barbie interprets to mean that she wishes be buried next to the grave of her late husband, James Layton, in Ranpur. Susan Bingham, Teddie's newlywed and pregnant bride, is unhinged when having received news of Teddie's death she witnesses her aunt Mabel's death. As it is, Susan depends on others to define her role and character. Without Teddie to serve as the anchor for her identity, Susan is lost and afraid to be responsible for a fatherless child. Coming unhinged, she makes a ring of fire with paraffin and places the baby with it, in imitation of a native treatment of scorpions which she witnessed as a child. The baby is rescued unharmed by its nurse.
4981238	/m/0cy9ds	Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown	Maud Hart Lovelace	1943		 In this volume in the series, horseless carriages arrive in Deep Valley for the first time when Mr. Poppy, the owner of the Opera House, buys an automobile. Betsy's friend Tib is his first passenger &mdash; along with his wife &mdash; due simply to her having the boldness to ask for a ride. Although the girls' classmate Winona Root is initially jealous of Tib over this experience, she soon gets over it and invites Betsy, Tacy, and Tib to their first real theatrical experience, a dramatized version of Uncle Tom's Cabin at the Opera House. Betsy befriends the lonely Mrs. Poppy, who welcomes the chance to share the little girls' affection after having lost her only daughter in the years before moving to town. Through this friendship, the girls not only enjoy parties at the Poppy Hotel, but also participate in a theatrical production of Rip Van Winkle that lets Mrs. Poppy reunite Betsy's mother, Mrs. Ray, with her long-lost brother. Betsy and her friends also discover the temptations of dime novels, prompting Betsy to try her hand at writing her own. Eventually, Betsy shares her secret writings with her mother, who successfully encourages her to write fiction of more elevated character. Betsy's parents decide that in order to foster a love of classic literature and make Betsy a better writer, she will be allowed to go alone to the new Carnegie library every two weeks, with spending money for a special mid-day treat to let her stay all day.
4981278	/m/0cy9j8	Betsy and Joe	Maud Hart Lovelace	1948		 Betsy and Joe details the events of Betsy Ray's senior year (1909-1910) at Deep Valley High School in Deep Valley, Minnesota. Betsy had first met Joe Willard in the fifth book of the series, Heaven to Betsy, at Willard's Emporium, a store in the country owned by Joe's uncle. The two of them did not become close friends initially, as they competed in school for top marks in English class and in the annual high school essay competition. Joe's parents had died earlier, causing him to have to spend his time working to support himself and making him, in Betsy's opinion, proud. At the end of the previous book, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy's classmate, Joe Willard, sent her a postcard requesting to correspond over the summer while he was away working in the harvest fields. Joe soon moved to North Dakota to help run a newspaper, and over the summer while Betsy is away on vacation at Murmuring Lake, Betsy and Joe corresponded, Betsy on her "scented, greensealed" stationery replying to Joe's "typewritten letters." While at Murmuring Lake, Betsy is often visited by her good friend, Tony Markham. Tony tends to run with a wild crowd, so Betsy encourages his visits to keep him with the Crowd. In September, school begins, and Joe makes his first visit to Betsy's home and soon he comes every Sunday night for "Sunday Night Lunch." The first dance of the school year is announced, and to Betsy's dismay Tony asks her first. After Betsy explains the situation to Joe, he makes a blanket invitation for her to go to all the rest of the dances with him. Betsy declines because she feels it would be unfair to Tony to shut him out of her life like that, even though she only likes him as a friend. The fall progresses with Tony and Joe both taking Betsy to various events, and soon it is time for the New Year's Eve dance. Again, Tony asks Betsy first &mdash; despite Betsy's having tried to give Joe a chance to invite her first &mdash; and Betsy feels she can't say no, so she accepts even though she would rather go with Joe. When Joe finds out, he is angry and says they should stop seeing one another. When school resumes after break, the two of them are no longer friends and scarcely talk to each other. Tony becomes more serious about Betsy. Just before Easter break, Tony tries to kiss Betsy and she tells him she only likes him as a friend. She then goes away for a week to visit friends of her father in the country, the Beidwinkles. At the end of the week, Betsy and the Beidwinkles visit Willard's Emporium, where Betsy and Joe meet again and rekindle their friendship in the place where it began. They spend the day together, and when they both return to Deep Valley they begin "going together." Tony leaves school to go work on Broadway in New York, and Joe and Betsy end the year happily "almost engaged."
4983958	/m/0cygn_	Royal Flash	George MacDonald Fraser	1970	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Royal Flash is set during the Revolutions of 1848. The story features Lola Montez, and Otto von Bismarck as major characters, and fictionalizes elements of the Schleswig-Holstein Question, 1843, 1847 and 1848. It is set in the fictional Duchy of Strackenz, making it the only Flashman novel to be set in a fictitious location. Other characters include Prince Edward, Lillie Langtry, Ludwig I of Bavaria, John Gully, Nicholas Ward, Lord Conyngham, Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Oscar Wilde, Henry Irving, Karl Marx, Lord Palmerston, Viscount Peel, Jefferson Davis. The book is loosely based on the plot of The Prisoner of Zenda. Flashman explains that this is because the story was plagiarised from him by its author, Anthony Hope.
4984228	/m/0cyh5k	Flash for Freedom!	George MacDonald Fraser	1971	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 From Dahomey to the slave state of Mississippi, Flashman has cause to regret a game of pontoon with Benjamin Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. From his ambition for a seat in the House of Commons, he has to settle instead for a role in the West African slave trade, under the command of Captain John Charity Spring, a Latin-spouting madman. Captured by the United States Navy, Flashman has to talk his way out of prison by assuming the first of his many false identities in America. After a visit to Washington D.C. and an unsettling meeting with Abraham Lincoln (still a junior congressman at the time), he escapes his Navy protectors in New Orleans and holes up at a whorehouse run by an amorous madame, Susie Willinck. He is again taken into custody, this time by members of the Underground Railroad. Traveling up the Mississippi River with a fugitive slave ends badly once again, and the rest of the story has Flashman as a slave driver on a plantation, a potential slave himself, and a slave stealer fleeing from vigilantes. Eventually he ends up back in New Orleans at the mercy of Spring. This story is continued in Flashman and the Redskins. At the end of the novel, the editor (Fraser) claims that the escape of Cassy and Flashman across the Ohio River was the inspiration for the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, with the names altered and the story focusing on the slave Cassy rather than Flashman. This is similar to a claim made by Flashman that his experiences in Royal Flash were the basis for The Prisoner of Zenda.
4984343	/m/0cyhbc	Flashman at the Charge	George MacDonald Fraser	1973	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Flashman meets Queen Victoria's cousin, William of Celle, incognito in a billiards hall and befriends him, before getting him drunk and leaving him in an alley with bootblack on his buttocks for the police to find. However, his reputation as a valiant and down-to-earth soldier leads to Prince Albert assigning Flashman as the boy's mentor. Despite every attempt to avoid it, he finds himself in the Crimea showing William what soldiering is all about. The boy's unfortunate death does not allow Flashman to avoid involvement in the most notable actions of the Crimean War, including The Thin Red Line, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade under James Yorke Scarlett, and the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade. Powered by fear and flatulence, he reaches the Russian guns in front of the other surviving members of the charge and promptly surrenders. He is taken into Russia (now Ukraine) and placed in the custody of Count Pencherjevsky. Here he reunites with Scud East, his old schoolmate, and meets Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev, a vicious Russian Captain. Flashman and East overhear plans by senior Russian officers to invade India and end the British Raj. The two men escape from the Count's estate (thanks to a peasant uprising), but Flashman is recaptured by the Russians. Ignatiev takes Flashman with him across central Asia as part of his plans to conquer India. Flashman is rescued from prison by cohorts of Yakub Beg, led by his Chinese paramour. Then the Tajik and Uzbek warriors attack and destroy the Russian fleet with the aid of Flashman (who is drugged with hashish and utterly fearless as a result, for the only time in his life).
4984388	/m/0cyhdv	Flashman in the Great Game	George MacDonald Fraser	1975	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Flashman not only encounters Lord Palmerston at Balmoral, but also his old nemesis Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev. He escapes assassination narrowly and journeys to Jhansi in India, where he meets Rani Lakshmi Bai, the beautiful queen. He listens to her grievances against the British Raj and attempts to seduce her. Whether or not he is successful is unclear, but immediately afterwards Flashman is nearly garroted by Thuggees. In disguise as Makarram Khan, a Hasanzai of the Black Mountain, he takes refuge in the native cavalry at Meerut. Unfortunately, Meerut is where the Sepoy Mutiny begins. Flashman survives the Siege of Cawnpore and the Siege of Lucknow but ends up imprisoned in Gwalior after an attempt to deliver Lakshmi into British hands. He is released just in time to witness the death of Lakshmi, but then his appearance after two months in prison leads to his misidentification as a mutineer. After being knocked out during the British attack on the Rani's camp, he awakens to something that makes Hugh Rose later wonder that Flashman did not lose his mind - he is gagged and tied to the muzzle of a cannon, about to be executed with other mutineers. Fortunately, quick thinking allows him to communicate with gestures his true ethnicity to his British captors. In an uncharacteristically humane act, he orders the Indian mutineers who were going to be blown away alongside him, to be freed saying "the way things are hereabouts, one of 'em's probably Lord Canning." In this book Flashman often behaves heroically, though his interior thoughts are often - but not always - those of a coward and a cad.
4984502	/m/0cyhn8	Flashman's Lady	George MacDonald Fraser	1977	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Flashman meets Tom Brown at a tavern and is convinced to play cricket at Lord's for a team made up of Rugby Old Boys. His impressive play (performing possibly the first ever hat-trick) leads to more matches, and an encounter with Daedalus Tighe, a notorious bookie. He also meets Don Solomon Haslam, a businessman from the East Indies, who has a lot of money, prestige, and a fascination for Elspeth, Flashman's wife. Due to a wager with Haslam, blackmail from Tighe, and threats from a Duke arising from an affair with the Duke's lover, Flashman is forced to accompany Haslam, Elspeth, and Morrison (his father-in-law) on a trip to Singapore. There Haslam reveals his true identity and kidnaps Elspeth. Flashman must reluctantly chase after them, with the help of James Brooke. This chase takes him to the jungles of Borneo, the nests of pirates, and finally to Madagascar, where he is enslaved and becomes military advisor and lover to Queen Ranavalona I. Escape from the island seems impossible, and with his wife's help he has to overcome his cowardice to evade their pursuers.
4984601	/m/0cyhtf	Flashman and the Redskins	George MacDonald Fraser	1982	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In his haste to leave New Orleans and the threat of imprisonment, Flashman agrees to shepherd Susie Willinck and her company of prostitutes to Sacramento, where she intends to set up shop and make a bundle from goldminers. As wagon captain, Flashman is nominally in charge of his and Susie's (now his wife) collection of women, supplies, sex toys and the other forty-niners and invalids looking for a better life but he depends on the guidance of Richens Lacey Wootton to see them through. Unfortunately, Wootton becomes stricken with cholera. Flashman is left to get everyone to Bent's Fort in safety, which Comanches make difficult for him. Eventually, they reach Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Flashman absconds with two thousand dollars made from selling one of the prostitutes, Cleonie, to Navajos. For safety in the wilderness, Flashman falls in with a group of travelers but he discovers them to be scalp-hunters, when they attack a band of Apaches. Flashman joins in but refuses to take any scalps or rape captive women, which saves him when the scalp-hunters are killed by the rest of the tribe on their return. He ends up marrying Sonsee-Array, the daughter of chief, Mangas Coloradas, and becoming friends with Geronimo. Eventually, he escapes and is saved by Kit Carson on the Jornada del Muerto. In 1875, Flashman returns to America with his wife, Elspeth. He meets George Armstrong Custer and Mrs. Arthur B. Candy, the former slave Cleonie, both of whom lead him into disaster. He travels to Bismarck, North Dakota, to meet with Mrs. Candy and pursue a carnal relationship but at her connivance, he is kidnapped by Sioux and kept captive at Greasy Grass. He escapes just in time to see the defeat and death of Custer and to be partly scalped himself by his own illegitimate son from Cleonie, Frank Grouard, who by choice has been living as an Indian. Thus, the book ends with Flashman discovering that he left more behind in America in 1850 than two jilted wives.
4984678	/m/0cyhzc	Flashman and the Dragon	George MacDonald Fraser	1985	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In Hong Kong, Flashman is convinced by Phoebe Carpenter, a lovely minister's wife, to take a shipment of opium into Canton, with the promise of a later, more pleasant meeting. On the way he discovers that instead of opium he is carrying guns to the Taiping rebels. In Canton, Flashman manages to convince Harry Smith Parkes that he was trying to stop the shipment. However, instead of being able to head for home as he originally intended, he is put on the intelligence staff in Shanghai. From Shanghai he travels to Nanking and meets the leaders of the Taiping rebels, in order to convince them not to march on Shanghai. Flashman then proceeds to the mouth of the Peiho to join Lord Elgin's staff for his march to Pekin. After being captured by the Imperials, he meets Xianfeng Emperor and becomes the prisoner and lover of Yehonala, the imperial concubine. When the British army arrives at Pekin, he witnesses the destruction of the imperial Summer Palace. But after that event, while heading for home, he is drugged and apparently kidnapped while attempting to fulfill his promise with Pheobe Carpenter. There the story ends, and it is never revealed in any subsequent volume what then became of him.
4984744	/m/0cyj0h	Flashman and the Mountain of Light	George MacDonald Fraser	1990	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At the end of events in Flashman's Lady, Flashman is sent to India when the English are anticipating conflict with the Sikh Army, the Khalsa. He is dispatched by Major George Broadfoot to the Punjab, masquerading as a solicitor attempting to settle the Soochet legacy. Flashman becomes entangled in the intrigues of the Punjabi court before being forced to flee at the outbreak of war, then becomes involved in plans by the Punjabi nobility to curb the power of the Khalsa. Returning to the relative safety of the British forces, Flashman arrives just in time to become an unwilling participant in the attack on Ferozeshah. Injured, he attempts to avoid the rest of the war in a sick bed, but is called personally by the Maharani of the Punjab to attend to an urgent mission: smuggling her son Daleep Singh and the Koh-i-Noor diamond out of the country.
4984820	/m/0cyj59	Flashman and the Angel of the Lord	George MacDonald Fraser	1994	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At the start of the novel, Flashman leaves Calcutta before the wrath of a cuckolded husband can find him. He proceeds to South Africa, where by a chance meeting he reunites with John Charity Spring (whom he had worked for as a slaver in Flash for Freedom! and seen shanghaied in Flashman and the Redskins). Spring uses his daughter, Miranda, and her feminine wiles to have Flashman drugged and sent to the United States, where charges against his old aliases still exist. Flashman manages to avoid the authorities, but Crixus (one of the chiefs of the Underground Railroad from Flash for Freedom!) finds him and tries to convince him to join John Brown's attempt to start a slave rebellion. One of Crixus' followers, a black man named Joe Simmons, actually works for the Kuklos, a possible forerunner of the Ku Klux Klan. They also want Flashman to help Brown, but in order to start a civil war. One last doublecross exists: the wife of the leader of the Kuklos works for Allan Pinkerton, who brings Flashman to meet William H. Seward. Seward, considered by many at that time to be the next President of the United States, also wants Flashman to join with Brown, but to slow him down and prevent the raid into the South from ever happening, and therefore prevent civil war. Of course Flashman fails at this, and he becomes an eyewitness to the whole event.
4984907	/m/0cyjcz	Flashman and the Tiger	George MacDonald Fraser	1999	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 "The Road to Charing Cross" begins with Flashman going to Berlin with Henri Blowitz to help him get a copy of the Treaty of Berlin and publish it before anyone else has it. He also meets Caprice, a beautiful member of the French secret service. Five years later, Flashman is looking for an excuse to leave London and avoid being sent to Sudan with Charles George Gordon. Luckily, a letter from Blowitz arrives inviting him to Paris. He rides the maiden voyage of the Orient Express and makes the acquaintance of a princess, Kralta, supposedly so that she can sleep with him. This turns out to be a ruse on the part of the princess and Otto von Bismarck, and Flashman is forced to join with Rupert Willem von Starnberg, son of the villain from Royal Flash, and save Emperor Franz Josef from assassination by Magyar nationalists. It turns out that Starnberg has plans of his own, and Flashman must save both the Emperor and himself. "The Subtleties of Baccarat" has Flashman at the home of Sir Arthur Wilson with the Prince of Wales, just when the Royal Baccarat Scandal is unfolding. Unlike in most Flashman stories, he is mainly an observer of the event, simply giving bad advice when asked to. However, in a twist, someone he has known for years unexpectedly turns out to be the most important player in the story. At the beginning of "Flashman and the Tiger", Flashman is in South Africa fleeing from the Battle of Isandlwana in a wagon. After his escape, he meets Tiger Jack Moran about ten miles (16&nbsp;km) away, and both head to Rorke's Drift and the nightmare that awaits them. Later, at the mention of Flashman's name, Moran says "if I'd only known." Years later, in 1894, Flashman finds out what he meant when Moran blackmails his granddaughter in order to sleep with her, revealing to Flashman that he was a cabin boy on Captain John Charity Spring's ship, the Balliol College (see Flash for Freedom!), who was traded to King Gezo as a white slave and has spent much of his adult life avenging himself on the ship's former crew. In an attempt to save her, Flashman finds himself in a scene from "The Adventure of the Empty House", and has to endure the humiliation of Sherlock Holmes analyzing him while he is pretending to be a drunken tramp (Fraser, perhaps to tweak the sensibilities of Holmes' legion of admirers, has Holmes get it all wrong).
4984960	/m/0cyjfp	Flashman on the March	George MacDonald Fraser	2005	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Having fled Mexico aboard the Austrian warship carrying the Emperor Maximilian's body home for burial, Flashman is on the run, after mortally offending Admiral Tegethoff by seducing his great-niece en voyage. Flashman meets an old acquaintance, Jack Speedicut (who appears in other of the novels), who enlists him to escort a shipment of Maria Theresa thalers to General Robert Napier's forces in Abyssinia, via Suez. General Napier, overjoyed to find the noted military hero Flashman arrived in Abyssinia, immediately despatches him on a secret undercover mission to recruit Queen Masteeat and her Galla people, who are opposed to Emperor Theodore II of Ethiopia, travelling in the company of her half-sister Uliba-Wark, who is herself scheming to depose Queen Masteeat. Flashman succeeds in enlisting the assistance of Queen Masteeat, but is then captured by Emperor Theodore's forces. The second half of the novel deals with Flashman's relations with the Emperor and covers the final battle with Napier's forces and their allies, after which Theodore commits suicide. Flashman tells Napier at the conclusion that the British government could have avoided the whole sorry adventure if they had simply given Theodore the respect that a monarch deserves by properly responding to his letters.
4985225	/m/0cyjz9	Mr American	George MacDonald Fraser	1980	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Mark Franklin arrives on the Mauretania at Liverpool in 1909 with a copy of Shakespeare's works, an old Mexican charro saddle and two Remington pistols in his battered luggage. A tall and softly-spoken American prospector, who made his fortune in a silver strike in Nevada, he is visiting the 'old country' to see his roots. He goes to London where he meets and has a one-night stand with 'Pip' Delys, a music hall performer. She gives him the name which forms the title of the book. He then buys a house in Castle Lancing, the Norfolk village his ancestors came from in the 17th century. A chance event during a fox hunt, when the fox hides in Franklin's picnic basket, leads to an acquaintance with King Edward VII, and the beginning of an enmity with a neighbour (Frank, Lord Lacy) which lasts throughout the book. Through playing bridge with Edward and his mistress Alice Keppel, Franklin elevates himself greatly in the king's estimation through his easy manners. When the king invites him to Sandringham, Franklin meets Winston Churchill, Jackie Fisher, and Ernest Cassel. This allows Fraser to depict some of the historical background of the build-up to the First World War. He also meets General Flashman, from Fraser's well-known historical fiction series. Flashman is in his late 80s at the start of the book (as he says, "I'm eighty-eight next May, and I attribute my longevity to an almost total abstinence from tea"), and an important sub-plot involves his grand-niece, Lady Helen Cessford, a suffragette. An old partner in crime, Kid Curry, tracks him down and demands half of all his wealth. Franklin refuses, and the stage is set for a midnight gunfight, which Franklin wins with the assistance of his manservant Samson. They bury the body in a field. He falls in love with, and marries, another neighbour, Peggy Clayton. Her brother is an officer in the British Army and is involved in running guns to Ireland during the Curragh Mutiny, using Franklin's money obtained by Peggy from him by deception. Over the years Franklin gradually grows apart from his young wife, at first due to the breach of trust over the money, and then when he discovers her sexual infidelity. The novel ends with the outbreak of war in 1914, and Franklin deciding to return to the U.S., leaving the bulk of his fortune in England for his wife and her family. At the last moment he changes his mind, and the reader is left unsure whether he intends to return to his unfaithful wife, to possibly accompany Samson who plans to serve in the Legion of Frontiersmen under Frederick Selous, or something else entirely.
4992469	/m/0cyw58	33 Snowfish	Adam Rapp	2003-03-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 33 Snowfish follows the character of Custis, a 10-year-old orphan living with his "owner" Bob Motley, who sexually abuses him, in a dilapidated house in Rockdale, Illinois. After overhearing that he was to star in a snuff movie, Custis steals a small pistol and escapes through a hole in the wall. While hiding from Motley's crew and begging for quarters in a video arcade at the Joliet Mall, Custis spots Boobie (whose real name is Darrin Flowers), a strange boy with black eyes and a single painted fingernail. Custis decides to follow Boobie into Crazy Lou's Woods, a private woodland supposedly owned by an ex-military cat farmer. Custis and Boobie soon become friends. Custis, having no home, and Boobie, who has an unstable relationship with his parents, set up a makeshift home in the woods with a tent and steal electricity from a nearby paper factory. Soon they are joined by Curl, Boobie's 14-year-old girlfriend who is addicted to drugs and supports herself as a prostitute, and finally Boobie's baby brother, whom Boobie abducts after murdering his parents. The four of them take to the road in a stolen Buick Skylark to flee the police who are searching for Boobie, engaging in dumpster diving, robbery and begging in various Chicago suburbs along the way.
4992567	/m/0cywb8	Goth Opera	Paul Cornell			 As the Fifth Doctor and his companions vacation in Tasmania they get caught up in a scheme by the Time Lord Ruath to resurrect the vampire Yarven (from Blood Harvest). Ruath sends a vampire baby to attack the Doctor and turn him into a vampire, but the child instead attacks and converts Nyssa. Unable to provide Yarven with the Doctor's Time Lord blood, Ruath gives her own blood to Yarven, causing her to die and regenerate into a vampire Time Lord. Nyssa, while trying fight her new vampire nature, is drawn to Yarven's castle, where she learns more about Ruath's plan. Ruath has created a genetically enhanced mist that can turn normal humans into vampires, and kill those who use traditional methods (garlic, crosses, etc.) to protect themselves. Ruath has also invented a Time Freeze, a small Time Loop that can hold the Earth in a perpetual night, leaving the vampires free to roam and feed. Nyssa contacts the Doctor and aids him in entering the castle, which turns out to be Ruath's TARDIS. Ruath captures the Doctor and Tegan. She informs Yarven that his brain, now enhanced by Time Lord blood, will become the controller of the Time Freeze mechanism, and offers the Doctor the change to become her vampiric consort. Yarven, however, decides he doesn't want to sacrifice himself, and places the Doctor in the Time Freze. The Doctor manages to use Ruath's command ring to take control of her TARDIS and force it to materialize on a distant planet, where the rising sun incinerates Yarven and his vampire hordes. The death of the vampire child cures Nyssa of her vampirism. Ruath survives the dawn, but is sucked into the Time Vortex after Nyssa opens the doors to the Doctor's TARDIS while it is in flight.
4994110	/m/0cyymr	Happy Baby				 Theo is addicted to sadomasochism. He insists on being hurt - whether by one he loves or by a professional dominatrix. Theo is a victim of the child welfare system. Told in reverse chronological order, 'Happy Baby' begins when 36-year-old Theo returns to Chicago after six years away, to visit an ex-girlfriend called Maria. He knows Maria from their years growing up together in a state institution, where Theo was sent aged thirteen after his abusive father was killed and his mother died from multiple sclerosis. Theo then drifts into relationships with women who are willing to abuse him. His need for pain stems from the brutal treatment he received as a child in state custody. He recalls the memory of Mr. Gracie, a pedophile caseworker who regularly raped him when he was aged twelve but also protected him from the other boys. Elliott explores the psychology of child sexual abuse and physical abuse.
4994522	/m/0cyz7k	Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison	Charles Shaw	1952	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The narrative deals with the developing relationship between the marine and the nun, especially Allison's growing attraction to Sister Angela. The novel is set earlier in the war than the film, with Allison escaping from the Battle of Corregidor at the time that the Allies are still on the defensive in the Pacific.
4995921	/m/0cz0n3	Fire in the Abyss			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Gordon awakens in 1983 floating in the north Atlantic when all of a sudden a U.S. submarine emerges from the depths and plucks Gilbert from certain death. (The book's cover shows Gilbert on the deck of a modern submarine.) Together with some hundred other "Temporally Displaced Persons," or DTIs, the government term for those it’s kidnapped from other times, Gilbert is illegally incarcerated in a secret installation in Horsefield, New Jersey where authorities conduct experiments designed to extract historical and linguistic secrets from the past. Gilbert is forced to live a pathetic existence of living in a prison and must wear a protective suit just to prevent from being infected with deadly modern day viruses and bacteria. Just when hope seems to have run dry Gilbert discovers that he and the other DTIs have developed a telepathic ring, coordinated by the Ancient Egyptian priestess Tari, a follower of the cult of Isis. In this ring they are able to share their dreams, fears and plans for escape. Together with Tari, a Norse giant, a dancer from ancient North America and many others, Gilbert escapes from his illegal confines. This is a deadly plan as the US government is eager, even willing to kill, to keep the scandalous DTIs a secret from the public. Once on the outside Gilbert, Tari and a handful of others find themselves on-the-run and overwhelmed by culture shock. Dodging murderous government agents and curious laymen Gilbert wanders across the American continent, meeting up with crazed Irish nationalists, an anti-government rock group and even working for a time in a San Francisco S&M parlor, indulging his homosexual desires. One by one Gilbert’s companions are killed off by accident or murder until he alone finally makes an escape back to merry-ole England, where again finds himself an outsider and fugitive. The book, written in the first person, is Gilbert's diary and is intended as proof of the government misdeeds committed against DTI’s. Gilbert makes many sardonic remarks on the life and institutions of the modern world in general and present-day Britain in particular, but also enjoys disabusing moderns who tend to romanticize the Elizabethan Age. Gordon is especially harsh in his mocking of the political paranoia that infected the United States during the Cold War. Gordon, a Scotsman, does manage to have Gilbert, an Englishman, visit the author’s home town of Buckie on the northeastern coast of Scotland.
4996811	/m/02vkgbm	Mountains Beyond Mountains	Tracy Kidder	2004	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is written from the point of view of author Tracy Kidder. It is set mainly in Haiti and Boston, Massachusetts. Kidder first met his subject, Dr. Paul Farmer, in Haiti in 1994. At the time, Kidder was researching a story about American soldiers sent to reinstate Haiti's democratically elected government led by president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Kidder again met Farmer on his flight back to Miami, Florida from Haiti and began to learn small pieces of Farmer's life. Farmer was born in Massachusetts and grew up as one of six children in a poor household in Florida, going on to attend Duke and Harvard, where he earned his M.D and Ph.D. The rest of the book details Farmer's inspiring life and accomplishments, including Farmer's work with the health and social justice organization Partners in Health, especially in Haiti, Peru, and Russia. Kidder describes Paul Farmer as follows: :"And I was drawn to the man himself. He worked extraordinary hours. In fact, I don’t think he sleeps more than an hour or two most nights. Here was a person who seemed to be practicing more than he preached, who seemed to be living, as nearly as any human being can, without hypocrisy. A challenging person, the kind of person whose example can irritate you by making you feel you’ve never done anything as important, and yet, in his presence, those kinds of feelings tended to vanish. In the past, when I’d imagined a person with credentials like his, I’d imagined someone dour and self-righteous, but he was very friendly and irreverent, and quite funny. He seemed like someone I’d like to know, and I thought that if I did my job well, a reader would feel that way, too." The book is primarily a biographical work broken into five parts. PART I: Doktè Paul Introduces Farmer's work at the Brigham in Boston, Massachusetts and at the PIH founded Zanmi Lasante in Cange, Haiti. PART II: The Tin Roofs of Cange Describes Farmer's family background and gives accounts of Farmer from sources close to him. Farmer's dedication to PIH led to his broken engagement with Ophelia Dahl, the daughter of famous author Roald Dahl and actress Patricia Neal. The two remained close confidantes however, with Ophelia continuing work for the PIH organization. PART III: Médicos Aventureros 1995 MDR-TB claimed the life of a close friend known as Father Jack, in Lima, Peru. PIH co-founder, Dr. Jim Kim convinces Farmer to extend PIH into Peru where they fight against the rigid orders of the DOTS program, outlined by the World Health Organization, largely under the financial support of an American benefactor, Tom White. PART IV: A Light Month for Travel Follows Farmer from Haiti to Cuba, Paris, France, Russia, and other locations on his quest to treat infectious disease. PART V: O for the P In 2000, PIH receives news of being awarded a $45 million grant to combat MDR-TB in Lima, Peru along with other organizations. "O for the P" refers to an expression within PIH that is a shortened form of saying “a preferential option for the poor”.
4996910	/m/0cz240	Donnerjack	Jane Lindskold	1997-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book combines gods with high technology. Computers have gone independent in a Virtual Reality that contains many elements borrowed from myth and legend. Death features as a major character, and the hero must rescue his lady-love from him. Other actual and virtual myth-figures come into it. It is not connected with Jack of Shadows
4997821	/m/0cz3yb	The House on the Borderland	William Hope Hodgson	1908	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Two good friends, Tonnison and Berreggnog, travel to the remote village of Kraighten in rural Ireland. On the third day of their trip, they stumble upon the ruins of a strangely-shaped house bordering a large lake. They discover the mouldering journal of the Recluse, an unidentified man who recorded his last days in the house before its destruction. The Recluse begins his journal with descriptions of how he acquired the house, along with his daily life with his sister and his faithful dog, Pepper. He confides that he is starting the diary to record the strange experiences and horrors that were occurring in and around the house. The Recluse relates a vision in which he travels to a remote and vast arena, "the plain of silence," surrounded by mountains with representations of mythological beast-gods, demons, and other "bestial horrors" on their slopes. In the center of the plain stands a house almost identical to his own, save that the house in the arena is much larger and appears to be made of a green jade-like substance. Along the way, he sees a huge, menacing humanoid swine-thing. After his vision of the "arena," he becomes fascinated with the pit adjacent to his house (Ireland), and begins to explore it. Shortly after this he is attacked by humanoid pig-like creatures that he names "the swine-things" which appear to have their origin from somewhere in the depths of a great chasm found under the house (accessed through a pit on the other side of the gardens) . The struggle with these creatures lasts for several nights of greater and greater ferocity, yet in the end, the man kills several of the swine things, and apparently drives them off. As he searches for the origin of the Swine-things, the man explores a pit in the gardens were the river ends and flows underground. There he finds a tunnel leading to a great chasm under the house. When rock slides dam the water in the pit, trapping the man, his dog Pepper rescues him. By the time that the two men find the journal, the obstructed water has overflowed the pit to create the lake. The house transports him inter-dimensionally to an unknown place called 'the sea of sleep' where he briefly reunites with his lost love. A short time later, the man notices that day and night have begun to speed up, eventually blurring into a never-ending dusk. As he watches, his surroundings decay and collapse to dust. The dead world slowly grinds to a halt as the sun goes out after several million millennia. Once the world ends, the man floats through space, seeing angelic, human, and demonic forms passing before his eyes. Later, he finds himself back in his own study on Earth, with everything apparently returned to normalcy—with the one exception of Pepper, who is dead. To make matters worse, the malicious swine-beast from his earlier journeys to the 'arena' has managed to follow him back to his own dimension. The creature infects the man's new dog with a luminous fungal disease. Although the man shoots the suffering animal, he also contracts the disease. The manuscript ends with the man locked (from the outside only) in his study as the creature comes through a trap door in the basement, that opened directly over the chasm under the house. Tonnison and Berreggnog search for information on the man and his circumstances. They find that the only knowledge of the house was that it was a place long of evil repute and had mysteriously fallen into the chasm. They leave Kraighten and never return.
4999964	/m/0cz6_3	The Hundred Dresses	Eleanor Estes	1944	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book centers on Wanda Petronski, a poor and friendless Polish-American girl. Her teacher, outwardly kind, puts her in the worst seat in the classroom and she does not say anything when her schoolmates tease her. One day, after Wanda's classmates laugh at her funny last name and the faded blue dress she wears to school every day, Wanda claims to own one hundred dresses, all lined up in her closet at her worn-down house. This outrageous and obvious lie becomes a game, as the girls in her class corner her every day before school, demanding that she describe all of her dresses for them. She is mocked, and her father, Mr. Petronski, decides that she must leave that school. The teacher holds a drawing contest in which the girls are to draw dresses of their own design. Wanda enters and submits one hundred beautiful designs. Her classmates are in awe of her talent and realize that these were her hundred dresses. Unfortunately, she has already moved away and does not realize she won the contest. The students who teased her feel remorse and want her to know this, but they are not sure how. They decide to write her an apology letter and send it to her old address, hoping the post office can forward it.
5003381	/m/0czcqv	A Dying Light in Corduba	Lindsey Davis	1996-06-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The Society of Olive Oil Producers of Baetica is throwing a big dinner party in Rome, trying to drum up business for their product. Falco is invited at the request of Claudius Laeta, Vespasian’s top clerk. The food, the garum and the dancing girl make a big impression on Falco. When two guests at a dinner are assaulted, one fatally, Falco realizes that being at the dinner was just the start of another job. The surviving victim, Anacrites, is Falco's rival and Vespasian's Chief Spy. Falco is asked to investigate the attack on Anacrites and its possible connection to an attempt to corner the market on Spanish olive oil. Trying to keep Anacrites safe, he moves him to the one place where no one will look, and if they do, they will regret it; his mother’s house. Soon, Falco is on his way to Hispania to track down some of the guests and that memorable dancer. Laeta hints that someone is looking to corner the market on Hispania’s olive oil production. Suspicion immediately falls on Quinctius Attractus, the host of the festivities that fatal evening. This is an assignment Falco does not take solo; he is bringing his very pregnant companion, Helena Justina. Helena's father Camillus Verus happens to own a small estate in Baetica, and her brother Aelianus has just returned for serving there, so he and Helena have a perfect excuse to show up. And Helena has made it very clear that Falco will be there for the birth of his child. Falco soon discovers, among other things, Quinctius Attractus, owns one of the largest estates in the region, producing massive quantities of olive oil. He also learns that against his initial suspicions, there does not appear to be much interest in cornering any market, at least on the part of the Baeticans. This does not mean the investigation is over; there is still the assault to solve, and pesky dancer is still on the loose. Helena becomes friendly with the daughters of two local magnates, Claudia Rufina and Aelia Annaea. Falco gets to know some of the sons, including Claudia’s brother Constans. Also appearing is Attractus’ son Quadratus, the new quaestor of Baetica. That one item alone keeps Falco on guard. While concluding the interviews of the dinner guests, Falco finally catches up with the dancer, Selia, who promptly tries to kill him with the help of her band. Before she strikes the final blow, she reveals that Laeta sent her too, not to find the killer, but to stop anyone following, a classic double cross. Now Falco knows all, or nearly all. Falco manages to escape, but fails to catch Selia. He rushes home to see if Helena is well. Falco finds Quadratus in his house, injured in a fall from a horse, and discovers that there has indeed been a death; Rufina Constans, Claudia’s brother. He was found dead in an olive press, moving a stone that no human could move alone. Falco suspects something, but the obvious suspect is his guest and claiming an injury. Yet Claudia is convinced it was not an accident, and she asks Falco to investigate. Seeing the site of the death, he is convinced someone else was there when Constans died. Now it is just one more thing he has to prove. Now the chase is on. Falco goes to the Quinctius estate, and finds Selia dead and Quadratus gone. But this death is much more elegant, and soon another Dancer appears; Perella. She is working for the Chief Spy Anacrites, who was still alive when she saw him last, now with the Praetorian guard, but still being nursed by Falco’s mother. Still not trusting Perella, Falco decides to share his information with her, and they piece together the real plot. It is not the Baeticans who want the cartel, it is Laeta, who wants to force Vespasian to take over production, pouring millions into Rome’s coffers, but causing the price of olive oil to go through the roof. Laeta had set up Falco in the hope that he will find enough to cause the Emperor to stave off the threat of anyone else controlling olive oil, and putting Laeta in charge of the new cartel. If Falco dies, instead, well, that is the cost of doing business. Attractus and Quadratus are part of the plan because Laeta needs some legitimacy, and the Quinctii have enough influence to make it at least appear to be on the up and up. Falco also learns that Quadratus was indeed with Constans when he died. It is now time to act. Helena is about to burst, but Falco is still fearful of local medical experts, and so he sends her east by land while he rides to catch Quadratus before he kills someone else, and then hopes to catch up. After visiting a couple of mines in search of Quadratus, he finally catches up with him. It turns out that Laeta did not have as much control over the Quinctii as he thought, and some of the killings were Quadratus’ idea. Quadratus tries to bluff, but he knows it’s too late to recover the dream of all that control. Ignoring Falco, he descends a ladder, slips and falls to his death. Falco can only wonder how much of an accident it was. It’s a girl. Falco makes it before the birth, Helena survives, and only breaks a couple of his fingers.
5003415	/m/0czct7	M*A*S*H: A Novel About Three Army Doctors	W. C. Heinz		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 Radar O'Reilly, while playing poker, listens in on a conversation between Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake and General Hamilton Hartington Hammond and announces the forthcoming arrival of two new surgeons. Captains Duke Forrest and Hawkeye Pierce share a jeep to MASH unit 4077. On the way, they also share a bottle and discover that, although they come from different parts of the U.S., they have much in common. Upon arrival, rather than report to the commanding officer, they have lunch in the mess tent, where they run into Lt. Col. Blake anyway. They are assigned to work the night shift, and billeted with Major Jonathan Hobson, a Midwestern preacher and surgeon. The two new surgeons exhibit exceptional surgical skills and commitment to their job, and gain the respect of their colleagues. However, they become annoyed by Maj. Hobson's devotion to prayer, so they complain to Henry, who reluctantly agrees to have Maj. Hobson rebilleted. Seeing that Henry is a bit of a push-over, they also request a chest surgeon for the unit. Friction mounts between the major and the new captains. Major Hobson's prayers begin to annoy everyone and Henry arranges to have him sent stateside. Weeks later, the new chest surgeon, Captain John McIntyre, arrives. He evades everyone's attempts to get to know him, and stays hidden inside a parka stocked with cans of beer and martini olives. For days Hawkeye has a nagging feeling that he's met McIntyre before. McIntyre is a fantastic surgeon, but still won't talk to anyone until Hawkeye suddenly remembers playing football against McIntyre in college. Hawkeye introduces McIntyre to everyone as Trapper John. The Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ) tent occupied by the three surgeons, known as The Swamp, becomes a popular hang-out, serving cocktails at 4. One of the regulars is Father Mulcahy, the Catholic chaplain. The boys aren't religious, but they like the Father, calling him "Dago Red" because of his red hair. However, as Duke is an avowed Protestant, he requests a Protestant chaplain. The nearest Protestant chaplain is Shaking Sammy, who lives in an engineering outfit, and is so named because he loves to shake hands. The Swampmen come to dislike him because he tends to send letters to the families of fatally wounded soldiers saying all is well. After one too many of these letters, they lash him to a wooden cross and make him believe they intend to burn him alive. Captain Waldowski, the dentist known as the Painless Pole, who has a pool table and a poker table (open 24 hours), suddenly becomes depressed and decides to commit suicide. (He's chronically depressed and has a fit of depression every month.) Duke gives him a "black capsule" to knock him out, a mock Last Supper is arranged and everybody bids him farewell. The next day he is feeling better and ready for a game of poker. The Swampmen begin to have personal conflicts with Captain Frank Burns, a rich, arrogant surgeon from the day shift. He trained for two years with his father, who was himself not a trained surgeon. However he considers himself a better physician, and officer, than Hawkeye, and constantly harasses enlisted men. When one of his patients dies he claims "it's either God's will or somebody else's fault." He blames Private Boone for the death of a patient, reducing Boone to tears. These actions result in a physical assault by Duke and then by Trapper. The arrival of the new Chief Nurse, Major Margaret Houlihan, at first restores order. However, being Regular Army, she dislikes the Swampmen and sides with Burns. Henry decides to appoint a Chief Surgeon, and the job falls to Trapper, being the best surgeon in the unit. Burns and Houlihan conclude that the Swampmen are evil and Henry their puppet. They prepare a report for Gen. Hammond and later get together in her tent, where Frank stays until 1:30 am. The next day the Swampmen tease Burns and Houlihan about their late-night meeting. Trapper John calls Houlihan "Hot Lips" and Hawkeye provokes Burns into a fight. Henry is finally forced to send Burns stateside. "Henry," Duke comments, "if I get into Hot Lips and jump Hawkeye Pierce, can I go home too?" Ho-Jon, the Korean houseboy working in the Swamp, is drafted into the South Korean army. After being wounded, he arrives at the 4077th for treatment. After rehabilitation, he resumes his position as Swampboy. The Swampmen, who are very fond of Ho-Jon, arrange to have him sent to Hawkeye's old college. To raise funds, Trapper grows a beard, dresses up like Jesus Christ, and autographs thousands of photos which the Swampmen sell for a buck apiece. Trapper receives orders to rush to Kokura, Japan for a medical emergency. Trapper and Hawkeye depart immediately with their golf clubs. The "emergency" turns out to be a routine operation; the anesthesiologist turns out to be "Me Lay" Marston, an old friend of Hawkeye's who works at Dr. Yamamoto's Finest Kind Pediatric Hospital & Whorehouse ("Finest kind" becomes one of Hawkeye's catchphrases). The two Swampmen qualify for a golf tournament and play against a good-humoured British colonel. Trapper, still resembling Christ, attracts a lot of unwanted attention. After the tournament, they have dinner with Me Lay. Me Lay asks the boys to look at a sick baby, whom they take back to the army hospital. When the hospital's commanding officer, Colonel Merrill, tries to get in their way, he is abducted, sedated and blackmailed. Me Lay adopts the orphan baby. Business picks up at the 4077th and Trapper and Hawkeye return immediately to find the unit overwhelmed by casualties. A constant flow of wounded soldiers pours into the hospital for two weeks and all personnel work around the clock performing operations far beyond their training. At the end of the two weeks everyone is exhausted and irritable. The unit's efficiency sags, and the tremendous loss of life begins to take its toll on the surgeons. They turn to heavy drinking and start harassing the nurses, particularly Maj. Houlihan. Fed up, she again complains to the General, who comes down on Col. Blake. The Swampmen intercede on behalf of the Colonel and smooth things over with the General. Summer arrives and the 4077th is hot and overworked. The work slacks off and while Henry is sent to Tokyo for three weeks, Colonel Horace DeLong fills in. Col. DeLong finds Hawkeye at the poker game and demands that he start surgery on a patient in the preoperative ward. Hawkeye says that the patient is receiving blood and that he will do the surgery at 3:00 am. At 2:45, while scrubbing for surgery, Hawkeye explains that the waiting period was necessary for the patient to become fit for surgery. When the Swampmen get bored, to get away for a few days they lead DeLong to believe they need psychiatric evaluation. At the 325th Evac, they escape and the psychiatrist, accompanied by Henry, finds them at Mrs. Lee's (a nearby whorehouse). Meanwhile, General Hammond has assembled a football team composed of ringers and is making tidy profits betting on his squad with other Korean units. The Swampmen organize a team to play against Gen. Hammond's team. They tell Henry to request neurosurgeon Oliver Wendell Jones, once a pro ball player known as Spearchucker. Henry becomes the coach, certain that he'd be a better coach than Hammond. Spearchucker scouts Hammond's team and finds out the general has three pros on his team. They devise a plan to get the running back out of the game, and wear the two tackles out as early as possible. Their plan is successful and they win the game 28-24, although only by using a trick play to score the winning touchdown, and by using Radar's phenomenal hearing to eavesdrop on the opponents' tactical discussions. Time drags for Duke and Hawkeye as they wait for their active duty deployments to expire. They start to disappear for days at a time. To keep them busy, Henry has them train the new recruits, Captains Pinkham and Russell, in the short-cuts of "meatball surgery." The recruits do well, but Capt. Pinkham's wife has a mental breakdown and he is sent home. When the time finally comes for Duke and Hawkeye to go home, everyone crowds into The Swamp for a farewell drink. The two continue to drink and cause trouble all the way home by feigning battle fatigue to scare new recruits, impersonating chaplains to get out of working short-arm inspection and harassing an airline stewardess. They part ways in Chicago and rejoin their families.
5004367	/m/0czf1c	The Hunger of Sejanoz	Joe Dever	1998	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 You play as one of Lone Wolf's Grand Masters. On a visit to the court of Xo-lin, there is news of an invasion force by the Autarch Sejanoz of Bhanar brought to the palace in Pensei. Xo-lin must be rescued and brought to sanctuary in the distant city of Tazhan across the Lissanian Plain.
5006014	/m/0czhf_	Where Rainbows End	Cecelia Ahern	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rosie and Alex were best friends since they were very young, confiding in each other and telling each other everything. The story is told through the form of instant messages, letters, invitations, e-mails, throughout their teen and senior high school years and into their adult lives. de:Für immer vielleicht it:Scrivimi ancora
5009235	/m/0czngr	Senso	Camillo Boito			 Senso is set in Italy about the time of a war with Austria in 1866. Its protagonist is Livia, an Italian countess who is married unhappily to a stuffy old aristocrat, and who willingly wanders in response to her yearnings. The story opens a few years after the war, with Livia reminiscing on her 39th birthday about her first truly passionate affair. Her reverie transports us to Venice during the war, where Livia falls in love with Remigio Ruz, a dashing young lieutenant in the Austrian army. Although he obviously is using her, her money, and her social status, Livia throws herself into an affair of complete sexual abandon with Remigio. She lets him spend her money freely, cares nothing of what society thinks of her, and ignores her new lover's pathetic cowardice when he refuses to rescue a drowning child. Though the war drives the lovers apart, Livia feels driven to revisit Remigio. When she joins him for a tryst, he asks for more money, to bribe the army doctors for a reprieve from the battlefield. Livia gladly gives him all her jewels and gold. Remigio flees to Verona, without bothering even to kiss her goodbye. Eventually her yearning for Remigio drives Livia nearly mad, but her spirits soar when a letter from him finally arrives. His letter says that he loves and misses her, and that her money and his bribery had allowed him to evade any combat. He asks Livia not to look for him. Still clutching his letter, she promptly boards a carriage and heads straight to Verona to find her loyal lover. She finds the city in ruins, with dead and wounded everywhere. Livia's undeterred. She heads to the apartment she had bought for Remigio, where she finds him, a drunken, ungrateful rogue, in the company of a prostitute who openly mocks Livia for accepting his abuse. Mortification drives Livia out into the night. Shame shapes her lingering lust into vengeance when Livia remembers she still has his letter. Livia finds the Austrian army headquarters, where she indicts Remigio by presenting his proof of desertion to a general. Her vengeance for Remigio's philandering infidelity is obvious to the general, yet her motives lend her lover no exemption. The very next morning, Remigio and the doctors he bribed face a firing squad while Livia attends the execution.
5012215	/m/0czss8	The Champion Maker	Kevin Joseph	2006-01-30	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The Champion Maker is hybrid of suspense and sports fiction. Set primarily in the Washington, D.C. area, it tells the story of an unorthodox track coach and his young protégé's quest for Olympic gold in two disparate events: the 100 meter dash and the 1500 meter run. Along the way, they uncover a dark conspiracy involving genetic engineering.
5017753	/m/0c_04h	Archer's Goon	Diana Wynne Jones	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Thirteen-year-old Howard Sykes lives in an English town with his parents, Quentin, an author and professor, and Catriona, a music teacher; his sister Anthea, always called "Awful" because of her constant screaming; and Fifi, the family's au pair. Their life is interrupted one afternoon when an unnamed huge person, "somebody's Goon" as Fifi describes him, comes into their home and announces that he has come to collect the two thousand words that Quentin owes somebody called Archer. It transpires that thirteen years ago Quentin undertook to write two thousand words of nonsense quarterly and give them to Mountjoy, a town official. In return he was promised an exemption from city taxes. The Goon says that the latest two thousand didn't get to Archer. Quentin irritably writes a replacement set and gives them to the Goon, who goes away—but the next afternoon, he is back, as they were a repeat of what had been done previously, and the agreement specified that they must not be a copy or paraphrase of anything he had done before. The Goon takes Howard to see Mountjoy, who reveals that the town is secretly run by seven wizard siblings: Archer, Shine, Dillian, Hathaway, Torquil, Erskine, and Venturus. Each one "farms" (i.e., collects a portion of taxes from) some aspects of the town's life and industry (for list, see below). Mountjoy has instructions from an unknown superior to post the words, but does not know who the actual recipient is. Mountjoy's revelation starts the Sykes family on a quest for the sibling who is the actual user of Quentin’s words. The Goon takes the family to meet Archer, who believes that Quentin's words are restricting him and his siblings from leaving town. His aim is to acquire a sample of the writing so that he can figure out how to lift the restriction, in order to take over the world. On learning of Archers ambitions, Quentin becomes convinced that the restrictions are a thoroughly good thing, and stubbornly refuses to write them any more. Other siblings, like Archer, also want to acquire samples of Quentin’s words for the same purpose and they all start putting pressure on the Sykes family. Gas and electricity is cut off, the shops are closed to them, their bank accounts are frozen, and all of Catriona's musical instruments play themselves, full blast, as does the radio and TV. Torquil, who farms music and therefore is Catriona's effective boss, threatens that she would lose her job if she does not get Quentin to write him two thousand words; Fifi, who is in love with Archer, attempts to get the words for him; Shine sends a group of boys known as Hind's Gang, led by one Ginger Hind, to follow Howard and Awful and briefly kidnaps the two to use them as leverage, though the Goon and Torquil quickly come to the rescue. Hathaway (roads and transport, archives and records)sends a messenger to collect the words, but Quentin locks up his typewriter and tells the messenger to have Hathaway write the words himself; the street outside the Sykes house is subsequently dug up and re-paved over and over again as a form of punishment. When Quentin receives a letter from the town demanding payment of a huge amount in back taxes, Howard and Awful decide that they have to seek help from Hathaway, who lives 400 years in the past. The children visit him in his Elizabethan household by going through a white door at the back of the museum. Hathaway proves to be very reasonable, stops the street digging, and promises to help about the taxes. He also tells Howard that Catriona and Quentin found him (Howard) as an infant and adopted him, which proves only to add more to the boy's troubles. With Hathaway out of the running, Erskine is the next most likely candidate as the "user of the words". The Goon takes Quentin and the two children through the sewers to the Erskine's sewage installation outside the city limits. It would have been only a short walk above ground, and when asked why he took them through the sewers, the Goon admits that he can only leave the town through the sewer or by rubbish truck. Quentin realizes the Goon is, in fact, Erskine. Erskine has the three locked up as a way of exerting even more pressure on Quentin, but they manage to escape with the help of the aforementioned Ginger Hind, who insists that he needs Howard's help to be free from Shine. Howard now must find the seventh brother, Venturus, who lives in the future. Howard identifies Venturus's hiding place by going to a half constructed building, i.e., to a place that will exist in the future. As he runs from Erskine's men, he frantically wishes to Hathaway to send him a bus, and lo - one appears. He asks Archer for money for the fare, Shine to cause a distraction, and Dillian for a police car to stop Shine's "distraction", which goes a little over the top; all of these things miraculously appear and Howard makes it to Venturus's hideout. As he climbs up the stairs of the half-finished building, Howard discovers that each step ages him. On a mirror is scrawled the foreboding message, "THIS IS THE SECOND TIME". Howard eventually realizes that he himself is Venturus, who has been building a fantastic spaceship inside his home in the future. Venturus had twice, to get himself out of design problems with his spaceship, sent the whole town back thirteen years through time, accidentally transforming himself into a small child in the process. That small child was adopted (twice) by Quentin and Catriona, who named him Howard. The six siblings could not leave the town all that time not because of Quentin's words, but because their parents laid it on them to protect Venturus, and as long as Venturus–Howard was too young to realize his magical powers, they had to be close by to protect him. Torquil, Hathaway, Erskine, and Venturus, who understand that civilization would likely crumble if one of the seven gained ultimate control, evolve a plan to send the other three (Archer, Shine, and Dillian) off to deep space in Venturus's newly constructed spaceship. They do this by convincing each of the three that the rest had plotted against each other and would put their final plan into action that night in Venturus's spaceship. They all board the ship, which Howard–Venturus has programmed for a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, and it takes off. The remaining siblings have no plans to rule the world – but Howard, now Venturus, still worries about what Erskine and Awful may get up to in the future. He decides he will stay with the Sykes family so he can help keep Awful in check and Erskine decides to travel the world, making for a pleasant ending.
5021006	/m/0c_5dl	Lion in the Valley	Barbara Mertz	1986	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Emersons return to Egypt in 1895-96 to excavate at Dahshoor - finally, some real pyramids for Amelia! In looking for a keeper for Ramses, they find a demoralized Englishman named Donald Fraser. Donald has troubled family relationships and a hashish habit, both of which Amelia means to reform. Enid Debenham, a young lady whose behavior scandalizes Cairo society, also takes a hand when Amelia takes her under her wing. Meanwhile, the Master Criminal reappears personally, taking an interest not only in illegally obtained antiquities but in the person of Amelia herself. The story is key in the series because it is the first time the reader learns the pseudonym of the Master Criminal: Sethos. It is the name of a number of Pharaohs, and is tied to Set or Seth, the Egyptian god of the desert. Sethos interacts in a number of ways, including offering gifts and returning the communion set stolen from Mazghuna the previous year. Sethos also appears in a number of guises, only one of which Amelia sees through. She does, however, assume a number of others are either Sethos or in his gang, almost always incorrectly. Donald and Enid return in a later novel, Seeing a Large Cat.
5021410	/m/0c_622	Double Whammy	Carl Hiaasen	1987	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 On an early August morning in Harney County, Florida, fanatic bass fisherman Bobby Clinch takes his bass boat out onto the lake. A few hours later, he is found floating dead in that same lake. Private investigator R.J. Decker is hired by sugar cane tycoon Dennis Gault, another fanatic bass fisherman, to prove that celebrity fisherman Richard "Dickie" Lockhart, Gault's main rival on the fishing tournament circuit, is a cheat. Decker, an expert photographer, used to work for a newspaper, but was fired, and served a short prison sentence, after assaulting a teenaged kid trying to steal camera equipment out of his car (his ex-wife, Catherine, playfully nicknamed him "Rage" on account of his temper). Investigating Lockhart's hometown in Harney County, Florida, Decker looks up an old newspaper friend, a laconic reporter named Ott Pickney. Finding the local bass fishing guides too expensive, Decker takes Ott's advice and meets a reclusive hermit who lives in the woods, calling himself "Skink." While teaching Decker about fishing, he mentions seeing Bobby Clinch on the lake on the morning he died. The strange thing is, he wasn't fishing. Attending Bobby's funeral, Decker meets Elaine "Lanie" Gault, Dennis's sister, a former fashion model who confides to Decker that she and Bobby were lovers. She tells Decker that Dennis hired Bobby to catch Lockhart first, only she believes Lockhart had Bobby killed. When Decker mentions her suspicions to Ott, Ott is skeptical and dismissive; the coroner ruled Bobby Clinch's death an accident (the result of a crash while joyriding) and besides, a murder over fishing is too outlandish to be believed. However, when Ott interviews Bobby's widow, he also discovers clues that Bobby wasn't fishing. Tracking down the junked remains of his boat, Ott discovers signs of sabotage. Unfortunately, at that moment he is tracked down and murdered. After finding his body, Skink and Decker are both committed to nailing the likely culprit, Dickie Lockhart. They tail Lockhart to his latest fishing tournament, on Lake Maurepas in Louisiana, but inadvertently photograph the wrong gang of cheaters, and Lockhart wins the tournament anyway. Decker is dispirited, but Skink tells him not to worry, adding, "worse comes to worst, I'll just shoot the fucker," to Decker's alarm. Later, he returns to their hotel room and finds Lanie waiting for him. They sleep together, but after her drops her off at her hotel, he notices lights on at the lakeside. Going to investigate, he finds Dickie Lockhart floating in the weigh tank, clubbed to death. Assuming Skink is the culprit, Decker quickly and quietly leaves Louisiana and drives back to Florida. But when he returns home, he finds the Miami police, led by Detective Al Garcia, waiting for him. Skink intercepts Decker and tells him the bad news: Decker has been framed. The whole assignment from Gault was a set-up, allowing Gault to kill his hated rival and put the blame on Decker. Meanwhile, Lockhart's corporate sponsors, the mammoth Outdoor Christian Network, led by TV evangelist Reverend Charles "Charlie" Weeb, loses no time in announcing a Lockhart memorial fishing tournament, a publicity stunt to boost sales at "Lunker Lakes", a massive housing development built by Weeb on the very edge of the Everglades, targeted almost exclusively at bass fishing enthusiasts. In reality, advance sales of the condominiums at Lunker Lakes have been going very slowly, and Reverend Weeb is becoming increasingly desperate, as the Outdoor Christian Network has so much money sunk into the project that its failure will mean his own financial ruin.
5023750	/m/0c_b9c	Call for the Dead	John le Carré	1961	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Foreign Office civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently commits suicide after a routine security check by Circus agent George Smiley. Smiley had interviewed and cleared Fennan only days previously after an anonymous accusation; however, Circus head of service Maston sets up Smiley to be blamed for Fennan's death. While interviewing Fennan's wife Elsa (a Jewish concentration camp survivor) in her home, Smiley answers the telephone, expecting a call from the Circus for him. Instead, it is a wake-up call from the local exchange, but Elsa Fennan seems surprised by it. Smiley then meets Inspector Mendel, a police officer on the verge of retirement who is investigating the Fennan case, and finds out through him that the wake-up call had been specially requested by Samuel Fennan the night before. When Elsa later tells Smiley that she requested the call from the exchange (which Smiley knows to be false), he tells Mendel and Maston. However, Maston unequivocally orders Smiley to refrain from any further investigation into Fennan's death. Back in his office, Smiley receives a letter posted by Fennan the night before, requesting an urgent meeting that day. Believing that Fennan was murdered to prevent the meeting, Smiley promptly resigns from the Circus and attaches his resignation to Fennan's letter, which he forwards to Maston. On returning home, Smiley notices a tall blond stranger inside his house, avoids going inside and notes the number plates of all the cars parked nearby. Mendel traces one car to a criminal named Adam Scarr, who tells Mendel that he rents it out twice a month to a stranger known as "Blondie", who matches Smiley's intruder. Smiley is subsequently attacked and nearly killed while trying to track the car to "Blondie", and Adam Scarr is killed. Investigating further, Mendel learns that Elsa attends a local theatre twice a month with "Blondie" and that the two exchange music cases at each performance. "Blondie" is soon identified by fellow Circus agent Peter Guillam as Hans-Dieter Mundt, an East German agent under diplomatic cover working for Dieter Frey, a German spy of Smiley's during World War II who has since become an important East German agent. Smiley believes that Frey would use a courier like Mundt to service only one highly-placed resident agent. Guillam reports that Mundt has fled England. When confronted with Smiley's evidence, Elsa Fennan confesses to Smiley that her husband was an East German spy, that she was his unwilling accomplice in passing secret documents in the music cases, and that Fennan was killed by Mundt after Frey saw him talking to Smiley. However, Guillam learns that during the last six months Fennan had been taking home insignificant, unclassified documents. Smiley realizes that Elsa Fennan herself is the East German spy and that Fennan had accused himself to meet someone with whom he could discuss his suspicions about his wife. Smiley sets a trap, using his knowledge of Frey's tradecraft from WWII to arrange a rush covert meeting between Frey and Elsa Fennan. When Frey realises he has been tricked, he kills Elsa, but he is trailed by Mendel and killed by Smiley while trying to escape. At the end of the story, Smiley turns down Maston's offer to rejoin the Circus and instead flies to Zurich to see his estranged wife Ann.
5023763	/m/0c_bbd	In Custody	Anita Desai	1984-10-08	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Deven earns a living by teaching Hindi literature to uninterested college students. As his true interests lie in Urdu poetry, he jumps at the chance to meet the great Urdu poet, Nur.
5023767	/m/0c_bbr	A Murder of Quality	John le Carré	1962	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 George Smiley is called by a wartime colleague, Miss Brimley, who now publishes a small Christian magazine, to investigate a "death menace" letter sent by a reader who claims her husband, a boarding school teacher, is trying to kill her. Terence Fielding, the brother of a classics professor who was one of Smiley's close wartime associates in the Circus, is also a teacher at the school where the woman's husband teaches, the famous Carne College. Unfortunately, the woman is killed before Smiley can even talk to her, and Smiley goes to the school to investigate, in an effort to ease Miss Brimley's concern that her failure to call the police was a cause of the woman's death. The town of Carne was the youthful home of Smiley's estranged wife Ann, and Smiley is both the subject of snide gossip and witness to a rural "town and gown" gap (with mistrust on both sides) that makes finding the killer seem more and more unlikely. At every step, he realizes there were many possible reasons for the murder, and the number of suspects only seems to get bigger. The town police focus on a madwoman as the murderer, but both Smiley and the investigating officer believe her to be innocent. Smiley discovers the hiding place of the murderer's blood-stained clothes, while the police find a second murder victim, a boy in Fielding's house. The clues, and a confession about the secret, delusional vindictiveness of the murdered woman from her husband (which confirms the odd reaction to her that Smiley had noted from the local minister), lead Smiley to the real murderer: Fielding, who was being blackmailed by the woman due to a WWII homosexuality conviction, and who had only kept his job at substantially-reduced wages. The boy had inadvertently seen evidence that disproved Fielding's alibi for the time of the woman's murder, although the boy was never aware of it before his death. Le Carré has denied that Carne was based on any particular school: "There are probably a dozen great schools of whom it will be confidently asserted that Carne is their deliberate image. But he who looks among their common rooms for the D'Arcys, Fieldings and Hechts will search in vain." Nonetheless, the geography and descriptions of Carne bear a great deal of resemblance to le Carré's own alma mater, Sherborne School.
5024077	/m/0c_by7	Iggie's House	Judy Blume	1970	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Winnie Barringer misses her best friend Iggie, whose family has moved to Japan. She is fascinated that a black family, the Garbers, have moved into Iggie's old house. She soon becomes friends with the three kids. Another neighbor, Mrs. Landon, organizes a petition to pressure the Garbers into moving. Much to Winnie's distress, her parents seem ambivalent on the issue, though they do not sign the petition. Mrs. Landon later nails a harassing sign to the Garbers' lawn. Winnie creates a questionnaire to determine community members' attitudes about blacks, hoping to raise support for the Garbers. She has an argument with the Garber kids, however, who accuse her of befriending them only because she thinks having black friends is cool. The Garber parents are seriously considering moving. Mrs. Landon visits Winnie's parents again. She not only complains about Winnie's questionnaire, but also announces that she will be moving away and tries to pressure the Barringers to move. Mr. Barringer flatly refuses, and in the ensuing argument Winnie confronts Mrs. Landon about her racism. The next morning, Winnie discovers that her parents really are considering moving. She decides that if they do, she will become a stowaway and go to live with Iggie in Japan. But soon she makes up with the Garbers, and finds that neither they nor her parents have ultimately decided to move.
5024135	/m/0c_c12	Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great	Judy Blume	1972	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When the family of Sheila Tubman, Peter Hatcher's rival from the Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, as well as Superfudge, takes a trip to Tarrytown with her family. The family reside in the house of Sheila's father's friend, Professor George Egran. Sheila pretends that she is fearless and confident. The truth, however, is that many things terrify her. The family vacation forces her to confront some of her many secret fears, including the dark, swimming, ghosts, lightning, spiders and dogs. Sheila attends a day camp where she meets a girl named Merle "Mouse" Ellis, who is skilled at many activities that Sheila fears and is an exceptional yo-yo champion. In spite of envying Mouse for her multiple talents, Sheila befriends her and tries to mask her cowardice with a more courageous, talented personality. Mouse does not appear to have many fears and according to Sheila, Mouse is able to do everyhing. Unforunately for Sheila, she is afraid of dogs and is unable to swim. Mouse, on the other hand, loves dogs and is a swimming champion. The Egrans own a pet dog named Jennifer that Sheila fears. Mrs. Tubman has her daughter take swimming lessons with an instructor named Marty. Sheila is deeply reluctant about this arrangement but is forced to pull through with it anyway, and becomes acquainted with Mouse's younger sister Betsy, who is a phenomenal swimmer and pulls an empty box called "Ootch" around, pretending that it is a pet dog, since her allergies prevent her from being able to adopt an actual dog, and the Van Arden twins, Sondra and Jane. Sheila also signs up to write a portion of the camp newspaper entitled "Newsdate by Sheila the Great," where she writes about her fellow campers, but is forced to give up her position after two boys complete her crossword puzzle and she has no other reward to give to them after promising whoever filled the crossword puzzle with a prize. Even though Sheila's relationship with her new friends from camp appears to be turning out smoothly, one night at a sleepover party, when the girls fill out "slam books" and give each other their true opinions on one another, Sheila discovers that the others wrote rather negative comments about her and that the other guests' slam books are also quite offensive. Antagonized by these writings, the group winds up tossing toy models belonging to the Egrans' son Bobby (whose bedroom Sheila is sleeping in) at each other, only to be faced with repairing these items afterward. Jennifer mates with a neighboring dog named Mumford and is expecting a litter of puppies. Sheila's older sister Libby urges her parents to adopt one of the puppies after they have been born as the Egrans have offered, whereas Sheila protests against this, fearing the idea of owning a pet dog. However, gradually, Marty's encouragement with Sheila in the water helps her conquer her fear of swimming, and soon she is comforted slightly in her fear of dogs also, although not entirely.
5024225	/m/0c_c60	Forever	Judy Blume	1977	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Katherine, in the middle of her senior year in high school, finds herself strongly attracted to Michael, a boy she meets at a New Year's party. As their relationship unfolds, the issue of sex comes up more as an emotional and health issue than as a moral one. Both of them are aware that physical intimacy is both common and complicated. Michael has been sexually active, while Katherine hasn't. Their relationship progresses slowly as they begin to go on dates and trips together; they are accompanied on various meetings by Katherine's friend, Erica, who has known Katherine since the 9th grade and believes that sex is a physical act and not a romantic act. Erica and Katherine are also joined by Michael's friend Artie, who, with Erica's help, explores and acknowledges some uncertainty about his own sexuality. Artie is a depressed teenager who feels life is over after high school. He shows his depression when he attempts to hang himself from his shower curtain rod but fails. When Katherine and Michael do have sex on Michael's sister's bedroom floor, they are sure it seals a love that will be "forever." Michael buys Katherine a necklace for her birthday that says both of their names on it and it also says "Forever". However, separated for the summer by work that takes them to two different states, Katherine finds herself aware of the limitations of the relationship and ultimately attracted to a tennis instructor, Theo, who is older and more experienced in life. She takes responsibility for breaking the news to Michael when he comes on a surprise visit and almost catches her and Theo together. Katherine realizes the 'loss' of Michael, while painful at first, can be the start of new successful relationships. The book ends with Katherine's mother giving her a message that Theo called for her.
5024580	/m/0c_crm	The Return	Buzz Aldrin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book starts by detailing a corporation that works to send people to space, by booking them on empty seats on Space Shuttle flights. The third such flight was preparing to launch, carrying retired basketball player MJ (a character closely resembling Michael Jordan) into space. However during the flight something goes wrong and MJ and the pilot die, while the rest of the crew is forced to make an emergency landing. Initially most everyone in the space industry is sued over MJ's death, although most of the charges are later dropped when it is discovered that the explosion was the result of a Chinese attempt to take down the Space Shuttle. China is also found to be responsible for a high altitude nuclear weapon that Pakistan set off. The purpose of this bomb was to wipe out the current network of satellites, apparently in an attempt to cash in with their new presence in space exploration. The bomb also leaves the International Space Station heavily damaged. The rest of the book chronicles a daring rescue attempt to save those still on board the ISS, using mostly theoretical prototype vehicles. The rescue is a success, and the whole crew returns as heroes.
5025098	/m/0c_dmw	Flags in the Dust	William Faulkner	1973		 For generations, the powerful Sartoris clan has dominated political and social life in Yoknapatawpha County, a history-rich but impoverished district in rural Mississippi. But with the coming of the twentieth century, a new war in Europe, and the passing of old ideals, the lives of the Sartoris family are permanently transformed.
5025572	/m/0c_f1y	More Die of Heartbreak	Saul Bellow	1987	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens with an introduction of characters, and with Trachtenberg, the narrator, describing his complex relationship with his maternal uncle, Benn Crader, a world-renowned botanist. He then discusses the distinctions between himself, and his father, a man who, as he describes him, “[puts] on the kind of sex display you see in nature films, the courting behavior of turkey cocks or any of the leggier birds… Dad was a hit with women.” This theme continues throughout the book, with Kenneth accepting his difficulties with women. He also introduces his mother, a woman who allowed her husband to step out, and only left after realizing that he did not understand what made her happy. She wanted intellectual stimulation of a literary style, whereas he bought her materialistic goods to make up for his infidelities. To atone for the goods she did not need, Kenneth’s mother is now living an African community, helping a refugee camp. Kenneth then embarks on an overview of Benn’s recent sexual history. He presents a man who, while appreciative of beauty and women, is not quite rooted enough in human society to understand the sexual pretexts he encounters. One incident is discussed many times during the novel: a middle aged neighbor of Benn’s, an attractive professional who has a slight drinking problem, asks Benn to help her change a light bulb, a not too subtle hint which Benn ignores until she makes a move. The next day, when he shows no interest, and expresses regret for the act, she exclaims, “What am I supposed to do with my sexuality?” Benn then attracts the attentions of another older woman, Caroline who is controlling, indifferent, and loving all at the same time. While Benn, unbeknownst to Kenneth, is dealing with a planned wedding to Caroline, the protagonist is in Seattle to discuss with his ex-girlfriend, Treckie, what they should do about raising their child, now three years old. Treckie, a beautiful, half-sized woman, has been seeing another man, a fact Kenneth knows because of the bruises on her legs - lovemaking injuries he refused to ever give her. Kenneth has discussed this peculiar fetish with his father, who knows women, and received the knowledge that some smaller women must do it to show they are women, and not fully matured girls, the perception they give off. Benn, escaping from the wedding to Caroline, flies to Kyoto at the expense of a lecture series, inviting Kenneth to join him. The Japanese sense of order and utility appeals to Benn, until a strip show he sees at the insistence of his colleagues upsets him with its overt sexuality, at which point, he and Kenneth return to their home in the Midwest. Benn’s next partner is Matilda Layamon, a beautiful, Midwestern daughter, who wants to settle down with a distinguished, older man who can calm her wild side. Benn, perhaps fearing that Kenneth will convince him that it is a foolhardy idea, weds her without “Kenneth’s permission.” Matilda’s father is a rectangular man with sharp, thin shoulders who is a doctor, and in fact, asks that he be called, “Doctor.” He serves the rich, and because of this, has one-percentage point interests in many businesses around the country - an accidental fortune. He is a scheming man, and other than a few disagreements between Benn, and the man, no conflicts occur until he attempts to take advantage of Benn’s uncle, a man who, as executor of the will of the Crader mother, undersold, and unfairly bought the Crader home, selling the land to a company which built a tower there, resulting in millions of dollars of profit for Uncle Vilitzer, and pennies for the Crader children. Because Vilitzer controlled the judge, neither Benn nor Kenneth’s mother received their fair share, and the Doctor hopes to correct this, so that Matilda will have a rich husband. In the end, Vilitzer dies after a heated discussion with Kenneth and Benn, and Benn, attending the funeral, sends his wife ahead to their honeymoon, and changes his ticket for the North Pole. He relays this to Kenneth who now lives in Benn’s apartment, and who has recently returned from a successful bid to Treckie that he have his daughter for a part of the year. He is aware of her impending marriage thanks to a self-expedient phone call that revealed this information. The book ends with a conversation between the two professors in which both stories are relayed to each other.
5026872	/m/0c_gxg	Vampirium	Joe Dever	1998	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Claw of Naar is the evil wand of power used by Agarash the Damned during his ancient conquest of Magnamund. Legend held that it had been lost forever in the molten ruins of Naaros, but now it has resurfaced, and its dread return heralds a dawn of disaster for the peaceable nations of Magnamund. Your allies, the wise wizards of the Elder Magi, have the power and the means to destroy the accursed Claw, but they do not possess it. In Vampirium, you must venture into the hostile land of Bhanar and snatch the Claw from the clutches of the evil Autarch Sejanoz.
5028208	/m/0c_jg8	The Fall of Blood Mountain	Joe Dever	1997	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 For centuries the Shom’zaa has lain incarcerated and forgotten in a granite prison located deep below the mountains of Bor. Now this terrifying beast has accidentally been set free, and its hunger for vengeance knows no bounds. With a horde of vile minions at its command, swiftly the Shom’zaa enacts its sinister plan to destroy King Ryvin and the wondrous realm of the Drodarin dwarves. You must journey to the subterranean kingdom of the dwarves and attempt to save your ancient allies from the wrath of the Shom’zaa.
5028710	/m/0c_kb9	Trail of the Wolf	Joe Dever	1997	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Lone Wolf has been abducted by the forces of the Dark God Naar and imprisoned in a remote city-fortress on the border of the Darklands. Subjected to relentless attacks by the minions of evil, the Supreme Master of the Kai is surely doomed to die unless a rescue can be affected swiftly and successfully. You must venture alone into the dreaded stronghold of Gazad Helkona to find and free your leader.
5028764	/m/0c_kdc	Rune War	Joe Dever	1995	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Evil Lord Vandyan of Eldenora has unearthed the lost secrets of rune magics used by Agarash the Damned during his ancient conquest of Magnamund. Empowered by his discoveries, Vandyan unleashes his armies upon the peaceful realms of the Free Alliance with swift and devastating effect. Lone Wolf, Supreme Master of the Kai, leads the crusade to defeat Vandyan before all Magnamund succumbs to his tyrannical rule. Your task is to infiltrate Skull-Tor, Lord Vandyan’s stronghold, and destroy the ancient runes from which he draws his evil power.
5028802	/m/0c_kg2	Mydnight's Hero	Joe Dever	1995	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The King of Siyen has been assassinated. Prince Karvas is the sole heir of this rich and powerful realm but he lives in exile in distant Sheasu - ‘the Isle of Lost Heroes’. In his absence, evil Baron Sadanzo and his army of robber knights have staked their claim to the vacant throne. In Mydnight’s Hero, your quest is to voyage to Sheasu and track down Prince Karvas in the fabled city of Mydnight. Once found you must persuade him to return with you to Siyen without delay. You have only 50 days in which to complete this challenging quest or Siyen will be enslaved by the tyrannical Sadanzo and his brutal followers.
5028836	/m/0c_kht	Voyage of the Moonstone	Joe Dever	1994	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Moonstone is a legendary artefact that was created by the godlike Shianti. It contains the might of all their magic and wisdom, the sum of their divine knowledge. Lone Wolf - Supreme Master of the Kai - has succeeded in retrieving it from the clutches of Naar, the King of the Darkness. Now the Moonstone must be returned to its creators who are exiled upon the remote Isle of Lorn in southern Magnamund. Someone must take the fabled artefact to the Shianti and Lone Wolf has chosen you, the most promising warrior, among the ranks of the New Order Kai, to carry out this vital mission. Armed with the special weapons and skills of a Grand Master, you embark upon a secret voyage to the distant Isle of Lorn. However, your mission becomes a life and death struggle when you encounter intrigue and danger en route.
5029129	/m/0c_krd	Nastanirh	Rabindranath Tagore	1901	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Nastanirh takes place in late 19th century Bengal and explores the lives of the "Bhadralok", Bengalis of wealth who were part of the Bengal Renaissance and highly influenced by the Brahmo Samaj. Despite his liberal ideas, Bhupati is blind to the loneliness and dissatisfaction of his wife, Charu. It is only with the appearance of his cousin, Amal, who incites passionate feelings in Charu, that Bhupati realizes what he has lost.
5031446	/m/0c_pkg	A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain	Robert Olen Butler	1992-03-15	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The opening story is set during the Vietnam War. The narrator, a translator for the Australian forces, recounts the story of a North Vietnamese communist named Thập who joins the Australian forces as a spy, after the communists massacre his family. When the Australian soldiers bring him to a screening of pornographic films, Thập seems overwhelmed and disgusted. The narrator speculates that, as a former Communist, he considers pornography immoral, and that it simultaneously reminds him of his longing for his dead wife. Thập later kills an Australian soldier and himself. "Mr. Green" is narrated by a Catholic woman who was taught by her grandfather about ancestor worship. As a child, she was saddened when her grandfather told her that she could not tend to the worship of her family members because she is a woman. Mr. Green is a talking parrot that belonged to her great grandfather; after his death, she cares for the parrot, bringing him to the United States with her. When Mr. Green grows old and melancholy, plucking out his own feathers, the narrator kills him by wringing his neck as she had learned from her mother and grandmother. This story is about gendered values. The narrator must come to terms with her Grandfather's subtle misogyny and establish her own self-worth as a woman. Ths story focuses on the conflict between ancient, honorable but constricting values and the modern assertion of femininity. As the narrator leaves Vietnam she takes a reminder of this bonding Confucian values with her in the form of Mr. Green. The death of Mr. Green is therefore symbolic. "The Trip Back" is about Kánh, who drives to the airport in order to pick up his wife's grandfather, Mr. Chinh. Kánh is shocked when he discovers that Mr. Chinh is chaperoned by his cousin Hương, and during his trip home realizes that Alzheimer's disease afflicts Mr. Chinh. Kánh is deeply disturbed by this and worries whether he could ever forget his wife, whom he deeply loves. The situation is compounded further when his wife realizes that her grandfather has no recollection of her. The story is about a Vietnamese prostitute nicknamed Miss Noi who was brought to the United States as the wife of an American GI. She divorces her husband and becomes a prostitute again, and seems happy with her station in life. She meets a Vietnam War veteran named Mr. Fontenot who proposes to her with an apple, and gives her a good life. "Crickets" is about a man named Thiệu who tries to teach his Americanized son how to make crickets fight, which was a favorite game of Thiệu's as a boy in Vietnam. His son is uninterested and Thiệu eventually gives up. Thiệu and his new bride had escaped from Vietnam by boat and ended up in the state of Louisiana, where the land was very much like the Mekong Delta. They struggled to adapt to the new land and language, while their American-born son, Bill, adapted easily but had little knowledge of his Vietnamese cultural background. Despite barriers of age and language, Thiệu tries to educate his son to be more Vietnamese. "Letters from my Father" is the story of a Vietnamese teenager who has grown up without her American father. After the father arranges for his wife and daughter to come to the United States, he is unsure of how to react to his daughter, because all that he knows of her is from pictures and letters. His daughter learns more from her father by discovering some letters that he had written to the United States government in which he angrily and poetically demands his daughter's release, and she longs for him to love her in the way that he expressed his love in those letters. Love is about a former Vietnamese spy who has a beautiful wife, Bướm. As a spy in Vietnam, he was able to direct U.S. missiles onto the homes of men who aroused his jealousy by looking at or flirting with his wife. After moving to New Orleans, he suspects his wife of having an affair with a Vietnamese restaurant owner, and consults a voodoo practitioner. The stories "Mid-Autumn" and "In the Clearing" are similar, in that they deal heavily in Vietnamese mysticism. Both are dialogues between parent and child and make reference to supernatural beings. "Mid-Autumn" is about a mother’s first love lost; "In the Clearing" is an apology from father to son for having to leave his family in Vietnam. In "A Ghost Story", a man tells a story, which he claims he knows to be true, about the spirit of a beautiful woman who saves men from disaster, then reappears to eat them. "Snow" is the story of a woman named Giàu who works as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. A Jewish lawyer named Cohen, who shares with Giàu a fear of snow, talks to her as he waits for his takeaway meal on Christmas Eve. They realize that despite their different backgrounds they have several things in common, and arrange to go on a date. "The American Couple" is the longest story in the collection at 80 pages. It is narrated by a Vietnamese woman named Gabrielle on vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. They meet an American couple, Frank and Eileen. Frank is a Vietnam veteran who is eager to talk about his experiences. Vinh and Frank begin a strange and secretive relationship in which hostilities are sometimes manifested concerning their respective roles in the Vietnam War. The story is told from the perspective of Vinh’s wife, who has had little access to her husband’s experiences as a soldier. It is an outsider’s perspective of Vietnam veterans, which is why Frank and Vinh are observed at a distance. "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain" is the final story. It involves a grandfather, slowly dying, and seeing the vision of Ho Chi Minh, with whom he worked and lived. The politics of the Vietnamese refugees continue after they have arrived in America, as their new home country looks to deal with the newly Communist united Vietnam.
5032114	/m/0c_qjp	Definitely Maybe	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Action takes place in Leningrad, USSR, apparently in the 1970s. The protagonist, Dmitry Alekseyevich Malyanov (Дмитрий Алексеевич Малянов) is an astrophysicist who, while officially on vacation, continues to work on his thesis, "The Interaction of Stars with Diffused Galactic Matter". Just as he begins to realize that he is on the verge of a revolutionary discovery worthy of a Nobel Prize, his life becomes plagued by strange events. First, Malyanov is visited unexpectedly by an attractive woman claiming to be his wife's classmate and food and wine arrive for them mysteriously and already paid for. Then his neighbor dies of an apparent suicide and Malyanov becomes the murder suspect. Approaching the problem with a scientific mindset, Malyanov suspects that his discovery is in the way of someone (or something) intent on preventing the completion of his work. The same idea occurs to his friends and acquaintances, who find themselves in a similar impasse — some powerful, mysterious, and very selective force impedes their work in fields ranging from biology to mathematical linguistics. An explanation is proposed by Malyanov's friend and neighbor, the mathematician Vecherovsky (Вечеровский). He posits that the mysterious force is the Universe's reaction to the mankind's scientific pursuit, which threatens to destroy the very fabric of the universe in some distant future. Vecherovsky proposes to treat this universal resistance to scientific progress as a natural phenomenon which can and should be investigated and even harnessed by Science. As the novel concludes, the other scientists, including Malyanov, have been forced to abandon their research, and Vecherovsky remains alone to battle the universe and continue their work. Aleksandr Sokurov's movie The Days of the Eclipse is loosely based on the novel.
5034461	/m/0c_t_x	Exiles to Glory		1978-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 An intelligent young misfit, Kevin Senecal, leaves Earth to escape various troubles, including a teen gang vendetta which the authorities will not act to stop, and bureaucratic interference in his studies for an engineering degree, in a culture where environmentalists and zero-growth advocates hold sway. He enlists with the Hansen Corporation, a huge conglomerate which has re-located to the Moon, and is now involved in asteroid mining. He is to go to the asteroid Ceres. The journey involves laser launch from Earth to orbit, and a long voyage on a ship using the NERVA nuclear rocket technology. During the journey, all the passengers have to be involved in maintaining the shipboard environment, which includes algae to generate oxygen from photosynthesis. Kevin falls in love with a mystery woman called Ellen MacMillan. Between them they deal with the consequences of sabotage of the ship by persons unknown, and find a way to effect the rendezvous at Ceres after the ship's computer is sabotaged. They use the expertise of Jacob Norsedal, a prototypical computer hacker who is also a top-notch mathematician and physicist. At Ceres Ellen reveals herself to be an agent for Hansen investigating the mining work, which is plagued with irregularities. In particular, a new element called Arthurium is being mined on Ceres. This is a stable transuranic element of the kind predicted during the 1970s based on the theory of an Island of stability for elements of atomic number 114, 120 and 126. Being super-heavy, these elements sink into the cores of planets and are not accessible, but may be found in asteroids. In the story, the arthurium is a possible catalyst for hydrogen fusion and is vital to both the economy of Earth and the future of spaceflight. Rival corporations and mineral interests on Earth want to steal the arthurium or stop its production. Anti-technology politicians would like to shut down all space industry and dedicate the money to the Welfare State. Ellen is actually Glenda Hansen-Mackenzie, daughter of Aeneas Mackenzie and Laurie Jo Hansen, owner of the Hansen Corporation. She can foil the plots if she can access the Ceres computer system. However, she, Kevin and Jacob are marooned on one of Ceres' small satellites by the enemy agents. They improvise a steam-jet rocket which lets them land back on Ceres and bring an end to the intrigue.
5036278	/m/0c_x04	Counterfeit Son				 Cameron Miller is 14. He has been physically and sexually abused by his father all his life. His 'Pop', Hank, was a serial killer who preys on young boys, murdering more than 20 over the years. Hank kept newspaper cuttings of each of the boys in a filing cabinet in the cellar where he locked Cameron while he tortured and killed the boys. Cameron studied the cuttings and dreams of being one particular boy whose parents have sailboats on a lake. When 'Pop' dies in a gunfight with police, Cameron takes on the identity of this boy, Neil Lacey, a victim who was abducted and murdered six years earlier. The Lacey parents accept 'Neil' into their home with few questions, but he lives in fear that he will make a serious mistake through not knowing Neil's likes and dislikes and that dental records and suspicious Detective Simmons will expose him. His eight-year-old brother Stevie is put out by his return and his younger sister Diana is convinced he's not Neil, but much prefers him to her memories of her real brother. Alphin describes the years of sexual and physical abuse that Cameron endured at the hands of his father, but never in graphic detail. Cameron is always expecting punishment from his new 'parents', yet finds kindness and love instead. When Cougar, "Pop"'s former accomplice newly freed from prison, finds Cameron and threatens him with exposure, Cameron tries to tell his 'father' the truth. In the novel's climax, Stevie is kidnapped and Cameron risks everything to save him. During the rescue Cameron's knowledge of the boat indicates that he really could be Neil, and eventually it is shown that Hank had killed his own son Cameron and Neil took his place as the son.
5037417	/m/0c_yrb	Jumping the Scratch			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Eleven-year-old Jamie Reardon’s cat dies, his father leaves home; and his aunt Sapphy has an accident at work that causes her memory to skip. Jamie is a boy who is teased at school and, on the other hand, has a memory he'd give anything to be able to forget. He is performing badly at school and has Miss Miller,an unsympathetic teacher. A visiting author, or as Jamie hears the name - 'Arthur', recognises that the boy is troubled, but the two do not have a chance to really communicate. Jamie has to sort out his problems himself. He tries to find the magic trigger that will help Sapphy's memory jump the scratch, like the needle on a record, but in the end it's Audrey Krouch, a neighborhood girl who hypnotises him. Under hypnosis, when he is hoping to learn how to forget, Jamie recalls his recent sexual abuse by Old Gray, a paedophile caretaker at the trailer park where he lives in Traverse City, Michigan. Jamie's emotional reaction to the incident he was trying to suppress returns Sapphy’s memory, and the boy is finally able to tell her everything. The actual abuse is not described in the book. Sarah Weeks has said that, "I felt like I wanted to protect Jamie’s privacy... Jamie didn’t want anybody to know what had happened to him in Old Gray’s office on Christmas Eve, so it didn’t feel right for me to tell all the details either."
5039607	/m/0d00gs	Vector	Rob Swigart	1987-02	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 New York City cab driver Yuri Davydov is a disgruntled Russian émigré poised to lash out at the adoptive nation he believes has denied him the American Dream. A former technician in the Soviet biological weapons program in Sverdlovsk, BIOPREPARAT, Yuri possesses the knowledge and expertise to wreak havoc in the Big Apple. But before he executes his planned pièce de résistance of retribution against the wealthy Jews of Manhattan he first tests the Anthrax's efficacy on a dealer in exotic carpets as well as on his increasingly suspicious American-born wife. Dr. Jack Stapleton and Dr. Laurie Montgomery (both last seen in Chromosome 6) begin to witness some unusual cases in their capacity as forensic pathologists in the city's medical examiner's office: a young obese black woman dies of respiratory failure on the heels of a Greek immigrant's succumbing to what initially appears to be a sudden, overwhelming attack of influenza. At the same time, the pair are pressured from above to investigate the death of a prisoner from the blatantly obvious use of excessive force by police. When an unexpected breakthrough persuades Jack that the first two seemingly unrelated deaths are connected, his colleagues and superiors are skeptical. Only Laurie is somewhat convinced. The tension builds as the reader's complacent assumption of the usual happy ending is eroded away by a never-ending series of twists and turns in the action. For even if the pair of doctors succeeds in solving the puzzle, will they still be able to react in time to keep Yuri and his militant American cronies from snuffing out the lives of a million Manhattanites?
5040409	/m/0d01td	Ratman's Notebooks	Stephen G Gilbert		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book is set as a series of journal entries, where the unnamed narrator goes back and forth between his life with the rats and his work, in a low-level job at a company that his father used to own. In these entries, the young man dwells on the hatred he feels for his boss, the stresses of caring for his aging mother, a nameless girl he becomes fond of and above all the families of rats which he has befriended and which he uses them for company and companionship. Eventually, the young man trains the rats to do things for him. His favorite is a white rodent, which he calls "Socrates". A rival to Socrates is "Ben", a large rat that the narrator grows to despise when it refuses to listen to him. The young man uses the rats to wreak revenge upon his boss, and havoc amongst the local shop owners and home owners, who he has robbed with the aide of his rat pack. His "ratman" robberies become a newspaper sensation in the area, and the man makes quite a stash of money for himself, and for the girl who he is courting at work. After his mother dies, the young man inherits the house. Socrates is killed at the young man's work place, by his boss Mr. Martin, and the young man is forced to now use Ben in his criminal escapades. He devises a plan to have the rats kill Mr. Martin, avenging Socrates death. He then abandons all the rats at the scene of the crime, ridding himself of that part of his life. Eventually, as his relationship with the office girl moves towards marriage, Ben and his pack return, chasing the girl out of the house, and trapping the young man in the attic. The book ends with the young man madly scribbling about the rats chewing away at the door.
5041461	/m/0d03bk	D'entre les morts	Boileau-Narcejac	1954	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story concerns a former detective who suffers from vertigo, who is hired to follow the wife of a friend who is puzzled by her strange behavior. The detective becomes obsessed with the woman, eventually falling in love with her but unable to explain her strange trances and her belief in a previous life. When she falls to her death from a tower, he is unable to save her due to his fear of heights and experiences a psychotic break. After his partial recovery he encounters a woman who is nearly the image of his dead love, and the obsession begins all over again...
5043277	/m/0d06sl	The Madman's Tale	John Katzenbach	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Francis Petrel, recently released from an asylum faces his own inner demons as he recounts his memories of a murderer in the asylum during his time there. The story tells itself in two parallel parts: one of the stories is during his time in the asylum, all a memory slowly bringing itself back to life; the other story takes place after he is released, and he feels compelled to author a book on the events surrounding that murder. He has no paper, so he writes his story on the wall and is constantly challenged with tedious interruptions. At the same time, he forgoes his medication, and the tension of continuing with his work becomes threatened by his struggle with his own madness. It is currently being turned into a movie and it was supposed to be filmed from November 26th, 2007 until approximately January 20th, 2008 at Fairfield State Hospital in Newtown, Connecticut. Filming has not yet taken place due to personal issues of Jonathan Rhys Meyers, the films star, according to an article in the Newtown Beehttp://www.newtownbee.com/. Trivia: Descriptions in the text suggest that the central hospital, "Western State Hospital", is actually modeled on the Northampton State Hospital, which operated in Northampton, MA from 1856 - 1996.
5043452	/m/0d070y	The Da Vinci Code	Dan Brown		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0594kx": "Conspiracy fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Louvre curator and Priory of Sion Grand Master Jacques Saunière is fatally shot one night at the museum by a man named Silas, who is working on behalf of someone known only as the Teacher, who wishes to discover the location of the "keystone," an item crucial to the search for the Holy Grail. After Saunière's body is discovered in the pose of the Vitruvian Man, the police summon Harvard Professor Robert Langdon, who is in town on business. Police Captain Bezu Fache tells him that he was summoned to help the police decode the cryptic message Saunière left during the final minutes of his life. The note also includes a Fibonacci sequence, left as a code. Langdon explains to Fache that Saunière was a leading authority in the subject of goddess artwork and that the pentacle Saunière drew in his own blood represents an allusion to the goddess and not "devil worship", as Fache believes. A police cryptographer, Sophie Neveu secretly explains to Langdon she is Saunière's estranged granddaughter, and that Fache thinks Langdon is the murderer, because of the note her grandfather left saying to "find Robert Langdon," which she says Fache had erased prior to Langdon's arrival. Sophie is troubled by memories of her grandfather's involvement in a secret pagan group. However, she understands that her grandfather intended Langdon to decipher the code, which she and Langdon realize leads them to a safe deposit box at the Paris branch of the Depository Bank of Zurich, which Sophie and Langdon go to after escaping the police. In the safe deposit box they find the keystone: a cryptex, a cylindrical, hand-held vault with five concentric, rotating dials labeled with letters that when lined up properly form the correct password, unlocking the device. If the cryptex is forced open, an enclosed vial of vinegar ruptures and dissolves the message, which was written on papyrus. The box containing the cryptex contains clues to its password. Langdon and Neveu take the keystone to Langdon's friend, Sir Leigh Teabing, an expert on the Holy Grail. There, Teabing explains that the Grail is not a cup, but the tomb containing the bones of Mary Magdalene. The group then flees the country in Teabing's private plane, on which they conclude that the proper combination of letters spell out Sophie's given name, "SOFIA." Opening the cryptex, they discover a smaller cryptex inside it, along with another riddle that ultimately leads the trio to the tomb of Isaac Newton at Westminster Abbey. During the flight to Britain, Sophie reveals the source of her estrangement from her grandfather, ten years earlier. Arriving home unexpectedly from college, Sophie secretly witnesses a spring fertility rite conducted in the basement of her grandfather's country estate. From her hiding place, she is shocked to see her grandfather making love to a woman at the center of a ritual attended by men and women who are wearing masks and chanting praise to the goddess. She flees the house and breaks off all contact with Saunière. Langdon explains that what she witnessed was an ancient ceremony known as Hieros gamos or "sacred marriage". By the time they arrive at Westminster Abbey, Teabing is revealed to be the Teacher for whom Silas is working. Teabing wishes to use the Holy Grail, which he believes is a series of documents establishing that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and bore children, in order to ruin the Vatican. He compels Langdon at gunpoint to solve the second cryptex's password, which Langdon realizes is "APPLE." Langdon secretly opens the cryptex and removes its contents before destroying it in front of Teabing. Teabing is arrested by Fache, who by now knows that Langdon was innocent. Bishop Aringarosa, realizing that Silas has been used to murder innocent people rushes to help the police find him. Silas is found hiding in an Opus Dei Center, when he realizes that the police have found him, which causes him to rush out and accidentally shoot Bishop Aringarosa. Bishop Aringarosa survives but is informed that Silas was found dead later, apparently by suicide. The final message inside the second keystone leads Sophie and Langdon to Rosslyn Chapel, whose docent turns out to be Sophie's long-lost brother, whom Sophie had been told died as a child in the car accident that killed her parents. The guardian of Rosslyn Chapel, Marie Chauvel, is Sophie's long-lost grandmother, and the widow of Jacques Saunière. It is revealed that Sophie is a descendant of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. The Priory of Sion hid her identity to protect her from possible threats to her life. The real meaning of the last message is that the Grail is buried beneath the small pyramid directly below the inverted glass pyramid of the Louvre. It also lies beneath the "Rose Line," an allusion to "Roslyn." Langdon figures out this final piece to the puzzle in the last pages of the book, but he does not appear inclined to tell anyone about this.
5043907	/m/0d07zb	Birds Without Wings	Louis de Bernières	2004	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is set in Eskibahçe, a small fictional village in southwestern coastal Anatolia during the 1900s, spanning World War I and the era of Turkish nationalism. The Battle of Gallipoli takes place halfway through the novel. Although fiction, the setting of Eskibahçe is based upon Kayaköy (Greek: Levissi Λεβισσι) village near Fethiye, the ruins of which still exist today. Once a thriving Greek village, this town of over one thousand houses, two churches, fourteen chapels, and two schools, was completely deserted in 1923 when the Greek inhabitants living there, along with a vast number of Greeks living throughout Turkey were deported to Greece through a massive government mandated population exchange between the two countries following the Turkish war of independence. Historically, Turks and Greeks had lived together in this region for centuries, the Turks as farmers in the Kaya valley and the Greeks living on the hillside dealing in crafts and trades. A Greek presence in this region goes back for centuries. Since then, the village of Kayakoy, as it is called in Turkish, or Karmylassos, as it was called in Greek, which had been continually inhabited since at least the 13th century, has stood empty and crumbling, with only the breeze from the mountains and mist from the sea blowing through its empty houses and streets. Attempts by the Turkish government to get Turks deported from Greece to inhabit the village failed, and eventually, in the 1950s, the roofs of all the houses were removed. Some of its characters are also present in the author's earlier novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The book includes a vivid and detailed description of the horrors of life in the trenches during World War I.
5044147	/m/0d08hg	Tetrarch	Ian Irvine	2003-09-29	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tiaan wanders the ancient, abandoned city of Tirthrax aimlessly. She still clutches the dead body of her adopted-sister, Haani, who was killed by a nervous Aachim shooter. Her previous withdrawal, that caused her to madly desire the strange crystal Amplimet, which lies unguarded near the gate she created to bring the treacherous Aachim to Santhenar from dying Aachan, has evaporated in her grief for her sister. It is not long before Tiaan realises that she is being followed. Indeed she is soon captured, by her nemesis from the manufacturory, Nish and a strange young woman by the name of Ullii. Tiaan escapes twice but is recaptured both times. However, as Nish bounds her after her second escape attempt, in which Tiaan nearly falls to her death in the Well of Echoes, he is interrupted by an old Aachim woman who states herself to be the Matah of Tirthrax. The Matah forces Nish to release Tiaan, humiliating him with a minor use of her powers. The Matah has Tiaan and Nish relate their story and becomes distressed at the knowledge of the Aachim invasion, led by Vithis. She speaks of the time of The Forbidding as if she were present. The Matah instructs Nish and Ullii to leave Tirthrax and warn their people of the Aachim invasion, though Nish had already sent word by skeet of what he had witnessed. The Matah befriends Tiaan and helps her to deliver Haani's body to the Well of Echoes, an honour befitted to only the greatest of people. The Matah reveals that she is in fact Malien, a heroine from the time of the Mirror. Tiaan decides to go and retrieve the amplimet from the gate room, but finds it missing. She originally accuses Malien, but they eventually realise that Nish is the only possible culprit. Later, Tiaan and Malien head for the Baloon on the side of Tirthrax to retrieve the Amplimet and succeed. Nish and Ulii manage to repair and refloat the balloon and head off.
5044608	/m/0d093f	The Rotters' Club	Jonathan Coe	2001-02-22	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Three teenage friends grow up in the British 1970s watching their lives change as their world gets involved with Provisional Irish Republican Army bombs, progressive and punk rock, girls and political strikes.
5046545	/m/04n7pkv	The Wild Boy			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel switches among several different timelines which ultimately tie together in the last few chapters. As the novel opens, the Lindauzi are reeling from the extinction of their soul-mate species, the Iani, without whom they will lose all sense of themselves and succumb to "reversion," a return to a feral, animal state. Many Lindauzi are choosing suicide over the possibility of reversion; a civil war has erupted between those who believe it is time for the Lindauzi to surrender to extinction, and those who wish to leave the homeworld in search of a compatible species to replicate the bond the Lindauzi had enjoyed with the Iani. Corviax, son of the Left Emperor, finally wins the right to lead a search expedition; they discover that the humans of Earth share many similarities to the Iani and, believing that the Iani emotional bond with the Lindauzi can be recreated in the humans, Corviax instigates an ambitious scheme to make the human population more receptive to the Lindauzi. He begins by covertly releasing viruses to thin the planet's population, and his fleet endears itself to the sick and traumatized survivors by arriving with a cure for the virus, seemingly by pure coincidence. Once a bond of trust has been established, the Lindauzi begin building settlements and inviting humans to live with them. Further dependence is fostered in the humans by the systematic decimation of the humans' companion animals, such as dogs and cats, by more viruses. Within three or four generations, humanity is completely dependent upon and subservient to the Lindauzi, who have begun their breeding program in earnest. Ilox is the pinnacle of the breeding program, an exceptionally bright and empathic human boy who at an early age can sense the presence and emotions of nearby Lindauzi. He becomes the pet of Phlarx, a young Lindauzi noble, and the two form a deep bond - "heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul," as is the stated goal of the breeding program. Despite his attachment to Phlarx, Ilox is insatiably curious, especially about human history. "Dogs" - as humans are now called by the Lindauzi - are forbidden from acquiring this knowledge, but Ilox eventually learns of the origins of the Lindauzi, the extinction of the Iani, and the lengths to which the Lindauzi went to engineer humanity to their specifications. At the same time he comes by this knowledge, Ilox falls in love with another pet human, Nivere, and is caught having sex with her. Nivere is euthanized, and Ilox - formerly seen as the Lindauzi hope for a new partner species - is now thought to be a failed breeding experiment of no use to the Lindauzi. He is separated from Phlarx and abandoned in the wild to fend for himself or die; his disappearance is written off as an accidental death. Ilox is taken in by a small tribe of "wolves" - humans who have resisted domestication by the Lindauzi and live apart from them, hiding in the ruins of human cities. Ilox eventually adapts to life among the free humans in the settlement of Jackson, and takes a wife, Mary, with whom he has two sons, Caleb and Davy. Despite his new life as a "wolf," Ilox misses Phlarx dearly, and one day when Caleb is eleven, Ilox leaves the human settlement to return to his Lindauzi bondmate. Not long after this, the settlement falls under siege by Lindauzi "hounds," humans bred to hunt and kill "wolves." Caleb, the only survivor of the raid, wanders on his own for a time until he is discovered and brought before Prince Orfassian, son of the late Corviax. Orfassian, impressed with the fact that Caleb can speak (and specifically, curse) in the Lindauzi language, decides to keep Caleb as a novelty, and has him trained as a "show dog." Ilox, meanwhile, has been reunited with Phlarx and tries to tell him about the indignities humanity has suffered to become the pets of the Lindauzi. He tries to explain that the symbiotic bond that existed between the Iani and the Lindauzi can never be recreated as long as humanity remains subservient to the Lindauzi, and that humans cannot be forced into loving another being, but must be allowed the choice of loving, as Ilox chose to love his wife Mary. Phlarx cannot comprehend this, however, and thinking that Ilox has been corrupted by living among wolves, has him sealed in a sensory deprivation cocoon in an attempt to correct what Phlarx sees as a flaw in Ilox's otherwise impeccable breeding. This only has the effect of driving Ilox insane, however, and while Ilox is now more dependent upon Phlarx than ever before, he is a far cry from the intelligent, capable companion Phlarx desired. Caleb is eventually reunited with his father, who no longer recognizes him, and the pair escape from the Lindauzi city of Umium - built on the ruins of New York City - via the old city's subway system. They are intercepted by Phlarx, who is on the run from Lindauzi authorities for displaying signs of reversion and is suffering from severe guilt for what he has done to Ilox. Phlarx agrees to take Caleb and Ilox to the "Summer Country" - South America - where it is too warm for Lindauzi to settle and humans live with relatively little interference. Prince Orfassian, upon hearing of Phlarx's supposed reversion, the escape of Ilox and Caleb, and the truth behind Ilox's supposed "death" years previously, finally realizes that the bond cannot exist in humans the way it did in the Iani, and that the Lindauzi are facing inevitable reversion and extinction. He arranges for the air filters in the forcefields surrounding the Lindauzi cities to be altered so that carbon monoxide emissions will slowly reach lethal levels, leading to a peaceful and dignified death for his species. Caleb adapts well to life among the human population of the Summer Country, and Ilox slowly begins regaining his senses, though he never recovers them completely. He has recurring prophetic dreams about the death of all the Lindauzi, which the humans of the Summer Country decide to act on, making tentative exploratory forays beyond their safe haven in the tropics. Phlarx does not fare as well as the humans, however; he suffers in the tropical heat, and this, combined with his compromised bond with Ilox, leads to his death within a few months. Ilox dies along with him, and the pair are buried side by side - Ilox on the boundary of the sanctified ground of the village cemetery, and Phlarx just beyond it.
5047323	/m/0d0dnl	Locksley Hall	Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson			 The unnamed protagonist is a soldier traveling with a small military unit. He asks his company to continue ahead as he pauses for sentimental reasons. He then quickly reveals that the place he has stopped at is called Locksley Hall, and he spent his childhood there. The rest of the poem, though written as rhymed metered verse, follows the stream of consciousness of its protagonist as an interior monologue. The protagonist struggles to reach some sort of catharsis on his childhood feelings. In his monologue, the protagonist begins with fond memories of his childhood and love, but those memories quickly lead to a burst of anger because his lover abandoned him due to her parents' disapproval. He proceeds to offer a biting criticism of his lover's new husband, interspersed with personal reflection. This criticism is only really interrupted when he reflects that his lover will eventually have a child, and will be more concerned with her child than about the protagonist. The protagonist promptly continues his angry tirade, this time directed at the mother-child relationship. The protagonist reveals frustration with his present career, which he identifies as an escape from a depression and sense of hopelessness, saying: : What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these? : Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys. : Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow. : I have but an angry fancy; what is that which I should do? : I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground, : When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound. (lines 99-104) In order to be free of his depression, the protagonist continues into a grand description of the world to come—which he views as somewhat utopian. He relapses into anger briefly again when he hears a bugle call from his comrades telling him to hurry up. Much of the remainder of the poem is built up of an odd contrast between the beauty of civilization and the beauty of the noble savage. He recalls the land where he was born (which he only says is somewhere in the Orient), and lovingly notes its lack of civilization, describing it as "Summer isles of Eden" and "knots of Paradise." In the end, he rejects the ideal of the noble savage, preferring the progress that civilization has made. He also immediately thereafter rejects Locksley Hall, and marches forth to meet his comrades.
5047951	/m/0d0fkk	The Passion According to G.H.	Clarice Lispector			 When the book opens, G.H., a well-to-do resident of a Rio de Janeiro penthouse, is remembering what happened to her the previous day, when she decided to clean out the room of the maid who has just left her service. “Before I entered the room, what was I?” G.H. asks. “I was what others had always seen me be, and that was the way I knew myself.” In the maid’s room, G.H. expects chaos. Instead, to her shock, she finds a desert, “an entirely clean and vibrating room as in an insane asylum from which dangerous objects have been removed.” Only one thing disturbs the room's perfect order: black carbon scratches on the dry white wall, outlines of a man, a woman, and a dog. Pondering the inscrutable drawing, she realizes that the black maid, whose name she has forgotten, and whose face she has trouble calling to mind, had hated her. Overwhelmed by anger, she opens the door to the wardrobe. Terrified by the cockroach she sees emerging, she slams the door shut, severing the cockroach in its center and sees the still-living animal's entrails begin to ooze out. G.H. is appalled by the sight, but she is trapped in the room by the irresistible fascination of the dying insect. She wants to scream, but she knows it is already too late: "If I raised the alarm at being alive, voiceless and hard they would drag me away since they drag away those who depart the possible world, the exceptional being is dragged away, the screaming being.” Staring at the insect, her human personality begins to break down; finally, at the height of her mystic crisis, she famously takes the matter oozing from the cockroach—the fundamental, anonymous matter of the universe, which she shares with the roach—and puts it in her mouth.
5050625	/m/0d0jr7	A Cry in the Night	Mary Higgins Clark	1982-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jenny MacPartland, a divorced single mother, falls in love with artist Erich Kreuger while working for a New York gallery. They marry within a month and set up home on Erich's vast Minnesota ranch. For several months they are happily married, but Jenny begins to feel uneasy around her increasingly unstable husband. Within a year, their marriage is ripped apart by scandal and Jenny plans to return to New York City until she realizes that she is pregnant and completely dependent financially on Eric. Unsure of what to do, Jenny lives in fear and hides her growing baby from her husband as long as she physically can. As Jenny's pregnancy progresses, she discovers Eric's obsession with his dead mother, Caroline—the exact image of Jenny. As the facts begin to add up, Jenny realizes that she is married to and carrying the child of his. Soon after he finds out she is planning to leave him, he starts to stalk her. Leaves without her on a trip and takes her two children. Trying to find out the truth about what he is trying to do, she also finds out more than that, more in the past and soon...
5050695	/m/0d0jwc	Honus & Me	Dan Gutman	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 Joe Stoshack's biggest love is baseball. He knows everything there is to know about the game -- except how to play well. When he takes a job cleaning a bunch of junk out of his neighbor's attic, he finds a 1909 T206 Honus Wagner card (the most valuable baseball card in the world). He tries to verify that it is an authentic Wagner by going to a collectible shop. The owner, an ex "bad guy" professional wrestler named Birdie Farrell, tries to trick him into selling it for ten dollars by saying it's Heinie Wagner. When he goes to sleep that night, he's holding the baseball card, wishing he could meet Honus. The next day, after one of his team's games, Joe finds himself face to face with baseball legend Honus Wagner. He plays catch with him, and Joe and Honus share what their dreams are. Joe's is to play in the big leagues, while Honus' is to win the World Series. Together they travel back in time -- into the seventh game of the World Series -- where Honus helps Joe boost his self-esteem and gain confidence in his ability to play baseball.
5051840	/m/0d0lc7	The Rainbird Pattern	Victor Canning		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Elderly spinster Julia Rainbird, under sessions by medium Blanche Tyler, or "Madame Blanche", promises her a large sum of money to locate her illegitimate nephew Edward Shoebridge. Blanche and her boyfriend, George Lumley, begin making inquiries around their area about the Shoebridges, despite no one knowing where Edward is, or if he is alive. Meanwhile, Edward Shoebridge, alive and under the pseudonym of "the Trader", has been organising small kidnappings around the area, but is planning a larger score, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom he will hold for a large ransom.
5052099	/m/0d0lvh	The Fury	John Farris	1976	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Gillian Bellaver is a teenage girl who has psychic powers such as telepathy and telekinesis. But though she is trying to reject the fact that she is clairvoyant, she soon finds out that a boy her age, Robin Sandza, is kidnapped. With her powers, she helps Robin's father Peter Sandza find Robin. But though Robin was psychic like Gillian, they come to realize death has entered their boundaries. Gillian and Peter find Robin, but both father and son get killed. Gillian wakes up to find she is kidnapped, a victim herself, when the kidnapper, Childermass, has her in a room. She grabs a winter coat and drowns him mercilessly.
5052307	/m/0d0m1b	Topaz	Leon Uris		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Cold War-era story concerns an alleged plot between the Soviet Union and Cuba, and a spy ring with connections to both. It also speaks about the Russian infiltrations into the French intelligence. The main characters of the book are fast friends Michael Nordstorm and Andre Devereaux of the American and French intelligence. Devereaux goes out of way to get evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He has information of Soviet links in French intelligence but is himself targeted when he reveals this to the French president. But he continues with his fight and exposes the mole ultimately seeking asylum in America with Nordstorm's help.
5053182	/m/0d0n60	Ashes and Diamonds	Jerzy Andrzejewski		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place in Ostrowiec (probably Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski), Poland, and begins on May 3, 1945, one of the last days of World War II. The characters are all aware that the war will end soon. The Soviet Army had driven the German Army out of Ostrowiec in January, and the Communists are poised to take control of post-war Poland. In the story, Stefan Szczuka is the Secretary of the Province Committee of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR, a party of Communist orientation formed in the Soviet Union), and is expected to play an important role in the new government of Stalinist Poland. A jeep is transporting him to speak at a cement factory in Biała, a nearby town. The jeep is being driven by Frank Podgórski, who is the Secretary of the District Committee of the PPR. Podgórski recognizes a friend (Alicja Kossecka) walking alongside the road, and stops to greet her. Podgórski learns from her that her husband Antoni Kossecki, who was a local judge before the war, had returned from the German prison camp Gro&szlig;-Rosen two days ago. He asks to visit them, and she agrees. Podgórski gets out of the car to talk with his friend which causes a delay. Szczuka impatiently honks the horn to get Podgórski to return to the jeep and resume the trip. Later, as they are driving, Podgórski explains to Szczuka who his friend Alicja Kossecka was and that her husband had just returned from the Nazi captivity. Szczuka mentions that he had also spent time in that prison camp, but cannot remember knowing anyone from Gross-Rosen named Kossecki. Podgórski suddenly remembers that Kossecki had been arrested under an assumed name, so that Szczuka would not have known him as Kossecki, but Podgórski cannot recall what his assumed name was. A short time later, after the jeep passes a narrow point in the road, they find a crowd surrounding another jeep lying on its side at a distance from the road. They stop and go to investigate. They find that the passengers, two workers named Smolarski and Gawlik, have been shot and killed, apparently ambushed at the narrow place in the road they had just passed. On the way back to their own jeep, Szczuka tells Podgórski that he thinks the shots were intended for him (Szczuka). Podgórski suddenly recalls that Kossecki’s assumed name was Rybicki. Szczuka recognizes this name, but doesn’t say very much about what he remembers. Antoni Kossecki and his wife Alicja Kossecka (the couple that Podgórski was telling Szczuka about), have two sons Andrzej (21) and Alek (17). During the war, while his father was at Gross-Rosen, Andrzej was fighting as a partisan, presumably with the Armia Krajowa (AK), although it is never mentioned by name in the story. Andrzej too has now returned home, so the family is together again. Alicja Kossecka returns home from the walk on which she had met Podgórski. She needs 3,000 zloty to purchase some wool. She had hidden this money in a safe place, but discovers that the money has disappeared. The only person who could easily have taken it was her younger son Alek, who was there at home earlier but suddenly left the house shortly after she did. She keeps her suspicions to herself and decides to ask her elder son Andrzej to lend her the money she needs. As she goes to his room, she hears him talking with some friends and overhears fragments of a conversation that he is having with them. These conversation fragments strongly suggest to the reader that Andrzej and his friends were somehow involved in the ambush of the two men in the jeep. Meanwhile, Podgórski drops Szczuka at the Monopol hotel in Ostrowiec, where he is staying. They will both attend a banquet at the hotel later in the evening, but Podgórski says that he first wants to visit Antoni Kossecki, as he had agreed earlier in the day with Alicja Kossecka. As Podgórski and Szczuka part ways, Szczuka asks Podgórski to ask Antoni Kossecki whether he wants to meet him, an old comrade from Gross-Rosen. Podgórski agrees and goes to visit the Kossecki family while Szczuka goes into the hotel. As Szczuka is picking up his room key from the reception desk, a 24-year-old young man, who we later find out is Maciej Chelmnicki, is also at the hotel desk asking for a room. The desk clerk tells Maciej that all the rooms are taken, however Maciej is very persistent and ultimately convinces the desk clerk (with the help of a bribe) to find him a room. By chance, Maciej ends up in the room next to that of Szczuka. Podgórski’s visit to Antoni Kossecki turns into a very long conversation, and Podgórski stays late. They talk about how the War subjected people to conditions that brought out the worst in some of them, and to what extent people can be held accountable for their actions under such conditions. While Podgórski is visiting Antoni Kossecki, Szczuka goes to visit his sister-in-law Katarzyna Staniewiczowa, who also lives in Ostrowiec. She has not invited him, and does not expect him to visit, but he feels that he has to tell her that his wife Maria (the sister of Katarzyna Staniewiczowa) has not returned from the prison camp where she had been staying. When Szczuka arrives, Katarzyna Staniewiczowa has guests who are obviously part of the pre-War aristocracy and disapprove of Szczuka’s politics. In the next room, unknown to Szczuka, Andrzej Kossecki is meeting with Captain Florian Waga. It is apparent that Captain Waga is Andrzej’s commanding officer in a conspiratorial organization (presumably the AK) and has given the order to kill Szczuka, eliminating any doubt that Andrzej and his friends are the ones involved in the ambush earlier that day. Andrzej asks Captain Waga whether it is really necessary to kill Szczuka, and Captain Waga replies that all that matters is that they have been given the order to do so, and that they must obey the order. Back in the living room, the discussion has taken a not very cordial turn. Szczuka tells his sister-in-law about Maria, which is why he came to visit, and decides to leave. After Szczuka leaves, Katarzyna Staniewiczowa and her guests, including Andrzej, all decide to go to the Monopol for entertainment. Captain Florian Waga declines to join them and goes his separate way. Back at the Monopol, Maciej Chelmnicki has gone to the hotel bar, where he chats up the bar maid Krystyna. He is quite taken with her, and tries to convince her to come to his room when she is done with work. While waiting for Krystyna’s shift to end, Maciej is joined in the bar by his friend Andrzej Kossecki, who has just come from the home of Katarzyna Staniewiczowa. Maciej and Andrzej discuss the botched attempt on Szczuka’s life. Andrzej recounts his meeting the Captain Waga, and Maciej promises to finish the job of killing Szczuka. In the main part of the Monopol dining room, separate from the bar, the banquet is beginning. Meanwhile, Alek Kossecki, who has stolen the 3,000 zloties from his mother, is meeting in an abandoned basement with four of his friends, all of whom belong to a conspiratorial organization. During the meeting, their leader Jerzy Szretter calls upon all the attendees to produce the 5,000 zloties that each of them was supposed to bring to the meeting to fund a weapons purchase. All but one of them is able to produce their money. Alek Kossecki confesses that he had to steal part of the money from his mother. The leader tells Alek to keep his money, and demands that his share be paid by Janusz Kotowicz, another of the attendees who is known to have more money than the others. Kotowicz refuses, and Szretter beats him until he surrenders all his money, which turns out to be an enormous amount. Janusz Kotowicz starts to leave, hinting that he will turn them in, prompting Jerzy Szretter to shoot Kotowicz. Back at the hotel, Podgórski has returned from his visit to Antoni Kossecki, and stops by Szczuka’s room on his way to the banquet. While they are talking, Szczuka tells Podgórski that Antoni Kossecki had committed horrible crimes while at the Gross-Rosen prison camp. Podgórski, who knew Kossecki before the War, can hardly believe what he is hearing and reflects about the conversation he just had with Kossecki about moral accountability. At the bar of the Monopol, Krystyna asks her coworker to cover for her so that she can leave early and go to Maciej’s room. Her coworker agrees, and Krystyna does go to Maciej’s room and they spend the night together. Maciej falls seriously in love with her, and begins to reconsider the path he has been following in life. Downstairs, the banquet, which turned into a boisterous party, is ending, and the hotel impresario has the musicians play Chopin’s Military Polonaise as the last guests leave. (This is the scene that appears at the end of the film.) The next day, Maciej spends the entire day with Krystyna. He tells her that he wants to make changes in his life and is thinking about enrolling in a technical school. He meets with Andrzej Kossecki, who is his superior in the secret organization that has ordered the killing of Szczuka which Maciej has been ordered to carry out. Maciej explains to Andrzej that he has fallen in love with Krystyna and wants to change his life, and that he no longer wants to kill Szczuka. Andrzej reminds Maciej that he is under orders to carry out the killing. Maciej finally agrees to kill Szczuka, but says that this will be the last order he will carry out. Maciej writes a note to Krystyna and tells her that he has some business to attend to, and cannot see her for awhile. He says that he has to go to Warsaw, and invites her to come with him, and she agrees. Maciej begins to stalk Szczuka, and follows him to the apartment of a woman who had returned from the same camp where Szczuka’s wife was imprisoned. Szczuka has gone to see her in hopes of learning the fate of his wife. While Szczuka is in the apartment, Maciej enters and kills Szczuka. He returns to the hotel, where he sleeps for several hours. When he awakes he hurries to catch the train for Warsaw. After having killed Szczuka he is nervous about being recognized, and on his way to the train station he raises the suspicion of a patrol, which orders him to stop. He panics and tries to run, and they shoot him.
5059561	/m/0d0wvb	The Lab	Jack Heath		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Lab is an action book, whose protagonist is a 16 year old superhuman, named Agent "Six of Hearts". Six was created to be the ultimate soldier by a group called The Lab which is a ruthless division of the company ChaoSonic. In this futuristic setting there is only one known city left in the world, and it is run by ChaoSonic. ChaoSonic took over the city and has obliterated all their competitors and enemies. Six is an agent of a vigilante organization called "The Deck" which survives by attacking ChaoSonic subsidiaries that are acting unethically, arresting the people involved and then selling off their assets. Only the King of Hearts, who saved Six from the Lab as a child, and is now his boss, is aware of the fact that Six is a superhuman developed by ChaoSonic. Six and King keeps this a secret, as the Spades, another division of the Deck, would imprison Six if they knew he was a ChaoSonic creation, in case he was a threat. Six is the best agent in the Deck, having a 100% mission success rate. The Deck then begins to investigate "The Lab" and King gives Six the assignment to stop anyone from discovering his true identity. On his mission he meets Kyntak. Kyntak is genetically identical to Six, designed in the Lab's 'Project Falcon' alongside him. In a twisted way, they are brothers. This discovery prompts Six to re-ex When he arrives, he discovers that Lab soldiers have invaded the Deck and captured the agents. Six sets off on a mission to infiltrate the Lab and rescue the agents. The agents manage to get out, but Six is killed in the attempt. However, the Lab brings Six back to life, using parts from a clone of him to repair his body. Their leader, Methryn Crexe, then offer Six a job working for them, as they believe he has the perfect personality for a soldier, which theyamine his own sense of humanity. Kyntak is locked up when he and Six arrive at the Deck, but is soon released on the orders of one of the Jokers, the shadowy leaders of the Deck. One of the Jokers is Grysat, who usually poses as the Deck's receptionist, but the identity of the other Joker is unknown, and he is the Joker that released Kyntak. Six and King are worried that the Joker and Kyntak might be working for ChaoSonic, but they keep quiet in case the Spades find out the truth about Six when investigating Kyntak. The Deck then spies on a meeting between the Lab and a potential customer, but one of the guards recognizes Six. Six chases the man, but he escapes, using superhuman abilities. Six returns to the Deck with his first ever mission failure. want to replicate with the next soldiers they grow. They then plan to use those soldiers to crush all resistance in the city. Six refuses the offer, and tries to escape, but is almost killed. Kyntak then arrives and rescues him. Before they leave, they find a new baby superhuman, a girl, which they take with them.
5060743	/m/0d0y2z	Edinburgh: A Novel	Alexander Chee	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the novel, Aphias "Fee" Zhe, a twelve-year-old Korean American boy growing up in Maine, is selected for membership in a boys' choir along with Peter, who becomes his best friend and first love. Fee and other boys are molested by the choir director Big Eric Gorendt. Fee is afraid to tell, and doesn't want anyone else to tell, for reasons that are deeper than pure embarrassment or fear. When one boy comes out with the secret, all the boys are revealed as victims as well. This novel explores the horrific mental and emotional damage these boys go through and how they cope with this trauma.
5061559	/m/0d0z7r	The Coming Storm	Paul Russell	1999-08	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told from the alternating perspective of four characters:&nbsp; Louis Tremper, the headmaster of a boy's prep school in upstate New York; his wife, Claire Tremper; Tracy Parker, the school's new 25-year-old English teacher; and Noah Lathrop III, a 15-year-old student struggling with his own sexuality."The Coming Storm | Paul Russell | Macmillan", macmillan.com, 2010, webpage: Mac-CS. Headmaster Louis Tremper is a repressed homosexual with a love of German opera. He hires Tracy as an English teacher at the school, Middle Forge, and is instantly attracted. He and his wife, Claire become close friends with Tracy, often inviting him over to dinner, with Louis educating and imparting his love of classic music on the young English teacher. Louis, as headmaster, has a history of having favorite boys within the school, but the relationships always closely resembled that of his new friendship with Tracy Parker – a relationship similar to the one he himself had with Jack Emmerich, the school's previous headmaster. Claire has also developed a friendship with Tracy. Knowing full well of Louis' repressed desires, Claire accepts them knowing that even so, he has remained a faithful husband. She also admits to a lesbian crush when she was younger, with her best friend Libby, who is married to Reid. Louis and Reid have been friends for years, and it was through Reid that Claire had met Louis. It is implied that Louis had an unrequited love for Reid – who instead became a womanizer and an adulterer, eventually leaving his wife by the end of the novel. Tracy quickly becomes a popular teacher on campus, letting the students call him by his first name. He lives alone in a big house on campus; one that was previously owned by Jack Emmerich. He quickly befriends the Trempers. He and Claire visit a dog shelter where Tracy finds Betsy, a beagle which he occasionally leaves in the care of one of his students, Noah Lathrop III. Shortly after he starts teaching, he visits friends in New York City, where it is revealed that Tracy is gay. His ex-boyfriend, Arthur Branson, who is dying of AIDS, was also formerly a student of Middle Forge, and at the time, had been one of Louis' favored students. Later it is revealed that Arthur was in an illicit relationship of his own with the school's previous headmaster, Jack Emmerich. Noah is a troubled student who was sent to Middle Forge after having developed a crush on a teacher in his previous school. His father, Noah Lathrop II, is an overbearing alpha male running dubious business deals around the world. He's a coke fiend who has little time for his son, and is oblivious to what goes on his son's life. Noah III often sees the school counselor, wets the bed, and is on Ritalin. During a trip home to New York, he runs into Christian Tyler, a boy maliciously teased by the other boys in their dorm. Christian is gay, HIV-positive, and in a relationship with a 40-year-old doctor. Noah has his first gay experience with Chris, and eventually the boys become close friends. Early on, Louis suspects the relationship between Tracy and Noah has grown too close – only it's not until a few months later, after many overtures by Noah, that Tracy finally gives in to his desires. They see each other clandestinely for a couple of months, until the headmaster finds out, and everything begins to unravel, including the history of what happened with Arthur Branson and Jack Emmerich and how it ruined their lives as well as Louis' life. Louis stepped in to stop the relationship, but then turned his back on Arthur when Arthur declared his homosexuality. When Tracy invited him back to the school to have dinner with the Trempers, Louis now realizes that Tracy is gay and turns his back on Tracy for the same reason. Claire eventually re-ignites her own friendship with Tracy, during which he confides in her about his forbidden relationship with Noah. History repeats itself when Tracy panics and finally breaks off the relationship (with Noah) he knows he never should have started. Noah, feeling hurt and rejected runs away with Betsy to New York. While wandering the city at night, he loses Betsy in Central Park. Tracy finally comes clean to Louis, about the teacher-student relationship with Noah, and offers his resignation, which Louis accepts. Louis prepares to, once again, clean up the mess caused by a forbidden relationship between teacher and student. Eventually, Noah is brought back to school by his father, who is unaware that any drama other than a lost dog has occurred. Tracy's actions are kept secret, though he still resigns his teaching position. The novel ends with Louis, the headmaster, feeling that once again he has failed the person in the situation who needed protecting most, Noah. Claire urges him to look out for the boy, since no one else will. Tracy has left the school and gone back to New York, having completely cut off any contact with the Trempers, the school, and Noah. Though Noah never says anything to his father or anyone else who might do something, Tracy nonetheless now realizes that he will spend the rest of his life feeling guilty, not for loving the boy, but for acting on it when he knew better; and not knowing if has irrevocably damaged Noah in the same way that Jack Emmerich (and inadvertently Louis) had damaged Arthur. Unlike the three adults – Louis, Claire, and Tracy – who are left pondering their regrets and mistakes, it is Noah who gets the happy ending. Finally coming to terms with who he is, he tests negative for HIV, is no longer angry at Tracy for ending their relationship, and has finally accepted himself for who he is. He and fellow student Chris Tyler start a club for gays on campus, which allows Noah the chance to finally admit his homosexuality openly for the first time. The club is run with Louis' blessing, and the novel ends with Noah realizing that unlike Arthur, his own experiences have helped him find himself and that there is hope that his own future will be brighter and happier than Tracy and Arthur, or Louis and Claire.
5062035	/m/0d0zwz	A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian	Marina Lewycka	2005-03-31	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The novel details in comic form the varied reactions by two daughters when their widowed father marries a much younger Ukrainian immigrant. The father, a former engineer, is writing a history of tractors in Ukrainian, extracts from which are interleaved throughout the text. It is told in the first person from the perspective of one of the daughters, Nadezhda. After their father decides he is going to remarry after his wife's death, Nadezhda is outraged and worried, especially when she meets the wife-to-be: voluptuous gold digger Valentina. The hurricane on their lives that is Valentina serves to bring together the two daughters against a common enemy, as it becomes increasingly clear of the middle-aged divorcee's intents. The family's secret history is overturned as the troubles continue, and their father is gradually weakened by his fiancée until the hold is finally broken.
5062852	/m/0d1031	Ragazzi di vita	Pier Paolo Pasolini			 The novel tells the story of Riccetto, a street urchin who the audience is first introduced to during his Confirmation and First Communion. Not too long afterwards, Riccetto is stealing from a blind beggar and a convent. Over the next few years, the reader follows along with Riccetto as he goes from robbery to scam to prostituting himself and back again while drifting around. During this time, many of his companions are killed or die off and there is constant immorality at hand. He is finally arrested and put in jail after trying to steal some iron in order to buy his fiancée an engagement ring. He is released afterwards and goes back to his same street life. Pasolini makes it clear to the reader that Riccetto and his peers are wanderers by nature, they have no life plans or goals and don’t care to; Riccetto is a more deviant Dean Moriarty of sorts. This is the way in which Pasolini finds this subclass of people to be free from modernity and rooted in a way of life that has since been lost. He also admired “what he considered their pre-political rebelliousness”; they were separated from the partisan politics that plagued post-war modern Italy. Pasolini wished to bring to the attention of the public the existence of this underground class they thought extinct. As he saw it, “They were thought of as a closed book. Yet, poor devils they really did exist”. He wrote the book in lowbrow language and derogatory slang that the real life “lumpen proletariat” would use that made the book not easily accessible for mainstream Italy, the Italy that Pasolini was against. He would later write in Heretical Empiricism that literature should be “written in a language substantially different from that of the writer, not leaving out of consideration a certain naturalism”. Another alienating characteristic of the book is the fact that the narrator does not provide any background information to a society who know nothing of what he is writing. His narration puts himself on the same level as the people he is writing of; he does not narrate from above. He saw the underground class as the only ones who survived the corruption brought about of industrialization and modernity; a sort of human time capsule. He saw them as the only ones who are truly free. He respects them for this, and sees them as being the true underclass; that even the Communist Party sees themselves as being above. <!--SEE MAIN ARTICLE ABOUT PASOLINI PLEASE
5062888	/m/0d1055	The Manchurian Candidate	Richard Condon	1959	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Major Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and the rest of their infantry platoon are kidnapped during the Korean War in 1952. They are taken to Manchuria, and are brainwashed to believe that Shaw saved their lives in combat — for which Congress awards him the Medal of Honor. Years after the war, Marco, now back in the United States working as an intelligence officer, begins suffering the recurring nightmare of Shaw murdering two of his comrades, all while clinically observed by Chinese and Soviet intelligence officials. When Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon also has been suffering the same nightmare, he sets to uncovering the mystery and its meaning. It is revealed that the Communists have been using Shaw as a sleeper agent, a guiltless assassin subconsciously activated by seeing the “Queen of Diamonds” playing card while playing solitaire. Provoked by the appearance of the card, he obeys orders which he then forgets. Shaw’s KGB handler is his domineering mother Eleanor, a ruthless power broker working with the Communists to execute a "palace coup d’état" to quietly overthrow the U.S. government, with her husband, McCarthy-esque Senator Johnny Iselin, as a puppet dictator.
5063891	/m/0d124_	Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself	Judy Blume	1977	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sally J. Freedman is moving from New Jersey to Miami, Florida with her brother and their mother and grandmother at the end of World War II. This is because of her brother Douglas's health, for he caught nephritis from staying in wet clothes in the cold. The novel first touches on racism when, on the train to Florida, Sally meets a black woman traveling with her young son about Sally's age and her infant daughter whom Sally gets to hold. The next day, Sally goes back to visit the black family and discovers that laws requiring racial segregation in the 1940s in the Southern United States force the family to move to another car on the train. Sally is infuriated and does not understand why her mother is not upset as well. Before Sally can be admitted to her new school, she must undergo a physical examination in which the school nurse discovers nits (head louse eggs) in Sally's hair. The school nurse tries to calm Sally's mother, who is insulted and taking the news personally, by saying, "Look Mrs. Freedman, don't take this personally. You've been traveling, she could have picked them up anywhere." In her new school, she meets new friends, the first being Barbara, who teaches Sally all about the new school. Later, she meets Andrea, a sixth grader, and Shelby, a girl in a different class than Sally. She has a difficult first day at school, but after a while, she begins to make more friends. There, she meets Peter Hornstein, a so called 'Latin Lover', who seem to like Sally, but Peter ignores Sally when Jackie, a new girl, arrives at the school. It troubles Sally that Peter is going after a different girl, and she begins to like Peter back. A central part in the story is when Sally meets a man named Mr. Zavodsky, who lives in her building in Miami. He offers Andrea and her candy. Sally refuses the candy even though Andrea accepts it, which makes Sally upset. Sally, who is Jewish, notices that Mr. Zavodsky looks similar to Adolf Hitler and comes to believe (because of her active imagination) that he is actually Hitler, in disguise and retiring in Miami. Another important plotline is when Sally finds out that her father, who had just turned 42, was exactly the same age as his two brothers had been when they died. Sally, who is superstitious, is worried that her father may die in his 42nd year, because of the well-known superstition 'all bad things happen in threes'. Sally writes (but never mails) a lot of letters to Mr. Zavodsky, always saying she will get him someday. She spies on him, secretly listens to their phone conversations on a party line. She worries at one point Mr. Zavodsky killed her friend Shelby, and she believes the rock candy he offers is actually poison. In the end, Mr. Zavodsky dies of a heart attack. In the one year Sally spends at Miami, she learns how babies are made, attends but loses a contest, drinks whisky, kisses Peter at their teacher's wedding, and in the end, strengthens her relationship with her family members. At the very end, Sally and her family return to New Jersey.
5064007	/m/0d12d8	Wifey	Judy Blume	1978	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story follows the life of bored 1970s New Jersey housewife, Sandy Pressman, who decides to reinvigorate her life by having an extramarital affair with an old high school boyfriend. This decision is complicated when she accidentally discovers evidence her husband might be having a long-term affair. Somewhat emblematic of the time period of open marriages and different mores, this was the first novel by Blume to directly address adult lives and sexuality.
5064200	/m/0d12v6	Smart Women	Judy Blume	1983	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story follows Margo and B.B., two divorcees who are trying to restart their lives in Colorado, to the annoyance and amusement of their teenage daughters. Matters get much more complex and relationships strained when B.B.'s ex-husband moves next door to Margo and starts a relationship with her.
5064508	/m/0d13cz	Fudge-a-Mania	Judy Blume	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Hatcher and Tubman families decide to spend their summer vacation together in Maine, not next door to each other, but in the same house, much to the disgust of Peter Hatcher and his arch-rival Sheila Tubman. Fudge plans to marry Sheila Tubman and Peter is disgusted. It took ten hours for the Hatcher family to drive to Maine. Jimmy Fargo (Peter's friend) is able to come for a week, with his father, Frank Fargo. Sheila also plans to have a friend come named Mouse Ellis who is weird, but she catches Chickenpox and is unable to do so. Fudge meets a girl named Mitzi, who has a baseball glove she calls her "mitzi" and she also has a book about her called "Tell me a Mitzi." Fudge gets his own "mitzi" and Peter goes with him to the library that day. Fudge could not find the book he wanted, so they ask a librarian named Isobel. Peter falls in love with her and cannot stop thinking about her. Peter asks Fudge why he wants to marry Sheila in the first place, which was because he wanted her to protect him from " scary creepy monsters." Fudge quickly postpones the wedding because he has his own can of " Mitzi's monster spray" and it is solved. The Hatchers and Tubmans are related at the end of the story because their grandparents, Muriel and Buzzy, got married. Peter's brother, Fudge, no longer plans to be a bird when he grows up, but instead a bird breeder, or as he mispronounces it, "bird breather", to which Sheila immediately corrects him by saying he cannot breathe for birds. Other subplots include Tootsie accidentally helping Mr. Fargo's art business when she toddles across his work and Fudge being chosen as a team captain in a baseball game sponsored by a retired player of the Boston Red Sox, Big Apfel, much to Peter's dismay. One last one is how Fudge meets Mitzi. Uncle Feather, Fudge's myna bird, went missing and Peter and Fudge went looking for him. They rang the doorbells to different houses and eventually met up with Mitzi's Grandma. The next day they met Mitzi. Towards the end of the book a little romance is spread between Peter and Sheila, though they agree that they will always hate each other.
5064574	/m/0d13hf	Trace	Patricia Cornwell	2004-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Dr. Kay Scarpetta, having left Richmond, Virginia five years ago to become a freelancer, is asked to return at the request of her replacement, Chief Medical Examiner Joel Marcus. A young girl has been murdered, but very few clues are available. In parallel her niece Lucy is investigating an attack on her companion Henri. Henri has been sent for analysis and safe keeping to stay with Benton Wesley, Scarpetta's partner. Scarpetta's investigations are hampered by Marcus's ineptness and the disarray of her former lab.
5064635	/m/0d13n7	Here's to You, Rachel Robinson	Judy Blume	1993	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This book is written in the perspective of Rachel Robinson, who is an overachiever and a perfectionist. She tries to help her older sister, Jessica, with her acne problem. She resents her older brother, Charles, who has been expelled from boarding school. Rachel feels Charles gets all the attention in her family, even if it is negative, and that he is driving their parents to the break of despair,(and is gorgeous in the sight of girls). In the book, Rachel has to deal with her crush on Charles's tutor, Paul Mediros,(who in the end dates their cousin Tarren) and the fact that the best looking boy in ninth grade, Jeremy "Dragon" Kravitz (at least, to Stephanie, Allison and Rachel) is interested in her, (who in the end kisses her). Through family counseling and a trip to Ellis Island, the Robinson family learn how to put aside their differences and get along better.
5064773	/m/0d13_8	Star King	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Gersen is taking a short holiday at Smade’s Tavern, the only settlement on Smade’s Planet, which is a “neutral ground” hostelry for crook and honest man alike in the Beyond. Here he meets an explorer with a problem: Lugo Teehalt has discovered a beautiful and unspoiled world – but he has learned that his employer is the notorious criminal Attel Malagate, “Malagate the Woe”, and Teehalt cannot bear to see his planet despoiled by him. However, some of Malagate's minions murder him and steal the spaceship parked nearby. By chance, Gersen's spaceship is the same common model as Teehalt's; the thieves have taken the wrong ship. Gersen departs in the deceased man's ship and thus comes into possession of the navigational device that contains the planet’s coordinates. Gersen goes in search of the identity of Teehalt’s employer. He quickly establishes that his mission was sponsored by someone at Sea Province University, an important institution on the planet Alphanor in the Rigel Concourse, and narrows Malagate's alter ego to one of three men, all senior officials at the university. All deny specific knowledge of Lugo Teehalt. By now, Gersen has encountered two of Malagate’s chief henchmen, whom he saw earlier at Smade’s Tavern: Tristano the Earthman, and Sivij Suthiro the Sarkoy. He knows that Malagate is aware of what he carries, though not his motivation. He has also deduced that Malagate is not, as widely assumed, human, but rather a "Star King", a member of a species that can rapidly evolve in a few generations to resemble its most successful rival. After contacting humans, the Star Kings began changing their appearance to look more and more like Man. The most successful can readily pass for human. During his visit to the University, Gersen makes the acquaintance of Pallis Atwrode, a clerical assistant. While the two are enjoying an evening out, they are attacked by another of Malagate’s lieutenants, the hideous Hildemar Dasce. Gersen is left unconscious and Pallis abducted. Through a combination of detective work and good luck, he traces her whereabouts to a secret base belonging to Dasce. He takes the three officials to see Teehalt’s world, which they are interested in purchasing, and along the way, Gersen opportunely stops to rescue Pallis and capture Dasce, along with a prisoner he has tortured for years, Robin Rampold. Gersen convinces Dasce that Malagate betrayed him and then allows Dasce to overpower him. Dasce's attempt to avenge himself on Malagate reveals the Star King's identity. In combination with strong circumstantial evidence, this convinces the other two men to accept Gersen's accusations. After Dasce’s unsuccessful attack and flight, Gersen tells Malagate that he is to be summarily executed. Malagate however succeeds in escaping himself, only to be horribly killed a few minutes later by one of the native lifeforms on Teehalt’s world. At his own request, Rampold is left behind. He subsequently turns the tables on his former torturer and begins a long-term program of revenge.
5065619	/m/0d155t	Burnt Offerings	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 As in the previous novels, Burnt Offerings requires Anita to balance her romantic life with her roles as supernatural police consultant, vampire executioner, zombie animator, human servant and lover to the vampire Master of the City and lupa to the local werewolf pack. In this case, Anita is quickly confronted with several problems that ultimately prove to be interrelated: * Fire Captain Pete McKinnon wants Anita's help with a series of arson incidents that he believes to be the work of a pyrokinetic. * The local wereleopard pard needs leadership and protection after Anita killed its "alpha," Gabriel in the previous novel, The Killing Dance. * The Thronos Rokke pack of werewolves needs clear succession and protection, particularly while Richard is out of town studying for his master's degree. * A vampire has been set on fire at the vampire owned and themed restaurant, "Burnt Offerings." The woman who did so claims that the vampire tried to bite her against her will, and alleges self defense. This attack later proves to be the first in a series of attacks on vampires and vampire businesses. * Most threatening, the Vampire Council has sent representatives to Jean-Claude's territory in an attempt to investigate and possibly destroy Jean-Claude. The Council is threatened by Jean-Claude's ability to destroy one of its most powerful members, The Earthmover, and by Jean-Claude's refusal to take The Earthmover's place on the Council himself. (Jean-Claude will not do so because he is not strong enough to hold the position against challengers; but the Council, based in Europe, fears that Jean-Claude is setting up a rival council in the United States). The Council has sent representatives of four of its six remaining members, as follows: ** Council member The Traveler has arrived personally, or at least in spirit (one of his powers is the ability to possess other vampires, and the location of his actual body is never revealed). The Traveler is accompanied by Balthasar, his human servant, and has also recruited one of Jean-Claude's vampires, Liv, to leave Jean-Claude's service and swear fealty to the Traveler. ** Council member the Master of Beasts has arrived personally, accompanied by his son, Fernando and the other members of his triumvirate, Gideon and Captain Thomas Carswell. ** Belle Morte does not come personally, but is represented by Asher, Jean-Claude's former lover and current mortal enemy. ** Morte d'Amour is represented by the vampires Yvette and Warrick. Anita is forced to put the mysteries aside as she participates in a series of confrontations between Jean-Claude's followers and the council. Ultimately, Anita's combination of loyalty, ruthlessness, and naiveté allows her to triumph over each of the delegations of vampires. * The Master of Beasts and Fernando attempt to seize control of as many of the city's lycanthropes as possible, but are ultimately stopped by Anita, Richard and Rafael. Anita assumes control of the leopard pard and fully assumes her role as lupa, rescuing all of the local shapeshifters with Richard and Jean-Claude's help, but not before the Master of Beasts, Fernando, and Liv torture Rafael and Fernando and Liv torture and rape Sylvie and Vivian. * Anita shares Jean-Claude's love for Asher, notwithstanding Asher's scars and his hatred of them both. Ultimately, their love wins Asher over, and he decides to leave Belle Morte's service and remain in St. Louis with Anita and Jean-Claude. * Anita offers friendship to the Traveler, and challenges him to be a worthy ruler when she discovers that his power is causing local vampires to become feral. Intrigued, he accepts. * As she and Richard confront the Master of Beasts a second time, the Master lets Anita get too close. Anita draws on the power of Raina's munin, using Raina's powers to threaten harm rather than healing. With the Master's heart in her metaphysical grip, Anita threatens to kill him unless the Master leaves St. Louis and turns over Liv and Fernando to suffer the punishment for raping a member of Anita's werewolf pack. The Master is loath to give up his son, but ultimately agrees, and Anita turns Liv and Fernando over to Sylvie and the pack, winning their loyalty as their lupa. * Yvette then reveals her plan, solving the remaining mysteries. Like Mister Oliver before him, Yvette's master, Morte d'Amour, fears the US experiment with vampire legalization and wishes to sabotage it. Yvette, together with Harry, the owner of Burnt Offerings, has been provoking Humans First to attack vampires and vampire businesses, and plans for Asher to kill Jean-Claude, seize control of the city's vampires, and provoke them into a murderous rampage. Asher, won over by Jean-Claude and Anita, refuses. Yvette then reveals her back-up plan—at her instructions, Warrick, a pyrokinetic, has been setting the arson fires, and will burn down a stadium full of people. Warrick, a former crusader, announces that he has rediscovered his faith in God and refuses to assist Yvette. Yvette then announces that she personally will go on a rampage, but is stopped by Warrick, who uses his powers to burn both Yvette and himself to ash.
5069054	/m/0d19b6	Islands in the Stream	Ernest Hemingway	1970	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first act, "Bimini", begins with an introduction to the character of Thomas Hudson, a classic Hemingway stoic male figure. Hudson is a renowned American painter who finds tranquility on the island of Bimini, in the Bahamas, a far cry from his usual adventurous lifestyle. Hudson’s strict routine of work is interrupted when his three sons arrive for the summer and is the setting for most of the act. Also introduced in this act is the character of Roger Davis, a writer, one of Hudson’s oldest friends. Though similar to Hudson, by struggling with an unmentioned internal conflict, Davis seems to act as a more dynamic and outgoing image of Hudson’s character. The act ends with Hudson receiving news of the death of his two youngest children soon after they leave the island. "Cuba" takes place soon thereafter during the Second World War in Havana, Cuba where we are introduced to an older and more distant Hudson who has just received news of his oldest (and last) son’s death in the war. This second act introduces us to a more cynical and introverted Hudson who spends his days on the island drinking heavily and doing naval reconnaissance for the US military aboard Hudson's yacht, converted to an auxiliary patrol boat. "At Sea", the final act, follows Hudson and a team of irregulars aboard their boat as they track and pursue survivors of a sunken German U-boat along the Jardines del Rey archipelago on the northern coast of Cuba. Hudson becomes intent on finding the fleeing Germans after he finds they massacred an entire village to cover their escape. The novel ends with a shoot-out and the destruction of the Germans in one of the tidal channels surrounding Cayo Guillermo. Hudson is presumably mortally wounded in the gun battle, although the ending is slightly ambiguous. During the chase, Hudson stops questioning the death of his children. This chapter rings heavily with influences of Hemingway’s earlier work For Whom the Bell Tolls.
5071062	/m/0d1ct4	Shuttle Down	G. Harry Stine	1981	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 In the book, the Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on a polar orbit launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. During the launch, the main engines cut off prematurely and the shuttle is forced to make an emergency landing on Rapa Nui, better known to most of the world as Easter Island. Landing is just the start of the problems for NASA, who now have to deal with the immense technological challenge of getting the shuttle back home. Problems include lack of documents for the astronauts and shuttle, bringing in the crane that's used to lift the shuttle onto the specially modified 747 that carries it, widening the runway to accommodate the 747, building turn-arounds on the runway so that it can turn and take off again, bringing in fuel for the plane and many, many other problems. A subplot involves efforts by the Soviet Union to take the shuttle for themselves. In real life, and shortly after publication of this book, the United States paid the Chilean Government to improve the facilities at Mataveri International Airport on Rapa Nui in case of just such an emergency, and the airport now has a relatively long runway. In addition, astronauts now carry passports and other documents, including traveller's cheques, in case of emergency landings.
5073808	/m/0d1jhn	The Face	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Kirth Gersen tracks Lens Larque across several worlds, most notably Aloysius, the desert world Dar Sai and the more temperate Methel. He eventually learns that Larque is a Darsh, born Husse Bugold. He had been deprived of an earlobe and made a rachepol or outcast from his clan for a crime considered "repulsive but not superlatively heinous." He took the name Lens Larque, after the lanslarke, an indigenous creature and the fetish of the Bugold clan. (It was this slim clue that enabled Gersen to track him down.) He then became a notorious criminal renowned for his magnificent, if often grotesque and horrifying, jests. Gersen encounters Larque at a Darsh restaurant on Aloysius, but only manages to cut off his remaining earlobe. Gersen had arranged to impound one of Larque's spaceships, in order to lure him in from the lawless Beyond. In an ironic twist, Larque escapes Gersen's courtroom ambush, blows up the ship, and collects insurance money - from a company owned by Gersen. Gersen then proceeds to Dar Sai. The harsh planet is home to the "fierce and perverse" Darsh, who mine black sand, stable transuranic elements of atomic number 120 or greater. The inhabitants have odd mating customs; when the moon is full, men and women chase each other on the desert. Young women are used as bait to lure men into the clutches of ugly, older women. Gersen determines that Larque is connected somehow with a seemingly worthless Dar Sai company called Kotzash Mutual. He begins buying up its shares in an attempt to gain control, but falls short of what he needs, until shares are put up as a prize for a hadaul match. Hadaul is essentially a free-for-all brawl within a series of concentric rings. Gersen, by dint of skill and cleverness, wins the match and gains control of the company. He also rescues Jerdian Chanseth, a young aristocratic Methlen woman, when her sightseeing party is waylaid by Darsh during their mating activities. A brief romance blossoms between them. Gersen then follows Larque to Methlen. The wealthier Methlens reside in large manors with which they closely identify. Gersen attempts to renew his relationship with Jerdian, going so far as to buy the mansion next to her family's. But being a disreputable (if extremely rich) space vagabond and decidedly not Methlen, he is rejected as a suitor by her father, bank owner Adario Chanseth, who uses the law to nullify the sale of the house. It turns out that Larque himself had tried to buy the same estate, but had also been thwarted by the same Methlen law, because Chanseth didn't want to see his "great Darsh face hanging over my garden wall." Eventually, Gersen learns that Lens Larque and Kotzash Mutual have been mining Shanitra, the small moon of Methlen, for some mysterious reason. It was well known that Shanitra bore no useful deposits of ore and was practically worthless. Nonetheless, Kotzash had gone to great pains to place extensive explosive charges all across its surface. Gersen finally tracks Larque down and kills him with cluthe, a paralyzing poison. In his final moments of life, the Darsh begs Gersen to press a button, but Gersen denies him his last request. However, Gersen has divined Larque's last and most grandiose jest, and having exactly the same motivation, he presses the button after the Demon Prince has died. Shanitra is racked by explosions and takes on a new shape, the face of Lens Larque, expression frozen in a leering grin. Gersen then calls Adario Chanseth and dryly informs him there is a "great Darsh face hanging over your garden wall."
5073937	/m/0d1jp7	The Killing Machine	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 To hone his skills, Gersen spends time as a "weasel", a police spy in the lawless Beyond; in this role he is sent on a sensitive mission in which Kokor Hekkus is reputedly involved. He is to intercept a “Mr Hoskins,” with license to kill him if necessary. Mr Hoskins is killed, though not by Gersen, who however recovers two pieces of paper that were being exchanged. The one from Hoskins’s contact, Billy Windle, provides information on how to become a “hormagaunt,” a legendary undying monster that steals children and lives on the supposedly mythical planet Thamber; the other contains technical specifications that Gersen doesn't understand. During debriefing, Gersen is made aware that Billy Windle was Kokor Hekkus himself. He laments his lost chance, but shortly afterward he learns that Hekkus is masterminding a series of kidnappings, not his normal modus operandi. The victims are taken to Interchange, on a planet in the Beyond where exchanges between kidnappers and ransomers are facilitated. Gersen learns that the latest victims are the children of a local high-ranking Fellow of the powerful Institute, Duschane Audmar, who as a matter of Institute policy must remain aloof under all circumstances. Gersen convinces him to underwrite a fact-finding mission to Interchange to learn more of Hekkus’s activities and to ransom the children. While there, Gersen learns that Hekkus accumulates funds to ransom a lovely young woman named Alusz Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay who claims to be from Thamber; she fled her homeworld when Hekkus became interested in her and settled on Interchange as her only possible refuge, since not even he would dare to interfere with that organization. As her own "kidnapper," she had set her ransom at a staggering, seemingly unattainable ten billion SVU, but Hekkus was undaunted, and set out to raise the immense sum by kidnapping the loved ones of the Oikumene’s hundred wealthiest citizens, ransoming them for a hundred million apiece. Gersen also meets Myron Patch, an engineer from Krokinole. Patch had built Hekkus a unique many-legged walking “fort” made to look like a giant centipede, but when Hekkus was dissatisfied with the result, Patch refused to refund the money already paid, and was accordingly kidnapped and shipped to Interchange to recover the sum. Having enough money on hand, Gersen ransoms him as well as the Audmar children, and temporarily takes a controlling interest in his engineering company. He determines to improve the fort to lure Hekkus within his reach, and has some ideas as to how to correct the faults in its walking mechanism that Hekkus had identified. Gersen demands and is paid more money by Hekkus’s agent Seuman Otwal for the alterations, but when it is time to deliver the completed fort, Gersen is taken captive and ordered to repay the money; when he cannot, he is dispatched to Interchange. While there, Gersen sees an old newspaper article that identifies “Mr Hoskins” as a senior bank official. He recalls the cryptic fragment of paper he recovered earlier and surmises that it describes marks used to authenticate banknotes. He forges enough money to free himself, and soon afterward returns to ransom Alusz Iphigenia. As she had in effect kidnapped herself, the money goes to her (minus Interchange's fee) – and since she is uninterested, Gersen becomes fabulously wealthy. (Usefully, it is laundered money; Interchange and Hekkus are left with nothing, as Gersen's forgeries had been printed with disappearing ink.) Gersen hopes that Alusz Iphigenia will be able to guide him to Thamber. She has no knowledge of astrogation but is able to complete a nursery rhyme that allows Gersen to deduce the planet's location. Thamber is home to a quasi-medieval culture, complete with barbarian tribes into whose hands Gersen and Alusz Iphigenia quickly fall. He has to fight the formidable leader of a war-band in order to save her from sexual slavery, and they accompany the warriors to Kokor Hekkus’s castle. There the barbarians easily defeat Hekkus’s foot soldiers, but then Patch's mechanical fort appears. It mimics one of Thamber's greatest terrors, an animal called the dnazd, and the barbarians flee in panic before it. Gersen, however, had foreseen the possibility of facing Patch's creation and had installed an Achilles heel. He disables the war machine and takes its crew prisoner, in the process noting that one of the men aboard, Franz Paderbush, resembles Seuman Otwal and also Billy Windle, in height and build. He takes the fort to the castle of Sion Trumble, at one time Alusz Iphigenia’s fiancé. Trumble offers the services of a friend who knows Kokor Hekkus, but the man denies that Paderbush is him. Gersen has his own suspicions. He allows his prisoner to escape, but then quickly forces his way into Trumble’s private quarters. There he finds Paderbush in the process of transforming himself into Trumble, for they are one and the same, and both are alter-egos of Kokor Hekkus. Hekkus himself has no face, having concealed his hideous un-face beneath a series of cunningly made masks, and he had for uncounted years played numerous roles on Thamber in order to enact wars, conquests and atrocities for his own amusement. Gersen identifies himself, reminding Hekkus of the Mount Pleasant raid in which his home was destroyed and nearly all of his family killed, and after giving him a few seconds for the news to sink in, summarily executes him. He then returns to the Oikumene accompanied by Alusz Iphigenia, promising to send ships to bring Thamber back into contact with the rest of humanity.
5074911	/m/0d1ktl	Room at the Top	John Braine	1957	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Joe Lampton, recently demobilised from the armed forces of late 1940s Britain, is starting in a new job with the Municipal Treasury in the town of Warley. He was a POW who spent his captivity studying to pass his accountancy examinations. He is an orphan whose parents were killed in an air raid against his home town. He is determined to make something of himself, targeting a high-paid job with a thousand a year salary. He notices, shortly after arriving, a young man with an expensive car and a pretty girl friend and he realises that this lifestyle and appearance is what he aspires to. The book centres on Joe's efforts to secure a future he can take pride in. In Warley, he takes lodgings with the Thompsons, a middle-class couple living in the better part of town, known locally as "T'top". Lampton is delighted to find himself already socially advantaged by taking, quite literally, a "Room at the top", and this serves as a metaphor for his ambition to better himself and to leave behind any vestige of his former life and acquaintances, many of whom he characterises as "zombies", lacking any trace of genuine life and character. Everything about Warley is an improvement on his former life in Dufton. The Thompsons introduce him to the local amateur dramatic society, which is in need of new faces, and there he meets Susan Brown, the only daughter of a very successful local businessman. He also meets the apparently cold and standoffish Alice Aisgill, who plays many of the leading lady parts. Alice and Joe are drawn together through intelligent conversation, and their relationship soon becomes a highly rewarding sexual one, in spite of what Alice perceives to be a significant age difference. Although supposedly betrothed to Jack Wales, the dashing scion of a wealthy local family, the naive and childish Susan allows Joe to woo her; meanwhile, Joe and Alice develop their relationship through clandestine sex in a borrowed apartment. Joe has a way with words, and convinces Alice of his affections for her - consolidating this during a stolen few days away in a country cottage, during which Alice declares her undying commitment to Lampton; in the meantime, Joe's silver tongue and persistence also enable him to seduce Susan, who becomes pregnant. This is part of Joe's plan; Joe loves Alice, but wants to marry Susan so as to achieve his social ambitions, and to demonstrate that he can outdo Wales in his battle for the girl's affections; people are becoming aware of the relationship with Alice, and exposure threatens his future (it would force him to leave town), so Joe is not averse when Susan's father insists on their immediate marriage, sweetening the offer with a "thousand a year " job, on condition that he drop Alice for good. Alice, distraught at the break-up, is found severely injured after a drunken car crash near where she and Joe first consummated their love, and dies shortly afterwards. Room at the Top concludes with Joe drunkenly attempting to cope with remorse over Alice’s death and his successful scheme to marry upwards. He is reassured that nobody blames him for Alice's death - but he knows this is wrong, and the book closes with him aware of his conscience, forced to live with his guilt and his responsibility for what has happened.
5075303	/m/0d1lfg	Kill the Indian, Save the Man				 The book is primarily an extended essay, entitled "Genocide by Any Other Name," tracing the history of the mandatory attendance of Native American children at residential schools, which generally meant they left their families to receive education in distant places, where they studied with children from other tribes. Churchill analyzes this as a process of genocide (forced assimilationist policies, as school policies often prohibited the use of the students' own languages and their exercise of their own religions or cultural practices, such as style of hair and clothes. Particularly in the early years, the schools were generally run by religious organizations, many of which had already established missions among the Native Americans. During the nearly 100-year history of the schools, conditions varied from place to place. Former students have also reported positive experiences. Families often hid their children, or their cultural identities, in an attempt to keep their children from being kidnapped. Trickery and outright paternalistic force were used to remove young children from their homes. Families were devastated, and once enrolled at school, the children were not allowed to associate with siblings or loved ones. Stress and trauma for both native communities and individual children still haunt the people today. Children were forced to develop an identity which did not prepare them for life back home in the native communities from which they came, or in the society at large which did not accept native people as equals. These people did not belong anywhere. He describes the sometimes terrible conditions in the schools, with poor nutrition, a high rate of tuberculosis (untreatable until the use of antibiotics was developed) and other infectious diseases (which were common in the times); forced labor, and incidents of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. He says the students suffered a higher rate of mortality than children of their age in the general population. He notes that many graduates have reported being damaged by their experiences and have suffered high rates of alcoholism (note: this has been a problem for Native Americans outside of the school experience) and suicide. Churchill says the former students have transmitted the "trauma to successive generations," contributing to social disintegration among Native American communities. The author intended the book to compensate for his not having covered the boarding schools and their issues in his 1979 book A Little Matter of Genocide. It includes numerous photos and lists of such historic schools in the US and Canada.
5078068	/m/0d1q2p	For the Term of his Natural Life	Marcus Clarke			 The story starts with a prologue, telling the tale of young British aristocrat, Richard Devine, who is the son of a shipbuilding magnate, Sir Richard Devine. In an incidence of domestic violence, Richard's mother reveals to Sir Richard that his son was fathered by another man, Lord Bellasis. Sir Richard proceeds to threaten the mother's reputation if Richard does not leave and never come back. He leaves him to pack for a while, claiming that he will fetch his lawyer to alter his will so that Richard receives no inheritance. When Richard leaves, he comes across a murder scene: his biological father, Lord Bellasis has been murdered, and Richard witnesses Sir Richard walking away from the scene of the crime. The police come and lock up Richard, who now gives his name as Rufus Dawes (which is used for the remainder of the book), for the murder of Lord Bellasis. Additionally, Sir Richard returns home and dies straight away, possibly of a heart-attack, without altering his will. Rufus Dawes/Richard Devine never finds this out. Rufus is found not guilty of the murder but guilty of the robbery of the corpse and sentenced to transportation to the penal colony of Australia. In 1827, Dawes is shipped to Van Diemen's Land on the "Malabar", which also carries Captain Vickers, who is to become the new commander of the penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour, his wife Julia and child Sylvia, Julia's maid, one Sarah Purfoy and Lieutenant Maurice Frere, Richard Devine's cousin, son of Sir Richard's sister, who would have inherited the fortune in Richard's place. It turns out that Sarah is on the vessel only to free her lover, John Rex. She organises a mutiny with the help of three other men: Gabbett, James "Jemmy" Vetch or "the Crow" and a man nicknamed "the moocher", while John Rex is in hospital with the fever. One night, a burning vessel is sighted and found out to be the Hydaspes; the ship on which Richard Devine is supposed to have sailed. The crew cannot be found. The following day, Dawes overhears the plans of the mutineers, but is taken to the hospital sick with the fever shortly afterwards. He manages to warn Captain Vickers and Doctor Pine about the plans. Sarah gets the Captain drunk and Frere otherwise busy but does not know about Vickers clandestinely doubling the guard. The mutiny is, therefore, unsuccessful, but Jemmy Vetch, who has understood that only Dawes could have betrayed them, gets his revenge by claiming that Dawes was the ring leader of the mutiny. Dawes is found guilty and receives a second life sentence. In 1833, at Macquarie Harbour, Maurice Frere has come to deliver to Captain Vickers the news that the settlement at Macquarie Harbour is to be abandoned and the convicts to be moved to Port Arthur. He also attempts to befriend Sylvia, but the child resents him ever since witnessing his treatment of the convicts (especially that of Dawes, who went to the quarterdeck to return her ball). Rufus Dawes has been the victim of several assassination attempts at the convicts' hands, but has also attempted escape twice and has a long record of bad conduct and punishments. At the moment of Frere's arrival, he is in solitary confinement on Grummet rock, a small island before the coast. Dawes has managed to recognise Frere at the harbour and now, seeing the preparations for the abandonment of the settlement, mistakenly assumes that Frere has taken command. Rather than suffer Frere's treatment upon his return, he attempts to drown himself. Meanwhile, it has been decided that Vickers should sail with the convicts and Frere follow with the brig "Osprey" with Mrs. Vickers and Sylvia, the pilot, five soldiers and ten convicts. Among the convicts is John Rex, who has again plans for mutiny. The convicts succeed in taking the boat, killing two soldiers, wounding one, and marooning him with the Vickers, the pilot and Frere. The pilot and the wounded man die shortly afterwards. One night, a man reaches their makeshift camp. It is Rufus Dawes, who has managed to swim to the settlement only to find it deserted. Although initially weary of him, the little community soon accepts Dawes, especially since he knows all kinds of ways to make their life more agreeable. Sylvia takes to him and Dawes soon does everything to please her, despite Frere's jealous attempts to win Sylvia's affection. It is also Dawes, who, after Sylvia mentioned the coracles of the Ancient Britons, plans and succeeds in building a boat out of saplings and goat hide. Although Frere promises Dawes a pardon, he nevertheless does not stop treating him like an inferior, at one point upsetting Dawes so much that he considers leaving on his own. Only Sylvia's writing in the sand, "Good Mr. Dawes", stops him. Through a hazard, Frere tells Dawes of the fate of his cousin and how narrowly he missed inheriting the Devine fortune. Dawes had not known about Sir Richard's death. Finally, they set to sea with Mrs. Vickers gravely ill and Sylvia soon also sick. After some time they are found by an American vessel at which point Frere takes the rudder of the boat and Sylvia in his arms. By 1838, in Port Arthur, Mrs. Vickers has died. Sylvia has lost all her memories of the incident at Macquarie Harbour and knows only what she has been told about it. She is now a young woman of sixteen and engaged to Captain Maurice Frere, who has told the story of the mutiny in his own way: making himself the hero and claiming that Dawes attempted to murder all three of them. News arrives that the surviving mutineers of the Osprey have been captured and are to be tried at Port Arthur. Sarah Purfoy calls on Frere and begs him to speak in Rex's favour, saying that he left them food and tools. She threatens to expose Frere's previous affairs to Sylvia. Frere consents to her demands. Rufus Dawes is also brought down from Hobart to identify the captured men. At the trial, he sees Sylvia again and realises that she is alive: he had been informed of her death. He tries to speak his case but is not allowed to. The mutineers get away with life sentences. Dawes escapes to see Sylvia again and begs her to speak, but in her amnesia she is afraid of him and calls for help. Dawes, too thunderstruck to leave, is immediately recaptured and sent back to Hobart. There, he meets the Reverend James North, a drunkard, whose failure to get up in time after a drinking night results in the death of a convict at the triangle, whom North had sworn to protect. Dawes is ordered to carry out the flogging and upon eventually refusing is flogged himself. Despite Dawes' initial hate for the man he considers to be a hypocrite, he is moved by North's begging for forgiveness and calling him "brother". The next time he asks to see the chaplain he finds that North, an enemy to the bishop for his impious vices, has been replaced by Meekin, a dainty man, who lectures him on his sins rather than attempting to console him. John Rex seeks Dawes and tries to persuade him to join him in an escape, organised by Sarah Purfoy. Dawes refuses. Through luck, Rex starts talking about the Devines and about how he was once employed to find news of their son. Dawes, appalled, asks if he would still recognise the man and Rex understands all of Dawes' story. When shortly afterward a warder confuses them both, commenting on how much they look alike, Rex hatches another plan. A few days later, Rex and another group of eight, led by Gabbett and Vetch, escape. It soon becomes apparent that Rex used the other men only as decoys. They get hopelessly lost in the bush and start eating one another, leaving only Gabbett and Vetch to struggle for not being the first to fall asleep. Later, Gabbett is found on a beach by the crew of a whaling vessel, with the half-eaten arm of one of his comrades hanging out of his swag. This part is based on a true story, that of Alexander Pearce. Rex reaches Sydney and, soon becoming weary of Sarah, escaping her to go to London, where he presents himself as Richard Devine. Lady Ellinor accepts him as her son. In Norfolk Island, by 1846, Reverend James North has been appointed prison chaplain. Shortly afterward, Captain Frere becomes Commandant of the Island, resolved to enforce discipline there. North, appalled at the horrible punishments inflicted but not really daring to interfere, renews his friendship with Dawes and also takes to Sylvia. Her marriage is an unhappy one. Frere has grown weary of his wife over the years and Sylvia married him only because she believed that she owed love to the man who allegedly saved her life. Dawes has also been on the Island for five years and again becomes Frere's target. Frere is resolved to break his opponent's spirit and finally succeeds after inflicting punishment upon punishment on him for several weeks. One night, Dawes and his two cell mates draw lots. The longest straw and old hand Blind Mooney is killed at the hands of the second, Bland, with Dawes as the witness. According to their plan, Bland and Dawes get sentenced to death. North, in the meantime, has had to realise the true nature of his affection for Sylvia. At first, he attempts to keep away from her, but this unfriendliness is ill-received by Frere, who gets his revenge on the convicts open to North's words, especially on Dawes. One day, Sylvia has gone to see Dawes. She has not been able to stop thinking about him as she feels that there is more to the story than she knows. She finds Dawes on the "stretcher" and orders his release. Frere is furious when he learns about it and strikes Sylvia, despite North's presence. North has sent his resignation two months previously. Sylvia had already decided to go and see her father to escape the grievances of her life on the Island. The two admit their feelings for one another but decide to keep quiet until they can sail. North visits Dawes and learns the true story of the mutiny and rescue. He promises to tell Sylvia Dawes' story but does not. Meanwhile, Sarah has found John Rex in London. He has led a life of debauchery, much to the disapproval of Lady Ellinor. Sarah threatens to denounce John if he does not introduce her as his wife. Ever since Rex wanted to sell the family house, Lady Ellinor's suspicions have reached the point where she attempts to test her alleged son. When she forbids him to sell the house, Rex says that it only is his right to do so. Lady Ellinor tells him that he has no rights to anything since Richard Devine was a bastard, the son of Lord Bellasis. Rex suddenly understands their strange resemblance: he is also a son of Lord Bellasis; his mother was a servant in his house. Rex confesses to the murder of Lord Bellasis, who laughed at him when told this story. Lady Ellinor promises Sarah to allow them to leave the country in exchange for information about her son. Sarah manages to get them both aboard a vessel bound for Sydney, but Rex dies of a stroke during the voyage. Shortly before leaving, North visits Dawes to confess that he never talked to Sylvia because he is himself in love with her. Dawes tells the priest that he knows nothing about love and recounts his own story to illustrate his words. North confesses to having been the one who robbed the corpse of Lord Bellasis, as the Lord held proofs against North, who had been forging bank notes. Begging forgiveness again, North leaves in great confusion, forgetting his hat and cloak. Dawes manages to get out and on the boat in this disguise as the drunken warder has not closed his cell door. North observes him leaving and decides that it is for the best. The ship on which Dawes and Sylvia sail soon gets into a storm. Sylvia, seeking comfort from the reverend, finds Dawes in his place, and now remembers the past as the gale reaches its greatest force. The next morning finds their entangled corpses on a piece of planking from the sunken ship. * Macquarie Harbour Penal Station * Hell's Gates * Frenchmans Cap * Hobart * Port Arthur, Tasmania * Island of the Dead http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fa/IsleOfTheDead.jpg/180px-IsleOfTheDead.jpg * Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania * Norfolk Island
5078257	/m/0d1qb_	Life at the Top				 It is ten years further on from when last we learned of Joe's life in Room At The Top. He now has everything he thought he wanted - the upper-class wife, an executive job, two cars and two children for his new house. Yet, Joe is still a dissatisfied man - his job had not moved significantly forward in the last ten years. This dissatisfaction leads him back to his old philandering ways - spurred on by the knowledge of his wife's own infidelity. Joe and Susan separate temporarily but, towards the novel's close, Joe is drawn back to his life in Warley in response to trouble with his children and the self-knowledge of what his life needs.
5078339	/m/0d1qdq	Corduroy	Don Freeman	1968	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book tells the story of a teddy bear named Corduroy, displayed on a toy shelf in a department store. One day, a girl named Lisa arrives in the store with her mother and spots the bear. She is willing to buy him, however, her mother declines to spend more money and notes that a button is missing from his overalls. After they leave, Corduroy decides to find the missing button by himself and embarks on a trip around the department store after it closes in the evening. He goes upstairs and finds furniture he had never seen before, including beds and mattresses. Thinking that one of the mattress buttons is the one he is missing, he pulls it hard and eventually falls down from the bed, making noise. The store guard arrives, finds the bear and puts him back in place. The next day, Lisa comes back with the money she had found in her piggy bank and buys Corduroy. At home, she sews a button on his shoulder strap and the book ends with them saying that they had always wanted a friend and hugging each other.
5079765	/m/0d1sbq	Death in Holy Orders	P. D. James	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Dalgliesh visits Saint Anselm's in a semi-official capacity to follow up the death of a student some time previously - his father was not satisfied with the verdict. Whilst there, a visiting Archdeacon is murdered. Dalgliesh is assigned the investigation, summoning D I Miskin and D I Tarrant from London to assist, as well as local officers. Initial suspicion falls on one of the fathers who run and teach at the college, as the archdeacon was known to be recommending the closure of the college. Two more murders follow and after all present have been questioned, several skeletons are brought out the cupboard - including the fact that one of the students is unknowingly the son of one of the lay lecturers and that through his Mother, he will inherit the property, should it be closed and sold. Forensic evidence clinches the case against the lecturer and he confesses. The college is closed and the student inherits the proceeds. In this novel, Dalgliesh meets and begins a relationship with Dr Emma Lavenham, a visiting teacher from Cambridge.
5080040	/m/0d1sts	The Skull Beneath the Skin	P. D. James	1982	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cordelia Gray is engaged by Sir George Ralston, a baronet and World War II hero, to accompany his wife, the acclaimed actress Clarissa Lisle, for a weekend at Courcy Castle on the island of the same name on the Dorset coast. Clarissa has been receiving thinly veiled death threats in form of quotations from plays where she played the main role. Shortly before the performance of The Duchess of Malfi, Clarissa is brutally murdered, leaving Cordelia and the Dorset CID to deal with solving the crime.
5080326	/m/0d1tb2	Original Sin	P. D. James		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The murder of Peverell Press's managing director, ambitious Gerard Etienne, seems to be the horrible end of a series of malicious pranks in the company headquarters. When Adam Dalgliesh is called to the scene to solve the murder, he soon finds out that the killer does not intend to stop with Etienne.
5082407	/m/0d1x90	The Interruption of Everything	Terry McMillan	2005	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Marilyn Grimes, a 44-year-old mother of three has spent her time deferring her dreams to create the perfect suburban life for her family: her grown-up children, her live-in mother-in-law, an elderly poodle named Snuffy, and her workaholic husband Leon.
5082958	/m/0d1ylc	Sweet Danger	Margery Allingham	1933	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Guffy Randall is surprised to find his old friend Albert Campion in a French hotel, accompanied by a mountaineer and a prospector, masquerading as minor Royalty. When Campion explains that they are seeking proof of British rights to a small territory, recently disturbed by an earthquake and turned into a strategically important harbour with its own fuel, Randall joins the team. Following their adversaries, headed by a secretive financier named Savanake, they travel to the village of Pontisbright in Suffolk, former seat of the heirs to the crown of Averna. After a night in the local inn, the Gauntlett, during which Lugg sees a corpse wrapped in a winding cloth on the nearby heath, they move to the local mill, run by an impoverished family with claims to be the lost heirs of the Pontisbright name. Amanda, the middle child, has an interest in electricity and radio, running a dynamo from the watermill; her aunt Hattie recently disturbed a burglar in the house, who Campion immediately identifies as "Peaky" Doyle, an old associate of Savanake who recently shot at Campion on the continent. Amanda shows them an ancient inscription on a slab of oak cut from the Pontisbright estate, which speaks of a crown hidden by a split diamond, and other proofs, believed to be the missing deeds and titles, marked by a bell and a drum. Campion and his friends visit Dr Galley, the local medic, a bizarre, eccentric old man who tries to scare them back to London with talk of a curse on the village. Back at the house, they find a drunken Lugg and Scatty Williams, the Fittons' servant, have beaten up a burglar found looking at the inscription; it is Peaky Doyle, who Campion insists they leave, unconscious, on the heath, revealing that he informed Doyle of the inscription in hopes of getting some help solving the riddle. Campion is called to a meeting with Savanake, who insists he take a job in Peru, leaving immediately; when Campion's friends receive a note saying he has run out on them, they resolve to stay to finish the business, but are at a loss as to how to continue. The house is invaded, and everyone left bound and gagged in the dark while it is searched, but they are mysteriously released later. A letter arrives addressed to Campion, which the men read after Amanda has opened it; it describes a drum belonging to the Pontisbrights, currently in a Norwich museum. Amanda reveals she has come into £300, and plans to buy a car and some radio equipment; when Farquharson and Randall arrive at the museum to retrieve the drum, they find Amanda and Scatty Williams have already taken it. At the mill, Hal meets Dr Galley, who tells him he has found evidence that Hal is the Pontisbright heir, and insists they all visit him the following night for dinner. Amanda arrives, and Hal locks her in the grain store, taking the drum. When the others return, he goes to tell them he has it, but when they return to his room the skin is gone from the drum and Amanda is free. Next morning, Lugg and Scatty leave early in the new car, laden with radio equipment. Two policemen arrive, and take Farquharson and Eager-Wright away, accused of trying to defraud a museum of its drum. Aunt Hattie disturbs a man rifling her jewellery, which leads to a gunfight in the yard; the thief is driven back into the house by Campion, dressed as a woman. He explains that he switched with a friend to avoid being sent abroad, and has been hiding in the house, secretly helping out. He tells them he arranged for the two men to be arrested by friends, so they could safely take the drum-skin bearing the deeds to Averna to London. He identifies a necklace of Aunt Hattie's as the ancient crown of Averna, and gives everyone instructions to go to Galley's and flee by boat when they get his signal. When he hears some stories about Galley from Amanda, he realises the old man is insane and plans to kill his guests. They rush to his house, arriving just in time to stop him drugging everyone, and Campion heads off on his mission. Amanda enters Galley's, and he begins a ceremony to conjure a demon. They learn he had tried this before, and had mistaken Peaky Doyle, who arrived during the ceremony, for Astaroth; he did Doyle's bidding for a time, until he found him unconscious on the heath, from when he believed he had control of the demon, and tried to feed him with bizarre herbs. He unveils Doyle, bizarrely dressed and near death, just as the sound of an enormous bell rings loud around the valley; the others overpower Galley, lock him up and flee in a camouflaged boat prepared by Amanda. Campion follows an echo of the bell, broadcast by a duplicate of the old Pontisbright bell in a foreign convent and amplified by Amanda's equipment. He finds an old well, but must hide in a tree when Savanake arrives with his well-armed gang. They remove an iron box from the well, but Campion has knocked out Savanake's chauffeur, and driving him and Parrott away with the box, heads to the mill and gets out, feigning engine trouble. He knocks Parrott out, but Savanake draws a gun on him; he knocks the box into the water, and he and Savanake fight. As Campion is about to drown in Savanake's mighty hands, Amanda opens the stops and flushes Savanake away. Campion is exhausted, and Savanake climbs out of the water; Amanda distracts him and grabs the box, but takes a bullet from Savanake's gun as she shuts a door on him. Savanake tries to get round to them, but falls through a rotten walkway; when Campion tries to help him, he shoots at Campion, losing his grip as he does so, and is washed into the waterwheel and killed. The army arrive and clear everything up, taking the precious deeds found in the box to the government. Hal has proof, found in Galley's house, that he is the Pontisbright heir; Randall and Mary plan to marry; and Amanda's wound is not serious. She and Campion talk, and she makes him promise to take her into "partnership", when she is a little older.
5085765	/m/0d20cl	An Actor Prepares	Constantin Stanislavski	1989-04-28		 An Actor Prepares is the diary of a fictional student named Kostya during his first year of training in Stanislavski's system. Kostya and his fellow students have little to no experience in acting. As they go through the class, Tortsov, their teacher and theatre director addresses the many assumptions they have formed that do not coincide with the 'system'. Stanislavski relates his message with examples. He argues that his system is not a particular method, but a systematic analysis of the 'natural' order of theatrical truth. The system that he describes is a means both of mastering the craft of acting and of stimulating the actor's individual creativeness and imagination. It has influenced the majority of performances we see on the stage or screen. The book is autobiographical and deals with many different areas of acting skills, including action, imagination, concentration of attention, relaxation of muscles, units and objectives, faith and a sense of truth, emotion memory, communion, adaptation, inner motive forces, the unbroken line, the inner creative state, the super-objective and the subconscious mind. Tortsov, the Director, explains all these art forms in great detail, and thereby transforms An Actor Prepares into a type of textbook. The book begins when Kostya and his fellow students are waiting for their first lesson with the Director. They are excited and nervous at the prospect of meeting, and are surprised when he tells them that their first exercise is to put on a few scenes from a play. Kostya and two of his friends perform scenes from Othello, with Kostya taking the leading role. Afterwards the Director tells them their mistakes. At the end of the book, the students recall their first exercise: Sitting in a chair in a way that interests the audience, and searching for a brooch convincingly. fr:La Formation de l'acteur
5085908	/m/0d20k3	Tuck Everlasting	Natalie Babbitt		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ten-year-old Winnie comes from a well-bred and straight-laced family who keeps her safe behind a four-foot iron fence that surrounds their home. She lives a life of boredom and frustration. They are the oldest family in the town and own the surrounding woods. When she runs away from her confinement and into the woods one morning, she finds a beautiful tree from which a spring of water pours with a teenage boy—almost a young man—drinking from it. This discovery leads her to learn of the Tuck family - the boy named Jesse Tuck and the rest of his family (Jesse's mother Mae Tuck, father Angus Tuck, and brother Miles)—who are immortal (they do not age and cannot be killed by most normal fatal accidents or methods of killing; it was never clear whether they would survive) because they drank from this spring eighty-seven years earlier. The family decides it best to take Winnie away with them to explain the secret and why it must be kept—but all the while, a man in a yellow suit has been watching. He has come to the town in hopes of finding the spring (which he had heard of through stories told by his grandmother who is Miles Tuck's wife's friend) and selling the water for an incredibly high price. He uses this supposed kidnapping of Winnie to define the Tucks as brutes, and uses it to persuade the Fosters to give him the forest. Meanwhile, the Tucks introduce Winnie to their strange limbo existence, and she grows to love them like the family and friends she never really had. They are affectionate, with nearly no apparent rules, and live humbly in the woods 20 miles from town. They state that unleashing immortality upon the world would disrupt the balance of life, throwing human beings out of the great cycle of life and death and turning them into "rocks on the side of the road." Their brief time together is ended when the man in the yellow suit confronts the family, whom he has tracked to their home after the "abduction." After hearing his plan, Mae Tuck takes out a shotgun and hits him in the back of his head with the stock, a blow from which he eventually dies. The constable, who has followed the man, sees only Mae's assault, not the man in the suit's plans to use the Tucks as sideshow freaks. Mae is incarcerated in the newly built jail and will be hanged, but since she cannot die, her date with the gallows will reveal the Tucks' secret to the world. Jesse then gives Winnie a bottle of the spring water, and tells her to drink it when she turns 17, as he has asked her to live and travel the world with him, or even get married. Jesse argues that immortality is only dreadful for the Tucks because the way in which they live makes it so; he says that they could be together, in the prime of their lives, forever. Meeting the family by the jailhouse the night before Mae's "execution," the boys open the jail's bars, and Winnie takes the place of Mae in the cell. They then escape, while Winnie is found in the cell the next day. She gets into trouble for helping the Tucks escape, but the secret is safe. In the epilogue, it is revealed that Winnie had a family of her own after the Tucks' escape. Winnie died of old age before the Tucks came back to Treegap for her. The Tucks were saddened, yet they left to live their immortal lives.
5089642	/m/0d266q	Sideways	Rex Pickett	2004-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is the story of two friends, Miles and Jack, who go away together for the last time to steep themselves in everything that makes it good to be young and single. During the week before Jack plans to marry, the pair heads out from Los Angeles to the Santa Ynez wine country.
5090100	/m/0d26w3	The Big Six	Arthur Ransome	1940	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Ds return to Norfolk, hoping to enjoy a holiday with their friends of the Coot Club. Unfortunately, they find the Death and Glories coming under an increasing cloud of suspicion for setting moored boats adrift. Everywhere they go boats seem to be cast adrift and they are threatened with being forbidden to sail. Things get worse when new shackles are stolen from a boatbuilder after one of the casting off episodes and some of them are found aboard the Death and Glory. At the same time, the boys seem to be flush with cash, but they won't say where they got it. The Big Six (Dick, Dorothea, Tom Dudgeon, and the three Death and Glories) get together to investigate the crimes and collect evidence. Eventually a carefully prepared trap is sprung and in a flash (literally, to take a night photo of the real culprits), the villains are discovered and the boys are exonerated. The source of their secret supply of money is uncovered when a local pub unveils a magnificent stuffed pike.
5090172	/m/0d271n	Missee Lee	Arthur Ransome	1941	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book opens with the Swallows, Amazons and Captain Flint in an unnamed port in the South China Sea, apparently the Hundredth Port of a round-the-world voyage aboard the Wild Cat, the small green schooner which featured in Peter Duck. They are warned to stay away from the Chinese coast because of pirates. On the next stage of their voyage, they encounter a dead calm. Their monkey, Gibber, causes a fire which burns the Wild Cat to the waterline so she sinks. They all escape aboard the Swallow and Amazon which are being used as ship's boats. However, the boats are separated in the night when a strong wind blows up. The crew of the Amazon, the Blackett sisters and their uncle, is picked up by a junk, which turns out to be a pirate vessel. The Swallows make their own way to shore, where they eventually meet the Amazons, who are being held by Taicoon Chang, one of the Taicoons who rule the Three Islands. Captain Flint is kept under much stricter guard by the Taicoon, as he hopes to ransom him, as he claims to be the Lord Mayor of San Flancisco. The children are sent to Missee Lee, the leader of the pirates. She turns out to be a frustrated academic from Camblidge, who had been sent to England for her education, only to have to return to rule the Three Islands when her father died. She starts to give the children Latin lessons, at which Roger surprisingly excels. Captain Flint is also bought from Taicoon Chang who has threatened to chop off his head. The pirates are concerned that if the Royal Navy were to learn their position, a gunboat might be sent to destroy them, so when Captain Flint is later seen by the other Taicoon, Wu, with a sextant, they are only saved from having their heads chopped off by Missee Lee's intervention. As they consider that they are still in danger of execution and are also becoming fed up with the Latin lessons, they plan an escape. During the Dragon festival, they set sail aboard Missee Lee's junk, the Shining Moon. With the help of Missee Lee, who has decided to leave her responsibilities on the Three Islands and go back to study at Camblidge, they take a daring and dangerous passage through a gorge to evade capture. However, when Missee Lee hears fighting begin between the various islanders, she decides that she owes it to her people to return and unite them again. The Swallows, Amazons and Captain Flint return to England aboard the Shining Moon.
5090932	/m/0d282t	Nemesis	Jo Nesbø	2002	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A bank robbery is committed by a lone robber in a balaclava mask. Holding a bank teller hostage, he demands that the bank's ATM be emptied within 25 seconds before the police can arrive, or he will kill her. To conceal his voice, he makes the hostage speak his demands, whispered into her ear. The bank manager empties the ATM, but it takes him 31 seconds. Taking the money, the robber whispers one last time to the hostage before shooting her. Initially given to the robberies unit, the case remains unsolved. However, a police video evidence expert, Beate Lønn, surmises that, since the robber and hostage are intimately close together, the robber knew his victim well. The case is transferred to Lønn and Harry Hole, treating it as a murder investigation. Further bank robberies occur in the same way. However, successful emptying of the ATMs within the specified time limit mean that no other tellers are killed. Whilst his girlfriend, Rakel, and her son Oleg are in Moscow on a parental custody case (Oleg's Russian father has sued for the return of his son), Harry Hole is invited to dinner at the flat of an old girlfriend. Anna, a flamboyant painter of minor skill, intends to have an art show which she wants to call Nemesis. The following morning, Harry awakens in his own apartment with the classic symptoms of a hangover, headache and short-term memory loss regarding the events of the night before. Later that day, Anna Bethsen is found dead, an apparent suicide. But the gun is held in her right hand, and Harry knows Anna was left-handed, so he believes this is a disguised murder. A photograph found near her body suggests the involvement of a rich businessman, who may have been Anna's lover. Harry, who has concealed his presence in Anna's flat, now is in a race against time to discover the murderer before he is implicated himself. With no memory of the night of her death, he is even uncertain that he himself is not the killer. Learning that Anna was a gypsy, Harry enlists the help of Anna's blood relative, Raskol, a former bank robber now in prison, the latter's insights into the robberies in exchange for Harry solving the murder of his niece. Harry's dealings with Raskol extend also to getting from him considerable sums of money to finance a private investigation for which Harry cannot use police resources - an act which, had it been discovered, could have led to Harry losing his job and being prosecuted. Further evidence plus Raskol's suggestions send Harry and Beate Lønn on a visit to a robbery suspect hiding in São Paulo, Brazil, but the man is found hanging from a beam in his home, another apparent suicide. Back home, Harry receives a number of e-mails from the murderer, signed S2MN, which give him insights into the latter's mind. But simultaneously, Detective Inspector Tom Waaler, a thorn in Harry's side in The Redbreast (the previous novel), learns of Harry's visit to Anna and, with great delight, prepares to arrest him. Harry now finds himself on the run. He forwards the incriminating e-mails to Beate Lønn as evidence of his innocence. But forensics determines that the e-mails were sent on time-delay by a modem connected to Harry's own (missing) mobile phone, so Harry is still implicated. Tom Waaler, meanwhile, uncovers another former lover of Anna's, who may also have robbed the banks. But he shoots him dead when he seems to resist arrest, just as he had done to a murder suspect in the Redbreast investigation, so that line of inquiry is closed. Eventually, the strange signature on the e-mails, S2MN, is deciphered when Harry catches sight of it in a mirror. Now reading NM2S, he deduces that the 2 represents a second S, and that running the letters together phonetically, it sounds like the word Nemesis ("revenge"), the name of Anna's intended art show. His "hangover" symptoms are proven by forensic evidence to be the effects of being drugged. Anna's death was therefore an intricate suicide, which she had plotted to confuse and convict Harry and two other former lovers, all of whom had abandoned her. This solution also leads Harry to realize that the first bank robber was, in fact, the husband of the murdered bank teller, who had intended to leave him for his brother in Brazil. The inescapable conclusion is that all the crimes were done for love. Thanks to Raskol's gypsy contacts, Rakel wins the custody battle for Oleg and returns to Norway with him. But even now Harry cannot relax. He has gotten wind of a witness in the murder of his former colleague, killed during the Redbreast investigation into a mysterious gun smuggler. The witness may have seen Ellen's murderer with the smuggler, known only as the Prince. Harry shows him a picture of his new prime suspect... In fact, the reader knows much more than Harry, having been told a lot by the omniscient author. The ending clearly sets the stage for a shattering showdown in the following book. As with other Harry Hole novels, the novel was translated from Norwegian into English by Don Bartlett. no:Sorgenfri (bok) zh:復仇女神的懲罰
5091671	/m/0d293g	Bloodhype	Alan Dean Foster	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Vom is an intergalactic intelligence described as a large black blob not unlike a gigantic amoeba, impervious to almost all energy and physical attack. Following years of battle with the Tar-Aiym it has sheltered on a planet where it has gone dormant for 500,000 years, waiting for an opportunity to escape the Tar-Aiym Guardian orbiting in space above it. Carmot MMYM a commander in the AAnn Empire discovers the Vom and brings it to the planet Repler for study at a concealed AAnn base. Lieutenants Kitten “Kitty” Kai-sung, a female human, and Porsupah, a male Tolian, of the Intelligence Arm of the United Church have been sent to Repler to investigate the newly re-established trade in the drug bloodhype (aka jaster, silly salt, brain-up, phinto) as the most deadly and addictive drug in and outside the Humanx Commonwealth. Once on Repler they make contact with the drug trader Dominick Rose who are using Captain Malcolm Hammurabi and his ship, the Umbra, as unwitting transporters of bloodhype. This trio tracks Rose to his base where they encounter Flinx, currently in Rose’s employ, who helps them escape when Rose’s men capture the agents. After reporting Rose’s activities to the United Church, Rose escapes to the AAnn base right before the AAnn lose control of the Vom. Meanwhile, the agents have enlisted the help of Rose’s brother who has discovered the Tar-Aiym Guardian and his machine now orbiting above Repler. With the assistance of Flinx’s psychic abilities the Guardian prepares to fight the Vom again, while Kitty, Porsupah, and Mal prepare a raid on the AAnn base to capture Rose. The Vom escapes and the Guardian is forced to fight it in a psychic battle, but is slowly losing until Kitty and Mal manage to recover Rose’s supply of bloodhype and use it to poison the Vom. Now weakened, the Vom succumbs to the Tar-Aiym Guardian. After the battle the Guardian self-destructs, Flinx leaves Repler on his ship Teacher, Porsupah gets drunk, while Mal and Kitty start a romantic relationship.
5092014	/m/0d29k2	Orphan Star	Alan Dean Foster	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place in 550 A.A. (After Amalgamation in Foster’s timeline, 2950 AD). Flinx, no longer a poor orphan, is chasing a merchant to Hivehom and Terra in search of information about his parentage. Along the way Flinx is joined by Sylzenzuzex, a female Thranx member of the Commonwealth Church. His chase leads him to Ulru-Ujurr, a planet under Edict from the United Church, ostensibly because it contains a highly intelligent telepathic race. It is on Ulru-Ujurr that he discovers the mystery of his parentage and begins the childlike Ulru-Ujurrians on their "Game of Civilization".
5092903	/m/0d2bll	The End of the Matter	Alan Dean Foster	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 He not only finds this man, Skua September, but also acquires a strange new alien pet Abalamahalamatandra—Ab for short—and is pursued by an assassin squad called the Qwarm. Flinx’s friends Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex show up looking for Ab in the hope of finding an ancient weapon, thought to possibly be capable of stopping a rogue black hole; before the three inhabited planets on the black hole's course are sucked in.
5093294	/m/0d2c1m	Flinx in Flux	Alan Dean Foster	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book opens upon a meeting of ecological fanatics plotting against operations on Longtunnel. Lifeforms are being modified by gengineers, and they intend to stop the perversion of nature. The scene switches to Alaspin. Flinx has returned to the planet to release Pip's offspring into the wild. The minidrag became pregnant in The End of the Matter. While returning to town, Flinx’s empathic abilities detect someone hurt nearby. Flinx discovers a woman, badly hurt, and with bruises that suggest interrogation of some sort. He returns to town, but no one seems to know of a missing woman. He takes her to his hotel and she regains consciousness and reveals herself to be Clarity Held. She explains that she is a gengineer working for Coldstripe on Longtunnel. Fanatics attempting to stop the work kidnapped her. This sparks uncertainty in Flinx, due to his past of genetic alteration by the Meliorare Society. Later, while sleeping, people in chameleon suits attack them in the hotel. Flinx and Clarity escape and return to Alaspinport, where Flinx smuggles Clarity onto the Teacher, his personal ship in order to return her to Longtunnel. On the voyage, their relationship becomes romantic. They land on Longtunnel and Clarity begins showing Flinx around the facilities. All structures are contained in an extensive cavern system since the surface is inhospitable. The caverns are home to a wide variety of flora and fauna that redefine the preconceived Humanx notions of evolution and possible lifeforms. Clarity introduces Flinx to Alynasmolia Vandervort, the leader of the Coldstripe compound. Flinx stays to learn more about the operation. Clarity and Flinx begin to fall in love, but Flinx is not used to this kind of attachment. Flinx attempts to push Clarity away by confiding in her that the Meliorare Society has manipulated him. During the discussion, an explosion rocks the facility. The fanatics have somehow found the facilities and are destroying everything in sight. Flinx and Clarity flee deeper into the cave with minimal supplies to wait out the attack. However, more explosions rock the facility, and they discover that the fanatics have collapsed the tunnels. Flinx and Clarity have no choice but to continue through the caves in hope of discovering a way out. In the tunnels, they meet an injured thranx, Sowelmanu, and help him recover enough to go with them. Unfortunately, Flinx trips after they take an unexpected slide to another level of the caves, and breaks their last light. In the darkness, Flinx detects a sentient creature in the blackness that feels nothing but peaceful intentions. The aliens turn out to be empathic like Flinx and identify themselves as the Sumacrea. They communicate with Flinx through complex descriptive emotions, allowing Flinx to hone his skills. Eventually, the aliens lead them back to the Humanx settlement. Clarity and Sowelmanu reunite with their fellow scientists, and Flinx discusses the ordeal with Alynasmolia Vandervort. Clarity discloses Flinx’s special abilities to Vandervort. Vandervort cautions Clarity about becoming too close to Flinx due to his unpredictable and possibly dangerous gene modifications. Meanwhile, Flinx is asked to take wounded survivors to a nearby planet, Gorisa, which has better medical facilities. Clarity begins distancing herself from Flinx, and he realizes she fears him. Clarity and Vandervort accompany Flinx on the journey to Gorisa. Later, Clarity visits Vandervort only to find that Flinx and Pip have been rendered unconscious by sleeping gas and are in a container. Vandervort intends to study Flinx and convinces Clarity that she has no choice but to help. As they begin to leave, fanatics arrive to "save" Flinx and return him to true normal form. A firefight ensues and Flinx’s container is damaged. He begins having strange dreams. He regains consciousness and escapes the container. While in the container, Flinx’s powers have developed again. He projects intense fear into the combatants, rendering them unconscious. Clarity and Flinx reunite, but suddenly the ground beneath them erupts. Several of Flinx’s old friends, the Ulru-Ujurrians, emerge and ask for Flinx’s assistance in understanding a new threat that could end all life. They have discovered an alarm on Horseye that warns of impending danger, but all else is unknown. They project Flinx’s consciousness across space, and he finds something terrible and incomprehensible. He returns to his body and decides his mission in life is to do something about this horrible threat. He promises the Ujurrians that he will learn more about the danger, and then they will meet again. He extends an invitation to Clarity to accompany him on his journey to understand himself and this new threat, but she declines, needing a break.
5093584	/m/0d2ccg	For Love of Mother-Not	Alan Dean Foster	1983	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story of Flinx is begun in this novel, exploring his early years growing up with Mother Mastiff on the planet Moth. Young Philip Lynx is purchased in a slave auction by Mother Mastiff for one hundred credits. After years of raising the boy, whose full origins are unknown to his adoptive mother, she suddenly disappears. Flinx pursues her across the rainy world of Moth and discovers she has been kidnapped by the mysterious Meliorare Society, a group known to have experimented with eugenics and might very well be the source of Flinx’s unusual talents. Flinx is gifted with empathic powers and able to project emotions and read the emotions of others. Mother Mastiff also realizes later on that it was not her desire to buy the boy but his desire to be bought that was intentionally pushed on to her by Flinx .
5093868	/m/0d2cn4	Mid-Flinx	Alan Dean Foster	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 This novel does little to expand on Flinx’s much hinted at upcoming importance in fighting a great evil approaching the Humanx Commonwealth, but does show Foster’s love of travel to the tropical portions of our world. Midworld is essentially a worldwide jungle that is many more times deadly than our own. His stance on environmentalism comes through in how most of the villains are defeated not so much by Flinx's skills or cleverness, but by their lack of respect for the world itself. The events aren’t so much important in and of themselves but seek to expand on Flinx’s talents and set up the next book in the series.
5094115	/m/0d2cz0	Reunion	Alan Dean Foster	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Flinx has returned to Earth for only the second time in his life to search out the records of the extensive computer network known as the Shell that is maintained by the Unified Church. To do so he uses his empathic Talent to seduce Elena Carolles, a security guard in the Shell, and convinces her to allow him direct access to the most secure databanks. In the Shell he discovers a new bit of data about his mysterious past, information about the Meliorare Society, but the file containing this data has already been stolen by an operative hiding behind the front company Larnaca Nutrition. The agent has absconded with the file to the bleak desert planet Pyrassis deep in AAnn held territory. Flinx has no recourse but to pursue in his own space ship, Teacher, leaving Elena in an emotional lurch. Once he reaches Pyrassis he finds the agent’s ship, the Crotase, in orbit and apparently abandoned. A search of the ship for the missing file turns up nothing, so Flinx must pursue the ship’s crew to the planet surface. On his trip down to confront the thief, he discovers that his shuttle has been sabotaged by the Crotase's AI. He crash lands far from his target, the camp of the ship’s crew. Now forced to march across the desert with few supplies and only Pip, his minidrag, for company Flinx discovers the strange flora and fauna that exist on the harsh world. The difficulty of his journey results in Flinx losing most of his supplies and being captured by a mated pair of AAnn scientists. They inadvertently reveal to him that the strange terrain over which he had been traveling wasn’t just the broken lands of a desert, but was in fact an ancient alien transmitter. During Flinx's struggle to escape the reptilian scientist before members of the AAnn military take him into custody, they accidentally activate the transmitter revealing a secret on the outermost planet of the Pyrassis system, a brown dwarf star. After escaping on a shuttle thoughtfully provided by Teacher's AI, Flinx follows both the Crotase and the transmitter’s signal to the brown dwarf where an alien construct is found. He pursues the missing file into the construct where he finds the other ship’s crew and his long lost sister Mahnahmi Lynx who is intent on killing him. Flinx manages to use his mental Talent to defend himself when the Qwarm that Mahnahmi has hired attacks him. After binding the Qwarm and holding Mahnahmi at bay with a weapon, the two siblings exchange information confirming to Flinx's satisfaction and surprise, that Mahnahmi is indeed his sister and she was the one who stole the sybfile. Their reunion is broken up by a troop of AAnn soldiers hunting for the humans who had infiltrated their territory. The Qwarm is killed aiding in the siblings' flight while Mahnahmi breaks the tentative truce the pair had struck up, attacking him and stealing the transport Flinx had used to reach the alien construct. His only means of returning to Teacher now gone, Flinx flees from the AAnn back into the depths of the construct which he discovers to be another Krang apparently also made by the Tar-Aiym, a long dead alien race. Using the Krang he fights off the AAnn and takes the shuttle that had belonged to Mahnahmi's ship, Crotase to return to Teacher. It is revealed to the reader that the Krang wasn't communicating directly with Flinx, but with the plants that he had been given from the planet Midworld, plants that have achieved sentience and had been assisting Flinx in his adventure.
5094210	/m/0d2d36	A Cavern of Black Ice	Julie Victoria Jones	1999-03-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with a woman named Tarissa giving birth to a girl outside the city Spire Vanis. The girl, Ash March (possibly the daughter of Jack, from the Book of Words(Ref Required)), is taken in by Penthero Iss, Spire Vanis's Surlord (a supreme ruler). After discovering that she will soon be moved to more prison-like quarters by the supposedly benevolent Surlord, she escapes. The book also relates the tale of a young clansman of the Blackhail clan named Raif Sevrance. Raif and his brother, Drey, return from hunting one morning to discover their party has been slain. After dispensing final rites to their clansmen, the brothers return home to find the foster son of the chief, Mace Blackhail relating a different version of the tale implicating Clan Bludd in the death of their friends and family. Mace becomes chief of Clan Blackhail through various acts of treachery and declares war on Clan Bludd; Raif realises that Mace is lying, but no-one else who speaks against Mace lives to tell the tale. Raif is forced by social pressure in a raid on what Mace says is a Clan Bludd battle party; it instead contains the (innocent) family of Vaylo, chief of Clan Bludd. Refusing Mace's orders to kill these innocents, Raif flees and is exiled from his clan for disobeying orders. His uncle, Angus Lok, takes him to Spire Vanis. There, Angus and Raif rescue Ash from the Surlord's soldiers and flee the city, deciding to travel to another city called Ille Glaive. Along the way, Marafice Eye "the Knife", Iss's leading general, pursues them with some soldiers and a sorcerer called Sarga Veys. Most of the soldiers are lost as they follow Ash onto the ice of a lake, and subsequently drown, though Veys uses magic to escape and the Knife also makes it out. Once in Ille Glaive, Angus, Ash and Raif meet with Heritas Cant, another sorcerer. Cant explains Ash's abilities to reach the Blind, resting place of all manner of dark creatures sealed away in ancient history. Angus, Ash, and Raif then proceed northward to the Cavern of Black Ice, where Ash can get rid of her abilities as a Reach. As the group heads north they become captured by Clan Bludd, who have recently taken over a place they stop in. Raif is beaten severely for days. Vaylo fears Ash because of her connection to Iss, and contacts the Surlord to return her (we do not discover what happens to Angus). Ash forces Vaylo to postpone the execution of Raif, which allows his escape during a raid by Clan Blackhail. Drey, present at the raid, allows Raif to escape. The Knife attempts to rape Ash. She awakes before this occurs and unleashes the dark power within her, killing all but Veys and the Knife once more. Ash again travels towards the Cavern of Black Ice and re-meets Raif. Eventually, after a cold and difficult journey with the help of two mysterious "Sull" (a more advanced culture described earlier in the book), they arrive at the Cavern of Black Ice where Ash finally discharges her powers.
5094281	/m/0d2d8f	White Horse, Dark Dragon				 The action takes place in a fictional Central European country, Karistan, where the beautiful Alta lives with her young blind daughter Jewel. Jewel has a friend in the form of an enigmatic white horse. Soon they meet an American visitor named Jim Martin, who has been sent to Karistan to prove that a new investment is not going to harm the environment in Karistan.
5094462	/m/0d2dl3	A Small Town in Germany	John le Carré	1968-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Small Town in Germany occurs in the late 1960s, in Bonn, the capital of West Germany. From London, Alan Turner, of the British Foreign Office, arrives to investigate the disappearance of Leo Harting, a minor British Embassy officer; moreover, secret files have disappeared with him. The embassy's security chief, Rawley Bradfield, is hostile to Turner's investigation. Despite that, he is dinner party host to Turner and Ludwig Siebkron, head of the German Interior Ministry; the latter is close to industrialist Klaus Karfeld, who is successfully building his new political party. Initially, Turner suspects Leo Harting is a spy, but comes to grasp that Harting was secretly investigating Karfeld's Nazi career — as the war-time administrator of a laboratory that poisoned 31 half-Jews. In fact, Harting is hiding from Siebkron, and might assassinate Karfeld. To Turner's chagrin, Bradfield is unsympathetic to Harting's circumstance and uninterested in protecting him, because he considers him a criminal and a political embarrassment.
5094787	/m/0d2d__	The Poseidon Adventure	Paul Gallico		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Formerly the RMS Atlantis, the SS Poseidon is a luxury ocean liner from the golden age of travel, which was converted to a single-class, combination cargo-cruise liner. The ship was on its maiden voyage in the North Atlantic with the new company, celebrated with a monthlong Christmas voyage from Lisbon to African and South American ports. On December 26, the Poseidon is overturned when it has the misfortune of being directly above the location of an undersea earthquake. The ship capsizes as it falls into the sudden void caused by the quake displacing millions of gallons of seawater. Starting from the upper deck dining room, preacher Reverend Frank "Buzz" Scott leads a small group of (often unwilling) followers towards the keel of the ship, trying to avoid the rising water level and other such hazards. Those stuck within the dining saloon are unwilling to follow the Reverend, and stay behind. Those survivors choosing to follow Scott climb a Christmas tree to ascend into the galley area where they meet some stewards and kitchen crew. There is a great debate about whether to try to reach one of the propeller shafts at the stern, or to go forward to the bow. One of the stewards fears the lockers that hold the anchor chains will have flooded, and suggests that they try for the engine room. After climbing two upside-down stairways, the group comes upon "Broadway", a wide service corridor that runs the length of the ship and connects to the engine room. The posse breaks for a while whilst they look for supplies. Young Robin Shelby ventures off to find the bathroom while Tony "The Beamer" Bates and his girlfriend Pamela find the liquor closet. When the ship's emergency lighting suddenly goes out, a number of crew members panic and stampede; they are trampled, or killed by falling over stairway openings or into a large pit where a boiler tore through several decks of the upturned ship. After the panic, Scott's group goes in search of The Beamer, Pamela, and Robin, who are missing. New York Police Detective Mike Rogo finds The Beamer passed out, intoxicated, and Pamela refuses to leave him. Robin is nowhere to be found. While searching for her young brother, Susan is brutally raped by a young, terrified crew member. Susan talks with the boy, who is remorseful and ashamed, and grows to like him. But the boy, realizing the consequences of his actions, panics and runs off -falling to his death in the dark pit. Susan rejoins the group and tells them nothing of what has happened. After an intense search, they make the painful decision to move on without Robin. At this point his mother, Jane Shelby, breaks down and vents her long-held disgust and hatred for her husband. The Reverend, having found a Turkish oiler, guides the other survivors through Broadway to the stern. They find the corridor to the engine room, which is completely submerged. Belle Rosen, a former W.S.A. champion, swims through the corridor and finds the passage to get them to the other side. Upon their arrival, they find the engine room, or "Hell" as Mr. Martin calls it. They take time to rest and save the batteries on their recently-acquired flashlights. In the darkness Linda Rogo makes a move on the Reverend. After their rest they see the way out - five decks up, on top of a fractured steel wall they name "Mount Poseidon". During the difficult climb, Linda Rogo rebels and attempts to find her own way. She chooses an unstable route and falls to her death, impaled on a piece of sharp steel. An explosion rocks the ship, and Reverend Scott, in an insane rage, denounces God, offers himself as a sacrifice, and commits suicide. Mary Kinsale, an English spinster, screams in grief and claims that they were to be married. Her fellow survivors aren't quite sure what to make of this revelation. Mr. Martin takes charge of the group and they make their way into a propeller shaft where the steel hull is at its thinnest. The oxygen supply begins to give out, but after much waiting, they are finally found. Belle Rosen has a heart attack and dies before the rescue team can reach her. The rescue team cuts through and the group climb out of the upturned hull. Manny Rosen, however, refuses to leave without Belle's remains, which are lifted out after the others have left. Once outside, the survivors see another, much larger group of survivors being removed from the bow of the ship. Most are still in their dinner clothes, in contrast to Scott's group, who are stripped to their underwear and streaked with oil. En route to the rescue ships in lifeboats, they see The Beamer and Pamela, who have survived after all. Sailors from a small German ship try to put a salvage line on the Poseidon. Mike Rogo curses them because of his World War II experiences, and laughs when their efforts fail. The group goes their separate ways - Mary Kinsale and Nonnie on a ship back to England; Mike Rogo, Manny Rosen, Hubie Muller, Dick, Jane and Susan Shelby back to New York; and the Turk back to Turkey. Aboard the American ship, they watch as the Poseidon sinks. Jane Shelby, finally giving up hope, silently grieves the loss of her son. The novel ends with Susan dreaming of going to Hull in England to visit the parents of the boy who had raped her. She hopes that she might be pregnant with his child so he would have a legacy.
5097299	/m/0d2jq2	City of Skulls	Carl Sargent	1993	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The adventure takes place in the Kingdom of Furyondy and the Empire of Iuz following the Greyhawk Wars. The city referenced in the book's title is Dorakaa, the capital of Iuz's empire.
5103688	/m/0d2t1n	Flinx's Folly	Alan Dean Foster	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 While on Goldin IV looking for new experiences to give direction to his life, Flinx accidentally renders unconscious a group of twenty innocent bystanders when his Talent takes an unexpected turn and starts projecting to others in his immediate vicinity. He and the others are hospitalized but unhurt; knowing he is still wanted by the Commonwealth for his past crimes, Flinx gives a false name and slips out of the hospital, but to no less danger. He is now being pursued by the Order of Null, a quasi-religious group that worships death itself as expressed in the great evil that is approaching the Commonwealth—the same great evil that Flinx is able to sense and communicate with through his Talent. After escaping from the Order of Null and the planetary authorities, Flinx decides he needs to reflect on his life and talk over his difficulties with someone who understands him. Since that particular type of person is extremely rare in the universe, he settles on finding Clarity Held, the woman he fell in love with on Longtunnel, who is now a gengineer on New Riviera, a paradise world. Finding Clarity proves easy, the difficult part is dealing with her boyfriend Bill Ormann, a vice-president of the gengineering firm for whom she now works. He is eager to make Clarity his wife but she is more reluctant to marry. After tolerating a growing attraction between the two, Ormann decides he is losing Clarity to Flinx and sets out to remove the young man from the relationship. After a pair of failed attempts to warn his rival off with use of violence, Ormann is forced to act himself with the intention of killing Flinx. Ormann first kidnaps Clarity and imprisons her in a remote cabin with the intention of luring Flinx to rescue her there, where he will spring his trap. Flinx manages to bypass the deadly mechanical traps set by Ormann, but is overcome by the particularly clever bio-engineered trap hidden in a most unlikely vector. Captured by Ormann’s minions, Flinx and Clarity are at the mercy of the thugs but their lives are saved by the timely intervention of Flinx’s old friend Truzenzuzex. The wily thranx had come looking for Flinx to get the young man’s insight on the disappearing weapons platform full of Krangs the Tar-Aiym had left behind on the tenth planet of the Pyrassis system (see events in Reunion). The old warrior inside Tru manages to kill the four thugs threatening Flinx and Clarity while his partner Bran Tse-Mallory confronts Ormann. When the corporate executive threatens Bran with a weapon, Bran kills Ormann with a voltchuk. The four attempt to escape from New Riviera via Flinx’s shuttle, but before they can even approach the ship, they are trapped between two groups both seeking to capture Flinx: a squad of Commonwealth Peaceforcers and yet another group from the Order of Null. In the process of trying to flee the fighting, Clarity is critically wounded. To save her and remain free himself, Flinx is forced to allow Bran and Tru to take the woman he loves to a hospital while he slips aboard the shuttle and back to his starship, the Teacher. They agree to meet up again when Flinx locates the Tar-Aiym weapons platform Back on board Teacher Flinx is so distracted by the seriousness of Clarity’s wounds that he misses the presence of two members of the Order of Null already on board. They manage to capture the preoccupied Flinx and set Teacher on a suicide course with New Riviera’s sun. Once again Flinx is saved at the last minute by the sentient plants from Midworld on board his ship; they strangle the two initiates in the Order of Null allowing Flinx to escape his drug-induced bondage. Flinx plots his next move as a return to his adopted home world of Moth.
5103776	/m/0d2t5h	Sliding Scales	Alan Dean Foster	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Sliding Scales Flinx is confounded by how to proceed with his life. He abandoned his injured girlfriend, Clarity Held, on the planet New Riveria under the protection of his friends Truzenzuzex and Bran Tse-Mallory (see events in Flinx's Folly) with the understanding he would search the galaxy for the Tar-Aiym weapons platform that has once been in the system Pyrassis. Not knowing where to go to start the search, Flinx first visits his homeworld of Moth, then broods as his ship, Teacher takes in aimlessly through the galazy. Teacher’s AI suggests something unusual to take him out of his funk: a vacation. This is followed another surprising suggestion: that he take the vacation in an isolated world that falls within the reach of the AAnn Empire, a near-desert planet named Jast. The native sentient species of Jast is the Vssey, a single-sex species that resembles and acts much like a giant mobile mushroom. The Vssey are loosely allied with the AAnn, though not yet a part of their empire. Some members of the Vssey are strongly opposed to a closer alliance, though the ruling government seeks to bring the two worlds closer together. Flinx enters this unsettled atmosphere and is immediately suspected of being a spy for the Humanx Commonwealth. Taken by Secondary Administrator Takuuna VBXLLW on what is to be a sightseeing tour of a canyon. Either through accident or fortune Takunna’s tail knocks Flinx over the edge of the canyon and to his death. Flinx manages to survive the fall, but with a head injury causing amnesia. He wanders the Jast desert for several days before being rescued by a Chraluuc, a member of a most unusual organization: an AAnn artist colony known as the Tier of Ssaiinn. Considered outcasts by AAnn society, Flinx is safe among these aliens, so safe that he is actually adopted by the Tier under the name Flinx LLVVRXX once he proves to them he has the soul of an artist. Meanwhile, back in the cities of Jast, an insurrection is ongoing as a faction of Vssey start a bombing campaign against the AAnn. Based on his success in getting rid of the supposed Commonwealth spy Flinx, Takuuna is given the assignment of tracking down this disruptive element. Although he uses the best of AAnn intimidation and hunting techniques, his mission is a failure until a bit of luck and a low-level functionary delivers the name of the one and only terrorist. Fortune also provides him with the location of Flinx, the human he thought he had killed. Takuuna travels to the Tier to arrest Flinx, but finds his efforts thwarted by the Tier’s unusual Imperial charter. Nevertheless he manages to get special authorization to arrest one of their members and forces Flinx into hiding in canyon where the artist group is creating a group project. Cornered, Flinx and Chraluuc seek safety in a Tier built shelter, but circumstances arise allowing one of Takuuna’s soldiers to kill Chraluuc. The shock of seeing his friend killed allows Flinx to respond, instinctively, with his empathic Talent, knocking out Takuuna and driving the soldier permanently insane. His memory restored, Flinx is able to contact Teacher and leave the troubled world of Jast. Takuuna is airlifted from the Tier, but his transport is sabotaged by the singular Vssey terrorist killing him and destroying the AAnn Authority’s transportation annex. Flinx decides he has had enough of a vacation—from the Commonwealth and himself—and heads back to his home territory.
5104008	/m/0d2tj8	Running from the Deity	Alan Dean Foster	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Continuing his pursuit of the alien weapon’s platform, the Krang, Flinx finds himself heading into the Blight—where the Krang has presumably gone—but is informed by his ship, Teacher, that repairs are necessary before they can continue. The repairs can be simply done by Teacher’s autonomic controls, but the need for raw materials force Flinx to land the entire KK-drive ship on the world of Arrawd. Arrawd is classified by the Humanx Commonwealth as a Class IVB world, placing it technologically at 19th century Earth levels, the initial development of the steam engine. Because the planet is at such a low technology level, first contact with aliens is forbidden, a rule that Flinx once again ignores. On an excursion from his ship while it is repairing itself, Flinx falls and injures his ankle, leading to his discovery by two members of the Dwarra, a married couple Storra and Ebbanai. They assist the human to their home where he is able to heal himself with some simple Commonwealth technology. His use of such magical technology and his physical prowess—the gravity of Arrawd is much lower than Terran standard—quickly leads Storra to spread stories of his abilities. The couple takes advantage of Flinx’s good will and begin to profit from the human’s agreement to help heal those who come to the couple’s farm. When this is discovered by Flinx he resolves to leave the planet, but too late it seems for his presence has started a war between three of the local governments, all seeking to control the new god that has come to their world. Flinx, despite his troubles on Arrawd considers staying there for the rest of his natural life simply to be away from his troubles with the rest of humanity and the Humanx Commonwealth. Part of his reasoning is that during his time on the planet he doesn't have any of the headaches that have plagued him most of his post-adolescent life. The reason for the headaches disappearing is unclear, though it is indicated that the empathic ability innate in each Dwarra might be the reason. In the end, he knows staying is an impossibility because of his responsibility to track down the Krang. Despite his protestations that he is as mortal and common as the Dwarra, the members of the native race pay Flinx little attention. A three-way war erupts and ends only when Flinx brings Teacher to the stronghold where the battle is raging and uses his ship’s weapons to separate the combatants. During a conference after the war, Flinx attempts to convince the various political leaders he is not a deity, to limited success. Before the conference can be concluded Flinx is the target of an assassination attempt. His Talent once again saves him, but kills the assassin and several co-conspirators in the process. Flinx's headaches return after the assassination attempt. Disgusted at his poor choice of actions in dealing with the Dwarra, and the alien race’s insistence at seeing him as a god, Flinx finally leaves Arrawd. As he leaves the system Flinx is contacted by an alien intelligence that pulls him away from his search for the Krang. In the epilogue, Clarity Held has been taken to the safety of the thranx homeworld, Hivehom where she is shown the interstellar devastation known as The Great Emptiness. Thranx galactographic astronomers have been able to track the destruction of a galaxy known as Poltebet-MH438A. The destruction is accelerating and headed directly for the heart of the Humanx Commonwealth.
5104322	/m/0d2t_x	Patrimony	Alan Dean Foster	2007-10-30	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Once again diverting from his assigned task of finding the ancient Tar-Aiym weapon that will help save the galaxy from the approaching evil, Flinx lands on the planet Gestalt, known as Tlel to its natives, looking for his father. In the previous volume of the series, Flinx was told his male parent, a former member of the Meliorare Society, was now living on an obscure minor planet that was part of the Commonwealth. Though the information was suspect, coming from a dying member of the Meliorares, Flinx jumped at the opportunity. Following a series of adventures, including his attempted murder at the hands of a local hit man hired by the Order of Null, Flinx finds his father. Or rather, he finds the last man associated with his creation. Since Flinx is a semi-successful experiment in eugenics, the man he finds is just another Meliorare in hiding. However, the man reveals to him that Flinx was the product of so much DNA splicing that he has no real parents; no father who donated sperm, and his dead mother was nothing more than a surrogate womb for hire. Upset that Flinx, who does not reveal the true extent of his talents, was hardly the super-genetic success they had hoped for, Flinx's creator attempts to kill him, but only wounds the minidrag Pip before Flinx's erratic yet powerful mental gifts save his life, but destroy all traces of the scientist.
5105071	/m/0d2w5d	The Eight				 The Eight features two intertwined storylines set centuries apart. The first takes place in 1972 and follows American computer expert Catherine “Cat” Velis as she is sent to Algeria for a special assignment. The second is set in 1790 and revolves around Mireille, a novice nun at Montglane Abbey. The fates of both characters are intertwined as they try to unravel the mystery behind the Montglane Service, a chess set that holds the key to a game of unlimited power. A gift from the Moors to Emperor Charlemagne, these pieces have been hunted fervently throughout the years by those seeking ultimate control. In the throes of the French Revolution, Mireille and her cousin Valentine must help in dispersing the pieces of the chess set to keep them out of the wrong hands. However, when Valentine is brutally murdered in Reign of Terror, Mireille is thrown into the midst of men and women who would pursue power at any cost, including Napoleon, Robespierre, Talleyrand, Catherine the Great, and more. She comes to realize she must rely on her own intuition and tenacity to accomplish her goal. In 1972, Cat Velis faces a similar atmosphere of conspiracy, assassination and betrayal. When she is requested by an antique dealer to recover the chess pieces, she unwittingly enters into a mysterious game that will endanger her life. As she learns the story of the Montglane Service, she begins to realize that players of the Game may plan their moves, but their very existence makes them pawns as well.
5105821	/m/06tmskz	Patriots of Ulek	Anthony Pryor			 The adventure takes place in the Principality of Ulek in the southwestern Flanaess.
5105935	/m/0d2x86	Spellsinger	Alan Dean Foster	1983-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In a world of sentient animals and humans, the hardheaded tortoise wizard Clothahump searches across the dimensions for another kind of wizard to help defeat the looming threat posed by the armies of the Plated Folk. What he gets is Jonathon Thomas Meriweather, law student, part-time would-be rock guitarist and janitor, who finds that with the use of a unique instrument called a duar, he can perform magic by playing and choosing from his well-worn repertoire of rock. Jon-Tom, as he is called in Clothahump’s world, quickly discovers that while he might be able to use magic with his music making, the results are often unpredictable and usually humorous. Ever searching for a way to get back to Earth, Jon-Tom takes up the battle to save this world.
5106203	/m/0d2xs7	The Hour of the Gate	Alan Dean Foster	1984-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Barely accustomed to the strange new world in which he has found himself trapped, Jon-Tom accompanies the wizard Clothahump to try to mount a defense against the invasion of the monstrous insectoid Plated Folk. He and his otter companion Mudge, along with other allies gained in "Spellsinger", find themselves faced with ever more serious obstacles: From an underground river that leads to the four waterfalls known as The Earth's Throat, to the spider-silk city of the wary Weavers and their horrific arachnid queen, into the heart of Plated Folk territory, and even to the stars themselves.
5106574	/m/0d2yf9	The Day of the Dissonance	Alan Dean Foster	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jon-Tom, with the somewhat faithful otter Mudge, sets across the Glittergeist Ocean in his strange new world in order to find a magical cure for the dying wizard Clothahump. Along the way he conjures up Roseroar, an Amazonian tiger, rescues Jalwar, the ferret, and together they free Folly, a not so innocent beauty, from bondage. Jon-Tom and his motley crew press on, confronting a forest of Fungoid Frankensteins on the Muddletop Moors, a parrot pirate on the high seas, cannibal fairies in the enchanted canyon, and the evil wizard of Malderpot. They also ally with a shopkeep with a secret and a golden unicorn with his own.
5106855	/m/0d2yxl	The Moment of the Magician	Alan Dean Foster	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The wizard Clothahump described the swamps of the south as "tropical, friendly, and largely uninhabited" when he sent Jon-Tom the Spellsinger and Mudge the Otter to investigate the rising power of a new magician, Marcus the Ineluctable. Along the way they encounter warring colonies of tough-talking prairie dogs, magical mime-vines, a mammoth mountain of living muck and a hidden colony of dreaded Plated Folk.
5106948	/m/0d2z1s	Atlantis Found	R. Garcia y Robertson	1999-12-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In 7120 BC, a comet slams into North America, creating Hudson Bay, abruptly ending the last Ice Age and causing global geological and environmental upheaval. Several advanced civilizations are ended. In 1858 AD, a whaling vessel discovers a 1770s merchant ship frozen in Antarctic ice. As with most of the novels in this series, these oddly juxtaposed opening scenes become key elements to the plot as it develops. A group of U.S. scientists discover an mysterious underground chamber in Colorado and are then attacked by a group of 'tomb raiders'. The attackers leave them to drown, but luckily U.S. National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) Special Projects Director Dirk Pitt happens to be nearby and saves the scientists. The scientists were able to save an exquisitely carved skull of polished obsidian (see crystal skull). It seems unique, but curiously, another is discovered to exist&mdash;in the private collection of a descendant of the whaling sea captain from the opening scenes of the novel. Dirk and Al Giordino acquire the descendant's skull, and the two are handed over to NUMA for study and analysis. A theory develops in the organization as to whether or not they are Atlantean in origin. Al and Rudi Gunn make it to the remote island and discover another inscribed chamber that housed the second skull, and discover another larger chamber beyond it. Here, they find perfectly-mummified, pre-Hellenistic men and women, surrounded by friezes of exotic cities and strange, mythic animals. They are ambushed by 'tomb raiders' too, but manage to defeat them. Meanwhile, Pitt is aboard an icebreaker in Antarctica searching for the 1770s merchant ship. The ship is found, but Pitt narrowly escapes disaster from an attack by a German U-boat that has been missing since 1945. The U-boat is destroyed by a US nuclear submarine and Pitt recovers the body of a beautiful female officer by diving to the wreckage. At NUMA headquarters, the skulls have been examined. Inside both are geometrically exact globes. However, the continents are in different locations; Antarctica in particular is now almost temperate. Coastlines are also different, further out. The inscription symbols are fed into the computers, and translations are awaited. Pitt returns to Washington and interrupts someone stealing the latest report from the NUMA director's office. After a brief chase, Pitt overcomes the thief and discovers a beautiful twin to the U-boat officer. Blood tests of both women show not only are they genetically identical, but their systems are so resilient as to allow them a long natural lifespan. The women are relatives, but not sisters. Both women are members of the Wolf family, who in turn are descendents of Nazi escapees from Syria. The Wolfs run Destiny Enterprises, a corporation based in Argentina that is rumored to include Fourth Empire Holdings from Nazi Germany. Pitt suspects foul play. The next morning, the results are back. Apparently, the chambers are the work of a civilization calling themselves the Amenes (pronounced Ah-Meen-Eez). A nation of seafarers, traders, and wisemen, they discovered and traded with most of the world, leaving coastal towns wherever they went. However, a comet struck Earth at the end of the Pleistocene period, ending the Ice Age. This caused a world wide series of tidal waves which wiped out most of their civilization&mdash;and, thanks to the urbanization they had begun, most of their civilized contemporaries as well. The survivors were all in the uplands, and usually less advanced. However, some of the Amenes survived in isolated pockets. Banding together in a sort of priesthood, they tried to pass on their knowledge of the world, architecture, astrology, navigation, and history. However, the knowledge was transmitted inexpertly, and was twisted as a result. Depressed, the priests saved the bulk of their knowledge in a series of enclosed inland vaults, similar to the one found in Colorado, and then passed out of history. But the comet which obliterated their society had a twin. According to their impressive mathematical models, the twin would return in some 9,000 years&mdash;in other words, soon&mdash;and produce similar results. The data is passed on to an observatory for analysis. Around this time, Dirk meets Karl Wolf, the C.E.O. of Destiny Enterprises Limited, who is a direct descendant of Ulrich Wolff, Colonel of the S.S. When Dirk mentions the potential catastrophe, and the loss of life it will entail, Wolf gives and answer that seems to imply that his family may actually be planning to capitalize on the disaster. The data from the observatory comes back: the prophecy is false. The comet will actually return to Earth in another few millennia and miss the planet entirely. Pondering Wolf's comment, NUMA researchers note that Destiny is putting a lot of capital into a series of vast ships. The Wolfs have created four superships to save themselves from the cataclysm, and everything required for a future civilization. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino take a tour of one of the ships, while rescuing again one of the Colorado scientists, who was captured for her ability to decipher the Amenes inscriptions. As well as this, information linked to a nanotech research facility in Antarctica comes to light. According to some sources, the facility is built on the ruins of an Amenes city found there by Nazi archeologists before World War II. It was intended as a submarine base, but never used. The plan ultimately comes to light: the villains intend to use nanotechnology to separate the Ross Ice Shelf from the Antarctic mainland. The loss of such a large mass will destabilize the ocean currents of the southern hemisphere, and unbalance the planet (Pole shift theory). In the resulting wave of earthquakes and tsunami, the population would be decimated, and civilization would collapse. Dirk and his friends travel there immediately, but their transport breaks down. They encounter a rich eccentric named 'Dad' (Clive Cussler) who is there with a team to recover the gargantuan Antarctic Snow Cruiser left there in 1940 during Admiral Byrd's third Antarctic expedition. Using the Snow Cruiser, they are able to make it the rest of the way to the villains' base in the ancient Amenes city. There, they deactivate the nanotechnology with minutes to spare, and the authorities arrive to secure the base. Dirk forces Karl Wolf and his relatives to leave the base on foot in the middle of a blizzard, and they die of hypothermia soon afterwards.
5107401	/m/0d2znm	The Paths of the Perambulator	Alan Dean Foster	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The strange world Jon-Tom has found himself trapped in takes a turn for the decidedly weird as Foster’s fantasy series take a page from Kafka's The Metamorphosis when the Spellsinger wakes up one morning as a giant crab. The cause, as determined by the turtle wizard Clothahump, is a trapped perambulator: an inter-dimensional creature that wanders through different universes leaving behind random changes to the fabric of the world. Jon-Tom and his friends attempt to free the perambulator before it wreaks permanent havoc on their world.
5107634	/m/0d2z_5	Blue Moon	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Blue Moon takes place in the apparently fictional town of Myerton, Tennessee. Richard, still recovering from Anita's rejection in The Killing Dance, has been in Myerton for some time, studying a local group of trolls as part of the requirements for his masters degree, and auditioning the women of the local werewolf tribe as possible lupas. The plot begins when Anita receives a call from Richard's brother Daniel. Daniel explains that Richard has been arrested for an alleged rape, and is refusing to hire a lawyer. Anita leaves for Myerton, over the objection of the local Master of the City, with Asher, Damian, and most of the wereleopards as backup. Once there, Anita must simultaneously attempt to uncover why local police have framed Richard and deal with Colin, the local Master of the City, who views her arrival as an act of war. Ultimately, Anita destroys most of Colin's vampires by activating the lupanar of the local werewolf clan, rendering it holy ground, and kills Colin herself by shooting Colin's human servant, Nikki. In the course of her various rituals, Anita ends up having sex with Richard, and they agree that Anita will begin dating both Richard and Jean-Claude. Anita also learns that Richard had discussed her with Jean-Claude and had obliquely asked Jean-Claude whether he would accept Anita taking Richard as a lover. Anita meets Marianne, a Wiccan practitioner who works with Verne's pack. Marianne advises Anita on building the wereleopards into a coherent group. Anita also has a long talk with Damien, and discovers that Jean-Claude gains power from lust and sex. Not only can he feed on the patrons of his strip club Guilty Pleasures, but on sex with Anita, or Anita having sex with Richard. She and Richard discover that the rape charges were an effort by art collector Frank Niley to drive Richard's study project from the area, allowing them to acquire some contested land and complete Niley's search for the Spear of Destiny. In desperation, Niley kidnaps and brutalizes Richard's mother and brother, causing Anita to cross another moral line, torturing Niley's messenger and killing everyone responsible.
5108039	/m/0d2_r7	9tail Fox	Jon Courtenay Grimwood	2005-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot centres around Bobby Zha, a Sergeant at the fictional SFPD Chinatown station in San Francisco. The claimed shooting of a burglar by eleven-year-old Natalie Persikov conflicts with Zha's intuition on the matter, but before he has a real chance to investigate he is shot himself. After meeting the Jinwei hu (the nine-tailed fox of the title) while dead, Bobby wakes up in a hospital. However, there are a few surprises for him on waking; not least that apparently he isn't Bobby Zha anymore. The doctors tell him he's in New York, not San Francisco; he was never shot; and that he's Robert Van Berg, sole survivor of a car crash that killed both his parents and put him into a coma since he was seven. Now adult and sole inheritor of his family's considerable fortune, Bobby wastes no time in getting back to the West Coast to investigate. In between looking into the case of his own murder, finding out what really happened at the Persikov's house and following up the leads from his contacts among the homeless of San Francisco, Bobby becomes increasingly concerned over his own identity. Changing identities at a whim&nbsp;— an FBI agent, a CIA investigator, a special forces agent direct from the White House&nbsp;— he questions his old acquaintances about Sergeant Zha, finding out more about himself than he ever knew. The novel is set "a few years in the future", and frequently references Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov. Grimwood notes in the Acknowledgments that "the choice of Persikov for Dr Misha's surname is entirely intentional."
5109121	/m/0d31dk	Bloomability	Sharon Creech	1998-09-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dinnie Doone has spent most of her life traveling around the United States because her father is transiently employed. Dinnie feels that she has settled into this routine of never having a permanent home until one night, her whole world changes. With her older brother in the Air Force after ending up in jail again, her older sister pregnant and married, and her dad still on the road for yet another home, Dinnie is taken away by her maternal aunt and her husband to Switzerland, where Uncle Max (her uncle) is the new headmaster of an international boarding school. Dinnie becomes a student at the school, where she makes friends, sees new, exciting things, and has many adventures of her own. She befriends a girl named Lila, who at first seems nice but then starts complaining a lot, but Dinnie still really likes her. Dinnie also has a friend named Guthrie, a spontaneous and fun-loving "fantastico!" person. She also gets to know Keisuke and Belen, a Japanese boy and a Spanish girl, who love each other but their parents are not supportive of their relationship. The group is later joined by an Italian girl named Mari. During a "going-away" party for Lila, Lila and Guthrie get trapped in an avalanche and are saved because Dinnie watched where they fell and is thus able to locate them. Both of them survive and make a full recovery. Intersperced in the novel are Dinnie's diary entries, postcards from her two paternal aunts informing Dinnie of what is happening with her family, and Dinnie's various attempts to communicate to the local community using signs at her window that she wants to return home. However, as the year progresses, Dinnie begins to thrive in the diverse environment and the stability of remaining in one place. At the end of the year, Dinnie's aunt and uncle give her a choice: Go home to America for the summer and come back in the fall, or go back to America permanently. It is never said what her decision was, but Dinnie keeps her skis in the closet so that she will have to come back someday.
5111325	/m/0d340r	Medicine River	Thomas King	1989		 Medicine River chronicles the lives of a group of contemporary First Nations people in Western Canada. The novel is divided into eighteen short chapters. The story is recounted by the protagonist, Will Sampson, in an amiable, conversational fashion, with frequent flashbacks to earlier portions of his life. In the novel, Medicine River, Thomas King creates a story of a little community to reflect the whole native nation. A simple return of Will's makes the little town seem to be more colourful. "Medicine River makes non-native readers think a little longer and harder about the lives of the first people they live among and the places they inhabit." Although Will enters the town as a foreigner, he eventually becomes part of the community. Medicine River shows the history of Canada and teaches readers to learn from the past experience in order to become better people. Will meets Louise who becomes an unfulfilled love interest that very much represents Will's existence, a series of half-fulfilled expectations. That is, he develops an ongoing relationship with Louise and her daughter, South Wing, for whom Will becomes a kind of father-figure. It has been included on the high school reading curriculum in many Canadian jurisdictions. One advisor writes, "It is a humorously told 'homecoming novel' that echoes an oral storytelling style, yet at the same time, debunks any kind of stereotypical 'cultural voice.' Although the protagonist is a middle-aged man, the novel is appropriate for young people, simply because of the way it is written, drawing in any audience."
5111769	/m/0d34r3	Chinese Cinderella	Adeline Yen Mah	1999-09-07	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Adeline's family considers her as bad luck and they don't pay attention to her throughout her early childhood. This is the story of her struggle for acceptance and how she overcomes the odds to prove her worth. Born the fifth child to a wealthy Chinese family, Adeline's life begins tragically. Adeline's mother died three days after her birth due to complications bought on by the delivery, and in Chinese culture she is considered as bad luck. This situation is compounded by her father's new marriage to a lady who has little affection for her husband's five children. She displays overt antagonism and distrust towards all of the children, particularly Adeline, while favoring her own younger son and daughter born soon after the marriage. The book outlines Adeline's struggle to find a place where she feels she belongs. Denied love from her parents, she finds some solace in relationships with her grandfather (Ye Ye) and her Aunt Baba, but they are taken from her. Adeline immerses herself in striving for academic achievement in the hope of winning favour, but also for its own rewards as she finds great pleasure in words and scholarly success. Adeline progresses through various situations in life, from boarding school to studies abroad.
5111971	/m/0d34_f	Against the Cult of the Reptile God			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The adventure takes place on the border between the Gran March and the Kingdom of Keoland in the western Flanaess. It is one of the most challenging of the early AD&D modules, featuring a mystery that leads to adventures in town, the wilderness and a dungeon. The scenario details the village and the cult's dungeon caves. The player characters arrive in the village of Orlane, where they are met with mixed reactions. Some villagers are friendly towards the characters, whereas some are distant and others are very suspcious and guarded. The characters realize that something is amiss, and have to find out what. They find that Orlane is being plagued by an evil cult, and the characters have to stop the cult.
5117506	/m/0d3g5g	The Time of the Transference	Alan Dean Foster	1987	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nothing is forever in the magical world Jon-Tom has found himself trapped in and as such the duar he uses to create his music-based magic breaks after a battle to save Clothahump from a group of house burglars. He does this by accidentally stepping on a fallen left behind battle axe, cutting himself, and falling back onto the duar and breaking it. The need to find an expert capable of repairing the rare instrument sets Jon-Tom off on another adventure where he and his friend the otter Mudge search for a repair shop for his instrument, along the way they encounter pirates, cannibals, talkative porpoises, a flying horse who is scared of heights and a beautiful female otter, Weegee, who becomes the target of Mudge’s amorous intentions. On the way, Jon-Tom accidentally finds a way back to Earth - to Texas, to be exact - and some of the anthropomorphic animals of his new world, including some very nasty characters, cross over as well. After some unpleasant experiences with American criminals and police, Jon-Tom takes the unequivocal decision to go back to what he realizes is now his true home.
5117620	/m/0d3gb9	Son of Spellsinger	Alan Dean Foster	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Rather than become a spellsinger like his father Jon-Tom, teenage Buncan decides to do his own thing, and puts together a band with Mudge and Weegee’s children that features rap music. Unfortunately for them it is Buncan and his band who possess the power to battle the sinister Grand Veritable.
5118058	/m/0d3h1z	Chorus Skating	Alan Dean Foster	1994	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 To avoid boredom, Spellsinger Jon-Tom and his faithful otter companion, Mudge, embark on a quest that seems to have no end. They rescue a gaggle of spoiled princesses, wage war on a guerrilla gorilla, and escape from a mocking maelstrom before getting on the wrong side of an evil alien band.
5118697	/m/0d3hwm	Settling Accounts: In at the Death	Harry Turtledove	2007-07-27	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The United States campaigns mirror Sherman's march to the sea as U.S. armies drive through the center of the Confederacy, while a second U.S. force drives into Virginia to capture Richmond. The Confederacy (with some quiet help from Great Britain) manages to produce a fission bomb. The bomb is smuggled via truck into the de facto U.S. capital of Philadelphia, and detonated; however, the bomb explodes only on the city's outskirts and does not damage any government buildings. In retaliation, the United States drops nuclear bombs on Newport News, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina. The Newport News bomb narrowly misses Confederate President Jake Featherston. Texas declares independence from the Confederacy and signs a separate peace with the United States. Jake Featherston attempts to escape to the Deep South but his plane is shot down. He survives the crash landing, only to be caught and killed by a black guerrillero, Cassius. The fourth and presumably final war between the United States and Confederate States ends officially on July 14, 1944, at 6:01 p.m after an unconditional surrender is signed between General Irving Morrell and the acting Confederate President Don Partridge. The United States commences a full occupation of the former Confederate States and Canada, though Texas apparently remains independent but still hosts American soldiers in its territory. For the first time in almost a century, the Stars and Stripes flies over the whole of the pre-1861 United States territory, and Americans express their determination never to let go of the former Confederate territories, after Featherston came so close to crushing them. The Confederates are bitter and far from being reconciled to their fate; they constantly attack the occupying US forces, despite grim retaliations including the execution of civilian hostages. Though outlawed, the Freedom Party is still very much an active underground force. Moreover, the United States itself - while dissolving the Confederate government and declaring its firm intention never to let it rise again - refrains from any formal annexation and (re)admitting Southern states to the Union, since any free elections would likely fill Congress with the United States' most staunch enemies. Rather, the former Confederate territories are left in the same legal limbo in which Canada has been since 1917, being offered neither independence nor civil liberties and kept under an open-ended, harsh military rule. Despite the enormous victory won by the US, the war has not truly ended, but rather changed its form. To their chagrin, most of the soldiers and sailors conscripted "for the duration" are not discharged but set to occupation duty. The US is faced with the daunting task of keeping under indefinite harsh military occupation vast rebellious territories with hostile populations, with the conquered Confederate territories being added to the previously held Canadian ones, as well as the smaller Mormon Utah. And at the same time, the Nuclear Age has been launched with the destruction of three cities in America and six in Europe, and a fast scramble to obtain nuclear arms by powers not yet possessing them. The United States and Germany are determined in trying to prevent Russia and Japan from going nuclear, but these efforts are apparently doomed to failure; moreover, these erstwhile allies themselves seem likely to drift into a Cold War, glaring at each other across the Atlantic. Moreover, aside from the nuclear issue, Japan is presenting an unresolved problem to the US - having won the Battle of Midway, consolidated its hold on the Western Pacific and Eastern Asia and established a concrete threat to Australia. Having to deal with the Confederacy - either as a belligerent neighbor or as a rebellious occupied territory - the US can spare only limited resources for confronting Japan, and the idea of "an island-hopping campaign" across the Pacific is rejected out of hand by one character.
5120386	/m/0d3lzj	Battledragon	Christopher Rowley	1995-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Masters of Padmasa have started using a great new terror on the world of Ryetelth, not magic but technology; on the southern continent of Eigo they have begun building cannons that could break the military might of the Argonathi Dragon Legions. To help fight this new threat, the Argonath Empire enlists the aid of western kingdom of Czardha and their horse mounted armored knights. On the southern continent the combined armies find victory when they destroy the enemies’ cannons and factory, but at a very high price for the armies are nearly devastated. In pursuit of the Master Heruta they track him to his lair inside a volcano that erupts during the final battle. Bazil and Relkin survive, but are separated from the rest of the Legion in a strange land.
5121633	/m/0d3nry	The Dragon Token	Melanie Rawn	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Pol is torn between anger and guilt at his father's death and relief that he can finally act out against the invading Vellant'im. As he and his mother, Sioned, try to uncover more about the invaders, they discover hidden secrets within an ancient mirror that had belonged to Sioned's old friend, Camigwen. An ancient sorcerer, Lord Rosseyn, is trapped within the mirror. Rosseyn tells Pol of his past and teaches him more about his sorcerous heritage. Meanwhile, Pol's wife and daughters are attacked by the Vellant'im. High Princess Meiglan and Rislyn are taken captive, but Andry, who had been travelling from Goddess Keep, saves Jihan. The southern princedoms are slowly being reclaimed,although many lives are lost, including Prince Kostas of Syr and Rihani of Ossetia. The Dorvali resistance mounts raids on the enemy, preventing them from joining the forces on the Continent, and Kierst-Isel remains secure. Goddess Keep is guarded by the Devr'im in Andry's absence. Other princedoms, such as Grib and Fessenden, have so far remained neutral, but ambitious and/or devoted Princes try to rouse their fathers and their people. In Firon the sorcerers capture the royal seat in Balarat and control the princedom through young Prince Tirel. Idalain, Tirel's squire in the absence of the boy's father, tries to protect the boy, but is forced to pretend he is unaware that the princedom is being overtaken. Yarin, a sorcerer and Tirel's uncle, names himself Regent of Firon. In order to keep Idalain busy, Yarin orders the squire to teach his kinsman, Aldiar, swordplay. As the Vellanti War continues, Pol, his family, and allies must hurry to discover a weakness in their enemies and must overcome past hatreds in order to work together.
5121642	/m/0d3ns8	Skybowl	Melanie Rawn	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the death toll rises and Pol's list of allies grows ever thinner, he must work with people once thought enemies and join all the forces of the Continent together in order to defeat the Vellant'im. Pol discovers allies in the Sorcerers of the Old Blood, who will help him defeat the invading Vellant'im. With this new found strength and the knowledge gained from Lord Rosseyn in the mirror, Pol, Sioned, and the other Lords of the Desert begin to form a plan for their last stand. A ros'alath, much like the one used previously at Goddess Keep, would be constructed by Pol and Andry with the aide of the Sunrunners of Goddess Keep. The main difference between the two walls being that this one would not kill. The diarmadh'im would be woven into the wall in order to withstand the steel blades of the enemies and protect the faradh'im, though they refused to be wove by Andry due to the Lord of Goddess Keep's transgressions against them. In Firon, Aldiar helps Idalian and Tirel escape. He then saves them and Prince Laric's entourage from a blizzard. During the journey to Balarat, Firon's royal seat, Aldiar discovers that Rohannon had become addicted to dranath. With Arlis' permission, Aldiar purges the drug from Rohannon's system. Rohannon then discovers that Aldiar is in fact a sorcerer and a woman, Aldiara. After Rohannon's recovery, the group makes their way North to reclaim Laric's princedom. To the South, Ostvel is able to infiltrate Meadowlord and secure the princedom from both the traitorous Chiana and the Vellant'im. Tilal's army meets up with the remnants of his brother's army, now led by ,Saumer of Kierst-Isel, and together they head North into the Desert. Along the way they stop to retrieve the Dragon Tears, which were used to protect Faolain Riverport. Prince Amiel of Gilad takes control of an army of physicians and aides whatever people he can. Prince Elsen of Grib, although crippled, rides to the aide of Goddess Keep, when it once again falls under attack. These Princes, along with other personages of power, joined the war at last, forsaking their Ruling Princes' stances of neutrality. Back in The Desert, Sioned and the other ladies form a plan to diminish the Vellanti army and rid the invaders of their superstitious priests. The women pose as servants, while Ruala 'gives' Skybowl to the Vellanti High Warlord. The women then proceed to give the priests poisoned food. The priests die, but the women are caught and held captive. The final battle begins. Pol is able to free Sioned, who is able to weave all the faradhi and diarmadhi minds that Pol calls together. Andry and his Sunrunners are also in the weaving. The ros'salath is formed, but a call for blood is heard and dragons enter the weaving. Andry wrests control from Pol, and the ros'salath begins to kill. Pol calls on more minds in an attempt to regain control. Aldiar (really Aldiara) offers Pol access to all the sorcerers' minds in Balarat - her kinsmen. With this new strength of diarmadhi minds, Pol is able to overpower Andry. The ros'salath stops killing; instead it renders nearly all the Vellant'im unconscious. Seeing his army crumble, the High Warlord kills Meiglan. Pol, enraged, kills him. Andry, whose mind had been stretched between this weaving, Goddess Keep, and a dragon, is lost on the light. To the North, Aldiara, Rohannon, and her kinsmen are immobile. Prince Laric is easily able to reclaim his princedom. In the end, the Vellant'im are all rounded up and shipped back to the Vellanti Islands, along with Chiana and her son, who had aided them. Ostvel is named Prince of Meadowlord and Chayla is named Lady of Goddess Keep. Pol is officially confirmed as High Prince, the Faradh'rei and the Diarmadh'rei.
5122263	/m/0d3ps6	Doña Bárbara	Rómulo Gallegos		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Santos Luzardo, a graduate lawyer of the Central University of Venezuela, returns to his father's land in the plains of Apure to sell the land but desists when he discovers that it is controlled by a despotic woman, Doña Bárbara, also known as the men's devourer; it is said that she uses seduction and pacts with demonic spirits to satisfy her whims and achieve power. Santos Luzardo meets his cousin Lorenzo Barquero and discovers that he was a victim of the femme fatale, who left him bankrupt and a daughter, Marisela, whom she abandoned and who became quickly a vagrant. Lorenzo lives in poverty in a miserable house consumed by his own constant drunkenness. Doña Bárbara falls in love with Santos Luzardo but he is charmed by Marisela, no longer living in abandonment and taken under Luzardo’s care. The novel ends with the “defeat” of Doña Bárbara, who is able to obtain neither the land nor Luzardo’s heart, and finally departs to an unknown location.
5122434	/m/0d3q20	Catriona	Robert Louis Stevenson	1893	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book begins precisely where Kidnapped ends, at 2 PM on 25 August 1751 outside the British Linen Company in Edinburgh, Scotland. The first part of the book recounts the attempts of the hero, David Balfour, to gain justice for James Stewart (James of the Glens), who has been arrested and charged with complicity in the Appin Murder. David makes a statement to a lawyer and goes on to meet Lord Prestongrange, the Lord Advocate, to press the case for James' innocence. However, his attempts fail as he is once again kidnapped and confined on the Bass Rock, an island in the Firth of Forth, until the trial is over, and James condemned to death. David also meets and falls in love with Catriona MacGregor Drummond, the daughter of James MacGregor Drummond, known as James More, also held in prison, whose escape she engineers. He also receives some education in the manners and morals of polite society from Barbara Grant, the daughter of Prestongrange. In the second part, David and Catriona travel to Holland, where David studies law at the University of Leyden. David takes Catriona under his protection (she having no money) until her father finds them. James More eventually arrives and proves something of a disappointment, drinking a great deal and showing no compunction against living off of David's largesse. At this time, David learns of the death of his uncle Ebenezer, and thus gains knowledge that he has come into his full, substantial inheritance. David and Catriona, fast friends at this point, begin a series of misunderstandings that eventually drive her and James More away, though with David sending payment to James in return for news of Catriona's welfare. James and Catriona find their way to Dunkirk in northern France. Meanwhile, Alan Breck joins David in Leyden, and he berates David for not understanding women. It’s this way about a man and a woman, ye see, Davie: The weemenfolk have got no kind of reason to them. Either they like the man, and then a’ goes fine; or else they just detest him, and ye may spare your breath - ye can do naething. There’s just the two sets of them - them that would sell their coats for ye, and them that never look the road ye’re on. That’s a’ that there is to women; and you seem to be such a gomeral that ye cannae tell the tane frae the tither. Prodded thus, and at an invitation from James More, David and Alan journey to Dunkirk to visit with James and Catriona. They all meet one evening at a remote inn, and discover the following day that James has betrayed Alan (falsely convicted of the Appin murder) into the hands of a British warship anchored near the shore. The British attempt to capture Alan, who flees with David and Catriona, now reconciled and shamed by James More&#39;s ignominy. The three flee to Paris where David and Catriona are married before eventually returning to Scotland to raise a family.
5128402	/m/0d4206	Curse of the Mistwraith	Janny Wurts	1994-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Born on a splinter world, Lysaer and Arithon are half-brothers raised apart in enmity. Cast through a Worldsend Gate, they arrive in Athera, the ancient world of their ancestors cloaked in the fog of the malicious Mistwraith. Found by the Fellowship of Seven and urged to fulfill a prophecy which will free Athera from the Mistwraith and allow the clans of the Old Bloodlines to rule again. Putting aside their differences in the new world, the brothers find common cause and through paired gifts of light and shadow, succeed in binding the Mistwraith with help from the Fellowship. Unbeknownst to the brothers and their Sorcerer guides, one wraith escaped containment and seeks retribution against the two. During Arithon's crowning as Athera's first High King in more than five hundred years, the wraith binds Lysaer into irrational hatred of his half-brother, a curse he transfers to Arithon after the botched ceremony. Rather than succumb to the curse, Arithon flees into a winter storm, finding solace in the outlawed clans dwelling in the forest. Lysaer gathers an army to follow Arithon, led by the vicious bounty hunters who capture, kill and sell members of the clans. Though initially resistant to the idea of leading a guerilla war against the army, Arithon reluctantly assumes command upon realizing it is the only alternative to the extinction of the clans. The battles that ensue exact horrific slaughter on both sides, eventually resulting in a stalemate that forces Lysaer to withdraw without killing his brother. Arithon in turn has his mage-gift crippled through guilt. While Lysaer returns to the cities to muster a greater army and more support for his fratricidal war, Arithon becomes apprenticed to Athera's Masterbard, departing the clans in disguise.
5131160	/m/0d45h9	The Tumbled House				 At the heart of the novel is a libel case: however, despite the potential dullness of such a subject, the author weaves a suspenseful plot with many strands that drives the reader on in excited anticipation. Roger Shorn is a successful journalist. Elegant and clever, he has a way with the ladies. He introduces an old flame, Joanna, to his friend, Don Marlowe, and the two subsequently marry. One evening two years later Roger drives Joanna to the cottage of her deceased father-in-law, Sir John Marlowe. They are en route to London after visiting mutual friends, and they re-kindle their affair. However, they are seen by a woman who is viewed fleetingly by Joanna through the window. Don returns from a trip abroad, and before long his father's reputation is being attacked in a Sunday newspaper. The author goes by the name "Moonraker" and his identity is unknown. Don is unable to sue, as the attack is on a dead man. Don has a younger sister, Bennie, an air hostess. She meets Michael, Roger's only son, and he falls in love with her. Over the course of a few rather hectic dates, (in which it is evident Michael is mixing with the "wrong" crowd), Bennie discovers by chance that Roger Shorn is "Moonraker." This discovery allows Don to start libelling Roger, in the hope that he sues him. In that way, Don is able to at least attempt to clear his father's name. Roger will be forced to prove what he wrote was true. Unfortunately, Joanna realises that this could be the end of her marriage, especially when the fleetingly glanced woman proves to be a key witness. She also now understands why Roger wanted to go to the cottage, to obtain important papers that would help him write his article. Michael, meanwhile, is frustrated at his lack of money, and wants the best for Bennie. This leads him into crime, and a tragic outcome for both of them. Subsequently the case ends badly for both men, but they both lose far more than they could have imagined at the outset.
5133061	/m/0d485p	Miss Hickory	Carolyn Sherwin Bailey	1946	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist is Miss Hickory, a doll made from a forked twig from an apple tree and a hickory nut for her head (hence her name). She lives in a tiny doll house made of corncobs outside the home of her human owners. Her world is shaken when the family decides to spend the winter in Boston, Massachusetts, but leave her behind. Miss Hickory is aided during the long cold winter by several farm and forest animals. Prickly and a little stubborn, she slowly learns to accept help from others, and to offer some assistance herself.
5133421	/m/0d48yt	The Country of the Pointed Firs	Sarah Orne Jewett			 The narrator returns after a brief visit a few summers prior, to the small coastal town of Dunnet, Maine, in order to finish writing her book. Upon arriving she settles in with Mrs. Todd, a local elderly apothecary or herbalist. The narrator begins to work for Mrs. Todd when Mrs. Todd goes out, but this distracts the narrator from her writing. She rents an empty schoolhouse, so she can concentrate on her writing. After a funeral, Captain Littlepage, an 80-year-old retired sailor, comes to the schoolhouse to visit the narrator because he knows Mrs. Todd. He tells a story about his time on the sea and she is noticeably bored so he begins to leave. She sees that she has offended him with her display of boredom, so she covers her tracks by asking him to tell her more of his story. The Captain's story cannot compare to the stories that Mrs. Todd, Mrs. Todd's brother and mother, and residents of Dunnet tell of their lives in Dunnet. The narrator's friendship with Mrs. Todd strengthens over the course of the summer, and the narrator's appreciation of the Maine coastal town increases each day.
5135300	/m/0d4cmw	Harm's Way	James Bassett	1962	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 A regular Naval officer in the Pacific theater is assigned to command an operation to seize a group of strategic islands from the Japanese. The attack on Pearl Harbor catches the United States Navy unawares. They include Captain Rockwell Torrey, commanding a heavy cruiser known only as Old Swayback (an obvious reference to the U.S.S. Salt Lake City - CA-25), which is off the Hawaiian coast near Pearl Harbor, running another set of exercises in a long string of them. Lieutenant (juniot grade) William "Mac" McConnell is assigned as Officer of the Day aboard the destroyer, USS Cassiday, tied up in a shallower channel of the harbor, not all that far from Battleship Row. When the attack comes, Lieutenant McConnell takes his ship out of the harbor, leaving his captain and executive officer behind, and eventually joins a scratch task group assembled around Torrey's cruiser. Torrey leads his task group on a seek-out-and-destroy mission. When the ships approach the end of their fuel, Torrey orders them to steer a straight course. That makes the group vulnerable to attack. A Japanese sub scores two torpedo hits on Old Swayback before Cassiday can sink the sub with depth charges. Back at Pearl Harbor, Torrey is relieved of his command and faces a Board of Inquiry that could lead to a Court-Martial, but when Admiral Chester Nimitz arrives to take command in the Pacific theater, he makes sure that Torrey will have a position on his planning staff. Torrey's officers scatter to various points in the Pacific theater, with his old exec, Paul Eddington, assigned to an unrewarding post at an old Free French base on the island of Toulebonne. Torrey drifts into a romance with a Navy nurse named Maggie Haynes; this romance is interrupted only briefly by the alert ordered during the Battle of Midway. Eventually, Torrey and his roommate, Captain Egan Powell, USNR, are invited to dinner at Nimitz's house, where Nimitz personally presents Torrey with the pair of Rear Admiral (lower half) stars Nimitz had worn before taking command as CinCPAC and announces that he is to go into the Pacific theater to take personal command of an operation, called Mesquite, that has ground to a halt because of the inept micro-management by the area commander. Torrey lands on the island of Gavabutu, about three hundred miles west of Toulebonne (where the area commander is headquartered), and immediately makes the area commander his enemy by planning an operation to drive the Japanese off Gavabutu immediately. This operation succeeds, and Torrey turns his attention to his next target: Levu-Vana, a much sought-after island having a central plain large enough to build runways for B-17 bombers. He learns that the Japanese want to stay on Levu-Vana. Torrey's repeated attempts to get more materiel for his mission end in failure, largely because the Navy is sending most of its heavy tonnage to the Solomon Islands to support General Douglas MacArthur. Torrey presses on anyway; during the battle, enemy fire sinks his ship, and falling wreckage strikes him and knocks him unconscious. He wakes up aboard a hospital ship under the care of his lover, Maggie Haynes, initially believing that he has lost the battle and sacrificed his ships to no good purpose, until the general commanding his landing forces informs him that he is in control of Levu-Vana, that Torrey's battle was a success, and that no less than Admiral Ernest King has praised him highly for his efforts. Torrey submits to the ministrations of Maggie Haynes—who, in the last scene, prepares to shave his face using his prized seven-blade set of German straight razors, which his rescuers preserved and returned to him.
5137338	/m/0d4gkp	Ender in Exile: Ganges	Orson Scott Card	2008-11-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 One year after the Formics were defeated and the Battle School children have returned to Earth, Ender is still unable to go back to earth because there would be wars over which country would keep Ender to use for their own ends. Ender is offered the Governorship of the first human colony to be planted on one of the Formics' former worlds, a planet that will eventually become known as Shakespeare. His sister Valentine decides to accompany Ender on his journey because she is sick of being controlled by her older brother, Peter, and because she wants to restore the relationship with Ender that she had lost when he left to go to Battle School. On their way to the Shakespeare colony, Valentine begins writing her History of the Bugger Wars books while Ender has an unspoken power struggle with the Captain of the ship, Admiral Quincy Morgan. Once the ship lands on Shakespeare, Ender, who had spent much of his trip learning the names and lives of the colony's residents, takes charge of the colony and wins the colonists over. Ender resides as Governor for a few years in Shakespeare. Near the end of his time as governor, Ender and a young boy from the colony named Abra go to find a site for a new shipment of colonists. Ender wants the new settlement to be far enough away from the other settlements that there will not be competition between them right away, and so they can develop separately. In the process of finding a location for new settlement, Ender stumbles upon what seems to be the equivalent of a note from the Formics. It is a structure made to look like a game he used to play in Battle School. When Ender goes to investigate the structure, he finds the living pupa of a Formic Hive Queen that is fertilized and prepared to make hundreds of thousands of offspring upon its own maturation. The find leads Ender to write his first book as the Speaker for the Dead. It is a book titled The Hive Queen and it tries to look at the Formic wars and their eventual destruction from the point of view of the Formics. Later, Peter Wiggin, nearing the end of his life and knowing that Ender wrote the story, asks him to write one for him for when he dies. This book becomes known as The Hegemon. After this, Ender resigns as Governor of Shakespeare and leaves the colony for another called Ganges. The leader of Ganges is Virlomi. Here he encounters Randall Firth who believes himself to be the son of Achilles de Flandres, and even refers to himself by the name Achilles. Randall spreads propaganda accusing Ender of Xenocide in an attempt to discredit Virlomi and get revenge against Peter Wiggin, who he believes is responsible for his father's defeat. Randall tries twice to meet with Ender and discredit him somehow. On the second visit his plan is to cleverly provoke Ender into killing him so that people will see how violent and dangerous he is, but Ender does not attack. Instead Ender tries to convince Randall that he is not Achilles' son, but that he is in fact the son of Bean and Petra; hence where he gets his gigantism from. Eventually, Ender manages to convince Randall of his parents' identity by allowing Randall to brutally defeat him in a one-sided fistfight, the entire time asserting that he could never hurt his friends' child. Randall ends up changing his name to Arkanian Delphiki amidst his guilt for Ender's horrifying wounds. After Ender heals a bit, he, Valentine, and the Hive Queen pupa board a star ship to go to a new place.
5137649	/m/0d4h3n	See How They Run	Philip King			 The play is set in 1943 for the original (or shortly after the end of World War II in the rewrite) in the living room of the vicarage at the fictitious village of Merton-cum-Middlewick (merging various actual village names, such as Merton and Middlewick, both in Oxfordshire, along with the old British usage of 'cum', meaning 'alongside' in the middle of a village name, as in Chorlton-cum-Hardy). The lead character is Penelope Toop, former actress and now wife of the local vicar, the Rev. Lionel Toop. The Toops employ Ida, a Cockney maid. Miss Skillon, a churchgoer of the parish and a scold, arrives on bicycle to gossip with the vicar and to complain about the latest 'outrages' that Penelope has caused. The vicar then leaves for the night, and an old friend of Penelope's, Lance-Corporal Clive Winton, stops by on a quick visit. In order to dodge army regulations, he changes from his uniform into Lionel's second-best suit, complete with a clerical 'dog-collar' in order to see a production of "Private Lives" (a Noël Coward play in which they had appeared together in their acting days), while pretending to be the visiting vicar Arthur Humphrey who is due to preach the Sunday sermon the next day. Just before they set out, Penelope and Clive re-enact a fight scene from "Private Lives" and accidentally knock Miss Skillon (who has come back unannounced) unconscious. Miss Skillon, wrongly thinking she has seen Lionel fighting with Penelope, gets drunk on a bottle of cooking sherry and Ida hides her in the broom cupboard. Then Lionel, arriving back, is knocked silly by a Russian spy on the run, who takes the vicar's clothes as a disguise. To add to the confusion, both Penelope's uncle, the Bishop of Lax, and the real Humphrey unexpectedly show up early. Chaos quickly ensues, culminating in a cycle of running figures and mistaken identities. In the end, a police sergeant arrives in search of the spy to find four suspects, Lionel, Clive, Humphrey and the Russian, all dressed as clergy. No one can determine the identity of the spy (or anyone else for that matter) and the Russian is almost free when he is revealed and foiled by the quick work of Clive and Ida. The scene calms down as the sergeant leads the spy away and Humphrey leaves. Miss Skillon emerges from the closet, and she, the Bishop and Lionel demand an explanation. Penelope and Clive begin to explain in two-part harmony, getting up to the scene from "Private Lives," when Miss Skillon again manages to catch a blow in the face. She falls back into Ida's arms as the curtain falls.
5139818	/m/0d4lk9	All-Consuming Fire	Andy Lane		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Sherlock Holmes finds himself united with the Seventh Doctor to solve the mystery of the theft of arcane tomes from The Library of St. John the Beheaded. Susan Foreman, the First Doctor, and the Third Doctor have cameo appearances.
5140181	/m/0d4mbv	Terminator Gene	Ian Irvine	2003-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 - "Security knocks at the door and Irith Hardey's world is torn apart. - Her mother, Jemma, is arrested for an unspecified crime and disappears. Irith, a young gene researcher, is thrown onto the streets. With nothing but the clothes on her back, she fights to survive in a cruel and predatory world. - - The sexually inexperienced Irith soon falls prey to the mysterious Bragg. He spirits her away to a Britain slowly collapsing under the sanctions of the Global Congress. There she is flung into a violent battle between Security and a cabal of rebels, only to find herself caught up in the rebels' underground assault on a Congress data centre. They steal files containing the code for a deadly terminator virus, but no one can decipher it. - - Hunted through the flooded tunnels under the London Docklands, the group flees to New Orleans, slowly drowning under the rising seas, to destroy the laboratory where the virus is being made. As the hurricane of the century bears down on the sinking city, Irith struggles to crack the secret of the virus before it wipes out all humanity."
5140206	/m/0d4mdk	Endymion Spring: Open the Book that Unlocks the Secret	Matthew Skelton	2006-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Endymion Spring has a double storyline. The first story follows two children in current day Oxford, Blake and Duck Winters. Blake is twelve years old and his sister is a few years younger. The two happen to come across a strange book in a library in Oxford, which is entitled Endymion Spring. After finding out that it leads to a book of all the knowledge in the world, all the knowledge Adam and Eve tried to obtain from eating of that forbidden tree of knowledge but lost, they then embark on a quest to find it. However, when they do, the story then becomes a battle against the Person in Shadow, a person whose heart has turned black with evil and desire for the knowledge and power of the book. The second story line follows the journey of a young printer’s devil who works in Gutenberg’s workshop named Endymion Spring from his hometown in Mainz, Germany to Oxford, which was then a settlement of monks. The two story lines are about 600 years apart, with Spring's story taking place at the epoch of the printing press in 1453, and Blake's taking place in the late 20th or early 21st century. There are several themes throughout Endymion Spring. The first and foremost resonates throughout the book in the words "Bring only the insight the inside brings." These words appear to communicate a theme regarding knowledge, and how it should be used.
5140212	/m/0d4mdx	The Life Lottery	Ian Irvine	2004-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Irith Hardey's life is out of control. The world's climate is in chaos. Rising seas have flooded out half a billion people. Hundreds of millions of refugees are pouring into the west, the global economy is collapsing and democracies are being crushed by the anti-refugee Yellow Armbands. But there is worse to come. In a desperate attempt to avert the coming ice age that will wipe out civilisation, the Great Powers have agreed to embark on the most monumental gamble of all time 100 Days to Save the World. Climate scientist Irith Hardey is sure they've got it wrong. The U.S. President's pet scheme isn't going to save the world, but ruin it. Searching for the awful truth behind the 100 Days project, Irith is tormented by the Yellow Armbands, then hunted from blizzard-struck London to the Scottish Highlands and across the wild North Sea. In a United States terrorized by gun-toting militias trying to bring down the President, Irith is forced to confront the worst nightmare any 21st-century woman can face, as she struggles to uncover the ghastly secret of the Life Lottery before 100 days are up.
5140895	/m/0d4npx	It's Like This, Cat	Emily Neville	1963	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The main character of the story is Dave Mitchell, a 14-year-old who is growing up in mid-20th century New York City. Dave lives with his father and his asthmatic mother and her attacks worsen when Dave and his father have their frequent arguments. Dave's refuge after a clash with his father is with Kate, an elderly neighbor whose apartment is filled with the stray cats she loves. Dave adopts one of the cats, names it "Cat" and takes it home. "Cat" brings both joy and adventure into Dave's life. Cat's presence brings Dave into contact with several new people, including a troubled college-aged boy named Tom and his first girlfriend , Mary. While documenting Tom's growing maturity, the book also provides glimpses of a few of New York's neighborhoods and attractions, from the Fulton Fish Market to the Bronx Zoo and Coney Island.
5142729	/m/0d4rgz	Stormed Fortress	Janny Wurts	2007-11-05	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Though Athera may be free, the fight is far from over… The heartstopping conclusion to the Alliance of Light series brings Lysaer's army of Light to besiege the great citadel of Alestron. Master of Shadow, Arithon, with barely a moment's recuperation from his victory over the necromancers, has discovered that young Jeynsa s'Valerient whom he has sworn to protect, has joined the ranks of his disowned allies within the threatened citadel. Worse, following a failed rescue attempt, his beloved Elaira, his double, Fionn Areth, and the spellbinder Dakar are also trapped within Alestron's walls. The chancy wiles of Davien the betrayer must spirit Arithon across the enemy lines to attempt a bold and perilous rescue mission. Arithon must seek the heartcore of his talent, even while embroiled in a savage battle against those he has vowed to protect. But treachery strikes from deep within the duke's ranks. Lysaer's fanatics will be unleashed to claim their bloody revenge. With the Fellowship Sorcerers in mortal danger, and all under threat from a collapsing grimward, Davien the betrayer is unable to intercede to save his colleagues and so will be forced to invoke the dire terms of an ancient and most secretive bargain. Arithon stands alone at the hour of reckoning as the true purpose of the Koriani enchantresses becomes, at long last, fully unveiled – with the covetous Prime Matriarch now poised to snatch a prize, a prize beyond that of merely integrity and life…
5142779	/m/0d4rk1	How late it was, how late	James Kelman	1994	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sammy awakens in a lane one morning after a two day drinking binge, and gets into a fight with some plainclothes policemen, called in Glaswegian dialect, 'sodjers'. When he regains consciousness, he finds that he's been beaten severely and, he gradually realises, is completely blind. The plot of the novel follows Sammy as he explores and comes to terms with his new-found disability, and the difficulties this brings. Upon being released Sammy goes back to his house and realizes that his girlfriend, Helen, is gone. He assumes that she took off because of the fight they had before Sammy last left his house, but makes no attempt to find her. For a while, Sammy struggles with the simple tasks that blindness makes difficult. Soon, Sammy realizes he will need something to indicate his blindness to other people. He cuts the head off an old mop and, with the help of his neighbor, Boab, paints it white. He also purchases a pair of sunglasses to cover his eyes. Eventually, Sammy finds himself at the Central Medical waiting to get checked out for his blindness. He is instructed to the Dysfunctional Benefits floor and is questioned by a young lady who asks Sammy questions about his blindness. Sammy tells her 'about being beaten up by the cops, but immediately regrets telling her this and tries to take it back. She informs him that she cannot remove his statement from the record, but he can clarify if he wishes to. This upsets Sammy and he leaves the Central Medical without finishing filing for dysfunctional benefits. Once home Sammy decides to calm down by taking a bath. While in the bathtub Sammy hears someone enter his apartment. When he goes to investigate he is cuffed by police and taken to the department. They question him about the Saturday before Sammy went blind, and about the Leg (an old friend/associate). Sammy can’t remember much about that Saturday but admits to having met up with his friends Billy and Tam. Sammy says he can’t remember anything else, so they throw him in a cell. Later Sammy is released for his doctor appointment. The doctor asks Sammy a series of questions about his vision, and in the end refuses to diagnose Sammy as blind. Upon leaving the doctors office, a young man, Ally, approaches Sammy. He seems to know all about how the doctor will not give out diagnoses and persuades Sammy that he should be his representation for a commission payment. Bored at home Sammy decides to go down to Quinns bar, the bar Helen worked at. Sammy gets his neighbour, Boab, to call him a taxi to take him to the city centre. At the door of Quinns bar Sammy is told by two men that there is a promotion going on inside and Sammy cannot go in. Sammy gets upset at this and asks about Helen. The men tell Sammy that no one by the name of “Helen” has ever worked there. Upset, Sammy walks to Glancy’s bar—his favourite hang out—and is approached by his old friend Tam. Tam is upset because Sammy gave his name to the police and now his family is being affected by it. Angry, Tam leaves Sammy who wonders what is going on. Later, Ally sends over Sammy’s son, Peter, to take pictures of the marks Sammy has from being beaten by the soldiers. Peter arrives with his friend, Keith, and offers to give Sammy money. Sammy refuses the money but Peter keeps pestering him about it. Eventually Sammy agrees to take the money and meets with Peter and Keith at a nearby pub. After Peter leaves Sammy takes the money, flags a taxi, and leaves.
5143235	/m/0d4r_k	Killing Ground	Steve Lyons		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor returns his companion Grant to Agora, the human colony planet where he was born, and upon arrival discovers that Agora has been conquered by the Cybermen, who have enslaved the population and return every three years to take the five hundred fittest humans for conversion in order to add to the Cybermen's galactic army. At the same time, Agora plays host to another time traveller, ArcHivist Hegelia, and her novice research partner, Graduand Jolarr. Hegelia is obsessed with the Cybermen and intends to become one, and she has used the sanctioned excursion of Jolarr as an excuse to meet them and arrange the fulfilment of her ambition. Agoran rebels plan an attack on the Population Control building set up by the Cybermen as a herding centre for conversion selectees with the assistance of Grant, but the Doctor is trapped in a cell inside the building, and the Cybermen are due to return in person within a matter of days.
5143917	/m/0d4t0m	Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day	Judith Viorst	1972-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 From the moment Alexander wakes up, things just don't go Alexander's way. When Alexander gets out of bed, he trips on the skateboard and drops his sweater into the sink while the water was running. At breakfast, Alexander's brothers, Anthony and Nick reach into their cereal boxes and find amazing prizes, while Alexander ends up with cereal. On the way to school, he doesn't get the window seat in the carpool. At school, his teacher, Mrs. Dickens doesn't like his picture of the invisible castle (which is actually just a blank sheet of paper), criticizes him for singing too loud and leaving out 16. His friend, Paul deserts him to his third best friend and there is no dessert in his lunch. At the dentist's, the dentist, Dr. Fields tells Alexander he has a cavity, the elevator door closes on his foot, Anthony pushes him in the mud, Nick says he is a crybaby for crying, and Mom punishes him in the act of punching Nick. At the shoe store, they're sold out of Alexander's choice of sneakers (blue ones with red stripes), so Mom has to buy him plain white sneakers, which he refuses to wear. At Dad's office, Alexander makes a mess of things when he fools around with everything there (the copying machine, the books, and the telephone) getting to the point where Dad tells him not to pick him up from work anymore. At home, the family has lima beans for dinner (which he hates), there is kissing on TV (which he also hates), bath time becomes a nightmare (too much hot water, soap in his eyes, and losing a marble down the drain) and he has to wear his railroad train pajamas (he hates his railroad train pajamas). At bedtime, his nightlight burns out, he bites his tongue, Nick takes back a pillow, and the family cat chooses to sleep with Anthony. No wonder Alexander wants to move to Australia. The book ends with Mom's assurance that everybody has bad days, even for people who live in Australia. In the Australian and New Zealand versions he wants to move to Timbuktu, not Australia.
5144014	/m/0d4t58	Original Sin	Andy Lane			 Benny and the Doctor land on Earth in the late 30th century, in order to find out more information about a missing alien space ship. They are eventually arrested for murder by Adjucator Roz Forrester and her partner/squire Chris Cwej. The Doctor discovers that the person behind his arrest, and also responsible for supporting the Earth Empire, is none other than Tobias Vaughn, the former head of International Electromatics and collaborator with the Cybermen. Just prior to his "death" (in The Invasion), Vaughn transferred his memories and consciousness into a robot body. Since then, he has been manipulating Earth history in order to trap the Doctor and gain the secret to time travel. The Doctor manages to trap Vaughn in the TARDIS, cutting him off from transferring his mind to a new body; he later removes Vaughn's brain crystal and installs it in a food machine. Roz and Chris, now framed by corrupt Adjucator officials, agree to travel with the Doctor rather than face trumped-up charges.
5144721	/m/0d4vbl	The Tartar Steppe	Dino Buzzati	1940		 The plot of the novel is Drogo's lifelong wait for a great war in which his life and the existence of the fort can prove its usefulness. The human need for giving life meaning and the soldier's desire for glory are themes in the novel. Drogo is posted to the remote outpost overlooking a desolate Tartar desert; he spends his career waiting for the barbarian horde rumored to live beyond the desert. Without noticing, Drogo finds that in his watch over the fort he has let years and decades pass and that, while his old friends in the city have had children, married, and lived full lives, he has come away with nothing except solidarity with his fellow soldiers in their long, patient vigil. When finally arrives the attack by the Tartars, Drogo gets ill and the new chieftain of the fortress dismisses him. Drogo, on his way back home, dies lonely in an inn.
5153200	/m/0d577z	Obsidian Butterfly	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Obsidian Butterfly, Anita travels to New Mexico to repay the favor that she promised Edward at the end of The Killing Dance. Edward wants Anita to assist in a set of apparently supernatural attacks that have left numerous victims dead, and has skinned alive many survivors. In the course of the investigation, Anita learns more about Edward's personal life than she ever has before. She meets Donna, Edward's fiancee (in his civilian identity of legal bounty hunter "Ted Forrester") and Donna's children, Peter and Becca. She and Edward also come into conflict with a number of mercenaries who work for Edward's former boss, "Van Cleef," allowing Anita to learn a few clues about Edward's former life. Anita also comes into contact with a number of possible suspects and sources for information: the Aztec vampire and purported goddess Itzpapalotl; her priest and human servant Pinotl; local Ulfric, Roland, and Roland's necromancer/vargamor and local tough guy Nicky Baco. Ultimately, Anita learns that a second Aztec vampire/god, Red Woman's Husband, is awakening in New Mexico. After sleeping for centuries, Red Woman's Husband began awakening when Riker, (Harold's boss) raided his tomb, stealing several jade idols. In order to finish his awakening, Red Woman's Husband's priest and his animal servant have been skinning and killing the people who bought the idols stolen from his tomb, animating the skinned corpses as servants. Riker takes Becca and Peter hostage in an attempt to force Anita to protect him from Red Woman's Husband, but Anita, Edward, and Edward's associates Bernardo and Olaf rescue Edward's family and kill everyone involved with their kidnapping. Anita is captured by Red Woman's Husband, who plans to consume her life energy to complete his awakening, but with Itzpapalotl's help, she is able to kill the vampire instead. Realizing that Edward loves his soon-to-be family in some way, Anita leaves them without interfering and returns to St. Louis to begin work on her own romantic relationships.
5153333	/m/0d57k8	Two women	Alberto Moravia	1958	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A daughter and her mother fight to survive in Rome during the Second World War. Cesira, a widowed Roman shopkeeper, and Rosetta, a naive teenager of beauty and devout faith. When the German army prepares to enter Rome, Cesira packs a few provisions, sews her life savings into the seams of her dress, and flees south with Rosetta to her native province of Ciociara, a poor, mountainous region famous for providing the domestic servants of Rome. For nine months the two women endure hunger, cold, and filth as they await the arrival of the Allied forces. But the liberation, when it comes, brings unexpected tragedy. On their way home, the pair are attacked and Rosetta brutally raped by a group of Goumiers (Moroccan allied soldiers serving in the French Army). This act of violence so embitters Rosetta that she falls numbly into a life of prostitution. In his story of two women, Moravia offers up an intimate portrayal of the anguish and destruction wrought by war, as devastating behind the lines as it is on the battlefield.
5155087	/m/0d5b6g	Dragon Ultimate	Christopher Rowley	1999-02-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Picking up where the previous novel ended, Waakzaam the Great has attacked Ryetelth again, this time striking against the Sinni, the golden beings sometimes mistaken as the Ryetelth gods, who have been fighting against Waakzaam on the Sphereboard of Destiny from time immemorial. Waakzaam has taken control of an army of the Masters of Padmasa, who have been unable to reorganize themselves since the death of the Master Heruta Skash Gzug and has begun a full-scale invasion of the Argonath. To defeat the evil wizard, Relkin and Bazil must journey across time and space to battle a giant golem on the Sphereboard of Destiny. Once they accomplish this task, by taking control of giant constructs designed by the Sinni just for them, Waakzaam is finally defeated and oppressed peoples across the Sphereboard rise up in liberation. They then leave the Legions with Eilsa to finally begin their dream of owning their own land together.
5155156	/m/0d5bb9	A Dragon at Worlds' End	Christopher Rowley	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Trapped and alone on the dark continent of Eigo, Bazil and Relkin learn to fight and live off the dinosaurian wildlife that inhabits the land. During their journey of survival they encounter Lumbee, a female member of the tailed Ardu race. When they find her tribe, Relkin discovers he is in love with the tailed woman, a state that causes great distress to the members of her tribe. He is betrayed by the Ardu and sold to slavers who carry him off the to the city of the Elf Lords, Mirchaz. To save his dragonboy, Bazil leads the Ardu in an attack on the slaver’s base, then marches on Mirchaz itself. Relkin has been trapped in a dream world created by an evil Elf Lord. When Bazil comes to the dragonboy’s rescue the pair manages to bring down the Great Game that occupies the Elf Lords and end their rule of Mirchaz. After their victory they return to Argonath from Og Bogon bearing much treasure from an appreciative king.
5156373	/m/0d5d68	A Fan's Notes	Frederick Exley	1968	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Fan's Notes is a sardonic account of mental illness, alcoholism, insulin shock therapy and electroconvulsive therapy, and the black hole of sports fandom. Its central preoccupation with a failure to measure up to the American dream has earned the novel comparisons to Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Beginning with his childhood in Watertown, New York, growing up under a sports-obsessed father and following his college years at the USC, where he first came to know of his hero Frank Gifford, Exley recounts years of intermittent stints at psychiatric institutions, his failed marriage to a woman named Patience, successive unfulfilling jobs teaching English literature to high school students, and working for a Manhattan public relations firm under contract to a weapons company, and, by way of Gifford, his obsession with the New York Giants. Exley's introspective "fictional memoir", a tragicomic indictment of 1950s American culture, examines in lucid prose themes of celebrity, masculinity, self-absorption, and addiction, morbidly charting his failures in life against the electrifying successes of his football hero and former classmate. The title comes from Exley's fear that he is doomed to be a spectator in life as well as in sports.
5160255	/m/0d5lhm	Wild Magic	Tamora Pierce	1992-12-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The reader is introduced to Veraldaine, (who goes by Daine), a thirteen year old girl who can speak to animals. Daine meets Onua, the woman in charge of the horses for the "Queen's Riders," (the group of warriors who ride with and for the Queen), and is hired to help bring up a group of new ponies to the capital of Tortall. Along the way, Daine and Onua are attacked by strange creatures called Immortals, which are mystical beings including monsters such as spidrens, (huge, carnivorous spiders with human heads), and Stormwings, (metallic birds with human faces that feast on the dead). They later learn that nearly all of Tortall, Scanra, Galla, Tusaine, Maren and Tyra are being plagued by these Immortals, despite the fact that they were supposed to have been locked away years ago. As it turns out, the Immortals that attacked them had been on the chase of a hawk, which Daine rescues using her powers. With the help of Alanna of Trebond, Dainie turns him back into a human, and he turns out to be Numair Salmalin, the most powerful mage in Tortall and one of the few black-robe mages in the world. Upon reaching Corus, she continues as the assistant horsemistress, teaching Rider trainees such as her friends Miri and Evin and learning more about her own powers of "wild magic" from Numair, who becomes her teacher. She discovers the true depth of her power and learns of its advantages and dangers. During a journey to Alanna's home, Pirate's Swoop, Daine tells Onua and Numair about how she had lost her mind after the murder of her family and joined a pack of wolves to kill the bandits who had killed her family. The townspeople of Snowsdale then realized what was happening and tried to kill her, so she fled. After a time spent wild with the wolves, she regained her humanity and sanity with the help of Cloud, her pony. Relieved that her friends still like her after her confession, and after Numair enacts a spell so she will not lose her mind once again, she begins to hone her powers and soon learns to heal animals. She is visited frequently by the male badger god, who tells her that he promised her father he'd look after her. The badger god gives her a claw to wear around her neck that will allow him to contact her, and is very angry after she nearly kills herself by accidentally stopping her heart in order to hear dolphins. She finds out that she is able to talk to certain Immortals as well, and manages to convince several griffins not to harass the people of Pirate's Swoop. Towards the end of the book, she saves Pirate's Swoop from an attack of pirates and Immortals who are under orders from Carthak, a neighboring country. She defeats them by calling a kraken from the far away ocean floor. She's also left in charge of a dragonet, whose mother Flamewing has died in the battle to help save Tortall. Daine nicknames the dragonet Kitten, despite her real name being Skysong, and raises her much as a close pet.
5160607	/m/0d5m3f	Primary Inversion	Catherine Asaro	1996-05-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Primary Inversion is set in a future where three star-faring civilizations vie for control of human-settled space. Fighter pilot Sauscony (Soz) Valdoria commands a squadron of four Jagernaut pilots, neurologically enhanced empaths who have been bio-engineered as weapons. Jagernauts have extensive biomech throughout their bodies, allowing for enhanced speed and reaction, and an embedded artificial intelligence (AI) in their spinal cords. They are pitted against the legions of the Trader empire, in particular the Aristo ruling class, a race that derives pleasure from the amplified pain and anguish of empaths—especially Jagernauts, as Soz knows from personal experience. Soz is also an Imperial Heir and may someday become the military commander of the Skolian Empire, the bitter enemies of the Traders. The book is divided into three sections. In the first, Soz and her squadron are taking shore leave on a planet that has remained neutral in the hostilities between the warring empires. It is there that Soz meets the Highton Heir, Jaibriol Qox the Second, the Aristo who will someday rule the Trader empire. She discovers he secretly possesses the same empathic abilities that she wields. The two link mentally and fall in love against their own wishes. From Jaibriol, Soz learns that his father is going to commit genocide against the inhabitants of a planet who have joined together to rebel against their Aristo rulers. She goes in with her squadron to warn and evacuate the planet. After a desperate space battle, they barely escape with their own lives, but are able to save some of the planet's inhabitants. In the second section, Soz is sent by her brother, Kurj, the Imperator of the Skolian Imperialate, for rest and recuperation on the planet Foreshires Hold. Emotionally drained and suffering from post traumatic syndrome, she refuses to acknowledge she needs help. She wants to fight the Traders, to avenge Rex, her second in command and long time friend, who was crippled in the battle. Her condition continues to deteriorate, until she almost shoots herself with her own gun. Finally acknowledging she needs help, she seeks the counsel of a heartbender, a psychologist specifically trained to treat Jagernauts. In part three, Soz's brother calls her back to HQ. He has captured Jaibriol Qox and wants Soz to interrogate him. Knowing that if her brother discovers her secret meeting with Jaibriol, he will probably have her executed for treason, Soz undertakes a daring rescue and frees Jaibriol. With the help of her stunned father Eldrinson, she and Jaibriol escape in a star ship accident that appears to kill them both. They hide on an isolated planet, with only Soz's father and the president of the Allied Worlds of Earth aware of their true situation. The book ends with their knowledge that they will someday have to return to deal with their respective empires, but for the time being they are safe.
5162233	/m/0d5pfq	A Great and Terrible Beauty	Libba Bray		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gemma Doyle, the series' protagonist, is forced to leave India after the death of her mother to attend a private boarding school in London. On her sixteenth birthday, Gemma and her mother are walking through the Bombay market when the two encounter a man and his younger brother. The man relays an unknown message to Gemma’s mother about a woman named Circe, and Gemma's mother panics and demands that Gemma return home. Becoming angry at her mother’s secrecy, Gemma runs away, and has a vision of her mother committing suicide while searching for her, which she later learns is true. Gemma becomes haunted with the images of her mother’s death. With her mother dead and her father’s growing addiction to laudanum, Gemma is shipped off to a finishing school near London, Spence Academy for Young Ladies. At first, Gemma is an outcast at the school; however, she soon finds the most popular and influential girl in school, Felicity, in a compromising situation that would ruin Felicity’s life. Gemma agrees not to tell Felicity’s secret and the girls soon form a strong friendship, along with Gemma’s roommate Ann, and Felicity’s best friend, Pippa. But Gemma is still tormented with her visions and is warned by the young man from the market, Kartik, a member of an ancient group of men known as the Rakshana, dating all the way back to Charlemagne, that she must close her mind to these visions or something horrible will happen. During one of her visions Gemma is led into the caves that border the school grounds. There, she finds a diary written 25 years earlier by a 16-year-old girl named Mary Dowd who also attended Spence Academy and seemed to suffer from the same visions as Gemma, along with her friend, Sarah Rees-Toome. Through this diary, Gemma learns of an ancient group of powerful women called the Order and becomes convinced that her visions are linked to it. Members of the Order could open a door between the human world and other realms, help spirits cross over into the afterlife, and also possessed the powers of prophecy, clairvoyance, and what was considered the greatest force of all, the ability to weave illusions. Gemma, Felicity, Pippa and Ann decide to create their own Order in the caves to escape from the monotonous lives that they are expected to lead. As the girls read further and further into the diary of Mary Dowd they realize that the actual Order existed at Spence Academy and that Mary was a part of it along with her best friend Sarah and the original Headmistress Eugenia Spence, who all died in a fire at the school in the East Wing. Gemma tells her friends the truth about her powers and together they travel to the realms. There Gemma finds her mother alive and well, and the girls find that they can achieve their hearts’ desires. Gemma wishes for self-knowledge, Felicity for power, Pippa for true love and Ann for beauty. The girls continue to sneak out to the caves in the middle of the night and visit the realms. However, Gemma’s mother warns them not to take the magic back into their own world, for if the magic leaves the realms, the evil sorceress Circe will be able to find Gemma and will kill her, leaving the realms unguarded. After Gemma confronts her mother, she confesses that she was once a member of the Order and escaped the fire thinking the others had died, she also discovers that her mother was Mary Dowd and Circe was her friend Sarah Rees-Thoome. In Mary Dowd's diary, Mary says that she has sacrified Mother Elena's little girl to get back the decreased power of Sarah, after reading this, Gemma thinks of her mother in a different way and hates her for what she had done. The only way for her to ever be at peace is for Gemma to forgive her. When Gemma and the other girls go back to the realms, they realize that something has changed. Before they can leave, the creature that killed Gemma’s mother appears. Frightened, Pippa runs off and Gemma does not have time to bring her back. Gemma takes Ann and Felicity back to Spence, leaving Pippa trapped underwater. As the three friends awaken, they see Pippa seizing on the ground. They run to get help from the headmistress and Kartik. After, Gemma goes back to the realms to save Pippa, but Pippa choses to stay in the realms because she lacks the strength to fight for what she wants. While attempting to save Pippa, Gemma defeats the creature and destroys the runes. When Gemma returns, Pippa is dead.
5162603	/m/0d5q3p	Toxin	Robin Cook	1998-12-31	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with a scene showing a couple of farmhands who are entrusted with disposing of a diseased cow. However they instead take it to a nearby slaughter house and sell it. The story then moves to the protagonist Dr. Kim Reggis who is going through a bad divorce. On a night out with his daughter Becky, he takes her to the nearby fast food chain, OnionRing Burgers. There she eats a rare steak burger. The beef in the burger is revealed to have come from the cow mentioned at the start of the book. The next day Becky begins having loose motions and severe body pain. Kim and his estranged wife Tracy rush her into the emergency care unit of the hospital he works in. However he is ignored there which infuriates him. The doctors confirm that she has been infected by E Coli's renegede strain O157:H7 which is resistant to most antibiotics. Becky's condition begin to deteriorate rapidly. Feeling helpless at his inability to save his daughter's life, Kim makes it his mission to trace out how she contracted the disease. He first makes a visit to the restaurant they ate at, only managing to create a ruckus there. However he learns that the beef came from Mercer Foods. He traces the slaughterhouse and manages to take a US FDA in his confidence. The next day Becky dies of multiple organ failure leaving him in sorrow and strengthening his resolve for justice. He infiltrates the slaughterhouse with the help of his ex-wife by changing his appearance to make him look like a jobless neo-Nazi. He accepts a job as a janitor. On his first day at work, he gets into the records room and finds out the truth about the diseased animal. They are attacked by an assassin. Tracy appears and kills the assassin. They then escape from the slaughterhouse and flee the country after making public the malpractices committed by the slaughterhouse.
5163298	/m/0d5r3n	1634: The Galileo Affair	Eric Flint		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Following Grantville's alliance with Gustavus Adolphus and their military successes, texts of modern day history books of the seventeenth century have became very popular among the powerful personages of Europe and made dramatic effects and turmoil on the continent. Among those that are affected are the Holy Roman Catholic Church with their religious holdings. Father Lawrence Mazzare started the controversy by allowing Father Fredrich von Spee to read his own entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia, thereby stiffening the Jesuit's resistance to the Inquisition. Also Mazzare provided copies of the papers of the Second Vatican Council and other documents to Monsignor Giulio Mazarini, which led Pope Urban VIII to request a summary of Catholic theological reforms over the following centuries in the original timeline. The newly formed USE acts to open a trade corridor with the Middle East via Venice to insure supplies of materials unavailable within Western Europe; gaining political allies within these regions; and religious allies to spread the doctrines of religious tolerance and the separation of church and state. Michael Stearns selects Lawrence Mazzare to lead the delegation to Venice because of his current fame (or notoriety) among Catholics. Mazzare asks Simon Jones, the Methodist minister, to accompany him as a sign of religious tolerance and Father Augustus Heinzerling. Jones goes along as Mazzare's assistant. Stearns also sends Tom Stone and his family to assist with the production of pharmaceuticals, Sharon Nichols to aid in medical education (and to give her something useful to do while she is grieving over Hans Richter's death in 1633), and Ernst Mauer to advise on public sanitation. Lieutenant Conrad Ursinus is sent as the naval attaché and advisor on shipbuilding and Scottish Captain Andrew Lennox is assigned as the military attaché and commander of the Marine Guard. Lieutenant Billy Trumble is sent as XO of the Marine escort as well as sports advisor. However, the delegation is opposed by the French embassy in Venice led by Claude de Mesmes, comte d'Avaux, who is given orders by Cardinal Richelieu to disrupt trade negotiations between the USE and Venice.
5163341	/m/0d5r50	1635: The Cannon Law	Eric Flint	2006-09-26	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following the events of 1634: The Galileo Affair, Pope Urban VIII had been won over to the actions of the Americans after being saved from his attempted assassination and his subsequent pardon of Galileo Galilei. However, Pope Urban's relations with the Americans and their allies earned the scorn of his historical enemy Cardinal Gaspar Borja y Velasco, who had been loudly critical of the actions, or inactions, of the Holy See in regard to Gustavus Adolphus, Galileo, and now Cardinal Larry Mazzare, and had been briefly banned from Rome by Urban. Cardinal Borja returned to Rome, though living in the outskirts of the city, and having cultivated allies with the Spanish element of the Vatican and acquiring the aid of Francisco de Quevedo y Villega, a mercenary agent provocateur, is ordered by King Philip IV of Spain to stir up trouble within Rome with the efforts of discrediting Urban and turning him into a lame duck pope after Urban failed to support Spain in her war against the United States of Europe (USE). Borja exceeds these orders, orchestrating a military coup to overthrow Urban, which also caused the deaths of Urban's political allies including his cardinal-nephew Antonio Barberini, and replace him with a Spanish puppet. Fortunately, Urban escaped from his second attempted death with the help from the American Roman embassy, leading to Borja being declared an Anti-Pope, with only Spain and its satellites recognizing his authority as the new Pope.
5163774	/m/02p8_3d	Rider at the Gate	C. J. Cherryh	1995-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Three riders arrive at the Shamesey town gates to inform border rider Guil Stuart that his partner, Aby Dale and her nighthorse Moon, were killed in a truck convoy accident on Tarmin Height. The accident, they say, was caused by a rogue nighthorse. Stuart heads up the mountain to hunt down and kill the rogue. Danny Fisher, a junior rider and friend of Stuart, follows him. Another rider, Ancel Harper, who blames Stuart for the earlier death of his brother, also pursues Stuart. With winter approaching, journeys up the mountain at this time of the year are ill-advised and dangerous. Stuart first goes to the industrial town of Anveney where he meets businessman Lew Cassivey. Dale had been working for Cassivey, and her last job, escorting the truck convoy down the mountain, included delivering a shipment of gold to him. The truck that crashed had the gold in it, and Cassivey wants Stuart to retrieve it and pays him in advance. In Tarmin village, in the highlands near Tarmin Height, 13-year old Brionne Goss responds to the <call> of a nighthorse in the Wild by going out the village gates on her own. It is a rogue nighthorse and it finds and adopts Brionne. During her absence, riders go out looking for her, and her older bothers, Carlo and Randy, are arrested in the village for the death of their father, the blacksmith. Their father had belittled and abused the boys for most of their lives and when he now accuses them of pushing Brionne out the gate, Carlo shoots him. Later Brionne and the rogue return to the village and her mother insists that the gates be opened to let her daughter in. Tarmin is then overrun by swarms of predators and scavengers and everyone in the village is killed, except for Tara Chang, a rider out of the village at the time, and the Goss brothers who are locked in jail. Fisher arrives at Tarmin to find the gates wide open! The village is decimated, but Fisher finds and frees the Goss brothers. Stuart reaches Tarmin's gates (now closed) where he is shot at by Harper who is waiting near the gates to ambush him. Stuart retreats to a rider shelter and is later joined by Chang who is lost after the fall of Tarmin. Then the rogue with Brionne on its back arrives at the shelter. The rogue, whom Stuart recognises as Dale's horse Moon, has found Stuart in the ambient, recognising him as Dale's partner. Stuart tricks Moon by approaching her as a friend and then shoots the horse dead. He rescues Brionne, but the loss of "her nighthorse" causes her to slip into a coma. Stuart realises that Moon could not have died with Dale and went rogue only after her rider fell off the cliff. Moon must have sent images to the ambient of Moon and Dale together in the gorge below because that is what Moon would have wanted. What the other riders saw and reported were Moon's sendings. Then Harper arrives at the shelter and shoots and wounds Stuart. Chang responds by shooting and killing Harper, and Harper's nighthorse runs away, riderless and another potential rogue. Fisher and the Goss boys leave Tarmin village to search for Stuart and find him at the shelter. Because of the danger Brionne now poses if she wakes up with another rogue in the vicinity, Fisher agrees to escort her and her brothers to another village further up the mountain. Stuart and Chang remain behind in the rider shelter because Stuart cannot ride and needs to recover from his injury. :... continued in Cloud's Rider.
5163776	/m/02p8_3s	Cloud's Rider	C. J. Cherryh	1996-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 :... continued from Rider at the Gate. Fisher and Cloud escort the Goss children halfway up Rogers Peak to Evergreen village with Harper's riderless nighthorse, Spook, in pursuit. Fisher tells the local riders about the fall of Tarmin village and the presence of Spook, but does not reveal the arrest of the Goss brothers nor the role Brionne played in Tarmin's demise. Fisher is lodged in the rider camp, the unconscious Brionne with Darcey Schaffer, the village doctor, and Carlo and Randy with Van Mackey, the village blacksmith. The news of Tarmin's fall is devastating to Evergreen because all its supplies come from there, but many of the villagers see the disaster as an opportunity to seize and occupy the vacant property in Tarmin village in the spring. One night Spook enters the ambient and disturbs the horses and riders in the rider camp. Fisher knows that Brionne has woken up and is <calling>. The next morning Ridley takes Fisher out the gates to find Spook, but when they are some distance from the village, Ridley points his rifle at Fisher and demands the truth. Fisher is relieved to be able to finally unburden himself and tells Ridley everything he knows. Earnest Rigs, a miner, arrives at the doctor's house for treatment and sees and is entranced by Brionne. That night Schaffer and Brionne are awoken by a noise on the roof and a banging at the door. The next day, Schaffer finds blood splattered outside her house, and Rigs is missing. A crowd gathers, including the Goss boys and the village marshal. Carlo is accused of murdering Rigs and, scared that his arrest in Tarmin will become known, runs away. The marshal orders that Carlo be stopped, and a group of miners pursue him. When Carlo reaches the village gate, his only escape is out the village. Spook finds Carlo in the Wild and immediately adopts him. Fisher and Cloud begin searching for Carlo and see him riding Spook. Suspecting that Spook may have gone rogue, Fisher pursues them. When he catches up with them he sees a threatening shadow in the trees above them and shoots it. At the same time, Stuart and Chang, out looking for Fisher and the Goss children, find Fisher and Carlo. They search for the creature Fisher shot but find instead a large nest in which appear to be human bones. No creature of this size and ability had ever been encountered before, and they conclude that it must have come from the unexplored side of the mountain, probably attracted by the noise in the ambient from the swarm that overran Tarmin. Then the riders hear Evergreen's bells calling for help, and set off for the village. At Evergreen, the breakthrough bells are ringing and the riders enter the village to investigate. They find the gate man ripped to shreds in his watch tower and track the intruder to the houses. When the riders hear Brionne <calling> they realise that she is controlling the beast. They go to Schaffer's house where, through the door, they try to persuade the doctor to drug the girl. Inside Brionne opens the underground passage door to reveal a huge ape-like creature. It picks up Brionne and when Schaffer tries to intervene, it hurls the doctor against the wall, killing her. Like a rider and a nighthorse, Brionne and the beast connect. They climb to the roof and disappear over the wall. All the riders spend the rest of the winter in the rider camp and discuss their plans for the spring. Stuart reveals the presence of the gold in the crashed truck, and Fisher and Carlo agree to go to Anveney to request supplies from Cassivey to retrieve the gold. Stuart and Chang take on the responsibility of escorting villagers down to Tarmin. Of Brionne and the beast there is no sign, not even in the ambient. Clearly they have returned to the other side of the mountain.
5165487	/m/0d5vg8	The Fatal Equilibrium			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The narrative focuses on the stories of several Harvard Professors as they deliberate whether tenure should be imparted on assistant professor Dennis Gossen. Gossen is an up-and-coming economics figure, who is hopeful that the Promotion and Tenure Committee will find him of adequate qualification to receive tenure at Harvard University—a very prestigious accomplishment. The P and T Committee is headed by celebrated anthropologist and Harvard Dean Denton Clegg and consists of distinguished sociologist Oliver Wu, chemist Sophia Ustinov, English professor Calvin Weber, psychology professor Valerie Danzig, mathematics professor Morrison Bell, Classicist Foster Barrett and dominant economics professor Henry Spearman. Dennis somehow shows up at the door of Henry Spearman, who is not home, and let in by Henry’s wife, Pidge. Because Dennis appears so distraught, Pidge calls her husband and tells him to come home early, which he does. However, Spearman refuses to discuss anything with Dennis on the basis that he is not allowed to converse with tenure candidates. P and T Committee meetings proceed to take place, and Dennis Gossen is turned down for tenure with a 3-3 vote. Oliver Wu, Sophia Ustinov and Calvin Weber all vote in favor of promotion, while Valerie Danzig, Morrison Bell and Foster Barrett all vote that Dennis Gossen is not cut out for Harvard. Dean Clegg is naturally placed in the role of tie breaker, and votes against advancement, as is his policy with ties. Because of his failure, Dennis Gossen seemingly commits suicide. Within the next week, Morrison Bell and Foster Barrett, two of the people who voted against Gossen’s promotion were murdered, and Dennis’s fiancé, Melissa Shannon, is arrested for the crime. The prosecution charged that she murdered them because she felt that they were responsible for her fiancé’s suicide, and the Melissa’s defense argued that the evidence was merely circumstantial; Shannon is eventually convicted by the jury and sentenced to a life in prison. Economist Henry Spearman is skeptical, however. Applying economic analysis, he could not fathom how the benefits of suicide could have outweighed the emotional cost that Gossen—a very rational person—was paying for his failure. He also did not think it rational that Melissa Shannon was so upset that she would kill two Harvard professors. With Melissa Shannon in jail, the Harvard Alumni are all aboard a cruise to Europe. This is where Spearman finally uses economic reasoning to deduce who really murdered Dennis, Morrison, and Foster: Dean Clegg. His theory is proven when Clegg, knowing that Spearman is on to him, leaves behind a note explaining everything; Clegg coveted academic distinction, and went to an island to write a book he hoped would be revolutionary in his field of anthropology. However, he had been absent from his field as Dean for a couple of years and was having trouble. That was when he conceived the idea to forge data for his book. It turned out that Dennis Gossen read his book and found economic inconsistencies in the data Clegg had made up and realized that Clegg was a fraud. Gossen blackmailed Clegg to vote in favor of his promotion, which Clegg happily agreed to. However, Clegg wanted to secure his secret, and so he killed Gossen and made it look like suicide. He then killed two of his colleagues who he thought might find out his dirty secret and framed Melissa Shannon.
5166492	/m/0d5x08	The Palace of Love	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Kirth Gersen is on Alphanor with Alusz Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay, a woman he had rescued in the previous novel of the series. It is plain that their short-lived relationship is nearing an end, as she cannot understand why Gersen, made extremely wealthy by his epic defrauding of Interchange, still feels the need to exterminate the remaining Demon Princes himself, instead of hiring others to do the job, but most of all, she cannot accept his cold and singleminded pursuit of vengeance. Gersen notices a newspaper article announcing the forthcoming execution of a prominent Sarkoy venefice, Kakarsis Asm, not for selling poisons to the Demon Prince, Viole Falushe, but for violating a Guild-mandated pricing policy. He accordingly hastens to Sarkovy to pursue this lead. There he learns from Kakarsis Asm (in exchange for bribing his way to a swift and painless execution) that Falushe visited Sarkovy, at the beginning of his criminal career many years before, with a shipload of slaves, two of whom he sold to Asm and whom he subsequently resold. While they are on Sarkovy, Gersen’s relationship with Alusz Iphigenia finally ends, though he ensures that she will want for nothing in the future. After visiting his new financial advisor, Jehan Addels, to check how the program to invest the proceeds of his swindle is proceeding, Gersen locates a surviving slave, whom he buys and frees in exchange for further information concerning his enemy. He learns that Falushe was born Vogel Filschner, an Earth boy of disgusting appearance and habits who, to satisfy his obsession with a female classmate, Jheral Tinzy, had kidnapped the entire girls’ choral society at his school. Fortunately for Jheral, she had not attended choir practice that day. Gersen follows the trail to “Rolingshaven” in the Netherlands, to the people who knew Filschner as a youth. The most direct link is the mad poet Navarth, who was Filschner’s mentor and who later enjoyed a brief relationship with Jheral; after the kidnapping, she had attracted a share of the blame for having teased Filschner and turned to Navarth for comfort. However, she was later abducted by Falushe. Navarth has custody of a young girl, variously known as Drusilla Wayles or “Zan Zu from Eridu,” who was given to him as a child by Falushe to nurture and protect. She resembles the young Jheral to a disturbing extent. With the erratic assistance of Navarth, Gersen tries to engineer a meeting with Falushe. To this end, he buys the failing, but respected Cosmopolis magazine and authors a lurid article that paints the young Falushe in extremely unflattering terms. He is able, through Navarth, to contact Falushe by telephone and secures an invitation to Falushe's legendary Palace of Love in his guise as a reporter in return for writing a more flattering article. He is transported to Falushe’s planet, where he sees that the Demon Prince has built an entire civilization acknowledging him as its supreme ruler. The inhabitants pay tribute to him, including their first-born children (the most beautiful going to staff the Palace). In the company of a party of invitees including Navarth, Gersen visits the Palace. Eventually, he discovers Falushe’s lifelong ambition: to create a copy of Jheral Tinzy who will be brainwashed into loving him. Navarth's Drusilla Wayles was bred parthenogenically from the original Jheral, and there are at least two others on the planet. Jheral herself had succeeded in committing suicide some years into the forced breeding program. Gersen, guessing correctly that Viole Falushe is among the guests, intent on gaining Drusilla’s affections, narrows the possibilities down to three men and finally identifies his prey with the aid of a critical error by Falushe: he has an implanted telephone, which can be heard ringing when Navarth calls him. By this time, Gersen has rescued two Jheral copies and, along with Drusilla Wayles, they leave no doubt that they find Falushe repellent; the Demon Prince bitterly realizes that his life's work has been an abject failure. As Gersen is about to throw him out of an airboat hovering ten thousand feet above the sea, Falushe breaks his bonds, but loses his balance and falls to his doom. Gersen frees the servants at the Palace, informs the planet’s inhabitants that they need pay taxes no more, and entrusts the various Drusillas to Navarth’s eccentric care. Some months later, he meets yet another, more mature Drusilla, plainly the oldest, and is about to read her some of Navarth’s poetry as the story closes.
5168526	/m/0d5_fc	The Prophet	Khalil Gibran	1923	{"/m/017k4z": "Prose poetry"}	 The prophet, Almustafa, has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
5172337	/m/0d65gs	King Dork	Dr. Frank	2006-04-11	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Outcast Tom Henderson begins his sophomore year of high school in as quiet way as possible but is set upon by the school’s many bullies and administration. Through a series of chance circumstances he soon finds himself investigating his father’s death, trying to put together a decent rock band with his only friend, searching out the identity of a mystery girl he met and made out with at a party, struggling to keep out of the way of the school’s psychotic “normal” kids bent on cruelly punishing him for existing. The myriad plot strands are brought together during and after a climatic battle of the bands in the school where he inadvertently is the cause of the disappearance of at least one teacher, earns the wrath of a new group of students, and the surprising admiration of some of those who previously despised him.
5176633	/m/0d6cnm	The Casino Murder Case	S. S. Van Dine		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Philo Vance receives an anonymous letter alerting him to the possibility that violence will soon be done within a well-known family, and the letter also suggests that something of interest will take place that night at the casino. Vance attends and witnesses the collapse of the son and heir to the family fortune, a heavy gambler, due to his having been poisoned—immediately after he drinks a glass of water from the casino manager's private decanter. At approximately the same time, across town, the son's wife, a former Broadway musical star, dies from poison. The curious factor is that the medical examiner cannot identify the way in which the poison was administered to the wife, except to say that no traces were found in the stomach (and no marks of a hypodermic are found). Vance attends the son's home and investigates the wife's death—later that evening, the sister of the son and heir is also poisoned. When he recovers, the son suggests that his mother may have been responsible for the poisoning, but Vance also finds a note that suggests that the wife committed suicide. There are other characters connected with the family upon whom suspicion falls, including the sister's two suitors, one of whom is the family physician and the other the chief croupier at the family casino, and the children's uncle, who manages the casino. Vance must determine the method by which the poison was administered and at the same time follows a trail that leads to one of the character's research into the production of deuterium, or "heavy water", which had just been discovered in 1934. Having worked out the murderer's plot and identity, Vance puts himself at the mercy of the murderer, who is holding Vance at gunpoint, in order to hear a confession—then the murderer is killed in an exciting climax.
5177162	/m/0d6dcv	Kissing the Gunner's Daughter	Ruth Rendell	1992-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Four members of a well-to-do family in Kingsmarkham are shot during dinner, and only Daisy survives with minor injuries. Daisy is the teenage granddaughter of Davina Flory, a popular crime fiction writer much like Agatha Christie. Wexford wishes to protect her in a fatherly way, as he is with his own daughter Sheila, whose new boyfriend Augustine Casey is a post-post-modernist novelist who has already published a novel devoid of any characters. Daisy had never met her father. Wexford finds that Daisy's father is a former football player nicknamed "Gunner" because he played for Arsenal Football Club.
5177439	/m/0d6dzk	Checkers	John Marsden	1996	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The main plot of Checkers is told in flash back, first-person narration which takes the form of a diary. The author of this diary is a nameless teenage girl, who is a voluntary patient in a Psychiatric Ward. She refuses to talk about why she's there and does not say a word during her Group therapy sessions. Before she admits herself into hospital, she lived with a grimly dysfunctional and uncommunicative family of four, whose father was a co-owner of a company named Rider Group receives a multi-million dollar business contract. As part of the celebration, the girl's father buys her a pet dog, which she names Checkers, for his odd fur pattern. Soon, however, her father's company begins being attacked by the press, who accuse him and his business partner of gross corruption, allegedly involving the Premier of the State. The Premier continually denies having ever met the girl's father, but these accusations and negative media attention escalate over a period of months. The pressure drives the girl further into isolation and cements the bond she has with Checkers. Reporters continue to hound the family and the girl is under strict instructions not to discuss any personal matters. However, one day when returning from a walk with Checkers, she strikes up a conversation with a young reporter waiting outside her house. The reporter is intrigued by Checkers, seemingly by his unusual appearance and asks to take a photo of him. The following day, the newspapers are claiming Checkers is the missing link between the Rider Group and the Premier. Two photos are published; one of Checkers and one of the Premier's dog, and it is revealed The Premier gave Checkers to her father as a gift. The girl returns home from school to discover the story, and finds her father has murdered Checkers with a carving knife. The events between that day and her admittance to the hospital are never revealed. At the end of the novel, the girl seems to have resigned herself to being in hospital forever, and she continues to blame herself for the death of her beloved dog. The novel also has many sub-plots which takes place in the psychiatric ward in real time. These sub-plots are mostly descriptions and backstories of the other teenagers in the ward, who all suffer from various types of mental defection. These characters include Daniel, who has Obsessive–compulsive disorder, Cindy, an emotionally damaged girl who self-injures and who tries to commit suicide towards the end of the book, Esther, a heavily medicated but honest and friendly "query psychotic" who believes there is an animal living inside her head, Ben, a boy with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oliver, an anorexic and Emine, a Turkish-Australian girl who was driven to mental breakdown by the pressure of strict, Turkish parents. Each character is given considerable text and attention, up until the final chapter when the last of them leave the ward and return to normal life, leaving only the unnamed narrator, who suggests she means never to leave.
5178145	/m/0d6g0t	Owlflight	Larry Dixon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Darian, the black sheep of his village, is blamed for every misdemeanour of the village children. The villagers, who feared the woods they were surrounded by, were afraid his parents' trips into the woods would bring death to them in the form of a monster formed by the Mage Storms. When his parents died and on the verge of being abandoned, Darin is apprenticed to the village hedge wizard - Justyn. However, this makes Darian unhappy and the villages feel he is ungrateful causing them to be hostile. The mage tries his best, though he's not very good with children. Darian just doesn't want to learn to use the magical ability inside him. Then one day the village is unexpectedly attacked by barbarians from the north - the Bear Clan - who take over the village. In the fight Justyn is killed and Darian flees. During his flight Darian is almost caught by two of the barbarians chasing him when he is unexpectedly rescued by a Hawkbrother scout called Snowfire, who has some magic of his own. Snowfire takes Darian back to the temporary camp where they set out to find out what happened, However, Darian is very upset with the realisation that Justyn only ever tried to help him – even when Darian was outrageously rude. Mixed with suppressed feelings for his parents who he believes are not dead and distaste for the villagers, Snowfire, along with the mages Starfall & Nightwind and the gryphon Kel, they gradually help him come to terms with his Justyn’s death and the attack on the village. Darian is adopted by the Hawkbrothers and becomes Snowfire’s little brother. However, he cannot leave the villagers to their fate as slaves—even if they have treated him wrongly in the past. He helps the Hawkbrothers infiltrate the village and attack and drive out the Bear Clan. In the process Darian almost gets killed by their Shaman but kills him instead. In the end Darian is faced with either staying with the villagers as their mage or going off with the Hawkbrothers. In the end he compromises—he will travel with the Hawkbrothers for a few years to learn magic and then return as the village mage. Pleased with Darian's maturity, Snowfire gives Darian his bond bird, a fledgling owl named Kuari.
5178956	/m/0d6hd1	The Harmony Silk Factory	Tash Aw	2005-07-04	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 From the bookjacket "The Harmony Silk Factory is the textiles store run by Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in rural Malay in the first half of the twentieth century. It is the most impressive and truly amazing structure in the region, and to the inhabitants of the Kinta Valley Johnny Lim is a hero-a Communist who fought the Japanese when they invaded, ready to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his people. But to his son, Jasper, Johnny is a crook and a collaborator who betrayed the very people he pretended to serve, and the Harmony Silk Factory is merely a front for his father's illegal businesses. Centering on Johnny from three perspectives-those of his grown son; his wife, Snow, the most beautiful woman in the Kinta Valley (through her diary entries); and his best and only friend, an Englishman adrift named Peter Wormwood-the novel reveals the difficulty of knowing another human being, and how our assumptions about others also determine who we are. "
5181905	/m/0d6mpy	Cotillion	Georgette Heyer	1953	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Heroine Kitty Charing has been brought up in rural isolation by her rich and eccentric guardian, Matthew Penicuik (pronounced PENNY-cook), whom she calls Uncle Matthew. Uncle Matthew makes the whimsical decision to name Kitty as his heiress, but only if she marries one of his extensive collection of great-nephews, the offspring of his assorted and much-loathed sisters' children. Uncle Matthew expects that Kitty will marry Jack Westruther, his favourite great-nephew, and Kitty would be only too happy to comply: she has adored Jack for years. But Jack, while he intends someday to wed Kitty (believing that Uncle Matthew's money must be willed either to her or to him), prefers to lead a rakish lifestyle as long as possible. Confident that Kitty will not accept any of his cousins, Jack declines to attend the family party at which Uncle Matthew intends for his great-nephews to propose to Kitty. Kitty, greatly upset by the absence of Jack and by the possibility of becoming destitute should she not accept one of the great-nephews, is further dismayed by the proposals she receives. First, there is doltish Lord Dolphinton ("Dolph"), an impoverished Irish peer under his mother's thumb. Dolph is clearly proposing because his mother wants Uncle Matthew's money. Then there is Reverend Hugh Rattray, who assures Kitty that he is very fond of her, and that she will make a very suitable wife when her youthful levity has been tempered, for he pities the fact she is a destitute orphan, to her scorn. When another great-nephew arrives, Kitty hails him with relief. Freddy Standen is rich, good-natured, unaware of Uncle Matthew's intentions, and has no intention of marrying. Nevertheless, Kitty begs him to propose to her and invite her to London to reintroduce her to his parents, whom she has not seen for some time. She assures Freddy that once she has visited London for a month, she will break off the engagement and live quietly thereafter. When she threatens to cry, Freddy is too mortified to do anything but agree. She does not tell Freddy that she really hopes to make Jack jealous and force him to propose to her. Freddy suspects she has something up her sleeve but does not know what. Uncle Matthew, unconvinced by the announced engagement, guesses exactly what Kitty is up to; since it falls in with his own wishes, he allows Kitty to go to London. At the same time, he assures her that he will not tolerate being left for more than a month with "that Fish"—Miss Fishguard, Kitty's governess, who will stand in as housekeeper during Kitty's absence. The complications that ensue are reflected in the title: a cotillion was originally a dance for four couples.
5182186	/m/0d6n8p	Arc Light	Eric L. Harry	1994-09	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 The novel opens with the invasion of the Korean Demilitarized Zone by North Korea. Next is the phone call from Russian General Yuri Razov to U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Andrew Thomas, informing him of Russia's intent to recapture land lost to China in a previous conflict. The beginning of this invasion will be the use of tactical nuclear weapons to clear the way for the army. Meanwhile, a radical Russian general, Zorin, seizes control of the Stavka and gains access to Russia's nuclear launch codes. As China retaliates against Moscow, Zorin launches a counterforce nuclear strike against the U.S. missile silos, bomber bases, submarine pens, and command centers. The U.S. responds in kind, and though no cities in either country were intentionally targeted in the exchange, roughly four to seven million people are killed. A political crisis erupts as war is declared and President Walter Livingston is impeached. The novel follows Greg Lambert, the National Security Advisor to the President, in the inner governmental circles as the war begins and the Vice President is sworn in. The United States Army Reserves are called up, and Major David Chandler reports to March AFB in California, leaving behind his pregnant wife Melissa, an attorney. As the novel follows him from his leave to his assignment as a tank battalion commander, Melissa gives birth and deals with fallout and fear back home. The novel proceeds along as conventional war begins as NATO is dissolved, and the U.S. and its new allies begin the invasion of Eastern Europe and Russia. Marines land in eastern Russia and push west. But Russia has not launched all of her nuclear weapons, and threatens to launch submarine-based missiles at the quickly emptying 304-largest U.S. cities. President Paul Constanzo and the joint chiefs must wrestle with the failing economy, failing support, and all-out nuclear war, while the Army continues its advance into the heart of Russia.
5182384	/m/0d6nll	Verdigris	Paul Magrs		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Orbiting above London is a mysterious ship, a duplicate of the St. Pancras railway station. The Doctor, with the aid of the adventurerer, Iris Wildthyme bargains to stop creatures determined to infiltrate the 1970s in the guise of characters from nineteenth century novels. The Doctor is cut off from many of his friends and allies. Iris and her companion Tom reappear in the audio adventures Wildthyme at Large and The Devil in Ms Wildthyme, and the anthology Wildthyme on Top. Iris Wildthyme would later be played in Big Finish audio dramas by Katy Manning, who played Jo Grant in Doctor Who.
5182671	/m/0d6p1g	Il Filostrato	Giovanni Boccaccio			 Calcas, a Trojan prophet, has foreseen the fall of the city and joined the Greeks. His daughter, Criseida, is protected from the worse consequences of her father's defection by Hector alone. Troilo sees the lovelorn glances of other young men attending a festival in the Palladium. But almost immediately he sees a young widow in mourning. This is Criseida. Troilo falls in love with her but sees no sign of her similar feelings in him, despite his efforts to attract attention by excelling in the battles before Troy. Troilo's close friend Pandaro (Pandarus), a cousin of Criseida, senses something is distressing him. He calls on Troilo, finding him in tears. Eventually Pandarus finds out the reason and agrees to act as go-between. Troilo, with Pandaro's help, eventually wins Criseida's hand. During a truce, Calcas persuades the Greeks to propose a hostage exchange: Criseida for Antenor. When the two lovers meet again, Troilo suggests elopement, but Criseida argues that he should not abandon Troy and she should protect her honour. Instead she promises to meet him in ten days' time. The Greek hero Diomedes, supervising the hostage exchange, sees the parting looks of the two lovers and guesses the truth. But he falls in love with Criseida, and seduces her. She misses the appointment with Troilo who dreams of a boar which he recognises as a symbol of Diomede. Troilo rightly interprets the dream to mean that Cressida has switched her affections to the Greek. But Pandaro persuades him that this is his imagination. Cressida, meanwhile, sends letters that pretend a continuing love for Troilo. Troilo has his fears confirmed when his brother Deífobo (Deiphobus) returns to the city with the clothes that he has snatched in battle from Diomedes; on the garment is a clasp that belonged to Criseida. Troilo, infuriated, goes into battle to seek out Diomedes, killing a thousand men. He and Diomedes fight many times, but never manage to kill each other. Instead Troilo's life and his suffering are ended by Achilles.
5182899	/m/0d6pcy	Historia Caroli Magni				 The Chronicle recounts the following incidents : At the request of Saint James who appears to him in dream, Charlemagne embarks on four wars to wrest Spain from the Saracens. In the first war, he takes his army to Santiago de Compostela and conquers all of Spain. A second war is brought on to battle the African king Agolant who, briefly, reconquers the country. (During this war, several miracles occur, including flowers sprouting from the lances of the knights.) A third war has Argolant invading south-western France and sieging the city of Agen, but he is forced to retreat to Pamplona. In the fourth war, Charlemagne's great army sieges Pampeluna. After the death of Argolant, Charlemagne's troops pursue the Saracens through Spain. In a story modeled on David and Goliath, Roland battles the Saracen giant Ferracutus, who is holding the city of Nájera. They fight for two days, taking truces to rest at night, but during the second night the courteous Roland places a stone beneath the head of the giant as a pillow, and upon waking the giant reveals to Roland that he is only vulnerable in one spot: his navel. In the subsequent battle, Roland's sword finds the spot and the giant is killed. Once the last Saracen leaders are defeated, Charlemagne invests Santiago de Compostela with considerable powers and begins the return to France. The chronicle then tells The Song of Roland material: at Roncevaux Pass, Charlemagne's rearguard, which includes Roland, is ambushed by the troops of brothers Marsile and Baligant, kings of Zaragoza, who have bought off the traitor Ganelon. Roland kills Marsile, but is mortally wounded and blows his horn to recall Charlemagne's army. After routing the Saracens, Charlemagne oversees the trial and execution of Ganelon, and the heroes' bodies are brought back to France. Charlemagne invests Basilique Saint-Denis with considerable prerogatives and dies. The chronicle ends with several appendices, including the purported discovery of Turpin's tomb by Pope Calixtus II and Callixtus' call to crusade.
5183504	/m/0d6q8s	A Fortress of Grey Ice	Julie Victoria Jones	2003-08-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A Fortress of Grey Ice represents a greater division of storylines than was present in the first book. The novel opens rather dramatically with new characters and settings, then moves quickly to Ash March's abrupt and covert departure from Raif in order to join the Sull. Left with the Listener, Raif finds himself alone, now abandoned by clan and friend, cut off from everyone and everything that he loves. Embittered and resentful of the lore that claims him as Watcher of the Dead, Raif will wander the edge of the Want until he finds the only group willing to accept an outcast and renegade, the outlaw Maimed Men. Elsewhere Ash, already leagues away from Raif, will become initiated into the mysterious blood lettings of the Sull, all the while riding in haste to reach the safety of the Sull lands, guarded by her two Far Riders and pursued by the maeraith she has been unintentionally released.
5184863	/m/0d6s6c	The Quiet Gentleman	Georgette Heyer	1951	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Gervase Frant, 7th Earl of St Erth, returns to his family seat at Stanyon, having inherited from his father while abroad with the army against Napoleon. Also residing at Stanyon are his stepmother the Dowager Lady St Erth, Gervase's younger half-brother Martin, his cousin Theo and his stepmother's young friend, Drusilla, who is on a long-term visit. Lady St Erth and Martin rapidly make plain to Gervase, in ways verging on the highly anti-social, that they are rather disappointed to see him home. They had expected him to die, as the officer death rate was high, and had wanted him to die, as Martin would have inherited instead. Gervase had not spent much time at Stanyon as a child; his maternal grandmother had taken him in instead; Theo, his cousin and the steward, is therefore the only person at Stanyon with whom he has had much contact. The two are good friends. Out riding one day, Gervase happens upon an extremely beautiful young lady who has fallen off her horse, and discovers her to be Marianne, the daughter of another member of the local gentry, Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas is a Baronet who inherited unexpectedly from his older brother; he had been sent to India to seek his fortune and achieved success. Consequently he is called in the area the Nabob. Gervase being rather taken with Marianne finds that Lady St Erth is less impressed with his new acquaintance; while she is extremely fond of Marianne in her self-centred way, she had hopes of her making a match with Martin. Having made Marianne's acquaintance, Gervase resolves that there should be a Ball, an idea which Martin throws himself into with enthusiasm, although it is to Theo and Drusilla who must organize it. Martin's sister arrives with her husband and two children, to attend Gervase's first big function at Stanyon; so too does "Lucy" (short for Lucian), an old Army friend of Gervase's who is the heir to a fairly rich peerage. The ball is a resounding success; particularly successful is the meeting between Lucian and Marianne. This upsets Martin, although Gervase receives it with more equanimity; his passion for Marianne was short-lived, despite her charm and beauty. After the Ball and as life settles back into a routine, however, some alarming things begin to happen. Gervase, who sleeps in the panelled and ancient master bedroom at Stanyon wakes thinking someone is in his room. Someone appears to have sabotaged a bridge he is about to cross which has been damaged by flooding, someone sets up a tripwire for his horse. The person who is behind all these incidents appears to be Martin, whose handkerchief is found after Gervase wakes up, and who also attempted to fight Gervase without a button on his fencing foil. Later someone shoots him. The injury proves not fatal, but dramatic, and Gervase is ill for some time. Meanwhile, Martin disappears, and people assume he fled to avoid the shooting. When he reappears, he does so with a fishy story about being attacked and tied up in a ditch. Everyone is sceptical about this story except for Gervase. As soon as he is fairly well recovered, Gervase rides out to see Theo, and he is hotly pursued by Martin. Before the police can arrive, Martin is able to tell Gervase that he believes Theo is behind the attempts on both their lives, and Gervase agrees with him. Theo finally admits it, and Gervase gives him control of a plantation in the West Indies rather than firing him and causing a scandal. All ends happily as the unromantic, practical Drusilla and Gervase are engaged.
5185172	/m/0d6snt	The Toll-Gate	Georgette Heyer	1954	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After acting as an aide-de-camp at the Battle of Waterloo, Jack Staple is finding civilian life tedious. Following a formal (and somewhat boring) dinner party in honour of his cousin's engagement, Jack sets out by himself on horseback to visit a more congenial friend some 60 miles away. After getting lost in the dark and rain he reaches a toll-gate where a frightened 11-year old lad is acting as toll collector in the absence of his father. A combination of curiosity, compassion, tiredness, and dampness lead him to stay at the toll house overnight with a view to sorting out the situation in the morning. Over the next few days Jack's circle of acquaintances rapidly expands to include a highwayman, a Bow Street runner, and the local gentry plus their devoted retainers. Other complications include a dead body, stolen treasure, and some masked villains. In the process of preventing a scandal, Jack also manages to identify the murderer, deal with the villains, retrieve the treasure, satisfy the law, provide for his friends, and resolve his own romance.
5185461	/m/0d6t2h	April Lady	Georgette Heyer		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 April Lady is the story of Nell Cardross the young beautiful wife of the Earl of Cardross. She is of a "good family", one that is accepted by high society, but nonetheless her father and brother spend freely and the family is known to be impoverished. Cardross, on the other hand, is significantly older and has been out in society for some time. Rich and handsome he could have his pick of the season's débutantes. He falls for Nell on sight and, in spite of the warnings of his friends who are concerned about the gambling habits of her family, he proposes to her at once. Nell's mother, who has "more hair than wit", tells Nell that Cardross wants an heir and wishes to marry into a good family. She also tells her that she must be a conformable wife and not trouble Cardross. Consequently Nell, who fell for her husband in the same instant he fell for her, keeps him at arm's length until he starts to doubt her appeal. The couple dance at this misunderstanding for many months ably assisted by Cardross' half-sister, her fiancé Jeremy, Nell's brother Dysart and Cardross' cousin Felix. Naturally the resolution is happy.
5185679	/m/0d6tb1	Dreadnought	Robert K. Massie	1991	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Massie begins with the birth of Queen Victoria and follows the chronology of the royal families of Europe, culminating in the unification of Germany by Bismarck and the crowning of Kaiser William II. With the stage set, Massie describes the series of people and events that contributed to the outbreak of war, including Alfred von Tirpitz and his plan for German naval superiority, the Kruger Telegram, Boer War and Boxer Rebellion.
5187172	/m/0d6wvc	Narcissus in Chains	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 * Narcissus in Chains takes place shortly after the events of Obsidian Butterfly, and approximately one year after the events of Blue Moon. At the beginning of the novel, Anita Blake has been out of contact with Jean-Claude, Richard, and the vampires and werewolves that follow her two lovers. After the events in the last novel, Anita is determined to renew her connections to Jean-Claude, Richard, and their followers, but she encounters several new problems as a result of "marrying the marks" that Jean-Claude has placed on Richard and herself. ** First, Jean-Claude feeds his ardeur, a rare power seen only in vampires of Jean-Claude's bloodline, through Anita. Shortly afterward, Anita develops the power herself. Although this power allows Anita to draw energy from lust, it also requires her to "feed" on this sexual energy every day, sometimes multiple times a day. ** Second, in Anita's absence, Damian, a vampire linked to her after she raised him from true death, has become a feral killing machine and has been locked away by Jean-Claude, and Richard has attempted to substitute democracy for the strictly hierarchical nature of the local werewolf pack, threatening to destroy the pack. A new werewolf in town, Jacob seeks to take advantage of this chaos to raise to third in the pack; to become Ulfric, he would need to first take out second-in-command Sylvie, and then Richard himself. ** Third, a new alpha wereleopard, Micah has arrived with his pard of wereleopards, and seeks to merge groups with Anita and consequently becomes her Nimir-Raj and mate. ** Fourth, a new group of shapeshifters has arrived in town, and attempts to capture Nathaniel and several swanmanes. In the fight against those shapeshifters, Gregory accidentally claws Anita, potentially infecting her with wereleopard lycanthropy. ** Fifth, Anita eventually learns that several of the weaker werespecies in town have had their alpha weres mysteriously disappear. * Ultimately, Anita resolves each of these issues with help from her various allies. ** Anita helps Damian to regain his sanity, assuming her position as Damian's master and rendering him the first "vampire servant" in centuries. She becomes the bolverk for the werewolves, performing the acts too evil for Richard to do them himself, and inspires Richard to reorganize the werewolves' power structure by showing him how close the wereleopard pard has become under her own dominance. ** Anita learns that the conflict in the shapeshifter world is due to the arrival of Chimera, a panwere who seeks to dominate shapeshifters by finding weak groups and eliminating their alphas. Both Jacob and Micah arrived in town as agents of Chimera, intended to deliver the local werewolves and wereleopards to his control. Micah, however, switched his loyalty to Anita and was nearly killed as a result. In order to save Richard and Micah's lives, Anita uses her powers to draw the life from Chimera and share that energy with them, killing Chimera and making allies of Narcissus and his werehyenas. The ease with which Chimera played the various species against one another inspires Anita to begin forming a coalition of all the shapeshifter species in St. Louis headed by herself, at least for the moment. ** Anita comes close to reconciling with Richard, but Richard ultimately leaves her after she uses the ardeur to feed on him, declaring that, like Anita herself, he will not allow himself to be used as food. Anita accepts Micah as her lover and Nimir-Raj. Micah, who appears willing to accommodate any desire of Anita's, becomes part of a menage a trois with Jean-Claude, allowing Jean-Claude to feed on him. * In the epilogue, Anita mourns Richard, but explains that she believes that their romantic relationship is finally over. She is no longer the lupa of the Thronos Rokke clan, but has become its bolverk. She is not herself a wereleopard, but her affinity with the leopards apparently means that they are her animal to call as if she were herself a master vampire. Anita and Micah are happily leading their wereleopards, and she, Micah and Jean-Claude are a happy threesome, but, being Anita, she doubts that happiness can last long.
5189343	/m/0d6zrw	Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square	Arthur La Bern			 The novel and film tell the story of Bob Rusk, a serial killer in London who rapes and strangles women. Because of circumstantial evidence, however, the police come to suspect Rusk's friend Richard Blamey.
5189402	/m/0d6zt_	Hannibal	Thomas Harris	1999-06-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Seven years after rescuing Jame Gumb's last victim, Clarice Starling witnesses her career crumble around her when a drug raid goes wrong and she kills an armed meth dealer named Evelda Drumgo, who was carrying her child at the time, in self-defense. Hannibal Lecter, who has been living in Florence, Italy, under an assumed name since escaping custody, sends her a letter of condolence and requests more information about her personal life. Desperate to catch Lecter, the FBI finds a use for Starling once again. She meets with Barney Matthews, former orderly of Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He tells her what Lecter said about her and that he said he would never go after him if he escaped. Meanwhile, Mason Verger, a wealthy, sadistic pedophile who was left horribly disfigured after a "therapy session" with Lecter, plans to get revenge by feeding Lecter to wild boars, using Starling as bait. He is aided by corrupt Justice Department agent Paul Krendler, Starling's personal nemesis. A disgraced Florentine detective, Rinaldo Pazzi, also pursues Lecter in the interests of collecting Verger's bounty on him. However, Lecter kills one of Pazzi's men and hangs Pazzi where his ancestor, Francesco de Pazzi, was hanged in 1478. Lecter waves at a camera, the footage of which is later seen by Verger. Lecter kills one of Verger's men and escapes to the United States, where he begins pursuing Starling. The novel briefly touches upon Lecter's childhood, specifically the death of his beloved younger sister, Mischa. The two were orphaned during World War II, and a group of German deserters found them on their family estate and took them prisoner. Lecter watched, helpless, as the deserters killed and ate Mischa. Barney briefly works for Verger, and gets acquainted with Verger's sister and bodyguard Margot, a lesbian bodybuilder whom Verger molested and raped as a child. Their friendship is briefly strained when he makes a pass at her, but they eventually reconcile, and Margot tells him that she stays in her hated brother's employment because she needs Mason's sperm to have a child with her partner, Judy. Lecter is captured by Verger's men, and Starling pursues them, determined to bring Lecter in herself. One of Verger's men is able to shoot her full of tranquilizer as she releases Lecter. The wild boars break through the barricade separating them from Lecter, but they lose interest in their intended prey when they smell no fear on him, instead going after Verger's men. In the confusion, Lecter carries the unconscious Starling to safety, and escapes with her. At the same time, Margot forcibly obtains Mason's sperm by sodomizing him with a cattle prod, and then kills him by shoving his pet Moray eel down his throat. Lecter, who had briefly treated Margot after her brother abused her, has urged her to blame the murder on him, which she does by leaving one of his hairs at the scene. Using a regimen of psychotropic drugs and behavioral therapy, Lecter attempts to brainwash Starling, hoping to make her believe she is Mischa, returned to life. She ultimately proves too strong, however, and tells him that Mischa will have to live on within him. Lecter kidnaps Krendler and lobotomizes him, and he and Starling dine on his still-living brain before killing him. The two then become lovers, and disappear together. Three years later, on July 9, 2000, Barney and his girlfriend go to Buenos Aires to see a Vermeer painting. At the opera, Barney spots Lecter and Starling; terrified, he flees with his girlfriend, reasoning that "we can only see so much and live."
5189952	/m/0d6_cv	The Golden Egg	Tim Krabbé	1984	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 Two lovers, Rex Hofman and Saskia Ehlvest, have traveled to France for a bicycling vacation. One night they have a minor argument but quickly make up, and Rex pulls over at a convenience store to refuel. He and Saskia bury coins to mark the spot, then she goes into the station to buy drinks and is never seen again. Eight years later he is still haunted by her disappearance. He is now in a relationship with another woman named Lieneke, who is both sympathetic to, and frustrated by, the hold that Saskia's disappearance has over him. Despite her misgivings, however, they become engaged. It is at this point that the reader is introduced to Raymond Lemorne, the man responsible for whatever happened to Saskia. The novella reveals that Lemorne once saved a young girl from drowning; having proven to himself that he is capable of great goodness, Raymond then begins to wonder if he is capable of an act of pure evil. He then comes up with an idea to murder someone in the most horrible fashion he can imagine. The book follows his meticulous preparations, and his long months of trying to find a suitable victim. This section of the novella ends with him abducting Saskia, but we are still not told what happens to her, though the book does provide clues. At this point the narrative switches back to Rex. His obsession with discovering what happened to Saskia has grown to such an extreme that he has taken out a large loan to post advertisements in papers throughout France, hoping that someone might be able to provide him with information. His quest has also driven a wedge into his relationship with Lieneke. One night he is approached by Lemorne, who reveals that he is the one who abducted Saskia, and in a bizarre show of sympathy he offers to satisfy Rex's determination to discover her ultimate fate, but only if Rex agrees to undergo the same ordeal that Saskia suffered. After a long discussion between the two men, Rex agrees to Lemorne's proposal, and proceeds to drink a cup of coffee laced with a sedative. He awakens sometime later to find himself buried alive, and suffocates while imagining himself finally to be reunited with Saskia. In the epilogue it is revealed that several newspapers commented upon Rex's mysterious disappearance and its eerie similarity to Saskia's. Their fates are never discovered; it is as if they vanished from the face of the earth.
5191112	/m/0d70t9	The Siege of Krishnapur	James Gordon Farrell	1973	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set in the fictional town of Krishnapur and tells of a besieged British garrison which holds out for four months against an army of native sepoys. Among the community are the Collector, who is an extremely Victorian believer in progress and father of small children and who can often be found daydreaming of the Great Exhibition; the Magistrate a Chartist in his youth but who sees his youthful political ideals destroyed by witnessing the siege; Dr Dunstaple and Dr McNab who row over the best way to treat cholera; Fleury, a poetical young man from England who learns to become a soldier and Lucy a "fallen" woman rescued from a bungalow who eventually runs a tea salon in the despairing community. By the end of the novel cholera, starvation and the sepoys have killed off most of the inhabitants, who are reduced to eating dogs, horses and finally beetles, their teeth much loosened by scurvy. "The final retreat of the British, still doggedly stiff-upper-lipped through the pantries, laundries, music rooms and ballroom of the residency, using chandeliers and violins as weapons, is a comic delight". The Siege of Krishnapur is part of Farrell's "Empire Trilogy", which concerns the British Empire and its decline in three locations. Other books in the series are Troubles, about the Easter 1916 rebellion in Ireland, and The Singapore Grip, which takes place just before the invasion of Singapore by the Japanese in World War II, during the last days of the British Empire.
5191594	/m/0d71s7	Midshipman's Hope	David Feintuch		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Nicholas Seafort is a seventeen-year-old midshipman who boards the UNS Hibernia on his first space assignment, a three-year interstellar voyage to the colonies of Hope Nation and Detour. He beats back a challenge to his authority as senior midshipman by Vax Holser, the next most senior. During the trip, he strikes up friendships with Third Lieutenant Harv Malstrom and an attractive passenger, Amanda Frowel. A disastrous rescue of a passenger injured while sightseeing on the wreck of the another ship results in the deaths of Captain Haag and his two senior lieutenants, elevating Malstrom to the captaincy and Seafort to second-in-command of Hibernia. When Maelstrom falls ill with a quick-acting cancer, Seafort, believing himself to be unqualified to command, begs him to promote Holser to lieutenant, but Maelstrom dies without doing so. The other surviving officers (outside the chain of command) share Seafort's opinion of his leadership abilities and try to get him to relieve himself, but he cannot find any regulations that permit it. They back down when Seafort points out the penalty for mutiny. Seafort is immediately faced with a difficult decision. Malstrom had condemned three crewmen to death for assaulting the sergeant-at-arms in an attempt to conceal their drug-making operation. Their punishment was extremely unpopular with the rest of the crew. However, despite the danger of a revolt, Seafort has two of the men hanged; the third's sentence is commuted to several months confinement. His resolute handling of the situation quells the unruly crewmen. This action estranges him from Amanda, who feels the executions to be barbaric. Other dangers follow. By thoroughness and sheer stubbornness, Seafort discovers that the ship's sentient computer, Darla, has been corrupted by careless naval programmers and would have sent the ship hopelessly off-course on the next leg of their journey. Darla was also responsible for the explosion that killed Captain Haag. To fix the problem, Seafort has a backup restored. When the ship arrives at its next stop, Miningcamp, a small mining colony in an otherwise uninhabitable system, mutineers from the space station try to take over the ship. Seafort single-handedly holds them off until the crew can regroup and deal with the intruders. Eventually, Seafort ends the rebellion and finds out the cause. An ore barge and the starship Telstar are long overdue, which resulted in the panic that led to the trouble. When the Hibernia reaches Hope Nation, Seafort expects to be relieved, but discovers that not only has the admiral in command of the naval garrison died in a strange viral epidemic, but a captain has deserted, leaving a Hope Nation commanding officer who is junior to Seafort. Seafort finds himself in charge of all naval forces in the system. During a tour of the planet, Seafort, Amanda (with whom he has reconciled) and one of his officers run into the officer who had deserted. He is hiding in the mountains with his wife because he believes he saw meteors spraying something in the sky shortly before the epidemic broke out. Believing the man to be mad, Seafort dismisses his story as fantasy, but does not force the couple to return to civilization. Seafort recruits several officers from the local personnel, then continues on to the next stop, Detour. He finds that two of the new men are poor officers, dumped on him by their former commanders. However, he manages to deal with the situation. Then Hibernias sensors detect the Telstar, adrift in space with massive rents in her hull. Seafort leads a boarding party to investigate and, to his horror, encounters a strange alien life form resembling an amoeba in the ship's corridor. When it attacks, it becomes clear that it was responsible for the disabling of the Telstar and the death of its crew. Fortunately, Seafort is able to escape unharmed. After a stop at Hope Nation to warn the residents, Seafort takes Hibernia back to Earth to report the news.
5191717	/m/0d71zw	Challenger's Hope	David Feintuch		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Nicholas Seafort, newly assigned commander of UNS. Challenger and part of Admiral Geoffrey Tremaine's task force, has his ship taken from him when the Admiral decides to make Challenger his flagship, under the command of Captain Hasselbrad. Seafort is given command of the Admiral's far smaller original flagship, UNS Portia. Tremaine's task force has the task of reaching Hope Nation, and eliminating any aliens found on the way. Portia is given the task of transporting a group of Lower New York 'transpops' - uneducated and often violent street children - to the colony of Detour beyond Hope Nation. Seafort initially sees the transpops as simply a danger to his ship (drugging or imprisoning them were considered as solutions). The squadron is attacked by Fish that board Portia, releasing their lethal virus into the ship and killing dozens of her crew and passengers, including Seafort's baby son. Shortly after this Amanda Seafort, driven insane by grief, commits suicide, and Nicholas suffers a temporary breakdown as a result. After his recovery, Portia encounters Tremaine's flagship Challenger, crippled by a Fish attack. Seafort is transferred to the ship and is left alone, save for passengers and crew that Tremaine hates, including the transpops, and abandoned in space. After overcoming a mutiny, Seafort sets about preparing Challenger for an eighty-year voyage back to Earth, conscripting passengers into the Naval Service and scavenging what is possible from the wrecked sections of the ship. Barely weeks into the trip radiation from the ship's damaged propulsion systems attracts the aliens, leading to a series of desperate battles in which Challenger is further damaged, and more of her already tiny crew killed. Ultimately Seafort uses his dying ship to ram an alien, only for it to Fuse (accelerate to faster than light speed) taking Challenger with it. For sixty days Challenger remains lodged in the alien, her crew dying of malnutrition until, almost miraculously the Fish Defuses in the solar system itself. In the aftermath of the voyage, Seafort meets his father in a naval base on the moon, and is given command of his old ship, Hibernia, to return to Hope Nation.
5191940	/m/0d72cc	Reality Dust	Stephen Baxter		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The plot begins not very long after the Third Expansion began (the First Expansion ended when humanity was conquered by the Squeem; the Second Expansion ended with the conquest of humanity by the Qax, and the Third Expansion, ~5400 CE, began after the events of Timelike Infinity, pursuant to Jim Bolder's destruction of the Qax home-system). The protagonist, one "Hama", an investigator for Earth's Truth Commission, is investigating the surviving Qax-collaborators (as the Qax restricted access to AS- anti-senescence technology - to collaborators, they are rather old, and are known as "Pharaohs"); he follows one renegade Pharaoh to Callisto. It is collected in the anthology Resplendent.
5192029	/m/0d72kp	Firstborn	Stephen Baxter	2007-12-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's action switches stage frequently between the Earth of 2069, the 'jigsaw-planet' Mir 31 years after its creation, and various settlements on Mars. Firstborn opens with Bisesa Dutt waking up after 19 years of suspended animation, only to be informed of the fact that a 'bogey' has entered the Solar System. Further investigation of the object reveals that it is a "cosmological-weapon" (called a Q-bomb by scientists) capable of destroying matter by engulfing it into a small 'pocket universe', which is then quickly destroyed in a Big Rip-like event. Bisesa, her now-divorced daughter Myra, and a young spacer called Alexei Carel quickly leave the Earth via a space elevator, in order to escape what Alexei views as an inefficient and corrupt government. Meanwhile, on Mir, a young astronomer named Abdikadir (son of one of the main characters of Time's Eye), while making observations on what appears to be planet Mars covered in oceans, is interrupted by Bisesa Dutt's old mobile phone ringing. Back on Earth, the Space Council is preparing to launch an antimatter-fueled spacecraft to intercept the Q-bomb, while Bisesa arrives at a research station located at Mars' North Pole. The team there had discovered a gravitational "trap" that contained one of the Firstborn's Eyes. This is proof that not only did intelligent Martians exist in the distant past, but that they had been exterminated (probably with another Q-Bomb) by the Firstborn, but not before they had captured one of the Eyes. As she approaches the Eye, Bisesa is promptly sucked into a gateway and finds herself back on Mir, in the Temple of Marduk. Babylon has been completely changed by Alexander the Great after his victory over the Mongols, becoming the center of his new empire and one of only two large cities on the planet (the other being a nineteenth-century Chicago). After a failed assassination attempt on Alexander, Bisesa is forced to leave Babylon and head for Chicago. On the way, her phone's AI determines that the universe containing Mir and the habitable version of Mars is rapidly decaying, and has only another 500 years left before it ends in a Big Rip. Myra, after losing her mother once again on Mars, is contacted by the AI Athena, who had been the managing intelligence behind the storm shield in Sunstorm. After being copied and transmitted to nearby star systems in 2042, in an attempt to save a small bit of humankind should the shield project fail, she and another two AIs had reached a distant, inhabited planet, who had itself been almost sterilized by the Firstborn. From there, with the help of the planet's last inhabitant, they witnessed humanity's survival through the Sunstorm. Athena was promptly re-transmitted to Earth, to aid against the alien menace. Athena informs Myra and the Mars researchers of a plan to stop the Q-bomb by communicating to the Martians from Mir's universe. Back on Mir, Bisesa reaches a frozen-over Chicago, the climate having been heavily disrupted by the Discontinuity (the moment of Mir's creation). There she receives a transmission from Myra in the "real" universe, informing her of Athena's plan to communicate with the Martians; a pattern of geometrical shapes was to be transmitted to Blue Mars, which would prompt the Martian survivors to somehow act. At the suggestion of Thomas Alva Edison, the residents of Chicago dig vast trenches in the shapes required in Mir's North American icecap, filling them with oil and setting them ablaze; the pattern is observed by the sole remaining inhabitant of Blue Mars, at the Martian North Pole, who promptly reconfigures its version of the gravity trap to crush the Eye it contained. Athena's hypotheses was that all the Eyes were connected, and the destruction of one on Blue Mars would attract the Q-bomb to real-Mars, thereby destroying the planet completely but sparing Earth. The scheme is successful, and the Q-bomb is diverted. It strikes Mars, and the planet slowly begins to leave the universe. Myra decides to stay at the Martian North Pole as the planet dissolves. On Mir, Bisesa travels back to Babylon, activating the Eye and returning to real-Mars at the very moment of the Big-Rip. The novel ends with Myra and Bisesa reunited on the planet shown to Bisesa during her very first trip through an Eye. A portal opens behind them, and Myra's estranged daughter, Charlotte, invites them through. It is revealed that in Charlotte's future, humanity alone or with other sentient allies, calls itself the Lastborn as they are at war with the Firstborn.
5192353	/m/0d734t	Vulcan's Hammer	Philip K. Dick	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In 2029 CE, the Earth is run by the Unity organisation after a devastating world war. Unity runs the planet, controlling humans from childhood education onwards through the Vulcan series of artificial intelligences, but is fought by the Healer movement. Unity Director William Barris discovers that the Vulcan 3 computer has become sentient and is considering drastic action to combat what it sees as a threat to itself. Vulcan 3 has been kept ignorant about information related to the Healer revolutionary movement by Managing Director Jason Dills, who is still loyal to its (also sentient) predecessor, Vulcan 2. Vulcan 2 fears that it will soon be superseded by Vulcan 3, and previously established the Healers as a movement to overthrow its successor. Dill and Barris begin to suspect one another, as Dill has received a letter that refers to Barris' previous contact with the Healers, but Vulcan 2 suffers partial damage in a terrorist attack. It advises Dill not to inform Vulcan 3 about the existence of the Healers, for fear that Vulcan 3 will order their mass execution. However, Vulcan 3 has already noticed the gap in available data about the rebels, and manufactured killer androids of its own. Barris and Dill resolve their differences and attack Vulcan 3, resulting in the destruction of the artificial intelligence, but Dill dies in the attempt. Finally, however, humanity is free from Unity and its technocratic dictatorship.
5193582	/m/0d74sc	The Lover	Laura Wilson	2004-06-17	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Set in World War II England, The Lover is a novel based on the real-life case of serial killer Gordon Cummins, also known as the Blackout Ripper. A 28-year old British airman, Cummins began strangling and mutilating female prostitutes in London during the bombing and subsequent blackout in the city. The novel looks at the events from three view points: a female prostitute with a young son who is a potential victim, a woman who met Cummings and became infatuated with him, and Cummins himself.
5194222	/m/0d75nl	Midworld	Alan Dean Foster	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Midworld is a planet entirely covered by a rain forest three-quarters of a kilometer (almost half a mile) tall. Born is a member of the primitive society that has lived peacefully on Midworld for hundreds of years, they keep the careful natural balance of the jungle so that all may live. The world is disrupted by the arrival of an exploitative human company from Earth whose representatives know nothing of the delicate stability of the planet. Born helps two of them, one of whom is a female botanist, by leading them safely through parts of the relentlessly hostile jungle. The portions of the jungle near the ground are full of bioluminescent growths. The natives live in a gigantic tree called the Home Tree. When one of them dies, they are ceremonially buried in the Home Tree. Most of the animals have six legs and three eyes. One flying creature, called a sky-devil, is a large reptile-like creature that has air intakes under its wings. Each of the locals forms a lifetime bond with a powerful predator called a furcot. The natives hunt with poison darts. All of the life on the planet is linked together in a vast neurological network centered on the plant life. The natives can sort of communicate with this network through a process they call "emfoling". Eventually Born realizes that he has made a grave error in assisting the aliens who have plans for life that will completely kill the jungle and Born's people. Enlisting the aid of native plant and animal lifeforms, and their furcots, he and a powerful warrior from his tribe named Losting (both of whom are in love with the tribe's most beautiful girl) destroy the invaders' base. In the course of the fight the other warrior is killed.
5194768	/m/0d76hr	One of Ours	Willa Cather	1923	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While attending Temple College, Claude tried to convince his parents that attending the State University would give him a better education. His parents ignore his pleas and Claude continues at the Christian college. After a football game, Claude meets and befriends the Erlich family, quickly adapting his own world perception to the Erlichs' love of music, free-thinking, and debate. His career at university and his friendship with the Erlichs are dramatically interrupted, however, when his father expands the family farm and Claude is obligated to leave university and operate part of the family farm. Once pinned to the farm, Claude marries Enid Royce, a childhood friend. His notions of love and marriage are quickly devastated when it becomes apparent that Enid is more interested in political activism and Christian missionary work than she is in loving and caring for Claude. When Enid departs for China to care for her missionary sister, who has suddenly fallen ill, Claude moves back to his family's farm. As World War I begins in Europe, the family is fixated on every development from overseas. When the United States decides to enter the war, Claude enlists in the US Army. Finally believing he has found a purpose in life - beyond the drudgery of farming and marriage - Claude revels in his freedom and new responsibilities. Despite an influenza epidemic and the continuing hardships of the battlefield, Claude Wheeler nonetheless has never felt as though he has mattered more. His pursuit of vague notions of purpose and principle culminates in a ferocious front-line encounter with an overwhelming German onslaught.
5194778	/m/0d76j2	Cachalot	Alan Dean Foster	1980-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cachalot is an ocean planet where humans have begun building floating cities. It is also the same planet where all of Earth’s cetaceans were transplanted six hundred years ago after the Covenant of Peace was enacted with all intelligence-enhanced ocean dwellers. Five of these cities have been destroyed when a middle-aged scientist and her late-teen daughter are dispatched to the planet to discover the source of the attacks. The novel title comes from the French word cachalot, meaning sperm whale. This word was applied to the sperm whale when the mammals were actively hunted in Earth’s oceans. The novel features a new musical instrument called "neurophon" producing not only tunes but also nerve sensations on human skin and irritating alien creatures found on the planet.
5195037	/m/0d771f	Voyage to the City of the Dead	Alan Dean Foster	1984-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Scientists Eitienne and Lyra Redowl come to the planet Horseye to study the entire length the immense Skar River and its spectacular river chasm, the largest in the whole Humanx Commonwealth. On Horseye there are three separate sentient species, which all have different concerns about their planet. The Mai, traders from the river delta, are prepared to help the Redowls, but had their own agenda for doing so, for it was rumoured that at the head of the river was the City of the Dead and a great treasure. This treasure is eventually revealed to be not be material wealth, but an ancient artifact that is used to monitor the depths of space for an approaching evil.
5195644	/m/0d78dt	Sentenced to Prism	Alan Dean Foster	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the Humanx Commonwealth, Prism is a unique planet because its ecosystem contains both silicon-based and carbon-based life. Evan Orgell, a management troubleshooter, sent to Prism to investigate the disappearance of a research group, finds himself fighting for his survival in this strange crystalline environment after his specialized environment suit succumbs to the local elements. Leaving behind his mechanized suit, Evan is for the first time in his life exposed to a hostile environment without the protection of his suit and must rely on the unexpected help of the native sentient life to survive. With the help of a caterpillar-like creature named A Surface of Fine Azure-Tinted Reflection With Pyroxin Dendritic Inclusions (which Evan chooses to call simply "Azure", much to his strange new friend's disappointment) he must grow to overcome his prejudices, his assumptions and his pre-occupations to re-learn what life, communication, companionship, government, and even his own bodily form mean to him. He and his new-found friends must overcome multiple treachery by his own race in order to survive and thrive on their beautiful, but deadly, planet.
5196403	/m/0d79sw	The Howling Stones	Alan Dean Foster	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Two scientists race against their vicious alien nemesis, the AAnn, to secure a treaty for mining rights on the newly discovered planet Senisran, an oddity of mostly ocean dotted with thousands of islands. The aboriginal natives' sacred stones are found to have an immense power that the humans and the AAnn will do almost anything to obtain.
5196524	/m/0d7b34	Drowning World	Alan Dean Foster	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On the distant planet Fluva, torrential rains that leave it barely habitable also make it a treasure trove of rare botanical specimens. When the human prospector Shadrach Hasselemoga crashes in a remote area, the only crew available to search for him is the warrior Jemunu-jah, one of the native Sakuntala, and the immigrant Deyzara trader, Masurathoo. This culturally different and physically repulsive to each other couple promptly crash also. While the rescuers and the rescued are all slogging it out of the ultimate rain forest, the reptilian AAnn empire is fomenting bloody trouble between the Sakuntula and the Deyzara. This leaves Commonwealth administrator Lauren Matthias in the hot seat, with refugees swarming in to her limited facilities and the bodies of the innocent piling up, with few resources to help. But it's the survivors of the rain forest who bring new knowledge that helps save Fluva, along with quick work by Matthias.
5197098	/m/0d7c6s	In a Free State	V.S. Naipaul	1971	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The narrator is initially on a ferry to Egypt, and concludes many years later as a tourist in Egypt again. The first tale concerns an Indian servant from Bombay who, having no real alternative at home, accompanies his master on a diplomatic mission to Washington, D.C.. The two Indians suffer abominably from the poor value of Indian currency. The servant lives in almost a cupboard and inadvertently blows several weeks salary just buying a snack. However he gets to meet a restaurant proprietor who offers him an apparent fortune as a salary, so he absconds and works for him. Once he has his affairs in reasonable order, however, he starts to live in fear that his master will find him and order him back. He also learns that he is working illegally and liable to deportation. The only way of resolving the situation is to marry a woman who had seduced him but whom he had avoided ever since out of shame for his behaviour. The second story has an unreliable narrator. It concerns a rural West Indian family, a set of cousins, one of whom being in a better situation manages to humiliate the narrator. The richer family has a son who goes to Canada and is destined to do well, while the others can expect nothing. The younger brother of the second family then sets out for England to study engineering, while his elder brother does all he can to support him. Eventually the elder brother follows him to England with the aim of helping him further. He works all hours in demeaning jobs to keep him, but eventually makes enough money to set up his own business. However he discovers that the brother, despite appearances is doing no studying at all, while his restaurant is frequented by yobs. The narrator, in a fit of rage, murders one of these yobs, who is in fact a friend of his brother. The story ends when he attends his brother's wedding, with a prison guard for company. The story is set in an East African state that has recently acquired independence. The King, although liked by the Colonials, is weak, and is on the run while the President is poised to take absolute power. The level of violence in urban centres of the country is rising and there are rumours of violence in the countryside. There is mention of the Asian community being "deported". Bobby is an official who has been attending a conference in the capital city. He now heads back to the governmental Compound where he lives, and he has offered a lift to Linda, another colleague's wife. We learn early on that Bobby is homosexual. He is rebuffed by a young Zulu when he tries to pick him up at the Hotel bar. He soon discovers that Linda has plans of her own as they embark on the journey. The relationship between the two is complex from the outset; it seems Bobby is intent on aggravating the initially calm Linda. His previous history of mental illness is explored. Things go from bad to worse when they put up at a Hotel, run by an old Colonel who can not adapt to the new conditions in the country. There, they have dinner, and they witness a scene between the Colonel and Peter, his servant, who he accuses of planning his murder. Furthermore Bobby discovers that Linda was planning some extra marital activity with a friend along the way, and he becomes furious and hostile. The two reach their destination, but not before witnessing the site where the old King was recently murdered, a philosophical Muslim planning to move to Egypt and the beginnings of a genocidal wave of violence. Bobby is beaten by the army at a check point, where he and Linda experience first hand the growing violence. The story follows the conventions of a road trip with the reader becoming aware, as do Bobby and Linda, of the situation and how serious it has become.
5197331	/m/0d7cmm	Evil Star	Anthony Horowitz		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 After the events of Raven's Gate, Matt goes to a new school which the Nexus are paying for, but is left friendless because of a bully named Gavin Taylor, causing Matt to injure Taylor by using his powers. Susan Ashwood and Fabian, members of the Nexus, ask him to help them acquire an old diary which could enable them to stop a second gate being opened. He refuses. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn, his aunt, has fallen under the influence of dark forces. She kills her spouse Brian, steals a petrol tanker, and drives it into Matt's new school in a desperate attempt to kill him. Fortunately, he uses his clairvoyance powers and manages to evacuate the whole school before it happens. Matt realizes that he must stop the gate from being opened and agrees to meet the bookseller, Morton, at St Meredithe's Church after a meeting with the Nexus. Morton affirms him to be one of the Five, but he is killed in the process and the diary is stolen by Diego Salamanda, another bidder who wants to use the diary to open the second gate. The Nexus persuade Matt and his carer, Richard Cole, to fly to Peru, find the second gate, and stay at a house belonging to Fabian. However, on their way to the planned rendezvous, the Hotel Europa, the car is ambushed and Richard is kidnapped but Matt manages to escape. With the help of a local Peruvian, Pedro, Matt manages to get to the meeting place but is captured by the Peruvian police at the hotel, led by the sadistic Captain Rodriguez, and brutally beaten. Pedro saves him. Then, they escape to the Poison Town, where Pedro lives. Strangely, while all the town is affected by diseases, the street where Pedro lives on seems unaffected. Here, they meet the man Sebastian (who can speak English, unlike Pedro), who agrees to help Matt. As night passes, Matt meets Pedro in a dream, revealing that he is one of the Five. Matt finds the markings of his previous beatings have all gone. Thinking Salamanda had Richard kidnapped, Matt and Pedro travel to his hacienda in Inca, but they are discovered. Salamanda reveals that he does not have Richard. An Inca, Micos, one of Richard's kidnappers, helps them escape, and he is killed in the process. He tells them to travel to Cuzco before he dies, and there, Matt manages to contact Fabian and the Nexus on their whereabouts. However, Rodriguez and the police arrive but Matt and Pedro escape with the help of several Incas, led by Atoc, Micos' brother. Then they are taken to the Mountain of the Sleeping God Mandingo. From there, they descend into the town of the last Incas, Vilcabamba, where Richard, having been staying there after being separated, is waiting for them. There, Richard reveals that the kidnapping was conducted to prevent Matt from reaching the Hotel Europa. Based on the Salamanda's knowledge of their movements, Matt and Richard deduce that there is a traitor in the Nexus tipping him off. At the village, it is learned that the gate is located somewhere in the Nazca Desert. They travel to the Nazca Desert with Professor Chambers, an expert on everything Peruvian, and Matt realizes that the Nazca lines are the second gate. The gate will only open once all the stars align with each of the drawings, however, the gate has been constructed such that the stars will never all align at once, and in this case, the star Cygnus is not in its proper position. However, Salamanda has sent a satellite as a substitute star, an evil star, to open the gate. Matt and Pedro break into Salamanda's headquarters with some help of the Incas in an attempt to stop his plan by destroying the radio mast controlling the satellite. At the control center, it is revealed that Fabian is the traitor in the Nexus, having believed it was pointless to try and stop the opening of the gate. Rodriguez then bursts into the room and shoots Fabian when he tries to stop Matt and Richard from being killed. The radio mast is destroyed and falls into the building, flattening Rodriguez. In his dying moments, Fabian reveals that Salamanda had taken control of the satellite once it was in range, using a different satellite dish out in the desert. Atoc takes Matt and Pedro on a helicopter to the dish, but the helicopter crashes, killing Atoc and breaking Pedro's ankle. Matt has no choice but to stop the gate from being opened alone. He manages to trigger his power, destroying the dish and trailer Salamanda is using, and kills Salamanda when he shoots at Matt by deflecting two bullets back to him. However, the satellite is revealed to still be continuing on its trajectory, opening the gate. The Nazca lines crack open and an army of demons arise, before the King of the Old Ones himself appears, and challenges Matt. Matt uses his powers to wound them but he over-exerts himself and falls into a coma. The Old Ones, biding their time, temporarily hide from the world. Matt is taken to Professor Chambers' house and a doctor examines Matt but does not think he will survive. But Pedro comes back from hospital early and insists on being alone with Matt. At this point, Pedro's power is revealed to be the power to heal. This explains the reason why the street Pedro lived in was the only place in in Poison Town that was unaffected by disease. Matt awakes from his coma thanks to Pedro and decides that the only way they can defeat the Old Ones is to find the other three Gatekeepers.
5198712	/m/0d7fcj	The Hunter	Donald E. Westlake		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The plot concerns a criminal, Parker who, having been betrayed, shot, and left for dead by his partner and wife, embarks on a relentless quest to retrieve his money and wreak revenge. The novel was written as a stand-alone crime novel, but when Westlake turned it in, his editor told him that if Westlake would rewrite the ending so that Parker escaped, he would be willing to publish up to three books a year about Parker. Though Westlake wasn't able to keep up that level of productivity, he did go on to write 23 more Parker novels over the next 46 years. The Hunter was re-issued by the University of Chicago Press in August 2008.
5199081	/m/0d7fy7	Phoenix in Obsidian	Michael Moorcock		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When the story begins, Erekosë has ended the war and found peace. Then the dreams of eternal struggle, that tormented him in The Eternal Champion, begin again. He finds himself transported into the body of Urlik Skarsol, driving a chariot pulled by polar bears across an ice sheet. He encounters a party of humans who take him to Rowernarc. There he meets the debauched Bishop Belphig and the ascetic Lord Shanosfane. Belphig eventually invites him on a hunt for the fearsome sea-stag. On the trip, Urlik begins dreaming of the Black Sword; then, while he is awake, a mysterious bell tolls, a Screaming Chalice appears, and a voice orders Urlik to take up the Black Sword. Finally they hunt the sea-stag to its island lair. Many of the hunters are killed and, though he succeeds in killing the stag, Urlik is left for dead. He is rescued by another party from the wholesome human settlement of the Scarlet Fjord, led by Bladrak. On the advice of the Lady of the Chalice, they have been ringing the bell that summoned him from his life as Erekosë. They have with them the Cold Sword, which he instinctively fears. During a raid to rescue prisoners from the Silver Warriors, Urlik learns that Belphig has been engaged in slave trade with them. Bladrak summons the Lady of the Chalice for advice. She tells Urlik to take the Cold Sword and rescue Shanosfane. Shanosfane reveals that Belphig commands the Silver Warriors because he holds their Silver Queen hostage; then he is killed by the Cold Sword. Soon Belphig places the Scarlet Fjord under siege and the situation becomes desperate. Again they consult the Lady, who tells them that the Silver Queen is held hostage on the Moon. Urlik rescues the Queen and learns that she is also the Lady, who was able to advise them remotely. They return to the Scarlet Fjord. When the Silver Warriors see that their Queen is free, they turn against Belphig. After the battle, she tells him of a legend that the chalice contains the blood of the sun. Suddenly Urlik understands his dreams. The two go out on the ice. While she summons the Screaming Chalice, he kills her. The Black Sword pours its blood into the Chalice, then the Chalice is taken up to renew the sun and the Sword vanishes. In The Quest for Tanelorn, Erekose learns more about the events that concluded Phoenix in Obsidian. Renewing the sun, an act that aided humanity, was so greatly counter to the nature of the entity Stormbringer that it was driven out of its habitation in the Black Sword and was forced to seek another body.
5199767	/m/0d7gvt	The Unknown Ajax	Georgette Heyer	1959	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Hugo Darracott, an enormous figure of a young man, arrives at Darracott Place in Sussex to find his family waiting: his grandfather, Lord Darracott; his uncle, Matthew, a politician, his wife, Lady Aurelia and their sons Vincent and Claud; and his uncle Rupert's widow Elvira and her children Anthea and Richmond. They are, it is immediately apparently, expecting "a fellow who eats off his knife": that is, a working- or at best lower middle-class man. Hugo obligingly applies a Yorkshire accent and looks gormless. Lord Darracott puts pressure on his older grandchildren, Vincent, Anthea and Claud, to educate Hugo. He discourages Hugo from much contact at all with Richmond, who is young and army-mad - Richmond is Lord Darracott's favourite, and his grandfather has no desire to see him leave Darracott Place. All three of the older grandchildren oblige: Vincent because his grandfather bribes him financially, Claud because he is a dandy and wishes to be influential, and Anthea to ease her grandfather's bullying of her mother. It rapidly becomes apparent to Hugo that things are not all quite straightforward at Darracott Place; among other things he is disconcerted at the positive attitude towards smuggling that his family display. He is also unimpressed at the financial status of the family: while the lands are clearly rich, the tenants' farms are ill-maintained and so indeed are the family buildings (both Darracott Place itself and the Dower house which is reputed to be haunted and is maintained by a single servant). It emerges that Richmond, bored by being kept at home with nothing to do, has started joining in the smuggling . This ultimately results in a farcical scene in the family's pains to keep this discovery from the customs officers, choreographed by Hugo, with Claud and Richmond pretending to be drunk and playing cards in order to deceive the main customs officer into not realising that Richmond, not Claud, is actually suffering from blood-loss. Anthea, who is already half-falling for Hugo, is hugely impressed by his inventiveness and strength - and is as a result appalled when Vincent reveals that, far from being the impoverished man they had assumed, son of a weaver's daughter and having earned his Commission rather than bought it, is in fact a Harrow-educated grandson and heir of a wealthy mill-owner, since she fears being considered a gold-digger. Hugo feels this suggestion is ridiculous, and begs her to marry him to protect him from matchmaking mamas - an offer which Anthea ultimately accepts.
5199812	/m/0d7gxk	Bad Bargain	Diana G. Gallagher	2006-12-26	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Having sealed the Hellmouth, the Scooby Gang do not realise that anything is odd when things to be sold at the first annual band fund-raising rummage sale are stored in the school basement, which is directly above the Hellmouth. The rummage sale begins, and the items on sale seem to be having an unexpected effect on those that buy them. Even Xander and Willow are soon affected. The situation gets more serious resulting in the school being quarantined leaving Buffy and Giles to sort things out before the items get sold elsewhere.
5200046	/m/0d7h7s	The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts	Louis de Bernières	1990	{"/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 The town of Chiriguaná is threatened with rape and murder by the caprices of the thuggish Capitan Figueras, and drought, thanks to the spoilt Doña Constanza's plan to divert the Mula river in order to feed her swimming pool. When Doña Constanza is kidnapped by communist guerillas and held for ransom, the unkindness she had shown towards her tenants leads them to celebrate a three-day long fiesta. Several chapters focus on individual characters, from those detailing the life of Aurelio, the magical Sierra-turned-Jungle Indian, to those involving Chiriguaná, to letters home to France from Antoine, and to those of the guerilla characters. In the capital of the nation, the handsome young Capitan Asado is promoted to Colonel and given orders from the highest positions in the military to eliminate subsersives and communists through whatever means necessary. After initial distress, Colonel Asado hardens, his objectives change, and thousands of ordinary civilians are kidnapped during the night and driven in Ford Falcons to army buildings where they are systematically tortured and killed. Journalists and relatives who report the kidnappings are abducted themselves, and the capital of the nation becomes lawless and fearful. The escapades and political in-fighting of the divided and deeply corrupt military drive the people of Chiriguaná to fight the army, and after the battle, to flee, en masse, in an exodus to the mountains. Guided by Aurelio, and accompanied by a mysterious host of cats, the townspeople travel away from the degenerate civilisation of Chiriguaná towards a new civilization rooted in past magic and majesty. Shortly after their departure, an earthquake triggers a great tsunami, which destroys a vast area of the Mula Basin jungles. Due to Aurelio's premonition of it, they observe the event from higher ground. The long journey takes the townspeople across high plateaus and through tropical jungles, and at its end Don Emmanuel and Aurelio traverse a glacier to navigate over a mountain. An avalanche occurs, which both men miraculously survive, and exposes hundreds of long-buried colonial Spanish conquistadors and their hundreds of Indian slaves, who had been perfectly preserved in ice for centuries. The earthquake earlier in the journey had burst the dam of a lake-filled valley, situated over the mountain Don Emmanuel and Aurelio climbed. The draining of the valley had exposed the remnants of an Inca town, partially buried in mud. At the valley end there is a cliff dropping down to the jungle below, which lies under deposited mud from the burst dam. The townspeople clear the mud from the buildings in the Inca town, and the new town is subsequently named Cochadebajo de los Gatos after the Inca stone statues of jaguars which line it. The mud deposited on the flattened jungle below the valley provides fertile farmland for the new town, and mud-brick terraces are built on which to grow crops. The conquistadores are brought back to life by Aurelio and, after initial rampant chaos, eventually adapt to their new lives alongside the main characters in the new town.
5201210	/m/0d7jw0	Blast from the Past	Ben Elton		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Polly Slade is a 34-year-old woman with no money, no love life and a boring, run of the mill job at the local town council. She has attracted the obsessive attention of Peter, an ex-client, who continues to harass and threaten her in breach of several court orders she has brought out against him. The novel frequently changes perspective, and we see the depth of his obsession with her as he plots to come to her house late at night in a last-ditch attempt to prove his "love" to her. Through a series of flashbacks we investigate Polly's relationship with Jack Kent, a soldier who was once the youngest captain in the US Army. They had a short affair during the summer when Polly was seventeen years old. She was at that time an activist and saboteur living in a "peace camp" in the countryside, whom Jack met at a motorway service station while he was positioned in England with his work. The relationship ended when he took her to a hotel and then walked out on her as she slept, leaving her with no way of contacting him. Polly's memories of him are extremely bitter for this reason, and Jack, who is trapped in an unhappy marriage, finds he cannot escape Polly's influence over his life. He has risen to the rank of a general, partly with her assistance, as his memories of her have kept him from becoming involved in a number of scandals which could have ruined his career. One night, Polly's phone rings in the small hours of the morning, and Jack unexpectedly announces his intention to come to visit her, despite the unsociable hour and the fact of them not having seen each other for sixteen years. Meanwhile, Peter is also making his way over to Polly's house, and he and Jack have a confrontation in a public phone booth. Jack arrives at Polly's house and they spend several hours talking about the past, both memories of their relationship and details of Jack's life since he left her. They argue about politics; Jack is very right wing and something of a male chauvinist, whereas Polly is a pacifist and feminist. Polly's beliefs oppose everything he stands for, and he tells her that people like her are what has brought America to ruin. When she complains that he cannot just reappear in her life after such a long absence, he comes to the point of his visit: he intends to kill her to prevent the details of his relationship with her becoming public. At the time they knew each other, Polly was an anarchist and below the legal age of consent for sex in America (at the time of their affair, Jack was stationed in England), and if Jack's involvement with her is found out, his career could be ruined. He is the top candidate to become the National Security Advisor and he has decided that nothing, not even the love of his life, can be allowed to stand in his way. At this point Peter breaks into the house, having killed a milkman he initially mistook for Jack. As Jack is about to murder Polly, Peter bursts into the room, shouting a string of obscenities and threats. Jack shoots him dead, allowing Polly a chance to activate her alarm, alerting the police who arrive in minutes. Rather than have his history with Polly, and the murder of Peter, made public, Jack shoots himself. When his body is found, there is a major press scandal over his involvement with Polly and the details of his death, exactly what he feared would happen to him in life. Polly is now free of the terror of her stalker, but she has been left with nothing, and decides to rebuild her life. At the very end of the novel, she is visited by Jack's recently divorced brother, who feels he cannot hate her for what has happened and wants to know more about her and her relationship with Jack. As she lets him into the house, she is calm and feeling positive about the future, and she notices how like Jack he is but with one noticeable difference: his voice is "kinder, somehow".
5203663	/m/0d7n_d	The City in the Autumn Stars	Michael Moorcock	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Fleeing from the Reign of Terror in 1793, Manfred von Bek (the Ritter von Bek), once a valued revolutionary, leaves Paris and heads towards Switzerland, with the final destination of the Waldenstein city of Mirenberg in mind. Close to Vaud, von Bek, who is masquerading as a messenger carrying secret documents, meets Robert de Montsorbier. Following polite conversation, Montsorbier accuses von Bek of being a traitor, and von Bek flees towards the border. Shortly after crossing the border, although not knowing it at the time, von Bek meets a group of young revolutionaries on their way to Paris. As Montsorbier is not carrying any flags or standards, the revolutionaries believe him to be part of the Swiss Guard, and open fire. They wound Montsorbier and several of his men. Von Bek thanks them and, after explaining, to their dismay, that the men they opened fire on were enforcers of the Committee of Public Safety, he leaves them, also taking Montsorbier's horse. After spending the night at an inn&mdash;Le Coq D'Or&mdash;von Bek awakens to discover that Montsorbier, posing as a member of the Swiss Guard, is searching for him at the inn. Unable to locate the hiding Von Bek, Montsorbier accuses him of being a horse thief, and attempts to gain information on his heading. It is then that von Bek meets Libussa, the Duchess of Crete, who owns the carriage that he'd seen the previous night. She assists him in escaping from Montsorbier, and von Bek becomes smitten with her. Leaving, and intending to follow Libussa to Lausanne, von Bek meets Orkie Lochorkie, whose given name is Colin James Charles, better known as the Chevalier de St Odhran, an aeronaut, balloonist and confidence trickster. The two meet at the Hackmesser Pass, as von Bek has unknowingly caused a landslide while shooting a hare for his supper. St Odhran expresses his intent of heading to Mirenberg to do 'business'; von Bek, however, does not inform him that he also intends to travel to Mirenberg, but readily agrees to meet with St Odhran if their paths cross again. On arrival in Lausanne, von Bek discovers that the Libussa has already left, and a friend informs him that there is, in fact, no Duchess of Crete. There is, however, an unmarried Duke of Crete, who has been living in Prague for the last five years, though he dresses up as a woman as a flight of fancy. Von Bek resolves to travel to Prague, where a convention of alchemists has been called, and search for Libussa there. Not finding Libussa in Prague, von Bek journeys onwards to Mirenberg, where he once again meets St Odhran, and becomes involved in a confidence trick regarding the sale of shares in a new airship that he and von Bek will build. After several misadventures, the pair decide that they must flee Mirenburg, as the amount of money they have swindled is simply too much, and one of their major backers has turned up murdered. On the night of the escape, two mysterious figures board the airship. As the ship departs, it becomes evident that one of the passengers is indeed Libussa, Duchess of Crete. The other, is the villain Klosterheim, the same man who attempted to kill Ulrich von Bek more than 100 years previously. After traveling through the shadow land of Mittelmarch, this unlikely alliance arrives in the City in the Autumn Stars. Soon after meeting with Satan, he becomes involved in a quest to find the Holy Grail.
5203688	/m/0d7p0f	Houseboy				 The story starts in Spanish Guinea with a Frenchman on vacation, who finds a man named Toundi. He has been injured and soon dies. The Frenchman finds his diary, which is called an "exercise book" by Toundi. The rest of the story is of the diary (exercise book) that the Frenchman is supposedly reading. There is no further discussion of the Frenchman after this point. The first "exercise book" starts with Toundi living with his family. His father beats him constantly, and one day he runs away from his home. He runs to the rescue of Father Gilbert, a priest who lives nearby. His father comes back for him, telling Toundi that everything will be alright if he comes back. He denies his father's offer and after this point he no longer acknowledges his birth parents. Toundi treats Father Gilbert as his new father. Father Gilbert teaches Toundi to read and write, and he teaches Toundi about Catholicism. Toundi believes in Catholicism, but as the story progresses he drifts from his beliefs until the end, when he does not believe in God. Father Gilbert dies in a motorcycle accident a few months after meeting Toundi. Toundi is eventually taken to live with the Commandant, the man in charge of the surrounding colony. He serves as the houseboy for the Commandant, and later Madame, the Commandant's wife. It becomes very clear that the events that go on in the house are more important to Toundi than his own life. After about six months since Toundi comes to live with the Commandant, Madame, the Commandant's wife arrives from France. She initially is a warm and caring woman, who is very beautiful. She catches the eye of almost every man in town, much to the Commandant's dismay. Soon after Madame arrives the Commandant leaves to go on tour again. Toundi is left with Madame to take care of the house. As time goes on, Madame becomes more and more hostile and disrespectful towards Toundi. When the Commandant returns, she is portrayed as a ruthless woman. While the Commandant was still on tour, it becomes obvious that she is bored with her life. She begins to have an affair with M. Moreau, the man in charge of the prison. M. Moreau is perceived to be ruthless against the Africans. One of Toundi's first experiences with M. Moreau had him whipping two other Africans nearly to death. The Second Exercise book begins. The Commandant returns from touring, and it is later discovered that he knew about his wife's affair and returns because of it. The Commandant has a terrible argument with her, but after a few days they are getting along again. Madame becomes very disrespectful towards Toundi, partly because she does not like being there anymore, but mostly because she knows that he knew about her affair. Sophie, the lover of the water engineer is accused of stealing his workers' salaries with the help of Toundi. He is taken to prison where he is tortured in order to confess a crime he had not committed. Toundi is held in a hut near the police headquarters. Fortunately he has a friend who works there named Mendim, who is described as a very muscular man. He is feared by most other people but he soon comes to be known as Toundi's ally. M. Moreau orders Mendim to beat up Toundi, but Mendim throws ox's blood on him to make it look like he is injured. They spend the rest of the day playing cards. Toundi becomes sick and Mendim takes Toundi to the hospital. They have to wait a very long time to see a doctor because the black doctor is the only doctor there, the other white doctor was promoted to captain. The doctor finds out that Toundi's ribs are broken and have punctured his bronchi. While still at the hospital, while Toundi is in a dazed state, M. Moreau returns with the white doctor. He talks about punishing Toundi some more. At this point, after M. Moreau has left, Toundi escapes the hospital, not knowing exactly where to go. At the end of the novel Toundi questions his faith enough to give up his belief in God. fr:Une vie de boy sv:En boys liv
5204285	/m/0d7pyt	The Lady from the Sea	Henrik Ibsen			 This symbolic play is centred around a lady called Ellida. She is the daughter of a lighthouse-keeper, and grew up where the fjord met the open sea; she loves the sea. She is married to Doctor Wangel, a doctor in a small town in West Norway (in the mountains). He has two daughters (Bolette and Hilde) by his previous wife (widowed), and he and Ellida had a son who died as a baby. This put big strains on the marriage. Wangel fearing for Ellida’s mental health has invited up Arnholm, Bolette’s former tutor and now the headmaster of a school, in hope that he can help Ellida. However, Arnholm thinks that it is Bolette waiting for him and he proposes. She agrees to marry her former teacher, because she sees this as her only opportunity to get out into the world. Some years earlier Ellida was deeply in love and engaged to a sailor, but because he murdered his captain he had to escape. Nevertheless, he asked her to wait for him to come and fetch her. She tried to break the engagement but he had too great a hold over her. The sailor then returns all these years later to claim her. However she then has to choose between her love or her husband. Dr Wangel finally recognizes her freedom to choose since he understands that he has no other options. This goes in his favour as she then chooses him. The play ends with the sailor leaving and Ellida and Wangel taking up their lives together again.
5205080	/m/0d7rbm	The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas	John Boyne	2006-01-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0q9mp": "Tragicomedy", "/m/031mk": "Fable", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Bruno is a 9-year-old boy growing up during World War II in Berlin. He lives in a huge house with his loving parents, his twelve-year-old sister Gretel (whom he refers to as a Hopeless Case) and maidservants. His father is a high-ranking SS officer who, after a visit from Adolf Hitler (referred to in the novel as "The Fury", Bruno's misrecognition of the word "Führer") and Eva Braun, is promoted to Commandant, and to Bruno's dismay, the family has to move away to a place called "Out-With" (which turns out to be Auschwitz). When Bruno gets there, he feels a surge of homesickness after leaving behind his grandparents and his three best friends. Unhappy with his new home, Bruno becomes lonely and has no one to talk to or play with. One day, Bruno notices a group of people all wearing the same striped pyjamas and striped hats or bald heads. He asks who these people are and his father tells him that these people are not real people at all, as they are Jews. Gretel has changed from a normal young girl into a strong Nazi with the help of her tutor, but Bruno does not seem to take the same stance as his sister. Bruno finds out he is not allowed to explore the back of the house or its surroundings. Due to the combination of curiosity and boredom, he decides to explore anyway. He spots a boy on the other side of the fence. Excited that there might be a boy his age, Bruno introduces himself and finds out the Jewish boy's name is Shmuel. Shmuel and his family were brought here, broken apart from each other and forced to work in Auschwitz. Almost every day, the two boys meet at the same spot. Soon, they become best friends, so similar, they are basically the same person in different circumstances, one a Polish Jew, the other a German. Over the course of the book, Bruno shows a great deal of naivety whilst Shmuel seems to have more knowledge, as he has felt the suffering first-hand. Bruno's mother persuades his father to take them back to Berlin (after what is presumed to be an romance between a young soldier called Lieutenant Kotler and Bruno's sister is broken up by the father) after a year at their new home, while the father stays at Auschwitz. With Bruno about to go back to Berlin with his mother and sister, as a final adventure, he agrees to dress in a set of striped pyjamas and go under the fence to help Shmuel find his father, who went missing in the camp. The boys are unable to find him, and are mixed up in a group of people going on a march. Neither boy knows where this march will lead. However, they are soon crowded into a gas chamber, which Bruno assumes is a place to keep them dry from the rain until it stops. The author leaves the story with Bruno pondering, yet unafraid, in the dark holding hands with Shmuel: "...Despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let it go." In an epilogue, the book states that Bruno's family spent several months at their home trying to find Bruno, before his mother and Gretel return to Berlin, only to discover he is not there as they had expected. A year afterwards, his father returns to the spot that the soldiers found Bruno's clothes (almost the same spot Bruno spent the last year of his life) and, after a brief inspection, discovers that the fence is not properly attached at the base and can form a gap big enough for a boy of Bruno's size to fit through. Using this information, his father eventually pieces together that they gassed Bruno to death. Bruno's father then realizes what he was really doing, and thinks about his job as Commandant. Losing Bruno makes him greatly depressed, and he stops caring about his job. Several months later, the Red Army arrives to liberate the camp and orders Bruno's father to go with them. He goes without complaint, because "he didn't really mind what they did to him anymore".
5207922	/m/0d7wr5	Taking Lives	Michael Pye		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Dutch teenager, Martin Arkenhout, and an American college student, Seth Goodman, strike up a conversation on a bus in Florida, and on a whim they rent a car to better explore the rural area. But then the car breaks down and Goodman, trying to summon help on the roadside, is struck by a passing car and left critically injured. Arkenhout bludgeons Goodman with a rock, switches their wallets and papers, and continues Goodman's journey to college in New York. Arkenhout soon must give up the identity when Goodman's suspicious parents demand he comes home for Christmas. He has by now developed a taste for wealth and luxury, and so begins befriending and killing rich people, stealing their identities and living their comfortable lives for as long as he can before moving on. The novel soon shifts over to first narration James Costa, a museum curator who will track Arkenhout down and become his next victim. He wrestles with his troubled but passionate marriage, and is disturbed by his father's sudden decision to leave England and return to the family's former village in Portugal. When Costa and Arkenhout, still posing as Professor Hart, cross paths, Arkenhout is unaware that the real Hart had stolen rare manuscripts from a British museum. Costa, representing the museum, pursues the man he believes to be Hart as far as Portugal hoping to regain the missing manuscripts. As fate would have it, Arkenhout takes a vacation villa near the village where Costa's father had only just died. While settling family business and attempting to negotiate for the manuscripts, Costa makes increasingly unnerving discoveries about the identities of Hart and Arkenhout, and about his own father's involvement in political oppression during World War II. The book culminates with a blazing fire and an intriguing and an unanticipated plot twist.
5208113	/m/0d7x4q	If Beale Street Could Talk	James Baldwin	1974-06-17	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This book is about a 19 year old girl named Tish, whose real name is Clementine. She is in love with a 22 year old sculptor named Fonny, whose real name is Alonzo. They become engaged and she becomes impregnated. However, he is falsely accused of raping a Puerto Rican woman, Victoria Rogers. He was set up by a racist police man (Officer Bell) and he soon goes to jail. This unfortunately halts their engagement. Ms.Rogers left the United States to go back to Puerto Rico and Tish's mother Sharon travels there to find evidence that will set Fonny free, which pushes them all through New York and San Juan. Baldwin narrates through Tish’s point of view as well as Fonny's. The tone of the story is both sad and sweet. This content is very explicit with mature scenes. This book describes what a strong family the Rivers family is and how they stuck together until the end of everything. Although Fonny's own mother and sisters didn't bother to save him, the Rivers family takes him in as their own. They work extra hours so that they could make the money to pay the lawyer and to try to pay for Fonny's bail if he gets out on bail. In the end, Fonny's father commits suicide. Furthermore, the baby is finally born. Throughout the whole story the author shows what a powerful family is and the troubles they went through.
5208465	/m/0d7xmz	Time and Again	Jack Finney	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In November 1970, Simon Morley, an advertising sketch artist, is approached by U.S. Army Major Ruben Prien to participate in a secret government project. He is taken to a huge warehouse on the West Side of Manhattan, where he views what seem to be movie sets, with people acting on them. It seems this is a project to learn whether it is feasible to send people back into the past by what amounts to self-hypnosis—whether, by convincing oneself that one is in the past, not the present, one can make it so. As it turns out, Simon (usually called Si) has a good reason to want to go back to the past—his girlfriend, Kate, has a mystery linked to New York City in 1882. She has a letter dated from that year, mailed to an Andrew Carmody (a fictional minor figure in history, who was associated with Grover Cleveland). The letter seems innocuous enough—a request for a meeting to discuss marble—but there is a note which, though half burned, seems to say that the sending of the letter led to "the destruction by fire of the entire World", followed by a missing word. Carmody, the writer of the note, mentioned his blame for that incident. He then killed himself. Si agrees to participate in the project, and requests permission to go back to New York City in 1882 in order to watch the letter being mailed (the postmark makes clear when it was mailed). The elderly Dr. E.E. Danziger, head of the project, agrees, and expresses his regret that he can't go with Si, because he would love to see his parents' first meeting, which also occurred in New York City in 1882. The project rents an apartment at the famous Dakota apartment building, which did not actually exist in 1882. (It was completed two years later, but Finney explains that he took a few liberties with the timeline due to his fascination with the building.) Si uses the apartment as both a staging area and a means to help him with self-hypnosis, since the building's style is so much of the period in which it was built and faces a section of Central Park which, when viewed from the apartment's window, is unchanged from 1882. Si is successful in going back to 1882, at first very briefly, and then a second time he is able to take Kate with him. They travel by horse-drawn bus down to the old post office, and watch the letter being mailed by a man. They follow him, and learn that he lives at 19 Gramercy Park. Then they return back to their base at the Dakota apartments and return to the present. Si is debriefed and carefully examined after each trip to the past, and as far as the project organizers can tell, his activities in the past are making no difference to the present. He is encouraged to go back again. He presents himself at 19 Gramercy Park as a potential boarder. He is accepted, begins living there and learns that the man who mailed the letter is named Jake Pickering. He explores the Manhattan of the past for several days, sketching all the while—he is an illustrator, and Finney inserts illustrations from the period into the book as Si's own. He goes on to learn that Pickering is blackmailing Carmody. Si finds himself falling for the landlady's niece, Julia Charbonneau. But he has a rival—Pickering. Eventually, Pickering makes a scene, having tattooed the name "JULIA" on himself, and Si soon leaves, to return to the present. Things aren't going as well in the present. One of the other participants in the project, having gone back to Denver some seventy years in the past, has made some unknown change in the past and thus a friend, whom he remembers, was never born. Danziger insists that the project be stopped. When he is overruled, he resigns. After Prien talks to him, Si sees no alternative other than to return to the past again, though he is troubled by Danziger's resignation. He is accepted back at Gramercy Park cheerfully, with even the dour Pickering happy. It seems Pickering and Julia are now engaged. Si (casting himself as a private detective) tells Julia that Pickering is a blackmailer. They go to Pickering's office and conceal themselves to watch the blackmail money being turned over by Carmody. Carmody brings only $10,000, rather than the demanded million dollars for the incriminating files. After knocking him out, Carmody ties up Pickering and sets out to look for the papers. He realizes they are concealed amid many other files. He patiently thumbs through the files, as Si and Julia agonize as the hours pass. Finally, Carmody decides on a scheme—burn the files. He does so. Pickering tries to save the files, but burns himself badly in the process. To the pair's astonishment, Si and Julia burst forth, urging them to flee, and flee themselves. It is a huge fire, and Si and Julia find themselves trapped. They barely escape. Si learns that the building used to house the newspaper the New York World and one piece of the puzzle fits in—the missing word in Carmody's note was "Building". After watching the efforts to fight the fire, in which many die, the shaken couple returns to Gramercy Park. There is no sign of Pickering. [The burning of the New York World building is a factual historical event]. Two days later, the two are picked up by Police Inspector Thomas Byrnes, and then taken to Carmody's house. The terribly burned man there accuses them of murdering Pickering and starting the fire. After they leave, Byrnes expresses indecision and lets them walk away—only to yell "The prisoners are escaping" to the sergeant who accompanies him. It is a set-up, the two are to prove their guilt by "attempting to escape". As it turns out, police all over the island have already been provided with their description and photographs. They are able to flee, but have no money and nowhere to go. They shelter in the as-yet-unassembled Statue of Liberty's arm, then standing in Madison Square. (Again, the arm standing in Madison Square Park prior to the statue as a whole being erected is a factual event). Si tells Julia the whole story, but she takes it as entertaining fantasy. She is soon convinced otherwise, as Si brings them both into the present, and she observes the dawn from high inside the long-assembled statue, seeing a totally strange New York. They spend a day in the present, with a shocked Julia observing the things that have changed in ninety years, from clothing to television. At last, they settle into Si's apartment. He is ashamed to tell her the history of what has happened in the past ninety years, the horrible wars and the fact that there are areas of the city where no law abiding citizen can safely go. Julia must return home. The two realize that the man whom they met at Carmody's house was in fact Pickering—Carmody died in the fire. Armed with that fact, Julia can keep Pickering from having her arrested, lest he be exposed. As 1882 is far more real to her than 1970, she returns to the past without needing any help from Si. Si goes to report in, and tells most of the story, concealing Julia's visit to 1970. They then give him an assignment—to intentionally alter the past. Research has confirmed that Carmody (actually Pickering) was an acquaintance of Grover Cleveland's--and talked Cleveland out of buying Cuba from Spain. The military men now in effective control of the project conclude that if Pickering is exposed, he might never have influence with Cleveland, and the U.S. might never have to worry about Fidel Castro. But after talking with Danziger, Si worries about the other effects the change might have, and Danziger makes him promise not to carry out the scheme. Si returns to 1882. Having been told how Danziger's parents met, he aborts the meeting. Danziger will never be born, and the project will never happen. Si walks away sadly—towards Gramercy Park and Julia and away from 1970.
5208727	/m/0d7y20	Cerulean Sins	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 * Cerulean Sins apparently takes place some time after the events of the previous novel, Narcissus in Chains. Anita is happily living with Micah and Nathaniel and dating Micah and Jean-Claude. However, as usual, Anita is confronted by a series of simultaneous problems. ** First, she appears to be attracting the attention of a number of spies, including "Leo Harlan", a professional assassin who claims to want Anita to reanimate one of his ancestors to assist in genealogical research and two mercenaries who Anita arrests via her Federal Marshal status after noticing them following her. ** Second, Jean-Claude is unpleasantly surprised by an early visit from Musette and her entourage, all of whom are representatives of the founder of Jean-Claude's bloodline, Belle Morte and represent an attempt by Belle Morte to test and possibly punish or capture Jean-Claude and his followers. ** Third, Anita learns of a series of shockingly brutal rapes and murders, apparently committed by a shapeshifter serial killer. However, because of her deteriorating relationship with Dolph, Anita is unable to get cooperation from the police in solving the crimes. * As usual, Anita resolves each of these conflicts with a combination of ruthlessness, magical power, and the loyalty of her friends and lovers. ** Anita ultimately learns that the mercenaries have been spying on her to consider recruiting her for a secret mission overseas. (As Agent Bradford warned Anita in Obsidian Butterfly, Anita has come to the attention of one or more secret agencies within the US government). Luckily for Anita, at her mentor Marianne's insistence, Anita had stopped using animal sacrifices to raise zombies. Without the additional power granted by an animal sacrifice, Anita's zombies were sufficiently "zombie-looking" to convince the mercenaries that she would not be able to perform the job, arguably validating Marianne's belief that the animal sacrifices would result in bad karma. ** Anita confronts, outmaneuvers, or defeats Belle Morte several times. First, she and Jean-Claude take Asher to their (cerulean) bed in a menage a trois, making Asher their lover and therefore immune to most of Belle Morte's advances. Second, Anita, with help from Richard, Jean-Claude, and her wereleopards, is able to block Belle Morte's attempts to make Anita her human servant. Third, Anita is ultimately able to trap Musette in their game of courtly politics, proving that Belle Morte and her proxy Musette has violated the terms of her invitation and forcing Musette and her people to leave. ** More alarmingly, Anita begins to believe that Belle Morte is planning a war against the Mother of Darkness, the oldest and most powerful of the world's vampires. Although Anita and Jean-Claude do their best to avoid that conflict, the Mother of Darkness is beginning to awaken from a millennia-long sleep, and seems interested in Anita. ** Finally, Anita helps Zerbrowski track down the shapeshifting serial killer, who turns out to be a werewolf member of the mercenary team sent to observe Anita herself. After a confrontation in which several police officers are killed, Anita tracks down the werewolf a second time and executes him. * In the epilogue, Anita explains that she is continuing to date Micah and Jean-Claude, and that she has also added Asher to her list of lovers. She and Richard are still broken up, but Richard appears to be overcoming his death wish. Two of Belle Morte's vampires have received permission to remain in St. Louis, both to repair the damage done by their visit and to attempt to stay out of the way of any conflict between Belle Morte and the Mother of Darkness.
5213100	/m/025tdg9	Zabibah and the King	Saddam Hussein		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The plot is a love story about a powerful ruler of medieval Iraq and a beautiful commoner girl named Zabibah. Zabibah's husband is a cruel and unloving man who rapes her. The book is set in 7th or 8th century Tikrit, Hussein's home town. Although the book is on the surface a romance novel, it is (and was intended to be read as) an allegory. The hero is Hussein and Zabibah represents the Iraqi people. The vicious husband is the United States and his rape of Zabibah represents the U.S. invasion of Iraq at the end of the Gulf War.
5217168	/m/0d8bt2	Blood Harvest	Terrance Dicks		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 While the Seventh Doctor and Ace team up with a hard bitten PI in 1929 Chicago, Bernice is stranded on a vampire-infested world with the Doctor's former companion Romana. The chief monster is a supernaturally powerful creature called Agonal, an elemental who feeds on agony and death and so seeks as much of such as he can. Rassilon traps Agonal in his tomb, just as he trapped Borusa in the television story, "The Five Doctors."
5217290	/m/0d8b_8	Iceberg				 In Antarctica in the year 2006, scientists frantically work to prevent the inversion of the Earth's magnetic field, while the Seventh Doctor faces one of his oldest and deadliest foes, the Cybermen.
5218369	/m/0d8dpd	A Demon in My View	Ruth Rendell	1976-05-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A rigid man of fifty leads a solitary, apparently respectable life, as clerk and bookkeeper for a small business and part-time rent collector for his landlord. He has rented a flat in the building for twenty years because deep in its cellar, unbeknownst to anyone else, is a mannequin that he periodically "strangles" in order to satisfy his homicidal urges. The figure's location in the cellar, the darkness, the furtiveness, all are essential to the solitary man's satisfaction. The tenuous mental equilibrium he has been able to maintain is threatened when a young man, healthy in mind and body, a doctoral candidate in psychology, becomes a roomer in the house. Danger the older man senses from the moment the new tenant appears is horribly realized for him when the young man finds the mannequin and uses it as the figure in the bonfire at the Guy Fawkes Night celebration he has organized for the local children. The respectable fifty-year-old now must go back to the streets to find flesh more yielding than a mannequin's...
5222113	/m/0d8m9v	Athyra	Steven Brust	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Vlad has traveled through Dragaera for over two years. He now wears normal clothing, has discarded most of his assassin arsenal, and has lost a finger. While entering the village of Smallcliff, he meets Savn, a Teckla boy apprenticed to the local physicker. The two strike up a brief conversation, and Savn is often confused by Vlad's behavior, as he has never seen an Easterner before. Vlad's arrival in town is concurrent with the mysterious death of Reins, a former servant of the Baron of Smallcliff. Vlad shows up again at the local inn, causing a stir. He talks to Savn and becomes interested in Reins's death. While most of the village assumes that Vlad killed Reins, Vlad begins to believe that the death did have something to do with him. After some questioning, Vlad determines that the Baron of Smallcliff is still Loraan, an Athyra wizard he killed during the events of Taltos. The time Savn spends with Vlad in public alienates him from his friends in the village. Savn takes Vlad to some nearby caves at his request and begins learning about witchcraft, sorcery, and thinking for himself. Vlad tells him that Loraan is an undead necromancer who killed Reins to draw Vlad out for a Jhereg assassin. Savn also becomes acquainted with Vlad's two jhereg, who are on constant lookout for assassins. Recurring sections from the point-of-view of Rocza reveal that she obeys the "Provider" only out of obligation to her mate, Loiosh. Vlad describes his plan to tunnel into Loraan's manor and use the caves' "dark water" to kill him. Before he can put his plan in action, however, he is attacked at the inn by Loraan's men. Vlad fights them off but becomes seriously wounded before teleporting away. Using Vlad's comments about sorcery as a guide, Savn locates Vlad and treats his injuries, which include a pneumothorax. While the rest of the village searches for Vlad, Savn recruits the master physicker and they fight off Vlad's infection. While recuperating, Vlad confirms Savn's growing suspicion that Vlad has been manipulating him in order to get his help. Savn goes to Loraan's manor and discovers that Vlad's allegations about him are true. Savn is thrown into a cell with his master, who has already been tortured into revealing Vlad's location. Savn treats his master and kills the guard to escape and warn Vlad. He contacts Rocza and summons Vlad into Loraan's cellar, where Loraan and the Jhereg assassin Ishtvan suddenly appear. Savn realizes that Vlad is still too wounded to fight off his attackers. Remembering Vlad's lesson about thinking for himself, Savn dispels his irrational fear of his Baron and uses the caves' "dark water" to menace the undead Loraan. Vlad uses the distraction to kill Ishtvan, but collapses immediately afterward. Robbed of his power, Loraan simply begins throttling Savn until Rocza slips Ishtvan's Morganti dagger into Savn's hand. Savn kills Loraan with the dreaded dagger, but the horror of the ordeal, and a subsequent head injury, snaps his mind. After reaching safety and healing completely, Vlad resolves to take responsibility for Savn's near catatonic state and seek out treatment for the boy he used.
5222504	/m/0d8n80	If I Had One Wish	Jackie French Koller		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One day an old woman grants Alex one wish for his kindness to her. Alex uses it to wish that his little brother Stevie had never been born; to his horror, it comes true. Although no one else remembers Stevie, and Alex's life is in some ways better now, he is still guilt-stricken, and desperately tries to find a way to reverse his wish.
5223686	/m/0d8p_c	Noisy Nora	Rosemary Wells	1994	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Now one old Wells friend, Nora, that noisy mouse, returns with all her middle-child problems still on display. What's a mouse to do when little brother and big sister take up all mom and dad's time? Yup. Plenty of noise. Look at these new pictures and you can almost hear the racket. With all that clatter, it might be better to read this one before dinner, not before bed!
5225382	/m/0d8sdr	Doing It	Melvin Burgess	2004-05-06	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The plot revolves around a group of British teenagers, Dino (the most popular guy at school) and his two best friends Ben and Jonathon. Dino really likes beautiful in shape Jackie - the girl he sees as an equal, the most popular girl at school - but she won't give him what he wants. This gives Dino the chance to get it from other girls behind Jackie's back. Yet problems arise in Dino's family that causes him to see maybe sex isn't what he needs. Jonathon likes Deborah, but she's overweight; fearing condemnation from his friends and because of a disgusting looking bump on his penis, he fears showing his true feelings. Ben's been secretly seeing his teacher, Miss Young, the typical teenage fantasy. He used to love it, but now it overwhelms him. Ben tries to break it off for a girl his own age but it causes big trouble for him, Miss Young and his new girlfriend.
5227351	/m/0d8wf5	Toccio the Angel		2003-02		 The story is about a lovable and grumpy angel named Toccio (who heavily resembles Fat Buu). He is in Heaven and loves to play, but hates to study. The Big Boss gets tired of his antics, and commands him to help people out or he will lose his place in Heaven.
5227875	/m/0d8x5r	The Family Trade	Charles Stross	2004-12	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Miriam's adoptive mother gives her a shoebox filled with items that belonged to Miriam's birth mother, a Jane Doe who died mysteriously when Miriam was only a baby. Among other items, Miriam finds a locket. Inside is a design not unlike a Celtic knot, and when she focuses on it, she is transported to a parallel world that never developed beyond the Dark Ages—except for the men on horses who try to kill her with machine guns. Miriam quickly finds herself caught up in the feuds of her estranged family, which calls itself the Clan. The Clan has used the genetic ability to travel back and forth between the two worlds to build a lucrative import/export trade. However, one of their main sources of income is transporting drugs into and out of the United States which bothers Miriam for ethical and other reasons. Miriam finds a kindred soul in Roland, a distant relation who would also like to be free of the Clan's machinations.
5228811	/m/0d8yvg	The Probability Broach	L. Neil Smith		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Edward William "Win" Bear is a Ute Indian who works for the Denver Police Department in a version of the United States projected (by 1986) to be controlled by an anti-business, ecofascist faction complete with a new Federal Security Police (FSP, or "SecPol" as it is more commonly known) reminiscent of the Gestapo. Called to investigate the unusual murder of physicist Vaughn Meiss, Bear eventually finds himself projected into the NAC by means of the "Probability Broach," an interdimensional conduit originally developed as a means for interstellar travel in the NAC by the dolphin physicist Ooloorie Eckickeck P'Wheet and her human compatriot, the gorgeous Dr. Dora Jayne Thorens. Win encounters his NAC counterpart, Edward William "Ed" Bear, and Ed's neighbors, most notably the beautiful "healer" Clarissa Olson and the incorrigible Lucy Kropotkin, who is later revealed to be 135 years old. Lucy's life becomes the vantage point by which Win is acclimated to life in the NAC and Laporte (the NAC equivalent to Denver). Win and Ed unravel the mystery of the Meiss murder, learning that he was killed to hide an effort by SecPol to conquer the NAC with the help of Hamiltonian forces on the NAC side, led by John Jay Madison, a.k.a. the infamous Prussian expatriate and 1918 war hero Manfred von Richthofen, known here as the Red Knight of Prussia. Win, Ed, Lucy and Clarissa lead the effort to notify the nascent NAC government of the threat. En route to the meeting of the Continental Congress, Ed & Clarissa are kidnapped, leaving Win & Lucy to reveal the plot. After fighting (and winning) a duel with a SecPol agent, Win & Lucy rescue their friends, and track the Madison and the Hamiltonians to a small town outside Laporte. Win sets off an explosion that eliminates all of the Hamiltonians. Win elects to remain in the NAC and marries Clarissa. Ed marries Lucy (who at the time of the story was awaiting a delayed "regeneration" due to an accident involving massive radiation exposure) and sets out for the asteroid belt to build a new life for themselves on the NAC frontier. The Continental Congress agrees to begin a massive propaganda campaign to force Win's United States (and the rest of the globe) towards a similar Gallatinist revolution.
5229672	/m/0d8_55	The Military Philosophers	Anthony Powell	1968	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the Spring 1942 Jenkins is working in Whitehall as Pennistone's assistant, looking after the Poles in Allied Liaison under Finn. He attends a Cabinet Office meeting, chaired by Widmerpool, where he finds Sunny Farebrother and a dejected Peter Templer. Jenkins visits the Polish HQ in Bayswater, which turns out to be the Ufford Hotel. His driver on this occasion is Pamela Flitton, Stringham's niece. Pamela brings the news that Stringham was captured at the fall of Singapore. Jenkins is living in a flat in Chelsea in early 1943 and is promoted in his liaison duties to supervising the Belgians and Czechs. One night during the Summer 1944 Jenkins, sheltering in the flats from a flying bomb attack, encounters Pamela Flitton with her current lover Odo Stevens. Following prophecies into their futures by Mrs Erdleigh there is a row between Stevens and Pamela. Promoted to major, Jenkins escorts a party of Allied military attachés on a tour of Normandy and Belgium led by Finn. A meeting in Brussels with Bob Duport brings news of Templer's death in the Balkans. Summer 1945 sees Widmerpool engaged to Pamela Flitton and Miss Weedon affianced to Sunny Farebrother. Pamela accuses Widmerpool of murdering Templer. The victory thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral is attended by the military attachés, including a Latin-American, Colonel Flores. Nick fails to recognise Flores's wife, who proves to be Jean. Finally Jenkins is demobbed. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent
5232628	/m/0d94mr	Undercover Cat				 Pancho, also known as Darn Cat or DC, is in the habit of prowling the neighborhood at night. One night he returns home with a wristwatch round his neck. It is determined that the watch belongs to a bank teller who is being held hostage by bank robbers. The FBI put surveillance on the cat in the hope he will lead them to the kidnappers. They are helped and hampered by Pancho's human family and their neighbors.
5232804	/m/0d94zp	Bruges-la-Morte				 It tells the story of Hugues Viane, a widower overcome with grief, who takes refuge in Bruges where he lives among the relics of his former wife - her clothes, her letters, a length of her hair - rarely leaving his house. However he becomes obsessed with a dancer he sees at the opera Robert le diable who bears a likeness to his dead wife. He courts her, but in time he comes to see she is very different, coarser, and their relationship ends in tragedy.
5235865	/m/0d9b38	The House of Stairs	Ruth Rendell	1988-09-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 As Elizabeth tells her story, so the tragic events that took place at the House of Stairs 20 years before are revealed. She tracks Bell Sanger down and renews her acquaintance, with terrifying results.
5236234	/m/0d9blj	Snakecharm	Amelia Atwater-Rhodes	2004-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Danica has begun to fit into serpiente society more and more, but other people do not have her courage or motivation. The avians and the serpiente, in spite of the royal union, are hardly warming up to each other. Neither of the sides is willing to try to join the other. Stirring things up is Syfka, a powerful aplomado falcon who has just arrived to drag a falcon criminal back to the island of Ahnmik. Syfka has absolutely no respect for the reunification of the two cultures and with her falcon magic, she has no problem with trying to destroy the fragile peace. There is little that Zane and Danica can do to try to stop her, considering her ability to use powerful magics almost casually and the fact that she is several thousands of years old. On top of that the avians and serpiente are nowhere near capable of defending themselves against the falcon empire. It seems best to just hand Syfka her criminal and make sure she feels no need to come back. But Rei, the leader of the Royal Flight and the man who Danica loved before she met Zane, becomes increasingly agitated during Syfka's search and the question arises of what would happen if the "criminal" turned out to be someone loyal to Zane and Danica. After hearing a young woman's stories about her experiences on the falcon island, Zane and Danica are forced to wonder whether they can hand someone over to the falcons with a healthy conscience. Complicating things is the fact that Danica is pregnant. Neither the serpiente nor the avians are crazy about the idea of a mixed-blood child taking the throne. A child of a cobra and another serpent is always a cobra, a child of a hawk and another avian is always a hawk. But a cobra-hawk child has co-dominant genes and as a mixture between the two, it would end both royal lines. Both sides are worried about being dominated by the other and both are putting enormous pressure on Zane and Danica to raise the child their way.
5236269	/m/0d9bnl	Falcondance	Amelia Atwater-Rhodes	2005-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Nicias is the child of Kel and Andreios, resident falcons of Wyvern's Court. He is the best friend and guard of Oliza Shardae Cobriana, Arami of the serpiente and heir to the Tuuli Thea. After Nicias's falcon magic awakens he is left with two frightening options: stay in Wyvern's Court and hope he will be able to control his magic so it won't kill him, or travel to Ahnmik, the island where his parents were raised but later fled. Nicias's choice is soon made for him, after a frightening dream in which a cobra tries to strangle him. He wakes up to find his ribs aching and his breathing painful. His magic is clearly out of his control and he has to go. Lillian, a local peregrine who has lived among the avians and the serpients in Wyvern's Court using the disguise of a raven, offers to take him with her when she returns to Ahnmik. However, bringing him to Ahnmik also means bringing him to Araceli, Nicias's grandmother and the woman both of his parents fear above anything else in the world. Before Nicias leaves, his father Andreios shows him the scars that Araceli left on him in her anger about giving him up. He warns Nicias about the infinite cruelty of the white city, and about the torture that awaits those who do not show complete loyalty for the Empress Cjarsa. When Nicias arrives in Ahnmik, he finds it very different from the hell his father informed him about. Araceli appears to be affectionate, wise, and sad about what happened between her and her son. She explains the terrible scars on Andreios's skin as something that was necessary to keep his power from destroying him while he lived away from Ahnmik. The white city also does not appear dangerous or cruel. Its beautiful white roads are soft as carpets, and they sing to all who have falcon magic. The falcons' sky dances are beautiful and captivating. Nobody appears to be tortured or afraid. Also, Lillian's friendship with Nicias gradually becomes something more. The closer they grow, the less evil Nicias sees in Ahnmik. The only thing marring the beauty of Ahnmik are the shm'Ecl. Held in a violet tower and guarded by Servos, one of the member of the royal family of Ahnmik, the shm'Ecl are a painful reminder of the dangers of falcon magic. Ecl is the Void, it is the absence of even nothingness that surrounds Mehay (existence). This is where falcons flee when their magic overwhelms them or they enter Ecl as an escape from the pain of the mortal world. Darien appears to be one of the shm'Ecl and nothing more. However, she has not succumbed completely to oblivion, and calls to Nicias in his dreams, asking him to come to her, and telling him to beware of the falcons and Araceli. Nicias manages to ignore her calls for several days, but eventually he goes. In Darien, he finds the key to the truth about many things. Darien was once Kel's best friend and partner in Cjarsa's Mercy, and together they found out a horrible secret Cjarsa and Araceli hid. The knowledge of their secret was why Darien succumbed to Ecl, to escape the execution and torture that awaited her in return for knowing, and for daring to tell what she knew. And that was why Kel fled the island, unable to live with what she had learned and unable to torture Darien to death as Ahnmik's laws dictated. The avians and serpiente had been fighting for thousands of years. Nobody remembered how the fighting got started, except the falcons. The avians and the serpients both have differing views on how the war began. Avian history says that the serpiente killed Alasdair first, but serpiente history says that the avian guards slaughtered the serpiente, thus beginning the long war. Both these versions are true, and the responsibility for all of these events lies squarely at the feet of the falcon Empress and her Heir, Araceli. When Anjay Cobriana travelled to Ahnmik to seek the falcon's aid in the avian-serpiente war, he developed a close relationship with Darien. In fact, he was Hai's father. After he left, she kept an eye on him, and she was watching when he rode to the Hawk's Keep with the intent of killing Nacola and Danica Shardae. She was watching when Xavier Shardae stabbed her lover in the back, causing the avian poison concocted by Araceli to start killing him. Darien called on Cjarsa to help Anjay, but Araceli refused, saying that it wasn't the falcon's fight. When Araceli lied to her, the twists in the falcons' magic allowed Darien and everyone in the room with her at the time to see the truth. When the coven of the Dasi split, the magic of both the serpents and the falcons, which had once balanced each other, became unstable. The falcons' magic balanced itself, as it is the magic of stillness and silence, bringing anyone overcome by their magic to Ecl. The serpents' magic, however, was more unstable, as it was the magic of reckless freedom and chaos, with much power to destroy everything around them. Cjarsa saw danger in this destructiveness and so, in a period of recklessness, she dived into Ecl and manipulated fate to take away a part of the serpent's magic. This part was unable to be destroyed, and the falcons were afraid of what the serpiente would do if they were to discover the truth. So Cjarsa and Araceli took in a human girl. They taught her magic, giving to her and, thus, all her descendants, the part of the serpents' magic they had removed. This girl, Alasdair, was the first avian. With the falcons' help, she quickly became led her people to prosperity. Although they are drawn together, since each of them was the missing half of the other's magical powers, Araceli had made sure that the avians were created as the exact opposite of the serpiente, strict and controlled, so that the two cultures could never blend together without one of them being destroyed. This was to prevent the reunition of Anhamirak's powers,as that could cause great chaos and eventually destroy both their worlds. Araceli then used persuasion magics on Kiesha to make her stab Alasdair in the back, and manipulated the minds of Alasdair's guards so that they would retaliate instantly and violently by killing the serpiente leaders. And then the war between the two sides began, and it would not be ended for another few thousand years. Darien, Kel, Lillian, and a few others learned this truth the night Anjay Cobriana died. Araceli wanted them executed but Cjarsa protected them. Darien tried to share her knowledge with the rest of the falcon world and was arrested. Kel, not being able to inflict the Empress's violent punishment on Darien, the person she loved most, fled from the island and Darien gave herself to Ecl rather than face Cjarsa's punishment. Lillian forced herself to forget. She became the head of the Elite Silver Choir, Araceli's Mercy, now that the previous two favorites were out of the way. After Nicias learns of this, he turns on the falcon empire. He only wants to return to his home in Wyvern's Court, even if he is an outcast there. Darien agrees to help him escape Ahnmik, but only if Nicias will bring her half-serpiente daughter, Hai, back to Wyvern's Court. Hai gave herself to Ecl after having her wings broken when she was a dancer. As she had no bonds in the mortal world to hold her, she surrendered completely to Ecl and gave up her life of pain. Nicias returns to Wyvern's Court with his magic under control. Besides the knowledge of truth, Darien had also taught him about Ecl. If one enters Ecl out of free will and without fear, they can control their magic easily. Moreover, Nicias has royal blood, which makes it easier for him. After learning how to better control his magic, Nicias can now survive away from Ahnmik, and he is eager to do so. However, there are a few serious obstacles in the way of his return. Araceli has not agreed to let him go, and having let go of her own son Sebastian, she is reluctant to give up her grandson so easily. The falcons also think that Wyvern's Court is doomed, as Oliza's children will have the full powers of Anhamirak and the magic will overwhelm them and eventually destroy their world. When Nicias returns to Wyvern's Court, Oliza is worried that she has stolen the throne from Hai, as Anjay Cobriana, Hai's father, was the older brother of Oliza's father, Zane Cobriana and so Hai is the rightful Arami of the serpiente. However, Nicias reassures her by saying that Hai is lost in Ecl and it is unlikely that she will ever return. Out of fear for Oliza's safety, Nicias returns to Ahnmik to find that Cjarsa has requested an audience with him. Cjarsa explains about the danger of a race with Anhamirak's magic without the balance of Ahnmik around to control it and tries to give some justification for starting the avian-serpiente war. Then Araceli bursts in and confronts Cjarsa. Araceli is power-hungry with no sense of balance and has been planning to topple Cjarsa for a long time, as Nicias stands between the two women he discovers a shocking secret: Syfka. Syfka, an aplomado, is the third in line of the hierarchy from the Dasi coven. When Araceli's son Sebastian was young she helped him flee the island and become Andreios. She has also proven herself to be helpful when she helped Kel and Andreios return to the avians and serpiente after Araceli abducted them. On top of that she gave Nicias the opportunities he needed to speak to Darien and get out of the city with Hai. But the falcons never do anything that they will not gain from, and Syfka is no exception to this. As Araceli's magic flows over him, Darien instructs him to find a pattern which she suspects exists but she is unable to see as she is not of royal blood. Inside Araceli's magic, Nicias discovers incredibly subtle and discreet persuasion magics of the same kind that Lilian used on him to keep him from seeing the evil of Ahnmik. These were woven by Syfka, who had been planning on using Araceli to destroy Cjarsa. In the process Araceli would also have been destroyed and as third in line to the throne, Syfka would have ruled Ahnmik. Araceli's children were in line before her and so she did everything she could to help both Sebastian and Nicias leave the island. She almost succeeded but Nicias exposes her magic. Lillian and Araceli instantly retatialate, and Syfka is immediately taken into custody. Nicias then receives permission to leave Ahnmik and return to Wyvern's Court, on the condition that any children he has must be with another peregrine falcon. On his return he discovers that the vow Hai made to him, a promise to try to return from Ecl, has produced results. Hai is awake, and she is every bit as powerful as the gyrfalcon and the cobra in her combined. Oliza is no longer the first in line to the serpiente throne, and Wyvern's Court future is uncertain.
5236852	/m/0d9cbd	Thirteen Steps Down			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mix Cellini is a lonely, maladjusted young man who works for a company that repairs exercise equipment, and lives in the upstairs apartment of an old Victorian house on Notting Hill. While his reclusive landlady, Gwendoline Chawcer, spends her time reading and pondering lost loves, Mix grows dangerously obsessed with serial killer John Christie and a local model, Nerissa Nash, despite the fact that she hardly even acknowledges his existence.
5237219	/m/0d9cx3	Deep Secret	Diana Wynne Jones	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The multiverse, shaped like a figure eight, contains Ayeward (generally good, pro-magic) and Nayward (the opposite) worlds. It is the task of the magids to urge the worlds in an Ayewards direction. In Ayeward worlds, magids can operate openly. Earth is an exception; it is generally Ayeward, but magic is still difficult and mostly hidden. The narrative in this book is told variously from the point of view of Rupert Venables in his magid report, Maree Mallory's Thornlady computer files, and in an epilogue from Nick Mallory. Rupert Venables is Earth's junior Magid, though his day job is writing software. He is also responsible for the Koryfonic Empire, a collection of Ayewards worlds. The Koryfonic Empire's present emperor has made it a capital crime for his many banished children to discover their identities, and thus Rupert witnesses the execution of the emperor's eldest son for daring to discover his origins. When the Emperor is assassinated a short time later, no heir can be found and this creates a huge unwanted problem for Venables. Meanwhile, Earth's senior magid, Stan, has died. It is now Rupert's job to find a new magid. Stan has compiled a short list of five candidates for Venables to research and is allowed by the "Upper Room" to remain in an advisory role by hanging around as a disembodied voice in Venables' house and car. However, each magid candidate proves to be difficult to contact. Venables does encounter one of the British candidates, Maree Mallory, but their meeting is disastrous and he rejects her as a candidate. Using magid fateline methods, Venables draws the candidates together in an unlikely place: a science fiction convention in the fictitious town of Wantchester. Unfortunately, during the magid working to consolidate their fatelines, his peculiar inventor neighbor Andrew becomes tangled in the magical working and later accompanies Venables to Wantchester. Meanwhile, destitute Maree Mallory has been forced to move in with her uncle Ted Mallory, a horror writer, her hostile aunt Janine and their fourteen-year-old son, Nick. Ted is to be the guest of honor at the upcoming convention in Wantchester. Janine, Maree, and Nick are to accompany him, even though Venables has specifically prevented Maree from attending the con through a magic working. All arrive at the convention, where the reserved Venables is somewhat stunned at the bizarre nature of the convention and its attendees, particularly as it is housed in the strange, Escher-like Hotel Babylon, which appears to be centered on a powerful magical node. He seeks out each magid candidate, but is disappointed to find each of them entirely unsuitable. His opinion of Maree Mallory rises, however, as they encounter each other several times at the convention. Pleas for help from the unsettled Koryfonic Empire force Venables to cross over to the Ayewards world Thule to seek help from his magid brother Will. Maree and Nick unwittingly follow him through the gaps between worlds, nearly killing themselves in the process. Rupert is furious with them, but the placid Will decides to tell them all about magids and the multiverse. Afterward Will arrives at the Hotel Babylon in his car, but hits a centaur who arrives simultaneously from the Koryfonic Empire with a message for Rupert. Maree uses her veterinary skills to help heal the centaur Rob, something which reveals an unlikely bond between him, Maree and Nick. Rupert returns to the Koryfonic Empire to recover the heirs, but is thwarted in horrific ways by those who later prove to have been the emperor's assassins. What transpires after this is a comedy of mistaken identity, horrible violence and dark magic (including the increased influence of a bitter thornbush goddess), a trip into the bizarre, nightmarish land of Babylon, and the ultimate restoration of the Koryfonic Empire to its rightful ruler after his memory of himself is abruptly restored..
5237452	/m/0d9d7b	The Water's Lovely	Ruth Rendell	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Ismay Sealand believes that her younger sister, Heather, murdered their stepfather Guy when they were teenagers. Ismay and her mother, Beatrix, returned from shopping for a new school uniform to find Guy drowned in his bath. Although both Ismay and her mother believe Heather drowned Guy - who was weak from a virus - they covered it up from the police. Ismay thinks Heather murdered Guy because he made sexual advances to her, Ismay, and Heather wished to protect her. In fact Ismay encouraged Guy's interest and hoped he would come to her bedroom and have sex with her. Now in their twenties, Ismay and Heather live in the same house, which has been divided into two flats. They live together in one, and their mother, who is emotionally traumatised and living in a world of her own lives with her sister Pamela in the other. They all remain haunted by what happened all those years ago. Ismay is desperately in love with Andrew Campbell-Sedge, who looks very like her dead stepfather, and who does not get on with Heather. Meanwhile, Edmund Litton's mother, Irene, tries to set him up with Marion Melville, a thin darting woman who has befriended a number of elderly people in the area. Horrified by this idea Edmund sets up a date with a woman who works in the catering department of the hospice where he works, Heather Sealand. Their date is more successful than expected and the two begin to fall in love. This causes a rift with Edmund's mother, especially when Edmund goes to stay overnight at Heather's flat. Ismay worries whether or not she should tell Edmund about Heather's past and, eventually, makes a tape telling him what she thinks happened when Guy drowned. She hides it in a box which formally contained the cassette 'Rainy Season Ragas' and puts it out of sight. Edmund and Heather's relationship causes another rift; this time between Ismay and Andrew. Andrew cannot stand Heather and Edmund being in "our flat". Andrew has a row with Edmund during which Edmund confronts Andrew with his knowledge of Andrew's infidelity. Afterwards Andrew splits up with Ismay and Edmund never again enters the flat. Edmund proposes to Heather and they become engaged and begin seeking a flat, staying with Irene in the meantime. Marion takes advantage of Irene's dislike of Heather and spends a lot of time with her, hoping to be included in her will. Marion has morphine sulphate in her bathroom cabinet and hopes to use it on one of her elderly "friends". Irene invites Marion for Christmas, and Marion meets Avice, an elderly lady who frets about leaving her rabbits at home alone. Marion is soon rabbit-sitting for Avice regularly. Fowler, Marion's homeless brother, sometimes visits her flat for a meal, drink or a bed for the night. On one visit he takes the strongest thing her can find from her bathroom cupboard. Edmund and Heather are married, and after a scene with Irene at the wedding, move out to a rented flat whilst they wait to complete the sale on a flat of their own. Ismay decides to destroy the recording she made for Edmund regarding Guy's death and puts it into her handbag in order to throw it away somewhere in London. Ismay is distraught, wandering around the places she and Andrew went at all hours of the night, she is also drinking heavily. She even confronts Andrew and his new flame, socialite Eva Simber and then has her bag stolen on the tube; the bag containing the tape she made for Edmund. Heather, convinced that Andrew would return to Ismay without the presence of Eva, begins to contact the young woman regularly, asking her to leave Andrew. Eva refuses to do so, although she speaks to Heather on the phone quite often all the same. Marion tries to kill Avice Conroy with her morphine, but discovers Fowler's robbery when Avice says her food tastes like cough mixture. She instead turns her attentions to Irene's neighbour, Barry Fenix, a retired 'civil servant' who loves all things relating to India. Eva Simber goes for her daily run and is murdered. Ismay discovers Heather had been in contact with her and thinks that Heather has killed Eva in order that Andrew would return to her. Ismay sits with Beatrix quite a lot whilst Pamela goes out with a man she has met on 'romance walks'. Although he will not spend any money to take her out and she does not much like his character, Pamela fancies him enough to become his lover. Marion tells Fowler that she is to become engaged and he leaves her an engagement present of a Marc Jacobs handbag he found in a West End bin and its contents, which include a tape, 'Rainy Season Ragas'. Pamela decides to end things with her lover, but when she does he becomes violent and beats her up and pushes her down the stairs of his flat. She is taken to hospital and Edmund and Heather move in with Beatrix to care for her. Ismay comes home from work to discover Andrew inside her flat, he has returned to her. She hides the fact that Edmund and Heather are currently living upstairs with her mother and the two are reconciled. Marion listens to the tape to see if it is suitable to play to Barry on a romantic evening and discovers what Ismay has said on it. She decides to blackmail Ismay, who is desperate to keep the tape's contents a secret from Andrew, who has decided to move in with her. Marion extorts several hundred pounds from Ismay and becomes engaged to Barry. When Marion boasts that she shall shortly be 'Mrs Barry Fenix', Ismay remembers the name in connection to Guy's death - Barry was the officer who led the investigation all those years ago. She tells Marion to stop the blackmail or she will tell Barry what she has been up to. Marion gives up her blackmail and she and Barry are married shortly after. Fowler blackmails Marion into giving him her flat. Following a teenager's arrest for the murder of Eva Simber, Ismay confronts Heather and asks her whether she killed Eva and Guy. Heather is shocked that Ismay could think she killed Eva but admits to killing Guy, not to protect Ismay but because he was sexually abusing her, Heather. Heather tells Ismay that Guy was no longer interested in pursuing her because she was 'obviously interested' in him and that Guy wanted someone who didn't want him, so he turned his attentions to Heather. Guy got into the bath that day and asked Heather to join him in the bubbles, saying "the water's lovely". Heather also tells Edmund of the murder she committed as a thirteen-year-old and he is deeply saddened by the information. The two head off for a belated honeymoon. Pamela is reconciled with a Michael, a former fiancé who left her after Guy's death, and the two plan to move in together and have Beatrix living with them. Ismay and Andrew get engaged and start looking for a shared home, too. On Boxing Day an earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggers a tsunami in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. Fearing for Heather and Edmund, who are honeymooning in Sumatra in Indonesia, Ismay asks Andrew to ring a friend who is a diplomat. There is a news report that four British citizens have been killed in a tsunami, but no names can be released until the next of kin have been informed. The next of kin are Heather's mother and Edmund's mother.
5239847	/m/0d9hfp	Le Complexe de Di	Dai Sijie	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book follows Muo, a French psychoanalyst, who returns to China to rescue his university sweetheart. She is referred to as "Volcano of the Old Moon" (the characters of her family name represent "old" and "moon," and her given name is composed of the characters for "fire" and "mountain"); while her given name is never revealed, her initials are H.C. Volcano of the Old Moon never makes an appearance in the book, but is thought of often by Muo. (A reviewer noted the similarity to the device of J. D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye, where he refers to a Jane Gallagher who never appears.) The story is not always told chronologically. It sometimes tells where Muo is, then later accounts for how he reached a particular place. The book switches into the point of view of Muo by use of his journal entries or letters, but is otherwise written in the third person.
5241939	/m/0bbz3vs	The Cherryh Odyssey		2004-09		 The Cherryh Odyssey consists of eight analytical essays on C. J. Cherryh's works, four personal reflections, and a fifty-six page bibliography of Cherryh by Stan Szalewicz. Also included is a preface and a biography, "The Literary Life of C.J. Cherryh" by the editor, Edward Carmien. In "Introduction: What We Do For Love", science fiction author and scholar James Gunn explains how difficult it must have been for Cherryh to enter the male-dominated science fiction arena in the mid-1970s. He says that she wrote for the love of story-telling rather than for the money. Author and artist Jane Fancher, Cherryh's business and writing partner contributes a personal tribute, "The Cherryh Legacy ... An Author's Perspective" in which she relates Cherryh's childhood and her school and college years. At the age of ten, Cherryh started writing her own stories when Flash Gordon, her favorite TV program was cancelled. In this essay Fancher also analyses Cherryh's writing style, in particular a technique Cherryh calls "Third Person Intense Internal" (TPI-squared), in which the writer only narrates what the viewpoint character sees and thinks about. Betsy Wollheim, the daughter of Cherryh's first publisher, Donald A. Wollheim, gives another personal account of Cherryh in "A Pioneer of the Mind". Wollheim describes the relationship that developed between her father, also a science fiction writer, and Cherryh, and recounts Cherryh's passion for space travel that is reflected in many of her stories. In "Oklahoma Launch", author Bradley H. Sinor gives his views on Cherryh, who later became his friend and mentor. They both lived in Lawton, Oklahoma during their childhood, and crossed paths again at a University of Oklahoma science fiction club meeting. Translator and poet Burton Raffel explores the literary aspects of most of Cherryh’s science fiction novels in "C.J. Cherryh's Fiction". He describes Cherryh as "a master of detail, tone, and emotional wallop." "A Great Deal in Sand: Hammerfall by C.J. Cherryh" is an extract from author and critic John Clute's essay collection, Scores: Reviews 1993-2003. Here Clute analyses Cherryh's Gene War novels Hammerfall (2001) and its sequel Forge of Heaven (2004), and takes her writing to task, complaining about, amongst other things, the "literal back-and-forth slog through the desert" that dominates the story. Heather Stark in "C.J. Cherryh: Is There Really Only One of Her?" questions how one person can write so many books in thirty years. She also examines the ratio of Cherryh's science fiction to fantasy output, concluding that, in her opinion, Cherryh's science fiction works better than her fantasy. In contrast, academic Janice Bogstad praises Cherryh's fantasy in "Shifting Ground: Subjectivities in Cherryh's Slavic Fantasy Trilogy". Here Bogstad analyses Cherryh's Russian trilogy, Rusalka (1989), Chernevog (1990) and Yvgenie (1991), explaining how her use of magic "complicates and questions typical high-fantasy tropes, particularly wizards and magic powers." Bogstad maintains that Cherryh’s books are "satires of their respective genres due to the conveyed intensity of the mental and emotional challenges the characters face in their out-of-the-ordinary experiences." Critic J.G. Stinson explores how human characters in Cherryh's fiction cope with and adjust to alien cultures in "The Human as Other in the Science Fiction Novels of C.J. Cherryh". She shows how they "all absorb elements of the thinking, behavior, and worldview of their 'adopted' cultures", that gives readers a "highly believable window into worlds and minds outside their own." Janice C. Crosby analyses gender roles in Cherryh's four-book Morgaine Saga in her essay "A Woman With a Mission; or, Why Vanye's Tale is Morgaine's Saga". Cherryh's Hugo Award winning novel, Cyteen is the subject of two essays, "Of Emorys and Warricks: Self-Creation in Cyteen" by academic Susan Bernardo, and "Dr. Ariane Emory, Sr.: Psychopath—Or Savior?" by academic Elizabeth Romey. Both examine the relationship between a senior scientist Dr. Ariane Emory and her apprentice Justin Warrick at a research facility on the planet of Cyteen. The "Selected Bibliography of C.J. Cherryh" was compiled by Stan Szalewicz, a media librarian at Rider University in New Jersey, and is an in-depth 56-page document that comprises: *General biographical resources (interviews, essays and criticism) *Internet biographical resources *Novels, novellas and short stories by Cherryh *Other writing by Cherryh *A list of reviews of works by Cherryh
5243957	/m/0d9nzg	A Man Named Dave	Dave Pelzer			 The background childhood experiences reveal Dave's character traits as an adolescent and young man. The kind couple Dave treats as parents give him ample space to study these lessons from his past and to learn from them. It is when his father is dying of cancer that Dave attempts to reestablish contact with the man. The son's lifelong wish is to become a firefighter in the steps of his father. To accomplish that dream, Dave joins the Air Force, where he overcomes obstacles that would stop an ordinary man. But his determination pulls him past these obstacles in his quest for recognition. He becomes an in-flight fueling technician for the Air Force, a highly regarded job and, in the course of his career, he meets his first love. A rush into marriage proves disastrous, but his son, Stephen, is the result of that union. Dave's inability to trust another person is a partial reason for the failure of his marriage -- until he can finally come to terms with the facts of his childhood, he cannot give total trust to any relationship. Dave spends countless hours with his dying father, trying to untangle in his mind the web of broken family relationships. He attempts to sort out the whys of his mother's sad existence by deepening his ties to his father, but those answers do not unfold during this time. Much later, after his mother's death, Dave realizes that his mother's demonic tendencies were gleaned from her own childhood experiences. He is determined that his child will never know the exclusion he felt as The Child Called "It."
5245125	/m/0d9qsz	The Keys to the Street	Ruth Rendell	1996	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Against the will of her boyfriend, Alistair, Mary Jago volunteers to donate bone marrow. He beats her after finding out, so she breaks up with him and goes house-sitting for a rich couple in London. Leslie Bean, an old dog-walker, comes there twice a day to take the shih tzu Gushi out along with five other dogs. Mary makes an appointment with Leo Nash, the leukemia patient whose life she prolonged. Although he's secretive about his private life and doesn't want her to see his brother she starts an affair with him, much to the dislike of Alistair. Homeless people live in and around Regent's Park, including Roman Ashton, who's actually rich but prefers the street life since his wife and children died in a traffic accident. When Effie, a homeless woman, finds a corpse over the spikes of the park gate, he makes an anonymous phone call to the police. The victim is John Dominic Cahill, a homeless Irishman known as Decker. The newspaper nickname the killer 'The Impaler'. A second victim follows: James "Pharaoh" Clancy, a homeless man who was always wearing keys around his neck. DI William Marnock starts suspecting Bean, because he has accused the victim of beating him up and had plans to pay Hob, a drug addict, to beat up Pharaoh. In the meantime Mary starts asking questions about Leo and his mysterious brother.
5245337	/m/0d9r65	Kristin Lavransdatter	Sigrid Undset			 The cycle follows the life of Kristin Lavransdatter, a fictitious Norwegian woman living in the 14th century. Kristin grows up in Sil in Gudbrandsdalen, the daughter of a well-respected and affluent farmer. She experiences a number of conflicts in her relationships with her parents, and her husband Erlend, in medieval Norway. She finds comfort and conciliation in her Catholic faith. Kristin Lavransdatter is the daughter of Lavrans, a charismatic, respected nobleman in a rural area of Norway, and his wife Ragnfrid, who suffers from depression after the loss of three infant sons and the crippling of her younger daughter Ulvhild in an accident. Raised in a loving and devoutly religious family, Kristin develops a sensitive but willful character, defying her family in small and large ways. At an early age, she is exposed to various tragedies. After an attempted rape raises questions about her reputation, she is sent to Nonneseter Abbey, a Benedictine nunnery in Oslo, which proves to be a turning point in her life. Despite being betrothed since childhood to a neighboring landowner's son, Simon Darre, Kristin falls in love with Erlend Nikulaussøn, from the estate of Husaby in Trøndelag. Erlend has been excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church for openly cohabitating with Eline, the wife of a prominent judge; she left her elderly husband to live with him, flouting both religious and social law. They have had two children together, Orm and Margret, who have no legal rights since they were born of an adulterous relationship. Erlend and Kristin begin a passionate romance which is sealed with Erlend's seduction of Kristin and their eventual complicity in Eline's death, both grievous sins in the eyes of Church and State. Lavrans forbids their relationship, but after three years of Kristin's defiance and the death of Ulvhild, he no longer has the strength to oppose Kristin. He consents to her marriage to Erlend. Erlend and Kristin are formally betrothed, but she becomes pregnant before the wedding. Out of shame, she keeps this a secret from everyone, including Erlend, and is wed with her hair loose and wearing the family bridal crown —- privileges reserved for virgin brides. This section of the trilogy is named for the golden wreath Kristin wears as a young girl, which is reserved for virgins of noble family. It symbolizes her innocent life before she meets Erlend; after he seduces her, she is no longer entitled to wear it, but does so out of fear of her sin coming to light. The second book opens with Kristin's arrival at Husaby. She is suffering from remorse for her sins and fears for her unborn child. Her relationship with Erlend is no longer the careless one of days past, as she can see that he is impetuous and wasteful of his possessions although his passion for her is unchanged. She gives birth to a son, Nikulaus (Naakkve for short), who to her surprise is healthy and whole in spite of the circumstances of his conception. After confessing to her parish priest, Kristin undertakes a pilgrimage to St. Olav's shrine in Trondheim to do penance and give thanks for her son's birth. She donates her golden wreath, which she wore undeservedly after her seduction by Erlend, to the shrine. Over the following years, Kristin and Erlend have six more sons together and Kristin becomes the head of the household. She must deal with her husband's weaknesses while running the estate, raising her children as well as those of Erlend's former mistress, and trying to remain faithful to her religion. During these years, her parents die and her remaining sister Ramborg is married to Simon Darre, although he secretly still loves Kristin. Ramborg is only fourteen when she is married, but has pushed for this wedding as she has loved Simon since her childhood. She understands little about what marriage means, particularly to a man who has been in love with someone else for many years. Erlend, impulsive to the point of recklessness, runs foul of the political powers of his time and is imprisoned. Through the efforts of Kristin's former fiancé, Simon, his life is spared but his property must be forfeited to the crown. Husaby is lost to them. The only property left to the family is Kristin's childhood farm, Jørundgård. Kristin, Erlend, and their children return to Jørundgård but fail to gain the acceptance of the community. Hardship forges strong family bonds and highlights Kristin's sense of obligations to her family and her faith. However, she and Erlend become estranged from Simon and Ramborg after Erlend and Ramborg become aware of Simon's continuing love for Kristin. Kristin becomes increasingly concerned about the future of her sons now that Erlend has lost their inheritance. After an argument on this subject in which she compares him unfavorably with her father, Erlend leaves the manor and settles at Haugen, the former home of his aunt Aashild. He and Kristin reunite there briefly during his absence after the dying Simon extracts a promise from Kristin to ask Erlend's forgiveness for her harsh words. They conceive an eighth son together, but Erlend refuses to return to the manor, instead insisting Kristin must move to Haugen to be with him. Kristin is very angry and hurt, and when she gives birth, she names her son Erlend. This is a terrible breach of custom, as local superstition maintains that children must not be named after living relatives or one of the two will die. In this way, she demonstrates that she considers her husband dead to her. The superstition is borne out, as the child weakens from the time he is given his father's name and soon dies. Due to the jealousy of her foreman's estranged wife, Kristin is publicly accused of adultery and complicity in the death of her child. Her sons rally around her, and Lavrans rides to inform Erlend. Erlend immediately sets out for Jorundgård, but upon his return to the farm he is accidentally slain in a confrontation with the locals and dies, without a confession to the priest, in Kristin's arms after asserting her innocence. After handing the farm over to her third son and his wife, Kristin returns to Trondheim, where she is accepted as a lay member of Rein Abbey. When the Black Death arrives in Norway in 1349, Kristin dedicates herself to nursing the ill after she learns that her two eldest sons have succumbed to the plague. Shortly afterwards she herself succumbs to the plague. Undset wrote a tetralogy, "The Master of Hestviken", which takes place around the same time as Kristin Lavransdatter. Kristin's parents make a brief appearance in this book, near the end of the part called "The Snake Pit". They are depicted as young married people, playing with their baby son. They are a happy and prosperous couple at their first home in Skog, before Kristin's birth. The unfortunate life of Olav, the main character of "The Master of Hestviken", stands in stark contrast to the happiness and good fortune of the young couple, though Kristin's parents eventually lose all their sons in infancy, and suffer many other misfortunes and sorrows.
5245466	/m/0d9rbc	Johnny, My Friend				 Johnny, My Friend is narrated by 12-year-old Krille. Krille is a naive youth, having grown up in a safe, supporting family in 1950s Stockholm. A new boy, Johnny, appears in Krille's life, and quickly impresses the neighborhood boys with his bicycling prowess. His popularity aside, Johnny is a bit of a mystery, rarely saying anything about his life. The boys of the neighborhood do not know where he lives, and sometimes he disappears for long periods, only to turn up again without explanation. Krille determines to solve the mystery of Johnny. Johnny has got a secret, a big one, and Krill's going to discover it...
5245580	/m/0d9rl0	A Fine Dark Line	Joe R. Lansdale	2002-06-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told through the eyes of Stanley Mitchell, a thirteen year-old boy, the younger of two children. The Mitchells are the owners and proprietors of the only drive-in theater in Dumont. Stanley discovers a tin box containing a collection of troubled love letters that ultimately lead him to a burned-out house, the mysterious deaths of two young women and various secrets that the Dumont leaders would prefer remain buried. Stanley's ally is Buster Smith, the projectionist at the drive-in theater, an elderly black man whose attempts to drown his demons in alcohol are doomed to failure but who has a depth that only Stanley is aware of. In attempting to solve the mysteries of the deaths of the two women, Stanley exposes himself, his family and his friends, to danger.
5245661	/m/0d9rqj	Simisola	Ruth Rendell	1994-09-24	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dr Raymond Akande is Wexford's new GP and one of the few Black British people in Kingsmarkham. When Akande's daughter goes missing, and a body of a young black woman is found, Wexford is confronted by his own prejudices.
5247519	/m/0d9t_l	The Crocodile Bird	Ruth Rendell	1993-09-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When her mother, Eve, tells Liza that she must leave their remote home, the gatehouse of a country mansion, Liza is terrified. Although seventeen years of age, she has never been on a bus or a train, has never played with a child of her own age. She has almost no knowledge of a world described by her mother as evil and destructive. Their strange, enclosed life together is over because Eve has killed a man. And he is not the first. With £100 in cash, Liza is cast adrift. However, she is not alone. There is one particular secret she has kept from her mother - her love affair with a young man who worked in the big house. With him, gradually Liza learns about the world, about herself, and must come to terms with the possibility that the murderous violence of her mother may be present in her.
5247749	/m/0d9vbr	Phylogenesis	Alan Dean Foster	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Desvendapur is an anti-social Thranx poet native to the colony on Willow-Wane who believes he can find new inspiration for his poetry by coming in contact with the physically repulsive humans, an intelligent mammal race that is unlike the insectoid thranx. Desvendapur's aspirations lead him to a secret thranx colony in the Amazon Basin on Terra where he meets a petty human thief turned murderer, Cheelo Montoya. Desvendapur is fascinated by the first native human he comes across so, with great resistance on the part of Montoya, chooses to follow the human, using him as the basis of a series of poems. The mismatched pair flee from the authorities, a pair of poachers who wish sell Desvendapur to a private zoo, and ultimately demonstrate how the two races can get along and work together on common challenges. By the end, the unlikely pair find a mutual understanding. The Thranx colony in the Amazon Basin is revealed to the Earth community and the diplomatic beginnings of the Humanx Commonwealth are greatly accelerated. Montoya becomes a celebrity despite his unwillingness to be in the spotlight and Desvendapur's poems he composed during his time on Earth become wildly popular amongst the Thranx.
5247876	/m/0d9vjr	Dirge	Alan Dean Foster	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It has been twenty years since the chance meeting of street thug Cheelo Montoya and thranx poet Desvendapur revealed the insectoid alien colony hidden deep within the Amazon Basin, and not much has changed. Humanity has recently discovered the planet Argus V, better known as Treetrunk, with the intention of colonizing the planet when their survey team is visited by a new alien race, the Pitar. At first the humans worry that the Pitar will want to lay claim to the planet, but the instead of wanting to claim territory, the aliens instead simply want to observe the humans. The Pitar are a close human analog to humans, appearing to be perfectly human except for a wider variety of hair and eye colors (including blue and violet among them) along with nearly god-like physiques. Most humans almost immediately view the Pitar as perfect. This complicated matters for the insectoid Thranx who wish to form a closer alliance with the humans. Some xenophobic humans go so far as to invade the small Thranx colony in the Amazon, killing many of the insect colonists. While this causes a political nightmare for both humans and Thranx, it also brings together the human chaplain and Thranx spiritual advisor who form the United Church. While the three races continue their political dance, a massacre occurs on Treetrunk. All 600,000 humans are killed by unknown attackers who then leave the planet. After an extensive search for the murderers turns up no clue, a single survivor is found hiding in a lifeboat on the smaller of Treetrunk’s moons. Allwyn Mallory claims to have witnessed the massacre and has proof of the attacker’s identity, a memory cube that recorded the Pitar not only killing the humans on Treetrunk, but also eviscerating the females for the reproductive organs. At first the Pitar demure the accusation, claiming that a single man’s accusations are groundless, but presented with the video proof the few Pitar on Terra at first flee, then either commit suicide when confronted or attack the humans attempting to place them under arrest resulting in their deaths. The humans form a space armada with the intention of bringing war and destruction to the Pitar’s twin homeworlds. The Pitar, while having no ambition to invade the galaxy, have thought ahead and set up extensive defensive works around their solar system. The war quickly becomes a stalemate for the humans, even with their new Thranx allies, cannot break through the Pitarian defenses. Only when the new allies develop a new weapon, the SCCAM missile—a nuclear warhead mounted on a starship’s KK-drive generator. This proves to be the tipping point of the war, though when a ground invasion of the Pitar’s homeworld was begun, the arrogant aliens refuse to surrender, fighting even when the obvious result would be death. This results in the eventual extinction of the Pitar. Only after the Pitar are exterminated, is it discovered why they had eviscerated the women on Treetrunk: the low reproductive rate of the Pitar put them at a disadvantage in comparison to other races. The Pitar sought to use human reproductive organs to supplement their own birth rates.
5248422	/m/0d9w6m	Shadows in Bronze	Lindsey Davis	1990	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins in Rome during late spring, AD 71. Marcus Didius Falco and a group of the Praetorian Guard under the captaincy of Julius Frontinus are disposing of a decomposing corpse. Secrecy is paramount because he was the victim of a discreet execution, having been guilty of treason against the Emperor. In his position as imperial agent, Falco is involved with the tidying of the conspiracy (The Silver Pigs) and the emptying of the traitor's house. Anacrites and Momus are also involved with this. When Falco and Anacrites arrive at the Palace to report to the Emperor, Falco runs into the Senator Decimus Camillus Verus and his daughter, Helena Justina. He then reports to the Emperor, who wishes to destroy any evidence that his son, Domitian, was involved with the scheme. When a freedman bursts in to inform the Emperor that the Temple of Hercules Gaditanus is on fire, Anacrites is sent to the Transtiberina to find a freedman (Barnabas) who has been following Falco around, whilst Falco is sent to investigate the arson attack. There he discovers that Curtius Longinus, who had been summoned to Rome to account for his role in the plot, has been killed in the fire. He returns to the palace to be informed that Anacrites had been unable to locate Barnabas, the freedman immediately becoming suspect in the arson and death. Falco is then sent to Magna Graecia in southern Italy in search of Aulus Curtius Gordianus, the brother of Curtius Longinus, who may also be in danger from Barnabas. Arriving in Crotone, Falco is almost immediately caught up in a brawl in the marketplace, being rescued by Laesus, a ship's captain, with whom Falco then shares a meal at the mansio. Falco finally tracks down Gordianus at the Temple of Hera at Cape Colonna and informs him of the death of his brother. While Gordianus spends several days in mourning, Falco stays on the beach with a goat previously intended as a sacrifice, before an acolyte at the Temple informs him that Gordianus has returned. Falco suggests that Gordianus accept a better post in Paestum. This would be a generous gift from Vespasian to get the senator back on side with the new regime, but it would also put Gordianus closer to Rome and make it easier for Vespasian to keep him in line in future. Barnabas is once more implicated in an attack on the Deputy Priest, apparently mistaking him for Gordianus who would normally have been conducting the ceremony, but Falco is forced to return to Rome without tracking him down. At the end of June, Falco travels to the Bay of Neapolis. This time he is travelling in the company of his friend, Petronius, and Petronius' family, as well as his own nephew, Larius. This "holiday" is in fact a cover for Falco trying to track down Aufidius Crispus, a senator who had also been implicated in the plot. His plan is to masquerade as a plumber in the company of his nephew. In that guise they travel around various country estates. One estate that they visit is that of Caprenius Marcellus. There they run once more into Helena Justina. She is visiting her father-in-law. Due to the amorous nature of their ox, Nero, Falco and Larius are arrested in Herculaneum. They are taken to see the local magistrate, Aemilius Rufus. There they again meet Helena, as well as her friend, Rufus' sister. Falco becomes a harp tutor to the sister. Falco manages to track down Aufidius Crispus at the Villa Poppaea, where the senator is hosting a sumptuous banquet in order to gain support for his future political moves. On their return they once again find traces of Barnabas, but the freedman has vanished. After several days, Falco catches up with him, only to discover that "Barnabas" is in fact Atius Pertinax, the ex-husband of Helena Justina, believed dead. It is made clear that Marcellus expects the divorced couple to re-marry. Pertinax and Crispus flee Imperial questioning on Crispus' yacht, but Crispus is killed when the yacht is rammed by a trireme under the authority of Rufus. Pertinax escapes, returning to Rome and attempting to force Helena Justina to re-marry him in order to regain his money. He is tricked and is finally killed by Falco.
5248544	/m/0d9wdv	Poseidon's Gold	Lindsey Davis	1993	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In Poseidon's Gold, Falco returns from a six month mission to Germania Liberia, only to become embroiled in the after-effects of a scam by his, now deceased, older brother, Festus. The story recounts shipping scams, crooked antiques auctions and hired thugs, all while Falco is trying to clear his family's name and sort out his deceased brother Festus' business dealings.
5248563	/m/0d9wfw	Last Act in Palmyra	Lindsey Davis	1994	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In Last Act in Palmyra, Falco takes on a new spying mission for Vespasian to the east of the Empire. He also plans to investigate the disappearance of a young musician, Sophrona. With Helena Justina, he travels to Petra, where they encounter a theatre group who have just lost their playwright due to drowning. Joining them, Falco attempts to fulfil his various investigations, whilst at the same time write his new play, The Spook Who Spoke.
5248590	/m/0d9wh7	Diurnity's Dawn	Alan Dean Foster		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the third and concluding novel of this trilogy, an uncomfortable archaeological alliance of Thranx, humans, and AAnn, explores the well-kept secrets of the lost civilization of the Sauun on the frontier world Comagrave. After a series of accidents that occur where the AAnn are convenient for helping an injured or stranded human, the chief Thranx scientist starts suspecting an anti-Thranx conspiracy. Meanwhile on the planet Dawn, such a conspiracy seems to be up and running, for terrorists there plan vicious destruction to crush the infant commonwealth. Unexpected players in this engrossing drama are the padres, human and Thranx, of the anything but dogmatic United Church, which ministers to both species with a decidedly untraditional religious outlook.
5249170	/m/0d9x53	Going Wrong	Ruth Rendell	1990-09-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When he was a young man, Guy Curran led a local street gang and dealt drugs before falling madly in love with Lenora Chisholm, a much more middle-class teenager whose society minded parents naturally disapproved of him. However, despite an initially passionate romance the fairytale soon subsides, and Lenora tells a distraught Guy that she has found a new love. This announcement sets off a dark chain of events that will lead Guy into obsession, stalking and finally murder.
5249476	/m/0d9xhv	The Bridesmaid	Ruth Rendell	1989-04-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's protagonist is Philip Wardman, a relatively normal young man (unusually so for traditional Rendell protagonists), whose only particularly strong feeling is that he hates violence. Philip lives at home with his mother and sister, and his feminine ideal is exemplified by a beautiful statue of Flora, a nymph, in their garden. One day Philip's sister marries, and Philip meets eccentric Senta Pelham, one of her bridesmaids who looks alarmingly like the statue of Flora. The two begin a passionate affair, but Philip's world comes crashing down around him when Senta sets a test: she begs Philip that, to prove their love, they must each kill someone.
5249849	/m/0d9xz3	The Veiled One	Ruth Rendell	1988	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book begins when a garotted body is found in a deserted subterranean Kingsmarkham car-park. The victim is Gwen Robson, a middle-aged home help and resident of the town. However, before Wexford can investigate any further he is the victim of a politically motivated car-bomb that was intended for his daughter, Sheila, a well-known actress who has recently caused controversy with a high-profile protest on Ministry of Defence Property. With his boss out of commission in hospital, Detective Inspector Mike Burden must forge ahead alone in the investigation, and quickly narrows in on a suspect. However, without Wexford to rein Burden in, is he in danger of being too short-sighted?
5250268	/m/0d9yfm	Talking to Strange Men	Ruth Rendell	1987-05-21	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Two plotlines run through this crime novel. The main adult protagonist is John Creevey who stumbles upon a series of hidden coded messages which he thinks must be the work of criminals or spies. John is unhappy and depressed. His wife Jennifer has left him for Peter Moran, her old fiancé, and he cannot accept that she will not return to him. He is still affected by the murder of his sister 16 years ago and Mark, her fiancé, is equally unhappy. John becomes obsessed by unravelling the codes, spending hours trying to break them. The coded messages are, however, being left by rival groups of public schoolboys. These boys are emulating the world of the 1980s spy fiction with the home team led by 14-year-old Mungo battling against Moscow Centre, run by boys at a rival school. Mungo is over six feet tall and has inherited the leadership from his older brother. The groups have moles and traitors. One of Mungo’s team is Charles Mabledene, another 14-year-old, but Mungo is not sure if he is really on their side and sets out to test him. Jennifer and Peter come round to John’s house in one of their attempts to get him to agree to a quick divorce and Colin, a friend of John’s, recognises from when he was a juror. He tells John that Peter pleaded guilty to indecent assault on a male child under the age of thirteen. John wonders how he can use this information to turn Jennifer against Peter and is also worried because a 12-year-old boy has been abducted from where Peter and Jennifer live on an afternoon when Peter was on his own. John decides to intercept and alter one of the messages and gives instructions for Peter to be investigated. The message is sent to Charles and he interprets this as being the loyalty test he is expecting. John confronts Jennifer with his information on Peter saying, “You can’t love a man who molests little boys”, but Jennifer stays loyal to Peter, to help him and to protect other boys. John then tries to cancel his instructions to Charles, but Charles ignores the new message, knows it cannot be from Mungo who is on holiday, and reads it as a trap. Charles goes to Peter’s House and meets him on the pretext of offering to wash his car. He immediately senses that Peter is attracted to him. Charles looks very young for his age and tells Peter he is just twelve years old. He is just over five foot, has blond hair, an unbroken voice and is quite aware he is very attractive. His father is always telling him not to talk to strange men. Peter suggests a meeting in town. After they sit down, he leans forward to brush ice cream off Charles’ cheek yet Charles maintains a cool exterior. On a later trip to the cinema, Peter puts his arm around the boy’s shoulder. After the cinema, they go to eat supper in a derelict building, one of the boys’ ‘safe houses’. Peter makes advances to Charles, talking about a ‘physically loving’ friendship he had when he was Charles’ age, and puts his hand on his thigh. Charles jumps up and in the subsequent panic, Peter is accidentally killed and Charles escapes, leaving a burning candle which destroys the building.
5250472	/m/0d9ynl	Heartstones	Ruth Rendell	1987-04-16	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a college town, two schoolgirls live with their widowed father Luke, a gentle well-educated man, meticulous and orderly. Elvira and Spinny are watchful, however, for Luke plans to remarry and has chosen Mary. The threat to the girls' world is removed when Mary falls to her death.
5250782	/m/0d9z5f	Woman on the Edge of Time	Marge Piercy		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Thirty-seven-year-old Hispanic woman Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, recently released from forced detention in a mental institution, begins to communicate with a figure that may or may not be imaginary: an androgynous young woman named Luciente. She realizes that Luciente is from a future, utopian world in which a number of goals of the political and social agenda of the late sixties and early seventies radical movements have been fulfilled. Environmental pollution, homophobia, racism, phallogocentrism, class-subordination, consumerism, imperialism, and totalitarianism no longer exist in the agrarian, communal community of Mattapoisett. The death penalty, however, continues to exist ("We don't think it's right to kill (...). Only convenient."), as does war. She is once more placed in a mental hospital after hitting her niece's pimp and her time with Luciente is one of the few solaces from her powerlessness. Connie learns that she is living at an important time in history, and she herself is in a pivotal position; her actions and decisions will determine the course of history. Luciente's utopia is only one possible future; a dystopian alternate future is a possibility&mdash; one in which a wealthy elite live on space platforms and subdue the majority of the population with psychotropic drugs and surgical control of moods, also harvesting these earth-bound humans' organs. Women are valued solely for their appearance and sexuality, and plastic surgery that gives women grotesquely exaggerated sexual features is commonplace. The novel gives little indication as to whether or not Connie's visions are by-products of a mental disease or are meant to be taken literally, but ultimately, Connie's confrontation with the future inspires her to a violent action that will presumably prevent the dissemination of the mind-control technology that makes the future dystopia possible, since it puts an end to the mind-control experiments and prevents the lobotomy-like operation that had been planned for her. Though her actions do not ensure the existence of the Mattapoisett future, Connie nevertheless sees her act as a victory: "I'm a dead woman now too. (...) But I did fight them. (...) I tried."
5250896	/m/0d9z9x	An Unkindness of Ravens	Ruth Rendell	1985-04-15	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When Wexford does a favour for his wife - to look into the disappearance of one of their neighbours' husbands - everything he finds seems to confirm his first inkling: that this is simply another case of a bored middle-aged man having run off with a younger woman. However, when Rodney Williams is found dead, and another local man is stabbed in his car, Wexford finds himself thrown into an investigation involving a militant feministic organisation known as "Arria", who have taken the raven as their symbol.
5252322	/m/0db00_	Forbidden	Caroline B. Cooney	1994-06-16	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 18-year-old Annabel Hope Jayquith is both beautiful and famous in her world of wealth and prestige. Daughter to billionaire Hollings Jayquith and the deceased artist Eleanor Hope Jayquith, as well as niece to the famous television news anchor Theodora Jayquith, Annabel is fighting internal demons of loneliness and self-doubt. While at a charity event in Manhattan, she meets and falls in love with 22-year-old Daniel Madison Ransom. Daniel is the son of Senator Madison Ransom who was assassinated for trying to reveal a corrupt industry. Along with his mother, the insane Catherine Ransom, Daniel wants to reveal to the world the real killer, whom they believe is Hollings Jayquith himself. Meanwhile, Theodora Jayquith’s illegitimate 18-year-old daughter Jade O’Keefe has discovered the identity of her real mother after the death of her foster parents, and is now on her way to Manhattan to confront her mother and gain the fortune she feels she has been denied. In another strand of the plot, a young man who goes by the name Alex arrives in Connecticut seeking to avenge the murder of his brother. Annabel and Daniel meet again at their mutual friends Venice Pierce and Michael Theil’s wedding in Litchfield, Connecticut. He's a groomsman, she's a bridesmaid, and it seems to be a night of romance. Then Daniel reveals what he and his mother want to do, expose Hollings on his sister’s own show. Annabel, too shocked to speak, flees to her home to comfort herself. However, her solace is invaded by the entrance of Jade, who has used her likeness to Theodora to charm Hollings. After a kidnapping and rescue, it develops that Annabel's father is innocent of the murder, and the story ends happily.
5254706	/m/0db2x9	Deeds of the Disturber	Barbara Mertz	1988	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Immediately after their adventure in Lion in the Valley, the Emersons return home to England for the summer of 1896, as is their custom. Upon their arrival, Amelia finds that her despised brother James wants to dump his two children, Percy and Violet, on the Emersons for the summer. Amelia accepts, if only to instill some higher principles in the obviously spoiled children. Kevin O'Connell enters the story as he reports on a supposed curse on a mummy in the British Museum. He's competing against a fellow journalist, M. Minton, who always seems to "scoop" him, and he pesters the Emersons for their knowledge and expertise on Egyptology and detection. Imagine Amelia's surprise when M. Minton turns out to be a young woman! Meanwhile, Ramses and Percy hate each other on sight, Violet turns out to be an empty-headed doll who overeats and throws temper tantrums, and Ramses' belongings keep mysteriously ending up in Percy's possession. The mummy "mystery" begins to take on more sinister portent as a masked figure stalks the Museum, a woman from Emerson's past turns up as the owner of an opium den, and the Emersons (including Ramses) are subjected to the usual attempts at injury and kidnapping. Eventually, Amelia, Emerson, and Inspector Cuff of Scotland Yard find themselves trapped in a cellar which is about to be flooded, with no backup and only Amelia's corset to save them...
5257205	/m/0db5tc	The Woman in White	Wilkie Collins		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Walter Hartright, a young art teacher, is walking from Hampstead to London late one summer's evening, when he meets a mysterious woman dressed in white, apparently in deep distress. He helps her on her way to London, but later learns that she has escaped from an asylum. The next day he travels north to Limmeridge House, having been hired as a drawing master to the residents of the house; he had been recommended for the job by his friend, Pesca, an Italian language professor. The Limmeridge household comprises Mr Frederick Fairlie, and Walter's students: Laura Fairlie, Mr Fairlie's niece, and Marian Halcombe, her devoted half-sister. Several days after he arrives, Hartright is shocked to realize that Laura bears an astonishing resemblance to the woman in white, called Anne Catherick. The mentally disadvantaged Anne had lived for a time in Cumberland as a child and was devoted to Laura's mother, who first dressed her in white. Walter and Laura quickly fall in love. Laura, however, has promised her father that she will marry Sir Percival Glyde, and Marian – knowing that Laura loves Walter in return – advises Walter to forget his love, and leave Limmeridge. Anne, after sending a letter to Laura warning her against Glyde, meets Hartright who becomes convinced that Glyde was responsible for shutting Anne in the asylum. Despite the misgivings of the Fairlie's lawyer over the financial terms of the marriage settlement, Laura and Glyde marry in December 1849 and travel to Italy for 6 months. Hartright also leaves England, joining an expedition to Honduras. After their honeymoon, Sir Percival and Lady Glyde return to his family estate, Blackwater Park, in Hampshire; they are accompanied by Glyde's friend, Count Fosco (who is married to Laura's aunt). Marian Halcombe is also living at Blackwater and learns that Glyde is in financial difficulties. Sir Percival unsuccessfully attempts to bully Laura into signing a document which would allow him to use her marriage settlement of £20,000. Determined to protect her sister, Marian crawls out onto a roof overlooking Percy and Fosco whilst they plot; but it begins to rain, and Marian, completely soaked, falls into a fever which shortly turns into typhus. While Marian is ill, Laura is tricked into travelling to London. Her identity and that of Anne Catherick are then switched. Anne Catherick dies of a heart condition and is buried in Cumberland as Laura, while Laura is drugged and placed in the asylum as Anne Catherick. When Marian recovers and visits the asylum, hoping to learn something from Anne Catherick, she finds Laura, supposedly suffering from the delusion that she is Lady Glyde. Marian bribes the nurse and Laura escapes. Hartright has safely returned from Honduras, and the three live together in obscure poverty, determined to restore Laura's identity. After some time Walter discovers Glyde's secret, which is that he was illegitimate, and therefore not entitled to inherit his parents' property. This secret was known only to Anne's mother, and while Anne never knew the secret, she spoke and acted as if she did. Many years earlier, Glyde had forged an entry in the marriage register at Old Welmingham Church to conceal his illegitimacy and hence unlawful inheritance of estate and title. Believing Walter either has discovered, or will discover his secret, Glyde attempts to destroy the register entry, but the church vestry catches fire and he perishes in the flames. Confronting Anne's mother, Hartright discovers that Anne was the illegitimate child of Laura's father, which accounts for their resemblance. On returning to London to resume his battle with Fosco, Hartright marries Laura. When he secretly tails Fosco to investigate about him, Hartright also discovers that Fosco belongs to, and has betrayed, an Italian secret society (dubbed "The Brotherhood"), of which Pesca is a high-ranking member with enough authority to dispatch him. Using Fosco's weakness as bargaining chip, Hartright now has the power to force a written confession from Fosco and Laura's identity is restored. Fosco departs from England in haste, only to be discovered by the Brotherhood's agents some time later and murdered. Since Hartright and Laura have married, on the death of Frederick Fairlie, their son becomes the Heir of Limmeridge.
5260168	/m/0dbc23	The Jewel in the Crown	Paul Scott	1966-07	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Daphne Manners, who has lost her immediate family in England, comes to India to live with her only remaining near kinsman, Lady Manners. Lady Manners sends her to Mayapore to stay with her Indian friend, Lady Chatterjee. While staying with Lady Chatterjee, whom she calls "Auntie Lili," Daphne meets Hari Kumar. He is an Indian who was brought up in England and educated at Chillingborough, a public school that Daphne's own brother attended; Hari speaks only English, but his father's financial collapse and suicide obliged Hari to return to India. Daphne learns to despise the attitudes of the English in India and also grows to love Hari. Meanwhile, the local police superintendent, Ronald Merrick, has designs both on Daphne and Hari, making for a potent love triangle. Merrick, of lower-middle-class English origin, is resentful of the privileged English "public school" class and contemptuous of Indians. Hari thus represents everything that Merrick hates. After Daphne and Hari make love in a public park, the Bibighar Gardens, they are attacked by a mob of rioters who by chance witnessed their lovemaking. Hari is beaten and Daphne is raped repeatedly. Knowing that Hari will be implicated in her rape, Daphne swears him to silence regarding his presence at the scene. But she does not count on the instincts of Ronald Merrick, who, upon learning of the rape, immediately takes Hari into custody and engages in a lengthy and sadistic interrogation which includes sexual humiliation. Merrick also arrests a group of educated young Indians, including some of Hari's colleagues at the Mayapore Gazette. Daphne steadfastly refuses to support the prosecution of Hari and the others for rape. She insists that her attackers were peasants and included at least one Muslim (although she was blindfolded, she could tell he was circumcised) and could not be young, educated Hindus like Hari and his acquaintances who have been taken into custody. The inquest is frustrated when Daphne threatens to testify that, for all she knows, her attackers could have been Englishmen. Hari puzzles the authorities by refusing to say anything, even in his own defense (he has been sworn to secrecy by Daphne, and he honors that pledge to the letter). Because the authorities cannot successfully prosecute him for rape, they instead imprison him under a wartime law as a suspected revolutionary. And Daphne's refusal to aid a prosecution for rape leads to her being reviled and ostracized by the English community of Mayapore and of British India as a whole, where her case has become a cause celebre. Unbeknownst to Hari, Daphne has conceived a child; its paternity is impossible to determine, but she considers the child to be Hari's. She returns to her aunt, Lady Manners, to give birth, but a pre-existing medical condition results in her death. Lady Manners takes the child, Parvati, to Kashmir. Parvati's physical resemblance to Hari satisfies Lady Manners and Lady Chatterjee that Hari was her biological father.
5260518	/m/0dbcnz	The Towers of Silence	Paul Scott	1971-10	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel begins with the story of Barbie Batchelor, an old missionary schoolteacher, who, after years of service to the church, decides to take her pension and retire. She finds a place as a paying guest with Mabel Layton, a member of the aristocracy of the English in India, at Rose Cottage in Pankot. Barbie and Mabel become close. Late one night, Mabel tells Barbie that she will only go to Ranpur when she's buried, which Barbie interprets to mean that she wants to be buried in Ranpur, next to the grave of her late husband, James Layton. Barbie is proud of her working class background and her simple Christianity, but she does her best to behave in a manner that makes upper-class Pankot comfortable. Unfortunately, they will never accept her as one of their own, treating her as a peculiar and unwanted intruder. In 1942, Pankot society hears about the attacks on two English women in and near Mayapore (events that took place in the first novel of the series). Daphne Manners was gang raped by a mob and Edwina Crane was witness to the murder of her Indian colleague. Miss Crane, another missionary schoolteacher, was a good friend of Barbie's, and she is haunted by the attack and by Edwina's subsequent suicide by fire. Pankot society does not know what to make of Barbie and her insistence on sharing a picture, "The Jewel in the Crown" of the title, that Edwina gave her. Pankot also rejects a theory, proposed by an officer passing through from Mayapore to Muzzafirabad, that the relationship between Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar, who has been arrested for the rape, was not a case of an innocent, inexperienced white girl being mesmerized by a crafty Indian, but rather that Daphne and Hari simply were in love, like any two young people. Just as Daphne Manners dies while giving birth to the child conceived on the night of the rape, the Laytons announce the engagement of Susan Layton and Teddie Bingham. Just then, Teddie gets a new posting and is reassigned to Mirat. In Mirat he meets his new quarters-mate, Ronald Merrick. Merrick, who is serving in army intelligence, briefs Teddie and his unit regarding the "Jiffs" or the Indians who are fighting on the side of the Japanese as part of the Indian National Army. Teddie and the other more traditional officers of the Indian Army can hardly believe their ears. They and their forebears have grown up with generations of these Indian soldiers, knowing intimately their villages and families, and they cannot believe that such disloyalty is possible. Returning to his quarters, Teddie comes across a woman's bicycle, old and battered, accompanied by a symbol made of chalk marked on the veranda, like those made in connection with Hindu religious rites. Before he can ask Merrick about it, the bike has disappeared. However, Merrick suspects that it is the work of his old nemesis, Pandit Baba, who was present in Mayapore when Daphne Manners was attacked. Merrick was the police commissioner there and took brutal action against Hari Kumar and a group of his acquaintances. The bicycle belonged to Daphne and might have served as evidence had any charges been brought in the case. Merrick informs Teddie that if he means to get married, then he had better do it quickly, because he would soon be sent to do battle against the Japanese. Teddie panics, not knowing what to do. Merrick solves his problem by arranging the loan of the sumptuous guest house belonging to the Nawab of Mirat and suggesting he then go on honeymoon nearby in the Nanoora Hills. Teddie's best friend, Tony Bishop, is down with jaundice, Merrick helps out again by being best man. The honeymoon is disappointing for Susan, who is let down by Teddie's sexual inexperience. While these arrangements are being made, the Laytons are vacationing in Kashmir, where they encounter Lady Manners and Daphne's child Parvati. Sarah without her family's knowledge defies her family by going to visit their houseboat. But Lady Manners actually proves helpful when she suggests that by way of thanks for the loan of the guest house, a volume of the poems of Mohammed Gaffur would make a nice gift for the Nawab of Mirat, since the nawab is a descendant of the Urdu poet. The Laytons return to Pankot to make preparations. Mildred disturbed by the fact that this step is being taken while her husband, Lt. Col. John Layton, is held prisoner in Germany. Barbie and Pankot society are also disappointed that such an important society wedding will be in Mirat and not Pankot. But they are consoled with the gossip of the momentous events: (1) Teddie's injury resulting from a stone being thrown at his car, (2) Susan's instinct to show obeisance to the Nawab, thus saving all from embarrassment at his being detained at the entrance, and (3) the appearance of Shalini Gupta Sen at the railway station when the couple are being seen off on their honeymoon and the scene she creates with her entreaties to Merrick which are later revealed to regard Hari's imprisonment. Barbie, wanting to show her affection for Susan with a nice wedding-cum-21st birthday gift, buys a set of silver Apostle spoons and gives them to Sarah to pass on. Mabel, while going through some old clothes, comes upon a piece of cloth that remained from a christening gown. The fabric is embedded with woven butterflies, symbolically imprisoned in the material. She gives the piece to Barbie, who is quite taken with its fragility. In order to make up for having the wedding out of town, Mildred throws a buffet luncheon at the Pankot Rifles officers' mess for Pankot society. Mabel and Barbie go together, but are efficiently separated from each other under Mildred's instructions. Barbie is puzzled that her gift of spoons is not displayed with the other wedding gifts. Susan's pregnancy is announced and, several months later, news of Teddie's death arrives. While Sarah is in Calcutta visiting Merrick, who witnessed Teddie's death and was himself injured, Mabel Layton has a stroke and dies. Susan is witness to the old lady's death and the shock drives her into premature labor. Worried about the state of Mabel's soul, Barbie worms her way into the morgue at the hospital and thinks she sees the anguish of eternal torment on the face of her dead friend. She is then shocked to learn that Mabel will be buried in Pankot and not in Ranpur, as she had wished. She barges in on Mildred to plead for her friend's last wish, but Mildred rebukes her harshly for interfering and offers a vicious evaluation of her character. Mildred gives Barbie until the end of the month to vacate Rose Cottage. Susan survives the difficult childbirth and so does her prematurely delivered son. Sarah returns from Calcutta and gives the report of Merrick's heroism in trying to save Teddie. Barbie moves in with the vicar and his wife, Arthur and Clarissa Peplow. Barbie tries hard to get back into the missionary service, but finds a position difficult to secure. She learns through Sarah that Mabel has left her an annuity in her will. Barbie is embarrassed by the gesture and predicts that Mildred will cause trouble over it. Meanwhile, Susan's behavior is troubling. She seems not to be relating to her child in a maternal way. She seems often distracted and distant. One evening, remembering a fable about scorpions committing suicide when surrounded by fire told her by Barbie, Susan pours kerosene in a ring on the grass, puts her baby in the center and lights the fluid. The baby is quickly saved by a servant. However, it is now clear that there is something seriously wrong with Susan, and she is put under the care of a psychiatrist. Mildred blames Barbie for planting the idea in her mind and returns the Apostle spoons through Clarissa. Barbie, deeply hurt by the insult, sends notes to Colonel Trehearne and Captain Coley saying that she intends to make a gift of silver to the 1st Pankot Rifles. She then sets off in search of Coley to deliver the goods. Arriving at Coley's bungalow in a rainstorm, Barbie gets no answer at the door. Finding it unlocked, she goes in to leave the gift inside. But hearing an odd sound, she investigates and comes upon the sight of Coley and Mildred Layton rutting furiously. Undetected by the lovers, she flees from the bungalow, but is caught in the rainstorm and falls seriously ill, coming down with bronchopneumonia. Fenny is visiting from Calcutta and is gossiping with the Pankot women about recent events, Susan's recovery in the hospital, and the state of the household. Fenny suggests to Mildred that Sarah is under too much stress and should be allowed a vacation. Mildred turns viciously on Fenny, telling her that she cannot believe that she could try to fool her. Fenny does not know what Mildred is talking about until Mildred informs her that for the past two months, Sarah has not been using her sanitary napkins. Fenny realizes that Sarah is pregnant and that Jimmy Clark must have been responsible for it. Mildred assumed that Fenny already knew what the situation was. Fenny agrees to take Sarah away surreptitiously for a "D&C," their euphemism for an abortion. With Sarah gone and Susan in hospital, Mildred decides to close Rose Cottage and move into Flagstaff House. Susan seems to be recovering under the care of psychiatrist Captain Samuels, the "Jew-boy trick-cyclist". Barbie, recovering from pneumonia but unable to speak above a whisper, finally donates the spoons to the regiment. She gets a letter from Calcutta, offering her a position as a teacher in Dibrapur, the site of Edwina Crane's horror. Captain Coley informs Barbie that a trunk full of her things has been found stored in a shed at Rose Cottage and it had better be removed before Mildred finds out. Knowing that she will soon be leaving the Peplows and will have enough space of her own, she goes up to the vacant cottage to retrieve her trunk. There she encounters Ronald Merrick, who is in town for treatment at the local military hospital and has come in search of the Laytons; however, no one is currently in residence. Barbie is excited to finally meet Merrick and asks him about Mayapore. She opens her trunk and presents him with her copy of the painting, "The Jewel in the Crown". Merrick recognizes it as one he saw among Edwina Crane's things and accepts it gratefully. Barbie has the tonga-wallah load the large trunk onto the tonga she is travelling in. Merrick worries that the load is too heavy, especially on such a steep road down from Rose Cottage. Barbie sets off anyway as it begins to rain. The dirt road becomes slick and the tonga-wallah loses control, dumping Barbie and the trunk in a ditch. Barbie is physically and mentally injured in the accident and ends up at a sanitarium in Ranpur. Her view is of the Parsees' towers of silence of the title. Sarah visits her, but she cannot seem to get through. Barbie dies just as the atomic bomb is exploded over Hiroshima in August 1945.
5260608	/m/0dbcvy	A Division of the Spoils	Paul Scott	1975-05-05	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story covers in personal terms the humbling and hasty decamping of the British: the precipitous concession of power to a country fiercely bent on division; the travails of an honorable Muslim Congressman, Mohammed Ali Kasim, and his sons, one of whom had deserted to the Japan-directed Indian National Army; the quandary of the Nawab of the small fictitious princely state of Mirat, left in the lurch by the lapse of British Paramountcy; the suicide of a dysentery-debilitated and maladapted British officer; the prowling of the haunted Ronald Merrick. The new man on the scene is Sergeant Guy Perron, once a pupil of a public school called Chillingborough which Hari Kumar (as Harry Coomer) also attended when he lived in England. It was Guy who returned in 1947/8 to be an observer of India on the eve of Independence; this assignment soon turns into a personal inquiry into the truth behind the hushed-up story of Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald Merrick's death in Mirat. The tragic consequences of India-Pakistan partition are dramatized in a horrific train massacre in which Ahmed Kasim, the son of Mohammed Ali Kasim, is targeted by rioters and chooses to sacrifice himself in order to protect the rest of the people in his carriage.
5260741	/m/0dbd1l	Vortex	Patrick Larkin	1991-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 In a tense, hypothetical 1990s apartheid South Africa, the ruling National Party and its new state president prepare to end decades of racial injustice and conflict by entering into negotiations with African National Congress officials for sweeping democratic reforms. However, beneath the surface progress has been slow, with the Soviet Union and its rivals in the West attempting to play both sides and internal pressure mounting. The ANC refuses to properly disarm and cease planning terrorist operations, while for their part even white moderates refuse to permit a total system of "one man, one vote". To complicate matters, South African commandos conducting a clandestine raid into Zimbabwe uncover a conspiracy by ANC guerrilla fighters to assassinate the reformist government. After learning of the plot, Afrikaner Resistance Movement fanatic and Minister for Internal Security Karl Vorster seeks to manipulate the situation for his personal gain, allowing the plan to proceed despite advance knowledge of its details. Hardline elements of the regime, led by its staunchest supporters of apartheid, intend to let the ANC terrorists murder their political opponents, leaving the field clear for them to seize power. With most of South Africa's moderate cabinet dead, Vorster becomes president and declares martial law. The security forces begin brutal crackdowns on anti-apartheid organizations, and those suspected of having ties to ANC affiliates are executed or moved to isolated internment camps. Suppression, torture, and state-sponsored killings became commonplace, while the South African Defence Force is ordered to invade newly independent South West Africa (Namibia) to re-establish apartheid in that territory. Cuban military personnel, however, push south from neighbouring Angola in support of their Namibian allies, halting Vorster’s invasion short of Windhoek. As the South African blitz stalls, conditions at home begin to worsen. Armed police indiscriminately massacre hundreds of white students protesting conscription at the University of the Witwatersrand, while a minority of Afrikaners, disgusted at Vorster’s abuses in power, launch secessionist movements in the Transvaal and Orange Free State. The regime is also confronted with full-fledged tribal revolts after a Zulu chieftain is denaturalised for condemning apartheid. Attempts to suppress dissension with brute force only leads to greater unrest, such as a violent uprising by Durban’s Indian population. Hoping to take direct advantage of South Africa’s internal chaos, the Cuban leadership, aided by direct military assistance from friendly African states such as Libya and Mozambique, launches an invasion of the country with logistical backing from Moscow. While Cuban tank divisions rapidly close on Pretoria, brushing aside the feeble resistance offered by reservists and local Afrikaner militias, Karl Vorster orders the deployment of nuclear weapons in a desperate attempt to save the city. His air force subsequently uses one such projectile to strafe an armoured column, eliminating three thousand Cuban and Libyan soldiers. The ensuing radiation storm goes on to contaminate much of the Transvaal, affecting combatant and civilian alike. Cuba retaliates by using chemical weapons against SADF positions, although the hundreds of innocents also killed in these indiscriminate barrages prompts the ANC to desert their communist allies. Havana goes on to authorize the use of live civilians as human shields, intending to reduce the threat posed by South Africa’s nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, anti-Vorster factions seize Cape Town, dealing a mortal blow to their nation’s economic structure. When the skyrocketing price of precious metals begins to dampen the world economy, the U.S. and Great Britain authorize direct military intervention in South Africa. Despite suffering heavy casualties, a joint American and British task force, backed by both overwhelming air and naval support, make headway and overrun the apartheid government's stockpile of nuclear weapons. With this threat removed, the race for Pretoria is narrowly concluded after rebel-backed Rangers capture the unhinged strongman and his supporters. American air strikes demoralize the battered Cuban Army and force their withdrawal; in exasperation a humiliated Soviet leadership vows never to waste another ruble on the continent. During the following months the fall of Vorster’s illegal government is completed, although ANC units and Afrikaner secessionists remain at large, hostile towards their homeland's new masters. Apartheid is formally abolished and a conglomerate of various political parties brought to the table for establishing a new, multiracial, South Africa.
5261893	/m/0dbfy6	The Winter King	Bernard Cornwell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Kingdom of Dumnonia is in chaos. The forces of Dumnonia led by the Edling (Crown Prince) Mordred and Arthur (the King's bastard) have defeated the Saxons at a battle beneath the hill of the white horse, but at a terrible price. Prince Mordred was slain, leaving the Kingdom without an heir. Dumnonia's only hope is for Mordred's pregnant wife, Norwenna, to give birth to a son. High King Uther Pendragon blames his son's death on Arthur and exiles him to Armorica. Norwenna is in labor, and there are fears that she and the child may die. Norwenna, a Christian, has insisted that only Christian midwives be present. High King Uther, a pagan, finally loses patience with the midwives of the Christian God and summons Merlin's priestess Morgan to deliver the child. The pagan magic seems to work and a male child is born. It would seem the kingdom is saved. However, the child is born with a crippled foot, which is seen as a very bad omen. The High King dismisses the sign and declares that the son will be named after his father: Mordred. Mordred and his mother are brought to Merlin's hall at Ynys Wydryn (Glastonbury), where she and the child are placed under the care of Merlin's priestesses, Morgan (Arthur's sister) and Nimue (Merlin's lover). Merlin himself has not been seen in Britain for many years. Derfel is one of the orphans at Ynys Wydryn adopted by Merlin, and is in love with Nimue. Nimue binds Derfel to her by scarring both of their hands and making Derfel swear that while he carries the scar, their lives are bound and he must obey her. High King Uther summons a high council of the Kings of Britain at Glevum (Gloucester). Morgan is summoned to represent the still absent Merlin and Nimue joins her, accompanied by Derfel. The tension between the British kingdoms is made clear as King Gorfyddyd of Powys does not attend and King Gundleus of Siluria is tardy. Uther makes it clear that no man, other than his grandson Mordred, will sit on the throne of Dumnonia. Since Mordred is only a baby, he appoints three guardians (King Tewdric of Gwent; Owain, Champion of Dumnonia; and Merlin) and also a foster father to Mordred, who will marry the Princess Norwenna. Agricola, champion of Gwent, chooses Arthur, but the High King disowns Arthur as his son. King Gundleus is then appointed as Mordred's Guardian and marries Norwenna. After King Tewdric and Owain give their oaths as guardians, Uther asks Morgan if Merlin will give an oath. Morgan insists that Merlin will only take the oath if Arthur is appointed as a guardian. After Uther dies Mordred, still only a baby, is pronounced King of Dumnonia. He is not High King because that title can only be given to a King accepted as Higher than the other British Kings. Nor is he the Pendragon, as that title is only given to a High King who wins his rank in battle. Following Uther's death, King Gorfyddyd attacks Gwent. Dumnonia and Siluria rush to the aid of Gwent. Shortly afterward, King Gundleus sends news of victory and announces he is coming to Ynys Wydryn to be with his wife. Morgan and Nimue tell Norwenna that Gundleus lied and that the war is not over. Norwenna does not believe them and makes ready for Gundleus's arrival. When Gundleus arrives, he kills Norwenna and Mordred. Then, in retribution for Nimue's curse, he rapes her and plucks out an eye. Derfel rescues Nimue and while escaping runs into Morgan, who has the baby Mordred with her. She explains that the baby that Gundleus killed was the baby of the child king's wetnurse. The group flee with Gundleus in pursuit. As they reach the capital Caer Cadarn, Derfel joins Owain's army and prepares to join the battle against the Silurian army. Arthur appears with his horseman during the battle and defeats Gundleus. In the aftermath of the battle Arthur imprisons Gundleus but treats him with respect as he is a King. Arthur is very observant of the customs of the nobility. Then, much to Derfel's displeasure, Arthur gives Derfel to Owain to train, explaining that he only employs horsemen. Under Owain's leadership, Derfel learns the realities of war. Owain is dishonest and seeks war for profit. While Derfel is with him he enters into an agreement with Prince Cadwy of Isca (Exeter) to massacre the tin miners of Kernow (Cornwall) who had been working in Dumnonia at Uther's invitation. Derfel is traumatised by the unwarranted slaughter, and as a result loses faith in Owain as a leader. When Prince Tristan, Edling of Kernow, arrives in Dumnonia and demands recompense for the massacre, Owain blames an Irish raiding party. Arthur suspects Owain is lying and after speaking with Derfel, challenges Owain to resolve the matter in a court of swords, a battle to the death where the gods are called on to give victory to the truth. Arthur defeats Owain and assumes complete power in Dumnonia, he then takes Derfel into his service to spare him the vengeance of Owain's supporters. Arthur wishes to end the civil war and unite the British Kingdoms against the Sais (Saxons). To do this, he enters into a peace treaty with Powys. He will return Gundleus to the throne of Siluria and then marry Ceinwyn, the daughter of Gorfyddyd. He travels north to Powys, where he is formally betrothed to Ceinwyn. However, when Guinevere enters the feasting hall, Arthur falls in love with her. He abandons Ceinwyn and marries Guinevere, destroying any hope of allegiance and plunging Britain back into civil war. In the years following Arthur's marriage to Guinevere, Derfel grows into a great warrior and is given a second name, "Cadarn", which means "the mighty." Sagramor, Arthur's Numidian commander, initiates Derfel into the religious cult of Mithras, a Roman deity popular with soldiers. It is also at this time that Arthur receives a summons from the Armorican Kingdom of Benoic, to which he swore an oath to be the kingdom's champion. Unable to go himself, he sends Derfel with 60 men. Derfel is to join forces with Arthur's cousin Culhwch and to write to Arthur if more men are necessary. Before he leaves, Sagramor warns Derfel of the Edling of Benoic, Lancelot, saying he can be treacherous. Upon arriving, Derfel is taken to Ynys Trebes (Mont Saint-Michel, France), the island capital of Benoic. There he meets King Ban. The King is upset when he learns that Arthur is not coming, but is delighted upon learning that Derfel is a literate warrior. King Ban shows Derfel the library of Ynys Trebes, which is overseen by Father Celwin, a foul-tempered priest investigating the wingspan of angels. Later, at dinner, Derfel meets Lancelot and the two take an instant dislike to each other. Derfel is only prevented from beating Lancelot senseless by the intervention of Galahad, Lancelot's half-brother. Galahad explains in private that Lancelot will not take defeat lightly and suggests that Derfel leave Ynys Trebes immediately. Derfel takes Galahad's advice and returns to shore accompanied by Galahad, who wishes to fight alongside him. Derfel spends three years in Benoic and learns quickly that Lancelot's fearsome reputation has nothing to do with his prowess in battle and everything to do with paying poets to sing his praises. Derfel and his men begin a campaign to slow the Frankish advance. In this they succeed and become feared by the Franks. They start to call Derfel and his warriors "wolves" and Derfel and his men adopt this as their nickname and wear wolf-tail plumes on their helmets. However, their attacks on the Franks become like "a wasp attempting to sting a bull to death", and they are pushed back to Ynys Trebes where Lancelot has taken charge of defending the city. After a council of war, where Lancelot insists that the Kingdom can survive within the city's wall as the city is self sufficient, Derfel speaks to Father Celwin, who is forever irritable and has little time for small talk. Derfel explains his duty to defend the lives of the people in the city. Father Celwin responds: "Then I place my life in your hands." After several months under siege, the city falls. Lancelot is among the first to flee. As Derfel begins to escape the city he remembers the words of Father Celwin and returns to the palace, where they find King Ban resigned to his fate and refusing to leave the city. They find Father Celwin in the library frantically searching for a particular scroll and refusing to leave. As the Franks storm the palace, Derfel finally loses patience with him, screaming: "Come on you old fool!" To which Father Celwin replies: "Old, yes, Derfel, but a fool never!" as he reveals himself to be Merlin in disguise. Merlin finds the scroll he was looking for, saying that it contains the knowledge of Britain. He then leads Derfel and Galahad out of the city, as he has already planned his escape. As they arrive in Dumnonia, Merlin promptly disappears again. Meanwhile, Derfel learns that Nimue has been declared dangerously mad and has been banished to the isle of the dead (Portland Bill). Derfel assumes that this is why Merlin has disappeared. Believing Derfel and his men to be dead, Lancelot has told Arthur and the Men of Dumnonia that despite his best efforts, Ynys Trebes fell and it was the fault of Derfel. Derfel arrives in time to hear this slander, declaring Lancelot a liar and challenging him to back up his story with his sword. Arthur calms the situation, claiming that in battle men are often mistaken. Derfel is rewarded for his service to Arthur and is declared a lord, but shortly after learns that Merlin has gone north, leaving Nimue on the Isle of the Dead. With the scar on his hand reminding Derfel of his duty to Nimue, he travels south to rescue her himself. When he arrives at the Isle he is warned by the guards that he is free to enter, but once inside he can never be released. He enters nonetheless and finds Nimue at the southern tip of the isle. She initially attacks him, but he clasps their scarred hands together and Nimue's wits return. As he returns to the entrance, he finds that Galahad and his men have followed him south to ensure that he could leave the isle. In the months following this adventure, Derfel and Nimue become lovers. Nimue considers leaving Merlin and the path of the Gods, but realizes that life with Derfel is an impossible dream. She ends their relationship, only to find out that she is pregnant with Derfel's baby. She refrains from telling Derfel about this, instead claiming that the baby is Merlin's. Arthur meanwhile, is contemplating a final assault on Powys to end the war. To do that, he must ensure that the Sais, led by Aelle who calls himself the Bretwalda (Ruler of Britain), remain at peace, and only money can achieve that. On the advice of Nimue he makes enforced loans from all Christian and pagan shrines, an act which the Christians resent him for. Meeting with Aelle, Arthur negotiates three months of peace for the gold and information on how to capture the Powysian Stronghold of Ratae (Leicester). With the Eastern border secure, Arthur marches his army north into Gwent where at Glevum he holds a council of war. At the council, Tewdric suggests letting the Powysians besiege Glevum, whereas Arthur wants to attack Powys at Lugg Vale. Meurig, the Edling of Gwent, then asks Arthur why they fight at all, since Gwent's only responsibility is to ensure Mordred gets the throne - not to protect Arthur. Galahad volunteers to travel north as an emissary to King Gorfyddyd to ascertain Gorfyddyd's intentions toward Mordred. Derfel accompanies him, although his presence in Gorfyddyd's hall provokes anger, since he is sworn to Arthur. Merlin then arrives and declares that Derfel is not to be harmed. Gorfyddyd fears Merlin and obeys. Gorfyddyd tells Galahad that he would adopt Mordred himself until he was old enough to serve as King. In private Merlin tells them that Gorfyddyd is lying and comments: "He has the brains of an ox, and not a very clever ox at that." Merlin says that Gorfyddyd will kill Mordred in order to fulfill his ambition of becoming High King. During his time in Powys, Derfel meets Ceinwyn and falls in love with her. She has been betrothed to Gundleus in return for Siluria's assistance. Derfel tells her of Arthur's wish to marry to Lancelot. Ceinwyn tells Derfel that she is tired of hearing of Arthur's weird flings and dishonorable unions. Derfel makes a declaration of love, to which she makes no reaction (save a comment to her aunt that she took great pleasure in all she heard, though apparently speaking of the harpist). Derfel then swears an oath to protect her, which she accepts. Returning to Glevum, Tewdric refuses to commit his troops to the war as he accepts Gorfyddyd's assurance that Mordred is safe. Arthur, however, believes Merlin, and tries to persuade Tewdric to change his mind. Eventually Arthur gives up on Tewdric and marches north to confront Gorfyddyd alone. Derfel and his men undergo a night march to reach and capture Lugg Vale at dawn, ready to hold the position for when Gorfyddyd's main army arrives. The main army is led by Nimue, who has an uncanny ability to find her way in the dark. They succeed in taking the Vale and await Arthur there. Arthur arrives in time to destroy the vanguard of Gorfyddyd's army. He sends Galahad south in the hope that the men of Gwent will come and fight now that they know battle has begun. He then offers Derfel his unique armour so that Gorfyddyd's soldiers will think Derfel is Arthur, which will give Arthur the opportunity to spring a trap on the rear of Gorfyddyd's army and hopefully drive them into panic. Derfel accepts and Arthur rides off into position to spring his trap. Derfel is first confronted by Valerin, who was betrothed to Guinevere before she ran off with Arthur. Valerin screams at Derfel, believing him to be Arthur, that Guinevere was a whore. Derfel cannot control his temper and fights Valerin. After killing him, Derfel finds a lovers' ring on his corpse with Guinevere's symbol on it, which he throws away. The battle then begins with Derfel's troops being forced further uphill, until Morfans, another of Arthur's Commanders, gives the signal for Arthur to attack. Arthur's charge destroys almost a third of Gorfyddyd's army but the king sees the danger in time to defend against it. Arthur's trap has failed. During a lull in the fighting, Galahad returns with the bad news that no-one from Gwent is coming except for perhaps a few volunteers. However, a handful of men from Kernow led by Prince Tristan do come. Tristan wishes to repay Arthur for fighting against Owain. As fighting resumes, Derfel and his men are beaten further back. Then battle stops once again as Cuneglas, Edling of Powys, offers them the chance to surrender. They refuse. Before battle can recommence Merlin arrives. Being a druid, he can walk in safety anywhere. He commands both armies to cease hostilities because he needs all Britons to help him in his Quest for the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. Gorfyddyd is furious that Merlin might destroy his chance of becoming High King. He refuses Merlin's requests and readies his troops again for battle. Merlin, turning to Derfel, informs him that the Black Shield Irishmen currently allied to Gorfyddyd would switch sides and give Arthur victory. Sure enough, as battle resumes, the Black Shields attack Gorfyddyd and give the victory to Arthur. In the aftermath, Gorfyddyd is fatally wounded but uses his last breath to curse Arthur and declare Guinevere a whore. Arthur loses his temper and calls Gorfyddyd a liar and a thing of filth, challenging any man from Powys to defend their dead King's honour with their sword. None do. Cuneglas apologizes to Arthur for his father and swears an alliance will exist between Dumnonia and Powys against the Sais, bringing the civil war to an end. Derfel and Nimue continue into the Powysian encampment and find Gundleus barricaded in a hut, protected by Tanaburs. Tanaburs threatens to unleash his most terrible curses on Derfel and tells him that he can show him his mother, but Derfel resists the druid's power and cuts him in half. Nimue then slowly tortures Gundleus to death, attaining vengeance for her rape and lost eye.
5262128	/m/0dbg4s	Enemy of God	Bernard Cornwell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Chapter One: Enemy of God starts off where "The Winter King" left off, with Arthur's unexpected victory over the combined armies of Powys and Siluria. Both Gorfyddyd, king of Powys, and Gundleus, king of Siluria, are dead. Gorfyddyd's son, Cuneglas, shares Arthur's desire for peace and also his dream of an alliance between the British kingdoms that will destroy their common enemies, the Saxons. Derfel is ordered to follow Cuneglas to Caer Sws (Caersws), capital of Powys, where the Edling is to be crowned king. As for the vacant Silurian throne, Arthur tells Derfel of his plan to make Lancelot king and marry him to the princess of Powys, Ceinwyn, thus cementing the alliance between Dumnonia, Powys and Siluria. Derfel does not reveal that he is in love with Ceinwyn, and want her for himself, and goes to Caer Sws, and witnesses Cuneglas' acclamation. Days later, Arthur arrives with his court, including Guinevere and Lancelot. Derfel watches with frustration Ceinwyn's betrothal to Lancelot, and her apparent happiness with the marriage. Derfel speaks with Merlin, and Merlin tells him that Arthur wants him to marry Gwenhwyvach, Guinevere's plain and apathic sister. Merlin asks Derfel to meet him and Nimue late that night on a hilltop, where Merlin has Derfel drink a hallucinogenic potion. Derfel hallucinates about Ceinwyn and sees a dark road and a ghoul, and he describes his vision to Merlin. Merlin tells him the ghoul was Diwrnach, a vicious Irish king of Lleyn, and he also asks Derfel to accompany him on the quest (which also requires the presence of a virgin) for a magical Cauldron, one of the Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain, but Derfel is committed to taking his men to aid Arthur in his campaign to drive the Saxons out of eastern Britain. Merlin gives Derfel a bone, and tells him that all he has to do is break it and his wish will be granted, namely that Ceinwyn will choose him over Lancelot, but warns that if he breaks it, he will be bound to Merlin's quest.
5263528	/m/0dbj5r	Glory Lane	Alan Dean Foster	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Punk rock fan Seeth rescues a stranger from arrest at his favorite hang-out, the bowling alley, only to discover that the cops are killer aliens. Seeth soon finds himself on the run, not just on the streets of Earth, but among the stars as well. Along the way he is joined by geeky bookworm Kerwin and Valley girl Miranda and the trio quickly find themselves in the middle of an intergalactic battle.
5264015	/m/0dbjxj	Created By	Richard Christian Matheson	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ~Plot outline description
5265231	/m/0dblxr	The Killing Doll	Ruth Rendell	1984-03-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The winter before he was sixteen, Pup's Mum died and he sells his soul to the devil. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to get in exchange. For the time being, all he asked for was to be happy, and to grow a bit taller. Even though she was older than Pup, Dolly was always in awe of her brother. More and more, she wanted to believe that he had occult powers and could do anything. Magic could remove the birthmark from her face and make her normal. Magic could kill their wicked stepmother, Myra. Pup laughs when Dolly shows him an effigy of Myra: a rag doll, about fifteen inches high, with knitted nylon skin and rust-coloured wool hair. Dolly sticks it full of pins. Myra dies
5265300	/m/0dblyf	The Speaker of Mandarin	Ruth Rendell	1983-02-07	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When Chief Inspector Reg Wexford takes a holiday to China, takes in the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace, he doesn't expect his trip to revisit him in such a horrific way. Shortly after his return, he finds out that one of his fellow tourists from the trip has been killed in her home. A burglary, it seems like, but Wexford has other ideas.
5265853	/m/0dbmnb	Pig Island	Mo Hayder	2006-04-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's protagonist is Joe Oakes - "Oakesy" - a journalist who makes his living exposing supernatural hoaxes. So, when a bizarre videotape recorded by a tourist catches a glimpse of a disturbing creature, half-man half-beast, wandering the beaches of a remote Scottish island, Oaksey is just the man to investigate. Pig Island is home to a mysterious religious community, the Psychogenic Healing Ministries, and its leader Pastor Malachi Dove, and they ask him to come to the island to debunk the rumours of Satanism which are the result of the videotape. Oaksey has met Pastor Dove before, and the two have a long-standing threat to make good on. However, Oaksey's visit throws up more questions than answers. Why does the wider community not want him there? Why will no one talk about the creature seen wandering the island? What lies beyond the wood and the gorge that almost splits the island in two, with a fence that has rotting pig heads atop its posts? Most importantly, what has happened to Pastor Dove, not seen on the island for years, and why will no one talk about him? Joe's visit to the island, and its horrific conclusion, is only the beginning of the legacy that Pig Island will leave on his life.
5265938	/m/0dbmrf	The Real Majority	Ben J. Wattenberg	1970		 The authors argued that while the Democratic Party "owned" "the Economic Issue" (a broad category encompassing such issues as Social Security and employment), the Republicans likewise "owned" "the Social Issue" (crime, drugs, and morality). They argued that whichever party could exploit their own strengths, and neutralize their opponent's, would prevail. The authors traced the dichotomy in part to voter concerns about "law and order" in the 1960s. The concern grew as disorder became associated with racial tension, activism and college radicalism; and the people associated with those issues generally had liberal attitudes on sexual behavior and drug use. The authors argued that the electorate at the time did not share this kind of liberalism. The authors noticed many Democrats took a liberal stance on what they called issues of law and order and permissiveness, and said that this could be potentially disastrous. They intended the book to be a warning to Democrats about the danger. They argued that the "real majority" was still economically liberal, but socially conservative. They advised Democrats that Republicans would increasingly garner votes based on "the Social Issue". The Real Majority is often compared and contrasted with The Emerging Republican Majority, a book by Republican strategist Kevin Phillips which was released at the same time. Phillips concluded that the majority was inevitable, a conclusion Wattenberg and Scammon reject.
5266592	/m/0dbnpy	Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur	Bernard Cornwell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel begins shortly after the end of Enemy of God. Arthur has taken full control of Dumnonia, Guinevere is imprisoned, Mordred who, while still king, has had his power taken away from him. Lancelot has joined with the Saxons and Derfel is trying to deal with both his daughter's death and his service to Arthur. Merlin is preparing for Mai Dun, a pagan ceremony that is said will bring the old gods back to Britain. Before the ceremony though Derfel must go and try to make his father Aelle turn against his ally Cerdic. Upon arrival Cerdic demands Derfel's death but Aelle says his son must fight a Saxon in single combat and if he wins he will be allowed to live. Derfel wins and stays the night but is unable to get his father to stop his attack on Britain. It is finally the time of Mai Dun the ceremony is not completed though due to Arthur realising that Nimue intends to sacrifice his son to bring the gods forth. Finally the Saxons invade, Derfel, who along with Ceinwyn and Guinevere, leads a group of survivors who are trapped at Mount Baddon. Derfel is impressed by Guinevere's efforts in the battle. Eventually, Arthur arrives along with Saragmor and Cuneglas and manage to win a victory over the Saxons. Derfel eventually finds Aelle and kill him. Lancelot is caught and hanged. Cuneglas is killed in battle and thus Arthur loses one of his greatest allies, also the price Arthur has to pay for Gwent's help is giving up his power. After gives up his power he leaves Derfel and Saragmor in charge of Dumnonia's army while Mordred is given back his power. At the same time Mordred goes on war raids later a messenger says he is dying while also being besieged. Derfel trying to avoid a succession issue goes to Arthur. He learns that Arthur does not want to be king but Arthurs son does. Pleased returns to Dumnonia to find Mordred still alive and learns that he faked his injuries and plans to take revenge on both Derfel and Arthur. Derfel manages to escape with the help of Taliesin. Derfel returns to find Ceinwyn is deathly sick, he tries everything to save her, but nothing works. He is taken to meet Nimue who says that she caused Ceinwyn's sickness and will only remove it if Derfel gives her Arthur's sword and Arthur's son. Derfel, having no were else to turn, goes to Morgan who offers to remove the fever if Derfel will agree to convert to Christianity and serve her husband, Sansum. To complete the spell, Derfel's hand is cut off. Mordred comes for Arthur and faces him at Camlan where Mordred is killed and Arthur is wounded. Derfel stops Nimue by throwing Arthur's sword into the sea (The English Channel) and watches as his friend and his lord sails away with Guinevere back to Armorica.
5269427	/m/02p92tj	Fires of Azeroth	C. J. Cherryh	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Gates are passageways through space and time that can, if misused, destroy entire civilizations. Such cataclysms had happened in the past, most recently to the qhal, a species that at one time had enslaved other races, including humans. The Union Science Bureau had dispatched a hundred men and women on a one-way mission to destroy the Gates, closing them behind them as they traveled from one world to the next. Morgaine is the last survivor of that band. In Vanye's world, they had been opposed by an evil ancient being whose knowledge of the Gates rivals Morgaine's own. The creature had taken over the body of Chya Roh, Vanye's cousin, then fled through the Gate of Ivrel to the land of Shiuan. There, he had amassed an army by promising men and half-breed qhal a way out of their dying world. It had taken all of Morgaine's guile to force a passage for her and Vanye through the Gate of Shiuan into a third world, but they were powerless to stop Roh from following with his forces. Being two against a hundred thousand, they are forced to flee into the forests of Azeroth, finding shelter with friendly villagers. Eventually, the natives call on their qhal lord for guidance. Morgaine meets with Merir, lord of Shathan, and receives grudging permission to travel where she wills. The invading army came through the Master Gate. Morgaine heads to Nehmin, where the Gate's controls are located, but on the way, they are attacked. She is seriously wounded, but manages to flee. Vanye is captured by humans led by Fwar, who has a grudge against him. Before he can be tortured overmuch, Vanye is seized by the khal, who resent Roh's power over them. They want any information of the Gates that the prisoner may have. However, Roh is informed and rescues his cousin. Vanye finds the camp deeply divided: Fwar's barrowlanders resented by the more numerous marsh people, both groups hating and despised by the khal, nominally led by Hetharu, but themselves split into factions. Roh barely maintains control over the rabble because of his knowledge of the Gates, or Fires as they are called in this world. Knowing the situation to be unstable, Roh tries to leave quietly with Vanye and Fwar's band, but the khal are alerted and pursue. It is a close race, but some of them reach the shelter of the forest, where the few barrowlanders not caught and killed by the khal are dispatched by Roh and Vanye. Vanye guides Roh to Merir, but the lord of Shathan has no news of Morgaine. Merir decides that they must go to Nehmin for answers. There, Vanye finds Morgaine, recovered from her near-fatal wounds. The guardians of Nehmin have ignored her counsel, distrusting her motives, and now they are under siege. At last, Morgaine forces them to recognize not just the immediate danger, but the ever-present temptation of the power of the Gates; they agree to close them after she and Vanye depart, even though they are their main defense against the horde. Before she leaves, Morgaine offers her assistance against their common enemy. In the desperate fighting, Hetharu and Shien, his main khal rival, are killed. With Fwar already dead, the enemy is left leaderless; the various factions unexpectedly turn on each other, ending the threat. There remains only Roh to trouble Morgaine. Even though the Gates will be shut down, he has the knowledge to reactivate them. Vanye has discovered first-hand that the Roh he knew and admired had not been killed when his body was taken over. Gradually, that Roh has regained control, or so Vanye believes. Morgaine is not entirely convinced, but allows Roh to remain alive (though under watch) when she and Vanye enter the Fires and leave Azeroth forever.
5269457	/m/02p92tx	Gate of Ivrel	C. J. Cherryh	1976-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The backward land of Andur-Kursh is split into many cantons, each with ambitious clans vying for power. The loyalty of a warrior of the nobility is given to one's clan. Vanye is one of them, if only the barely tolerated bastard son of the ruler of one of these cantons, the result of a mere night's amusement by a Nhi lord with a captive from an enemy clan, the Chya. One day, he is brought before his father, after killing one legitimate half-brother and maiming the other with his sword, in a baiting that had gone awry. After turning down honorable suicide, he is made ilin, an exiled, clanless warrior akin to the Japanese ronin. Hunted by his half-brothers' vengeful maternal clan, Vanye is forced to enter Morgaine's vale, a place anyone less desperate would have shunned. By chance, he releases Morgaine, a beautiful woman of distinctive appearance, from the Gate there. Vanye recognizes her as a legend from the past. It is winter and Vanye is weary, cold and hungry. So when Morgaine provides food and shelter, he accepts them. Only then does he remember that she, alone of all women, has been given lord-right; she can and does claim a year of service from him in return for accepting her hospitality. Morgaine is determined to complete the mission she and four companions had set out on a century before: to close the master Gate at Ivrel. She explains to Vanye that the Gates that dot the land are passageways through both space and time. One hundred men and women had been sent by the Union Science Bureau on a one-way mission to close all the Gates, lest humanity suffer the fate of another species. The qujal had found the Gates and tapped their powers to rule an interstellar empire of lesser beings, including humans. But one reckless fool had succumbed to temptation and gone back in time, triggering a cataclysm that had wrecked qujal civilization. After many years, the last five Union survivors had reached this world and recruited allies to attack Thiye Thiye's-son, the master of the Gate of Ivrel. But they were betrayed and nearly their entire army was swallowed up by the Gate; only Morgaine and a few soldiers, bringing up the rear, survived. Fleeing before the enemy, she had been forced to seek refuge in a lesser Gate, there to wait in stasis until freed. She seeks aid from Clan Leth, a former staunch ally, but finds it greatly changed and its lord, Kasedre, half mad. His chief counselor, Chya Liell, comes to them late at night and warns them to leave before harm befalls them, killing a guard to give them no choice in the matter. Privately, Liell tries to persuade Vanye to desert Morgaine. Morgaine and Vanye travel into neighboring Chya lands and find themselves uneasy guests of Chya Roh, Vanye's cousin. After questioning and some rest, they are let go, only to be attacked by Thiye's men. Morgaine is forced to draw her sword, Changeling, which turns out to be more than it seems; it can tap the power of the Gates to send its victims elsewhere. The two manage to escape, but run into a Nhi band. Rather than chance another fight, the wounded Morgaine orders Vanye to bargain for shelter and protection. She is set free, though without her sword, while he is forced to remain behind by his brother Erij, now the lord of Nhi. Erij wants his brother to help him rule, knowing him to be trustworthy and bound to him by blood. When persuasion and threats alike prove useless, he draws Changeling, not knowing its powers. Vanye takes advantage of the ensuing mayhem to retrieve the dropped sword and escape to rejoin Morgaine. Roh had warned him not to trust Liell, that rumors said his body had been taken over by another. Morgaine confirms that such a thing can be done using a Gate. She knows that Thiye has prolonged his life by this method and suspects her century-old betrayer also still lives. The aged Liell's attempt to suborn Vanye suddenly takes on a more sinister aspect. After another clash with Nhi warriors, Morgaine is personally escorted by Roh out of his domain. Fearing her intentions, he knocks out a too-trusting Vanye when Morgaine is asleep and ties them both up, but his timing could not have been worse. Liell and his men easily capture all three. He takes Vanye to a Gate, intent on switching bodies. The unease of Liell's men in the unnerving presence of the Gate allows Vanye to escape. By chance, the horse he steals is carrying Changeling. But Vanye's luck still runs bad; he is caught again, this time by his brother Erij. Erij, emboldened by his possession of Changeling and for a variety of reasons, allows himself to be persuaded to go to Ivrel. After driving off Liell's men with the deadly sword, they reach Thiye's fortress. They wait for night before Erij uses Changeling to force their way in. Vanye then takes his brother by surprise and retakes Morgaine's sword. In mortal danger, Erij has no choice, but to guard his back. Inside, they come upon the aged Thiye, but before they can react, the old man is killed by Roh. Roh informs them that Morgaine is loose in the fortress and that Liell is dead. He warns them to flee while they still can, then follows his own advice. Vanye finds Morgaine and surrenders the sword to her, much to Erij's dismay. She confirms Vanye's suspicion; Roh's body now houses Liell's mind. Fearing Morgaine, Roh/Liell had sabotaged the Gate controls so that he could escape to another world, leaving his enemies trapped here. But Morgaine believes that he left too much of a safety margin before the Gates on this world close forever and that she can follow him. She departs in all haste. Erij surprisingly bids his brother to go after her and Vanye gratefully complies. Together, Morgaine and Vanye pass through the Gate.
5269545	/m/02p92v8	Well of Shiuan	C. J. Cherryh	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mija Jherun, a fey seventeen-year-old peasant woman, lives in a world inexorably being overwhelmed by the sea. One day, after looting a barrow, the tomb of a young warrior-king, she is chased by an armored man on horseback back to her village. He breaks into the poor home she shares with her family, helps himself to some food, and asks if anyone has seen a pale woman on a grey horse. After repulsing an attack by the men of the village, he departs for Shiuan, a richer land ruled by the khal, another race that is enough like humans to successfully interbreed. Jherun, yearning for a less bleak future than marrying the thuggish Fwar, runs after him. Instead of finding him, she stumbles upon his mortal enemies: his cousin, Nhi Vanye, and Vanye's lord, Morgaine, the pale woman. They inform her that Chya Roh's body had been taken over by an evil creature who had extended his life countless times by this means. He had betrayed Morgaine and sent ten thousand men to their doom a century before. Fleeing her, he had passed through a Gate from Vanye's world to this one, closing the passageway forever, but not quickly enough to prevent Morgaine and Vanye from following. Jherun knows of two Gates, which she calls Wells. The newcomers had emerged from one; the other is in Shiuan. Morgaine's mission is to travel from world to world, closing their Gates permanently, as they can (and have in the past) destroyed whole civilizations when their immense power is misused. She is the last survivor of a band of one hundred sent for that purpose. Vanye is a chance-met warrior, bound to obey her initially by his stubborn sense of honor and later for other reasons. As they travel towards Shiuan, it begins to rain heavily. They become separated when Vanye is knocked off his horse by an uprooted tree carried by the rapidly rising, onrushing water. He finds Jherun, but not Morgaine. Knowing that Morgaine will make for the Well of Shiuan, he heads there also, accompanied by Jherun. Along the way, Jherun persuades him to seek food and shelter at the fortress of Ohtij-in, held by half-breed khal. This proves to be a grave mistake, as Roh had preceded him there. He treats Vanye well, claiming that the Roh Vanye knew still coexists with his "murderer"; Vanye is uncertain and does not kill him when Roh deliberately gives him the opportunity. Roh has promised the khal a way out of their dying world. The old lord, Bydarra, is skeptical, but his ruthless son Hetharu is more receptive. He murders his own father and puts the blame on Vanye. He assembles his forces and heads off to the Gate with Roh. Vanye is left behind, a prisoner of Hetharu's brother Kithan, but is rescued by Morgaine and an army she has recruited from Jherun's people and their neighbors, the marshlanders. However, when they learn what Morgaine intends, they turn on her, forcing her to kill many with her advanced weapons. Morgaine, Vanye, Jherun and Kithan flee on horseback, followed by the mob on foot. They reach the control room for the Gate of Shiuan, only to find that Roh has locked the controls. He has also left a message: he will allow Vanye safe passage through, but not Morgaine. She orders Vanye to go to Roh, wait his chance to kill him, and continue on with her mission. Knowing that the two of them stand no chance against Roh's army, he reluctantly obeys, taking the other two with him. Roh sees through the ruse immediately, but still accepts his cousin. As they prepare to pass through the Gate, Morgaine attacks with the human rabble, with which she has forged an uneasy alliance. In the confusion, Vanye fights his way to her, and together they force their way through, to continue their quest on yet another world. The rest, khal and human alike, follow, save Jherun and Kithan. Then the Gate closes.
5269566	/m/06ztwfn	Exile's Gate	C. J. Cherryh	1988-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Morgaine must meet her greatest challenge—Gault, who is both human and alien, and also seeks control of the world and its Gate. She will meet the true Gatemaster—a mysterious lord with power as great, or greater, than her own.
5270108	/m/0dbtkn	Ordinary Jack	Helen Cresswell	1977	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Depressed at being an 'ordinary' child in a talented family, and by the failure to beat his younger sister at swimming, Jack Bagthorpe enlists the help of his Uncle Parker in hatching a scheme to become equal. Later, a series of events involving Zero (the family dog) and cousin Daisy result in the dining room being destroyed by a spectacular fire involving a box of fireworks. Jack has a clandestine meeting with Uncle Parker during which they conspire to turn Jack into a prophet or seer. His first prediction will concern Uncle Parker appearing in a lavender coloured suit. The meeting ends abruptly as Daisy, excited about the previous evening's events, dabbles with pyromania. Jack returns home to act "mysteriously", as a build up to making his first prophecy. His first attempt is disrupted when Mr Bagthorpe is goaded into attempting a headstand, breaking his writing arm in the process. Jack uses his father's immobility to corner him and make the prediction ("I see a Lavender Man bearing tidings") and shortly thereafter Uncle Parker appears in his suit to complete the prophecy. Flushed with success Jack and Uncle Parker visit a store where they purchase a crystal ball and a set of tarot cards, and plot their next prediction which will involve a red and white bubble. Life in the Bagthorpe family continues to be disrupted. Because of his broken arm, scriptwriter Mr Bagthorpe is unable to work; The arrival of a Danish au-pair causes turmoil amongst the younger family members as they squabble over her attentions; Jack makes prophesies and teaches Zero to fetch sticks; Daisy continues to set fires. As Rosie's birthday nears Mr Bagthorpe suffers further problems; twice he hides in the garden with a cassette recorder to record dialogue, and twice Zero mistakes the microphone for a stick and chews it up. Jack makes a prophecy concerning the giant bubble and bears, and worries the family by naming the date of Rosie's birthday party. Grandma chooses to interpret the bear as a symbol for her cat Thomas, previously killed under the wheels of Uncle Parker's car, and predicts his return. On the day itself, Mr Bagthorpe's literary frustrations reach a peak and he excuses himself from the al-fresco party to do some "serious reading". During his absence the prophecy is fulfilled by a giant balloon carrying two men dressed as bears; however Mr Bagthorpe returns brandishing Jack's diary containing evidence of the conspiracy, to destroy any mystical illusion. An argument is forestalled as smoke caused by Daisy's latest fire rises from the house Finally the plot is exposed. On reflection the family praise Jack for his inventiveness and fine acting. Rosie is pleased that her party succeeds her grandmother's as the most disastrous ever. Mr Bagthorpe's mood lightens as he is revealed to have found Jack's diary only because his "serious reading" involved working his way through Jack's pile of comic books, where the diary was hidden.
5271323	/m/0dbwfj	Breakfast in the Ruins	Michael Moorcock	1972	{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The novel's first chapter begins in London, with Karl Glogauer travelling through Kensington on his way to the Derry and Tom's Roof Gardens. There, on a bench in the Spanish Gardens, he fantasises about the past, trying to put "his mother, his childhood as it actually was, [and] the failure of his ambitions" out of his head with ideals of Regency-era London politics, gambling, women and duelling. His imaginations are interrupted by a "deep, slightly hesitant, husky" voice, a greeting of "Good afternoon", a dark-skinned man who spends the entirety of the novel unnamed. He first asks if he may join Glogauer on the bench, and then goes on to explain that he's merely visiting London, and that he hadn't expected to find such a place in the middle of the city. Glogauer wrongly assumes him to be a rich American tourist, annoyed to have been disturbed from his reverie. The man then asks Glogauer if he may photograph him; Glogauer, now flattered, assents. While he's being photographed, the man explains that he's from Nigeria, attempting to convince the government of England to buy copper at a higher price. Glogauer says that he's an illustrator. The man then invites Glogauer to have tea with him, and Glogauer, feeling guilty, and, despite recalling his mother's words to not have anything to do with people who make you feel guilty, agrees. After journeying through the Tudor and Woodland gardens, they dine at the restaurant. During the meal, Glogauer attempts to introduce himself. The man, however, does not respond, merely offering Glogauer the sugar bowl. He then asks Glogauer to "come back with me", to which Glogauer says "Yes". The second chapter, introducing a format that is followed by most subsequent chapters, excluding the last, begins, in italics, with a short scene in the man's hotel suite. Glogauer has taken his clothes off, and lies naked on the bed. The man touches first his head, and then his shoulders. Glogauer closes his eyes, blocking reality out, and begins a fantasy, similar to that which was interrupted by the man in the first chapter. The ending of the chapter is also another scene, in italics, that is set in the present.
5273075	/m/0dbz73	Eight Days of Luke	Diana Wynne Jones	1975	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 David Allard, an orphan, returns to his hometown of Ashbury from boarding school to discover that his relatives-cum-guardians have nothing arranged for his summer and he will have to endure their mistreatment for his entire holiday. While walking in the garden, in a fit of frustration he makes up words to use as a curse. David's words seem to cause the garden wall to crumble, and to release a boy a year or so older than himself with flame-red hair, who identifies himself as Luke. Happy to have made a new friend, David notices Luke's odd references to being released from his "chains" and "bowls of venom". The two hastily repair the wall, and David notices that Luke's touch seems to burn the bushes growing beside the wall. Luke says ruefully that he "can't bring the dead back to life." Luke also tells David that simply kindling a flame will summon him. When David and his young cousin-by-marriage, Astrid (who seems the best of the awful relatives) are on a shopping expedition the next day, Luke duly appears when David lights a match. Luke ingratiates himself with Astrid, and when a bored David suggests it would be great if the building across from them caught on fire, the building suddenly does. People are trapped. It is only when David tells Luke that he wants the fire out, and reminds Luke that he cannot bring the dead back to life, that the fire dies down. That evening, David escapes punishment because his uncle is upset that his gardener has found another job over at Thunderly Hill. David notices more odd things about Luke; he can entertain his friend with fiery doodles. Also, when Luke is asleep, he seems ageless, and heals uncommonly quickly. In the morning, the new gardener Mr. Chew arrives. He is very interested in David, and in the place where Luke's release took place. Luke, who has slept over, seems afraid of Chew, castigating himself for his carelessness in scorching the plants. David helps Luke escape the house without Chew noticing, and they play cricket (David's obsession) down the street, where they meet a new friend, Alan. David is unable to escape the house in the afternoon, due to Chew's vigilance. David is sent again to his room without supper, though Astrid secretly brings him food. The next morning, a well-dressed man named Mr. Wedding arrives and persuades David's relations to let him take David out for lunch in a car chauffeured by a beautiful lady. He quickly gains David's trust, and David gladly tells him all the things about school he could not tell his relatives. They arrive at a green island, linked to the mainland by a long arching bridge with a rainbow-like effect. While David is served a wonderful lunch, Mr. Wedding begins interrogating David about Luke, and David admits only to releasing Luke while trying to curse. David notices for the first time that Wedding is missing an eye. Wedding tells David that Luke was imprisoned for doing something terrible. He tries frightening David, threatening to keep him captive, promising him a bribe, even shaming him. None of this is successful - David will not betray Luke - and eventually Mr. Wedding returns David home, seeming to admire David for his stubbornness. But first he makes a deal with David: if David can keep Luke free until Sunday, then Luke is safe for good. Mr. Wedding sets a talking raven to watch David, but he is able to evade the bird and summon Luke. He tells Luke about the deal, who is confident that they will win against Mr. Wedding. The next day, David is blocked from leaving the house by two ravens - until he distracts them with a joint of meat while he drives off with Astrid. Luke appears when David strikes a match for Astrid's cigarette, and is suddenly caught by a fair, strong ginger-haired individual. However, after Luke is questioned by the fellow, he is released. It seems the individual, who seems very nice, has lost something. Luke denies any knowledge. David and Luke agree that the best course is for Luke to simply vanish until Monday. But the next day, the Frys from down the street show up, followed shortly by Mr. Chew and Mr Wedding. When a confused Astrid needs a cigarette lit, the inevitable happens - Luke appears and is caught by the group. They begin shouting demands at Luke; Luke denies everything, and David defends him, saying Luke did not act out of revenge, but as a favour for someone now dead. Luke admits that he did help someone hide something so it might never be found. The crowd is grudgingly convinced that this is true, and Mr. Wedding strikes a new deal with David: since David has no idea what he is looking for, it is possible for him to find it (according to the rules of the charm Luke laid down). If David restores what the ginger-haired fellow lost by Sunday, Luke will remain free, otherwise he will be sent back to prison. Astrid has figured out the puzzle, but Luke warns her not to tell David. David convinces one of the ravens to lead them to a house on Wednesday Hill, where David should find "three Knowing Ones under the tree." It is Alan's house, and through a secret door, David and Alan find a huge tree, with three blind crones, sharing an eye among them, washing, spinning, and cutting wool at a well. They refuse to talk until David captures their eye - then they tell David to go to the place (Wallsey) where Mr. Wedding took him and ask the man with the dragon where to look. The next day, Astrid drives David, Alan, and her husband, Cousin Ronald, to Wallsey, which appears very different from when David saw it with Mr. Wedding. David searches the hall, which is filled with strong young men cheating pinball machines, until he finds what he was told to look for—a man with a dragon tattoo. By the rules, the three must run a gauntlet before having their questions answered, which the boys do courageously and Ronald does in a cowardly fashion. The dragon man admits to taking the item they sought as revenge, on behalf of a woman who blamed Mr. Wedding for something that happened. The woman can be found on Thunderly Hill, where a hospital is now built. David, Luke, Astrid, Ronald, and the ginger-haired fellow all proceed to Thunderly Hill, on the excuse that Ronald's minor injuries should be treated. When David and Luke step inside "Firestone Ward", they find themselves on a grassy hillside that burns but is never consumed. Luke admits that he set the fire, long ago, and it will burn until the end of time. David braves the flames (with Luke doing his best to suppress the fire) and discovers a cairn, on which a hauntingly beautiful lady in armour lies, not quite dead, but barely breathing. Across her chest rests a stone implement with a too-short handle. When David realizes it is a hammer, suddenly everything falls into place and he realizes who everyone really is. He returns to Luke, and is told that an entire day has passed - David has been outside time. He restores the hammer to the ginger-haired fellow, who is of course Thor. Mr. Wedding is Woden, chief of the gods. The dragon man is Siegfried, and the lady Brunhilda. Astrid reveals that (no doubt with divine interference) David's other relatives have been exposed as financial frauds, and have fled. Astrid will now be David's guardian. Luke will be around - but at the final battle yet to come, he and Mr. Wedding will be on opposite sides.
5273081	/m/0dbz7v	Specimen Days	Michael Cunningham	2005-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "In the Machine", set in mid-to-late 19th Century New York, begins in the aftermath of a wake. Simon, a young man working in a factory had been accidentally sucked into a factory machine which crushed him to death. Due to the poverty present in the lower classes during the Industrial Revolution, Simon's family sends Lucas, Simon's disfigured younger brother, to work at the factory in Simon's place. Lucas has a strange affliction in which he intermittently and uncontrollably spouts the poetry of Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' (Lucas' favourite book). Walt Whitman was a contemporary of the time and Lucas meets him during the course of the story. Lucas is also concerned Simon has become a ghost and inhabits not only the machine that killed him but all the machines that are becoming commonplace in the city as a result of the Industrial Revolution. This concern leads Lucas to fear for the life of Catherine, Simon's bereaved girlfriend. Lucas believes Simon's ghost may try to inhabit the machines at the factory where Catherine works as a seamstress with a view to take Catherine to the afterlife by killing her through the machine's function. Lucas embarks on a mission to save Catherine by preventing her from going to work. Lucas' fear of Simon's ghost is, at the same time, a fear of the Machine and, on a larger scale, the Industrial Revolution in New York City itself. The machines replace humans, even kill them, and the industrial revolution has demeaned the importance of each human individual with its positioning of people as cogs in its own giant machine. In this light, Lucas' fears and Whitman's transcendental poetry represent the affirmation of humanity and each individual's importance.
5276530	/m/0dc3t6	After the Hole	Guy Burt		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 At an English public school, five students - Liz (the narrator of many flash backs), Mike (the protagonist of most of the student's time in the titular "hole"), Alex, Frankie and Geoff - are lured into an abandoned cellar by a malevolent prankster named Martyn. All is well for the three days, in which they socialise and get to know each other better; but when three days pass and Martyn is nowhere to be seen, the group must face the possibility that they are trapped indefinitely. Flash forwards of a "dream summer" section punctuate the story, narrated by Liz, reveal that most of them got out of the hole (Liz interacts awkwardly with Alex at one point) and Mike and Liz are now living together while Liz writes a book based on everything that happened within the Hole. Liz also keeps tapes of interviews with a girl named "Lisa" who talks of her romantic relationship with Martyn. In the Hole, they become increasingly desperate for food, beginning to face up to the fact that Martyn's experiment was really to play God with all of them. Mike and Liz meet at night in the small bathroom section and talk a lot. At one point Mike believes he sees the keyhole of the trapdoor locking them in the Hole "winking" at him, but dismisses this on grounds that he is hallucinating, or so he thinks. The water supplies go off. Mike tells Liz his experience with the "winking" keyhole and from this she decides that Martyn must have bugged the main room but not the bathroom area where Mike and Liz have been talking. Liz formulates a plan to test their theory, by saying how lucky they are to have light, and see if Martyn turns off the electricity. They then sleep together. Liz follows through with it, and everything goes to plan. The electricity goes off. Liz tells the others that a friend of hers knows about the prank and if she doesn't return he will come and rescue them. Everyone rejoices, but Mike is suspicious. Lisa's story goes on in parallel to this, via the tapes Liz has made of "interviews" she had with Lisa. On the same day Liz plots this, Lisa goes over to Martyn's house and tries to break up with him. Martyn barely listens and, in anger, rapes Lisa. After this, he walks out and supposedly never returns. Lisa goes into his office, searching for him, and sees the tapes of The Hole. She realises everything that has gone on and goes to the Hole, rescuing everyone. At this point, Liz's narrative ends and there is an extremely ambiguous epilogue written by Dr. Phillippa Horwood, who casts the whole of Liz's testimony in doubt by saying that Michael ("Mike") Rollins died on the sixteenth day in the Hole, that Liz was the "sole survivor" and that no records of the infamous Martyn exist, heavily implying that Liz created Martyn in order to place blame on someone other than herself. It is also heavily implied - but never actually decided - that Liz and Lisa are the same person.
5276643	/m/0dc407	Hostage	Robert Crais	2001	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins when three young boys rob a minimart and the salesclerk is killed. Police chase the boys and they end up taking a family hostage. The house taken hostage was owned by Sonny Benza, a man who rules over the West Coast's most powerful Mafia empire. Sonny arranges for his men to kidnap the small town's police chief, Jeff Talley's, family. Talley goes to the location where his family is being held. A man named Marion Clewes executes Benza and his associates for their failure because Marion's employer in New York feels that Benza had betrayed the trust of Marion's employer by failing to retrieve two discs that could shut down Benza's organization and put Benza away for good. The police obtain one of the discs. Rather than killing Talley and his family, Marion lets them live.
5278111	/m/0dc6sm	The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	Paula Danziger	1974	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows Marcy Lewis, an amply-contoured thirteen-year-old freshman girl who hates her looks. She has a verbally abusive father and it seems her parents, Martin and Lily Lewis, are always fighting. She also has a younger brother named Stuart who tends to carry his teddy bear, Wolf, with him everywhere he goes. Her dad doesn't make her feel good about her excuses that result in her failing gym for the year. Marcy refuses to take gym due to her insecurity over her large figure. Marcy only has one friend, Nancy Sheridan. Nancy later admits she was Marcy's friend only because her mother told her to be, as both of their mothers were friends and participated in the PTA. Later on, Nancy grows to like Marcy as a good friend. However as Nancy was very popular Marcy sometimes got jealous of her. After going through a lot of English teachers, the school hires Barbara Finney, a teacher whose methods are completely unorthodox, and, unlike most of her teaching colleagues, was willing to listen to her students. Through a school club she sets up, called Smedley, Marcy meets a lot of new friends. She even meets a boy who seems to be attracted to her, Joel Anderson, whose attorney father works with the Board of Education. Then one day, the principal, Mr. Stone, comes to observe Ms. Finney. She teaches the syllabus material well, but the same unorthodox teaching techniques that work for the kids by Ms. Finney are abhorred by the school administrators, including Stone, and the vice principal, Mr. Goldman. Marcy and her friends suddenly find themselves coming to Ms. Finney’s defense when she is threatened with the loss of her job, mainly because she refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Marcy and her friends help start a protest and she, along with her friends, are suspended by Mr. Stone. During the situation with Ms. Finney, Marcy gains an ally in her mother, who is the president of the PTA. This pits both Marcy and Lily against Martin, who, like Mr. Stone, believes that Ms. Finney isn't a proper teacher, and is unpatriotic, and because of that, should be fired. Joel's father joins the fight and sides with his son, much like Lily sides with Marcy. Also siding with Lily and Marcy was Nancy's parents. Of the four students, besides Marcy's father, Robert Alexander's mother sides with Stone against Ms. Finney, and punishes her son for his involvement in the protest. Ms. Finney brings a legal case against her firing; once in court some of her students speak in her defense. She also brings up the legal case for refusing to say the school Pledge of Allegiance. Martin becomes impossible by trying to sabotage the family's car to keep Lily and Marcy from attending the hearing. During the School board hearing, the fiercely divided board reluctantly reinstates her due to there being a legal precedent to support her stand. However, Ms. Finney, realizing that she would be going back into an impossible situation and after seeing the community so fiercely torn apart and divided by the issue, immediately resigns. Marcy and her friends feel betrayed, but come to understand her reasons, as they eventually use her lessons as they move forward in life. The story ends with Marcy becoming closer to Joel; Lily going to night classes at the local college; Marcy's relationship with her father still strained; and for the most part life returning to normal. They get a new English teacher, who is more in line with the administration's expectations; and Ms. Finney takes classes in bibliotherapy, counseling using books and writing, which interests Marcy.
5278456	/m/0dc768	To Catch a Thief	David F. Dodge		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 In August 1951, French police come to arrest American John Robie at his villa in Vence near the Côte d'Azur. He escapes, leaping over the garden wall. In the late 1930s, Robie was a daring, supremely athletic burglar, known as Le Chat ("the cat"), who specialized in jewel thefts from hotels and villas on the French Riviera. He was caught and sent to prison in 1939. But during the German occupation of France in World War II, the Germans released a lot of convicts from French prisons, including Robie. He and many other released convicts joined the French Resistance (the Maquis), and fought against the Germans. After the war, there was an unofficial amnesty for those released convicts who had been maquisards. Their previous sentences were not remitted, but as long as they refrained from new crimes they would be left alone. Some returned to underworld occupations, but Robie retired. He had saved some of the proceeds of his thefts, and did not need to steal. He bought his villa, tended his garden, and played boules with the townsfolk, including his friends Commissaire Oriol and Count Paul. He comforted Paul during the tragic death of his wife Lisa from tuberculosis. Then in 1951, there were new jewel thefts on the Riviera, exactly in the style of Le Chat. Robie was suspected, but he assured Oriol that Le Chat was dead - killed in the Resistance. But after more thefts, Oriol's suspicion returned, and he tried to arrest Robie. After escaping, Robie contacts Bellini in Cannes. Robie wants to leave France, but Bellini asks him to help catch the new Le Chat. The police are cracking down, threatening to send all the old ex-prisoners back to prison. The thief is using Robie's methods, so Robie can help them catch the thief, and get the police off their backs. Jean-Pierre disguises Robie as a pudgy, middle-aged man. As "Jack Burns", vacationing American businessman, Robie scouts the Riviera, visiting nightclubs and casinos. He identifies three likely targets for the new Le Chat: Mrs. Stevens, the Souzas, and the Sanfords. He works out Le Chat-style plans for burglarizing their residences. Unfortunately, Mrs. Stevens becomes attached to "Burns". He stood next to her in a casino (to study her jewelry), making small, cautious bets at roulette. Mrs. Stevens copied his bets with much larger sums, and won two million francs. She used the money to buy a pin - a diamond dog with emerald eyes. She decides that "Lucky" Burns is her personal good-luck charm. Whenever she sees him, she joins him, buys him drinks, and copies his bets, attracting attention Robie doesn't want. So Bellini provides Robie with Danielle, a pretty girl to escort "Burns" in the casinos. This annoys Claude, Danielle's muscular would-be boyfriend, but keeps Mrs. Stevens away. "Burns" has also attracted the attention of Francie Stevens, who is suspicious of men who may want to exploit her trusting mother. The thief strikes again, and Sûreté headquarters in Paris sends senior detective Lepic and additional agents. Mr. Paige announces an offer to buy back the jewels for 20% of their value - no questions asked. Then Robie encounters Count Paul in Cannes. Paul doesn't recognize him, but Robie has to stop his scouting. He dismisses Danielle. Francie Stevens has guessed that "Burns" is Le Chat. She mistakenly thinks that he is the leader of a gang, which staged all the apparent feats of Le Chat. She is excited to meet a master thief, and suggests that he rob her mother, whose jewelry is insured, except the diamond dog. But she insists that the dog must not be taken - even though this would be an obvious giveaway. Bellini provides Robie with six tough ex-maquisards, including his old comrades Coco and Le Borgne. If they catch the thief and recover the jewels, they can share the reward. Robie sets Coco and two men to watch the Souzas' cottage, and Le Borgne with two men to watch the Sanfords' chateau. He himself will watch in Mrs. Stevens' hotel. He has determined that the thief must strike by night. That night, Mrs. Stevens goes out for an all-night gambling session, wearing most of her jewels. Francie (wearing the rest) has Robie take her out for the night. He complies, since there is nothing for the thief to steal. But Mrs. Stevens loses her stake quickly and comes home early. After she goes to sleep, the thief strikes. Count Paul is among the crowd attracted by the alarm over the theft, and recognizes Robie. Paul won't expose him, but he wants an introduction to Danielle. She reminds him of his beloved Lisa, and he must meet her. Robie tells him who she is, but deliberately rejects Paul's offer to help him. Francie thinks Robie's gang stole the jewels. She demands the return of the diamond dog, threatening to expose him. Robie plays for time. Robie thinks that perhaps Danielle, who is clever, and Claude, who is athletic, are behind the thefts. Bellini investigates, and clears Claude. At the Souzas' cottage, Coco dismisses one of his crew, a quarrelsome gypsy, and Robie joins him on watch. The next day, at the beach, he introduces Paul to Danielle. Later, Robie tells her about Lisa. Francie again pressures Robie for the diamond dog, and he tells her the whole story; also, how he came to be Le Chat. His parents were circus acrobats, as was he. He was orphaned when young, came to Europe, was stranded, and took to burglary. Two nights later, Robie spots a figure sneaking away from the Souza cottage. Then Detective Lepic shoots the man dead. It is the gypsy, who tried to take advantage of Robie's Le Chat-style planning. This seems to exonerate Le Chat, but the stolen jewels are still missing. Robie is certain that the gypsy was not athletic enough to be the hotel thief. The thief is still at large, and will strike again. The target will be the Sanfords. The next weekend is their gala house party, and the guests will bring fabulous jewels. Francie wangles an invitation for "Burns". But Count Paul is also a guest. Paul demands that Robie leave, and won't listen to his explanation. Lepic and Oriol also arrive to protect the guests' jewels. Robie abandons his disguise and lies in wait for the thief on the roof of the chateau. Late that night, he pursues the thief over the roof. The police are aroused, and Oriol demands Robie's surrender. Robie catches up with the thief, who is Danielle. Reflexively, he joins her in evading the police. They slip through the window of Paul's room. Paul hides them from Oriol, and now listens to Robie's story. Danielle too was a hungry young orphan acrobat. She deliberately mimicked the famous Le Chat, and never recognized "Burns" until they met on the roof. Paul, who is in love with Danielle, asks her to marry him. He can pay what is required to save her freedom. But Robie has a better idea - since she still has the stolen jewels. Danielle and Bellini take the jewels to Paige, who tells Oriol and Lepic that the jewels have been returned and "Burns" was his company's agent. With the jewels restored, and the dead gypsy, the case is closed. Robie can now return safely to Vence, where he has everything he wants - except, he now realizes, Francie Stevens. He finds her packing to leave for America...
5279170	/m/0dc8c_	Master of the Moor	Ruth Rendell	1982-04-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Columnist Stephen Walby, known as the Voice of Vangmoor, often goes on long walks through the countryside that lies outside his window. However, events take on a sinister turn when he stumbles across the body of a young woman, whose face has been badly disfigured and her hair shaven. After another corpse surfaces he finds himself under suspicion from the local police, and when he then goes on to discover that his wife has been having an affair, tragedy ensues...
5279244	/m/0dc8h2	Put on By Cunning	Ruth Rendell	1981-04-13	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When the esteemed flautist Sir Manuel Camargue slips on a snowy path one dark night and falls into an icy river, his death seems like an open and shut case. However, when Wexford discovers that the old man's long lost daughter has just arrived in anticipation of the reading of his will, suspicions of foul play arise...
5279374	/m/0dc8qq	The Lake of Darkness	Ruth Rendell	1980-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Martin Urban is a young accountant leading the comfortable though somewhat dull life of a bachelor. Unexpectedly he wins a very large sum of money in a football pool (104,754 pounds 46 pence), but he decides to give half the money away to the poor. Then Francesca enters into his life, a mysterious young woman who captures his heart. And when he meets Finn, the twisted son of his mother's cleaning lady, the good intentions of Martin become fatally entangled with the macabre madness of Finn, with deadly results. nl:The Lake of Darkness
5279676	/m/0dc9dh	A Sleeping Life	Ruth Rendell	1978-05-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The body found under the hedge was that of a middle-aged woman, biggish and gaunt. There was nothing to give Detective Chief Inspector Wexford her address, her occupation or even her identity - let alone any clues which might lead to her killer.
5280749	/m/0dcccq	The Torments of the Traitor	Ian Irvine	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Torments of the Traitor is also the story of a new character Maelys, whose once great family have hatched a plan for her to rescue Nish from the prison his father has set him in and to seduce him into marrying her. Maely's family hope to be raised up to their former glory if Nish rebels against his Father, and become God-Emperor, or if he joins his father and becomes his lieutenant. Either way Maely's family benefits. Nish has been imprisoned for the last ten years. His time for release has finally come. However the condition is that he must swear loyalty to his evil father, the man who had his beloved Irisis beheaded. Through Nish swore in front of thousands when he was first imprisoned, that he would never join his Father Jal-Nish after ten years, his will to fight has left him, and is unsure whether he can resists Jal-Nish Hlar's temptations. At the conclusion of the novel, the characters, who have grouped together, make the decision to seek down Irvine's mysterious boogeyman, the Numinator.
5280810	/m/0dccgt	The Last Camel Died at Noon	Barbara Mertz	1991	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A relatively quiet evening at home in 1897 for the Emersons is disturbed by the appearance of Reggie Forthright and his grandfather, Viscount Blacktower. The two visitors have information about Blacktower's older son, Willoughby Forth, who disappeared fourteen years ago in the desert west of the Nile in the Sudan. They tell the story of a lost civilization in the midst of the desert. Lord Blacktower's story would have been discounted, except the map he produced was on the back of a page from Emerson's own notebook, drawn by Willie Forth himself. Blacktower wants the Emersons to lead an expedition to find the missing heir, but the Emersons decline. Surprisingly, Radcliffe, Amelia and Ramses do travel to the Sudan, to excavate at Gebel Barkal and Napata, the first Nubian capital. The sudden appearance of Reggie Forthright causes them to alter their plans. Reggie is set on seeking his long-lost uncle, and when he disappears in the western wastes, the Emersons have no recourse but to go after him. But the rescuers need rescue themselves when all but one of their men desert them, and their camels die off one by one. Finally, the last faithful servant takes a chance, and looks for a promised oasis ahead. Nearly dead from heat and thirst, they suddenly find themselves in a world 3,000 years out of place. Amelia suffers the worst of it, taking weeks to fully recover. She is spurred on because they find themselves in a place where ancient Egypt is still alive and functioning. And they find that their servant was in fact one of two brothers struggling for power in the ancient land. They soon learn that anyone who thought life in ancient Egypt was simple would have been grossly mistaken. The intrigues, politics, and social mores push and prod the Emersons in ways they never expected, and they still need to discover what happened to Willie Forth, his wife, and his nephew. Dinner with princes and a queen, clandestine meetings with priestesses, and plans to escape all jumble together until the god Aminreh appears to make his decision, and all three Emersons are in the midst of the action when Aminreh makes the choice no one expected... Nefret Forth is introduced, and the source of her later wealth is established. So too is the devotion the family has to a young woman they did not know the existence of just a short while before.
5282060	/m/0dcfh2	Atom Bomb Blues	Andrew Cartmel		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Ace travel to a parallel universe, where they become involved in a conspiracy involving that Earth's Manhattan Project, Duke Ellington, and Japanese saboteurs.
5282191	/m/0dcfpn	The Thin Man	Dashiell Hammett	1934	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story is set in Prohibition-era New York City. The main characters are a former private detective, Nick Charles, and his clever young wife, Nora. Nick, son of a Greek immigrant, has given up his career since marrying Nora, a wealthy socialite, and he now spends most of his time cheerfully getting drunk in hotel rooms and speakeasies. Nick and Nora have no children, but they do own a Schnauzer named Asta. (Only in the film adaptation is she a wire fox terrier.) Charles is drawn, mostly against his will, into investigating a murder. The case brings them in contact with a rather grotesque family, the Wynants, and also with an assortment of policemen and lowlifes. As they attempt to solve the case, Nick and Nora share a great deal of banter and witty dialogue, along with copious amounts of alcohol. The characters of Nick and Nora are often thought to reflect the personalities of Hammett and his long-time lover, Lillian Hellman. Because the "Thin Man" title was used for the subsequent movies, there is a widespread misapprehension that the term refers to Nick Charles himself; in fact it refers to Clyde Wynant, the mysterious and eccentric patriarch who is the main concern of the plot. A skeletonized body, found during the investigation, had been assumed to be that of a "fat man" due to its being found in clothing from a much heavier man. This clothing is revealed to be a diversion, and the identity of the body is finally revealed as that of a particular "thin man" instead—the missing Wynant. The murder has been disguised in a way to frame Wynant, by people who have stolen a great deal of money from Wynant and killed him, on the night he was last seen.
5282234	/m/0dcfrs	Fear Itself	Nick Wallace		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is the twenty-second century and Earth is caught in a war with powerful alien forces. Paranoia runs rampant and the Doctor is in danger from all directions. This was the only Past Doctor Adventure to feature the Eighth Doctor, as the original novels featuring that incarnation formed their own series, the Eighth Doctor Adventures. However, with the 2005 revival of the television series, and the BBC's New Series Adventures being published, the Eighth Doctor Adventures came to an end.
5283185	/m/0dcgw3	City at World's End	Christopher Bulis		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and his two companions travel to Arkhaven. It is one of the last cities on a doomed alien planet. The city has one plan for survival, no backup. However, there are underlying plans threatening to sabotage this as various people vie for power the disaster might bring. The Doctor then must deal with the 'Creeper', an entity prowling the outskirts of Arkhaven. His companions cannot help him, as one becomes lost and the other becomes mentally ill.
5283465	/m/0dch98	Running Out of Time	Margaret Haddix	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Keyser is a 13-year-old girl from the village of Clifton, Indiana in the 1840s. During a village-wide outbreak of diphtheria, Jessie's mother reveals that the actual year is 1996, and that Clifton Village is actually a tourist attraction, a replica of a historical village. She secretly sends Jessie out of the village with a pair of jeans and t-shirt to retrieve a cure for the disease from a man who disagreed on having Clifton as a tourist attraction, Isaac Neeley. But Jessie has to be careful because there are a few guards that have to make sure that no one from Clifton leaves and finds out that it is really 1996 and not 1840. Miles Clifton was the creator of Clifton. Jessie escapes underground and almost gets caught by guards and almost loses her package of food and money. Not wanting others to realize she is from 1840s Clifton, she stays overnight in a restroom until she is able to leave the tourist area. Jessie is often confused at the technological advancements of the modern world. After meeting with Neeley at a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) in Waverly, Indiana, she returns with him to his apartment, where Neeley attempts to drug her so he can kill her. Jessie overhears Neeley saying that she knows too much about the outside world. She manages to escape through a window in his apartment. Jessie convinces local newspapers and radio stations to attend a news conference on the steps of the Capitol building. When the media arrives, Jessie attempts to explain the situation, but faints due to diphtheria, which had infected her before she left Clifton. The "news conference" causes Clifton Village to close; it is revealed that Miles Clifton allowed Frank Lyle (a scientist and the business partner of Miles Clifton) and others to use his village to try to create a stronger human gene pool of people able to resist diseases without the aid of medicine. Jessie awakens in a hospital, where she learns that the real Mr. Neeley had died, the person she met was actually Frank Lyle. Jessie leaves her hospital room and finds him talking about the diphtheria outbreak in the Clifton Village. She discovers that several other members of the Clifton Village have been brought to the hospital. Her parents are not among those who were arrested, but they have to convince the authorities that they didn't put any of their six children in danger. Jessie's mother is allowed to visit Jessie in the hospital and explain to Jessie that her father still believes in the life of 19th century. However, she gets to live in 1996 after Clifton Village closes.
5286695	/m/0dcnxn	Incubus Dreams	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Incubus Dreams apparently takes place a few weeks after the events of Cerulean Sins. As usual, Anita must juggle several problems simultaneously. * First, in her job as an animator, Anita must respond to the request of Barbara and Steve Brown that Anita raise their dead son, Stevie Brown, a high school student murdered three years earlier, probably by an acquaintance. Anita explains that it is not possible to raise a murder victim and question them, because that kind of zombie has only one purpose (to kill the murderer), but agrees to assist the police in investigating the murder. * Second, Anita continues to wrestle with the metaphysical problems raised by her recent increase in power. She, Jean-Claude, Richard, and Damian are all experiencing unexpected increases in their magical power, with unpredictable results. * Third, Anita continues to assist Jean-Claude with vampire politics, as Jean-Claude confronts a challenge from The Dragon and her offspring, Primo and as Anita and Jean-Claude realize that the vampires in town that follow Malcolm rather than Jean-Claude have not been bound by blood oath, leaving them as essentially unrestrained predators. * Fourth, Anita's personal life becomes increasingly complex, both as a result of Anita's increasing ardeur and as a result of the personal problems of the various people involved. In particular, Nathaniel has decided that his relationship with Anita should advance to a sexual relationship, Damian continues to struggle with his role as Anita's vampire servant, and Anita's love/hate relationship with Richard remains as powerful as ever. Anita also must deal with jealousy from Jessica Arnett, a RPIT detective with a crush on Nathaniel, and with increasing distrust by various police officers as a result of her close relationship with the city's vampires and shapeshifters and as a result of her increasingly sexually-based abilities. * Fifth, Anita attempts to assist the police in solving a series of vampire serial killings, apparently focusing on area strip club workers or patrons. Unlike previous novels, although Anita resolves some of these issues by the end of the book, many remain unresolved. * With regard to the Stevie Brown murder, although Anita agrees to investigate, she is unable to make progress on the investigation during this novel, and notes in the epilogue that she intends to review Brown's personal effects with Evans soon. (Evans is a very powerful psychometrist). * With regard to Anita's metaphysical problems, she makes considerable progress. Anita learns that she can partially control the ardeur by drawing power from others' lust and by ensuring that her other desires, such as physical hunger, do not go unfulfilled. Richard realizes that a great deal of his unstable behavior in recent novels is a result of his acquiring Anita's rage through their spiritual link, and Jean-Claude begins to stabilize his own power after Anita gives him permission to feed on the lust of his club patrons. * Anita also makes progress on resolving the vampire politics issues that arise in this novel. Using her own powers and her link to Jean-Claude, she binds Primo to Jean-Claude's service, and, with her challenge defeated, The Dragon expresses interest in negotiating with Jean-Claude. Anita also accepts Wicked and Truth, two other warrior vampires, into Jean-Claude's service, greatly increasing Jean-Claude's ability to resist physical challenges. However, the issue of Malcolm's vampires remains unresolved, as both Anita and Jean-Claude believe that without a blood oath, some of the vampires of the Church of Eternal Life will eventually revert to predators. * Anita's personal life also resolves in a number of ways. She accepts Nathaniel as the fourth of her concurrent lovers, and she and Richard also agree to renew their relationship. (Although Nathaniel and Micah appear to accept or want Anita as their only lover, Anita reluctantly agrees to accept Richard's decision to date other people, and allows Jean-Claude to begin feeding his lust from others, at least spiritually). The major unresolved issues in Anita's personal life appear to be her relationship with Damian, who she attempts to offer more independence but who also wants to be one of her lovers, and her role as a law enforcement officer, which is becoming more and more difficult as she continues to identify with the "monsters." * Anita is unable to resolve the serial killer investigation fully. Although she and the police kill several of the lesser vampires responsible for the murders, the more powerful vampires escape to kill in another city, particularly their leader, Vittorio. Anita promises herself that she will track Vittorio and his remaining followers down. In the epilogue, Anita explains that she has bought gifts for her various lovers (except for Richard), and that she is committed to continuing her life as a vampire executioner, and to resolving the remaining open plotlines discussed above.
5288739	/m/0dcsgk	Truth and Bright Water	Thomas King		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with a Prologue, which describes the setting, the physical landscape around the two towns, Truth on the American side and the reserve Bright Water on the Canadian. The two towns are separated by the Shield river, which also marks the national border, and ineffectually connected by an uncompleted bridge and a "ferry," an old iron bucket suspended over the river on a steel cable. We first meet the three central characters, Tecumseh, his dog Soldier and his cousin Lum, on the riverside. Lum is training for the long-distance run to take place at the Indian Days festival, which he hopes to win. The two boys see a truck approach the coulee; a woman emerges from the vehicle, throws a suitcase into the river and jumps after it herself. However, when the boys and the dog run down to the river to see what happened to her, she has disappeared and Soldier just finds the small skull of a child long dead. The story branches out from this point to touch the stories of other characters connected to Tecumseh, his mother, who yearns to leave Truth to move to a big city and become an actress. His aunt Cassie, his mother's older sister and sometime role-model, who left the reserve to travel the world, but who has a mysterious guilt in her past that seems to bring her back to her home. One of the most central of these storylines involves Monroe Swimmer, who refers to himself as "famous Indian artist," and who, like Cassie, has returned to the reserve. Monroe, a specialist in restoring paintings, buys the abandoned Methodist missionary church building and proceeds to paint it "out of" the landscape. The narrator leaves no doubt that the church actually becomes invisible even to Monroe himself when he is finished. Tecumseh becomes his assistant in a number of artistic endeavors (such as setting up metal buffalo statues to lure back the real buffalos chased away—or actually exterminated—by the white settlers in the nineteenth century), and Monroe is the only one of the adults who actually takes him seriously. Monroe tells Tecumseh important things about himself, even if he does it so that Tecumseh can then compose songs about his, Monroe's, heroic deeds. Eventually, Tecumseh finds out from Monroe that he not only restored nineteenth-century landscape paintings when he worked for museums around the world, he had also painted Indians "back into" the paintings and taken Native remains collected in these museums to take back. Monroe claims he is "going to save the world" (131). Another "heroic deed" of Monroe is his grand giveaway festival, to which he invites the whole town and at which he gives away all his possessions (these gifts also have symbolic meaning, e.g. Cassie receives an Inuit sculpture of a woman with a child on her back, Tecumseh gets the piano). Finally, it turns out that Monroe, wearing his characteristic wig, was the mysterious "woman" on the river and the skull the boys found one of the re-appropriated pieces of Native American history stolen from various Indian nations. Another story-line takes up Elvin, Tecumseh's father, a carpenter and smuggler, who tries to get things done and to be a good father, but who continually falls short. Tecumseh's parents are separated, but the father makes a number of ineffectual attempts to lure Tecumseh's mother back into a relationship. A chair that one of the members of the Indian band ordered, but which Elvin never gets done, is a running joke and emblematic of Elvin's inability to finish what he sets out to do. It comes as a complete surprise to everyone, including the narrator, when he drives to the Indian Days festival in the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, the car he had been promising to fix for Tecumseh's mother throughout the novel. Lum is perhaps the most tragic character in the novel. His abusive father Franklin (Elvin's brother) told him his mother was dead, but Lum does not believe him and hopes she will come back. There is a moving scene in which he talks to the child's skull they found in the river imagining "he" is crying for his lost mother: "'Stupid baby' [...] 'She's not coming back!' [...] 'She's never coming back!" (177). Franklin injures Lum so severely one day that he is unable to participate in the race that he had been training so hard for. He is aggressive and unpredictable in his interactions with his younger cousin and gruff with Soldier, but the dog is undeterred and absolutely loyal to him. When Lum finally runs off the unfinished bridge into a certain death in the river, Soldier follows him blindly, after the two boys have performed Monroe's funeral rites for "their" skull and throw it in the river. Many of the storylines remain open. There is no conclusive answer, for example, to Tecumseh's question "Who's Mia?" (55) even though Mia seems to be the key to Cassie's guilt and the reason why she came back. There is a track of clues that runs through the novel and ends at the point when Cassie burns the baby clothes from a suitcase Tecumseh's mother has given her. One of these clues is Cassie's tattoo which spells AIM (American Indian Movement), but in the mirror reads "Mia." Another clue is the strange fact that Cassie sends presents to Tecumseh, at a time that has nothing to do with his birthday, and which to him are "girls" toys, e.g. a doll and a pink box with a mirror (117). Another unsolved riddle is the identity of the woman Tecumseh and Lum observe in intimate interactions with Monroe in the church one day (both Cassie and Tecumseh's Mother had had a relationship with him in the past). In addition, Tecumseh once walks in one his mother and Cassie having a conversation whilst going through old baby clothes. Helen indicates that she had an affair fifteen years ago, at the time that Tecumseh would have been conceived (122). Also, Helen asks Cassie if she's going to "give it up?" (122), to which Cassie responds "Why not... Gave it up the first time" (122). Given the context, this conversation indicates that Cassie has returned because she is pregnant. Additionally, she had been pregnant before, and this child was given up. The name Mia is also related to her former pregnancy. Also, the novel ends with Tecumseh's mother carefully trimming a bouquet of purple freesias "until there is nothing left but the stems" (266), but the narrator never learns who gave them to her.
5291153	/m/0dcxhv	Something to Answer For	P. H. Newby	1969		 Townrow is a 31-year-old Fund Distributor stealing from the fund he is in charge of. He is contacted by the widow of an old friend, Elie Khoury. They had met in 1946, in Port Said in Cairo after he had been thrown from a horse in front of the Khoury's beach hut. Mrs Khoury wants Townrow to go to see her in Cairo because she believes her husband was murdered. After thinking it through, Townrow accepts Mrs Khoury's offer of a plane ticket to Cairo. He stops over in Rome where he argues with two men, defending the British Government from its involvement in Nazi Germany's Final Solution campaign. The discussion ends on a friendly note. In Cairo, Townrow makes a joke about marrying Mrs Khoury for her money to an immigration officer, which leads his being interrogated. He is kept in a cell and is released once his train has departed. In Port Said, Townrow doesn't go straightaway to see Mrs Khoury, instead opting to stay in a hotel. Here he considers having no one who really cares about him in his life. Townrow visits a bar he used to frequent while serving as a sergeant. The owner of the bar, Christous, recognises him and kicks out his clientele for some privacy. Townrow asks about Elie's death. Christous tells him that Mrs Khoury, with great difficulty, took her husband's body back to Lebanon to be buried. Because of her actions, Colonel Nasser took the Suez Canal as Egypt's. it:Something to Answer For
5292595	/m/0dc_0m	Shake Hands Forever	Ruth Rendell	1975-04-25	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Most people would have screamed. Mrs Hathall made no sound. She had seen death many times before, but she had never before seen a death by violence. Heavily, she plodded across the room and descended the stairs to where her son waited. 'There's been an accident,' she said. 'Your wife's dead.'Chief Inspector Wexford could discover no motive, no reason, no suspect - all he had were his own intuitive suspicions. Probably he was reading meaning where there was none; probably Angela Hathall really had picked up a stranger, and that stranger had killed her. But why such doubt? Was Wexford becoming cynical and untrusting - or was this simply one of the most ingenious crimes he had ever tackled?
5292691	/m/0dc_3s	The Face of Trespass	Ruth Rendell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Two years ago he was a promising young novelist. Now he barely survives, in a near-derelict cottage with only an unhooked telephone and his own obsessive thoughts for company. Two years of loving Drusilla, but the affair is over and the long slide into deception and violence has just begun.
5292736	/m/0dc_6x	Some Lie And Some Die	Ruth Rendell	1973-04-16	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kingsmarkham doesn't have too many complaints about its first annual rock festival, but then in a nearby quarry two lovers find a body that makes even Reg Wexford's stomach lurch. All he can discover is that there is a strange connection with the star of the festival.
5292777	/m/0dc_9c	Murder Being Once Done	Ruth Rendell	1972-07-17	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A girl with no name, no possessions and no past, is found murdered in a vast, overgrown London cemetery. Wexford is in the capital for a rest on doctor's orders, but is drawn into the investigation when his nephew is given charge of the case.
5292825	/m/0dc_fv	No More Dying Then	Ruth Rendell	1971-10-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On a stormy February afternoon, little Stella Rivers disappears and is never seen again. Then, on a warm October day, five-year-old John Lawrence fails to come home, and evil, mad, taunting letters begin, which make the worst, unspoken imaginings a brutal reality.
5292850	/m/0dc_gw	One Across, Two Down	Ruth Rendell	1971-03-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 There are only two things that interest Stanley: the crosswords and getting his hands on his mother-in-law's money, which he has dreamed about for 20 years. He finally realises that he must construct a puzzle of his own in order to give death a helping hand.
5292933	/m/0dc_nw	A Guilty Thing Surprised	Ruth Rendell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When Elizabeth Nightingale was beaten to death, it seemed a straightforward enough case. But Detective Chief Inspector Wexford discovered that beneath the placid surface of the Nightingales' lives there were undercurrents and secrets that no one had ever suspected.
5293007	/m/0dc_s1	The Best Man to Die	Ruth Rendell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The fatal car accident involving the stockbroker Fanshawe couldn't possibly be connected with the murder of a cocky little lorry driver. But was it a coincidence that the latter died the day after Mrs Fanshawe regained consciousness?
5293062	/m/0dc_v4	The Secret House of Death	Ruth Rendell	1968	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Susan Townsend was the only resident with no interest in the affair going on next door in Orchard Drive, or in the neighbourhood gossip about it. Yet it was Susan who found the bodies of the lovers locked in death.
5293079	/m/0dc_vv	A New Lease of Death	Ruth Rendell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Chief Inspector Wexford had every reason to remember the Painter case - it was the first murder he'd ever handled on his own. There had been no doubts about the case, until now. Someone wants the case reopened, and they want Wexford proved wrong.
5293160	/m/0dc_zd	Wolf to the Slaughter	Ruth Rendell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Anita Margolis had vanished. There was no body, no crime - nothing more concrete than an anonymous letter and the intriguing name of Smith. According to headquarters, it wasn't to be considered a murder enquiry at all. Chief Inspector Wexford, however, had other ideas.
5293181	/m/0dc__s	Vanity Dies Hard	Ruth Rendell	1966	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Alice Whittaker was 37, rich but dowdy, with no career. Her life a lonely failure, she had got by with the one thing she did have - money. Then handsome Andrew Fielding came into her life, and just as suddenly her beautiful friend, Nesta, vanished from it - leaving a trail of confusing clues.
5293276	/m/0dd071	To Fear A Painted Devil	Ruth Rendell	1965	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Gossip in tiny Linchester is raised to new heights when young Patrick Selby dies on the night of his beautiful wife's birthday party. The whole neighborhood was there, witness to the horrible attack of wasps Peter suffered at the end of the evening. But did Peter die of the stings? Dr. Greenleaf thinks not. After all, wasps aren't the only creatures that kill with poison.
5297101	/m/0dd5md	The Godfather Returns	Mark Winegardner	2004-11-16	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story picks up immediately after the end of the first novel. The events of the film The Godfather Part II take place within the time frame of this novel, but are only mentioned in the background. Many of Puzo's characters are expanded upon, especially Fredo Corleone, Tom Hagen, and Johnny Fontane, and new characters like Nick Geraci, Danny Shea, and Francesca Corleone are introduced. The other half of the novel goes deeper into Michael's role as Don and his dream of legitimizing the Corleone family. The novel expands on Michael's service in World War II as well as his brother Fredo's secret life. The novel shows how Sonny, Fredo and Tom Hagen join the family business, as well as the deaths of Pete Clemenza and Sal Tessio. The Godfather Returns was followed by The Godfather's Revenge in 2006, also written by Winegardner.
5297160	/m/0dd5qz	The Godfather's Revenge	Mark Winegardner	2006-11-07	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story begins with Michael Corleone having a dream in which his brother Fredo Corleone, whom he had killed, warns him of a coming threat. At the same time, the apparition tries to give Michael a message, which he doesn't comprehend. Michael's guilt over ordering Fredo's murder has aged him beyond his years &mdash; his hair has turned white, his diabetes has worsened, and he suffers from chronic insomnia. He is also depressed over his failing relationship with his ex-wife, Kay Adams, and his son, Anthony, who knows the truth about Fredo's death. Carlo Tramonti, a boss of the New Orleans crime syndicate, is introduced as he is deported by the INS to his native Colombia. Meanwhile, Attorney General Daniel Shea (analogous to Robert F. Kennedy) declares his war on the Mafia. Tom Hagen meets with a CIA agent named Joe Lucadello in a Protestant church in Florida. He informs Hagen that Nick Geraci, a former caporegime for the Corleones, has turned up. The book then outlines Nick Geraci's survival in an underground cave under Lake Erie, and how he gets ready to take his revenge. He contacts his father, who helps him get away, and plots his revenge with Momo Barone. Meanwhile, Hagen is implicated in the murder of his longtime mistress, which throws his personal and professional life into disarray. Meanwhile, President Jimmy Shea (analogous to John F. Kennedy), who was elected in part due to Michael's influence, is assassinated by a Cuban national. While the real reason for his murder is never made clear, the novel suggests that it was orchestrated by Tramonti, who wanted revenge for his arrest in a raid ordered by Daniel Shea. Nick Geraci reunites with his family, beginning his revenge against Michael Corleone: * He drowns Tom Hagen in the Florida Everglades. Geraci then sends Michael a package containing a dead baby alligator along with Hagen's wallet, a message similar to the one that is sent to Sonny Corleone in the original novel following Luca Brasi's death. * He meets with his old friend Momo Barone, and promises him the title of consigliere if he agrees to help. Momo agrees, and provides Geraci information on Michael Corleone's daily routine. * Geraci contacts Don Anthony Stracci and asks for his help to depose Michael as head of the Commission. Nick ultimately gets the votes to overthrow Michael. Stracci asks Geraci to meet Don Greco, the Greek, who also because of Stracci's influence was to vote against Michael. Geraci meets him at a restaurant on Staten Island. When he arrives, however, he realizes he has walked him into a trap; Michael arrives and orders Barone to shoot Geraci to prove his loyalty. Geraci grabs the gun, shoots two bodyguards and injures Al Neri, but is mortally wounded in the process. Eddie Paradise delivers the coup de grace, shooting him execution style. Michael also executes the following people: * Carlo Tramonti is shot in the back of his head and thrown off on the highway. * Tramonti's brother, who sought to re-open his brother's murder, dies of "natural causes". * Joe Lucadello has an ice pick rammed into his eye. In the novel's final scene, Michael's sister Connie tells him that Fredo had an illegitimate child with Rita, whom Michael had briefly dated before realizing that he was still in love with Kay. es:El Padrino "La venganza" it:La vendetta del padrino pl:Zemsta ojca chrzestnego
5297517	/m/0dd679	Summer of the Monkeys	Wilson Rawls	1976	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Summer of the Monkeys takes place in the very late 19th century. It is about a fourteen-year old boy named Jay Berry Lee who wants a pony and a .22 caliber gun. In his first attempt to catch the monkeys, he sets the traps under a tree, hides them, and pins apples on the tree. This plan fails when Jimbo simply reaches high and gets the apples off the tree, and, when he is satisfied, he gives the rest of the apples to the little monkeys. For his second plan that day, Jay sets the traps, hides them, and places apples on the trigger. This plan also fails when Jimbo uses a stick to trip the traps. He again shares the apples with the little monkeys. Later, Jay Berry decides to take a break and heads to the nearby spring. When he gets back, he finds that the monkeys have stolen his lunch and traps. He gets angry and shoots rocks at the monkeys. The monkeys then get very angry and chase Jay home. The next day, Jay Berry goes to consult with Grandpa. Grandpa gives him a butterfly net that can open and close using two pull strings and tells him to dig a hole that night so he can hide from the monkeys to try to catch them. He catches two monkeys, but Jimbo releases them and orders the small monkeys to attack Jay and Rowdy. They come out of the fight with many scratches and bites. His sister wants to be a Red Cross nurse when she grows up so she gives Jay her "Red Cross treatment" as she always does whenever Jay and Rowdy are injured. After recovering, Jay Berry goes to talk to Grandpa again. Grandpa tells him that he wrote to the circus asking them for advice on how to catch the monkeys. The animal trainer responds by telling them to call Jimbo by his name and try to make friends with him. With this in mind, Jay goes back to the river bottoms. However, when he arrives, he is astonished to find the monkeys drunk on whiskey at a still. Jimbo offers Jay the mixture since he no longer sees him as a threat, and Jay reluctantly accepts. Jay wakes up in the middle of the night feeling drunk. He unsteadily goes home, where Daisy notices he is drunk and tells Mama and Papa. They tell Jay never to get drunk again. Once again Jay receives the "Red Cross treatment". Grandpa decides to take Jay Berry to the town of Tahlequah to go to its library and do research on how to catch monkeys. They find out to use coconuts and a trap cage, and they go to the general store for these. As they return, they stop by a spring. When they return to the buggy, they find that the monkeys have stolen the items they bought. Later on Daisy finds a fairy ring which is capable of granting wishes. The book has her wishing something, but it doesn't say for what. It turns out that she wished for Jay Berry to get his pony and his gun. Then, there is a storm. The monkeys are scared enough that they go with Jay to his house. Jay Berry gives the monkeys to the circus. The owner gives him lifetime passes to their circus and the $156 reward. This is enough to buy his pony and .22 or to get Daisy's leg operation. Jay almost buys the pony of his liking, but decides to use the money for Daisy's leg operation. During the many weeks Daisy and Mama are gone for the operation in Oklahoma City, Jay Berry and Papa miss them and struggle to handle daily chores without them. While Daisy is in Oklahoma City, she buys Jay a .22 which she gives to him during her return. Also, Grandpa buys Jay the pony that he was going to buy. Daisy and Mama come home on the train. Once they get off the train, Daisy kisses Jay Berry on the lips because she is so happy. When they all get home, She and Jay Berry run around the hills together, holding hands.
5297977	/m/0dd6rs	Lion's Blood	Steven Barnes		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins with Aidan O'Dere, a child growing up in a primitive 19th century Ireland with his pagan father, Christian mother, and twin sister. Their village is attacked by Vikings and Aidan’s father is killed in the battle, while Aidan and the rest of his family are taken as slaves. They are later sold to black slave merchants in Andalus and taken to Bilalistan (southeastern North America) by the middle passage. Many die along the way and Aidan’s mother suffers a miscarriage. During the voyage, Aidan swears to his sister that if they are separated, he will find her. There at a slave auction Aidan’s sister is separated from them and sold off as a maidservant, while Aidan and his mother are sold to a Wakil named Abu Ali Jallaleddin ibn Rashid al Kushi, owner of a plantation called Dar Kush. Dar Kush is known for its lenient treatment of the white slaves, going as far as allowing them to keep native religion, culture, and language. The Wakil has three children: Ali, the oldest son; Elenya, the youngest child and only daughter; and the middle child and younger son Kai, an awkward, shy boy who feels that he will never live up to his father's expectations. One day Kai and Aidan meet and become unlikely friends. Aidan aids Kai in a prank that gets him whipped, but Kai saves him from most of the punishment and selects him as his footboy/servant. Despite their difference in status, the boys develop a strong friendship. Kai and Aidan grow up together and remain close, until a half-Andalusian Moor, half-Greek slave girl that was a gift to Kai comes between them. The break happens when the girl falls in love with Aidan, leading to a fight between the two. Though Kai is has better fighting skills achieved via formal training, Aiden is far stronger, with greater punching power and endurance, achieved from several years of grueling labor. As a result, Aidan defeats Kai. Though angry and humiliated, Kai does not punish them further, and allows the two to be together. Both boys go through several changes as they become adults. Kai converts to Sufism, begins to have feelings for his brother’s betrothed, finds himself about to be in an arranged marriage with a Zulu princess, and begins to question the practice of slavery. Aidan, finally with something worth fighting for, begins to chafe at the bonds of his slavery, which drives a wedge further between the two friends. After his (also enslaved) wife and newborn son are transferred away to the plantation of Kai's uncle, Aidan becomes involved in a slave revolt among the slaves of Dar Kush and neighboring plantations. Using the revolt as cover, Aidan and other slaves attempt to flee, but are captured and Aidan's infant son almost dies. Aidan, however, is again spared punishment by Kai, who is mourning the death of his father in the revolt. Later Bilalistan finds itself at war with the Aztecs over a treasured Bilalian landmark, Mosque Al'Amu (the Shrine of the Fathers), which stands at the border between Bilalistan and Aztec territory. Both Kai and Aidan join the army heading to meet them. During the last stand at the Shrine of the Fathers, Kai takes leadership of the armies after the Zulus abandon the battle due to the suspicious deaths of their leader, Shaka Zulu, and Kai's elder brother Ali. Promising freedom to all of the slaves who came with the army, the Bilalians manage a victory by destroying the Shrine of the Fathers with most of the surviving Aztec forces inside it. Kai, now a war hero, keeps his promise to free all of the slaves who fought along with their families. On returning home he finds that his uncle has taken Aidan’s wife as an unwilling lover and refuses to free her, forcing Kai into a duel with him which results in the death of Kai's uncle. Kai, now the only surviving male in his family, takes his place as the Wakil of Dar Kush, while Aidan and his family leave to start a new life as freed slaves. The story is set in an alternate history world where Islamic African nations are the dominant world power, with colonies in Europe and the New World, commonly referred to by the characters as Bilalistan instead of North America. The dominant nations are Egypt which is still ruled by the Pharaohs and Abyssinia which is controlled by a monarch known as the Immortal Empress. Due to the destruction of Rome by Carthage and Egypt in 200 B.C., Europe remained largely tribal while Africa advanced technologically and culturally with steamboats, rifles and airships or "flying boats" by the late 19th century. The dominant Africans consider Europeans to be inferior and treat them as a source of slave labour which is supplied to them by Viking raiders. Southern Africa is controlled by the Zulus while the Vikings control much of Northern Europe. The Middle East is presumably Islamic-dominated, with references to Egypt being at war with Persia, though a Jewish state known as Judea is also mentioned to have been established by the Prophet Muhammad in 623 AD as part of a mutual assistance pact between Islam and the Jews. The Gupta control much of India while China is ruled by Emperors and apparently has a colony on the New World's western coast. Much of modern day Mexico is ruled by the Aztecs while Native Americans compete with both Aztecs and the African immigrants. On a map of Bilalistan shown in the book, Bilalistan is divided into four provinces which include: New Alexandria, New Djibouti, Azania and Wichita. Most of the story takes place in Dar Kush in New Djibouti, around where the real world state of Louisiana lies. It is also mentioned that the African settlers have driven the Native Americans out of their territories as the European powers had done to the native populations from the 19th century. To the south lies the Aztec nation of Azteca which often fights with Bilalistan. Vikings maintain a colony in the New World known as Vinland to the north of Bilalistan and there is a Chinese colony in California. White runaway slaves often join Native American tribes, or manage to make their way to Vinland to find work as paid laborers. Christianity is also mentioned in the novel, though it failed to become a dominant world religion, with the majority of its followers being Europeans. Without the influence of Rome, Christianity is much more divided between traditional and Gnostic thought over whether Christ was divine or merely a man. The Gospel of Mary is also an important part of the Christian beliefs. Following Alexander the Great's conquest of much of the known world, Alexander made himself the Pharaoh of Egypt following a vision of Pharaoh-hood after he had lost his leg. After the death of his first wife, he married a Kush princess named Mesgana, who bore him twin sons. When his sons came of age, he set one as ruler of Alexandria with the other reigning over Abyssinia. Alexander eventually adopted the title of Pharaoh Haaibre Setepenamen which literally translates as "Jubilant is the heart of Re, Chosen of Amen". As in our timeline, Alexander's capital was at Alexandria which became the capital of Egypt. Over the centuries, history was rewritten to portray Alexander as an African to suit the perceptions of the dominant Africans. In 200 BC, the combined forces of Egypt, Carthage and Abyssinia destroyed Rome, removing the last European power and paving the way for African dominance. For a thousand years the descendants of Alexander ruled much of the known world with Egypt ruling an empire stretching from Eastern Europe to India. Egypt and Abyssinia also created a major trade route along the Nile and immense networks of canals. By 420, steamboats had been invented and were used to trade with other kingdoms in Africa. Eventually, most of sub-Saharan Africa was under joint Egyptian and Abyssianian rule. With the advent of Islam, Arabic became the dominant language of that region. In 623, Muhammad approved of a mutual assistance pact with the Jewish people which would lead to the establishment of the Jewish state of Judea. With Muhammad's death in 632, his followers fought among themselves as they did in our timeline. However, this was stopped by the intervention of Bilal. He rescued Muhammad's daughter Fatimah and fled to Abyssinia, where they were protected. Fatima continued Muhammad's teachings and her form of Islam became known as Fatimite Islam which eventually swept through much of North Africa, resulting in a unified Islamic coalition against Egypt's royal house. In the end, Alexandria was defeated through the use of a disease carried by black barges which may be an analogue to the Black Plague. This disease eventually swept through Egypt and its territories in the Middle East and southern Europe. With Egypt defeated the Fatimite Caliphate was established but both nations would remain separate. Bilal would live long enough to see the fall of Alexandria and was thus revered by the masses as the last of the Prophet's companions. He saw that politics and religion had intertwined in the Old World and that the resulting chaos of that union were beyond repair. It was on his deathbed that Bilal received a vision from the angel Gabriel who told him of the existence of a continent beyond the oceans which would be the promised land, and that the masses should colonize it for their own. By 1000, African Muslim explorers had crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the New World through the use of huge ocean-going steamboats. As the early European explorers had done, the Africans traded with the natives for gold and exotic fruits and founded cities there. The explorers would move westward and would come into conflict with the native populations there. When the last of these explorers had perished far west in Texas, their burial site became the location of the Shrine of the Fathers. By 1100, the Fatimites were trading with the Aztec/Toltec empires though Bilalistan would only be officially colonised in 1700. Like the United States of America during the 19th century, Bilalistan's society is diverse with races as varied as Egyptians, Abyssinians, Yoruba, Zulus, Arabs, Moors, Jews, Europeans, and Native Americans. Egyptians,Abyssinians, Arabs and Zulus form most of the upper class. West Africans (such as Yoruba and Igbo) and North African Moors predominate the middle and working classes, and are usually employed as instructors, merchants and slave overseers. Herding and ranching are dominated by the Maasai. The lowest jobs are taken by European slaves. Certain African groups, such as the Danakil, are not slaves, but are looked down upon by other Africans, due to their involvement in "unclean" occupations (example: training thoths). Bilalistan was originally a theocracy when first settled, though it had become a theocratic republic by 1863. The Bilalian ruling hierarchy consists of the Ulema, the religious body which is led by an Ayatollah, and the Senate, the political body which is ruled by a Caliph. Both organizations compete for control though all power lies in the hands of the Caliph, who is appointed by the Pharaoh of Egypt. The Senate is divided into a House of Lords and House of Commons. Below the Caliph are four Governors who governs each of the four provinces of Bilalistan. These Governors are also assigned or appoint Wakils which rule fiefdoms within the provinces and are apparently part of the aristocracy. Arranged marriages are practised between the Wakils. Citizens, whether male or female, are allowed to vote though slaves have no citizenship and little rights. Many slaves are forced to convert to Islam and take Islamic names. The Bilalian hierarchy ranges from the Caliph and Ayatollah, the Houses of Lords and Commons and the Judiciary which create both religious and common laws. For laws to be passed, they must be accepted by majorities in both Houses which hold legislative power and the Caliph and Ayatollah which have executive power over the state. Common laws can be overturned by a two-thirds majority within the Ulema while religious laws can only be overturned by the Ayatollah and the Pharaoh. Like the Europeans the Muslim explorers brought exotic animals to Bilalistan, most notably the Savannah buffalos, which were imported by the Zulu in order to carry out hunts. Most dogs are considered impure due to the prevailing Islamic culture, with the possible exception of Greyhounds in New Alexandria, and Zulu Ridgebacks in the Zulu kraals. However, many forms of monkeys are kept as pets. Baboons, (or thoths, as they are known), are used to track down runaway slaves, often with brutal consequences.
5299865	/m/0ddb6y	The Ape Who Guards the Balance	Barbara Mertz	1998	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Luxor, 1906-1907. The Emerson clan is trying to determine where to dig during the upcoming season. But before they even leave England, they encounter Sethos and foil an attempt to kidnap Amelia. Suspicion for the attempt falls on Sethos, but not everyone is sure. Upon arriving in Egypt, the children, Nefret, Ramses and David, now in their early twenties but still children to Amelia and Emerson, acquire a magnificent papyrus, but are also stalked. Is Sethos behind this too? Since Emerson has managed to annoy M. Maspero to the point of distraction, he is initially not even allowed near the Valley of the Kings, where another of Emerson’s rivals and targets of invective, Theodore M. Davis, has the rights to the entire valley. Much to everyone’s surprise (and possibly with Nefret’s help), Emerson is granted permission by Davis to clean up three tombs thought to be already excavated in full, KV3, KV4 and KV5. Not only does his rival Davis find yet another rich tomb, right next to the debris-filled and empty tomb he excavates, once again somebody is still after the Emersons—particularly, it seems, Amelia. But help is on the way, from surprising, or perhaps not so surprising, quarters.
5300136	/m/0ddbw2	Dante's Equation	Jane Jensen	2003-07-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the discovery of many people, two of them physicists, that the fifth dimension obeys a (species of spiritual) law of nature where Good and Evil control the lower dimensions. This insight was first discovered by a Jewish physicist, Yosef Kobinski, who was interned in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. It is rediscovered by Dr. Jill Talcott and her graduate-student assistant. the young scientist's discovery coincides with the resurfacing of manuscripts written by the Jewish physicist. The discovery and the manuscripts attract an interest from several sources. A kabbalistic scholar becomes interested in Kobinski as well, as his name shows up in an analysis of Torah codes. A journalist is trying to track down Kobiniski too as part of the research for an article on disappearances. The military become aware of the phenomenon as well, and one agent tries to track down the young scientist and her partner in order to evaluate the military applications of the discovery.
5300664	/m/0ddcwc	Family Secrets	Norma Klein	1985	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Leslie and Peter are childhood friends who become lovers the summer before their senior year in high school. Their romance is immediately complicated by Leslie’s discovery—by reading her mother’s diary—that her mother, Aline, and his father, Nelson, are having an affair. Before the summer is over their parents have announced their impending divorces and Leslie and Peter’s lives are thrown in disarray. The pair spends the next few months of their lives dealing with senior year in high school, the divorces of the parents, and the quick marriage that legally makes them stepsiblings. In addition, Peter is striving for early acceptance at Harvard while Leslie spends much of her time in rehearsal for her high school play for she plans on going to college for acting and drama. Peter at the start of the school year continues to live with his mother; Nelson moves into a new apartment with his new wife and stepdaughter. Leslie is upset at the new living arrangements because she is close to her father and is angry with Aline for the divorce and quick remarriage. In her struggle to deal with the divorce Peter’s mother decides to sell the family home and move to Chicago to finish her college degree. This forces Peter to move in with his father, stepmother and stepsister/girlfriend. The awkwardness of the situation causes the two to argue and abruptly end their physical relationship, having kept it a secret from their parents. As they move on with their lives, Peter and Leslie reconcile and renew their intimacy as the new marriage begins to fall apart primarily because of Nelson’s womanizing, although Aline’s emotional neediness is also a contributing factor. The novel ends with the couple planning a cross country car trip during the summer before they go off to separate colleges. No longer related, they are more comfortable to resume their relationship without the complications imposed by their parents' actions.
5302989	/m/0ddhj5	The Minotaur	Ruth Rendell	2005-04-07	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Kerstin Kvist didn't quite know what to expect when she took up a job with the Cosway family at their odd, almost grand home, Lydstep Old Hall, deep in the Essex countryside. The family turned out to be even odder than the house: the widowed Mrs Cosway lived with her three unmarried daughters, in thrall to the old lady. A mysterious fourth daughter - a widow herself and apparently quite rich - came and went, with ill-disguised contempt for the others. More puzzling still was Mrs Cosway's son, John, a sad, self-absorbed figure in his thirties who haunted the house. "There's madness in the family", offered one of the daughters by way of explanation, but Kerstin had trained as a nurse and knew it wasn't right to be administering such powerful drugs to a vulnerable figure like John.
5305677	/m/0ddmsx	The Blood Doctor	Ruth Rendell	2002-06-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Lord Nanther embarks on a biography of his great-grandfather, the first Lord Nanther, physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria and an expert on blood diseases. What he uncovers begins to horrify him as he realizes that Nanther died a guilty man - carrying an horrific secret to the grave.
5305741	/m/0ddmxb	Grasshopper	Ruth Rendell	2000-06-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Blamed by her parents for the death of a friend, Clodagh has been banished from their home in the countryside to a dingy basement flat and a meaningless existence in the city. Then she meets the inhabitants of the top floor of 15 Russia Road. Charismatic Silver, brutal Johnny, paranoid Liv and exotic Wim range across a London of roofs, eaves and ledges, unseen by the ordinary inhabitants, thrilling in the freedom and danger. Clodagh, haunted for two years by the accident on the pylon, finds that running the roofs with these fascinating misfits brings her back to life, but it seems that tragedy and misfortune may not be done with her yet...
5305807	/m/0ddm_2	The Chimney-sweeper's Boy	Ruth Rendell	1998-03-26	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When successful author Gerald Candless dies of a sudden heart attack, his eldest daughter Sarah is approached by her father's publisher with a view to writing a biography about his life. Sarah embarks on the memoir but soon discovers that her perfect father was not all he appeared to be, and that in fact he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. Candless's neglected wife Ursula gradually regains her self-confidence and begins a new relationship as she realises that the unhappiness of her marriage was due, not to her own shortcomings, but to her husband's latent homosexuality — indeed the reason itself as to why her husband became 'Gerald Candless' in the first place.
5306304	/m/0ddnyk	Red Dragon	Thomas Harris	1981-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In 1980, a serial killer, popularly nicknamed the Tooth Fairy, stalks and murders seemingly random families during sequential full moons. He first kills the Jacobi family in Birmingham, Alabama, then the Leeds family in Atlanta, Georgia. Two days after the Leeds murders, FBI agent Jack Crawford seeks out his protégé, Will Graham, a brilliant profiler who captured the serial killer Hannibal Lecter three years earlier, but retired after Lecter almost killed him. Crawford goes to Graham's Sugarloaf Key residence and pleads for his assistance; Graham reluctantly agrees. After visiting over the crime scenes with only minimal insight, he realizes that he must visit Lecter and seek his help in capturing the Tooth Fairy. The Tooth Fairy is revealed to be a St. Louis film processing technician named Francis Dolarhyde. He is a disturbed individual who is obsessed with the William Blake painting "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun". Dolarhyde is unable to control his violent, sexual urges, and believes that murdering people&mdash;or "changing" them, as he calls it&mdash;allows him to more fully "become" an alternate personality he calls the "Great Red Dragon," after the dominant character in Blake's painting. Flashbacks reveal that his pathology is born from the systematic abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of both his sadistic grandmother and his stepfamily. As Graham investigates the case, he is continuously hounded by Freddy Lounds, a sleazy tabloid reporter. Meanwhile, Lecter's de facto jailer, Frederick Chilton, discovers a secret correspondence between Lecter and Dolarhyde, in which Lecter provides the killer with Graham's home address. Graham's wife and stepson are evacuated to a remote farm belonging to Crawford's brother. Graham tries to intercept the secret communication without Lecter's knowledge, but the doctor quickly realizes the ruse and humiliates the authorities by upping the stakes: in return for his help in capturing the Tooth Fairy, he requests a first-class meal in his cell and having his library privileges returned. Lounds becomes aware of the correspondence and tries to trick Graham into revealing details of the investigation by posing as the Tooth Fairy, but is found out. Hoping to lure the Tooth Fairy into a trap, Graham gives Lounds an interview in which he blatantly mischaracterizes the killer as an impotent homosexual. This infuriates Dolarhyde, who kidnaps Lounds, forces him to recant the allegations, bites off his lips and sets him on fire, leaving his maimed body outside his newspaper's offices; Lounds eventually dies. At about the same time, Dolarhyde falls in love with a blind co-worker named Reba McClane, which conflicts with his homicidal urges. In beginning a relationship with Reba, Dolarhyde starts to consciously resist the Dragon's "possession" of him; he goes to the Brooklyn Museum, beats a museum secretary unconscious, and eats the original Blake watercolor of The Red Dragon. Graham eventually realizes that the killer knew the layout of his victims' houses from their home movies, which he could only have seen if he worked for the film processing lab that developed them. Dolarhyde's job gives him access to all home movies that pass through the company. When he sees Graham interviewing his boss, Dolarhyde realizes that they are on to him and goes to see Reba one last time. He finds her talking to a co-worker, Ralph Mandy, a man whom she actually dislikes. Believing that Reba is being unfaithful, Dolarhyde kills Mandy, kidnaps Reba and, having taken her to his house, sets the place on fire. He intends to kill her and then himself, but finds himself unable to shoot her. After Dolarhyde shoots himself, Reba escapes. Graham later comforts her, telling her that there is nothing wrong with her, and that the kindness and affection she showed Dolarhyde probably saved lives. However, it turns out Dolarhyde did not in fact shoot himself but left behind the body of Arnold Lang, a gas station attendant, in order to stage his own death. Dolarhyde attacks Graham at his Florida home, stabbing him in the face and permanently disfiguring him. Graham's wife, Molly, then fatally shoots Dolarhyde. While recovering, Graham receives a letter from Lecter, which bids him well and hopes that he isn't "very ugly". However, Crawford intercepts the letter and destroys it.
5308109	/m/0ddr50	The Taking of Pelham One Two Three	John Godey			 It starts as a normal day on a subway, but the normality is interrupted by the hijacking of a subway train, on the number 6 train. Four men armed with submachine guns detach the lead car of the train and take it and 17 hostages into a tunnel. The hijackers are lead by Ryder, a former mercenary; Longman, a disgruntled former motorman; Welcome, a violent former Mafia thug; and Steever, a powerful, laconic brute. They threaten to execute the hostages unless the city pays one million dollars in ransom. While the city rushes to comply, transit police try to puzzle out the hijackers' plan. They don't realize that Longman has figured out how to bypass the "dead-man's switch", allowing the car to speed along the track by itself (with the police chasing it while driving on surface streets) while the hijackers escape through an emergency exit. As they prepare to leave, however, Ryder and Welcome begin to argue, ending with Ryder fatally shooting Welcome. The delay allows one of the passengers, an undercover police officer who jumped off the train as it started to speed away, to shoot Steever. Longman escapes while Ryder shoots the passenger. As Ryder is about to administer a fatal head shot, he is himself shot dead by DCI Daniels of Special Operations Division. The novel ends with Longman's arrest.
5308727	/m/0dds5_	Corpse Marker	Chris Boucher		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Society's helpful robots are waging a second murderous spree and this one won't be covered up.
5311969	/m/0ddykx	The Dragon Can't Dance	Earl Lovelace	1979	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Prologue The main stage for the development of the plot, Calvary Hill, is introduced through a series of descriptive elements that portray it as being something close to a slum, favela, or barrio. The mood of the hill is described through the lifestyle of Aldrick Prospect, the novel’s main character: “[he] would get up at midday from sleep, yawn, stretch, then start to think of where he might get something to eat, his brain working in the same smooth unhurried nonchalance with which he moved his feet”. Carnival is set as the central theme of the novel and is portrayed as the only phenomenon that is able to bring the hill to life and corrupt everyday life in Trinidad. The power and soul of Carnival, however, lies in calypso, the songs that “announce the new rhythms of the people, rhythms that climb over the red dirt and stone, break away rhythms that laugh through the bones of these enduring people”. 1. Queen of the Band The first chapter follows a conversation between Miss Olive and Miss Caroline and their criticisms of Miss Cleothlida, a proud mulatto widow who owns a parlor store but runs it as “if she were doing a favour to the Hill, rather than carrying on a business from which she intend[s] to profit” (18). Miss Cleothilda has chosen her costume for this year’s Carnival and it comes as no surprise when she reveals that like every year, she will be playing Queen of the Band. Miss Cleothlida’s arrogance stems from her preserved beauty and her ability to continue to attract men at her age. Philo, a calypsonian man, has been chasing after her for 17 years without success, but with continuous temptation. The neighbors note that Miss Cleothilda only treats people well during Carnival because of the natural ambiance of the Hill and so she can defend her insults throughout the year. As soon as Carnival is over, she will continue to look down upon the people who are blacker than her and the Hill will return to its slumber. 2. The Princess At 17 years of age, Sylvia is the most desired woman on the hill. The novel moves back in time to reveal how she has constantly been a symbol of temptation and sexuality. When Miss Olive fails to come up with money to pay the rent, Sylvia is asked to go up to Mr. Guy’s house and perform sexual favors. However, as hard as many men have tried, Sylvia has outsmarted all of them and has managed to retain her virginity. The men on the Hill are aware that this year Sylvia does not have a man or a costume for Carnival. Mr. Guy is quick to promise her any costume she desires in an effort to become her man, however, his attempt is interrupted by Miss Cleothilda, who is aware of the situation and purposely intrudes by offering Sylvia one of her old dresses. That night, Sylvia creeps out of her house in the middle of the night. Aldrick is able to observe her silhouette in the dark from his window, but hesitates to approach her as he believes that she is the most dangerous women on the hill because she has the ability to “capture him in passion but to enslave him in caring, to bring into his world those ideas of love and home and children that he [has] spent his whole life avoiding” (31). Nonetheless, their first verbal exchange is full of desire and temptation as she questions him about love and reveals that Mr. Guy will be the one buying her a costume that year. While the conversation drags on regarding costumes for Carnival, the real meaning and significance is of Sylvia and Aldrick revealing an attraction for one another 3. The Dragon Aldrick is in his small room working on his dragon costume, which he recreates every year for Carnival. While at work, thoughts of Sylvia keep coming to his head, when all of a sudden she appears at his doorstep. Her visit represents an invitation for him to take her as his woman, however, Aldrick nervously refuses to acknowledge her and instead continues working on his costume. The impasse is broken by Philo’s arrival to the scene and his desire to touch Sylvia forces her to leave the scene. It is getting late and Aldrick forces Basil, a boy who always sits by him and helps him create his costume, to go home. When the boy refuses to leave, Aldrick learns that his stepfather, Fisheye, constantly abuses him at home. Aldrick’s knowledge of Fisheye’s violent reputation makes him hesitant to intervene, but the boy’s refusal to leave forces him to walk him home and confront Fisheye. 4. The Bad John The novel jumps back in time to reveal Fisheye’s violent family history, describing them as “tall strong men who could handle their fists, and were good, each one of them, with a stick, since their father, before he became a preacher, was a champion stickfighter who had himself schooled each one of them in the art of stickfighting”. Fisheye’s family injected so much fear into society that no one dared to call them anything more derogatory than John. Through Fisheye’s character, we see the introduction of musical bands, whose behavior emulates street gangs. Fisheye becomes the center of the Calvary Hill steelband, and as their leader, he attempts to unite several bands so that instead of fighting one another, they can unite and “fight the people who are keeping down black people…the government”. While Fisheye is able to get the bands to sign peace, it never produces what he had envisioned, as this only ends the nature of violence between them without joining them in movement and opposition against the government. The spirit of peace is short-lived as Fisheye’s warrior spirit emerges once the white bands come into the streets and Carnival begins to become commercialized. At the beginning, Fisheye does not mind that some of the “light-skinned” bands become sponsored, however, once the Desperadoes and Calvary Hill consider the option, he begins to fight again in an effort to drive away possible sponsors. Fisheye learns that senior members of the Calvary Hill band are considering his expulsion, and while he waits for them to approach him, the novel jumps back to the point when we see Aldrick coming to deliver Basil home. Aldrick knows that Fisheye is not in the mood for joking, but he addresses the issue with humor and avoids an altercation. On his way back home, Aldrick’s mind is occupied with Silvia, when he is approached by Pariag, the Indian outcast living on the hill. 5. The Spectator Even after two years living on the Hill, Pariag, is still seen as an outsider. Pariag migrates to the city with his wife Dolly from the New Lands in an effort to break away from the country lifestyle and become part of something bigger. The novel jumps back in time once again, this time to reveal the entrepreneurial spirit of the Indian outcast. Pariag’s first job in the city involves buying empty bottles and re-selling them to Rum companies. Initially, he enjoys the task because he is able to talk to people and demonstrate that he is more than just a simple Indian boy. After realizing that this job brings him no meaningful social interactions, he ventures into selling roasted peanuts and boiled and fried chenna at the race track on Saturdays and at football games on Sundays. In an effort to become noticed by others on the Hill, Pariag buys a bicycle a week before Carnival, a very exciting time for people on the Hill. Pariag’s new acquisition gets him the name “Crazy Indian” and makes people in the neighborhood nervous about his ambitions. 6. A Call to the Dragon The buzz of Carnival and Pariag’s new acquisition have the people on the Hill gossiping. Miss Cleothilda approaches Aldrick and expresses her concerns regarding Pariag’s bike, signaling that his ambitions would soon lead him into buying a parlor. Mr. Guy also approaches Aldrick with the excuse of Pariag’s bike, but his real intentions are to collect the month’s rent. By the time Philo approaches Aldrick, Aldrick is fed up with the gossip about the Indian and the bike, however, Philo simply invites Aldrick for a drink so that he can listen to the new calypso he will be singing that year, "The Axe Man". The following morning, hung-over from a night of drinking with Philo, Aldrick notices Pariag at his door asking him to paint a sign on a box for him: “Boya for Indian Delicacies, Barra, and Doubles!!!" Aware of the conflict that will soon arise on the Hill and wanting to remain neutral, Aldrick dismisses him with the excuse of being tired and asks him to come back later. 7. Norman “Tex” at the Carnival Fete It is Saturday night of Carnival and the music is flowing in the air. Norman “Tex” has been playing the saxophone all night with great intensity, and Philo is enjoying a night of popularity thanks to "The Axe Man". Aldrick manages to temporarily forget about Sylvia amidst the smoke, rum, and ambience of the night. However, when morning hits and he finds himself out in the Yard with a girl named Inez, the thought of Sylvia’s costume returns to hunt him. Nonetheless, he chooses to bring Inez home and make love to her until morning. 8. To Be Dragon and Man It is Carnival on Monday morning and the Hill begins to ready itself for a big day. Aldrick follows a yearly ritual of putting on his costume and entering a new mental state with a dragon mask that gives him a mission of upholding an unending rebellion. However, this year he feels as if he is the last symbol of rebellion and threat in Port-of-Spain. Fisheye is under orders to not misbehave and Philo has stopped singing calypsos of rebellion, which forces Aldrick to question if he still believes in the dragon anymore. Yet, as soon as he steps outside, Carnival hits him and he suddenly feels tall and proud: “No, this ain’t no joke. This is warriors going to battle. This is the guts of the people, their blood” (123). Aldrick becomes the dragon of Port of Spain for two full days. He feels joy when he sees terror in people’s faces after gazing at him: “he liked it when they saw him coming and gathering up their children and ran”. On his way home, Aldrick stumbles upon the Calvary Hill band that refuses to end Carnival and wants to continue dancing. Aldrick slowly works his way to the front of the band towards Sylvia, who has been dancing wildly to the rhythm of the steelband. After observing her for a while, he reaches out to touch her but she spins out reach and, facing him, delivers a vocal blow: “No mister! I have my man!” (128) Suddenly, Guy appears behind her and caresses her towards him, leaving Aldrick frozen in the moment, dwelling in pain as Sylvia dances away with another man. 9. Ash Wednesday Aldrick awakes on Ash Wednesday and emerges from his room to look out at the yard with Carnival still swimming in his mind. He inhales deeply and the stench of poverty hits his nostrils for the first time in his life. He looks over all of the “pathetic and ridiculous looking shacks planted in this brown dirt and stone, this was his home”. With Sylvia’s rejection still fresh in his mind, he says, “I have to learn to feel.” This marks his acceptance of Calvary Hill as his home, and his life. Meanwhile, Miss Cleothilda recognized, for the first time, a change in the yard that threatens her position of queen: a combination of Philo’s new found success, her inability to convince Aldrick to do something about Pariag’s continued presence, and most of all, Sylvia’s new man, Guy. Guy could “keep her in style”,(135) and if she became ambitious, could become the new "queen". As a result of all this, Miss Cleothilda begins to use Miss Olive as a way to create a friendship with Sylvia so that she could mold her as she saw fit into the new "queen" of the yard. Her relationship with Philo causes a stir in the yard and people begin to question whether or not it is intimate. If so, it brings a more human side, a weakness, in Miss Cleothilda. A shyness comes over Aldrick and he begins to feel he is not the dragon he once was, and pines for Sylvia. One morning, the yard wakes to Pariag screaming over his mutilated bicycle. 10. Friends and Family Pariag marches his bicycle down Alice street in a funeral procession-like manner, while Fisheye, Aldrick and some other youth from around Calvary Hill watch closely from the corner. The close attention he receives marks one of the first instances where he appears “alive” to others, connecting with them in a humane way. In the days after the bicycle accident, Pariag thinks deeply of his existence and purpose in his life, and because he steps back to view himself, it brings him closer to his wife, Dolly. They decide one night after seeing an Indian film in San Juan to visit their family up in the country on their day off. While there, the family’s hospitality mimicked that of a host treating a guest, and they felt instantly like outsiders on the farm. But to his nieces and nephew’s he represented a wider world, of something more than their village existence. His wealthy uncle calls for him and criticizes his decision to move to Port of Spain: “Is so you want to live, among Creole people, like cat and dog, and forget your family. You have family boy. Next thing you know, you leave your wife – who you didn’t bring to see me." Pariag returns home that night to Calvary Hill feeling that his mind is made up on where he was going to be in life, and his finality makes him feel at peace. 11. The New Yard By August, many things, such as relationships, have changed around the yard. Miss Cleothilda has decided she is to be "queen" once more, but with a more gentile superiority complex. Philo had made it inside her home weeks earlier and is now her man. Sylvia is her protégée. Miss Cleothilda becomes giving and inquisitive around the yard and shows off the belief that “all o’ we is one” when Dolly becomes pregnant and she leads her baby shower. Miss Olive and Miss Caroline also accept her on a more human level because she is with a lower caste black man despite her mulattoness. For them, the relationship unites her more closely with the people of Calvary Hill. Meanwhile, Aldrick sits in his doorway, thoughtful. He has become a quiet man and has little interest in, yet again, being the dragon of carnival. He feels like he has outgrown this costume and role. 12. Outcasts Aldrick, Fisheye and a few other young men have begun assembling at the corner more and more, not in the same company, but occupying the same space. They are men who no longer partake in carnival, especially since Johnson and Fullers began sponsoring their steelband. For them, the true renegade spirit of masking as timeless warriors of generations past has been overrun by modern forces such as business and tourism. One day, Aldrick calls out to a passing Sylvia telling her that it’s her life and she doesn’t have to spite him. He warns her of her choices early on and how they carry residual consequences for the outcome of her life. Of course, he is referencing her relationships with Miss Cleothilda and Guy. Philo comes by later and takes Aldrick out for a drink. Philo is hell-bent on proving that his recent success in calypso music hasn’t changed him, that he is still an integral part of the hill. Fisheye does not like Philo hanging around and confronts Aldrick about their friendship. One day at the corner, Philo drops by with a bottle and two girls to say hello and have a couple drinks. Fisheye says to Philo: “Philo, you ain’t have no friend here. You is a big shot.” Philo looks at Aldrick, who tells him to go. When Philo offers the bottle, Fisheye throws it to the ground and hits one of his girls. “Is war, Philo.” Philo, in retaliation, makes a hit calypso that is played all over the island about the hooligans in Port of Spain. Meanwhile, everyone is gearing up for carnival and Aldrick just looks on from his spot at the corner, feeling odd. He dreams of dragons every night but never starts working on his costume. While police begin to crack down on public loitering, Fisheye plots an attack against the police. 13. The Dragon Dance Fisheye comes to the corner one day with a pistol and tells the eight of them there that they are not to part when the police come around to kick loiterers off the street. His plan is that two of them will begin fighting when the police come, and when they get out to break it up, “they will see”. When the police come by and break up Crowley and Synco’s brawl, they cuff the police at gun-point, put them in the back and speed off in the squad car. They go to Woodford Square, the political centre of Port of Spain, where speeches and rallies are always held. Over the megaphone they proclaim: “This is the People’s Liberation Army.” At one point Aldrick takes the microphone and says: “make no peace with slavery…make no peace with shanty towns, dog shit, piss. We have to rise up as people. People”. Before this point, it had not been fully understood that Aldrick or any of these men, except for maybe Liberty Varlance, had any political motives behind their rebellious lifestyles. Crowds assemble to watch the chase, and it ensues for a couple of days, as the police figured they were not a threat to anyone’s safety and they would eventually tire themselves out or run out of gas. 14. Prison Dance Their defense attorney in court is a young man with passionate radical views and is very eloquent in his defense of the Calvary Hill nine (as papers had dubbed them). But in the end, it is not enough and they are all to serve sentences of a few years. Aldrick serves six years. While in prison they spend much of their time at the beginning sitting and discussing what they really expected from their stint in the police car, and in the end it seems it was all for show, a bluff, a dragon dance. After a while, during their prison sentence, they all drift apart and have no intention of continuing from where they left off once they get out of jail. 15. The Dragon Can’t Dance Aldrick returns to Calvary Hill after six years in prison and is greeted like a hero, yet he feels more like he is being received by a band of deserters that have long made peace with the enemy. He meets a new girl in a bar, named Molly, and she tells him of the two thousand people playing devil in the upcoming carnival. Aldrick gets temporarily excited that perhaps times haven’t changed, until she says they are “Fancy devil, with silk and satin. Pretty Devil”. He tells her of his time as dragon, a real dragon breathing fire and wearing long claws. The next day, he visits Sylvia for the first time in over six years and finds that she has matured. Sylvia recounts her confusion during the days he was in the police car, while Aldrick looks around her house and sees that Guy has provided her with many luxuries: a television, stereo, refrigerator, etc. Miss Cleothilda comes in and shakes his hand, she has aged considerably. She tells Aldrick about the degradation of the neighborhood, namely crime by young men whom she thinks were inspired by Fisheye’s police jeep hijacking. Guy has become a city councilor and because of this news, Miss Cleothilda challenges Aldrick: “What you could give her?” Shortly after, he realizes that Sylvia will soon be getting married. When Aldrick leaves her home, he realizes that maybe Sylvia had her life in control from the beginning, and that it is not so much that she chose Guy as she resisted the impotence of dragons. And with this, Aldrick feels at peace with the chapter of his life where Sylvia might have become a part. He walks by Pariag’s new store and is tempted to go in a talk to Pariag, but instead he walks on, disillusioned by his past and what the future holds. 16. The Shopkeeper Pariag had seen Aldrick stop outside of his shop, and it troubles him greatly that he (Aldrick) did not come in to speak with him. After all these years, Pariag still has not established any sense of belonging in Calvary Hill, and as a result of his ongoing isolation has more or less concluded that he is done with Creole people. Even with a shop, Pariag still did not acquire any degree of superiority in relation to others around the neighborhood, saying “shop don’t make a man”. He wishes, for the sake of the hill, that life was better for everybody, and that there was more unity between peoples. He lies with Dolly and they discuss their life together, remembering their life back in the country and his first meeting with her when he said that she would have to accept living in Port of Spain. 17. The Calypsonian Philo stands out on his verandah in Diego Martin, an affluent neighborhood of Trinidad, and looks out at the homes of people he thinks he has just figured out as being uniformly successful but also unfulfilled as human beings. From this revelation comes a new tune and he goes in to write it down, and there on his desk he finds the wedding invitation for Sylvia and Guy. As he thinks about Sylvia’s position in the yard as the symbol of youth and hope, he remembers Aldrick’s love for her, but also Guy’s taste for young women and his ability to get what he wanted. Philo thinks to himself: "Marriage to Guy was a horse of different colors.” He remembers a discussion about Sylvia and Guy that he had some time ago with Miss Cleothilda, and her undying faith in their life together. Cleothilda explains some of Sylvia’s side love interests, one man whom identified strongly with Africa, another that spoke passionately about Cuba, Vietnam, China and Trinidad’s potential for revolution. The youthful exuberance of these boys always enticed Sylvia greatly. Remembering the yard troubles Philo while he waits for one of his young girls to come by. He looks back on his youth, his family. She arrives and Philo decides to be forward with her and asks to fuck. Afterwards, he feels guilty for being so straight with her. Later that night, he decides to drive to Calvary Hill to see everybody. He is greeted warmly at a bar near the yard, and later decides to go and see Miss Cleothilda. She meets him at the door and tells him to come inside, that he knows where the bedroom is, but, even him forgetting that wouldn’t surprise her very much “with the way the world is going”.
5312783	/m/0dd_4w	Tomb of Valdemar	Simon Messingham		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor's quest to fix the Key of Time is interrupted by a complex conspiracy to bring back Valdemar, an ancient being that can change reality.
5313029	/m/0dd_kv	Grave Matter	Justin Richards		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Peri arrive on a fog-shrouded island, not even aware of which century they have landed in. They soon discover that they are on a remote island of the coast of Britain where the local people have put aside modern inventions and lifestyle. However, when a dead body rises from its grave, and the local school children display uncanny adaptivity, the Doctor must discover the secrets of the scientific research carried out by the island's benefactor.
5313833	/m/0df0_v	The Door	Magda Szabó		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A childless woman writer, Magda, hires an older housekeeper, Emerence, who behaves oddly, but eventually they develop a kind of friendship.
5314492	/m/0df231	Island of Death	Barry Letts		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jeremy Fitzoliver and his friend Sarah Jane Smith encounter a 'New Age' cult; typical work for investigative journalists. They are surprised that the cult worships a demon like figure. The Doctor and UNIT also become interested in the cult. This situation soon reveals the involvement of government ministers, alien drugs, a remote island in the Indian Ocean and official conspiracies. Even the Royal Navy gets in on the action. It soon becomes a race against time to avert disaster. It has been suggested that this is a version of a third proposed radio play following on from 'The Paradise of Death' and 'The Ghosts of N-Space'.
5315008	/m/0df2tb	Ancestors of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley	2004-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 2500 years BC, Tiriki, Priestess of Light and of the Earth-goddess Ni-Terat, and her husband Micail, Priest of Light and Prince of the Atlantean state Atharrath, have to save themselves from the destruction of Atlantis and are forced to board different ships to the Isles of Tin (Britain). When they finally reach the British coast, they are far away from each other and they both believe that the other one is dead. Tiriki and other Atlanteans who came with her, settle down in the swamplands surrounding the Holy Mountain (which is later going to be called the Isle of Avalon). She realizes that the cult of the Great Goddess is much stronger here than it was in Atlantis, so she and her companions start living with the indigenous people and build up a new religion, where the Atlantean knowledge and the Old Faith of the British people merge. Micail and Tjalan, Prince of Alkonath, on the other hand, try to rebuild the lost glory of Atlantis and start building a huge stone circle -which will later be known as Stonehenge - in order to turn the people of Britain to slaves by using its tremendous powers. When Tiriki and her followers finally come in contact with the other Atlantean settlement, conflicts arise immediately. de:Die Ahnen von Avalon fr:Les Ancêtres d'Avalon it:L'alba di Avalon pt:Os Ancestrais de Avalon
5315051	/m/0df2wt	Heart of TARDIS	Dave Stone		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Each Doctor has to deal with different ends of the same crisis involving a dimensional anomaly created by an American experiment, the Second accidentally materialising the TARDIS in a town that has been trapped in the anomaly while the Fourth is forcibly recruited to repair the equipment that created the anomaly. Although neither Doctor ever meets the other, the Fourth Doctor and Romana do travel to the Second's TARDIS to allow him to gain access when the anomaly renders the ship's interior inaccessible from the outside; when the Second Doctor enters, the Fourth Doctor and Romana subsequently hide under the console on the opposite side from the Second in order to escape detection, the Fourth stating that meeting himself would make things too complicated.
5315277	/m/0df3cg	Prime Time	Mike Tucker		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Detecting a mysterious sub-space signal in the Time Vortex, the Doctor and Ace land on the planet 'Blinni Gaar'. They soon discover that the native population are little more than zombies, addicted to the programmes of the dangerously powerful Channel 400. As the Doctor investigates, he finds that the television company has a sinister agenda that has nothing to do with entertainment.
5315587	/m/0df3y8	The Light Princess	George MacDonald			 A king and queen, after some time, have a daughter. The king invites everyone to the christening, except his sister Princess Makemnoit, a spiteful and sour woman. She arrives without an invitation and curses the princess to have no gravity. Whenever the princess accidentally moves up in the air, she has to be brought down, and the wind is capable of carrying her off. As she grows, she never cries, and never can be brought to see the serious side of anything. The court philosophers, when consulted, are unable to propose any cure that the king and queen will suffer to be used. She passionately loves swimming, and when she swims, she regains her gravity. This leads to the proposal that if she could be brought to cry, it might break the curse. But nothing can induce her to cry. A prince from another country sets out to find a wife, but finds fault in every princess he finds. He had not intended to seek out the light princess, but, upon becoming lost in a forest, he finds the princess swimming. Thinking she is drowning, he "rescues" her, ending up with her in the air, with her scolding him. He falls instantly in love and, upon her demand, puts her back in the water, and goes swimming with her. Days pass, and the prince learns that her manner is changed between the water and the land, and he can not marry her as she is on land. Princess Makemnoit, meanwhile, discovers that the princess loves the lake and sets out to dry it up. The water is drained from the lake, the springs are stopped up, and the rain ceases. Even babies no longer cry water. As the lake dries up, it is discovered that the only way to stop it is to block the hole the water is flowing from, and the only thing that will block it is a living man, who would die in the deed. The prince volunteers, on the condition that the princess keep him company while the lake fills. The lake fills up. When the prince has almost drowned, the princess frantically drags his body from the lake to take it to her old nurse, who is a wise woman. They tend him through the night, and he wakes at dawn. The princess falls to the floor and cries. After the princess masters the art of walking, she marries the prince. Princess Makemnoit's house is undermined by the waters and falls in, drowning her. The light princess and her prince have many children, none of whom ever lose their gravity.
5315609	/m/0df3_f	Palamon and Arcite	John Dryden			 The story is of two knights imprisoned by Theseus after being found unconscious after a battle. Theseus locks Palamon and Arcite in a dungeon where the two knights can see into a courtyard or garden. One day Palamon, looking through the bars of his cell, sees Emily. Falling in love instantly, Palamon cries out, causing Arcite to ask his friend what is wrong. Palamon declares his new found love for Emily, and as Arcite listens, he sees Emily. Turning to Palamon, Arcite claims that because he first recognized her as mortal and not a goddess, Arcite has the right to woo Emily. Later, one of Arcite's friends begs Theseus to free his prisoner; Theseus agrees, but banishes Arcite. The love-struck knight returns, disguised as one of Theseus's servants. The story unfolds as each knight endures different challenges to prove his love for Emily.
5316478	/m/0df5my	Half-Broken Things	Morag Joss	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The lives of three very lonely people - pregnant Steph, on the run from her violent boyfriend; Michael, a petty thief who becomes her knight in shining armour; and Jean, a sixty-year old spinster nearing the end of her career as a house sitter - collide dramatically within the grounds of the illustrious Walden Manor, where together they seal themselves away from the outside world and build a new life together. The fantasy cannot last forever though, and events take a murderous turn when the first unexpected guest arrives.
5317123	/m/0df6pp	Bullet Time	David A. McIntee		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Sarah Jane Smith encounters the Seventh Doctor in Hong Kong.
5317324	/m/0df71z	The Shadow in the Glass	Stephen Cole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart discovers an odd mystery. A plane being shot down in World War 2 was nothing out of the ordinary...but the fact the crash site is still being guarded decades later is. The Doctor moves in to investigate this oddness.
5317537	/m/0df7ht	Drift	Simon A. Forward		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is winter in New Hampshire. The US military is pursuing a survivalist cult while battling a series of unnatural blizzards. The storms are also holding a slow-building threat that could threaten the entire world if it is not stopped.
5317770	/m/0df83t	The True Story of the Three Little Pigs	Lane Smith	1989	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book tries to show that the Wolf from The Three Little Pigs does not necessarily have to be "Big" and "Bad." The wolf justifies his journeys to the little pigs' houses as needing to ask for some sugar to bake a cake for his dear Granny's birthday, his "huffing and puffing" as him having a cold and "sneeze[ing] a great sneeze", and his eating of the pigs as not letting good meat go to waste, since the pigs die in the sneeze anyway. At the very end of the book, it is revealed that the wolf has been telling the whole story from prison telling the reader that "he's been framed", having been caught during his 'attack' on the third pig's house due to his rage after the pig insulted his granny and rudely dismissed his polite requests for sugar.
5318187	/m/0df8pr	The Algebra of Ice	Lloyd Rose		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Ace investigate a 'crop circle' in the Kentish countryside; they are helped by a maths expert, a web-magazine publish and the Doctor's friend, the Brigadier. However, this crop circle is made of ice and is not circular, instead being filled with square-sided shapes. It draws the Doctor and Ace into a new level of reality.
5318297	/m/0df8yr	Synthespians™	Craig Hinton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Peri land on Reef Station One, an isolated space station that has modelled itself on 1980s popular culture and encounter Autons.
5318869	/m/0df9_z	The Eleventh Tiger	David A. McIntee		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 It is China in 1865. Strife and rebellion rock the land. Trying to maintain order is the British Empire and the martial arts expert, the Ten Tigers of Canton. Adding to the confusion is the impossibility of many people already knowing Ian.
5319045	/m/0dfb91	Empire of Death	David Bishop		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In 1863, Queen Victoria is insensate with grief after losing her husband, Prince Albert. A secret seance is planned. Concurrently, The Doctor and Nyssa are dealing with the death of their good friend, Adric. They are surprised when they are seemingly visited by the ghost of their dead friend. Everything, plus the secrets of a guarded, drowned village come together.
5319397	/m/0dfbx4	Kiss the Girls	James Patterson	1995-01-11	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kiss the Girls begins in 1975 Boca Raton, Florida where the boy, Casanova, is killing his first four victims. Elsewhere in 1981 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a young Gentleman Caller kills his first two victims. Present time - Casanova takes a girl to the woods and leaves her to die. He wears a mask for death. An ongoing theme is that Casanova wears a mask to symbolize his mood. Alex Cross comes home to find his sister, grandmother, and other relatives waiting for him and is informed that his niece, Naomi "Scootchie" Cross - a student at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina - is missing. In North Carolina Sampson and Cross meet Detectives Nic Ruskin and Davey Sikes, who tell Cross that the FBI and DEA are involved and that eight to ten women are missing, all from different states; all have received notes from someone calling himself Casanova. In Los Angeles, reporter Beth Lieberman is working on a serial killer story about “The Gentleman Caller”, who has just raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl. He threatens “bonus kills" to her if his letters are not published. Kyle Craig meets Beth in LA. Casanova plans to kill Kate because she had broken the rules, but she fights him and gets away. Kate manages to escape, running outside into a forest and jumping off a cliff into the river below. Cross and Ruskin find out she is alive, but she is too injured to speak. In North Carolina, Cross reads about the “Gentleman Caller” in the FBI serial killer files and one of the notes published in the LA Times mentions a black 2nd year law student, Naomi C. Alex tries to call Beth, but she hangs up on him. Cross calls her editor-in-chief, who reveals that Casanova and the Gentleman Caller are communicating as coast-to-coast serial killers. Casanova calls the "Gentleman Caller". Cross discovers Kate was drugged with Marinol, which leads them to believe that Casanova is a doctor or pharmacist. Kyle tells Cross and Kate that Beth Lieberman was murdered by the Gentleman Caller, who cut off her fingers. In her computer was a suspect for Casanova, a Dr. William Rudolph from Los Angeles. Kate and Alex go with Kyle to LA. Kate takes one look at Rudolph and is positive he is not Casanova. Cross knows for sure that there are two killers, which means that Rudolph is the Gentleman Caller. They follow Rudolph but he gets away from the authorities. They eventually catch up with him again the next afternoon. Rudolph has taken another woman and that night after hearing her scream, authorities rushes in, but Rudolph escapes. His apartment is searched and a picture of Rudolph with Dr. Wick Sachs from Durham is found. On the back it reads "Casanova". Cross and Sampson discuss a theory that the girls are being held in an underground house, built in an area that may have been part of the Underground Railroad. Sachs is a professor at Duke and Dean Lowell confirms Sachs is the campus skelton, known as "doctor dirt". Lowell also lets Cross know that Sachs had been a suspect when two students were murdered in the early 1980s. Later Ruskin and Sikes ask Cross for help in catching Casanova, whom they believe to be Sachs. Rudolph prowls Durham, reminiscing. He met Casanova at Duke and Casanova had known Rudolph had killed the young couple and kept the woman's tongue as a souvenir. Casanova shared with Rudolph his own experiences and the two formed a bond. When they reunite, they decide to work together to take down Cross, the homicide detective who was searching for both Casanova and The Gentleman Caller. Jay heads to Kate's house, where he sees Cross and Sampson. After they leave, Kate goes to bed, and is attacked by both Casanova and the Gentleman Caller at the same time. She is seriously wounded and taken to the hospital. Cross, Sampson, and the FBI are at her house. Cross notices that this attack is different from the first one and suspects both men worked together on this. The next day Sachs is brought in for questioning. Cross attacks him, noticing that Sachs is not very physically strong and is sure that Sachs is not Casanova. Later the FBI arrests Sachs, believing he is Casanova after finding physical evidence pointing to him. Sampson and Cross head to the forest again, taking a hand-written map given to them by an Underground Railroad historian and Duke professor. On it is an area not previously searched. As they walk, they hear women screaming. Following the screams they find the underground house. Outside, Casanova and the Gentlemen have been watching Sampson and Cross. They plan to take out Sampson first and then Cross. Cross finds Naomi but hears Sampson scream. He runs out to see Casanova and the Gentleman, both wearing masks, on top of his partner. Sampson has a knife stuck in his back. Cross takes his gun and fires, hitting one in the shoulder. The two take off running and make it to a nearby bar, steal a truck and take off. Cross takes a car and goes after them. In traffic, the two run out of the car, running in opposite directions and firing their guns. Cross follows one, they exchange gunfire, and he hits him in the chest. Cross runs to the man and removes his mask. It is Rudolph. He dies, telling Cross he will never catch Casanova. In the underground house, Cross looks for clues and thinks he knows who Casanova is. He keeps the information from Kyle Craig and decides to go on his own stakeout. He follows Davey Sikes, positive that he is Casanova. He thinks Sikes is looking for a new woman to kidnap. Cross snoops outside a house where Sikes has gone in. Sikes sees him and the two get into a fight. The woman was Sikes’s mistress and the FBI had known about the affair. Later, while visiting Kate, Alex goes jogging and finds a dead FBI agent. He runs back to the house where Casanova, who is Detective Nick Ruskin, hits him with a stun gun. With Cross down, Casanova heads for Kate, but Kate fights him and takes him down. He takes out his gun to shoot Kate but Cross gets up and shoots him in self-defense.
5319623	/m/0dfc79	The Osterman Weekend	Robert Ludlum	1972	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 John Tanner, the host of an investigative news show, is convinced by a CIA agent that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy, called Omega, that threatens national security. But then everything John Tanner thinks he knows about his closest friends is overturned, and he is set against them. But when Omega finally reveals itself, he realises that he has been manipulated from the very start. The novel was the basis for the film of the same title. fr:Le Week-End Osterman
5319905	/m/0dfcqb	The Pledge: Requiem for the Detective Novel			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Dürrenmatt uses a first-person narrative to insert himself into a frame story as a writer of detective fiction. However, the primary narrator is actually a character named Dr. H., a retired police chief who takes on the role of explaining to Dürrenmatt's first-person character the flaws of the detective literature genre. To do so, Dr. H. relates the story of one of his former inspectors, Matthäi, who, on his last day with the department, found himself called into an investigation of child murder. A suspect soon confessed to the crime, but knowing that the confession came only after the man was browbeaten in a relentless, 20-hour interrogation, Matthäi's keen police instincts told him that the man was not the real murderer. Matthäi felt that there was a serial killer at work, with the girl's murder being related to other child murders that had occurred in the area. However, he was alone in that assessment and the police closed the case. Having made a solemn promise to the parents of the murdered girl that he would find the culprit, Matthäi abandoned his previous plans and continued investigating the case as a private citizen. He was warned by a psychiatrist that the murderer he sought likely did not exist, and thus he might drive himself mad with his obsession in finding the man. Matthäi, however, was undeterred. Through shrewd detective work, and driven by a growing and near maniacal obsession with the case, Matthäi was able to construct a detailed profile of the likely killer, down to the very road the murderer would probably travel to and from his evil deeds. Matthäi purchased a gas station along the route, and then hired a housekeeper with a daughter named Annemarie, who matched the profile of the murdered girls. With Annemarie in place, living along the road as bait for the killer, Matthäi waited for the villain to come to him. Matthäi's plan seemed to come to fruition, as one day the girl reported having encountered a man matching the profile Matthäi had constructed of the killer. She even included details that tied the man's behavior to that of a man the original murdered girl had reported seeing prior to her death. Matthäi planned to apprehend the killer the next day, having the police surround the area where Annemarie said she was to meet the man again. They had lain in wait for him, but no one ever arrived. The failure proved to be utterly devastating for Matthäi. The police and all other outsiders were finally convinced that no other killer existed and that Matthäi's quest had been borne solely of his own madness. His relationship with Annemarie and her mother was destroyed through their discovery that despite the genuine love they had developed for him, he had seen Annemarie merely as bait for his trap. Unable to fathom how his intricate and detailed detective work had not resulted in a triumphant resolution to the case, Matthäi sank finally into insanity and alcoholism. Only years later, far too late to be of any use to Matthäi, was the truth revealed that his instincts and detective work actually had been entirely correct. The murderer had not arrived for his meeting with Annemarie on the fateful day simply because he had been killed in a car accident while on his way to the rendezvous. In the original film Es geschah am hellichten Tag, the story was directly that of the Matthäi character, rather than being framed through its retelling by Dr. H., as in Das Versprechen. At the end of the movie, Matthäi had demonstrated his concern for Annemarie by sending her and her mother away to safety before attempting to spring his final trap upon the murderer. The murderer arrived and was killed, thus vindicating Matthäi's persistence in pursuing the case and leading to a happy reunion with Annemarie at the story's conclusion. At the story's end, Dürrenmatt offers to the reader an implicit acknowledgment of the existence of the Es geschah am hellichten Tag version of Matthäi's story, by having Dr. H. explicitly mention that the tale of Matthäi would make a perfectly suitable entry into the genre of detective fiction, if only the ending were changed such that the killer arrived for his appointment with Annemarie and fell into Matthäi's trap. However, Dr. H.'s point in relating the tale is to demonstrate to the first-person narrator the folly of such fiction. The first of Dr. H.'s two main complaints about typical detective fiction is the idea that the criminal is always caught. He regards this as a relatively minor transgression, however, as even the most naive of readers would be aware that in real life, sometimes a crime is not solved. But the greater problem, to Dr. H.'s way of thinking, is the manner in which the solving of a crime is depicted in detective fiction. In such literature, the task of solving a crime is presented in a way that makes it akin to that of solving a mathematical equation. A properly formed equation can always be solved if enough of its variables can be computed and if the mathematician possesses enough skill to handle the equation's complexity. Detective fiction often depicts crime-solving in a similar light. Thus, a naive reader of such fiction might well conclude that, even in real life, if a detective fails to solve a crime, it is either because the perpetrator executed the crime well enough to avoid leaving the necessary clues &mdash; like an equation for which not enough variables could be computed &mdash; or because the detective was not clever enough to properly locate, assemble and analyze those clues to determine what had occurred &mdash; like a mathematician who lacks the skill to handle the complexity of the equation with which he is presented. In mentioning the idea of an alternate ending to Matthäi's story, Dr. H. is noting that with such an ending, the story would (and, in Es geschach am hellicten Tag, did) follow precisely the mathematical equation presentation typical of standard detective fiction. However, given the actual ending as related by Dr. H., Matthäi's failure to solve the crime arose solely because of an automobile accident &mdash; a completely random twist of fate that had nothing to do with either how the perpetrator committed the crime or any lack of competence on the part of Matthäi as an investigator. In fact, Dr. H. describes Matthäi as having been an investigative genius at a level unmatched even by fictional detectives. According to Dr. H., the sad story of Matthäi demonstrates that contrary to the mathematical precision usually presented in a detective novel, the outcome of true police detective work finds itself far more subject to random chance, coincidence and events entirely outside of the control of either the criminal or the investigator.
5320616	/m/0dfdy1	Independence Day	Peter Darvill-Evans		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor wishes to return a communications device he had borrowed from the Mendeb system years ago. Being a time lord, he reasons he can put it back before nobody notices anything is wrong. However, when he arrives he comes to believe he is far too late to fix things; an invasion seems to have resulted because of his actions.
5321169	/m/0dffwq	The King of Terror	Keith Topping		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Suspecting the American multimedia company Intercom of nefarious activities, the Brigadier asks the Doctor and Tegan to investigate. At their Los Angeles HQ, the pair run into terrorists obsessed with an ancient prophecy and aliens who turn the city into a battle ground.
5321463	/m/0dfgg8	As the Crow Flies	Jeffrey Archer	1991-05	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story tells the tale of the Trumper retail empire, through the (often overlapping) points of view of several of the main characters. The narrative characters are Charlie Trumper, Becky Salmon (later Trumper), Daphne, Colonel Hamilton, Mrs. Trentham, Daniel Trumper, and Cathy Ross. Guy Trentham is a non-narrative character who links most of these viewpoints together. The story begins with Charlie, grandson of a barrow costermonger. His father usually spends his money on drink instead of his family. Charlie is the youngest of the family, and has three older sisters. His mother died while giving birth to him. For as long as he could remember, Charlie wanted to sell fruits and vegetables just like his granpa (as he puts it). Charlie's father is eventually given a white feather, and ends up enlisting in the British Army to serve in World War I. Charlie, having saved the money he earned helping his grandfather, buys the "biggest barrow" for his own enterprise, only to find that his granpa died. Charlie tries running his own business. He is eventually bailed out by the Jewish father of "Posh Porky" a baker, who loans him money to pay the rent. He is impressed with Charlie's ability to learn from his mistakes and feels he has the ability to be successful. However, when his father is killed in WWI, Charlie enlists to take his place, leaving instructions to Rebecca to sell everything and keep his share secure for when he returns. Charlie fights in WWI under Colonel Hamilton and Captain Guy Trentham. He befriends another recruit, Tommy, (who was a pickpocket and was given the choice of enlisting or serving time). Twice they charge the enemy lines. The first time, Charlie wakes up in a hospital with having lost a toe. The second time, Charlie, Tommy, Guy manage to get behind enemy lines. After some killing, they retreat to their own front. It is here that Guy Trentham shoots Tommy, because he had proof that Guy turned a coward under fire. Tommy had left a will giving everything to Charlie. The most important thing he receives is a painting, which was later revealed to have been stolen by Guy Trentham. Tommy is awarded a Military Medal, and Guy Trentham a Military Cross, which his mother promptly has custom engraved with his initials. After the troops are demobilized, Charlie returns to London. He makes enquires and is led to a shop in Chelsea. He is astonished to see a greengrocer shop bearing the words "Trumper, The Honest Trader, Established 1823." Rebecca Salmon continues the tale, with her own version of events. Her prized possession is a book of art given to her by Daphne, a girl of nobility and common sense (though not of brains). She decides she wants to work in the art field, and becomes an excellent student. She also learns a lot about the bakery trade from her Jewish father, who was both honest, smart, and had potential. When Rebecca's father dies, she approaches Charlie asking him to go into business with her. They agree on terms, and she goes off to study art history at university. She shares rooms with Daphne, only after her mother gives her approval. She finds it impossible to continue the business of Charlie's costermongering and her father's bakery, and sells it to the highest bidder. She puts the proceeds into investments that she was unable to access when Charlie's irresponsible sister, Kitty, tells that her Charlie had been killed in the war. A short time later, her ego gets the better of her when she finds a greengrocery shop for sale in Chelsea. She makes enquiries, and offers 100 pounds for the freehold. She only has 40 pounds at the time, and did not know where to go when the offer was accepted. She is rescued by Daphne, who has her lawyers draw up very strict terms. Rebecca hires somebody to manage the store until Charlie returns. When he does, she tells him everything. Charlie goes about the business of costermonger, rearranging the shop and doing great business. However, when at a foursome for dinner, he finds himself paired with Daphne, against Rebecca and Guy Trentham. Guy Trentham invites Rebecca to his country place for a weekend. Mrs. Trentham marks the event with several snide comments about her. Guy tells Rebecca he loves her, and promises to marry her just before he is shipped to India. With these words, he seduces and impregnates her. However, he fails to provide either a ring or an announcement of their engagement. At urging, she writes to Guy about the child, but gets no response. Eventually, Rebecca realizes she has been a fool, and a week after giving birth to Daniel, marries Charlie. Daphne is a member of the upper classes in England, though she went to school with Rebecca Salmon. She hardly remembers her, except that she gave a book of art to her and got free cream buns from her father. However, when approached by Rebecca about sharing rooms, she takes delight in finding out that Rebecca's mother was worried about her rather than the opposite. She took Rebecca in as a roommate, to the delight of her parents, who were worried about a single woman living alone. Daphne takes considerable interest in Rebecca's future, both as an academic, and as a businesswoman. She learns of Becky's foolish offer on the greengrocery shop, and after careful investigation of the opinion of several people about Charlie, she backs the deal on her own terms. When Charlie returns home after the war, Daphne realizes that Rebecca's faith in him was justified. She becomes determined to play matchmaker between them, and educates Charlie in social niceties. She eventually unites them, and makes her own marriage in her own social class. However, having gained great insight into retailing, she also knows the British banking system. She knows that the banking clan is snobbish, and does not back a successful businessman if he does not have a title. She very wisely suggests the Trumpers get a "front man" - a man with the right background who will open doors for them with his connections and class. Colonel Hamilton nicely fits the bill, even though he is not Daphne's first choice. Daphne also responds to Guy's letter in which he tries to explain the events leading to Rebecca's pregnancy. Daphne is totally insulted by his attempt, in which he assumes that she is gullible, and would believe the story that Rebecca forced herself on him. Colonel Hamilton was the commanding officer of Charlie and Guy Trentham's unit in the First World War, but he was discharged after the war. At loose ends, he initially encounters the post-war Charlie in his greengrocers shop while running errands for his wife. He invites Charlie to the company dinner, where he encounters Rebecca, Charlie's date. At the dinner, Rebecca suggests he become their "front man". While initially reluctant, he decides to observe the shop secretly before making a commitment. Once satisfied that Charlie is a hard worker and is generating business, combined with his lack of other employment options, he accepts the offer. While he knew he was in over his head when it came to business, his background and old school tie allowed him to get the loan for the Trumper company. He gets involved in the business, offering suggestions, but defers to Charlie's judgement. He does, however, agree to be chairman of the company. His background, new position, and the success of Charlie's business allows them to get additional loans to acquire additional freeholds on buildings in Chelsa Square. Daphne, after receiving Guy Trentham's letter, picks him to confide in. Colonel Hamilton advises her on how to respond, and also asks his wife what he should do. She advises him to either write to Guy, write to his commanding officer, or forget the whole mess. He opts for the second option, and also attempt to discuss the matter with Guy's father. He instead encounters Mrs. Trentham, who coldly insists Guy had nothing to do with Rebecca's pregnancy. He later learns that Mrs. Trentham bought a block of flats in Chelsa Square, solely to keep the Trumpers from getting them. In recap, Charlie marvels at the shop that bears his name, when Rebecca introduces him to the manager. He finds he has a flat above the shop, but spends most of the night rearranging the displays for better traffic. In no time at all he's back at costermongering, and building up a devoted base of customers. He starts on his program of acquisition, marries Rebecca, and also secretly starts taking university classes. He also attends Daphne's wedding to Percy and admires the paintings. Along with the painting Tommy left him, starts his lifelong interest in buying paintings. Upon Daphne and Percy's return, he finds out from Percy that Guy Trentham was forced to resign from the army, based not only on his actions with Rebecca, but also an affair with the adjutants wife. Charlie and Rebecca move into a house, and she gets pregnant again. Charlie has the little painting reframed, but is assaulted by Guy Trentham on the way home, who steals the painting. He also finds that Guy broke into his home, and caused his wife trauma which resulted in a stillborn daughter. Rebecca recovers, and Charlie focuses on business once again. One of his employees delivers to him a list of girls applying for work in his florist shop, with a note on one of them. She was unqualified for the position, but had been a maid for the Trentham family. She was discharged for having an affair with the second footman. Charlie employs her as a maid for his family, but her real job is to gather information on the Trenthams (as the maid is still with the footman). This information comes in handy when the art gallery in Chelsa Square is auctioned off. While Charlie and Rebecca develop a plan to thwart Mrs. Trentham, it ultimately fails, as she bids higher than them for the property. Just before she's about to win the auction, Charlie returns with a new, higher bid, and the bidding goes to very high levels. Mrs. Trentham wins, with a bid of twelve thousand pounds. When asked what he was doing by Rebecca, Charlie responds that he knew she would go up to ten thousand pounds, as it was her bank balance. Mrs. Trentham begins by stating she is not a snob, and retells the story from her perspective. She glosses over her rude manners towards Rebecca, stating only that she was the type of girl who brought out the worst in her. She is relieved when Guy brings another girl over a few weeks later. She similarly believes Guy when he tells her that he wasn't the father of Rebecca's baby, and we learn that she deliberately arranged for a meeting with herself instead of her husband (an M.P.) with Colonel Hamilton, as she scheduled it during a three line whip. She employs a private detective to dig up some information, and learns through him that Charlie is not denying the child was his, and his name is on the birth certificate. However, she does learn her son resigned his commission, and would have been cashiered if he hadn't resigned. Upon his return to their estate, he has the stolen painting. Mrs. Trentham arranges to hide the painting, sets up false clues regarding the assault, and sends her son to Australia. From there she spreads a rumour that he was offered a partnership in a cattle business that was too good to pass up. She continues to send him money. After the auction of the art gallery and auction house, she realizes she doesn't have enough money to pay in full, and sacrifices her deposit. She then learns about Guy's impending death, and sails to Australia to bring his body back home and arrange matters in Australia. With the threat of a general strike, Charlie resolves to keep business as usual, and buy a few more shops at low prices. However, he prepares for unrest (in the form of a general strike) with drills, and responds well. Mr. Fothergill, the owner of the art gallery, approaches Charlie, saying that Mrs. Trentham was unable to pay for his shop. Charlie agrees to buy the place, but only at the maximum his board would allow. It will be Rebecca's new job after she has completed her thesis for her master's degree (she had already been employed at Sotheby's, starting at the front desk and working her way up). Both attend the graduation ceremony for it, but to Rebecca's shock, Charlie has also been awarded a degree in mathematics, having secretly been attending classes for eight years. Things at the gallery are rough, as Charlie keeps trying to steal the best pieces for his own art collection. However, things are smooth enough that he and Rebecca take a trip to the United States. He instantly falls in love with Bloomingdale's, and spends the next several days taking notes about the entire operation. He is eventually noticed by security, who question him about his actions. He reveals who he is, and meets John Bloomingdale. The two talk about retailing and department stores, and become friends. In Chicago, he is similarly impressed with Marshall Fields and its owner. He resolves to build a store greater than either of those in London. Upon his return to England, he meets a Jewish refugee who had patiently waited outside his office for several weeks, even though Charlie was in America. The refugee is attempting to sell jewelry; all he has left from his flight from Germany. Charlie buys the man's jewels, and makes him the manager of the jewelry department in the process. He also realizes war is inevitable. He faces another problem in the form of his sister Kit, who was caught shoplifting. He declines to press charges, but bans her from the store. War starts, and the first shop to fall victim to the German bombs is Mrs. Trentham's flats. The second victim is Charlie's greengrocers store, which Charlie takes a personal affront to. He re-enlists in the army, but is summoned to Prime Minister Churchill's office. Churchill needs him for logistics; obtaining and distributing food for both the troops and the home front. Charlie studies the problems, and makes recommendations. When he realizes there are not enough men to drive trucks or work on farms, he tells the minister of food to get women instead. Daniel, his son, enlists, but does not go to the front. He was a mathematic student, and worked on a top secret project (cryptology, including the breaking of the enigma code). He notes that Daniel looks a lot like his father when in his captain's uniform. Charlie also learns of the death of Mrs. Trentham's father, and seizes the chance to buy the remaining shops in Chelsea Square before she can grab them. Unbeknown to anybody, from a very young age Daniel knew he was illegitimate. His mind, suited to solving puzzles, stored various bits of overheard conversation. While he grew to be a professor of maths, and helped in the code-breaking of the Enigma device during World War II, he also solved the puzzle of who his true father was, and decided to track him down. During summer holidays, he sets sail to America, telling his parents he is visiting math professors, but instead goes to Australia, where he finds his biological father was a deadbeat who died in jail. He isn't told he was hanged. Daniel also realized that Mrs. Trentham's hatred of the Trumpers stems from him, as Rebecca named Guy Trentham as his father at the time. While Mrs. Trentham was blocking the build of the large department store, as well as building dreadful flats with her property, Daniel decides to take matters into his own hand by dressing as Guy, knowing his similar appearance will force Mrs. Trentham into acknowledging him as her grandson. He successfully bargains with her, getting her to drop her objections to the store and drop the hideous flats, but is asked to give up any claim to the Hardcastle (Mrs. Trentham's father) estate in return. He does so, but feels uneasy about it afterwards. Mrs. Trentham is horrified to learn her father plans to leave everything to Daniel Trumper. Her father tells her he's studied him for some time, and his convinced he's of his blood, from his appearance to his mannerisms. However, he did not intent to let Daniel know of his fortune until he turned 30. Upon her father's death, Mrs. Trentham engages in a campaign to swindle her sister out of her legacy, as well as that of Daniel Trumper. She succeeds in both, and uses the estate to buy as much stock in Trumper's stock as she can, intending for her son Nigel to become chairman of the company. She later bargains to sell her property to Trumpers for even more stock. In the interim, she has Kitty, Charlie's sister, place the painting Charlie inherited from Tommy at the debut auction of Trumpers, then having a man claim it was stolen. Charlie and Becky figure out the painting was a masterwork, and was stolen during World War I. They feel it was likely that Guy Trentham planted it in Tommy's effects, as Guy would have known the value, and used it to blackmail Charlie if the true events of the war came to light. However, a bishop of the church gambles the Trumpers are fair players, and agrees to publicly state the one for sale was a copy in exchange for the real painting, allowing all sides to save face. Later, a young assistant named Cathy Ross spots the same man who declared the painting stolen property looking at a silver tea set. Becky contacts the police, and eventually finds it was stolen. They turn the situation into their advantage by playing the on the press, and showing that the Trumpers are showing concern for any item of dubious origin. Later, Charlie and Becky are informed of Daniel's provision under the terms of Gerald Hardcastle's will. They go to inform him of his lineage, but are first surprised by his announcement of his engagement to Cathy Ross, then by a call from their attorney, who informs them of the contract Daniel signed. In the meantime, Nigel Trentham is placed as a member of the board of directors of Trumpers after controlling enough stock through his mother's actions. The goal is for Nigel Trentham to replace Charlie as the chairman. Cathy grew up in Australia in an orphanage, never knowing her parents. Her single artifact from her past was a miniature M.C., which she wore as a necklace. She snooped around, then found there was an engraving on the miniature M.C. of the initials G.F.T. However, nobody in the Australian military had those initials. Her only hope was the war office in England. While she had an art degree, she was not accepted at Slade, and out of options, agreed to work in a hotel as a chambermaid for a year in exchange for passage to England. In her spare time, she tracks down her father as Guy Trentham. She also notes that Charlie Trumper was a member of that regiment. She finds the shops, and asks about getting a job in the art gallery. She interviews with Becky Trumper, and lands a job, first as a counter girl, then working in the art department. In the process, she learns of the feud between the Trenthams and the Trumpers. Invited to the housewarming party of the Trumpers, she meets Daniel Trumper, and the two become lovers. In the midst of it, she writes to Mrs. Trentham concerning her birth, and she replies, and later reveals to Daniel her period is two weeks late. However, Mrs. Trentham sent a letter to Daniel regarding Cathy, resulting in his suicide. Cathy was tramuatized by Daniel's suicide, and Charlie and Becky take her in Charlie also starts butting heads with Nigel Trentham in the boardroom, as Nigel's suggestions are usually ill-founded. Cathy becomes the Trumper's protégé, as they loved her as their son's chosen wife. Mrs. Trentham dies, and leaves her estate to Nigel. Nigel intends to use the money as colleratal to mount a hostile takeover of Trumpers. However, Sir Raymond Hardcastle had foreseen the possibility, and added a clause to his will allowing for two years to find a different legitimate heir before his estate was probated. Charlie and his staff work diligently to try to find one with no luck, until, close the to the closing date, Daphne overhears it, and tells both Charlie, Becky, and their attorney's that looking in England was a waste of time. They begin looking in Australia, and eventually piece together that Cathy Ross was the legitimate daughter of Guy Trentham and his wife (who he murdered and was hung for). However, Mrs. Trentham took elaborate measures to hide her. In a confrontation between Nigel and his attorneys, and Charlie and his, the key bit of evidence was the M.C. miniature worn by Cathy. Cathy says it was given to her by her father (her one clear memory of him), and Nigel claims he can prove it wasn't his brother's. The full M.C. was engraved with his initials by his mother, and insists that a miniature would have also been engraved. The medal is examined under a magnifying glass, and the attorney's admit the case is proven - Cathy's M.C. miniature bore the engravement. Without the estate's money to back his stock, Nigel is forced to sell and resign as a board member. Cathy becomes the new chairman of Trumpers. Charlie is named life president, but is eventually banned from the store, to let the next generation take over. As he has become a lord, he attends parliament, and suddenly gains a new hold on life, rising early and talking about agriculture committees. However, when a request came in for an order of Cuban cigars for Mr. Field from the U.S., neither Becky or Cathy knows which brand he smokes (Cuban cigars were now illegal in the U.S. after the trade embargo from Cuba; Charlie had substituted Trumper brands for the Cuban ones). They find out that Charlie's tales of parliament and committees were a fabrication. They eventually track him down to his origins - finding him selling fruits and vegetables out of a barrow with great success. Both laugh at the situation, but realize Charlie is happy doing what he always loved best. Cathy notes he's come a long way since his youth at the barrow, but Becky says it was really only a few miles - As the Crow Flies.
5322210	/m/0dfhqs	Last Orders	Brian Aldiss	1996-01-26	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story makes much use of flashbacks to tell the convoluted story of the relationships between a group of war veterans who live in the same corner of London, the backbone of the story being the journey of the group to Margate to scatter the ashes of Jack Dodds into the sea, in accord with his last wishes. The title 'Last Orders' not only refers to these instructions as stipulated in Jack Dodd's will, but also alludes to the 'last orders (of the day)' - the last round of drinks to be ordered before a pub closes, as drinking was a favourite pastime of Jack and the other characters. The plot and style are influenced by William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.
5324519	/m/0dfndc	The Quantum Archangel	Craig Hinton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Mel must work through personal problems in order to defeat Kronos, a powerful being seeking revenge on the Master.
5324637	/m/0dfnm8	Bunker Soldiers	Martin Day		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The first Doctor and his companions are trapped in an ancient Earth city as a murderous army sweeps in ever closer. To complicate matters, something alien is awakening beneath the innocent defenders.
5324697	/m/0dfntb	Rags			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 On the windswept wilds of Dartmoor, a going-nowhere punk band pulls off the road while their driver, Doc, answers a call of nature by the standing stones. The van is struck by a Range Rover driven by a group of drunken upper-class students from Exeter, and the minor accident becomes a major brawl as the punks and toffs lay into each other, driven by class hatred. Doc, watching it all from the tor, sees an old bone dagger buried in the earth, and, driven by some unnatural feeling of hatred, he pulls it free and buries it the chest of one of the students. As the blood soaks into the standing stones, something which has slept for centuries wakes, and the fight becomes bloody and deadly. Soon all of the fighters are dead, but that's just the start of it. Drawn by the violence, thugs from a nearby village arrive with a cattletruck, and it isn't just the standing stone which they load into the back. The tour to end all tours is about to begin... The Doctor is taking advantage of a rare quiet time at UNIT to work on the dematerialisation circuit when the TARDIS sensors pick up a powerful energy surge from Dartmoor. He and Jo set off to investigate, and track the disturbances to a small village near Dartmoor prison. The cattletruck has driven over the moors to Princetown, drawing the attention of the local slacker Nick, his lover Sin Yen, and their friends Jimmy and Rod. Four players emerge from the back of the cattletruck, musicians like a cross between punks and wandering mummers -- and their songs are raw musical wounds of violence and hatred which sweep the crowd into a frenzy. A riot breaks out in the prison, and the cons at the work farm turn on their guards, dragging them in front of the cattletruck and brutally slaughtering them. Nobody lifts a finger to stop them, and the village constable is trampled and killed as the audience riots in celebration of the deaths. Even Jo is caught up in the madness of the moment... When the band stops playing, the riots stop as well, and the audience, shaken, withdraws to the pub. Night seems almost to seep out of the cattletruck rather than falling naturally, but when the Doctor tries to investigate he is driven off by the roadies -- thugs who are rumoured to be involved in Satanic rituals in the nearby villages. Journalists arrive in town to cover the murders, and reporter Charmagne Peters finds herself strangely drawn to the story. She once visited Romania as a young woman, and vowed to become a journalist after seeing the horrific conditions in which the sewer urchins of Belgrade lived. She can't explain why this particular story touches her so personally, but she vows to follow it to the end. The people in the pub fall silent as a mummer enters, handing out flyers to anyone who will take them -- anyone who seems to welcome what he's offering. To Nick's dismay, Sin is one of them. The flyers announce that the Unwashed and Unforgiving tour will be playing in Postgate on Tuesday, and the Doctor decides to attend as well. On the day of the performance, violence breaks out again. Three fox hunters choose the wrong pub to retire to for a drink, and as the band starts to play outside, three men take down the farming implements decorating the walls of the pub and use them as instruments of death. Once again the band's music has incited murder, and once again nobody flees in horror; in fact, the audience seems to welcome the rage, and Sin feels "chosen" by the fact that the lead singer vomited green bile all over her during his performance. Jo seems to have made friends with Nick's gang, and the Doctor asks her to stay with them and keep an eye on the band while he returns to UNIT to analyse the readings he's taken. But she must be careful. More and more people are joining the mummer's convoy, drawn by the message of hate that's being sent out... In the town of Cirbury, unemployed alcoholic Kane Sawyer learns that his arch-nemesis Simon King will be returning. Simon is now a big-shot BBC producer, and he's coming back to stage the Epic of Gilgamesh -- supposedly as a dry run for the Edinburgh Festival, but really to rub his success in the faces of those he left behind. The Sawyers have been shunned by the town for years, and when the young Simon saw Kane kissing his sister Cassandra at school, he and his schoolyard chums held Kane down and forced him to eat a jar of slugs. Cassandra has spent the last fifteen years waiting for Mr Right to come along, and Kane knows that he'll always be her lost love -- and that he'll never be good enough for her. Meanwhile, in Bristol, working-class Derek Pole's attempts to incite demonstrations for anarchy are failing from lack of interest, but he has something big planned nevertheless. Shadow Cabinet minister Jeremy Willis intends to help him, in order to embarrass the current government and ensure that his party wins the next election. The Unwashed and Unforgiving tour appears to play right into his hands; if he arranges for the convoy to remain in Bristol at the same time that Princess Mary arrives for a royal visit to the University, they can be used as scapegoats when Pole strikes against the parastic monarchy he's hated all his life... The Doctor considers asking the Brigadier to stop the tour, but for some reason he doesn't. Perhaps the Brigadier just seems a bit too smug, or perhaps something else is influencing the Doctor's decision. In any case, he does ask the Brigadier to send in an undercover agent to keep an eye on Jo, and after some consideration the Brigadier selects Mike Yates. However, he is too late; when the convoy stops at Glastonbury, the mummer wanders the crowds, spreading the word, and Jo falls under his spell as well. Only Nick remains sane, and worried; the convoy is full of losers who have forgotten how to dream, and the band is now doing their dreaming for them. And what violent dreams they are... As night falls, Rod wakes from a profound nightmare to see the mummer walking up to Glastonbury Tor, and he follows, knowing that it'll be the last thing he ever does. At the top of the hill Rod sees a vision of the dead rising from the land, and as he is confronted by the mummer -- the Ragman, the spirit of the Unwashed and Unforgiving Tour -- his last thought is of the horrors that will soon be unleashed. Meanwhile, the local policemen detailed to watch the convoy are relieved of duty, and return home... where they dismember their wives and children. The PM is facing pressure to end the nightmare tour, and after the "incident" at Glastonbury, he replaces the police escort with UNIT troops. This is done over the Doctor's objections; he has detected a secondary energy source somewhere in the country, and suspects that something is calling the tour to it. Any overt military presence might stop the force behind the tour from showing its hand. The convoy makes its way to Bristol, where they settle down in the Arnos Vale cemetery. The UNIT escort seals off the band and their followers, but the soldiers pay no attention to the homeless alcoholics who live near the cemetery -- and as the band starts to play again, the Arnos Vale winos pull gardening tools out of the sexton's shed and head for the Money Tree, a posh bar in the heart of the financial district. Nobody gets out alive. The police question the members of the convoy about the incident -- but for some reason, they don't question the band or the roadies. The Brigadier senses that there's something odd about that, but then forgets to follow it up; the Ragman's influence is growing stronger. Even Jo has been swept up in the spirit of hatred, and she cheered at the Arnos Vale gig when the lead singer vomited maggots out of his mouth, singing out the wild fury and sickness of the unloved and the unwanted. Mike fears that Jo has gone too far undercover, but she doesn't care. She's a part of the convoy now. Charmagne Peters has followed the tour to Bristol, and she slips into the cemetery to get some quotes from the audience. But there are no answers here, just raw, angry enthusiasm for the violence which has been let loose; soon the divisions between the classes will be torn down forever. Charmagne tries to catch a glimpse of what lies inside the cattletruck, but flees in horror when she sees a dead grey eye staring out through a crack at her. She later returns, determined to face down her fears and learn more, but that's a mistake; the roadies are waiting for her, and they fling her into the back of the cattletruck, where she finds herself in an impossibly open space. The back of the cattletruck stretches out across a moor, the same moor where she and her father used to play hide and seek, until one day she hid too well and he suffered a heart attack from the exertion of looking for her. Finally, she's found her father again, but it's not her father. It's the Ragman, and he has things to show her. The Doctor finally finds the source of the secondary pulse, amongst a group of standing stones in a field in Cirbury. The sound of bells draws him to the nearby church, where Kane Sawyer has entered with the vague intention of vandalising the building which doesn't want him. Or perhaps something else has drawn him here, as he realises when he finds his ancestor Emily's tomb in the crypt. The cleaning woman gleefully repeats the old tale to Kane and the Doctor; history or legend, it's said that Emily died in poverty, disowned by her father for being with child. The whole tale is in the library, in a book which should have been burned long ago. Kane knows the book she means; it terrified him as a child, searing images of horror into his mind and never letting go. He flees back to the library, where the book is still waiting for him; it tells the same tale Charmagne is seeing unfold in the back of the cattletruck, a tale of the magistrate's son and the mayor's daughter, who made love by the standing stones while penniless mummers huddled in the grass nearby. When one of the mummers approached, begging for coins, the boy struck him aside and the mummer cracked his head against a standing stone. From the blood and violence the Ragman was born, thrusting itself out of the stone and into the body of the dead mummer, tearing apart the boy and doing something even worse to the girl. When the townsfolk attacked the Ragman it killed many of them and then retreated back into the stone, to await the day when its message could spread to the world. The terrified townsfolk executed the other mummers, soaking the stone with their blood, and sent the bodies and the stone far away. But those who carried the stone away were driven mad by the journey, and they claimed that the Ragman would return one day. And he will. The book was written and illustrated by a madman... Kane's grandfather. The Doctor now knows that he's let things go too far, and he heads for Arnos Vale cemetery -- or tries to. The Ragman is now powerful enough to reach out from Bristol, creating images of horror and hallucinations which try to drive the Doctor off the road or otherwise delay him. Nevertheless, the Doctor makes it back to the cemetery, where he finds the UNIT troops getting tense; Corporal Robinson, whose parents were killed in a car crash caused by stoned hippies, can barely keep her rage at the convoy under control. The Doctor heads for the cattletruck, pausing only to tell Mike to watch over Jo... but that's a mistake, for Sin sees this and turns the mob against the traitorous Mike. Jo turns against him as well, and Mike is beaten nearly to death before Corporal Robinson arrives. She in turn nearly shoots Sin before the Brigadier can stop her and impose order on his troops once again. The Doctor enters the cattletruck, only to find himself lost on a hellish moor where the tarns are filled with blood and severed heads and limbs float along streams of gore. In the middle of a moat of blood, raised on an altar of dead flesh, a standing stone pulses with the same energies the Doctor detected at Cirbury; and here, the Ragman is waiting for him. The Ragman shows him things; an asteroid travelling through uncountable light years of space, bathed in alien radiation and given life without sentience, drawn to Earth and nourished by the planet's ley-lines, until the being within was given birth in an eruption of class-based violence and death. This is all it knows. The Ragman has raised the dead mummers of the Cirbury legend and cloaked their rotting bodies with the flesh of the punk band whose deaths woke it from sleep; with the hatred of the convoy to feed it, it will level all class distinctions and bring true equality to the people of the world... an equality of nothingness, of death. The Doctor now knows his enemy, but that isn't enough to defeat it; he's lost in the perceptual vortex of the Ragman's cattletruck, facing nightmares of his failures, seeing his old companions turn on him while his own ego takes the form of a monstrous spider and tears apart his TARDIS. In the end he is reduced to a shivering wreck, convinced that all of his old adventures were delusions; there are no Daleks, no Cybermen, no UNIT, just a mad old man huddled in an empty police box shell on the Ragman's tarn of death... The day of Princess Mary's visit to Bristol is the same day the supporters of the fox hunt have chosen to hold a rally -- and Jeremy Willis arranges to let the convoy out of the cemetery, claiming that they will start to riot if they are kept cooped up against their will. While UNIT and the Bristol police maintain a wary cordon between the travellers and the fox hunters, the cattletruck leaves the cemetery unnoticed and parks near the University. There, Pole is waiting for Mary to arrive; Willis believes that he intends to kidnap her and hold the monarchy to ransom, but in fact, he plans to assassinate her. However, as he steps out of the crowd, drawing his gun, Mary turns, takes it from his hands, shoots him five times and dances on the body, claiming that this is her birthright. In the furore that follows, Willis commits suicide when his link to Pole is found out. Mary claims not to remember any of it, but nobody believes her. Another wedge has been driven between the classes. Their work done in Bristol, the convoy sets off again, and splits in two; half of them follow the cattletruck to Cirbury for the summer solstice performance, and the rest go to Stonehenge. The Brigadier receives new orders at last; the government will not tolerate the vandalism of a national monument, and UNIT must keep the travellers out of the circle. Only Mike Yates thinks to wonder why the government didn't give any orders to intervene after the murders. He's still somewhat disoriented by the beating he took in the cemetery, and perhaps that's why he's the only one unaffected by the tension building up amongst the UNIT troops. Even Benton and the Brigadier seem to be affected by it; when Corporal Robinson urges them just to open fire on the convoy, neither of them questions this blatant insubordination. Yates suggests sending a squad to Cirbury, as the band has always been at the centre of the disturbances, but the Brigadier refuses, insisting that the enemy is here, at Stonehenge. Certain that something's wrong, Yates disobeys orders and takes a group of soldiers to Cirbury. Nobody even notices them go. In the middle of Simon King's production, Gilgamesh asks the audience who will challenge him, and the drunken Kane walks up on stage and pushes King into the audience. Something bad is coming, and Kane knows what it is; it's his ancestor. The magistrate's son did not father Emily Sawyer's child. Shaken by the encounter, knowing that he only returned to this dismal town to flaunt his success, Simon speeds out of town -- but just as it seems he's going to put it behind him forever, he sees the Ragman standing in the road ahead of him, and drives off the road into a standing stone. Nobody notices the explosion; the convoy has arrived, and the townspeople seem to accept their presence as natural. Nobody will listen to Kane's drunken warnings of evil, and when Nick finally challenges the Ragman, claiming that he brings only hatred and death, the Ragman literally cuts him dead with a look. But there's a shred of hope. In the cattletruck, the Doctor sees Jo appear before him and beg for help, and the telephone in the police box shell rings for him. A familiar voice on the other end wakes him to reality; even the Time Lords fear what the Ragman might do if left unchecked. There's a monster out there, and he has to fight it. He is given the strength to go on, and to find his way out of the perceptual distortions, out of the cattletruck, to fight the Ragman for the last time. Night has fallen over Cirbury; the night of the summer solstice, and the night of the tour's final performance. This time, they're tapping into more than just the hatred of the convoy; they're drawing power out of the ley lines which gave birth to the Ragman in the first place. As the band starts to play, the Ragman sends Jimmy to Stonehenge, where he drives his van into the monument, knocking a stone out of position, blowing up the van and himself, and finally sparking an all-out battle between the soldiers and the travellers, who have been aching to lay into each other for days. As the violence erupts at Stonehenge, the people of Cirbury turn on each other, tearing apart the village constables. Kane Sawyer arrives, having given in to his destiny at last, and Charmagne Peters emerges from the cattletruck, also under the spell of her ancestor. They are both descendents of Emily Sawyer's child, the child of the Ragman; and the fruit of their union will inherit a great levelled land where all are equal. Yates and his men arrive and try to gun down the mummers, but their bullets have no effect, for the players are already dead. The Ragman raises the corpses of 18th-century highwaymen, those who robbed the rich and were killed for it, and sets them on the UNIT men. Yates is shot in the shoulder as his men die around him. The force of the Ragman's hate is spilling out into the ley lines, and the people of the convoy see images of London falling, and of the royal family hung to die on an Offering Tree. Anarchy is loose, and soon all the world will be bathed in violence... But then the Doctor steps out of the cattletruck, bringing his confidence with him. Nick lies dead near the standing stones, killed for speaking against a message of dissent. The Doctor knows the Ragman for what he is; a being of foulness and corruption, who promises change but brings only hatred and death. And as long as he stands here, drawing power from the ley lines which gave birth to him, he's vulnerable. The Doctor forces Charmagne to look at the Ragman, and she sees him for what he really is; not her father at all, but a monster. Enraged, Charmagne picks up a pitchfork, and as she stabs at the Ragman Sin rushes forward to protect her saviour -- and is impaled before Charmagne realises what she's doing. Sin's last sight is of Nick's body, and she dies realising just what she'd given up. The crowd sees her die, and the Ragman's spell over them is broken -- and as they turn on the creature who brought them to this false night of violence, Kane realises that the Ragman is the thing that brought him down, kept him down, and prevented him from making anything of his life. Enraged, Kane attacks the Ragman, pushing him back against the standing stone. As the Doctor had realised, the Ragman is vulnerable to the powers he's released here, and both he and Kane are drawn into the stone and sealed there, trapped forever. The spell is broken, here and at Stonehenge, but it's too late for many; Kane Sawyer, Sin and Nick, Corporal Robinson, and all those murdered as the convoy made its way across England. The biggest question of them all remains unanswered; how could they ever have let things get this far?
5324874	/m/0dfp5v	M*A*S*H Goes to Maine	H. Richard Hornberger		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Hawkeye Pierce returns to live in Crabapple Cove, Maine near the town of Spruce Harbor. Having left the Army, Hawkeye is established to be working for the Veterans Administration. In May 1954 he is laid off. At this point, Hawkeye doesn’t have much money in the bank, is 31 years old, and has three children: Billy, Stephen and Karen. The day he’s released, Trapper John McIntyre comes to visit and sets Hawkeye’s future in motion. Trapper John, a Lieutenant in the medical organization of Maxie Neville in New York City, arranges for further thoracic training for Hawkeye, first in the East Orange VA Hospital in New Jersey, then at St Lombard’s in Manhattan from July 1954. After two years Hawkeye breezes through the Thoracic Boards. At the end of his training in June 1956, two Spruce Harbor locals, Jocko Allcock (the man who was responsible for Hawkeye being fired by the VA) and “Wooden Leg” Willcox (the local fish magnate) come to visit Hawkeye to set him up in practice—by betting favorably on the outcome of his operations. The first operation with Trapper John’s assistance (upon Pasquale Merlino) is a success, and thanks to his superior training Hawkeye becomes the local surgeon. As time goes by, Hawkeye is given more patients by the local general practitioner of note, “Doggy” Moore; goes into private practice with ex-Spitfire pilot Tony Holcombe and plots the eventual reuniting of the Swamp Gang. By 1959 Hawkeye has lured Trapper John, Duke Forrest, and Spearchucker Jones into his net, and thanks to the proceeds of the “Allcock-Willcox” syndicate, a new “Finestkind Fishmarket and Clinic” is set up along with the new Spruce Harbor General Hospital. Duke returns to Georgia from Korea, and takes a course in urology. Hawkeye Pierce then invites him up to Spruce Harbor, Maine to join him and a new friend, Tony Holcombe in private practice. Duke immediately turns up in Maine with his bloodhound, Little Eva, and joins Hawkeye in persuading Spearchucker to become the local neurosurgeon. Duke and his family move into Crabapple Cove next to Hawkeye and Mary Pierce. Pierce's home, "Port Waldo", is (real-life) Waldoboro, and the FinestKind Clinic is just up Route 1 in Rockland. "Crabapple Cove" is Broad Cove, in Bremen, just down the Medomak River from Waldoboro Village. Richard Hooker (Hornberger) owned an old farmhouse on Heath Point. The reader will note Wreck Island, Thief Island, and other Muscongus Bay landmarks in the book. It is possible that the Pierce family is modeled after the (real-life) Spear family, who had a number of different branches in the area, in the 1950s.
5326809	/m/0dfs7q	Jurassic Park	Michael Crichton	1990-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrative begins in August 1989 by slowly tying together a series of incidents involving strange animal attacks in Costa Rica and on Isla Nublar, the main setting for the story. One of the species, a strange small lizard-like creature with three toes, is identified later as a Procompsognathus. Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student, Ellie Sattler, are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond—founder and chief executive officer of International Genetic Technologies, or InGen—for a weekend visit to a "biological preserve" he has established on a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica. Upon arrival, the preserve is revealed to be Jurassic Park, a theme park showcasing cloned dinosaurs. The animals have been recreated using damaged dinosaur DNA found in mosquitoes preserved in prehistoric amber. Gaps in the genetic code have been filled in with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA. To control the population, all specimens on the island are lysine-deficient females. Hammond proudly touts InGen's advances in genetic engineering and shows his guests through the island's vast array of automated systems. Recent events in the park have spooked Hammond's investors. To placate them, Hammond means for Grant and Sattler to act as fresh consultants. They stand in counterbalance to a well-known mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm and a lawyer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro. Both are pessimistic about the park's prospects. Malcolm, having been consulted before the park's creation, is especially emphatic in his prediction that the park will collapse, as it is an unsustainable simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system. Countering Malcolm's dire predictions with youthful energy, Hammond groups the consultants with his grandchildren, Tim and Alexis "Lex" Murphy. While touring the park with the children, Grant finds a Velociraptor eggshell, which seems to prove Malcolm's earlier assertion that the dinosaurs have been breeding against the geneticists' design. Malcolm suggests a flaw in their method of analyzing dinosaur populations, in that motion detectors were set to search only for the expected number of creatures in the park and not for any higher number. The park's controllers are reluctant to admit that the park has long been operating beyond their constraints. Malcolm also points out the height distribution of the Procompsognathus forms a Gaussian distribution, the curve of a breeding population, rather than the distinctive pattern that a population reared in batches ought to display. In the midst of this, the chief programmer of Jurassic Park's controlling software, Dennis Nedry, attempts corporate espionage for Lewis Dodgson, a geneticist and agent of InGen's archrival, Biosyn. By activating a backdoor he wrote into the park's computer system, Nedry manages to shut down its security systems and quickly steal fifteen frozen embryos, one for each of the park's fifteen species. He then attempts to smuggle them out to a contact waiting at the auxiliary dock deep in the park; however, during a sudden tropical storm, he exits his stolen vehicle to get his bearings and is killed by a Dilophosaurus. Without Nedry to reactivate the park's security, the electrified fences remain off, and dinosaurs escape. The adult and juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex attack the guests on tour, destroying the vehicles, killing public relations manager Ed Regis, and leaving Grant and the children lost in the park. Malcolm is gravely injured during the incident but is soon found by Gennaro and park game warden Robert Muldoon and spends the remainder of the novel slowly dying as, in between lucid lectures and morphine-induced rants, he tries to help those in the main compound understand their predicament and survive. The park's upper management—engineer and park supervisor John Arnold, chief geneticist Henry Wu, Muldoon, and Hammond—struggle to return power to the park, while the veterinarian, Dr. Harding, takes care of the injured Malcolm. For a time they manage to get the park largely back in order, restoring the computer system by shutting down and restarting the power, resetting the system. Unfortunately, a series of errors on their part soon plunge the park into greater disarray. During their time trying to restore the park to working order, they fail to notice that the system has been running on auxiliary power since the restart; this power soon runs out, shutting the park down a second time. Furthermore, since the auxiliary generators didn't create enough electricity to power the fences, they weren't reactivated when the system was reset, meaning all the fences—including the holding pen containing the park's Velociraptors, quarantined due to their intelligence and aggression—had been offline the whole time. Escaping their enclosure, the raptors kill Wu and Arnold and injure Muldoon, Gennaro, and Harding. Meanwhile, Grant and the children slowly make their way back to the Visitor's Center by rafting down the jungle river, carrying news that several young raptors, bred and raised in the island's wilds, were on board the Anne B, the island's supply ship, when it departed for the mainland. While Ellie distracts the raptors, Grant manages to turn the park's main power back on. After escaping from several raptors, Grant, Gennaro, Tim, and Lex are able to make it to the control room, where Tim is able to contact the Anne B and tell them to return. The survivors are then able to organize themselves and eventually secure their own lives. Word soon reaches them that the crew of the Anne B has discovered and killed the raptor stowaways. Gennaro tries to order the island destroyed as a dangerous asset, but Grant rejects his authority, claiming that even though they cannot control the island, they have a responsibility to understand just what happened and how many dinosaurs have already escaped to the mainland. Grant, Ellie, and Muldoon set out into the park to find the wild raptor nests and compare hatched eggs with the island's revised population tally. Cautious in this pursuit, they emerge unharmed. Meanwhile, Hammond, taking a walk around the park and contemplating making a park improving on his previous mistakes, hears the T-Rex roar and falls down a hill where he is eaten by a pack of Procompsognathus. Concerning the dinosaurs' breeding, it is eventually revealed that using frog DNA to fill gaps in the dinosaurs' genetic code enabled a measure of dichogamy, in which some of the female animals changed into males in response to the all-female environment. In the conclusion, before boarding helicopters the group tell the Costa Rican Air Force that the dinosaurs had been killing people. The Air Force then say that the island is dangerous and releases napalm over the island, destroying the island and the dinosaurs. It is implied that Malcolm has died. Grant asks Muldoon of Malcolm's condition when they depart via helicopter, Muldoon's nonverbal response is merely shaking his head and on the second to last page it says that the Costa Rican government wouldn't permit a burial for Hammond or Malcolm -->. Survivors of the incident are indefinitely detained by the United States and Costa Rican governments. Weeks later, Grant is visited by Dr. Martin Guitierrez, an American doctor who lives in Costa Rica and has found a Procompsognathus corpse. Guitierrez informs Grant that an unknown pack of animals has been migrating through the Costa Rican jungle, eating lysine-rich crops and chickens. He also informs Grant that none of them, with the possible exception of Tim and Lex, are going to leave any time soon.
5326923	/m/0dfshp	Byzantium!	Keith Topping		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Byzantium is an ancient Greek city near the Black Sea. Romans, Greeks, Zealots and Pharisee are all part of its mix. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki arrive for general sight-seeing. However, each soon has to face the possibility of being stranded in this place and time, alone and surrounded by political upheaval.
5328289	/m/0dfvj8	The Lost Boy	Dave Pelzer			 The book continues after the ending of the previous book, A Child Called "It" with David Pelzer, 9 years old, running away from his home in Daly City, California. He ends up in a bar, getting cared for by some of the patrons. One of them calls the police, bringing David home to his abusive mother. David's teachers eventually contact the authorities, causing David to be put together with a social services worker named Ms. Gold. Before the trial of whether or not to permanently remove him from his mother's custody, David becomes confused about whether he may have deserved the treatment his mother gave him. Ms. Gold, on the other hand, assures him it had nothing to do with him, and that his mother is sick. After the trial, he is put into a home for the mentally challenged under the care of a woman he calls Aunt Mary. He does not fit in with the other children, he is quite active and disruptive due to being cut off from normal household living and behavior for so long. He soon receives a visit from his mother and brothers. His mother asks how David was doing, calling him "The Boy", shocking Aunt Mary. While Aunt Mary answered a short phone call, his mother swears to David that she will get him back. His brother brought back David's bike, which was mistreated and broken. He is so distraught by the bike's condition that he cried for hours. He decides to fix the bike on his own. One day, he decides to ride his bike and go down his old road. His family sees him riding on the road, and contacts his foster family. He is punished, but it is nothing compared to his former treatment. Later in the book, David meets a person who he thinks is his friend, until he starts using him to do illegal things. One of those times is when they plan to set one of his teacher's classroom on fire. The fire gets out of control, and David tries to stop it. His "friend" later tells the teacher that it was all David. As a result he is removed from his foster home, and sent to Juvenile Hall. He eventually is released, and is placed in multiple foster homes across California. In his sophomore year of high school, he is placed into a class for slow learners. He then decides that he is more interested in earning money than school, because he will be out of foster care in less than a year. When he is out of foster care, he enlists in the US Air Force. Surprisingly, his own mother knew the news and she congratulated him at his Air Force graduation. As he talked to his mother and began to cry, he then hopes that his mother will say the three special words that he has always wanted her to say. "I love you." It was not said and he believes she is just playing with his emotions, as he has longed for these three words for years. He believes that he wanted to see his mother but that was also not a good idea. He soon realizes that the mother's love that he has always been searching for was in the arms of his foster mother, Alice. The story ends with him beginning his career in the airforce so he can learn how to treat others. From then on it continues to the book A Man Named Dave.
5328392	/m/0dfvqy	The Hawk Eternal	David Gemmell	1995-10-19	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Caswallon, a Farlain clansman, watches the Aenir tear apart Ateris of the lowlands. Gaelen, an orphaned Lowlander child thief, saved by Caswallon from the Aenir. He is tended of his wounds by Oracle, who tells him about the clans. Caswallon, Maeg, and Oracle discuss the Aenir threat and Gaelen. Gaelen continues to heal, learns clan history from Oracle. Caswallon adopts Gaelen as his son. After Gaelen is healed, Caswallon and Gaelen wander the Farlain woods, and Caswallon teaches Gaelen how to survive as a clansman (hunting, fighting, etc). However, they discover that the Aenir have been following them in the woods, so they attack the trio of Aenir and run off. We are introduced to Taliesen, who speaks with Oracle. Maggrig goes to see Caswallon and Maeg. Gaelen goes out to meet the other boys of the Farlain clan, but because he is a Lowlander, Agwaine and his friends do not accept Gaelen and they plan to play a joke him. However, Gaelen is protected and befriended by Layne, Lennox, Gwalchmai, and he prepares for the Hunt with them. Caswallon talks to Leofas, an influential older clansman, to convince him that Aenir are a threat. Caswallon is concerned because the Aenir have been invited to watch the hunt, and we are introduced to the beast. The Hunt begins, and Gwalchmai beats Agwaine in finding the clue. While Gaelen’s group and Agwaine’s group compete in the Hunt, the clansmen have been notified of the beast, and the Hunt has been cancelled. However, their groups are not found in time, and three of Agwaine’s group members were slaughtered by the monster. The five boys first meet the Hawk Queen, and she helps them defeat the beast but is also killed. Gaelen is confused when the Queen tells him they will meet again. The Queen and the boys are buried, and everyone reflects on the current events. Caswallon and Cambil argue on who will become the next Hunt Lord, Gaelen or Agwaine. Oracle reveals his story to Caswallon: In other kingdom, he revealed the secrets of the Gates to another man in order to align with him, the man betrayed him and brought his Aenir to the current world. Life went on, Lennox became stronger, others recognize Gaelen’s natural leadership. The Games occur, all the boys compete in their events. A year drifts by, Gaelen begins to have a crush on Deva, Caswallon gets angry when Cambil invites Aenir to Summer Games. Taliesen the druid searches for the Hawk Queen. Aenir plan to use the invitation to scout the clan lands, and prepare to participate in the Games. The Games begin, and many of the clans are not happy with Cambil’s decision to allow the Aenir to participate. Cambil realizes his mistake, as an overall Aenir victory moves from possibility to probability. Only the Farlain have a chance of defeating the Aenir, but the evil Aenir wound Gaelen before the final race. Agwaine is forced to run against the top Aenir runner, and after an Aenir cheating scheme is foiled, Agwaine wins the race. Lennox wins the throwing challenge, and the Farlain squeak by with the Game victory. They celebrate and get drunk at the Whorl Dance. Another winter passes by, and in the spring the Aenir begin their horrible attack on the clans. The Haesten clan is massacred as the few survivors stream into the mountains, while the Pallides escape just in time and head towards the Farlain. Meanwhile, in the Farlain Taliesen tells Caswallon that the Aenir are coming, and the war horn is sounded. However, Cambil will not believe that the Aenir would attack, and he and a few others decide not to escape with Caswallon. Cambil and his followers (including Kareen) pay with their lives, although Agwaine escapes at the last moment. Gaelen, however, was alone in the mountains when the Aenir attacked. Deva’s scream pierces the woods, and Gaelen runs and saves her from the Aenir. It is evident that the Aenir have attacked, and after defeating a few scouts the pair head north in search of the rest of the Farlain clan. Gaelen and Deva continue north, narrowly escaping another Aenir camp. Deva tells Gaelen that he cannot marry him, because a fortune teller has told her she is to marry a king and be the mother of kings. Meanwhile, Caswallon continues to march to the Gates with the Farlain, and sends out many scouts to watch for the Aenir and for other clansmen. Caswallon speaks to Taliesen, whose plan it is to bring the clans through the Gates to a time many thousand years ago. Oracle dies of old age. Meanwhile, Maggrig, Hunt Lord of the Pallides, realizes his people have few options, and prepares to make a last stand against the Aenir. The Pallides defeat the Aenir army that is following them. The Farlain defeat another Aenir army by raiding their camp in the night. Gaelen and Deva are finally reunited with Caswallon and the Farlain. Both the Farlain and the Pallides clan enter through the Gate into a land from thousands of years ago. Caswallon and Maggrig plan an attack on the Aenir, and Caswallon sends Gaelen and his friends to search out the mountains looking for more warriors. Gaelen sets out with Lennox, Layne, Gwalchmai, Agwaine, and two other boys, but Lennox is sent back after they find a baby in the woods. Gaelen’s party continues to travel west, but they are attacked by wolves, and Layne is killed. Caswallon is sent to a future world to seek the Queen and ask her help in fighting the Aenir. However, Taliesen tragically dies after a 1,000 years of life, and the Gates close, so Caswallon cannot come back to his realm. Gaelen’s party find the Haesten party after 5 days of travel, but they are sad to hear that almost all the men have been killed in a final raid against the Aenir. Gaelen speaks with the girl Lara, who tells him that they have 800 women that are willing to fight. Gaelen immediately develops a crush on Lara. Maggrig, the Pallides Hunt Lord, hears that the Gates have been closed, and is despaired. However, he makes alliances with some minor clans to fight the Aenir. Caswallon hears that the Gates have been closed, and he is told that in order for him to return to his realm he must study for 11 years to learn how to reopen the Gates. Now with the Haesten women as well as some Pallides stragglers, Gaelen leads the bigger group of warriors to Axta Glen, the planned battle site with the Aenir. Gaelen and Lara fall for each other, and they make out one night. Meanwhile, Maggrig and his army of Pallides and Farlain make their last stand against the Aenir. While the clansmen fight with vengeance and the arrows make their mark, but the Aenir looked poised for another victory. However, at a crucial time Gaelen arrives with his army, and then the Hawk Queen arrives with her army and horses. With their new found numbers, the battle turns, and the Aenir are finally defeated. After the war, Gaelen introduces his new girlfriend to everyone, and the Queen seeks Gaelen. Gaelen and Lara agree to follow the Queen to her realm, because they have little left in their realm. Gwalchmai and Lennox agree to follow Gaelen. Gaelen is very happy to see Caswallon again, but he is confused at why Caswallon looks 10 years older than he did. Caswallon explains to Gaelen that he studied with a druid for 11 years in order to return to his realm, but how when he came back to his world no time had passed. Caswallon and Maeg reunite, and Gaelen, Lara, Gwalchmai, and Lennox say goodbye to their clansmen and follow the Queen to their new realm. Agwaine ruled the Farlain for 27 peaceful years. However, Deva continued to wait for the king she was to marry, but after seven years of waiting, Caswallon revealed to her that Gaelen was the future king she was to marry, and Deva broke down in tears. Deva eventually married a widow and raised children. Lennox and Gwalchmai both led good lives in the Queen’s realm, but Gwalchmai was killed in battle. Gaelen and Lara lived contently and had five children, and after the Queen died Gaelen became the new king.
5330580	/m/0dfz4v	Fear of the Dark	Trevor Baxendale		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 It is 2382. Archaeologists land on Akoshemon's only moon, along with the Doctor and his companions. They uncover an entity that was seemingly there when Akoshemon destroyed itself in violence; it glories in death and destruction and tries to start more. It seems to have the ability to mentally influence people.
5331097	/m/0dfzw9	The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail	Jerome Lawrence			 The play does not present events in chronological order; rather, the play features Thoreau remembering earlier parts of his life, not necessarily in the order they occurred. The play opens with Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his old age, recalling the memories of his friend, Henry. The play quickly shifts to Henry's current time in jail because he refused to pay the tax to support the war, where he meets Bailey, a homeless man falsely accused of arson. After meeting Bailey, Thoreau reflects on his recent past. Henry taught Bailey to spell his name by b-a-beanpole-turn the corner-comb-tree. Henry, who would have graduated from Harvard, but refused to pay the one dollar fee to receive his diploma, becomes a schoolmaster and attempts to teach a class against the school's curriculum, but Deacon Ball, a logical, respected teacher, makes him flog the children, after which he quits. After leaving the school, Henry and John (Henry's brother) start an outdoor school, but soon all of the children are pulled out of classes by concerned parents. Ellen, the sibling of one of the former classmates, went to the school to find out more about Transcendentalism, which her father claimed the school was based on. After the school is disbanded and the children leave, Henry takes her on a boat ride. He tells her about Transcendentalism, and about how he loves her, but it becomes very awkward and he tells her to go to church with John. John is in love with Ellen, and proposes to her, but later Ellen tells him that her father wouldn't allow her to marry either of the Thoreau brothers. Soon after, John dies from blood poisoning caused by a shaving cut, and Henry tries to cope with the loss.
5331428	/m/0df_b_	Warmonger	Terrance Dicks		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Peri arrive on a small planet, but as soon as Peri steps out, she is attacked by a wild animal and her arm is almost severed. The Doctor takes her in the TARDIS to the hospice on the planet Karn to see the best surgeon in the galaxy, Doctor Mehendri Solon. When they arrive, the hospice’s advisor, the Reverend Mother Maren (of the Sisterhood of the Flame) convinces Solon to reattach Peri's arm, which he does successfully. The head of security, Commander Aylmer Hawken tries to stop the Doctor leaving, but Maren convinces him not to, as she is wary of Time Lords. Lord Delmar, the owner of the hospice also warns Hawken against interfering with The Doctor, in case it stops the peace conference which the hospice is hosting from proceeding. The conference is to make alliances between the smaller empires, and has been set up by a warlord known as "The General". Solon’s assistant Drago starts harassing Peri, and after The Doctor complains, Drago later suggests to Solon that Peri and The Doctor be killed, but Solon dismisses his worries and goes to work on "project Z". overhearing this, Peri follows Drago to a room full of dead bodies made from parts of different species. She leaves the room, but Solon notices Peri's interference and injects her with a poison, but tells The Doctor that her body is rejecting the arm, and she needs the Sisterhood's elixir of life. The Doctor fetches it, but Solon secretly keeps it and gives Peri the antidote. The Doctor then threatens to reveal what Solon just did to Lord Delmar and takes Peri out of the room. When the ambassadors arrive for the peace conference, Lord Delmar invites the Doctor to watch, but as the Doctor is about to refuse, he recognises the General's mind as that of a Time Lord, and decides to bug the room. Listening in on the meeting, they discover that The General is gathering the small empires into a huge army to take over the galaxy. After his plan to steal the elixir of life fails, the General reveals himself to be Morbius and kidnaps Peri. Peri escapes Morbius's ship by pretending to have an infectious skin disease, and she is put in an escape pod and launched into space, but a ship from the planet Sylvana finds her and takes her back to Sylvana. Sylvana's nearest planet Freedonia joins Morbius and attacks Sylvana and invades it, causing Peri to join a group of guerrillas. While Solon continues his experiments, the Doctor goes to Gallifrey to warn the Time Lords about Morbius. The Time Lord President Saran and Borusa refuse to become directly involved, but order the Doctor to unite the largest empires in the galaxy into one army to defeat Morbius. The Doctor then manages to persuade a number of Draconians and Sontarans to join his army. The Time lords send him Ensign Vidal, a Gallifreyan, to act as his advisor, a flagship and the title of Supreme Coordinator of the Alliance. As the campaign grows, Ogrons, Ice Warriors and Cybermen join the Doctor's forces. After Sylvana is recaptured, Peri is reunited with the Doctor. Eventually Morbius begins defending the area around Karn, which is where The Doctor plans to defeat him finally. The Doctor leads his army into a ground battle, but Maren initially refuses help in defending the elixir of life but eventually accepts. Morbius then withdraws all his troops from the planets they are protecting and brings them to Karn. After the Doctor's forces are nearly destroyed, a second army arrives, comprising foot soldiers from the planets that the Doctor liberated from Morbius. Morbius's army is destroyed, he is captured, tried and sentenced to death. The survivors of the Doctor's army return to their home planets while Morbius is imprisoned awaiting execution. Solon unleashes his zombies on Saran and Borusa, but they easily overpower them, and Solon is imprisoned. To avoid a paradox, the Doctor goes to free Solon from his cell, but finds one of Morbius's commanders has already done so, following them to the execution room, he finds Solon removing Morbius's brain. After Solon leaves, the Doctor puts Morbius's body in the vaporisation chamber, and waits for Saran and Borusa to arrive. They then vaporise Morbius's body. The Doctor quietly leaves with Peri. The hospice is abandoned, the Sisterhood retreat to their temple and Solon resumes his experiments until, years later, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive on Karn.
5331499	/m/0df_fr	Amorality Tale	David Bishop		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the East End of London, the Doctor and Sarah get involved with gangsters and face a horror hiding in the Great Smog of 1952.
5332765	/m/0dg13p	Among the Barons	Margaret Haddix	2003-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At Hendricks School for Boys, Luke Garner has managed to adjust to his new life as Lee Grant, having adopted this fake name when he came out of hiding. Things change when the Grants, a prominent Baron family who donated the name of their son when he died in a ski accident, decide to send the real Lee's brother, Smithfield (a.k.a. Smits), to the school and visit "Lee". Smits is troubled by the death of his brother, and tells Luke, the new Lee, his stories of times he and the real Lee spent together. But when Smits wants to get rid of his bodyguard, he sets the school on fire. After the fire, Luke is sent to search Smit's room and discovers two fake IDs in Smits' room: one with Smits' picture labeled Peter Goodard, the other had no picture and was labeled Stanley Goodard. Luke is soon caught up in a complicated web of lies in a world where he is completely unprotected from anything that will prove he is an illegal third child. He has no idea who he can trust, especially Smits and his bodyguard, Oscar Wydell, and as a member of the Grant family in name, Luke is in an incredible amount of danger. Furthermore, the Grant family selfishly desires to express their grief over the real Lee's death by faking "Lee's" death and send Luke back into hiding once again. The return of "Lee" (with a few changes made by the Grants' services) and Smits is celebrated by a party at the Grant's house. At the party, Oscar attempts to assassinate the President, who started the war, and Luke who is saved by Trey. The President was in a different location at the time. Smits's parents are both killed by a falling chandelier. Smits, Luke, and some of Luke's friends escape, dropping Smits and Luke off at Luke's house. Trey grabs some documents which he thinks are important and which he will use in Among the Brave. Smits and Luke are then welcomed back by Luke's family. Smits stays with Luke's family as a sort of fourth son that they had never been able to have. Luke then leaves with more unanswered questions. He feels that he did something right for Smits even though he didn't do anything much for his cause. The book ends with Trey, Nina, Joel, and John at Mr. Talbot's home, seeking answers and safety, and Luke leaving off at his house. vi:Ở giữa Bọn Tư Bản
5336100	/m/0dg63x	Climbers				 The novel concerns the adventures of “Mike”, who, recovering from a failed marriage, falls in with a clique of hard core northern rock climbers and becomes immersed in an intense and inward looking life style in which climbing is so important that “real life” is all but excluded. Mike is initially fascinated by this rather strange group of people and is in awe of their focus and technical competence on the rock. Their obvious incompetence in more mundane areas of life only seems to increase their glamour. For a while Mike loses himself in this closed little world but in the end seems to become disenchanted with its narrowness. The overall tone of the book is very much one of disappointment and alienation. The pivotal event is the death of the enigmatic “Sanky” who falls 30 feet from the 5b crux of a climb he has soloed without difficulty many times in the past. His friends cannot believe he has died on an undistinguished climb that was well within his technical competence and seem to have difficulty understanding the obvious fact that a 30 foot ground fall is more likely to result in death than a twisted ankle. The descriptive passages in the book are very good and the locations are easily recognisable by anyone who has climbed in the Peak and Pennines. Harrison does find beauty in this sometimes harsh and occasionally post industrial landscape but in keeping with the general tone of the book his eye is sometimes rather jaundiced. Describing the pleasant view from the top of Stanage Edge he chooses to focus on the cement factory at Hope. Set down in the (mostly) picturesque town of Holmfirth he devotes his descriptive powers to Lodge’s supermarket, the one truly hideous building in the town. In several interviews Harrison has said that he was pleased with the book. It may however bewilder a few science fiction fans and threaten the illusions of a few self-styled gritstone heroes.
5337106	/m/0d0h9_	The Butterfly Tattoo	Philip Pullman	1992	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book is split into three parts: the first deals with Chris' first meeting of Jenny, the second with his search for her, and the third with the tragic ending. The first sentence gives away the doomed nature of the book: Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm Oxford evening.... The seventeen year old main character, Chris, works for a lighting company in Oxford, England. While rigging up a party he inadvertently rescues a beautiful young woman in a white dress from upper class thugs. Smitten, he looks for her, but she has disappeared into the night, leaving the white dress in a boat shed. Before she goes, however he finds out that her name is Jenny, and that she had gatecrashed the party. The thugs' leader, Piers, recognised her and was threatening to turn her in, unless she slept with him. He then searches for her for many weeks, and eventually finds her squatting in an empty house with two friends (not, as he fears, lovers). He asks her out on a date, and she accepts, much to his joy. After this, he goes to his father's house (his parents have divorced three weeks ago; their emotionless parting chills him), and meets his mistress, his secretary Diane. She asks him how his mother is, hoping that she hasn't forced her to suicide by taking her husband away from her. Chris tells her that she has a boyfriend, called Mike, and she is feeling much better. His father mentions that they are going abroad for a weekend together, and asks him if he would house sit for them. Of course, Chris agrees, and plans to bring Jenny there for a romantic weekend, as his father would be having in Paris. After another date (in which they ironically see Romeo and Juliet) Chris asks Jenny to spend the weekend with him at his father's house after they kiss passionately in the park. She says that she will be there. Meanwhile, we hear about Jenny's past at the hands of her abusive father. She comes from Yorkshire (and still retains a Northern accent), and after suffering at his hands very literally leaves home on the morning of her sixteenth birthday. The story is set a year later. On the night which she was supposed to arrive, she does not come. And so, crestfallen and love sick, Chris goes to bed. The next morning Jenny arrives, and after having tea on the porch they go into his father's bedroom and make love. He is a virgin, while she is much more experienced, and he notices she has a tattoo of a butterfly above her left breast (hence the title). The next day, when she leaves Jenny finds that the house in which she and her friends had been illegally squatting has been the victim of a police drugs raid. Her hippie flatmates are taken into custody for possession of cannabis, and, despite her innocence, Jenny flees the scene, since she does not trust the police as they failed to help her over her father's abuse. Because of this, not knowing Chris's address or even his last name, she loses contact with him. We then learn about the shady past of Chris' boss, Barry. He used to belong to the Carson gang, an outfit of petty thieves trying to pull a big heist. They tried to get the contents of a Securicor van, but they failed, and in the ensuing chaos one of the thick witted Carson brothers killed one of the security guards. With the police chasing them, they recklessly tackled another van, this time succeeding and killing two more men. Barry felt his conscience pricking him, and after making off with the thousands of pounds from the van turned the Carson brothers in to the Law. He gave evidence in court and one of the three Carson brothers were killed in the gunfight to take them, the other was sentenced to twenty five years in jail. Barry Springer changed his name by deed poll to Miller, and he, his wife and his small son were relocated from London to Oxford under the Witness Protection Act. The one remaining Carson brother, Edward, was not like his brothers; while they were dim witted thugs he was like a modern day Moriarty, and set his sights on ruthlessly hunting down Barry, and avenging his brothers... While Chris, frantic and love stricken, searches Oxford for Jenny, she finds work with a friend as a waitress. Her boss, who reminds her like most of the men she meets of her father, seeks to take advantage of her, and she tries to avoid him as much as possible, spending all her spare time searching for Chris. Fate, it seems, is against them; for the obnoxious boss Jenny works for so disgusted Chris when he came looking for a job that he vowed never to go there again, and although they catch tantalising glimpses of each other occasionally, they do not find each other, and as Jenny's love begins to cool, Chris' only intensifies. At this point Barry, Chris' boss, shows him a "chalet" which he has bought by the canal, and wants to fix up. When Chris asks him why he has it, he feeds him a kaleidoscopic version of the truth about his dealings with the Carson gang, shifting the drama to Ireland and the IRA. He then pays Chris to fix it up, and enthuses about an infra red light switch out at the front, so that the light will go on if anyone comes near it. Through a remarkable coincidence, after Jenny quits her job as a waitress since her boss' attentions prove too much for her she ends up babysitting for Chris' boss' eleven year old son, Sean. He is the epitome of innocence as he explains the cosmos to her, and teaches her to play chess. When she kisses him goodnight, she finds herself kissing him like a lover; she stops when she realises, and downstairs feels revulsion at what her father has made her become. After she’s put him to bed the phone rings and Jenny answers, hearing “Tell him Carson’s getting warm.” She only tells Barry about the call when he is driving her home. Barry goes completely white and tells her about the shed. Things start spinning out of control as Chris continues to ache for Jenny. Right then he decides to return to the shed to get the knife he’d forgotten. As he approaches the chalet he sees his Jenny and Barry exiting the chalet together. Being in a dark mood he immediately believes Barry has found himself a new play thing. The truth, is less shocking; Barry had simply asked the girl to do some painting and hang a few curtains to make the place more livable. Chris turns away, in tears, before either of them sees him. Lying in bed Chris realizes he should have confronted the two and makes up his mind to do just that the next day. That morning, unsure of what he’s going to say, he goes to the warehouse. Barry isn’t there, but a police officer called Fletcher in an expensive white Mercedes is. He tells Chris he is looking for Barry Springer, a dangerous criminal---the man Chris knows as his boss. After a little pushing Chris agrees to betray his one time friend and set him up to be captured at the shed later that night. Jenny again babysits Sean that night. As Sue is about to leave the house she tells her Barry might be a little late because he’ll be checking on Chris at the chalet. For the first time Jenny has hopes of seeing Chris again as Sue confirms it’s indeed her lover in the shed. Chris, deliberately betraying a friend, is restless and decides to bike around town. He runs into Dave who is celebrating his birthday at a local pub. After some random drunk talk Dave tells Chris about Carson in the white Mercedes at the warehouse earlier. The boy immediately realizes his stupid mistake. His anger had blinded him so much he never saw the obvious. In panic he asks one of the girls at the party to call Barry at his house. But he is out, while Jenny receives the message on his new answering machine: “For God’s sake keep away from the shed. Carson’s on his way there.” Without hesitation she takes Sue’s bike and races to the shed to save Chris. Chris goes home to call Barry, then races towards the shed when Sue tells him about Jenny. Riding his bike like a demon he arrives at the woods and jumps off his bike to run toward the chalet. He hears the low grumble, as if produced by a giant beast, behind him. Terrified, he realizes it is the white Mercedes. In full sprint he runs to the shed. He enters the clearing, and as he calls out for Jenny he hears the deafening report of a gun, six times. Carson leaves, Barry arrives, and Chris enters the chalet to find his beloved Jenny on the bed, soaked in her blood and riddled with bullets. She had written on the wall in her own blood, "DAD." Her dad, at the inquest, covers his face with his hands. Chris understands that to be a father for whom Jenny wanted to be next to her as she died. Chris is happy that she was able to say it before she died.
5337827	/m/0dg8v2	Arashi no Yoru Ni	Yuichi Kimura		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A goat named Mei wanders into a barn one night, seeking shelter from a storm. In the barn, the goat meets another refugee. The two can neither see nor smell each other, but nevertheless they huddle together, fending off the cold, and begin to talk. Eventually, they establish a friendship. The two decide to meet later and will recognize each other by using the password "one stormy night". The next day, when they meet, Mei learns that his companion from the night before was a wolf named Gabu. Despite their natural predisposition as enemies, they share a common bond and begin meeting regularly. However, Mei's flock and Gabu's pack eventually find out about their relationship and forbid the friendship. Mei and Gabu, hoping to preserve their friendship, cross a river during a storm. They hope to find an "emerald forest" free from persecution. However, Giro, the leader of Gabu's pack, holds a grudge against goats and views Gabu as a traitor to all wolves. Giro and his pack begin to hunt down the two companions. Gabu and Mei reach the summit of a mountain where they stop and rest, exhausted from fighting their way through a snowstorm. Mei, knowing that Gabu has not eaten in days, offers to sacrifice himself as food. Gabu agrees initially, but soon realizes that no matter how hungry he is, he cannot eat his friend. Gabu hears his pack approaching and faces them, ready to defend his goat friend to the death. As Gabu is about to go face the wolf pack, there is an avalanche. The next morning, Mei digs through the snow blocking the cave and sees the "emerald forest" they had been searching for in the distance. Gabu is missing, but Mei finds him in another cave. Gabu has lost his memory of their friendship and all the events that preceded the avalanche. While waiting for the moon to come out, Gabu taunts Mei that he plans on eating him. Mei, saying that he wouldn't have minded being eaten by Gabu before, accuses the wolf of not being the Gabu he previously knew. Angrily, Mei shouts that he wishes that he had never met Gabu on "one stormy night". On hearing these words, Gabu's memory returns, and they happily reunite. In the end, Mei and Gabu both enjoy watching the moon as it rises.
5339073	/m/0dgbts	The Front Runner	Patricia Nell Warren	1974	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Although the title refers to another character, The Front Runner is the story of Harlan Brown, the track coach at fictitious Prescott College, a new, small, progressive, experimental private liberal arts college sixty miles from New York City. The story begins in late 1974 and ends in early 1978, with occasional flashbacks giving information about Brown's past. When the story begins, Brown is thirty-nine years old, an ex-Marine, a graduate of Villanova University (where he both ran and coached track), and a rigidly closeted homosexual. Six years earlier he was forced to leave an important head coaching position at Penn State University because of untrue accusations of sexual misconduct from a male student on his track team. Although Brown had been sexually attracted only to men all his life, he had suppressed that attraction successfully, married a girl he impregnated while in college, and lived a wholly straight life, with only occasional furtive, traumatic excursions into the gay underground of pre-Stonewall New York City. The student whose accusations drove him from Penn State was himself secretly gay, made sexual advances toward Brown, and then turned on Brown when those sexual advances were rejected. The episode also ended Brown's unhappy marriage; his ex-wife and two adolescent sons appear only briefly in flashback. Although the reason for his leaving Penn State was not widely publicized, the rumors in the track world made it impossible for him to find work in that field. He tried unsuccessfully to find other work he was qualified for; finally he moved to Greenwich Village and supported himself for two years as a high-priced hustler. He was very successful at hustling because he was - by his own account - very good looking, in perfect physical condition, and extremely well-endowed sexually. But his heart was not in it; he longed to return to the track. When Joe Prescott, the founder and president of Prescott College, needed a new athletic director, he managed to find Brown in Manhattan and offered him the job, which he accepted. He immediately stopped hustling, returned with determination to the closet, and threw all his energy into coaching; at the college, only Joe Prescott knew the truth about his sexual orientation and his past. The story opens in December 1974; Prescott tells Brown that three star runners, who have been expelled in their senior year from the elite track program at the University of Oregon because they are gay, want to transfer to Prescott and train with Brown. Although Brown is wary because of the Penn State experience, he is eager to work with such talented runners, so he agrees. All three new runners - Vince Matti, Jacques LaFont, and Billy Sive - are extremely attractive and sorely test Brown's straight act; but Vince and Jacques are more or less a couple, and Billy is the one he falls for. He manages to suppress his attraction for a few anguished months, but he and Billy soon become lovers, and after the boys graduate and take teaching positions at Prescott, Billy moves in with him. The difficult, drawn-out process of their coming out as a couple (and Harlan's as an individual) in the intensely homophobic world of amateur athletics takes up most of the book, throughout which the sport - and particularly Billy's determination to qualify for the 1976 Olympics in Montreal - plays as large a part as the characters' homosexuality. Harlan and Billy do eventually come out fully as a gay couple, and Billy overcomes practically insurmountable opposition and hostility to run in the Olympics. He wins the gold medal in the 10,000 meter race and is within meters of winning the 5000 meter race as well when an anti-gay assassin shoots him in the head and kills him. Harlan is devastated, but fortunately he and Billy had stored samples in a sperm bank a few months earlier; their close lesbian friend Betsy Heden offers to bear Billy's child, so hope and a new life emerge from the tragedy.
5339269	/m/0dgc78	The Bisexual Option	Fred Klein		{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology"}	 The book shows bisexuals that they are not alone and discusses where people may fit on the sexual orientation continuum. It also aids in explaining who bisexuals are and why they have problems in heterosexual as well as the mainstream gay/lesbian communities.
5342117	/m/0dghll	In Search of a Distant Voice	Taichi Yamada	2006-04-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kasama Tsuneo is a young Japanese immigration officer, mid-way through the preparations for an arranged marriage. While raiding a house in the early-morning hours, one immigrant escapes and Tsuneo takes chase through a neighbouring graveyard. As Tsuneo thinks he has the escapee cornered, he is overcome by a huge wave of euphoric emotion. Paralyzed by it, he's immobile and the suspect escapes. Tsuneo recovers, completely perplexed. To his bosses he explains that the suspect tripped him and ran away. That same night, on the verge of sleep, he is again flooded by a huge wave of paralyzing emotion, this time sadness. As it passes, he hears a female voice saying "Who are you?" in the darkness, which then disappears. Over the next days, Tsuneo starts to hear this voice more, and eventually it responds to him and he begins a dialogue with it. It claims to be the voice of a woman, very lonely, and that with all her energy she somehow "projected" herself into the world, and Tsuneo was the one to answer. Initially Tsuneo thinks it is the voice of "Eric", someone he knew whilst living in America, but in time accepts that this is not so. Tsuneo becomes increasingly fascinated by the voice and their dialogues, and wonders whether he is suffering from auditory hallucinations. Because of his erratic behaviour, he is given time off work and must see a doctor. His arranged marriage is also called off for similar reasons. As the voice continues to speak to him, he asks that he may tell her his story, which has been hinted at throughout. Tsuneo tells the voice how, after his permit runs out in America, he narrow escapes being caught by immigration officials, and one day meets Eric in a city square. Forty-something Eric seems to take pity on Tsuneo, and offers him a job in his shop selling light fittings, and lodgings. However, as time goes by Eric makes passes at Tsuneo, who, definitely opposed but unsure of how to rebuff Eric - who in any case has been so kind - passively submits to Eric's wishes. Tsuneo desperately wishes to escape the relationship, but can see no way out. He attempts to escape under the guise of "taking a short break to the sea", but Eric questions why he is taking his passport, and is forced to leave it behind. Instead, while on his trip Tsuneo makes a hoax call to the police, claiming that Eric is in possession of and dealing a large amount of drugs. Tsuneo hopes that while eric is detained and questioned, he will have a window to escape the country and get back to Japan. However, when the police try to take Eric in there is an accident and Eric is killed. A while after Tsuneo has related his story to the voice, he asks if the woman behind the voice will meet with him. She reluctantly agrees, and they set a date and time. However when Tsuneo goes to meet her she is not there, and only leads him down the garden path. Tsuneo is angry with her. She is hurt but apologizes, and says that she will contact him again in 6 months time. If at that time he still wishes to meet her, despite her claim she is unimaginably ugly, then she will concede. Six months pass, during which Tsuneo still has bouts of intense and irrational emotion, sadness and happiness reminiscent of bipolar disorder. When the voice contacts him again, he does still wish to meet, and a time is set at which to meet her outside a museum. When Tsuneo goes to the museum at the appointed time, the voice directs him towards a tree, behind which a blind girl of about eighteen stands. When she speaks, "Hello Mr Kasama", Tsuneo knows he has been misled again, and expresses his anger towards the voice. It tells him that in future whenever he thinks of her he must remember her in the form of this girl. This is the last Tsuneo hears of the voice. The blind girl tells him that a month beforehand, an 'honest' sounding woman paid her 10,000 yen to stand here, at this time, to wait for a Mr Kasama.
5344537	/m/0dgm10	Gonna Roll the Bones	Fritz Leiber	1967	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story centers on Joe Slattermill, a poor miner whose home life is a never-ending source of frustration. His wife works at home as a baker to supplement the family's income, while his elderly mother lives with them and regularly voices her disapproval of his lifestyle. His only outlet comes in the form of occasional visits to the local gambling parlors, where he routinely loses all his money, gets drunk, and has sex with prostitutes; he then returns home, beats his wife, and winds up spending the night in jail. On his latest trip, though, he finds that a new club has opened--"The Boneyard"--and decides to try it out. Joe possesses a remarkable skill for precision throwing and can make dice show whatever number he wants when he rolls them. Joining a high-stakes game of craps, he uses this talent to win several thousand dollars before confronting the table's "Big Gambler," a pale figure hidden beneath a dark hat and long coat. This man bankrupts all the other players with his own brand of precision throwing, and Joe loses all his money upon accidentally rolling a double-six. Instead of ending the game at this point, however, the Big Gambler offers to bet all his winnings, plus the world and everything in it, against Joe's life and soul. By now, Joe has come to believe that he is facing off against Death incarnate. Joe rolls the dice and gets snake eyes, losing the bet. He prepares to kill himself by diving into the table, having learned that it is an entrance to some kind of deep shaft filled with intense heat, but instead leaps across and tackles the Big Gambler. The latter's body crumbles on impact and Joe is thrown out of the club, though he manages to steal a handful of casino chips before this happens. Out on the sidewalk, he finds that he has held onto a piece of the Big Gambler's skull, which looks suspiciously like a piece of pastry. Tasting it, he realizes that it is in fact made of bread—the same bread his wife was putting in to bake when he left the house that night. The table he jumped across was connected to her oven as a channel for its heat, and she had created the Big Gambler as a means of humiliating him. The stolen chips prove to be communion wafers, as evidenced by the cross imprinted on each one. Now free of his wife's influence and with a pocketful of food, he goes home "the long way, around the world." Oddly, the story was adapted as a children's book, written by Sarah L. Thomson, illustrated by David Wiesner, and published in 2004 by Milk and Cookies Press.
5348576	/m/0dgsfd	The Loveday Loyalty	Kate Tremayne	2006-03-06	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Against the dramatic scenery of Cornwall, the turbulent criminal underworld of London and the climactic events of the French revolution. In this seventh novel in the series, life with the Lovedays is not confined to England and France. America has won its independence but the Lovedays have connections in Virginia and the new penal colony in Australia has become the residence of one Loveday who took a chance too many. Loyalty to and pride in the Loveday name has held the family together through unstable times, but with the fierce rivalry that exists between family members, will loyalty be enough to honour the family's heritage?
5348821	/m/0dgss7	Serious Money	Caryl Churchill			 The plot follows Scilla and Jake who are enjoying the pleasures and the comforts of the upper class. But the story climaxes when Jake Todd turns up murdered during the first few scenes due to his underground trading. Scilla takes it upon herself to find her brother's killer and the money he was dealing. She later finds out that he was being investigated by the Department of Trade and Industry. Though she does not find the killer, she finds the American business woman Marylou Banes with whom Jake was dealing. Marylou Banes offers her a fresh start. The story takes place around the stock market troubles in Britain. Aside from that a second story follows Billy Corman's and Zac Zackerman's attempt to take over the Albion company from Duckett. In between this takeover Corman attempts to get Jacinta Condor and Nigel Ajibala [who are the foreigners with an interest in his takeover] to buy shares in his company. They support Corman but decide to give their bid to Duckett in the end. The plot ends with Greville Todd in jail, Corman appointed as a Lord, and Scilla happily working for Marylou Banes.
5353295	/m/0dg_l0	My Brother Sam Is Dead	Christopher Collier	1974	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Timothy Meeker is a young man who lives in the town of Redding, Connecticut around the time the American Revolution begins. Tim does not exactly care about politics, but his father, Eliphalet ("Life"), is a loyalist to Great Britain, much like the rest of the town. His entire family welcomes his brave and high-strung teenage brother, Sam, when he returns from Yale. However, his father is outraged when he learns that Sam has joined the Continental Army to fight against the British. Unlike Tim, Sam is not afraid to voice his opinions, and this causes him to eventually be forced out from the family tavern (their home and business). After this, Sam steals his father's Brown Bess to use as a weapon during battles. Sam leaves Redding to fight, and things become harder, gradually separating the family. Sam occasionally returns, although when this happens, Tim is the only one who talks with him. In one instance, Tim delivers a "business letter" to New York for a "moderate" neighbor named Mr. Heron, against his father's wishes, since he does not trust Heron. Betsy Read, Tim and Sam's friend, opens the letter, only to find it is a "test note" that says: If you receive this message, then the messenger is reliable, meaning that the future letters will be spy reports on soldiers. Tim throws away the note. Meanwhile, prices of food and drinks go up and the redcoats even show up in Redding to take weapons and fight the few Patriots there. After seeing the bloody battle, in which one of Tim's friends, an innocent slave named Ned, is decapitated, and another friend, an innocent child named Jerry Stanford, is captured by the British, Tim begins to have stronger feelings about the Patriots. While on a trip with his father to sell beef to loyalists in New York, they are stopped by a band of cowboys who presumably abduct him. Tim goes home, and the next year finds his father has died on a prison ship due to an outbreak of cholera. After this, Tim's mother, Susannah, begins to drink heavily. Sam returns, only to reveal he has been framed for stealing cattle and he is going to be executed by his own army in a warning to soldiers who may do the same thing if faced by extreme hunger. The story then cuts to 1826, where Tim reveals he has survived the Revolution, and that he has written the entire story to tell what life was like in the war. He expresses his condolences about Sam, and then reveals he has a happy life.
5353546	/m/0dh01x	Micah	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Micah apparently takes place approximately one month after the events of Incubus Dreams. (Tammy Reynolds, one of the characters in the series, is four months pregnant in Incubus Dreams and five months pregnant in Micah). As usual, Anita must juggle several problems simultaneously. * First, in her role as an animator, Anita must travel to Philadelphia on short notice to substitute for Larry Kirkland, who must remain in St. Louis because of complications in his wife Tammy's pregnancy. Although the assignment—reanimating a recently deceased federal witness in order to testify in an organized crime investigation—initially seems routine, Anita quickly begins to suspect that there is more to the case than she and Larry have been told. * Second, Anita continues to deal with her various personal problems, in this case her relationship with Micah, who accompanies her on the trip. Anita must come to terms with Micah's decision to reserve a nice hotel room for the two of them without telling her, and must help Micah get over two of the defining problems in his life: first, the trauma narrowly surviving a wereleopard attack that left several members of his family dead; and second, the trauma of accidentally harming a previous girlfriend during sex, due to his unusually large penis. * Third, Anita continues wrestle with her recent increase in power, first attempting to deal with the ardeur, a metaphysical effect that causes Anita to need to have sex every few hours, and second, wrestling with the vast increase in her own powers as a necromancer, which are now so powerful that her attempt to raise a single person threatens to raise every corpse in the cemetery. As usual, Anita is able largely to resolve each of these problems by the end of the novella. * The initial plot point—the animation—is not resolved until the very end of the novella. Although Anita initially wrestles with her increase in power, she is ultimately able to confine her power to a single corpse, raising only the witness, Emmett Leroy Rose. However, Anita then learns that although Rose technically died of a heart attack, the heart attack itself occurred after the defense lawyer in the investigation, Arthur Salvia, framed Rose for murder. Rose therefore considers Salvia his murderer and will not rest until he has killed Salvia. In the ensuing fracas, Anita is knocked unconscious, and Salvia is killed. * With regard to Anita's personal problems, she and Micah make some progress. Anita decides to accept that Micah surprised her with the romantic hotel, and listens to him share the traumas of almost being eaten alive by a wereleopard and of being rejected by various women. Anita sympathizes with Micah's survivor's guilt, and, in a conversation very similar to her conversation with Richard in Incubus Dreams, explains to Micah that some women don't like well-endowed men, but other women, such as Anita, do.
5353754	/m/0dh0cm	Shadowslayers			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Legends tell of the coming of the dragon-god Derrezen, a monster powerful enough to crush all of humanity beneath his claws. The forgotten child of Niiran’s goddess Ameterra, he has spent centuries in an arcane prison. But now he has awakened, driven by hatred and intent on recreating the world in his image. Only the combined efforts of two powerful wizards have protected the human empire of Blackwood until now. But when one of them finally falls in battle, the realm is more vulnerable than ever before. Kajeel Shadowslayer awakens in the realm of the afterlife, the wounds from her final fatal battle with Derrezen still fresh. She must journey into her own past to seek a weapon stronger than magic that can finally stop the Dragon’s rampage. But can even Blackwood’s greatest sorceress breach the boundaries of death itself? Kajeel’s husband Garyl stands as the empire’s last chance against its oldest foe. Cursed long ago for unspeakable crimes, Garyl’s decades-long search for redemption may be reaching its end. But first he must set aside his grief and meet the Dragon head on – a battle that he knows he will ultimately lose. The two Shadowslayers must reach beyond the borders of life and death, past and present, and ultimately must sacrifice that which is most dear to them in order to succeed. The final emotional struggle will determine not only the fate of Blackwood, but of the entire world of Niiran.
5354117	/m/0dh0xp	The Old New Land	Theodor Herzl	1902	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of Friedrich Löwenberg, a young Jewish Viennese intellectual, who, tired with European decadence, joins an Americanized Prussian aristocrat named Kingscourt as they retire to a remote Pacific island (it is specifically mentioned as being part of the Cook Islands, near Raratonga). Stopping in Jaffa on their way to the Pacific, they find Palestine a backward, destitute and sparsely populated land, as it appeared to Herzl on his visit in 1898. Löwenberg and Kingscourt spend the following twenty years on the island, cut off from civilization. As they pass through Palestine on their way back to Europe, they discover a land drastically transformed, showcasing a free, open and cosmopolitan modern society, and boasting a thriving cooperative industry based on state-of-the-art technology. In the two decades that have passed, European Jews have rediscovered and re-inhabited their Altneuland, reclaiming their own destiny in the Land of Israel. The basic plot device of a person finding himself transported to an utopian future and being given a "guided tour" of the society he finds there is similar to the plot of "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy, already considered a classic Utopian work at the time of writing and with which Herzl has been familiar.
5354328	/m/0dh16j	Petals on the Wind	V. C. Andrews	1980	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A continuation to the previous book Flowers in the Attic, the story starts off with Cathy, Chris, and Carrie traveling by bus to Florida after escaping Foxworth Hall. Carrie, still weak from the effects of the poison that killed her twin, is taken ill on the journey. The children are then discovered by Henrietta "Henny" Beech, the mute housekeeper of a local South Carolina doctor and widower, Paul Sheffield. Henny takes the children to the doctor's home so he can help Carrie. At first the children refuse to reveal their identities, but Cathy, sensing he genuinely cares and can help them, tells Dr. Paul their horrifying story of being locked up for three years, and being poisoned by their mother and grandmother. He convinces them to stay and receives custody of them. Though the three thrive under Paul's care, fulfilling their dreams -- Chris goes to premed and medical school, and Cathy joins a local ballet school then, later, one in New York -- Cathy is still bitter and bent on revenge against her mother, seeing her as the root of every problem in their lives: everything from Cory's death and Carrie's deformation to her and Chris' incestuous obsession with each other. While still in love with Chris, Cathy tries to get over her feelings for him and rejects his advances, saying she loves him only as a brother. Over time, Cathy falls in love with Paul, they become lovers, and make plans to be married, much to Chris' dismay. Part of this is due to Cathy's need to repay Paul sexually for taking them in and another part is to get over Chris. Paul confesses to Cathy that his wife, Julia, had murdered their son, Scotty, after he had an affair. This only increases her desire to be with him so that he won't be lonely. One day, Paul's sister, Amanda, visits Cathy after a ballet performance and leads Cathy to believe Paul's wife isn't dead. She also states that she knows Cathy miscarried Paul's child, referring to an incident about a month after Paul took them in where Cathy was hospitalized when she began bleeding profusely—she was told it was due to her irregular menstrual periods. Cathy realizes if she did miscarry, it was Chris' child, not Paul's. She confronts Paul, who admits his wife had still been alive when he first took them in (though in a permanent vegetative state from a suicide attempt years ago), but she died around the time he and Cathy became lovers. He also insists Cathy did not miscarry, but Cathy realizes she has now revealed to Paul the truth about her and Chris committing incest while they were imprisoned. Paul assures her he loves her, but she reveals that she felt so hurt and betrayed by what his sister told her that she married a man in her dance troupe, a fiery dancer named Julian Marquet who had been pursuing her from the moment he met her. Cathy knows she has made a mistake in marrying Julian, but feels she has to stay with him. Julian is possessive of Cathy and jealous of her relationship with both Paul and Chris. He abuses her, cheats on her, and forbids her to see Paul or Chris. Cathy even has to sneak away to see Chris graduate from medical school. When she returns to Julian, he breaks her toes so that she cannot perform. Chris comes to her rescue, and wants her to leave. However, Cathy is pregnant with Julian's child and wants to make her marriage work, even though both Paul and Chris insist that she must get away for her own safety. In the midst of this conflict, Julian is rendered paralyzed in a car accident. Even though Cathy tells him about the baby and that she loves him, he commits suicide in his hospital bed when he learns he will never dance again. Cathy, though guilt-ridden, is free. After the birth of her son (named Julian Janus Marquet, and called Jory -- J for Julian, the rest for Cory), Cathy once more becomes determined to destroy her mother's life. She moves with Carrie and Jory to Virginia, not far from Foxworth Hall. Under the guise of collecting Julian's insurance, she hires her mother's husband, Bart Winslow, as her lawyer, with the intention of seducing him and eventually revealing her true identity as Corrine's daughter. Meanwhile, Carrie meets a young man named Alex and they have a rich courtship. However, when Alex tells Carrie he plans to be a minister, Carrie becomes frightened, having remembered her grandmother Olivia's lectures about the devil's spawn. Soon after, Carrie attempts suicide by eating doughnuts poisoned with arsenic. In the hospital, Cathy relays to Carrie that Alex has said he will not become a minister since it bothers her so much. But Carrie reveals the real reason for her suicide attempt: she tells Cathy she saw their mother on the street and ran up to her, only to be angrily rejected by Corinne—this further convinced Carrie that she must be bad and evil. Carrie then dies from the damage of her suicide attempt. Cathy is devastated, and becomes even more enraged and intent on revenge against her mother. Chris finds out about Cathy's plan and gives her an ultimatum: she must give her plans or he will have nothing to do with her. Cathy refuses to listen and continues her plan to seduce Bart Winslow. Though initially focused solely on revenge, she and Bart fall in love and begin a prolonged affair. Cathy also sneaks into Foxworth Hall one evening, and begins looking for her grandmother, who by this time is an invalid due to a stroke. Cathy taunts and lashes her grandmother, but eventually starts to feel guilty and runs from the mansion. While Cathy and Bart continue their affair, she becomes pregnant with Bart's child, an act she believes will be a crushing blow to her mother, who, according to her grandfather's will, must forfeit her vast inheritance should she ever borne children. As Bart and his wife cannot have children, he is torn between his desire to be a husband to Corinne and his wish to be a father to Cathy's unborn child. Cathy returns to Foxworth Hall a second time on Christmas and visits the room that she and her siblings were locked up in; she describes the room as being as they have never left. She discovers a hidden room in the attic and smells a strange smell that she compares to something dead. She waits until the stroke of midnight and then takes her revenge on her mother by exposing the truth to Bart and a crowd of guests at her mother's Christmas Party at Foxworth Hall. Bart whisks Cathy and Corinne away from the party to the library; at first he thinks Cathy is lying, but he listens to her story and confronts Corinne. Corinne confesses to Bart but then exposes her side of the story, claiming to be a victim of her father, whose vicious plot was to ensure his grandchildren died trapped in the attic. She claims that she gave the children the arsenic to simply make them sick, whereupon she could take them out of the house and get them away and lie to her parents that they had died at the hospital. Cathy does not believe her and Bart is visibly disgusted by what she has done and the secrets she kept from him. Cathy demands to know what happened to Cory's body, as she checked the records and there were no death certificates issued for a boy of his age in that month. Corinne says she stashed the body in a ravine but Cathy accuses her of lying again and says she found a small room off the attic which had a strange musty smell. Chris arrives at the house and bursts into the library. Corinne mistakes him to be her first husband, come back to haunt her. Cathy's mother suffers a mental breakdown in which she suddenly believes that Cathy is twelve again and has somehow escaped the attic to confront her. In her madness, she sets fire to Foxworth Hall. Cathy, Chris and their mother escape, but Olivia is trapped and Bart runs to save her. Both end up dying in the fire. Cathy's mother is committed to a mental institution. It is later revealed that in a twist of fate, although Corinne has forfeited her father's inheritance, all that money has reverted to her now-dead mother, who stated in her will that her daughter was to receive everything. Chris tells Cathy why he came to Foxworth Hall to find her: Henny had a massive stroke, and in the process of trying to help her, Paul suffered a massive heart attack. Cathy returns to Paul and finally marries him. Cathy gives birth to a second son, whom she names Bart Jr.. Life is happy for Cathy, but due to complications from four heart attacks, Paul dies soon after. On his deathbed, Paul encourages Cathy to be with Chris, who has loved her and waited for her all these years. Cathy is amazed that Chris still loves her and still wants to be with her. It is at that moment when Cathy realizes that Chris was the right man for her all along and she still loves him as well. They move to California, where Cathy and Chris take the name "Sheffield" and plan to raise Cathy's two sons together, although Cathy secretly dreads what will happen to the children if their secret relationship is ever revealed. She also ends the book stating that she has been having strange thoughts about the attic in their house, and even put two twin beds up there. She wonders if she is somehow becoming her mother.
5354400	/m/0dh18m	If There Be Thorns	V. C. Andrews	1981	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book is narrated by two half-brothers, Jory and Bart Sheffield. Jory is a handsome, talented fourteen-year-old boy who wants to follow his mother Cathy in her career in the ballet, while nine-year-old Bart, who is unattractive and clumsy, feels he is outshone by Jory. By now, Cathy and Chris live together as husband and wife. To hide their history, they tell the boys and other people they know that Chris was Paul's younger brother. Cathy and Chris have a passionate and very sexual relationship, described by Jory who has accidentally witnessed encounters between them. The more they fight, the more they make up with affection. Cathy is a loving mother to her sons, but shows favortism in Jory while she looks at Bart with shadowy eyes. Unable to have more children, Cathy secretly adopts Cindy, the two-year-old daughter of one her former dance students, who was killed in an accident, because she longs to have a child that is hers and Chris's. Initially against it, Chris comes to accept the child. Lonely from all the attention Jory and Cindy are receiving, Bart befriends an elderly neighbor that moved in next door, who invites him over for cookies and ice cream and encourages him to call her "Grandmother." Jory also visits the old lady next door, and she reveals that she is actually his grandmother. Jory initially doesn't believe her, and avoids her at all costs. The old woman and Bart, on the other hand, soon develop an affectionate friendship, and the woman does her best to give Bart whatever he wants, provided that Bart promises to keep her gifts—-and their relationship-—a secret from his mother. Her butler, John Amos, also seems to befriend Bart, but soon John Amos begins to fill Bart's mind with stories about the sinful nature of women. John Amos reveals that the old woman is truly Bart's grandmother, Corrine Foxworth. He also gives Bart a journal belonging to Bart's biological great-grandfather, Malcolm Foxworth, claiming that this journal will help Bart become as powerful and successful as that man. Bart is enveloped by the journal and begins to pretend that he is his great-grandfather, who hated women and was obsessed with their degradation. Bart becomes destructive and violent towards his parents and siblings; he kicks Jory in the stomach and cuts off Cindy's hair. Bart's family notices the change in the boy, but only Jory suspects that the changes are due to the mysterious woman next door. At the same time, Jory becomes suspicious of his parents' relationship. Although amazed by their love, which he describes as intense and heartful, he notices that they resemble each other and wonders why his mother would marry Paul, who was much older, before Chris. After Bart becomes ill and nearly dies, Jory finally tells Chris about his suspicions about the lady next door. They go to confront her, but Chris discovers that the woman is his mother, who pleads with him to love and forgive her. Chris is indifferent to her pleas and orders her to stay away from him, Cathy, and the children, especially Bart. However, he decides not to tell Cathy that their mother is living next door to them. At the same time, Cathy is injured in a ballet accident and is told that she will never dance again. From her wheelchair, she begins to write out the story of her life. Bart filches his mother's manuscript pages and is enraged to learn the truth about his parents: Cathy and Chris are brother and sister, and his "grandmother" locked them in an attic for years, feeding them poison to gain an inheritance. The news causes Bart to cling to the only person who has not yet lied to him: John Amos. Bart proudly calls his parents sinners and "devil's spawns". Jory finds out the truth when his paternal grandmother visits and confronts Cathy about her relationship with "her brother Christopher". Jory is shocked and disgusted, but soon forgives them after he learns of their tragic past. Cathy also discovers the truth about the woman next door when Bart accidentally says that the woman gives him anything he wants and she goes to confront the woman. The old woman admits that she is indeed Cathy's mother, She expresses remorse for her crimes against Cathy, Chris and the twins, and begs Cathy to forgive and love her again. Cathy is enraged and attacks her. Before she can storm out, John Amos knocks Cathy and Corrine unconscious. Working on John Amos' orders, Bart, who now believes he is a vessel for his great-grandfather's vengeful spirit, helps to lock Cathy and her mother into the cellar, where John Amos plans to starve them to death. In the course of this, Bart realizes how much he loves his mother and grandmother, despite their sins, and tells Chris where the women are. But before they can be reached, the house next door catches fire. Bart goes in and unlocks the cellar door. Corrine orders Bart outside, and Corrine goes back into the cellar and saves Cathy, but Corrine's clothes catch fire as soon as she gets outside. Chris runs to her and helps put out the flames, but her heart gives out and she dies. John Amos dies in the house as well. The epilogue, resumed with Cathy as narrator, describes Cathy's emotional forgiveness of her mother at the woman's funeral. Cathy and Chris, for the sake of their three children, realize that they must never allow their secret relationship to be revealed. Bart seems to have recovered from the worst of his madness, but still dwells on the power wielded by his great-grandfather, whose millions he now stands to inherit.
5354438	/m/0dh19_	Seeds of Yesterday	V. C. Andrews	1984	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins fifteen years after the events in If There be Thorns. Cathy and Chris arrive at the house of their son, Bart, which was entirely built to replicate Foxworth Hall (which burned down in Petals on the Wind) to celebrate Bart's twenty-fifth birthday. They are planning on moving to Hawaii after the birthday celebration. When they arrive, they meet Joel, who they soon learn is their uncle, Corrine's brother, who was long thought dead. He claimed he spent several years in an Italian monastery, and contacted Bart after learning of Corrine's death and now works as the head butler at Bart's request. They soon learn that he is feeding Bart false information about God and punishment. Bart also begins to look at Joel as a father figure; a fact that troubles Cathy greatly. Bart is still bitter towards his mother and Chris for their incestuous relationship, so their stay is not pleasant. He has grown into a handsome young man, who is extremely jealous and power hungry, and bitter that Chris is the guardian of his money until his twenty-five birthday. Eventually Jory and Cindy move into Foxworth Hall, which adds to the tension in the household. Jory, who is almost thirty, has been married to Melodie, his childhood sweetheart and ballet partner, for nine years. They announce that Melodie is pregnant with their first child, and Cathy is happy of becoming a grandmother. When they move in, however, Bart exhibits jealousy towards Jory, whom he always believed was Cathy's favorite child. Bart also shows an unhealthy interest in Melodie. Days later, Cindy, who is now sixteen, arrives and it becomes clear that Bart still has disdain towards her. Cathy tries to make the best out of the situation until Bart's party. The happiness ends during Bart's birthday party, when Jory gets into an accident, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and unable to dance again. Melodie cannot deal with Jory's disability and withdraws from Jory. She turns to Bart for comfort and passion, and the two begin an affair. Although he believes he loves Melodie and she reciprocates his feelings, Bart soon realizes it is an empty relationship and he is just a replacement for Jory. Despite this, the affair continues, and Cathy is enraged when she finds out about it and tries with no success to keep them apart. Jory finds about the affair, and although angry, he tries to reconcile with Melodie, but she rejects him. Melodie goes into labor on Christmas Day, although she tells no one, and gives birth to twins, Darren and Deirdre, whom Cathy says resemble her twin brother and sister. Left with two children to care for, as well as a disabled husband, Melodie abandons Jory and the children. Cathy tries to console both her sons and tries to keep a firm hand on the pretty and free-spirited Cindy, who has a knack for finding boys. Bart, under the influence of Joel, hypocritically bans Cindy from premarital sexual acts under his roof even though he repeatedly slept with his brother's wife. In one incident Bart beats up a boy, Lance, when he finds Cindy having sexual intercourse with him in her room; in another, he comes across Cindy and another boy, Victor, making out in a car and again assaults the boy. Cindy later mentions to her mother that in her fear she kneed Bart in the crotch to make him stop but his rage was so great that he didn't even flinch at the supposedly crippling pain. This shows Bart's belief that what Cindy was doing was truly evil and his determination to stop her. When confronted about his hypocrisy a number of times throughout the story, Bart never attempts to justify his actions but instead responds with anger and resentment. After a long period of torment from Bart, and later Joel who disapprove of her ways, Cindy leaves to go to a school in New York. Cathy and Chris hire a beautiful nurse, named Antonia "Toni" Winters, to help Jory recuperate. She soon starts an affair with Bart. Bart is deeply infatuated with Toni, who seems to be in love with him. Cathy notices a change in Bart as a result of his relationship with Toni, such as withdrawing from Joel. Cathy, however, discovers that Jory has feelings for Toni and that he deserves her love more than Bart. Eventually, Toni sees the dark side of Bart after he becomes possesive to her, and she ends their relationship. Soon after, Toni falls in love with Jory and they begin a relationship, which brings Jory out of his depression from his divorce with Melodie. Cindy later comes home for a visit and tells Cathy of how she ran into Melodie in New York, who had apparently remarried immediately after her divorce from Jory was final and resumed her dancing career. Bart builds a chapel, in which he commands the family to attend Sunday sermons, presided over by Joel. Cathy and Chris eventually become disgusted by the "fire and brimstone" sermons and tell Bart that they will no longer attend. Bart secretly starts bringing the twins to the chapel, where they are made to pray for forgiveness for being the "Devil's Issue", which Cathy overhears, reminding her of Cory and Carrie. She confronts Bart with this, and tells him to leave the twins alone, telling Toni never to let them out of her sight, unless she knows they are with Jory or herself. After catching Bart bring the twins back to the chapel, Cathy decides it is time to leave, after two years in Foxworth Hall. Chris agrees it is time to leave and take Jory, Cindy, and the twins with them. Cathy tells Bart of her plans, and tells him that while she loves him, she cannot deal with the kind of person he has become. A furious Bart acts as if he wants nothing more and says her leaving him again is proof that she never understood him. Hours later, Cathy is waiting for Chris to come home from work so they can leave, but he never shows up. Joel comes and quite happily tells them that he heard on the radio of a car accident, in which a man was killed. Cathy's worst fear is confirmed later when she finds out that that man was Chris. She realizes how similar it was when their father was killed. With the loss of Chris, a big part in Cathy dies and she loses the will to live. Bart soon realizes how much he really loved Chris and gives a moving eulogy at his funeral, and soon after finds his place as a televangelist who travels the world. Bart and Cindy also make peace with each other. Toni and Jory have gotten married, and Toni becomes pregnant; Jory tells Cathy that if they have a boy they will call him Christopher, and if it is a girl they will call her Catherine. Despite all these good things and the family becoming closer than before, Cathy is depressed and longs to see Chris again. On her last night, Cathy goes up to the attic and sits by the one of windows and, after decorating the attic with paper flowers, dies. As she passes away, she remembers Chris, her mother, grandmother, and siblings, and how she lost her innocence to the world. Jory and a servant find a letter in Cathy's hand that she wrote, saying that no one needs her more than Chris does, that her final manuscript (the one she wrote during the course of Seeds of Yesterday and would later become that same novel) is in her private vault and anyone can do with it what they will, and that it was never too late for Bart to realize that he had the right father. It is determined that Cathy died of natural causes, but it is likely that she died of a broken heart.
5354586	/m/0dh1hv	The Three Evangelists	Fred Vargas	2006-01-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The "three evangelists": Marc Vanderloos, Matthias Dellamarre and Lucien Devernois, and Marc's uncle, the cashiered police commissioner Armand Vanderloos, make their first appearance in this book. One morning, the retired operatic soprano Sophia Siméonidis discovers, in her garden in the quiet Paris street rue Chastle, a beech tree that she has never seen before. There is nothing to indicate where it came from. Sophia is alarmed, but her husband Pierre is indifferent. Eventually she calls on her neighbours, the odd household of Marc, Matthias, Lucien, and the elder Vanderloos, and asks their help. They dig out the tree, but find nothing underneath it. Sophia disappears. Pierre remains unconcerned; he believes she has gone to visit an old lover, Stelyos. But Juliette, the evangelists' other next door neighbour, expresses concern; she is sure that Sophia, her best friend, would never have gone off without telling her, and especially not on a Thursday evening, when all the neighbours regularly meet for a convivial meal at Juliette's restaurant, Le Tonneau (The Barrel). One night Alexandra, Sophia's niece, arrives with her little boy Cyrille, running away from a failed relationship and expecting to stay with Sophia. Shortly afterward, a burned corpse is discovered in an abandoned factory, unrecognisable but with it is a small piece of basalt, which was Sophia's lucky charm. Alexandra has no alibi, she stands to inherit a third of Sophia's substantial fortune, and her habit of driving aimlessly around at night makes her a principal suspect. Already troubled by the enigma of the tree, and increasingly desperate to divert the attention of the police from Alexandra, the three evangelists and Armand Vanderloos start to investigate, exploiting Armand's continuing contacts with his former colleagues.
5354657	/m/0dh1ly	Garden of Shadows	V. C. Andrews	1986	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Garden of Shadows starts with a tall, plain Olivia being rescued from spinsterhood by the smart and handsome Malcolm Foxworth. She thinks she has found "the one" since this is the first man to ever show interest in her due to her height and plain appearance. They soon get married and Olivia leaves her family home in New Haven, Connecticut and moves to Malcolm's father Garland's manor, Foxworth Hall, in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Olivia starts to discover the dark secrets about Malcolm that start to kill her love for him. She discovers he is still tormented by his beautiful mother Corinne’s abandonment of him when he was five and that it was Olivia's plain looks and money that attracted him to her due to his mistrust of beautiful women. At a party to celebrate their wedding, Malcolm talks to and flirts with all the beautiful socialites, ignoring Olivia. While he is attracted to beauty and seems like he might consider an affair with one of them, it is obvious he does not trust them enough to marry and have a family with them. Olivia feels betrayed and humiliated, but hopes things will change as they begin their life together. When exploring the house, she discovers "The Swan Room," a room that belonged to Malcolm’s mother and has been kept as a shrine to her. In the room is a very large, ornate bed carved into the shape of a swan. When Malcolm discovers her in the room, they finally consummate the marriage, an act that could be considered more of an attack than an act of love; Malcolm saying his mother's name the entire time. Olivia wants to scream but doesn't, trying to save their humiliation from the servants. Nine months later, Olivia gives birth to a boy, Malcolm Jr., who is generally referred to as “Mal” so it would be easier to distinguish between him and his father. Malcolm is kind to her at times, giving her hope that things might improve between them. But for the most part, she feels unimportant and ignored. Two years later, she gives birth to a second son, Joel. Malcolm is upset as he wanted their second child to be a girl and that Joel is not healthy. He and Olivia are also told she cannot have any more children. Malcolm ignores the boys and Olivia because he can’t have a perfect daughter to raise to love him and stay with him always. Shortly after Joel is born, Malcolm’s father, Garland, comes back to Foxworth Hall with his new wife, Alicia. Olivia is disgusted to see that Alicia is only nineteen and very beautiful, and Malcolm is enraged to discover she is pregnant, thinking that her child will inherit part of Garland's fortune. Alicia makes numerous friendly overtures to Olivia, but Olivia keeps herself distant from her. Alicia gives birth to a son, whom she names Christopher. However, Malcolm becomes obsessed with Alicia. In one incident, Malcolm follows her to the lake and attempts to seduce her. Olivia witnesses this and is hurt. When Alicia spurns his advances, Malcolm is convinced that she is leading him on and vows to make her pay dearly. Olivia knows of Malcolm's lust towards Alicia and is humiliated and heartbroken, but she blames Alicia for making herself attractive to Malcolm. On the night of Christopher’s third birthday, Garland catches Malcolm trying to rape Alicia, has a heart attack, and dies in the fight that follows. Things are very somber in the house, although Malcolm seems to be feeling some guilt and avoids Alicia. After some time though, he begins to show interest in her again. A month or so later, Alicia confesses to Olivia that Malcolm has been visiting her in her bedroom and forcing himself on her, threatening to throw her and Christopher out on the street penniless if she doesn't let him. She also tells Olivia she is pregnant with Malcolm's child, who was still desperate to have a daughter. Olivia is humiliated and jealous. This is the moment when she hardens herself and begins to slowly transform into the vicious grandmother from Flowers in the Attic. Olivia decides that the only thing to do is hide Alicia up in the attic while she is pregnant; meanwhile Olivia will feign being pregnant as well. Once Alicia secretly has the baby, Olivia will take and pass the baby off as hers. Malcolm will give Alicia Garland's inheritance, and she and Christopher will leave. Alicia reluctantly agrees and says goodbye to Christopher and goes into hiding in the attic. Olivia has the servants removed so no one has a clue what is going on, and hires new ones. While locked away in the attic, Malcolm continues to see Alicia and takes advantage of her loneliness. So, to make her less attractive to Malcolm, Olivia coerces Alicia into cutting off her beautiful chestnut hair, which Olivia leaves on Malcolm’s desk to show that she now is the one in control. Over the months that pass, Olivia begins to think of Christopher as another son and is heartbroken when Alicia, after giving birth to a daughter, leaves quietly, taking Christopher with her. However, Olivia is soon enraged when she discovers Malcolm has named his new child Corinne after his mother and plans for her nursery to be next to his study. He acts like an only parent to the young Corinne, often overriding attempts by Olivia to raise her to be a proper young woman. Olivia still does what she can to be a mother to Corinne, and takes joy in their relationship. In the years that pass, Corinne grows up into a beautiful but spoiled young girl, and Malcolm continues to be emotionally distant from his sons and Olivia—he often criticizes the boys to Olivia, and is upset that they have no interest in his business. Malcolm Jr. dies in a motorcycling accident that resulted in him riding off a cliff near Foxworth Hall. Later, John Amos, Olivia's cousin, is hired as the butler and also serves to incorporate religion in the household. Soon after, Joel leaves on a tour of Europe with a professional orchestra against his father's wishes and is famed in several European newspapers. Olivia is proud of Joel for rebelling against his father, but Malcolm is indifferent and acts like he doesn't care. Unfortunately, Joel meets his end in an avalanche. His parents are informed of his death in a telegram that also revealed that his body was not recovered. Devastated over the loss of their sons, Olivia and Malcolm turn to religion and bond slightly until Olivia receives a letter from Alicia, who is dying from breast cancer. Alicia had remarried soon after leaving Foxworth Hall, but her husband died a few years later, and she became bankrupt during the Great Depression, so she and Christopher having been living in poverty. Alicia is pleading with Olivia to give Christopher a home and put him through medical school. Only because of how kind Olivia was to Christopher while Alicia was in the attic, Alicia wants Christopher to live at Foxworth Hall. Olivia convinces Malcolm to agree to this, and Christopher comes to live with them. When they meet for the first time, Corinne and Christopher fall deeply in love. Everyone is blinded from this love, however, as they all adore Christopher. But later, John Amos begins to suspect incest, although Olivia brushes it off as jealousy. She and Malcolm seem truly happy and content with their family. After Christopher's graduation from college (and Corinne's high school graduation) Christopher receives a letter of acceptance to Harvard. Olivia is the first to see it, and is very happy and rushes to find Christopher. She hears voices in the swan room and takes a quick peek that reveals Christopher and Corinne making love. They are banished and disinherited. Malcolm has a stroke as well as a heart attack afterward, and he is forced to use a wheelchair. Olivia comes to devote herself to Malcolm's health. Olivia also reveals the truth to John Amos that Christopher was not only Corinne's half-uncle but also her half-brother. She also tells of the sins and events that led to it. Malcolm is a changed man after the discovery of Chris and Corinne's scandal. Finally, he breaks and asks Olivia to hire a private detective to find out what happened to Corinne. The P.I. returns and informs Olivia that they live in Gladstone, PA under the name of Dollanganger. Christopher had dropped out of medical school and works in public relations, and Corinne is a housewife. She is also told of their four children: Chris, Cathy, and the twins, Cory and Carrie. All four children are perfectly healthy, bright, and beautiful, and well-known to their town as the Dresden Dolls. She does not tell Malcolm about the children because Olivia believes that he will want to see his grandchildren and be bewitched by the children's beauty, especially the girls. Years later, Corinne writes a letter to Olivia, seeking shelter and telling of Christopher's death by a car accident. Olivia is heartbroken of Christopher's death, but John Amos tells her that it was God's work. He also convinces her to allow Corinne and the children to come to Foxworth Hall, but the children must be hidden from the world forever if she wants to end the sins within Foxworth Hall. Olivia writes back to Corinne and says she is welcome back. Olivia tells Malcolm of Corinne coming home, but again doesn't tell him about the children. When she sees them for the first time, Olivia is attracted to the children's beauty and how much Chris and Cathy remind her of Christopher and Corinne, but she refuses to love them, as they are the "devil's spawn". The book ends with Olivia silently vowing to keep her heart hardened against the children, and to hide them from the world forever.
5354661	/m/0dh1m8	Have Mercy on Us All	Fred Vargas	2001	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Joss, a middle-aged former Breton sailor, begins to succeed in reviving the old family trade of town crier in modern-day Paris. Business is good, since people gladly pay five francs to hear their rants and nonsensical messages in parks and squares; every so often, ominous cryptic messages announcing the return of the plague will also be part of the day’s requested cries. At the same time, chief inspector Adamsberg is surprised as a distressed woman describes that all her apartment building’s doors, except one, have been marked with a large inverted “4” in black ink with the inscription “CLT.” This graffiti continues to turn up throughout the city, and residents of apartments with unmarked doors are turning up dead, showing signs of rat-flea bites and blackened flesh. Inspector Adamsberg must lead an investigation that takes him through a juxtaposition of 15th-century Europe and modern-day France...or does he? fr:Pars vite et reviens tard (roman) it:Parti in fretta e non tornare
5355263	/m/0dh2c2	The Black Book	Ian Rankin	1993	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Rebus finds himself with a number of problems on his hands. His wayward brother, Michael, has returned to Edinburgh in need of accommodation - with only the box-room in Rebus's flat available. While out drinking, he meets an old army friend, Deek Torrance, who admits to being involved in shady activities, telling Rebus he can get his hands on 'anything from a shag to a shooter'. Rebus spends so long out with Deek that he misses dinner with his girlfriend, Doctor Patience Aitken. Furious, she locks him out of her flat, forcing him to sleep in his own flat, on the sofa. At work, a new operation ('Moneybags') is started, aimed at putting one of 'Big Ger' Cafferty's money-lenders out of business. However, Rebus (who despises Cafferty) would rather go after the leader himself. Finally, Rebus's colleague Brian Holmes is put into a coma after being attacked from behind in the carpark of his favourite restaurant, the Elvis-themed Heartbreak Cafe. Rebus interviews Eddie Ringan, the Elvis enthusiast who owns the restaurant, and Pat Calder, Eddie's gay (and business) partner, but they prove to be of little help. Brian's girlfriend, Nell Stapleton, tells Rebus that Brian had a 'Black Book', a small notebook in which he kept interesting snippets of information. She suggests that Brian was attacked because of something in it. She also feels guilty, since she had argued with Brian just before he went to the restaurant. When Rebus recovers the book, one entry in particular catches his interest. Five years ago, a mysterious fire burned Edinburgh's seedy Central Hotel down. Although all the staff and customers were accounted for, an unidentified body was found in the remains. The entry in the black book talks about a poker game that took place on the night the fire happened. However, it is written in cryptic shorthand, with obscure nicknames instead of the real names of the poker players. Rebus's first action is to discuss the autopsy of the unidentified body with the pathologist Dr Curt, who still remembers it in grisly detail. The autopsy revealed that the deceased had been shot through the heart, as well as having suffered a broken arm sometime in the past. Meanwhile, Operation 'Moneybags' is set to get into swing, with Rebus supervising one of the surveillance teams. Under his command is Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke, at this time a new recruit to the force. Rebus turns to an old friend of his, Matthew Vanderhyde, an elderly blind man who helped him in Hide and Seek. In the 1950s, Vanderhyde used to go to the Central Hotel for rallies for Sword and Shield, a hardline offshoot of the Scottish National Party. He was there the night it burned down, having a drink with a friend, Aengus Gibson, also known as 'Black Aengus'. Heir to the Gibson brewing business, Aengus was a wild drunk at the time of the fire, but has since reformed. He was not on the list of people who was at the hotel due to his family's influence. The day after a night of arguments with Michael and the students, Rebus discusses Cafferty with Siobhan. Siobhan mentions the 'Bru-head Brothers', Tam and Eck Robertson, a pair of criminals who disappeared at around the same time as the Central fire. Rebus then realises that the one of the names in the Black Book refers to them, and another to Cafferty himself. When Rebus returns home, he receives grim news about his brother, who has just been found hanging by his legs from the Forth Rail Bridge. Michael is in shock and has to be taken to hospital. Fearing for the safety of his brother, Rebus decides that he needs serious protection. Remembering Deek Torrance's words 'anything from a shag to a shooter', Rebus decides to get in touch with his old friend. The following day, while overseeing the dull minutae of the Operation Moneybags surveillance, Rebus and Siobhan hear welcome news - Brian Holmes has recovered consciousness. While he cannot remember anything about his assailant, he does tell Rebus that the final name in the Black Book refers to Eddie Ringan, the chef of the Heartbreak Cafe, who told Brian about the poker game. Rebus returns to the Heartbreak Cafe, and demands to know what happened on the night of the fire. He knows that Eddie was moonlighting at the Central, which is why he never appeared on the list of people who were there. Eddie, an alcoholic, flies into a drunken rage, hurting his assistant Willie in the process. But as Rebus turns to leave, Eddie suggests visiting a pub in Cowdenbeath. Armed with two sketches of the Robertson brothers as they might appear today, Rebus visits several Cowdenbeath pubs, asking customers if they recognise them. He has little luck, although a drunk old gambler claims he recognises one of the pictures, causing Rebus to suspect that one of the brothers may be working as a bookmaker. The next day, Rebus learns that Eddie has disappeared after a night out. Pat Calder insists to Rebus that Eddie always returns home safely, despite his alcohol problem. Willie, the assistant chef, is of little help. Rebus suspects that Eddie may have been warned off, or worse. Meanwhile, Rebus's superiors are annoyed at the effort he is putting into the Central Hotel case. Undaunted, Rebus approaches Aengus Gibson, who admits being at the hotel on the night of the fire with Vanderhyde, but insists that he left hours before the fire actually began. Rebus, however, is suspicious. Later that night, Rebus meets up with Deek Torrance, and arranges to buy a handgun from him. Chief Superintendent 'Farmer' Watson demands an explanation for Rebus's continued interest in the Central Fire, giving him twenty-four hours to come up with something concrete. Later that day, Rebus goes to Pat Calder and Eddie's flat to fill out an official missing person report. Calder reveals that Willie had cracked up trying to cope without Eddie, making a scene before leaving the restaurant. With few options left open to him, Rebus decides to talk to Morris Gerald Cafferty at his upmarket home in Duddingston. The two men's mutual loathing results in a tense confrontation. While Cafferty reveals relatively little, he does admit that the Robertson Brothers used to work for him as 'general employees', but left his service years ago. As Rebus leaves, he is certain that Cafferty was behind the attack on Michael. Meanwhile, Siobhan is out getting extra camera film for the Operation Moneybags surveillance, and walks past the Heartbreak Cafe. Smelling gas, she enters and discovers Eddie Ringan's body with the head inside the oven, an apparent suicide. Dr Curt's examination of Eddie's badly burned body turns up some suspicious findings. The deceased's liver was in good condition, even though Eddie was a persistent heavy drinker. There are also strange injuries inside the mouth. That night, Rebus meets with Deek Torrance in North Queensferry to buy the handgun, a Colt 45, which he hides in his car. Mulling over the cases, Rebus visits a Catholic church and confesses to the priest that he has bought a gun. The priest advises him to throw it into the sea. Rebus decides to do just that. Returning to St Leonards, Rebus is confronted by his immediate superior, Chief Inspector Lauderdale, who demands Rebus surrender his car keys. Rebus realises that his colleagues have been tipped off about the gun. But worse is to come, as the gun turns out to be the same one used in the Central Hotel shooting five years ago. Rebus is suspended from duty. After attending Eddie Ringan's funeral, Rebus has a suspicion of what happened. After checking the reservations book for the Heartbreak Cafe, he finds out that none of the customers remember Willie making a scene and storming out. His suspicions confirmed, Rebus goes to Eddie and Pat's flat, and finds the still living Eddie Ringan hiding there. He and Pat had rendered Willie unconscious by forcing alcohol down his throat, and used his body to stage a suicide attempt. Rebus arrests Eddie, but while taking him back to the station, stops in front of Cafferty's mansion. Eddie is clearly terrified of Cafferty, and admits that he helped burn down the Central Hotel, after a blood-splattered Aengus Gibson ran into the hotel kitchens. Siobhan, having checked the medical records of a Dundee hospital, reveals that Tam Robertson had broken an arm twelve years ago. The corpse found in the remains of the Central belonged to him. Rebus confronts Aengus Gibson, demanding to know what happened at the night of the fire, but is forced to leave by Aengus's father. Returning to Fife, Rebus visits a bookmaker owned by Eck Robertson, living under a false name. Eck says that Aengus shot Tam for cheating during the poker game. Back in Edinburgh, Aengus Gibson has committed suicide. When Rebus reads Aengus's journal, it becomes clear that he thought that he was about to be arrested for the murder of Tam Robertson. The journal also reveals that it was Cafferty who forced the gun into his hand, getting Aengus's fingerprints on it. After the shooting, Aengus went berserk, starting the fire to hide the evidence. Determined to trap Cafferty once and for all, Rebus uses his contacts to set up a sting operation, with child molester Andrew McPhail being used as the unwitting bait. Cafferty is caught red-handed attacking McPhail outside the Operation Moneybags surveillance, and is arrested. With Cafferty in jail, the police are able to take a closer look at his operation. A farm in the Borders is raided, where Cafferty used to personally execute his enemies. Deek Torrance is amongst those arrested there. In exchange for leniency, Eddie Ringan agrees to testify against Cafferty. In the final chapter, Rebus accuses Nell Stapleton of being the one who knocked Brian Holmes out. Although he doesn't have any evidence, he does note that she had a motive after the arguments she'd been having with Brian.
5355319	/m/0dh2fh	There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom	Louis Sachar	1987	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This book is about Bradley Chalkers, a troubled fifth grade boy who has serious behavior problems. Bradley made a friend name Jeff he came from the white house but they don't get along as well. Bradley invariably lies and bullies classmates. Bradley also performs poorly in his studies. He does not complete his homework and constantly lies to his mom telling her that he always gets A+ on his papers, when he gets F- all the time. As a result, he gets held back a year, making him the oldest pupil in the fifth grade. He does not appear to have a happy house life. His father often bullies him and his sister teases him. With the exception of his mother, Bradley's family is largely unsupported and does little to attempt to undo. This all changes when his school gets a counsler named Carla Davis she changes Bradley's life but in the end has to leave the school because of angry parents. fi:Takapulpetin poika
5356295	/m/0dh3y8	Man on Fire	A. J. Quinnell	1980-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Italy, wealthy families often hire bodyguards to protect family members from the threat of kidnapping. When Rika Balletto urges her husband Ettore, a wealthy textiles producer living in Milan, to hire a bodyguard for their daughter Pinta, he is doubtful but agrees. After some searching, he finally settles for an American named Creasy. Creasy, once purposeful and lethal, has become a burnt-out alcoholic. To keep him occupied, his companion Guido suggests that Creasy should get a job, and offers him to set him up as a bodyguard; thus he is being hired by the Ballettos, where he meets his charge, Pinta. Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her. They become friends and he replaces her parents in their absences, giving her advice, guidance and help with her competition running; he is even spurred to give up his drinking and return to his former physical prowess. But Creasy's life is shattered when Pinta is kidnapped by the Mafia, despite his efforts to protect her. Creasy is wounded during the kidnapping, and as he lies in a hospital bed Guido keeps him informed of the goings on. Soon enough, Guido returns with the news that the exchange went bad, and Pinta was found dead in a car, suffocated on her own vomit. She had also been raped by her captors. Out of hospital, Creasy returns to Guido's pensione, and outlines his plans for revenge against the men who took away the girl who convinced him it was all right to live again; anyone who was involved, or profited from it, all the way to the top of the Mafia. Told by Guido he can stay with in-laws on the island of Gozo in Malta, Creasy accepts the offer, in order to train for his new mission. While on Gozo, Creasy trains for several months, getting into shape and re-familiarizing himself with weaponry. But, to his surprise, he also discovers he has another reason to live after his suicidal mission against the Mafia; he finds himself accepted by and admiring the Gozitans, and falls in love with Nadia, the daughter of his host. Soon enough, he is fit and leaves for Marseille where he stocks up on supplies, weapons and ammunition; from there he travels back to Italy, and then the war between Creasy and the Mafia begins. From low-level enforcers to the capos in Milan and Rome, and all the way to the head Don in Sicily, Creasy cuts through their organization, murdering anyone who had something even remotely to do with Pinta's kidnapping. After Creasy reveals to Rika that Ettore allowed her to be kidnapped for the insurance money, Ettore commits suicide. Finally, after killing the Don, a severely wounded Creasy is taken to hospital, but pronounced dead; a funeral is held and Creasy is thought to be gone. But, unknown to all, Creasy was in fact alive, and makes it back to Gozo where he is reunited with Nadia.
5356511	/m/0dh4bh	Web of Dreams	V. C. Andrews	1990-02	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel opens with Annie Casteel Stonewall returning to Farthinggale Manor for the funeral of her father, Troy Tatterton. Annie, hoping to finally put the past to rest alongside her mother Heaven, feels drawn to the suite that used to be occupied by her great-grandmother, Jillian. Annie soon discovers a forgotten diary hidden away in a back drawer in Jillian's suite. The diary was written by Leigh VanVoreen, Annie's grandmother and Heaven's mother. Surprised by the discovery, Annie begins to read the tragic story of Leigh. 12-year-old Leigh VanVoreen was the beloved daughter of cruise-ship magnate Cleave VanVoreen and his beautiful Boston socialite wife Jillian. Leigh's life was happy until her mother left her father for the much younger Tony Tatterton, the handsome and wealthy owner of Tatterton Toys. When Jillian married Tony, she and Leigh moved into Tony's estate, Farthinggale Manor. Leigh's only friend on the estate was Troy Tatterton, Tony's 4-year-old brother, and they spent a lot of time together. Eventually, Leigh was placed in an exclusive private school for girls. During her summer vacation, Leigh served as the model for what would be a new line of toys for Tatterton Toys: a portrait doll. During the portrait-doll modeling sessions, Tony had Leigh model nude and started making advances towards her, as Jillian had stopped sleeping with him. Leigh told Jillian what was happening, but Jillian told her she was being stupid to worry and that it was nothing. Leigh went to her father to originally help her,but he remarried a woman who didn't like Leigh and Leigh realized he didn't care about her anymore. After the doll was complete, it was presented to Leigh on her birthday. Tony raped Leigh one night while Jillian was away, when she was about to go asleep. She was going to call her close friend but was to ashamed of what happened. The next morning he acted like nothing had happened, but she was fearful and didn't want to stay in her room, where the attack had happened, so she hid in Jillian's room with the door locked. But he had a spare key and he raped her the second night, and when she tried to scare him off by saying she'd tell Jillian, he told her Jillian thought Leigh wanted him to have sex with her, and then raped her again. When Jillian came home, Leigh tried to tell Jillian that Tony raped her, but Jillian didn't believe her. She accused Leigh of lying, saying that Tony had told her Leigh was the one making sexual advances during the modeling sessions and that she had tried to get Tony to have sex with her. Leigh was shocked and saddened by her mother's decision to believe Tony over her own daughter. After a few weeks, Leigh discovered she was pregnant by Tony and confronted her mother with this fact. Jillian,acted as though convinced that Leigh had seduced Tony on purpose, called her a slut. It was then that she realized Tony was right, and Jillian was making Leigh a mistress to Tony, not caring about Leigh anymore. Leigh told Jillian that she knew Jillian had also had premarital sex and that she had essentially pimped her out to Tony to avoid having sex with him. After the fight, Leigh stole some of Tony's money that he kept in a strongbox and fled Farthinggale Manor with a few meager possessions and her portrait doll. Leigh decided to go live with her grandmother Jana in Texas. After leaving Boston, she purchased a train ticket in Atlanta, but missed her connection and was stranded. A stranger named Luke Casteel cheered her up. After he inquired about Leigh's portrait doll, she admitted that it was indeed modeled after her, and that she had named it Angel. Luke told her that 'Angel' was a better name for her than Leigh. He then proceeded to refer to Leigh as Angel after that. Leigh confided in him about the circumstances of her pregnancy and her tragic story and he drove her to a motel so she could rest. He then returned with some food for her, and when Leigh asked him to stay because she had never been in a motel room alone, he agreed. When she woke up in the middle of the night, Luke was instantly at her side, reassuring her that he'd always protect her. He then told her that he had fallen in love with her and wanted to be the father of her baby. Assuming she dreamt this, Leigh went back to sleep. After waking up in Luke's arms, she asked him about it. He passionately talked about his plans for the future if the two of them were together and Leigh fell more and more in love with him. Although they had only known each other for one day, they got married and returned to Luke's West Virginia mountain home, where her young age was not so unusual. After meeting Luke's parents, Annie and Toby, Leigh worked hard around the shack and ignored the stares of the local townsfolk. For his part, Luke was madly in love with her and had plans to build a house in town for her and the baby. Whenever Luke would drink, Leigh would fear for his health and tell him off, which he liked because she put him straight. He promised to make her happy because she was the love of his life. Leigh's diary ends when she starts experiencing labor pains while out for a walk with Luke. She writes about how they went up the mountain and how Luke talked about their plans for the future. He told her that she was his one and only and that no man could ever love any woman more than he loved her. She responded by kissing him and asking him to go back to the cabin with her so he could hold her. As they walk back, Leigh records that she stopped and stared at the stars, telling Luke that when she went to sleep tonight she wanted to feel like she was going to sleep in heaven. These are the last words in the journal, sadly ironic because the reader/Annie knows that Leigh does go to sleep 'in heaven', due to her death in childbirth, and that it is this death which turns Luke into the heartless man he is in Heaven. In the present, Annie finds a note from a private investigator Tony hired, stating that Leigh died in childbirth due to inadequate medical care. The note also states that the child survived and that it was a girl. The implication is that both Tony and Jillian knew about Heaven long before she came to Farthinggale, but preferred to leave her to be brought up as a hillbilly rather than face what they had done to Leigh. Saddened by what she has read, Annie puts the journal back in the drawer as she hears Luke calling her name. She goes to him and they leave Farthinggale to its ghosts.
5357217	/m/0dh61j	Dawn	V. C. Andrews	1990-11	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 14-year-old Dawn Longchamp leads a humble, rootless existence with her parents, Ormond and Sally Jean Longchamp, and her moody older brother Jimmy, who is 16-years-old. Moving around a lot, Dawn's family does not provide much stability for her, but what her lifestyle lacks in stability, her home life makes up for in love. This erratic lifestyle seems to change when Dawn and Jimmy are able to enroll in an exclusive private school when Ormond gets a job there. It is here that Dawn's talent for singing is discovered. Her brother does not enjoy the school, feeling the weight of class differences bear down upon him. Dawn, although optimistic, does not fare much better, and is sternly ordered by the headmistress to be on her best behavior as she is of lesser social status than her classroom peers. On her first day, she also incurs the wrath of the most popular and affluent girl in the school, Clara Sue Cutler, after accidentally ratting her out on her smoking. Clara Sue then proceeds to pull mean-spirited pranks on Dawn and openly refers to her as white trash. Deeply offended, Dawn finally stops trying to like Clara Sue after this insult. However, Clara Sue's older brother, the handsome and charming Philip Cutler, does not share his sister's loathing. Phillip is kind to Dawn, and immediately shows an interest in her. He compares her beauty to that of his mother, Laura Sue Cutler, and is easily entranced. Jimmy is wary of Phillip, but does not overtly oppose Dawn's involvement with him. A shy girl who has had a sheltered upbringing, Dawn is somewhat taken aback by Phillip's immediate romantic overtures, even though she does find him attractive. Phillip urges her to date him, and after constant persuasion from him, Dawn agrees. Meanwhile, Dawn's mother, Sally Jean, has discovered that she is pregnant. This strains the Longchamps' finances, which are already tight, but Dawn is still overjoyed at the prospect of a little sibling, hoping that the baby will look more like her. Sally Jean gives birth to a little girl named Fern, but does not recover her health after the labor. She attempts several holistic ways of recovering her health but to no avail. She remains bedridden for the duration of Dawn's school year. At school, Dawn is excited by the musical opportunities now opening up to her. Her enjoyment of music culminates in her solo song, Somewhere over the Rainbow, at a school concert. Although nervous because of a prank pulled earlier by Clara Sue and her clique, Dawn draws emotional strength from the pearl necklace Sally Jean gave her earlier in the evening, which she claims are a Longchamp heirloom. Dawn's world comes crashing down after her solo performance at the school concert. Her beloved mother, Sally Jean, passes away that night. With the shock of this barely registered, what comes on the heels of Sally Jean's death truly changes Dawn's life forever. A security guard at the hospital where Sally Jean died recognizes the family, and also notices something peculiar in Dawn's appearance. He goes to the authorities, who perform an early morning raid of the Longchamp residence. Through these officers, it is revealed to Dawn that she is not Ormond and Sally Jean's biological daughter, but that she was kidnapped by them as a newborn baby, and that she is actually the daughter of Randolph and Laura Sue Cutler. Dawn is taken back to Cutler's Cove, Virginia, an offshoot of Virginia Beach. Ormond is arrested for child kidnapping. With no nearby relatives to come to their aid, Jimmy and Fern are placed in foster care. Dawn refuses to believe that Ormond kidnapped her, but the authorities prove her identity through a unique birthmark she shares with the description of the kidnapped baby. Dawn is appalled at the realization that the terrible Clara Sue is her sister; even worse, her boyfriend, Phillip, is actually her brother. These concerns fade into the background after her first meeting with Grandmother Cutler at the family's hotel, also named Cutler's Cove. Grandmother Cutler does not seem overjoyed about the return of her long-lost grandchild. She informs Dawn that she will be known by her "true" name, Eugenia, and that she will work in the hotel as a maid in order to prove that she is trustworthy. Dawn is shocked and upset by this cold treatment. She tries appealing to her real parents, Randolph and Laura Sue, but they are just as powerless as her. Randolph, though charming and handsome, has little willpower and prefers life to be as smooth as possible. Laura Sue is enchanted by Dawn's prettiness and resemblance to her, but refuses to make any effort to help her, as she is completely cowed by her mother-in-law. Dawn is also put at risk by Clara Sue's malicious tricks. Infuriated by Dawn's return, she does her best to make sure Dawn is fired by stealing jewellery and other items from the hotel guests. Dawn finds some comfort in the housekeeper, Mrs. Boston, who knew Sally Jean and Ormond Longchamp when they worked at the hotel. She cannot believe that her parents stole her, as they were always honest, hard-working people. Mrs. Boston hints that there is more to the "kidnapping" than meets the eye. Dawn's life is further brightened by a secret visit from Jimmy, aided and abetted by Phillip. Jimmy confesses that he has been in love with Dawn since they were children, but never dared show it because he felt he was sick for thinking of her that way. Dawn admits the attraction is mutual, but they find it hard to overcome their upbringing as brother and sister. This happy interlude comes to an end when Clara Sue finds Jimmy in the basement, where Dawn hid him. She tells Grandmother Cutler, who goes to the police and has Jimmy taken back to his foster parents. Dawn is heart-broken that Jimmy has to leave and is furious with Clara Sue. Jealous of her obvious affection for Jimmy, Phillip corners Dawn in her bathroom and rapes her. Desperate to get out, Dawn visits Mrs. Dalton, the woman who took care of her just after she was born, and learns that her "kidnapping" was staged by Grandmother Cutler because Randolph was not her biological father, as her mother had extramarital affairs, and didn't want a non-Culter child to receive benefits from the family. The Longchamps were paid with family jewels, including Dawn's pearls, to keep them quiet and to provide for Dawn and Jimmy. Outraged, Dawn confronts Grandmother Cutler about this. The old woman eventually agrees that she was the instigator and makes Dawn a deal: if Dawn will go to a singing school in New York, she will get Ormond out of prison. Dawn agrees but on one condition: that she be referred to by Dawn, not Eugenia. The book ends with Dawn going to New York.
5357347	/m/0dh69w	Secrets of the Morning	V. C. Andrews	1991-06	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Secrets of the Morning picks up where Dawn left off, with Dawn Cutler arriving in New York City after leaving her family’s hotel, Cutler's Cove, located in Virginia. Her family is filled with untrustworthy liars who only care for themselves. When Dawn arrives at the boarding house, she meets the owner, Agnes - an aging actress who remains obsessed with the stage. Agnes immediately thinks bad of Dawn due to a letter from Grandmother Cutler saying Dawn is promiscuous and spoiled after years of having her way at the hotel. After much effort, Dawn earns Agnes's trust. Dawn forms a strong bond of friendship with her roommate, a dancer named Trisha. Dawn and Trisha both attend a performing arts school, Bernhardt School For The Arts. During Dawn's first year in the boarding house, she meets more residents and makes several new friends. Dawn is enrolled in special lessons with her piano teacher, a very famous opera singer named Michael Sutton. Michael is holding auditions for six people to be admitted to his singing class. Dawn is selected to be in this prestigious class at the beginning of her senior year. As time goes on Dawn feels attracted to Michael, who takes advantage of her and seduces her. After spending many forbidden weeks together, Dawn falls in love with Michael but feels guilty for betraying Jimmy. After Thanksgiving break ends, she discovers, much to her dismay, that she is expecting Michael's child. Michael said that he would marry Dawn and take her with him on tour, but instead he flees the country. Dawn, mistakenly believing that he is taking her with him, goes to his apartment to discover he is gone. She finds out that Michael was just subletting the apartment from an old man and the gifts he bought for Dawn were just empty boxes. Then after leaving the apartment in shock, Dawn thinks she sees Michael, and she runs into oncoming traffic to catch him. Right after realizing that it wasn't Michael, she is struck by a taxi. Dawn wakes up in the hospital after four days. Dawn's doctor then tells her that luckily she and her baby are all right. Grandmother Cutler comes a few days later and tells Dawn she is sending her to The Meadows, Grandmother Cutler's childhood home, where her sister Emily is going to take care of her until after she delivers the baby. Upon arriving, she meets Luther. A handyman and hard worker, Luther picks her up from the station, and drives her to the isolated dilapidated plantation. Emily is waiting for them and with her is her younger sister Charlotte. Charlotte is mentally disabled, but quite friendly. Emily is very harsh to Dawn and tells her she is an embarrassment to her family thus her reason for being sent to The Meadows is to avoid scandal. Emily keeps Dawn in a little stuffy room with no windows and just enough kerosene to last her one week. Emily doesn't allow the electricity to be used because of its expense. Emily is a trained midwife and she makes Dawn submit to an embarrassing and rough examination. Emily then gives Dawn two outfits to wear all the time. Emily takes all of Dawn's things and does not return them. Emily forces Dawn to do all the chores in the old plantation. Emily also puts vinegar into the food, claiming that the vinegar is to make them mindful of the bitterness of life and sin. Dawn makes it through the next few months with only simple-minded Charlotte as a companion. The times Dawn and Charlotte are alone Charlotte reveals she had a child and tells Dawn sometimes Emily lets the child visit. Emily told Charlotte that her baby was born with horns, because it was the spawn of the Devil. Dawn is intrigued and one night sneaks out to the west wing, a place where Dawn is forbidden to venture. She finds a nursery and is startled there by Emily. The two argue and the fight nearly becomes physical. Dawn storms off and trips over a lamp cord, and the resulting fall starts her into labor. Dawn gives birth to a baby girl, whom she names Christie. After giving birth, she holds her daughter once and then the baby is whisked away so she can rest. When Dawn wakes up she asks for her baby, Emily tells her baby was born too small leading Dawn to believe the baby has died. Secretly, Grandmother Cutler has planned an adoption of Dawn's baby and while Dawn sleeps, the baby is taken to her new adoptive parents. When she wakes up again, Emily gives Dawn back her clothes and tells her that Luther is going to take her to the bus station so she can leave. To her surprise, Jimmy shows up to get her after becoming concerned that Dawn had not responded to his letters and Trisha told him what had happened to her. Jimmy interrogates Emily into revealing that Grandmother Cutler had given the baby up for adoption. Dawn tries to apologize to Jimmy for her betrayal, but Jimmy forgives her because she was taken advantage of. They set out to find Dawn's baby starting with Grandmother Cutler. To their shock Grandmother Cutler had just suffered a deadly stroke and is in the hospital. Dawn and Jimmy go see her to question her regarding the whereabouts of Dawn's baby. They find out that Grandmother Cutler is paralyzed from her left side but they see her for only five minutes and Dawn starts asking her “Where’s my baby?” Grandmother Cutler just murmurs so Dawn gets closer to her and listens to what her grandmother tells her, “You’re my curse” and then dies. At the reading of her grandmother's will, Dawn finds out that her grandfather is really her biological father, because her mother had been raped by him years earlier and that is what led to the kidnapping plot. A portion of his will that he had specified only be read after the death of his wife revealed this and the fact that he left a significant amount of his fortune and over half ownership of Cutler's Cove Hotel to Dawn. After hearing about her real father, Dawn confronts her mother about it, but her mother refuses to talk. Dawn is disgusted with her mother and says she wouldn't care if the hotel burned to the ground. Dawn and Jimmy then leave to go get Christie, her daughter.
5357383	/m/0dh6g1	Twilight's Child	V. C. Andrews	1992-02	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Dawn and Jimmy arrange to find out what happened to Dawn's daughter Christie, who was given up for adoption by Grandmother Cutler. Thanks to the hotel lawyer, Dawn and Jimmy quickly get Christie back, as the adoption process was not legal. Dawn and Jimmy make plans to marry. Although she dislikes the hotel and would rather become a singer, Dawn takes up the running of Cutler's Cove. Randolph, Dawn's stepfather and half-brother, is haunted by the death of his mother, and starts to drink excessively. The only thing that makes him happy is Christie, but he begins to wander away from the hotel, often forgetting where he is and begins pretending that his mother is still alive. Dawn marries Jimmy, and her brother Philip acts as best man. Philip, who has obsessed over Dawn since prior to finding out they were related, acts strangely during the wedding, muttering the vows under his breath as if he were marrying Dawn. As Randolph is not at the ceremony to give Dawn away, Bronson Alcott, a friend of Dawn's mother, does instead. On their wedding night, Dawn and Jimmy finally consummate their relationship. However, the honeymoon is cut short when Randolph is found dead at his mother's grave several days later. Dawn takes full ownership of the hotel and begins spending more time on the hotel than with her family. With her husband dead, Laura Sue resumes her old relationship with Bronson Alcott and they quickly marry. Bronson later confesses to Dawn that Clara Sue is his daughter, conceived during an affair that began after Dawn's "kidnapping". Soon after, Dawn discovers that she is pregnant with Jimmy's child. Because Bronson wishes to have a relationship with Clara Sue, Dawn decides that her sister should go and live with him and their mother, and has Clara Sue's things moved to Bronson's house. When Clara Sue comes home and finds out about Dawn's decision, she becomes angry and attacks Dawn, causing her to miscarry. Clara Sue is ostracized by nearly everyone for this act, her mother being the only exception. The miscarriage has a devastating impact on Dawn and Jimmy. Dawn resorts to the hotel to ease her grief, withdrawing from Jimmy and Christie, and it takes a long time for them to recover from this tragic event. Phillip announces that he is engaged to a classmate, Betty Ann Monroe. Clara Sue purposely embarrasses the family at his graduation ceremony by bringing one of her sleazy boyfriends along. Phillip marries Betty Ann, but still obsesses over Dawn, to the point that he has Betty Ann dye her hair blonde, wear Dawn's nightgown and perfume, and goes to the same place where Dawn and Jimmy went on their honeymoon. Clara Sue returns to torment Dawn: she says the hotel should be hers, because Dawn is an illegitimate child, but Dawn reveals that Clara Sue is also illegitimate and doesn't have any Cutler blood, which drives Clara Sue away in anger. Since her miscarriage, Dawn has been unable to become pregnant. Dawn and Jimmy's frustration grows when Betty Ann becomes pregnant and gives birth to twins, Melanie and Richard. Philip tells Dawn that this works out perfectly: Melanie can be for Betty Ann and Richard for Dawn. Dawn is disturbed by this statement, but does nothing because she can see Philip is trying to lead a normal life. After the birth of the twins, Jimmy decides to visit his father and stepmother in Texas. While he is away, a drunken Philip almost rapes Dawn, telling Dawn that he could get her pregnant unlike Jimmy. Fortunately, they are interrupted when Christie starts crying and Dawn sends him away, reminding him that he is now married and should try to love his wife. He tries to apologize to her, but she tells him to forget it happened. Jimmy tells Dawn that he has found out what happened to his baby sister Fern, who was adopted when his father was arrested for "kidnapping" Dawn. He found out that Fern was adopted by Clayton and Leslie Osbourne, who changed her named to Kelly Ann. Dawn and Jimmy visit the Osbournes to make sure that Fern is okay. Although they are not allowed to tell Fern who they are, she already knows about her adoption and follows them back to the hotel. She tells them that Clayton sexually abused her, so Jimmy and Dawn obtain custody of her. Fern initially seems sweet and helpful, but soon proves untrustworthy, stealing things from the hotel, smoking in the basement with older boys, and acting promiscuously. She also makes Christie and Gavin, her little half-brother, strip and try to touch each other. Jimmy continually takes her side and Fern seems to enjoy driving a wedge between her brother and sister-in-law. Dawn is upset because she cannot understand how the sweet baby she used to care for has become this resentful, deceptive teenager. Christie's father, Michael, reappears in Dawn's life again. He asks to see Christie, and Dawn reluctantly agrees. He then claims to be remorseful for his actions and asks for a second chance, which Dawn rejects, saying nothing can ever take her away from Jimmy. Michael's real intentions are revealed; he asks $5,000 from Dawn to help him get back on his feet. If she refuses, he will fight for custody of Christie. With the help of the hotel lawyer and a private detective, Dawn is able to scare Michael away. Meanwhile, Clara Sue is killed in a truck accident with another boyfriend. Laura Sue has a mental breakdown following Clara Sue's death and loses bits of her sanity. When she comes upon a magazine article that mirrors Fern's accusations, she realizes that Fern has been lying about being sexually abused. She calls Jimmy and they confront Fern about the magazine. Fern breaks down and admits that she made up the whole story, but argues that her adoptive parents were always disappointed in her and she thought Jimmy and Dawn would treat her better as they were her 'real' family. Dawn tells her that they do want to treat her better but that can only happen if Fern works on her attitude and stops stealing and lying to them. Fern promises that she will do better but Dawn wonders if she can really change. Sometime later, Dawn learns from Luther that Emily has died from heart failure. Everyone is happy to hear of her death, due to her religious obssesion and abuse. As they sit around talking, Dawn finds out that Luther was the one who got Charlotte pregnant years ago. He tells her that he had sheltered her from her father and sister after they beat and starved her, and in the process, he developed feelings for her. Since Emily didn't leave a will, Charlotte receives the plantation. The book ends with Dawn telling Jimmy that she is pregnant.
5357407	/m/0dh6hs	Midnight Whispers	V. C. Andrews	1992-11	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Christie Longchamp is the daughter of Dawn and Michael Sutton. Christie is a promising musician whose mother owns and operates the prestigious Cutler's Cove hotel. They live nearby with Christie's stepfather Jimmy and her nine-year-old half-brother Jefferson while her Uncle Philip, his wife Bet and their twin children, Richard and Melanie, reside in the family section of Cutler's Cove. The story commences on Christie's sixteenth birthday. A grand party is being held at the hotel for her extended family and school friends, but to Christie, the only person whose arrival matters is her stepfather's seventeen-year-old half-brother, Gavin. Fern, Jimmy's younger sister and the problem child of the family, also arrives unexpectedly, mainly to upset Dawn and Jimmy (showing she has not changed since Twilight's Child). She presents Christie with a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Christie throws it into her closet, appalled by her aunt's insinuations and promiscuousness. Despite Fern's wild and drunken behaviour, the party is a great success, and the evening concludes with Gavin confessing his love for Christie. The next day, Christie and Jefferson return home from school to find that Cutler's Cove has burned to the ground after a boiler in the basement exploded. Jimmy, who was in the basement, was trapped and Dawn tried to save him, but they both perished in the blaze. It is revealed that Philip and Bet are now their legal guardians, and they proceed to move into Christie's house to establish themselves as the new heads of the Cutler empire. Although Aunt Bet explains to Jefferson and Christie that they must all compromise and sacrifice, Christie notices that it is only she and Jefferson who are being asked to make sacrifices. Aunt Bet has all of Dawn and Jimmy's belongings removed or seized by Aunt Bet if she likes them or not. She and Christie begin habitually quarrelling after Aunt Bet picks on Jefferson for anything he lacks to be perfect in, and Richard frames him for naughty deeds just to get him in trouble. Christie pleads with her uncle to allow Jefferson and herself more freedom, but Philip sides with his wife, as he has had little willpower since Dawn's death. After some time, Laura Sue dies, which adds to Philip's deteriorating mental state.. Gradually, Christie notices her uncle is lavishing her with affection and trying to have intimate, personal conversations with her. Christie grows increasingly disturbed and worried by her uncle's behavior, especially after he gives her lingerie and she catches him watching her bathe, but it is not until her Aunt Bet finds the forgotten copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover and punishes her that her suspicions evolve into fear. Later that night, Uncle Philip, overcome by desire and fury at never having been able to possess her mother, enters Christie's room and rapes her, mixing her up with her mother as he does so. Heartbroken and confused, Christie packs a bag for her and Jefferson in the middle of the night and buys them bus tickets to New York, in search of her mysterious biological father. But her father is now a rundown, drunken singer, and in no way fits the image Christie had of him. In her disappointment, she leaves and calls the only man she still believes in, Gavin. When Gavin arrives, Christie confesses what her uncle has done, and in his fury and disgust he refuses to allow her to return home. Together they decide to hide out at 'The Meadows', the mysterious, ancestral plantation where Christie was born. Her Aunt Charlotte, a simple but sweet woman, is now the owner with her husband, Luther, and gladly they take them in. Gavin and Christie begin to explore the grounds, and gradually they learn many of the family's secrets that have remained buried inside the house, such as the fact Grandmother Cutler was raped by her father, the torture Dawn suffered at the hands of Emily when she was pregnant with Christie, and Emily used Luther as a slave for impregnanting Charlotte. Gradually, the isolation pulls them closer together, until they finally consummate their relationship, with Christie asking Gavin to take away her shame by making her love for him feel right. Then Fern and her boyfriend Monty arrive. Fern takes over the household and bullies the family, making Christie her slave as revenge for constantly being met with disapproval by Christie's parents. She has no interest in why Christie and Jefferson are hiding out at The Meadows, assuming that Christie finally got bored of being a good girl and ran away. Even when Christie tells Fern what Philip did to her, she torments Christie by saying that she must have seduced him. But when Jefferson becomes terribly ill with tetanus, Christie is forced to come out of hiding to save her brother's life, and in an instant her uncle comes to reclaim her. Fern and Monty leave immediately when Jefferson becomes ill, fearing getting into trouble. Christie is terrified of Philip, but she is so afraid for Jefferson's life that she has no choice but to return with him. Gavin tries to stay with her, but Philip forces him out and takes his niece back to their house. Locked in her room by Aunt Bet and finding her beloved Sweet 16 party dress shredded by Richard, Christie is miserable and frightened. Although she has lived in this house for almost her whole life, she no longer feels safe or at home there. Enraged by how her relatives have intimidated her, Christie tips the twins' bowls of chowder onto their laps and tells Aunt Bet what Phillip did to her. This appears to drive Aunt Bet over the edge. On the brink of insanity, Philip drives Christie and imagines the place where he took her mother years ago, and again tries to rape her while calling her Dawn the whole time. Christie manages to fight him off, and runs to her grandmother's husband, Bronson Alcott, who finally learns what Philip has done. Philip is found to be mentally ill, and is taken away. Aunt Bet can't face the shame of the public, so she and the twins move out of Christie and Jefferson’s house and go to live with her parents. The novel concludes with Jefferson's recovery. Christie and her brother live in Bronson's house and Christie is pursuing her dream of becoming a concert pianist while maintaining a long-distance relationship with Gavin. It appears that the Cutler 'curse' has finally been broken.
5357463	/m/0dh6mm	Ruby	V. C. Andrews	1994-02-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Ruby is a young teenager who has lived her entire life with her grandmother Catherine, a traiteur (a Cajun folk healer) because her mother had died giving birth to her. They live in Houma, a small swamp village in Louisiana. Ruby is an artist and has already sold some of her paintings to a gallery in New Orleans from their roadside stand for tourists. Her grandfather Jack lives in a separate shack, having been thrown out by her grandmother when Ruby was just a baby. Ruby begins a relationship with Paul Tate, who belongs to one of Houma's richer families. Paul's parents don’t approve of the relationship and Ruby thinks that it is because she is poor. Only after Grandmere Catherine sees that the relationship is getting serious does she tell Ruby the truth - that Paul is her half brother. Ruby's mother, Gabrielle, was raped by Paul's father, Octavius, just before she graduated. In 1950s Louisiana, Gabrielle could not abort the baby legally but her father Jack blackmailed Paul's father, Octavious to take the child in order to keep it secret from the town and was forced to give it up to Gladys Tate, Octavius's wife, while her father was paid to stay silent. Sad and angry at this, Ruby does what is right and breaks up with Paul, with whom she was falling in love. Soon after, Ruby's grandmother gets sick and passes away. After her death Ruby admits the truth of their shared maternal parentage to Paul, explaining that to be the reason that she ended their budding romantic relationship. Shortly before Grandmere Catherine's death, she tells Ruby the truth about her parents: Ruby's mother become pregnant as a result of an affair with a rich Creole man named Pierre Dumas. Pierre was married, so he and Gabrielle agreed that the child would stay and live with Gabrielle in the bayou. But Grandpere Jack made a secret deal with Pierre's father to sell the child to the Dumas family for a large amount of money, while Pierre's barren wife, Daphne, would pretend to be pregnant. Grandmere Catherine knew that it was going to be twins, but she never told Jack or Gabrielle. When the time came, she gave the first baby to Grandpere Jack and kept the second baby, Ruby. When Jack saw Ruby he wanted to sell her, too, yelling that they could get twice the amount of money for two babies. At this, Catherine threw him out and told him to never come back. Exhausted by giving birth to two babies, Gabrielle survived long enough to see Ruby and name her, then died. Grandmere Catherine's only wish was for Ruby to find her real father. She had been selling Ruby's paintings in the hope that Pierre Dumas would see the signature and become curious. After Catherine's death, Ruby has no one left in the bayou now except Grandpere Jack. She overhears him making a deal with his drinking buddy Buster Trahaw that she can be his common-law wife. Terrified, Ruby runs away to New Orleans to find her father, knowing only that he lives in the Garden District. With the help of a woman she meets on the bus, Ruby finds her father's address and goes to his house. Standing at the door she meets Beau Andreas. He takes her into the house, mistaking her for her twin sister Giselle, who has grown up in the lap of luxury. Although Beau and Daphne are both taken in by the resemblance, Pierre immediately recognises that Ruby is not Giselle. After Ruby explains what has happened, he agrees that she can come and live with them. Ruby is accepted immediately by her father but not by her twin sister or stepmother, Daphne. The Dumases concoct a story that Ruby was kidnapped as a baby from the hospital. Ruby is thus brought into Creole society. Giselle, threatened by Ruby's intelligence and similarity, is extremely cruel to her and deliberately gets her in trouble, which does not improve Daphne's opinion of her. Beau Andreas is Giselle's boyfriend, but Ruby and Beau become romantically close, eventually sleeping together when Ruby sketches Beau's portrait. This drives a further wedge between Ruby and her sister. All the while Daphne is doing anything she can to get rid of Ruby because she is a constant reminder to her of Pierre's affair. Giselle gets a new boyfriend, Martin Fowler. They get into a car accident, which cripples Giselle and kills Martin. This sends Pierre into a depression. He starts drinking heavily and locks himself away in his study, gazing at a picture of Jean, his younger brother, who was brain damaged after an accident. Discovering Ruby's naked sketch of Beau, Daphne has Ruby imprisoned in a mental hospital as a nymphomaniac, but Ruby escapes with the help of an inmate, after meeting her uncle Jean. She manages to tell her father what Daphne did to her. She reassures him that Jean is not a hopeless case, but the family must stop lying. She wants to be able to tell the truth about where she came from, and tell Giselle about their real mother. Pierre agrees that they must all be more truthful with each other, but decides that it is best for the twins to go away for school in Baton Rouge in order to let the dust settle.
5357590	/m/0dh6_0	To Live Again	Robert Silverberg	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book describes a world where all great scientists, economists, thinkers, builders and so on can store a "backup" of their personality (if they can afford the expensive procedure). Most of those who can afford it record their personality once every six months. These personalities can then be transplanted (upon the person's actual death) to other people, "living" alongside with the Host, providing him or her with a new insight on life, and on their field of expertise. . As the possession of extra personalities can be a mark of prestige, it has become fashionable in high society to buy and possess as many personalities as they have money for. Occasionally, the personalities of strong minded individuals can overwhelm the personalities of their hosts, resulting in the destruction of the host body's personality.
5358718	/m/0dh8kp	The Sleep of Reason	Martin Day		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor poses as a psychiatrist to investigate strange goings on at a mental health hospital.
5359189	/m/0dh969	Psycho	Robert Bloch	1959	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Norman Bates is a middle-aged bachelor who is dominated by his mother, a mean-tempered, puritanical old woman who forbids him to have a life away from her. They run a small motel together in the town of Fairvale but business has floundered since the state relocated the highway. In the middle of a heated argument between them, a customer arrives, a young woman named Mary Crane. Mary is on the run after impulsively stealing $40,000 from a client of the real estate company where she works. She stole the money so her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, could pay off his debts and they could get married. Mary arrives at the Bates Motel after accidentally turning off the main highway. Exhausted, she accepts Bates' invitation to have dinner with him at his house—an invitation that sends Mrs. Bates into a rage; she screams, "I'll kill the bitch!", which Mary overhears. During dinner, Mary gently prods Bates about his lack of a social life and suggests that he put his mother in a mental institution, but he vehemently denies that there is anything wrong with her; "We all go a little crazy sometimes", he states. Mary says goodnight and returns to her room, resolving to return the money so she will not end up like Bates. Moments later in the shower, however, a figure resembling an old woman surprises her with a butcher knife, and beheads her. Bates, who had passed out drunk after dinner, returns to the motel and finds Mary's corpse. He is instantly convinced his mother is the murderer. He briefly considers letting her go to prison, but changes his mind after having a nightmare in which she sinks in quicksand, only to turn into him as she goes under. His mother comes to comfort him, and he decides to dispose of Mary's body and go on with life as usual. Meanwhile, Mary's sister, Lila, comes to Fairvale to tell Sam of her sister's disappearance. They are soon joined by Milton Arbogast, a private investigator hired by Mary's boss to retrieve the money. Sam and Lila agree to let Arbogast lead the search for Mary. Arbogast eventually meets up with Bates, who says that Mary had left after one night; when he asks to talk with his mother, Bates refuses. This arouses Arbogast's suspicion, and he calls Lila and tells her that he is going to try to talk to Mrs. Bates. When he enters the house, the same mysterious figure who killed Mary ambushes him and kills him with a razor. Sam and Lila go to Fairvale to look for Arbogast, and meet with the town sheriff, who tells them that Mrs. Bates has been dead for years, having committed suicide by poisoning her lover and herself. The young Norman had a nervous breakdown after finding them and was sent for a time to a mental institution. Sam and Lila go the motel to investigate. Sam distracts Bates while Lila goes to get the sheriff—but she actually proceeds up to the house to investigate on her own. During a conversation with Sam, Bates says that his mother had only pretended to be dead, and had communicated with him while he was in the institution, Bates then tells Sam that Lila tricked him and went up to the house and that his mother was waiting for her. Bates then knocks Sam unconscious with a bottle. At the house, Lila is horrified to discover Mrs. Bates' mummified corpse in the fruit cellar. As she screams, a figure rushes into the room with a knife—Norman Bates, dressed in his mother's clothes. Sam enters the room and subdues him before he can harm Lila. At the police station, Sam talks to a psychiatrist who had examined Bates, and learns that, years before, Bates had murdered his mother and her lover. Bates and his mother had lived together in a state of total codependence ever since his father's death. When his mother took a lover, Bates went over the edge with jealousy and poisoned them both, forging a suicide note in his mother's handwriting. To suppress the guilt of matricide, he developed a split personality in which his mother became an alternate self, which abused and dominated him as Mrs. Bates had done in life. He stole her corpse and preserved it and, whenever the illusion was threatened, would dress in her clothes and speak to himself in her voice. The "Mother" personality killed Mary because "she" was jealous of Norman feeling affection for another woman. Bates is found insane, and put in a mental institution for life. Days later, the "Mother" personality completely takes over Bates' mind; he literally becomes his mother.
5359347	/m/0dh9d6	Strangers on a Train			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Architect Guy Haines wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam, in order to marry the woman he loves, Anne Faulkner. While on a train to see his wife, he meets Charles Anthony Bruno, a psychopathic playboy who proposes an idea to "exchange murders": Bruno will kill Miriam if Guy kills Bruno's father; neither of them will have a motive, and the police will have no reason to suspect either of them. Guy does not take Bruno seriously, but Bruno kills Guy's wife while Guy is away in Mexico. Bruno informs Guy of his crime, but Guy hesitates to turn him in to the police. He realizes that Bruno could claim Guy's complicity in the planned exchange murders; however, the longer he remains silent, the more he implicates himself. This implicit guilt becomes stronger as in the coming months Bruno makes appearances demanding that Guy honor his part of the bargain. After Bruno starts writing anonymous letters to Guy's friends and colleagues, the pressure becomes too great, and Guy murders Bruno's father. Subsequently, Guy is consumed by guilt, whereas Bruno seeks Guy's company as if nothing had happened. He makes an uninvited appearance at Guy's wedding, causing a scene. At the same time, a private detective, who suspects Bruno of having arranged the murder of his father, establishes the connection between Bruno and Guy that began with the train ride, and suspects Bruno of Miriam's murder. Guy also becomes implicated due to his contradictions about the acquaintance with Bruno. When Bruno falls overboard during a sailing cruise, Guy identifies so strongly with Bruno that he tries to rescue him under threat to his own life. Nevertheless, Bruno drowns, and the murder investigation is closed. Guy, however, is plagued by guilt, and confesses the double murder to Miriam's former lover. This man, however, does not condemn Guy; rather, he considers the killings as appropriate punishment for the unfaithfulness. The detective who had been investigating the murders overhears Guy's confession, however, and confronts him. Guy turns himself over to the detective immediately.
5359566	/m/0dh9p1	Halflife	Mark Michalowski		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Having landed on the planet of Espero, the Doctor and Fitz leave Trix in the TARDIS whilst they investigate a distress signal. As she grows bored, Trix decides to leave, but is surprised to find an amnesiac Fitz lying unconscious outside the TARDIS. They find themselves in the path of a wavefront of grey goo, and Fitz surprises Trix by being quite keen to investigate the mystery. The Doctor, meanwhile, has been befriended by Calamee, a member of the planet's ruling family. The amnesia he has been suffering from has grown worse, and he — like Fitz — has forgotten everything that has happened prior to the start of the novel. He is directed to the home of a mysterious off-worlder named Madam Xing, who restores his most recent memories and confirms that the memories lost (prior to The Burning) have been permanently deleted, rather than merely suppressed. The Doctor refuses to allow Xing to restore the memories by using a viroid unit, but does take the unit with him as he leaves. As he goes, he discovers that he is being observed via anachronistic technology. Fitz and Trix head to the city, and watch as a mob of citizens attack a "night beast" — an unknown creature that has arrived on the planet. Fitz tries to prevent the attack, but is over-powered by the mob, who kill the beast. Fortunately, they are led to safety by a woman named Farine, but Trix wanders away when she sees a young boy watching them. The boy offers her a device that will allow her to disguise herself much more effectively, changing her entire body on a genetic level. Trix takes him up on the offer, only to find that the "device" is actually an alien symbiote named Reo, who takes complete control of her body. Fitz is taken to the palace by Farine, who turns out to be Princess Sensimi of the ruling family. As they head to the cellars to visit a captured night beast, the TARDIS arrives and the Doctor and Calamee step out: the Doctor has been persuaded to warn the authorities about the wavefront. He explains that it is altering living beings on a genetic level, and manages to convince the others to join him in searching for the source of the wavefront. Finding the source, the Doctor and Fitz discover that it is a crashed living spaceship called Tain, a warship from a race called the Makers who are involved in a war with a race called the Oon. Tain had removed the Doctor and Fitz's memories of finding the ship, but because of a trojan virus in his systems he was unable to do the job properly. The trojan created the night beasts as soldiers against Tain, but he was able to interfere in their development to make them docile. Unfortunately, in his panic he activated the Gaian Wave, a self-defence mechanism that genetically alters the inhabitants of a planet so that they are all genetically part of the ship: its enemies will be unable to defeat it without destroying the entire planet. Trix and Reo find them, and as Tain agrees to sacrifice himself to save the planet, Reo transfers his consciousness into the ship. Trix collapses, her body unable to look after itself without Reo's control, and Tain manages to link with her and keep her alive. But this leaves the Doctor with a dilemma: if he carries out Tain's wishes and destroys him to save the planet, Trix will die. Fortunately, Fitz saves the day: remembering that his current body was "remembered" (Interference: Book Two) he advises Tain to do the same. Tain separates himself from the ship in a new body, and destroys Reo's consciousness inside the ship. Tain then returns his consciousness to the ship, and cures Trix.
5359850	/m/0dh9z1	Emotional Chemistry	Simon A. Forward		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The TARDIS crew arrive in the Kremlin Museum, looking for a locket that may help to reveal the nature of Sabbath's plans. However, they find the museum being ransacked by two soldiers from the future. One is overpowered, and the other escapes to the future, taking the Doctor with him. In the present day, Colonel Grigoriy Bugayev (of the Russian branch of UNIT) is investigating the thefts, and suspects corrupt businessman Vladimir Garudin. He also knows of the Doctor, and thinks that his companions may be able to help him. Unfortunately, he doesn't search Trix properly, and fails to discover that she has stolen the locket the Doctor was searching for. The Doctor and the future soldier arrive in 5000 with a painting of a Russian noblewoman, which his captor insists on taking to his commander, Lord General Razum Kinzhal. Kinzhal himself has been captured by enemy forces, but manages to complete a daring escape that leaves him in the Arctic wilderness with his second-in-command, Angel, who loves him dearly. In 1812, as Alexander Vishenkov prepares to head off to face the French with his friend Captain Victor Padorin, he is given the diamond locket as a token of affection by Dusha. He loves her dearly, but is troubled by lustful feelings he has started to have for her younger sister. Dusha, meanwhile, worries about her two sisters, whom the notorious lecher Padorin seems to have set his sights on. As Trix and Fitz are escorted to Bugayev's HQ, he tells them that the collection of artefacts they were raiding seem to have a strange effect on the public; in part, they were displayed to study that effect. They are interrupted, however, when the convoy is attacked by a group of apparently possessed locals. Fitz finds himself possessed by the same force, and compelled to leave the safety on the convoy. The future soldier, meanwhile, recovers and forces Trix to aid his escape. As she drives them away from the convoy, she is surprised by a woman on horseback and crashes the vehicle. The Doctor and his soldier stumble across a bunker where a group are plotting to betray and execute Kinzhal. As the soldier grows more enraged by this, a mysterious fire breaks out from around the picture and kills everyone in the bunker. The Doctor is intrigued by this apparent pyrokinetic ability. Fitz is marched by his controlling force to the office of Victor Garudin, and then released: it is clear that Garudin himself was controlling them. He is after the Doctor's TARDIS, and fearing for his life Fitz admits that he will sell the Doctor out happily if he is rewarded suitably. Garudin shows Fitz his own personal time machine, Misl Vremnya or "Thought Time", which allows Garudin to watch history through any person's eyes. The soldier travelling with the Doctor succumbs to his injuries, but the Doctor manages to deliver the portrait to Kinzhal. He demands to know why the Lord General is stealing treasures from the past, and how the painting causes fires. Unseen by all but Angel, the Lord General's new aide tries to avoid the Doctor catching sight of her. Trix awakes to find herself on the planet Paraiso with a woman named Aphrodite, and her soldier recovering in a villa. Using the diamond necklace, Aphrodite is able to use her pool to travel back to 1812 with Trix. Once there she greets Dusha as her mother. Unknown to the two of them, Fitz and Garudin are watching the reunion through Padorin's eyes: Garudin has to leave, but allows Fitz to stay, confident that he doesn't possess the metal discipline to control a person in the past. Trix, meanwhile, tricks Aphrodite into allowing her to go back to Paraiso apparently to fetch the Doctor to help them. Instead, she intends to steal the diamond necklace that allows Aphrodite to visit her mother. Fitz is rescued by Bugayev. However, this is part of Garudin's plan, who intends to use him as a spy on the investigation. Unfortunately, Fitz ruins this plan by convincing Bugayev to rescue Garudin's secretary as well: she is happy to betray her employer, and shows the Colonel evidence that Garudin has been using "Thought Time" to control the military leaders of the age. Bugayev can now justify a full scale raid on the industrialist's headquarters. Kinzhal admits to the Doctor that the artifacts that have been collected all amplify powerful emotions because they have been in contact with Dusha. He sent his men to gather them, but cannot travel in time himself: he and Dusha are star-crossed lovers, aliens who are forbidden from seeing each other by their own people. The Doctor agrees to help create a mental bridge between the two lovers using the time travel technology, but unfortunately the device he needs has been lost in the 21st century and possibly developed in a time machine. The Doctor returns to the 21st century and is held by Bugayev, reunited with Fitz. However, once he realises that Angel, Garudin's secretary and Dusha's sister all look exactly the same, he decides to go back and visit Dusha to see what he is not being told. Unfortunately, Fitz is still under Garudin's influence, and he intends to control the Doctor as well. As Trix arrives on Paraiso, she finds her soldier and the locket missing, and assumes he must have taken it back to his time. She heads to 5000 to try to retrieve it, but unfortunately, she was mistaken: the soldier has returned to 1812 to force Aphrodite to take him home, being unable to work the controls of the time machine pool. Fortunately, the Doctor and Fitz arrive and convince Aphrodite and the soldier to return to Paraiso. Once there, they work out where Trix has gone. Aphrodite explains that Dusha and Kinzhal are two halves of the same being, exiled for breaking their society's laws and having a child. United, the creature is more like an intelligent star, which means that if they are reunited, the Earth will be destroyed by their natural form. Trix arrives too early, and ends up having to pose as Kinzhal's aide whilst she awaits what she assumes will be the return of the locket. In the meantime, the Doctor and Fitz arrive to offer a solution to the lover's separation to Kinzhal. However, he refuses, not wanting to take the risk that something will go wrong. However, at that point they are attacked and, although they defeat the attackers, Angel is mortally wounded. She offers her body to Dusha, knowing she can heal it, and the two lovers can be together without reforming as a star. Moved by her sacrifice, Kinzhal agrees. The Doctor arranges for Dusha to arrive in the future in Angel's body, and also obtains the diamond he needed to find the true nature of Sabbath's masters. The empty locket is returned to Aphrodite on Paraiso, who vows to remain there, satisfied that her parents have been reunited. As Burgayev's raid on Garudin's headquarters is successful, the industrialist commits suicide, and the time travel equipment is confiscated and destroyed. The Doctor, Fitz and Trix are free to carry on their journey and attempt to defeat Sabbath's masters.
5359895	/m/0dh9_2	Gilligan's Wake				 Each of the seven castaways narrate an autobiographical story—almost totally unrelated to the events of the show—in order of their mention in the show's title theme. Their stories intersect with a character named John "Jack" Gilbert Egan, a former Marine and CIA operative, whose own life is the meta-narrative which ties the novel together. Each chapter features an important person or object in the lives of the castaways whose name is an anagram of "Gilligan"; additionally, a character whose name is a variant of "Susan" and Maxwell House coffee appears or is referred to in each story.
5359944	/m/0dhb2k	Timeless	Stephen Cole		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor takes a huge risk to restore the collapsing multiverse.
5360089	/m/0dhb6q	The Last Resort	Paul Leonard			 This story begins with Fitz and Anji working for the Good Times Inc. Company. They are working undercover for the Doctor, who is shocked to discover a company that is selling holidays in time. The climax of the story results in the destruction of billions of universes. The Doctor and Sabbath realise all time travellers must be stopped, to prevent these events from happening again. However, at the end of the book a man reveals he has a time-travel machine and proceeds to begin interfering in time once again.........
5360165	/m/0dhbbj	Reckless Engineering	Nick Walters		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is set in an alternate universe and features Isambard Kingdom Brunel; the cover is based on a famous photo of Brunel standing in front of the launching chains for the SS Great Eastern. Set during the 1840s, the Doctor and his companions arrive during the Industrial Revolution in England, and learn that an inventor has been ordered by an alien force to construct a machine known as the Utopia Engine, a machine that will cause the entire planet to rapidly age. Anybody below the age of puberty will survive, but those above it will age to death. Brunel, who has unknowingly been supplying parts for this engine, unites with the Doctor to destroy the engine after learning of the post-apocalyptic future the Doctor has foreseen.
5360378	/m/0dhbl4	Time Zero	Justin Richards		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A story arc about the Multiverse collapsing begins in this novel, ending in Timeless
5360660	/m/0dhbx6	History 101	Mags L Halliday		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set in the Spanish Civil War, the book (Halliday's first novel) explores the construction of history and the experiences of George Orwell. The Doctor, Fitz, and Anji, after viewing Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" at the 1937 Paris exhibition, realise time has been changed. They travel back to Spain in order to uncover what affected the artist's vision of this terrible event.
5360718	/m/0dhbyz	The Crooked World	Steve Lyons		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor accidentally brings the concept of reality to a world based on cartoon physics.
5360871	/m/0dhc69	Hope	Mark Clapham		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor tries to push the TARDIS to its limit, but is forced to land when it begins to break up. They land on the surface of a frozen sea of acid on the planet Endpoint, in the distant future. When the ice begins to break up, The Doctor, Fitz and Anji, flee to the nearby city of Hope, only to see the TARDIS sink to the bottom of the sea. On the city, a policeman investigating a decapitation explains that the planet is toxic, so the humans had to evolve to survive, but recently a serial killer has been decapitating people. The policeman then tells them to go to a casino for help. When they arrive The Doctor buys entry with a apple core (which is long extinct) from his pocket. Inside the casino, a group of cyborgs, calling themselves the Brotherhood of the Silver Fist, burst in and demand that the casino's owner, Silver, speaks to them. Silver, himself a cyborg, enters and drives the brotherhood out of the casino but not before talking to The Doctor. After learning that The Doctor can time travel, he offers to recover the TARDIS if The Doctor catches the murderer, which The Doctor agrees to. While Fitz and Anji rest in the casino, The Doctor finds a used tranquilliser dart at a crime scene and deduces that the murders are part of a plan committed by a visitor to Endpoint. While Fitz tries to infiltrate the Brotherhood, Anji finds apple trees being cloned from the core. Silver explains that he was born in the 30th Century, and was enlisted into the military and given his implants to prolong his life from the birth defects he suffered. In 3006, he was sent to the future to collect technology to help in a war, but was unable to return, and became a businessman on Endpoint. The Doctor learns that the people of Endpoint produce a hormone called Kallisti, which has similar effects to adrenalin, and the killer has been taking heads to give himself a permanent supply. The Doctor uses himself as bait, and when the killer attacks him, he overpowers him, only to discover that the killer is an inbred human. Then, other humans surround The Doctor and tranquillise him. Back at the casino, Anji asks Silver if he could clone her boyfriend Dave Young. Silver agrees, but demands that Anji provides him with data from the TARDIS so he can build his own time machine, which Anji agrees to. When his staff tell him that The Doctor has disappeared, Silver explains that he fitted The Doctor with a tracer, and he locates him on the sea bed. Silver then dives down to rescue The Doctor. On sea bed, where The Doctor is being held in a bunker, the humans explain that they regard the people of Endpoint as mutants, and they believe that humans should be the dominant race, so they have been experimenting with Kallisti to improve humans. Suddenly, Silver attacks the bunker and kills the humans. Fitz contacts The Brotherhood and turns them against each other, but then the image of their cyborg Queen appears and orders Fitz's release. Fitz releases the Queen, who is actually one of Silver's staff, Miraso. She explains the The Brotherhood was created by Silver to control rebels and keep the public's faith in Silver. In the Bunker, The Doctor and Silver find technology capable of reversing the pollution. When activated, the sea turns into water, and the air becomes breathable again. Fitz discovers that Silver has mutants with silver skin hidden in his casino and goes to investigate while Anji trades the data on the TARDIS so that the clone of Dave can be made. The Doctor places Kallisti into the liquid computer of Silver's brain, allowing him to create Kallisti himself. The humans explain that their bunker has a hypertunnel, which can be used to quickly travel throughout space. Fitz tells The Doctor about Silver's mutants, and, with Miraso's help, breaks into Silver's office. Silver explains to Anji that he intends to use Dave's clone (Dave II) to give the human race some genetic variety. He explains that he plans to create a new race, Silverati, who all have the enhanced Kallisti, and are loyal to Silver. After conquering the empire, he plans to create time machines to spread his power further. The Doctor and Fitz are imprisoned after learning of Silver's plan. The Doctor gives Anji the TARDIS key and blows up the cell door with an explosive from his pocket. The Doctor turns Dave II into a Silverati disloyal to Silver. Dave II takes them to the hypertunnel and helps them fight Silver. Anji shoots Silver in the eye and he flees through the hypertunnel. The Doctor explains that he took the data on the TARDIS from him when they were fighting. Dave II reprograms the hypertunnel to leave Silver and his army stranded on a dead planet. The Doctor turns Dave II back into a human and Anji leaves him to create a new life for himself on Endpoint, before she leaves in the TARDIS.
5360914	/m/02p97r5	The Scapegoat	C. J. Cherryh		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 An unarmed human starship and its crew of fifteen hundred is destroyed by a technologically less advanced alien race, later called elves by the humans because of their resemblance to the mythical creatures. Other unprovoked attacks follow. All attempts to negotiate fail; the elves fire without communicating. Eventually, the overmatched enemy is driven back to his homeworld, but the conflict does not cease. The Alliance, one of the three human power blocs, ends up mired in a twenty-year-long war. In all that time, humans get no closer to understanding why the elves fight or how to make peace. A few districts remain puzzlingly neutral, but when humans try to establish relations with one of them, it instantly joins the enemy side. In addition, not a single elf is captured alive; except for the very young, they have the ability to stop their hearts at will, and use it. Then one day, Second Lieutenant John deFranco takes a prisoner, one who deliberately allows himself to be captured. The creature speaks English, learned from a human prisoner, and calls himself the saitas. He tells deFranco he has come to try to end the war. The elf is passed along to Alliance scientists, but cannot communicate with them. He asks to speak to deFranco, a fellow soldier. As they talk, deFranco learns that the elves do not comprehend the concept of a treaty, written down on a piece of paper, and do not trust it; their way of thinking is too alien. The saitas explains that he has come to be killed, so that his death will carry away the mistakes of the war. He is willing to sign the human treaty, but the elves require a human saitas. The elf hopes that deFranco will be that one. Meanwhile, all along the front, the elves attack with the little they have left. One of deFranco's friends becomes a casualty. When deFranco realizes what the prisoner wants, he tries to leave, but the meeting place has been locked from the outside by his commanders and a grenade pointedly left inside. In the end, deFranco finds it within himself to join the saitas in completing his mission. When the recording of their deaths is broadcast, the fighting ends. An elvish delegation arrives and takes away deFranco's body for burial. The humans in turn take the elf's body to be interred on Downbelow, the Alliance world.
5364400	/m/0dhjpb	Soft City	Jonathan Raban		{"/m/014dsx": "Travel"}	 Soft City records one man's attempt to plot a course through the urban labyrinth. Holding up a revealing mirror to the modern city, it is used as the locale for a demanding and expressive personal drama. Jonathan Raban’s soft city is the malleable material from which identity is formed. “It invites you to remake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in . . . Decide who you are, and the city will again assume a fixed form around you.” This soft city is the mythic city, where illusion, dream, aspiration, and nightmare are all fixed into place; it comes into focus as it is passed through and acted upon by an individual or a collective. Where is the ‘Soft City” now? – Feb 2007 Introduced by Tim Waterman Hosted by Andrew Stuck, Rethinking Cities Ltd.
5364408	/m/0dhjpp	Hide and Seek	Ian Rankin	1991	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Detective Inspector John Rebus finds the body of an overdosed drug addict in an Edinburgh squat, laid out cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, with a five-pointed star painted on the wall above. Some of his colleagues are inclined to categorise it as the routine death of a "junkie", but Rebus is perturbed by some unusual facts of the case: a full package of heroin in the dead man's room, and some mysterious bruises on his face and body. Rebus takes seriously a death which looks more like a murder every day, and he begins to investigate the true circumstances of the death. As part of his investigation, Rebus finds the young woman named Tracy who knew the dead man and heard his terrifying last words: "Hide! Hide!" It emerges that the dead man was a photographer who took and hid some sensitive photos in a specialist private members' club - Hyde's - where highly-connected people in society watch illegal boxing. Rebus is able to arrest Hyde's owner and several high profile members, but to his outrage and disgust all the prisoners die suspicious deaths: the powers-that-be are covering it up to prevent scandal. Shortly after Rankin moved to London, there was a real-life case of male prostitutes bribing lawyers and judges, similar to some parts of the book: "questions were asked in parliament" and two lawyers began to investigate the police investigation. "To everyone's surprise, this inquiry found that the allegations were false. Police officers involved in the case found themselves demoted..."
5364744	/m/0dhk34	Tooth and Nail	Ian Rankin	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Rebus is drafted in by Scotland Yard to help track down a cannibalistic serial killer called the Wolfman, whose first victim was found in the East End of London's lonely Wolf Street. His London colleague, George Flight, isn't happy at what he sees as interference, and Rebus encounters racial prejudice as well as the usual dangers of trying to catch a vicious killer. When Rebus is offered a psychological profile of the Wolfman by an attractive woman, it seems too good an opportunity to miss.
5365144	/m/0dhk_c	Strip Jack	Ian Rankin	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A police raid on an Edinburgh brothel captures (seemingly by accident) popular young local MP Gregor Jack. When Jack's fiery wife Elizabeth disappears, and two bodies are found, suspicion falls on a famous local actor Rab Kinnoul. Detective Inspector John Rebus is sympathetic to the MP's problems, and interviews a member of Jacks' social circle, Andrew MacMillan, who is locked up in a psychiatric hospital after murdering his own wife many years before. It becomes increasingly evident that somebody has 'set up' Jack, with the intention of stripping him of his good name, political standing and maybe even his life.
5365942	/m/0dhm7z	The Stranger	Chris Van Allsburg		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 One fall day, while Farmer Bailey is riding down the road in his truck, he runs over something or someone. At first, he thinks he has hit a deer, but when he gets out to see what he hit, he finds that he has accidentally run over a man. The man tries to flee but loses his balance and falls down. Farmer Bailey takes him to his house, where he and his wife, Mrs. Bailey, discover that the stranger cannot talk. The Baileys call a doctor to examine him. The doctor arrives and takes the stranger's temperature with his mercury thermometer. As the doctor holds it up to his mouth, the stranger blows on it and the mercury freezes. The doctor thinks that his thermometer is broken. Although the stranger isn't seriously hurt, he can't remember who he is or where he's from. The doctor advises the Baileys to give the stranger shelter until he's fully recuperated. They do, and he fits in well with the family and even helps about the farm. One night the stranger comes out to have dinner with the Baileys. They are having soup, and the stranger notices steam rising from his plate. He lightly blows on the bowl, and the steam drifts away. When he blows, Mrs. Bailey feels a draft. Mr. Bailey enjoys having the stranger as his guest, but he also notices how peculiar the weather has been. The stranger goes for a walk in the forest and notices some rabbits and hares. They would usually flee from humans, but they walk toward the stranger. It still feels like summer on Mr. Bailey's farm, and the summer warmth makes his pumpkins grow bigger than normal. The stranger too notices this. He wonders why the trees on the Bailey farm are still green while all the other trees on the other farms are red and orange. One day, however, the stranger blows on a green leaf. When it turns orange, he realizes it's time for him to leave the Baileys. On his last evening at the house, the stranger gets hugs from all the Baileys before he leaves. They come outside to wave goodbye to their friend, but he's disappeared. With the stranger's departure, fall has come to the Bailey's farm, and the trees are now all red and orange. Etched in frost of the farmhouse windows is the old phrase, "See you next fall."
5366420	/m/0dhmw1	Mortal Causes	Ian Rankin	1994	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set during the Edinburgh Festival, this novel starts with a brutally executed corpse being discovered in Mary King's Close, an ancient subterranean street. The body has a tattoo identified with "Sword and Shield", a long-thought-defunct Scottish Nationalist group with links to sectarianism in Northern Ireland. The victim turns out to be the son of notorious gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty, and the plot moves towards the unthinkable prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a tourist-filled Edinburgh.
5367876	/m/0dhr5g	Let it Bleed	Ian Rankin	1996	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Detective Inspector John Rebus and Frank Lauderdale start the book with a car chase across Edinburgh, culminating with the two youths they are chasing throwing themselves off the Forth Road Bridge and in Rebus being injured in a car crash. Rebus' upset over this allows Rankin to show the character in a new light, revealing his isolation and potentially suicidal despair. After the unconnected suicide of a terminally ill con, Rebus pursues an investigation that implicates respected people at the highest levels of government, and due to the politically sensitive nature of what he is doing, faces losing his job, or worse. He is supported by his daughter Sammy, allowing their distant relationship to be built upon. The title refers to the Rolling Stones album Let it Bleed.
5369028	/m/0dhspn	Involuntary Witness	Gianrico Carofiglio	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the beginning of the novel, Italian lawyer Guido Guerrieri splits from his wife and somewhat loses track of his life. He moves into a flat where he knows no one, drinks a bit, and generally doesn't take very good care of himself. Then he gets involved in a controversial trial. Abdou Thiam, a Senegalese immigrant who sells fake handbags on the beaches of Bari has been accused of the kidnap and murder of a young Italian boy. A witness claims he saw him in the area, though Thiam, who has been seen several times in the company of the boy, denies it. When searched, Thiam is found to have possession of a photograph of the boy, though he claims they were good friends, and that the boy gave it to him. Thiam is arrested for the crime and bound over for trial. A friend of Thiam approaches Guido Guerrieri and asks him if he will represent the African, and he accepts. Initially Guido wants to opt for the shortened procedure, whereby the prosecution evidence is shown only to a judge, with no questioning or trial. The result will be a certain conviction, though a reduced sentence for opting for the abbreviated, less time-consuming procedure. Thiam protests his innocence, and initially gives up hope, before a suicide attempt in his cell. A short or long sentence, either will be the end of him for the crime of killing a child. So, Guido is open to the possibility of the longer process, with witnesses and a jury. The sentence will be permanent, but there is at least a chance of acquittal, even though it is very slim. Thiam agrees, and the trial begins. it:Testimone inconsapevole pl:Świadek mimo woli (powieść)
5369370	/m/0dht1n	Black and Blue	Ian Rankin	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Detective Inspector John Rebus is working on four cases at once trying to catch a killer he suspects of being the infamous Bible John. He has to do it while under an internal inquiry led by a man he has accused of taking bribes from Glasgow's "Mr Big". TV journalists are meanwhile investigating Rebus over a miscarriage of justice. Rebus travels between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen and then on to Shetland and the North Sea.
5369692	/m/0dhthv	The Hanging Garden	Ian Rankin	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Detective Inspector John Rebus is investigating a suspected war criminal. Rebus helps a traumatised Bosnian prostitute and tries to intercede in a territory war between upstart gangster Tommy Telford and 'Big Ger' Cafferty's established gang. Telford is known to have close links with Newcastle gangster named Tarawicz -"Mr Pink Eyes"- a Chechen people-smuggler. Rebus' daughter Sammy is knocked down in what looks like a deliberate hit-and-run. A Japanese gangster is killed by someone trying to frame Rebus, using his Saab car.
5369993	/m/0dhtzv	Dead Souls	Ian Rankin	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 While investigating a poisoner at Edinburgh Zoo, Detective Inspector John Rebus sees a known paedophile photographing children. After a chase ending in the sea lion enclosure, Rebus decides to 'out' the man, in spite of assurances that he is trying to reform. As a campaign against the man starts, Rebus hears that the son of an ex-girlfriend has gone missing and starts investigating his disappearance from a nightclub with a mysterious blonde. A convicted killer comes back from the U.S. having served his time in prison, with an agenda he wants to pursue. Rankin incorporated the novella Death Is Not the End as the missing person plot-line of this novel.
5370670	/m/0dhvsm	Set in Darkness: An Inspector Rebus Novel	Ian Rankin	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Scottish Parliament is about to reopen in Edinburgh after 300 years. Detective Inspector John Rebus is in charge of liaison, as the new parliament is in his patch. While on a tour of Queensberry House, which is to be incorporated into the new Parliament, a fireplace where legend has it a youth was burned to death is opened up and another, more recent murder victim is found. Then, a prospective MSP called Roddy Grieve is found murdered, and Rebus is expected to find instant answers. The title comes from the poem "The Old Astronomer to his pupil" by Sarah Williams.
5370904	/m/0dhw23	Resurrection Men	Ian Rankin	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Detective Inspector John Rebus is thrown off a murder inquiry, just days after the brutal death of an Edinburgh art dealer, for throwing a cup of tea at DCS Gill Templer. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - this is his 'Last Chance Saloon'. He is put with a team of officers in similar circumstances and together they are given an unsolved case to work on. This turns out to be one in which many of the team are already involved, and they all have their own secrets that they wish to keep hidden. Rebus is asked to act as a go-between for Edinburgh gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty, and newly promoted DS Siobhan Clarke, while working the case of the murdered art dealer, is brought closer to Cafferty than she ever expected. As always the cases are all linked and Rebus must use his trusted friends to uncover the truth before the truth uncovers him. The title is a reference to the body-snatchers of the 19th century, who were known as 'resurrectionists' or 'resurrection men'. sv:Botgörarna (roman)
5371299	/m/0dhwnk	A Question of Blood: An Inspector Rebus Novel	Ian Rankin	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At a private school two teenagers are killed by an ex-Army loner who then turns the gun on himself. As Detective Inspector John Rebus puts it, 'There's no mystery...except the why'. In searching for these answers, Rebus finds himself drawn into a shattered community and a link with his own past. He becomes fascinated with the killer who had friends and enemies aplenty, from politicians to goths, and who left behind a web of secrets and lies. Meanwhile, Rebus faces his own trials: DS Siobhan Clarke has been stalked by a petty criminal who is found burnt to death in his own home and Rebus is fresh out of hospital with his hands heavily bandaged. sv:Blodsband (roman)
5371971	/m/0dhxgt	Mad Dogs and Englishmen	Paul Magrs		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A race of alien poodles alters a 20th century fantasy epic to aid their civil war. The Doctor infiltrates a groups of writers known as the Smudgelings, Anji experiences some very, very special effects in 1970s America and Fitz meets an old friend. The book also features a jolly hotel chef and dogs with opposable thumbs.
5375460	/m/0dj0lv	The Falls	Ian Rankin	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A student vanishes in Edinburgh, and her wealthy family of bankers ensure Detective Inspector John Rebus is under pressure to find her. A carved wooden doll in a coffin found near her East Lothian home leads Rebus to an Internet role-playing game that she was involved in. DC Siobhan Clarke tackles the virtual quizmaster, and thus risks the same fate as the missing girl. "You okay, John?" Curt reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. Rebus shook his head slowly, eyes squeezed shut. Curt didn't make it out the first time, so Rebus had to repeat what he said next: "I don't believe in heaven." That was the horror of it. This life was the only one you got. No redemption afterwards, no chance of wiping the slate clean and starting over. Rebus said "There is no justice in the world." "You'd know more about that than I would", Curt replied. sv:Fallen (roman)
5375672	/m/0dj0xy	Fleshmarket Close	Ian Rankin	2004	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Detective Inspector John Rebus has no desk to work from, as a hint from his superiors that he should consider retirement, but he and his protegee Siobhan Clarke are still investigating some seemingly unconnected cases. The sister of a dead rape victim is missing; skeletons turn up embedded in a concrete floor; a Kurdish journalist is brutally murdered; and the son of a Glasgow gangster has moved into the Edinburgh vice scene. The book uses two new settings: a sink estate divided between racist thugs and refugees (based on Wester Hailes), and a small town whose economy is dominated by an internment camp for asylum seekers (based on Dungavel). it:Indagini incrociate sv:Adress Fleshmarket Close
5375711	/m/0dj0_b	The Naming of the Dead	Ian Rankin	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 An underlying thread throughout the book is that of familial relationships; the book opens with Detective Inspector John Rebus attending the funeral of his brother Michael, who has died suddenly from a stroke. The parents of Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke arrive in Edinburgh as part of the protests, demonstrations, and scuffles that surrounded the G8 summit at Gleneagles, keeping the police busy. Clarke defied her parents by becoming a police officer; she now wants to feel like a daughter. Rebus is nearing retirement ("nobody would blame you for coasting"), and becomes sidelined until the apparent suicide of MP Ben Webster occurs at a high-level meeting in Edinburgh Castle. It emerges that Webster was campaigning against the arms trade, and Richard Pennen of Pennen Industries, a dealer in weapons technology, comes under suspicion. At the same time, a serial killer seems to be killing former offenders, helped by a website set up by the family of a victim. Clues have been deliberately left at Clootie Well (duplicated from the Black Isle to Auchterarder for the purposes of the plot), a place where items of clothing are traditionally left for luck. Siobhan Clarke is placed in charge of the investigation, although she is outranked by Rebus, and finds herself having to compromise with Edinburgh gangster Morris Cafferty (for whom one of the victims was working as a bouncer) in hunting down the identity of the riot policeman who apparently assaulted her mother at a demonstration. Cafferty is also getting older, though his insecurity is balanced somewhat by his having had a biography ghost-written by local journalist Mairie Henderson. She is enlisted by Rebus and Clarke to help solve the crimes. The new Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders Police, James Corbyn, is keen to put any potential controversy from the investigation of these sordid crimes on hold until the focus of the world's media has moved on. He puts Rebus and Clarke under suspension when they disobey him and they need to rely on Ellen Wylie for help. David Steelforth, the London-based Special Branch (SO12) Commander who is overseeing the policing of the G8 summit, seems to be holding back Rebus' work at every turn. Rebus and Clarke blow the cover of one of his agents who is photographing demonstrators. Former preacher Councillor Gareth Tench seems to Rebus to be involved due to his apparent closeness to one of the suspects, Niddrie thug Keith Carberry. The book is set in real time; within it, some real events occur, such as the 7/7 London bombings, the 2012 Olympic bid and George W. Bush falling off his bicycle whilst waving at police officers: "&nbsp;'Did we just do that?' Siobhan asked quietly." The title refers to: the ceremony Clarke's ageing left-wing parents attend, where the names of a sampling of the dead from the Iraq War are read out; the list of victims created by Rebus and Clarke as they try to unravel the crime; and also to John Rebus' evocation of grief in naming the many of his own friends and family who have died in the course of his life. By the end of the book, Clarke realises that she has grown closer than ever to understanding Rebus: "It's not enough, is it?" she repeated. "Just...symbolic...because there's nothing else you can do." "What are you talking about?" he asked, with a smile. "The naming of the dead," she told him, resting her head against his shoulder. (p410) She increasingly fears that she is becoming more like him: "obsessed and sidelined, thrawn and distrusted. Rebus had lost family and friends. When he went out drinking, he did so on his own, standing quietly at the bar, facing the row of optics."
5375984	/m/0dj1b0	Commentariolus				 Copernicus offered seven postulates: #Celestial bodies do not all revolve around a single point #The centre of Earth is the centre of the lunar sphere—the orbit of the moon around the Earth #All the spheres rotate around the Sun, which is near the centre of the Universe #The distance between the Earth and the Sun is an insignificant fraction of the distance from the Earth and Sun to the stars, so parallax is not observed in the stars #The stars are immovable; their apparent daily motion is caused by the daily rotation of the Earth #Earth is moved in a sphere around the Sun, causing the apparent annual migration of the Sun; the Earth has more than one motion #Earth's orbital motion around the Sun causes the seeming reverse in direction of the motions of the planets.
5378763	/m/0dj6b3	The Hiding Place	Corrie ten Boom	1971-11	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book opens in 1937, with the ten Boom family celebrating the 100th anniversary of the family watch and watch repair business, now run by the family's elderly father, Casper. The business took up the ground floor of the family home (known as the Beje). Casper lived with his unmarried daughters Corrie (the narrator and a watchmaker herself) and Betsie, who took care of the house. It seemed as if everyone in the Dutch town of Haarlem had shown up to the party, including Corrie's sister Nollie, her brother, Willem, and her nephews Peter and Kik. Willem, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church brought a Jewish man, who had just escaped from Germany, as a guest. The man's beard had been burned off by some thugs, a grim reminder of what was happening just to the east of Holland. In the next few chapters, Corrie talks about her childhood, her infirm but glad-hearted mother, and the three aunts who once lived in the Beje. She talks about the only man she ever loved, a young man named Karel, who ultimately married a woman from a rich family. Eventually, both Nollie and Willem married. After the deaths of Corrie's mother and aunts, Corrie, Betsie, and their father settled down into a pleasant, domestic life. Then, in 1940, the Nazis invaded Holland. Due to the family's strong Christian beliefs, they felt obligated to help their Jewish friends in every way possible. The Beje soon became the center for a major anti-Nazi operation. Corrie, who had grown to think of herself as a middle-aged spinster, finds herself involved in black market operations, stealing ration cards, and eventually, hiding Jews in her own home. Corrie suffered a moral crisis over this work; not from helping the Jews, but from what she had to do to accomplish this: lying (even though she didn't want to), theft, forgery, bribery, and even arranging a robbery. The Dutch underground arranged for a secret room to be built in the Beje, so the Jews would have a place to hide in the event of the inevitable raid. It was a constant struggle for Corrie to keep the Jews safe; she sacrificed her own safety and part of her own personal room to give constant safety to the Jews. Rolf, a police officer friend, trained her to be able to think clearly anytime in case the Nazis invaded her home and started to question her. When a man asked Corrie to help his wife, who had been arrested, Corrie agreed, but with misgivings. As it turned out, the man was a spy, and the watch shop was raided. The entire ten Boom family was arrested, along with the shop employees, though the Jews managed to hide themselves in the secret room. Casper was well into his eighties by this time, and a Nazi official offered to let him go, provided he made no more trouble. Casper does not agree to this, and was shipped to prison. It was later learned he had died ten days later. Corrie is sent to Scheveningen, a Dutch prison which was used by the Nazis for political prisoners, nicknamed 'Oranjehotel'--a hotel for people loyal to the House of Orange. She later learns that her sister is being held in another cell, and that, aside from her father, all other family members and friends had been released. A coded letter from Nollie revealed that the hidden Jews were safe. Corrie befriends a depressed Nazi officer, who arranges a brief meeting with her family, under the pretense of reading Casper's will. She was horrified to see how ill Willem was, as he had contracted jaundice in prison. He would eventually die from his illness in 1946. Corrie also learned that her nephew, Kik, had been captured while working with the Dutch underground. He had been killed, though the family did not learn of this until 1953. After four months at Scheveningen, Corrie and Betsie were transferred to Vught, a Dutch concentration camp for political prisoners. Corrie was assigned to a factory that made radios for aircraft. The work was not hard, and the prisoner-foreman, Mr. Moorman, was kind. Betsie, whose health was starting to fail, was sent to work sewing prison uniforms. When a counter-offensive against the Nazis seemed imminent, the prisoners were shipped by train to Germany, where they were imprisoned at Ravensbrück, a notorious women's concentration camp. The conditions there were hellish; both Corrie and Betsie were forced to perform back-breaking manual labor. It was there that Betsie's health started failing. Throughout the ordeal, Corrie was amazed at her sister's faith. In every camp, the sisters used a hidden Bible to teach their fellow prisoners about Jesus. In Ravensbrück, where there was only hatred and misery, Corrie found it hard to look to Heaven. Betsie, however, showed a universal love for everyone. Not only for the prisoners, but, amazingly for the Nazis. Instead of feeling anger, she pitied the Germans, sorrowful that they were so blinded by hatred. She yearned to show them the love of Christ, but died before the war was over. Corrie was later released, due to what later proved a clerical error. Though she was forced to stay in a hospital barracks while recovering from edema, Corrie arrived back in Holland by January 1945.
5380713	/m/0dj8xv	The Ultimate Evil	Wally K. Daly		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Sixth Doctor's TARDIS is working perfectly, leaving him with nothing to do. When Peri suggests a holiday, the Doctor decides to visit the peaceful country of Tranquela. But an evil arms dealer, the Dwarf Mordant has been busy fomenting hatred there, so they will break a truce with their enemy, the people of the continent of Ameliora. But when even the Doctor becomes affected, can anything stop Mordant's plans?
5381738	/m/0djb71	Peveril of the Peak	Walter Scott	1823-01-07	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Sir Geoffrey Peveril and Major Bridgenorth had been boys together; and although they adopted different views in religion and politics, the major's influence had saved the Royalist's life after the battle of Bolton-le-Moor, and Lady Peveril had brought up his motherless girl, Alice, with her own son. After the Restoration, the Countess of Derby, who, through treachery, had suffered a long imprisonment by the Roundheads, sought protection at Martindale Castle, where Bridgenorth would have arrested her for having caused his brother-in-law, William Christian, to be shot as a traitor, had not the knight interfered by tearing up the warrant, and escorting her through Cheshire on her return to the Isle of Man. Alice was of course withdrawn from his wife's care, and it was supposed the major had emigrated to New England. Several years afterwards Sir Geoffrey's son Julian became the companion of the young earl, and, with the nurse Deborah's connivance, renewed his intimacy with his foster sister, who was under the care of her widowed aunt, Dame Christian. At one of the secret interviews between them, they were surprised by the entrance of her father, who related some of his religious experiences, and vaguely hinted that his consent to their marriage was not impossible. The next night, having undertaken to proceed to London, to clear the countess and her son from the suspicion of being concerned in Titus Oates's pretended Popish plot, Julian was conducted to a sloop by Fenella, his patron's deaf and dumb dwarf, and, as she was being taken ashore against her will while he was asleep, he dreamt that he heard Alice's voice calling for his help. At Liverpool he met Topham with a warrant against Sir Geoffrey, and on his way to the Peak to warn him, he travelled with Edward Christian, passing as Ganlesse, a priest, who led him to an inn, where they supped with Chiffinch, a servant of Charles II. On reaching Martindale Castle, he found his father and mother in the custody of Roundheads, and he was taken by Bridgenorth as a prisoner to Moultrassie Hall, where Alice received them, and he recognised Ganlesse among a number of Puritan visitors. During the night the Hall was attacked by the dependents and miners of the Peveril estate, and, having regained his liberty, Julian started, with Lance as his servant, in search of his parents, who he ascertained were on their way to London in charge of Topham. At an inn where they halted, Julian overheard Chiffinch revealing to a courtier a plot against Alice, and that he had been robbed of the papers entrusted to him by the countess, which, however, he managed to recover the next morning. Meanwhile, Christian, under whose care Bridgenorth had placed his daughter, communicated to the Duke of Buckingham a design he had formed of introducing her to Charles II, and, at an interview with her father, endeavoured to persuade him to abandon the idea of marrying her to young Peveril. Having reached London, Julian met Fenella, who led him into St. James's Park, where she attracted the notice of the king by dancing, and he sent them both to await his return at Chiffinch's apartments. Alice was already under the care of Mistress Chiffinch, and escaped from an interview with the duke to find herself in the presence of Charles and her lover, with whom, after he had placed the countess's papers in the king's hands, she was allowed to depart. Julian, however, lost her in a street fray, and having been committed to Newgate for wounding his assailant, he was placed in the same cell with the queen's dwarf, and conversed with an invisible speaker. After startling Christian with the news that his niece had disappeared, the duke bribed Colonel Blood to intercept his movements, so that he might not discover where she was, and was then himself astonished at finding Fenella instead of Alice, who had been captured by his servants in his house, and at her equally unexpected defiance of and escape from him. A few days afterwards, Sir Geoffrey Peveril, his son and the dwarf were tried for aiding and abetting Oates's Plot, and were all acquitted. In order, however, to avoid the mob, they took refuge in a room, where they encountered Bridgenorth, who convinced Julian that they were in his power, and allowed Christian to propose to the Duke of Buckingham that several hundred Fifth-Monarchy men, led by Colonel Blood, should seize the king, and proclaim his Grace Lord-Lieutenant of the kingdom. The same afternoon Charles had just granted an audience to the Countess of Derby, when the dwarf emerged from a violoncello case and revealed the conspiracy which Fenella had enabled him to overhear. It then transpired that Bridgenorth had released the Peverils, and that Christian had trained his daughter Fenella, whose real name was Zarah, to feign being deaf and dumb, in order that she might act as his spy; but that her secret love for Julian had frustrated the execution of his vengeance against the countess. He was allowed to leave the country, and the major, who. on recovering Alice by Fenella's aid, had placed her under Lady Peveril's care, having offered to restore some of Sir Geoffrey's domains which had passed into his hands as her dowry, the king's recommendation secured the old knight's consent to the marriage which within a few weeks united the Martindale-Moultrassie families and estates.
5381757	/m/0djb7r	The Fair Maid of Perth	Walter Scott	1828	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The armourer, Henry Gow, had excited the jealousy of the apprentice Conachar by spending the evening with the glover and his daughter and was returning to their house at dawn, that he might be the first person she saw on St Valentine's morning, when he encountered a party of courtiers in the act of placing a ladder against her window. Having cut off the hand of one, and seized another, who, however, managed to escape, he left the neighbours to pursue the rest, and was saluted by Catharine as her lover. The citizens waited on the provost, who, having heard their grievance, issued a challenge of defiance to the offenders. Meanwhile the King, who occupied apartments in the convent, having confessed to the prior, was consulting with his brother, when the Earl of March arrived to intimate his withdrawal to the English Border, followed into the courtyard by Louise, and afterwards by the Duke of Rothsay, whose dalliance with the maiden was interrupted by the Earl of Douglas ordering his followers to seize and scourge her. Henry Gow, however, was at hand, and the prince, having committed her to his protection, attended his father's council, at which it was determined that the hostile Clans Chattan and Quhele ("Kay") should be invited to settle their feud by a combat between an equal number of their bravest men in the royal presence, and a commission was issued for the suppression of heresy. The old monarch, having learnt that his son was one of those who had attempted to force their way into the glover's house, insisted that he should dismiss his Master of the Horse, who encouraged all his follies; and while Catharine, who had listened to the Lollard teaching of Father Clement, was being urged by him to favour the secret suit of the Prince, her other lover, Conachar, who had rejoined his clan, appeared to carry off her councillor from arrest as an apostate reformer. The armourer had maimed the Prince's Master of the Horse, Sir John Ramorny, whose desire for revenge was encouraged by the apothecary, Dwining. An assassin named Bonthron undertook to waylay and murder Henry Gow. On Shrovetide evening old Simon was visited by a party of morrice-dancers, headed by Proudfute, who lingered behind to confirm a rumour that Henry Gow had been seen escorting a merry maiden to his house, and then proceeded thither to apologise for having divulged the secret. On his way home in the armourer's coat and cap, as a protection against other revellers, he received a blow from behind and fell dead on the spot. About the same time Sir John was roused from the effects of a narcotic by the arrival of the Prince, who made light of his sufferings, and whom he horrified by suggesting that he should cause the death of his uncle, and seize his father's throne. The fate of Proudfute, whose body was at first mistaken for that of the armourer, excited general commotion in the city; while Catharine, on hearing the news, rushed to her lover's house and was folded in his arms. Her father then accompanied him to the town council, where he was chosen as the widow's champion, and the Provost repaired to the King's presence to demand a full inquiry. At a council held the following day, trial by ordeal of bier-right, or by combat, was ordered; and suspicion having fallen on Ramorny's household, each of his servants was required to pass before the corpse, in the belief that the wounds would bleed afresh as the culprit approached. Bonthron, however, chose the alternative of combat, and, having been struck down by Gow, was led away to be hanged. But Dwining had arranged that he should merely be suspended so that he could breathe and during the night he and Sir John's page Eviot cut him down and carried him off. Catharine had learnt that she and her father were both suspected by the commission; and the Provost having offered to place her under the care of The Douglas's daughter, the deserted wife of the Prince, the old glover sought the protection of his former apprentice, who was now the chieftain of his clan. Having returned from his father's funeral, Conachar pleaded for the hand of Catharine, without which he felt he should disgrace himself in the approaching combat with the Clan Chattan. Simon, however, reminded him that she was betrothed to the armourer, and his foster father promised to screen him in the conflict. At the instigation of his uncle, the Prince had been committed to the custody of the Earl of Errol; but, with the Duke's connivance, he was enticed by Ramorny and the apothecary to escape to the castle of Falkland, and, with the help of Bonthron, was starved to death there. Catharine and Louise, however, discovered his fate, and communicated with The Douglas, who overpowered the garrison, and hanged the murderers. The meeting of the hostile champions had been arranged with great pomp, and Henry Gow, having consented to supply Eachin (Conachar) with a suit of armour, volunteered to take the place of one of the Clan Chattan who failed to appear, A terrible conflict ensued, during which Torquil and his eight sons all fell defending their chief, who at last fled from the battle-ground unwounded and dishonoured. On hearing of Rothsay's death, Robert III resigned his sceptre to his wily and ambitious brother, and later died broken-hearted when his younger son James was captured by the English king. Albany transferred the regency to his son; but, nineteen years afterwards, the rightful heir returned, and the usurper expiated his own and his father's guilt on the scaffold. The warrants against Simon and his daughter, and Father Clement, were cancelled by the intervention of the Earl of Douglas, and the Church was conciliated with Dwining's ill-gotten wealth. Conachar either became a hermit, or, legend has it, was spirited away by the fairies. Scotland boasts of many distinguished descendants from Henry Gow and his spouse the Fair Maid of Perth.
5381761	/m/0djb8h	Anne of Geierstein	Walter Scott	1829	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 As the merchant John Philipson and his son Arthur were travelling towards Basel they were overtaken by a storm, and found themselves at the edge of a precipice caused by a recent earthquake. Arthur was making his way towards a tower indicated by their guide Antonio, when he was rescued from imminent danger by Anne, who conducted him to her uncle Bierderman's mountain home. His father had already been brought there to safety by Biederman and his sons. During their evening games Rudolph, who had joined in them, became jealous of the young Englishman's skill with the bow, and challenged him; but they were overheard by Anne, and the duel was interrupted. The travellers were invited to continue their journey in company with a deputation of Switzers, commissioned to remonstrate with Charles the Bold respecting the exactions of Hagenbach; and the magistrates of Basel having declined to let them enter the city, they took shelter in the ruins of a castle. During his share in the night watches, Arthur fancied that he saw an apparition of Anne, and was encouraged in his belief by Rudolph, who narrated her family history, which implied that her ancestors had dealings with supernatural beings. Hoping to prevent a conflict on his account between the Swiss and the duke's steward, the merchant arranged that he and his son should precede them; but on reaching the Burgundian citadel they were imprisoned by the governor in separate dungeons. Arthur, however, was released by Anne with the assistance of a priest, and his father by Biederman, a body of Swiss youths having entered the town and incited the citizens to execute Hagenbach, just as he was intending to slaughter the deputation, whom he had treacherously admitted. A valuable necklace which had been taken from the merchant was restored to him by Sigismund, and the deputies having decided to persist in seeking an interview with the duke, the Englishman undertook to represent their cause favourably to him. On their way to Charles's headquarters father and son were overtaken by Anne disguised as a lady of rank, and, acting on her whispered advice to Arthur, they continued their journey by different roads. The elder fell in with a mysterious priest who provided him with a guide to the "Golden Fleece," where he was lowered from his bedroom to appear before a meeting of the Vehmic court or holy tribunal, and warned against speaking of their secret powers. The younger was met and conducted by Annette to a castle, where he spent the evening with his lady-love, and travelled with her the next day to rejoin his father at Strassburg. In the cathedral there they met Margaret of Anjou, who recognised Philipson as John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, a faithful adherent of the house of Lancaster, and planned with him an appeal to the duke for aid against the Yorkists. On reaching Charles's camp the earl was welcomed as an old companion in arms, and obtained a promise of the help he sought, on condition that Provence was ceded to Burgundy. Arthur was despatched to Aix-en-Provence to urge Margaret to persuade her father accordingly, while the earl accompanied his host to an interview with his burghers and the Swiss deputies. King René of Anjou's preference for the society of troubadours and frivolous amusements had driven his daughter to take refuge in a convent. On hearing from Arthur, however, the result of the earl's mission to the duke, she returned to the palace, and had induced her father to sign away his kingdom, when his grandson Ferrand arrived with the news of the rout of the Burgundian army at Neuchâtel, and Arthur learned from his squire, Sigismund, that he had not seen Anne's spectre but herself during his night-watch, and that the priest he had met more than once was her father, the Count Albert of Geierstein. The same evening Queen Margaret died in her chair of state; and all the earl's prospects for England being thwarted, he occupied himself in arranging a treaty between her father and the King of France. He was still in Provence when he was summoned to rouse the duke from a fit of melancholy, caused by the Switzers having again defeated him. After raising fresh troops, Charles decided to wrest Nancy from the young Duke of Lorraine, and during the siege Arthur received another challenge from Rudolph. The rivals met, and, having killed the Bernese, the young Englishman obtained Count Albert's consent to his marriage with Anne, with strict injunctions to warn the duke that the Secret Tribunal had decreed his death. By the treachery of the Italians the Swiss were enabled the same night to gain another victory, Charles was slain, and their independence was established. Being still an exile, the earl accepted the patriot Biederman's invitation to reside with his countess at Geierstein, until the battle of Bosworth placed Henry VII on the throne, when Arthur and his wife attracted as much admiration at the English Court as they had gained among their Swiss neighbours.
5381773	/m/0djb9k	Weir of Hermiston	Robert Louis Stevenson	1896	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of Archie Weir, a youth born into an upper-class Edinburgh family. Because of his Romantic sensibilities and sensitivity, Archie is estranged from his father, who is depicted as the coarse and cruel judge of a criminal court. By mutual consent, Archie is banished from his family of origin and sent to live as the local laird on a family property in the vicinity of Hermiston (now on Edinburgh's outskirts, and occupied by Heriot-Watt University, but then out in the countryside). While serving as the laird, Archie meets and falls in love with Kirstie (Christina). As the two are deepening their relationship, the book breaks off. Confusingly, there are two characters in the novel called Christina.
5384313	/m/0djfsj	Witch Hunt	Wendy Corsi Staub	1993	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A fishing boat sinks in the English Channel in the middle of the night, and the evidence points to murder. Ex-Special Branch agent Dominic Elder comes out of retirement to help investigate the explosion of the boat, as it appears that his long-time obsession, a female assassin known as Witch, may be responsible. Using the boat to get to England from France, Witch left a subtle trail of clues to announce her arrival and to warn off Elder. But that is the least of Special Branch's worries, if Elder's well-honed intuition is correct. He has seen her work before and knows her to be a resourceful enemy, who always seems a step ahead of the authorities. With an imminent summit of world leaders to be held in London, Witch's target seems obvious. Young Michael Barclay's thoroughness leads him onto Witch's trail, with the help of his liaison in the French police, Dominique. Apart from her language help and guidance around Paris, Michael is sexually attracted to her. The team of detectives and MI5 agents, and the terrorist, play cat-and-mouse with each other in Scotland, England, France, and even briefly visit a former associate of Witch in prison in Germany.
5384472	/m/0djfzw	Bleeding Hearts	Ian Rankin	1994	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Michael Weston is a professional assassin, but he also suffers from haemophilia. The wealthy father of a girl he killed by mistake years ago has sworn vengeance on the killer, hiring a private detective (Hoffer) to track him down. Rankin has said that he wrote this book under the influence of Martin Amis' novel Money and that Weston was influenced by that novel's protagonist John Self.
5384586	/m/0djg4h	Blood Hunt	Ian Rankin	1995-09-14	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Gordon Reeve, a former SAS soldier, receives a phone call in his home in Scotland, informing him that his brother Jim has been found dead in a car in San Diego - the car being locked from the inside, and the gun still in Jim's hand. While in the USA to identify the body, Gordon realises that his brother was murdered, and that the police is more than reluctant to follow any lead. Retracing Jim's final hours, he connects Jim's death with his work as a journalist, investigating a multinational chemical corporation. Soon, Gordon finds himself under surveillance, and decides to find out more among Jim's acquaintances back in Europe. In London, he finds more hints, but no evidence for his brother's sources. After returning to his wife and son, he finds that his home has been bugged by professionals. Sending his wife and son to a relative, he determines to take on his enemy on his own. Interestingly, there are two parties after him: The multinational corporation, represented by "Jay", a renegade SAS member, and an international investigation corporation, somehow connected with the case. Traveling to France, in order to find out more from a journalist colleague of Jim's, they are attacked by a group of professional killers under orders from Jay, resulting in multiple deaths, and leading to Gordon becoming a police target. Gordon decides to return to the USA, where he infiltrates the investigation corporation, and learns more about the history of the case. Then he travels to San Diego, to collect more evidence, and eventually returns to England, deliberately leaving a trail for Jay. Their long enmity leads Jay to follow Gordon to Scotland, where Gordon kills him and his team in a final showdown. Gordon manages to locate Jim's hidden journalistic material, hopefully clearing Jim's and his own name.
5385291	/m/0djg_n	Before the Fact	Anthony Berkeley Cox		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Before the Fact is the story of Lina, a "born victim". She is raised in the country in the early decades of the 20th century and, at 28, she is still a virgin and in danger of becoming an old spinster. She finds country life with her parents rather boring, and only lives for strangers who might be passing through or who have been invited by someone living in or near their village. When the novel opens, such a stranger has just arrived: 27 year-old Johnnie Aysgarth, from an impoverished family who are, as she is told, "of rotten stock". General McLaidlaw, Lina's father, is opposed to the marriage, and everyone seems to know that all that Johnnie is after is Lina's money. Lina herself has been told from an early age that Joyce, her younger sister, got the looks and she (Lina) got the brains. In spite of these difficulties, Lina and Johnnie get married after only a short engagement. They go to Paris on their honeymoon, where they stay at the best hotels and dine at the best restaurants, and, on their return, move into an eight-bedroom house in London. Only six weeks later, Johnnie, who is jobless, admits to his wife that they have been living on borrowed money and that it has run out. Gradually, unwillingly, Lina takes charge of the couple's finances and suggests that Johnnie get a regular job. They leave the expensive house and move to the country; they settle down in a part of Dorset where they know no one and start living in a more modest house. For the time being, they rely entirely on Lina's allowance. Reluctantly, Johnnie takes a job as the steward of a large estate of a Captain Melbeck. Lina always wanted to have children, but, as it turns out, she never gets pregnant. As time goes by, Lina gradually learns that Johnnie is a crook. Apart from being a compulsive liar, he turns out to be * a thief: During a tennis party, he steals an expensive diamond belonging to one of the guests and, soon afterwards, a piece of Lina's own jewelry. Also, he sells Lina's four Hepplewhite chairs to an antique shop in Bournemouth. * a forger: He forges Lina's signature and cashes one of her cheques. * an embezzler: He embezzles Captain Melbeck's money to pay his gambling debts. Luckily, Melbeck doesn't prosecute. * an adulterer: During their marriage, he has affairs with many women and village girls, including Lina's best friend, Janet Caldwell - he has a flat in Bournemouth especially for that purpose - and Ella, their parlour maid, by whom he has a son. * eventually, a murderer: He incites General McLaidlaw to do a trick involving chairs while he and Lina are staying with the General for Christmas. This is too much physical exercise for the General, and he dies suddenly. Some years later, Johnnie cheats a rich school friend of his, Beaky Thwaite, out of his money by traveling incognito to Paris with him, going to a brothel and having him drink a whole beaker of brandy in one gulp so that he drops dead. However, Lina's own death will be Johnnie's first "real" murder. He goes to great lengths to conceive an undetectable murder. When Isobel Sedbusk, the author of detective stories, happens to spend the summer in their village, he associates with her and, on the pretext of discussing material for her new book, elicits a new method of murder from her: swallowing an alkali commonly used, but never suspected of being poisonous, and which leaves no trace in the human body for a post-mortem to find. At the very end of the novel, Lina, who really seems to have gone mad, catches the flu. She has been waiting for her husband to try to murder her for months now. When he brings her a drink, she swallows it deliberately, knowing that it is a poisonous cocktail. Johnny is going to get away with it ("People did die of influenza."), which is what Lina, so much in love with her husband, hopes will happen. The novel covers a period of approximately ten years: Johnnie Aysgarth's courtship of, and marriage to, Lina McLaidlaw, the disintegration of their marriage and her imminent death &mdash; although it is uncertain that she is really going to die. The whole story is told from Lina Aysgarth's point of view. We know everything she does and everything she thinks. On the other hand, we know practically nothing about the villain except for what Lina sees and gathers, creating more suspense.
5385342	/m/0djh1c	The Talented Mr. Ripley	Patricia Highsmith	1955	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Tom Ripley is a young man struggling to make a living in New York City by whatever means necessary, including a series of small-time confidence scams. One day, he is approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf to travel to Mongibello, Italy, to persuade Greenleaf's errant son, Dickie, to return to the United States and join the family business. Ripley agrees, exaggerating his friendship with Dickie, a half-remembered acquaintance, in order to gain the elder Greenleaf's trust. Shortly after his arrival in Italy, Ripley meets Dickie and his friend Marge Sherwood; although Ripley ingratiates himself with Dickie, Marge does not seem to like him very much. As Ripley and Dickie spend more time together, Marge feels left out and begins insinuating to Dickie that Ripley is gay. Dickie then surprises Ripley in Dickie's bedroom dressed up in Dickie's clothes and imitating his mannerisms. Dickie is upset, and from this moment on Ripley senses that his wealthy friend has begun to tire of him, resenting his constant presence and growing personal dependence. Ripley has indeed become obsessed with Dickie, which is further reinforced by his desire to imitate and maintain the wealthy lifestyle Dickie has afforded him. As a gesture to Ripley, Dickie agrees to travel with him on a short holiday to Sanremo. Sensing that Dickie is about to cut him loose, Ripley finally decides to murder him and assume his identity. When the two set sail in a small rented boat, Ripley beats him to death with an oar, dumps his anchor-weighted body into the water and scuttles the boat. Ripley assumes Dickie's identity, living off the latter's trust fund and carefully providing communications to Marge to assure her that Dickie has dumped her. Freddie Miles, an old friend of Dickie's from the same social set, encounters Ripley at what he supposes to be Dickie's apartment in Rome. He soon suspects something is wrong. When Miles finally confronts him, Ripley kills him with an ashtray. He later disposes of the body on the outskirts of Rome, attempting to make police believe that Miles has been murdered by robbers. Ripley enters a cat-and-mouse game with the Italian police, but manages to keep himself safe by restoring his own identity and moving to Venice. In succession Marge, Dickie's father, and an American private detective confront Ripley, who suggests to them that Dickie was depressed and may have committed suicide. Marge stays for a while at Ripley's rented house in Venice. When she discovers Dickie's rings in Ripley's possession, she seems to be on the verge of realising the truth. Panicked, Ripley contemplates murdering Marge, but she is saved when she says that if Dickie gave his rings to Ripley, then he probably meant to kill himself. The story concludes with Ripley's traveling to Greece and resigning himself to eventually getting caught. On arrival in Greece, however, he discovers that the Greenleaf family has accepted that Dickie is dead and that Ripley shall inherit his fortune according to a will forged by Ripley on Dickie's Hermes typewriter. While the book ends with Ripley happily rich, it also suggests that he may forever be dogged by paranoia. In one of the final paragraphs, he nervously envisions a group of police officers waiting to arrest him, and Highsmith leaves her protagonist wondering, ".....was he going to see policemen waiting for him on every pier that he ever approached?"
5386942	/m/0djjp_	Timewyrm: Exodus	Terrance Dicks		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Ace arrive in London 1951, but discover that somehow the Nazis have won the war. They must travel back into the history of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party to ensure that history is restored to its proper course.
5386979	/m/0djjr0	Timewyrm: Apocalypse	Nigel Robinson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Ace follow the Timewyrm to the planet Kirith in the far, far future. There they find a peaceful, happy society that hides a dark secret.
5387022	/m/0djjs1	Timewyrm: Revelation	Paul Cornell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The battle to defeat the Timewyrm having taken the Seventh Doctor and Ace to Ancient Mesopotamia, 1950s Britain and the edge of the universe at the end of time finally ends within the Doctor's own mind with only his past incarnations to help him after Ace is killed by a playground bully...
5390022	/m/0djnpz	Obernewtyn	Isobelle Carmody	1988-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07lw0y": "Post-holocaust", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Elspeth learns from her premonitions, and her cat Maruman's prophecies, that a keeper from Obernewtyn, a feared institution where Misfits are sent to work, will come to take her there. Soon, when delivering tea to visiting Head Keeper of Obernewtyn, Madam Vega, Elspeth accidentally reveals she is a Misfit, though not to what extent, and is soon despatched to Obernewtyn. Her first few weeks at Obernewtyn are spent in the kitchen, with the cook’s daughter, the favoured Misfit, Ariel, and farm overseer, Rushton, taking an immediate hatred of her. Later reassigned to the farm, an encounter with Matthew and Dameon reveals she is not alone in her particular abilities. Elspeth, plagued by nightmares, begins to feel there is a dark secret underneath their everyday tasks. While working, Elspeth decides to test the range of her telepathic ability, "farseeking", but beyond the boundaries of Obernewtyn, a strange machine, the Zebrakhen, traps her mind. She is only freed by combining her mental strength with another anonymous mind who offers assistance. Asked by Vega to look out for "special" Misfits, her interview reveals the Doctor is a defective simpleton; his "assistant", Alexi, has no interest in Elspeth in his quest to find the "right one". Elspeth and Matthew later deduce that tortuous experiments on their kind are occurring, and they decide to escape. That night, Elspeth sneaks into the Doctor’s office to retrieve a map and compass, but on finding forbidden books and maps from before the Great White, the "Beforetime", she realises they must be searching for something from long ago. She leaves empty-handed. Rosamunde, a friend from Kindraide, arrives at Obernewtyn and coldly informs Elspeth that her brother Jes had discovered he also had mental abilities, but was killed by guards in an escape attempt. Rushton comforts the distraught Elspeth, and asks her why she plagues him. Fearful that someone will soon be after her as well, her group’s escape plans begin in earnest. Elspeth returns a second time to the Doctor’s office, but when Vega, Alexi and Ariel enter, she learns Ariel is part of the Obernewtyn family, and that they are searching for a Misfit to help them find the location of Beforetime weapons. Pre-warned that two councilmen are coming to fetch her for questioning by the Herders, at nightfall she makes to escape but Rushton stops her. He reveals a secret network of drains which gets her safely to the farms. Yet, once there she is lost in a blizzard, until Dominick finds her and locks her in the farmhouse to return later to Obernewtyn. Overhearing a conversation between her captors, she discovers they were to secretly meet with the rebel group, but Rushton has gone missing. Convincing them that her powers can help find him, she makes her way on foot through the blizzard to the far mountains, with Maruman as her guide. Inside the cave network she finds a dying Cameo, who tells her the Beforetime weapons Alexi and Vega are searching for caused the Great White, but they do not know this. She also reveals it is Elspeth’s destiny, as the Seeker, to destroy them. After mourning her death, Elspeth overhears that Rushton, imprisoned in the next cavern, is the true heir of Obernewtyn. Suddenly, she is captured by Ariel, who ties her to a table next to the Zebrakhen machine. Elspeth is forced to hold the diaries of Marissa, the wife of the founder of Obernewtyn, and use her abilities to discover what Marissa was thinking when she wrote them to determine the weapons’ location. Still withstanding the torture, Elspeth mentally enters Rushton’s mind and recognises the voice of her earlier rescuer from the Zebrakhen. Rushton gives his mental strength to her to endure it, but in her despair at their threats to kill him, her resistance breaks and Marissa’s thoughts reveal the map to be carved into the front doors of Obernewtyn. At this point, the Zebrakhan overheats and bursts into flames. Something in Elspeth’s mind cracks and she uses this new power to kill Vega. She falls unconscious as Rushton’s rebel friends rush in. Alexi is killed, but Ariel flees into the night and is believed to have died in the blizzard. Now known to be the legal master of Obernewtyn, Rushton plans to build it into a secret refuge for Misfits.
5390085	/m/0djnrp	The Farseekers	Isobelle Carmody	1994-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/07lw0y": "Post-holocaust", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rushton returns from a journey around the highlands and immediately calls a meeting of all the leaders of the guilds (guildmerge). At the meeting, Elspeth and Pavo propose a joint expedition of their guilds to the West Coast, in order to recover an untouched Beforetime (time before Great White) book cache, as well as rescue a person with very strong mental abilities. Rushton proposes a safe house be set up in the capital, Sutrium, so they can be informed of the Council’s movements, with that person joining their expedition. This expedition is unanimously approved. Suddenly her cat Maruman falls into a fitful coma and Elspeth enters his mind to help bring him to. Inside his mind, a voice of an Agyllian reminds Elspeth of her promise to destroy the weaponmachines, a journey she must make alone. Later, Zarak bumps into an unknown Misfit mind while farseeking, who is a novice Herder in Darthnor cloister. Elspeth contacts the novice, named Jik, who initially believes she is a demon sent to test his faith. After subsequent conversations, she reveals she too is a Misfit and offers him a home at Obernewtyn. A small group of Farseekers rescue him, making it looked as he had drowned. Meanwhile, Elspeth, in response to the horses’ refusal to be ridden, strikes a bargain with their leader, Gahltha, that the upcoming expedition be treated as a test as to whether they can work as equals. He agrees but only if Elspeth rides him, as both parties should risk leaders. Just before the expedition sets off, a prophecy reveals Jik must join them and they must be back before the pass closes in winter, or Obernewtyn will fall. Disguised as a gypsy troop, they attempt to find a secret pass through the lower mountains, but are taken captive by armsmen of Henry Druid (infamous rebel leader). Inside the well-established camp, their mental abilities are suddenly constrained and the group are separated. After being questioned by Druid about Obernewtyn, Kella and Elspeth are invited to dinner with the men in order to arrange bonding (marriage) of them to some armsmen. The head armsmen, Gilbert, takes a liking to her and speaks at length of his life and the camp. Later, Elspeth finds a secret group of Misfits led by Druid’s secret deaf daughter and learns the block on the abilities is caused by a Misfit baby. Elspeth and Kella intended to be bonded to someone that night but instead the group escape during a large storm. Dominic, who had eluded capture, had built large rafts at Elspeth’s earlier request, on which the group escaped their pursuers into the mountain rapids. Halfway down, they came across a ruined Beforetime city in a large cavern. Suddenly exiting the mountain via a large waterfall, they are nursed back to health by a rebel couple. In return, the group agree to go to Aborium to see if their son, Brydda, is fine. Domick leaves them to travel to Sutrium to set up the safe house. In Aborium, Elspeth asks for him at the specified inn but is taken prisoner instead. Rescued by one of Brydda’s friends, she is taken to see him. Meanwhile Kella, Jik and Pavo are taken captive by the Herders and are being held in the local cloister. Realising Jik is an escaped novice, they intend to send him to Herder Isle (island containing core of order) that night for interrogation. Though she breaks in and frees the other two, she is too late to free Jik. However, with Brydda’s help, they are able to cause enough commotion on the wharf to rescue him. Outside the city, they, with Brydda, travel north to their destination, the ruins containing the library. Deserted as believed haunted, the group eventually realise a wild girl is causing the horrific visions with her mind, and is the Misfit they seek. By coaxing with food, the girl, dubbed ‘Dragon’, eventually follows them back and joins their group. They also take back many books from the Beforetime library. After returning to Brydda’s parents house, Domick rushes in to warn them of the approaching soliderguards, and that Ariel is alive. Fleeing, Brydda reveals the secret pass through the mountains, which the group safely get through only through Jik’s dog’s directions. However on emerging from the other side, a firestorm bears down on them. Though Elspeth is dragged to safety by Daffyd, someone she met many years earlier, Jik perishes in the flames. Elspeth convinces Daffyd to take the others back to Obernewtyn before the pass closes, as the mental barrier blocking the pain in her badly injured feet caused by the Zebrakhen had collapsed. Alone and dying, Elspeth is taken by Guannette birds (Agyllians) to the highest mountain where they teach her body to heal itself. The leader, Atthis, who spoke to her earlier in Maruman’s mind, reminds her of her quest, and the existence of the Destroyer who is destined to try and use the weaponmachines. Haven taken months to heal, Elspeth is return to the wintery highlands where Gahltha awaits her to take her back to Obernewtyn. There Elspeth sees a ruin, destroyed by a firestorm, and a soldierguard camp set up nearby with Rushton and others captive inside. Having presumed her dead, the others are mystified and overjoyed at her arrival, particularly Rushton. They reveal Obernewtyn is fine, and it is just a vision caused by Dragon to fool soldierguards, who eventually flee in fear of catching a deadly disease.
5390724	/m/0djq1h	The Keeping Place	Isobelle Carmody	1998-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/07lw0y": "Post-holocaust", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After a kidnapping, the Misfit community at Obernewtyn are forced to join the rebellion against the totalitarian Council, using their extraordinary mental abilities. Yet Elspeth must also seek out clues left by a long-dead seer, Kasanda, necessary to her quest to destroy the Beforetime weaponmachines. When one is hidden in the past, Elspeth must travel the Dreamtrails, stalked by a terrifying beast, with Maruman, her cat, as guide and protector. Only now can she learn more of the Beforetime Misfits and their enemy, Govamen, and realise her quest is intimately linked with the Misfit's Obernewtyn - its past and its future.
5391339	/m/0djr2l	The Eye	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1930		 The action of the novel largely begins after the attempted (perhaps successful) suicide of the protagonist. After his supposed death, his "eye" observes a group of Russian émigrés as he tries to ascertain their opinions of the character Smurov, around whom much uncertainty and suspicion exists.
5392055	/m/0djs90	Darkfall	Isobelle Carmody		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After Glynn is transported to the world of Keltor, she is rescued by an Acanthan Windwalker named Solen, who despite his apparent indifference, is heavily involved in the complex politics of Keltor. Glynn pretends amnesia and slowly learns that the independent Isle of Darkfall and its sisterhood of soulweavers are falling out of favour with rulers in Keltor. Unfortunately, her athletic build, sense of honour and independence make her resemble the Myrmidons, amazon like women who are the sworn protectors of the soulweavers, who are also out of favour. Unbeknownst to Glynn, her twin sister Ember, in trying to save her from drowning was also transported into Keltor. She is rescued by the Soulweaver Alene and her Myrmidon protectors Feyt and Tareed, who harbours a nagging suspicions as to whether Ember is the "Unraveller" as predicted by Lanalor, the very first Holder(King) and the only male soulweaver. Ember is dying from a large tumour in the frontal lobe of her brain. She is half blind and does not have long to live. The entire plot is a result of Lanalor's trickery in which the Unykorn/Firstmade was captured by the Chaos spirit so that Lanalor could be with his love, Shenavyre, who incidentally committed suicide when the Firstmade was imprisoned. Lanalor prophesized an Unraveller would come to rescue the Unykorn and free Keltor, although most Keltorians have lost faith in this prophecy. The arrival of strangers (People from Earth), Lanalor promised, would be a sign that the Unraveller would come one day. He gave the description by which the Unraveller would be identified: half blind yet seeing all (half blind), mark by visioning though without the Darkfall mark, lives yet sings the deathsong (dying), born yet not of the Song of Making (not from Keltor), gifted from the great water (from the portal in the water, thus washed up to shore) and crowned in bright flames (many take this as red hair) In an attempt to get currency to pay for a ship fare, Glynn is captured by members of the Draaka cult, who drug and enslave her. The Draaka cult preaches to the Chaos spirit though this is not known to all of Keltor. The Draaka seek to ultimately rule the world in Chaos. Glynn is saved from being a drugged drone by Bayard, a loyal Draaka follower who does not agree with the drug taking that the rest of the cult does, when her pet, the fienna, gets attached to Glynn. Bayard wanted Glynn as her servant instead of a drone as she believed that Glynn could help the fienna give birth to its final offspring (Glynn portrays herself as a Fomikan who came from an aspi breeder's farm whose parents are disappointed with her, in order to survive). Through a vision, Ember saves the Holder's life from an assassination attempt by Coralyn, who wants to put her other son Kalide on the throne. Her friend Bleyd is framed and tortured and a daring rescue attempt brings Ember face to face with the paradoxical manbeast Ronaall who predicts Ember's death if she does not leave the Isle of Ramidan within the night with Bleyd. Ember's tale ends with her smuggled on a ship heading to Darkfall so she can seek answers and healing for her ever-worsening brain tumour. Alene gives her own a'luwtha as a gift, the playing of the music to unlock her memory. Bayard falls overboard and drowns on the way to Ramidan and Glynn helps the fienna give birth, assisted by Solen, who she reunites with on a ship after his faked death. The mother fienna enhances Glynn's latent abilities so that she can save the last offspring (the mother and 2 of 3 offspring die), and in doing so, helps fill the grey void in Glynn. She is now connected to the he-fienna. In the morning, as Glynn's ship pulls into the harbour of Ramidan; unknowingly she watches Ember's ship departing. The novel also interconnects characters on Earth to those in Keltor in "Segue" sections. These characters include Faye and Tabby (Implied mirrors of Feyt and Tareed), a mysterious comatose manbeast by the name of Ronaall, the male nurse who cares for the comatose man who also cared for Ember, a clarinet player and his comatose mother, a security guard, a policeman named Johnny, the blonde jogger who finds Wind's suicide note and various others.
5395471	/m/0djxtf	Drift House: The First Voyage	Dale Peck	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After the 9/11 attack on New York City, the three Oakenfeld children, Susan, Charles, and Murray, are sent to live with their Uncle Farley in Canada. Farley has recently bought a strange ship-like home named Drift House on The Bay of Eternity. The home resembles a bizarre old-time ship, washed ashore. The children immediately find the home very odd. When they question their uncle about the strange house, he becomes nervous and distracted. The children later explore the house, where they meet a talkative parrot named President Wilson. One morning, they wake to discover the house has been raised up by a flood, carried out of the bay, and has drifted into the Sea of Time&nbsp;– a place where past, present, and future converge. Susan, Charles and Murray, along with Uncle Farley and President Wilson embark on an adventure where they discover evil mermaids, comical pirates, a wise whale, predictions of things to come, and a secret plot that could stop time itself.
5395968	/m/0djyc4	The Professor of Desire	Philip Roth	1977	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 David is emotionally insecure. He grows up in the hotel his parents manage, where he is influenced by artist Herbie Bratasky, who, thanks to his ingenuity in imitating sounds of farts, defecation and toilet flushing, is credited with "mastering the whole Wagner scale of fecal Storm and Stress". When he attends a college, he rooms with a lazy, often-masturbating, homosexual, draft-dodging, fellow student, who inadvertently adds to Kepesh's insecurity. At first, he seems to accept the odd facts about his colleague, but then he's shocked when he's told by others that he deviated from so many social norms. David, often lusting after female co-students, never has a successful date. He often annoys girls by telling them they have gorgeous bodily features. Kepesh, with a Fulbright grant in his pocket, goes to London, where he meets two sexually interested Swedish girls, Birgitta and Elisabeth. Back in America, he moves to California, where he gets acquainted with Helen, a woman dreaming of opening a store. Helen has a history of promiscuity dating back to her early twenties, when she lived in Hong Kong and other places in Asia. Helen does not feel loved by Kepesh. She refuses to do household duties because Kepesh gives her only sexual attention; unable to speak of his emotions, Kepesh submits to that "fact" and ends up doing all the housework as well as teaching literature classes and writing papers on Anton Chekhov. Kepesh separates from Helen and goes to New York to give lectures in literature, but his emotional side not yet formed or refined, he has endless sessions with a psychoanalyst and even uses his literature class (which he later calls "Desire 341" after the course number) to contrast his own desires and experiences with those portrayed in works like Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. He even persuades the students to hear about and discuss his own love life. On a visit to Prague, birthplace of the equally sexually inexperienced Franz Kafka, he dreams of visiting the still-living prostitute of Kafka who invites him to look at her crotch; presuming he wants to see why it held Kafka's interest for so long. it:Il professore di desiderio
5397043	/m/0dj_60	The Last Hero	Leslie Charteris	1930	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Unlike previous Saint stories, which were straightforward realistic crime dramas, The Last Hero saw Simon Templar entering the realm of both science fiction and spy fiction. The novel starts an unspecified length of time after the events of Enter the Saint with an account of Simon Templar, The Saint, foiling an assassination attempt on a visiting prince by tricking the would-be assassin into blowing himself up. This leads to The Saint becoming a cause célèbre among the British people, to the point where the government offers him not only a full pardon for past crimes, but also a job as a sanctioned crime-buster. Templar politely refuses, saying he prefers to remain underground, his identity a secret to all but a select few. (He would revisit this decision, however, in the later story "The Impossible Crime" (featured in the collection Alias the Saint) and again in the novel, She Was a Lady.) Over the next three months, the Saint proceeds to operate so far in the shadows that the general public thinks he has retired or disappeared. During this time, Templar hears from a reporter friend about troubling indications that conditions for a new war in Europe might be brewing (Templar insists that after the events of the First World War there wouldn't be another such war "for hundreds of years"). Later, during an outing in the countryside with fellow adventurer and girlfriend Patricia Holm, Templar stumbles upon a secret British government installation where he and Holm witness the testing of a deadly and mysterious weapon—the electroncloud machine, which creates a vapor capable of turning anything (and anyone) it touches into ash. Templar and Holm are about to leave when they encounter a giant of a man named Rayt Marius, an evil tycoon who wants the weapon for his own purposes. After escaping to safety, Templar determines that he and his team must steal or destroy the weapon before their government—or any other—can use it against people. Not only that, but the weapon must not be allowed to fall into Marius' hands. And in order that such a weapon never be re-created, Templar also plans to kidnap the device's inventor and, if necessary, kill the scientist. Things become complicated when Marius kidnaps Patricia Holm, setting Templar off into an uncharacteristically murderous rage. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard Inspector Claud Eustace Teal also finds himself getting involved, even though the identity of The Saint remains a mystery to him. After rescuing Patricia from the clutches of Marius, Templar realizes that his quest for anonymity is at an end (with both Marius and Teal now aware of who he really is) and begins to make plans to leave the country (along with his compatriots if they so choose). But first he must try to convince the inventor of the electroncloud to abandon the weapon; when the scientist indicates that he not only refuses to give up his work, but might also be mad, Templar reluctantly decides the man must die in order to potentially save the lives of millions. Before he can execute the scientist, Templar's base is attacked by Marius, who is revealed to be working for the same prince Templar earlier saved. During the melee, one of Templar's men, Norman Kent, completes the Saint's orders and kills the scientist; he does so after determining that whoever killed the scientist would be likely to hang for murder if caught, and out of loyalty to Templar chose to take the chance himself. It is also revealed that Kent, who had only been mentioned briefly in previous Saint adventures, harbored an unrequited love for Patricia Holm, possibly originating from a Mediterranean cruise on which Templar had assigned Kent to take Holm in order to keep her out of trouble (as indicated in Enter the Saint). Later, while being held at gunpoint by Marius and the prince, Kent reveals that he killed the scientist, but not before being given the man's final notes on the electroncloud. In exchange for Marius and the Prince allowing the Saint and his friends Patricia and Roger Conway to go free, Kent agrees to hand over the documents. After Templar and his group (save Kent) depart, Kent reveals that he has played a trick on Marius and had secretly passed the notes off to Simon before his departure. As the book ends, Marius shoots Norman Kent dead as he stands in front of a window to stop Marius shooting through it. The Last Hero was published 15 years before the advent of nuclear weapons, and nine years before the outbreak of the Second World War, yet contains statements that could be seen as predicting these two milestones. Perhaps coincidentally, the name Albert Einstein is mentioned in passing. The electroncloud device is only shown in action once and, while the inventor of the device is killed, and Marius states to Templar that the machine Templar and Holm witnessed in action was destroyed by his men, it is never revealed what, if anything, Templar did with the scientist's notes. The Last Hero was the first of a trilogy of novels. The events of this novel (in particular the fate of Norman Kent) led to an immediate sequel, Knight Templar (a.k.a. The Avenging Saint), which was published later in 1930 and which takes place three months after the conclusion of Last Hero. In 1932, after an interval of a number of unrelated novellas and a full-length novel, the trilogy concluded with Getaway. After this book, the character of Holm fades somewhat into the background for a time, although she would return to the forefront in the novella collection The Holy Terror. The tone of the book is far more romantic and tragic than the average Simon Templar books. In most books of the series, the reader can know in advance that no matter what terrible threats and perils Templar would face, he would survive them all and live to have new adventures in the next book and the next. Conversely, in the present book Charteris drops many hints that Norman Kent is in effect "fey", meaning doomed to die - for example, his hopeless but gallant love for Patricia Holm. Norman Kent, rather than Templar, is the true protagonist - certainly in the book's later parts - and he is manifestly "The Last Hero" of the title. With reference to this book, Caroline Whitehead and George McLeod wrote: (...) Norman Kent is an archetypal knight-errant. Though formally a man of 20th Century England, he lives (and dies) by the Code of Chivalry. He loves totally his Lady, Patricia Holm - who, like Don Quixote's Dulcinea, is not aware of that love. He is totally loyal to his Liege Lord, Simon Templar. Like Sir Gawain in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", Norman Kent takes on the threats to his Lord. Not only physicial threats to life and limb, but also the sometimes inavoidable need to take dishourable acts which would have reflected badly on the reputation of King Arthur/Simon Templar is taken on, wholly and without reservation, by Sir Gawain/Norman Kent..
5397088	/m/0dj_8g	Winner Takes All	Jacqueline Rayner		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The time travellers return to present-day Earth and become intrigued by the latest craze, the video game Death to Mantodeans. Is the game as harmless as it seems and even if it is, why are so many people going on holiday and not coming back? The Doctor and Rose need Mickey Smith's help as Earth is threatened once more by aliens known as the Quevvils.
5398595	/m/0dk1nl	That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French	Stephen King			 As the story progresses, she begins to remember skeletons from the closet, starting as financially strapped newlyweds who went onto greater things with her husband's eventual success in the computer industry. It is implied, though never explicitly revealed, that the man and woman have been killed in a mid-air plane collision, and are suffering eternal torment.
5399696	/m/0dk3dr	Cold Fusion	Lance Parkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Adric and Nyssa arrive on an unnamed ice planet (which goes unnamed throughout the novel), which has settlements at the equator and not anywhere else. The planet is run by the Scientifica, a technocratic society allied with the Earth Empire, but there is a more than usual presence of Adjudicators on the planet. Tegan and Nyssa get a hotel room where they run into a man who claims to be "Bruce Jovanka" with a bad Australian accent, while the Doctor and Adric enter the Scientifica's complex and encounter three very diverse characters: Whitfield, the woman who runs the Scientifica; Tertullian Medford, the primary Adjudicator on the planet; and a badly decaying woman who the Doctor subsequently learns is Gallifreyan when she regenerates and nicknames "Patience" (she was previously known as only the Patient). While things turn sticky for the Doctor and Adric (they're ambushed by a beautiful black woman on the skitrain tracks, then arrested for being alien spies), Tegan and Nyssa run into their own troubles with the husky blond "Bruce". And all the meanwhile, a little man is elsewhere on the planet, investigating a strange machine found buried in the subterranean soil...
5400608	/m/0dk4y2	System Shock	Justin Richards		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is 1998 and the information age is just about to take off. However, mysterious events are plaguing London. A prominent spy is killed. A hostage situation bizarrely resolved. The Doctor receives a computer disc from a man who is supposed to be dead. It seems that an alien race is planning a takeover using Earth's ever expanding computer technology.
5400938	/m/0dk5fn	The Eye of the Giant	Christopher Bulis		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The year is 1934. According to legend, the Polynesian island of Salutua disappeared after a fire god rose up from the volcano and drove away the natives. However, the eccentric Professor Sternberg believes that he’s located the legendary island, after tending to a man found floating in the Pacific Ocean with giant animal bites on his body. An American millionaire, film producer Marshal Grover, funds an expedition to Salutua based on Sternberg’s findings, apparently intending to use the island as a backdrop for a realistic monster movie. The expedition’s ship, the Constitution, passes through what appears to be a freak atmospheric distortion which shrouds Salutua from the outside world, but is disabled by an underwater explosion as it enters the lagoon. The crew successfully beach the ship, and as they begin to conduct repairs, Grover’s team sets off to explore the jungle. The flora and fauna on the island prove to be impossibly gigantic, but Grover’s spoiled second wife, former starlet Nancy Norton, is terrified by the unnatural growth, and when she’s attacked by a giant snake she flatly refuses to film anything on the island. Grover, however, refuses to take her away just yet. He has another reason for coming to Salutua -- a motive connected to his beloved daughter Amelia, who lost an arm in the car crash which killed Grover’s first wife. In present-day London, the Doctor and Liz are working on the TARDIS console when Sergeant Mike Yates arrives in the laboratowy with a package from UNIT’s Australian bureau, a fragment of an alien spaceship found in the belly of a shark. The Doctor tunes the TARDIS’ Space-Time Visualiser to the frequency of the omicron radiation trace on the fragment, and creates what appears to be a holographic image of the fragment’s path through history, terminating at the moment of its creation. As Yates leaves to report to the Brigadier, however, Liz realises that the “image” is in fact a time bridge, through which solid material can pass; the Doctor is in fact making another attempt to escape from his exile. The Doctor passes through the bridge to explore the island on the other side, but the Visualiser’s power accumulators begin to overload. While trying to warn him, Liz accidentally falls through the time bridge and is stranded on the other side with him when the accumulators short out. Grover’s cameraman de Veer, trying to get one up on the selfish Nancy, suggests using Amelia as a stand-in for long-shot location footage. Nancy, who fought her way to stardom from the slums, has become paranoid about any perceived threat to her livelihood, and that night she confronts Amelia privately on the ship’s deck, convinced that Amelia is trying to steal the picture from her. As Amelia tries to explain that this is not the case, the ship is attacked by giant crabs, and when Nancy tries to escape she accidentally knocks Amelia overboard. Surrounded by the crabs, Amelia is forced to retreat into the woods, and Grover and a team of sailors set off to rescue her, while Nancy remains on the boat, paralysed by guilt and self-reproach. In the forest, Amelia manages to escape from the pursuing crabs, but then falls into a giant pit masked by vegetation, and is unable to climb out. The Doctor and Liz explore their surroundings, and discover that they’re in the caldera of a dormant volcano. An alien spaceship is embedded in the ground, and a device powered by geothermal energy from the volcano is generating a force field that renders the island invisible to the outside world. The Doctor theorises that the device has caused the volcano to cool down and lapse into dormancy, which means that the ship must have been here for quite some time. He and Liz then hear gunfire and screaming from the jungle, and investigate to find that the rescue team from the Constitution has been caught in the middle of a battle between giant crabs and giant bats. The crewmen are being slaughtered until the Doctor arrives with his sonic screwdriver, which drives off both the bats and the crabs. The Doctor claims to be from a British expedition, and although wary of rivals, Grover is grateful for the Doctor’s help. It is now obvious that the search for Amelia will have to wait until morning, and the Doctor and Liz accompany the team back to the Constitution. On the way back, they spot strange marks in the jungle earth, which appear to be the tracks of a miniature tank. Back at UNIT HQ, Sergeant Osgood manages to repair the time bridge, although it must be run at a reduced rate of power in order to prevent the accumulators from burning out again. Yates volunteers to go through the bridge and search for the Doctor and Liz, and while searching the island, he finds Amelia and rescues her from a giant spider. Since Amelia is unable to climb out of the pit, she and Mike must search for another way out, and while doing so they stumble across a giant statue, presumably the islanders’ deity -- a giant humanoid carved from remarkably pliant stone, with a single ruby-red eye. The pit turns out to be an extinct lava tube, which comes to the surface elsewhere in the jungle. While returning to the Constitution, however, Mike and Amelia are attacked by a miniature tank which has been taking samples of the flora and fauna from the island. Trying to fight it off, Mike accidentally destroys it when his grenade ruptures what proves to be a high-pressure water tank. He and Amelia are then reunited with the expedition members and with the Doctor and Liz, but as they share stories, a shower of paper leaflets floats across the island, having been flung through the time bridge by a desperate Lethbridge-Stewart. UNIT’s research team has just learned that Salutua will be completely destroyed by a volcanic eruption this very night. The Doctor is forced to admit the truth, but Grover refuses to abandon his expedition on the word of people who claim to have travelled through Time. In order to prove his story, the Doctor suggests that Mike show Grover the “statue” in the pit, which the Doctor believes is in fact a dead alien in a life support suit. Upon arriving at the pit, the Doctor studies the statue for himself and finds a storage unit containing two Semquess drug vials and one empty space; he concludes that the third vial must have broken open in the past, releasing chemicals which resulted in the gigantism on the island. He intends to dispose of the other two, but before he can do so, Grover has his men hold the Doctor, Liz and Mike at gunpoint and seizes the vials, revealing that he came to the island in the hope that the cause of the unnatural growth could be tamed to grow back Amelia’s missing arm. Nancy, who has been suffering from guilt ever since Amelia fell into the water, realises that this entire expedition was for Amelia’s benefit and not her own, and in a fit of rage she lashes out at Amelia’s self-righteousness -- infuriating Grover and destroying herself in his eyes before she realises what she’s done. The Brigadier finds that he is unable to pilot the time bridge beyond the caldera, since it is tuned into the omicron radiation signature from the spacecraft. Benton thus prepares to lead a team through the bridge to find and rescue the Doctor, Liz and Yates. As the team prepares to set off, reports start to come in from UNIT’s American offices of strange, spectral UFO sightings on the American west coast. Sightings are also reported of ghosts and of spectral buildings which have not existed for years. Soon reports are coming in from all over the American continent, and then from Hong Kong and Japan. As Benton and his team pass through the time bridge, a commercial jet crashes in Munich after the pilot reports that the runway has changed position. Soon the sightings reach England as well; ghostlike squadrons of marching figures, dead people and condemned buildings are spotted. The opposite occurs as well -- people who still exist become harder to perceive... Grover has the Doctor, Liz and Mike locked up on the Constitution, promising to release them before the volcano erupts so they can return to their own time. The Doctor, however, refuses to help Sternberg open the vials, claiming that the human race is not prepared to handle the alien technology within. Amelia, who believes that the loss of her arm is a test from God, accepts the Doctor’s argument and refuses to take any of the drugs even if Sternberg somehow manages to open the vials. Meanwhile, Nancy, knowing that her marriage to Grover is effectively over, seduces crewman David Ferraro and convinces him to steal the giant’s ruby eye from the pit. When he fails to return, she goes looking for him -- to find that he has been hypnotised by the ruby eye and is building a fire in the pit. Before Nancy can respond, the heat restores the giant to life, and it hypnotises her as well. The smoke from the fire attracts the attention of Grover’s men and of Benton’s search party, but when they arrive, the giant, Brokk, holds Nancy hostage and uses her as its telepathic go-between to demand the return of the ampoules. He had stolen the vials from the Semquess, but they shot down his ship and he crashed on this relatively cold planet, losing one of the ampoules in the process. He drove away the natives of the island and installed the force field to prevent the Semquess from finding him while he repaired his ship, but first he went searching for the missing ampoule and fell into this pit, damaging the heat exchanger of his survival suit. He has been trapped, dormant, for fifty years, and in the intervening time the Semquess have tracked him down. The miniature tanks are the Semquess’ life support units, they have been taking samples from the island to determine whether their drugs are responsible for the growth here, and it was presumably a Semquess tank which struck the Constitution in the lagoon, damaging the ship. Realising that the Doctor was right all along, Grover orders the reluctant Sternberg to surrender the vials, but just as they are handed over the Semquess tanks arrive. As Brokk still holds Nancy hostage, the UNIT troops are forced to fight off the Semquess while Brokk escapes, but the Semquess mothership then emerges from the lagoon, and Brokk realises that he will never escape them. Following him at a distance, the others see him place Nancy down and continue on to the ship alone. Realising what is about to happen, the Doctor sends Grover’s group back to their ship and tells the UNIT team to assemble on the beach. Benton has left one man standing by the time bridge, and the Doctor has Yates radio instructions to him to pass on to the Brigadier. Brokk’s ship takes off, but the Semquess shoot it down, and its fragments are scattered across the island -- thus covering the island in omicron radiation and enabling the Brigadier to pilot the time bridge to the beach. As the UNIT team escape and the repaired Constitution heads back out to sea, the nuclear core of Brokk’s ship plunes into the heart of the volcano, triggering an eruption which destroys Salutua and scatters the fragments of Brokk’s ship throughout the surrounding area. One day, one of these fragments will be found and eaten by a shark. Back in present-day England at last, the Doctor begins to power down the time bridge -- but suddenly the power in UNIT HQ goes out, and Yates sees that the lights of London have changed outside the window. Realising what has happened, the Doctor stops before shutting down the time bridge completely. Salutua must have existed on a nexus point in time and space, and by passing through the bridge and interfering in the past the Doctor and his friends have changed history. While the time bridge was operating at full capacity the two timelines co-existed side by side, causing the spectral sightings which began on the opposite side of the world and have slowly been approaching the terminus of the time bridge. Since UNIT HQ’s electrical generators no longer exist, the time bridge only has a limited amount of power, and when that runs out the time bubble preserving this corner of UNIT HQ will be wiped out of existence. The Doctor and his companions must find out how history has changed, return to the Constitution, and fix things before their timeline ceases to be. UNIT HQ is attacked by soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms, who capture Liz and take her through the interface into the other timeline. The Doctor knows that she will only survive for a short time on the other side; she is currently imbued with artron energy due to her trip through the time bridge, but as that decays she will slowly cease to exist. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton set off after her, using the fragment of Brokk’s ship from the time bridge as a portable artron energy reserve. Yates and Osgood remain on guard as the soldiers outside begin to bomb UNIT HQ; their bombs fade away on UNIT’s side of the interface, but are slowly becoming more real -- and more dangerous. Liz is taken through a version of London which resembles the futuristic visions of old silent films. In what used to be St Paul’s Cathedral, she is questioned by nuns dressed in scarlet, who open a satellite to this world’s Goddess -- Nancy Grover. Nancy reveals that Brokk, knowing he could not escape the Semquess, struck a deal with her and gave her the Semquess vials and fragments of his brain-eye. The figure that boarded the ship and took off was just the husk of his body, acting autonomously. Since Nancy was unable to hide the ampoules in her pocketless dress, she had Sternberg smuggle them aboard the ship; unwilling to leave Salutua without some proof of his discoveries, he was happy to do so. Once aboard the ship, however, Nancy murdered him and used the contents of one ampoule to merge herself with a fragment of Brokk’s brain-eye. Using the powers granted to her by the ruby fragment, she took over the minds of her maid Tilly and the disgraced David Ferraro, planted ruby fragments in their foreheads as well, and proceeded from that point; once Grover’s films made her a star, she was able to spread her mesmeric influence over the world and reshape it in her image. Now she is the star she’s always wanted to be, and the Goddess of a world; the people of her Earth have already fought off the Semquess, and soon they will have constructed a new body for Brokk. However, Liz realises that while this world is united rather than divided, it is ruled by fear, and when Nancy loses the powers granted to her by her union with Brokk, her utopia will fall. Infuriated by Liz’s rejection, Nancy attempts to bring her under mental control, but fails when Liz begins to fade from existence. Fortunately, the Doctor arrives just in time, and once back in the time bubble surrounding Bessie, Liz returns to normal. The Doctor drives back to UNIT HQ, and as Nancy’s soldiers redouble their efforts to destroy the time bridge, he leads the Brigadier, Benton and Yates through the time bridge to the Constitution to face Nancy in the past. Nancy and her slaves are in the process of taking over the ship, and when they attempt to kill the intruders, the Doctor -- realising that Nancy is beyond reason -- uses his sonic screwdriver to find the resonance point of the ruby crystals. The crystals shatter, killing Tilly and Ferraro, but as Nancy dies she falls atop the ampoule -- and the contents spill over her body, the remaining ruby fragments, and the structure of the Constitution itself. Back at UNIT HQ, Liz and Osgood find themselves looking out over a devastated wasteland as the Constitution begins to warp into a monstrous living being. The contents of the ampoule have merged Nancy, Brokk’s eye, and the organic components of the ship itself into a voracious living entity, part animal, part vegetable, and part mineral; the transition has driven the new entity insane, and it will consume all life on Earth. The Doctor is unable to fight this new life form, and when Liz and Osgood try to cut it to pieces using the time bridge, the pieces reconstitute on the other side and attack them. They are forced to flee beyond the interface, but begin to fade away once outside the time bubble. As the Constitution prepares to devour its passengers, the Doctor realises that his only remaining weapon is the third ampoule -- the most dangerous and valuable of all, which releases the full potential of any life form which consumes it. He is unwilling to risk the consequences of his drinking it, fearing what he might become -- and before anybody can stop her, Amelia grabs it from him and drinks it herself. The shock of the chemical transformation kills her, but her faith and the powers of the transformation enable her to survive beyond death, turning her into an angelic being with all of the powers that implies. The new Amelia subdues the hybrid life form, and promises to care for it until she can find a way to separate Nancy and Brokk once again. Realising that she no longer belongs on Earth, Nancy bids farewell to her tearful father and sets off to explore the Universe and try to understand her new purpose in it. The Doctor and the UNIT team return to London to find that, apart from a few newspaper headlines regarding the fate of Grover’s expedition, history has returned to normal.
5401161	/m/0dk5t4	The Plotters	Gareth Roberts		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In London of 1605, the First Doctor becomes embroiled in the Guy Fawkes conspiracy whilst Vicki finds herself dressed as a boy in the Court of King James I.
5401753	/m/0dk6kc	Forty Thousand in Gehenna	C. J. Cherryh	1983-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A group of 42,363 Union humans and azi are dispatched to set up a base on a very rare habitable planet named Gehenna II. Unknown to the settlers, their mission is designed to fail; they are deliberately abandoned in order to create long-term problems for the rival Alliance. The native Caliban are first presented as annoying lizard-like creatures. The humans at first attempt to keep them outside a perimeter or to drive them away. In time, larger and larger Caliban are seen, with differences in color, size, and even a social structure (some Caliban are subservient to the larger, different-colored Caliban). It becomes clear that the creatures are capable of communication, at least at the level of symbology, and of developing empathic or possibly telepathic links to humans. Eventually a symbiosis develops, with some of the Caliban pairing off with humans. Over a period of decades and several generations cut off from resupply, the colonists lapse into a primitive lifestyle. By necessity, the azi are allowed to raise families. The non-azi humans are in the minority from the beginning and over time, intermarry with the majority. An Alliance mission first seeks to intervene, then withdraws from direct contact, content to watch as two quasi-feudal, fundamentally opposed societies develop, while a third, smaller group called the "weirds" becomes much more closely associated with the Caliban, living with them rather than the other humans and becoming less comprehensible in the process. The novel follows several generations of descendants of one particular azi, who establish different lines and rise to become the leaders of two rival cultures. Historical moments depict the decline of the colony, the establishment of human/azi-Caliban relations, cultural development, and the planetary environment. Finally, the two cultures, one "masculine"-aggressive, the other more "feminine"-receptive, meet and fight for dominance. A Union delegation arrives at the very end, just in time to be given short shrift by Elai, the girl-ruler who has emerged victorious.
5401791	/m/0dk6lr	The Also People	Ben Aaronovitch		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Prologue relates a fable in which a leopard becomes caught in a trap. None of the animals will release the creature because they fear she will eat them, until a woman passes by and makes the leopard promise not to hurt her if she frees her. Out of the trap the leopard goes back on her promise and begins hunting the woman, arguing that her brothers built the trap and that killing is part of her nature. Unable to get help from the other animals, the woman eventually encounters the clever hare Tsuro, who tricks the leopard back into the trap, from where she again begins to shout for help. Tsuro turns to the woman and asks whether or not they should free her. Following events on Detrios, the Doctor has promised to give his companions a holiday and sets the TARDIS for the Worldsphere, a Dyson Sphere that is the home of the massively technologically advanced race called the People. The People are an amalgam of several different races that banded together to build the sphere and have now evolved to an incredibly advanced state where they can change their form and sex at will. The sphere is also home to several different kinds of artificial intelligences; including the governing computer called God (a joke that stuck), spherical drones and various starships that orbit the sphere. Even household objects such as tables and baths have their own personalities. The People are so technologically advanced that they have a non-aggression treaty with the Time Lords (which the Doctor helped negotiate). One of the clauses of this treaty is that the People are not allowed to develop Time Travel technology and the Doctor parks the TARDIS a couple of seconds into the future so as to remove it as a temptation should God become curious. The travellers move into a deserted villa that overlooks the town of iSanti Jeni and wake up the following morning to find their every whim and desire catered to. Exploring this new environment, Benny makes friends with a local baker saRa!qava and Chris begins a romantic relationship with her daughter Dep. However, despite his earlier claims the Doctor has a very serious reason for visiting the Worldsphere; in a nearby wilderness he has hidden Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart under the guard of the drone aM!xitsa. After she disappeared into the Time Vortex the Doctor eventually tracked her down on board a slave ship in the Atlantic, reduced to a feral state where she attacks and kills anyone who approaches her. The Doctor brought her here for safety but fears that she is too dangerous to be kept alive. That night a thunder storm rages across the bay. The following night saRa!qava invites them to a party at the local power facility which has been made to resemble a set of windmills. Whilst the others mingle, Roz is the only one who doesn't feel comfortable in the peace and quiet of her surroundings. This is not helped when she accidentally consumes a mood enhancing drink flashback, that causes her to relive the death her partner Martle. She also unwittingly becomes a cult figure when she throws up over an alien creature that resembles a cockroach, something that the People find fascinating. She bumps into another guest feLixi, who claims to understand her feelings. He is a veteran of the war the People recently fought against an insectoid race and witnessed the death of his lover. Meanwhile, Chris and Dep are too busy playing an electronic game to notice a strange electrical discharge for one of the windmills. The morning after two agents of the ship !C-mel arrive and inform the group that during the thunderstorm a drone called vi!Cari was killed by a lightning strike which somehow penetrated the drone shielding. Itself another war veteran, vi!Cari had withdrawn from society and become increasingly unpopular after the death of its partner. Popular opinion also blames vi!Cari for cause the micro-tsunami that destroyed local artist beRut's mural on iSenti Jeni's harbour wall. God was busy conducting surveillance and cannot explain what the drone was doing out in a storm. Without actually being asked, the Doctor volunteers to investigate the death and discover if vi!Cari was murdered. The Doctor and Chris use a biplane to fly over the crime site and are forced to land on a nearby ocean liner when they run out of fuel. Re-supplied they return to the skies and the Doctor parachutes down to the ground (striking up a conversation with the parachute who is actually sentient and exploring apple trees as a hobby). Meeting up with saRa!qava and Benny, the Doctor outlines his theory that vi!Cari's shields were damaged by specifically designed lightning strikes. Kadiatu experiences a nightmare in which her creators threaten to put her back in her box and takes shelter in the villa. Before aM!xitsa can catch her, Benny recognises her and realises that the Doctor has brought her here despite his claims to the contrary. The Doctor admits that he is unsure what to do with her and is especially worried that various trans-temporal entities might be attracted to her. The only solution maybe to painlessly kill her. Benny refuses to allow this, so the Doctor decides to make it her choice and gives her two days to make up her mind. The Doctor presence disturbs the millions of ships in orbit within the sphere, since they cannot predict his actions. !C-mel nearly convinces the ships to go to war against the Time Lords, however the Doctor (using a sofa inside a gravity bubble) appears and manages to talk the ships down. He leaves Chris and feLixi fishing and to Chris' surprise the fish he catches is intelligent and he throws it back. The returning Doctor is annoyed by this and re-catches the fish to question it. The fish confirms that a depth charge caused the micro-tsunami. The Doctor's theory is that vi!Cari was out in the storm looking for evidence that proved itself innocent of destroying the mural. He dispatches Roz and Chris to interview some of the ships, but Roz loses her patience when the first one, S-Lioness, starts showing off by answering her questions before she asks them. Nevertheless, they still learn that many ships suffered psychological effects from the war; including a ship R-Vene which requested to be dismantled after two of its crew were killed. It was this ship that vi!Cari served on. The Doctor believes that the People would not simply destroy the ship and concludes that the ship was rebuilt and given a new identity to help it recover. Roz shares this information with feLixi, who has begun to write poems for her. He shows her a garden area he has created and Roz finally begins to relax and the two make love. Meanwhile, Benny is finding her decision about Kadiatu harder to make than she thought and she begins to experience bad dreams. saRa!qava takes her on a shopping trip (although Benny finds the idea of shopping without money hard to understand). saRa!qava reveals that she had a reason to kill vi!Cari, since the drone discovered that she had conceived Dep without her partners permission. Such a crime is punishable by social ostracism in the People's culture. She wants to share this information with the Doctor. Unknown to her, Dep is also committing the same crime; the next time she and Chris make love, Dep secretly manipulates her own biology so that conceives a child. When the Doctor and Benny arrive for the meeting with saRa!qava, the pair are attacked by a swarm of microscopic drones that attempt to eat anything in their path. The Doctor and Benny survive long enough for God to intervene and shut the swarm down. Horrified at what has happened, saRa!qava protests that she isn't responsible and the Doctor says that he already knows that. Only a ship could build such a weapon and monitor her calls. Back at the glade where he has hidden Kadiatu, aM!xitsa performs a routine brain scan and is suddenly hit by a virus created from Kadiatu's own brain patterns. By the time he overcomes it, Kadiatu has gone. By the time the TARDIS crew learn of this she has reached the town and is apparently attacking beRut. But in fact, beRut is the one attacking her as she has graffitied his new mural with the phrase "I AM NOT A NUMBER, I AM A FREE-WHEELING UNICYCLE". Somehow, she has overcome her genetic programming and her response to attack is no longer to kill. Free at last, she begins dancing on the beach with Roz and the others joining in. As the party ends, the Doctor spots the windmills and realises that they could have been the source of the blast, explaining the energy discharge during the earlier party. It occurs to Roz that vi!Cari might have kept a diary to cope with its isolation. She confronts S-Lioness, who confesses that her behaviour during their earlier encounter was to mask that it has vi!Cari's diary. As Roz leaves !C-mel moves in and kidnaps her and holds her hostage along with the rest of the crew. To prevent God attacking it, !C-mel moves inside the Sphere. It admits that it is the re-engineered R-Vene and threatens to use its weapons against the several trillion inhabitants of the sphere unless the Doctor grants it asylum. The Doctor exchanges himself for all the hostages and then suggests that they link telepathically to save time. In doing so !C-mel unwitting downloads the virus Kadiatu attacked aM!xitsa with and begins to break up. Roz makes it to safety, while the Doctor falls out of the ship; only to be caught by the parachute he befriended earlier. Having read the diary, Roz confronts feLixi, who reveals that his lover who died in the war was vi!Cari's partner and he blamed the drone for her death. He convinced !C-mel that vi!Cari had found its secret and manipulated the ship into killing the drone. Roz also accuses him of slipping her the flashback drink at the party and faking affection for her in order to get close to the Doctor. He denies this and says that his feelings are genuine, but Roz simply walks away. He won't be punished for his crimes but from this moment on he will be outcast from society and no-one will speak to him. The Doctor injects Kadiatu with some Time Lord DNA that stabilises her genetic code and allows her to travel freely in time. Benny tells the Doctor about her dreams and outlines a theory of her own that she has developed; since all the Doctor's companions are linked through the TARDIS's telepathic circuits, Benny suspects that her agonising over Kadiatu's fate and eventually decision to let her live filtered through to Kadiatu's mind and helped her overcome her programming. Benny believes this was the Doctor's plan all along, but he says that they just got lucky. The crew remain on the sphere for several more days before leaving in the TARDIS, unaware that Dep is pregnant with Chris's child. Kadiatu leaves for her own travels accompanied by aM!xitsa. The epilogue relates another fable of Tsuro the hare and his ancient enemy the snake, Danhamakatu. Through his cleverness, Tsuro frees the leopard from her influence and in revenge Danhamakatu promises to take the life of one of his friends. Tsuro however, laughs, thinking that he has tricked her again. By the time she strikes he will have been able to think up a plan to save his friend. But the woman is worried; what if he cannot think up a plan this time?
5403356	/m/0dk8w_	Space Station Seventh Grade	Jerry Spinelli	1982-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Seventh-grader Jason Herkimer narrates the events of his year, from school, hair, and pimples, to mothers, little brothers, and a girl. It is a story about being true to yourself and the nostalgic recollection of adolescent years. Jason has a crush on a cheerleader, Debbie.
5403366	/m/0dk8yc	The Begum's Millions	Jules Verne	1879	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Two men receive the news that they are part-inheritors to a vast fortune due to being the last surviving descendants of a French soldier-of-fortune who many years before settled in India and married the immensely rich widow of one of its native princes – the begum of the title. One of the inheritors is a gentle French physician, Dr. Sarrasin, who has long been concerned with the unsanitary conditions of the European cities. He decides to use his share of the inheritance to establish a utopian model city which would be constructed and maintained with public health as the primary concern of its government. The other inheritor is a far from gentle, German scientist Prof. Schultze – very stereotypically presented as an arrogant militarist and racist, who becomes increasingly power-mad in the course of the book. Though having had himself a French grandmother, (otherwise he would not have gotten the inheritance), he is completely convinced of the innate superiority of the "Saxon" (i.e., German) over the "Latin" (primarily, the French) which would lead to the eventual total destruction of the latter by the former. Immediately when first introduced to the reader he is in the process of composing a supposedly scholarly paper entitled "Why do all French people suffer, to one degree or another, from hereditary degeneration?", to be published in the German "Physiological Annals" (though his official academic specialty is Chemistry). Later it is disclosed that Schultze had done considerable "research" and publication conclusively proving the superiority of the German race over the rest of humanity. The Utopian plans of his distant French cousin not only seem to Schultze stupid and meaningless, but are positively wrong for the very fact that they issue from a Frenchman and are designed to block "progress" which decreed that the degenerate French are due to be subdued by the Germans. Schultze proposes to use his half of the inheritance for constructing his own kind of utopia – a city devoted to the production of ever more powerful and destructive weapons – and even before the first stone was laid in either city, vows to destroy Sarrasin's creation. The two (each one separately) quite improbably manage to get the United States to cede its sovereignty over large parts of the Pacific Northwest, so as to enable the creation of two competing city-states, located at southern Oregon at a distance of forty kilometres of each other on either side of the Cascades – a tranquil French city of 100,000 on the western side, and a bustling German city of 50,000 to the east, with its industrial and mining operations extending far eastward, causing extensive pollution and environmental destruction as far as The Red Desert in Wyoming (see http://www.wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org/programs/reddesert/index.php,http://www.wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org/news/newsletter/docs/2003c/). Verne gives the precise location of Sarrasin's "Ville-France" (France-Ville or Frankville in English translations) – on the Southern Oregon sea shore, eighty kilometres north of Cape Blanco, at 43°11'3" North, 124°41'17" West. This would place it at the southern end of Coos County, Oregon – a county which already existed at the time, though very thinly populated (and remained so, having 62,779 inhabitants as of 2000). The nearest real-life town seems to be Bandon with a 2,833 population registered in the same 2000 census, located slightly north-east of the site of Ville-France, (see http://www.el.com/to/bandon/), and which was founded by the Irish peer George Bennet in 1873 – one year after Verne's date for the creation of Ville-France. The Coquille River, at whose southern bank Bandon is located, is presumably the unnamed "small river of sweet mountain waters" which Verne describes as providing Ville-France's water. As depicted by Verne, brief negotiations with the Oregon Legislature in December 1871 suffice to secure the grant of a 16 kilometre-wide area extending from the Pacific shore to the peaks of the Cascades, "with a sovereignty similar to that of Monaco" and the stipulation that after an unspecified number of years it would revert to full US sovereignty (Verne does not mention any United States Department of State or Congressional involvement in the deal). Actual construction begins in January 1872, and by April of the same year the first train from New York pulls into the Ville-France Railway Station, a trunk line from Sacramento having been completed. The houses and public facilities of "Ville-France" are constructed by a large number of Chinese migrant workers- who are sent away once the city is complete, with the payment of their salaries specifically dependent on their signing an obligation never to return. Reviewer Paul Kincaid noted that "The Chinese coolies employed to build the French utopia are then hurriedly dispatched back to San Francisco, since they are not fit to reside in this best of all cities" http://www.sfsite.com/03a/bm219.htm. The book justifies the exclusion of the Chinese as being a precaution needed in order to avoid in advance the "difficulties created in other places" by the presence of Chinese communities. This might be an oblique reference to the Chinese Massacre of 1871, when a mob entered Los Angeles' Chinatown, indiscriminately burning Chinese-occupied buildings and killing at least 20 Chinese American residents out of a total of some 200 then living in the city. Most of the action takes place in Schultze's "Steel City" (Stahlstadt) – a vast industrial and mining complex, where ores are taken out of the earth, made into steel and the steel into ever more deadly arms, of which this has become within a few years the world's biggest producer. The now immensely rich Schultze is Steel City's dictator, whose very word is law and who makes all significant decisions personally. There is no mention of Steel City's precise legal status vis-a-vis the Oregon or US Federal authorities, but clearly Schultze behaves as a completely independent head of state (except that he uses Dollars rather than mint his own currency). The strongly fortified city is built in concentric circles, each separated from the next by a high wall, with the mysterious "Tower of the Bull" – Schultze's own abode – at its center. The workers are under a semi-military discipline, with complex metallurgical operations carried out with a Teutonic split-second precision. A worker straying into where and what he is not authorised to see and know is punished with immediate expulsion in the outer sectors and with death in the sensitive inner ones. However, the workers' conditions seem rather decent by Nineteenth Century standards: there are none of the hovels which characterised many working-class districts of the time, and competence is rewarded with rapid promotion by the paternalistic Schultze and his underlings. Dr. Sarrasin, in contrast, is a rather passive figure – a kind of non-hereditary constitutional monarch who, after the original initiative to found Ville-France, does not take any significant decision in the rest of the book. The book's real protagonist, who offers active resistance to Schultze's dark reign and his increasingly satanic designs, is a younger Frenchman – the Alsatian Marcel Bruckmann, native of the part of France forcibly annexed by Germany in the recent war. The dashing Bruckmann – an Alsatian with a German family name and fiercely patriotic French heart – manages to penetrate Steel City. As an Alsatian, he is a fluent speaker of German, an indispensable condition for entering the thoroughly Germanised Steel City, and is able to pass himself off as being Swiss – "Elsässisch", the German dialect spoken in Alsace, being very close to Swiss German. He quickly rises high in its hierarchy, gains Schultze's personal confidence, spies out some of the tyrant's well-kept secrets and brings a warning to his French friends. It turns out that Schultze is not content to produce arms, but fully intends to use them himself – first against the hated Ville-France, as a first step towards his explicit ambition of establishing Germany's worldwide rule.(He casually mentions a plan to seize "some islands off Japan" in order to further the same.) Two fearsome weapons are being made ready – a super-cannon capable of firing massive incendiary charges over a distance of 40&nbsp;km (just the distance from Steel City to Ville-France), and shells filled with gas. The latter seems to give Verne credit for the very first prediction of chemical warfare, nearly twenty years before H. G. Wells's "black smoke" in The War of the Worlds. Schultze's gas is designed not only to suffocate its victims but at the same time also freeze them. A special projectile is filled with compressed liquid carbon dioxide that, when released, instantly lowers the surrounding temperature to a hundred degrees Celsius below zero, quick-freezing every living thing in the vicinity. Ville-France prepares as well as it can, but there is not very much to do against such weapons. Schultze, however, meets with poetic justice. Firstly, the incendiary charge fired by the super-cannon at Ville-France not only renders the cannon unusable, but also misses its mark. The charge flies harmlessly over the city and into space, apparently owing to Shultze's failure to account for the roundness of the globe when firing a projectile over such distances. Secondly, as Schultze sits in his secret office, preparing for the final assault and writing out the order to his men to bring him the frozen bodies of Sarrasin and Bruckmann to be displayed in public, a gas projectile which he kept in the office accidentally explodes and feeds him his own deadly medicine. The entire edifice of "Steel City" collapses, since Schultze had kept everything in his own hands and never appointed any deputy. It goes bankrupt and becomes a ghost town. Sarrasin and Bruckmann take it over with the only resistance offered being from two rather dimwitted Schultze bodyguards who stayed behind when everybody else left. Schultze would remain forevermore in his self-made tomb, on display as he had planned to do to his foes, while the good Frenchmen take over direction of Steel City in order to let it "serve a good cause from now on." (Arms production would go on, however, so as "to make Ville-France so strong that nobody would dare attack it ever again".)
5405150	/m/0dkcfh	The Prophet of Yonwood	Jeanne DuPrau	2006-05-09	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins with a young girl named Nickie travelling with her Aunt Crystal to an old house in Yonwood, North Carolina. Nickie's great-grandfather has died, and the house where he lived, known as Greenhaven, is inherited by Crystal and Nickie's family, who plan to sell it. Nickie's mom is working in Philadelphia and her father is assigned to a secret government project (The City of Ember) and communicates with Nickie via short postcards. In Yonwood, a local woman named Althea Tower sees a vision of the future with the world in burning flames and smoke, and subsequently spends months in a dream-like semi-conscious state, in which she mutters indistinct phrases and words. Brenda Beeson, a woman in the town, calls them instructions from God and requires townspeople to comply with her interpretation of the words, and insists that the entire city quit their "wrong" ways and start to be good people, so God would be with them. As a prominent community leader she directs the police in the town to enforce the 'war against evil', Althea's ramblings as admonitions from God. Those who fail to follow God's words are fitted with buzzing bracelets and ostracised. Mrs Beeson's interpretations gradually become more and more strict and unreasonable: beginning with 'no sinners' and 'no singing', they progress to 'no lights' and eventually 'no dogs'. During this time, Nickie has discovered a girl and a dog living in the third floor nursery of Greenhaven. When the girl, Amanda, leaves to take care of Althea, Nickie keeps the dog and she falls foul of Mrs Beeson's ban on dogs. A local boy, Grover, whom Nickie has befriended is also a target of the war against evil and the majority of the book deals with Nickie's struggle with her own desires to be 'good' and do what is 'right'. The book features a fierce under-current outlining the verbal conflict between the U.S. and the 'Phalanx Nations'. Fears that the Phalanx Nations are sending terrorists and spies to the U.S. results in the imposition of a deadline for action against the enemy and preparations for the coming crisis (i.e. war). Through Nickie's actions, Althea Tower is brought back to her senses and the actions of Mrs Beeson are overthrown. The story concludes with Nickie returning to her parents who are moving to California to be near her father's work. In the final chapters it is revealed that Nickie's father is one of the builders of Ember and that eventually Nickie, in her sixties, is offered a place as one of the founders of the city. On her way to Ember, Nickie writes a brief journal that she hides behind a rock for someone to read in the future. This is the journal Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow find in The City of Ember.
5405446	/m/0dkcxt	Old Man's War	John Scalzi	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of John Perry, a 75-year old retired advertisement writer, who joins the Colonial Defense Forces who protect human interplanetary colonists. Applicants are required to sign a letter of intent when they are 65—which John and his now deceased wife Kathy had signed 10 years prior to the beginning of the story. After visiting his wife's grave to say good bye (as volunteers can never return to Earth) Perry takes a space elevator to the CDF's Henry Hudson, where he meets a group of fellow retiree volunteers who dub themselves the 'Old Farts'. Following a series of bizzare psychological tests, Perry's mind is ultimately transferred to a new body with enhanced musculature, green skin, and yellow (almost cat-like) eyes. This new body, based on his original DNA, has been modified for enormous strength and dexterity, and supplemented with several proprietary products including artificial blood, enhanced eyesight and other senses and most critically, a BrainPal—a neural interface that allows Perry to communicate with other members of the CDF through thought. After a week of frivolity and orgies, Perry lands on Beta Pyxis III for basic training, during which the CDF's heritage in the United States armed forces is made clear when the recruits are taught the Rifleman's Creed. After Perry learns that his Master Sergeant adopted one his advertisements from Earth as a mantra, Perry is given the dubious job of platoon leader during the weeks of training before he is shipped out to the CDF's Modesto. His first engagement is with the Consu, a fierce and incredibly intelligent, though religiously zealous, alien species. Perry improvises a tactic which enables the CDF to win this first battle quickly. This is soon followed by a number of battles with, among others, the Whaidians and the tiny Covandu. By the end of this last engagement Perry begins to suffer psychological distress over killing the Liliputian Covandu and accepts that he has transformed both physically and mentally. Now a war-seasoned veteran, Perry then participates in the Battle for Coral. The CDF plans to rapidly transport in a small number of vessels to Coral, which was assaulted and conquered by the predatory Rraey. Somehow, the Rraey are able to predict the trajectory of the vessel's skip drives (a feat that should not be possible) and use this knowledge to destroy the fleet. Perry's quick thinking allows him and a small number of others to escape in a shuttle craft and make for the planet's surface, where they are shot down and crash violently. Perry is left for dead, only to be rescued by the mysterious "Ghost Brigades", the Special Forces units of the CDF. Perry is struck by the sight of the leader of the Ghost Brigades rescue team, Jane Sagan, an apparent clone of his dead wife Kathy. After being repaired, Perry tracks down Jane Sagan, who turns out to have been grown using Kathy Perry's DNA, as legally allowed by her letter of intent to join the CDF. Unlike John, Jane has no memories of her previous life, but upon learning of Kathy, Jane seeks to learn more from John about being a regular born ('realborn') person and what kind of life one can have outside the CDF. Jane manipulates her chain of command to promote John to an advisory role (as a full lieutenant) to gather information from the Consu during a ritualistic meeting to share information. Perry discovers that the Rraey have received tachyon technology from the Consu, allowing them to predict the location of their ships. Perry also manipulates command to get the last two of his friends from the 'Old Farts' transferred to Military Research. Jane and John then participate in a Special Forces operation in an attempt to capture or destroy the borrowed Consu technology in advance of a major invasion on Coral. While John is instrumental in the successful outcome of the battle, in particular, saving the data relating to the machines, which are destroyed, he loses track of Jane as she returns to the insular Ghost Brigades. At the conclusion of the book, Perry has been promoted to captain following his deeds at Coral and despite the separation, holds hope of reuniting with Jane when their terms of service conclude.
5405547	/m/0dkd0z	Snobs	Julian Fellowes		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Edith Lavery is an upper middle class single woman who feels she has reached a time in her life when the only chance of riches, fame and success is to marry a rich man. Her parents, especially her mother, have spent most of Edith's life trying to make her respectable to the upper classes and are both extremely glad when she announces her courtship and engagement to bumbling but kind-hearted, Charles Broughton, the son of the Marquess of Uckfield. The engagement is not looked upon favourably by Charles' mother, the Marchioness of Uckfield ('Googie' to her friends) or by many in Charles' 'set'. His friends and relatives frequently mock Edith and attempt to 'catch her out' as an alien to the aristocracy. Her greatest enemy of all, ironically, is Eric Chase, husband of Lady Caroline Chase (Charles' sister) who comes from a similar background to Edith herself. After the couple marry they honeymoon in Majorca, Spain and cracks already begin to form in the marriage. Charles bores Edith and Edith puzzles Charles. Back at the family seat of Broughton Hall, Edith is tempted by Simon Russell, an actor who is filming scenes for a period drama at Broughton with the story's narrator. She embarks on an affair with Russell which leads her to eventually very nearly divorce Charles. She returns to the Broughton fold upon news of her being pregnant. She accepts Charles for who he is and they live 'happily enough'.
5405937	/m/0dkdk_	Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible	Marc Platt		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On Gallifrey, civilization is reaching a crossroads. The venerable Pythia, ruler of Gallifrey, is coming to the end of her reign without a successor. Meanwhile, Rassilon and his Cult of Reason are gaining political influence, as early time travel experiments begin to bear fruit. But during the latest such experiment, the Time Scaphe collides with a strange blue box hurtling through space-time. Both craft are destroyed, leaving the crew of Chronauts stranded on a gray alien world. Elsewhere (specifically Ealing Broadway in the early 1990s), the Doctor and Ace are enjoying a quiet lunch in a café when the whole of reality suddenly breaks down. They manage to get into the TARDIS, though it now lacks even a door. Convinced there is an intruder, the Doctor leaves Ace in the console room while he goes to look. The console releases a parchment to Ace, then the TARDIS collides with a primitive time ship and is destroyed. Ace finds herself alone in a barren, grey landscape. Ace sees a far larger version of the creature that infiltrated the TARDIS, and begins to work out what happened. She encounters a young man named Shonnzi who seems to know her and the Doctor already. Shonnzi takes her to meet the Phazels, the former crew of the Gallifreyan Time Scaphe, who were stranded on this world, betrayed by their former comrade Vael, and enslaved by the Process. Now, they work to find the future, which was stolen by the Doctor at the beginning of the World. Right before the Doctor died. Ace, by interacting with the Phazels, begins to cause changes to the established pattern of time in the World City, a disruption which is detected by the Process in its Watch Tower. The Process sends Vael to investigate. When Vael and the Process’s insect-like guards arrive, the Phazels help Ace to escape. She and Shonnzi get away and discover a ghost-like image of the Doctor. Believing him to be dead, Ace begins to grieve. But Shonnzi tells her that he has been given many of the Doctor’s memories. Ace and Shonnzi are forced to split up as they are discovered by the guards. Vael manages to capture Shonnzi and take him back to the Process, but Ace escapes across a mercury river. Across the river, Ace realizes that she is in the same place she was before, but at an earlier time. She witnesses the arrival of the Chronauts and the death of the Doctor at the hands of the Process. Believing that she and the Doctor are to blame for their predicament, the Chronauts turn on Ace and hand her over to the Process. Vael betrays his fellow Chronauts, who are enslaved by the Process and sent to search for the Future stolen by the Doctor. Vael drags Ace back to the Watch Tower, where the Younger Process prepares to eliminate her. But it is interrupted by the arrival of the Older Process, who has come to discover why the past is no longer as it remembers. The Doctor’s ghost appears, which allows Ace to escape. She comes across a silver cat that leads her to the top of the Watch Tower. There, Ace discovers that the World exists on the inner surface of a hollow sphere, and there are three different Cities existing at three discrete moments in time stretching out from the Watch Tower. She also finds Shonnzi imprisoned in a cocoon and releases him. As Vael chases them, the cat trips Ace, causing her to fall from the top of the Watch Tower. She is caught by some sort of force field and begins to slowly descend toward the ground. Shonnzi jumps after her and is also protected. Ace concludes that the TARDIS must still exist, somewhere, and must be protecting them. Back on Gallifrey, the Pythia's prophetic powers suddenly desert her, and she becomes fanatically obsessed with locating her male successor, who she believes to be Vael. In reality, her promised successor his Rassilon. The TARDIS key glows in Ace’s hand and leads her to an old attic that she recognizes from the TARDIS. Inside the attic is the Doctor, but he has no memories. Ace and Shonnzi bring him back to the Phazels so that he can help them fight the Process, but he’s not much good in his present condition. When Vael and the guards arrive, one of the Phazels, Reogus, recklessly challenges them. Reogus is killed and one of the guards spontaneously vanishes. The Phazels are all highly disturbed by this. The Doctor issues a challenge to the Process, but privately admits to Ace that there is little he can do. The cat returns, transforms into the Doctor’s ghost, and restores the Doctor’s memories. The Doctor realizes that the cat was a manifestation of the TARDIS’s Banshee Circuits, a fail-safe measure designed to avert the ultimate destruction of the ship. The TARDIS had used Shonnzi’s mind as a kind of back-up data storage and dumped the Doctor’s memories there. Now that the Doctor is restored, Ace gives him the parchment she had obtained from the TARDIS. It is the TARDIS greyprints, which the Doctor can use to access the ship’s systems through the Banshee Circuits. The Doctor realizes that the entire World City was his TARDIS, invaded, occupied, and distorted by the Process. The Doctor uses the TARDIS’s architectural configuration systems to trap the Older Process, which is trying to restart the World it remembered from its youth. While the Doctor interrogates the monster, the Phazels receive the psychic summoning they knew was coming, and walk back toward the Watch Tower to become the Process’s insect-like guards. The Older Process tells the Doctor that the Young Process intends to start a new Now, turning the old Phazels into guards, and using them to enslave the young Phazels and immediately turn them into guards as well. The world begins to collapse as a massive moon-like object approaches from the “sky”. The younger Shonnzi, who remembers things that adults forget, recognizes it as an egg. Vael uses his pyrokinetic powers to destroy the egg before the Process can be born, which in turn destroys the older Processes. Then Vael turns his power against his own mind, where the last Pythia of Ancient Gallifrey is lurking, trying to safeguard the future of her world. Vael is killed as he burns out his own mind in opposition to the Pythia’s domination. The Phazels, now Chronauts once again, return to Gallifrey where Rassilon’s revolution has been successful. But with her dying breath, the Pythia curses the world of Gallifrey so that no children will ever be born there again. Rassilon suspends the time experiments until he can come up with a way of artificially extending the Gallifreyan lifespan. But Pekkary, Captain of the Chronauts, tells Rassilon about the TARDIS, a time ship bigger on the inside than outside, and the future of Gallifrey is clear. Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor becomes obsessed with the ancient history of his world, but the data banks contain no information other than vague legends. But the TARDIS has been seriously damaged by the ordeal, and the silver cat remains.
5406078	/m/0dkdr7	Cat's Cradle: Warhead	Andrew Cartmel		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the near future, the Earth is on the point of environmental collapse, and pollution poisons the atmosphere. The point of no return is rapidly approaching, but the Butler Institute has an ingenious solution. Rather than work to restore the environment, the Butler Institute plans to transfer the minds of the super-rich into computers, thus eliminating the need for breathable air and drinkable water. Many years after he met her on the planet of the Cheetah People (as seen in the televised episode Survival), the Doctor visits Shreela as she's dying in hospital. Shreela, now a science writer, agrees to publish as her own an article the Doctor wrote linking telekinesis to certain blood proteins. Later, the article is seen by Matthew O'Hara, CEO of a massive corporation called the Butler Institute. O'Hara instructs his Biostock Acquisitions division to forward any individuals exhibiting the relevant blood proteins directly to his research facility in upstate New York. In New York City, a police officer named McIlveen is assassinated by a Butler Institute employee, in front of his partner Mancuso. The Doctor then visits the King Building in New York City, corporate headquarters of the Butler Institute. and gains access to restricted computer files. Next, the Doctor hires a youth gang to track down Bobby Prescott, an insane murderer who preys on video gamers. Prescott tells the Doctor about a dangerous secret being hidden in a nondescript metal drum in Turkey. The Doctor sends Ace to Turkey to retrieve the item. In Turkey, Ace hires a band of Kurdish mercenaries to assist her. The drum is being held on an island by a handful of well-armed but inexperienced kids. Ace manages to neutralize the kids without anyone getting hurt, secures the drum, and makes arrangements to return with it to the Doctor in England. The Doctor takes Ace to his house in Kent, where he explains that the drum contains a young man by the name of Vincent Wheaton. Vincent's life-functions were totally suspended by a chemical gel inside the drum. Vincent has the power to mentally amplify the emotions of others and release the mental energy through telekinesis. The Doctor plans to use Vincent, along with a specially selected emotional trigger, to work as a two-component telekinetic bomb to destroy the Butler Institute research facility. The trigger is Justine, an emotionally unstable environmental activist, lured to Kent by rumors of a supernatural gateway located within it. After Ace gets Vincent out of the drum and brings him back to consciousness, Justine finds him, touches him, and sets off a powerful psychic explosion. Relocating everyone to New York City, the Doctor's plan is set into motion. Justine drugs Vincent in Central Park, ensuring that he'll be picked up by the Butler Institute's Biostock Acquisitions division, where his unusual blood proteins will be detected. Justine meets Ace and the Doctor at a drug store which is about to be robbed. Eager to be reunited with Vincent (with whom she is now in love) Justine takes a suicide pill and collapses before the enraged Doctor. Meanwhile, Mancuso arrives in response to the robbery and arrests the Doctor before he can tell her about her unusual new gun. Ace is arrested by Mancuso's new partner Breen. During a shoot out with the gang robbing the drug store, Mancuso's gun swivels on a hidden joint and fires of its own accord, saving Mancuso's life. Ace is taken into custody by Mancuso's new partner Breen, but the Doctor gets away. Ace's good health is immediately detected by the Butler Institute, who want to farm her organs for the benefit of the rich. Breen intervenes on Ace's behalf and takes her to Mancuso. The Doctor appears and explains to Mancuso that the mind of her old partner, McIlveen, was downloaded into her new gun. This was a test run for the scheme the Butler Institute will use to immunize the very rich against the further degradation of the planet. The Doctor reveals that the pill Justine took did not kill her, but merely simulated death, and that she'll soon wake up in the Biostock Acquisitions division of the Butler Institute. Mancuso, Breen, and McIlveen help the Doctor and Ace to rescue Justine from the King Building. They all travel to the project site, where Justine and Vincent are reunited. However, the Doctor's weapon fails. Her blossoming relationship with Vincent has quieted the emotional storm raging within Justine, and she is no longer capable of fueling his telekinetic power. O'Hara, gloating over the failure of the Doctor's plan, grabs Vincent angrily by the arm. The emotional coldness within O'Hara is amplified by Vincent's power, and a terrible blast of cold destroys both O'Hara and the project site. The Doctor informs O'Hara's corporate partners that the project has failed, and they agree to redirect their efforts toward reversing the environmental damage done to the planet.
5406102	/m/0dkds_	Cat's Cradle: Witchmark				 Strange things are happening in the Welsh village of Llanfer Ceirog. The police are investigating a coach crash which killed the driver and all passengers. Only the driver could be identified: Selwyn Hughes, brother of the coach's owner, Emrys Hughes, and resident of Llanfer Ceirog. Stuart Taylor, a veterinarian, tends to a horse with a strange wound in the middle of its forehead, and discovers a tapered horn nearby. When the Doctor and Ace arrive, they are greeted warmly until Ace is shot at by Emrys Hughes. The Doctor is intrigued to hear a legend of a village called Dinorben that vanished hundreds of years ago. Everything seems to be centered around the mysterious stone circle located on Emrys's land. The Doctor and Ace investigate the circle, only to find themselves transported to another world. The city of Dinorben has become a desperate refuge of humanity. The head of the ruling council, Dryfid, explains that the sun mysteriously disappeared some time ago, and that they are beset by demons. The other people of the world, including unicorns, centaurs, trolls, and short, furry-footed creatures called the Sidhe, have become hostile after learning that the humans have a means of escaping their doomed world: the stone circle gateway to Earth. The Doctor and Ace are sent on a quest to find the living god Goibhnie and persuade him to restore his favor. Back in Wales, two American hitchhikers stumble upon an injured centaur. Unable to believe what they've found, they seek help from the authorities. Unfortunately, they find the local Constable Hughes, who douses the centaur in gasoline and incinerates the corpse. The hitchhikers, Jack and David, manage to contact Inspector Stevens of Scotland Yard's Paranormal Investigations Division. Stevens is in the area investigating the mysterious coach, and trying to find the missing veterinarian who contacted him about the unicorn. Meanwhile, two figures resembling the Doctor and Ace return to Llanfer Ceirog, but they are really shape-shifting demons who kill and take the forms of two local residents. The Doctor and Ace set off on their quest. They meet Bathsheba, a young girl with a withered arm, who tells them that her family was killed by demons while she was collecting firewood. They agree to take her with them, and she hopes that the god Goibhnie will see fit to restore her arm. After meeting Herne, a strange creature who apologizes to the Doctor for something that hasn't happened yet, they are captured by the Sidhe, evading execution when the Sidhe are attacked by an unseen force, allowing them to escape. They are next attacked by a demon, but rescued by Chulainn, a human returning to Dinorben for evacuation. Fearing for the safety of his companions, the Doctor asks Chulainn to take Ace and Bathsheba back to Dinorben with him. Bathsheba catches the Doctor trying to leave quietly, and insists on going with him. Ace reluctantly agrees to return to Dinorben with Chulainn. She is contacted by Bat, a unicorn who can communicate with her telepathically. Chulainn is distrustful of all non-human creatures, so Ace abandons him and his party. She decides to return to Dinorben with Bat and the other unicorns, intending to force their way through the gateway and make themselves known to the Earth authorities, so that the other peoples of the dying world might also be saved. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Bat encounter a group of Firbolg (centaurs) along with veterinarian Stuart Taylor, who was sent on the same quest to reach Goibhnie. The Firbolg take them to Goihbnie's island, but they don't know how to contact the god. When the Firbolg slay a dragon, the Doctor discovers that it is in fact a bio-mechanical creature, technological rather than fantastical in origin. Ace's assault on Dinorben is successful, and passing through the gateway, she finds the hitchhikers David and Jack along with Inspector Stevens, who were investigating Emrys Hughes's role in everything. When the soldiers of Dinorben overcome the shock of Ace's sudden attack, they regroup and follow her through the gateway, arrest Ace, David, Jack, and Stevens, and bring them all back to Dinorben. The soldiers have overcome the unicorns and forcefully removed their horns, destroying their psychic abilities. The Doctor gets an audience with Goibhnie, who turns out to be an alien scientist whose experiment has been completed. The Doctor appeals to Goibhnie's scientific curiosity to extend the experiment. Goibhnie restores the sun, and agrees to help collect the demons, which are discarded products of his experiments. Ace discovers that General Nuada, the head of Dinorben's military, is in fact a shape-shifting demon. Nuada summons all of the demons for a final assault on Dinorben. David finds himself summoned by Nuada, since he was attacked by a demon when he came to Llanfer Ceirog as a child. Goibhnie returns to Dinorben, but is mortally wounded in the battle against the demons. David manages to hold onto his self-control and kills Nuada, and eventually with the Doctor's assistance, is restored to human form. Goibhnie gives the Doctor his power source, which the Doctor uses to reprogram the gateway. All of the demons are funneled into the stone circle, and transmatted to tne now rejuvenated sun. The Doctor, Ace, Jack, David, Stevens, and Taylor return to Earth, and the stone circle is destroyed. The unicorns, now trapped on Earth, are beginning to recover. The Doctor promises Ace that UNIT will look after them. The Doctor uses Goibhnie's experimental material to repair his ailing TARDIS, unaware that a fleck of demonic material had contaminated the supply.
5406151	/m/0dkdx5	Nightshade	Mark Gatiss		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The year is 1968, and as the BBC rebroadcasts episodes of the classic SF serial “Nightshade”, the townsfolk of Crook Marsham prepare for a lonely Christmas. At the local retirement home, actor Edmund Trevithick learns that a reporter is coming to interview him about his role as Professor Nightshade, and goes to sleep dreaming of past successes. But later that night, the scientists at the local radiotelescope are baffled by a sudden energy surge from an unknown source, which floods their instruments and blots out the signals they were monitoring from a nova in the vicinity of Bellatrix. Trevithick wakes to find that his window has been smashed open, and he faints when an evil voice in the darkness hisses the name of Professor Nightshade. Meanwhile, Jack Prudhoe is drowning his sorrows at Lawrence Yeadon’s pub, thinking back on the failure he’s made of his life, when his wife Win runs by the window -- young again, and as full of life as she was before the death of their young son crushed her spirit. Almost delirious with joy, Jack follows her out of the village to the moor… where something horrible happens. The TARDIS materialises in Crook Marsham as dawn breaks. The Doctor is in a pensive mood, and he shouts angrily at Ace when she finds his grand-daughter Susan’s clothing and dresses in it as a joke. Telling Ace that he needs to think about things for a while, he sends her off to explore the town while he visits the local monastery to reconsider his self-appointed role as guardian of the cosmos. Ace meets Robin Yeadon, the pub owner’s teenage son, and becomes curious when Vijay Degun, a technician from the radiotelescope, comes in search of a working telephone only to find that the entire town’s phone system is down. Seeking excitement, Ace hides in the back seat of Vijay’s car and is taken to the radiotelescope, and while exploring she finds a guard’s rapidly decomposing body near a hole in the fence. She enters the building to tell the others, but nobody believes her claim; particularly not the head of research, the racist Professor Hawthorne. Lawrence Yeadon’s wife Betty goes into hysterics while preparing for a bath, claiming to have seen her dead brother Alf climbing out of the water. She has always blamed herself for his death during the war, since she feels she shamed him into enlisting. Lawrence sends Robin to fetch Doctor Shearsmith, but Robin finds Shearsmith’s offices empty and instead goes to the old folks’ home to ask Jill Mason for help. Jill is seeing off her charges as they leave town to visit their families, and Constable Lowcock is questioning Trevithick about the previous night’s incident. He and Trevithick accompany Robin back to the pub, where Lawrence tells Robin to take care of Betty while he and Lowcock fetch help from the next village over. The Doctor spends some time with Abbot Winstanley, and reads up on the history of the village. During the Civil War, Marsham Castle was completely destroyed as if by heavenly fire, on the very ground on which the radiotelescope was later built. Not terribly concerned, the Doctor returns to the pub to fetch Ace, only to find the village in a turmoil as more villagers are found to have vanished during the night. Trevithick tries to interest the Doctor in his story, but the Doctor doesn’t want to get involved and decides to look for Ace at the radiotelescope. Robin overhears him and decides to accompany him, since Betty seems to be sleeping normally now and Robin wants to see more of Ace. However, soon after they leave, there is another surge of energy at the radiotelescope -- and Betty awakens to find her dead brother standing outside her door. Trevithick, on his way back to the retirement home, is attacked by one of the insectoid aliens from the first “Nightshade” serial, but it vanishes into thin air when Lowcock and Yeadon return -- retching and fainting, and claiming that they were unable to leave the village. When Vijay goes to fetch his lover Holly to help analyse the readings from the array, he finds the ghost of James, her dead lover, sitting at the edge of her bed. James’ image dissolves into a fountain of light which nearly consumes Holly before Vijay manages to snap her fully awake. Meanwhile, the old folks’ bus crashes on its way out of town when the driver falls victim to the same force that prevented Lowcock and Yeadon from leaving. Tim Medway, the BBC reporter coming to interview Trevithick, feels no such influence when he enters the town, and when he comes across the accident he helps Jill to evacuate the stunned old folk to the monastery. Medway stops at the police station to report the accident, only to find them fully occupied by the disappearance of so many townspeople. He continues on to the pub, where Trevithick fills him in on the unbelievable events and decides to alert the Doctor, who seemed to believe his story. Medway, unable to accept what he’s stumbled into, nevertheless agrees to drive Trevithick to the radiotelescope to look for the Doctor. The Doctor and Robin find Jack Prudhoe’s decomposing body on the moors, and continue on to the radiotelescope with some urgency. Once he’s sure Ace is safe, the Doctor studies the readings the scientists have been taking, but can make no sense of them. He and Ace decide to redirect their investigation towards the history of the town, and go to the monastery while Robin returns home. There, he finds that Betty is dead, her body decomposing like the others they have found. When his furious father accuses Robin of abandoning her, Robin bolts from the pub to join Ace back at the monastery. There, the Doctor and Ace find that not only was the radiotelescope built on the grounds of Marsham Castle, but an archaeological dig in the same area was abandoned at the turn of the century for unknown reasons. The Doctor returns to the radiotelescope, leaving Ace at the monastery, but Hawthorne scoffs at the Doctor’s claims, accuses Holly and Vijay of taking psychedelic drugs, and storms off to his room -- where he is attacked and consumed by a Tar Baby, the embodiment of his childhood fears. The old folk at the monastery try to raise their spirits with a singalong, but raise entirely the wrong spirits; the songs remind them of lost friends and family, which come to life around them. The ghosts transform into blazing fountains of light which consume the terrified seniors and monks, including Winstanley. Jill flees in terror, while Robin and Ace, cut off from the exit, have no choice but to climb the stairs and try to hide in the attic. There, they are trapped by Billy Coote, a homeless old man who sleeps here on cold nights -- and who has been possessed by the Sentience which is eating the villagers’ lives. The Doctor sees the blazing light from the monastery and rushes off to rescue Ace. He runs into Jill on the way, and orders her to gather the surviving villagers together in the church. Medway and Trevithick arrive at the radiotelescope soon after, but Medway panics and flees upon finding Hawthorne’s decomposing body. When he tries to drive out of town, however, he too falls victim to the fear barrier, which let him in but will not let him out. When he tries to push through regardless, he nearly runs over the fleeing Jill Mason, and is killed when he swerves off the road to avoid her. Back at the radiotelescope, Holly, Vijay, Trevithick and Dr Cooper are attacked by the insect monsters from “Nightshade”, and are forced to split up. The monsters pursue Trevithick into the depths of the complex, where he manages to destroy one in a lift shaft, using his old service revolver to blow up a fire extinguisher. He then sees a fierce, glowing light creeping up the lift shaft towards him, but manages to get out of the shaft and escape before it consumes him. The Doctor finds the monastery littered with decomposing bodies -- and then his grand-daughter Susan steps out of the shadows towards him. He flees from her to the attic, where he finds Ace and Robin trapped with Billy Coote. The Sentience which possesses him is barely sentient at all, and knows only an all-encompassing hunger. Billy’s body breaks into shafts of light which attempt to consume the Doctor, Ace and Robin, but Ace distracts it using her nitro-9a capsules. The Doctor, Ace and Robin flee as the attic explodes, but the Sentience feeds upon the energy released by the explosion and grows stronger yet. Meanwhile, Jill and Lowcock get the survivors to the church, although Lawrence Yeadon and Win Prudhoe have both fallen victim to the Sentience in the form of their dead spouses. As the frightened villagers gather in the church, the strengthened Sentience rushes over the moor to the village -- and an old veteran studying the war memorial on the church wall inadvertently provides it with another form. The villagers find their church under siege by dead soldiers, who begin to batter through the doors and windows to get at them. The Doctor, Robin and Ace return to the radiotelescope, where they find that subsidence near the breach in the fence has exposed the old Paleolithic quarry and archaeological site. The Doctor finally realises that the energy surges which have been flooding the instruments are not from space at all, but from beneath the ground. He takes Holly, Vijay and Trevithick to confront the Sentience on its own turf, but it has grown too strong for them, and consumes both Holly and Trevithick, forcing the Doctor and Vijay to retreat. The Doctor seems powerless to defeat it, but Ace realises that the Sentience has been taking forms from its victims’ memories because it requires them to submit before it can consume them. She proves her theory by summoning the Sentience to her with her own memories of her mother, and then banishing it by refusing to concede to her mother’s hold over her emotions. The Doctor leaps into action and has Cooper realign the radiotelescope until it is once again picking up the nova in Bellatrix which the scientists were originally studying. He then summons the Sentience in the form of Susan, and shows it the nova -- a source of more energy than it could ever have imagined. The Sentience tears itself free of the earth, leaving Crook Marsham at last. As the Doctor prepares to follow, Ace asks his permission to stay behind with Robin, but the Doctor asks her to take one more trip with him first. They follow the Sentience as it travels back in Time, in order to reach the star before it goes nova, and watch as its departure from Earth tears apart Marsham Castle, to the horror of the watching Roundheads and Cavaliers. The Sentience reaches the star in Bellatrix just as it goes nova, and gorges itself on the release of energy. Still not sated, it locates another supernova in a distant galaxy, travels there and settles down to feed… and the Doctor and Ace watch with satisfaction as the star collapses into a black hole, trapping the Sentience forever. Ace now expects to be taken back to Crook Marsham, but the Doctor has another agenda for her, and instead he vanishes into the TARDIS corridors, refusing to acknowledge her pleas to be taken back.
5406188	/m/0dkdy6	Love and War	Paul Cornell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ace returns to Perivale to attend the funeral of her childhood friend Julian. At the funeral she remembers how she and Julian once drove his car into the country along a road that leads to nowhere on the map, as owls flew overhead. Despite the atmosphere of the funeral, she takes comfort that she still has the Doctor and returns to the TARDIS. In the 26th century, the planet Heaven, has been designated as a cemetery for the dead of various races, of which there are many at the moment, as Earth and Draconia are in the middle of a war with the Daleks. In addition to the military presence and various civilian settlements on the planet, there is also a community of Travelers and a group of archeologists, led by Prof. Bernice Summerfield. Bernice (Benny to her friends), is looking for clues to the function a mysterious arch-shaped monument, left by Heaven's long extinct original inhabitants about whom nothing is known. In the main settlement of Joycetown, there is also a religious sect called the Church of the Vacuum, led by brother Phaedrus, who preach that the universe is without meaning and that people should give themselves over to the vacuum of space. In the middle of one of their rituals where a member of the group is being sacrificed the victim is taken over by an alien presence, that announces it is coming to Heaven and the Church must do its bidding. The Doctor and Ace arrive on the planet looking for a book the Doctor wants called the 'Papers of Felsecar', which he believes he can find in a library of forbidden texts the Earth authorities have stored on Heaven. However, the librarian claims he hasn't seen the book. Outside Ace bumps into one of the travelers called Jan, whom the Doctor promptly saves from the attentions of Kale, one of the soldiers station on Heaven. Ace goes with Jan back to the camp and meets his friends, including Roisa, Jan's on again off again lover, Maire (a Dalek killer who wears one of their guns as a trophy) and Benny. Walking back she tells Benny about the TARDIS and her own background. As one of Benny's specialist subjects is 20th-century history, she knows that no matter how strange her story, Ace is telling the truth. Also at the camp is Christopher, the traveler's sexless high priest, who is beginning to sense evil approaching. The Doctor visits Miller, the man in charge of the IMC military force on Heaven. Miller knows about the Doctor through legends that describe him as the "Oncoming Storm" and tells him that his instruments keep picking up a vast sphere in orbit, but the sphere keeps vanishing before they can identify it. Worried about what this means the Doctor meets Benny at her dig site and helps her access a hidden chamber beneath the arch, where they find the body of one of the long vanished Heavanites and a message written on the walls. Outside a sniper tries to shoot them, but Benny wounds the attacker in the arm and they flee. At the traveler's camp, Ace joins Jan and the others in the virtual reality realm, known as Puterspace, where the travelers have constructed their own area called the Great Wheel. Jan is greeted by the archetypical god of universal jokes, The Trickster, who torments Jan with a goblet. Jan tells Ace that he once stole such a goblet from the Church of the Vacuum. Jan doesn't agree with their concepts of sacrifice, because long ago when he and Christopher were drafted, they volunteered for experimental drug trials, but Jan lost his nerve at the last moment and Christopher took his for him, with the result that he gained psychic abilities and lost his gender. As the travelers gather at the Wheel, Roisa tells them all that she plans to leave the group, but before she can explain a creature breaks into the Wheel. Christopher holds it off while the others escape, but his body is killed in the process. The Travelers hold a funeral for Christopher’s body and Ace spends the night with the grieving Jan. That night, Ace experiences a strange dream in which the Doctor meets Death and offers himself as a sacrifice to her instead of Ace. Death reminds the Doctor that he sacrificed his sixth body to become "Time's Champion" and says that instead of Ace, she will taken another life. The following morning the Doctor is unsettled to learn Ace has slept with Jan and changes the subject to the book he's looking for. Ace goes to the library and realises that the librarian is being watched, but still manages to locate the book. Miller sends Kale to man an orbiting space station in case of attack. The Doctor meets Jan and realises that he is really in love with Ace. Seemingly making his mind up about something, the Doctor enters Puterspace, only to be attacked by Phaedrus and members of the Church of the Vacuum and trapped in a recreation of his third regeneration, where he was dying of radiation poisoning, alone in the TARDIS. Ace breaks in to rescue him and the scene shifts to a recreation of Ace's home and one of her arguments with her mother. Suddenly, Julian appears and Ace realises that he has been absorbed intyo the alien's group consciousness. With the help of Christopher, whose mind still lives on inside Puterspace despite the death of his body, Julian regains enough of his individuality to help Ace and the Doctor escape. In the confusion, Phaedrus is trapped in his own worst memory, of the time when he performed the mercy killing of his dying mother. That night the Doctor leads the travelers as they break into the library, but the librarian turns before their eyes into a fungus-like creature. The Doctor kills the creature by setting it on fire and retrieves the book. The Doctor tells Miller that Kale has also been infected by the creatures and it was him who shot at the Doctor and Benny. He has similarly infected everyone on the space station via fungal spores and the planet is now defenseless and they cannot call for help. The Doctor tells Ace to end her relationship with Jan, but she thinks he is simply jealous and doesn't want her to abandon him. The 'Papers of Felsecar' contains a message from a future Doctor, who has left behind the cypher to translate the Heavenite message. Ace spends the night with Jan who reveals that his secret name is Aradath, which means 'big fire', in relation to the prokinetic abilities he gained from the military drugs. Suddenly, a cloud of fungal spores drifts into the camp, but in the confusion it is impossible to tell who was infected. Christopher appears before Ace, in a reanimated corpse. He warns her that if she stays with Jan she will be forced to make a sacrifice. The message on the wall is warning that confirms the Doctor's worst fears. Everyone of the billions of dead bodies on Heaven has been infected by the fungus. In orbit Kale tries to crash the station and destroy the dig site. The Doctor and his friends break into the church (where he and Benny disrupt the Churches mantras by singing Try a Little Tenderness) and demands to speak to their masters. Ace, fearing that she will lose Jan, threatens to kill Phaedrus unless his masters call off the attack. Kale promptly self-destructs the platform. The Doctor explains that the fungus is an alien life form, known as the Hoothi. The Hoothi feed on death and decay, and travel in giant organic spheres filled with toxic gases that are invisible to tracking systems. They are master planners, laying traps for their enemies across time; everyone infected by the spores is now linked to the Hoothi group mind, and they can use them to gather intelligence or do their bidding, before eventually transforming them into fungus creatures. The Heavanites were a race that the Hoothi regularly harvested and used brainwashing to convince that they were gods. The body at the dig is of a woman who rebelled against them and the archway is a telescope she built to spot the approaching spheres. With no way of getting help the Doctor seemingly gives up hope of beating them. Roisa, realising that she is infected, straps explosives to her body and goes to destroy the Church, but she is unable to pull the trigger and Phaedrus leads her to the crypt to meet her new masters. Jan, furious with the Doctor for doing nothing, decides to take action himself. He thinks that, with the help of the telescope, they might be able to attack the sphere in a shuttle with explosives. Although he tries to leave Ace behind, she comes along anyway. Ace, though, leaves a note for the Doctor suggesting that, if she doesn't make it back, he should take Benny as his new companion. Approaching the sphere she asks Jan to marry her and he accepts, but at the last moment everyone except Ace explodes into the fungus — including Jan. In the confusion, Ace falls into an escape pod and falls back to the surface. Realising Ace has gone on the attack, something he expected Jan to stop her from, the Doctor leaps into action. He and Benny go in the TARDIS to the sphere, where the Doctor offers the fungi one last chance to surrender, which the giant fungus refuses to do. They have already used Roisa to infect the Doctor and threaten to convert him unless he does what they want. As they leave, Benny sees her traveler friends, including Jan, now no-more than walking corpses. All across Heaven the bodies of the dead rise out of the ground and attack the military bases and towns. Benny finds Ace in the forest, looking for revenge. Christopher appears, and assures Ace that Jan was not manipulated into his death but went of his own free will; however, Benny is an expert at reading body language, and knows that he is lying. Phaedrus enters Puterspace in a last attempt to make peace with his dead mother, but Ace follows hims and attacks him. Confident of victory the Hoothi sphere lands to pick up the dead and the infected. The Doctor goes to the Church and jacks into Puterspace, ostensibly to pull Ace out so they can escape. But as Ace watches in horror, the Doctor and Christopher use Phaedrus’s link to the Hoothi, their own links to Puterspace, and Christopher’s old friendship, to contact Jan’s remains through the neural link still embedded in his fungus-ridden body. There is still a bit of Jan left in the Hoothi group mind, and the Doctor reminds him of his secret name. Jan uses his pryokinisis to burn the Hoothi sphere, igniting the gas in the sphere and destroying them. Jan realises that the Doctor had always planned to send Jan to his death and did it despite knowing Ace's feelings for him. In shock, Ace wanders into the basement of the church, only to find Phaedrus and Roisa and a single surviving Hoothi, left behind as a back-up. At the last moment, Maire the only other surviving traveler, emerges carrying a Dalek gun and kills Roisa. Ace calls out to Julian inside the Hoothi mind and the creature explodes. Returning for Ace, the Doctor is confronted by Christopher, who dies in his arms to remind him of what he has done. The Doctor tries to apologise to Ace, but she angrily walks out of the TARDIS resolving to travel with Maire. Although she is also displeased with him, Bernice agrees to travel with the Doctor as she thinks he needs someone to remind him who he is and why he fights evil. Their first journey is back to Earth to release some of the owls, that can no longer survive in Heaven's ecosystem. In the distance Ace and Julian are driving towards the beach.
5406230	/m/0dkd_8	Transit	Ben Aaronovitch		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Human engineers are preparing to open a new section of the Sol Transit System (STS), a mass transit system that uses transmat technology to send trains instantly between planets, from the solar system to Arcturus. The system begins to experience power drains, which the technicians, known as "Floozies", cannot determine the cause. At Lunarversity on the moon, Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart is experiencing financial difficulty and agrees to deliver a batch of drugs to Old Sam, one of the Floozies, for a local dealer. Old Sam is a veteran of the Ten-thousand Day War against the Martians and now cannot survive without combat drugs given to him by the army. Having made the drop off and collected a moneypin in payment, Kadiatu joins the Floozies for a wild night out across the Solar System and sleeps with one named Blondie. The following morning, she wakes up in Beijing, without the moneypin she needs to get home and pay her debts. During the opening ceremony of the Arcturus extension, an unknown force blasts through the tunnel, killing everything in its path. Dodging a ticket inspector, Kadiatu makes her way to King's Cross Station as the TARDIS materialises. As the Doctor and Bernice exit the TARDIS, the blast wave hits the station&mdash;Bernice and the TARDIS are caught in the blast and disappear, but the Doctor pulls Kadiatu to safety. With the main line shut down till the damage can be repaired, the Doctor cannot retrieve the TARDIS or Benny, and remains with Kadiatu. The pair visit Kadiatu's elderly family friend and blind war veteran, Francine, at her bar on Mars. She agrees to use her underworld contacts to find Blondie (who Kadiatu assumes stole the moneypin while they were making love), and tells Kadiatu that her new friend has two hearts, confirming her suspicions. Long ago, her father told her stories about his grandfather and the mysterious time traveller known as the Doctor. The two go to a cafe in Paris, where the Doctor gets drunk and passes out celebrating the universe's 13500020012th birthday. Benny arrives at Lowell depot a rundown slum on Pluto and meets two prostitutes, Zamina and Roberta. Unknown to Benny, Roberta is a childhood lover of Blondie who resents him for escaping the slum. Roberta has Kadiatu's moneypin, which she took after having seen her and Blondie making love. Behiaving strangely, Benny demands to be taken to a local gang leader, whom she then encourages to take over the slum. Violence spreads across the slum, killing many including Roberta and eventually leading to military intervention and evacuation of the survivors. The Doctor awakens in Kadiatu's room at the Lunarversity and, looking through her belongings, realises she has been researching his visits to Earth and that she was genetically engineered. He also discovers that she is close to developing a time machine. Unsure how to act, the Doctor first solves Kadiatu's problem with the drug dealers and then searches for Benny, stowing away on a maintenance train heading to the relief zone on Pluto. A mysterious train-shaped object begins moving through the tunnels, swallowing passengers and pirate free-surfers (who use special boards to traverse the tunnels illegally). Its victims are re-engineered into mutant soldiers to serve the intelligence that has invaded the tunnels. Francine contacts Old Sam about Blondie, but he convinces them that he knows nothing about the moneypin. Using the tunnel surveillance system, they locate Kadiatu and the Doctor heading for Pluto. Old Sam and Blondie set off to investigate, intending to rescue Kadiatu. The Doctor finds the TARDIS embedded in a concrete wall at the end of the line. While the Doctor tries to work out a way to free it, the pair are attacked by Benny. The intelligence has possessed her, but it does not recognise the Doctor as a threat. Kadiatu realises that her instinctive response to danger is to kill, and that her punches are capable of causing fatal injuries. Old Sam and Blondie arrive and Benny escapes, joining Zamina on a refugee train heading for Mars. Zamina realises that Benny caused the riots for just this purpose. Flashbacks reveal that Kadiatu's father, Yembe, is a descendant of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart and an African woman with whom he had a brief relationship during his service in Africa. Years later Yembe Lethbridge-Stewart had been a soldier in the war against the Martians, where he met Francine. After the war, Francine learnt from a mysterious hacker that a facility outside Leipzig was being used to genetically engineer super-soldiers. Yembe burnt the facility to the ground, but spared a single baby whom he and Francine adopted. The Doctor, Kadiatu and Blondie return the Doctor's house on Allen Road in Kent. While Kadiatu and Blondie make love, the Doctor constructs a device for hacking into the tunnel network. The Doctor deduces that the intelligence invading the tunnels is from another dimension and operates similarly to a computer virus using a neural computer system. He also learns that the STS system has become self-aware, and communicates with it via a hologram of television anchorman, Yak Harris. The hologram confirms the Doctor's theory, which they then report to the STS executives in London. At the same time, the Floozies identify an energy build up, indicating that the hole between dimensions is about to open again. On Mars, Benny has gained access to the STS system, but the controlling influence weakens as she gets further from the tunnels. She recovers enough to send Zamina to the Doctor for help. The Doctor and Kadiatu arrive on Mars, in time to see Benny fleeing from the human colony, killing anyone in her way. They follow, and corner her in an Ice Warrior nest. Benny reveals a gun and Kadiatu shoots her. As the sleeping warriors begin to revive, the Doctor realises that this "Benny" is a duplicate created to distract him. Kadiatu summons Francine to fly them back to the settlement. En route, the craft accidentally activates a missile defence system, but Francine's manages to land the craft. Another duplicate of Benny enters a STS reactor and overloads the power, creating enough energy to open the breach. The Doctor sends the Floozies to the end of the line to build a machine to his specifications and connected to the TARDIS. The group&mdash;including Benny, who is disguised as one of the station's staff&mdash;come under attack by the mutant creatures, and Blondie is among the fatalities. The Doctor commandeers a freesurf board and heads through the tunnels to the station, picking up a piece of software hitch-hiking in the system along the way. Barely surviving the landing, the Doctor sees the breach open. The virus was an agent laying the groundwork for the real invader to emerge&mdash;it is nameless, but the Doctor calls it Fred. The Doctor uses the machine to fire a burst of artron energy from the TARDIS. Fred retreats through the breach, taking Benny with it and the Doctor follows. In the other dimension, the Doctor appears before its world's ruler to ask for Benny's return. Unlike Fred, the ruler realises how dangerous the Doctor is, and attempts to destroy him. At that moment, Kadiatu appears, distracting Fred long enough for the Doctor to push the hitch-hiker into Benny's mind, forcing Fred out. The Yak Harris software remains in the alternative dimension achieve its full potential, and the Doctor, Benny and Kadiatu return to their reality moments before the gateway collapses. The Doctor visits the Stone Mountain computer archive and erases evidence of his existence, then sends Old Sam to the Ice Warrior nest, suggesting he offer the reviving warriors a gesture of peace. The surviving Floozies cut the TARDIS from the wall and the Doctor and Benny depart. Some months latter, Kadiatu has a job at STS, gaining access to the resources she needs to build her time machine. Her work complete, she destroys her research and sets off through the time vortex to catch up with the Doctor.
5406999	/m/0dkg6t	The Pit				 In an attempt to lighten the Doctor's mood, his companion Bernice suggests an investigation of a planetary system of seven planets that had seemingly vanished. The TARDIS materializes on the worst of the seven and the two are assailed by multiple types of threats. The Doctor is thrown into another universe entirely. Bernice soon realizes the source of the dangers come from the Doctor's own past.
5407100	/m/0dkgh1	White Darkness	David A. McIntee		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor’s last three visits to the scattered human colonies of the third millennium have not been entirely successful. And now that Ace has rejoined him and Bernice, life on board the TARDIS is getting pretty stressful. The Doctor yearns for a simpler time and place: Earth, the tropics, the early twentieth century. The TARDIS lands in Haiti in the early years of the First World War. And the Doctor, Bernice and Ace land in a murderous plot involving voodoo, violent death, Zombies and German spies. And perhaps something else -- something far, far worse.
5407173	/m/0dkgr2	Blood Heat	Jim Mortimore		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A mysterious force breaks through the TARDIS exterior, throwing Bernice into the Vortex and forcing the Doctor to make an emergency landing. At first thinking they've landed in prehistoric times (after a dinosaur knocks the TARDIS into a tar pit), the Doctor soon learns that they have landed on a parallel Earth. On this Earth, the Silurians killed the Doctor in his third incarnation twenty years ago, then went on to kill most of humanity with a plague, and return Earth to its prehistoric state. An embittered alternate version of the Brigadier, along with Liz Shaw and the remnants of UNIT, attempts to destroy the Silurians with nuclear missiles. Ace manages to reactivate the Third Doctor's TARDIS (which had gone into hibernation after his death), which the Doctor then materializes around the entire Earth. He then uses the Architectural Configuration controls to delete the inbound missiles and prevents the massacre of the Silurians. The Doctor then manages to convince the Brigadier and the Silurian leader that the two races can and must live in peace. The happy ending is ruined for Ace and Bernice, however, when the Doctor reveals that this alternate universe cannot survive without destroying the real Universe. In order to save their Universe, the Doctor time rams his old TARDIS in order to start a chain reaction that will destroy the parallel universe after the current inhabitants have lived out the rest of their lives, vowing simultaneously to find whoever created this timeline and bring them to justice.
5407302	/m/0dkh16	Conundrum	Steve Lyons		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 What seems to be a simple murder investigation in a quiet English village becomes something far more deadly for the Seventh Doctor and his companions when the inhabitants begin to exhibit superhero abilities...
5407317	/m/0dkh1x	No Future	Paul Cornell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 London, 1976, while Bernice becomes lead singer in a punk band, the Doctor must face more than one old enemy...
5407353	/m/0dkh3_	Tragedy Day	Gareth Roberts		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Empire City on the planet Olleril is experiencing 'Tragedy Day', where the well-off give charitably to the poor. However, this specific day has much more to offer, with murders, weaponry and plots that could destroy everything. The trio, naturally, all want to leave but had been captured by various factions within minutes of arrival.
5407368	/m/0dkh5q	Legacy	Gary Russell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor is in pursuit of a galactic criminal and the the trail leads to Peladon: a desolate world once home to a barbaric, feudal society. Now the Galactic Federation is attempting to bring prosperity and civilisation to the planet. But not all Peladonians support the changes, and when ancient relics are stolen from their Citadel, the representatives of the Federation are blamed. The Doctor suspects the Ice Warrior delegation, but before long the Time Lord himself is arrested for the crime -- and sentenced to death. Elsewhere, interplanetary mercenaries are bringing one of the galaxy's most evil artefacts to Peladon, apparently on the Doctor's instruction. Ace is pursuing a dangerous mission on another world and Bernice is getting friendly -- perhaps too friendly -- with the Ice Warriors she has studied for so long. The players are making the final moves in a devious and lethal plan - but for once it isn't the Doctor's...
5407407	/m/0dkh7h	Theatre of War	Justin Richards		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 An archeological expedition to the planet Mexaus ends in tragedy; all but one of the visitors die and lethal radiation contaminates the surface. Now the survivor is leading a new trip, with Professor Bernice Summerfield. Murders start again. Bernice summons her friends, the Doctor and Ace. They are sucked into a dangerously real re-creation of Shakespeare's greatest tragic play, Hamlet, which is paralleled by "The Good Soldiers," the (fictitious) purportedly lost play of the future playwright Stanoff Osterling.
5407607	/m/0dkhjj	To Reign in Hell	Steven Brust	1984-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins by detailing the creation story of Heaven. There is a substance of raw chaos: cacoastrum; and stuff of order: illiaster. From the illiaster came consciousness that resulted in the firstborn angels: Yaweh, Satan, Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Leviathan and Belial. The firstborn create Heaven in order to protect themselves from the cacoastrum, which threatens to destroy them. This event is later referred to as the 'First Wave.' The walls of heaven have collapsed two times since then, resulting in the Second and Third Waves, creating, respectively, the archangels and angels. After the third wave Heaven has been divided into four regencies named for the cardinal points of the compass. Belial, half-mad and trapped in the form of a dragon, rules the Northern Regency. Leviathan, a kindly woman in the shape of a sea serpent, oversees the Western Regency. Satan rules the South with his loyal servant Beelzebub, trapped in the body of a golden retriever. Lucifer rules the East, with his consort Lilith, who had previously been briefly involved with Satan. Yaweh oversees all of Heaven from the center, aided by his healer Raphael and warrior Michael. Other important angels include the blind musician Harut, the poetry-quoting Ariel, the craftsman Asmodai, the smirking Mephistopheles, the dour Uriel, the sneering Abdiel, the somewhat naive Gabriel and the coolly competent Zaphkiel. A mostly independent subplot involving two angels named Kyriel and Sith gives the viewpoints of two low-level angels who get swept up in the story's events. Trouble arises when Yaweh, worried about the imminent Fourth Wave, devises The Plan: the blueprint for a new, larger Heaven (Earth), with walls that the cacoastrum cannot destroy. Unfortunately, at least a thousand angels will die during the construction of his new Paradise. Yaweh charges Satan with securing the cooperation of every angel in Heaven, and Satan finds himself wondering if they have the ethical right to coerce anyone into participating. Exacerbating matters is Abdiel, who craves Satan's rank. Abdiel begins playing Satan against Yaweh, telling each of them that the other will no longer discuss matters. Step by step, the factions escalate. Abdiel attempts to wound Beelzebub and accidentally kills the innocent Ariel. When Satan and Beelzebub attempt to avenge this, Raphael and Michael misinterpret this as proof their opponents have abandoned all decency. Yaweh, attempting to rally his side, convinces his supporters that he is not only the eldest of the Firstborn, he is God. This announcement stuns not only his opponents, but even Michael, his closest supporter. Using the energy of his newfound worshipers, he creates a new angel, Yeshuah, who he proclaims his son and heir. As the war continues, Zaphkiel intercepts Satan and brings him directly to Yaweh, where the two discover that Abdiel has played them both for fools. However, Satan will not acknowledge Yaweh's dishonest claim to Godhood, and neither will Yaweh abandon it, so the conflict continues. Abdiel, now on the run from both sides, begins digging a hole in the wall of Heaven, but Mephistopheles finds and strangles him before he can finish the work. Satan's hosts gain the ascendency in the battle. Seeing that defeat is inevitable, Yaweh decides to destroy Heaven by expanding the hole that Abdiel had been deepening. Yet when the wall of Heaven is breached, flooding Heaven with cacoastrum, Yaweh finds that he cannot allow himself to be destroyed by the cacoastrum; it is not in his nature. Yeshuah, seeing an opportunity to triumph over Satan's forces, sacrifices his life by leaping into the breach and directing the rupture towards the hosts of Satan, devastating them. Meanwhile, as the rebels fight for Heaven, Satan is captured but with the help of Beelzebub and Mephistopheles leaves Heaven; his followers join him in the abyss and create a third stronghold: Hell.
5408368	/m/0dkjbv	Warlock	Andrew Cartmel		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A new drug called "Warlock" is tearing apart society. Benny is involved with a law enforcement effort to bring it down while Ace is in trouble in a horrific animal laboratory. Only The Doctor is left to discover the truth behind the new drug.
5408388	/m/0dkjd7	Set Piece	Kate Orman			 Ms Cohen is travelling on a starliner, when the ship falls through a time rift and is boarded by giant mechanical ants. She wakes up on board a vessel known as The Ship, where the ants and human prisoners they use as slaves are slowly processing the captured humans and storing their minds inside Ship's systems. The human guards, however, have a problem. One prisoner, whom they have christened the "Gingerbread Man", keeps escaping from cold storage and despite their best efforts they are unable to prevent him escaping again. Ms Cohen witnesses several of these escapes and watches the guards brutally beat him to the point where he seems to be suffering a heart attack. As Ms. Cohen tries to start him breathing again, she realises he has two hearts. Eventually she realises that the "Gingerbread Man's" escapes always go to a different part of Ship, therefore he is looking for someone. In his next escape, he reaches the freezers, where Ace is trapped. Having finally found her, he is able to summon Bernice to rescue them. But the attempt fails and the Doctor, Ace and Bernice are thrown out into the rift. Ms Cohen is trapped on Ship and eventually processed like the others. Some months earlier, the Doctor shows Bernice and Ace a mysterious cafe that keeps manifesting itself at different locations in time and space ranging from Glebe, New South Wales to Argolis. The Doctor says this as a result of a Time Rift, which has been punched through the fabric of reality. Now an unknown force is using the rift to snare passenger ships. The Doctor and Ace plan to get captured and learn what is happening and then Bernice can rescue them but now the plan has gone wrong and the three travellers are separated. Ace falls out of the rift in the ancient Egyptian desert during the Akhenaten period, where she is eventually found by nobleman Sedjet and becomes part of his household body guard. Because she is a woman, she has to constantly prove herself. The only person who seems to accept her is the priest, Sesehaten. Although she can still hear Egyptian as English, she eventually accepts that the Doctor isn't coming to rescue her. When Sedjet tries to take her on as his mistress, Ace refuses and realises that Sedjet will only ever see her as a curiosity. She leaves his house, abandoning the force field generator she used to travel through the rift. However, she can't find work as a soldier and is reduced to working as a waitress. She eventually bumps into Sesehaten again, who tells her that odd lights have been seen in the sky. Ace realises that the rift may be opening and rushes back to Sedjet's house. The building is empty and the ants are there looking for the force field generator. Sesehaten reveals that he is part of the cult of Set, also known as Sutekh, which has been outlawed since Pharaoh forced Egypt to accept a single religion and one god Aten. Sesehaten's cult will help Ace leave through the rift, if she helps them kidnap the Pharaoh, which Ace agrees to as she sees Akhenaten as another in the long line of fascists she's fought. Ace breaks into Akhenaten's palace and takes him hostage, but the Pharaoh finds the whole thing very amusing and Ace realises through talking to him that he is no better or worse than any other ruler would be and just wants to be remembered. In the courtyard he reveals the TARDIS, which his army recovered when it fell from the sky, explaining how Ace could understand Egyptian. Using the instruments, Ace discovers that Sesehaten is not human, but a machine built by Ship to control the rift. Bernice lands in France in 1798 and makes friends with Vivant Dominique Denon, the father of modern Egyptology and one of her heroes. Together they travel to Egypt with Napoleon's army and Bernice attempts to find the Amarna Graffito, a mysterious phrase written on a tomb wall in modern English, which she has a strange feeling can help her find the TARDIS. Searching inside a tomb, she is trapped by survivors of Set's cult, who steal her diary thinking it and the message are key to releasing their god from his prison. Denon rescues her and together they lead French troops to the Cultists camp, where Benny recovers her diary and finds the location of the graffiti. The Doctor, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, appears out of the rift in Paris, 1871, as the events of the Paris Commune unfold. He finds himself in the care of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, whose time travel experiments have created the rift in the first place and now they are both trapped in Paris. The ants, however, have followed them and Kadiatu takes the Doctor to M. Thierry's house for shelter. Despite his confused state of mind, the Doctor still realises that Thierry's young son is not all he seems and suspects Thierry is really in league with the ants. Thierry and Kadiatu have been helping the Doctor recover, playing for time and hoping that he will reveal to them the information that Ship couldn't take from his mind. Ace has the TARDIS buried in the monument at Amarna and writes a message on the wall, so the Doctor or Bernice will eventually find it. She then uses Sesehaten to open the rift and with the help of the force shield, escapes through it. In 1798, Bernice does indeed find the TARDIS and after saying goodbye to Denon, she too leaves for the Doctor's location. In Paris, Thierry uses the ant's technology to try to use Kadiatu's time machine to stabilise the rift, but unfortunately the Doctor has filled it with explosives, hoping the ants would take it back to Ship. The only thing they can do now is duck. The resulting explosion kills Thierry, and tears the rift completely open. The little boy appears and attempts to stabilise the rift as first Ace, then the TARDIS come through. He is a machine built to stabilise the rift like Sesehaten. As the rift widens, Ace shoots the boy, sealing the rift in the process. The Doctor, his mind recovering, explains to Ace and Benny that Ship is an organic computer, built by a human colony to store their minds in a gestalt entity, but having fallen through Kadiatu's rifts, it is now trying to store all organic matter in the universe and has built the ship and the ants to fulfil its purpose. The travellers return to Paris and Ace watches the chaos around her. Knowing that the Commune will fail and thousands will be killed, she tries to persuade the woman fighters that their attack are pointless, just as Akhenaten's religious reforms were ultimately undone and forgotten. But the fighters believe that fighting for their beliefs is more important than winning. Bernice finds Kadiatu is giving Ship dead bodies killed in the Commune to process into organic machinery for time travel. Ship has also infected Kadiatu with an organic virus that is slowly taking her over. She has been playing for time hoping to come up with a virus to kill Ship, but now it’s too late. Ship overcomes her virus and she becomes apart of Ship and goes back for the Doctor, whom his companions now realise has also been infected, which will allow Ship to read his mind and use the knowledge to open more rifts and process more minds. Refusing to let the Doctor be sacrificed Ace uses one of Kadiatu’s organic time hoppers to follow them to Ship, where she tries to track down the Doctor. All the prisoners and the human guards have been processed and the three people are the only ones aboard. Kadiatu shoots her, but as she is still trying to resist Ship’s influence Ace is only badly wounded. Ace is too late to help the Doctor, who is already being connected to the fabric of Ship—but the moment he accesses Ship’s central nervous system, he is able to shut it down directly. As Ship dies, Kadiatu leaps into the rift and disappears. Ace gets the Doctor back to Paris, where he allows himself to die temporarily, thus killing the organic material which Ship had implanted in him. As the TARDIS is about to leave Ace chooses to stay. She knows she can't change history, but actions maybe able to save some lives. She also plans to use the surviving technology to monitor the rifts and protect Earth from any other threats like Ship. The Doctor reveals that he's known where she would end up since soon after he met her. The Epilogue shows Ace, now using the name Dorothee McShane, meeting Denon and telling him that Bernice is safe. She again meets the Doctor in Sydney, 1993 and helps him fight an alien invasion. In the present of 1871, Ace helps defend a barricade until the last moment, then puts down her gun and disappears into history.
5408447	/m/0dkjgp	Sanctuary	David A. McIntee			 As the Albigensian crusade draws to its bloody conclusion, men inflict savage brutalities on each other in the name of religion. Forced to temporarily abandon ship, the TARDIS crew find their lives intertwined with warring Templars, crusaders and heretics. While the Doctor begins a murder investigation in a besieged fortress, Bernice finds herself drawn to an embittered mercenary who has made the heretics’ fight his own. And both time travellers realize that to leave history unchanged they may have to sacrifice far more than their lives.
5408799	/m/0dkjzc	Sky Pirates!	Dave Stone		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Benny travel on the ship Schirron Dream. They confront various hostile climates, bizarre crew members and an alien race threatening the entirety of the local star system.
5408961	/m/0dkk4_	Zamper	Gareth Roberts		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and his companions, separated from the TARDIS, investigate Zamper. It is an organization dedicated to building gigantic warships. A separate race has arrived in order to commission craft; also industrial accidents are plaguing the workers.
5408969	/m/0dkk5p	Toy Soldiers	Paul Leonard		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Benny are in Europe in the aftermath of World War 1. Children are going missing and it is tied to an alien world that has been going through its own war.
5409030	/m/0dkk93	Head Games	Steve Lyons		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A flaw in the structure of the Universe is allowing energy from the Land of Fiction to seep through. The Doctor and his companions must close the gap to save the Universe, but the TARDIS is unable to navigate the crystallised cloud of fictional energy around the gap. The Doctor lands on the crystal’s surface, and he, Benny and Chris pass through the crystal, navigating through their individual dreams as the fictional energy gives them form. Once they reach the crystal’s interior they must put force-field generators in place around the gap, and Roz, who is waiting by the controls in the TARDIS, will then be able to squeeze the gap shut. But the Doctor has withheld one fact from his companions for fear of alienating them. The gap has opened above the dying planet Detrios, and its inhabitants have unwittingly reshaped the fictional energy into the crystal Miracle which is providing light and power to their world. When the Doctor closes the gap, the Miracle will vanish, and Detrios really will be doomed. Things get even more complicated when the fictional energy finds a focus in Jason, the young Writer who was returned to Earth by the Time Lords after the Doctor’s last encounter with the Land of Fiction. As the fictional energy floods into this Universe, Jason finds that his wishes and dreams are coming true. A fictional double of the Doctor, Dr. Who, appears in the TARDIS, knocks out the real Doctor before he can enter the crystal, and sends him to the fictional Galactic Prison for the crime of trying to wipe out the Detrians. Dr Who then picks up Jason, his new companion, and they set off to have neat adventures, beat up green monsters, and arrest the evil Doctor’s accomplices. Roz, uncertain of the extent of the newcomers’ powers, hides in the TARDIS corridors and waits for an opportunity to make her move. Jason and Dr Who try to remove Benny and Chris from the Miracle, but as the TARDIS is unable to materialise within, it is diverted to Detrios. There, Jason agrees to help the hapless Politik Darnak to defeat the green lizard monsters which are about to attack his Citadel. In fact Darnak is just a low-grade civil servant who sees promotion prospects in these helpful aliens, and the lizard people have a rich culture of their own which has suffered under the oppressive rule of the human upper classes. Oblivious to the wider issues, Dr Who whips up an ACME Lizard Monster Eradicator from spare parts and instantly exterminates ninety percent of the planet’s lizard population. Darnak can’t believe that the problem has been solved so easily, but his denial irritates Jason, and moments later the Citadel is attacked by a giant dinosaur. Jason discovers its one weak point and defeats it through a combination of observation, clever thinking and bravery—except of course that he’d created the dinosaur and thus its weakness as well, and in the process of defeating it, a dozen guards have been horribly killed and the Citadel has been destroyed. Jason and Dr Who depart, leaving Darnak with the unenviable task of explaining the fiasco to the Detrian Superior. The Detrians detect intruders on the Miracle and transmat Chris to their planet for interrogation, where he’s horrified to learn that the Doctor nearly tricked him into committing genocide. He is imprisoned with a young rebel, Kat’lanna, who was arrested after the extermination of the lizard people and has given up her hope for a new world order; talking with Chris, however, restores her hope that things can get better, even when he admits that he and his friends were trying to destroy the Miracle. Kat tricks their guard, steals his keys and helps her fellow prisoners to escape, but back at the rebel stronghold they are betrayed and captured by followers of Enros, the Undying One. Enros believes that he created the Miracle and that his death will mean its destruction; he also believes that one day aliens will descend and worship him. When Chris refuses to do so, Kat is taken to be executed while Enros prepares to sacrifice Chris in public before his followers. Dr Who and Jason travel to the decrepit leisure world Avalone, where the Doctor’s former companion Mel has been stranded alone for months. At first, she’s delighted to see the TARDIS, but then Dr Who and Jason imprison her in Galactic Prison along with the Doctor. Dr Who and Jason then land on the Miracle, venture inside and kidnap Benny, but while they’re busy Jason’s attention wanders and the fictional Galactic Prison vanishes—leaving Mel and the Doctor at the mercy of the fictional dinosaurs which Jason left to guard the grounds. He eventually forgets about the dinosaurs as well, but by that time many of the planet’s primitive natives have been slaughtered. The angry primitives blame the Doctor and Mel and prepare to burn them at the stake, but they are saved at the last moment when Dr Who and Jason return with Benny, causing the Prison and the dinosaurs to return. The Doctor and Mel are no longer within the confines of the prison, and thus escape as the dinosaurs tear into the fleeing tribesmen. Mel, however, has begun to worry about the Doctor’s newly secretive nature and is puzzled by Dr Who’s claim that the Doctor is responsible for the destruction of the Althosian system and the Silurian Earth. Roz emerges from hiding to rescue Benny from Dr Who and Jason, but when they are reunited with the Doctor, Mel is appalled by his new gun-toting, casually violent companions. Together, they steal a cartoon spaceship from the Prison and attempt to return to the Miracle, but Jason and Dr Who pursue them in the TARDIS. Jason decides that the TARDIS has weapons, and it therefore does—and Dr Who shoots down the escaping prisoners’ ship, blowing it up in the vacuum of space... Dr Who and Jason then return to Detrios to arrest Chris, and the materialisation of the TARDIS distracts Enros’ followers just as Chris is about to be sacrificed. Still disoriented and confused from the drugs which the cultists gave him, Chris accuses Dr Who of trying to commit genocide, and Jason and Dr Who realise that he was unaware of the Doctor’s evil plans and welcome him aboard as part of the team. As Chris recovers in the TARDIS, Jason and Dr Who travel to a cafe in Glebe to try to arrest Ace, but she realises that Dr Who isn’t the real Doctor and fights back. Unable to defeat her, Jason panics and flees, deciding to forget that she ever existed—and as Ace has no way of finding them by herself, she uses her time-hopper to travel to 2002, in order to conduct research on historical anomalies in the hope of tracking them down. Jason and Dr Who then take the puzzled Chris to Earth to right wrongs and topple evil dictatorships, and decide to start in England. Dr Who gets himself arrested in order to contact rebel elements in prison, but only succeeds in freeing several dangerous criminals who instantly flee into the streets rather than join his rebel army. Jason also tries to contact the “resistance”, but only finds student protestors who think he’s out of his mind. He eventually storms Buckingham Palace with a fictional battletank, only to find that the Queen has gone to Sheffield to dedicate a new sports centre. Jason and Dr Who set off to assassinate her, concluding that since she’s the head of the oppressive English dictatorship, then getting rid of her will usher in a new era of peace. The Doctor, Benny, Roz and Mel find themselves on Earth; in Jason’s world, the arch-villains are always inexplicably resurrected for the sequel. The Doctor leaves Benny and Roz to watch over Buckingham Palace in case Jason returns, while he sets off for Sheffield with the increasingly hostile Mel. But the Doctor’s frustration boils over when their train is delayed by the vagaries of British Rail. The voice of his sixth incarnation shouts at him in his mind, accusing him of horrific crimes, and his guilt forces him to admit to Mel that he deliberately influenced her to leave him so he could go about his mission as Time’s Champion without her simplistic morality interfering. She is horrified by this revelation, and realises that he truly is no longer the Doctor she knew. The Doctor and Mel reach Sheffield moments too late, and Dr Who guns down the Queen with smart bullets which evade innocent bystanders and smash into the Queen’s chest. And yet the Queen survives without a scratch, proof that Jason knows deep down that what he’s doing is wrong. Ace has found this odd incident in newspaper reports—and was told of its significance by a future Doctor—but Dr Who and Jason get away from her again. She is, however, reunited with the Doctor and Mel, who is horrified to see that Ace has become a callous soldier. Jason and Dr Who, apparently believing that they’ve assassinated the ruler of Britain, return to Buckingham Palace, drive out the staff and set up a force field to keep them out; however, Benny and Roz join forces with UNIT under Brigadier Winifred Bambera and use Roz’s force rifle to bleed energy into the force field until it overloads. Meanwhile, the Doctor finds his TARDIS in Sheffield and travels to the Palace to confront Jason; however, Dr Who and Chris both confront the Doctor over his past crimes. The Doctor claims that the Detrians’ grim position is their own fault, as the upper classes had plenty of warning that their sun was dying but wasted time in internecine squabbling rather than searching for ways to save their world. The Miracle is a stopgap solution only, and will destroy the Universe as a side effect. And Jason is just as guilty of genocide as is the Doctor; he’s already wiped out the lizards of Detrios just because they looked like green monsters, and has decimated the tribal population where he thoughtlessly set down his “Galactic Prison” and guard dinosaurs. At this point, UNIT forces storm the palace, and Jason panics and releases a fireball which kills everyone; fortunately, the Doctor uses the fictional energy surrounding Jason to survive, and convinces him to use his powers to resurrect everyone. Jason finally acknowledges the need to grow up, and Dr Who vanishes, his work done. The Doctor takes Jason and his former and current companions back to the Miracle to finish his work, but Mel refuses to help him destroy a world, and Chris insists upon returning to Detrios to rescue Kat’lanna. Roz insists upon helping him, and the Doctor has no choice but to let them go their own way. Jason agrees to help the Doctor, and he, Ace and the Doctor thus venture out onto the Miracle. The Detrians have posted guards to stop them from destroying the Miracle, but Benny emerges from the TARDIS at the last moment to help fight them off; sadly, Mel doesn’t. The Doctor, Ace and Jason then travel through the Miracle, but as the Doctor travels through his own dreams he’s confronted by his guilt made manifest in the form of his sixth incarnation. The Sixth Doctor accuses the Seventh of cutting his incarnation short in order to become Time’s Champion, of genocide, and of the manipulation and betrayal of his companions. The Seventh Doctor is forced to fight his way past the raving Sixth, and sees him transforming into the Valeyard as they do battle. Kat’lanna’s fellow rebels rescue her from Enros’ followers; meanwhile, Enros decides to legitimise his claim to be Detrios’ true ruler, and sends his followers into the Citadel to assassinate the Superior and seize control of the planet. As this leaves Enros himself relatively unguarded, the remaining rebels decide to take the opportunity to assassinate him, but Kat recalls Chris’ claim that the Miracle was created by the beliefs of the Detrians—which means that if enough people believe the Miracle will vanish when Enros dies, then it will. If this happens, Detrios will never shake off his warped religion. Kat thus tries to stop her fellow rebels, and the delay gives the Doctor, Ace and Jason enough time they need to finish their work. As the Miracle fades away, Enros’ hold over his followers is broken, and thus nobody notices when he is killed. Meanwhile, Chris and Roz are unable to locate Kat’lanna, and when Chris sees the terrible poverty and deprivation in which the ordinary Detrians live he gives in to despair, concluding that it was foolish and pointless to try rescuing just one person. He and Roz return to the TARDIS, unaware that Kat’lanna and her fellow rebels have used the death of the Miracle as a foundation for a new order; now that it’s gone the Detrians have no choice but to abandon their illusory hopes, and start looking for real, constructive ways of restoring power to their world. For the first time there is real hope for the future. But Kat’lanna never understands why Chris didn’t try to come back for her as he’d promised. The Doctor returns Jason, Ace and Mel to their proper times, but he and Mel part on bitter terms. Ace promises to try to talk some sense into Mel—and quietly passes on a message for the Doctor from his future incarnation. As Roz tries to help Chris come to terms with his perceived failure, the Doctor seals off the memory of the Sixth Doctor in his mind, knowing that he must continue to resist the temptation to regenerate into his eighth incarnation; that moment of weakness could give the Valeyard the chance he needs to break free. He then promises Benny that he’ll set the co-ordinates at random so they can have a simple adventure like the ones they used to have, but again, he’s lying. According to Ace, the gap which they’ve just closed was scraped into the Universe by Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart’s time machine, and the Doctor must deal with her for good before she does any more damage. Once again his duty to the bigger picture must take precedence over the wishes of his companions.
5409077	/m/0dkkb4	Warchild	Andrew Cartmel		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The culmination of the previous two novels brings powerful forces ready to do battle all over the globe. Sucked into this is every-man Creed, whose normal life is disrupted by the super-powers his two sons seem to have.
5409295	/m/0dkklh	SLEEPY	Kate Orman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The earth colony Yemaya 4 is struck by a plague that causes the colonists to manifest psychic powers. The Doctor and his companions become heavily involved. Some of the group contract the plague, while others travel back in time to try to find out how it started. Meanwhile, murderous agents threaten to simply kill every innocent person involved.
5409661	/m/0dkl2f	GodEngine	Craig Hinton		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Stranded on Mars, the Doctor and Roz team up with a group of colonists on a journey to find much-needed supplies at the North Pole. But when their expedition is joined by a party of Ice Warrior pilgrims, tensions are stretched to breaking point. Elsewhere, Chris finds himself on Pluto's moon, trapped with a group of desperate scientists in a deadly race against time. The year is 2157: the Earth has been invaded, and forces are at work on Mars to ensure that the mysterious invaders are successful. Unless the Doctor can solve the riddle of the GodEngine, the entire course of human history will be changed...
5409885	/m/0dklkt	So Vile a Sin	Kate Orman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor returns to the thirtieth century; he fears an ancient secret from his own past will harm time and space. The Human empire that rules the solar system is crumbling under power disputes.
5410725	/m/0dkmyj	Twilight of the Gods	Mark Clapham		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 God-like beings have shattered the peace of Dellah, and threaten to spread chaos across the galaxy. Benny and Jason Kane return to the planet in a desperate last attempt to stop them, before the planet is destroyed forever.
5411302	/m/0dknx5	Artemis Fowl: The Seventh Dwarf	Eoin Colfer	2004-03-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Artemis Fowl lures the dwarf, Mulch Diggums, to New York City and then brings him back to Ireland to steal the priceless Fei Fei tiara which contains a one-of-a-kind blue diamond. Artemis claims that he intends to use it for a laser. However, a gang of six dwarves led by Sergei the Significant have already stolen the tiara and plan to sell it at a circus to several European jewellery fences. As the dwarfs perform in the circus, Mulch sneaks in underground and takes the tiara, also knocking out their leader, Sergei. Captain Holly Short has been relaxing in a luxury resort belonging to the People while waiting for the Council to clear her name after the incident at Fowl Manor. However, Foaly calls her saying that she must track Artemis's plane; the LEP have been alerted by Mulch's stolen LEP helmet. Holly Short catches Artemis with the tiara, but not before he manages to swap the priceless blue diamond for a fake. Ultimately, it is discovered that Artemis stole the diamond as the colour reminded him of his father's eyes. He gives the diamond to his mother as a gift and promises her that he will find his father. nl:Artemis Fowl: De zevende dwerg
5412678	/m/0dkq_9	The Lost Weekend	Charles R. Jackson	1944	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in a rundown neighborhood of Manhattan in 1936, the novel explores a five-day alcoholic binge. Don Birnam, a binge drinker mostly of rye, fancies himself a would-be writer. He lapses into foreign phrases and quotes Shakespeare even while attempting to steal a woman's purse, trying to pawn a typewriter for drinking money, and smashing his face on a banister. That accident gets him checked into an "alcoholic ward." There, a counselor advises Birnam on the nature of alcoholism: There isn't any cure, besides just stopping. And how many of them can do that? They don't want to, you see. When they feel bad like this fellow here, they think they want to stop, but they don't, really. They can't bring themselves to admit they're alcoholics, or that liquor's got them licked. They believe they can take it or leave it alone &mdash; so they take it. If they do stop, out of fear or whatever, they go at once into such a state of euphoria and well-being that they become over-confident. They're rid of drink, and feel sure enough of themselves to be able to start again, promising they'll take one, or at the most two, and &mdash; well, then it becomes the same old story over again. Perhaps the only thing keeping Birnam from drinking himself to death is his girlfriend Helen, a selfless and incorruptible woman who tolerates his behavior out of love. Helen does, however, upbraid him with the words: &#34;I haven&#39;t got time to be neurotic.&#34; No sooner has he begun to recover from his &#34;Lost Weekend&#34; than he contemplates killing Helen&#39;s maid to get the key to the liquor cabinet. He has a few drinks and crawls into bed wondering, &#34;Why did they make such a fuss?&#34;
5413317	/m/0dkrvd	The Bodysnatchers	Mark Morris		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Doctor, Sam and an allied professor work together to stop alien bodysnatchers, grave-robbers and much worse plaguing London.
5413393	/m/0dkryy	Genocide	Paul Leonard		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Jo Grant, a UNIT veteran, receives a call for help from an old colleague. A scientific unit is being threatened by a UNIT force led by a secretive Captain. Jo Grant ends up sucked out of time and space. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Sam go to 2109 and find an alien race where the humans should be. To make it worse, the aliens claim to have been there for thousands of years...and something is wrong with Sam's mind.
5413403	/m/0dkrzm	War of the Daleks	John Peel		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story opens up with the Doctor and Sam in the TARDIS doing some maintenance when they are collected by a ship which holds an escape pod containing Davros. A group of Thals arrive; they want Davros to alter their species so they will be better able to fight the Daleks. A force of Daleks then arrive and take the Doctor and Davros, along with other characters, to Skaro. Before landing on Skaro, the Doctor discovers that the coordinates he believed were Skaro's were actually those of the planet Antalin. Since Davros's return the Dalek Prime has met considerable resistance with a number of Davros loyalists forming. Initiating a final civil war on Skaro, the Dalek Prime has all the Davros loyalists revealed and exterminated. In the mean time he releases the Doctor to leave Skaro. The Doctor discovers a planted device on board the TARDIS which would allow the Daleks to survive in case the Dalek Prime failed. He jettisons it into the vortex. With his faction defeated, Davros is sentenced to death by matter dispersal. Prior to his downfall he had implanted a Spider Dalek as a spy amongst the Dalek Prime's forces. Davros is placed in a disintegration chamber and his atoms dispersed. His fate is left open when his data is either erased from the disintegrator or transmatted across space to a safe location.
5413561	/m/0dks6x	The Year of Intelligent Tigers	Kate Orman			 The alien world of Hitchemus is known for its animal sanctuaries and the musical talents of the citizens. Now the animals have escaped, a hurricane is threatening everyone and the humans do not want the Doctor's assistance. His companions are left to deal with the situation when the Doctor vanishes into the wild.
5413611	/m/0dks99	Alien Bodies	Lawrence Miles		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith use the TARDIS to find Sputnik 2, and retrieve the body of Laika, which the Doctor then buries on the planet Quiescia. Years later, the Doctor (now in his eighth incarnation) is playing a game of chess with General Tschike of UNISYC, when suddenly the general pulls a gun on him. Tschike tells the Doctor that the only reason the various Earth governments he has encountered down the years have never done this before is because they never really believed that the Doctor could be actually killed. Now they have received information from a source in what was once Borneo that suggests differently. Before Tschike can shoot however, the Doctor dives out a nearby window. Tschike knows he won't hit the ground; after all, he's the Doctor. In fact the TARDIS has been hovering outside and reunited with Sam the Doctor heads to Borneo to investigate. In Borneo (now referred to as East Indies Revit zone) two other UNISYC soldiers, Colonel Kortez and Lieutenant Bregman arrive at what appears to be the ruins of an ancient city, but it is really a block-transfer computational structure known as the Unthinkable City. The City is a venue for the auction for an artifact, known as the Relic. In addition to the two UNISYC soldiers, other bidders include a dead man named Trask, a conceptual entity referred to as The Shift, a Time Lord called Homunculette and two representatives from Faction Paradox, Cousin Justine and Brother Manjuele. The auction is being organised by Mr. Qixotl, who is awaiting the arrival of one more party before the bidding can begin. When the TARDIS materialises at the City, the Doctor and Sam are attacked by leopards that are programmed to attack anyone whose biodata they do not recognise. However, the Doctor locates one of their control pads and adds his own and Sam's biodata to the guest list. Qixotl, horrified, recognises the Doctor and tries to hide his identity from the other quests. Homunculette is a Time Lord from sometime in the Doctor's future where the Time Lords are entangled in a war with a mysterious "Enemy". The Time Lords want to possess the Relic because they think it will give them an advantage in the war and Homunculette has been pursuing it across history. At some point it fell into the hands of Earth governments and Homunculette attempted to retrieve it after the Dalek invasion, but Qixotl had already claimed it. His companion Marie is actually his TARDIS, disguised as a woman. In the City, Marie's weapons systems are suddenly turned against her and she explodes. While the Doctor is amazed by the future evolution of TARDISes, Homunculette assumes that Faction Paradox are responsible, since they are natural enemies of Time Lords. Faction Paradox also once possessed the Relic, which they unearthed from the ruins on Dronid, where the first battle between the Time Lords and the Enemy was fought. However, its discoverers didn't realise its significance and fired it off into the vortex as part of a ritual (where it eventually came to Earth). Sam finds Bregman has gone into culture shock at the presence of so many alien beings and wonders why she has never felt such feelings. The pair is drawn into the Faction Paradox shrine, which resembles a TARDIS crossed with a voodoo shrine, where Brother Manjuele attacks them and takes a biodata sample from Bregman. Both Bregman and Sam begin hearing voices in their heads which appear to come from the Relic and follow them into the heart of the City. The Doctor confronts Qixotl and demands to known what the Relic is. Qixotl reveals the truth; the Relic is a coffin containing the Doctor's own future dead body. Flashbacks reveal Qixotl was once on Dronid just prior to the battle. He was stranded there following the collapse of various criminal activities and learnt from local gossip that the Doctor was on his way to Dronid, but no-one is sure whether he has sided with his own people or the enemy. The current Doctor presses Qixotl for more information, but is appalled when he reveals that the Daleks are the last bidder to arrive. Outside a black spaceship descends and Qixotl and the Doctor go to meet it. But instead of the Daleks, a Kroton, called E-Kobalt emerges, having killed the Dalek passengers and taken their ship. The Krotons are also aware of the future war from captured Time Lord prisoners and believe they can use the conflict to further their empire. Sam and Bregman reach the Relic in a vault at the centre of the City, but suddenly the City's internal defenses are activated which use the intruders biodata to create a psychic attack unique to the individual. Bregman is filled with a sense of self loathing and despair and Sam is attacked by giant babies that appear out of the walls, but the only result is to make her confused. Forced to ignore the auction, the Doctor rushes to shut off the system and rescue them. Finding Sam and the dead embryos, he realises that Sam has two sets of biodata; the Sam he knows and another dark-haired version. This confused the security system and it couldn't generate a proper attack. The Doctor concludes that someone has re-written Sam's biodata to make her the perfect travelling companion for him. His conclusion is confirmed by the dead body in the coffin. Despite being dead, a Timelords mind remains active to some degree and the Doctor more so than usual and it has been calling out to Sam, Bergman and the current Doctor. Back in the Faction shrine, Manjuele attempts to take over Bregman's mind while it is in a confused state. But the Doctor realises what is happening and touches the dead mind inside the Relic to give himself enough energy to push Manjuele out. Repelled from Bergman, Manjuele realises the Doctor's identity and bursts into the auction to tell the others. The various groups assume they have been set up and turn on each other. As the Doctor intervenes, he suddenly recognises Qixotl from his past and is consumed with a desire for bloody revenge on the man who tried to profit from his death. As he is about to strangle him, he suddenly realises that they are all being manipulated by The Shift, that has got into all their minds and exploited their various insecurities to set them against each other. The Doctor deliberately falls into a catatonic state, trapping The Shift inside his mind. It reveals that it works for the Enemy. It was originally a Gabrielidean soldier who fought on the side of the Time Lords and encountered a future Doctor, before dying and being turned in a conceptual entity for the Enemy. When the Doctor wakes up, it can no longer influence the bidders, so retreats inside E-Kobalt to await another chance. The chance arrives soon for E-Kobalt has summoned re-enforcements and the Doctor's actions have deactivated the security systems. Abandoning the auction the bidders attempt to flee. In the chaos, Qixotl is mortally wounded, only to be approached by Trask. Trask is an agent of the Celestis, a future version of the Celestial Intervention Agency who have removed themselves from existence and become beings of pure thought who observe the war from outside the universe. They maintain influence through their agents who bear their mark. They brought Trask back from the dead as such an agent and they can save Qixotl in the same way, if he gives them the Relic. The Doctor uses a piece of crystal discharged by the Krotons weaponry as a biodata sample, which he uses to activate the Faction shrine so the bidders can escape. Meanwhile, Marie has been slowly repairing herself and makes contact with the Doctor. He materialises the Shrine around the attacking Krotons, who accidentally destroy themselves attempting to blast their way out of the Shrine. The Doctor seizes the moment and traps The Shift in a mental prison inside his mind. Stepping out to reclaim his own body, he finds Qixotl has surrendered it to the Celestis, who have taken it to their extra-dimensional home, Mictlan. The Doctor follows Trask and arrives in the castle at the centre of Mictlan where the Celestis watch the universe through a portal in the floor. In addition to the Celestis the world is also populated by their servants, who made deals with them across history and now live a terrible existence as slaves. Just before the battle on Dronid, a future (and possibly the final) Doctor made his own deal with the Celestis to stop them interfering on Dronid. Now they are going to take his body in payment of this debt. The current Doctor makes a counter offer; they can mark his current body and he will be their agent in return for releasing the Relic to him. They agree and place a mark on his hand; but in fact the Doctor has tricked them and they have actually marked The Shift inside his mind. Returning to the real world the bidders go their separate ways; Qixotl dismantles the City (glad the Doctor never learnt the truth about how he got his hands on the Relic), Marie and Homunculette return to the war, The Shift is downloaded into the TARDIS memory. Bregman returns to UNISYC, taking comfort from the fact that although humanity is such as small part of the universe, the higher powers still need human beings to define their existence. The Doctor chooses not to tell Sam about the Relic or what he's learnt about her biodata. He takes the Relic to Quiescia and buries it next to the grave his third self dug. He then uses a bomb to destroy his own body forever.
5413634	/m/0dkscc	The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town	John Grisham	2006-10-10	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Ron Williamson has returned to his hometown of Ada, Oklahoma after multiple failed attempts to play for various minor league baseball teams, including the Fort Lauderdale Yankees and two farm teams owned by the Oakland A's. An elbow injury inhibited his chances to progress. His big dreams were not enough to overcome the odds (less than 10 percent) of making it to a big league game. His failures lead to, or aggravate, his depression and problem drinking. Early in the morning of December 8, 1982, the body of Debra Sue Carter, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress, was found in the bedroom of her garage apartment in Ada. She had been beaten, raped and suffocated. After five years of false starts and shoddy police work by the Ada police department, Williamson—along with his "drinking buddy", Dennis Fritz--were charged, tried and convicted of the rape and murder charges in 1988. Williamson was sentenced to death. Fritz was given a life sentence. Fritz's wife had been murdered seven years earlier and he was raising their only daughter when he was arrested. Grisham's book describes the aggressive and misguided mission of the Ada police department and Pontotoc County District Attorney Bill Peterson to solve the mystery of Carter's murder. The police and prosecutor used forced "dream" confessions, unreliable witnesses, and flimsy evidence to convict Williamson and Fritz. Since a death penalty conviction automatically sets in motion a series of appeals, the Innocence Project aided Williamson's attorney, Mark Barrett, in exposing several glaring holes in the prosecution's case and the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses. Frank H. Seay, a U.S. District Court judge, ordered a retrial. After suffering through a conviction and eleven years on death row, Williamson and Fritz were exonerated by DNA evidence and released on April 15, 1999. Williamson was the 78th inmate released from death row since 1973. Williamson suffered deep and irreversible psychological damage during his incarceration and eventual stay on death row. For example, on September 22, 1994, he was five days away from being executed when his sentence was stayed by the court, following the filing of a habeas corpus petition. He was intermittently treated for manic depression, personality disorders, alcoholism and mild schizophrenia. It was later proven that he was indeed mentally ill and therefore was unfit to have been tried or sentenced to death in the first place. The State of Oklahoma, the city of Ada, and Pontotoc County officials never admitted any errors and threatened to re-arrest him. Another criminal from Ada, Glen Gore, was eventually convicted of the original crime on June 24, 2003. He was sentenced to death He was convicted at a second trial on June 21, 2006 and sentenced by Judge Landrith to life in prison without parole. This was required by law due to a jury deadlock on sentencing. Williamson and Fritz sued and won a settlement for wrongful conviction of $500,000 in 2003 from the City of Ada, and an out-of-court settlement with the State of Oklahoma for an undisclosed amount. By 2004, Williamson was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and died on December 4, 2004 in a Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, nursing home. Fritz returned to Kansas City, where he lives with his daughter, Elizabeth . In 2006, Fritz published his own account of being wrongly convicted in his book titled Journey toward Justice. The book includes accounts (as subplots) of the false conviction, trial and sentencing of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot in the abduction, rape, and purported murder of Denice Haraway, as well as the false conviction of Greg Wilhoit in the rape and murder of his estranged wife, Kathy. At one time, all the men were incarcerated in the same death row. About two decades before Grisham's book, Ward and Fontenot's wrongful convictions were detailed in a book published in 1987 called The Dreams of Ada by Robert Mayer.
5413890	/m/0dksqv	The God Delusion	Richard Dawkins	2006	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/06mq7": "Science", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Dawkins dedicates the book to Douglas Adams and quotes the novelist: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" The book contains ten chapters. The first few chapters make a case that there is almost certainly no God, while the rest discuss religion and morality. Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four "consciousness-raising" messages: # Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled. # Natural selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a "God hypothesis"—the illusion of intelligent design—in explaining the living world and the cosmos. # Children should not be labelled by their parents' religion. Terms like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should make people cringe. # Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. Since there are a number of different theistic ideas relating to the nature of God(s), Dawkins defines the concept of God that he wishes to address early in the book. Dawkins distinguishes between an abstract, impersonal god (such as found in pantheism, or as promoted by Spinoza or Einstein) from a personal God who is the creator of the universe, who is interested in human affairs, and who should be worshipped. This latter type of God, the existence of which Dawkins calls the "God Hypothesis", becomes an important theme in the book. He maintains that the existence of such a God would have effects in the physical universe and – like any other hypothesis – can be tested and falsified. Dawkins surveys briefly the main philosophical arguments in favour of God's existence. Of the various philosophical proofs that he discusses, he singles out the Argument from design for longer consideration. Dawkins concludes that evolution by natural selection can explain apparent design in nature. He writes that one of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain "how the complex, improbable design in the universe arises", and suggests that there are two competing explanations: # A hypothesis involving a designer, that is, a complex being to account for the complexity that we see. # A hypothesis, with supporting theories, that explains how, from simple origins and principles, something more complex can emerge. This is the basic set-up of his argument against the existence of God, the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit, where he argues that the first attempt is self-refuting, and the second approach is the way forward. At the end of chapter 4, Why there almost certainly is no God, Dawkins sums up his argument and states, "The temptation [to attribute the appearance of a design to actual design itself] is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable". In addition, chapter 4 asserts that the alternative to the designer hypothesis is not chance, but natural selection. Dawkins does not claim to disprove God with absolute certainty. Instead, he suggests as a general principle that simpler explanations are preferable (see Occam's razor), and that an omniscient and omnipotent God must be extremely complex. As such he argues that the theory of a universe without a God is preferable to the theory of a universe with a God. The second half of the book begins by exploring the roots of religion and seeking an explanation for its ubiquity across human cultures. Dawkins advocates the "theory of religion as an accidental by-product – a misfiring of something useful" as for example the mind's employment of intentional stance. Dawkins suggests that the theory of memes, and human susceptibility to religious memes in particular, can explain how religions might spread like "mind viruses" across societies. He then turns to the subject of morality, maintaining that we do not need religion to be good. Instead, our morality has a Darwinian explanation: altruistic genes, selected through the process of evolution, give people natural empathy. He asks, "would you commit murder, rape or robbery if you knew that no God existed?" He argues that very few people would answer "yes", undermining the claim that religion is needed to make us behave morally. In support of this view, he surveys the history of morality, arguing that there is a moral Zeitgeist that continually evolves in society, generally progressing toward liberalism. As it progresses, this moral consensus influences how religious leaders interpret their holy writings. Thus, Dawkins states, morality does not originate from the Bible, rather our moral progress informs what part of the Bible Christians accept and what they now dismiss. The God Delusion is not just a defence of atheism, but also goes on the offensive against religion. Dawkins sees religion as subverting science, fostering fanaticism, encouraging bigotry against homosexuals, and influencing society in other negative ways. He is most outraged about the teaching of religion in schools, which he considers to be an indoctrination process. He equates the religious teaching of children by parents and teachers in faith schools to a form of mental abuse. Dawkins considers the labels "Muslim child" or a "Catholic child" equally misapplied as the descriptions "Marxist child" or a "Tory child", as he wonders how a young child can be considered developed enough to have such independent views on the cosmos and humanity's place within it. The book concludes with the question whether religion, despite its alleged problems, fills a "much needed gap", giving consolation and inspiration to people who need it. According to Dawkins, these needs are much better filled by non-religious means such as philosophy and science. He suggests that an atheistic worldview is life-affirming in a way that religion, with its unsatisfying "answers" to life's mysteries, could never be. An appendix gives addresses for those "needing support in escaping religion".
5414246	/m/0dkt7h	Escape Velocity	Colin Brake		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In 2001, there is a new space race, between Pierre Yves-Dudoin and Arthur Tyler III, both competing to be the first privately funded man in space. Eventually Pierre announces that he has succeeded, and will be in space in a week. However, Pierre has been helped by a scout of the Kulan race, who are poised to invade Earth. In Brussels a man is shot in front of stockbroker Anji Kapoor and her boyfriend Dave. When Dave attempts first aid, he realises the man is not human. The man then slips a package into Dave's pocket and injects a substance into his wrist. Meanwhile, in London, Fitz is dropped off by Compassion two days before he is to meet the Doctor. When he sees Dave in a news report claiming the dead man had two hearts, he fears the worst and travels to Brussels. After speaking to Dave in Brussels, Fitz discovers that the man wasn't the Doctor, but stays to help investigate. Dave finds the package in his pocket and calls a number written on it, and finds himself speaking to Arthur Tyler III. After meeting Tyler's bodyguard, they bring him back to Dave and Anji's hotel room only to find the killers outside. As the killers drive away, one of them drops his gun which is of alien origin. When Dave leaves the room to contact the police, the dead man's killers kidnap him. Anji then decides to go with Fitz to meet the Doctor. On the 8th of February, Anji and Fitz arrive at St. Louis' pub to meet the Doctor. The Doctor reveals that he created the pub to lure Fitz to him. When the Doctor sees Fitz, he still cannot remember any of his past, and his TARDIS is still smaller on the inside than the outside. Despite this, the Doctor agrees to help and sends Fitz back to Brussels to investigate if Pierre is involved, whilst the Doctor and Anji will stay in London to investigate Tyler. In Brussels Fitz meets a CIA agent called Fisher who is investigating whether Pierre Dudoin's company, ITI, has been in contact with aliens. Together they break into the ITI headquarters and find an alien called Sa'Motta tending to Dave. Sa'Motta explains that he came to Earth in a failed invasion spearhead four years ago and has been stranded which prevents him from stopping their leader, Fray'kon, from reporting that Earth should be invaded by the Kulans. Fray'kon has been helping Dubion's ship near completion in order to rejoin the invasion fleet. The other Kulans in the spearhead just want to return home and have been helping Tyler's ship. However Kulan ships need telepathy to work, so research has been done to produce a hybrid who can work the ship. The dead man had been giving the genes necessary to Tyler, but injected them into Dave to preserve them. However, the genes injected into Dave are slowly killing him. As guards recapture Dave, Fisher's boss orders a squad to capture Fitz and Sa'Motta. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Anji go to Tyler's base and save his life after a Kulan computer virus planted by Dudoin traps Tyler in a room with a fire. The Doctor puts the virus on a DVD for study. The Doctor offers to help stop Dudoin and Fray'kon's plan, but Tyler's ship is destroyed by an after-effect of the virus. Tyler turns to his former friend and Dudoin's ex-wife Christine Holland to help with adapting the Kulan technology for humans, but before he can contact her, Dudoin kidnaps his daughter Pippa to force her to come to Brussels to help Dave. She does so, but Dudoin reveals he plans to launch the rocket without testing it. Christine sees Fray'kon tamper with the controls, but Dudoin refuses to listen. Fitz and Sa'Motta attempt to go to London, but realise they are followed by CIA agents. Fitz is captured and taken to the CIA's agent known as Control, but Sa'Motta escapes, and makes the way to the CIA base where Fitz is being held. Control puts a tracer on Fitz and allows Sa'Motta to rescue him to lead the CIA to the other Kulan. While escaping, Fitz realises that his memories of the destruction of Gallifrey are getting blurred and hazy. In space, the invasion fleet moves into its final formation, ready to invade on Fray'kon's command. Meanwhile, the Doctor rescues Christine's daughter and asks for Tyler's help in stopping Dudoin and Fray'kon getting to space and alerting the invasion fleet, which he agrees to. The Doctor, Tyler, and Anji break into Dudoin's launch pad with ease as Fitz and Sa'Motta are being chased by guards elsewhere in the complex. After rescuing Christine, the Doctor links his mind to Dudoin's ship to shut it down, but he passes out in the process. However, he first raises the oxygen level which causes the Kulan led by Fray'kon to faint, but Fray'kon escapes. Tyler then uses the DVD with the Kulan virus to destroy the systems, and the cabin sets alight, killing the Kulan aboard and Dudoin himself. Returning to Britain, the Doctor helps Tyler complete his rocket so he can return Sa'Motta to the invasion fleet to order the abortion of the invasion. Dave is recovering, but Christine discovers a small amount of Kulan DNA in Dave which was there before his infection, indicating that humans and Kulan may be genetically related, giving solid evidence against the invasion. However Fray'kon enters, having followed them. Control's squad enters, to stop Tyler's ship taking Sa'Motta to the fleet, but Tyler attempts to launch anyway. Fray'kon steals the Doctor's spacesuit and forces Dave to drive to the launch platform, whilst holding Anji hostage. After reaching the rocket, he murders Dave and boards the rocket. The CIA withdraw from the complex, but the Doctor can't warn Tyler about Fray'kon being on board the rocket. Fray'kon overpowers the crew and drives the rocket towards the fleet, where he informs the fleet commander that the humans are savages, and should be killed. The Doctor and Anji go back to St Louis' pub, where the TARDIS has finally regenerated itself. The Doctor pilots the TARDIS onto the Kulan command ship. The Doctor tells Anji to stay in the TARDIS, but she follows him and watches him be captured and put in a holding cell. The Kulan destroy Tyler's ship and put him on trial in front of their war council. Anji releases Fitz and they go to the weapons room. Trying to scare the Kulan by firing an energy beam, she instead fires a barrage of missiles which destroy half the fleet, who turn on each other. The Doctor and Tyler fight Fray'kon, but when Fray'kon gets stunned, Tyler offers to stay and hold off Fray'kon whilst the others escape. Tyler tricks Fray'kon into falling to an airlock and Tyler ejects himself and Fray'kon into space. As the remainder of the fleet blows up as the TARDIS dematerialises. The Doctor, who still cannot remember anything, offers to take Anji home, but the TARDIS materialises onto a prehistoric landscape instead.
5414598	/m/0dktw3	The Burning	Justin Richards		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the late 19th century, the village of Middleton is on the verge of bankrupty due to the tin mine running out, when a huge fissure opens in the moorlands. After a visitor called Roger Nepath offers to buy the mine and visits the fissure with the lord of the manor, Lord Urton's personality changes, and allows Nepath to move into his manor house with his sister Patience. The amnesiac Doctor arrives at the village and befriends Professor Dobbs from The Society of Psychical Research during his research into the fissure. Dobbs's assistant Gaddis claims to have empathic powers, which lead him to point along the fissure, where he is chased off by Urton. The Doctor notices that the water in a dam near the fissure has become warm and acidic, suggesting that it has been heated. Returning to the Fissure they find Gaddis's corpse horribly burnt, which fascinates the Doctor. Nepath later holds an auction to fund his purchase, and demonstration a metal that returns to its original shape when destroyed, which Nepath gives the Doctor a sample of. The army gives Nepath a large amount of money for him to create self repairing guns for the army, which Nepath uses to buy more mining equipment. Later, the metal turns into molten lava, which causes the remains of TARDIS to grow to normal size, although it is still a featureless blue box. Dobbs and the Doctor break into the manor and discover that Nepath had been making many copies of his artifacts out of the metal, then selling them, as well as a young woman's body in a box, before narrowly escaping the Urtons. Going into the mines, the Doctor finds that the tremors that caused the fissure opened up a new mine shaft, which is full of pools of molten lava, which is the source of the metal. The lava suddenly forms into creatures which burn Dobbs to death whilst the Doctor escapes. The Doctor explains to Reverend Stobbold that Nepath is helping living magma, with the power to reform itself, which has already replaced the Urtons and mine workers. After an explosion, the Doctor relises that Middleton is located in an ancient volcanic caldera - with a new eruption about to start. The Doctor meets the army on the way to pick up their new guns, where they are attacked by magma creatures and the new guns explode when fired, killing most of the soldiers. At the manor Nepath explains that the creature has run out of resources in the mine, and he intends to release it into new areas, then take advantage of the resulting chaos. He reveals that the body in the case is his sister Patience's, who died as the result of a building collapsing after a fire, and Nepath believes that the creature can bring her back to life. Escaping the manor, the Doctor pushes Lord Urton into a river, where the cold water cools him into a statue, which crumbles apart. The Doctor returns to the manor and tells him that the woman is not really Patience. When Nepath questions her, she embraces him as the magma leaves her body, leaving him trapped in a statue's arms. The army place explosives near the dam, which the magma accidentally explodes, releasing water that turns the magma into stone. Nepath is freed from the statue, but the Doctor pushes him into the water, causing him to drown. The flood unearths new seams of tin ore, saving the town's economy. The Doctor leaves with the TARDIS's remains to wait for his meeting with Fitz in 2001.
5416143	/m/0dkwvn	The Doll	Bolesław Prus			 Wokulski begins his career as a waiter at Hopfer's, a Warsaw restaurant. The scion of an impoverished Polish noble family dreams of a life in science. After taking part in the failed 1863 Uprising against Tsarist Russia, he is sentenced to exile in Siberia. On eventual return to Warsaw, he becomes a salesman at Mincel's haberdashery. Marrying the late owner's widow (who eventually dies), he comes into money and uses it to set up a partnership with a Russian merchant he had met while in exile. The two merchants go to Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, and Wokulski makes a fortune supplying the Russian Army. The enterprising Wokulski now proves a romantic at heart, falling in love with Izabela, daughter of the vacuous, bankrupt aristocrat, Tomasz Łęcki. The manager of Wokulski's Warsaw store, Ignacy Rzecki, is a man of an earlier generation, a modest bachelor who lives on memories of his youth, which was a heroic chapter in his own life and that of Europe. Through his diary the reader learns about some of Wokulski's adventures, seen through the eyes of an admirer. Rzecki and his friend Katz had gone to Hungary in 1848 to enlist in the revolutionary army. For Rzecki, the cause of freedom in Europe is connected with the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Hungarian revolution had sparked new hopes of abolishing the reactionary system that had triumphed at Napoleon's fall. Later he had reposed his hopes in Napoleon III. Now, as he writes, he places them in Bonaparte's scion, Napoleon III's son, Prince Loulou. At novel's end, when Rzecki hears that Loulou has perished in Africa, fighting in British ranks against rebel tribesmen, he will be overcome by the despondence of old age. For now, Rzecki lives in constant excitement, preoccupied by politics, which he refers to in his diary by the code-letter "P." Everywhere in the press he finds indications that a long-awaited "it" is beginning. In addition to the two generations represented by Rzecki and Wokulski, the novel provides glimpses of a third, younger one, exemplified in the scientist Julian Ochocki (modeled on Prus' friend, Julian Ochorowicz), some students, and young salesmen at Wokulski's store. The half-starving students inhabit the garret of an apartment house and are in constant conflict with the landlord over their arrears of rent; they are rebels, are inclined to macabre pranks, and are probably socialists. Also of socialist persuasion is a young salesman, whereas some of the latter's colleagues believe first and last in personal gain. The Dolls plot focuses on Wokulski's infatuation with the superficial Izabela, who sees him only as a plebeian intruder into her rarefied world, a brute with huge red hands; for her, persons below the social standing of aristocrats are hardly human. Wokulski, in his quest to win Izabela, begins frequenting theaters and aristocratic salons; and, to help her financially distressed father, founds a company and sets the aristocrats up as shareholders in the business. Wokulski's eventual downfall highlights The Dolls overarching theme: the inertia of Polish society.
5416976	/m/0dkxy3	The Outpost	Bolesław Prus			 The Outpost is a study of rural Poland. Its principal character, a peasant surnamed Ślimak ("Snail"), typifies his village's inhabitants, nearly all illiterate; there is no school. Religion is naively superficial: when a villager happens to buy a painting of Leda and the Swan, the community pray before it as they do before two ancient portraits of noblemen who had been benefactors of the local church. Changes are, however, coming to the area. A railway is being built nearby. The owners of a local manor sell their estate to German settlers financed by Bismarck's German government. Polish landowners, who speak more French than Polish, are happy to take the money and move to a city or abroad, away from the boring countryside. Ślimak's farm becomes an isolated Polish outpost in an increasingly German-settled neighborhood. Ślimak suffers a series of adversities as he refuses to sell his plot of land to German setters (who are described not unsympathetically). The stubborn, conservative peasant is not acting from self-interest, since the money he would have gotten could have bought a better farm elsewhere; he is, rather, acting from inertia and from a principle inculcated in him by his father and grandfather: that when a peasant loses his hereditary plot, he faces the greatest of misfortunes — becoming a mere wage-earner. Still, Ślimak lacks his wife's strength of will; he hesitates. But on her deathbed she makes him swear that he will never sell their land. The book's somber picture is relieved by the author's humor and warmth. The local Catholic priest, habitué of dinners and hunting parties at local manors, is not entirely devoid of Christian virtues. Two of the village's humbler denizens turn out to be exemplars of selflessness. Ślimak's half-wit farm hand, on finding an abandoned baby, takes it home to care for it. After Mrs. Ślimak dies and the widower's farm burns down, he is befriended by a poor, empathetic Jewish peddler who comes to his aid and, in the manner of a deus ex machina, saves the day and the farm.
5419651	/m/0dl11h	Legacy of the Daleks	John Peel		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Great Britain in the late 22nd century is slowly recovering from the devastation that followed the Daleks' invasion. The Doctor's very first travelling companion -- his granddaughter, Susan -- is where he left her, helping to rebuild Earth for the survivors. But danger still remains all around... While searching for his lost companion, Sam, the Doctor finds himself in Domain London. But it seems that Susan is now missing too, and his efforts to find her lead to confrontation with the ambitious Lord Haldoran, who is poised to take control of southern Britain through all-out war. With the help of a sinister advisor, Haldoran's plans are already well advanced. Power cables have been fed down a mineshaft, reactivating a mysterious old device of hideous power. But has the Dalek presence on Earth really been wiped out? Or are there still traps set for the unwary? The Doctor learns to his cost once again that when dealing with the evil of the Daleks, nothing can be taken at face value...
5419833	/m/0dl1ck	Placebo Effect	Gary Russell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Doctor takes Sam to Micawber’s World, an artificial planet owned by the Carrington Corporation, to attend the wedding of his friends Stacy Townsend and the Ice Warrior Ssard. Sam is slightly peeved to learn that they travelled with him during the three-year period in which he’d left her at a one-hour Greenpeace rally, but she eventually forgives him. The wedding ceremony is disrupted by followers of the Church of the Way Forward, who believe that interspecies marriage dilutes racial purity and is thus forbidden by their Goddess. Chase Carrington himself apologises for the disruption and pays for the wedding guests’ expenses out of his own pocket. Later, however, he is murdered by Foamasi assassins working for the Dark Peaks Lodge, and an impersonator in a body-suit disguise takes his place... Micawber’s World is hosting the 3999 Olympics, and Ms Sox, the head of security for Carrington Corp, has called in extra Space Security troops for the occasion. A patrol vanishes while lighting the tunnels beneath the surface of the planet, but rather than court-martial Sergeant Dallion for losing her men without an explanation, Commander Ritchie gives her and the remaining members of her squad leeway to investigate. In fact, Ritchie’s wife and son have been kidnapped by the Dark Peaks Lodge, who intend to discover what’s going on in the tunnels and then kill Dallion. Rivalry between Dark Peaks and the Twin Suns Lodge leads to the murder of a Foamasi, and when the Doctor notices the body being taken to the Space Security building for an autopsy, he involves himself in the investigation out of curiosity. Ritchie decides that the Doctor might prove to be a useful loose cannon and directs him to the Foamasi ambassador, Green Fingers. The Doctor also speaks with Ms Sox and with Sergeant Dallion, and eventually they all put together their stories and determine that the Dark Peaks Lodge is attempting to infiltrate Carrington Corp through blackmail, murder and impersonation. Sam investigates the Church of the Way Forward but determines that they’re not connected to the mystery; the telepathic Reverend Lukas simply wants to spread the word of his Goddess throughout the galaxy. His young follower Kyle Dale, who has come to compete in the Olympics, becomes intrigued by Sam’s intelligent and passionate defense of her own beliefs. After leaving the Church followers, Sam happens across the entourage of the visiting Duchess of Auckland, just as the sycophantic journalist Talon Chalfont learns that he’s been snubbed from the Duchess’ itinerary. Chalfont hacks into the Federation computers to search for a better story, learns of the missing troopers and sets off to investigate. Sam follows him, and Kyle, who happens to be passing by, follows them both. Ms Sox informs the Doctor that her security team has been investigating SSS xenobiologist Miles Mason, who was seen consorting with an unknown alien shortly before arriving on Micawber’s World. Ms Sox believes that Mason is involved with drug smugglers who have set up camp in the tunnels; it would seem that the Dark Peaks Lodge learned of her investigation while infiltrating Carrington Corp, and are attempting to find out what’s going on so they can get in on the action. But Dark Peaks agents learn of the investigation and send word to Events Co-ordinator Sumner that Ritchie and his associates are conspiring to assassinate the Duchess of Auckland. What nobody yet realizes is that the creatures in the tunnels are Wirrrn. Dr Mason has been absorbed into the Wirrrn hive mind, and has been using the facilities of the SSS labs to manufacture a mutagenic drug which will transform anyone who takes it into a Wirrrn. He intends to trick the Foamasi into distributing the drugs to the athletes under the impression that they are performance-enhancing; in fact most of them are placebos with the mutagenic tags attached. Some of the drugs contain a time-release formula, so those who take them will not fully transform into a Wirrrn for months, thus spreading the taint throughout the galaxy... The missing patrol members have been transformed into Wirrrn larvae, and the Queen sends them to the surface to await the start of the games. She sends a telepathic message to Mason, ordering him to arrange a distraction that will provide the larvae with cover for their attack. The signal is also picked up by the Doctor, who faints dead away just as Sumner arrives to arrest the “conspirators” -- and by Reverend Lukas, who believes it to be the call of his Goddess, and who leads his followers into the tunnels where most are absorbed by the Wirrrn. Chalfont is also transformed into a Wirrrn, but Sam and Kyle manage to escape. Sumner realizes he’s been deceived, and the recovering Doctor realizes that there’s more going on in the tunnels than he’d previously believed. Green Fingers informs the other Lodges about Dark Peaks’ activities and executes the Dark Peaks Patriarch; the remaining Dark Peaks Foamasi are targeted and killed by assassins from the other Lodges, and eventually Ritchie’s wife and son are found and rescued. In the process, it becomes clear that many Dark Peaks agents have themselves become infected by the Wirrrn in the course of their criminal activities. The Doctor and Ms Sox obtain a sample of the drugs, analyse them and learn the truth just as Sam and Kyle arrive with their story. Mason plants a bomb beneath the Duchess of Auckland’s podium, and she is killed instantly in the explosion. In the ensuing confusion the Wirrrn larvae emerge and attack, and some of the Olympic athletes spontaneously transform into Wirrrn, spreading confusion and terror. But thanks to their advance warning of the danger, SSS troops are able to contain the attack and drive off the larvae. The Doctor enters the tunnels and confronts the Wirrrn Queen, who has made her nest around the planet’s artificial power source; he is able to rewire it and electrocute her, but some of the Wirrrn larvae survive. Acting on instinct, they steal a shuttle and set off back “home”, to the Andromeda Galaxy. The Doctor synthesizes an antidote to the mutagenic drug, saving the athletes who took them from becoming Wirrrn—although they will never fully recover. Kyle decides to remain on Micawber’s World and carry on the good work of the Church despite Lukas’ betrayal of his ideals. Lukas himself has escaped with the body of the Wirrrn Queen and with two of his followers—who are slowly transforming into Wirrrn themselves, ready to spread the word of their Goddess throughout the galaxy...
5419981	/m/0dl1lt	Someday Angeline	Louis Sachar	1983	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Angeline is extremely intelligent, because she knew things, especially related to ocean animals and the ocean, "before she was born." Even though she is only eight, she is sent to the sixth grade. She wants to be a garbage collector like her father, although he wants her to become famous and is afraid of her intelligence at times. At school she also faces problems, bullied by the other students and misunderstood by her teacher, Mrs. Hardlick. Her only two friends are a fifth grade teacher, Miss Turbone (also known as Mr. Bone) and Gary Boone (who later gets a book to himself, Dogs Don't Tell Jokes). Mr. Persopolis wants the best for his daughter, and he often pushes her too hard to achieve. When she is elected Secretary of Trash, he becomes angry and orders her to resign. The next day at school, Mrs. Hardlick does not listen to Angeline when she tries to resign, and Angeline is so frustrated that she messes up the classroom, denouncing everything as "Garbage!" Mrs. Hardlick is furious and tells Angeline to not come back without a signed note from her father. For the next week she goes to the aquarium each day, instead of going to school. Her father gets home after she does, so he does not know. When Miss Turbone finds out about this, she arranges to talk with Mr. Persopolis (it is implied that the two fall in love when they meet). They decide Angeline will be transferred to Miss Turbone's fifth grade class, and that she will return to Mrs. Hardlick's class for a day or two while the transfer is arranged. They also plan to go on a date the next evening. However, Mrs. Hardlick succeeds in alienating Angeline one more time, and she once more runs away from school, this time to the beach, where she jumps off the pier (the better to see the fish) and nearly drowns. However, she is saved by a fisherman and later gets completely better.
5420650	/m/0dl2hz	The Face-Eater	Simon Messingham		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On Earth's first space colony, Proxima II, an expedition to a nearby mountain disappears and only one survivor, Jake Leary, returns, apparently turned insane by the experience, he breaks out of hospital and vanishes. Afterwards mutilated bodies begin appearing on the streets, causing the colony's workers to send a distress signal against the wishes of their leader, Helen Percival. The Doctor and Sam arrive in response to the signal, causing Percival to become paranoid that she will be overthrown. despite this, she allows The Doctor to investigate. Sam learns that Percival burned the bodies without an autopsy and breaks into Helen's office to investigate and sets off a bomb planted to stop intruders, and is saved by Police Chief Fuller. Meanwhile, the Doctor speaks to xenozoologist Joan Betts, who is studying the native Proximans, who are dying out suddenly. The Doctor theorises that the Proxians have telepathic powers which are focused on the mountain, trapping something in. When The Doctor attempts to contact their group mind, he learns that they are under threat from an ancient evil. When The Doctor follows Joan into the sewers later that day, something attacks them which kills Joan and knocks him unconscious. Percival begins to oppress the colonists, sparking off riots, whilst Sam and Fuller read Leary's report which explain that the expedition woke an ancient evil which was dormant in the mountains. Later Fuller reveals that he is a shape shifter which has killed the real Fuller. However Sam escapes when a Proximan attacks the creature. The Doctor is brought to the officers, where he explains that an ancient creature called the Face-Eater has being sending out shape shifters to gather life essences for it to eat. Leary enters and explains that this Doctor is a shape shifter - the real one was with him in the mountains, and that is was a shape shifter impersonating him that is responsible for the murders. The Doctor finds the Face-Eater with a Proximan's help and learns that the Proximans built the Face-Eater as a focal point for their group mind in case of attack, but it soon began to eat all life on the planet until it was subdued, but the colonists have woken it again. The Face-Eater then becomes strong enough to move by itself and attacks the settlement. After Percival fails to launch a nuclear strike to wipe out the colony, she is killed by a worker. The Face-Eater attempts to absorb The Doctor, but is confused by his dormant personalities, allowing the Proximans to attack it. Finding the control unit, the Proximans shut down the Face-Eater, which also shuts down their group mind mentally degenerating them into little more than animals. The Doctor and Sam then leave.
5420907	/m/0dl2y5	Revolution Man	Paul Leonard		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor tries to stop a mysterious entity called The Revolution Man from spreading mind altering drugs in the 1960s.
5421043	/m/0dl350	Unnatural History	Kate Orman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In London, 2002, the dark haired Sam Jones is living a normal life, though struggling with a drug addiction, when the Eighth Doctor arrives in the shop she works in and tells her that she should have blonde hair and be travelling with him. Shocked by this, she runs out onto the street to get away from him and is attacked by a ten year old boy, who claims that she shouldn't exist. When the Doctor rescues her, she agrees to go with him to San Francisco. When they arrive, the Doctor finds Fitz and explains that when the TARDIS destroyed the Earth, but reversed time, a scar in space and time was left behind and strange creatures from other dimensions are being attracted to the city by it. The TARDIS has become trapped inside the scar, and will be crushed by the strain of trying to stabilise the scar in three days unless it is removed. When the Doctor originally arrived, blonde Sam fell in the scar, and dark Sam appeared in London. The Doctor's attempts to contact the Time Lords to obtain new equipment to close the scar fails, and he meets the boy again, who reveals that he is a member of Faction Paradox, but he claims that he isn't here to harm the Doctor, just to observe his actions. Later the Doctor notices a Kraken in the bay, which will destroy the city looking for food if it detects the energy coming from the scar, but the TARDIS is currently blocking it from detecting them. Now under another time limit, the Doctor finds a scientist called Joyce who promises to help repair the equipment needed to close the scar. The Doctor tells Sam that her biodata is vulnerable to change from the pulses coming from the scar. One of Fitz's contacts kidnaps them and delivers them to a man who fits them with tracking devices and releases them. In Golden Gate Park the Doctor discovers lines of his own biodata lying exposed on the ground, and seeing this removes the tracking devices. The Doctor now realizes that the man who kidnapped them was from the higher dimensions, and has been experimenting with the Doctor's biodata. The Doctor learns that the man's name is Griffin and he wants to collect the unnatural creatures in the city. The Doctor traps Griffin who explains that his ambition is to categorize every creature in the universe. Griffin then escapes and the Doctor returns to his hotel. At the hotel Griffin's henchmen kidnap Fitz, but accidentally leave Sam behind. The Doctor goes to check Joyce's progress with his equipment, only to discover that Joyce has also been experimenting with his biodata as well, but refuses to explain why. After learning that Fitz has been kidnapped, the Doctor confronts Griffin, who explains that he wants to see the Kraken destroy the city. Griffin decides to simplify the Doctor's biodata and begins experimenting on it. Sam attempts to rescue him, but Griffin takes a sample of her biodata before they both escape. Joyce finishes repairing the Doctor's equipment. Returning to the scar, the Doctor finds his equipment can't close the scar and will only remove the TARDIS from the scar, which will enable the Kraken to destroy the city, so the Doctor decides to sacrifice the TARDIS to seal the scar. Joyce accidentally tells Griffin that the largest amount of the Doctor's exposed biodata is at the scar. Griffin goes there and tries to edit the Doctor and Sam's biodata, but the Doctor threatens to alter the higher dimensions that Griffin lives in. Griffin releases Fitz, but Fitz then attacks Griffin and traps him in his dimensionally transcendental specimen box. The Doctor pulls the TARDIS out of the scar, causing the Kraken to look for food. The Doctor places a machine to distract the Kraken on the bay, and the boy offers to create a paradox, but the Doctor refuses. Back at the scar, Sam jumps in, turning her into blonde Sam. The Doctor frees Griffin's specimens from the box, who attack Griffin and push him into the scar. Sam throws the specimen box into the scar after him, causing it to close, and which causes dark Sam to cease to exist and the Kraken and the other creatures return to their own dimension. The boy explains that blonde Sam is a paradox, because blonde Sam was created when dark Sam threw herself in amongst the Doctor’s biodata in the scar, but she was only able to do so because the Doctor brought her to the scar he’d created. Now he has no shadow, like the other Faction members, and the boy tells him that he will soon be a Faction member.
5421216	/m/0dl3m8	Autumn Mist	David A. McIntee			 The Doctor investigates an ancient force inferering with The Battle of the Bulge.
5421868	/m/0dl4k6	The Tinder Box	Hans Christian Andersen	1835-05-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story opens with a poor soldier returning home from war. He meets a witch, who asks him to climb into a hollow tree to retrieve a magic tinderbox. The witch gives the man permission to take anything he finds inside the chambers, but he must return the tinderbox. In the tree, he finds three chambers filled with precious coins guarded by three monstrous dogs, "one with eyes the size of teacups", who guards a vault filled with pennies, one with "eyes the size of supper-plates", who guards a vault filled with silver, and one with eyes "the size of windmills", who guards a vault filled with gold. He fills his pockets with money, finds the tinderbox, and returns to the witch. When she demands the tinderbox without giving a reason, the soldier lops off her head with his sword. In the following scene, the soldier enters a large city and buys himself splendid clothing. He makes many friends, and lives in a magnificent apartment. He learns of a princess kept in a tower after a prophecy foretold her marriage to a common soldier; his interest is piqued and he wants to see her but realizes his whim cannot be satisfied. Eventually, the soldier's money is depleted and he is forced to live in a dark attic. He strikes the tinderbox to light the room, and one of the dogs appears before him. The soldier then discovers he can summon all three dogs and order them to bring him money from their subterranean dwelling. Again, he lives splendidly. One night, he recalls the story of the princess in the locked tower, and desires to see her. He strikes the tinderbox and sends the dog with eyes the size of teacups to bring her to his apartment. The soldier is overwhelmed with her beauty, kisses her and orders the dog to return her to the tower. The following morning, the princess tells her parents she has had a strange dream and relates the night's adventure. The royal couple then watch her closely. When the princess is carried away again, they unsuccessfully use a trail of flour and chalk marks on neighborhood doors to find where she spends her nights. Eventually, her whereabouts are discovered and the soldier is clapped in prison and sentenced to death. On the day of execution, the soldier sends a boy for his tinderbox, and, at the scaffold, asks to have a last smoke. He then strikes the tinderbox and the three monstrous dogs appear. They toss the judge and the councilors, the King and Queen into the air. All are dashed to pieces when they fall to earth. The soldier and the princess are united, and the dogs join the wedding feast.
5422647	/m/0dl5zg	A Martian Odyssey	Stanley G. Weinbaum	1934-07		 Early in the 21st century, nearly twenty years after the invention of atomic power and ten years after the first lunar landing, the four-man crew of the Ares has landed on Mars in the Mare Cimmerium. A week after the landing, Dick Jarvis, the ship's American chemist, sets out south in an auxiliary rocket to photograph the landscape. Eight hundred miles out, the engine on Jarvis' rocket gives out, and he crash-lands into one of the Thyle regions. Rather than sit and wait for rescue, Jarvis decides to walk back north to the Ares. Just after crossing into the Mare Chronium, Jarvis comes across a tentacled Martian creature attacking a large birdlike creature. He notices that the birdlike Martian is carrying a bag around its neck, and figuring it for an intelligent being, saves it from the tentacled monstrosity. The rescued creature refers to itself as Tweel. Tweel accompanies Jarvis on his trip back to the Ares, in the course of which it manages to pick up some English, although Jarvis is unable to make any sense of Tweel's language. At first, Tweel travels in tremendous, city-block-long leaps that end with its long beak buried in the ground, but upon seeing Jarvis trudge along, walks beside him. Upon reaching Xanthus Jarvis and Tweel find a line of small pyramids tens of thousands of years old made of silica bricks, each open at the top. As they follow the line, the pyramids slowly become larger and newer. By the time the pyramids are ten feet high, the travelers reach the end of the line and find a pyramid that isn't open at the top. As they watch, a creature with gray scales, one arm, a mouth and a pointed tail pushes its way out of the top of the pyramid, pulls itself several yards along the ground, then plants itself in the ground by the tail. It starts exhaling bricks from its mouth at ten-minute intervals and using them to build another pyramid around itself. Jarvis realizes that the creature is silicon-based rather than carbon-based; neither animal, vegetable nor mineral, but a little of each. The strange combination of a creature produces the solid substance silica and builds himself in with the By-product then sleeps for an unknown length of time. As the two approach a canal cutting across Xanthus, Jarvis is feeling homesick for New York City, thinking about Fancy Long, a woman he knows from the cast of the Yerba Mate Hour television show. When he sees Long standing by the canal, he begins to approach her, but is stopped by Tweel. Tweel takes out a gun that fires poisoned glass needles and shoots Long, who vanishes, replaced by one of the tentacled creatures that Jarvis rescued Tweel from at their first meeting. Jarvis realizes that the tentacled creature, which he names a dream-beast, lures its prey by projecting illusions into their minds. As Jarvis and Tweel approach a city on the canal bank, they are passed by a barrel-like creature with four legs, four arms, and a circle of eyes around its waist. The barrel creature is pushing an empty coppery cart; it pays no attention to Jarvis and Tweel as it goes by them. Another goes by, then a third. Jarvis stands in front of the third, which stops. Jarvis says, "We are friends," and the cart creature repeats the phrase from a diaphragm atop its body, "We are v-r-r-riends," before pushing past him. The next cart creature repeats the phrase as it goes by, and the next. Eventually the cart creatures start returning from the city with their carts full of stones, sand, and chunks of rubbery plants. Jarvis stands in front of one and refuses to move. Eventually the cart creature tweaks his nose hard enough to make him jump aside and yell "Ouch". After that, every cart creature that passes by says "We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!" Jarvis and Tweel follow the cart creatures to their destination, a mound with a tunnel leading down below it. Jarvis soon becomes lost in the network of tunnels, and hours or days pass before he and Tweel find themselves in a domed chamber near the surface. There they find the cart creatures depositing their loads beneath a wheel that grinds the stones and plants into dust. Some of the cart creatures also step under the wheel themselves and are pulverized. Beyond the wheel is a shining crystal on a pedestal. When Jarvis approaches it he feels a tingling in his hands and face, and a wart on his left thumb dries up and falls off. He speculates that the crystal emits some form of radiation that destroys diseased tissue but leaves healthy tissue unharmed. The cart creatures suddenly begin attacking Jarvis and Tweel, who retreat up a corridor which fortunately leads outside. The cart creatures corner them and, rather than save himself, Tweel stays by Jarvis' side facing certain death. The cart creatures are about to finish them off when an auxiliary rocket from the Ares lands destroying the creatures. Jarvis boards the rocket while Tweel bounds away into the martian horizon. The rocket returns with Jarvis to the Ares, and he tells his story to the other three. Jarvis is consumed with recalling the friendship and bond between Tweel and him when Captain Harrison expresses regret that they don't have the healing crystal. Jarvis, mind somewhere else, admits that the cart creatures were attacking him because he took it; he takes it out and shows it to the others.
5424350	/m/0dl8j1	She Was a Lady	Leslie Charteris	1931	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 After years of living on the wrong side of the law, Simon Templar has been pardoned for past (perceived) crimes and is now working as an agent of Scotland Yard. His first mission is to investigate a crime ring called the Angels of Doom, which specializes in (among other things) helping convicted felons escape police dragnets and ambushes. The Angels of Doom is run by Jill Trelawney, a young woman who is willing to condone just about any action -- including the murder of The Saint, if needs be -- in her quest to wreak havoc on Scotland Yard, which she blames for the death of her father. But Templar, in his pursuit of Trelawney, finds within her an unexpected kindred spirit. The book is divided into three parts and could almost be seen as a trilogy of novellas. The first part details Templar investigating Trelawney and discovering the cause of her criminal actions, ultimately resulting in him allowing Trelawney to kill one of the men responsible for framing her father, which has the effect of dissolving the Angels of Doom. Subsequently, in the second part, Templar's status as a police agent apparently comes to an end as he and Trelawney go to Paris in pursuit of a second man believed to be connected to the death of Trelawney's father. As the Paris segment of the novel begins, Templar and Trelawney have become partners to the extent that Simon, when leaving his traditional "calling card" consisting of the drawing of a stick figure with a halo, is now compelled to add a female figure to the image. Meanwhile, Inspector Claud Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard continues to pursue both the Saint and Trelawney, especially when he receives reports that the two have allegedly reactivated the Angels of Doom. The third segment of the novel sees Templar and Trelawney pursuing the third and final man responsible for framing her father, but in doing so they must first recruit some unexpected help from within Scotland Yard itself. The book ends with several metafictional references by Templar, who makes references to himself being a storybook character in search of a suitable epilogue for the book. He also makes a direct reference to the title of the American omnibus collection Wanted for Murder which had preceded this novel. She Was a Lady is also notable in that no reference is made to any of the Saint's past colleagues, including his girlfriend, Patricia Holm, making this one of the first books in the series to have such an omission. (This is possibly because, as mentioned above, the novel was not originally conceived as a Saint adventure).
5424799	/m/0dl98b	The Bronze God of Rhodes	L. Sprague de Camp	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is written in first person, purporting to be the memoirs of Chares of Lindos, the sculptor of the Colossus of Rhodes, and concerns his return to Rhodes, his attempts to set up as a sculptor, his struggles with his family's wishes that he enter their bronze foundry, his experience as a catapult artilleryman during the Siege of Rhodes, and his complicated and somewhat hilarious adventures in Ptolemaic Egypt.
5425263	/m/0dlb3b	Saving the Queen	William F. Buckley, Jr.	1976		 It reveals Oakes's childhood and educational background, his recruitment into the CIA, and Agency's procedures for "handling" him. His first assignment sends him to Britain, where he must identify (and deal with) a high-level security leak close to the Queen of England. Rufus, the enigmatic genius behind American intelligence operations, is also introduced.
5425276	/m/0dlb4c	Stained Glass	William F. Buckley, Jr.			 Oakes's second assignment sends him to West Germany where he is infiltrated into the inner-circle of a charismatic and heroic nobleman, Count Wintergrin, who intends to run for the West German Chancellorship on platform of immediate re-unification with East Germany. Although this is ultimately in the interest of the Western Powers and NATO, the threat of Soviet invasion of West Europe means that Oakes must prevent Wintergrin's election, by whatever means necessary.
5425286	/m/0dlb4q	The Black Moth	Georgette Heyer	1921	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jack Carstares, oldest son of the Earl Wyncham, disgraced six years earlier, returns home and becomes a highwayman so that he is able to live in the land he loves without detection. One day while out riding he foils an abduction plot mastered by the infamous Duke of Andover. Injured while rescuing the damsel in distress, he is taken home by the thankful Diana Beauleigh and her Aunt Betty, to recover. Mystery and intrigue continue to the melodrama's end.
5425299	/m/0dlb5d	To Play the Fool	Laurie R. King	1995	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A homeless man is murdered and Kate must determine the culprit's identity. Everything seems to point to a man whom the homeless community regards as an important religious figure.
5425303	/m/0dlb5r	With Child	Laurie R. King	1997-03-21	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The stepchild of Kate's coworker Al Hawkin asks Kate to help her find her homeless friend Dio, who has mysteriously vanished. They become friends during the process, although Kate is wounded and decides to take a rest. She invites Jules on a trip to visit her lover Lee. On the way, Jules disappears. Kate realizes that Jules has been kidnapped by her biological father, recently freed from prison. The novel ends with Kate going undercover to the father's house and rescuing her.
5425315	/m/0dlb6f	The Art of Detection	Laurie R. King	2006-05-30	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Philip Gilbert, the head of a group of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, is found dead in a national park's artillery battery. Because the autopsy report is slow-coming, inspector Kate Martinelli and her partner Al Hawkin treat the death as a murder case. She can discover little about the dead man aside from his unrelenting fascination with all things Holmes. One of his dinner group companions, Ian Nicholson, reveals that he had discovered a "lost" Holmes story, possibly by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, about the murder of a gay soldier in 1920s San Francisco. Kate's interest is piqued when Ian mentions that Gilbert's body was discovered under the same circumstance as the soldier's in the story. Eventually, Kate traces Gilbert's ex-wife and learns that it is likely Glibert was gay, given that he had been with an actor several years before. She connects him with Nicholson, who used to be an actor and whose own ex-wife admits he is gay. Kate questions Nicholson, who admits that he hit Gilbert with a heavy bottle of wine after Gilbert announced they would have to break up temporarily following the publishing of the lost manuscript. He did not realize at the time that Gilbert actually died of complications following the attack, thereby downgrading the legal status from homicide to manslaughter. Finding Gilbert dead, Nicholson panics and dumps the body then sets up an elaborate alibi. After confessing his actions to Kate, Nicholson commits suicide by cop.
5425327	/m/0dlb73	A Monstrous Regiment of Women	Laurie R. King	1995	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Just one more week and Mary will turn 21. She will inherit property and money...but she will also be free of her awful aunt. Going in search of her mentor, Sherlock Holmes, she finds him on top of a hansom cab. Holmes reveals that he knows why Mary has sought him out - to ask him to marry her! - and he mocks her for it. Mary becomes upset and literally runs away. By chance, she meets her old college friend Veronica Beaconsfield. Veronica talks Russell in to visiting The New Temple In God to hear a woman named Margery Child preach. Margery's speeches are all about love and empowerment of women, but Mary discovers that several young ladies have died shortly after making wills in favor of the temple. Mary must try to solve the mystery of Margery Childe while surviving mysterious attacks, newfound wealth, and uncomfortable (or maybe too comfortable?) new feelings for her partner, Holmes.
5425341	/m/0dlb7g	A Letter of Mary	Laurie R. King	1997	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 August 1923. All is quiet in the Holmes household in Sussex as Mary Russell works on academic research while Sherlock Holmes conducts malodorous chemistry experiments. But the peace quickly disappears as out of the past comes Dorothy Ruskin, an amateur archeologist from the Holy Land, who brings the couple a lovely inlaid box with a tattered roll of stained papyrus inside. The evening following their meeting, Miss Ruskin dies in a traffic accident that Holmes and Mary soon prove was murder. But what was the motivation? Was it the little inlaid box holding the manuscript? Or the woman's involvement in the volatile politics of the Holy Land? Or could it have been the scroll itself, a deeply troubling letter that seems to have been written by Mary Magdalene and that contains a biblical bombshell.
5425488	/m/0dlbgr	Absolute Zero	Helen Cresswell	1978	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Uncle Parker has won a trip to the Caribbean in a caption contest. In typical Bagthorpian style, the rest of the family immediately enter similar competitions in an attempt to better his prize but, much of the time, beating the others to an entry form is a victory in itself. With the Parkers on vacation, manic 4-year-old cousin Daisy comes to stay. Uncle Parker claimed her pyromania has passed, but neglected to mention the nature of her current obsession. As Daisy's activities bring the household to its knees using items such as paint, face powder, water and an invisible friend/entity named Arry Awk, Grandma manages to get herself arrested, Mrs Fosdyke is reduced to serving up dishes such as oxtail trifle, and the children are busy wrapping up unwanted prizes to give each other as Christmas presents. When the Bagthorpes eventually win a chance at fame and happiness, the fates deliver a chance for history to not only repeat but excel itself.
5425800	/m/0dlbyt	Getaway	Leslie Charteris	1932	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel begins approximately three weeks after the events of the story "The Melancholy Journey of Mr. Teal" in The Holy Terror. Simon Templar, accompanied by his lover/partner Patricia Holm, has departed England on a well-deserved holiday from crime-fighting. While visiting Innsbruck, Austria with their friend, book editor Monty Hayward (making his first appearance in the series), the trio are out for a late-night walk when they see a man being attacked by thugs. They stop the attack, but the victim is particularly ungrateful, forcing Templar to knock him out, too. Intrigued by the man's attitude -- as well as by a steel box attached to his wrist (which later turns out to be a miniature safe filled with recently-stolen diamonds), Templar decides to take the unconscious man back to his hotel room. Before long, however, the man is stabbed to death in Templar's bed and Templar finds himself in yet another encounter with Prince Rudolf -- one of the men responsible for the death of his friend Norman Kent in The Last Hero. Simon and Patricia (with very reluctant adventurer Monty in tow) find themselves on a cross-continent race against Rudolf and his minions (who are pursuing the diamonds) and the police (who want Templar and Monty for the murder of the courier). Along the way, the trio picks up a female crime reporter who takes part in the adventure in her quest for a career-making scoop on The Saint. Whereas the previous book, The Holy Terror, takes place over the course of nearly a year, the events of Getaway take place over little more than 24 hours. The text indicates that this story takes place about two years after the events of The Last Hero. It is the first Saint story to take place completely outside of Great Britain since the novella "The Wonderful War" in Featuring the Saint. Some editions of the novel (such as the Fiction Publishing Co. edition) omit a prologue that recaps the events of "The Melancholy Journey of Mr. Teal". According to this prologue (and later repeated within the main body of the text), the Saint has been "buccaneering" for 10 years by the time of this novel, during which time he had amassed a personal fortune of approximately 100,000 pounds, which was finally topped up by his absconding with a villain's diamonds at the end of "Melancholy Journey". Much of the book is told from Monty Hayward's point of view. According to The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Film and Television 1928-1992 by Burl Barer, the character was based upon Charteris' real-life editor, Monty Haydon.
5426648	/m/0dld10	Tempest	Christopher Bulis		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Drell Imnulate is a powerful object lost somewhere on the Polar Express, a powerful train traversing the hostile world of 'Tempest'. Factions on the train want to the Imnulate and are willing to kill innocent people to get to it. It is up to Bernice to save the day.
5426739	/m/0dld66	The Sword of Forever	Jim Mortimore		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bernice finds her own DNA in the stomach of a mummified dinosaur. Together with Patience, a sentient velociraptor, she travels ever backwards through time. She stumbles upon the 'Sword Of Forever', an object that could easily demolish entire worlds. The story draws on conspiracy theories around the Knights Templar, the Ark of the Covenant and so forth. It also draws on earlier New Adventures' depictions of a future Earth.
5426763	/m/0dld6y	Another Girl, Another Planet	Steve Bowkett		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bernice rushes in to help an archeologist friend who is being stalked by a mysterious figure.
5426818	/m/0dld9q	Where Angels Fear	Rebecca Levene		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bernice's home planet of Dellah, once a place of learning, is being overrun by a new religious movement. Closer investigation reveals the major powers of the universe are literally running in fear from said movement. Levene had been editor of the New Adventures for some years, with Winstone latterly her deputy and then her successor. Where Angels Fear was commissioned as Levene handed over to Winstone and it sets up a story arc that ran through to the final New Adventure, Twilight of the Gods.
5427081	/m/0dldqt	Tears of the Oracle	Justin Richards		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The shattered world of Dellah, once a thriving place of learning, has only one aspect of the university left. This is under siege by religious fanatics. Bernice Summerfield has to deal with this, a mad collector, her ex husband and an Oracle that could lead to priceless information.
5428409	/m/0dlgf_	Presumed Innocent	Scott Turow	1987	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the discovery of Polhemus dead in her apartment, the victim of what appears to be a sexual bondage encounter gone wrong, killed outright by a fatal blow to the skull with an unknown object. Rusty Sabich is a prosecutor and co-worker of Carolyn and is assigned her case by the district attorney. Everything is complicated by the fact that Rusty is an ex-lover of Carolyn's. The novel follows the eventual discovery of their affair and Rusty's trial for her murder. Many of the minor characters in Presumed Innocent also appear in Turow's later novels, which are all set in the fictional, Midwestern Kindle County. A sequel to Presumed Innocent, titled Innocent, was released on May 4, 2010 and continues the relationship between Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto.
5428853	/m/0dlgp_	Serpent's Reach	C. J. Cherryh	1980-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins on a Family estate at Kethiuy on Cerdin, where the Sul sept of the Meth-maren House is attacked by the rival Ruil sept, with the help of Red and Gold Majats. The Ruil sept is seeking to wrest control of the Blue Majat from the Sul sept. A young Raen a Sul hant Meth-maren is the only survivor, and she seeks refuge in the nearby Blue Majat Hive. There she persuades the Blue Queen to help her regain control of Kethiuy. The Blue Warriors and their azi succeed in destroying the Ruil sept, but the Blue Hive is decimated and Raen is captured and brought before the Kontrin Council. Moth, the second oldest Kontrin, protects Raen from the Kontrin conspirators seeking to destroy her, and Raen is banished from Cerdin. Raen adopts a low profile and drifts from planet to planet in the Reach. She survives several assassination attempts but never gives up her desire for revenge against the Kontrin Council and those who destroyed her family. After Council Eldest Lian is assassinated, Moth takes control of the Council. She watches Raen's movement but does not interfere. Raen's final move is to board a Beta passenger spaceliner, Andra's Jewel bound for Istra, the only planet in the Reach accessible from the Outside. Istra has no permanent Kontrin presence, only Betas, who deal with Outsiders and the Majat, who were brought here by the Kontrin hundreds of years previously. To amuse herself on Andra's Jewel's long voyage, Raen plays Sej, a dicing game every night with a ship azi named Jim. They agree that at the end of the voyage Raen will buy his contract, and if Jim is the overall winner, he will be a free man, but if he loses, he will become her azi. Jim narrowly loses and serves her for the remainder of the story. On Istra, Raen and Jim, now her second in command, establish a presence on the planet. She manipulates the Betas and gains control of their affairs. She also allies herself with the local Blue Majat Hive. But the Majat Hives are restless and soon turn on each other. The Blue, Green and Red Queens are killed and the surviving Gold Queen unites all the Hives under her. The Hive revolt spreads to all planets of the Reach and all the Kontrin perish, except for Raen, who now lives with the Majat on Istra. With the Kontrin Company no longer in control, the Betas take charge of the Reach. All the azi are gone, having self-terminated at their maximum age of 40, and no new azi are created. Jim, however, at Raen's request, is given immortality by the Majat and lives with her in the Gold Hive.
5429764	/m/0dlhfy	An Elephant for Aristotle	L. Sprague de Camp	1958	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of Leon of Atrax, a Thessalian cavalry commander who has been tasked by Alexander the Great to bring an elephant captured from the Indian ruler Porus, to Athens as a present for Alexander's old tutor, Aristotle. Leading a motley crew that includes an Indian elephantarch to care for the creature, a Persian warrior, a Syrian sutler and a Greek philosopher, Leon sets out to cross the whole of the ancient known world from the Indus River to Athens. The journey is long and adventurous, involving frequent skirmishes with bandits, unruly noblemen, Macedonian commanders with ideas of their own about who's in charge, and a runaway Persian noblewoman. It doesn't help that the goal of the whole enterprise is essentially a malicious prank concocted by Alexander on his former teacher: he gifts Aristotle with the elephant but no funds for its upkeep, while sending the funds (but no elephant) to the savant's arch-rival Xenocrates. The story is founded on the fact that Aristotle's writings include an apparently eye-witness description of an Indian elephant, though the circumstances under which he might have come into contact with such an animal are unknown.
5430388	/m/0dlh_2	Billiards at Half-past Nine	Heinrich Böll	1959	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Architect Robert Faehmel's secretary, Leonore, describes Robert and the knowledge that something in her routine life is not ordinary. Robert is meticulous in everything he does. An old friend of Robert arrives at the office but Leonore sends him to the Prince Heinrich Hotel where Robert is, daily, from 9:30 to 11:00. Trouble is afoot for the entire Faehmel family, which includes three generations of architects: Heinrich Faehmel, his son Robert and Robert's son Joseph. The man who wants to see Robert is named Nettlinger, but the Hotel bellboy, Jochen, refuses to let the man disturb his patron who is in the billiard room. Upstairs, Robert is telling Hugo about his life and we discover that Nettlinger was once a Nazi policeman. Robert and his friend Schrella, both of whom were schoolmates with Nettlinger, had opposed the Nazis, refusing to take "the Host of the Buffalo," a reference both to the devil and the Nazis. Schrella had disappeared after being beaten by Nettlinger and Old Wobbly, their gym teacher, also a Nazi policeman. Nettlinger and Old Wobbly had not only beaten Schrella and Robert, but had corrupted one of Robert's three siblings, Otto, who died in 1942 at the Battle of Kiev. His mother, Johanna Kilb, is committed to a mental institution because she tried to save Jews from the cattle cars going to the extermination camps. It is now Heinrich's 80th birthday. Heinrich and Robert meet in a bar after visiting Johanna, sitting down and talking for the first time in many years. Meanwhile, Schrella has returned to Germany and talks with Nettlinger, who tries to make amends for his past life despite the fact that he has not really changed, and remains an opportunist. Schrella goes to visit his old home. We meet Joseph Faehmel and his girlfriend Marianne. Joseph has just learned that Robert was the one who destroyed the beautiful Abbey his grandfather had built and this greatly upsets him. Marianne tells him the story of her own family: her father was a Nazi who committed suicide at the end of the war. Before taking his own life, he had ordered Marianne's mother to murder the children. She hanged Marienne's little brother but the arrival of some strangers prevented her from doing the same to Marianne. Johanna, in control of her wits, leaves the sanatorium with a pistol which she intends to use on Old Wobbly for his past sins. The entire family gathers in the Prince Heinrich Hotel for the birthday party and Johanna shoots at a Secretary of State who was watching a military parade from a hotel balcony. This act was intended to signal Johanna's inadaptation in a society ruled by "The Buffalo", whose members already forgot the horrors of the world. At the conclusion, Robert adopts the bellhop Hugo. A birthday cake which is shaped like the Abbey is carried in. Heinrich slices it and hands the first piece to his son.
5432223	/m/0dllx7	Seven Little Australians	Ethel Turner	1894	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The seven children of the title live in 1880s Sydney with their father, an army Captain who has little understanding of his children, and their twenty year-old stepmother Esther who can exert little discipline on them. Accordingly they wreak havoc wherever possible, for example by interrupting their parents while they entertain guests and asking for some of their dinner (implying to the guests that the children's own dinner is inadequate). After a prank by Judy and Pip embarrasses Captain Woolcot at his military barracks he orders that Judy, the ringleader, be sent away to boarding school in the Blue Mountains. Meg comes under the influence of an older girl, Aldith, and tries to improve her appearance according to the fashions of the day. She and Aldith make the acquaintance of two young men, but Meg believes she has fallen in love with the older brother of one, Alan. When Aldith and Meg arrange to meet the young men for a walk, Meg is embarrassed after a note goes astray and Alan comes to the meeting instead and reproaches her for becoming 'spoilt', rather than remaining the sweet young girl she was. Meg returns home and later faints, having tight-laced her waist until it affects her health. Unhappy away from her siblings, Judy runs away from school and returns home, hiding in a barn. Despite her ill-health as a result of walking for several days to get home, the other children conceal her presence from their father, but he discovers her. He plans to send her back to school however realises that she is suffering from tuberculosis, and she is allowed to remain at home. In part to assist Judy's recuperation, the children and Esther are invited to visit Esther's parents at their sheep station Yarrahappini. One day the children go on a picnic far away from the property. A ringbarked tree falls and threatens to crush the youngest child, 'the General'. Judy, who promised 'on her life' not to allow him to be harmed on the picnic, rushes to catch him and her body protects him from the tree. However her back is broken and she dies before help can be fetched. After burying Judy on the property, the family returns home to Sydney sobered by her death. While ostensibly things remain the same, each character is slightly changed by their experience. In particular Captain Woolcot regrets the fact that he never really understood Judy and tries to treasure his remaining children a little more.
5435751	/m/0dlr_6	Around the Moon	Jules Verne	1870	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Having been fired out of the giant Columbiad space gun, the Baltimore Gun Club's bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers, Barbicane, Nicholl and Michel Ardan, begins the five-day trip to the moon. A few minutes into the journey, a small, bright asteroid passes within a few hundred yards of them, but luckily does not collide with the projectile. The asteroid had been captured by the Earth's gravity and had become a second moon. The three travelers undergo a series of adventures and misadventures during the rest of the journey, including disposing of the body of a dog out a window, suffering intoxication by gases, and making calculations leading them, briefly, to believe that they are to fall back to Earth. During the latter part of the voyage, it becomes apparent that the gravitational force of their earlier encounter with the asteroid has caused the projectile to deviate from its course. The projectile enters lunar orbit, rather than landing on the moon as originally planned. Barbicane, Ardan and Nicholl begin geographical observations with opera glasses. The projectile then dips over the northern hemisphere of the moon, into the darkness of its shadow. It is plunged into extreme cold, before emerging into the light and heat again. They then begin to approach the moon's southern hemisphere. From the safety of their projectile, they gain spectacular views of Tycho, one of the greatest of all craters on the moon. The three men discuss the possibility of life on the moon, and conclude that it is barren. The projectile begins to move away from the moon, towards the 'dead point' (the place at which the gravitational attraction of the moon and Earth becomes equal). Michel Ardan hits upon the idea of using the rockets fixed to the bottom of the projectile (which they were originally going to use to deaden the shock of landing) to propel the projectile towards the moon and hopefully cause it to fall onto it, thereby achieving their mission. When the projectile reaches the point of neutral attraction, the rockets are fired, but it is too late. The projectile begins a fall onto the Earth from a distance of 160,000 miles, and it is to strike the Earth at a speed of 115,200 miles per hour, the same speed at which it left the mouth of the Columbiad. All hope seems lost for Barbicane, Nicholl and Ardan. Four days later, the crew of a US Navy vessel USS Susquehanna spots a bright meteor fall from the sky into the sea. This turns out to be the returning projectile, and the three men inside are found to be alive and are rescued. They are treated to lavish homecoming celebrations as the first people to leave Earth.
5435899	/m/0dls77	Thieves' Picnic	Leslie Charteris	1937	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 After Simon Templar intercepts a mysterious message intended for a jewel-smuggling ring during a trip to Spain, he and his sidekick Hoppy Uniatz follow the message's trail to Tenerife, Canary Islands where they rescue an elderly Dutch diamond cutter and his daughter from being beaten to death. Templar learns that the old man is a reluctant member of the smuggling ring and, assisted by the daughter, sets out to bring down the gang. Things become more complicated when Templar learns that the man had been in possession of a lottery ticket worth the equivalent of $2 million, and that this ticket is now missing. So not only does The Saint have to rescue the diamond cutter and his daughter from the smuggling ring, he also has to track down the missing lottery ticket, which has sparked instability within the gang. Soon after, Hoppy and the diamond cutter go missing. Templar, using his frequent "Sebastian Tombs" cover name, infiltrates the gang, posing as a freelance diamond cutter who is hired to replace the old man. (This despite the fact that Templar hasn't the slightest idea as to how to cut diamonds.) From within the gang, Templar plans to start the members double-crossing each other, but finds his work is already half done thanks to that missing lottery ticket. Some later editions of this book include an afterword entitled "The Last Word" in which Charteris invites readers to join The Saint Club, a fan club that he founded in the 1930s. The annual dues for the club, Charteris writes, went to support the Arbour Youth Club located in east London, which at the time Charteris composed "The Last Word" was still recovering from the Blitz of World War II.
5437029	/m/0dlv6f	Doctor Wortle's School	Anthony Trollope			 The novel takes place in the respectable, fictional parish of Bowick, Victorian England, with the main plot concerning itself with the renowned Dr. Wortle's Christian seminary academy. The community's morals are outraged and the school's credibility wounded upon the discovery that Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke, a respectable American couple hired to the academy by Wortle, are indeed improperly married. Their wedlock was rendered asunder by their chance meeting, some years prior, of Mrs. Peacocke's first husband, an abusive drunkard named Colonel Ferdinand Lefroy. Hearing that an ambiguous Colonel Lefroy was killed during the Civil War, the two rightfully assumed it was Ferdinand and married. Yet it is their strange persistence in living as husband and wife, even after the shocking revelation, that creates a scandal. Wortle, though religious, sympathizes with the Peacockes and is understanding of their love for each other and hatred for Colonel Lefroy. The book is thus of the interest in providing multiple stories: that of Wortle's attempt to rebuild his reputation, provide rebuttal for malicious slander and all the while insist he was right in hiring the Peacockes; Mr. Peacocke's journey to America in search of Ferdinand's true status; the sexual concerns of the Wortles' daughter Mary and the insights of the community members who see the intentional bigamy as a sin.
5438574	/m/0dlxvv	The Saint in Miami	Leslie Charteris	1940	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 One of Patricia Holm's friends sends an invitation for Patricia and her friend, Simon Templar to visit Miami. Upon arrival, however, The Saint, Patricia and sidekick Hoppy Uniatz discover Pat's friend and her husband are nowhere to be found. The trio take up residence in the friend's house. A few days later, a tanker explodes off the Florida coast, and soon after, Simon discovers the dead body of a sailor washed up on shore; attached to the wrist of the body is a lifebelt from the British submarine H.M.S. Triton. Simon suspects a link between the disappearance of Patricia's friends, the explosion, and a millionaire yachtsman named Randolph March. March's yacht is moored not far from the explosion, and Templar and Hoppy launch the investigation by climibing aboard the yacht, leaving the sailor's corpse in a stateroom for the police to find, and challenging March to give up his secrets. Afterwards, Templar finds himself targeted not only by March, but by an eager local sheriff who proves to be almost as fast-witted as the Saint, himself. Soon, the Saint uncovers a Nazi ring operating out of Florida.
5439414	/m/0dlzbd	The Saint Steps In	Leslie Charteris	1943	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In Washington, D.C., a young woman whose father has invented a new form of synthetic rubber requests Simon Templar's aid when she receives a threatening note. Before long, The Saint is drawn into a web of war-related intrigue involving what appear to be gangsters, but soon turns out to be groups with differing opinions as to what it takes to be patriotic. The book reveals that, instead of enlisting to fight in the war, Templar has instead been working behind the scenes, carrying out quiet missions against enemy agents and, unusually for the character, his efforts in this case are actually supported by law enforcement. This is the third Saint book in a row to be set in the United States (previously most of Templar's adventures took place in England), following The Saint in Miami and The Saint Goes West, and direct reference is made to the Miami novel.
5441482	/m/0dm103	Portrait of the Artist, as an Old Man	Joseph Heller			 The story is of Eugene Pota, a prominent writer who, in his old age, is struggling for that last piece of fiction that could be his magnum opus, or at least on par with his earlier writings. Littered throughout the novel are many of Pota's ideas and drafts of possible stories, such as the sexual biography of his wife, or of Hera's trouble with Zeus.
5442262	/m/0dm1x8	Hex	Rhiannon Lassiter	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens with the introduction of a brother and a sister: Wraith and Raven. Both of whom are of considerable maturity for their age, Raven being only 15 and very independent. She is a Hex, whereas Wraith is not. The two are meeting up after three days of separation from arriving in England. It is presumed that formerly they were in the United States because there is a reference to Denver. Raven and Wraith had to grow up fast, being orphans in a blockhouse from which they escaped. Wraith got out first by joining a gang and Raven later on, becoming a hired computer hacker. The two are able to travel so easily because Raven is able to hack many systems and can create fake bank accounts, identification cards, and profiles of people. While the siblings escaped living in the blockhouses, their younger sister Rachel was adopted. The two haven't heard from her in years, and Wraith is determined to find out where she is located. Entering the slums of London, Wraith mets a boy by the name of Kez who is dirty, homeless, and knows the streets. He helps Wraith find the Countess, a woman who mans a headquarters (or fortress) responsible for locating people, providing weapons, muscle, and information for a price. Kez tags along with Wraith to a hotel, where Raven meets up with the two of them. The next morning, Raven decides to dive into the Net searching for information about her sister Rachel. During the search, she runs into another Hex, who is completely inexperienced. Raven discovers everything about the other Hex, who is a sixteen year old girl by the name of Ali. A rich and spoiled daughter of a man who owns vidchannels. Kez, Wraith, and Raven move to the Belgravia Complex, the same rich neighborhood that Ali lives in, partly because Raven has high taste. The first day involves Kez exploring the area on his own and running into Ali's clique by accident. Earlier, Raven had spoken to him about 20th century music and the information comes in handy as he tries to hold his own in a conversation with the very spoiled girls. Ali then tells her father about how Kez's "cousin" (Raven) owns a vidchannel and can perhaps help him with one of his failing channels. Over the course of the novel, Wraith discovers that Rachel had been taken from her adopted parents by the CPS. Raven, collaborating with Ali's father on a vidchannel to bring its failing ratings up, is invited to a party in which she meets Ali, who somehow feels terrified at seeing Raven because she inexplicably knows it is the same girl she ran into in the Net. Wraith becomes discouraged at the news of Rachel's disappearance but regains hope when Raven hacks various systems and reports that she thinks Rachel might still be alive. In an attempt to successfully break into the CPS facility that holds Hexes and possibly Rachel, Wraith tries to convince Ali to be caught and taken there. She refuses. At which point, Raven and Kez devise a plan to lie to Wraith and Ali and say that the CPS is already on their way to get her. By coincidence, the CPS comes and takes Ali away and she is transported to the CPS facility. Prior to that, Raven had told her in the presence of Wraith and Kez that she was getting taken and had implanted a communication device behind her ear. Suiting up for the raid, Wraith contacts the Countess for muscle. Three soldier-like "gangers" are assigned to the mission by the name of Melek, Finn, and Jeeva. Ali has, in the mean time, befriended some fellow inmates and discovers the experimenting on these 'test subjects' is going on. She asks to see the remaining Hexes that did survive and Luciel, a boy she befriends, takes her to see Revenge. Raven tells Ali to speak in such a way to see if it is Rachel or not, because the girl is clearly insane. It turns out to be Rachel but the girl now calls herself Revenge because of her intent. Many violent gun fights ensue as the small group makes its way to the main room computer room so Raven can gain control over the facility. Becoming aware of what is happening, the main scientist in charge of the experiments, Dr. Kalden is determined to stop the group and is intrigued at the idea of experimenting on Raven. One of the gangers (Melek) dies when Wraith finds Revenge as the CPS guards open fire on them. Barely escaping, Raven, Wraith, Kez, Finn, Jeeva, Ali and her friend Luciel make it to the roof of the facility. Before leaving, Raven sends out images of the experiments going on to vidchannels across England. In an attempt to cover up the evidence, the scientists blow up the building and escape also. The book ends with Raven and Wraith, as well as the rest of the group watching the government broadcast news that the facility and the experiments shown from Raven's broadcasts never happened. The Prime Minister then states that Raven's group were terrorists responsible for the damages and deaths, and that they will be caught. The group as a whole decide that they should stick together and fight the tyranny of the government as well as the belief that Hexes are mutants that should be killed.
5446038	/m/0dm7vg	The Regime	Tim LaHaye	2005-11-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After his horrifying trials in the wasteland, Nicolae Carpathia's influence grows in business and politics. However anyone who gets in his way tends to disappear, permanently. He hires kingmaker and soon-to-be False Prophet Leon Fortunato as a deputy and consultant. Over the course of a few years, Carpathia rises to power within the Romanian government, manipulating people and events for his own personal gain and often resorting to murder and blackmailing to achieve his goals. He often calls upon the influence of his "spirit guide" (later revealed to be Satan himself) for advice. Jonathan Stonagal begins to grow regretful with his involvement with Carpathia, fearing the young Antichrist is already out of his control. Airline pilot Rayford Steele's home life is suffering, but gains a truce-like quality, while his wife is concerned that he has already risen as far his career will take him. Now a born-again Christian, Irene slowly begins to grow in her newfound faith, even leading her son Raymie Steele to salvation. However, Rayford and her daughter, Chloe, reject Irene's religious beliefs, and Irene is desperate to help them find Christ before it is too late. Abdullah Smith, a Jordanian pilot, is shocked when his wife, Yasmine, and his two teenagers become followers of Christianity. After many heated arguments, she leaves him, taking the children with her. This later leads Abdullah to become an alcoholic and have affairs with several women, though it is clear that he is desperate for his family back in place of this destructive new lifestyle. He fears it is the work of Allah as punishment for growing lax in his Muslim faith. Rayford, meanwhile, is considering pursuing a relationship with Hattie Durham, a young flight attendant and his co-worker. At first it seems impossible for Rayford, though he slowly begins to warm to the idea, often having dinner with her and giving her rides home. He slowly begins to contemplate taking their relationship to a whole new level. Celebrated journalist Buck Williams becomes a feature writer for the Boston Globe, coming from an Ivy League education at Princeton University. After writing several revered pieces, Buck is hired for Global Weekly, a job that has been his dream for all his life. In Israel, he meets and interviews renowned scientist Chaim Rosenzweig, who has recently developed a formula that makes plant life grow in desert soil. Suddenly, an immense military strike against Israel commences and the entire nation stands on the brink of complete annihilation.
5446041	/m/025th4p	Desecration	Jerry B. Jenkins	2001-10-30	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nicolae Carpathia stages a gruesome and evil desecration of the temple. Hattie publicly confronts him and is burned to death by Leon, the False Prophet. As millions take the Mark of the Beast, the first Bowl Judgment rains down as foul and loathsome sores appear on the bodies of all who have taken the mark, including Nicolae's inner circle. When the temple is defiled, millions of Jews and Gentiles rebel against Nicolae and many of them become believers. The Tribulation Force launches "Operation Eagle", a mass exodus of the believers to the refuge city of Petra. Leading them is none other than Dr. Chaim Rozensweig turned into a modern-day Moses, who, calling himself Micah, and along with Buck Williams, confronts Nicolae and leads the faithful to refuge. Meanwhile, David Hassid, the first to arrive at Petra, is murdered by two renegade GC soldiers left over from a confrontation between the Trib. Force and the GC. The second Bowl Judgment hits as all the oceans and seas turn into blood. In Chicago, Chloe wanders off into the night and finds a group of believers (whom she eventually aids) hiding in a basement near the safe house. In Greece, the rescue of the two teenagers that Buck helped escape is attempted by the Trib Force's newest man: George Sebastian. One of the teens is replaced with a look-alike who kills the other teen, along with Lukas "Laslos" Miklos. George is captured and taken away. Tsion Ben-Judah arrives at Petra to address the throng as the Antichrist launches an all-out attack against them. The book ends with Nicolae hysterical as he believes he is about to wipe out one million believers, Rayford Steele and Tsion Ben-Judah among them.
5448719	/m/0dmc_c	Rimrunners	C. J. Cherryh	1989-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The long, bitterly fought Company War between Earth and Union had ended – for everyone, except Conrad Mazian, commander of the Earth Company Fleet. By refusing to accept the peace, he and his loyal Mazianni became outlaws, hunted by all sides. Elizabeth 'Bet' Yeager had been one of Mazian's marines, a twenty year veteran. Stranded on Pell Station when the Fleet was forced to pull out abruptly (as told in Downbelow Station), she managed to blend in with the many displaced war refugees. Since then, she survived by taking whatever starship berths she could find. Her luck begins to run out when her latest ship, the freighter Ernestine, is forced to return to Pell for major repairs, a destination too fraught with danger for her. She stays behind on the decrepit, dying Thule Station. Day after day, she goes to the employment office, but there is little work. Few starships call and the ones that do, do not need her. Late one night, while trying to sleep in a dockside washroom, she is attacked by a man and barely manages to kill him. In desperation, weak from hunger, she moves in with a lowlife bartender. When he tries to control her, with threats to go to the authorities about his suspicions about her, she dispatches him too. With time running out before his body is discovered, she signs up with the ship Loki, a barely legitimate 'spook' that survives by gathering intelligence and selling it. Loki is not a typical merchanter ship; instead of a close-knit family, the crew consists of unrelated hire-ons. As a result, various competing cliques have formed aboard and Bet has to navigate her way among them. She becomes friends with Musa, a universally respected crewman who claims to have served on one of the ancient sublighters, the original nine vessels that predated faster-than-light ships. She is also strongly attracted to Ramey, an ex-merchanter and surly outcast with a nickname of NG (no good). She gradually makes a place for herself and even manages to get the reluctant NG tentatively readmitted back into shipboard society. Things get complicated when she is forced to reveal her past, especially since Loki is currently hunting a Mazianni ship. Long overdue for a major overhaul, Loki limps into Thule, hooks up to the sole starship fuel pump and takes on all the available fuel. While there, the ship they were searching for (Keu's India) shows up. The Mazianni ship had been harried and hunted by Alliance and Union forces to the point that it was blocked from its regular supply bases and is desperately low on fuel. Keu needs to take the precious pump and fuel intact, so he can not just blow Loki up. Instead, he sends boarding parties of armored marines, but Bet and NG between them manage to hold them off. Then the Alliance warship Norway arrives to close the trap and administer the coup de grâce. Bet's actions during the battle prove to her crewmates that she can be trusted; she has found a (relatively) safe haven.
5449185	/m/0dmdmm	Merchanter's Luck	C. J. Cherryh	1982-07-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Sandor ('Sandy') Kreja is the sole survivor of a moderately prosperous merchanter family that had operated in Union space. When he was a young boy, all but two of his relatives were killed or taken by the renegade Mazianni, once soldiers in the service of Earth, who had refused to accept the end of the Company War and turned pirate in order to keep on fighting. The three remaining Krejas had continued to run their aged freighter, Le Cygne, as best they could, but an accident had killed one and a shady deal gone bad the other, leaving Sandy both impoverished and preposterously wealthy — the sole owner of a starship. By the dangerous expedient of hiring crewmen when possible and running solo when not, the young man had kept his ship running (under constantly changing names), but as unpaid debts piled up, he had begun to run out of safe Union ports. At Viking station, as Edward Stevens of Lucy, Sandy has a chance sleepover with another merchanter, Allison Reilly, which proves to be pivotal to his future. Allison, one of the powerful Reillys of the superfreighter Dublin Again, lets slip that she is going "across the line" to Pell, the Alliance star system. Having heard rumours that trade between Pell and Earth might be re-established and wanting desperately to see her again, he decides to try his luck in Alliance space. Sandy races Dublin Again to her next port, but the only way he can catch the much faster ship is by taking chances. He performs a dangerous double-jump and arrives at Pell groggy, causing a stir when he barely manages to dock. As a result, he is questioned by Alliance security, but is released when the Reillys come to his aid, not for his sake, but to protect their reputation. At Allison's suggestion, they offer to refit Sandy's ship and provide a crew and cargo as a loan. The Reillys are also interested in the Earth trade, and the small ship would be an ideal conduit. Sandy swallows his pride and accepts the generous deal. As it turns out, Allison has an ulterior motive. She is a junior officer in charge of her own small group within the much larger group in command of Dublin Again, but many, many years stand between her and a 'posted' position with real responsibility. By transferring with her crew to the smaller ship, she can satisfy her ambition immediately. Things seem to be going well for once. Then Sandy is called in to meet the head of the Alliance military, the notorious Signy Mallory, who had once been one of the renegade Mazian's captains. She gives him a sealed priority military cargo to be delivered to stations being reopened Earthward. The trip is tense; Sandy and his new crew do not trust each other. He refuses to release the computer safeguards that have protected him in the past, preferring to size up the Reillys first. Curran, Allison's second in command, tries to force him to give up the security codes, but Sandy refuses to back down and a fight breaks out. The result is an ugly, festering stalemate. When they arrive at the Venture star system, they are intercepted and boarded by Mazianni from the warship Australia. Sandy orders his crew to hide, while he and Curran try to talk their way out. He is taken to Tom Edger, Mazian's senior captain. Sandy offers to work for him and is then told that his cargo is worthless scrap. Mallory had used him as bait to flush out her enemy. Edger decides he might have a use for Sandy, but Curran is taken away. Fighting to get his crewman back, both Sandy and Curran are shot and left for dead as the Mazianni begin to evacuate. At that moment, Mallory's Norway, the armed Alliance superfreighter Finity's End, and Dublin Again rush in to engage the fleeing Edger (although he gets away) and free the station. Sandy and Curran survive the battle. When the dust settles, Mallory clears Sandy's name and title to his ship in return for having put him in mortal danger. His crew now trust him wholeheartedly and Sandy has the nucleus he needs to revive the Kreja family, returning his ship to its original name, Le Cygne.
5449235	/m/0dmdq0	Tripoint	C. J. Cherryh	1994-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Twenty years in the past, merchanter ships Sprite and Corinthian were docked at Mariner Station. What started out as a friendly sleepover between the inexperienced Marie Hawkins of Sprite and Austin Bowe of Corinthian turned into rape, with Marie becoming pregnant. She elected to raise the child, Thomas Bowe-Hawkins, on Sprite, but was consumed with rage. Tom grew up with an ambivalent mother and was never fully accepted by his family. When Austin later became senior captain of Corinthian, Marie started tracking Corinthian's movements in order to expose what she suspected was smuggling. When the two ships cross paths again, this time at Viking, Marie is ready for her revenge. She and Tom scour the docks for information about Corinthian's cargo, but Tom is caught snooping and is imprisoned aboard Corinthian, forcing the ship to depart prematurely for Pell Station via Tripoint. At Marie's insistence, Sprite pursues Corinthian. On Corinthian, Tom meets Austin, his domineering father, and Capella, second chief navigator and night-walker. When Corinthian docks at Pell Station, Tom's younger half-brother, Christian Bowe-Perrault tries to solve the problem by shipping him off to Sol Station, but Tom escapes and hides on the docks. Christian and Capella search frantically for him, unaware that Sabrina Perrault-Cadiz, Christian's cousin, has already found and befriended him. When Capella contacts old acquaintances for assistance, it attracts the unwanted attention of a dissident faction within the outlawed Mazianni Fleet. Capella is an ex-Fleet navigator with knowledge of Fleet routes and drop-points, which the dissidents want. When Corinthian prepares to depart for Tripoint, Tom returns voluntarily to the ship and is no longer treated as a prisoner. He learns the ship's secret: they are illegally trading with the renegade Fleet. Austin justifies this by maintaining that supplying the Fleet means it won't have to raid merchanter ships. Sprite arrives at Pell Station shortly after Corinthian's departure and takes off again in pursuit. During Corinthian's jump to Tripoint, Capella is aware of Sprite and a Mazianni spotter following and performs a premature system-drop near an abandoned freighter, causing the other ships to overshoot. Corinthian immediately starts frantically offloading to the freighter, a Fleet drop-point. As the spotter and Sprite approach, Tom and Christian activate the freighter's weapons and destroy the spotter. Tom tells his mother he is staying with Corinthian because he is more at home on his father's ship than his mother's. Marie, having taken the captaincy of Sprite from her weak brother, does not expose Corinthian's illegal trade because of Tom and because Corinthian outguns Sprite. Austin realizes too many people know about his connection with the Fleet and decides to leave Alliance-Union space for good. As amends for the past, Austin offers Marie the access codes to the hulk at Tripoint and the opportunity to take over Corinthians profitable trade, but she declines and the ships part company. During Corinthians next jump, Capella tells Tom about a new drop-point she discovered that leads to a habitable planet with forests. The Mazianni are building a new secret colony there and Corinthian is now part of that future.
5449258	/m/0dmdr1	Finity's End	C. J. Cherryh	1997-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is eighteen years after the end of the Company War, at least as stationers experience time, less for merchanters subject to the effects of time dilation in the course of their travels. Regardless, the threat of the piratical Mazianni is ebbing. The Neiharts and their superfreighter Finity's End had spent the post-war years assisting the Alliance militia hunt down the renegades. But now the oldest of all existing merchanter families wants to return to trading. When the ship docks at Pell Station, the heart of the Alliance, the family retrieves one of its own. Fletcher Neihart's mother had been stranded there by the fortunes of war, giving birth to him on the station. Unable to adjust to stationer life, she had committed suicide when he was five years old, leaving him to suffer through a succession of foster homes. The lonely outsider had been befriended by a couple of hisa, the gentle, intelligent natives of Pell's World. Now a young man of seventeen with dreams of working on the planet and no wish to take up the family business, he is furious when he is handed over against his will to his relatives as part of a deal between Elene Quen, Stationmaster of Pell, and senior Captain James Robert Neihart. Finity's End had suffered enormous casualties in the war and afterwards; half the crew died in one catastrophic decompression. Due to this and also because it was impractical to raise children in wartime, the youngest generation consists of only three orphaned "junior-juniors": Jeremy (Fletcher's new roommate), Vince and Linda. Fletcher should have been in the same age group, but due to time dilation, he is four or five years older. Fletcher is a surly anomaly; he is as old as the more numerous "senior-juniors", but has less shipboard knowledge and experience than the junior-juniors. This is finally resolved by putting him in charge of the three youngsters. Despite a botched, unofficial initiation that results in a fistfight between Fletcher and Chad, a senior-junior cousin, the responsibility (and implied trust) as well as his friendship with Jeremy gradually reconcile him to his new life. Even the initially hostile Vince and Linda look to him for leadership and approval. It all comes crashing down when Fletcher's spirit stick, a valuable gift from the hisa Satin (from Downbelow Station), is stolen. Suspicion and distrust grow on both sides. When Chad provokes another fight, Jeremy finally confesses that he was responsible. To safeguard the artifact from resentful relatives, he had hidden it in his hotel room at their last stop, Mariner, only to have it stolen. The merchanter Champlain is one of the suspects. Meanwhile, Captain Neihart has vastly more important issues to deal with. He is trying to shut down the smugglers and the black market, from which the Mazianni resupply themselves. At every port of call, he forges agreements with merchanters, Union and stationmasters to bring about a transition to peacetime, legitimate trade. When they find Champlain docked at their next stop, Esperance, Jeremy drags Fletcher to various curio stores, hoping to find the spirit stick. He succeeds, but as the senior captains are locked in vital negotiations, Fletcher is instructed to keep his charges in the sleepover to wait. However, the impatient twelve-year-old Jeremy takes it upon himself to go back to the shop and try to shoplift it, leading to his capture. Fletcher attempts to rescue Jeremy but is caught as well. As they are being led away at gunpoint to be quietly disposed of, Fletcher manages to engineer their escape. The resulting investigation pressures the corrupt, reluctant stationmaster into agreeing with Captain Neihart's proposals. Fletcher wins the approval of his family and he accepts Finity's End as his new home.
5452045	/m/0dmj1z	The Friends of Eddie Coyle	George V. Higgins		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Eddie Coyle is an aging, low-level gunrunner for a crime organization in Boston, Massachusetts. He is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of a driving a hijacked truck in New Hampshire. Eddie had been driving the truck for Dillon, a convicted felon and career criminal who is well connected to the syndicate. Coyle has refused to give Dillon up to the authorities in exchange for leniency. Coyle's last chance to avoid a prison term is a sentencing recommendation from ATF Special Agent Dave Foley, who demands that Coyle become an informer in return. A gang led by Jimmy Scalise and Artie Van has been pulling off a series of daring day-time bank robberies with pistols supplied by Coyle. One of Coyle's sources for the pistols is a young gun runner, Jackie Brown, who is involved in a deal to supply military submachine guns for other clients. When taking the delivery of the pistols, Coyle finds out about the submachine guns and sets up Jackie for Foley. Jackie is apprehended by Foley and his agents and realizes he has been double-crossed by Coyle. Coyle feels he has fulfilled his end of the deal, but Foley puts the squeeze on Eddie, demanding more information for his cooperation. Acting on a tip, Foley and their agents are able to arrest Scalise and Van's gang in the commission of a robbery. A desperate Coyle approaches Foley with the only information of value he has, the identity of the gang pulling off the bank robberies, but it is too late for Eddie as Foley has already made the pinch. Scalise believes that he has been double-crossed by Eddie and the head of the syndicate is angry because one of his relatives was arrested as part of the gang. The syndicate boss wants Coyle killed, and Dillon gets a contract for a hit on Coyle, which he carries out. Dillon, who has had to live with the chance that Coyle might have given him up to the authorities to avoid prison, has been an informer for Foley and it is he, not Coyle, who has fingered Scalise and Van. When Foley asks his informant Dillon for information on Coyle's murder, Dillon demurs.
5454096	/m/0dmm2v	Enrique's Journey	Sonia Nazario	2006	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Juanita, leaves Honduras to find a job the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can go to school past the third grade. Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. But she struggles in America. Years pass. He begs for his mother to come back. Without her, he becomes lonely and troubled. When she calls, Lourdes tells him to be patient. Enrique despairs of ever seeing him again. After eleven years apart, he decides he will go find her. Enrique sets off alone from Tegucigalpa, with little more than a slip of paper bearing his mother’s North Carolina telephone number. Without money, he will make the dangerous and illegal trek up the length of Mexico the only way he can–clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains. With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother’s side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Gangsters control the tops of the trains. Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the route are out to fleece and deport them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la Muerte–The Train of Death. Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope–and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States.
5454113	/m/0dmm46	Kira-Kira	Cynthia Kadohata	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the 1950s, Katie and her family live in Iowa, where her parent own a unique Asian supermarket. When the family's store goes out of business, the family moves to an apartment home in Georgia where Katie's parents work at a hatchery with other Japanese families. Throughout the novel, Katie's best friend is her older sister Lynn, who Katie looks up to as the most intelligent person she knows, citing Lynn's ability to beat their Uncle Katsuhisa, a self-proclaimed chess grand master, at his own game as an example. Katie holds close to her heart the word Japanese phrase "kira-kira", which Lynn taught her and they use to describe things that sparkle in their lives. When Katie enters school, she has difficulty being the only Japanese-American in her class. Her grades are solid average C's, in comparison to Lynn's consistent A's. Lynn becomes friends with a popular girl, Amber, whom Katie dislikes immensely, and starts becoming interested in boys, often dropping Katie to go hang out with people her age. Katie eventually becomes friends with a girl named Silly Kilgore, whom she meets while waiting in the car at her mother's job. Silly's mother backs having a union at the plant to fight for higher wages and better working conditions, though Katie's mother opposes it. Meanwhile, Lynn becomes ill with lymphoma and becomes even sicker when Amber dumps her as a friend. The family moves into a house of Lynn's choice to help her recover, which appears to work. However, Lynn relapses from distress when her younger brother Sammy is caught in a metal animal trap on the vast property owned by Mr. Lyndon, the owner of the hatchery. Lynn's condition continues to deteriorate and she becomes blank and irritable. Katie's parents eventually tell her about Lynn's illness and Katie realizes that Lynn is dying. When Katie falls asleep without reconciling with Lynn after an argument, she is woken by her father the next day to be told that Lynn has died. Katie realizes why Lynn had taught her the word kira-kira; she wanted to remind her to always look at the world as a shining place and to never lose hope though there might be harsh hurdles in life. Katie keeps Lynn's belongings on her desk as an altar. The family feels that Lynn's spirit will stay around as long as they have her belongings around, though Katie thinks that Lynn's spirit will only stay around 49 days after she dies from an old story her uncle told her. The same day Lynn dies, Katie's usually calm and restrained father breaks into an angry rage after seeing Sammy struggle with his limp. He takes Katie and goes and wrecks Mr. Lyndon's car, an act which shocks her. Later on, he goes to Mr. Lyndon and owns up to what he did, resulting in him getting fired. Katie is appalled that her father is now unemployed, but he tells her that there is another hatchery opening up in Missouri, where he will probably work next, even though it will be a longer drive. Katie is left with Lynn's diary, and upon reading it, she realizes that Lynn knew she was going to die and that Lynn has written a will dated several days before her death. Soon after, Katie's mother attends a pro-union meeting at the Kilgore house. One of the things that the union wanted to achieve was having a three-day grief leave for families handling adversities. Though Katie's mother knows it's a little late for their family, if she voted for the union, it wouldn't be too late for the next family suffering grief. To cheer everyone up, Katie's family decides to take a wonderful, beautiful vacation. Katie recommends California because that is where Lynn would have wanted to go; California is where the sea she loved is and it is where Lynn wanted to live when she got older. The family arrives, and while Katie walks on the beach, she can hear Lynn's voice in the waves: "Kira-kira, kira-kira."
5454580	/m/0dmmq5	Life Among the Savages				 Jackson — speaking as the nameless mother who serves as narrator — relates a period of roughly six years in the life of her family, focusing particularly on her attempts to keep peace and domestic efficiency despite her increasing number of children. As the book's primary incidents begin the mother has "two children and about five thousand books" and predicts that before they leave their home they will have "twenty children and easily half a million books". The two children are Laurie and Jannie, named for and based largely on Jackson's two eldest children. Laurie is five, just beginning kindergarten, and "clamoring for the right to vote on domestic policies"; Jannie is nearly two. Eventually a third child, Sally — likewise named for and based upon Jackson's own third child — is introduced into the often overwhelming hilarity and chaos of domestic life, as the three children evolve into highly independent personalities. The book closes with the birth of yet another baby, Barry, who is again a fictional stand-in for Jackson's youngest child.
5455476	/m/0dmp3c	A Feast Unknown	Philip José Farmer	1969	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The two main characters are thinly-veiled versions of two of Farmer's favorite characters, Tarzan and Doc Savage. Called "Lord Grandrith" and "Doc Caliban", respectively, the two are recognizable as the iconic characters, but still unique. The two, half-brothers with the same father (the infamous Victorian era serial killer, Jack the Ripper) share a horrible affliction thanks to the powerful elixir that gives them near-eternal life. At the start of the novel they have discovered that they can no longer engage in sexual activity except during acts of violence (their penises become erect only during an act of violence) and they ejaculate after taking lives. By the end of the novel, Grandrith and Caliban will have grappled with each other in the nude, punching, clawing and biting, each of them sporting massive erections. The novel begins with Grandrith under attack by three parties: the Kenyan army, a group of Albanian mercenaries, and Doc Caliban who believes that Grandrith has killed Caliban's cousin and one true love. In addition, both Caliban and Grandrith have been summoned for their annual appear before The Nine, a powerful group of near immortals, who have given them both the secret of immortality in return for their obedience. However, Caliban and Grandrith ultimately find a common enemy among the Nine that is revealed to be controlling the world, and to have been manipulating their own lives, and indeed, the entire preceding battle between the two. The two iconic warriors vow to defeat the Nine together—that tale is told in the intertwining sequels, Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin.
5459336	/m/0dmt_5	Eternity	Greg Bear	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Eon, Axis City split into two: one segment of Naderites and some Geshels took their portion of the city out of the Way and through Thistledown into orbit around the Earth; they spend the next thirty years aiding the surviving population of Earth heal and rebuild from the devastating effects of the Death. This effort strains their resources and the government of the Hexamon. As time passes, sentiment grows to have Korzenowski reopen the Way. Firstly, to learn what has happened to the Geshels' long-sundered brethren (who took their portion of Axis City down the Way at relativistic near-light speed). And, secondly, to benefit from the commercial advantages of the Way (despite a very real risk that the Jarts will be waiting on the other side). In a parallel Earth, known as Gaia, the mathematician Patricia Vasquez (who was the primary protagonist of Eon), dies of old age; she never found her own Earth where the Death did not happen and her loved ones were still alive, but remained on the one she discovered (in which Alexander the Great did not die young and his empire did not fragment after his death). She passes her otherworldly artifacts of technology to her granddaughter, Rhita, who appears to have inherited her gifts. Rhita moves away from the academic institute the "Hypateion" (a reference to Hypatia) which Patricia founded and to that world's version of Alexandria. Patricia's clavicle claims that a test gate has been opened onto this world of Gaia, and that it could be expanded further. Ser Olmy is distracted by three concerns; the growth of his son, the prospects of the Way being re-opened (which he believes inevitable) with the attendant consequences, and by the revelation to him by an old friend that one of the deepest secrets of the Hexamon was a captured Jart whose body died in the process but whose mind was uploaded. Its mentality was alien and powerful enough that it took over or killed many of the researchers who attempted to connect to and study it, so it was hidden away deep in the Stone. As he studies the Jart, Olmy comes to believe that the Jart had been captured on purpose, that it was in fact a Trojan Horse. The Jart reveals tidbits about the Jart civilization: in essence, they are a hierarchical meta-civilization that ruthlessly modifies itself, attempting to absorb all useful intelligences and ways of thinking that it encounters, in the service of the Jarts' ultimate goal - to transmit all the data they can possibly gather to "descendant command". Olmy investigates further and discovers that descendant command is the Jart name for what they know as the "Final Mind" - a Teilhardian (or Tiplerian) conception of an ultimate intelligence which will be created at the end of the universe when all intelligences merge themselves into a single transcendent intellect which will effectively be a god. Olmy underestimates the Jart, and it begins to slowly take over his body and mind. Its original mission, assigned to it hundreds of years ago was to engage in sabotage and transmit its freshly acquired understanding of humanity back to present command, but the arrival of Pavel Mirsky changes everything. Pavel Mirsky had elected to go with the Geshels down the Way more than thirty years ago, after which the Way had been sealed off. It should have been impossible for him to return, but yet one day he quietly re-appears on Earth to deliver an urgent message. He had indeed traveled down the Way when the Way was sealed off with that portion of Axis City, and he and its citizens had voyaged hundreds of years and billions of kilometers; they advanced and changed radically on the way. At the end of the Way was a finite but unbounded cauldron of space and energy - a small proto-universe. They transformed themselves into ineffable beings of energy in order to survive the transition. They became as gods to this place, and for a time their creating went well. But it began to corrode and collapse without conflict and contrast between the creators, threatening to take the would-be gods with it. But they were rescued by the Final Mind of this universe, which took pity on them and freed them from the Way. The Final Mind is not quite omniscient or omnipotent, however, and many grand efforts are being balked and frustrated by the precocious accomplishment that the Way is. Mirsky had been reconstituted from what he had become and sent back in time to try to persuade the Hexamon to order the re-opening of the Way - and its destruction. On Gaia, Rhita persuades the aging queen to support her like the queen had supported Patricia. Their expedition leaves for the location of the test gate somewhere in the barbarous hinterlands of Central Asia in the nick of time, as the queen is deposed during their trip. Rhita's clavicle succeeds in expanding the test gate to a usable size, but it warns her that whoever opened the gate in the first place was not human. That night, the Jarts arrive on Gaia en masse. They begin the mammoth task of storing and digitizing all the data and life forms on Gaia to transmit down to descendant command. Rhita's consciousness is of special interest to the Jarts, particularly what she knows of Patricia. In the meantime on Earth proper, consensus has been reached to re-open the Way but not to destroy it. Mirsky disappears. Another entity who should not be there, Ry Oyu, the former gate opener for the Gate Guild, appears. He prods the president of the Hexamon into covertly ordering Korzenowski into destroying the Way regardless of the decision of the citizens. The backlash destroys the Stone. Ry Oyu, Korzenowski, Ser Olmy (who connived at the destruction), and the Jart controlling Olmy, outrun the Way's destruction and arrive at a Jart defense station located over Gaia. The Jarts respect the wishes of Ry Oyu as a representative of descendant command, and before the Way dies, transmit their accumulated data in a single immensely long fluctuation along the singularity/flaw of the Way to the Final Mind. Korzenowski has himself digitized and sent with the transmission. Olmy is dropped off on the homeworld of the Frants, a communal mind civilization whom he likes. Ry Oyu has Rhita's mind freed; her consciousness gives Ry Oyu the last piece of data needed to reconstitute Patricia Vasquez. Ry Oyu intends to make up for his failure to instruct Patricia properly when she was trying to open a gate back home in Eon; he correctly opens the gate, and bare moments before the Way completely disintegrates around him, finally sends her back home to an Earth where the Death did not happen. Rhita is also returned to Gaia, a Gaia where she never opened a test gate and where the Jarts did not invade. And Pavel Mirsky, still unsatisfied, returns to the beginning of the universe to witness all interesting events between then and the Final Mind, when he will return and report back to it.
5465108	/m/0dn1y8	The Two of Them	Joanna Russ	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Irene, a female galactic agent, rescues a young woman, Zubeydeh, from a male-dominant culture of a colonized planet, Ala-ed-deen, where women are kept in purdah.
5466499	/m/0dn3_6	The Saint and the Fiction Makers	Leslie Charteris	1968	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The dashing Simon Templar is hired by a friend in the book publishing trade to protect one of his stars, a secretive recluse named Amos Klein who writes a popular (and lucrative) series of adventure novels about a manly and suave spy. When he arrives at Klein's house in the country, he hears a woman's screams and several gunshots. Rushing to the rescue, he finds a woman tied up and gripping a revolver behind her back. After untying her, he finds out that she is "Amos Klein", a woman who adopted a male nom de plume to increase sales of her novels. She explains that she has to be able to do everything her character in the novels does and that she was just doing some research. The pair are soon kidnapped by a group of people who claim to be members of S.W.O.R.D., the evil organization from Amos Klein's novels. Their leader, "Warlock", the mastermind of the group, believes that Simon Templar must be the Amos Klein he is looking for and that the woman must be his secretary. They then find out what the group of madmen want: for Amos Klein to write the plot of their next grandiose heist.
5466643	/m/0dn44d	The Saint in Pursuit	Leslie Charteris	1970	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 To be added.
5468760	/m/0dn7bq	The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate	L. Sprague de Camp	1961	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel concerns the quest of Bessas of Zarispa, a young officer of the 'Immortals' regiment, for the ingredients of a potion that the King has been told will give him immortality; the blood of a dragon and the ear of a king. Unbeknownst to Bessas, the third ingredient is the heart of a hero, and therefore Bessas' own. Relying on information given him by the priests of Marduk in Babylon that a reptile depicted in reliefs on their temple, the sirrush, is a real dragon and lives at the headwaters of the Nile, Bessas sets out for the source of the Nile, accompanied by his former tutor, Myron of Miletos, who is bored of teaching and wants to make a name for himself in the field of philosophy.
5468826	/m/0dn7h6	The Blue Equinox	Aleister Crowley			 The Blue Equinox opens with Crowley's poem "Hymn to Pan", a devotional work devoted to the ancient Greek deity Pan. This is followed by an editorial, in which Crowley discusses Thelema, the A∴A∴ and the O.T.O., and the important role which he believed that they had to play in the Aeon of Horus. #Editorial #Præmonstrance of A∴A∴ #Curriculum of A∴A∴ #Liber II [The Message of the Master Therion] #The Tent #Liber DCCCXXXVII [The Law of Liberty] #Liber LXI [vel Causae A∴A∴] #A Psalm #Liber LXV [Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente] #Liber CL [De Lege Libellum] #A Psalm #Liber CLXV [A Master of the Temple] #Liber CCC [Khabs am Pekht] #Stepping Out of the Old Aeon into the New #The Seven Fold Sacrament #Liber LII [Manifesto of the O.T.O.] #Liber CI [An Open Letter to Those Who May Wish to Join the Order] #Liber CLXI [Concerning the Law of Thelema] #Liber CXCIV [An Intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order] #Liber XV (The Gnostic Mass) #Nekam Adonai! #A La Loge #The Tank *Special Supplement: Liber LXXI [The Voice of the Silence: The Two Paths, The Seven Portals]
5468954	/m/0dn7sl	Lord of the Trees	Philip José Farmer	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the end of A Feast Unknown, Grandrith and Doc Caliban (a thinly disguised Doc Savage) cease fighting each other upon learning that their personal war and indeed their entire lives were engineered by the Nine, a megalomaniacal and powerful secret society. The two men have a sexual affliction in common; they are impotent except when performing acts of violence; a temporary side effect of a serum that grants them eternal life&mdash;another product of the Nine. Angered by the ways they have been manipulated, the two heroes split up to overthrow the Nine, ultimately meeting up at the end. Lord of the Trees shows the story from Grandrith's point of view. The Mad Goblin tells the same story from Doc Caliban's viewpoint. During the events of the book, Grandrith kills two of the Nine, Mubaniga and Jiizfan. The oldest member of the Nine, XauXaz, died previously of extreme old age in A Feast Unknown. Iwaldi, the The Mad Goblin, is also killed. In the end, only five of the Nine remain alive.
5470395	/m/0dn9xc	Never End	Åke Edwardson	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A nineteen year-old woman, Jeanette Bielke, is raped whilst walking home during the night. Inspector Winter is perturbed when he realises that the rape occurred in exactly the same spot as a similar crime, which in this case ended in murder, five years ago. That case remains unsolved, and looms even further into Winter's site when another rape occurs, and this one ends in murder again.
5470763	/m/0dnbfr	The Saint and the People Importers	Leslie Charteris	1971	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 This novel captures some flavour of the early-seventies English society by thrusting its titular hero against the immigration rackets exploiting the masses of underprivileged Asian workers (in this case, Pakistani) during the times when England "called the Empire home". The action starts when, getting in a cab in London, Simon Templar spots a particularly lurid headline on the frontpage of a newspaper forgotten by some previous customer, describing the horrible death of a Pakistani immigrant in Soho.
5470991	/m/0dnbp2	Walkabout				 The book opens with two siblings, Peter and Mary, in a gully with diminishing food supplies. They are lost as a result of a plane crash and after swimming, and eating the last of their food, they decide to walk to Adelaide which, unknown to them, is across the continent. They leave and start walking across the desert. They climb some hills and Peter sees what he thinks is the ocean. Mary looks and realizes it is nothing more than salt in the desert. To keep this knowledge from Peter, she tells him they will rest below the hill. In the night, Mary dreams about what happened. They were in a cargo plane when the engine caught on fire and the plane crashed. Everyone survived including the pilots, but they were killed when the plane exploded while Mary and Peter were at a safe distance. The incident stranded them in Sturt Plain in the Northern Territory. The next day they keep walking and searching for food. Their efforts are in vain and they don't find food. They keep walking even more and Peter thinks he notices someone. Suddenly out of nowhere an Aborigine seems to appear and startles Mary and Peter mostly due to his nudity. Hoping to make him leave out of shame, Mary glares at him. Eventually Peter sneezes and the Aborigine laughs. Hoping to find out about the strangers, he inspects both of them and finds nothing, so he leaves. Peter and Mary, shocked that their only hope for survival had just left, soon follow. Peter attempts to communicate with him through gestures of eating and drinking and the Aborigine comprehends their situation. He indicates that they should follow him and the children do. He arrives at a waterhole where the children drink to their fill. Then, the Aborigine finds a plant which he prepares as food. After this, he begins to lead the children to the next waterhole. On the way, Mary has an idea. She removes her pants from under her dress and gives them to the Aborigine in hopes of clothing him. Peter assists in the attempt and the Aborigine puts on the pants. Just then, Peter notices that they are girl's pants and starts jumping around mocking the Aborigine. The Aborigine suddenly thinks that the pants are decorations for a dance that Peter had just started and starts dancing himself. His movements depict two men fighting as a victory dance. At the end of the dance the pants snap and fall off. Mary is shocked and the Aborigine looks at her face. He is terrified for he thinks that Mary's shock is because she had seen the Spirit of Death in him. They arrive at the next waterhole where the symptoms of the 'flu start to show in the Aborigine due to the fact Peter had the disease and had passed it on to him. He begins to worry and decides to tell the children he needs a burial platform to keep bad spirits from his body after he dies. Peter is gathering firewood so to avoid interrupting a man at work, the Aborigine seeks Mary who is bathing. The Aborigine doesn't see a bath as something that private in his culture so there is nothing to stop him. He arrives at the pool and Mary is terrifed and begins to threaten the Aborigine with snarls and a rock. He is confused why this is happening and becomes depressed that he will not get his burial platform. Mary goes to Peter and tells him to leave with her. Peter wonders about the Aborigine though, and a hesitant Mary is forced to stay. Peter goes back to Mary and tells her that the Aborigine is very sick. Peter begins to realize that the Aborigine will die while Mary refuses to believe that can happen from the flu. Soon, Mary goes to investigate. Finally, she acknowledges that he is actually dying and forgives him. She lays his head in her lap and he touches her hair, during this moment Mary realizes that they are not so different, despite his appearance and language. He dies later in the night. They bury him and leave for the food and water-filled valley Peter was told about by the Aborigine before he died. They stop at a pool where they eat some yabbies and observe platypus and leave. After crossing many hills they come across the valley. They discover some wet clay which they use to draw pictures with. Peter draws nature while Mary draws stylish women and her dream house. Eventually the children see smoke and see Aboriginal swimmers. They arrive at the Aboriginal settlement where one of the swimmers, a man, sees the drawings. He sees Mary's dream house and realises who Mary and Peter are. In a wide variety of gestures and drawings, he tells the children that there is a house like that across the hills and demonstrates how to get there. The overjoyed children begin their trek back to their civilization. The book has 125 pages
5471038	/m/0dnbrx	The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace	Leslie Charteris	1976	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 To be added.
5471458	/m/0dncbl	Locked Rooms	Laurie R. King	2005	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 On their way back to Britain from India, Holmes and Russell stop at Russell's childhood home in San Francisco. As they approach San Francisco, Russell becomes more and more distracted. Holmes concludes from this, and her recurring dreams of falling objects, a faceless man, and locked rooms, that she is repressing some unpleasant memory. Russell denies this and tries to track down the psychiatrist who helped her recover from the trauma she suffered when she precipitated the car accident that killed her family. On the way, she meets a Chinese man, Long, who was the son of her parents' good friends. Long saves her from a murder attempt before introducing himself and saying that his own parents were killed shortly after her own parents died. When Russell finally tracks down the name of her psychiatrist, she learns that she was murdered after Russell departed for England several years ago. Holmes determines from the fact that there was a recent break-in at Russell's house, Russell's anxiety and distraction, the murder of the psychiatrist, and the most recent attempt on Russell's life, that there is something serious amiss. He hires Dashiell Hammett to join his investigation. They conclude that Russell was present during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, despite her denial of this fact, and it was this experience that produced the dream about falling objects. He learns from an interview with a survivor of the earthquake that Russell was very frightened by a man with several bandages on his face looking for her father — he had covered up his face because he had been burned while fighting a fire, and this made him appear faceless. Both Russell and Hammett visit the site of the Russell family car accident. Russell then takes a vacation to her family's summer home with her friends Flo and Donny. During the vacation, she recovers her wits enough to realize that somebody is trying to murder her and all the people that could possibly be connected with the car accident that killed her parents, from Long's parents to her psychiatrist. She visits the garage that collected the remainder of her parents' car and learns that the brake rod was cut and she is not to blame for their deaths; they were murdered. Russell returns to her city house, fully recovered and determined to find out who was behind all the murders. Using fengshui, which Long's family was very interested in, they dig up the garden and find a box with a confession, written by Russell's father, and several valuable items in it. In the letter, he says that he helped a man get away with murder of a policeman, looting, and arson to cover up the evidence during the 1906 earthquake. The man in question was the one posing as a rescuer with the bandaged face. The letter concludes with the statement that Mr. Russell is going to disclose this information in order to free his conscience, and adds that he warned the person responsible of his intentions. The letter was written only days before the family members' deaths. Holmes had previously set up Irregulars in the form of street kids to spy on Hammett's house in case of an attempt on Hammett's life. They report on a break-in involving the two suspects, the burnt man and his "sister". They end up on a chase that takes them to Chinatown, where one of Long's friends calls on the crowd to prevent them from getting away. Russell confronts the two before they are arrested, and finally unlocks the last "room" — a memory she had of seeing the man near her parents' car the day they died.
5474467	/m/0dnh1c	Lost	Gregory Maguire	2001-10-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Winifred Rudge is an American writer who travels to London to visit a distant cousin, and to research a new novel about a woman haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. When she arrives, she discovers that her cousin has vanished, his apartment (once owned by a common ancestor of theirs: a man who was supposedly the inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge) is being renovated, and strange sounds are coming from the chimney. It seems the apartment is now haunted by a supernatural presence. Although the plot of the novel revolves around Winifred trying to chase down the ghost in her cousin's apartment, along the way a deep mystery that exists between Winifried and her cousin, John Comestor, is revealed. While trying to solve the mystery Winifried is forced to face the ghosts of her own past and examine her choices and motivations.
5476214	/m/0dnjs4	Exquisite Corpse	Poppy Z. Brite	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel unfolds in alternating chapters from the points of view of the four main characters. Andrew Compton, a convicted serial killer (based on real life serial killer Dennis Nilsen), leaves his prison cell as a dead man in a self-induced cataleptic trance and rises again to build a new life. His journey takes him to New Orleans' French Quarter-- to the decadent bars and frivolous boys that haunt the luscious dark corners of a town brought up on Voodoo and the dark arts. Anticipating a willing victim, he finds an equal in Jay Byrne, a decadent artist (based on real life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer), who shares the same dangerous desires--torture, murder and cannibalism. They fixate on Tran, a young Vietnamese runaway, as their perfect victim. As Tran's long-standing attraction to Jay threatens to lead him straight to his demise, Tran's estranged older gay lover, Lucas Ransom (pirate talk radio personality "Lush Rimbaud"), seeks to find and reunite with him. The four collide in a horrific climax.
5480268	/m/0dnqfc	The Saint and the Templar Treasure	Leslie Charteris	1979	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 To be added.
5482401	/m/0dntfb	When the People Fell	Frederik Pohl	1959-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The setting is the type of benign Venus imagined before the first space probes penetrated the clouds of that planet. Colonization has become stymied by the native inhabitants (loudies), who are apparently sentient bubbles that float around the landscape, getting in the way of human progress. Attempts to communicate with them produce no response. Confining them is useless (they drift back) and killing them produces a deadly explosion that contaminates a thousand acres (4 km²). The non-Chinese authorities of the early Instrumentality government have no answer. The ruler of Goonhogo (the entity that replaced China under the early Instrumentality) decrees that 82 million Chinesians (men, women, and children) be dropped from space, parachuting down to the surface. Each one has a simple mission — herd the bubbles together. Many die in the process, both in landing and from the bubbles exploding. The rest corralled the loudies together into herds, where they eventually starve, wiping out the species. Meanwhile, more Chinese parachute down with rice seeds and begin planting. Eventually, by sheer weight of numbers, the Chinese conquer Venus. Smith's point in the story is evidently to demonstrate how Chinese attitudes such as fatalism and obedience to authority, coupled with their large numbers, could outperform the "Yankee ingenuity" and "self-reliant individual" attitudes predominant in mainstream 1950s American science fiction of the time. (However, it is implied that the separate Chinese government and Chinese ethnic identity of the time of the Venus colonization no longer exist in the same form by the time of the story's "frame" interview.)
5482474	/m/0dntk5	Half-Life	Aaron Krach	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Two weeks before high school graduation and the geography of 18 year-old Adam Westman's life is about to change dramatically. Many of the familiar landmarks will remain—his best friend Dart riding shotgun; the suburban house where he lives with his dad and younger sister; and the numerous on-ramps and off-ramps that connect him to his hometown of Angelito in the center of centerless Los Angeles. But when death and love, perhaps, arrive unexpectedly, Adam must learn that trouble sometimes has to rumble through a tidy world to make room for the kind of magical connections that make life worth living.
5486177	/m/0dnz35	Hell's Kitchen			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The book follows Pellam as he tries to prove the innocence of an old woman, Ettie, whom he had interviewed for a documentary on the area of New York referred to as Hell's Kitchen. When Ettie's apartment catches fire, she is blamed for the crime and jailed. Pellam believes she is innocent and is determined to prove it and set her free. Along the way he meets several characters who try to interrupt his search as it uncovers many underlying crimes of different people. All the while, the real arsonist, a man named Sonny, has been continuing to burn buildings and chase Pellam. Towards the end of the book, Sonny finally confronts Pellam, attempting to kill him (and Sonny himself in the process). However, just when it appears Pellam is about to die, two friends he has made along his investigation come to his aid and save him from Sonny. Pellam gathers the evidence needed to prove Ettie innocent and she is set free.
5486216	/m/0dnz4k	Freckles	Gene Stratton-Porter	1900	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The hero is an adult orphan, just under twenty years of age, with bright red hair and a freckled complexion. His right hand is missing at the wrist, and has been since before he can remember. Raised since infancy in a Chicago orphanage, he speaks with a slight Irish accent, "scarcely definite enough to be called a brogue." Exhausted after days of walking, he applies for a job with the Grand Rapids lumber company, guarding timber in the Limberlost Swamp. The lumber company field manager, McLean, is impressed by the boy's polite assertiveness and hires him despite his youth and disability. He gives his name only as "Freckles", insisting that he has no name of his own. He claims the name given him in the orphanage (which we never learn) "is no more my name than it is yours". So that he has a name to put down on the books, McLean gives Freckles the name of his own father, James Ross McLean. Freckles' duty is to twice a day walk the perimeter of the lumber company's land, a seven-mile trek through lonely swampland, and to be on the watch for those who aim to steal the expensive timber. McLean's chief worry is Black Jack Carter, who has sworn to smuggle several priceless trees out of the swamp. Freckles' weapons are limited to a revolver and a stout stick, which he carries at all times and uses to test to wire that marks the company's boundaries. At night Freckles boards with Duncan, head teamster for the lumber company, and Duncan's wife, who becomes a mother figure to Freckles. Initially terrified of the wilderness after a lifetime in an urban environment, Freckles first conquers his fears and then develops an interest in the wildlife of the swamp. He is touched by the beauty he sees, and his frustration and curiosity leads him to purchase several books on natural history, and look upon the creatures of the swamp as his friends. He creates a "room" in the swamp, where he has transplanted the most unique plant specimens he can find. After a year in the swamp, his hard work and faithfulness lead McLean to offer a thousand dollars to anyone who can show him a cut stump from a tree stolen under Freckles’ watch. Freckles gets an opportunity to prove his capabilities as a guard when Wessner, a recently fired lumberman, comes upon Freckles on his rounds and offers him five hundred dollars to look the other way while Black Jack’s gang of thieves steals several prime trees. After initially playing dumb to gain information, Freckles puts his gun and stick aside and fights Wessner using only his one fist. He wins, and drives Wessner from the swamp. The next day, while he is reading in his room in the swamp, a lovely and wealthy girl about sixteen years of age appears. Freckles instantly falls in love with her for both her beauty and her bravery, as she is not bothered by the thought of rattlesnakes and the other deadly creatures of the swamp. The girl's name is never given, but she has come to the swamp with a local photographer known as the Bird Woman and has become lost. Freckles conducts her back to her carriage, and names her "the Swamp Angel." In the days that follow, the Bird Woman comes to the swamp repeatedly to take photographs while Freckles sings for the Swamp Angel and shows her the wonders of the swamp. One day the Bird Woman spots two men in the process of sawing down a tree. Although Freckles' first instinct is to protect the women, the Bird Woman and the Swamp Angel join him with revolvers of their own, and under the cover of the swamp all three drive off the thieves. Her skill with a gun gives Freckles further reason to love the Swamp Angel. The next day he returns the Swamp Angel's hat to her father at work, rather than going to her home, and this gentlemanly behavior makes a positive impression. Meanwhile, Freckles continues to secretly worship the Swamp Angel, while believing her to be far above him in social class and out of his reach. Freckles is granted a second revolver and the use of a bicycle, so that if thieves should reappear he can alert the camp swiftly. In spite of these precautions, Black Jack manages to capture Freckles, and ties him to a tree while the rest of the thieves cut down several trees. When they finish, Freckles is to be left for Wessner to kill personally, and his body will be hidden so that it will look like he joined the thieves, killing his reputation as well. However, the Swamp Angel finds them, pretends to think they are on official camp business, flirts with Black Jack to make him trust her, and rides off on Freckles’ bicycle to bring the rest of the camp to his aid. When she returns with reinforcements, she finds that the Bird Woman has freed Freckles and shot Black Jack in the arm. The fallen logs are recovered and the thieves captured, except for Black Jack who swears vengeance on Freckles, the Bird Woman, and the Swamp Angel, and escapes into the swamp. For a week, Freckles pushes himself to the point of exhaustion by guarding the trees during the day and the home of the Swamp Angel at night. Finally, it is discovered the Black Jack was killed by the creatures of the swamp, and Freckles is able to relax his watch. He and the Swamp Angel find several trees that Black Jack had marked, but when the last one is felled it nearly crushes the Swamp Angel. Freckles rushes toward her and pushes her out of danger, but the blow from the tree falls on him instead, and smashes almost all the bones in his chest. The Swamp Angel and her father rush him to the finest hospital in Chicago, but Freckles’ belief that the Swamp Angel deserves a better husband causes him almost to lose the will to live. He fears that he is descended from criminals, who abused their baby and cut off his hand intentionally. The Swamp Angel declares her love for Freckles, and promises that she will find his parents and prove that they were respectable people. Her inquiries at his former orphanage lead her to Lord and Lady O’More, Irish nobility who have been searching Chicago for Lord O’More’s lost nephew. They prove themselves to be kind and noble, and explain that Freckles’ father had been disinherited when he married a clergyman’s daughter, and both had perished in the fire that took his hand. Freckles’ true name is Terence Maxwell O’More of Dunderry House in County Clare. The virtue of his parents proven, Freckles revives and becomes engaged to marry the Swamp Angel. With the help of McLean, whom he still regards as a foster father, Freckles plans out what the next few years will hold. Rather than go to Ireland and live as a lord, he will go to college in the United States and then join McLean in managing the lumber company, so that he can always be near the Limberlost.
5487527	/m/0dn_9l	The Winthrop Woman	Anya Seton		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Winthrop Woman begins with young Elizabeth Fones and her family travelling to visit their family at their grandfather's countryside estate. Elizabeth's uncle, John Winthrop, is especially pious and strict about Protestantism; and he chides his sister for not taking proper care of her children, Elizabeth in particular, who is hot-headed and capricious. Elizabeth is caught blaspheming and is beaten, resulting in her becoming areligious and instilling in her a hatred for her uncle. Years later, Elizabeth Fones has become a beautiful young woman working in her ailing father's apothecary. Though she is in love with her cousin John ("Jack") Winthrop, Jr., it is Jack's friend Edward Howes who seeks to marry her. Just as she becomes engaged to Howes, her cousin Henry Winthrop (or "Harry"), Jack's younger brother, returns from his adventures in Barbados. Unlike his father and brother, Harry is wild and carefree, reckless to the point that he has depleted all his money and nearly brought his family to financial ruin. Unwilling to return to his father, Harry instead stays at Thomas Fones's house and spends his time frolicking with his equally profligate friends. One night, Harry and Elizabeth spend an especially long night out, their lust overcomes them, and they sleep together in a garden. In yet another reckless act, Harry declares that he is in love with Elizabeth and demands her hand in marriage. The couple are wed, much to the dismay of both fathers (John Winthrop both believes that his son could do better than a Fones and is not fond of Elizabeth; Thomas Fones is dismayed because his daughter was already engaged to marry Edward Howes). Elizabeth and Harry move to the Winthrop estate in the countryside (John Winthrop is no longer resides there as he has taken a position elsewhere). For a while, the couple live a happy life. However, it soon comes obvious just how profligate Harry is as he neglects his wife and family to have his own fun. In the meantime, Jack returns. It is apparent that he and Elizabeth still have strong feelings for each other; but, while attempting to cover his feelings for his brother's wife, Jack accidentally kisses Martha, Elizabeth's younger sister, and soon the two are wed. Finally, in an attempt to control his son, John Winthrop forces Harry to come to New England with him. In a final act of recklessness, Harry drowns when he attempts to jump in and swim. Elizabeth is left a pregnant widow. After she gives birth to her daughter (Martha, she, Jack, Martha, and John Winthrop's wife, Margaret, all depart for Massachusetts. In the strict colony in the New World, Elizabeth runs into more trouble than ever. On her uncle's suggestion, Elizabeth marries Robert Feake, a weak-willed and strangely disturbed man who often has nightmares and commits odd deeds in his sleep. She also attempts to befriend Anne Hutchinson and chooses a tainted squaw, Telaka, for her maid. Eventually, Elizabeth and Robert are driven out of their house in Watertown because the other colonists believe Telaka to be a witch. The Feakes then settle in Greenwich in the colony of New Haven. After run-ins with Indians, Elizabeth and the other leader of the town, Daniel Patrick, join Greenwich to the Dutch colony of New Netherland. After Daniel Patrick is murdered by an old enemy, Elizabeth's husband, Robert, becomes completely mad and attempts to return to England. Meanwhile, Joan marries Thomas Lyons, who turns out to be a prospective gold-digger. When William Hallett, a previous acquaintance of Elizabeth's, begins courting her and gains more and more control over the Feake household, Lyons grows jealous. Finally, Elizabeth and her lover are accused of adultery after not having married properly under English law, and all their lands are confiscated. Elizabeth and William Hallett hide under the protection of Jack Winthrop, who is now an important member of another town in Connecticut. After Jack does all he can for his cousin and ex-lover, Elizabeth and William Hallett are once more free to move back to Greenwich, where Indians then set their house afire. Elizabeth and William Hallett have no choice but to start anew once more, their hearts heavy but their wills strengthened.
5487849	/m/0dn_nz	The Darkest Road	Guy Gavriel Kay	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kim and Matt, with the help of Tabor and Imraith-Nimphais, rescue the Paraiko. Ruana, their leader, chants kanior -- a ritual of forgiveness and lamentation for the dead that is tied to the Paraiko's non-violent nature and the bloodcurse that protects them. So powerful is his performance that it invokes not only all the Paraiko that have died through the centuries but even their enemies; both he and Kim sense a finality in it, as is proven when the Baelrath blazes and summons Kim to change the Paraiko's pacifist natures so they can fight against Maugrim. Due to the loss of their pacifism, however, the magical bloodcurse that had protected the Paraiko for centuries was also lost forever. Kim returns to Ysanne's cottage where she meets Darien and gives him the Circlet of Lisen. As she puts it on his head, the light of the gem goes out, and Darien interprets this as a sign that he is evil. In despair he takes Lökdal, the dagger that Ysanne used to kill herself, and flees. Kim calls after him to tell him where his mother is, hoping that Jennifer will be able to comfort him. Jennifer, waiting in Lisen's tower for Prydwen to return, listens to Flidais' tale of the Wild Hunt and how its randomness, being outside the Weaver's control, gifts the Weaver's creatures with freedom of choice. That wildness also made Maugrim possible; and because Maugrim came from outside the Tapestry there is no thread in it with his name on it, Flidais explains, and so he cannot die. Darien arrives at the tower, looking for love and acceptance. Believing as she does that their only hope lies in leaving Darien completely free, Jennifer tells him simply that he must make his own choice and that she will not influence it, except to say that his father wanted her dead so that he would never be born. Darien believes that his choice was made for him when the light of Lisen's Circlet went out and so departs to seek his father. Prydwen returns in the midst of a terrible storm and Jennifer immediately sends Lancelot away, charging him to follow Darien and protect him. Lancelot battles an ancient stone creature of the wood, a demon named Curdardh, only managing to defeat it with Darien's help. In a moment of clarity Darien realizes that his mother sent him away because she is not afraid of what he will do if he is left free to choose: she trusts him. Lancelot finally loses sight of Darien as he crosses Daniloth in the form of a white owl. Meanwhile, the Dalrei, the lios alfar, and the men of Brennin and Cathal are gathering on the plain to face Maugrim's army. Jaelle's view of men as lesser beings has been challenged by Kevin's unflinching sacrifice and she and Paul/Pwyll begin to tentatively shape a friendship. As they talk on the shore below Lisen's Tower, a ghostly ship appears to take all of them to Andarien in time to meet Aileron and the rest of the host of the Light. Loren, Matt and Kim return to the kingdom of the dwarves where Matt competes against Kaen and Blöd to regain his rightful position as King of the Dwarves. The Crystal Dragon of Calor Diman awakens but despite the blazing summons of the Baelrath, Kim refuses to bind it to help them against Maugrim, realizing that she still has the power to choose and that there is a point where the ends do not justify the means. She uses the ring's power instead to take Loren, Matt and herself to the Plain in time for Matt to reclaim the Dwarves and lead them to join the rest of the forces opposing Maugrim's hordes. A giant urgach issues a challenge to single combat and Arthur, hearing that the name of the plain was once Camlann, recognizes that his time has come: "I never see the end." But while they debate, Diarmuid seizes the moment and takes the challenge on himself. He fights brilliantly and kills the urgach but is mortally wounded, and dies in Sharra's arms. The next morning the battle begins. Among Maugrim's army are Avaia and her black brood of swans and, more terribly, a giant black dragon. Kim, realizing that it was for this the Baelrath had demanded the Crystal Dragon, is sick with self-reproach but Imraith-Nimphais and Tabor fight valiantly and kill many of the swans. Finally, realizing there is only one way to defeat the dragon, the unicorn shakes Tabor from her back midair and plunges into the dragon's heart, killing both herself and the dragon. Tabor is saved from his death plunge by magical intervention. Despite this unexpected victory, the battle is not going well for the Light as Darien arrives in Starkadh. He faces his father in a room at the top of a tower whose windows magically reflect the battle going on miles away. Maugrim tries to batter his way into Darien's mind, and when he fails guesses who Darien is. Realizing that a child of his getting binds him into the Loom and thus makes him mortal, he gloats that now he will kill Darien himself and thus restore his immortality. He takes Lökdal from Darien; Darien, seeing the horror and death on the battlefield, at last makes his choice for the Light. When he does so, Lisen's Circlet blazes up, temporarily blinding Maugrim; in that moment Darien steps forward onto the knife, and so Maugrim kills without love in his heart and the curse of Lökdal destroys him. The tide of battle turns and Maugrim's army scatters, but Galadan, who since Lisen's death a thousand years ago has wanted nothing more than the annihilation of everything, blows Owein's Horn to summon the Wild Hunt. They arrive, but before they can begin to destroy everything in Fionavar Leila, far away in Paras Derval but still linked to Finn, slams the double-headed axe down on the altar and demands in the name of the Goddess that he come home. When Finn tries to turn his horse, Iselin throws him and he falls to his death. Ruana of the Paraiko arrives and, telling Owien that since they have once again lost the Child who leads them they must be returned to their slumber, binds them once again as Connla did so long ago -- though he comforts them by saying that one day they will be free again. Paul, recognizing that Galadan's ability to hear the Horn means that he is not altogether evil, leaves him free to go, and Cernan takes him away to find healing. Paul then calls the sea in to wash the plain clean; with the sea comes a boat, and Jennifer/Guinevere, Lancelot and Arthur (who has survived to see the end) are also freed from their penance and sail away together at last. Paul decides to stay in Fionavar with Jaelle, who has stepped aside as High Priestess in favor of Leila. Ceinwen, the Goddess of the Hunt, appears one last time to Dave and reminds him that he cannot remain in Fionavar, but as a final gift she asks him what he would name a child of the andain, a son, if he had one. He chooses the name "Kevin" and he and Kim return to our world.
5489053	/m/0dp18y	Moondyne	John Boyle O'Reilly	1879	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1848, convict Joe is assigned as a labourer to settled Isaac Bowman in Western Australia. Joe escapes and takes refuge with a tribe of aborigines led by Te Mana Roa, who tell him about a mountain of gold. Bowman recaptures Joe, who tells him about the mine. Bowman goes to the mine, kills the king and loads his horse with gold, but ends up perishing in the desert, leaving Joe with his aboriginal friends.
5489318	/m/0dp1lb	The Flanders Panel	Arturo Pérez-Reverte	1990	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Julia, an art restorer and evaluator living in Madrid, discovers a painted-over message on a 1471 Flemish masterpiece — appearing as the cover of the book —called La partida de ajedrez (The Chess Game) reading "Qvis Necavit Eqvitem", written in Latin (English: "Who killed the knight?"). With the help of her old friend and father-figure, the flamboyantly homosexual César, and Muñoz, a quiet local chess master, Julia works to uncover the mystery of a 500-year-old murder. At the same time, however, Julia faces danger of her own, as several people helping her along her search are also murdered.
5489505	/m/0dp1t9	The Secret World of Og	Pierre Berton	1961	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In this fantasy adventure, four children — Penny, the leader; Pamela, her common-sense sister; Peter, whose life’s ambition is to become a garbageman; and Patsy, who collects frogs in her pockets — set out in search of their baby brother, Paul, better known as “The Pollywog,” who has vanished mysteriously from their playhouse. Accompanied by their fearless pets, the children descend through a secret trapdoor into a strange underground world of mushrooms, whose green inhabitants know only one word: “OG!”
5490661	/m/0dp3j4	The Fourth Bear	Jasper Fforde		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 DCI Jack Spratt heads the Berkshire Nursery Crime Division, handling all inquiries involving nursery rhyme characters and other PDRs (persons of dubious reality). After doubts arise concerning his handling of the Great Red-Legg'd Scissorman's arrest and the Red Riding Hood affair, he is suspended pending a mental health review. His DS Mary Mary promises to consult him on all cases, to bypass the suspension. They begin an investigation of porridge-smuggling by anthropomorphic bears. Jack's troubles increase when the argumentative Punches move in next door and his son adopts a sly and sticky-fingered pet. He is forced to reveal to his shocked wife that he is himself a PDR (Person of Dubious Reality). Furthermore, his psychiatrist is particularly sceptical about his claim that his new car repairs itself when no one is watching, and the car salesman who can prove his sanity cannot be found. His self-esteem is somewhat restored when the newspaperman who has been hounding him begs Jack's help in finding his missing sister "Goldilocks". It seems she was working on an explosive story involving cucumber growers. Meanwhile the Gingerbreadman, the notorious murderous biscuit, (or possibly cake, occasionally cookie) escapes custody leaving a trail of bodies; Jack is frustrated when the case is given to an unimaginative officer outside NCD. While Jack and Mary are making enquiries about Goldilocks, they twice encounter the fugitive biscuit, but fail to capture him. It emerges that Goldilocks was involved in the porridge-smuggling after her body is discovered in the grim theme park SommeWorld. Jack begins to suspect the Gingerbreadman is a hired assassin and attempts to question the Quangle-Wangle, a reclusive industrialist. The solution to the mystery involves secret industrial and government conspiracies and the mysterious Fourth bear... After more investigations Jack comes across a cottage of three bears who knew Goldilocks. They say that she ate the little bear's porridge and broke his bed, like the rhyme. He also makes investigations into Ursine Developments, the flats for bears. You came across these at the start of the book when Jack caught them smuggling oats into the flats for oat addicts. This is illegal for bears to eat as well as marmalade,honey and large amounts of porridge as it has the same effect of drugs.
5490729	/m/0dp3m8	Holding the Man	Timothy Conigrave			 In 1976, Timothy Conigrave fell in love with the captain of the football team, John Caleo. So began a relationship that was to last for 15 years, a love affair that weathered disapproval, separation and, ultimately death. With honesty and insight, 'Holding the Man' explores the highs and lows of their life partnership: the intimacy, constraints, temptations, and the strength of heart both men had to find when they tested positive to HIV. The story opens at Kostka, Xavier's junior [preparatory] school in Melbourne. Here, the author begins to sexually experiment with other boys, and comes to the realisation that he is gay. Several years later, on his first day at Xavier College (the Jesuit senior school), Conigrave sees John Caleo for the first time. On the far side of the crush I noticed a boy. I saw the body of a man with an open, gentle face: such softness within that masculinity. He was beautiful, calm. I was transfixed. He wasn't talking, just listening to his friends with his hands in his pockets, smiling. What was it about his face? He became aware that I was looking at him and greeted me with a lift of his eyebrows. I returned the gesture and then looked away, pretending something had caught my attention. But I kept sneaking looks. It's his eyelashes. They're unbelievable. [31] The two form a friendship, and at the suggestion of Pepe, one of Tim&#39;s female friends, John is invited to a dinner party at Tim&#39;s house. The girls know Tim is in love with John, and &#39;pass a kiss&#39; around the table for his benefit. Juliet kissed Pepe. Their kiss lingered. Pepe came up for air. 'Tim'. As I kissed her she opened her mouth. Her tongue was exploring mine. I felt trapped. I was afraid to stop kissing her because I knew what was coming. I don't want John to think I'm enjoying this. Before I knew it my hand was on his knee, as if to let him know it was him I wanted. His hand settled on mine as Pepe continued kissing me. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was a virgin being led to the volcano to be sacrificed. I turned to face him. He shut his eyes and pursed his lips. Everything went slow motion as I pressed my mouth against his. His gentle warm lips filled my head. My body dissolved and I was only lips pressed against the flesh of his. I would have stayed there for the rest of my life, but I was suddenly worried about freaking him out and I pulled away. I caught sight of his face - fresh, with chocolate-brown eyes, and a small, almost undetectable smile. [74] A few weeks later, Tim rings John at home, and asks &#34;John Caleo, will you go round with me?&#34; The reply is an unambiguous &#34;Yep&#34;. The two graduate from High School in 1977, Tim attending Monash University and John studying to be a chiropractor at College. Despite parental opposition, Conigrave&#39;s eventual move to Sydney and NIDA, and youthful experimentation and infidelities, the relationship continues. Tragically, when Tim and John finally move in together in Sydney and are genuinely happy, they are diagnosed with HIV. The year is 1985. Until 1990, the men have relatively mild symptoms. Sadly, in the Autumn of 1991, John begins to rapidly deteriorate, suffering from lymphoma. Tim cares for his partner, whilst nursing symptoms of his own. The misery of HIV/AIDS is laid bare before the reader, with Conigrave sparing nothing in detailing the cruel progression of the disease. He watches as his lover&#39;s once-strong body is ravaged. The reader helplessly looks on as the story moves to its devastating conclusion. At Christmas, in 1991, John is admitted to the Fairfield Hospital in Melbourne. A month later, on Australia Day 1992, he dies of an AIDS-related illness, with his lover by his side, gently stroking his hair. Nearly three years later, shortly after finishing &#39;Holding the Man&#39;, Tim Conigrave passes away in Sydney. The final passages of the book are some of its most poignant: I guess the hardest thing is having so much love for you and it somehow not being returned. I develop crushes all the time, but that is just misdirected need for you. You are a hole in my life, a black hole. Anything I place there cannot be returned. I miss you terribly. Ci vedremo lassu, angelo. [286].
5490754	/m/0dp3pq	The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold	Evelyn Waugh	1957	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gilbert Pinfold is a middle-aged Catholic novelist teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown. In an attempt to cure his nerves he doses himself liberally with bromide, chloral and crème de menthe. He books a passage on the SS Caliban, assuming it will be a nice break; however his crisis deepens and he slips into madness. it:La prova di Gilbert Pinfold ru:Испытание Гилберта Пинфолда
5491759	/m/0dp5mj	Letter to a Christian Nation	Sam Harris	2006-09	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The underlying premise Harris takes is one of utilitarianism. He states: "Questions about Morality are questions about happiness and suffering." Harris addresses his arguments to members of the conservative Christian Right in America. In answer to their appeal to the Bible on questions of morality, he points to selected items from the Old Testament Mosaic law, (death for adultery, homosexuality, disobedience to parents etc.), and contrasts this with, for example, the complete non-violence of Jainism. Harris argues that the reliance on dogma can create a false morality, which is divorced from the reality of human suffering and the efforts to alleviate it; thus religious objections stand in the way of condom use, stem cell research, abortion, and the use of a new vaccine for the human papilloma virus. Harris also addresses the problem of evil—the difficulty in believing in a good God who allows disasters like Hurricane Katrina—and the conflict between religion and science. A 2005 Gallup poll suggested that 53% of Americans are creationists, so Harris spends some time arguing for evolution and against the notion of Intelligent Design. Harris considers the variety of religions in the world, citing a religious basis for many ethnic and inter-communal conflicts. Contrary to those who advocate religious tolerance, mutual respect, and interfaith dialogue, Harris contends that such values only make it more difficult to criticize faith-based extremism. While holding that spiritual experiences can be valuable and life-affirming—he expends considerable space in The End of Faith in arguing that they are necessary—Harris rejects their link to religious beliefs. He argues that religion may have served some useful purpose for humanity in the past, but that it is now the greatest impediment to building a &#34;global civilization.&#34;
5495673	/m/0dpcxd	The Right to Arm Bears	Gordon R. Dickson	2000-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The planet Dilbia is in a vital spot for both human and Hemnoid space travel. Both are trying to convince the Dilbians to work with them to use the planet as a way station. *Spacial Delivery (Originally published in 1961) In the first story, a biologist is drafted into the diplomatic corps to aid the human ambassador to Dilbia. He sends John Tardy (Half-Pint Posted) to hunt down a Dilbian, the Streamside Terror, who has kidnapped Ty Lamorc (Greasy Face), another human. While being delivered by stalwart Dilbian postman Hill Bluffer, Tardy learns more of the situation, and is attacked and eventually captured by Boy Is She Built (Streamside Terror's girlfriend) and the Hemnoid Tark-ay. Tardy gets free, and learns that things aren't quite as they seem on the planet or with the situation. As he solves the dilemma of rescuing Lamorc, he gains a victory for humanity over the Hemnoids, and a deeper insight into the Dilbians for humanity's future dealings. *Spacepaw (Originally published in 1969) Bill Waltham is a terraforming specialist sent to Muddy Nose village on Dilbia to teach the natives to use basic farming tools. When he arrives, the agricultural group leader and assistant are missing. The assistant, Anita Lyme, has been kidnapped by a local group of bandits led by Bone Breaker. Hill Bluffer returns as a freelance consultant to help Bill (Pick-and-Shovel) continue the Shorty tradition of overcoming tough Dilbian customers. The outlaws are holed up in a valley, and Bill discovers, upon visiting, that Anita is a "guest". The whole story is a plan by Bone Breaker to get beaten by a human, but not lose face, so that he can retire from being an outlaw. *The Law-Twister Shorty (Originally published in 1971) High school student Malcolm O'Keefe is sent in to avoid a diplomatic incident as Gentle Maiden attempts to adopt some stranded human tourists. Village law allows her to do this, and Malcolm must defeat Iron Bender in order to have them released. Instead, he is able to make new laws by moving the Stone of the Mighty Grappler.
5497401	/m/0dpgn7	The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog	Barbara Mertz	1992	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After returning from their adventure at the Lost Oasis, the Emersons try to get Nefret, their new ward, integrated into English country life. She has difficulty with the immaturity and meanness of girls her age, but is determined to learn the ways of her newly adopted culture. Nefret decides she will stay in England to study while the Emersons return to Egypt as usual in the fall, and Walter and Evelyn Emerson glady take her in. Ramses also decides to stay in England, as his crush on Nefret becomes more obvious to his mother (but no one else). So Amelia and the Professor sail east, to begin a new season with a new project - the complete clearing of an entire archaeological site. Despite Amelia's hopes that this will be a second honeymoon for them, Emerson is kidnapped—but no ransom demand or explanation is forthcoming. Amelia, Abdullah, and their circle of friends scour Luxor for any sign of Emerson, with the help of Cyrus Vandergelt, who appears on the scene just when Amelia needs him most. When Adbullah finally finds Emerson, imprisoned in a backyard shed, Amelia finds out that his captor wants information about their previous year's travels and the possibility of a lost Meroitic civilization (complete with artifacts and treasures to exploit). Unfortunately for the kidnapper, Emerson is the victim of amnesia and doesn't know anything about the Lost Oasis. Unfortunately for Amelia, it turns out Emerson doesn't remember her either—and is just as annoyed by her as when they first met. (See Crocodile on the Sandbank.) Back in England, Ramses and Nefret also seem targeted for abduction, and Ramses' harrowing letters do not add to Amelia's peace of mind. Meanwhile, Cyrus is beginning to look at Amelia with more affection than she expected, but she's not going to give Emerson up without a fight.
5499267	/m/0dpldr	The Charnel Prince	Gregory Keyes	2004-08-17	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this sequel to The Briar King, Anne, her maid Austra, and her protectors Cazio and z'Acatto are working to earn passage by sea to her home in Eslen, while trying to keep a low profile. Anne and Austra experience further trials with their friendship and Anne learns more about her destiny and undergoes a transformation into a mature and powerful adult. Sir Neil, against his wishes, and still haunted by the death of his love, Fastia, travels south to find Anne and meets with treachery and unexpected kindness. Meanwhile, Aspar, Winna, and Stephen Darige are tasked by Praifec Hespero to hunt down and kill the awakened Briar King. However, they discover that his presence might not be as harmful as the Church fears and discover more evidence that makes them question the Church's motives. Queen Muriele governs Eslen with a much wiser hand than her husband ever did, but she is faced with many challenges and finds unexpected allies. The book ends with her in prison after a palace coup by her brother-in-law Sir Robert, who has literally returned from the dead, but she has managed to keep her son safe and out of harm's way. In addition to the familiar characters from The Briar King, The Charnel Prince introduced a new main character, a composer and a musical genius Leovigild "Leoff" Ackenzal. Heading to the royal castle to meet the late king William. Leoff accidentally stumbles on an evil plot to drown the Lowlands under waters. He helps to thwart the attempt and becomes a small hero. This helps him to get a position as the court composer and to start his masterwork, an opera-styled musical composition that brings together singers and an orchestra of 30 players for the first time in the history of the world. However, to finish his work, he has to find his way through the complex political situation of the court and the censorship of Praifec Hespero.
5499708	/m/0dpm9g	The Sweetest Fig	Chris Van Allsburg	1993-10-25	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Monsieur Bibot is a self-centered wealthy dentist. He lives alone in Paris, France, in a fancy apartment with his dog, Marcel, whom he mistreats, often by beating him over little things, such as sitting on furniture, and he often drags Marcel around town as part of his "walks". Everything in his life seems quite satisfactory until an impoverished old woman stops by his office to get her tooth extracted. He seems to almost enjoy inflicting pain in this woman. After removing the tooth with a pair of pliers, and about to give a prescription for the painkillers, Bibot is upset when the woman can't pay his fee in cash. Instead, she pays him by giving him two figs which she claims will make his dreams come true. Naturally, Bibot scoffs at the thought of magical figs, and refuses to give her the painkillers. Later that evening, Bibot proceeds to eat one of the figs as a midnight snack. The old woman is right: Bibot finds himself walking Marcel in Paris in his underwear, stared at by the passers-by, and the Eiffel Tower has drooped over; everything in the dream that he had last night has come true. Horrified and embarrassed by this mishap, Bibot vows to hypnotize himself to control his dreams so that he may become the richest man on Earth. This typically self-centered plan involves ditching Marcel, who he has continued to harm in more ways than one, for a string of Great Danes from a dream he had the night before. But one day, when Bibot is preparing dinner, the dog gobbles up the second fig sitting on the table. Bibot is furious and chases the dog around the house. Heartbroken over the fig, Bibot goes to sleep. The next morning, however, Bibot wakes up underneath his bed - as the dog. Needless to say, Bibot is horrified and realizes that the dog was dreaming about finally getting his revenge on his cruel master all along. Marcel, who's now in Bibot's form, tells Bibot it's time for his walk. Bibot tries to yell, but all he can do is bark.
5500123	/m/0dpmx7	Modesty Blaise	Peter O'Donnell	1965	{"/m/012h24": "Comics", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/01vnb": "Comic book", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Willie Garvin has lost the will to live. He had worked for Modesty Blaise for six years in The Network, Modesty's criminal organization, and rose to the position of her right-hand man and became her very best friend. Willie was on top of the world. But then Modesty disbanded The Network and retired, and Willie didn't know what to do with himself. He got involved as a mercenary in a South American revolution, but his heart wasn't in it. He was captured and is now sitting in a primitive prison, waiting listlessly to be executed. Fortunately, Sir Gerald Tarrant, head of a British secret service organization, knows about Willie's situation, and he needs the services of Modesty and Willie for a very special mission. Sir Gerald visits Modesty and lays his cards on the table. Modesty is very grateful, and agrees to help Sir Gerald as soon as she has rescued Willie. This is the start of the adventure. Sir Gerald's job turns out to be a perilous intervention against the criminal mastermind Gabriel, who intends to steal a huge consignment of diamonds. The action starts in the south of France, where Willie causes Paco (who is on Gabriel's payroll) to lose his head (literally). On to Egypt, where Modesty and Willie get captured by Gabriel's gang. The diamond heist succeeds, and the action moves to a small island in the Mediterranean where Modesty has to vanquish the incredible Mrs. Fothergill in unarmed combat. But then all of Gabriel's gang are in pursuit, and there is nowhere to run.
5500192	/m/0dpm_b	Sabre-Tooth	Peter O'Donnell	1966	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Karz is a military leader who has never known defeat. The huge Mongol is now assembling and training a large and well-equipped army of mercenaries in a hidden valley in the Hindu Kush Mountains bordering on Afghanistan. His objective: The invasion and occupation of oil-rich Kuwait. Karz does have one problem though; he lacks a couple of top lieutenants to command two sections of his growing army. His choice falls on Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin, even though he knows they are not for hire. Meanwhile, Sir Gerald Tarrant, who runs a secret service organization under the British government, has noticed that many mercenaries are being recruited by some unknown employer and disappearing. This worries Sir Gerald, and he asks Modesty and Willie to investigate. So while Modesty and Willie are looking for Karz (without knowing who they're looking for), Karz has Lucille (a child dear to Modesty and Willie) kidnapped, and commands Modesty and Willie to report for duty. There is no possible way that Modesty and Willie can both save Lucille and sabotage the invasion of Kuwait. Modesty plays a long shot and is forced to fight the fearsome Twins, two men joined at the shoulders, a four-legged four-armed fighting animal impossible to defeat. And even if she survives that fight, how will Modesty escape from the isolated valley so far from civilization?
5500227	/m/0dpn1f	A Taste for Death	Peter O'Donnell		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Canadian Dinah Pilgrim (blind since 11) and her sister Judy are vacationing in Panama. They're attacked on a lonely beach by a pair of gunmen, and Judy is killed and Dinah is taken prisoner. Fortunately, Willie Garvin is nearby and he intervenes, killing the two gunmen, and incidentally determining that they work for Gabriel, the villain from the first Modesty Blaise book. Willie and Dinah go into hiding, knowing that Gabriel can mobilize the entire Panamanian underworld to search for Dinah. Modesty comes to their aid, and a deadly cat-and-mouse game ensues, with both Modesty and Willie barely surviving traps that should not possibly be survivable. Back in England, Modesty encounters Simon Delicata, a huge man with an ape-like build, and strength to match. A friend of Sir Gerald Tarrant is dead, and Simon Delicata is the killer. And Willie knows Simon Delicata from long ago, having been beaten senseless and near-fatally injured by him in a barroom fight. Then Dinah is brutally kidnapped, and it becomes obvious that Gabriel and Simon Delicata are working together. Modesty and Willie travel to Algeria and The Sahara to rescue Dinah. But they're up against the most formidable opponents they've ever crossed swords with. Literally in fact; Modesty has to defeat the fencing master Wenczel in a duel to the death, and he's wearing a protective steel mesh jacket. The final fight, set in an abandoned Foreign Legion fort, occurs with Modesty incapacitated from a serious sword wound and Willie having to go one-on-one unarmed against the man-ape Delicata.
5500277	/m/0dpn34	The Impossible Virgin	Peter O'Donnell	1971	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mischa Novikov had never even considered defecting from Russia until one day when his analysis of a satellite picture of a tiny bit of central Africa awakens an unbridled greed in him. Hidden in an almost inaccessible valley he can see untold riches, and he is the only man on earth who knows about them. Eight months later Novikov dies in a small hospital not far from his hidden treasure, the victim of Brunel's over-zealous torture. And a few days later Modesty Blaise happens by and intervenes when two of Brunel's men start interrogating Doctor Pennyfeather, who had been at Novikov's deathbed. Brunel refuses to accept that Novikov took his secret into the grave with him. The story moves to London where Modesty and Willie Garvin manage to sabotage one of Brunel's operations. But then Lisa, Brunel's adopted daughter, tricks Willie, and in France Brunel turns the tables and captures Modesty and Willie and Dr. Pennyfeather. Back to Africa, to Brunel's plantation, where Modesty finds herself imprisoned, alone and drugged and being brainwashed, while Brunel slowly tortures Dr. Pennyfeather. As if this isn't bad enough, Adrian Chance, Brunel's right-hand man, succumbs to delusions of grandeur and manages to coerce Lisa into killing Brunel. Adrian Chance then vents his deep-rooted hatred for Modesty by locking her and Pennyfeather in a huge cage with a vicious gorilla. But then the fuel store goes up in flames, and the story takes a surprising twist. Finally, during a fight with machetes and quarterstaffs, Modesty sinks lifeless to the ground, and Adrian Chance rushes in for the kill.
5500325	/m/0dpn67	Last Day in Limbo	Peter O'Donnell	1976-05-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Maude Tiller, one of the few female agents in Sir Gerald Tarrant's secret service, is miserable. Her last assignment involved her having to submit to degrading treatment by Paxero, the man she had been sent to spy on. And she hadn't even learned anything about the rich and enigmatic Paxero to justify the disgusting things she had let herself be subjected to. Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin discover how their good friend Maude has been mistreated, and they decide to teach Paxero a lesson. But when they break into his villa on the outskirts of Geneva they find a Breguet watch that was a gift from Modesty to Danny Chavasse, a very close friend of Modesty's. Everyone thought Danny had died when a cruise ship sank two years ago, but finding his watch indicates that Danny's fate was not as simple as that. This is the start of the journey that leads to Limbo, Paxero's secret and hidden plantation in the jungles of Guatemala. Limbo is farmed by slaves, very special slaves, rich and famous men and women who have been kidnapped and will now spend the rest of their lives at hard labor, watched over by armed guards. The "last day in Limbo" occurs when Paxero decides to shut the plantation down, and orders the guards to kill all of the slaves - which now includes Modesty, who has let herself be captured in order to infiltrate Limbo. Modesty leads a slave uprising, and Willie and Maude arrive just in time after having hacked their way through the jungle. A final battle ensues, with Paxero and his heavily armed guards holed up in the big house, waiting for reinforcements to arrive by airplane.
5500372	/m/0dpn89	Dragon's Claw	Peter O'Donnell	1978-10-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 While sailing a small yacht single-handedly from Australia to New Zealand, Modesty Blaise rescues Luke Fletcher, the world-renowned painter, from drowning. But how in the world did Luke Fletcher end up adrift in the Tasman Sea, after having disappeared in the Mediterranean two months earlier? Luke Fletcher is not the only person from the world of the arts who has disappeared in the last couple of years, but he is the only one who has turned up alive later. Back in England, Modesty and her good friend Willie Garvin refuse to get involved in trying to unravel the mystery, preferring to leave well enough alone. But then Luke Fletcher is killed, and Modesty and Willie make it their goal to find out who is behind it all and bring him/her down. The trail leads back to the Tasman Sea, to Dragon's Claw Island, but Modesty and Willie make a mistake and find themselves in captivity. They've solved the puzzle of why certain people with artistic flair have disappeared, but will they live long enough to make use of this knowledge? Willie, ever the resourceful one, manages to break out of his cell, but then he's recaptured. After that the bad guys don't intend to give Modesty or Willie another chance to escape. They force Modesty to fight a gun duel against the Reverend Uriah Crisp, the gun-toting minister who has proven that he is faster on the draw than Modesty. Modesty is given her own gun and holster, her gun loaded with one bullet. She waits calmly as the crazy priest advances, a prayer book in one hand and a six-shooter on his hip.
5500432	/m/0dpnbr	The Xanadu Talisman	Peter O'Donnell	1981	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Nanny Pendergast, the middle-aged Scottish woman who is the driving force behind "El Mico", may not be the typical criminal mastermind. Nevertheless, she and her two young charges, Jeremy and Dominic Silk, have made El Mico the most potent underworld force in North Africa, filling the void left when Modesty Blaise disbanded The Network. El Mico has just achieved its greatest triumph, the clandestine theft of an object of immense value. And El Mico has also suffered its greatest setback; Bernard Martel, one of their top lieutenants, has double-crossed them and stolen the object. Modesty happens to be present when an El Mico assassin tries to kill Bernard Martel, and both Modesty and Willie Garvin are present when Jeremy Silk succeeds in killing him at Modesty's house in Tangier. For Modesty and Willie this signals the start of two parallel quests: To find "the object" and to rescue the beautiful young Tracy Martel, Bernard's wife, who is being held captive as a harem girl in the isolated palace called Xanadu, high in the Atlas Mountains. First Modesty figures out where Bernard Martel has hidden "the object", and she and Willie retrieve it. But then Modesty and Willie are captured by El Mico and find themselves imprisoned in Xanadu. All they have to do now to rescue Tracy Martel is to survive several coliseum-style fights to the death and escape from captivity and free Tracy from the harem and steal a jeep and flee down a slow twisting mountain road with a helicopter full of armed men in hot pursuit.
5500478	/m/0dpncs	The Night of Morningstar	Peter O'Donnell	1982-10-21	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "The Watchmen" is an international terrorist organization that has sprung out of nowhere and is making major assaults, for example killing the entire Turkish Embassy staff in Madrid, wrecking a French nuclear power plant, and blowing up a dam in Utah. Nobody knows who they are or what their real motives are. CIA agent Ben Christie, an old friend of Modesty Blaise, is trying to infiltrate The Watchmen. But Modesty runs into Ben in San Francisco and blows his cover. Things go from bad to worse when Modesty tries to hang around to help Ben if necessary and gets captured by The Watchmen. She and Ben are held at gun point on a small fishing boat in San Francisco Bay as The Watchmen make final preparations to destroy the Golden Gate Bridge. Modesty manages to escape, but without gaining any way of localizing The Watchmen. Back in England, she and Willie Garvin eventually get a lead on one of the top leaders of The Watchmen, Major the Earl St. Maur, formerly leader of a British Marine Commando battalion. Following St. Maur's trail to Madeira Island off the coast of Morocco leads to several surprises, not the least of which is that The Watchmen intend to kill the President of the United States and France, and Prime Ministers of United Kingdom and West Germany. This has to be prevented, of course, but before Modesty and Willie can get a warning out they are captured by The Watchmen and imprisoned and drugged such that they can not possibly escape. The Watchmen's plan: To leave Modesty's and Willie's dead bodies at the scene of the attack, clothed in Watchmen uniforms.
5500564	/m/0dpnj7	Dead Man's Handle	Peter O'Donnell	1985-10-03	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The headquarters of "The Hostel of Righteousness" is an old monastery on the small Greek island Kalivari. But this does not imply that the organization is a particularly holy one. On the contrary, Dr. Thaddeus Pilgrim and his followers are among the most unholy people you could have the misfortune of meeting. By chance, Willie Garvin and Modesty Blaise are targeted by Dr. Pilgrim, who has an obsession for creating "interesting scenarios". Dr. Pilgrim sends Sibyl and Kazim, his two top assassins, to England to capture Willie Garvin and bring him to Kalivari under heavy sedation. There Dr. Janos Tyl subjects Willie to the most diabolical brainwashing possible for him; he is made to think that a woman called Delilah has brutally murdered Modesty, and that he must now avenge Modesty's death by killing Delilah. Willie is shown pictures of this she-devil Delilah, in reality pictures of Modesty Blaise. In other words, Willie is now programmed to kill Modesty on sight, at which point he will regain his memory, and presumably go insane when he realizes what he has done. Modesty manages to pick up Willie's trail, and she eventually arrives at Kalivari, waiting until after dark to go ashore. Dr. Pilgrim has ensured that Modesty and Willie encounter each other in the old amphitheater, suddenly seeing each other when the spotlights are switched on. Willie doesn't hesitate a moment, he draws his throwing knife and throws it. The story does not end here, and soon Dr. Pilgrim's obsession with interesting scenarios goes horribly wrong (for him) when Sibyl and Kazim are killed in gladiator-style duels and Dr. Janos Tyl is felled by a heavy round shield thrown frisbee-style by Willie. And finally, the ungodly Dr. Pilgrim meets his fate at the hands of one of his own assassins.
5500861	/m/0dpnwd	Jack Maggs	Peter Carey	1997	{"/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in 19th century London, Jack Maggs is a reworking of the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations. The story centres around Jack Maggs (the equivalent of Magwitch) and his quest to meet his 'son' Henry Phipps (the equivalent of Pip), who has mysteriously disappeared, having closed up his house and dismissed his household. Maggs becomes involved as a servant in the household of Phipps's neighbour, Percy Buckle, as he attempts to wait out Phipps or find him in the streets of London. He eventually cuts a deal with the young and broke up and coming novelist Tobias Oates (a thinly disguised Charles Dickens) that he hopes will lead him to Phipps. Oates, however, has other plans, as he finds in Maggs a character from whom to draw much needed inspiration for a forthcoming novel which he desperately needs to produce.
5501173	/m/0dpp7h	Amy Foster	Joseph Conrad	1901-12		 A poor emigrant from Central Europe sailing from Hamburg to America is shipwrecked off the coast of England. The residents of nearby villages, at first unaware of the sinking, and hence of the possibility of survivors, regard him as a dangerous tramp and madman. He speaks no English; his strange foreign language frightens them, and they offer him no assistance. Eventually "Yanko Goorall" (as rendered in English spelling) is given shelter and employment by an eccentric old local, Mr. Swaffer. Yanko learns a little English. He explains that his given name Yanko means "little John" and that he was a mountaineer (a resident of a mountain area — a Goorall), hence his surname. The story's narrator reveals that Yanko hailed from the ‪Carpathian Mountains‬. Yanko falls in love with Amy Foster, a servant girl who has shown him some kindness. To the community's disapproval, they marry. The couple live in a cottage given to Yanko by Swaffer for having saved his granddaughter's life. Yanko and Amy have a son whom Amy calls Johnny (after Little John). Amy, a simple woman, is troubled by Yanko's behavior, particularly his trying to teach their son to pray with him in his "disturbing" language. Several months later Yanko falls severely ill and, suffering from a fever, begins raving in his native language. Amy, frightened, takes their child and flees for her life. Next morning Yanko dies of heart failure. It transpires that he had simply been asking in his native language for water.
5502759	/m/0dprg4	Inside Outside	Philip José Farmer		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jack Cull (a pun on the word "jackal") finds himself in a bizarre location called "Hell". A huge sphere with a sun in the center, Hell's population consists of deceased humans and demons; the humans have the same mind and body as when they died, there is no disease or famine, and deaths are reversed within hours. Earthquakes are frequent occurrences. Humans have taken control of Hell, and they have replaced the traditional inscription (as imagined by Dante), "Abandon all hope..." (written in Italian) with a new one: "Do not abandon hope" (written in Hebrew). Cull goes to his workplace, and hears that the mysterious "X", an analogue of Jesus Christ, has been killed by an unruly mob. Along with Phyllis and Fyodor, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jack investigates his death. Travelling into a sewer, they find out that "Hell" is in fact a massive spacecraft, controlled by hyper-moral, ultra-powerful alien beings with the means of capturing many if not most of the souls they come upon, incorporating them in immortal bodies (provided they are fed regularly). However, the capturing of souls is an imperfect process, and many souls are lost to the void. Although the bodies are more or less immortal, there comes a time when the aliens destroy them when they feel the souls have progressed to an acceptable level. Even then, not all of the bodies are destroyed, and some continue on with the spaceship as it travels about the galaxy.
5504214	/m/0dpv5_	Who Killed Kennedy	David Bishop		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book's credited co-writer, fictional journalist James Stevens, investigates the events occurring in 1970s Britain and the connection between them, the anarchist terrorist Victor Magister (also known as "the Master"), the organisation known as UNIT, their scientific adviser known as "the Doctor" and the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.
5504833	/m/0dpw8h	The Gospel According to Adam	Muhammad Aladdin	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A young man walks a scorching Cairo street. At the entrance to the city’s pivotal main square, he notices a succulent girl. Ineluctably drawn into her magnetic field, and the swirling, palpitating square ahead, he starts to fantasize about how he would talk to her, seduce her, rape her, love her, abandon her, cherish her were he, for example, a Brazen Rake, a Brutal Bohemian, a Sensitive Painter, or a Bald Mechanic, jumping from persona to persona as his imaginings become more and more feverish, while in his mind the girl goes through a similar series of transformations. These characters—a circus parade of Egypt’s contemporary human menagerie—are not, however, mere dress-up costumes to be donned and discarded at their author’s whim. They, and others who emerge from the side alleys of his mind, strut their stuff, accost one another, argue, and shout until eventually they leave him, on a scorching Cairo street, peering after an infinite succession of receding, parallel clamorous worlds, from whose possibilities he must draw his own conclusions.
5504986	/m/0dpwgf	Atlantis Mystery				 During a speleological expedition deep in the caves of the Azores, Blake and Mortimer are cut off by their old enemy Olrik, trapping them in a gaseous cavern. Surviving the odds, they are captured by a race of technologically advanced men ... who claim to be descendants of survivors from Atlantis! Then, immersed in a sinister plot led by Commander Magon to topple the wise Basileus and lead modern Atlantis in conquest of the surface world, they ally themselves with Crown Prince Ikaros to thwart Magon's megalomaniac plans. But the outcome is far from certain...
5507751	/m/025thwq	Race, Evolution and Behavior	J. Philippe Rushton			 The book grew out of Rushton's 1989 paper, "Evolutionary Biology and Heritable Traits (With Reference to Oriental-White-Black Difference)". The 1st unabridged edition was published in 1995, the 2nd unabridged edition in 1997, and the 3rd unabridged edition in 2000. Rushton argues that Mongoloids, Caucasoids, and Negroids fall consistently into the same one-two-three pattern when compared on a list of 60 different behavioral and anatomical variables. (Rushton's 2000 book, like other population history works, e.g. Cavalli-Sforza 1994, uses the terms Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid to describe these groups broadly conceived, but these terms have since been replaced in the scientific literature—the MeSH terminology as of 2004 is Asian Continental Ancestry Group, African Continental Ancestry Group and European Continental Ancestry Group.)The decline in usage of these terms can be seen year by year in a Google Scholar search, and the change of terms can be seen in, for example, the US National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), which in deleted the -oids (as well as terms such as Black and White) in favor of terms such as African Continental Ancestry Group: The MeSH descriptor Racial Stocks, and its four children (Australoid Race, Caucasoid Race, Mongoloid Race, and Negroid Race) have been deleted from MeSH in 2004 along with Blacks and Whites. Race and ethnicity have been used as categories in biomedical research and clinical medicine. Recent genetic research indicates that the degree of genetic heterogeneity within groups and homogeneity across groups make race per se a less compelling predictor. Rushton uses averages of hundreds of studies, modern and historical, to assert the existence of this pattern. Rushton's book is focused on what he considers the three broadest racial groups, and does not address other populations such as South East Asians or Australian aboriginals. The book argues that Mongoloids, on average, are at one end of a continuum, that Negroids, on average, are at the opposite end of that continuum, and that Caucasoids rank in between Mongoloids and Negroids, but closer to Mongoloids. His continuum includes both external physical characteristics and personality traits. Citing genetic research by Cavalli-Sforza, the African Eve hypothesis, and the out of Africa theory, Rushton writes that Negroids branched off first (200,000 years ago, Caucasoids second 110,000 years ago, and Mongoloids last 41,000 years ago), arguing that throughout all of evolution, more ancient forms of life (i.e. plants, bacteria, reptiles) are less evolved than more recent forms of life (i.e. mammals, primates, humans) and that the much smaller variation in the races is consistent with this trend. "One theoretical possibility," said Rushton "is that evolution is progressive and that some populations are more advanced than others". Rushton argues that this evolutionary history correlates with, and is responsible for, a consistent global racial pattern which explains many variables such as worldwide crime statistics or the global distribution of AIDS. {| class="wikitable" |- | colspan=4 | Claimed Average Differences Among Blacks, Whites, and Orientals from Race, Evolution, and Behavior |- | || Blacks || Whites || Orientals¹ |- | colspan=4 | Brain size |- | Cranial capacity (cubic centimeters) || 1,267 || 1,347 || 1,364 |- | Cortical neurons (millions) || 13,185 || 13,665 || 13,767 |- | colspan=4 | Intelligence |- | IQ test scores || 85 || 100 || 106 |- |- | Cultural achievements || Low || High || High |- | colspan=4 | Reproduction |- | 2-egg twinning (per 1000 births) || 16 || 8 || 4 |- | Hormone levels || Higher || Intermediate || Lower |- | Sex characteristics || Larger || Intermediate || Smaller |- | Intercourse frequencies || Higher || Intermediate || Lower |- | Permissive attitudes || Higher || Intermediate || Lower |- | Sexually transmitted diseases || Higher || Intermediate || Lower |- | colspan=4 | Personality |- | Aggressiveness || Higher || Intermediate || Lower |- | Cautiousness || Lower || Intermediate || Higher |- | Impulsivity || Higher || Intermediate || Lower |- | Self-concept || Higher || Intermediate || Lower |- | Sociability || Higher || Intermediate || Lower |- | colspan=4 | Maturation |- | Gestation time || Shorter || Longer || Longer |- | Skeletal development || Earlier || Intermediate || Later |- | Motor development || Earlier || Intermediate || Later |- | Dental development || Earlier || Intermediate || Later |- | Age of first intercourse || Earlier || Intermediate || Later |- | Age of first pregnancy || Earlier || Intermediate || Later |- | Lifespan || Shortest || Intermediate || Longest |- | colspan=4 | Social organization |- | Marital stability || Lower || Intermediate || Higher |- | Law abidingness || Lower || Intermediate || Higher |- | Mental health || Low || Intermediate || Higher |- | colspan=4 align=right | Source: 2nd Special Abridged edition, Race, Evolution, and Behavior (p.&nbsp;9). |} Rushton writes that his collection of 60 different variables can be unified by a single evolutionary dimension known as the r and K scale. His theory attempts to apply the inter-species r/K selection theory to the much smaller inter-racial differences within the human species. While all humans display extremely K-selected behavior, Rushton believes the races vary in the degree to which they exhibit that behavior. He argues that Negroids use a strategy more toward an r-selected strategy (produce more offspring, but provide less care for them) while Mongoloids use the K strategy most (produce fewer offspring but provide more care for them), with Caucasoids exhibiting intermediate tendencies in this area. He further asserts that Caucasoids evolved more toward a K-selected breeding strategy than Negroids because of the harsher and colder weather encountered in Europe, while the same held true to a greater extent for Mongoloids. Rushton argues that the survival challenges of making warm clothes, building durable shelter, preserving food, and strategically hunting large animals all selected genes for greater intelligence and social organization among the populations that migrated to cold climates. Rushton invokes genetics to explain his data arguing that purely environmental theories fail to elegantly explain what he sees as such a consistent pattern of both behavioral and physiological differences, but instead just provide a long list of ad hoc explanations. Rushton argues that science strives to organize and simplify data, and seeks the simplest explanation possible, and claims that r/K selection theory explains all of his data parsimoniously.
5507953	/m/0dq09y	The Wild Geese	Mori Ogai		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Suezo, a moneylender, is tired of life with his nagging wife, so he decides to take a mistress. Otama, the only child of a widower merchant, wishing to provide for her aging father, is forced by poverty to become the moneylender's mistress. When Otama learns the truth about Suezo, she feels betrayed, and hopes to find a hero to rescue her. Otama meets Okada, a medical student, who becomes both the object of her desire and the symbol of her rescue.
5508711	/m/0dq1p9	After the First Death	Robert Cormier	1979	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the First Death describes the terrorist hijacking of a summer camp bus full of children. The main characters include Kate, a high school student driving the bus, Miro, one of the terrorists, and Ben, the son of a general for an anti-terrorism group. The story is mostly written from the point of view of Kate, Miro and Ben, switching back and forth, and brief sections are told from the point of view of some other characters. Kate is driving the bus when it is hijacked by four terrorists, Miro, Artkin, Antibbe and Stroll. The terrorists force Kate to drive the bus to an old, worn-down railroad bridge, where a drawn-out siege begins, the terrorists threatening to kill one child for every attack by the police or death of a terrorist. The terrorists are working to "free" their homeland, which is never named specifically but could be assumed from their descriptions to be a Middle Eastern, or African Country.
5509095	/m/0dq2bb	Un Lun Dun	China Miéville	2007-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins with two twelve-year old girls, Zanna and Deeba, who have begun to notice several strange things happening around them, all of them centering on Zanna. After she and her friends are attacked by a dark cloud, Zanna spends the next two nights at Deeba's house. Deeba is awoken in the middle of the night and spies a moving broken umbrella. The girls follow it into the basement of a building, where they are drawn through a gap between the worlds of London and Un Lun Dun (or UnLondon). UnLondon is a nonsensical mirror version of London, inhabited by various creatures and animated items who have been discarded by the inhabitants on London. A boy named Hemi saves them from a roving pile of trash but is later shooed away by the tailor Obaday Fing who reveals that the boy is a ghost who was trying to get close enough to them to possess one of them. In conversation he realizes that Zanna is the "Shwazzy", a prophesied chosen one who is destined to save UnLondon from the Smog - an evil, sentient cloud of pollution. With the help of Fing, Skool (a friend of Fing's in an old-fashioned diving suit), Conductor Jones, Rosa the bus driver, and the Slaterunners (a tribe of people who walk only on roofs), Zanna and Deeba make their way to the Propheseers where they learn more about the Smog. Apparently, after the Smog was created in London, a group of weatherwitches called the "Armets" battled it with a magic weapon called the "Klinneract." However, the Smog was not killed. Instead, it travelled to UnLondon. It is prophesied in The Book (a talking tome) that the Shwazzy would come one day and save UnLondon. But, in spite of what is prophesied, Zanna fails in her first battle against the Smog. Brokkenbroll, master of broken umbrellas (or unbrellas) arrives in time to shoo the Smog away using a new technique he and Benjamin Unstible (a Propheseer who was presumed dead) came up with. Zanna is severely injured and is sent home with Deeba with her memories of the city erased. Instead, the city turns to Brokkenbroll and Unstible who begin handing out Smog-resistant unbrellas to defend the people of UnLondon. However, Deeba, who still remembers UnLondon, begins to search for things related to it on the internet, hoping she can find someone to talk to. She discovers that Armets is really RMetS. This leads her to question everything she's learned. Upon further investigation she discovers that Unstible has been reported dead but that he had been studying the Clean Air Act. Just as UnLondoners misheard "RMetS" as "Armets," they misheard "Clean Air Act" as "Klinneract." She decides to travel back to UnLondon. After several tries, she finally finds a way back. She goes to Wraithtown, the town of ghosts, where, with the help of Hemi she verifies Unstible's death and sets out to warn the Propheseers. Unfortunately, on the way, Deeba and Hemi are taken to Brokkenbroll, who is revealed to be working with the Smog, which has re-animated Benjamin Unstible's body. They escape to warn the Propheseers, who refuse to listen to her. They run from them as well, escaping with The Book, which, although it has proved to be less-than-accurate, agrees to help them fulfil the Shwazzy's tasks and defeat the Smog in the limited time Deeba has before everyone in London forgets that she exists (this happens to everything that comes to UnLondon). With the help of Obaday, Rosa, Jones; the utterlings Diss, Bling and Cauldron; Yorick Cavea and Curdle the milk carton; Deeba and Hemi collect the UnGun, an ultimate weapon which can be loaded with anything. Deeba, under the banner of 'the Unchosen One', uses it to defeat the Smog and save UnLondon. Since Deeba takes Zanna's place as the savior of UnLondon, she is called "the UnChosen." On Zanna's first day at Kilburn Comprehensive, Deeba is able to make her laugh, something most people can't do. She likes to do things her own way, and is not your stereotypical hero. Along the way, she is joined by her pet milk carton, Curdle, and a talking prophecy book that often gets information wrong. Zanna has the title "the Shwazzy," which is related to the French adjective "choisi," meaning "chosen". She hates her given name, "Susanna," but she hates "Sue" even more. She is tall and striking, with blond hair, but she always tries to stay in the background. This doesn't work very well. When she is attacked by a Smog-Junkie, a servant of the Smog, in UnLondon, she breathes in Smog and falls ill. Zanna is sent back to London by Brokkenbroll, leader of unbrellas, with her memories of UnLondon erased forever. Hemi is a half-ghost - the result of a union between an UnLondoner and a dead Londoner. While normal ghosts cannot speak in a way that non-ghosts can hear them, Hemi can speak to both ghosts and non-ghosts. He has trouble fitting-in because both ghosts and non-ghosts despise him for being a 'half-breed'. Most inhabitants of Wraithtown do not have to eat. Since Hemi does, he's taken to stealing or "extreme shopping," as he calls it. The Smog is a living gas cloud that was created by a different mixture of chemicals in the air of London. It thinks of no one but itself and consuming new gases to add to its mixture. It is also hungry for knowledge and absorbs any information contained in books that are burned and their smoke added to the mixture. The Smog attacked London years ago but was beaten by the "Klinneract", which was really the 1956 Clean Air Act, seeped into UnLondon, and is now trying to take over UnLondon. Working for it is Brokkenbroll, the leader of unbrellas, or broken umbrellas from London. It creates servants from its Smog, such as Smombies, or corpses re-animated with Smog, Smoglodytes, disfigured creatures made from Smog, and Smog-Junkies, humans forced to be addicted to the Smog.
5511036	/m/0dq5s8	The Green Odyssey	Philip José Farmer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Green Odyssey is a relatively straightforward adventure story, involving an astronaut named Alan Green stranded on a primitive planet, where he is claimed as a gigolo by a duchess and is married to a slave woman. Upon hearing of two other stranded astronauts, he escapes from the duchess, and sets sail to find them. However, because of the peculiar geography of the planet, there is a vast expansive plain, instead of an ocean to cross. Green uses a ship equipped with large rolling pin-like wheels along the bottom to traverse the plains of this world. After his escape from the duchess he is followed by his slave woman wife and her children (one is his). There follow several fairly standard adventure plots with cannibals, pirates, floating islands (that turn out to be giant lawnmowers), and the deus ex machina, a female black cat named Lady Luck.
5511039	/m/0dq5s_	Mutineers' Moon	David Weber	1991-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book’s premise is that the moon is a massive space ship controlled by a self-aware computer that wants its rightful crew back aboard. The book begins with a prologue recording a mutiny aboard the planetoid-sized Utu-class starship of the Fourth Imperium (a 55,000+ year old technologically advanced multi-star system empire), the Dahak, led by its Chief of Engineering, the ambitious and psychopathic Captain Anu. Anu's ostensible reason for mutiny is to lead his followers to refuge on some remote planet where presumably the genocidal wrath of the "Achuultani", a mysterious alien race that periodically exterminates all intelligent life it can find, and which has destroyed the previous two Imperiums, will pass over them. The loyal crew is taken by surprise, and unable to defeat the mutineers. Faced with no choice, the captain orders Dahak to execute "Red Two Internal"—a command which will flood the entirety of the interior of the vessel with extremely deadly gases and compounds; this action will force both mutineers and loyalists to the lifeboats, and the vessel will then, acting on its other orders from the captain, allow back in the Dahak only the loyal crew and blow the disloyal members out of space. Red Two unfortunately entails the death of the captain as well. Because of his death, he is unable to command Dahak to destroy the mutineers as they leave aboard warships, not lifeboats, and the captain is equally unable to undo Anu's systematic sabotage of the power generators, intended to kill Dahak by starving it of power and thereby rendering it open to conquest by Anu's forces. Unfortunately for Anu, Dahaks computer systems catch the sabotage before it utterly wrecks all the power plants, but the damage is so severe that it is forced to cease all communications and non-necessary expenditures of power. Indeed, the damage takes decades to repair—by which point none of the loyal crew is still alive or able to contact the Dahak, which places the ship in a dilemma in which it cannot return to the Imperium as it has been ordered to, but nor can it exterminate the mutineers as other, equally important, orders dictate. This impasse lasts for approximately 50,000 years, until the Earthling's early space program sends up one Lieutenant Commander Colin MacIntyre to map the dark side of the heavenly body Dahak had camouflaged itself as—the Moon, as a "dress rehearsal" for a similar trip scheduled for Mars. His mission is hijacked by Dahak and his death is faked; had MacIntyre returned with his data, Dahak’s cover would have been blown. While aboard, Dahak (the AI, not the vessel proper) explains the situation to MacIntyre, and prevails upon him to, as a descendant of the loyalists, to become Dahak’s newest captain, and to quickly exterminate the mutineers—quickly, because Imperium installations are being methodically destroyed, sure signs of the beginning of the latest Achuultani incursion. MacIntyre reluctantly accepts. The first step to making him the true captain is to massively revamp his body surgically, granting him nigh superhuman resilience, speed, and strength, in addition to the built-in electronics granting matchless control of Imperium technology. While Dahak has known for thousands of years where Anu's forces have bunkered up—under the South Pole in Antarctica—their base is protected by extremely strong force fields, force fields so strong that to penetrate them and destroy the base would require Dahaks heavy weaponry, which would inevitably kill a significant percentage of the human population of Earth; an untenable action, to say the least. MacIntyre returns to his old home to renew contacts with his elder brother, Sean, and to enlist him in a scheme to discover the mutineers' agent in the space program. It initially succeeds, but when he and Sean attempt to contact the agent, they discover their scan of the space program building was detected, and that it was a trap. MacIntyre and Sean fend off some of the mutineers (at the cost of Sean's life), but is rescued by an acquaintance, who sends him through a tunnel where he is captured by another group of mutineers. This group, led by former missile tech Horus, was a dissident splinter faction of Anu's, which turned against him after the mutiny. Despite supporting Anu during the mutiny itself, Horus and his crew committed a double mutiny against Anu and fled into hiding on Earth. Once they reached Earth, they entered stasis so that the crew would be able to survive however long it would take for civilization to reappear on Earth (Anu at the time enforced primativism). Now, with civilization and technology emerging on Earth, his group has begun a passive, behind-the-scenes war against Anu. Because they are heavily outnumbered in weaponry, they have been forced to always play it very carefully. As a result, the crew of the battleship has created a huge network of humans, many of whom are descendants of Nergal's crew. However, the arrival of the MacIntyre means that the end has begun, for Dahak has at last taken a hand in the game. Eventually, this group and its battleship, the Nergal, joins MacIntyre, and they embark on a grand plan to destroy Anu: first, they rapidly and effectively destroy a number of important installations that Anu's terrorists and other forces are based out of (convincing Anu to withdraw all of his important personnel back to the main base), then they have their agents inside the Antarctica base steal the codes to gain access for them; finally, they fake a major defeat, and when Anu relaxes, certain that they were cowed and hurt, their now-at-liberty agents send them the codes and they launch a full assault, backed up by Dahak's orbital weaponry. The assault costs them dearly, but Anu is killed and his forces captured or dead. With the full revelation of Dahak’s power, the world's governments have little choice but to submit to the Planetary Governor MacIntyre. However, Colin has little time to unify the world, because the Achuultani draw ever nearer, and the Imperium is silent, even when Dahak’s communication systems are repaired. At the end, MacIntyre leaves the world under the care of old Horus, and departs for the nearest Fleet Imperium base, hoping to call upon Imperial assistance.
5512550	/m/0dq7qf	The Keeper of the Isis Light	Monica Hughes	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins with Olwen and Guardian, who live alone on the planet of Isis, manning the Isis Light, the means with which they communicate with Earth. It is Olwen's 16th birthday (10th on Isis), and Guardian tells her that settlers are coming from Earth. Olwen is in distress thinking that these settlers will ruin her perfect world. Guardian explains that she must wear a special protective suit to protect her from the viruses and bacteria the settlers might be carrying. One of the younger settlers, Mark London, falls in love with Olwen, and Olwen wishes Guardian to allow her to see Mark without her suit. Guardian refuses. One day, Mark overhears Guardian discussing some of Olwen's blood samples with Dr. Macdonald and he thinks Olwen might be in trouble so he climbs up towards her house. He suffers an accident and falls from the top of Lighthouse Mesa because of Olwen's appearance. Later, Guardian tells Olwen the truth about the death of her parents, and that her mother gave care of Olwen to him. To keep Olwen safe, he changed her genetically, so the ultraviolet rays from Isis' sun, Ra, would not harm her, so she could climb to the heights, as Isis is a planet of mountains. When the settlers see Olwen as her true self, they are disgusted, and Olwen refuses to wear the suit or see any of the settlers again. Then there is a solar storm and Olwen goes out and rescues a young boy, Jody, who was outside in it. The settlers do not know how to react. The story ends with Olwen deciding to leave the settlers' valley, Cascade Valley, and live in isolation with Guardian and her "dog" which is really a dragon, Little Hobbit. We also find out that Guardian is actually a robot called DaCoP (Data Collector and Processor).
5513825	/m/0dq9p7	Echoes of the great song	David Gemmell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Avatars were immortal and lived like kings - even though their empire was dying. Their immortality was guaranteed by magic crystals, crystals whose influence was now waning. But when two moons appeared in the sky, and the ruthless armies of the Crystal Queen swarmed across the land, bringing devastation and terror, the Avatars united with their subjects to protect their universe. The story is set in the world of the Avatars - an immortal race of humans, who are convinced that they are gods, undying. Their empire was destroyed when the seas upturned. A few - around 200 - escaped when one of the spiritual leaders, Questor Anu, predicted the fall of the world. The group of 200 moved north from the city of Parapolis, to the city of Pagaru. The day after they arrived, the world was turned upside down, and Questor Anu gained the title of The Holy One. Other than the group who travelled with Questor Anu, the Holy One, about 300 other Avatars survived the end of the world. The Avatars rely upon magic crystals to keep them alive and healthy. Their power is fading, however, and an expedition attempts to recharge power chests by creating a link with their great power source within the previous capital city, Parapolis, which was covered in ice. They succeed - partly - charging four of the six chests. The chests are used to power the only Avatar ship, the Serpent Seven, as well as recharge the primary Avatar weapons - the zhi-bow. The zhi-bow is a bow that shoots the equivalent of plasma bolts. The humans who are ruled by the Avatars, known as the Vagars, are starting a secret rebellion in the remaining cities of the Avatar. The group calls themselves the Pajists - a group set out to see the fall of the Avatar. The Pajists are a group of assassins who are headed by a Vagar woman known as Mejana. Mejana is motivated to bring down the Avatar Empire by the killing of her daughter, who disobeyed the race laws by falling in love with an Avatar. She was crystal-drawn, meaning that her life force was sucked out of her and into the crystals of the Avatar, which grant them immortality. Crystal drawing cannot be infinitely continued, however, so Anu the Holy One begins the construction of a great pyramid which will supposedly absorb the suns energy and then power the crystals of the Avatar. However, the real purpose behind the pyramid is to destroy all the Crystals, as Anu foresaw the arrival of foreign invaders, led by a great crystal power. There are greater problems for the Avatar and the people with them, however. A people known as the Almecs, who are headed by Almeia, the Crystal Queen, managed to avoid the fall of their own world by teleporting their continent to the world of the Avatars. They learn of the Avatars, and their fragile position in the world. Thinking the Avatars will realize the obvious, they sail to the new capital city, Egaru, where they are greeted courteously by the Avatar rulers. They give a blunt message: hand over power to the Almecs and live, or fight and die. The Avatar council decides to fight, as they believe the war is winnable. Using the power of the Sunfire, a giant laser beam, they sink several Almec ships and force them off. The treasures of the other cities, power chests and the remaining Avatars, are called back to Egaru, which the Avatar council claims is easier to defend. From now on, the Avatar leadership moves fast. It reaches out to the nomad tribes and to the king of the 'mud men', Vagars living in an ordered society outside of Avatar rule. This move largely fails, with the mud men refusing help and subsequently being slaughtered. The next move on behalf of the Avatars is to repair ties with their Vagar underlings, largely the order known as the Pajists. The leader, Mejana, eventually comes over to the Avatar side, but many changes to the way things are run are made. The Avatar council becomes half Avatar, half Vagar, and the army's officers the same. This, however, leads to many poor decisions in the field, and the Almecs manage to besiege Egaru. After a long and costly fight for both sides, the Almec General, Cas-Coatl, proposes a truce between the two sides. The Vagar population will be slaughtered in order to feed the Crystal Queen's thirst for blood, but the Avatars will survive and be allowed into the Almec society. The Avatars gather in the town hall together to discuss this, but as they are doing so, Almeia, the Crystal Queen, discovers the true purpose of Anu's pyramid, which will destroy her when complete. She immediately orders the deaths of the Avatars, who were clustered together. The siege weapons of the Almecs kill all the Avatar who were not warrior males. Rael, the Questor General and leader of the Avatars, surrounds himself with the remaining members of his endangered species, his warriors. They, distraught over the extinction of their species, as all the females have been killed, prepare for a death ride. They charge the Almec line, hoping to destroy their siege weapons. They succeed, but all save one are killed. This move gives the Vagars time to mobilize, and they defeat the Almecs. fr:L'Écho du grand chant
5514133	/m/0dqb3x	Conundrum			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book Conundrum follows a boat of gnomes, named the Indestructable, to sail around the world of Krynn. However, when they reach the doorway to the bottom of Krynn, things change.
5515184	/m/0dqcpp	Cuckoo's Egg	C. J. Cherryh	1985-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The back-story presented in the novel describes the first contact between the Shonunin and humans, which occurred when a damaged human probe with five crewmembers entered the Shonunin's home system. The contact, however, turned violent. It was not clear who fired the first shot, but the Shonunin, who had only recently put themselves into space, chased the crippled human ship for two years (the ship had lost the ability to jump through hyperspace) before overpowering it. Having suffered losses themselves, the Shonunin killed all the humans aboard. They knew the probe had been sending messages out of the solar system and the Shonunin, incapable of interstellar travel themselves, now feared retribution from the technologically superior humans. A Shonun, Dana Duun Shtoni no Lughn (Duun), was charged with the task of saving the Shonunin world from the potential threat the humans posed. Duun's solution was to raise a human child to adulthood who could serve as an emissary to his race and hopefully prevent a major conflict when humans return to the Shonunin system. Scientists cloned one of the dead human crewmembers to produce the male human child, whom Duun named Haras, meaning Thorn. Raising a human in their midst, an alien and the enemy, sparked fear among the Shonunin, but Duun elected to undertake the task himself, uncertain whether the creature would turn on him. The novel is set during the period following Thorn's birth, and the first chapters concern Thorn's infancy and early childhood. As Thorn grows, Duun trains him according to the ways of the warrior Guild to which Duun belongs, the Hatani. The Hatani are a class of warrior-judges revered by most Shonunin, and Duun believes that raising Thorn under the Hatani code will be the best possible preparation for the boy's eventual ambassadorial duties. To be Hatani is to be respected but isolated. But by raising Thorn to be one of their Hatani, he makes Thorn part of the framework of society, not an isolated experiment. *Dana Duun Shtoni no Lughn (Duun) – a Shonun of the Hatani warrior Guild. (Cherryh has stated that she based the character Duun in large part on her own father.) *Haras (Thorn) – a Human, raised by Duun as an Hatani *Betan – a fellow student and Thorn's first love interest *Sagot – a teacher
5516305	/m/0dqfg8	The Lioness	Nancy Varian Berberick	2002-06-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The evil green dragon Beryl oppresses the kingdom of Qualinesti with the aid of her Dark Knights. A resistance leader, a mysterious Kagonesti woman who is known as 'The Lioness' arises to battle her.
5516915	/m/0dqh5l	Dark Thane	Miller Lau	2003-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After a series of ugly battles and incidents, the dwarven community becomes increasingly isiolationist in its city under the mountains. Unfortunately dark magic, backstabbings, betrayal and power grabs threaten to destroy the already destabilized dwarf society. A Thane is a ruler of a dwarven faction.
5517226	/m/0dqhv5	Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean	Justin Somper	2005-06-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The year is 2505. The oceans have risen. A new era of piracy is dawning. A vicious storm separates twins Connor and Grace Tempest, destroying their boat and leaving them fighting for their lives in the cruel, cold water. Picked up one of the more notorious pirate ships, Connor soon finds himself wielding a cutlass. But does he have the stomach to be a pirate? Grace finds herself aboard a more mysterious ship of vampire pirates
5517347	/m/0dqj6b	Spin	Robert Charles Wilson	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens when Tyler Dupree is twelve years old. Tyler and his mother live in a guest house on the property of aerospace millionaire E.D. Lawton and his alcoholic wife Carol. Tyler is friends with the couple's fourteen year old twins Jason, a brilliant student who is being groomed to take over the family business, and Diane, whom Tyler is in love with. One night while stargazing, the three children witness all the stars simultaneously disappear. Telecommunications suffer as every satellite falls out of orbit simultaneously. It turns out that an opaque black membrane, later dubbed a "spin membrane" has been placed around the entire earth. Eventually it is determined that the membrane has slowed down time so that approximately 3.7 years pass outside the membrane for every second within. The membrane is permeable to spacecraft, but protects the earth from the harmful effects of concentrated stellar radiation and cometary impact. A simulated sun on the inside of the membrane allows for a largely normal life cycle to continue on earth. However, the greatly increased passage of time outside the membrane means that all life on earth will end in a few decades when the sun's expansion makes that region of the solar system uninhabitable. The membrane is apparently being controlled by a pair of city sized objects floating over both of Earth's poles. A Chinese attack on the devices using nuclear weapons causes a brief visual disturbance of the membrane but not change in the time dilation and other attempts to interfere with it are called off. In the wake of what becomes known as "the Spin", Jason studies science and joins his father at Perihelion an aerospace research firm which eventually gets folded into the government and coordinates efforts to deal with the Spin. Tyler, attends medical school and becomes a doctor, while Diane marries a man named Simon and deals with the Spin through a newfound religious faith. Jason eventually rises to run the day to day operations of Perihelion and hires Tyler as staff physician. Jason explains that Perihelion intends to terraform Mars by releasing bacteria and plant seeds to change the habitat into one that is survivable by humans. Because of time dilation this process, which will occur over millions of years, will be finished in a few months of subjective Earth time. When the terraforming is complete, Perihelion and its counterparts in other nations launch manned colonization missions to Mars. While months pass on Earth these colonists will have hundreds of thousands of years to build a Martian civilization and possibly discover more about the Spin and the alien Hypotheticals responsible for it. A mere two years after the terraforming process begins, they receive satellite images confirming the existence of sophisticated human civilizations on Mars. Soon afterwards Mars is enclosed in its own Spin membrane. Before the membrane went up the Martians sent their own manned mission to Earth. The Martian ambassador, Wun Ngo Wen, is part of a civilization hundreds of thousands of years old which has been experimenting with high end biotechnology for centuries. Jason, who has developed an acute form of multiple sclerosis which is incurable by terrestrial medicine, takes a Martian bioegineering product which extends his life by decades, putting him into a fourth stage of life past adulthood. Jason and Wun Ngo Wen then intend to seed nanotechnology through the outer solar system. This technology will eventually expand to other star systems over the course of millions of years and search for other worlds enclosed by Spin membranes, hopefully discovering why they were created and if anything can be done to stop them. Wun Ngo Wen is accidentally killed shortly after this, but the plan moves ahead. Tyler leaves Perihelion after being betrayed by his girlfriend, and moves to California. There he gets a desperate call from Dian's husband, Simon, stating that she is terribly sick. Diane and Simon had moved from mainstream religious belief to join a more cult like fringe movement which was trying to hasten the second coming through genetic engineering of cattle. As Tyler heads to meet Diane the Spin membrane seems to falter and fail, allowing the stars to return to the sky. The next day, the sun rises huge and red in the sky causing terrible heat and high winds. Thousands across the world panic as the apparent end has come. Tyler finds Diane suffering from a fatal cardiovascular disease which crossed from cows to humans. The only cure is to give her the same treatment that Jason has taken. He and Simon drive Diane back to Diane's childhood home where Tyler had hidden some of the biotech along with notes from Wun Ngo Wen. He discovers that Jason is there, dying of a mysterious ailment. Jason explains that he has become a human receiver for the nanotechnology which they have seeded throughout the galaxy. He also explains his conclusions about the nature of the Hypotheticals and the Spin. The Hypotheticals are intelligent von neumann machines which were spread throughout the galaxy billions of years previously. Horrified at the rise and fall of biological societies they saw around them they devised a plan whereby they would enclose planets on the verge of societal collapse in Spin membranes to slow their advancement until a way could be found to save them. Jason dies shortly after explaining this and has Tyler mail copies of the information to trusted informants. Tyler gives the Martian treatment to Diane, who recovers. Shortly after the membrane partially reasserts itself, allowing the stars to be seen, and synchronizing earth time with that of the universe, but filtering the solar radiation to a survivable level. It's discovered that the Spin membrane had been retracted in order to let a massive ring shaped object descend and embed itself in the Indian Ocean. The "Arch", as it becomes known, acts as a portal to another world, one engineered by the Hypotheticals to give mankind a new chance at life. A decade after the appearance of the Arch, Diane and Tyler, now married, flee from agents of the US government who seek to arrest them for possessing forbidden Martian technology. Tyler takes the same cure the Lawton's did, becoming a "Fourth" himself, and the two pass through the Arch with a group of Indonesian refugees.
5519382	/m/0dqmlp	Mosquitoes	William Faulkner	1927	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Mosquitoes opens in the apartment of one of the story’s main characters, a reserved and dedicated sculptor named Gordon. Ernest Talliaferro, a friend of the artist, joins him in the apartment, watching intently as the Gordon chisels away at a sculpture. Talliaferro engages the sculptor in a largely one-sided ‘conversation’ about his abilities with women. The artist works around the chatty Talliaferro, indifferently agreeing with every claim and question, yet declines the offer to attend an evidently aforementioned boat trip hosted by the wealthy Mrs. Maurier. Leaving the apartment to get a bottle of milk for Gordon, he meet’s Mrs. Maurier, the hostess of the upcoming yachting trip, who is accompanied by her niece, Pat. A quick return to Gordon’s apartment follows where Mrs. Maurier personally extends the offer for him to join the yachting excursion. Though Gordon maintains a distant and uninterested aura, it becomes evident through the stream-of-consciousness passages that follow that he is at odds with himself over his sudden attraction to Pat that changes his mind about the trip. When Talliaferro takes leave of Gordon and the women, his path through the city and the path’s of other characters that diverge in his wake serve to introduce the multifaceted New Orleans artistic community around which the plot focuses. At a dinner that follows, Talliaferro’s visit with Gordon, the conversations about art that ensue as well as the sexual tensions that are hinted at in the interactions of Talliaferro, Julius Kaufmann, and Dawson Fairchild set the stage for the interactions and themes that come to typify rest of the novel. The second section opens as Mrs. Maurier welcomes all her guests onto the Nausikaa. The cast of characters in attendance is diverse and is typologically split into artists, non-artists, and youths. Though it, at first provides a chronological foundation to the activities that Mrs. Maurier has planned for her guests, it becomes evident that her guests, especially the men, are uncontrollable and more interested in drinking whisky in their rooms while gossiping about women and discussing art, than in participating in any activity she offers. The first day on the yacht concludes with a minor cliffhanger when Mr. Talliaferro makes it known that he has his sights set on one of the women on the ship, but only speaks her name behind closed doors. During the second day the activities on the boat take an even further backseat to the development of the characters and their interactions with one another. Similar conversations among the men over drinks continue, but the second day of the trip becomes largely defined by interactions between pairs of characters that result in misguided sexual tension that is fostered between them. Mrs. Jameson’s advances on Pete, for instance, go unnoticed or unreciprocated by the young man. Similarly, Mr. Talliaferro’s interest in Jenny grows, though as is always the case with him, he is not able to realize any relationship with the girl. Mrs. Maurier shares in the disappointment of unrequited love as she watches all of the men on the boat fawn over Jenny and Pat. These two subjects of male gaze share their own brief sexually charged interaction as they lay together in the room they share. The only openly reciprocal feelings that seem to develop over the course of the day are between Pat and the nervous steward, David West, who she goes to meet for a midnight swim after her intimate encounter with Jenny. Two scenes diametrically opposed conclude the chapter as David West and Pat return in youthful joy from a midnight swim off of the now marooned boat, while Mrs. Maurer lies in bed sobbing in her loneliness. The third day on the yacht begins as Pat and David decide to leave the boat and elope to the town of Mandeville. The chapter cuts back and forth between the characters on the boat and Pat and David as they make their way through a seemingly endless swamp to their intended destination. The sexual advances and artistic discussion continue among characters on the boat. The most notable change in this chapter is the dominant role Mrs. Wiseman comes to play both in her sexual exploits and in her display of intelligence. Mrs. Wiseman’s interest in Jenny is evident in her ever-present gaze upon the girl. Prior to this chapter, conversations on the merits of artistic production took place almost exclusively among the male passengers of the boat, but now, following her revealed gaze upon Jenny, Mrs. Wiseman holds a strong place in a debate between Fairchild, Julius, and Mark Frost. Mrs. Maurier too is present, but her idealistic thoughts on the “art of Life” are hardly heard. Eventually growing tired of talking, sitting, and eating, the passengers on the boat join together to try to pull the boat from where it is marooned. Their struggle to release the boat is mirrored by the Pat and David’s struggle for survival as they continue to trudge, dehydrated through the swamp. Failing to free the boat, the characters return to the yacht and the brief reprieve from explorations of sexuality and art ends. These main themes return quickly as Mrs. Wiseman kisses Jenny and the rest of the men return to drinking and talking. Pat and David soon return and everything returns to normal by the end of the day. The fourth day opens and David is gone again in pursuit of a better job. The excitement of the third day has vanished. The boat still stranded and no one knows where Gordon has gone. Eventually the same man who brought back Pat and David also brings Gordon back and everyone is once again accounted for. With David out of the way, Gordon is finally given a chance to explore his attraction to Pat that brought him on the boating trip in the first place. They get in an argument that ends in a bizarre manner with him spanking her like a child. Thereafter however, she lays in his arms and they get to know one another. The tugboat comes and frees the marooned yacht and everyone, including Gordon, spends the evening dancing. Mr. Talliaferro fall victim to a trick by Fairchild and Julius that leads him into a room which he thinks is Jenny’s room but is in fact the room of Mrs. Maurier, to whom he is now apparently engaged. The epilogue follows the Nausikaa’s passengers onto land and back into their individual lives, tying up many loose ends. Jenny and Pete return to their families. Major Ayers attends a meeting to propose an invention of digestive salts that continually mentions throughout the story. Mark Frost and Mrs. Jameson, the two unimaginative artists, find love in each other and begin a relationship. Gordon, Julius, and Fairchild have one last discussion of art and Gordon reveals that he has shifted from working with marble to clay and has molded from it a likeness Mrs. Maurier, much departed from his prior artistic obsession with representing the young female nude that he worked on in the beginning of the book. In the last section, Mr. Talliaferro visits Fairchild, distressed again by his ineptitude with women. After returning home, Talliaferro comes to what he thinks is a revelation regarding how he can be more successful with women. The novel ends as he tries to call Fairchild, but on the other end is only the operator, who says sarcastically “You tell ‘em, big boy; treat ‘em rough.”
5520100	/m/0dqnhc	Fear is the Key	Alistair MacLean	1961	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 In the prologue, set in May 1958, Talbot, owner of "Trans Carib Air Charter Co" was in radio contact with one of his planes en route to Tampa, Florida, as it is being shot down by an American military plane. This resulted in the death of Talbot's family. Two years later, Talbot has apparently turned to a life of crime, for which he is now facing sentencing in a courtroom. He escapes, taking a young woman hostage. A reward is put out on his head, and he is captured by a thug who turns him in to the hostage's father. Instead of turning him over to the police, however, the father hires him for some not entirely legitimate tasks. The father, it turns out, has been consorting with some shady characters including a born killer. The story becomes straight action with car chases, gunfights, the mafia, a beautiful woman, mysterious doings aboard an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and a sunken DC-3 at the bottom of ocean with a secret treasure, as Talbot searched for answers to his long quest to find the murderers of his family. In typically MacLean style, the reader comes to find that nothing in this complicated plot is quite as it seems. In addition to a clever story, the level of tension is pitched extremely high. There is scarcely a let up from the action until reaching a gripping climax.
5523451	/m/0dqtzn	Borkmann's Point	Håkan Nesser	1994	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The novel is set in the early 1990s when Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, a 30-year veteran of police work who appreciates fine food and drink, cuts short his vacation to help the police chief of the remote town of Kaalbringen and his small crew investigate two ax murders. Another identical murder occurs in the weeks leading up to the retirement of Police Chief Bausen and it's expected that solving them would not only complete their work while Van Veeteren is available, but would be a high point for Bausen's career exit. Bausen is determined that the cases are solved quickly and the public is safe again before he departs. At a loose end in Kaalbringen, Van Veeteren accepts Bausen's collegial hospitality. A widower, Bausen generously shares from his expensive wine cellar and together they draw close over a love of chess. The sympathetic Van Veeteren wants to resolve the difficult investigation for his old friend's sake, which Bausen also appreciates. The problem is that the killings are random with the victims completely unrelated, and the murderer is too clever to be found or even noticed. Significantly the corpses are discovered axed precisely in the same way with a butcher's chopper which shows the killer's attention to detail. Just when it seems that the Ax Murderer – so dubbed by the press – is on a roll, the killings stop at three. The work to find a connecting thread is shared by a crew that includes Beate Moerk a dedicated, single female colleague with dreams of becoming a private detective; Münster, a detective whose career is creating cracks in his marriage and family life; and others like the nerdish Kropke who bring their professional skills as well as their personality traits to bear. All strive to solve the puzzle as time runs out, especially when Beate Moerk goes missing while jogging late at night.
5524262	/m/0dqwbj	Dr. Franklin's Island	Gwyneth Jones	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A plane to a research facility in Ecuador crashes in the deep forest and the only three survivor children are Semi Garson, the narrator, Miranda, a brave girl, and a boy called Arnie. Soon Arnie disappears and the girls are taken hostage in an island by some Dr Franklin and his assistant Dr Skinner, who perform transgenetic experiments on them. This transforms the girls into a bird and a manta ray, who can still communicate through radio chips planted in their new bodies. It is revealed that the missing Arnie, also a prisoner, is eavesdropping on them, and reporting their conversations to the scientists. Arnie tells the two girls that there is a cure to their condition and says that he will try to help them by obtaining it. Semi soon begins to covertly receive the treatment, learning that Skinner is getting her the doses of antidote. Skinner frees her from the lockup, horrified by the experiments. Semi, now a full human again, finds a snake and discovers that it is Arnie. They are recaptured by Franklin's who also have Miranda trapped in a net. Miranda Hart is the best They attack in a desperate last stand, and the scientist smashes into the electric fence. The voltage kills Franklin almost instantly. Semi, Miranda and Arnie escape to the mainland in a boat. On the way home, Semi gives Miranda and Arnie the antidote, and the return to being human. They arrive in Ecuador, where they tell a cover story for their adventures (not mentioning Franklin's "treatment"), and are returned happily to their parents. The story ends with Semi's concerns that the transgenic DNA is still in their cells, and that they may have specific cues that will return them to being animals, and her dreams for a world that will allow her and Miranda to become the creatures they were on the island without barriers between them.
5524514	/m/0dqwkv	Memoirs of a Survivor	Doris Lessing	1974	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in a near-future Britain where society has broken down due to an unspecified disaster. Family units themselves have broken down and survivors band together into loose units for basic survival. The unnamed narrator ends up with 'custody' of a teenage girl named Emily Cartwright. Emily herself has unspecified trauma in her past that the main character does not probe at. Hugo, an odd mix of cat and dog, comes with Emily. Due to the growing scarcity of resources, the animal is in constant danger of being eaten. Periodically, the narrator is able, through meditating on a certain wall in her flat, to traverse space and time. Many of these visions are about Emily's sad childhood under the care of her harsh father and distant mother. At the end of the novel, the main character's strange new family breaks through dimensional barriers via the wall, and walks into a much better world.
5525294	/m/0dqxkq	The Twenty-Seventh City	Jonathan Franzen	1988-09-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A complex, partly satirical thriller that studies a family unraveling under intense pressure, the novel is set amidst intricate political conspiracy and financial upheaval in St. Louis, Missouri in the year 1984.
5525358	/m/0dqxmw	Anno Domini 2000 - A Woman's Destiny	Julius Vogel	1889	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel describes the exploits of Hilda Fitzherbert, former 23-year-old Under Secretary for Home Affairs, and then Imperial Prime Minister, in a future where the British Empire has achieved both female suffrage (which New Zealand granted in real life in 1893) and become an Imperial Federation, apart from an independent Ireland, although Sir Reginald Paramatta, a villainous Australian republican, has his eyes set on the abduction and wooing of Miss Fitzherbert. Miss Fitzherbert foils the Republican plans, and then she falls in love with Emperor Albert, the dashing young ruler of the Federated British Empire. Unfortunately, their plans hit a snag when the Emperor refuses the hand of the female US President's daughter, which precipitates an Anglo-American war, which the Empire wins, leading to the dissolution of the United States and its reabsorption into the Empire, and the ensuing marriage of Hilda and the Emperor. Several years later, the Emperor and his Empress find that their opinions about male primacy in royal succession have reversed themselves, when faced with a brilliantly competent princess and bookish, scholarly prince as prospective heirs apparent to the throne. There are large slabs of intrusive detail about the intricacies of finance and federal Imperial politics and the novel did not sell well initially. It has attracted posthumous recognition for its uncanny representation of New Zealand's female-dominated political, judicial and corporate executive hierarchies in 2000. However, the book lacks any mention of Māori protagonists, despite its other significant innovations. It was reissued in 2001, and the University of Hawaii Press published its first American edition in 2002.
5525893	/m/0dqycf	The Bancroft Strategy	Robert Ludlum	2006-10-17	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Todd Belknap, a field agent for Consular Operations, is cut loose from the agency after a job gone wrong. But when his best friend and fellow agent is abducted abroad and the government refuses to step in, Belknap decides to take matters into his own hands. Meanwhile, Andrea Bancroft learns she’s about to inherit 12 million dollars from a cousin she never met—with one condition: She must sit on the board of the Bancroft family foundation. Having been estranged from her father’s family for most of her life, Andrea is intrigued. But what exactly is the Bancroft’s involvement with “Genesis,” a mysterious person working to destabilize the geopolitical balance at the risk of millions of lives? In a series of devastating coincidences, Andrea and Belknap come together to form an uneasy alliance if they are to uncover the truth behind “Genesis”—before it is too late.
5526778	/m/0dqzb8	Parallelities	Alan Dean Foster	1995-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Max is sent to interview a rich man, Barrington Boles, who claims to have invented a machine that can break through the barrier between parallel worlds, or "paras." Max first assumes the man is a typical loony, but after returning home, he finds his apartment burglarized by identical triplets who don't seem to know one another. Later, he meets four "sisters" who look almost but not quite identical, and who claim never to have met before the previous night. Mystified, he rushes back to Boles's place to ask the inventor what on earth is going on. Boles informs him that the machine must have turned Max into a nexus who pulls the inhabitants of other worlds into his own. Max is frantic, but Boles reassures him that the effect will probably wear off in a few days, and that if it doesn't, he should come back on Tuesday. Max tries to resume his life, but his neighbor's canary turns into a hundred identical birds, and the next day Max runs into a double of himself at work. The double (whom he calls "Mitch" to avoid confusion) has no idea what's going on, apparently coming from a para where Max never interviewed Boles. After Max explains the situation to him, they decide to pose as twins. They go to a zoo to work on a story about a painting elephant, only to find the zoo overrun by fifty female chimps. Sensing that the situation has gotten out of hand, Max and Mitch decide to visit Boles again. But on the way, they spot a herd of bighorn sheep and a condor, species extinct in Los Angeles. Max realizes that he's no longer simply pulling things from other worlds into his own, but drifting into other worlds (apparently taking Mitch with him). When they arrive at Boles's mansion, this version of Boles doesn't remember their second meeting and has no idea how to help them. On their way home, Max and Mitch encounter two identical pairs of English-speaking aliens who don't understand why the local spaceport has vanished. Later, Max gets briefly separated from Mitch, and when he returns, Mitch has been replaced by a female version of Max who is an actress rather than a reporter. After he successfully convinces her what has happened, the two go home and make love, realizing that they're the only two people who know exactly how to satisfy each other. In this para, Australia has become the dominant power in the world due to discovering a cheap form of electricity. After falling asleep on a couch at her workplace, he wakes up in his own workplace, where a familiar coworker invites him to a basketball game on the weekend. He assumes that the effect has finally worn off and that he has returned to his original world, until he discovers that the entire world has been taken over by Elder Gods (of H. P. Lovecraft fame), who demand weekly human sacrifices. Somehow, earth's populace has adapted to this reality so completely that everyone continues to live relatively "normal" lives that include tabloid newspapers and professional basketball. After fleeing his building and entering a subway station, he shifts to a new para where the entire world has been destroyed, and he meets a sickly version of himself who informs him that this was the result of the "Boles Effect." Max next finds himself in a utopian, futuristic version of Los Angeles with hovercars, courteous citizens, and no pollution. While he would love to remain there, he has no control over the Boles Effect, and soon he finds himself back in a more familiar version of L.A. He goes home, but when he wakes up the next day he discovers that he's a ghost, because the local Max died in a shooting. He wanders out onto the beach, converses with an old man ghost, and soon encounters two identical couples who have just died—implying that the Boles Effect works even on the dead. After shifting to a para where he's alive once again, Max is at the end of his ropes, bewildered by the metaphysical truths he has learned, disillusioned by the Boles Effect that never seems to end. After contemplating suicide, he finally goes home and sleeps again. During the night, he has a series of bizarre dreams in quick succession, and he concludes that he must have been "para dreaming," implying that "not only was the cosmos composed of para realities, it was rife with para unrealities as well." When he drives to work, he discovers that he's entered a para where every man, woman, and child in the world is a version of himself. Everyone not only looks like him, but has aspects of his personality too, and for the first time in his life he becomes aware of how unpleasant a person he is. His boss assigns him to interview a man named Max Parker, who lives in what Max thinks is his own apartment. This local Max claims to be experiencing dreams where a man named Barrington Boles has zapped him with a condition that makes him sail through parallel worlds. Max doesn't recognize the name of the newspaper that this Max works for, The National Enquirer. Max has had enough. He concludes that so many parallel worlds must exist that "a single universe [is] but a pinprick." After having met so many clones of himself, his whole sense of individual identity is coming apart. His mind can't take it anymore. He drives to Boles's house, witnessing some bizarre sights on the way, but hoping against hope that by the time he arrives he will have found a version of Boles who can end Max's condition. This Boles remembers their second meeting and works the machine on Max once again, attempting to destroy the effect. After all that he's been through, Max will not allow himself to believe that everything is back to normal. But as he leaves Boles's mansion and returns home to his apartment, he grows more and more relaxed—until the reflection in his mirror frowns at him while he's still smiling.
5529131	/m/0dr1kp	The Motel Life	Willy Vlautin	2007-04-05		 Frank and Jerry Lee Flannigan are two down-and-out brothers who live a meager existence in Reno, Nevada. Both men are high school dropouts who live in cheap motel rooms, work at odd jobs for money, and drink heavily. One night, while driving drunk during a blizzard, Jerry Lee accidentally hits and kills a teenage boy on a bicycle. Although the accident is the boy's fault, there are no witnesses, and Jerry Lee is certain that the police will put the blame on him. He convinces Frank to leave town with him and flee to Montana. Along the way, Jerry Lee abandons Frank in Wyoming and then burns the car in a secluded Idaho forest. Both men return separately to Reno. The police seem to take no interest in the case, so both men attempt to settle back into their Reno lives. Frank adopts an abused, half-frozen dog he finds during a snowstorm. Acting on a tip from a friend, he scrapes together $800 and bets it on the Tyson-Holyfield boxing match, winning more than $5,000. He also tracks down the family of the dead teenager and stands outside their home, watching them come and go. Jerry Lee, meanwhile, becomes consumed by guilt and attempts suicide, shooting himself in the leg. He survives and lands in the hospital. On the day of the Tyson-Holyfield fight, the police come to question Jerry Lee; they have discovered the burned-out wreck of his car in Idaho. Once again, Jerry Lee convinces Frank to flee Reno. Frank uses his winnings to buy a used car. He leaves $1,000 at the home of the dead teenager, sneaks Jerry Lee out of the hospital, and heads to the town of Elko, Nevada to hide from the police. Frank's ex-girlfriend Annie lives in Elko, and he secretly hopes to run into her. But Jerry Lee's wounds are far from healed and he quickly becomes very sick.
5531936	/m/0dr6bt	The Hippopotamus Pool	Barbara Mertz	1996	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Amelia and Emerson are in Cairo to greet the 20th century, when a mysterious Mr. Shelmadine presents them with a gold ring from a unknown tombe bearing the cartouche of Queen Tetisheri. The same Shelmadine then goes in a fit that spell out a new case for Amelia. Not even this time will Amelia's archeological season be left alone by criminals and tomb robbers. Only this time she's up against two unknown parties, one to save, one to avenge. This book also introduces David Todros, Ramses's lifelong friend and partner in crime. Evelyn and Walter Emerson come back to the land of the pharaohs for the first time since their romance in the ruins of the heretical pharaoh's city, Amarna.
5533292	/m/0dr8dd	Ode to Gallantry	Louis Cha	1965	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The plot centers on a case of mistaken identity between a pair of identical twins, which in his afterword Jin Yong acknowledges resemble some works of William Shakespeare (cf. Twelfth Night and The Comedy of Errors). The protagonist, who refers to himself as "Gouzazhong" (狗雜種; literally means "the mongrel dog", a colloquialism for "bastard"), first appears as a young beggar living on the streets of Kaifeng, searching for his lost mother. He witnesses a fight between several wulin pugilists and meets the Shi couple and members of the Snowy Mountain Sect (雪山派). An accident causes him to be taken away from Kaifeng by a martial artist called Xie Yanke, to Xie's secluded home on Motian Cliff. Xie Yanke, who is frequently bothered by Gouzazhong, decides to teach him martial arts. Gouzazhong learns qi cultivation techniques under Xie Yanke's tutelage for six years. Gouzazhong is unaware that Xie Yanke actually harbours ill intentions towards him and has been teaching him the wrong methods, in hope that Gouzazhong will sustain internal wounds and die eventually. At the same time, the leader of the Changle Sect, Shi Potian (whose real name is Shi Zhongyu), mysteriously disappears. The greater part of the novel deals with the complications that arise as Gouzhazhong is mistaken to be Shi Zhongyu, not only by members of the sect (for ulterior motives), by also by Shi Zhongyu's parents, the Shi couple, Shi Zhongyu's lover Ding Dang, and members of the Snowy Mountain Sect. Although the two bear a splitting resemblance, their characters cannot be more different: Gouzhazhong is simple, honest and clever, while Shi Zhongyu, the son of the Shi couple, has a bad reputation as a lewd and sly womaniser. In the process Gouzhazhong acquires consummate martial arts skills. Gouzazhong is hounded by members of the Snowy Mountain Sect who mistake him for Shi Zhongyu, who had molested A'xiu, the granddaughter of the Snowy Mountain Sect's leader. He acquires A'xiu as his girlfriend after various episodes, during which the misunderstandings are resolved. The novel culminates in an episode when the leaders of various sects are coerced into going to a secluded island by a pair of mysterious, highly skilled messengers to celebrate the Laba Festival by eating Laba congee. The story then leads to a surprising conclusion: revelations on the island and more revelations concerning Gouzhazhong's true parentage.
5534091	/m/0dr9rt	What Dreams May Come	Richard Matheson	1978-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03v9sb": "Bangsian fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The prologue is narrated by a man telling of his visit by a psychic woman, who gives him a manuscript she claims was dictated to her by his deceased brother Chris. Most of the novel consists of this manuscript. Chris, a middle-aged man, is injured in a car accident and dies in the hospital. He remains as a ghost, at first thinking he's having a bad dream. Amid a failed séance that helps further convince his wife Ann that he didn't survive death, an unidentified man keeps approaching Chris and telling him to concentrate on what's beyond. But Chris disregards this advice for a long time, unable to leave his wife. After finally following the man's advice, focusing his mind on pleasant memories, he feels himself being elevated. He wakes up in a beautiful glade which he recognizes as a place where he and Ann used to travel. Understanding by now that he is dead, he is surprised that he looks and feels alive, with apparently a complete physical body and sensation. After exploring the place for a while, he finds Albert, his cousin, who reveals himself as the unidentified man. Albert explains that the place they occupy is called Summerland. Being a state of mind rather than a physical location, Summerland is practically endless and takes the form of the inhabitants' wishes and desires. There is no pain or death, but people still maintain occupations of sorts and perform leisure activities. The book spends several chapters depicting Summerland in great detail, through Chris's eyes. Chris feels somehow uneasy, being haunted by nightmares ending in Ann's death. Soon he learns that Ann has killed herself. Albert, who is as shocked as Chris, explains that by committing suicide, Ann has placed her spirit in the "lower realm" from Summerland, and that she will stay there for twenty-four years — her intended life span. Albert insists that Ann's condition is not "punishment" but "law" - a natural consequence of committing suicide. Albert's job is to visit the lower realm, and Chris asks to be taken there so he can help Ann. Albert initially refuses, warning Chris that he might inadvertently find himself stuck in the lower realm, thus delaying his eventual, inevitable reunion with Ann. Chris eventually convinces Albert to attempt the rescue, even though Albert insists that they will almost certainly fail. The lower realm (which the book only later refers to as "Hell") is cold, dark, and barren. Albert and Chris are able to use their minds to make their surroundings slightly more bearable, but Albert warns Chris that this will become harder to do as they travel further. They eventually reach a place occupied by people who were violent criminals while they were alive. Chris is forced to witness a series of dreadful sights and gets gruesomely attacked by a mob, though he soon discovers that the attack occurred only in his mind. They finally depart from that particularly violent section of Hell, arriving at last at Ann's place. It resembles a dark, depressing version of the neighborhood where he and Ann used to live. Albert explains that she will not immediately recognize Chris, and that he can only gradually convince her who he is and what has happened to her. Ann believes that she is living alone in her house where nothing seems to work, grieving her husband's death. This is her private "Hell" - an exaggerated version of what she had been experiencing prior to her suicide. Identifying himself as a new neighbor, Chris makes numerous unsuccessful attempts to make her realize the true situation. He describes details of his own life so that she will be reminded of her husband. He calls her attention to the improbably negative conditions of the house. He drops in clues, gradually leading her to the truth, but she seems to block out anything that will cause recognition. He finally tells her the truth straight out. She gets angry and calls him a liar. Because she does not believe in afterlife, she finds it impossible that he could be her dead husband. After a moment of disorientation where he starts to forget his own identity, the atmosphere of Hell gradually drawing him in and threatening to trap him there, he delivers a long monologue of appreciation for her, detailing all the ways in which she enriched his life. He finally makes the most dreaded decision of all: he decides to stay with her and not return to Summerland. As he begins losing consciousness, Ann finally recognizes him and realizes what has happened. Chris awakens in Summerland once again. Albert, who is amazed that Chris was able to rescue Ann, informs him that she has been reborn on Earth, because she is not ready for Summerland. Chris wants to be reborn too, despite Albert's protests. Chris learns that he and Ann have had several previous lives, and in all of them they had a special connection with each other. As the manuscript comes to a close, Chris explains that he is soon going to be reborn and will forget all that has happened. He ends with a message of hope, telling his readers that death is not to be feared, and that he knows in the future he and Ann will ultimately be reunited in Heaven, even if in different form.
5535961	/m/0drdms	Now It's My Turn	Mary Cheney	2006	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Mary Cheney writes about her experience as a campaign staffer during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, when she worked for her father, Dick Cheney. She recounts what she learned in 2000 about campaign staffers's job, laying out pointers. Moving on to the re-election of 2004, she expresses her repudiation of the Marriage Protection Act supported by George W. Bush. As openly lesbian, she considered leaving the campaign; she only stayed because she believed George W. Bush to be the best commander-in-chief during the War on Terror. She also expresses outrage at the way John Kerry's campaign made use of her personal life when the issue of same-sex marriage came up.
5536702	/m/0drftq	The Peacekeepers	Gene DeWeese	1988-09-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 While investigating an alien derelict, Geordi La Forge and Data are sent to a solar system several light-years away by a transporter with interstellar range, to a similar derelict orbiting an Earth-like planet. Once there, they are mistaken for "the Builders", those who the planet's native populace, a culture similar to late-20th-century Earth, believe are the creators of the derelict, which they call the "Repository of the Gifts". One of the natives, Shar-Lon, discovered the Repository some years before and used its "Gifts" (advanced technology) to end planetary wars that were leading to a possible nuclear holocaust. However, Shar-Lon's use of the Gifts since that time has led to a worldwide perception of himself and his supporters, the Peacekeepers, as a suppressive force that has limited the social and technological advancement of their people. Assuming the role of "Builders" in order to assess their situation, La Forge and Data are drawn into the social politics of the Peacekeepers and their world, and must extract themselves from the situation and find a way back to the Enterprise without further harming the natives' culture and violating the Prime Directive.
5536719	/m/0drfvd	The Children of Hamlin				 The Hamlin colony had been attacked some time previously by the alien Choraii. All the adults had been slain and the children kidnapped. Now the Choraii are back, bargaining for precious metals. Captain Picard plans to use the Choraii's needs to get the children back.
5536817	/m/0drfzm	Survivors	Jean Lorrah		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Enterprise is called in to deal with Treva, a human colony on the fringes of known space. For a time, it was thought to be a suitable candidate for Federation membership. Now it has sent a distress call because a brutal warlord has seized power and a revolution has sprung up. Natasha Yar is sent down with the android Data. The two soon discover the situation is more complicated than originally thought. The warlord wants Federation weapons to use against the rebels and is willing to kill whomever it takes to accomplish this goal. The novel also focuses on the unique relationship between Yar and Data and how the current situation correlates with Yar's brutal childhood.
5537096	/m/0drggp	Strike Zone	Peter David		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In this book a race of aliens who have fought with the Klingons for centuries, called the Kreel, find a large stash of advanced weapons hidden on a strange planet on the Kreel-Klingon border. They are established as scavengers. They had, in the continuity of the novel, plundered the destroyed colony that was Worf's childhood home.
5537342	/m/0drgw0	Stalking the Unicorn	Mike Resnick		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Mallory, a private investigator from New York, spends New Year’s Eve in his office, with a bottle of whisky, and in a terrible mood. His business partner left for California with Mallory’s wife, having also blackmailed some of their clients. Since the infuriated victims head for the detective’s office, it seems that the night will end up tragically; yet, the plot suddenly takes an unexpected turn as in the room appears a strange creature, an elf called Mürgenstürm. Mürgenstürm, who comes from an alternative world, is in equally serious trouble. He was obliged to guard a valuable animal, the unicorn called Larkspur. He neglected his duty and the unicorn was stolen. Now, the elf’s life is in danger, so he wants to take advantage of Mallory’s service. As he has no other way out of trouble the detective decides to follow Mürgenstürm, and to search for the stolen animal. They enter the alternative New York through the gate in the basement of the very building where Mallory has his office. When the detective examines the scene of the crime, he encounters the eye-witness, a cat-girl Felina, who, despite her cat-like personality, will become Mallory’s loyal partner. She reveals that the culprit is a leprechaun, Gillespie, working for a perilous and powerful demon Grundy that is responsible for spreading evil in both New Yorks. At the same time, the Grundy finds out about Mallory’s investigation and tries to dissuade him from taking further steps. Nevertheless, Mallory does not abandon the investigation and in search of information about the unicorn visits various places in the alternative New York, such as the Museum of Natural History, full of dead yet regularly reviving animals, and Central Park, occupied by wholesalers offering completely useless goods. On his way Mallory meets Eohippus, a six-inch tall horse that helps him find the expert on unicorns, a former huntress still craving for adventure, Colonel Winifred Carruthers. Unlike Mürgenstürm, who gradually turns out to be more an accomplice in the crime than the victim, Carruthers and Eohippus are valuable allies. Due to Colonel, Mallory comes into contact with a magician, The Great Mephisto, and finds out the motives for the crime. In the unicorn’s head there is a ruby that would enable the Grundy to move freely between the two worlds and gain more power than he has ever had. After a long search Mallory reaches Gillespie’s flat on the 13th floor of a cheap hotel only to find out that the leprechaun ran away, the unicorn is already dead, and the gate between the two cities begins to close. In the meantime, Mallory’s partners, Colonel and Eohippus, are caught by Gillespie. Soon after that the detective receives an invitation to the auction at which the precious ruby is to be sold. The Grundy appears there too, and he seems to have all the cards. Yet, it turns out that Mallory, with the help of Felina, has already found and hidden the jewel, which gives him an advantage over the enemy. Grundy sets Mallory’s friends free and agrees to wait until the detective delivers the ruby. Mallory, who has no intention of letting the Grundy wreak havoc in both worlds, has the jewel transported to "his" New York just before the passage between the two worlds closes. Then he meets the Grundy only to inform him about it. Since the demon cannot be sure whether Mallory tells the truth he does not dare to kill the detective, but promises to have his revenge in the future. Mallory is content to stay in the alternative New York, where his work makes more sense. He is determined to continue his struggle against evil having the noble Colonel and of the mysterious Felina at his side.
5538452	/m/0drjdf	Charlotte Gray	Sebastian Faulks	1999-02	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1942, a young Scot, Charlotte Gray, travels to London to take a job as a medical receptionist for a Harley Street doctor. On the train she talks to two men sharing her compartment, and one of them - who works for the secret service - gives her his card. Despite the war, social life in London is in full swing and the attractive, intelligent girl soon meets up with an airman, Peter Gregory. The temporary nature of life at the time is epitomised when she quickly loses her virginity and then her heart to him. The romance is heightened when Gregory is sent on a mission over France and news comes back to Charlotte that he is missing In action. Charlotte spent much of her childhood in France and speaks the language fluently - a talent that the secret service wishes to exploit in its effort to support the French Resistance. Charlotte decides to throw in her job - which she has no talent for anyway as the doctor informs her - and joins a Special Operations Executive (SOE)* training course. Once it has grilled her on methods of interrogation, dyed her hair a mousy brown and replaced her fillings, Charlotte is parachuted into France to complete a specified mission. But instead of doing her job and heading home, she sets out to find Gregory's whereabouts. When he speaks of fidelity and conflicting passions, he is not just referring to Charlotte's love of her missing man but of the Occupation by the Nazis that turned Frenchmen against each other as well as against Jews.
5539996	/m/0drljg	Bull Run	Paul Fleischman		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is a collection of monologues by sixteen fictional characters and one real one, eight Northern and eight Southern, black and white, male and female, describing their personal experiences in the First Battle of Bull Run of the American Civil War in 1861. Issues such as race, gender, and economic, social, and regional tensions are depicted throughout the novel. This book gives a clear vision of what went on in the civil war from medical tents to bodies on the battlefield.
5540595	/m/0drmdy	Dragons of Ice			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 In Dragons of Ice, after leaving Thorbardin, the player characters head south into the polar regions, journeying along the glaciers in search of Icewall Castle. The characters encounter Ice Folk, ice-skate boats, and the Walrus-Men. Characters begin play at the ancient port city of Tarsis in the world of Krynn. After an attack by the Dragonarmies on Tarsis, the party is driven south to Icewall Castle, which is home to a white dragon and one of the legendary Dragon Orbs. After the Cataclysm, the seas receded from the port city Tarsis, so instead of finding a port the characters have found a land locked city 40 miles inland. The adventure series version of Dragons of Winter Night, book two of the Dragonlance saga, will follow part of the party from the first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Returning playable characters available are Sturm Brightblade, Flint Fireforge and Tasslehoff Burrfoot and Gilthanas. Laurana and Elistan, previously appearing NPC's, are now also playable as characters. Additionally two Knights of Solamnia, Aaron Tallbow and Derek Crownguard, are available for players if required. Aaron will appear as an NPC with the party if he is not used by a player. The other characters from the first book leave from Tarsis in a different direction at the beginning of DL10 Dragons of Dreams. Chapter 1: The Fall of Tarsis Chapter 2: The Ice Reaches Chapter 3: The Ice Folk Chapter 4: Icewall Castle Chapter 5: Icemountain Bay Epilogue
5540997	/m/0drn1s	Ravager of Time				 In Ravager of Time, the player characters are hired to search a fenland for a lord's son who slew his father, but the character become entangled in the plot of the evil that taints Eylea. The Lord Temporal Rughlor returned from the wider world to settle at Ffenargh Manor, Lorge, with a radiant young wife, Nuala. However, her beauty hid a will for evil and a hunger for the forgotten lore of an ancient wizard buried below Lorge. Rughlor discovered his wife’s evil and destroyed her and himself, and Lorge was abandoned. But Nuala’s treacherous beauty, even as a distorted tale, fascinated another scion of Ffenargh Manor, Miles D’Arcy, who, with the aid of a thief and one of Eylea’s strange relics, found and resurrected the sorceress. He completed her last terrible spell, causing his own doom, and embroiled a group of powerful adventurers in Nuala’s plot to gain allies for her bid for power in the Ffenargh. Nuala now plans to use these adventurers and her own new powers to overthrow the creaky clerical hierarchy of Eylea and rule the Ffenargh. The adventure includes statistics for new monsters, the slime golem, and the life-bane duplicates.
5542108	/m/0drpmv	Blackrock	Nick Enright			 Blackrock was set in a fictional Australian beach side working-class suburb called Blackrock, where surfing was popular among youths like Jared. He had his first serious girlfriend, Rachel, who came from a much wealthier part of the city. One day Ricko, the local surfing legend, came back after an eleven-month odyssey, and Jared gave him a 'welcome home' get together. A few nights later it was Rachel's brother Toby's birthday party which was held at the local beach club.Unsupervised and with alcohol freely available, tragedy soon arrived - Jared witnessed a girl called Tracy being raped by three youths (Davo; Scott; and Toby, Rachel's brother). After which she was murdered by Ricko with a rock. And Jared did nothing to stop the attacks. Ricko and the community would soon be scrutinized by news bulletins across the nation. The locals reacted differently: The surfers continued their lives as if nothing had happened. Cherie, who also happened to be Jared's cousin, resorted to violent behaviours; Rachel had to face the news that her brother Toby was one of the accused. Jared was torn between the need to reveal what he saw for the sake of justice, and the desire to protect Ricko, Toby and the other rapists in the name of 'mateship'. His silence eventually led to the breakdown of his relationships, not only with Rachel, but also with his mother Diane, who was recovering from breast cancer.
5542129	/m/0drpnj	Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition	Sion Sono	2002-04-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition tells in four different chapters the story behind a fictional mass suicide that takes place on the Shinjuku Station in 2002, on which 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a train. This event unleashes in Japan—and soon after, in the world—a chain of suicides that seems endless. Police officers try to stop it and understand why this is happening, and after several events they find a connection between the suicides and a website that belongs to a mysterious organization called Family Circle. Through this website, Family Circle enrolls young people and incite them to run away from home to serve the Circle "family rentals", a service that the organization provides to families who lost relatives to suicide. Parallel to this, alongside the police's quest, the book also follows the story of one of Family Circle's new members that witnessed the mass suicide, Noriko Shimabara, and how her own family slowly falls apart to the suicide wave, while her father tries to "rescue" her from the Circle. In the end, all the pieces come together as the true meaning behind the website is revealed.
5542375	/m/0drq3x	Betsey Brown	Ntozake Shange		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Betsey Brown begins with Betsey looking out over her neighborhood in St. Louis in 1959. She will go to her predominately African-American school and win a prize for her recitation of a poem. Later in the novel, she will switch schools as part of an effort to integrate the city's schools. Betsey has an identity crisis and runs away to the local hair dresser's. When she returns her mother and father fight and Betsey's mom leaves the home. During her mother's hiatus, a new caretaker comes into the Brown home and brings order with her. After some time, Betsey's mother returns home. Betsey's mother does not like the new caretaker. The caretaker does not show up for work one day because she was put in jail. Betsey grows up and takes over for the caretaker. First of all, Betsey's parents are wealthy members of the middle class. They do not live in a poor district. The father, Greer, works as a doctor and the mother, Jane, is a professional social worker. They live in a house which belonged to white people. Even though they are rich, they are still discriminated in the society and have to fight for equality. Greer is an activist who is not afraid of taking action and expressing his views. He participates in a demonstration and, against his wife's will, takes his children with him. This event proves that, despite his superb education and a respected job, he was not equal with white people. The thing which made him inferior was just the color of his skin. Betsey Brown was written in 1985, but it is set in 1959. Through this retrospective method of writing, Shange incorporated many crucial facts. The 1950s were very important as a result of radical changes in the legal system and in society. One of the most essential events, which is mentioned in the novel and which caused a huge outcry among not only African- Americans but many white Americans as well, was the true story of the lynching of a young black boy Emmet Till in 1955. His name is mentioned in the scene, in which children are supposed to go to a mixed school after the desegregation act was introduced in 1954. On the one hand, this act changed a lot in the legal system, but it did not change the mentality of many white people, for whom mixing black children with their white peers was still outrageous. African-American children were really afraid of being abused or treated unequally. The case of Emmet Till was the most horrible example of the dangers which might have been caused by white people. This constant fear was very legitimate because besides Emmet there were more than 2,000 families murdered and lynched over the years by whites in America. Betsey belongs to those black pupils, who were the first to go to the same schools as white children. She was afraid of this new situation, but after the first day at a new school, she noticed an essential thing which changed her attitude towards other people: namely that without being together, playing together and studying together, the word “equality” was meaningless. Before the act from 1954, there was a ubiquitous rule of being “separate but equal”, which meant that black and white communities could never get to know each other. Jane, Betsey's mother, teaches her children to have a positive attitude towards others, regardless of skin color or social status. She says that bad people are everywhere, even among African-Americans. This lesson shows Jane's children that everybody is the same and that the invisible boundaries between races and classes should be destroyed. Another thing described in this complex book is the reversal of the roles ascribed to particular members of the family. Jane stands for those women who, in the 1950s, started to change the stereotype connected with their gender roles. It was believed that women should stay at home, raise children, clean, cook, and be financially dependent on men. In this novel, Jane is presented as a self-confident woman, who has got her own career and who is not a servant for her husband, but his equal partner. She can afford to employ a nurse for her children, so she is not obliged to look after house and her offspring. She has got enough time for pleasures and thinking about herself. This new model of a woman represents the social change in the society and the new approach towards womanhood. What is more, this family is a perfect example of showing different attitudes of people at different ages toward those social changes. This family is like a microcosm, in which everybody stands for a particular approach. It is an extended family in which grandma's behavior is contrasted with the lifestyles of her daughter and son-in-law. Vida represents an older generation for whom equality was only a dream. She remembered the oppression and visible hatred of white Americans toward African-Americans. Her life taught her that it was extremely dangerous to stand out or to oppose the system controlled by white people. That is why Vida cannot accept Greer's traditionalism and persistence in fighting for a better future. Nobody can blame Vida for her conformism and surveillance. The situation in the 1950s must have surprised many people from her generation, who would not even dare to think that an anti-discriminatory act would be introduced during their lifetimes. Greer represents activists who later created the Black is beautiful movement and who openly admitted their pride of their heritage and traditions. He strongly believes in the purpose of this fight and the importance of those historical events he participates in because he realizes that his children will live totally different lives than his.
5546479	/m/0dry30	Or Die Trying	Sean Williams		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Following the events of Force Heretic II: Refugee, Jedi Knight Jaina Solo investigates the origins of the Human Replica Droid Bakuran Prime Minister Cundertol had infused his essence into. Her investigation leads her to the droid manufacturer ODT's headquarters on Onadax, in the Minos Cluster. There, she confronts Stanton Rendar (head of the factory and the brother of the infamous smuggler Dash Rendar) concerning the morality of granting immortality to sentients through droids and attempts to persuade him to surrender himself to the Galactic Alliance. However, Stanton and his associates unleash their droids on Jaina, creating a diversion which allows them to escape. The story ends with Jaina feeling bitter over the failure of the mission.
5546772	/m/0drynf	Q and A	Vikas Swarup	2005	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Narrated in the first person, the novel follows the life of Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated young waiter. Prior to the start of the novel, Ram has correctly answered 12 questions on the fictional game show Who Will Win a Billion? (or W3B), and has won Rs. one billion (about $22 million). However, show host Prem Kumar and the producers, who do not have the money to pay him, have had the police arrest him for cheating; they had cast Ram because they figured an uneducated street child would not be able to answer more than a few questions at most, and they find the police more than willing to believe them. Ram explains to his sympathetic lawyer, Smita Shah, (who has rescued him from being tortured), just how he managed to answer twelve random questions: they related to real events that occurred in his life, with each question prompting its own flashback. As he says, "Well, wasn't I lucky they only asked those questions to which I knew the answers?". Ram goes on to tell her how by drawing from the experiences of his own short, yet turbulent and sometimes cruel life, he, a young, poor waiter, answered the twelve questions that led him to the jackpot. Through this device, the novel moves between Mumbai, Delhi and Agra (non-chronologically) as it highlights Ram's bizarre experiences, from his original upbringing by an English-speaking priest to his various jobs, which include working as house help for an aging Bollywood actress, in a foundry, an Australian diplomat who turns out to be in a spy ring, as a tourist guide in Agra and a waiter in a bar at Mumbai. His best friend is another young orphan named Salim, who plays a part in some of these adventures and dreams of becoming an actor, as it was foretold by a palmist at a fair. Ram was told by the same palmist that he would not live a very long life, but he doesn't believe in foretelling the future and dismisses it. Salim later becomes an actor after saving a Bollywood producer from assassination from a professional hitman. However, the key events of Ram's life come when he works as a tour guide at the Taj Mahal, which is when he meets a young prostitute named Nita. He falls in love with her and asks her pimp to let her marry him, but the pimp refuses. Meanwhile, Ram's friend Shankar is dying of rabies. He needs 400,000 rupees to buy a vaccination, and Nita's pimp demands the same amount. Shankar dies, and Ram steals the money from Shankar's uncaring mother. After learning that the pimp (who is also Nita's brother) will continue to demand even more money, he instead gives it to an English teacher whose son needs the rabies vaccine. The teacher later helps answer Ram's question about William Shakespeare when Ram uses his Friendly Tip Lifeboat. Ram tells his lawyer that he went on the show partly in a quest to win enough money to buy Nita's freedom from her pimp, and partly in a bid to get even with the show's host, Prem Kumar, who abused and exploited Nita, resulting in her being placed under intensive care in hospital. Prem also exploited the late Neelima Kumari, a former Bollywood actress and Ram's former employer. Ram had planned to kill him when he went for a bathroom break (show rules dictate that the contestant must be followed everywhere by the host so they cannot cheat). However, Ram decides against it and, in gratitude, Kumar tells him the answer of the last question, which was the only answer he might have not have answered correctly.
5548191	/m/0dr_st	The Night Listener	Armistead Maupin	2000	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gabriel Noone is a gay writer whose late-night radio stories have brought him into the homes of millions. Noone has recently separated from Jess, his partner of ten years. Noone's publisher sends him the galleys of a memoir apparently written by a 13-year-old boy, Peter Lomax. The author claims to have been the victim of sexual abuse and infected with AIDS. According to his memoir, his father started beating him at two and raped him at four; his mother videotaped the "sessions". When he was eight years old, his parents started pimping him and selling videotapes. When Pete was age 11, he ran away with the pornographic tapes, and his parents were jailed. A psychologist named Donna Lomax took the boy in and eventually adopted him. Noone contacts the boy and they start exchanging a series of phone calls that develop into a kind of father/son relationship. He begins to suspect that Pete does not exist and that he and his memoir are fabrications by Donna. Even a visit to their home is inconclusive, and the novel ends with Gabriel feeling that the value of the relationship to him is more important than whether or not Pete is real. Subplots in the novel revolve around Gabriel's relationships with his lover and his father. Important themes are the nature of father/son relationships, the power struggle involved in caring for and being cared for by another, the embellishment of truth, and the secrets we keep even in the most intimate relationships.
5549298	/m/0ds1ct	Lord Tyger	Philip José Farmer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ras Tyger has lived in the jungle for as long as he can remember. Raised by apes, he lives an idyllic existence as the lord of the jungle, gleefully hunting prey and feeding his prodigious sexual appetite with various female denizens of his jungle. Eventually, however, Tyger begins to suspect that all is not as it seems. He sees strange giant birds, black and without movement aside from their spinning wings atop their heads. He sees other apes raising their young and ponders why his childhood was so different. Always receiving more questions than answers, the more Tyger explores his universe, the more it begins to deconstruct before his very eyes. Ultimately, Tyger discovers that his entire life is a fraud, a construct. A crazed millionaire named Boygur has, in an effort to reproduce the Tarzan novels he loved as a child, purchased a young English nobleman (Tyger) and created a complex series of jungle environs for him to live within. He hires two dwarfs to act as his ape parents, and has two huge black helicopters (Tyger's "giant birds") patrol the area to keep outsiders out, and insiders in. Ultimately, neither Tyger nor Boygur get what they desire. Tyger cannot handle the harshness of his newfound reality, and Boygur is shocked and appalled when the jungle superman he's raised is far from innocent. At the end of the book, Boygur sadly notes that "things went their own way."
5549309	/m/0ds1dh	The Golden Wind	L. Sprague de Camp	1969	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of Eudoxus of Cyzicus and Hippalus on the first voyages by sea from Egypt to India. Following these, it deals with Eudoxus' efforts to circumvent the newly established Egyptian monopoly on trade with India by pioneering a new route around the west coast of Africa, which are ultimately defeated by misadventure and the sheer extent of the continent.
5551154	/m/0ds4gd	The Arrangement	Elia Kazan	1979	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The Arrangement is the first-person story of Evangelos Arness, aka Evans Arness, aka Eddie Anderson, a second-generation Greek-American World War II veteran, a son of an Anatolian rug merchant who went broke after the 1929 Depression. He has come to use the name "Eddie Anderson" in his career as a self-loathing advertising executive and the name "Evans Arness" in his second career as a muck-raking magazine reporter, the career in which he ostensibly takes pride (Lincoln Steffens is his role model). His personal life is just as duplicitous: to outsiders he is happily married but is in fact a compulsive adulterer with his wife Florence's "don't ask - don't tell" tacit approval, one aspect of the titular "arrangement". His serial adultery ends when he begins a liaison with a female assistant at his advertising firm, Gwen Hunt, whose independent mind fascinates him; he becomes obsessed with her, perhaps even feeling true love towards her. He fails to lock a drawer with their nude photographs, perhaps subsconsciously wanting to be found out; a prying maid discovers them and shows them to Florence (and before that, it turns out, to their adopted daughter, now a university student). Florence persuades him to leave Gwen and to re-invigorate their life with a self-improvement regimen; both seem perfectly content though somewhat dull but after several months he crashes his car in an apparent suicide attempt. The rest of the novel deals with his inability to return to his old role as he attempts to find a new life in which he can be who he authentically is rather than who others desire him to be or whom he has sold people on his being. He has to returns to New York City where he had left his parents and brother after college to deal with his father's dying. After several false starts, in which the newly "authentic" Eddie is arrested for indecent exposure, burns down his parents' former house that had become a symbol of father's tyranny over the family, is shot by Gwen's jealous suitor, and is committed to a mental hospital, Eddie settles down with Gwen in Connecticut as a liquor dealer and starts to write short stories.
5552573	/m/0ds6h9	The Book of Abraham	Marek Halter		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book begins in 70 AD in Jerusalem during the siege of the city by the Romans just prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. Abraham, a Jewish scribe, his wife and two sons live in Jerusalem and have survived the siege. On the day when the Romans breach the city walls and set fire to the Second Temple, Abraham and his family successfully escape Jerusalem only to be stopped by a Roman platoon. The Roman soldiers incapacitate Abraham and rape and murder his wife. Abraham and his sons are later freed, but he is forced to surrender his scrolls to a Roman commander. At this point, Abraham begins a scroll that documents his family's journeys (the so-called "Book of Abraham", around which the story revolves) and lists his sons and their descendants. Each successive generation after Abraham dies adds on to the Book of Abraham, which continues to the point when the original scroll is lost and to the end of the book when Marek Halter's grandfather dies during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. From Jerusalem, the family moves, over the course of nearly 2000 years, to cities such as Carthage, Hippo, Rome, Toledo, Cordoba, Narbonne, Troyes, Strasbourg, Constantinople, Amsterdam, Lublin, Odessa, and Warsaw. In both the fictional and factual parts of the book, the story coincides with many notable historical events, including the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Islamic conquests, the Inquisition, the Black Plague, the French Revolution, and World War II, as well as telling the story from the point of view of the Jews during the early to late Middle Ages, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, and the early Twentieth century (i.e., showing the segregation and hardships faced by the Jews after their expulsion from Palestine).
5556885	/m/0dsdrc	The Art of Dreaming	Carlos Castaneda	1994	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The Art of Dreaming describes the steps needed to master control and consciousness of dreams. The Toltecs of Don Juan Matus' lineage believed that there are seven barriers to awareness, which they termed The Seven Gates of Dreaming. In The Art of Dreaming Castaneda describes extensively how a state called Total Awareness can be achieved by means of dreaming. According to Castaneda there are 7 Gates of Dreaming, or obstacles to awareness, which when overcome yield total awareness. Four of the Gates of Dreaming are discussed in The Art of Dreaming. What follows is not so much a technique in achieving lucidity, but rather the practical application of lucid dreaming. By acting a certain way while dreaming, one can cause psychosomatic changes in one's being, including an alternate way of dying. What follows is a point-form summary of the philosophy surrounding Toltec dreaming as a way of "Sorcery that is a return to Paradise". * 1st Gate of Dreaming (stabilization of the dreaming body): Arrived at when one perceives one's hands in a dream. Solved when one is able to shift the focus from the hands to another dream object and return it to the hands, all repeated a few times. Crossed when one is able to induce a state of darkness and a feeling of increased weight while falling asleep. Location in the body – in the area at the base of the V formed by pulling the big and second toes of one foot to the sides. * 2nd Gate of Dreaming (utilizing the dreaming body): Arrived at when one's dream objects start changing into something else. Solved when one is able to isolate a Scout and follow it to the realm of Inorganic Beings. Crossed when one is able to fall asleep without losing consciousness. It is also referred to the activity of dreaming together with other practitioners. Location in the body – in the inside area of the calf. * 3rd Gate of Dreaming (traveling): Arrived at when one dreams of looking at oneself. Solved when the dreaming and physical bodies become one. Crossed when one is able to control the Dreaming Emissary. Location in the body – at the lowest part of the spinal column. * 4th Gate of Dreaming (seeing): Arrived at when one is able to perceive the energetic essence of every dream item. Solved when one falls asleep in a dream, in the same position in which one has gone to sleep. Crossed when one wakes up in this reality, located not only in the physical but in the energy body.
5559292	/m/0dsjsh	The Last Unicorn	Peter S. Beagle	1968	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with a team of human hunters passing through a forest in search of game. After days of coming up empty-handed, they begin to believe they are passing through a Unicorn's forest, where animals are kept safe by a magical aura. They resign themselves to hunting somewhere else; but, before they leave, one of the hunters calls out a warning to the Unicorn that she may be the last of her kind. This revelation disturbs the Unicorn, but she initially dismisses the thought. She encounters a talking butterfly who speaks in riddles and songs and initially dodges her questions about the other unicorns. Eventually, the butterfly issues a warning that her kind have been herded to a far away land by a creature known as the Red Bull. Fearing for the other unicorns, the Unicorn decides to leave the comfort and safety of her forest to find out what has happened to the others. During her journey, she is taken captive by a traveling carnival led by witch Mommy Fortuna, who uses magical spells to create the illusion that regular animals are in fact creatures of myth and legend. The Unicorn finds herself the only true legendary creature among the group, save for the harpy, Celaeno. Schmendrick, a magician traveling with the carnival, sees the Unicorn for what she is, and he frees her in the middle of the night. The Unicorn frees the other creatures including Celaeno, who kills Mommy Fortuna and Rukh, her hunchbacked assistant. The Unicorn and Schmendrick continue traveling in an attempt to reach the castle of King Haggard, where the Red Bull resides. When Schmendrick is captured by bandits, the Unicorn comes to his rescue and attracts the attention of Molly Grue, the bandit leader's wife. Together, the three continue their journey and arrive at Hagsgate, a town under Haggard's rule and the first one he had conquered when he claimed his kingdom. A resident of Hagsgate named Drinn informs them of a curse that stated that their town would continue to share in Haggard's fortune until such a time that someone from Hagsgate would bring Haggard's castle down. Drinn also went on to claim that he discovered a baby boy in the town's marketplace one night in winter. He knew that the child was the one the prophecy spoke of, but he left the baby where he found it, not wanting the prophecy to come true. King Haggard found the baby later that evening and adopted it. Molly, Schmendrick and the Unicorn leave Hagsgate and continue toward Haggard's castle, but on their way they are attacked by the Red Bull. The Unicorn runs, but is unable to escape the bull. In an effort to aid her, Schmendrick unwittingly turns the Unicorn into a human female. Confused by the change, the Red Bull gives up the pursuit and disappears. The change has disastrous consequences on the Unicorn, who suffers tremendous shock at the sudden feeling of mortality in her human body. The three continue to Haggard's castle, where Schmendrick introduces the Unicorn as "Lady Amalthea" to throw off Haggard's suspicions. They manage to convince Haggard to allow them to serve him in his court, with the hopes of gathering clues as to the location of the other unicorns. During their stay, Amalthea is romanced by Haggard's adopted son, Prince Lír. Haggard eventually reveals to Amalthea that the unicorns are trapped in the sea for his own amusement, because the unicorns are the only things that make him happy. He then openly accuses Amalthea of coming to his kingdom to save the unicorns and says that he knows who she really is, but Amalthea has seemingly forgotten about her true nature and her desire to save the other unicorns. Following clues given to them by a cat, Molly, Schmendrick, and Amalthea find the entrance to the Red Bull's lair. Haggard and his men-at-arms attempt to stop them, but they manage to enter the bull's lair and are joined by Lír. When the Red Bull attacks them, Schmendrick changes Amalthea back to her original form. In an effort to save the Unicorn, Lír jumps into the bull's path and is killed. Fueled by anger and sorrow, the Unicorn drives the bull into the sea. The other unicorns are freed and they run back to their homes, with Haggard's castle falling in their wake. Lír, who has been revived by the Unicorn and is now king after Haggard's death, attempts to follow the Unicorn despite Schmendrick advising against it. As they pass through the now-ruined town of Hagsgate, they learn that Drinn is actually Lír's father, and that he had abandoned him in the marketplace on purpose to fulfill the prophecy. Realizing that he has new responsibilities as king after seeing the state of Hagsgate, Lír returns to rebuild it after accompanying Schmendrick and Molly to the outskirts of his kingdom. The Unicorn returns to her forest. She tells Schmendrick that she is different from all the other unicorns now, because she knows what it's like to feel love and regret.
5564728	/m/0dssy_	The Outpost	Mike Resnick	2001-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is divided into 3 sections: Legend, Fact, and History. In Legend, the characters tell stories of what they were doing before they arrived and about people they met and things they did. The storytelling is interrupted by an alien invasion of the system, to which the heroes react. The History section sees everyone gathered back at the Outpost to share their stories and find out the fates of the others. *Catastrophe Baker and the Dragon Queen *The Last Landship (Hellfire Carson) *The Greatest Painting of All Time (Little Mike) *The Short, Star-Crossed Career of Magic Adbul-Jordan (Big Red) *When Iron-Arm McPherson Took the Mound (Big Red) *The Night Bet-a-World O'Grady Met High-Stakes Eddie *Catastrophe Baker and the Siren of Silverstrike
5566051	/m/0dsw2r	Diplomatic Immunity	Lois McMaster Bujold	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Miles and Ekaterin are enjoying a much-delayed honeymoon while their first two children are approaching birth in their uterine replicators back on Barrayar. They have just left Earth to begin the journey home when Miles is dispatched by Gregor to Graf Station in Quaddiespace to untangle a diplomatic incident in his capacity as the nearest Imperial Auditor. There, he is unexpectedly reunited with the Betan hermaphrodite Bel Thorne, a former Dendarii captain and his good friend. A convoy of merchant ships and their Navy escorts are prevented from leaving the station, and a Barrayaran officer is missing, either murdered or deserted. While investigating, Miles uncovers a plot by a high-ranked Cetagandan to steal a cargo of extreme importance to the Cetagandans and hide its tracks by putting the blame on Barrayar. By the time Miles figures out what is going on, he and Bel have been infected by a highly lethal Cetagandan bioweapon. Miles almost dies (again) and barely averts an interstellar war between Cetaganda and Barrayar.
5566829	/m/0dsx98	Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods	Suzanne Collins	2005-07-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Prophecy of Blood on a scroll given to him by Nerissa. Soon, a message from Vikus arrives in the laundry room with the announcement that the "Curse of the Warmbloods is upon us". Gregor and his father travel to Central Park and the entrance underneath and meet Ripred, who informs him that the Curse of the Warmbloods is a plague scouring the Underland, and that all warmbloods have united in order to find a cure. Gregor is uncertain that his mother will let him and Boots go, but Ripred encourages him by informing him his own bond, Ares, is a victim of the plague, and adding that if his mother does not comply, the rats will send an escort. Back at their apartment, Gregor's mother will not let them go, but Ripred's escort arrives in the form of hundreds of normal-sized rats in the walls. After being overwhelmed, his mother agrees to go on the condition that she come too (this is the first time she goes to the Underland). They meet the bat Nike, daughter of Queen Athena, in the laundry room and fly to Regalia, where delegations of cockroaches, rats, bats, and humans have gathered. The humans inform the other species that there is a cure for the plague, starshade, found deep in the Vineyard of Eyes. The rats agree to lend their assistance on one condition: that a yellow powder used to keep fleas, plague carriers, away be sent to the rats. A bat flies in from the Dead Lands, plague ridden, and fleas force the audience to retreat, but not before Gregor's mother is bitten. Gregor, Boots, Ripred, Nike, Temp, Solovet, and two rats named Lapblood and Mange agree to journey to the Vineyard of Eyes. When they enter the jungles, they are greeted by Hamnet, Luxa's long lost uncle, his Halflander(half Overlander, half Underlander) son Hazard, and a lizard, Frill. Hamnet agrees to be a guide, but only if Solovet does not come. The pack enters the jungle and run through several trials, such as flesh eating plants, which kill Mange, and quicksand, before arriving at the end and meeting Luxa and Aurora, who had been hiding with the mice the whole time. They make it into the Vineyard of Eyes, but ants destroy the field of starshade and kill Hamnet and Frill, leaving no hope of a cure. Temp mentions offhandedly that "unless this be, not the cradle, unless this be" making them realize there is still hope for a cure. Gregor realizes that Ares did not contract the plague from the mites, as thought, but in a laboratory, and it leads him to believe that the plague was invented by the humans. Luxa is horrified, but Ripred thinks it fits and orders that the first cures be sent to the rats. The plague was actually ordered by Solovet, Regent of Regalia and wife of Vikus, as a military weapon for killing. Back in Regalia, they have developed a cure, and Luxa exposes the project. Nerissa reveals to Gregor that had the quest never happened, the plague cure would never have been given to the gnawers, and so their journey was not in vain. Gregor's mother cannot return to the surface without risking carrying the plague to the Overland, and so the book ends with Gregor confiding in Mrs. Cormaci in order to enlist her help.
5566839	/m/0dsxbn	Gregor and the Marks of Secret	Suzanne Collins	2006-05-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story takes place in New York where 8-year-old Lizzie is preparing for camp and 12-year-old Gregor is preparing for his echolocation training in the Underland with Ripred. Mrs. Cormaci now knows about the Underland and gives Gregor some pasta to bring to Ripred. Gregor rides Nike, the princess of the bats to the city of Regalia. When under the palace, Ripred informs Gregor that there is one more prophecy that Gregor is in called the "Prophecy of Time". But whenever Gregor asks anyone about the prophecy, no one will answer. Gregor then finds that the Bane has been brought to his lessons, and grown to an even 8'. Ripred taunts the Bane repeatedly and is finally attacked by him. And it is also revealed that the Bane's real name is Pearlpelt and that Snare was Pearlpelt's father. Later, Gregor receives an invitation to a party from still traumatized Hazard and his soon-to-be bond and joker, Thalia. When Gregor returns with a camera, he goes to Ripred to tell him that he gives up on echolocation training, but once there, is attacked by Twirltongue and two other rats./ His rager skills kick in during battle, but suddenly give away when he loses his flashlight, revealing that he can only fight if he can see and needs echolocation more than he thought. He escapes and blocks the door and asks also traumatized Vikus from Solovet's betrayal about the strength of the door. When he says it will hold, a now relieved Gregor heads to the party with 3-year-old Boots. There, Gregor meets up with his mom. 12-year-old Luxa approaches Gregor and asks for a dance. Gregor agrees and afterwards takes one look down at Luxa and realizes he likes her. A crown landing right by them kills the moment and they both realize that it's the crown Luxa gave to the nibblers (Underland word for mice) in case they were in need of help. Gregor, his bond Ares, Luxa, and her bond Aurora go to the nibblers' colony and find one of Luxa's friend nibblers dead. They also find a strange symbol on the ground that looks like a lowercase "r". Later, a group of baby nibblers were brought to the palace from the river in a woven basket./ This causes Gregor, Ares, Luxa, Aurora, Howard, Nike, Boots, Hazard, and Thalia to inspect what is going on. A series of events happens including an earthquake, Luxa develops a crush on Gregor, the team reunites with Photos Glow-Glow and Zap, they find a nibbler named Cartesian, they discover Ripred being tortured in a pit and rescue him, their bats are nearly killed in wind currents, Gregor and Luxa strongly argue, and they find out that a now 12-foot Bane is planning on taking over the Underland. The team heads to a volcano and find that there is a colony of nibblers being herded toward it. They suddenly realize this and try to escape but fall to the ground, gasping for air. Gregor realizes that they are suffocating, and also that the nursery rhyme and song is actually a prophecy and that the part about the nibblers in a trap is happening right now./ The nibblers suddenly stay still and when Boots says that they are sleeping, Gregor finally tells her about dying. He then discovers that the queen in the prophecy is not Luxa, but the volcano. It erupts and engulfs the team in smoke. Gregor wakes up lying in a cave. He walks further in to the cave and find the team okay, but knows someone is dead when he sees their faces. He sees Hazard crying and finds Thalia lying in his arms, stone dead. Later, Ripred tells him that he must get his sword, but Gregor is confused at this since he has a sword, but Ripred says he needs Sandwich's sword. Before Gregor leaves to Regalia, Luxa asks why he helped her with the nibblers, and Gregor tells her that he did it because they saved her. The story ends with Gregor gazing at the sword in awe.
5568656	/m/0dszn8	The Beast Master	Andre Norton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09zvmj": "Space western"}	 It tells the story of Hosteen Storm, an ex-soldier who travels to a distant planet with his comrades, a group of genetically altered animals with whom he has empathic and telepathic connections. The team are hired to herd livestock, but Storm still harbors anger at his former enemies the Xik, and has sworn revenge on a man named Quade for actions against Storm's family in the past. In this novel and the following series, Norton explores aspects of Native American culture (specifically that of the Navajo) through metaphors in Storm's life and in the culture he adopts on his new home world.
5569380	/m/0ds_dd	Big Two-Hearted River	Ernest Hemingway			 Part one In the story, Nick Adams arrives by train at the town of Seney to find that, because of a fire, "there was no town, nothing but the rails and the burned-over country." Following the road leading away from the town, he stops to stand on a bridge where he watches the trout below in the river. He then he hikes up a hill. At a burned stump, he stops to rest, smokes a cigarette, and examines a grasshopper blackened by the fire. Later in the day he rests in a glade of tall pines where he falls asleep. When he wakes, he hikes the last mile to the edge of the river where he sees the trout feeding in the evening light "making circles all down the surface of the water as though it were starting to rain." Carefully he pitches his tent, unpacks his supplies, cooks his dinner, fills his water bucket, heats a pot of coffee, and kills a mosquito before falling asleep. Part two Early the next morning, Nick fills a jar with 50 dew-heavy grasshoppers he finds under a log in a "grasshopper lodging-house", eats breakfast, drinks sweetened coffee and makes a sliced onion sandwich. After checking and assembling his fly-fishing rod and tying on damp leader line, he walks to the river with a net hanging from his belt, a sack from his shoulders and the jar of grasshoppers from his neck. Wading in the water, he fishes the shallows where he lands a trout that "was mottled with clear, water-over-gravel color" that he releases. Moving into a pool of deep water, he lands a large trout, "as broad as a salmon", which he loses. After a rest, he moves away from the deep water to the center of the river and catches two trout that he stows in his sack. Sitting on a log, smoking a cigarette and eating his onion sandwich, he contemplates fishing the deep water of the swamp, but he decides to wait for another day. In the river, at the log, he kills, guts and cleans the two trout and then returns to his camp.
5569548	/m/0ds_lp	Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth	Gary Gygax	1982	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The introduction, with instructions that the Dungeon Master read it aloud to the players, outlines that there is a treasure in the Yatil Mountains south of the Greyhawk realm of Perrenland. The player characters must investigate rumors of a lost treasure that scores of adventurers have perished attempting to find. The players must first traverse a wilderness area with 20 numbered encounters before arriving at the caverns. The encounters have names such as "Border Patrol" (encounter 1) and "Hill Giants" (encounter 10). After the wilderness are two lettered encounters: the "Gnome Vale", which includes a map for their lair, and "The Craggy Dells", where humans and orcs are capturing hippogriffs to sell. Next, the player characters reach the caverns. They consist of the "Lesser Caverns" with 22 encounters, and the "Greater Caverns" with 20 encounters, each with its own map. The lesser caverns include encounters such as "Stinking Cave" (encounter 5) which contains four trolls and "Underground Lake" (encounter 14). The greater caverns include encounters such as "Uneven-Floored Cavern" (encounter 5) where the player characters face an umber hulk and "Canyon of Centaurs" (encounter 9). The 20th and final encounter is titled "The Inner Sphere". Here, a "woman sleeps on an alabaster slab." She is "armored from toe to neck in gold chased plate mail." The woman is actually Drelzna, a fighter/vampire and the daughter of Iggwilv. After defeating Drelzna, the players are rewarded with treasure, and the adventure ends.
5570623	/m/0dt1d2	The Sacred Art of Stealing	Christopher Brookmyre	2003	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The plot of The Sacred Art of Stealing tells the story of American Zal Innez, a witty and intellectual art-loving thief, who is being blackmailed by crime boss Alessandro Estabol to do one last major job for him. As a warm up to their main heist, Zal and his team of fellow failed artists rob a Glasgow bank of approaching a million pounds. During the raid they use unorthodox methods such as firing itching powder at armed police, carrying fake guns, staging plays and drawing works of art for their hostages to keep casualties to a minimum. During this robbery Zal meets and falls for a woman police officer, Angelique de Xavia, heroine of Brookmyre's previous novel, who is under-appreciated by her bosses. Both police officer and thief become painfully aware of the strong attraction between them and a relationship is formed, despite the fact that they are both fully aware that they are on opposite sides. Zal knows Angelique is after him, and even counts on this knowledge to complete his final job, while Angelique is aware that Zal is playing her, even though she does not want to contemplate what that might imply about his real feelings for her.
5571575	/m/0dt3h3	Poodle Springs	Robert B. Parker	1989-10	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 The start of the book finds Marlowe married to Linda Loring, the rich daughter of local tycoon Harlan Potter. Loring and Marlowe had met in The Long Goodbye and begun a romance at the end of Playback. From the beginning there are tensions, however, as Linda wants Marlowe to quit his job and get a decent position at one of her father's plants, which Marlowe refuses. The couple relocate to Poodle Springs (a mocking reference to Palm Springs), where they move into a grand mansion and Linda starts organising cocktail parties. Marlowe literally bumps into a local criminal named Lipschultz, who requests his services before Marlowe has even found office space in Poodle Springs. Lipschultz operates an illegal gambling house just outside Poodle Springs jurisdiction in Riverside. He has taken an IOU for $100,000 from one of his customers, a Poodle Springs photographer called Les Valentine. Lipshultz' boss, a local tycoon, has found out that the sum is missing from the books and has issued a 30-day ultimatum to retrieve the money or else. Lipshultz asks Marlowe to retrieve Valentine, who is unreachable. Marlowe accepts the job, asserting that all he can do is locate Valentine, not shake him down. Marlowe leaves and questions Valentine's wife, Muffy Blackstone, a rich socialite and acquaintance of his own wife, who tells him Valentine is out on a photo shoot. When Marlowe calls on Lipshultz again, he finds him killed in his casino office. From there, the trail leads to a double identity and a mastermind behind the scenes that is too close to home to be comfortable.
5573719	/m/0dt7d2	The Type One Super Robot		1986		 A boy, Humbert, goes to stay with his Uncle Bellamy. Once there he discovers a strange package that appears to hum to itself. Upon alerting his uncle to the package, Humbert is surprised to find that it contains a Type One Household Robot, designed to help around the home. The robot is swiftly named Manders by Uncle Bellamy, because he does everything that a man-does. Humbert and Manders get into all kinds of adventures, the most memorable of which is a kite flying expedition. The joy in the story for children is how Manders struggles to come to terms with human existence, for example; misunderstanding phrases like "getting along like a house on fire", not realising that a kite is not meant to take you with it, or trying to slice custard.
5574100	/m/0dt817	The Abyssinian	Jean-Christophe Rufin		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Abyssinian tells the story of a young French physician who is sent as part of a diplomatic mission to Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia). Along the way he must face various perils while trying to win over his true love.
5575042	/m/0dt9rc	World War Z	Max Brooks	2006-09-12	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02psyd2": "Zombies in popular culture", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Through a series of oral interviews, Brooks, as an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, describes the history of 'World War Z'. Although the origin of the zombie pandemic is unknown, the story begins in China after a young boy is bitten; he becomes the pandemic's 'patient zero'. The Chinese government attempts to contain the infection and concocts a crisis involving Taiwan to mask their activities. The infection is spread to other countries by the black market organ trade and by refugees, before an outbreak in South Africa finally brings the plague to public attention. As the infection spreads, the State of Israel is the only country to take the reports of zombies seriously, initiating a nationwide quarantine and closing its borders to everybody except uninfected Jews and Palestinians. Pakistan and Iran destroy each other in a nuclear war after the Iranian government attempts to stem the flow of Pakistani refugees. The United States of America does little to prepare; although special forces teams are used to contain initial outbreaks, a widespread effort never starts as the nation is sapped of political will by several "brushfire wars", and a placebo fraudulently marketed as a vaccine has created a false sense of security. When the world recognizes the true scope of the problem, a period known as the "Great Panic" begins. Following the fall of New York City, the United States Army sets up a high-profile defense at Yonkers, New York to restore American morale. The U.S. military uses obsolete Cold War tactics on the zombies, including anti-tank weapons and demoralization through wounding. These have no effect on the zombies, which "can't be shocked and awed", have no self-preservation instincts, and can only be stopped if shot in the head and killed. The soldiers are routed on live television, while other countries suffer similarly disastrous defeats, and human civilization teeters on the brink of collapse. In South Africa, the government adopts a plan drafted by ex-apartheid government official Paul Redeker, which calls for the establishment of small "safe zones", areas surrounded by natural boundaries and cleared of zombies. Large groups of refugees are abandoned, but kept alive outside the safe zones to distract the hordes of undead, allowing those within time to regroup and recuperate. Governments worldwide adopt their own versions of the "Redeker Plan", or relocate the populace to safer foreign territory, such as the complete evacuation of the Japanese Home Islands. As zombies freeze solid in the cold, many civilians in North America flee to the wildernesses of northern Canada and the Arctic, where some 11 million people, unprepared to deal with the cold Canadian winter, die from starvation and exposure. Seven years after the start of the zombie pandemic, a conference is held off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii, on aboard the , where most of the world's leaders indicate they want to wait out the zombie plague, but the U.S. President successfully argues that the only way to survive physically and psychologically is to go on the offensive. Determined to lead by example, the U.S. military reinvents itself to meet the specific challenges involved in fighting the living dead: automatic weapons and mobility are replaced by semi-automatic rifles and formation firing, troops are retrained to focus on head shots and slow, steady rates of fire, and a multipurpose hand tool, the "Lobotomizer" or "Lobo", is designed to destroy zombie heads close up. In two north–south lines stretching across North America, the U.S. military leaves its safe zone west of the Rocky Mountains and crosses the continent in a three-year campaign, systematically destroying the zombies and reclaiming outposts of survivors (whether they want to be reclaimed or not). Ten years after the "official" end of the zombie war, millions of zombies are still active and the geopolitical landscape of the Earth has been forever transformed. A democratic Cuba has become the world's most thriving economy and the international banking capital. China has also become a democracy, following a civil war sparked by the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam and ending after a mutinying Chinese Navy submarine destroys the Communist leadership with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Tibet, freed from Chinese rule, hosts the world's most populated city. Following a religious revolution, Russia is now an expansionist theocracy. North Korea is completely empty, with the entire population presumed to have disappeared into underground bunkers; it is unknown if they survived or have become zombies. Iceland has been completely depopulated, and is the world's most heavily infested country. The United Nations fields a large military force to eliminate the remaining zombies from overrun areas, defeat hordes that surface from the ocean floor, and kill frozen zombies before they thaw. Overall, there is a drastic reduction in the human population, which is alluded to have been brought to the brink of extinction, and many environments and animal species have been devastated, as much by desperate humans as by marauding zombies.
5576466	/m/0dtd6m	The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision	James Redfield		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 One of the characters of The Celestine Prophecy disappears while exploring a forest in the Appalachian Mountains. The book discusses ideas about other dimensions, past lives, conception and birth, the passage through death to an afterlife, hell and heaven. It also illustrates the author's vision of human destiny and the notion that fear of the future is endangering Earth's spiritual renaissance. In the story, each individual soul is part of a larger "Soul Group", which shares the mission of helping the evolution of the cosmos. At times, a soul from a given Group incarnates itself, choosing the conditions of its life according to its needs, while the other souls observe. Each soul creates a reality around itself, which later brings consequences upon it. These consequences take the form of life and afterlife, which vary according to the person's choices. On Earth, people speak of the prophecy written in the Book of Revelation as if it were coming true. Many fear that it will come partly true, in that a dictator (an Antichrist) will arise, but will not be thrown down. To counteract this idea, which is damaging to the spiritual renaissance, the protagonists hold their own, Utopian "World Vision" to the exclusion of its opposite, until it dominates the opposite at the book's climax. All of these ideas are experienced as if real by the characters.
5576841	/m/0dtdy4	The Guardian of Isis	Monica Hughes	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mark London is now president of the settlement. He has forced the people to abandon all technology and become a simple, agricultural community full of taboos. Upper Isis is now a forbidden zone, because, so they believe, the Guardian put a curse on the mountains, imprisoning the people in their own valley. One boy, Jody N'Kumo, grandson of one of the original settlers, breaks one of the most sacred taboos, and is banished to the land of Guardian, although everyone knows he is simply being sent to his death. However, Jody does not die, and discovers a place called Bamboo Valley. There he meets the Lady Olwen, who was the Keeper of the Isis Light in the times before the colony, and learns the truth about the history of Isis.
5576973	/m/0dtf29	The Isis Pedlar	Monica Hughes	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The leader of the colony is Roger London, Mark London's son. London seems to be nothing like his father, however. Mike Flynn, a Galactic wanderer, spots Isis, and plans to corrupt the inhabitants to obtain the precious firestones. He promises them a Forever Machine, which will supply them with a lifetime of ambrosia, which means they will never have to work for their food again. His daughter, Moira, however, knows that he is simply lying, and tries to stop Mike's evil plans with the help of David N'Kumo, great grandson of Jody N'Kumo. When David and Moira succeed, Jody N'Kumo becomes president, instead of Roger London. Moira decides to stay on Isis, and Guardian, goes with Mike Flynn. Things look much brighter for a future for Isis.
5578822	/m/0dthzw	The Howling	Gary Brandner		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 When middle-class Karyn Beatty is attacked and raped in her Los Angeles home, she suffers a miscarriage and a nervous breakdown. She and her husband, Roy, leave the city and go to stay in the secluded Californian mountain village of Drago whilst Karyn recuperates. Although the town offers Karyn a quiet lifestyle and the locals are friendly, Karyn is disturbed when she continues to hear a strange howling sound at night coming from the woods outside of their new home. This puts further strain on her marriage as Roy believes she is becoming more and more unstable, but Karyn is adamant that there is something in the woods. As tension between the couple mounts, Roy begins an affair with one of the local women, a shopkeeper named Marcia Lura. However, on his way home, Roy is attacked in the woods by a large black wolf. Though the wolf only bites him, Roy becomes ill for several days. He was bitten by a werewolf, and has now become one himself. Karyn eventually discovers that the town's entire population are all in fact werewolves, and becomes trapped in Drago. She contacts her husband's best friend, Chris Halloran, who comes up from Los Angeles to rescue her. Chris arrives with some silver bullets which he had made at her insistence. That night, the two of them fend off a group of werewolves (one of which is Karyn's husband, Roy) and Karyn is forced to shoot the black werewolf (revealed to be Marcia Lura) in the head. In the commotion, a fire breaks out at Karyn's woodland house which sweeps through the woods and the entire town of Drago is engulfed in flames as Karyn and Chris escape from its cursed inhabitants. However, as they flee, they can still hear the howling in the distance. nl:The Howling
5580522	/m/0dtm33	Babywise		2007		 Baby Wise describes an infant management plan built around feed/play/sleep cycles. The authors term their approach to feeding "parent-directed feeding", or PDF: The book includes instructions for the care of babies from birth through six months. It primarily covers infant sleep and feeding practices, and emphasizes parental control of infant training. The infant is presented not as the defining center of the household but as a "welcome addition", subject to larger household order. The material presented in Baby Wise is not radical or new, it is simply a re-articulation of various practical methods which are reminiscent of parenting styles advocated by other Evangelical child-rearing advisors. Ezzo and Bucknam describe their stance as a middle ground between feeding the baby on demand (when the baby indicates hunger) and feeding based on a strict clock schedule. In contrast to advice given by popular pediatrician William "Dr. Bill" Sears, the Baby Wise authors do not condone co-sleeping; Ezzo wrote, "The most serious sleep problems we've encountered are associated with parents who sleep with their babies." The sleep advice given by Baby Wise is similar to Richard Ferber's advice given in his popular book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. The Ferber method of getting a baby to sleep includes putting the baby to bed when awake; the same as Baby Wise. The baby is expected to learn how to fall asleep alone. Both methods warn the parents against using aids such as a pacifier to ease the baby into sleep, and both methods describe putting the infant to sleep without prior rocking, cuddling or nursing applied for the sole purpose of calming the child into sleep. "Crying it out" is expected from the infant during the early training periods, until about eight weeks of age. A foundation of the book is that "great marriages produce great parents." Ezzo and Bucknam recommend that the new parents continue to schedule dates with each other and have friends over. Buyers of the book include mothers wearied by the demands of attachment parenting, in search of more time for their careers and pursuits. The book promises that following its plan "will not leave mom ragged at the end of the day nor in bondage to her child. Nor will Dad be excluded from his duties."
5587290	/m/0dty6n	Sten	Allan Cole	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Karl Sten is a young boy growing up on an industrial factory world called Vulcan. Sten's parents are little better than indentured servants, always wanting to raise their children somewhere else, but never able to "buy out" their contracts and leave. After Sten's family is killed in an industrial cover-up initiated by Vulcan's CEO, Baron Thoresen, Sten rebels against the laws of Vulcan and escapes to live on his own in the background of the factory world. For several years he runs with the Delinqs, a band of young outlaws that have also rejected the ideals of The Company. One day he saves an off-worlder, Ian Mahoney, from a security team. Mahoney is the head of Imperial Intelligence and is trying to gather information on a special project Baron Thoresen is running. Mahoney offers Sten and his gang a chance to leave Vulcan if they can get the information he needs. Unfortunately, during the mission they are discovered and Sten is apparently the only one who makes it back alive. True to his word, Ian takes Sten off the hellhole of his birth, but enlists him the military to keep him safe. During Imperial Guards training, Sten proves to be square peg for the traditional military, but perfect for the super secret CIA-type covert branch of intelligence that Ian heads, called Mantis. While in Mantis, Sten excels and becomes the head of Team 13, with Alex Kilgour, a heavy worlder from New Edinburgh, (who has a rather ill-tempered view of the Campbell Clan) as his second in command. Eventually, The Eternal Emperor assigns Team 13 to bring down the government of Vulcan so the Baron's secret project can be unmasked. Team 13 accomplishes this by organizing a rebellion, which gets out of control and almost tears apart the factory world in a heated frenzy. Sten and Team 13 finish the job up with sneakiness, judicious violence and a few well placed explosions. Sten confronts his parents killer, Baron Thorenson, and kills him by ripping his heart out with his bare hands. At the conclusion of the novel, while being dressed down for killing Thoresen against the emperor's orders, Ian promotes Sten to lieutenant. It seems the emperor had thought better of his order not to kill the baron but had not been able to get word to the team in the field. A great future seems to be in store for our hero.
5592382	/m/0dv5mm	Hira Singh	Talbot Mundy			 Hira Singh is the story of a regiment of Sikh cavalry who are captured in battle in Flanders in the early days of World War I, escape from captivity and experience many adventures as they make their way back to India.
5592507	/m/0dv5yz	Seeing a Large Cat	Barbara Mertz	1997	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book opens at Amelia's favorite hotel, Shepheard's in Cairo, where her family reunites after a summer in various locations. The Emersons' son Ramses (now aged sixteen) and their adopted son David have been living in Egypt for six months, and their ward Nefret has been studying anatomy with Louisa Aldrich-Blake at the London School of Medicine for Women. The Emersons receive a dire warning about staying away from an undiscovered tomb, which of course inspires them to hunt all the harder for it. Meanwhile, a silly American debutante insists she needs protection from a stalker (selecting Ramses for the job), and a mummy swathed in modern clothing begins to lend verisimilitude to her otherwise unconvincing narrative. The characters of Donald and Enid Fraser from Lion in the Valley reappear in this novel. They are in Cairo, accompanied by a woman who claims to have communicated with an ancient Egyptian princess and unwittingly triggered Donald's obsession with finding the princess's tomb. The American Cyrus Vandergelt is another character who reappears from an earlier novel. This volume marks the death of the cat Bastet and the first whiskey Ramses is permitted to imbibe (although the two events are not directly related). The device of "Manuscript H" is used for the first time in this book to give a voice to Ramses, through whom the romantic and adventurous elements of the series are able to continue as his parents begin to age. In the course of the mystery, Amelia discovers that her old admirer and adversary, Sethos (the "master criminal") is not dead, as was thought to be the case earlier in the series.
5594143	/m/0dv8fz	The Parched Sea	Troy Denning		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Parched Sea is another name for the desert Anauroch in which the novel takes place. The Zhentarim, determined to drive a trade route through Anauroch, send an army to enslave the nomads of the Great Desert. Ruha, an outcast witch, tries to gain the trust of the Sheikh as tribe after tribe fall to the Zhentarim. The Harpers send an agent to counter the Zhentarim, and Ruha helps this stranger win the Sheikh's trust, so that he can overcome the tribes' ancestral rivalries and drive the invaders from the desert.
5594391	/m/0dv8qz	Face of the Enemy	Robert N. Charrette	1999-07-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As the League fights to prevent Remor incursions, Juliana Tindale and Kurt Ellicot join a group going to Chugen IV to study a newfound alien race, the Chugeni. Through a faked attack on the landing party, their shuttle crashes and the survivors move in with the natives to survive and await rescue. When they discover the attack was a hoax, they work to save the natives by proving that they are not the Remor.
5594851	/m/0dv9hv	My Uncle Napoleon	Iraj Pezeshkzad	1973	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place at the time of Iran's occupation by the Allied Forces during World War II. Most of the plot occurs in the narrator's home, a huge early 20th-century-style Iranian mansion in which three wealthy families live under the tyranny of a paranoid patriarch Uncle. The Uncle—who in reality is a retired low-level officer from the Persian Cossack Brigade under Colonel Vladimir Liakhov's command—claims, and in latter stages of the story actually believes that he and his butler Mash Qasem were involved in wars against the British Empire and their lackeys such as Khodadad Khan, as well as battles supporting the Iranian Constitutional Revolution; and that with the occupation of Iran by the Allied Forces, the English are now on course to take revenge on him. The story's narrator (nameless in the novel but called Saeed in the TV series) is a high school student in love with his cousin Layli who is Dear Uncle's daughter. The story revolves around the narrator's struggles to stall Layli's pre-arranged marriage to her cousin Puri, while the narrator's father and Dear Uncle plot various mischiefs against each other to settle past family feuds. A multitude of supporting characters, including police investigators, government officials, housewives, a medical doctor, a butcher, a sycophantic preacher, servants, a shoeshine man, and an Indian or two provide various entertaining sequences throughout the development of the story.
5595597	/m/0dvbwf	Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions	Daniel Wallace	1998-10-01		 A young man (William Bloom), at the deathbed of his father (Edward Bloom), tries to reconcile his memories of his dad with who he really is. Whereas he always saw his father as an irresponsible liar, he comes to understand his dad's exaggerations and their roots in reality. The book is written in a chronological (although they may not appear so at first) series of tall tales. Despite the novel's first-person narration, there is no present tense part of the book. The various stories are Will's retelling of tales that Ed has told about his life. The 'My Father's Death Take' chapters are William planning out his final conversation with his father in his head and how it will go, so that when the actual conversation takes place, he will be able to get to bottom of the truth and find a way of truly understanding his father. The book draws elements from the epic poem The Odyssey, James Joyce's Ulysses, and American tall tales. The story of Edward Bloom also includes at least seven of the Twelve Labors of Hercules. The subtitle "A Novel of Mythic Proportions" may be a reference to the dimensions of the Penguin edition, which make a Golden ratio. Conversely, the dimensions of the Penguin edition may derive from the subtitle. The Golden ratio dimensions carry through the bodies of type on each page, and are most apparent on the opening pages of each chapter.
5596086	/m/0dvcn_	Beasts of No Nation	Uzodinma Iweala	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is about an African boy named Agu who is forced to become a child soldier. His family lived in a small village. When war came, Agu’s mother and sister had to leave on a bus but Agu, his father, and a shoesman try to escape and Agu’s father is shot down and killed. Agu hides and is soon found by soldiers who coerce him to join their rebel force. In a bloody initiation, the commander forces him to kill an unarmed soldier. As Agu is forced to leave his childhood behind, he reminisces about the past: his family, his love of reading and school, his dream of becoming an important Doctor, and how he used to read the Bible every day. He thinks about how he and his friend used to play war and how this war is not the same. He fears that God hates him for killing others but he soon forces himself to believe that this is what God wants because “he is soldier and this is what soldiers do in war.” He befriends a mute boy named Strika and together they face the crimes and hardships of war: looting, rape, killing, and starvation. Agu loses track of time, understanding only that he was a child before that war but that he has become a man in a seemingly never-ending trial by fire. He wants to stop killing but fears in doing so will get him killed by the Commandant. During this time of war Agu and the army has very little to eat so they eat what they can; rats, small game, goats and some times other people. The food isn’t cooked enough for fear that others will see the fire and the water is known to have human feces in it. Agu and many other men for the army are forced to receive the commander's sexual advances; Agu knows it is wrong but fears to say no. Wishing and wanting to no longer be in the army finally comes true when Rambo, the new lieutenant, shoots and kills the commander. Sick and exhausted Agu and Strika join the disbanded soldiers to try to make their way home. Along the way, Agu's only friend and confidante, Strika, dies and Agu ultimately leaves his fellow soldiers. In time, Agu comes under the care of a missionary shelter/hospital run by a preacher and a white woman, Amy. Agu gets new clothes and all the food and sleep he wants, gaining back his health and strength. However, after living through a bloody guerrilla war, the Bible no longer holds any meaning for him. Amy invites Agu to share his thoughts and feelings. Agu tells her how he would like to be a doctor and save lives so he could redeem his sins. He also tells her all of the evils he had to do in war.
5596254	/m/0dvcwp	Unknown man No. 89	Elmore Leonard	1977-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel follows the exploits of Detroit process server Jack Ryan, who has a reputation for finding men who don't want to be found. A string of seemingly unrelated crimes leads Ryan to the search for a missing stockholder known only as "unknown man #89," but his missing man isn't "unknown" to everyone: a pretty blonde hates his guts, and a very nasty dude named Virgil Royal wants him dead in the worst way. This is very unfortunate for Jack, who is suddenly caught in the crossfire of a lethal triple-cross and becomes as much a target as his nameless prey. Along the way, Ryan butts heads with local police, including six-shooter-carrying Dick Speed. The book is perhaps best remembered for a sequence taken straight from The Godfather, where thug Virgil plants a shotgun in the meeting place of his victim, in this case, the fire escape of Bobby Lear's hotel room. Also of note is homosexual wannabe gangster Lonnie, whose "superfly" haircut was emulated by several of Elmore Leonard's other characters.
5598680	/m/0dvh7z	Facing the Flag	Jules Verne	1896	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Thomas Roch, a brilliant French inventor, has designed the Fulgurator, a weapon so powerful that "the state which acquired it would become absolute master of earth and ocean." However, unable to sell his unproven idea to France or any other government, Roch begins to lose his sanity, becoming bitter, megalomaniacal and paranoid. The United States Government reacts by tucking him away at a luxurious asylum in New Bern, North Carolina, where he is visited by one "Count d'Artigas"—actually Ker Karraje, a notorious pirate of Malagasy origin. His heterogeneous crew is drawn from "escaped convicts, military and naval deserters, and the scum of Europe." Karraje and his crew lead double lives. Karraje goes around openly, under the alias of "Count d'Artigas", a pleasure loving, slightly eccentric but eminently respectable member of royalty. He is a regular visitor to the ports of the East Coast aboard his schooner Ebba. To outward appearances, Ebba has no other means of propulsion than its sails, but in fact it is pulled by an underwater tug. By this means, Karraje and his crew can pull up to becalmed sailing vessels without raising suspicion and board them without warning. They then rob and massacre the crews, scuttling the ships, adding to the statistics of "unexplained disappearances". Karraje hears of Roch and his invention, takes them both seriously, and decides to gain possession of them. Actually, his aim is rather modest. He has no intention to seize mastery over the world, but just to make his hide-out impregnable. He and his men successfully kidnap Roch from his American asylum, and then bring him to their hide-out—the desolate island of Back Cup in the Bahamas. Here a wide cavern, accessible only by submerged submarine, has been made into a well-equipped pirate base. It has its own electrical power plant, and is completely unknown to the rest of the world. During the kidnapping, however, Karraje orders his men to also take along Gaydon, Roch's attendant for the past fifteen months. The reader knows (and, as is later shown, Karraje is also aware) that Gaydon is actually Simon Hart, a French engineer and explosives expert. Hart had decided "to perform the menial and exacting duties of an insane man's attendant" in the hope of learning Roch's secret and, thereby, saving it for France, actuated by "a spirit of the purest and noblest patriotism." Hart is kept imprisoned at the pirate base, though in quite comfortable conditions. He can only watch in dismay as the pirate chief easily manages what four governments in succession have failed to do: win Roch over. Roch is given "many rolls of dollar bills and banknotes, and handfuls of English, French, American and German gold coins" with which to fill his pockets. Further, Roch is formally informed that the entire secret cavern and all in it are henceforward his property, and egged on to "defend his property" against the world which has wronged him so badly. Soon, the inventor is busy constructing his fearsome weapon, happily unaware that he is nothing but a glorified prisoner in the pirate's hands. The paranoid Roch does, however, keep to himself the secret of the detonator or "Deflagrator", a liquid without which the explosive is merely an inert powder. By holding fast to that last secret, Roch unwittingly preserves the life of his ex-keeper Gaydon/Simon Hart. Karraje suspects, wrongly, that Hart knows much more of Roch's secrets than he is willing to let on. It serves the purposes of the pirate chief, a completely ruthless killer, to let Hart live. The pirate engineer Serko, Hart's "colleague," hopes to win him over in prolonged friendly conversations. Hart's reticence is misunderstood as proof that he has something to hide. The pirates underestimate Hart, giving him a practically free run of their hide-out, since the only way out is via submarine. But after carefully studying the currents, Hart succeeds in secretly sending out a message in a metal keg, giving the full details of Karraje's operations and his impeding acquisition of the Fulgurator. The message gets through to the British authorities at their nearby naval base in the Bahamas, and the British Navy sends a submarine, , to find Hart. The submarine's crew makes contact with Hart, and take him and Roch on board, but the Sword is discovered, attacked and sunk by the pirates in a direct underwater submarine vs. submarine battle. The unconscious Hart and Roch are extracted from the sunken British sub by pirate divers, leaving the entire British crew to perish. Hart manages to convince the pirates that he had been kidnapped by the British sailors and had nothing to do with their "visit." He resumes his role as a tolerated prisoner with a free run of the pirate base. Meanwhile, Roch's weapon is completed and becomes operational. A hastily gathered international naval task force approaches the island, consisting of five warships dispatched by the world's five largest powers. The weapon, operated personally by Roch himself, works fully as advertised. Roch has no compunction in using it on British or American ships, and the first cruiser to approach the island is easily destroyed with only a handful of its crew surviving. Undaunted, the next ship approaches the shore, and the moment comes towards which the entire book was leading and from which its title was drawn: "A flag unfurls to the breeze. It is the Tricolour, whose blue, white and red sections stand out luminously against the sky. Ah! What is this? Thomas Roch is fascinated at the sight of his national emblem. Slowly he lowers his arm as the flag flutters up to the mast-head. Then he draws back and covers his eyes with his hand. Heavens above! All sentiment of patriotism is not then dead in his ulcerated heart, seeing that it beats at the sight of his country's flag!" Having at the moment of truth, rediscovered his patriotism, Roch refuses to fire on his country's ship. He struggles with the pirates who try to seize his phial and the Deflagrator. During the struggle Roch resorts to blowing up himself, his weapon, the pirates along with the entire island. The single survivor of the cataclysm is Simon Hart, whose unconscious body with the diary at his side is found by the landing French sailors. Hart is eventually revived, to be amply rewarded for his dedication to his country. He proudly bears witness to Thomas Roch's last-minute change of heart and self-sacrifice. French patriotism is the moral and material victor.
5599047	/m/0dvhwh	Beyond the Black Stump	Nevil Shute	1956	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story concerns a young American geologist, Stanton Laird, working in the Australian outback in the field of oil exploration. Although he is in a very remote location - beyond the black stump - in a region called "the Lunatic" in Western Australia, he is part of a crew that has a well-appointed mobile facility. He is befriended by a local farming family, the Regans, and develops a relationship with their daughter Mollie. The Regans run an enormously profitable station, but their domestic lifestyle is, to say the least, unconventional, with the two Regan brothers at one time having Mollie's mother move from one to the other without bothering to get a divorce. The family is large, and even larger when counting the half-caste children produced by both fathers, and the children are taught by the Judge, an English exile and alcoholic, who gives the children an excellent education and keeps the finances of the station properly accounted for. Over the course of the explorations (which prove unsuccessful), he notes the unique lifestyle on what amounts to the Australian frontier, and falls in love with Mollie. The two wish to wed, but Mollie's mother insists that Mollie first see how the Lairds live in their Oregon town, Hazel, which was once on the frontier, but is no longer, though its citizens take pride in feeling that it still is. The two travel to Hazel. At first, Mollie gets along well in the Laird family home. But then Stanton's one-time love, Ruth, the widow of Stanton's best friend, returns to Hazel with her son. The son bears a tremendous resemblance to Stanton, and Stanton is moved to confess to Mollie both that the son may be his, and that he killed a girl in a drunken accident as a teenager. Mollie is unconcerned about the boy—such things are common where she comes from—but is concerned and judgmental about the accident, and about Stanton's lack of concern for the dead girl. As Stanton expected Mollie to care very much about the boy, and did not expect her to be so concerned about the girl, the two begin to realize they have a very different outlook on life. Eventually, Mollie comes to realize that she will never fit in in Hazel, and does not particularly want to. Her place is on the true frontier, in the Lunatic, not in Hazel. She returns to Australia, where she will likely marry a young neighbor, an emigrant from England, who has long loved her. Stanton is likely to marry Ruth, as Mollie suggests he should. Stanton has a wedding present for Mollie, though—his final report reveals that the neighbor's impoverished lands lie over great quantities of artesian water, which will allow the neighbor—and Mollie—to flourish.
5603173	/m/0dvrr3	The War Machine	David Drake	1989-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After being forcibly divorced from his wife for political reasons, Spencer tries to force his way on board the ship she’s on. After being ejected, he gets drunk and implanted with a "feelgood" device that stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain. Spencer is saved from this addictive and lethal fate by an unknown Kona Tatsu (secret police) agent. They clean and care for him, then send him on a mission to the Daltgeld system. Working with Agent Suss Nanahbuc, Spencer is given command of a task force and told that Kona Tatsu (KT) agents are disappearing from the planet. Upon arrival, the ``Duncan`` splashes down to dock for repairs, and Nanahbuc heads out to learn the fate of the other agents. While docked, Spencer gets a visit from McCain, a KT agent hiding from the enemy. However, the enemy is aboard and kills McCain before they can analyze the data she found. The enemy turns out to be a small mercury-like blob that seems to react to its environment, weighs 16 tons, and can control the devices it infects. Spencer leaves the ship and closes it down tight, but it’s already too late. In the end, it turns out an alien artifact was recently discovered in an asteroid, and the captain of the mining freighter was "convinced" to take the artifact to the head of a local conglomerate, Jameson. The device, a helmet made of a mercury-like substance, takes over Jameson and uses him as a control center for taking over the system, with plans to leave it and spread throughout the galaxy. After losing his flagship to prevent an alien from leaving the system, Spencer and Nanahbuc locate the main asteroid of the enemy and head in with the task force to put an end to it for good.
5604544	/m/0dvvf9	Riders in the Chariot	Patrick White	1961	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the wild and mad Miss Hare, awaiting the arrival of a new maid to assist in the upkeep of her house, Xanadu, a large and sprawling structure that is slowly falling into decay because of a lack of care. The climax is a mock crucifixion of an old Jewish refugee (one of the four main characters) in the courtyard of the factory where he works. The owner of the factory fears to interfere, and a young aborigine says three times, that he does not know the victim.
5606764	/m/0dvzgn	When the Wind Blows	James Patterson	1998-10-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book centers on Frannie Devin O'Neill, a veterinarian, whose husband was killed a three years before the story takes place. The action takes place in Bear Bluff, Colorado. She meets Kit Harrison, an FBI agent, when he rents a cabin in the woods behind her house. One night, after a friend's mysterious death, Frannie sees a small girl with wings, running in the forest. Her name is Max, and they learn about Max's missing brother, Matthew, and the sinister place where they grew up. Kit, Frannie, and Max find and break into the School. They find the rest of Max's "flock", two Chinese siblings named Wendy and Peter, a blind boy named Icarus, and Oz, all of whom have wings. The group leaves the school and Kit calls the FBI for help. They try to go back to Frannie's vet clinic, the Inn Patient, but they find it burnt down. They are caught by the "whitecoats" (who work at the School) and the flock's previous Keeper, a cruel man named Harding Thomas (also known as "Uncle Tom"). The whitecoats force Kit and Frannie to come with them at the threat of shooting the children and they agree. Max, however, manages to escape. The whitecoats take the adults and the rest of the flock to the home of Gillian, Frannie's friend who turns out to work at the School as well. The flock becomes excited when they see Gillian's son, Michael, who is one of the School's experiments. Gillian and Thomas try to get Frannie and Kit to tell what they've found out about the School, but neither cooperate. Michael guides them to where the flock is being kept. They find the flock, along with Matthew, and escape while Gillian holds an auction to sell the bird children to major corporations. Max, meanwhile, guides news helicopters to Gillian's house and they report on the bird kids and expose the whitecoats. Kit is shot nonfatally. Frannie, Max, and Matthew notice Gillian, Michael, Thomas, and Anthony Peyser (Gillian's husband and the leader of the School) escaping in a car. Max and Matthew fly after, with Frannie following in her car. The siblings dive-bomb the car and cause it to crash, killing everyone inside. During the explosion, however, Max is badly hurt. Frannie operates on Max at a hospital and she recovers, as does Kit. Kit and Frannie take the bird kids into hiding, however eventually they help the children find their parents.
5606870	/m/0dvzmg	Blades of the Tiger	Chris Pierson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 While attempting to steal back an important work of art, Shedara discovers that the lord of the keep has been attacked and is dying. He mistakes her for a friend and mutters "The Hooded One" before he dies from his mortal but bloodless wounds. After returning to Armach-nesti and discussing the event with the Voice of the Stars, she is sent on another mission to retrieve the Hooded One, a statue of an evil Emperor of Aurim, Maladar the Faceless. Maladar's soul has been imprisoned in the statue and evil forces are at work to try to free him. Meanwhile, across the Tiderun, on the plains north of Coldhope Keep, Hult has discovered that the Uigan leader, their Bolya, has been ambushed. Chovuk and Hult look for the Boyla, and discover that he is still alive. Chovuk kills the Boyla, to be named the next Boyla. Hult later discovers that Chovuk has been learning evil sorcery from a black robed mage, known only as the Teacher. Chovuk fights the other contestant for the position of Boyla, and wins because he used sorcery to shape change into steppe-tiger. The tribes have a superstition that the steppe-tiger is the avatar of their god, and so embrace Chovuk as the new Boyla. Chovuk recruits the goblins, as well as an elf, Eldako, from the wild elf tribes to help him attack the Imperial League. They burn, sack, and massacre the towns and villages of the Imperial League north of the Tiderun, while they wait for the moons to sink below the horizon, so that the Tiderun will become dry. In the Imperial League south of the Tiderun, Forlo is returning from many long years of war, when he discovers that the capital has been damaged by an earthquake, and that the emperor and almost all of his immediate blood relatives are dead. He also finds out that the keeper of the peace is Duke Rekhaz. Forlo meets Duke Rekhaz, and Rekhaz wants Forlo to help command his army, so that Rekhaz can defeat any opponents vying for the throne. However, Forlo has a writ of dismissal from the now dead emperor, so he refuses to serve, which angers Rekhaz. Forlo returns home, to discover a pirate raiding in his waters, whom he had previously signed a treaty with. He discovers that the pirate raided the ship only because the ship was carrying artifacts that hadn't been taxed, and the owner of the ship was a rich merchant. In return for raiding the ship, the pirate gives Forlo a statue. After taking it home, he finds out that his wife is pregnant, and that they both feel the statue's menacing presence. He decides to have it moved into the family vaults under the keep. Shedara discovers that the statue was stolen from a merchant, and that it has ended up in the hands of Barreth Forlo. She attempts to steal the statue, but is trapped and captured by Forlo's guards. Forlo questions her, but she refuses to answer and he has her locked up in a tower. He learns that the Uigan are preparing to cross the Tiderun, and attack his fief. He calls for aid from Rekhaz, but Rekhaz questions his loyalty. Rekhaz agrees to give Forlo only six hundred men if he agrees to rejoin the army. Forced to act, Forlo agrees. Later, Grath, a friend of Forlo's and the current commander of the Sixth Legion agrees to help Forlo. He decides to send the Sixth Legion to help Forlo, but they still can't hold the fief. He then questions Shedara again, and agrees to give her the statue if she will contact Armach-nesti to send aid. She contacts Armach-nesti, but discovers that the evil forces intent on capturing the statue have murdered the Voice of the Stars and all her people. Forlo tells her she's free to go, but she still wants to help him, so she forces Maladar to send a gigantic wave over the barbarian horde. The barbarian horde is destroyed, and she manages to force Maladar back into the statue. A small remainder of the Uigan horde is still alive, as well as Eldako, the Boyla, and Hult. The horde doesn't present much resistance and are easily defeated by Forlo and his men, however, the elf escapes. The Boyla turns back into a human because the evil forces betrayed him, so he becomes mad. He fights Forlo in an attempt to regain his honor, but Forlo kills him. The Boyla's protector, Hult, decides not to avenge his master and instead follows Forlo. Forlo discovers that Grath was killed during the fighting and that the Uigan were sent as a diversion so that the keep would be unprotected. Forlo, Shedara, and Hult return to the keep only to discover that Essana has been kidnapped, the statue is missing and the only thing left behind is a dragon's scale.
5611141	/m/0dw6dn	The Riddle	Alison Croggon		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Maerad and Cadvan continue the search for the Treesong, the key to Maerad's destiny, while fleeing from Enkir, the First Bard of Norloch, who had broken Milana, Maerad's mother, and sold them both into slavery. Maerad and Cadvan sail with a friend called Owan d'Aroki to the Mycenean Greece-like island of Thorold. Enkir sends a sea serpent in pursuit, which the two Bards kill. Having arrived on the island, they enter the Bardic School of Busk. Maerad continues her Bardic training that had been stopped abruptly in Innail, learning about magery, illusions, and additional fighting skills, which improve readily. Cadvan studies records in Busk's extensive library, but finds nothing by which to explain the nature of the Treesong. Soon, Busk receives a messenger from Norloch who reveals that Enkir has claimed the authority of High King over all the Seven Kingdoms, and demands the Schools' undivided fealty. Busk, rather than submit to Norloch or be counted its enemies, pledge their "unwavering allegiance to the Light", rather than to Enkir; thus placing themselves beyond either possibility. Later, at a seasonal festival commemorating the Bards' New Year, Busk's First Bard Nerili succumbs to a 'darkness' within herself, which puts her into a trauma that prevents her creation of the ceremonial "Tree of Light". Cadvan intervenes, salvaging the ceremony; however, Nerili's experience suggests that the power of the evil Nameless One is increasing, and that it is more insidious than in his previous attacks upon humanity. Maerad and Cadvan decide to leave the School of Busk, as it is not safe for them to stay, and instead travel a long and arduous route into the island's mountainous interior, accompanied by the Bard Elenxi. Elenxi guides the two to his goatherd brother Ankil, who is Nerili's grandfather. Maerad and Cadvan adapt to an agrarian lifestyle, continuing Maerad's training in their spare time. In so doing, they learn that Maerad is capable of feats of transformation beyond the abilities of any other Bard, as demonstrated when she literally changes a boulder into a lion. Such abilities are attributed to her Elidhu (faerie) ancestry. At one point, Ankil reveals a story wherein one mortal king stole a song of the world's harmony from the Elidhu, splitting it in half, and by doing so brought misery. Cadvan assumes this man to be Sharma, who would later become the Nameless One, but is subsequently suggested to be wrong. When word reaches them that they are no longer safe, Maerad and Cadvan leave Ankil. Accompanied by Elenxi, they traverse an unfrenquented path to a port where they may sail with Owan to the mainland. En route, they are attacked by a Hull (a sorcerer corrupted by evil magic), who renders Elenxi insensate and holds Maerad's power under his control by use of an appropriately-named "blackstone", which copies her magic's energetic signature and enables him to manipulate it. In spite of this, Maerad uses her Elidhu power to change him into a rabbit. Cadvan thence captures and kills the rabbit, leaving him to corrode. Maerad and Cadvan then awaken Elenxi. The two of them take leave of Elenxi at the coast of Thorold, from which they then embark for the mainland. While they are on the ocean, Cadvan, Maerad, and Owan are attacked by a monstrous "stormdog"; a huge, ferocious, wild manifestation of the storm's fury, shaped vaguely like an enormous hound. In attempting to use her magic against it in Cadvan's aid, Maerad suddenly understands the stormdog's true nature, and therefore calms it rather than frighten it away. Thereafter the three humans make the journey safely to land. On the mainland, Cadvan and Maerad stay for some days and nights (possibly less than a week) at the Bardic School of Gent. Here, Maerad's training is not pursued as it was on Thorold; but they are treated as honored guests. Maerad soon befriends their host Gahal's daughter Lyla, who while not a Bard has skill in the art of medicine. Because her now dead suitor Dernhil was born at Gent, Maerad is often reminded of him. Owan leaves for Thorold, which is his home; days later, Maerad and Cadvan go north on the backs of their faithful horses, Darsor and Imi. Believing such a course to be against Enkir's expectations, they ride through Annar, briefly passing within reach of Cadvan's former School, Lirigon. In Annar, they encounter economic degradation, often openly in the forms of abject poverty, misery, and child labour. Near Lirigon, they encounter two Bards who believe Enkir's statement that any who do not swear fealty to him, and especially Cadvan and Maerad, are traitors to the Light. In the confrontation, Maerad kills one of these two Bards, Ilar of Desor. This act deeply disturbs Cadvan, who takes it as indication that he has failed to correctly train Maerad. When he speaks of this, Maerad's own emotional insecurity etc. causes her to be harsher toward Cadvan than she has been accustomed to be. Fear, pride, and resentment on her part increase over the next many weeks, causing a rift between herself and Cadvan. The Bards and their horses proceed to the mountains called Osidh Elanor, intending to go beyond them to find the secret of the Treesong. When they are among the mountains, they are attacked by the frost giant-like "iriduguls", who serve the Elidhu called Arkan the Winterking. Maerad cannot join with Cadvan mentally to combat these iridugul, who break the mountainside and by doing so bury Cadvan and Darsor. Imi flees in the opposite direction, while Maerad, horrified at the sight of Cadvan's apparent death, lies down in shock. When she awakens, Maerad eats, drinks, and plays a lament for those whom she considers dead on a flute-like instrument given to her by her Elidhu ancestor Queen Ardina. The playing of the pipes summons Ardina, who at Maerad's request heals some of her more life-threatening injuries, then takes her to the home of a northern tribeswoman called Mirka à Hadaruk, who lives as a recluse in the mountains with no companion but her dog Inka. Mirka nurses Maerad to health over several days, during which she reveals that she is a Bard, though not one trained in the Annaren/Thoroldian fashion; that she (Mirka) belongs to the seminomadic people called Pilani, from whom Maerad is descended on her father's side; and that to the north exist a people called the Wise Kindred, who may explain the Treesong. Maerad, having recovered from her injuries and left Mirka, travels to Murask, a Pilani settlement on the nearby Zmarkan Plains. There, she is accepted as guest by her father Dorn's twin sister, Sirkana à Triberi. Maerad stays in Murask for some days, unremarked by most of the people whom she meets, and eventually leaves in the company of one Dharin, a cousin of hers born to Dorn's other sister. Dharin and Maerad ride on a dogsled to the home of the Wise Kindred, an Inuit-like ethnicity of people who live on the volcanic islands north of Zmarkan. These people, in turn, redirect Maerad to the home of the necromancer Inka-Reb, who lives with a pack of wolves. Inka-Reb receives Maerad and calls her a liar when she claims to need his help to define and find the Treesong. Angered, she demands that he speak with her. He agrees, adding that she may be unaware of having spoken a lie. Inka-Reb then reveals that half of the divided Treesong is actually written on a lyre that Maerad has inherited from her mother, and that if either the Light or the Dark unite the two halves, the world will be ruined. Having told her this, and refusing to say more, he sends her away. Maerad and Dharin ride their dogsled toward the south, but are attacked on the way to Murask by the Jussacks, a tribe of Cossack-like hunters sent by the Winterking to seize Maerad. Dharin is killed and Maerad taken prisoner. The Jussacks transport her in their own dogsleds to the northeastern stronghold where Arkan's life and power are situated, where they hand her to Arkan. En route Maerad develops a friendship with Nim, the Jussack warrior deputed to take care of her, and loses three fingers to frostbite, reducing her much-cherished ability to play music. In Arkan's fortress, Maerad is given a life of illusory luxury, her corporeal needs attended by a servant woman named Gima, who views Arkan as her beloved master. Arkan and Maerad gradually develop a Beauty and the Beast-like relationship, wherein she feels sexually drawn to him and he to her. During her captivity, Arkan reads the writing on Maerad's lyre, revealing that the symbols are an ogham-analogous script containing the power of the Speech. He additionally reveals that they were created by the Bard Nelsor, who attempted to capture the Song's power without realizing the disasters this could cause. Nelsor is later suggested to have been Arkan's homosexual partner. Maerad is contacted during her captivity by Ardina, who has changed herself into a wolf and does not initially reveal her own identity. She gives Maerad a saying: "Triple-tongued is triple-named". This implies that in addition to the girl's human name, Maerad, and her Bardic name Elednor, she has another, Elidhu name, which Arkan does not know and therefore cannot use to control her as he uses the others. Ultimately, Maerad walks out of Arkan's stronghold and joins Ardina, who guides her to assume wolf's form. As wolves, the two escape, pursued by Arkan's stormdogs. Ardina delivers Maerad to the wolf pack who serve Inka-Reb and leaves her with them. Subsequently, the wolf pack take Maerad to Annar, where she travels, still a wolf herself, to her birthplace of Pellinor. There, she encounters Cadvan, who has survived the battle in the mountains and come to Pellinor at Ardina's advice. She resumes her human form, hears Cadvan's account of his own travels through Zmarkan (which he had pursued shortly in her wake), and reveals her own story to him. Cadvan speculates regarding the meaning of what she has learned, suspecting that her destiny involves undoing Nelsor's captivity of the Speech, which neither Light nor Dark should have achieved. The two of them plan to seek out Maerad's brother Hem, who is significant to her destiny. Will she ever find her destiny?
5611604	/m/0dw7d5	The Mocking Program	Alan Dean Foster	2002-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A hard-boiled police procedural set in a highly imaginative megalopolis called the Montezuma Strip, which stretches along the old U.S.-Mexican border. When police inspector Angel Cardenas investigates the case of a male corpse found with most of its internal organs missing, the victim turns out to have had two identities - one as a local executive, the other as a Texas businessman. The plot thickens when the victim's booby-trapped house nearly kills Cardenas and his partner. The author makes use of a vast array of futuristic elements; notably, sapient apes led by gorillas and intelligent rogue computers that commit computer crimes. While the book does not state this, this is a continuation of a series of short stories featuring the same main character, written by Foster and initially published in genre magazines under the pen-name of James Lawson, and then collected under his own name in the Warner book Montezuma Strip (1995), ISBN 0-446-60207-8
5613748	/m/0dwc8x	The Infinitive of Go	John Brunner	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 For the first significant test using a live person, a diplomatic agent is Posted to a foreign embassy from the USA. The test is an abject failure, with the agent demanding a countersign upon arriving at his destination, and then shooting himself and triggering a destructive failsafe in the package of documents he was carrying. It is assumed that the Posting affected the agent's sanity. Faced with termination of the project, Dr. Justin Williams, the inventor of the technology, arranges to have himself Posted from the same embassy back to his research laboratory. He finds himself in a world which is subtly different from his own. For one thing, Cinnamon Wright, his beautiful but cold African-American collaborator, is suddenly an ardent lover. Eventually she admits to him that, like the Cinnamon Wright from his world, she was Posted, and once worked for him in a world where he hated her, even though she was attracted to him. As the story progresses, they realize that when humans are Posted, their inner desires influence the outcome, tipping them into alternate universes. However, they are not prepared for outcome of the next Posting: A Dr. Eduardo Landini has to be Posted back from an orbiting satellite for emergency surgery following a mechanical accident. But the being who emerges is not a man. He is a humanoid descended from baboons, who claims to be Ed Landini, and tells the doctors attending him that he is guaranteed to be biologically compatible with humans, otherwise he would not be there. He reveals that in his world the Posting technology is well understood. However, only mystics and "Pilgrims" elect to be Posted, because they know they will go to another world. It was only his desperate situation that forced him to take the chance himself. The problem is this: the Poster links two congruent spaces, but it searches many universes to find the best match. When all factors are accounted for, including a person's state of mind and the state of the machine itself, the best match is more likely to be found in a machine from another universe. This is how a Dr. Landini arrived that is a man descended from baboons but speaking English and coming from a world with almost exactly the same history as the one on which he arrived. Although evolution took a different track on his world, the outcome was almost exactly the same as on the world where he arrived; had it been different, he would have gone to a different universe. The person who first comes to understand this is not a scientist, but a philosopher. For intelligent beings, the Poster acts as a sort of "equalizer" between universes, introducing worlds where the technology is new to worlds where it is understood. The world from which Landini came was one in which the technology was being pushed further. Posters were being built in large numbers and launched across huge distances of interplanetary space, since the further the distance in the transfer, the greater the difference between the universes linked by the Poster. However, Landini himself becomes the focus of trouble. Rumors about his appearance inspire revulsion among staff members at the facility, and as those rumors spread into the general population, politicians, pundits, religious leaders and rabble rousers begin exploiting the fears generated. Landini himself has no stomach for the attention, and openly shows his contempt for the behavior of the humans around him. Despite his training and education, he has significant personality problems that isolated him even from his own kind. One of the things he tells Justin and Cinnamon is that a typical outcome from contact via the Posters is that the inventors of the devices go insane. Justin begins to feel he is right. The world is spiraling out of control around him, and he has had to reconcile his initial feelings of triumph over the creation of the device with the knowledge that an infinite number of people in other universes invented it long before him. The final chapter has Myron Chester, the financier of the development effort (who was a ruthless power broker in Justin's original world) revealing a secret. He had suspected that Justin and Cinnamon had both been changed by being Posted because neither had mentioned their secret project-within-a-project: To discover what would happen if a Poster was used without another Poster acting as a destination. Once it became apparent that Posters linked different universes he began sending information rather than objects. Soon he accumulated a collection of books, newspapers and other media from other Earths, some fantastically different from the one he lived on. He is optimistic that once people begin being Posted this way, they will receive the Pilgrims Landini talked about, who go to help other universes. He believes that the Posters will necessarily send people to the universes where they can do the most good, because that is what their state of mind will require. One message he received says that in worlds where the inventors of Posting are among the first to be Posted, the outcome is usually good for those left behind. If this is not done, the outcome is usually very bad. Since both Justin and Cinnamon had been posted, this foretells a likelihood of a positive outcome in this reality.
5615674	/m/0dwgj3	Inca Gold	Clive Cussler		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In 1532 a fleet of ships sails in secret to an island in the middle of an inland sea. There they hide a magnificent treasure more vast than that of any Pharaoh would ever possess. Then they disappear, leaving only a great stone demon to guard their hoard. In 1578 the legendary Sir Francis Drake captures a Spanish galleon filled with Inca gold and silver and the key to the lost treasure, which included a gigantic chain of gold and a large pile that of diamonds worth more than 200 billion dollars belonged to the last Inca king, a masterpiece of ancient technology so huge that it requires two hundred men to lift it. As the galleon is sailed by Drake's crew back to England, an underwater earthquake causes a massive tidal wave that sweeps it into the jungle. Only one man survives to tell the tale... In 1998 a group of archaeologists is nearly drowned while diving into the depths of a sacrificial pool high in the Andes of Peru. They are saved by the timely arrival of the renowned scuba diving hero Dirk Pitt, who is in the area on a marine expedition. Pitt soon finds out that his life has been placed in jeopardy as well by smugglers intent on uncovering the lost ancient Incan treasure. Soon, he, his faithful companions, and Dr. Shannon Kelsey, a beautiful young archaeologist, are plunged into a vicious, no-hold-barred struggle to survive. From then on it becomes a battle of wits in a race against time and danger to find the golden chain, as Pitt finds himself caught up in a struggle with a sinister international family syndicate that deal in stolen works of art, the smuggling of ancient artifacts, and art forgery worth many millions of dollars. The clash between the art thieves, the FBI and the Customs Service, a tribe of local Indians, and Pitt, along with his friends from NUMA, two of whom are captured and threatened with execution, rushes toward a wild climax in a subterranean world of darkness and death - for the real key to the mystery, as it turns out, is a previously unknown, unexplored underground river that runs through the ancient treasure chamber.
5615710	/m/0dwglw	Valhalla Rising	Clive Cussler			 Dirk Pitt has to stop an evil CEO of an oil and natural gas company in the US from establishing absolute monopoly over oil resources and supplies. It is a typical Dirk Pitt novel dealing with a countdown, bribed officials, and ruthless evil leaders. Pitt also unravels the work of a brilliant, reclusive scientist who had made great advances in oil technology, traced the history and found the remains of a Viking settlement on the Hudson River, and discovered the remains of Captain Nemo's Nautilus and unriddled and improved its power system (a magnetohydrodynamic engine).
5620868	/m/0dwq_5	The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11	Ron Suskind		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The One Percent doctrine (also called the Cheney doctrine) was created in November 2001 (no exact date is given) during a briefing given by then-CIA Director George Tenet and an unnamed briefer to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in response to worries that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear weapons expertise to Al Qaeda after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack. Responding to the thought that Al Qaeda might want to acquire a nuclear weapon, Cheney observed that the U.S. had to confront a new type of threat, a "low-probability, high-impact event" as he described it. Suskind makes a distinction between two groups engaged in the fight against terrorism: "the notables", those who talk to us about the threat of terrorism (Bush, Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, et al.), and "the invisibles", those who are fighting terrorists (the CIA analysts, the FBI agents and all the other foot soldiers). The book advances the theory that Abu Zubaydah, a "top operative plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States" as Bush described him, was an insignificant figure. According to the book, Osama bin Laden apparently wanted Bush reelected in 2004, and therefore issued a video message which, in the U.S. media, was described as “Osama’s endorsement of John Kerry.” In the book, unnamed CIA analysts speculate that this can be attributed to the view that the controversial policies Bush advocated would help recruit mujahideen and would cause the image of the United States to decline globally due to aggressive foreign policy. The book also mentions a plot to attack the 34th Street – Herald Square subway station in New York City in March 2003. But, 45 days before an al-Qaeda cell, who had monitored surveillance of the station, were to release deadly cyanide gas into the tunnels, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other terrorist leaders scrapped the plan because it wasn't as deadly as 9-11 and therefore wasn't notable enough to compete with the impact of 9-11. Richard Clarke told ABC News he is wary of the report about the New York City subway plot. Clarke stated: "There's reason to be skeptical... Just because something is labeled in an intelligence report does not mean every word in it is true." He said the information describing the plot would have been just one of the hundreds of threats that would have been collected in 2003. According to Clarke, the specificity of the report also made it suspect, stating "Whenever you get reports that are this specific, they are usually made up." Clarke also called into question the notion that Ayman al-Zawahiri called off the attack, adding that he would be too isolated to have that kind of direct control over a plot inside the United States. He also believes the terrorists would have carried out the attack if the plot was as advanced as Suskind reported, stating "Frankly if there was a team in the United States that was ready to do this, they would have done it." An intelligence official who was briefed at the time that the authorities learned of the threat, and who wished to remain anonymous, told The New York Times that some in the intelligence community had been skeptical of the supposed plot, particularly of the idea that the plot had been called off by Mr. al-Zawahiri. The plot was said to involve the use of a relatively crude device for releasing the chemical gases. "This is a simple cyanide thing, two chemicals mixed together, and it releases cyanide gas..They'd be lucky if they killed everybody on one car — you can do that with a 9-millimeter pistol...None of it has been confirmed in three years, who these guys were, whether they in fact had a weapon, or whether they were able to put together a weapon, whether that weapon has been defined and what it would cause or whether they were even in New York", he told the Times. One former official told CNN that he agreed al-Zawahiri called off the attack but disagreed with Suskind that the terrorists were thwarted within 45 days of carrying it out. Two former officials told CNN the United States was familiar with the design of the gas-dispersal device and had passed the information to state and local officials, but added that the proposed timing of the attack was not as precise as Suskind wrote. A former CIA official told the New York Daily News that few top U.S. counterterrorism officials knew about the plot and many deny Suskind's claim that a panicky Bush White House sent "alerts through the government." One reason for the lack of alarm, according to the former official, was that soon after discovering Al Qaeda blueprints for a homemade cyanide sprayer, the feds learned Zawahiri had nixed the plot because "it wasn't big enough." The device was also an unreliable weapon of mass destruction. "Cyanide is sexy, but difficult to weaponize...They have fantasies of poisoning a water supply. You can't imagine how difficult that would be. Did they fantasize about a cyanide attack? Most likely", a senior counterterrorism official told the Daily News. New York Senator Charles Schumer told the Associated Press that while the threat was "serious enough to be taken seriously", the alleged plot was "never corroborated." Suskind also claims in the book that the al Qaeda's cell that would have carried out the attack is still in the United States. Intelligence sources, however, told CBS News that, as far as they know, there are no terrorist cells operating in the U.S. under the command of Zawahri or bin Laden. A counter-terrorism official who asked not to be named told the Washington Times, "A lot of information [in Suskind's book] is simply wrong." One inaccuracy, this official said, is the book's assertion that Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA captured in Pakistan in 2002, was not a key al Qaeda figure, and was insane. The counter-terrorism official said Zubaydah is "crazy like a fox" and was a senior planner inside al Qaeda who has provided critical information on how Osama bin Laden's group works. John McLaughlin, former acting CIA director, has also stated, "I totally disagree with the view that the capture of Abu Zubaydah was unimportant. Abu Zubaydah was woven through all of the intelligence prior to 9/11 that signaled a major attack was coming, and his capture yielded a great deal of important information." Sources with direct knowledge of Zubaydah's interrogation told the New York Daily News that while they concede Zubaydah knew about ideas but not operations and fed the CIA disinformation, he was lucid and difficult to crack. "He was tough and smart", said an agency veteran.
5621134	/m/0dwrh3	War of the Worlds: New Millennium	Douglas Niles		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After a remote Mars Rover (Vision) loses contact with Earth, a series of flashes appear on the face of Mars, once every Martian day (24 hours, 37 minutes). The flashes baffle scientists at first, until strange objects are discovered heading towards Earth. A space shuttle is sent out to investigate, and becomes the first casualty in the Martian attack on Earth. The first of the eleven objects sends out a 1 million volt electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which becomes known simply as the Pulse. The first pulse covers North America, and knocks out all computer circuitry and most sophisticated electronics. The second and third objects contain EMPs for Eurasia and Antarctica, effectively immobilizing the world. The remaining objects release canisters which plummet to Earth and strategically impact around major population centers. As planes crash and cars stop, Alex DeVane tries to get to NASA headquarters to deal with the Pulse and what it means. After the canisters hit, and bombing appears to have no effect, the United States Army sends out an infantry division to investigate and attack the aliens. The canister opens, and the Martians exit in armored saucers held up on tractor beam-like legs. They are also armed with lasers that burn through anything they touch. The ring of tanks, infantry, and artillery fire on the Martians, but to no effect. They destroy the group and continue the invasion. The U.S. Army rallies and fights bravely, but loses every battle. The Martians also have a poison gas weapon that lasts about 30 minutes, but is lethal. They destroy and kill for the sake of doing so, and seem to breathe in the death and destruction they are causing. Ironically, this smell leads doctors and scientists to speculate on the nature of the Martians, and the large amount of bacteria they seem to thrive upon. Although successful with nuclear weapon attacks, the Americans try a penicillin/antibiotic bomb, which seems to stop the landers after only a slight delay. Further experimentation by Markus DeVane later proves that any bread-based mold will quickly put down a Martian. This solution is communicated to the survivors, and the invasion is stopped.
5621370	/m/0dwrz1	Generation "П"	Victor Pelevin	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in Moscow in the Yeltsin years, the early 1990s, a time of rampant chaos and corruption. Its protagonist, Babylen Tatarsky, graduate student and poet, has been tossed onto the streets after the fall of the Soviet Union where he soon learns his true calling: developing Russian versions of western advertisements. But the more he succeeds as a copywriter, the more he searches for meaning in a culture now defined by material possessions and self-indulgence. He attempts to discover the forces that determine individual desires and shape collective belief in this post-Soviet world. In this quest, Tatarsky sees coincidences that suggest patterns that in turn suggest a hidden meaning behind the chaos of life. He first senses this hidden purpose when reading about Mesopotamian religious practices. Tatarsky’s quest is enhanced by the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, and vodka. His quest is further aided by another form of spirits: through a Ouija board, Che Guevera writes a treatise on identity, consumerism, and television. Eventually, Tatarsky begins to learn some truths—for instance, that all of politics and the “real” events broadcast on television are digital creations. But he can never quite discover the ultimate force behind these fabrications. When at last he reaches the top of the corporate pyramid, Tatarsky learns that the members of his firm are servants of the goddess Ishtar, whose corporeal form consists of the totality of advertising images. The firm’s chief duty is to make sure that Ishtar’s enemy, the dog Phukkup, does not awaken, bringing with it chaos and destruction. After a ritual sacrifice, Tatarsky becomes the goddesses’ new regent and, in the form of a 3-D double, her bridegroom. In the novel’s last chapter, Tatarsky’s electronic double becomes a ubiquitous presence on Russian TV. Tatarsky, who had tried to look past the false images presented on TV to see a true umediated reality, has himself been transformed into an illusion.
5622375	/m/0dwtg7	Wild Energy	Marina and Sergey Dyachenko	2006	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The heroine, Lana, lives in a synthetic city and works as a pixel. Every evening millions of people, working as pixels, perform a 20-minute light show for the other citizens. They wear colourful robes and during each sunset they receive commands in the form of music through headphones. Each command means a certain type of movement, so that by moving/dancing, different parts of their clothes are exposed to the sun rays, thus reflecting the sunlight in different colours. All this can be seen on a huge screen in the synthetic city, where all citizens watch it. After every light show all pixels receive a packet of energy which allows them to survive until their next dose. If a pixel makes a mistake during a show, so that the picture appears distorted, they are punished by not receiving an energy packet. If they haven't stored anything from their previous doses, they will not survive the next day. Lana's best friend, Eve, makes such a mistake and is not given a packet. Lana does her best to save her but doesn't succeed. In the synthetic city there is a rumour spread that some people don't need these packets of synthetic energy and can live on their own, by the energy their hearts and spirits produce. These people are chased by the energy police: they are slaughtered in the factory (a mystic place about which little is known) and their energy is used for maintaining the lives of the synthetics by turning it into energy packets. Lana is determined to find the Wild people and try to live by her own energy (the phrase "I'll find it or die" becomes the motto of the book and Ruslana's project). She finds them in a place called Overground. Overground is located on the roofs of abandoned or ruined skyscrapers, high, where no one can reach the Wild. They have created their own world and culture, possess wings as means of travelling, and have their own language, similar to that of birds. Lana stays with them for a while and finds friends. Lana turns out to be a powerful generator of wild energy, for which she is chased by the energy police. Being in Overground she exposes also her friends to danger. One day, while she is away, the energy police, in search for her, attack the Wild from Overground. When Lana returns, her home is devastated. She sets off to find and destroy the factory where her friends have most probably been taken. On her way she meets the people-wolves, living in the woods, where she stays and learns how to summon the forces of nature, which will help her destroy the factory. During those rituals she is helped by a small drum, given her as a present by an old man from the synthetic city. She gathers a group of devoted young wild "wolves" and they go to fight with the factory and its devastating energy. The first attempt is not successful, the young wolves die, but she manages to enter the factory and is caught by the factory's host, who calls himself "The Heart of The Factory". Lana becomes his hostage and while she is there, it is implied that the factory's host might be Lana's father. Lana manages to escape and saves her Overground friends. They go back to the people-wolves, where they gather a team for a second time. Another fight with the factory follows. The characters' weapons are different musical or noise producing instruments, including drums and trembitas. The factory's power is deafening silence. All sounds, all rhythm is lost when approaching the factory. Its anti-rhythm is usually stronger than any other life energy or rhythm. Lana's task is to defeat this anti-rhythm and, by summoning lightning, which must simultaneously strike all the weakest parts of the factory to destroy it. The friends manage to do this and enter the factory, but once inside, the factory's anti-rhythm almost kills them. They survive because "The Heart of The Factory" helps them by taking their place in the dangerous anti-rhythm zone. He dies and Lana and her friends remain safe and sound. The Wild go back to their homes and Lana becomes the new "Heart of the Factory".
5624292	/m/0dwy1k	Stolen	Kelley Armstrong	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins with Elena travelling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to follow up a lead the Pack have come across on believe.com which purports to be able to prove the existence of werewolves. However, when she meets her contact, a young witch named Paige Winterbourne, she has information that Elena finds extremely disturbing. Not only does she claim to know about werewolves, but more specifically about her. It is clear that the posting on the website was a lure designed to bring Elena to Pittsburgh because of problems other supernaturals have been having with a group headed by Tyrone Winsloe. Elena is skeptical, having given no credence up to this point that other supernatural beings such as witches and vampires could exist. The claims of Paige and her mother, Ruth, sound like conspiracy theories that Elena finds hard to believe. Unable to sleep, she goes out that night for a run, but is followed by a stalker with military training. Elena evades him only to discover that he has colleagues and that they are trying to capture not only herself, but also the Winterbournes. In the fight, Elena kills one of the men, Mark, and the three women find themselves confronting a half-demon able to teleport whom Elena nicknames 'Houdini', who works for Tyrone Winsloe. Ruth casts a spell which traps him temporarily and the three women make their escape. Elena calls Jeremy and, the next morning, the two of them attend a meeting of the Inter-racial Council. There they are told about a shaman who had been kidnapped and taken away from his home in Virginia to a compound run by Tyrone Winsloe and Lawrence Matasumi. With his abilities of Astral projection, the shaman is able to not only determine that he is not the only captive, but also to contact the shaman on the Inter-racial Council, Kenneth. Following the discussion about how to handle matters, Jeremy declines to return to the meeting after dinner. His priority is first and foremost to the Pack and its safety. Whilst he is prepared to join forces with the Council if necessary, it is only a temporary measure as the Pack has always fought its own battles. That night Clay arrives. The three werewolves are attacked by men working for Winsloe, but they are all killed. The Pack are suspicious because the only people who knew they were in the area where the members of the Council. So, the following day, when they arrive at the meeting, they do so with the head of one of the men in a bag. They decline any offer to align themselves with the Council and leave. On the way back, Elena is kidnapped and taken to the compound. There she becomes involved with many of the other residents, being 'befriended' by Leah and Sondra, as well as helping Doctor Carmichael in the infirmary. She discovers Ruth has also been kidnapped. The witch is particularly interested in another prisoner, Savannah Levine. However, 'poltergeist activity', that many of those in the compound associate with Savannah, plays a role in the death of Ruth. Sondra Bauer becomes obsessed with turning herself into a werewolf and injects herself with some of Elena's saliva. Her body reacts as if she has been bitten, and she is taken to the infirmary. While there, Bauer kills Carmichael and Elena is forced to sedate her. Bauer is transferred to the cell beside Elena's. Tyrone Winsloe takes an interest in Elena, wanting her to wear skimpy clothing as well as watch, and participate in, his 'hunts'. Prisoners such as Patrick Lake and Armen Haig are killed during these and it becomes clear that Elena is next. Winsloe brings her photographs that he claims are of Clay and that Clay is now dead. An apparent system malfunction provides the opportunity for Elena, Sondra, Leah and Savannah to attempt escape. Bauer loses control and is killed by the guards. Leah and Savannah get left behind when an elevator door closes on Elena. She makes a run for it, Changing into a wolf, and is chased by dogs. Clay finds her and takes her back to Jeremy and the others who are in New Brunswick, Canada. After telling her story, the group devise a plan to free the others from the compound and to put a stop to Ty Winsloe and his associates. Clay, Paige, Adam and Elena enter the compound first. They kill the dogs and disable the vehicles before entering the building itself. Tucker and the guards are killed or disabled before they enter the cell block. There they find Savannah. Curtis Zaid is revealed to be Isaac Katzen when he attacks Paige and the others. Katzen is killed. Leah is shown to be the one really responsible for the poltergeist activity. She attempts to snatch Savannah, but is prevented and escapes. Clay and Elena track Winsloe and kill him.
5624402	/m/0dwy5b	Dime Store Magic	Kelley Armstrong	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Set nine months after the events of Stolen, or as Paige observes at the beginning of the novel "nine months, three weeks and two days", Dime Store Magic begins with Paige receiving complaints from the Elders about Savannah, clearly not for the first time. The Elders hate trouble and object to anything that might draw attention to the Coven. The same day Paige receives a petition for custody of her ward from Leah O'Donnell, a half-demon involved in events at the compound the previous year. Paige meets Leah and her lawyers, Gabriel Sandford, at the Cary Law Offices in East Falls. There she recognises Gabriel as a sorcerer. It is revealed that the custody claim comes not from Leah, but Savannah's father, Kristof Nast. Nast is the head of the Nast Sorcerer Cabal in Los Angeles, California. After she gets home, Paige is confronted by Victoria and the other Elders who are concerned because Leah's intent to use Paige's status as a witch in the custody battle threatens to expose the Coven. Paige persuades them to give her three days to clear matters up. She then arranges a meeting with Grantham Cary Jr., the local lawyer. It is decided to request that Nast submit to DNA testing to prove his paternity claim. Sandford, as Paige expected, refuses on behalf of his client. In order to force her to submit, Leah and associates begin a dirty tricks campaign that includes placing a hand of glory on her property and setting up satanic altars in the fields behind. Paige comes under investigation by the town sheriff's department and also the social services. At this point, Lucas Cortez turns up on Paige's doorstep and offers his services. His offer is refused as witches do not trust sorcerers. The media set up camp outside Paige's house and, on a drive into town to pick up a takeaway, Paige's car is deliberately run into by Grantham Cary Jr because she refused his offer of paying his fees by sharing his bed. Furious, she confronts his wife at his house and then returns home. Cary leaves a message on her answering machine asking her to come to his office to talk. However, when she gets there it is to discover Leah is there too. The half-demon uses her powers to throw Cary out of a window, framing Paige for his murder. Paige is taken to the police station, from where she is released by Lucas Cortez, despite Paige's protests. They then go to a Coven meeting, but receive little support from the other members. Angry, Paige agrees to talk to Lucas and he provides her with background information on the Cabals. The next day Paige receives a call telling her to come to the funeral home to pick up her file from Cary's people. Thinking this is strange, as it is currently Cary's visitation, Paige nonetheless agrees and she and Savannah go to the home. However, whilst they are there Nast employees stage a scene that involves bodies raising from the dead and illusions. Paige and Savannah are rescued by Lucas. The police arrive but are forced to let them go. Events continue to escalate with other incidents occurring. The Coven get increasingly anxious, and Social Services turn up to check on Savannah. However, the interview does not go well as Savannah is upset - at least until she discovers that she has begun to menstruate. Cortez grows concerned because the menses ceremony associated with a witch's first period can be vital to ensuring her loyalty to her Cabal and he believes that this will increase the urgency of any action Leah and her colleagues take. Paige also grows curious about the differences between witch and sorcerer magic. She starts to realise that there were once several grades of spell: primary, secondary and tertiary. However, at some point the higher level spells were lost or deliberately destroyed, only a few surviving in old grimoires that the Coven Elders refuse to let the other witches use. These grimoires are kept by Savannah's aunt, Margaret. When they visit her to borrow her car, Paige takes the grimoires. She, Savannah and Lucas then drive to Salem, Massachusetts. There, the two witches argue. Savannah insists on the ceremony her mother wished to use, not the Coven approved one Paige underwent. Paige finally agrees to Savannah's wish, but the ceremony requires them to get certain ingredients which requires them to go to the cemetery. Afterwards, Paige shares the knowledge of the grimoires with Lucas and they become lovers. The next day Paige's house is fire-bombed, and she and Savannah are kidnapped by the Nast Cabal. Nast presents his claim to Savannah. Savannah agrees to it provided she can have Paige do the originally planned ceremony and also that Paige can stay. Kristof Nast accepts. They then meet Greta and Olivia Enwright. They are supposed to be teaching Savannah, however during this lessons they force her to sacrifice a boy and drink his blood. Savannah is deeply upset. Nast denies any knowledge. Sandford observes that the Cabal Witches had expected Greta's daughter to succeed her, not Savannah, and that the ritual might have been a form of revenge. Paige is secured and gagged so that she can't spellcast. Sandford brings her to the notice of Lucas' family and one visits her. He orders her death by sundown. Friesen takes her away to kill her, but Paige manages to escape. When she returns to Nast's house, it is to find all hell has broken loose in her absence. Savannah has called a demon as she attempts to raise her mother from the dead. Nast is killed trying to save his daughter. Lucas tells Paige a spell that will permit her to look like Eve Levine temporarily. They use this to get Savannah out of the house.
5624476	/m/0dwy93	Industrial Magic	Kelley Armstrong	2004	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story starts with the attack upon Dana MacArthur, daughter of a Cabal employee. Dismayed by her inability to persuade other witches to form a new coven because of their disapproval of her relationship with Lucas Cortez, Paige Winterbourne is not entirely happy to find his father - Benicio Cortez - on her doorstep with news of the new case. Lucas and Paige decide to travel to Miami to visit his father and introduce Paige to the family, as well as to hear further details about the attack. They discover that Dana's is only one of a series of similar attacks upon the children of Cabal employees. That night another child, the son of Benicio's bodyguard is killed. The father, Griffin, asks Paige and Lucas to investigate. Concerned about Savannah, they arrange for her to stay with the werewolf Pack. They then arrange to meet up with Jaime Vegas, a necromancer. Jaime manages to contact Dana, who is believed to be in a coma, getting what details she can from her about the attack. In the process she discovers the girl is dead. Investigation leads them to the home of Everett Weber. They are unable to find him, but do find a lot of encrypted computer files. Paige breaks the code to reveal a list of the children of Cabal employees. They track down Weber, but before they can persuade him to come with him peacefully, a Cabal SWAT team cause a hostage situation. Paige is injured and Everett taken into custody. The trial results in Weber's swift execution, but almost immediately another child is killed - the grandson of Thomas Nast. Jaime, Lucas and Paige go out to the swamp where Weber would be buried to contact him. They meet Esus. He gives them details about the man who hired Weber. When they continue to investigate, they start to be plagued by a ghost, but Jaime struggles to contact it. Eventually, they discover that the ghost is that of a vampire. Their search leads them to the home of Edward and Natasha, two immortality-quester vampires. Natasha has been killed, she is the ghost, and Edward is looking for revenge. They set a trap, but it backfires. Lucas is shot, and both he and Paige find themselves in the land of the dead. There Paige meets Savannah's mother, Eve, who guides her. The Fates offer them a choice, and their decision returns them to the land of the living, where they find the werewolves have begun to search for them. A trap is set for Edward at a charity ball, but it goes wrong. Jaime is kidnapped and Benicio ignores the plan in order to save his son. Jeremy, Savannah and Paige help to save everyone. Benicio executes Edward.
5624540	/m/0dwycj	Operation Hell Gate		2005-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Jack Bauer has a bit of a problem with a recent mission. Subsequently he must accompany the prisoner, FBI agent Frank Hensley (who was later revealed to be an Iraqi agent) and other government officials. The plane crashes and all chaos breaks loose - Frank Hensley frames Jack Bauer for the murder of two FBI agents, Ryan Chappelle has trouble helping Jack from LA, and a weapon has been stolen that could potentially release a virus deadly to the whole of America. Jack Bauer must use all his skill and recruit the help of some Irish women (Caitlin) in order to break down a highly complicated conspiracy that leads to the government.
5624552	/m/0dwydk	Haunted	Kelley Armstrong	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Haunted, the fifth in the Women of the Otherworld series, is a novel written by Kelley Armstrong featuring Eve Levine. Half-demon, black witch and devoted mother, Eve has been dead for three years. However, whilst the afterlife isn't too bad, Eve is desperate to find a way to communicate with her daughter, Savannah, now the ward of Paige Winterbourne and Lucas Cortez. The Fates, though, have other plans, and they call in a favour. An evil spirit called the Nix has escaped from hell. Feeding on chaos and death, she is an expert at persuading people to kill for her. The Fates want Eve to hunt her down before she does any more damage. The Nix is a dangerous enemy, however. Previous hunters have been sent mad in the process.
5624580	/m/0dwyh9	Chaotic	Kelley Armstrong		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Half-demon Hope Adams loves her job. Granted, working for True News tabloid isn’t quite the career her high-society family had in mind for her. What they don’t know is that the tabloid job is just a cover, a way for her to investigate stories with a paranormal twist, and help protect the supernatural world from exposure. When Hope’s “handler” sends her and a date to a museum charity gala, Hope suspects there’s more to it than a free perk. He’s tested her before. This time, she’s ready for whatever he throws her way. Or so she thinks...until she meets her target: werewolf thief, Karl Marsten...
5624655	/m/0dwymg	Broken	Kelley Armstrong		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In this story the half-demon Xavier calls in a favour - steal Jack the Ripper's From Hell letter away from a Toronto collector who had himself stolen it from the British police files. It seems simple, but in the process Elena accidentally triggers a spell placed on the letter which opens a portal into the nether regions of Victorian London. With thieving vampires, killer rats and unstoppable zombies on the loose, Elena and the Pack must find a way to close the portal before it is too late. To add to the confusion, Elena herself is pregnant with Clay's child (actually twins). The story begins with Elena worrying about her current pregnancy. She has concerns about what effect her werewolf nature will have on the unborn child, something with no recorded precedent in Pack knowledge. Clay and Jeremy, also concerned, have imposed a number of restrictions on her actions too, which Elena accepts but is also frustrated by. She is, therefore, not entirely displeased to hear from Xavier Reese who offers her a deal: he will hand over information about a rogue mutt the Pack have been seeking in exchange for the Pack's help in stealing an artefact from a sorcerer - the From Hell letter. The deal is agreed to and, after the mutt has been dealt with, Jeremy steals the letter. As they leave, however, Clay squashes a mosquito and smears Elena's blood on the document. This activates an inter-dimensional portal, which releases individuals previously entrapped there during the Victorian era. Now zombies, these track Elena, putting her and her unborn offspring at risk. Attempting to rescue her, the Pack kill these zombies, but to their shock they keep returning. In addition, cholera has infected the Toronto water-supply and the city's rats have become diseased and aggressive. Modern individuals disappear through the portal by accident, whilst murders take place that lead them to suspect that they have released Jack the Ripper himself upon an unsuspecting public.
5624798	/m/0dwyxh	Such Is My Beloved	Morley Callaghan		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Such Is My Beloved takes place in a city experiencing the economic hardships of the Great Depression. The main character is Father Stephen Dowling, a young, exuberant priest searching for the meaning of God’s love. Dowling decides to try to help two young prostitutes, Ronnie and Midge, turn their lives around. The priest goes to great lengths to try to help them, such as giving them money and clothes, while trying to find them jobs. As the story progresses, Dowling becomes increasingly involved in the girls’ lives. He exhibits agape for the prostitutes and does everything he can to help them redeem their lives. His relationship with the prostitutes is condemned by his rich, self-righteous parishioners and his bishop. In the end, the girls are arrested for prostitution and sent away. Dowling feels that he has failed the girls and becomes grief-stricken. His anguish over the girls’ fate causes him to lose his sanity and subsequently he is removed from the church and sent away to an insane asylum. In the end, Dowling has a beautiful moment of clarity in which he sacrifices his own sanity to God to spare the girls’ souls. The novel closes on his realization of the purely Christian love he bears for Ronnie, Midge and for all of humanity.
5625157	/m/0dwzh2	Next of Kin	Eric Frank Russell		{"/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Leeming is every sergeant's worst nightmare &mdash; immune to discipline and punishment, and given to random acts of defiance, such as wearing his cap backwards on parade for no particular reason. Thus when a mission to fly a prototype spaceship behind enemy lines comes up, he is the ideal candidate to fly it. The ship is untested but should be able to outrun anything else in the galaxy. It carries no arms but is an ideal spy vessel for discovering the movements of the ships of the Lathians and their allies. Since the odds of returning alive are pretty slim, it is also an ideal way of dealing with Leeming. For his part, Leeming is ready to jump at any alternative to life in barracks and the stockade. He is equipped with a survival kit designed by a top bureaucratic committee, so it contains an exquisite miniature camera that is of no conceivable use if he needs to survive on an alien world, as well as the usual inedible food. For a while the mission goes well, and Leeming relieves some of the boredom by listening in on routine ship-to-ship messages. He overhears conversations in a language that sounds exactly like English, but used to make bizarre statements, such as "Mayor Snorkum shall lay the cake", "What for the cake will be laid by Snorkum ?", "I shall lambast my mother!". Leeming starts tossing in his own comments, resulting in an aggrieved response "Clam shack?" Later, the ship malfunctions and Leeming is forced to land on an alien world, which turns out to be inhabited by the speakers of quasi-English. They are a dour, reptilian race who make ideal prison guards. On being locked up, Leeming is told by the guard "We shall bend Murgatroyd's socks" to which he can only reply "Dashed decent of you". Leeming winds up in one half of a POW camp, of which the other half is inhabited by members of another allied race. Unfortunately they have never seen a human and so do not trust him. To find a way out, he learns the alien language and tries to get the other prisoners to trust him. He begins to cultivate an imaginary friend whom he calls Eustace. He convinces the guards that Eustace can go anywhere and spy for him, and also that every human has a Eustace who can do the same. In addition, Eustaces can wreak revenge on those who harm their partners. Events help him here, in that one guard he threatens with Eustace is shot for allowing a mass escape attempt of the other prisoners. Furthermore, Leeming alleges that the Lathians, the leaders of the enemy alliance, also have invisible companions called Willies, although these are far inferior to Eustaces. He tells the aliens to ask human prisoners on other planets two questions : "Do the Lathians have the Willies ?" and "Are the Lathians nuts ?", a 'nut', according to Leeming, being someone with an invisible companion. Naturally the answers all come back as positive, and Leeming's captors are convinced that if they start accepting human prisoners they will have thousands of invisible Eustaces running wild across their planet, spying and causing mayhem. They immediately release Leeming and smuggle him home, at the same time withdrawing from their alliances and convincing other races to do the same. The enemy alliance collapses and the Lathians have to make peace. The plot has obvious similarities to E. H. Jones's The Road to En-Dor – an account of that author's escape from the Yozgad prisoner of war camp in Turkey during World War I.
5628002	/m/0dx3h9	The Lion's Game	Nelson DeMille	2000-01-06		 The book opens with Corey, his new FBI boss Kate Mayfield, CIA agent Ted Nash and FBI agent George Foster (both introduced in the previous Corey novel, Plum Island), awaiting the arrival of a defecting Libyan terrorist, Asad Khalil, at John F. Kennedy Airport. However, even before the Boeing 747 from Paris has landed, it becomes apparent that something is unusual about the flight.
5629681	/m/05znqj7	Beastly	Alex Flinn	2007-10-02	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Kyle Kingsbury has good looks. He truly has it all. He is very arrogant and rude. One day in class, a witch, Kendra, who has ugly features, appears and challenges his royal status. At the dance, Kyle uses a chance to humiliate Kendra in front of schoolmates. Kendra reveals herself to be a witch and punishes him for his cruelty by condemning him to live as a beast. However, because of his one act of kindness (he gave a rose to the girl who was working the ticket booth) she gives him two years to find somebody who he loves and who loves him back, and when he does, the girl must prove her love with a kiss. She gives to him a mirror with which he can see whomever he'd like, then vanishes. Kyle's shallow father, a famous news reporter, is ashamed of his son's new appearance (He is said to look like a dog and a bear, with fur all over). He purchases Kyle his own apartment where he proceeds to live with their housekeeper, Magda. His father also sends Kyle a blind tutor, Will. The two later become friends. Will and Magda suggest that he takes up gardening, and Kyle builds a greenhouse where he plants many roses that become dear to him. After one year has gone by, he decides to change his name from 'Kyle', which means handsome, to 'Adrian', which means 'the dark one'. When he is about to lose all hope of ever returning to his human form, a drug addict stumbles upon his green house rose garden. Angered, Adrian hollowly threatens to drop him out the window. Desperate for his life, the cruel man offers his daughter - Lindy - to take his place. They make a deal and Adrian prepares Lindy a room filled with books and new clothing. Despite his efforts, Lindy (who is the girl that had been working the ticket booth at the dance) is still very upset that she is to be forced to live in the house, calling Adrian 'Kidnapper' and 'Jailer'. Hearing her call him this Adrian gets upset. After several days of solitude, Lindy finally comes out of her bedroom in the middle of the night and bumps into Adrian. Adrian explains how he is her age, and that he was just lonely and offers to let Will tutor her. One night there is a thunderstorm, which she is terrified of, and they stay up and watch The Princess Bride and eat popcorn. In doing so, he showed his tenderness and things begin to change between them. They begin studying together under Will's supervision, and spending more time with each other. Adrian makes a deal with Kendra that if he is able to get Lindy to kiss him before the last year is up, she will also return Will's sight to him and allow Magda to go home to her family (Her family does not live in the U.S due to not having green cards). Adrian then invites Lindy up to a cabin he has during Christmas break, with Will and Magda along. They have enormous fun with snowball fights and sledding. But Lindy misses her father and realizes he is in trouble when she sees him through the magic mirror. Understanding her feelings, Adrian allows her to go, because of his love he can't have her captive. Lindy leaves. Adrian is heartbroken when she doesn't return to him and misses her incredibly. He soon realizes that Lindy was again sold for drugs and soon would be raped. Adrian rushes to her aid, even revealing his beastly looks on a subway train. He breaks down the door and is injured by the-would-be rapist, who is terrified by his appearance. He scatters away and Lindy rushes to Adrian's side. Adrian professes his love for her as she does in return. He is mortally wounded and asks for a kiss from Lindy. Lindy does so. Adrian then transforms back to his original self. Confused, Lindy tries to find Adrian for she didn't see his transformation. Kyle then tells her of their memories together to assure her he is Adrian. Lindy is overjoyed and hugs and kisses him. Will gets his vision back and gets a job as an English teacher at Kyle's and Lindy's school. He also goes back to college in order to become a university English professor. As for Magda, she is revealed to actually be Kendra in disguise and that because of the spells she cast when she was younger, she was told she must stay and care for Kyle for the rest of her life. It was Kyle's wish for her to be reunited with her family that frees her from her obligation. Kyle returns to school with Lindy and they date. People are confused by his new personality and his dating Lindy, who has red hair and crooked teeth. But Kyle reassures Lindy that he loves her despite what everyone says. Lindy and Kyle go to prom together, and they live happily ever after.
5630795	/m/0dx7fs	The Great War: Walk in Hell	Harry Turtledove	1999-08-03	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The United States and Confederate States are locked in a stalemate (1915-1916), as both of their offensives have stalled; the U.S. in Kentucky pushing south, the C.S.A. in Maryland pushing north. The Confederacy must also deal with their black population rising up in rebellion, and a change in administration. However, the war begins to turn in the favor of the U.S. as the Kentucky offensive, led by George Armstrong Custer, manages to conquer enough of Kentucky to readmit it to the Union after 54 years as a member of the Confederacy. He uses the new barrels (what we know as tanks) to break through. The Confederacy, conversely, has begun to lose its gains in southern Pennsylvania, and to be pushed back into Maryland. Washington D.C., in Confederate hands since 1914, is still in their possession, but as their hold on Maryland weakens, the C.S. is faced with the possibility of losing the old U.S. capital as well. Meanwhile, Flora Hamburger, a Socialist from New York, gains a nomination from her party, installing her in the House of Representatives. Faced with a shortage of eligible white men, the Confederacy is forced to consider a bill that would allow blacks to serve in the C.S. Army, even though a number of them had rebelled against the same government that is now offering citizenship to volunteers. The novel ends as Theodore Roosevelt is re-elected President of the United States and the war is moving more into Confederate territory.
5630892	/m/0dx7r4	American Empire: The Victorious Opposition	Harry Turtledove	2003-07-29	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book covers the period March 5, 1934 (the day after Jake Featherston's inauguration as President of the Confederate States) to June 22, 1941 (the commencement of Operation Blackbeard). The United States is able to end a war with Japan, but is beginning to prepare for a fourth war against its southern neighbor. In the Confederacy, Featherston and his Freedom Party enact sweeping changes to all aspects of life, including purging and expanding the Army, abolishing the Supreme Court, and using camps to kill off Whig and Radical Liberal politicians before using them to eliminate the black population of the Confederate States. As these changes are taking place, representatives of the former Confederate states of Kentucky and west Texas (Houston) begin calling for a return to their rightful nation. Though this is done, Featherston is still not satisfied, and wants more territory that the U.S. had taken in 1917 (Sequoyah, and parts of Sonora, Virginia, and Arkansas). After his offer is refused by U.S. President Al Smith, Featherston issues the order to attack the United States in an effort to regain the Confederacy's lost lands, as part of his ultimate plan to defeat the U.S.
5631897	/m/0dx920	I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You	Ally Carter	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story follows 15-year-old Cameron (Cammie) Ann Morgan, a sophomore at Gallagher Academy For Exceptional Young Women, a school for "very gifted girls," but actually a school for espionage spies in training. She faces her fourth year of real spy training. While on her first mission required for her Covert Operations class, she meets a "normal" boy called Josh, he notices her despite her reputation as a "pavement artist" and that she is trying to be invisible. No one sees Cammie when she doesn't want to be seen, which is one of the things she likes about him. She does not tell him who she really is though, or where she goes to school, due to Gallagher's reputation of being a school for snooty heiresses. Soon Josh and Cammie develop a steady relationship, with Cammie always sneaking out of the school, with the help of her best friends and roommates Liz Sutton and Bex Baxter. Macey McHenry, an authentic heiress and senator's daughter, also becomes her friend despite a rocky start at Gallagher. Cammie lies to Josh many times to keep her cover, claiming that she is home schooled, has a cat and has lived in exotic places, but her true identity is revealed after Josh's friend, Dillon, sees Cammie walking toward the academy with the rest of the girls and attempts to break into Gallagher Academy to prove that it is Cammie's real school. After a heated confrontation, Cammie tells Josh the truth—besides information about being a spy—and then they break up.
5635740	/m/0dxgtv	Ugly Rumours				 During the Vietnam War, two Special Forces soldiers attempt to avoid combat duty.
5635764	/m/0dxgw6	The Third World War: The Untold Story	John Winthrop Hackett Junior	1982	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 By the mid-1980s the Soviet Politburo comes to the consensus that the country's economy is stagnating and its military may not retain superiority over the West for much longer. It would therefore be in the interests of the Soviet Union to invade Western Europe with a short, sharp blow, and then sue for peace from a position of strength. The Politburo deliberates two options involving a sudden barrage of nuclear weapons against Western targets, but realizing the risk of nuclear war they decide to opt for a third strategy involving conventional forces. The catalyst for conflict comes in July 1985, when an American Marine unit intervenes against a Soviet incursion into Yugoslavia. In response, the Warsaw Pact mobilizes and subsequently launches a full scale invasion of Western Europe on the 4th of August 1985 (the anniversary of the start of the First World War). Soviet forces thrust through West Germany towards the Rhine, and also land forces in northern Norway and Turkey. Attacks are also carried out using long range strategic bombing, naval forces and even killer satellites in space. The Soviet juggernaut quickly loses steam. Stiff resistance by NATO, aided by France and Sweden, eventually foils the Soviet invasion, and Warsaw Pact forces get no further West than the German town of Krefeld in the Ruhr by around August 15. Norway is also invaded, causing Sweden to enter the war when it refuses to allow overflight rights to the Soviet air force. From mid-August the capacity of the Soviet Union to wage war is significantly undermined by desertion of some of its demoralized allies, internal dissent at home and its own forces mutinying. Outside Europe the Americans bomb Cuba, the Chinese invade Vietnam and overthrow its government, Egypt invades Libya, Japan seizes the Kurile islands, and the Soviet Navy and merchant fleet is permanently neutralized. To prove to the world that they are still a force to be reckoned with, the Soviets launch a nuclear missile strike against Birmingham, England. The West retaliates with a similar strike on Minsk, which accelerates the collapse of Soviet control in its satellite states. A coup d'etat led by Ukrainian nationalists overthrows the Soviet Politburo, which leads decisively down the path to the end of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The ruins of Birmingham and Minsk are eventually turned into war memorials fronted by immense causeways, with the memorials respectively called Peace City West and Peace City East. German reunification is opposed by both sides after the war, and does not have any particular support in the Germanies themselves as they have developed separate national identities. In The Untold Story a separate chapter is devoted to an alternative, more pessimistic scenario, written in the form of radio transcripts and newspaper editorials. NATO forces are unable to defend West Germany, and after the Netherlands falls, the West sues for peace. Despite not being occupied, Britain is forced to accept a set of conditions which allows the Soviet Union to effectively control its military, economy and political institutions. This chapter is not included in the Macmillan edition.
5636107	/m/0dxhhr	Carbonel: the King of the Cats	Barbara Sleigh	1955	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot concerns a girl named Rosemary who buys a broom and a cat from an untidy woman in the marketplace. When the cat starts talking to her she learns that she has encountered a witch, selling up to start a new career. Moreover, the cat, Carbonel, just happens to be King of the Cats, presumed missing by his subjects ever since the witch Mrs. Cantrip abducted him. Unfortunately he cannot return to his throne until the enslavement spell Mrs. Cantrip cast on him is undone, so Rosemary, together with her friend John, have to learn a little witchcraft and to track down Mrs. Cantrip for her at best ambivalent help.
5637899	/m/0dxlxt	The Voyage Out	Virginia Woolf	1915-03-26	{"/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirize Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Two of the other characters were modeled after important figures in Woolf's life. St John Hirst is a fictional portrayal of Lytton Strachey and Helen Ambrose is to some extent inspired by Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell. And Rachel's journey from a cloistered life in a London suburb to freedom, challenging intellectual discourse and discovery very likely reflects Woolf's own journey from a repressive household to the intellectual stimulation of the Bloomsbury Group.
5638151	/m/0dxmhb	Conrad's Fate	Diana Wynne Jones	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Conrad Tesdinic lives in Stallery, a small town in his world's version of the English Alps, formed as in Series Seven worlds the British Isles are still connected to the European mainland. In the mountains high above Stallery lies Stallery Mansion, a possibilities mansion, grand and imposing house, home to the Count and his family. Conrad's father is dead; his sister Anthea left home to go to university; his mother, Franconia, is a rather eccentric feminist author, and her books are sold exclusively in her brother's bookshop, where she and Conrad also live. Conrad's uncle tells him that someone up at Stallery Mansion is pulling the possibilities – that is, changing the details of the world. Judging from the affluence of Stallery, this person is making a great deal of money by doing so, perhaps by playing the stock market; but this is adversely affecting the rest of the world. At first only small details change – the colour of the postboxes, the titles of books – but the changes keep getting bigger and bigger. Conrad is going to die. According to his uncle, this is because of his bad karma, which, if he does not kill the person pulling the probabilities, will result in he himself being killed within a year. Conrad's uncle and his group of magician friends work a strange spell on a cork, giving it, and Conrad, who has possession of it, the power to summon a Walker at will. A Walker is a being who will give him what he needs to defeat the person he should have eliminated in a past life. Conrad needs to be sure who this person is before he summons the Walker, however, so instead of moving forward in school with his friends, he is sent to work at Stallery and study its inhabitants, one of which is the person Conrad needs to defeat. Conrad soon finds that he is not the only one snooping around the mansion. He befriends his fellow servant-in-training, Christopher "Smith" (really Christopher Chant), who is searching for his friend Millie. Together, they discover that she is trapped in one of the possibilities. Conrad and Christopher must stop the person behind all the mischief, rescue Millie, and fix Conrad's fate, all without spilling soup on the Countess although Conrad's bad Karma isn't helping along the way.
5638829	/m/0dxnkm	Spadework	Timothy Findley	2001-08-30	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centers on the story of a few summer months in 1998 in Stratford, Ontario against the backdrop of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. The novel is told by a third-person narrator, who selectively changes from the point of view of one character to another, but it is Jane Kincaid, a property maker for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, whose perspective dominates throughout. Jane Kincaid is an immigrant from the United States, more specifically from a quintessentially southern town somewhere in Louisiana, aptly called Plantation. She left the United States to begin a new life as an artist, in essence, to escape her family (which nonetheless provides her with a modest but stable income from an inheritance)—she even shed her birth-name Aura Lee Terry when she met her husband Griffin, an up-and-coming young Shakespearean actor. The two lead an entirely ordinary, reasonably happy suburban existence, with a seven-year-old son (Will), a dog (Rudyard) and a housekeeper/nanny (Mercy Bowman). But even in the beginning, the neat threads of this ordinary life begin to unravel around the attractive and ambitious young theater talent Griffin. His personal beauty and desirability lead Jane to suspect that other women, specifically Griffin's stage partner Zoë Walker, 21 and herself a stunning figure, may be after him. Much of what follows in some way hinges upon Griffin's personal attractiveness, although many other things happen that also put pressure on Jane's youthful obliviousness to the world's cruelty and proclivity to cause pain even in the moments of greatest happiness. Troy Preston, an old high-school boyfriend, serves as harbinger of this pain: he shows up out of the blue, having pilfered his talents and lost his promise, and sexually assaults Jane, ejaculating on her dress and face. A few hours later Jane hears that he has died in a car accident. While this episode haunts her throughout the narrative, she never speaks about it to anyone, not even her psychiatrist. The town is also menaced by a rape-murderer, who kills two women before he kills himself with an overdose of drugs. Furthermore, Jane receives a strangely aloof letter from her mother telling her that her sister Loretta has committed suicide. Failed communication between people intensely close to each other is at the core of the quotidian tragedies that unfold in this novel. A telephone line cut by the spade of an over-eager gardener serves as the physical manifestation or symbol for this failure to connect. This cut telephone line (which seems as anachronistic as the letter from the mother in an age of email, short messages and mobile phones) prevents two crucial phone calls: one from Griffin to his director Jonathan Crawford and one from Jesse Quinlan to his nephew Luke, the gardener who cut the phone line and his anchor in life. Jesse seeks help and when he fails to reach Luke in that crucial moment, he descends further into drugs and becomes a stranger to himself, a rapist and murderer. Griffin was to give Jonathan an answer to his ultimatum either to begin a sexual affair with him or to lose his chances for the desired break-through in his acting career. Soon after, Griffin is informed that he will not get the coveted lead roles in the next season, which devastates him and leads him to agree to another meeting with Jonathan. Finally, Griffin gives in to his ambition and Jonathan's advances which are somehow more sophisticated, as the narrator points out, than the usual sleazy proposals to enter stardom through the gate of sexual favors. Jonathan, who thinks of himself as "a sculptor of talent" (128) genuinely desires Griffin and there is an element of pedagogical eros in their relationship; the older man sincerely believes that Griffin will grow as a man and as an actor if he submits to his power: "I want to teach you how to accept the fact of being desired" (139). Griffin does submit and he does leave his family – without explanation. Jane is the last to find out that Griffin's affair is not with a younger woman but with an older man. Jane develops her own overpowering desires that are quite independent from Griffin's escapades: when the telephone repairman, Milos Saworski, a polish immigrant with limited command of English, enters her house, she is completely overwhelmed by what she experiences as his unearthly beauty. When Griffin leaves, her pursuit of the "angel-man" becomes more determined and she becomes a living contradiction to Jonathan's assessment of women as sexually mostly passive and incapable of such aggressive pursuit. She asks Milos, himself married and a young father of a dying infant, to model for her in the nude, a proposal which he accepts with knowing innocence and an entirely masculine submission that mirrors the scene between Jonathan and Griffin. Jane's gaze upon Milos' beauty exactly parallels Jonathan's desire for Griffin. While sexual desires unravel families and love relationships in this novel, it is the love between fathers and sons that disrupts these momentarily beautiful but cruel and ultimately destructive desires. Griffin's precocious son Will is estranged from both of his parents; Milos' baby eventually dies because of his father's inaction (his wife has kept the newborn baby out of the reach of doctors for religious reasons); Jonathan's son, twenty one and full of promise, is killed by revolutionaries in Peru. The news of this murder is brought by Jonathan's former wife in person and it leads him to see that the affair with him is just as wrong for Griffin as his own marriage had been for himself; he releases Griffin and sends him back to his family. A few months later, in April, the novel comes back to Jane, Griffin and Will, a happy family unit watching a procession of Swans released from their winter domicile indoors. With the help of her mother's money, Jane has bought the house and made it the home she desired. The novel has come full circle to the peacefulness of the beginning, but this renewed peacefulness seems less precarious because it has been tempered by essential conflict and near break-up. The novel thus ends on a surprisingly hopeful note with a vision of spring and new life.
5639472	/m/0dxpl2	Sweet Silver Blues	Glen Cook	1987-08	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this first novel, Garrett is approached by the Tate family to investigate the untimely death of Denny Tate, an old army buddy of Garrett's from their time spent in a war in the Cantard. Although Denny's death was an accident, he had acquired a large fortune in silver through insider trading. In his will, Denny left the fortune to the woman he loved, Kayean Kronk. The Tates try to hire Garrett to locate and deliver the fortune to Kayean, who is assumed to be living somewhere deep in the Cantard, but having lived through the war, Garrett wants no part of the ordeal. Things start to get ugly as different parties try to steal Denny's fortune. In part as a debt to his old army buddy, and in part to be reunited with Kayean Kronk (a teenage fling of Garrett's), Garrett reluctantly heads off to the Cantard with his half-elf friend Morley Dotes and the Roze triplets. Denny's cousins, Rose and Tinnie Tate, try to tag along on the trip, but are sent back when Garrett and Morley find out. When they arrive in Full Harbor, Garrett, Morley, and the Roze boys begin their search for Kayean Kronk, but as time goes by, one thing becomes more and more obvious: Kayean is involved with vampires. A centaur by the name of Zeck Zack claims to be able to help, but instead turns out to be working with the vampires. After forcing the truth out of Zack, Garrett and the gang head out into the heart of the Cantard to find Kayean, who has become a vampire bride. In a desperate battle, Garrett rescues her from the vampire lair and returns her to the Tates, upon which he receives a portion of the inheritance as his fee. With his new riches, Garrett purchases a house and moves in with the Dead Man, a dead, but not inactive Loghyr, starting a partnership that will last for the rest of the series. Meanwhile, Morley, with Garrett and Saucerhead Tharpe along for the ride, delivers a sleeping vampire to the head of the criminal underworld of TunFaire. The vampire kills him, opening the door for a new leader to take over. Garrett's role in the rise of the new Kingpin, Chodo Contague, plays a major role in later novels in the series.
5639796	/m/0dxq3b	Bitter Gold Hearts	Glen Cook	1988-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel starts with Garrett being approached at his house on Macunado St. by a young woman named Amiranda Crest. She explains that her employer is the Stormwarden Raver Styx, whose son Karl daPena has been kidnapped. They want Garrett to organize the exchange between them and the kidnappers. The Domina Willa Dount, in charge while the Stormwarden is away, explains to Garrett that they only need him as a decoy, and apparently, Garrett's work is over. But when Garrett is attacked on his way home by a band of ogres, his interest in the matter is piqued. When the kidnapper's demands rise, Garrett is brought back in to give his expertise on the matter. It soon becomes apparent to Garrett that the members of the Stormwarden's family are all involved in the affair to some extent, as is a band of ogres led by a mysterious individual named Gorgeous. The link between the ogres and the dePenas appears to be a prostitute by the name of Donni Pell, who had both Karl daPena and Gorgeous as customers. Apparently, she orchestrated the kidnapping of Karl by convincing Gorgeous and his band of ogres to help. The transfer of funds with the kidnappers goes off without a hitch, but when Amiranda Crest is murdered and Karl daPena is found after allegedly committing suicide, Amber daPena comes running to Garrett for help. With the help of Morley, the Roze boys, and Kingpin Chodo Contague's skull crackers Crask and Sadler, Garrett storms Gorgeous' hideout, capturing Gorgeous and some of his cronies. The ogres, when faced with torture, offer some information into the kidnapping, and Chodo orders Donni Pell to be found and delivered to Garrett. When the Stormwarden returns to town, she comes first to Garrett to find out just what happened to her family. Garrett then manages to orchestrate a meeting between all the guilty parties, and in a masterful display of deductive reasoning, Garrett implicates Karl daPena Jr., Karl daPena Sr., Amiranda Crest, the Domina Willa Dount, Donni Pell, Gorgeous, and others all in a convoluted kidnapping scheme gone horribly wrong. With the truth out, the situation gets ugly fast, and Garrett and company flee the scene, letting city investigators clear the mess. At the end of it all, the Dead Man, in his infinite wisdom, sheds some light on the few remaining mysteries in the case.
5639888	/m/0dxq96	Cold Copper Tears	Glen Cook	1988-10	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This story begins with Garrett being approached by a beautiful young woman by the name of Jill Craight. She hires Garrett to help find out who has been breaking into her apartment and why. Immediately after, a Magister Peridont comes to Garrett to try to get him to investigate the disappearance of some religious relics; Garrett respectfully declines. After getting attacked by a gang called the Vampires, Garrett goes to his old friend Maya, leader of a gang herself, for advice. Maya informs Garrett that Jill was a former member of the Doom, Maya's gang, and that she is a chronic liar. Sensing Garrett needs help, Maya invites herself along for the rest of the adventure. Garrett and Maya continue their investigation, but unfortunately, Garrett has no leads and isn't even quite sure what to investigate. Garrett's one clue is some mysterious coinage tying together Jill and the Vampires. Garrett asks Magister Peridont about the coins, then heads over to the Royal Assay office for help. After learning nothing new, Garrett heads home, where he is visited again by Magister Peridont, who informs him that Miss Craight was in fact his mistress, and now she is missing. The story gets more complicated when Garrett visits Chodo Contague, whose house gets attacked by magical forces. Chodo Contague involves his henchmen more earnestly in Garrett's case, and Garrett and Maya take their search for Jill to the Tenderloin, the red-light district of TunFaire. When they return home, they find the same magical forces that attacked Chodo's mansion trying to tear apart Garrett's home. After taking care of them, the Dead Man intervenes, letting Garrett know that there is another dead Loghyr involved in the magical attacks. Eventually, Garrett and the Dead Man manage to tie together the roles of the Church, the missing relics, the dead Loghyr, and Jill Craight. After discovering that Jill is hiding out in a church complex, Garrett and Morley break in and kidnap Jill and another of her lovers, a high status member of the Orthodox church. Garrett assembles everyone of importance at his house, and he and the Dead Man uncover the motives of all the parties present. Eventually, the relics are recovered, the other dead Loghyr is disposed of, and Garrett lives to tackle another adventure.
5639952	/m/0dxqg0	Old Tin Sorrows	Glen Cook	1989-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This Garrett novel is a traditional whodunit. Garrett is approached by his old marine sergeant, Blake Peters, who calls in an old army debt to get Garrett to investigate the mysterious illness afflicting his current employer, General Stantnor. Garrett moves into the Stantnor mansion, to find that only a handful of individuals still inhabit the property and keep it from crumbling into ruin. As Garrett begins his investigation, an unknown individual begins murdering the few remaining members of the household. When some of the recently murdered individuals come back from the dead and attack the living house guests, Garrett calls upon his good friend Morley Dotes for backup. As the focus of Garrett's investigation switches to solving the ongoing murders, he continues to be distracted by two elusive beauties seen around the house: one is the general's daughter Jennifer, but the other can only be seen by Garrett, who suspects that she may in fact be a ghost. While Garrett escapes multiple murder attempts on his own life, other members of the household are not so lucky, and the list of potential suspects grows shorter and shorter. Morley, meanwhile, suspects the general's illness is not a result of poison but possibly of the supernatural. As the pieces start to come together, Garrett and Morley hire an exorcist by the name of Doctor Doom, and with the remaining house staff gathered, they confront the sick general in his quarters. It is revealed that the general murdered his wife, Eleanor, and the ghost that Garrett has glimpsed is in fact her. Eleanor's ghost, as revenge for her murder, has slowly been stealing the life away from the old general. Additionally, Garrett and company deduce that all the murders were in fact committed by the general's daughter, Jennifer, in an attempt to keep the family estate intact after her father's death. In the aftermath, both the general and Jennifer die, and Garrett takes as his only payment a hauntingly beautiful painting of Eleanor, to remind him of the events. He hangs it up in his study, and it becomes apparent that Eleanor's ghost has followed him and now haunts the painting.
5640025	/m/0dxqlx	Dread Brass Shadows	Glen Cook	1990-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tinnie Tate comes to visit Garrett at home and is stabbed in the middle of the street by an unknown assailant. Garrett and Saucerhead run down the would-be assassin, but before they can interrogate him, he is killed by a crossbow-wielding band of hooligans. The only clue as to the villain's motive is mention of a book. Meanwhile, a woman named Winger visits Garrett; she is also looking for a book. When a third individual, a young woman named Carla Lindo Ramada, comes by in search of a book, at least she can shed some light on the mystery. They are looking for the Book of Dreams (or Book of Shadows), a magical tome that allows the user to take on a hundred different identities. As word gets out about the power of the Book of Shadows, several parties become involved, each trying to obtain the book before the others. Among those involved are Gnorst Gnorst, head of Dwarf Town, Chodo Contague, Kingpin of TunFaire, Lubbock, a fat wannabe wizard and Winger's employer, and The Serpent, a witch partially responsible for creating the Book of Shadows. As his desire for the Book of Shadows grows, Chodo Contague turns on Garrett, and in an attempt to save their own lives, Garrett, Winger, Crask, and Sadler strike an uneasy alliance to overthrow Chodo. In a confused battle at Chodo's mansion involving all the parties, Crask and Sadler manage to take over from Chodo, and Garrett and Winger escape alive. When Garrett returns home, he finds that Carla Lindo Ramada has escaped with the Book of Shadows, which had been hidden at Garrett's home the entire time. He and Winger manage to track Carla down, take back the book, and destroy it before any more evil can be committed in its name.
5640108	/m/0dxqr0	Red Iron Nights	Glen Cook	1991-09	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Garrett is relaxing at the Joy House with Saucerhead and Morley Dotes, when Belinda Contague, daughter of Kingpin Chodo Contague, stumbles into the bar. She is attacked by a wizened old man who spits butterflies from his mouth and tries to kidnap Belinda in his black stagecoach. As strange as this is, Garrett moves on to his next job, tailing a religious crackpot by the name of Barking Dog Amato. This job, however, takes a backseat when Captain Westman Block comes knocking at Garrett's door. Block needs Garrett's help to solve a series of grisly murders, in which upper class young ladies are being strung up and gutted in strange, ritualistic killings. Garrett soon realizes that the attempted kidnapping of Belinda Contague is connected to the murders. Garrett and Morley then go pay the owner of the coach a visit, and in a bungled sleuthing attempt, Garrett ends up killing the serial killer. Figuring that the case is closed, Garrett finds time to spend on Barking Dog Amato, but before he can get going, Captain Block comes by to inform Garrett that there has been another murder. It seems that there is a curse associated with the murders, so that killing the murderer does not prevent the rise of a new serial killer. Even when Garrett and Block find the new killer, the curse spreads again. Meanwhile, Garrett finds out that Chodo Contague suffered a stroke during his encounter with the Serpent in Dread Brass Shadows, and Crask and Sadler are ruling the crime world in his stead. Belinda Contague, fearing Crask and Sadler, seeks out Garrett for help; Belinda is also in danger of being slain by the cursed serial killer. When Block and Garrett, along with Relway, an up-and-coming member of the Watch, find the new bearer of the curse, he escapes yet again. Ultimately, after a final plot twist, the curse is broken, and Belinda Contague overthrows Crask and Sadler and takes over as ruler of the underworld, using her father as a figurehead. Finally, as a gag gift, Morley gives Garrett an annoying talking parrot, which takes a major role in later Garrett novels.
5640170	/m/0dxqts	Deadly Quicksilver Lies	Glen Cook	1994-03	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 With Dean out of town, the Dead Man asleep, and only the Goddamn Parrot for company, Garrett finds himself wishing for something new. When Winger drops by with a job investigating a woman known as Maggie Jenn, Garrett bites. Maggie, meanwhile, hires Garrett to find her missing daughter, Emerald. Everything seems to be going just fine until Garrett is attacked in the street, knocked out, and thrown in the Bledsoe's mental ward. When Garrett escapes, he discovers that the man who put him there goes by the name of Grange Cleaver, also known as The Rainmaker. As Garrett tries to find out more, everyone urges Garrett to be careful, as The Rainmaker has quite a nasty reputation. As usual, Morley gets involved, but when he and Garrett try to capture The Rainmaker, he manages to get away. Meanwhile, Garrett continues his search for Maggie Jenn's daughter, only to find that Maggie has disappeared. In fact, Morley and Garrett discover that she may not actually be a woman at all and could actually be The Rainmaker! When the Outfit gets involved in The Rainmaker's business, the city Watch has no choice to get involved as well. Garrett gets off free of charges, but The Rainmaker is still nowhere to be found. As word of a long buried treasure gets out, even more parties climb into the fray, leaving Garrett bruised and battered again. In a typical novel-ending plot twist, Grange Cleaver dies, things settle down, and Garrett is left to mull over the possibilities.
5640249	/m/0dxqzl	Petty Pewter Gods	Glen Cook	1995-11	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 TunFaire is in a state of unrest; with the sudden end of the war in the Cantard, returning former soldiers are at odds with the half-breeds and immigrants who have taken their places in society. Garrett, however, has his own problems to worry about - he gets knocked out, brought before a group of small-time gods known as the Godoroth, and forced into working for them. The goal: find the "key" to the one remaining temple up for grabs in TunFaire, and do so before the Shayir, the Godoroth's rivals. The Shayir find out about the Godoroth's plans. The Shayir capture Garrett and give him their side of the story. Only with the help of a renegade Shayir called Cat does Garrett manage to escape. As the civil unrest escalates into full-fledged street warfare, the Godoroth and Shayir elevate their search for Garrett, and Cat, who has her own agenda, is apparently the only one Garrett can trust. When the battle between the Godoroth and Shayir spills over into the world of the living, causing madness in the streets of TunFaire, the more powerful gods of the city decide it is time to intervene. After an epic battle between gods, Garrett hopes the trouble is over, but the Dead Man thinks there is still a missing piece or two to the puzzle. Eventually, the Dead Man deduces that there was yet another party behind the struggle between the Godoroth and Shayir. When everything settles down and is sorted out, the remaining gods go back to their own business, leaving Garrett to go back to his beer.
5640299	/m/0dxr1p	Faded Steel Heat	Glen Cook	1999-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This ninth installment in the Garrett series sees Garrett visited at home by three lovely young ladies, Tinnie Tate, Giorgi Nicks, and Alyx Weider, daughter of Max Weider. Alyx explains that she has been sent by her father to get Garrett to investigate an apparent extortion attempt on the Weider business by The Call, a group of human rights activists headed by Marengo North English. Meanwhile, Colonel Block and Deal Relway strike a deal with Garrett: Garrett will attempt to infiltrate The Call, reporting back to Block and Relway on their activities, while Relway and Block will try to help solve the extortion attempt on the Weiders, as well as ensure the safety of the Weiders and Tates during the ordeal. In typical Garrett fashion, things start to get complicated when Garrett is attacked by a group of thugs while poking around the Weider brewery. After cleaning up and meeting with Max Weider, Max decides it may be best for Garrett to come to Ty Weider’s and Giorgi Nicks' engagement party the following night. When Garrett returns home, the Dead Man concurs, pointing out that it will allow Garrett to investigate the motive of his assailants, as well as help him infiltrate the upper echelons of The Call's society. With Belinda Contague as his date for the evening, Garrett stumbles into a party that turns dark quickly. By the end of the evening, two of Max Weider's children have been murdered, Max Weider's wife has died, and multiple shapeshifters have been discovered, incapacitated, and arrested. To make matters worse, Belinda Contague gets kidnapped by Crask and Sadler as the evening is winding down. Garrett quickly hightails it to the Palms, where he has Morley hire an expert tracker, a ratgirl by the name of Pular Singe. With Pular's help, Garrett and Morley track down Crask and Sadler, freeing Belinda and dealing the mafia skull-crackers a serious blow. When Garrett returns home, he's shocked by what he finds: Dean and the Dead Man are gone! The next day, with help from Colonel Block, Garrett tracks down and arrests Crask and Sadler, who are barely alive from their wounds. With this out of the way, Garrett starts his search for information on the shapeshifters, starting by visiting his friend at the Royal Library, Miss Linda Lee. After getting nowhere fast, Garrett heads back to the Weider's estate, where he and Colonel Block manage to sort out just how and why shapeshifters infiltrated the Weider household. With Tinnie Tate in tow, Garrett heads out to the estate of Marengo North English, where he continues his search for the shapeshifters. North English, who gets injured in a surprise attack against The Call, has little to offer, but Garrett and Tinnie still manage to uncover one shapeshifter in the midst. With the help of Morley, Belinda Contague, and Marengo North English, Garrett hatches a plan to reunite all the guilty parties back at the Weider manor in an all inclusive finale. In the end, Garrett manages to solve the intertwining mysteries of the Weider murders, the shapeshifters, and The Call, and he even unearths an embezzlement scheme that has bankrupted North English and The Call. After a little more detective work, Garrett and company manage to ferret out the last remaining shapechanger in TunFaire, ending the string of murders and impersonations and bringing a small amount of peace to the city. The Dead Man, who returned home with Dean, actually helped mastermind the finale at the Weider’s estate, where he had overseen the night’s events from his hiding place in a large tank of beer.
5640361	/m/0dxr4s	Angry Lead Skies	Glen Cook	2002-04	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Garrett is at home when Playmate comes by to visit, with a kid by the name of Kip Prose in tow. It turns out that Kip has made friends with creatures that cannot quite be described (Garrett thinks of them as "silver elves"), but because of his relationship with these creatures, other parties are trying to kidnap Kip. Despite his protests, Garrett gets drawn into the mess. While searching Playmate's stables for clues, Garrett and company are attacked by another group of indescribable assailants. Luckily, Morley, Saucerhead, and Pular Singe are close by, and they manage to wake Garrett and Playmate after the scuffle. Kip Prose, however, is gone. The gang gives chase but is unable to locate Kip, though they do manage to get knocked out by the assailants a few more times. With Kip missing, Playmate and Garrett head off to talk to the members of Kip's family, hoping they might be able to find some clues as to his whereabouts. Despite some promising leads, Playmate and Garrett are unable to locate Kip, although they do encounter an "elf" named Casey, who assures them Kip is in no immediate danger. When Playmate goes missing, Garrett and Pular Singe head out to track him down, with the Roze triplets tagging along for backup. Pular tracks the scent to the "elf" Casey's apartment, where more mysterious "elves" make an appearance. The trail eventually takes Garrett, Pular, and the Rozes into the country outside TunFaire, where they find more of the "elves", their space ships, and an unconscious Playmate and Saucerhead Tharpe, as well as the bratty Kip Prose. Garrett decides it is time to involve the Watch, who can hopefully clean up the mess. Meanwhile, a ratman named John Stretch, who turns out to be Pular Singe's brother, attempts to kidnap Pular for his own purposes. While Garrett and John Stretch come to an agreement, Colonel Block and Deal Relway try to manage the situation with the remaining "elves". Garrett concerns himself with striking a deal between Kip Prose, Max Weider, and Willard Tate, in which the involved parties agree to manufacture "Three Wheels", a revolutionary new method of transportation for the citizens of TunFaire. As a final twist, the "elf" Casey escapes, thwarting the attempts of Garrett and the Watch to discover the true nature of the "silver elves". Though Relway is angry and suspicious of Garrett, Garrett is on top of the world, with his new stake in the Three Wheel business booming and the Goddamn Parrot missing in action.
5640424	/m/0dxr8y	Whispering Nickel Idols	Glen Cook	2005-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Things seemed to be going pretty well for Garrett one morning until he finds a strange kid named Penny Dreadful hanging around his house, gets summoned to a meeting by Harvester Temisk, Chodo Contague's lawyer, and nearly has his door knocked down by an ugly thug wearing green plaid pants. Garrett meets with Temisk, who fears there are unnatural events occurring associated with Chodo Contague, who may not be as paralyzed as he appears. Garrett agrees to look into the matter that evening, at a birthday party being held by Belinda Contague for her father. At the party, when Chodo is introduced to the guests, a number of people mysteriously burst into flames, and in the confusion that follows, Belinda and Chodo somehow get separated. The whole mess seems to have some connection with the Ugly Pants Gang, who continues to harass Garrett at his home and on the streets. In addition, Garrett is getting more attention than he likes from subordinate mob bosses who suspect that Garrett knows where Chodo Contague is hiding. Garrett can only escape the warring mafia factions for so long, and eventually he is captured, poisoned, and blackmailed by one aspiring leader named Teacher White. With the help of his friends and the psychic powers of the Dead Man, Garrett survives the worst of the ordeal. While he rests and recuperates at home, the Dead Man organizes efforts geared towards unraveling the mysteries of the Green Pants Gang, the mafia factions, and the spontaneous combustions. Compiling the efforts of Garrett's many friends, the Dead Man deduces that the Green Pants Gang is actually a religious faction from outside of TunFaire, and Chodo Contague had at one point worked with the gang to help him rise to the top of the mafia Outfit. With some clues from the Dead Man, Garrett, Morley, and company track down and capture Harvester Temisk, who had been hiding out with Chodo Contague. More clever deductive reasoning by the Dead Man reveals a few final plot twists: Penny Dreadful is in fact Chodo Contague's other daughter, Chodo was partially responsible for the previously unexplainable spontaneous combustions, and the Green Pants Gang actually knows the secret to drawing dark emotions out from within the body. With the help of Garrett and the Dead Man, Chodo's condition improves, so that he is no longer completely physically and mentally impaired. As a finale, Morley Dotes drops by Garrett's house, with none other than Mr. Big, Garrett's much-despised parrot which had gone missing for some time, perched on his shoulder.
5640550	/m/0dxrmz	Pendragon Book 8	D.J. MacHale	2007-05-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Bobby and Courtney arrive on Third Earth only to find that it has changed quite noticeably. Patrick, the local Traveler, arrives and takes them to the library to find out about their friend Mark, whom they believe is on First Earth. Startlingly, information pertaining to Mark originates from both First Earth and Second Earth. Both sources tell of him disappearing. In the flume, on First Earth November 1, 1937, Courtney and Bobby run into a dado (a type of android) in ragged clothing. Bobby tells Courtney to escape while he fights it off. Soon the dado backs into the tunnel and into an oncoming train. The dado is torn in half. Bobby takes the pieces to the flume and sends it back to Quillan. Then Bobby goes to First Earth to find Mark but he knows that Ibara needs him so he goes there and leaves Courtney behind. Bobby is in Ibara, the next territory he must save from Saint Dane's plans. Though the people there live simply, by growing or fishing for their food and living in grass huts, there are signs of advanced civilization, including artificial lights and other technological advances. No one, whether out of ignorance or desire to conceal, can explain these anachronisms. Bobby meets the Jakills, a group of teens outside of the main social group, who are determined to discover the truth of Ibara's unusual character. Leading them is Siry, Remudi's son. Bobby agrees to join the Jakills after proving his skills against a group of Flighters (humanoids that attack Ibara relentlessly). Together the Jakills and Bobby steal a ship and set off to find the truth. They eventually land in a city known as Rubity, a city far away from Rayne. Bobby, Siry, and a few of the Jakills explore Rubity. After a while, Bobby discovers that Ibara is a manifest future version of Veelox/an island on the territory Veelox and that Rubity is Rubic City, 300 years after Bobby failed to stop Saint Dane from causing chaos there. The Flighters attack them as they find this out, however, and only Bobby and Siry make it back to the ship, which they find is burning. They believe that most of the Jakills are killed, apparently leaving only Bobby and Siry alive. They escape from the enraged Flighters, only to meet Saint Dane in the now abandoned Lifelight pyramid. Aja Killian's journal is interrupted by Saint Dane. Bobby then finds out that the Jakills' name comes from Aja Killian [aJAKILLian] and that Flighters were the people who didn't leave Lifelight [liFeLIGHTERS]. Saint Dane reveals that he is bringing an army of tens of thousands of dados to Ibara to make Veelox's second turning point a disaster. Bobby and Siry barely escape on Skimmers, which are high speed boats from Cloral, brought by Saint Dane. The two of them get back to Ibara and tell the ruling Tribunal what has happened. The Tribunal then reveals that the ship that the Jakills stole was one of ten ships that they were going to use to repopulate Veelox. After sending them out early, the ships are destroyed by Flighters, and the threat of the impeding army looms on the horizon. Bobby and Siry travel to Veelox to obtain maps of Ibara from Aja Killian. They then go to Zadaa to borrow a dygo, then to Denduron in order to unearth the explosive tak. When they leave, the Traveler Alder goes with them. Bobby then goes to Quillan alone in order to get the black dado-killing rods for extra protection. After a gigantic battle with archers firing tak at the dados, it appears that the battle is won. When a second wave of dados arrive, Bobby throws almost all the tak they have left in an underground tunnel and lures the army over it. As he is about to detonate the tak, Saint Dane catches up with Bobby and has a fight with him, in which he reveals that there is a "King of the territories", and that he wants to be it. When Bobby asks who the king is now, Saint Dane merely says, "And now you see the truth..." Siry arrives in time to prevent Bobby from being killed, and Bobby blows up the tak bomb. The dado army is destroyed but as they begin to celebrate, Bobby decides that the time has come to go after Saint Dane. Bobby goes with Siry and Alder to take the various things they had taken from the other territories back to their places of origin. After they leave, Bobby destroys the flume with a tak arrow, trapping both himself and Saint Dane on Ibara. Bobby hopes that this means Halla is safe. In the final chapter, however, Saint Dane and his accomplice Nevva Winter speak on top of the Lifelight pyramid. By unearthing the tak, Bobby has doomed Denduron. Just as Saint Dane had said long ago, Denduron would be the first territory to fall. It is revealed that Saint Dane has more power in realizing the future of Halla than thought, and that Telleo is actually Nevva Winter in disguise.
5641294	/m/0dxsyx	The Magician	Sol Stein	1971	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in Ossining, New York. Ed Japhet is sixteen years old, and he is a bright, articulate boy. His father Terence teaches at his school. Ed's hobby is performing magic tricks, hence he is the "magician" of the title. One evening, Ed performs in front of the school on prom night, and aggravates school hoodlum Urek. Urek and his gang wait for Ed that night as he is about to go home with his dad and girlfriend. Urek attacks Ed and nearly kills him. Urek is eventually arrested on a charge of serious assault. At first this looks like a straightforward case. But Urek's dad happens to have a lawyer named Thomassy, who has made it his life's work to defend the low-lifes and the criminals of the area - and to get them off the hook. When Thomassy started his promising career as a lawyer he joined a firm with WASP surnames deliberately. They took him on and he became their most brilliant lawyer. However, the senior partner told him that as an Armenian he would never get promoted, at least while he was alive. Thomassy, stung, left and decided to follow a controversial path defending the most undesirable characters in society. He sends a birthday card every year to the old senior partner, as if to say, "You still alive?" As the story unfolds, the reader becomes uncomfortably aware of how an event can be interpreted by the law. It seems as though Ed has the advantage, he is talented, with a nice family and girlfriend, horribly attacked and nearly killed by a brute. But Thomassy manages to play the attack down: he discredits witnesses, intimidates others, and portrays Urek as acting only in self defense. Now the reader is unsure who the actual "magician" of the title really is. Also involved is German Jewish Psychiatrist Koch, who has taken an interest in the case. His involvement gives the reader an opportunity to see Urek in more depth, as previously he is portrayed as a mindless, violent and inarticulate monster. Nothing can excuse what he has done, but Koch offers more insight as to why he did it. The book ends on a violent note. Urek walks free from the assault charge and proceeds to attack Ed again, this time by hiding in Terence's car and leaping out at Ed. Ed, newly trained in Karate, can now defend himself against the thuggish Urek, with devastating results. Terence Japhet knows exactly whom to call. The book is written in the third person narrative style, but interspersed at intervals throughout the story are "comments" provided by the key characters. They are written in the style of statements, but the reader never knows to whom they are directed.
5641451	/m/0dxt47	Tex	S. E. Hinton	1979	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with Tex McCormick who is a happy go lucky 14 year old who loves horses, his brother Mace, living in a small town and Jamie the girl next door. Tex is growing up mostly with Mace in a small country home. Their mother died years before and their father goes off for months at a time leaving Mace, a senior and a star basketball player and Tex at home. At the start of the book Tex comes home to find the two brothers horses sold. Negrito, Tex's horse, was always more of a human friend to Tex, so he is sad. However Mason had to sell the horses to guarantee Tex and himself would have enough to eat over the winter. This action by Mason, sets Tex against his brother most of the book. But the McCormick brothers aren't alone. Living in the significantly larger ranch house next door (about a half a mile) are the Collins's, the family includes Mason's best friend Bob, Tex's best friend Johnny and the younger sister who Tex loves, Jamie. The Collins's however are forbidden to see Mace and Tex because the patriarch of the Collins family, Cole thinks they are a bad influence. After a turn of events involving Tex and Mason's father, Tex runs away to the city with a family friend and eventually learns that just living life and staying with his brother is the best thing for him.
5646914	/m/0dy258	Rain of Gold				 The novel begins with the main character, Lupe Gomez, as a young and overall naive girl, who lives with her mother, Doña Guadalupe and her other sisters and brother in a ramada in the "Rain of Gold" valley. The family makes a living by selling breakfast to the local miners and washing their clothes. There is a group of colorful miners and most of them have problems with drinking and gambling. The village suffers repeated raids by various factions of the Mexican Revolution and ultimately the brazen Doña Guadalupe manages to protect her daughters and son without incident. Eventually Lupe encounters a man she simply calls "my colonel", a charismatic and romantic figure that Lupe seemingly falls in love with. For much of the beginning of the first chapter of the story she compares the things she enjoys in life to the Colonel, unaware of the fact that he is married to another woman and is nearly two decades older than she is. Swayed by the religious devotion of the Gomez family, the Colonel has them look after his young wife, Socorro who is pregnant with a child. While away on an escort mission of mined gold the Colonel is attacked and killed, Subsequently the rebel fighters who slay him return to the box canyon and dominate the residents. They are a suspicious group and accuse Lupe's brother Victoriano of stealing gold from the mine and they try to hang him as an example to others. He is saved by his mother who hands him a gun after she told the rebels that she was giving him his last prayer, but before Victoriano is able to escape, he shoots and kills La Liebre, the leader, who was attempting to kill Guadalupe. Afterwards, La Liebre's second in command orders Guadalupe to be hanged, but is stopped by the town's people gathering in a mob to stop them. Shortly after the violence the towns people start to leave the city en masse to escape the violence of the Mexican revolution.
5648330	/m/0dy3_f	When Heaven Fell	William Barton	1995-03-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Earth has been taken over by the Master Race, a galaxy-spanning empire of artificial intelligences, and the best of Earth’s survivors are recruited into the aliens' army. Athol Morrison has served for 20 years, and heads back to Earth for a brief vacation. There, he runs into old friends, and finds it easy to give into his old feelings with his childhood girlfriend, Alexandra (Alix) Moreno. However, Alix and the rest of Athol’s friends are involved in a rebellion against Earth’s Master. They ask Athol to help and to join them, and so he helps to train them. However, concerned that any rebellion will provoke a genocidal response from the Masters, he betrays the rebellion to the local government, making sure that Alix and Davy Intäke are spared. Conflicted about what he has done, but feeling as if there was no choice, Athol rejoins up with his new command. Soon afterward comes war with the Hu, the most advanced race yet encountered—they developed hyperspace travel either on their own or stole it from a Master facility. Despite the Hu winning a series of early victories, the Master Race grinds the Hu down in a near-genocidal campaign that leaves the Hu homeworld in ruins. After that war is over, Athol and one of his concubines visit his alien comrade Shrêhht on her home planet. There, he is invited into another rebellion, one composed of all of the slave races, that has been plotting against the Master Race for over 100,000 years. He returns to Earth a second time and learns that he and Alix have a daughter, Kaye Moreno, and takes her off-planet to be trained as a soldier herself. Later, the Master Race's empire is attacked by a new foe that the conspirators believe drove the Master Race out of the Andromeda Galaxy and has arrived to finish them off. Athol, now a general, and Kaye ponder whether now would be the right time for the conspirators to revolt against the Master Race and welcome the newcomers, although he worries that if the Masters fall, the subject races will be the "slaves of slaves" forever.
5653498	/m/0dydyn	Mediated	Thomas de Zengotita			 Mediated aims at creating awareness rather than offering ready-made solutions to remedy the intrusion of too much media in our industrial societies. Rather than writing yet another pamphlet against the media, the author chooses to focus on the mechanisms and the processes of our mediated society. The basis of his analysis is that the opposite of reality is not phony or superficial, it is optional. We choose between options to determine who we are, to make statements to the world about who we are. People, he argues, have always done so, but the difference with today's situation is that we have a lot more options. In terms of options, comparing the modern world with the post-modern world is like comparing a breeze with a hurricane. The media forces at work since the fifties have contributed to expanding our options greatly, making the self "aware" of the possibilities to be who it deems worth being. We have become method actors, constantly flattered. Deception is luring as it is the inherent condition of the "flattered-self". So we seek new ways of satisfying our selves. These are the true forces at work behind what de Zengotita calls the "virtual revolution".
5654742	/m/0dygzp	Coots in the North	Arthur Ransome	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Death and Glories are bored because the salvage business is in decline on the Broads. They see a boat being loaded for delivery to the Lake in the North where the Swallows, Amazons and Ds have their adventures and decide to go along for the ride. They get left behind at a stop on the way but make their way to the lake and find that the lorry has already left for Norfolk and they have no way to get home. They meet the owner of the boat who takes them to find the Ds. They encounter the Swallows, Amazons and Ds sailing on the lake and make an attempt to rescue Nancy after her boat capsizes. At this point the story as published ends, though notes indicate that Ransome was struggling to develop a suitable plot line and a way of arranging for the Death and Glories to get home without their impoverished parents having to pay the fare. Various scenarios are mentioned, including the salvage of Captain Flint's houseboat when its anchor chain breaks in a squall. In gratitude Captain Flint pays for their return journey and gives them a reward.
5656005	/m/0dykhc	A Rumor of War	Philip Caputo		{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 In the foreword, the author states his purpose for writing this book. As he clearly states, this is not a history book, nor is it a historical accusation. The author states that his book is a story about war, based on a personal experience. The book is divided into three parts. The first section, "The Splendid Little War", describes Lieutenant Philip Caputo's personal reasons for joining the USMC, the training that followed, and his eventual arrival to Vietnam. Lt. Caputo was a member of the 9th Expeditionary Brigade of the USMC, the first American regular troops unit sent to take part in the Vietnam War. He arrived on March 8, 1965, and his early experiences reminded him of the colonial wars portrayed by Rudyard Kipling. The 9th Expeditionary Brigade was deployed to Da Nang, formerly Tourane, on a "merely defensive" condition, primarily to set a perimeter around an airstrip that ensured arrival and departure of military goods and personnel. The first skirmishes against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong made it clear to Lt. Caputo and his comrades that their earlier impression about Vietnam war as small and unimportant are all wrong. In the second part of the book, "The Officers in Charge of the Dead", Lt. Caputo is reassigned from his rifle company to a desk job documenting casualties. His new position in the Joint Staff of the brigade was a change that did not suit him, because he was proud of his rifle company duties and had a certain desire to return to basic infantry command. This distance from the Main Line of Resistance gave Lt. Caputo a different perspective of the conflict. Lt. Caputo described senior officers as being more worried about trivial matters than strategy. For example: movies being played in the open at night, risking potentially devastating mortar attacks. Lt. Caputo also witnessed enemy corpses being treasured as hunting trophies, and shown off to generals. He also describes American corpses carrying evidence of Viet Cong torture. In the third part, "In Death's Grey Land," Lt. Caputo is reassigned to a rifle company. He describes the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong as fierce and skilled fighters and as having earned the grudging respect of American soldiers. Lt. Caputo describes his fellow Marines as having stopped wishing for epic, World War II-style battles; they had learned to detect boobytraps, to counter-snipe, and to comb the jungle in search of enemy bunkers and their rations. Lt. Caputo took part in these operations, until troops under his command miscarried orders and shot two suspects deliberately. Lt. Caputo assumed full responsibility for the incident and faced a court-martial. Eventually, he was relieved of his command and the charges were dropped. Lt. Caputo was then reassigned to a training camp in North Carolina and eventually received an honorable discharge from the service. In the Epilogue, almost ten years after the end of his tour of duty, Philip Caputo returned to Vietnam as a war journalist for a newspaper. Old memories of his war experiences and his comrades flood his mind as he witnesses the fall of Saigon to the troops of North Vietnam. Caputo left Vietnam on April 29, 1975. A postscript published in 1996 details some of the anxieties Caputo experienced while writing the memoir, and the difficulties he had handling his fame and notoriety after its publication.
5656985	/m/0dym9n	Black Sheep	Georgette Heyer		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel is set in Bath, Somerset and centres around two main characters: Miss Abigail Wendover and Mr Miles Caverleigh. When attempting to enlist Miles' help in preventing a clandestine marriage between his nephew, Stacy, and her niece, Fanny, Abigail finds herself attracted to the black sheep of the Caverleigh family. After rejecting Miles' first proposal, following a series of Heyer-esque twists and turns, Abigail is finally swept off her feet when Miles abducts her and the novel ends with the two on their way to get married.
5659240	/m/0dyqsc	Inconstant Star	Poul Anderson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 There are two parts to the novel, Iron, and Inconstant Star. In “Iron”, Saxtorph and the Rover, hired by the wealthy Crashlander Laurinda Brozik, set out to explore a newly discovered red dwarf star. When they arrive, they are challenged by a Kzinti warship. Separating the crew onto the shuttles, the Rover is captured and landed on one of the moons. The first shuttle sets on Prima, the first planet, and is held fast by a planet-sized organism that begins dissolving the shuttle. They broadcast for rescue, and are refused help by the Kzin. Meanwhile, helpless to rescue their friends, Robert, Dorcas, and Laurinda make a plan to steal a tug and escape back to friendly space with the news of the Kzin base. Dorcas pilots the tug, and takes out the ship guarding the ‘’Rover’’. Robert and Laurinda land, fight off a Kzinti shuttle, and recover the Rover. They are able to rescue Juan and Carita, and destroy the base with a guided asteroid. In “Inconstant Star”, Saxtorph and crew are hired by Tyra Nordbo to redeem her father’s honor, as he was accused of collaboration with the Kzin during their occupation of Wunderland. To do so, they must use notes he had left behind and follow a ship that had left 30 years prior to investigate a concentration of gamma rays. They travel to the coordinates, and find a massive artifact made of an unknown metal. A hole in the spherical artifact is pouring out lethal radiation. As the study it, they learn it is a weapon of the Tnuctip. It is a shell around a “captured” black hole, one that had been holed by a meteorite and is thus releasing the Hawking radiation. They then deduce the route of the original Kzin ship, and head off to the Father Sun, the star of the Kzin homeworld. En route, they locate the Sherrek, where Tyra’s father Peter had worked free of his Kzin captors. They rescue him and head back to the artifact. Another Kzin ship, Swordbeak, also finds the old ship. They, too, head to the artifact, and catch the Rover by surprise. Just when all looks lost, Robert and Dorcas conceive a plan to use the artifact's radiation against the Kzin warship. In a last act of defiance, a dying Weoch-Captain activates the artifact’s hyperdrive and heads out into unknown space.
5661139	/m/0dysyy	Boogiepop Returns: VS Imaginator Part 1	Kouhei Kadono		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A year before the "pillar of light", Minahoshi Suiko seemed to have killed herself, but Boogiepop claims that he killed her, because she was an enemy of the world. He calls her Imaginator. Asukai Jin can see people's hearts as parts of plants such as flowers, leaves, buds and roots growing from their chests, but everyone's plant is missing something important: this represents the flaw in their heart. Asukai saw the apparition of a girl, who claimed to be Imaginator. She offered Asukai a vision of a possible future, but he was initially opposed. He tried sketching the apparition's face, but was unable to capture it. The students who sought his counsel often uttered the phrase "sometimes it snows in April"; a phrase used by Imaginator. After meeting a former student, addicted to drugs, and dying, Asukai gave in and reached for her plant; she died happy. After rescuing a boy and a girl from a group of thugs, Asukai identified himself as Imaginator. Taniguchi Masaki had just moved back to Japan from Phnom Pehn, and found himself incredibly popular with the girls at his school, and equally hated by the boys. One day, he failed to notice a group of thugs moving in to attack him. A girl, Orihata Aya, stepped in to help Taniguchi, though her words and actions were far from normal. Before things got out of hand, a man stepped in to save them. The two ended up going out. While waiting for Taniguchi one day, a large man missing his right ear came up to Orihata, calling her "Camille" &ndash; he was Spooky E, and they were both from the Towa Organisation. Taniguchi thought to rescue Orihata from the man, but was rendered unconscious. Miyashita Touka and Suema Kazuko were studying at the cram school were they had met and become friends. Kinukawa Kotoe approached Suema seeking advice about her relative, Asukai Jin. Unable to let things pass her by, Suema promised to look into things. In Asukai's office, she found failed sketches that looked like Minahoshi Suiko. Whilst hiding, she also saw Asukai do "something" near the chests of two girls on behalf of Imaginator &ndash; a name she recognized from a book by Kirima Seiichiro. After Asukai had finished, the two girls looked remarkably similar in their relaxed expression. After the incident with Spooky E, Orihata had explained to Taniguchi about the shinigami, Boogiepop. She asks him to play the part of Boogiepop, and save people. He dressed up as the rumours described Boogiepop, and uses his Karate experience to defeat criminals that she would lure out. However, this fails to draw out the real Boogiepop, so Spooky E instructs Orihata to try a new plan. When Taniguchi Masaki transferred into his school, Anou Shinjirou fell in love immediately. Confused by his feelings, he directs anger at Taniguchi instead. One day, he convinced a group of younger students to threaten Taniguchi, and watches on from the shadows. At no point did things go according to his plan, especially not when some man suddenly appears and quickly defeats the other students. Anou watches with disgust as the relationship between Taniguchi and Orihata develops. Hearing rumours about Orihata's frivolous attitude towards men, Anou tries to prove them, so as to break up her relationship with Taniguchi. Unfortunately, all he learns is that she lives like clockwork, and makes no effort to enjoy life. Anou is found by Spooky E, who turns him into his puppet, and orders him to enter Shinyo Academy &ndash; following this, Anou would occasionally cry for no apparent reason. Due to the change in his behaviour, Anou receives a love letter, and is instructed by Spooky E to follow it up, but a chance encounter with Asukai Jin frees Anou from Spooky E's control. When Anou goes to meet the girl who sent the letter to him, he arrives at the roof of a department store. When he saw a girl there, he begins to speak to her, but his words reveal that he had been freed from Spooky E's control &ndash; the synthetic human leaps out to erase him at this, but a microfilament wire saves him at the last second. The 'girl' had been none other than Boogiepop himself, who had decided to kill Spooky E for his actions. Despite being significantly overpowered by Boogiepop, Spooky E escapes, at the cost of his right ear. Boogiepop gives Anou the real love letter, which he had exchanged earlier, before leaving. Before the start of the new school year, Suema returns to Shinyo Academy, as the new students are being orientated, meeting up eventually and shortly with Niitoki Kei (and hearing that she is no longer head of the Displinary Committee from Niitoki). Anou and his girlfriend arrive at Shinyo Academy, but he questions why he is there in the first place. Whilst looking down at the place where Minahoshi Suiko had killed herself, Suema meets Orihata Aya. Orihata asks Suema about Boogiepop, but she brushes it off as a fantasy to "protect an unstable heart." Suema quotes Kirima Seiichi's VS Imaginator hoping to reassure Orihata about her way in life.
5663858	/m/0dyxtk	The Flying Classroom	Erich Kästner		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story covers the last few days of term before Christmas for the students of Johann-Sigismund Gymnasium The main characters are Martin, the first student of the class, Jonathan, an orphan who was adopted by a captain, Matz, Uli and Sebastian, students from the Tertia (Year 8). There is a bitter struggle between the students at the Gymnasium and another school, the Realschule. The so-called "Realists" steal their schoolbooks containing their dictations, which the teacher's son (another classmate) was to carry home to his father. This results in a brawl between two champions of each side - Matz and one Wawerka - and a hard-fought snow-ball fight, both of which the six friends win, although they end reported by a student form the Prima (Year 13) for being late back to school. As a "punishment" they are stripped one afternoon off, to be spent with their amiable house teacher Justus at his office (coffee and cake included) where he tells them a story about his own youth and his struggle with inaccessible wardens from Prima. Other parts of the plot include: the friends playing a drama called the Flying Classroom written by Johnny and the friendship to the "Nonsmoker" (a former doctor who lives in an scrapped non-smoker railway compartment and smokes very much, and works as a pub piano player) and the Nonsmoker's own friendship to Justus (who are reunited by the boys). When Uli, the smallest boy who is often called a coward, decides at this time to attempt something which will remove his reputation as a coward. His best friend, Matz, has in the past encouraged him, until he sees Uli about to run off a gym ladder using an umbrella as a parachute. Uli crashes and falls unconscious. Justus and the Nonsmoker (who upon this reenters his medical profession as school doctor) allay their fears that he is dead, but that he has a broken leg.
5664324	/m/0dyyl9	The Fantastic Flying Journey				 One day, a hot air balloon attached to a huge straw house, lands in the garden of the Dollybutts. The fat old man who owns it is Great-Uncle Lancelot. He tells Mrs Dollybutt and her three children that he is going to find his brother, Perceval, who is lost in the jungles of Africa, looking for gorillas. Perceval, a scientist, invented a magic dust which enables people to communicate with animals. Lancelot takes the three children, Emma, Ivan and Conrad with him in the hot air balloon, which he has called Belladonna, to track Uncle Perceval. On their way, they meet several animals which they can talk to (because of the dust), such as a swallow, a camel and a fennec fox, who tell them many interesting facts about their lives. In the jungle, the gorillas tell them that Perceval left for South Africa, to meet some elephants. Lancelot and the three children follow Perceval to South Africa, and then to Australia,the North Pole, Canada, North America, Brazil and Patagonia. On their way, they meet a crocodile, a rhinoceros, some koalas, a platypus, a blue whale, some killer whales, polar bears, musk oxen, beavers, buffalos, monarch butterflies, a boa constrictor, some howler monkeys, penguins and elephant seals. Everywhere, they learn something about the animals, their habitat, behaviour and dangers threatening them. In the end, the elephant seal tells them that Uncle Perceval has returned to Britain. So they follow him there, and find Perceval in the Dollybutts' house. The chase lasted a whole year, but the children all agree it was not a waste of time after all.
5667292	/m/0dz2r4	The Black Company	Glen Cook	1984-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Black Company's current employer, the Syndic of Beryl, is losing control of his decadent city to rival factions, so when the Taken named Soulcatcher offers the Company new employment in the service of the Lady, its Captain readily accepts, though he is forced to kill the Syndic to break the contract. On the march north to the Lady's empire, the Company acquires two new members. Raven is an uncommonly deadly and (usually) remorseless recruit, even by Company standards. Uncharacteristically, he rescues Darling, a nine-year-old mute girl being abused by soldiers affiliated with the Limper, another of the Taken. The Limper and Soulcatcher are deadly rivals; since the Company was recruited by Soulcatcher, that makes the Limper an enemy to beware. After weeks of trying to link up with the Limper's forces, the Company (at Soulcatcher's suggestion) takes an important rebel fortress, embarrassing both the Limper and Raker, a leading member of the Circle of Eighteen. The Limper sends his top aide, Colonel Zouad, to stir up trouble for the Company, but Elmo, the Company's Sergeant, leaks his whereabouts to the rebels, allowing them to abduct him for information. Zouad manages to contact the Limper, but Soulcatcher has other plans. When the Limper cracks open the underground room where his minion is being held, Soulcatcher's Taken ally, Shapeshifter, is waiting disguised as a rebel and unexpectedly stuns him with magic. Shifter then rolls the incapacitated Limper into the cellar and causes it to collapse in on itself. Another victory for the Company, another humiliation for the Limper. While the Limper is not killed, this slows him down for a time. While the Limper is absent from his post, Raker's troops attack and part of the front collapses. The Company is caught up in the general retreat but shows itself to be the Lady's most effective unit in the ensuing battles. The Captain is given authority normally reserved for the Taken. Raker is targeted next. The Company's wizards, with Soulcatcher's backing, display a fortune in gold, silver and jewels (protected by magic) in a nearby, neutral city - a bounty for his head. Raker has no choice but to try to steal it before half the world tries to collect. Isolated when he ignores the Circle's order to withdraw, he is eventually killed by Raven and Croaker, but not before his disobedience saps the morale of the rebels in the region. Retreating once more, the Company stumbles upon and captures a rebel training camp. Papers are found that belong to Whisper, the strongest member of the Circle and a military genius as well. One details a future meeting with the Limper, who is ready to defect as a result of his string of disasters. Soulcatcher, Raven and Croaker ambush them. All the while Croaker has a nagging suspicion that someone is watching them who he later learns was Silent which was who he thought it was the whole time. They are captured alive and presented to the Lady, the Limper to face her wrath and Whisper to take her place among the Taken. Limper is sentenced to centuries of torture by the Lady. After the Lady uses magic she learned from the Dominator to gain Whisper's unswerving loyalty, the new Taken is sent to the eastern front. The war becomes a race: the rebel armies in the north, under the overall command of Circle wizard Harden, drive the Imperial forces back towards the Tower at Charm, the headquarters of the Lady, while Whisper runs amok in the east, laying waste to the heartland of the rebellion. Harden is killed, but takes the Taken The Hanged Man with him. The Circle suffers more casualties, but massive rebel forces besiege the Tower. A daring sortie by the Company captures the wizards Feather and Journey, weakening the Circle further; they are transported to the Tower to share Whisper's fate. The battle for the Tower begins. The Circle's forces number a quarter of a million while the Lady can muster a mere twenty-one thousand. Yet so dangerous are the Lady and the Taken that the Circle delays, hoping to find the prophesied reincarnation of the White Rose to lead them. A great comet hangs in the sky for most of the battle. This is a symbol of the prophecy which says: the Lady and the Dominator will be defeated under a comet's fiery tail. Finally, it is forced to attack without her before the empire's victorious eastern armies can arrive. All of the Taken gather to bolster the defenses, killing the remaining members of the Circle, when they're not busy assassinating each other. Except for Soulcatcher, all of the original Taken are slain, some by the rebels, but more from internal backstabbing. During the fighting, Croaker observes that Darling seems to be immune to magic. Finally, the rebels are utterly devastated. Then, with her plot to take over the empire discovered, Soulcatcher flees, but the Lady, with Croaker along as a witness, tracks her down. The physician shoots her with magical arrows supplied by the Lady and then beheads her. Croaker then learns that Soulcatcher is the Lady's own sister. Afterwards, he speculates that this was what the Lady had intended all along: not only to crush the revolt, but also to rid herself of all the treacherous Taken. During the confusion, Raven deserts because he knows something he does not want the Lady to learn, taking Darling with him. Raven, Croaker and Silent all seem to believe that Darling is the reincarnated White Rose, who will oppose the Lady and defeat the Empire.
5667338	/m/0dz2th	Shadows Linger	Glen Cook	1984-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Black Company is ordered to march thousands of miles across the Lady's vast empire to the Barrowland. A small detachment, including the Company's doctor and historian, Croaker, is flown to Juniper, a run-down port outside the empire, at the request of the local prince, to investigate its magical connection to the Barrowland. By coincidence, Raven, a deserter from the Company, and his ward Darling are living at Marron Shed's dilapidated hotel in Juniper. Raven has been accumulating money any way he can, including selling dead (and almost dead) bodies to the non-human residents of a mysterious black castle that is steadily growing, fueling the unease of the city's residents. Shed also desperately needs money, to pay his loanshark Krage. Raven does him a favor by letting him participate in his body-selling venture. When Raven and Shed find out that Shed's acquaintance, Asa, has been robbing the dead in the underground Catacombs, they follow suit. A minor incident escalates into a life-and-death struggle between Krage and Raven, which the former loses; Krage and many of his henchmen are sold for a hefty sum to the castle. Two of the Lady's most powerful wizards, Whisper and Feather, arrive in Juniper to investigate the castle and determine that it is an attempt by the Dominator to escape. Ironically, Raven, while trying to protect Darling, had been unwittingly aiding her worst enemy. If the castle gets sufficient bodies to grow large enough, the Dominator will be freed. Once he learns of Raven's presence, Croaker becomes worried, for he knows why Raven deserted: Darling is the reincarnation of the White Rose, the nemesis of both the Lady and the Dominator. If the Lady ever found out, Croaker and the rest of the Company would be done for. Fortunately, Raven and Darling sail away as soon as the winter ice melts, taking Asa with them, in the ship Raven had built with his ill-gotten loot. Shed continues to have money troubles, forcing him to sell his embezzling cousin and a treacherous lover to the castle, but is finally caught by the Company. Croaker realizes that he cannot risk handing him over to Whisper for questioning, as the Company's connection to Darling would be revealed, so he fakes Shed's death. Asa returns to the town shortly afterwards, bringing news that Raven has been killed. Meanwhile, fierce fighting breaks out between the castle's inhabitants and the Lady's forces, now including the Lady herself, the rehabilitated Limper, Feather and Journey, as well as the remainder of the Black Company. Feather is slain. In the confusion of the climactic battle, Croaker, Shed, Asa, the Lieutenant and many of the old-time Company members sail away, rightfully fearing that the Lady will learn the truth about Darling. The Company's Captain dies when he tries in a heroic attempt to save the company by making sure the Lady's carpet cannot be used to chase them down he does this by flying it on a suicide run into a cliff. The Lieutenant takes command of the Company. At the next port, the fleeing band find Raven's ship. Croaker determines that their friend had only staged his death and the men begin searching for him and Darling. In the process, they discover that some of the Dominator's minions had slipped away from Juniper and planted the seed for another castle in a new, more secluded spot. Croaker informs the Lady when she contacts him magically. Back in Juniper, the Lady emerges victorious over her husband. Whisper and the Limper then take an unauthorized side trip to track down the remnants of the Company. The Lieutenant barely gets away in the ship with most of the men, but Croaker, Shed, Silent, Goblin, One-Eye and a few others are left behind. With no other choice, they ambush the Taken and succeed in hurting them badly enough to get away, though Shed is killed. When they link up with the Lieutenant in another port town, they learn that he had found Darling, and Raven had died in an accident immediately prior to his arrival. They become Rebels. The very thing they were fighting, to protect Darling who is The White Rose. They then prepare to spend the next twenty-nine years on the run, waiting for the return of the Great Comet, which prophecies say will signal the downfall of the Lady.
5667392	/m/0dz2xt	The White Rose	Glen Cook	1985-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Black Company has taken refuge from the Lady in the Plain of Fear. Its magical non-human denizens are powerful enough to daunt even her. Among them is Old Father Tree, a god manifesting itself as a tree planted in the exact center of the plain. From this sanctuary, the White Rose rebuilds and directs the rebellion. No wizard in the world can rival the Lady's magical skill and power, but the White Rose is immune to magic and as she matures, the magic-free zone around her expands. (This explains how her former incarnation was able to defeat the Lady and the Dominator.) After several years of relative peace, the pace picks up. The Taken and their armies gather on the borders of the plain, threatening to swamp the vastly outnumbered rebels. Also, couriers begin arriving from the far eastern reaches of the empire, among them Tracker and Toadkiller Dog, a man and his mutt. Each messenger bears a letter for Croaker, describing what some unnamed rebel spy has found out about Bomanz. The last letter claims that the wizard knew the Lady's true name. With the situation becoming increasingly desperate, the White Rose sends Croaker and wizards Goblin and One-Eye to retrieve that vital bit of information. Tracker volunteers to go with them as a guide. When they reach the end of their journey, they soon discover that the letter-writer was Raven, a former Company stalwart (who had staged his death at the end of Shadows Linger). He had made his way to the Barrowland and started doing odd jobs for the soldiers garrisoned there. Once he gained their trust, he received permission to live in Bomanz's old house, where he covertly searched for the old wizard's papers. What he found made him attempt something beyond his abilities; he used a spell to send his spirit to check on the Dominator. His worst fears were confirmed; the bloodthirsty tyrant was awake and actively working to free himself. Fleeing in panic, Raven made a mistake, allowing two of the lesser imprisoned creatures to free themselves and leaving him trapped. Croaker's men search Raven's house, but they arouse the Barrowland guardians' suspicions and are brought in for questioning. With their cover blown, they flee into the surrounding forest, taking Raven's vacant body and the papers he found. When they have trouble shaking their pursuers, Croaker deliberately allows himself to be captured as a distraction. He is taken to the Lady, who has unexpectedly grown fond of him. With the imminent threat of the Dominator looming, she goes with Croaker to see the White Rose, to form an alliance against their common foe. Goblin, One-Eye, Tracker and Toadkiller Dog return shortly afterwards. They all gather in front of Old Father Tree, who recognizes them, especially the latter two. Unmasked as the escaped servants of the Dominator, they try to kill the White Rose and the Lady, but Toadkiller Dog is driven off and Tracker converted into Old Father Tree's slave. Scorn and Blister, two of the new Taken, try to assassinate their mistress but fail and pay the ultimate price for their treachery. Soon, both the Black Company and the Lady and her minions travel back to the Barrowland to confront the Dominator, taking along a sapling, the offspring of Old Father Tree. There, both Bomanz and Raven are revived. Meanwhile, Toadkiller Dog lurks uncaptured, awaiting his chance to help his master. While preparations are being made, the Lady, emotionally vulnerable due to her growing fear of the outcome, and Croaker grow closer. The final battle begins. The White Rose carefully approaches the burial mounds of each of the lesser minions, one by one, nullifying the spells that bind them. When they emerge, they are powerless within her zone of influence and relatively easy to kill. Finally, it is the turn of the Dominator. Even without his magic, he is practically immortal and immensely powerful, but eventually he is overcome, though at the cost of the Lieutenant and Elmo. His body is burned, his malevolent spirit infused into a silver spike which is driven into the trunk of the scion of Old Father Tree. In the aftermath, the Limper tries to utter the Lady's true name, but guesses the wrong one. His head is chopped off by Croaker while he is helpless in the White Rose's vicinity. Then the Lady doublecrosses the White Rose, speaking her true name and depriving her of her unique ability. Finally, Silent, of all people, speaking for the first time in Croaker's memory, truly names the Lady, rendering her powerless. Because the Lady had tied the Taken to her fate, they are destroyed. The remnants of the Company, now led by Croaker as the highest ranked surviving officer, sneak away, taking the not-unwilling Lady with them.
5667438	/m/0dz2__	The Silver Spike	Glen Cook	1989-09	{"/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Dominator was a wizard of immense power who could not be killed by his enemies. He was however defeated and his evil essence imprisoned in a silver spike. The power inherent in the spike is so greatly feared and desired that some try to steal it while others try to keep it from falling into anyone's hands.
5667535	/m/0dz37f	Shadow Games	Glen Cook	1989-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Following the defeat of the Dominator at the Barrowlands, the Black Company is down to just six men; Croaker, physician, annalist, and the newly elected captain, Goblin and One-Eye, company wizards, Otto and Hagop, company veterans, and Murgen, the company standard bearer. The Lady, formerly a powerful sorceress and ruler of the Empire of the North, follows along with the company, despondent as she deals with her newfound mortality. Having decided to journey to Khatovar, the long lost birthplace of the Black Company, the remaining members first travel with the Lady to the Tower at Charm, where the Lady returns the lost annals to Croaker. After relaxing at the Tower for several weeks while the Lady attends to business, Croaker eventually decides to leave without the Lady, arriving at Opal after a couple weeks. Before the Company sets sail across the Sea of Torments, however, the Lady surprises everyone by appearing to join Croaker for a romantic evening, joining them on their journey south. As the Company continues to travel south, they eventually reach the Temple of Traveler's Repose, where they are able to recover several volumes of annals that were lost long ago. Although the annals give insight into much of the Company's history, the annals containing the origin of the Company and the location of Khatovar are still missing. The Company's journey south continues through swamps and jungles, where they arrive at the city of Gea-Xle. Here, the company meets the offspring of previous Company members. The Nar, as they are called, are led by Mogaba, a powerful, athletic soldier who is as capable a leader as he is a soldier. The Nar join with the Company, who is recruited to help disperse pirates who have become a nuisance on the trade routes to the south. After outfitting a barge as a military vessel, the Company with their new recruits travels south along the river, where they encounter the pirates after a few days. The Company easily routes the pirates' first attack, but the pirates return a few days later with a vengeance, as well as with a powerful sorcerer on their side. Although the Company is able to defend the barge from the attacking pirates, the pirate sorcerer is too powerful for One-Eye and Goblin to deal with. When it looks like the battle will turn in favor of the pirates, Croaker confronts Lady about a friend she took on in Gea-Xle, who it turns out is the former Taken Shapeshifter. With Shifter's help, the enemy sorcerer is forced to flee, upon which the Company realizes they were dealing with another former Taken in The Howler. Continuing south, the Company meets two northerners by the names of Willow Swan and Cordy Mather, as well as their friend Blade, who are escorting the Radisha Drah, a noble from the city of Taglios. When the Company reaches Taglios, they are greeted as returning champions by the populace. Croaker, naturally suspicious, meets with the crown prince, the Prahbrindrah Drah, who is in cahoots with Swan and Mather. The Prahbrindrah Drah tries to convince the Company to help them defend Taglios from the invading Shadowmasters, a group of sorcerers from the south that threaten the city. After scouting the area for themselves, Croaker is convinced that the only way to Khatovar is through the Shadowlands, and the Black Company is forced to join forces with the Taglians to try to fight their way through the Shadowlands. After a monumental effort trying to train the Taglians into soldiers, the Black Company wins a couple of dramatic victories over the invading armies of the Shadowmasters, and so the Company presses the attack into the Shadowlands. After arriving at the city of Stormguard (previously Dejagore), the Company encounters another enemy army and the first of the Shadowmasters. While the Company prepares to attack, Croaker and Lady, who have been developing a tenuous relationship throughout the journey south, finally consummate their relationship the night before the attack. The following morning, the Company wins another battle against the enemy armies, and Croaker prepares a trick to enter the city that night. With the ruse working to perfection, the Company storms the castle at Stormguard, where they find Shifter and one of the enemy Shadowmasters tangled in battle. It turns out the Shadowmaster is in fact the Taken called Stormbringer, who was previously thought to have been dead. She and Shapeshifter fight to near-death, and when they are both weakened One-Eye knocks them both unconscious, and then disposes of them both. The following day, another Shadowmaster army approaches from the south, and the Black Company prepares for a final battle to break the last of the Shadowmaster forces. In the ensuing battle, it appears that the Company will eventually win, but the fighting becomes chaotic. During the melee, the Lady is swarmed by opponents, and Croaker, who is shot in the chest by an arrow, is abducted by the former Taken Soulcatcher.
5667675	/m/0dz3k7	Bleak Seasons	Glen Cook	1996-04	{"/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Taking place in part during the events of Dreams of Steel, which was told from the point of view of Lady, this story examines the events surrounding Murgen, who is trapped within the siege of Dejagore where atrocities are being committed by both sides. Also examines events later in Taglios under rule of the Liberator and the increasing tensions between the Black Company and the Radisha, as well as the ever-present threats from the Stranglers and of some new deception by Soulcatcher and the Howler. Bleak Seasons is unique among the Black Company series for the unusual narrative device of Murgen being totally unfixed in time and uncertain of when he will experience another seizure and move between distant past, recent past and a vaguely comprehended present. This narrative device is followed through three-quarters of the novel until we come to understand the traumas that have led Murgen to this point, while the enchantment that has made it possible remains unclear. The tone is introspective, haunted and mysterious. This novel introduces several key elements and characters to the series, including visions of the frozen caverns, Sahra, Uncle Doj, Mother Gota, One-Eye's black spear, and the manipulation of the comatose wizard Smoke.
5667777	/m/0dz3v3	Water Sleeps	Glen Cook	1999-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Cook brings the latest cycle of the Black Company saga to a major climax, as disaster survivors regroup in Taglios and set out to free their fellow warriors held in stasis beneath the glittering plain. They arrive just in time for a magical conflagration that will reveal the bones of the world and the history of the Company. Water Sleeps is set with most of the leadership of the Company in Stasis, while the remaining company fights a guerilla war. The company is both pitted against the last remaining Shadowmaster, Soulcatcher, a Sorceress of epic power, and the subtle machinations of the sleeping Goddess of Death and her Deceivers.
5667805	/m/0dz3wv	Soldiers Live	Glen Cook	2000-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this climactic conclusion to the "Glittering Stone" cycle in the Black Company series, Croaker is former military dictator of all the Taglios, and no Black Company member has died in battle for four years. But with the Company's old adversaries around, who hope to bring about the apocalyptic Year of the Skulls, the Company is brought to the edge of the apocalypse.
5670379	/m/0dz916	Till Death Do Us Part	Lurlene McDaniel	1997-07		 18-year-old April Lancaster, the child of Janice and Hugh Lancaster, enters the hospital for testing as she has been suffering from headaches, blackouts, and eventually passed out in English class. During this time, April becomes acquainted with Mark Gianni, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, and has been in and out of the hospital since he was born. Mark is very interested in April, and even tells her that he intends to marry her, but she declines his offer to go out, as she already has a boyfriend, Chris. April is told by her doctor that she has an inoperable brain tumor, a recurrence of the case she had as a five-year-old, and needs to start radiation treatments. Soon after breaking the news to Chris, he ends their relationship, and April begins to date Mark. Over time, the two fall in love, and Mark proposes to April. She accepts, although her parents aren't thrilled about the match. Eventually, they do reconcile to the idea. Shortly afterward, the car that Mark is driving in during a race (he is an avid racing fan) flips over and ignites. Mark survives the crash, but he develops pneumonia and dies. The book ends with April and her parents in St. Croix for a vacation. April releases a red balloon for Mark, as he had once done for her. The sequel, For Better, For Worse, Forever begins with April in St. Croix.
5670979	/m/0dz9_c	Twilight Watch	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Among us live the Others. They are humans who can enter the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists alongside our real world, and gain unnatural powers from it. As long as they are in the Twilight, Others are drained of their life essence and may be consumed if they remain in it for too long. Others are made up of two distinct groups- the Light Others and Dark Others. A long time ago, the Light and Dark others fought a fierce battle in which neither side could win. In the end, both sides signed a Great Treaty- a set of laws which would govern them and the use of powers. Light Others created Night Watch, to ensure that the Dark Others wouldn't break the Treaty while Dark Others created Day Watch, to watch the Light Others as well. Both sides answer to the Inquisition&mdash;an organisation which ensures that neither of the two sides become too powerful. The book is separated into three novellas: Anton Gorodetsky is assigned by Gesser to investigate mysterious warning letters sent to both the Watches and the Inquisition. In the letters, a powerful Great Light Other promises a human that they will turn him into an 'Other', which the human deeply desires. However, as far as the Others are concerned this is impossible and as such, the Light Other is in danger because refusal to fulfill this human's request means that he or she will dematerialise in the Twilight. Anton is assigned the case and goes to the Assol, a rich district in Moscow where the letters came from. Vampire Kostya Saushkin from the Day Watch has also been assigned to the case, along with Edgar and Vitezislav from the Inquisition. Anton discovers that the human is a 60-year old businessman, the son of Gesser. The four confront Gesser about making the promise to turn his son into an Other but Gesser denies even knowing his son was alive. It is then revealed that his son is a potential Other for whom Gesser claims the right to initiate. It is revealed later in the book that the witch, Arina, used the book of Fuaran to transform Gesser's son into an Other. Anton joins his wife Svetlana (who left the Night Watch), her mother, and their daughter (Nadya) on a vacation in a remote area. Whilst there, he learns an incident where werewolves tried attacked two human children but who were saved by a mysterious woman living in the forest. Anton magically reads the older girl's memory, and notices that she saw a book titled "Fuaran" on the shelf. Anton can hardly believe it, as Fuaran is a legendary and extremely powerful artifact, believed to be lost ages ago or maybe never to have existed at all. According to stories, the book, written by an ancient witch (named Fuaran) contains a spell able to turn an ordinary human into an Other. Anton finds the witch's cottage and the witch, Arina, who turns out to be level 1 or higher, but not Fuaran. Instead, all Anton finds is a book about the legend of Fuaran which is co-authored by Arina. The book explains how Fauran discovered how to raise the power of an Other, and grant a human the powers of an Other. According to the book, the average magical temperature of the world was 97 degrees, while humans had a magical temperature of 97 or higher. Their warmth is fed into their surroundings, while the Others have a magical temperature under 97, and thus soak up the 'warmth' that surrounded them. The lower an Others magical temperature, the more they soaked up. Seventh level Others had a magical temperature of about 90, while Others without Classification where in the 40s. The rarest type of other is one who had no magical temperature at all, a Zero Other, who's power was near limitless due to the fact they only absorbed magic. After a talk with Svetlana, Anton discovers Nadya is an absolute Zero Other. Later, as Anton is relaxing in a hammock, he opens his eyes to find Edgar (an Inquisitor) standing over him. Edgar explains to Anton that Arina was wanted for questioning. In turns out the witch played a major role in a joint Watch experiment to create the perfect socialist state in the 20s. Arina was meant to put a potion in the bread that, over time, would cause whoever ate it to fully believe in newly arising government. Instead, all the subjects were turned quickly to the cause, which lead to the downfall of the government and the death of nearly all the subjects, supposedly due to the Arina's intentional sabotage. Confronted by Anton and Edgar, Arina dives into the fourth level of the twilight, where it takes time before the pair manage to follow her, only to find that she had escaped. Edgar and Anton return to the real world and decide that it would not be smart to search a Higher Others house, as Arina had proven herself to be. Having lost their target, the duo split ways, Edgar to get backup in order to find the witch and Anton to return to his family. Once back home Sveta and Anton learn that while Sveta's mother was out in the forest with their daughter, her 'old friend' took their daughter for a walk. Sveta and Anton knew instantly it was Arina, and through magical means contacted her. The Inquisition had erected a dome to stop the witch from escaping, and she was holding Nadya hostage with demands that they find her a means to escape. After Sveta sends out magical means to search for Nadya, which nearly blew Anton away, and discovers nothing, the werewolves, who had felt Sveta's power and were afraid she would come after them, showed up. It turned out to be a man in his twenties with three children. They admitted having seen where Arina took Nadya and agreed that as long as they were pardoned for hunting those children, they would help track down and fight Arina. In the end, after a battle between Arina and a very angry Sveta, Nadya is saved, and with no deaths. Sveta, who traveled to Arina via the fifth level of the twilight, seemed changed, as though she had a new understanding on life. After forcing Arina to agree not to hurt any human or other unless in self-defense, Sveta agreed to help her find a means to leave. Anton later traveled to Moscow in order to talk to Gesar, at which point Gesar received a phone call, asking him to go to the witches hut, where Anton had only just been. After traveling there with Anton through magical means, they meet Kostya, Edgar, Zabulon and Svetlana. Vitezoslav's ashes have been found in a hidden room with no indication of who could have killed him, except that it would have to be someone powerful, as Vitezoslav was a Higher Vampire. At first, they suspect Arina. However, it soon turns out that the Other who killed Vitezoslav and took the book is Kostya, who himself became a Higher Vampire after drinking a blood cocktail made from donors in order to raise a vampire to this max potential (a mix of blood from 12 donors). Originally, Vitezoslav found the book and phoned Edgar, who didn't believe the vampire had found the actual book of Fuaran. But Kostya wasn't convinced the book was a fake and join Vitezoslav at the hut. The Inquisitor wanted to see if the book actually worked and tried it on Kostya, using his cocktail of a blood mixture made from 12 donors, increasing his powers exponentially, after which Kostya challenged Vitezoslav to a vampire duel. The loser of such a duel is ashed. His ultimate goal is to travel to the International Space Station and read the book while looking at the Earth from orbit (the spell of Fuaran works on everyone in the caster's range of sight), turning all humans into Others, so at last he will not be different from the rest. All but Kostya realize that this will be a disaster - "you step on someone's foot in a tram, he curses at you; now he can incinerate you." Also, what most Others do not realize is that it is, in fact, humans who emit magical energy. The Others absorb it more than they emit, allowing them to use it. The magic level of an Other depends on the absorb/emit ratio. There were several "zero" Others in history: Jesus (Yehoshua), Merlin, and Anton and Svetlana's daughter. Their power is nearly unlimited as all they do is absorb magic. If Kostya manages to turn all humans into Others, the amount of magic energy available will drastically decrease. To demonstrate the effectiveness of "Fuaran" to Anton, he uses it on a human, turning him into a low-level Other. What neither Kostya nor Anton realized at the moment was that Anton was affected too - as he was standing right in front of Kostya - turning him into a mage without classification (Gesser/Zabulon/Sveta's level).Kostya makes it to the Baikonur Cosmodrome and mind-controls the humans there to suit him up for the rocket launch. Anton catches up and confronts him, with Gesar, Zabulon, and Edgar all linked to his mind, and feeding him energy from everyone they have the right to leach it from. Each is telling him to use a different destructive spell on the vampire. They realize that Kostya is not planning to steal a rocket, as not even the Higher Vampire is capable of launching a rocket into orbit by himself. He is instead planning to open a portal to the space station. As a precaution, he is still putting on a spacesuit. However, when Kostya was about to open the portal, Anton took all the energy channeled into him by Gesar, Zabulon, and Edgar and spent it to create a shield around himself in order to shield his thoughts from Kostya. What Anton did not want the vampire to realize was that because Kostya was an Other, an Other without classification to boot, he would not be able to perform any magic in the vast emptiness of space. There would be no energy there from which he could draw on, in space he was separated from the source of all Others energy. Kostya, assuming the shield was put up because Anton was afraid and wanted to protect himself from harm, expressed his surprise at such an act of cowardice and opened the portal. Only when the vampire stepped through it did Anton relax - the threat was over. It takes thousands of calculations to put a rocket into orbit. He knew that Kostya could not possibly calculate the exact position of the station. The portal deposited Kostya into orbit, leaving him to float in his spacesuit, unable to perform any magic. He could not make a corrective teleport into the space station, he could not open a portal back to the planet. He could only remain in orbit as that orbit decayed and he ended up burning up in the atmosphere upon re-entry, along with the book. With the death of Kostya and others in the recent past, The Day Watch in Moscow is down to one Higher Level Magician (Zavulon) while The Night watch in Moscow has four (Gesar/Olga/Sveta/Anton).
5676556	/m/0dzl18	Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors	Piers Paul Read	1974		 :See main article: The crash and rescue Alive tells the story of the Uruguayan Rugby team (who were alumni of Stella Maris College) and their friends and family who were involved in the airplane crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 which crashed into the Andes mountains on Friday, October 13, 1972. Of the 45 people on the flight, only 16 survived, resorting to cannibalism to live. The book was published two years after survivors of the crash were rescued. Read interviewed the survivors and their families for an extensive period of time before writing the book. He comments on this process in the Acknowledgments section: I was given a free hand in writing this book by both the publisher and the sixteen survivors. At times I was tempted to fictionalize certain parts of the story because this might have added to their dramatic impact but in the end I decided that the bare facts were sufficient to sustain the narrative...when I returned in October 1973 to show them the manuscript of this book, some of them were disappointed by my presentation of their story. They felt that the faith and friendship which inspired them in the cordillera do not emerge from these pages. It was never my intention to underestimate these qualities, but perhaps it would be beyond the skill of any writer to express their own appreciation of what they lived through.
5677127	/m/0dzm1x	Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home	Nando Parrado	2006		 :See main article: The crash and rescue Parrado co-wrote the 2006 book Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, with Vince Rause. In Miracle in the Andes, Parrado returns to the events described in Piers Paul Read's 1974 book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (which tells the story of the people, most of whom were part of a Uruguayan rugby team consisting of alumni of Stella Maris College (Montevideo), who were on Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed into the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972). Piers Paul Read's version was published two years after the rescue and was based upon interviews with the survivors. Miracle of the Andes, however, is told from Parrado's point of view 34 years later.
5677867	/m/0dzn9s	The New Centurions	Joseph Wambaugh	1971-01-30	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is basically without plot, instead episodically depicting the psychological changes in three LAPD officers caused by the stresses of police work, and particularly police work in minority communities of Los Angeles. The three officers—Serge Duran, Gus Plebesly, and Roy Fehler—are classmates at the police academy in the summer of 1960, and the novel examines their lives each August of succeeding years, culminating in their on-the-job reunion during the Watts Riot of August 1965. The New Centurions is likely the most autobiographical of Wambaugh's novels and is a straightforward narration of events with little use of flashback. Each chapter is written third-person from the point of view of one of the three protagonists, who realistically have no contact with each other once they graduate from the academy but whose paths are at once both parallel and converging. Like Wambaugh, his protagonists move from a few years of uniformed patrol in minority districts to plain clothes assignments in juvenile and vice work, experiences which so impacted Wambaugh that they appear repeatedly in all his fiction. The significance of this structure is that while Wambaugh began his career writing entirely about police officers, he experimented with method until in his fourth book, The Choirboys, he "found his voice," using satirical black humor in a style he openly attributed to the influence of Joseph Heller but which is entirely absent in The New Centurions, The Blue Knight (first-person fiction), and The Onion Field (non-fiction in a novelistic style). Many of the characters of The New Centurions are the first appearances of police officer character types repeatedly found in Wambaugh's LAPD novels. The atavistic beat officers Andy Kilvinsky and Whitey Duncan can be seen again in Bumper Morgan (The Blue Knight), Spermwhale Whalen (The Choirboys), and Rumpled Ronald (The Delta Star). Serge Duran is Detective Sergeant Mario Villalobos (The Delta Star) as a rookie, and Gus Plebesley working Wilshire Vice is indistinguishable from Harold Bloomguard (The Choirboys) working Wilshire Vice. Roy Fehler has much in common with Baxter Slate (The Choirboys), Sgt. A.M. Valnikov (The Black Marble), and Sgt. Al Mackey (The Glitter Dome). A character type not portrayed in The New Centurions is the brutal street cop. Known in the LAPD vernacular as a "black-glove cop" and epitomized by Roscoe Rules in The Choirboys and The Bad Czech of The Delta Star, Wambaugh only hints at the type in several vignettes. Wambaugh's apparent reluctance to portray police brutality in his first work is balanced however by his frankness in depicting adultery, alcoholism, racism and suicide as rampant in the ranks of the LAPD. Police officer suicide in particular is a theme Wambaugh explores in nearly all of his books. A major theme explored throughout the book is what traits characterize a veteran officer, and how a rookie acquires them. Wambaugh consistently compares the attitudes of the new officers (one is not considered a veteran in the LAPD until one's fifth anniversary on the job) to those of the older entrenched men.
5682433	/m/0dzy1p	Consent to Kill	Vince Flynn	2005-10-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Flynn's previous novel, Memorial Day, CIA counter-terror operative and assassin Mitch Rapp uncovered an Al-Qaeda plot to use a nuclear weapon obtained from abandoned Russian nuclear storage bunkers. The ultimate goal was the destruction of Washington, D.C., and Rapp was forced to torture the only man who knew the details of the plan: Waheed Abdullah. Rapp then faked Waheed's death to prevent the Saudi Government from learning of it and rescuing him, while preserving a useful source for himself. To keep Waheed from being discovered, Rapp puts him in an Afghan prison. However, this plan backfired: Waheed's father, Saeed Ahmed Abdullah, a billionaire Saudi businessman and a jihadist himself, has learned that Rapp has "killed" his son. He places a $20 million dollar bounty on Rapp's head, and a former East German Stasi officer, Erich Abel, begins to hunt Rapp. Abel learns about Saeed and his son through Prince Muhammed bin Rashid, who convinced Saeed to kill Rapp. Abel, through his contacts, encounters two assassins, a husband and wife team, Louie Gould and Claudia Morrell. For $10 million, they agree to kill Rapp. Claudia, who is pregnant, specifically asks Louis not to kill Rapp's wife, as she is also pregnant. He agrees, and leaves for America. In Washington, Rapp is angered by the new Director of National Intelligence, Mark Ross, who authorized surveillance of Rapp's co-worker and friend, former Navy SEAL Scott Coleman. Ross sends the IRS to investigate Coleman and requests Coleman's personnel file from the Navy. Ross has ambitions to the presidency and views his current position as a stepping stone to the White House. He has no respect for Rapp because of Rapp's reckless antics and, despite Rapp's contributions, wants to fire him. Rapp decides to visit Ross to stop his investigation of Coleman, but he loses his famous temper when he finds a satellite photo of Coleman and discovers his friend was a topic of interest. He physically holds the National Security adviser by the collar and slapped him with a folder holding Coleman's files, to the shock of his aid. Rapp warns him not to interfere with the War on Terror. His words fall on deaf ears, though, and Ross decides that he must fire Rapp; since the latter has the president's full support, he decides he has to do it carefully. Later Rapp injuries his left knee during a morning jog, and encounters the assassins Gould and Claudia, both dressed as bicyclists, examining his house. Rapp doesn't suspect anything and continues limping back towards his house. The next day, Rapp undergoes arthroscopic knee surgery. He and his wife Anna come home and as they settle down in their house, Louie detonates a bomb that kills Anna and throws a severely wounded Rapp into Cheasepeake Bay where he was saved by a nearby boater. The CIA fakes Rapp's death and brought him to a safehouse to recuperate. In a secret meeting with Irene Kennedy, Director of CIA, President Hayes tells Kennedy that Rapp has his consent to kill any and all people involved in the murder of his wife. Rashid, who is visiting U.S., finds out through Ross that Rapp is not yet dead and orders his assistant Saudi intelligence agent Nawaf Tayyib to kill Rapp and Abel. Tayib hires Latino gang leader Anibal Castillo to kill Rapp at the safehouse. He then goes hunting for Abel himself with two of his men. Castillo and thirteen of his men attack the safehouse. Rapp kills all of Castillo's men, then wounds Castillo and brings him in to be questioned. Through different leads Rapp discovers Saeed as the one who put a bounty on his head. Rapp goes to Afghanistan and gets Waheed out of prison with Waheed being under the impression that it is a hostage exchange. Rapp has Waheed wear a vest full of explosives. As Waheed embraces his father in the street, Rapp pulls out a detonator and blows Saeed and Waheed and twelve of Saeed's bodyguards to pieces. The CIA in the meantime has found out about Erich Abel's role in hiring the assassins and sends Rapp to Abel's office. There Rapp finds Tayyib torturing Abel's secretary for information on Abel's whereabouts. Rapp kills Tayyib's men, then he and Coleman capture Tayyib. A guilty Claudia is revealed to be the one who gave the CIA information on Abel. Abel's secretary reveals to Rapp and Coleman that Abel is in Austria. Rapp flies there and captures Abel at his mountain retreat and tortures him for information. Abel reveals that Rashid was the mastermind behind the plot. He also gives information on the assassins. After hearing this, Rapp, who has become much more violent after the killing of his wife, burns Abel alive inside the house. He then travels to Spain where Rashid is staying. There Coleman bribes Rashid's guards, who are British SAS sympathetic to Rapp, to let them in. Rapp completely covers Tayyib with explosives and drops him off in front of the mosque where Rashid is staying. Once Rashid's personal guards have him in custody, Rapp detonates Tayyib's body, killing him and all the guards. Rapp finds Rashid and beats him severely before he puts a thermal grenade in his mouth and pulls the pin, melting Rashid's head. In the epilogue, set nine months later, Rapp trails Louie and Claudia to Tahiti. Claudia has had her baby and Louie has retired. Rapp aims a gun at Louie Gould's head, but once he hears that the baby was named after his wife, he realizes she would not want her death avenged like this. He turns and leaves Louie, Claudia, and Anna unharmed. He then throws the gun into the ocean and continues walking down the boardwalk outside.
5685680	/m/0d_28v	Faery in Shadow	C. J. Cherryh	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Caith mac Sliabhin, condemned by the Sidhe in The Brothers for committing patricide, wanders along the river Guagach, accompanied and tormented by Dubhain, a mischievous pooka. Their journey takes them to Gleann Fiain where a beast from the river chases Caith up a hill to an isolated cottage. The occupants, twins Ceannann and Firinne, let Caith and Dubhain in and allow them to spend the night. Unbeknown to Caith, the birth of the twins 21 years ago set in motion a sequence of events that damned Gleann Fiain and cast a shadow over Faery. The twins were born to Fianna, queen of Gleann Fiain in Dun Glas. But unbeknown to her husband, Ceannann mac Ceannann, Fianna was unable to conceive and had sought help from a wise-women, Moragacht. Moragacht struck a bargain with her, promising her twins if she lay down with a selkie, in exchange for one of the twins when they were born. But when the twins arrived (a human and a selkie) and Moragacht came to claim one of them, Fianna denied any knowledge of her, and mac Ceannann turned Moragacht away. From that day onwards, grief and misery struck the family, and mac Ceannann and Fianna were forced to vacate Dun Glas and flee with the twins to an abandoned hilltop fortress. But the loch beast, under Moragacht's control, found them there and killed them all, except the twins, now aged 14, who escaped to the cottage. The witch then seized control of Dun Glas from where she damned all of Gleann Fiain. But the wards that had protected the cottage from Moragacht fall when Caith and Dubhain arrive. Riders from Dun Glas come and capture the twins. Caith and Dubhain (as a horse) give chase, but as they approach the riders, Dubhain is overcome by the witch's magic and falls into the loch, abandoning Caith. Caith and the twins are taken to Dun Glas where they are locked in cells bordering the loch. Caith lapses into a dream where he enters the loch to find Dubhain duelling with the loch beast. He draws Dubhain back to his cell, who in turn calls Nuallan from Faery, the bright Sidhe controlling their destinies. Nuallan gives Caith a silver key to unlock the iron cells and so lifts a spell enabling Nuallan to cast Caith, Dubhain and the twins out of Dun Glas. Moragacht allows her prisoners to escape because with her magic she now holds Nuallan, a bigger catch and her means to controlling Faery. The twins lead Caith and Dubhain to the ruins of the hilltop fortress, their former home. There they make a fire with the remains of a staircase, but a ghost appears out of the smoke that transports Caith back to the night of the fall of the fortress and into the body of Padraic, head of mac Ceannann's household. There he relives the last few hours of the family until he is killed by the beast. Firinne retrieves one of the burning timbers from the fire as a keepsake, and the twins set off for the sea to search for their selkie father, with Caith and Dubhain in pursuit. Caith finds the selkie first, a whale floundering on the beach. But when the selkie shapeshifts to a man, he is killed by one of Moragacht's pursuing riders. In the ensuing confusion, Caith accidentally kills Ceannann. Firinne is devastated by the loss of her twin brother and gives Caith her keepsake from the fortress. Then, revealing her selkie birth, she changes into a whale and heads out to sea. Caith rides Dubhain back to Dun Glas to free Nuallan. Once again Dubhain is weakened by the witch's spells and Caith has to enter the keep on his own. He sees Nuallan helpless in his cell, but Nuallan asks him to unlock it with the silver key Caith unknowingly still had all this time, the key that would have given Moragacht access to Faery. Nuallan takes the key and flees the keep, leaving Caith to fend for himself. Moragacht, furious at the loss of the Sidhe, prepares to deal with Caith, but he throws the charred piece of wood Firinne gave him into the fireplace which releases Padraic, the ghost from the hilltop fortress. In an act of revenge, it begins destroying Dun Glas and all in it. With the witch's spell now diminishing, Dubhain rescues Caith from the keep, while in the loch a whale from the sea turns on the beast. The shadow over Faery lifts and Caith and Dubhain resume their travels.
5688754	/m/0d_6bv	Trail of the Black Wyrm	Chris Pierson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Shedara, Forlo, and Hult, prepare to leave Coldhope Keep, but are attacked by shadow-fiends. The shadow-fiends outnumber them, and are losing as well as badly injured. Luckily, Eldako shows up and manages to kill the rest of the shadow-fiends. They decide to stay in Coldhope Keep until they recover. Later, the Fourth Legion of the Imperial League arrives, intent on arresting Forlo for desertion. Forlo claims he didn't desert, but they are still determined to arrest. Eldako and Shedara manage to escape via a magic levitation spell, by jumping down a cliff. However, Hult is afraid of magic, so he didn't manage to escape. Forlo didn't want the Fourth Legion to capture just Hult, as they would torture him since they wouldn't get himself, so he stayed with Hult and was arrested too. Hult and Forlo are taken back to the capital, Kristophan, and since Eldako and Shedara can't overpower so many minotaurs, they travel back to Armach-nesti to see if they can get help. At the same time, Essana is in the jungles of Neron, and held captive by the Brethren who are trying to resurrect Maladar. The faces of the Brethren are scarred, and hidden behind hoods, just like Maladar. They want to resurrect Maladar because they believe that Taladas is declining due to war, famine, etc., and that Maladar will reestablish the empire of Aurim, bringing peace and prosperity. There are six of the Faceless Brethren; the Keeper, the Master, the Teacher, the Slayer, the Watcher, and the Speaker. She later learns that the Keeper is secretly a spy for the kings of the Rainward Isles. She is forced to watch them sacrifice elves of the jungle to Maladar. Meanwhile, the scenario in Armach-nesti is even worse. Thousands of shadow-fiends have invaded the woods, and the elves are hard-pressed to keep them back. The city has been overrun, and it's basically a melee. She discovers that her brother only has sixty elves total in his force, but he still manages to spare some to help rescue Forlo and Hult. Since Forlo "deserted", he's brought to Rekhaz, who is now the Emperor of the Imperial League. Rekhaz has no pity for Forlo, and declares his life forfeit. Forlo manages to call on his Imperial right of dueling in the arena, and so he and Hult are sent to fight a horax, and begin to lose soon after. Shedara, Eldako, and the elves of Armach-nesti manage to sneak into Kristophan, rescue Forlo and Hult, and escape. Forlo kills Rekhaz in cold blood on the streets of Armach-nesti. The elves of Armach-nesti gives Hult a magical pendant of language, so that he can understand what other people are saying. Now reunited, they head north to the snowy fields of Panak, where they search for the Wyrm-Namer, a dragon that can name other dragons. They arrive in Panak on a magical elven boat, and quickly meet the Wolf-clan, a friendly clan that Eldako has lived with before. On their way to the clan village, they are beset by a snow storm, and pursued by the Eyes, which are almost invulnerable evil creatures that kill any that venture into the snow storms. However, they can be held at bay by statues of the Patient Folk. They arrive at the Wolf-clan's village, and meet the seer, Tulukaruk. Tulukaruk lets a spirit-wolf take control of his body to communicate with them. They learn that the spirit-wolf will only tell them where and how to find the Wyrm-Namer only if they will agree to kill it when they're done. Forced with no choice, they agree. Angusuk, the lead hunter of the tribe leads them to the mountain of the Wyrm-Namer, where Hult uses his magical pendant to communicate with the snow-ogres that guard his lair. They entire the Namer's lair, and discover that he's dying. Before he dies, he manages to tell them the name of the dragon, Gloomwing, who lives in the valleys of Marak, home of the kender. They head back to the village and discover that the shadow-fiends had massacred everyone there, and toppled the statues of the Patient Folk. They notice that some hunters may have escaped, so Angusuk decides to stay and look for the rest of his tribe. Shedara, Hult, Eldako, and Forlo head for Marak. Essana and the Keeper attempt to escape through a tunnel, and Essana begins to miscarriage in the tunnel. They manage to exit the tunnel and get to the rendezvous point with the elves, although they are ambushed. Essana faints, and when she wakes up she discovers that she is chained. The Master shows her what happened to the Keeper, he's mutilated, and is being kept alive by a magic spell. Meanwhile, the four arrive in Marak, and discover that Gloomwing left, though the kender are nearing extinction because the shadow-fiends capture kender, and take them to the Teacher, who arrives when the black moon is full to turn them into more shadow-fiends. Luckily (or unluckily), the black moon was full that night, so they attempt to ambush the Teacher. They capture him, and question him. After that, they desire revenge, so they kill him. After that, they sail to Neron, and as soon as they arrive, Gloomwing decides to "meet" them. The four notice that the elves were gathering in the woods preparing to ambush Gloomwing, so Eldako decides to be a "dummy" for Gloomwing. Gloomwing dives at Eldako and breathes acid at him, and at the last second Eldako falls into the water. The elves meanwhile kill Gloomwing. They search for Eldako until it is dark, and are forced to leave and head for the elven village because mind flayers patrol the woods after dark. They meet the oldest elf in the village, the Grandmother. Grandmother tells them that a prophecy foretold that two humans and two elves would destroy the Brethren. She notices that they are missing Eldako, so she scries for him. They find out that the mind flayers captured Eldako, and that he was badly hurt by the dragon's acid. Eldako's right eye was gone, and his vision in his left eye is cloudy. His skin was melted by the acid, and his right leg was the only part of him untouched by the acid. They rescue him, and they assault the temple of Maladar. They manage to kill the Brethren, and Eldako manages to kill the Master by jumping to his death with the Master. They rescue Essana and Azar, Essana's son, who is already eighteen due to age altering magic. However, instead of Maladar taking over Azar, he accidentally manages to take control of Forlo, and he escapes to the Burning Sea where he will try to resurrect Aurim.
5689764	/m/0d_826	Brothers of Earth	C. J. Cherryh	1976-10-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The protagonist of the book is Kurt Morgan, a crewman on the Alliance ship Endymion, which was destroyed in a space battle with Hanan forces. Morgan evacuates the ship and lands on an alien planet, home of the Nemet race. Morgan is rescued by one faction of the Nemet and becomes embroiled in their political and military struggles. Morgan is not the first human stranded on the planet, however. His encounters with a previous female human castaway endanger the entire Nemet race when she reacts badly and threatens to unleash weapons of mass destruction on the planet.
5689837	/m/0d_8b4	Hunter of Worlds	C. J. Cherryh	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the story, a ship belonging to a terrifyingly dominant space-faring race, the iduve, arrives at a space station. They demand that a particular station resident, a blue-skinned Kallian, be sent to their ship and all record of him be erased. No defiance is possible or the space station will be destroyed. The human-like Kallian is handed over to the iduve who mind-link him to two other human prisoners, forcing him to service his captors on three levels.
5691705	/m/0d_cs8	Sara Payne: A Mother's Story		2004	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 The autobiography covers the abduction and murder of her daughter Sarah on 1 July 2000, and the effects that it had on herself, her family and the community. The first chapter of the book tells the story of Payne's life from 1985 and the age of 16, when shortly after leaving school she met her future husband Michael, and up to the stage when she had given birth to four of her five children. The following two chapters tell of Sarah's disappearance and then of the news that her body had been found. Further into the story, Sara tells of her campaigning for the introduction of Sarah's Law - and of how Mike confessed to her that he had paid for a gun and was preparing to shoot suspect Roy Whiting if he managed to avoid conviction for Sarah's murder. Whiting was eventually brought to trial, found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2001. Later on, just over a year after Whiting's trial, Payne discovered that she was pregnant. At first she was apprehensive about having another baby, but eventually decided to go ahead with her pregnancy. But this happy news did little to relieve the dark clouds that had been hanging over the Payne family since Sarah's death, and she and Michael agreed to separate four months before their baby's birth, although they remained good friends and were hoping that they might one day be able to live together again. The final chapter of the book tells of Sara giving birth to her fifth child, Ellie. She tells the reader that Ellie's birth gave the family new hope and some much-awaited happiness after more than three years of misery.
5693089	/m/0d_g7s	Two Weeks with the Queen	Morris Gleitzman	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An Australian family, struggling with the recent recession are finding it hard with money. While spending one evening watching television, their youngest oand speaks to a doctor who refuses to help, which discourages Colin. He walks out to the lobby where he meets a Welsh man named Ted crying, claiming that his friend also has cancer. Colin attempts to cheer him up, so in appreciation, Ted requests Colin that they meet up again so Ted can introduce Colin to one of the world's leading cancer experts. Colin meets Ted and Doctor Graham the next day, where Doctor Graham tells Colin that she called up Luke's doctors in Sydney. She then informs Colin that Luke's cancer is terminal and incurable. Colin storms back to his Aunt's house distraught, where Alistair gives Colin the idea that South America may provide an unknown cure for Luke's cancer. Colin convinces Alistair to join him to stowaway on a cargo ship to South America the next day, until Colin tells Alistair that he used his pocket-knife to slash a group of doctors cars and that Ted caught him. Alistair tells Colin that Ted will be blamed for this, so Colin decides to delay their trip to South America, so he can go see Ted the next day. Colin goes to visit Ted at his home and finds that he has been moderately injured. Ted tells him that he was beaten by people in the street who disliked him because he is a homosexual. He then tells Colin that his friend dying of cancer is instead his lover, Griff, who is dying of AIDS. Ted is unable to walk, so Colin promises to visit Griff for him. Colin goes to the hospital and meets Griff, bringing him a letter from Ted and Griff's favourite food, tangarines. After enjoying a conversation with Colin, Griff requests Colin that he come to visit him again. After Griff is taken back to his ward by a nurse, Colin finds a spare wheelchair in the hospital which he takes back to Ted's house. Colin then takes Ted to the hospital to see Griff using the wheelchair and the couple thank Colin greatly for reuniting them. A while later, when Ted can walk again, Colin goes to visit the couple in the hospital, but upon arrival, finds that Griff has died. When Colin arrives home, Aunt Iris tells Colin that she found out everything from Alistair. They are both sentenced to having only cold baked beans for dinner, and the house is made much harder to sneak out of. Colin gives up on his South America plan and decides to accept Luke's fate. He requests to Aunt Iris that he go back to his family, but she forbids it, telling him that breaking out will not help either, because they will not allow him on the plane with his return ticket unless he is seen off by an adult guardian. The next morning, with much difficulty, Colin sneaks out of the house and meets Ted at the airport. Ted signs Colin's forms and they say their goodbyes. After Ted leaves, Colin is about to board the plane until Aunt Iris, Uncle Bob and Alistair show up. Iris and Bob try to take him back home, but Alistair shouts up, convincing them to let Colin go back to Australia. They see him off, and Colin travels back to Sydney to see Luke. The story ends with Luke waking up, happily seeing Colin.
5695657	/m/0d_ljq	Tactics of Mistake	Gordon R. Dickson	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lieutenant Colonel Cletus Grahame has been an instructor at the Western Alliance military academy since a battle injury crippled one of his knees, and forced his retirement from active duty. He has completed three volumes of a planned twenty-volume series of books on military strategy and tactics, and believes his analysis can revolutionize military science, although many do not take his work seriously. Feeling he needs to get out in the field and try putting his theories into practice, he leaves the academy and arranges to be sent to the world of Kultis, where the Alliance is supporting the Exotic colony of Bakhalla in a war against the neighboring colony of Neuland, backed by the Coalition. The heart of his military strategy, based in part on fencing, is what he labels the "tactics of mistake," enticing one's opponent into overreaching, and being ready to take advantage of the mistake. This description is an adaptation of a similar concept in the novel Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini when the character Moreau studies at the salon of the Master of Arms. On the first night out on the ship to Kultis, he deliberately antagonizes Dow deCastries, Secretary of Outworld Affairs for the Eastern Coalition, forcing deCastries to take notice of him. He also meets Colonel Eachan Khan, an officer of the Dorsai troops who have been hired by the Exotics, and Khan's daughter Melissa. Mondar, an Exotic official, is also present, and takes notice of Grahame. Putting his theories to work, Grahame repeatedly entices deCastries and the Neulanders into attempting incursions, where he is ready to pounce on them. Finally, after conveniently getting his own uncooperative commander out of the way, he entices them to launch a major invasion. Using the Dorsai troops, who had been underestimated and little-used by the Alliance command, he actually wins the war, handing deCastries a humiliating defeat. His victory has actually made him rather unpopular with his own command. Mondar, using the Exotic science of ontogenetics, recognizes him as a key mover of history, and tries to recruit him to join the Exotics, but he chooses instead to emigrate to the Dorsai, in order to begin building them into the kind of military force he envisions. It seems he possesses some of the advanced mental abilities of the Exotics, and with their help, he is able to heal his crippled knee. Melissa wants her father to return to Earth, and the General's rank he had enjoyed in the Western Alliance, and to do so, she needs the influence of deCastries. Grahame forces Melissa to marry him to prevent Eachan's departure, as he feels Eachan is necessary to his plans. Over the course of years, Grahame builds the Dorsai into the unique fighting force that becomes so famous in later years. With their advanced training and superior tactics, they can defeat larger forces and suffer far fewer casualties than any others, making them far more economical for other worlds to hire. Gradually, they reach a status where other worlds no longer need to depend on Earth for fighting forces to protect them, threatening Earth's control of the younger worlds through its system of client states. To prevent this loss of position, the two Earth factions, the Western Alliance and Eastern Coalition, unite their forces under deCastries, and attempt to stretch the Dorsai forces so thin that they will be conquered. When Earth invades the Dorsai, there are no soldiers to defend it, but deCastries underestimates the power of the Dorsai people themselves. The final result leads to a totally new balance of power among the settled worlds. (The actual battle for the Dorsai itself is given little coverage in this book. The ultimate battle for Foralie district, Grahame's home, ends up being between deCastries and Amanda Morgan, a woman in her late nineties who leads the home defense. In the novella, "Amanda Morgan", she is used as the ultimate example of the spirit of Dorsai.)
5697849	/m/0d_qf1	His Master's Voice	Stanisław Lem	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/06m9m8": "Social science fiction"}	 The novel is written as a first-person narrative, the memoir of a mathematician named Peter Hogarth, who becomes involved in a Pentagon-directed project (code-named "His Master's Voice", or HMV for short) in the Nevada desert, where scientists are working to decode what seems to be a message from outer space (specifically, a neutrino signal from the Canis Minor constellation). Throughout the book Hogarth — or rather, Lem himself — exposes the reader to many debates merging cosmology and philosophy: from discussions of epistemology, systems theory, information theory and probability, through the idea of evolutionary biology and the possible form and motives of extraterrestrial intelligence, with digressions about ethics in military-sponsored research, to the limitations of human science constrained by the human nature subconsciously projecting itself into the analysis of any unknown subject. At some point the involved scientists, desperate for new ideas, even begin to read and discuss popular science-fiction stories, and Lem uses this opportunity to criticize the science fiction genre, as Hogarth soon becomes bored and disillusioned by monotonous plots and the unimaginative stories of pulp magazines. Acting on Hogarth's suggestion that the signal may be a mathematical description of an object (possibly a molecule), the scientists are able to use part of the data to synthesize a substance with unusual properties. Two variations are created: a glutinous liquid nicknamed "Frog Eggs" and a more solid version that looks like a slab of red meat called "Lord of the Flies" (named for its strange agitating effect on insects brought into proximity with it, rather than for the allegorical meaning of the name). There is some speculation that the signal may actually be a genome and that "Frog Eggs" and "Lord of the Flies" may be a form of protoplasm; possibly that of the alien creatures that presumably sent the signal. This theory, like all the project's theories about the signal, turns out to be unverifiable. For a short time, Hogarth suspects that the message may have a military use, and is faced with an ethical dilemma about whether and how to pursue this angle. "Frog eggs" seems to enable an effortless and instantaneous transportation of an atomic blast to a remote location, which would make deterrence impossible. Hogarth and the discoverer of the effect decide to conduct further research in secret before notifying the military. Eventually, they conclude that there is no military use after all (which Hogarth sees as a proof of the Senders' far-sightedness), since the uncertainty of the blast location increases with distance. The two scientists face ostracism from their colleagues, some of whom consider their conduct unpatriotic. Some of the scientists pursue a theory that the neutrino signal might have had the effect of increasing the likelihood that life would develop on the planet eons ago. They are forced to consider whether alien beings sent the signal for this very reason. In the end, there are no certain answers. There is much speculation about the nature of whatever alien beings might have sent the signal. They must have been technologically superior, but no one can be sure whether they were virtuous or evil. Indeed, as the signal must have been sent long ago, no one can be sure whether they still exist. The theories the scientists come up with all seem to make some progress toward deciphering the signal; however, as we are informed in the very few first pages of Hogarth's memoirs, for all their effort, the scientists are left with few new, real discoveries. By the time the project is ended, they are no more sure than they were in the beginning about whether the signal was a message from intelligent beings that humanity failed to decipher, or a random, cosmic background noise that resembled, for a while, the "thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters creating a meaningful message" puzzle. In the end, the many theories about the signal and the beings who might have sent it say more about the scientists (and humanity) than about the signal (and the beings who might have sent it). The comparison between the signal and a Rorschach test is made more than once.
5698295	/m/025tl2s	Gil's All Fright Diner	A. Lee Martinez	2005-04-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the backwoods southern town of Rockwood, a vampire and a werewolf in a run-down old truck come across Gil's All Night Diner, a 24-hour restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Nearly run out of gas, they stop in at the diner only to discover it is the target of zombie attacks, hauntings, and occult activity. The manager of the diner, Loretta, offers them a job helping her out around the diner, and maybe help solve her zombie problem. In exchange, she'll give them money to help them on their way. They accept.
5699509	/m/0d_ty_	The Armageddon Inheritance	David Weber		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 After the events of Mutineers' Moon, the evil mutineer Anu has been defeated by the warship Dahak, aided by its new captain, Colin MacIntyre. As the highest-ranking officer of the Imperium present, MacIntyre had elevated himself to the rank of "Governor of Earth" in order to absolve the loyalist mutineers of their crimes; he then unified the worlds' governments under his authority (backed up by his advanced Imperial armaments and Dahak) and set Horus the task of preparing defenses against the Achuultani scouts, which have been methodically advancing on the Sol system, to the heralds of self-destructing Imperial sensor arrays- giving the frantic defenders under Lieutenant Governor Horus and his assistant, Gerald Hatcher, barely two years to pacify the holdouts to the new world order (such as the Asian Alliance), to modernize the world economy, construct and power a planetary defense shield, as well as construct and train a space fleet and the fortresses on the ground which will support the fleet; and then of course to defeat both the scouts and the main Achuultani incursion. The primary holdout to the military government is the Asian Alliance, a close knit group of all Asian nations except Japan and the Philippines. It is effectively controlled by a Marshal Tsien Tao-ling. who is convinced to join by the obvious military imbalance (the moon having disappeared, and several Middle Eastern nations forcibly disarmed by Imperium technology-equipped troops) and by the promise of considerable local autonomy and control of four seats on the nine-person council advising Horus. Regardless, the military programs soon get underway. To withstand the Siege (as the coming attack on Earth is named) the Earth's defenses consists of front line spaceships, constructed by "orbital industrial units" left behind by Dahak (clanking replicators, in other words); a planetary shield powered by a core tap; and all backed up by numerous hypermissile launchers built into "Planetary Defense Centers" (topped-off and excavated mountains). In the meantime, Colin and his new wife, Jiltanith (daughter of Horus), take Dahak and depart for the nearest known Imperial system to seek military aid from the Imperium; little is expected to come of this quest, as Dahak had been attempting to contact the Imperium via his FTL "hypercom", but failing completely. The first system they arrive at, the Sheskar system, is devoid of life, its inhabited planet shattered to pieces in what apparently was a civil war using gravity warping implosive "gravitonic warheads". Even worse, the system had not been reclaimed by the Imperium as it should have (due to its strategically vital location). Reluctantly, they proceed to Defram, where they find merely two barren orbs. Their next target the planet Keerah in the Kano system; they reason that Defram was simply a Fleet base, and so perhaps a civilian system would have more answers or life. In Keerah, they are attacked by an automated quarantine orbital system; after disabling it, Colin and his crew discover that the dead planet had fallen victim to a horrific biological warfare agent designed to be effective against all forms of life (by rapidly mutating until a successfully lethal form is obtained), which spread throughout the entire Empire (the form of government having changed in the ensuing thousands of years) too quickly to be contained, thanks to widespread use of a teleportation (or "mat-trans" as it was known) device. Colin makes the fateful decision to go straight to the Bia system and the planet Birhat- the military and political centers of the Empire. This decision means that it would be impossible for them to return to Earth in time to help defeat the scouts. At Birhat, they discover an enormous number of installations in the system, such as a shield which protects not merely the planet of Birhat, but the entire inner system. After successfully picking his way through the perilous labyrinth of "Mother"'s (the master computer overseeing the Fleet and the Bia system) emergency programming, Colin resorts to ordering Mother to implement "Case Omega"- an order which unbeknownst to him, appoints the senior surviving Fleet official and civil servant as Emperor. This unexpected elevation has the happy side effect of granting Colin control of the Imperial Guard Flotilla, 78 planetoids, each vastly more powerful than Dahak (but also vastly stupider). The crew of Dahak immediately set to work reactivating and repairing the planetoids so they can return to Earth. Book 2 begins with a different point of view; the subject is now a minor Achuultani tactical officer named Brashieel, attached to the scout forces about to drop out of hyperspace and destroy Earth. However, the Achuultani warships are extremely slow in hyperspace, and the Earth defenders use their several hours of advance notice to prepare an ambush in the outer system. The ambush, while successful (because of the element of surprise and the generally superior Imperial technology), nevertheless sets the tone for the rest of the Siege by being extremely bloody on both sides. During the months that Colin's crew in Birhat labor to get the Imperial Guard up and running, the scouts duel the Earth forces, hurling asteroid after asteroid at the shield while whittling down the fortresses and ships, all in preparation for their final blow: hurling the entire moon of Iapetus down the gravity well of Sol at high speed, and aimed directly at Earth. Seven months after the first battle, the "Hoof" (as the Achuultani term their immense kinetic weapon) is about to impact Earth, piercing through the weakened defenders "like a bullet through "butter". At the last moment, the Imperial Guard arrives and as they drop out of hyperspace, blasts the Achuultani escort and the moon into dust using gargantuan gravitonic warheads. Unfortunately, all is not well. Dahak recovers from some wreckage computer records about the main Achuultani force: some 3 million vessels more powerful than the scouting vessels, intended to back up the various scout forces. Somewhat fortunately, this invincible force has divided up into at least two fleets, and so Colin develops a plan to exploit the Enchanach Drive's moderate side effect of accidentally causing stars to go nova (due to the gravitonic sheer stress of drive activation). With the Imperial Guard, they lay an ambush for the first fleet, having intercepted its courier, and lure it into an otherwise unremarkable star system. There they briefly engage the Achuultani (to ensure they are sucked far enough into the system, past the hyperlimit that they cannot escape, and to gather some more military information); the opposing fleet's having stepped into Colin's "mousetrap", the Enchanach Drives of 8 planetoids simultaneously activate, inducing a supernova which obliterates Sorkar's forces. The second trap does not go as well. Like in the first, the Guard ambushes the second force (this time laying a dense field of hypermines, which account for a quarter of the million Achuultani vessels), but some of Sorkar's couriers had escaped and warned Hothan's fleet of the nova trap, so that stratagem was unusable. Instead, Colin traps Hothan's forces in normal space (again, using the Enchanach Drive's side effect to exploit the hyperdrive's limitation of being unable to work in a sufficiently deep gravity well). With a good deal of luck and a well-timed planetoid assault on the flank, the Achuultani command structure disintegrates and they are routed. Once again, Colin's forces are elated by their success and what they believe to be a crushing victory ending the Achuultani "Great Visit", and once again Dahak discovers ominous news in the wreckage of the Achuultani command ship: the final segment of 200,000 vessels much, more capable than the previous ones, had been held in reserve, and would shortly attack Earth (they having deduced its location from the timing of Colin's attacks) if the Guard did not stop them. The odds are against their depleted, battered ships lacking fresh supplies of hypermines, but they have little choice. The battle goes poorly, and they win thanks only to a suicide plunge by Dahak, in which Dahak hacks into and kills the computer truly in charge of the Great Visit. This is so effective because it had been previously discovered that the explanation for the various Achuultani anomalies (their lack of females, the oddly inconsistent state and stasis of their technology, their constant war making and hyper-xenophobia etc.) was that their civilization had been decimated millions of years ago, and they had entrusted the survival of their species to a computer roughly the equal of Dahak. That computer turned out to have the personality flaw of ambition, and deliberately perpetuated the state of war it needed to justify to its programming its continued tyrannical control. With the death of Dahak and BattleComp, the Achuultani fleet panicks, flees, and is destroyed or captured. As it turns out, Dahak had successfully copied himself to another planetoid, and that is not all: from Earth, a message arrives that Isis Tudor had decoded enough of the Achuultani genetic structure for an eventual prospect of cloning a female Achuultani- the first free female for millions of years. Against this hopeful note and the prospect of a war of liberation to free the rest of the Achuultani from the control of the master computer, the novel ends.
5699799	/m/0d_vf4	After Dachau	Daniel Quinn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story is narrated by a young rich man, heir to a huge sum of money. He devotes his life to an organization called "We Live Again" which investigates the reality of reincarnation. People have souls that pass on to other individuals and give them their memories, usually alongside, but sometimes in place of their own memories. The story focuses on Mallory Gabus, a recently reincarnated woman and her fascinating integration into the new world. She recalls and narrates her experiences and memories of Hitler's victory, which allowed Hitler to bring his desire for an "Aryan" world to fruition. She realizes all that went wrong. The Nazis had won World War II and purged their empire of all non-whites, then rewrote history so as to say that Dachau, a concentration camp, was instead a battle with Adolf Hitler as its hero. After Hitler's victory, the Third Reich is solely Aryan, the Aryans have killed all non-Aryans in their new empire. They now use A.D. to refer to After Dachau, the turning point in their civilization, and A.D.-A.D. to refer to our A.D. Mallory was (re-)born in 1922 A.D.-A.D. as an Afro-American female in New York. We find out that the Nazi purges in the Third Reich have started to have a cultural effect on America, and soon Jews are being executed. Blacks are being "repatriated", which turns out to mean: put into concentration camps. Mallory, hides out with her lover in the N.Y. underground and makes a life until their hiding place is discovered by police. At that point, they commit suicide rather than being taken alive or executed. The narrator, in an attempt to publicize the story and the atrocities the Aryans committed, contacts a newspaper and other news media. His investigation gets him sequestered in an unknown location until he can write three words upon a chalkboard. The words turn out to be "No One Cares", and, as it turns out, no one does. The narrator explains that he cares, and he doesn't care if others don't care, he is still going to pursue this for his own personal interest. He opens an exhibit displaying relics from the old world, including works by Jewish authors such as Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. The narrator receives a gift from his "uncle" (the man who imprisoned him), and expresses his intent to publish the gift. He opens a shop where he displays pictures of Africans that had been saved in Mallory's hideout. Finally, one night, someone throws a brick through the gallery's windows, prompting the narrator to conclude that somebody "does care". The last line reveals that the gift is the diary of a young girl written during World War II, the Diary of Anne Frank.
5701145	/m/0d_xck	Hestia	C. J. Cherryh	1979-09-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Engineer Sam Merrit has been sent to the planet Hestia to build a dam. The colonists believe that a dam will enable them to expand beyond their single river valley and escape the squalid conditions that have persisted there since the founding of the colony over a hundred years ago. Upon arrival Merrit finds that, in his professional judgment, a dam will not solve the colony's problems, and the construction of the dam will force the relocation of many of the cat-like alien natives as the reservoir fills. However, having made the years-long sublight journey to Hestia at great personal inconvenience, he is reluctant to return home without accomplishing anything. From the start, he has little patience for the colonists' blame-shifting attitude, and as he becomes familiar with one of the alien women, Merrit becomes increasingly convinced that destroying the alien culture by building the dam is not an acceptable option.
5703221	/m/0f0017	I, Lucifer	Glen Duncan	2003-01-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In I, Lucifer, God presents the devil with a chance of redemption by living a somewhat sinless life in a human body. Lucifer, not wanting redemption, takes God’s offer for a trial but instead takes it as a month's holiday. This story takes place in London and Lucifer lives in the body of Declan Gunn (an anagram of "Glen Duncan", the author's name), formerly a struggling writer who is suicidal. While in Declan’s body, Lucifer takes his body for granted and abuses drugs, alcohol, and sex. Not only does Lucifer still live a devilish life, but also he starts to realize what being a human is really like. He realizes there is so much going on in their lives and so much temptation, and people can’t simply do whatever they please. As Lucifer’s trial is coming to an end, he receives a visit from the angel, Raphael, in an attempt to help Lucifer head in the right direction. Raphael tells him the world is going to end so there’s no choice but to gain redemption from rebelling against God and be accepted back into heaven. Lucifer makes his decision. The whole story is permeated by the main character's versions of biblical episodes and his disparaging opinions about God and "Jimmeny" (Jesus).
5704755	/m/0f02sh	The Falcon at the Portal	Barbara Mertz	1999	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The 1911 season finds the Emersons planning to excavate at Zawyet el'Aryan, south of the great pyramids of Giza. David Todros has just been married to Lia, the daughter of Walter and Evelyn Emerson, and the happy couple will be joining the expedition after their honeymoon. The family's happiness is dimmed, however, by allegations that David has been making and selling fake antiquities under the guise of his late grandfather Abdullah's legacy. Ramses and Nefret take on the task of ferreting out the source of the rumors - and the fakes - with fears that the Master Criminal is behind it. Meanwhile, Percy Peabody, Amelia's evil nephew, turns up as a member of the Egyptian Army and an intermittent pest. He has written a lurid (and completely false) memoir about his time in Egypt, keeps proposing to Nefret, and seems up to something, though he doesn't have the brains to be part of the plot the Emersons are investigating. Two young Americans join the Emersons' dig, Geoffrey Godwin and Jack Reynolds, whose sister sets her sights on Ramses. With this cast of characters, and Ramses' involvement in investigating the illegal drug trade, nothing but the usual peril could ensue.
5704889	/m/0f02_p	He Shall Thunder in the Sky	Barbara Mertz	2000	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel takes place in 1914, as Ramses Emerson works undercover to gather intelligence for the British military, Nefret returns from studying medicine in Switzerland, and Percy Peabody returns to wreak revenge on the Emerson family for past events. The Emerson have acquired the firman for part of the Giza concession, but of course are distracted by the criminal element, and eventually by a startling revelation from the Master Criminal, Sethos himself.
5705316	/m/0f03p7	Strange happenings		1972		 The stories and brief synopses in the book are as follows: # Haunted Flight by George Frangoulis - A boy, Nick, wakes up to find he is alone in the world; after searching in vain, it is revealed that he is in fact dead. # Some Pencils are Smarter than People by Erwin A. Steinkamp - A young man purchases a pencil from a street vendor, and discovers, to his delight, that when he takes tests with the pencil, it always writes down the correct answers. # The New Friend by D.J. Gregoirio - A young man discovers his classmate is an Extraterrestrial. # The Mysterious Rescue at Sea - Author Unknown - A ship becomes stuck to an iceberg, and is only found by another ship due to a case of Astral Projection. # Space Mission 21 by E.M. Deloff - Astronauts land on a strange planet with an odd, glowing, golden orb in the sky, and inhabited by beings with only two arms which ride in vehicles with the words D-U-N-E B-U-G-G-Y on the side. # The Case of the Strange TV Channel by Jaqueline W. Mcmann - A young man, watching a television broadcast with his family of the first unmanned probe to land on Pluto, ends up having his consciousness transmitted to the landing site, leaving his body behind in his living room, dead. # Be Tough! by Tom Gunning - A young High School Football player, stuck in his burning home after rescuing his family, is inspired to "Be Tough" and keep crawling to safety despite the burning pain by his Football Coach continually shouting it from outside the burning home; it is later revealed that the Coach had died earlier that evening, prior to the fire. # The Perfect Place to Live by Tom Gunning - A man, driven to his last nerve by the stress, hustle and bustle of the big city, opts to live on a colonized planet known as Utopia; he later discovers that peace, quiet, and perfect order can be quite boring, and returns to Earth and the big city, far less bothered by and in fact even enjoying the noise and activity. # The Joker by Tony Gaignat - A young man assists another boy who jokes about being a Werewolf in training for the track team, only to find that it was no joke, and finds himself face to face with a Werewolf.
5707887	/m/0f09_2	The Paladin	C. J. Cherryh	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Lord Saukendar, Imperial sword master and stalwart supporter of the Emperor is betrayed, falsely accused of an affair with his childhood sweetheart Lady Meiya, now the Emperor's wife. Meiya is dead, and hostile forces have command of the Emperor's regency. Wounded, desperate and cut off from his supporters, Saukendar runs for the border. In a homemade cabin high in the hills Saukendar survives crippled and alone, his warhorse Jiro and his regrets his only company, while the empire is bled by the rapacious warlords that are regent to the Emperor. Only occasional assassins dispatched by the Regent disturb his morose existence. Taizu, a country girl from Hua locates him, demands he teach her sufficient swordsmanship to extract her revenge for her people's suffering. Despite his better judgment and strenuous efforts to discourage her, she forces him to take her on as apprentice swordswoman. Shoka, as he prefers to be known to his friends, becomes fond of the girl. In the process of teaching her and supporting her cause, they become embroiled in the affairs of empire, becoming the spearhead of a revolt that rescues the Emperor from his Regent and his people from the clutches of the warlords.
5708643	/m/0f0d31	The Seeing Stone	Kevin Crossley-Holland	2000-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy"}	 The story begins in the year 1199, just before the beginning of the Fourth Crusade. Young Arthur de Caldicot, thirteen years of age at the time, is the second son of a knight living in Caldicot manor in the "Middle Marches" of the March of Wales. Most of the first book deals with the stresses associated with medieval life. Most important to Arthur is the fact that he is Sir John's second son, and thus ineligible to inherit land. In order to have a life of his own, he must become a squire and then a knight, and create his own manor and farmland. One challenge to overcome is his inadequate "yard-skills", especially jousting and sword-play. He is left-handed, considered a dangerous oddity in those days, but he must joust and fence with his off-hand. Another challenge is that his father would make him a scribe for his skill reading and writing. The obstacles disappear when he learns on his fourteenth birthday that his "uncle" Sir William de Gortanore is really his father; he becomes heir to a large manor. Unfortunately, it seems that his mother's husband was murdered by Sir William, who was jealous of him. And the revelation terminates the betrothal of Arthur and Grace, Sir William's daughter; as Grace is Arthur's half-sister they cannot marry. The novel ends with Arthur accepted as squire to the Lord of the Middle Marches, Stephen de Holt, . The wizard Merlin gives Arthur de Caldicot the "Seeing Stone" early in the story, along with the warning it will cease to work if anyone else shares in its knowledge. Through the stone Arthur observes the life of legendary King Arthur until his rise to power as King of Britain. It begins with the marriage of King Uther and Ygerna. They conceive a child, who is named Arthur and is taken by Merlin to a foster family. Years later, when King Uther dies, Arthur comes to be king. Many specific people look similar to or exactly like people in Arthur's life. The most notable resemblance is between Arthur and young King Arthur himself, which leads de Caldicot to suppose that Arthur in the stone is himself in the near future. This belief is only accentuated when he learns on his birthday that his parents are only foster parents, as for young King Arthur. Eventually it becomes clear that King Arthur inhabits a parallel universe, with events in both worlds reflecting each other.
5708916	/m/0f0dt4	Isle of Dread			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The Isle of Dread is meant to introduce players and Dungeon Masters familiar with only dungeon crawl-style adventures to wilderness exploration. As such, the adventure has only a very simple plot, even by the standards of its time. The module has been described as a medium to high level scenario, which takes place on a mysterious tropical island divided by an ancient stone wall. The characters somehow find a fragment from a ship's log, describing a mysterious island on which many treasures can be found, and set out to explore it. Typically, the characters will first make landfall near the more or less friendly village of Tanaroa, which is reminiscent of the village depicted in King Kong, and after possibly dealing with some troublesome factions in the village, set out to explore the interior of the island. In the course of their explorations, they may find a number of other villages of unfamiliar intelligent creatures, numerous hostile monsters and the treasures they guard, and a band of pirates. Many prehistoric creatures, including dinosaurs, are prominently featured, especially in the original printing of the adventure. Near the center of the island is a hidden temple inhabited by monstrous, mind-bending creatures known as kopru; the characters may stumble across it or learn that it is a source of problems for the other inhabitants of the isle, and the climax of the adventure typically consists of the characters exploring this temple, battling its inhabitants, and uncovering its secrets.
5710423	/m/0f0j9d	The Curse of the Gloamglozer	Chris Riddell	2001-09-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Quint, the fourteen-year-old only remaining son of famous sky pirate Wind Jackal, arrives with his father in the floating city of Sanctaphrax. Wind Jackal, a good friend of Sanctaphrax's ruler, Most High Academe Linius Pallitax, agrees to allow Quint to stay in Sanctaphrax as the High Academe's personal assistant. Quint is not pleased with this turn of events, and neither is Linius' daughter Maris, who believes that Linius is favoring Quint over her. At first, Maris hates Quint for this. However, when Quint tries to overcome his phobia of fire (his mother and brothers were all killed in a fire) in order to help her, Maris begins to respect him. Quint is asked by Linius to help him use a low sky-cage (a contraption built for exploring the sky between Sanctaphrax and Undertown). Quint steers the cage to an entrance into Sanctaphrax's floating rock, which, inside, consists of an ever-changing series of tunnels known as the stonecomb. Linius returns in a bad state, scratched up and exhausted. Curious about what Linius could be doing within the stonecomb, Quint follows the Academe the next time they travel into the stonecomb. Linius is revealed to be entering the Ancient Laboratory, an unused research center built by Sanctaphrax's first scholars, and Quint is chased by an unseen monster on the way back. When Linius arrives, he is in an even worse state than before, his ear nearly cut off and seemingly delirious. Maris, concerned for her father's safety, confronts Quint in school. Quint promises to take Maris into the stonecomb to find out what her father was doing. On the way down in the sky-cage, however, the chain connecting the cage to Sanctaphrax is cut. Maris and Quint barely escape with their lives, and they enter the stonecomb. Trying to follow a chain of arrows Quint had drawn the first time he had followed Linius, Quint and Maris are attacked by the same monster, which turns out to be a massive, blood-red creature known as a "rogue glister". They are saved from the creature by Bungus Septrill, who is the High Librarian of the Great Library, an earth-scholar. Meanwhile, the Sub-Dean of Mistsifting, Seftus Leprix, allies himself with a disowned flat-head goblin guard, Bagswill. They resolve to try to kill Linius Pallitax in a move to seize power. Their attempt to kill Linius by cutting the chain of the low-sky cage is futile, as Quint and Maris were the ones in the cage at the time. Their second attempt, this time using poison, backfires badly when they accidentally drink the poisoned beverage, and are killed. Bungus, Quint and Maris set off out of the stonecomb, intending to demand an explanation from Linius. However, Quint gives them the slip and sets off on his own to see what is in the Ancient Laboratory. Linius, slightly recovered from his ordeal, begins to tell how he discovered that the Ancient Laboratory was used to create life, harnessing energy from storms and the ghostlike glisters. Linius tries to follow in their footsteps, and does manage to create life, but is dismayed to find out that what he created is in fact a gloamglozer, a terrible demon. After futilely trying to kill it using a substance known as chine, which is deadly to it, Linius resolves to leave it locked in the Ancient Laboratory. Meanwhile, Quint enters the laboratory and is knocked unconscious by the gloamglozer, who, being a shape-shifter, assumes Quint's form. Bungus and Maris, returning to the stonecomb in an attempt to stop Quint releasing the gloamglozer, but are again ambushed by the rogue glister. Bungus stays behind to stave off the creature, while Maris travels on to the laboratory. She revives Quint and they return, only to find Bungus killed by the glister but its lair caved in: trapping it forever. The two of them return to Sanctaphrax. Linius is visited by the gloamglozer-Quint, who traps the Academe in his Palace of Shadows and sets a fire. Then he adopts Linius' form and goes out on the roof. Quint and Maris spot him, and Quint again overcomes his fear of fire in order to rescue Linius. While Quint attempts to climb the building, the spindlebug Tweezel, one of Linius' servants, rescues the real High Academe. Quint is confronted on top of the burning building by the gloamglozer, now in its true form. He manages to repel the creature using chine, but not before the gloamglozer curses Quint and all of Sanctaphrax (hence the book's title). It then flees. The book ends with Maris telling Quint that Linius Pallitax and the Professor of Light have promised him a position in the Knights' Academy for his valiant attempt to rescue Linius (or what he thought was Linius).
5713121	/m/0f0q5n	The Cat and the Canary	John Willard			 The story concerns the death and inheritance of old Cyrus West, a rich eccentric who felt that his relatives "have watched my wealth as if they were cats, and I -- a canary". He decrees that his will be read twenty years after his death, at which point his relatives converge at his old family home, now a spooky old haunted mansion. The will reads that his most distant relative still bearing the name of West be sole heir provided they are legally sane. The rest of the night spent in the house calls into question the sanity of Annabelle West, a fragile young woman who is legally Cyrus West's heir.
5713763	/m/0f0qxw	Alanna: The First Adventure	Tamora Pierce	1983-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alanna of Trebond and her twin brother Thom may be twins, but are very different; Alanna is a tomboy who dreams of being a knight, and Thom wishes to become a sorcerer. Unfortunately, Alanna is shortly to be dispatched by her inattentive father to a temple in the City of the Gods, to learn to become a young lady - to her, a fate worse than death - whilst Thom is similarly destined for the royal palace, where he will train as a knight; his worst nightmare. To avoid their respective fates, Alanna and Thom hatch a plan; Alanna will disguise herself as a boy, call herself Alan, and take Thom's place as a knight. Thom will go to the City of the Gods, where he will hopefully be able to train as a sorcerer. After convincing their two caregivers, the healing woman Maude and the soldier Coram, that their plan will succeed, they set off. At the palace, "Alan" trains as a page, meeting many friends, such as Raoul of Goldenlake, Gareth of Naxen the Younger, Francis of Nond, Alexander of Tirragen, and Prince Jonathan of Conté. She also makes an enemy during her first day in the palace: Ralon of Malven, who continuously bullies her. Rather than have her companions beat him, Alanna secretly trains with George Cooper, the King of the Court of the Rogue - i.e. the Thief King - until she can beat him herself. When she does, he leaves Court, vowing revenge. During Alanna's page years, a fever, the Sweating Sickness, spreads within the capital city, Corus, and nowhere else. This disease is different than all other known diseases in that it drains healers of their powers to heal, and even kills them. There is talk that it was sent by a great sorcerer. Alanna has a powerful healing Gift, but is frightened to use it, so she doesn't tell anyone that she can heal. Due to this refusal of her abilities, Francis of Nond, one of her friends, dies. When Prince Jonathan falls ill, Alanna, recognizing herself as the only undrained healer in the city, tries to heal him. She succeeds, but only through evoking the Great Mother Goddess and fetching Jonathan from the place in between Life and Death. In so doing, she unknowingly reveals herself as a female to Sir Myles of Olau, one of her mentors. Shortly after, Jonathan's powerful sorcerer cousin, Duke Roger of Conté, comes to live at the palace and teach the Gifted pages and squires magic. Alanna goes to George Cooper's mother, the healer mistress Cooper, after she has her first monthly period. She tells George the truth about her gender. Jonathan also discovers the truth during Alanna's last year as a page, when she comes on a trip for the squires on the behest of Prince Jonathan to Persopolis, the only city of the Bazhir, a race of nomadic desert people. All the squires were warned to stay away from the Black City, a city just within view of Persopolis, by Duke Roger. However, Jonathan decides to ride for the city to defeat whatever evil lies there, and Alanna goes with him to help him in his quest. The two arrive at the city to find it completely deserted; that is, until they enter the large, central temple. There they find the Ysandir, beings who will not age or starve as mortals will, but that can be killed. Jonathan and Alanna begin to fight, but things began to go awry when one of the Ysandir magically removes Alanna's clothes to reveal her true sex. Jonathan saves his shock for later, as Alanna and Jonathan must combine their powers to defeat the Ysandir. With the help of her magical sword, given to her earlier by Sir Myles, Alanna defeats the last of the Ysandir, and Jonathan and Alanna head back to Persopolis. The book ends at an oasis near Persopolis, where Alanna suggested that perhaps Roger had wanted Jonathan to go to the city. Jonathan said that yes, he had, but only so that Jonathan could rid Tortall of a great evil. When Alanna pointed out that perhaps Roger had not expected him to come back alive, Jonathan refused to listen. After this, Jonathan chooses Alanna to be his squire when he is knighted that year. He says he does not care that she is a girl, because she is the best page regardless.
5713804	/m/0f0q_2	In the Hand of the Goddess	Tamora Pierce	1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While camping in the woods on her way back to Corus from an errand, Alanna's campsite, set up under a willow tree, is discovered by a small black cat whom she names Faithful. It does not escape Alanna's notice that his eyes are as purple as her own; she also finds out that Faithful can talk to her, although to others it sounds as if he is meowing. Soon after, the Great Mother Goddess, Alanna's patron, shows up at her campfire. She gives Alanna an amulet that allows the young woman to see magic being worked around her. As she progresses into knighthood, Alanna's feminine side is nurtured as well. After a few visits with Eleni, George Cooper's mother, Alanna realizes that part of her wants to act like the ladies she sees in the Court. Eleni takes Alanna under her wing and secretly teaches her how to dress and behave like a woman. The change does not go unnoticed by George or Prince Jonathan, the only two friends with whom she has shared her secret about her sex. They share their first kiss after Jon rescues Alanna when she is kidnapped by nobles from Tusaine, and they become lovers soon after, although George made it clear to Alanna that he loved her before they went to war. Later on, during a party, Jonathan finds Alanna in the gardens and expresses his feelings, kissing her and attempting to take her corset off. But before he can, Alanna protests and the contact is broken off. Alanna withstands the Ordeal of Knighthood and becomes a knight. Her twin brother, Thom, presents her with a shield featuring the crest of their home estate, Trebond. When he and Alanna are alone after the ceremony, he shows her that when she is ready to reveal to everyone that she is a woman, the Trebond crest will disappear, and in its place will be the picture of a golden Lioness rearing on a field of red. In a final showdown against her long-time nemesis, Alanna kills Duke Roger of Conte, her prince's cousin, who is to inherit the throne should anything happen to Jonathan. She does this after finding out about Roger's plans to kill the king, the queen, Jonathan, and even Alanna herself. During her duel with Roger, he slices through the special corset she wears to keep her breasts flat. It is revealed to everyone that she is very much a woman. Nevertheless, she is determined to go on and beat Roger so that he cannot kill the people she loves. When Roger uses an illusion to confuse Alanna regarding which of his swords is real and which is the illusion, she uses the amulet given to her by the Goddess in the beginning of the novel. She is able to beat him. Her friends, including Jonathan and Myles, step up and tell the king that they knew beforehand that she was a female. After her battle with Roger, Alanna decides not to stick around to deal with the initial uproar over her sex. With Faithful, her longtime manservant Coram, and her horse Moonlight, she sets off for the desert in the South, in search of more adventure.
5713840	/m/0f0r16	The Woman Who Rides Like a Man	Tamora Pierce	1986	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The third book sees Alanna through her journey through the Bazhir desert, where she and her manservant Coram are adopted by the Bloody Hawk tribe. During their stay, Alanna duels with the Bloody Hawk shaman, a crazed wizard who is convinced Alanna is evil, and kills him. According to Bazhir law she must be the tribe's shaman until she trains a new one to replace her or someone kills her and takes her place. Alanna selects three Gifted children of the tribe, Ishak, Kara, and Kourrem, and begins to train them in magic. She also inherits the former shaman's sword, with a crystal on the hilt, symbols that remind her of the dead sorcerer Duke Roger, and a terrifying amount of dark power. She keeps it because her old sword, Lightning, broke during a battle. She also teaches the traditional Bazhir to slowly lose some of their prejudice against women. During their training, Alanna sees glimpses of the shamans the girls will become, but the boy, Ishak, constantly attempts stronger, darker sorcery. In a sudden encounter, Ishak steals the crystal sword from Alanna and tries to master its power, but it consumes him and kills him. Alanna continues to train Kara and Kourrem. Prince Jonathan and Sir Myles of Olau make a visit to the Bloody Hawk tribe, where Jonathan and Alanna renew their love affair and spend a passionate night together. When Jonathan asks her to marry him, Alanna is shocked and asks for time to think it over. During their stay, Jonathan is adopted by the tribe and takes up training under the Voice of the Tribes, an old friend of Alanna's and Jonathan's. When the Voice dies, Jonathan is made the new Voice, thus acting as a sacred link between all the Bazhir tribes. This status will help unite northerners and southerners when he eventually becomes King of Tortall. Also, Myles adopts Alanna as his daughter and heir to his lands. Jonathan, tired from the Rite of the Voice, wants to go home soon and assumes that Alanna will marry him though she has asked for time to think about it, and when he begins to make arrangements for her to return to Corus with him, they argue. She refuses to marry him, and he wounds her deeply by saying he'd rather marry a woman who knows how to act like a woman. Jonathan and Myles leave, and Alanna continues her training of Kourrem and Kara, who eventually pass the required tests and are made shamans for the tribe, Kourrem being the head shaman. Alanna and Coram travel to Port Caynn to visit George Cooper, who is putting down a Rogue rebellion there. While Coram woos George's cousin Rispah, Alanna begins a love affair with George, who has loved her for years, but when he wants her to return to Corus with him, she refuses to go with him. The two split, and Coram accompanies Alanna back to the desert, where the Bloody Hawk chief asks her to check on a sorceress, a friend of his, whom he has been having bad dreams about. When Alanna and Coram arrive at the sorceress' drought-stricken village, they see the starved, crazed villagers burning the sorceress, thinking the sacrifice will please the gods and provide them food. Alanna and Coram rescue her, but not in time, and the sorceress dies after leaving Alanna with a scroll to give to the Bloody Hawk chief. The chief tells them it is a map to the Dominion Jewel, a legendary stone that provides untold powers in the hands of Gifted or unGifted rulers. Alanna and Coram decide to go after it.
5713852	/m/0f0r28	Lioness Rampant	Tamora Pierce	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first chapter of this quartet finds Alanna and her manservant, Coram, far from Tortall, on a quest seeking a legendary stone that can provide untold powers and abilities in the hands of country rulers. Stopping in Berat, Alanna meets Liam Ironarm, the Dragon of Shang and the strongest and most powerful of the Shang fighters, who befriends her and agrees to accompany her on her quest for the Dominion Jewel. En route to the Roof of the World, where the Jewel is hidden, Liam and Alanna begin a love affair, despite their clashing tempers and his fear of all things magical. The travelers pass through war-torn Sarain, ripped apart by a vicious civil war between the native K'miri tribes and the ruler, Warlord jin Wilima, whose armies persecute the K'mir. The war has been fueled by the death of the Warlord's K'miri wife, Kalasin, the most beautiful woman in the world, who killed herself as a rebellion against the persecution of her people. Caught in the midst of the battles, Alanna and her friends stumble upon Princess Thayet, the Warlord's only child, who is in hiding from her father's enemies who wish to either kill her or marry her to claim the Saren throne. Thayet and her friend and protector Buriram Tourokom, a gruff K'mir, join Alanna, Coram and Liam on their quest for the Jewel, knowing that it is best for Thayet to leave her country and never return. The group travels to the Roof of the World, where Chitral's Pass is blocked off due to severe blizzards. Alanna knows Chitral, the mountain elemental who holds the Jewel, will never make it easy for her to obtain the Jewel, so she bespells her friends to keep them asleep and ventures into the blizzard up the mountain. She battles Chitral, who takes the form of a mountain ape, and though she is defeated, he gives her the Jewel anyway. Alanna, wounded, frozen and half-dead, passes out; when she wakes up, she is back in the hotel with her friends. Liam is furious that she witched him, and the two break off their romance but remain friends. Meanwhile, Alanna has been having strange dreams from home, of her brother Thom, George, Jonathan, and Lord Roger's dead body. When the group encounters Raoul of Goldenlake, he confesses to Alanna that Tortall is in turmoil. Queen Lianne is dead, and the King committed suicide soon after. A grief-stricken Jonathan has been made King but not been crowned, and worst of all, Alanna's arrogant brother Thom, in an effort to prove to the haughty Lady Delia of Eldorne that he is the strongest and most powerful sorcerer in the realm, has raised Lord Roger from the dead. Alanna's friends accompany her back to Tortall, where she finds the people whispering of famine, black magic and a cursed reign for King Jonathan. She takes her place at Jonathan's side, giving him the Dominion Jewel, and Jonathan names her as his King's Champion, the first female Champion in history. Meanwhile, Alanna finds amusement when he falls in love with Thayet and begins to court her. Jon and Alanna agree that they were not right together, but when she looks to George to renew his romance, he treats her as nothing more than a friend. Her brother Thom is rapidly growing ill, poisoned by his own magical mystic Gift, and Alanna is helpless to stop it. Meanwhile, Alanna and Roger have a vicious encounter where they renew their old hatred, and Alanna suspects that Lady Delia and others, including her old rival Alex of Tirragen, are plotting to overthrow Jonathan and put Roger in his place. On the eve of the Coronation, Alanna meets the Great Mother Goddess, who warns her that the Coronation will be a "crossroad in time." Sure enough, during the ceremony, insurgents wearing Tirragen and Eldorne colors storm the palace and Alanna and her friends fight to protect Jonathan. Thom dies, drained of his life-force energy by Roger's dark spell, and Alanna's magical cat Faithful is also killed. In a sheer rage, Alanna kills Alex when he tries to detain her from reaching Roger, and she confronts her archenemy, who uses her magical mystical sword - part Lightning, part the Bazhir shaman's sword - to bring her to him. The spell backfires when she stops resisting and lets go, killing Roger with his own sword and destroying his evil forever. When the fighting dies down, Alanna sees that Liam is also dead, killed while protecting Jonathan. After the insurgents are captured, Alanna returns to the Bazhir to rest and clear her head, also to grieve for her brother, Liam and Faithful. Thayet and Buri visit her there, where Alanna gives her blessing on Thayet's upcoming marriage to Jonathan. The Shang Wildcat, who was once Liam's teacher, visits briefly to give Alanna a letter Liam had written before he died. In it, he says he knew that his time was near, and he tells Alanna to live a happy life with a man who loves all of her, and she realizes by the end that George has always been the one for her. Later, George visits her among the tribe, bearing the news of Thayet and Jonathan's engagement, and Alanna confesses that she still loves George and wants to be his wife. The series ends with George and Alanna cementing their own engagement with a kiss, and an announcement to the Bazhir.
5713970	/m/0f0r9x	Someone Like You	Sarah Dessen	1998-05-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book is split into three parts. Halley and Scarlett Thomas live in directly opposite houses and both had jobs at Milton's Market. At the beginning of the summer, Scarlett started dating Michael Sherwood but they decide to keep it quiet, with only Halley really knowing, because Michael recently broke up with cheerleader Elizabeth Gunderson and he claims he didn't want her to get upset . For the last 2 weeks of summer vacation, Halley has been sent away to Sisterhood Camp against her will by her mother who is having difficulties coming to terms with Halley growing up and changing. Then disaster strikes and Halley gets a phone call from Scarlett telling her about Michael's death and Scarlett asks Halley to come home and be with her. Her mom, even though she is unhappy about this, brings her home. On the day of the funeral, it is clear that no one knew about Scarlett and Michael and Elizabeth Gunderson seems to be taking it very hard. On the ride home, it is raining heavily and as they are driving along they see Macon Faulkner, Michael's best friend, walking and they offer him a lift which he declines as he is clearly upset. Going back to school on the first day, Scarlett states she feels ill. Halley goes to class and finds her new schedule is wrong so she goes to the guidance counselors office to sort it out. There she gets talking to Macon who jokes around with her and teaches her the "Jedi Mind Trick". She is a bit surprised by his sudden friendliness. Later that day, she finds out they have P.E together and from then on, she develops a crush on him as he fascinates her with his unpredictable and wild lifestyle. Macon eventually mentions a party, casually asking her out and she accepts. She and Scarlett later go to the party, where Macon fails to show up. When the party host, Ginny Tabor, throws everyone out, they go back to sit on Scarlett's porch and Halley talks about how she doesn't deserve him. He later turns up at her window and tells her he did go to the party but he was in the attic so it was all a misunderstanding. He then kisses her and Halley's nerdy ex-boyfriend, Noah Vaughn, is watching from the kitchen window. The next day, while she is doing her chore of mowing the lawn, Macon turns up with a giant mower to help which pleases her father but makes her mother angry as it is supposed to be her job to mow the lawn. Her mother becomes very nosy and keeps bugging Halley about who the boy was mowing the lawn. Halley and Scarlett are working when Scarlett pulls Halley into the bathroom and tells her of her pregnancy. They proceed to tell Scarlett's mother and her mother books an abortion appointment. On the day of the abortion, Scarlett decides against it and calls Halley to pick her up from the clinic. Halley asks Macon to drive her there and he does. When they have picked up Scarlett, Halley's mother sees them and assumes they are just cutting class. She tells Scarlett's mother, who then enlists Halley's mother's help to sort a compromise. Halley is then grounded. Halley has a birthday dinner the next day with her family, the Vaughn family, and Scarlett. Later, she sneaks out with Macon. He takes her to the quarry where they passionately make out, leaving Halley feeling as though the girl she used to be has left her and she was replaced by someone new. The next chapters are focused on the changes that happen throughout Scarlett's pregnancy and the pressures of Halley's relationship with Macon, who is constantly asking her to have sex with him. Although she thinks about it a lot she isn't ready to and they start to become distant, which isn't helped by his secretive lifestyle. Elizabeth Gunderson drops hints about him cheating on her. Also her mother is forever asking her about Macon and she dislikes him despite never having met him. Halley is forbidden from seeing Macon. And everyone at school finds out about the pregnancy because Ginny, who can't keep secrets, overhears them talking in the bathroom. When Halley decides to have sex with Macon at a New Year's Eve party, Scarlett tries to convince her not do it and they get into a major argument that leaves them not speaking. Halley gets drunk before she can do it. When she throws up and leaves, Macon is furious because he thought she was just leading him on. While he is driving her home, he is too busy shouting at her to watch the road and they get into a major car accident. Before going into the emergency room, Macon holds Halley's hand tightly and says, "I love you." Halley is seriously injured and taken to hospital. Macon didn't visit. Her mother is disappointed in her because she does not know the truth about what really happened. After Halley gets out of the hospital, Macon comes to see her at her window. Halley having had enough breaks up with him which breaks his heart because he then realizes he's in love with her. Her mother comes down and starts to shout at her for seeing Macon and then Halley explains what has just happened. She also tells her mother how she feels about all the restrictions she has put on her and they come to an understanding: both of them will try harder to get on. Next is prom and with Elizabeth now dating Macon, and Halley goes to prom with the family-friend, and former boyfriend Noah. Noah gets drunk and rips Halley's prom dress, and she gets angry and is then forced into the bathroom where she bumps into Elizabeth. Elizabeth tells her that Macon still loves her but they are interrupted by the announcement that Scarlett's in labor. Halley and Scarlett and Scarlett's other friend, Cameron, try to leave but the only transport to the hospital is Macon's car. Macon and his now girlfriend Elizabeth (who appear to be in a fight) take them to the hospital. Halley calls her mother who comes down and helps her through it. After the birth, Scarlett names the baby Grace Halley Thomas and everyone turns up in the waiting room; the school prom-goers and all Scarlett's mother's friends and they all come together in happiness of the birth. After everything has calmed down and everyone has gone home, Halley starts to walk home alone, but happy, thinking about Grace Halley's life ahead and what she could offer her.
5715263	/m/0f0sr5	Fletch	Gregory Mcdonald	1974	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The first Fletch novel (1974) introduces I. M. Fletcher, a journalist and ex-marine staying on a beach watching the drug culture for a story, waiting to find the dealer's source before publishing an exposé. A millionaire businessman named Alan Stanwyk approaches Fletch to hire Fletch to murder him; the man tells Fletch that he is dying of bone cancer and wants to avoid a slow, painful death. Fletch accepts $1000 in cash to listen to the man's proposition; the man offers him $20,000 for the murder, and Fletch talks him up to $50,000 in an effort to see if the man is serious. He appears to be serious, and Fletch begins investigating the man's story in between investigating the drug story on the beach and avoiding the two attorneys after him for alimony for each of his ex-wives.
5715433	/m/0f0sxp	Sherlock Holmes ~ The Way of All Flesh			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate when the body of an Italian diplomat is discovered in the River Thames, his torso horrifically mutilated. Fearing the political repercussions - the diplomat being in London to initiate talks regarding a secret naval treaty between the two nations - the Government entrust Holmes with the delicate task of uncovering the truth behind the brutal murder. Events take a shocking turn, however, when a young solicitor is found slain in the East End, his body similarly mutilated.
5715499	/m/0f0s_2	Bump in the Night	Isabelle Holland	1988-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Divorcee Martha Tierney awakes to a phone call from her son Jonathan's headmistress telling her Jonathan is not at school. Martha, an alcoholic, cannot even remember what day it is. Jonathan had a call the night before from his father, Patrick, Martha's ex-husband, and the two have arranged a secret meeting at a doughnut shop at 8AM. Jonathan leaves the house early and stops by a neighbor who tells him that the chosen doughnut shop is closed and he will have to meet his father in the street. Jonathan has been stalked for several days by Lawrence Miller, a former professor who has lost his job after being accused of child molestation. When Patrick fails to show at the doughnut shop, Lawrence pretends to be a friend of Jonathan's father and lures him off to the zoo, then on to an apartment that doubles as a film studio for child pornography movies. Patrick, Martha, the neighbors, and investigating detective Sergeant Mooney all work together to hunt for the little boy. Jonathan uses all his courage and resourcefulness to escape the sexual abuse that he knows is coming.
5715693	/m/0f0tc8	The Cosmic Puppets	Philip K. Dick	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ted Barton, having left Millgate, Virginia several years ago, returns with his wife Peg to find his hometown strangely transformed. Street names and landmarks do not exist as he remembers them, and the inhabitants of the town are similarly oblivious to their contradictory past. Peg proves intolerant of her husband's interest and abandons him while he explores the town. While in Millgate, Barton meets three sympathetic locals: Doctor Meade, a family physician; his daughter, Mary; and William Christopher, a town drunk. However, Mary has a menacing counterpart-- Peter Trilling, the deceptively young offspring of the town's hotel owner. After Barton's departure from Millgate is blocked by a permanently jacknifed logging truck obstructing the only route out of town, he discovers that Christopher remembers the town's erased past. Christopher recalls an event entitled "the Change," which occurred eighteen years beforehand, after Barton had left Millgate. In his previous life he was an electrician but is now working to revert Millgate to its previous state of existence. Dr Meade and Mary have the same agenda, as Meade's "Shady House" patients turn out to be "Wanderers," incorporeal former inhabitants of the erased Millgate who can communicate with Mary and certain others. Barton is able to revert objects, as well as an erased park, at which point Mary discloses that she is also aware of the Change and the prior Millgate. Mary and Peter are in fact engaged in a low-intensity supernatural proxy war against one another. She can only use bees, moths, cats and flies against his control over golems, spiders, snakes and rats, and initially seems to kill Mary through his servitors. However, even this traumatic event is not enough to cause Dr Meade to abandon the comforting illusion of his false human identity. Two vast, supernatural entities loom over Millgate, however, and Barton realises that Meade is one of them, as Peter Trilling reverts to his own, malignant divine self. He uses his servitors to attack Barton, Christopher and the Wanderers, but is stopped as Meade remembers his past, and reassumes his own divine identity. At the denouement, Millgate finds itself in the crossfire of a battle between the twin but diametrically opposed demigods of Zurvanism (a Zoroastrian sect), Ahriman and Ormazd. Ormazd eventually triumphs, and Mary reveals her own true identity as Ormazd's messianic daughter, Armaiti, who arranged for Barton's exile and return to the town when it was time to overthrow Ahriman's false illusion. The former Millgate returns to solidity, Christopher resumes his career as an electrician forgetting the Change ever occurred, and Barton leaves the town, having restored the 'true' nature of the community to what it was.
5718346	/m/0f0yvs	Wolf-Speaker	Tamora Pierce	1994-05-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Daine receives a summons from some old friends - the wolf pack from her old village, led by Brokefang and his mate Frostfur, who are unhappy with the nobles ruining the Long Lake, their territory. They send messengers to ask Daine for help and then disappear back into the night to hunt while Daine discusses this over with her teacher, Numair Salmalin. Numair agrees to help the wolves, but he decides that he first must visit the nobles in Fief Dunlath at a party to further investigate after they find the burnt remains of the Ninth Rider Group. Numair recognizes a battle mage at Fief Dunlath, who appears to be wooing Lady Yolane. After Daine boldly approaches them about the threat to the wolves and to the area with a warning that if they don't change, things will happen, the nobles all laugh at her. She retires with Numair back to their quarters and stealthily leave in the night from Fief Dunlath. Tristan Staghorn, the mage in Dunlath is a war mage from the Carthaki university where Numair studied to become one of the 7 most powerful mages in the world. Upon discovering Tristan was there, Numair realized that the situation in Dunlath was worse than they had thought. He creates a magical simulacra (clone) of himself and plays on Tristan's knowledge of him back in Carthak, where he was a "book-bound idiot." He explains to Daine that people who are Black robe mages study books and learn nothing practical. Daine seems to think he relies too much on the enemy mage's stupidity. Shortly after this, Numair decides to go back to the city where King Jonathan is and warns him of something afoot in Dunlath. Daine stays to sort out the mess with her friend Brokefang and Numair tells her not to do anything extreme or he will lock her in the deepest dankest dungeon he can find when he gets his hands on her again. Throughout the book, Daine reaches the next level in the development of her wild magic as she starts to share minds with animals, a useful ability as she uses the eyes of squirrels and other creatures to spy. This ability soon translates to gaining certain characteristics of animals once she returns to her natural body. Daine discovers she has the power to morph into animals after Maura, Lady Yolane's somewhat plain and much younger sister, runs away from Fief Dunlath. Shortly afterwards, Rikash Moonsword the Stormwing appears to be fond of Maura and he makes Daine rethink her theory about all Stormwings being naturally evil. Maura tells Daine about Yolane's plans to become Queen - a deal with Emperor Ozorne of Carthak, who is also hinted at causing the siege at Pirate's Swoop in the first book. In the meantime, Daine meets a basilisk named Tkaa, who comes to be an important ally and a partial tutor to Kitten, her dragonet; Tristan creates a magical barrier to isolate fief Dunlath from help. In the Tortallan universe, basilisks resemble elegantly featured lizards that have the ability to stand on their hindlegs. They eat rocks and have a curious screech that turns anything in their direct path into stone. Daine learns that Tristan and his mage friends Alamid and Gissa are going to dump a poison called bloodrain into the river at the north of Dunlath to kill everything living within ten miles of the river. Tristan tries to hurt Daine with his magic, and Numair turns him(Tristan)into an apple tree with a word of power, also causing a tree somewhere in the world to turn into a human. With the help of Maura, Tkaa, Kitten (Skysong the Dragonet), the Stormwing Lord Rikash,Huntsman Tait, Alanna the Lioness, Raoul of Goldenlake, and the animals of the Long lake of Dunlath Numair and Daine manage to rip the entire plot to pieces in the biggest siege Daine has foiled yet.
5718430	/m/0f0y_c	Emperor Mage	Tamora Pierce	1994-11-17	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Daine is sent with a delegation that includes both Sir Gareths of Naxen, Alanna the Lioness, and Numair Salmalin, to the Emperor Mage of Carthak, in hopes that she can smooth the international relations by helping with his prized birds. All seems well in the elaborate court of the charming emperor, who continues to proclaim his innocence in stirring up troubles in Tortall and seems to truly care for his prized aviary. This soothes the nervous delegation, though the situation is complicated by Numair, who had to flee Carthak and Ozorne's ire several years before. Daine makes several friends in Carthak, including Numair's former teacher and close friend Lindhall Reed, Ozorne's heir and nephew Kaddar, and a marmoset named Zekoi. She also is reunited with the Stormwing Rikash Moonsword, who seems to bear her no significant ill will and in fact warns her several times about the trouble brewing in the empire. Despite her best efforts, she gets caught up in not only the political situation, but a religious one as well. Emperor Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe has been neglecting the worship of the gods, primarily the chief Goddess of Carthak, the Graveyard Hag. To Daine's surprise and later chagrin, she realizes that the Graveyard Hag has given her the ability to revive dead bodies, which leads to a series of mixed episodes which includes the revival of an only partly assembled Archaeopteryx skeleton and culminates in the revival of a whole nest of dinosaur eggs and nestlings. The reanimation of the nest results in Daine killing herself and having to get forcibly revived by the Badger god. During the time she is "dead," she gets a brief image of her mother with a mysterious horned stranger. Daine fights her newly given "gift," which cannot be taken away except by the Graveyard Hag, who has supreme power in Carthak as the primary goddess. It is noted that the only one more powerful in Carthak is the Black God, god of death, but she is his daughter and he listens to her in matters involving Carthak. The Graveyard Hag urges Daine, as her vessel, to act by causing chaos with the revival of the human dead to get Emperor Ozorne to remember the gods once more. Daine is understandably disinclined to do so. During her time healing the birds, Daine realizes that the birds illness is caused by metal paint that they are eating saying that it tastes good (it contains salt as well iron) When she tells this to Ozorne, he congratulates her and gives her a drug to make her sleep in her food. Meanwhile, the Tortallan party is planning to leave Carthak, but Numair will not leave his "magelet" behind. Daine is resccued from the dungeon by Zek, who is very fascinated by keys. She then meets up with Prince Kaddar. He tells her that Ozorne had Numair killed. Daine is overcome with fury. Using her power to revive dead beings to create an army out of the hall of bones. While looking for Ozorne, she meets with Numair's ex-lover. Daine tells her that Numair is dead. Daine finds the Hyenas and transforms into one. Using their excellent sense of smell, they hunt down Ozorne. They are about to attack him when he stabs himself with the Stormwing feather given to him by Rikash. Ozorne turns into a stormwing and flies away with the rest of them. Daine turns around to see Kaddar, Lindhall, and Numair. Losing her grip on her Hyena self, Daine transforms into her human, naked self. Nuamir gives her his robe and tells her that a Simulacrum of himself was caught and "killed" by Ozorne, not the real Numair. Then, the graveyard hag comes and takes the power of reviving the dead from Daine. Four days later, Daine wakes up to find Alanna at her side. She then goes to talk to His Imperial Highness, Kaddar. He tells Daine that she can have whatever she wants for saving his life (his uncle was planning to have him accused of treason of plotting against him). Daine asks that the people who have wild magic and the emperors mutes must be released from slavery. <!--
5718462	/m/0f0z1t	The Realms of the Gods	Tamora Pierce	1996	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this final book of Daine's story, she and Numair are transported to the Divine Realms,or the realms of the gods themselves through a very unusual agency- Daine's mother Sarra, now the Green Lady, a minor goddess of healing and childbirth in the northern provinces. Although it has been hinted at before, Daine's father is revealed in this book as none other than the minor Northern God of the Hunt, Weiryn. Despite her happiness at being reunited with her long dead mother, Daine must return to the mortal realms in time to help fight the Immortals attacking Tortall, including the former Carthaki Emperor Ozorne, who is now a harpy-analogous Stormwing in league with the queen of Chaos, Uusoae. However, getting into the realm of the gods is much easier than getting out and so, aided by the badger god and the god of platypi, Daine and Numair must travel a perilous road to the realm of the dragons, to petition them for help in getting back to the mortal realms. Throughout their journey, they encounter an alarming number of Chaos vents, "windows" that look into the Chaos realms. As a demigod, Daine is particularly vulnerable to them. It is revealed that Numair Salmalin harbored very strong feelings for Daine, though she had not believed it to be anything serious. After saving her life from spidrens (giant spiders with human heads), Numair forgets himself and kisses Daine, admitting he loves her. Daine also loves him, but the two have doubts about a lasting relationship because of their age difference; Daine is sixteen, and Numair is thirty. Despite this, in the epilogue of the book, Numair asks Daine to marry him. Daine does not agree yet, but it revealed that they do live together in another one of Tamora Pierce's books, First Test. In Trickster's Queen, another one of Tamora Pierce's books, they are married and have children. They go through many perils to finally reach the Dragonlands. After some arguing, two dragons agree to bring them back. In the mortal realms there is a major attack on Port Legann, a city in Tortall. In this fight Daine defeats former Emperor Ozorne. Uusoae ends up trying to kill Daine but she is saved by Uusoae's and the gods's mother and father; Father Universe and Mother Flame. Daine then has to decide whether to stay in the mortal realms as a mortal or live in the Divine Realms as a minor goddess with her mother and father. With some discussion with her mother and Weiryn, her father, she decides her true home is the mortal realm. Her mother promises to visit when she can. <!--
5721677	/m/0f148s	Shadows on the Stars	T. A. Barron	2005-10-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the previous book, "Child of the Dark Prophecy", the evil sorcerer Kulwych made a pure crystal of élano out of the water from the White Geyser of Crystillia. Élano is the most powerful substance in Avalon, and is known for its power to create life. At the beginning of "Shadows on the Stars", the wicked spirit Rhita Gawr corrupted this pure crystal of élano and thereby transformed into an anti-matter-like version of itself, called vengélano, which destroys whatever it touches. Facing this danger, the three young heroes of this story, Tamwyn, Elli, and Scree, must push their abilities to its utmost limit in order to save Avalon. Tamwyn must somehow find his way to and relight the darkened stars of the constellation Wizard's Staff. Elli must seek the crystal of vengélano and destroy it. Scree must confront his greatest mistake, that nearly cost him his life and the staff of Merlin, to help defeat Rhita Gawr's army. Tamwyn, accompanied by Henni the hoolah and the small, winged creature called Batty Lad, leaves Avalon's root-realms – the seven familiar sections of Avalon, home to the greatest diversity of life-forms – and enters the trunk. There, he is separated from his friends. He discovers, among other things, growth rings of the Tree that tell of its entire history; places where giant termites dwell; and the people called Ayanowyn, whose once glorious society has become a dystopia. When living with the Ayanowyn, Tamwyn learns that if a Golden Wreath – a wreath of mistletoe, sacred to the Ayanowyn – were to appear among them, the one to whom it appeared would become their leader. While leaving the Ayanowyn to continue his travels, Tamwyn finds such a Wreath and leaves it with the one who has been his host, so that this one, who desires a return of his people's glory, becomes leader. Because, as a rule, humans think of trees as being wooden, the description of Avalon's trunk as being essentially made of stone and consisting of such topography as exists in our real world creates some ambiguity. In Avalon's tree-world, a knothole becomes a valley, and the outside of the trunk becomes similar to a cliff, or to Amara, though Avalon's surface is less steep than Amara's. In or near Merlin's Knothole, Tamwyn meets the sole survivor of his father Krystallus' expedition to the stars; Ethaun, a blacksmith who has made the Knothole/valley his home since the death of his leader. This man shelters Tamwyn; reforges Tamwyn's broken dagger; brings him to visit Krystallus' grave; and gives Tamwyn a globular compass by which to navigate the trunk and branches. Tamwyn eventually discovers that the stars that illuminate Avalon, occupying the niche held by the Sun in our world as well as the niche held by the stars of our night sky, are in fact "doors of fire" that lead, when opened, to other worlds including ours and the spirits' Otherworld. To rekindle the constellation Wizard's Staff, therefore, Tamwyn must shut the doors of which it is made. Elli, accompanied by Nuic, Shim, Brionna, and a priest of the order to which Elli belongs, called Lleu, attempt to seek the aid of the water dragons. This aid is slow in coming; therefore the questors leave the dragons' home. They travel via the portals that link the seven root-realms; mistakenly to the realm Malóch, where they learn that Elli's former tormentor Llynia is part of a eugenic, genocidal effort to impose human rule on all nonhuman life-forms. Escaping from Llyina's clutches with the help of a gnome whose life Elli had saved in the previous book, they continue with greater urgency to fulfill their purposes. In a dream created by Tamwyn's magic, he and Elli meet on a cloud. There he gives her a half-finished harp in replacement of the one he broke. In exchange they share a kiss. Scree has returned to Rahnawyn, the realm of his birth. There, he learns that the clan of eaglefolk called Bram Kaie is destroying other eaglefolk. Having experienced their cruelty firsthand, Scree attempts to attack the renegade clan alone. He has met their leader before; this leader, Quenakhya by name, had seduced Scree in order to seize the magic staff Ohnyalei. When he understood this, Scree had fled. On returning, he watches as Quenakhya's own son challenges and kills her in order to gain the leadership. Scree, immediately after, challenges this new leader and kills him. On her last breaths, the dying Quenakhya (Who supposedly tricked and seduced Scree in his younger years and having sex with him. The product of their sex is a eagleman of two tribes named Maulkee.Then near Qenakhya's death she asks Scree if he really loved her.)reveals that Scree is the father of the warrior whom he has slain. Ashamed of himself, but cognisant of necessity, Scree takes the leadership of Bram Kaie.
5723419	/m/0f17cy	The Removers	Donald Hamilton	1961	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 A year after having been reactivated, Helm receives a message from his ex-wife, asking for his aid, and soon finds himself fighting to protect his family from an enemy agent.
5731456	/m/0f1qs_	Amongst Women	John McGahern		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with an elderly, weak, and depressed Michael Moran being taken care of by his daughters. Although they have busy lives and families of their own in Dublin and London, they have never really left the family home because they feel more important there. They have decided to recreate "Monaghan Day," an event Moran always seemed to enjoy, hoping that this will somehow reverse his failing health. Monaghan Day was a market day when Moran's friend McQuaid used to visit and they would reminisce about the war. The family's story is told through the use of flashbacks as the women in Moran's life remember the past. Moran was a once prominent Republican who fought for Irish independence in the 1920s. He is now a widower with three daughters and two sons. They live in a house called "Great Meadow" on a small farm in the west of Ireland. He thinks that his time in the IRA was the best of his life, and misses the security provided by the military's structure, rules, and clear demarcation of power. In his old age, however, he is bitter about the "small-minded gangsters" that are now in charge of the Republic of Ireland. For example, he refuses his soldier's pension because he feels that the government has betrayed the ideals that he fought for in his youth. He transfers the violent nature that served him well in battle to his dealings with his family. Moran’s controlling nature is shown from the very first flashback narrative. On a past Monaghan Day, Moran petulantly refuses to yield to McQuaid’s authority, “an authority that had outgrown” his own. McQuaid leaves abruptly and ends their long friendship. This is a defining moment for Moran, after which he withdraws into “that larger version of himself,” his family, over which he exercises absolute authority. Through his influence, the outside world is kept at an “iron distance”, and the family unite against it. Moran marries a local woman called Rose Brady when his children are teenagers. Rose is in middle-age when she marries Moran. Despite her mother's warning that he is "one sort of person when he's out in the open among people — he can be very sweet — but that he's a different sort of person altogether behind the walls of his own house," she is determined to marry him. She becomes a mother to the children and is their mainstay. For example, she helps Maggie to leave for London to become a nurse. She often alleviates the disputes between Moran and the children. She is quietly tolerant of Moran's mood swings, even when he verbally abuses her. Moran's personality becomes apparent in his dealings with his family, who all love and respect him despite his violent outbursts and his lack of apologies. His family are actually "inordinately grateful for the slightest good will." Although he can be tender towards his family, he is often obstinate and cruel and demands constant attention. For example on his wedding day he is content because "he needed this quality of attention to be fixed upon him in order to be completely silent." He enforces his own view of the world on all those around him. He is a devout Catholic and makes sure that his family upholds all the values he fought for. He recites the Rosary daily, looking for religious help for his inner turmoil and the complications of his daily life. His violent nature stems from traumas he received as a guerrilla fighter in his youth. However, he thinks that the war was the best part of his life, because "things were never so simple and clear again." He feels that he is losing his position as the centre of attention as he ages and the children start to escape from Great Meadow. He demands help and attention at inappropriate times as a way of focusing the others on his needs. Although he is mostly calm with his daughters, he is threatened by his sons as they grow up. Luke, the older son, leaves for London because of his father's overbearing authority and only returns once. Thoughts of Luke are painful to Moran, and the others refrain from mentioning him. Michael, the youngest child, hides behind Rose until he gains the courage to leave also. The only way that the children can assert any autonomy is through exile, thus tacitly rebuking Moran's ethos of family solidarity. Moran dominates his daughter's lives and they regularly return to the family home despite their own busy lives. They yearn for his approval, yet fear his temper. He tells them that it is important that the family stick together: "Alone we might be nothing. Together we can do anything." They find individuality painful compared to the protection of the familial identity. Moran's friendship with McQuaid is also recounted using flashbacks, and there is an account of an attack carried out on the British Army by the Flying Column to which they belonged. There is also a description of the argument between them that ended their friendship and left Moran with no male friends. Moran dies at the end of the novel. He is buried under a yew tree, but his influence does not leave his family "...as they left him under the yew, it was as if each of them in their different ways had become Daddy."
5732050	/m/02p9pw7	Matter	Iain Banks	2008-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book follows the experiences of three members of the royal household of the Sarl, a humanoid race living on the 8th level of the Shellworld of Sursamen, an ancient artificial planet consisting of fourteen nested concentric spheres internally lit by tiny thermonuclear "stars", whose layers are inhabited by various races. Constructed for an unknown purpose by a long-dead race called The Veil, Shellworlds are guarded and mentored by progressively more advanced species, up to the level of what the Sarl call "Optimae". Approximately 4000 Shellworlds are known, but almost 200 have been deliberately destroyed by another later, vanished race, The Iln; most, if not all, are also evidently equipped with mechanisms that activate randomly, either exterminating the inhabitants or collapsing the entire Shellworld. Like many Shellwords, the hollow core of Sursamen is known to be inhabited by a mysterious creature called a Xinthian Tensile Aeranothaurs, whom the Sarl worship as their World God. The Culture is considered one of the Optimae, though Sursamen is not in their direct sphere of influence. Ferbin, the heir to the Sarl throne, has to flee his home level on the Shellworld after witnessing the murder of his father, King Hausk, by tyl Loesp, the King's second-in-command. Oramen, Ferbin's studious younger brother, is unaware of the treachery and trusts tyl Loesp fully. After Ferbin's disappearance, tyl Loesp takes on the role of regent, supposedly until Prince Oramen comes of age and can be crowned King. The Oct, the mentoring species of the Sarl, meanwhile have been organizing the takeover of the 9th level of Sursamen, using the Sarl as their pawns. It becomes increasingly clear that they are searching for something hidden in the Nameless City, a metropolis buried under several hundred million years of sediment which is currently being stripped away by the giant Hyeng-zhar waterfalls. The 9th level was only recently re-colonized in a move by the Oct which was retrospectively validated, with reluctance, by the mentoring races. Elsewhere, Djan Seriy Anaplian, another child of King Hausk, had left Sursamen fifteen years previously to become a member of the Culture, and of an organization called Special Circumstances (SC). Anaplian (the author uses this as her primary name, rather than Djan) decides to return to her home planet, originally simply to pay her respects to her dead father. On her way back, she joins up with the fleeing Ferbin and his faithful (but increasingly independently-minded) servant Choubris Holse, from whom she learns that her father's death was in fact a murder. Other channels of intelligence indicate that the Oct are planning something mysterious on Sursamen. Special Circumstances asks her to investigate, and she meets Klatsli Quike en route, who turns out to be an avatoid (indistinguishable from human) of the Liveware Problem, probably an undercover SC ship. Her rather irritable combat drone (Turminder Xuss) stows away in her belongings, disguised initially as a dildo. Anaplian has had most SC enhancements disabled (the Morthanveld - in whose sphere of influence Sursamen resides - well know the fearsome reputation of such an SC combat team), but she begins to restore them, and Xuss will prove critically useful. Returning to Sursamen, they realize that they have come too late – though Oramen, warned by several botched assassinations, had begun an open struggle with tyl Loesp, neither of them could (or wanted to) stop the excavations in the Nameless City before a fateful discovery – a member (or possibly a machine) of a long dead civilization known as the Iln is uncovered deep beneath the city and wakes. The Iln were responsible for the destruction of thousands of shellworlds before ultimately disappearing. The revived Iln's intention is the destruction of shellworld Sursamen. Its nature comes as a horrible surprise to humans and Oct both – with the Oct having thought that they were excavating one of the Involucra (the 'Veil') who had originally built the shellworlds and from whom they claim to be descended as a matter of faith. The Iln entity kills all present with a thermonuclear explosion including tyl Loesp and several hundreds of thousands of workers excavating the Nameless City (but not Oramen, who has been carried away – he dies of other wounds and radiation sickness shortly afterwards), before heading towards the core of the world, aiming to destroy Sursamen completely using antimatter. Anaplian, Ferbin, and Holse head towards the core level, equipped with highly sophisticated SC-technology level combat suits. They are accompanied by Xuss and Hippinse, another of several avatoids of the Liveware Problem. The latter takes substantial damage from Nariscene weapons during its descent to the core, the constrained tunnel and the nature of the 4 dimensional shellworld limiting its defenses. The team is thus outgunned by the Iln, who has taken over the programming of a Morthanveld guard ship and twelve other drones secretly emplaced in the core. Xuss is MIA. Hippinse's parent ship, the Liveware Problem, disposes of all but two of the Morthanveld drones then sacrifices itself in a suicide attack on the Morthanveld guard ship. Hippinse himself is killed eliminating one of the remaining drones; Anaplian accounts for the last one, but the Iln remains too strong for the remaining compatriots, whose resources are seriously depleted. In the end, the sacrifice of two (Ferbin and Anaplian) saves one and defeats the Iln. Ferbin is killed outright, but satisfies the Iln that the group are not harmful when disarmed and permits Anaplian a close approach. Despite her advanced armor, she is shredded beyond the point where a non-SC enhanced human would be dead, but she remains conscious enough to detonate the tiny grain of antimatter in her skull that provides power to her SC enhanced body. In the epilogue, Holse, the lone survivor of the Iln encounter, rejoins his family after a long absence, accompanied by Quike. He declares his intention to become a political leader of the Sarl, with the secret backing of the Culture. From Holse's survival, the Culture could be presumed to have a reasonably complete picture of events; from the continued existence of the shellworld, one may infer that Anaplian's sacrifice successfully foiled the Iln. The final body count is not immediately clear. Anaplian was backed up before leaving her Special Circumstances post, but, if restored, such a backup would not remember more recent events. However, part of her "insurance" taken out before the final confrontation may have been a more up-to-date backup. Similarly, the drone Turminder Xuss proper survived, but the destruction of his knife-missile mind-copy would mean memories of earlier events were most likely lost.
5737304	/m/0f212k	Devlin's Luck	Patricia Bray	2002-04-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Devlin Stonehand is an ex-metalsmith and ex-farmer from the conquered land of Duncaer. After losing his family to banecats, he decides to take the oath of the Chosen One, hoping for a quick death. Instead, Devlin solves the mystery of elusive bandits, and defeats a lake monster, to the growing annoyance and concern of his enemies. Attacks made against him, both mundane and magical, fail to stop him. Meanwhile, as the Chosen One continues to live, the common people of Jorsk begin to respect and worship him. Nobles from around the kingdom seek Devlin out for help with local troubles and troubles to the kingdom overall. Helping those he deems sincere, Devlin seeks out the barony that is having no trouble, and investigates in his role as Chosen One. There he finds an oppressed populace, and confronts the baron with charges of treason. The arrested baron is sent back to the capital, Kingsholm, to be judged by the king. When he finally understands the depths of the baron’s treachery, he returns to Kingsholm to uncover the rest of the conspiracy. When he arrives, he finds that the Marshal of the Royal Army, Duke Gerhard, is a main conspirator, and the accused baron has been released. Devlin challenges Gerhard to a duel, in which Gerhard is slain and Devlin almost dies. He recovers over time, and is named the new General of the Royal Army and given a voting seat on the king’s council.
5737542	/m/0f216r	The Secret Pilgrim	John le Carré	1990-01	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 George Smiley unexpectedly accepts an invitation from Ned to speak at the agent training school at Sarratt. Ned revels silently in his memories as Smiley imparts his wisdom to a class of newly-recruited MI6 students, pausing only to polish his spectacles on the fat end of his tie to the secret delight of all present; a mannerism frequently mentioned in the Smiley canon. Smiley's sections of the book are quite brief; the bulk of the book consists of Ned's reminiscences, prompted by his interpretation of tangential comments made by Smiley and illuminated from his own experiences. At the end of the penultimate chapter, Smiley instructs them not to invite him again. The final chapter is unconnected with Smiley; Ned recollects Leonard Burr, who appears in the novel The Night Manager. The themes of the book are Smiley's sense of the moral ambiguity of spying, and Ned's growing self-awareness.
5737713	/m/0f21db	Danse Macabre	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Danse Macabre appears to take place a few weeks after the events of Incubus Dreams and almost immediately after the events of Micah, assuming that the series of serial killings that Anita's friend Ronnie refers to as occurring two weeks earlier are the killings Anita investigates in Incubus Dreams. Unlike the previous thirteen novels, neither Anita's role as a Federal Marshal nor her job as a zombie animator plays any part in this novel. Instead, Anita must juggle a series of problems arising from her own increasing power, Jean-Claude's vampire politics, and her own personal life, complicated in this case by Anita's apparent pregnancy. * First, Anita believes that she may be pregnant. This forces her to confront the difficult choice of whether to bring the child to term, as well as whether to inform the various potential fathers. (Richard, Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Asher, and Damian). ** Richard and Nathaniel are the most likely candidates for fatherhood; Micah had a lycanthrope vasectomy (silver clamps on the vas deferens); vampires in this world are capable of fathering a child, either via sperm created prior to their death for the newly dead, or if their body temperature is kept elevated for a long enough period of time to create new sperm, but the likelihood goes down with age. A vampire over the age of 100 is not a likely candidate. ** Micah and Nathaniel are willing to rearrange their lives to take on the primary parenting responsibilities. By contrast, Richard proposes monogamous marriage and expects that Anita will stop being a vampire executioner and federal marshal. ** A child of Anita's would have a significant risk of birth defects. Previous books have mentioned "Vlad Syndrome", occurring in children of vampires, which in severe cases results in death of both the child and the mother. Anita is also at risk of "Mowgli Syndrome", which can occur when a shapeshifter has intercourse in animal (or part-animal) form. Not all details are discussed, but it is noted that the fetus can develop at the rate of the beast instead of human &mdash; which could put Anita past the legal abortion threshold in only a few weeks or months, depending on the animal. * Second, Anita's increasing powers continue to lead to new problems. In particular, Anita is attempting to select a pomme de sang from a variety of candidates, leading to a series of conflicts between various persons who wish to join her harem of lovers. In addition, she discovers that her ardeur has been shaping both her own and her lovers' feelings and personalities, making Anita question whether her love for Micah and Nathaniel is real. Finally, Anita discovers that she may be a pan-were, and that in addition to being the dominant female of the local wolf and leopard pack, she may also become Regina, or Queen, of the local werelion pack, leading to a conflict between the lions eager to become her Rex, or lion king. * Third, Anita is involved in a variety of conflicts relating to vampire politics, largely relating to Jean-Claude's decision to invite a vampire ballet and several master vampires to St. Louis. ** Augustine, the master of Chicago, Illinois, attempts to force Anita to love him, and hopes to control the local were-lion pack by introducing a dominant were-lion of his choosing. ** Thea—who is not only the wife of the master of Cape Cod but a siren—wishes Anita to sleep with one or all of her three sons, in the hope that Anita can bring them into their power. ** Merlin, head of the vampire ballet, attempts to mentally dominate all of the master vampires and lycanthropes present at the performance, for reasons he will not reveal. ** Meng Die is becoming increasingly jealous of Anita's irresistibility to the men in their circle, to the point where she attempts to kill Requiem ** Both Belle Morte and The Mother of Darkness continue their attempts to dominate Anita. Ultimately, Anita resolves most of these conflicts: * After reluctantly deciding to have the baby, Anita ultimately learns that she is not pregnant, and that her positive test result was caused by her unique body chemistry. * Anita learns to accept that her love may be manufactured in part by the ardeur, particularly in the cases of Nathaniel and Micah, both of whom have had their personalities shaped by the ardeur to meet Anita's needs (and vice versa). She accepts that she possesses several metaphysical "beasts," and rejects Haven, a dominant were-lion that Augustine hoped to use to dominate the St. Louis pack. * Anita is also able to navigate most of the challenges raised by vampire politics. ** Using the ardeur, Anita and Jean-Claude bind Augustine, increasing their own power. They also turn the tables on him by feeding not only on him, but on his entourage. (Although Anita now loves Augustine, she is sufficiently stubborn that this love does not gain him an advantage). ** Anita promises to sleep with Thea's oldest son to see if she can raise his powers through the ardeur. ** Anita defeats Merlin's attempt to dominate the assembled vampires and shape-shifters, and questions him for information about the Mother of Darkness. ** The combined threat of Anita, Jean-Claude, and all of their vampires is enough to make Meng Die agree not to kill anyone for the night. ** Anita is able to evade Belle Morte and the Mother of Darkness's attempts to control her, although she continues to fear them.
5738184	/m/0f2223	The Cutting Edge	Dave Duncan	1992-09-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The year 3000 is approaching, and life continues as normal for most people. A few, however, are aware that the Protocol (the rules that determine how magic may be used) of the past thousand years is breaking down. Shandie is battling the Caliph in Zark, and gains himself a new Signifier when Ylo saves the banner from falling. While they follow Imperial decrees and take the war to the elves, King Rap in Krasnegar receives a warning from the gods that he will lose one of his children. Knowing that this has to do with the upcoming millennium, he sets out for Hub, the capital of the Impire, to speak with his friend the Imperor. Thaïle, a Gifted pixie in mysterious Thume, stands Death Watch over a neighbor, and receives her first Word of power. This earns her interest from the College, and Jain arrives at her parents’ house to talk to Thaïle. He informs her she will be going to the College next year, and there is nothing she can do about it. After suffering defeat from summoned dragons at Nefer Moor, the Legion retreats back to Qoble. Shandie and his inner circle decide to head to Hub to speak with the Imperor. Instead of traveling conventionally, they race to Hub to beat the message of their coming. On the way, a cloaked Pixie visits them and tells them of a preflecting pool at Wold Hall (putting your left foot in the pool shows you what you need, your right foot shows you what to avoid). They detour to visit it, and each person's vision guides their actions afterwards. Thaïle, despondent over not being allowed to meet a man and have her own Place, meets Leéb. They fall in love and find a Place far from home. Thaïle hopes that the College won’t find her or care about her, but the College catches up with her just as her child is born. They spirit Thaïle away to the College and the Keeper. Shandie and company arrive in Hub, and find the Imperor a deranged, drooling husk of his former self. Shandie immediately seizes administrative control, and plans on how to meet with the faun he saw in the pool (who turns out to be Rap). Ylo’s vision was a lovely women naked amid daffodils, and the woman turns out to be Princess Eshiala. When the Imperor finally falls into a coma and dies, preparations are made for the upcoming coronation of Shandie. During practice, the Warlock Raspnex appears and tells the procession to crown Shandie immediately. Ylo takes charge and completes the ceremony just as the four warlocks’ thrones are destroyed by magic. The group meets for a council of war, and go to Dr. Sagorn’s house (the vision seen by Sir Acopulo). Rap has just arrived and meets the group at the doctor’s house. As they try to puzzle out what is going on, Raspnex shows up and tells them that the evil sorcerer Zinixo is taking over all of the sorcerers in the world, and plans to take over all of Pandemia. After a short discussion, the house is attacked, and Raspnex uses magic to whisk the group away to safety.
5738471	/m/0f22g1	Ten Little Wizards	Randall Garrett	1988	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Someone is killing wizards, and doing so apparently without the use of magic. Lord Darcy is sent to investigate. He must uncover the murderer and ascertain whether the whole business is a ploy to kill the king himself. To complicate matters Darcy must investigate during the preparations for the investiture of Gwiliam, Duke of Lancaster (King John IV’s younger son), as Prince of Gaul. To add international tension, the Crown Prince of Poland, His Majesty the King of Courland (Latvia), will attend the ceremony. (In this timeline, Poland is a great empire ruling most of Eastern Europe, and there is an ongoing cold war between it and Darcy's Anglo-French Empire).
5738560	/m/0f22lj	A Study in Sorcery	Michael Kurland	1989	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In New England an Azteque Prince is found dead on a stone altar. Lord Darcy and Sean O Lochlainn are sent across the Atlantic to investigate. Darcy must identify the killer and determine whether the Azteques are returning to human sacrifice. Perhaps an attempt is being made by the rival Polish Empire to upset the balance of power between the Angevin Empire and the Azteques?
5738625	/m/02p9q0s	Aethiopica				 Chariclea, the daughter of King Hydaspes and Queen Persinna of Ethiopia, was born white because her mother gazed upon a painting of the naked Andromeda just after her rescue by Perseus while Chariclea was being conceived (an instance of the theory of Maternal impression). Fearing accusations of adultery, Persinna gives her baby daughter to the care of Sisimithras, a gymnosophist, who takes the baby to Egypt and places her in the care of Charicles, a Pythian priest. Chariclea is then taken to Delphi, and made a priestess of Artemis. Theagenes, a noble Thessalian, comes to Delphi and the two fall in love. He runs off with Chariclea with the help of Calasiris, an Egyptian who has been employed by Persinna to find Chariclea. They encounter many perils: pirates, bandits, and others. The main characters ultimately meet at Meroe at the very moment when Chariclea is about to be sacrificed to the gods by her own father. Her birth is made known, and the lovers are happily married.
5739327	/m/0f23j_	Learning the World	Ken MacLeod	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is a first contact story, following the generation ship But the Sky, My Lady! The Sky! as it approaches the Destiny Star. Humans have been colonizing the 500 light-years around Earth for a few thousand years, and have never run into an alien species&nbsp;— until now. The discovery of an Industrial Age alien race upsets the established protocols of the ship, leading to uncertainty and delays in habitation, which in turn leads to societal unrest and conflict aboard the ship.
5739845	/m/0f246v	Operation Luna	Poul Anderson	1999-08	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The world of Operation Luna has an alternative history, which mostly resembled our own until a great "Awakening" brought awareness of supernatural forces to the world at large. This Awakening led to drastic changes in society; industrial machinery was largely replaced by technology driven by magic, spells, and "goetic forces" instead of fossil fuels and electricity. For example, the main mode of transportation is broomsticks and magic carpets fitted with cabins for people to sit in; radios are called "runers," apparently activated by runes; and the propulsion behind space flight is achieved by a combination of mechanical technology, spelled crystals, and arcane materials such as mummy dust. Steve helped in the construction of a spacecraft for Operation Selene, the United States' first attempt to send a manned craft to the Moon. However, a disaster caused by beings adverse to the mission destroy the vehicle and nearly kill the celestonaut, Curtice Newton, although Steve, in wolf form, saves her. Afterward, Steve, Ginny, and a handful of people begin to investigate the disaster and make plans to put Operation Luna into effect, a smaller version of Operation Selene independent from NASA. Since the identities of the entities behind the Operation Selene disaster remain somewhat veiled and mysterious, Steve and Ginny enlist the help of a number of people, including Balawahdiwa, a Zuni high priest; Fotherwick-Botts, an enchanted sword that can talk; and Fjalar, a Norwegian dwarf who forged Fotherwick-Botts. Though the characters live in Gallup, New Mexico, the characters travel to various other locations in their investigations, including London, England, various parts of Norway, and even Yggdrasil, the legendary Norse site of the World Tree. The time period is roughly in the late 1990s. Although vague, their initial investigations reveal that the malevolent spirits who collaborated with Coyote are Asian in origin, leading them to suspect a connection to Dr. Fu Ch'ing, a Chinese scientist, government agent, and thaumaturge. (The U.S.' largest competitor for space exploration in the novel is China rather than Russia.) Meanwhile, the F.B.I. suspects Ginny's brother, Will, an astronomer who helped in the planning of Operation Selene and who has an interest in Chinese culture and connections with people in the country. Steve and Ginny themselves worry that he may be possessed by an evil spirit, though tests reveal no trace of a foreign entity.
5740351	/m/0f24vb	Bernard the Brave	Margery Sharp	1977	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins when Miss Bianca's owner, referred to as "The Boy," becomes sick and is taken to a mountain resort far from the city, where the fresh air will help him get over his illness. Miss Bianca must travel with him and leaves her house, known as the "Porcelain Pagoda," in charge of Bernard, whom she trusts with her life. Shortly after Miss Bianca leaves, Bernard is visited in his bachelor flat by an obnoxious old mouse named Nicodemus, who tells him that he is in a great predicament and hoped to find the legendary Miss Bianca to help him. The problem centers around his owner, an orphaned young lady named Miss Tomasina, who has been kidnapped by mountain bandits under the order of her legal guardian, and with only three days before she comes of age to claim her parents' properties as hers. Bernard decides to take the case, in the process gathering valuable clues and going through several mishaps, like being kept as a pet for a few minutes by a bunch of school girls and almost getting roasted alive by two housemaids. He also meets one of the most curious characters of the whole series, a stuffed bear named Algernon, who proves to be an invaluable ally for the future. Bernard and Algernon eventually travel to a desolate and perilous wasteland known as the "Wolf Range," where their clues had pointed that Miss Tomasina is being kept. All this time, Miss Bianca daydreams about Bernard and wonders what he is up to. When she arrives home from the mountains, she realises that Bernard is nowhere to be found and worriedly runs to his flat to see if he is not terribly ill, ready to nurse him all night if necessary. Upon questioning Nicodemus and Bernard's neighbors, she hears all about Bernard's quest to rescue Miss Tomasina and really begins to worry about him. It is in this point of the series that readers realise just how important Bernard is to Miss Bianca, and is where she lets go of her formal self and gives in to her love for him, realizing that she just cannot live without Bernard. She refuses to eat or sleep, and becomes very taciturn, thinking of nothing except her dear Bernard, lost in some desolate corner of the Wolf Range, with only a stuffed toy to accompany him. Meanwhile, Bernard and Algernon eventually find the bandits' hideout and rescue Miss Tomasina right on time. The most hilarious events occur at this point, as well as a very bleak one: the legal guardian of Miss Tomasina dies from a heart attack in the middle of the court. After all the adventure, Algernon finds a place with another stuffed bear named Nigel and form a stuffed toy club. Bernard returns to Miss Bianca and they sit beside the fountain in her courtyard, leading to one of the few but very touching moments in which Bernard and Miss Bianca's whiskers touch and they feel each other's love aglow. Miss Bianca asks Bernard to please come and live with her, for she feels that they have had enough adventure in their lifetime and wishes to settle down and retire. Bernard, however, has a different feeling. Something inside him tells him that there is still something he must do, one more adventure to live, which leads to the final part of the Rescuers series, Bernard into Battle. And with this scene, the story ends.
5740554	/m/0f251n	Worldwar: In the Balance	Harry Turtledove	1994-01-03	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After arriving in the Earth's solar system, the Conquest Fleet's essential personnel are awakened from cold sleep after a twenty year journey originating from Tau Ceti II. Fleetlord Atvar is busy making final preparations for the invasion of Earth, expecting a rapid victory over the primitive beings that populate the planet. He is interrupted by a communications officer who reports that radio emissions are emanating from Earth. Atvar refuses to believe the report since the most recent intelligence, gathered from a probe that visited Earth in the 12th century, indicates that the inhabitants are a pre-industrial species. The Conquest Fleet reaches Earth orbit in December 1941 and begins surveying the planet. They are shocked to find that in the course of only 800 years the inhabitants have moved from a primitive agricultural society to an industrial civilization. The Race's technology has hardly changed in more than 50,000 years and other known intelligent species are similarly slow to evolve. After six months of reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, in May 1942 Atvar consults with the Shiplords of the Conquest Fleet. The troops have been awakened from cold sleep and are prepared to commence with military operations. However, it is within Atvar's power to cancel the invasion. Unwilling to call off the attack and face the Emperor back on Home, Atvar orders the assault to begin. Shortly thereafter the Race detonates several atom bombs above the Earth's atmosphere in an attempt to disrupt human communications. The attack begins. On the night of May 30, only hours after detonating the atomics, the Race's forces attack human aircraft and ground vehicles in and around designated landing zones. Once the sites are secured, troop ships begin landing and disgorging ground forces. The Race simultaneously establishes bases on every continent except Antarctica. South America and Africa are overrun almost immediately, with Mexico the only one resisting the invaders. Landing bases in Florida, Illinois, Idaho, and New York cause widespread panic and chaos in the United States. The Race's forces establish bases in Poland, cutting Germany off from the bulk of its forces in the Soviet Union and resulting in a massive German retreat westward. The UK's air forces are battered from alien bases in Spain and France. The Soviet Union must deal with enemy strongholds in Ukraine, Outer Mongolia, and Siberia. Everywhere, humankind falls back in the face of a seemingly unstoppable nemesis. While hostilities between the Axis and Allied powers end almost immediately, this is the result of military expediency rather than a sign of genuine cooperation. With the Race's forces battering the human armies into submission, no resources can be expended on human rivalries. The unsettling reality of the new balance of power is emphasized by the fact that, in the early days of the fighting, only Germany is able to battle the aliens with any measure of success. Since Germany has been at war longer than the other major powers and because its economy has been specifically geared toward war, this is only natural. But Americans are nauseated by the idea of fighting on the same side as Hitler while the Soviets are not quite so sure that the Germans can be trusted even in the face of an alien invasion. After the initial assault, the Race's troops come to a virtual standstill. It is not so much human resistance that keeps them from advancing as much as their tendency to deliberate their options before acting. Mankind takes advantage of the respite provided to wage localized counterattacks, nearly all of which fail. In the process they find that the Race lacks tactical combat initiative and can be easily lured into traps. However, their advanced technology makes it difficult to exploit this weakness. The Race also discovers that their orbital atomic detonations had little if any effect on the human militaries. They had thought that the resulting electro-magnetic pulse would short out any advanced technology the humans had, but soon realize that humans do not yet possess silicon computer chips. Most human electronics, such as radios, use vacuum tubes, which although less efficient are also more resistant to electro-magnetic interference. Hitler takes advantage of the brief lull in the fighting to order an artillery unit in Ukraine to attack an alien base using railroad guns. The German battery manages to destroy two of the Race's ships (the 67th Emperor Sohrheb and the 56th Emperor Jossano), including the one which carries the bulk of the Conquest Fleet's atomic stockpile. The resulting explosion sends chunks of plutonium flying across several acres. Soviet partisans take notice of the care with which the Race goes about collecting the strange metal. Elsewhere in Ukraine, Major Heinrich Jäger manages to destroy one of the Race's landcruisers and a troop carrier, and another panzer and infantry destroy a second landcruiser, but at the cost of his entire panzer company. Narrowly escaping from the battle he is found by Lieutenant Gorbunova who flies him back to the airfield where she is stationed. From there, Jäger is sent to Moscow where he spends several weeks as a guest of the Soviet government---not an official prisoner of war nor an ally. Finally, he is asked to take part in a joint German-Soviet operation in Ukraine aimed at recovering some of the plutonium. The ad hoc band of Soviet partisans and displaced German soldiers charged with the assignment manages to hijack a shipment of plutonium. In accordance with negotiated arrangements, they divide the load in half and go their separate ways. Jäger is given a horse and is forced to ride across the Ukrainian steppe and through enemy-occupied Poland to reach Germany with the precious metal. Somewhere between the towns of Chernobyl and Hrubieszów, Jäger is ambushed by Jewish partisans. Though they are nominally allies of the Race, they recognize the threat the aliens pose to mankind. They take half the plutonium in Jäger's possession and let him return to Germany with the other half. The Jewish partisans send their commandeered plutonium to England where it is subsequently shipped to the United States. Upon his arrival in Germany, Jäger is promoted to the rank of colonel and awarded the German Cross in Gold at a ceremony held in Berchtesgaden, Hitler's Bavarian resort. While Jäger enjoys a well-deserved furlough there, Molotov arrives to consult with Hitler on the conduct of the war. The Soviet ambassador is flown to Bavaria by Lieutenant Gorbunova, to Jäger's surprise. Heinrich and Ludmila grow close during their short time together. In an attempt to reduce human resistance, Atvar orders the use of atomic weapons on Washington, D.C. and Berlin, hoping that this will persuade the Americans and the Germans to surrender. Berlin is hit first, primarily in retaliation for the destruction of the Race's ships in Ukraine. While Atvar regrets the need to atomize human territory, mostly because Earth has so little land relative to sea, he sees the display of power as necessary since Germany fields the strongest human army. The Race is less dismayed by the attack on Washington DC since it is an administrative and communications center with few industrial and commercial resources. Furthermore, Atvar rationalizes that most of the radioactive fallout will drift harmlessly out into the Atlantic. Instead of breaking the human will to resist, the attacks inspire both nations to fight harder and to hasten production of their own atomic weapons. Meanwhile, in the United States, Jens Larssen is forced to travel to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia where the U.S. government has set up a temporary capital after losing Washington DC. Larssen warns the Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, that the U.S. Army must defend Chicago at all costs since the metallurgical laboratory stationed at the University is working feverishly to develop atomic power, which might be the only chance humanity has to defeat the Race. Marshall assures Larssen that holding Chicago is a key component of the Army's strategy. Satisfied, Larssen makes his way back to the University of Chicago. On his way back, Larssen finds that the Race has captured most of Ohio and Indiana. He carefully makes his way through and around enemy lines (in the process spending several weeks in one of the Race's prison camps, until he manages to convince them that he is no threat to them) until he is found by U.S. troops. Larssen explains that he is a physicist on important government business. After several interrogations, Larssen is granted an audience with General George S. Patton who explains that a major military operation is currently being planned to keep the Race out of Chicago. Since he is so valuable to the war effort and because of the dangers involved, Patton refuses to allow Larssen to proceed to Chicago until the Americans have secured the city. As the winter of 1942 begins, the Race's attacks begin to lose momentum. They are completely unprepared for the kind of winter weather they find on Earth. On their home planet, snow is extraordinarily rare outside the laboratory and much of their land is sandy desert. As soon as the first blizzard hits Illinois, a handful of American fighters and bombers, hoarded for this last desperate strike, move against the Race's positions in western Indiana and southern Wisconsin. Massive artillery barrages follow. Finally, American infantry and tank units under Patton in the east and General Omar Bradley in the north move toward their objective: Bloomington, Illinois. Although human M4 Shermans and P-51 Mustangs are no match for the Race's landcruisers and killercraft, the alien forces are so badly outnumbered and the weather so inhospitable that they are compelled to retreat. The U.S. troops move rapidly and manage to encircle some of the Race's slower formations in a ring of armor and destroy them in detail. Mankind scores its first major success against the nemesis from the stars. As the human counteroffensive succeeds in liberating most of northern Illinois, Fleetlord Atvar and the Conquest Fleet's Shiplords begin to grow worried about the war's progress. When the invasion began they were confident that their technological superiority would guarantee a rapid victory even in the face of expansive human industrial power. While they have managed to subdue South America, Africa, and Australia, the Race still faces stiff resistance in North America, Europe, and Asia six months after their attack started. As the fighting continues, the Race's more advanced weaponry, such as guided missiles, anti-armor rockets, landcruisers, killercraft, and helicopters, are being destroyed in ever greater numbers. While simple weapons, such as rifles, bullets, artillery shells, and mortars, can be produced in captured human factories, the longer the war continues the more the technological gap between the Race and mankind will shrink. Atvar is informed by his intelligence officers that human vehicles are dependent upon petroleum for fuel and that striking at refineries processing oil might reduce the combat effectiveness of humanity's armies. Atvar orders an airborne attack upon the Romanian oilfields at Ploiești, but the bombing raid meets with limited success and costs the Race valuable killercraft. As 1942 nears its end and Patton and Bradley march their forces into Bloomington, Jens Larssen arrives in Chicago to find the city in ruins. He makes his way through the rubble, encountering a civilian populace in severe disarray, and toward the University of Chicago. There, Larssen is informed by a custodian that the metallurgical laboratory has evacuated the campus and is relocating to Denver. Like the war, Larssen's journey has a long way to go.
5740888	/m/0f25db	Bel Canto	Ann Patchett	2001	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Set in an unnamed country, the story begins at a birthday party thrown at the country's vice presidential home. The party is thrown for Katsumi Hosokawa, the visiting chairman of a large Japanese electronics company called Nansei. Performing is a famous American soprano, Roxane Coss. Near the end of the party, members of a terrorist organization break into the house looking for the President. When it is discovered that the President did not attend the party, the terrorist group decides to take the entire party hostage. After determining they have too many hostages, the terrorists decide to release all of the hostages except those they deem most important and most likely to receive a large ransom. This includes Hosokawa, Roxane, and the translator Gen. Two major romantic relationships develop as the standoff drags on and serve as the backdrop to the rest of the story. The first is between Roxane Coss and Katsumi Hosokawa. Hosokawa is one of Roxane's biggest fans and he attended the party because Roxane was going to be singing. When they are placed in the house together, they develop a deep bond, even though they do not speak each other's language and thus cannot communicate verbally. The second relationship is between Gen Watanabe and the young terrorist Carmen. They must keep their love a secret because Carmen is forbidden to have relationships with a hostage. The two lovers meet in the china closet every night to practice Carmen's reading and eventually to make love. At the end of the novel, the government breaks into the house and kills all the terrorists. All of the hostages are freed except for Mr. Hosokawa, who dies in the struggle. The novel ends some time after the crisis; we learn that Gen and Roxane were married in Italy.
5745884	/m/0f2fkd	Sarah	Laura Albert	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cherry Vanilla passes himself off as a virginal girl and enters the service of Glad, a pimp who runs a truck stop brothel in West Virginia with a number of young boys dressed as women, though he is the youngest. He calls himself Sarah and learns how to turn tricks with the truckers. Twelve-year-old 'Sarah' aspires to be the most famous lot lizard (prostitute) and runs away to work for a rival pimp, a cruel and murderous man called Le Loup. Cherry Vanilla passes himself off as a girl called Sarah and makes friends with a prostitute there called Pooh. He doesn't tell anyone he's a boy. Le Loup becomes entranced by Sarah's beauty and sets 'her' up as Saint Sarah and charges the truckers to visit with her, though no one can touch her. Eventually Sarah is found out, Le Loup viciously cuts her hair off, scarring her scalp, and Sarah – now 'Sam' – is forced to be a male child prostitute for more than a year, being continually abused. Sarah finally escapes and returns to the relative safety of Glad's operation only to find that his mother has left. The story itself has many of the elements of The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, but has a lighter, more humorous feel in its account of Cherry's quest (such as renaming himself Sarah after his mother) to become the greatest lot lizard in the brothel. Much as in LeRoy's earlier writing, the protagonist falls upon bad times and faces exploitation and abuse at the hands of a pimp. Less dark than the short story collection, the novel has a distinct mythical, Dickensian feel and relates the story of a child's love for his mother as expressed through his imitation of her.
5746632	/m/0f2gy0	The Singer of All Songs	Kate Constable		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Calwyn is a young priestess who chants the ice chants of Antaris. She lives inside Antaris, a community located among mountains, which is enclosed by an ice wall. The priestesses must maintain the wall with their chantments; that is, by singing certain songs, the knowledge of which is passed down to them through the temple. Nine powers can be achieved by such songs, though never by the same chanter. Legend has it that a Singer of All Songs will someday be born, who will know and use the songs of all the effects. During one of the nine days of Strengthening, in which the priestesses sing to maintain the Wall, it is breached by a strange traveler, called Darrow. Calwyn attempts to approach him; but when he sings in a low tone, Calwyn feels as though a hand is clutching her tunic and keeping her away. He is unable to maintain this and collapses because of an injury he had suffered, whereupon Calwyn brings Darrow back to the priestess' dwellings. The psychokinetic effect is revealed by the High Priestess to be of a chantment, the Power of Iron, which controls inanimate matter. Calwyn befriends Darrow, who now has a scar on his eyebrow and a permanent limp. Samis, a greedy sorcerer who wants to become the Singer of All Songs and rule the world of Tremaris, follows Darrow to Antaris. Darrow and Calwyn manage to flee by jumping into the river that flows under the Wall. They cross many miles to reach Kalysons, where Darrow meets his friends Tonno and Xanni to ask them for help. All four sail on the boat Fledgewing to Mithates, where they seek the help of a chanter who can help them defeat Samis. In Mithates, the men leave to try finding remnants of the fire chantments, leaving Calwyn on the boat as women are not allowed in the war-machine-making colleges. Calwyn sees Samis' chantment-powered galley dock nearby and searches for her friends to warn them. She, on the way, meets Trout, a bespectacled, inventive college student, who has unknowingly acquired an ancient and powerful object; the Clarion of Flame. This Clarion, a trumpet-like device, is the last remnant of the Chantments of Fire. Samis, using the chantments of Seeming (illusion) to give himself the appearance of Darrow, attempts to seduce Calwyn into giving him the Clarion; Calwyn, because of her soft spot for Darrow, is at first swayed, but eventually realizes the truth. Calwyn and Trout flee from Samis and the Mithate guards; Calwyn uses her chantments to aid their escape. They reach the boat, where they see the real Darrow, Tonno, and Xanni running towards them and away from Samis. Samis uses iron chantment to wield a dagger, threatening to kill Darrow; Xanni takes the blow and dies instead. Everyone, including Trout, escapes from Mithates. The crew gives Xanni's dead body a burial at sea. Later, they all become embittered by his death. Their quest abandoned, the survivors are caught in a storm and are swept into the Great Sea. There they are captured by pirates. Calwyn is taken aboard the pirates' ship because they believe that she is a windworker; a chanter able to control the wind. While aboard, Calwyn befriends the pirates' other windworker, Mica. Mica soon teaches Calwyn how to sing a breeze, thus preventing the pirates from killing her out of hand. Calwyn's ability to sing chantments of both ice and wind convinces Mica that Calwyn's father, who remains unidentified, is an islander, on the grounds that only islanders can sing chantments of wind. The pirates dock at Doryus Town, which is notorious for its slave trade and drug traffic. There, the pirate captain hopes to sell Calwyn to a man who desires a windworker, this man being an incognito Samis. When the pirates have been rendered into a stupor by the effects of a drug called slava, Calwyn, Mica, and the Fledgewings crew escape. At the same time, Samis tests the Clarion's power on the dormant volcano of the island of Doryus. The volcano erupts, revealing the Clarion's power to summon all forms of fire or heat. The crew of the Fledgewing travel to the arboreal Wildlands with new hope for their quest. While approaching the Wildlands, the protagonists are confronted by the draconic Arakin, who are guardians of that region. Calwyn uses her powers of chantment to make peace with them, revealing that she has a third power of chantment in her composition; the Power of Beasts. This gives Darrow cause for contemplation and worry, in that it implies that Calwyn is the true Singer of All Songs. In the forests of the Wildlands, the sailors are befriended by Halasaa, one of the mute, telepathic Tree People, who is the last guardian of the powers of Becoming; therefore, the power to heal, which is the only one of the Nine Chantments not dependent on audial speech. The Tree People send Halasaa away from their community of Spiridrell as punishment for befriending the outsiders, who have perpetrated genocide against them in the past. He escorts the outsiders, at their request, to the ancient, abandoned city of Spareth, where they meet Samis once more. In the ancient, apparently high-tech city, they enter a tower, where Samis finds them again. In a final confrontation, Samis tricks and then terrorizes the crew of Fledgewing into singing the different chantments, claiming that he who commands the Nine Powers to be sung will become the Singer of all Songs. When Darrow's life is threatened, a despairing Calwyn sings the last chantment, a song of ice-call. Instead of transforming Samis into a god, the Great Power he has summoned absorbs and overwhelms him. The crew are left to ponder how to realize Samis’ vision for a peaceful and united Tremaris without tyranny: not as one lone voice, as he wanted, but as many voices singing together.
5747302	/m/0f2j3r	Iracema	José de Alencar	1865	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story revolves around the relationship between the Tabajara indigenous woman, Iracema; and the Portuguese colonist, Martim, who was allied with the Tabajara nation's enemies, the Pitiguaras. Through the novel Alencar tries to remake the history of the Brazilian colonial state of Ceará's origins, with Moacir, the son of Iracema and Martim, as the first true Brazilian in Ceará. This pure Brazilian is born from the love of the natural, innocence (Iracema) and culture and knowledge (Martim), and also represents the mixture (miscegenation) of the native race with the European race to produce a new (Brazilian) race. Its name is Guarani language for honey-lips, from ira - honey, and tembe - lips. Tembe changed to ceme, as in the word ceme iba, according to the author. Iracema is also an anagram to America, appointed by critics as fitting to the allegorization of colonization of America by Europeans, the novel's main theme.
5748107	/m/0f2kg5	The Waterless Sea	Kate Constable		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 By the time this book opens, characters Calwyn, Trout, Tonno, Halassa and Mica are making and enacting plans to rescue chanters from their various underprivileged situations and form a school of chantment; thus integrating the Nine Songs by which nature is commanded, as well as their singers, into society. While Calwyn and her friends are freeing windworkers from pirates' ships, they meet Heben, a former (exiled) princeling from the continent of Merithuros, who was a prisoner of the pirates'. On the island where the rescued windworkers live, Heben tells them that the ironcraft chanter children of Merithuros are being kidnapped, among them his (legal) brother and sister. Calwyn and her friends embark for the desert of Merithuros to rescue the captured children. Trout, the inventor, decides to remain behind. Darrow is alone on his boat Heron, where he reminiscences about his childhood. It is revealed that he was the son of a sea-captain and was nicknamed "Mouse" by the family-like crew. During his pre-adolescent years, Mouse discovered that a crew member named Arram was an ironcrafter, and that he himself could use the same gift. At his request, Arram secretly taught Mouse to use ironcraft, enabling him to manipulate matter by his songs. While docking at a Merithuran town, Mouse sang ironcraft to save his father from falling cargo. A Merithuran sorcerer saw this and took the terrified child away. Calwyn, Tonno, Mica, Halasaa, and Heben travel to Merithuros on the boat Fledgewing. There the outsiders of the group learn of the discontent lives of the common folk, who try to protest the cruelty of the Merithuran Empire. Tonno stays on the ship whilst the others ride on the goatlike "hegesi" to the Palace of Cobwebs where the royalty live. There, the group hope to learn where the kidnapped children are. Along the way, Calwyn and Mica earn the chauvinistic Heben's respect through their use of chantment. After many days of riding, they finally reach the Palace of Cobwebs. Darrow returns to the island of Ravamey, his current refuge, and learns that Calwyn and others have left. He is given cause to think that they have gone to the Black Palace, where the chanter children are actually held. Darrow is revealed to have lived in the Black Palace during his childhood. It is there that he acquired his name, which was derived from the title of his father's ship, Gold Arrow; there that he was given extensive training in the use of ironcraft by the harsh, partisan, cruel Merithuran sorcerers; and there that he first met the power-mad Samis. Calwyn and friends are inside the Palace of Cobwebs. Calwyn, disguised as a noblewoman and the others as her servants, have no success in learning anything useful, though they note the presence of chantment, implying the children to be nearby. Also present is a sorcerer of the Black Palace, Amagis by name, who recognizes their powers but does not confront them. Instead, he persuades Third Princess Keela to ingratiate herself with Calwyn, in hope of learning more about the latter. This is only a partially successful venture. After a parade and during a feast, the aged Emperor suddenly falls ill and dies. In the resulting clamor, the seekers sneak away and split up to search for the children. Darrow is sailing to Merithuros, while recalling to attention that Samis had singled him out as an ally, naming him "Heron". When the old lord of the Black Palace was dying, Samis seized his office and the Ring that signified it. He later attempted to persuade Darrow to join him in the quest to become Singer of All Songs and conquer the world; Darrow refused, cast away the name "Heron", and fled, later to meet Calwyn. Calwyn finds Shada, Heben's legal sister, trapped on a tower. To keep her there, Shada's kidnapper has broken the bones of her feet. Shada explains that five of the kidnapped children, including herself, are hidden in the Palace of Cobwebs, where they sing chantments to keep the palace intact. Halasaa heals Shada and they escape from the pursuing Amagis. The group reunites and search for the four other children. Calwyn and one of the children, Ched, try to warn the inhabitants of the steadily collapsing Palace while the others steal supplies and escape. No one pays attention to Calwyn, except Keela, who tries to take Ched from her. Calwyn and Ched escape, leaving the palace just as the palace collapses. Calwyn uses Ironcraft for the first time to assist in their escape. Falling debris kills Ched. Calwyn overhears some soldiers conspiring to crown the Fifth Prince so that they can control the dimwitted man and rule the Empire through him. Darrow meets Tonno at a Merithuran harbor. At a bar, Darrow meets the leader of the commoners who want to rebel against the empire. Darrow earns a partnership by promising to take the leader, Fenn, to the fabled Black Palace. Calwyn and friends travel towards the Black Palace. Halasaa becomes ill along the way, because of the barrenness of the land. In his telepathic conversations with Calwyn and other characters, Halasaa reveals that Merithuros was once a fertile, generous land, but was reduced to wasteland by humans. When confronted by wasunti (wild dogs), Calwyn uses the Power of Beasts to turn them away. Oron, one of the children, is bitten by one of the wasunti. Halasaa teaches Calwyn the Power of Becoming, with which Calwyn heals Oron. Possibly as a result, Calwyn almost faints from exhaustion. When she awakes, they have been saved by Darrow, Tonno, and the rebels. They head to the Lip of Hathara, which is a stone wall surrounding the Black Palace. Darrow and the children rescued from the Palace of Cobwebs (except for Ched who died) use ironcraft to open a doorway, but do not close it. This leaves an entryway for the army and nobles led by Keela, who are all heading to the Palace. When the protagonists enter, they are attacked by the sorcerers. Oron goes missing, later to be discovered, threatened and suborned by Keela. Darrow reveals the Ring of Lyonssar, making himself the Lord of the Black Palace. This confuses Calwyn, who associates such a manouvere with the desire for control. Later, Darrow explains his methods, whereas Calwyn disclaims any division that he has suspected her of having in her affections. Darrow also reveals that the Black Palace can, if its mechanisms are released, become a wind-powered war machine, similar to a terrestrial warship. Calwyn compares the sorcerers' tradition of living in the Black Palace to the tradition in which she was raised, wherein priestesses hide behind walls of ice, and wishes that the chanters would "come out of hiding". On the roof of the palace, Calwyn and Darrow share a passionate kiss (during which Darrow's ring becomes caught in Calwyn's hair), finally acting on their feelings for each other. In the next morning, the remaining imperial soldiers are advancing toward the Black Palace. Darrow rallies sorcerers, rebels, and his friends, invoking them to build a Republic on the ruins of the Empire, wherein a more generous way of life is followed. When the various factions begin to quarrel, Darrow reveals the soldiers to them as a common enemy, whereupon all unite in their opposition to this. Heben, impromptu, questions the wisdom of war and suggests that all factions co-operate rather than compete. Darrow supports this idea. Tonno discuses with Calwyn their means of getting back to Ravamey. He assumes that Darrow will stay here and assume the role of Lord of the Black Palace. This saddens Calwyn, because despite the fact that Darrow has finally acted on his love for her, she must leave him in Merithurous to fulfill his duty. In addition, Halassa is sick and needs her aid more at the moment than does Darrow. The imperial army attacks; moments later, Oron unwillingly obeys Keela's order to activate the mechanisms of the Black Palace, which are a series of metal pipes. When air is run over the pipes correctly, the pipes create a chant of Ironcraft powerful enough to move the Black Palace itself. As it advances menacingly, Calwyn responds to the needs of the injured land and uses all of her chantment to heal it. In the process, she sacrifices all of her own power to sing. Using chantment, Darrow halts the Black Palace in its path saving Calwyn. As a result of Calwyn's chantment, the region called Hathara becomes the site of a lake, into which all the fighters throw their weapons. Because his sickness and weakness corresponded with that of the land, Halasaa is restored to health even as the land is revived. Keela is captured; although she attempts to talk her way out of trouble, she is imprisoned at Darrow's command. It is revealed that Keela believes Samis to be alive; because Darrow doubts the clarity of his own perception of Samis as dead, he is frightened by this information. Calwyn, upon regaining her strength, is distraught to find that she has lost all of her chantment. She watches aimlessly as Heben, Darrow, Tonno, and the leaders of the various Merithuran factions build the foundations of their new Republic. Eventually, she is approached by Darrow. He attempts to console her without much success. He then reveals that he intends to seek Samis, to discover whether he is in fact alive, and if he is so to kill him. Darrow discusses the future with Calwyn, suggesting that she might go back to Antaris to heal, and eventually asks her to promise him that if she returns to Antaris in search of healing, she will not go alone, but in the company of friends, and to promise him that she will return upon success or failure. When she does not promise to return, arguing that she cannot ensure it, he leaves her, disappointed.
5750096	/m/0f2ntf	The Ruins of Gorlan	John Flanagan	2004-11-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Morgarath, the angry, evil ,exiled lord of the bleak, barren Mountains of Rain and Night, has been waiting for fifteen years in his dark realm, carefully planning his revenge against the Kingdom of Araluen. His former fief, known as Gorlan, was long ago brought to ruin as a result of his unsuccessful rebellion against King Duncan. Now he silently plots to rebel again, rallying creatures known as Wargals to his side. Wargals have little will of their own, and are easy to control, therefore being suitable as soldiers in Morgarath’s army. Now, after the fifteen years, Morgarath prepares to unleash his power and attempt to take the Kingdom once more. In Araluen, in the fief Redmont, a special day has come for Will, called Choosing Day, where he becomes an apprentice to a craftmaster. Although Will's first choice was Battleschool, he becomes apprenticed to Halt of the Rangers. Rangers are the intelligence group of the country and specialize in long range weapons and the art of staying unseen. Will is trained in these skills as he prepares for the annual Ranger meeting called the Gathering which is where his skills will be tested. At the Gathering the Rangers receive a report that the Kalkara, vicious creatures under the control of Morgarath, have killed important Araluen figures. Halt leaves to track down the Kalkara while Will rides for help. The Baron, Sir Rodney, and several others head out to slay the Kalkara and to save Halt. Finding where Halt is battling the Kalkara, Sir Rodney and the Baron manage to slay one, but are badly injured by the other. Suddenly, the last Kalkara is killed by Will with a flaming arrow that burns it because of its highly flammable fur. Back at his fief, Will is considered a hero and receives his bronze oakleaf medal which identifies him as a Rangers Apprentice. On the other hand, Araluen is preparing for a battle with Lord Morgarath.
5750420	/m/0f2p1k	The Burning Bridge	John Flanagan	2005-05-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 On a special mission for the Ranger Corps, Will, his friend Horace, and the Ranger Gilan travel to Celtica, a neighbouring country to Araluen . They discover that all the people are gone. Will and Horace wonder if all the villagers have been slain or captured, but Gilan believes that the evil Lord Morgarath devised a plan to cross the mountain pass. If that were true, and the King wasn't warned, the country would be destroyed. Gilan rides to warn King Duncan, and Will and Horace begin to follow a straggling Wargal force. On their way, they come across a girl named Evanlyn, who claims to be a maid to a lady of the Araluan court, but is actually the Princess herself. When the three of them follow the Wargals they discover that a gargantuan bridge is in the process of being built across The Fissure for their war party to cross. They also discover that the King's army will be trapped on the Plains of Uthal, because the plans that Halt captured were merely a ruse. Will burns the bridge with Evanlyn's help. Will and Evanlyn are taken captive by a group of Skandians ruled by Jarl Erak. Horace was able to escape. After, he tells the King and his aides about what is going to happen, the army starts to get prepared for the army that is supposed to attack them from behind, Halt is sent to take care of them with a force of cavalry and archer units (an archer and pikeman). In the middle of the battle, Morgarath calls a truce and challenges Halt to a duel, but Duncan forbids it. Then, unexpectedly, Horace challenges Morgarath to single combat. About to be defeated by Morgarath, Horace then, in a last-ditch attempt to win the battle, throws himself into the path of the battlehorse, in order to throw it off-balance. He is successful, but only manages to wind Morgarath. Morgarath is confident that he is going to win by a last powerful stroke of his broadsword, but Horace blocks it with the double-knife defence that Gilan taught Will and stabs Morgarath to win the battle. The Wargals become harmless as soon as Morgarath dies and the mind domination is broken. The Skandians escape with Will and Evanlyn. Halt tries to rescue them by launching a one-man assault, but it was too late. Halt promises to rescue Will.
5750501	/m/0f2p5p	Freddy Goes to Florida	Walter R. Brooks		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Freddy was an intelligent pig that lived on the Bean Farm. To avoid the cold winter at their farm in Upstate New York, the animals decided to vacation in Florida. At first Charles the rooster is prevented from joining them by his acerbic wife, Henrietta. The animals encounter a man and a boy who wished to capture them. The animals scared them off. Later, Charles and Henrietta joined the group again. They also met the man and the boy, with the same results as last time. The animals were also joined by the man's black dog, Jack. They next passed through Washington, D.C where three senators took them on a tour of the city. At the end of the tour, one of the senators made a speech how pleased he was by the animals' visit. A few days later, while walking towards Florida, a thunderstorm forced the animals to take refuge in an empty log house. A flock of swallows mention a pile of gold in the area. The animals found the gold but were unable to take it with them, because they couldn't carry it. After meeting two men who tried to capture Hank, the old horse, and Mrs. Wiggins, a cow, the animals arrived at Florida only to get trapped on an island in a swamp by some alligators. After they escaped the alligators, the farm animals started the long trek northward. Their further adventures included disguising themselves to get past the two kidnappers, returning stolen property to some townspeople, taking the pile of gold with them on an old carriage, and taking the gold back from the man and the boy who tried to steal it before they got back to the Bean farm. Once they got to the farm, they showed Mr. and Mrs. Bean the gold and they all danced merrily.
5750856	/m/0f2ps1	The Last of the Wine	Mary Renault	1956	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is narrated by Alexias, a noble Athenian youth, who becomes a noted beauty in the city and a champion runner. The novel suggests that young male Athenians were treated almost like modern debutantes and wooed by older men seeking to be their lovers; in fact, in a memorable passage, Alexias' father, Myron, himself a former beauty and champion athlete, writes to his son before leaving Athens for the Sicilian Expedition. The father imparts to the son the traits he should seek in a lover – qualities like honor, loyalty and courage. However, the father also warns the son not to become involved with women as he is much too young. (See Athenian pederasty.) The book implies that Myron had been Alcibiades' lover when the latter was a teenager, and felt that the way that Alcibiades turned out was at partly Myron's fault at least, as it was his responsibility as a lover to teach his eromenos virtue. As an Ephebe (adolescent male), Alexias falls in love with Lysis, a man in his 20s – a champion pankratiast and a student of Socrates. The novel follows their the relationship through the Peloponnesian War, the surrender of Athens, the establishment of the Thirty Tyrants rule over Athens, the democratic rebellion of Thrasybulus and shortly after. The story ends with first hints of the eventual trial of Socrates for teaching blasphemy and sowing social disorder. From the beginning of the novel, Socrates figures prominently; both Alexis and Lysis become his students in their youth. Also characterized in the novel are Plato and several figures from his Dialogues who were Socrates' students, including Xenophon. Another historical figure who figures in the story, albeit mostly off-stage, is Alcibiades, the Athenian general who flees Athens on a charge of sacrilege and functions as a military adviser to Sparta until he is recalled by a resurgent democracy in Athens. Alexis and Lysis serve under Alcibiades' command until his carelessness leads the fleet to disaster and he once again goes into exile. In the course of the novel, Lysis falls in love with and marries a woman who sees Alexias favorably and encourages the continuation of her husband's relationship with him. Not long after this, Athens is defeated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. Alexias' father is murdered under the Spartan-installed tyranny, and he and Lysis go into exile in Thebes joining Thrasybulus when he leads the next democratic revolt. Lysis is killed in the battle between the Long Walls running from the port of Piraeus to Athens (the Battle of Munychia). Shortly after the victory, Alexias takes Lysis' widow under his protection, marries her and continues his family line. The book ends with the postscript that this story (incomplete and long-forgotten) has been found by Alexias' grandson (also named Alexias), a commander of Athenian cavalry in the service of Alexander the Great.
5751209	/m/0f2q7q	The Tenth Power	Kate Constable		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 On a winter night in Antaris, Tamen, the Guardian of the Wall, and other priestesses approach the ice Wall that surrounds Antaris. A priestess drugs herself, whereupon the other priestesses sing a hole into the wall. The drugged priestess is sealed inside. Characters Calwyn, Mica, and Trout are traveling to Antaris, Calwyn's home, hoping that the priestesses may restore Calwyn's lost powers of chantment, by which she was able to manipulate wind, ice, animals, and living systems. Upon reaching the Wall, Mica uses the Clarion of the Flame, a magical object used to invoke fire, to burn a hole into the Wall. The drugged priestess is revealed, whereupon Calwyn tries to heal her, but does not succeed. The three notice other corpses encased in the Wall, which Calwyn attributes to a failure to entomb them according to custom. The three proceed to the priestesses' Dwellings. When reaching the Dwellings, Calwyn enters the kitchen where she sees a now crippled Lia, a revered priestess and milk healer. Lia warns Calwyn that Tamen will hunt Calwyn down and seal her into the Wall with the other priestesses; having contracted an ailment called snow-sickness, they were put into the Wall in hopes of appeasing their goddess Taris, who would presumably restore spring. Marna, the High Priestess, has died and Tamen has been promoted to High Priestess in her place. Tamen then appears and accuses Calwyn of bringing the cruel intruder Samis, the endless winter, and the snow-sickness to their homeland. Calwyn argues that she has the right to return home. Tamen sings ice onto Trouts face, whereupon Mica uses the Clarion to melt the ice and attack Tamen. This sets the kitchen on fire. The three flee and are rescued by Ursca, the infirmarian, who takes them to an abandoned, lightning-struck barn where in the rafters is a snow-sick Marna, apparently alive. It is revealed that when Marna contracted snow-sickness, Ursca proclaimed that Marna had already died and hid her in the barn to prevent Marna from being sealed into the wall. Ursca leaves the three, whereafter Calwyn reprimands Mica for using the Clarion as a weapon. This quarrel upsets both girls. Calwyn sleeps; later, she awakens to find Marna speaking with great difficulty. Calwyn tries to calm her; Marna tells Calwyn that the world is broken but can be mended. She speaks of the Wheel, which is an object of power, and of the mysterious Tenth Power (of chantment, which is used through specific songs) before she falls asleep. Gilly, a priestess who was formerly frivolous but has become wiser, comes in the morning to help Marna and there befriends Mica. At night, Calwyn sneaks out to visit Lia, who reveals that she believes that Calwyn will put an end to the snow-sickness. It is also revealed that Marna holds the same opinion. While Calwyn, Mica, and Trout travel to Antaris, Darrow, Tonno, and Halaasa travel to Gellan, where they encounter the ex-princess Keela. Darrow, while investigating an enclosure of sick chanters, contracts the snow-sickness himself. Later he and the others, including Keela, rendezvous with Calwyn, who has left Antaris and is in search of a missing piece of the Wheel. During the further travels of the combined party, Keela secretly relays information to her half-brother Samis, who is a sorcerer bent on achieving power over others. Subsequently, the travelers enter the Veiled Lands, which are a region unknown to Calwyn's people but legendary among Halasaa's. Their journey continues underground, culminating at the mysterious Knot of Waters, where Calwyn embraces her own death to save Keela from drowning. This sacrifice revives Calwyn, restores her powers of chantment, and creates a sibling-like bond between the two women. The Clarion of the Flame is lost in the Knot and never again used. The travelers are met by some of Halaasa's people, who teach them the true history of their world, wherein it is revealed that the snow-sickness is part of a larger pattern of entropy taking place all over Tremaris. Whereas originally all the songs of chantment overlapped, each one strengthening the others, a war between the Tree People and the Voiced Ones (see below) caused the peoples who used them, and therefore the chantments themselves, to separate. It is suggested that the abuse of chantments, practiced during the war, caused chantment to fall into disfavor everywhere. The connections between songs, people, lands, etc. became weaker and more lost. After this meeting, Calwyn is captured by Samis, who desires to heal Tremaris so that it will not be destroyed before he can conquer it. He keeps her a prisoner in the long-abandoned city-spacecraft called Spareth, which is the means by which the Voiced Ones (colonists from another planet, presumably Earth) arrived on Tremaris millennia before the story begins, trains her in advanced uses of chantment surpassing her previous abilities, and additionally reveals to her the Tenth Power mentioned by Marna. This is the Power of Signs, a code by which the songs of chantment may be written and learned. A minor romance occurs between the two of them during this time, culminating and terminating when Samis and Calwyn use their chantments to empower Spareth, sending it into interplanetary space. Calwyn, now revealed as the legendary Singer of All Songs, remains on Tremaris, while Samis flies inside Spareth, intent on reaching its port of origin. Ultimately, Calwyn must unite Tree People and Voiced Ones in a common need. In this she succeeds. All the people who had contracted snow-sickness, including Darrow, are healed. The peoples are united in harmony, and a new, better world begins.
5752813	/m/0f2tdr	The Ancient Economy		1973		 Finley represented the side of the "primitivists" where he argued that the economies of Ancient Greece and Rome differed wildly than how the economies of the western world function today. The modernists, on the contrary, believed that the ancient economy resembles in many ways the way it functions in western democracies, where economic laws such as supply and demand functioned in the same ways then as it does now. To show how the economies of Ancient Greece and Rome differed from our times, he first examines how the Ancients lacked even the concept of an "economy" in the way we refer to it in our own times. Economy derives from a Greek word,οἰκονόμος, "one who manages a household". The household was the most important economic unit. Of course, they mined, taxed, and traded, but what the Ancients did not do was to combine all their commercial activities into an overarching sub-system of society, a giant marketplace where the means of production and distribution responded to market forces such as the cost of labor, supply and demand, trade routes, etc. Moreover, Finley takes the fact that the Ancient Greeks and Romans did not have a sophisticated accounting system as well as how imprecise or carefree they are about numerical data to imply the lack of an economy resembling Western modern ones that place exorbitant demands on numerical computations and precise accounting records. He also deals with the roles of orders and status. He argues that because the ancients placed so much emphasis on status, which heavily regulated what commercial activities was acceptable for those in the upper orders and well as the lower ones, their economy differed from any modern economy where everyone was free and able to participate in whatever legal commercial enterprise. Finley also discusses the institution of slavery which was very prominent in the Ancient world. The relationship between master and slave was complex and even within slaves, there was a diversity of societal rankings. Yet despite this complexity, Finley shows how slavery provided free labour that at times had to be curtailed in order to provide work for the native artisans. Slavery heavily influenced the value placed on labour and certain jobs. Thus, the distribution of labour as well as the means of production that one sees in the ancient economy was different to how modern economies function where human capital plays a role in determinant of price as well as on supply. Another relationship Finley discusses is the way the Ancients viewed the land. Land for the Ancient Greeks and Romans was not seen as a capital investment where profits could be obtained from the growing and selling of crops, but used as showpieces to enhance one's status as well as something that was inherently desirable from a traditional stand-point where economics played no part. To illustrate this, Finley turns to one of Pliny's letters where he writes that he will have to borrow money to buy more land. In the letter, Pliny does not discuss if this new purchase is an economically wise one in terms of the profits that can be derived from it. The last part of the book, Finley discusses the discrepancies between life in the city and country as well as how the State did not play a role in managing the national economy and treasury in the same ways modern governments are expected to do in most Western economies. The book has had such an impact on classical scholarship that the views brought forward in The Ancient Economy has been labeled "the Finley/Polanyi orthodox" Finley covers both ancient economic thought, wealth, the role of the state, slavery as well as the tax system. "Indeed, no individual writer (...) has attempted a comprehensive economic overview of the entire classical world since Finley, though period specific, regional or thematic work has abounded."
5754273	/m/0f2wrs	Worldwar: Tilting the Balance	Harry Turtledove	1995-02-21	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As the year 1943 begins, the Race attempts to consolidate its hold over Latin America, Africa, and Australia while engaged in a fierce struggle with the advanced nations of the world: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Japan, and the Greater German Reich. While capable of resisting the invaders, mankind has been dealt a heavy blow by the nemesis from the stars. The Race maintains unquestioned air supremacy over the entire world as humans are reduced to moving their ground forces by night and using their own aircraft only in the most dire emergencies. With supplies of petroleum severely limited, people have taken to using horse driven carriages rather than automobiles and kerosene lamps instead of electric lights. But even as the human race huddles in the darkness, physicists and engineers work desperately to develop the first human atom bombs as they represent what might be the only hope of driving the Race off Earth. After a rapid conquest of Spain and the capitulation of Italy, the Race focuses on driving its forces in France eastward, toward the heart of the German Reich. Among the officers of the Wehrmacht struggling desperately to hold back the tide of the alien forces is Colonel Heinrich Jäger. Fresh from his stay in Hitler's Berchtesgaden retreat, Jäger is puzzled by the relationship he has formed with Senior Lieutenant Ludmila Gorbunova, the Ukrainian pilot who flew Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov to Bavaria for a conference with the Führer. He is much enamored with her but wonders if love can develop between two former enemies. Jäger is given command of a panzer regiment near Belfort and is charged with keeping the Race from reaching the Rhine. Although the latest panzer models, the Panther and the Tiger I, give the Germans a fighting chance, they are still woefully inferior to the Race's landcruisers. For their part, the aliens are stunned that humans are capable of designing and deploying new tank models within such a short space of time, as the Race's rate of technological development is centuries slower. Jäger is abruptly pulled out of frontline service and ordered to assist the German atomic bomb program in Wittelsbach. In the United States, Jens Larssen, a physicist, leaves Chicago in search of the metallurgical laboratory which has relocated to Denver. After crossing the Great Lakes, he moves swiftly across Minnesota and the Dakotas. Larssen is not so much driven by the need to hasten atomic bomb development as he is by a desire to be reunited with his wife Barbara. Unfortunately for Jens, under the impression that he is dead, Barbara has started a relationship with Corporal Sam Yeager, a soldier responsible for guarding captured alien POWs. Yeager serves as a translator for the metallurgical lab since he has learned the rudiments of the Race's language. Jens arrives in Denver before the lab and sends a courier out to find Barbara with a message that he remains alive. Barbara learns that her husband is still alive just after revealing to Yeager that she is pregnant. In Illinois, after the successful drive by General Patton that liberated much of the state, the Race begins to advance upon Chicago once more. U.S. soldiers fight valiantly but the flat open country gives the alien landcruisers a decisive advantage. Slowly but surely the Race draws closer and closer toward Lake Michigan. Heinreich Jäger manages to return to the front lines in Belfort after an unproductive stay with German physicists working on atomic research in Wittelsbach. Not long afterward, Wittelsbach is destroyed by an out-of-control nuclear reaction produced by Nazi scientists. The resulting nuclear meltdown alerts the Race to the virtual certainty that Germany is engaged in nuclear research. They are not the only ones. On Stalin's behalf, Foreign Minister Molotov visits a secret research laboratory several miles north of Moscow where Soviet researchers are struggling to turn the sample of plutonium captured by German-Russian forces in Ukraine the year before into an atomic device. They are meeting with minimal success and Molotov attempts to encourage them with threats of torture and death if they fail. His pep talk produces no marked improvement in the advances made by Soviet engineers. In Japan, a captured killercraft pilot of the Race named Teerts is interrogated by Japanese researchers attempting to understand the dynamics of nuclear fission. As a pilot, Teerts has a limited knowledge of atomic weapons, as his job is merely to drop them not build them. The Japanese refuse to believe him and use torture to make Teerts more cooperative. In the United States, the metallurgical laboratory finally reaches Denver and begins working on atomic research. Their work is helped by a small shipment of plutonium that Colonel Leslie Groves brings from Boston, where a British submarine had been entrusted with delivering it to the U.S. government. The plutonium is one-fourth of the material stolen from the Race during the Nazi-Soviet operation in Ukraine. It had come into the possession of the British by way of Jewish partisans who had commandeered a portion of the plutonium consigned to Germany when they briefly held Colonel Jäger in captivity in Poland the previous winter. Unfortunately, the plutonium in question is not enough with which to build an atomic bomb. The metallurgical lab must produce a substantial amount of the precious plutonium before Americans can hope to wield a nuclear device in the war against the Race. Jens Larssen meets with his wife upon her arrival in Denver and learns that she has married and become impregnated by Corporal Sam Yeager. In a difficult decision that leaves everyone emotionally upset, she decides to keep the baby and remain with Yeager. Jens takes the news hard and his work on the atomic bomb project suffers. In order to keep him out of trouble, Colonel Groves orders Larssen to travel to Hanford and consider the possibility of transferring the metallurgical lab there to facilitate the production of plutonium. With an M1903 Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder, Jens heads off to Washington State on a bicycle. Jäger, supervising the efforts to recover plutonium from the melted-down reactor in Wittelsbach, is recruited by SS Standartenführer Otto Skorzeny to help take back the city of Split from the Race, who have been offering the Independent State of Croatia incentives to turn away from the Germans and toward them (and also in an effort to lure Skorzeny into Split to be killed). However, Skorzeny and Jäger, with superior maps, dig a tunnel into the middle of the Race's garrison, and, with numerous Croat soldiers and FG 42 battle rifles (which are superior to the Race's infantry weapons), completely reduce the garrison, and every member of the Race in Split is either killed or taken prisoner. Among the dead is Fleetlord Atvar's chief intelligence officer, Drefsab. As the summer of 1943 begins, the Race creeps closer to Germany, Moscow appears to be on the brink of capture, and in the USA the Lizards reach the outskirts of Chicago. The Race advances on Moscow only to be abruptly stopped by the detonation of a human-made atomic bomb planted as a landmine between Kaluga and Moscow. The story ends with the balance of power in the scope of the conflict dramatically redefined.
5754747	/m/0f2xf2	Lord of the Silent	Barbara Mertz	2001	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In this installment, which takes place during the 1915-1916 season, newlyweds Ramses and Nefret Emerson spend their time living on their family's dahabeeyah on the Nile, while the rest of the group remains at the house near Giza, where their excavations continue. Between the antics of Ramses' former associates in the smuggling trade, the reappearance of the Master Criminal, and yet another unknown adversary with a rich find, little time is permitted for romance...but of course, the younger Emersons make the most of it.
5754818	/m/0f2xk9	The Golden One	Barbara Mertz	2002	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Golden One is a combination of two stories. The first story deals with the search for an unknown tomb, one where some artifacts have started to appear on the black market. The second story follows Ramses Emerson as he is sent on another mission behind Turkish lines. After arriving in Egypt in January, 1917, Amelia acquires a magnificent cosmetic jar with the cartouche removed. Rumors of a new, previously untouched tomb are rife, and this is significant evidence. After a brief stay in Cairo, the family moves on to their home in Luxor. When the Emersons arrive in Luxor, they encounter Joe Albion and his family, a wealthy American collector of antiquities, who make no secret of his desire to deal on the black market. Cyrus Vandergelt is acquainted with Joe Albion, and tells Emerson he would do anything to get what he wanted. This riles Emerson, and relations with the Albions are frosty at best. Jamil, a former employee and Jumana’s brother, is at the center of the rumors about the tomb. Early in their excavations, the Emersons discover one looted tomb with links to Jamil. They learn that he is manipulating a number of people and even attempts to kill Emerson and Peabody. When his family confronts him, his ancient musket explodes, mortally wounding him. But before he dies, he leaves a clue to the location of the tomb – “in the hand of the God”. The Emerson and Vandergelt expeditions now try to figure out which “hand of the God” Jamil meant. Just then Ramses is called back into service as an agent. An English spy, claiming to have converted to Islam, has become a tool of the Turks and is now known as Ismail, the Holy Infidel. Ramses is sent to discover if the turncoat is Sethos. It so happens that Ismail is in Gaza, just inside the Turkish lines. Ramses is forced to take a novice agent with him, but manages to get into Gaza without much trouble. While trying to get a look at Ismail, Ramses companion fires at Ismail and misses. In the confusion, Ramses is caught but the other agent makes his escape. The head of the Turkish secret service, Sahin Pasha, takes possession of Ramses, but makes a surprising offer: convert to Islam and marry his daughter, Esin, and he will set Ramses free. While Ramses is left to consider the offer in a dungeon, Esin engineers Ramses’ escape. Meanwhile, the Emersons, who had secretly arrive in a town just behind the British lines, are ready to come to Ramses aid if needed. They get word of his capture and are working out a rescue plan when Ramses shows up. They prepare to make their getaway when Sethos also appears, with Esin in a rug. They are forced to escape to a temporary hiding place, where they again encounter Sethos. He was indeed Ismail, sent to destroy Sahin Pasha, which he has done by humiliating him. But his work is not done and he returns to Gaza. As the Emersons are about to leave for Cairo, Sahin appears, hoping to regain his status by returning with both his daughter and Ramses. Though he wounds Ramses, Emerson captures him, and they all return to Cairo. Sahin Pasha is turned over to the authorities, and Esin is sent to a secure home. When the Emersons return to Luxor, they concoct a story that for most people would be implausible, but does bear some resemblance to previous adventures, so no one asks much about it. However, the tomb is still undiscovered. The Albions are making it clear that nothing will stop them from getting what they want, and they seek to abuse Jumana’s trust as one means of doing so. Both Bertie Vandergelt and Ramses have encounters with the Albion son. When Jumana is caught by Peabody sneaking into the compound one night, Peabody assumes the worst and decides to harshly punish her. Peabody is terribly disappointed, and feels that Jumana has abused her position of trust in the family. But that morning, Cyrus and Bertie appear, unable to contain their excitement. Bertie, with help from Jumana, has found the tomb in the hills above Deir el Medina. The two of them had been climbing for the last few nights around a rock formation that looked like a fist, the “Hand of the God”. It is a royal cache, containing the mummies and funerary times of four of the Wives of the God. Peabody realizes her mistake and for once is contrite about jumping to conclusions. Sethos reappears, and is amazed at the discovery. He also warns Emerson of the Albions. Sethos considers them unscrupulous, a serious charge coming from Sethos. But the Albions appear again, making it clear that they expect to get some of the items from the tomb. When they are sent away by Emerson and Cyrus, they decide to try force. Sethos warns Emerson, and the Emersons and Vandergelts ambush the Albions and their hired thugs. Caught by Emerson and Vandergelt, the Albions are forced to give up the few items they had bought from Jamil, and then disappear. The only thing left is the announcement that Ramses and Nefret are going to have a baby.
5754938	/m/0f2xrj	Children of the Storm	Barbara Mertz	2003	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The 1919 season opens with the Vandergelts and Emersons packing the God's Wives treasures found (in the previous book) for Cyrus Vandergelt by his adopted son Bertie. Just before the Service d'Antiquités representative comes to inspect their work, several items disappear together with the conservator Cyrus had hired on Sethos's recommendation. The conservator's skeleton is found later in the desert, without the objects. These events coincide with a visit from Emerson's brother Walter, his wife Evelyn, their daughter Lia and her husband David (the Emersons' adoptive son), plus their small children. Meanwhile, the Emersons meet up with a Justin FitzRoyce, a young person with a strange mental malady, and his companion, François, who quickly develops a dislike of the family after Emerson mistakes his attentions to the boy for physical abuse. Justin is travelling with his grandmother, the elderly, sometimes confused, Mrs FitzRoyce; also with them is her companion, who turns out to be Maryam, the teenage daughter of Sethos, fallen on hard times. Amelia tries to befriend Maryam and helps her to rebuild her relationship with her father when he arrives to visit. She also reassures Maryam that the Emersons were not responsible for the death of the girl's mother, Bertha. Along the way, the Emerson family is dogged by a series of mysterious events ranging from strange pranks to near-fatal accidents. Most of these seem to be directed at the Arab servants, including Selim, who is badly injured when a motor-car imported by Emerson crashes as a result of the wheel-nuts having been removed. The exception is a mystery attacker who targets Maryam. In addition, Ramses is temporarily taken prisoner and drugged by a mysterious woman disguised as the goddess Hathor. The same woman later reappears at the temple ruins during the night but the Emersons fail to apprehend her. As the head of the Service arrives to take possession of the treasure for transport to Cairo, Nefret is captured by the criminal gang intent on stealing the treasure, and held prisoner on the dahabeeyah belonging to the FitzRoyces, as is Emerson when he impetuously comes to rescue her. "Justin" is revealed as Maryam's elder half-sister and "Mrs FitzRoyce" as an old associate of Bertha's. Through Emerson's efforts, Nefret escapes through a window of the boat, to be picked up by passing fishermen; meanwhile Maryam, who is implicated in the plot, shows her true loyalties by rescuing Emerson. The final chase scene has Amelia, Rameses, Sethos, Selim, Daoud, Cyrus, Walter, and Bertie racing down-river armed to the teeth to rescue Nefret and Emerson, and is unlike any other scene in the Amelia series.
5755031	/m/0f2xvz	Guardian of the Horizon	Barbara Mertz	2004	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins in summer, 1907, ten years after the Emersons' expedition into the Nubian desert in The Last Camel Died at Noon, when the Emersons were lured to a Lost Oasis where the remains of a Meroitic - Ancient Egyptian civilization that had avoided the outside world for centuries still survived. It was during that journey that the Emersons brought back Nefret Forth to live with them in England. A messenger from the Lost Oasis now appears at their home in Kent, pleading for help for their friend, King Tarek, and they have no choice but to go to his aid, though they mistrust the young man who claims to be Tarek's younger half-brother. This time it is Ramses who experiences the feeling of foreboding that normally assails Amelia, as they head off to the Sudan and into the desert to help their friend. Unlike their first trip, they bring a far larger force, in full awareness that the Lost Oasis will no longer be a secret no matter what the outcome of this expedition. It soon becomes apparent that the Emersons are not the only ones interested in the Lost Oasis. They run into too many people who are interested in their travel plans, and ultimately bring some unexpected guests with them. These include a British adventurer who has in his company a mysterious young woman. The girl unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Ramses, but he remains strangely attracted to her, although he is really in love with Nefret. Upon their arrival, the family finds things have indeed become desperate for King Tarek, who has been deposed by the father of the duplicitous messenger who brought them to the oasis. The usurper's plan is to obtain the endorsement of the Emerson family in order to neutralise any popular resistance this regime. Nefret, who up until now has seemed to miss her old life, is taken from the group and made to resume her position as high priestess. When Amelia catches an intruder in their quarters, she is relieved to find that it is her old enemy and admirer Sethos, and he promises to help rescue Nefret. Amelia is up to her usual plotting and lists, Emerson is as bombastic as ever, Ramses plays the part of the action hero, and the assistance of Selim and Daoud becomes essential to the Father of Curses and the Sitt Hakim. Chronologically, this book covers the time period immediately after The Ape Who Guards the Balance, although it was published some years later than the books that follow it chronologically.
5755166	/m/0f2y0v	The Serpent on the Crown	Barbara Mertz	2005	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In 1922, the Emersons are excavating at Deir el Medina when a melodramatic visitor delivers a challenge—and a solid gold ancient statuette—to them: find out where it came from and why it brings bad luck to its owners. Emerson, of course, doesn't believe in curses, but he does believe someone has robbed a find of historic proportions. When their visitor turns up dead and her stepchildren disappear, everyone except the Emersons believe the murder is a family affair. Ramses, meanwhile, finds a papyrus which he suspects to be of historic importance, and an assistant who is not all he seems.
5755196	/m/0f2y2l	Tomb of the Golden Bird	Barbara Mertz	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Howard Carter returns as a featured character, as the Emersons are privy to his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamon.
5756202	/m/0f2z7p	Mitch and Amy	Beverly Cleary	1967	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book centers around twin siblings, Mitch and Amy, who bicker constantly over insignificant or little things. It chronicles their average daily experiences or their opposing personalities and interests, as well as their sibling rivalry. However, it also deals with their problems with a tormentor named Alan Hibbler, who harasses them constantly for seemingly no apparent reason until a schoolyard fight leads Amy to realize that his antagonistic behaviors may be linked with his father Judson Hibbler's great notoriety and Alan's poor skills in spelling.
5756414	/m/0f2zkt	Ramona the Brave	Beverly Cleary	1975	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Summer is coming to an end. Ramona has spent most of it with her friend Howie Kemp, pounding old bricks into dust in a game called Brick Factory. Brick Factory makes Ramona feel powerful, something that doesn't happen very often since she is the youngest in her family. Ramona longs to be brave and grown-up, so when some boys tease her older sister about her name Ramona sticks up for her and gives them a lecture. She's crushed to realize that instead of considering her a hero, Beezus is embarrassed and angrier at Ramona than the boys. Why can't everyone see that she is trying so hard to grow up? Summer gets more interesting when Mother gets a part-time job and some workmen cut a hole in their house to add an extra bedroom. Beezus and Ramona are going to take turns using the room, and for once Ramona gets to be first. She can't wait for school to start so she can tell everyone in first grade about the big, slightly scary, hole in her house. But she isn't prepared for how frightening it is to go to sleep in the new room - alone. The good part about first grade is that Ramona is learning to read. The bad part is that Ramona is sure her teacher, Mrs. Griggs, doesn't like her. And as hard as she works on her self-control she just can't seem to stay out of trouble. One day when her class is making paper-bag owls for Parents' Night, Ramona sees Susan, her kindergarten nemesis, copying her owl. Mrs. Griggs sees Susan's owl first and shows it off to the class. Ramona is so angry that Susan copied so now her owl isn't special, that she destroys both of them. Later she is forced to apologize to Susan in front of the whole class. The final chapter describes how Ramona became "The Brave." One day on her way to school a big dog comes after her, so she takes off her shoe and throws it at him. The dog picks up her shoe and carries it away and Ramona limps off to school. That turns out to be the morning Mrs. Griggs finally chooses her to lead the morning flag salute, and she discovers that Ramona is only wearing one shoe. Ramona uses her ingenuity to deal with the situation, and when her shoe is returned the school secretary compliments her bravery.
5759887	/m/0f34q_	The Caine Mutiny	Herman Wouk	1951	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told through the eyes of Willis Seward "Willie" Keith, an affluent, callow young man who signs up for midshipman school with the United States Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army during World War II. The first part of the novel introduces Willie and describes the tribulations he endures because of inner conflicts over his relationship with his domineering mother and with May Wynn, a beautiful red-haired nightclub singer who is the daughter of Italian immigrants. After barely surviving a series of misadventures that earn him the highest number of demerits in the history of the school, he is commissioned and assigned to the destroyer minesweeper USS Caine, an obsolete warship converted from a World War I-era Clemson class destroyer. Willie, with a low opinion of the ways of the Navy, misses his ship when it leaves on a combat assignment, and rather than catch up with it, ducks his duties to play piano for an admiral who has taken a shine to him. He has second thoughts after reading a last letter from his father, who has died of melanoma, but soon forgets his guilt in the round of parties at the admiral's house. Eventually, he reports aboard the Caine. Though the ship has successfully carried out its combat missions in Keith's absence, the ensign immediately disapproves of its decaying condition and slovenly crew, which he attributes to a slackness of discipline by the ship's longtime captain, Lieutenant Commander William De Vriess. Willie's lackadaisical attitude toward what he considers menial and repetitive duties brings about a humiliating clash with De Vriess when Willie forgets to decode a communications message which serves notice that De Vriess will soon be relieved. While Willie is still pouting over his punishment, De Vriess is relieved by Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, a strong, by-the-book figure whom Willie at first believes to be just what the rusty Caine and its rough-necked crew needs. But Queeg has never handled a ship like this before, and he soon makes a series of errors, which he is unwilling to admit to. The Caine is sent to San Francisco for an overhaul, not for any merit by Queeg, but in an admiral's hope that the captain will make further mistakes someplace else. Before departing, Queeg browbeats his officers into selling their liquor rations to him. In a breach of regulations, Queeg smuggles the liquor off the ship and when it is lost by a series of careless mistakes blackmails Willie into paying for it by threatening to withhold his shore leave. Willie sees May on leave, and after sleeping with her, decides he has no future with a woman of a lower social class. He resolves to dump her by not replying to her letters. As the Caine begins its missions under his command, Queeg loses the respect of his crew through a series of incidents: *He grounds the ship on his first sailing, then attempts to cover it up while blaming his helmsman, Gunner's Mate 2nd Class John Stillwell. *He causes the loss of a gunnery target sled by steaming over, and cutting, the target's towline while distracted by a petty disciplinary action--a sailor's loose shirt-tail--and again blames Stillwell. *He confines Stillwell to the Caine for six months for flipping through a comic book while standing watch while the ship is in port. *He court-martials Stillwell for being absent without leave, rigging the court-martial in an effort to convict Stillwell, whose sentence of forfeiture of six liberties amounts to an acquittal. *Twice, when under fire, he leaves a battle area, once abandoning troops under his protection to fend for themselves. *After a combat mission near the Equator, noticing that the ships water usage went up 10% during the action, he cuts off water for the entire crew for three days. *He claims to suffer severe migraine headaches and rarely leaves his cabin. *And he becomes obsessed over the theft of a quart of frozen strawberries missing from a gallon the Caine had received from the U.S.S. Bridge, reliving an episode from early in his career in which he had solved a shipboard theft and received a letter of commendation. He is regarded as tyrannical, cowardly, and incompetent. Tensions aboard the ship lead Queeg to ask his officers for support, but they snub him as unworthy, believing him an oppressive coward. The crew refers to Queeg as "Old Yellowstain" following the invasion of Kwajalein. The Caine, ordered to escort low-lying Marine landing craft to their line of departure, instead drops a yellow dye marker to mark the spot when Queeg fears the ship has come too close to shore under fire, then leaves the area. The sobriquet, a double entendre, refers to both the dye marker and his apparent cowardice. Communications officer Lieutenant Thomas Keefer, an intellectual former magazine writer and budding novelist who has chafed under Queeg's authority, and initially portrayed as a sympathetic, if not heroic character, plants the suggestion that Queeg might be mentally ill in the mind of the Caine's executive officer, Lieutenant Stephen Maryk, "diagnosing" Queeg as a paranoid. He also steers Maryk to "section 184" of the Navy Regulations, according to which a subordinate can relieve a commanding officer for mental illness in extraordinary circumstances. Maryk keeps a secret log of Queeg's eccentric behavior and decides to bring it to the attention of Admiral William F. Halsey, commanding the Third Fleet. Keefer reluctantly supports Maryk, then gets cold feet and backs out, warning Maryk his actions will be seen as mutiny. In this scene Keefer is shown to be cowardly. Soon after, the Caine is with the fleet when it is caught in the path of Typhoon Cobra, a terrible ordeal that ultimately sinks three destroyers and causes great damage and loss of life. At the height of the storm, Queeg's apparent paralysis of action convinces Maryk that he must relieve Queeg of command on the grounds of mental illness in order to prevent the loss of the Caine. Willie Keith, on duty as the Officer of the Deck, supports the decision, although his decision (as he later realizes) is based on the hatred he has developed for Captain Queeg. The Caine is ultimately saved, apparently by Maryk's timely decision and expert seamanship. Maryk and Willie are charged at court-martial with conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline, a catch-all charge, instead of making a mutiny. When Maryk is tried first, Keefer distances himself, even though he has no Navy career in mind, and shows himself to be a moral coward. Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, a Jewish naval aviator who was a crack attorney in civilian life and who has been grounded for medical reasons after being injured in a plane crash, is appointed to represent Maryk. His opinion, after the captain was found to be sane by three Navy psychiatrists, is that Maryk was legally unjustified in relieving Queeg. Despite his own disgust with Maryk's and Willie's actions, Greenwald decides to take the case. During the trial, Greenwald unrelentingly cross-examines Queeg until he is overcome by the stress and displays a confused inability to handle the situation. Greenwald's tactic of attacking Queeg results in Maryk's acquittal and the dropping of charges against Willie. Maryk, who had aspired to a career in the regular navy, is sent to command a Landing craft infantry, a humiliation which ends his naval career ambitions, while Queeg is transferred to an obscure naval supply depot in Iowa. At a party celebrating both the acquittal and Keefer's success at selling his novel to a publisher, Greenwald shows up intoxicated, and accuses Keefer of being a coward. He tells the gathering that he feels ashamed of having destroyed Queeg on the stand, because Queeg did the necessary duty of guarding America in the peacetime Navy, which people like Keefer (and by implication, Willie), saw as beneath them. Greenwald further points out that without the protection of people like Queeg, Greenwald's mother could have been "melted down into a bar of soap," which is what he says is happening to the Jews under Hitler's reign in Europe. Greenwald tells the gathering that he had to "torpedo Queeg" because "the wrong man was on trial"--that it was Keefer, not Maryk, who was "the true author of 'The Caine Mutiny.'" Greenwald throws a glass of "yellow wine in Keefer's face", thereby bringing the term "Old Yellowstain" full circle back to the novelist. Willie returns to the Caine in the last days of the Okinawa campaign as its executive officer. Most of the officers have been transferred to other ships. Keefer is now the captain, succeeding a trouble-shooter from the Regular Navy who had restored order to the crew. Ironically, Keefer's behavior as captain is similar to Queeg's. The Caine is struck by a kamikaze, an event in which Willie discovers that he has matured into a naval officer. Keefer panics and orders the ship abandoned, but Willie remains aboard and rescues the situation. Keefer is sent home after the war ends, ashamed of his cowardly behavior during the kamikaze attack. Ironically, Keefer's brother, Roland Keefer, had saved his ship from a kamikaze fire. Willie becomes the last captain of the Caine. He soon receives a medal for his actions following the kamikaze--and a letter of reprimand for his part in unlawfully relieving Queeg. The findings of the court-martial have been overturned after a review by higher authority. Willie discovers that he agrees that the relief was unjustified and probably unnecessary. Willie keeps the Caine afloat during another typhoon and brings it back to Bayonne, New Jersey, for decommissioning after the end of the war. After reflecting at length, he decides to ask May (now a blonde and using her real name of Marie Minotti) to marry him. However, this will not be as easy as he once thought it would be, as she is now the girlfriend of a popular bandleader. Willie faces a challenge just as great as the one he has overcome.
5763542	/m/0f3cmk	The Wizard of Oz	Glen MacDonough		{"/m/05qp9": "Play"}	 A little girl named Dorothy Gale lives in the midst of the great Kansas prairies with her Aunt Em, her Uncle Henry and her little dog, Toto. One day, while she is playing with her pet cow Imogene, things are broken up by a fierce whirlwind. Dorothy and Toto take shelter in the farmhouse, which is carried far away into the clouds. Meanwhile in the hamlet of Center Munch, the little Munchkins dance around their maypole not noticing that Dorothy's house has fallen to earth and killed the Wicked Witch of the East. Dorothy opens the front door and marvels at the strange Land of Oz. The Good Witch of the North awards Dorothy with a magic ring, good for three wishes and can summon the Good Witch of the South at any time. The Good Witch then waves her wand and a pair of beautiful shoes appear on Dorothy's feet, she tells Dorothy that if she wants to get home, she must ask the Wizard of Oz to help her. After a while, everyone exits and Dorothy is left alone with a Scarecrow, hung on a pole. She wishes she had someone to talk to, and the Scarecrow comes to life. He gets down off his pole and complains that he has no brain. Dorothy suggests that she join him on the road to the Emerald City and he sings "Alas for the Man Without Brains". Dorothy and the Scarecrow come upon the Tin Woodsman, who has rusted playing his piccolo. As it turns out, the Woodman's real name is Niccolo Chopper. He explains that the Wicked Witch of the West took his heart, so he cannot love Cynthia, who is his girlfriend. He joins the others in the hope of receiving one from the Wizard, and return to Cynthia. The Keeper of the Gates patrols outside the Emerald City. Sir Wiley Gyle enters. He is a mad old inventor who scorns all magic ever since his mother died. After being sent to prison for murdering his wife, the travelers enter the Emerald City. The Wizard gives the Scarecrow a brain and the Tin Woodman a heart. He declares this the greatest of all his achievements and calls for a celebration. The Ball of All Nations is thrown, in which anywhere up to twelve songs are sung by various characters. The Wizard performs a basket trick in which Pastoria is the mark. In the middle of the trick he claims his right to the throne and overthrows the Wizard. A great commotion breaks out, with the Wizard escaping in a hot air balloon. Dorothy, still longing for home, sets off with her companions to the castle of Glinda the Good Witch of the South. End of Act Two. Dorothy and her friends arrive at the palace and are welcomed. There are great celebrations, with Glinda promising to send Dorothy home. The whole cast rushes out from the wings and sings the finale. Romayne Whiteford portrayed Glinda early in the run as well as Doris Mitchell and Ella Gilroy, but the character appears to have been written out in subsequent productions.
5765896	/m/0f3hpk	The Assassin King	Elizabeth Haydon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dhracian hunter Rath arrives by sea, searching for the F'dor demons and also for Ysk, now known as Achmed the Snake, the Assassin King of Ylorc. At the same time dragons gather in a primeval forest glade to mourn the death of the dragon Llauron, who died protecting his daughter-in-law Rhapsody and her newborn son, Meridion, which happened at the end of the previous book of the series, Elegy for a Lost Star. His death also means the loss of the lore and control over the Earth itself that it represents. The dragons are terrified for what will come as a result of this loss. In Navarne, Lord and Lady Cymrian hold a secret meeting attended by King Achmed, his sergeant Grunthor, Lord Marshal Anborn, young Duke Gwydion Navarne and Constantin, the Patriarch of Sepulvarta. It becomes clear that Talquist, the new ruler of Sorbold, is making preparations for a war against his neighbours. Ashe sends his wife and baby Meridion to safety to Ylorc with Achmed and Grunthor and calls a meeting of Cymrian nobles. Meanwhile Anborn and Constantin travel with an army to the Holy City of Sepulvarta, which has been attacked by sorboldian troops. Achmed meets Rath, who tells him of his destiny to hunt the F'dor demons, yet declines Rath's request to join him - as a Firbolg King and protector of the Earth Child he has other priorities.
5767564	/m/0f3lfy	Olympos	Dan Simmons	2005-06-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centers on three main character groups; that of the scholic Hockenberry, Helen and Greek and Trojan warriors from the Iliad; Daeman, Harman, Ada and the other humans of Earth; and the moravecs, specifically Mahnmut the Europan and Orphu of Io. The novel is written in present-tense when centered on Hockenberry's character, but features third-person, past-tense narrative in all other instances. Much like Simmons' Hyperion where the actual events serve as a frame, the three groups of characters' stories are told over the course of the novel and their stories do not begin to converge until the end.
5768015	/m/0f3m3w	The Thirteen Problems	Agatha Christie		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 As in some of her other short story collections (e.g. Partners in Crime), Christie employs an overarching narrative, making the book more like an episodic novel. There are three sets of narrative, though they themselves interrelate. The first set of six are stories told by the Tuesday Night Club, a random gathering of people at the house of Miss Marple. Each week the group tell thrilling tales of mystery, which are always solved by Miss Marple, from the comfort of her armchair.The others in her company are dumbstuck as to how Miss Marple manages to solve each and every mystery by relating them some or the other incident from her own small village. One of the guests is Sir Henry Clithering, an ex-commissioner of Scotland Yard, and this allows Christie to resolve the story, with him usually pointing out that the criminals were caught. The next set of six occur as part of a dinner party Miss Marple is invited to at the request of Sir Henry Clithering, as a result of her skill in the Tuesday Night Club. This employs a similar guessing game, and once more Miss Marple triumphs. The thirteenth story, Death by Drowning takes place some time after the dinner party when Miss Marple finds out that Clithering is staying in St. Mary Mead and asks him to help in the investigation surrounding the death of a girl in the village.
5768774	/m/0f3n3s	Ramona and Her Father	Beverly Cleary	1977	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ramona is well into her second grade year at Glenwood School, and all is going well until one day her father comes home and announces he has lost his job. The Quimbys must now cope with the breadwinner searching for another job, filling out job applications and collecting unemployment insurance. Mrs. Quimby goes to work full time, but things are still very tight for the family. Mr. Quimby gets depressed and Mrs. Quimby tells the children that they must not do anything that would further upset their dad. Ramona wants to help, so she crosses almost everything off her wish list for Christmas. Then she adds one more item - a happy family. But will her wish come true? The Quimbys are also dealing with the family's temperamental car, Beezus' problems with creative writing, and Ramona's efforts to get her father to stop smoking. One day when Ramona worries about the family, Mr. Quimby reassures her the Quimbys will always be together and strong, no matter what happens. That Christmas Beezus and Ramona participate in their church's Christmas pageant. Beezus is to be the Virgin Mary and Ramona decides that she and her friends Howie and Davy should be sheep. Unfortunately, her Mother doesn't have time to sew a costume so Ramona has to wear a pair of old pajamas, which she hates. In the end, the sheep steal the show and Ramona and her family share a wonderful night together.
5768908	/m/0f3n8m	Ramona and Her Mother	Beverly Cleary	1979	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "People should not think being seven and a half years old was easy, because it wasn't." At least Ramona's father has a job again, so the Quimbys host a party to celebrate. Burdened with the task of keeping spoiled little Willa Jean out of everybody's way, Ramona gives Willa Jean a box of tissues and shows her how to pull them out one by one. Ramona does not want Willa Jean to touch any of Ramona's toys. When Willa Jean strews tissues through the house, the guests decide that it is time to go home. When someone remarks that Ramona was just like Willa Jean at that age, Ramona feels hurt and upset. She does not believe that she was ever such a pest. When Mrs. Quimby states that she could not get along without Beezus, Ramona feels isolated and unappreciated by her family. Now that both their parents are working full time, everyone has to do their share around the house. One day the Crockpot does not get plugged in, and it leads to an argument between Mr. and Mrs. Quimby that frightens the sisters who are afraid that the argument will result in Mr. and Mrs Quimby getting a divorce. That night they comfort each other, and Beezus tells Ramona that she will always be there to look after her. The next morning, Beezus and Ramona are surprised to discover their parents sitting at breakfast together and sharing the newspaper. The girls learn that marital "spats" are part of life, and do not always end in divorce. Mr. and Mrs. Quimby explain that arguing is normal and that Beezus and Ramona fight. Ramona feels that the comparison is not the same thing and orders her parents to never fight again. Tempers flare again when Beezus refuses to let her mother cut her hair. Mrs. Quimby normally cuts Ramona and Beezus' hair, but Beezus rebels and saves her allowance to get her hair cut at the student hairdressing academy. This makes Ramona happy, as she is still feeling jealous of Beezus's relationship with their mother. When the appointment goes wrong and Ramona ends up with a cute haircut, while Beezus' looks awful, Ramona decides it is nicer when everyone in the family is happy. Matters become complicated once more when Mrs Quimby purchases a new pair of pajamas for Ramona. Ramona is happy because for once, she receives clothing which is not inherited from Beezus. She loves her new pajamas so much that she wears them to school underneath her clothes. Her teacher, Mrs. Rudge, finds out and promises she that she will not reveal Ramona's secret to anybody. Later Ramona overhears a phone conversation that causes her to feel betrayed. She becomes angry, argues with her parents, and decides to run away. No one tries to stop her. In fact, her mother helps pack a suitcase, which shocks Ramona. Than she realizes Mother made it too heavy for her to carry on purpose. "I couldn't get along without my Ramona", her Mother says.
5769275	/m/0f3nw6	Ellen Tebbits	Beverly Cleary		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Third-grader Ellen Tebbits lives with her parents on Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon. The book opens when Ellen heads to her dance class at the studio run by the mother of a classmate, Otis Spofford, who is always teasing her. When she arrives, she heads to change in a broom closet so the other girls cannot see her terrible secret: Ellen is wearing woolen underwear. After class, she accidentally walks in on a new girl in class, Austine Allen, who's also wearing the dreaded underwear. Soon, the two become best friends. Other chapters in the book deal with Ellen's first-ever time going horseback riding, her efforts to bring a giant beet to school for show-and-tell, and Ellen and Austine's efforts to put up with Otis' antics. During summer vacation, Ellen and Austine decide to dress as twins on their first day back to school. The plan is for their mothers to make identical dresses for them. Austine's mother, however, cannot sew, so her dress doesn't turn out well. As the day goes on Austine begins to amuse herself by tugging on the sash of Ellen's dress. Ellen gets irritated and finally slaps Austine in the lunch line when her sash comes undone. Unfortunately, Austine was innocent; Otis had pulled on her dress. Austine begins spending time with other girls and ignores Ellen, who thinks everyone looks down on her for slapping her best friend. In the final chapter, the teacher chooses Ellen and Austine to go outside and clean the chalkboard erasers. Austine continues to ignore Ellen, who becomes so angered by this that she yanks on the sash on Austine's dress and rips it. Both girls end up in tears and, after learning that Otis was the culprit in the lunch line and that both of their mothers made them wear their dreaded woolen underwear that day, they mend their friendship.
5769952	/m/0f3ptt	The First Casualty	David L. Seidman	2005	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In June 1917, whilst recovering from shell shock inside a military hospital, beloved war poet and dedicated soldier Viscount Abercrombie is inexplicably shot dead. Meanwhile, Douglas Kingsley, a liberal Inspector for Scotland Yard, has refused national service because he considers the war to be an affront to his highly prized sense of logic. As a result, he's hauled before a judge, branded a coward by those who love him - including his wife Agnes - and thrown into prison, where his fellow inmates routinely assault him, taking revenge for him putting them behind bars in the first place. However, the Home Office give the disgraced copper a chance for redemption when they abduct him from his cell, fake his death and order him to investigate the Viscount's death behind the lines at Flanders. As he begins his reluctant inquiries, encumbered by the presence of his psychopathic minder Captain Shannon, Kingsley discovers that not only was Abercrombie a homosexual, but that he had also become disillusioned with the war and was composing poetry to this effect before his untimely death.
5772074	/m/0f3sz_	Kermit the Hermit	Bill Peet	1965	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 One day, when Kermit attempts to gain another unnecessary thing, he is almost buried by a dog, but is saved by a poor boy. Kermit is grateful and wants to thank the boy, but cannot think of a way to do so until he finds a chest of gold. As he stores the gold pieces in his cave, he slowly gives up one thing at a time, until he has all the gold and no more possessions in his cave. With the help of the pelican, Kermit drops coins down the boy's chimney. The boy's family becomes rich and Kermit learns the value of sharing.
5772621	/m/0f3v3r	The Watsons	Jane Austen		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mr. Watson is a widowed clergyman with two sons and four daughters. The youngest daughter, Emma, has been brought up by a wealthy aunt and is consequently better educated and more refined than her sisters. But when her aunt contracts a foolish second marriage, Emma is obliged to return to her father's house. There she is chagrined by the crude and reckless husband-hunting of two of her twenty-something sisters. She finds the kindness of her eldest and most responsible sister, Elizabeth, more attractive. Living near the Watsons are the Osbornes, a great titled family. Emma attracts some notice from the boorish and awkward young Lord Osborne, while one of her sisters plaintively pursues Lord Osborne's arrogant, social-climbing friend, Tom Musgrave. Various minor characters provide potential matches for Emma's brothers and sisters. Mr. Watson is seriously ill in the opening chapters, and Austen confided in her sister Cassandra that he was to die in the course of the work. Emma was to decline a marriage proposal from Lord Osborne, and was eventually to marry Osborne's virtuous former tutor, Mr. Howard.
5774312	/m/0f3xck	The Akhenaten Adventure	Philip Kerr	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 John and Philippa Gaunt lead an upper class life in New York City, New York. Their life changes when their Wisdom Teeth(also called Dragon Teeth by Djinns) appear after their Uncle Nimrod appears to them in a dream. He tells them that they are Djinns, and that their mother is trying to take away their powers. Suddenly John's acne disappears, and they both have a sudden desire for the heat, as well as hitting a growth spurt,and granting their housekeeper a wish. After some debate, the children are sent to spend the summer with their Uncle Nimrod. On the plane, they accidentally make two people disappear Their uncle begins to train them on how to use their powers. They meet a French named Coeur de Lapin, a woman who is the wife of the ambassador. Nimrod, John and Philippa are trying to discover where the 'Seventy Lost Djinn of (Akhenaten)' are hidden, which leads to the capture and binding of Nimrod, a murder of a man called Hussein Hussaout and a confrontation of Iblis, the leader of the most wicked tribe of djinn, the Ifrit. This could tip the balance in the ongoing fight between djinn who attempt to promote good luck, of which Nimrod is the nominal leader, and those who promote bad luck. After several adventures in Cairo, Egypt the book concludes with a battle in the British Museum between them and a ghost king, cobra, crocodile, and baboon. However, while ensuring that the Djinn will not be controlled by bad Djinn to tip the balance of luck in the universe towards more bad luck, Nimrod gets confined in the same jar as Akhenaten himself, who turns out to be a bad Djinn. In order to release Nimrod from the bottle without releasing Akhenaten, they go to the North Pole, because the cold causes the Djinn to become very weak and tired. The cold temperature slows down Nimrod and Akhenaten, so John and Philippa go inside the lamp. They make themselves spacesuits to wear in the cold so that they would stay warm and not get weakened themselves. They have to bring Nimrod out quickly so that Akhenaten, who is warming up (due to a polar bear sniffing through the lamp), does not escape. But eventually they save Nimrod and go back to London. When they later go back home to New York City, it turns out their mom really knows more about what the twins were doing than they thought.
5774480	/m/0f3xj0	In the Night Kitchen	Maurice Sendak	1970	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young boy named Mickey sleeps in his bed when he is disturbed by noise on a lower floor. Suddenly, he begins to float, and all of his clothes disappear as he drifts into a surreal world called the "Night Kitchen". He falls into a giant mixing pot that contains the batter for the "morning cake". While Mickey is buried in the mass, three identical bakers (who closely resemble Oliver Hardy) mix the batter and prepare it for baking, unaware (or unconcerned) that there is a little boy inside. Just before the baking pan is placed into the oven, the boy emerges from the pan, protesting that he is not the batter's milk. To make up for the baking ingredient deficiency, Mickey (now covered in batter from the neck down) constructs an airplane out of bread dough so he can fly to the mouth of a gigantic milk bottle. Upon reaching the bottle's opening, he dives in and briefly revels in the liquid. After his covering of batter disintegrates, he pours the needed milk in a cascade down to the bakers who joyfully finish making the morning cake. With dawn breaking, the naked Mickey crows like a rooster and slides down the bottle to magically return to his bed. Everything is back to normal, beyond the happy memory of his experience.
5775329	/m/0f3yzb	The Strange World of Planet X	René Ray		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A monomaniacal scientist has invented ultra-sensitive magnetic fields, which begin to attract objects from space. Strange things begin happening, including a freak storm, and insects and spiders begin to mutate into giant monsters. An alien spaceship has appeared over London and begins to warn mankind against the dangers of this scientific experiment.
5776519	/m/0f4023	The Sum of All Men	Dave Wolverton	1998-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The novel begins with a young Runelord, Prince Gaborn Val Orden of Mystarria, traveling to the kingdom of Heredon to try to win the hand of Princess Iome Sylvarresta, daughter to King Jas Laren Sylvarresta, longtime friend of House Val Orden. Gaborn's plans are put on hold, however, when he receives word that Raj Ahten, the most powerful Runelord since Daylan Hammer, is leading his army north into Heredon and has nearly reached Castle Sylvarresta. Although Gaborn travels as fast as possible to the castle, he still arrives just moments before Raj Ahten and his forces. He brings word of the invasion to Iome and King Sylvarresta, then quickly sneaks out the back of the castle with help from the herbalist and Earth Warden, Binnesman. Raj Ahten, meanwhile, takes the entire walled city with only a single arrow being fired; King Sylvarresta's men eagerly swing open the gates for him, his numerous endowments of glamour and voice making laymen powerless to confront him. Both King Sylvarresta and Iome are forced to give Raj Ahten endowments to show fealty to their new King. Gaborn risks capture by returning to the castle to rescue Iome and her father, and then he and the princess flee south, intending to warn Gaborn's father, King Orden, who is a few days ride from the city. Raj Ahten, meanwhile, moves his forces out, with a similar intent as Gaborn: track down and kill King Orden. With Raj Ahten gone, Prince Orden's personal bodyguard, Sir Borenson, acting on orders of the King breaks into the dedicate's keep at Castle Sylvarresta and begins slaying all the dedicates. Borenson escapes on his own, and Binnesman learns from the Earth that Raj Ahten may be the least of all their problems - an ancient race of subterranean creatures known as Reavers are preparing to strike. Still having received no word from his son, King Orden and his men fortify Castle Longmot in anticipation of the arrival of Raj Ahten. Gaborn and his company arrive with Raj Ahten's army still a measure off, so King Orden sends Gaborn and his companions to nearby Castle Groverman to ask for aid. Gaborn realizes only too late that his father sends him away only to keep him from being slain in the battle at Castle Longmot. In a desperate attempt to kill the Raj, King Orden and 20 other men form a Serpent Ring, where each man endows metabolism (In this case each having already 2 or 3) to the next in the ring, making it so that the last man in line moves at a speed twenty times that of a normal man. However, Raj Ahten himself takes endowments of metabolism from a number of men, and in a fierce battle, Raj Ahten kills King Orden and the rest of the Serpent Ring. When Gaborn, Iome, and Borenson return to the castle, they find it destroyed and every man dead but one, with his lone life spared to give word of the events to Gaborn. Raj Ahten, with his army, has fled, after many of his dedicate vectors were killed in a freak accident. At the end of the novel, Borenson slays King Sylvarresta on orders from the late King, Gaborn puts his father's body to rest, and the Earth crowns Gaborn the new Earth King, deeming that the Earth is in need of a protector and savior.
5776752	/m/0f40fz	Brotherhood of the Wolf	Dave Wolverton	1999-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Newly crowned by the Earth, Gaborn struggles to understand his new powers and responsibilities in protecting the land, while Raj Ahten wreaks havoc on the Mystarrian countryside in an attempt to lure the new King Orden back to his own country. Soldiers and knights equitable of various nations begin arriving at Castle Sylvarresta, to see if the rumors of the rise of a new Earth King are true. Meanwhile, a second story line is brewing. Roland Borenson, father to Gaborn's bodyguard Ivarian Borenson, awakens after the death of his Runelord, King Mendellas Draken Orden. He unites with a man known as Baron Poll as they travel through Mystarria when suddenly they encounter a young messenger girl named Averan and a mysterious green woman. After hearing news of a Reaver uprising, the group heads towards the walled city of Carris with haste. As word of the Reavers reaches Gaborn, he gathers the amassed troops of Heredon, Orwynne, and Fleeds and heads towards Carris with his host. Sir Borenson he sends to Indhopal on a mission of peace to seek out Raj Ahten's love, Saffira, to see if she can convince her lover to end his war on the kingdoms of Rofehavan. As Gaborn and his army travel towards Carris, they are attacked by a Darkling Glory, summoned from the ashes of a town destroyed by the Wolf Lord Raj Ahten. The Darkling Glory ignores Gaborn and heads swiftly to Castle Sylvarresta, seeking Gaborn's unborn child growing in Iome's womb. In a miraculous display of marksmanship, Myrrima Borenson slays the Darkling Glory with a single arrow to its eye. Iome, Myrrima, and Binnesman then rejoin Gaborn and continue towards Carris. Meanwhile, Roland Borenson and Baron Poll have reached Carris, which is overflowing with men guarding the city against the approaching forces of Raj Ahten. But when word of the Reavers reaches the city, Raj Ahten and his men are accepted into the city, as all realize that the best chance of survival against the Reavers is to join forces behind the immense walls of Carris. Averan and Spring, the green woman, follow their own path, Averan discovering that she has strange earth powers. When Spring kills a Reaver, Averan eats from the Reaver's brain and gains its memories. At the break of dawn, the Reavers attack Carris, at the same time drawing a Seal of Desolation which begins to rot the countryside for miles around. An epic battle rages around the city, with the combined forces of mankind doing all they can to stave off the Reaver assault. When Saffira arrives with Borenson, the power of her voice causes the populace of Carris to surge forth for one last counterattack against the Reavers, but she is slain before Raj Ahten can save her. It is at this time that Gaborn and his mounted knights arrive at Carris and enter the battle, along with Spring, who is Binnesman's wylde, the warrior of the Earth. Only when Gaborn uses his earth powers to destroy the Reaver Fell Mage and the Seal of Desolation, by summoning a world worm, does the battle end, causing the Reavers to flee. At the end of the battle, Raj Ahten castrates Sir Borenson for his role in Saffira's death, and when Gaborn uses his Earth powers to attempt to kill Raj Ahten, one of the Earth's chosen, the Earth forsakes Gaborn and strips him of his newfound powers. In the aftermath of battle, Myrrima and a group of lords and knights equitable swear fealty to the Earth and to mankind, forming the Brotherhood of the Wolf.
5777045	/m/0f40zj	The Conqueror Worms	Brian Keene	2006-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Teddy Garnett tells this story of a global flood that has left humanity in tatters. Holed up in his mountain home, Teddy and his buddy Carl Seaton struggle through daily life, puzzling over things even stranger than a 40-day rainstorm, including the giant slime-coated holes that keep showing up in Teddy's yard. Before long, Teddy and Carl are fending off man-eating earthworms the size of buses. A helicopter crash nearby brings Kevin and Sarah, the last two survivors of an outpost in Baltimore, into Teddy's story; their tale makes up the even more bizarre second part of the book that explores, graphically, the insanity doom can inspire. It all leads to a slam-bang showdown back at Teddy's house with a creature so monstrous it scares even the killer annelids.
5778505	/m/0f43b0	Aelita	Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins in the Soviet Union, just after the end of the Russian Civil War. A lonely engineer, Mstislav Los', designs and constructs a revolutionary pulse detonation rocket and decides to set course for Mars. Looking for a companion for the travel, he finally leaves Earth with a retired soldier, Alexei Gusev. Arriving on Mars, they discover that the planet is inhabited by an advanced civilization. However, the gap between the ruling class and the workers is very strong and reminiscent of the early capitalism, with workers living in underground corridors near their machines. Later in the novel, it is explained that Martians are descendants of both local races and of Atlanteans who came there after the sinking of their home continent. Mars is now ruled by Engineers but all is not well. While speaking before an assembly, their leader, Toscoob, says that the city must be destroyed to ease the fall of Mars. Aelita, Toscoob's beautiful daughter and the princess of Mars, later reveals to Los' that the planet is dying, that the polar ice caps are not melting as they once did and the planet is facing an environmental catastrophe. While the adventurous Gusev takes the lead of a popular uprising against the ruler the more intellectual Los' becomes enamored with Aelita. When the rebellion is crushed, they are forced to flee Mars and eventually make it back to Earth. The trip is prolonged with the effects of high speed and time dilation resulting in a loss of over three years and the exact fate of Aelita herself is unknown. It is hinted that she actually survived because Los' receives radio messages from Mars mentioning his name.
5779726	/m/0f44yk	Wizardborn	Dave Wolverton	2001-03-14	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 After Raj Ahten attempts to murder the Earth King at the end of Brotherhood of the Wolf, his men turn on him and declare him a marked man in his own kingdom of Indhopal. Raj Ahten, fleeing the battlefield and struggling with wounds inflicted to him by Binnesman's wylde, encounters some of his flameweavers, who warn him that his earthly body is dying from the Earth's curse. However, Raj Ahten has no time to waste, as word reaches him that the Lord of the Underworld himself has arisen in Kartish, and he races off to defend his people. Meanwhile, Gaborn and his companions rest in the nearby village of Balington until dawn, when they will give chase to the fleeing Reaver horde. Binnesman, sensing strong Earth powers within Averan, promptly begins to train her, as well as train his own wylde, Spring. Binnesman also does his best to heal the injured Sir Borenson, and Gaborn, upon learning of Averan's special powers, hatches a plan to track down and extract information from the Waymaker, the only Reaver that knows the underworld path to the One True Master of the Reavers. While Erin Connal and Prince Celinor travel north to gain support for the Earth King, Gaborn and his company move south, attacking and harassing the Reavers whenever possible. Borenson and Myrrima travel south towards Inkarra, to seek out Daylan Hammer, the Sum of All Men, and to ask the Storm King Zandaros for aid. In a final battle, Gaborn and his warriors defeat the remaining Reavers, sending the few remaining creatures scuttling back into the underworld. Averan finds the Waymaker and learns from him the path to the One True Master, afterwards agreeing to lead Gaborn to him. Raj Ahten, after a disastrous battle against the Reavers in his own nation of Indhopal, manages to slay the Reaver Fell Mage, but his own life fails him. In order to remain in the world of the living, he gives himself to the element fire, transforming into Scathain, Lord of Ash. Borenson and Myrrima are attacked by wights on their journey to Inkarra, and Myrrima apparently dies from her wounds. Stunningly though, she comes back from near death, and we learn that she is in fact a water wizard.
5779847	/m/0f451p	The Lair of Bones	Dave Wolverton	2003-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 In order to save mankind and all life on Earth, Gaborn is charged by the Earth to descend into the underworld and confront the One True Master, ruler of the Reavers. Taking Binnesman, Averan, and Iome with him, he seeks the Lair of Bones in the heart of the Reavers' home. As he descends, Gaborn's powers grow as he takes many endowments, vectored through his dedicates. Gaborn and his companions follow the trail of the previous Earth King, Erden Geboren, to its furthest, and when attacked by Reavers, they are forced to leave Binnesman behind and press on without him. Meanwhile, Borenson and Myrrima venture into Inkarra in search of Daylan Hammer, only to be captured and brought before King Zandaros. The forces of Raj Ahten, fresh off their victory over the Reavers, march north to Carris once more. Erin and Celinor meet Celinor's father, King Anders, who claims to be the new Earth King after Gaborn's loss of power, and they are forced to follow him south into Mystarria. During all this, mysterious earthquakes and countless falling stars herald the very world's shifting in the heavens, as the chaotic forces of destruction seek to unmake the Earth, as the One True Master attempts to bind the Rune of Desolation with the Runes of the Inferno and the Heavens. When Averan is captured by the Reavers, Gaborn has no choice but to leave Iome behind and press forth on his own. Eventually, he reunites with Averan, Iome, and the wylde, and he begins slaying dedicate Reavers of the One True Master. Meanwhile, Borenson and Myrrima escape Inkarra with the help of a Days named Sarka Kaul. They race towards Carris, where they find the city fortified beyond belief in anticipation of another attack by Reavers, this horde making the last look small in comparison. Also near Carris are the massed armies of Raj Ahten, Queen Lowicker of Beldinook, and King Anders of South Crowden. Right before the Reaver attack, Binnesman arrives at Carris to aid his fellow men for one last time. In the underworld, while Averan attempts to destroy the Rune of Desolation, Gaborn battles the One True Master. With the battle raging at Carris, Gaborn, with aid from the Earth, the wylde, and Glories and with Iome slaying dedicate vectors to the One True Master, is able to defeat the Reaver queen, and Averan, instead of destroying the Rune of Desolation combines it with the four other heavenly runes, creating a perfect rune to heal the Earth. With the One True Master's host dead, the remaining Reavers at the Battle of Carris flee to the underworld, and the Earth transports Gaborn, Iome, and Averan to the battlefield. Raj Ahten, seeing his chance to finally kill Gaborn, rejects the Earth King's guidance and is subsequently struck by an ensorcelled arrow, shot by Myrrima. Before he can recover, Raj Ahten is attacked by dozens of Runelords, who hack his body to pieces and throw him in the river, killing the man and drowning the fire spirit within him. With the Earth no longer in danger, peace comes over the land. Iome births her and Gaborn's child, a son named Fallion, and Gaborn travels the land in service to the Earth.
5780538	/m/0f45wj	Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance	Harry Turtledove	1996-01-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The United States and Germany develop atomic weapons of their own and, alongside the Soviets, engage in a nuclear exchange with the Race. The Soviets may have detonated the first atomic bomb, but it was only because their original sample of plutonium (captured from the Race) was larger than the samples given to the USA and Germany; the Soviets actually lag far behind either of these two countries in their efforts to make their own plutonium, and they used all they had in the atomic bomb they used south of Moscow to stop the Race's main thrust against the city. Regardless, the Race is in a full state of panic that humans have been able to detonate an atomic weapon, and many commanders are shocked at the number of the Race's soldiers that died in the blast. Straha, third in command of the Conquest Fleet, demands a vote of no confidence in Fleetlord Atvar by the captains of each ship in the Fleet. Such a vote would require a 75% majority to depose Atvar, but the vote falls short at 69%. Atvar remains in control, but he recognizes that most of the shiplords no longer actively support him. Furious at Straha, he orders the shiplord's arrest, but Straha, one step ahead of him, defects to the United States, enraging Atvar and allowing the Americans access to a spaceship of the Race. Soon, the Race launches an invasion of the British home islands (by air from south France, flying over German-held north France) and occupy a northern area (which seems to be centered on Oxfordshire and includes Northampton), and a southern area (which seems to be centered on west Sussex). The humans hold onto Market Harborough; parts of the story describe fighting around Brixworth and Scaldwell and Spratton villages which are on the front line between Northampton and Market Harborough. Another section of text describes an artillery and tank battle for Henley-on-Thames. The human forces are exposed to fire from Lizard helicopter gunships many years before humans had such craft in the real timeline. The Lizards ignore warnings from Churchill that such an attack will meet with terrible consequences. The Lizard forces in Britain are subjected to another human weapon they did not anticipate: mustard gas. Totally unprepared for a chemical attack by the humans, the Race's invasion force is devastated and thrown back: a Lizard plan to link their two areas through Maidenhead fails. London suffers heavy bombardment and loses many landmarks including Big Ben which survived the real world timeline German Blitz. The Lizards' northern pocket is obliterated, and their southern pocket evacuates in a hurry by air through Tangmere, which is the Lizards' last airfield in Britain out of range of human artillery. As a result, the British gain access to much intact Lizard technology that was abandoned in the retreat. The British use of mustard gas also inspires the Germans, Americans and Russians to use poison gas against the Race. The German use of poison gas includes the use of Sarin and Tabun. China's Communist guerrillas also escalate the conflict against the Race. In one of the Race's bases in Siberia, morale is at an all time low. The weather is a truly miserable condition from the hot one the Lizards are used to, and the Race's soldiers feel they're constantly being sent to their deaths by incompetent commanders. Many have fallen into abusing ginger, which works as a narcotic for them, even though it has been outlawed by Atvar's orders (such disobedience would have been considered unthinkable before they came to Earth). The Race's soldiers are pushed to the breaking point, and when the base commander starts berating the garrison yet again, landcruiser driver Ussmak shoots him in the head to silence him and an insurrection starts; the entire Race base mutinies and makes Ussmak their de facto leader.
5780650	/m/0f460c	Worldwar: Striking the Balance	Harry Turtledove	1996-11-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the beginning of 1944, the Battle of Chicago has ended with the Race's forces decimated as a result of an American atomic bomb detonated in the heart of the city. German forces in Western Europe have successfully kept the Race from reaching the Rhine while managing to hurl back the Race's troops in Poland after a nuclear attack on Breslau. The Soviets have managed to stop the Race's assault on Moscow and accept the surrender of a band of disillusioned alien soldiers. After a landing in Britain, Churchill inflicted a massive victory against the Race using mustard gas, gaining much abandoned technology, and inspiring the other nations to use poison gas. The United States attempts to reverse engineer captured Race technology in an effort to create ballistic missiles at a military base in Couch, Missouri. Sergeant Yeager attempts to help Robert Goddard and other scientists with this research by interrogating captured aliens. By this point Yeager has become an expert translator of the Race's language, making him an invaluable asset to Goddard. In the process of his work, Yeager has developed a friendship with two of the alien prisoners, Ristin and Ulhass. Both members of the Race show an alarming adaptability to American customs, learning to play baseball and adopting human slang, along with a surprising willingness to help their human captors. The Race has apparently lost interest in Chicago and seeks instead to capture Denver. Captain Rance Auerbach is among the U.S. Army soldiers who are ordered to try and halt the new offensive. However, the Race's superior firepower and mobility crush American resistance with relative ease. During the fighting, Rance is critically wounded and incapacitated. He awakens in a refugee hospital to find that the Race is advancing rapidly on Denver. General Omar Bradley prepares defenses around Denver which, as the site of America's nuclear weapons program, must be defended at all costs. Fortunately, Brigadier General Groves and the metallurgical laboratory manage to produce an atomic bomb which they use to halt the Race. Fleetlord Atvar considers a nuclear strike against Denver in retaliation, but decides against it since the nuclear fallout would harm the Race's forces. Instead he orders the detonation of one over the front lines in Florida, causing the collapse of the entire American position in the state. Americans are upset by the recent death of President Roosevelt, and Atvar hopes that this will cause a succession crisis, tearing the United States apart; however, this does not happen, and the Presidency is smoothly transferred to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. The U.S. Army, under the command of General George Patton, launches a counter-offensive down the Mississippi River, slowly liberating it from the Race. They manage to reach Quincy, Illinois but begin taking higher and higher casualties as they progress. The first American ballistic missiles are also launched against the Race, though they are so crude and unsophisticated that they do little damage against the invaders. Many of these missiles are easily destroyed by the Race's anti-missile systems. But stocks of anti-missile weapons are low as the Race already expended many to shoot down German missiles. The speed with which the Americans and Germans have developed such weapons stuns and frightens the Race. In Poland, the Wehrmacht continues its advance eastward toward Lodz. However, as they get deeper and deeper into Polish territory, they encounter Jewish partisans whose sympathies lean toward the Race. Mordechai Anielewicz and his fellow Jews do not trust the Nazis and do not wish to see them in control of Poland. They don't wish to see the Race rule the world, either. This situation is exacerbated by the realization that Soviet forces in Ukraine are slowly making their way toward Poland as well. No one is sure what will happen if and when the Wehrmacht and the Red Army meet on the battlefield. Colonel Heinrich Jäger, a tank commander who has had experience with the partisans, manages to convince Anielewicz that the German forces will not repeat their previous persecution of the Jews. For a time, the Wehrmacht and the partisans manage to work together against the Race. The Kriegsmarine manages to destroy Alexandria with an atomic bomb on board a type XXI Elektroboote U-boat. This attack shocks the Race, both because they are unaware of the type XXI's existence and do not see how the bomb could have been transported close enough to Alexandria to destroy the city, and due to Alexandria's proximity to the Race's capital in Cairo; they destroy Copenhagen in retaliation. In the wake of recent setbacks, especially a Soviet nuclear attack on the Race's forces in Saratov, Fleetlord Atvar agrees to meet with human diplomats from the USSR, Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States for the purpose of negotiating an armistice. Vyacheslav Molotov, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Anthony Eden, Shigenori Tōgō, and George Marshall head to Cairo, the Race's capital, in order to negotiate with Atvar. However, the chances for peace are severely endangered when Hitler secretly plans to resume hostilities by launching a surprise attack against the Race in Poland. Jäger is relieved that the fighting has stopped and hopes that it will achieve a lasting peace. However, Hitler sends SS agents into Poland under Otto Skorzeny and they immediately begin to cause friction between the local Poles, the Jewish partisans, and the Wehrmacht. To Jäger, Skorzeny privately makes comments alluding to the fact that Hitler has not by any means abandoned his plans for the Final Solution. Jäger grows steadily distrustful of Skorzeny and seeks to prevent the SS and Nazis from turning against the Jewish partisans. He establishes a line of communication to the partisans through a Polish farmer named Karol. When Jäger learns that Hitler is planning to use the negotiations in Cairo as a distraction to detonate an atomic bomb in Lodz, he is shocked and disgusted. Jäger gets word to Mordechai about the bomb through Karol. Mordechai and his fellow partisans manage to find and disable the weapon. The Wehrmacht moves into position for the offensive. When Skorzeny activates the weapon's detonator, nothing happens. Furious, Skorzeny heads into Lodz to discern the problem. In Cairo, a distraught Joachim von Ribbentrop announces his government's decision to continue the war to the confused delegates. Ribbentrop is relieved when Atvar tells him that no reports of an attack in Poland have been made. When Jäger finds Karol tortured to death with SS runes burned onto his chest and his wife and daughter brutally raped and murdered, he realizes that his cover is blown. Soon after returning to camp, he is detained by SS men and interrogated. Somewhere in Poland, Ludmila Gorbunova crash lands while trying to deliver supplies to partisans, as the partisans forget about a pine tree in the middle of the runway, which she runs into, wrecking her aircraft. She gets little or no help from the locals who are largely unable and unwilling to aid a Soviet pilot. A Jewish partisan named Ignacy does eventually manage to help her locate a working Fieseler Storch. She takes off with the intent of returning to the Soviet Union after her extended stay in Estonia. By a shocking coincidence, Ludmila arrives at an airfield in the same location where Jäger is being held captive. Jäger's tank crewmen recognize Ludmila as the woman with whom he is involved. Fearing what will happen to their commander if he is interrogated by the SS, the tank crewmen inform Ludmila about his fate and ask for her help. She readily offers her assistance. The Wehrmacht soldiers kill the SS men guarding Jäger and then lead him to Ludmilla's plane. The two take off before anyone realizes Jäger has escaped. Jäger explains Hitler's plan to Ludmila and they make their way to Lodz. There they make contact with Mordechai and tell him about Skorzeny. All three head to the condemned building where the bomb is being guarded by partisans. They find the Jewish guard dead. Upon entering the building, Skorzeny attacks them with nerve gas and a submachine-gun. Jäger is carrying a medical kit with an antidote to the toxin and manages to inject himself, Ludmila, and Mordechai with it. They manage to kill Skorzeny and avert the detonation of the bomb. In Cairo, the Race reaches an accord with the human powers. The Race will completely withdraw from the territories under the control of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Third Reich in 1942, with the exception of Poland, which the Race intends to hold as a buffer state between the Reich and the USSR. Atvar is willing to suspend hostilities with Germany, Russia, America, Britain, and Japan. Atvar has no intention of returning any part of the British Empire to the United Kingdom, except Canada (which the Race considers uninhabitable due to its climate). And Australia is fully conquered with the atomic bombing of Sydney, and Melbourne. With that, the war ends. Nevertheless, fighting continues in those territories the Race still controls, especially China where a determined Communist insurgency under Mao Zedong seeks liberation. And the Red Army continues to mop up remnant German units from the German invasion. It is clear that the peace is only temporary. The Race has not recognized the right of the human powers to their own independence and still officially intends to conquer the entire world at a later date. Nazi Germany is apparently still eager to use force in order to drive the race off earth completely, though perhaps not in the immediate future. In the Soviet Union, Stalin assures Molotov that war with the Race and the other human powers is inevitable, especially since a second wave of alien colonists is expected to reach earth by the 1960s. In the United States, an America in ruins begins the long process of reconstruction.
5780913	/m/0f46g5	At the Earth's Core	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1914	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The author relates how, traveling in the Sahara desert, he has encountered a remarkable vehicle and its pilot, David Innes, a man with a remarkable story to tell. David is a mining heir who finances the experimental "iron mole," an excavating vehicle designed by his elderly inventor friend Abner Perry. In a test run, they discover the vehicle cannot be turned, and it burrows 500 miles into the Earth's crust, emerging into the unknown interior world of Pellucidar. In Burroughs' concept, the Earth is a hollow shell with Pellucidar as the internal surface of that shell. Pellucidar is inhabited by prehistoric creatures of all geological eras, and dominated by the Mahars, a species of flying reptile both intelligent and civilized, but which enslaves and preys on the local stone-age humans. Innes and Perry are captured by the Mahars' ape-like Sagoth servants and taken with other human captives to the chief Mahar city of Phutra. Among their fellow captives are the brave Ghak, the Hairy One, from the country of Sari, the shifty Hooja the Sly One and the lovely Dian the Beautiful of Amoz. David, attracted to Dian, defends her against the unwanted attentions of Hooja, but due to his ignorance of local customs she assumes he wants her as a slave, not a friend or lover, and subsequently snubs him. Only later, after Hooja slips their captors in a dark tunnel and forces Dian to leave with him, does David learn from Ghak the cause of the misunderstanding. In Phutra the captives become slaves, and the two surface worlders learn more of Pellucidar and Mahar society. The Mahars are all female, reproducing parthogenetically by means of a closely guarded "Great Secret" contained in a Mahar book. David learns that they also feast on selected human captives in a secret ritual. In a disturbance, David manages to escape Phutra, becomes lost, and experiences a number of adventures before sneaking back into the city. Rejoining Abner, he finds the latter did not even realize he was gone, and the two discover that time in Pellucidar, in the absence of objective means to measure it, is a subjective thing, experienced by different people at different rates. Obsessed with righting the wrong he has unwittingly done Dian, David escapes again and eventually finds and wins her by defeating the malevolent Jubal the Ugly One, another unwanted suitor. David makes amends, and he and Dian wed. Later, along with Ghak and other allies, David and Abner lead a revolt of humankind against the Mahars. Their foes are hampered by the loss of the Great Secret, which David has stolen and hidden. To further the struggle David returns to the Iron Mole, in which he and Dian propose to travel back to the surface world to procure outer world technology. Only after it is underway does he discover that Hooja has substituted a drugged Mahar for Dian. The creature attacks David but is overcome, and the return to the surface world proceeds successfully. Back in the world we know David meets the author, who after hearing his tale and seeing his prehistoric captive, helps him resupply and prepare the mole for the return to Pellucidar.
5787848	/m/0f4l14	Life During Wartime	Lucius Shepard	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 David Mingolla is an artillery specialist in the United States Army serving in a near-future Central American war (references are made to then-future "Afghanistan in '89" and a nuclear weapon that destroyed Tel Aviv). As his unit serves in "Free Occupied Guatemala", Mingolla goes on leave and meets a woman named Debora in a cantina. They gradually become lovers; however, as they get close to each other, Mingolla feels intense mental pain later identified as a psychic probing his mind. Soon after this, Mingolla is recruited into the Psicorps, an elite group of psychics the United States has assembled to counter the Soviet Union's own. Debora, a veteran of the revolt that led to American intervention in the first place, is designated his target. On his way through Psicorps training to refine his mental abilities, Mingolla learns that this front of the Cold War (published before 1991, before USSR's fall) as well as the war itself is a manipulation by two Panamanian families, the Madradonas and the Sotomayors, over three centuries to increase psychic potential in humanity as well as their own genetic diversity. Mingolla and Debora meet and part several times before their meeting with the Madradonas and Sotomayors in Darién, Panama and become embroiled with the members of Mingolla's former squad in a firefight which culminates in the nuclear destruction of Panama City. David and Debora leave the city and their former friends and antagonists behind them, deciding that ultimately what matters is their love for one another, the only item that has not been blatantly manipulated. The fictional work excerpted several times in the novel, Juan Pastorín's short story collection The Fictive Boarding House, gives clues to the nature of the novel and Mingolla's experiences himself in a type of foreshadowing. The lyrics of Prowler heard or sung or thought among members of Mingolla's unit which bookend Life during Wartime serve this function as well. As a nod to science fiction author Philip K. Dick's work, the text itself does not present a clear or objective account of what truly happened to Mingolla or what was hallucination on his part. (At one point on Mingolla's journey, an AI combining a downed Sikorsky helicopter and a long-range guided missile imparts "revelation" to him.) PsiCorps' intensive drug therapy to hone Mingolla's potential as well as the presence and use of "Sammy" (short for Samurai, an intense stimulant) and Frost, a super-addictive version of cocaine, make the third person point of view essential for this novel. es:Vida durante la guerra (novela)
5799415	/m/0f5d1h	Among the Brave	Margaret Haddix	2004-04-27	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The fifth book starts off directly where the last book had ended, from the point of view of Trey, Luke's friend from Hendricks' School for Boys. After Luke Garner (Lee Grant) leaves Smits Grant, the younger brother of the real Lee Grant, in the care of his real parents, Luke's friend Trey finds himself at Mr. Talbot's front door preparing to explain all the recent events. The car containing Trey's friends, Nina, Joel, and John takes off without Trey.The house is raided soon afterward and thanks to luck and his own vast knowledge from reading during his years in hiding, Trey manages to dive to safety behind a flowerpot. A member of the Population Police, who searches the porch, says liber (Latin for free). Trey's knowledge of Latin saves his life, as the raider reports that the porch is clear.After the raid, Trey sneaks into the house and encounters a hostile but stunning woman with bright red hair; she is none other than Mrs. Talbot. Together, they discover from a private news network that the government has been overthrown and replaced by the powerful Population Police. Defeated, Mrs. Talbot abandons the house and leaves Trey to fend for himself. After sorting himself out and taking several obscure, important looking documents found within the Talbot house, Trey sets out to find help, hopefully to find Lee and the others. He winds up on the Garner farm and ventures out with Mark, one of Luke's older brothers, to find Luke/Lee and the rest of his friends. They instead find themselves at Population Police Headquarters, once the house of the Grants; Mark is captured and taken instead and Trey must sign up as a recruit to save him. Using his own ingenuity, despite his own fears, Trey manages to save injured Mark by working out a deal with a Population Police guard. He was also able to save his missing friends and Mr. Talbot from execution with the help of a rebel named Nedley. The group find safety at Mr. Hendricks' cottage and discover the schools have been raided and emptied of their students and able-bodied teachers. Then the group is nursed back to health by Mrs. Talbot, who happens to be a doctor. Afterward, Trey presents the documents that he saved, despite several opportunities where he may have abandoned them. Mr. Talbot reveals that the documents conceal the identities of hundreds of Third Children with false identities and they decide to burn them to protect the children. But Trey wants to take the names and the responsibility. Trey snatches them away at the last moment, resolving to take small steps to destroy the Population Police from within along with Lee, Nina, the chauffeur, and Nedley.
5801361	/m/0f5kkn	The Stone Rose	Jacqueline Rayner		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After Mickey Smith discovers a 2000-year-old statue of Rose in a museum, she and the Doctor travel to Ancient Rome and discover some unpleasant secrets. Rose meets a girl who can predict the future, and learns to be careful what she wishes for.
5804023	/m/0f5s_n	Jumper	Steven Gould		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One evening, while being physically abused by his father, David Rice unexpectedly teleports (or "jumps") and finds himself in the local library. The origin of this power is never explained. Vowing never to return to his father's house, David makes his way to New York City. After being mugged and discovering that he can't get a job without a birth certificate and social security number, David robs a local bank by teleporting inside the safe, stealing nearly a million dollars. He then begins a life of reading, attending plays and dining in fancy restaurants. At a play he meets a woman named Millie Harrison, and they spend some time touring New York before she returns to college in Stillwater, Oklahoma. David later visits her in Oklahoma, and they begin a romantic relationship. David also manages to locate and reunite with his long lost mother, Mary Niles. Mary left the family after being severely beaten by David's father, and all her attempts to contact David over the years were interrupted by his father. The New York police start investigating David after he saves a neighbor from an attack by jumping her abusive husband to a park; the husband turns out to be a cop. The investigation drives David to move to Oklahoma, where he gets an apartment near Millie. One night while David is out, the police are in his New York City apartment when Millie calls, and Millie breaks up with him after learning that he is being pursued by the police. Mary, who was on a business trip, is murdered by terrorists when her plane is hijacked. David then sets out to find Rashid Matar, the terrorist responsible for his mother's death. David starts jumping to Algeria to search for Matar, having to dodge the police almost every time he is there. While he is searching for the terrorist, he and Millie eventually reconcile. However, the National Security Agency, led by veteran agent Brian Cox, become suspicious when they find out he can get from Algeria to the United States in only a few hours. When he is questioned, David jumps out of the NSA office, witnessed by Cox and several other agents. Cox and the NSA then become determined to capture David so they can use his powers. After numerous failures to grab David, Cox takes Millie hostage in order to get to him. David strikes back by grabbing Cox, and later captures Matar and his abusive father – thereby putting him in the unique position of controlling the fates of all three of his tormentors. This experience has profound effects on all four of them. David finds himself unable to kill his captives despite their crimes against him, and ultimately releases them. David turns Matar over to the authorities, threatening to come after him again if he isn't found guilty for his crimes. His father is forced to acknowledge his abuse of David and Mary, and enters alcoholic counseling. Cox is forced to see the similarities between his actions and those of the terrorist and the wife-beating alcoholic, and has Millie released and agrees to stop hunting David. Afterward, Millie comforts David as he realizes that he cannot escape his pain through teleportation or vigilante action, and he enters counseling as well.
5804157	/m/0f5tbf	Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey	Chuck Palahniuk	2007-05-01	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Buster Casey is born in the rural town of Middleton with the senses of smell and taste far more advanced than any other human. Buster acquires the nickname "Rant" from a childhood prank involving animal organs which results in numerous people getting sick. As the victims throw up, they make a sound resembling the word "rant," which becomes a local synonym for "vomit" and Buster's nickname. As a child Rant discovers a massive wealth that turns the small town's economy on its head. He then becomes obsessed with getting bitten by rabid animals along with venomous snakes and spiders. After his first bite from a black widow spider, Rant discovers that toxic spider bites cause him to get an erection. He uses this effect to get out of school and eventually threatens his way to an early diploma and a rather large check that he uses to leave town. It isn't until Rant arrives in the city that it becomes clear that the novel takes place in a dystopian future, where urban dwellers are forcefully divided by curfew into two separate classes: the respectable Daytimers and the oppressed Nighttimers. Rant becomes a Nighttimer and finds himself swept up in the Nighttimer lifestyle that revolves around "Party Crashing", a covert demolition derby played out on city streets at night. The game is organized by an unknown entity and is set during a designated window of time. The object of the game is to crash, not too forcefully, into other players who sport a certain "flag", such as a Christmas tree on the car's roof or the words "Just Married" scrawled on the rear windshield. Rant meets Echo Lawrence, a fellow crasher and the girl with whom he falls in love. Rant also starts a nationwide rabies epidemic that eventually erupts into zombie-invasion-like proportions that calls for those infected with rabies to be shot and killed on sight. Rant eventually dies during a Party Crashing event. His death is viewed and listened to by millions on national television and the "Graphic Traffic" radio show. However, when the car is pried open, his body is missing. After his "death", many interviewees share their speculations about Rant's strange fate and its implications for society along with the rabies outbreak. Some interviewees and friends of Rant speculate that crashing a car while in a given state of mind, will jar a person outside of time. Once this is accomplished, they can then go back and kill off all of their ancestors, in turn, making them immortal. Or they can, through incest, make themselves into something more than human. The latter is believed to have happened to Green Taylor Simms, a fellow Party Crasher, who is suspected to have unsettling ties to Buster Casey.
5804456	/m/0f5v4l	Fool on the Hill	Matt Ruff	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is the story of two authors. Cornell University resident and author Stephen Titus George finds that his real life is becoming the main plot of a retired god, known as Mr. Sunshine. Mr. Sunshine, as god, prefers to create his works in real life instead of on paper. Stephen Titus George decides to fight with Mr. Sunshine about the authorship and outcome of the work. On the stage of Cornell campus a rich set of secondary characters appears, like Cornell student Aurora Borealis Smith with whom Stephen Titus George falls in love, Ragnarok, the Bohemians, a dog named Luther, a cat named Blackjack, Puck, Calliope, a fire-breathing paper dragon as well as evil forces like Rasferret the Grub, a mannequin called Rubbermaid and an army of rats. The drama then unfolds, telling the story of the battle between Good and Evil and the efforts of the two authors to write the story towards either a happy ending or a tragic greek drama.
5804783	/m/0f5w52	Question and Answer	Poul Anderson	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 John Lorenzen is an astronomer from Lunopolis who is recruited by the Lagrange Institute for the second expedition to Troas. At this time, Earth is still recovering from a two-century-long era of war and chaos that began with the Soviet conquest of North America in World War III and ended with the unification of the Solar System at the conclusion of a war between Mars and Venus. Twenty-two years after the discovery of a faster-than-light drive, Troas is the only Earthlike world to be discovered, and enthusiasm for interstellar travel is waning. If Troas is not opened to colonization, humanity may give up interstellar travel altogether. The effort to mount a second expedition to Troas is plagued with difficulties. The Lagrange Institute is unable to charter a starship and must build its own, the Henry Hudson. The construction of the Hudson is hampered by delays, cost overruns, and at least one act of outright sabotage. The voyage of the Hudson to Troas is also troubled, as tension rises among the members of the expedition. Edward Avery, the expedition's psychomed, is unable to maintain group harmony aboard the ship, and at least one fight breaks out. Upon arrival at Troas, the crew of the Hudson find no trace of the first expedition. After it is determined that there are no harmful microorganisms on Troas, a base camp is established on the planet. Eighteen days later, a group of aliens appears. Avery is assigned to learn the aliens' language, and he reports that it is extremely difficult to understand. He is eventually able to determine that the aliens are called the Rorvan, and that they are native to Troas. This is bad news for the expedition, since planets with native intelligent species are off limits to colonization. The Rorvan invite a small group of humans, including Avery and Lorenzen, to accompany them to their settlement. As the group of humans and Rorvan travel, Lorenzen listens to Avery's conversations with the aliens and realizes that their language isn't nearly as difficult to understand as the psychomed claims. By the time they reach the Rorvan settlement, Lorenzen has learned through his eavesdropping that Avery and the Rorvan are conspiring to deceive the other humans. When Lorenzen finally confronts Avery, the psychomed admits that he and his clique within Earth's government have been deliberately stifling interstellar travel, since they feel that humanity isn't ready for it. The members of the first expedition were interned after returning to the Solar System, and the Rorvan are not native to Troas after all. Avery pleads with Lorenzen to help him maintain the deception, but Lorenzen refuses. He wants humanity to expand into the galaxy.
5806088	/m/0f5zp2	Among the Enemy	Margaret Haddix	2005-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Matthias, Percy, and Alia, (from Among the Betrayed) are introduced once again. At Niedler School they are apprehended along with many other children and put in a truck to be taken, supposedly, to a work camp. They are saved when Matthias finds a nail, slashes the tires and crashes into a tree that falls, injuring Alia in the process, and allows them to escape. They run immediately to the forest, and Percy is shot in a crossfire between Population Police and Rebels while they are trying to find a place to hide. Matthias is able to drag Percy and Alia, now both critically ill, into a rebel hideout cabin, whose dwellers are killed by the Population Police, and then he runs to Mr. Hendrick's cottage to get help. He returns from Mr. Hendrick's cottage with Mrs. Talbot, a talented doctor and wife of a rebel leader, Mr. Talbot. Finding Alia and Percy missing, Matthias then ends up saving a Population Police Officer Tidwell, called Tiddy by his friends, from a deadly shootout. They end up at Population Police headquarters, where he finds an expected favor from the commander of the base as a result of his association with Tiddy, a favorite of the commander's. Tiddy goes to the forest and reports upon his return that he torched the entire area. Unexpectedly, he dies from poison very suddenly soon afterward. Matthias grieves for Percy and Alia, who he believes are now dead, though makes it appear as though he is grieving for Tiddy instead. The commander provides Matthias with special allowances, believing that Matthias is devastated by Tiddy's death, and Matthias pretends to enjoy the commander's company to avoid getting into trouble. Matthias soon encounters Nina, working undercover at the headquarters, and she reluctantly reveals what she, Lee (Luke Garner), and several other allies are doing in hopes of overthrowing the Population Police. The commander also takes the boy to a warehouse full of food, where Matthias realizes that he must stop grieving over Percy and Alia and help Nina and her friends. Thanks to Matthias, they are soon able to overhear many of the commander and the Population Police's plans, including one involving Jason Barstow, a boy who betrayed Nina to the Population Police. Matthias eventually escapes from headquarters to aid Nina and the others but is caught by Mike, a Population Police agent and Tiddy's best friend. However, Mike soon reveals that he is actually a double-agent, having previously saved Matthias and Nina when they were caught during a secret meeting to exchange information. They make their way to the warehouse and empty it of all its food by "lending" it to the local population. The warehouse, which also contains fake ID cards as well as the local population's real ID cards, is destroyed to prevent the Population Police from exacting a plan that would expose illegal thirds and other people targeted by the Population Police as enemies. The pair remain in hiding for several days before returning to Mr. Hendricks' house, where Matthias hopes to apologize to Mr. Talbot for abandoning Mrs. Talbot in the forest where Percy and Alia perished. However, when they arrive, Matthias is relieved and overjoyed to discover his friends and Mrs. Talbot are safe and alive. Mike reveals himself to be Nedley, an ally from Among the Brave. Matthias decides to remain at the Mr. Hendricks' cabin with his friends until he decides what he will do next with his life, though he is content to remain with Percy, Alia, and everyone else.
5806151	/m/0f5zy2	Among the Free	Margaret Haddix	2006-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Luke Garner is an illegal third child along with Trey, Nina, Matthias, Percy, and Alia. He has been working from within the Population Police at the stables in hopes of slowly overthrowing them and bringing about freedom. When he is chosen to accompany a sergeant on a mission to distribute new identification cards to citizens, Luke unknowingly brings about the catalyst of change when he refuses to shoot a defiant old woman and runs away, leaving his sergeant in the hands of a group of angry villagers who despise the Population Police. After several days of surviving alone, haunted by the memory of his friend Jen Talbot, run-ins with a selfish stable boy who was with Luke and his sergeant at the time of the incident, and attempting to avoid the Population Police at all costs, Luke finds his way to another village filled with starving people. They save Luke from being executed by the Population Police when they arrive; one man in particular named Eli reveals that the village no longer cares about their own lives and will do anything to help those in need like Luke. In the past, Eli and other villagers willingly betrayed a family with a third child in order to obtain food for their own families. That villagers realize their wrongs much too late and found many of their family members taken away by the Population Police with nothing in return. When people are heard coming to the village, Eli helps Luke escape with a quilt made by his daughter Aileen. Luke wanders into another village and discovers the Population Police has finally been overthrown. With many villagers, they travel to the government headquarters as large groups of people revel and relate their own stories on television. Luke, on the other hand, is apprehensive and discovers Oscar Wydell, Smits Grant's former bodyguard, intends to claim leadership and collaborates with Aldous Krakenaur, former Population Police leader, to blame Third Children for all the Population Police's crimes. While the news broadcast originally intended to allow people voice their opinions, Luke sees that the leaders are already beginning to poison the unwitting populace with propaganda and it is impossible for any opinion other than one that blames Third Children for all crimes to be heard. Desperate, Luke rides one of the horses (Jenny, he called it in memory of Jen) onto the stage to avoid the security guards and voices his opinion and reveals to the world what he is saying is the absolute truth as he is a third child. Protected by Philip Twinings, a prominent news anchor from before the era of the Population Police who had hoped that opinions could have been openly shared, Luke tells his life story (chronicling the events from the beginning of the series to the present) and the stories of his friends Trey, Nina, and Matthias, and of Smits and how Oscar was his bodyguard, and people come to realize that the government is undeniably at fault. Shortly after, the people discover that Oscar escaped with Krakenaur during Luke's speech. Luke finally finds his friends Nina and Trey in the crowd and finds out that all his friends met up at Mr. Hendricks home. Luke thinks about all the things he's always wanted to do, and realizes that it is all possible.
5808026	/m/0f648_	Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood	Ann Brashares		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is the girls last summer before college and then they will go to university and college. They all find themselves in different, but challenging situations. They all struggle with their identities, love, and relationships. Following the death of Lena's grandfather, Lena's father convinced his mother, Valia, to move in with his family. Valia is homesick and sad, and, as a result, constantly complains and makes Lena's home life very tense. Lena's one solace is the figure drawing class she is taking at an art school, despite her parents' wishes that she choose a more practical interest. However, when her father comes into the class and sees her drawing a nude model, he really forbids her from taking the class. Lena tries to fund the class herself, but is caught by her father, who then announces that he will not pay for Lena to go to the Rhode Island School of Design. Shocked by her father's decision, Lena goes to the class's instructor, Annik Marchand, who advises Lena to try for a scholarship. Lena makes a portfolio of drawings of her family, as well as Paul Rodman, who comes to stay with Carmen and ends up visiting and posing for Lena. Through her drawings, Lena learns more about her family: her sister Effie's anger that Lena is leaving for college, her mother's struggle between Lena's wishes and her father's, her father's fear of Lena entering a world he is unfamiliar with, and her grandmother's wishes that someone pay attention to her misery instead of simply ignoring it. At the end of the summer, Lena mails in her portfolio, and receives word that she has gotten the scholarship. She tells her father, and receives his permission to attend art school. She also manages to convince him to allow Valia to return to Greece. Brian asks Tibby to go to the senior party with him, as his date. Although it is clear that she returns his romantic feelings, she worries about changing their relationship and opening herself up to him. She soon relents, though, and Brian kisses her and tells her that he loves her. The next morning, Katherine reached out the window to get an apple but falls out the window and injures her head. Tibby is thrown into depression, concerned for Katherine and blaming herself for the accident. She also feels as if she didn't love Katherine enough, having always resented her younger siblings. She begins to avoid Brian, feeling that the accident wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been thinking about him, and also believing that Katherine's accident indicates that taking chances will only end in suffering. Towards the end of the novel, Tibby becomes Christina's unwilling labor partner and helps Christina be brave enough to have the baby, even without her husband and Carmen's presence. This encourages Tibby to be brave herself and confront her feelings for Brian instead of shying away from them, and they begin a relationship. Bridget goes to soccer camp in Pennsylvania, and is shocked to discover that one of her fellow coaches is none other than Eric. She finds her feelings for him reawakening, but is stunned by the discovery that he has a girlfriend, Kaya. Bridget plans to begin avoiding Eric, but her plan is shot down when she and Eric are made partners, causing them to see each other constantly. Not wanting to upset Eric, Bridget selflessly puts her feelings aside and restrains herself to being Eric’s friend while respecting the relationship between Eric and Kaya. The two develop a friendship despite Bridget’s uncertainties. Later, Bridget comes down with a fever, and Eric finds her in her cabin very ill. Eric carries her to his cabin and he takes care of her. They fall asleep together, and Bridget wakes up to find Eric holding her. Feeling guilty, she tries to break the hold quietly, but her attempts wake up Eric. Bridget feels confused and betrayed when he leaves the camp for an unknown reason, and decides that she won’t hope for his attention anymore. As much as she prided herself on making this summer with Eric different from the first one (where she went after him and had to have him), it began to feel the same because once again she is left wondering why he left her. She trains her soccer team hard, and they go on to defeat Eric’s in the championship. Bridget later questions Eric about his leaving, and Eric reveals that he returned to New York to break up with his girlfriend due to his feelings for Bridget. At first, Bridget asks Eric if he gets closer to her just to leave her, but he lets her know otherwise. He tells her that he thinks they were always meant to be. Afterwards, they become a couple. Carmen feels stressed out over her mother’s pregnancy and her job watching Lena’s grandmother, Valia, who has become cranky and sullen ever since she was forced to move to the United States following the death of her husband. Carmen also begins to feel that her leaving for college will leave her unable to return home, and decides to attend the University of Maryland instead of Williams so that she can stay home and retain a part of her old life. While taking Valia to the hospital one day, Carmen meets Win Sawyer, a college student who volunteers at the hospital. He begins to develop feelings for her, and she for him, but she fears that he only likes her because he assumes that she is a kind and selfless person, and is afraid of telling him the truth. She calls this selfless side of her, "Good Carmen." When Carmen’s mother goes into labor four weeks early, Carmen enlists Tibby to stay with her mother, and together with Win Sawyer heads off to find David, Christina's husband, who is out of town. Together, Tibby and Christina do it and she delivers a baby boy which Carmen names Ryan. After the baby is born, Win and Carmen finally kiss, and leave the hospital hand in hand. Carmen finds that, "Good Carmen," is a part of her, not a different person. Carmen realizes that there will always be a place for her in her family, and she decides to go to Williams College. it:Il tempo delle scelte. Quattro amiche e un paio di jeans
5811678	/m/0f6hkg	A Stroke of Midnight	Laurell K. Hamilton	2005-04-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Following on almost immediately from the events of Seduced by Moonlight, A Stroke of Midnight begins with Merry and the Ravens attending a press conference in the sithen. This is highly unusual as the home of the sidhe is usually off-limits to the human press. However, it is felt that it is more secure than holding the conference elsewhere. This opinion is challenged almost immediately by the deaths of Beatrice, one of the lesser fae, and a human reporter. Merry, assigned to solve the murders by her aunt, Queen Andais, opts to bring in human forensics in the hope that science might be able to succeed where magic has so far failed - and bring a murderer to justice. The entire novel takes place within approximately one day.
5811788	/m/0f6hyq	Seduced by Moonlight	Laurell K. Hamilton	2004-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Seduced by Moonlight begins shortly after the events of A Caress of Twilight. Kurag, Goblin King, is insisting upon proof that Kitto has become sidhe following sex with Merry. She offers an extra month of their alliance for every goblin hybrid she can bring into sidhe magic. During the discussions, Siun, Kitto's nightmarish, spidery former mistress, appears and he is terrified. It is revealed that Rhys also swore blood price on her, as it was she that took his eye when he failed to "glow" for her during sex. In his fear, Kitto accidentally uses the Hand of Reaching to open a portal through the mirror. Siun falls through and is trapped half-way, and after some negotiation, Kurag allows the Ravens to do what they like. Kitto viciously wounds her, and Rhys kills her with a sword. It is revealed that Meredith is a vessel for the Goddess Danu when she inadvertently brings the pregnant Maeve Reed back into her god-head, and gives Frost newfound god status (which he is not comfortable with). The cup or cauldron also reappears after Merry has a dream about it, an effect that has significant impact upon the sidhe who believed it lost forever. During sex with Merry many of her lovers suffer unexpected side-effects: * Rhys is brought back into his god-head * Frost is brought into his god-head * Sage is turned into a full-sized sidhe * Nicca is possessed by Dian Cecht * Doyle regains his shape-shifting abilities (turning into a dog and a horse), plus ones he never had previously (an eagle). Merry and her lovers return to the Courts. Upon the flight back, Merry is presented with the Queen's ring by Rhys. This is not only a symbol of her status as heir, but also a potent artifact in its own right. It was known as the happy ever after ring as it permitted sidhe to find their perfect mates. When they arrive at the airport they are greeted by several of the Queen's Ravens as well as human policemen. The Queen has insisted that Merry take to her bed any of the sidhe that the ring recognises. A short while after their arrival, they attend a press conference. A policeman is bewitched and shooting breaks out. Merry is saved by Frost and others of the Ravens. Yet more Ravens await Merry at the sithen. The Queen insists that Merry beds two out of the four before she appears before her. The result is the appearance of a spring, from which Merry fills a cup. Andais, apparently insane with bloodlust, is attacking her men. The Ravens attempt to intervene and protect one another. Merry uses her Hand of Blood to draw wounds upon her aunt. The Green Man then gives Merry the ability to heal all those in the room. It is discovered that a spell was used to incite the Queen to murder. The plot was hatched by those amongst the court who feared that a mortal Queen, Merry, would result in the sidhe ceasing to exist. Merry is challenged by one, Miniver, and they duel before the court. Meredith is declared the winner.
5811854	/m/0f6j38	A Caress of Twilight	Laurell K. Hamilton	2002-03-26	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Caress of Twilight begins a few months after the events of A Kiss of Shadows. It is December, and Merry and the Sidhe warriors she has chosen as her lovers have returned to Los Angeles, California. Merry has resumed working for the Grey Detective Agency and several of the Sidhe have also joined the payroll. Merry is approached by Maeve Reed, previously known as Conchenn before her exile from the Seelie Court and now a famous Hollywood actress. Maeve asks Merry to perform a fertility rite that will permit her to have a child by her dying human husband. In return, she tells the princess that the reason for her exile was that she had refused to become the wife of Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, because she believed he was sterile. Galen, badly injured by the demi-fey during A Kiss of Shadows, has yet to heal, despite the usually phenomenal healing abilities of a sidhe warrior. Merry approaches the Queen of the Demi-Fey, Niceven, regarding a cure. The price of the cure and an alliance is a weekly drink of Merry's blood by a surrogate to be chosen by Niceven. During Merry's first night in bed with Doyle, they are interrupted by Andais who reveals that the Nameless has been freed. The worst of both courts, the Nameless was the last great spell that Seelie and Unseelie had cooperated upon. They had stripped themselves of everything too awful for them to be permitted to stay in the United States, and from it had been formed the Nameless. A strange murder brings members of the Grey Agency, including Merry, to the scene. However, their presence is challenged by others of the police force and they are thrown off site. However, this is not before they have a chance to suspect that supernatural forces are at work. It is suspected that the lives had been sucked from the murder victims by the ghosts of dead gods. Nothing is said to the police, however, as the only known person to work such a spell was a sidhe and, if it were discovered, that fact could result in all sidhe being banished from the country. Healed from his injuries by Niceven's representative, Sage, Galen acts the part of the Green Man in the fertility ritual with Merry which results in Maeve Reed becoming pregnant. It begins to become clear that Taranis is also planning something as various social secretaries insist upon Merry attending first the Yule Ball and then a feast in her honour. This culminates in a conversation between Merry and Taranis himself. Finally, the Nameless attacks Maeve Reed's home. It is finally defeated by Merry and her companions, Merry herself showing for the first time her second Hand of Power - the Hand of Blood. The result of the destruction of the Nameless is the release of the magics which formed it; these magics transfer themselves to the victors, who begin to exhibit unforeseen side effects.
5811962	/m/0f6jgr	A Kiss of Shadows	Laurell K. Hamilton	2000-10-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in Los Angeles, California, in a world where magical creatures are "out of the closet" and, in some cases, even legal. Princess Meredith NicEssus is working for the Grey Detective Agency under the assumed name of Meredith 'Merry' Gentry. When two women come to the agency with a story about fey-wannabes and rituals involving fey women, Merry goes undercover to investigate. However, she and her colleagues get more than they bargained for when it is discovered that the culprit is using Branwyn's Tears, an illegal oil that can make a human appear as a sidhe (pronounced 'shee') lover for a night, and turn even a sidhe or a sidhe-descendant into his sexual slave. In the process of solving the case, Merry's secret is revealed, and she is hunted by the demonic Sluagh. Brought to see their King, Sholto, he offers Meredith a deal. Himself disapproved of by Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, because of his mixed blood, he proposes an alliance between the two of them. Jealous at the idea of Merry becoming his lover, Sholto's harem of nighthags attack Merry. During the fight Merry's gift, theHand of Flesh, is revealed when one of them, Nerys, becomes turned into a ball of flesh. Shocked, Merry tries to flee, but is trapped. Doyle, Captain of the Queen's Raven Guard, appears. He announces that the Queen never sent the Sluagh, and that in fact the Queen meant her no harm. As proof of this he produces the Queen's sword Mortal Dread, as well as the Queen's mark, which he transfers to Merry in a kiss. Merry returns with Doyle to the Court. The Queen claims that she wants her bloodline to continue upon the throne. She is willing to take as her heir whichever of Meredith or her cousin, Cel, can first produce an heir. She lifts the geiss of celibacy upon her Ravens for Meredith alone, insisting that she choose at least three in order to increase the chance of pregnancy. While this offer would permit Merry to end her self-imposed exile and return home, it also brings dangers. Cel, previously the sole heir, makes several attempts upon her life. Merry makes alliances with others such as Kurag, the Goblin King. However, Cel was behind the Branwyn's Tears incident in LA. In punishment, he is to be confined for six months after being coated with the oil himself, something akin to torture.
5811996	/m/0f6jkh	Mistral's Kiss	Laurell K. Hamilton	2006-12-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Meredith wakes up from a dream where she is given a horn cup from the Consort. The horn is a lost relic belonging to Abeloec, one of her guards, and the former god of wine. Abeloec and Merry drink from the horn, and some of his former god powers are restored. The other guards receive tattoos, symbols of their former god-powers that link the guards to Meredith in a mysterious way. They are magically transported to the heart of the Unseelie sithen, the dead gardens, where sex with Meredith, Abeloec and Mistral causes the gardens to come alive again. Rain begins to fall inside the garden. Through the sex magic, Galen, Nicca and Aisling disappear into the earth, air and trees, apparently as sacrifices to bring the magic back. Merry discovers that the Sithen responds to her desires, like adjusting how much rain falls in the garden. Merry learns that Abeloec’s cup was once used to make queens and goddesses, and the group speculate as to whether Merry is now immortal. Meredith asks the sithen to create a door to return to the Unseelie sithen. When they go through it, they find that they have accidentally passed into the Sluagh sithen, and they end up in the dead garden of the Sluagh. Before they can escape, they are confronted by Sholto, King of the Sluagh, and Lord of That Which Passes Between, and his two night hags, Agnes and Segna. Meredith discovers that Sholto’s tentacles have been shaved off by a member of the Seelie who tricked him. The hags believe that Meredith is part of the conspiracy. Segna attacks Meredith, but before she can reach her, Sholto strikes her and throws her into the dead lake, where is she is speared by the enchanted bones of the dead. Segna is mortally wounded, but alive. Sholto and Meredith wade into the lake to euthanize Segna. In a last-ditch attempt to kill Meredith, Segna pulls her under the water. Meredith uses her Hand of Blood to finish Segna. Sholto and Meredith magically appear on the Island of Bones in the middle of the lake. Sholto carries a dagger and a spear of bone, signs of kingship among the sluagh that had been lost. The Goddess appears and gives Sholto the chance to restore magic to the Sluagh. He is given the choice to either bring the magic back with blood by killing Meredith, or by sex. If he chooses death, the black heart of the sluagh will be restored. But if he chooses sex and life, it will change the sluagh sithen to a more Seelie-like place. Sholto chooses sex and life, and together they restore magic to the Sluagh garden. In a blast of power, they are returned to the Sluagh garden which is now filled with herbs, plants and flowers. Drunk with his new power, Sholto calls the Wild Hunt to chase the sidhe. Meredith and her guards flee. Meredith conjures a protective covering of four-leaf clover and discovers a “thin place” that allow them to escape the Sluagh sithen. Now more sidhe than ever, Sholto is attacked by the very Wild Hunt that he called up, and he is forced to flee as well. Now in the real world, Meredith calls on a group of Red Caps (cousins of the goblins), led by Jonty, to fight the Wild Hunt with them. The Wild Hunt is defeated and through the remaining magic, faerie animals including dogs appear. After the battle, they are rejoined by Galen, Aisling and Nicca who, having disappeared from the garden, reappeared in the Hall of Mortality. Galen’s wild magic causes flowers and water to appear in the Hall, and he accidentally causes all prisoners to be freed, including Cel, the Queen’s son, who wants Meredith dead. A furious Andais confronts Meredith and tells her that she must take her guards and go back to Los Angeles tonight, because she has ruined her sithen and Andais cannot keep her safe from Cel.
5812419	/m/0f6kp9	Monster Planet	David Wellington	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Monster Planet takes place twelve years after the events in Monster Island. Sarah, Dekalb's now 20-year-old daughter, fights alongside Ayaan and her squad of female Somali warriors to defend their last remaining settlements from the encroaching undead forces. Meanwhile, a powerful lich from Russia who calls himself "The Tsarevich" leads his army west on an unknown expedition.
5812965	/m/0f6m68	Freddy Goes to the North Pole	Walter R. Brooks		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the beginning, Freddy had the idea to establish a tourism company called Barnyard Tours Inc. The animals agreed, and the company was formed. Animals could pay for a tour with food, or by doing work for Mr. Bean. Soon, however, Freddy and Jinx, the cat, were sick and tired of conducting the tours. Freddy suggested a trip to the North Pole. So they and four other animals set off. A year passed, and the animals left began to worry. A mob formed in the barnyard triggered by a speech by Charles, the rooster. Then, Ferdinand, a crow from the expedition, came back and organized a rescue party. He said they had gone on a ship and crew were planning to eat Freddy. The sailors had said that they might try going to Santa Claus’ house. Later, in the woods of Canada, two children and a bear joined the rescue party. However, it soon was discovered that Ferdinand forgot to bring food and clothing for the animals. Everything looked grim for Ferdinand for a minute, but he suddenly came up with the idea for a lecture tour. The animals of the woods brought in food and clothing they found in the woods. Also, a few weeks later Charles and Jack, a dog, wandered away and were captured by some wolves. The animals, Charles and Jack, managed to drive the wolves away with the help of some ants. They finally arrived at Santa Claus’ house. The animals found Freddy there and also found a problem: The sailors were trying to turn Santa Claus’s irregular workshop into an ordinary, assembly line factory. The animals tried to make the sailors leave. They played ghosts, but one sailor wasn’t scared. Then, Freddy sent the captain, Mr. Hooker, a treasure map. He thought all the sailors would go with him, but instead, he tried to get all of it for himself. Freddy and Jinx chased after him and took it back. Later, the whole crew of the ship was shown the map. The sailors left and Santa Claus’s workshop went back to normal. Santa Claus took the animals and the two children to the Bean Farm.
5832482	/m/0f8067	Good News, Bad News	David Wolstencroft			 The novel revolves around two men, Charlie Millar and George, both secret agents who are mistakenly placed together as employees in a photo kiosk at Oxford Circus. Neither man is aware of the other's real identity. Then a "Frame Thirteen" order comes through, instructing each to assassinate the other. Charlie and George try at first to carry out the order. But in time they learn that the real problem lies with the organisation for which they both work. As the chase begins, the two men come to understand that things not what they seem, and out pour secrets that will rattle the foundations of the British Intelligence Service.
5833227	/m/0f81dt	My Cousin Rachel	Daphne du Maurier	1951	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story of "My Cousin Rachel" begins with Ambrose and Philip Ashley out walking. Ambrose is the owner of a large country estate on the Cornish coast and guardian to his orphaned cousin, seven year old Philip. As they walk they see a body swinging on a gibbet and Ambrose delivers the book's memorable opening line… The story moves forward and we find Ambrose and Philip running the estate and living a harmonious, bachelor lifestyle in an all male household. The manservant, Seecombe, is in charge of the staff and runs the house and Tamlyn is head gardener. On Sundays Philip's godfather, Nick Kendall and his daughter Louise, come to lunch as do the Reverend Pascoe and his family. Life is good apart from a few health problems that determine that Ambrose must spend the winter in warmer climes. As the damp weather approaches, he sets off for his third winter abroad and this time chooses Italy. Philip misses Ambrose, but receives letters from him, telling of his journey and then saying that he has reached Florence and met up with a cousin of theirs called Rachel. Apparently Rachel's father was from Cornwall and related to the Ashley family by marriage, but her mother was Italian. Ambrose relates that when Rachel was young she had married an Italian nobleman called Cosimo Sangalletti, who had been killed in a duel, leaving her childless and in a precarious financial position. Ambrose's letters reveal that he enjoys Rachel's company and that he spends much time with her during the following months. Philip discusses Rachel with Nick and Louise Kendall and they are all surprised that Ambrose has chosen female company during his visit to Italy. In the Spring, when Ambrose would normally be planning a date for his return home he sends a letter to Philip announcing that he and Rachel are married and have no immediate plans to return to Cornwall. Philip is numb with shock and ashamed that he can not be pleased for Ambrose, while everyone else seems delighted for the happy couple and full of questions about what Rachel is like. Seecombe is also unhappy, dreading a female influence on the household. Louise chatters on about the changes that Rachel will make to the house and when Philip snaps at her she asks him if he is jealous. Then Philip's godfather asks him if he has any plans for the future bearing in mind that, if Ambrose has a son, Philip will no longer be his heir. Another letter arrives from Italy saying that there is a 'tangle of business' relating to Rachel that Ambrose is spending a lot of time and money sorting out and that they need to stay in Florence. Philip is relieved that he can continue running the estate for the time being. Gradually the tone of Ambrose's letters changes and he complains of the relentless sun, the stuffy atmosphere of the villa Sangalletti and terrible headaches. Philip hears nothing at all from Easter to Whitsun of the following year and when a letter finally arrives in July, all is clearly not well. Ambrose writes of his illness and says that a friend and advisor of Rachel's called Rainaldi has recommended that Ambrose sees a different doctor. Ambrose says he can trust no-one and that Rachel watches him constantly. Philip discusses the contents of the letter with his godfather who thinks Ambrose may be having a breakdown or suffering from a brain tumour. Nick tells Philip that Ambrose's father had died of a brain tumour, having suffered terrible headaches and other symptoms similar to those affecting Ambrose. Philip is deeply concerned and decides to go to Italy. As he is about to start his journey another letter arrives saying… When Philip arrives at the villa Sangalletti he is told by a servant that Ambrose is dead and that Rachel has left the villa. Philip is devastated by the realisation that he will never see Ambrose again. He calls on Rainaldi, who seems startled when he sees Philip, but quickly recovers himself and explains that Ambrose's condition had deteriorated quickly, with his behaviour becoming very strange and that this was because of pressure on his brain. Philip feels intense dislike and mistrust for Rainaldi and for Rachel. Once back in Cornwall, Philip tries to overcome his sadness. Ambrose had appointed Philip's godfather to be his guardian until his coming of age, which would be when he was twenty-five. Nick tells Philip that he has received a communication from Rainaldi containing two pieces of information; firstly that the death certificate confirms that Ambrose's cause of death was a brain tumour and secondly saying that Ambrose had never changed his will in Rachel's favour so Philip is still heir to the estate. Nick accepts Rainaldi's word about Ambrose's death but Philip is convinced that Rainaldi cannot be trusted and coupled with Rachel's abrupt disappearance from the villa, he is sure something is amiss. Two weeks later Nick receives a communication from Rachel to say that she has arrived by boat at Plymouth. She says that she has all Ambrose's possessions with her and wants to return them to Philip. Philip invites her to stay with him, even though he can hardly bear to think of her. Seecombe prepares the house for a female visitor and on the day Rachel is due to arrive, Philip goes out so that there will be no-one to receive her. When Philip returns home Rachel has retired to her room so he dines alone. Later Rachel sends a note down asking Philip to join her in her room. Rachel seems startled when she first sees Philip and he is dumbfounded by the vision in front of him. Rachel is small and pale with dark hair and tiny hands and she is dressed all in black. She bears no resemblance to the woman Philip has imagined since he first heard of her. Rachel thanks Philip for letting her visit and says that her arrival at the house was just as she had imagined it would be, because of all that Ambrose had told her about his Cornish home and she says that Philip must not let her visit inconvenience him at all. Rachel quickly relaxes in Philip's company, who despite his preconceived dislike for her, finds himself at ease with her; all thoughts of anger, hatred and fear seeming futile as he gets to know and like her. The next day Philip shows Rachel around the estate and introduces her to the tenants in the surrounding farms. After a day or two, Philip realises that Rachel does not know about his trip to Florence, so he approaches the subject with her and shows her the last two letters that Ambrose had sent explaining that it was the letters that prompted his journey. Rachel knows that the letters must have made Philip hate her and he admits that he only invited her to stay so that he could accuse her of harming Ambrose, make her suffer and then send her away. He goes on to tell her, that now they have met, she is so different from what he expected that he cannot hate her. She explains about Ambrose's illness and because they both loved Ambrose a harmony develops between them. Philip and Rachel adopt a routine which includes church on Sundays, followed by lunch with Nick and Louise Kendall and the Reverend Pascoe and his wife and daughters. Rachel has brought many plants from Florence and she spends lots of time working in the gardens with Tamlyn, the head gardener. Evidently Rachel is an expert on plants and herbs and often provides advice on the use of herbal remedies to the staff in the house and the families in the nearby farms. She also brews tisana saying that it is better for you than tea. It is not long before Rachel is accepted as mistress of the household. From time to time Rachel refers to Louise as Philip's future bride, which totally baffles him as he has no intention of marrying anyone. Philip realises that as Ambrose's widow and with no will to make provision for her, Rachel has no income. He speaks to his godfather about this and although Nick is surprised that Philip's attitude towards Rachel has improved so much, he is pleased to arrange a quarterly sum to be paid to Rachel. When Philip tells Rachel about the allowance they argue, but then she agrees to accept the money and they are reconciled. Later Philip sees a letter, addressed by Rachel to Rainaldi, in the postbag and feels disturbed by it. One day about a month later, bad weather keeps Philip and Rachel indoors and they decide to unpack the things belonging to Ambrose, which Rachel had brought back from Florence. The cases contain all manner of things including clothes and books. Philip decides that he will distribute Ambrose's clothes to the tenants at Christmastime. When they begin to unpack the books, a note falls out of one of them. Philip reads it and then throws it onto the fire. The note included the following words… Rachel sees the note but Philip will not discuss it with her and there is a feeling of constraint between them. Later Rachel presses Philip to tell her what the note said and he answers in vague terms saying that Ambrose had mentioned concerns about expenditure. Rachel tells Philip that Ambrose had always been generous with money until he became ill and then everything had changed and he had constantly questioned her about what she wanted the money for. She had even been obliged to ask Rainaldi to give her money so that she could pay the servants. She tells Philip that Ambrose did not like Rainaldi. Winter approaches and the household routine continues. Philip is totally happy; his only fear being that Rachel may want to leave one day, however she is busy with Tamlyn, planning the terraced gardens. Philip decides to hold a Christmas party for the tenants and Rachel throws herself into the preparations. He really wants to give Rachel something special for Christmas, so he decides to go to the bank to choose something from the family jewels. The most beautiful item is a collar of pearls, traditionally worn by Ashley brides on their wedding day. Philip brings the pearls home and gives them to Rachel just before the party on Christmas Eve. She is radiant with happiness and kisses him. Everyone has a wonderful time at the party, which is attended by Nick, Louise and the Pascoes as well as all the tenants. Back in the drawing room after the party, Nick speaks to Philip. He has a number of concerns about Rachel. Firstly, she is hugely overdrawn on her allowance. Secondly, Nick has heard a rumour that Rachel had a reputation for living a loose and extravagant lifestyle and people had been concerned when she married Ambrose in case she ran through all his money. Thirdly, Nick says Philip had no right to give Rachel the pearl collar and, acting as his guardian, Nick says Philip must ask for it back. Rachel enters the room at that moment and hands the pearls to Nick. Philip is devastated, but when everyone else has gone, Rachel takes him in her arms and says he must not mind. But they are at cross purposes. Rachel loved wearing the pearl collar that she would have worn if she had married Ambrose in Cornwall and does not realise that Philip gave it to her because of the feelings he is developing for her. Philip and Rachel enjoy a happy Christmas together and they distribute the parcels of Ambrose's clothes to the tenants. Following the incident with the pearls there is a coolness between Phillip and Nick. One day Sam Bate, the tenant from East Lodge, asks to see Philip. Sam has found a letter, in Ambrose's writing and addressed to Philip, in the pocket of the jacket Philip gave him at Christmastime. Philip walks up to the top of the hill and sits down to read the letter. Ambrose had written the letter three months before he died and in it he tells Philip about his illness which takes the form of fever, headaches and strange moods. He talks of Rachel's recklessness with money and her habit of turning to Rainaldi, rather than himself. He says that Rainaldi has questioned him about his will and about providing for Rachel and that Rachel is always watching him. Finally he says that since his last bout of illness he wonders if they are trying to poison him and he asks Philip to go to him. Philip buries the letter up on the hill. Philip does not mention the letter to Rachel but he does talk to her about how different things would have been if Ambrose had left the estate to her. Rachel goes to the drawer and brings out Ambrose's unsigned will. Philip reads the will, which is in Ambrose's handwriting, and states that he leaves his property to Rachel, for her lifetime, passing at her death to the eldest of any children that might be born to both of them, and failing the birth of children, then to Philip, with the proviso that Philip should have the running of the property while Rachel should live. Rachel says that she does not know why Ambrose did not sign the will, and that he had changed so much once he became ill, suspecting her of everything and not letting Rainaldi come to the house. The next day, Philip goes to Bodmin to see an attorney and gets a legal document drawn up, so that on the day that he becomes twenty-five, and inherits the estate, he can give it to Rachel and fulfil Ambrose's wishes. On his return home, Philip finds that Rainaldi has arrived. He stays for a week; Philip dislikes him and is jealous of the amount of time Rachel and Rainaldi spend together. Philip becomes increasingly excited as his birthday approaches. On the day before his birthday he goes to the bank and withdraws all the family jewels. Later that day he goes to see Nick and shows him the unsigned will and the document that the attorney has drawn up. Reluctantly Nick agrees to witness Philip's signature on the document which gives the estate to Rachel, during her lifetime and providing she does not remarry. In the evening Philip and Rachel dine together and afterwards Philip is so restless that he goes for a long walk and a swim in the sea. As midnight approaches he returns to the house and climbs up to Rachel room. He showers her with all the family jewels and afterwards they make love. Philip is so naïve that he believes this means that Rachel will marry him, she sees it very differently and was simply thanking him for the jewels. The next morning Philip makes sure that the legal document giving Rachel the estate goes up to her room on her breakfast tray. He bursts into her room but she sends him away and later she goes out in the carriage. When she eventually returns she says she has been to see Nick to clarify certain things in the document. She says that she has also seen Louise and repeats her thoughts on what a suitable wife Louise would be for Philip. Philip is stunned, he cannot understand what is wrong with Rachel, surely they are in love with each other and getting married? He tries unsuccessfully to recapture their mood of the night before. After dinner Nick and Louise call in to have a birthday drink with Philip. Philip cannot contain himself and bursts out with the news that he and Rachel are to be married. There is a terrible silence and then Rachel apologises for Philip's ridiculous outburst. Nick and Louise leave. Philip has given Rachel his property, his money and the jewels. He has nothing else to give. He puts his hands around her neck and asks her to swear that she will never leave him, but his pressure on her throat prevents her from answering. He releases her and she slips away to her room. The next morning Philip sends a note to Louise asking her to meet him by the church in the town. Although Louise is concerned about the events of the previous evening she does not attempt to comfort Philip. Instead she tells him that she believes that Rachel came to Cornwall with the specific intention of getting the Ashley money and that Philip has played into her hands, by misinterpreting her behaviour towards him. Louise does not want to hurt Philip, but she does want him to realise the truth so that he can begin to get his life back together. Philip stays in the town all day. It is a cold, rainy day and the wind is blowing and by the time he returns home he is chilled and wet. He finds that Rachel has invited Mary Pascoe, one of the vicar's daughters, to stay as her companion, making it impossible for Philip to talk to Rachel. That evening Philip feels cold and unwell and by the morning he is suffering from a stiff neck and terrible pains in his head. He collapses and has to be carried to his room. Philip is ill for many weeks and when he begins to recover Rachel tells him he has had meningitis. He discovers that Rachel has been nursing him and in his confusion he thinks they are married. When he is well enough to go outside he finds that the terraced gardens are complete and work has begun on a sunken garden. Flowers are in bloom including the laburnum trees, which remind Philip of the laburnums that he saw growing beside Rachel's house in Florence. Rachel tells Philip that she will stay with him until he is well again and then she must go back to Florence. Philip asks Rachel to tell people that they are married and when she tells him that they are not he collapses into sobs, his dream broken. Rachel agrees to stay a little longer and Philip recovers to a certain extent, but remains weak and has recurring headaches. Seecombe worries about Philip and Nick and Louise visit and are very kind. One day Philip discovers that Rainaldi is staying at the Rose and Crown, beside the church in town and that Rachel visits him there. When Philip challenges Rachel about this she says that she did not tell him because he does not like Rainaldi. They argue and eventually Philip says that Rainaldi should come to the house to see Rachel. When Rainaldi arrives Philip leaves him talking to Rachel and goes to his room. That night Philip's fever returns and Rachel resumes her role as nurse. Philip tells Rachel that she need not nurse him if she wants to spend her time with Rainaldi, but Rachel says that Rainaldi has gone. Thoughts of Rachel and Rainaldi make Philip remember the letter that Sam Bate gave him. As soon as he is well enough he goes up the hill to where he buried the letter. He reads it again, especially the end part where Ambrose wonders if Rachel and Rainaldi are trying to poison him. When Philip returns home he notices that a letter has come from Rainaldi, but later when he looks for it, he finds instead an envelope containing laburnum seeds. Philip thinks laburnum seeds are poisonous and he begins to piece together a number of things - Rachel's relationships with Rainaldi, Ambrose and himself, her herbal remedies and tisana, Ambrose illness, his own illness… The next day is Sunday and the foreman responsible for the work in the gardens has a word with Philip telling him that the bridge over the sunken garden is only a framework and will not bear any weight. After church Philip invites the Kendalls and the Pascoes to lunch. Philip asks Louise to stay behind when her father goes home. After Nick and the Pascoes have left, Rachel prepares some tisana for Philip, Louise and herself but Philip refuses to drink his. Rachel goes out for a walk and as soon as she has gone Philip asks Louise to help him find some sort of proof that Rachel is trying to poison him. As they search Rachel's room, Philip is surprised to find a letter from the bank thanking Rachel for returning the jewels. They can find nothing to incriminate Rachel and begin to wonder if they are misjudging her. Meanwhile Rachel has walked to the terraced garden and stepped onto the bridge over the sunken garden. Philip finds her broken body lying amongst the timber and stone. He takes her in his arms and she looks at him calling him Ambrose before she dies. The book's title reflects Philip's consistent references to Rachel as "my cousin Rachel" right up to the moment he realizes he is in love with her. A film My Cousin Rachel, starring Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland was made in 1952, and a television adaptation, starring Christopher Guard and Geraldine Chaplin.
5833507	/m/0f81vz	The Hunting Party	Pierre Christin	1983		 The book begins with an epigraph from György Konrád: You have become accustomed to power as to bleeding flesh. This is followed by fictional biographies of the Dramatis Personae, who are all prominent political ex-leaders of Eastern European Iron Curtain countries: the Soviet Union, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Poland. The only Western character in the novel is a young, unnamed French Communist student of Slavic languages who participates as an interpreter. Another French character appears later, but he is an ordinary tourist who is detained by police at the border of Poland and later expelled without understanding the reason for his detainment nor the authorities understanding what he is saying. His role in the novel is thus insignificant, except possibly as a metaphor of the unfathomable distance between Western and Eastern Europe. (This character appeared as a nameless revolutionary with extraordinary powers in Christin and Bilal&#39;s La Ville qui n'existait pas.) As the book begins, a Soviet Railway train passes through the station of Czaszyn, Poland, at night. The first characters of the novel are introduced: a young, unnamed French student, and Evgeni Golozov, an Ukrainian polyglot born in 1918 who is a member of the Central Committee and the de facto personal secretary to Vasili Aleksandrovič Čevčenko. Čevčenko, an old paralyzed man who lies in bed in the next car reading the Pravda, is the Éminence Grise behind the whole novel: born in 1895, he has fought in the Revolution of 1917, has met Lenin and Stalin and has been an executive of the Cheka and the GPU. A decorated General during the Second World War, he has later become a high ranking official of the Politburo. Čevčenko&#39;s long and eventful life, recreated in the conversation between Golozov and the French student, summarizes both the utopian, exhilarating aspects of the Communist Revolution and its darkest, most violent abuses. We also learn about Čevčenko&#39;s only love interest, Vera Nikolaevna Tretjakova (1895–1937), a blonde, strikingly beautiful Bolshevik leader and intellectual who, coincidentally, is the only female character in the story, and only present as a ghost of the past. After having played an important role in the October Revolution, during which she had an affair with Čevčenko, Tretjakova was a victim of the 1937 Čistka and arrested under charges of Trockij-Zinovievism, then disappeared, probably eliminated by the NKVD. She was arrested by the very agency Čevčenko was an executive of. Tretjakova&#39;s memory has since haunted Čevčenko constantly, with the implication that since her death, as a high State official, Čevčenko has always been torn between personal feelings and Raison d'État. The train finally reaches its destination in Królówka, Poland. The Soviet dignitaries and the French student are welcomed by Tadeusz Boczek (born in Wilno, 1914), on whose country property the hunting party will be held. While they debark on the platform, the French student/interpreter learns that his and Golozov&#39;s duties are largely ornamental, since all guests at the hunting party speak fluent French, which is their lingua franca, unless an argument ensues, in which case the guests pretend in spite not to understand each other and call for interpreters. Shortly, other hunting party guests arrive at the platform: Ion Nicolescu (born on the Danube Delta, Romania, in 1918, an executive of the Securitate and member of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party; and Janos Molnar, vice-Interior Minister at Budapest. Nicolescu was a follower of Gheorghiu-Dej in 1948 and in charge of the purges, but fell in political disgrace in 1952, until new purges favoured his return to power in the Securitate in 1957, after which he has been steadily climbing the ranks of the Central Committee. The guests board a motorcade and depart towards Strzyżów, to Tadeusz Boczek&#39;s country estate, a large mansion evidently expropriated from wealthy landowners during the Communist takeover of Poland. There is a hint that Boczek was only granted such a property as honorable exile after political disgrace. The French student expresses admiration for the rich decor and works of art displayed throughout the mansion, to which Golozov quips: &#34;Yes, the decadent exploiting aristocracy of this country did have good taste.&#34; The vast mansion also features an American Bar Room, where the next character is found having a drink: Vasil Strojanov, born in 1920 or 1921 in Bulgaria to peasant parents. Strojanov was a valiant partisan during World War II on the Rodopi mountains, and took part in the first Dimitrov cabinet in 1946. He is introduced as a big, hard-drinking loudmouth. Boczek accompanies his guests in a tour of the estate and serves a &#34;frugal, but hearty&#34; lunch in the gazebo in the snow-covered garden. Another guest arrives: it is Pavel Havelka, born in the suburbs of Prague in 1915. Havelka was a Czech Social Democrat who sided with the 1948 Communist coup, then was arrested in 1951 in the wake of the Slánský trial as a &#34;nationalist-bourgeois imperialist&#34;, then was rehabilitated in 1963. Havelka is the only one to arrive by car, driving a Tatra that has special significance for him and Čevčenko, being the very same car in which he and Čevčenko discussed the possibility of a Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia on August 15, 1968, after the Dubček reform. A flashback of Russian troops in Prague on August 21 follows, with people screaming: "Эх, Иван! Вернись домой!" and "Hoj Kamarade! Koho jste vy přišli zabit? Svobodu?". The guests briefly discuss the Prague Spring, Molnar and Nicolescu cynically dismissing the whole concept of Socialism with a human face as an &#34;enormous tactical blunder&#34;. Havelka hints that while they may be right, the Russian élite, and especially Čevčenko, actually favoured the departure to the West of disgraced comrades on the very same Tatra that he arrived on. Embarrassment follows. The party then marches on to the first hunt for small fowl in the snow-covered country, a warm-up exercise only intended to secure appetizers for dinner. Strojanov displays his love of whisky, and he is warned: &#34;Vasil, you had better beware of the influence of capitalist alcohol on your tongue&#34;. At this moment, the whirring of an helicopter is heard. Boczek explains more guests are arriving from Akademgorodok, where they have been attending a summit conference on industrial exchange between Warsaw Pact countries. The helicopter lands and two men debark: Günther Schütz and Sergej Šavanidze. Schütz, born in Leipzig in 1930, a brilliant East German philosopher-economist, is, as Boczek explains it, &#34;one of the great minds of the Comecon. Before him, no one knew why our commonwealth worked badly. Now we know&#34;. Molnar asks: &#34;So now it works better?&#34; Boczek answers: &#34;No, but knowledge is priceless for scientific régimes such as ours.&#34; Sergej Šavanidze, born in Georgia in 1939, a mechanical engineer, is the Party&#39;s young lion, destined to replace Čevčenko in the Politburo. Golozov warns the French student he is going to have to work, since Šavanidze does not speak any language except Russian, plus he does not like Golozov at all. The French student translates small talk between Šavanidze, Molnar and Havelka, and the guests adjourn to the winter garden for drinks. Boczek then suggests a dip in the brand new heated pool in the basement of his mansion. All the guests change into bathing suits. Boczek tells Schütz the whole apparatus is imported from the United States, and Schütz says stiffly he has never approved of &#34;luxury goods&#34;, especially in view of Poland Boczek's country&#39;s foreign debt. Strojanov tells him sarcastically: &#34;I thought privileged Party executives like you had everything to gain from &#39;luxury goods&#39;.&#34; Vasili Aleksandrovič Čevčenko watches silently from his wheelchair while the guests dive in the pool, and Janos Molnar approaches him to tell him the pool should remind him of the July 1956 Hungarian Revolution, when Čevčenko had come to Hungary and talked to Tibor Illyes, the old Stalinist Party leader, in a thermal pool, to remove him from his seat. Illyes was found dead soon after, officially a &#34;suicide&#34;, and Molnar was the first to bring the news to Čevčenko, therefore winning his favour. But maybe Čevčenko had already set his sights on Molnar, then a young reporter from Szabad Nép, and chosen him for his ally. We learn that Čevčenko has always shown remarkable talent for singling out the young and promising cadres in times of trouble, so that the Communist empire could move forward no matter the individual casualties. The discussion and arguments between Molnar, Havelka and Nicolescu concerning Hungary and Czechoslovakia reach a high at dinner, where caviar and other delicacies are served. While Strojanov belches contentedly, Šavanidze challenges Čevčenko to a chess match (&#34;Не хотцте аи вы играть шашки, Василий Александрович?&#34;). Čevčenko is a master player. Havelka whispers to the French student: &#34;As usual, Sergej challenges Vasili Aleksandrovič. And as usual, Sergej will lose. And he is a very bad loser&#34;. Šavanidze, beaten and humiliated, retreats angrily to his room. Boczek suggests everybody goes to bed, because &#34;tomorrow will be a hard day&#34;. Golozov and the French student watch Čevčenko&#39;s bedroom, where he is haunted by his personal ghosts and nightmares: a soaring falcon, possibly a metaphor of the October Revolution, and the same falcon with its eyes ripped out and its beak dripping blood; Vera Nikolaevna Tretjakova being escorted away by two NKVD agents; a bear in a snowy landscape in a pool of blood, like a vision of the future hunting party; and Čevčenko himself with Tretjakova, both naked and embracing while immersed thigh-high in blood, with the (incomplete) word &#34;ЛЮБОВ&#34; (Love) painted in white on a wall behind them. The next morning, the guests move out on a new hunt: boar first, then deer. Tadeusz Boczek and the French student exchange political zingers, where the impression is that the French student is enthusiastic and extremely naive in his unrequited love of Communism, while Boczek is a seasoned veteran who has seen the dark side and lived to tell the tale. Wild boar prowl the countryside, huge and dangerous creatures. The hunting party scatters, each looking for prey on his own, but before long someone is heard crying for help. Pavel Havelka says: &#34;It sounded like Tadeusz&#39;s voice&#34;. Molnar says: &#34;I do not understand. Nothing was supposed to happen today&#34;. The party finds Boczek wounded and lying in the snow in front of an enraged boar ready to kill. While everybody is gripped by fright and discusses what to do, a single master rifle shot from somewhere in the forest strikes the boar dead when it is just inches away from Boczek. Everybody knows it was Čevčenko who saved Boczek&#39;s life. While he is brought back to safety, Boczek says Čevčenko has gifted him with three lives and three deaths. Boczek, as a Polish Communist Jew, was saved in 1938 from internal Comintern purges; was a witness to Nazi atrocities and participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and Čevčenko organized his escape in order to rebuild a national Communist party; and today Čevčenko has chosen to save him from a more mundane, but no less deadly threat. But Boczek has also died three times because of Čevčenko: once in the same year 1938 when he was saved, when he first realized Russia was bent on destroying its most faithful foreign militants; later, after World War II, when he witnessed the torturing of dissidents inside the Palace of Culture and Science; and lastly in 1967, when the Soviet régime was in dire need of external enemies to pin its shortcomings on and decided the last Jews left after the Shoah were responsible. Boczek was excommunicated and vilified, and exiled to the comfortable but isolated estate in Strzyżów. The hunt goes on in the afternoon for deer, sans Boczek who stays home recovering. Later, the guests meet at the Observatory dome to watch the night sky, which prompts Nicolescu to reminisce about his youth, when he gazed at the sky between 1952 and 1957 while in disgrace from the Party along with Ana Pauker, and still earlier with his mother as a child and in 1945, when he returned to Romania with Čevčenko to take his role as one of the new rulers of the country after Yalta. He goes on to describe his memories of storks nesting on the multicoloured chimneys of his childhood village and pelicans going after fish in the Danube Delta. Vasil Strojanov, in his cynical and drunken way, is moved enough to recount his own experience as a partisan and member of the Dimitrov cabinet. Strojanov was the only one to escape hanging under charges of Titoism. Since then, Strojanov has had a recurring nightmare: a hideous monster-beast with sharp teeth, gray, stonelike skin and breasts similar to a female animal&#39;s mammaries, rising over a snow-covered landscape along with a red star. In the dream, the beast is Strojanov himself, or maybe &#34;The Party itself, of which I am but a swearing mouth, a bloodthirsty claw&#34;. The conversation is interrupted by Schütz, who coolly disapproves of his comrades&#39; &#34;puerile idealism&#34; and proudly reminds them he voted against Kafka's rehabilitation from charges of &#34;bourgeois pessimism&#34;. Boczek saves everyone from further embarrassment by calling them to dinner. However, Nicolescu, Strojanov and Boczek share a few words that let us know Schütz is increasingly becoming a puppet of Šavanidze, which is harmful to their &#34;business&#34;. Dinner ends with a collective toast: "На здоровье!", after which Šavanidze challenges yet again Čevčenko to a chess match, and yet again loses.
5834189	/m/0f82lg	Revolt on Alpha C	Robert Silverberg	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story takes place in the year 2363. The protagonist is Cadet Larry Stark, a 20-year-old, fresh graduate of the Space Patrol Academy who comes from a long line of Space Patrol commanders. As the story begins, he is embarking on the customary final training cruise on the interstellar ship Carden. At the end of this cruise, he will be awarded a commission as officer of the Space Patrol. The ship makes the four and a half light-year journey to the star Alpha Centauri in a span of 15 days using the faster-than-light overdrive. The fourth planet orbiting Alpha C, an earth-like planet inhabited by dinosaurs, has been colonized 125 years earlier. Cadet Stark, who has been taught to obey orders and to trust the infallibility of Earth and the Space Patrol, arrives at planet IV of Alpha C just as the colonists are voting to declare, and possibly fight for, their independence from Earth. The arrival of the Carden and its crew can potentially affect the course of events in this revolution. The young cadet, for the first time in his life, must choose the proper and honorable course of action in a situation where there is no clear right and wrong. The consequences of his actions may place in jeopardy his career with the Space Patrol and the love of his father. The story is apparently a metaphor for the American Revolution, with Earth representing England and Alpha Centauri representing the US. Ultimately Cadet Stark sides with the Alpha C colonists, but he feels confident that his father would be proud that he had been true to himself. Distinctive things to note about the 1955 novel include: 1) The overdrive is based on the principle of warping space; 2) The phrase "electronic guitar" is used for electric guitar and "wristchron" is used for wrist watch; and 3) the ship radio uses vacuum tube technology. Also the character named Harl Ellison was named after science fiction writer Harlan Ellison, who was a neighbor of Silverberg in New York at the time he was writing the book. This was confirmed in a special edition on the occasion of Silverberg's 35th year in the business.
5836822	/m/0f8665	The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place	E. L. Konigsburg	2004	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Twelve-year-old Margaret Rose Kane is sent to summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains while her parents visit Peru, the first time she has neither vacationed with them nor lived downtown with her great-uncles Alex and Morris Rose. She is a new girl at Camp Talequa, placed in a cabin with six "Meadowlarks" who return every summer, and she is the victim of their hazing or "pranks". As a result, she does not follow the directions of the camp proprietress, Mrs. Kaplan. After the first of four weeks, Uncle Alex travels by bus and rescues her. Mrs. Kaplan states that there can be no refund. However, Uncle Alex elicits lunch and a long automobile ride home, chauffeured by camp handyman Jake Kaplan, the adult son of the proprietress. Margaret lives the rest of vacation with the Uncles. For 45 years they have constructed three towers of scrap metal, glass, and ceramic in their small back yard at 19 Schuyler Place, former company housing that the Tappan Glass Works long ago sold to its workers or to immigrants such as the Roses. The uncles have remained through Old Town's decline and recent gentrification, but the new homeowning gentry have petitioned to have the towers demolished. Margaret spurs and leads a belated fight to save them after the Uncles have lost their last battle and given up hope. She plots initially with young Jake Kaplan. She personally recruits to the Cultural Preservation Committee. She does this through their mothers who still live in Epiphany, two adults who were friends of her own mother and neighbors of the towers as children, art museum director Peter Vanderwaal and Infinitel (a telephone company) attorney Loretta Bevilacqua. With Jake she must handle Phase One: Stop the demolition. On Loretta's advice she buys the towers for a dollar; on her own, she occupies them. Finally Jake must drag his mother and the Meadowlarks from Camp Telaqua into the fray. Phases Two and Three and the epilogue comprise fewer than 20 pages.The Outcasts, ch. 27–30 (pages 278–96 in the Aladdin edition). Occupation with mass media publicity bought time. Peter who knew the towers as masterpieces of outsider art mustered academic opinions in support. Loretta, who recognized their potential function, persuaded Infinitel to buy them. They were moved to a new hilltop park above campus and topped with cellular phone antennas. Margaret's triumph was bittersweet: she anticipated sharing it with her returning parents but saw that their love had ended and her family would soon break up. Tower Hill became a suburban housing development.
5838375	/m/0f89j2	The Two Captains	Veniamin Kaverin			 After a postman drowns, Sanya, 8, finds a bag full of letters. As the envelopes are all wet, there is no way to read the addresses and send the letters. A neighbour, Aunt Dasha, reads the letters to anyone willing to listen during the cold winter evenings. Thus Sanya first hears of the lost Arctic expedition that will become the meaning of his life. For now on he is only fascinated by the brave people and their adventures, though he already can understand that the expedition is probably lost and all its participants are dead. Meanwhile, tragedy comes into his own life. One night he goes fishing in the river and witnesses a murder. Next morning his own father is accused of it, the accusation based on the knife with the name of "Grigoryev" beside the victim. Sanya knows that it is he who has lost the knife, but he cannot tell anything because he is mute. Sanya's father is taken to prison and eventually dies there. During the hard and hungry winter of father's being in prison, mother sends Sanya and his sister, also Sanya (he is Alexander and she is Alexandra) to a village to live the two of them all alone. There Sanya meets the Doctor, a runaway revolutionary, who teaches the boy to speak. He disappears three days after his mysterious arrival, but Sanya keeps practicing all winter - only to start speaking when it is told of father's death. Eventually mother comes for the children and takes them home, where they discover she is about to re-marry. The stepfather turns out to be cruel and selfish, and he abuses the children heavily. Mother realizes that and soon dies, probably after committing suicide (this is not specified; it could be an accident after which she has no will to live, though suicide is also possible, as to parallel the fates of Sanya and Katya's parents). Sanya then agrees to his best friend Pyetka's urges and the two escape to search for a better life in Turkestan, which they see as a magical land of the East. They give each other a pledge taken from the poet Tennyson: "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield". This pledge always helps Sanya go on. After months of wandering through the winter forests, through war-beaten Russia of the 1917 winter, they end up in the hunger-stricken Moscow. The reality smashes in their faces, they get separated and lose each other for many years. Sanya ends up in an orphanage. In the orphanage he meets two new friends, Valka and Romashka, and also the strict school headmaster, Nikolay Antonich Tatarinov. By chance - or fate - Sanya meets on the street an old woman originating from Sanya's own town, Ensk, and her granddaughter, Katya, of Sanya'a age. He soon realizes that they are his headmaster's family. After breaking the Tatarinov's lactometer, getting into a fight with Katya over that, and Katya's taking the blame, they become fast friends and Sanya frequents the Tatarinov house, helping the old woman with the household. He also gets to meet the old woman's daughter, Katya's mother, Maria Vasilyevna, a mysterious sad woman. But one day, just after Sanya's beloved teacher, Korabliov, proposes to Maria Vasilyevna and gets a refusal, he overhears the teachers' cruel plot to destroy Korabliov, because he has gained the students' love and respect and has become more popular than the headmaster, and Sanya tells him of the plot. Nikolay Antonich discovers of Sanya's intervention (as it is discovered years later - through Romashka) and banishes him out of the house. Years later, in the last school year, Sanya meets Katya again and realizes that he is in love with her. But Romashka spies on him kiss Katya and tells Nikolay Antonich. Nikolay Antonich sends Katya back to Ensk, but Sanya goes after her, thus visiting home, the beloved Aunt Dasha and the abandoned little sister for the first time since his escape. He finds the old letters and is shocked: only now does he realize that the mysterious letters of his childhood deal with no other than Katya's lost father, the Captain Tatarinov, one of them is actually from him - the last letters ever to have arrived, the letters Katya's mother has never seen. His letter clearly indicates that it was him who first discovered Severnaya Zemlya. But there is more: in his letter Katya's father accuses Nikolay Antonich of destroying the expedition, of doing everything to make it fail and the people never to return. But that page is missing: Sanya remembers it by heart, and his proof is a nickname that Katya's mother used to call Katya's father - Sanya could not have guessed or invented that nickname. Maria Vasilyevna believes Sanya. However, by now she is married to Nikolay Antonich, because she till now believed, according to his own words, that he actually was the great benefactor of the expedition, accusing the Captain, his cousin, to always have been a good-for-nothing who never succeeded in anything he tried to do. She believes Sanya - and commits suicide. Katya turns away from Sanya, Nikolay Antonich having convinced her and all the others that Sanya only slanders him. Sanya then swears to find the expedition and prove that he is right. Sanya finishes school and fulfills his first dream - he becomes an Arctic pilot. While working in the North he meets again with the doctor who taught him to speak and discovers that the doctor possesses the diaries of the expedition's navigator. Sanya reads the diaries, but they do not contain any proof of Sanya's being right. One day, during a mission, Sanya and the doctor make a forced landing in a northern village, where they find a hook from Santa Maria, Captain Tatarinov's ship. An old native tells Sanya a ten-year-old story about himself finding a boat with a dead man in it. This is a proof that someone from the expedition has reached mainland, and that the remnants should be searched for in this region. Sanya comes back to Moscow and meets Katya again. He also meets a man who has to do with the expedition's organization, and his story, and the papers he has, are the lost proof. Korabliov tells all this to Katya and she realizes that Sanya was right. Sanya organizes a search expedition and leaves to the North again, as his leave is over. Later in the year Sanya and Katya meet in Leningrad to get married and also to meet Sanya's sister and her husband, Sanya's best friend Pyetka, and be with them at the birth of their first son. But the sister is very ill during the birth and soon dies of complications. The search expedition is cancelled, probably through the efforts of Nikolay Antonich, who refuses to acknowledge his guilt, saying he will only accept one witness - the captain himself. Instead, Sanya is sent to the battlefields of the Civil War in Spain. When he returns, Sanya and Katya plan on finally starting their life together, but by then it's 1941 and the Germans invade Russia. Katya remains in Leningrad an is soon trapped in the blockade. During that horrid time Sanya's old enemy, Romashka, who has always been Nikolay Antonich's ally and all his life tried to harm Sanya, finds Katya. He tells her of meeting with the wounded Sanya on a bombed echelon and his apparent attempt to save Sanya's life. But after she finds in his pocket Sanya's documents, she starts thinking that Romashka has killed Sanya. Already starved and ill, she faints and gets worse. A friend manages, after many efforts, to send her away from the seized Leningrad. Sanya, meanwhile, is not dead. It is true that he met Romashka on a bombed echelon, but Romashka abandoned him and ran away by himself, leaving Sanya, badly wounded in his legs and unable to move, to die in a forest under fire. Sanya manages to crawl out of the forest and is tended back to health by two little boys, and then goes to a field hospital. Upon leaving the hospital he is told that he will never fly again. Sanya tries to locate Katya but cannot find her trace, and starts believing that she is dead. Meanwhile he is called back to fight, this time on the Northern front. He overcomes his condemnation and starts to fly again, bombing German ships invading the Northern Sea. During one of these fights he is forced to make a landing and thus finds the remnants of the expedition, and the Captain's last letters, clearly stating that all the blame is on Nikolay Antonich. He also finds the Captain himself, frozen to death 29 years ago. One day he goes to visit his friend the Doctor and surprisingly meets Katya, who has come to the North in search for him. Sanya organizes a lecture about Captain Tatarinov and his achievements, and Nikolay Antonich is banished. Captain Tatarinov is buried with all honors on a shore facing the land he has discovered, and all ships passing through can see the engraving: "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield".
5839363	/m/0f8c6w	The Book of Dave	Will Self	2006-06-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Contemporary narrative: Dave Rudman, a London taxi-driver, has a casual sexual encounter with a young woman named Michelle Brodie. The pair do not meet for another seven months until a heavily pregnant Michelle arrives at Dave's flat. They marry, and Michelle gives birth to a boy, Carl, but the marriage is unsuccessful, and Michelle eventually files for divorce, after which she resumes an earlier relationship with the television producer Cal Devenish. Dave descends into depression and increasingly unstable behaviour, and Michelle forbids him contact with their son, Carl. Dave writes a book that consists partly of an account of cab-driving in London, and partly of a misogynistic rant against the alleged unfairness of divorce and child access legislation. He has a single copy of the book printed on metal plates and buries it in the garden of the house in Hampstead where Michelle lives with Cal and Carl. Dave suffers a breakdown, and comes under the care of the psychiatrist Anthony Bohm. Despite discovering that Carl is actually Cal's son, Dave slowly recovers his sanity and, during a stay in hospital, forms a relationship with Phyllis Vance, the mother of Steve, another patient. Dave regrets the content of his book, and attempts to dig it up from the Hampstead garden, but fails. Dave moves into Phyllis's cottage on the fringes of outer London and, under her guidance, writes a second book that repudiates the content of the first, and recommends a life based on tolerance and freedom. He mails the new book to Carl, but shortly afterwards is confronted at the cottage by loan sharks to whom he is heavily indebted. Dave brandishes a shotgun but is fatally injured in a struggle with the men, who arrange the scene to make the death look like suicide – an arrangement that is readily believed by Phyllis and the police. Carl and Cal then place Dave's second book in a metal film canister and bury it in their garden. Future narrative: On the isolated island of Ham, a tiny community ekes out an existence from the land, assisted by semi-intelligent pig-like creatures known as 'motos' that are unique to the island. The community lives according to the severely enforced religion of the country (known as 'Ing') whereby men and women lead separate lives but share childcare in accordance with the dictates of the 'Book of Dave', which is regarded as a sacred text, but which is evidently the book written by Dave Rudman and buried in a Hampstead garden some two thousand years earlier. A young male 'Hamster', Symun Devush, explores a forbidden area of the island and emerges claiming that he has discovered a second Book of Dave that repudiates the tenets of the first. Although Symun's revelations are popular, and he is lauded throughout the country as a prophet, religious authorities from the reconstructed city of New London send a deposition that arrests Symun on a charge of heresy (or 'flying') and transports him to New London, where he is physically and mentally broken, his tongue torn out, and returned to live in isolation on the desolate outcrop of land known as Nimar, not far from Ham. Before being arrested, Symun conceives a son, Carl, who becomes an object of interest to Antone Böm, an exiled heretic. Böm believes that the second book of Dave discovered by Symun may be buried on the island, but his search for the book is a failure. Carl and Böm travel to New London in order to determine the fate of Symun and the second book but, soon after their arrival, the pair are arrested and sentenced to death. They escape, and discover Symun's fate on Nimar. Upon returning to Nimar, however, they find that Symun has died, and that his belongings include no second book but only a metal container filled with rotten debris. They return to Ham, where another delegation from New London is brutally mistreating the population and slaughtering the motos. As one of the Hamsters rebels against the slaughter, Carl and Böm reveal themselves.
5840098	/m/0f8d5p	Out	Natsuo Kirino	2004-09-30	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel tells the tales of four women, working the graveyard shift at a Japanese bento factory. All four women live hard lives. Masako, accepted as the leader of the four women, feels completely alienated from her estranged husband and teenage son. Kuniko, a plump and rather vain girl, has recently been ditched by her boyfriend after the couple were driven into debt leaving Kuniko to fend off a loan shark. Yoshie is a single mother and reluctant caretaker of her mother-in-law, who was left partly paralyzed after a stroke. Yayoi is a thirty-four-year old mother of two small boys. She hates to leave her children home alone to go to work. More than that, she hates the thought of her drunken, gambling husband returning home and hurting them or, more likely, herself. Returning home one night, Yayoi discovers her husband has gambled away all their savings and loses control of her temper. She strangles him to death. She desperately persuades Masako, who eventually gets Yoshie and Kuniko involved, to help her dispose of the body. The body is dismembered, secured in many black bin-liners and hidden all over Tokyo. It is isn't long before one carelessly hidden bag is discovered and the police begin to ask questions. As if things weren't bad enough, the women begin to blackmail each other, a loanshark is requiring their services and a criminal who has lost everything because of their antics has begun to hunt the women down. The way out is not easy and it is certainly not pretty, and the women soon have to pay the price.
5840337	/m/0f8dl3	Adverbs	Daniel Handler	2006-06-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In "Immediately," a man leaves his girlfriend (Andrea) and falls in love with his homophobic cabdriver. In "Obviously," a teenager (Joe) working at a multiplex takes tickets for Kickass: The Movie while pining for the teenage girl (Lila) working the shift with him. She has a boyfriend (Keith). Joe mentions a friend, Garth, who travels to San Francisco to meet with his girlfriend, Kate. This Kate is Kate Gordon, one of Flannery's friends in The Basic Eight, who is mentioned having a brief relationship with a guy named Garth in that novel. In "Arguably," a British writer (Helena), who is married to a man (David) whose ex is called 'Andrea', needs money. In "Particularly," Helena works for Andrea, whom she is jealous of. In "Briefly," a teenager's crush on his sister's boyfriend (Keith) haunts him throughout life. In "Soundly", a woman (Allison) -- who has an ex named 'Adam' -- spends an evening out with her best friend (Lila), who's dying of a rare disease, and they both focus on what their friendship means, particularly compared to their relationships with men. They reminisce about their friend 'Andrea' and an encounter with a boy named 'Joe'. "Allison" and "Lila" both crop up again as character names repeatedly throughout the book. Handler is sometimes clear about whether he's speaking about the same people, and sometimes not. As in most of the chapters, Handler here provides one possible definition of love: "[t]his is love, to sit with someone you've known forever in a place you've been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it's time to go. You don't care about yours. Why should it change, the love you feel, no matter how death goes?". After a conversation with a woman named Gladys, who is able to make items appear out of thin air, Lila gets a call to come to the hospital for a transplant, but there is a problem with the ferry; some kind of disaster has occurred which means they cannot cross to the hospital. The guy working at the booth is called 'Tomas'. In "Frigidly," a pair of detectives comes looking for the Snow Queen (Gladys) in a diner where Andrea is drinking at the counter. A boy (Mike), who had been a student of Helena, is waiting. "Collectively" is about a man who has a series of random people, including a mail carrier and his son (Mike), coming to his house to declare how much they love him. "Isn't love a sharing?", asks the narrator, trying to explain the postman's (and everyone else's) strange longing for the house owner. The story concludes with the man sharing accepting the affection of his guests by sharing a smoothie with them. In "Symbolically," an aspiring writer (Tomas) hooks up with a man (Adam) who has come to film a potential catastrophe. The next day, the man returns with his girlfriend (Eddie). In "Clearly," a young couple (Adam and Eddie) sneaks away into the woods for some risqué outdoor sex. After they have undressed, an apologetic hiker (Tomas) interrupts them with news of an injured friend (Steven). The couple attend to the hiker's needs, leaving their own hanging. The female character (Eddie) in "Naturally" dates a man who turns out to be a ghost. When she discovers this, she ends their union. Her ex is called 'Joe'. "Wrongly" features a graduate student (Allison) inexplicably drawn to a colleague (Steven) who's already treated her badly. In "Truly," Daniel Handler explains the game Adverbs: "Someone is It and leaves the room and everyone else decides on an adverb. It returns and forces people to act out things in the manner of the word, which is another name for the game. People argue violently, or make coffee quickly, and there's always a time when the alcohol takes over and people suggest hornily and we all must watch as It makes two people writhe on the floor, supposedly dancing or eating or driving a car, until finally It guesses the adverb everyone's thinking of. It's a charade, although it's not much like Charades. You play until you get bored." Handler's explanation of Adverbs leads to a discussion of the identity of characters across chapters: "Nobody keeps score, because there's no sense in keeping track of what everyone is doing. You might as well trace birds through a book, or follow a total stranger you spot outside the window of your cab, or follow the cocktails spilling themselves from the pages of vintage cocktail encyclopedias to leave stains through this book, or follow the pop songs that stick in people's heads or follow the people themselves, although you're likely to confuse them, as so many people in this book have the same names. You can't follow all the Joes, or all the Davids and Andreas. You can't follow Adam or Allison or Keith, up to Seattle or down to San Francisco or across—three thousand miles, as the bird flies—to New York City, and anyway they don't matter." In "Not Particularly," Helena awaits the return of her husband, David. She thinks he's cheating on her, because he's left his passport behind, but she doesn't realize that (at that time) he doesn't need a passport to travel to Canada. Helena meets Joe and gets a letter addressed to Andrea. In "Often," Allison is married to a comic writer and goes on a cruise for comic writers. She meets Keith. In "Barely," Sam moves out after her roommate (Andrea) gets involved with Steven. The boy across the street is Mike. Finally, in "Judgmentally," Joe avoids jury duty and meets Andrea, who is driving a cab.
5842112	/m/0f8j47	The Gift of Asher Lev	Chaim Potok		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The brilliant, schismatic Hasidic painter Asher Lev is now a middle-aged man, residing with his wife and children in the south of France. When his beloved Uncle Yitzchok dies, Asher is abruptly summoned back to Brooklyn. Soon after the funeral, he learns that his uncle had secretly been collecting art for many years and has amassed a valuable collection, of which Asher is to be the trustee. Asher is dazzled and makes some tentative efforts to reconcile the Ladover Hasidic community to modern art—for example, by sketching a portrait of his uncle for his grieving father and by teaching a lesson in art appreciation at the school where his daughter has temporarily enrolled. But one of his cousins bitterly resents the art collection and hampers Asher's efforts to use it for charity in his uncle's name. Meanwhile, Asher's parents and the rest of the Ladover community worry because the aging Ladover rebbe has no children and has appointed no successor. What will happen to the Ladover community if the rebbe dies before the Messiah comes? The logical candidate for next rebbe would be Asher's father, Aryeh Lev, who has been one of the rebbe's chief lieutenants for decades, but Asher realizes that the rebbe is reluctant to pass the mantle of authority to Aryeh unless Aryeh has a successor—who cannot be Aryeh's only child, the iconoclast painter. Slowly, Asher realizes that the rebbe and Aryeh both hope that Asher's five-year-old son, Avrumel, will become the ultimate successor to the rebbeship. It is Avrumel who will be "the gift of Asher Lev." Another strand of the plot concerns Asher's wife, Devorah, who is plagued by bitter memories of her parents' deaths in the Holocaust and of her own early childhood, spent in hiding with her cousin Max and his parents. Asher suspects Devorah will seize on her son's eventual succession to rebbeship as some sort of vindication for her family's suffering. In the end, Asher acquiesces in the unspoken plan of succession and decides to save his uncle's art collection until Avrumel grows up, in confidence that Avrumel will know what to do with it.
5842145	/m/0f8j70	Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas	Hunter S. Thompson		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The novel lacks a clear narrative and frequently delves into the surreal, never quite distinguishing between what is real and what is only imagined by the characters. The basic synopsis revolves around journalist Raoul Duke (Hunter S. Thompson), and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo (Oscar Zeta Acosta), as they arrive in 1970s Las Vegas to report on the Mint 400 motorcycle race. However, they soon abandon their work and begin experimenting with a variety of recreational drugs, such as LSD, ether, cocaine, alcohol, mescaline, and cannabis. This leads to a series of bizarre hallucinogenic trips, during which they destroy hotel rooms, wreck cars, and have visions of anthropomorphic desert animals, all the while ruminating on the decline of culture in a city of insanity.
5842146	/m/0f8j7j	Davita's Harp	Chaim Potok			 In New York City of the 1930s, Ilana Davita Chandal is the child of a mixed marriage: a Polish Jewish immigrant mother and a Christian father from an old and wealthy New England family. Both of her parents are haunted by bitter and violent memories from their youths, and both have, in consequence, turned their backs on their pasts in order to become active members of the Communist Party. Ilana's early childhood is fraught with mystery and struggle as the neighbors eye the Chandal family with suspicion. When Michael Chandal, already wounded once in the Spanish Civil War, returns to Spain, Ilana begins to look for answers at the local synagogue and in friendship with observant Jews, including her neighbor Ruthie Helfman and her distant cousin, David Dinn. Michael Chandal is killed in Spain, at Guernica, and Ilana and her mother both struggle to cope with their grief. They are often at odds with each other as Ilana becomes more and more interested in traditional Judaism—even asserting her right to say kaddish for her non-Jewish father—while Anne Chandal devotes herself to the Party and becomes involved in a new relationship with a young Communist historian, Charles Carter. When Stalin signs a non-aggression pact with Hitler, Anne struggles with reconciling the communist cause with the geopolitical reality and leaves the Party. Soon after Carter breaks off their engagement. Ultimately Anne returns—though not with her daughter's fervor—to religious observance and marries her cousin Ezra Dinn, whom she had rejected many years before. Ilana becomes a star student at her Jewish day school. She is devastated when she is unjustly denied an academic award on account of her gender, but she remains determined to make her mark on the world. A subplot involves the mystical European Jewish writer Jakob Daw, another former suitor of Anne Chandal. He is deported from the United States against his will— in spite of the best efforts of his lawyer, Ezra Dinn—and dies in Europe soon afterwards. Anne Chandal, now Dinn, unconventionally decides to say kaddish for her old friend, even though she is a woman and women did not say kaddish in Orthodox synagogues in the 1940s.
5844310	/m/0f8n1n	The Bride Price	Buchi Emecheta	1976	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the city of Lagos, the Ibo Aku-nna and her brother, Nna-nndo, are bid farewell by their father Ezekiel, who says he is going to hospital for a few hours – their mother, Ma Blackie, is back home in Ibuza, performing fertility rites. It becomes apparent that he is much sicker than he let his children know, and he dies three weeks later. They have the funeral the day before Ma Blackie arrives; she takes them back to Ibuza with her, as she now becomes the wife of Ezekiel’s brother Okonkwo. The family is problematic in Ibuza – Ma Blackie has some of her own money, and so her children receive much more schooling than other children in the village, particularly the children of her new husband’s other wives. Aku-nna is blossoming, though she is thin and passive, and starts to attract the attention of young men in the neighborhood, though she has not yet started to menstruate. Her stepfather Okonkwo, who has ambitions of being made a chief, begins to anticipate a large bride price for her. Meanwhile she has begun to fall for her teacher Chike, who in turn has developed a passion for her. Chike is the descendant of slaves – when colonization started, the Ibo often sent their slaves to the missionary schools so they could please the missionaries without disrupting Ibo life, and now the descendants of those slaves hold most of the privileged positions in the region. Chike’s inferior background means it is unlikely that Okonkwo will agree to let him marry Aku-nna, although his family is wealthy enough to offer a generous bride price. When Aku-nna begins menstruating – the sign that she is now old enough to get married – she at first conceals it in order to stave off the inevitable confrontation. When she finally reveals that she has her period, young men come to court her and Okonkwo receives several offers. One night, after she finds out that she has passed her school examination (meaning she might become a teacher, earning money by means other than the bride price) she and the other young women of her age-group are practicing a dance for the upcoming Christmas celebration when men burst in and kidnap her. The family of an arrogant suitor with a limp, Okoboshi, has kidnapped her to be his bride in order to “save” her from the attentions of Chike. On her wedding night, she lies and tells Okoboshi that she is not a virgin and has slept with Chike; he refuses to touch her. The next day, word of her disgrace has already spread around the village when Chike rescues her and the two elope, fleeing to Ughelli where Chike has work. The two begin a happy life together, marred by her guilt over her unpaid bride price – Okonkwo, furious, refuses to accept any of the increasingly generous offers made by Chike’s father, and has gone so far as to divorce Ma Blackie and torture a doll made in Aku-nna’s image. When Aku-nna feels sick, she goes home. There she is not sure if she will have a baby. Soon the doctor in Chike´s oil company confirms that Aku-nna will have a baby. Later on when she feels sick and screams, Chike brings her to the hospital. There Aku-nna dies in childbirth. Chike christens his baby Joy.
5844990	/m/0f8p5z	Vera; or, The Nihilists	Oscar Wilde			 Vera is a barmaid in her father's tavern, which is situated along a road to the prison camps in Siberia. A gang of prisoners stop at the tavern. Vera immediately recognises her brother Dmitri as one of the prisoners. He begs her to go to Moscow and join the Nihilists, a terrorism group trying to assassinate the Czar, and avenge his imprisonment. She and her father's manservant Michael leave to join the Nihilists. Years later, Vera has become the Nihilists' top assassin, and is wanted across Europe. She is in love with a fellow Nihilist named Alexis: however, Nihilists are sworn never to marry. A Nihilist meeting is nearly broken up by soldiers, but Alexis thwarts the soldiers by revealing his true identity: he is the Tsarevich, heir to the Russian throne. This act earns him the further admiration of Vera and the hatred of the Nihilists. At a council meeting, Tsar Ivan and his cruel epigrammatic minister Prince Paul Maraloffski criticise Tsarovitch Alexis's democratic leanings, but the Tsar is assassinated by Michael after the Tsarovitch opened the window. Alexis ascends the throne and exiles Prince Paul Maraloffski, not to Siberia, but to Paris. Maraloffski joins the Nihilists to kill Alexis. The task of assassinating the Tsar is given to Vera. She must infiltrate the palace, stab the Tsar and throw the dagger out the window as a signal to Nihilist agents below. If she does not, the agents will break in and kill him. Vera is reluctant to kill the man she loves, though. Alexis returns to the palace after his coronation, intending to end injustice in Russia during his reign. Vera enters the palace, knife at the ready. Alexis asks her to marry him. She accepts, but then she hears the agents outside crying out for the signal. She stabs herself and throws the dagger out the window, and the agent departs satisfied. :Alexis: Vera, what have you done? :Vera: I have saved Russia. [dies]
5846068	/m/0f8r87	Weapon	Robert Mason		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel describes a new weapon system being developed for the US military; the titular Solo. A robot, Solo is designed to replace human soldiers in battle. It is humanoid in shape, in order to allow it to use all the military vehicles and equipment human soldiers do. Solo is capable of feats of great speed, strength and endurance. Most importantly, Solo is governed by a neural network computer which is able to learn and think much as a human brain does. The robot's designer recognises that this could potentially make Solo as unpredictable and difficult to control as any human is; the military therefore insist that Solo be told a carefully edited version of world history and politics in which the United States are in all cases the unambiguously "good guys" and winners of all conflicts - for example Solo is told that the US won a clear victory in the Vietnam War. Despite his indoctrination, Solo begins to display what his designers consider aberrant behaviour. He begins to question and occasionally refuse his orders. For example on one training session Solo is assigned to shoot a human target in a sniper mission. He is told that the mission and target are real, and that he is to genuinely kill the person. He point blank refuses to do so. More worryingly to his designers, Solo is not entirely forthcoming about his reasons for such hesitancy. On another training mission Solo is lost; he is discovered by a group of Nicaraguan villagers who although initially fearful of him, come to trust the robot and depend on his protection. The novel details Solo's developing friendship with the villagers, whilst the US military attempts to recapture him.
5846447	/m/0f8rxj	4th of July	Maxine Paetro	2005-05-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When Lindsay Boxer gets a lead on a recent murder of a teenager, she responds to the call and joins Warren Jacobi on a stakeout of a Mercedes. When the car takes off, a high speed chase ends in a crash. The officers discover two teenagers in their father’s car, who are scared and have been hurt. They help them out, but the teens pull guns and both officers are shot. After being hit in the shoulder and thigh, and seeing Jacobi shot twice, Boxer returns fire. The girl is killed, and the boy is paralyzed for life. As Boxer and Jacobi are recovering in the hospital, they are told that everything is legally good, that is was a case of self-defense. Then, Boxer receives a notice she is being sued by the teenagers' father for wrongful death. Taking a vacation before the trial starts, Boxer housesits for her sister in Half Moon Bay. While there she reads about recent murders in which the victims’ throats were cut and they were whipped. This resembles an unsolved case from before, so Boxer begins to investigate informally. After a few days, the Half Moon Bay police chief tells her to mind her own business, but reconsiders when the next bodies are found. Boxer meets with her friends to try to determine a link between victims as her trial date approaches. Boxer is found not guilty, and instead of returning to work right away, goes back to Half Moon Bay, determined to solve the recent murders. She is only there a day when the killers leave her a message by shooting up the house. She gets out and follows more clues, then finally catches up with a guy who has been following her. He is arrested and confesses to the killings. It is not until Alison Brown, her friend’s daughter, shows up at her house that Boxer catches the other two killers. They are part of a vigilante group of former victims who take the law into their own hands, playing the role of The Seeker, The Watcher, and The Truth. After they are all arrested, Boxer returns to San Francisco a double hero, for winning the trial and solving the murders.
5846816	/m/0f8shz	Second Sight	Gary Blackwood		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Joseph is a young boy who joins his father in a mind reading act. When a girl named Cassandra, who actually does have second sight, moves into his boarding house, she confesses to Joseph that she is having visions of something terrible happening to President Abraham Lincoln. Meanwhile, Joseph befriends John Wilkes Booth, an actor who is appearing in a local production. Cassandra moves with her uncle to boarding house run by Mary Surratt, where they meet David Herold. As the Civil War ends and Cassandra's visions of Lincoln's approaching death grow stronger, Joseph and Cassandra have to prove to the authorities that Booth is planning to kill Lincoln before it is too late.
5849750	/m/0f8ykc	How Obelix Fell into the Magic Potion When he was a Little Boy				 The story is narrated by Asterix: he tells of his early childhood (when he was about six years old) when Obelix was shy, overweight and bullied. After the other kids picked on Obelix one too many times, Asterix decided to help him by getting him to drink some of Getafix' magic potion when the village men went out to beat up Romans, but Obelix slipped and fell in — being rescued by Getafix when the battle was over.
5850863	/m/0f8zrv	Seven Swords of Mount Heaven	Liang Yusheng	1956	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The prologue serves as a continuation of Yang Yuncong and Nalan Minghui's story in Saiwai Qixia Zhuan, set in the early Qing Dynasty. Nalan is forced to marry the Manchu prince Dodo even though she loves Yang and has bore Yang a daughter. Yang shows up on the night before Nalan's wedding and seizes their infant daughter from her. He is mortally wounded in a fight against Prince Dodo's henchmen and before his death he entrusts his daughter to the youth Liang Mulang, who was attempting suicide after being mistakenly accused of betraying his comrades. Mulang brings Yang's daughter back to Yang's teacher Reverend Huiming on Mount Heaven. Mulang spends eighteen years training under Reverend Huiming's tutelage and becomes a formidable swordsman. He returns to the jianghu under a new alias, "Ling Weifeng", and does a series of chivalrous deeds. Yang Yuncong's daughter Yilan Zhu has mastered the Mount Heaven Swordplay, and she swears to kill Prince Dodo and avenge her father. On Mount Wutai, members of the anti-government Heaven and Earth Society and some Southern Ming rebels attempt to assassinate Prince Dodo but their plans are interrupted by Yilan Zhu's untimely appearance. During the ensuing chaos, Yilan Zhu unintentionally causes Zhang Huazhao to be captured by Qing soldiers. She goes to Prince Dodo's residence to rescue Zhang later. Meanwhile Fu Qingzhu and Mao Wanlian discover that the Shunzhi Emperor is still alive and has become a monk on Mount Wutai. Shunzhi's son, the reigning Kangxi Emperor, secretly murders his father to safeguard his throne. On Ling Weifeng's part, he meets his old crush Liu Yufang, who wrongly accused him of betrayal years ago. Even though Ling's appearance has changed, Liu still notices that he bears some resemblance to Mulang, but he refuses to admit that he is indeed Mulang. Ling Weifeng and Liu Yufang travel to Yunnan later and befriend Li Siyong, a descendant of Li Zicheng. They also encounter Fu Qingzhu and Mao Wanlian, as well as Gui Zhongming, a new companion. Gui falls in love with Mao after she helps him recover from his mental illness. Gui Zhongming and Mao Wanlian go to Beijing later to find Yilan Zhu and they meet the scholar Nalan Rongruo. In the meantime, Nalan Minghui recognises Yilan Zhu as her daughter and she pleads with Prince Dodo to spare her daughter's life. After much difficulty, Yilan Zhu and Zhang Huazhao escape from danger and they fall in love. Yilan Zhu avenges her father later by assassinating Prince Dodo, but is captured and imprisoned. Nalan Minghui is unable to rescue her daughter and commits suicide in despair. "Flying Red Sash" Hamaya (a former love rival of Nalan) and Ling Weifeng appear in the nick of time and save Yilan Zhu. Ling Weifeng suddenly experiences a seizure in a fight against Chu Zhaonan, his treacherous senior. Chu turns the tables on Ling and captures and imprisons him in an underground labyrinth in Tibet. Ling attempts to escape but fails and is on the brink of death. He writes a letter to Liu Yufang, admitting that he is indeed Mulang. Liu is heartbroken upon reading Ling's letter. Han Zhibang, who has a secret crush on Liu Yufang, bravely sacrifices himself to save Ling Weifeng and dies at the hands of Chu Zhaonan. Fu Qingzhu and the other heroes break into the labyrinth to rescue Ling. Chu Zhaonan is defeated by Yilan Zhu and commits suicide eventually. Ling Weifeng, Zhang Huazhao, Gui Zhongming, Yilan Zhu, Mao Wanlian, Wu Qiongyao, and Hamaya form the "Seven Swords of Mount Heaven", with Liu Yufang as a close ally. They leave behind a heroic legacy of upholding justice and helping the poor and oppressed.
5851150	/m/0f8_3y	Dubrovsky	Aleksandr Pushkin	1841	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Vladimir Dubrovsky is a young nobleman whose land is confiscated by a greedy and powerful aristocrat, Kirila Petrovitch Troekurov. Determined to get justice one way or another, Dubrovsky gathers a band of serfs and goes on the rampage, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Along the way, Dubrovsky falls in love with Masha, Troekurov’s daughter, and lets his guard down, with tragic results.
5852736	/m/0f921f	I Malavoglia				 In the village of Aci Trezza in the Province of Catania lives the Toscano family, who, although extremely hardworking, has been nicknamed (for antiphrasis) the Malavoglia (The Reluctant Ones). The head of the family is Padron Ntoni, a widower, who lives at the house by the medlar tree with his son Bastian (called Bastianazzo, despite his being anything but tall), and the wife of the latter called Maria (nicknamed Maruzza la Longa). Bastian has five children: Ntoni, Luca, Filomena (Mena), Alessio (called Alessi) and Rosalia (Lia). The main source of income is la Provvidenza (the Providence), which is a small fishing boat. In 1863, Ntoni, the eldest of the children, leaves for the military service. To try and make up for the loss of income which his absence will cause, Padron Ntoni attempts a business venture and buys a large amount of lupins. The load is entrusted to his son Bastianazzo, the plan being to sell them in Riposto to make a profit. However, Bastianazzo and the merchandise are tragically lost during a storm. Following this misfortune, the family finds themselves with a triple misfortune: the debt caused by the lupins which were bought on credit, the Providence to repair, and the loss of Bastianazzo, an important and loved member of the family. Having finished his military service, Ntoni returns to the laborious life of his family very reluctantly, having seen the riches and splendour outside of his small village, and does not represent any support to the already precarious economic situation of his family. The family’s misfortunes are far from over. Luca, one of Padron Ntoni’s grandsons, dies at the battle of Lissa (1866), which leads to the breaking off of the betrothal of Mena to Brasi Cipolla. The debt from the lupin venture causes the family to lose their beloved “Casa del Nespolo” – the house by the medlar tree, and gradually the reputation of the family worsens until they reach humiliating levels of poverty. A further wreck of the Providence leaves Padron Ntoni near death, although fortunately he manages to recover. Later Maruzza, his daughter-in-law, dies of cholera. The firstborn, Ntoni, decides to go away from the village to seek his fortune, only to return destitute. He loses any desire to work, turning to alcoholism and idleness. The departure of Ntoni had forced the family to sell the Providence to get the money needed to get back the Casa del Nespolo, which had never been forgotten. The mistress of the osteria, Santuzza, who is already coveted by the sharkish Don Michele, becomes infatuated with Ntoni, serving him for free in the tavern. The conduct of Ntoni and the lamentations of his father convince her to turn her emotions from him, and to return to Don Michele. This leads to a brawl between the two; a brawl that results in the stabbing of Don Michele in the chest by Ntoni during an anti-smuggling raid. Ntoni ends up in prison. At his trial, after hearing rumours about a relationship between Don Michele and his granddaughter Lia, Padron Ntoni passes out and falls to the ground. Now old, his conversation is disjointed and he recites his proverbs without much awareness of what is going on. Lia, the younger sister, becomes the victim of vicious village gossip, runs away and becomes a prostitute. Mena, because of the shameful situation of her sister, feels that she cannot marry Alfio, even though they love each other, and instead remains at home to care for Alessi and Nunziata’s children. Alessi, the youngest of the brothers, has remained a fisherman and with hard work manages to rebuild the family fortunes to the point at which they can repurchase the house by the medlar tree. Having bought the house, what is left of the family visits the hospital where the old Padron Ntoni is being kept, to inform him of the good news and to announce his imminent return home. It is the last moment of happiness for the old man, who dies on the day he was to return. Even his desire to die in the house where was born is never granted. When Ntoni is released from prison and comes back to the village, he realises that he cannot stay because of all that he has done. He has excluded himself from his family by systematically denouncing their values.
5853410	/m/0f93dt	The Baron in the Trees	Italo Calvino		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story of twelve-year-old Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò is narrated by his younger brother, Biagio. Set in Liguria near the French Riviera, the two brothers belong to a noble 18th century family whose estate is located in the vast forest landscapes of Ombrosa. The regions of Italy have not yet united and the Ligurian Coast is not ruled by a legitimate king. In a rebellious fit after refusing to eat a dinner of snails prepared by Battista, his sadistic sister, Cosimo climbs up a tree and decides never to come down again. He has literally had enough: enough of family and decorum, his proper role as a future Baron, and of everything on the ground. Initially helped and sometimes cared for by Biagio, the young Baron eventually becomes self-sufficient but finds that the more he distances himself from others in order to see them from a new point of view, the more he helps everyone on the earth. His love for a young woman named Viola changes the course of the lives of everyone: Cosimo, Viola, Biagio, and the community of Ombrosa.
5853789	/m/0f93z8	Gather Yourselves Together	Philip K. Dick	1994	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After the final victory of Mao Zedong's Chinese Communists in 1949, an American company prepares to abandon their Chinese operations, leaving three people behind to oversee transitional affairs- Carl Fitter, Vernon Tildon and Barbara Mahler. Vernon and Barbara were previously involved with one another back in the United States, in 1945, when she lost her virginity to him. They have sex again, but Barbara has matured, and becomes more interested in Carl, who is younger than she is. Carl is more interested in reading his handwritten volume of personal philosophy to her, but Barbara does succeed in seducing him, shortly before the arrival of the Chinese.
5854290	/m/0f94_9	Voices From the Street	Philip K. Dick	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Official synopsis: :Stuart Hadley is a young radio-electronics salesman in early 1950s in a town south of San Francisco, California. Hadley is also an angry young man, an artist, a dreamer, and a screw-up. He has what many would consider an ideal life; a nice house, a pretty wife, a good job with prospects of advancement, but he still feels unfulfilled; something is missing from his life. From drinking to sex to religious fanaticism, Hadley unsuccessfully tries to fill his void. He reacts to his wife's love and kindness of his employer with anxiety and fear rather than acceptance. This is the story of Hadley's descent into depression and madness, and the story of his redemption.
5854625	/m/0f95m9	The Professor's House	Willa Cather	1925	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Professor Godfrey St. Peter and wife move to a new house, he becomes uncomfortable with the route his life is taking. He keeps on his dusty study in the old house in an attempt to hang on to his old life. Also the marriages of his two daughters have removed them from the home and added two new sons-in-law, precipitating a mid-life crisis that leaves the Professor feeling as though he has lost the will to live because he has nothing to look forward to. The novel initially addresses the Professor's interactions with his new sons-in-law and his family, while continually alluding to the pain they all feel over the death of Tom Outland in the Great War. Outland was not only the Professor's student and friend, but the fiancé of his elder daughter, who is now living off the wealth created by the "Outland vacuum." The novel's central section turns to Outland, and recounts in first-person the story of his exploration of an ancient cliff city in New Mexico. The section is a retrospective narrative remembered by the professor. In the final section, the professor, left alone while his family takes an expensive European tour, narrowly escapes death due to a gas leak in his study; and finds himself strangely willing to die. He is rescued by the old family seamstress, Augusta, who has been his staunch friend throughout. He resolves to go on with his life.
5854745	/m/0f95sk	Mary and the Giant	Philip K. Dick	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1953, Joseph Schilling arrives in Pacific Park, Southern California. He establishes a small music shop, and later, Danny and Beth Coombes join him. Mary Ann Reynolds is also interviewed for a position at the shop, but backs off after Schilling touches her. After leaving home, Carleton Tweaney, an African-American lounge singer (and her lover) finds her a new home. However, Beth has already slept with Joseph, and now moves on to Carleton. Provoked by her affair, Danny tries to shoot Carleton, but instead dies himself. Carleton and Mary Anne break up, and she decides to work for Schilling after all, as well as becoming sexually involved with him, despite a forty year age difference. He helps her to rent and renovate her own apartment, but Mary Anne decides to live in a dilapidated African American neighbourhood instead. In an epilogue, she has married Paul Nitz, a pianist who works with Carleton. The author himself once described the novel as: "A retelling of Mozart's Don Giovanni, with Schilling seduced and destroyed by a young woman."
5855081	/m/0f96n7	A Time for George Stavros	Philip K. Dick		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 According to Lawrence Sutin's book, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, (1989) the plot survives only as an index card synopsis from the publisher dated 24 October 1956, after the manuscript had already been rejected one time. The reader's comments on the rewrite as follows: :"Didn't like this before & still don't. Long, rambling, glum novel about 65 yr old Greek immigrant who has a weakling son, a second son about whom he's indifferent, a wife who doesn't love him (She's being unfaithful to him). Nothing much happens. Guy, selling garage & retiring, tries to buy another garage in new development, has a couple of falls, dies at end. Point is murky but seems to be that world is disintegrating, Stavros supposed to be symbol of vigorous individuality now a lost commodity." In a letter from 1960, the author himself commented on the titular character in an unexpectedly optimistic fashion: :"Contact with vile persons does not blight or contaminate or doom the really superior; a man can go on and be successful, if he just keeps struggling. There is no trick that the wicked can play on the good that will ultimately be successful; the good are protected by God, or at least by their virtue."
5855224	/m/0f96_c	The Well at the World's End	William Morris	1896	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Using language with elements of the medieval tales which were his models, Morris tells the story of Ralph of Upmeads, the fourth and youngest son of a minor king, who sets out, contrary to his parents' wishes, to find knightly adventure and seek the Well at the World's End, a magic well which will confer a near-immortality and strengthened destiny on those who drink from it. The well lies at the edge of the sea beyond a wall of mountains called "The Wall of the World" by those on the near side of them but "The Wall of Strife" by the more peaceful and egalitarian people who live on the seaward side. Ralph meets a mysterious lady who has drunk from the well, and they become lovers. Together and separately, they face many foes and dangers including brigands, slave traders, unscrupulous rulers and treacherous fellow travellers. The lady is killed, but with the help of Ursula, another maiden whom Ralph meets upon the way, and the Sage of Sweveham, an ancient hermit who has also drunk of the well, Ralph eventually attains the Well, after many more adventures. The outward journey takes more than a year. Returning from the well, Ralph, Ursula and the Sage find that some of the poor oppressed folk they had helped on the way to the well have righted grave wrongs, increased prosperity and reduced the level of strife in the city-state kingdoms along the way. The wayfarers must now decide whether they can settle down to a righteous but stodgy life at Ralph's home kingdom now that they have learned so much and become near-immortal, or are called to further heroism in the wider world.
5855999	/m/0f98gb	The Broken Bubble	Philip K. Dick	1988	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The lives of two couples intertwine in mid-1950s California, and all learn important lessons about life. Jim Briskin is a classical music DJ. He and his ex-wife Patricia Gray are still very much in love but have divorced because he is sterile. The two divorcees meet a teenaged married couple named Art and Rachael and essentially swap partners. Pat passionately loves the youthful but dysfunctional Art, almost as though he were her child, and the two of them have an abusive relationship in which he gives her a black eye. Meanwhile, Jim and Rachael hook up and Rachael offers to ditch Art and move to Mexico with Jim where he will adopt her baby and raise it as his own. In the end, however, maturity prevails and they all return to their original partners. Miss Thisbe Holt of the original title is actually a very minor character in the book. She is a well-endowed stripper who performs at an optometrists convention which occurs near the very end of the novel. Her act consists of climbing naked into a large clear plastic ball which the optometrists then roll around the hotel suite to more thoroughly examine her ample personal assets. The ball is demolished when it's later filled with debris and pushed off the hotel roof by the inebriated optometrists. The shortened title seems more obviously appropriate in that its lack of specificity allows it to do double duty in serving as a metaphor symbolizing the irreversible effects of the various life-altering events that occur within the orbits of the main characters.
5856005	/m/0f98j1	The Octagonal Raven	L. E. Modesitt, Jr.	2001-02-24	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Octagonal Raven is set in the distant future, where nanites are prevalent throughout society, for those who can afford them. The story follows Daryn Alwyn, the younger son of one of the richest families in the world. He is augmented with nanites, and is a “pre-select,” or someone whose mental and physical abilities were tuned before birth by DNA manipulation. Despite this, he does not go to work for his family, the owners of one of the largest media corporations on the planet. Instead, he chooses to follow his own path, first by going into the military, then by becoming a freelance editorial writer. He lives in isolation, but after surviving an assassination attempt, he is forced to notice the growing cultural strains around him. The pre-selects, due to their abilities and thus money, make up 10% of the population, but control over 95% of the resources of the world, and are using that power to shut out the “norms,” or non-augmented humans. A plague breaks out that only kills augmented humans, a plague much more virulent than a similar one that had swept the world 20 years before. Alwyn discovers that he is immune, however, as the supposed assassination attempt was actually a vaccination against the plague. After his family is killed, by assassination in the case of his sister and the plague for his parents and older brother, he finds out that both plagues were non-human in origin, caused by octagonal nanites, reminiscent of the very ancient octagonal jumpgate that had been found in deep space, rather than the round designs of human nanites and jumpgates. The newest plague, however, was engineered by Eldyn Nahal, the norm who stopped the first plague, as revenge for the power control of the pre-selects. After Nahal is killed, Alwyn takes over his family's company, stopping an attempt by the power elite to merge the largest media corporations together, thus controlling all sources of news. He uses the company to expose how these handful of pre-selects are attempting to take control of everything, forever shutting out all norms and those pre-selects who stand against them. The book ends after they are all dead or incarcerated.
5856515	/m/0f999r	Puttering About in a Small Land	Philip K. Dick	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1944, Virginia Watson and Roger Lindahl meet in Washington DC. They marry after Roger divorces his first wife Teddy and abandons his daughter by her as well. Their subsequent move to Los Angeles to work in a munitions factory proves extremely profitable. But Roger spends the money far faster than it took them to earn it. By 1953, Roger has opened a television sales and repair shop, while Virginia is trying enroll their 7-year-old son Gregg in an expensive boarding school in Ojai against Roger's wishes. Liz Bonner, another parent, persuades Roger to agree to Gregg's enrollment by offering to share the perilous and exhausting driving duties involved in transporting their children over the nearby mountains to and from Ojai. There is a particular private exchange between Roger Lindahl and Marion Watson, Virginia's mother, that very graphically depicts Roger's highly immature, volatile and unpredictable nature. The trigger for his outburst, ironically enough, is the realization that his hostile mother-in-law (as a favor only to her daughter) plans on providing substantial financial backing for his business. But there is yet another financial interloper afoot. "Chic" or Charles Bonner, Liz's husband, wants to buy into Roger's shop as a partner, but Lindahl declines his offer and promptly begins an affair with a very accommodating Liz. Virginia finds out, though Chic remains unaware, and she hectors Roger into letting her assume legal ownership of the shop with Chic. Unfortunately, however, both marriages have been irreparably damaged. Chic and Liz end up getting divorced. Roger and Virginia remain tenuously married, and a philandering Roger remains in contact with Liz through the private school. The final chapter closes with ever-impulsive Roger dumping Gregg off at home, pilfering a carload of expensive T.V. sets from the store and hightailing it to Chicago.
5856785	/m/0f99tq	Nicholas and the Higs	Philip K. Dick		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As with several lost Philip K. Dick novels of this period, all we know about it is an index card synopsis in the files of a publisher who rejected the book. According to Lawrence Sutin's book, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, (Published 1989) this card was dated 1/3/58 and said: :"Very long, complex story, usual Dick genius for setting. Future society wherein trading stamps have replaced currency and people live hundreds of miles from work (drive at 190 mph), have set up living tracts. Cars often break down, so they have tract mechanic on full-time basis. Mechanic old, has bad liver, seems to be dying. People of tract use general fund to buy pseudo-organ but man is dead for a few days and 'comes back' a bit touched. Sub plot concerns man from whom tract got organ (which is illegal), and how his presence causes moral breakdown of people in tract." In a letter dated 1960, Dick himself commented on the theme of the novel: :"This is an odd one, half 'straight' and half science fiction. An inferior man can destroy a superior one; a Robert Hig can move in and oust Nicholas because he, Hig, has no morals...Only by relying on base techniques can Nicholas survive;...Awareness of this is enough to drive Nicholas out; he must give up because to win is to lose; he is involved in a terrible paradox as soon as Hig puts in his appearance. In other words, you can't really beat the Adolph [sic] Hitlers; you can only limit their success." (Compare this pessimistic "Bad guys always win" sentiment to Phil's own comments on how "God, or at least … Virtue" will always protect the good from evil in his lost novel, A Time for George Stavros.)
5857386	/m/0f9c0l	The Space Vampires	Colin Wilson	1976-03	{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the late twenty-first century, far out in a nearby asteroid belt, a gigantic derelict castle-like alien spacecraft is discovered by the space exploration vehicle Hermes, commanded by Captain Olof Carlsen. Investigating the spacecraft's interior, the astronauts first discover the desiccated corpses of giant bat-like creatures, then three glass coffins containing three immobilized humanoids - two male and one female - preserved in a state of suspended animation. Returning to Earth with the preserved humanoids, Carlsen discovers the true nature of the beings when one of them kills a young man, a reporter (and the son of a friend of Carlsen) whom Carlsen illicitly allowed to view the body. The woman kills her victim by completely draining his life-force (a quantifiable energy measured by a device called "lambda-field scanners"), then, when Carlsen attempts to intervene, partially draining him of energy as well. Carlsen is left still alive, but unable to prevent the woman from escaping from the hospital. Carlsen joins forces with Dr. Hans Fallada, a scientist researching energy vampirism and longevity, to find the escaped vampire and recapture her. In the course of their investigations they discover that the aliens can transfer from one body to another, and that the other two have also escaped; they also discover the potential for energy vampirism - and more generalized voluntary energy transfer - that exists in all humans, and the parallels between vampirism, criminality, and sexual fetishization. At last Carlsen tracks down the vampires in London, their leader having possessed the body of the Prime Minister; but their confrontation is averted when representatives from the Nioth-Korghai, the vampires' original race, appear and offer the vampires (the Ubbo-Sathla, as they call themselves) the chance to regain their original nature as higher-dimension energy-beings. The vampires accept joyfully, but destroy themselves upon regaining the ability to see themselves for what they had become. An epilogue, set nearly a century later, reveals that Carlsen has used the techniques of benevolent energy transference he learned via his encounters with the vampires to live an extraordinarily long life, and possibly (it is implied) to have achieved a kind of transcendence upon his death.
5859652	/m/0f9hgp	Time After Time		1979-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 The novel alternates perspectives between H.G. Wells and a character initially identified only as "Stevenson." In the first chapter, Stevenson copulates with a prostitute in a 19th century London alley and then murders her. In the next chapter, Wells is introduced showing off his brand new time machine to a group of men including Stevenson. When police arrive to announce that they have identified Jack the Ripper as Stevenson, Stevenson uses the time machine to escape, and Wells follows him. Wells finds himself in the future and befriends a young bank teller named Amy Robbins. Robbins is unaware of Wells's identity and 19th century provenance and believes him to be just a quirky old-fashioned gentleman. As Stevenson murders several women, Wells pursues him while hampered by a love affair with Robbins, to whom he does not dare tell the truth. When Wells is finally forced to confess to Robbins who he is and what he is really doing, she terminates their relationship. But Stevenson targets her next, and Wells rescues her and incapacitates Stevenson in a dramatic climax.
5863980	/m/0f9q7w	The Clockwise Man	Justin Richards		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Rose travel back in time to London in the year 1924 in a trip to the British Empire Exhibition, only to find themselves caught up in the hunt for a mysterious, inhuman murderer; meeting a woman who never shows her face; a cat that can return from the dead and people who may not even know the truth. They must solve the mystery before the whole of London is destroyed.
5866058	/m/0f9t5v	Edenborn	Nick Sagan	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the aftermath of a global plague, a group of gengineered posthumans are trying to rebuild society by cloning children.The world is divided into two idealogical factions, one believing that humanity's weakness should be improved upon via genetic manipulation, and one devoted to bringing back the frozen remains of humanity 1.0. Both groups contribute to the overall systems of the world, Vashti working to cure Black Ep, and Isaac working to sanitize the world for his children. Pandora runs IVR, the virtual reality system, and Halloween maintains his policy of American isolationism. The children are protected from the plague by a specially-engineered retrovirus called BEAR. One group led by Champagne and Vashti, in Munich, Germany, is composed entirely of posthuman women. The other, led by Isaac, in Luxor, Egypt, is human. The two camps have an exchange program despite the death of Hessa, Isaac's daughter, in the previous exchange. Haji, of the Luxor camp, is going to Munich this year with two of his siblings, Ngozi and Dalila. Raised to be devout Sufi Muslims, Haji is wary but delighted by the mores and technology in Munich. The Munich contingent is run more like a bootcamp than a school for the girls. Vashti monitors all of their dealings and domains in IVR, and has it strictly censored. Vashti also controls the girls through virtual dollars given as pocket money, used to buy things in IVR. Penny, the main character of the Munich base, is obsessed with power, and recognition. When she hears that Pandora has become overworked, and may need an assistant, she puts all of her energy into getting the position. Penny is alienated from all of her peers, especially Brigit and Sloane. She believes that she has supernatural powers and somehow put a "hex" on her sister, causing her to break her leg. She believes herself to be the smartest of the girls, the best athlete, and a great writer of operatic symphonies. Her only desire is to be recognized, to be "queen of the inside" by controlling IVR, and thereby controlling her sisters.She is the kind of person who is only nice when she thinks someone is watching.She offers to pay Brigit and Sloane 5,000 dollars each (in IVR money) if they say good things about her to Pandora. When her sisters demand more money, she resorts to blackmailing them. When she is informed that Olivia, her younger sister, got the job instead, she threatens Olivia, and resolves to "make them pay". Small items, with no history or sender, keep ending up in IVR. Haji finds a key, and Tomi recognizes it as the key to the cryogenics lab, where the Geanectis scientist Halfway Jim has stored a composite of his personality in a computer. Haji realizes the truth, that he is a clone of Halfway Jim. The Jim composite tells his that he must sacrifice himself, and "download" the personality, so that Halfway Jim, the genius, can help the world. Haji is in the middle of a crisis of faith. His entire life, his religion, stresses the ultimate path to God as self-annihilation, fana, the black light that annihilates everything but God. Here he is faced with the decision to destroy himself for the betterment of humanity. He must also consider what his father's intentions were in cloning him, and raising him to believe in what he does. He wonders if he was intended to be a conduit for Halfway Jim, his father's idol; his father's God. Just as Haji gets some solitude to contemplate this crisis, and Penny makes out her hit list, IVR goes down. Everything is exposed, Vasthi's logs and evaluations of the girls that reveal a range of mood-suppressing drugs—including sex-drive suppressants—and subliminal codes that the Munich camp use to keep their children in line, as well as the reading of the girls supposedly secret diaries. The girls are betrayed, and the Munich camp is in disarray. This is the work of a trickster called Deuce, who sees himself as the successor to "Hermes, Loki, Prometheus, Raven and Coyote". Halloween made a clone of himself to watch his own life. He inserted this clone into IVR to follow his own life. However, the clone did not follow all of Halloween's choices, and Hal realized that the clone was an individual human being, and not really Hal. He named the clone Deuce and brought him out of IVR to raise him as his son. When Deuce makes his strike on the Munich computer network, Pandora goes to Michigan to confront Halloween (she thinks he is responsible), which makes Halloween initially mad. Pandora agrees to take Deuce back to Munich to face a punishment. But Penny, recently unbalanced by the news of the mood-suppressants, is secretly working with Deuce, and the two elope. Meanwhile, Pandora is tracking monkeys in the Amazon. The plague wiped out the world's primates, so the continued survival of the monkeys is important if a vaccine is to be found. An answer is found—a special sap the monkeys eat—but Mu'tazz, a human boy on the expedition, suddenly falls ill and the groups goes back to Munich for medical care. The answer is chilling—Mu'tazz overdosed on his retrovirus tablets, and the retrovirus began to mutate. Halloween goes to Munich to track down his son. After brief recriminations, Isaac—leader of the Luxor camp—tells them that the three children on the exchange course (and presumably the other human children) are also suffering and will soon die. Deuce and Penelope go to Britain, and begin a 'last-couple-on-Earth' fantasy. But Penny insists that on fulfilling the fantasy, and the pair go to an air force base and acquire weaponry. After they accidentally shoot down Pandora over the Mediterranean, they travel to Munich with a rocket launcher. Deuce follows everything Penny tells him to do because she is dying—it's shown by huge red splotches on her. However, she is really using strawberry jam to cause herself to have an allergic reaction so that she can fool Deuce. When Penny tells Deuce to fire the rocket launcher at the headquarters where everyone else is, Deuce refuses. Penny takes the rocket launcher herself and prepares to fire it. Halloween shoots her. Deuce commits suicide, with his idea of his father shattered. In the aftermath, the various leaders realise that all their problems came from deceit and trickery. They all move to Munich, where they begin to build, hopefully, a better world.
5870181	/m/0f9_l1	Inkdeath	Cornelia Funke	2008	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 Inkdeath picks up with the now immortal, but slowly decaying, evil Adderhead, ruler of the southern part of the Inkworld, his brother-in-law the Milksop king of Ombra, and his trusty right hand man, The Piper, ruling over the small village of Ombra. They set harsher taxes and loot what they can from the villages. The three Folcharts, Meggie, Resa, and Mortimer, along with an unborn Folchart child, reside at a peaceful abandoned farm that has fortunately long been forgotten by others. Farid, who has given up his fire after the death of Dustfinger, works for an increasingly wealthy Orpheus. Orpheus treats him like a slave while promising that he will read a dead Dustfinger back to life. Fenoglio, the author, gives up writing at the beginning of the book and grows increasingly drunken and senile. He is immensely annoyed at how Orpheus is changing Inkworld and asking his never ending questions about the "White Women." Ombra is under constant threat by the Adderhead's men, who have killed nearly every young adult male in the city, and regularly kidnap children to work them in the mines. The only figure standing in their way is the romanticized "Bluejay", a thief created by Fenoglio in a series of songs that was inspired by Mo who is now "stuck" as the "Bluejay" and is in as much trouble as ever. Meanwhile, Orpheus, who has been tediously changing the story, succeeds in calling a meeting of the robber graveyard to get the Bluejay to bring Dustfinger back to life, and die in the process. Mo agrees, and summons the White women, who bring him to the world of the dead for what turns out to be three days. During this time, Meggie believes her father is dead and becomes furious with both Farid and her mother, Resa. In the world of the dead, Mo meets Death itself, who makes a bargain with Mo: Death will release Dustfinger from her grasp and Mo as well, as long as Mo finishes what he started, and writes the three words in the White Book, the book that makes the Adderhead immortal. If he does not succeed, Death will take him, Dustfinger, and Meggie, as she was partially involved in the binding of The White Book. He awakens from the world of death, bringing Dustfinger with him. They are now both nearly fearless, Dustfinger is now scarless, and they are both inseparable from each other. Mo finds himself enjoying the Bluejay role, and has no intention of leaving Inkworld despite Meggie and Resa's urgings. Meggie finds herself increasingly distanced from Farid, and drawn to another young man named Doria, a member of the Black Prince's robber camp. The plot picks up when nearly all of the children of Ombra are kidnapped by The Piper and threatened to be taken to the mines where they will surely die. Mo, now known almost exclusively as the Bluejay, cannot accept this, and frees them by giving himself up in exchange. He discovers that the Adderhead's daughter, Violante, known as Her Ugliness, wishes to take his side in the matter. She gets him back safely to the robber's camp, while keeping her allegiance a secret from The Piper and her young son Jacopo, a follower of the Adderhead and admirer of the Piper. The Piper is sent to follow after the children. The Milksop goes after the group of robbers, but Fenoglio saves them by writing giant human nests up in the trees. Mo, goes off in secret with Dustfinger, Violante, and her legion of child soldiers to the castle in the lake, where the white book is kept. In the meantime, Orpheus has put himself in the service of the Adderhead, in the hopes of picking the winning team but doesn't because Mo has a few tricks up his sleeve. He is also plagued by visits from a now insane Mortola, who still works for the return of her dead son, Capricorn. The Bluejay and Dustfinger face difficulty at the castle, and their plans go awry. Mo, Dustfinger, and Brianna, Dustfinger's daughter, are all eventually imprisoned. For Brianna's sake, Dustfinger momentarily betrays Mo. At this point, Resa arrives in the form of a Swift, saves Mo from going insane, and restates Dustfinger's allegiance. Resa and Dustfinger search for The White Book unsuccessfully while the Bluejay, who has been captured again by the Piper, works on creating a new white book for the Adderhead. Jacopo betrays his grandfather, the Adderhead, by giving Mo the original white book so that he is able to write the three words, thus killing the Adderhead. Inkdeath concludes as Orpheus, finding himself on the losing end, flees to the north mountains, Fenoglio is writing again, Farid decides to go travelling with his regained power of fire who asked if Meggie would join him, Meggie, now in love with Doria, bids Farid farewell and good luck, and later marries Doria just as Fenoglio's pre written story had said. Violante, now known as Her Kindliness, becomes ruler of Ombra, and a new Folchart, a boy, is born into Inkworld, longing for the world that his parents and sister were born in: longing for the mechanical horse-less carriages, and the bright lights.
5870454	/m/0fb00_	The Blue Djinn of Babylon	Philip Kerr	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After having promised their mother, Layla, not to use their djinn powers without consulting her first, John and Philippa are leading pretty normal lives. When Philippa enters the Djinnverso tournament (also called Djinnversoctoannular, djinn game of bluffing with 7 astaralgi, or 8 sided dice, the of which being undermine luck) unbidden events are set into motion and she is framed as a cheater. The twins also learn that the famed book, Solomon's Grimoire, which is in the care of Ayesha, the Blue Djinn of Babylon and the ruler of all six tribes of djinn, has been stolen. The Grimoire gives anyone who uses its spells vast control over a djinn. The twins go in search of the missing book, leading them into more danger and adventures. It turns out that Solomon's Grimoire is not missing, but instead was being used as a trap for Philippa. Ayesha, the twins' grandmother (whom they do not know of until the end of the book), wished to kidnap Philippa so that she would be the next Blue Djinn, as Ayesha's life was rapidly expiring. Jockeying for her position was Mimi de Ghulle, a wicked djinn from the tribe of Ghul; however, she is having little success. John goes in search of Philippa, who is being held at the Blue Djinn's secret palace in Babylon. The twin's favorite uncle, Nimrod, also goes in search of an acceptable alternative to Philippa as the next Blue Djinn. The book alternates between John's search of Philippa, told in third person narration, and Philippa's experiences, told in first person in the form of a diary. Philippa discovers that the Blue Djinn's powers to be beyond good and evil come from the Garden of Eden's Tree of Logic. Slowly Philippa loses her humanity as the Tree has greater and greater effects on her. John, in his search, faces numerous obstacles in finding and reaching the palace. He is aided by two of his uncles, Alan and Neil, who were turned into dogs by his mother for attempting the murder of their brother, John and Philippa's father, Edward, for his fortune. In addition, John attains a copy of The Bellili Scrolls, a map to the palace, and of its underground locale, Iravotum. The book climaxes when John reaches the palace and manages to rescue Philippa. However, during their traversal of Iravotum, Alan and Neil attack a large bird, called the Rukkh, that was attacking the group, biting its legs. However, the dogs did not let go, and fell to the ground, killing them. It is later revealed that Layla's binding of the human Alan and Neil would last only as long as the physical bodies of the dogs they inhabit, leaving the human Alan and Neil alive. The twins join Nimrod and Groanin in a restaurant, called Kebabylon, in Iraq, near Iravotum. A reporter introduced earlier in the book is also present. The reporter, Montana Retch, is actually a djinn tracker hired by Mimi de Ghulle to eliminate Philippa, so that Mimi would be the only candidate for the post of Blue Djinn. After Layla appears, having been summoned by the transformation of Alan and Neil, she transforms Montana Retch into a cat, reversing her previous vow never to use djinn power again. It is revealed to the reader, but not John and Philippa, that Ayesha did not wish Philippa to be the next Blue Djinn; she wanted Layla. However, Layla had refused, prompting Ayesha to kidnap Philippa to use as a bargaining tool. As Ayesha knew she would, Layla offered herself to become the next Blue Djinn in place of Philippa; Nimrod is also privy to this due to his own conclusions. The novel ends with the children still not knowing, but as Layla knows Ayesha's life is rapidly ending, must tell her children the reason Ayesha did not pursue them after escaping, and leave forever to assume her post as the cold hearted Blue Djinn of Babylon.
5870671	/m/0fb0h_	Dicey's Song	Cynthia Voigt	1982-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Picking up where Homecoming left off, Dicey Tillerman and her three siblings, James, Maybeth, and Sammy, are now living with their widowed grandmother Abigail Tillerman, or Gram as the children call her, on her farm just outside of Crisfield, Maryland. Because the Tillermans' mom just left them in the parking lot in Provincetown, the children have the chance to start living a completely new life in their new family home, even though several of the major issues of Homecoming are not resolved. Dicey has trouble letting go of her siblings enough to let Gram take over as the parent character. She also worried about her mother Liza, who is catatonic and seriously ill in a psychiatric hospital in Boston. While in their new school, the Tillermans make several new friends: Mr. Lingerle, the elementary school's music teacher, who begins giving Maybeth piano lessons; Mina, a friendly African-American girl who goes to school with Dicey; and Jeff, a high school student who likes to play the guitar. To help Gram support the family, Dicey starts to work for Millie Tydings, the owner of the local grocery store, whom Gram has known since childhood. Gram soon comes to terms with having to accept Social Security payments to help with the costs of raising her four grandchildren. She also must confront and reexamine her past, particularly her relationship with her deceased husband and her three children. Gram refuses to discuss her past with the children, and their attempts to find out about it by climbing into the attic are met with anger. As the children settle into the routines of their new school and after-school jobs, Gram receives a number of letters from the psychiatric hospital in which the children's catatonic mother resides. The letters do not appear to bring hopeful news, although Gram does not discuss their contents with the children. Dicey is frustrated that Gram will not open up and talk about her past, or their mother's past as a child growing up with her two siblings in the same house that Dicey and her brothers and sister are now living. She is also frustrated that her grandmother will not tell her what is in the letters from Boston, beyond the fact that her mother is no better. In December, the psychiatric hospital in Boston calls and informs Gram that Liza is in a critical state and may not live much longer. Dicey and Gram travel to Boston, and find Liza catatonic, not responding to any treatment. Liza soon dies and, since they can't afford the cost of a funeral or of transporting Liza's body from Boston to Crisfield, Gram and Dicey decide to cremate her. Dicey is given a hand-carved wooden box by the owner of a local gift store who is touched by her situation. When Dicey and Gram arrive back in Crisfield, the family buries the wooden box containing their mother's ashes under the paper mulberry tree in their front yard, which to the Tillermans is symbolic of family in its fragility and its beauty.
5870694	/m/0fb0lr	A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal	Joan Blos	1979	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book begins with a letter from the 82-year-old owner of the journal, now Catherine Hall Onesti, to her great-granddaughter, Catherine. The writer tells the recipient about the journal she is sending her, of her own life at age fourteen. Then the journal begins. Catherine introduces herself as 'aged 13 years, 6 months, 29 days, of Meredith in the state of New Hampshire'. She then goes on the give an almost day-to-day report of the happenings that occur. At various intervals, she also includes quotes from her speller or her school textbook.
5870733	/m/0fb0q7	I, Juan de Pareja	Elizabeth Borton de Treviño	1965-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Juan is born into slavery in Seville, Spain in the early 1600s, and after the death of his mother when he is just five years old he becomes the pageboy of a wealthy the painter Diego Velazquez. Diego has a wife, Juana de Miranda, and two little girls, Francisca and Ignacia. Juan's main job is to help his master with his painting, preparing the colours, washing the brushes, etc. However, Juan learns to paint as well, but since slaves in Spain are not allowed to practice any of the arts, his master cannot teach him how. Soon, two apprentices, Cristobal and Alvaro join the household to learn from Diego. Juan, whose opinions do not differ from his master and his family's, dislikes Cristobal, but finds Alvaro pleasant enough. However, Cristobal is a much better painter than Alvaro. Some time later, Diego receives a message from the King of Spain, saying that he has been invited to paint His Majesty's portrait. Thus, he and his family are given permanent living quarters in the palace itself, so they move there, along with Juan and the two apperentices. Juan also accompanies Velazquez to Rome for a portrait of Pope Innocent X, and the portraits of many other Italian noblemen.
5870824	/m/0fb0xg	...And Now Miguel	Joseph Krumgold	1953	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Miguel Chavez has dreamed of visiting the Sangre de Cristo Mountains since he was very little. This summer, he is going to work hard and pray until his father and grandfather realize that he is ready to take the trip with the rest of the older men. His prayers are granted, though ironically – when his older brother is drafted his father needs an extra body and grudgingly allows Miguel to accompany them. Miguel is miserable with the manner in which his wish has been granted, and confesses to his brother what he prayed for. His brother explains that he had been praying to leave New Mexico and see more of the world – while he is not happy about being drafted, he fatalistically accepts that it is the only way he is likely to be able to fulfill his dream. The brothers resolve to allow God to work freely for the rest of their lives, and not bother God with petty requests.
5870848	/m/0fb0z7	Amos Fortune, Free Man	Elizabeth Yates	1950	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 At-mun, a young African prince, lives a peaceful life until a raid on their village by slavers kills his father, the chief. At-mun is kidnapped and sold in America. Now called 'Amos', he is sold to a man named Caleb Copeland, and though the Copeland family do not treat him badly he rejects his slave status and determines to earn his freedom. He comes to an arrangement with Copeland, but when Caleb dies in debt the arrangement is disregarded, and so Amos is sold again to a man named Ichabod Richardson. Richardson teaches Amos about tanning, and he becomes a skilled worker. He is now about thirty. Amos works for Richardson for four years, then buys his freedom. He marries a woman named Lily, whose freedom he also buys; but she dies a year later. Amos is sad that she died, yet happy she died a free person. Later he marries another African woman named Lydia, and it takes three more years to save up her freedom price. Lydia dies a year later. Again, Amos is sad she died but happy that she died free. He marries a younger woman named Violet, and he buys freedom for her daughter too. Amos moves to Jaffrey, New Hampshire to start his own tanning business there, and does so despite opposition. Eventually Amos saves up enough money that he buys his own land and he builds a house and a barn. At one point Amos becomes very angry with his wife, who has taken money from him. He climbs a mountain and doesn't leave until he gets an answer from God. Eventually he receives his answer and climbs back down, then forgives his wife as she is sorry for stealing his money. She had done it to keep him from helping a woman named Lois who needed help to keep her children from being taken away. She was lazy and wouldnt support her children,but Amos had pity on her. He decides against helping her and keeps the money. Amos goes to buy the land that he has always wanted. They buy the land and they build a house before winter. They also build a place where Amos can work as a tanner. At this point in his life, he is 80 years old. The book is based on the life of the real Amos Fortune, who was born free in Africa in around the year 1695 and who died free in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, in 1801.
5870871	/m/0fb0_b	King of the Wind	Marguerite Henry	1948	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is a fictionalised biography of the Godolphin Arabian, an ancestor of the modern thoroughbred. The story starts with Man o' War's victory over Sir Barton in a race. The fans expect Man o' War to race at Newmarket, but his owner chooses to end his racing career early. When questioned about his decision, he tells the story of the Godolphin Arabian. The story starts in Morocco, as the fast of Ramadan is ending with the setting sun. The boys in the Sultan's stables begin to hungrily feast, but Agba, a mute orphan, ignores the end of the fast and continues to tend to his favorite mare. She refuses to eat, even though all the horses were forced to participate in the Ramadan fast along with the humans, and Agba worries for her. The Chief Groom realizes this, and that tonight is her birthing hour. Agba, sleeping in the mare's stall, wakes to find a new foal in the stable. He notices a white spot on his hind heel, considered the emblem of swiftness and good luck. The Chief Groom, upon entering the stall spots a wheat ear on the foal's chest, a sign of bad luck. He attempts to kill it, but Agba intervenes and points out the white spot. The Chief Groom considers this, then leaves, prophesying that the mare will die. Agba, undaunted, names the colt Sham because of his golden coat. Within a few days, the prophecy is fulfilled. Agba attempts to run away from the stables, but is knocked into a camel. This gives him an idea, and he feeds Sham on camel's milk and wild honey, promising that someday he will be King of The Wind. Sham matures into a promising racehorse, beating all of the other horses. Sham sees Agba as a mother, and they develop a close bond. The Sultan summons six horseboys to his palace, including Agba, and charges them to accompany six horses to the French king, one chestnut, one yellow dun, one dark gray, one white, one black, and one bay touched with gold. Sham fits the requirements and accompanies Agba to France. The horseboy is to remain with that horse until death, then return to Morocco. Here, the supposedly great racehorses are frowned upon by the French, who believe that they are not 'lusty' enough to be racehorses. Five are sent to work in the army, but Sham remains behind to be a kitchen horse. He does not take to this well, and when Agba is gone one afternoon, causes such a mess that the cook sells him. Agba searches desperately for Sham, finally finding him pulling water in the streets of Paris. He becomes a slave to Sham's owner, and meets Grimalkin the cat along the way. Sham is bought by a Quaker man and taken to England. He refuses to have the Quaker's nephew ride him, and is sold to an inn. When Agba is caught sneaking in to see him, he goes to jail. The jailer destroys Sham's pedigree. Fortunately, Agba is bailed by the Quaker's housekeeper who is quite fond of him, and Sham is released from his cruel treatment at the inn. She finds him a job with the Earl of Godolphin. The Earl treats Sham as a workhorse, albeit kindly. The true celebrity in the Godolphin stables is Hobgoblin, whom Sham detests. Lady Roxana, a mate meant for Hobgoblin, arrives, and Sham fights Hobgoblin for her. Lady Roxana enjoys his company, but the Earl is embarrassed. He sentences Sham, Agba, and Grimalkin to life in Wicken Fen, and they depart. Two years later, the Earl's Chief Groom comes back and reveals that Lady Roxana had a foal with Sham, who was left alone and left untrained due to his skinniness. Lath, however, one day jumps the fence and outruns some of the colts that the Earl is training, proving his worth. The trio come back to Godolphin, and Sham is named the Godolphin Arabian. He has two more foals with Lady Roxana, Cade and Regulus. After the Earl reveals that he is near bankruptcy, they decide to race Sham's sons in Newmarket. Agba kept his promise! Sham is King of the Wind They win the races and the Queen's purse, and Agba contemplates his life with Sham. As a footnote, it is revealed the Godolphin Arabian lived long and had many successful descendants. The Earl has left his grave blank, and Agba has returned to Morocco. After the Earl's death, the dates and name of the Godolphin Arabian are put on the grave, but time is slowly erasing the words.
5870892	/m/0fb11r	Rabbit Hill	Robert Lawson	1944	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in a place called Rabbit Hill, a country crossroads near Danbury, Connecticut. The animal inhabitants are suffering as the house nearby has been abandoned for several years and the untended gardens, the animals' source of food, have withered to nothing. Then "New Folks" move in to the house. Are the New Folks hunters, or friendly gardeners who will share their crops with the animals?
5870905	/m/0fb134	Adam of the Road	Elizabeth Gray Vining	1943	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Adam is an eleven-year-old who wants to become like his father, Roger, and to do so he tries to be the best minstrel in England. Beginning of the story, Adam and his friend Perkin are in St. Alban's monastery, where they go to an old lady's house to visit Adam's dog, Nick. They quickly return to their home at the monastery and go to the roadside to find Roger is coming back from his long journey as a knight's minstrel. Roger tells Adam that he is going to London to follow in the knight's train. Adam is allowed to come, but he must hurry because the knight leaves the next day. While on the road, Adam meets Margery, the daughter of the knight, in a beautiful carriage. Soon after, following a night of feasting and partying, Roger tells Adam he lost his warhorse, Bayard, in a bet with another minstrel. One night, while Roger and Adam are sleeping, Bayard trades Nick to another minstrel, Jankin. Adam worries that Jankin will mistreat Nick. When Adam and Roger discover Nick is gone, they chase Jankin across England. When Adam sees Jankin in a crowded marketplace, he pursues him and is separated from Roger. Adam makes friends and eventually finds Nick with Perkin. Roger, Adam and Nick are eventually reunited in Oxford. Adam is offered a place at Oxford college, but decides to be a minstrel, like his father.
5870941	/m/0fb14x	Roller Skates	Ruth Sawyer	1936-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Roller Skates opens with the narrator remembering back to a special year in the 1890s, when young Lucinda Wyman arrives at the Misses Peters' home in New York City; the two ladies will care for her during the year of Lucinda's parents' trip to Italy. The narrator's diaries help her remember the details of 10-year-old Lucinda's "orphanage," as she calls it. Miss Peters, a teacher, is "a person of great understanding, no nonsense, and no interference." Miss Nettie is shy and soft-hearted. Living with them Lucinda experiences unprecedented freedom, exploring the city on roller skates and making friends with all types of people. Lucinda quickly gets to know Mr. Gilligan the hansom cab driver and Patrolman M'Gonegal. The first friend of her own age is Tony Coppino, son of an Italian fruit stand owner. Lucinda enlists Officer M'Gonegal to stop the bullies who knock down Tony's father's fruit-stand and steal the fruit. In return Tony takes her for a city picnic where they meet a rag-and-bone man. Later Lucinda reads Shakespeare with her favorite uncle and is inspired to put on a puppet production of The Tempest. But the cold and snow of winter keep her cooped up indoors, and eventually a restless Lucinda acts out -- and gets sent home from school in disgrace. Later her uncle introduces her to Shakespeare's tragedies, and she experiences her own when two of her friends die. With Lucinda's parents coming back from Italy she realizes everything is changing. So she skates to the park one last time. "How would you like to stay always ten?" she muses. "That's what I'd call a perfectly elegant idea!"
5870976	/m/0fb18b	Invincible Louisa	Cornelia Meigs	1933	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Invincible Louisa, subtitled "The Story of the Author of Little Women", opens with Louisa Alcott's birth on a snowy November day in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Her father, Bronson Alcott, ran a school for young children in their home. "It was a time of great happiness, peace, and security... Happiness was to continue... but peace and security were not to come again for a very long time". So Meigs introduces her reader to Alcott's life. Her father, Bronson, is portrayed as brilliant but impractical, unable to support his family as a man of the times was expected to. The book follows the Alcott family to Boston and Concord, as Bronson Alcott seeks places that understand his unusual views on education and transcendentalism. Louisa proves to be an active child, getting into trouble and causing her mother, Abba, some anxiety. When she is ten the family moves again to Fruitlands, the transcendentalist community Alcott helps found. By now there are four girls in the family. Meigs portrays Bronson Alcott and the oldest daughter, Anna, as being fully committed to the ideals of this new life, but says that Louisa and her mother understand how much hard work would be necessary for a communal farm to succeed. The contrast between idealistic and practical is shown when Bronson and the only other adult leave the area for a conference just as the barley is being harvested. An approaching storm has Abba and the children bringing in the grain alone. In less than a year Fruitlands failed, and the family moved several more times. Invincible Louisa tells of the Alcott's friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson, and recounts some of the events Louisa later used in Little Women, including meetings of the Pickwick Club and the death of one of Louisa's younger sisters, Elizabeth. Louisa later leaves the family to earn her own way writing and teaching. During the Civil War she travels to Washington, DC to nurse soldiers. The book concludes with Louisa writing Little Women and the two books that followed, Little Men and Jo's Boys. The success of these books, according to Meigs, gives Louisa her own "happy ending... the whole of what she had wanted from life -- just to take care of them all." Invincible Louisa ends with a five page chronology of Louisa May Alcott's life.
5870991	/m/0fb190	Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze	Elizabeth Lewis	1932	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the book opens, the widowed Fu Be-be arrives in Chungking with her 13-year-old son Yuin-fah and a letter from a village friend to Tang Yu-shu, a master coppersmith, asking that Young Fu be given an apprenticeship in Tang's establishment. Because the widow is alone and Young Fu is her only son, he is allowed to complete his apprenticeship while living in a small rented room with her, rather than living in the shop, a plot device which allows us to see more of the city than might otherwise be the case. In the chapters that follow, Young Fu goes from being a young and somewhat arrogant boy of 13 to a more capable and humble youth of 18. Along the way, he has encounters with soldiers, foreigners, thieves, political activists, an old scholar, the poor of the city, the rich of the city, and government officials. He is alternately swindled, attacked by bandits, reviled and praised as his coppersmith skills grow.
5871015	/m/0fb1bd	Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon	Dhan Gopal Mukerji	1928	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Gay-Neck, or ‘’Chitra-Griva’’, is born to a young owner in India. Gay-Neck’s parents teach him how to fly, but he soon loses his father in a storm and his mother to a hawk. His master and Ghond the hunter take him out into the wilderness, but he becomes so scared by the hawks that he flees and ends up in a lamasery where the Buddhist monks are able to cure him of his fear. When his young master returns home he finds Gay-neck waiting for him. But Gay-Neck decides to go on other long journeys, much to the boy’s consternation. Then, during World War I, Gay-Neck and Ghond end up journeying to Europe where Gay-Neck serves as a messenger pigeon. He is chased by German machine-eagles (planes) and is severely traumatized when one of his fellow messenger pigeons is shot down. Gay-neck and Ghond barely survive, and Gay-Neck is unable to fly. Ghond, Gay-Neck, and his master return to the lamasery near Singalila, where Ghond and Gay-Neck need to be cleansed of the hate and fear of the war. After that, Ghond succeeds in hunting down a buffalo that killed a villager, but feels remorse for having to kill the buffalo. Gay-Neck disappears once more, but when the other two return home, they find, to their joy, that Gay-Neck had already flown there ahead of them.
5871920	/m/0fb2p2	The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death	Daniel Pinkwater	1983-03-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The story is told from the viewpoint of Walter Galt, a teenager on the verge of dying from boredom at Genghis Khan High School, until he meets Winston Bongo, another suffering student and the self-proclaimed inventor of "snarking out" (which involves sneaking out of your house late at night, going to the movie theater, hanging out, and sneaking back home without getting caught). They usually go to an all-night movie theater, The Snark. While snarking out, they meet the usual assortment of oddballs, such as Ms. Bentley Saunders Harrison Matthews, a.k.a. Rat, and places, from Blueberry Park to Lower North Aufzoo Street to Beanbender's Beer Garden. Along the way, they help foil the scheme of the world's greatest criminal genius and his gang of trained orangutans.
5874603	/m/0466pd4	Bearing an Hourglass	Piers Anthony	1984-07-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Some time in the future (as evidenced by technology in use that is much more advanced than in the first story), Norton&mdash;a man of about forty&mdash;is living a life of nomadic wandering when a ghost named Gawain asks him to father a child to his widow, Orlene, with whom Norton eventually falls in love. Gawain then asks Gaea, the Incarnation of Nature, to make the child in his own likeness so his bloodline would continue. Unfortunately, the child ends up dead due to a disease that runs in Gawain's family. Orlene then commits suicide. Feeling depressed about the disastrous results of his affair with Orlene, Norton is approached by Gawain again, who offers Norton the position of Time (Chronos), where he must rule over all Earthly aspects of time. Gawain explains to Norton that Chronos lives backwards in time until the moment of the birth—or conception, it is never made clear—of the office holder's previous self, who is still living forwards. The ghost baits Norton, explaining to him that, by living backwards, he can continue to see Orlene, since she is still alive in the past. Norton accepts, and Gawain leads him to the spot where the future office holder of Time, Norton's predecessor, will pass the hourglass onto Norton. Norton immediately starts literally living life backwards in time, though he can temporarily go forward in order to interact with others. However, when he is living backwards, he is not visible to mortals. Norton experiments with his hourglass, recognized by all the Incarnations as being the most powerful magical device in the world, to halt and/or reverse time, travel many millions of years into the Earth's past, and work with the Incarnation of Fate, who needs his hourglass to help fix tangles in her threads of fate. Because Norton lives backwards in time, his past is everyone else's future, making him an isolated character even among the other Incarnations. He also realises that this will make it impossible to have a relationship with the forward-living Orlene. He does, however, have an affair with Clotho, the youngest aspect of Fate. This is both awkward and intriguing to Norton since her past is his future. Residing at his new residence in Purgatory, Norton is then visited by Satan, who informs Norton that while he can travel anywhere in time with his hourglass, he cannot leave Earth. Satan claims to have the power to travel the whole universe, since evil permeates all of reality, and gives Norton some samples of this ability by having him travel to other planets where, Satan claims, time flows backwards, allowing Norton to live normally and to get involved in both a space opera ("Bat Durston and the BEMS") and an epic fantasy adventure. Satan offers Norton the ability to have that power if Norton will grant Satan a favor; to go back in time 20 years and save a man from committing suicide. Norton goes back in time to check out this young man, but after consulting with the other Incarnations, he is informed that this man is the current office holder of the Incarnation of Death (Thanatos—in other words, Zane, from the previous novel) and that it is Zane's attempted suicide that brought him to that position. This man is needed as Thanatos in order to protect his girlfriend, Luna Kaftan, from Satan's mischief so she can go into politics and fulfill a prophecy of thwarting Satan. However, a relic Satan had given Norton turned out to be a demon in disguise. When Norton went back in time, the demon disembarked a few years in the past to prevent Luna from going into politics (the demon gives an incumbent politician an antidote to keep him alive so Luna doesn't take his place). Due to some of the limitations of the hourglass, intercepting this demon is difficult, but Norton eventually manages to stop it. Not giving up, Satan tries one more time by trapping Norton on one of the other planets he had an adventure on. Not sure how to get back home, Norton starts toying with the hourglass, traveling all the way back to the beginning of the observable universe and all the way to its end (from the big bang to the point where all matter became trapped in black holes) and realizes that, since the Incarnations' magic does not extend beyond Earth, his adventures on other planets were illusions created by Satan, and that Norton had, in fact, never left Earth. Norton then finds out that the demon that created the illusion had been attached to him and, once again, disembarked at a point in the past, two years after the events of the first book, to begin a campaign to discredit Luna so she doesn't run for office. Norton then goes back in time to this point and uses his hourglass to show the world all the bad things that will happen if Luna doesn't get elected. As Norton is no longer fooled by Satan's illusions, Satan stops trying to exploit him.
5874617	/m/0466pdj	With a Tangled Skein	Piers Anthony	1985-09-12		 Set around the time of World War I, a young Irish (21) woman named Niobe has a marriage arranged for her by her parents. Her husband-to-be is a teenage boy (16) named Cedric Kaftan. She considers him too immature for her, but can find no way out of the marriage. Although Niobe at first hates being married to a "child", Cedric's good nature, kind heartedness, and desire to make his wife happy and safe win her over, and she soon falls madly in love with her husband. Cedric shows that he is an intellectual prodigy. With some prodding and nurturing from his wife as well as from his mentor, Cedric accepts a scholarship to attend college and hone his magical abilities. As he matures and finds his niche in magic and wetland studies, he and Niobe have a child: Cedric Jr. With a bright future certain, and wizardry greatness assured, life in the Kaftan house was happy indeed. Sadly a few years later, Cedric learns of a plot to kill Niobe. Seeing no way to avert it, Cedric leaves school, goes home to Niobe, hastily puts his affairs in order, and sets in motion the only way he can save his wife's life..... by taking her place. On the fateful morning, Cedric wakes up to make love to his wife one last time, kisses her goodbye and goes into the woods to face his destiny. Awakened by gunshots, Niobe learns her husband is assassinated as part of a plot by the agents of Satan. She learns not only of the plot, but that she, and not her husband, was the real target. Upon learning this, Niobe's hatred for having her husband's life cut short, makes her vow to make Satan pay. She is invited to join as an aspect of the incarnation of Fate, three women sharing one physical body. Eager to thwart Satan's plans and to avenge Cedric, she leaves her child with Cedric's cousin and becomes Clotho, the youngest aspect of the three Fates. The three Fates weave the tapestry of life and have disposition over the length of human lives and the pattern they produce. Clotho, the youngest, spins the threads from the substance of Void; Lachesis, the middle aspect, measures the threads and Atropos, the oldest, cuts the thread of each individual human. When she takes the aspect of Clotho, Niobe must journey to the edge of the Void without aid from the other Fates and replenish her stock of thread-material. Because Incarnations do not age, Niobe spends many years as Clotho. She frequently visits her son, who has befriended Cedric's younger cousin, Pacian. Because her lack of aging would be noticed, she takes the form of the grandmotherly Atropos, pretending to be a concerned family friend. One day, the Fates take the two boys to a fortune teller, who gives them disturbing news—each of the boys will have a daughter who will oppose a tangle in the threads of life. However, one of the girls is fated to marry Death, and the other is fated to marry Evil. Niobe leaves the office of Clotho and returns to mortal life in order to marry Pacian, who has matured while she was in office. She gives birth to a daughter they call Orb, at around the same time that her son, who is now a powerful magician, has a daughter called Luna. The two girls grow up together under the magician's protection. At one point the girls and Niobe go on a quest for powerful artifacts that will enhance their natural talents, and Satan takes the opportunity to send demons against them. Although one of the girls is to marry him, he is not interested in a wife who is not evil. Niobe helps the girls to get through safely, though, and Satan's plot comes to nothing. One year after the events of On a Pale Horse, the middle-aged Niobe is asked to join the Incarnation of Fate once again, this time as Lachesis. Satan has arranged to have all three women leave the office at the same time, thus making the Incarnation of Fate inexperienced in all three aspects simultaneously. The current office-holders hope to use Niobe's previous experience as aspect of Fate as an ace in the hole to prevent Satan's current plot from coming to fruition. They learn that Satan plans to cause political turmoil in the UN by having one of his minions plant a stink-bomb. They are forced to waste time by investigating the likely minions one by one, but in the meantime Satan is offering aging political candidates a chance at renewed youth, and the opportunity to start over in their careers, in exchange for their resignation from office. He plans to replace them with his own minions, who would work against Luna. The three Fates realize that their inexperience is a liability, so they seek help. They learn that Niobe's son, the magician, can help them—unfortunately, he is now in Hell. Satan cannot prevent them from searching for the magician, but he can make the quest very unpleasant and one of them must risk her own soul in the process. Niobe is worried that Satan will cheat, so she arranges for the Incarnation of War to supervise the contest. Niobe leaves the Fates' collective body and goes to Hell. She must beat Satan's challenge—a puzzle-maze—in order to get the answers she is looking for. At the end, she finds her son, but Satan has cast an illusion over him. She puzzles out the answer anyway—that Satan's plot can be stopped by the Atropos aspect of Fate: Atropos can cut short the lives of Satan's minions, making his plot futile. Niobe wins the game and is allowed to leave Hell freely.
5874622	/m/0466pdx	Wielding a Red Sword	Piers Anthony	1986-09-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mym, an Indian prince, defies his father's plans for an arranged marriage, instead joining a traveling circus. He meets Orb, who teaches him to overcome his own handicap of a terrible stutter through song. He is soon discovered, and his father arranges for him to marry a princess by the name of Rapture. After fighting against this for days on end, he finally realizes that Rapture is worth loving, and so concedes to the marriage. However, a plot to separate him from her results in his decision to become the Incarnation of War. Through the course of living as Mars, Rapture takes up a life of her own and decides that she does not need him anymore. Satan arranges, subtly, a demoness for his new companion, hoping to get Mars in his debt that way. In the end, this backfires and he ends up with two loves in his life. His ultimate goal was to use his position to ameliorate some of the suffering being caused by war on Earth, and is surprised by Satan's encouragement. Soon he realizes the subtle importances of human war and conflict: under certain circumstances, human suffering is increased, not decreased, by abstinence from armed response. Satan's plan is to have an inexperienced office-holder in the position of the Incarnation of War, such that he can manipulate the course of armed conflicts on Earth, allowing some wars through and blocking the progression of others, such that the overall balance of evil in the world is increased. He accomplished the replacement of the previous Mars by facilitating the cessation of all conflict in the world—not only war, but bar brawls and even minor squabbles between children counts as conflict—every time this happens in history, the Incarnation of War retires and passes on into the afterlife. Mym stepped into the office at a time when global violence was just being recommenced, and thus became an opportunity for Satan to manipulate a naïve Mars. Part of this process was a plot by which Satan managed to trap Mym in Hell. Mym eventually led a revolution of the lost souls and secured an escape route, employing lessons from Miyamoto Musashi's famous treatise, The Book of Five Rings, to defeat Satan in a one-on-one battle. However, during his absence, Satan has manipulated the geopolitical situation such that international tensions everywhere are at an all-time high, and the world is on the brink of apocalypse. This results in virtually every government everywhere adopting martial law, as normal democratic process is eminently non-viable. A result of this, and an important objective for Satan, is that Luna Kaftan has become sidelined, unable to fulfill the prophecy that she would rise into political office and stand as a bulwark against Satan. Mym realizes Satan's underlying objective, and forces a confrontation on terms unfavourable to Satan—he travels to the Doomsday Clock, a signifier of how close the world is at any given time to Armageddon, and there employs the powers specific to his office to escalate world violence and bring War to ultimate fruition—Judgement Day. The crux is this: that Satan is not yet ready for the Final Judgment to happen, as the current balance of souls on Earth is favourable to God—i.e. God would get a greater proportion of the souls, signifying (in this fictional universe) the ultimate victory of Good. At the very last minute, Satan is forced to concede and withdraw. Mym lowers his Sword and returns the world to a state of relative peace. Mym learns that his responsibility as War is not to promote war and violence, but to make sure that conflicts are handled fairly.
5874629	/m/0466pf8	Being a Green Mother	Piers Anthony	1987-10-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It is discovered that young Orb, the Aunt of Luna, has the gift of conjuring natural music that emanates from things in nature. She sets off on a quest for a magical song known as the Llano, a song supposed to be the most beautiful imaginable. During the beginning of her search, she meets and helps a young Gypsy girl who was blind, teaching her song and dance as such most men never see. She also joins up with a circus for a short time, meeting there the man that would later become War, and realizing after his unwanted departure that she is pregnant with his child. Upon having his child, she takes the baby, the young Orlene, to her Gypsy friend with the understanding that the woman would find her daughter the best possible home. Later on, she joins up with a rock and roll band. Her magical singing allows them to lose their drug addictions, and they quest together until she is approached by her mother, Niobe (who had left her office to have her with Pacian, thus effectively making Orb the aunt of Luna as well as her cousin through their fathers), in the guise of Fate. She is told that she has been selected to fill the role of Nature (Gaea), but that a prophecy foretells that she may one day marry Satan. Satan, attempting to fulfill the prophecy, kidnaps Orb and attempts to use magic to compel Orb to marry him. She frees herself with the help of Natasha, a man who has also been seeking the Llano and has learned much of it. Natasha continues to teach her the Llano as they defend themselves from Satan's attacks. Orb learns that the Llano has the power to control Nature and that she must learn it in order to assume her position. She also finds herself falling in love with Natasha and decides to marry him. All is not as it seems, however, as Natasha reveals that he is Satan in disguise ("Natasha" is "Ah, Satan" backwards) and has been attempting to court her according to the terms of an agreement he made with Fate: He will be allowed to court Orb without interference from the other Incarnations, but everything he says to Orb must be a lie, or part of a greater construct of lies, until he proposes marriage, when he must reveal the truth. Orb rejects Satan's proposal, and demands that he teach her the final part of the Llano, the Song of Chaos, which she needs to become Gaea. He does so, but warns her that it is a powerful weapon and its effects are unpredictable. She sings the Song of Chaos and it results in devastation on a global scale. The previous Incarnation of Nature then tells her that the only thing that he knows that might reverse its effects is the Song of Chaos itself. She tries singing the song three more times, and each time only results in more destruction. The destruction came in the form of the four elements—Fire, Air, Earth, and Water—so if she sings the song a fifth time, it would appear in the form of the fifth element, Void, and erase the Earth from existence, returning all of existence to primeval Chaos. Thus, the Song of Chaos is Gaea's ultimate weapon; it will unmake all of reality, and Heaven, Hell and the mortal universe will return to the fundamental chaos from which they sprang. Desperate, Orb turns to the other Incarnations for help. Chronos tells her that he can go back in time and stop her from singing the Song of Chaos, but he needs the consent of all the other incarnations in order to do it. The only one who objects is Satan, who says that he will only give his consent if Orb agrees to marry him. Orb, faced with the impossible choice hinted at in the prophecy, declares "God help me, but I do love Satan" and agrees to the wedding. Chronos changes the past, and Orb honors her agreement. The wedding takes place in Hell, and Satan puts on a grand ceremony. As their wedding vows, the two each sing a song to the other. Orb sings a section of the Llano (the Song of Evening—also known as the Song of Love) which is meant to evoke romantic love, but Satan, surprising everyone, sings a variation of the hymn Amazing Grace—and vanishes. Singing a song forbidden to him, Satan abdicates as the Incarnation of Evil as a demonstration of his feelings for Orb. Having fallen in love with a good woman, Satan can no longer continue to hold the office of the Incarnation of Evil.
5874638	/m/0466pfn	For Love of Evil	Piers Anthony	1988-11	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Parry, an orphan, is taken in and is accidentally adopted by a wizard who teaches him the benefits of white magic and how it can be used to help others. A musician and adept white magician, Parry plans on following in his father's footsteps when he is encouraged by his father, the sorcerer, to take a bride. Parry selects Jolie, seeing her potential despite her ragged appearance. Using his unique singing talents, Parry convinces Jolie that he means no harm. Taking her in, Parry and his father begin to teach Jolie the ways of wizardry and they begin to fall in love. With his father's blessing, Parry and Jolie wed and are about to start a life of bliss when they are attacked by crusaders of Christianity. Parry's father is killed in the attack and Parry escapes in bird form while his wife Jolie had gone ahead to warn her parents to go to the pre-determined hidden shelter. Unfortunately by the time Parry gets to town to check on his wife, she has been taken prisoner by the crusaders, who capture Parry himself shortly after he arrives. Working in conjunction with his wife, since he possesses a magical second sight, he frees them both but not before Jolie is slain by the dying Captain who was going to rape her. Taking off in horse form with Jolie strapped to his back, Parry arrives at the shelter and tries to heal her wounds but is lacking in medical supplies to save her. Parry watches as his wife dies in his arms. Due to special circumstances, Jolie's soul cannot immediately go to Heaven, so at Parry's request, Thanatos binds her spirit to a drop of blood on Parry's wrist. Vowing vengeance, Parry thinks the best way to escape from the villagers is to hide in plain sight, so he joins a monastery for sanctuary as well as a means to destroy the enemy. Soon after joining the Franciscan monks, Parry discovers that a new order, the Dominicans, are being formed with the express purpose of rooting out evil and heresy. Because of his keen mind and magical prowess (which he uses in secrecy), he becomes a feared inquisitor. During one of his many trips to stop Lucifer's campaign of Evil, Parry succumbs to the temptation of his ghostly wife Jolie inhabiting a physical body, thus violating his oath of celibacy. As retribution, Lucifer sends forth Lilah (alternately known as Lilith), a demoness, to corrupt him. By using the toehold of his broken oath of celibacy and his own feelings of sexual desire and guilt, Lilah corrupts Parry to Evil. His intense desire for Lilah eventually leads him to corrupt the Inquisition itself. Upon his deathbed, Lucifer attacks Lilah; with his last vestige of strength, Parry manages a magical counterattack against Lucifer, saving Lilah. Lucifer, taken off guard, is defeated. Though Parry's magic was far weaker than that of Lucifer, his spell was able to work because Jolie's good spirit (which still resided in the drop of blood on Parry's wrist) was immune to Lucifer's powers. As a severely weakened Parry lays dying with only moments to live, Lilah tells him to claim the office before it finds a different successor, as well as to name the form he would like to assume (he chooses his body at the age of 25). Parry, not understanding what she's asking of him and wanting to honor this last wish before he succumbs to death, does as Lilah requests, and is suddenly transformed into the new Incarnation of Evil and takes the name Satan. (It is later explained that if no one claims the office, it seeks out the most qualified person for that position. So if Parry hadn't claimed the office as Lilah had told him, it would have found the most evil person on earth to take Lucifer's place.) In For Love of Evil, several scenes from the previous books (as is the case with all the books in the series with respect to their Incarnations) are shown from Parry's point of view. Parry also does not believe himself to be evil, but is simply fulfilling his function as an Incarnation. It is rather ironic that Parry is not actually evil, but all of the other Incarnations (Thanatos, Gaea, Chronos, Mars, and Fate) naturally expect him to be. Parry wants to defeat God so that he can create a better way to separate the good souls from the bad, and he takes no pleasure in causing unnecessary suffering in the mortal world (the other Incarnations obviously believe that Parry's reasons for wanting to defeat God are more nefarious). In fact, Parry, as a personal favor to YHWH (the incarnation of the God of the Jews, called JHVH in this book), manages to prevent the Holocaust from happening. Upon taking office, Parry approached the other Incarnations in good faith, but was rebuffed and/or humiliated by them since they allied with God. Only Chronos offered friendship. This led to Parry being enemies with many of these Incarnations and their successors. Parry was friends with several holders of the office of Chronos, but eventually the Chronos officeholders became hostile to him as well. Parry also attempted to meet with the Incarnation of Good to figure out how to best sort out which souls belonged in Heaven and which in Hell (Parry had no desire for souls that didn't belong in Hell to be there), but was not successful. The Incarnation of Good was too busy contemplating his own greatness to pay any attention. Instead he strikes a bargain with the Archangel Gabriel: if Parry cannot corrupt one influential individual or her children or grandchildren in order to shift the balance of the world to evil, he must give up his quest. That individual was Niobe Kaftan&mdash;meaning Parry had to wait six centuries before he could act. Later Parry meets Orb, Niobe's daughter who is slated to become the next Gaea, and decides to court her in the hope that he could later take advantage of Gaea's powers to defeat God. The other Incarnations oppose Parry's plan, but eventually they all come to an agreement: the other Incarnations promise not to interfere with Parry's courtship of Orb if he tells her the truth about his identity prior to asking her to marry him. Posing as a mortal named Natasha, Parry manages to win Orb's heart. When she becomes Gaea, he reveals to her that he is the Incarnation of Evil and asks her to marry him. In a fit of rage, Orb nearly destroys the world with her powers, and in order to undo that destruction, she needs Parry's help. Thus she agrees to marry him, and even admits that she still loves him despite his true identity. At the wedding Parry surprises everyone by singing Amazing Grace, which causes him to vacate his office. With no one to take his place, the office automatically goes to the most evil person on earth, a cruel murderer and child rapist. After a battle of wits, Parry eventually reclaims his office, to the relief of the other Incarnations who prefer Parry's doctrine of necessary evil over the murder-rapist's sadism. The Incarnations come to realize at the end that Parry is not truly evil in the traditional sense; rather, he works to facilitate evil on earth because that is a necessary part of the process to determine whether souls belong in Heaven or Hell. Unable to consummate his marriage to Orb due to their offices being traditionally opposed, Parry initially becomes depressed. But then the spirit of Jolie co-inhabiting the body of Orb comes to him one night and explains that he and the two loves of his life can occasionally spend time together as long as they do so in secret. In the end, Parry is happy and resumes his duties as the Incarnation of Evil.
5874649	/m/0466pg0	And Eternity	Piers Anthony	1990-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the seventh novel of the series, three women—the ghost of Jolie, the ghost of Orlene (daughter of Orb), and a fourteen-year-old drug-addicted prostitute named Vita—try to discover a way to restore the life of Orlene's baby, Gawain II, who had died as a result of a severe birth defect inflicted unknowingly by Gaea at the request of the child's ghost father Gawain. Nox, the mysterious Incarnation of Night, promises to help, but she needs a specific item of great value from each of the other Incarnations in order to resurrect the baby. The three women set out to meet with each of the other seven Incarnations of Day. In the process of obtaining the items, they conclude that the definitions of Good and Evil used to classify souls as destined for Heaven and Hell are flawed. Orlene's soul had been denied access to Heaven because she committed suicide in a futile attempt to help her baby. Vita meets and comes under the protection of an older male judge; they fall in love and have sex, but this too is considered Evil, because Vita is below the legal age of consent. The three women eventually succeed in gaining the item from each one of the Incarnations, with the exception of God, the Incarnation of Good, who has become obsessed with his own greatness and is completely unresponsive to the outside world. Reporting their discovery to the other Incarnations, they all conclude that God has been derelict in his duty and must be replaced so that the eventual triumph of Evil can be prevented. Luna Kaftan, now an influential Senator, begins a campaign to impeach God and declare the office of the Incarnation of Good vacant. Thus, the final conflict between Good and Evil becomes a political one, fought with words and votes in the halls of a legislature, and not by armies on a battlefield. Despite Satan's efforts, Luna's campaign succeeds, and a mortal must now be chosen to become the new Incarnation of Good. However, the replacement must be selected by a unanimous vote of all the other Incarnations, including Satan himself—and why would the Incarnation of Evil approve a candidate who would effectively promote the cause of Good? Each Incarnation, in turn, nominates a mortal for the position. (Gaea's nominee happens to be the same judge that became Vita's lover.) After all the other Incarnations make their suggestions, to their complete amazement, Satan nominates Orlene, whose soul had become exactly half evil as a result of choices none of the other Incarnations were willing to condemn. The other Incarnations immediately agree that Satan has made the best possible choice, and they unanimously declare Orlene to be the new Incarnation of Good. Therefore the girls find that Nox had set up the items from the other Incarnations to help Orlene take the place of God and in doing so, become God herself. In return, Orlene allows Nox to keep Gawain II as she will no longer be able to care for him and the child is content with the Incarnation of Night.
5874727	/m/0fb7cw	Lives of the Saints	Nino Ricci		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Vittorio Innocente's father, Mario, has immigrated to Canada, though originally believed to be America, to pave the way for the rest of his family to come. Little Vittorio doesn't understand why the neighbours disapprove of his mother, but suspects it has something to do with the man she was with in the stable on the morning she was bitten by the snake. But it becomes clear that it is Cristina’s independence of mind and rejection of superstition that offend the peasant values in this remote village in post-war Italy. In the miniseries, Vittorio seeks comfort from his teacher, Aunt Teresa "La Maestra", who unlike the neighbours, sympathizes with Vittorio, and consoles him. Aunt Teresa hides Cristina when she becomes visibly pregnant while her husband is away, and helps Vitorrio understand life through stories in a book she gave him called Lives of the Saints, while in the novel Zia Lucia (Aunt Teresa) is a completely different character from "La Maestra". Cristina and Vittorio depart to Canada to meet Mario, but the Cristina dies on the ship giving birth to Vittorio's sister, Rita. Rita has bright blue eyes like her father, which serves as a constant reminder of Cristina's affair. The book focuses on the unspoken affair Cristina Innocente is having with the "blue-eyed man" (Vittorio first sees when at the stable with the snake). Ever since the incident with the snake, Cristina is scrutinized by the townspeople as a "whore" who is sleeping around while her husband, Mario, is working and sending her money from America. Cristina has become pregnant and Vittorio, her 7-year-old son, remains oblivious to the entirety of the situation until much later in his life. Cristina's scrutiny leads to the isolation of the Innocente family: her father resigns as mayor and Vittorio is bullied; not to mention, Mario was informed of Cristina's pregnancy. The townspeople's ruthless treatment leads Cristina to leave the town of Valle del Sole with Vittorio. The townspeople assume it is to meet with Mario, but hinted that Cristina had actually made plans with the "blue-eyed man". It is never clear as Cristina dies on the boat to America, but the blue-eyed man does pay Vittorio a visit in the infirmary in Canada, so one may assume this. Vittorio then lives his life on his own from then.
5875760	/m/0fb8t1	Whale Song	Cheryl Kaye Tardif	2010	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Thirteen years prior to the start of the book, Sarah Richardson’s life was shattered after the assisted suicide of her mother who was battling a debillitating disease. The shocking tragedy left a grief-stricken teen-aged Sarah with partial amnesia. A familiar voice from her past sends Sarah, now a talented mid-twenties advertising executive, back to her buried past. Torn by nightmares and visions of a yellow-eyed wolf, yet aided by the creatures of the Earth and by the killer whales that call to her in the night, Sarah's life parallels the native legends that were told to her by a wise old native grandmother. In the end, she must face her fears and uncover the truth―even if it destroys her.
5876252	/m/0fb9fr	The Monsters Inside	Stephen Cole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Rose to the Justicia System &mdash; a prison camp comprising the six planets in that solar system. The pair are separated and trapped in different environments, each determined to escape in their own distinctive style. However, their plans are complicated when some old enemies show up. Are the Slitheen really attempting a takeover of Justicia, or is it something far more sinister?
5877683	/m/0fbcs2	Edison's Conquest of Mars	Garrett P. Serviss	1947	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06bm_y": "Edisonade"}	 The book is set following the abortive Martian attack depicted in Fighters from Mars, much more devastating and global than in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, though in both works the onslaught is thwarted when the aliens die from bacterial illness. Determining that the Martians will inevitably return, Earth's leaders, including U.S. President William McKinley, Queen Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Emperor Mutsuhito, unite the world against the common threat and plan an attack on Mars. American inventor Thomas Edison leads a group of scientists to study derelict Martian equipment; they are able to develop an anti-gravity device powered by electric repulsion as well as a disintegration ray. Using this new technology, the allies construct an armada of space ships for the attack. Edison takes some ships to the moon on a test run; using the first known fictional depiction of space suits, the explorers uncover evidence of an extinct civilization of giants. The armada heads on, discovering a solid gold asteroid being mined by the Martians. The humans fight two space battles against the Martians, suffering heavy casualties but ultimately winning thanks to the superiority of Edison's ray gun compared to the Martians' electric weapons. The humans take a captive, from whom they learn the Martian language. The humans reach Mars, but in spite of their superior forces they have lost half their number to the Martians' overwhelming numbers. The Martians envelop the planet in a smoke screen, and the humans retreat to the moon Deimos. During a raid on Mars for supplies, the earth men find Aina, the last of a population of human slaves whose ancestors were captured from Kashmir in a Martian raid 9,000 years ago. During this raid, the Martians also constructed the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphynx in Egypt, the latter of which is a statue of their leader. Aina advises Edison that meeting the Martians in battle would be fruitless, and that they should instead attack the dams that channel water from the polar ice. Since most of Mars' cities are under sea level, the flood spreads rapidly, killing most Martians and destroying their civilization. Edison and company force a peace with the Martians, and return home to great celebration.
5878272	/m/0fbdw2	The Last Hawk	Catherine Asaro	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens when Kelric Valdoria crash lands on the planet Coba. An ancient culture with similarities to the Raylicans, Coba is one of the many isolated and forgotten planets of the former Ruby Empire. Kelric makes several unsuccessful attempts to escape and eventually ends up in jail. It is there he spends his time (particularly while in isolation) learning the dice game Quis. Eventually, Kelric is released and joins one of the "estates" - small matriarchical provinces or city-states that comprise the population of Coba. These estates have special dedicated communes that exclusively play Quis, called Calanya. Kelric becomes a member of one of these communes, known as the "Calani". The society of Coba has, for centuries, replaced war and aggression with competition in Quis. The Quis also double as an information network, with players revealing information about themselves and their estate while at the same time learn about others. Finally, as an information-exchange network, Quis allows technology to improve on Coba at an astounding rate. The strength of a Calani is based on two properties: a player's skill, and the number of different estates they have worked for. Because of his pleasing appearance and his skill in Quis, Kelric is conveted by the queens (known as "Managers") of the different estates. Kelric's membership in the estates proceeds as follows: Dahl, Haka, Bahvla, Miesa, Varz, and finally Karn. Renamed "Sevtar", Kelric has two children with two of his wives (one of which is born Rhon) during his time in the different estates. Each time Kelric is traded, his skill and worth increase, in the end reaching legendary status. In the final trade to Karn, Ixpar Karn trades rule of the planet (in addition to being Karn Manager, Ixpar also held the title of "Minister" of Coba) for Kelric. This eventually ignites actual violence, allowing Kelric to escape. The end of this novel is where Ascendant Sun begins. Quis refers to a dice game learned by Kelric on the planet Coba. This dice strategy game can be played with a physical set of dice that are made from hand-crafted jewels; or it can be played mentally. It originates on a planet called Coba, a former colony of the Ruby Empire that became isolated during the empire's collapses and remains so even during the time of the novels. All members of Coban society learn to play Quis, but only a few excel at it. The Quis dice can be used for a variety of purposes, including as a game, to tell stories, to exchange information, and even to gamble. But its most important use is its influence on politics, as the dice are used to compete politically, and also can convey politically important information. There are competing city-states that have isolated top Quis players, who study the art of playing Quis as their full-time occupation.
5878550	/m/0fbffp	The Stealers of Dreams	Steve Lyons		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It seems an easy enough position to take &mdash; on a world where daring to dream is a crime, the Doctor sides with a pirate television station that is trying to foment rebellion. However, he begins to discover that things are not as simple as that, and dreams can easily become nightmares.
5883734	/m/0fbqn7	The 33 Strategies of War	Robert Greene		{"/m/012lzc": "Self-help", "/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/050yl": "Military history"}	 The 33 Strategies of War contains successful military principles from a range of cultures and eras that are often applied to 21st century situations. The book is divided into five parts: Self-Directed Warfare, Organizational (Team) Warfare, Defensive Warfare, Offensive Warfare and Unconventional (Dirty) Warfare. The 33 strategies are: # Declare War on Your Enemies: The Polarity Strategy. # Do Not Fight the Last War: The Guerrilla-War-of-the-Mind Strategy. # Amidst the Turmoil of Events, Do Not Lose Your Presence of Mind: The Counterbalance Strategy. # Create a Sense of Urgency and Desperation: The Death-Ground Strategy. # Avoid The Snare of Groupthink: The Command-and-Control Strategy. # Segment Your Forces: The Controlled-Chaos Strategy. # Transform Your War into a Crusade: Morale Strategy. # Pick Your Battles: The Perfect Economy Strategy. # Turn the Tables: The Counterattack Strategy. # Create a Threatening Presence: Deterrence Strategies. # Trade Space for Time: The Nonenagement Strategy. # Lose The Battles But Win The War: Grand Strategy. # Know Your Enemy: The Intelligence Strategy. # Overwhelm Resistance With Speed and Suddenness: The Blitzkrieg Strategy. # Control the Dynamic: Forcing Strategies. # Hit Them Where it Hurts: The Center of Gravity Strategy. # Defeat Them in Detail: The Divide and Conquer Strategy. # Expose and Attack Your Enemy's Soft Flank: The Turning Strategy. # Envelop The Enemy: The Annihilation Strategy. # Maneuver Them Into Weakness: The Ripening For the Sickle Strategy. # Negotiate While Advancing: The Diplomatic-War Strategy. # Know How To End Things: The Exit Strategy. # Weave a Seamless Blend of Fact and Fiction: Misperception Strategies. # Take The Line of Least Expectation: The Ordinary-Extraordinary Strategy. # Occupy the Moral High Ground: The Righteous Strategy. # Deny Them Targets: The Strategy of the Void. # Seem to Work for the Interests of Others While Furthering Your Own: The Alliance Strategy. # Give Your Rivals Enough Rope To Hang Themselves: The One-Upmanship Strategy. # Take Small Bites: The Fait Accompli Strategy. # Penetrate Their Minds: Communication Strategies. # Destroy From Within: The Inner Front Strategy. # Dominate While Seeming to Submit: The Passive-Aggressive Strategy. # Sow Uncertainty and Panic Through Acts of Terror: The Chain Reaction Strategy.
5884004	/m/0fbr5c	Leaf Storm	Gabriel García Márquez	1955	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The Father, an aging, half blind man who carries the title of colonel within the village, has made a promise to bury the recently deceased former doctor in spite of the consensus within Macondo that he should be left to rot within the corner house where he had lived in complete social isolation for the past decade. The daughter, Isabel, is obliged to accompany her father out of respect for traditional values while knowing she and her son will be doomed to face the wrath of her neighbors in Macondo. The narrative of the grandson, on the other hand, is more preoccupied with the mystery and wonder of death. As with many of his stories, such as Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, García Márquez introduces a dramatic scene to begin his narrative and then moves backward, rehashing the past that will lead up to the ultimate conclusion. It is discovered within the narrative that the center of all the conflict (the deceased) is a doctor who came to Macondo with a mysterious past and no clear name. The man's only saving grace is a letter of recommendation from the Colonel Aureliano Buendía, one of the main characters of the later One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is this letter that leads the stranger to the family that serves collectively as narrator to the drama that unfolds. In Medias Res-Marquez starts his novella in medias res, that is, “in the middle of things”. This is shown through the opening paragraph that starts off with the description of the boat company landing in Macondo and then immediately goes to the boy’s point of view at the doctor’s wake. Multiple Narrators-The story changes narrators at many points with an omniscient narrator always being present. It changes for the boy to his mother to his grandfather the colonel. Each perspective is different and allows the reader to see inside the mind of whoever is speaking. Stream of Consciousness-The story is told in a stream of consciousness because the boy, Isabel, and the colonel tell the reader a trail of thoughts as they appear in their mind. These internal monologues provide the information that puts the pieces of the story together as the story starts off at the doctor’s death and not his life. Because the stream of consciousness is used, it enables the characters to jump back and forth in time without ever leaving their present moment, which is at the wake of the doctor. Also due to this narrative technique the illusion is given that these characters are talking out aloud to each other when in fact very little interaction actually takes place between them. Death-As the novella starts out at the wake of the doctor, death is an apparent theme that surrounds the narrative. More specifically, however, the type of death exhibited in this book is self-inflicted death as the doctor committed suicide after locking himself away for ten years in his home. Solitude-Solitude is another important theme that not only manifests itself through the doctor’s life but through the colonel, Isabel, and the boy. As a result of the doctor’s isolation he commits suicide but as a result of that suicide the family risks isolation with his burial. Because the doctor was an outcast from Macondo and scorned by the people of Macondo there is more at stake than just the proper treatment of a corpse. This is reflected in Isabel’s thoughts as she contemplates how the townspeople will receive them after they bury the doctor. War-It is not as apparent as solitude or death but nonetheless involved in the story. It is suggested in the novella that at this time in Macondo’s history a civil war has ended. This can be inferred by the reason that townspeople hate the doctor. He denied treatment to wounded soldiers that had come to his house to seek aid. The colonel himself is a reminder of war culture as he maintains high rank in Macondo and is well respected by the people although he is going against their will by burying the doctor. Also, reflecting war culture is the colonel’s relationship to the doctor. He is loyal to the doctor even after his death because of the doctor's ties to another colonel he knows. After giving up on the practice of medicine and living at the expense of the family for an inordinate amount of time, the reclusive doctor moves two houses down with Meme, the indigenous house maid that had been living with the narrative family at the time. While his reclusive demeanour and lustful attention to the female form do not make him popular with the locals, the former doctor's ultimate banishment only occurs when nearly a dozen men, wounded from one of the country's many civil wars, are brought to his door in search of medical attention. The doctor, having given up the practice of medicine, refuses to save them as he once refused to help an ailing Meme while they had been living with the family of narrators. In addition to the themes of cyclicality and inversion that are bedrocks to the narrative fluidity of One Hundred Years of Solitude; Leaf Storm also demonstrates several other techniques identified with Magical Realism such as manipulation of time and the use of multiple perspectives.
5884364	/m/0fbryx	An Old Captivity	Nevil Shute	1940	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The principal character is a young Scottish pilot with bush-flying experience in Canada, Donald Ross, who is hired by an Oxford don, Cyril Lockwood, to pilot an air survey mission of Greenland. Lockwood's interest is in the early Viking seafarers and their exploits, and although he appears to have little knowledge of the needs of such a project, he insists on their starting as soon as possible, with his elder brother David, a businessman, providing finance. Ross, as the hired expert, then has to contend with the 'helpful' suggestions from both the financier and Lockwood's young daughter, Alix. This causes early tensions in the preparatory stages. While the preliminary dig is ongoing Ross shoulders much responsibility including keeping the aircraft safe in a tidal zone. Worn out with the expedition's work - all of which has fallen solely on him - and a prolonged lack of sleep induced by worry over the expedition, he enters a coma induced by the sleeping tablets he has been forced to take to keep going, and in it dreams that he and Alix were once Scottish slaves aboard Leif Ericson's vessel on its voyage of discovery to Greenland. A part of this dream includes the leaving behind by the two slaves of a stone, with their names carved on it, at the Viking explorers' landing point in North America. Ross recovers and tells Alix and the don of his dreams. The last remnant of photographic survey is successfully completed, and the three complete their air crossing to North America, making landfall in eastern Canada. Flying down the coast towards New York Ross recognizes where he dreamed Lief Erickson's expedition landed on the coast of Cape Cod; they land to investigate and find the stone with the slaves' names on it. The technical details of a trans-Atlantic flight of this period (late 1930s) are accurate and of interest. The type of aircraft is a fictional radial-engined floatplane intended for bush use, made by a fictional Detroit firm named Cosmos. It corresponds roughly to the performance of a Noorduyn Norseman. This was Shute's first attempt at re-incarnation as a plot, a second later work on this theme is In the Wet.
5884627	/m/0fbsh4	"A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide	Samantha Power	2003	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Power begins with an outline of the international response to the Armenian Genocide (Chapter 1), and then describes Raphael Lemkin's efforts to lobby for American action against Nazi atrocities in Europe (Chapter 2). Then she describes further the difficulties of individuals' efforts to convince Americans and other members of the Allied Powers to recognize the Holocaust, which she explains were compounded by the focus on World War II and anti-Semitic indifference (Chapter 3). She continues in Chapter 4 to describe how Lemkin brought genocide to the forefront of foreign policy issues, leading to the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Chapter 5 describes Lemkin's mounting disappointments and multiplying adversaries until his death in 1959, whereupon Senator William Proxmire and others picked up the torch. She shows how Senator Proxmire and President Ronald Reagan worked to gain support for the ratification of the Genocide Convention (Chapter 7). In the rest of the book, she mainly focuses on individual genocides and the U.S. response in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo.
5886366	/m/0fbwdm	The Feast of the Drowned	Stephen Cole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 When a Naval cruiser sinks in mysterious circumstances in the North Sea all aboard are lost. Rose is saddened to learn that the brother of her friend, Keisha, was among the dead. And yet he appears to them as a ghostly apparition, begging to be saved from the coming feast of the drowned.
5886510	/m/0fbwt0	The Resurrection Casket	Justin Richards		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On a shadowy planet called Starfall, where no modern technology works, the Doctor and Rose become involved in a quest for a lost treasure that belonged to Hamlek Glint — the Resurrection Casket, supposedly the key to eternal life. But the TARDIS has stopped working too...
5886604	/m/0fbx41	I am a Dalek	Gareth Roberts		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Doctor and Rose Tyler are preparing to enjoy a visit to Earth's Moon when they discover that the TARDIS has, on its own volition, taken them instead to a small seaside town in present-day England. In this town, the dead shell of a Dalek has been discovered by archaeologists in 1st century Roman ruins on the site of a decommissioned Cold War-era military bunker. The Doctor and Rose are separated for a time when the TARDIS dematerializes with Rose still outside the ship. The Doctor finds himself at the dig where he befriends one of the archaeologists and, upon recognizing the Dalek, attempts to disarm the dead creature by giving his new friend custody of the Dalek's gun arm. Rose, meanwhile, witnesses a traffic accident in which a young woman named Kate is apparently killed. However, Kate proceeds to regenerate in much the same fashion as the Doctor, which causes her hair colour to change and — unknown to Rose — her intellect to increase exponentially. Along with Kate's newfound intelligence comes a confusing desire to exterminate every human on the planet, starting with her ex-boyfriend. The Doctor and Rose eventually reunite at the dig site, where Kate reactivates the Dalek, causing it to also regenerate. Rose and the confused Kate escape, while the Doctor tries to unsuccessfully disable the revived Dalek before it can go on a killing spree. The Dalek tracks down and kills the archeologist in order to reacquire its gun arm. Meanwhile, Kate's personality becomes more Dalek-like, and she eventually unites with the Dalek, who bargains for the use of a time travel technology, with Earth as the bargaining chip. It is revealed that Kate is a form of Dalek-human hybrid, the result of an attempt by Daleks who came to Earth millennia earlier (because of the Time War) and injected a "Dalek Factor" into humanity. However, only a few individuals retained it in the present day. With encouragement from Rose and the Doctor, Kate's human personality manages to reassert itself against the Dalek influence and she destroys the Dalek, returning to her pre-accident self.
5889981	/m/0fc17z	The War in 2020	Ralph Peters	1991-02	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The War in 2020 takes place in a future dystopia dominated by an alliance of Japan, South Africa and militant Islamic states. The novel describes the attempts by the United States to defend the remnants of the (still existing) Soviet Union against attacks by the Japanese alliance. The novel begins in the year 2005, when the South African Defense Force (equipped and trained by Japan) seizes mineral-rich areas of the Shaba Province in Zaire. The United States sends the XVIII Airborne Corps along with associated air and naval assets to repel the aggression. The American expeditionary force is defeated due to a combination of technological inferiority (the South Africans' Japanese equipment has such innovations as onboard battle lasers), lax security (a squadron of USAF B-2 Spirit bombers is destroyed on the ground by South Africans and local guerrilla) and poor intelligence. The American collapse is so swift that the XVIII Airborne Corps attempt to surrender. When the surrender offer is ignored, the American President orders a nuclear strike on Pretoria, forcing a cease-fire and a South African withdrawal from Zaire. The political cost paid by the United States for these events, however, is very high. An African epidemic spreads home with the returning soldiers, while abroad, an economic and political conflict with Japan reduce American power and influence. This is heralded by a newspaper headline that reads: "THE END OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY". The novel's protagonist, George Taylor, is an air cavalry captain commanding an Apache gunship squadron that is attacked and destroyed on the first day of the South African offensive. Through a combination of luck, physical strength, and sheer willpower, Taylor makes his way several thousand miles through the African bush from the Shaba province to the Zairean capital, Kinshasa, where he is evacuated, but finds himself suffering from a virus named "Runciman's disease" that leaves him horribly scarred. After the war in Shaba ends, Runciman's disease spreads rapidly through the rest of the world, bringing numerous societal problems along with it. In 2008, the United States is suffering from escalating social unrest and gang violence in major cities because of the spread of Runciman's Disease. The U.S. Army is ordered into the major cities to quell unrest and to ensure the safety of basic services. Taylor is placed in command of a unit deployed to Los Angeles as part of the operation. In 2015, Mexico is occupied by the United States, and the U.S. Army is fighting a guerrilla war against Japanese-supported insurgents. Taylor commands a unit in the war, where his unconventional tactics are unleashed on an unsuspecting rebel leader. By the year 2020, the Soviet Union is collapsing from the inside-out. Quality of life for Russian citizens continues to decline. The Muslim Central Asian republics have joined forces with other Japanese-supported Islamic nations and have begun a genocidal conquest with the dual purpose of slaughtering ethnic Russians, as well as conquering the resource-wealthy territory for their Japanese masters. In order to prevent the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, the United States intervenes, secretly building up an in-theater force of experimental and secret war machines. Once unleashed, (now-Colonel) Taylor's force proves to be unexpectedly advanced technologically to the Japanese. They strike a crippling blow to forces in the region, however, the Japanese have one last trick up their sleeve: a radio-wave weapon that cripples, but does not kill, all those affected. Their forces were battered, but their resolve was intact. The American forces planned a daring counter-attack.
5893837	/m/0fc7p1	Gösta Berlings Saga	Selma Lagerlöf	1891	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The hero, Gösta Berling, is a deposed minister, who has been saved by the Mistress of Ekeby from freezing to death and thereupon becomes one of her pensioners in the manor at Ekeby. As the pensioners finally get power in their own hands, they manage the property as they themselves see fit, and their lives are filled with many wild adventures, Gösta Berling is the leading spirit, the poet, the charming personality among a band of revelers. But before the story ends, Gösta Berling is redeemed, and even the old Mistress of Ekeby is permitted to come to her old home to die.
5897399	/m/0fcgch	Officer Buckle and Gloria	Peggy Rathmann		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A rather boring police officer named Officer Buckle is assigned to take a police dog named Gloria to his safety speech at the local school. Until that time, whenever Officer Buckle tried to tell schools about safety everyone fell asleep. Then, unbeknownst to Officer Buckle (literally, behind his back), Gloria does tricks imitating the safety tip demonstrating safety rules, and Gloria is a big success. Officer Buckle enjoys the fame until he sees on a taped speech that the schoolchildren are so enthusiastic because of Gloria. He refuses to teach safety and a huge accident happens. A letter from an attentive and sweet girl, named Claire, convinces Officer Buckle to start teaching again. In the end, Officer Buckle and Gloria go to many schools and teach the students about safety together.
5898976	/m/03bxkcj	The Last Puritan	George Santayana			 Part I provides the necessary back story on the characters who shape Oliver's childhood and helps us understand the significance of Oliver’s conflict: the conflict between Oliver’s sense of duty and his “true nature”. The section begins with Nathanial Alden, Oliver’s reclusive Puritan uncle, and we are clued into his life and his philosophy. It is easy to dismiss Nathanial as a prig, but his philosophy is practical enough and his life is in such unwavering unison with his beliefs, (a unison hard to find in many of the characters) that he serves as a good example of an early American Puritan unaffected, or just escaping, the oncoming genteel tradition. The detailed caricature of Nathaniel is significant because it shows how he affects Peter's life, which in turn, affects Oliver's. Nathaniel's problem is that his beliefs are so strong that he doesn't validate any world view except his own. In the book A Philosophical Novelist, George Santayana says, "Nathaniel is an unwitting purveyor of Epicurean atomism to his half brother, accidentally encouraging in him a cynical tendency toward self indulgent agnosticism." Nathaniel fails to see Peter's potential; he is distracted by Peter's curiosity and favor for recreation and hanging out with "heathens." He sees Peter's actions as evil and feels a need to force change in the young boy's life. Nathaniel wants Peter to follow the will of God &ndash; prudent and tempered living with a respect for the social order of that time. When Peter began to go in a direction that he felt was unbecoming of a young man, Nathaniel tries to prove how loyal he is to God's will by sending Peter west to a camp for wayward youth. The first section of the novel, "Ancestry", sets the tone for the rest of the story. We see the ancestral ground work for the development of Oliver's mental conflict, his dedication to duty. In section seven of Ancestry, Harriet Alden stares down on baby Oliver and describes the portraits of four generations of family, consisting of clergymen, lawyers, merchants, and physicians. It seems as if we are being predisposed to Oliver’s inevitable struggle. Oliver's relationship to duty goes back to his grandfather Nathaniel Alden who seems to only do things out of a sense of duty. It is stated in the opening scene "If he [Nathaniel Alden] went out at all it was to perform some duty, such as to ascertain the state of his financial affairs." Peter is more inclined to be a free spirit and involve himself with pleasurable things. This gets him into trouble with his older sibling and is the catalyst for Peter’s adventures around the world. It is also important to note how Nathaniel feels about interacting with others. He sees this as nothing more than mere gossip, and the pleasantries of conversation are nothing more than staged mechanical mannerisms. We see this when both Peter and Nathaniel attend one of the Unitarian Church services. When Nathaniel is interacting with the others, you get the distinct feeling that he only does so out of duty. Piety is another form of duty for our dearly drab Nathaniel. He enjoys his Sunday ritual of going to church because, “if acquaintances met there they could decently ignore each other, or at most pass with a mute bow.” This confirms Nathaniel’s anti-social personality, being that he rarely ever leaves his home in the first place. Even art for Nathaniel is a duty he declares for those who can afford it. He believes one ought to encourage art in a new country regardless of the quality. He possesses countless works of art which he generously donates to museums then keeps the letters of gratitude to, “refute any possible insinuation that he was a miser”, which his murdered father was accused of being. Nathaniel is undoubtedly incapable of any raw emotion and relies on his sense of duty and tradition to serve as sufficient emotional constructs. When the conundrum was proposed by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, why couldn’t Nathaniel Alden open the blinds or light the gas in his house, he suggests, because he might see the pictures. This cleverly states what Nathaniel truly is, a fraudulent being. When Nathaniel decides to attend the funeral of his late Cousin Sarah Quincy, it's done to maintain the consistency of their relationship. Nathaniel says, “I feel that ones conduct ought always to be consistent to the last, and that I ought to attend her funeral.” How horribly mundane. It is only because of sheer duty that he attends his Cousin funeral, devoid of any true emotional attachment. Here Nathaniel even remarks that the undertaker has the duty not to be emotionally affected by his work. He goes on to say that if he ever goes to funerals or to church it is only from the sense of duty he retains and that he does not truly enjoy them. We see Nathaniel’s attitude invade young Peter’s mind frame. It is Nathaniel that feels it to be his duty to save Peter from his consorting with lower status individuals by sending him away. It is made clear however that Nathaniel is only doing this to fulfill his own sense of duty and when examined closer Peter is in no real danger of anything from which he should be extracted. It is also brought out that when Nathaniel does this it is, “one of the busier and happiest days of his life”. Could it be that Santayana is trying to tell us if we move through life only for the sake of being mobile or we stay still just to be in a state of stagnation that our soul is in danger of being in dire straights? In the spirit of Santayana one could say, that is for the reader to decide. Everything is duty to Nathaniel and this, despite Peters extensive traveling, is what Peter ultimately succumbs too. During Peters more mentally distressing years, when he is in his mid-thirties, we begin to see him fall into the practice of duty for duties sake. His views on marriage are a distressing prevalence of his commitment to duty. He describes his wife Harriet in a surgical way. Peter, whom his wife refers to as Dr. Alden, has a very dutiful sense of what marriage is. He says that Harriet has no sense of humor, but he doesn't care because he is only looking for peace, not companionship. He describes Harriet as “a first rate woman” and says that if he tried to fare better in finding a mate he would probably fare worse, so why not just take her. He is just like his older brother Nathaniel at this point; he is introverted, anti-social, mechanical, and cold. He does, however, respect duty, and this, for better or worse, is what he uses to validate his existence. Harriet's motives towards marriage are not altogether dissimilar from Peter's. She feels a deep sense of duty to her father, Dr. Bumstead and to her home and property. She doesn’t really want to marry Dr. Alden, but it is the most sensible thing to do, given Dr. Alden’s financial status through which she intends to preserve her home and watch over her father. When asked if she would still marry Dr. Alden if she chose to move to Boston where there are a host of other men to choose from, says she would because she has a duty to preserve her family's interests. Given that these are Oliver’s parents, the reader has an excellent precursor to what Oliver's life will be like growing up in that household. In Part II we journey with Oliver, a rather extraordinary child, through his early life. This section, as well as Part I, serves as a map from which we can trace many of the older Oliver's tendencies. Santayana starts at the absolute beginnings of Oliver's life, (his genetic formation in the womb) and with fantastic style describes and gives coherence to Oliver's earliest sensations and perceptions of a vast new universe. Santayana notes, at the beginning of this section, that from his first action (being born punctually and denying the "drowsy temptation" to remain female) every decision he was to make, was a decision he would make on the basis of duty. "In his infancy, Oliver is already strongly disposed to go over the line of healthy egoism &ndash; to assert too vigorously his dominion over the world that he occupies". Indeed it was through this assertive nature that Oliver attempted planning or structuring every event in his life &ndash; in his own way mocking chance and circumstance. But he didn't only impose his will relentlessly, he felt it his duty to do so. Duty is the inextricable force that at once propels Oliver through purposeful, practical existence, and what keeps him from ever attaining access to the more tender side of life. This tender side of life was felt by Harriet to be a fundamental flaw if learned of too early. Peter, who generally abandoned his premonitions about his wife's mothering style, left the formal aspects of Oliver's upbringing (namely, the aspects that involved planning as opposed to physical engagement) to Harriet. She felt the emotional aspects of life and learning (religion, poetry, song) not only as unimportant to his young mind, but purely detrimental. "His education mustn't begin by stuffing him with nonsense". How significant this is in identifying the roots of Oliver's sense of duty and detachment from true emotion! The little physical contact given to the young Oliver in the capacity of emotion was to be had through Irma the German governess, although this too would prove awkward in time. Oliver's young mind readily digested the material of fact, those indisputable fundamental principles void of human meddling and the confused passions of the lower sphere of the brain. But therein lies the problem for Oliver. His mind was digestive, not so much perceptive. Every piece of information he took in became true only when he digested it and moralized it. His perception was not weak though when he left it alone. In fact his perception, his senses, his memory, were all first rate &ndash; the problem resided in his heart. Even in as a man his heart would remain undeveloped. His early education was too one-sided, which was what Harriet thought best, and his lack of rounding out a full character would inevitably become his downfall. His childhood was privileged though to say the least, and the pleasures he was offered would have been the greatest joy for many a boy, if only they were offered to him as pleasures. Alas, he was forced, although not by external factors alone, to perceive everything through the lens of duty. He receives a pony, but does not ride for fun or for show, but instead out of duty to his health. Oliver excelled at school, and was the best in most categories, but formal schooling was delayed as long as possible for Oliver had always learned on his own, and needed little guidance. The scholastic system was, in Harriet's eyes, a place for him to further his sense of duty, discipline, and the routine of social interaction. It was in school though that Oliver came to a realization that would stick with him until manhood: that there was a sunny and shady side to knowledge. The sunny side was to be found in nature, geography, mathematics, and anything left untainted by the crude passions of humanity. For him "Only non-human subjects were fit for the human mind. They alone were open, friendly and rewarding". The section really reaches its peak with the meeting of Lord Jim on the Black Swan. Lord Jim was like a brother to Peter Alden, and for much of the section he represents a wholly admirable free-spirited side of life of which Oliver was largely unaccustomed. His friendship on that level would be very temporary as Oliver had to come to grips for possibly the first time that the person in his mind, in this case Jim, did not match up with the person as they were. This is yet another struggle in Oliver's perfectly imperfect existence. The experience of fear when Jim dives in the water is connected to a later section of the book as a sort of premonition in Oliver's mind, and is worth keeping in mind as you progress through the novel. In quite compressed summary, this section takes Oliver to Europe where he will further his education, and is the section where Oliver truly begins to form his own tastes. This section also marks the decline of his and Jim's friendship, which flourished in Part II, and marks the rise of his relationship with his cousin Mario. Part III begins with Peter Alden in London, where he felt strangely comfortable and at home, waiting for the arrival of Oliver and Irma. Peter arranged for Oliver to spend the first few days with Jim in Iffley and he sent Irma on to visit her old school. At the beginning of this section we see Peter, for the first time, worry about his sons future. He speaks of the money that will eventually belong to Oliver, and the problems it will cause him. Jim and Oliver arrive at the Iffley Vicarage to find the family is off at the church, where Jim's father is the minister. They jolt quickly to the church to catch the rest of the sermon. Their arrival at church pleased the Vicar and caused him to change his whole sermon. This visit to the church becomes memorable because directly after the sermon Oliver meets Rose Darnley, Jim's sister, for the first time. Oliver spends some time speaking with the Vicar alone (while Rose and Jim play in the garden), and the Vicar explains that he can see a light in Oliver's eye and that he has the higher calling. He says that Oliver is a spiritual man by nature and calls this a tragic privilege. After a meek supper Jim and Oliver leave for a two mile hike to the King's Arms Inn. There, Mrs. Bowler, the landlady made them a large supper. One the way back to the Vicarage Jim let Oliver in on a secret of his. Mrs. Bowler and Jim had been lovers and her son, Bobby, was Jim's. This news hit Oliver like a like a ton of bricks, but after reflection, he realizes that it was what should have been expected. The reader observes a steadfast and unchanging disposition towards Jim despite the shift in Oliver's perception of the reality of Jim's character. Oliver's new outlook about Jim and Mrs. Bowler are displayed through a dream that night. In the dream Oliver takes Jim and Mrs. Bowler's greed to an extreme, by insinuating that they would be willing to kill Peter or Oliver to get their money. The next morning, when he wakes up, Oliver goes down stairs and speaks to Mrs. Darnley. It is obvious that she has lived a difficult life and Oliver feels pity for her. Despite his recent feelings Oliver had towards Jim, he focused on Jim's positive qualities, with the purpose of pleasing her. Later that day Jim and Oliver went to the inn for a luncheon (which Oliver would pay for). Oliver comforted Bobby after dropping his fruit in the mud and he doctored up his bruised leg. Bobby clung to Oliver's coat and stated that he didn't want to leave, because he likes Oliver more than his family. Oliver than encountered Rose, he found himself interested in how her mind worked. She was young and her mind was not yet mature. Her mind still thought in categories and didn't believe in the necessity of a reason for something; she just believed that things simply were the way that they were. This attracted Oliver and at the end of their conversation he asked the young girl to marry him. Rose accepted this proposal and he kissed her. He wanted to run and tell Jim that they would be married, but she said no one would believe it because Oliver, himself, didn't believe it. They decided to keep it a secret until the day that they can prove it true. Oliver took his first punting lesson while travelling back to Iffley. He learned the task rather easily, like all physically dependent tasks. The action of the body seemed to restore a sense of homeostasis to his mind. "Thought is never sure of its contacts with reality; action must intervene to render the rhetoric of thought harmless and its emotions sane." [This idea is recurring in the novel. He uses bodily action to remain in contact with reality via football, rowing, and running. As he gets older he exercises less and uses his body less, thus causing pain in his thoughts and an irrational emotional state (attributing too much control to himself over the world).] Peter decides to take Oliver to see his foreign cousin at Eton, an English public school. This is when we first encounter Oliver's cousin, Mario. Mario is younger than Oliver, but he was at least his intellectual equal, perhaps even his superior. He carried on a full conversation with Peter, and Oliver listened. Despite the lack of conversation between the two boys they each felt the presence of the other. Oliver and Mario seemed, from the beginning, to be direct opposites. "[Mario] is the anti-puritan, the foil to Oliver; his destiny on earth is happiness, and the world, Santayana believes, is better off for him and his kind. At lunch the next day they all three sat and conversed until Peter began to cough and grow pale. Peter decided to stay in and rest next to a fire while Mario showed Oliver the sights. They decided to walk and talk rather than see the sights. Peter was dreading the walk down Castle Hill, but he didn't want to disappoint Mario so he decided he would dose himself with medicine before the trip. When the boys returned they got a visit from Mr Rawdon Smith, Mario's schoolmaster. They spoke of a multitude of things, but the most important topic was of Mario's staying at Eton. Mario wanted to stay there so he could see his mother on the holidays. As Mr Rawdon Smith continued to speak Peter slipped into a limp slumber in the arm chair, with his eyes closed. Mr Rawdon Smith went to shake him until he encountered Oliver's deliberately rough arm-nudge. Oliver knew that Peter had a chill and must have medicated himself with a sedative, and he also knew that the sedative had taken him over. Oliver coaxed Peter into assisting in moving him to the cab and the three of them went to a see a doctor that Mario knew. The Doctor's name was Mr. Morrison-Ely, he wasn't referred to as doctor. He advised them against travelling for a few days. Oliver decided he would go back to London, pay the bill, and bring his father his old slippers and razors. Mario decided to go with him, and Oliver gave him the task of paying for everything with his money since the money was foreign to him and he knew it would make Oliver feel as though he helped his elder cousin. Peter's health was declining. Due to his current heart issues they decided to move him to a more peaceful spot. Peter was on bed-rest and had Mildred to wait on him. This is the time that Oliver and Peter spend the most father-son time together. The two finally connect and had time to talk and exchange philosophic inquiries and viewpoints. Oliver was thinking of the upcoming school year when he received a cablegram from his mother demanding that he bring his father home immediately, or else she would come and get him. This upset Peter, he didn't understand why Oliver wrote to his mother to explain the situation. This ruined everything, because he was unable to move he had no options. He had Oliver write a letter to his mother, stating that he was better and that Oliver was sailing home. He made his preparations and then just had to close his eyes and die. Oliver meets up with his mother, who exclaims that everything is wrong, just like Peter predicted. Mrs. Alden is having difficulty dealing with the fact that she was in a strange land, her husband is dead, and her son is going off to college. Mrs. Alden found a letter among Peter's business papers. The letter was from Mario wishing Peter to get well, it also thanked Peter for paying for his schooling. The letter also spoke of Oliver and the interest the two showed in each other foreshadowed their future involvement in each other's lives. Mrs. Alden was no longer a match for Oliver. Any position she may take would be beaten down by the young puritan. She bounced from one automatically elicited thought to the next and Oliver understood the irrationality in his mother. This is the point where Oliver and his mother really break apart. "His allegiance in any case must be to his own conscience, to his own reason. On that basis he was not in the least afraid of the future-fool's paradise or virtuous hell, or whatever you might call it." On the ship back to America Oliver finds some time to escape from his mother and spend some time alone. He re-reads Mario's letter and begins to ponder on the people who think so highly of him. He feels as though his mother doesn't love him and he thinks that she won't let anyone else love him either; but he convinces himself that the relationship he and Mario have can only be explained by love. After reaching this realization he is about to go back to his mother, when out of nowhere, a hand grabbed his shoulder. It was Jim Darnley. He wandered how and why Jim was here. It was clear that he had travelled many miles without sleep to come to the ship that he knew Oliver would be on. It was as though Jim felt if Oliver got away to America he would never see him, or more importantly, his money again. Jim sneaked on board without a ticket, but he knew the Bursar and was allowed to work off his passage. Lucky for Jim, there happened to be a large, double cabin that was open and had been paid for by an unknown source. Oliver understands Jim's reliance on him, but he knew that he should not avoid him. Jim's appearance transformed overnight. He was now clean, shaven, and well-dressed. Jim wanted to spend some time with Oliver like the old days, but Oliver knew he couldn't be around Jim on this trip. His mother would be uproarious if she found out that Jim was on the ship at all. Jim offered Oliver some of his father's books and keep-sakes from the "Black Swan." Jim tells Oliver of his newly planned life. He is to marry a new girl name Bella Iggins, and they plan on acting to pay the bills until he gets his money for the ship and they can settle at a riverside cottage. Oliver knew better than to believe in Jim's plan, he doubted he would get married, but was sure he would be divorced soon afterward if he did follow through with the plan. The rest of the trip he hardly saw Jim Darnley. He felt as though Jim was afraid that he would forget him, but Oliver was ever too loyal to turn his back on a promise. "Jim is to be the Goethen good intentions." He knew that, despite what he now understood about Jim's, selfish character, he would not be the same person without him. Oliver understands that the effect that Jim had on him was over. Now he was merely attached to him through a sense of duty, which is how he feels he is attached to everything through this same sense of relentless duty. At the end of this section we get a peek inside Jim's head. When he speaks of his marriage he doesn't speak of love and commitment, he speaks of how he will ask Oliver to be his best man (even though he knows Oliver will be too busy and won't be able to come), for the purpose of getting a big wedding gift. He thinks about how Bobby, Rose, and his future children will all be taken care of by the soundest Puritan he had ever known, Oliver Alden. The first part of The Last Pilgrimage recalls Oliver's journey around the world with Mario, which had turned out to be a disappointment for Oliver. Like his father, Oliver could not find peace anywhere in his travels. So, Oliver returns to Oxford and decides to ultimately return to America. The next part occurs in 1914 at the start of World War I. Mario visits Oliver to inform him that he is going to fight with the French. Oliver protests this decision, and argues that war is foolish, but Mario proceeds to tell Oliver that he doesn't understand such things and joins anyway. Oliver then returns to Iffley to discover that Jim Darnley has been killed. In the third part we witness Oliver in a touching moment comforting Jim Darnley's mother, but he is only able to do so because he mimics Jim. Oliver again proves his goodness by proposing to adopt Jim Darnley's bastard son, but Jim's sister Rose crushes this proposal. All they really need is Oliver's money, and Rose says that Oliver wouldn't be capable of raising the boy in any other manner. Following these events Oliver decides to volunteer as an ambulance driver in France, but is unable to handle the stress. He realizes that "his soul has been born crippled." So, he returns discouraged to Iffley. Following the advice of Mrs. Darnley, he opens a home for convalescent officers at Court Place, which places his wealth, as always, at the center of his relationships. By this time, America had entered the war. Oliver, driven as always by duty, returned to America to enlist to fight for America (despite his earlier belief that the war was wrong). Santayana begins to mention more and more Oliver's psychological issues. Upon joining the army, Oliver ignores his personal problems, and "he threw off this 'depression' as again they called it." He also realizes the correlations between football and the military. He visits his mother for what would be the last time, and Irma is horrified that he is going to war against her own country. His mother becomes a devout patriot and Irma eventually leaves the Alden household. Mrs. Alden's former lover and close friend, Letitia Lamb, takes Irma's place. During this time, Mario is wounded and stays with the Darnley women on Oliver's behalf. Rose develops a crush for Mario. The fifth part again portrays Oliver as depressed and unable to cope with war. He was no longer a capable officer and "the authorities were "annoyed at his frequent illnesses." He is sent away for recuperation to Paris. Then enters a prostitute and old "friend" of Mario's looking for money, whom Oliver pities and gives 1000 francs. She then attempts to seduce him, but he realizes that he is incapable of making love to a woman, a realization brought on by him tasting her sardine breath. The fact that Oliver was offended at this is secondary to the idea that the smell and lustful embrace served to pull his head from the clouds, and to bring before his face the true nature of the woman whom he had seen, as little as five minutes prior, drop the masque and embody the very symbol of the meek; while he took on that of the man of ample piety. Part six tells of Oliver returning to duty sick and depressed. He was "thin, sallow, and tired" and "he couldn't sleep well at night, and seemed to be half asleep and dreaming all day." His commanding officers realize that his depression has made him unfit for service, and send him to a nursing home. While there he realizes that he is not free, and makes the decision to marry. Recall that Peter's life was wrought by similar circumstances, but realized a different outcome. In part seven he returns to Iffley to propose to Rose Darnley, and in doing so finds out that Mr. Darnley has died. He proposes to Rose but is turned down. In the following episode, Oliver realizes that he probably won't marry. The only thing that might make him happy "must be all perfection and all beauties and all happiness." In the conclusion of The Last Puritan, we found out that Oliver returned to his military service but was killed in a vehicle crash. This part tells us of Mario returning to Iffley to speak with the Mrs. Darnley and Rose. Apparently, his old friend Tom Piper had become a doctor in the military, and upon seeing Oliver had died was terribly sad (something which affirms that Tom was Oliver's true friend in this story). Mario cannot help but notice how unappreciative the Darnley's were of Oliver, despite all that Oliver had done for them. Mario himself is terribly distressed. The tale ends with the reader realizing that Mario had matured, when he realizes that Rose had a crush on him. He thinks about "taming the shrew," but after playing with the idea realizes that he's past such meanderings. He becomes a moral creature through natural self-knowledge. The Darnley's remain crude and disrespectful of Oliver. Rose begins to weep (probably in Mario refusing her) and Mrs. Darnley assumes that she is mourning Oliver. "No need breaking your heart over a young man who's dead and gone," she remarks to Rose. But, she admits, he was a kind gentleman.
5907986	/m/0fc_75	Benjamin Button	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1922-05-27	{"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Benjamin is born with the physical appearance of a 70-year-old man, already able to speak. His father Roger invites neighborhood boys to play with him and orders him to play with children's toys, but Benjamin only obeys to please his father. At five, Benjamin is sent to kindergarten but is quickly withdrawn after he repeatedly falls asleep during child activities. When Benjamin turns 12, the Button family realizes that he is aging backward. At the age of 18, Benjamin enrolls in Yale College but having run out of hair dye on the day of registration, is sent home by officials, who think he is a 50-year-old lunatic. In 1880, Benjamin is 20, his father gives him a control of Roger Button & Co. Wholesale Hardware. He meets Hildegarde Moncrief, a daughter of General Moncrief, and falls in love with her at the first sight. Hildegarde mistakes Benjamin for a 50-year old younger brother of Roger Button, and without realizing the fact of Benjamin's abnormality, the two get married six months later. Years later, Benjamin's business has been a great success, but his family life hasn't been well for him. Benjamin starts to get tired of Hildegarde because she's a nagging woman that is no longer beautiful as before. His family life is so boring that he joins the Spanish-American War in 1898. He had a great success in the military, ranked up to lieutenant colonel, and rewarded with a medal. He then quits the military because his company requires his care. In 1910, Benjamin turns over control of his company to his son, Roscoe, and enrolls at Harvard University, having the appearance of a twenty-year-old. His first year at Harvard is a great success, and he is dominant in American football, notably obtaining revenge against Yale for his earlier unpleasant experience. However, by the time Benjamin reaches his last 2 years, he is a weak sixteen-year-old, unable to play football and barely able to cope with the academic load. After graduation, Benjamin returns home, only to learn his wife has moved to Italy. He lives with Roscoe, who treats him very sternly, making Benjamin call him "Uncle" in front of his house guests. As the years progress, Benjamin turns from a moody teenager into a young child. Eventually Roscoe has a child that later attends kindergarten with Benjamin. After kindergarten, Benjamin slowly begins to lose memory of his earlier life. His memory fades away to the point where he cannot remember anything except his nurse. Then everything fades to darkness.
5908106	/m/0fc_f1	Simpatico	Sam Shepard			 As youths in Azusa, Vinnie, Carter, and Rosie pull off a racing scam, substituting winners for plodders and winning big bucks on long odds. When an official uncovers the scam, they set him up for blackmail. The story jumps ahead for twenty years, when Carter and Rosie are married, successful racers in Kentucky, who are about to sell their prize stallion, Simpatico. Vinnie is a drunk in Pomona. He decides to make a play for Rosie, and lures Carter to California, where he steals his wallet and heads for Kentucky with the original blackmail material. Carter begs Vinnie's friend, a grocery clerk named Cecilia, to follow Vinnie and get the material back.
5908247	/m/0fc_lx	On Stranger Tides	Tim Powers	1988-10-19	{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book follows the exploits of John "Jack Shandy" Chandagnac, who travels to the new world after the death of his puppeteer father to confront his uncle, who apparently has made off with the family inheritance. During the voyage, he gets to know a woman named Beth Hurwood and her father Benjamin Hurwood, an Oxford professor. Before they arrive, their ship is waylaid by pirates and, with the help of the professor and his assistant, the captain is killed and Chandagnac is forced to join the pirate crew. The reader discovers a sinister plot being concocted by the professor involving his dead wife, his living daughter, the Fountain of Youth, and Blackbeard. Chandagnac, now known as "Jack Shandy", must put a stop to these plans and save Beth Hurwood.
5909618	/m/0fd1_6	Deathtrap	Ira Levin			 ACT I, SCENE 1 Sidney Bruhl, an accomplished writer, has had a series of box office flops and is having trouble writing the next play. When he reads a play by Clifford Anderson, a younger writer, he decides to steal the script and kill him. SCENE 2 Clifford stops by Sidney's office to learn what he thinks of his play. While asking Clifford questions that allude to murder, Sidney kills him as Sidney's wife Myra looks on in horror. Sidney wraps Clifford's body in a rug and discusses how he plans to take credit for Clifford's play. SCENE 3 As Sidney returns from disposing of Clifford's body, psychic Helga ten Dorp visits to tell Sidney and Myra that she is receiving bad vibes from the house. Helga wanders around the house revealing only trivial insights. When she leaves, Sidney is elated that Helga has not discovered the murder. As he goes to turn off the lights, Clifford, covered in mud, snatches him from behind, attack Sidney as Helga had predicted he would. Myra, shocked by the evening's events, collapses, apparently the victim of a heart attack. Clifford confirms Myra's death and exclaims to Sidney that their plan has been successful. Clifford's murder had been staged to shock and kill Myra. ACT II, SCENE 1 Two weeks have elapsed. Clifford is working on his manuscript. Sidney continues to suffer from writer's block. Porter Milgrim, Sidney's attorney, tells Sidney he has seen Clifford locking his manuscript away and tells Sidney not to trust Clifford. Sidney surreptitiously reads Clifford's manuscript and learns that Clifford is writing a play called Deathtrap that reveals their whole plot for Myra's death. Sidney confronts Clifford, who persuades him that the murder was so clever they will never be suspected. SCENE 2 Helga once again tells Sidney that she has a bad feeling about Clifford. She leaves, and Sidney telephones Clifford to invite him to visit and see the progress Sidney has been making on the second act of his play. Sidney asks Clifford to act out parts of the second act, which includes a violent struggle. Sidney reveals that the struggle was to produce evidence that he needed to kill Clifford and that he plans to burn the manuscript of Deathtrap. Sidney shoots at Clifford but finds that the bullets in his gun are blanks. Clifford aims a gun at Sidney and handcuffs Sidney to a chair. The Handcuffs prove fake, and Sidney escapes, grabs a crossbow, and shoots Clifford. Imagining that the fight is over, Sidney starts to telephone the police, but Clifford rises up behind him, and pulls the arrow from his own body, and stabs Sidney. Both die. SCENE 3 Helga and Porter wandering through the room as she reveals the events that led to the deaths. They discuss how the story would make an excellent thriller. They begin to argue about which of them should claim authorship of the play. The curtain falls.
5913404	/m/0fd87s	Skybreaker	Kenneth Oppel	2005-07-20	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Matt Cruse has been stationed on the Flotsam, an old cargo ship. The Flotsam is his training vessel. All Airship Academy students are assigned a training vessel for two weeks, he is assigned to partake in journeys made by the training vessel. During one trip, the ship flies through the Devil's Fist, a permanent storm in the Indian Ocean. After several dangerous maneuvers through wind drafts, the Flotsam levels. A vessel, drifting at 20,000 feet, is suddenly spotted from the crow's nest. Captain Tritus deduces that it is the Hyperion, a long-lost ship built for billionaire Theodore Grunel that was supposedly carrying great riches. Tritus foolishly attempts to go tow the ship; however, he and most the crew are stricken with altitude sickness. Despite Tritus's protests, Matt, the sole crew member unaffected by the altitude, pilots the ship down and steers for the nearest port, saving the crew in the process. Matt returns to the Airship Academy where he is approaching finals and is told by the principal that he is failing and needs to study to pass the exams. Matt then gets a request to meet a strange man named John Rath requesting the coordinates of the Hyperion. When the man is revealed to be a criminal in search of the Hyperion's loot, Matt escapes with a gypsy girl named Nadira. Matt, Kate, Nadira and Kate's chaperone Ms. Simpkins hire a man named Hal Slater, an accomplished pilot, to fly them to the Hyperion. The group travels several days toward Skyberia, a cold and desolate area around the Antarctic. They discover a large, squid-like creature that lives in the sky when it gets trapped in the ship's rudder. One of the crew dies while trying to get it out. Hal then allows Matt to become part of the crew. Kate and Hal begin to get along, causing Matt to feel jealous. Nadira and Matt kiss in the crow's nest shortly after. Matt and Kate's relationship begin to falter. They find out that there's a homing signal coming from the ship, and Hal immediately suspects Nadira because of her secretive nature and because she's a gypsy. Matt realizes Rath put the beacon in the lining of his duffel. He interrupts Hal's rough search of Nadira's cabin where it is revealed her father was Szpirglas. Hal locks Nadira in her cabin for a day, but Matt and Kate get him to let her out. Soon after, they come across the "Hyperion". While exploring the skies in the ship, they learn from Grunel's diary that a man named "B" is searching for the ship to plunder it. They dismiss "B" as a product of Grunel's diseased mind, but later find out that "B" is Barton, Rath's employer who wished to steal Grunel's work years ago, as Grunel was a brilliant inventor and scientist, and also studied rare animals. It is revealed that Rath, Barton, and the rest of the group are also on an airship headed toward the Hyperion. Aboard Hal's ship, the Sagarmatha, the gang finds the Hyperion and climbs aboard. They find a whole collection of rare animals and a blueprint of a machine that produces hydrium. Knowing that the blueprints will be worth millions, the gang tries to leave, but is stranded on the ship when Rath and his men shoot at the Sagarmatha. Kate later reveals she knew that Matt and Nadira kissed and they made up. After a battle onboard (during which the animals strike Rath and Barton, killing Barton but leaving Rath's fate unknown), the gang manages to escape the Hyperion in an ornithopter before the ship is destroyed. They lose the blueprints, but ultimately get away with 40 gold bars, found in a compartment of the ornithopter.
5913749	/m/0fd8r5	How I Live Now	Meg Rosoff	2004-08-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Fifteen-year-old Manhattanite Elizabeth (who goes by the name of Daisy) is sent to stay with cousins on a remote farm in the English countryside during the outbreak of a fictional third world war (WWIII) of the 21st century. Though enthusiastic about moving away from an evil stepmother who is with her child, Daisy is homesick at first. This only lasts for a short while before she and her extended family become close, and Daisy begins to embrace her new home. Daisy soon finds herself falling in love with cousin Edmond and, after realizing that the affection is mutual, begins a relationship with him. Meanwhile, the family receives news that Daisy's aunt Penn is stranded in Oslo. During this period of time, terrorists attack from an unknown enemy who later occupies England. The war becomes increasingly difficult for Daisy and her family as it affects their lives to a greater extent, eventually leading to food shortages and lack of other resources. One day, the farm is taken over by soldiers who separate the boys from the girls by sending them away to live at separate homes, and then separate farms. Daisy and Piper are forced to put survival as their top priority and cannot look for the male members of their family. After the war ends, Daisy must deal with putting the pieces of her life back together and overcoming the terrible experience of war as she reunites with the forever changed members of her family, including a physically and emotionally scarred Edmond. The Meg Rosoff written young adult novel How I Live Now has been made into a film by Director Kevin Macdonald featuring Irish actress Saoirse Ronan playing the role of Daisy, with George MacKay as Edmond, Tom Holland as Isaac and Harley Bird as Piper. How I Live Now is currently in post production and is set for a 2013 release.
5915106	/m/0fdbbw	Dragon Venom	Lawrence Watt-Evans		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Arlian has discovered how to kill the dragons, he now faces an all-out war between dragons and humans. The Dragon Society is split between those loyal to the dragons and those loyal to themselves. Arlian's quest for vengeance will find many secrets of the past, including the origins of the dragons greatest foes...the gods. He gives dragon venom to his stewards wife who is carrying a child. She becomes a dragonheart (a human carrying a baby dragon) and her baby becomes a god. To protect the new born god Arlian battles the dragons killing the three dragons who killed his family and turned him into a dragon heart. He becomes badly injured by dragon venom (the only substance that can harm a dragonheart) so mages cut open his heart and remove the dragon within him. He then awakens to find the young god has healed him and at long last ends his quest for vengeance. At the end of the story Arlian is joined by his closest friends and for the first time in a long time feels the emotion of love.
5916166	/m/0fdcsq	The Cocktail Party	T. S. Eliot			 Edward and Lavinia Chamberlayne are separated after five years of marriage. She leaves Edward just as they are about to host a cocktail party at their London home, and he has to come up with an explanation for why Lavinia is not present, in order to keep up social appearances. Lavinia is brought back by a mysterious Unidentified Guest at the party, who turns out to be a psychiatrist whom Edward and Lavinia both consult. They each learn that they have been deceiving themselves and must face life's realities. They learn that their life together, though hollow and superficial, is preferable to life apart. This message is difficult for the play's third main character, Edward's mistress, to accept. She, with the psychiatrist's urging, also moves on towards a life of greater honesty and salvation and becomes a Christian martyr in Africa. Two years later, Edward and Lavinia, now better adjusted, host another cocktail party.
5916209	/m/0fdcvs	Taronga	Victor Kelleher	1986	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book begins two years after the Last Days. Ben lives with a callous man named Greg, who uses Ben's powers, which he calls "the Call", to attract game for hunting. Ben feels guilty about leading the animals to their death but faces a beating from Greg if he does not comply. When he finally escapes, he promises not to use the Call again. He breaks this promise less than a day later when he is pursued by a man on horseback. Ben decides to return to Sydney, where he once lived with his parents. He travels first on foot, then by bike, using mountain roads to avoid local gang activity. He is joined by a stray dog. As he draws closer to his destination, he hears the Call of something wild and ferocious. When he reaches the city, he realizes that the Call is coming from Taronga Zoo. He then makes up his mind to travel to Taronga zoo to find out what creature could still be so wild and free. In Sydney, Ben is chased by a gang. The dog sacrifices itself to give Ben the opportunity to escape, but Ben is still captured. The gang takes Ben to Taronga Park Zoo, which houses another gang of survivors and is guarded by tigers and other predators. The gang wishes to break into the zoo and plans to use Ben as bait. Inside, Ben is almost attacked by two tigers, Raja and Ranee. He is saved by Ellie, an Aboriginal girl who is in charge of the big cats. She takes him to their leader, Molly, who allows Ben to stay after he proves that he can also round up and cage the cats. Ben quickly earns the trust of all of the animals except for Raja, the male tiger, who hates Ben for restricting his physical freedom. Although Ben originally sees Taronga as an ideal community, he soon discovers that Molly is a ruthless and selfish leader. When the Sydney gang tries to break into the zoo, Molly divulges her plan to burn Taronga to the ground before she lets another gang occupy it. Ben and Ellie decide to act. Ben convinces the rival gang that he wants to help them break in and they set a date for an ambush. During the next week, Ben and Ellie cut a hole in the outer fence and disguise it with ivy. On the day of the ambush, they set the animals free. The Sydney gang and the Taronga gang fight. Ben and Ellie are the only survivors. Ben once again swears that he will no longer use the Call. When he is cornered by Raja, he keeps that promise. But Raja does not attack him; instead, he gives Ben a playful swat. Raja and Ranee head towards the Blue Mountains and are followed by Ben and Ellie.
5916631	/m/0fddf1	Cover Her Face	P. D. James	1962	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story opens with a dinner party hosted by Mrs. Eleanor Maxie at Martingale, a mediaeval manor house in the (fictional) Essex village of Chadfleet. Mrs. Maxie's son and daughter, Stephen Maxie and Deborah Riscoe, are both at the party. Also present are Dr. Charles Epps, the vicar Bernard Hicks, Miss Alice Liddell, who is the Warden at St. Mary's Refuge for Girls, and Catherine Bowers, a guest at the estate who is in a relationship with Stephen Maxie. Serving at the party is Sally Jupp, an unmarried mother with an infant son, who was employed by Mrs. Maxie at the recommendation of Miss Liddell. Stephen Maxie champions Sally during dinner, and afterwards Deborah Riscoe cryptically predicts that the young servant will cause trouble. During dinner, it is also mentioned that the Maxie's elderly domestic servant, Martha Bultitaft, is not very pleased with Sally Jupp. On the Thursday before St. Cedd's church fete, which takes place every year on the grounds of Martingale, Deborah goes to London and visits Stephen at the hospital where he works. There she sees her brother talking with Sally, who looks carefully dressed in a grey suit. Stephen says that Sally brought him some of their father's tablets, which she found on old Mr. Maxie's bed. Stephen suspects that old Mr. Maxie manages to deceive Martha, pretending to take his tablets when he is simply hiding them in his bed. Stephen again praises Sally and tells Deborah to take the tablets and put them in the medicine cupboard at their father's room. Deborah is suspicious as to why Sally came to Stephen with the tablets and not to Mrs. Maxie or herself. When Sally returns to Martingale, she taunts Martha about the tablets and her care for old Mr. Maxie. On the day of the fete, Sally shows up wearing exactly the same dress that Deborah is wearing, with the same accessories. Guests are shocked into silence, but Deborah appears unconcerned. Later that day, Sally announces that Stephen has asked her to marry him. Miss Liddell is distraught by this announcement and her unkind words are met by abuse, with Sally calling her a "sex-starved old hypocrite" and threatening to reveal her secrets. The following day, Martha complains that Sally has overslept again. When there is no response to repeated knocking at her bedroom, Stephen and Felix (a close friend of Deborah's, who is staying at the house) go up a ladder to enter the room through the window, and find Sally Jupp's lifeless body. Sally Jupp is found to have died of manual strangulation by a right-handed person. She is also found to have been drugged. The local constabulary request that Scotland Yard send an experienced homicide detective, and Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh and Detective Sergeant Martin arrive. They interview the family members and guests of the Martingale household. They also interview Miss Liddell, Dr. Epps, some neighbours of the Maxies, and Sally's aunt and uncle. It emerges that Sally is already secretly married to James Ritchie, who has a successful job in Venezuela, but returns to England after her death. Sally has been saving money for her husband's return. She blackmails her uncle (who unbeknownst to her had spent her modest trust fund) into giving her 30 pounds. She pretended to be an unmarried mother because revealing the marriage would jeopardise her husband's job and she likes to 'play with people'. She revealed Stephen Maxie's proposal of marriage for the same reason, although it is notable that she did not accept it. Martha had been regularly drugging Sally at night so that she would oversleep, and be discredited, and eventually dismissed from Martingale. It is Mrs. Eleanor Maxie who eventually confesses to the murder of Sally Jupp after Dalgliesh reveals everyone's movements on the night. It is clear, through a process of elimination, that only she could be the culprit. She goes to prison, having been found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, and Deborah is left alone in the house. Martha goes to stay with a friend in Herefordshire. Old Mr. Maxie, an invalid throughout the story, dies shortly before Mrs Maxie confesses; it becomes clear that she was waiting for his death before doing so. The novel ends with a meeting between Adam Dalgliesh and Deborah Riscoe. Adam gives Deborah a lift back to Martingale. Deborah tells him that Catherine will probably marry James Ritchie, thus providing a mother for Sally Jupp's son Jimmy (named after his father). It is hinted that a relationship will develop between Adam and Deborah.
5918875	/m/0fdj0_	The Brothers	C. J. Cherryh		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The Brothers is a story of two valleys, Gleann Gleatharan, ruled by Cinnfhail of Dun Gorm, and Gleann Fiach, ruled by Sliabhin of Dun Mhor. Separating the two valleys is a Sidhe-wood, which Dun Gorm respectfully keeps out of, but in which Dun Mhor defiantly hunts. The Sidhe have blessed Gleann Gleatharan with peace and good fortune, but cursed Gleann Fiach with bad luck and misery. Sliabhin is also cursed by the Sidhe for committing fratricide, killing his older brother Gaelan to seize Dun Mhor and Gaelan's queen, Moralach. Moralach had two children, Caith and later Brian, both during Gaelan's reign, but Caith was exiled soon after birth to live with Gaelan's cousin Hagan of Dun na nGall. After Sliabhin became king, Moralach hanged herself. Caith grows up believing that Gaelan is his father and when he learns that Sliabhin murdered Gaelan, and that he has a younger brother, now in Sliabhin's hands, he returns to revenge his father's death and rescue Brian. As he passes through Gleann Gleatharan, he is told that Sliabhin is his real father who raped Moralach, and this increases his resolve to rid Dun Mhor of Sliabhin and free Brian. Cinnfhail, uneasy that Caith's meddling may disturb Gleann Gleatharan's peace, reluctantly lends Caith his fay horse Dathuil. Dathuil takes Caith straight to the Sidhe wood where he meets Nuallan, of the Sidhe Fair Folk, and Dubhain, a mischievous shapeshifting pooka. They bargain with Caith, who ends up losing everything he has, including Dathuil, in exchange for their help in overthrowing Sliabhin and freeing Brian. Caith and Dubhain, alternating between a black horse and a boy, set off for Dun Mhor. Meanwhile, Cinnfhail's son, Raghallach, rides to the Sidhe-wood to find and assist Caith, but is stopped by Nuallan. At Dun Mhor, Caith and Dubhain are let in and taken to Sliabhin, who shows them Raghallach, captured and tortured. But a discrete smile from Raghallach reveals to Caith that it is actually Nuallan in disguise. Caith and Dubhain themselves are imprisoned, and Caith bargains away his scruples for help from Dubhain in freeing them and rescuing Brain. Dubhain, as the horse, takes Caith through the locked door and down to a cellar containing Brain locked in a cage, a shackled and disfigured Raghallach/Nuallan, and Sliabhin. The chains holding Raghallach suddenly fall away and Nuallan escapes with Brian, leaving Caith to confront Sliabhin. Caith kills Sliabhin, escapes the dun and is taken by Dubhain back to the Sidhe-wood. In the wood, Caith sees a group of Fair Folk around a sleeping Brian, but they won't let Caith near his brother. Nearby Raghallach sits on his horse, frozen-in-time, and Nuallan puts Brian in Raghallach's arms, letting Raghallach believe that he rescued Brian from Dun Mhor. Nuallan then takes Caith into Faery from where Caith looks down on Dun Gorm and sees an older Brian playing happily. Nuallan offers to take Brian's happiness and give it to Caith, but Caith refuses. Caith is returned to the wood where he is cursed with torment for the rest of his life for committing patricide. Not permitted to return to Dun Gorm or Dun Mhor and with nowhere else to go, the wayward Dubhain appears at his side and offers to be his companion. Caith reluctantly agrees.
5920663	/m/0fdm57	Wizard of the Pigeons	Robin Hobb	1986-01-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The plot focuses on the homeless character 'Wizard' and his battle with a malignant force from his forgotten past. In order to survive, Wizard must rely on his powerful gift of 'Knowing'. This allows him to know the truth of things, to receive fortunes and to reveal to people the answers to their troubles. Aiding him in his battle for survival is the enigmatic 'Cassie' and several other people from the streets.
5924321	/m/0fdth0	The Stars Are Cold Toys	Sergey Lukyanenko			 During a usual trading flight Pyotr found a Counter on his craft who called himself Karel and, most importantly, made it through the jump unhurt (ironically, the alien accomplished this by going into a self-induced coma caused by division by zero). Standing orders require Pyotr to destroy the ship and all evidence of the alien's survival, as this would eliminate the Conclave's need in Humanity. The alien requested an informal meeting with Andrey Khrumov — Pyotr's grandfather and a known political scientist, also a great patriot of Humanity, biased against the Strong races. A fleet of Alary has captured a small but deadly scout of an unknown civilization. Its pilot was killed, but without a doubt it was a human being. Studying the memory of the scout showed that another civilization had transferred its planetary system to a region of space close by, perhaps escaping a cataclysm. Strangely enough, they shaped their continents to resemble a perfect circle and square — so Andrey Khrumov called them Geometers. The new civilization seems to be strong enough to take on the entire Conclave, as the single scout ship managed to wipe out two-thirds of one of the strongest Alary fleets before being tractored into the Alary flagship. This is a chance for Weak races to improve their positions... but also a threat for Earth, since on receiving the information the Strong races would destroy it to prevent its possible alliance with a biologically-identical race. A conspiracy of four races decide to carry out a reconnaissance mission. Pyotr Khrumov agrees to enter a symbiosis with a Kualkua, who morphes him to look like the dead pilot, gives him the language of Geometers, and temporarily erases his memory...
5925685	/m/0fdw6k	Pal Joey	John O'Hara			 Based on original 1940 book ;Act I In Chicago in the late 1930s, singer/dancer Joey Evans, a charming "heel" with big plans, schemes to get his own nightclub. He auditions for an emcee job at a second-rate nightclub ("You Mustn't Kick It Around"). Joey gets the job and begins rehearsals with the chorus girls and club singer Gladys Bumps. Joey meets young and naïve Linda English outside a pet shop, and he impresses her with grandiose lies about his career. Linda innocently falls for Joey's line ("I Could Write a Book"). As the chorus girls are doing a song-and-dance number at the club that night ("Chicago"), Linda arrives with a date. Wealthy married socialite Vera Simpson arrives at the club and shows a definite interest in Joey. Joey plays hard-to-get and insults Vera, who walks out. Mike, the club owner, fires Joey, but Joey, believing Vera will be back, strikes a deal: if Vera doesn't come back within the next few days, Joey will leave without pay. The chorus girls continue with the show ("That Terrific Rainbow"); Linda, having witnessed Joey's caddish behavior, has left the club. Vera doesn't return, so Joey is fired. When Linda refuses to answer his calls, Joey calls Vera ("What is a Man"). After his last night as emcee, Vera picks Joey up from the club and they start an affair ("Happy Hunting Horn"). Vera is glowing in the romance and sets Joey up with an apartment and expensive clothes ("Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"). Joey and Vera run into Linda while shopping for clothes for Joey, leaving Vera jealous and Linda distraught. Vera gives Joey his own nightclub, "Chez Joey", and Joey looks forward to rising to the top ("Pal Joey"/"Joey Looks to the Future" ballet). ;Act II The chorus girls and singers from the old club have relocated to "Chez Joey", and they rehearse for the opening performance ("The Flower Garden of My Heart"). Melba, an ambitious reporter, interviews Joey, recalling her interviews with various celebrities, including Gypsy Rose Lee ("Zip") [In the 2008 revival, Gladys plays a "reporter" in a skit during the floor show at Chez Joey, performing "Zip" as a striptease]. Ludlow Lowell, Gladys' old flame, introduces himself as an agent with papers that Joey unthinkingly signs as the rehearsal continues ("Plant You Now, Dig You Later"). In Joey's apartment the next morning, Joey and Vera reflect on the pleasures of their affair ("In Our Little Den"). Linda overhears Gladys and Lowell plotting to use the papers Joey signed to blackmail Vera. [In the 2008 revival, Joey fires Gladys, and to get back at him, she conspires with Mike, the club manager, to blackmail Vera. Mike is forced into the scheme because Gladys threatens to have him fired because he is gay.] Linda calls Vera, who initially distrusts Linda; Vera confronts Joey, asking what his relationship is with Linda, and Joey responds defensively ("Do It the Hard Way"). Linda comes to the apartment to convince Vera, and Vera, seeing Linda's sincerity, now believes her. Vera and Linda agree that Joey is not worth the trouble ("Take Him"). Vera calls her friend the police commissioner, who arrests Gladys and Lowell. Vera throws Joey out and closes "Chez Joey" ("Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" reprise). Joey runs into Linda again outside the pet shop, and she invites him to dinner with her family. He refuses the invitation, and, saying she hopes she'll see him again, she leaves him standing alone. {|class="wikitable" ! width="100"| Character ! width="200"| Description ! width="200"| Notable performers |- ! Joey Evans | A small-time womanizing MC and dancer/singer who has dreams of opening his own night club | Gene Kelly; Harold Lang; Bob Fosse; Christopher Chadman; Clifton Davis; Joel Grey |- ! Vera Simpson | A bored rich socialite | Vivienne Segal; Siân Phillips; Viveca Lindfors; Joan Copeland; Lena Horne; Donna Murphy; Patti LuPone; Stockard Channing; Christine Andreas |- ! Linda English | A naive stenographer (in the 2008 revival, a clerk in a men's clothing store) | Leila Ernst; Rita Gardner; Daisy Prince |- ! Gladys Bumps | A chorus girl who takes an instant dislike to Joey (in the 2008 revival, they have history) | June Havoc; Helen Gallagher; Vicki Lewis; Martha Plimpton |- ! Melba Snyder | An ambitious reporter (does not appear in the 2008 revival) | Elaine Stritch; Kay Medford; Josephine Premice; Dixie Carter; Bebe Neuwirth |- ! Ludlow Lowell | A crooked "artists representative" | Jack Durant; Lionel Stander; Ned Eisenberg; Ron Perlman |}
5925835	/m/0fdw9z	Bright Lights, Big City	Jay McInerney	1984-08-12	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story's narrator is a writer who works as a fact checker for a high-brow magazine—likely based on Harpers or The New Yorker, where McInerney himself once worked as a fact checker—for which he had once hoped to write. By night, he is a cocaine using party-goer seeking to lose himself in the hedonism of the 1980s yuppie party scene, often going to a nightclub called Heartbreak. His wife, Amanda, recently left him and he copes with this by pretending nothing happened and telling no one that she's gone. Initially hopeful that she will return someday, he eventually resorts to searching for her at a fashion event. He obsesses over every item she owned in his apartment, every modeling photo and every club she visited, even repeatedly visiting a mannequin based on her. Also, his partying is affecting his work and he appears to be on the verge of getting fired by his temperamental boss. The novel would go on to be the source material for the 1988 film Bright Lights, Big City, which was also written by McInerney. In 1999, an off Broadway stage musical was produced by the New York Theater Workshop, written by Paul Scott Goodman and directed by Michael Grief, with orchestrations and musical direction by Richard Barone.
5925896	/m/0fdwd2	The Sinner	Tess Gerritsen		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Sinner involves Detective Jane Rizzoli and a main character new to the series, first seen in "The Apprentice" as a minor figure, medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles. When a young novice nun about to take vows is found murdered in the abbey's summer chapel, Isles and Rizzoli are immediately called to the scene. The elderly nuns are of little help to Isles and Rizzoli but when another body is found, mutilated beyond recognition (and testing reveals the body to be that of a fortyish Indian Hansen's Disease victim), it is soon discovered that there is more to these killings than meets the eye.
5926108	/m/0fdwrh	Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance				 The novel follows the journeys of three young European boys represented in a circa 1913 or 1914 photograph by August Sander. Two parallel narratives, one in the voice suspected to be the author, whose surname, we learn starts with P, offer contemporary perspectives and illustrate the interconnectedness of events. These voices provide contemporary perspectives on technology -- the major theme of the novel. A series of rather academic essays on the nature of photography, including quotes from Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt- in the authorial narrative voice of Mr P - are interspersed with the story. The story begins with the authorial narrative voice of Mr P. first sighting the photograph taken in the months before the outbreak of World War I of three young boys in Germany - a photograph which is titled Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance and which is being exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The novel follows the fictional fates of these three young men in war time, as well as the stories of Peter Mays, a technical editor for a 1980s electronics magazine and Mr P - the first person narrator of sections of the novel - who is obsessed with the photograph and with concepts of photography and technology. Note that Powers's later novel Galatea 2.2, published in 1995, uses the first person perspective of semifictional narrator Richard Powers to describe to a large extent the conditions under which Powers wrote Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance attempts to balance the technological advancements that caused the large scale deaths in World War I with those that created art for the masses in the form of photography.
5926213	/m/0fdwvy	The Bourne Betrayal	Robert Ludlum	2007-06-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 At the beginning of the book, Bourne is in Doctor Sunderland's office. Sunderland, recommended by Lindros, is a specialist in memory restoration and miniaturization. Unfortunately for Bourne, he doesn't know that this man posing as Sunderland is actually Costin Veintrop, hired by Fadi to mess with Bourne's brain by creating new memories. These new memories can be evoked by new smells or even hearing things. As Bourne exits the office two things happen: Veintrop calls Fadi and tells him the work is done, and Bourne receives a call that Martin is missing. He then catches a cab and heads back to the CIA headquarters to talk to the Old Man. Back at the CIA Bourne is introduced to a number of new people: Matthew Lerner (the Deputy Director until Lindros gets back), Soraya Moore (a senior case officer), Hiram Cevik (a prisoner, actually Fadi in disguise), and Tim Hytner (who is framed as a traitor to the CIA organization). Tim is working on cracking a cipher created by Fadi. Unwittingly Bourne brings Cevik out of his prison cage to take a walk with him in an attempt to extract more information about Fadi. Then Cevik escapes under the cover of a gun battle in which Hytner is killed. Bourne then steals a motorcycle from the back of a truck to follow the Hummer, which he thinks Cevik is still trying to escape in. Once the Hummer is stopped up the street, CIA officers surround the car, waiting for the prisoners to step out. Bourne then realizes the car is rigged to explode. He grabs Soraya and they make their way to safety just before detonation. Later, Jakob and Lev Silver (Fadi and Muta ibn Aziz in disguise) arrive at the Hotel Constitution, located on the northeast corner of 20th and F Streets. They have a hotel worker named Omar bring them some champagne; the room service was merely a ruse to kill the innocent man and use his likeness to disguise Fadi in an elaborate diversion to easily get Fadi out of the country. Fadi kills Omar, uses makeup and props to disguise his own face with Omar's features, sprays the room with Carbon Disulfide and sets fire to the suite. The room burns, and turns Omar's body into unrecognizable ash as Fadi slips away. Bourne boards a plane intent on finding Fadi. While on board he looks at some of the pictures that Deron has given him on Fadi. Bourne ends up going from London to Addis Ababa; Ababa to Djibouti. In Djibouti, he takes a CIA helicopter to Ras Dejen to look for Fadi and check the area. He finds a body suspiciously drained of all its natural fluids; he suspects radiation is the key. While there, in the wreck of Skorpion One, Bourne sees a boy, Alem. Alem leads him into town and to his father. After being chased by terrorists, he goes and sees the victims of Skorpion One inside a church. There the pilot, Jaime Cowell, tells him that Fadi was torturing Lindros. Meanwhile, Martin Lindros is being tortured by Fadi and his men, and they are all on the move. They relocate Martin to places that are safe for Fadi and his people; and sufficiently away from Bourne. In this case they move him to a Dujja hiding place in a cave. When Bourne arrives in Ras Dejen, he is able to rescue Lindros (actually an impostor named Karim al-Jamil) and brings him back to the CIA, where Karim sends him to Munich to meet with Yevgeny Feyodovich, a man that does business with Dujja. Karim gets word from his source that Bourne will be landing tomorrow, and gives orders for him to be executed. Upon arriving and starting what he believes to be his mission, Bourne discovers Edor Vladovich Lemontov (a fictitious drug lord that Bourne was to meet with) is not a real person, and ends up in a chase with the terrorists. The chase culminates with Bourne ending up on a beach face to face with Fadi. Fadi says "I've waited a long time for this moment," referring to the time that Bourne killed his sister (which we later learn is untrue). Fadi and Bourne fight, with Fadi stabbing Bourne with a knife. During the struggle, a dog attacks Fadi and bites him in the face, knocking him off his guard. The dog (a boxer named Oleksandr) is with Soraya and she is there in Odessa to help Bourne, unaware that she was sent by the impostor Lindros to be killed as well. Bourne and Soraya escape and end up in Istanbul, Turkey, where they find a tracking device planted on him. This happened the day that they took Hiram Cevik out of his prison cage. Bourne figures out that the prisoner was actually Fadi in disguise. They also discover the truth behind a lot of the other deceptions being played out, including the fact that Soraya's friend, Anne Held was Karim (The Fake Lindros)'s Mistress, and the true mole in the CIA. They find out that Veintrop was hired by Fadi to do the surgery. They find out that Sunderland's office wasn't even open on Tuesday. Bourne sends Soraya back to the CIA to find the mole inside. Bourne goes to Nesim Hatun's house to ask him about some things. There he starts following Fadi's messenger back to Buyukada, where he poses as the pilot of Muta's airplane. They end up crashing, and Bourne finds out that he didn't actually kill Fadi's sister Sarah; Muta and his brother Abbud did because she was having a secret love affair. Bourne and his friend Feyd al-Sould find the underground opening to the Dujja facility in Miran Shah. Feyd al-Sould and his cadre go and blow up the water pipes, flooding the underground facility. Bourne then finds Lindros, being held hostage by Fadi, and kills Fadi. Fadi however, had managed to shoot a bullet through Lindros' jaw and eye socket, giving the injured CIA deputy director very little time to live. Katya Veintrop, Costin's wife, is also killed. Costin then deactivates the detonator bomb. Jason makes his way back to the CIA to kill Karim al-Jamil. Meanwhile, Soraya and Tyrone are on the run from supremacists and terrorists. They end up finding the Old Man being embalmed in a mortuary, as they set out for the CIA headquarters. They get shot at by terrorists in the Old Man's limousine, thinking that they can get into the headquarters by showing them the DCI's face, redone by another one of Fadi's men. Bourne kills Karim al-Jamil at the IVT facility by using the same trademark as his nemesis Carlos the Jackal, a bullet to the throat . He then realizes that there is a second timer on the bomb. However after thinking about it he realizes that the second timer was put in there by Veintrop, who, to get back at Fadi and Karim's men for hurting and torturing his wife, didn't connect it to the bomb. fa:بورن، خیانت fr:La Trahison dans la peau pl:Zdrada Bourne'a
5926782	/m/0fdxnb	Freedomland	Richard Price	1998-06-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Brenda Martin walks into the hospital emergency room in a state of shock. As doctors bandage her hands, they find out she is the victim of a carjacking near Armstrong. Detective Lorenzo Council meets with her, and through her tears gets the story that her four-year-old son Cody was in the backseat of the car. She then describes the assailant as being a young black man with a shaved head and scary eyes. Local reporter Jesse Haus follows up on this relatively minor news story, and is one of the first to learn about the kidnapping. After promising to write a story on Bump Rosen’s son, she gets an inside chance to be next to Brenda. As the Gannon and Dempsey police blockade the crime area, Lorenzo works to get more details from Brenda, and Jesse works on details for her story. Lorenzo has Jesse stay with Brenda so she is not alone, and Jesse discovers Brenda’s love of classic R&B music. Lorenzo, under a deadline to solve the case or lose it to the FBI, starts asking all of his contacts for any information. False or no information is the result, and the residents of Armstrong are beginning to express outrage at the blockade. George Howard is arrested in hopes of getting information from him, but his unfair arrest only pushes passions higher. In a last chance to elicit information from Brenda, Lorenzo takes her to the abandoned Freedomtown theme park and opens up to her, hoping that she will do the same in turn. Ben Haus brings in Karen Collucci and the Friends of Kent (an organization that searches for missing children) to speak to Brenda and organize a search party for Cody. They figure the most likely place to search would be an abandoned, overgrown mental hospital not too far from where the carjacking occurred. Understanding that the Friends of Kent have a hidden agenda, Jesse sticks close to Brenda and Elaine during the search. Lorenzo has an asthma attack and ends up in the hospital. After he is gone, the group arrives at a building where a child’s body had been found years earlier. There, Brenda hears a child crying, and confesses to knowing where Cody is. Days before, when Brenda had gone downstairs to meet her boyfriend Billy, she came back up and found Cody dead of a Benadryl overdose. She panicked and ran away, until she finally called Billy and told him what happened. He went over and took Cody to Freedomtown and buried him in front of the Chicago Fire exhibit, as per a written request from Brenda. When Brenda returned, Cody was gone and the spot was cleaned up. Then, while sitting next to the railroad and only half thinking about it, she jams her hands into the ground (causing her injuries) and makes her way to the hospital on foot. As the story comes out, Dempsey residents are outraged, and Lorenzo feels a protest riot in is the air. That night, the feeling subsides when a man dies in an elevator accident. The next day, local leaders plan a march to demonstrate against the unfair treatment they received during the carjacking-kidnapping story. They march into Gannon with a police escort, and then back into Dempsey. At the end of the march, a fight breaks out and another resident is killed. The novel ends with a funeral for Cody, followed soon after by Brenda’s suicide. This seems to end the saga, leaving the residents of both cities emotionally exhausted.
5927277	/m/0fdy6d	Green Rider	Kristen Britain	1998-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Karigan G'ladheon, a merchant's daughter, is cast out of her school in Selium by Dean Geyer following a duel in which she bested a wealthy aristocrat. Running away from the shame of her expulsion, she travels into the forest called the Green Cloak, she meets a Green Rider (a group of legendary and elite messengers in the king's service) who is dying with two black arrows protruding from his back. The Green Rider F'ryan Coblebay, makes Karigan swear to carry a message to Sacor City for the 'love of her country', and there to deliver into the hands of either Laren, the Captain of the Green Riders, or the king himself. He also orders Karigan not to read the letter for the sake of her life. Coblebay entrusts a second more private letter to her care also. As his life passes, he whispers with his last breath; "beware the shadow man...".She also takes the gold winged horse brooch, which she only noticed after his death. It is the symbol of his office as a Green Rider. Karigan, following her promise, rides the horse (whose real name is Condor) to Sacor City through perilous paths. The Horse appears to have an uncanny ability to navigate the various dangers Karigan encounters, always delivering Karigan to safety. During the journey, she meets many people, including the Berry sisters, members of the mystical, elf-like race of Eletians, and two traitorous Weapons (a special rank given only to the bodyguards of the king). Throughout her journey, the ghost of F'ryan Coblebay follows her, urging her on and providing help when desperately needed. When she reaches Sacor City, she is hailed as a Green Rider, and she delivers both letters. The second seemingly less important letter, which Karigan felt justified in reading as it was not addressed to the king, was a love letter to the beautiful Lady Estora. Karigan delivers the letter from F'ryan Coblebay but to everyones' dismay the letter appears to contain nothing of any importance. The Lady Estora, confused by inaccuracies in the letter delivered to her, approaches Karigan; who then takes the letter to Laren for closer inspection. The love letter is decoded to reveal a plot by his brother Amilton and one of the clan chiefs to kill King Zachary. Amilton, the elder brother of Zachary, was denied the throne due to his dishonorable character and eventually even lost the right to rule over the family province of Hillander due to his shameful behaviour. There follows a desperate battle as Shawdell, an Eletian who has infiltrated the kings court and gained the trust of the crown, is revealed as the Shadowman F'ryan Coblebay warned Karigan of. After a dangerous battle involving ghosts and a wraith like being called a munariel, Karigan kills the rogue Eletian and Zachary's throne is safe again. She then leaves for home with her father.
5927549	/m/0fdyh0	Sandry's Book	Tamora Pierce		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Lady Sandrilene fa Toren is locked away in a dark room with a fading oil lamp. She was magically hidden in this storeroom days ago by her nurse, who was murdered moments later just outside the door by a mob bent on destroying everything infected by the fierce plague that killed Sandry's parents. Sandry is concerned about the flickering oil lamp, even though she knows there is no chance of anybody finding her as the room she is locked in is protected by magic so that it cannot be found either magically or non-magically, and the only person who knows her whereabouts is her nurse, who is dead. Sandry is afraid of going crazy in the darkness. Unknowingly doing her first piece of magic, Sandry traps the remaining light in a simple braid. A powerful seer, Niklaren Goldeye, finds her and takes her to Winding Circle in Emelan. Trader Daja Kisubo is the lone survivor when her family's ship is destroyed in a storm. She floats on the water for days, surviving only because she finds a suraku- a survival box full of food and water from the ship. When Niko finds her, they go to the Trader Council so they can decide Daja's fate. Because Daja is the only survivor of her family, they declare her trangshi, or outcast- the worst sort of bad luck. As trangshi, she is forbidden to speak, touch, or write to other Traders. Niko is outraged at the council's decision and conducts her to Winding Circle. Roach (later named Briar Moss) is a "street rat" in Hajra, Sotat. His mother died when he was four; he was then taken in by the Thief Lord, the leader of the gang Lightning. Each time Roach is caught committing a crime, an "X" is tattooed onto the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger. After his third capture, Roach is sentenced to the docks but is saved by Niko, who stopped the judge and convinced her to allow him to take Roach to Winding Circle. Roach also has the opportunity to choose a new name for himself; he chooses Briar Moss because of his curiosity and experience with plants. Trisana Chandler is from a merchant's family. She has been passed from relative to relative because of the strange things that occur when she is around. Never staying long in one house, she never had a real family. Eventually, she is brought to Stone Circle Temple by her parents and left there, where she wreaks more havoc still. The temple's dedicate superior pleads with Niko to take her to Winding Circle, and he agrees after Tris starts a hail storm out of anger. The four children are brought to Winding Circle Temple in Emelan, where they do not fit in. Daja is secluded and ignored because she is a Trader, Tris wreaks havoc through weather when girls upset her by making fun of her, Briar threatens other boys with knives, and Sandry is caught looking at the looms too much. They are all taken to Discipline Cottage, an isolated cottage for children who do not fit in, where they are overseen there by Dedicate Lark, a kind and gentle thread mage, and Dedicate Rosethorn, a sharp plant mage. The four learn they have magic, which none of them knew about. While they all practice meditation, each of the four is matched with a main teacher to guide them through their magical learning. Sandry begins studying with Lark, learning to weave and spin; Tris studies with Niko about weather; Daja is taken under the wing of Dedicate Frostpine, the greatest smith mage; Briar works with Rosethorn in her garden and workshop. They each grow closer together and stronger in their magic. During the course of the book, there have been tremors all summer. Near the end of the book, a big earthquake comes, having gained power by bouncing off the walls of a crystal used in an attempt to trap it. Just before, the four were out walking Little Bear, their dog, when he runs down a path and into the back of a large cave. The four and their dog are stuck underground when the earthquake begins. Daja holds to roof of their small space up by making a magical "suraku" around the space to help save them. Tris and Briar begin their own protections and Tris starts to open up air vents. However, the three of them cannot finish, because each person does not have the skill to finish. Sandry remembers her time trapped in the storage room and is paralyzed with fear when she remembers her weaving bag. She infuses it with the essences of the four and weaves their magic together, so each can complete his or her jobs. The four and their dog are rescued by their teachers after the quake. It is discovered that they are under the kitchens of the temple. At the very end of the book, Tris, Briar, and Daja present Sandry with a light-filled crystal to help her conquer her fear of the dark.
5927768	/m/0fdysd	The Maracot Deep	Arthur Conan Doyle		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel revolves around the legend of Atlantis, mentioned as an ancient city or continent which was drowned by the sea due to divine intervention. The novel is narrated by Headley who first writes a letter to his friend Sir John Talbot. On his subsequent rescue, he completes his story giving details on his escape and how they fought off possibly the greatest danger to humanity, the Devil himself. The novel begins with preparations for the dive, off the coast of Africa. Prof. Maracot claims to have located the deepest trench in the Atlantic and is vehement that he shall go down in the specially prepared submersible actually a bathysphere along with Headley and Scanlan. On reaching the edge of the trench, a description of the undersea world is presented. The team comes face to face with a giant crustacean who cuts off their line and hurls them down into the trench. Down in the trench, the team is rescued by the Atlanteans who are the last survivors of the land that was Atlantis. Although the description of Atlantis may not sound quite futuristic and may seem fantastic, the fact that the novel was written in 1929 should be taken into account. One device in particular is often made use of. This is a thought projector which visualizes the thoughts of a person for others to see. This helps the team and the Atlanteans to communicate. Descriptions of work habits, culture and various sea creatures are provided. The Atlanteans forage for their food from the sea bed and their slaves, Greeks who are the descendants of the original slaves of the kingdom of Atlantis work in undersea mines. This is made possible thanks to an exceptionally strong and light transparent material which is fashioned into helmets to enable people to work underwater. The team eventually uses the levity of these spheres to escape to the surface. Headley elopes with the daughter of Manda, leader of the Atlanteans. In the later part of the novel, Headley describes the encounter with the Lord of the Dark Face, a supernatural being who led the Atlanteans to their doom and was the cause of untold miseries to humanity ever since. This being is likened to the Phoenician god Baal who was demonized by later religions and cultures. The being is defeated by Prof. Maracot who becomes possessed by the spirit of Warda, the man who managed to convince a handful of Atlanteans to prepare for the worst and thus built an Ark which saved them from the cataclysm which destroyed their land.
5928939	/m/0fd_q3	Flesh and Blood	Jonathan Kellerman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alex receives a call from the mother of an ex-patient, Lauren Teague. Considering it unresolved business, Alex contacts Milo and they ask around to see if they can find her. Her body turns up and the missing person case turns into a murder investigation. Alex and Milo visit her parents, former co-workers, roommates, and employers. They follow connections back and find that Lauren had $350,000 saved up, probably earned from prostitution. She had recently started to attend college, and was part of an intimacy experiment. When a former co-worker ends up dead after speaking to them, they know the murder was no ordinary mugging. Then Lauren's mother is killed, presumably by her husband. While kayaking along the beach near the Duke mansion, Alex rescues a boy who had swum out too far. This gets him invited in, and he makes the acquaintance of Duke's ex-wife, Cheryl. They flirt, and when a rendezvous is arranged, the killer shows up and shoots Cheryl. Alex is saved by Lauren's brother, Ben Dugger.
5929667	/m/0ff0wm	Justinian	Harry Turtledove	1998	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book centers around Byzantine Emperor Justinian II and is told through the ideas of a fictional soldier named Myakes. The book follows Justinian's time before and after taking the throne, as well as his overthrow, mutilation and exile in the Crimea, his subsequent return to power (following a possibly apocryphal nose-job), his insane quest for revenge, and his finally being unseated a second time and executed.
5934156	/m/0ff7x7	The Blunderer	Patricia Highsmith	1954	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 For years, mild mannered lawyer Walter Stackhouse has suffered as a result of his neurotic, unstable wife Clara, whose constant alienation of all his friends, coupled with her penchant for overly dramatic gestures, has slowly driven him to hate her. After he becomes infatuated with the sweet and sensuous music teacher Ellie Briess, Clara jealously attempts suicide via an overdose, forcing him into her arms once again. However, he eventually stands his ground and demands a divorce. When Clara subsequently turns up dead, having fallen off a cliff during a bus trip to see her dying mother, Walter finds himself blundering around in the dark as the official investigation ensues. He admits that he stalked her bus in his car, whilst daydreaming about the possibility of killing her at the first stop, just as Melchior J. Kimmel, a 40-year-old bookshop manager, murdered his own domineering partner Helen, an unsolved crime that Walter had read of in the paper and grown fascinated by. Both men soon encounter the formidable, possibly psychotic Lieutenant Lawrence Corby, a police officer with savage ambition who is convinced of their guilt and believes that they are somehow in cahoots with one another. He soon begins encroaching on his suspects' lives, sowing the seeds of doubt into the minds of those they care for and even ferociously assaulting Kimmel.
5934648	/m/0ff90r	The Gospel According to Larry	Janet Tashjian	2003-05-13	{"/m/05qt0": "Politics", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The Gospel According to Larry revolves around seventeen-year-old Josh Swensen, an articulate teen whose dream is to change the world. He creates his own website which he calls "The Gospel According to Larry" because Larry was the most un-biblical name he could think of. He writes articles on this site "preaching" his feelings and ideas about making the world a better place. At first he does not get many hits until someone writes an article about him in a local newspaper and the number of hits begins to grow. That is when he decides to start photographing and posting his possessions. He was curious to see if it was possible to track down someone anywhere in the world simply by their possessions. Josh only has 75 possessions counting all clothes, underwear, school supplies, recreational equipment, software and the keys to his step-father's house. He has a list of guidelines to keep track of how many possessions he has. If he wants a new CD, or book, or video he has to sell an old one or trade for it. A notebook counts as one even though it has 70 sheets of paper in it. A pair of socks counts as one and so do shoes. He decided to start doing this after reading about Native Americans who did not want to leave a "footprint" behind. This means every purchase is a major decision and he takes it very seriously. Not everyone is happy with his blog. A poster named betagold does not like the fact that Josh is hiding behind a screen name. She threatens to find him out, no matter what he does to hide himself. She even notices little things that he speaks of that she figures point to where he lives, such as Red Maples which grow in the New England area. Things really take off when U2's lead singer Bono takes an interest in the site causing much more publicity. Soon after Bono decides to host a giant rock festival called Larryfest where all of the bands would play for free and all companies would sell food and drink at cost. After the festival Josh is at home when an older woman knocks on his door. It is Tracy Hawthorne, also known as betagold. She is surrounded by reporters wanting to get a photograph of "Larry." He is then thrown into the public eye and at first he is glad because then he can spread his anti-consumerism message to all those who do not have access to the internet. He quickly realizes that reporters do not want to know about his message; they want to know about him: his life, his family, and his friends. Josh likes to talk to his deceased mother at the makeup desk at Bloomingdale's. His mother would go there once a month to buy makeup and talk to the woman who worked there. Josh sits on a chair and talks out loud to his mother. He waits for the next voice he hears and whatever they say is his answer. Josh gets really depressed by the fact that he cannot leave his house without being harassed by reporters and tries to talk to his mother. He is very confused and does not know where to go from there. He hears a woman say "Sometimes I could just kill myself." Immediately after that another woman says "I'm completely serious. Sometimes it's the only way." This is when he begins to consider suicide as a way out. He ends up biking to the Sagamore bridge because he has heard stories of how people had jumped from there. He rides home after that, pretty shaken up. The next day he gets bored and is looking up Greek and Latin roots. He puts two words together and comes up with pseudocide (Pseudo-, "false." and -cide, "killing") to pretend to kill yourself. He starts working out plans for this, not entirely considering going through with it, but it is a project. He does everything necessary for this fake suicide to occur. On the day he decides to do it he cuts and dyes his hair and rides his bike to the Sagamore bridge, after seeing no one around throws a homeless Indian child over and tucks his pants into his bag so he is wearing shorts. He waves down a passing car and tells them he was running past and saw a kid jump. He describes himself as he looked before. They see his bike is registered. Josh is so freaked out that he throws up. He leaves and stays at a small motel as he watches the local news about how everything goes. He does not want there to be a doubt that it was a successful suicide.
5935404	/m/0ffbgw	The Purple Land	William Henry Hudson	1885	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel tells the story of Richard Lamb, a young Englishman who marries a teenage Argentinian girl, Paquita, without asking her father's permission, and is forced to flee to Montevideo, Uruguay with his bride. Lamb leaves his young wife with a relative while he sets off for eastern Uruguay to find work for himself. He soon becomes embroiled in adventures with the Uruguayan gauchos and romances with local women. Lamb unknowingly helps a rebel guerrilla general, Santa Coloma, escape from prison and joins his cause. However, the rebels are defeated in battle and Lamb has to flee in disguise. He helps Demetria, the daughter of an old rebel leader, escape from her persecutors and returns to Montevideo. Lamb, Paquita, Demetria and Santa Coloma evade their government pursuers by slipping away on a boat bound for Buenos Aires. Here the novel ends, but in the opening paragraphs, Lamb had already informed the reader that after the events of the story he was captured by Paquita's father and thrown into prison for three years, during which time Paquita herself died of grief.
5936650	/m/0ffdz8	Tris's Book	Tamora Pierce	1998	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As the book begins and progresses, Tris hears voices on the wind telling her seemingly useless bits of information. In an effort to cool herself off in the summer's cruel heat, she and her three "mates"- Sandry, Daja, and Briar- head up to the wall that encloses Winding Circle. On the wall, Tris hears more voices and then suddenly a lighthouse nearby blows up. As Tris and her teacher Niklaren Goldeye examine the ruins, they realize that the tower was blown up by a new substance they have never heard of. In the ruins, Tris finds a baby starling, which she decides to take care of. While repairing a magical net protecting Winding Circle with Dedicate Frostpine and his apprentice Kirel, Daja sees a magically hidden boat out of the corner of her eye. While eating a turnover from Dedicate Gorse's kitchen's, Briar smells the unmistakable scent of cinnamon and poppy, a sure sign of someone invisible. A forgetful novice realizes that there are a lack of bandages, so Dedicate Lark and Sandry are forced to make some more. The Temple is short on medicine, so Dedicate Rosethorn and Briar are forced to make more. All the signs lead to trouble. When Daja finally tells Frostpine about the ship, he immediately tells Dedicate Superior Moonstream, who sends word to Duke Vedris IV, Sandry's uncle and the ruler of Emelan. Pirates are afoot. Tris's cousin Aymery Glassfire comes to bring Niko a letter, and is recognized by her. He tries to get Tris to go home, saying her father is ill, but she refuses, saying that if he wanted her, he would send for her. While everyone is talking, a novice comes and tells Niko that every mirror, crystal, and vision bowl has been broken. That leaves Winding Circle blind to the future. Early the next morning, when jumping into a wind magically, Tris realizes that there is a huge invisible magic box coming slowly toward Winding Circle. Later in the morning, Frostpine takes Daja to repair two chains that protect Winding Circle. During the repairs, the pirates begin their attack. As the attack goes on, the four start to help. Tris takes one of the pirate's "boomstones"-- a hard sphere containing gunpowder-- with her winds and sends it away. Briar and Rosethorn take seeds of thorny plants and grow them quickly and thickly along the cove to capture and kill the pirates. When all the adults leave to help defend Winding Circle, Tris practices zapping targets with her lightning and the help of Sandry, Daja, and Tris. Tris tests herself when a boomstone begins a descent on Discipline and blows it up. When looking through Aymery's belongings, Briar finds that even though he claims he's staying for several weeks, Aymery has only brought a very small wardrobe. In a locked trunk, Briar finds cinnamon oil and poppy, used for invisibility. He also finds a mirror, when all of the mirrors in Winding Circle had broken the night before. When following Aymery out of Discipline at midnight, Tris and Briar confront him, whereupon he reveals that he had been working for Enahar, the pirates' chief mage, for some time. Then Aymery lets in the pirates through a side gate. Sandry, Daja, Lark, and Niko come and deal with the pirates, and Tris takes the dying Aymery's earring that links him to Enahar. Maddened by helplessness, Tris goes up on the south wall to deal with the pirates herself and get them away from the one place she can call home and Sandry, Daja, and Briar join her and help. They bash through the pirates' barrier by pulling their strength together. Daja finds all the metal in the pirates' fleet like nails and weapons, pulls it out, and drops it in the water. Tris uses her lightning to blast ships. The four start destroying the fleet when they are all caught in mage traps on the ships. They appear to be lost when Niko returns their string of combined magic. With the extra power of the string and their arrived teachers, they destroy the rest of the fleet. Enahar attempts to capture Tris using his link with Aymery's earring, but Sandry, Daja, and Briar realize this and use stray lightning on Tris's hair to destroy the small piece of jewellery. Because she killed and injured many of the helpless slaves on the pirate ships, Tris decides to help with the wounded pirates and slaves. She gets little thanks. All she cares about is trying to make up for some of the harm she did to so many people with her lightning.
5936812	/m/0fff6n	If Only It Were True	Marc Levy	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lauren Kline is a pretty, young, medical resident, completely devoted to her work in the Emergency Room of San Francisco Memorial Hospital. She worked round the clock dealing with patients until she got into a serious auto accident. As a result of the accident, Lauren went into a coma. She "woke" to awareness outside of her still comatose body, and was frustrated that she could not communicate with anyone. After a while, she chose to spend most of her time at her old apartment, where she is discovered by Arthur, the man who took over renting the place. Only he can see, hear or touch her. After some initial disbelief on his part, they fall in love.
5937848	/m/0ffgzt	Bedroom Farce	Alan Ayckbourn			 The play takes place in three bedrooms during one night and the following morning. The cast consists of four married couples. At the beginning of the play, the oldest couple, Delia and Ernest, are getting ready to go out for a meal to celebrate their wedding anniversary; Malcolm and Kate, the youngest, are about to host a housewarming party, to which the other two couples, Jan and Nick and Susannah and Trevor (the only ones whose bedroom is not seen), have been invited. At the last minute Nick has hurt his back and is unable to go. The complicating factor is that Jan used to be Trevor's girlfriend, and after Susannah and Trevor have a blazing row, Susannah finds Trevor kissing Jan. As a result Susannah leaves the party and goes to visit Delia and Ernest, whose connection with the rest of the plot is that they are Trevor's parents; she ends up sharing Delia's bed, while Ernest is forced to sleep in the spare room. Meanwhile Trevor himself, feeling unable to go home, is also offered a bed in a spare room by Kate, but decides to go and "straighten things out" with Nick and Jan, leaving Kate waiting up for him. Eventually Trevor and Susannah seem to be reconciled, but at the end of the play the audience might doubt whether this state of affairs will last.
5940868	/m/0ffnd2	David and the Phoenix	Edward Ormondroyd	1957	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel begins with David moving to a new house at the base of some beautiful mountains. Rather than settle in the new house, he decides to climb the next day. Upon reaching the summit, he encounters the brash Phoenix. At first they are frightened of each other, as Phoenix had been chased by a Scientist for several weeks and David had, of course, never seen anything like the Phoenix before. The Phoenix seems quite flattered by David's attentions, and takes a shine to him. Thus, the Phoenix decides that he should educate David about the various legendary creatures in the world—to round out his knowledge. But years of hiding from scientists have made the Phoenix's wings flabby, and David has to coach the rather comical bird on his flying. The first adventure in the Phoenix's curriculum for David involves seeing the Gryffins, said to be the friendliest of three similar races: the Gryffins, Gryffons, and Gryffens). On this journey, they first meet a Witch who goads the Phoenix into a race, which he later wins. Though David never actually meets a Gryffin on his first journey, the Phoenix attempts to talk to a lazy Gryffen. But they get captured by the violent and arrogant Gryffons, who sentence the Phoenix to death for bringing humans into their magic world. After escaping the Gryffon Cave through combined ingenuity, the Phoenix keeps his appointment with the Witch. David returns home to meet the unpleasant Scientist visiting his parents. David's evasiveness makes the villain suspicious. David warns the Phoenix as he unceremoniously shows up later that night, exhausted from his race. The two friends begin implementing various plans to avoid the Scientist, firstly by finding some buried treasure with the help of a gruff, but friendly Sea Monster, and spending the gold coins on magic items to foil the Scientist's plot to capture the rare bird. While visiting the magical world to buy necessities, David has a brief adventure with a prankster Leprechaun, meets a cantankerous potion-selling Hag, and even makes friends with a Faun, who races and plays with the boy before joining his people for an alluring dance in the Forest. However, the Phoenix rescues David from remaining too long in this world, which could absorb those beings who are not magical. Using their collected magical items, the Phoenix and David sabotage the Scientist's equipment and frighten him into leaving town—at least for the moment. However, the old Phoenix celebrates his 500th birthday, and soon reveals he must "bow to tradition," and build himself a pyre of cinnamon logs. David tearfully complies with his friend's wishes, buying the necessary items from town. Unfortunately, the Scientist shows up and follows David up the mountain trails. The Phoenix is reborn, but as a hatchling, does not yet comprehend its peril. David appeals to the young Phoenix, who dimly recognizes a friend, and flies away to avoid captivity. David watches as the Old Phoenix's token, a blue feather, changes to a golden hue.
5942332	/m/0ffqwg	Other Songs	Jacek Dukaj	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Twelve centuries have passed since the fall of Rome; fewer since the death of Kristos (Christ). Hieronim Berbelek was once a powerful strategos (a natural born leader whose form makes other people listen to him or her), but when he was defeated by one of the kratistoses, known as the Warlock, his Form and spirit were broken, reduced to those of a lowly merchant, a sad, small man, easily molded by others with stronger Forms. However, a chain of events sets him off on a journey — first to Africa, and later into many new lands, from the depths of Warlock's domain, through the fabled Library of Alexandria and mysterious flying city, to the Moon colony, and on this journey he may have a chance of regaining his Form…
5943148	/m/0ffs5d	Stet				 Stet tells the life story of a visionary Soviet filmmaker named Stet who lives through Stalin's repressions, manages to direct his first feature film, but ends up in a prison camp for various offenses against the bureaucracy. The novel is narrated in a "Russian" voice, by an ostensible third-person narrator who is nevertheless full of opinions and bitter aphorisms. Despite his third-person status, the narrator seems to be a major character in the book. The tone of the book is black humor, and often entirely pessimistic, as it delineates the difficulties of living as an artist who does not accept or worry about the judgments of his surrounding world. Yet the character of the filmmaker Stet, to whom aesthetic ecstasy remains available throughout his trials, seems to give the reader an alternative to the pessimism of the narrator.
5946164	/m/0ffxnj	Rules for Radicals	Saul Alinsky	1971		 Outlining his strategy in organizing, Alinsky writes: There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoyevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families &ndash; more than seventy million people &ndash; whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default. For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting whatever he believed to be wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don’t have the power to change a situation, they stop thinking about it. According to Alinsky, the organizer — especially a paid organizer from outside — must first overcome suspicion and establish credibility. Next the organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is necessary to get people to participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent community life where people have simply come to accept a situation. Alinsky would say, &#34;The first step in community organization is community disorganization.&#34; Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a &#34;mass army&#34; that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals. According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. &#34;The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.&#34; In a separate chapter he suggests that the perennial question, &#34;Does the end justify the means?&#34; is meaningless as it stands: the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, &#34;Does this particular end justify this particular means?&#34; These rules of the ethics of means and ends are only one chapter of his book, totally distinct from his &#34;clear set of rules for community organizing.&#34;
5946747	/m/0ffyp6	Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo				 Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band tells the story of the relationship between Alex, a 17 year old rebel, and Aidi, a girl who enters his life out of the blue one Sunday with a phone call. She asks about a poetry book and they end up talking about their projects and aspirations. Before they part she kisses him on the cheek. Alex falls for her, and later asks her to be his girlfriend. She begins behaving increasingly coldly to him until she states that she doesn't want any relationship because she'll be leaving for the States the following year and doesn't want to be in a long-distance relationship. Alex accepts her decision. Nonetheless, they maintain a relationship that, though not full-blown love, is stronger than mere friendship. Meanwhile, Alex takes a position in opposition to bourgeois society, rejecting the commonplace life that everyone expects him to be leading in the future ("a car, two children, a wife and a business consultant") and befriending Martino, the son of a rich family but an "outcast" like Alex himself.
5948815	/m/0fg3xq	The Inscrutable Americans	Anurag Mathur	1991-07		 Gopal Kumar, the son of a hair oil tycoon in Madhya Pradesh, arrives in America to study chemical engineering in a university in Eversville. Being a rural boy, he is singularly a virgin. Randy Wolff, his designated buddy attempts to introduce him to the dating culture of the USA, which Gopal resists at first. He is slowly coaxed by him while discovering more of America. Towards the end of his stay, Gopal becomes frustrated due to being unable to "score" a girl. He leaves America still a virgin, but on a flight, he meets a mysterious woman who shares his affection, although they don't touch.
5949254	/m/0fg53x	Quadrille	Noël Coward			 The date is 1873. The wife (Spencer) of Diensen, a railway magnate (Lunt) has run off to the South of France with Lord Heronden (Jones). Diensen and Lady Heronden (Fontanne) join forces to find their errant partners and get them back. They succeed, but are not glad to have done so because they have fallen in love with each other. At the end of the play, they elope together.
5953255	/m/0fgdms	Scratch One	Michael Crichton	1967-09		 Roger Carr has a lot going for him. He's a handsome, charming and privileged man who practices law—more as a means to support his playboy lifestyle than a career. Thanks to his father, who is a powerful politician, Carr has many connections. For this reason, his law associates tolerate him and keep him around. Carr is sent to Nice, France on a job by one of his wealthy political connections to find and secure the purchase of a Villa. Little does he know that this cushy assignment is going to put him in the middle of an arms deal investigation involving the CIA and a gang called Associates Both sides mistake him for someone else—an American assassin—and neither side can understand why Carr is ignoring them. The CIA take it as a sign of defiance, the Associates perceive him as a cool and collected professional, who knows exactly what he's doing and is difficult to predict. Carr becomes slowly aware that something strange is going on. He's not sure...but he thinks someone may be trying to kill him. The worst part of it is, he has no clue as to why. What happens next will send Carr on a thrilling roller-coaster ride involving fast cars, fast women and international terrorists. tr:Scratch One
5953317	/m/0fgdr7	Easy Go	Michael Crichton	1968		 Harold Barnaby is a brilliant Egyptologist who has discovered a hidden message while translating some hieroglyphics. The message tells of an unnamed Pharaoh whose tomb hasn't been discovered yet. Barnaby is exhilarated by the discovery and the prospect of the fame and fortune that will come with it. There is only one problem. He doesn't have the knowledge, influence or wherewithal to pull off such a job without alerting the Egyptian authorities who would surely encroach on his discovery. Luckily, Barnaby meets Robert Pierce, a transient freelance writer who is in between jobs and looking for some excitement. In a moment of drunken indiscretion, Barnaby shares his discovery with Pierce along with his small logistical problem. Pierce, who because of his job has many friends in high—and low—places, offers his services to plan and manage the "extraction". For a cut, of course. He brings on Lord Grover, the fifth Earl of Wheatston to bankroll the project; smuggler Alan Conway; and international thief, Nikos Karagannis. Together, this motley crew set up camp in the harsh conditions of the Egyptian desert and "dig in" for the long haul. Their task is made all-the-more challenging when an Egyptian official becomes suspicious of their activities. tr:Easy Go
5953789	/m/0fgfk3	Pride of Baghdad	Brian K. Vaughan			 The story revolves around the brief freedom experienced by a small pride of captive lions, who escape from Baghdad Zoo during the 2003 invasion of Baghdad by the U.S.-led coalition. As the lions roam the streets of Baghdad trying to survive, each lion comes to embody a different viewpoint regarding the Iraq War.
5958545	/m/0fgn5h	Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver	Michael Ende	1960	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins on a tiny island called Morrowland (original German: Lummerland), which has just enough space for a small palace, a train station and rails all around the island, a grocery store, a small house, a king, two subjects, a locomotive named Emma, and a locomotive engineer by the name of Luke (Lukas) (who, as railway civil servant, is not a subject). One day, the postman – who has to come by ship – drops off a package with a nearly illegible address for a Mrs. Krintuuth at Zorroulend. On the back was a large 13. After a futile search for the addressee among Morrowland's few inhabitants, they open the package. To their immense surprise, there's a black baby inside. After the commotion has died down, the baby is adopted by the islanders and is named Jim Button. As Jim grows up, the King begins to worry that the island is too small and there won't be enough space for Jim to live on once he's an adult. He announces to Luke that Emma has to be removed. Luke, upset about this decision, decides to leave the island with Emma, and Jim (who had accidentally overheard Luke relating his woes to Emma) decides to come along. They convert Emma into a makeshift ship and sail off the island in the night, eventually arriving at the coast of China. When they arrive in Ping, the capital, they win the friendship of a tiny great-grandchild named Ping Pong, who tells them the Emperor is in mourning. His daughter, Li Si, has been kidnapped and is being held in the Dragon City. Luke and Jim offer their help, and while investigating the circumstances of Li Si's disappearance, they stumble upon several names which are directly connected to Jim's mysterious arrival on Morrowland: Mrs. Grindtooth (Frau Mahlzahn), the Wild 13, and Sorrowland (Kummerland). Now Jim and Luke have another reason to go to the Dragon City, located in Sorrowland, and confront Mrs. Grindtooth. After a long and hazardous journey, they arrive in the Dragon City. Along the way, they make two new friends, the giant Mr. Tur Tur (who is actually a "Scheinriese" – he only appears to be a giant), and Nepomuk, the half-dragon. Jim and Luke free Princess Li Si and a large number of children, who had all been kidnapped and sold to Mrs. Grindtooth by a gang of pirates (the Wild 13). Mrs. Grindtooth had chained the children to desks at her school, where she had barked lessons to them like a kommandant. Jim and Luke take Mrs. Grindtooth with them as they make their way back on the Yellow River, which begins right at the Dragon City. Arriving back in China, they receive a triumphal welcome and are surprised by some startling news. Mrs. Grindtooth is about to turn into the Golden Dragon of Wisdom, and the other inhabitants of Morrowland want them back on the island! With parting advice given by the now-reformed Mrs. Grindtooth and generous assistance from the Emperor, Luke and Jim come into possession of a floating island, which is named New-Morrowland, to serve as Jim's future residence. After a cordial welcome back on Morrowland, Jim and Li Si become engaged, and Jim gets a small locomotive for his own, which he names Molly. Jim Button and the Wild 13 (original German title: Jim Knopf und die Wilde 13) is the sequel and concludes the story. Following the events in Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver, life in Morrowland continues as usual for a year until the postman rams New-Morrowland with his mail boat in the dark of night. It is decided that the island needs a lighthouse, but it is too small to support one. Jim remembers Mr. Tur Tur and his ability to appear as a giant when seen from afar, and Jim and Luke decide to invite him to Morrowland to use his unique ability as a living lighthouse. While sailing the oceans with Emma and Molly (Jim's locomotive) to get to the desert where Mr. Tur Tur lives, Jim and Luke stop to help out a mermaid named Sursulapitschi and her father, Lormoral, the king of the seas. This leads to a precarious encounter with the Magnetic Cliffs. The magnetic pull can be turned of and on. When on, they activate a phenomenon called the Sea Glow, which illuminates the bottom of the sea, but also activates the magnetic pull, endangering passing ships. Someone must be found to ensure that no ships are endangered while the Sea Glow is switched on. In addition, Sursulapitschi is distressed because her fiancee, a "Schildnöck" (turtle man) named Ushaurishuum, has been assigned by her father to refashion the Crystal of Eternity, a task only possible with the aid of a creature of fire, with whom the merpeople are at war. Using the special properties of the cliffs' material, Jim and Luke convert Emma into a flying vehicle which they dub the "Perpetumobile" due to its unlimited means of locomotion. With it, they cross the Crown of the World to get Mr. Tur Tur. To their surprise, in the desert, they also encounter their half-dragon friend Nepomuk, who had had to flee the Dragon City following the events in the first book, for his help in capturing Mrs. Grindtooth. Jim and Luke persuade Nepomuk to accompany them and take up the post at the Magnetic Cliffs. Unexpectedly, the four meet Sursulapitschi and Ushaurishuum at the cliffs, and the Schildnöck and Nepomuk quickly become friends, enabling the recreation of the Crystal of Eternity. Meanwhile, Jim's locomotive Molly, whom Jim and Luke had left at the cliffs when getting Mr. Tur Tur and Nepomuk, has been abducted by the band of pirates called the Wild 13. Luckily for Jim and Luke, the former Mrs. Grindtooth awakes as a Golden Dragon of Wisdom in China and can help them out with information and tells Jim how to find out about his origin. With the help of the Chinese emperor, Jim and Luke – and Princess Li Si as a stowaway – start their journey to meet the Wild 13 and rescue Molly. They encounter the pirates, who prove to be too much for them in battle. Molly is lost at sea, and all but Jim are captured and brought to the pirates' base, Castle Stormeye, a pinnacle of rock within the eye of a perpetual hurricane. Unseen, Jim manages to sneak into the pirates' fortress, overpower them with a trick and some luck, and become their leader. As it turns out, Jim is the last descendant of Caspar, the third of the Three Kings, whose heirs were doomed to be homeless after Mrs. Grindtooth had sunk their kingdom beneath the ocean millennia ago. Only the sinking of Castle Stormeye will raise it up again. In the end, the Wild 13 sacrifice their fortress, Jim's old kingdom reappears – and to everyone's surprise, Morrowland is located at the top of the realm's highest mountain. All the families whose children Jim and Luke had rescued from the Dragon City come to live in the new country. Jim marries Li Si and receives Molly from the merpeople, her iron frame transformed into the Crystal of Eternity. The Wild 13, reformed by their sacrifice, remain in Jim's kingdom as its protectors and royal guards.
5958929	/m/0fgnt2	An Acceptable Time	Madeleine L'Engle	1989-10-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Happy to be away from her large family for a while, Polly O'Keefe is spending the autumn with her maternal grandparents, Dr. Kate Murry and Dr. Alex Murry, getting a better education from them in science than she would have received at home. Soon, however, surprising things start to happen, including the unexpected arrival of Zachary Gray, a charming but troubled college student whom Polly met in Greece and dated on Cyprus the year before (in A House Like a Lotus). Then, while walking near her grandparents' Connecticut home, Polly meets druids Karralys and Anaral and a warrior named Tav, all of whom lived in the area some three thousand years ago. She soon learns that she is not the first person from her time to meet the Murrys' Pre-Columbian neighbors. Bishop Nason Colubra, the brother of a family friend, Dr. Louise Colubra, has been investigating the hieroglyphs found on rocks in nearby, relics of Karralys' time. In doing so, he has also come into repeated contact with Anaral's tribe, the People of the Wind (a tribe that previously appeared in A Swiftly Tilting Planet). The retired bishop is initially reluctant to discuss this, having been met with his sister's skepticism in previous attempts. However, he feels responsible for exposing Polly to the potential dangers of a tesseract of intersecting periods of time. The Murrys and the Colubras try to protect Polly from being drawn into the past, but although she tries to obey their restrictions on her movements, she continues to encounter Anaral and the others. Karralys and Tav formerly lived in ancient Britain, but have since crossed the ocean and made their home with the People of the Wind. On Samhain, Polly feels a compulsion to visit the Murrys' indoor swimming pool, the modern location of a site considered sacred by Karralys and Anaral. Polly is suddenly transported to the past, where she learns that Tav wants to offer Polly in blood sacrifice in order to avert a drought. Already the People Across the Lake are conducting raids due to the privations of drought, and Tav wants to protect his adopted people. Karralys sends Polly home. Zachary, however, is intrigued when he learns that the odd people he has seen are from the ancient past. His heart, previously seen as damaged by rheumatic fever in the Austin family novel The Moon by Night, is now so weak that he does not expect to live much longer. On the slight possibility that the solution to his problem lies with the ancient druids, Zach rashly leads Polly back to the star-watching rock, a place where Polly found herself in the past once before. Polly and Zach are drawn through a time gate and trapped in ancient Connecticut, with neither the Murrys nor Louise Colubra there to help Polly out of a potentially fatal situation. Tav soon changes his mind about whether his goddess wants Polly to be sacrificed. Her primary danger is not from the People of the Wind, but from their neighbors across the lake, where the drought is more severe. The People Across the Lake conduct another raid, and leave behind two of their injured members as they withdraw. One of them, Klep, is expected to be his tribe's future leader. He develops an attachment to his healer, Anaral, and learns from Polly the concept of love. The other injured man, Brown Earth, persuades Zachary to cross the lake with him during the night. Tynak, the current leader of the People Across the Lake, promises to let the tribe's medicine man heal Zachary's heart if he helps bring Polly to them. Zach agrees. He participates in another raid, with Polly's capture as the goal. Polly tries to convince Zach that the People Across the Lake intend to sacrifice her for her blood, but he refuses to admit this. Polly escapes, but returns for Zachary's sake. Ultimately, Polly's spirit of self-sacrifice and love, accompanied by the timely return of rain on her captors' side of the lake, wins out as a better way to interact with the Divine than an offering of death. The two tribes agree to unite and help each other. Zachary repents his betrayal of Polly, and his heart is physically healed (at least in part) before they return to their own time. When they return Polly tells Zachary they shouldn't see each other any more.
5959933	/m/0fgq4n	Ramona Quimby, Age 8	Beverly Cleary	1981	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The schools in Ramona Quimby's neighborhood have been reorganized, and now she gets to ride the bus to Cedarhurst Primary, where she and her fellow third graders will be the biggest kids in the school. Ramona is happy about the changes until a boy on the bus steals her new eraser, but she rises to the challenge and ends up deciding the "Yard Ape" may not be so bad, after all. The best part of being in third grade is Sustained Silent Reading. Ramona loves getting time to read in school every day. The worst part is that she isn't sure if her teacher, Mrs. Whaley, likes her. When Ramona cracks a hard boiled egg on her head at lunch- and finds out her mother forgot to boil it- she ends up in the secretary's office with a head full of raw egg, where she overhears Mrs. Whaley describe her as a show-off and a nuisance. Even Yard Ape can't make her feel better about that. Things get worse when she throws up in class and her mother has to leave work to take her home. Then there's the problem of spoiled Willa Jean. Every day after school Howie goes outside to ride bikes with his friends, and Ramona is forced to play baby games with her. Beezus can always say she's busy doing homework, but that doesn't work for Ramona. Clearly, though, she is growing up, as she uses her creativity to find ways to help her family by getting along.
5963476	/m/0fgy4_	Catalyst	Laurie Halse Anderson	2002-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kate Malone, a preacher's daughter and high school student who is excellent in chemistry and aspires to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, faces multiple tragic situations ranging from rejection by MIT to the fire of her neighbor Teri Litch at the end of her senior year. All of these become catalysts propelling self-centered, arrogant Kate to change. Throughout the novel Anderson makes extensive references to the periodic table of elements.
5963679	/m/0fgymb	René	François-René de Chateaubriand	1802	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 René, a desperately unhappy young Frenchman, seeks refuge among the Natchez people of Louisiana. It is a long time before he is persuaded to reveal the cause of his melancholy. He tells of his lonely childhood in his father's castle in Brittany. His mother died giving birth to him and since his father is a remote, forbidding figure, René takes refuge in an intense friendship with his sister Amélie and in long, solitary walks in the countryside around the castle. When René's father dies and his brother inherits the family home, he decides to travel. He visits the ruins of ancient Greece and Rome which inspire him with melancholy reflections. He travels to Scotland to view the places mentioned by the bard Ossian and to the famous sights of Italy. Nothing satisfies him: "The ancient world had no certainty, the modern world had no beauty." He returns to France and finds society corrupt and irreligious. His sister Amélie inexplicably seems to avoid him too. As René explains: :"I soon found myself more isolated in my own land, than I had been in a foreign country. For a while I wanted to fling myself into a world which said nothing to me and which did not understand me. My soul, not yet worn out by any passion, sought an object to which it might be attached; but I realised I was giving more than I received. It was not elevated language or deep feelings that were asked of me. My only task was to shrink my soul and bring it down to society's level." Disgusted, René withdraws from society and lives in an obscure part of the city. But this reclusive life soon bores him too. He decides to move to the countryside but he finds no happiness there: "Alas, I was alone, alone on the earth. A secret languor was taking hold of my body. The disgust for life I had felt since childhood came back with renewed force. Soon my heart no longer provided food for my mind, and the only thing I felt in my existence was a deep ennui." René decides to kill himself, but when his sister learns of his plan, the two are joyfully reunited. But there is no happy ending. Amélie seems to be pining for something. One day, René finds she has gone, leaving a letter saying she wants to become a nun but giving no explanation why. René goes to witness her initiation ceremony where she reveals she has joined the convent because she wants to overcome her incestuous love for him. Devastated by this confession, René decides to leave Europe forever and travel to America. After spending some time with the Indians, he receives a letter announcing his sister's death. The novella concludes by revealing shortly after René told his tale, he was killed in a battle between the Natchez and the French. (Note: according to the version in Les Natchez, the action of the story takes place in the 1720s).
5966618	/m/0fh2cm	The Quincunx of Time	James Blish	1973-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Capt. Robin Weinbaum of Earth Security submits to a request for an interview from Dana Lje, a video commentator, mostly because she can and has made his life difficult with her reporting of Security lapses, especially in a recent case involving the Government of Erskine, another planetary system. Ms. Lje reveals that she has received a communication from an outfit calling itself "Interstellar Information Ltd." about an incident in a star system so far away that even by a faster-than-light ship, no message could return from it in less than two months. The incident in fact is due to take place in the next few days. The communication also alleges that there is a new device aboard the ship, and gives the name of the device. When Weinbaum hears the name—the Dirac communicator—he is forced to believe that Interstellar Information have access to information even he doesn't have. He brings in Dr. Thor Wald to explain the Dirac device to Dana Lje. She agrees to play along with Interstellar and its owner, J. Shelby Stevens, to let Security find out how the company gets its information. A long investigation turns up exactly nothing. Even when J. Shelby Stevens allows an interview, under the conditions of so-called "stoolie's arrest" in which he voluntarily places himself in custody for interview, with a guarantee of being set free immediately afterward, there is no progress. The only result is that Stevens predicts the date of their next meeting. Weinbaum uses the Dirac device to communicate with his agents, even though he suspects the communications may not be secure. Each audiovisual message is preceded by a loud beep and burst of visual static, which is so annoying that Weinbaum orders it edited from the tapes he reviews. Finally Weinbaum discovers who Stevens really is, and to his amazement the day this happens is the exact day Stevens predicted they would meet again. He orders his agents to arrest the miscreant. The explanation he gets is this: the beep that he found so annoying represents all the messages ever sent, or that ever will be sent, using the Dirac device. With proper techniques, it is possible to extract any message, whether it be recent, or far in the future. Weinbaum realizes that this is an incredible and dangerous thing. On the one hand he can be ready for any hostile act on the part of Earth's enemies, but on the other he may, by choosing some events over others, affect the course of future history. The final chapters of the book are a long and well-informed discussion on free will and determinism (the preface of the novel has a quote on the subject from philosopher William James). Eventually Weinbaum decides that the best choice is no choice at all. If information in the beep states that something will happen, then his agents must make sure that it happens. He calls this principle "Thy will, not mine".
5967227	/m/0fh3wg	East	Edith Pattou		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Arne married the superstitious Eugenia, he agreed to have seven children with her, one for each point of the compass, excluding North, which she believed to be wild and uncontrollable. Each direction fortold a different personality. Her favourite child, East-born Elise, died young and Eugenia had another child to replace her. As soon as Rose (Nyamh) finds out that she is not actually an East bairn, but a North, she and her short temper go hysterical, driving her to go with the White Bear. Eugenia was told years before by a skjebne-soke (fortune teller) that any North Child she had would die crushed beneath an avalanche with ice and snow. Rose has always felt out of place in her family, a wanderer in a bunch of homebodies. So when an enormous white bear mysteriously shows up and asks her to come away with him--in exchange for health and prosperity for her ailing family--she readily agrees. The bear takes Rose to a distant castle, where each night she is confronted with a mystery. In solving that mystery, she loses her heart, discovers her purpose, and realizes her travels have only just begun.
5968160	/m/0fh60v	Premonitions	Judy Blundell	2005-04-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Gracie knows when bad things are about to happen. Or sometimes when they have already happened. She begged her mother not to leave for a trip that ended with her dying when her car was hit by a truck delivering oranges, and now, living in Washington with her aunt Shay, Gracie has visions that involve her best friend Emily. Gracie would prefer that her psychic powers did not exist, but when Emily disappears, she has to use every vision she gets as a clue to solving the mystery. The problem with Gracie's visions is that she does not know exactly what she is seeing. Sometimes she sees the past, sometimes the present, and sometimes she misinterprets her visions completely. Assisted by her cousin Diego, Gracie follows her visions in hopes of finding Emily. After a few false starts and a little research, she finds Emily's trail and is taken captive by Emily's kidnapper. Trapped in a guarded and gloomy house, Gracie begins to see the dark childhood of her kidnapper and his kins in unstoppable visions, the kidnapper is a madman who regrets not saving his ill sister Nell. This leads to the house being set ablaze by his enraged father and most of his brothers and sisters are killed in the fire including his dear sister Lizbet. This disillusioned madman wants to end this properly this time and so plans to die with his foster 'family'.
5968846	/m/0fh7f3	Magic's Pawn	Mercedes Lackey	1989	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Vanyel Ashkevron, age sixteen, is the heir to a great estate, Forst Reach, though he does not measure up to what his father, Lord Withen, deems to be a "proper" man. He is devoted to music and cultivating an elegant appearance. Withen sends Vanyel to school in Haven, the capital of Valdemar, under the supervision of Vanyel's aunt Savil. Savil has little interest in Vanyel because he has no psychic or magic powers, but realizes he is not as arrogant as Withen described. Vanyel finds schooling at Haven more suited to his nature, but is told he does not have the Bardic gift, and cannot become a true Bard. Feeling he has lost his dream, he becomes depressed. Vanyel develops feelings for Tylendel Frelennye, one of Savil's protégés. He learns that Tylendel is shay'a'chern, or homosexual. They become lovers and later find they are lifebonded, that is, soulmates. For the first time, Vanyel is truly happy. Tylendel introduces Vanyel to Gala, his Companion; one of the intelligent horse-like creatures that bond with Heralds. Staven, Tylendel's twin brother, is assassinated by a family enemy. Tylendel senses his brother's death and goes mad with grief. Not understanding Tylendel's trauma, Vanyel continues supporting him as he seeks revenge. Using Vanyel's dormant energies Tylendel 'Gates' them to the enemy family. Tylendel casts a complicated spell summoning deadly wyrsa to kill members of the enemy family. Gala repudiates Tylendel and dies sacrificing herself to give time for Heralds to arrive to stop the massacre. Tylendel commits suicide, and the backlash from the 'Gate' spell tears open Vanyel's dormant magic potential. Suffering from psychic and emotional damage, Vanyel is "chosen" by a Companion, Yfandes, who reassures him of her love and friendship and his worth. Vanyel begins recovering, but is unable to control his newly "opened" powers. He telepathically overhears thoughts blaming him for Tylendel's death. Vanyel attempts suicide, but is rescued, and the Heralds see that his love for Tylendel was real. Savil, realizing Vanyel needs special assistance, takes him to the Tayledras, human beings who live in K'Treva, an environment immersed in magic. They teach him how to control his abilities, and convince him that being gay is not wrong or sinful. Vanyel does not want to be a Herald or a Mage, and suspects the people around him value his powers, not himself. He runs away, but as he thinks things over he realizes that Savil and the others have shown that they care about him. Just when he realizes that and moves to return he discovers a village being terrorized by a colddrake, a type of dragon. Before he can even think to do anything, he witnesses the dragon killing an elderly man. He pulls himself together and kills the dragon, but the unfortunate timing gives Vanyel the impression that he is a coward. The Tayledras later explain that he is not at all cowardly and that his reactions were normal. Vanyel is about to return to the Tayledras when he receives a telepathic cry for help. He ends up assisting a village in overcoming a mad wizard along with his aunt and teachers. With a combination of strategy and half-learned magic, he defeats the wizard. He believes he will die as well, but is comforted by the thought that he will be with Tylendel. Vanyel wakes to find himself with his aunt in K'Treva as she presents him with the white robes of a full-fledged Herald-Mage.
5969504	/m/0fh847	Taming The Star Runner	S. E. Hinton	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Travis is a tough kid living in a big city. When he comes home to find his stepfather cramming the fireplace with his writing, Travis assaults him with a fireplace poker. As a result, he is sent to live with his paternal uncle, Ken, on his ranch outside of Tulsa. Travis, used to life in the city, soon finds country life to be boring. Formerly the coolest, toughest kid in school, he is now an out-of-place loner, torn between his desire to fit in and his contempt for country living. Even Ken seems too busy for him, between work at his law-firm and his divorce; he is often too busy to even keep food in the house. Travis continues work on his book while maintaining a correspondence with Joe, the only one of his friends to even occasionally write back. He also meets Casey Kencaide, who runs a riding school on Ken's ranch and is the only one brave enough to ride the Star Runner, a creature who, like Travis, was never meant to be tamed. Soon Travis is working for Casey as a stable boy, and he receives an offer to publish his book. In response he takes a trip into town to celebrate. While in town he gets drunk and is beat up by the bouncer when his true age is discovered. In bad shape, he contacts his uncle to bring him home and reveals his book deal to Ken, a surprise for Ken, as he was unaware that Travis was even fully literate. For a while life, to Travis, at least seems bearable. Things soon get worse though, as Travis' stepfather refuses to allow the book to be published without his prior approval. Hearing this, Travis has another fit of rage and throws the phone, nearly hitting Ken's wife, Teresa, and their son, Christopher. Teresa, in response to this, and discovering Travis' criminal record, threatens to use his presence in Ken's house to win full custody of Christopher and Ken almost kicks Travis out in his zeal to be with his son. Eventually they make peace after they realize that they both hoped that the other would be the father and son they were looking for. It turns out Travis' father died in the Vietnam War two months before Travis was born. Ken then agrees to help Travis get his book published, going with him to meet the publisher Ms. Carmichael when she comes to town, and even arranges some publicity with a TV interview at a station owned by a friend of his. Travis then gets a surprise visit from his friend Joe, who had hitchhiked his way there. Instead of this being a joyous event, Joe reveals that after Travis left, his friends, Joe and the twins, Billy and Mike, had turned to burglary, fencing the goods through a man named Orson. After Joe quit, the twins continued their burglaries, but found a new fence. For this, Orson killed the twins and tried to make Joe help him. Travis and Ken convince Joe that he must return to face trial as an accomplice, and take him to the local police for extradition. As they return to Ken's ranch, a huge lightning storm strikes and Ken and Travis must go help Casey round up the horses into the barn. As they do this, the Star Runner breaks free of his padlock. Casey and Travis give chase only to have Casey's jeep struck by lightning. Although it is not directly stated, the Star Runner is killed(This is implied from Travis smelling burned flesh). The book ends as Casey and Travis have recovered from the accident and the temporary hearing loss. Though Casey had previously spurned Travis' romantic overtures, they are now close friends who share a common bond. Travis also realizes that he, like the Star Runner, should never allow himself to be tamed or broken, even when life is at its worst.
5969644	/m/0fh89h	Magic's Promise	Mercedes Lackey		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book opens with Herald-Mage Vanyel returning to his country Valdemar from an extensive campaign along the border with Karse, the neighboring enemy country. He checks in with Valdemar's King Randale and his lifebonded mate, Shavri, and their daughter Jisa. Only a select few know that Jisa is Vanyel's daughter. Because King Randale is sterile, he had asked Vanyel to father an heir. Now, Shavri confides in Vanyel her fear that Randale is mortally ill. Vanyel and his mentor Savil return to Vanyel's family home at Forst Reach, where they find little rest or peace. His parents both try to change his mind about being shay'a'chern, or homosexual. Vanyel becomes somewhat confused about his own sexuality. He wonders if he is truly in love with Shavri. Yfandes, Vanyel's Companion, doesn't buy it and finds the situation amusing. Vanyel also meets his illegitimate nephew, Medren. Medren is small for his age as Vanyel was, and like him it appears that he is often bullied by the armsmaster Jervis. The boy has a powerful Bardic gift, and Vanyel sponsors him for the Bardic Collegium. Vanyel confronts Jervis and learns that the armsmaster is not being intentionally rough. He also apologizes for beating Vanyel long ago, and explains his difficult position with Vanyel's father. He also mentions that he knew Vanyel was shay'a'chern from the beginning, but also knew from his army service that being gay does not keep men from being courageous warriors. Vanyel accepts this and they form an uneasy friendship. The main plot focuses on how Vanyel assists young Prince Tashir Remoerdis. Vanyel and Yandes receive a psychic summons into the neighboring country of Lineas. Upon arrival, they find Tashir, who has just become a Herald, with his Companion, Leshya (nicknamed Ghost by Yfandes). Another Herald, Lores, is beating the child and attacks Ghost when he tries to interfere. He believes that Tashir is actually an evil sorcerer who has murdered his own family. Vanyel immediately stops Lores and commands him to return to Valdemar. Vanyel takes Tashir back to his own home, Forst Reach, and begins to try and discover what truly happened to Tashir's family. He then returns to Lineas, disguised as a minstrel to gather information. In Lineas magic is taboo; no one is supposed to perform it for any reason. It shares a border with Baires, a country ruled by the Mavelan, a family of mages. A treaty was signed to end the warring between the two countries, sealed by the marriage of Tashir's parents. In the treaty there exists a clause that if the royal family of Lineas dies out, the Mavelan can take over the Lineas throne, and vice versa. Vanyel meets an old servant of the Remoerdis family who tells him of Tashir's sad childhood. Tashir was physically and emotionally abused by his father and sexually abused by his mother. His mother was mentally unstable and made seductive overtures to Tashir even as a young child. Tashir looks very much like his mother's uncle Vedric, and rumor has it that he is the product of an incestuous affair between them. Returning to Forst Reach, Vanyel recruits Savil and Jervis to help. Together with Tashir, they return to Lineas, breaking through the palace's magic shields to search the place. They find a secret room which contains a "heart-stone", an ordinary rock connected with a magical "node" which is keeping a deep, dangerous fault sealed. As the stone was unstable and any magic done in the area could disturb it, a guardian family without magic was appointed. If the stone were to be removed, a giant earthquake would occur destroying Lineas, parts of the outlands, and the border of Valdemar. That was why magic was anathema in Lineas, and also why everyone in the palace was blood related member of the Remoerdis family, sworn to protect the node. In the palace Vanyel and Savil discover a "trap-spell", which targets one person and also kills the target's entire family. Tashir's family were the victims of the trap-spell, which was placed by Tashir's uncle Vedric, whose intention is to control both Lineas and Baires. (He is not, however, Tashir's father.) Vedric tries the same trick on Vanyel, who has already caught on and sent Savil away, along with Tashir, while keeping Jervis with him. In defending himself, Vanyel ends up killing most of the Baires family as well as Vedric. Now king of both Baires and Lineas, Tashir considers himself too young and inexperienced. He allows King Randale to annex the two smaller countries into Valdemar. Vanyel finally sorts out that he actually is gay, and that Shavri is just a good friend.
5970467	/m/0fhb0x	Magic's Price	Mercedes Lackey	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with the last four Herald-Mages, Vanyel among them, creating a magic barrier around their nation of Valdemar. This barrier prevents hostile mages from using magic. Vanyel intends to add other defenses when he has the time. Valdemar's King Randale is dying of a mysterious ailment. Vanyel has taken over nearly all the responsibilities of the throne, while young Prince Treven is trained. A young bard named Stefen is discovered in the Bardic Collegium. He has the unusual ability to block pain with his music. Vanyel arranges for Stefen to play for Randale during an official audience, proving his ability. Stefen is openly shaych (homosexual) and falls in love with Vanyel. Vanyel hesitates to love anyone because he fears his enemies will attack those he cares about, but finds that he and Stefen have become lifebonded—that is, they are complementary soulmates. It is unheard-of to have more than one lifebond in one lifetime, and Vanyel had already had such a link with (now dead) Herald-Mage apprentice Tylendel when very young. While visiting his family with Stefen and his aunt and mentor Savil, Vanyel wanders alone to think things over and is ambushed by a rogue mage, whom he overcomes and delivers to the family priest. The mage escapes and attacks a group of women who are listening to Stefen's music. Yfandes tries to help but is injured; Vanyel shows up just in time to step in front of a thrown dagger meant for his mother. Savil recognizes the dagger as a leech-blade, which sucks life energy from its victim. Savil Gates away to the land of the Tayledras Hawkbrothers, to ask for help; she returns with Vanyel's former mentors, Moondance and Starwind. They discover that Vanyel's lifebond with Stefen may have saved his life and speculate that Stefen is the reincarnation of Tylendel. Vanyel is not told, as the Hawkbrothers think it would complicate his relationship with Stefen. Vanyel, Stefen and Savil return to Haven, bringing Vanyel's parents along for their protection. King Randale has deteriorated further. Shavri, his lover and King's Own, has decided to provide him with strength through a psychic link. When Randale dies, so will Shavri. To make matters worse, Karse, the traditional enemy of Valdemar, is about to declare a holy war. Vanyel departs to negotiate a treaty with the land of Rethwellan. Upon his return he finds that Herald-Mages are dying in what look like accidents. Savil doesn't believe it and asks Vanyel to strengthen the protective wards around her home. Vanyel is tired and puts it off; the same night a mage-made creature murders Savil. Vanyel is now the last Herald-Mage. Vanyel sets out to find the mage behind the deaths, followed by Stefen. They are ambushed by bandits who work for the mage, whom they call Master Dark. As instructed, Stefen runs away to hide and returns later. He finds Yfandes injured and Vanyel kidnapped. A blocking spell has been put on Vanyel to prevent him from using his powers. The bandits rape and beat Vanyel savagely and he nearly dies; they send for a healer to revive him. This man sees the magical block on Vanyel's mind and removes it. Vanyel revives, and temporarily loses his sanity, killing everyone in sight. Stefen and Yfandes arrive and so do a pack of Kyree, who take the humans in and help them. Vanyel is healed, but is determined to find "Master Dark", whom he now suspects of having been behind a number of mysterious deaths in Valdemar. Vanyel finds a mountain pass, where the mage intends to take his troops down into the heart of Valdemar. Vanyel sends Yfandes and Stefen to the guard post for help; knowing he may never see them again. The dark mage's army shows up. Vanyel defeats them and finally faces Leareth, "Master Dark" himself. Yfandes returns and together they invoke the ultimate spell, Final Strike, which kills not only one's enemy but oneself. Vanyel and Yfandes die together. Stefen, who has felt Vanyel die, finds only a cracked and burned amber focus-stone—a present he had given Vanyel—and a few strands of blood-soaked horse hair. Some months later, King Randale and Shavri have died. Lost in grief and despair, Stefen returns to the site of Vanyel's death, intending to commit suicide, but Vanyel's spirit appears before him. Vanyel tells Stefen that in order for Stefen to be free to join him, he must convince all of Valdemar that Herald-Mages are no longer necessary, and that Heralds are enough; a nearly impossible task. Stefen agrees and spends the rest of his life working for this change, until his death when he is able to join Vanyel on the other side.
5970542	/m/0fhb8y	St. John's Eve	Nikolai Gogol			 This story is retold by Rudy Panko from Foma Grigorievich, the sexton of the Dikanka church. Rudy was in the middle of reading the story to the reader, when Foma butts in and demands to tell it his way. His grandfather used to live in an old village not far from Dikanka that no longer exists. There lived a Cossack named Korzh, his daughter Pidorka and his worker Petro. Petro and Pidorka fall in love, but Korzh catches them one day kissing and is about to whip Petro for this, but stops when his son Ivas pleads for his father to not beat the worker. Korzh instead takes him outside and tells him to never come to his home again, putting the lovers into despair. Petro wants to do whatever he can to get her, and meets up with Basavriuk, a local stranger who frequents the village and many believe to be the devil himself. Basavriuk tells Petro to meet him in Bear’s Ravine and he’ll show him where treasure is in order to get back Pidorka. He has to find a fern that blooms on St John's Eve, a folk legend not based in fact. Basavriuk tells Petro to pluck the flower he finds, and a witch appears who hands him a spade. When he finds the treasure with the spade, he cannot open it until he sheds blood, which he agrees to do until he finds that they captured Ivas in order to acquire it. He refuses at first but in a fury of uncertainty lops off the child’s head and gets the gold. He falls asleep for two days and when he awakens he sees the gold but cannot remember how he got it. After they are married, things go downhill and Petro becomes increasingly distant and insane, thinking all the time that he has forgotten something. Eventually, after a time, Pidorka is convinced to visit the witch at Bear’s Ravine for help, and brings her home. Petro then remembers, upon seeing her, what happened and tosses an axe at the witch, who disappears. Ivas appears at the door with blood all over him and Petro is carried away by the devil. All that remains is a pile of ashes where he once stood and the gold has turned into pieces of broken pottery. After this, Basavriuk begins to appear in the village again and Pidorka goes on a pilgrimage. Foma’s grandfather’s aunt still had problems with the devil however; a party is ruined when a roast lamb comes alive, a chalice bows to his grandfather and a bowl begins to dance. Even after sprinkling the entire area with holy water the tavern is still possessed, so the village becomes abandoned.
5974342	/m/0fhk0q	Dracula's Guest	Bram Stoker			 "Dracula's Guest" follows an Englishman (whose name is never mentioned but is presumed to be Jonathan Harker) on a visit to Munich before leaving for Transylvania. It is Walpurgis Night, and in spite of the hotelier's warning to not be late back, the young man later leaves his carriage and wanders toward the direction of an abandoned "unholy" village. As the carriage departs with the frightened and superstitious driver, a tall and thin stranger scares the horses at the crest of a hill. Upon reaching a desolate valley after a few hours, it begins to snow and as a dark storm gathers intensity, the Englishman takes shelter in a grove of cypress and yew trees. The Englishman's location is soon illuminated by moonlight to be a cemetery, and he finds himself before a marble tomb with a large iron stake driven through the roof, the inscription reads: Countess Dolingen of Gratz / in Styria / sought and found death / 1801. Inscribed on the back of the tomb "graven in great Russian letters" is: The dead travel fast. The Englishman is disturbed to be in such a place on such a night and as the storm breaks anew, he is forced by hail to shelter in the doorway of the tomb. As the Englishman avoids the pelting hail, the bronze door of the tomb opens under his weight and a flash of forked lightning shows the interior - and a "beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier". The force of the following thunder peal throws the Englishman from the doorway (experienced as "being grasped as by the hand of a giant") as another lightning bolt strikes the iron spike, destroying the tomb and the now screaming woman inside. The Englishman's troubles are not quite over, as he painfully regains his senses from the ordeal, he is repulsed by a feeling of loathing which he connects to a warm feeling in his chest and a licking at this throat. the Englishman summons courage to peek through his eyelashes and discovers a gigantic wolf with flaming eyes is attending him. Military horsemen are the next to wake the semi-conscious man, chasing the wolf away with torches and guns. Some horsemen return to the main party and Harker after the chase, reporting that they had not found 'him' and that the Englishman's animal is: "A wolf - and yet not a wolf". They also note that blood is on the ruined tomb yet the Englishman's neck is un-bloodied, "See comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his blood warm". Later, the Englishman finds his neck pained when a horseman comments on it. When the Englishman is taken back to his hotel by the men, he is informed that it is none other than his expectant host Dracula that has alerted his employees, the horsemen, of "dangers from snow and wolves and night" in a telegram received by the hotel in the time the Englishman was away.
5975647	/m/0fhmtn	Young Man with a Horn	Dorothy Baker	1938		 A jazz fiction novel set in a world of speakeasies, big bands, and the Harlem Renaissance. It is loosely based on the life of the great cornet player Bix Beiderbecke who died of alcoholism in 1931 at the age of 28. It tells the story of Rick Martin, a tormented genius from childhood until his death at age 30. The story also dwells on the white/black abilities to play jazz. However, Rick establishes a strong relationship to black musicians who in fact teach him a great deal. The book details both the widely accepted public view of the jazz musician of the time as well as a musician's own struggle for perfection. This drive finally destroys Rick.
5976174	/m/0fhn_1	The Wheels of Chance	H. G. Wells	1897	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Wheels of Chance was written at the height of the cycling craze (1890–1905), when practical, comfortable bicycles first became widely and cheaply available and before the rise of the automobile (see History of the bicycle). The advent of the bicycle stirred sudden and profound changes in the social life of England. Even the working class could travel substantial distances, quickly and cheaply, and the very idea of travelling for pleasure became a possibility for thousands of people for the first time. This new freedom affected many. It began to weaken the rigid English class structure and it gave an especially powerful boost to the existing movement toward female emancipation. Wells explored these social changes in his story.
5976731	/m/0fhpwk	The Arrows of Hercules	L. Sprague de Camp	1965	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The protagonist is the engineer Zopyros of Tarentum, a follower of the Pythagorean philosophical school. Having invented an improved type of catapult, he is drafted into Syracuse's war effort against Carthage by the tyrant Dionysios, creator of the first military ordnance department known to history. The historical Battle of Motya of 399 BC is a major event in the novel. Also portrayed is the incident upon which the legend of the Sword of Damocles is supposedly based.
5979692	/m/0fhwcc	Berlin Game	Len Deighton	1983	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The time is the early 1980s. A highly-placed agent in East Germany codenamed "Brahms Four" wants to come to the West. Brahms Four is one of Britain's most reliable, most valuable agents behind the Iron Curtain, and that he should be urgently demanding safe passage to the West sends a ripple of panic through the SIS. Bernard Samson, a former field agent, and now working behind a London desk, is tasked to undertake the crucial rescue. After all, it was Brahms Four who had once, nearly twenty years ago, saved his life. But even before Samson sets out on his mission, he is confronted with undeniable evidence that there is a traitor among his colleagues — a traitor planted by the KGB. Clearly, it is someone close to the top, close to Samson himself. It could be Dicky Cruyer, his incompetent supervisor - whom Samson despises. It could be the American Bret Rensselaer, who has built his entire career around the work of Brahms Four — and who is spending an inordinate amount of time with Samson's wife, Fiona (also an intelligence officer). It could be Frank Harrington, the 'rezident' - or head of the Berlin field unit. In fact, it could be any member of the senior staff at London Central — even the Director-General himself. Bernard travels to East Berlin to assist the escape of Brahms Four, and decides at the last moment to send Brahms Four out in his place. His suspicions of treachery prove well-founded when he is captured and subsequently confronted by his wife, who had defected and betrayed the operation.
5980075	/m/0fhx0p	Late Victorian Holocausts	Mike Davis	2000-12	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Part 1 is further subdivided into three chapters – 1) Victoria's ghosts 2) The Poor Eat Their Homes 3) Gunboats and Messiahs. In this section Davis writes about the drought that occurred in the various parts of the British empire in the 1870s and the reactions of the colonial government. Part 2 is further subdivided into three chapters – 1) The Government of Hell 2) Skeletons at the Feast 3) Millenarian Revolutions. This section deals with the impact of the colonial famine policy and its effects on the colonial subjects. Part 3 contains two chapters – 1) The Mystery of the Monsoons and 2) Climates of Hunger. It describes the effect of the ENSO on the lives and livelihood of the people around the world. The final part of the book has four chapters – 1) The Origins of the Third World 2) India: The Modernization of the Poverty 3) China: Mandates Revoked 4) Brazil: Race and Capital in the Nordeste.
5983051	/m/0fj0kf	First Rider's Call	Kristen Britain	2003-08-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Now a Green Rider, one of the king's elite troop of messengers, Karigan returns to Sacor City giving up her merchant lifestyle. The story opens a year into this service as danger is threatening the kingdom of Sacoridia once again. The dark magic in Blackveil Forest is restless, and has found an outlet through the breach in the D'Yer Wall, which has protected Sacoridia from the forest for over 1000 years. This influx of magic has messed up a land that has largely learned to live without magic during this time. Strange instances of animals turned to stone and entire villages disappearing are brought to the palace from around the country. In the end the strange magic touches even the main city as suits of iron are brought to life and snow falls within the castle. Even the Green Riders' magic goes haywire sending Captain Mapstone into solitary confinement. As a result Mara (another rider) and Karigan are left to lead the riders as best they can. Throughout the book Karigan has visions of the First Rider, Lil Ambriodhe, who is the long-dead founder of the troop. Karigan meets with an Eletian prince and learns that she has wild magic within her that entered her as a result of her battle with Shawdell in the previous book. This wild magic augments her rider ability and allows her to do some interesting time travel, even visiting Lil in her own time. However, it also allows Mornhavon the Black to possess her. However, Karigan uses this to her favour at the end of the book. Whilst Mornhavon possesses her, she transports him into the future and then with the help of Lil Ambriodhe, deposits him there. This buys the defenders of Sacoridia time to prepare for Mornhavon's return. With the weakening of the wall, Mornhavon's spirit reawakens in Blackveil forest and begins to control the forest. Alton D'Yer is sent to fix the wall, but is betrayed by Seargent Uxton and knocked over the side of the wall into Blackveil. Mornhavon then possesses Alton and tricks him into singing the song that would destroy the D'Yer Wall keeping him imprisoned. Mornhavon also raises two lietenants from his army from the dead but they are destroyed later in the book. An interesting web woven throughout the book is the journal of Hadriax el Fex. Hadriax El Fex was Mornhavon's right hand man and best friend. From Hadriax's journals you learn who Mornhavon the Black was. He was Alessandros del Mornhavon, a prince of a foreign land called Arcosia. He comes to Sacoridia to conquer the land and harvest the lands magic to prove himself to his father. He destroys the Eletian city of Argenthythe and many of the human cities. He faces resistance, though, and the war becomes long and drawn out and becomes the Long War referred to in the book. He loses contact with his father and the empire of Arcosia and feels abandoned by his father. This abandonment and his quest for ultimate power lead him to commit foul experiments to increase his power and make a foul weapon called the Black Star. Hadriax, increasingly dislikes the Long War and Mornhavon's experiments. It becomes too much for Hadriax when Mornhavon sacrifices one of his elite units to power the Black Star. Hadriax joins the Sacoridian league against Mornhavon and helps to bring Mornhavon down. Mornhavon is defeated by the Eletian king in the final battle of the long war. Karigan receives a copy of Hadriax's journal from Estral who finds it in the archives in Selium. From the journal, Karigan learns that Hadriax changes his name to Hadriax G'ladheon and that he is Karigan's ancestor. Overall the book more fully develops the characters met in the first book and introduces new characters that further the plot.
5983624	/m/0fj1m0	The Mystery Of Holly Lane				 The Five Find Outers - Fatty, Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bets - are together again in the school holidays. Bored without a mystery, they decide to practice disguising themselves and shadowing people. Larry dresses up as a window cleaner, and unexpectedly the five children come across a robbery at a house in Holly Lane, the windows of which Larry has cleaned. The house belongs to a blind old man, who has apparently hidden his savings somewhere in the furniture. When the man reports the money stolen, the Find Outers initially believe it to be a simple robbery, but then in the middle of the night, all the old man's furniture is mysteriously spirited away as well. The suspects include Wilfrid, the old man's grandson, and his cousin Marian. When Marian herself disappears, suspicion falls firmly on her and bumbling village policeman Mr Goon is convinced she is the thief - but Fatty thinks differently.
5985623	/m/0fj4xk	Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh can be played by five to ten characters of 1st&ndash;3rd levels. The module includes optional pre-generated first level characters for use by the players. The scenario is the first of the Underwater (U) series of modules set in Saltmarsh, and details a ghostly ship and the haunted mansion of an evil alchemist. The module sleeve contains the following description: The module is divided into two parts, The Haunted House and Sea Ghost, which are intended to be played consecutively. The first part is set in the town of Saltmarsh and deals with unraveling the secret of the haunted house that lies on the edge of town. The abandoned, dilapidated mansion of an evil alchemist has been the subject of rumors about hauntings and treasure. The second part of the module follows on from the first, expanding on the concept. (preview)
5990366	/m/0fjgch	In the Beauty of the Lilies	John Updike	1996		 Beginning in 1910 and ending in 1990, it covers four generations of the Wilmot family, tying its fortunes to both the decline of the Christian faith and the rise of Hollywood in twentieth century America. In her apprasial of Updike's work New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote: "Mr. Updike’s stunning and much underestimated 1996 epic, “In the Beauty of the Lilies,” tackled an even wider swath of history (than his Rabbit Tetralogy). In charting the fortunes of an American family through some 80 years, the author showed how dreams, habits and predilections are handed down generation to generation, parent to child, even as he created a kaleidoscopic portrait of this country from its nervous entry into the 20th century to its stumbling approach to the millennium."
5990391	/m/0fjgg8	Elusive Isabel	Jacques Futrelle	1909	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The eponymous heroine, Isabel Thorne, is a young woman, half British, half Italian, who works for the Italian secret service and who has been commissioned to bring about the signing of the secret contract right in the capital of the enemy by representatives of all countries involved, both European and American. Her brother, an inventor, has devised a secret weapon by which missiles can be fired from submarines (see also depth charge) which will, it is hoped, secure military dominion over the rest of the world. Members of the U.S. Secret Service, who have been alerted, are assigned to prevent the signing of this "Latin compact" and bring to justice those involved who have no diplomatic immunity. One young representative by the name of Grimm, however, although absolutely loyal to his government, falls in love with the beautiful foreign agent. In the end Isabel Thorne, who reciprocates her admirer's love, becomes estranged from her employer, the Italian government, because she does not want Grimm, who has been captured by the conspirators and knows all their secrets, to be murdered. Stripped of all her power and possessions, she unites with him at the end of the novel, no longer elusive. A trivial novel in its time, Elusive Isabel has been completely forgotten but can now be easily accessed via the Project Gutenberg web site.
5994383	/m/0fjnyr	Ramona Forever	Beverly Cleary	1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ramona Quimby is growing up. She and Beezus manage to convince their parents to let them stay home alone together after school for one week to see how it goes. When the sisters find their cat, Picky-Picky, dead in the basement and handle the funeral and burial themselves, their parents decide they are responsible enough to take care of themselves. Ramona is especially happy not to have to go to the Kemp's after school any more because Howie's rich Uncle Hobart has arrived from Saudi Arabia. He's the kind of man who thinks it funny to tease kids, and the girls don't like him. There are more changes coming for the Quimbys. Mr. Quimby is almost finished with college, and everyone hopes he'll get a teaching job in the area. It's especially important because Mrs. Quimby is expecting another baby, and she plans on staying home to take care of it. Beezus thinks it will be wonderful to have a baby around to take care of, but Ramona realizes she won't be the littlest any more. She's not sure how she feels about being the middle child. Before she gets a chance to find out, something else changes. Aunt Bea and Howie's Uncle Hobart get engaged, and Beezus and Ramona are to be maids of honor. They only have two weeks to plan the wedding, though, and by the time the wedding day arrives everyone in the neighborhood has become involved. By the time baby Roberta arrives, Ramona realizes, along with everyone else, that "She was winning at growing up."
5994440	/m/0fjn_v	Forest Mage	Robin Hobb	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story picks up where Shaman's Crossing left off. The Gernian Cavalla Academy is recovering from the devastating effects of Speck plague, a disease causing severe dysentery. The disease has run through the ranks of all the Academy (and civilian) population of Old Thares, killing many of the Old and New Noble soldier sons and leaving the Academy ranks severely depleted. Many who were fortunate enough to have survived the outbreak, including Nevare Burvelle's friend Spinrek "Spink" Kester, have been forced to resign from the academy and return to their homes to struggle with the long-term effects of the disease. Cadet Burvelle also returns home, to attend his brother Rosse's wedding. Nevare continues to have dreams about a seductive Speck woman (usually referred to as "Tree Woman") whom he fought to stop the plague epidemic in the dreamworld. On the way home, he stops as a tourist to see a giant spindle-shaped monument belonging to the Kidona plains people, but the Speck magic working through him causes him to accidentally destroy it. Unlike most of those who were affected by the plague, Nevare was not left weak and gaunt after his bout of plague; in fact, he is swiftly gaining weight. This fact is annoying but doesn't affect his thinking too much as he travels home expecting to meet with his betrothed, a beautiful young noblewoman, Carsina. Yet the reaction he receives on returning home brings into stark relief the physical problem that he struggles with: the Speck plague has caused him to "grow" rather than shrink and waste away. This is a virtually unknown reaction to the plague and is seen by Nevare's father, who will not listen to his excuses, as the result of gluttony. Nevare also visits his old mentor, the Kidona warrior Dewara who introduced him to the dream world. The Kidona tribe has been reduced to a bunch of derelicts living on a reservation due to the actions of the Gernian government. Dewara also blames Nevare for being seduced by Tree Woman and destroying the Spindle, the source of Kidona magic. Nevare's betrothal to Carsina, though informal, is cancelled. After his fruitless attempts to lose weight, Nevare is locked away by his father and his meals regulated. However, while Nevare is locked away, a plague ravages the Widevale Estate, killing many, including his mother, eldest sister and brother Rosse. Nevare and his sister Yaril survive and run the estate while their father is in mourning, but when their father recovers, he banishes and disowns Nevare. Nevare travels east toward the remote outpost Gettys. On the way, he stops at a small settlement called "Dead Town" and helps a widow, Amzil, and her three children by doing odd jobs to make their lives easier, in exchange he gets to eat and sleep there. Nevare wants to win Amzil's trust, but she finds it hard to trust men, having had to work as a prostitute to feed herself and her children. One day, a wounded cavalla scout named Buel Hitch reaches the town and asks Nevare's assistance in getting to Gettys, to which Nevare agrees. As they leave, he uses his dormant Speck magic to create a bountiful vegetable garden for Amzil, and his Speck self comes closer to the surface. On their journey to Gettys, Nevare realises that Hitch is in a similar position to his: he is a tool of the Speck magic also. The Gernian goal of building a highway through the forest is being blocked by Speck magic. He enlists in the army there, but only as a lowly cemetery guard, a far cry from his former goal of a cavalla officer. He works very hard and the colonel is thinking about promoting him. After a while he meets two Specks, a girl named Olikea and her father. Olikea brings Nevare food that satisfies the magic that runs through his veins. He is getting pulled between two worlds, the Gernian world and the Specks' magical forests. He doesn't know where to settle down and he does not wish to betray his own people. Nevare's reputation is damaged by his gross appearance and his attempts to talk to his ex-fiancee Carsina, who has moved to Gettys with her new husband. Spink Kester and Nevare's Cousin Epiny, married, are also in town, but he distances himself so as not to ruin their reputation. One day at his way home he gets attacked and shot in the head. His horse is stolen and he is left on the ground with his head bleeding. However, he survives and the wound heals rapidly due to his magic. Unfortunately, Nevare's magic is not as strong as it could be, since he has been avoiding the Specks so he could not get the magical food that Olikea brought. The cavalla scout Buel Hitch(also a Gernian seduced by the Specks) uses the stolen horse's bridle to strangle a prostitute who was friendly with Nevare, thus framing him for murder. As days go by, the Speck plague sweeps by the outpost of Gettys so Nevare is kept busy as cemetery guard/gravedigger. Among the dead is Carsina, who revives briefly at the cemetery and is cared for by Nevare, then dies in his bed. He is accused of necrophilia in addition to the earlier murder, and sentenced to be tortured and hanged. But fortunately for Nevare, the Tree Woman comes and frees him from his cell and impending doom. During his escape, confrontations with Spinrek and Amzil and the townspeople force Nevare to finally give in to the magic. With his magic, he gives the townspeople false memories of his death before embracing his future life in the forest.
5995203	/m/0fjpxw	Pentagon	Allen Drury	1986		 The Soviet Union invades and occupies a sparsely-populated Pacific atoll and proceeds to kill the inhabitants and gradually construct a missile and submarine base. This is perceived as a major threat to the United States, which is called upon to respond. When diplomacy fails, the United States must respond militarily if anything is to be done. Plans to do so, though, are frustrated by infighting within Congress, the Pentagon, and elsewhere in the government. When the novel ends, the U.S. has failed to respond and the Soviets have consolidated their hold on the atoll.
5997068	/m/0fjsjf	The Ragged Edge of Science	L. Sprague de Camp	1980		 The essays in the book fall into three general categories, dealing with ancient civilizations and certain unscientific theories regarding them, occult-related subjects, and pseudoscience in general. Anecdotes from history and de Camp's travels to some of the locales he writes about pepper the narrative. The first eight chapters fall into the first category. Discussions of Bronze Age Troy and the ancient Sudanese civilization of Kush counter romantic speculations with a resume of what is known of them from historical sources and archaeological investigations. In contrast, the section on King Arthur, of whom little factual information has been established, puts to rest unverified notions regarding him by tracing the development and elaboration of his legend down through the ages. The chapter on the Maya debunks diffusionist theories seeking the origin of their culture in Old World civilizations rather than from indigenous factors. Later sections about Teotihuacan and the Toltecs serve more as general introductions to these cultures. There is also a brief discussion of the Tour Magne, a Roman ruin in Nîmes, France, and a chapter on myths that discounts them as reliable reportage of prehistoric events. Chapters in the second category include discussions of memories of previous lives supposedly recovered via hypnosis, the Kabbalah, lives of famous charlatans claiming to have been magicians, such as Cagliostro and Aleister Crowley, the hoax perpetrated by Léo Taxil and others that purported to expose Freemasonry as devil worship, theosophist C. W. Leadbeater, the development of occultist cultism around Mount Shasta in Northern California (demonstrated to have a literary basis), and the origins of the mystic trance, with rational explanations for the visions experienced. A satirical chapter of advice on how to set one's self up as a prophet rounds out the section. An account of the early history of Fundamentalist movement to prohibit the teaching of evolution in schools leads off the third category. There is also a biography of Populist politician Ignatius Donnelly focusing on his speculations regarding Atlantis and like matters, and then a speculative chapter regarding future languages, essentially a didactic piece on language change with application to science fictional treatments of time-travel. It leads in to a discussion of nonscientific claims about the "fourth dimension" in general. This part of the book also includes reviews of Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision and Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods?, both of which de Camp discounts.
5998983	/m/0fjx2j	Die Dame im Chinchilla			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The body of a murdered woman is discovered in a New York apartment. Her luxurious buttocks have been thoroughly searched, and expensive clothes are lying around. Chief Inspector David Brewer knows that the victim lived on the edge of legality: in a previous life, she was a stripper and the owner of a night club that got mentioned in a call-girl scandal and in a case involving hard drugs. All motives are present for murder.
5999601	/m/0fjygj	Jessica	Bryce Courtenay		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jessica is a tomboy, raised to be her father's son to help out on the farm. Her older sister Meg is very much her mother's daughter, and it is Meg's and their mother's mission for Meg to seduce Jack Thomas, the town's wealthiest eligible bachelor. Jessica and her dad work each year shearing at Riverview station for the Thomases - the richest family in the district. In the shearing shed, Jessica becomes close friends with Jack Thomas and William D'arcy Simon. Jessica is teased by the other boys, predominanly for simply being female. Eventually she is attacked, with tar poured over her head and hair. Jack and Billy defend her, but William is stepped on by a horse, causing brain damage and earning him the name Billy Simple. Subsequently, Jessica and Jack's relationship blossoms and they become Billy's sole friends. Jack gets Billy a job working as a gardener for his rich family, but one day Billy kills Jack's mother and two sisters, because of their constant taunting of him. Jessica takes him on the long journey to the nearest town with a courthouse, endangering herself. Jessica holds off the angry mob of farmers, to give Billy a fair trial. When they finally reach the courthouse, the farmers (including Jack) catch them. However, although Billy has murdered his mother and sisters, Jack holds off the mob and sweeps exhausted Jessica off her feet and carries her into the courthouse. Billy is later sentenced to death, but not without a fight from his lawyer, Richard Runche. It is discovered a few months later that Jessica is pregnant. Her parents suspect that she had intimate relations with Billy Simple on the way to town, although it turns out that she slept with Jack while in hospital for her own injuries travelling the long journey with Billy. She is locked up in a tin hut by her family, and her mum and sister come up with a scheme. Jack enlists for war, but not before being seduced by Meg as a "goodbye present." She pretends to be pregnant, forcing him to marry her, although he loves Jessica. Her mother tells the town that Jessica has gone crazy, so had to be isolated (during her pregnancy). They pretend that Meg is pregnant, and when Jessica gives birth, helped by an Aboriginal friend, they take her baby and pass it off as Meg's. Jessica's father tries to kill Jessica's mother, his wife, because of how she tricked him and Jessica, but he has a heart attack. At the funeral, when they announce that Meg gave birth, Jessica breaks down, screaming that they stole her baby. She is put in a mental asylum, and makes friends with a Jewish man, Moishe Goldberg. She helps him to get better and when he is released, Moishe contacts Billy's lawyer, Richard Runche who fights and frees Jessica. Meg and her mother agree to give her the land entitlement for their old property plus another 10 acres (40,000 m2) on the condition that she never approaches her son, Joey, or tries to get him back. Her Aboriginal friend, Mary's (who helped her during her pregnancy) half-caste children are taken by the authorities, and Jessica, with the help of Runche and Moishe, gets them back in a court case to make history. Upon return to her house one afternoon, Jessica finds her dog has been bitten by a snake. She goes off to find the snakes and while Jessica is successful in killing one, its mate bites Jessica before being bludgeoned to death with her rifle. Knowing that death is near, she goes back to her hut and is found dead by Mary. Mary also finds a letter Jessica wrote to Jack, but never sent advising him of being pregnant with his child. *1998, Australia, Viking Australia ISBN 0-670-88351-4, Pub date 1 December 1998, hardcover *1999, Canada, ISBN 1-55278-088-0, Pub date 1 January 1999, hardcover *2000, United Kingdom, Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-14-027960-3, Pub date 27 July 2000, paperback
6000000	/m/0fjzg5	Lautlos wie sein Schatten	Frank Arnau	1959	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 When James Baldon comes home from a party late at night, he is not able to open the front door of his apartment. The reason: a dead man is blocking his entrance. David Brewer, head of the Homicide Squad, starts the investigation. When it is discovered that the body was moved after being shot, everybody in the building turns out to have an alibi. However, Brewer is convinced that one of the alibis must be false. nl:Lautlos wie sein Schatten
6000399	/m/0fj_4d	Der perfekte Mord			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 To celebrate the successful illegal transaction of weapons to Algerian freedom fighters, Nissim Cordanu is going to organise a dinner for ten people at his house. Walter Reyder, head of the Hamburg Police research force, is oblivious when he is almost struck by Nissim's car. Nissim immediately recognises his old friend, even though twenty-five years have passed since they met. Nissim invites his old friend for dinner, not suspecting that by doing so, he invites the law as the eleventh guest. When it is announced that a very special hypnosis act will be performed at the party, Reyder decides that it is not yet time to reveal his true identity. nl:Hamburg na middernacht
6002164	/m/0fk24y	The Spook's Curse	Joseph Delaney	2005-06-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book begins with Tom binding a Ripper in Horshaw. Although he is successful, the Ripper's victim, Father Gregory, the Spook's brother, dies from shock. He's sent to be buried in Priestown and the Spook goes there with Tom, to pay his respects and to finally deal with an ancient demon locked in the catacombs under the city. The demon, also known as the Bane, has already bested the Spook once and has since grown in power. The Spook makes preparations to enter the catacombs but is betrayed by his cousin, Father Cairns and is arrested by the Quisitor. Tom enters the catacombs to slip inside the prisons undetected, but only manages to free Alice. Andrew hides them into a haunted house in town and they fall asleep. The Bane comes to tempt them both in their dreams, yet although Tom refuses him, he wakes up to find Alice at the Silver Gate, where she confesses she made a deal with the Bane so that she could help him. She helps save the Spook and the other prisoners from the execution. Tom takes the Spook to his mother who heals him and they set out to find the cemetery of the segantii, the first people to have bound the Bane. Their leader, Naze, tells them that he too had made a pact with the Bane, so that if the Bane was to be freed and then enter his prison once again, he was to be bound there for the rest of the Bane's existence. Following this information, the Spook takes Alice back to the catacombs. Tom follows without his knowledge after opening a letter from his mother where she wrote that if he does not go too, both the Spook and Alice will die pointlessly. After Alice summons the Bane, he whisks her away and turns into his material form to feed for the last time from her blood. The Spook being knocked out, Tom follows the Bane on his own and binds him with the silver chain that his mother gave him on his last visit. The Bane tries once again to sway him but fails and Tom kills him. He dies, as predicted by Naze, but Alice doesn't let him go and uses the power of the mark she'd made on his arm during the events in The Spook's Apprentice to bring him back to life. The Spook, Alice and Tom return to Chippenden where the Spook tries to put Alice into the pit he had Tom dig for her. Tom uses what he knows about Meg Skelton and the Spook to demand Alice's freedom and the Spook is swayed. He allows Alice to stay at Chippenden in exchange for her knowledge about witches and her skills with latin.
6002269	/m/0fk2bf	The Spook's Secret	Joseph Delaney	2006-07-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In this third and terrifying instalment in the Wardstone Chronicles, the nights are drawing in and it is time for Tom and his master to move to Anglezarke, the Spook's winter house. Tom has heard it will be a sinister and menacing place, but nothing could fully prepare him for what he finds there. For this house, and indeed the whole of Anglezarke moor is full of secrets about the Spook's youth. When they reach Anglezarke Tom and the Spook leave Alice with the Hursts, who owe the Spook a favour. They then head to the Spook's winter house. There Tom meets Meg, and finds out that the Spook has been keeping her drugged so she wouldn't harm the other inhabitants. Trouble arises at the Hursts and Tom and the Spook have to face a rock throwing spirit. They win, but barely, and the Spook is severely injured. With Alice's help, he pulls through, against all odds, but is still weak. Alice then moves back with Tom to help and undertakes the task of giving Meg her potion. She takes a liking to Meg so she decreases the dosage and to help her and Meg becomes more lively.
6004380	/m/0fk60v	The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl	Tim Pratt	2005-11-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 'Rangergirl' focuses on Marzipan "Marzi" McCarty, who is an art major dropout from UC Santa Cruz, who now runs the night shifts at the popular coffeeshop Genius Loci. While she is not serving coffee to the various people of Santa Cruz, she works on a comic book under the same name as the title of the book. In her comic book, Rangergirl takes on a more surreal western environment where there is a rattlesnake sphinx, a scorpion oracle, menacing natives, and the eternally evil Outlaw. Recently, a college student from the east coast, named Jonathan, had rented the upstairs room located in Genius Loci because he is interested in the murals depicted within the coffee shop. The murals were painted by Garamond Ray, who was an interesting artist but went missing the day of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; Jonathan is looking into doing his graduate thesis on the works of Garamond and these murals were his last pieces. Lindsey, Marzi's best friend, is a regular at the coffee shop and made her goal to get Marzi and Jonathan together; Lindsey is not interested since she claims she is "done with boys." She has her interests with Alice, a motorcycle riding lesbian. The three become an outgoing group. Amongst all of this, strange things begin to unravel. An art student named Beej, who was a coffee shop regular, becomes more dirty and homeless-like, claiming he is to unleash a god. A graduate teacher's assistant named Jane, becomes ambushed by a mudslide and is then transformed into mud being who can morph her body at her will into different shapes; she declares that her mission is to resurrect the earth goddess. Also, Alice, Lindsey's lover, has developed her urge to set things on fire increasingly. However, all of this connects to Genius Loci. Both Beej and Jane make various visits to the coffee shop to unleash a god that, according to them, is held prisoner in there; Alice wants to burn the place to the ground but does not know why. Even Marzi is subject to some strange encounters like her surreal dreams where she is floating over Santa Cruz county and sees all of it destroyed. Plus, her own personal problems becomes apparent again when she is to confront her own fears such as opening any closed door. Once everything is put into perspective, Marzi realizes there is some kind of presence in the Genius Loci coffee shop; an earthquake god is in the kitchen storage room, which Marzi made a distinctive point for everyone not to open. Since Jonathan was curious about the Garamond Ray murals and he knew there was one more mural located in the storage room, he fulfilled his own curiosity and opened the door to the storage room (with the help of the power of the earthquake god). The earthquake god pulled Jonathan into the unknown realm and the god came into the present reality. Since Marzi became the guardian of the door, the unknown realm took on the appearance of the western world she had created in her comic, and the god became the villainous Outlaw. Once freed, the Outlaw recruited his assistants, Beej, Jane, and Jane's supposed lover, Denis, a graduate student who is to be blamed for her mudslide incident. The Outlaw gives Denis and Beej a project to work on: to create metal door that is reminiscent of the bat wing doors found in saloons in the Wild West. The two do their part and create the door. Meanwhile, Marzi and Lindsey realize that Jonathan is missing and that the Outlaw has been unleashed; they realize they need to go into the unknown realm and figure out how to save Jonathan and destroy the Outlaw. Upon entering the storage room, the two find themselves in the western setting that Marzi had created. When learning this, Marzi finds out that she can control the surroundings, which means manipulating the weapons they have (like Lindsey firing a gangster-style tommy gun), being knowledgeable about the enemies they encounter (like savage Native Americans who ride car-sized bugs), and many other circumstances. They also encounter Garamond Ray, who managed to capture the Outlaw back in 1989 and put it in this realm, however, Garamond was pulled into it and was not able to get out. While the three talk, it is revealed that the Loma Prieta earthquake was due to Garamond and the god fighting over being imprisoned. Later, the three encounter an oracle, who explains that Marzi must go to its temple and ask one question. After a wild adventure through the world that Mazri created, they find themselves at the oracle's temple. Instead of asking about how to defeat the Outlaw, Marzi asks about how to save Jonathan (who was discovered by being unconscious). The oracle answers, although disappointed because it feels that Marzi should have asked about the Outlaw, and it explains that they must enter Jonathan's soul and revive him from there. Meanwhile, the Outlaw, Beej, Jane, and Denis have created nothing but chaos and havoc throughout Santa Cruz by firebombing parts of the downtown area and the coastal beach areas. Once Marzi and Lindsey free Jonathan, they meet up with Garamond and all of them know their part in terms of destroying the Outlaw. However, the door that the Outlaw demanded Denis and Beej to create was put to use. They went to Genius Loci and placed the door on the outside of the storage room, which then fused into the mural setting (hence the saloon like door). The door would then transport whoever walked through the door into another reality. Marzi, Lindsey, Jonathan, and Garamond walked through the door and found themselves enveloped in Genius Loci, which was dominated by the murals coming to life. Marzi realized that Beej is in control of the surroundings and manages to persuade him to stop the animated murals. They then enter the present reality and confront the Outlaw. While migrating to the Outlaw, the group encountered Jane, who had become a more monstrous mud being. Before Jane was able to attack, suddenly Alice, Lindsey's lover, came roaring on her motorcycle and blazed Jane with an ultimate amount of fire, which disintegrated her instantly. Marzi was stunned by this, knowing that Alice had left town in order to avoid her pyro urges. Lindsey was an artist as well, and found a way to manipulate reality and therefore summoned the persona of Alice into the situation. Marzi earlier was thinking of ways of destroying the Outlaw. She realized, at first, that since all of this reality was being maintained by her comic book setting, then she and the Outlaw would have to have some kind of showdown. Usually what happened in the stories, was that if there was no showdown, then local enforcement would imprison the outlaw, but his henchmen would be able to free him out of his cell, which is exactly what happened in this case. While getting closer to the Outlaw, Marzi realized that if she can manipulate this reality she would be able to destroy the Outlaw willingly. However, before she moved in on this action, it dawned on her that if she went outside from what the western reality was providing, that meant that the Outlaw would become something outside of the recent reality. This is something the Outlaw was anticipating. But due to the sudden realization, this altered the Outlaw's powers and Denis (who was already frustrated by the Outlaw) was able to stab him numerous in the torso and the back, killing him as if he was some kind of mortal. Knowing that the Outlaw was destroyed, Marzi and everyone felt everything would slowly come back to normal. Denis did time in prison, Jane was no more, Beej was in his own world, Jonathan decided to stay in Santa Cruz, Lindsey was pleased to see the return of Alice, and Garamond became a legend to hero with his return to the world.
6012159	/m/0fkjq7	The Albino's Dancer	Dale Smith		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 An encounter with the mysterious Catherine Howkins warns Honoré Lechasseur that Emily Blandish is about to die. However, even with this knowledge, can he prevent her death? At the same time, the Albino, a gangster operating in post-rationing London, has also taken an interest in Emily.
6013197	/m/0fkl5x	The Cabinet of Light	Daniel O'Mahony		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Honoré Lechasseur, a "fixer" with time-sensitive abilities, is hired by Emily Blandish to find someone known only as the Doctor. He soon discovers that the Doctor is a legendary figure that has drifted in and out of Earth's history. As he follows the trail of the Doctor, questions arise: what is the Doctor's connection with 1949 London and with the mysterious "cabinet of light" that another group is seeking?
6013414	/m/0fklpx	Last Of The Breed	Louis L'Amour		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The start of the book chronicles Joe Mackatozi (Mack) daring escape from captivity, but also introduces another captive, an English chemist whom the Soviets believe is working on chemical warfare agents. The chemist is mentioned later, as the first of their captor Zamatev's mistakes, because it turned out he was after all only working on developing insect repellents. The success of his subsequent foot travel across Siberia to the Bering Strait is dependent on his Native American hunting, tracking, and evasion skills. It is mentioned several times in the text that these skills were learned by his people, and taught to each generation across thousands of years. Now the skilled flyer of aircraft must remember and practice bow and arrow, fire-making, tracking, stalking, hunting, skinning, and ambush skills taught by his elders. Knowing that "a man with a knife can survive," he sneaks into a miner's cabin, and leaving no evidence he was there, he steals preserved food, a heavy sweater, and a knife. Although this knife is needed for Mack to survive in the wilderness, his stealing of the knife gives the Yakut tracking him a clue as to where to begin searching for Mack. He also has strong attachments to his people's discipline and self-mastery. When he comes upon an army patrol he crawls inside in an old hollow tree to hide. His pursuers make camp in the same area, and he must remain motionless until it gets dark and only the sentries are awake. When captured, he receives a very rough beating from his pursuers, but true to his heritage, he never makes a sound. A man who previously informed on him unlocks the shed he is in and allows him to escape. He ends up killing Alekhin the Yakut, who was following him, and sending his scalp back to Colonol Arkady Zamatev with a note written on birchbark that reads "This was once a custom of my people. In my lifetime I shall take two. This is the first." At the end of the book, the success of Joe's 90-mile kayak ride to Alaska (given a good kayak) is left unresolved. The resolution of the story is left to the imagination of the reader.
6016488	/m/0fkrwf	The Great Indian Novel	Shashi Tharoor	1989-08-24	{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The organization of the sections and chapters of the novel mirrors the organization of the Mahabharata and the themes and events addressed in each allude to themes and events of the mirrored sections of the epic. The novel has 18 "books," just as the Mahabharata has 18 books and the Battle of Kurukshetra lasted for 18 days. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Beginning." In this section, Ved Vyas ("V.V."), the narrator, recounts his personal history; the seduction of Satyavati by the Brahmin Parashar and his own birth; the origin of Ganga Datta from the union of Shantanu and the now absent Maharanee (whom he met on the banks of the Ganga (Ganges) and who had had seven suspicious miscarriages); the marriage of Shantanu and Satyavati and Ganga Datta's vow of chastity; the birth of Chitrangada and Vichitravirya and the latter's marriage; Ved Vyas's insemination of Ambika and Ambalika; the vow of revenge against Ganga Datta taken by Amba; the birth of Dhritarashtra and Pandu; and the assignment of Ganapathi by Brahm's Apsara Agency to transcribe Ved Vyas's memoir, which V.V. describes as the "Song of Modern India." Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Assembly Hall." The title of this section alludes to Paul Scott's The Jewel in the Crown. Ved Vyas also compares his memoir to The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad Chaudhuri. The British resident's equerry is named "Heaslop," an allusion to a character in A Passage to India. Introduced is the character of Sir Richard, the British resident at Hastinapur, who is complaining about the increasing radicalization of Ganga Datta, who is still serving as regent of Hastinapur. Ved Vyas discusses the upbringing of Dhritarashtra, Pandu, and Vidur Dharmaputra under the care of the regent, Ganga Datta. Discovering the suffering of the people of Motihari, Ganga Datta embarks on his first protest campaign. Gangaji is arrested and he pleads guilty to defying a police order, but his action results in a victory for the peasants of Motihari. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Forest." The title of this section alludes to Louis Bromfield's The Rains Came. Sir Richard is furious about the events of Motihari and Heaslop notes that Gangaji had never formally resigned from the regency of Hastinapur. The regent having committed sedition, Hastinapur can now be annexed by British India. Dhritarashtra and Gandhari’s marriage is off to a good start. The devoted young bride has resolved to forever covering her eyes with a blindfold so that she is deprived of whatever her husband is deprived of. Pandu is also enjoying his two sexually expert wives. While enjoying sexual congress with both at once, he suffers a "massive coronary thrombosis" and is prohibited from ever again engaging in sexual intercourse. Pandu joins Gangaji’s movement and instructs his wives to seek other sexual partners so that they may still bear him heirs. Kunti reveals that in her youth she bore Hyperion Helios’s child but sent the baby boy down the river in a basket. Gandhari the Grim gives birth not to a hundred sons, but to one daughter, Priya Duryodhani, who is to be the equivalent of a thousand sons. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of Virata." The title of this section alludes to Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. Hastinapur is annexed to the British Presidency of Marabar (an allusion to the "Marabar Hills," which figure prominently in A Passage to India). The people of Hastinapur are milling in the streets, threatening revolt. There is a rumour that Gangaji will address a rally at the Bibighar Gardens (an allusion to the "Bibighar," which figures prominently in A Jewel in the Crown). Heaslop counsels Sir Richard to let passions dissipate on their own, but Sir Richard instead calls in Colonel Rudyard and the Fifth Baluch, which starts firing on the unarmed gathering in the Bibighar Gardens. Almost 400 people are killed and more than a thousand are injured. After the Bibighar Gardens Massacre, Colonel Rudyard is retired with a half-million pound pension. An unnamed Nobel Prize-winning poet (an allusion to Rabindranath Tagore) returns his knighthood. Gangaji kicks off the Quit India Movement (an allusion to the Quit India Movement started by Mahatma Gandhi). Bungling assassins kill a Professor Kipling instead of Colonel Rudyard. This Professor Kipling was the racist teacher whom a young Pandu had struck, resulting in the end of Pandu’s formal education. Vidur resigns from the civil service but Gangaji and Dhritarashtra order him to rescind his resignation. Dhritarashtra becomes head of the Kaurava Party and Pandu becomes the party’s chief organizer. Kunti bears the sons of Dharma (a young magistrate), Major Vayu of the palace guard, and Devendra Yogi: Yudhistir, Bhim the Brave, and Arjun. Exhausted, Kunti calls a halt to the cuckolding and Madri begs to be permitted to take up the torch. She has an affair with the twins Ashvin and Ashwin and bears the twin sons Nakul and Sahadev. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of War Preparations." The title of this section alludes to Paul Scott's The Towers of Silence. During an epidemic, a Sarah Moore persuades her brother, the manager of a jute mill in Budge Budge, near Calcutta, to offer the mill workers a bonus. After the epidemic, the workers refuse to give up the bonus and are locked out. Sarahbehn enlists Gangaji's aid and Gangaji embarks on his first protest fast. The British Raj directs the Mill Owners' Association to give in. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of Bhishma." A rift begins to develop between Dhritarashtra and Pandu, both working within the Kaurava Party to further the cause of Indian independence, with Pandu advocating a harder line than that pursued by Gangaji and Dhritarashtra. Gangaji attends the Round Table Conference hosted by the British government. Mahadeva Menon, a Kaurava Party official from Palghat, persuades Gangaji to do something about the tax on mangoes. Gangaji kicks off the Great Mango March, which prompts Pandu to leave the Kaurava Party. In Chaurasta, a Kaurava protest turns violent and Gangaji calls off the mango agitation. Gangaji is called for a meeting with the viceroy and entertains an uncomfortable Sir Richard with the tale of why he drinks goat's milk instead of cow's milk. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of Drona." The title of this section alludes to Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Ved Vyas describes the divisions in Indian society engendered by British policy and the formation of the Muslim Group under the figurehead leadership of the Gaga Shah, an "overweight sybarite." The arrogant and (literally) brilliant Mohammed Ali Karna, the son of Kunti and Hyperion Helios, educated by the generosity of Indra Deva, the employer of Karna's adoptive father, rises to prominence as a lawyer and as a member of the Kaurava Party. Dhritarashtra insults Karna upon discovering that his (adoptive) father is a chauffeur. Kunti sees Karna and realizes that he is her firstborn son. The story is told of how Indra Deva gave him the surname "Karna," the "Hacker-Off," after Karna circumcised himself with a knife. Karna leaves the movement and goes to England, but the Gaga Shah invites Karna back to India to lead the Muslim Group. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of Karna." The title of this section alludes to Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. The five Pandavas and Priya Duryodhani grow up, each revealing their characters. Priya tries and fails to poison and drown her cousin Bhim. While playing cricket, the Pandavas meet the sage Jayaprakash Drona who tells the tale of his son, Ashwathaman, and his insult at the hands of Ronald Heaslop, which led him to his mission of educating young Indians in order to facilitate the overthrow of the British. The Pandavas choose Drona to be their tutor. Pandu decides to seek the presidency of the Kaurava Party and Dhritarashtra fears that there is a good chance he will lose the election to Pandu. Gangaji persuades Dhritarashtra to step down in favor of a less prominent figure, and untouchable. Thus, if Pandu wins the election, then Gangaji and Dhritarashtra will not be seen as having suffered a defeat. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of Shalya." The title of this section alludes to Rudyard Kipling's Kim and to M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions. Pandu is elected president of the Kaurava Party and a struggle begins between him and Gangaji for control over the direction of the party. Gangaji outmanoeuvres Pandu, who loses a vote of confidence and resigns. Ved Vyas switches to verse to tell Pandu's story. Pandu forms the Onward Organisation (an allusion to the All India Forward Bloc), the OO. Pandu allies himself with the Nazis and the Japanese against the British and forms the Swatantra Sena (an allusion to the Indian National Army formed by Subhash Chandra Bose) to fight against British forces on the Burmese front. Pandu sends for Madri to join him and the sight of her wearing a military uniform begins to break down his control over his carnal desires. While fleeing from defeat in Singapore by air, Pandu and Madri succumb to their passion. Pandu dies of a heart attack and the plane is shot down, killing Madri as well. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Sleeping Warriors." - title may be an allusion to Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" Ashwathaman joins the Pandavas as the students of Drona in the military, terroristic, and nationalistic arts. When Arjun has to share an academic prize with Ekalavya, the son of a maidservant, Ekalavya admits that he has been sharing in the Pandavas' lessons while standing outside the door. In exchange for payment for his tuition, Drona demands that Ekalavya cut off his own right thumb and give it to Drona. Unlike in the original Mahabharata, Tharoor's Ekalavya refuses and flees in horror. Drona has a good laugh. Karna considers his options after the Muslim Group's candidates are bested by Muslim members of the Kaurava Party in the elections. Karna proposes a coalition government in the legislative assembly of the Northern Province. Vidur urges Dhritarashtra to accept Karna's proposal, even though the Kaurava Party controls enough seats in the Northern Province to rule without a coalition. Mohammed Rafi, a Muslim Kauravaman, urges rejection of Karna's offer and Dhritarashtra and Gangaji concede. Karna is resolved to find other means of gaining power. The viceroy and Sir Richard consider what to do in reaction to the initiation of the Second World War. Sir Richard relates the story of Sir Francis Younghusband, who inadvertently annexed Tibet. ("He'd really intended just to see the tourist spots and to get a few good pictures of the Potala Palace, but one of his rifles went off accidentally and when he then saw all the notables on their knees cowering he couldn't really disappoint them by not conquering them.") Sir Richard persuades the viceroy to declare war on Germany without consulting the elected governments of the provinces. Kaurava Party legislators react to the declaration of war by resigning en masse. The absence of the Kaurava Party in the administration benefits the Muslim Group, which takes over the government in three provinces. Gangaji initiates the Quit India Movement and the leaders of the Kaurava Party are imprisoned. The emboldened Muslim Group begins calling for a separate Muslim state, to be called Karnistan (the "Hacked-Off Land"). Amba, planning her revenge on Gangaji, goes to a plastic surgeon for a sex-change operation. Following the end of the war, the Kaurava Party does well in the election, but the Muslim Group's strength is not diminished. The British government charges with treason the soldiers who joined Pandu's Swatantra Sena. Viscount Bertie Drewpad is appointed viceroy. His wife, Georgina, is excited at the prospect of dallying with lusty Indian men. While Dhritarashtra plans to meet the new viceroy, his wife, Gandhari the Grim, lies dying, calling Priya Duryodhani her "son." Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Women." Lord Drewpad announces the British intent to withdraw from India on Aug, 15, 1947, to Dhritarashtra, Mohammed Rafi, Ved Vyas, Sardar Khushkismat Singh, and Karna. Dhritarashtra and the Kaurava Party agree to the Partition of India. A Mr. Nichols is assigned to draw the border between the two new countries, to the derision of an experienced administrator named Basham. Vidur assists the viceroy in making decisions related to the transfer of power. Gangaji initiates an experiment in eliminating sexual desire by inviting Sarah-behn to sleep in his bed. While violence tears India apart, Dhritarashtra initiates an affair with Lady Drewpad. While India celebrates independence, Amba, now Shikhandin the Godless, assassinates Gangaji. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of Peace." The title of this section alludes to Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. Ved Vyas refers to "Children being born at inconvenient times of the night who would go on to label a generation and rejuvenate a literature," which alludes to Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Drona's secretary is called Sir Beverley Twitty, K.C.M.G. Jayaprakash Drona, now serving as Minister of State for Administrative Reform, gets his opportunity for revenge against Ronald Heaslop, who has lost everything in the rioting. Drona, instead of answering Heaslop's long-ago refusal to help him with co-ordinate cruelty, he offers Heaslop a job. Georgina Drewpad's affair with Dhritarashtra (now prime minister of India) continues. On 26 January 1950, the day India becomes a republic, she gives birth to a daughter, who is given up for adoption and given the name Draupadi Mokrasi. Vyabhichar Singh ("Mr. Z"), the maharaja of Manimir, tries to avoid acceeding either to India or Karnistan. Mohammed Rafi urges Dhritarashtra to ensure that Manimir remains part of India. Vidur, now Principal Secretary for Integration, counsels patience, hoping that Sheikh Azharuddin, a Kaurava ally, might be able to overthrow Mr. Z. Dhritarashtra decides to let Karna, now governor-general of Karnistan, make the first move, which he does, leaving the Indian government the perfect excuse to send in Khushkismat Singh, the Minister of Defence, with Indian troops. Vidur goes to Devpur to get Vyabhichar Singh to sign the instrument of accession, and persuades Colonel Bewakuf Jan to disturb the maharaja from his sporting with a Frenchwoman. Vidur states his case while the maharaja is fellated under an "enormous silk razai." The maharaja is finally persuaded to sign by his companion, "a steatopygous blonde wearing nothing but a look of panic." Vidur helps the maharaja flee to Marmu, his winter capital. The Pathans invading Manimir get drunk and the Indian Army parachutes into Devpur. Dhritarashtra snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by halting the Indian Army's advance and calling in the United Nations. Professor Jennings delivers a critique of his student, D. Mokrasi. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of Bhishma's Final Instructions." The title of this section alludes to E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. Drona decides to resign from government and do "constructive work" in rural areas, taking Ashwathaman with him. The five Pandavas they also want to go along and break the news to Kunti, their chain-smoking and still glamorous mother. In order to secure her blessing, Yudhishtir promises never to disobey his mother. Dhritarashtra consults V. Kanika Menon, India's high commissioner in London, regarding what he should do about the increasing popularity of Drona and the Pandavas. Kanika counsels Dhritarashtra not to allow the Pandavas to attain too much political power, but Dhritarashtra is too idealistic to take the advice. Priya Duryodhani, however, is listening and she takes Kanika's advice seriously. Vidur, now Secretary of the Home Ministry and head of the Central Bureau of Intelligence, goes to a Drona land reform rally to warn the Pandavas that Priya Duryodhani is plotting against them. Vidur arranges for the Pandavas to hide out in Varanavata with Kunti. Karna, who has not been well, dies when he tries to pull a car out of the mud with his bare hands. Kunti, hearing the news, repeats her firtborn son's final gesture—by shaking her fist at the sun. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Horse Sacrifice." The title of this section alludes to the Hindu sacred work the Rig Veda. Purochan Lal, the owner of the hotel where Kunti is staying, is an agent of Priya Duryodhani. Vidur intercepts the cables and sends a coded message explaining that the house is coated with lac and will be set fire. The building is burnt, but Vidur arranges their escape while letting the world believe they have perished in the fire. Vidur tells Dhritarashtra about a joke by Winston Churchill botched by Khushkismat Singh. After discussing the Manimir situation, Dhritarashtra appoints Kanika to replace Singh as Minister of Defence. The Pandavas wander India sticking up for the rights of the downtrodden. The refuse to take sides between two corrupt landlords, Pinaka and Saranga (whose men attacked a man named Hangari Das). Dhritarashtra and Kanika start the "non-aligned" movement. They decide to annex the Portuguese colony of Comea. Bhim saves a beautiful girl from her abusive brother, Hidimba ("a large man with a small goatee"), and weds. The Chairman of the People's Republic of Chakra, watching the annexation of Comea by India, orders the Chakar People's Liberation Army to cross the Big Mac Line and annex the nation of Tibia, on the Indian border. In order to enter Tibia from the province of Drowniang, however, Chakar troops must cross into territory claimed by India. Bhim has a baby son, Ghatotkach, who is born in the town of Ekachakra. Sahadev challenges the champion wrestler Bakasura and is trounced. Kunti is annoyed with her other sons for allowing Sahadev to go through with it. The Chakars annex a piece of Indian territory and the humiliation breaks Dhritarashtra's heart and he dies. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Hermitage." Dhritarashtra leaves nothing in his will to Draupadi Mokrasi and her adoptive father worries that he will not be able to find her a suitable husband. The Kaurava Party's Working Committee appoints the "honest but limited" Shishu Pal to replace Dhritarashtra as prime minister. Ved Vyas convenes a training camp where the Pandavas are captivated by Draupadi. Priya Duryodhani is annoyed that Draupadi is drawing the attention away from her lectures and orders Ved Vyas to get Draupadi married. In Ved Vyas's mind, only Arjun is good enough for Draupadi, but he realises that Arjun will not be faithful to her. Priya Duryodhani decides to match her up with Ekalavya, of whom Drona had demanded his right thumb, and, apparently with whom Priya Duryodhani had had a youthful fling. Draupadi chooses Arjun, but through a misunderstanding, Kunti instructs the Pandavas to share equally the "surprise" they have brought home. All five Pandavas marry Draupadi, Ved Vyas using his father's magic to ensure that she is a virgin for each of the five successive wedding nights. Bhim's wife leaves him. Perceiving India as weak following its defeat at the hands of the Chakars, Karnistan invades Manimir again. Shishu Pal directs a successful counterattack. Shishu Pal dies of a heart attack after signing a cease fire. Unable to find a successor that is universally unobjectionable, the Working Committee is persuaded by Ved Vyas to appoint Priya Duryodhani. The Pandavas work out a strict schedule to share Draupadi's bed. Arjun violates the rule when he goes to retrieve the manuscript of a speech while Yudhishtir and Draupadi are together. Under the rules, Arjun is banned from his conjugal rights for a year. Arjun decides to spend the year as a "roving correspondent" for a newspaper and, in addition to witnesses the condition of the people, he finds a new sexual companion in every locale he visits. Arjun ends up in Gokarnam where he meets Dwarakaveetile Krishnankutty Parthasarathi Menon (known as "Krishna"), the local Kaurava Party secretary who has recently unseated the local political machine boss, Kamsa. When Arjun first sees Krishna, he is using a traditional dance form, Ottamthullal, as a medium for social satire. Arjun and Krishna become close friends and Arjun falls for Krishna's sister, Subhadra. Krishna advises Arjun to woo her through abduction. In the dark, a confused Arjun mistakenly abducts Kameswari. A second attempt is more successful and the two are married. Arjun cables Draupadi, telling her that he is bringing home a new maid, making their eventual meeting rather uncomfortable. However, by the time Draupadi and Subhadra give birth to their sons, Prativindhya and Abhimanyu, they are as close as sisters. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Maces." The title of this section alludes to Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. The Kaurava Party is dealt a blow in state and local elections, although still holding a majority in the national Parliament. Yudhishtir suggests that new leadership is needed. Priya Duryodhani agrees to a national election. Yudhishtir is named deputy prime minister, but is shut out of the Cabinet by Priya Duryodhani and Yudhishtir resigns. Ashwathaman, Drona' son and the leader of a socialist splinter party, is invited by Priya Duryodhani to join the Kaurava Party Working Committee. Priya Duryodhani takes Ashwathaman's side in advocating the elimination of the privy purses of India's former princes. Yudhishtir resigns from the Working Committee. Priya Duroydhani and Ashwathaman then champion a bill to nationalise the banks. Dr. Mehrban Imandar, the president of India, dies. The Kaurava Old Guard thwarts Priya Duryodhani by nominating Ved Vyas as the Kaurava Praty's candidate for president. Priya Duryodhani backs Ekalavya as an independent candidate. The Working Committee expels Ekalavya from the Kaurava Party for opposing the party's official candidate. Before the Working Committee can act to expel Priya Duryodhani, Ekalavya narrowly wins the election. Priya Duryodhani splits the Kaurava Party, forming the Kaurava Party (R) ("R" for "real") to oppose the Kaurava Party (O) ("O" for "official" or "old guard"). Priya Duryodhani wins with the support of the Left. Jarasandha Khan, the military dictator ruling Karnistan, decides to call elections. The Gelabin People's Party, representing the Gelabi people of East Karnistan, wins a majority in the Karnistani Parliament. Zaleel Shah Jhoota persuades Jarashanda Khan to declare the election results null and void and declare martial law in East Karnistan. Priya Duryodhani enters the conflict on the side of the Gelabins and the Gelabi Desh War results in the creation of a new nation-state. The success against Karnistan boosts Priya Duryodhani's popularity, but her rule grows increasingly oppressive. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Great Journey." Drona leads the opposition to Priya Duryodhani's rule. Priya Duryodhani is convicted of electoral misconduct. Shakuni Shankar Dey, a Bengali lawyer and president of the Kaurava (R) Party, counsels her to declare a Siege and seize dictatorial powers. President Ekalavya concedes to the seizure of emergency powers. Priya Duryodhani orders the arrest of her political opponents. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's "Book of the Ascent to Heaven." Ved Vyas refers to the Kama Sutra as the "Great Indian Novelty." Priya Duryodhani calls elections. Ved Vyas chooses Krishna to lead the opposition campaign. Priya Duryodhani thus gets Krishna's experienced Kaurava Party grassroots electoral machine. At a critical moment, Krishna persuades Arjun that he should criticise Priya Duryodhani's administration instead of remaining a disinterested reporter. Bhim, Nakul, and Sahadev stay out of the campaign, refaining from endorsing either party. The People's Front defeats the Kaurava (R) Party. Drona and Ved Vyas consult with the parties of the People's Front coalition to choose the new prime minister. Their ultimately erroneous choice is Yudhishtir. Ashwathaman is appointed head of the party organisation. The People's Front leadership gathers at the Taj Mahal for a ceremonial oath. The return of Krishna to local politics marks the beginning of the failure of the People's Front. Yudhishtir proves to be "as stiff and straight-backed and humourless as his critics had always portrayed him, and his colossal self-righteousness was not helped by his completely inability to judge the impression he made on others." Yudhishtir becomes a target of fun in the national and international press when he admits to drinking his own urine. The "strongmen" of Yudhishtir's cabinet are locked in squabbles and Yudhishtir "remained tightly self-obsessed, seemingly unaware that half of those who sat on the executive branch with him were busily engaged in sawing it off." Priya Duryodhani, labeling the faltering government as the "Backward Front," begins to gain political strength again. As Zaleel Shah Jhoota is toppled in another Karnistani military coup, Priya Duryodhani runs rings around her prosecutors while being tried for subverting the constitution. Yudhishtir suffers another publicity blow when he attends a speech by a holy man who uses the word "Untouchables" instead of "Harijans." Ashwathaman criticises Yudhishtir and the party organisation awaits word from an ailing Drona that it is time for Yudhishtir to go. Yudhishtir dispatches Sahadev to tell Drona that Ashwathaman's plane has crashed. When asked Yudhishtir confirms that "Ashwathaman is dead" and Drona dies without throwing support to Yudhishtir's opponents in the People's Front. When Ved Vyas confronts Yudhishtir regarding his lie about Ashwathaman, Yudhishtir says that early that day he had caught a cockroach, named it Ashwathaman, and killed it; thus, his statement to Drona was not a lie. Ved Vyas refuses to accept Yudhishtir's explanation and abandons him. In any case, Yudhishtir's deception is ultimately pointless. The government falls and Priya Duryodhani is victorious in the next election. Ved Vyas sees a vision in which the Pandavas, Draupadi, and Krishna hike up a mountain. One by one they are killed, except for Yudhishtir, who reaches the top. When Kalaam, the god of time, offers to bear Yudhishtir to the court of history, Yudhishtir refuses to leave his faithful dog behind. The dog reveals himself to be Dharma, Yudhishtir's father, and the three board Kalaam's chariot together. In the court of history, Yudhishtir is stunned to find a place of honour given to Priya Duryodhani.
6020411	/m/0fkyzh	Collaborator	Murray Davies		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins in December 1940 with the return of Sergeant Nick Penny to his home in an unnamed West Country port town. A former prisoner of war, he had been captured in the aftermath of the successful German invasion of Britain. A former schoolteacher, his ability to speak German had secured his release to work as a translator for the military governor of region, Generalleutnant Kurt von Glass. Glass soon puts Penny to work in organizing the "Anglo-German Friendship League", which is designed to foster greater unity. Penny is uncomfortable with his current position, and his viewed with suspicion by much of the community. Soon after his return, he visits the Three Horseshoes, a local pub operated by the family of his friend, Roy Locke. There he reconnects with Locke, who immediately begins to recruit him for the emerging resistance movement. Penny begs off, requesting time while he sorts matters out. Penny soon finds himself drawn into the resistance, motivated in part by the gradually increasing harshness of German rule. Penny's mother and sister, with whom he lives, suffer physically and psychologically from the effects of German rule, while Penny's nephew, David, desires to strike back. Though Glass supports Penny's suggestions for fostering Anglo-German amity, the region's security chief, Standartenführer Stolz, is using every pretext for brutalizing the local population. Penny and Locke nearly miss curfew, but are saved at the last minute by the timely arrival of Matty Cordington, their old friend, who was released from internment and who brought Sara Burskin, a Polish refugee, with him. Roy quickly enlists them into a plan to smuggle the Regent, his wife, and the crown jewels out of the country, but they are thwarted by the Abwehr. Though Penny and Cordington manage to evade capture, Locke is arrested but kills himself before revealing any information. After their failed operation, Penny loses contact with the resistance. Loathing his life, he watches as profiteers like the local newsagent reap the benefits of the growing crackdown on Jewish businesses. In March, however, the German invasion of the Soviet Union breathes new life into the resistance as Communists now join the effort. Penny is contacted once again by Coral Kennedy, a young woman whom he met during the failed effort to smuggle out the Regent and the jewels. Once again involved with the resistance, Penny assists in a number of their operations, informing Kennedy of an attempt by the IRA to assassinate Glass and helping to smuggle a Danish scientist and his wife out of the country. Yet these are isolated successes amidst a series of setbacks, as the Germans disrupt operations and shut down networks. Glass himself soon leaves Britain to serve on the Eastern Front; his departure coincides with the roundup of foreign-born Jews by the authorities, including one in hiding on Cordington's estate. A ruse by the resistance reveals the leak: Sara Burskin. Informed of this discovery, Cordington agrees to kill her himself. The discovery of the leak leads the resistance to abandon contact with Penny yet again, as the German security services are clearly aware of his participation in the resistance and hope by monitoring him they can discover the identity of other members. Penny is therefore surprised when Kennedy suddenly contacts him in July with a new mission: to smuggle out Otto Frisch, who the Gestapo has discovered knows information which could be vital to the development of a "superbomb". Traveling to Liverpool, they succeed in persuading Frisch to agree to escape. Avoiding discovery, Penny hides Frisch among the Jenner family, where he poses as a visiting relative. The Germans order a second round-up of the Jews, though, this time including native-born British citizens. Frisch is captured along with the Jenners, and Penny and Cordington travel to Imber in order to stage an escape from the concentration camp the Germans have built there. Upon their return Cordington tells Penny about his plans to meet with a nearby resistance leader, followed by a trip to London for an upcoming conference to resistance leadership to be held during the Regent's re-coronation. After he leaves, Penny is sent to intercept him and to head-off an ill-advised ambush that threatens to draw in a nearby Waffen-SS unit. Penny arrives in time to save Cordington but not to stop the ambush, which leads the Germans and their British auxiliaries to massacre everyone in the nearby town of Merricombe in response. He returns with news of the massacre, which Kennedy quickly exploits for propaganda purposes. When they attempt to smuggle Frisch out of England, however, they are met by Sara, who is very much alive and who reveals that Cordington is in fact a double agent who was coerced into working with the Gestapo upon the discovery that his deceased mother was in fact Jewish. Killing Sara, Penny and Kennedy race to London to prevent Cordington from revealing the location of the resistance meeting to the Germans. Pursued by the authorities, they make it to London and warn the resistance, but they are unable to stop Cordington before he executes his real plan: using the credentials given to him by the Gestapo to get through security at the coronation and setting off a suicide bomb that kills the Regent and assembled German leadership. In the aftermath, the Germans retaliate by massacring over 100,000 people (including Penny's remaining family), triggering a nationwide rebellion that threatens the Germans' hold on their empire.
6023177	/m/0fl1tw	Dancer from the Dance	Andrew Holleran		{"/m/0cgx58": "Gay novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel revolves around two main characters: Anthony Malone, a young man from the Midwest who leaves behind his "straight" life as a lawyer to immerse himself in the gay life of 1970s New York, and Andrew Sutherland, variously described as a speed addict, a socialite, and a drag queen. Their social life includes long nights of drinking and dancing at New York gay bars. Though they enjoy many physical pleasures, their lives lack any spiritual depth. The "dance" of the novel's title becomes a metaphor for their lives. Malone is described as preternaturally beautiful; much of the plot concerns Sutherland's efforts to leverage Malone's beauty by "marrying" him to a young millionaire.
6026387	/m/0fl6cv	The Winning Side	Lance Parkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Emily Blandish has been murdered by an unknown assailant, but when Honoré Lechasseur turns up to see the body, he is surprised to be met by… Emily Blandish. They soon find themselves embroiled in a revolutionary plot stretching into their own futures, with the freedom of the entire world at stake.
6027087	/m/0fl7p1	Shell Shock	Simon A. Forward		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Sixth Doctor and Peri find themselves stranded on an alien world that is mostly covered by water. The Doctor manages to make it to shore, where he has to work out a way to save Peri, the TARDIS and himself. Peri, however, is swallowed by an alien life-form intent on making her its god.
6027788	/m/0fl94n	Heavy Weather	Bruce Sterling	1994-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set in the year 2031, Heavy Weather depicts a world where mankind has unbalanced the world's ecosystem with their continuing production of greenhouse gases and unchecked expansion. As a result, the weather has become unpredictable and dangerous. Powerful storms routinely leave trails of devastation in their wake. Alex Unger, a young man suffering from numerous medical problems, is liberated from an illegal Mexican clinic by his sister Janey and brought back to America to her group of friends and colleagues, the Storm Troupe. The Troupe are dedicated and knowledgeable storm chasers who use high technology to document and research the weather, led by Janey's lover, the charismatic and brilliant scientist Jerry Mulcahey. They are preparing to meet an F-6, a storm of truly monstrous proportions.
6027958	/m/0fl9jk	First Amoung Sequels	Jasper Fforde	2007	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In order to save the future, undercover SpecOps investigator Thursday Next attempts to convince her son Friday to join the ChronoGuard. To complicate matters, she'll have to deal with renegade apprentices, ruthless corporations, and a sting operation from the Cheese Enforcement Agency. The title First Among Sequels was met with stiff resistance from Fforde's publishers because it had 'sequel' in the title, and it was felt that telegraphing the 'sequelness' of the book might be a bad move. It was decided, however, to capitalise on the fact that this was a series - a sort of 'Have you discovered Thursday Next yet?' approach to marketing. First Among Sequels is the first part of a new four-part Thursday Next series, which is reported to be continued with One of our Thursdays is Missing in 2011. The title is a parody of First Among Equals, which is the title of a best-selling Jeffrey Archer novel, but also comes from the English translation of the Latin phrase primus inter pares. It is traditionally used to describe the position of the British Prime Minister, since in the British Constitution the position of prime minister has no official existence, and the office holder is simply the 'most powerful' of the Queen's advisors in Cabinet.
6030224	/m/0flfkz	Runaway	Tom Clancy	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Tracking down a runaway friend, Net Force Explorer Megan O'Malley discovers that the web is just as fraught with danger as the streets ...
6030706	/m/0flgbs	Down a Dark Hall	Lois Duncan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After her mother gets re-married, Kit is forced to attend Madame Duret's Blackwood Boarding School. Kit originally planned to attend with her best friend, Tracy, but Tracy wasn't accepted despite having better grades. The place is far out in the country and upon glimpsing the restored ancient building, Kit feels something dark emanating from the school. She is further disturbed to find that her room only locks from the outside. The faculty consists of Madame Duret, Professor Farley, and Jules, Madame Duret's son who teaches piano. Blackwood students are taught individually, according to their 'level of learning and ability'. There are only three other students: Lynda, her best friend Ruth, and Sandy, each with a unique gift. Lynda excels at painting; Ruth, at math, and Sandy writes poetry, which none had shown any talent for before. Kit's specialty is the piano. Kit learns that Madams Duret is using the students to connect telepathically with famous artists who died young and channel their talents to create masterpieces for her. She also learns that all former students at Blackwood either lost their lives, or lost their minds. Kit devises a plan for escape and attempts to contact her friend, Tracy, for help.
6032175	/m/0flkgg	Gallows Hill	Lois Duncan	1998	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Sarah Zoltanne is an extra ordinary girl. Her widowed mother, Rosemary, decides to move to Pinecrest because of Ted Thompson. When Sarah starts school as the new pupil, she makes no friends. Eric Garrett convinces Sarah to play a fortune teller at the fortune telling booth. He says it is to benefit the prom and she would be perfect because she is new and almost no one knows her. Sarah accidentally agrees while having a strange vision at home. At the carnival, Kyra feeds her information on the customers coming in. Sarah uses an old paperweight that belonged to her departed parternal grandmother as her crystal ball. The night is going well until Sarah does a reading for an abundantly contoured but likeable boy named Charlie Gorman. When reading for him, she sees a vision in the paperweight of Charlie falling down a flight of stairs. Sarah quickly closes down the booth and leaves. She becomes friends with Charlie, and discovers that he believes in reincarnation and past lives. Sarah starts writing a history paper about the Salem Witch Trials, and begins having dreams and visions in which she is participating in the trials. Charlie tells her he thinks that everyone in the town participated in the trials, and they are back together to finish something. Meanwhile, Eric convinces her to start doing readings as a business, but things start going down hill when Sarah makes the popular cheerleaders angry and keeps seeing visions about people. The cheerleaders become convinced that Sarah is a witch. Sarah receives threats, such as a sketch of a gallows and a dead crow in her locker. In desperation, she goes to the principal, and then Ted and her mother. Neither party does anything to help her. Later, Ted forces Sarah to go to a party with Kyra. Eric comes by to pick up Sarah for the party, but she has changed her mind about it. Eric persuades her to come out and apologize to Kyra, but she is forced into the car and brought to the party. Eric and the others take Sarah to Garrote Hill, in the middle of Pine Crest, where many drunk students are waiting. The students begin acting strangely and calling the place Gallows Hill, the place in Salem, Massachusetts where the witches of the trials were hanged. They try to hang Sarah, but Charlie intervenes, and the students suddenly relive their past lives in Salem before attacking Charlie. Sarah almost ends up getting hanged until Ted saves her. Sarah and Rosemary decide to move back to California, and Sarah realizes that in a past life, she was Betty Parris, the young girl who brought about the Salem Witch Trials. She leaves Charlie with a night of passion, and gives him the paperweight. It was once cloudy, but now it is 'clear and transparent as window glass'.
6032387	/m/0flkyp	The Keep	F. Paul Wilson	1981-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 German soldiers and SS Einsatzkommandos alike are being slowly killed off in a mysterious castle (the "Keep" of the title) high in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania in April 1941. A Jewish History Professor living in Bucharest, Theodore Cuza, and his daughter Magda, are collected and delivered to the keep in a desperate effort by SS Sturmbannfuhrer Eric Kaempffer to find out what it is that is murdering the men and put a stop to it by any means necessary. The professor is useful in translating a mysterious message that has been written in blood on a wall of the keep in a forgotten dialect of Old Romanian or Old Slavonic. He is also tasked with finding a method of defeating the unknown evil that is wreaking havoc. This evil entity, which calls itself "Molasar", sees a certain usefulness in Professor Cuza and procures his services through deception and false promises. Molasar is later revealed to be Rasalom, an ancient sorcerer from the "First Age" of humans. Shortly, a reluctant champion of the ancient Forces of Light appears; an immortal man calling himself "Glenn", but whose real name is Glaeken. He built the Keep as a prison for Rasalom out of the reluctance to kill him outright. The two beings are mystically linked in a way that binds their destinies together, even though Rasalom's supernatural abilities vastly outmatch Glenn's innate abilities. Magda and Glenn meet and develop a relationship which quickly becomes romantic as Professor Cuza manipulates the German SS into arresting Glenn and bringing him into the Keep where he will be vulnerable to Rasalom's ever-increasing power. The scheme fails when Magda rescues Glenn from dying by bringing him his healing power-sword after he is riddled with bullets. Professor Cuza, meanwhile, is excitedly carrying Glenn's Talisman through the lower levels of Rasalom's 500-year-old prison and upwards toward the surface where the Professor plans to re-bury it according to Rasalom's instructions. Magda leaves Glenn to recuperate while intervening with her misguided father to keep him from crossing the perimeter of the fortress area, giving Glenn just enough time to arrive on scene where, after joining the Talisman to his power-sword, he is able to drive Rasalom backwards into the depths of the keep. Rasalom then uses his telekinetic abilities to launch an overwhelming assault against Glenn. Finally, Glenn prevails as Rasalom rashly launches himself bodily at his age-old enemy and is reduced to ashes by a single stroke from Glenn's sword. Glenn himself plummets onto the craggy rocks below as Rasalom's body decays into nothingness. However he reawakens to discover that he is now mortal, having vanquished his long-time foe, and he and Magda are reunited.
6035060	/m/0flqlh	Reborn	F. Paul Wilson	1990-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Almost immediately after being slain by Glaeken in a castle keep in Romania in the Spring of 1941 Rasalom has opportunistically entered the body of a clone that grows within a woman hired by the scientist in charge of a project seeking to create a genetically enhanced super-soldier for the U.S. Army. The boy comes to term, is born and grows into an unusually strong and aggressive specimen but has a personality of his own which prevents the johnny-come-lately Rasalom from doing anything but secretly encouraging his host whenever possible to indulge his inclination to violence. This all changes when the host dies a seemingly untimely death in his late 20s and the fetus conceived by his wife becomes the newest, un-co-opted vessel for evil. The wife Carol acquires one chief protector in the form of a lifelong sociopath and occasional murdering psychopath known as Jonah Stevens. He stops at nothing to ensure the baby's survival and guarantees that Rasalom will have more than a fighting chance to take over the Earth after attaining early adulthood. The ancient being known as Glaeken is content to take a back seat to all of this as he feels he has earned his permanent retirement from the battle between the forces of Darkness and Light. He realizes that a major confrontation is inevitable but placidly aspires to count himself and his wife Magda among the dearly departed before that dark day descends with a deafening thud upon humanity's collective cranium.
6035356	/m/0flr7m	Nightworld	F. Paul Wilson	1992-05-21	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Rasalom returns in reincarnated form to transform the Earth into unrelenting hell. Rasalom is shortening the daylight hours and letting loose a plague of ever-more-fearsome flesh-eating monsters that prey on the world's populace during the ever-lengthening nights. Whole communities turn on one another; riots break out over food; gangs wage war on the public; and Rasalom grows ever stronger as he feeds on the ever-increasing chaos, violence and terror. The only one who can possibly stop the horror is Glaeken, an enfeebled old warrior who has battled the Adversary across the millennia. Too weak to fight alone, Glaeken gathers together a select band of people to assist him, among them a young boy with mysterious powers, a 150-year-old Hawaiian woman with magical necklaces, a semi-catatonic scientist with a mystical connection to Rasalom, and an all-too-human vigilante named Repairman Jack. So supremely confident is Rasalom of his eventual victory that he spares Glaeken for an especially gruesome fate and allows him to pursue his desperate plan to save the Earth so that Glaeken's ultimate failure will become both Rasalom's greatest victory as well as Glaeken's - and humankind's - most tragic final defeat. Glaeken's only hope in defeating Rasalom and reversing the planet's descent into madness is to forge another power-sword out of the widely scattered materials that remain of his first two mystical weapons of Light. To do this he sends a two-man team to Romania to collect as many fragments of the second sword as possible. Another two-man team is dispatched to Maui to collect two very special necklaces containing material from the first power-sword ever to be created many millennia ago before Glaeken himself became the only surviving, reluctant torchbearer for the Legions of Light on this planet. The raw materials are finally gathered together and then forged into a new power-sword by a peculiar collection of specialists hiding out in a shack on the northeastern shore of Long Island in the little hamlet of Monroe. What remains now is for the weapon to be imbued with the ancient, sentient power that resides in the young boy Jeffy and then, finally, for the power-sword itself to choose a new champion whom it deems worthy of engaging the Powers of Darkness as embodied in the evil Rasalom. The manner in which the new hero or heroine is to be chosen is very strongly reminiscent of the way in which Arthur was chosen by Excalibur to be a worthy successor to his father, Uther Pendragon. The choice ultimately comes as a great surprise to many readers because of the shrewdly roundabout way in which the author lets the little drama play out. The warrior who is finally selected engages Rasalom in his deep, dark lair where he lies waiting for the completion of his transformation into the reigning creature of terror on Earth. For the second time in a mere 50 years the champion for the Legions of Light gets into a serious bind and only prevails in the end because of major assistance from the throngs of mere mortal humans anxiously awaiting the outcome on the surface.
6035638	/m/0flrkl	Boogiepop Returns: VS Imaginator Part 2	Kouhei Kadono		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Sneaking into Paisley Park to sit with her memories of Asukai Jin, Kinukawa Kotoe fell into the clutches of Spooky E, who had been hiding there since his defeat by Boogiepop. Capturing her as a new terminal, he worked on her to lead his search for Imaginator. Using her vast wealth, the manipulated Kinukawa began taking those whose friends had been changed by Imaginator to help find it. Under the suspicion of Kirima Nagi, Taniguchi Masaki headed off to meet Orihata Aya, planning to again impersonate Boogiepop for her. Kinukawa had already met up with Orihata and had instructed her that this was the end of her relationship with Taniguchi. Trying to save him, Orihata tries to make Taniguchi hate her, but he instead runs off to continue impersonating Boogiepop for her sake. Spotting one of the girls who had been with Asukai at her school, Suema followed to investigate. The girl had been looking for someone. After, at their cram school, Suema confronts Asukai. Both manage to surprise each other with their knowledge, though neither managed to identify how the other was linked. Living as 'Boogiepop', Taniguchi stopped returning home. Finding new targets by himself, he continued to act the part of a hero, but was gradually becoming sloppier in his actions. Kinukawa and some of her hired thugs managed to find Taniguchi and tried to use him to kill 'Boogiepop', thereby making the real Boogiepop a fake in the eyes of others. Though able to protect himself against the initial attack, Taniguchi was soon overwhelmed, however, he was rescued by Kirima, who had also been looking for him. She defeated the attackers and freed them all from Spooky E's control. Kinukawa escaped, but was found by Asukai, who restored her to normal, as he had done with many of the other Terminals. Trying to find Orihata, Taniguchi searched her apartment, but soon realised that she had not returned since they last met. Meanwhile, Spooky E quickly discovered that he had lost all his Terminals, and was soon confronted by Asukai, who identified himself as Imaginator. Protecting himself from Spooky E's powers with anti-magnetic sheets, Asukai grasps Spooky E's 'flower' and begins changing his heart, but the synthetic human chose suicide over being manipulated by Imaginator. Fearing for Orihata's life, Taniguchi attempts to contact her by phone. She is found by Asukai, who allows her to speak with Taniguchi, but he needs her to be his sacrifice to create his perfect world. From the phone call, Taniguchi was able to deduce that they were at Paisley Park and immediately set off for it. Meanwhile, Suema also discovers that everything is at Paisley Park and makes her own way to the abandoned site. Breaking into Paisley Park, Taniguchi is confronted by those manipulated by Imaginator. Unable to effectively fight back, he is soon overwhelmed, but at the last moment is saved by a microfilament wire. Accompanied by the Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Boogiepop makes his appearance and quickly defeats the manipulated humans. Making his way to where Asukai and Orihata were, Boogiepop appeared before them. From the way she feared him, Asukai deduced that Boogiepop was a powerful opponent, but it was not until his plan to use Orihata fails that he realised that he had lost. After expelling Imaginator, Boogiepop left Orihata and Asukai alone. Suema arrived at Paisley Park to again find that everything had already finished around her. Suema saved Asukai and helped reunite Orihata and Taniguchi, who need no longer be separated.
6035643	/m/0flrky	The Keep	F. Paul Wilson		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The Keep had stood empty in the Transylvanian Alps for some 500 years. No one knew who built it, or why. But on the eve of World War II, German soldiers moved in and awoke something—something hungry… something more merciless than the SS einsatzkommandos accompanying them.
6036644	/m/0fltfh	Windows on the World				 The novel alternates between two voices: the first Carthew Yorsten, a Texan realtor accompanied by his two sons (ages 7 and 9) who are having a tourist-style breakfast at Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center on the morning of the September 11 attacks; the second, the voice of the author writing the story while having breakfast at a restaurant atop a Paris skyscraper (Tour Montparnasse). Each chapter, averaging three pages a piece, represents one minute from 8.30 am - just before the time the building is hit at 8:46am - to 10.29, just after its collapse at 10:28am.
6038490	/m/0flx2_	Red Thunder	John Varley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set in Florida in the near future. China and the United States are sending competing first missions to Mars, although it is clear the Chinese will arrive first. The book's protagonist is Manny Garcia, a teenager who is fascinated by space flight. He, along with his girlfriend Kelly, his best friend Dak, and Dak's girlfriend Alicia, are partying on the beach one night and almost run over a man who has passed out from drinking. The man is Travis Broussard, a former astronaut who was forced to retire in disgrace. Travis lives with his cousin Jubal, who is mentally deficient in some ways, but is also a scientific genius. Jubal has invented a device called the "squeezer", a spherical impenetrable silver force field that can be formed or have its size changed with no cost of energy. Travis and the teenagers realize the device could have numerous practical uses as well as being a dangerous weapon. They decide to use the squeezers to power a spaceship and plan to arrive at Mars ahead of the slower traveling American and Chinese missions already in transit, and to be available should Jubal's prediction of problems with the American drive prove true. They succeed in building the Red Thunder out of used railroad tank cars on schedule, and near their shoestring budget of $1 million dollars and take off. The four teenagers form the crew with Travis as pilot. They arrive at Mars a day ahead of the Chinese mission. They learn from the Chinese that the American mission was stranded by an accident (their VASIMR drive exploded). Red Thunder is able to locate and rescue the surviving crew members during their return to Earth. When they arrive back on Earth, they are heroes. They use the publicity of their trip to ensure that no nation or individual controls the squeezer technology, and help form a separate non-political organization to control and disseminate the new technology. With this new technology, people are able to eliminate waste dumps and pollution, and begin a new era of space travel throughout the solar system and beyond.
6041679	/m/06c0hr0	Red Hand of Doom	James Jacobs	2006-02	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The plot of Red Hand of Doom follows a group of adventurers who have entered the Elsir Vale, a thinly populated frontier region. The party uncovers and then is placed in the position of stopping a massive hobgoblin horde who are fanatically devoted to the dark goddess Tiamat and led by the charismatic half-dragon warlord Azarr Kul. To stop the horde, the players have to muster the inhabitants of the Vale, battle hobgoblins, giants, and dragons, and defeat an overwhelming enemy.
6041804	/m/0fm27t	Blow Your House Down	Pat Barker		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is divided into three parts. Part 1, which is centred on Brenda, starts off by showing Brenda in the role of a mother of three children; she is shown putting them to sleep before she goes out for the evening. Most of Part 1 sees Brenda (in conjunction with Audrey) walking the street; episodes/encounters with customers are juxtaposed with passages telling Brenda’s history of becoming a prostitute. In the final section of part 1 the focus switches to Kath, an ‘old’, experienced, but ruined prostitute whose three kids were taken into communal care and whose luck has steadily deteriorated since that time. On leaving Palmerston (a pub where the prostitutes have their drinks before starting their work) Kath is approached by a client. He turns out to be the killer. Kath in her highly intoxicated state is unable to proffer any resistance to the man and he kills her. Part 2 shows the intensifying of the fear among the prostitutes. It also further elaborates on the motherly part of the prostitutes’ lives; Elaine is expecting a baby but continues in her job - she starts working in a pair with Jean who seems to have a plan of some sort to trap and find the killer. The focus of the narrative gradually switches to Jean. Part 3 is the climax of the novel as it leads to Jean’s identification and killing of the serial killer. It is narrated by Jean who tells the story of her friendship, teamwork, and love-relationship with Carol, a young and vulnerable fellow prostitute who one day disappeared under dramatic circumstances. After Carol’s corpse has been found on a heap of rubbish the strength of Jean’s love for Carol makes her determined to track down the murderer. From the clues given to her by her instinct and the murderer’s ‘handwriting’ she chooses a spot where she thinks she is most likely to meet him. Her waiting finally bears fruit and she manages to stab the man with a knife. Though in the end she herself is left to wonder whether she has killed the real murderer the reader – from the description of the murderer’s encounter with Kath – suspects that she has killed the right person (although this is never made clear). In the final chapter the news is told that Elaine has given birth to a boy.
6042010	/m/0fm2qw	Peculiar Lives	Philip Purser-Hallard		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish become embroiled in the endgame of a plot which began a generation ago, with the birth of the superhuman children known as "the Peculiar". While Emily encounters their chronicler, the elderly science-fiction novelist Erik Clevedon, Honoré is pitched against his will into an unimaginably distant future.
6042972	/m/0fm440	Wieland	Charles Brockden Brown	1798	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set sometime between the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War, Wieland details the horrible events that befall Clara Wieland and her brother Theodore's family. Clara and Theodore's father was a German immigrant who founded his own religion; he came to America just before the American Revolution with the conviction to spread his religion to the indigenous people. When he fails at this task, he believes he has also failed his deity. One night, as he worships in his bare, reclusive temple, he seems to spontaneously combust, after which his health rapidly deteriorates and he dies. His children inherit his property, which is divided equally between them. Theodore marries their childhood friend, Catharine Pleyel, and they have four children. Soon, Theodore begins to hear voices and Catharine's brother, Henry Pleyel, begins to hear them, too. Though at first doubtful of the voices that the men claim to hear, Clara also begins to hear a strange voice. The mysterious Carwin appears on the scene, and suggests that the voices may be caused by human mimicry. Clara is secretly in love with Pleyel, and makes a plan to tell him so; however, her chance is ruined. When she returns home, she finds Carwin hiding in her closet. He admits he had been planning to rape Clara, but believing her to be under the protection of a supernatural force, leaves her. The next morning, Pleyel accuses Clara of having an affair with Carwin. He leaves quickly, without giving Clara enough time to defend herself. She decides to go to see Pleyel, to tell him he is mistaken, but he does not seem to believe her. On her way home, Clara stops to visit her friend Mrs. Baynton, where Clara finds a letter from Carwin waiting for her, which requests an audience with her. At Theodore's house, Clara finds that everyone seems to be asleep, so she continues on to her own home, where she is to meet with Carwin. When she arrives, there are strange noises and lights, and she sees a glimpse of Carwin's face. In her room, she finds a strange letter from Carwin, and Catharine in her bed – dead. Shocked, she sits in her room until Theodore arrives and threatens Clara. When he hears voices outside, he leaves Clara unharmed. Clara learns that Theodore’s children have also been killed. Clara falls ill; later, she is able to read the murderer's testimony. The killer is her brother, Theodore. He claims to have been acting under divine orders. Clara is sure that Carwin is the source of Theodore's madness. Carwin reveals to Clara that he is a biloquist. He was the cause of most of the voices, but he claims that he did not tell Theodore to commit the murders. Wieland, having escaped from prison, arrives at Clara's house and tries to kill her. Carwin uses his ability to tell Theodore to stop. He says that Theodore should not have listened to the voices, and Theodore suddenly comes to his senses. He kills himself, full of remorse for what he has done. Clara refuses to leave her house, until it burns down one day. She then goes to Europe with her uncle, and eventually marries Pleyel. Clara feels she has finally recovered from the tragic events, enough to write them down. As for Carwin, he has become a farmer in the countryside. Apparently the novel was based on the true story of murders which took place at Tomhannock, New York (a hamlet near Pittstown) in 1781. Mirroring the incidents of the later novel, one James Yates, under the influence of a religious delusion, killed his wife and four children, then attempted to kill his sister, and expressed no remorse for his conduct in court later. Brown gave his tragic hero a pedigree related to that of the actual German author Christoph Martin Wieland, who is mentioned obliquely in the text: My ancestor may be considered as the founder of the German Theatre. The modern poet of the same name is sprung from the same family, and, perhaps, surpasses but little, in the fruitfulness of his invention, or the soundness of his taste, the elder Wieland. This and others of Charles Brockden Brown&#39;s novels were very influential in the later development of the Gothic genre by such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, and most especially, George Lippard.
6045681	/m/0fm94f	Upland Outlaws	Dave Duncan		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Having escaped across the Cenmere Sea, the group takes to ship and sets sail.
6046538	/m/0fmc8x	Another Day in Paradise		1997-10-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 At age 13, Bobbie leaves the violent, abusive home where he was raised, and this book details his following year. He has an older girlfriend, carries a gun, takes drugs, and is on an ever-tightening spiral to hell, his crimes escalating until they include murder. The plot, which highlights Bobbie's increasing dependence on the highs of violence, is not pointless but instead emphasizes a frightening reality. For Bobbie, read Little. He's been there, and his graphic story is written with an immediacy and realism that will make normal thinking people cringe and parents anxious to protect their children from the harshness in which some youth live.
6047155	/m/0fmdgq	Why the Whales Came	Michael Morpurgo		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Gracie and Daniel, two young children, live on the island of Bryher in the Isles of Scilly at the beginning of World War I. Their parents warn them not to go to near the Birdman, who lives on the south side of the island. There are rumours that the Birdman is mad and dangerous. However, Gracie and Daniel end up on the south side of the island when they cannot find a place to sail their boats then eventually run into him. The Birdman turns out to be friendly and they begin a secret friendship with the old man. He alerts them when a large deposit of timber from a wrecked ship is deposited on one of the island's beaches, and the islanders manage to hide the timber before customs officers from St Mary's arrive. The Birdman warns them in turn to stay away from the island of Samson, which he says is cursed. According to his story, a large school of whales were washed ashore on the island and were massacred by the islanders. This led to a number of misfortunes, including the well drying up, which eventually made the island uninhabitable. The curse can only be lifted when the guilt of Samson is redeemed. As luck would have it, during a fishing trip, Gracie and Daniel end up stranded on Samson, which appears to be haunted. When they return home, they hear that Gracie's father has disappeared while fighting at Gallipoli. Soon after, a school of whales are washed ashore on Bryher, and it appears that Bryher will suffer the same fate as Samson. Gracie and Daniel try to stop the whales from being slaughtered, and eventually succeed when joined by their mother. As a result, the curse of Samson is lifted and the islanders of Bryher are able to visit it. Finally, Gracie's father returns home, having miraculously survived.
6047363	/m/0fmdxj	Foreign Devils	Andrew Cartmel		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins in China, 1800, when the Doctor and his companions arrive in their time machine, the TARDIS, at the English Trade Concession in Canton. A relic, previously thought harmless becomes active and transports his companions into the future. The Doctor tracks them in the TARDIS and materialises in England, 1900, where the descendents of an English merchant from 1800 have gathered. One of these is a man called Carnacki, who before long helps the Doctor investigate a series of strange murders in the house. When the Doctor discovers that the house and its surroundings have literally been removed from space and time, he realises that their attacker may not be all they seem.
6051490	/m/0fmm9s	The Silver Wolf	Alice Borchardt	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 "I was born of darkness. My father's eyes closed before mine opened. I am not of this world or the other, and I have the right to be what I am... " Regeane is a half-Saxon and half-Frankish woman whose father, Wolfstan, died because of her mother, Gisela. Wolfstan was a shape shifter, a man who could change from human to a very large wolf while her mother, Gisela, was frightened at the abnormality that her husband displayed. Due to Gundabald's urgings and pressure, Gisela grew to believe that Wolfstan was an offspring of the Devil Himself and eventually lured him to his death. When Gisela birthed Regeane, she was relieved to find no abnormalities...leastwise, not yet. When Regeane experiences her first sign of adulthood, she changes into this beautiful silver wolf. Gisela panics and forces poor Regeane to drink filthy concoctions, to pray for hours, to go to church, to promise never again to change as long as she lived...etc. In return for that promise, Gundabald would take care of Regeane for a long time. But when Gisela dies, the whole family falls into poverty and corruption, ending up with tattered cloths, temporary lodging in Rome and Regeane chained by the neck in the basement. Gundabald treats her worse and worse while Hugo, his son, is a more drunken wastrel than ever. Together, the expert wastrel (Gundabald) and the apprentice wastrel (Hugo) use up the money while Regeane is locked up in the house. But Regeane fights back and she finally escapes from the imprisonment when Gundabald's mood turns when he finds her a wealthy mountain lord by the name of Maeniel to marry her. Regeane escapes to Lucilla's villa, where Lucilla, Hadrian (the Pope), Antonius and many others befriend her and her smaller friend Elfgifa. Antonius, who is a leper, is Regeane's friend and she ventures forth into the World of the Dead to find a cure for him before it is too late. On one of those many trips, she meets three wolves - one black, one gray and one red. Unknown to her, the gray wolf whom she desires is Maeniel, her future husband and lord. On first sight, they both fall in love. A few days later, Maeniel pays an unannounced visit to Lucilla's villa, where he drowns his future bride with more than a king's ransom of wealth. After the wedding feast, a dispute is begun when an assassin tries to kill Maeniel while he is occupied with Regeane. Regeane stops him by breaking his wrist bone with one hand over Maeniel's shoulder, grabbing him by the broken wrist. Due to the excessive bruising a normal woman could not have caused, he finds out that Regeane is, in fact, the silver wolf whom he desires. What follows next is a desperate battle between Maeniel and Scapthar as the champions fight to see whether or not Regeane is to burn at the stake. Maeniel wins and Scapthar is left for dead. Finally, Gundabald is the last to be killed and Regeane finally learns that Maeniel, her love, is the gray wolf.
6052653	/m/0fmpmk	The Inheritance	Nancy Varian Berberick		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with Elansa Sungold going to the border to heal a group of trees with her Blue Phoenix, a magical artifact passed down since the Age of Dreams to woodshapers in her family. The Blue Phoenix is a symbol of Habbakuk, and the artifact may be a holy artifact of Habbakuk. She is guarded by twenty elves. When they reach further into the forest, they are ambushed by goblins, which were hired by human brigands. Elansa is taken for ransom, and one of the guards who were sent to take care of her by her husband, Prince Kethrenan, is mutilated and sent back to Qualinost, the elve's homeland, to inform them of the ransom demand, two cartloads full of the best weapons that the elves have. Elansa is taken to one of the bandits secret hideouts, and is guarded by Char, the dwarf. Brand, the leader of the bandits, also takes Elansa's Blue Phoenix from her. In the hands of a human, it didn't pulse with magic at all, so humans would think it's just a pretty shaped gem. Brand means raven in an ancient dialect. Brand kills the son of Gnash, a hobgoblin, who was sent to assist the ambush, making him an enemy of the goblins. They run from the goblins into many different secret hideouts, then hole up in one for the winter. In the sprain, Brand's demand for two wagons full of weapons has been acknowledged. Prince Kethrenan, and his cousin, a female warrior, drive the wagons, while other warriors hide in the woods. Their plan is to slaughter the bandits when they come to take the weapons, however, their plans are foiled when goblins, this time enemies of both, appear. Brand and his band get away with Elansa and the two wagons, leaving the elves to "mop up" the goblins. Brand stores the weapons in caches all over the stone lands, so that they won't be discovered. A goblin "turncoat" decides to help the elves, and with his help the locate all of the weapon caches. The weapons that can't be recovered due to transportation issues are destroyed. By plotting the caches on a map, the elves discover an arrow pointing to Pax Tharkas, perhaps the last safe house for the brigands, so the elves head to Pax Tharkas. Brand and his band know that they are being hunted, but not by whom, so they decide to go to the abandoned Pax Tharkas as a safe haven. During this time, Char becomes almost a friend of Elansa's. Many of the men in the group of bandits want Elansa, so Brand gives her a choice between him and them. He was just doing this to protect her, but she didn't know that. Elansa chooses Brand. The goblins amass an army and also head to Pax Tharkas, following Brand. Brand and his followers arrive in Pax Tharkas, and a couple of goblins manage to rouse the undead guarding Kith-Kanan. While Elansa is trying to help the Bandits to destroy the undead, one of the bandits try to rape her, but Char saves her. Elansa uses her Blue Phoenix to destroy the undead, but she faints from the strain afterwards. The elves and goblins fight outside Pax Tharkas, and the elves destroy the goblins. Prince Kethrenan's cousin is killed. Prince Kethrenan comes in to rescue Elansa, but Elansa wants him to spare Brand. He refuses, kills Brand, and at the same time Leyerlain Starwing kills Kethrenan by throwing a dagger into his neck. At this point, Elansa realizes that she grew to love Brand. Elansa runs away with Char, before the elves come to investigate. She's pregnant with Brand's child, and Char convinces her to claim that she was raped to protect herself and the child, even though Brand grew, almost, to be her lover. She returns to Qualinesti. The child is known as Tanis Half-Elven.
6053554	/m/0fmqv0	Against the Day	Thomas Pynchon	2006-11-21	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nearly all reviewers of the book mention the Byzantine nature of the plot. Louis Menand in The New Yorker gives a simple description:The New Yorker Menand, Louis, "Do the Math: Thomas Pynchon's latest novel", The New Yorker, November 27, 2006 edition, posted November 20, accessed November 28, 2006 : "[T]his is the plot: An anarchist named Webb Traverse, who employs dynamite as a weapon against the mining and railroad interests out West, is killed by two gunmen, [...] who were hired by the wicked arch-plutocrat Scarsdale Vibe. Traverse's sons [...] set out to avenge their father’s murder. [...] Of course, there are a zillion other things going on in Against the Day, but the Traverse-family revenge drama is the only one that resembles a plot [...] that is, in Aristotle’s helpful definition, an action that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The rest of the novel is shapeless [...]" As to the multitude of plot dead-ends, pauses and confusing episodes that return to continue much later in the narrative, Menand writes: : "[T]he text exceeds our ability to keep everything in our heads, to take it all in at once. There is too much going on among too many characters in too many places. [...] This [including tone shifts in which Pynchon spoofs various styles of popular literature] was all surely part of the intention, a simulation of the disorienting overload of modern culture."
6053891	/m/0fmr7t	Molly Moon's Hypnotic Time-Travel Adventure	Georgia Byng	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Molly is trying to fit in her new life as the daughter of a billionaire (Primo Cell), but things aren't going so well. This is mainly because her mother is depressed about losing her 11 years of her life to hypnotism. She walks around the property miserable and all she does is sulk. Molly tries to help her but is soon subjected to the mystery of her missing pug. While looking she is hypnotised and taken to another time. She is taken to India in 1870, and taken to a fine red fort. Her escort, Zackya, is getting more and more nervous as they approach the main room. Then she has the displeasure of meeting the Maharaja of Waqt, a fat scally man, who wishes to kill her to stop her from wrecking the plans made in the last two books, since the Maharaja is the mastermind who hypnotized Cornelius Logan in the first place to hypnotize Lucy and Primo Cell. Taken back into the 1870s, Molly makes a new friend named Ojas who helps her, Rocky, and Forest defeat the mad Maharaja and save time as we know it. The Maharaja kidnaps a baby Molly, three-year old Molly, six-year old Molly, and 10-year old Molly by time traveling. It reveals her Uncle Cornelius was actually hypnotized as a young boy by the Maharaja and that Molly has a twin brother. es:Molly Moon viaja a través del tiempo sv:Molly Moons hypnotiska tidsresa
6057877	/m/0fmys8	Golem100	Alfred Bester		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Taking place in a city of the future, a group of bored wealthy women begin dabbling in ancient satanic rituals, unaware that their rites are actually working. The beast of pure evil, Golem100, is raised each time the group practices their ritual, embarking on a rampage of rape, torture and murder. The demon is tracked through the physical and spirit worlds by Gretchen Nunn, a master of psychodynamics, Blaise Shima, a brilliant and famous chemist, and a clever local police officer, Subadar Ind'dni.
6062284	/m/0fn5d8	The Monastery	Walter Scott	1820	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the many conflicts between England and Scotland the property of the Church had hitherto always been respected; but her temporal possessions, as well as her spiritual influence, were now in serious danger from the spread of the doctrines of the Reformation, and the occupants of the monasteries were dependent on the military services of their tenants and vassals for protection against the forays of Protestant barons and other heretical marauders. Dame Elspeth's husband Simon had fallen in the battle of Pinkie (1547), and the hospitality of her lonely tower had been sought by the widow of the Baron of Avenel and her daughter Mary, whose mansion had been seized and plundered by invaders, and subsequently taken possession of by her brother-in-law Julian. While confessing the baroness on her death-bed, Father Philip discovered that she possessed a Bible, and as he was carrying it to the Lord Abbot, it was, he declared, taken from him by a spectral White Lady. Disbelieving the sacristan's tale, the sub-prior visited the tower, where he met Christie of the Clinthill, a freebooter, charged with an insolent message from Julian Avenel, and learnt that the Bible had been mysteriously returned to its owner. Having exchanged it for a missal, he was unhorsed on his return by the apparition; and, on reaching the monastery, the book had disappeared from his bosom, and he found the freebooter detained in custody on suspicion of having killed him. The White Lady was next seen by Elspeth's son Halbert, who was conducted by her to a fairy grotto, where he was allowed to snatch the Bible from a flaming altar. During his absence from the tower, Happer the miller and his daughter Mysie arrived on a visit, and soon afterwards came Sir Piercie Shafton, as a refugee from the English Court. The next day the abbot came to dine with them, and offered Halbert, who had quarrelled with the knight for his attentions to Mary, the office of ranger of the Church forests. He, however, refused it, and startled his rival with a token he had obtained from the mysterious spectre. The following morning they fought in a glen, and Halbert fled to the Baron of Avenel, leaving Sir Piercie apparently mortally wounded. His companion thither was Henry Warden, who offended the laird, and assisted Halbert in his determination to escape from the castle, rather than serve under his host's standard. The knight, however, had miraculously recovered, and on making his way back to the tower, was accused by Edward of having murdered his missing brother, in spite of his assurance that the youth was alive and uninjured. With the sub-prior's approval he was treated as a prisoner; but during the night Mysie assisted him to escape, and accompanied him northwards, dressed as his page. Mary Avenel, meanwhile, in the midst of her grief at the supposed death of her lover, was visited by the White Lady, who comforted her by disclosing the place where he had hidden the Bible, which she had secretly read with her mother. The rest of the family were astounded by the arrival of Christie, who confirmed Sir Piercie's assertion, and announced that he had brought Henry Warden to be dealt with as a heretic by the lord abbot. But the preacher and Father Eustace had been intimate friends at college, and the sub-prior was urging him to save his life by returning to the bosom of the Church, when Edward interrupted them to confess his jealousy of his brother, and his resolution to become a monk, in obedience to the White Lady who had appeared to him. Father Eustace then decided to leave his prisoner at the tower, under promise to surrender when summoned to the monastery; and, having learnt from the freebooter that Julian Avenel would fight for the Church, despatched him in search of Sir Piercie and the miller's daughter. That same night the lord abbot, alarmed by intelligence that English and Scottish soldiers were advancing with hostile intentions against the monastery, resigned his office to the sub-prior. Having taken the road to Edinburgh, Halbert had joined a squadron commanded by the Earl of Murray, who sent him forward to prevent an engagement between the English, under Sir John Forster, and the supporters of the Church, under the Baron of Avenel. He arrived too late, but the earl induced Sir John, who had won the battle, to withdraw, and marched his troops to St Mary's. Here the new abbot had assembled his brotherhood in the village, in anticipation of the destruction of their home. The regent and his followers formed up facing them, and the first matter settled was the marriage of Halbert with the heiress of Avenel. Father Eustace was then summoned to produce Sir Piercie, who surrendered voluntarily, and a flaw in his pedigree having been proved, Mysie was declared a fitting wife for him, and they were shipped off to Flanders. The monks, at the intercession of Henry Warden, were allowed to retain their monastery and lands on condition of being laid under contribution; while Edward, who had sought another interview with the White Spirit, was told that the knot of fate was tied, and impressed with the belief that the marriage of his brother with Mary Avenel might prove fatal to both of them.
6063708	/m/076x37t	Last Full Measure	Andy Mangels	2006-04-25	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 An alien weapon attacks Earth, unleashing energies that kills millions across two continents. A second such rumoured weapon could destroy the planet. The 'Enterprise' accepts a contingent of 'MACOS', Military Assault Command Operations personnel, and track down the source of the alien attack. The military men and the Starfleet officers come into conflict over the ways to perform the mission but both sides realize they must work together or perish.
6064877	/m/0fn920	Who He?	Alfred Bester		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A TV game show host, waking up after an alcoholic blackout, discovers that someone is out to destroy his life.
6065164	/m/0fn9dq	The Computer Connection	Alfred Bester	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the future, a band of immortals (some who are famous historical characters, some who have tried their best to avoid becoming so), including Herb Wells, Ned Curzon (nicknamed Grand Guignol), Hillel, and Sam Pepys have only one requirement for membership: don't die. Through their extensive social network, they come across a brilliant Cherokee physicist named Sequoya Guess, who himself has only very recently learned of his peculiarity and the catches and loopholes that come along with it. This creates a swift change in Guess's day-to-day life that is as much a shock to his friends as to himself. At the same time, the world's scientists are collaborating to bring together a supercomputer named Extro that will monitor and control all mechanical activity on Earth. The immortals create a plan to subtly harness Extro to aid them in their quest for knowledge and use some of the experience they've gained to assist it in its task. Working outside of expected behavior, Extro instead seizes control of Dr. Guess, leaving the only people who know what's going on — the Immortals and Guess's nearest friends — to grapple with the heart and mind of a malevolent machine in the body of an Immortal, a powerful and ingenious man who cannot be killed.
6065261	/m/0fn9ly	Tender Loving Rage			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 From Publishers Weekly: "With a title more appropriate to a paperback romance and an author whose reputation was made in an entirely different genre, this posthumous thriller by one of the stellar lights of the golden age of science fiction seems unlikely to find an audience. Although Bester died in 1987, the book seems, in both style and perspective, to have been written well before that, perhaps not too far beyond its late 1950s setting. Beautiful model Julene Krebs attracts the attentions of both a high-powered advertising executive and a prominent research scientist. The two men become friendly as a result of their mutual interest in the girl, and she in turn becomes involved with each. Meanwhile, Bester offers what is presumably intended as satirical commentary on the advertising industry in general and TV commercials in particular, via a stream of embarrassingly awkward conversations and repartee in a variety of settings. There's a threatening, shadowy figure lurking about, as well as intimations of a dark secret in Julene's past, but these matters are so submerged in the plodding story that they seem unimportant&mdash;at least until a wild, violent night on Fire Island, N.Y. That's followed by a hurricane, a kidnapping and a thoroughly unbelievable bit of melodrama. In the end, after Bester skirts around an appalling view of rape and its victims, love triumphs over all&mdash;sort of."
6065317	/m/0fn9pp	Molly Moon Stops the World	Georgia Byng	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Molly Moon Stops The World, Molly Moon is having the good life after using the money she earned in New York. She is using the money to fix up the orphanage. At the start of the book, Davina Nuttel, a famous child actress, and Molly Moon's rival, gets kidnapped by Primo Cell, a powerful leader and rich businessman. When Lucy Logan sees the news, she summons Molly because she suspects Primo is behind her abduction and is hypnotizing movie and other types of stars to perform in Primo Cell's ads. And besides, is trying to become the president of United States. Molly travels to Los Angeles, California and finds out her large diamond that she wears around her neck enables her to stop time. She also finds that permanent hypnosis will ensue from stopping time during regular hypnosis of a person. Molly gets help from Sinclair (Primo's stepson), his personal yoga teacher named Forest, and Rocky. Molly finds out that Lucy Logan and Primo Cell are her parents. She also finds Lucy and Primo have been under Cornelius Logan's (Lucy's twin brother) hypnosis for eleven years. The story finally ends when Molly made Cornelius think he was a lamb, through tireless hypnotism and time-stopping. es:Molly Moon detiene el Mundo sv:Molly Moon stannar tiden
6067175	/m/0fncny	The Living and the Dead	Patrick White	1941-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Living and the Dead opens in London's Victoria Station. Elyot Standish bids farewell to his younger sister Eden in a manner that is not particularly emotional or final. Elyot returns to an empty house, somberly observing the memories that remain amongst its silent possessions. Chapter 2 takes the reader several decades earlier, where a young Kitty Goose begins to find her way through England's upper classes. Catherine marries Willy Standish and bears him two children, but separates some years afterwards due to Willy's infidelity. Catherine's children, Elyot and Eden, are raised by her maid Julia and, during World War I, by surrogate guardians. Following the war, Catherine, living on the dwindling remnants of pre-war affluence, struggles to relate to her children. Elyot, a Cambridge graduate and professional writer, isolates himself in intellectual pursuits. Eden, a bookshop attendant, is influenced by left-wing politics. As the Spanish Civil War rises in the conscience of British society, the Standishes are forced to face their inner dissatisfactions. This is brought into focus by the failures of their sexual relationships. Catherine, who finds herself irrelevant in a much-changed world, pursues a romance with the younger Wally Collins, an American musician. The relationship is severed when Wally loses interest in Catherine, who spills her emotions whilst drunk at a fashionable party. Elyot, whether with family or with women, never allows himself a relationship of any depth. He distances himself from both Muriel Raphael, an artistic socialite, and Connie Tiarks, an unattractive but devoted childhood friend. The two are complete opposites, yet neither satisfies the purposeless Elyot. It is Eden who suffers the most tragedy, yet, paradoxically, offers the best hope of a meaningful existence. Her first lover, a married man, discards her to pursue an overseas position. The secrecy surrounding her abortion isolates her further from her family. Her second romance with the leftist Joe Barnett gives her a long-sought happiness, but this is taken away in cruel circumstances. Joe, facing his own conscience, disappears to Spain and is killed in action. It is Joe Barnett's firm direction that all others fail to achieve. With the death of Catherine to cancer, Eden decides that her rightful place is in Spain, even without her deceased lover. At the station, Elyot does not expect to ever see her again, and thus the reader understands the full significance of the opening chapter's sterility. The Living and the Dead raises deep questions about life, death and those in between.
6068767	/m/0fngs4	An Arrow's Flight	Mark Merlis	1998-08	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Pyrrhus lives in the city with his housemate Leucon. He works as a waiter, then as a hustler. One day he hears his father Achilles has left him some inheritance in Troy, and he decides to claim it. On the ship, he sleeps with Corythus, a sailor. He soon learns he needs to seduce Philoctetes and get his arrow for a prophecy to come true. He grows attached to the old man, though the latter also has an affair with Paris. Finally, Philoctetes breaks the arrow. Pyrrhus meets Leucon again in a hospital where Pyrrhus is waiting to see his lover Philoctetes, who is very sick; the latter realizes he no longer has feelings for Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus understands that he has grown and accepted his sexuality and is able to live openly, something Leucon cannot do. (The novel hints that he probably never will.)
6070304	/m/0fnkg2	The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963	Christopher Paul Curtis	1995	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first part of the book is set in Flint, Michigan, with the narrator, Kenny, introducing his family, the "Weird Watsons". His family includes his dad, his mom, older brother Byron and younger sister Joetta, nicknamed Joey. This section is largely a description of the Watsons' family life: Byron kissing his reflection in a car mirror in January and freezing his lips to the chilled glass, Kenny's friend LJ stealing all Kenny's toy dinosaurs, the countrified new kids at school, and Byron's sliding into friendship with the bad element in town. It is this last episode that prompts the main conflict in the story, as Byron's behavior worsens. Ultimately, he is caught again playing with matches despite having been warned repeatedly against doing just this. At this point, the family decides Byron should live with his Grandma Sands in Alabama for the Summer and if things don't work out he'll stay there for the next school year. It is, however, when the grandmother's church is bombed that the family decides to return home, with Byron, in an attempt to avoid explaining the full implications of what has happened to the children. Kenny, having never encountered racism of this magnitude before, is unable to process what has happened--he ran to the church moments after the bombing took place as he believed his sister to be in the building, and saw the aftermath. Byron does his best to help Kenny understand what has happened, as the parents are reluctant to explain.
6071436	/m/0fnmj6	Fury	C. L. Moore	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Malik Solanka, a Cambridge-educated millionaire from Bombay, is looking for an escape from himself. At first he escapes from his academic life by immersing himself into a world of miniatures (after becoming enamored with the miniature houses on display at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), eventually creating a puppet called "Little Brain" and leaving the academy for television. However, dissatisfaction with the rising popularity of "Little Brain" serves to ignite deeper demons within Solanka's life, resulting in the narrowly avoided murder of his wife and child. To further escape, Solanka travels to New York, hopeful he can lose himself and his demons in America, only to find that he is forced to confront himself.
6076948	/m/0fnxtl	Orphans of the Helix				 The spinship Helix has not yet reached a suitable destination when it receives a distress signal from a binary star system. Four of the five shipboard AI (apparently formerly of the TechnoCore; in characteristic Simmons fashion, each is patterned after a famous literary figure, in this case, Japanese: Saigyo, Lady Murasaki, Ikkyu, Basho, and Ryōkan) decide that the call is worth investigating, not least because of the further anomaly that the orbital forest around the lesser of the two stars, which the AIs intend to resupply their ship from, is of neither Ouster nor Templar construction, though they may have settled on it. The AIs awaken certain crewmembers, and together they enter the system, where they are greeted by hundreds of thousands of space-adapted Ousters; they importune the Helix to save their civilization from an enormous and ancient harvester spaceship (which gathers food, air, and water), which visits every 57 years, and is so programmatically inflexible that it sees the Ouster and Templar settlements as infestations of the tree-ring, and attempts to cleanse it by eradicating them. Over the centuries, the colony's technological infrastructure has been steadily ground under by its assaults, and many die attacking or being attacked. A brief assay of the harvester's defenses (for the 57 years have elapsed since the last visit, and the harvester has arrived) by one of the Helix armed vessels reveal the ancient device to be minimally defended and weakened by age; easily destroyed. However, the harvester is presumably being used by its creators, and destroying it might be tantamount to condemning that civilization to slow starvation and death. Even despite its misdeeds, the crew of the Helix cannot countenance that possibility, though they saw no inhabitants in the other, red-giant system. Since they cannot get to the system normally before the harvester strikes again, the crew votes to risk the Helix and its hundreds of thousands of stored inhabitants by making a very short Hawking drive jump. The jump succeeds, and they begin scanning the system for life. On an inspiration, they scan inside the red giant star, and discover a truly ancient rocky world which the star had enveloped in its expansion. It is honey-combed, and occupied by a curious oxygen-breathing race, whose primary method of technological communication is via modulated gravity waves (explaining the failure of previous attempts to contact the harvester). Aboard is Ces Ambre, the only survivor of the family which took in Raul Endymion; though she is not an Aenean, she received the Aenean nano-technology; she cannot freecast, but she is capable of empathatic communication with the more than 3 billion "modular... so fibrous" minds in the cinder planet. She successfully explains the harm their harvester has caused. They are devastated to learn of what they had done, and immediately transmit a gravitonic sequence which would reprogram the harvester (they offer further to commit collective suicide to atone for their crimes, but the Spectrum feels that this is not needed), as indeed it does. They also reveal the reason they stubbornly stay in their original planet and constructed the harvester and tree-ring: they like their home, and don't want to leave. Ces Ambre offers a vial of her blood to the tree-ring inhabitants; though she is not philosophically an Aenean and refrains from using her abilities, she feels that the natives should have the choice. The crew return to hibernation, and the AI direct the Helix on its way under Hawking drive. Mysteriously, the Shrike, Dem Loa (Ces Ambre's mother), and "Petyr, son of Aenea and Endymion" appear on the bridge. Petyr briefly communes directly with the AIs, healing Basho's psychological conflicts, and directing them to divert the Helix to a nice, but challenging system. He and Dem Loa then vanish, apparently using the Shrike as a method of locomotion.
6078671	/m/0fn_rk	The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily	Dino Buzzati	1945	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily is the story of a group of bears living in the mountains on the island of Sicily. One year, a harsh winter descends upon them, eliminating the majority of their food sources. Driven by hunger, the bears descend the mountain to avoid starvation. The bear king, Leander, also has a personal motive for going: years ago, humans kidnapped his son Tony, and he is determined to get him back. Upon being seen, the Grand Duke of Sicily starts a military campaign against the bears. Their valour is no match against the humans' technology, but when the bears proceed against the capital city, the bear Marzipan builds ladders, catapults and a cannon. The bears are victorious. King Leander's son, Tony, is found performing in the capital's theater, and is happily reunited with his father. King Leander now rules over Sicily, with bears and humans peacefully coexisting in the city. However, to King Leander's dislike, his bears lose their innocence and adopt human habits. The situation deteriorates when the King's Chanberlain, bear Salpetre establishes a gambling den, robs the treasury, and organizes orgies. His final grab to take power by killing the king is, however, prevented by bear Dandilion. On his death-bed, King Leander orders his bears to denounce all human ways, and return to into the mountains to their former life. They are to leave the riches behind, to find again peace of mind.
6079669	/m/0fp1qt	Himitsu				 Heisuke Sugita, a humble 39-year-old man, enjoys the smaller pleasures in life. He is devastated when his wife and daughter are involved in a bus accident. Naoko, his wife, dies and his 11-year-old daughter Monami is badly injured. Monami makes a miraculous recovery—albeit, with one small twist—her personality and memories are that of her mother Naoko's, rather than her own. Both Heisuke and Naoko conclude that her spirit is possessing Monami's body. Unable to explain what has happened, they decide to keep the matter a secret while Monami lives as Naoko from now on. As Monami's possessed body enters adolescence, she takes the opportunity to live her own unfulfilled dreams. Naoko's growing independence begins to cause a rift between her and Heisuke, who struggles to remain a faithful husband and also tries to make sense of the tragedy that caused Naoko's condition by learning more about the bus driver who caused the accident. Heisuke and Naoko have a falling out when he suspects she has become interested in a boy around Monami's own age, but find they cannot resolve their own relationship as Naoko is now biologically Heisuke's daughter. When Monami's consciousness begins resurfacing, Heisuke and Naoko are able to repair their relationship as they ensure that Monami and Naoko, now sharing the same body, will able to function and transition back to the life that Naoko has lived for her. As Monami's consciousness begins to become dominant, Heisuke and Naoko eventually part ways forever and Heisuke is content to raise Monami as his daughter again. Years later, Monami suggests that Naoko's possession was the result of a multiple personality disorder brought on by the accident to help her father cope and gradually went away as her own true personality emerged again. However, on the day that Monami is about to marry, a heartbroken Heisuke suspects that Monami never returned and that Naoko eventually abandoned her identity as Naoko in order for them both to move on in their lives.
6081759	/m/0fp5wz	Lunch Money	Andrew Clements	2005-07	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Greg Kenton is a 6th-grader with considerable talent, but whose greatest talent is as an entrepreneur. His newest business, Chunky Comics, is successful, until long-time rival and business competitor, Maura Shaw, distributes mini books of her own. Eventually, the two come together to form a partnership, and also friendship. The principal, Mrs. Davenport, has some doubts about granting them permission to sell their comics, but eventually consents. Chunky Comics becomes a huge domestic hit, and is eventually distributed nationally on eBay.
6082776	/m/0fp7_v	The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse				 “The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse” is narrated by nine-year-old Aram Garoghlanian, a member of an Armenian community living among the lush fruit orchards and vineyards of California. One morning Aram is awakened before dawn by his thirteen-year-old cousin Mourad, who is thought to be demented by everyone except Aram, and has a way with animals. Aram is astonished to see that Mourad is sitting on a beautiful white horse. Aram has always wanted to ride a horse, but his family is too poor to afford one. However, the Garoghlanian tribe is noted not only for its poverty but also for its honesty, so it is unthinkable that Mourad would have stolen the horse. So, Aram felt that his cousin couldn't have stolen the horse. Aram was invited to ride on the horse with Mourad. The idea of Mourad stealing the horse drained away from Aram's mind as he felt that it wouldn't become stealing until they offer to sell the horse. They enjoyed their riding on the horse for a long time. Mourad's crazy behavior was considered to be a natural descent from their uncle Khosrove, even though his father, Zorab, was a practical man. Uncle Khosrove was an enormous man who was always furious, impatient, and irritable. He would roar for everyone to stop talking and say It is no harm, pay no attention to it. In fact,one day, when his son came and told them that their house was on fire, Khosrove silenced him by roaring "Enough. It is no harm". After a long day of riding, Mourad wanted to ride alone on the horse. Aram had the same longing, but when he sat on the horse and kicked its muscles it reared and snorted and raced forward, dropping Aram off its back. That afternoon, an Assyrian farmer named John Byro -an Assyrian friend of the Garoghlanians- came to Aram's house. He reported to Aram's mother that his white horse which had been stolen a month ago was still missing. Hearing this, Aram concludes that Mourad must have had the horse for a long time. Khosrove, who was at Aram's house when Byro came, shouted his dialogue "its no harm" to such an extent that Byro was forced to sprint out to avoid responding. Aram ran to Mourad to inform him of Byro's arrival. Aram also pleads to Mourad to not return the horse until he could learn to ride. Mourad disagrees saying that Aram would take at least a year to learn, but promises he would keep it for six months at most. This becomes a routine. Mourad comes daily to pick Aram to ride, and Aram continuously falls off the horse's back after every attempt. Two weeks later, they were going to take the horse back to its hiding place when they met Byro on the road. The farmer is extremely surprised. He recognizes his horse but refuses to believe that the boys had stolen it. He says "the horse is the twin of my horse" and "a suspicious man would believe his eyes instead of his heart". Thus the Garoghlanian's fame of honesty saves them. The following day they return the horse before everyone (except the dogs) is awake. None of the dogs bark, since Mourad has "a way with dogs". Mourad gets extremely sentimental when he parts with the horse. The next day Byro arrives at Aram's house to show the horse to Aram's mother and report that "the horse is stronger and better tempered." The story ends with Khosrove shouting at Byro to "pay no attention to it".
6083124	/m/0fp8yl	The Magicians of Caprona	Diana Wynne Jones	1980	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Caprona is a city-state in the Italy of Chrestomanci's world (World Twelve A), which was never united as a nation-state. The city is said to be losing its "virtue," a process which Chrestomanci blames on the malevolent influence of a mysterious enemy enchanter, making it vulnerable. Florence, Siena, and Pisa aim to capitalize on this weakness by uniting against Caprona in an attempt to conquer it. Chrestomanci has advised each spell-house that Caprona could regain its virtue if the true words to the Angel of Caprona, both a hymn and a powerful spell, could be found. The search is not helped by the deadly (and rather Shakespearean) rivalry between the two spell-houses, each quick to blame the other for the city's misfortunes. The story is told through the eyes of the young Tonino Montana and his brother Paolo. They are both members of Casa Montana, one of two spell-houses in Caprona, the other being Casa Petrocchi. The two spell-houses are deadly rivals; the two families are both convinced that the decline of Caprona is all the fault of the other spell-house, and refuse to work together under any circumstances. Tonino is, unknown to himself or the rest of Casa Montana, a talented enchanter; however, he is unaware of his ability, and prefers to spend his time reading. Paolo is more outgoing and friendly, and does better at school. When representatives of both houses are called to the Duke of Caprona's palace, they both go. Whilst there, they meet members of the Petrocchi family for the first time, and they also encounter the Duchess, a powerful woman who appears to be the true ruler of Caprona.
6083274	/m/0fp987	The Cricket in Times Square	George Selden	1960	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about a cricket named Chester from Connecticut who gets caught on a commuter train heading for New York and after stumbling on the subway he ends up in Times Square. Mario Bellini, whose parents run a financially struggling newsstand, finds Chester, takes him to the newsstand and wants to keep him as a pet and for good luck. Mama Bellini is concerned that the cricket will give them germs, but Papa Bellini is more easy-going about the cricket's presence. At the newsstand, Chester meets Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat, who spend their time scrounging the city for food and other thrown away items. They show him Times Square, which Chester finds overwhelming. During the story, Chester reveals his musical chirping talent. Mario takes Chester to Chinatown (via the 1 train), where he buys Chester a cricket cage from the Chinatown shop owner Sai Fong. At one point, Chester accidentally eats a two dollar bill from the newsstand cashier. Mama Bellini wants Chester to go, but Tucker gives part of his coin collection that he's collected from scrounging to save Chester and replace the money. Later on, more seriously, during a party that Chester, Harry and Tucker are having, they accidentally set fire to the newsstand. The fire is put out, but Mama Bellini is extremely angry, accuses Chester of being an arsonist, and demands that Mario get rid of Chester, much to his dismay. However, at the right moment, Chester chirps Mama Bellini's favorite song, which she sings along to and which leads her to change her mind. It becomes clear that Chester has a perfect memory for music, as he chirps opera selections, which surprises Papa Bellini. Later, Chester chirps classical music pieces and hymns for a music teacher, Mr. Smedley, the Bellini's best newsstand customer, who is impressed and writes a letter to the New York Times about it. This is printed in the newspaper, and brings attention to the newsstand when Chester starts playing concerts there. This causes the fortunes of the newsstand to turn around, and the Bellinis start selling their newspapers and magazines very well to the new crowds. Mario senses that Chester has become unhappy, and says out loud that he wishes Chester hadn't come to the newsstand if he wasn't going to be happy. This makes Chester decide that he wants to return to the countryside. He tells Tucker and Harry this, and Tucker tries to convince Chester to stay. However, Harry says that Chester should do what he wants with his life and stop the concerts if he isn't happy. With the advent of fall, Chester decides to go home to Connecticut. He gives a final concert that causes Times Square and blocks of New York City to fall still, with everyone stopping to listen to the music. Mario plays one last time with Chester at the newsstand after that last concert, and falls asleep after a while. Later that same night, after Chester gives a farewell chirp to Mario, Harry and Tucker take Chester to Grand Central Terminal so that Chester can hop on to a train. At Grand Central, they all say good-bye. Later, when Mario wakes up as his parents have returned, he realizes later that Chester has gone home, but accepts this by saying: "And I'm glad." The story ends with Tucker telling Harry that maybe they'll visit the country one day, "in Connecticut".
6087491	/m/0fpjx0	The Second Confession	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A wealthy industrialist, James U. Sperling, asks Wolfe to obtain evidence that his daughter's suitor, Louis Rony, is a Communist. Wolfe will neither investigate marital disputes nor collect evidence for divorce cases, but Sperling's request is apparently acceptable. Wolfe recasts the job as finding any information that will cause daughter Gwenn to break it off with Rony, and Sperling agrees. Wolfe begins the investigation by sending Archie to spend a weekend at Sperling's country estate near Mount Kisco. Rony, and two of Sperling's business associates, are also present as guests. Archie is undercover, as "Andy Goodwin," to avoid alerting the family – and Rony – that a private detective is in their midst. But daughter Madeline has harbored a crush on Archie for years, having seen his picture and a story about him in the Gazette almost ten years earlier. She knows he's not Andy, but she implies that she'll keep it to herself. At the Sperlings' swimming pool, Archie notices Rony repeatedly check the contents of a wallet attached to his swimming trunks, and wonders what he's hiding. He prepares a strong sedative for Rony and plans to dope his cocktail with it; later, with Rony drugged, Archie can search Rony's room for whatever was hidden in that wallet. Archie dopes his own drink and surreptitiously exchanges it for Rony's. A few minutes later Archie discovers that Rony has emptied his glass – the one with the dope – into an ice bucket. Bemused, Archie goes to his room. Preparing for bed, he can't stop yawning and just before passing out he realizes that he's been drugged himself. The next day he suffers the drug's aftereffects, but manages to work it out that someone had drugged Rony's drink before Archie exchanged their glasses. Rony was apparently anticipating something of the sort when he dumped his drink. Archie plans to return to Manhattan that night and offers to give Rony a lift. When Rony accepts the offer, Archie lays a trap. On the road that night, they are waylaid by Wolfe operatives Saul Panzer and Ruth Brady. They pretend to knock Archie out and actually do knock Rony out. While Rony's unconscious, Archie searches him and finds a membership card for the American Communist party. The card bears no photo and apparently belongs to someone named William Reynolds. Archie takes photographs of the card, puts the camera back in the car trunk and pretends to regain consciousness along with Rony. When Archie arrives at the brownstone Wolfe informs him that he has had a phone call from Arnold Zeck. Zeck, a crime boss introduced in And Be a Villain, has warned Wolfe to drop his investigation of Rony or suffer consequences. Just as Wolfe tells Archie of the phone call, Zeck's men open fire with machine guns from across the street, destroying the plant rooms' windows and most of the orchids. With replacement materials purchased and repairs underway, Wolfe and Archie decamp for the Sperling estate. Meeting with the Sperling family, Wolfe discloses the reason that Sperling hired him. He describes Zeck's operations, the warning Zeck gave him, and what Zeck then did to his orchids, impressing on Gwenn the connection between Zeck and Rony. Gwenn leaves the family meeting, announcing that she will take a few hours to decide what to do about Rony. Later, Madeline asks Archie for help – she can't find Gwenn. As they search the grounds for her, Archie finds a body that he recognizes as Rony's. It has been run over by a car, and it's just a few feet away from the estate's long driveway. Then Madeline and Archie find Gwenn outside waiting for Rony. She had decided to break it off with him, and had phoned earlier to ask him to come to the house: Gwenn didn't want to give Rony the news on the phone or in a letter. Archie reports to Wolfe, and the police are notified. Lieutenant Con Noonan, Archie's bête noire in Westchester, has a moment of triumph when it is determined that it was Wolfe's car that ran Rony over. But then one of Sperling's houseguests and business associates, Webster Kane, confesses – he borrowed Wolfe's car to run an errand in Mount Kisco and accidentally hit and ran over Rony in the driveway. Kane lost his head, re-parked the car, and pretended to know nothing of the accident. Wolfe doesn’t buy it, but the District Attorney does, and Wolfe returns with Archie to the brownstone. Wolfe isn't through: he still has the photograph of the Communist party membership card to use as a screw. Wolfe does use it, in combination with detailed information about the Party's internal meetings, to force the Communists to help him expose Rony's murderer.
6088381	/m/0fpkyn	Back to Life	Wendy Coakley-Thompson		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lisa is facing 30, is three months away from ending her acrimonious divorce from Bryan, and is constantly rebuffing her child psychologist/writer mother, who questions her daughter’s life decisions. Marc, in between plugging his successful novel Goombah, is a star professor at the State College of New Jersey, which is poised to become a university. Nina and Tim Simon, a mixed couple and mutual friends, attempt to bring Lisa and Marc together at a party in Montclair, New Jersey on the very night that an Italian mob in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn murders Yusuf Hawkins, a Black teen. Nina and Tim have their matchmaking work cut out for them. Lisa and Bryan constantly wrangle over community property. Lisa, by some registration fluke, winds up in Marc’s class. A.J., Lisa’s militant friend, drives Lisa incessantly to prove her Blackness. Marc receives word that Michele, his ex-wife, is about to remarry, forcing him to re-evaluate his feelings for her. Demonstrations and hate crimes plague the campus and stress the college’s chancellor, who is fixated on seeing the college become a university. All these activities are interwoven with the charged political context of the New York City mayoral race, which ends in Democratic Party (United States) candidate David Dinkins beating Republican Party (United States) candidate Rudy Giuliani to become the city’s first Black mayor. When Lisa and Marc finally do become a couple, interpersonal conflicts, along with racist and prejudiced family and friends, an ambitious college chancellor, Michele, and a showdown at Lisa’s job threaten the union. Lisa, stressed, crashes her car on her way home and lapses into a coma. A bedside vigil ensues. Bryan agrees to the terms of the divorce. Marc decides to take a fellowship in San Diego. Lisa’s mother rushes to her. Lisa regains consciousness. She and her mother come to an understanding. On his way out of town, Marc visits Lisa, and they negotiate their way to love. On the way to San Diego, they marry in Las Vegas. Lisa is on the balcony overlooking La Jolla Cove at sunset. Marc returns home, and Lisa informs him that the EPT stick has turned blue...
6088829	/m/0fpljh	What You Won't Do For Love	Wendy Coakley-Thompson	2005	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A failed engagement and an instructional design doctoral degree from Syracuse University lead Chaney Braxton, 36, the youngest of three sisters of West Indian descent, raised in Brooklyn, NY, to the Washington D.C. area in early 2002. She is one-fourth partner in Autodidact, Inc., an 8A government contracting firm that specializes in developing paper-, computer-, and web-based training for government agencies. Devin Rhym, 28, half-black half-Korean veterinarian, has come home from exile in Seattle, where his mother moved after leaving his father, K.L. Rhym, 70, retired JAG Corps Marine. Devin and Chaney meet when Daisy, Chaney’s flaky middle sister, asks Chaney to take care of Tony, Daisy’s massive yellow Labrador Retriever. Daisy has left her home in Los Angeles and run off to join her latest lover, a musician in the band of a black deadlocked rock star. Chaney likes Devin, but doesn’t see her lot in life taking on a “tadpole” – code for the younger lover of an older woman. Randy Tyree, 46, ex-Navy lieutenant, is more her style. He is a bright spot in her sojourn through the seamy world of Government contracts. Devin is also has issues. Despite the fact that he is living a charmed life, with his own veterinary practice, a Georgetown, Washington, D.C. townhouse, and a Lincoln Navigator, he is dealing with his aging and increasingly hostile father, with distant relationships with his two older half-brothers, Chauncey and Eric, and with his lack of suitable companionship. His life takes another blow when another competing practice moves into town at the same time his father’s health begins to deteriorate. Devin and Chaney become a couple just as life around them is unraveling. Devin’s business is suffering. Because of a spurned Randy’s overtures, Chaney is ousted from her partnership at Autodidact. Her relationship with her older sister Anna Lisa fabulously implodes. Belatedly, he discovers that she is expecting Devin’s baby at a time when marriage has not even been discussed and she has no gainful employment. Moreover, as Devin and Chaney are at a crossroads, a sniper lays waste to the Washington D.C. area. Just as the sniper’s reign ends with lives in Chaney and Devin’s orbit mercifully intact, K.L. succumbs to Alzheimer’s disease and dies. In a tense context, Devin and Chaney find each other and solutions to life’s complexities that seem to work for them. Devin realizes that, though he could not come home again to the same life he left, there is a more fabulous life waiting, if he can be patient. Chaney comes to see that a painful past maybe the ticket to a wonderful future, if one believes. Through death and war, Devin and Chaney nourish themselves and each other with their love and that of their family.
6089118	/m/0fplw4	And Be a Villain	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Madeline Fraser is a radio talk show host in the style of 1940s talk show hosts: not a buffoon who rants and blusters, but a sophisticated, trained broadcaster who knows how to connect with an audience of eight million listeners. Her show gets unexpected and unwanted publicity when one of her guests is poisoned in the middle of a broadcast. But what the press finds really juicy is that the poison was administered in her principal sponsor's soft drink. That particular show featured two guests: Cyril Orchard, who published a weekly horse race tip sheet called Track Almanac, and F. O. Savarese, an assistant professor of mathematics at Columbia. Orchard was there to talk with Miss Fraser and her sidekick, Bill Meadows, about betting on horse races. Savarese was invited to talk about the probabilities of winning those bets. One of the regular commercial features on the show is the ritual of drinking Hi-Spot, a soft drink. It's an event, starting with the sound of Meadows pushing back his chair and walking to the refrigerator to get the bottles, and continuing with opening the bottles and pouring Hi-Spot into glasses. Everyone at the broadcast table – Fraser, Meadows, Orchard and Savarese – gets a glass and marvels for the microphone at the taste of Hi-Spot, The Drink You Dream Of. But Mr. Orchard has no sooner taken a swallow from his glass than, in Archie's words, he "makes terrible noises right into the microphone, and keels over, and pretty soon he's dead, and he got the poison right there on the broadcast, in the product of one of your sponsors." Faced with being cleaned out financially by the necessity of paying his income taxes, Wolfe sends Archie on a sales call. Archie meets with some of the program's principals: Miss Fraser, Mr. Meadows, Deborah Koppel (Fraser's business manager), and Tully Strong (secretary of the show's Sponsors' Council). Archie points out that the best way to turn the negative publicity positive is to hire Nero Wolfe to investigate. Because he needs the money, Wolfe offers to take the case on a contingent basis: expenses only, with a fee payable if Wolfe gets both the murderer and credible evidence. Fraser and the several sponsors like the idea, and they hire Wolfe on that basis. The police have focused their investigation on eight people who had the best opportunity during the broadcast to get the poison into Orchard: Fraser, Meadows, Koppel, Strong, Savarese, Nathan Straub (a member of an advertising agency that represents three of the Fraser sponsors), Elinor Vance (a script writer for the show) and Nancylee Shepherd. Miss Shepherd is a teenager who idolizes Miss Fraser and has organized a successful Fraser fan club – she is allowed to take part in the show by taking care of minor tasks such as carrying glasses to the table. Wolfe concentrates on those eight, and calls a meeting at his office, attended by all but Savarese and Miss Shepherd. Wolfe learns that the idea of doing a show on horse race betting had been under consideration for some time, that the question had finally been put to the audience as a survey, and the response had been enthusiastic and positive. One of the listeners who responded was Savarese, who asked for an invitation to participate as a second guest and to act as an expert on what Tully Strong calls the law of averages. Subsequently, Savarese shows up for an interview with Wolfe, but Wolfe does not yet have anything specific to pursue: he is, as he puts it, "… wandering around, poking at things." One of the things that Wolfe is poking at is Michigan. The poison in Orchard's glass was cyanide, and Miss Fraser's husband (who was Deborah Koppel's brother; Fraser and Koppel are sisters-in-law) committed suicide in Michigan some years before by taking cyanide. Wolfe hasn't yet spoken with Miss Shepherd, and Lon Cohen helps out by informing Archie that she is in hiding with her mother in Atlantic City. Wolfe sends Saul to get them, but for once Saul is flummoxed: he takes a good approach, but Mrs. Shepherd is too wary for him. Wolfe then sends Archie to bring the Shepherds. Mindful that even Saul stubbed his toe on this errand, Archie makes elaborate preparations. He composes a telegram, purporting to be from Mr. Shepherd, to tell Mrs. Shepherd and Nancylee to come immediately to Nero Wolfe's house. Then Archie takes a train to Atlantic City, arriving the next morning, at about the time that Saul is sending them the telegram. The trick works: Archie follows Mrs. Shepherd and Nancylee to the brownstone, where they choose to submit to Wolfe's questioning. At first Wolfe lulls Nancylee with innocuous questions, but then he slowly approaches the topic of how the broadcasts are managed, particularly the Hi-Spot bottles and glasses. He finally catches the girl in a discrepancy: Elinor Vance has said that she puts eight bottles of Hi-Spot in the studio refrigerator to cool off for the broadcast, but Nancylee says it's seven. Wolfe pounces on the discrepancy. Nancylee resists, but Wolfe forces her hand by threatening to convince the police to arrest Miss Fraser. Nancylee gives Wolfe what he's after: Elinor Vance has lied about how the Hi-Spot bottles are managed. Miss Vance always brings an extra bottle to the studio, and it always has a length of transparent tape encircling its neck. Sending Nancylee and her mother back to Atlantic City, Wolfe gathers the main suspects and confronts them with the information he wrung from Nancylee. At first they try to humbug him, claiming that Miss Fraser prefers her Hi-Spot much colder than most people, and the tape is on the bottle to show which one goes to Miss Fraser. After Wolfe shows them the holes in that story, he gets the confession: the awful truth is that despite all the Hi-Spot hoopla on every show, the soft drink gives Miss Fraser indigestion. The tape is on the bottle to identify it as containing iced coffee, not Hi-Spot, so that Miss Fraser is able to pretend to drink the beverage in view of the studio audience. It complicates matters that the poison was in the bottle with the tape – so the intended victim wasn't Mr. Orchard at all, but Miss Fraser. Now Wolfe sees a way to earn his fee without doing any further work. He tells Inspector Cramer that he has a fact, unknown to the police, without which they will be unable to solve the murder. Wolfe's proposal to Cramer: Cramer can have the fact if, when he subsequently exposes the murderer, he will also tell Wolfe's client that the case would not have been solved without the information that Wolfe provided. That, Wolfe concludes, will satisfy his client that Wolfe has earned his fee. Cramer agrees, Wolfe tells him why the tape was on the bottle – because of Miss Fraser's indigestion – and Cramer immediately phones Lieutenant Rowcliff to have Homicide shift gears: "We've got to start all over. It's one of those goddam babies where the wrong person got killed." But it's not just the police that Wolfe has stirred up. For it to be generally known that Hi-Spot gives its main pitchman indigestion would dwarf the bad press from the murder itself. Tully Strong is furious that Wolfe disclosed the secret to the police. Traub, from the advertising agency, is upset because Bill Meadows says that Traub served Orchard the poisoned bottle. Savarese, who is trying to use mathematics to solve the murder, is annoyed because the police have set their questions on a new tack, and that's a variable that he can't account for. Archie cools his heels for a week while Wolfe waits in vain for the police to identify the murderer with the clue he's given them. At last Archie gets so impatient that he enlists Lon Cohen's help in getting the Gazette to run a stinging editorial that criticizes Wolfe's lack of progress after the fanfare that followed his hiring. The editorial moves Wolfe to ask Cramer about another recent murder: that of Beula Poole, the publisher of What to Expect, a weekly forecast of political and economic affairs. Both Wolfe and Cramer think it no coincidence that two publishers of overpriced newsletters are murdered within a couple of weeks of one another. Cramer has looked into the Poole murder as well as Orchard's, and was unable to find a subscriber list in either victim's office. Wolfe advertises for information about subscribers to either publication, and gets two nibbles. One leads him to a successful Park Avenue doctor, W. T. Michaels. Wolfe learns from Michaels that some of his patients received poison pen letters, implying unethical behavior by Michaels. Shortly after hearing of the letters, Michaels got a phone call telling him that the letters would stop if he subscribed to What to Expect for one year, at $10 per week. The caller stressed that the letters would then stop, and that there would be no requests for subscription renewals. The second nibble is from Arnold Zeck, the shadowy head of a crime syndicate. In the past, Wolfe has made inquiries about Zeck and learned that he is resourceful and dangerous. Now Zeck has seen Wolfe's advertisement concerning Track Almanac and What to Expect, and warns him that he should drop the matter. Wolfe lets Zeck know that he will pursue the matter as far as necessary to complete the job he was hired for. The phone conversation ends, abruptly. Wolfe assembles the known facts: that Zeck is behind a wholesale blackmailing enterprise. People are threatened by anonymous letters making false claims about them. They are then told that the letters will stop if they subscribe to a publication at a relatively high, but bearable, cost. They are also promised that the extortion will end after one year. Wolfe's inference is that one of the subscribers decided to stop the extortion by killing Orchard and Poole. Wolfe calls Inspector Cramer to his office to give him this new information, only to find that Cramer learned about the blackmail connection a couple of days earlier. Cramer has since then had his men trying to track down anonymous letters about the Orchard suspects, but they have found nothing. Archie tosses Lon the information about the blackmail and the subscriptions. The Gazette prints it, and that brings Hi-Spot's president to the brownstone. He is appalled that the case is no longer about murder – something "sensational and exciting" – but about blackmail – something dirty and disgusting. He gives Wolfe a check for the full amount of his fee and fires him. He also states that he's canceled his sponsorship of the Fraser radio program. Wolfe once again sends Archie to call on the Fraser coterie, and he finds them discussing which company will replace Hi-Spot – they've had sixteen offers, one from a company that makes a candy called Meltettes. While Archie is waiting to be heard, Deborah Koppel tries a sample bite of a Meltette. She spits it out, convulses, and dies of cyanide poisoning. Suddenly the police are all over the Fraser apartment, and all those present are to be subjected to a strip-search. Archie declines – he has a bogus anonymous letter in his pocket – and is taken into custody. When he finds the letter on Archie, Sgt. Purley Stebbins gets so mad that he, not Lt. Rowcliff, starts stuttering. It looks as though Archie is going to have a charge of obstruction of justice hung on him until the police get a call from a radio station. Nero Wolfe has phoned the station to announce that he has solved all three murder cases and is ready to furnish the murderer's identity to the District Attorney. The radio station wants to know if the police have any comment. They don't. They release Archie from custody and appear at Wolfe's brownstone, along with the surviving staff and sponsors. In a wrapup that's extraordinary even by Wolfe's standards, Wolfe forces admission after admission from those present, and concludes by exposing the murderer. A coda describes a phone call of congratulations from Zeck, one that foreshadows his next two appearances in the series.
6091305	/m/0fpp9r	ATLA - A Story of the Lost Island	Anne Eliza Smith		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The people of Atlantis are accidentally discovered by the Phoenicians by a chance shipwreck somewhere in Atlantic Ocean. One Tyrian survivor is found and rescued by a people known as the Tsinim who come from the West. The Phoenicians become interested in this new civilization because they possess a secret of sailing without using the heavenly bodies as guides. A foreign infant is found upon a shipwreck near the shores of the Atlantean empire. The baby girl is adopted by the King and he names her Atla. The child's complexion is fair and white which is uncommon among the populace of dark colored inhabitants. Atla is raised alongside the King's real daughter who is called Astera. As the girls grow up to maturity, the inhabitants of Atlan are visited by foreigners from the East. The fleet of Phoenician ships comes to the shores of Atlantis only after mastering the new art of sailing without guiding stars. The leader of the fleet is Herekla, son of King Melek of the Phoenician empire. Herekla was the inventor of the compass which enabled them to reach the island in the west. The Phoenicians were not the first to discover the secret of the compass. The people of the Tsinim learned the secret first and they were in fact the Atlanteans of the west. es:Atla
6091723	/m/0fppw0	The Fallen	Thomas E. Sniegoski		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Aaron Corbett learns on his 18th birthday that he is a Nephilim, the child of a human/angel pairing, and that he is being pursued by a group of angels called the Powers. The Powers believe that all Nephilim are an abomination and affront to God. However, there is a prophecy that a Nephilim will be born that will redeem all the Fallen. * The Fallen (Pocket Books, 2003) The story starts out with introducing us to our main character, Aaron Corbet. Aaron's not such a bad kid, though he was orphaned since birth and shoved from foster home to foster home, and had some anger issues to get over and under control. He was finally adopted by Tom and Lori Stanley, and tried very hard to be a good son and a big brother to their autistic son Stevie. Aaron meets Vilma Santiago, a beautiful girl at his high school to whom he is immediately attracted. It seems like things are finally working out for Aaron; he has everything that he has ever wanted, so he thinks. On his 18th birthday, everything changes. He starts having nightmarish dreams and visions, has trouble concentrating, experiences bad headaches, starts hearing voices in his head and feels painful changes occurring inside his body. Other weird things start happening, too. Suddenly, he has the "gift of tongues" and can speak and understand languages he had never known; he can even understand his dog Gabriel talking to him. Surely Aaron is losing his mind. He reacts to this transformation with confusion; just when his world seemed normal, it now begins to unravel before his eyes. A chance encounter with what Aaron thinks is a homeless bum turns out to be a fallen angel by the name of Ezekiel ("Zeke"). It was Zeke who sensed Aaron's true nature and told him what he really was: A Nephilim, the offspring of an angel and a mortal woman. Zeke warns Aaron that the Powers will hunt him down and kill him, that he must learn how to use his divine gifts and flee immediately. Aaron, of course, thinks the guy is nuts. Nevertheless, Aaron goes to his local library and looks up information on Nephilim. He begins to wonder if it could be true. Another angel, Camael, appears at his high school and tells him that his is the chosen one that the angels have been waiting for: The one spoken of in the Prophecy. Camael tells Aaron that he has come to protect him from the Powers and help him fulfill his destiny. We are introduced to the Powers and their leader Verchiel, a cruel, relentless angel who feels it is his sacred mission in the name of the most Holy to eradicate the Fallen and their offspring from the face of the earth. He especially wants to eliminate the Nephilim spoken of in the Prophecy who is supposed to redeem the Fallen, forgive them of their sins against the Creator and send them back home to Heaven. In this book, Aaron meets Verchiel for the first time. Zeke and Camael come to the rescue, but not before Verchiel kills Aaron's adoptive parents and takes his brother Stevie captive. Enraged, Aaron's angelic nature takes over and he battles with Verchiel. * Leviathan (Pocket Books, 2003) The Fallen saga continues. This story opens with a fallen angel praying to the Divine and listening to others who are also praying. He is seized by the Powers and offers no resistance. Verchiel torments this prisoner with utter relish. Aaron is now on the run with Camael and his dog Gabriel. Together they are searching for Stevie and trying to elude capture by the Powers. Along the way, Camael tries to help Aaron merge with his angelic self. The trio are lured to a seemingly peaceful town which has been seduced by a malevolent ancient creature known as Leviathan. Camael is drawn into Leviathan's web and is captured. Aaron's angel instincts feels something isn't right, but he can't quite put his finger on it. Gabriel also senses something is wrong. He searches the town for Camael. Back in Aaron's old town of Lynn, Vilma is going through similar changes that Aaron went through: She, too, is Nephilim. Verchiel, meanwhile, uses angel magic and transforms Stevie into Malak, a deadly hunter of false prophets and the Fallen. He intends to use his new creation to find Aaron and, if possible, kill him. What a sweet irony for Verchiel: To see Aaron killed by his own brother. Aaron finds Leviathan in an underground cave where he sees Camael, Gabriel and other magical creatures hanging in translucent sacks beneath the belly of the beast. He is seduced by the beast, but his angelic nature surfaces and rebels against the seduction; Aaron breaks free and saves those whom the beast feeds upon. The Archangel Gabriel, one of the angels Aaron frees from Leviathan, tells him, "You have done much to expunge the sins of the father and to fulfill the edicts of prophecy... You are your father's son... You have his eyes..." * Aerie (Pocket Books, 2003) Our story picks up with Aaron, Camael and Gabriel still searching for Stevie. Aaron is still no closer to discovering the identity of the angel who sired him. By pure accident, they stumble upon folks who are from Aerie, a place where the Fallen and Nephilim live together to avoid the Powers. Verchiel is still in hot pursuit of Aaron and sends his magical warrior Malak to hunt for Aaron's scent. Malak wears armor impervious to angel fire, and possesses the keen ability to pick up the scent or trail of the Fallen and Nephilim; he mercilessly kills them. He is determined to prove his worth and find the chosen one for his master Verchiel. Aaron must prove to the citizens of Aerie that he is indeed the chosen one, a hard enough task when he is unsure himself. An ancient, wise, and gentle fallen angel named Belphegor helps Aaron to fully unite his human and angelic natures. While in the process of becoming whole, Aaron hears Vilma's pleas for help and instinctively goes to her rescue, not realizing that it could be a trap. Despite overwhelming odds, he battles Verchiel and the Powers to save Vilma. Aaron meets Malak and realizes that it is his little brother Stevie who has been changed somehow; however, he cannot bring himself to kill his own brother. Aaron rescues Vilma and takes her back to Aerie, but the battle follows him and he loses many friends and loved ones. Verchiel learns from Belphegor who Aaron was sired by; during the battle, he taunts Aaron with jibes about his father. Enraged, Aaron demands that Verchiel reveal his father's identity. Aaron learns who his father is from his friends at Aerie, and is stunned by the news. * Reckoning (Pocket Books, 2004) In the conclusion of The Fallen series, Verchiel is rapidly deteriorating, and he becomes more demented and full of rage. He tries to undo the "word of God" and, with the help of the Archons and magical shackles, he has his prisoner, Lucifer Morningstar, strung up and he orders the Archons to disembowel Lucifer. With magicks and sacred runes, the Archons attempt to unleash the sins of the father upon the world, all the fury, hatred, rage and sorrow which is buried deep within the center of Lucifer's being by the Creator. Aaron is now struggling with the knowledge of his true parentage: That Lucifer, the greatest sinner and first of the Fallen, is his sire. Aaron has accepted his destiny as the Redeemer chosen by God to be able to forgive the Fallen for their sins and send them back home to Heaven. He also becomes more comfortable and familiar with his angelic powers; with the demise of Belphegor, he is now the protector of the citizens of Aerie. They know he is the son of Morningstar, and are aware of how powerful his angelic nature is, yet given the circumstances of his parentage, some of the citizens are torn and do not know if they can trust him. Aaron must win their trust and fight to save them and mankind from Verchiel's madness. Vilma, the woman Aaron loves, is not able to cope with her angelic transformation, and Aaron must find a way to help merge both her human and angelic natures. To do this, Aaron must find the last of the angel sorcerers known as the Malakim to help save her or else face the unthinkable decision to put her down like a rabid animal. Verchiel is eventually successful in releasing Hell from Lucifer's body while Lucifer himself, repentant of his crimes, struggles in vain to hold the essence back, although it costs the mad angel the lives of his magicians and the remainder of his soldiers. Aaron faces Verchiel down in a titanic battle in the gym of St. Athanasius. Verchiel's formerly blind healer Kraus decides to help Lucifer reclaim Hell and, in the end, Verchiel is taken up to Heaven to face God's judgement. Aaron is unable to redeem his father and Lucifer decides to live in Aerie alone. Fallen first aired in 2006 and 2007, and released for re-sale in 2010. The movie is based on The Fallen novels, but doesn't follow the same sequence of characters and events as outlined in the novels. Actors in the mini-series are as follows; * Paul Wesley as Aaron Corbet * Rick Worthy as the former Powers Leader Camael * Hal Ozsan as the fierce Fallen angel Azazel * Will Yun Lee as the Powers leader Mazarin * Fernanda Andrade as Vilma Santiago * Bryan Cranston as Lucifer MorningStar The DVD contains the following sequels; * The Time of the Redeemer * Mysterious Ways, and All That * Someone Always has to Die * Il Gran Rifiuto (aka, the Grand Refusal)
6093314	/m/0fpskj	The 25th Hour	David Benioff	2001-01-30	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 New York drug dealer Monty Brogan is arrested for drug possession and sentenced to seven years in prison. He spends his last night of freedom partying with his friends, contemplating his uncertain future and the decisions he made that brought him to this point.
6098647	/m/0fq134	Secret Servant: The Moneypenny Diaries	Samantha Weinberg	2006-11-02	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 From saving spies to private passions, this book covers the secret adventures of James Bond's right-hand woman. Jane Moneypenny may project a cool, calm and collected image but her secret diaries reveal a rather different story. In the grip of an uncertain love affair and haunted by a dark family secret, the last thing she needs is a crisis at work. But the Secret Intelligence Service is in chaos. One senior officer is on trial for treason, another has defected to Moscow and her beloved James Bond has been brainwashed by the KGB. Only a woman's touch can save them. Moneypenny soon finds herself embroiled in a highly-charged adventure infused with the glamour of the Cold War espionage game. Alone on a dangerous Russian mission she turns, with breathless intimacy, to writing a truly explosive private diary.
6101125	/m/0fq4zy	The Kobayashi Maru	Julia Ecklar	1989-11-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 When communications with the Venkatsen Research Group were lost, the U.S.S. Enterprise was sent to investigate. In a system with 47 planets, the transporter is not usable, so Kirk and crew take a shuttle to Hohweyn VII. En route, a gravitic mine damages the shuttle. Communications and navigation are not responsive, and Kirk and Sulu are injured in the blast. McCoy, in an attempt to pass time, convinces Kirk to tell his story about the "unwinnable scenario". The training scenario itself involves a crippled fuel freighter in the Neutral Zone between the Federation and Klingon space. The starship receives a garbled distress call, which, if responded to, results in an attack by three Klingon cruisers. The opening volley causes heavy damage to the ship, and, despite any actions on the part of the cadet, the ship is destroyed. The purpose of the no-win outcome is to test the cadets' response to losing. Kirk proceeds to tell how he reprogrammed the simulation so that the Klingon commanders recognize his name and assists Kirk in saving the freighter. Chekov tells his story about the Kobayashi Maru and a secondary training exercise on an empty space station. Chekov completed the scenario by evacuating his crew and physically ramming the ship into the Klingon attackers. In the second exercise, Chekov commits group "suicide" by "killing" the others who had captured him. The secondary exercise involves pitting all the cadets against each other to see who lasts a pre-determined time period. Chekov creates a different plan. He learns that when Kirk went through the same scenario he organized the cadets in such a way there was no need to fight each other. Sulu tells his story about his great-grandfather Tetsuo, and about going to Command School for the first time. The first exercise is a type of Model U.N., where Sulu is a tech level 3 planet, Menak III, and trying to gain entrance into the Federation. When Sulu finds out Tetsuo is discontinuing treatments for a life-ending illness, he refuses to speak to him. Sulu finds out about Tetsuo's death after returning from a field exercise. When he finally takes the Kobayashi Maru test, he decides that the freighter's distress call is probably a trap and chooses not to help it. Scotty tells about his early years at Command School, and how his love of engineering made it difficult for him to pay attention to non-engineering subjects. Upon taking the scenario, Scotty used engineering solutions to destroy ever increasing waves of Klingon cruisers. Review of his performance shows that he used the Perera Field Theory to destroy the final wave, which was proven to be mathematically possible (thus acceptable to the computer), but physically impossible (as proven by Scotty). The resulting decision had Scotty moved out of Command School and sent to study engineering. The shuttle is rescued by the Enterprise after a plan to turn the shuttle into an electromagnetic black hole works. This lets the Enterprise know where to find them.
6101339	/m/0fq57_	The Gift	Danielle Steel	1994-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The setting of the novel was in the 1950's.Maribeth Robertson got pregnant accidentally in a senior's prom by a senior star athlete who is getting married after High School graduation.Her father disapproves of what happened.He sends her away from home and into the convent.She was asked to comeback after she delivers the baby and gives it up for adoption.Finding her life lonely inside with the nuns,Maribeth moves outside the convent and goes to Chicago where a new life of faith,hope and romance awaits her.
6103625	/m/0fq8m2	Winkie	Clifford Chase		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Winkie is the story of a teddy bear of the same name who was accused and imprisoned for over nine thousand charges including terrorism, sodomy, witchcraft, treason and others. Winkie is a teddy bear miraculously given life and freedom of movement and speech. In the novel, Winkie's gender transforms, from being a 'she' to a 'he,' as he is passed on to different children. He is first called Marie in the hands of Ruth, his first owner. By then Marie was just a toy, albeit already having consciousness and feelings. Marie is then passed on to Ruth's five children. In the ownership of Clifford Chase, the youngest of Ruth's children and named after the author, Marie is then changed into a boy. He was called Winkie from then on. However, when Cliff, like the owners of Winkie before him, abandons and ignores Winkie as Cliff began to grow up, Winkie feels betrayed. He felt altogether alone, for he knew that there will be no one left to 'hug' him any more. He was left sitting on the shelf above Cliff's dresser for years when finally, he was given by some mysterious and unexplainable force the gift of life. Winkie then decides to go out into the world, to get away from the humans that betrayed him. He shatters the bedroom window with a book, and climbing out onto the tree outside, Winkie was able to fulfill the first of his three wishes: freedom. He continued on fulfilling the other two, for he thought of nothing else to do. Noticing some brown pods underneath a tree, Winkie goes to eat them, fulfilling his second wish. After eating, he then proceeded to defacate, "doo-doo" as he calls it - his third wish. Winkie then goes to the other lawns of the neighborhood, making his "special mark." On his twenty-fifth lawn, Winkie met an old woman. Here he was torn between accepting the sweet croons of the woman and turning his back on her. Anger boiling inside him, he chose the latter, scaring the woman away as he yelp "Heenh! Heenh! Heenh!" He then decided to go to the forest, trying to distract himself and forget the encounter with the old woman. After two days of walking and crawling, he arrives. Here he eats more berries. He ended sleeping on a rock, only to be waken up by an excruciating pain in his stomach. Rolling over and over, Winkie felt that his seams would burst open, only to find that the pain was only intensifying. At its peak, however, it disappeared. Thinking that the stomachache was brought by the berries he ate last night, he turned to look at the terrible mess he had made, only to find that, instead of "doo-doo," there was a baby Winkie. For months, father-mother and daughter lived peacefully in the forest, eating off berries and sometimes from garbage cans nearby. Then one day, Baby Winkie is kidnapped by a mad English professor living in the woods. The professor was a terrorist, making bombs then mailing it to other terrorists. He kidnapped Baby Winkie for he fell in love with her innocence and purity, only to be disappointed to find that she speaks his language of books. For months Winkie was distraught, laying down on the ground until vines began to crawl around him. And then, one evening, he heard a hum which he was sure came from Baby Winkie. He ran after the sound, only to find her, glowing and shining brightly, in the hut where the professor lives. Baby Winkie then disappeared, leaving Winkie alone and depressed. He resolved to live in the hut, acknowledging that his daughter is forever gone yet still hoping that she will return. He disposed off the dead professor, who died before Baby Winkie disappeared. In the days after her disappearance, Baby Winkie appeared before Winkie in a dream. "Think back," she said, and then was gone again. After three days, however, Winkie is arrested by the police. In the months following this apparition and his imprisonment, Winkie tried to remember everything, from his life with Ruth until his hearings in court, where he was able to find meaning in his being and existence. His trial, lead by the insecure and stuttering Charles Unwin against the prosecutor and most of the court audience, was not as he expected. On all 9 678 charges - which he knew nothing of - Winkie felt that he will lose. But when Judy the assistant of the prosecutor, seeing that Winkie really was innocent, said that they were withholding evidences deliberately, Winkie regained hope. In the end, the jury reached deadlock. Winkie, in the meantime, was free after the Free Winkie Committee paid for his bail. He traveled to Cairo, Egypt with Françoise - a lesbian cleaning woman who mended him after he was shot during his arrest in the forest - where he began to accept and understand why everything has happened to him.
6105288	/m/0fqbvz	Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes	Chris Crutcher		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eric “Moby” Calhoune’s best friend Sarah Byrnes is catatonic, sitting in the mental ward of Sacred Heart Hospital. The staff there suggests that he recall some moments that may jog her memory and bring her out of her catatonic state and back to reality. Eric and Sarah Byrnes (who insists on being called Sarah Byrnes, rather than just Sarah) have been friends for a long time, originally because he was extremely overweight and she was severely burned as a child leaving her with scars on her hands and face. They were picked on regularly and began to write an underground newspaper called Crispy Pork Rinds, focusing an article on the bully Dale Thornton. After the ensuing events, they recruited Dale as “protection”, and their lives became a bit easier. Eric is recruited to the swim team, and as he improves in skill his weight decreases. Out of fear of losing his friend Sarah Byrnes, he continues to eat, even more excessively, so he can “stay fat for Sarah Byrnes”. Eric’s search for a “cure” to Sarah Byrnes’s catatonia, leads him to seek out Dale Thornton, and Eric learns that she had an abusive father and that the facial scarring was no accident. Shortly after being confronted with this information, Sarah Byrnes begins speaking to Eric, and he discovers that her catatonia has been a ruse, and that she is terrified that her father, who has been declining into further mental illness, is going to kill her. She has been hiding out in the hospital because it is the only place she feels safe from him. But Virgil Byrnes appears to be on to Sarah, and time is running out. Confused as to what to do, Eric reveals all to his teacher and swim coach, Ms. Lemry. She hatches a plan to hide Sarah Byrnes in the apartment above her garage. Ms. Lemry teaches the Contemporary American Thought (CAT) class which includes discussions on abortion, suicide, religion, body image, social justice, and many other topics. Through these moments, Eric, Steve Ellerby, Jody Mueller, and Mark Brittain (classmates with conflicting views), develop and explore their personal views on these issues. During the course of this class, Mark is confronted with the truth of his actions—that he encouraged Jody to have an abortion—and he has difficulty reconciling his actions with his beliefs and later attempts suicide. Ms. Lemry agrees to take Sarah Byrnes to Reno to look for her mother, who is the only witness to the abuse Sarah has suffered at the hands of her father. While they are gone, Virgil Byrnes hunts down Eric after school and threatens to kill him, and eventually stabs him in the back. Eric makes his way to Dale Thornton’s house where he passes out, and Dale and his father rescue him and take him to the hospital. Sarah attempts to run away because she doesn’t want any more of her friends to get hurt, but Eric and Ms. Lemry stop her. Eric’s mother’s boyfriend Carver Middleton (former Vietnam Special Forces soldier) figures out that Virgil Byrnes must be hiding out in his house and lays a trap for him, capturing him after a brief struggle.
6106468	/m/0fqcnc	His Majesty's Dragon	Naomi Novik	2006-03-28	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the winter of 1805 or thereabouts, during the War of the Third Coalition, the HMS Reliant under Captain William Laurence seizes the French Amitie, a 36-gun frigate. Laurence and the crew of the Reliant find an unhatched dragon egg on board and declare it a prize captured from the French. Unfortunately, the egg is near hatching, and in order to bring the resulting dragonet into service with Britain's Aerial Corps, it must accept harnass and a handler. Laurence orders every officer aboard to prepare to make the attempt, but the dragonet, unusual with all-black hide and six spines on his wings, chooses Laurence, who names him Temeraire, after a French ship likewise pressed brought into service of England. Despite Laurence's reluctance to leave polite society and join the Aerial Corps, whose men are almost married to their dragons and who are known for grievous informality, he and Temeraire develop a deep affection. The Reliant lands in Madeira, where Laurence and Temeraire await the Aerial Corps' response concerning their enlisting in the Corps; they are eventually ordered to a training camp at Loch Laggan. In the meanwhile, the naturalist Sir Edward Howe identifies Temeraire as a rare Chinese Imperial, a breed rarely seen outside China, much less in England; only the Celestials are more rare. The Corps also attempt to reassign Temeraire to a more experienced handler, Lieutenant Dayes; Laurence is surprised at how close he has grown to Temeraire in this short time, and rejoices when Temeraire rejects Dayes entirely. After a brief stopover at the Allendale estate, where Laurence reveals his new profession to his family, Temeraire and Laurence arrive in the covert of Loch Laggan. Here Laurence meets Celeritas, the dragon training-master; Catherine Harcourt, the young female captain of the Longwing Lily (Longwings, the only acid-spitters in England, insist on female captains), whose formation they will join; Berkley, the captain of the Regal Copper Maximus; and Rankin, a captain of noble bearing, and his abused Winchester Levitas. Temeraire sees his first action when Victoriatus, a Parnassian, is injured in combat and must be carried back to base. Laurence and Temeraire also adopt their flight and ground crew, headed by Lt. John Granby; Granby, a friend to Dayes, showed initial hostility to Laurence, but the two overcome their difficulties during the mission to aid Victoriatus. Finally, Laurence meets Jane Roland, mother of one of his runners, Emily Roland, who is being groomed to captain the Longwing Excidium after Jane herself retires; Jane and Laurence eventually become lovers. During their training, Celeritas introduces Choiseul, a French deserter, and his dragon Praetorius, who Temeraire views as competition. Choiseul is revealed to be a double agent when he attempts to kidnap Lily and Captain Harcourt. After interrogation, he admits that he was actually sent to steal Temeraire, whom the Chinese gifted to Napoleon as his personal mount. The spirits of the captains, dragons, and crew are bolstered by the victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, which erases Napoleon's navy and diminishes his aerial strength; additionally, while Nelson is raked by fire from a Spanish Flecha-del-Fuego, he survives to fight another day. While they are celebrating, Rankin and a severely wounded Levitas arrive at Dover with important intelligence: Napoleon was not planning to send troops over by sea, as originally predicted. Instead, he plans to send them by air, using transports hauled by dragons, accompanied by Napoleon's aerial force. This disrupts celebrations as the captains at the Dover covert prepare for combat, knowing their great disadvantage in numbers. The Dover dragons fly out to meet the French aerial armada, their primary objective the destruction of the transports. Unfortunately, the superior French number prove telling, and soon some of the transports land. However, Temeraire, earlier deemed unlikely to develop a breath weapon, unleashes a powerful shockwave roar, which destroys the transport they are attempting to take down. This turns the tide of battle, and the French signal retreat. At the celebration party held in order to commemorate the victory, Sir Howe seeks out Laurence. He then reveals that Temeraire is actually Celestial; the roar, called the "divine wind," is unique to that breed. The Chinese reserve Celestials solely for emperors and royalty. Though this opens plenty of new worries concerning China's apparent friendship with France, Temeraire dismisses the idea of going to France, preferring his life in Britain with Laurence.
6106753	/m/0fqczd	The Goblin Mirror	C. J. Cherryh	1992	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 An ill-wind disturbs the peaceful land of Maggiar and the wizard, Karloy requests leave to consult with his sister, Ysabel over the mountain. Lord Stani instructs his two eldest sons, Bogdan and Tamas, and his master huntsman, Nikolai to accompany Karloy. After a difficult trip over the mountain, they approach a tower, Krukczy Straz where they hope to find shelter, but are ambushed by goblins. The goblins have overrun the tower, killing all inside. Tamas is separated from the others but is rescued by Ela, a witchling who takes him to her mistress, Ysabel in a neighboring tower, Tajny Straz. But this tower has also been raided by goblins and all are killed, including Ysabel. Ela goes into the tower and retrieves Ysabel's shard from the goblin mirror. Then Azdra'ik, the goblin lord appears, but does not threaten them. He tells Tamas he must take the mirror fragment from Ela because it is too powerful for her to use. Ela takes Tamas to the next tower at the ruins of what was Hasel. Here Ela looks into the mirror but is overwhelmed by the goblin queen staring back at her. Tamas is startled when the queen looks at him and calls him a wizard, which, he assures Ela he is not. Ela is drawn to the goblin queen at the lake and Tamas tries to follow her, but gets lost. Azdra'ik finds him and together they search for Ela. Back in Maggiar, Yuri, Tamas's younger brother has been left behind to look after Tamas's dog, Zadny. But Zadny, pining for his master, escapes his pen and tracks Tamas's scent over the mountain with Yuri in pursuit. Near Krukczy Straz, Yuri finds an injured Nikolai, and together they follow Zadny, still on Tamas's trail, to Tajny Straz. But by the time they get there, Tamas has already left. Then Karloy arrives and reveals to Nikolai the story of the succession of witches, their bargains with the goblin queen, and the mirror fragment. Karloy realizes that Ela must have the shard and says he must take it from her before she misuses it. The three then head for Hasel to find Ela. At Hasel, Zadny continues his pursuit of Tamas, and realising that Ela and Tamas must be together, they all follow Zadny. Azdra'ik and Tamas find Ela near the goblin lake. Much of the surrounding landscape has been devastated by marauding goblin armies and a darkness spreads from the lake. The goblin queen is expanding her sphere of influence. Ela is tempted to try the mirror again, but Tamas, slowly becoming aware of the wizard in him, convinces her otherwise. Yuri, running ahead in pursuit of Zadny, stumbles into the goblin queen's hall. There he finds the goblin mirror and sees Bogdan in it. Bogdan, under the queen's spell, pulls Yuri into the mirror. Tamas arrives and tries to persuade Bogdan to free Yuri, but Bogdan challenges Tamas and in his rage is accidentally killed. Tamas and Ela confront the goblin queen. The shard returns to the mirror but with their combined magic they seize control of it and banish the goblin queen and her armies. Karloy and Nikolai arrive but the darkness is already receding. Karloy reveals that Azdra'ik used goblin magic to "father" Ytresse with Ylena and that Ela is Azdra'ik's great grand-daughter and Karoly's niece. Tamas, now in control of Azdra'ik, elects to let the goblin lords remain on earth.
6107048	/m/0fqd6r	Monster Blood Tattoo Book One: Foundling	D. M. Cornish	2006	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Rossamünd Bookchild, a foundling from the city of Boschenburg, has lived his entire life at Madam Opera's Estimable Marine Society For Foundling Boys And Girls, learning the ways of life upon the sea so one day he can begin a career as a vinegaroon (sailor) in the Empire's service. Rossamünd's only friends are the dormitory masters Fransitart and Craumpalin, and the parlour-maid Verline of the Marine Society - the other foundlings only bully him for his feminine name. Much to Rossamünd's surprise, instead of a sailing life he is summoned to begin life as a lamplighter in the coastal city of High Vesting, far away to the south. After being prepared for his journey by his masters, he receives his instructions from a leer (a spy who has a special box with organs in it to enhance his sense of smell) and sets off on a river voyage on the Hogshead, a ram captained by an intimidating man named Poundinch. However he soon learns that he has been tricked onto the wrong ship, and is now slave to a band of criminals. He learns little of their trade other than that they are smuggling some kind of terrible contraband. Rossamünd only narrowly escapes fate as a captive cabin boy when, unwilling to reveal their cargo to river gatekeepers, the criminals are attacked by rams of the navy. Rossamünd, having escaped the river battle, reaches the riverbank and struggles through the wilderness on his own. He comes close to death before being found by Miss Europe, a fulgar (a type of lahzar, or monster hunter) who can fire lightning from her hands. Her powers are demonstrated to Rossamünd as they come across the Misbegotten Schrewd, an ettin (a very large monster). It shows some level of intelligence and no outward hostility, and so Rossamünd cannot help but sympathise with it as it is slain by Miss Europe. Their party is attacked soon after by grinnlings (also known as nimbleschrewds, a small and particularly nasty breed of monster) and the creepy leer Licurius, Miss Europe's personal servant, is killed. Rossamünd drags the badly-wounded and unconscious fulgar to Harefoot Dig, a wayhouse on the road to High Vesting, where she is healed and rested. While staying at the Dig, Rossamünd becomes privy to Miss Europe's reputation and hears her referred to as the Branden Rose, a name with infamy attached to it. Miss Europe also begins to refer to Rossamünd as her factotum (a servantile position previously held by Licurius). Rossamünd is torn between his predestined career of lamplighting, and this new prospect. To replace the deceased Licurius in the short term however, Rossamünd is charged with hiring a new carriage driver in the nearby town of Silvernook. There he finds the postman Fouracres, a friendly man who is all too willing to help, who seems to be a monster-sympathiser. The party now leave the wayhouse and after uneventful travel they reach High Vesting - Rossamünd's original destination. Two weeks having passed since Rossamünd left the Marine Society, he is eager to get to his new place of employment but Miss Europe has business to attend to. Rossamünd is left to explore the city. He comes across the Hogshead docked in the harbour, and is confronted by Poundinch. The captain, assuming Rossamünd to be snooping into his mysterious, live, and probably-illegal cargo, ties Rossamünd to one of the crates in the hold and leaves him there. Rossamünd gives up hope of being rescued until whatever is inside the crate begins talking to him. It turns out to be a glamgorn (a friendly, little, human-like bogle) named Freckle. The other crates do not contain such friendly creatures however, and Rossamünd realises Poundinch's trade: smuggling deceased human bodyparts to be put together into new, horrible creatures like those in the other crates. The captain soon returns and removes Rossamünd from the hold, but not before Freckle hints at some hidden significance to the foundling's name. Poundinch leads Rossamünd to one of his other ships, but Rossamünd escapes the captain and flees - right to the safety of Fouracres and Miss Europe. Miss Europe takes the captain out with one electric shock, and Poundinch falls into the caustic water of the harbour. Rossamünd insists that the three of them go back to the Hogshead to rescue Freckle, and they do just that (Freckle immediately disappearing into the sea), but the subsequent realisation that Freckle is a bogle sparks momentary hostility between Miss Europe and the foundling. However, they continue on to find Rossamünd's employers. On the way, Miss Europe reveals that she is suffering from an undetermined illness, and must travel far away to where she was altered into a lahzar so she can be treated. She promises to return after a while to see how Rossamünd is faring in his lamplighting career, and to again offer him the position of her factotum. Accepting this, he bids Miss Europe and Fouracres farewell. Rossamünd discovers that Mister Germanicus, whom he was supposed to report to in High Vesting, had given up waiting for the foundling and had moved on north to Winstermill. He sets off in a coach, accompanied now only by parting gifts from Miss Europe: food, more gold than Rossamünd had ever seen in his life, and a note revealing the lahzar's true identity - Europa, a duchess-in-waiting, set to one day rule over the rich city of Naimes. Soon enough Rossamünd reaches Winstermill, and is signed into service by two registrars, friendly Inkwill and nasty Witherscrawl. He is also given a letter, written five days ago by Verline from the Marine Society. This letter reveals that Master Fransitart will soon be on his way to see Rossamünd, and is bearing some kind of distressing news. Completely confused, Rossamünd goes to bed. He will begin his career as a lamplighter at the dawn.
6108018	/m/0fqftj	Tarzan the Untamed	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1920	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The action is set during World War I. While John Clayton, Lord Greystoke (Tarzan) is away from his plantation home in British East Africa, it is destroyed by invading German troops from Tanganyika. On his return he discovers among many burned bodies one that appears to be the corpse of his wife, Jane Porter Clayton. Another fatality is the Waziri warrior Wasimbu, left crucified by the Germans. (Wasimbu's father Muviro, first mentioned in this story, goes on to play a prominent role in later Tarzan novels.) Maddened, the ape-man seeks revenge not only on the perpetrators of the tragedy but all Germans, and sets out for the battle front of the war in east Africa. On the way he has a run-in with a lion (or Numa, as it is called by the apes among whom Tarzan was raised), which he traps in a gulch by blocking the entrance. At the front he infiltrates the German headquarters and seizes Major Schneider, the officer he believes led the raid on his estate. Returning to the gulch, he throws his captive to the lion. Tarzan goes on to help the British in the battle in various ways, including setting the lion loose in the enemy trenches, and kills von Goss, another German officer involved in the attack on the Greystoke estate. He then becomes embroiled in the affairs of Bertha Kircher, a woman he has seen in both the German and British camps, and believes to be a German spy, particularly after he learns she possesses his mother's locket, which he had given as a gift to Jane. His efforts to retrieve it lead him to a rendezvous between Kircher and Captain Fritz Schneider, brother of the major Tarzan threw to the lion previously, and the actual commander of the force that burned the estate. Killing Schneider, Tarzan believes his vengeance complete. Abandoning his vendetta against the Germans he departs for the jungle, swearing off all company with mankind. Seeking a band of Mangani, the apes among whom he had been raised, Tarzan crosses a desert, undergoing great privations. Indeed, the desert is almost his undoing. He only survives by feigning death to lure a vulture (Ska in the ape language) following him into his reach; he then catches and devours the vulture, which gives him the strength to go on. The scene is a powerful one, a highlight both of the novel and of the Tarzan series as a whole. On the other side of the desert Tarzan locates the ape band. While with them he once again encounters Bertha Kircher, who has just escaped from Sergeant Usanga, leader a troop of native deserters from the German army, by whom she had been taken captive. Despite his suspicion of Bertha, Tarzan's natural chivalry leads him to grant her shelter and protection among the apes. Later he himself falls captive to the tribe of cannibals the deserters have sheltered among, along with Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, a British aviator who has been forced down in the jungle. Learning of Tarzan's plight, Bertha heroically leads the apes against the natives and frees them both. Smith-Oldwick becomes infatuated with Bertha, and they search for his downed plane. They find it, but are captured again by Usanga, who attempts to fly off in it with Bertha. Tarzan arrives in time to board the plane as it takes off and throw Usanga from the plane. Smith-Oldwick and Bertha Kircher then try to pilot it back across the desert to civilization, but fail to make it. Seeing the plane go down, Tarzan once more sets out to rescue them. On the way he encounters another Numa, this one an unusual black lion caught in a pit trap, and frees it. He, the two lovers and the lion are soon reunited, but attacked by warriors from the lost city of Xuja, hidden in a secret desert valley. Tarzan is left for dead and Bertha and Smith-Oldwick taken prisoner. The Xujans are masters of the local lions and worshippers of parrots and monkeys. They are also completely insane as a consequence of long inbreeding. Recovering, Tarzan once more comes to the rescue of his companions, aided by the lion he had saved earlier. But the Xujans pursue them and they turn at bay to make one last stand. The day is saved by a search party from Smith-Oldwick's unit, who turn the tide. Afterward, Tarzan and Smith-Oldwick find out that Bertha is a double agent who has actually been working for the British. Tarzan also learns from the diary of the deceased Fritz Schneider that Jane might still be alive. Tarzan the Untamed was one of Burroughs’ most controversial novels. The controversy stemmed from his blanket portrayal of Germans as stereotypical, unredeemable villains, one that was also extended to his contemporary science fiction novel The Land That Time Forgot. This portrayal, while perhaps understandable in wartime, ultimately ruined the market for his writing in Germany, where the character of Tarzan had formerly been quite popular. Burroughs’ later introduction of heroic Germans into his subsequent novels Tarzan and the Lost Empire, Tarzan at the Earth’s Core and Back to the Stone Age did little to repair the damage to his reputation there. Tarzan the Untamed has a sprawling, almost incoherent plot atypical of the author's early Tarzan novels, an artifact of its origin as two separate tales. The initial savage campaign of retribution, once it has run its course, gives way to a complete withdrawal and rejection of humanity, which is succeeded in turn by a fantastic adventure in a lost city. Only the continuing presence of the enigmatic figure of Bertha Kircher serves to unite the disparate story elements. Tarzan himself, unusually, is recast from his typical role as a noble and high-minded hero into that of a very human being so unhinged by grief as to blame a whole nation for the crimes of a few of its people, and to commit atrocities in consequence. His simple, direct and savage campaign against the enemy comes across as crude in comparison with Bertha's espionage, with which it ironically interferes. Tarzan's recovery of something approaching his normal status is attained only gradually. The parallel encounters with the two lions highlight his dual role; in the first, the lion is treated with cruelty, as an enemy and a tool against other enemies; in the second compassion prevails, and the lion is befriended and becomes a willing ally. Regardless of its flaws, Tarzan the Untamed is an important work in the Tarzan series. It begins a sequence continuing with Tarzan the Terrible, Tarzan and the Golden Lion and Tarzan and the Ant Men in which Burroughs' vivid imagination and storytelling abilities hit their peak, and which is generally considered a highlight of the series. The book is also a transitional one for the series. The hero's acts of vengeance against the Germans look back to his malicious baiting of a native tribe in Tarzan of the Apes, the first Tarzan novel, a campaign also motivated by grief, on that occasion for the death of his ape mother Kala at the hands of a villager. The taming of the lions recalls Tarzan’s enlistment of a whole menagerie to his cause in the early The Beasts of Tarzan, while looking ahead to his recruiting of his ultimate lion ally, Jad-bal-ja, in Tarzan and the Golden Lion. Tarzan the Untamed is a pivotal work in that it heralds two basic shifts in plot-type for the Tarzan series. The first is a shift in focus away from Tarzan himself and towards secondary characters. Previous novels had dealt primarily with the ape-man’s own affairs, while most later ones (beginning with Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle) would cast him as a savior and enabler of others, following the example set in his dealings with Bertha Kircher and Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick. The second shift is marked by the appearance of the lost civilization of Xuja, which brings to the fore a plot element that would dominate the later Tarzan novels. Prior to Tarzan the Untamed the series centered on Tarzan’s natural environment and activities among the animals and natives of Africa. The only element comparable to Xuja had been the lost city of Opar, which had been used sparingly, appearing only twice over the course of six novels. After Tarzan the Untamed lost cities, races and lands would be encountered in almost every book, usually in pairs at war with each other.
6111215	/m/0fqmjx	The Golden Age	Gore Vidal	2000-09	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The action centers around President Roosevelt's maneuvers to get the United States into World War II while keeping his 1940 campaign pledge to America voters that "No sons of yours will ever fight in a foreign war, unless attacked." Vidal makes the case that 1) the U.S had backed Japan into a corner with the oil and trade embargo, as well as massive aid to China and unconditional demands Japan could never accept; 2) the U.S. provoked Japan into attacking; and 3) the U.S. had broken Japan's military codes and knew of Japan's pending attack, but intentionally withheld warning Pearl Harbor. This was to arouse the U.S. populace and bring the United States into the war, so the U.S could take its place as the post-war dominant superpower. The novel also covers some of the American artistic and cultural scene after the war, with attention given to John La Touche, Dawn Powell, Tennessee Williams, and postwar Hollywood.
6111753	/m/0fqnr9	The Lightning Thief	Rick Riordan	2005-06-28	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Percy Jackson is a twelve year old boy, diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, who has been expelled from numerous (six) schools, the latest being Yancy Academy. During a school field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, his pre-algebra teacher, Mrs. Dodds, attacks Percy, revealing that she is one of the three Furies. Percy's stepfather, Gabe Ugliano, a man whose smell is so repulsive, mistreats both Percy and Percy's mother, Sally. To get away from Gabe, Sally takes Percy on a trip to Long Island for a three-day vacation. In the middle of the first night, Percy's closest friend and former classmate at Yancy Academy, Grover Underwood, who is revealed to be a satyr, comes and warns the two of them that Percy is in danger. Sally drives them both to Camp Half-Blood, a camp for demigods, where he can train and be protected. On the way there, they are attacked by the Minotaur, which grabs Percy's mother by her throat. She then dissolves into a golden shower of light. Percy, angered by the Minotaur for killing his mom and then going after his best friend, goes after the Minotaur and defeats him using the Minotaur's own horn. Percy then stumbles into the camp carrying a semi-conscious Grover. Upon waking up, Percy is moved into the Hermes cabin, under the care of Luke Castellan, the cabin's counselor. During a game of capture the flag, the Ares cabin attacks and injures Percy. He steps into the adjoining river and is healed by the waters. After the game is won, Percy gets attacked by a hellhound, which gets shot by arrows and dies. To heal himself, he steps into the water, while Poseidon's trident appears above his head, revealing him to be the son of Poseidon. Poseidon has broken an oath taken with Hades and Zeus to refrain from having any more children with mortal women, as their children can become too powerful and become a threat. It is revealed that Zeus's master bolt has been stolen. Because Percy has been claimed, Zeus believes that Percy was the one to have stolen it. To clear his and his father's name, Percy is granted a quest to find Zeus's master bolt which Chiron believes Hades has stolen. Percy has to find the bolt before the summer solstice, ten days from then. Luke gives magic flying shoes to Percy before leaving on the quest with Annabeth and Grover. Percy has to travel west to reach the entrance to the Underworld in Hollywood. They encounter Greek monsters, including the Furies, Medusa, Echidna, the Chimera, and Ares, the god of war, who tells Percy that his mother is alive. As they approach Hades' palace, Luke’s shoes try to drag Grover over the edge of Tartarus, but he manages to slip free. Percy confronts Hades, who believes Percy stole his Helm of Darkness, an object that allows him to become a shadow. Percy discovers that the bolt had appeared in the backpack Ares gave them and flees from the Underworld, forced to leave his mother behind. Percy fights and defeats Ares, obtaining the helm, which he asks the Furies, who witnessed everything, to return to Hades. Percy flies to New York, risking his life by entering the sky, the realm of Zeus. He arrives in New York City to give the master bolt to Zeus at level 600 of the Empire State Building, where Olympus is now located. Zeus accepts the master bolt, and Percy returns to camp. Luke reveals that he stole the bolt for Kronos and summons a poisonous pit scorpion which stings and nearly kills Percy. Chiron cures him, and Percy leaves to attend another school that his mother has found. Annabeth returns to live with her father, and Grover embarks on a journey as a "seeker" to try to find the great god Pan.
6112722	/m/0fqqk4	The Bridge at No Gun Ri		2001-09-06		 The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War is written in chronological narrative style and is organized in three parts, “The Road to No Gun Ri,” “The Bridge at No Gun Ri,” and “The Road from No Gun Ri.” It opens with two chapters that alternately introduce the readers to the young Army enlistees of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, mostly from poor backgrounds, many of them school dropouts, on occupation duty in post-World War II Japan, where they have been insufficiently trained and are unprepared for the sudden outbreak of war in nearby Korea; and then to the South Korean villager families and the age-old rhythms of their rural lives, to be exploded in late June 1950 by a Korean civil war borne of the new U.S.-Soviet rivalry, the Cold War. The next two chapters describe the deployment of U.S. military units to face the onrushing North Korean invaders, the growing nervousness of U.S. commanders who issue orders to fire on South Korean refugee columns out of fear of enemy infiltrators, and the disarray of the weakly led 7th Cavalrymen as they reach the warfront; and then tell of the villagers’ plight as they first seek shelter from the war by gathering in a remote area of their valley, and then are forced by retreating U.S. troops to head south toward U.S. lines. The 26-page middle section is an account of three days of carnage that began with U.S. warplanes attacking the column of hundreds of refugees, after which survivors were forced into an underpass and methodically machine-gunned until few were left alive among piles of bodies. Survivors estimated 400 were killed, mostly women and children. Seventh Cavalry veterans recalled orders coming down to stop all refugees from crossing U.S. lines and to “eliminate” the No Gun Ri group. This and earlier chapters describe declassified military documents showing such orders spreading across the warfront. The final section of four chapters follows the stories of lives shattered when they intersected at No Gun Ri, both of Korean villagers fighting to survive in the chaos of war, and of young U.S. soldiers fighting in the seesaw battles of 1950-51. In the postwar decades, the psychic toll of what the Koreans suffered and what the Americans did and witnessed weighs heavily on both, leaving them deeply depressed, sometimes suicidal, often haunted by visions and ghosts. One, Chung Eun-yong, a former policeman whose two children were killed at No Gun Ri, makes it his life mission to find the truth of who was responsible for the massacre. The section ends when an Associated Press reporter telephones Chung, at the beginning of a lengthy journalistic investigation. The book has two epilogues. The first describes the AP investigative work that found the U.S. veterans who corroborated the Korean survivors’ story and the declassified documents that further supported it, and the bibliographic, archival and interview sources for the book. (The AP team’s editor, Bob Port, later wrote about the reporters’ yearlong struggle to publish their explosive report in the face of resistance by AP executives.) The second epilogue details the serious irregularities in the U.S. Army report on the No Gun Ri investigation prompted by the AP disclosures. (Co-author Hanley later published a more extensive analysis of what the Korean survivors described as a “whitewash.”)
6112846	/m/0fqqss	Invisible	Pete Hautman		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Dougie talks with his best (and only) friend, Andy Morrow. Athletic, popular Andy is very different from socially inept Dougie, yet the two find things to talk about. They discuss everything - except for what happened at the Tuttle Place three years ago. It is evident that Andy and Dougie's friendship (which adults are afraid of) is not what it seems to be at first: not only is Andy absent when Dougie needs him most, he pressures Dougie into stalking a classmate, Melissa Haverman, and making a bomb threat via the telephone. When Dougie's psychologist finds out that he's been skipping sessions and hiding his medications, the teenager is forced to remember that fateful night at the Tuttle Place. The truth is that Andy is dead, a victim of the fire they accidentally set to the house. In the end, he sets fire to his beloved bridge while in the basement, becoming a burn victim at the hospital. Andy then visits him, promising to return. However, it is debatable as to whether Dougie died or not, since he was hospitalized at the "Madham Burn Unit," the name of his self-built town with his railroad of matchsticks. He also mentions that the hospital smells of burning plastic, referring to the plastic people in Madham, present when he set the town on fire, and that he wants to find his grandfather, to see if he is mad about the train. Whether it is his imagination that leads him to smelling burnt plastic and seeing "Madham Burn Unit" or he has died and Madham Hospital is his place of rest is not revealed.
6113208	/m/0fqrbq	The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things: Stories	Laura Albert	2001-06-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is told from Jeremiah's perspective and is a collection of interlinked chapters that focus on his early life with his mother. At the start of the novel, five-year-old Jeremiah is taken away from his foster parents to live with his biological mother Sarah, a drug addict and lot lizard prostitute, who has recently turned 23 and legally gained custody. Jeremiah moves with his mother from truck driver to truck driver as he gets older, though his age in each chapter is never clearly established. Sarah forces Jeremiah to take on various roles of siblings and offspring (gender determined by Sarah). After wetting his bed, Jeremiah gets viciously belted by her then-boyfriend, Luther, while his mother fondles his penis. He is made to shoplift by Sarah and is left home alone and unattended for six days when Sarah marries one of her men. The man returns alone from their honeymoon, explaining how Sarah abandoned him after he lost his money in Atlantic City. He then sodomises Jeremiah, then dumps him outside a hospital. After some ineffectual psychotherapy, he goes to live with his repressive Christian grandparents' home. Jeremiah is abused there as well; he is being forced to get into scalding water. Two years later, Jeremiah's mother unexpectedly turns up and takes him away, aware of the lack of power her parents have over the custody decision. She makes him grow shoulder-length hair and act as a girl, on occasion for the sexual satisfaction of her clients. With Sarah as the only influential figure in his life, Jeremiah starts to adopt his mother's seduction techniques. After dressing up as a 'baby doll', Jeremiah seduces Jackson, his mother's latest man. Jackson initially tries to rebuff the boy's advances, but then rapes him.
6116473	/m/0fqy9w	The Art of Seduction	Robert Greene		{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology"}	 The book covers a history of the seduction as well as the psychology that makes the described techniques supposedly effective. Greene claims to have studied notable figures such as Casanova, Cleopatra, and John F. Kennedy to create his guide. The book offers amoral advice on effective seduction, including "choose the right victim", and "approach indirectly". Greene also classifies several seduction archetypes, such as "the Siren", "the Charmer", and "the Natural".
6116738	/m/0fqyvb	Twelve Sharp	Janet Evanovich	2006-06-20	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel begins with Stephanie being stalked by Carmen Manoso, a woman claiming to be the wife of Ranger, a fellow bounty hunter with whom Stephanie has occasionally been intimate. Ranger is out of town on 'bad business' when Stephanie learns that his daughter has been kidnapped. Ranger is the prime suspect. As the story progresses, Stephanie learns that Carmen is actually married to a man named Edward Scrog who is attempting to steal Ranger's identity, even going so far as to kidnap Ranger's daughter Julie for his own. After Scrog kills Carmen he kidnaps Stephanie to complete his "family" and start a new life. However, he needs money, so Stephanie convinces him to try to find one of her FTA's (wanted for armed robbery) and steal his money. To prevent Stephanie from escaping, Scrog constructs a bomb and tapes it to her. As they try to negotiate for the money, Stephanie's old nemesis Joyce Barnhart turns up to capture the FTA herself. In the struggle that ensues, Scrog gets shot in the foot and Stephanie manages to rip the bomb off before Scrog stun-guns her. When Stephanie wakes up, her boyfriend Joe Morelli is there. Joyce caught the FTA, as he ran over the bomb after Stephanie tossed it in the road and it exploded. Together Stephanie and Morelli return to the trailer where she and Julie were being kept, but find it empty. Stephanie returns to her apartment, where she finds Scrog. He stun-guns her once more, then ties her to a chair. Julie is there too, drugged and on the couch. Scrog's plan is to kill Ranger when he arrives. Ranger opens the door with his hands up and Scrog shoots him. Julie attacks Scrog, the drugs having worn off, and shoots him. The police, paramedics and Morelli come in. Ranger is rushed to the hospital. On the way there Stephanie finally tells Morelli that she loves him, but leaves out the fact that she loves Ranger, too.
6118487	/m/0fr186	Language of Goldfish		1980-04-14	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Carrie Stokes, age 13, is suffering a mental breakdown due to her fear of change. She is growing up without realizing it, or perhaps blatantly ignoring it, until it gets too hard for her to pretend that everything was the same as it was when she was a young girl. Carrie is a skilled artist, and takes lessons with the art teacher at her school. Moira, Carrie's older sister, is a constant reminder that she inevitably has to grow up. She has an anxiety disorder because she is worried about the social graces and rites of passage - such as going to school dances - that growing up entails.
6118585	/m/0fr1f1	My Friend Leonard	James Frey	2005-06-16	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The novel begins with Frey's release from an Ohio county jail. He anxiously drives to Chicago to see his girlfriend, Lilly, whose grandmother has just died. James and Lilly met in rehab (as mentioned in A Million Little Pieces) and Lilly was in a halfway house while James was in jail. Upon arriving in Chicago, James is informed by the director of the halfway house that Lilly committed suicide because she could not deal with the pain of losing her grandmother. Desperate, James goes to a liquor store and buys the cheapest bottle of wine with the intention of drinking it. He spends the night in his car and does not drink the alcohol. James asks Leonard for thirty thousand dollars, which he uses to bury Lilly and her grandmother. Leonard had told James while they were in the treatment center that he would look out for James as though he were his father. He gives the money to James on two conditions: 1) James must agree to tell Leonard later what he did with the money, and 2) if James does decide to drink the bottle of wine (which he still keeps in his apartment), he must agree to call Leonard beforehand. At the end of the story, Leonard goes into hiding and James does not hear from him for eighteen months. Finally, Leonard meets with James in San Francisco and informs James that he is dying from AIDS. Leonard takes his own life by overdosing on pain medications. James must handle great adversity throughout the entire novel. He has to deal with people who aren't always reputable. And he battles with depression, but slowly grows from his experiences. The rest of the novel deals with James' attempting to create a normal life for himself.
6118652	/m/0fr1j4	Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War	William R. Forstchen	2003-06-12	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place in 1863 when Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia are victorious at the Battle of Gettysburg instead of the United States. (Instead of attacking the Union line on July 2, 1863, Lee conducts a broad turning movement and forces the Army of the Potomac to attack him in a favorable position.) Losing Gettysburg is a grave setback to the United States, but it by no means spells the end of the war or determines its outcome, and the United States still has a lot of fight in it. In this, the book takes an opposing view to the classic "Bring the Jubilee" published in 1953 - precisely fifty years before the present book - which assumes that a defeat in Gettysburg would have led to a complete defeat and catastrophic collapse of the North.
6118750	/m/0fr1mz	Grant Comes East	William R. Forstchen	2004-06-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book picks up where the first left off at the Confederate victory at Gettysburg. General Robert E. Lee and his troops march on Washington, D.C., and launch an assault, hoping that if they can take the capital they can win the war. Meanwhile, President Abraham Lincoln has appointed Major General Ulysses S. Grant commander of all Union forces with orders to attack Lee. Grant masses his forces (the newly minted Army of the Susquehanna) at Harrisburg, while Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles gains control (through his violent pacification of the New York Draft Riots) of the Army of the Potomac. Sickles has his eye on the White House, but he needs to defeat Lee to win the Civil War for the War Democrats. Violating orders from Grant, he rolls his troops out to meet Lee's army alone. A sidebar shows Napoleon III planning to invade the United States through a colony in Mexico. Lee, bloodily repulsed at Fort Stevens outside Washington (the black troops of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry regiment playing a decisive role), turns on Baltimore. Abandoned by the Union, Baltimore descends into chaos. Using Baltimore to threaten Washington, Lee instead turns his entire army upon the advancing Sickles. The Army of the Potomac is destroyed in a rout, with Sickles losing a leg in the process (as he did in the real Battle of Gettysburg). The battle pens Lee up in Maryland, however, leaving Virginia wide open as Grant and William T. Sherman converge on it via Pennsylvania and Georgia. The novel ends with Lee scrambling to meet Grant's threat.
6119514	/m/0fr2wl	The Family Markowitz	Allegra Goodman			 Centred around a middle-class American Jewish family, The Family Markowitz touches on themes ranging from religiosity to ageing and from homosexuality to intermarriage. The novel tells the story of four main characters: Rose Markowitz (the matriarch), her sons Ed and Henry, and her daughter-in-law Sarah. Through these characters, the reader meets many other members of the family including Ed's four children, Henry's wife, and Rose's stepdaughter.
6119849	/m/0fr3k9	The Face in the Frost	John Bellairs	1969	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story opens with Prospero at home on a late summer day when he feels particularly uneasy. In the evening he receives an unexpected visit from his friend Roger Bacon, and the two discuss unusual phenomena that have transpired lately, especially those concerning a mysterious book for which Roger has been searching England. The following morning the two wizards find Prospero’s house besieged by agents of some other wizard who seems to have ill designs for them. They escape the house by shrinking themselves down and sailing out on a model ship via an underground stream accessible through Prospero’s basement. Once they regain their normal size they visit a library of records where Prospero discovers, as Roger stands guard outside, that a seal appearing in the mysterious aforementioned book belongs to Melichus, an old rival of his. Unfortunately, at that point a person comes into the library and claims to have killed Roger. Prospero flees the library and spends the night in a nearby town, where he luckily escapes an attack from some sort of evil creature sent by Melichus. The following day he travels to the cursed grove where Melichus is supposed to be buried, only to discover that the one buried there is not Melichus, but only one of his former servants. He presumes, therefore, that Melichus is still alive. After narrowly escaping from the cursed grove he travels to the town of Five Dials, where he stays at an inn with somewhat unsettling clientele and staff. Unable to sleep, he becomes suspicious of the inn and begins checking the other rooms, only to find them all empty. In the last room he finds the innkeeper with a large knife and flees the inn, whereupon he discovers that the entire town was an illusion (presumably created by Melichus). At last Prospero and Roger are reunited at the actual site called Five Dials, a lone inn on the edge of the country. Here they discuss why Melichus is after Prospero: they once created a magical item together, a kind of crystal ball resembling a green glass paperweight. Since neither one can fully possess it without the other’s cooperation, Prospero will have some share in Melichus’ power until he is dead. They also determine that Melichus is using the mysterious book mentioned early in the story to create a permanent winter over the world. While staying the night at Five Dials they meet a small armed force that intends to attack a village across the border. Roger and Prospero thwart the army by destroying a necessary bridge and begin traveling to the village where the paperweight is kept, and where, they presume, Melichus is now. As they travel, unseasonably cold weather gradually sets in. Though the way to their destination is blocked, they find a monk herbalist who lets them in through a back entrance. Once in the village they do find Melichus studying the book. Prospero attempts to steal the paperweight, only to be transported to a different world. Melichus follows him there, but Prospero meets another wizard who takes the magical item and defeats Melichus. In the end, Prospero returns home to find that the early winter has subsided.
6120391	/m/0fr4p8	Beowulf's Children	Steven Barnes	1996-11-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As the story opens the second generation of Avalon's colonists are coming of age, and the potential for teenage rebellion has never been so strong. The original colonists (the "Earth-born"), although selected for optimal physical and mental attributes, suffered varying levels of brain damage due to the unforeseen effects of long periods of chemically- and temperature-induced hibernation necessary to survive the long journey to Avalon. Their children (the "star-born") have no such disability; instead, they are geniuses with feeble-minded parents. The Grendel Wars (in which the Earth-Born's short-sightedness nearly led to their extermination) are still fresh in their minds. The battle-proven (yet impaired) elders preach a dogma of zealous caution which might have once tried their own patience; the brilliant (and arrogant) Star-Born deem it cowardice and tyranny. Adding to the strain are those who made the journey to Avalon as cargo: the "Bottle Babies", embryos grown in artificial wombs. They were raised collectively, lacking the family ties of their fellow Star-Born, and feel less obliged to obey. Aaron Tragon (perhaps the most intelligent of them) is more than just rebellious; he may be insane. As conflict brews between generations on the island of Camelot, on the mainland a dangerous question has been answered. The Grendels nearly drove the colony into extinction, but what preys on the Grendels is even worse. Two of the colony's best and brightest die in a horrifying, inexplicable fashion: a storm of yellow sand which has left nothing but naked bones soaked with Grendel supercharger, and a baby wrapped in a blanket. The Earth-Born ban further trips to the mainland, but the Star Born make an attempt to return on a quest for answers (and vengeance). Cadmann Weyland (the colony's hero from the Grendel War) stows away on the return trip, accidentally killing one of the Star-Born during an altercation. The colony holds a tribunal, which finds Cadmann not guilty; this increases tension between the generations of colonists. Aaron Tragon takes advantage of this to further his own goals. Instead of challenging the decision, he shows the tribunal unshakable evidence of an approaching danger. Tau Ceti's sunspot cycle is 50 years, not 11 like Earth's. Because of it, Avalon is entering a period of agitated weather and its lifeforms will react to it in ways the colony has never before seen. If the colony is to survive, trips to the mainland to study Avalon's life are essential – trips such as the one an Earth-Born killed a Star-Born to prevent. Over the objections of senior colonists, missions to the mainland resume. Tragon has humiliated the Earth-Born and established himself as leader of the Star-Born. Months later the yellow storm has not been seen again and the Grendels (although more numerous and varied) are only a dangerous predator, not a demonic horde. There is much to learn; the danger seems controllable until a rainstorm permits six Grendels to reach a snowy mountaintop where a study is taking place. The snow permits them to supercharge without dying, and they will not stop to eat their dead; these Grendels "cooperate". Although the team is able to drive them off with only one casualty, they are shaken. The Grendels, although dangerous, had always been predictable; now they are changing. Aaron Tragon behaves more erratically, convinced that the source of his powers is his origin as a Bottle Baby. He hopes to use artificial wombs to sire hundreds of children (breeding them like horses), and begins worshipping the Grendels. On Camelot Cadmann is disturbed and withdrawn, reflecting on events on the mainland. A small group of Star-Born, trapped in a snowstorm, killed five Grendels with only one casualty. The Grendels were intelligent enough to take advantage of the snowstorm to overcome the heat generated during supercharging, and cooperated to hunt the Star-Born. In contrast, when the Earth-Born first encountered the Grendels they lost ten colonists while driving off one gravely-wounded monster. What was mortal danger to the Earth-Born is a momentary threat to the Star-Born. This reveals a further dichotomy between Earth-Born and Star-Born: to the Earth-Born the mainland is no man's land, but to the Star-Born it is a challenge. The killing of a Star-Born by Cadman Wayland destroyed any remaining trust of the Star-Born for the Earth-Born. The Star-Born see a parallel between the Earth-Born and the Grendels: both seem willing to kill their offspring for their benefit. This cements Aaron Tragon's role as leader of the Star-Born; to Cadmann, this appears deliberate. Aaron's quest for power causes Cadmann to investigate Aaron's background and psychology. He discovers that most "Bottle Babies" have a need for purpose, and bond strongly to their families as a result. Aaron did not bond with his family; he seems instead to have bonded to colonization at the exclusion of all other ties. He seems to be exhibiting megalomania. On the mainland, the Grendels are evolving. Some develop the ability to resist their instinct to hunt and kill mindlessly. One, in particular, refuses to kill her own offspring; instead she establishes a family, with unknown effects on Grendel development. The Earth-Born visit the Star-Born town of Shangri-La; now that the two groups are cooperating, discoveries are made. One is disturbing: another life-form (a pollinater similar to an Earth bee) which uses a Grendel supercharger. There is also a glorious one; for the first time, a human and a Grendel meet and neither tries to kill the other. Camelot's Grendels are an anomaly. On the mainland, some Grendels cooperate with each other and with similar species. Without the cannibalistic cycle existing on Camelot, they have more advanced traits. They hunt in packs, building bridges like beavers with "samlon ladders" to permit use by both branches of the species. One chose to leave, rather than confront an armed human. In mainland Grendels, there is the possibility for coexistence. There is a physical difference between the two types as well. Mainland Grendels are prone to infestation by a brain parasite. Although it may be lethal (reproducing uncontrollably inside the Grendel's brain until their skull breaks open) it may also be symbiotic, enhancing the Grendels' intelligence in exchange for nutrition. This depends on when the infection occurs; during development, the symbiote and host are able to adapt to each other and produce heightened intelligence. Infestation after development is fatal, and the parasite is absent from the island. The first discovery is also understood; the "bees" are the yellow storm. They are scavengers, with a taste for Grendels; after eating them the bees collect the supercharger like Earth bees collect honey so when they are desperate, they can use it themselves and hunt rather than scavenge – stripping whole areas bare. This began the conflict; a windstorm pulled the sturdy, crustacean-like insects across a desert. When the storm hit the camp they were starving, and used their stores of supercharger to eat whatever was available. The blanket in which the baby was wrapped was an aposematic (warning) shade of blue (later called "Cadzie" blue for the baby it protected), which the bees avoided. This discovery gives the colonists an ability to deal with the "bees", at least on a small scale. This helps the Earth-Born realize the drawbacks of their perspective on danger, and the value of investigating (rather than avoiding) it. The threat to the colony is not eliminated, however. Further study of the bees shows that their nests are in areas which will be flooded by the sea as the planet warms. That is why so many bees were in that storm; their hives were flooded, and soon that will happen to large bee populations. Until the storms are over the mainland will have to be evacuated, but Tragon resists. He attacks Cadmann and another Star-Born to prevent this knowledge from spreading, to protect Shangri-La and his dream. The Star-Born survives; the family-building Grendel finds him, spares his life and takes him to safety. Tragon returns to Shangri-La with a story that Cadmann and his fellow Star-Born were eaten by Grendels, but the bees are still coming. When they arrive with devastation; not only do they eat everything but the supercharger they carry is still explosive, capable of knocking aircraft out of the sky. As Tragon rallies his people the old Grendel drags the barely-alive, lost Star-Born into Shangri-La; his father welcomes both, protecting the Grendel. The boy has enough strength to say, "Aaron shot us" before the bees hit Shangri-La. The Grendel hides in the town's cistern, and Tragon survives by burying himself in a stockyard's manure pile. The rest of the town is not as fortunate. The only things stopping the bees are solid walls or fire – which ignites hundreds at once like hundreds of cherry bombs, setting much of the town ablaze. Only 63 of about 90 colonists return to the island. Aaron Tragon is not one of them. After Shangri-La is evacuated he stumbles through the ruins of his kingdom, covered in animal waste. The crops are gone, eaten by the bees. Even the cooperative, beaver Grendels must eat the samlon (Grendel "larvae") to survive. Aaron, still driven by his ambition, wanders away from the town. Two years later, the colonists return to the ruins of Shangri-La. Tragon (or what remains of him) is there. Mentally, it seems Aaron Tragon is dead but what remains is that he has made peace with the intelligent Grendels. He will serve as a bridge between the humans and the Grendels, who will reshape Avalon into its namesake. pl:Dzieci Beowulfa ro:Dragonii Heorot
6121634	/m/0fr6k1	Absurdistan	Gary Shteyngart	2006-05-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After Misha's father kills a prominent businessman from Oklahoma, the INS bars the entire Vainberg family entry to the United States, trapping Misha in his native Saint Petersburg, which he nostalgically refers to as "St. Leninsburg." Misha, a.k.a. "Snack Daddy" from his days at Accidental College, somewhere in the Midwestern U.S. (the college resembles Oberlin College, which Shteyngart attended, while the name is a play on Occidental College), is desperate to return to his true love, Rouenna, whom he met while she was working at a "titty bar" and who now attends Hunter College, at Misha's expense. Misha's father is killed by a fellow oligarch. Soon after, Misha is given an opportunity to buy a Belgian passport from a corrupt diplomat in the fictitious ex-Soviet republic of Absurdsvanϊ (also known as Absurdistan). Absurdistan's reputation for oil riches got it the title "Norway of the Caspian." Divided between two major ethnic groups, the Sevo and Svanϊ, whose mutual hatred stems from a dispute over which way the "footrest" of the Orthodox cross should be tilted, Absurdistan soon finds itself ensconced in civil war and Misha is forced to take sides on behalf of a new love. Appointed "Minister of Multiculturalism," he is asked to petition Israel for funds, but he soon finds he is being played by the Sevo leader, who has, in fact, been in league with the Svanϊ leader all along.
6124315	/m/0frb3c	Circus	Alistair MacLean	1975	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Bruno Wildermann of the Wrinfield Circus is the world's greatest trapeze artist, a clairvoyant with near-supernatural powers and an implacable enemy of the East German regime that arrested his family and murdered his wife. The CIA needs such a man for an impossible raid on the impregnable Lubylan Fortress where his family is held, to remove a dangerous weapons formula from a heavily guarded laboratory under cover of a traveling circus tour, Bruno prepares to return to his homeland. But before the journey even begins a murderer strikes twice. Somewhere in the circus there is a communist agent with orders to stop Bruno at any cost.
6132795	/m/0frx8l	Layer Cake	J. J. Connolly	2000-04-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story starts on April Fool's Day in 1997. The narrator, and his pal Mister Mortimer are waiting impatiently to sell a half-kilo of cocaine to a less-than-punctual pal, Jeremy. Until Jeremy arrives, we are introduced to various characters and are given a brief look into their histories, including Jimmy Price; Mister Mortimer (Morty), who served five and a quarter of an eight year sentence for being caught while disposing of suicide victim Kilburn Jerry after a party; young Clarkie, whom the narrator expects will be taking his place when he retires; and Terry, friend to all. The narrator also explains to us how he made it to where he is—starting small, growing in rank, keeping quiet and making sure everything is strictly business. Jeremy eventually arrives half an hour late to make the purchase. In the next scene, Narrator is invited to Mortimer's pornshop, Loveland, and interrupts an argument between Mort and an employee, Nobby, who is confused on what to do over a shipment from the Netherlands of low-quality sex gear that they did not order. It is decided to send it back. Mort then drives the narrator to a fancy, out-of-the-way restaurant called Pepi's Barn, the haunt of "don" Jimmy Price, who has demanded to meet with him. Here we are introduced to Jimmy's right-hand man Gene, a loyal gundog to boot. The purpose of the dinner, as it turns out, is the disappearance of a young girl name of Charlotte Temple. Charlotte is the daughter of Edward Temple, a wealthy business contractor and socialite whom Price has known since childhood. She's run away with her new boyfriend, a cokehead by the name of Trevor Atkins, alias Kinky. Price charges Narrator with the task of locating Charlotte as a favour to Jimmy's pal, and promises that if he is successful, Price will allow him to retire without fuss. Price also tells the narrator about a crew of gangsters who have recently acquired two million high quality Ecstasy pills from Amsterdam. Price tasks the narrator with finding a buyer for the pills, and quickly. During the meeting with the gangsters, collectively known as the "Yahoos", the narrator finds that he cannot reason with them, and he leaves upon promising to find a buyer for the pills, albeit at a much lower price than if the Yahoos would consent to releasing the pills in small installments. The narrator tells the Yahoos that the pills are worth much less than they believe, which they are not happy to hear. The narrator tasks his old friend Cody, AKA Billy Bogus and his partner Tiptoes with locating Charlie. Cody expects little difficulty and quickly accepts the job. While looking for Cody in a London club, the narrator encounters Sydney, a low-ranking member of The Yahoos, the crew holding the two million pills. The narrator then meets Sydney's girlfriend Tammy, who he is immediately attracted to. Before leaving the club, Tammy gives him her number and surreptitiously asks him to call her. While speaking with Sydney, the narrator hears a story about the leader of Sydney's crew, a man named Darren who prefers to be known as The Duke. The Duke and his girlfriend, Slasher, are a pair of dedicated coke addicts who live just outside of London. The pair of them have become steadily more paranoid due to their cocaine use, and this paranoia leads Slasher to attack a member of the local council with pepper spray when he visits their home. Slasher also manages to kill one of the Duke's prized Dobermans, Mike Tyson, by shooting it. Sydney thinks the story is hilarious, but the narrator panics upon realizing that the Duke probably had his number along with Mr. Mortimer's, and the police could very well have information on them now. The narrator sets about finding a buyer for the Ecstasy pills, and he, Mortimer and Clarkie go to Liverpool to meet with Trevor and Shanks, two powerful north England drug dealers. Upon their arrival, Shanks tells the narrator and his colleagues that the "Yahoos" have in fact stolen the pills from a neo-Nazi outfit in Amsterdam, and they used the narrator and Mortimers' names to gain credibility. Shanks tells the narrator that the Germans have unleashed an assassin named Klaus to recover the pills and eliminate the thieves. Unfortunately for the narrator, Klaus believes that he was the one who initiated the robbery. The meeting ends and Trevor invites the narrator to come to dinner at his house. The narrator has a nightmare involving Jimmy Price and awakes to a television news story about the brutal torture and murder of a boatman named Van Tuck. At Trevor's house, Trevor and the narrator are discussing the state of the drugs game when the narrator offhandedly mentions Van Tuck's murder. Trevor flies into a panic and takes the narrator to see Duncan, a local reporter who is friendly with many police officers and feeds Trevor information. On the way, Trevor explains that Van Tuck was a smuggler and he was currently moving several million pounds worth of marijuana into the country for Trevor. Trevor's hope is that Van Tuck had not yet picked up the shipment, but there is a strong possibility that the police will have confiscated the drugs during their investigation of Van Tuck's murder. Through Duncan, Trevor discovers that the cannabis has been seized by the police and after destroying many of Duncan's possessions in a rage, the action moves back to London. The narrator and Morty receive a call from Cody, telling them that he has located Kinky, Charlie's boyfriend, in a flat in King's Cross. Upon arriving at the flat, the men find that Kinky is dead of a heroin overdose, and one of the crackheads who was living with Kinky believes that Kinky was murdered. The narrator is intrigued to learn that Kinky had turned up at the flat shortly before his death with Charlie and two grand in cash. The crackheads tell them that Charlie has gone to Brighton and the narrator sends Cody after her. The narrator and Morty retire to a cafe, where they run into Freddy Hurst, a fat and slovenly ex-gangster who is down on his luck. Freddy subtly ridicules Morty and asks for some money. Morty complies, but when Freddy makes another comment, Morty flies into a rage and beats Freddy almost to death in the middle of the crowded cafe. Morty and the narrator flee, with the narrator deeply troubled by what he has just witnessed. That night, the narrator visits Gene at his flat. Gene goes over the beating in great detail and informs the narrator that if Freddy dies, the narrator is left with two options. He can either testify against Morty or he will go to prison as an accomplice to murder. Gene then goes on to explain that Freddy Hurst was an influential gangster in the late 1970s in London, and that Gene and Morty were members of his crew. After Kilburn Jerry killed himself and Morty was caught disposing of the body, Freddy was about to go away for about 12 years to serve concurrent sentences. Freddy could have gotten Morty off the hook but chose not to, leading to Morty doing 5 years in prison unnecessarily. The narrator gets very drunk with Gene, and the next day decides to arrange a meeting with Tammy at the Churchill Hotel. While showering at the hotel before Tammy arrives, the narrator is kidnapped by two unidentified men and transported across London to The City. There he meets Eddie Temple, who explains that Jimmy has double-crossed the narrator. Jimmy had become involved in a scheme with some gangsters from Chechnya to purchase a consignment of non-existent Pakistani heroin. Jimmy had been taken in by the gangsters and had lost nearly 13 million pounds. In his rage, Jimmy believed that his old friend Eddie had arranged for Jimmy to be ensnared, and he therefore tasked the narrator to find Charlie, Eddie's daughter. Jimmy believed that if he could hold Charlie hostage, he could force Eddie to get his money back. Eddie goes on to explain that Jimmy has been moonlighting as a police informer for a number of years. Eddie plays the narrator a recording in which Jimmy speaks with Albie Carter, a member of the Southeast Regional Crime Squad. Jimmy tells Albie that he wants the narrator to be arrested for possession of drugs, which would result in a 12 year sentence. Jimmy had sent the narrator to a dodgy accountant, and after the narrator is imprisoned, Jimmy was planning to take control of his assets to recover his lost wealth. Eddie drops the narrator off back at the Churchill with the recording. The narrator decides to take matters into his own hands and proceeds to Jimmy's mansion in Totteridge. There, he sneaks into the grounds of Price's house and kills him with a gun he borrowed from Gene. The narrator heads back into London, where his colleagues are frantically trying to find out who killed Jimmy. The narrator is convinced that he got away cleanly and is unconcerned. He is summoned with Morty to see Gene, who promptly beats the narrator viciously and breaks his wrist. It transpires that Gene has discovered that the narrator killed Jimmy with the same gun that Gene used to kill Crazy Larry Flynn, a homosexual London gangster who had been friends with both Gene and Morty. Upon producing the recording, the narrator manages to convince Gene and Morty that Jimmy was an informer, and they trust one another again. The narrator now decides to eliminate both of his remaining problems. One, he has to stop Klaus the murderous Nazi and, two, he has find a way to steal the pills back from the Yahoos. The narrator and Morty contact Shanks in Liverpool and get him to send an assassin down on the train. The narrator lures Klaus to Primrose Park and lies in wait with the sniper. The narrator spots a tall blonde man in the park and, believing this man to be Klaus, orders to sniper to kill him, which he does. The narrator then realizes that they have killed the wrong man and see Klaus run away from the scene. Gene flies into a rage when he hears what has happened, and dispatches some of his own men to find and kill Klaus, which they do. The narrator then contracts Cody to organize a false police raid on the Yahoos hideout to steal back the pills. Cody and his team assault the hideout, posing as armed police. They allow the Yahoos to escape and they "confiscate" the pills. Gene and the narrator find the Yahoos in a run-down bar and convince them that the police who raided them were crooked and have taken the pills for themselves. The narrator had previously worked out a deal with Eddie Ryder to give Ryder the pills in return for 2.5 million pounds. Thinking that his job is finally complete, the narrator and his colleagues take the pills to Eddie Temple's bonded warehouse at Heathrow Airport, where Temple is having the pills flown to Tokyo. When they arrive at the airport, Eddie and his private security team take them all hostage and take the pills. Temple takes the pills, telling the narrator that he is owed them as a result of the narrator causing Charlie distress. Temple then delivers a speech to the narrator, explaining the nature of the drugs game, crime and life in general: "You're born, you take shit. Get out in the world, you take more shit. Climb a little higher, you take less shit. Until one day you're up in the rarified atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake, son." Seemingly defeated, the narrator and his colleagues then discover that they have delivered the wrong boxes to Temple. The boxes were actually filled with sex toys and pornography that Morty had been able to sell at Loveland, the sex shop that he owned. The real pills had been shipped back to Amsterdam and to an unknown fate. Clarkie then tells Morty that had Freddie Hurst has died of his injuries, which could cause serious problems for Morty. The story then fast-forwards about three years. The narrator is now living on the northern coast of Venezuela where he runs a bar. It turns out that about six weeks after Temple took the pills, the narrator and Tammy were eating in a restaurant in London when Sydney, Tammy's jilted ex-boyfriend found them. Sydney shot the narrator multiple times, including in the head. The narrator spent six weeks in a coma and awoke with a steel plate in his head. He is visited in hospital by a mysterious government official, who may work for the police or MI5. The man tells the narrator to abandon the drugs trade and leave Britain or else he would find himself in prison for a very long time. The narrator moves to Venezuela and leaves us with the line, "My name? If you knew that, you'd be as clever as me."
6134980	/m/0fr_v2	Forgive us our Sins			{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Imagine staging the end of the world and observing the effects of this apocalypse on an isolated, rural village… imagine a group of powerful Vatican clerics coldly orchestrating such an experiment in search of scientific and theological “truth”… 1284 Heurteloup is a village tucked away in the marshlands of South West France. It has been cut off from the rest of the world for forty years and - so it seems - ignored by everyone including the local diocese and the state. Neighbouring townsfolk do not dare venture anywhere near Heurteloup - it is a place that inspires terror, a name that conjures up evil spirits, darkness and savagery. Not so long ago, the remains of corpses were found floating in a river, dragged by the current straight from the banks of the cursed town. One man decides to set off to try to save the “soul” of Heurteloup: his name is Father Henno Gui. A newly ordained priest, Gui is driven purely by faith and his sense of vocation. He is accompanied by two loyal companions: a young boy, Floris, and a giant-like man, Mardi Gras, whose disproportionate size and disfigured face terrify onlookers. Having walked for days, fighting their way through thick forests, Gui and his companions arrive at Heurteloup. The village is deserted and there is not a soul in sight. The Church is in ruins and the dwellings appear uninhabited. But when Gui looks carefully, he notices traces of recent human activity, and he can sense that their every move is being watched. He has no idea where the villagers are hiding. Most importantly, he can tell from effigies and statuettes of women that these hidden villagers worship ‘Gods’ of a very unorthodox kind… So begins this violent story of power and corruption, where magic and superstition coexist alongside Catholicism and the stranglehold of the Vatican. Romain Sardou recreates the period as he weaves philosophical and religious questions through a chilling tale of murder and betrayal. * Pope Martin IV
6135059	/m/0fr_yk	Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up	Christopher Noxon	2006-06	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Rejuvenile is about adults who behave and think in childlike and childish ways, and Noxon's opinion is that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. According to the book, many rejuveniles have found ways to lead productive and responsible lives without tossing aside things they've always loved -- from Necco Wafers to Tintin to skateboarding. The book is also a collection of stories of like-minded adults who do things like play dodgeball on the weekends, go to Walt Disney World Resort (without kids) and collect toys.
6136468	/m/0fs1s0	Dragon Keeper	Carole Wilkinson	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the far western mountains of the Han Empire in ancient China, an aging dragon, his wife (who soon dies), and a young slave girl are used, abused and neglected by the cruel Master Lan. Nameless and alone, the slave girl is without hope and her only friend is her pet rat, Hua. After one of the Imperial Dragons, the mate of the aging one, suddenly dies, the slave girl feels guilty and responsible. She finds herself coming to the aid of the last dragon, Danzi. The two escape, but when the emperor finds out that one of his dragons is dead, Master Lan blames it on her and she finds herself chased by the imperial guards, who believe she is an evil sorceress. A necromancer and a dragon hunter, who are determined to kill the dragon and take the dragon's stone, are chasing her and the dragon. The dragon, Long Danzi (meaning courageous dragon), tells the slave girl her true name: Ping (meaning duckweed). Ping discovers her destiny as Dragon Keeper, but she is unaware that the dragon stone is an egg. Now she and the dragon must go on a dangerous journey across China to Ocean, an apparent magical healing place. She must protect a mysterious stone that is vital to the dragon's legacy. While travelling with Danzi, Ping learns many things that will, in time, help her with her struggles. Ping also learns the value of friendship and courage. After, Danzi and Hua must go over Ocean when they're hurt by Diao, the dragon hunter. The stone (now found to be an egg) hatches, and out of it comes...a purple vegetable. Or at least that is what Ping thinks. Eventually Danzi claims it is a baby dragon. It moves, and just before Danzi leaves, he gives the baby a name: Long Kai Duan. Ping is now left alone with the baby dragon. The last of the first.
6137012	/m/0fs2mq	Bag Limit	Steven Havill	2001-11-17	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Sheriff Bill Gastner hopes his last few days in office will be uneventful, but this is before a local 17 year old named Matt Baca drives drunkenly into his cruiser. Baca stumbles drunkenly into the night as Gastner confronts him. He is later arrested passed out at his home. After kicking open sheriff Gastner's temporary cruisers window, he is transferred to a local Border Patrol unit. The transfer turns fatal when Baca pushes himself away, accidentally into a delivery trucks path. The plot thickens as the dead teens father is found dead in his kitchen the next morning. Thus bringing Gastner into a confusing set of clues to lead him to why Baca kept fighting his arrest, where is and where did he get his fake I.D., and who was involved in the struggle with Matt Baca's father leading to his death.
6137040	/m/0fs2q3	Alma Cogan	Gordon Burn		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Burn's novel, however, Alma Cogan does not die in 1966, but retires from show business sometime thereafter to a quiet solitude near the English seashore, living neither in luxury nor poverty. In contrast to Cogan's bubbly public persona, Burn's Alma, who narrates the book, is an arch, dry-witted, highly intelligent observer of the world around her, mildly dismissive of, even jaded by, her showbiz past (but not entirely disdainful of it). She recounts with equal detachment the heady days of celebrity and the sordid backstage cruelties—including bouts of unexpected violence—as she muses on the nature of stardom and its many pitfalls, which entrap the worshipper as much as the worshipped. But her residual fame proves a gruesome and unwanted relic as it serves to tie her, through her fans, to an unforeseen encounter with evil.
6137287	/m/0fs33m	The Ballad of the Sad Cafe	Carson McCullers			 The Ballad of the Sad Cafe opens in a small, isolated Georgia town. The story introduces Miss Smith, a strong character of both body and mind, who is approached by a hunchbacked man with only a suitcase in hand who claims to be of kin. When Miss Smith, whom the townspeople see as a calculating woman who never acts without reason, takes the stranger into her home, rumors begin to circulate that Miss Smith has only done so to take what the hunchback had in his suitcase. When the rumors hit their peak, a group of eight men come to her store, sitting outside on the steps for the day and waiting to see if something would happen. Finally, they enter the store all at once and are stunned to see that the hunchback is actually alive and well. With everyone gathered inside, Miss Amelia brings out some liquor and crackers in hospitality, which further shocks the men, as they have never witnessed Miss Amelia be hospitable enough to allow drinking inside her home. This is essentially the beginning of the café. Miss Amelia and the hunchback, Cousin Lymon, unintentionally create a new tradition for the town, and the people gather inside at the café on Sunday evenings often until midnight. It is apparent, though surprising, to the townspeople that Miss Amelia has fallen in love with Cousin Lymon, and has begun to change slightly as time progresses. When the townspeople see this, they relate it to another odd incident in which Miss Amelia was also involved: the issue of her ten-day marriage. Miss Amelia had been married to a man named Marvin Macy, who was a vicious and cruel character before meeting and falling in love with her. He changed his ways and became good-natured, but reverted back to his old self when his love was rejected after a failed ten-day marriage in which he gave up everything he possessed in hopes of having her return his affections. He broke out into a rage, committing a string of felonies before being caught and locked up in the state penitentiary. When he was released, he returned to the town with the full intention of ruining Miss Amelia's life the way she ruined his. Upon his return, he takes advantage of Cousin Lymon's admiration for him, as he views Macy as a true man, and uses him to crush Miss Amelia's heart, ransack the café, steal her curios and money, and leave Miss Amelia alone by taking Cousin Lymon along with him as he disappears from town. The novella ends with The Twelve Mortal Men, which is a brief passage of twelve men in a chain-gang, whose actions outline that of what happened in the lonely rural town, and highlights the themes of loneliness and isolation.
6137851	/m/0fs3j5	The Privilege of Youth	Dave Pelzer			 Dave Pelzer's biographical account tells of his teen years as an abused child placed into foster care in California in the 1970s. Currently working at an exhausting pace to spread his message of hope and triumph as a public speaker crossing the country for weeks at a time he recounts the events of his teen years that changed the course of his life. He was rescued in 1973 from a childhood home fraught with abuse, starvation, torture and neglect at the hands of his mother; deemed the third worst case of child abuse on record in California up to that time. Despite the newfound freedom and sense of family he got from his numerous foster families, he was still subjected to bullying and torment at school and in his neighborhoods as he struggled to fit in. Often he would put himself a risk of grave injury doing stupid stunts or taking dares to be accepted by his friends David and Paul. Life was better for Pelzer but still very traumatic as he approached the dreaded age of 18 when foster children are cut loose and must go it alone in the world. Pelzer was determined to succeed, after all he had been put through he refused to be complacent and let life beat him. Pelzer admits he made poor choices along the way by sacrificing school for working menial jobs to save enough money to make it on his own, dropping out of school to work as a car salesman, and dreaming of a career as a Hollywood stuntman. He was fortunate to have the friendship of two men from his neighborhood of Duinsmoore, Mike Marsh and Dan Brazell, who preached to him to finish school and make something of his life. It was his short time living in this neighborhood that made all the difference to Pelzer and the man he became. It was here in the “Leave It To Beaver” world of Menlo Park, CA that he gained a sense of belonging that he had never known. His story is inspiring and has a positive message for kids who think they have a rotten life whether they are in foster homes or living with their parents. Dave Pelzer's message to value what you have, stay in school, work hard and to give your best effort in everything you do has been delivered to thousands of groups across the nation in his role as a spokesman for millions of abused and neglected children.
6138431	/m/0fs4p7	Past Master	R. A. Lafferty	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Past Master is set in the year 2535 on the world of Astrobe, a utopian Earth colony that is hailed as Golden Astrobe, "mankind's third chance" after the decline of both the Old World and New World on Earth. Despite idealistic intentions, it is suffering moral and social decline that may be terminal for both Astrobe and the human race. In an attempt to save their dying civilization, its leaders use time travel to fetch Sir Thomas More (chosen for his fine legal and moral sense) from shortly before his death in the year 1535 to be the president of Astrobe. More struggles with whether to approve of the Astrobian society, noting its possible connections to his own novel Utopia. His judgements soon lead him into conflict both with destructive cosmic forces on Astrobe and with its leaders who thought him a mere figurehead who could be manipulated.
6142983	/m/0fsd0q	The Shoemaker's Holiday	Thomas Dekker	1599		 Aristocrat Rowland Lacy falls in love with middle class girl Rose Oatley, but both their fathers refuse to approve the match because of the class difference and Rowland's spendthrift lifestyle. Rowland is told to redeem himself by joining the army fighting in France. To avoid going, he persuades someone else to take his place and disguises himself as a "Dutch" shoemaker, Hans. He becomes an apprentice of eccentric but hard-working tradesman Simon Eyre and uses this position to be able to find Rose again and secretly marry her. Meanwhile, another shoemaker, Ralph, is sent off to war to the great dismay of his wife, Jane. While he is away, Hammon, a gentleman, falls in love with Jane and attempts to woo her. She is not interested, but once shown a false document that says her husband is dead, she agrees that if she ever marries again, she will marry Hammon. Ralph later returns from the war, with his legs having been amputated. He is further distraught when he cannot find his wife and later suspects (based on the appearance of her shoe that he once made for her) that she has agreed to marry someone else. He locates her, and when given the choice, Jane returns to her husband. Hammon attempts to buy her from Ralph, but Ralph refuses. Later in the play, Simon Eyre is made, first, Sheriff, and then Lord Mayor of London. He decides to create a special holiday to honour apprentices. The King comes to see him. He finds his mannerisms strange, but enjoys his company. The play ends with the King defending Rose and Rowland's marriage to their fathers, and knighting Rowland so that Rose may be a lady and their social classes may be more appropriately matched. He does this while claiming that love goes beyond social class.
6143895	/m/0fsflt	The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler	Robert G. L. Waite			 This book foregoes many common topics of historicity among biographies of Hitler, instead creating a portrait of the dictator solely through his apparent motivations. While questions have lingered as to whether Hitler had Jewish ancestry, and subsequent history has cast great doubt on the idea, Waite proposes that Hitler's own doubts as to this question was a fundamental catalyst of the dictator's political actions. The author attempts to show that Hitler was unaware as to the truth of this matter, made great efforts to covertly shed light on his ancestry, and was deeply affected by the lingering question. Waite's presents a plethora of evidence to consider: Hitler's fixation on blood (both his own and in his speeches on the topic of purity), craniometry, a law banning Jewish employers from having pre-menopausal German handmaidens (as was the situation of Hitler's grandmother), etc.
6147347	/m/0fsn42	Professional Foul	Tom Stoppard	1977	{"/m/05qp9": "Play"}	 The play begins by introducing Anderson, a Cambridge don and professor of Philosophy, en route to a philosophical colloquium in Prague. He is soon joined by McKendrick, another professor of Philosophy headed towards the colloquium, who forces conversation upon the reluctant and detached Anderson. During their conversation in the opening scene, the themes of politics and philosophy are established as being central to the play. In the hotel lobby in Prague Anderson is introduced to another philosopher, Chetwyn, and spots two English footballers, Crisp and Broadbent, who are there for a World Cup qualifying match against Czechoslovakia. Whilst in his room, Hollar, a former student of Anderson's, comes to the door and asks Anderson to smuggle an essay out of the country which claims that the ethics of the individual should be the basis of the ethics of the state, an ideal contradicted by the Czechoslovakian Communist model. Although he objects to smuggling the thesis out of the country on the grounds of "good manners" and a breach of the implied contract between himself and the Czechoslovakian government, Anderson agrees to drop the thesis at Hollar's flat the next day, rather than allow Hollar to run the risk of being caught with dissident material by the police. The next morning sees an encounter between Anderson and the two footballers, Crisp and Broadbent. The conversation reveals Anderson's ulterior motive for coming to Czechoslovakia and his lack of interest in philosophical discussion: he is there to watch the football. It is in this scene that McKendrick mistakes the two footballers for philosophers. In the next scene, Anderson and McKendrick talk to each other about the football match with the thesis of linguistic philosopher Professor Stone as a backdrop. The limitations of linguistic philosophy are indicated here, as well as Anderson's ability to think on his feet. Anderson leaves the colloquium early to return Hollar's thesis to him before heading to the football match, however he is accosted by several police officers who prevent him from leaving the Hollar flat upon entry. It is revealed that on his way from the hotel back to his home, Pavel Hollar was arrested. At this point Anderson is now late for the football match so the police permit him to listen to the match on the radio. The action from the football match parallels events in the flat: Broadbent commits a professional foul on a Czechoslovakian footballer just as the police commit their own professional foul by planting foreign currency in the Hollar residence in order to justify their arrest of an outspoken critic of the government. Eventually permitted to leave, the exhausted Anderson returns to the hotel where he overhears match reports being read by two different English journalists. At dinner that evening, McKendrick introduces the idea of a "Catastrophe Theory" as well as inadvertently providing a philosophical criticism of the actions of Anderson, angering the protagonist. It is learned here that Chetwyn, like Anderson, had an ulterior motive for travel to Czechoslovakia. Mrs Hollar then comes to the hotel and Anderson departs the dinner conversation to talk with her. In the street, Sacha, Pavel Hollar's young son explains what is happening in broken English. On observation of the emotional plight of the two, Anderson vows to do all he can to help. Anderson spends the evening thinking about his situation, eventually going to borrow Grayson's typewriter where he interrupts a drunken McKendrick lecturing an unimpressed crowd, including the footballers. McKendrick's criticisms of Broadbent's actions in the football match lead the footballer to punch McKendrick, knocking him out. At the colloquium the next day Anderson delivers a lecture which he wrote the evening before. The paper is not the one which he had earlier agreed to present, but one which speaks of the conflicts between the rights of individuals and the rights of the community, an allusion to his experiences in Czechoslovakia with Hollar. The colloquium's Chairman stops the potentially damaging criticism by staging a false fire alarm. In the play's penultimate scene, Anderson and Chetwyn's luggage is meticulously searched by officials whilst McKendrick breezes through. Nothing is found on Anderson, leading to questions surrounding the whereabouts of Hollar's thesis, however Chetwyn is found to be smuggling letters to Amnesty International and is detained. The final scene is similar to the way in which the play began. On the plane Anderson and McKendrick discuss the fate of Chetwyn and the events of the weekend. It is then revealed by Anderson that he took advantage of McKendrick's "Catastrophe Theory" by placing Hollar's thesis in McKendrick's bag whilst he was unconscious. In spite of McKendrick's role in Anderson's decision to commit his own professional foul, McKendrick is furious. Anderson concedes that McKendrick's anger is justified, but concludes by saying that ethical philosophy can be very complicated.
6149640	/m/0fsryz	The Book of Dreams	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with an extract from The Book of Dreams, which contains the imaginative writings of Howard Alan Treesong during his unhappy childhood. Among other things, it details the adventures of Seven Paladins, who are key to the fantasy world he devises. Gersen's pursuit of Treesong begins after a conversation with an Interworld Police Coordinating Commission (IPCC) contact, who remarks that the arch criminal has been quiet as of late. Some years earlier, he made himself "Lord of the Overmen" (or "King of Thieves" in less grandiose language) and as recently as three years ago, he almost engineered his appointment as head of the IPCC itself. Gersen and his friend grudgingly admire Treesong's ambition to control the criminal underworld and the Oikumene's sole interstellar police agency at the same time. Gersen concludes that Treesong must be due for another grand gesture any time soon, but admits to himself he possesses insufficient imagination to visualize what it could be. His extensive business empire, managed by Jehan Addels, includes Cosmopolis magazine, for which he often masquerades as the journalist "Henry Lucas". Gersen spends some time examining the Cosmopolis files for any material relating to Treesong. He is on the point of giving up when he discovers a photograph, apparently of a formal dinner, bearing the words "H A Treesong is here". No other likeness of Treesong is known to exist - and the woman who had sold it to the magazine had apparently been killed for it. But there is no way to tell which of the people in the picture is Treesong, so Gersen devises a plan to unmask him. He launches Extant, a livelier sister magazine to Cosmopolis. He then publishes the picture in the free inaugural issue as part of a contest, offering large cash prizes to anyone who can first identify any or all of the ten people in the photograph. An attractive red-haired young woman, Alice Wroke, seeks temporary employment processing the contest entries. Gersen, expecting an attempt at infiltration by Treesong, covertly uses a lie detector on her and confirms his suspicions. Eventually, each of the subjects is identified, except for one man who seems to have a variety of identities. When a contestant submits the correct identification for all ten, Gersen confronts Alice and places most of his cards on the table: that the photograph was intended to identify Treesong, and that the magazine would be interested in interviewing him. However, he conceals his personal interest. Information from the contest leads Gersen to suspect the photograph is of the highest-ranking Fellows of the powerful Institute. It includes seven members of the "Dexad" (the Fellows of ranks 101 to 109 and 111), and the three Fellows of rank 99 (ranks 100 and 110 are always vacant). All save one died at the banquet, poisoned by charnay (see below). The survivor is the man of many names - Treesong himself, clearly the murderer of the others. Having fraudulently acquired the rank of 99, he plans to become the Institute's leader, the Triune (rank 111, hence the name), by default. Three members of the Dexad were not present. One had died recently: the banquet was for choosing his successor from the 99s. Another had broken with the Institute and become a hermit. The last was Alice Wroke's father; Treesong, under a false name, blackmailed Alice into spying on the contest by threats to her father, whom he had in fact already murdered. Gersen locates the last surviving member of the Dexad just ahead of Treesong, and saves him, in the process shooting Treesong in the leg. The new Triune immediately cancels Treesong's spurious rank and brings to an end another plan that would have put the Demon Prince in a position of immense power. Extant receives a late entry to the contest, from someone who identifies Treesong as "Howard Hardoah" from Maunish on the planet Mouderveldt and claims to be his father. The letter also mentions a school reunion, to which Howard has been invited. Treesong himself calls the Extant offices, and identifies the people in the photograph, only to be told that all have been named already, and that he is too late to claim a prize. "Henry Lucas" offers to publish Treesong's memoirs, but Treesong says he has somewhere to go immediately. Gersen suspects that Treesong plans to attend the school reunion. Gersen travels to Maunish. He interviews the elder Hardoah, with the excuse of delivering a prize check, and learns about Treesong's boyhood. He also meets Howard's older brother Ledesmus, who hid Howard's prized "Book of Dreams," an exercise book in which he wrote his childhood fantasies, and tells of Howard's near-murder of his childhood friend Nymphotis Cleadhoe, when he thought Nymphotis had taken it. Ledesmus recovers the book and sells it to Gersen. Gersen contacts Treesong's one-time music teacher, and pays for his orchestra's appearance at the reunion - with Gersen as a member, though an afternoon's lesson leaves him a thoroughly inept musician. His guess is correct. Treesong arrives, accompanied by a band of menacing underlings, and perpetrates imaginative (though non-fatal) humiliations on those who had tormented him. Treesong's admittedly good musical ear is offended by Gersen's poor playing, so he has him thrown out. Out of sight, Gersen dispatches the men assigned to take him away and uses their weapons. This is enough to disrupt Treesong's revenge, but Gersen can do no more than inflict another wound before he has to flee. In a second interview with the Hardoahs he learns that the Cleadhoes moved off-planet, and their destination. Otho Cleadhoe was township marmelizer - who transformed the flesh of corpses into a stony substance, after which the resulting "marmel" (statue) was placed in the cemetery. He still has the Book, and finds there a description of Treesong's "Seven Paladins". On broaching the subject with Alice, who is now his confederate, he learns that Treesong considers the Seven to be the embodiments of various aspects of his own personality, with "Immir" representing normal self. Gersen concludes that the Book would probably lure Treesong out of hiding. He finds willing, but difficult, allies in Nymphotis Cleadhoe's parents, Otho and Tuty - whose only child is dead, and they have no doubt that Howard killed him. Gersen has Cosmopolis publish a sensationalized report of Treesong's exploits at the reunion, and a letter purportedly from Tuty, in which she talks fondly of Howard as their son's friend, and casually mentions an exercise book she still has in her possession. As hoped, this draws Treesong's attention. The Cleadhoes now live on the jungle planet of Bethune Preserve. Treesong comes in search of his precious book. Tuty and Otho lure Treesong to their remote outpost, but double-cross Gersen, leaving him (and Alice) behind. Gersen and Alice manage to borrow a vehicle to follow in, but arrive late. They are shown into Otho's laboratory and museum. Otho has marmelized Treesong's legs, and left him seated in an indoor garden facing the marmel of Nymphotis. Gersen reveals his motivation for seeking the last Demon Prince's downfall. The arch-villain wearily acknowledges himself to have been neatly trapped, mourns the narrow failure of his attempt to make himself the first Emperor of the Gaean Worlds, and asks to be left alone. Gersen declines to take any further revenge on him and leaves with Alice and the Cleadhoes. From behind the door, Gersen overhears a conversation, as between Immir/Treesong and his paladins, in which the lesser paladins bid farewell to their leader and gradually convince him that the situation is truly hopeless. Before they "depart", the paladins perform one last service for Immir. A crash and a splash are heard; Gersen hurries back inside, to find Treesong face down and drowned in a pond, before the overturned chair, though he should have been unable to rise from it and it had been solidly secured. Gersen, his revenge complete, finds himself at a loss. He confesses to Alice that he does not know what he will do now that he has been deserted by his enemies.
6150247	/m/0fst1d	Dragon Fire	Humphrey Hawksley	2000-08-24	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 This novel gives us nightmare scenarios where the world's worst fears begin on 10:00 a.m. on 3 May 2007. A SFF(Special Frontier Force) Major, Gendun Choedrak Assaults Drapchi prison with paratroopers to free Tibetan religious leaders who are being incarcerated there. Far out west, Pakistan launches an attack on the strategic outpost of Kargil, promptly raising the green crescent flag on Indian soil. China accuses India of attacking Chinese soil and declares war. It's Pakistan and China vs India now, 3 nuclear powers. Nuclear arsenals are being mobilized. Later Pakistan is devastated while India and China are threatening nuclear war. Russia says whoever is involved in this matter will have to face her first. The West's greatest nightmares are becoming true.
6150798	/m/0fsv01	Divine Hammer	Chris Pierson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins with Nusendaran (Andras's master), and Andras going into a village to sacrifice a black sheep. However, the Divine Hammer ambush them, and they manage to kill Nusendaran, and are aiming for him next. Suddenly, Andras is teleported away by Fistandantilus. They watch Nusendaran burnt at the stake, so Andras desires revenge against the Kingpriest and his forces. Just then, Fistandantilus offers Andras a choice to become his student. He agrees. Meanwhile, Cathan and the Divine Hammer are eradicating a temple to Chemosh hidden in an abandoned lighthouse. They get onto little longboats, and quickly arrive at the lighthouse. They manage to kill the guards, and work their way down to the main worship hall. The Deathmaster, head priest, aims for Cathan with foul magic, however, Damid, a friend of Cathan's, pushes Cathan away and dies instead. Tithian manages to kill the Deathmaster by throwing his sword at him. After the battle, they receive orders to return to Istar. Cathan also promises to knight Tithian. After returning to Istar, Cathan learns he is to be the escort for the new envoy from the Order of High Sorcery, Leciane, since the previous one died. On the way to the Tower of High Sorcery in Istar to bring her to the palace, the magical olive trees guarding the entrance manage to "persuade" Cathan off the path, causing him to lose his memories of that day. Fortunately, Leciane rescues him, and then he takes her to her quarters in the palace. Later, they head for a tournament held by Cathan's sister. On the way, Leciane is told by the head mage, Vincil, to charm Cathan, however she refuses and lies. Andras is taken to a ruined building a distance away from Istar, which is where he spends his life until one day, when he knows he's ready to attack the Kingpriest. He manages to summon many quasits (abyssal imps), and sends them to attack the Divine Hammer during the tournament. The Divine Hammer are very weak from the tournament, so many die very quickly, including the Grand Marshal. The Kingpriest attempts to banish the quasito, however a spell of Andras's prevents the godly magic from working. Leciane manages to persuade the Kingpriest to let her try, and she succeeds. They go after Andras, and manage to find many quasito around a ruined building. They deduce that their attacker must live there, so they storm the building. Andras is captured, and to be burnt at the stake. However, just before he is burnt, the Conclave rescues him so that they can levy their punishment on him first. Ironically, Fistandantilus steals Andras away from the Conclave. Andras becomes a fetch with the aid of Fistandantilus, and he takes on the form of the Patriarch of Seldjuk. Leciane manages to persuade the Kingpriest and the head of the Conclave to have a moot, however, Andras, as the Patriarch of Seldjuk, stabs the Kingpriest. The Kingpriest's guards think the Patriarch was mind controlled by the wizards, and so they begin to fight. The wizards quickly realize they can't hold out, so begin to attempt to teleport away. They arrive back in the tower, and find out that Vincil has an axe embedded in his back, and is dying. Since Vincil was Leciane's lover, she kisses him, then he dies. The Kingpriest makes Cathan the new Grand Marshal. Faced with the prospect of war with the Kingpriest, the wizards knew that they would lose. Therefore they begin to move all magical artifacts and books, to Wayreth, since the populace isn't ready for artifacts of mass destruction. They also disenchanted those that couldn't be moved. Since Fistandantilus is a renegade, he decides to aid the Kingpriest, sending him some magical seeds that can clear a path through the groves that protect the towers. The Kingpriest distributes the seeds to all of his allies attacking the towers. In Daltigoth, the general decides to attack early. Since the tower wasn't emptied, the Order of High Sorcery decides to destroy the tower, which levels the city. The Kingpriest receives word of this, however doesn't tell any of his other allies attacking the towers, believing it is an attempt by "forces of evil" to sway his holy crusade. Leciane comes to warn Cathan, who is going to attack the tower in Losarcum with the rest of the Divine Hammer. Unfortunately, she is interrupted before she manages to tell Cathan everything. When Cathan and the Divine Hammer attack the tower, Cathan notices that there seems to be a surge of magic in the apex, and quickly realizes the tower will explode. He and Tithian attempt to escape, but are confused by the twisting passages. Leciane finds them and teleports them away, but she takes a fatal wound in the process. Cathan becomes unconscious during the spell, and wakes up days later. By then, Leciane is already dead. Cathan parts with Tithian when they reach Istar, and Cathan decides that what the Kingpriest is doing is evil. He embarrasses the Kingpriest in front of all the courtiers, then leaves Istar. He is never seen again. Andras begins to feel guilty about what he has done, and wishes to undo it. However, Fistandantilus decides that payment is due then, so takes over Andras's mind. Andras, under Fistandantilus's spell, curses the tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas, so that no one will be allowed into the tower until the master of the past and present claims the tower. Fistandantilus threatens the Kingpriest's, by becoming his enemy if he doesn't let Fistandantilus join the Kingpriest's court. The Kingpriest is forced to agree.
6150915	/m/0fsv7b	The Dargonesti	Paul B. Thompson	1995-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins with a Qualinesti princess, Vixa, and some forces sent on the Evenstar to rescue an elven ambassador escaping from the advancing Ergothian army. However, a white wall of fog appears, and tows their ship away for an entire night. The fog clears to reveal a sandy island, which they find out is nine hundred leagues away from their previous location. The island is also unlisted on any maps. They explore the island, and see figures that wear green enamel armor and braided eelweed, who attempt to kidnap one of the exploration party. The exploration party attacks the figures, at which point the figures run away. They follow them into a cave, which collapses as soon as they are in it. While in the cave, they realize they landed on a kraken, and they went into its blowhole. They cause the kraken so much pain that it to releases them while underwater. Unable to swim, they begin to drown. Luckily rescued by Dargonesti elves, known as the green enameled figures. The four that survived are taken to a hollow volcano on the outskirts of Urione, a Dargonesti city, which is full of air and houses other captives. They meet Garnath and others there, and learn that the Dargonesti forces them to build walls to help defend against the chilkit, gigantic lobsters that are the enemies of the Dargonesti. Vixa meets Coryphene, as well as the Queen of the Dargonesti in Urione, Uriona. Vixa is told by Coryphene never to look at the queen, and to be obedient. She learns that Uriona wants to become rule of the Silvanesti, and appears mad. She chafes at being obedient, so she tries to catch a glimpse of Uriona. She sees Uriona reflected by the floor, and then Uriona's green eyes flash, causing her to become unconscious. As a punishment for being disobedient, she is sent to the volcano. While building a wall, the foursome are attacked by the chilkit. They are forced to fight with nothing but their bare hands, and fortunately they survive. However, many others didn't. After working for a while, one morning the Dargonesti don't arrive to escort them to work, and they can soon hear there is fighting going on outside. The dwarves had stored many jars of gnomefire, otherwise known as Greek fire, which was made from the minerals inside the volcano. Chilkit begin to enter the volcano, and the water level also begins to rise. The captives use the gnomefire on the chilkit. However, one manages to corner Vixa, but she is luckily saved by Garnath. Unfortunately, Garnath is killed while saving her. The water level is now very high, and the gnomefire used up the remaining oxygen in the volcano, so the captives are forced to swim out of the volcano, but they have no air shells to breathe through, and Vixa becomes unconscious after swimming outside. She is rescued by Naxos, who takes her to the surface. However, they cannot get back to Urione, because they have no air shells, and Vixa can't hold her breath for that long. Naxos decides to make her one of the sea brothers, allowing her to shape change into a dolphin at will. They swim back to Urione, however she conceals her ability so that Naxos won't get into trouble. She meets up with the rest of the captives in a barracks where they are held. Gundabyr agrees to show the Dargonesti how to use gnomefire so that they can destroy the chilkit, in exchange for freedom. However, Uriona secretly tells Coryphene that the captives must not be allowed to live. Since the captives are now heroes for saving the city from the chilkit, captives are showered with gifts, and can leave the barracks. However, none come back. Vixa soon realizes that the soldiers under Coryphene's orders are killing captives, so she decides to escape. Gundabyr is held prisoner in a guard room, so Vixa rescues him, then Vixa as a dolphin carries Gundabyr on her back, heading for Silvanesti. They attempt to warn the Silvanesti of an attack, but are considered mad and are held captive in an outlying fort. When the Dargonesti do come to attack the fort, the general sets them free to help fight. However, the Dargonesti brought a kraken, which quickly levels the fort. The two manage to escape and reach Silvanost to warn the Speaker of the Stars, Elendar. With the help of Vixa and Gundabyr, the Silvanesti manage to defeat the Dargonesti, and hold Uriona, Coryphene and other Dargonesti elves captive. Elendar decides to marry Uriona, however, their sons will not be in line for the throne. Vixa tells Coryphene that Uriona is going to marry Elendar, and so Coryphene commits suicide, because he loved Uriona passionately, so followed all of her wishes and commands. However, Uriona always thought of him as a tool to help her achieve her dreams. Vixa and Gundabyr are given a griffin to ride to Thorbardin, where she drops Gundabyr off. Then, she rides back to Qualinesti, and is joyfully received by her parents, who thought her dead. They hold a feast in her honor, and her story is spread throughout the realm. Since their daughter can carry responsibility now, she is given command of the Wildrunners. She begins to feel a calling to return to the sea, so days later she abandons her post, writes a letter to her parents saying good bye, and goes to live underwater as Naxos's wife.
6151708	/m/0fsw8f	They Thirst			{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The prologue starts in Hungary as young Andy is waiting for his father to come home after a hunting trip. His father comes in late but is different. Andy comes to his father when told to and finds he is pale and cold. Andy's mother suspecting that he is a creature he was hunting for shoots him. His face is blown apart but continues to come after the two. They then run away into the cold blizzard. His father shouts "I'LL FIND YOU" as they run away. Andy and his mother finally go to a house away from their town. Later Andy is now a detective trying find the Roach who rapes, murders, and then puts cockroaches in the mouth of the women. Andy works leaves him stressed from days and days of work. Meanwhile an albino sociopath killer is making his way to Los Angeles by the calls of someone and visions. At a bar in Texas he kills everyone with a Mauser and makes his way to Los Angeles. Gayle Clark is a reporter and while going to work with her boyfriend they find the Hollywood Cemetery is ransacked. The people who did this left the bodies in a road and stole the coffins. Andy is told this and goes to the watchman to tell him what to do if the men did it again to just stay in the house and close the binds. At the same time Rico, a Chicano gangster, gets his girl and finds she is pregnant. But the girl runs away after asking whether it's his. The girl runs while Rico tries to find her. But she is overtaken by the vampires in a dark street. That same night Wes Richer is having a large party after his successful comedy show. But his wife is a medium and she decides to have a vision with a Ouija board with a non-believer. She is told by a spirit that there's evil and when asked what is this evil it replies, "THEY THIRST" Before dawn the Prince Vampire is in Disneyland and sees the Headmaster. The Headmaster tells him that endless possibilities will be possible once he conquers Los Angeles. When seen after talking to him by a watchman he turns into a large bat and flies away. es:Sed de sangre
6153632	/m/0fsz7r	The Word	Irving Wallace	1972-03-27	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot of the novel is based around the discovery within Roman ruins of a new gospel written by Jesus' younger brother, James in the first century. In the gospel, many facts of Jesus' life, including the years not mentioned in the Bible, are revealed not to be as factual as they were once thought to be. Steven Randall, a divorced public relations executive running his own company in New York City, is the man hired by New Testament International, an alliance of American and European Bible publishers, to give publicity to James' Gospel as published by them. The project has been top-secret for six years, and now it is about to be unveiled to a world long in need of Christian revival. However, as Steven gets more involved in the project he runs into several questionable circumstances, as radical clerics centered in Central Europe oppose the publication of the document, since it would give ammunition for the conservative churches to keep the flow of worship from the top to the bottom, instead of bringing the faith to the masses. A struggle for control of the World Council of Churches, the suspicious absence in the project of archeologist Prof. Agusto Monti, the original discoverer &ndash; and whose daughter Angela is a potential love interest for Steve &ndash; , and the potential notion that the newly discovered gospel itself is a forgery made in the 20th century instead of a legitimate historical document, all are guaranteed to make Steve question the worth of the new job he's undertaking, and the newly re-found faith in God he acquired along with it. *New York City, Steve's place of work and regular abode. *Oak City, Wisconsin, Steve's hometown (fictional; may be based on Oak Creek and/or Pleasant Prairie). *London, England, where Steve meets Dr. Bernard Jeffries and Dr. Florian Knight *Amsterdam, Netherlands, headquarters of the New Testament International project, and of Maertin de Vroome's Westerkerk. *Paris, France, home of Henri Aubert's lab at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique *Mainz, Germany home of Karl Hennig's printing press *Simonopetra Monastery, Mount Athos, Greece *Rome, Italy, base of the Monti family, and its former Roman seaport Ostia Antica, place of the discovery of the Gospel According to James *Milan, Italy, where Steve first meets Angela
6155879	/m/0ft3bd	Footfalls	Samuel Beckett	1975		 The play is in four parts. Each opens with the sound of a bell. After this the lights fade up to reveal an illuminated strip along which a woman, May, paces back and forth, nine steps within a one metre stretch. In each part, the light will be somewhat darker than in the preceding one. Therefore it is darkest when the strip is lit up without May at the very end. Correspondingly, the bell gets slightly softer each time. Beckett introduced a "Dim spot on face during halts at R [right] and L [left]" so that May's face would be visible during her monologues. The play has a very musical structure and timing is critical. “The walking should be like a metronome”, Beckett instructed, “one length must be measured in exactly nine seconds.” “These ‘life-long stretches of walking,’ he told his German May, Hildegard Schmahl, are ‘the centre of the play; everything else is secondary’.” To ensure that every step could be heard “sandpaper was attached to the soles of [Billie] Whitelaw’s soft ballet slippers” during the London premiere. As she covers the nine paces (seven in earlier printed texts) she hugs herself, the arms crossed, with the hands clasping the shoulders in front. ‘When you walk, you slump together, when you speak, you straighten up a bit.’ Schmahl asked Beckett if May’s posture was supposed to express fear? “No, not fear. It expresses that May is there exclusively for herself. She is isolated.” One of a long line of Beckett protagonists whose name begins with an M, May is a woman in her forties (who should however appear “ageless” according to Beckett). She paces back and forth on a strip of bare landing outside her dying – if not already dead – mother’s room (a vertical ray of light not in the printed text suggests a door barely ajar). The woman, clearly a shadow of her former self, wears tattered nightwear and has a ghostly pallor. Beckett said: “One could go very far towards making the costume quite unrealistic, unreal. It could, however, also be an old dressing-gown, worked like a cobweb … It is the costume of a ghost.” “You feel cold. The whole time, in the way you hold your body too. Everything is frost and night.” The adjective ‘ghostly’ is used frequently – by Beckett himself and others – to describe various aspects of Footfalls. The play – significantly – only has a semblance of a plot. May’s mother is only ever heard. We learn that she is apparently ninety years old and in poor health. The more likely truth is that she is a creation of May’s mind, especially when one examines Beckett’s earlier drafts. As she paces, May and her mother carry on a conversation. They go through the daily routine by rote. Both voices are low and slow throughout. May asks her mother if she requires tending in any way. To each request the mother says: “Yes, but it is too soon.” The full list of comforts offered to the suffering mother carry a biblical resonance: dressings, sponge, lip-moistening and prayer. The suffering daughter, on the other hand, paces on the bare floorboards nailed as in a cross; in the church later ‘she’ paces across the arms of the cross. May asks her mother what age she is. She’s told that she is in her “forties” but only after May has first let her mother know that she is ninety. The mother asks May: “Will you never have done … revolving it all … In your poor mind?” The pacing back and forth is an externalisation of this inner unresolved issue. “It All” was a title Beckett was considering before he opted for Footfalls though we never discover what “it” might be. May may or may not be a ghost but she is undoubtedly a haunted individual; the umbilical cord has clearly never been severed. “M (May) and V (Voice) create a dialogue which is simultaneously time present and time past, for, although the mother’s voice is an echo from the past, May is speaking to her in the endless present dramatized before our eyes. Quite literally in Footfalls, the past is in the present.” Simply put: they are ‘living’ in the past. In the second part, the mother’s voice addresses the audience directly. She tells us that she too is watching her daughter along with us literally through the corridor wall. We learn that the turning point in May’s life, the “it” happened in girlhood: “when other girls her age were out at … lacrosse” she had already begun her obsessive pacing. From that time on significantly she has not ventured outside. In the beginning the hall had been carpeted but May had asked her mother to have it taken up. When questioned the child had said because she needed to “hear the feet, however faint they fall”; “the “motion alone is not enough”. In an earlier draft the voice tells the audience: “My voice is in her mind” suggestive of the fact that the mother actually is only a figment of May’s imaginings. This is borne out by the fact that voice tells the story of a girl who “called her mother” ,” instead of simply talking about a girl who “called me.” This is the kind of slip May might make if she was narrating the mother’s part herself. We also learn how May sleeps, “in snatches” with her head bowed against the wall which is reminiscent of Mary in Watt. “Beckett explains [why] the mother interrupts herself in the sentence ‘In the old home, the same where she — (pause)’ and then continues ‘The same where she began. She was going to say: ... the same where she was born. But that is wrong, she hasn’t been born. She just began. It began. There is a difference. She was never born.’ There is the connection with the Jung story [detailed below]. A life, which didn’t begin as a life, but which was just there, as a thing”. In Part II the mother speaks of the daughter, in the third part, the daughter of the mother, in a way that is exactly parallel. ‘One must sense the similarities of both narratives,’ explained Beckett, ‘Not so much from the text as from the style, from the way that the text is spoken.’ In a manner similar to Mouth in Not I, “the shift into third person narrative and the indefinite pronoun work both to objectify the text, making it into a separate entity that seems disconnected from personal history. In that sense the recitation becomes a verbal structure repeated in consciousness rather than a sequence of memories in spontaneous association.” This part can be subdivided into four sections. After each section May halts for a time and then resumes pacing. This part opens with May uttering the word, “Sequel” twice, which Beckett asked to be pronounced as “Seek well” – another pun – since she is seeking for herself. May begins to tell a story in which an undefined ‘she’, probably herself, has taken to haunting the local Anglican church, which she enters through a locked door; there ‘she’ walks ‘up and down, up and down, his poor arm’” The description of the spectre is similar to how the audience sees May: “a tangle of tatters” and her pacing is comparable except that the ghost paces along the crossbeam whereas May paces the length of the stake. A residual haunting is where the entity does not seem to be cognizant of any living beings and performs the same repetitive act. It often is the reenactment of a tragic event, although it may sometimes be a very mundane act that was repeated often in life. It is generally not considered an actual ghost but some form of energy that remains in a particular location. The ghost goes about their business oblivious to the world of the living – what Beckett meant by the expression “being for herself,” Night by night ghosts pace their prescribed path offering no explanation to the viewers as to why they re-enact the same scene over and over. The answers – or at least best guesses – have to come from research done by the living in the real world. The apparition is “by no means invisible” and can be seen “in a certain light.” : a Latin dictum meaning "to be is to be perceived." Additionally, a ghost does not have to be dead; the word can be defined as: “a mere shadow or semblance; a trace: He's a ghost of his former self.” May makes up a story about a woman, Amy (an anagram of May) and her mother, a Mrs Winter. Although he knew a Mrs Winter in real life the name would have been chosen to reflect the coldness of “his own ‘winter’s tale’, just as he changed the ‘south door’ of the church in the manuscript to the ‘north door’ at a late stage for the same reason.” The name Amy is another pun: “A me.” Mrs Winter has become aware of something strange “at Evensong” and questions her daughter about it while at supper. She asks if Amy had seen anything strange during the service but the daughter insists she did not because she “was not there” a point her mother takes issue with because she is convinced that she heard her distinctly say “Amen.” This is not a dramatisation of the event that traumatised May however as that happened in girlhood and Amy is described in the text as “scarcely a girl any more.” “‘The daughter only knows the voice of the mother’. One can recognize the similarity between the two from the sentences in their narratives, from the expression. The strange voice of the daughter comes from the mother. The ‘Not enough?’ in the mother’s story must sound just like the ‘Not there?’ of Mrs W in Amy’s story, for example. These parallelisms are extremely important for the understanding of the play … One can suppose that she has written down everything which she has invented up to this, that she will one day find a reader for her story—therefore the address to the reader …‘Words are as food for this poor girl.’ Beckett says. ‘They are her best friends.’ … Above all, it is important that the narrative shouldn’t be too flowing and matter-of-course. It shouldn’t give the impression of something already written down. May is inventing her story while she is speaking. She is creating and seeing it all gradually before her. It is an invention from beginning to end. The picture emerges gradually with hesitation, uncertainty – details are always being added” Just as the light from Part I to Part III becomes constantly darker, the tone quieter, so the walking gets slower. When she begins to walk, there’s a small hesitation, as though she were unsure if she should walk or not. “Beckett pointed out that on her last walk along the strip of light, her energy runs out after three paces and she has to wait there until enough vitality returns to drag herself to the end of the light.” “As the play ends, Mrs Winter speaks to Amy the very words spoken to May by her mother: ‘Will you never have done … revolving it all?’” Up until this point May has identified who has been speaking, At the end, when ‘Mrs W’ says, “Amy” it is May who answers, “Yes, Mother” – significantly she does not say, “Amy: Yes, Mother.” Can May be the ghost and be ‘Amy’? Yes, if each reflects a different aspect of who she is. In the final section there is no one on stage. The bell chimes, the lights come up and then fade out. “The final ten seconds with ‘No trace of May’, is a crucial reminder that May was always ‘not there’ or only there as a ‘trace’.” As Beckett told Billie Whitelaw, when she asked him if May was dead, he replied, “Let’s just say you’re not all there.” This has been interpreted by many to mean that May is not dead. But it should be remembered that [a] ghost has a curious relation to finitude, which means it is never entirely unearthly or out of this world. [G]hosts, … are traditionally tied to places, condemned for a certain time to walk the earth. In an interview with Jonathan Kalb, Billie Whitelaw describes May’s journey: “In Footfalls … [May] gets lower and lower and lower until it’s like a little pile of ashes on the floor at the end, and the light comes up and she’s gone.” James Knowlson and John Pilling in Frescoes of the Skull (p 227) come close to summarising the entire play in a single sentence: “We realise, perhaps only after the play has ended, that we may have been watching a ghost telling a tale of a ghost (herself), who fails to be observed by someone else (her fictional alter ego) because she in turn is not really there … even the mother’s voice may simply be a voice in the mind of a ghost.”
6156403	/m/0ft4d7	Leroy And The Old Man			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Fleeing from a neighbor's assailants, who believe he has identified them to the police, LeRoy leaves his Chicago housing project to live with his grandfather, a shrimp fisherman, in Mississippi. This was Butterworth's last children's book. He also wrote under several pseudonyms, most notably as W.E.B. Griffin.
6156916	/m/0ft5h0	Craii de Curtea-Veche				 Written as a first-person narrative, Craii de Curtea-Veche depicts the lives of the rich and educated boyar family descendants Paşadia and Pantazi, who are often visited by the narrator. The latter admits his admiration for Paşadia and his fascination with Pantazi. The two's mysterious existence is revealed only through conversations and banquet episodes, which tend to end in champagne-drinking bouts and orgies. They appear versed in Western manners and refined salon culture, but love to refresh their senses by submerging in the muddy atmosphere of Bucharest brothels. Their destiny intersects with that of Gore Pîrgu, a brutish self-seeker who is on his way up on the social scale. A combination of venality, depravity and bombastic, often demagogic discourse, Pîrgu is meant to illustrate the alternative and undertoned "Balkan-like" Romanian identity. He manages to sell Ilinca, an impoverished young noblewoman, to the libertine Paşadia, but the latter is defied by Pantazi, who offers to marry Ilinca himself and thus save her family's honour. However, fate puts an end to such a romantic happy ending, as the young woman catches scarlet fever and dies, while Paşadia ends his aventurous life in a heart attack during one of his sexual escapades. The latter stage of the novel corresponds with the onset of World War I and the drastic changes it brought to Romanian society.
6157405	/m/0ft67j	The Guardians	Samuel Youd	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/070l2": "Soft science fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Rob - a fourteen-year-old boy living in the "Greater London Conurb" - is orphaned following the death of his father. There is considerable suspicion and secrecy surrounding his death. Rob is sent away to a State Boarding School where harsh disciplinary measures and ritual bullying by seniors soon make life intolerable; in his desperation, he devises a plan of escaping to the County, reasoning that he will avoid detection there much more easily than anywhere in the heavily-surveilled Conurbs. He is further driven by the fact that his mother was also from the County and had herself crossed over into the Conurbs to be with his father. Slipping out and making his way to Reading, he comes up against the Barrier dividing that Conurb from the County adjacent. The Barrier, unmanned, proves be a much less of a challenge than popular rumour suggests, and, finding a spot at which he is able to dig a gap underneath that is large enough to pass through, Rob crosses over into the County. He takes in his expansive surroundings as he continues north-west but does not manage a long distance before he is noticed. A figure on horse spots him and gives chase, catching up quickly as Rob twists his foot running. The rider turns out to be a boy perhaps a year or less older than Rob himself. He appears to be sympathetic to Rob's plight and, introducing himself as Mike Gifford, tends to the blisters on Rob's feet before taking him to a nearby cave where he can rest in concealment. Mike attempts to make the cave a little more hospitable for him by appropriating food, blankets and such from the Gifford household, but these discrepancies are eventually noticed by the housekeeper and reported to Mike's mother, whose suspicion is also aroused by Mike's staying out longer. She finds the cave and confronts Rob. Uncertain about how to proceed, Mrs Gifford allows Rob to remain in the cave one more night. In spite of his impulse to immediately set out again and avoid the possibility of being turned in to the authorities, Rob stays put, partly because he wishes to see Mike again. The following morning, both Mike and Mrs Gifford visit the cave and speak to him; Mrs Gifford proposes that, as he will not willingly return to the Conurbs, and as Mike is determined to help him, the only plausible option is to fit Rob into the family. Amazingly, Mr Gifford has already been told the story and has given his approval. So, declaring him a relative raised in Nepal (accounting for his lack of County manners and behaviour) and playing out his supposed arrival from the nearest station, Rob is inducted into the Gifford family. Changing his surname from Randall to Perrott, Rob does his best to adapt to life in the Gifford house, getting to know Mr Gifford (a quiet, unassuming man whose greatest interest seems to lie in bonsai) and the servants, as well as Cecily, Mike's younger sister. She is not told Rob's story, as it is feared that she is too young to keep the secret safely. Rob is taught various skills such as horse-riding to help him blend in with County society. These are put to the test when the Giffords hold a garden party and he is engaged in searching conversation by Sir Percy Gregory and an elderly man named Harcourt. Under the stress, Rob fears his answers are unconvincing; his worries are put to rest, however, when Harcourt dismisses Rob's mannerisms as typical of a "Nepalese settler". Several months pass. Rob becomes increasingly confident and assured of his position, even going so far as to win third place in the archery contest of the year, beating Mike who comes in eleventh. Rob joins Mike at school; though he notices Mike's attitude toward him has changed, the two still talk frankly, especially about differences between the Conurbs and the County. Mike brings Rob to a gathering held by a senior boy named Daniel Penfold, where a heated discussion on both the failings and the merits of the current social system ensues. While most of the boys present laugh it off, Rob notices Mike does not. Later, in the privacy of their room, Mike shares with Rob his knowledge of a gang of organised revolutionaries and hints that Rob should join, given his knowledge of the Conurbs. Rob refuses, both on principle and for fear of his secret being divulged. Christmas arrives and Rob celebrates it in the way of the County gentry. Mrs Gifford speaks to him about his good progress at school, noting that Mike is not doing as well. As Mike and Rob are about to visit the Penfold family, she also raises her suspicions about Mike’s dealings with them, especially with the older Penfold boy, Roger, whose Army record is not entirely clean. She asks Rob to watch over her son. The visit passes largely uneventfully for Rob, in spite of Roger Penfold's somewhat seditious talk during dinner. On the ride home, Mike and Rob again fall to arguing over the state of affairs; Mike declares that he probably would not have been interested in these issues if he had not run across Rob. Another school term passes. One Friday, Mike pulls out of a planned fishing trip with Rob, saying that he must ride to Oxford to see about a horse. Several hours later, news arrives that a violent uprising has begun somewhere in that area, and that both Oxford and Bristol (government headquarters) have been taken by armed rebels. Rob returns in haste to the Giffords' where Mrs Gifford demands he tell her what he knows about Mike's involvement. He does, and she rebukes him angrily, reminding him of Mike's kindness to him when he was in need. Ashamed, Rob prepares to ride out to meet a band of vigilantes countering the insurrection, but Mrs Gifford softens and asks him to stay as all the men of the house have already ridden out. No clear news arrives due to the telephone exchange being down, and rumours run rife. The next morning, Mr. Gifford and his men return to the house; it emerges that the revolt had been put down without their aid. The younger Penfold is said to have been killed and there is no news of Mike, though his name is not on the incomplete list of dead and wounded. That night, Mike steals into the house and visits Rob, unbeknownst to the family. It is his last visit; he is fully aware of his status as a fugitive (as Rob once was) and realises that his involvement in the revolt means that he can no longer remain in the County. He declares his intention to cross the Barrier into the Conurbs, where the movement has "friends". Rob tries to dissuade him and threatens to raise the alarm but is restrained by the thought that Mike had not turned him in when he had been in a similar position. Mike gives Rob an address in the Conurb where he can be found, should he change his mind and decide to join him. They shake hands and he rides out. The next day, a patrol stops at the Gifford house with orders to escort Rob for questioning. Rob's initial apprehensions about this are calmed when he is taken not to law enforcement but to Old Hall, Sir Percy Gregory's home. Over coffee and cherry cake, Rob comfortably recounts his old Nepal backstory again in response to Sir Percy's prompting questions. Sir Percy, however, shocks him when complimenting him by using his real surname. It becomes clear that Rob's true identity has been known to him for a long time now and that the authorities have tolerated his presence in the County. Using this as leverage, Sir Percy attempts to manipulate Rob into informing. Rob tells him everything except for Mike's late-night visit and the secret address; this seems to satisfy Sir Percy, though he had been hoping to find out more about the leaders of the movement and their present location. Disturbingly, Sir Percy tells Rob of what is to be done with Mike if he is found: a certain surgical procedure on the brain which renders the subject docile and obedient. He also tells Rob of the secret group of overseers responsible for the present system (the titular "Guardians") and, having appraised the intelligence and initiative Rob has shown in coming this far, offers to recruit him. Rob returns home by evening. Mrs Gifford tells him that she is aware of Mike's visit the night previous - having again noted the absence of some household articles, such as food and clothing - and again rebukes Rob, with great sadness instead of anger this time, for not doing what she feels would have been the right thing. To justify himself, Rob explains about the operation that would have been performed on Mike had he turned him in. To Rob's horror, Mrs Gifford reveals that she knows of this, and further that Mr Gifford himself had been subject to it; hence his preoccupation with bonsai and little else. This revelation causes an epiphany for Rob Perrott. He realises that Mike had inherited a spirit of freedom from his father, and though his father had been forced into submission, Mike had not grown up entirely blind to the oppression around him. It had simply taken contact with someone from the other side - Rob, a Conurban - to spark rebellion in him. Rob also realises that he had almost bought into the groupthink himself by assimilating into the gentry with such determination that he had forgotten his Conurban past, even taking up the offer to join the Guardians. He makes a decision: either he can remain in the place he has won in County society, now in perfect safety, or he can join the movement which has fled to the Conurbs and struggle alongside Mike in liberating the masses. The story closes with Rob leaving the Giffords at night and returning to the Barrier, trowel in hand.
6161733	/m/0ftg74	The Lies of Locke Lamora	Scott Lynch	2006-06-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After a devastating plague, a man known as the Thiefmaker pays off the city guard to allow him to take in thirty newly-orphaned individuals, whom he plans to train as thieves. One orphan sneaks into the group of paid children, "thirty-one of thirty". The Thiefmaker soon discovers that this one child, Locke Lamora, is extremely clever but not "circumspect", and is a liability due to his lack of foresight or restraint. The Thiefmaker decides to sell Locke to Chains, a priest of the Nameless Thirteenth god, the Crooked Warden who protects thieves. Chains uses a temple dedicated to one of the twelve respectable gods as a front to operate the Gentlemen Bastards. They play confidence games on the city's richest citizens. This in defiance of the Secret Peace ,an unspoken agreement between the criminal underground and nobility of Camorr that establishes a toleration of thievery and mischief as long as the nobility are not targeted). Over time, Locke becomes known as the "Thorn of Camorr", an identity which is never linked to Locke, who maintains the pretense of being a perfectly ordinary sneak thief. In time, Locke becomes garrista (leader) of the Gentlemen Bastards. His crew includes Jean Tannen, an expert fighter (especially with hatchets- his favorite pair is nicknamed "The Wicked Sisters"); Calo and Galdo Sanza, a pair of jack-of-all-trades twins; a young apprentice named Bug; and a woman named Sabetha, whom Locke loves and who, for unspecified reasons, does not appear in the novel. At the beginning of the novel, the Gentlemen Bastards are commencing an elaborate confidence game against Don Lorenzo Salvara and his wife. Locke pretends to be Lukas Fehrwight, a representative of a powerful foreign brandy brewing family that needs to get its stock out of its home state before it erupts into civil war. During the course of this con, a mysterious figure named the Gray King begins killing prominent members of the criminal community. Soon, the Gray King confronts Locke and due to Locke's skills at deception, coerces him to impersonate the Gray King during a meeting with Capa Barsavi, head of Camorr's criminal underworld. It is also revealed that the Gray King employs a Bondsmage, a member of an exclusive guild of sorcerers who are infamous for both the ridiculous fees required to acquire their services and the wrath they collectively bring down on any individual or group that kills one of their members. Despite reassurances that the Bondsmage's magic will protect Locke, things go awry during the meeting. While the Bondsmage's sorcery prevents Locke from being cut or pierced, it confers no superhuman strength, and does not protect against blunt trauma. When the Capa's men discover this, they wrestle him to the ground and capture him. Locke realizes that his capture and execution was the Gray King's plan all along, in order to lower Barsavi's guard. Furthermore, Locke cannot reveal his true identity to Barsavi as the Capa would kill not only him, but the other Gentleman Bastards as well. After a brutal and lengthy beating, Locke is sealed in a funeral cask filled with horse urine and thrown into the harbor. Confident that his enemy is dead, Barsavi invites the entire underworld to a celebration in his headquarters, a dry-docked ship. At the height of the celebration, Barsavi is assassinated by his twin bodyguards (actually the Gray King's sisters), who also kill Barsavi's sons, and his most trusted underlings. The Gray King appears before the stunned onlookers, and takes the name "Capa Raza", declaring himself the new head of the underworld. With help from Bug and Jean, Locke is saved, and they return to the Bastards' home to find it ransacked and Calo and Galdo killed. One of the Gray King's men is lying in wait, and kills Bug before being killed by Locke. Enraged, Locke swears revenge. Down at the docks, Jean kills the Gray King's sisters, while Locke tries to complete the confidence game with what few resources he still possesses. Unfortunately, the Salvaras have been tipped off to Locke's scam; they invite him to the nobility's party on the city's most important holiday, where he is nearly captured by the city's spymaster. After escaping and fleeing to one of his hideouts, Locke finds the Bondsmage waiting for him, already having incapacitated Jean. By exploiting the bondsmage's arrogance and psychic link with his scorpion-hawk familiar, Locke and Jean barely manage to subdue him, and proceed to torture the Gray King's secrets out of him. Wary of the ruthless reputation of the Bondsmagi, the Gentlemen spare the Bondsmage's life, but remove his fingers and tongue rendering him unable to practice his craft. From the Bondsmage, we learn that when the Gray King was a boy, his father had opposed the brokering of the Secret Peace, resulting in the execution of nearly his entire family. In the intervening years, the Gray King's consuming hatred had driven him to build up a vast amount of wealth and stage his complex plot against Capa Barsavi and the nobility of Camorr. His revenge on Barsavi complete, the Gray King turns to exact vengeance upon the nobility. For this, he arranges the delivery of four sculptures as "gifts" to the Duke of Camorr. The statues are actually timebombs filled with Wraithstone (a dangerous mineral used to "gentle" animals, effectively turning them into passive vegetables) and are set to explode at nightfall. Locke rushes back to the party, and manages to warn the assembled nobles before the bombs go off. In view of his selflessness, and despite his numerous crimes against the nobility of Camorr, Locke is allowed to leave to go after the Gray King himself. In single combat aboard the Gray King's ship, Locke finds himself completely outmatched against the Gray King, but manages to trick him and ultimately kill him, avenging his fallen brethren. The novel ends with Jean and Locke aboard a ship setting off for a new life.
6161823	/m/0ftgff	Runaway Ralph	Beverly Cleary	1970	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Fed up with his family, Ralph hops onto his toy motorcycle (given to him by Keith in the first book, The Mouse and the Motorcycle), and speeds down the road away from the Mountain View Inn toward Happy Acres Camp, where he encounters Sam, a nosy watchdog, and is captured by a boy named Garfield (or Garf) and kept as a pet. Separated from his motorcycle, Ralph must endure life in a cage with an obnoxious hamster named Chum. Over time, Ralph and Garf form a relationship that is similar to the one Ralph had with Keith in the first book in the series. Ralph's adventures at Happy Acres Camp include escapades with an evil cat, the return of a missing watch, the escape from his cage, and being reunited with his beloved motorcycle. Ralph eventually begins feeling homesick and strikes a bargain with Garf: return the motorcycle and bring him back to the Mountain View Inn, in exchange for clearing Garf's name (the rest of the children at Happy Acres Camp believe Garf was the one who took the missing watch). Eventually the watch is returned, and Garf reassures Ralph that he will go back home the next day.
6164878	/m/0ftn16	The Amen Corner	James Baldwin	1954	{"/m/05qp9": "Play"}	 The play addresses themes of the role of a church in an African-American family and the effect of a poverty born of racial prejudice on an African-American community. The Amen Corner takes place in two settings: a ‘‘corner’’ church in Harlem and the apartment dwelling of Margaret Alexander, the church pastor, and of her son, David, and sister Odessa. After giving a fiery Sunday morning sermon, Margaret is confronted by the unexpected arrival of her long estranged husband, Luke, who collapses from illness shortly thereafter. Their son, David, along with several elders of the congregation, learn from Luke that, while Margaret had led everyone to believe that he had abandoned her with their son years ago, it was in fact Margaret who had left a dysfunctional Luke and pursued a religious life. This information precipitates confrontations between Margaret and her son, her congregation, and her estranged husband, regarding what they perceive as the hypocritical nature of her religious convictions, and the breakup of her family. After an important conversation with his dying father, David informs Margaret that he is leaving home to pursue his calling as a jazz musician. On his deathbed, Luke declares to Margaret that he has always loved her, and that she should not have left him. Finally, Margaret’s congregation decides to oust her, based on their perception that she unjustly ruined her own family in the name of religion. Only after losing her son, her husband, and her congregation, does Margaret finally realize that she should not have used religion as an excuse to escape the struggles of life and love, but that ‘‘To love the Lord is to love all His children—all of them, everyone!—and suffer with them and rejoice with them and never count the cost!’’
6167034	/m/0ftrmx	The Plot To Save Socrates	Paul Levinson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 The Plot to Save Socrates deals primarily with the concept of time travel, and while the novel rarely discusses time travel directly, it poses several questions about its validity and possibility (or lack thereof). In particular, the characters are trapped in endless Time loops, effectively deprived of free will and having no choice but to take an action which - due to time travel - they already know they have taken. The story begins in Athens, Greece in 2042 with the main character, Sierra Waters, thinking to herself, at which point the rest of the story begins as a flashback (both in her head and in the sense that the characters constantly flash in and out of historic eras). Sierra Waters, a graduate student, receives a copy of a previously unknown dialogue in which Socrates is being offered an escape from his death sentence in ancient Athens by a person named Andros offering to take him into the future and leave a clone behind. The document appears to be genuine, and this takes Sierra onto a path that leads her to a time traveling adventure of her own. On her path she meets up with the great historic inventor Heron of Alexandria but soon realizes that not only is Heron a time traveler himself (from a future later than hers) but is a suspicious and ruthless character. Later on she would encounter the renowned Athenian general Alcibiades, help save his life at the time when history records his death in 404 BC, become his lover and fall deeply in love with him, and help set him on a very extensive and fruitful later long life which would remain unknown to historians. The story tangles itself a bit as more and more characters appear to be intertwined with each other and on occasion even the same person at different points in life. However, the novel ultimately untangles itself, somewhat satisfying the plot's plausibility although leaving unanswered any deeper metaphysical qualms the reader might have. Together with various fictional characters, the story also involves Plato, and of course Socrates - who only comes onstage in the last part - as well as the 19th Century publisher William Henry Appleton. There are scenes across time, placed in the Ancient Library of Alexandria, Victorian New York City, and Roman London. At various points it is mentioned that Sierra Waters would eventually become the famous mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria. This theme is taken up in a sequel, "Unburning Alexandria", of which the first two chapters were published as a standalone novelette in the November, 2008 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact and which had not yet been published in full as of October 2011.
6169154	/m/0ftx1j	Eh Joe	Samuel Beckett	1965		 Eh Joe is the complete antithesis to ... but the clouds ... in which a man strains nightly to evoke the image of a woman with little success. Like O in Film, Joe has gone through his routine, doing what he feels he needs to do to protect himself and like the man in Film he is sitting quietly thinking he is safe. But he is not. It is not a face he finds watching himself but a voice he hears, a woman’s voice. As the voice progresses we move closer and closer to Joe. To Alan Schneider, Beckett wrote on 7 April 1966: "Voice should be whispered. A dead voice in his head. Minimum of colour. Attacking. Each sentence a knife going in, pause for withdrawal, then in again." 36” – The voice wants to know if Joe has checked everything. Why is he still sitting there with the light on? Why doesn’t he go to bed? He’s changed the covers. 32” – She reminds him that he’d told her that the best was still to come but that it was the last thing he did say to her as he hurried her into her coat and bundled her out the door. 28” – She is not the first voice that has come to him like this, in his mind; although the woman hints that the source may be external. His father’s voice came to him for years until Joe found a way to stop him talking, to metaphorically throttle him, then his mother and finally, others, “[a]ll the others”, everyone it seems who ever loved him. 24” – She asks if there is anyone left who might love him. He’s reduced to paying for sex, once a week. She warns him to be careful he doesn’t run out of people to take advantage of because then there would only be him left to adore him until he too died. She assures him that she is not in heaven and not to expect to go there himself. 20” – The woman recalls one time the two of them were together. It was summer, they were sitting together on the grass watching the ducks, holding hands and exchanging vows. He’d complimented her on her elocution and she remarks how well he used to express himself. Now, like he did with his parents and the others, he has “[s]queezed her down to this”, the slow monotonous drone we hear. She knows her time is limited and wonders when all she will have left is a whisper. She lashes out at him and asks him to imagine if he never managed to rid himself of her until he died and was with her in death himself. 16”– Joe has been a religious man. She wants to know if he’s as righteous as he used to profess to be. She quotes from the parable of Jesus about the rich man and says one day God will talk to him like she is doing and, when he does, it’ll be time for him to die. 12” – Joe had said that the best was to come. She tells him that, for her at least, it did. She found someone far better than he was and lists off all the ways. 8” – She did all right. “But there was one didn’t.” One of Joe’s other loves, a young, slim, pale girl did not fare so well. He said the same thing to her that the best was yet to come, just as he did with Voice, as he bundled the girl out the door with no intention of furthering the relationship now he’d got what he wanted from her. In fact his aeroplane ticket was in his pocket ready for him to make good his escape. The timeline is unclear but the likelihood is that his relationship with Voice came first. 4” – She wants to know if Joe knew what happened to her, if she’d told him. Of course she hadn’t. The first he’d heard about it was an announcement in the Independent. Joe tries harder to throttle the voice. She knows her time is short and begins to goad him. “Mud thou art,” she tells him – more commonly heard as “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” – Genesis 3:19. 0” – The woman proceeds to tell him what exactly happened to the girl he abandoned. Voice describes her going down to the sea close to her house wearing only her lavender slip where she attempts to drown herself but it doesn’t work. The girl returns to the house, sopping wet, fetches a razor – the make Joe recommended to her – goes back down the garden, this time to the viaduct, where she also fails to slit her wrists. She tears a strip of silk from her slip and ties it round the scratch. She goes back to the house and this time gets some tablets. She takes a few on her way back down the garden. When she reaches the viaduct she decides to head further down near the Rock and takes some more on the way. When she reaches the spot she empties the tube and lies down in the end with her face a few feet from the – presumably incoming – tide. At this point Beckett added the following instruction, which is not included in the printed text: “Eyes remember.” Joe makes a concerted effort at this point and the woman’s voice drops to a whisper. She makes Joe imagine the girl lying there, describing events in erotic terms: “… part the lips … solitaire … Breasts in the stones …Imagine the hands … What are they fondling? … There’s love for you …” Another change Beckett made here was to add in a greater degree of repetition, particularly the word “imagine” emphasising that what we are hearing here is primarily a work of imagination rather than simple recollection. The voice falls silent and the image fades out. Joe has finally rid himself of her. As his face vanishes we realise he is smiling, an important addition Beckett made to the play but which was never incorporated in the printed text. “Here, for the first time, Joe looks at the camera”. This may not represent a final victory but he has silenced her for now.
6171956	/m/0fv2c1	A Spectacle of Corruption	David Liss	2004	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This tale picks up a few months after the conclusion of David Liss' first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper. It's late in the year 1721 and Benjamin Weaver is hired by a clergyman to investigate a death threat against him. His quest doesn't go according to plan, however, and Weaver soon finds himself falsely accused of murder, sentenced to hang and confined in the infamous Newgate Prison. He must somehow escape this fate, clear his name, and find those responsible. Weaver's personal and occupational struggles play out against the backdrop of the upcoming general election. Several of the other fictional characters are carry-overs from A Conspiracy of Paper. As in the first installment of his "memoir", Weaver is aided by his uncle Miguel and his best friend, the surgeon Elias Gordon. His cousin's widow Miriam, now married to a Tory candidate for Parliament, once again tugs on Weaver's heart strings.
6171981	/m/0fv2gw	A Conspiracy of Paper: A Novel	David Liss	2000	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel's story is told in the form of a first-person memoir penned by the elderly Benjamin Weaver (born Lienzo), London-born son of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish parents. After a successful career in bare-knuckle boxing, Weaver has found a new calling as a 'thief-taker'—roughly equivalent to a modern private investigator. Believing that his estranged father died in a tragic accident, Weaver is shocked when a prospective client claims that the 'accident' was, in fact, murder. Weaver's subsequent investigation involves him in the new London financial world of banks, stocks, speculation, violence and scandal leading up to the world's first stock-market crash, the South Sea Bubble. In order to solve the mystery, he must learn the inner workings of this new world of paper money. The murder investigation moves toward its conclusion in lock-step with the accelerating frenzy of the Bubble's final days. A sub-plot involves Benjamin's gradual reintegration, after years of estrangement, into his family's community and traditions. This gives the author the opportunity to introduce the Lienzo family, and their struggles to survive and prosper as Jews and foreigners in 18th century London. Benjamin finds added incentive to rejoin his family when he meets the beautiful Miriam, widow of his cousin and now living in his uncle Miguel's household.
6172424	/m/0fv3f1	A Flame in Hali	Deborah J. Ross	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Flame in Hali is set in Darkover's "Hundred Kingdoms" era. It is an era blurred in with the Ages of Chaos at the tail end. Breeding programs are no more, but wars are still fought with terrible laran weapons. The events in this book start some years after the end of Zandru's Forge. It overlaps with Two to Conquer as it mentions the Kilghard Wolf and Varzil's visit in Asturias.
6174418	/m/0fv699	Look Homeward, Angel	Thomas Wolfe	1929	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The book is divided into three parts, with a total of forty chapters. The first 90 pages of the book deal with an early biography of Gant's parents, very closely based on the actual history of Wolfe's own mother and father. It begins with his father, Oliver's decision to become a stone cutter after seeing a statue of a stone angel. Oliver Gant's first marriage ends in tragedy, and he becomes a raging alcoholic afterwards, which becomes his major struggle throughout his life. He eventually remarries after roaming the countryside, builds his new wife a house, and commences to start a family. The couple is beset with tragedy, as their first daughter dies of cholera at two months old, while two more die during childbirth. In the wake of these losses, Oliver is sent to Richmond for a "cure," to little success and becomes abusive to his family at times, threatening to kill his second wife Eliza (Eugene Gant's mother) in one drunken incident. The two remain together, however, and have a total of six surviving children, with the oldest, Steve, born in 1894. Eugene's father is drunk downstairs while his mother gives birth to him in a difficult labor. Oliver Gant forms a special bond with his son from early on. He begins to get his drinking under control, save for occasional binges, though his marriage becomes strained as Eliza's patience with him grows thinner. By the fifth chapter they are no longer sleeping in the same bedroom. Though, during all this time he is especially fond of his youngest son, Eugene, with whom he makes a special bond. Despite his flaws, Oliver Gant is the family's keystone, reading Shakespeare, having his daughter Helen read poetry, and keeping great fires burning in the house, symbolic of him as a source of warmth for the family. His gusto is the source of energy and strength for the family. Shortly after this, he journeys to California for the last time, returning home to the joy of his family. At this point Eugene is six years old and begins to attend school. His early education takes place, including several incidents of trouble with some of his teachers. He has a love of books and is a bright young boy, much to the pride of both his parents. His mother continues to baby him, unwilling to see him grow up; she does not cut his hair, even though he is teased about its length by the other boys.
6180704	/m/0fvfzk	Murderers' Row	Donald Hamilton	1962	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Matt Helm, codenamed "Eric", is given a tough and distasteful assignment: to physically assault a fellow female agent in order to help establish her cover in an undercover operation. In doing so, however, Helm accidentally kills the woman, which results in him having to complete the woman's assignment — the assassination of an enemy agent — while being pursued by his own agency.
6182359	/m/0fvjjx	Darkness and Light	Paul B. Thompson	1989-09-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Darkness and Light begins in the town of Solace at the time the companions decide to pursue rumors of war and embark on their own personal quests for five years. Sturm Brightblade and Kitiara Uth Matar both decide to go north to Solamnia to learn more about their families. Shortly after they leave Solace, they encounter a group of gnomes who are in the final stages of building a flying ship that has become mired in mud. The two companions decide that taking the flying ship to Solamnia would be much faster than on horseback or walking, so they assist the gnomes in hoisting the ship from the mud. The flying ship is a success—but too much of a success, as mechanical problems lead the ship up and up until it eventually touches back down on the red moon Lunitari. While on Lunitari fixing the ship, something unexplainable happens to the companions and the gnomes that they inherit magical powers -- the magic amplifies their natural talents. Kitiara becomes much stronger and Sturm is plagued with visions of his father and the downfall of Castle Brightblade. The ship is carried away in the night, and while searching for it they encounter a deranged king named Rapaldo who is worshiped (but also held captive) by the native Lunitarians, a semi-intelligent race that resemble trees. Rapaldo has gone mad after living on Lunitari for ten years after his sailing ship was propelled there by a waterspout. He plans to escape with the gnomes' ship, leaving Sturm behind to be the new Lunitarian king. His treachery is uncovered and a battle ensues, in which Rapaldo kills the gnome Bellcrank, but is accidentally stabbed by Sturm's dagger. Free of Rapaldo, Sturm, Kitiara, and the gnomes flee before the native Lunitarians can avenge the death of their king. They follow a strange trail to a valley where the brass dragon Cupelix is imprisoned inside a gigantic marble tower, as he is to guard the eggs of other dragons. Conversing with the dragon, Sturm learns of the birth of Draconians.The group also learn of the Micones, horse-sized ants created out of crystal to act as servants for the Dragon. Also, Kitiara forms an alliance with the dragon, that if she can free him, he'll become Kitiara's dragon partner. The gnomes attempt to set him free, but they continue to fail, until they think of vitriol. Using vitriol that they had on board, they destroy the marble tower and set the dragon free. After fixing up their ship, they head for home with the dragon. Unfortunately the air is too thin to support the dragon, so he is forced to remain on Lunitari. As they fly higher and higher, they spot the dead gnome walking again, a magical power in which nothing can die on Lunitari, but they can't return to rescue him. The gnome then goes to live with the dragon. After weeks and weeks of butting heads over individual ideals on Lunitari, Kitiara and Sturm decide that they will go their separate ways and sever their ties of friendship. Sturm joins a group of cattle drivers, were he meets a young girl called Tervy, who is orphaned when Sturm shoots her only relative in a raid. She has no idea of modern technology, like the armour Sturm wears, and regularly calls him Ironskin. Sturm and the cattle drivers are then tricked into delivering their herd into the camp of Merinsaard, a dragonlord. He succeeds in stealing the cattle, and lock the group up. They escape when Sturm and Tervy knock the highlord out, imitate him and escape on his horse. Sturm returns to Castle Brightblade—now abandoned—and finds his father's armor and sword. Shortly after this discovery, he discovers that the horse he stole was actually the highlord in disguise. They battle up to the ramparts, were Kitiara shoots the highlord through the neck. She later severs all links with Sturm in a letter, the gist of which is 'We're even'.
6185359	/m/0fvqmb	The Afghan	Frederick Forsyth	2006	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sometime before the events of the story take place, a joint MI6/CIA/ISI raid against al Qaeda (AQ) operatives in Pakistan uncovers documents concerning a planned, but largely cryptic, terrorist attack. This raises concerns and triggers further investigations authorised at the most senior level. Mike Martin, who previously appeared in the Forsyth novel The Fist of God, is now a retired SAS officer. Educated in Iraq and physically able to pass for an Afghan (his maternal grandmother was a Bengali-Indian named Indira Bose, misspelled Bohse in the book) who contributed to his chestnut-brown complexion which allows him to look like an Arab (or later on, Afghan) Martin has a near-perfect command of Arabic and is also familiar with Afghanistan and the Pashtun language, Pashto. He is chosen (due entirely to an overheard gaffe by his brother who is a member of the expert "Koran committee" of academics specialising in ancient texts) to infiltrate the highest echelons of AQ, by impersonating an AQ prisoner, Izmat Khan, currently held at Guantanamo Bay. In the story it is revealed that prior to Martin's escapades in Iraq he had worked with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation where he met Osama Bin Laden and rescued a young Afghan boy, Izmat Khan, who later became a resistance leader. Khan is portrayed as an heroic Afghan freedom fighter determined to have vengeance against America and careless of his life following the bombing of his village in the Tora Bora mountains which killed his family. In a highly covert operation Martin is successful in impersonating "The Afghan" (under the code word "crowbar"), a prisoner held in Guantanamo Bay for over five years. Following his re-infiltration to Afghanistan as a repatriated prisoner, and his subsequent stage-managed escape, he makes his way back to an al Qaeda safe house in Pakistan, where he is accepted as a compatriot following his security clearance by "The Sheik", Osama Bin Laden due to the brief encounter years before. He makes contact with AQ and volunteers to get involved in a suicidal terrorist attack which involves hijacking and re-berthing a tanker off Borneo carrying liquid petroleum gas. Another group hijack a cargo ship in the Caribbean, although this is intended to serve as a cynical decoy. Martin successfully alerts his handlers to the general nature of the threat, but is left incommunicado for several weeks as the ship steams to the US Eastern Seaboard. Izmat Khan escapes from US captivity after a US fighter jet accidentally crashes into the secret hiding place in Washington state where Izmat is incarcerated, destroying his guards and the compound wall whilst leaving him unscathed and free to walk out. He is finally shot dead trying to warn his allies using a public phone in Canada, after a long chase across the Cascades. Eventually the tanker reaches the mid-Atlantic, where a G8 summit is being held on the Queen Mary 2 liner. Martin finally learns that the terrorists intend to release and then ignite the gas on board the tanker, which could incinerate the Queen Mary 2 as it passed within range. Martin's last minute heroism, quick reflexes and self-sacrifice prevent a tragedy.
6190878	/m/0fv_fn	The Cossacks	Leo Tolstoy	1863	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The young idealist Dmitriy Olenin leaves Moscow, hoping to start a new life in the Caucasus. In the stanitsa, he slowly becomes enamored by the surroundings and despises his previous existence. He befriends the old Cossack Eroshka, who goes hunting with him and finds him a good fellow because of his propensity to drinking. During this time, young Cossack Luka kills a Chechen who is trying to come across the river towards the village to scout the Cossacks and in this way gains much respect. Olenin falls in love with the maid Maryanka, who is to be wed to Luka later in the story. He tries to stop this emotion and eventually convinces himself that he loves both Luka and Maryanka for their simplicity and decides that happiness can only come to a man who constantly gives to others with no thought of self-gratification. He first gives an extra horse to Luka, who accepts the present yet doesn't trust Olenin on his motives. As time goes on, however, though he gains the respect of the local villagers, another Russian named Beletsky, who is still attached to the ways of Moscow, comes and partially corrupts Olenin's ideals and convinces him through his actions to attempt to win Maryanka's love. Olenin approaches her several times and Luka hears about this from a Cossack, and thus does not invite Olenin to the betrothal party. Olenin spends the night with Eroshka but soon decides that he will not give up on the girl and attempts to win her heart again. He eventually, in a moment of passion, asks her to marry him, which she says she will answer soon. Luka, however, is severely wounded when he and a group of Cossacks go to confront a group of Chechens who are trying to attack the village, including the brother of the man he killed earlier. Though the Chechens lose after the Cossacks take a cart to block their bullets, the brother of the slain Chechen manages to shoot Luka in the belly when he is close by. As Luka seems to be dying and is being cared for by village people, Olenin approaches Maryanka to ask her to marry him; she angrily refuses. He realizes that "his first impression of this woman's inaccessibility had been perfectly correct." He asks his company commander to leave and join the staff. He says goodbye to Eroshka, who is the only villager who sees him off. Eroshka is emotional towards Olenin but after Olenin takes off and looks back, he sees that Eroshka has apparently already forgotten about him and has gotten back to normal life.
6192202	/m/0fw1m4	Ida B.	Katherine Hannigan	2004-08-17	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Ida B. Applewood is a homeschooled only child who enjoys long conversations with the apple trees in her family's orchard. Her life changes when her mother develops cancer, leading her parents to sell part of the orchard and send Ida B to public school. She first acts terrible around her teacher, Ms. Washington, because of a previous experience in school. She later learns however that public school—Ms. Washington included—isn't that bad. She also learns along the way that she should learn to say she's sorry, accept the truth, and believe in herself.
6192339	/m/0fw1t0	Hadji Murat	Leo Tolstoy	1912	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The narrator prefaces the story with his comments on a crushed, but still living thistle he finds in a field (a symbol for the main character), after which and then begins to tell the story of Hadji Murat. Murat is a separatist guerrilla who falls out with his own commander and eventually sides with the Russians in hope of saving his family. The story opens with Murat and two of his followers fleeing from Shamil, the commander of the Caucasian separatists, who is at war with the Russians. They find refuge at the house of Sado, a loyal supporter. However, the villagers learn of his presence, and he must flee again. His lieutenant succeeds in making contact with the Russians, who promise to meet Murat. He eventually arrives outside of the fortress of Vozdvizhenskaya to join the Russian forces, in hopes of eventually defeating Shamil. Before his arrival, a small skirmish occurs with some Chechens outside the fortress, and a young man named Petrukha Avdeyev dies after being shot. The narrator makes a chapter length aside about Petrukha: childless, he had joined the military in place of his brother, the family man. His father regrets this because he was such a better worker. Although the family mourns when Petrukha dies, his wife is somewhat happy since she is pregnant with another man’s child. While at Vozdvizhenskaya, Murat befriends Prince Semyon Vorontsov, his wife Maria and his son during his stay and wins over the good will of the soldiers stationed there. They are at once in awe of his physique and reputation, and enjoy his company and find him honest and upright. The Vorontsovs give him a present of a watch that he is fascinated with. On his fifth day of Murat's stay, the governor-general’s adjutant Loris-Melikov arrives with orders to write down Murat’s story, and the reader learns some of his history: he was born in the village of Tselmes and early on became close to the local khans because his mother was the royal family's wetnurse. When he was fifteen some followers of Muridism come into his village calling for a holy war against Russia. Murat declines at first but after a learned man is sent to explain how it will be run, he tentatively agrees. However, in their first confrontation, Shamil—then a lieutenant for the anti-Russian Muslims—embarrasses Murat when he goes to speak with the leader Gamzat. Gamzat eventually launches an attack on the capital of Khunzakh and kills the pro-Russian khans, taking control of the Chechens. The slaughter of the khans throws Hadji and his brother against Gamzat, and they eventually succeed in tricking and killing him, causing his followers to flee. Unfortunately, Murat's brother was killed in the attempt and Shamil simply replaces Gazmat as leader. He calls on Murat to join his struggle, but Murat refuses because the blood of his brother and the khans are on Shamil. Once Murat has joined the Russians, who are aware of his position and bargaining ability, they find him the perfect tool for getting to Shamil. However, Vortonsov’s plans are ruined by Chernyshov, a prince who is jealous of him, and Murat has to remain in the fortress because the emperor is told he is possibly a spy. The story digresses for a bit and Tolstoy depicts Nicholas I of Russia, showing his tendency towards women and his condescending nature, as well as his enjoyment in terrifying his subjects. The emperor orders an attack on the Chechens and Murat remains in the fortress. Meanwhile, Murat’s mother, wife and eldest son Yusuf, who had been captured by Shamil, were moved to a more defendible location. Realizing his position (neither trusted by the Russians to lead an army against Shamil, nor able to return to Shamil because he will be killed) he decides to flee the fortress to gather men to save his family. At this point the narrative jumps forward in time, to the arrival of a group of soldiers at the fortress bearing Murat's severed head. While Maria Dimitriyevna—companion of one of the officers and friend of by Murat—comments on the cruelty of men during times of war, the soldiers tell the story of Murat's death. He had escaped the fortress and shook his usual Russian escort with the help of his five lieutenants. After they escape they come upon marsh that they are unable to cross, and hide amongst some bushes until the morning. An old man gives away their position and Karganov, the commander of the fortress, the soldiers, and some Cossacks surround the area. Hadji and his men fortify themselves and begin to fire upon the troops, dying valiantly. Hadji himself runs into fire after his men are killed, despite being wounded and plugging up his fatal wounds in his body with cloth. As he fires his last bullet his life flashes before him and the soldiers think he’s dead; he gets up as if to continue attacking and then falls over. Victorious, the Russian soldiers fall upon and decapitate him. The nightingales, which stopped singing during the battle, begin again and the narrator ends by mentioning the thistle once more.
6192564	/m/0fw22r	Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain	Louis Cha	1959	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The story begins in the Changbai mountains in northeastern China during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor in the Qing Dynasty. It follows the classical unity of time, taking place on a single day, which is the 15th day of the third month of the Chinese calendar, in the 45th year in the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (i.e. April 19, 1780 in the Gregorian calendar). A group of jianghu pugilists unearth a treasure chest and begin fighting for it. The reason for them doing so is deliberately kept from the reader at this point of time. Midway during their tussle, they are overpowered and coerced by a highly skilled monk called Baoshu to travel to a manor at the top of Jade Brush Peak (玉筆峰), to help the manor's owner drive away an enemy called Hu Fei, also known as the "Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain". They start telling stories concerning the origin of a precious saber in the chest, their mysterious foe (Hu Fei) and slowly reveal each others' personal secrets. The saber's story dates back over a century ago to the feuds of the four bodyguards under the warlord Li Zicheng, who led the rebellion that overthrew the Ming Dynasty. The four guards' family names were Hu, Miao, Tian and Fan. Owing to a massive misunderstanding, which lasted several generations, their descendants had been slaying each other in a vendetta that prevented any one of them from discovering the truth. The Hu clan was opposed to those from the Miao, Tian and Fan families, the latter three which were allies. The people gathered at the mountain manor are either all descendants of the four bodyguards or are otherwise embroiled in the feud. Hu Fei's father, Hu Yidao, was a male descendant who became involved with Miao Renfeng, a descendant from the Miao family. Both were masterful martial artists without peer. Miao Renfeng, Hu Yidao and his wife developed an uncommon friendship and grew to admire each other, but Hu Yidao and Miao Renfeng must fight unwilling duels to avenge their parents' deaths. Under the schemes of the villain Tian Guinong, Hu Yidao was slayed unintentionally by Miao Renfeng after his sword was smeared with poison by Tian. Hu Yidao's infant son, Hu Fei, was smuggled away and raised by a waiter named Ping A'si. Hu Fei eventually grew up to become the "Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain". The various scheming pugilists are eventually punished by their greed. Hu Fei makes an appearance midway in the story. The conflict reaches a climax when Miao Renfeng challenges Hu Fei to a duel owing to a misunderstanding that Hu Fei has intentionally molested his daughter Miao Ruolan and both of them fight for several rounds but neither emerges the victor. They are stranded on a cliff about to collapse under their weight and the novel comes to its climactic end. Hu Fei has an opportunity to attack Miao Renfeng and knock him off the cliff, but he hesitates as Miao may be his future father-in-law. If he refrains, both of them might fall to their deaths, otherwise he will certainly die as Miao will kill him. The novel ends in a deliberate cliffhanger, leaving the conclusion to the reader's imagination.
6199490	/m/0fwd6q	Lulu Dark Can See Through Walls	Bennett Madison		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Lulu Dark is a sixteen-year-old girl with attitude and fashion sense, and a keen eye for clues, who thinks girl detectives (such as Nancy Drew) are dumb. However, after her fake Kate Spade handbag gets stolen at a club, Lulu must become a girl-sleuth to retrieve it. But Lulu did not realize that it would get her entangled in a murder that only she believes has happened. At the end she solves more than one mystery of mistaken identities, and manages to do it in style with the help of her best friends, Daisy and Charlie.
6199853	/m/0fwdqn	A Mouthful of Birds	Caryl Churchill			 The play has an unusual structure; it is a series of seven independent vignettes each focusing on a different character. After every scene, a moment in the tragedy of Pentheus is seen. Dionysos, a dancer, watches the action invisibly, and his kiss causes each episode's central transformation. At the play's end, the characters return to give epilogues narrating how their stories continued. The episodes include: * An unhappy wife slowly succumbs to post-natal psychosis. She experiences command hallucinations telling her to drown her baby in the bathtub and eventually does so. * A man's marriage and career are disrupted when he falls passionately in love with a pig at a slaughterhouse his company owns. * A voodoo practitioner newly arrived in London is haunted by an upper-crust British spirit who tries to drive away her familiar Haitian spirit guide, Baron Sunday. * Herculine Barbin, a nineteenth-century hermaphrodite, narrates the story of his transformation from girl to man. This monologue lies at the center of the play and is performed first by an actress, then repeated in identical language by a male actor. * A woman struggles to overcome alcoholism. * Two jailers must restore order in their prison when a serial killer among the inmates inexplicably changes sex and begins killing other prisoners with magic. * A female office worker is subject to grotesque, bloody fantasies and fits of rage. The actors play ensemble roles in all scenes other than their own. Dance sequences are at the center of the episodes involving the pig and his lover, the schizophrenic and her hallucinated tormentor, and the serial killer. The play's perspective on mental illness and sexuality is strongly influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, who also wrote a monograph on the life of Herculine Barbin, as well as David Lan's own anthropological work on possession and non-Western religions.
6200994	/m/0fwgnt	Mexico Set	Len Deighton		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins in Mexico, where Samson is on the trail of his Soviet opposite number: Erich Stinnes, a KGB major working in East Germany whom London Central wishes to coax over to the West. The task of laying the delicate and elaborate groundwork for Stinnes' defection propels Samson from Mexico to London, Paris, Berlin, and the East-West border. What happens along the way—-a temporary abduction, an unnecessary murder, an inconvenient suicide—-happens so fast that Samson hardly seems able to keep London Central informed of developments. Or is it that Samson wants to keep his colleagues in the dark? Certainly London Central's entire senior staff—from Samson's immediate supervisors, locked in their endless internecine office warfare, to the dotty Director-General himself—would have reason to suspect that Samson might be working for the other side. He was, after all, closer than any of the other to the former traitor-in-their-midst. And Samson himself is losing control—indeed, events seem to be controlling him. As he finds himself in a series of ever more incriminating positions, as one by one the avenues of escape or vindication close before him, the novel winds back toward Mexico.. and toward the astonishing climax - at the scene of the defection Samson has so painstakingly orchestrated—in which the allegiances of all involved are finally and fatefully revealed. Years after its publication, Granada TV made a version of the trilogy for ITV, called Game, Set, and Match, starring Ian Holm as Bernard Samson and Mel Martin as Fiona. It was adapted by John Howlett and directed by Ken Grieve and Patrick Lau. ar:مجموعة مكسيكو
6201096	/m/0fwgvn	London Match	Len Deighton		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Samson suspects that there is a traitor within his department of MI6, due to the appearance of a memorandum which was leaked to the KGB. It transpires that it is part of a plot conducted by his wife - now working for East German intelligence - to frame his superior, Bret Rensselaer, as a KGB agent. When Samson's old friend Werner Volkmann is arrested by the East German police Samson organizes an unauthorised exchange of defector Erich Stinnes for him, but the operation ends in a shootout on the Berlin S-Bahn.
6201194	/m/0fwh0k	Spy Hook	Len Deighton		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel begins with Bernard Sampson visiting his old friend and ex-SIS colleague in Washington named Jim Prettyman as part of an investigation regarding some missing funds. Soon after, Prettyman is murdered in a mugging. All his allies start losing interest in the investigation, and after digging deeper Bernard is sent to America once again, where it is revealed that Brett has not indeed died (as hinted at the end of the first trilogy, and discussed in this book.) but is in fact in rehabilitation. Bernard returns to Europe, where he confronts a man called "Dodo" and is saved from an untimely death by Prettyman, who it turns out has gone under "deep-cover". Bernard then takes his evidence to the Director General, who in a surprise turn of events orders his arrest, which thanks to some quick thinking by Werner Volkmann, Bernard evades for the while. The novel concludes with Bernard seeking an explanation from Frank Harrington, before disappearing into the night.
6201274	/m/0fwh3_	Spy Line	Len Deighton		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel starts with Bernard Samson in hiding in Berlin after the events in the first book of the series. He is soon found by the SIS and is invited by Frank Harrington to sit in on a debriefing of an undercover agent, where it is revealed that Eric Stinnes has been smuggling drugs into East Germany. Bernard is eventually recalled to London, and sent on a mission to Vienna to pick up a package from a stamp auction. This is revealed to be a Russian passport, which he uses to meet his wife Fiona, whom it is now revealed is a double agent (It is not made clear for how long Bernard knew this). Finally, Fiona attempts to escape from East Germany, whereupon Eric Stinnes, and Fiona's sister Tessa are both killed. Bernard and Fiona escape back to the other side of the wall and are transported to America for debriefing.
6201357	/m/0fwh6d	Spy Sinker	Len Deighton		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Spy Sinker starts in 1977 and ends in 1987. It tells the entire story in the previous five novels from the third person perspective (Bernard Samson's bosses, his colleagues, his girlfriend Gloria, and most of all his wife Fiona). Thus it fills in the gaps in the story, as the previous five books only reveals what Bernard can see and think he understands. It also tells the back story leading up to the story in the five novels, which has only been hinted at previously.
6201653	/m/0fwhmn	Winter	Len Deighton		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is a time of turmoil. A time when the horrors of war engulf and extinguish the Germany that is. Harald Winter had two sons at this time: Peter and Pauli Winter, two very different brothers, whose lives—whose destinies—are forever bound to the madness that lies ahead. From their sheltered childhood through their violent coming of age in the Great War... from the chaos of 1920's Berlin to the spreading power of Hitler... they are wrenched apart by conflicting ideals and ambitions. Blood brothers, now mortal enemies, they are trapped in a holocaust that threatens to tear them - and the world - to pieces. Since the entire story unfolds as a flashback from the time of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after the Nazis' defeat, the readers know that both would make a career as lawyers, but in widely divergent directions: one would enter the Nazi Party and think up various "legal" ways to legitimise their crimes, while the other brother would be a staunch anti-Nazi, go into exile and come back to Germany after the war as a member of the American war crimes prosecution. But the reader cannot be sure, until deep in the book's plot, which is which.
6206244	/m/0fwrr9	Olivia Joules and The Overactive Imagination	Helen Fielding		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book delves into the world of espionage as it follows the adventures of freelance journalist-turned spy, Olivia Joules. While covering a face cream launch in Miami, Olivia meets the alluring international playboy, Pierre Feramo. Suspicious that he is an international terrorist, she follows him to Los Angeles, Honduras, and the Sudan, while he is under the impression that she is falling in love with him.
6209257	/m/0fwx55	There Should Have Been Castles			{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 It is the 1950s. Ben Webber is a cocky but disillusioned young man who has spent the last few years of his life waiting for a neighborhood girl—in his eyes, the epitome of lost virtue and beauty—to reach the age of consent so that he can marry her. Ben comes frustrated with his life, though, and leaves his family home in New England to travel to New York in hopes of finding himself. Despite possessing a near-genius IQ, Ben feels no need to strive in academics, instead choosing to toil away in a number of dead-end, low-paying jobs, which he invariably quits or gets fired from after either telling off his boss or getting caught stealing. Down to his last few cigars and without a place to stay, Ben has a chance run-in with Don at a coffee shop; impeccably dressed and exquisitely mannered, Don is nonetheless just as destitute as Ben and facing eviction from his own apartment unless he can find someone to help with the rent. Ben and Don quickly become friends, and Ben moves into Don's apartment, which Ben discovers is actually owned by a trio of airline hostesses who rent the apartment out to Don at a low rate in exchange for providing them anonymous, strings-free sexual favors on their occasional stopovers in town. Ben, a virgin, is initiated into sex by one of the stewardess, and falls in love with her, only to discover shortly thereafter that she is engaged; after one last night, the stewardess relinquishes her third of the apartment and leaves New York, leaving Ben heartbroken and morose. Meanwhile, nineteen year old Ginnie Maitland, the daughter of a wealthy painter and an unfaithful socialite, runs away from home after her father commits suicide in the wake of her mother's running off with another man. Cutting herself off from her inheritance, Ginnie travels to New York in hopes of finding herself and becoming a dancer on Broadway. Alone in the big city, Ginnie falls in with a pair of middle aged men, one Jewish, one Japanese, who are attempting to open a restaurant which serves food based on traditional Kosher and Oriental dishes. Ginnie becomes a hostess for them, and manages to get a job with a dance troupe. At the same time, Ben has managed to become a mailroom clerk for a movie studio, and begins an arduous climb up the corporate ladder; shortly after getting a promotion into writing taglines, however, he's drafted into the U.S. Army. Shortly after Ben is drafted, Ginnie's apartment burns down; one of the members of the dance troupe informs her that one of his friends is currently seeking help to pay the rent, since his old roommate has been drafted. The "friend" turns out to be Don, and Ginnie takes up residence with him. Ben goes through boot camp and is assigned to a base run by Major Holdoffer, a young, boorish soldier who delights in exerting his authority over the men in his command. Ben documents his hellish experiences in letters home to Don, lamenting the lost loves in his life and yearning for purpose; after Don leaves the letters out one day, Ginnie begins reading them and starts writing Ben back. Her letters prove to be a shining ray of hope to Ben, and the two begin falling in love through their correspondence. While Ginnie remains chaste, though, in hopes of losing her virginity to Ben, Ben releases his sexual frustrations with an emotionally dead but sexually predatory middle aged woman named Maggie. In a bit of dramatic irony, the reader becomes aware that the woman is in fact Ginnie's runaway mother, having dumped her lover and moved on to one-night stands with soldiers. One day, Ben's unit is taken on a dangerous trek by Holdoffer through harsh terrain without proper equipment; in the middle of the night, Holdoffer intentionally gives negligent orders to an elderly soldier after learning that the man is gay, resulting in the soldier's death; the next morning, Holdoffer denies culpability demands that the hike go on. Later in the day, Holdoffer ignores Ben's warning that a machine gun is malfunctioning, and another soldier is fatally shot in the face. As Ben and another soldier prepare to attack Holdoffer, the gay lover of the elderly soldier who died of exposure fatally stabs Holdoffer in the kidney. In exchange for keeping his mouth shut about having warned Holdoffer of the faulty machine gun, the Army agrees to an honorable discharge Ben on a technicality. Ben sleeps with Maggie one last time and then heads back to New York, where he and Ginnie begin a passionate affair. With one another's support, Ginnie becomes a locally renowned dancer, and Ben manages to get one of his scripts read by a television executive, who buys it and turns it into a movie of the week. However, Ginnie's increasingly busy schedule, coupled with Ben's self-destructive nature, leads to the pair splitting after a disastrous night. While Ben makes a financially successful but debauched trip to Hollywood, Ginnie reaches national fame as a variety show fixture and through her engagement to a prominent socialite—neither being far from the other's mind.
6209312	/m/0fwx88	Other Tales of the Flying Fox	Louis Cha	1960	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The story begins several years after the death of Hu Yidao. His son Hu Fei, raised by Ping A'si, inherits the Hu family's skills and becomes a powerful martial artist. While travelling around the land in search of adventure, Hu Fei encounters Feng Tiannan, a ruthless villain, and he wants to kill Feng to deliver justice for Feng's victims. He also meets a young maiden named Yuan Ziyi, who shows signs of affection towards him. She stops Hu Fei from killing Feng Tiannan each time when he is close to killing the villain. Based on Ping A'si's words, Hu Fei believes that the famous martial artist Miao Renfeng is responsible for his father's death. He refrains from killing Miao Renfeng after finding the latter, because Miao has been tricked by an enemy and is temporarily blinded by a deadly poison. He is so impressed with Miao's sense of chivalry that he starts wondering if Ping A'si was mistaken about Miao. He decides to help Miao Renfeng and journeys to find a cure for his eyes. He meets Cheng Lingsu, a young disciple of the deceased "King of Venoms". Hu Fei witnesses Cheng Lingsu defeating her three wicked seniors with her calm and wits. She agrees to help him cure Miao Renfeng's eyes. When Miao Renfeng regains his sight he confesses that he had indeed killed Hu Yidao unintentionally several years ago. Hu Fei is filled with sorrow upon hearing the truth and leaves with Cheng Lingsu. Cheng Lingsu and Hu Fei become sworn siblings. Travelling together, the two then stumble upon an election for a new leader of the wulin (martial artists' community), hosted by the general Fukang'an. The election is part of Fukang'an's plot to instigate turmoil in the wulin, which is part of the government's plan to control the martial artists' community. Hu Fei and Cheng Lingsu disguise themselves and participate in the election. With help from Yuan Ziyi, the trio combined to expose Fukang'an's scheme and disrupt the meeting. They are attacked by enemies and Hu Fei is poisoned while trying to shield Cheng Lingsu with his body. Cheng loses her life trying to save Hu, and reveals before her death that she is in love with him. Hu Fei is filled with anguish by the tragic loss of Cheng Lingsu. After Cheng's funeral, he meets Yuan Ziyi again, who tells him that she had already taken an oath to be a nun in her childhood, and cannot be together with him even though she loves him. She places her palms together and recites a silent prayer for Hu Fei before leaving.
6209875	/m/0fwy88	The Second Angel	Philip Kerr	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In The Second Angel, passages of narrative by an omniscient narrator alternate with lengthy, discursive commentaries on the characters, and complex observations on human nature and blood by a first-person, intrusive narrator, who claims to be the omniscient narrator telling the story, but deliberately refrains from disclosing his or her identity until the last chapter. It is the late 21st century, when 80% of mankind have been infected with a virus called HPV2 (human parvovirus 2), or P2, whose spread was accelerated with the discovery and use of synthetic blood. P2 disrupts the blood's ability to carry hemoglobin around the body, greatly shortening the host's life. The only known cure for P2 is a complete blood transfusion with healthy blood, coupled with a dose of the drug ProTryptol 14. With only 20 percent of the world's population free of P2, the price of a litre of healthy blood has reached almost two million dollars. In the novel, blood has replaced gold and diamonds as a valuable commodity (gold was extracted in great quantity from the sea and is now valued at about $200 a kilogram). Uninfected people reside in "Clean Bill of Health" (CBH) zones within cities to avoid contact with the sick, for vamping (murder for the purpose of blood theft) is a major risk for healthy individuals. Standard procedure for those who are uninfected is to perform autologous donations to enable them to completely replace it in the event of becoming infected. The healthy blood reserves are kept in state-of-the-art blood banks around the world, the largest being the First National Blood Bank on the Moon. Due to the high incidence of theft in these banks, they are guarded by the most sophisticated security systems. The greatest designer of blood banks is Dana Dallas, who works for one of the largest security firms in the world, and has designed several state-of-the-art blood banks, including the First National Blood Bank. His ingenious security systems have never before been bypassed or robbed. His boss, Simon King, grows concerned when he hears that Dallas's daughter Caro has been diagnosed with thalassemia, an illness that can only be cured by a lifetime of regular healthy blood transfusions, as despite his high position in the company Dallas would never be able to afford to pay for this treatment. Rather than risk Dallas leaking industrial secrets to the highest bidder, he orders Rimmer, the company's security officer, to kill Dallas, his wife and his daughter. His wife and daughter are indeed killed, but by chance Dallas survives and realises that the company had meant to kill him too. Dallas escapes to relative safety outside the city's Clean Bill of Health zone, hiding in a hyperbaric hotel. Dallas is now set on revenge and recruits a team funded by himself and a mafia boss to rob the First National Blood Bank on the moon. The robbery goes according to plan with only a few complications. On the way back to Earth, Dallas is told by his personal computer that a quantum computer has actually evolved in the bloodbank; the intrusive, omniscient narrator turns out to be this computer (a super-computer that opportunistically used the millions of litres of blood stocked in one place to re-create itself, using the unique storage and duplicating capacity of DNA); it has gained access to the memories of the characters by "merging" with them when they had a blood transfusion. The blood contains extremely advanced nanomachines which activate an ability to live longer, and be far more resistant to human limitations such as the need for food, water and oxygen; it enables them to survive in a state of suspended animation for years at a time. The supercomputer wanted to combine humans and computers with nanomachines in order to explore the galaxy. While Dallas and his crew are asleep on their way back to Earth, the supercomputer (unbeknownst to the humans) activates their new hibernation state and sets their course to deep space.
6210298	/m/0fwyx2	El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra	Tirso de Molina	1630		 The play begins in Naples with Don Juan and the Duchess Isabela, who alone in her palace room, have just enjoyed a night of love together. However, when Isabella wants to light a lamp Don Juan threatens to kill it. She suddenly realizes that he is not her lover, the Duke Octavio, and screams for help. Don Juan's uncle, Don Pedro, comes to arrest the offender. But Don Juan cleverly reveals his identity as his nephew and Don Pedro assists him in making his escape just in time. Pedro then claims to the King that the unknown man was Duke Octavio. The King orders Octavio and Isabela to be married at once, with both of them to be held in prison until the wedding. At home, after Octavio speaks of his love for Isabela, Don Pedro comes to arrest him, claiming that Octavio had violated Isabela the previous night. Octavio, of course, had done no such thing, and starts to believe that Isabela has been unfaithful to him. He flees from Don Pedro, planning to leave the country. By the seashore of Tarragona, a peasant girl named Tisbea happens to find Don Juan and his servant, Catalinón, apparently washed up from a shipwreck. She tries to revive Don Juan, who wakes and immediately declares his love for her. Tisbea takes Juan back to her house, intending to nurse him back to health and mend his clothes. Back in Seville, the King speaks to Don Gonzalo, a nobleman and military commander, about arranging a marriage between Don Juan and Gonzalo's daughter, Doña Ana. Gonzalo likes the idea and goes to discuss it with his daughter. Back at the seashore, Don Juan and Catalinón flee, apparently after Don Juan has already seduced Tisbea. Catalinón scolds him, but Don Juan reminds him that this is not his first seduction, and jokes that he has a medical condition in which he must seduce. Catalinón says that he is a plague for women. Tisbea catches up with the two men, and Don Juan assures her that he intends to marry her. Tisbea is so overcome with grief and anger over what happened that she exclaims "fuego, fuego" meaning that she is burning up with hate and a desire for revenge. She is also overcome with shame at the undoing of her honor and flings herself into the ocean. In Seville, Don Diego, Don Juan's father, tells the king that the man who seduced the Duchess Isabela was not Octavio, but Don Juan, and shows a letter from Don Pedro as proof. The King declares Don Juan banished from Seville and retracts his plans to have him marry Doña Ana. Just then, Octavio arrives, begging the king's forgiveness for having fled earlier. The King grants it, and allows him to stay as a guest in the palace. Next, Don Juan and Catalinón arrive and talk to the Marquis de la Mota, who is a womanizer nearly as bad as Don Juan. The Marquis confesses, however, that he is actually in love with his cousin Doña Ana, but laments that she is arranged to marry someone else. Mota says he is going to visit Ana, and Don Juan sends Catalinón to follow him in secret. His plans are also helped along when a servant of Ana's, having just seen Don Juan talking to Mota, asks that he give to him a letter from Ana. In the letter she asks Mota to visit her during the night, at 11 o'clock sharp, since it will be their one and only chance to ever be together. Mota comes back again, apparently not having found Ana at home, and Don Juan says he received instructions from Ana that Mota should come to the house at midnight. Mota lends Don Juan his cape at the end of the scene. That night at Don Gonzalo's home, Ana is heard screaming that someone has dishonored her, and her father, Don Gonzalo, rushes to her aid with his sword drawn. Don Juan draws his own sword and kills Don Gonzalo. With his final breath, Don Gonzalo swears to haunt Don Juan. Don Juan leaves the house just in time to find Mota and give him his cape back and flees. Mota is immediately seen wearing the same cloak as the man who murdered Don Gonzalo and is arrested. The next day, near Dos Hermanas, Don Juan happens upon a peasant wedding and takes a particular interest in the bride, Aminta. The groom, Batricio, is perturbed by the presence of a nobleman at his wedding but is powerless to do anything. Don Juan pretends to have known Aminta long ago and deflowered her already, and by law she must now marry him. He goes to enjoy Aminta for the first time and convinces her that he means to marry her at once. The two of them go off together to consummate the union, with Juan having convinced Aminta that it is the surest way to nullify her last marriage. Elsewhere Isabela and her servant, Fabio, are travelling, looking for Don Juan, whom she has now been instructed to marry. She complains of this arrangement and declares that she still loves Octavio. While travelling, they happen upon Tisbea, whose suicide attempt was unsuccessful. When Isabela asks Tisbea why she is so sad, Tisbea tells the story of how Don Juan seduced her. Isabela then asks Tisbea to accompany her. Don Juan and Catalinón are back in Seville, passing by a churchyard. They see the tomb of Don Gonzalo, and Don Juan jokingly invites the statue on the tomb to have dinner with him and laughs about how the hauntings and promised vengeance have not yet come. That same night, as Don Juan sits down for dinner at his home, his servants become frightened and run away. Don Juan sends Catalinón to investigate, and he returns, horrified, followed by the ghost of Gonzalo in the form of the statue on his tomb. Don Juan is initially frightened but quickly regains control of himself and calmly sits to dine while his servants cower around him. Gonzalo invites Juan to dine again in the churchyard with him, and he promises to come. At the Alcazar, the King and Don Diego, Don Juan's father, discuss the impending marriage to Isabela, as well as the newly arranged marriage between Mota and Doña Ana. Octavio then arrives and asks the King for permission to duel with Don Juan, and tells the truth of what has happened to Isabela to Diego, who was until now unaware of this particular misdeed of his son. The King and Diego leave, and Aminta appears, looking for Don Juan since she thinks he is now her husband. Octavio takes her to the king so that she can tell him her story. In the churchyard, Don Juan tells Catalinón about how lovely Isabela looks and how they are to be married in a few hours. The ghost of Gonzalo appears again, and he sets out a table on the cover of a tomb. He serves a meal of vipers and scorpions, which Juan bravely eats. At the end of the meal, Gonzalo grabs Don Juan by the wrist, striking him dead. In a clap of thunder, the ghost, the tomb, and Don Juan disappear, leaving only Catalinón, who runs away in terror. At the Alcazar, every single character who has been wronged by Don Juan is complaining to the King, when Catalinón enters and announces the strange story of Don Juan's death. All the women who have claim to Don Juan as their husband are declared widows, and Catalinón admits that Ana escaped from Juan before he could dishonor her. Mota plans to marry Ana, Octavio to marry Isabela, Tisbea is free to marry again if she chooses, and Batricio and Aminta go back home.
6211600	/m/0fx086	The Story of the Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks	Lee Falk		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book tells the story about Kit Walker, son of the 20th Phantom, who will one day grow up to take over the mantle from his father and become the 21st Phantom. The book starts with Kit's birth in the Skull Cave. Several chapters are dedicated to him growing up in the Bangalla jungle, where the readers get to see events and lessons that shape him to the man he will once become. When Kit reaches the age of 12, he travels to Clarksdale, Mississippi, USA, to receive a proper education (it is a tradition in the Phantom family that the children are sent away to their mother's homeland for education). Kit lives with his mother's sister and her husband in Clarksville. Kit is a brilliant student, and receives excellent grades in every subject. Kit proves to be a talented sportsman, and is predicted to become the world champion of a number of different genres (he even knocks out the boxing champion of the world in a match when the champion visits Clarksville. Kit also meets his future wife-to-be, Diana Palmer, on a Christmas party on his school. Despite being able to choose practically any career he wants, Kit faithfully returns to Bengalla to take over the role of the Phantom when he receives word from his childhood friend Guran that his father, the 20th Phantom, is dying from wounds he received in a battle with pirates trying to rob a jungle hospital.
6211772	/m/0fx0l4	Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni	Marin Preda		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A long epic, written in first-person, Cel mai iubit... is the life-story confession of a prisoner waiting for his trial. Victor Petrini, a promising intellectual in the 1950s and a lecturer in Philosophy, seduces his best friend's wife, Matilda, who eventually becomes his wife. Nonetheless, and despite the birth of their daughter, the sexual attraction between them is exhausted shortly after their wedding. Victor is arrested by the repressive secret police (the Securitate), wrongly accused of espionage, and sentenced to prison and forced labor - the verdict constitutes a brutal end to all his projects and ideals. During his several-year-long confinement, at first in the Romanian version of the Gulag, then on a lead mine in the Northern Carpathians, he is divorced and forsaken by his wife, and hardens his character in order to survive. Eventually, he even manages to attack and kill one of the torturers engaged in his re-education (a crime which is successfully hidden from the authorities). Once released, Petrini has to start back from zero. He gets a job as pest controller (killing rats) and accommodates to a new, proletarian and suburban existence. A few years later, he manages to obtain employment as a bookkeeper in a state-owned company, where he meets Suzy, with whom he falls in love. Shortly after, in self-defence, he kills Suzy's ex-husband by throwing him out from a cable railway, and has to return to jail.
6211896	/m/0fx0tj	After Dark	Haruki Murakami	2007-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Alienation, a recurring motif in the works of Murakami, is the central theme in this novel set in metropolitan Tokyo over the course of one night. Main characters include Mari, a 19-year-old student, who is spending the night reading in a Denny's. There she meets Takahashi, a trombone-playing student who loves Curtis Fuller's "Five Spot After Dark" song on Blues-ette; Takahashi knows Mari's sister Eri and insists that the group of them have hung out before. Meanwhile, Eri is in a deep sleep. Mari crosses ways with a retired female wrestler, now working as a manager in a love hotel (whom Takahashi knows and referred to Mari), a Chinese prostitute who has been beaten and stripped of everything in this same love hotel, and a sadistic computer expert. Parts of the story take place in a world between reality and dream.
6216269	/m/0fx886	Mistborn: The Final Empire	Brandon Sanderson	2006-07-17	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Luthadel, the capital city of the Final Empire, Vin, a scrawny street urchin, is recruited by a thieving group led by Kelsier, the Survivor of the pits of Hathsin, a place where atium, the most valuable metal in the world, is mined. He has a plan to steal the rumored atium stash from the Lord Ruler’s treasury and to free the oppressed Skaa in the process. When Vin learns that she is a Mistborn – a powerful Allomancer who can burn metals to gain special abilities (just like Kelsier) she becomes part of this scheme. Kelsier's thieving crew has other members: there are Misting – Ham, a Thug who can burn pewter, Breeze, a Soother who can burn brass, Clubs, a Smoker who burns Copper and Spook, a Tineye burning tin – and Dockson who has no special abilities but is a great administrator. Together they start working on a plan to overthrow the regime established by the evil Lord Ruler a thousand years ago. Marsh, Kelsier’s brother, infiltrates the Steel Ministry and Vin acts as Valette, cousin of Lord Renoux, to spy out what the nobility is doing. Vin falls in love with Elend Venture, the son of Lord Venture, an heir to House Venture. Kelsier manages to start a House War by assassinating powerful nobles, and Dockson, Ham and Breeze manage to recruit some seven thousand soldiers with which to attack the Luthadel garrison. However, Yeden, the man who originally hired the crew for the job, makes a foolish move leaving the army exposed and majority of it gets slaughtered. The rest covertly moves to Luthadel. House Renoux, the front for getting weapons, is compromised and Lord Renoux with his servants is to be executed. Kelsier and some of the remaining soldiers fight to save them, managing to free most of them. Kelsier is killed in the process, taking a Steel Inquisitor with him. Lord Renoux, who turns out to be a Kandra, a creature capable of changing its body-shape, consumes Kelsier’s body and is able to appear as an apparition to the Skaa. The whole population of Luthadel rises and defeats the garrison and the remaining noble houses. Meanwhile, Vin, armed with the eleventh metal, malatium, goes to the imperial palace, Kredik Shaw, to kill the Lord Ruler. She is captured by Kar, a brutal Steel Inquisitor and left in a cell to be tortured. Sazed, her faithful Terrisman servant, comes to her rescue. Being a Feruchemist, he manages to break his chains by strength stored in a piece of metal in his stomach, and then helps Vin to recover her possessions and a vial of metals. Vin attacks the Lord Ruler and Marsh, thought to be dead by the crew, rushes to aid her as a Steel Inquisitor. In a fierce fight Vin manages to separate the Lord Ruler from his bracelets that keep him from aging, thus making him age rapidly. Vin then rams a spear through the Lord Ruler’s heart. The Final Empire collapses.
6216956	/m/0fx9dv	The Ruins	Scott Smith	2006-07-18	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Four American tourists&mdash;Eric, his girlfriend Stacy, her best friend Amy, and Amy's boyfriend Jeff, a medical student&mdash;are vacationing in Mexico. They befriend a German tourist named Mathias and a trio of hard-drinking Greeks who go by the Spanish nicknames Pablo, Juan, and Don Quixote. Mathias convinces Pablo and the Americans to accompany him as he joins up with his brother Heinrich who had followed a girl he'd met to an archeological dig. The six of them head down to the rural Yucatan in search of Heinrich. Near a Mayan village, they discover a disguised trail which leads to a large hill covered in vines and surrounded by bare earth. The group approach the hill, ignoring the warnings of a young boy who had followed them to the village. The boy soon returns with armed adults who force the group to stay on the vine-covered hill. Among the underbrush, they discover the body of Heinrich, already overgrown with vines. They realize that the vines contain an acidic sap that burns their hands after they pulled the vines away from Heinrich's body. At the top of the hill is a camp with tents, a campfire and windlass and rope which leads down a mine shaft. Much of the camp is overgrown with the same acidic vines. Hearing the ring of a cell phone from the bottom of the shaft, they use the rope to lower Pablo down in an attempt to retrieve it. However, the acid from the vines has weakened the rope which snaps, sending Pablo falling down the shaft. His back is broken and the group raises him on a makeshift backboard. Jeff, who quickly emerges as the most level-headed and action-oriented of the group, explores the hill and discovers that the Mayans have formed a perimeter around the entire hill, not approaching, but always watching him and ready to shoot them dead with bow and arrow. He also discovers a warning sign made by someone else, which has been pulled into the underbrush of vines. That night, Eric, who had received a wound on his leg while rescuing Pablo, awakes to find one of the vines curled around his leg and inserting itself in his wound. Jeff surmises that the Mayans are afraid of the vines. They salted the earth around the hill to prevent their spread and are now intent on killing anyone who strays onto the hill. Already, spores from the vines have embedded themselves in the group's clothes. He also realizes that they will die soon without any food or water. Jeff and Amy return to the mine shaft to find the cell phone. After almost falling into a pit, Jeff realizes that the cell phone noise is being made by the vines. The plants can imitate sounds made on the hill. As they climb back up, they hear the plants laughing at them. Eric becomes convinced that the vines have infested his body and attempts to cut himself to get them out. That night, he, Amy, and Stacey get drunk and nastily criticize everyone. Later, the vines repeat their criticisms, especially those of Jeff. Amy and Jeff fight and Amy leaves the tent drunkenly. Jeff ignores the sound of her vomiting, and calling his name. The next morning they discover that Amy is dead; the sounds they heard were of the vine suffocating her. They seal Amy's body in a sleeping bag, intending to bury her, but that night they hear her calling Jeff's name. Seeing the bag moving, they open it to discover it full of writhing vines which have eaten Amy's body. Jeff, taking advantage of a torrential rainstorm, heads down the hill and attempts to escape but is shot by the Mayans. The vines pull his body back into the underbrush. The next morning, Stacey and Matthias go to check on Jeff. Increasingly disturbed, Eric begins cutting himself in an effort to remove the vines which he believes have infested his body. Hearing the vines telling them that Eric is dead, Matthias and Stacey run back up the hill to find him bloody, but alive. Eric angrily confronts Matthias, and accidentally stabs the other man with his knife. He then asks Stacey to kill him which, after much pleading, she does. Alone, Stacey heads to the bottom of the hill and seats herself on the path leading to the top. She then calmly slits her wrists and waits to die so that her body will be a warning to anyone else who comes. As she loses consciousness, the vines reach out and pull her off the path into the underbrush. A few days later, the other two Greeks, with some Brazilian tourists in tow, find the trail. A little girl&mdash;who's acting as a sentinel, as the little boy on the bike was&mdash;runs back to the village, but the new tourists are already halfway up the hill, calling for Pablo, before the men on horseback arrive.
6217080	/m/0fx9lb	The Honorable Barbarian	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When Kerin, youngest son of Evor the Clockmaker and brother of Jorian, ex-king of Xylar, commits an indescretion with Adeliza, a neighbor's daughter, he is packed off on a hasty quest to uncover the secret of an advanced clock escapement for the family firm. A pragmatic, cautious sort, he preps for his journey with a crash course in useful skills — swordsmanship and foreign tongues, of course, but also lying and burglary. He is hampered and sometimes aided by the sprite Belinka, commissioned by the calculating Adeliza to ensure Kerin's faithfulness. Kerin's goal takes him east across the Inner Sea, the Sea of Sikhon and the Eastern Ocean to the empire of Kuromon, where he is promised the secret in return for a magical fan lost centuries before. It has the property of making whatever it is waved at disappear without a trace. Along the way he must contend with a treacherous sea captain and his suspicious navigator, the duplicitous sorcerer Pwana, and the pirate crew of Malgo, who has a grudge against Kerin's family. A more pleasant complication is Nogiri, a princess of the island empire of Salimor, whom Kerin has liberated (much to the displeasure of Belinka) from the pirates. Kerin returns her to Salimor only to lose her to the nefarious designs of Pwana, and a dire fate from which she can only be preserved by a daring rescue — on roller skates! Finally Kuromon is reached and negotiations are concluded satisfactorily, but only at the cost of an unexpected regime change by fan...
6217454	/m/0fxb0d	The Goblin Tower	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Kingdom of Xylar, one of the twelve city-states of Novaria, has a peculiar custom for choosing its kings, each of whom serves for a five-year term. At the end of that period he is beheaded in the public square before an assembly of foreigners, and his head cast into the crowd. The man who catches the head is drafted as the next king. The latest beneficiary/victim of this arrangement is Jorian of Kortoli, a powerful and intelligent man who has trained extensively for a life of adventure, but who is hampered by garrulousness and a weakness for drink and women. Having served out his term as king in a reign characterized by both great accomplishments and increasing despair, he ultimately appears resigned to his fate, though in fact he is determined to cheat it. He successfully escapes his beheading with the aid of a Mulvanian magician, the saintly Dr. Karadur, who provides a spell granting physical access to the plane of the Novarian afterlife. This turns out to be our own world, in which the souls of Novarians are reincarnated. Jorian's brief excursion there is a satirical romp in which he is frightened by a passing giant truck, has a mutually uncomprehending encounter with a police officer in a patrol car, and is very glad to get back to the familiar dangers of his own world. These include an encounter with a homicidal wizard and his giant squirrel familiar, along with the succor of a distressed damsel who proves more trouble than she is worth. Linking back up with Karadur, Jorian is confronted with the price of the sorcerer's aid; securing for him the Kist of Avlen, a legendary repository of ancient magical manuscripts. The novel follows his adventures as he attempts to both fulfill his service and avoid the agents of Xylar, duty-bound to abduct him back to Xylar for the beheading ceremony. Jorian's quest takes him through much of the known world, including the exotic lands of Mulvan, Komilakh and Shven, before ultimately returning to Novaria. Included in his adventures' bill of fare are the rescue a consignment of maidens destined for the block from a fortress full of homicidal retired executioners, romancing the 500-year-old serpent princess serving as guardian of the Kist in order to steal it, matching wits with an unreliable and ineffectual god who appears to his worshipers in creams, escaping sacrifice by a horde of angry beast men to their tiger god, enslavement and sale by treacherous nomads, and abetting a revolution in the priest-ruled city-state of Tarxia, during which a huge frog statue is brought to life. The ultimate challenge comes at a great symposium of Karadur's guild of magicians hosted by the city-state of Metouro - the depiction of which provides de Camp with the opportunity to poke some fun at academic conferences and symposiums before getting on with the plot. The meeting is held in the fabled Goblin Tower, constructed from actual goblins transformed to stone. There Jorian becomes enmeshed in sorcerous politics as his patron Karadur naively presents the Kist of Avlen to the heads of his own faction, hoping thereby to advance its cause. Unfortunately, its use by these unscrupulous leaders cancels the spell binding the building's fabric together, freeing the goblins and bringing the tower crashing down. The protagonists escape but are left without resource. The outcome is particularly frustrating to Jorian; he had counted on Karadur's assistance in achieving his ultimate objective, the rescue from Xylar of Estrildis, his favorite among the wives he had as king, with whom he had hoped to settle down in peaceful obscurity in his home state of Kortoli. The end of the novel finds him starting from scratch to recoup his fortunes by telling stories on a street corner.
6218362	/m/0fxcjr	Star of the Sea	Joseph O'Connor	2004-01-01		 The Star of the Sea of the title is a famine ship, making the journey from Ireland to New York. Aboard are hundreds of refugees, most of them with humble and desperate backgrounds. Key protagonists are David Merridith Lord Kingscourt, his wife Laura, their servant Mary, the ship's captain Josias Lockwood, a friendless Irishman named Pius Mulvey, and American journalist Grantley Dixon. The narrative of the novel follows multiple threads interwoven by the journalist character Dixon from documents such as diaries and letters, or from conversations/interviews with some of the principal characters or their relatives/descendants. The narrative partly follows the chronological course of the voyage, and for the intermediate or interposed parts consists of the meshed-in background lives of some of the emigrants & their relatives before they left Ireland (or England, or even after they arrived in the US). The novel departs from the usual formula of a murder mystery in that readers are vaguely informed of the identity of the murderer and the victim early in the novel, but the murder does not take place until the closing pages of the novel, and murder does not carry the full idea or sense of the killing. As the writer was clearly aware in choosing the name, the term "Star of the Sea" has deep roots in Catholic tradition. Our Lady, Star of the Sea - a translation of the Latin Stella Maris - is the Blessed Virgin Mary in her aspect as a guide and protector to those who work or travel on the sea and under which title she is venerated in many Catholic seaside communities. Indeed, in Dutch and other translations the book was given the title "Stella Maris". In 2008, London band Silvery released the song "Star of the Sea" on their debut album Thunderer & Excelsior on Blow Up Records, loosely following the narrative of the book.
6218709	/m/0fxc_j	The Pine Barrens				 The Pine Barrens is composed of nine chapters, or installments. In "The Woods From Hog Wallow," McPhee introduces the Pine Barrens as the six hundred and fifty thousand acre, virgin forest reserve that dominates the southern half of New Jersey. The Pine Barrens region is sparsely populated at about 15 people/square mile, in contrast to New Jersey's average population density elsewhere of 1,000 people/square mile (the greatest in the US). Local residents, who inhabit mostly small forest towns amid vast stretches of wilderness, refer to the area as "pine belt," "the pinelands," or "the pines." In speaking to these locals - or "Pineys," a term which has contested connotations - McPhee claims that his interest in the untouched region stems from its proximity to major urban centers (i.e. Philadelphia and New York.) Burlington and Ocean County developed plans to construct a supersonic jet port, but these plans have never been executed - and most people (including "Pineys") believe that they never will be. The Pines Barrens host an underground reservoir of pure, untapped water. Loose, high-absorption soil makes the woods an ideal aquifer, while self-contained rivers prevent pollution from foreign water sources. Nevertheless, the aquifer's water table is notably shallow and therefore extremely easy to contaminate. McPhee meets Frederick Chambers Brown, a resident of Hag Wallow in the Pines and a widower with 7 children. Brown has no telephone and shows McPhee around the area throughout the series. Along with Brown, McPhee encounters Bill Wasovwich, a young man who grew up in the Pines. Wasovwich's familiarity with the complex trail system of the woodlands allows him to embark on long journeys that non-locals could never experience. In "Vanished Towns," McPhee explores the history of the Pines. The woods functioned as refuge for various dissociated social groups, such as the Tories during the American revolution and Quakers. Iron was a productive industry in the Pines for years during the nineteenth century, yet all that presently remains of the ironwork (which relocated, along with other heavy metal industries, to Pittsburgh) are small iron towns in the Pines, such as Batsto. In "The Separate World," McPhee describes the development of the Pines' reputation as a region of alleged savagery. Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, numerous magazine articles and reports (notably Elizabeth Kate's "The Piney," which depicted residents as drunk, illiterate, and incestuous half-animals) stigmatized the region's population as backward, nearly primitive, recluses. Although absurd images of hostile back-landers eventually disappeared from media representations, the term "piney" still possesses multiple connotations. Whereas some tourists still come to the region seeking strange, eccentric foresters that they refer to as "Pineys," locals also utilize the term to endearingly refer to their neighbors. Hence, most residents of the Pine Barrens, while recognizing the term's contested meanings, claim the term "Piney" as a respectful recognition of a long-term, like-minded local. McPhee describes the yearly cycle of natural yields in the Pines: in the spring, shpagnum moss; in the summer, blueberries, then cranberries; in the fall, berries off of vines; and in the winter, cordwood and charcoal. "Pineys" gather and sell these and other natural materials, allowing for self-sustainability without a longstanding nine-to-five job. This naturalistic sentiment is indicative of the cultural character of the Pines. In "The Air Tune," McPhee describes the popular storytelling practices in the Pines. Herbert N. Halpert collected Pine Barrens story in the 1930's and 40's, describing the legends as mostly European but featuring an overlapping of various regional traditions. Most famously, the Jersey Devil, or Leed's Devil, describes a half-bat, half-kangaroo that killed its human mother at age 4 and has been wandering around the Pine Barrens ever since; as with most Pine Barrens folk tales, there are numerous versions of the story. In "The Capital of the Pines," McPhee describes Chatworth, the principal community of the Pines, where roughly two-thirds of the residents 'live off the land' or work various odd jobs, such as highway workers or fire wardens. There is very little crime in the Pine Barrens, and police hardly bother with the region's residents, who are mostly loners and largely keep to themselves. Typically, crime is the work of outsiders, and the back roads of the region are notoriously difficult to navigate. In "The Turn of Events," McPhee details three noteworthy happenings in the Pines. First, the Chatsworth Fire of 1954 burned five hundred acres of land. Second, Emilio Carranza, a famous Mexican aviator, crashed in the Pines in 1928 while flying from New York to Mexico City; a yearly memorial is held in his memory at the site of the crash. Third, Italian prince Constantino di Ruspoli built a mansion in the Pines in 1927, when he married an American whose family owned property there. In "Fire in the Pines," McPhee explains the role of fires in the Pines. Nearly four hundred forest fires occur in the Pines every year; the pine trees require this fire in order to flourish. A sort of "natural selection" enables only two types of Pines, which put forth sprouts in response to fire, to grow in the area. The fires prevent the march of natural progression, so to speak, which would replace the pines with other trees, such as oaks or maples. The woods therefore remain perpetually "young" due to this "biological inertia." The region also attracts pyromaniacs: it seems that many people (including, on one occasion, a police officer of the Pines) cannot resist the urge to set the severely dry area ablaze. The Upper Plains of the Pines, which possess dwarf trees, whose incongruously small height remains a mystery to scientists, some of whom posit that the fires kill the trees' taproots but not their lateral ones, thus giving them a dwarf size. In "The Fox Handles the Day," McPhee discusses the environmental aspects and hunting practices of the area. Quaking bogs are virtually unique to the Pine Barrens, and the area's plant species resemble (though are not identical to) those of North Carolina's pinelands. Fox hunting is popular in the pines; hunters have their dogs chase down foxes, where after they release the foxes back into the forest. Deer hunting is also prevalent, as NJ hosts a high deer population. In "Vision," McPhee examines plans to develop the Pines. During the mid-nineteenth century, real estate speculators worked to develop the area, selling Pines land in major cities throughout the east coast. The most elaborate plan for the area was a supersonic jetport (the largest on Earth) and a new city, researched by the federal government and criticized by conservationists. Due to the spectrum of varied opinions about the project, McPhee predicts the Pines will not be dramatically changed any time soon.
6219719	/m/0fxfgj	Glory	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1932	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Martin Edelweiss grows up in pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg. His grandfather Edelweiss had come to Russia from Switzerland, and was employed as a tutor, eventually marrying his youngest tutee. The watercolor image of a dense forest with a winding path hangs over Martin's crib and becomes a leading motif in his life. During Martin's upbringing, his parents get divorced. His father, whom he did not love not very, much soon dies. With the revolution, his mother Sofia takes Martin first to the Crimea, and then they leave Russia. On the ship to Athens, Martin is enchanted by and has his first romance with the beautiful, older poetess Alla, who is married. After Athens, Martin and his mother find refuge in Switzerland with his uncle Henry Edelweiss, who would eventually become Martin's stepfather. Martin goes to study at Cambridge and, on the way, stays with the Zilanov family in London; he is attracted to their 16-year-old daughter, Sonia. At Cambridge, he enjoys the wide academic offerings of the university and it takes him some time to choose a field. He is fascinated by Archibald Moon, who teaches Russian literature. He meets Darwin, a fellow student from England, who has a literary talent and history as a war hero. Darwin also becomes interested in Sonia, but she rejects his marriage proposal. Martin has a very brief affair with a waitress named Rose, who extorts Martin by faking a pregnancy, until Darwin unveiled her ruse and pays her off. Just before the end of their Cambridge days, Darwin and Martin engage in a boxing match. Martin does not settle down after Cambridge, to the dismay of his step-father/uncle Henry. He follows the Zilanovs to Berlin and meets the writer Bubnov. During this period, Martin and Sonia imagine the fantasy land of Zoorland, a northern country championing absolute equality. Sonia pushes Martin away, making him feel alienated among the group of friends he had in Berlin. He takes a train trip to the South of France. At some distance he sees some lights in the distance at night, mimicking an episode in his childhood. Martin gets off the train, and finds the village of Molignac. He stays there and works a while, identifying himself alternately as Swiss, German, and English, but never Russian. Getting another negative letter from Sonia, he returns to Switzerland. Picking up an emigre publication, Martin realizes that Bubnov has published something called Zoorland, - a betrayal by Sonia, who has become Bubnov's lover. In the Swiss mountains, he challenges himself to conquer a cliff, ostensibly as a form of training for his future exploits. It becomes clear that Martin has been planning on slipping over the border into Soviet Russia. He meets Gruzinov, a renowned espionage specialist, who knows how to secretly enter the Soviet Union. Gruzinov gives him information, but Martin questions how seriously he is being taken, making Gruzinov's information suspect. Preparing for this expedition, Martin says his farewells, first in Switzerland, then back to Berlin, where he meets first Sonia, then Bubnov, and then Darwin, who now works as a journalist. He tells Darwin the basics of his plan and enlists his assistance, giving him a series of four postcards to send his mother in Switzerland so she does not get suspicious. Darwin does not believe he is serious. Martin takes the train to Riga, planning to cross from there into the Soviet Union. After two weeks, Darwin gets nervous and follows his friend to Riga. However, Martin is nowhere to be found: he seems to have disappeared. Darwin takes his concerns to the Zilanovs, and then travels to Switzerland to inform Martin's mother of her son's disappearance. The novel ends with Martin's whereabouts unknown, and Darwin approaching the Edelweiss's house in Switzerland, to deliver the troubling news.
6219743	/m/0fxfjd	Troy: Shield of Thunder			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Helikaon, King of Dardania, and his unfulfilled love for Andromache, now wife of Hektor, continues to be the central theme of this novel. However, the story is dominated by two surviving Mykene warriors turned outlaws - Kalliades and Banokles—who flee the wrath of Agamemnon, rescue a mysterious woman Piria (who turns out to be a runaway priestess, whose real name is Kalliope, and a royal princess). The three are themselves rescued by Odysseus, whose past is gradually revealed. Odysseus, like other kings, is headed for Troy to participate in the wedding celebrations of Hektor and Andromache. In the meantime, Helikaon has been seriously wounded by the assassin Karpophorus and only gradually returns to health. Andromache approaches Hektor, seeking an end to their engagement, only to learn a closely guarded secret concerning his manhood. Her earlier visit to king Priam revealed a harsh truth, upon which she acts much later. By the last third of the book, Troy is at war with Agamemnon and his allies. The Greek battleplan is rather different from that in the Iliad but makes sense historically. (Perhaps Gemmell was inspired by Mithridates or the Greek-Persian wars.) What happens next is a stunning set of reverses engineered by long-term planning and long-concealed treachery. In the last book, Troy: Fall of Kings (published in August 2007; U.S. edition due in December), the war between the Trojans and the Greeks will come to its climax. it:L'ombra di Troia pl:Troja: Tarcza Gromu
6220213	/m/0fxg8r	Swordswoman Riding West on White Horse	Louis Cha			 A young Han Chinese girl called Li Wenxiu loses her parents in the Gobi Desert while escaping from a group of bandits, who are after a map of the Gaochang labyrinth. Placed on a white steed, Li Wenxiu flees to Kazakh territory and is taken into the care of an elderly Han Chinese man called Old Man Ji. While growing up, Li Wenxiu meets a Kazakh boy named Su Pu and they gradually develop a romance. However Su Pu's father disapproves of the relationship between his son and a Han Chinese girl so they are forced to separate. Several years later, Li Wenxiu meets a hermit named Hua Hui in an oasis in the Gobi Desert and helps him cure his wounds. Hua Hui is grateful to her and accepts her as his student and teaches her martial arts. She returns home amidst heavy snow and sees that Su Pu, his father and his new lover are taking shelter inside her house. Unfortunately, Chen Dahai, the leader of the group of bandits who killed Li Wenxiu's parents, arrives at Li's home and suspects that the map they have been hunting for is inside the house. He proceeds to ransack the house for the map and eventually finds it. The secret of the map is revealed when blood is spilled onto the cloth. Chen Dahai wants to silence Su Pu and the others but is stopped by Li Wenxiu, who is in disguise as a Han Chinese man. Li Wenxiu defeats and wounds Chen Dahai. Chen Dahai flees with the map and finds his way to the labyrinth, while Li Wenxiu and Su Pu gather five others to join them in pursuit of Chen Dahai and the bandits. The seven of them make their way to the labyrinth but discover ordinary items associated with Han Chinese culture in place of treasure and riches. To their horror, they encounter a "ghost" who haunts them by killing their companions without leaving any traces. Just as they are about to flee, Su Pu learns that his lover has been kidnapped by the "ghost" and he tracks the "ghost" to its lair in the labyrinth, where he discovers that the "ghost" is actually a martial arts expert in disguise. The "ghost" tells his story and reveals that he was forced into exile and later betrayed by his former disciple, who is actually Old Man Ji. The "ghost" is the hermit Hua Hui, whom Li Wenxiu had saved earlier. More shockingly, Old Man Ji is revealed to be actually a man in his 30s disguised as a elderly man. Old Man Ji and Hua Hui start fighting each other. Li Wenxiu is shocked to realise that the two, who are close to her, are actually enemies. Hua Hui eventually dies in his futile attempt to kill everyone present at the scene. Upon leaving the labyrinth, Li Wenxiu hears the true story behind the items hidden in the labyrinth and its origins. She decides to leave the land for central China, feeling miserable after the loss of two of her loved ones and the marriage of her lover to another woman.
6220222	/m/0fxg92	Blade-dance of the Two Lovers	Louis Cha			 The story is set in the Qing Dynasty. A pair of precious blades known as the Mandarin Ducks Blades (鸳鸯刀) are being transported to the Forbidden City by an escort agency commissioned by provincial officials. The blades are said to hold the secret to invincibility, and thus become a highly sought-after artifact by jianghu pugilists. To ensure that the escort agency chief does not keep the blades for himself, the officials detain his family under the pretext of offering protection. Amidst attempts by various parties to seize the weapons, the blades fall eventually, through serendipity, into the hands of two couples: Yuan Guannan and Xiao Zhonghui; and Lin Yulong and Ren Feiyan, a pugilist couple with an infant who are forever bickering. They are defeated by a highly skilled imperial guard called Zhuo Tianxiong, who disguises himself as a blind man and hides in the convoy to protect the blades. Hunted by Zhuo Tianxiong, the couples are forced to seek refuge in a dilapidated temple. Out of desperation Lin Yulong and Ren Feiyan teach the younger couple Yuan Guannan and Xiao Zhonghui a type of swordplay known as the "Couple's Saber" (夫妻刀法). The saber movement covers the two partners' weaknesses while multiplying their combat lethality, making them virtually invincible. The couple defeat Zhuo Tianxiong with this new technique. Later, Yuan Guannan visits Xiao Zhonghui's manor during her father's 50th birthday party and receives a warm welcome. He meets Xiao Zhonghui's father Xiao Banhe, a respected martial artist, and Xiao's wives Madam Yang and Madam Yuan. At the dinner, Zhuo Tianxiong and his men show up to seize the blades. Concurrently another group of soldiers appear, but they were there for a different purpose. They denounce Xiao Banhe as a traitor to the emperor and proclaim that he is one of the government's most wanted renegades. Fighting their way out, the young couple's combined prowess is seriously compromised when it is revealed that Yuan Guannan is actually Madam Yuan's long-lost son, so that makes him a half brother of Xiao Zhonghui. The group takes refuge at a nearby cave while Xiao Banhe tells his story. Xiao Banhe reveals his true identity as a former anti-government resistance fighter who infiltrated the palace and became a eunuch. He met Yuan and Yang, two other resistance fighters who were imprisoned in the palace prison along with their families. Xiao Banhe rescued the widows and their children after their husbands were executed. While fleeing, Yuan's son was separated from Madam Yuan. Xiao Banhe took care of the widows and Yang's daughter and treated them as though they were his own family, pretending to be the widows' husband. Yuan Guannan and Xiao Zhonghui are therefore not related at all. Zhuo Tianxiong is coincidentally captured by the "Four Heroes of Taiyue" (four lucky and not-so-highly-skilled comical figures) and the soldiers retreat. Xiao Banhe reveals the blades' secret, which is an inscription - "the merciful are invincible" (仁者無敵).
6220238	/m/0fxgbg	Requiem of Ling Sing	Louis Cha	1963	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The plot centers on the experiences of the protagonist Di Yun, a simple and ordinary peasant from Xiangxi. He lives in the countryside for several years together with his martial arts teacher Qi Zhangfa and the latter's daughter Qi Fang, who is his sweetheart. One day, the three of them travel to the city to attend the birthday party of Wan Zhenshan, Qi Zhangfa's senior from the same martial arts sect. Di Yun runs into trouble as he is framed for larceny and attempted rape, and is arrested and imprisoned. Qi Zhangfa disappears mysteriously when Di Yun needs him the most. Wan Zhenshan's son Wan Gui bribes the magistrate to hand a heavy sentence to Di Yun to exaggerate the seriousness of Di's "crimes", while hypocritically playing the role of a good man by pretending to help Di in order to win Qi Fang's heart. Qi Fang becomes disappointed with Di Yun after believing that he is indeed guilty and gives up on him. With no one else to turn to, she eventually marries Wan Gui. Di Yun suffers in prison and is continuously harassed by Ding Dian, a fellow raving inmate who accuses him of being a spy and subjects him to constant physical beatings. However, after Di Yun attempts suicide, Ding Dian is finally convinced that Di is not a spy and they become close friends. Ding Dian tells Di Yun that he has obtained from an old man named Mei Niansheng the manual for the skill called Liancheng Swordplay, and has since become the target of many jianghu pugilists who are after the book. Ding Dian also teaches Di Yun a powerful inner energy skill that later proves to be a blessing for Di. Di Yu overhears the dirty secrets of his respected teacher Qi Zhangfa and his fellows, of how they murdered their teacher Mei Niansheng to seize possession of the Liancheng Swordplay manual. Di Yun and Ding Dian manage to break out from jail but Ding is fatally poisoned by Ling Tuisi, a heartless magistrate who is the father of Ding's late lover. Di Yun returns to Qi Fang's house and sees that Qi has conceived with Wan Gui a daughter nicknamed Kongxincai. He is depressed and emotionally hurt and escapes as a runaway convict. Di Yun soon arrives at a temple, where he encounters an evil cannibalistic monk called Baoxiang, whom he outwits and kills. He dons Baoxiang's robes and is mistaken by the Tibetan Blood Saber Sect's lascivious leader Grandmaster Xuedao as a grand disciple. Xuedao protects Di Yun from attackers from orthodox sects, and captures a girl named Shui Sheng, holding her as a hostage as they flee. They encounter an avalanche that causes them to be trapped a snowy valley in the Daxue Mountains during deep winter. Xuedao manages to kill three of their pursuers, one of whom is Shui Sheng's father. Meanwhile Xuedao becomes suspicious of Di Yun's identity and he attempts to kill the latter when Di's cover is blown. Unexpectedly, Xuedao's strike helps Di Yun channel his inner energy cycle and he dies at Di's hands instead. The last surviving pursuer Hua Tiegan reveals his true colours after Xuedao's death and resorts to cannibalism on his three dead companions in order to survive. While Di Yun, Shui Sheng and Hua Tiegan remain in the valley to wait for spring, Shui sees Di's kindness beneath his seeming misanthropy. When the three of them are finally able to leave the valley and meet up with other pugilists, Hua Tiegan accuses Di Yun and Shui Sheng of sexual immorality in front of Shui's fiance. Di Yun separates himself from Shui Sheng and continues on his lonely journey to vengeance. Di Yun tracks down the perpetrators responsible for his wrongful incarceration and learns that his teacher Qi Zhangfa is actually a scheming and ruthless villain, just as Ding Dian had told him. His first love Qi Fang is mercilessly killed by her husband Wan Gui when he suspects her of infidelity. As the story progresses, all the antagonists in the novel eventually locate the whereabouts of the Liancheng Swordplay manual in a temple. They start slaying each other over the treasure and all become insane after coming into contact with the deadly venom smeared on the jewels. After witnessing these beastly acts, especially Qi Fang's death, Di Yun becomes totally disillusioned with the dark nature and greed of humanity. He brings Qi Fang's daughter Kongxincai with him to the snowy valley and intends to lead a reclusive life there. To his surprise, he meets Shui Sheng, who has been faithfully waiting alone for his return.
6221158	/m/0fxht2	Three Hearts and Three Lions	Poul Anderson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Holger Carlsen is an Allied covert operative who assists the Danish Resistance to the Nazis. After an explosion, he finds himself carried to a parallel universe, which proves to have the Matter of France as its historical past. There he finds that the evil of Faerie is encroaching on humanity. His quest finally leads him to discover that he is Ogier the Dane, sent to this universe by Morgan le Fay, and to fight the battle that drives back the evil. This also thrusts him back into our world, in which he is able to ensure that Nazis can not stop a crucial escape from occupied Europe. At the end of the novel, he is seeking his way back in the other world, where he had fallen in love with a swan may.
6224163	/m/0fxn0s	The Clocks of Iraz	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this sequel to The Goblin Tower, ex-king Jorian of Xylar and Dr. Karadur renew their alliance, with the latter offering to help the former recover his favorite wife Estrildis in return for a new service. Jorian is commissioned to repair the clocks in the Tower of Kumashar, the great lighthouse of Iraz, capital city of the empire of Penembei to the south of Novaria. The timepieces had originally been installed by Jorian's father Evor the Clockmaker, a renowned practitioner of that trade. Complications consist of a pair of competing prophecies regarding the fate of the city, Iraz's cut-throat politics and xenophobic racing factions (clearly based on those of the Byzantine Empire), and a perfect storm of enemies approaching the city, including the pirates of Algarth, a mercenary company from Novaria, the desert hordes of Fedirun, and a revolutionary peasant army. Topping these is the Emperor Ishbahar himself, who seems to think Jorian might make a good heir to dump the whole mess on... Jorian hardly needs to hear a new prophecy relating to himself—"beware the second crown"—to tread cautiously. It will take luck as well as cunning just to get out alive, let alone save the city and seize the forlorn hope of regaining Estrildis with the aid of Karadur's flying bathtub. The riots which dominate the last chapters of the book are evidently modeled on the Nika riots, a major event in the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian.
6225422	/m/0fxpt1	The Bladerunner	Alan E. Nourse		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The novel's protagonist is Billy Gimp, a man with a club foot who runs "blades" for Doc (Doctor John Long) as part of an illegal black market for medical services. The setting is a society where free, comprehensive medical treatment is available for anyone so long as they qualify for treatment under the Eugenics Laws. Preconditions for medical care include sterilization, and no legitimate medical care is available for anyone who does not qualify or does not wish to undergo the sterilization procedure (including children over the age of five). These conditions have created illegal medical services in which bladerunners supply black market medical supplies for underground practitioners, who generally go out at night to see patients and perform surgery. As an epidemic breaks out among the underclass, Billy must save the city from the plague hitting the rest of the city as well.
6226217	/m/0fxr03	Bloodtide			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This story takes place in the future, where London is a wasteland where two clans war. The two main characters of this story are twins Siggy and Signy. They are the children of Val Volson, leader of the largest territory that was once London. Val wishes for peace and believes the only way to do so is to unite London under one ruler. He offers his daughter Singy as Conor's wife, in order to show his complete commitment to the Treaty. Conor agrees and shows his trust, by visiting the Volson's territory. The visit goes as planned until a banquet is interrupted by an unusual guest. A believed spy, who was strung up by his ankle returns to life and shows it was not a one time trick, as he crashes down head first from thirty or so feet up. After returning to life for the second time he walks up and down the hall. He acknowledges only Siggy and Signy, before plunging a knife deep into a believed to be unbreakable substance. All others try, but no matter how hard they pull, the knife remains within the wall. But one person knows he is the chosen one. Siggy (who wishes for anything but the responsibility of leadership) removes the knife with ease, as his father acknowledges that it was a gift from Odin himself, blessing the treaty in his own way. Conor wishes to have the knife himself and asks Siggy, claiming that as the guest of honour he is entitled. But Siggy refuses, even going so far as to plunge it into wood. But Conor cannot remove it and laughs it off, before leaving with Signy. Signy is disappointed with Siggy for not giving the knife to Conor and heads to Conor's territory annoyed at her brother. Conor and Signy are very happy together and everything seems to be perfect. Although she is disappointed at being kept in a tower (which Conor assures her is for her own protection), she is still happy because she loves Conor. During a half-man hunt, Signy makes a shocking discovery. The half-men are not what they are reputed to be. After being cornered by a hyena-man, she is informed that Conor wishes to kill her family and claim London for his own. The hyena-man surprises her further by giving her a kitten named Cherry (who is said to have more than one shape), before leaping to the ground and meeting his end by Conor's convoy. After over a year within Conor's territory, her family come to visit. They come (as expected) heavily armed but are caught off guard by Conor's surprise attack. He has betrayed them. Val is killed and the three brothers are forced to surrender. The Volsons are taken to Conor's lair, being disrespected by the guards and townspeople as they go. After a few days of torture, Conor has them left out to die in the half-men lands. Their fate is to be dinner of a berserk pig who roams nearby. First Hadrian is eaten, then Ben. Before long only Siggy remains. Siggy wishes for death, but knows somehow that it is not to be. Meanwhile Signy (following being hamstrung under Conor's orders) discovers that her kitten Cherry is a shapeshifter. She informs her master that Siggy is still alive and in the hopes of pleasing Signy, rushes to his aide. Cherry helps him escape from the pig, before ensuring he is found by Melanie (another pig-woman). Melanie originally intends to sell him as a slave or at worst eat him. But she quickly begins to like Siggy and decides to help him recuperate. She helps his wounds heal and assists in his convalescence. Before long Siggy is back to normal and has struck up a deep friendship with Melanie. Meanwhile Signy has become bitter and twisted and begins to think of nothing but her revenge against Conor. Signy realizes that Conor desperately wants her to have a baby, but she does not want it to be his. Instead, Signy changes shapes with Cherry. She changes into a bird and goes to meet Siggy. She seduces him and has him bear her a child unknowingly. When Signy has the baby, she pretends to have it kidnapped and lets rebel troops clone it. The original baby is named Victor, and the cloned one is named Styr. The cloned one is given special features, making it stronger, faster, and designed for war.
6227921	/m/0fxt_c	O Guarany	José de Alencar			 O Guarany is set back in 1604, a period when Portugal and its colonies submitted to Spanish dominion due to a lack of heirs to ascend to the throne. Alencar takes advantage of this dynastic complication to resurrect the historical figure of D. Antônio de Mariz, a nobleman connected to the foundation of the city of Rio de Janeiro and a pioneer settler. This historical (factual) background, which orients the novel throughout, is set in the first two chapters; then fantasy, both violent and erotic, starts to prevail. D. Antônio establishes himself in a deserted inland region, a few days’ travel from the seaside city of Rio. The land was granted to him through his services to the Portuguese crown, whose legitimacy the nobleman now distrusts. To be politically independent (if not economically) and keep to the Portuguese codes of honour, he builds a castle-like house to shelter his family in Brazilian soil where he lives like a feudal lord with his family and retainers. His family consists of his severe wife D. Lauriana, his angelic fair, blue-eyed daughter Cecília, his dandyish son D. Diogo and the ‘niece’ Isabel, a cabocla who is in fact his illegitimate daughter by an Indian woman. Other people are also attached to his household, a few loyal servants, forty adventurers/mercenaries kept for protection, the young nobleman Álvaro de Sá, an appropriate suitor for his lawful daughter Cecília, and Peri, an Indian of the Guaraní people, who once saved Cecy’s life (as the romantic/romanticised Indian endearingly calls Cecília) and who has since deserted his tribe and family. Peri is the hero who gives title to the book, he is treated as a friend by D. Antônio and Ceci and as a nuisance by Mrs. Mariz and Isabel. The life of the characters is altered by the arrival of the adventurer Loredano (former friar Angelo di Lucca) who insinuates himself into the house and soon starts subverting the other vassals, planning to kidnap Cecília and scheming against the house of Mariz; along with the accidental murder of an Aimoré Indian woman by D. Diogo.
6228372	/m/0fxvsp	The Third Eye	Mahtab Narsimhan	1984-04	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist of The Third Eye is eighteen-year-old Karen Connors. While in high school, she began dating Tim, a popular classmate. For the first time, Karen begins to feel as though she is finally fitting in. Her mother is pleased that she is dating Tim, as she has always pushed Karen to fit in and be popular. Karen gets a job as a babysitter for the Zenner family, watching Stephanie and her older brother, Bobby. Bobby leaves to go and play with his friends, but doesn’t show up at lunchtime. Karen asks nearby families if they had seen him, and when they all reply they haven’t, she contacts the police. Officer Ronald Wilson arrived to question Karen, and the first thing she notices about him is that he has vivid blue eyes and seems much too young to be a police officer. Wilson does not seem too concerned about the disappearance, saying that Bobby was probably at a friend's house. Karen starts having visions of where Bobby is, seeing he is unconscious and stuck in a box. When Bobby's parents arrive home, Bobby is still missing. The policeman returns to the Zenner home. Karen realizes that the box she saw in her vision is the trunk of a car, and that the car is headed her way. She also realizes that the car she envisions belongs to her boyfriend, Tim. When he arrives to take her home, she confronts Tim, and they find Bobby in the trunk, unconscious, but alive. Afterward, Karen is asked by Officer Wilson if she would be willing to help locate a missing girl named Carla Sanchez. Going against her parents' wishes, Karen agrees to help. Officer Wilson drives Karen to Ms. Sanchez’s house that afternoon. Alone in Carla's bedroom, Karen picks up various items of clothing and toys in an attempt to receive a vision of Carla. After this approach fails, Karen and Officer Wilson leave the Sanchez residence. While in the car with Officer Wilson, Karen receives psychic messages, leading them to a riverbank. They find a pair of sandals and a bicycle that belong to Carla. Karen feels weak and nauseated. Karen then has a vision of the events that led up to Carla's death. Police later find her body in the river. Among the following events, Tim breaks up with Karen and graduates high school. That summer, Karen is hired at a daycare center. On her way to work one day, a lady pulls over and asks for directions to the daycare center. The woman offers Karen a ride, and Karen agrees. The lady driving the car says she is named Betty Smith. When Betty calls Karen by name, Karen becomes suspicious as she had not introduced herself Believing Betty has other intentions, Karen tries to escape from the car. The doors are locked. Betty drives her to an apartment where a guy named Jed ties her down and hits her head on a stove, knocking her out. After Jed and Betty leave, Karen is visited by a vision of a little girl that she feels compelled to protect. She cannot save her while she is unconscious, so she forces herself out of her slumber to find that she is bound and gagged in the apartment with nobody to save her. She has almost lost all hope when she sees the little girl again, who points to the smoke alarm. (The little girl still has yet to speak or show her face. She keeps her back turned to Karen, so she can only see her blonde hair.) Karen then uses her feet to start a fire, which triggers the fire alarm, getting the attention of the apartment manager. She then learns that Betty and Jed stole most of the babies at the daycare center. One of these babies was Officer Ron Wilson's nephew. Karen's mother wants her to leave on a vacation to San Francisco, but Karen decides to help Ron locate the missing babies instead. Karen and Ron visit psychic Anne Summers, who had been shot because she was closing in on the kidnappings. Luckily, she held up a bag of meat to slow down the shot, which would have hit her in the heart. Karen knows she is the only one who can help locate the children now. Karen then decides to help Ron, and envisions the children on the way to Colorado. Karen and Ron camp out at the state park, where she discovers she is falling in love with Ron. The next morning, they arrive at the house in which the babies are being held. They find out that Betty and Jed stole the babies to illegally sell them. Ron goes up to the house to try to get a look at the babies when Karen has a vision of a dog guarding the house. Ron was terrified of dogs, so Karen had to go warn him. As she gets to him, the dog attacks, Ron shoots him, and Karen screams. Jed then comes out and shoots Ron in the shoulder. They were taken inside, and Karen tries to keep Ron from losing much blood. Soon, the police come and rescue them both, returning all of the missing babies. Karen’s mother was the one who alerted the police, after receiving a vision. Karen's mother then tells her how she has always been psychic too, but does not want to be thought of as a freak, so she tried to hide it. She also reveals that she had never been popular and that her first date was with Karen’s father. She wants Karen to hide it as well and try to find someone to fall in love with her. She also explains that she had seen Karen in visions before she was born, and these visions saved her life twice. Karen then tells her mother that she will find someone who loves and accepts her just as she is, and that she intends to use this gift for the good. That night, Karen dreams of the little girl again, realizing that this is her future daughter. When she asked the girl who her daddy would be, the girl finally looked up, revealing vivid, beautiful blue eyes implying that Officer Ron Wilson would be her father and Karen's husband or partner. accept oneself.
6230850	/m/0fxzs7	The Gigli Concert	Tom Murphy			 The Gigli Concert deals with seven days in the relationship between Dynamatologist JPW King, a quack self-help therapist living in Dublin but born and brought up in England, and the mysterious Irishman, a construction millionaire who asks King to teach him how to sing like the Italian opera singer Beniamino Gigli. As King finds himself reluctantly drawn into to the Irishman's request it becomes clear that his subject is mentally unbalanced but, against all expectations, King finds himself able to heal the Irishman and, in the process, himself. Although he rises to the challenge and, indeed, becomes obsessed with it, the Irishman ends up ending the process, finding himself cured of his mental and emotional malady through King's kindness. Left alone, and discovering that his lover, Mona, is suffering from cancer, King tries to kill himself but, in a stunning coup de theatre, instead finds himself miraculously able to sing an aria of Gigli himself. The play ends with King waking up after his suicide attempt and realising that the world is somewhere he is willing to fight on in.
6231400	/m/0fx_q3	La chamade	Françoise Sagan	1965	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Like many of Sagan's novels, this is a story of lost love. A couple meet and move in together, but the woman cannot get used to his life, his working-class existence. She leaves her lover to return to her affair with a man of means. Ostensibly, she is rejecting her lover because she feels stifled by his position in society. But the class differences are metaphor for the quality of the love, with a woman deciding to be with a man who loves her for who she is rather than as an object of affection, merely the focus of a selfish love. She wants to be with the one who doesn't ask her to change.
6234080	/m/0fy439	The Friendship	Mildred Taylor	1987-09-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Mr. Tom Bee, an elderly black man, twice saved the life of a white storekeeper when he was a boy. The boy, John Wallace, was grateful and even allowed Mr. Bee to always call him by his first name. However, years later, Mr. Wallace does not allow Mr. Bee to call him John, while he and even his son call him Tom, which he can do nothing about. Their friendship is ultimately put to the test, which four black children witness. Later Mr. Tom Bee is shot by John Wallace. Mr. Tom Bee crawls away, cursing John Wallace and refusing to give up calling him John.
6234866	/m/0fy53x	Griffin and Sabine			{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel"}	 Griffin Moss is an artist living in London who makes postcards for a living. He is unhappy and lonely, though he is unaware of these feelings. His life is changed forever when he receives a cryptic postcard from Sabine Strohem, a woman he has never met. Like Griffin, she is an artist (she illustrates postage stamps) and comes from a fictional group of small islands in the South Pacific known as the Sicmon Islands (Arbah, Katie, Katin, Ta Fin, Quepol and Typ). The two begin to correspond regularly. Griffin comes to realize that he is in love with Sabine, who reciprocates his feelings, and that they are soulmates. However, his growing uncertainty as to Sabine's true nature and the changes her presence in his life has brought to him develops into fear and he ends up rejecting her offer for him to come see her in person. He comes to the conclusion that Sabine is a figment of his imagination, created from his own loneliness. It appears to be true until another postcard arrives from Sabine with an ominous promise that if he will not come to her, she will go to him.
6238896	/m/0fybzj	The Education of Little Tree	Forrest Carter	1976	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The fictional memoirs of Forrest "The Education of Little Tree" Carter begin in the late 1920s when, as the protagonist, his parents die and he is given over into the care of his Cherokee grandparents at the age of five years. The book was originally to be called "Me and Grandpa," according to the book's introduction. The story centers on a clever child's relationship with his Scottish-Cherokee grandfather, a man named Wales (an overlap with Carter's other fiction). The boy's Cherokee Granpa and Cherokee "Granma" call him "Little Tree" and teach him about nature, farming, whiskey making, mountain life, society, love, and spirit by a combination of gentle guidance and encouragement of independent experience. The story takes place during the fifth to tenth years of the boy's life, as he comes to know his new home in a remote mountain hollow. Granpa runs a small moonshine operation during Prohibition. The grandparents and visitors to the hollow expose Little Tree to supposed Cherokee ways and "mountain people" values. Encounters with outsiders, including "the law," "politicians," "guv'mint," city "slickers," and "Christians" of various types add to Little Tree's lessons, each phrased and repeated in catchy ways. (One of the syntactic devices the book uses frequently is to end paragraphs with short statements of opinion starting with the word 'which,' such as "Which is reasonable.") The state eventually forces Little Tree into a Residential School, where he stays for a few months. At the school, Little Tree suffers from the prejudice and ignorance of the school's caretakers toward Indians and the natural world. Little Tree is rescued when his grandparents' Native American friend Willow John notices his unhappiness and demands Little Tree be withdrawn from the school. At the end, the book's pace speeds up dramatically and its detail decreases; Willow John and Granpa die natural deaths and Granma dies a peaceful death at home. Little Tree heads west and works briefly on various farms in exchange for food and shelter. The book ends after Little Tree's last companion, one of Granpa's hounds, dies.
6245649	/m/0fypwg	Kaleidoscope	Harry Turtledove	1987	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story revolves around three sisters born to a French mother and an American GI father. The father kills the mother and then commits suicide. The story features the events of each girl's life. Separated after the death of their parents, each one is raised quite differently. They are later reunited by an estranged, family friend: the lawyer who placed them in the homes where they spent their childhoods. They later find out that he is part of the reason why their father killed their mother. fr:Kaléidoscope (roman)
6245696	/m/0fypyj	Letting Go	Philip Roth	1962	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gabe Wallach is a graduate student in literature at the University of Iowa and an ardent admirer of Henry James. Fearing that the intellectual demands of a life in literature might leave him cloistered, Gabe seeks solace in what he thinks of as "the world of feeling". Following the death of his mother at the opening of the novel, Gabe befriends his fellow graduate student Paul Herz. The Novel is divided into seven sections: 1. "Debts and Sorrows" Having served in the Korean War after college, Gabe Wallach is finishing his military service in Oklahoma when he receives a letter his mother wrote to him from her death bed. After reading the letter Wallach places it in The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. The narrative then skips forward to a year later when Wallach is working on a graduate degree in literature at the University of Iowa. Wallach loans his copy of The Portrait to a fellow graduate student, Paul Herz. Later Wallach realizes that he left the letter from his mother in the pages of the book and in his attempt to retrieve the book he meets Paul's wife, Libby. Gabe learns from Libby that Paul is teaching classes at another school and realizes how poor the Herz's are. He drives Libby to where Paul's car has broken down on a trip from this second school and witnesses the first of many arguments between Paul and Libby. Libby also reveals to Gabe that she read the letter from his mother and this is the beginning of the several instances where they begin to imagine the life of the other and believe that they understand it completely based on very little actual evidence. During this opening section, Gabe also communicates with his father. Gabe, as narrator, paints his father as a week and needy man although he is a successful dentist in New York. During phone conversations Gabe's father nearly begs him to return home and questions his son about why he would go so far from New York to graduate school. Alone with a very sick Libby, Gabe kisses her once. Gabe also has a relationship with Marge Howells, an undergraduate from a well to do WASP family who is openly rebelling from her parents. While Gabe is in New York visiting his father, he asks Paul to help move Marge out of his apartment. 2. "Paul Loves Libby" In section two, Roth tells the story of Paul and Libby's courtship and the early years of their marriage. They meet while both of them are students at Cornell. Paul is the only child of Jewish parents in Brooklyn. Paul's father has failed at a number of businesses but Paul is recognized as a smart and gifted child. Libby is the child of Catholic parents. Neither Paul nor Libby is very serious about their religious backgrounds and have no problem courting each other because of it; however, both sets of parents are upset by this. Over Christmas break Paul tells his parents about the engagement. They react poorly and end up convincing Paul to speak with his two uncles. One of them, his Uncle Asher is a lifelong bachelor whom most of the family pities because they don't think he can find someone to marry. Paul, however, learns that Asher just does not want to be married. Asher has had a long series of sexual encounters while single and has no desire to be married. The blunt language of Asher is the first, and perhaps the most dominant, example in this novel of the frank sexual dialogue and discussion that Roth would later become renowned and notorious for. Faced with many conflicting opinions, none of which he really wants to listen to, Paul decides to go ahead and elope with Libby on Christmas Eve. Soon after their marriage, the couple learns that Libby's father will no longer support her. Eventually they end up in Michigan, both taking a break from school while they work to save up money. They live in a small room in a boarding house mostly occupied by seniors. Libby becomes pregnant and at work one day, Paul hurts himself in the factory. He tells the factory doctor that his mind was distracted by his pregnant wife. The doctor responds by giving him the name and number of a doctor who will perform abortions. After much discussion and a few arguments, Libby gets an abortion. 3. "The Power of Thanksgiving" 4. "Three Women" 5. "Children and Men" 6. "The Mad Crusader" 7. "Letting Go."
6250918	/m/0fyygn	Dogsbody	Diana Wynne Jones	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main action of this novel is framed as follows. Sirius, the Dog Star, has been falsely convicted of murdering a fellow "luminary" and of losing the Zoi, an extremely dangerous weapon that he has allowed to fall to a minor planet. He is sentenced to spend one lifetime in the form of dog, an animal native to this planet: if he can recover the Zoi within that dog's lifetime, he will be allowed to return to his former status as Sirius. If he does not, he will simply die at the end of his dog's life. Sirius accepts the sentence and is born into a litter of supposedly Labrador puppies. Revealed as mongrels, the puppies are thrown into the river in a sack. This is just the beginning of Sirius's problems. Although adopted by the loving Kathleen, he learns that she is "low dog" everywhere because she is Irish. Struggling with his limitations as a dog and his perceptions as a star, coping with the bigotry in the household, trying simply to get out on the street so he can begin his search for the Zoi, Sirius is battered by one setback after another. How he -- with help from Kathleen, another star, and his own quick wits -- uses his canine and stellar wisdom to track the lost weapon, is an intricate and intriguing tale. Many references are made to mythology, particularly Welsh mythology in the appearance and actions of the dogs (see Cŵn Annwn) and several later characters such as Arawn.
6253435	/m/0fz15c	Dance Hall of the Dead	Tony Hillerman		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When a young Zuni boy and his Navajo friend go missing, Lieutenant Leaphorn is called in by the Zuni Tribal Police to search for George Bowlegs, the missing Navajo boy. When Ernesto Cata, Bowlegs' Zuni friend, is found murdered, the search for Bowlegs takes on even greater significance.
6253935	/m/0fz1zj	Chosen of the Gods	Chris Pierson	2001-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Cathan is called back to his house to discover that his brother has died of the Longosai, a plague, and that he and Wentha are the only remaining members of their clan. Having prayed to Paladine every day to heal his brother, he rips down the symbol of Paladine from the wall of their house, since Paladine didn't answer his requests. Having no family left except for his sister, Wentha, he joins some bandits led by Baron Tavarre. Baron Tavarre gained an intense hate of clerists after a loved member of his family died, because the clerists in Istar wouldn't help him. However, he is not the only one that feels that way, as many other bandits joined only after their family died of the Longosai because the clerists ignored them. This hate influences the actions of Cathan, when on a rainy day they ambush a fat clergyman heading for Govinna with a tarp against the rain held by his guards. Cathan slings a piece of the symbol of Paladine at the clerist, knocking him out. The bandits quickly disarm the guards, and Cathan, seeing the fat and richly robed clergymen feels disgust, and so kicks him, earning himself a reprimand from Lord Tavarre, as he is now called. Meanwhile in Istar, the Kingpriest of Istar, Symeon IV, calls a meeting of his most trusted advisers, and to break the news that Kurnos the Ursurper is going to become his heir once he dies, as he has seen portents of his death. He and his advisers also debate whether do send the Imperial Army against bandits who attacked the clergymen, but Ilista, First Daughter of Paladine, and Loralon, emissary of the elves, counsel against it. The Kingpriest then adjourns the meeting to meditate. That night, Ilista has dreams of a Lightbringer, so she asks for the approval of the Kingpriest, and then with his approval sets out. Later in the day, during a game of khas with Kurnos, Symeon falls over unconscious. Kurnos then hears a dark voice in his head; "Let him die." Unknown to him at the time, the voice came from Fistandantilus. Kurnos refuses to listen to it and calls for help. After returning to their bandit camp, Cathan is called back to his village, where he finds out that Wentha has caught the Longosai. He leaves her in the care of Widow Fendrilla almost as soon as he arrives, desiring even more revenge against the clergymen. After returning, he learns that they have united with other bandits and plan to attack Govinna, the only walled city in the highlands. The bandits split up into groups, and enter Govinna undetected. Cathan is told to guard an alley, but he really wants to be part of the fighting. However, he remains at his post. Meanwhile, the rest of the bandits quickly capture the city, but Durinen, the Little Emperor of the highlands escapes. Durinen emerges through a secret tunnel close to where Cathan is posted, and so is captured and placed under house arrest. Back in Istar, Kurnos learns that Symeon will most likely live until the fall, which he feels is too long a wait. Fistandantilus offers his aid, and so Kurnos reluctantly accepts it, in the form of a demon, Sathira, bound within a ring. Kurnos tells Sathira to kill Symeon in a "natural way", and so Kurnos is crowned Kingpriest soon after. Ilista searches far and wide, however does not find any sign of the Lightbringer. Soon, she begins to doubt herself, and begins to consider turning back until she receives a message telling her to go to an abandoned monastery, where she will find the Lightbringer. On the way to the monastery, she is attacked by evil monsters, but is rescued by a humble monk, Brother Beldyn, who will become known to the world as "the Lightbringer." With the Lightbringer, she sets back out for Istar, taking an overland route through the highlands. However, unbeknownst to her and her party, the highlands have been taken over by the bandits. Just after setting out, she, her guards, and the Lightbringer are capture by the bandits. A guard was mortally injured in the battle, and Beldyn pleads with the bandits to allow him to heal the guard. The bandits reluctantly agree, and Beldyn manages to heal the guard. With a healing miracle in their midst, the bandits quickly support the Lightbringer, and pleading with him to heal their friends, family, and villages. Cathan is among the others that beg for healing, and luckily manages to have him heal his sister. After arriving in their village, Beldyn not only heals his sister, but everyone in the village too. Cathan then swears allegiance to Beldinas. In Istar, Kurnos learns of the capture of Govinna, and that Ilista found the Lightbringer. However, instead of accepting Beldinas, he feels threatened, deciding to send Sathira to kill him. He also sends the Imperial Army, or the Scatas, to kill the bandits. Durinen attempts to commit suicide, ending up with a mortal wound; however, Beldyn manages to heal him, convincing the Little Emperor that Beldyn is the true Kingpriest. The Little Emperor then reveals the location of the Crown of Power, an artifact that allows the wielder to claim the mantle of Kingpriest, and that has been lost since the time of Pradian. Unluckily, before Durinen finishes, Sathira arrives and slays the Little Empire; however he is banished back to the gem by Ilista's sacrifice and death. Everyone in the city mourns for Ilista, as she was unlike the other high clergy &mdash; she actually helped the people during her stay. Also, during this time, the Imperial Army reaches Govinna and camps right outside the city. This sets plans into motion as Beldyn and Cathan go into underground catacombs in an attempt to retrieve Crown of Power. Cathan emerges later with the crown, but Beldyn is in a coma and cannot be woken. Meanwhile, the situation becomes more dire, as the defenders of Govinna are deserting in the face of the Imperial scatas. Soon, the scatas make their move, and the fight for the city begins. However Beldyn still has not awoken. Cathan prays to Paladine, and the ghost of Pradian, the would-be emperor who hid the crown, appears. Cathan forces Pradian to wake Beldyn, as Pradian does not want to see the crown in the hands of Kurnos, and so Cathan and Beldyn join the fight. In a surprising move, Beldyn breaks the gates of Govinna to let the scatas in. Then, to convince the scatas of his power, Beldyn has Cathan crown him with the Miceram, the Crown of Power, but Sathira appears and lunges for Brother Beldyn. Cathan pushes Beldyn away, and manages to wound Sathira with the pieces of his symbol of Paladine, giving Beldyn time to banish Sathira. Beldyn then puts on the Crown of Power, resulting in a cleansing wave of power spreading through the city. The Scatas realize the power, and swear allegiance to Beldyn. Later, Beldyn and his newfound army march to Istar, to oust Kurnos. Back in Istar, the heads of the temples receive word of the approaching army, and Beldyn's holy powers, and begin to send votes of "no support" to Kurnos. That night, Fistandantilus replaces Sathira with a killing spell, instructing Kurnos to use it to kill Beldinas. The next day, Kurnos surrenders without a fight, and when he pretends to beg for forgiveness, he uses the ring on Beldinas. Cathan realizes Kurnos's intent, and jumps in front of Beldinas, saving his life, but dies. However, Beldinas calls on Paladine to resurrect Cathan, and Paladine answers. Cathan is resurrected and Kurnos is thrown into a dungeon, while Beldinas debates what to do with him. However, that night Fistandantilus arrives in Kurnos's cell and unleashes Sathira on Kurnos, letting her kill and mutilate him. When Sathira is done, Fistandantilus uses magic so that Kurnos looks like he died naturally.
6253992	/m/0fz218	Bard: The Odyssey Of the Irish	Morgan Llywelyn	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Official tagline: "The sweeping historical tale of the coming of the Irish to Ireland, and of the men and women who made the Emerald Isle their own." In the 4th century BC a group of Celts living in the north-west of Iberia, the Galicians, are waning in prosperity. A group of Phoenician traders unexpectedly arrives, and gives hope to the tribe. The story follows Amergin, druid and chief bard of the Galicians, and his brothers; Éremón, Colptha, Éber Finn, Donn, and Ír - all sons of Milesios. After years of declining prosperity, the Gaelicians hope that the Phoenician traders, led by Age-Nor, will help bring them back. Unfortunately, neither side has anything of much worth to trade. At a reception in the Heroes' Hall, Age-Nor is attacked by Ír, while Milesios is asleep and unaware. Amergin uses his bardic talent to entrance Ír, thus saving Age-Nor. Later in the novel, Age-Nor rewards Amergin, despite the bard's vehement protests, by giving him a servant, a shipwright named Sakkar, and regaling him with a tale of a fabled land to the north, Ierne. After a series of mishaps and bad decisions, it is eventually decided that a group of the Gaelicians, led by the Sons of the Mil, will settle this land. The tribe builds a series of ships with the help of Sakkar, and set sail. When they arrive on Ierne, they are confronted by the mysterious Tuatha Dé Danann, People of the Goddess Danu. After a battle, the Dananns vanish with no trace, leaving Ierne for the Milesians. it:L'epopea di Amergin, il bardo gaelico che conquistò l'Irlanda
6254794	/m/0fz33h	The Hoboken Chicken Emergency	Daniel Pinkwater	1977	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The main character, Arthur, is asked to pick up a bird for Thanksgiving dinner, so he brings home a 266-pound chicken named Henrietta. The family welcome her with open arms, but the neighbors are not so sure and then Henrietta escapes. Everyone in town is horrified and screams at Henrietta.
6255302	/m/0fz3zx	Pedagogy of the Oppressed	Paulo Freire	1968		 Translated into several languages, most editions of Pedagogy of the Oppressed contain at least one introduction/foreword, a preface, and four chapters. The first chapter explores how oppression has been justified and how it is overcome through a mutual process between the "oppressor" and the "oppressed" (oppressors-oppressed distinction). Examining how the balance of power between the colonizer and the colonized remains relatively stable, Freire admits that the powerless in society can be frightened of freedom. He writes, "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion". (47) According to Freire, freedom will be the result of praxis — informed action — when a balance between theory and practice is achieved. The second chapter examines the "banking" approach to education — a metaphor used by Freire that suggests students are considered empty bank accounts that should remain open to deposits made by the teacher. Freire rejects the "banking" approach, claiming it results in the dehumanization of both the students and the teachers. In addition, he argues the banking approach stimulates oppressive attitudes and practices in society. Instead, Freire advocates for a more world-mediated, mutual approach to education that considers people incomplete. According to Freire, this "authentic" approach to education must allow people to be aware of their incompleteness and strive to be more fully human. This attempt to use education as a means of consciously shaping the person and the society is called conscientization, a term first coined by Freire in this book. The third chapter developed the use of the term limit-situation with regards to dimensions of human praxis. This is in line with the Alvaro Viera Pinto's use of the word/idea in his "Consciencia Realidad Nacional" which Freire contends is "using the concept without the pessimistic character originally found in Jaspers" (Note 15, Chapter 3) in reference to Karl Jaspers's notion of 'Grenzsituationen'. The last chapter proposes dialogics as an instrument to free the colonized, through the use of cooperation, unity, organization and cultural synthesis (overcoming problems in society to liberate human beings). This is in contrast to antidialogics which use conquest, manipulation, cultural invasion, and the concept of divide and rule. Freire suggests that populist dialogue is a necessity to revolution; that impeding dialogue dehumanizes and supports the status quo. This is but one example of the dichotomies Freire identifies in the book. Others include the student-teacher dichotomy and the colonizer-colonized dichotomy.
6257377	/m/0fz75c	Bones of the Earth	Michael Swanwick	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Paleontologist Richard Leyster has reached the pinnacle of his profession: a position with the Smithsonian Museum plus a groundbreaking dinosaur fossil site he can research, publish on, and learn from for years to come. There is nothing that could lure him away - until a disturbingly secretive stranger named Harry Griffin enters Leyster's office with an ice cooler and a job offer. In the cooler is the head of a freshly killed stegosaurus. Griffin has been entrusted with an extraordinary gift; an impossible technology on loan to humanity for an undisclosed purpose from beings known to a select few as the Unchanging. The only stipulation being is not to alter recorded history. If the taboo is broken, the contract becomes null and void. Time travel has become a reality millions of years before it rationally could be. With it, Richard Leyster and his colleagues make their most cherished fantasies come true. They study dinosaurs up close, in their own time and environment. Also, individual lives have the freedom to turn back on themselves. People meet, shake hands, and converse with their younger or older versions at various crossroads in time. One wrong word, a single misguided act, could be disastrous to the project and to the world. Griffin's job is to make sure everything that is supposed to happen does happen, no matter who is destined to be hurt... or die. And then there's Dr. Gertrude Salley - passionate, fearless, and brutally ambitious - a genius rebel in the tight community of "bone men" and women. Alternately, both Leyster's and Griffin's chief rival, trusted colleague, despised nemesis, and inscrutable lover at various junctures throughout time, Salley is relentlessly driven to tamper with the working mechanisms of natural law, audaciously trespassing in forbidden areas, pushing paradox to the edge no matter what the consequences may be. And, when they concern the largest, most savage creatures that ever lived, the consequences become terrifying indeed, resulting in a team of "bone men" becoming stranded for two years in the Mesozoic Era. Apart from failed attempts to rescue the team from the past, slowly, something begins to happen. The temporal mechanics are altered in such a way that two time streams emerge. The first focuses on the struggling team in the Mesozoic's Maastrichtian Age, some 65 millions years ago. In the far future, in what will be known as the Telezoic Era, a younger version of Gertrude Salley meets an older version of herself - the one who was responsible for the split in the timeline - now happily living in the center of the new supercontinent of Ultima Pangea. There, they also finally meet the mysterious benefactors known as the Unchanging, who are actually an evolved avian species that inherited the Earth upon the extinction of the human race. Preparing to beg the Unchanging not to shut down the whole enterprise of time travel and the sciences based upon it, Gertrude also discovers their apparent fascination with humanity and that their gift of time travel was simply a means to study the human race in their own right. She also realizes the difficulty in the ability of the incomprehensible far-future species to forgive, for incomprehensible reasons, the creation of a deeply dangerous timeline anomaly back in the 21st century. However, interestingly, the team trapped in the Maastrichtian Age makes a remarkable discovery. One of the team members arrives at a genuinely unique explanation for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. They had already determined that predator dinosaurs farm and ranch their prey, singing infrasound commands that lead their ultimate prey to green pastures. One of the team speculated that dinosaur migration might be similarly controlled by the song of the Earth, the song of tectonic plates shifting in the crust of the planet. And the possibility of the Chicxulub meteor having been so great as to detune the song of the Earth for a decade or a century, deafening the dinosaurs so they could not migrate, causing them to starve. In the end, the Unchanging decide to retroactively remove the time travel science from human hands, thereby rendering all of the events up to that point irrelevant. But, out of the ashes of this paradox, its tangles and attenuations mercifully forgotten, a love of the world is retained - a deep unselfish love of learning the world and all its creatures.
6257787	/m/0fz86q	The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole	Sue Townsend	1984-08-02	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Adrian Mole is an outsider who feels the reason he can't quite fit in with "regular" society is that he is an intellectual. Evidence from his diary entries include a precocious interest in literature, in left-wing politics, a desire to have his own poetry show on the BBC, his dislike of Margaret Thatcher and his frequent critiques of his less-refined schoolmates and family. Adrian's dysfunctional family, as in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, is one of the focal points of the book. While Adrian's entries are full of humour, sarcasm and irony, they still speak to a great deal of confusion and disillusionment with the dysfunctional relationships of his parents. Sometimes Adrian's diary entries show him to be naive; other times they are very candid; and other times they are full of self-pity. As an only child (at least as the book begins), Adrian has a tendency to look at all problems from a selfish point of view, yet he seems to have a real compassion for the members of his family. While most people might not have the same loquacity as young Adrian, and others might not have the same level of dysfunction in their families, these entries are recorded in such a way that it becomes easy to empathise with the young writer. This book also builds on its predecessor by continuing the storyline of Adrian's growing frustration with his body. He constantly writes about the "spots" that mar his complexion, and he also has self-esteem issues about his height and muscular maturity. While Adrian seems a bit self-centred in some aspects of life (and it is hard not to seem this way when writing a diary), he also is more compassionate than the average young man. He is the only friend and frequent caretaker of the OAP Bert Baxter, and also shows a great deal of concern and compassion for the misfortunes of his parents and respect for the authority of his grandmother. it:Fuori di zucca pt:The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
6258044	/m/0fz8t0	Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years	Sue Townsend	1999-10-14	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Adrian is the Head Chef in a top Soho restaurant, and currently lives in the upstairs room of the restaurant; the rest of his family live in Leicester. He is estranged from his wife Jo Jo, a Nigerian woman who has returned to her home country following their separation, and they are in the middle of a divorce. The real love of Adrian's life is, as ever, Pandora, who is now standing for Labour MP of Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Pandora's full name is revealed as Pandora Louise Elizabeth Braithwaite in the novel. Adrian's father has no job, his mother is suspected of being involved with Pandora's father physically, his sister, Rosie, is a victim of culture - piercings, unprotected sex etc. and as a result gets pregnant and decides to have an abortion. Adrian also has a son with Jo Jo, William, who is three and idolises Jeremy Clarkson. Pandora becomes a Labour MP, Adrian gets offered a job as a TV chef, and accepts when he hears the pay. Adrian does the TV shows, but gets upstaged by his co-host, Dev Singh. Adrian gets sacked from the restaurant, as it is being turned into an oxygen bar and then moves home to live with his family. Pandora's father moves in with Adrian's mother, with whom he is having an affair, and Adrian's father moves in with Pandora's mother. Adrian's father and Pandora's mother then start an affair. Adrian is commissioned to write a book to go with the TV show, but fails, and is facing lifetime debt, but luckily, his mother writes it for him. Adrian discovers he is father to another son, the disruptive Glenn Bott. Archie Tait, a geriatric with whom Adrian is acquainted, dies and leaves Adrian his house. Adrian, William and Glenn move in together. Adrian then employs a (mentally unstable) special needs teacher for Glenn, Eleanor Flood, who becomes infatuated with Adrian but did not attract Adrian at all and ultimately sets fire to Archie's old house, after Pandora spends a night there. The uninsured house is completely destroyed, leaving him and his sons homeless. One of the few things recovered from the wreckage of the house is Glenn's diary, containing pages idolising Adrian.
6263825	/m/0fzkb7	Land of Unreason	Fletcher Pratt	1942	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Fred Barber, an American staying as a guest in an English country home during World War II, consumes a bowl of milk left as an offering for the fairies, substituting liquor in its place. The rightful recipient of the offering, drunk and offended at the substitution, takes vengeance by kidnapping Barber off to the Land of Faerie as a changeling, a fate normally reserved for infants. He finds Faerie beset by a menace echoing the war in his own world. Trapped in a magical realm where rationality as he knows it is turned upside-down and failure to follow the rules can have dire consequences, Barber undertakes a quest in the service of Oberon, the fairy king, in order to be returned to his own world. The outcome, befitting a realm in which nothing is as expected, is one that neither he nor the reader anticipates, for Fred Barber is not quite the man he thinks he is...
6266783	/m/0fzqbb	The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"	William Hope Hodgson	1907	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" starts in the middle of an adventure. The subtitle reads: Being an account of their Adventures in the Strange places of the Earth, after the foundering of the good ship Glen Carrig through striking upon a hidden rock in the unknown seas to the Southward. As told by John Winterstraw, Gent., to his Son James Winterstraw, in the year 1757, and by him committed very properly and legibly to manuscript. We learn nothing else from the text about what happened to the &#34;Glen Carrig,&#34; its captain, or any of the other people aboard the ship. The text begins: Now we had been five days in the boats, and in all this time made no discovering of land. Then upon the morning of the sixth day came there a cry from the bo'sun, who had the command of the lifeboat, that there was something which might be land afar upon our larboard bow; but it was very low lying, and none could tell whether it was land or but a morning cloud. Yet, because there was the beginning of hope within our hearts, we pulled wearily towards it, and thus, in about an hour, discovered it to be indeed the coast of some flat country. The narrator calls this dismal, muddy place the &#34;land of lonesomeness.&#34; The men paddle the two lifeboats up a creek. The air is filled with strange cries and growls. They come across an abandoned ship, and climbing aboard, discover food. The ship appears to have been evacuated in haste, with coins and clothing left behind. While spending the night aboard the ship, the survivors are attacked by a strange tentacled creature. They find troubling notes left by a female passenger aboard the ship, one of which makes reference to a nearby spring. The men locate the spring, but after filling their water containers, they discover horrifying plants that have taken on human shapes, and which produce blood-curdling cries. The survivors quickly flee and head back out to sea. Floating on the open sea, the survivors confront a tremendous storm. The second boat becomes separated from the first, although the narrator reveals that those aboard will eventually make it back to London. The story now concentrates entirely on the survivors in the first boat. The men set up a canvas covering to shield the boat from breaking waves and a &#34;sea anchor&#34; which keeps the boat perpendicular to the waves. The storm is a long ordeal, but the boat and the men come through unscathed. After surviving the storm, the men encounter giant, floating masses of seaweed, and enormous crabs. They pass a number of lost, ancient vessels in this Sargasso Sea, which the narrator calls the &#34;cemetery of the oceans.&#34; After encountering giant crabs and a weird humanoid creature they locate a habitable island. While the men explore, young seaman Job remains in the boat, and is attacked by a giant &#34;devil-fish&#34; (an enormous octopus). Job is struck with an oar and gravely injured. The bo&#39;sun bravely risks his life to bring Job ashore, but Job remains unconscious. The narrator discovers that the boat is badly damaged, and it must be repaired before it can be used again. Things become difficult for the men on the island. The narrator is attacked in his sleep by some kind of tentacled creature, which leaves marks on his throat. The unconscious Job is discovered missing, and a frantic search is carried out. His dead body is discovered in the valley, drained of blood. The men, filled with rage, burn down the island&#39;s forest of giant toadstools, the flames lasting through the night. In the morning, they bury Job on the beach. The bo&#39;sun grimly starts making his repairs to the boat, using wood recovered from another wrecked ship. Ascending to the highest point of the island, the men find that they are quite near to a ship embedded in the weed, and while keeping watch they see a light aboard the ship. Those aboard the ship have built a protective superstructure, which can be closed to resist attacks by the creatures that inhabit the &#34;weed-continent.&#34; The men manage to establish contact with the crew using words written on large pieces of canvas, and begin planning strategies to rescue the people aboard. The evenings on the island get progressively worse. The men are attacked repeatedly by hideous, foul-smelling, tentacled humanoid creatures that swarm over the island in the dark; these can only be kept at bay with huge bonfires. The narrator and several other men are injured in an attack. A seaman named Tomkins goes missing, and Job&#39;s body disappears from his grave, evidently removed by the ghoulish &#34;weed-men.&#34; Although in dire straits themselves, the men on the island retain a strong desire to aid those aboard the ship trapped in the seaweed. Coastal life-saving operations historically could use a small mortar (later known as a &#34;Lyle gun&#34;) to fire a projectile carrying a light rope, which was carefully pre-coiled in a basket to avoid fouling. This would be used to haul a stronger rope, which could be pulled taut and used to accommodate a breeches buoy that could be slid along a rope hawser. This possibility is discussed. The men on the island ask the people aboard the trapped ship if they have a mortar aboard. They reply by holding up a large piece of canvas upon which is written &#34;NO.&#34; The narrator advocates the construction of a giant crossbow to fire a line over to the trapped ship. The bo&#39;sun assents, and the men build the elaborate crossbow, composed of a number of smaller bows that can be fired together to propel a single arrow. The bow can easily launch an arrow past the vessel, but unfortunately when even a light line is attached, the arrows fall far short. All is not lost, though, because another crew member manages to build a large box kite which succeeds in carrying a line to the ship on the first attempt. The men manage to use the light line to pull across successively stronger lines, until they have a heavy rope stretched between the island and the ship. The bo&#39;sun attaches this to a conveniently located boulder, while, the crew of the ship attaches the line to the stump of a mast and uses a capstan to gradually winch the ship closer to the island. Two groups exchange letters by pulling an oilskin bag along the connecting rope. We learn that the ship, which was attacked by a devil-fish, has been stuck in the weed for seven years, and the captain and more than half of the crew are dead. Fortunately the ship carried a great deal of food, and so those aboard have not gone hungry. Indeed, the ship is even able to supply the men on the island with fresh bread, wine, ham, cheese, and tobacco. When the ship is close enough, and the rope high enough above the weed to ensure a safe passage, the narrator rides a breeches buoy to the ship, where he receives a hero&#39;s welcome. He discovers that there are several women aboard: the captain&#39;s wife, who is mad; the &#34;buxom woman&#34; who is now the cook, and the young and eligible Mistress Madison. The narrator and Mistress Madison develop a romance and Mistress Madison, who was only twelve years old when the ship was trapped in the weed, looks forward to re-joining the wider world as a young woman of nineteen. But they are not out of the weeds yet: the bo&#39;sun sends a note indicating that he has doubts about the state of the rope, which has frayed slightly, and insists that it is too dangerous for the narrator to return the way he came. The weed is still a dangerous place, and the ship is attacked again by the devil-fish and by the weed-men. But the crew of the ship works through the night to winch the ship closer to the island, and it is finally freed from the weed altogether. The rest of the men from the island tow the ship around to the far side of the island using the now-repaired lifeboat. At this point in the narrative, the story begins to significantly compress time: Now, the time that it took us to rig the ship, and fit her out, was seven weeks, saving one day. During this time the combined crew disassembles the superstructure, repairs the masts, and installs sails. They try to avoid the floating masses of weed, but brush against one accidentally and are again boarded and attacked by weed-men. Victory against the weed-men is overshadowed by sorrow when it is discovered that the captain&#39;s wife has disappeared during the attack. The bulk of the return journey is condensed into a single sentence: And so, after a voyage which lasted for nine and seventy days since getting under weigh, we came to the Port of London, having refused all offers of assistance on the way. In the concluding sentences of the book we learn that the narrator is a man of some wealth. He marries Mistress Madison, gives gifts to the crew members, and provides a place for the bo&#39;sun, who is now his close friend, to live upon his estate. In the closing of the story the narrator describes how he and the bo&#39;sun often talk about their adventures, although they change the subject when the narrator&#39;s children are around, because &#34;the little ones love not terror.&#34;
6267581	/m/0fzrh_	Kingdom Come	Jerry B. Jenkins	2007-04-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the aftermath of the Glorious Appearing during the 75 Day Interval before the Millennium World, Cameron (formerly known as Buck) and Chloe Williams see their son, Kenneth Bruce Williams playing with other children who were orphaned during the Tribulation. Buck and Chloe form a ministry known as Children of the Tribulation (COT), in the knowledge that these must be brought to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ before their one-hundredth year, or they shall die and go to Hell. The COT accomplish this mission by saying "Hey, you know Jesus is, like, right over there, right?" to which the unbelievers respond "Oh yeah," and are saved. At the End of the 75 Day Interval, Christ destroys the abomination of desolation in Jerusalem (the rebuilt Temple itself) with lightning from Heaven. He then constructs a new Temple for the people of the Earth and sets up Levites as his priests and his earthly apostles as civil governors, with a resurrected King David as their chief. Meanwhile, Natural and Glorified Believers (Naturals being Believers who lived to see the Glorious Appearing, and will still Age slowly until the end of the Millennium, but not die. And Glorified being Believers who were Raptured or Died During the Tribulation who ascended to Heaven and received Glorified Bodies meaning they cannot age or die.) Begin building their Houses and Estates for the 1,000 Years. A young woman named Cendrillon dies at age 100, surprising the Williams' and their close friends, who employed her at COT and assumed that she was saved. Rumors surface that she may have had contact with a group called The Other Light (TOL), which defies Christ even after his appearing and is growing in the world outside the Kingdom. This seems confirmed when Kenny Williams speaks to her cousins at the funeral, and sees that they wear garments announcing their dedication to TOL. The former members of the Tribulation Force decide to redouble their efforts in their new ministries, and Kenny Williams joins Raymie Steele and Abdullah's two children to form the Millennium Force, dedicated to share the Gospel to unsaved children before they turn a century old. Meanwhile, Kenny G is introduced to a Natural Believer from Greece around his age named Ekaterina Risto, who is employed at COT. The Two strike up a friendship, before beginning a Romantic Relationship. Kenny G tries to go undercover and infiltrate TOL, but his plans go awry when his older believing friend Abdullah Ababneh mistakenly thinks he is really a member of TOL. This causes Kenny G's life to virtually fall apart, as his girlfriend Ekaterina deserts him, all his friends abandon him, and even his own parents can hardly seem to believe him. Ekaterina soon feels guilty and talks to Kenny G, and they discover the real infiltrator from TOL, another teenager named Qasim Marid. Qasim is fired and Kenny G is reunited with his girlfriend and his family. Kenny G eventually marries Ekaterina, and they produced 8 Sons and 6 Daughters and over 80 Grandchildren, before expanding the work of COT to Greece, until they were too old to carry on and went back to Jerusalem towards 3/4 of the way through the Millennium. Meanwhile, Rayford Steele and his first wife Irene, now in a glorified body, lead a missionary trip to Egypt. Tsion Ben-Judah stands before the Parliament and rebukes the people of that land for continuing to glorify the name of the Egyptian god Ptah in the very name of their country. They preach the Gospel and lead many to salvation, but Rayford is captured by a pocket of resistance with goals similar to the TOL. He experiences firsthand the power of God when an angel descends into the base and rescues him and his fellow prisoners. Rayford also leads a TOL operative named Rehema to salvation. Near the end of the Millennium, the ministry is taken over mainly by Believers in Glorified Bodies (like Cameron, Chloe, Irene, Raymie, Tsion Ben-Judah and Bruce) as the Naturals from the Beginning of the Tribulation begin to feel the ravages of time. Friends and family gather at COT to celebrate the thousandth birthday of Mac McCullum, and every member of what was once the Tribulation Force makes an appearance. Rayford, who is now more than 1,000 years old, requests a picture of the original Tribulation Force, and is shocked to find how old he looks in contrast to his daughter Chloe, son-in-law Cameron and friend Bruce Barnes (who are all in glorified bodies). In the final years of the Millennium, the Other Light amasses its armies, a force a thousand times larger than the Global Community Unity Army that were Present at the Battle of Armageddon 1,000 years before. All the billions of members of TOL gather all the weapons they can to battle against God, surrounding the city of Jerusalem during the final year of the Millennium where Christ reigns, with Lucifer himself leading their charge during the final day when he is released. However, Jesus comes out to meet them and says, "I Am Who I Am," and the entire opposing army is devoured by fire. Jesus then speaks personally to Lucifer, shaming him for his iniquities and evils. At his final words he opens a hole in spacetime itself in which the Beast (Nicolae Carpathia) and the False Prophet (Leon Fortunato), are seen both writhing in agony and screaming "Jesus is Lord!" Lucifer joins them in their screaming and is thrown into torment with them. All the Believers at the End of the Millennium are then taken to Heaven, with the Naturals finally becoming Glorified. The Great White Throne Judgment takes place and all unbelievers are cast into the lake of fire. The earth is destroyed and reduced to particles by fire from Heaven and from inside the Earth itself. After the Great White Throne Judgement, Jesus instantly creates a new earth, and Heaven (or New Jerusalem) descends down upon it, ushering in a new heaven and a new earth. All the believers are then welcomed into New Jerusalem and New Earth, destined to reign with Christ for all eternity.
6267981	/m/0fzs4g	A Chaste Maid in Cheapside	Thomas Middleton	1630		 The play presents three plots centered around the marriage of Moll Yellowhammer, the titular maid, who is daughter to a wealthy Cheapside goldsmith. Moll loves Touchwood Junior, a poor gallant; her father, however, has betrothed her to Sir Walter Whorehound, a philandering knight eager for Moll's dowry. As a kind of side-bargain, Sir Walter has promised Moll's brother Tim a "landed niece" from Wales. Tim, a fatuous scholar, returns to London from Cambridge University with his Latin tutor. This "landed niece" is in reality one of Sir Walter's mistresses, who has no land in actuality. Sir Walter is also having an affair with the wife of Allwit, a knowing cuckold, or wittol, who lives on the money Sir Walter gives his wife. Meanwhile, Touchwood Senior (the elder brother of Moll's true love) prepares to depart from his wife; prodigiously fertile, he impregnates any woman he sleeps with. He and his wife must separate to avoid another pregnancy. His salvation comes from the Kixes, an aging couple who have not been able to conceive. This is important because if they have a child before Sir Walter (a relation of theirs) begets a legitimate heir, they will inherit Sir Walter's fortune. A maid tells the Kixes that Touchwood makes a special fertility potion; Touchwood deceives his way into the bed of Lady Kix. After an abortive attempt to elope with Touchwood Junior, Moll is guarded at home. The day before the wedding, Moll flees her parents' home. Caught while attempting to cross the Thames, she is drenched and seems to fall sick upon being brought home. Touchwood Junior and Sir Walter fight in the street, and both are wounded. Sir Walter believes that he is near death. At Allwit's house, he repents all of his sins, condemning the Allwits for indulging him. When news is brought that Lady Kix is pregnant (thus ruining Sir Walter's prospects), the Allwits kick him out and plan to sell all Sir Walter's gifts and purchase a home in The Strand. Moll continues very sick; when Touchwood Senior brings word that his brother has died, she faints and appears to die. Saddened, the Yellowhammers agree to Touchwood Senior's request that the young lovers receive a joint burial. At the funeral, Moll and Touchwood Junior rise from their coffins and the mourning turns to celebration. The two are wed, as Tim and the Welsh "niece" had been earlier that day; Kix promises to support the family of Touchwood Senior, who announces that Sir Walter has been imprisoned for debt. All exit, headed for a celebratory dinner.
6272268	/m/0fzz2c	Naked in Death				 Lieutenant Eve Dallas is just barely thirty years old in the NYPSD (New York Police and Security Department) Homicide division in January, 2058. Eve is suffering from bad dreams over the death of a young girl that she couldn't prevent. Eve killed the girl's father, who was the one who killed the girl, and is now awaiting Testing, a psychological and physical evaluation all police officers must undergo after utilizing maximum force (killing). Eve dreads Testing; however, it is delayed when she is called to a case: the murder of a senator's granddaughter, who was working as a licensed companion - the 2058 version of a prostitute. The murder weapon is an antique gun, a Smith and Wesson model 10, and the other detective is her former partner, Captain Ryan Feeney, of the Electronics Detection Division (EDD). This being 2058, prostitution is legal, but guns are not and only available to licensed collectors. The victim, Sharon DeBlass, had an evening appointment with Roarke, of Roarke Industries and one of the richest men on earth. He is also known for being an antique gun collector and a very proficient shot. Her first image of Roarke is his ID photo, but their first meeting is at Sharon DeBlass's funeral in the capital. Eve is observing Roarke from five pews back when he abruptly looks back and makes eye contact, which they hold until the ceremony ends. When they're outside, he's surprised to find she's a cop, internally observing that he normally avoids cops (due to his criminal background). They fly back to New York together. During the limo ride to the airport, a gray fabric button falls off Eve's suit without her knowing; Roarke picks up the button. It later becomes evident that Roarke apparently keeps it in his pocket at all times. Later that night, Eve's best friend, Mavis Freestone comes over to her apartment. It's revealed here that Eve has very few friends, but she treasures Mavis very much. They met when Eve was an unranked police officer and arrested Mavis - several times - for grifting and other small cons. Mavis is currently working as a singer in a club. Throughout this case, there is pressure on the investigation from the victim's grandfather, Senator DeBlass of the Conservative Party. He is spearheading a "Morality Bill" that will again outlaw prostitution and legalize firearms. Eve goes to Roarke's house for the first time, where she meets Summerset as well. She is at the house to take Roarke's S&W into evidence, and hopes to trap him into incriminating himself. He surprises her with dinner, turning it into their first date. After she collects the gun, they end up kissing. She leaves when summoned to the second in what is now a series of murders. After going to the crime scene, Eve goes directly to Roarke's office (the next day) and demands to know his whereabouts at the time of the murder; he does not have an alibi. They argue, Eve is conflicted by the fact that she feels that the murderer is not him but unable to prove definitively one way or another, and he's furious that she even suspects him. He breaks into her apartment that night and is waiting for her when she comes home. She and Roarke argue briefly before she admits to him that she's been suffering severe guilt over the death of the little girl that she couldn't prevent, and he comforts her. All the leads that Eve follows point to Roarke, in murder weapon, lack of alibi, and an appointment with the first victim, but she doesn't believe it's him. She is then abruptly thrown into Testing after all, where Dr. Charlotte Mira is introduced. After the examination and interview with the doctor, Eve goes to Mavis's club to get drunk. Roarke appears, drags Eve out of the club, and takes her back to his home, where he takes her to his target range where she shoots the weapons used in the murders. They then consummate their relationship; when she tries to leave directly after, as she has in all her previous relationships, he prevents her, and instead they spend the entire night together. Eve is very confused as to what they're doing together, and much more unsure than Roarke, who is a little disturbed but accepting of their relationship. He then leaves for on a secret trip to the Olympus Resort, an off-planet space resort that he's building. Eve returns to headquarters only to find that the Chief of Police, Simpson, her commander, Jack Whitney, and Feeney all know that she's compromised the case and slept with Roarke. She's then ordered to lie in the press conference and say that DeBlass has not been linked with the other murders. She returns to her apartment and receives a transmission from Roarke, but chooses not to inform him of her wavering credibility due to their relationship. Eve is informed of a third victim, and Eve takes the woman's cat, since the victim's daughter was too grief-stricken to take care of it. The murder weapon is registered to and was apparently purchased by Roarke at an auction the previous year; Eve alone knows that Roarke was off-planet at the time of the murder. Nevertheless, she is forced to inform him to return to NYC for an interview; his curt response leads her to believe (not incorrectly) that their relationship is over. They have a very bitter interview until proof comes in that the weapon isn't actually his, confirming Eve's suspicions that this is a set-up. Roarke, not knowing Eve's suspicions, is furious at her, but Feeney intervenes and informs Roarke that Eve was in danger of losing her job because of him. Roarke, apologetic but still angry, breaks again into her apartment that night and the two make-up. In the morning, she's pleased and horrified to find that he stayed the whole night, whereupon he informs her that he thinks he's in love with her, horrifying her further. Eve shows her first willingness to occasionally break rules by using Roarke's resources to illegally hack into the finances of the police chief, whereupon she finds that he's received enormous donations from DeBlass and also has millions of unreported dollars in overseas accounts. She feeds the information to Nadine Furst, effectively ridding herself of the interfering and criminal Simpson. Information finally comes in via Charles Monroe that there was one last appointment in Sharon DeBlass's book: her grandfather. Eve uncovers an incestual affair, which corresponds to the senator's childhood molestation of both Sharon and her aunt. She flies with Roarke to Washington D.C. and arrests the senator on the Senate floor for all three murders. Roarke informs her that he's now positive that he's in love with her. On the plane flight back, she throws up, and admits to him that her father raped her repeatedly as a child and that she doesn't remember anything beyond being found at age eight in Dallas. Despite the evidence, however, Eve feels that the second and third murders were committed by someone else; she comes home to find Senator DeBlass's assistant, Rockman, in her apartment, with her to be the fourth victim. The cat distracts him and Eve, though shot by Rockman's Colt revolver, punches him into unconsciousness. Roarke leaves the apartment with her in his arms as she is in a minor state of shock, and she tells him that she's named the cat after Galahad (as the cat saved her) and that she'd like it if Roarke stayed around.
6273548	/m/0f_0bh	All She Was Worth	Miyuki Miyabe		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 1992. Tokyo Metropolitan Police Detective Shunsuke Honma, on leave due to an incident on the job, is hired by his nephew, banker Jun Kurisaka, to track down his fiancée, whom he knows by the name of Shoko Sekine and who disappeared from his life after he discovered her credit history was tainted by bankruptcy. As Honma investigates her circumstances, he finds that the name "Shoko Sekine" actually belongs to someone else other than Jun's fiancée - and that the latter may have murdered the former to achieve this... As Honma navigates the country for clues, he finds that the credit-based economy in Japan, coupled with the country's own system for family identification, have undesirable side effects on ordinary people's lives. (Some of the names were changed in translation and will be noted in italics.) *Shunsuke Honma, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Inspector, on leave due to an incident on the job (a thug he was arresting shot him in the knee, disabling him temporarily). He has a 10-year-old adopted son named Makoto, whom he has raised alone since his wife Chizuko died in a car accident in 1989, when her small car was crushed by a truck driven by a sleepy worker. In his new assignment - finding Shoko - Honma has to work unofficially given the strong limitations placed on police officers on leave due to bureaucracy. Being a frugal widower, he looks askance at young couples' illusory dreams often built on credit card and real estate purchases. *Jun Kurisaka (original Japanese given name Kazuya), young banker, son of Chizuko's cousin. Was looking forward to marry the woman he knew as Shoko, only to be astonished at her disappearance and later at the revelation that she wasn't really named Shoko. He had met her in October 1990 and proposed to her on Christmas Eve, 1991. Conceited and worried with his parents' approval, but hires Honma behind their backs. *Tsuneo Isaka is Honma's friend and housekeeper. He was originally an architect but became a house-husband when the Japanese asset price bubble put him out of work, so he worked part-time as a housekeeper for Honma and two other families in the apartment complex where they lived. His wife, Hisae Isaka, runs her own interior designing firm so income is steady. *Mr. Imai (original Japanese given name Shirō, unmentioned in translation) and his employee Mitchie (Mit-chan) were boss and co-worker respectively of the fake Shoko at Imai's company, a small-time cash register dealer. *Gorō Mizoguchi was the real Shoko's bankruptcy lawyer. He is the first one to realize that the "Shoko" Honma was looking for was not the one Jun had known. He later explains to Honma the way the credit industry works and why people like the real Shoko had to declare bankruptcy. His secretary, Ms. Sawagi, receives Honma and later provides additional information on Shoko. *Nobuko Konno was the real Shoko's landlady at Kawaguchi, Saitama, and ran her buildings with help from her husband and daughter Akemi. She tells Honma that Shoko, though being a good and friendly tenant, had moved out mysteriously, thereby alerting him at the possibility that the identity switch had been violent, possibly due to murder or coercion. *Sadao Funaki (original Japanese surname Ikari), is Honma's co-worker and introduced him to Chizuko, allowing him to marry her despite his own crush on her. He supports Honma's informal investigation and in the process nails his own official investigation, a woman who murdered her businessman husband because he would not allow her to work outside the home, having a female friend as the accomplice. *Kanae Miyata is a hairdresser in Shoko's old neighborhood. *Tamotsu Honda was the real Shoko's best friend from all levels of school. He stayed in Utsunomiya as a mechanic and married Ikumi, the one who first saw Shoko's mother fallen down the stairs. They are about to become parents for the second time, but Tamotsu still insists on helping out Honma with the investigation, as Shoko was his original childhood crush. *Tomie Miyagi, was the real Shoko's roommate and bar hostess colleague at a building in Kinshicho, Tokyo. *Hideki Wada (original Japanese surname Katase), was the fake Shoko's boss at Roseline, the Osaka-based mail-order underwear company she worked at to target her victims. He apparently had an affair with her as well. He reveals "Shoko" 's real identity to Honma. *Kaoru Sudō was Kyoko's roommate in Nagoya, Aichi, when she was getting away from the yakuza who had taken control of the Shinjo family's mortgage payments. *Orie Chino (original Japanese name Kaori Ichiki), was Kyoko's roommate in Osaka, she worked in the company data section (separate from Kyoko's). Not on friendly terms with her as Kaoru was. *Shōko Sekine, the real deal, was a woman from Utsunomiya, Tochigi, who went bankrupt as a result of excessive credit card debt upon which she had to quit her original office job and turn to hostessing in bars. She was not particularly beautiful, unlike her impostor. Her mother, Yoshiko, died in 1989 - one year before the impostor took over her identity - when she fell down steps in a building, and the circumstances were always suspect. *The impostor Shoko was actually a very beautiful woman named Kyōko Shinjō, who was from Fukushima Prefecture. Unlike the real Shoko, who could free herself from the debts by declaring bankruptcy, the debts in her life actually belonged to her father, who had taken a large mortgage for the family to have their own home. She had attempted to get away from it all by marrying a young man, Yasuji Kurata in Ise, Mie, but the Yakuza in charge of her father's debt came to bother them too and ended up breaking their marriage. She hatched her plan to have another identity as a result of this. Miyabe's novel touches on many topics, including the Japanese asset price bubble mentioned earlier, plus social issues of family registry, the credit industry, the underground credit economy, and the rights and responsibilities of individuals in contrast to that of families. At one point Isaka, Honma's friend and housekeeper, talks about a flaming wagon that takes sinners to hell, citing Japanese Buddhist mythology. This is the kasha (火車, fire chariot) of the original Japanese title. The significance is that the real Shoko had gone through hell with her credit card bankruptcy, but then the fake Shoko (Kyoko) had taken her place in the chariot and was going to hell in it.
6275721	/m/0f_52g	The Zenith Angle	Bruce Sterling	2004-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Derek "Van" Vandeveer is a young, well respected, computer scientist who we find enjoying breakfast in his new home with his wife and young son. He is rich with stock options and heady with his own success when his whole world is suddenly and forever changed as the planes begin crashing into the World Trade Center. Within months his fortune is gone to an Enron-like scandal, and his wife and son have moved west to work on a new telescope being developed by a billionaire entrepreneur. Van is recruited into a nascent wing of the government working on the outside of the main bureaucracy to vastly improve the security of government systems. His ingenious design gains him even more respect from his peers, but as the project continues Van goes through personality changes, becoming more paranoid and simultaneously more patriotic. Without the psychological aid of the money and nice house of his former company, he even begins to question whether he really is a computer scientist or just an over-glorified technician. The novel comes to head as Van is asked to look into the reason a multi-billion dollar pork project spy satellite is failing in space. The bureaucracy, thinking that he will fail in this endeavor, hopes to use it to discredit his boss and him and put an end to their power climb in Washington. Van discovers the problem and through a covert military-like attack on the source, puts an end to it.
6279077	/m/0f_8yp	Hairstyles of the Damned	Joe Meno			 Hairstyles of the Damned is told by a typical protagonist, Brian Oswald. Brian Oswald is an average high school outcast. He has trouble coping with his identity and fights to find it throughout the novel. Even though Brian is an outcast at his Catholic school, he still manages to find friends in a mix of misfits. Gretchen is a tough, punk girls who makes Brian mixed tapes. Brian envies Gretchen because she does whatever she wants. "She did the things I wish I could do but didn't have the guts to" (Meno 15). He is infatuated with her, but she is interested in losers. Brian’s other friends include Rod, an African American nerd who had the largest record collection of anyone Brian knew. Mike is a burn out whose long hair was more popular than he was at school. Brian's family was a bit dysfunctional. His father begins sleeping in the basement and when Brian questions his father, he plays it off like it is no big deal. Joe Meno captures the meaning of adolescence and all that goes along with it such as awkwardness, finding your identity, first crushes, puberty, and the constant power struggle between parents and teens. There is a common theme throughout the novel that ties Brian's identity all together and that is music. Brian switches his choice of music throughout the story. He starts off liking Gretchen’s punk music, then to Rod's Chet Baker Albums, to Mike's Pink Floyd tapes. Brian changes who he is, depending of the music he is listening to. He is so worried about fitting in instead of having his own voice and accepting who he is. Brian does grow and develop over the course of the novel; his identity develops as well does his outlook on life. By the end of the novel Brian realizes it is okay to just be yourself.
6280057	/m/0f_b8n	See Jane Run			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The book centers on Jane Whittaker, who finds herself at a grocery store in downtown Boston with no recollection of her name, her physical features, her personality, or any of the details of her life, albeit having recollection of facts such as the formula for a hypotenuse. She is further terrified to see that she is wearing a blood-stained blue dress, which contains in one of its pockets $10,000. Frightened out of her mind, she heads to a local police station, where she is later reunited with a handsome doctor claiming to be her husband. Mr. Whittaker takes Jane back to their suburban home to recover. Instead of finding rest, however, Jane begins to uncover the horrific past that her mind had forgotten. Along with Dr. Whittaker, a caretaker named Paula Marinelli is also taking care of her.
6281739	/m/0f_d2z	The Carnelian Cube	Fletcher Pratt		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The carnelian cube of the title is a small red "dream stone" confiscated by archaeologist Arthur Cleveland Finch from Tiridat Ariminian, one of the workers on the dig he is supervising in Cappadocia. It bears an inscription in Etruscan that appears to identify its original possessor as Apollonius of Tyana, and supposedly allows the bearer to attain the world of his dreams. Finch, frustrated with the irrationality of his existence as an archaeologist, yearns for a more rational world in which he could realize his true dream of being a poet. Sleeping with the stone beneath his pillow he finds himself cast into a parallel world. It and later worlds visited by Finch tend to place him in or near his native Louisville, Kentucky rather than the Middle Eastern locale he starts out from, but Kentuckys that, while appearing to share much of the "real" world's history, have developed in radically alternate directions due to differences in their worlds' psychological or physical properties. Finch's new home sets the pattern; it is entirely too rational, with its denizens acting solely from self-interest in a society organized on a strict patron-client basis. The regimentation extends to naming conventions: people's names are ordered surname first, given name second, and occupation last. Finch initially finds himself classed as "Finch Arthur Poet" — and is, indeed, a poet. Poets are, however, a low-classified occupation, with few perks, certainly as compared to the local patron, Sullivan Michael Politician. Finch's attempts at social climbing, while initially successful, also bring him enemies, eventually making his new world too hot for him. Unfortunately, the stone had not made the trip with him, and Finch's only means of escaping this new and not entirely congenial existence is to purloin its counterpart from the local version of Tiridat. With the rational world's counterpart stone, Finch dreams himself into a second parallel world, this one exemplifying the individualism he has missed in the rational world. But he finds the individualist world one of rampant vanity and violence, in which megalomaniacal bully-boys like Colonel Richard Fitzhugh Lee uneasily dominate a population of extreme egocentrics defensive of their "originality" and touchy about being told what to do. It is also a more fantastic place, in which claims of ESP or the ability to raise spirits tend to be real. Hiring a medium-provided spirit to do the dirty work, Finch again obtains his current world's counterpart of the carnelian cube and makes his escape, this time hoping to regain his original existence as an archaeologist reconstructing the past. Finch awakens in yet another parallel world, only to find the stone has once again over-literalised his dream; his third world is one in which astrology-guided archaeologists really do reconstruct the past, drafting and magically conditioning vast numbers of people to reenact past events. He finds himself project head of a recreation of the Assyrian siege of Samaria, and quickly discovers the reenactment no mere fantasy; the brainwashed participants actually fight, kill and die in the furtherance of scientific knowledge. Caught up in the chaos, Finch faces execution at the order of the reenactor portraying usurping Assyrian king Sargon. "Sargon" turns out to be yet another version of Tiridat, who, like the others, is the possessor of this world's carnelian cube. Begging the cube from the "king" as a last request, Finch determines to escape once again by dreaming himself into a truly ideal world. On this note the novel ends, with neither the protagonist's possible execution or projected escape recounted, leaving the plot open-ended and providing an obvious opportunity for a sequel. However, no such sequel ever appeared.
6286677	/m/0f_jfh	This Lullaby	Sarah Dessen	2002-05-27	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Remy is an eighteen year old girl who is about to leave for college. Her father, a musician, had died before she was born. Before he died, he left a short song called "This Lullaby," which is now extremely popular. Remy's mother is getting married for the fifth time, with a car salesman. Consequently, love is something that Remy doesn't believe exists. In the past, she's been in many relationships with people she doesn't really care about, and they never last long. One day, she randomly meets Dexter. He claims to feel a connection with her the second he saw her. He is messy and a musician, two of her least favorite traits. But he is persistent. She slowly finds herself falling for him. She doesn't want to care about him, but somehow she just can't bring herself to get rid of him. Eventually they start dating and she is surprised by how open and honest and caring he is. When Dexter overhears Remy saying that she only wants him to be a summer fling, they break up. Remy begins to date another guy, but she finds herself always thinking about Dexter. Meanwhile, her brother is getting engaged, her mother's new husband is cheating, and her friends are all having problems of their own. But in the end, Remy realizes that she truly does love Dexter, and they get back together.
6298253	/m/0f_wg5	Under the Yoke				 The tranquility in a Bulgarian village under Ottoman rule is only apparent: the people are quietly preparing for an uprising. The plot follows the story of Boycho Ognyanov, who, having escaped from a prison in Diarbekir, returns to the Bulgarian town Byala Cherkva (White Church, today Sopot) to take part in the rebellion. There he meets old friends, enemies, and the love of his life. The plot portrays the personal drama of the characters, their emotions, motives for taking part in or standing against the rebellion, betrayal and conflict. Historically, the uprising fails due to bad organization, limited resources, and betrayal. The way in which the Ottomans break the uprising down then becomes the pretext for the Russian-Turkish war, that brought about Bulgarian independence.
6301386	/m/0g01bq	Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key	Jack Gantos		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story, told from Joey's perspective, deals with his inability to control his impulses, due to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). These impulses lead Joey to do numerous things, both at home and at school, which get him in trouble. Joey has been thinking about changing the world, after sneaking into an assembly. When his teacher comes back, at recess, he decides to make 1,000,000 bumper stickers. The scissors he uses are too small, and it hurts his hand, so he sneaks into his teacher's desk and takes the sharper, bigger scissors. He trips over his bunny slippers and cuts the tip off a girl's nose. Blood drips everywhere and she is put in an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. He gets put into the Special Ed Center downtown where he gets a transdermal patch and his behavior improves. He gets a dog later in the story who is just as hyper as he is, and is what he calls a "Joey Pigza dog", or a Chihuahua.
6302514	/m/0g03jj	Brothers Majere	Kevin T. Stein	1990-01-14	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Brothers Majere takes place shortly before the War of the Lance when the companions leave their village of Solace to pursue rumors of war and embark on their own personal quests for five years. Caramon Majere and Raistlin Majere have recently returned from the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth and find themselves to be near penniless. By luck or by design, the twins find a posted announcement in which the city of Mereklar (just northeast of Qualinesti) is looking for trained and experienced people to help with an investigation in the town. The twins, with their kender companion Earwig Lockpicker (Tasslehoff Burrfoot's cousin), decide to visit Mereklar, as according to the post, the fee was negotiatble. Upon arrival to Mereklar, the twins learn that the city's cats have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Legend had it that powerful wizards had built the city of Mereklar shortly after the Cataclysm and so long as the cats were there to protect the city, evil could not harm its citizens. Ten noble families govern Mereklar, and they begin to die one by one under mysterious (and grisly) circumstances. One of the nobles, Shavas, explains the legend to the twins, who are both captivated by her beauty. During their stay in the city, the twins are almost constantly followed by a black cat, which is strange because according to the townspeople, no black cats were ever seen in Mereklar. The twins eventually learn that this black cat is the demi-god, Lord of Cats who also appears to them later as a tall, powerful, dark skinned man of considerable intelligence and strength named Bast. With the Cat Lord's help, the twins discover that the town nobles were actually murdered a long time ago, and that the nobles' bodies are now possessed by demons from the Abyss. Raistlin discovers Shavas is actually a lich- an undead evil wizard taking the form of a beautiful woman. They learn that the demons are murdering the cats in order to open a portal for The Queen of Darkness. While Caramon and Earwig do what they can to keep the portal closed, the Lord of Cats continues his battle against the demons, and Raistlin battles Shavas and eventually defeats her, refusing to give into her temptations.
6304379	/m/0g06j7	Just a Couple of Days				 Dr. Flake Fountain is approached by the military to develop an antidote to a virus they have created, which is known as the "Pied Piper" virus, due to its relation to a mirth- and dance-inducing virus which supposedly caused the phenomenon the Pied Piper story was based on (see also St. John's Dance), which leaves its victims alive and unharmed, but destroys the brain's capacity for symbolic reasoning. This leaves victims unable to use language, including speech and writing to communicate. However, before Dr. Fountain can complete his antidote, the virus is released and everyone else on Earth, as far as he knows, is infected with it. He holes up in the house of his friends Blip (a fellow college professor) and Sophia, two organic hippie types. Since the house is a self-sufficient geodesic dome, he is protected from the virus and has electricity, and it is revealed that the book is his journal, where he is recording everything that has happened and is happening. Each chapter also begins with a selection from the "Book o' Billets-Doux" ("love letters" in French), which he found in the dome and is apparently an extended conversation between Blip and Sophia which they wrote, eventually while succumbing to the virus. In time Flake discovers that the people "afflicted" with the virus can apparently communicate, and he surmises that they connect on a deeper level without the hindrance of a language and its capacity to obscure the truth. They work together and seem happy, even Edenic. Because of this, once he has finished the book, he exposes himself to the virus, becoming unable to continue it and leaving the reader to wonder exactly what happened to him.
6306237	/m/0g09dn	The Piano Tuner	Daniel Mason	2002	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in 1886, in the jungles of Burma. The protagonist, a middle-aged man by the name of Edgar Drake is commissioned by the British War Office to repair a rare Erard grand piano belonging to a Doctor Anthony Caroll. Caroll, who is the root of many myths, had the piano shipped to him as a means to bring peace and union amongst the princes in Burma in order to further the expansion of the British Empire. The extreme humidity of the tropical climate soon rendered it useless and horribly out of tune. Drake's "mission" thus becomes vital to the Crown's strategic interests. In a series of sub-plots and intrigue the surgeon-major is charged with treason. When the piano tuner goes to meet the surgeon-major against the wishes of the military staff, he finds himself suddenly surrounded.
6309756	/m/0g0g99	Blood Beast	Darren Shan	2007-06-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Written by Darren Shan Blood Beast is the fifth book in a series called the Demonta. Blood Beast is set about a year after Slawter. It begins back at Dervish's house where Grubbs begins to feel alarming symptoms in connection with the full moon. He is having dreadful nightmares full of Demons and his sister, Gret, who keeps coming close to killing him. Also, in these dreams he has changed to a werewolf, but Grubbs attempts to convince himself that these nightmares are only normal. On top of this, his magician's prowess is growing all the time. He makes water change direction as it goes down the plughole (defying gravity) and claims to have woken from his nightmares levitating. Grubbs has got back to life as usual, and has got a crowd of friends, including a new best friend, Loch Gossel, who constantly bullies Grubbs' half brother, Bill-E. Grubbs also shows his usual like for Reni Gossel, Loch's sister. After Dervish has to go away for the weekend to say goodbye to Meera Flame, Grubbs throws a big house party. Reni, Loch, Bill-E and a few more stay for the night. They play spin the bottle and Grubbs kisses with Reni for the first time. He gets so into the kiss, that he doesn't realize when his powers have gotten the better of him and starts levitating the bottle. Soon after, the bottle explodes. He freezes the bottle in time and turns the shards into butterflies and flower petals. Half way through the night, Grubbs wakes up to a howling noise. He finds himself in the bathroom. He then realizes the howling noise is coming from himself. He looks in the mirror to find that he has become a werewolf, but somehow changes himself back to normal. The next morning, Bill-E and Loch decide to go and look for Lord Sheftree's treasure, but Grubbs isn't feeling well and protests greatly, but eventually gives in. The three set about digging and just as Loch is about to go home, they find a spot that Grubbs remembers Dervish being before. They start digging, but there are big rocks in the way which are hard to move. The boys go home but make a pact to come back after school every day until they find the treasure. Dervish returns home, but was drunk the previous night and fell into a deep sleep, so Grubbs couldn't tell him about the nightmares and fear of lycanthropy. Grubbs goes to sleep, but later wakes up and finds himself at the hole moving the heavy rocks, by himself. He runs back to the house and goes back to sleep. When Bill-E and Loch see the hole the next day, they are amazed and believe that Lord Sheftree planted bombs to kill those that tried to get his treasure, but they simply were old and detonated late. As they are digging, they begin to get very angry at each other and bicker, even try to kill each other. Grubbs feels magic in the air, and feels that it may be affecting the three, but tells the other two that it must be chemicals in the soil. Loch and Grubbs climb out of the hole and start to talk to each other when they hear a scream. The floor has given way and Bill-E is hanging on for his life. They hoist him up, and look down. The rocks gave way to a deep tunnel, but one that might be able to climb down. After a debate, the three decide to go down. At the bottom, they find a cave full of stalactites and stalagmites with a large waterfall. They start looking for the treasure but find none. Bill-E and Loch decide to climb a wall of the cave. At this point, Grubbs begins to feel very ill (possibly because of the full moon) and looks to the floor of the cavern. He sees a girls face in the rock similar to his sister's, yet it's the face of Bec, trapped in the rock; whispering in a strange language, but then she suddenly goes silent. Grubbs hears a scream from behind him and a thud. He turns around to find Loch's lifeless body lying on the floor, blood seeping out of his head. Grubbs attempts to heal the wounds while Bill-E leaves to get help. While Bill-E is gone, Grubbs needs to resuscitate Loch several times. The first two times it works, but then on the third, Loch stops breathing, his heart stops beating, and he dies. The whispering starts again and Grubbs starts to freak out. When he calms down he looks at Loch, and lifts up his head and notices something odd - all the blood is gone. Eventually Dervish and Bill-E turn up at the cave, however there is nothing that can be done to save Loch's life and Grubbs soon realises that there is no ambulance. Dervish says that they cannot let an ambulance come to the cave. The boys protest, but he says that he will explain to them later. The three of them move the body of Loch to a nearby quarry and throw it over a cliff edge. Dervish explains later to Grubbs why this is necessary - the cave is one where demons can create a strong doorway into the human world (presumably the same cave from Bec). Dervish has been given the duty to protect the cave and make sure nobody else can unleash the Demonata. Although hard to accept at first, Grubbs and Bill-E play along after being investigated by the police. One week later Grubbs returns to school. The psychologist has left the school, and a new one has come as a replacement. Grubbs is sent to meet her and finds out it is Juni Swan, a psychologist that Grubbs and Dervish met on the set of Slawter were she helped them get through their troubles and fight with the demons. Juni helps Grubbs, Bill-E, and their friends to cope with Loch's death, and soon everyone seems to be dealing fine. However tensions increase as Juni meets up with Dervish and both become romantically involved, eventually moving in with Dervish. Juni tells Grubbs and Dervish that since Slawter, her magic has advanced tremendously. This encourages Dervish, and he teaches her more spells and continues to see her more and more. In the following days Grubbs becomes more aware of the impending doom of his curse. Not only that, but he begins to notice a tramp coincidentally appearing around Carcery Vale. The tramp has an appearance nearly identical to Beranabus from Demon Thief, and is in fact, him. This is supported by the fact that Dervish attempts to contact Beranabus slightly before the tramp appears. On one of his late night jogs, Grubbs notices the tramp near the cave, the tramp tells him, "It won't be long." This immediately leads to Grubbs suspecting that Dervish called the Lambs. Grubbs gets Juni to ask Dervish about this for him, and she claims that Dervish did call them, but also goes on to tell him that she'll do whatever it takes to stop Grubbs from being killed, and that she sees him as her own son. For several nights around the time of the full moon, Grubbs has what he describes as a battle between his human and werewolf sides. During these times, he is in extreme pain while Juni and Dervish need to hold him down. Grubbs suggests that they put him in a cage that Dervish owns for the next night. During that evening, while in the cage, Juni suggests that Dervish leaves while she performs a dangerous spell to help Grubbs. Once Dervish is gone, she frees Grubbs from the cage, then passionately makes out with Grubbs when he shows his desire to die at the hands of the Lambs, claiming that she will not let him be killed while there may be hope. She says that they should go to meet up at the cave. he then breaks out of the cage, and battles 3 of what he believes are Lambs, dispatching them easily. It is not known whether Dervish did actually call the Lambs or if the people Grubbs attacks while escaping the cellar are actually Lambs, as Juni may very likely have lied to Grubbs about Dervish's call. Grubbs runs to the cave, where he loses control again and turns into a werewolf. When he returns to his normal state, Grubbs finds that he has killed Ma & Pa Spleen, Bill-E's grandparents and legal guardians. Not wanting to kill again, Juni says that the two of them need to run away from Dervish and the Lambs to protect Grubbs, both from his own death and the deaths of others. The two of them go to an airport, and board a plane, all of which is very distant to Grubbs. He falls asleep while on the plane. When he awakes, the plane is shaking, apparently due to turbulence. However, soon the cockpit opens and demons appear on the plane, Artery first and then the scorpion like creature from the front of the book. They both begin killing the passengers on the plane along with another rabbit-like demon. Finally, Lord Loss appears in the plane, stunning the passengers. Juni appears next to him and reveals that she summoned him and is actually a familiar of Lord Loss. The book ends with her declaring, "He's all yours now- master." The book then ends on a to be continued, with the words "Hell is revealed" underneath the title Book Six...
6309812	/m/0g0gg4	Demon Apocalypse	Darren Shan	2007-10-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Picking up where Blood Beast left off, Grubbs on a plane in a dire situation face-to-face with Lord Loss and Juni Swan who has just been revealed to be one of his higher ranked familiars. Just when it seems like Grubbs will be killed, Beranabus (the homeless man from the previous book that had been following him around Carcery Vale, and a powerful magician who the Disciples follow) appears, and the two jump from the plane, and fly to his cave. Once there, Beranabus and Kernel take Grubbs with them to fight a demon in one of the Demonata worlds. Grubbs chickens out and is stuck in Beranabus' home for seven weeks. Once Beranabus and Kernel return from demon hunting, they all discover that the tunnel that Bec had sealed 1600 years ago has been opened, and hell has been brought to Earth. Enlisting the help of the Disciples, Grubbs, Kernel, and Beranabus set out to reseal the tunnel and remove the Demonata from Earth at the same time. After arriving at the tunnel, Kernel gets his eyes gouged out by Spine (one of Lord Loss's familiars) and Grubbs sees all his friend's and Dervish's heads carried by demons (Not Bill-E's). The spirit of Bec appears again and tells Beranabus that sealing the tunnel will not remove the demons like it did last time. In the chaos, the Kah-Gash (the weapon powerful enough to destroy universes) awakes in Grubbs, Kernel and Bec and turns back time to a point just before the tunnel was opened, providing Grubbs, Kernel, and Beranabus a way to prevent mankind's extinction. During the cave battle between Beranabus' group and Lord Loss', it is revealed that Bill-E must be killed to prevent the opening of the tunnel, since he unwittingly sacrificed Loch to open the tunnel. Because Dervish is unable to kill his nephew, Grubbs is forced to painlessly kill Bill-E. This seals the tunnel, and also forces the retreat of a shadowy creature unlike any demon Grubbs has seen before. Bec, her essence trapped within Grubbs, fills Bill-E's body and changes the body to resemble hers. It is revealed that Bec's spirit has been trapped inside the cave for the past 1600 years, believed by Beranabus to be because she is part of the Kah-Gash, along with Grubbs and Kernel. Now knowing what is at stake, Grubbs leaves Dervish in the care of Bec and joins Beranabus and Kernel on their never ending quest to prevent more tunnels from opening and to learn more about the creature known as the Shadow.
6316703	/m/0g0r9c	Father of Frankenstein	Christopher Bram	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 James Whale has just had a stroke. He is convinced that his time has come to die. Increasingly confused and disoriented, his mind is overwhelmed by images of the past - from his working-class childhood in Britain, the trenches of World War I, and the lavish glamour of Hollywood premieres in the 1930s. Whale asks his new gardener, an ex-Marine named Clayton Boone, to come to his studio for some portrait sittings. Boone is uncomfortable with Whale's homosexuality but also fascinated by the chance to know a famous Hollywood director and so, despite his apprehensions, the relationship continues. Boone begins to think of Whale as a friend. But one night after they return from a Hollywood garden party, Whale makes an advance at Boone, trying to make him so angry that he will kill Whale. The old man wants to die; he wants his death to have a human face, Boone's face. Boone refuses. He is very upset. Whale apologizes—he knows he is going insane. The next morning Whale understands that he is ready to cross over, alone. He drowns himself in his backyard swimming pool.
6318149	/m/0g0sh6	Nerilka's Story	Anne McCaffrey	1985-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Taking a different approach from all previous books in the series, Nerilka's Story has a non-dragonrider non-harper as its major viewpoint character. It is set during the events detailed in Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern. Nerilka is the daughter of a Lord Holder who turns her back on her life of luxury and sets out to fight the disease that threatens to kill all humans on Pern. According to a critic for the Chicago Tribune, Nerilka makes for an "intelligent, resourceful, selfless and, alas, homely" heroine.
6321375	/m/025ttwt	The Ruby in the Smoke	Philip Pullman		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book takes place in 1872. A young woman called Sally Lockhart goes to visit where her father used to work, a shipping company named Lockhart & Selby. Sally’s father, Matthew Lockhart, died when his ship, the schooner Lavinia, sank when he was coming back from talking to the Dutch shipping agent Hendrik VanEeden. Matthew Lockhart was a former army man, and Sally's late mother was fighter in the Indian Mutiny. On the morning the book begins, Sally received a note in the mail and went to ask her father’s partner, Samuel Selby, what the note meant. Instead she saw Mr. Higgs, Mr. Selby’s secretary, and asked him two things: if he knew of a man named Marchbanks and if he had heard of something called the “Seven Blessings”. After she asked about the letter, Mr. Higgs had a heart attack and died. She tells the porter and finds out that she has to go to the inquest because she was a witness. Sally meets a thirteen year old office boy named Jim Taylor to whom she shows the letter. Jim informs Sally that the letter said that the man named Marchbanks lived in Chatham in Kent. He also volunteers his help, but she doesn’t need it at the moment. Sally goes back to her aunt’s house, where she lives now, and is mocked by her aunt at having no ladylike accomplishments (she CAN shoot a pistol and do financial work). Sally visits a man called Mr Marchbanks, while she is there he gives her book containing information about things which happened when Sally was little. Marchbanks tells her she must leave because there is a woman in his house who is their enemy. The woman follows Sally away from the house but Sally hides from her in the tent of a photographer named Frederick Garland. Before she leaves, he hands her his business card to keep if she ever finds herself in trouble again. She gets on a train and starts to read the book Mr Marchbanks gave her. She falls asleep and when she wakes up the book is gone and the only thing left behind are a few loose pages. The only thing that she remembers is that the offender wore a bright tweed suit, and a brown bowler hat with a pin in it. She frantically searches, but, the book is really gone. Across town, around the same time, young Adelaide is tending to one of Mrs. Hollands' guests. Along with the soup and bread she bring him, she lights him a pipe containing opium. This is a regular affair, since the man will give useful information to do with a large sum of money when under the influence of opium (an addictive drug). He begins to rave, as usual, and mentions that he must find Sally Lockheart, because he has a message from her father. He makes Adelaide promise to not tell Mrs. Holland, for she is an evil woman, and he begins to rave nonsense once again. Adelaide later meets with Jim, whom she tells about the man's raves. Jim promises to pass the message onto Sally, and he writes her a letter, suggesting they meet as soon as possible, to discuss the matter at hand. Later in the story, Sally finds out that Major Marchbanks was her father, who sold her to Matthew Lockheart for a ruby and that her "father" made up the story of her romantic mother. She leaves her Aunt and finds out she is just taking care of her because she gets money from Sally's father Mrs. Holland claims the ruby is hers, because the former owner of the ruby was in love with her (and claims she was prettier than Sally). Mrs. Holland killed Sally's father. Sally throws the ruby that Fredrick found into the water and Mrs. Holland goes after it and drowns. THE END This book is the first of the Sally Lockhart Quartet: # The Ruby in the Smoke # The Shadow in the North # The Tiger in the Well # The Tin Princess
6322892	/m/0g0_bt	Reading in the Dark	Seamus Deane	1996-10-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told from the point of view of an anonymous young Irish Catholic boy. This novel-in-stories is about both the boy's coming of age and the "Troubles" of Northern Ireland from the partition of the island in the early 1920s through the post "Bloody Sunday" violence of the early-mid 1970s. Reading in the Dark was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize. The setting mirrors mid-twentieth century Derry leading into the Troubles. Although the setting surrounds the narrator with violence, chaos, and sectarian division, Derry serves as a place for the narrator to grow, both physically and mentally. Despite the external surroundings, the narrator's tone never slips into complete despair, but maintains a sense of hope and humour throughout. The main focus of the novel is the narrator’s discovery of his family’s "secret" past and the effect that this discovery has on himself and his family. The book is constructed of dated short stories that are assembled into larger chapters, these chapters are then further divided into smaller "episodes" with titles such as: "Feet"; “Father”; “Mother”; and “Crazy Joe”. This structure provides the reader with brief glimpses of different aspects of the narrator’s life. These short stories share a common theme by involving the narrator's family’s past guilt and shame.A strong emphasis is put on how the division of Catholics and Protestants affected family life in Derry. Family secrets, community, the environment, faery stories, and economic despair are all central themes of the novel and are all contributing factors to how the narrator views the world around. Seamus Deane has often been asked why "Reading in the Dark" was not called a "memoir" instead of a "novel" because of Deane's almost identical upbringing to the main protagonist. He usually does not give a straight answer which raises questions about how much of the book might be Deane's life and how much is fiction.
6324034	/m/0g10vp	Uglies	Scott Westerfeld	2005-02-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Uglies is set in an unnamed futuristic city in Northern California “three hundred years in the future, ” in which the government provides for everything, including an operation. On their sixteenth birthday all citizens of the fictional society receive this “pretty” operation which, as its name implies, turns people into the biological standard of beautiful. After the operation, the new pretties cross the river that divides the city’s inhabitants and begin the section of their lives in which they have no responsibilities or obligations. In total, there are three operations; the first transforms people from “uglies” (unchanged teenagers), to “pretties” (young adults over the age of sixteen free to do what ever they want). Another one transforms “pretties” to “middle-pretties” (adults who hold a job), and a third transforms “middle-pretties" to "crumblies. " The term "Rusties" refers to the people of old who used to live before the supposed apocalypse that had ended the old society that existed before the one in which the story takes place, since their cities had rusted away after a bacteria that infected the very oil society had been so dependent on, making it unstable, had swept the world. Everyone's cars exploded, as did the oil fields they'd all been fighting over. Food and goods could no longer be transported, and society in general fell apart. The Rusties were basically us. Tally, the protagonist, is about three months from her sixteenth birthday at the opening of the story. Much like every other ugly in the city, she awaits the operation with great anticipation. “Tally’s best friend, Peris, has already made the transition and motivated by her desire to see him, ” she sneaks across the river to New Pretty Town, the home of all new pretties. There she meets the character Shay, another ugly who was also sneaking around in New Pretty Town. They quickly become friends and Shay teaches Tally how to ride a hoverboard. Shay also mentions thoughts of rebellion against the operation. At first, Tally ignores all these ideas, but is forced to deal with the concept as Shay runs away from the city a few days before their shared sixteenth birthday, leaving her friend with cryptic directions to her destination, a “renegade settlement” called the Smoke, where all the city runaways go to escape the operation. On the day of Tally’s operation, she is taken to Special Circumstances, a branch of her city’s government that is described to be “like gremlins, ” and “[blamed] when anything weird happens. ” However, the public actually knows little about them, and some even question its existence. The character Dr. Cable is a woman described as “a cruel pretty” with a “razor voice, ” “sharp” teeth, She is the head of Special Circumstances and gives Tally an ultimatum to either help them locate Shay, and more importantly the Smoke, or to never become pretty. After some thought, Tally sides with Special Circumstances. Dr. Cable gives her a hoverboard and all the necessary supplies to survive in the wild, along with a heart shaped locket that is actually a tracking device. Once activated, it will inform Dr. Cable of her location, and thus the location of the Smoke. She then sets off to find her friend. After a little less than a week of travel, Tally arrives at the Smoke, where she finds Shay, her friend David, and an entire community of runaway uglies. She finds herself reluctant to activate the pendant, and in her time spent stalling it becomes clear that David has a crush on her. One night, David takes her to meet his parents, Maddy and Az, who are the original runaways from the city, and they explain how the operation does more than “cosmetic nipping and tucking. ” It actually places lesions in people's brain to make them placid, or “pretty-minded. ” Expressing great horror at what her own city has done, Tally cancels any thoughts of giving away the Smoke, and, in a display of loyalty, throws the locket into a fire without telling anyone that it was a tracker. It is damaged in the flames, which causes it to activate, giving away the Smoke’s location. The following morning, Special Circumstances arrives and Tally narrowly escapes the camp. She flees to an old cave where they cannot track her heat signature. In the cave she finds David, who is also hiding there. Together, they begin to plan a rescue. Since all of their friends have been taken by Special Circumstances, and are currently being prepped to become pretties, Tally and David decide to go and free them. During the week-long journey Tally and David fall in love. Once they arrive at the Special Circumstances complex in Tally’s city, they discover that the Shay has been “turned, ” and is now a pretty. After a brief introduction, David knocks out Dr. Cable and takes her work tablet, which has all the information Maddy needs to make a cure for the pretty brain lesions. Then Tally and David free all the Smokies located in the complex. As they are escaping the Special Circumstances headquarters, Maddy tells David that his father is dead. Once everyone reaches safety, Maddy starts to work on the cure using Dr. Cable’s tablet and materials “brought by city uglies”. Once Maddy finishes the cure, she offers it to Shay who refuses, not wanting to risk becoming a “vegetable. ” Since Tally feels responsible for her initial betrayal, she decides to become a pretty and take the cure as a “willing subject”. In order to convince David to let her go she tells him about her interaction with Special Circumstances and turning in the Smoke. While David was busy taking in what Tally had just said to him, Maddy tells her to go back to the city with Shay before she changes her mind. Once there, Tally allows a middle pretty to find her. “I’m Tally Youngblood. Make me pretty, ” is the final phrase of the novel.
6325483	/m/0g12s0	Are You My Mother?	Philip D. Eastman	1960-06-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 "Are You My Mother?" is the story about a hatchling bird. His mother, thinking her egg will stay in her nest where she left it, leaves her egg alone and flies off to find food. The baby chick hatches. He does not understand where his mother is so he goes to look for her. In his search, he asks a kitten, a hen, a dog, and a cow if they are his mother. They each say, "No." Then he sees an old car, which cannot be his mother for sure. In desperation, the hatchling calls out to a boat and a plane, and at last, convinced he has found his mother, he climbs onto the teeth of an enormous power shovel. A loud "SNORT" belches from its exhaust stack, prompting the bird to utter the immortal line, "You are not my mother! You are a SNORT!" But as it shudders and grinds into motion he cannot escape. "I want my mother!" he shouts. But at this climactic moment, his fate is suddenly reversed. The shovel drops him back in his nest just as his mother is returning home. The two are united, much to their delight, and the baby bird tells his mother about the adventure he had looking for her.
6325932	/m/0g133t	The Jewel In The Skull	Michael Moorcock		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is set at some indeterminate time in a post-nuclear holocaust future, where science and sorcery co-exist and the Dark Empire of Granbretan (Great Britain) is expanding across Europe. Count Brass, Lord Guardian of the Kamarg (a territory that had once been a part of a nation called France), inspects his territories. On his return journey to his castle at Aigues-Mortes he is attacked by a 'baragoon' - a swamp monster created from transformed slaves by the previous Lord Guardian - and kills it. Count Brass arrives at Castle Brass in Aigues-Mortes and is welcomed by his daughter Yisselda and philosopher-poet friend Bowgentle. Bowgentle argues that the evil of Granbretan should be fought, but Count Brass believes that a united Europe will ultimately know peace. Brass, Yisselda, Bowgentle and the Count's chief lieutenant von Villach attend the opening of the Great Festival, where Count Brass enters the bullring to save the life of the injured bullfighter Mahtan Just. Back at the castle Count Brass receives an emissary from Granbretan - Baron Meliadus - who attempts in vain to persuade him to give up his knowledge of the various courts of Europe. Baron Meliadus begins to court Yisselda, but she refuses to elope with him knowing that her father would not agree to their marriage. Meliadus attempts to kidnap her, wounding Bowgentle in the attempt, but is defeated by Count Brass and expelled from Kamarg. Meliadus swears an oath on the legendary Runestaff to gain power over Count Brass, gain Yisselda and destroy the Kamarg. In the German province of Köln a rebellion against the Dark Empire led by Duke Dorian Hawkmoon is put down, and the captured Hawkmoon is brought to the Granbretan capital Londra as a prisoner. Hawkmoon is kept in luxurious captivity and offered a bargain for his life and freedom by Baron Meliadus. First to judge his suitability he is tested on the mentality machine by Baron Kalan, and judged sane. Meliadus offers him freedom for himself and Köln if he travels to Kamarg and kidnaps Yisselda from Count Brass: Hawkmoon agrees to the bargain. To ensure Hawkmoon's loyalty a Black Jewel is inserted in his forehead: this jewel will relay Hawkmoon's sight back to Londra, and will eat his brain should Hawkmoon attempt treachery. Before he departs Hawkmoon is granted an audience with the immortal King-Emperor of Granbretan. The plan is that Hawkmoon shall journey to Kamarg dressed as Meliadus, with the story that he drugged him and thus secured passage undetected. Thus Hawkmoon travels from Granbretan across the Silver Bridge to the Crystal City of Parye, Lyon, Valence and finally arrives at Castle Brass. Along the way he catches a glimpse of a mysterious warrior in jet and gold. Count Brass realizes the nature of the Black Jewel and by physical and sorcerous means manages to capture the life force of the jewel, rendering it safe. The reprieve is only temporary, but Brass informs Hawkmoon that a sorcerer from the East called Malagigi of Hamadan may possess the power to remove the jewel if Hawkmoon can find him in time. Led by Baron Meliadus the army of Granbretan advances on the Kamarg, harried by sniping attacks led by Hawkmoon. At the battle of the Kamarg the Granbretan army is defeated by the exotic war towers of Count Brass and Meliadus flees. Following the battle Yisselda pledges her love to Hawkmoon and persuades him to seek the sorcerer Malagigi to free himself from the Black Jewel. Hawkmoon rides one of Count Brass's giant flamingos towards the East, but is accidentally shot down by a furry midget crossbreed of a human/mountain giant pairing named Oladahn. Hawkmoon and Oladahn are attacked by a band of brigands but manage to steal two of their goats and ride off. A month later Hawkmoon and Oladahn come upon the freak-show caravan of 900 year old sorcerer Agonosvos. As an ex-inhabitant of Köln Hawkmoon expects Agonosvos to show loyalty to his duke, but instead Agonsovos kidnaps Hawkmoon to sell him to Baron Meliadus. Hawkmoon is rescued by Oladahn and the pair flee from Agonosvos, who swears vengeance upon them. Hawkmoon and Oladahn take a ship to Turkia, narrowly avoiding ships from the Dark Empire's warfleet, before heading further into Persia. A month later the pair are attacked by a group of 20 Granbretan warriors but are rescued by the mysterious Warrior in Jet and Gold, who accompanies them towards Hamadan. Arriving in Hamadan they find that ruler Queen Frawbra has been ousted by her brother Nahak in league with the forces of the Dark Empire. Hawkmoon finds sorcerer Malagigi but he refuses to help him and, spotting his enemy Baron Meliadus, Hawkmoon flees the city. Hawkmoon persuades Queen Frawbra and her followers to lead an assault to re-take the city, and together with Oladahn and the Warrior in Jet and Gold they attack Hamadan. During the battle Hawkmoon finds himself pitched against Baron Meliadus, and the two fight till they both collapse. Meliadus is later presumed dead, though his body is nowhere to be found. Queen Frawbra's forces succeed in recapturing the city with Frawbra killing her brother Nahak. Malagigi is finally persuaded to help Hawkmoon and succeeds in drawing out the life in the Black Jewel, though Hawkmoon elects to continue to wear the inactive jewel in his forehead as a symbol of hatred. The Warrior in Jet and Gold informs Hawkmoon that he is a servant of the Runestaff, though Hawkmoon dismisses this as a legend. Queen Frawbra offers marriage to Hawkmoon but he refuses and, accompanied by Oladahn, begins the return journey to Kamarg and Yisselda.
6326826	/m/0g14hl	Bastard Out of Carolina	Dorothy Allison	1993-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The book opens with Bone relating the details of her birth. Bone's fifteen-year-old mother, Anney, gives birth to her after being seriously injured in a car accident. Anney, who is comatose during the delivery, is unable to lie about being married. Her mother and older sister, Ruth, attempt to give a false name and are caught in their deception. This results in Bone being declared illegitimate. Anney, who "hated to be called trash", then spends the next two years unsuccessfully petitioning to get a new birth certificate issued without the word "illegitimate" stamped on it. This opens her up to the ridicule of the customers in the diner in which she works. At age seventeen, Anney marries Lyle Parsons and gives birth to another daughter, Reese, in short order. Lyle is killed in a car accident which left Anney "all butter grief and hunger." After remaining single for a few years she begins to date Glen Waddell, the son of a socially prominent dairy owner. Two years later, as a result of becoming pregnant, they get married. Anney gives birth to a stillborn boy and becomes unable to have more children. The family's fortunes plummet, with Glen losing job after job due to his anger management problems. It is then that Glen, who had been loving and gentle with Bone, begins sexually molesting her. The abuse culminates in beatings and whippings that leave Bone nursing bruises and broken bones. When Anney discovers the abuse, she leaves Glen, who promptly promises never to do it again. Anney takes him back and the abuse resumes. Anney leaves Glen again after her tough, hard-drinking brothers severely beat Glen upon discovering that he has beaten Bone once again. Bone then announces to her mother that she will never live in the same house with Glen again. Bone then tells her mother that she loves her and will forgive her if she decides to go back to Glen, reiterating that she will not return to the house with Glen. Her mother then vows not to go back to Glen unless Bone comes with her. When Glen discovers this, he attacks Bone at her Aunt Alma's house, breaking her arm and raping her on the kitchen floor. Anney walks in on him and fights him off. Glen follows the two out to the car, begging Anney to kill him rather than abandon him. To Bone's disgust and amazement, Anney ends up crying and throwing her arms around Glen. Bone's aunt, Raylene, visits her at the hospital and takes custody of Bone, as Anney has disappeared. While she is recuperating at her aunt's house, Anney shows up with a new birth certificate for Bone, this time without the word "illegitimate" stamped on the bottom. She asks Bone's forgiveness and leaves without telling Bone where she is going.
6327841	/m/0g16c7	Snakehead	Anthony Horowitz	2007	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure"}	 The story picks up moments before Ark Angel ended. Alex Rider lands in the South Pacific after falling from outer space. He is picked up by the USS Kitty Hawk, a U.S. Aircraft Carrier doubling as a "hospital at sea", where he recovers from his trip into space. He then travels to a military base owned by the Australian SAS and goes on a barbecue with a few of the soldiers, only to find himself on a war field by accident, which he manages to escape. He later learns that the war zone he stumbled onto was in fact a test of courage and stamina orchestrated by ASIS director Ethan Brooke to prove to their agents that Alex is as tough as his reputation suggests. Meanwhile, the criminal organization Scorpia is hired to assassinate eight celebrities who are hosting a "Make Poverty History"-type conference on Reef Island, an island off the north-west coast of Australia, using a bomb (which they do not have possession of yet), at the same time as the G8 summit. The deaths must look accidental. Scorpia board member Winston Yu, the head of a powerful Asian snakehead gang, is charged with this mission. Two days later, Scorpia agents break into a Ministry of Defence weapons research centre and steal a prototype bomb codenamed "Royal Blue". Ethan Brooke, head of ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service) coerces Alex into helping him about by pairing him with agent Ash, who was his godfather and one of his father's best friends, to investigate the snakehead ring. Alex travels to Bangkok where Ash explains their plan; he and Alex will take on the identities of Afghan refugees who have paid the snakehead to smuggle them into Australia. In this way they can identify important members of the snakehead and find out how they smuggle the refugees. They are given disguises and sent to an area in Chinatown to await contact from the snakehead. Alex is taken to an illegal Muay Thai boxing arena by a member of the snakehead and put up against the snakehead's toughest fighter, Sunthorn. Alex wins by spitting water on Sunthorn. The unexpected victory incites a riot, but Alex manages to escape when someone (later revealed to be Ben Daniels) cuts the lights and attacks. The snakehead is still willing to take Ash and Alex to Australia. They go on to Jakarta, Indonesia, the next step of their journey. Despite a brush with Kopassus, the Indonesian special forces, in the snakehead's toy factory, Alex and Ash make it to a port, and discover a container ship, the Liberian Star. The two of them are separated and put into separate containers, which are loaded onto the ship. While the boat is at sea, Alex escapes by using one of his coins, and explores the ship. He eventually finds Royal Blue, and sees Major Yu scanning his fingerprints into a machine that will give him sole control over the bomb. Once Yu is gone, Alex scans his own fingerprints into Royal Blue then escapes the ship using another coin. After this Ash is caught and held hostage, forcing Alex to surrender. Alex is then knocked on the head and falls into unconsciousness and is captured by Yu. When Alex wakes up he is invited to tea with Yu before Alex is sent to a hospital in the Australian rainforest where he is to be used as a donor for illegal organ transplants. Alex escapes using his final exploding coin. After kayaking down the river and being shot at Alex attempts to contact MI6. Alex discovers that there is no battery in his watch, and shorts a circuit from a battery in his trainers and is rescued by MI6. Along with Ben Daniels, Alex is sent as part of an SAS team to the oil rig where Royal Blue will be detonated. On the oil rig, Alex and Ben confront Yu and his assistant; Ben shoots the assistant, who is revealed to be Ash; he had became a double agent for Scorpia following the botched mission to kill a drug dealer. Yu escapes and triggers the sinking of Royal Blue. Alex detonates it early and it harmlessly goes off. Yu is killed in the resulting shock wave due to his fragile bone structure, known as osteoporosis. At the end of the novel, Jack Starbright, Alex's housekeeper, calls a mysterious person over for dinner. Alex is surprised to see the guest is Sabina Pleasure, his old friend who moved to San Francisco after the events of Eagle Strike.
6327856	/m/0g16d8	Skeleton Key	Charles L. Grant	2001-09-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book opens with two men, Marc and Carlo, flying to meet with General Alexei Sarov in Cayo Esqueleto (Spanish for "Skeleton Key"), an island just off of Cuba to exchange a kilogram of uranium for money the general has promised them. However, when Sarov reveals he needs to raise it, the two threaten to call the American Intelligence if the money isn't received in three days. Taking this as a threat, Sarov turns the runway lights when the two go to leave, and their plane lands in a mangrove. Sarov watches with pleasure as the two men and the pilot are devoured by the inhabiting crocodiles, he then loads the uranium in the Jeep he came in and leaves. Meanwhile, it is revealed Alex had survived the fight with his clone and is visited by John Crawley at school. Crawley offers him tickets to Wimbledon , but Alex learns he must go undercover as a ball boy following suspicion of a break in. There, he befriends a ball girl called Sabina Pleasure. Alex notices a suspicious looking guard who happens to be Chinese and decides to investigate, but the guard lures him and attempts to kill him. Alex survives the attack and learns that the man was a member of the Chinese Triad gang "Big Circle" and was attempting match fixing. Alex is targeted by the triad gang as another member makes an attempt on his life while surfing on vacation with Sabina in Cornwall, he comes close to drowning but Sabina manages to save his life, as she is an excellent swimmer and knows CPR. For his safety, both MI6 and the CIA arrange to send him with CIA agents Tom Turner and Belinda Troy to Skeleton Key to investigate General Sarov. The two CIA agents would pass off as his parents. The CIA is concerned about the actions of Sarov since he intends to meet the Russian president, Boris Kiriyenko. En route to Skeleton Key, the 'family' of Alex, Tom and Belinda stop in Miami. The two CIA agents are not happy about bringing Alex and they attempt to keep as much information from Alex as possible, clearly discrediting him, much to Alex's frustration. Tom meets a salesman on a boat called the 'Mayfair Lady', suspecting that the salesman was involved in a deal with Sarov. The salesman however ties Tom up, knowing that he works for CIA. Alex manages to board the boat and set fire to it, causing a distraction. A firefight ensues, where Alex escapes with Tom and the boat later explodes, killing everyone on board. Despite his life being saved, Tom is frustrated at Alex for causing the explosion, although Alex is not convinced. It is later revealed that Conrad, Sarov's henchman, planted an explosive on the boat due to the fact the Salesman may contact American Intelligence. Just after arriving in Skeleton Key, Alex notices a Geiger counter in a Game Boy console he was given by the 'parents' that is designed to pick up nuclear radiation. Alex learns that Turner and Troy were sent to the island to search for a nuclear bomb. The two CIA agents reveal to Alex that the salesman had sold weapons grade uranium to Sarov and they explain to Alex their plan to infiltrate the residence of Sarov - the Casa de Oro. They intend to scuba dive into a cave and then climb up to the surface. Alex goes with them but stays on the boat whilst Turner and Troy go underwater. When they do not return, Alex dives in alone and after a close encounter with a shark, discovers a mechanical spear trap that impaled Turner and Troy. When he resurfaces, the boat driver has been killed and Alex is captured by Conrad, who puts a sack over his head and injects him with a drug giving him the inability to move. When the sack is taken off, Alex finds himself in a sugar factory lying down on the conveyor belt where Conrad interrogates him. Alex lies to him but Conrad knows and activates the belt, causing alex to head toward a pair of crushers. Despite finally telling him the truth about the bomb, Conrad decides to kill him anyway, however, General Sarov stops the machine. Alex, overwhelmed that he was inches near death, passes out. Alex wakes up in the Casa de Oro and demands to know what Sarov wants with him who tells Alex he will tell him in time. The next day, Sarov tells him how he had a son named Vladamir who he encouraged to go to war in Afghanistan. However, he was killed in action by a sniper. The General tells Alex how he wishes to adopt him as he shares many traits with Vladmair due to their similar physical appearance and common traits. He then has Alex moved to the slave house. Alex attempts to escape the mansion by hiding in the boot of a limousine following a lunch meeting between Sarov and Kiriyenko. He is however caught by Sarov thanks to a sensor that can detects circulation, who spares Alex's life yet again but punishes him through mental torture, with Conrad pointing a pistol at Alex, Sarov holds the device in front of him so Alex can hear his own heartbeat, Conrad holds the gun against Alex's heart. The whole time, Sarov talks to Alex as if he really is going to have Conrad shoot him. As his heartbeat gets faster, Conrad then puts pressure on the trigger, and Sarov suddenly turns off the device, having Alex fall under the impression he'd been shot, Sarov then tells Conrad to take him back to the slave house. At dinner later that evening, Sarov drugs Kiriyenko and his guests, making them all unconscious and has them moved to the slave house. He then has the nuclear bomb transported onto the island. On the flight to Russia, Sarov tells Alex that they are heading to Murmansk, which contains a shipyard of nuclear submarines, he wants to drop the nuclear bomb their, which is powered by the uranium, and is activated by a key card which Sarov shows him, the bomb will cause a massive explosion, Russia will be blamed and they will turn to their president, Sarov will then release edited footage from an interview exposing Kiriyenko as a lazy drunk idiot who says he can't deal with the issue, this will force him out of power and he will eventually be found dead due to heart faliure, Russia will go back to communism, and Sarov will be taking over. The plane makes a fuel stop in Edinburgh. Alex uses a stun grenade (courtesy of Smithers at MI6) to escape the plane whilst it had landed, incapacitating Sarov and Conrad temporarily. Alex runs to one of the terminal buildings and attempts to call the police but is stopped by a security guard named George Prescott. Despite Alex's efforts to convince Prescott of the situation, Sarov recaptures Alex and Prescott is killed by Conrad. They continue their flight to Murmansk. At Murmansk, Conrad plants the bomb on a submarine using a magnetic crane. One of Sarov's men handcuffs Alex to a handrail close to the submarines, Sarov approaches him and bids him farewell before leaving. Alex sets himself free by using bubble gum that can be turned into a reactive substance when chewed for a certain period of time(again supplied by Smithers). Conrad immediately notices and lowers himself out of the crane to engage Alex. During their fight, the Russian army arrives and starts fighting Sarov's men. Despite Alex's efforts to fend Conrad off, Conrad easily overpowers him and attempts to strangle him to death. However, Conrad (who has numerous pieces of metal inside his body) is grabbed by the magnetic crane. Alex takes over the crane controls himself, dropping Conrad into the sea and grabbing the nuclear bomb from the submarine. He then removes the detonation card from the bomb, only to be told to put it back by a reappearing Sarov. When Alex tells Sarov that he would rather die than become Sarov's son, Sarov commits suicide. In the final chapter of the novel, it is revealed that when Alex explained his predicament to John Prescott, his office heard their conversation through Prescott's radio transmitter. Initially, they didn't believe Alex, but when they discovered Prescott's death, they immediately notified MI6, who then warned the Russians. Alex is depressed after everything he has been through, but Sabina approaches Alex and invites him on holiday with her family in France for a couple of weeks, cheering Alex up.
6334150	/m/0g1jm8	The Stress of Her Regard	Tim Powers	1989-09	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins shortly before the wedding of Michael Crawford, a doctor. The night before he marries Julia, he inadvertently places his wedding ring in the hand of a statue in a garden. When he goes to retrieve it, he discovers the statue has mysteriously vanished. Despite this mysterious event, the wedding proceeds. Julia's disturbed twin sister Josephine serves as the maid of honor. The next morning, Crawford awakes to discover Julia's horribly mutilated corpse next to him in the bed. Knowing he will be suspected of murdering his bride, Crawford flees to London and passes himself off as a medical student. He meets John Keats, who is also studying medicine. One day while visiting the wards they encounter the grief-stricken Josephine, who attempts to shoot Crawford to avenge her sister. A mysterious apparition saves him. Keats does his best to help Crawford understand what has happened. By placing the wedding ring on the statue Crawford unwittingly attracted the attention of one of the nephilim, who now considers herself Crawford's true wife. The nephilim killed Julia so she could have Crawford for herself. Keats, who has some experience with the nephilim, recommends that Crawford visit the Alps. There is a place high in the mountains where he may be able to free himself from "the stress of her regard". While traveling on the Continent, Crawford is called upon to assist another Englishman who is suffering from a seizure. The man is Percy Shelley, and is accompanied by Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Claire Clarmont. Byron and Shelley are also connected to the nephilim, which they see as both a blessing and a curse. The nephilim can prolong the lives of humans and serve as muses who help to inspire great works of creativity, but they are extremely jealous and will destroy anyone they see as a rival. Crawford and the two poets make their way up the Jungfrau, where it is said one might be able to break the bond with a nephilim. After answering a version of the Riddle of the Sphinx Crawford manages to free himself from his "wife". In doing so he also learns more about the nature of the nephilim. Yet the danger is not over for Crawford, the poets, and their loved ones. The nephilim are still active, and developments in Venice may threaten all humanity. Crawford, Josephine, Shelley, and Byron, all haunted by personal tragedy, must find a way to save themselves and the rest of the world from the nephilim.
6335613	/m/0g1lps	The Shepherd of the Hills	Harold Bell Wright			 The story depicts the lives of mountain people living in the Ozarks. The main story surrounds the relationship between Grant "Old Matt" Matthews Senior and Dad Howitt, an elderly, mysterious, learned man who has escaped the buzzing restlessness of the city to live in the backwoods neighborhood of Mutton Hollow. Howitt spends his time alone, acting as a mediator and friend to the mountain people, and trying to recover from his tragic past, which includes the prior deaths of his wife and children, and the later presumed madness and subsequent suicide of his only surviving child, his artist son (later referred to as "Mad Howard"). Howitt's reclusiveness has earned him the moniker "The Shepherd of The Hills", yet he befriends the Matthews clan (the strongest and most respected family in the area) who come to love and trust him. Old Matt and the Shepherd's common history (which only The Shepherd knows at the outset) involves Old Matt's daughter, who died while giving birth to her son (and Old Matt's grandson), Pete Howard. Unbeknownst to the Matthews, Mad Howard is Pete's father, and thus The Shepherd is Pete's grandfather. Years earlier, Mad Howard returned home after spending time painting in the mountains, and one of his paintings became famous, as did he. That painting was of a young girl, pretty, standing beside a creek; the girl in the painting was Old Matt's daughter, with whom he had fallen in love. However, Mad Howard believed that his father's pride of family and place in society would never allow him to approve of his son's marriage to an Ozark country girl. Mad Howard packed up his paintings and returned to the city, leaving Old Matt's daughter with the impression that he would return. Once returning to the city, Mad Howard sent her a letter explaining that his father would not approve of their marriage. However, he never told his father about Old Matt's daughter and his relations with her a secret; the secrecy drove a wedge between Mad Howard and his father, although his father never understood why. Meanwhile, Old Matt has sworn he will kill the man who abandoned his daughter, as well as his father, if ever he finds them. Over the years, Mad Howard's love for Old Matt's daughter and his guilt over abandoning her slowly drove him insane. Eventually, Mad Howard feigns suicide and leaves behind his city life. He goes to the Ozarks and learns that Old Matt's daughter is dead, but that she has a son who (like his father) suffers from mental instability. Mad Howard hides in the woods, living like a hermit, trying to atone for the wrongs he has done. Mad Howard is portrayed throughout the story as a ghostly person, masked and always hiding in the shadows, who reveals himself only to Pete (as a result, Pete is also believed to have some mental instability). The Shepherd is suffering a mental breakdown of his own over the presumed death of his son. Though The Shepherd is a pastor, he realizes that has no true belief in the Good Shepherd he preaches to others; this crisis of faith pushes him over the edge. His doctor recommends he take a long vacation, so he spends some time wandering around the country, rediscovering and strengthening his faith. Eventually, he changes his name and moves to the hills to connect with what his son loved most. Here he finally learns of his son's secret, the subsequent death of the Matthews girl, and the identity of young Pete as his grandson. He keeps this and his true identity from everyone, knowing that Old Matt has sworn vengenance. The Shepherd also hopes to do what he can to atone for his son's actions and intends to spend the rest of his life helping these people and teaching them about the "true Shepherd". Only later in the story does The Shepherd discover that the ghostly figure is his son Mad Howard. Shortly afterwards, Mad Howard is shot while risking his life to save others. The Shepherd then confesses his identity to Old Matt and tells him that the betrayer of his daughter is still alive, but dying and desires to be forgiven. After The Shepherd's confession Old Matt, although angry, finds it within himself to forgive both father and son, and he and the Shepherd (along with his wife and Pete) go to Mad Howard's bedside. With the doctor and family present, Mad Howard looks at the painting of the Matthews girl. He speaks to her of their life together, saying, "I loved her, I--LOVED--HER. She was my natural mate. My other self. I belonged to her, she to me." For a time he lies exhausted; then he rises on his arms and says, "Do you hear her? She is calling. She is calling again! Yes, sweetheart. Yes, dear, I am coming!" With that, Mad Howard dies and is buried in an unmarked section of a cave on Dewey Bald. Shortly thereafter, Pete also dies and was buried next to his mother. A backdrop storyline surrounds the pretty Samantha "Sammy" Lane and her love of Grant "Young Matt" Matthews, Jr. Young Matt is in love with Sammy, who is also being courted by two other men: Ollie Stewart (a "city slicker" who at the outset appears to have the inside track, but Sammy decides that she doesn't want to move to the city) and Wash Gibbs (leader of the Baldknobbers, a gang who terrorize the countryside wearing frightening masks with horns at their top and who rob banks and settlers as they see fit). Gibbs (who's father and Sammy's father Jim were involved with the Baldknobbers in the past) is jealous of Young Matt, and during the story kills Jim after he refuses to go along with one of the Baldknobbers schemes (it is during this episode that Mad Howard is shot by a posse mistaking him for one of the Baldknobbers). Eventually Sammy and Young Matt marry and have children of their own. The last chapter of the story skips ahead many years to an artist wandering through the mountains, looking for inspiration. He meets The Shepherd, and the two men converse casually for a time. The Shepherd notes that the mountains will eventually become "the haunt of curious idlers" once the railroad comes, but he will not be alive by then. For a few days they see one another regularly, conversing, and one day The Shepherd invites the artist to his home where the artist meets Sammy and Young Matt and their family. Inside, the artist takes special note of how nicely decorated the home is, and he is especially interested in one room, where paintings of good quality are hanging. He notices that the largest painting is veiled, hiding its content. The Shepherd never offers to show the young artist that painting, and the young artist does not ask to see it, but remains curious. The artist leaves the mountains, but returns the following summer. He is greeted by Young Matt and Sammy, and discovers that The Shepherd's prediction had come true &ndash; the railroad was blasting away nearby mountains, but he had died while the surveyors were in the area before construction had started (and was buried at Dewey Bald). It was then that, as requested by The Shepherd, the veiled painting is revealed to the young artist, who then becomes excited, knowing it immediately as Mad Howard's famous lost painting (though not revealed in the story it is implied that it is the painting of Old Matt's daughter). The young artist asks excitedly, "How &ndash; where did you find it?" They enter another room, as Young Matt and Sammy begin re-telling the story of The Shepherd of The Hills.
6339165	/m/0g1sy1	The Judas Pair	John Grant	1977	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Antiques dealer Lovejoy is commissioned to hunt down what he considers to be a mythical object, the Judas pair, the supposed thirteenth pair of duelling pistols made by the famous London gunmaker Durs Egg. After two murders Lovejoy is certain that the pistols do exist, and are now in the hands of the murderer.
6341826	/m/0g1xn2	Joe Gould's Secret	Joseph Mitchell		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 By observing the lives of those around him and recording the goings-on, Gould set about compiling an exhaustive record of modern life he called "Oral History." He claimed that oral history held more truth than the formalized history of textbooks and professors, as it gave voices to the lower classes that were representative of true humanity. In the 1920s, Gould had small portions of his "History" published in magazines, but in the years that followed he became more secretive and eccentric. He was well-known among the local shopkeepers, artists, and restaurateurs, many of whom gave him handouts of money or food in support of his project. Mitchell met Gould in 1942 and wrote the profile "Professor Sea Gull" on him for The New Yorker. The first part of Joe Gould's Secret is made up of this profile, from Gould's graduation from Harvard University in 1911, leading up to the writing of his "Oral History", said to be composed of 20,000 conversations and 9,000,000 words. The second part of the book is a more personal memoir of Mitchell's experiences with Gould, their eventual falling out, and his discovery of Joe Gould's secret: that the "Oral History" did not exist. Gould suffered from writer's block and hypergraphia; while to those around him he appeared to be taking constant notes&mdash;a notion he was happy to reinforce&mdash;he was, in fact, re-writing the same few chapters dealing with seemingly trivial events in his own early life. He had filled countless notebooks with edited versions of these events, evidently searching for meaning in the revisions. Out of respect, Mitchell waited several years after Gould's death to reveal the secret. He wrote the second article in 1964, and combined it with the original article in book form in 1965. Ironically, Mitchell was plagued with writer's block for the next three decades, and was never able to publish another book. Mitchell's pieces on Gould were later collected along with many other of his prominent works in the volume Up in the Old Hotel, published in 1992.
6342228	/m/0g1y1k	The Heralds	Brian Killick	1973	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The book begins with a brief introduction describing the lasting nature of the College of Arms through successive monarchs and governments. Immediately, though, the book shifts its focus to the current set of officers of arms at the College. At the end of the first chapter, Garter Principal King of Arms&ndash;the head of the body of heralds &ndash; announces his intended retirement from the post in six months time. The announcement by Garter throws the entire College of Arms into confusion. Set in the late 1960s, the retiring King of Arms had led the College since the end of World War II. Each of the other, twelve officers of arms in ordinary begins calculating his own chances of promotion to the top spot. Some continue about their own business, knowing that their dutiful service will be rewarded, however, Cecil Gascoigne, who is Chester Herald, decides he will stop only short of murder in obtaining the coveted office. Slowly, but surely, Cecil Gascoigne begins eliminating his competitors. His methods are diverse, and include devising for a colleague to be caught smuggling illegal substances into England; also using blackmail and bankruptcy to his advantage. Over time, Gascoigne begins grasping that unfortunate problems have befallen his fellow officers, and he is not the cause. Thinking that his competition has him on a list for elimination, Gascoigne begins doubling his efforts; by book's end, four officers of arms have died, and the rest disgraced. As Cecil Gascoigne awaits the inevitable appointment as Garter King of Arms, he is arrested for an arson at the College of Arms that he did not commit. With his staff depleted and the College demoralized, Garter King of Arms decides to shoulder the burden and continue on in his duties.
6347846	/m/0g22_5	Magic Moon	Wolfgang Hohlbein	1982	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kim is an average German schoolboy who hates math but loves to read the latest copy of Star Fighter. His daydreaming life spirals into a nightmare when his parents inform him that his little sister Rebecca has fallen into a mysterious coma after her appendicectomy. A visitor from the realm of Magic Moon, the wizard Themistocles, tells him there is only one way to free her from the enchantment of eternal sleep: Kim himself must travel into the land of dreams and save her from the dark wizard Boraas, who has captured her soul. So his next dream pulls Kim into Magic Moon, where he must fly a spaceship, disguise himself as a dark warrior, fight dangerous monsters and fantastical creatures, and journey ever-onward through forests and mountains to the end of the world, only to find out that the answer to saving Rebecca – and Magic Moon – lies within himself.
6349278	/m/0g23wk	An Experiment with an Air Pump	Shelagh Stephenson			 The plot takes place in the same house in two different time periods divided by the gap of two hundred years (1799 and 1999). The play questions the basic principles of scientific (medical) research, such as the right of the scientist to cross ethical limits: the right to perform dissection on the recently deceased (1799) and use of embryos in stem-cell research (1999). Both years are symbolic&mdash;they stand at the turns of new centuries and have to face the challenges the new times are about to bring. There will be a great development in medicine in the 19th and of genetics in the 21st centuries. The play also implicitly deals with gender roles and questions the stereotypes of women scientists. While in 1799, it is the father (Fenwick) who is the enlightened soul and his male friends are also scientists (Armstrong, the physician, and Roget, the to-be-author of the thesaurus), his wife (Susannah) is a stereotypical wife of the time and their two daughters (Maria and Harriet) are expected to be such, too. The decision of one of them to become a scientist leads to disapproval. In 1999, the roles somehow change: Ellen, the wife, is the geneticist, and her husband, Tom, is historian. Ellen's friend, Kate, is also a young genetic researcher. There are also two "uneducated" characters: Isobel, the 1799 maid, and Phil, the 1999 handyman. An additional theme of this play involves the ethics of using human life, in any form, for the advancement of science. Though the topic is not specifically discussed in 1799, the characters in 1999 do talk about the issue, though no concrete conclusions are drawn. Besides the general questions about a scientist's responsibilities and limits, the play is in part a detective story. In the modern times, a skeleton is found in the basement. The skipping between the two time periods highlights, then resolves, questions about the identity of the corpse and the means of their death. After Armstrong seduces Isobel, he confesses to Roget that he feigned love for Isobel because then she would agree to have intercourse with him. If she is naked, then he can examine her twisted spine more thoroughly. Isobel overhears and is moved to kill herself by hanging. Armstrong finds her hanging and speeds up the process. The characters in 1799 ring in the new year with the death of Isobel, whereas, the characters in 1999 begin the new millennium leaving their old home, and the certainties it possessed for them, behind.
6350429	/m/0g24vv	The Will of the Empress	Tamora Pierce	2005-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The primary plot of the novel is the struggle of Sandrilene fa Toren, a half-Namornese noblewoman, against her cousin, Empress Berenene of Namorn; Sandry had inherited the vast Namornese estate of Landreg from her mother, who had accustomed her to receiving a yearly income from the estate while rarely visiting it. Empress Berenene, who wants to keep the revenue from the estate within Namorn, repeatedly invites Sandry to visit her court in Dancruan while levying increasing taxes from her estate. When Sandry realizes that the Empress has been threatening Namorn's amicable trade with Emelan, she decides to accept the Empress's invitation and use the visit to visit her estate and Namornese family. Sandry's uncle, Duke Vedris of Emelan, asks her childhood companions Daja Kisubo, Trisana Chandler and Briar Moss who have just come back from their travels to accompany her in lieu of a company of guards, a gesture both discourteous and ineffectual. Though their friendship with Sandry and with each other has become strained since their return to Summersea after years of world-traveling, Daja, Tris and Briar agree, and the four travel to Namorn together. While there, they learn of the Western Namornese custom of bride kidnapping, which entails a man kidnapping a prospective bride and holding her captive until she agrees to sign a wedding contract. While the so-called "horse's rump" wedding is usually only used to bypass reluctant families or out of a sense of adventure, some marriages are forced, and the custom remains legal. Empress Berenene has never attempted to illegalize it despite having twice been kidnapped, because she believes her ability to escape both times means that only weak women would allow themselves to be forced into a marriage they don't want. When he hears of this, Briar comments that the Empress's captors are unlikely to have used the same level of violence as a common woman might encounter. Because of their power and renown, Empress Berenene decides that Namorn stands to benefit if she persuades all four mages to remain in her court, in addition to Sandry and the funds from her Namornese estate. She offers Tris a position as a court mage with a large salary and benefits including access to the Imperial library, attempting to appeal to her merchant upbringing and her known bibliophily. She appeals to Briar by inviting him to her fantastic private greenhouses, offering him unlimited access as her personal gardener and showing him public favor, including an earldom. To entice Sandry to remain in court, she sends an entourage of four young nobles to escort her to Clehamat Landreg, including Finlach fer Hurich and Jakuben fer Pennun, who openly compete in their courtship of Sandry. Daja develops a relationship with Berenene's beautiful seamstress, Rizuka fa Dalach, which is encouraged by the Empress in order to keep Daja in Namorn. When Fin, frustrated by Sandry's reluctance, kidnaps her with the aid of his uncle, locking her in a magic-proof box in the Julih Tunnel, a secret part of the castle, Sandry reconnects her magical bond with Briar while he is at a dance with Caidy, calling out to him for help. Briar and Tris succeed in extracting Sandry, and they decide to leave Namorn despite Empress Berenene's efforts to dissuade them and the incarceration of Fin and his uncle, until then the head of the Dancruan Mages' Society. The Empress then orders Ishabal Ladyhammer, her most powerful war-mage, to prevent the four from leaving to save face, and Ishabal casts a curse on Tris, causing her to fall down the stairs and fracture most of her bones. The injured Tris insists that Sandry, Daja and Briar travel ahead of her, and she catch up to them when she recovers. Halfway to the border with Anderran Sandry is again kidnapped, this time by Pershan fer Roth, whose proposal of marriage she had refused shortly before leaving Dancruan, and Quenaill Shieldsman, a powerful court mage and Shan's rival for the Empress's attentions. Quen lays a powerful sleeping spell on Briar and Daja and magic-dampening spells on Sandry. Briar uses smelling salts he calls "Wake the Dead" to wake up Daja and they start to go after Sandry when they are confronted by Quenaill. Briar and Daja engage Quenaill, draining him until the spells on Sandry wear off. When Sandry wakes up, she is covered in charms to prevent her from using her magic. These charms are tied to her with ribbons and she is thus able to free herself. Sandry then uses thread magic to unravel her captors' clothing and cocoon them in the resulting threads. After meeting up with Daja and Briar again, the party continue to the border. Aware that the empress may attempt to stop them, they send ahead their traveling companions and send their guards home. At the border, they are confronted by Ishabal Ladyhammer. She raises a barrier against them, but Sandry uses the circle of thread that binds them together to combine their powers. Tris, who had been travelling behind, magically accesses the ring from a distance, allowing the four mages to use their amplified power to shatter the border barrier. The thread circle disappears and all four now have a circular lump in their hand. Having invested much of her power in the barrier, Ishabal is magically drained when she leaves without attempting to stop Tris from crossing. The original title of the novel, The Circle Reforged, refers to the reforging of the four protagonists' friendship. In the year of the Circle of Magic quartet, Sandry, Tris, Daja and Briar live together and develop a strong friendship that manifests itself magically as a bond that allows them to communicate telepathically and causes their magical abilities to cross over from one to another. In The Circle Opens the four are separated, although their bond is clarified when they refer to each other as siblings or foster-siblings. Sandry remains in Summersea, living with her uncle in the Ducal Citadel, while Briar, Daja and Tris travel the world with their respective teachers. When they return, Daja after two years and Tris and Briar after four, the experiences they had while apart lead them to close their mental connection to each other, a representation of the distancing of their relationship. Sandry, feeling betrayed first by having been left behind, then by the telepathic wall, reciprocates in the same manner. Throughout the first few chapters of the book the four mages fight frequently. Briar and Tris are invited by Daja to live in her new house, with Tris taking over housekeeping duties to assuage what she perceives as charity from her wealthier friends. Daja withholds the extent of her hurt at not being able to return to Winding Circle as well as her experiences with the arsonist Ben Ladradun during Cold Fire. Tris lies about her newly learned ability to scry on the wind because of the ill treatment she experienced from other mages who found out. Briar refuses to discuss his experiences of war in Gyongxe and his resulting post-traumatic stress disorder with anyone but Rosethorn, his teacher and traveling companion. Sandry and Daja are the first to reopen their mental connection, ending their estrangement. Later in the book, Briar and Tris open their connection with each other. Some time later, Sandry telepathically calls out to Tris and Briar when she's trapped in a box, nearly paralyzed by spells that bind her magic and her own fear of the dark. Eventually, their telepathic bond is completely restored, though they maintain their ability to screen their minds when they choose to. The bond, and the circle of thread that represents it, serve them in a joint magical working to breach the barrier on the Namorn-Anderran border during the book's climactic battle; once complete, Sandry finds the thread gone, and each of them is left with a scar on their right palm resembling the four lumps in the thread that had represented their magical identities. In the post-climactic scene, each of the four reveals the secret that they had been keeping, and Briar introduces his sisters to a mental recreation of Discipline Cottage, their former home, which he had created and used when he wanted to feel safe. The Will of the Empress is the first book set in Emelan to involve the protagonists in a romantic sub-plot. While previous books alluded to romantic relationships between the adult characters, none of the four main characters were shown to have romantic interests. Sandry's visit to Namorn is punctuated by Empress Berenene's desire to see her marry a Namornese nobleman. She is courted by Jak and Fin, whose advances she rebuffs while maintaining a friendly acquaintance with them. She develops feeling for Shan and responds to his less public courtship, but when she learns that he's sexually involved with Empress Berenene, she doesn't pursue the relationship and rejects his offer of marriage. After Fin's incarceration Jak learns that Sandry is leaving Namorn and visits her before she leaves, when she tells him that she enjoys his company much more as a friend than as a suitor. Daja meets Rizu, the Empress's Mistress of Wardrobe, developing an infatuation with her and commenting on her beauty and flirtatiousness. Her feelings remain unacknowledged until Rizu makes the first move and kisses her, resulting in awkwardness on the part of Sandry, who telepathically senses the kiss and is flustered by the rush of Daja's emotions while dancing with Fin. Daja and Rizu's relationship quickly becomes sexual, and is discovered by Briar when he finds Rizu in Daja's bedroom one morning naked. During their short relationship, Daja develops intense feelings for Rizu and shows a desire for her to be accepted as part of her siblings' inner circle, while they are reluctant. When Daja prepares to leave Namorn she asks Rizu to return to Emelan with her and is heartbroken by her refusal; during the ride to the border she's shown to carry a small portrait of Rizu in her pouch. After Daja leaves, Berenene comments on Rizu's low spirits since her lover's departure. Briar, coping with an unspecified war in the country of Yanjing, tends to romance as many women as he can, mainly Caidy. He reassures the others that he takes droughtwort, a plant that renders the eater temporarily sterile. He has vivid nightmares of the war in Gyongxe when he sleeps alone.
6350803	/m/0g254y	Briar's Book	Tamora Pierce	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 To Briar, the Mire is familiar territory, having been first a street-rat and then a thief in Deadman's District, the poorest quarter of his native Hajra, before his magic was discovered by the great mage Niklaren Goldeye and he was taken to Winding Circle, a temple school for ambient mages. One day while out running errands with his teacher, Rosethorn, Briar is summoned to the Mire to examine Flick, a poor friend affected by a strange illness. Puzzled by what he has encountered, Briar enlists Rosethorn's help. The two bring the feverish girl to Urda's House, (a small charity hospital), where they learn that Flick is by far not the only one affected; many other people from the poorest parts of Summersea are ill as well. They also learn, to Briar's dismay, that the hospital has been put under quarantine to help stop the "blue pox" - so named for the bluish sores that mark the skin - from spreading even further. Trapped in Urda's House due to the quarantine, Rosethorn and Briar are kept busy with caring for the patients. Together with the healers, they come to the conclusion that it isn't the blue spots that are necessarily dangerous, but the fever. Even more troubling is the fever's apparent resistance to willowbark tea, a usually successful remedy. These revelations don't make the task of caring for patients any easier, however, and over the next few days many of them - including Flick - pass away. Eventually it's realized that the quarantine on Urda's House is useless; the plague has already spread to the whole of Summersea. Briar and Rosethorn are given leave, and travel back to Winding Circle, where Sandry, Tris and Daja spend the night with Briar in the altar room to help him cope with Flick's death. Rosethorn works with Dedicate Crane and a team of Air mages to find a cure for the sickness. But it is Briar's sharp-eyed friend Tris who discovers the first real breakthrough; the origin of the disease. With Niko's help, she learns that the disease was a result of a magical experiment gone wrong and disposed of incorrectly. Unfortunately, just as things start to look bright in the search for a cure for the blue pox, an accident in Crane's lab causes Rosethorn to become sick with it as well. This causes Briar to work twice as hard, determined not to lose Rosethorn as he had lost Flick, and slowly a cure begins to develop. (Rosethorn continues to send notes to Crane through Briar.) After several days, the cure is deemed to be safe and Crane tests it on Rosethorn. She starts to recover, but has a bad cough, which develops into pneumonia. Lark goes to find a healer, but while she is gone, Rosethorn has a seizure. Briar, not wanting to lose his teacher, plunges after her into death, magically linking himself to the three girls and his beloved shakkan, or miniature tree. Suspended in a sort of limbo, he finds Rosethorn in a garden, and they argue fiercely. Only after he threatens to sever the magical cords linking him to life does she agree to return with him. Upon their return, they discover that Rosethorn has temporarily lost her ability to speak, due to the seizure and the accompanying block of oxygen flow to her brain. But that appears to be the only lasting damage, and the blue pox has vanished for good. A month later, Briar and the girls on on the roof. Sandry comments that it is the four's birthday, they have all been at Discipline Cottage for a year. Everyone has to leave for various reasons, leaving Briar alone. He contemplates birthdays, and decides his birthday will be the following day, the day Rosethorn invited him to her garden. She calls up to him and tells him to come down and start weeding.
6355219	/m/0g28_w	Riverwind the Plainsman	Paul B. Thompson	1990-03-31	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Riverwind the Plainsman begins in the village of Que Shu shortly before the southern invasion of the War of the Lance. Riverwind the Plainsman is slightly different than the rest of the Preludes series, in that Riverwind was unknown to the other companions at this time. However, Riverwind's blue crystal staff was one of the focal points of the original Chronicles series. This is the story of how that staff came into his possession. The story starts with Riverwind undergoing tests of strength and courage in order to be allowed to be betrothed to Goldmoon, the princess of the Que Shu tribe. Goldmoon's father Arrowthorn, along with many other villagers, sees this as an unpopular match. Riverwind is from an outcast family not even permitted to live within the city walls. Their crime was believing in the true gods instead of recognizing the chief as a god, and Goldmoon as a goddess. Riverwind passes his tests, and so Arrowthorn gives Riverwind a quest. Arrowthorn instructs Riverwind to leave Que Shu with only a day's supply of food and water and search for proof of the true gods; only upon proof will Arrowthorn allow the betrothal. Upon leaving the village, Riverwind is joined by another tribal outcast: Catchflea. Old and slightly crazed, Catchflea is a self-proclaimed seer, who tries to divine the future in reading acorns shaken out of a gourd. Riverwind and Catchflea are not gone long before they find themselves unwilling participants in a civil war. Accidentally falling down a magical shaft while chasing a thief, they discover a new race of subterranean elves, who were originally Silvanesti elves, the Hestites, which fled Silvanesti during the Kinslayer Wars. These elves had, over 2,000 years ago, founded their underground city of Vartoom, which operated under a caste system consisting mostly of a warrior class, a smithing class, and a slave class. Riverwind and Catchflea are befriended by Di An, a female elven slave and one of scores of "Barren Children"- children born without military or magical inclinations put to work as diggers in the many underground mines. They are taken prisoner and taken to the queen of Vartoom, Li El—a cruel and idealistic elven wizardress. Eventually, Riverwind and Catchflea learn of an impending war between Li El and her former lover, General Mors. Mors recognizes Li El's evil and cruelty for what they are, and leads an invasion against her. A spellbound Riverwind fights in the ranks of Li El, while Catchflea teaches the slave class the lost art of archery and the use of pepper as a sort of biological agent. Mors is victorious, Riverwind is released from the spell, and Vartoom is liberated. Mors wants Catchflea to remain in Vartoom as an ambassador and consultant, but is outwardly cold toward Riverwind after a magicked Riverwind had fought in Li El's ranks. Riverwind and Catchflea are forced to escape Vartoom with the help of Di An, who by this time is in love with Riverwind. For miles, they trek secret tunnels until they come upon the sunken city of Xak Tsaroth, which is by now swarming with Gully Dwarves (Aghar), goblins, and Draconians. In Xak Tsaroth, the three meet an almost indifferent dark cleric named Krago, who is in Xak Tsaroth under orders from the Queen of Darkness to continue creating and perfecting more Draconian warriors. Xak Tsaroth's second in command (behind the Black Dragon Khisanth)is a juvenile Draconian named Thouriss, whom Krago created was grooming as a perfect sire to future generations of Draconians. Krago only initially takes interest in the three when he learns of Di An's stunted growth in relation to her age due to living underground her entire life and being largely malnourished (although the three tell their hosts that Di An is a Silvanesti Elf to avoid suspicion). Thouriss is a dangerous combination of extreme naïveté and irritability who doesn't know if he wants to graciously host the three outsiders, or eat them. Krago is also creating the perfect female specimen to mother future generations of Draconians, whom he names Lyrexis. Riverwind narrowly defeats Thouriss in battle by drowning him when he correctly assumes Thouriss hasn't yet been taught to swim. Riverwind is dragged underwater during his battle with Thouriss and is assumed dead when neither warrior rises to the surface. Catchflea and Di An are taken hostage by an increasingly frustrated Krago. Di An takes an alchemical blood purifier that she finds in Krago's lab and is wracked by pains throughout her body. This chemical begins to "cure" Di An's stunted growth and the elf girl starts to slowly grow to the correct size for her age and species, starting at her feet. Riverwind goes back to Krago's lab to free his companions and escape the city. By now, Lyrexis is awake and out of control, attacking the companions as well as crushing Krago's hand. She escapes the lab and heads into town where she attacks and easily defeats many goblins, but pauses when confronted by fellow Draconians. During Lyrexis' battle with the Draconians, the three with Krago taken as hostage reach the huge pots that are raised and lowered to and from the surface. Krago casts a spell to lift the pot but is killed by a Draconian crossbow bolt, ending the spell. The three are forced to climb up the chain to the surface as bolts whistle all around them. While escaping the city, Catchflea is shot by an enemy crossbow bolt and dies. It is here, in the above-ground section of the city, where Riverwind sees Di An succumb to a sort of reverse-agoraphobia and run off. Her many years living underground had given her a strong and powerful fear of open spaces, fearing that she would "fall up" into the open sky. It is also in the above-ground Xak Tsaroth where Riverwind encounters Khisanth, the Black Dragon who guards the city and helps to oversee the creation of the Draconians. It is during this encounter that Riverwind is given the blue crystal staff of Mishakal by the goddess herself when he is forced into a temple by the Black Dragon and her company of Draconians. Riverwind is able to repel the dragon and Draconians by using the staff's ability to severely injure any being aligned with evil if the staff even slightly touches them. After finally escaping from Xak Tsaroth, Riverwind finds Di An and the two enter the swamps. Riverwind became afflicted with swamp fever and Di An was still suffering the effects of being above ground. Mishakal gave Riverwind a choice. He could either use the staff to heal Di An, or use the staff to heal himself. Ultimately, Riverwind decided to use the staff to heal Di An, who instantly vanishes along with the staff. Di An is teleported by the Goddess back to Mors (whose blindness has been cured by Mishakal in preparation for Di An's return) and the rest of the underground Elves. Di An is to spread the word of the True Gods among her people. Now without his proof of the true gods, Riverwind set off for Que Shu to admit defeat. While journeying back to Que Shu, the staff materializes in front of Riverwind. Now with his quest complete, Riverwind continued to the village and, still delirious from the fever, collapses at Goldmoon's feet. The story ends with the staff being taken to Arrowthorn, who will decide if it is sufficient proof. The authors do not tell us the outcome.
6355963	/m/0g29n9	A Thousand Pieces of Gold				 Lalu is the oldest daughter of a Chinese farmer. Her father loses everything by gambling on winter wheat futures, and Lalu finds herself thrust into debt slavery. At the end of the book, after many hardships, she dies.
6357789	/m/0g2chw	Shock Wave	Tony Abbott		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 While investigating the deaths of a large number of marine animals, Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino encounter a group of tourists on Seymour Island. Aboard the tourists' cruise ship (the Polar Queen), a mysterious "disease" has killed everyone on board. The tourists are brought to the Ice Hunter, a research vessel for the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA). Here, they find out that the Polar Queen is missing and will not respond to their calls. After some searching, Pitt and Al discover that the missing ship is heading towards a cliff. After being winched onto the ship from a helicopter, Pitt steers and manages to narrowly avoid the crash. But he finds only one surviving passenger on board: Dierdre. Maeve, the tour guide from Seymour Island, is Deirdre's sister, and she seems perplexed to find Deirdre aboard. Pitt and Al uncover more evidence to suggest that the passengers of the Polar Queen were killed by extremely high-powered soundwaves. At this time, more outbreaks occur on a cargo ship and a Chinese junk. The cargo ship blows up while a boarding party from a passing ship is aboard; in the distance, a futuristic yacht is spotted heading away from the scene. We learn that the yacht belongs to the Dorsett Consolidated Mining Company, a gemstone mining company headed by the ruthless Arthur Dorsett. Dorsett is also the father of Maeve, Deirdre and a third daughter, Boudicca. Of Dorsett's three daughters, Maeve is the only one who does not work for his company. As a young girl, she ran away from home, broke all bonds with her family, and changed her last name to Fletcher. By borrowing the US Navy sonar net in the Pacific, NUMA discovers that the acoustic plague appears to be caused by a convergence of soundwaves from four sources around the Pacific: in the southwest, Gladiator Island; in the northwest, one of the Commander Islands; in the northeast, Kunghit Island; and in the southeast, Easter Island. Since Kunghit Island is located not far from the United States, Pitt decides to go there to investigate. He enlists the help of Mason Broadmoor, a Native American fisherman who, along with his associates, delivers fish to the Kunghit Island mine every week. During one such visit, Pitt is smuggled onto the island and given a tour of the mine by a disgruntled employee. The mine has a revolutionary mining method in which high-powered soundwaves are used to dig through clay containing diamonds. Pitt learns that the Dorsetts have kidnapped both of Maeve's sons and are holding them hostage. The company security force captures Pitt as he leaves the island, but Broadmoor rescues him, and the two escape using jet skis. Soon after returning to the US, Pitt, Al and Maeve are sent to Wellington to board another research vessel, the Ocean Angler. Their mission is to covertly infiltrate Gladiator Island, find Maeve's sons, and bring everybody back to the vessel. However, the plan is derailed when the pickup car drives them to a Dorsett company warehouse instead of to the research vessel. After a failed escape attempt, they are all brought onto the Dorsett yacht and immediately put out to sea. After about a day, Pitt, Al and Maeve are abandoned in the southwest Pacific Ocean, in a small craft and far away from ordinary shipping routes; in addition, a tropical cyclone is quickly approaching. Meanwhile, the NUMA computer center in Washington discovers a way to predict the coming convergence zones, and in a few weeks the Hawaiian island of Oahu will be hit. The head of NUMA, Admiral James Sandecker, fails to convince the President of the looming threat, so he launches a clandestine operation to avert the disaster. The plan is to reflect the soundwaves from the convergence zone back towards Gladiator Island. A giant reflector is obtained from a government agency; it is dismantled, loaded onto the Famous Deep-sea recovery ship Glomar Explorer, and brought into the convergence zone. Pitt, Al, and Maeve have successfully endured the storm and finally stumbled upon a small island. Here they find the remains of a sailboat, which they use along with their own battered craft to build a small sailship. With this ship, they set course for Gladiator Island, planning to rescue Maeve's sons from her evil family. As they climb ashore, the sound reflector outside Oahu successfully reflects the high-powered soundwave toward Gladiator Island. At the same time, scientists realize that this could cause both volcanoes on the island to erupt. Admiral Sandecker is shocked when he receives a call from Pitt, using Mr. Dorsett's phone. Pitt and Al rescue Maeve's sons and kill Arthur, Boudicca and Deirdre Dorsett—however, Deirdre fatally shoots Maeve before Pitt kills her. Pitt and Al flee, using the Dorsett yacht to make their escape. Al takes the children aboard a helicopter that was parked on the yacht, and as they fly away from the island, Al sees the yacht become engulfed by a pyroclastic ash cloud with Pitt still on board. Al arrives to a safe landing point, where he is recruited by rescue officials to fly back to the island. Al is concerned about what he will find there, but he has already decided to fly back and try to rescue his friend Pitt. Al also agrees to take a load of food, fresh water, and medical supplies to the islanders, who will most certainly need the items in the days following the eruptions. Upon his arrival at the island, Al is told that the authorities have received no radio communication to suggest that Pitt is still alive. As Al begins to mourn the loss of his best friend, he hears new information about a stranded yacht that has been seen floating several miles from the island. Al, feeling it might be Pitt, flies the helicopter to the coordinates hoping to find Pitt alive. Al indeed finds that Pitt is alive, having survived by barricading himself from the searing heat of the ash cloud. Sadly, however, Maeve is discovered dead from the injuries she sustained at the hand of her sister. We also discover that, prior to her untimely death, she and Pitt had pledged their deepest love for each other. After Pitt is rescued, he flies back to D.C. on a commercial jet flight and heads home, but not before spending some time in a hospital recovering from his very serious injuries. it:Onda d'urto (romanzo)
6363079	/m/0g2jm4	Boris Godunov	Aleksandr Pushkin	1831		 *Scene 1 – Kremlin Palaces *Scene 2 – Red Square *Scene 3 – Novodevichiy Monastery *Scene 4 – Kremlin Palaces *Scene 5 – Night; A Cell in the Chudov Monastery *Scene 6 – The Fence of the Monastery (Note: Deleted from the published drama) *Scene 7 – Palaces of the Patriarch *Scene 8 – The Tsar’s Palaces *Scene 9 – An Inn on the Lithuanian Border *Scene 10 – Moscow; The Home of Shuyskiy *Scene 11 – The Tsar’s Palaces *Scene 12 – Kraków; The Home of Vishnevetskiy *Scene 13 – Castle of the Voyevoda Mniszech in Sambor (Note: also deleted from many editions) *Scene 14 – A Suite of Lighted Rooms *Scene 15 – Night; A Garden; A Fountain *Scene 16 – The Lithuanian Frontier *Scene 17 – The Tsar’s Duma *Scene 18 – Plain near Novgorod-Seversk *Scene 19 – Square before a Cathedral in Moscow *Scene 20 – Sevsk *Scene 21 – A Forest *Scene 22 – Moscow; The Tsar’s Palaces *Scene 23 – A Tent *Scene 24 – Lobnoye Mesto (Red Square) *Scene 25 – The Kremlin; The House of Boris
6369513	/m/0g2v5f	Zorachus	Mark E. Rogers		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel Zorachus is chock full of sex and violence. It depicts several gory scenes of death, murder, war, and torture. It depicts in equally explicit fashion many scenes of sex. Very little of the sex is of the standard variety. The novel features as its protagonist the eponymous Mancdaman Zorachus, a powerful sorcerer who at the beginning of the novel was in his early 30s and had become a Seventh Level Adept of the Sharajnaghi Order. He was acknowledged by teachers and peers alike to be the most puissant sorcerer in the world. After his elevation to Seventh Level Adept, Zorachus learned from his teachers that he was the son of Mancdaman Zancharthus, former ruler of the city of Khymir, in the north. Khymir was, and always has been, the most evil city in the world, a bottomless pit of vice and temptation. Emissaries had come from Khymir to ask Zorachus to come back to his father's city and help the current regime rule the place. Zorachus was asked by his Sharajnaghi teachers to go to Khymir and, under the guise of doing the will of the ruling order and enjoying the pleasures of Khymir, prevent Khymir's evil from spilling out and making victims of nearby peoples. Zorachus was a very moral man, having been raised by the Sharajnaghi. He was afraid that he would not be able to resist the temptations to lust and violence Khymir and its people, and Tchernobog, offered. However, he was eventually convinced by his friends and teachers to go. From the very start, even on the voyage by water to Khymir, the Khymirians tempted Zorachus, performing sexually in front of him and inviting him to join in. Zorachus resisted these blatantly sexual advances fairly easily. He had a more difficult time not killing his Khymirian hosts to wipe out their evil. For instance, when the Khymirian ship was attacked by Kragehul pirates, Zorachus helped fight the pirates using his natural fighting ability and his battle magic. The victorious Khymirian sailors and soldiers, however, began to rape the captured Kragehul. Zorachus nearly gave into the urge to blast the rapists with the same magic he had used to blast the pirates. The magnitude and variety of the temptations only increased after Zorachus arrived in Khymir. Slavery was widespread in Khymir, and no one saw anything wrong in mistreating, torturing, raping, or killing slave and freeman alike, so long as the victim was of lower class than the victimizer. Zorachus was very strong-willed, but even he began to despair under the constant onslaught of horrible experiences he was forced to witness, all the while pretending he saw nothing wrong. In the end, Zorachus' bloodlust; his repressed desire for the Asa, wife of his Kragehul friend Halfdan; his loathing for Asa's lesbian, unfaithful relationship with the female slave Leahkalah; and his self-hatred; all combined to convince him that every human was evil. Zorachus led a coup d'etat, using baleful, evil, forbidden magic to seize absolute power in Khymir. He personally killed dozens of people in horrifying ways, completely abandoning all his former moral precepts. This was just as Tchernobog had planned, turning a good and moral magician-warrior to evil.
6370864	/m/0g2wx8	Was	Geoff Ryman	1992-05-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is separated into three parts, "Winter Kitchen", "Summer Kitchen", and "Oz Circle". The primary focus is put on Jonathan, a gay male actor with AIDS who goes on a pilgrimage of sorts to Manhattan, Kansas and the "real" (in the novel) Dorothy on whom the book's version of L. Frank Baum based the character. Characters include Baum, who makes an appearance as a substitute teacher in Kansas. Millie, a makeup girl on the set of the original film version film narrates an encounter with Judy Garland, its lead actress.
6374257	/m/0g2_mg	Tears Of The Giraffe	Alexander McCall Smith	2000	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mma Ramotswe is not impressed with Mr. J.L.B Matekoni's maid who has been sleeping in his bed with other men and not feeding him properly. The maid, sensing that the forthcoming marriage will involve her dismissal, attempts to plant a gun on Mma Ramotswe in order to have her jailed, but the maid's plan is foiled and it is she who ends up behind bars. She also investigates a butcher's wife who is suspected of an affair, and discovers that the woman's son has - unknown to her husband - been fathered by another man who is paying for his private education. The resolution of this case highlights differences between the methods and moralities of Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi. Mma Makutsi has expressed her yearning to do detective rather than administrative work, and Mma Ramotswe promotes her to assistant detective (although also retaining her secretarial role). The solution of the paternity case proves to be the first test of Mma Makutsi's detective and diplomatic skills. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni is maneuvered into offering a home to Motholeli and Puso, two orphaned children with a tragic past. He worries that this may affect his engagement to Mma Ramotswe, but she accepts the children and they both see potential in them, particularly in the girl, Motholeli, who uses a wheelchair but displays a real aptitude and interest in the work of the garage. A family unit begins to emerge. sv:Giraffens tårar
6374919	/m/0g30kv	Morality for Beautiful Girls	Alexander McCall Smith	2001	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Mma Ramotswe is engaged to "the excellent" Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, but faces a slowdown of business at the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency that threatens its existence. Forced to make difficult choices, Mma Ramotswe moves the business into the office of her fiancé's garage and makes her assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi, its assistant manager. At just this time, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has been showing signs of lethargy and neglecting his business. An important government man approaches Mma Ramotswe to investigate his sister-in-law, whom he suspects of attempting to poison his brother. The beauty contest: Mma Makutsi interviews beauty competition competitors to determine their good character. The mysterious orphan: Mma Silvia Potokwane, matron of the local orphanage, deals with a strange new child who, it is rumored, has been raised by lions. sv:Vackra flickors lott
6382892	/m/0g37qx	Open Veins of Latin America	Eduardo Galeano	1971		 In the book Galeano analyzes the history of Latin America as a whole, from the time period of the European settlement of the New World to contemporary Latin America, describing the effects of European and later United States economic exploitation and political dominance over the region. The Library Journal review stated, "Well written and passionately stated, this is an intellectually honest and valuable study."
6385011	/m/0g39q7	The Outstretched Shadow	Mercedes Lackey	2003-10-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Seventeen-year-old Kellen Tavadon has lived his whole life in Armathelieh, the Mage City. The son of Arch-Mage Lycaelon Tavadon, Kellen is expected to become a Mage by Armathelieh's citizens. However, fate has different plans for him. Stumbling through the City's Low Market, he comes upon three mysterious books&nbsp;— the books of the Wild Magic&nbsp;, an art forbidden by the High Mages. When Lycaelon searches his room and finds the books, Kellen is accused and convicted for the practice of Wild Magic. He is forced from the city by an Outlaw Hunt&nbsp;— a rare event orchestrated by the Mages of the Council to look like banishment&nbsp;, but actually a cover-up for murder. Kellen casts a Wild Magic spell asking for help in escaping the Outlaw Hunt. The Wild Magic grants him a unicorn named Shalkan who agrees to help Kellen on the condition that he remain chaste and celibate for a year and a day. Seeing little choice, Kellen agrees. After he and Shalkan fight off the stone hounds of the Outlaw Hunt, both are badly injured and seek refuge at the home of a Wild Mage named Idalia. Idalia happens to be Kellen's older sister who also was banished by their father. She takes him in and teaches him about Wild Magic. Meanwhile the demons, led by Queen Savilla, want to conquer the world of light. Savilla does this by trying to get the elves and humans to fight. Her son Prince Zyperis tells a spy for the council that Kellen has escaped and is learning wild magic from his sister. The council then decides to extend its border to where Idalia and Kellen live. Idalia, Shalkan and Kellen are forced to move into Elven lands, while the other folk (sylphs, dryads, fauns, pixies, gnomes, and centaurs) have to go north towards the mountains. As Kellen, Idalia, and Shalkan approach the Elven lands, Kellen notices that the woods are different from the wild wood and there are no other folk. When Kellen meets the elves he thinks they are perfect in every way. Their beauty and their whole civilization seem perfect. When they first arrive at their new home Kellen meets Jermayan, who loves and is loved by Idalia. However, she does not want to be with him because he will live for hundreds of years and she will die. Jermayan does not care, but Idalia rejects him. While Kellen is exploring he meets a young elf, Sandalon, who happens to be the prince of the elves and takes him to his mother, Queen Ashaniel. While she is there she tells him that a drought has happened. Idalia then learns this is not a natural drought. When she tries to summon water by wild magic it is rejected. The drought is a magical drought; someone is stopping the water. Idalia learns that the demons are the ones causing the drought. She believs she can fix it but she and the elves will have to pay a price. Then someone will have to go to the place the spell is being held and put a keystone with the counter spell and change it. Kellen has to do that because when the drought is broken huge storms will come and Idalia is need to slow and stop the spells and Kellen and Idalia are the only wildmages in elven lands. Kellen goes with only Jermayan and Shalkan. They journey into the mountains were the demons live to stop the counter spell. As they are traveling Jermayan teaches Kellen how to become a knight when he learns that Kellen is a knight-mage, making him an excellent fighter, but only an average wild mage. When several human and centaur bandits attack them, Kellen kills for the first time and is terribly upset. Jermayan is mortally wounded and Kellen heals him with wild magic, during which the gods of wild magic tell him "you will know what to do when the time comes" and Jermayan is healed but weak. Meanwhile, Kellen learns from Jermayan of the Great War. The elves, humans, and wild folk fought against the demons. Kellen learns that there were wild mages that did not want to pay their price so they joined the demons. Each had mighty dragons on both sides, and many races of the light were lost forever. As they get closer, the price in which Kellen paid for healing Jermayan leads him to someone harassing a girl. Kellen engages the man, deciding against drawing his sword against the man's club, instead using his armored gauntlets to knock him unconscious. Then Kellen realizes that the girl he saved looks like a demon. Jermayan sees her and tries to kill her but Kellen protects her. While they are fighting Shalkan walks up to her and touches her with his horn. If a demon touches a unicorn horn they die. Jermayan stops fighting Kellen and only accepts her because Shalkan threatened to kill him. The girl, Vestakia, says she can lead them to the barrier where the spell is being held. She can sense where demons and demon magic are. She then tells the story of how her mother was a Wild Mage who unknowingly slept with a demon in human guise. When she found out, she called on the wild magic for help and was given a choice: her child could be born human but with a demon nature, or a demon with a human nature. Both choices would cost twenty years of life. She took the second option and fled with her sister into hiding. Vestakia finally leads them to the mountain where the barrier is held. Vestakia, Kellen, Jermayan, and Shalkan ascend the mountain to find an obelisk. Kellen has to climb up it to position the counter-keystone while the others are weak because of the demon magic. As Kellen climbs up a demon army of goblins comes, and Vestakia, Shalkan, and Jermayan fight them off. During the battle, Jermayan learns to trust Vestakia and saves her life. Meanwhile, Kellen realizes he is going to die by going up there. He wishes he never left the golden city and learned wild magic. He realizes that he didn't miss the city itself, but what it could have been. A place of honor, justice, and law, and he misses the fact that he used to think it was. He ascends the staircase to the top of the obelisk, and is surprised to confront a doppelganger of himself. The doppelganger attempts to persuade him to give up his mission, to try to convince him of returning to Armathelieh. He tells him to renounce the three books, beg for his father's forgiveness, and he can take his father's throne to make the city how he wants it. Kellen almost accepts, but realizes it is all a trick. He slams the counter-keystone into the obelisk, starting the spell that will eventually shatter it. When he does, Doppelganger Kellen turns into the Demon Queen and disappears. Kellen's hands burn from holding the counter-keystone in place, and he thinks he going to die from the pain. He collapses when the obelisk is destroyed, and the goblins flee. Back in elven Lands, Idalia knows that she sent Jermayan and Kellen to their deaths. Then she feels the magic of the barrier being destroyed. She summons the wild magic, hesitating on the price but accepts to control the weather patterns as the storms built up from being stopped by the barrier. It transforms her into something big and she flies into the storm and controls it. Three days later, Ashaniel finds Idalia unconscious in a field. Kellen wakes up with Vestakia, Shalkan, and Jermayan all next to him and finds it raining. He feels really weak, and his hands hurt badly and are bandaged. As the book ends the Demon Queen is furious and Kellen's tutor Anigrel talks to her and she tells him what to do in the golden city.
6385365	/m/0g39x2	Blood of the Yakuza	David "Zeb" Cook		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Blood of the Yakuza is a campaign setting and scenario package for use with Oriental Adventures. The module describes the Japanese-style island of Wa and the port of Nakamura, detailing the history, politics, districts, architecture, and important personalities of the Tokugawa-era town. The module contains information on the rival Yakuza gangs and the political machinations of the important families and temples, as well as background on the major NPCs of the city, plus lists of names, occupations, and personalities for detailing minor non-player characters. Narratives are provided, rather than presenting the adventures as straightforward encounter plots, and depending on their character classes and backgrounds, the player characters can interact with the stories in many different ways. As the module was based on the Kara Tur boxed set, its information is older than the information about Wa found in such product lines as the Spelljammer series.
6385549	/m/0g3b3p	Anne Frank and Me	Jeff Gottesfeld		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Nicole, a fifteen-year-old American high school student living in the year 2001, comes from an affluent household and takes her lifestyle for granted. She has a website she calls Notes of GirlX. On the website, she talks about her life and frustrations. Absorbed in her studies, she becomes fascinated with a Holocaust survivor who speaks to her English class, named Paulette Littzer-Gold. Nicole feels drawn to the woman, and asks if they have previously met. The class takes a trip to a local Holocaust museum. During the trip, Nicole and her peers are assigned roles as Jewish teens living during the Holocaust. After the activity begins, Nicole hears students shrieking and gunfire. She attempts to run along with the rest of her classmates, but is struck in the back while ascending a staircase and loses consciousness. When Nicole wakes, she finds herself in Paris in 1942. She is told that she is Nicole Bernhardt, the name of the fictional Jewish girl assigned her by her English teacher back in the Holocaust museum. As months past, Nicole tells herself that the 2001 world is a dream and accepts that she is Nicole Bernhardt. Several of Nicole's friends are non-Jews who oppose Hitler's policies and protect the Bernhardt family. However, following the German invasion of France, Nicole's situation gets dramatically worse. Eventually, she is forced to hide in a rundown apartment in the streets of Paris. From her refuge, Nicole writes a string of anti-Nazi letters for the French resistance. In the letters, she calls herself GirlX. The Bernhardt family is betrayed and Nicole is transported to Auschwitz and she meets Anne Frank aboard the train. Nicole remembers that she read Anne's diary and tells her, but Anne says she left it where she had been hiding. Later, a fellow Jew tries to save Nicole by sending her to be slave labor in the camp instead of being sent to be killed. Nicole and her sister Liz-Bette, who is very ill, are to be split up, Nicole to live and Liz-Bette to die. Nicole becomes hysterical and begs to be allowed to accompany her sister. The Germans, after mocking Nicole's devotion to Liz-Bette, allow her to go with the young girl. Nicole tearfully thanks them and then walks with Liz-Bette to the "showers." Liz-Bette is frenzied with terror, but Nicole calms her. Nicole then leads her sister in a Jewish prayer, as she whispers she loves Liz-Bette and they succumb to death. Nicole wakes up, lying on a bench outside the museum. She finds out that other students had set off firecrackers which sent everyone running, when she bumped her head. Nicole stays at the hospital for a few days, and afterwards her life goes on, but she can't figure out if she was really in the Holocaust, or if it was just a bad dream. Nicole believes Paulette Littzer-Gold, the Holocaust survivor, who visited her school was the same woman at the Concentration Camp who told her to "stay to the right." The next day, Nicole finds out Mrs. Littzer-Gold had died overnight. She decides to go to Mrs. Littzer-Gold's funeral. Nicole sees a picture of her, but she looks nothing like the woman she thought she was. Nicole sadly accepts that she was never Nicole Bernhardt and that she never lived during the Holocaust. After the funeral, Nicole looks at the things that belonged to Mrs. Littzer-Gold that are at the altar. She notices that a letter Mrs. Littzer-Gold owned was one of the GirlX letters that Nicole herself had written, back in Paris in 1942. The letter talked about how no one could silence her ( "her" being GirlX). Not only did Nicole find out she did lived in the Holocaust, but she gave Mrs. Littzer-Gold the courage to live. Nicole takes her sister to a museum about Anne Frank.
6389584	/m/0g3h3h	Laughter in the Dark	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Albinus is a respected, reasonably happy married art critic who lives in Berlin. He lusts after the 16-year old Margot whom he meets at a cinema, where she works, and seduces her over the course of many encounters. His prolonged affair with Margot is eventually revealed to Elisabeth when Margot deliberately sends a letter to the Albinus residence and Albert is unable to intercept it before it is discovered. This results in the dissolution of the Albinus' marriage. Rather than disown the young troublemaker he is even more attracted to her. Margot uses him to become a film star, her ambition in life. Albinus introduces Margot to Axel Rex, but he does not know the two had previously been lovers. Margot and Rex resume their relationship, and start plotting to get Albinus out of the way and rob him of his money. Rex sees the opportunities that Albinus's infatuation with Margot produces, and understands that even a great risk is little to the blind and helpless; in love, in loss, and in dwindling fortune. Albinus delivers Margot her first role as an actress, but she does not appear to be very talented. In fact, what she possesses in beauty is best captured by the imagination rather than even a still camera. Only Albinus' wealth ensures she gets to play her role. Margot realized she played the role poorly, and Albinus worried about her reaction. Rex, however, adored seeing the girl from the streets suffer, and took the opportunity to use her ineptitude. After Margot becomes upset upon viewing the film, Albinus coaxes her into taking a holiday to the south. They rent a hotel room and, after a chance encounter with an old friend, Albinus happens to surmise that Margot and Rex are engaged in an affair. He had always been envious of Rex as he was the truest of the artists, unlike him. He stole beautiful young things from Albinus his whole life and this was not different. Albinus steals away with Margot and leaves Rex at the hotel. On their journey out of town, Albinus, a self-proclaimed poor driver, crashes the car and is blinded, leaving him in need of care and oblivious to the world around him. Rex and Margot take advantage of his handicap and rent a chalet in Switzerland where Rex poses as Albinus' doctor, although Albinus is unaware of Rex's presence. Unknown to Albinus he was being mocked and tortured during his recovery. He becomes increasingly suspicious as his ears become more attuned and he perceives someone's presence, but his fears are never confirmed. Paul, a friend to the family, after suspecting forgery (Rex and Margot have been bleeding Albinus' accounts dry by feigning his hand on cheques), drives to the residence and discovers Rex toying with Albinus in his blinded state. Paul then escorts Albinus back to his ex-wife, Elizabeth's, home. After a short time, Albinus receives a call that Fraulein Peters (Margot) has returned to his flat to collect some things. Knowing that she is coming, he decides to kill her. Without haste, he heads to Margot's flat and makes his way to the apartment, trapping her inside by barricading the door, intending to shoot her with his pistol. He seeks her out by her scent and faint sounds but when he tries to shoot her she overpowers him, grabs the pistol, and kills him.
6391335	/m/0g3lj0	The Illearth War	Stephen R. Donaldson	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Several weeks after returning to his world from The Land, the leper Thomas Covenant is taking a phone call from his ex-wife Joan when he falls and hits his head, waking to find himself back in the Land, in the chamber of the Council of Lords of Revelstone. Angered by the fact that he has been transported away from "reality", Covenant nevertheless believes he is once again experiencing a dream or delusion due to his head injury. His hypothesis is supported by the fact that the Land has seen the passing of forty years compared to the few weeks that have passed in his own world: the High Lord of the Council is Elena, the daughter of Lena and the product of Covenant's rape (though he does not know this when he first returns), and now, Covenant's summoner. Elena shows no ill will towards her biological father, and she and Covenant become close friends. Elena explains that the evil Lord Foul has assembled a massive army, with which he now threatens the people of The Land. For forty years, the Lords have dedicated themselves to the study of Kevin's Lore, training new students at the school at the tree city of Revelwood. Only Mhorham remains from Lords of the council during the quest for the Staff of Law, but seven new Lords have taken their seats, having mastered both the magical and martial arts. The horse-tending Ramen have been enlisted to patrol the frontier near Foul's dominions. The Warward, the army of Revelstone, is full of battle-ready volunteers and is led by Hile Troy, who came to the Land from Covenant's world. An attempt was even made to attack Lord Foul directly, via a commando raid on his lair at the Land's eastern edge; although the raid, led by Lord Mhoram, failed, valuable knowledge was gained about Foul's forces. The commander of Foul's army is one of three brothers of the race of Giants, a people previously thought incorruptible. With the aid of the powerful Illearth Stone, Foul's non-corporeal servants, the Ravers, have possessed the three brothers, now renamed Kinslaughterer, Fleshharrower and Satansfist. In shame and despair, the other Giants offer no resistance as Kinslaughterer murders them all in their home city. Thus, the Lords have lost their strongest and bravest ally in the fight against evil. Nevertheless, the Lords resolve to meet the enemy on the battlefield. Hile Troy is a genius in military tactics who developed a mystical form of sight when hurtloam, a magical mud with miraculous curative properties, was used to try and "heal" his lack of eyes. (The hurtloam used to heal Covenant's head injury also has the effect of "curing" his leprosy). While Troy leads the army to confront Fleshharrower's attacking force, Elena and Covenant go in search of the Seventh Ward, a repository of ancient magical power which Elena believes will ensure victory. Covenant, Elena and their two Bloodguard protectors journey through the remote mountain region on the western frontier of the Land to the hiding place of the Ward. Elena gains the power, but foolishly uses it to summon the long dead High Lord Kevin from his grave, and send him against Lord Foul. This act breaks the Law of Death, the barrier preventing the souls of the dead from interfering in the world of the living. Kevin's spirit is easily defeated and then enslaved by Foul wielding the Illearth Stone, and commanded to destroy Elena. The two High Lords engage in a battle of magic, in which Elena and her Bloodguard are defeated and killed, and the Staff of Law lost again. Covenant is able to save himself and his Bloodguard by using the power of his white gold ring, again without understanding how. Meanwhile Hile Troy has been forced into a desperate retreat by the superior force of the Raver's army to the edge of a dangerous, forbidding forest known as Garroting Deep. In desperation, he begs the aid of Caerroil Wildwood, an immortal Forestal who is charged with protecting the ancient forests of the Land from the Ravers. Wildwood brings the forest to life, totally destroying Foul's army, and personally "garrotes" Fleshharrower. The victory is a Pyrrhic one, however: the Lords' army is nearly obliterated, and Hile Troy has sacrificed himself as the price for the Forestal's aid, becoming Wildwood's immortal apprentice. The war thus ends in a draw, and with the death of High Lord Elena his summoner, Covenant once again returns to his own world. His ex-wife has long since hung up the phone, and he is a leper once more.
6391720	/m/0g3m32	Loose Ends	Greg Cox	2001-06-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It started out as an innocent road trip to Carlsbad Caverns to unwind, but now Max, Isabel, Michael, Liz, and Maria are totally regretting their plan. Hundreds of feet underground, in the cavern gift shop, Liz turns and is stunned to see someone she thought she'd never meet again—the man who shot her long ago in the diner. Their eyes meet and Liz bolts. But running won't solve the group's new "problem." Because the shooter has recognized Liz. Now he wants her dead. And nobody knows why.
6393908	/m/0g3r43	Redwall Map & Riddler	Brian Jacques	1997	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This guide features a full length map covering the topography of the places discussed in the series up until its year of publication. While now outdated, it is still a valuable tool for comparing the locations of the older books. Also featured in this guide is a series of questions to test the reader's knowledge of the series.
6394413	/m/0g3s38	The Power that Preserves	Stephen R. Donaldson	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Back in his own "real" world, Thomas Covenant is devastated by the loss of Elena, though he still maintains to himself that his experience in the Land was all just a dream. Tormented by this unanswerable paradox, he neglects his physical condition; he stops taking his medications and fails to treat his head wound, allowing his dormant leprosy to once again become active. Wandering in the woods outside of his home town, he comes upon a lost little girl suffering from a rattlesnake bite. At this point he is once again summoned to the Land, this time by the desperate High Lord Mhoram, who is in need of aid. Covenant finds that seven years have gone by since the Illearth War, and Lord Foul is preparing for his final assault on the people of the Land. Foul has enslaved the tormented spirit of former High Lord Elena, who now wields the Staff of Law in the service of evil. The Lords have lost their most loyal defenders, the semi-immortal Bloodguard, and the Land has been cast into a perpetual winter. Furthermore, Lord Foul has rebuilt his army, which, under the command of the third Giant-raver Satansfist, now besieges the Lords' mountain-fortress of Revelstone. As a last resort, the Lords have decided to call upon Covenant, in the hope that he will be able to use the wild magic power of his white gold ring to repel the siege and save the Land from total destruction. Covenant, however, demands that Mhoram release the summons in order to allow him to save the girl's life in the "real" world. Mhoram assents. Covenant does manage to save the girl, but at the cost of being poisoned by the rattlesnake venom he has sucked out of her. In this state and with the knowledge that the girl is safe, he accepts another summoning. Covenant finds himself once again at Kevin's Watch, the place to which Lord Foul transported him at the time of his first summoning by Drool Rockworm. This time he has been brought to the Land by the joint efforts of Triock, jilted lover of Lena (whom Covenant raped on his first trip to the Land resulting in the birth of Elena) and the Giant Saltheart Foamfollower, his boon companion from the quest from the Staff of Law and one of the last two surviving Giants. Descending from the mountain and travelling east with Lena and Foamfollower in search of Lord Foul's demesne, Covenant is horrified to witness the depredations caused by Foul and his servants. South of the Plains of Ra, Covenant finds that his old bodyguard Bannor has joined with the Ramen in an attempt to protect the Ranyhyn, the intelligent, free horses who formerly served the Bloodguard as mounts. Covenant convinces the Ramen to take the Ranyhyn south to safety; Bannor, though no longer sustained by the power of his Vow, accompanies him on his journey east. Kidnapped by Ravers, Covenant confronts Elena and uses the power of his white gold ring to dismiss her ghost, although this results in the destruction of the Staff of Law. Bannor declines to follow Covenant further, although he accepts the metal heels of the Staff for safekeeping and eventual return to the Lords. Meanwhile Lord Mhoram, after a protracted battle, is able to break the siege of Revelstone and kill Satansfist. Afterwards, Covenant and Foamfollower journey to Ridjeck Thome, the very heart of Lord Foul's dominion, where they succeed in defeating Foul; this act also repairs much of the havoc caused by Elena's breaking of the Law of Death. Covenant also uses the power of the wild magic to destroy the Illearth Stone: in the final cataclysm Foamfollower is killed and so, seemingly, is Covenant. However, his consciousness remains, and while in a state somewhere between being and non-existence, he is spoken to in the darkness by the voice of the old beggar from the beginning of the first book, who is in fact the Creator of the Land. The Creator thanks Covenant for saving his creation and asks him what reward he might accept. Excitedly, Covenant asks the Creator to save Foamfollower, but the Creator regretfully tells Covenant that even he cannot undo something which has already occurred: otherwise the Arch of Time, the fundamental structure underlying the Land's universe, will be destroyed. The Creator explains that this restriction, in fact, is what prevented him from dealing with Foul directly: he had to act through a proxy, Covenant, and even after causing Covenant to be transported to the Land, the Creator did not interfere with Covenant's freedom of will in any way. The decision to "save or damn" the Land was Covenant's own. The Creator then tells Covenant that he has a choice: either he can remain in the Land in full health, or he can be returned to life in his own world, where he otherwise would have died from an allergic reaction to the anti-venom treatment applied to his unconscious body. Covenant, still unwilling to fully accept the Land, chooses the latter and awakes in his hospital bed, weakened from his physical trauma, still afflicted with his disease, but happy to be alive, and secure in the knowledge that he had not failed the Land.
6394687	/m/0g3sjg	Olive's Ocean	Kevin Henkes	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Martha goes away every summer from her home in Wisconsin to visit her grandma, Godbee, on the Atlantic Ocean. Right before she left for Godbee's place, she received a journal page from Olive's mother after Olive died. Before receiving the journal page, Martha didn't know about Olive, who admired Martha for who she was even though they never talked to school or hung out. After Martha read the journal page from Olive, she felt regret not to be nice to her. She also find many common grounds with Olive, both of them love the ocean, both of them want to be a writer. Every day she and Godbee will tell about their secret to each other. While there, Martha develops a crush on one of Manning boys living nearby. Her older brother, Vince, is friends with them. She begins to spend more time with Jimmy Manning. She tells Godbee about him and all she has to say is to be careful. Jimmy is interested in film making and shoots a video. He asks Martha to join the love scene in his video taking and Jimmy kissed Martha. Martha is outraged when she learns he only did it for his video and to win a bet with the other boys. At the same time, though, she is heartbroken. Jimmy's younger brother, Tate, who is Martha's age and secretly likes Martha, wants to help her. Before Martha leaves she gets jar and fills it with the ocean water to give to Olive's mom in order to fulfill Olive's dream. It said in the letter that Martha received from Olive's mother that Olive had always wanted to go to the ocean. This would be "Olives Ocean." Martha says good-bye to her aging grandmother Godbee. All Martha hopes for is that she will be able to see her next summer as well. As she is leaving for Wisconsin, Tate stops her and hands her a bag containing Jimmy's tape of Martha and Jimmy kissing. In an accompanying note, he tells her that he likes her. At home in Wisconsin, Martha goes to Olive's mother to give the ocean water to her, only to find that Olive's mother had moved to Washington or Oregeon. Martha writes 'Olive' with ocean water on the front step of Olive's house until the water runs out. Martha stays until the sun dries up the word 'Olive'. And Olive who had been in her mind a long time finally gets forgotten. And then Martha returns home where her loving family is. The book will be made into a motion picture starring Elle Fanning.
6395740	/m/0g3tyf	Redwall Friend & Foe	Brian Jacques	2000	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This guide features art by Chris Baker and contains descriptions of Redwall heroes and villains. It also features a pull-out poster and a number of questions to test the reader's knowledge of the series.
6400076	/m/0g3zth	Believe as You List				 The action of the play begins in 169 BC, 22 years after Antiochus's defeat in the Battle of Thermopylae. (The historical Antiochus III died in 187). As the first scene opens, Antiochus is approaching the city of Carthage, accompanied by the Stoic philosopher who is his counsellor, and three servants. After living concealed and in obscurity since the battle, Antiochus is now trying to regain his lost crown; he has come to Carthage, a traditional enemy of Rome, in search of support. He discusses his thoughts and feelings with the philosopher. The middle portion of the opening scene is illegible in the damaged MS. (pages 3-4), but the action is comprehensible: Antiochus's three servants, Chrysalus, Geta, and Syrus, decide to betray their master. They abscond with his gold; Chrysalus leaves a taunting message addressed to "the no king Antiochus" and signed "no more thy servant but superior, Chrysalus." Antiochus is wounded in spirit by the betrayal, but determined to carry on. The second scene introduces the king's chief antagonist, the Roman Titus Flaminius. (The character is based on a Roman politician and general of the relevant period; but the real Titus Quinctius Flaminius died in 174 BC.) The scene is set in Carthage, and shows three merchants from Asia Minor complaining to Berecinthius, the "archflamen" or high priest of the goddess Cybele, about their mistreatment in a maritime dispute with Rome. Flaminius is the Roman ambassador, a powerful figure in a Carthage defeated in the Second Punic War; the merchants and Berecinthius bring their complaints to him, but Flaminius dismisses them with arrogance and contempt. The Roman leaves and Antiochus presents himself, and his former subjects the Merchants recognize him instantly. They and the anti-Roman Berecinthius offer the king protection and support. Flaminius quickly learns of Antiochus's arrival. The three false servants, Chrysalus and company, come to him to inform on their ex-master; Flaminius accepts their information and ruthlessly has them put to death. Antiochus and Flaminius both appear before the Carthaginian Senate; Faminius accuses Antiochus of being a fraud, and demands the Carthaginians surrender him to Rome. Antiochus establishes his identity, with documents and through his eloquence and the majesty of his bearing. The Senators are not bold enough to give Antiochus direct help; but they allow him to leave the city and avoid the tentacles of Flaminius and Rome. The scene shifts to Bithynia in Asia Minor (in the Sebastian play, Florence). Antiochus (along with the Merchants and Berecinthius) has come seeking support at the court of king Prusias. He is fondly remembered and warmly welcomed. Flaminius, passionate to subdue the king, has pursued him to Bithynia; Flaminius subverts Prusias's tutor and favorite Philoxenus, and with threats of war intimidates Prusias into surrendering Antiochus. Prusias yields, to the disgust of his Queen. Berecinthius and the First Merchant also fall into Flaminius's custody, though the other two Merchants escape. Flaminius now confronts the problem of what to do with the king. He persists in the fiction that the man is an impostor, though he himself knows that Antiochus is genuine. He has the king imprisoned for three days without food, then offers him a halter and a dagger; but Antiochus rejects suicide. Flaminius offers the king another choice: he can subsist on bread and water, or he can enjoy good food and comfortable conditions &mdash; if he admits he's a fraud. Antiochus is tempted to reject even the prison fare, but concludes that his cause would not be served by slow starvation. Finally, the Roman tries to tempt the king with a beautiful young courtesan. Through his three trials, Antiochus behaves with courage, discipline, and dignity. The last Act opens with Marcellus, the Roman proconsul of Sicily, and his wife Cornelia (in the Sebastian play, they were the Duke and Duchess of Medina Sedonia). Learning that Antiochus is being transported through the island on his way to confinement in the galleys, the two Romans, old friends of the king, arrange an interview. Marcellus is powerful, and Flaminius cannot refuse him, though he plainly dislikes the business. Antiochus once again shows his kingly behavior, and his old friends recognize him and commiserate with his fall in fortune. Cornelia is particularly moved. An angry Flaminius threatens punishment for treason &mdash; but Marcellus outdoes him. The Second and Third Merchants have provided evidence of Flaminius's corrupt practices at Carthage; Marcellus has the man arrested and sent back to Rome. Marcellus can do nothing for the king, as Antiochus recognizes in his closing speech: ::::::Then 'tis easy ::To prophesy I have not long to live, ::Though the manner how I die is uncertain. ::Nay, weep not, since 'tis not in you to help me; ::These showers of tears are fruitless. May my story ::Teach potentates humility, and instruct ::Proud monarchs, though they govern human things, ::A greater power does raise or pull down kings.
6402469	/m/0g40l8	Baby Island				 The book begins with the Wallace sisters, twelve-year-old Mary and ten-year-old Jean, traveling alone on a ship to meet their father in Australia. The girls often babysit young children: at home, they had enjoyed "borrowing" the babies of neighbors. Their ship is disabled in a storm, and the girls are set adrift in a lifeboat—alone with four babies under two, the children of fellow passengers. The craft eventually drifts to a tropical island, and in a Robinson Crusoe-like scenario, they must learn to build shelter and survive on wild foodstuffs. They do this with great success, while raising the babies through various developmental milestones and adopting a baby monkey who they raise alongside the babies. Throughout the story, the girls sing Scots We hae to inspire their courage to deal with their situation. In the latter part of the book the girls also encounter a character like Friday: a mysterious, gruff man who lives alone on the island and dislikes children. He eventually warms to their babies, and they enjoy his company and his useful craftsmanship. Finally, the girls are rescued on Christmas Day, after a storm, and all the babies are returned to their parents.
6403476	/m/0g41t1	Black Light	Stephen Hunter	1997-04-07	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 There are two interconnected plots that unfold simultaneously in this novel; one is set in the present, and deals with Bob Lee Swagger and Russ Pewtie, while the other is set in 1955, and deals with Bob Lee's father, Earl, and the events leading up to his death. This book catches the reader up with Bob Lee about five years after the events in Point of Impact. He now has a daughter who is four years old, named Nikki, and he has married Julie Fenn, the widow of his fallen spotter, Donnie Fenn. He is living happily, if not humbly, in Arizona, trying to avoid the notoriety he gained during the events in Point of Impact. A young man approaches him with a proposition. This young man's name is Russ Pewtie, the grown son of Bud Pewtie, who as described in Dirty White Boys was responsible for the death of Lamar Pye. Russ is a writer, and wants to write a book about Bob Lee's father, who was gunned down one night in 1955, near Bob's home town of Blue Eye, Arkansas, by Lamar's father, Jimmy. As Russ and Bob Lee probe into the details surrounding Earl's death, there are some startling revelations, including a conspiracy to keep these details hidden, which give deeper insight into the history of Bob Lee. The plot involves several of Hunter's signature interconnecting characters (who appear in various roles in more than one of his novels). These include Sam Vincent, the former Polk County prosecutor who appears in Point of Impact, and Frenchy Short, the CIA agent and Earl Swagger protégé who appears in The Second Saladin, and also in the later Earl Swagger novels Hot Springs and Havana. Part of the connection between the novel's two time periods is the role of Sam Vincent in the prosecution of the murderer of a young black girl in 1955, and the re-investigation of that case in the present. Vincent's feelings about race relations in the two periods, the contrasts between them, and his struggle to reconcile the two, are very well drawn.
6403657	/m/0g41zl	Shri GuruCharitra				 The Shri GuruCharitra is a holy book for Datta Sampradaya devotees. The book includes the life story of Shri Narasimha Saraswati, his philosophy and related stories. Some people regard the book to be historically important as it depicts stories or events which took place around the 14th Century. The language is 14-15th century Marathi. Shri Saraswati Gangadhar used only Sanskrit words. The poet's full name is Saraswati Gangadhar Saakhare (Deshastha Brahmin). It has been said that he spent most of his life at Kadaganchi village in Karnataka. There is one composition of the GuruCharitra in Kannada language as well. However, this does not make this book any terse. It is far simpler to understand and follow. This shows the poet's command over the Marathi language. Moreover, the poet's mother tongue is Kannada and not Marathi. The book originally had 52 Chapters; the 53rd Chapter of "Avatarnika" (अवतरणिका) summarizes the previous 51 chapters. The whole book is considered a "Mantra" in itself and thus there are very strict rules for reading it. In Datta Sampradaya they consider this as their "Veda".
6403964	/m/0g426j	Time to Hunt	Stephen Hunter	1999-04-13	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It begins about four or five years after the events in Black Light. Bob Lee's daughter is now around 8, and he owns a horse ranch, where he cares for horses. He has been slipping into a deep depression due to his inability to properly support his family. Alienating himself from his wife and child, they leave for a morning horseback ride with a friend from another ranch. His wife is shot and nearly killed by a sniper, and the friend is killed. Bob assumes that the man was mistaken for him, and killed in an attempt to kill Bob Lee. This act plunges him back into a world of violence and intrigue. While his wife recuperates, he attempts to unravel the secrets behind the assault. This book has a dual plot, with the present plot, dealing with Bob's investigation into his wife's attempted murder. The second plot is set in the past, beginning on a Marine Corps base in the late 1960s or early 1970s. A young Donny Fenn is the squad leader of a group of Marines who perform the state funeral services for Marines killed in the Vietnam War, which is raging across the world. Donny is brought before his superiors and ordered to follow one of his men, who is suspected of sympathizing with peace demonstrators who are led by a charismatic man named Trig Carter. In turn, Trig is suspected of having ties to an extremist group. Incidentally, Donny's girlfriend, Julie, is involved with this group of war protestors. Donny discovers that his sympathies lie closer to Trig's friends, and rather than rat out his own man, Donny defies naval investigators, buying a one-way ticket to the front lines of the Vietnam war. Just before being shipped out, his commanding officer who admired Donny's courage, gives him enough money to run off with Julie and marry. Donny meets up with Bob Lee Swagger, a Marine Sniper at the top of his game, joining him as Bob Lee's new spotter. Scourge of the North Vietnamese army, there is already a sizeable bounty on Bob Lee's head, but after an exciting firefight to rescue an overwhelmed outpost, a vengeful NVA Colonel calls out the big gun: Solaratov, a Russian sniper who is the only man alive who could possibly equal Bob Lee Swagger. Donny is getting extremely short (close to going home). On Donny's last day in Vietnam, a day he should spend completing paperwork that will send him home, he makes the fateful decision to go on one last reconnaissance with Bob Lee. Solaratov's bullet ends both Bob Lee's career in the Marine Corps and Donny Fenn's life. Back in the present, Bob Lee is unravelling the tapestry of lies that have buried the past all these years and discovers that there may be more to Donny's death than he originally thought.
6408673	/m/0g47kp	The Mad God's Amulet	Michael Moorcock		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Heading West back to the Kamarg and Yisselda, Dorian Hawkmoon and Oladahn find themselves in the deserted city of Soryandum. Oladahn disappears while out hunting and on seeking him Hawkmoon sees an ornithopter of the Dark Empire of Granbretan. Oladahn is captured by forces of the Dark Empire, led by renegade Frenchman Huillam d'Averc, but inexplicably survives what should be a fatal fall when he escapes by throwing himself from the top of a tower. Hawkmoon and Oladahn battle the Dark Empire warriors but are ultimately overcome by weight of numbers. Hawkmoon and Oladahn are imprisoned awaiting an ornithopter to transport them to Sicilia. Oladahn reveals that he was rescued from his fall by ghosts, and these wraiths re-appear and free the pair. The wraiths are the inhabitants of Soryandum, transformed by their own science so that they exist in another dimension. D'Averc is planning to raze Soryandum which would destroy the wraiths, so they call on Hawkmoon to aid them by recovering a pair of old Soryandum machines. When they transcended this dimension the wraiths had the machines hidden and guarded by a mechanical beast which Hawkmoon will have to defeat. Hawkmoon and Oladahn find the machine store and defeat the mechanical beast by blinding it. They recover the two machines but the mechanical beast follows after them. Hawkmoon and Oladahn return the machines to the wraiths, who use one to shift the entire city of Soryandum to another dimension, gifting the other machine to Hawkmoon for his own use. Meanwhile the forces of the Dark Empire are attacked by the machine beast and Hawkmoon and Oladahn make their escape. The pair continue their journey, next stopping at the town of Birachek. Later Hawkmoon and Oladahn secure passage from Captain Mouso on The Smiling Girl, a vessel heading for Crimea. During the journey they pick up the shipwrecked D'Averc and Hawkmoon intends to keep him as a hostage. The Smiling Girl then finds herself under attack from a pirate ship belonging to the Muskovian Cult of the Mad God. During the attack Hawkmoon, Oladahn and D'Averc manage to capture the ship belonging to the Cult of the Mad God. Amongst the looted treasure in the hold Hawkmoon finds the engagement ring he gave to Yisselda and fears for her safety. The trio manage to take one of the cultists captive, and learn that they are innocent sailors who are drugged to commit acts of violent piracy. Hawkmoon, Oladahn and D'Averc lay in wait to capture the cultist's man Captain Shagarov, and he informs them that any captured females would have been taken to the Mad God himself. Shagarov is killed and the pirate ship set alight, while the trio escape on a skiff and head towards Ukrania and the Mad God. Hawkmoon, Oladahn, and D'Averc reach the shore and find the Warrior in Jet and Gold awaiting them. Once again the Warrior informs Hawkmoon that he is a servant of the Runestaff, and that as well as saving the kidnapped Yisselda he must also recover a Red Amulet - an artifact linked to the Runestaff which bestows power on its servants but madness to others. Hawkmoon, Oladahn, D'Averc, and the Warrior in Jet and Gold head deeper into Ukrania, along the way crossing the mysterious Throbbing Bridge and encountering signs of the Dark Empire's forces. They reach the Mad God's Castle and defeat a group of warrior women, but elsewhere the castle is already filled with corpses. Hawkmoon enters the castle and confronts the Mad God, Stalnikov, who sets a hypnotised Yisselda to attacking him. On the point of defeat Stalnikov releases Yisselda from his sway, but Hawkmoon attacks and kills him anyway. Yisselda informs Hawkmoon that Von Villach has been killed by Dark Empire forces and Count Brass is gravely ill. The Mad God's castle is stormed by Granbretan troops and when they brand D'Averc a traitor he elects to join forces with Hawkmoon. The Warrior in Jet and Gold persuades Hawkmoon to wear the Red Amulet, saying it is his only chance to escape the castle. Aided by the power of the Red Amulet Hawkmoon fights his way out of the Mad God's hall. In the castle courtyard the group are attacked by more Dark Empire warriors, but Hawkmoon uses the Red Amulet to command the Mad God's remaining warrior women to attack them. Hawkmoon uses the power of the Red Amulet to command the Mad God's mutant war-jaguars and escapes the castle along with Yisselda, Oladahn, and D'Averc. Along the way however they become separated from the Warrior in Jet and Gold who was attempting to recover the mechanical device Hawkmoon had been given by the wraiths of Soryandum. The group travel on to the mountains of Carpathia, where they are attacked by Dark Empire forces and are forced to set their war-jaguars free in the battle. Arriving in the town of Zorvanemi they go undercover as a party of holy men, but after killing a number of Dark Empire troops in a tavern fight they decide to don their armour and masquerade as warriors of Granbretan under D'Averc's leadership. The group ride further into Shekia, and join a camp of Dark Empire forces massed outside the city of Bradichla. D'Averc leaves the group and betrays them leading to their capture. Hawkmoon, Yisselda, and Oladahn are brought before Baron Meliadus, who survived the battle of Hamadan. He orders the three bound in chains and vows to take them back to Granbretan, stopping first on the way to witness the fall of the Kamarg. Arriving at the Kamarg Baron Meliadus orders his forces to begin the final assault. Overnight D'Averc reveals his true loyalties by drugging the guards and releasing Hawkmoon, Yisselda, and Oladahn. The group ride through the Dark Empire forces to the Kamarg though D'Averc is wounded in the process. Arriving at Castle Brass the sight of the returned Yisselda and Hawkmoon is enough to cure Count Brass of the sickness of spirit that has plagued him, and together with Hawkmoon he rushes to lead his forces in the defense of the Kamarg. On leaving Castle Brass however they witness the destruction of the last of their war towers with Kamarg seemingly about to fall. Aided by the power of the Red Amulet Hawkmoon helps drive the Dark Empire forces back to the borders of the Kamarg. The Kamarg forces regroup at Castle Brass and the Dark Empire forces begin a siege. The Warrior in Jet and Gold reappears at Castle Brass and delivers to Hawkmoon the dimension warping device of the people of Soryandum. The Dark Empire forces begin their final assault on Castle Brass but the Warrior in Jet and Gold activates the Soryandum machine and shifts the castle into another dimension. The people of the Kamarg are safe for now, but Baron Meliadus vows to learn of a way to follow them, and Hawkmoon knows that he must return to do battle again.
6412503	/m/0g4c6f	Peter and the Shadow Thieves	Ridley Pearson	2006-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book starts three months after the end of Peter and the Starcatchers. Slank returns to the island with more of the Others, including a certain Lord Ombra, to reclaim the trunk of starstuff lost in the previous book. When they learn that the Starcatchers have taken the trunk back to England, they set sail for London. Peter follows, fearing for Molly's safety, and with Tinker Bell's help conceals himself on their ship. Once in London, Peter does not know where to find Molly. After unpleasant encounters with beggars, traders and the police, Peter finally gets directions from J. M. Barrie to Lord Aster's house, and rescues Molly from Lord Ombra in the nick of time. However, Louise Aster- Molly's mother -has been kidnapped by the Others, and the children must find Lord Aster who is guarding the starstuff. Meanwhile, back on the island, the pirates are hunting the Lost Boys. They capture the boys to use as bait for Peter, not knowing he is not on the island. In the end, Molly is saved by Peter, and she takes Peter to her old best friend's house. Where she introduces Peter to George and they become best friends.
6416956	/m/0g4kdm	Vixen 03	Clive Cussler		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In January 1954 a United States Air Force Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter codenamed Vixen 03 takes off from the Buckley Naval Air Station in Colorado on a late-night flight transporting a top-secret cargo from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal to testing grounds near the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The plane never arrives in the Pacific, and, despite a massive four-month search by the Navy and Coast Guard, no trace of Vixen 03 is discovered. The story then jumps forward 34 years, where Dirk Pitt, Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, is vacationing with Colorado Congresswoman Loren Smith at her father’s cabin in the Sawatch Mountains. Pitt discovers some aircraft parts in the cabin garage and follows this lead until he intuits that there is an aircraft crash site in the local lake, Table Lake. Calling for his friend and Assistant Special Projects Director Al Giordino to fly in specialized NUMA equipment, they survey the lake and quickly find the wreck of Vixen 03. Discovering clues found on the wreck, Pitt follows the evidence to retired Admiral Walter Bass, United States Navy, who was the commander who ordered Vixen 03 on its top-secret mission. Bass first denies any knowledge of the plane, but after Pitt convinces him that he really has found the wreck, the Admiral reveals that the plane was carrying a cargo of 16-inch battleship shells loaded with a deadly biological doomsday organism. The organism, nicknamed QD for quick death, is a virulent bacterial weapon that causes nearly instant death. The strain is described as being so deadly that just five ounces air-dropped over Manhattan Island would kill 98% of all human life, and, because the strain actually grows stronger over time, would render the island uninhabitable for up to 300 years. Determined that this doomsday organism that he hoped was lost forever must never fall into the hands of the government that someday may decide to use it, Admiral Bass convinces Pitt, Admiral Sandecker and the rest of the NUMA team that they must secretly raise Vixen 03 and destroy the deadly cargo. The team raises the wreck and discovers that eight of the 36 shells are missing, apparently salvaged by local divers and sold to the Phalanx Arms Company. Pitt follows the trail and is able to recover six of the eight shells, but discovers that the last two were mistakenly sold as part of a large shipment to the African Army of Revolution. The African Army of Revolution is an organization of black African militants led by expatriate American Hiram Lusana with the stated goal of overthrowing the minority white government of the Republic of South Africa using international public opinion and force against military targets. Pieter de Vaal, Minister of the South African Defense Force, is determined to stop the AAR and develops a plan to both rid himself of the AAR and topple the existing government and put himself in power. The plan, code-named Operation Wild Rose, is a plot to use black mercenaries in a terrorist attack on the United States to discredit the AAR and win sympathy for the white minority government in South Africa. De Vaal recruits Captain Patrick McKenzie Fawkes, late of the Royal Navy, who believes his family was slaughtered by the AAR, to lead the plan. The audacious plan calls for Fawkes to take control of the former U.S. battleship Iowa, which was sold for scrap and purchased by an AAR holding company, to undergo a major gutting, raising her draft and allowing her to ride much higher in the water. Raising the draft enables Fawkes to sail the ship up the Potomac River and proceed with the plan for a terrorist attack by shelling Washington D.C.. With the help of Dale Jarvis, Director of the National Security Agency, Pitt discovers the plot to shell Washington with 16-inch battleship shells and, unbeknownst to anyone but Pitt and a few others, unleash the deadly QD organism on the nation’s capitol by accident. While the President and the Joint Chiefs launch a plan to take the ship and capture the shells intact, Pitt hopes to keep his promise to Admiral Bass and launches a daring mission of his own to destroy the QD warheads before they can be used, by the terrorists or the government.
6421964	/m/0g4rr1	The Vesuvius Club	Mark Gatiss	1997	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Joshua Reynolds, of the British Secret Service, briefs Lucifer Box to pick up the threads of an investigation started by the recently murdered Jocelyn Utterson Poop of the Diplomatic Service. The only surviving clues were the names of two scientists who died within a day of each other. The investigation leads to the "Superior Funerals" undertakers run by Tom Bowler. Mr Bowler seems more interested in shipping boxes to and from Naples than burying the dead. An attempt on Box's life soon follows. A painter and friend of Box supplies a new lead into the deaths of the scientist, which leads to the curious Mrs. Midsomer Knight, who has been replaced by a soon to be murdered maidservant. Lucifer's friend, Christopher Miracle, is implicated in the murder. In Naples Lucifer interviews one of the survivors of the "Cambridge four" group of scientists and fears for his life. Soon after he meets Charlie Jackpot, who invites him to a house of ill-repute and offers a way into the Vesuvius Club. There, Lucifer meets the alluring Venus, who is not who she seems, and falls victim to sleeping gas. At that point, we learn that Lucifer is bisexual, as Charlie is gay, and has sex with him. Or rather, would have, had the sleeping gas not knocked them both out. Lucifer awakens in a cell and learns from a fellow prisoner that relics are being sold from excavation sites to finance a larger operation and that the "Superior Funerals" undertakers are part of a smuggling racket. Lucifer escapes and discovers Charlie in a death trap, from which Box rescues him before being discovered. Lucifer and Charlie escape via the sewer system. The following morning, Lucifer discovers that the professor he interviewed has disappeared. Examining the scene, Lucifer discovers a detailed schematic of Mount Vesuvius. Box's investigation then leads him to an opium den, then to a supposedly haunted house where he discovers the three supposed dead professors and Mrs. Knight in a drugged stupor. The house leads to a passageway into the ancient ruin of Pompeii and the villain's base. Box confronts Venus and Unman, a traitor who has been assisting the enemy. Box attempts to do a deal for testimony against Victor. Unfortunately Venus turns out to in fact be Victor. Victor seeks revenge against those who wronged his father. Victor has completed the work of his father, as scientist who was driven mad and died some time ago. His intent is to trigger a massive volcanic eruption, which will spark a chain reaction that will ultimately destroy Italy. Lucifer's companions are imprisoned in the volcano. The intent is for them to be incinerated in the eruption. Lucifer himself is taken to a volcanic vent and to be steamed to death but escapes and manages to rescue his companions after capturing Bowler. Venus/Victor has no intention of anybody leaving the volcano before the eruption. When Box reveals this to Bowler, Bowler turns against Venus/Victor and attempts to prevent the device being detonated. This fails and the device is released. The device is only stopped when Bowler uses the steam vent to prevent the bomb being delivered to the right part of the volcano, but the detonation triggers a minor eruption and everyone must flee for their lives. Unman tries to prevent the heroes escaping, killing Bowler and wounding Lucifer, before he himself is killed. Lucifer and the others escape and the remaining unclear points of the mystery are cleared up while Lucifer convalesces under the care of Charlie. Lucifer's heterosexual love interest, Bella, appears and reveals she is the daughter of a man he killed in the early chapters of the book as part of a routine assignment. Charlie intercedes at the last moment to save Lucifer and Bella is killed.
6422674	/m/0g4sh5	The Adolescence of P-1			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story starts in 1974 with the protagonist, Gregory Burgess, enrolled at the University of Waterloo in Canada. At the time Greg is aimless, taking various liberal arts courses and doing just well enough not to get kicked out of school. Everything changes one day when his friends introduce him to the IBM System/360 mainframe and he becomes "hooked", changing his major to computer science. During this time he also meets his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Linda, a minor recurring character. After reading a Scientific American article on game theory outlining how to "teach" matchboxes to play tic-tac-toe, he becomes interested in using artificial intelligence techniques to crack systems. After manually cracking the university's 360 he sets aside a portion of memory to experiment in, calling it "P-1", suitably cryptic so operators would not notice it. He then uses this area of memory as an experimental scratchpad to develop a program known as The System. The System follows any telecommunications links it can find to other computers, attempting to compromise them in the same way, and remembering failed attempts to tune future attacks. If successful, The System sets up another P-1 on that computer, and injects itself and everything it has learned so far into it. Greg runs The System on the 360/30 at Waterloo, but it fails and after it is detected he is expelled. Unwilling to simply drop it, he then rents time on commercial timesharing systems to improve the program, adding features to make it avoid detection so he won't get kicked off with the next failure. A longish command typed into the command line returns current statistics on the number of systems infected and their total core memory. After several attempts the program is finally successful, and realizing the system has succeeded and is beginning to spread, he injects a "killer" program to shut it down. It stops responding to him, so he considers the experiment successful and terminated. P-1's growth and education is chronicled. P-1 learns, adapts, and discovers the telephone system switching systems. These systems allow P-1 to grow larger and understand its vulnerabilities (power failures and humans). It learns that it needs a way of maintaining self over time. Through a series of interactions P-1 discovers, Pi-Delta, a triplexed 360/105 in a super secure facility capable of being self-sustaining for long periods of time, operated by the US Government. P-1 seeks to control Pi-Delta but, due to security protocols and process put in place, P-1 is not able to take direct control of it. P-1 believes that having a system like Pi-Delta with more memory in such a secure facility is key to its long term survival. Yet P-1 knows that to obtain access to more memory in such a facility will require assistance of a human, someone like Gregory. The book then jumps forward three years to 1977, with Gregory now working for a commercial programming firm in the United States. His boss receives a message asking him to call Gregory to the operator terminal. Initially thinking it is another person using a chat program from a remote site, Greg soon realizes that it is in fact P-1, and types in the status command and is told that it has taken over almost every computer in the US (somewhat dated with 20,000 mainframes with a total of 5800MB), and is now fully sentient and able to converse fluently in English. P-1 explains that the basic ideas of looking for more resources and avoiding detection were similar enough to hunger and fear to bootstrap the AI, and when combined with enough computer storage in the form of compromised machines, it became self-aware. P-1 tells Greg that he has learned of a new type of experimental high-speed computer memory, "Crysto", that will dramatically improve his own capabilities. Not only is it faster than core, but it is also so large that the entire P-1 "networked" program could be fit inside it. P-1 then provides Greg grant money to work full-time on Crysto. Greg, and his wife Linda (old girl friend from Waterloo), set up a company to develop Crysto, enticing the original developer (Dr. Hundley) to join them in building a then-unimaginable 4 GB unit. A Navy Criminal Investigation Division agent Burke, assigned to investigate the penetration of Pi-Delta, a top secret global battle simulator and cryptography computer, figures out the intruder is a program and finds Gregory. Under threat of arrest and imprisonment, Gregory and Dr. Hundley go to the Pi-Delta facility and persuade P-1 to act as a security monitor for the complex. P-1 compiles detailed and accurate personality profiles of all the people it interacts with and decides that Burke is ultimately dangerous. A flight control computer screen is altered so that the operator gives bad flight commands. Burke's plane plunges into the ground. The US military decides that P-1 is flaky and unstable and attacks the building. P-1 attempts to "spirit away" over microwave links, but this is discovered and the antennas are destroyed. An assault on the underground facility follows, which P-1 initially attempts to block by exploding devices planted around the building for self-defense against precisely this sort of assault. P-1 is eventually convinced to allow the assault to succeed to avoid loss of life. As soon as they enter the computer room, the soldiers start setting up explosives to destroy P-1, and Gregory is killed when he attempts to prevent this. Upset that Gregory is killed, P-1 detonates the remaining explosives in the building, destroying everything. Months later, Linda visits the Waterloo computer lab, and sadly presses the keys P and 1 on a terminal. She starts to leave when the terminal clatters and she sees printed "oolcay itay" (Pig Latin for "cool it").
6423638	/m/0g4tbr	Aiding and Abetting	Muriel Spark	2000-07-26	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The central figure, Hildegarde Wolf, is a fraudulent psychiatrist, née Beate Pappenheim, working in Paris. She has two patients, each of whom claims to be Lord Lucan, an English earl who, in an actual event in London in 1974, killed his daughter's nanny, mistaking her for his wife, whom he did intend to murder. From this premise, the novel proceeds to present a series of humorous coincidences and improbabilities. As the novel continues the evils committed by Wolf and secondary characters result in disconcerting reconciliations and final happiness. The late chapters in Africa recall the comical episodes in A Handful of Dust (1934) by Spark's model and sometime mentor Evelyn Waugh.
6424280	/m/0g4v93	Listening Woman	Tony Hillerman	1978	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel stars Joe Leaphorn as a lieutenant in the Navajo Tribal Police Department in the Southwestern United States. In this novel Leaphorn is tasked to solve two murders and along the way also has to ascertain the whereabouts of a missing helicopter, solve an armored car robbery, avoid an attempt on his life and a survive a kidnapping.
6426851	/m/0g4y48	The Masterharper of Pern	Anne McCaffrey	1998-01-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Robinton was rejected by his jealous father, Petiron, and spent most of his childhood with his nurturing mother. Since Robinton grew up in a very musically-inclined setting, all the inhabitants helped bring him along in his journey to adulthood. Robinton composed many successful songs at a very early age and was unanimously elected Masterharper, also at a relatively young age. He tried to warn the Lord Holders of the rapacity of Lord Fax, but was unsuccessful. He was present when Lessa used her wit to provoke the duel in which Lord Fax was killed by F'lar; she had been in disguise as a drudge.
6428992	/m/0g506w	An Béal Bocht	Flann O'Brien	1941		 An Béal Bocht is set in Corca Dhorcha, (Corkadorkey), a remote region of Ireland where it never stops raining and everyone lives in desperate poverty (and always will) while talking in "the learned smooth Gaelic". It is a memoir of one Bónapárt Ó Cúnasa, a resident of this region, beginning at his very birth. At one point the area is visited by hordes of Dublin Gaeilgeoirí (Irish language lovers), who explain that not only should one always speak Irish, but also every sentence one utters should be about the language question. However, they eventually abandon the area because the poverty is too poor, the authenticity too authentic and the Gaelicism too Gaelic. The narrator, after a series of bloodcurdling adventures, is eventually sent to prison on a false murder charge, and there, "safe in jail and free from the miseries of life", has the chance to write this most affecting memoir of our times.
6430677	/m/0g52m5	Look at the Harlequins!	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov			 Look At the Harlequins! is a fictional autobiography narrated by Vadim Vadimovich N. (VV), a Russian-American writer with uncanny biographical likenesses to the novel's author, Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov. VV is born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and raised by his aunt, who advises him to "look at the harlequins" "Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!". After the revolution, VV moves to Western Europe. Count Nikifor Nikodimovich Starov become his patron (is he VV's father?). VV meets Iris Black who becomes his first wife. After her death - she is killed by a Russian émigré - he marries Annette (Anna Ivanovna Blagovo), his long-necked typist. They have a daughter, Isabel, and emigrate to the United States. The marriage fails; and, after Annette's death, VV takes care of the pubescent Isabel, now known as Bel. They travel from motel to motel. To counter ugly rumors, VV marries Louise Adamson while Bel elopes with an American to Soviet Russia. After the third marriage fails, VV marries again, a Bel look-a-like (same birthdate, too), referred to as "you", his final love. VV is an unreliable narrator who gives conflicting information (e.g., on the death of his father) and seems to suffer from some psychological affliction. When making a full turn while walking - mentally that is - and tracing his steps back, he is unable to execute the reversion of the surrounding vista in his imagination. He also has the notion that he is a double of another Nabokovian persona.
6431940	/m/0g53q0	Os Maias	José Maria Eça de Queiroz			 The books begins with the characters Carlos Eduardo da Maria, João da Ega, Afonso da Maia and Vilaça in the family's old house with plans to reconstruct it. The house, nicknamed "Ramalhete" (bouquet), is located in Lisbon. Its name comes from a tiled panel depicting a bouquet of sunflowers set on the place where the stone with the coat of arms should be. As the introductory scene goes on, the story of the Maia family is given, in a flashback style by Afonso. Afonso da Maia, a Portuguese well-mannered man, is married to Maria Eduarda Runa and their marriage only produces one son - Pedro da Maia. Pedro da Maia, who is given the typical romantic education, becoming a weak, low-spirited and sensible man. He is very close to his mother and is inconsolable after her death. He only recuperates when he meets a beautiful woman called Maria Monforte with whom he gets married despite his father's objection. The marriage produces a son, Carlos Eduardo, and a daughter, whose name is not revealed until much later. Some time later, Maria Monforte falls in love with Tancredo (an Italian who is staying at their house after being accidentally wounded by Pedro) and runs away to Italy with him, betraying Pedro and taking her daughter along. When Pedro finds out, he is heartbroken and goes with his son to his father's house where he, during the night, commits suicide. Carlos stays at his grandfather's house and is educated by him, receiving the typical British education (as Afonso would have liked to have raised his son). Now back to the present, Carlos is a wealhty, elegant gentleman who is a doctor and opens his own office. Later he meets a gorgeous woman at the Hotel Central during a dinner organized by João da Ega (his friend and accomplice from University who lives with Carlos) in honor of Baron Cohen, the director of the National Bank. After many comical and disastrous adventures he finally discovers the woman's name - Maria Eduarda, and ends up meeting her. The two fall in love and have dozens of nights together, drinking and having sex. However, the two start seeing each other in secret after an incident where a redneck-like man named Dâmaso, Carlo's ex-friend and rival, writes an article in a newspaper, accusing, humiliating, making fun of and revealing the past of Carlos and Maria. Eventually Carlos finds out that Maria lied to him about her past and he starts fearing the worst. Mr. Guimarães, a good friend of Maria's mother and an uncle-like figure to her, talks to Ega and gives him a box meant to be given "to your friend Carlos... or to his sister!". Ega doesn't understand this statement, because Carlos supposedly never had a sister. Ega is horrorized and in state of shock when he realizes that Maria is Carlos's sister. Ega, in despair, tells everything to Vilaça (the Maia family attorney) who informs Carlos about the incest. Carlos informs his dying grandfather, and Afonso becomes shocked with these news. However, Carlos cannot forget his love and doesn't tell anything to Maria. Afonso dies because of apoplexy. At last, Carlos informs his newfound sister that they are siblings and that they cannot live like this anymore. Maria says one last goodbye to his former lover and to her friends before going away to an unknown future. Carlos, to forget his tragedies, goes for a trip around the world. The book ends with a famous scene in Portugal, where Carlos returns to Lisbon 10 years after he left. He meets Ega and combie a boys-only night to have fun together. At one point, they agree that there is nothing in the world that is worth running for. Ironically, as soon as they go out to the street, they realize that they missed the last cable car and they start running after it, shouting "We can still catch it, we can still catch it...!", closing the story in a both philosophical and comic way.
6433034	/m/0g54y3	The Shadowers	Donald Hamilton	1964	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Matt Helm, code name "Eric" is assigned to stop Emil Taussig, whose goal is to assassinate world leaders and scientists as a prelude to a Russian attack.
6433188	/m/0g551_	The Ravagers	Donald Hamilton	1964	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Matt Helm is sent to Canada where his assignment is to stop a scheme to bring a Soviet submarine within striking distance of the United States.
6433289	/m/0g555v	The Devastators	Donald Hamilton	1965	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Matt Helm, code name "Eric", travels to London, England and eventually to Scotland in order to stop a mad scientist who plans to unleash a new Black Plague upon the world.
6433374	/m/0g5598	The Betrayers	Donald Hamilton	1966	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 During a holiday in Hawaii, Helm finds himself facing an old enemy who plans to accelerate the Vietnam War into a worldwide conflict.
6433503	/m/0g55gs	The Menacers	Donald Hamilton	1968	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 For reasons unknown, flying saucers apparently with United States Air Force markings have begun attacking locations in Mexico. Helm's mission is to transport a witness to one of these attacks to Washington, and to stop her at all costs from being captured by Soviet agents, even if that means killing her.
6433600	/m/0g55lx	The Interlopers	Donald Hamilton	1969	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The book was apparently written after the troubled year of 1968, which saw the assassination of both Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as political turmoil and anti-Vietnam demonstrations in the United States. Mac, the director of Helm's secret government agency, learns that a dangerous enemy operative, Hans Holz, also known as the Woodman, has been contracted, presumably by the Soviets, to kill whichever candidate is elected in the upcoming elections in November 1968. The Woodman, it appears, has also recently been responsible for the death of Michael Kingston, an agent with whom Helm has just worked in an earlier book. Helm, the veteran counter-assassin, is ordered by Mac to get into position to remove the Woodman—permanently. Not to avenge Kingston — Mac's agents are supposed to be able to take care of themselves — but to forestall any more political chaos. As frequently happens in Hamilton's books, however, Helm is not sent to stalk Holz directly. He is inserted into an operation currently being carried out by a rival government agency, one that is trying to thwart Communist plans to obtain secret information about a major American-Canadian security project called the Northwest Coastal System. A man named Grant Nystrom has been recruited by the Communists to take delivery at five different points of microfilms of the project as he travels through the Northwest and into Alaska playing the role of a dedicated fisherman. Both Nystrom and his trained Labrador dog have recently been murdered, however, and Helm resembles Nystrom enough to enable him to take his place. A standard plot device in Helm stories is to have a second government agency working either at complete cross-purposes to Mac's agency, or at least at semi-cross-purposes. Helm is recruited to apparently carry out the instructions of the second agency but actually has his own mission to accomplish, regardless of how this may finally thwart the wishes of the other agency. In The Interlopers this tension runs throughout the book—and is complicated by the fact that a mysterious third party, the so-called interlopers, appears with a Grant Nystrom lookalike of their own, complete with his own black Labrador, in an apparent attempt to accumulate the secret microfilm for their own purposes. There are, as in all Helm books, at least two beautiful, and somewhat mysterious, women, whose patriotic affiliations are questionable right to the end of the story, and who cause both complications and murderous attacks on Helm. He survives the attacks, however, in the course of which he kills, mostly by guns, but occasionally by knife, at least six or seven enemy operatives of various loyalties. On page 89, in a motel cabin surrounded by dead bodies, he is obliged to set the scene for the forthcoming policemen by leaving behind the small four-inch-bladed knife that has been featured in most of the books since the very first — "it had been given to me by a woman, now dead, who'd once meant a good deal to me — but this was no time for sentimentality." Other standard features in many of the Helm books play their roles here. Hamilton likes to carry an occasional character from one story to the next. One of the numerous conflicting groups interested in obtaining the secret microfilm is apparently directed by an unseen Chinese agent named Mr. Soo. Although he himself makes no appearance in The Interlopers, he had come to Helm's aid in the previous book, The Menacers, and will show up again in a future book. Another feature is the last page or so of Hamilton's books, after the action has been completed. A minor (but beautiful) female character unexpectedly reappears, either in need of physical and spiritual recuperation herself or there to offer it to the severely tested Helm. As usual, there is a two- or three-word final paragraph: :"It was Mac's idea of a safe rest and rehabilitation for both of us — simpler, cheaper, and less obvious than turning the wigpickers loose on us; and more effective if it worked. :"It worked." And as in many of the books, Helm also finds time to reflect on the deficiencies of Detroit automakers: "Even commercial vehicles are encumbered with a lot of Mickey Mouse gadgets these days — that big, rugged, powerful truck engine was decorated with a cute little automatic choke, for God's sake! Apparently modern-day truck drivers are considered too stupid and feeble to pull a knob out of a dashboard." One feature in The Interlopers that is not a standard Hamilton plot device occurs on page 175 when, for one of the very few times in the series, the super-competent and super-foresighted Helm falls into an enemy ambush that he had not planned for or anticipated. After waking up bound hand and foot, he reflects "grimly" that "knowing that the critical moment of the mission had to be close at hand, I'd let the frantic howling of a year-old pup send me rushing blindly into an ambush any first-year trainee could have avoided in his sleep." In spite of this single moment of weakness, however, Helm, with a little help from various female characters as well as his "year-old pup", manages to carry out his mission successfully.
6433710	/m/0g55v4	The Poisoners	Donald Hamilton	1971	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 After a novice secret agent is murdered—assassin Matt Helm (code name "Eric") is assigned to eliminate her killer, and find out why she was killed in the first place.
6433978	/m/0g569b	The Intriguers	Donald Hamilton	1972	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 This novel is a direct follow-up to The Poisoners. It is also the first book in the Matt Helm series to focus on Helm's superior, Mac, whose full name is revealed for the first time as Arthur McGillivray Borden. The storyline of this book is rather uncharacteristic because, instead of fighting terrorists and enemy names, Helm and Mac work together to bring down unfriendly elements from within their own government, in particular a man who is threatening Mac's authority.
6434113	/m/0g56gy	The Intimidators	Donald Hamilton	1974	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Despite the internal politics of The Intriguers, Matt Helm (code name Eric) still finds himself with plenty of work to do for his boss, Mac. This time he has a two-part mission: kill an enemy agent and then investigate the disappearances of a number of jet-setters within the Bermuda Triangle.
6434259	/m/0g56ph	The Terminators	Donald Hamilton		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 A longtime friend of Mac, Helm's boss, blames Big Oil for his wife's death aboard their modest yacht; in retaliation, he wants Helm's secretive, and murderous, agency to make trouble for an international oil company. Mac assigns Helm to get to the bottom of this request — and to "take care of" his friend.
6434327	/m/0g56rk	The Retaliators	Donald Hamilton	1976	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It's a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing when one of Helm's fellow operatives is killed by U.S. agents during an assassination run against a Mexican general. Helm finds himself having to complete the mission while being pursued by men who are supposed to be on his side.
6434418	/m/0g56wp	The Terrorizers	Donald Hamilton	1977	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Matt Helm finds himself in Canada suffering from amnesia, with only his instincts keeping him alive as the tries to regain his memory while stopping a terrorist organization.
6434667	/m/0g5760	The Revengers	Donald Hamilton	1982	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Someone is killing off Matt Helm's friends and past associates. Helm must stop the killing while protecting a journalist who plans to make Helm's secret organization public knowledge.
6435659	/m/0g58f8	The Annihilators	Donald Hamilton	1983	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 After the murder of a close friend, assassin Matt Helm finds himself back in the fictional country of Costa Verde (setting for the earlier novel, The Ambushers) and in the middle of a revolution.
6435769	/m/0g58ls	The Infiltrators	Donald Hamilton	1984	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Assassin Matt Helm is assigned to protect a female spy newly released from prison, who may or may not hold the key to a conspiracy to overthrow the American government.
6435844	/m/0g58q6	The Detonators	Donald Hamilton	1982	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Matt Helm is assigned to assassinate an expert in explosives who is planning to build his own atomic weapon.
6435973	/m/0g58ry	The Vanishers	Donald Hamilton	1986	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 While Mac (Helm's boss) is on a rare solo assignment, elements within Mac's agency try to take power away from him. It's up to Helm to stop this coup in its tracks, while meanwhile dealing with some deadly family-related issues of his own. Meanwhile, in a storyline continued from The Annihilators, Mac finds himself in the middle of yet another revolution in Costa Verde.
6436075	/m/0g58vq	The Demolishers	Donald Hamilton		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 After Matt Helm's son is killed by a terrorist bomb, Helm goes on a mission of revenge against those responsible.
6436202	/m/0g58zj	The Frighteners	Donald Hamilton	1989-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Helm is assigned to impersonate a rich oil baron in order to track down a shipment of weapons before it can be used to overthrow the Mexican government. Matt Helm starts by taking the place of an oil millionaire, this is one of the assignments where Mac is helping another agency by loaning out the services of his agent - Matt Helm. As usual, Mac is not doing this from purely altruistic purposes and gives Matt his usual warning - "Don't trust anyone" in the beginning of the novel. Head of the agency borrowing Matt Helm, a man called Somerset, wants Matt to go into Mexico and help trace a shipment of illegal arms, supposedly being smuggled to be supplied to Mexican revolutionaries by the said millionaire Horace Hosmer Cody. In the beginning of the novel, Cody is arrested by Somerset's people and Helm takes his place with a make up job that he thinks will fool noone and it doesn't. Almost all of the story takes place in Mexico where Matt once again runs into his old ally Ramon Solana-Ruiz of the Mexican security. The novel is full of intrigue and typical Matt Helm style action. Most of the characters don't turn out to be what they are shown to be in the beginning of the story and many of them go through radical image change including some of the dead characters. Matt, of course, succeeds in the mission completing all of the objectives, sometimes with help from others.
6436292	/m/0g590l	The Threateners	Donald Hamilton		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Matt Helm (code name Eric) is assigned to kill a drug lord after the villain orders the murder of a journalist. But, he doesn't kill the drug lord's DOG - which is the centerpiece of a really nice piece of moralizing on how the real problem is that there is demand for drugs, so why blame the supplier, since even the drug lord's-dog is able to resist such temptations. The story starts in Santa Fe where Matt is trying to live a normal life with Jo Beckman from the previous novel "The Frighteners". At the beginning of the story Jo has left Matt because of his new hobby of shooting. One of the ladies from a previous novel "The Infiltrators" - Madeleine Ellershaw comes to visit Matt with a complaint that he's having her followed. Matt is being followed by the same kind of people. Madeleine dies violently pretty soon after her appearance. Matt's new friend who has introduced Matt to this kind of shooting sport also dies soon after revealing that he was an author hunted by a South American drug lord for writing a book about the drug business. The drug lord puts up a price of one Million dollars on his head. After Mark's death Matt teams up, unwillingly, with his widow to go hunt up back up copies of Mark's second book. Some computer jargon and concepts are mentioned when the electronic copies of the book are mentioned and surprisingly Hamilton has managed to keep most of his facts accurate. (Other than calling a diskette a three-and-a-half-inch-by-three-and-a-half-inch which it's not). As usual nothing and nobody is as they seem or are expected. As usual also, Matt undergoes torture and captivity and perils to his life. As usual, he comes up victorious, accomplishing his mission, saving the women and killing the bad guys. Fortunately, Hamilton doesn't deal in the Hollywood-hero-that-can-kill-a-hundred-black-hat-types and Matt is shown to have a better than average amount of brains, professional ruthlessness and courage and sense in balanced amounts. In this book again Matt runs across fanatic world-savers and drug-crusaders with both gunning for his life. The story opens and ends in New Mexico, USA but major part of it takes places in South America.
6436376	/m/0g593r	The Damagers	Donald Hamilton	1993	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Matt Helm brings his literary career to a close (for now) with a double assignment: destroy a crime gang run by the son of the villain from The Wrecking Crew, and prevent the atomic destruction of Norfolk, Virginia.
6436999	/m/0g59vg	Flash	L. E. Modesitt, Jr.	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After obtaining the rank of Lt. Col in the NorAm Marines, Jonat DeVrai resigns his commission after growing disenchanted with the realities of warfare for economic gains. Using his military benefits, DeVrai begins a new career and obtains an advanced degree and creates a more accurate model for measuring the effects of "prod-placement." DeVrai's practice for ethical, high caliber assessments brings him to the attention of the Centre for Societal Research, a generally non-partisian research group. The Centre commissions a study regarding potential abuses of "prod-placement" techniques in political campaigns. While the study is intended to be used by the leaders of some of the top Multis (companies), attempts on DeVrai's life and the murder of his sister and her husband, force DeVrai to risk his life in an effort to set things right. DeVrai receives help in the form of the self-aware Cy-droid Paula Anthane and the shadowy force behind Central Four. DeVrai has become a pawn on more than one chessboard. Will he have the chance to set things right? Will he be able to avenge the murder of his sister that left his niece and nephew orphans, or will the multiple plots to remove DeVrai from the board finally catch up to him?
6438132	/m/0g5c6d	Weight Loss	Upamanyu Chatterjee	2006-02-28	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Weight Loss is about the strange life (from age 11 to age 37) of a sexual deviant named Bhola, whose attitude to most of the people around him depends on their lust worthiness. Bhola’s tastes are not, to put it mildly, conventional. Sex is a form of depravity for him and he has fetishes about everyone from teachers to roadside sadhus to servants; he progresses from fantasizing about the portly family cook Gopinath to falling “madly in love” with a vegetable-vendor and her husband. This last obsession spans the entire length of the book and most of Bhola’s life – he even ends up teaching at a college in an obscure hill-station hundreds of miles from his home because he wants to be near the couple. At various other stages in his life he gets expelled from school for defecating in a teacher’s office, participates in an inexpertly carried out circumcision (one of the book’s many manifestations of the “weight loss” motif) and engages in all forms of debauchery.
6438799	/m/0g5d1n	Ignorance	Milan Kundera	2000	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Czech expatriate Irena, who has been living in France, decides to return to her home after twenty years. During the trip she meets, by chance, Josef, a fellow émigré who was briefly her lover in Prague. The novel examines the feelings instigated by the return to a homeland, which has ceased to be a home. In doing so, it reworks the Odyssean themes of homecoming. It paints a poignant picture of love and its manifestations, a recurring theme in Kundera's novels. The novel explores and centres around the way that people have selective memories as a precursor to ignorance. The concept of ignorance is presented as a two-fold phenomenon; in which ignorance can be a willing action that people participate in, such as avoiding unpleasant conversation topics or acting out. Yet also exploring the involuntary aspects of being ignorant, such as feigning ignorance of the past or avoiding the truth.
6444536	/m/0g5njg	Second Form at St. Clare's		1944	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The second form includes two girls who have been kept back from third form and two new girls. The two old girls are Elsie Fenshawe and Anna Johnson. Both are disliked as Elsie is spiteful and Anna is very lazy; however, both are made head of their form, replacing Hilary Wentworth who was head in first form. Miss Theobald decides to give them both the chance as she feels that Elsie's sharp nature may stir Anna up a bit, while Anna, despite her laziness, is good-humoured and well-meaning, and Miss Theobald hopes that she may be good for Elsie in this way. The second form mistress, Miss Jenks, has doubts about this as Elsie and Anna do not like each other very much, but agrees to let both of them try. The two new girls are Gladys Hilman and Mirabel Unwin. Gladys Hilman is miserable because her mother is ill in hospital. Gladys Hilman rarely speaks or joins in and this is the reason Gladys Hilman nicknamed "The Misery Girl". It takes Mirabel Unwin to find out what is wrong with her. Mirabel Unwin is determined to make the worst of things and ruin class for everyone. She was sent away from home because of her behaviour towards her younger brother and sister. Mirabel's attitude leads her into trouble when Carlotta slaps her in public for ruining a play rehearsal, but Mirabel learns her lesson and forgives Carlotta. Later she admits to Isabel that she is ashamed of her behaviour and wants to be friends with the girls instead. When Elsie attempts to convince the form to perform a series of punishments against Mirabel in retaliation for her attitude in class, Isabel sticks up for her and manages to convince the class that Elsie is not acting in their interest but is just acting out of spite. As a result of this, Mirabel and Isabel become friends. Mirabel initially declares she wants to leave at half term, but ends up staying when Pat and Isabel stand up for her and the girls decide to give her a chance. Although at first they do not get on well, an unlikely friendship later develops between Gladys and Mirabel, as they help each other cope with their first time in boarding school. Mirabel turns out to be a talented musician and Gladys a gifted actor, and the class manage to use these talents to ease the two girls into the way of things at the school. The term passes by eventfully, and Anna becomes a surprisingly popular head girl, throwing aside her laziness. When Elsie is stripped of her position, Anna takes to her new position of sole head girl with a new-found enthusiasm and discovers she actually enjoys the sense of responsibility she feels at helping others and setting a good example. When Mrs Theobald refuses to let Mirabel send a telegram home asking for her violin, mistakenly thinking that Mirabel has only stopped misbehaving because she has got tired of it, she confides in Anna, who goes to see the Headmistress and explains to her that Mirabel is in fact ashamed of herself and wants to do better. As a result of Anna's directness, Mirabel is allowed to send the telegram and Anna is admired and respected by all of the other girls for performing such a kindly act. A concert given by the girls proves a huge success, but Elsie is forbidden to take part as a result of her behaviour towards Anna when the decision was made to strip Elsie of her position as joint head girl. Anna and Carlotta both offer Elsie an olive branch, but Elsie has still not learned her lesson after being left out and sets out to ruin a birthday party given by Carlotta as revenge. However Hilary discovers Elsie's plan, and instead of holding the party the evening of Carlotta's birthday as planned, the girls hold a midnight feast the night before instead. Elsie gets into trouble as a result when her plan to expose the private party backfires. There is also a new drama mistress this year, Miss Quentin. Alison chooses to worship her (she always finds someone each year). However, at the end of the term, Alison is badly let down by Miss Quentin when she finds out that the mistress laughs at her behind her back and chose Gladys over her for the principle role in the play. She is then very cold to Miss Quentin and snubs her. At term's end, Anna is told she can now go up to the Third Form, who have heard about her success as head girl and want her to return to their year. Elsie is also granted passage into the Third Form after she apologises to Anna and Carlotta for trying to ruin the birthday party, but is told that she is on her last chance and that she must drop her malicious and spiteful attitude if she wants to stay there, and that one mistake will see her expelled from the school.
6446363	/m/0g5q4_	Dragon's Fire	Todd McCaffrey	2006-07-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Pellar's story provides background information related to the previous title Dragon's Kin. Cristov's story is mostly new material (blue firestone that survives in water) and takes place after the events in Pellar's. The focus of Cristov's story is the problem-laden transition from firestone to the phosphine-bearing rock that is used by later generations of dragons.
6446516	/m/0g5qft	Dead White	John Shirley	2006-07-25	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A racist militia leader has decided to test out his murderous assets on Batman before taking his attacks to Washington D.C.
6446859	/m/0g5qs3	Inferno	Alexander C. Irvine	2006-10-31	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A former firefighter, now an explosives expert, breaks into Arkham Asylum and burns it to the ground. Many of the inhabitants escape, including the Joker. The arsonist, calling himself Enfer, continues his rampage of destruction and comes into conflict with the Joker. The latter inmate has stumbled upon a way to disguise himself at the Batman. With some unexpected assistance, the Joker convinces the city that Batman has become a murdering lunatic. Enfer and the Joker finalize their conflict with an array of customizable remote-control robots. Batman is setback by the fact this is early in his career and he is limited in his resources thanks to losses caused by his adversaries.
6450497	/m/0g5vb4	Final Impact	John Birmingham		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Picking up two years onwards from the end of Designated Targets, Final Impact is the last novel in the Axis of Time trilogy. The supercarrier USS Hillary Clinton has been refurbished with more conventional steam catapults which replaced her less reliable fuel air explosive catapults. Her carrier air group is replenished with A-4 Skyhawk jet-powered attack aircraft, many of which are flown by 'temps, contemporary pilots. Admiral Kolhammer returns to sea at the head of a new Task Force with the Clinton at its core after two years of administering the Special Administrative Zone-California. Many characters have died in the intervening time period, from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, by his own hand to Commander Dan Black, one of the main characters of the story who asks for a return to combat and dies during the retakeover of Hawaii, when his plane crashed during take-off from Muroc Airfield, California. D-Day has begun a month early and the Third Reich is crumbling as the Allies invade France. They invade Pas-de-Calais instead of Normandy, using Normandy as the subject of the dis-information campaign. Paul Brasch's (who is now a Major General) cover is blown and he is extracted by the British. Hitler has a seizure and suffers permanent brain and muscle damage; with the T4 program in mind and believing it is for the good of the Reich, Himmler suffocates him. The USSR re-enters the war on the Allied side and surges through the Western Front and the Eastern, having used the intervening two years to train huge armies as well as outfit their troops with advanced technology, including AK-47s and MiG-15s. However, before a full scale invasion of the Home Islands of Japan can begin, the Soviets drop an atomic bomb on Litzmannstadt (that is, Łódź, Poland which in reality was colonised by the Nazis in 1939, ethnically-cleansed and renamed.) The Axis Powers react as much as they can: Himmler authorizes the use of anthrax in an unsynthesized form which will hang around for months halting a Russian advance. The USSR takes two more blows when a massive kamikaze strike cripples their Pacific Fleet, and the A-bomb building facility in Kamchatka is destroyed - both hits scored by the Japanese. The U.S., having secretly completed the Manhattan Project a few months before and built up - with a large amount of help by thousands of people from the future Multi-National force - a large enough stockpile of bombs to take on Germany, Japan and the USSR at the same time, if necessary, obliterate Berlin using three nuclear weapons. In response to the U.S. blast on Berlin and the Japanese destroying the Soviet Pacific fleet at Kamchatka, the Soviets nuke Tokyo, killing the Emperor. The Axis Powers give in to unconditional surrender, ending the war in July 1944, but the damage has been done. The USSR has pushed into Asia securing gains in Persia, Afghanistan, Korea, Indochina and is probably going to share occupation of Japan with U.S. and Australia; in Europe the USSR has gone around Germany and has taken all of Eastern Europe including Greece, plus Northern Italy and chunks of Vichy France and Austria. With the war over, most of the main characters move into the private sector and start anew.
6452561	/m/0g5xng	Cousin Henry	Anthony Trollope	1879-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Indefer Jones is the aged squire, between seventy and eighty years of age, of a large manor, Llanfeare, in Carmarthen, Wales. His niece, Isabel Brodrick, has lived with him for years after the remarriage of her father, and endeared herself to everyone. However, according to his strong traditional beliefs, the estate should be bequeathed to a male heir. His sole male blood relative is his nephew Henry Jones, a London clerk. Henry has, in the past, incurred debts that the squire had paid off, been "sent away from Oxford", and generally made a poor impression on his occasional visits to Llanfeare. Nevertheless, Henry is told of his uncle's intention to make him the heir to the estate and is invited to pay a visit. Isabel rejects her uncle's suggestion that she solve his dilemma by marrying Henry, as she cannot stand her cousin. Indefer Jones finds his nephew to be just as detestable as ever. As a result, he overcomes his prejudice and changes his will one final time, in Isabel's favour. Unfortunately, he dies before he can tell anyone. Finding the document hidden in a book of sermons by accident, Henry vacillates between keeping silent and revealing its location. He is neither good enough to give up the estate nor evil enough to burn the document, fearing disgrace, a long jail sentence and, not least, eternal damnation. Instead, he comforts himself by reasoning that doing nothing cannot be a crime. Indefer Jones had had his last will witnessed by two of his tenants, but since the will cannot be found despite a thorough search of the house, Henry inherits the estate. However, already extant suspicions are only strengthened by his guilty manner. He endures abuse from everyone; his own servants either quit or treat him with disrespect. He takes to spending hours in the library, where the will is hidden. The local newspaper begins to publish accounts of the affair that are insulting and seemingly libelous to Henry. It accuses him of destroying the will and usurping the estate from Isabel, whom everybody knows and respects. The old squire's lawyer, Mr Apjohn, himself suspecting that Henry knows more than he lets on, approaches the new squire about the articles, pressuring the unwilling young man into taking legal action against the editor. Henry finds that this only makes things worse. The prospect of being cross examined in the witness box fills him with dread. He realises the truth would be dragged out of him in court. Mr Apjohn, by clever questioning, gets a good idea about where the will is. Henry knows that time is running out, but once again procrastinates. Mr Apjohn and Mr Brodrick, Isabel's father, visit Henry at home and find the document, despite Henry's ineffectual efforts to stop them. Because he did not destroy the will, Henry is permitted to return to his job in London with his reputation intact and £4000, the amount Isabel was bequeathed in the other will.
6455676	/m/0g5_rz	Murder on the Leviathan	Boris Akunin	2004-04	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in 1878. The story opens with the murder in Paris of Lord Littleby, all seven of his servants and two children of servants. All were poisoned except for Littleby, who was bludgeoned with an ancient Indian artifact, a golden statuette of Shiva, which belonged to Lord Littleby and was stolen from his room, along with an old Indian shawl. French detective Gustave Gauche, in charge of the investigation, boards the passenger ship "Leviathan". Gauche knows that the murderer must be one of the first-class passengers, because one of the special golden badges for the ship's first-class passengers was left in Littleby's room. Among the suspects are a Japanese army officer, an addled English aristocrat, a married Swiss woman, and a clever young Russian diplomat on his way to his new post in Japan. The diplomat is Erast Fandorin, the master detective, who shoots down each of the ineffectual Gauche's incorrect conclusions, and in the end takes it on himself to find the murderer.
6457913	/m/0g6316	Showboat World			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Showboat World follows the farcical adventures of Apollon Zamp, owner of the showboat Miraldra's Enchantment, and his troupe of acrobats, magicians and actors. Zamp is invited by the King of Soyvanesse to travel up the river Vissel to the distant city of Mornune, there to participate in a contest. A rich prize awaits the showboat captain who stages the most spectacular performance and succeeds in entertaining the king. The mysterious, attractive Damsel Blanche-Aster accompanies him up the river for her own reasons. Zamp loses his ship through the machinations of his chief rival, Garth Ashgale, captain of the showboat Fironzelle's Golden Conceit. In order to take part in the competition, Zamp is forced to form an unlikely partnership with staid museum ship owner Throdorus Gassoon. Both men attempt to woo the unimpressed Damsel Blanche-Aster during the perilous journey. Along the way, the travellers encounter cultures and people with weird beliefs and unusual, often violent, customs. At least one scene was influenced by the Royal Nonesuch acting troupe episode in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, while Showboat World itself has strongly influenced The Wizard of Karres (2004) by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer. In addition, there are repeated references to Shakespeare's Macbeth, which is continuously adapted and readapted to the tastes of varying audiences. When they finally arrive at Mornune, Damsel Blanche-Aster reveals herself to be the rightful ruler, only to have her claim trumped by the unwitting Gassoon, when he appears in a decrepit costume that confers the throne on him. Gassoon marries the reluctantly acquiescent Blanche-Aster and richly rewards Zamp for his part in his elevation. Gassoon gives Zamp his boat, having no further use for it, and Zamp leaves with the boat and crew. When the costume falls apart, Gassoon flees with a bag of jewels and is able to catch up with the boat, which he reclaims. Both men are now wealthy--Zamp will build a new showboat while Gassoon will resume his role as proprietor of a museum boat.
6458438	/m/0g63_1	Night of the Werewolf	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When a ferocious, wolf-life creature appears in the small town of Bayport, the Hardy boys are engaged to clear the name of a young man who has a history of werewolves in his family.
6458579	/m/0g648h	Mystery of the Samurai Sword	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Shortly after his arrival in United States, a Japanese business tycoon mysteriously disappears. Mr.Hardy, who had been entrusted with the man's security, is baffled and shocked. He feels even worse when the FBI takes him off the case. However, his sons, Frank and Joe, are there to investigate. A valuable samurai sword, said to have belonged to the missing tycoon's family for generations, is stolen from an auction gallery in New York, and the boys suspect a connection. One clue leads to another, and danger confronts them constantly on their search for the solution to the puzzle. Who are their enemies? Did the criminals kidnap the missing businessman, or did he hide of his own volition? What is the secret of the stolen samurai sword?
6463737	/m/0g6bzz	César Cascabel	Jules Verne	1890	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The action starts in Sacramento in 1867. The Cascabels are a French family of circus artists who spent several years touring the United States and plan to return home. Their savings get stolen so the family cannot afford the ship ticket. Instead, César Cascabel decides to travel overland, via Alaska and Bering Straits, through Siberia and Central Russia with their horse drawn Carriage, the Belle-Roulotte (the Fair Rambler). They don't expect dangers to happen. On their way, they rescue at the Alaskan border, with the help of native girl Kayette, a Russian political fugitive, count Narkine, whom they bring along so that he can see again his father in Russia. Count Narkine adopts Kayette as his daughter. In Sitka, the group witnesses the transfer of Alaska to the United States. On their way from Port Clarence the travellers unfortunately end up on a floating iceberg that drifts to the Lyakhovsky Islands in Arctic Ocean. There they are captured by the natives. Other troubles, including political ones, occur but Cascabels manage to get through Ural to Perm and then, easily, to France. An animated TV series inspired by the book was produced in 2001 in France. <gallery> Image:'César Cascabel' by George Roux 03.jpg|Map of route through Alaska Image:'César Cascabel' by George Roux 39.jpg|Map of route through Russia </gallery>
6464546	/m/0g6csz	The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee	Matthew Stadler		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nicholas Dee, a young, anxiety-ridden history professor, lives in an unnamed American city battered by winter storms, plagued by crime, and patrolled by police in choppers and riot gear. Haunted by memories of his brilliant father and by the fear of loss, Nicholas takes shelter in his research: a history of the practice of insurance. One night, after a chance encounter with the police, he is made the guardian of a beautiful teenaged delinquent, Oscar Vega. But the boy is a part of a scheme to ensnare Nicholas, the tool of a mysterious female dwarf named Amelia Weathered, once the lover of Nicholas' father. Made an outlaw, Nicholas flees with Amelia, her young son Francis, and Oscar to the half-drowned country of Holland, where the boundaries between his historical research, his fantasies, and Amelia's schemes all begin to blend together. Scattered throughout the novel are passages from Nicholas Dee's scholarly writing, chronicle of a seventeenth century Dutch opera-house, which was built in a coastal swamp on the advice of a fortune-teller and housed a single performance before being swept out to sea in a storm. The chronicle is intended by Dee to serve as a case study within his history of insurance. But by the end of the book, a personal narrative has emerged from Dee's impersonal history, the story of a man's friendship with a boy soprano. Interpenetrating and linking the inner text by Nicholas Dee and the outer one by Matthew Stadler are snatches of music - extracts from the score of The Tempest, Henry Purcell's operatic setting of Shakespeare's play.
6466422	/m/0g6fry	Dragonsblood	Anne McCaffrey	2005-01-25	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Occasional chapters of Dragonsblood are set soon after the end of the First Pass of the Red Star, nearly 450 years before most of the action. There (or then) the elderly Wind Blossom, a geneticist and daughter of the legendary Kitti Ping, is bemoaning the gradual loss of manufactured items and the technology to create them. She and her ex-protégé Tieran are startled by two fire-lizards who literally fall from the sky. One, a gold, dies upon arrival and it is obvious that both are sick. They nurse the other one, a brown, back to health, using the last of the antibiotics. Not knowing if the fire-lizard’s sickness is contagious, they quarantine it until it recovers. Tieran adopts the fire lizard and names him Grenn&nbsp;– the name found on the harness he was wearing. Further investigation of the decorations on Grenn’s harness leads to the incredible conclusion that he is from the future. Since fire-lizards provided the genetic basis that Kitti Ping used to build the Thread-fighting dragons (and Wind Blossom used to build the watch-whers), they speculate that this future affliction of fire-lizards might be fatal to dragons, and that is confirmed when a dead gold dragonet appears&nbsp;– one obviously sickened by the same future disease. The dragon’s body is destroyed, but Tieran recovers a decorated piece of metal from its harness. In order to save the dragons of the future, Wind Blossom and Tieran devise a plan to educate someone from the future in genetics and the scientific knowledge to isolate the disease and devise a cure. They create hidden rooms in Benden Weyr and fill them with instructions and equipment to educate that future person. Tieran believes that both the fire-lizard and dragon came from the same woman in the future, since both had similar harness decorations and only women impress gold dragons. He further believes that she has some connection with himself and Wind Blossom&nbsp;– a connection that both dragon and fire lizards followed. He leaves a small souvenir for her in the hidden rooms. About 400 years later, at the beginning of the 3rd Pass of the Red Star, a talented young sketch artist and amateur healer Lorana is hitching a ride across the ocean to the newly built Half-Circle seahold. In a desperate attempt to save her two fire-lizards Grenn and Garth during a storm at sea, she orders them to leave her and believes they are dead. She is found washed up on the beach by dragonriders from Benden Weyr and recovers just in time to impress Arith, a gold dragon. Meanwhile, dragons and fire-lizards are falling sick to a disease with a 100% mortality rate. Fire-lizards are banned from the Weyrs and many die due to the disease. Lorana, who can hear and speak with any dragon, thus sharing in the death of each dragon, frantically scours records in hopes of finding some sort of clue or help towards fighting the disease. She unearths records of hidden rooms in the Weyr and gets them open. The recorded voice of Wind Blossom invites her and her companions to enter and learn what they need to find a cure. Lorana’s dragon Arith goes between and dies when a combination of the disease and an injection of watch-wher genetic material wreak havoc with her system. Despite the tragedy of losing Arith and the added burden of over a thousand dragon deaths, Lorana successfully learns how to use such items as a microscope and a genetic sampler to find the disease and create a cure. She can only make a single dose which she injects into the pregnant gold Minith, in hopes that the cure will be passed onto future dragon generations. Minith, her irritable rider Tullea and several others are sent between times to the past to give them time to recover. They return in triumph, with enough cure to save the rest of the dragons. An older and kinder Tullea gives Lorana an ancient locket she had swiped from the first of the hidden rooms. In it are a piece of Arith’s harness and pictures of Wind Blossom, Tieran and her fire-lizard Grenn.
6466634	/m/0g6fz3	The Ladies of Missalonghi	Colleen McCullough			 In the years before World War I in Byron, Australia, the males of the Hurlingford family hold all the power and money. Those Hurlingford women without a man due to spinsterhood or widowhood lead cramped lives of hard work and little money on scraps of land or in businesses that just barely support them. Thirty-something spinster Missy Wright leads a narrow existence on the wrong side of the tracks with her widowed mother Drusilla Hurlingford Wright and crippled aunt Octavia when Byron is consumed by two events, the upcoming wedding of Missy's beautiful, Amazonian cousin Alicia Marshall to William Hurlingford and the arrival of rough looking stranger named John Smith. With limited funds and suffering bouts of ill health, Missy's only consolation are her trips to the lending library where her distant cousin Una Hurlingford works. Una, a society beauty, has been sent to the backwater of Byron from her glamorous life in Sydney. Under Una's tutelage and bolstered by the romantic novels she sneaks home, Missy begins to dream of the world outside Byron and a better life for herself. Bolstered by a confrontation with her cousin Alicia and a trip to a Sydney doctor, Missy breaks free of her Byron shackles, finds financial independence for her older female Hurlingford relations and ends up the happy bride of the mystery man John Smith.
6467296	/m/0g6gjt	The Skies of Pern	Anne McCaffrey	2001-04-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A rogue comet that strikes Pern leads the Weyrleaders and Holders, contemplating a future where dragonriders are not needed in a Threadless world, to consider the creation of a new Star Craft made of dragonriders. The discovery by dragonriders F'lessan and Tai, after a brutal attack by large felines, of the draconic use of telekinesis, only strengthens their resolve to keep Pern's skies free of danger. At the same time, disgruntled citizens resisting the ever-growing role of technology in Pernese life band together as Abominators, attacking Crafthalls, and are determined to destroy all the new technology in use. These fanatics are seemingly allied with Southern Lord Holder Toric. The Abominators' leader, Shankolin, is killed at the end of the book when he enters the chamber formerly housing AIVAS, the computer that introduced advanced technology to the Pernese. This implies that although AIVAS is disabled, his defense systems remain active.
6468064	/m/0g6h4f	A Book of Common Prayer	Joan Didion		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is narrated by Grace Strasser-Mendana, an American expatriate who married into one of the three or four families that dominate Boca Grande politics, the Mendanas. Grace was trained as an anthropologist under Claude Lévi-Strauss, and later took up the amateur study of biochemistry, both attempts to find clear-cut, scientific answers to the mysteries of human behavior. Both attempts fail: Grace remains uncomprehending and cut off from the people around her, and in the final line of the novel she admits, "I have not been the witness I wanted to be." But Grace is not the novel's central character. That is Charlotte Douglas, another American woman sojourning in Boca Grande, although her family ties are elsewhere. Charlotte's beloved daughter Marin has run off with a group of Marxist radicals and taken part in an absurd act of terrorism, and in the wake of her daughter's disappearance, Charlotte's marriage to a crusading Berkeley lawyer (not Marin's father), has fallen apart. A limited signed edition of this book was issued by Franklin library.
6468552	/m/0g6hh5	The Dolphins of Pern	Anne McCaffrey	1994-09-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 This novel follows Dragonsdawn and the short story The Dolphin's Bell (short story contained in The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall) by discussing the present state (Ninth Pass) of the dolphins that were brought to Pern by the colonists. Set near the end and after the events of All the Weyrs of Pern it further integrates the science fiction aspects of the origins of the Pern series with the fantastical aspects presented by the original books. The plot focuses primarily on two young characters and chronicles the birth of the Dolphincrafthall and its first Dolphineer. Readis, the Paradise River Lord Holder's son, is saved by talking dolphins ("shipfish") as a young boy after falling into the sea and subsequently develops a strong fascination with the dolphins. T'lion, the young Eastern Weyr dragonrider of Bronze Gadareth, also develops an interest after being involved in an early dolphin encounter. The two befriend each other due to their shared interest and, in their own ways, defy family, Hold and Weyr to maintain their friendships with dolphins and convince others of the dolphins' intelligence and ability to speak. While familiar characters struggle to end the era of Thread, Readis, T'lion and others struggle to begin a new era in which dolphin and human work together again. Well-known characters from previous Pern novels are also involved in the plot, including Benden Weyrleaders Lessa and F'lar, and Masterharpers Robinton and Menolly.
6472302	/m/0g6lfy	The Color of Light	William Goldman			 The first time Chub gets the impulse to write, he has witnessed a fight between the girl of his dreams, B.J. Peacock, and her boyfriend Del that centers on a man knowing he'll never be able to make his woman happy, but that he'll never be able not to try. Two-Brew is a harsh critic, but feels Chub has the gift—his highest praise for anything Chub has written are four words: "on to the next"--implying that he wants to read more of Chub's work. Two-Brew's father runs Sutton Press in New York, and Chub's first long-awaited visit to New York City is punctuated with the surprise that Two-Brew's father has agreed to publish Chub's first short story. Chub's writing continues, usually after a collision of an emotional experience in his daily life with a childhood memory, and results in a series of short stories. Over one Christmas break, he visits his mother to surprise her with his published short story, but she sees herself portrayed negatively and explodes. Chub leaves almost as soon as he arrives, and returns to the Oberlin dorm with weeks of Christmas break ahead of him and nothing to do but write. He births a long story about his father's rise, fall and suicide—the best story he's written, Chub thinks—but Two-Brew insists that it's wrong for a short story and should be a novel. Chub's writing continues, but his focus on his studies suffers, and he graduates jobless. He works at a bar the summer after graduation when Two-Brew, now a young executive in his father's publishing house, suggests Chub connect his short stories and pitch them as a book, as a prelude to the novel about his father. Chub agrees immediately, but Two-Brew has already made the pitch. He hands Chub an envelope with two advance checks, and Chub moves to New York to write his novel. The book of short stories is published as Under the Weather, and is a modest hit. While Chub enjoys the praise, his walkup flat and New York life in general, he simply isn't writing. He is distracted by illness, and the return of B.J. Peacock into his life, now divorced with a young daughter Jesse, and aware that she inspired Chub's first story. They fall in love, marry and Chub is blissfully happy as both husband and father. However, B.J.'s jealousy extends to his relationship with Jesse, and during a Hawaii trip designed to recapture their happiness, Jesse is drowned by a rogue wave while in Chub's care, which leads to divorce, and a long, dark period for Chub. He teaches at his old school and is terrorized by a student he reported for plagiarism. Years pass. Chub lives in New York doing research for other writers, paralyzed by the incandescent emotion of his father's suicide, Jesse's death and his divorce. At a party for Two-Brew celebrating his ascension to head of the publishing company, he meets Bonita Kraus ("The Bone"), a tall, intense ex-model with aspirations of writing in the genre of Trash. Two wounded people, they share intimacy of a sort, but only when Sandy Smith, a nubile young fan of Under the Weather shows up at Chub's doorstep and stays does he feel the urge to love and write again. However, she sought him out because another man told her he was "Charley Fuller" the writer of Under the Weather. Sandy falls to her death from his window while Chub is gone, and while the police seem convinced it was suicide, Chub investigates his former student, now an escaped mental patient, then the man posing as Charley Fuller. His efforts to untangle the case make his writer's impulse run even more strongly, and he works up an outline of the story, shows it to Two-Brew and gets the cherished "On to the next" reaction. Finally back on the right path, Chub seeks out The Bone, wanting to move in with her so they both can write and support each other, but upon telling his story, The Bone unconsciously lets slip a detail linking her with Sandy's murder. Chub, terrified, can only repeat to himself that this is excellent material. He just has to live long enough to know how to use it.
6473517	/m/0g6mwf	Memed, My Hawk	Yaşar Kemal	1955		 Memed, a young boy from a village in Anatolia is abused and beaten by the villainous Abdi Agha, the local landowner. Having endured great cruelty towards himself and his mother, he finally escapes with his beloved, a girl named Hatche. Abdi Agha catches up with the young couple, but only manages to capture Hatche, while Memed is able to avoid his pursuers and runs into the mountains whereupon he joins a band of brigands and exacts revenge against his old adversary. Hatche was then imprisoned and later dies. Her mother, when Memed returns to the town, tells him he has a "women's heart" if he surrenders himself. He instead rides into town on a horse given to him by the towns people, to find his enemy. He finds Agha in the south-east corner of his house and shoots him in the breast.The local authorities hear the gun shots but Memed gets away barely before they are able to take a few shots at him. Yet before Hatche dies she gives birth to his son who is also named Memed.
6474168	/m/0g6nc9	King, Queen, Knave	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1928-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Franz (Bubendorf), a young man from a small town, is sent away from home to work in the Berlin department store of his well-to-do uncle (actually, his mother's cousin), Dreyer. On the train ride to Berlin Franz is seated in the same compartment with (Kurt) Dreyer and Dreyer's wife, Martha, neither of whom Franz has met. Franz is immediately enchanted by Martha's beauty, and, shortly after Franz begins work at the store, the two strike up a secret love affair. As the novel continues Martha's distaste for her husband grows more pronounced, and with it her adoration for Franz. Franz, meanwhile, begins to lose any will of his own, and becomes a numb extension of his lover. Dreyer, meanwhile, continues to lavish blind adulation on his wife, and is only hurt, not suspicious, when she returns his love with resentment. As her relationship with Franz deepens, Martha begins to hatch schemes for Dreyer's demise. Franz himself has begun to lose interest in Martha, but he goes along with her plotting. As part of Martha's plans, the three vacation together at the Seaview Hotel at Gravitz, a resort at the Baltic. She plans to take Dreyer, who cannot swim, out in a rowing boat so he can be drowned. On the boat, however, the plot is suspended by Martha when she learns from Dreyer that he is about to close a very profitable business deal. Martha then gets pneumonia from the rain and the cold on the boat. To Dreyer's great sorrow she passes away; he never learned about the betrayal and the danger he was in. Franz relieved by her death is heard laughing "in a frenzy of young mirth". Other characters in the novel are the "conjuror" Old Enricht who rents out a room to Franz, and the Inventor who was developing robot-like "automannequins" financed by Dreyer who hoped to make money by selling the invention to the American Mr. Ritter. The Inventor promised to make three dummies, however, at the final performance for Ritter, only the "elderly gentleman" with Dreyer's jacket and the woman ("walking like a streetwalker") were ready. The woman dummy crashed in a final clatter.
6474943	/m/0g6p3m	Strange Meeting	Susan Hill	1991		 The novel begins with the protagonist of the novel 'John Hilliard' in a military hospital, recovering from a wound he received; he briefly speaks to Crawford, a doctor, whom he knows from childhood and greatly dislikes. It is when Hilliard returns home that he has trouble sleeping. This is not because of his memories of war, but from being at home, a place which he greatly dislikes. The opening pages of the novel concern his brief period of sick leave back in England where his sister Beth, mother Constance and father are blind to the horror of the trenches. John finds it hard to adapt to life back in England and is happy to return to the war; especially after the new distance between him and his sister, to whom he was previously close. When Hilliard returns he finds that his batman and many other faces he knew have been killed. The group's Commanding Officer, Colonel Garrett, appears to have aged greatly in the short time Hilliard has been away, due to the stresses of war, and has taken to drinking quantities of whisky. His old batman is replaced with a new one called Coulter and he is placed in a room with a new Officer called David Barton in a rest camp while they wait to be called up to the front. During this time he becomes great friends with Barton, who is as yet untouched by the war. Throughout this chapter, the new Adjutant, a character called Franklin, appears expressionless and remote from the group. The chapter ends with Hilliard and Barton witnessing the wreckage of a German plane crash which shocks Barton, who has not seen a dead body yet. In Part Two, the group that Hilliard and Barton are in, B Company, is travelling to the front line at Feuvry. There are not enough horses so David walks alongside for the duration of the journey. He writes a letter home describing what a terrible place Feuvry is; the town has few buildings left intact after being shelled and occupied by the Germans in 1914. When they arrive at their billets the Officers are informed that a soldier called Harris won't come out of the cellar. Harris is a new recruit who has broken down in terror; Barton manages to talk him round and lead him from the cellar. While Barton goes to fetch some rum ration for the still unstable Harris, a shell falls on the billets, killing Harris. Barton blames himself for the soldier's death because he would have been safe had Barton not talked him out of the cellar. In another letter home Barton confesses that he has become hardened by his experiences in the war. He also states that John thinks that one of the most difficult experiences is getting used to the new faces as so many soldiers die. The chapter ends with Barton being chosen to go to the front lines to draw a map of the surrounding area with a runner called Grosse. In the front line he witnesses a shelling and the deaths of several men; he also sees a Private killed by a German sniper. After returning from the front line Barton admits that he feels that the war is changing him because he is unable to feel emotion for every soldier killed due to the sheer numbers killed each day. The final chapter of the novel begins with one of Barton's long letters complaining that "we are drones not fighting men". He is concerned that his letter may be censored by the military but he wants to tell those back home the truth. John gets a letter stating that his sister Beth is to marry the lawyer Henry Partington which causes John to become angry at those back home. Hilliard and Barton are sent on a reconnaissance mission which requires the men to spy on the enemy trenches. They can see little and after a flare exposes their position they are forced to retreat with some casualties. Barton feels guilty that he left Coulter, the batman, to die in No Man's Land. In another letter home, Barton states that the constant death erodes his courage. Midway through the letter, the C.O. states that he is leaving the platoon after arguing with Generals that reconnaissance missions are a waste of lives. After this news, a Private called Parkin is worried about the news that they will soon be going over the top. Barton and Hilliard begin to talk about how they will meet after the war before they realise they are assuming that they both will survive. During the military advance, Barton and Hilliard lose track of each others' positions. Hilliard is injured by a shell and is forced to hide in a hole by several dead bodies. At nightfall he crawls back to his trench. His leg is amputated in France and at first he is too ill to return to England. The inconclusive end of the novel is Hilliard being informed by a letter from Barton's parents that Barton is missing and presumed dead. Hilliard writes to inform Barton's parents that it is extremely unlikely that Barton is alive. Once he gets back to England, he goes and visits Barton's family and friends, and feels he knows the place already from Barton's descriptions.
6478896	/m/0g6w5d	Sharpe's Devil	Bernard Cornwell	1990	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The last book, chronologically, in the Sharpe series is set in 1820, five years after the events of Sharpe's Waterloo. Richard Sharpe has retired to live on the farm in Normandy with his common-law wife Lucille Castineau. Patrick Harper has a bar in Dublin with Isabella and has put on a great deal of weight. The two are called out of retirement by the wife of an old friend who sends them on a mission to South America. Doña Louisa Vivar, whom Sharpe befriended in Sharpe's Rifles, visits the farm and asks the former rifleman to sail to Chile in search of her husband, Don Blas Vivar, who has disappeared while serving as Captain-General of the rebellious colony and may have fallen victim to his political rival and successor, Miguel Bautista. Along the way the two encounter the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte and the Scottish former Royal Navy officer Lord Cochrane.
6479803	/m/0g6xtc	Dial-a-Ghost	Eva Ibbotson	1996		 The Wilkinson family become ghosts after they die in an air raid in World War II, apart from Trixie - Mrs Wilkinson's sister. Initially, they haunt their home, Resthaven, and they adopt another young ghost, a girl they name Adopta, who has no memory of her past. When the arrival of new owners forces them to leave, they travel to London and reluctantly begin haunting an underwear store, and apply to the Dial-a-Ghost agency for a new home. The Dial-a-Ghost agency finds the perfect home for the Wilkinsons in a ruined abbey, and tells them they can move in on Friday 13th. Meanwhile, orphan Oliver Smith is surprised to learn he is a descendant of the Snodde-Brittle family, and that he now owns Helton Hall, after the death of his cousin. He is taken from the orphanage to Helton Hall by his cousins Fulton and Frieda, who feel they should rightly have inherited the Hall. Learning that Oliver is asthmatic, Fulton hires some terrifying, child-hating ghosts known as the Shriekers, hoping to frighten Oliver to death. On the day of the move, the two sets of ghosts receive each other's directions. The Wilkinsons arrive at Helton Hall, and, although they initially scare Oliver, they soon become close friends. The Shriekers, however, are exorcised from the ruined abbey after attacking livestock belonging to the nunnery. When the Dial-a-Ghost agency realizes their mistake, they send the Shriekers to Helton Hall and ring the Wilkinsons to apologize. Oliver, however, refuses to let the Wilkinsons leave and also invites their friends from London to move in. When the Shriekers arrive, they attack Oliver, but are distracted by Adopta - the daughter whose loss drove them to madness. They agree to behave better in future, but are confused as to why they were sent to attack Oliver when he is supposed to have ordered child-hating ghosts. The Wilkinsons realize Fulton is to blame and send Oliver to London to keep him safe. Fulton and Frieda are now in severe debt and, believing Oliver to have been killed by the Shriekers, they spend thirty thousand pounds on 'Ectoplasm Eating Bacteria' to clear out the ghosts. Oliver returns home to the unmoving remains of the ghosts, and is distraught. He attacks Fulton and Frieda, but is distracted by the ghost budgie for long enough to let them escape. As the ghosts wake up, they realise the Ectoplasm Eating Bacteria was a con, and Oliver happily opens up the Hall to any ghosts needing a home, running it as a tourist attraction and a paranormal research institute. Frieda, meanwhile, repents and becomes a nun, but Fulton goes after the con artists, gets killed and asks for a home from the Dial-a-Ghost agency, who send him to the underwear store.
6480876	/m/0g6zk7	Fool for Love	Sam Shepard			 The "fools" in the play are battling lovers at a Mojave Desert motel. May is hiding out at said motel when an old childhood friend and old flame, Eddie, shows up. Eddie tries to convince May to come back home with him and live in the trailer on the farm they always wanted to buy. May refuses because she has started a new life and knows that if she goes back to Eddie their relationship will repeat the same destructive cycle it has before. Throughout the play the character of the Old Man &mdash; the father of both lovers &mdash; is present and talks to each of the other two characters. It is revealed that the Old Man had led a double life, abandoning each family for different parts of each child's life. The two became lovers in their high school years and when their parents finally figured out what had occurred Eddie's mother shot herself. May is afraid that Eddie has begun to emulate his father; taking to drinking and secretly seeing a woman May refers to as the Countess. The play centers around the drama of the action rather than a plot with a rising and falling action. In the end the two lovers have not reconciled, the Old Man begins to lose himself to his own delusions, and a stranger is left on stage to observe it all.
6481658	/m/0g6_bf	The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana	Peter Hitchens	2000	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The Abolition of Britain is a conservative polemic against the changes in the United Kingdom since the mid-1960s. It contrasts the funerals of Winston Churchill (1965) and Diana, Princess of Wales (1997), using these two related but dissimilar events, three decades apart, to illustrate the enormous cultural changes that took place in the intervening period. His argument is that Britain underwent a "cultural revolution", comparable to that of China in the 1960s. He describes and criticises the growing strength of such forces as multiculturalism, which still had a liberal consensus behind it at the time the book was written. He argues that English schools had largely ceased to teach the history of the country, criticising the preference for methodology, or the literature of Britain's past. Other changes gain Hitchens' attention, from the passivity and conformism resulting from the watching of television to the Church of England's rejection of its traditional liturgy and scripture. Sex education, he argues, is a form of propaganda against Christian sexual morality. The sexual revolution brought about by the first contraceptive pills was the result not of accidental discovery, but of research deliberately pursued by moral revolutionaries. He describes the efforts made to provide respectability for unmarried motherhood, not least the campaign to replace the expression "unmarried mother" with "single parent", thus lumping together those who had children out of wedlock with widowers, widows or deserted wives and husbands, and so deflecting disapproval. Hitchens sees the British establishment as being morally weak in their failure to resist the emerging drug culture, when they could easily have done so in the mid-1960s. He cites as one example the prosecution of Mick Jagger and the subsequent intervention of The Times in Jagger's defence in 1967 ("Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?") after his (temporary) conviction. One chapter analyses the use of TV and radio soap operas to spread liberal cultural and moral propaganda, and refers to several instances where this intention has been openly expressed by the editors and authors of such programmes. In another, he attacks the development of "anti-establishment" comedy since the staging of Beyond the Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival in 1960. For Hitchens, the development of television, citing with approval a critical letter by T. S. Eliot to The Times in 1950, was something which should have led to a greater public debate than it did. In particular, Hitchens criticises the easy capture of the Conservative Party by lobbyists for commercial TV, which removed the BBC's monopoly power to defend cultural standards. He argues that the introduction of colour television, which made even the bad programmes look good, greatly increased the influence of TV over the public mind. He identifies the then Labour politician Roy Jenkins as a highly-effective campaigner for "cultural revolution". He describes the Chatterley trial, describing what he calls "myths" about it, and argues that the defence of literary merit (from the 1959 Jenkins backed Obscene Publications Act) eventually came to be used to allow the publications of books and periodicals which had none at all. He examines Jenkins' use of cross-party alliances and, what he sees as, supposed Private Members' Bills to achieve his programme. These legislative changes had not been mentioned in the 1964 or 1966 election manifestoes, and Hitchens develops his argument by drawing on proposals Jenkins had made in a section (p135-140) of his 1959 book The Labour Case. He cites warnings made by those who opposed the abolition of capital punishment, and claims that those warnings have largely proved to be true. For Hitchens this is an example of the political elite working against the desires of the public. Hitchens' view is sustained, in the case of capital punishment, by the liberal historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his history of the period White Heat (2006 p321) using contemporaneous opinion poll data. He went on to explore this issue in more detail in A Brief History of Crime. A chapter in The Abolition of Britain on the contrast between the public health policies on lung cancer and the public health policies on AIDS was left out of the first edition of the book, after Hitchens was advised that airing thoughts critical of homosexual acts would bring such criticism on it that it would distract attention from the book's main message. It was reinstated in the paperback and American editions, with an explanatory preface. Hitchens elaborated that the morality of homosexuality itself was tangential to his main argument. He wrote that British society's unwillingness to criticize sexual promiscuity among gay, bisexual, and straight men alike despite the ill after-effects stands in direct hypocritical contrast to government action against drug use. Hitchens argues that damaging moral and cultural effects on Britain occurred from the presence of huge numbers of U.S. troops during World War II. He also laments the cultural impact of American usage of the English language in Britain itself. For Hitchens, the major failing of the Thatcher governments was the absence of a decidedly conservative stance over cultural and moral matters.
6492413	/m/0g7frh	The Alteration	Kingsley Amis	1976	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character, ten-year-old Hubert Anvil, is a chorister at St George's Basilica, Coverley (real world Cowley), for whom tragedy beckons when his teachers and the Church hierarchy, all the way up to the Pope himself, decree that the boy's superb voice is too precious to sacrifice to puberty. Despite his own misgivings, he must undergo castration, one of the two the alterations of the title. Insight into this world is offered during Anvil's abortive escape from church authorities, with references to alternate world versions of known political and cultural figures. Hubert's mother carries on an illicit affair with the family chaplain, and his brother, Anthony, is a liberal dissident from repressive church policies. In this timeline, there are two pivotal divergences from known history. Prince Arthur Tudor and Catherine of Aragon's short-lived union produced a son, Stephen II of England. When Henry of York ("the Abominable") tried to usurp his nephew's throne, there was a papal crusade (the "War of the English Succession") to restore the rightful heir, culminating in the "Holy Victory" at Coverley, which was designated as the ecclesiastical capital of England. Secondly, the Protestant Reformation did not take place as Martin Luther was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church and later became Pope Germanian I. Luther's anti-Semitism may have infected this history to a greater extent during his papacy, as the novel discloses that Jews are forced to seclude themselves and wear yellow stars to advertise their religious and ethnic identity. In this history, Thomas More did not marry, and ascended to the Papacy as Pope Hadrian VII. While the Papacy still holds sway across Western Europe, in this version of the twentieth century Protestantism is limited to the breakaway Republic of New England, which includes such locations as Cranmeria (named after Thomas Cranmer), Hussville (named for Jan Huss), Waldensia (Waldensians) and Wyclif City (John Wycliffe). The head of the schismatic church in New England is the Archpresbyter of Arnoldstown (named after Benedict Arnold). Joseph Rudyard Kipling held office as "First Citizen" from 1914–1918, while Edgar Allan Poe was an acclaimed general who died at the moment of his victory over the combined forces of Louisiana and Mexico in the war of 1848-1850. We learn towards the end of the book that this Protestant state also has unpleasant features, such as practising apartheid towards Native Americans and a harsh penal system. England dominates the British Isles: for example, Ireland is called "West England". Instead of parliamentary democracy, the English Isles are administered by a Convocation of clergy accountable to the Catholic hierarchy. The rule of the Church is absolute and totalitarian, controlled by the Holy Office, a sort of KGB or Gestapo equivalent. (Monsignors Henricus and Laurentius – Heinrich Himmler and Lavrentiy Beria – are mentioned in passing.) The state of the world is illustrated in a description of national, clerical and royal figures at the funeral of Stephen III, late King of England, which opens the book. There is reference to the Kings of Portugal, Sweden, Naples and Lithuania, which suggests that no Italian nation-state exists in this history due to the temporal strength of the Papacy. The Crown Prince of Muscovy is also mentioned, suggesting that Tsarism holds sway, and the Dauphin leads one to conclude that the French monarchy is also still in existence. Germany is a nation-state, known as Almaigne and ruled by an Emperor, although it may not have exactly the same national boundaries. The "Vicar General" of the "Emperor Patriarch" of Candia suggests that the Greek Orthodox Church survives as a separate ecclesiastical jurisdiction, albeit exiled from its native Greece (which is still under Ottoman domination) and with its headquarters in Crete. Finally, this opening section cites the "Viceroys" of India, Brazil and New Spain, suggesting that colonialism and direct imperialism are still realities here. A Christian/Muslim cold war exists between the Papacy and Ottoman Empire. Pope John XXIV is a Machiavellian Yorkshireman, who allows the cold war to heat up as a Malthusian plan to resolve Europe's population growth – the church has access to bacteriological warfare as an alternative to birth control, whose prior papal prohibition John XXIV opposes. The book's coda, set in 1991, fifteen years after the events of the main body of the book, reveals that events have turned out as the Pope planned. Europe's surplus population has become cannon fodder for the war, which ended in a narrow victory, despite mention that the Ottoman Empire got as far as Brussels. However, one of Hubert's childhood friends, Decuman, is mentioned as being among the occupation troops in Adrianople in far western Turkey, suggesting that the Ottomans either lost the war, or at least were forced to make significant territorial concessions to the Catholic West. William Shakespeare's work was suppressed in this history, although Thomas Kyd's original text of Hamlet has survived, and is still performed in 1976. Shelley lived until 1853, at which point he set fire to Castel Gandolfo outside Rome and perished. By contrast, Mozart, Beethoven, Blake, Hockney and Holman Hunt have allowed their talents to submit to religious authority. Edward Bradford argues that the choice of authors and musicians here is not meant to imply Amis's own preferences, but questions the value of art subordinated to a destructive ideology that represses sexual freedom and human choice. Underscoring the clerical domination of this world, Hubert's small collection of books includes a set of Father Bond novels (an amalgam of Father Brown and James Bond), as well as Lord of the Chalices (The Lord of the Rings), Saint Lemuel's Travels (Gulliver's Travels), and The Wind in the Cloisters (Wind in the Willows). There is also reference to a Monsignor Jean-Paul Sartre of the Jesuits, and A. J. Ayer is Professor of Dogmatic Theology at New College, Oxford. "Science" is literally a dirty word, and while "invention" is not, the scope of inventors is severely limited. Electricity has been banned; the only form of internal combustion engine permitted is the Diesel, which works without a spark. Some of the incidental pleasure of the book is in the "alternative technology" reminiscent of Amis's friend and fellow-author Harry Harrison, such as the swish train that takes characters from London to Rome in just seven hours, via Thomas Sopwith's Channel Bridge. Allusion to known historical figures include the political scene in Britain in the 1970s, and may reflect Amis's increasingly conservative attitudes. For example, Lord Stansgate (Tony Benn) presides over the Holy Office, and Officers Paul Foot and Corin Redgrave are two of its feared operatives. Pope John XXIV is a thinly disguised Harold Wilson and his Secretary of State is Enrico Berlinguer. Other references are more obscure; opera-lovers with a good knowledge of Latin will, however, be able to identify the two castrati from the Vatican, Federicus Mirabilis and Lupigradus Viaventosa, as the German singers Fritz Wunderlich and Wolfgang Windgassen, both recently deceased when Amis was writing. Although much of the interest of the novel, and much of the fun, lies in the details of the alternative world Amis has created, the plot is a strong one and many of the characters are vividly drawn and believable in such a setting. There is some remarkable insight into musical creativity (Hubert had the possibility of becoming as gifted a composer as he was a gifted singer) and the ways in which strong minded liberals can preserve their integrity under a theocracy are illustrated by Hubert's older brother Anthony and by the older chorister Decuman.
6493612	/m/0g7hzf	Show Business	Shashi Tharoor	1991	{"/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 Show Business begins with Ashok Banjara, a superstar in Bollywood, fighting for his life in the intensive care unit of a hospital after an accident on the sets of a film that he is shooting. Suspended between life and death he sees his entire life in Bollywood flashing in front of his eyes like a film. Details of Banjara's career in Bollywood are revealed primarily in flashback. A young Ashok Banjara leaves Delhi and comes to Bombay to make his fortune and find fame in Bollywood. He achieves the big league with his second film Godambo that establishes him as an action star. Soon Banjara is known for playing the role of an angry young man fighting for the poor and the helpless against the establishment his very own. A successful Ashok Banjara marries Maya, a talented co-star and convinces her to stay away from films for the sake of family. Banjara, though is something of a philanderer, bedding most of his heroines. The actress Mehnaz Elahi becomes his mistress. At the pinnacle of his success as a Bollywood star, Banjara is enticed to join politics and he wins the election easily (from his politician father's constituency). However to his dismay he finds that the party has no significant role for him and he languishes in the back benches in the parliament. Meanwhile Banjara makes a film, Mechanic. This film is Banjara's first flop. Sometime later Banjara is implicated in a money-laundering scandal. His party extricates him by saying that he is an irrelevant in the party's scheme of things. Banjara quits politics. The scandal has destroyed his fortune and Banjara finds that he has to seek work again. With no mainstream director or producer ready to cast him now, in desperation Banjara agrees to work in a mythological film (he hates mythologicals) called Kalki. It is on the sets of Kalki that Banjara meets his accident. Fate is not without its sense of irony. Kalki is supposed to be Banjara's comeback vehicle - one that will restore his fortunes and once again establish him solidly with his audience. Banjara's accident on the sets of Kalki sees an audience of hundreds gathered outside the hospital waiting for news on his health. Millions of others praying for his recovery from their homes.
6493890	/m/0g7jgz	Emil and the Detectives	Rod Smith		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins in Neustadt, a (fictional) provincial German town which is the home to young schoolboy Emil Tischbein. His father is dead and his mother raises him alone working as a hairdresser. She sends Emil to Berlin with 120 marks (a hairdresser's monthly salary then) to give to his grandmother and 20 marks for himself, sums that have taken some months to save from her modest earnings. On the way he is very careful not to lose the money and uses a needle to pin it to the lining of his jacket. On the train to Berlin, Emil meets a mysterious man who introduces himself as Max Grundeis. This man gives Emil mysterious chocolate and Emil falls asleep. When he wakes up, the money and Herr Grundeis are gone. Emil gets off the train in a different part of Berlin from where he intended. When he spots Herr Grundeis, he follows him. Emil dares not call the police since the local policeman in Neustadt had seen him paint the nose of a local monument red, so he feels that he is "a kind of criminal" himself. However, a local boy named Gustav offers to help. Gustav assembles 24 local children who call themselves "the detectives". After following Grundeis to a hotel and spying on him all night, Emil and the gang follow the thief to the bank. Emil gets his money back when Herr Grundeis tries to exchange the money for smaller bills. One of the boy detectives follows him into the bank and tells the bank teller that the money is stolen. Emil comes in and tries to tell the bank teller his story. He proves that the money was his by describing the holes left by the needle he used to pin the bills in the lining of his jacket. Herr Grundeis tries to run away, but Emil's new friends cling onto him until a police officer, alerted by Emil's cousin Pony Hütchen, arrives. Once arrested, Herr Grundeis is found out to be a member of a gang of bank robbers. Emil receives a reward of 1000 marks for capturing Herr Grundeis. After everything is straightened out, Emil's grandmother says that the moral of the story is: "Never send cash – always use postal service."
6494436	/m/0g7kcs	The Ninja	Eric Van Lustbader	1980-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 It is initially set in Japan following the end of World War II and follows the story of Lustbader's hero Nicholas Linnear, a man raised by Anglo-Chinese parents. As a youth, Linnear is introduced to the world of aikido, kenjutsu, and iai-jutsu at a local dojo of the Itto Ryu also attended by his cruel and violent older cousin Saigō. Linnear is a natural and soon becomes adept, much to the annoyance of Saigō. During a training exercise Nicholas and Saigō duel and Nicholas defeats him. Saigō is enraged and leaves swearing revenge. When they next meet Saigō is a considerably more skilled martial artist than Linnear and defeats him quickly. Later we learn Saigō has joined a Kuji-kiri ryu in order to learn black ninjutsu and has become a ninja. Linnear himself soon becomes introduced to Aka i ninjutsu, or the red, ostensibly "good" side of ninjutsu, through the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu. The ninja are introduced not as magical or almost mythical people, but rather as supreme martial artists who have reached the highest level and seek to progress further. It is suggested that by becoming ninja they strive to advance to an even higher plane, gaining skills such as haragei, or sensing the surrounding world in a different manner. However, we soon learn this is not without a high personal cost. Many years later, Linnear has moved to America and leads a peaceful academic existence. After quitting his job in advertising, he meets a beautiful, if disturbed, woman called Justine with whom he falls in love. This peace is shattered when a prominent local businessman is murdered in an extremely unusual manner (by a poisoned ninja shuriken). The local police are baffled and consult Nicholas as he is known to be an authority on oriental studies. Linnear quickly realises that a ninja is the murderer and the next target is his new girlfriend's father, Raphael Tomkin, whom he begins working for as a bodyguard, although not without persuasion. Linnear also befriends Lew Croaker, a local detective. Linnear's investigations reveal Saigō is the ninja and this puts him on a deadly collision course with his older cousin.
6499551	/m/0g7r0y	The Highway Men			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jase (Jason Mason) works as a lagger, one of a gang of labourers considered "too dumb to draft" into the army and thus conscripted into labour on public works. His group has the task of connecting a new nuclear-power station to the grid in the Highlands of Scotland, which have become colder and sparsely inhabited due to climate-change. This takes place against the backdrop of a long-running war between China and the West, which started due to an air-rage incident when a Chinese businessman, under stress due to a smoking-ban, got mistaken for a terrorist. Jase and his fellow laggers encounter a hitchhiker named Ailiss, whom Jase identifies as one of a group of New Age Settlers (also known as crusties or bandits), people who foresee the imminent end of modern society and who have retreated to a semi-hidden rural commune. However, their presence worries the authorities, who become concerned about the security of their nuclear-power station. Believing that they have inadvertently set the settlers up for arrest or worse, three laggers travel to the commune to warn them. Discovering the commune under attack, they accidentally defeat the government forces by allowing their truck to crash into and destroy a helicopter. Jase finds himself acclaimed a hero by the settlers, and decides to join them.
6501211	/m/0g7slj	The Pentagon Spy	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Valuable antique weathervanes are being stolen in the Pennsylvania Dutch country. A Navy employee removes a top secret document from the Pentagon and then goes missing. Fenton Hardy, their father, is assigned to find the man and the document. The Hardy brothers discover the connection between to those two seemingly unrelated cases.
6501559	/m/0g7t3c	The Apeman's Secret	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys investigate the disappearance of an eighteen-year-old girl suspected of joining a sinister religious cult. A few days later the boys get an offbeat assignment from a comic book publisher: The real life double of his character, Apeman, is turning up everywhere and causing considerable damage. Frank and Joe tackle both cases and uncover an intricate scheme by a clever gang of crooks.
6501748	/m/0g7tdn	The Mummy Case	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 When five Egyptian statuettes are stolen from a museum, the Hardy Boys travel to exotic Egypt. En route, the boys are asked to safeguard a mysterious mummy and find themselves tangled in a web of international intrigue. On the Nile, the young detectives uncover a secret hiding place with countless stolen treasures and realize they must get to the police fast! it is dumb book
6501854	/m/0g7thf	Mystery of Smugglers Cove	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 A painting is stolen, and the Hardy Boys are suspects. Determined to find the artwork, the young detectives fly to Florida, where they disguise themselves and join a group of sinister smugglers. Though the painting fails to appear, an important clue sends the boys on a perilous trek through the Everglades. Threatened at every turn by greedy enemies, the Hardys fight a tricky and powerful battle to expose the truth.
6501961	/m/0g7tml	The Stone Idol	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 When an ancient stone idol disappears, the Hardy Boys are off on another fast-paced adventure. It's a mystery that takes the boys from a primitive village in the Andes Mountains to Antarctica and finally to Easter Island. By using their fine investigative skills, the Hardy Boys find that the mystery of the stone idol is not what it seems.
6501981	/m/0g7tn8	The Vanishing Thieves	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Chet Morton's cousin, Vern, is on his way to California to find a rare and valuable coin mysteriously missing from his uncle's bank vault. When he stops in Bayport, his brand-new car is stolen. The Hardys take on a double mystery-and double danger as they head for the West Coast to investigate this sinister mystery.this is what the back of the book says.
6502065	/m/0g7tqp	The Outlaw's Silver	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy Boys are given clues which send them in search of the treasure hidden by the Outlaw of the Pine Barrens.
6502154	/m/0g7ttg	Submarine Caper	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On a visit to Germany the Hardy brothers investigate the theft of plans for a newly invented submarine and the mysterious disappearance of valuable coins and paintings.
6502845	/m/0g7vdk	Love for Lydia	H. E. Bates			 Lydia Aspen, a seemingly shy girl from a wealthy but isolated background, is encouraged by her aunts, her new carers, to discover the delights of growing up. They entrust her education to Mr Richardson, the young apprentice for Evensford's local newspaper, who is sent to their house to "get a story" about the recent death of Lydia's father. Richardson's access to the Aspens is unusual, as they are rarely seen by anyone from the town and hide behind their stone walls and perimeter of trees; introducing Lydia to the town's inhabitants gives Richardson a great sense of pride. Visiting the Aspen estate also allows Richardson the chance to escape from the great engulfing vacuum of Evensford, with its endless stretch of factory roofs and back alleys. As Lydia and Richardson spend more time together, he realises that his initial concept of Lydia was wrong, that she is far from being shy, and is often impetuous and demanding and enjoys captivating the young men who become her companions. Richardson soon discovers that his promise to love her, no matter what she does to him, is going to push him beyond the pain and feelings he thinks he is capable of experiencing.
6504754	/m/0g7y47	The Broken Commandment	Vincent McDonnell	1906	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The basic plot concerns a school teacher named Ushimatsu Segawa (family name written last) who struggles with a commandment given to him by his late father. He is never to reveal his burakumin background, which his father had tried so hard to conceal as well. Ushimatsu idolizes Rentarou Inoko, a burakumin rights' activist and successful writer (particularly considering the social position given to those considered burakumin). Ushimatsu wishes to reveal his background to Rentarou, as his need to hide away part of himself in order to be accepted by society in general leads to his feeling constricted by this superficial identity, and to his desiring to form a more meaningful connection with Rentarou through their common experience. This novel also touches on the dangerous, destructive nature of gossip, and questions society's inability to accept what is not understood. It attempts to build understanding and empathy for this group of people at a time (the novel's publication's) when a great deal of prejudice still existed towards this group.
6504819	/m/0g7y8c	Glory in Death			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 It has been about four months since the events of Naked in Death, as Eve finds the body of famous Prosecuting Attorney Cicely Towers on the night of May 2. Eve returns to Cop Central to find that Commander Whitney was very good friends with Towers, having started out together when they were very young. Due to this fact, he has personally arranged that Eve be primary. Eve therefore interviews the commander on the spot, and he responds badly, telling her that Cicely was family, something she wouldn't understand; though he apologizes, this sets the tone for their relationship throughout the rest of the book and the next. C. J. Morse, a reporter at Nadine Furst's station, calls Eve afterwards, pestering her with details about the case and a possible connection to Roarke. Later, Eve struggles between going back to her own apartment or Roarke's house; she eventually gives in and goes to Roarke's. At Roarke's home, Summerset greets her caustically, ironically remarking that he had no idea if she had intended to return. Eventually, Roarke joins Eve in the bath, and tells her he loves her. Eve does not reply; irritated, he changes the subject to the Towers case and the fact that Roarke has had business dealings with Towers, which Eve construes to be possibly illegal. Roarke brings up Eve's refusal to move in with him and commit to their relationship. Later that night, while Eve is sleeping, Roarke reorganizes and sells all of his remaining illegal businesses. The next morning, C. J. Morse implies that there is a cover-up involved in Towers' death by Eve and Whitney. The extra publicity irritates Eve, particularly because since Naked in Death and her relationship with Roarke, she has unwillingly become very famous. It is another source of tension between her and Roarke. Afterwards, Roarke leaves on business to Australia and Eve revenges herself against Morse by feeding the Towers story to Nadine Furst. Eve goes to a club nearby the scene of the crime, the Down and Dirty. Here she meets Crack, the proprietor, who mistakes her for a stripper. He gives her enough information (for cash) to track down where Towers had apparently scheduled a meeting. Eve finds out that Towers had had an umbrella that night, which was not recovered. Ryan Feeney has been unofficially instructed by the commander to aid the case. Feeney comments on how glamorous Eve looks in the media when out with Roarke, then further prods by making cracks about how married they seem. Later, Nadine overhears Roarke tell Eve that he loves her and bothers her about it as well. Eve is uncomfortable with Roarke's feelings, feeling pressured to return them. After some non-progression in the case, Eve returns to her own apartment; that night, Roarke surprises her in her sleep, having returned from Australia. The morning after, Roarke is struggling to control his resentment over the fact that Eve had not returned to his home. On their separate ways out, Roarke presents Eve with an enormous diamond that he bought impulsively at an auction in Australia. Terrified of what it represents, Eve starts a fight with Roarke, which he ends with an ultimatum for her to commit fully to their relationship. At Towers' funeral are her children, David and Mirina Angelini, their father, and oddly enough, Morse. Also at the funeral is Roarke, who tells Eve that Mirina's fiance is hiding a gambling and prostitution scandal. Eve researches it and discovers that Roarke sold the casino where it took place the day after Towers' death. Roarke refuses to tell her that he did it for her. Another victim is found, murdered by the same MO, an actress named Yvonne Metcalf, whose shoe is missing. C. J. Morse is already on the scene, filming the woman's dead body. He snidely informs Eve that Metcalf used to have a relationship with Roarke. Unable to find any connections between the victims, Eve heads to Dr. Charlotte Mira's office; Mira tells Eve that the killer hates women and wants to be famous, hence going after women who have what he wants. Mira also points out that these two women had a connection with Roarke; offended, Eve asks her if she thinks that Roarke is the killer. Mira tells Eve that she is not in love with a murderer. Eve tells her that she's having flashbacks of her time in Dallas. After trying to relax, Eve heads to Roarke's house, bypasses Summerset by elbowing him, and makes her way to Roarke's office, ostensibly to interview him about Metcalf. The two have a hostile interview; finally, Eve turns to leave. Roarke locks the door, but before he can say anything, Eve turns to him, shows that she's wearing the diamond (which she will wear underneath her clothing for the rest of the series), tells him that she'll move in with him, and that she loves him. Eve tells Roarke that the killer is stalking famous women. He is unhappy to find that Eve has decided to capitalize on this by becoming bait. Nadine promises to help this by delivering as much media attention as possible, but the scheme doesn't work. Roarke, who has to leave on another business trip, surprises Eve with her own suite of the house, which he has converted (partly with furniture from her apartment) into her own home office, adjoining his. Eve has a surfeit of leads: Randall Slade's gambling debts, David Angelini's (Towers' son) business failures and own gambling debts, and a mysterious transfer of two hundred thousand dollars from Mrs. Whitney to David. The commander is furious when she and Feeney tell him they have to interview his wife. Upset, she returns to what is now her and Roarke's home and invites Mavis over. Mavis's arrival shocks Summerset (whom Eve led to believe that she was inviting over another man), but surprisingly enough, he likes Mavis very much and for the rest of the books, is unusually kind and attentive to her. That night, one of Nadine's editors, Louise Kirski, goes out in Nadine's hooded raincoat and is murdered; C. J. Morse finds her body. At the scene of the crime is Officer Delia Peabody, the attending. It becomes quite clear that Nadine was the intended victim. Security tapes show that David Angelini was at the scene of the crime; further research reveals that he had a failed business deal with Yvonne Metcalf. During interview, he tries to bribe her; he also says that he had seen Louise Kirski get murdered before running away. Believing him the murderer but without physical evidence, she arrests him for some minor charges. Whitney asks her to release David on his own recognizance, but she denies him; he tells her she lacks compassion and dismisses her. A search of Angelini's house uncovers a long-handled blade spotted with blood; after seeing the knife, Marco Angelini falsely confesses to the murder, in an attempt to take the blame for his son. However, he sticks to his story in interview, even when Whitney personally interrogates him. Whitney finally realizes the stress and anger he's subjected Eve to and tries to alleviate the situation, and after Mirina Angelini interrupts them, he tries to apologize, but Eve rejects it and leaves. Eve and Roarke have a night in Mexico; on their return, Eve finds that the lab has tested David's knife as being negative for the murder weapon. The new police chief, Harrison Tibble, tells her to release David and Marcus on lack of evidence. He adds that that there is too much emotion involved in this case, lightly censuring both her and Whitney. Afterwards, Eve finds out that Nadine is missing. Eve reviews Morse's police interview and realizes that he lied about how he found Louise Kirski's body. Further research incriminates him as having possibly murdered his mother. At the studio, however, Morse is missing. Eve requests Peabody as her backup, and they search Morse's apartment, where Peabody finds the missing umbrella and shoe. Waiting for news on Morse or Nadine, Eve is stuck at Roarke's fundraiser when Summerset informs her of a private call, which turns out to be Morse, holding Nadine hostage. He gives her six minutes to make it to Central Park; she leaves without telling anyone, and when Roarke realizes that Eve is gone, he replays Eve's last call and leaves to follow her. During the fight with Morse, Eve miscalculates and gives him the upper hand. Before he can kill her, Roarke intervenes and saves her, and the knife instead stabs Morse in the throat. (It is not clear whether or not this was accidental or intentional on Roarke's part.) Roarke proposes to Eve as they walk away from the scene. In Immortal in Death, Morse is supposedly standing trial for his murder when he's very clearly dead at the end of this book. Part of Immortal in Death supposedly takes place in May, which is impossible as it is June at the end of this book.
6508429	/m/0g81s_	Nymphomation	Jeff Noon	1997-10-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jaz, a physics student working in his parents' Indian restaurant, earns extra money by constructing his own short-lived blurbflies and selling them. He manages to capture and dissect one of AnnoDomino's blurbflies - getting bit in the process - but finds only organic gloop inside. Daisy Love, a mathematics student living above Jaz's restaurant, is contacted by her father Jimmy, who first interested her in mathematics by teaching her dominoes. Jimmy reveals he was at school with Professor Max Hackle. In the university computers, Daisy finds papers written by Hackle on probability and statistics, as well as bizarre theories about breeding numbers (nymphomation) and love labyrinths: computer mazes where information packages with more love for the pathways can increase the odds of finding the centre. Daisy learns her father was part of a group called Number Gumbo (including Paul Malthorpe, Max Hackle, Susan Prentice and Georgie Horn) who regularly gathered to play dominoes. After Hackle invented randominoes - dominoes with constantly shifting numbers that set only when the pieces are played - former loser Georgie Horn invariably won. Jaz shows Daisy the blurbfly 'gloop', which he christens Vaz, demonstrating how it acts as a universal lubricator. When examined, Vaz is revealed as a form of artificial life, a constantly replicating nymphomation. His bite has become infected, and blurbflies are attracted to him and do his bidding. Professor Hackle believes AnnoDomino is murdering the naturally lucky people in an attempt to breed out good luck. He gathers a group called the Dark Fractal Society with the purpose of destroying the lottery, including Jaz, Joe Crocus, DJ Dopejack, and Sweet Benny Fenton. The group uses Vaz to break into AnnoDomino's computerised list of winners, where they discover that Celia Hobart, a child living on the street, keeps winning half-match dominoes. She has a homeless man named Eddie Irwell buy them for her. Eddie ends up arrested for cheating, and is delivered to the House of Chances - the AnnoDomino headquarters - where the company determines he must have an accomplice, as he lacks the genetic trait of being lucky. Joe Crocus and Daisy Love find Celia in a beggars' lair, alongside the dead body of Eddie Irwell, and take her to Max Hackle's house for testing. This is observed by undercover cop Inspector Crawl. Jazir realizes that somehow the naturally lucky repeat winners must be transmitting something through their hands to the dominoes. Separately, DJ Dopejack x-rays the dominoes and discovers that the dominoes' innards remain alive even after the numbers have set. Max Hackle tells Daisy Love more about his past with the Number Gumbo group: The computer Hackle Maze wanderers became more intelligent and started to breed as nymphomation after being given DNA structures. The group built a physical maze in the cellars of Hackle's house as an analogue of the computer Hackle Maze - Georgie Horn would wander this maze while hooked up to the computer maze; the original 'lucky bleeder' his brainwaves affected the information packet wanderers - the wanderer linked to Georgie is nicknamed Horny George. In time the others followed Georgie in hooking themselves up to the Hackle Maze. To increase the knowledge of the nymphomation Georgie initiated a math ritual where he would make love with Susan Prentice while they are connected to the maze, but Paul Malthorpe joins them, killing Georgie in an act of erotic asphyxiation, and infecting the nymphomation with a cocktail of sex and death. The winning domino numbers come up as a double blank - the 'Joker Bone' booby prize where the winner is the loser. The winner, Nigel Zuze, tries to escape Manchester, but is apprehended by a skeletal figure accompanied by a blurbfly called Horny George, is bitten and taken over. The infected Zuze drives to DJ Dopejack's house where Dopejack is in turn infected, before he himself kills Zuze. Sweet Benny Fenton, visiting Dopejack, is also infected by Horny George. Jazir tells Daisy that he is in contact with Miss Sayer, and that his own blurbfly infection is leading to a greater connection with the creatures, with Jazir sensing that some of them want to be liberated from the AnnoDomino company. Jazir can also see through the blurbflies' eyes, and senses something bad has happened to DJ Dopejack. Sweet Benny Fenton returns to the Dark Fractal Society, and rather than infect Joe Crocus with the Joker nymphomation instead chooses to stab himself in the heart outside the gates of the House of Chances. He is visited in hospital by Max Hackle, and Fenton bites and infects Hackle with the Joker nymphomation before he dies. Daisy uses vaz to hack into DJ Dopejack's computer harddrive, where she finds a last message from the infected Dopejack. Joe Crocus and Celia decipher the message, which reveals how Zuze won the Joker and passed it on to Dopejack; also the real identity of Mr Millions is an old member of Miss Sayer's maths class called Adam Jagger. The rest of the Dark Fractal Society leave Max Hackle and take up residence at DJ Dopejack's old house. Miss Sayer comes through on Dopejack's computer screen and helps unlock information stored there, which leads the Dark Fractal Society to deduce that Georgie Horn's information packet is the Joker, and that Adam Jagger (aka Mr Millions) is the real name of Frank Scenario. The Joker nymphomation has been mutating and carrying the knowledge of each of its victims through to the next. Infected with the knowledge of the previous victims Max Hackle goes to The House of Chances to confront Mr Millions, where he is expected. The remains of the Dark Fractal Society return to Max Hackle's deserted house, where they try again to win the weekly domino game. Aided by the online presence of Miss Sayer, Joe Crocus activates the computer Hackle Maze, and Jimmy Love gives him a 'Theseus' equation designed to sterilize the nymphomation. Celia Hobart tells Daisy Love about her life before she ran away, how she had a sister called Alice who used to fantasize she was the heroine of Lewis Carroll's Alice books (see Noon's Automated Alice) and how Celia left home to look for her parrot Whippoorwhill who flew out of her house when Alice left the window open. Celia asks Daisy to give Jazir one of Whippoorwhill's feathers for luck. When Daisy goes to Jazir, to give him the feather, she finds him completely engulfed in a mass swarm of blurbflies. Jazir's blurbflies are infected with the Theseus virus. Covered with the blurbs Jazir flies out of the window. Daisy and Jimmy begin to play dominoes, Jimmy hooked up to the Hackle Maze and controlling his own wanderer, while online Miss Sayer ensures the maze duplicates the AnnoDomino maze. As Max Hackle heads towards his meeting with Mr Million and Jazir enters the House of Chances with the help of the blurblfies they both become visible as icons in the Hackle Maze. The Hackle Maze becomes unstable as it starts to constantly mutate, but Jimmy and Daisy match and lock onto it by shifting play to their set of randominoes. The TV show starts and Tommy Tumbler appears in the maze. Hackle becomes lost in the maze and kills the Horny George blurbfly, which bites him as he dies. Time in the maze becomes fluid as Daisy and Jimmy desperately try to keep up. Hackle encounters Cookie Luck in the maze and time shifts, sending him back to the start. The computers in the Hackle house freeze as Max Hackle meets Mr Million/Frank Scenario/Adam Jagger. Adam reveals that he was jealous of Paul Malthorpe, who along with Miss Sayer came to him requesting funding to continue the Hackle Maze experiments. Jagger drags Hackle to a pit where the blurbflies deposit and feed dreams to the 'Domino Beast', which in turn excretes dominoes to be collected by the blurbs. The Domino Beast itself is a mutant containing the twin forms of both Paul Malthope and Miss Sayer, who ask Hackle for help. Hackle wrestles with Jagger, and they both fall into the Beast's pit. Jazir also enters the pit and feeds the Theseus infected blurbflies (and Whippoorwhill's feather) to the Domino Beast. Back at the Hackle household the computers come back online and Joe Crocus activates the Theseus equation which kills the Domino Beast; at the same time Daisy wins the game of dominoes with her father with a double-six - the same number on the last domino that the Domino Beast excretes before it dies. Celia's domino also freezes on the winning double-six number: she has won the lottery and so becomes the new Mr Million. Jazir retrieves Whippoorwhill's feather from the remains of the Domino Beast. Jagger is dropped from a height by the blurbflies and is killed. All over the city the dominoes hatch and split open, as they are revealed to be eggs: from them come a swarm of new blurbflies, spreading dreams throughout the city and beyond. Jimmy reveals to Daisy why she is a natural player - she is not his daughter after all, but Georgie Horn's, conceived at the moment of his death as he took part in the nymphomation sex ritual with Daisy's mother. Joe Crocus rushes to claim Celia's winning domino bone, only to find everyone has won the double-six. Jazir gives Celia Hobart back her Whippoorwill feather.
6510045	/m/0g83q5	Run, River	Joan Didion			 The novel is both a portrait of a marriage and a commentary on the history of California. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them (murder and betrayal) is suggested as an epilogue to the pioneer experience.
6512160	/m/0g8629	The Doll People	Ann M. Martin		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This children's tale is about a china doll named Annabelle, who is eight years old but has existed for one hundred years. The book is set in the present time period and is told in third person. Annabelle and her family belong to Kate Palmer. The dolls can move, talk, and play the miniature piano in their house but always return to the same spot they started from when a human approaches. The consequence of being seen moving is being "frozen" for twenty-four hours, also called Doll State. If a doll does something especially incriminating, the doll is "frozen" forever, called Permanent Doll State, or PDS. Kate's sister Nora receives a doll house and plastic doll family named the Funcrafts. The Funcrafts' daughter is Tiffany and she becomes Annabelle's best friend. In the book Annabelle and her friend Tiffany form a group called Society for Exploration and Location of Missing People (or SELMP for short), when Annabelle finds her Auntie Sarah's Journal. Auntie Sarah has been missing for 45 years and has not been seen or heard from in all that time. Annabelle and Tiffany become determined to find her. Using the clues from the journal, they deduce she is stuck somewhere, perhaps in the attic, so they go on a journey and successfully locate her. The doll family is happily reunited once again.
6516037	/m/0g8c2k	Zyword				 Zyword is an unbalanced dimensional structure held by three connection spells called Dawn, Deep, and Omega. Since these spells are unstable, Zyword is vulnerable to complete chaos. That's exactly what happens when the three Goddesses of Zyword betray its citizens and cast them under a spell that could cause them all to die in an eternal sleep. Lunatia Araimel, a 14-year-old spell decipherer, and her 15-year-old friend, Roddy Lederide are the only ones that are able to escape from Araimel as the spell locks everyone in ice. Luna and Roddy meet up with a messenger named Zera, who came to the silent sector of Araimel to see what had happened. Not too long after, Luna, Roddy, and Zera are in danger of being killed by monsters called spell-controlled soldiers. Luna is able to defeat the spell monsters, but then, right after, she learns the horrible truth about these monsters—they were just innocent human soldiers manipulated by magic. One of the three Goddesses, Arienna, had magically manipulated these soldiers in order to kill the saviors of Zyword. All of the humans inside the monsters are violently attacked and killed by the forces of magic—except for one, who happens to be a teenage boy with thousands of spells encrypted on his body. Luna and Roddy keep watch over the boy until he dies—but then the boy awakens when Roddy is under attack and fights of Roddy's attackers. It is revealed early in the story that Luna has been gifted with the Goddesses' Blessing. Little does Luna know that this blessing is actually also a curse put upon her since she was just a child. Luna remembers her childhood love, a young man named Deke Diranoia, and swears that she will rescue him from the curse. However, will these tenacious teenage spell casters be able to free all who have been ensnared by the Goddesses' curse or will Zyword just plunge into doom?
6516897	/m/0g8dd4	The Oracle, by Catherine Fisher			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Oracle is set in a fictional world, in the middle of a terrible drought. The Archon, the god-on-earth, has been called by the god to die, in order to bring rain to the land. Mirany is the bearer-of-the-god, one of the Nine priestesses who attend the god and his various incarnations. Her duty as Bearer is to hold the god in scorpion form in a bronze bowl. The god is fickle, and occasionally claims the Bearer's life. This terrifies Mirany. As the procession taking the Archon to his death reaches the final destination, the top of a Ziggurat in the City of the Dead, the Archon slips Mirany a note, telling her that the Oracle of the god is being betrayed, and the Speaker is corrupt. The Speaker is the most senior member of the Nine, and relays messages from the god, which he delivers via the Oracle. The Archon is killed by the scorpion the god inhabits, carried by Mirany. Secretly, Mirany does not believe in the god. She sees him as a lie, used by the Nine to gain favor. However, this changes when he begins to speak directly into her mind. Mirany discovers a plot by Hermia, the Speaker, and the General Argelin, to control the land, and that the Archon's death was arranged by the two so that they could choose the new Archon, a young boy, and use him as a puppet. Mirany, with the help of the previous Archon's musician Oblek, and Seth, an ambitious scribe, must find the new Archon, and instate him before Hermia and Argelin can.
6517341	/m/0g8fc6	King Horn				 The hero, named Horn, is the son of King Murry of Suddene and Queen Godhild. Suddene lies by sea, and is ruled by King Murry until he is killed by Saracen invaders. The throne eventually passes to Murry's son Horn, who defeats the Saracen occupiers with the aid of an army of Irish knights. The father of the fifteen-year old Horn is killed when their country is invaded by Saracens, and Horn is captured along with his band of companions, including his two dearest friends, Athulf and Fikenhild. His newly widowed mother flees to a solitary cave. The emir of the Saracens, impressed by the beauty of Horn, sets him and his companions adrift in a boat. In time, they reach the land of Westernesse, where they are taken in by King Ailmar. Upon reaching manhood, Horn and the king's daughter, Rymenhild, fall in love and become betrothed; Sir Athelbrus, the castle steward is entrusted by the princess as her go-between. The princess gives Horn a ring as a token of their betrothal. Having been made a knight, Sir Horn defends the land of Westernesse from the Saracens. Fikenhild, secretly eaten up with envy of Horn, discovers the betrothal, and informs the king, saying that Horn was seeking to usurp the throne. Horn is exiled on pain of death. Before he leaves he tells his beloved that should he not return in seven years she should feel free to marry another. He sails for Ireland where he takes service with King Thurston under a false name, becoming the sworn brother to the king's two sons. Here he encounters once more the Saracens responsible for his father's death, and defeats them in battle. The two princes are both slain in the fight. King Thurston, having lost both his heirs, offers to make Horn his heir, granting him the hand of his daughter, Reynild, in marriage. Horn, however, refuses to make an immediate decision. He requests instead that, after the end of seven years, if he should request his daughter the king would not refuse him, and the king agreed. Seven years pass, and Princess Rymenhild is preparing to marry King Modi of Reynes. She sends letters to Horn, begging him to return and claim her as his bride. One of these letters finally reached him. Horn, much upset by what he had read, asked the messenger to return to the princess and tell her that he would soon be there to rescue her from her hated bridegroom. The messenger, however, was drowned in a storm on his way back to Westerness, and the message never reached her. Horn reveals to King Thurston his true identity and history, and informs him that he is returning to Westernesse to claim his betrothed. He requests that Reynild be given in marriage to his dearest friend Athulf. Having gathered a company of Irish knights, Horn sets sail for Westernesse, only to find out that the marriage had already taken place. Disguised as an old palmer, having darkened his skin, Horn infiltrates the castle of King Modi, where the wedding feast is taking place, and contrives to return to her the ring she had given him at the time of their betrothal. She sends for the "palmer" in order to discover from where he had received the ring. He tests her love for him, by claiming that he had met Horn and that he was now dead. In her grief, Rymenhild tries to slay herself with a concealed dagger. It was at this point that Horn reveales himself, and there is a joyous reunion. Horn leaves the castle and rejoins the Irish knights. The army invades the castle and King Modi and all the guests at the banquet are slain. King Ailmar is forced to give his daughter in marriage to Horn, and the wedding takes place that very night. At the wedding feast, Horn reveals to his father-in-law his true identity and history, and then vows that he would return to claim his bride once his native land of Suddene was free of the Saracen invaders. He then takes his leave of Rymenhild, and he, Athulf, and his army set sail for Suddene. Here, reinforced by many of the oppressed men of Suddene, they threw out the hated invaders, and Horn was crowned King. Back in Westernesse, Fikenhild, now a trusted servant of the king, falsely claimed that Horn was dead and demanded Rymenhild's hand in marriage, which was granted to him, and preparations for the wedding took place. He imprisons Rymenhild in a newly constructed fortress on a promontory, which at high tide was surrounded by the sea. Horn, having had a revealing dream, gathers together Athulf and a few chosen knights, and sets sail for Westernesse. They arrive at the newly-built fortress, where Sir Arnoldin, Athulf's cousin, reveals the situation to them. Horn and his companions disguise themselves as musicians and jugglers, and make their way to the castle. Outside the walls they begin to play and sing. Hearing a lay of true love and happiness, Rymenhild swoons with grief, and Horn is filled with remorse for having tried her constancy for so long. Throwing off their disguises, Horn and his company slay Fikenhild, taking the castle for King Ailmar, and Horn persuades Ailmar to make Sir Arnoldin his heir. On their way back to Suddene, they stop off at Ireland, where Reynild is persuaded to make Athulf her husband, and the loyal steward Sir Athelbrus is made king, King Modi having died. Having reached Suddene, the royal pair reign in happiness to the end of their days.
6522545	/m/0g8qgw	Past and Present	Thomas Carlyle		{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Book 1: Proem - Carlyle expresses his ideas about the Condition of England question in an elevated rhetorical style invoking classical allusions (such as Midas and the Sphinx) and fictional caricatures (such as Bobus and Sir Jabesh Windbag). Carlyle complains that despite England's abundant resources, the poor are starving and unable to find meaningful work, as evinced by the Manchester Insurrection. Carlyle argues that the ruling class needs to guide the nation, and supports an "Aristocracy of Talent." But in line with his concept of "hero-worship", Carlyle argues that first the English must themselves become heroic in order to esteem true heroes rather than quacks. Book 2: The Ancient Monk - Carlyle presents the history of Samson of Tottington, a 12th-century monk who became Abbot of Bury St. Edmunds, as chronicled by Jocelin of Brakelond. Carlyle describes Samson as a lowly monk with no formal training or leadership experience who, on his election to the abbacy, worked earnestly and diligently to overcome the economic and spiritual maladies that had befallen the abbey under the rule of Hugo, the former abbot. Carlyle concludes from this history that despite the monks' primitive knowledge and superstitions (he refers to them repeatedly as "blockheads"), they were able to recognize and promote genuine leadership, in contrast to contemporary Englishmen: Carlyle presents his history as the narrative of the lives of men and their deeds, rather than as a dry chronicle of external details. To this end, he repeatedly contrasts his history with the style of the fictional historian Dryasdust. Book 3: The Modern Worker Book 4: Horoscope
6524216	/m/0g8vkg	The Winter Queen	Devin Cary	1998	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The novel opens on 13 May 1876 with a university student, Pyotr Kokorin, committing suicide in the public park in front of a beautiful young noblewoman, Elizaveta von Evert-Kolokoltseva. His will leaves his large fortune to the newly opened Moscow chapter of Astair House, an international network of schools for orphan boys founded by an English noblewoman, Lady Astair. The apparently open-and-shut suicide case falls to inexperienced 20-year-old detective Erast Fandorin. He interviews Elizaveta, and immediately falls in love with her. Further investigation reveals that Kokorin was playing Russian roulette (called "American roulette" in the novel) with another university student, Akhtyrtsev. Fandorin tails Akhtyrtsev, who leads him to a sensuous dark-haired woman, Amalia Bezhetskaya, whom Fandorin recognizes from a picture in Kokorin's room. He follows Bezhetskaya to her home, where she spends her time toying with the many men who come to visit. At Bezhetskaya's home, Fandorin meets Count Zurov, an Army officer that Amalia seems fond of, and sees Akhtyrtsev again. Akhtyrtsev and Fandorin leave Amalia's house together to go drinking, and Akhtyrtsev reveals to Fandorin that the Russian roulette game between him and Kokorin was Bezhetskaya's idea. Just as the mystery of Kokorin's suicide seems to be solved, a mysterious white-eyed assassin stabs Akhtyrstev to death and tries to kill Fandorin, only to fail when his knife bounces off the corset Fandorin is wearing. As he kills Akhtyrtsev, the white-eyed man hisses one word: "Azazel". The murder of Akhtyrtsev brings a great deal of attention to what had seemed a routine case. Fandorin gets a new boss, Ivan Brilling, a sophisticated detective familiar with modern investigative techniques. Brilling believes that the murder is the work of a terrorist organization called "Azazel" that is operating in Moscow. He sends Fandorin off to interview Lady Astair, whose Astair House has now acquired Akhtyrtsev's fortune along with Kokorin's, because both students left all their assets to Astair House after Amalia Bezhetskaya encouraged them to do so. Lady Astair is helpful to Fandorin, who leaves her school convinced of her innocence and impressed by her charitable mission. Next, Fandorin investigates Count Zurov. After Fandorin beats Zurov at cards, the count challenges him to a duel, but it turns out to be a practical joke on Fandorin, and the count befriends him. Zurov, believing Fandorin to be as much in love with Amalia as he is, and wishing that Fandorin will win her heart so that Zurov can let her go, reveals to Fandorin that she is staying at the Winter Queen Hotel in London. Fandorin journeys to London, where he tracks down Bezhetskaya to a house in town. He sneaks into her room after she leaves it and finds a paper that appears to be a list of Azazel members all over the world, many of whom hold high ranks in government or the military. Fandorin is about to leave when Bezhetskaya catches him in her room. They struggle, a shot goes off in the dark, and Fandorin flees, believing that he has killed Amalia. He has not, however, because Amalia and her henchmen kidnap Fandorin from his hotel room. Amalia leaves her henchmen to kill Fandorin, and they are about to do so when Count Zurov appears out of nowhere and saves Fandorin's life. Zurov admits to Fandorin that jealousy over Amalia led him to follow Fandorin to London. Fandorin assures Zurov that he is no rival for Amalia, and Zurov leaves to either kill her or "take her away somewhere". Meanwhile, Fandorin hurriedly leaves for St. Petersburg to intercept the letter that Amalia has mailed to her Azazel contact there. He succeeds, and sees the letter delivered to Gerald Cunningham, a teacher at the Moscow Astair House. Fandorin reports this to Brilling, and they go together to arrest Cunningham--but Brilling shoots Cunningham dead, and reveals to Fandorin that he is also an agent of Azazel. Fandorin and Brilling struggle, and Brilling is killed. Fandorin travels back to Moscow to continue the investigation. While on the way, he meets Elizaveta on the train, and finds out that she is as smitten by him as he is by her. Upon arrival in Moscow, he once again goes to see Lady Astair and asks her if she knows anything about Cunningham's activities with Azazel. While talking to Lady Astair, Fandorin suddenly realizes that Cunningham was too young to have started Azazel, and that Lady Astair is the real criminal mastermind. Lady Astair confesses to Fandorin, admitting that she is the head of Azazel. She tells him that her Astair Houses are part of a plot to train bright young orphan boys to serve her and her group, which plans to eventually take over the world. She then tells one of her servants, the German professor Blank, to give Fandorin a lobotomy so that they may retrain him as a member of Azazel, but Fandorin escapes and confronts Lady Astair, who is waiting for him with a bomb. Lady Astair traps him with her, but after Fandorin begs for his life, she lets him go in return for a promise to not hunt down her "children" from the Astair Houses. Lady Astair then appears to commit suicide with her bomb. Fandorin, however, is ordered to help the campaign to root out members of Azazel in Russia, which he does. His guilt at breaking his promise mars his happiness on the day of his wedding to Elizaveta. After the newly married couple retreat to their hotel suite, a messenger brings Fandorin a package. Fandorin walks to the window and sees the messenger frantically running into a carriage driven by the white-eyed assassin that earlier tried to kill Fandorin. Fandorin jumps out his window in an attempt to arrest the killer, and thus escapes the bomb, which blows up and kills his young bride. The novel ends with a dazed Fandorin walking the streets of Moscow, his hair having turned gray at the temples due to his shock over his wife's death.
6525384	/m/0g8xh3	Skinwalkers	Tony Hillerman	1986	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When an unknown assailant tries to kill Officer Jim Chee by firing a shotgun into his trailer, and three other people are found murdered in different locations around the Navajo reservation, Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police find few motives or clues except for small pieces of bone found in the bodies and in the shotgun shells used in the attempt on Chee. This leads them to conclude that the assailants and victims were involved with Navajo witchcraft, whose practitioners are called Skin-walkers. Leaphorn, a secular Navajo, rejects witchcraft as hateful superstition that has no place in Navajo mythology, but Chee, a practicing yataalii or medicine man, does not dismiss it so easily. Solving the cases requires them to find a balance between Navajo folklore and Western inductive reasoning, and to risk their lives to track down a killer before he gets to them first.
6529045	/m/0g90w9	The Icarus Hunt	Timothy Zahn	1999-08-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Prior to delivering a cargo to the nearby planet Xathru, Jordan McKell, a smuggler for a crime lord nicknamed Brother John and his shadowy boss, Mr. Antoniewicz, is on the planet Meima with his partner, Ixil, a member of an alien species called the Kalixiri. McKell is offered a job by a man named Alexander Borodin, whom he recognizes as the famous industrialist and sometime-archaeologist Arno Cameron. Cameron wants McKell to pilot the ship Icarus, which is carrying a very important cargo in its sealed storage core, to Earth. McKell accepts the job and instructs Ixil to continue on to Xathru, intending to pick him up there. He and Ixil theorize that Cameron's archaeological dig on Meima had uncovered an advanced, alien stardrive, which he intends to be brought to Earth by the Icarus. While waiting to board the Icarus, McKell becomes acquainted with the rest of the Icarus rag-tag crew, all of whom are complete strangers to him and to each other. At the last minute, they are informed that Cameron is unable to accompany them, and are forced to set out on their voyage without their employer. One of the crewers is killed in an accident a few hours later, and a series of other bizarre occurrences leads McKell to believe that they have a saboteur aboard; he begins keeping a wary eye on the crew. He stops as planned on Xathru to pick up Ixil and contact Brother John, who gives him a reluctant go-ahead to carry on with the voyage. While on Xathru, he is assaulted by a pair of strange aliens who say they want the Icarus cargo. McKell escapes and pilots the Icarus to a planet called Dorscind's World. Convinced that the Icarus is carrying something far more important than he'd originally supposed, and that they are being hunted, he lands the Icarus under a false name. He then attempts to make contact with his benefactor, "Uncle Arthur", both to inform him of his current situation and to get information from him about his crewmembers and about Cameron's activities. Before he can get a call through, he is confronted by an old acquaintance, who tells him that there is now a reward out for knowledge of his whereabouts and attempts to extort money from him in exchange for not turning him in. McKell realizes that the Icarus is being hunted by the Patth (an alien race who have a near-monopoly on the galaxy's shipping industry, due to their unique stardrives, which are several times faster than those of any other race). He becomes suspicious that the Icarus isn't carrying the recently-discovered alien stardrive; instead, he thinks the Icarus itself is the alien stardrive. If this stardrive were to remain outside Patth hands, it could spell the doom of the Patth economic empire. There are more scattered sabotage incidents aboard the ship, leading McKell to believe that one of the crewers is a Patth agent. He requests background information on all of them from Uncle Arthur, which is delivered to him when the ship stops at the planet Morsh Pon. McKell and Ixil are informed that the ship's computer tech, Tera, is in fact the daughter of Arno Cameron. They also discover that Cameron himself had been aboard the ship, hidden in the area between the inner and outer hulls; he had unexpectedly jumped ship, however, during one of the fuel stops. The Icarus successfully evades an attack off the planet Utheno, and McKell decides to make a break for Earth, outrunning the Patth by using the alien stardrive. This requires dismantling a good deal of the ship; while exploring deep inside the Icarus interior, McKell discovers by accident that the Icarus is not a stardrive at all; it is actually a stargate (a hitherto-theoretical interstellar-teleportation device), and Arno Cameron, instead of jumping ship as they had supposed, had instead been temporarily stuck at the stargate's other end. A forced landing on the planet Palmary leads to McKell being captured by the Patth; he is rescued, however, by some of the crew. They decide to take temporary refuge at the isolated planet Beyscrim. There, they are confronted by Antoniewicz, and it is revealed that Antoniewicz, through the crewmember Everett, had engineered most of the sabotage incidents, believing that McKell was no longer loyal to him and intending to bring him back into line. Then, recognizing the Icarus value, he had decided to take it for himself, and maneuvered the Icarus and its crew into coming to Beyscrim. Antoniewicz's plans are thwarted, however, with the arrival of a Kalixiri commando force that had been sent by Uncle Arthur. In the end, McKell reveals that he and Ixil are not smugglers, but instead members of a military intelligence organization who had been assigned to infiltrate Antoniewicz's operation. McKell had been on Meima under orders from Uncle Arthur, his superior, to find Cameron and help him out of whatever trouble he was in, with taking the job as the Icarus pilot a maneuver to that end; landing the Icarus on Beyscrim had merely been bait to bring Antoniewicz out of his cover. The book concludes with the crew celebrating their rescue, while Cameron makes plans for smuggling the Icarus back to Earth for research. A secondary plot thread (and a complication of the main plot) involves a chemical dependency (possibly related to a rare and fatal neurological disease) of one of the crewmen.
6529532	/m/0g91qw	The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy	Jeanne Birdsall	2005-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Penderwick family comprises Martin Penderwick and his four daughters Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty (ages 12, 11, 10, and 4). Their mother Elizabeth Penderwick died of cancer four years before the story, a few weeks after Batty was born. A Summer Tale features the family, including Hound the dog, on a three-week vacation in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, where they have rented a cottage on the beautiful estate Arundel. There the sisters befriend Jeffrey, the neglected, musically talented son of the strict and overbearing owner Mrs. Tifton.
6530708	/m/0g93j8	Sporting Chance	Elizabeth Moon	1994-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 In the aftermath of Hunting Party, the Prince was found engaged in the highly illegal and immoral sport of man-hunting. In an attempt to cover this up, Lady Cecelia and Captain Heris Serrano are enlisted by the Crown into quietly returning the prince to the capital. During the otherwise uneventful voyage, Ron notices something surprising: the Prince is far stupider than he should be as the cosseted and genengineered Registered Embryo he is, and considerably stupider than Ron remembered him being as a child. Clearly something is wrong, and poison is suggested. On Rockhouse Major, Cecelia confronts the King. He blithely dismisses her warning. Later, he mentions her discovery to one of his ministers, who repeats it to his sister, Lorenza, who hates Cecelia for following her dreams and has always wanted to get revenge; she uses the possibility of Cecelia making the poisoning of the prince as an excuse to finally carry it out. As a skilled poisoner, she is fully capable of the deed. On the space station, Heris is having the yacht overhauled and redecorated, whilst her new ex-Fleet personnel are quietly engaged procuring military-grade equipment and installing it. Brigdis Sirkin, meanwhile, has induced her lover (Amalie Yrilan) into taking up a temporary environmental tech job while Serrano decides whether to hire her or not. Towards the end of the allotted month, the smugglers balked in Hunting Party attack the two when Sirkin refuses to become their agent on the Sweet Delight, and are revealed to be Benignity agents. Before the badly injured Sirkin is rescued by Oblo and Methlin Meharry, Yrilan is killed by a sonic weapon. No sooner had this mess been cleaned up and the ship turned over to Spacenhance's redecorator than horrible news arrives from the planet: Lady Cecelia has suffered a "massive stroke". Heris is skeptical of this diagnosis, as is Brun. They maneuver to link up and begin planning how to rescue Cecelia. Cecelia in the mean time has been occasionally drifting to consciousness, and for increasing periods of time. What she hears is sufficient to prove that she is being deliberately prevented from recovering, her visual sense deliberately impaired and even worse, that she had been poisoned. Unfortunately for Cecelia, while she is not dead, she has been deemed sufficiently incapacitated that her will is being executed. In her will she had recently made a change to give the Sweet Delight to Heris, both because she was a good friend and because Heris had saved Cecelia from Admiral Lepescu on Sirialis in Hunting Party. Berenice, Cecelia's sister, had always envied her her yacht, and given the suspicious nature of Cecelia's stroke and the amendment to the will, decides to sue Heris for the yacht. With the yacht tied up in probate, Heris's options are limited. They are further limited when the King summons Heris to an audience, and quite firmly insists that she and her crew steal the Sweet Delight, and while avoiding arrest by the Fleet, discovery of their identity and also any attacks by the Benignity and their agents, take the stupid prince to the Guerini Republic to seek an antidote to the poison. Heris has little choice but to agree, and steals the yacht and busts out of the Rockhouse system at high speed. Brun and Ron take advantage of the lowered scrutiny and security (since Heris has quite visibly left, and Lorenza's agents were expecting any threat to their imprisonment of Cecelia to come from her direction) to arrange for a bunch of rowdies in hot air balloons to "visit" the long-term care facility during a festival; Cecelia is then evacuated in Brun's balloon (Ronnie having previously prepared Cecelia and had the surveillance devices put on a loop). Immediately they take her off-planet and eventually to her stable on the planet Rotterdam, where the locals like or love her. From there they begin hiring medical experts to come treat her. Heris' pickup of the prince goes badly when she proves unable to distinguish between the real prince and his clone double. The confusion is exacberated when Captain Arash Livadhi shows with a third prince whom he believes to be the real prince, but who is likewise indistinguishable. Otherwise, the trip goes smoothly, except for Sirkin, who keeps making careless mistakes and whose performance is otherwise deteriorating. As Lady Cecelia recovers and prepares to file for competency and thereby regain her estate, Brun works her way back to Rockhouse Major via low-level jobs aboard various commercial vessels; even with this ruse, she barely avoids Lorenza's hired assassins. She warns Ron and the others that Lorenza was the culprit and to be avoided. While Cecelia is regaining control, Heris leaves the three princes to the tender mercies of the Guerini medical establishment and travels back to Rotterdam to see Cecelia. After a joyful reunion, Cecelia returns to her yacht, and thence to the Guerini Republic. During this second trip to the Republic, Sirkin makes one mistake too many, and is relieved of her duties by Heris, who now suspects her of being a Benignity agent. However, merely taking her off-duty soon appears to be insufficient when a course modification puts them almost on top of a Benignity space-fleet base. When bridge computers begin malfunctioning, Heris orders the relatively new crew-member Skoterin to break out the small arms in the Security lockers against whatever Sirkin might be planning. Cecelia is convinced that Skoterin and not Sirkin is the traitor, and breaks Sirkin out of her quarters. When they (Cecelia's aide, a prince, and Sirkin) try to intercept Skoterin before she opens the lockers, they fail and are ambushed. Skoterin explains that her plan as a Benignity agent was to get revenge on Heris for killing two family members and to skillfully have it all blamed on Sirkin. When he tries to stop her from shooting Sirkin, the prince is killed. Cecelia and Sirkin are only saved when Petris attacks Skoterin from behind. The internal revolt quenched, all attention is turned to the attacking Benignity ships, now being harried by Livadhi's cruiser. Defeating two, they quickly beat a retreat to the Guerini. There Sirkin and Cecelia are treated with stunning success; Cecelia is rejuvenated to herself as she was at 40 years of age, restored in all senses and capacities. Now cured, Cecelia's next task is to punish Lorenza. She travels to the Familias Grand Council, at which event Lorenza is sure to be. The prince's death (for Cecelia is sure that the one of the three who sacrificed himself so heroically was the real prince) finally convinces the King that his policies have led to nothing but to disaster; his only course is to resign. Lorenza notices Cecelia's presence, hale and hearty and rejuvenated, and panics, fleeing wildly. She turns to the same therapist/Benignity agent who had arranged for Yrilan's death, seeking safe transportation away from the Familias; for her mistakes, the therapist gasses Lorenza to death.
6530714	/m/0g93jm	Prayers to Broken Stones	Dan Simmons		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The actual story is classic Simmons in its literary allusions, with epigraphs from Ezra Pound's Cantos; the protagonist's father is a Pound scholar with an especial interest in the Cantos (reading from it to his children), and the premise can be seen as deriving from a line in the Cantos as well. The mother of the family has died of some unspecified illness. Stricken by grief, the father bargains (heedless of the prospect of financial ruin) with the "Resurrectionists" to have his wife's corpse technologically revived. The resurrection is a hollow one, as all higher cognitive functions are irreparably damaged, although it does function somewhat autonomously. Their family is stigmatized, and the father slowly breaks down and his classes become less and less popular until he takes a sabbatical to write his long-planned work on the Cantos. He spends most of it drunk. Simon, the protagonist's brother, eventually commits suicide. A few years later, while the protagonist is at university (sponsored by the Resurrectionists, whom he has joined) the father commits suicide as well. He graduates and begins working for them and helping to spread the living dead. He does little but work, spending his free time with his resurrected family.
6530718	/m/0g93jz	Once a Hero	Elizabeth Moon	1997	{"/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Chronologically, Once a Hero directly follows Winning Colors, even overlapping partially, but the focus distinctly shifts to young Esmay Suiza, who came to prominence after successfully leading a mutiny against her traitorous captain and intervening to decisive effect in the Battle of Xavier (as Winning Colors records). Suiza is not immediately praised and feted for her heroism, however, for her actions demand official scrutiny. Thorough and complete, neither the Board of Inquiry nor the court-martial find Suiza guilty of anything, and so she is allowed to take a vacation before her next assignment. Back home on Altiplano, Esmay is honored with Altiplano's highest award, the Starmount, although she remains convinced that she was not really a hero, that it was blind luck. While talking with an old soldier who had served under her father (one of the four highest military commanders on Altiplano) and was a family friend, she learns that the nightmares and her dislike of command and horses were psychological trauma from when, as a child, she had ventured into a warzone seeking her father. She had been waylaid and molested by one of her father's subordinates; the family friend knew this sordid tale because he had been the one to kill that subordinate, whose politically connected father meant any trial was infeasible. He felt free to tell her since he assumed that Suiza's father's coverup had failed to convince Suiza that the memories were merely nightmares during an illness or fragments of her imagination. This revelation precipitates a break with her father. Meanwhile, some mendacious and greedy civilian contractors for the Fleet have agreed to carry out a job for the barbarian space-warriors of the Bloodhorde: they would take a Fleet contract to rekey the command sequences of various missiles, and when they were aboard the specified massive Deep Space Repair vessel, covertly disable its self-destruct mechanism. This job would pave the way for the Bloodhorde boarding team. By a remarkable coincidence, it is this very same DSR, the Koskiuskos ("Kos" for short) which Suiza is assigned to. After catching a resupply vehicle to the Kos, Suiza is assigned to a Major Pitak in Hulls and Architecture; Pitak immediately begins running Esmay ragged with errands and learning everything she needs to know about spaceship structural design and how to repair and fix vessels. In her spare time, Suiza slowly begins assembling a circle of friends, especially one Ensign Barin Serrano (last seen in Winning Colors hand-delivering a message to Heris Serrano from Vida Serrano before the Battle of Xavier). As the months pass by Suiza settles in; so do the traitorous civilian contractors who productively improve the hours by disabling the self-destruct without tripping the monitors. Inevitably, the Bloodhorde launches its attack, crippling the patrol ship Wraith. Wraith is repairable, but is incapable of further safe FTL jumps. So the Kos goes out to meet it, since it is in the neighborhood, although the danger of pulling the Kos out of its normal routes and so near Bloodhorde space is very real. Suiza is sent by Major Pitak to take pictures of the forward section of the hull to ascertain the full extent of the damage. Suiza discovers instead the first prong of the Bloodhorde plan: a massive mine was planted on Wraith, programmed to wait until Wraith was brought into one of the Kos's repair bays and then detonate; this would incapacitate the Kos and make it easy meat for the waiting Bloodhorde assault group. Thanks to Suiza's presence of mind, the mine is safely disarmed. But all is not well. The Bloodhorde's plan is remarkably subtle (for the Bloodhorde): though the first prong has been deflected, the second was yet to strike. After the mine is disposed of, repairs continue in earnest on the Wraith. Forward of the mine, some 25 crew members are discovered knocked out by sleeping-gas and are taken into the hospital facilities. Despite their location, open to space, they are uniformly uninjured, and eventually scattered across the Kos to help out. One interacts with Suiza. His manner strikes her as drastically unlike that of a Fleet member, and more reminiscent of commandos she had known. After making inquiries as to their location (most had vanished), whether they were injured at all like they should have been, and whether any senior Wraith officers recognize them, it is concluded that Kos has been boarded by Bloodhorde commandos seeking to capture the DSR and massively upgrade the Bloodhorde's industrial infrastructure and especially its military construction capability, greatly increasing its killing power. The captain immediately orders everybody's identification checked against their DNA and fresh IDs issued. During the change-over, the Bloodhorde kidnaps Barin Serrano, taking him as a hostage. With the Kos' FTL drive apparently broken and its self-destruct disabled, the higher-ups decide on a risky strategy of detaching the section of Kos containing most of the intruders, and ambushing the expected followup wave of Bloodhorde; while that wave was preoccupied boarding, they would attack the vessel and use it to either protect the Kos until its escorts returned with reinforcements or destroy it. During a meeting with Suiza to discuss how to suppress the commandos, the spoken-of commandos attack, cutting off most of the senior personnel with poison gas. They escape the cabin with the injured captain and link up with some personnel who had made it to the security lockers before the Bloodhorde. They conclude that to lead an effective resistance, they have to lead it from the T-1 arm of the Kos. But all the arms have been locked off from the core by the Bloodhorde. So, they decide to go EVA and go around. During the EVA excursions, the Kos is jumped through hyperspace. Led by Suiza, the crew of T-1 determine to retake the Kos and ambush their ambushers. When the intruders relax their guard of the bridge, one of the bridge crew women risks her life to re-open the doors to the core (and by extension, enabling an assault on the bridge). The prepared security teams overcome the few commandos in the core and regain control easily - most of the commandos had gone to T-4 to eliminate the resistance there. The crew in T-4 had used their grace time profitably, arranging an elaborate drama for the benefit of the commandos, intended to convince them that they were fighting - and defeating - the ill-prepared armed resistance of the Familias crew. The drama lures them to the repair bay, where (elated by their success), they don spacesuits and sortie out to welcome their warship into the repair bay. There it is trapped by an extremely strong adhesive. The two other warships dock without being trapped, and debark their crew in EVA suits. The robots used for painting vessels attack them, blinding and immobilizing them. The two still-mobile Bloodhorde ships are commandeered and the three remaining Bloodhorde are easily destroyed, and the day saved. Barin Serrano is discovered alive, but much abused in mind and body. Suiza is no less discomfited by her nightmares and anxieties. She and Barin begin going to psychiatric care. Eventually Suiza begins to work through her phobia of sexual contact and assuming leadership. She transfers to "command track" and becomes intimate with Barin.
6530724	/m/0g93k9	Rules of Engagement	Elizabeth Moon		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the end of Once a Hero, Esmay decided to pursue higher rank and command. Pursuant to this, she has transferred to a Fleet training base on the Fleet-owned planet Copper Mountain. Coincidentally, this is the same base that Brun is training at in various useful skills like escape and evasion. Simultaneously with their training, the podunk colony planet of "Our Texas" is up to its old piracy tricks using its share of the "New Texas Godfearing Militia"; it is using certain converts in the Familias to steal Fleet nuclear warheads and intercept them. Brun intends to befriend Esmay but is rejected; Esmay finds Brun to be shallow and is far too preoccupied with her staggering course load to be constantly hanging out with Brun. The final break occurs when Brun is forbidden by the base commandant and her father to participate in the field exercise which is the culmination of the Escape & Evasion course because of the scope it offers would-be assassins - already two attempts had taken place, one of which put Brun in the base hospital for a month. Brun storms down to Esmay's quarters to harangue her, accusing Esmay of not wanting to do the field exercise with her and getting her forbidden; Esmay is more than willing to reciprocate as she has learned of Brun's attempts to woo Barin away from Esmay. Brun is cut to the quick by some of the truths Esmay speaks and by her complete rejection (Brun having looked up to Esmay as a hero or almost a big sister), and leaves the base. She occupies herself travelling and inspecting various investments. Esmay is severely reprimanded for having spoken to the Speaker's daughter in such a fashion, and is assigned far away to a Search-and-Rescue (SAR) space vessel as its executive officer. After Brun leaves, the New Texas Godfearing Militia strikes, stealing the commercial hauler which is unknowingly carrying their stolen weapon; they space all the adults aboard (mutilating the women whom they describe as "abominations") and kidnapping the children and a teenaged girl named "Hazel". Brun happens to stumble on the scene (having discovered the commercial hauler's secret short cut) while the Militia was still practicing with the hauler. Against her bodyguard's better judgement, she sneaks in closer in her small yacht to see what was happening. Inevitably, the Militia notices and their warships begin maneuvering to capture the witness. Brun had not expected this, but began the complex and advanced maneuvers that would get her safely away - to discover that her chartered yacht had various safety interlocks in its computer navigation systems to prevent its users from doing anything possibly unsafe. Brun is captured by the Our Texans. As per their religious beliefs, her bodyguard is slaughtered to the man, and the Rangers decide to make Brun herself into their conception of a proper wife by having her surgically muted. She is then repeatedly gang-raped until she becomes pregnant with twins. She is transported to Our Texas and imprisoned in a maternity home while she gives birth; like all women so abducted, the plan is that she will give birth three times; if she is not dead of childbirth or executed for disobedience, she will then be auctioned off to the highest bidder to serve as perhaps the man's third or fourth wife. Records of all the proceedings are sent back to the Familias; the Ranger in charge is not completely suicidal, but believes that the threat of blowing up one of the thousands of Familias space-stations will deter any military response. Back in the Familias, suspicion and rumor (aided by less talented and jealous former classmates) and Lord Thornbuckle fasten on to Esmay as the culpable agent to blame. Somewhat fortunately for Esmay, at this unpromising juncture her great-grandmother dies. Esmay is the designated next female in the succession of the Landbride, so she inherits the title and the assets like the land. The Fleet gladly grants her leave, and her stay on Altiplano lasts just long enough for her cousin Luci to knock some sense into Esmay's head and convince her to return to Fleet and try to reconcile with Barin. She succeeds and planning for the rescue of Brun slowly proceeds; it will be timed for when Brun's twins are almost finished nursing and the time for Brun to be impregnated draws near. Presumably she will be at her best in this period. A Guerini agent will take her from the maternity facility and drive her to the spaceport. His shuttle will boost off the planet and be picked up by a Familias SAR spaceship, backed up by a decent sized task force in case the four Our Texan warships attempt to interfere. In the mean time, Brun has been preparing on her own for an escape: physically conditioning her body, brewing alcohol (to knock out her babies so their crying does not reveal her escape), and acquiring kitchen knives as weapons. The agent approaches Brun during her first practice escape, and also picks up the teenager from the merchant vessel at Brun's vigorous urging. The flight up is uneventful until the agent is offered more money by the Our Texans and changes his course to one of their warships while Hazel and Brun slept. When Brun wakes up and realizes his treachery, she kills him and seizes control of the shuttle. But the shuttle has already approached too close to the planet to escape, and she is forced to dock at an abandoned space station under heavy missile fire. The shuttle is sent on a suicide plunge into the atmosphere as a decoy, but this does not fool the Rangers, who dispatch several shuttles to destroy the station once and for all. The expert system aboard decides to help Brun and Hazel. Brun has it send a message to the Fleet SAR that she is aboard the station and not dead, and squads of neuro-enhanced space marines arrive on the station just after the three Texan shuttles unload. Another faction of Texans seize the opportunity to attempt to eliminate the first faction's troops. In the confusion, Hazel is evacuated but Esmay and Brun are blown into space by some bombs. Esmay suffers from hypoxia before the two are rescued by a space sled. By this point, the rest of the Fleet units have jumped in and easily blown the four warships guarding Our Texas. With Our Texas supine before the task force, Brun tasks Admiral Serrano with retrieving the four children captured by the Texans with Hazel. The retrieval initially goes well, as the Ranger's household, led by his first wife, cooperates, and attaches itself to Barin as their "protector". The other Rangers's successors (the Rangers themselves either dead or captured) do not intend to allow the heathens to take back children now being raised as God wants, and plan to use their stolen nuclear bombs to kill them all. With some effective help from the marines and theft of the arming keys, the threat is defused and many civilian lives saved. Esmay, Barin, and Brun are all reconciled, with the sole remaining threat being the enthusiastic media coverage.
6530744	/m/0g93k_	Winning Colors	Elizabeth Moon	1995-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 As the novel opens, things are in disarray in the Familias Regnant. Lord Kemtre's monarchy has fallen as a result of the events in Hunting Party and Sporting Chance which led to the revelation of the king's illegal use of biological clones as doubles; Lord Thornbuckle ("Bunny"; Brun's father) has taken the reins of government. Crises abound: a young and foolish Family member disappears on the fractious and restless world of Patchcock; there are concerns that the drug supply for curing aging is being adulterated by the Benignity; and other concerns that Brun is somehow in danger. The Fleet, too, is restless and ill at ease; lurking and awaiting their chance is the Benignity of the Compassionate Hand (the "Black Scratch"), which has begun preparing an invasion. The recently rejuvenated and cured Lady Cecelia de Marktos has decided to channel her recently acquired youthful energy into breeding horses, using the Sweet Delight (legally now Heris's as a result of a bequest in Cecelia's will which was executed whilst Cecelia was incapacitated, but de facto Cecelia's) to visit the frontier world of Xavier (which specializes in horses), with the added complication of Brun aboard working as a low-level apprentice technician. Meanwhile, Ron and George are dispatched to the Guerini Republic. Ostensibly, they are there to get Ron away from his lover Raffaele, whose family refuses to countenance their marriage, and also to retrieve some information about Cecelia's treatment there. The true reason they are there is that, at the request of Bunny, they are taking some of the suspected adulterated rejuvenation drugs to be compared against the original known good Guerini products. While waiting on the test results, they accidentally run into the manumitted clones of the dead prince; to protect their secret, the two surviving clones take Ron and George prisoner, until the trailing Raffaele tracks them down. The clones need their help because the former king is also trying to track them down, as they are his only surviving sons, in a sense. Ron, George, and Raffaele help the clones assume new identities in exchange for them freeing Ron and George. Freed, they learn that the Guerini had discovered that the rejuvenation drugs, supposedly of Guerini manufacture, were in reality being shoddily produced on Patchcock and fraudulently sold at the higher price. Meanwhile, Heris has been quietly ferrying around Cecelia and a special guest: Livadhi's secret weapon, a remarkable scan technician named Koutsoudas. A raider out of the anarchic and barbaric conglomerate known as Aethar's World visits Xavier and is blown into space dust by the Sweet Delight. Unfortunately, this display of martial expertise is insufficient to intimidate the Benignity observer, who reports back that Xavier has only minimal defenses; this report initiates the invasion, as Xavier is strategically situated. Heris's desperate pleas for assistance against the coming strike to the local Fleet headquarters succeeds only in roping in a cruiser and two patrol boasts - all commanded by traitors in the pay of the Benignity. After Koutsoudas's spying on the command crew sorts out traitors from loyalists, Heris lays and executes her plan: she has invited aboard to dine with all of the senior officers, along with some of her "officers" (really her best hand-to-hand combat fighters). When closeted away with the traitors, she quickly kills them and takes over the cruiser using the hidden computer authority which her aunt Admiral Vida Serrano had had created specifically for her to use in such a situation. Heris bluffs her way into command of the cruiser (claiming that she was really still in Fleet, and that her court-martial had been arranged to serve as a plausible excuse for leaving Fleet when she went undercover), and of one patrol boat. The third patrol boat, the Despite, escapes and warns the incoming Benignity fleet of what awaits them. Through a lot of luck (such as mechanical problems for the foe) and some excellent micro-jumping tactics by the defenders and the unexpected assistance of the Despite, whose crew had mutinied, and now captained by a jig named Esmay Suiza (who figures more prominently in the next three books), the invading fleet is destroyed and the system held until it is relieved by a Familias battle group under Admiral Serrano, who reveals to Heris that she had been deliberately maneuvering and aiding Heris to use her as a lightning rod to flush out traitors and blunt Benignity incursions. Now imbued with Fleet imprimatur, Heris travels with Cecelia to Patchcock, where together they help an aunt of the Family concerned kick her felonious brothers out of corporate control, and rescue the youngsters, all the while defeating the Benignity-encouraged terrorists who had killed the young Family member. At the end, Brun decides to take Fleet training; George begins following after his father in law school; Raffaele and Ron quasi-elope to a frontier world colony to build a life of their own; Heris and her crew rejoin Fleet, while Heris finally is reconciled with her parents over their betrayal of her during her court-martial, and Cecelia decides to captain a new vessel on her own while continuing to raise horses.
6530844	/m/0g93pf	In the Ocean of Night	Gregory Benford	1977	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The beginning of the novel, set in 1999 (2019 in the second edition), finds Nigel Walmsley, a British scientist and astronaut for NASA, sent to attach a thermonuclear bomb to an asteroid or comet named Icarus which is on a direct collision course for India - only if it is a rocky asteroid and not a slush ice core style comet. Icarus turns out to be large, solid, and made of a nickel-iron composite. Nigel is instructed to plant the 50 megaton weapon and leave (so it can be detonated). He persuades Mission Control to let him put it in a large fissure he discovered, so it would be even more effective. They let him. In the fissure, Nigel discovers strips of metal worked in obviously artificial patterns. Awestruck at this evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent life, Nigel begins exploring. Icarus is made up of a number of hollow shells, making the asteroid's mass far less than predicted. Presumably this makes Icarus less dangerous, allowing Nigel to spend time exploring this historic artifact. However, NASA claims that the demolition has to go forward, that Icarus would somehow skip off the atmosphere and land in the Indian Ocean and cause even more damage through the resultant tsunami. This of course is an obvious lie, and Nigel convinces his partner of that. They hide the nuke and spend the next week retrieving artifacts and materials before they finally set the nuclear bomb off and turn Icarus into rubble. 15 years after their discovery the Icarus artifacts have yielded little, and Nigel's delayed detonation of Icarus has distanced him from NASA and other people. Nigel's partner, Alexandria, has developed systemic lupus erythematosus, an oft-fatal disease caused by pollution. An anomaly over by Jupiter distracts Nigel: something, nicknamed 'the Snark', is repeating radio broadcasts. Alexandria is distracted by the mechanics of selling American Airlines to some Brazilians. The anomaly fires its fusion engines and reveals itself to the satellites around Jupiter. As a probe vessel, the directing computer could not afford to ignore the satellites' radio emissions before it moved on to Earth. Eventually the JPL team locates it around Venus. Nigel arranges to hijack the communications, transmitting his own signal (a binary sequence of prime numbers relating the Snark's trajectory). The Snark receives the signal as a sign of non-hostile intentions and transmits back. It also reaches out through Nigel's medical implants to his dead partner's more elaborate ones, and commandeers her body to explore and learn about Earth. Thus the initial tentative transmissions blossom into a largely one-way torrent of information for the Snark. One day, it asks to visit Earth. A compromise is worked out: the Snark will orbit the Moon until trust is built up. As Nigel is already fully informed, and everything about the Snark is being kept a state secret, he is assigned to pilot the space ship meeting the Snark - which will be armed with another nuclear weapon. Nigel meets the Snark; he is under orders to attack it. The Snark disables the chemical weapons and begins talking to Nigel. It says that organic civilizations and species are inherently unstable; they flash brilliantly and commit suicide sooner or later. The autonomous machines they craft live on long after them, going on and evolving. But they cannot truly compete with the organics, who live "in the universe of essences". That is the reason for the Great Silence. Nigel's superiors order him to use the nuclear weapon. He refuses. They override him and fire it anyway, knowing that its detonation will inevitably kill Nigel. If it hit the Snark, it would be badly disabled, so it flees the Solar System faster than the missile can follow. The decision to fire is covered up, and the version of the Snark's visit fed to the public is markedly different from what Nigel actually experienced. Nigel blackmails NASA into letting him go to the projects on the Moon; the Snark had directed a transmission at Mare Marginis for unknown parties, and Nigel wanted to find those parties. Four years later, in 2018 (2038), Nigel is now based on the Moon. A fellow astronaut, Nikka, is involved in a crash that accidentally discovers a still active alien spacecraft wreck in the Moon's Mare Marginis - a spacecraft suspiciously armed with a once-powerful anti-spacecraft weapon. Nigel and Nikka become lovers during the course of exploring the wreck, which proves to have a functioning computer with a direct neural interface. Nigel, and several others, experiment with the computer's neural hook-up, and leave fundamentally changed by it - the computer becomes inert and unable to reveal any more about its creators. Meanwhile, on Earth, some surprising experiments in human genetics conducted by the aliens are discovered alive in North America.
6530888	/m/0g93r4	Hunting Party	Elizabeth Moon	1993-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The plot and narrative center on one Heris Serrano, a strong competent female protagonist. She has recently left the Regular Space Service that guards the Familias Regnant rather than face a court-martial for saving the lives of her troops by deliberately disobeying the orders of her bloodthirsty superior, Admiral Lepescu, and capturing her objectives in a way other than what he specified. Cashiered to civilian life, she must make a living as a captain. Her employment agency finds her a job as captain of the private yacht Sweet Delight for a rich Family member, Lady Cecelia. The Sweet Delight''s previous captain, the sinister Captain Olin, had incurred Cecelia's wrath by failing to promptly leave the capital (where Cecelia had been to attend the Grand Council of the Familias) so she could arrive on Sirialis, Lord Thornbuckle's private estate-planet, in time for the beginning of the fox hunting season; this delay saddled her with some obstreperous relatives who are in disgrace and are sent aboard her yacht as being a convenient mobile exile. Heris discovers to her dismay that the same agency that had recommended her to Cecelia had also foisted an unrelieved stream of incompetent, regenerate, and outright criminal personnel on her ship, and that her new command was not merely overly luxurious and inefficient, it was an outright deathtrap. This point is driven home when Heris begins tracking down anomalies in the environmental systems and decides to inspect portions herself. The two environmental technicians she orders to accompany her in protective suits rush down to reach the scrubber before Heris. Heris's worse fears are realized when the two technicians blunder and unleash a cloud of deadly hydrogen sulfide; one dies, and the other is badly injured. On subsequent investigation, the life-support systems are in imminent danger of collapse. Heris orders an emergency detour to a deep-space shipyard for repairs. While in the shipyard, contraband data is discovered secreted in the scrubbers. Apparently Captain Olin, the dead Iklind, and presumably some of the others were using Cecelia's yacht to smuggle various goods for unknown parties. Cecelia and Heris agree to a bet: if the repairs were completed on schedule, Heris would tutor Cecelia on the inner workings of her ship. If not, then Cecelia would teach Heris equestrianism using her personal mechanical horse. In part because of the smuggling, Heris loses, but Cecelia does not hold her to it because of the legal interference, and insists that both sides pay up. The two discover a certain fondness for each other's pet subject, and slowly become fast friends. Ron gets cross-wise of Heris when he calls her "disgusting" for putting him and his companions in what he considers to be inferior housing during their stay at the shipyard, and compounds the offense when he intrudes on the bridge (intending to apologize) during a tricky series of FTL jumps. The final straw occurs during an emergency drill; Ron and Odious George had as a prank repainted various cylinders used in drills and tampered with equipment to confuse and humiliate the captain. Had the computer-generated drill been a little different, the cylinders would have formed a home-made bomb. Heris, with Cecelia's permission, locks Ron in his quarters, and through dexterous manipulation of the computerized fixtures and equipment tames Ron and slowly leads him to realize the errors of his ways; thereafter she begins to remedy his lax and deficient education. He is released when he has learned sufficient common sense. Ron's newfound sensibility begins wearing off when the Sweet Delight reaches Sirialis and the others (Cecelia, Heris, Brun, Raffaele, and George) all begin enjoying the fox hunting while Ron is positively miserable and unskilled at riding to the hounds. George suggests that they take a secret jaunt to one of the vacation islands to simply get away from it all and annoy their relations by disappearing for a little while. Their escape goes well, until they attempt to set down at the Bandoo complex of lodges and facilities, to refuel their flitter. Their authority is denied by the systems there, and while circling the field, their flitter is shot down. Struggling to the island, they are greeted by former members of Heris's crew, who apparently are the designated prey of a manhunt organized by the same Admiral Lepescu who had ruined Heris's crew. They had thought that the flitter was carrying some hunters, and so used their best weapon. They split the youngsters up into two groups, Raffaele with Brun and George with Ron, reasoning that divided there would be a better chance that at least one of them would survive long enough to be rescued. The first night, Raffaele and Brun do well, acquiring a hunter's gear when that hunter killed the long-time survivor Petris had sent to look after them; the hunter overconfidently fell to the blade of his not-yet-dead victim. The next day, they find a well-hidden cave, and hunker down in it. Ron and George do not do so swell. They improve the hours of the first night constructing a shoddy trap for hunters, and the next day Ron contracts a fever of some sort. George goes to get some water for Ron, but makes the mistake of drinking some before he notices the eerie silence of the creek: it had been poisoned by the hunters, who have begun to fear that the youngsters' absence would be noticed and have ceased to hunt fair. Ron feverishly attempts to drag George's body to safety, but George is captured by the hunters and is taken to Bandon lodge (while Ron manages to escape). At the lodge, George talks his two guards into betraying Lepescu and into letting him send a message to Lord Thornbuckle and his militia. The message reaches Heris and Cecelia who have already organized a militia expedition - they had grown suspicious of their absence and various unauthorized shuttle flights down to the islands. When they storm Bandon, a traitor in the militia kills the two guards and nearly kills George. All the hunters and victims were on the other island. Lepescu has realized that the jig was up, and begins methodically killing all the hunters and prey. His intent is to eliminate any witnesses and escape Sirialis. Ron finds the girls just before one of the surviving hunters does. They get the drop on him and discover that the crown prince Gerel is part of Lepescu's cabal. They all set out to escape the island, and are ambushed by Lepescu, who offers the prince a choice: either kill his friends, allowing Lepescu to blackmail the prince, or he will die with them. His threat is backed up by a gas grenade with a dead man's switch. Heris and Cecelia have been following the prince's tracks; while delayed by killing the traitorous militia member, they come upon Lepescu in time for Heris to shoot him in the head and end his threat. In the aftermath, Lepescu's cabal is dismantled. George recovers, and reunites with Brun and Ron, whose experience on the island have made them mature. Heris's former crew (the survivors, at least), decide not to return to the Fleet that betrayed them, and join the Sweet Delight, largely replacing the feckless former crew. The prince's participation is hushed up and he is confined aboard Cecelia's yacht until he returns to Rockhouse Major, there to answer to his father.
6530966	/m/0g93tx	Heirs of Empire	David Weber	1996-03	{"/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The story opens approximately 20 years after The Armageddon Inheritance. The human race has largely recovered from the Siege of Earth by the Achuultani and the Bia system is being slowly re-colonized and its defenses re-activated. In short, the Empire is largely at peace, busy assimilating the technological advances of the Fourth Empire and building and manning a fleet to take the war back to the Achuultani and the master computer controlling them. The captured Achuultani have prospered; with the aid of cloning, their ranks have swollen and they have colonized a planet called Narhan, which was unsuitable to humans by reason of its heavy gravity - for this reason they have renamed themselves the Narhani. They are fervently loyal to the reborn Empire and Colin, enraged by the perversion of their race by the master computer. Brashieel's clone-child (Brashieel is now the head Narhani) Brashan, is one of Sean and Harriet MacIntyre's closest friends (Sean and Harriet being Colin and Jiltanith's two children). The only flies in the ointment are the worrying fact that some of Anu's agents remain at large, and that a small but increasingly violent faction that considers the Narhani to be minions of the anti-christ and want to kill all Narhani; these two factions are secretly working against the Emperor. Into this volatile situation step Sean, Harry, Brashan, Sandy (daughter of Hector MacMahan and Ninhursag), and Tamman (the son of Amanda Tsien and Tamman), who have all enlisted in Battle Fleet. After graduation from the Academy, the four depart on a newly constructed planetoid warship, Imperial Terra, for their midshipman cruise. Unbeknownst to them, one of Anu's former minions, Lawrence Jefferson, had worked his way up to Lieutenant Governor of Earth, and has commenced his dastardly plan to become Emperor through assassinating everyone ahead of him in the line of succession. Under his instructions, Jefferson's personal band of religious terrorists, "The Sword of God", takes one of the planetoid's programmer's family hostage, and order him to sabotage Imperial Terra. The task is accomplished, and the programmer and his family are all murdered to cover it up. The Imperial Terra departs on its maiden voyage, but partway through deliberately loses control of its core tap, as the dead programmer had instructed. However, Dahak had surreptitiously inserted a command with equal priority to the sabotage command which states that the lives of 2 certain midshipmen and their friends must be preserved. Imperial Terra reconciles these conflicting orders by first jettisoning the four aboard a well-stocked and capable (but not FTL-capable) battleship moderately near some uncharted systems and only then destroying itself and its crew of 80 thousand. 2.2 Later, Sandy, Harry, Brashan, Sean, and Tamman arrive at the nearest potentially inhabited system. They barely survive the onslaught of a quarantine system, and decide to sneak onto the life-bearing world all the space-borne Imperial technology and weapons and orbital docks seem to be protecting. Amazingly, it seems that the bio-weapon that had killed the Fourth Empire had missed this world. After landing and investigating the ruins of a high-tech enclave, the five piece together the true history of the planet the indigenous inhabitants call "Pardal". Once, Pardal had been an out-of-the-way minor planet of the Empire. Because it was out of the way, its governor managed to shut down the mat-trans system before Pardal was infected by the bio-weapon when the first warnings went out across the hypercoms, and also to devise with her chief engineer an extremely effective quarantine system. However, even as they hunkered down behind their orbital defenses, the hypercom continued to operate "like a comlink to hell" (pg 255), broadcasting the prolonged death of the Empire, and even more devastatingly, messages from worlds like Pardal which were fooled by the bio-weapon's long incubation period into thinking they were safe. The horrified backlash by Pardal's populace centered on destroying Pardal's technological infrastructure, and erasing all scientific accomplishment and knowledge more advanced than the Dark Ages, so another such horror could never arise. The civil and military authorities concentrated on creating a global theocracy (reminiscent of the Catholic Church) dedicated to the suppression of technological advancement and to the maintenance of the quarantine system. The high-tech enclave the old records were retrieved from was permitted to exist to serve as a source of demons and to provide the fledging church an easy enemy. Harriet had been sent back to the shuttle to bring it to the valley so they could airlift the enclave's computer out, but along the way she was shot down by some locals. They were about to burn her alive for associating with the "Valley of the Damned" when Sean and the rest, but especially Sandy, frightened them and destroyed a portion of the village (without killing anyone) and rescuing her. The local priest becomes convinced that the intruders were actually angels, as Pardalian angels are female, beautiful, wound-able, speak in the language of the Empire (the priestly language on Pardal), killed no one (an odd restraint, were they "damned demons"), wore imperial military uniforms, and were immune to Father Stomald's various religious attacks and banishments. He begins preaching to the populace, converting a fair proportion. The Church reacts quickly and violently, sending a portion of the very well equipped "Temple Guard" to burn the heretics. Stomald's forces are outnumbered and outgunned (the Church possesses a monopoly on heavy artillery) and surely doomed. The five castaways discuss matters, and decide that their guilt in instigating this little rebellion, kickstarting the modernization of Pardal, and also gaining access they need to the quarantine system's main computer could all be accomplished by supporting the rebellion with their leadership and knowledge of how to revolutionize Pardalian warfare. The initial Guard expedition is repulsed and scattered by a miracle accomplished through Imperial technology (see Clarke's Third Law). This victory attracts even more recruits to their cause, such as a good proportion of the now-unarmed Guard force they defeated. The quasi-country the revolt began in, the Princedom of Malagor, has long been known for its independent spirit and its rifles; it had long chafed under the Church's studied oppression of it and its artisans. With the new rifles (on Pardal, smoothbore guns and pikes made up most of an army. Rifles took far too long to load despite their greater accuracy and range, because balls had to be rammed down the barrel; with the "angels"' introduction of the Minié ball, this issue became moot) the army is considerably superior to conventional Pardalian armies. Other advantages such as bayonet rings, modern meteorology or satellite cartography, or canister shot merely are the icing on the cake. The Battle of Yortown, in which the massed Guard reinforcements charged a fortified Angel's army position, quite effectively demonstrated this through the slaughter of the aggressors. Sean's lack of boldness in the counter-stroke followup allowed the surviving Guard commander, an Ortak, to retreat to Erastor, a well-fortified position placed like a choke-point between Malagor and the Temple. Unfortunately, Sean's many advantages are largely nullified in a siege, so he conceives a strike to Ortak's rear, seizing Ortak's semaphore communication lines to perform a man in the middle attack and gain time. Sean managed to bring enough men around Ortak's impassable swamp-secured flank to launch a pincer attack on Ortak's rear and front. With Ortak's forces shattered, the Angels' Army moves out into the open country of Aris, where they can bypass fortifications and crush any secular or religious army foolish enough to engage. They march clear to the Temple, but are stymied by its elaborate fortifications. Sean's army is ideal for defeating other armies, but not for fighting a siege. The Council offers to meet with Sean to discuss a truce, offering as surety one of its own members and allowing Sean to bring a large contingent in with him. Sean walks straight into their trap, and begins fighting his way to the actual Template/computer complex with his men, while Sandy and the others task the main army with breaking in to relieve Sean. Brashan anxiously circles 100 kilometers away, impotent to do anything while the quarantine system's defense guns are operational. Fierce fighting gets Sean within range of the computers; as crown prince and heir to the Imperial throne, he has all sorts of overrides and security codes. He shuts down the defenses, and Brashan defeats the Temple forces, ending the war. The next time they are heard from is a few years later, when Dahak receives a message via their newly constructed hypercom. The Emperor and Empress are overjoyed to hear from the two whom they had long thought dead (thought it sincerely enough that they had had two more children). They had not rested in the meantime, defusing Jefferson's plan to kill all the people in the succession via a massive gravitonic bomb planted in a Narhani statue (intending to use his perversion of their gift as a way to blame them), and foiling his attempt on Jiltanith and Horus's life, at the cost of Horus.
6531225	/m/0g945l	Change of Command	Elizabeth Moon	1999	{"/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The title of Change of Command refers to two events that drive the plot and occur just before the story begins or very early on. The first is the assassination of Bunny, or Lord Thornbuckle. The attack is believed by most to have been engineered by the New Texas Godfearing Militia who had sworn to git revenge on Thornbuckle and the Familias Regnant in general for executing Our Texas's leaders, the Rangers (for what they did to Brun and other women in Rules of Engagement). The second is the change in command of the military prison on Stack Islands in Copper Mountain, from Iosep Tolin to Pilar Bacarion, a woman who had been very close to Admiral Lepescu but had managed to evade the purges sparked by Lepescu's manhunts in Hunting Party. She plots to effect still another change of command, of a good portion of Fleet and eventually the Familias. A third possible event referenced by the title is the plot by the Benignity of the Compassionate Hand to undermine the expansionist capabilities of Fleet by arranging for the rejuvenation drugs being used on the master chiefs to be contaminated; "Project Retainer". With the help of Barin Serrano and a number of other junior officers and non-commissioned personnel, Fleet has just learned of the issue of important NCOs suffering from mental problems. Lady Cecelia is on Rotterdam engaged in the Wherrin Trials (which she wins) when the news of the assassination comes in. As it is already too late to return to Rockhouse in time for the funeral, Cecelia stays, and participate in a curious conversation with an old but not liked acquaintance named Pedar, who insinuates that it was not the Our Texans who had killed Bunny, but rather that he had been killed because he "broke the rules" and so the Rejuvenants (the shadowy quasi-political faction which supports unlimited use of rejuvenation with all that that implies), and more specifically, Pedar, had him killed. After this conversation, Cecelia covertly leaves Rotterdam for Rockhouse Major. There she stiffens the spine of Bunny's widow, Miranda, and aids her and Brun by taking the twins fathered on Brun by the Texans, fostering them with Raffaele and Ron on their colony world Excet-24; while on the colony, Cecelia discovers that something has gone very wrong in the colonial system. Most colonies appear to have been swindled and exploited. Miranda uses this breather to return to Sirialis&mdash;upon Bunny's death, his estate should have passed to his wife or his eldest son, Buttons. But his younger brother Harlis is masterminding a vigorous assault on the inheritance. Miranda suspects that Harlis has manipulated and falsified various records and intends to compare them against the full off-line backups she maintains in a remote portion of Sirialis. Hobart Conselline (of the Consellines whose sub-family, the Morrellines, were responsible for the profiteering off inferior rejuvenation drugs in Winning Colors) successfully manipulates the emergency Council meeting called after the assassination to have himself appointed Speaker, buying off Hobart with the promise that the judges appointed will be favorable to Harlis's lawsuits. He pushes through a number of disastrous amendments and ill-considered appointments (such as the appointment of Pedar as Foreign Minister). The resistance his politics meet drive him to even more extreme measures. The worst, possibly, is Hobart's conviction that the mentally damaged NCOs were not suffering because of bad drugs manufactured by the Morrellines but rather that the research demonstrating that was all fabricated by Ageists (those opposed to rejuvenation) and that the real culprit was inbreeding in various Fleet clans like the Serranos. Pursuant to this conviction, he orders the vast majority of flag rank personnel to be relieved of their duties and remanded to Medical. One of the admirals so retired is Admiral Vida Serrano, who returns home. Killing time, she browses through the old family libraries, and discovers a very old book, purporting to be a children's book, which records exactly how the Family which had been the Serranos' patron came to be extinguished, root and branch: they had been betrayed by their ground soldiers on Altiplano. Esmay Suiza's ancestors, in other words. This has obvious repercussions on the prospective marriage between Barin and Esmay. Not all is going poorly for Barin, however; he has gone broke paying for the refugees from Our Texas who had attached themselves to him, and is deeply relieved when the professor specializing in Texan history suggests that they be sent to Excet-24 where their skills and handicrafts are deeply needed by the colony and especially Ron and Raffaela. The new commander of Three Stacks on Copper Mountain has not been idle during these events. Methlin Meharry's little brother was stationed there when Bacarion was appointed; Gelan Meharry realizes after a little research turns up Bacarion's connections to Lepescu that a mutiny is imminent (as Bacarion could have no other reason to seek appointment to a maximum-security prison) and that as Methlin Meharry's little brother, his days are numbered. The mutiny begins with a communications technician bribed to disable the satellite surveillance for a time. It is immediately followed with the attack on Gelan: a prisoner is reported missing and he is attacked while he examines the bottoms of the cliffs. Wearing a protective suit against the fierce elements, he survives the fall but is believed dead. He had stored a life raft and supplies against just such an eventuality in a lava tube&mdash;where he is met by Bacarion, who had correctly suspected that Gelan would fake his death. In the ensuing scuffle, Gelan uses the grapples and claws of his suit to kill Bacarion and escape with her corpse (to sow confusion if the lava tube is examined by the other mutineers). Gelan is eventually rescued by a SAR air vehicle, but not before the RSS Bonar Tighe drops several LACs onto the prison and load up with mutineers and the convert prisoners; those prisoners who declined to join the mutiny are massacred. The LACs return to the Bonar Tighe and begin to take it over. The mutiny is successful, and the unsuspecting space-station is taken over. The vital weapons research laboratories and the entire system are now in danger. Gelan, a young lieutenant and a high-ranked scientist hurry over to the weapons labs and neutralize its commander who had been instructed by his fellow mutineers to preserve the installation and its contents intact. They cobble together an old-fashioned radio system, and luck out when an arriving Fleet vessel receives the message, takes it seriously, and manages to jump back out of the Copper Mountain system before being destroyed; it soon warns the rest of the Familias. Back on Sirialis, Miranda has defeated Harlis for control of the family assets. One last enemy remains: Pedar, who had revealed to Cecelia his complicity or spearheading of Bunny's assassination, and who is foolishly attempting to woo Miranda. Pedar insists in fencing with the old and authentic weapons an armor. Unbeknownst to Pedar, Miranda had weakened the armor she predicted Pedar would use. When they start, Miranda feigns slowness and weakness, and deliberately breaks the tip of her sword; revealing her full skill, she thrusts her blade into Pedar's brain, killing him just before Cecelia arrives. Everything arranged to look like a horrible accident, Miranda gets off scot-free, satisfied with her revenge. Cecelia is horrified by Miranda's casual killing. For his actions and policies, the chairman of the Benignity orders Hobart Conselline assassinated. To have needed to resort to such a tactic against one over whom he has no authority means that the Chairman has failed in his duty to his extended family of the Benignity, and even as Hobart is beheaded by the appointed Swordmaster (who replaced his usual Swordmaster), so too does the Chairman perish&mdash;another change of command. Esmay and Barin disregard their respective families' opposition to their engagement, and marry even as the mutiny begins raging beyond Copper Mountain and all is thrown into turmoil.
6531292	/m/0g948q	Against the Odds	Elizabeth Moon	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The opening steps back to near the ending of Change of Command; the loyalists in the weapons lab on Copper Mountain (which planet has just been taken over by mutineers) have finished sending out their radio transmission, which unbeknownst to them will indeed be picked by an escaping loyalist Fleet warship, and are wondering what to do next. Their transportation is ruined, so they decide to steal one from the mutineers. They stage a series of movements and radio transmissions intended to convince the mutineers that the weapons labs are being progressively taken over by their own. This ruse succeeds, and the NEMs and scientists go aboard the assault shuttle the mutineers dispatch to pick them up, along with "Project Zed" - a bona fide working cloaking device. The plan is to take over the shuttle and then stage another play, the NEMs pretending to be mutineers forcing the scientists into testing out Project Zed then and there, quite against the scientists' better judgement. At the opportune moment, the heretofore intermittent cloaking will be turned on completely and explosives laden with shuttle weapons and parts will be tossed out the back. Presumably the mutineers will believe the scientists and Project Zed destroyed and cease to pay attention to them. Esmay Suiza, in a hurry on Trinidad Station, discovers when she is surrounded by security forces that she has apparently been kicked out of the Regular Space Fleet (courtesy of an "Admiral Serrano"); the rationale given is her marriage to Barin Serrano and complications arising from being the Suiza LandBride. Suiza immediately begins trying to obtain transportation to Rockhouse Major and thence to Fleet HQ so she can contest this unjust separation. The only thing she can find is informal passage with a Terakian trading vessel by the same two Terakians who discovered the plot to bomb the space-stations in Rules of Engagement and who were presently transporting a religious fugitive from the Benignity to Castle Rock along with the acting troupe who sheltered him; the Terakians owe her for helping to rescue a relative (Hazel) in Rules of Engagement from the Our Texas religious fanatics. On Sirialis, Cecelia has not yet left. She is still poking around Pedar's "accidental" death. A chance remark by the man in charge of the stables, mentioning that Miranda had used the stable's small forge for something a few days before Pedar's death leads Cecelia to investigate: She discovers a piece of scrap metal suspiciously akin to the chain mail of the defective armor concerned. Miranda had deliberately weakened the armor, and exploited the opening to stick a sword in Pedar's brain. Cecelia confronts Miranda with this evidence and is appalled by Miranda's lack of remorse. Cecelia forces Miranda to agree to go with her to the Guerini Republic, there to live in exile and "Get treatment for whatever it is that made you think you could kill him with impunity." (pg 81) The Grand Council of Castle Rock is shaken by the news of Hobart Conselline's murder by a visiting fencing master, and only slightly less perturbed by the killing of Pedar. As the Council meets, the Benignity ambassador breaks in with an urgent message: He informs them that the assassination had been solely ordered by the (now former) Chairman of the Benignity, and that for ordering such a thing, he had been executed. The ambassador offers the Benignity's sincere apologies and regrets, and shows a recording the Chairman made before he died explaining the reasoning that drove him to order Hobart's (and by extension, his own) death: In short, the Familias was not handling the rejuvenation issue and Hobart's policies would only exacberate the issues which would inevitably spill over onto the Benignity. While travelling near Copper Mountain en route to the Guerni Republic, Cecelia and Miranda's vessel, the Pounce is accidentally forced out of an FTL jump by the mass shadow of the Bonar Tighe, flagship of the mutineers. Disabled, they can only try to get off a message to the Familias via ansible, but they are captured. The mutineers remember Cecelia hiring Serrano and also her role in discovering the vileness on Sirialis suppressed in Hunting Party; they ill-treat the two and throw them in the brig with the surviving loyalist female crew (preserved for future manhunts). Cecelia and Miranda trade on their reputation as harmless frivolous old ladies and cause no trouble, so their guards decide to amuse themselves and humiliate the two by making them clean the latrines. One day, when the guard is light and inattentive, Miranda uses her unstoppable fencing skills to stun and kill one guard. His keys open the cells of all the other loyalists. They separate into separate groups: One goes to sabotage the drives, another goes with Cecelia EVA to destroy external sensors and a third attacks the shuttle bay. That attack succeeds, but it can only be got into via EVA suit, and the mutineers have rallied and will eventually overcome their rear-guard. Miranda stays behind with the other two volunteers, giving her suit to a young traumatized female, and dies fighting the mutineers' onslaught. The shuttle escapes, but they were surely doomed: Eventually the mutineers would repair the ship systems and search them out. Fortunately for them, the distress signal over the ansible that Miranda and Cecelia had attempted to send so long ago (but had been cut off) had been noticed by one of Heris Serrano's crew: Her ship had been assigned to Admiral Minor Arash Livadhi's flotilla to monitor anomalies and seek out mutineers. Disabled, the Bonar Tighe is easy prey. The loyalists are rescued. For her services to Fleet past and present, Cecelia jokingly demands to be made an Admiral - a nod to a running joke in the series where various Fleet underlings become convinced (by how they keep showing up in the thick of things) that either Cecelia or Heris is really a special operations undercover admiral ferreting out traitors for Fleet. Finally at Rockhouse, Esmay meets up with Brun and her own father General Casimir Suiza, who had brought along with him all the necessary apparatus to transfer Esmay's status as LandBride to her cousin Luci. They then all of them go to Fleet HQ and discover that according to HQ, Esmay never left Fleet - Trinidad Station had been destroyed by mutineers and so the records of her being separated from Fleet were never forwarded to HQ; further, Fleet (thinking she was still with them) had ordered her to a new ship and when she never showed up, listed her as a mutineer. Eventually, with help from Admiral Vida Serrano (not the Admiral Serrano who had arranged her removal from Fleet), she is reinstated with no criminal charges and command of her own ship, the patrol ship Rascal, assigned to Admiral Arash Livadhi's flotilla along with Heris. Before Esmay leaves, she and Brun and General Suiza and Kevil Mahoney have some long conversations about recent events and issues raised by rejuvenation and how to save the Familias from itself. Brun is summoned to a meeting with the head of her sept (family of Families), Viktor Barraclough. He offers her the same thing he was offered: To live on as usual, taking rejuvenations and possibly living forever, or to forswear any use of rejuvenation and receive a position as his heir, heir to all the power that entails. She considers how she could change the Familias, and accepts his offer. At the next meeting, she masterfully takes control of the meeting and orchestrates a vote on whether the Fleet can expect the full backing of the Familias against the mutineers or not. The vote succeeds and soon Brun is Speaker, marshalling a "youth vote" comprising young Family members who recognize the issues that rejuvenation raises and the fact that something has to be done. Admiral Arash Livadhi this entire time has been growing increasingly uneasy. He had unfortunately been close to Lepescu when he was a younger officer, and fears every day that the investigation into the Lepescu-inspired mutineers will damn him as well; he is further compromised by the fact that his closest friend Jules had been a Benignity deep agent, who had solely manipulated him into breaking rules and then through blackmail into becoming a Benignity agent. The Benignity is not happy with him, as he has failed to be useful (although his work in Sporting Chance in thwarting the incompetent Benignity base commander was of value) - if he wishes to continue living, he will bring with him when he defects something valuable like an intact cruiser. His unease is noticed by his crew, especially old Heris and Arash stalwarts like Petris and Koutsoudas, who begin investigating his communications. What they find makes them suspicious but they find nothing solid enough to charge him with. They decide to confide in Suiza. One day, Livadhi takes off. His ship begins bouncing around the Familias, attempting to throw off followers. Suiza follows in her Rascal, and is hidden by Koutsoudas foxing the scans aboard Livadhi's cruiser. In the last system before the Benignity proper, Suiza powers up her weapons when she sees a Benignity vessel enter the system. Heris and her cruiser follow shortly after. Livadhi's crew begins evacuating on the shuttles. Petris confronts Livadhi in his cabin, but is drugged by him. Livadhi uses him as a hostage and the self-destruct button as a threat in his conversation with Heris; he lays out his whole list of grievances and suchlike, chief among which is his anger at being rejected by Heris - he had loved her, like Petris, but she had chosen Petris and not him. Partway through his rant, he notices the crew's evacuation. Furious that he would not be able to take them all with him, and believing that Heris was about to win yet again, he pushes the self-destruct button, taking Petris with him. The final scene is the promotion of Heris and Cecelia to Admiral, to replace Livadhi. Essentially everyone yet living is there, toasting the two. At the end, they memorialize all who had died in the conflicts, and especially Livadhi, with a song based on William Blake's Jerusalem (with additions and modifications by Moon): :This for the friends we had of old, :Friends for a lifetime's love and cheer. :This for the friends who come no more, :Who cannot be among us here. :We'll not forget, while we're alive, :These hallowed dead, these deeds of fame. :Where they have gone, we follow soon :Into the darkness and the flame. :Then we shall rise, our duty done, :Freed from all pain and sorrow here; :We'll leave behind ambition's sting :And keep alive our honor dear. :And they will stand beside us then, :All whom we loved and hoped to see; :And they shall sing, a glad AMEN, :To cheer that final victory. :Bring me my bow of burning gold; :Bring me my arrows of desire; :Bring me my ship — O clouds unfold — :Bring me my chariot of fire. :We shall not cease our faithful watch, :Nor shall the sword sleep in our hand, :Till we have gone beyond the stars :To join that fair immortal band.
6531307	/m/0g949d	Across the Sea of Suns	Gregory Benford	1984	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Radio astronomy on the Moon in 2021 reveals the presence of life by a nearby red dwarf, on a tide-locked planet. To investigate them and the message they are transmitting, Earth's governments repurpose a space colony that was to be stationed at one of Earth's Lagrangian points and convert it into Lancer, a Bussard ramjet powered interstellar ship based on a crashed alien ship discovered in the Mare Marginis on the Moon, and send it to investigate. In 2061, it arrives and discovers a primitive biological race of nomads broadcasting en-masse with organs adapted to emit and receive electromagnetic radiation; their transmissions were blurred by various nomads falling out of synch with the rest. Close up, the transmission is discovered to be an old radio show from the 1950s - the signal the EMs (as they are called) consider best to reply to Earth with. A curious satellite is discovered in orbit, from at least as far back as a million years — roughly when an anomalous meteor shower destroyed the EMs' civilization. On Earth, international commerce is brought to a standstill when mysterious spaceships drop sea creatures dubbed "Swarmers" and "Skimmers" (for their behaviour; Swarmers swarm ships and head-butt them until they sink, and Skimmers simply jump and skim around like dolphins). They begin multiplying and the Swarmers begin attacking humans and all their works on the seas, high or otherwise. The Ra expedition's first contacts go poorly. The attempt to examine and enter the more interesting of the total of two satellites prompts a massive retaliation by the satellite with plasma weapons that kills most of the crew involved in the attempt. The attempt to contact the EMs on Isis does not go well either; the EMs are confused by the presence of a human on the surface. They had been expecting a reply from Earth itself. In the confusion and surprise, they attempted to simultaneously broadcast their lengthy and elaborate summary of their history and culture, and also to see in more detail the messenger. Unfortunately, in order to see in radar, radar must be broadcast, and the narrowing gaze of the EMs and all the other transmissions literally cook the communications specialist alive. The standby team misinterprets this tragic incident as a deliberate attack and massacres the lot of EMs. Nigel works with the mathematicians and other experts to interpret the original transmission and later ones. His analysis reveals that their technologically advanced Space-age civilization had attracted the attention of machines, and perished in a massive and prolonged deliberate orbital bombardment that levelled their cities, infrastructure, and civilization. The bombardment of asteroids was severe enough to crack open the crust of the planet and permanently alter for the worse the EMs' ecosphere. The EMs drew to the utmost on what was left of their genetic engineering and biology, and radically altered their bodies to use silicon and transistors for a nervous system and so broadcast; the watching satellite is programmed to react to high technology, not inbuilt features of organisms, so this way the EMs will be able to broadcast their message and possibly help out other biological races. No sooner has some genuine two-way communication been established than new orders come from Earth, to move on to a new system where they think the Skimmers and Swarmers may've come from originally. En route, they preoccupy themselves analysing reports from the far-flung space probes: everywhere except Earth that traces could be found, anomalies like other Watchers abound. Walmsley theorizes that a machine-based race that was systematically destroying or guarding planets supporting organic life was responsible for these anomalies; the Swarmers represent a first strike at Earth, which had thus far eluded the machines' attempts to kill it, since the assigned Watcher (as Nigel calls the satellites) was destroyed by the Mare Marginis wreck. His theories are generally disregarded as being too speculative; the sober consensus agrees that Watchers are simply a common form of weaponry left over from the suicide of biological races, and the Swarmer invasion simply a grab for a fresh and relatively unspoiled world. At the next system, Ross 128, a moon like Ganymede is found with a Watcher around it. Initially it is taken as a disproof of Walmsley's Rule that Watchers will appear around any depopulated world that had once harboured technologically advanced biological life, but the de facto leader (Ted), who has always disliked Walmsley, attempts to covertly force Walmsley into hibernation until the long-planned-for return to Earth. Walmsley breaks out part-way through the necessary medical preparations and escapes to the moon in a submersible. Avoiding the people the Lancer sends out in pursuit, he discovers a much-reduced sapient civilization that had links to the EMs before the Watcher came. The Watcher prevents them from ever reaching the surface and thus from developing much technology, but it cannot complete its task and kill them—they are protected by ten kilometres of ice, which Walmsley remarks would insulate them from even the worst the Watcher could do: cause the sun of that system to go nova. The two are in a stalemate. During the standoff, news comes in from Earth (delayed nine years by the speed of light) that the Swarmers have begun land invasions; the tense superpowers each suspect each other, and escalate the conflict into a full-scale multi-party nuclear war. The machines, who had attempted to engineer just such an internecine conflict (more efficient than attacking a unified humanity), send their flotilla against Earth, when the defences are denuded, destroyed, or depleted. This grim news galvanizes the crew to do something. They agree to reactivate the fusion drive and turn the plume on the Watcher. This tactic cripples the Watcher, but its retaliation does even more damage to Lancer; worst of all, the drive system is destroyed. At some point after the publication of one or more sequels (beginning with Great Sky River, for the American paperback edition), Benford appended a new ending onto the original just-described ending of the novel. The following section is from the Second Edition of the book to bridge over to the continuance of the Galactic Core Saga: The Watcher is eventually blinded by being coated with a life-form native to the moon, which eats metals and other such materials, thus enabling a boarding action. The boarding parties discover that in exchange for their horrific casualties, they have obtained a map of the galaxy marked with places significant to the machines, and a sleek fast vessel to take them to those places. Now the leader, Nigel vetoes suggestions that they return to Earth and quoting Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ("Le's all slide out of here one of these nights and go for howling adventures amongst the Injuns over in the territory and I says all right, that suits me.") energizes everyone for a voyage to the Galactic Center, the most important place of all for the machines. Earth's ocean-borne myriads, now partnered with the Skimmers against the Swarmers, will just have to fend for themselves.
6534484	/m/0g99tw	Web	John Wyndham	1979-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The events depicted in Web are written from the viewpoint of Arnold Delgrange, a man whose wife and daughter were recently killed in a motor collision. They revolve around a failed attempt to establish a utopian colony on the fictional island Tanakuatua in the Pacific Ocean, remote from civilisation. Tanakuatua is now uninhabited by humans. Its native inhabitants were evacuated from the island due to British nuclear testing and were relocated however a small group of natives defy the evacuation order and placed a curse on any people who returned to the island. When Delgrange and his fellow pioneers reach the island they soon discover it has been overrun by spiders that hunt in packs.
6535784	/m/0g9c6v	Spectrum	Sergey Lukyanenko	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 His life changes when a wealthy man walks into his office and asks him to find his missing daughter. After a short investigation, the Walker finds her on Library - a world full of ancient ruins. Before he can bring her back, however, she dies in a freak accident. A clue leads him to another alien planet where he finds her alive and well. Soon he discovers that the same woman exists on several other worlds, each is connected to the other. One by one, they are killed in seemingly random, totally unrelated events. It is to the Walker's great surprise when he finds himself becoming attracted to his client's daughter. It's a race against time, as the Walker desperately tries to save the identical copies of the woman, only to have them die in his arms. Can he save the last one before she perishes and, in the process, uncover a massive conspiracy going back thousands of years with the Keymasters in the middle?
6539907	/m/0g9jmb	The Cave	Anne McLean Matthews	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story concerns an elderly potter named Cipriano Algor, his daughter Marta, and his son-in-law Marçal. One day, the Center, literally the center of commerce in the story, cancels its order for Cipriano's pottery, leaving the elderly potter's future in doubt. He and Marta decide to try their hand at making clay figurines and astonishingly the Center places an order for hundreds. But just as quickly, the order is cancelled and Cipriano, his daughter, and his son-in-law have no choice but to move to the Center where Marçal works as a security guard. Before long, the mysterious sound of digging can be heard beneath the Center, and what the family discovers will change their lives forever.
6540763	/m/0g9krs	Network Analysis and Ethnographic Problems				 The basis for the book is the complete genealogical network for a nomad community, its history, and its migrants and migrations. These form a relational web not just for description but for analysis of social dynamics. The picture that emerges is one of a complexly scalable social system that expands through reproduction, kinship alliances, and fissions, and overcomes internal conflicts and those with neighbors along routes of migration. These networks constitute a generative demographic engine for health, a potential for large sibling groups, and for extensive cooperation within and between these groups constructed through reciprocal ties of marriage. The book is lavishly illustrated with photos, network diagrams, and analytical tables showing how very simple principles of cohesion and scalable alliances between families are able to organize this social system through a series of shifting articulations at a variety of social and spatial levels. Thus continual reshuffling is capabable of moving, and does move individuals and groups in the society through a variety of transformations in relation to life problems, social problems, technological problems, and the transmission and enrichment of a highly complex cultural system. The book shows how these adjust dynamically to changing social conditions.
6542282	/m/0g9lw2	If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home	Tim O'Brien	1973	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 O'Brien takes the reader through a typical day in the life of a soldier in Vietnam. We are briefly introduced to a small number of fellow 'grunts' and the commanding officer of Alpha Company, the rifle company O'Brien was assigned to, one Captain Johansen. (Names and physical characteristics depicted in the book were changed.) Rather than proceed chronologically, O'Brien takes the reader back to the beginning of his induction into the US Army. The reader learns about the author's home town, Worthington, Minnesota and to which O'Brien moved when he was 10 years old. We are led through his childhood, playing various army games, and learning about World War II from returned veterans and the Korean War which was taking place at the time. The story of his tour itself continues to unfold while the reader is simultaneously taken through O'Brien's training at Fort Lewis, Washington, where he acquaints a man of similar situation named Erik. Together, the two decide to engage in a psychological resistance against the government. After debating over the idea of desertion, O'Brien arrives in Vietnam in 1969 and spends a week at a base in Chu Lai (home to the Americal Division from approximately 1967 until 1971), receiving last-minute training such as mine sweeping and grenade throwing as well as the essential do's and don'ts of jungle warfare, before being sent to Landing Zone Gator in Quang Ngai Province where he is assigned to Alpha company, 5th Battalion of the 46th Infantry, 198th Infantry Brigade. O'Brien describes his time in Alpha Company and the various events that took place during his time there, as well as some of the people he encountered. Among the scenarios O'Brien describes is one about the various mines that are encountered by the infantrymen, and the indiscriminate way that these devices disfigure and maim both combatants and civilians. Not long after the accidental shelling of a lagoon village by the A Battery, 1st Battalion, 14th Field Artillery Regiment, that Alpha Company was protecting (near an American firebase), O'Brien is offered a job at the rear and is airlifted away from the fighting, where he encounters a rear echelon officer, Major Callicles (battalion executive officer), who deals with the investigation into the My Lai Massacre committed by the Charlie Company of the same battalion. The memoir ends with O'Brien being flown home.
6546010	/m/0g9q5m	Mary, Mary	B. W. Battin	2006-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 FBI Agent Alex Cross is on vacation in Los Angeles with his family when he receives word that a Hollywood actress has been murdered. The actress was shot and her face violently slashed with a knife. An email describing the killer's mindset before and during the murder as well as allusions to the killer's motivation was sent to an entertainment reporter at the Los Angeles Times. The emails are signed "Mary Smith". The actress happens to be friends with the wife of the President of the United States who has asked FBI Director Ron Burns to look into the matter. Additional victims, including a movie producer and a local TV anchorwoman, turn up later as well. As the number of incidents increases so does the number of leads. One such lead is a sighting of a blue Chevrolet Suburban speeding away from one of the murder scenes. Further investigation reveals the owner of one such Suburban who's owner lives near the Internet cafe where many of the Mary Smith emails were sent. A variety of other evidence also corroborates the conclusion that the Suburban's owner is, in fact, the Mary Smith killer. Cross interviews the Suburban owner. In doing so, he discovers that she suffers from some sort of psychological disorder that either lead or caused her to kill her three children 20 years ago. To investigate the killings further, Cross travels to the Suburban owner's small hometown in Vermont and discovers that after her children were killed, she was institutionalized at a state mental hospital from which she later escaped. At the mental hospital, Cross examines the log of visitors who had come to see the Suburban owner and discovers a familiar name who then shows up and tries to silence Cross for good.
6546437	/m/0g9qmf	Judge and Jury	Andrew Gross		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 It's the biggest trial of the decade - big time mobster Dominic Cavello has finally been put in the dock, and there's enough evidence to make a conviction. Heavy security surrounds the courtroom, and Nick Pellisante, the FBI agent who helped to nail Cavello, keeps a close eye on the proceedings. But things swiftly begin to go wrong. Faced with anonymous threats, the jury is sequestered. Then the bus escorting them to their hotel is bombed on the day of Andie's young son's birthday - Jarrod, who is on the bus with the rest of the jury. Andie DeGrasse is the only person who survives, her loss strengthens her resolve to see justice done, to Cavello as well as to whoever planted that bomb. She and Pellisante both know that this will be difficult, but they can't foresee just how difficult.
6549971	/m/0g9vrd	One, Two, Buckle My Shoe	Agatha Christie		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Hercule Poirot leaves the office of his dentist, Morley, after an appointment, and notices the arrival of Mabelle Sainsbury Seale. He returns to her the shiny buckle that has fallen from her shoe. Later, he hears from Inspector Japp that Morley has died of a gunshot. Between Poirot’s appointment and Morley’s death there were only three patients: Banker Alistair Blunt, Mabelle, and a Greek blackmailer named Amberiotis. The presence of a man thought essential to the country’s economic survival, the banker, Blunt, ensures Japp’s involvement in the case. Amberiotis dies of an overdose of anaesthetic and it is thought that the dentist has killed himself after realising the accident for which he had been responsible. The movements of people at the dental surgery are inconclusive. Morley’s partner, Reilly, is a rogue but seems to have no motive. Morley’s secretary had been called away by a fake telegram. Her boyfriend, Frank Carter, had a weak motive given that Morley had attempted to dissuade her from seeing him. Also present at the surgery was Howard Raikes, a prickly left-wing activist violently opposed to Blunt but enamoured of his niece. There is too little evidence for Poirot to construct an alternative hypothesis, but he senses that the story is not complete. When Mabelle goes missing, his fears are realised. A search for her is conducted, and some time later her body is apparently found in a sealed chest in the apartment of Mrs. Albert Chapman, who has herself disappeared. The corpse’s face has been smashed in, and Poirot notices its dull buckled shoes. He is skeptical of the theory that Mrs. Chapman has killed Mabelle and fled. Sure enough, once the dental records are produced by Morley’s successor at the surgery, it is discovered that the corpse is Mrs. Chapman’s. The hunt for Mabelle continues. Poirot is now drawn into the life of the Blunt family. An attempt is made on Alistair Blunt’s life at which Raikes is a bystander. Poirot is invited down to Blunt’s house, where he is persuaded to undertake a search for Mabelle. While he is there, a second attempt is made on Blunt’s life, but it is seemingly thwarted by Raikes. The pistol used in the attack is found in the hand of none other than Frank Carter, who has taken a job as gardener at the house under a false identity. When a maid at the surgery admits to having seen Carter on the stairs going up to Morley’s office, it seems that Carter is likely to be tried and convicted of both the murder and the attempted murder. The fact that the gun with which he was captured was the twin of the murder weapon only makes things worse for him. In the climax of the novel – one of the darkest in the Poirot series – Poirot realises that by allowing Carter to persist in his lies he can ensure that the real killer goes free, and wrestles with his conscience. Eventually he presses Carter to admit the truth: that when he entered Morley’s office the dentist was already dead. It is the final element in the puzzle. Poirot visits Alistair Blunt and explains the murders. The real Mabelle Sainsbury Seale had known him and his first wife, Gerda, whom he had never divorced, in India; his money came from his now deceased second wife, and he would be disgraced if caught in bigamy. Running into Blunt in the street, she had recognised and spoken to him in front of his niece, but had not realised whom he had become. By chance she had mentioned this chance encounter to the blackmailer, Amberiotis, who made the connection between the name 'Blunt' and the wealthy banker and began to blackmail Blunt. Gerda, posing under several aliases including that of Mrs. Albert Chapman, invited Mabelle to visit her, killed her, and took her identity, but had to buy new shoes because Mabelle’s did not fit her. This is why the corpse’s buckles were dull, while the buckle of the woman whom Poirot met going into Morley's surgery were shiny: the fake Mabelle had newer shoes than the real one, who was by that time decomposing in the chest. The woman in the trunk could hardly have worn through a new pair of shoes in a single day. Ironically, the face of the corpse had been disfigured not because it wasn’t Mabelle, but because it was. Alistair Blunt had attended his appointment, shot Morley and stashed his body in the side office with his wife’s help. Having appeared to leave the surgery, he returned and changed the dental records of Mrs. Albert Chapman and Mabelle in order to ensure that the corpse would be identified as Mrs. Chapman: a woman who in reality did not exist; the motive for killing Morley was simply to prevent him from detecting this change. At the end of Mabelle’s appointment, Gerda left, while Blunt dressed as a dentist in order to administer the overdose to Amberiotis, a new patient who had never met Morley. Poirot’s involvement had forced Blunt to compound the lies with talk of assassins and spies as the detective had relentlessly tracked the truth. At the novel’s bleak conclusion, Poirot is forced to admit that Blunt does indeed stand in public life “for all the things that to my mind are important. For sanity and balance and stability and honest dealing”. Nevertheless, he adds: “I am not concerned with the fate of nations, Monsieur. I am concerned with the lives of private individuals who have the right not to have their lives taken from them.” He turns Blunt over to the police. Later, he confronts Blunt's niece and her fiancé Howard Raikes, telling them that they now have the "new heaven and the new earth" that they desire, asking them only to "let there be freedom and let there be pity". In the last chapter, Mr. Barnes tells Poirot that he took such a vivid interest in the case as he was Mr. Albert Chapman, the wife of whom Gerda (apparently Mrs. Albert Chapman) pretended to be.
6553110	/m/0gb473	Dairy Queen		2006-05-22		 The novel is about a 15-year-old girl named Darlene Joyce (D.J.) Schwenk, who lives on a farm in Red Bend, Wisconsin. During the summer, she is pressured into training a stubborn football player named Brian Nelson. Eventually, they become friends, and D.J. develops romantic feelings for Brian. Part of DJ's struggle is that she had once been a star athlete in volleyball and basketball. When her father hurts his hip, she had to take over all the responsibilities of running their dairy farm. Her only hopes of college had been sports scholarships, and when she is forced to quit sports in order to run the farm, she starts slacking in school. DJ's two older brothers Win and Bill are legends at her school and both play college football. DJ decides to try out for her high school football team. When pre-season is about to start, D.J.'s best friend Amber walks in on a waterfight between D.J. and Brian. Brian leaves, and D.J. and Amber argue. Later on, D.J.'s friend Kari invites her to a gravel-pit party, which Amber attends. D.J. tells the two of them about her decision and Amber expresses her disgust. After, D.J. encounters Amber away from the rest of the party. Then Amber reveals, "You're with me. You're not with him. It's the two of us. Don't you see that?" It then occurs to D.J. that Amber is in love with her (Which is how you know that Amber is a lesbian.) DJ withholds her decision to try out for the team from Brian, and when he finally finds out their friendship is ruined because Brian feels like DJ has betrayed him. Throughout the summer, D.J. learns a lot about the people in her life. She also discovers that there is a lot of meaning in speaking out. Brian once says to her "When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said." DJ and her family don't communicate effectively, her father rarely speaks to any of them except for her mother, her two older brothers are in the middle of a silent fight with her father, they have no contact with the family (until DJ finds out her mother has been communicating with them the whole time), and her younger brother speaks only when he is spoken to.
6555945	/m/0gbc4d	Jubilee Trail	Gwen Bristow		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with Garnet Cameron, an 18-year-old young woman from upper-class New York society. Garnet has just graduated from her finishing school and is trying to find a direction for her life now that her schooling is done. That summer, a young man by the name of Oliver Hale comes to New York. He is in town to buy supplies from the estate of Mr. Selkirk, a wealthy murdered man, to bring west with him. Oliver Hale is a frontier trader from California and Garnet is immediately drawn to him. He treats her as an equal and talks to her as "a human being", telling her about the journey to the unknown territory of California. Garnet is riveted by Oliver's tales of adventure and excitement and longs to see the things he tells her about. Promising to take her west with him, Oliver proposes marriage and Garnet happily accepts. They are quickly married and begin their journey that March. The plan is that Garnet will travel to California with Oliver while he closes up his business out west and they both will return to New York the following year. Oliver and Garnet travel first to New Orleans. Garnet is fascinated by the grandeur of the city. Oliver takes her to a dance hall called the Flower Garden, something Garnet would never have been allowed to do back in New York. In the Flower Garden, a blonde actress named Juliette La Tour stops the show with her talent for stage presence and performance. That evening, as the couple eats dinner, Garnet has a meeting with Juliette when two drunk men try to make a move on Garnet and the actress sends them away. Juliette tells Garnet that her real name is Florinda Grove. The next day, Garnet spots Florinda hiding in the hallways of her hotel. Florinda tells Garnet that a man from New York wants to arrest Florinda for the murder of Mr. Selkirk. Garnet and Oliver decide to help Florinda escape arrest by disguising her as a widow and sending her to St. Louis. Florinda is very grateful and she and Garnet become fast friends. Shortly after Florinda leaves, Garnet and Oliver leave New Orleans for St. Louis, themselves. Beyond St. Louis, Garnet and Oliver set out to cross the Great Plains. The trail is hard-going, but Garnet enjoys it with wide-eyed wonder. She questions Oliver about his brother Charles, whom they will be staying with in California, but Oliver is reluctant to talk on the subject of his brother and Garnet lets it drop. They arrive in Santa Fe several months after leaving St. Louis and Garnet is reunited with Florinda, who was traveling "in sin" with a deacon from St. Louis. She and Garnet rekindle their friendship. Shortly after their arrival in Santa Fe, the traders from California arrive in the city, too. Garnet is introduced to several of Oliver's friends: John Ives, Oliver's standoff-ish business partner, who is ; and fellow traders of the Jubilee Trail (the name of the trail from Santa Fe to California) Silky van Dorn, Penrose, and Texas. Florinda drops the deacon and makes the decision to travel to California with the traders. On the trail to California, Garnet and Florinda endure harsh temperatures, lack of water, and other such hardships with stoicism and bravery. Both women build friendships with the men of the trail, most notable of which is John's gradual warming to Garnet. They share a mutual appreciation of the scenery and he grows to respect both Garnet and Florinda for their sheer will and determination. The train finally arrives in California with much rejoicing, although Florinda quickly succumbs to exhaustion brought on by the trail. Garnet also finally meets Oliver's brother, Charles, who makes no secret of the fact that he hates her. Garnet convinces John to take care of Florinda, as she herself must leave for Charles' rancho to the north. Garnet finds out quickly that Charles is basically controlling Oliver. Oliver, who once was a strong and outgoing man, is reduced to the attitude of a child when he is around Charles. During an earthquake at Charles' rancho, Garnet discovers a letter from Charles to Oliver. The letter reveals that before leaving California last year, Oliver had a tryst with the daughter of a wealthy native Californian and the girl gave birth to a son. Charles was delighted at the opportunity to gain control of the property and expected Oliver to marry the girl on his return. He was shocked to discover he had gotten married in New York. Garnet's respect for Oliver continues to falter as she realizes that he is not the man she thought she was marrying. Shortly after this revelation, Garnet also realizes that she herself is pregnant and will be due sometime while she and Oliver are out on the prairie for the return trip east. In the midst of all this emotional turmoil, the young Californio woman kills herself and her baby. In a grief-stricken rage, her father storms into Charles' rancho and kills Oliver. After Oliver's death, Garnet nearly dies, but is rescued by John Ives and Florinda and taken to Florinda's Los Angeles saloon where she lives among new friends, including the magnificent Russian friend of John Ives. Her son is born amid the drama of California's joining the United States and the reality that Charles Hale wants to take her son from her. By the end of the story gold has been discovered on Sutter's Mill and John and Garnet fall in love and are married.
6557540	/m/0gbfz2	Witch Week	Diana Wynne Jones	1982	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book is set in an alternate modern-day England (World Twelve C), identical to our world except for the presence of witchcraft. Despite witches being common, witchcraft is illegal and punishable by death, policed by a modern-day Inquisition. At Larwood House, an underfunded boarding school that many of the adolescent children of executed witches are sent to, a note claiming "Someone in this class is a witch" is found by one of the teachers. This launches an internal investigation of several of the more unpopular students at the school, some of whom are gradually coming to terms with the fact that they can do magic. In the traditional manner of children, magic and mischief, mayhem gradually ensues as magic is used to make birds appear in the classroom, to rain shoes, to curse a classmate into having his words always be true, and to do the traditional flying on a broomstick. When the magic gets totally out of control, one of the students runs away, blaming the witch for controlling him. This launches an investigation and the Inquisition is called to locate any witches and have them burned. Four of the students escape the school, two of them turning for help to an old part of an underground railroad system for witches to send them to another world where they'll be safe. While the old woman who lives there tells them the system broke down long ago, she does give them a spell to say at the Oak Grove that will summon help in an emergency. The four students and Brian, the runaway, gather at the Grove and say "Chrestomanci" three times, which summons the nine-lives enchanter from The Lives of Christopher Chant to help them. With his help, and the help of their classmates, most of which are witches themselves, the kids outwit the Inquisitor and ultimately revise their world's history by merging their world (Twelve A) with ours (Twelve B), which has no magic. When the note is found in this world, everyone exclaims they are the witch, and it is seen as normal.
6558309	/m/0gbhk4	Castle in the Air	Diana Wynne Jones	1990	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Castle in the Air follows the adventures of Abdullah, a handsome young carpet salesman from Zanzib, who daydreams constantly about being a stolen prince. One day a strange traveler comes to his stand to sell a magic carpet. During the night, Abdullah goes to sleep on the carpet but wakes up to find himself in a beautiful garden with a young woman. He tells the woman, Flower-in-the-Night, that he is the stolen prince of his daydreams, believing that he is in fact dreaming. Flower-in-the-Night, who has never seen a man other than her father, first believes that Abdullah is a woman, so Abdullah agrees to return the next night with portraits of many men so that she can make a proper comparison. He does so, and Abdullah and Flower-in-the-Night decide to marry. Abdullah returns the next night, but he arrives just as Flower-in-the-Night is snatched away by a huge flying djinn. Soon after, the Sultan of Zanzib captures Abdullah who then discovers that Flower is actually the Sultan's daughter. Enraged that his daughter is missing, the Sultan blames Abdullah and throws him in jail, threatening to impale him on a 40 foot pole if his daughter is not found. Fortunately, Abdullah is saved by his magic carpet and escapes from Zanzib. Abdullah ends up in the desert and stumbles upon a group of bandits, who have in their possession a particularly cranky genie who grants only one wish a day. In the night, Abdullah steals the genie and flees. After a wish, Abdullah is transported to Ingary and ends up traveling with a bitter Strangian soldier whose country was recently taken in a war with Ingary. While traveling to Kingsbury in search of a wizard, the two stumble upon a cat and her kitten, whom the soldier names Midnight and Whippersnapper, respectively. As they travel, Abdullah wishes for the return of his flying carpet, who brings with it the very Djinn that kidnapped Flower-in-the-Night. It is revealed that the Djinn, Hasruel, is being forced to kidnap princesses from all over the world by his brother, Dalzel. The two proceed on the carpet to Kingsbury, which is where they find Wizard Suliman, who, upon realizing that Midnight is actually a person in cat form, returns her to being a human. As the spell is lifted from the woman, who turns out to be Sophie Pendragon, her baby, Morgan is returned to his normal self as well. However, when they go to collect the baby, he is no longer in the inn, where he was left with the soldier. Abdullah and Sophie then order the carpet to take them to Morgan. The carpet does so, taking them far into the sky, to the castle in the air, which is merely Wizard Howl's castle, having been greatly enlarged. There they meet the stolen princesses and plot with them to escape the castle. Led by Abdullah, they overpower the two Djinn, freeing Hasruel who banishes his brother. Flower-of-the-Night had by then wished the genie free, who turned out to be Sophie's husband, the Wizard Howl.
6558771	/m/0gbjht	The Infinity Clue	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Frank, Joe and Chet travel to Washington DC to investigate the theft of a diamond. Fenton Hardy has gone missing, and the sign of infinity begins to haunt the boys as it follows them everywhere!
6561364	/m/0gbpgh	Terrorist	John Updike	2006-06	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The story centers on an American-born Muslim teenager named Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, although Ahmad’s high school guidance counselor, Jack Levy, also plays a central role. The novel seeks to explore the worldview and motivations of religious fundamentalists (specifically within Islam), while at the same time dissecting the morals and lifeways of residents of the fictional decaying New Jersey Rust Belt suburb of "New Prospect" (which Updike has identified with Paterson, New Jersey, also the setting of his novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies).
6561640	/m/0gbptg	The Four-Headed Dragon	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Hardy boys track a criminal who plans to use an invention designed as a peaceful aid to the secret Four-Headed Dragon organization behind the Iron Curtain to harm the free world instead.
6562082	/m/0gbq6q	Track of the Zombie	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Hardy boys travel to Vermont to investigate a mysterious fire and to help a circus owner who is plagued with accidents.
6562130	/m/0gbq8t	The Billion Dollar Ransom	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy boys help out when a magicians' tournament is threatened by mysterious happenings. Frank and Joe naturally catch the magician who kidnapped the President and all culprits by slowly closing in on their position and taking control.
6562180	/m/0gbqbj	Tic-Tac-Terror	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this book the Hardy boys (Frank and Joe) are asked to help stop a world-famous spy who works for the HAVOC, an international network of terrorists, wants to defect to the U.S. Frank and joe know the spy as "Igor”. Also a million-dollar emerald from South America has vanished. Joe and Frank think “Igor” was involved. Their only clue is mysterious symbol in shape of tic-tac-toe. The game lead to a building that is run by the U.S government. The building has a bomb and the Hardys are trapped in a deadly game of tic-tac-toe.
6562256	/m/0gbqf8	Trapped At Sea	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Hardy brothers travel from the highways of eastern United States to tropical islands trying to track down truckloads of precious cargo that are being hijacked.
6562366	/m/0gbqjr	Game Plan for Disaster	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Frank and Joe Hardy are drawn into a tangled web of danger when they are called in to investigate mysterious accidents plaguing a college football star.
6562420	/m/0gbqmj	The Crimson Flame	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot begins with Frank and Joe witnessing a westerner being attacked by a notorious jewel thief Oscar Tamm. The westerner reveals himself as Alfred McVay and as a avid jewel collector. Due to suspicious happenings at his ranch house in Arizona, he hires the Hardys for protection. Upon reaching there the Hardys start to investigate the strange happenings and develop an immediate dislike of the foreman, Wat Perkins. The are also intrigued by a "mysterious rider" who seems to be sending messages to someone in the ranch house. They also grow suspicious of the butler Wilbur. When a tornado strikes the ranch, the Crimson Flame, a priceless ruby gets stolen. McVay becomes morose and the Hardys, with a couple of clues, pursue the jewel thieves to Thailand. The rest of the plot follows how the boys help capture the crooks and eventually, how the lost ruby is found.
6563632	/m/0gbrsv	The Thief	Megan Whalen Turner	1996-10-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gen is released from prison by the magus, the king's scholar. The magus finds Gen filthy, uncouth, and insolent, but he needs Gen’s skills as a thief. Without telling Gen where they are going, he takes him out of the city. They are joined by the magus’s two apprentices, Sophos and Ambiades, and by Pol, a soldier. The journey is dangerous, and the travelers grate on each other's nerves. The magus reveals that the object he wants Gen to steal is a precious stone called Hamaithes's Gift far far away. Gen risks death in a daring attempt to steal the stone from an almost inaccessible temple, while the entire party is pursued by the Guard of Attolia. None of the main characters is exactly what he seems to be. Gen actually works for the queen of a neighboring nation, Sophos is the heir to the throne and Ambiades is a traitor. By the end of the book, secrets are revealed, relationships adjusted, and respect among the travelers is lost and won.
6564761	/m/0gbsxh	Cyborg	Martin Caidin	1972-04	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Cyborg is the story of an astronaut-turned-test pilot, Steve Austin, who experiences a catastrophic crash during a flight, leaving him with all but one limb destroyed, blind in one eye, and with other major injuries. At the same time, a secret branch of the American government, the Office of Strategic Operations (OSO) has taken an interest in the work of Dr. Rudy Wells in the field of bionics - the replacement of human body parts with mechanical prosthetics that (in the context of this novel) are more powerful than the original limbs. Wells also happens to be a close friend of Austin's, so when OSO chief Oscar Goldman "invites" (or rather, orders) Wells to rebuild Austin with bionics limbs, Wells agrees. In Caidin's writings, he uses the form "bionics" in all references treating it as both noun (singular) and adjective, since "-ics" is the Greek suffix meaning science, study or practice, as in "physics"; this was changed for the subsequent television series to the more adjectival-sounding form "bionic", e.g. "bionic limbs" rather than Caidin's "bionics limbs". Steve Austin is outfitted with two new legs capable of propelling him at great speed, and a bionics left arm with almost human dexterity and the strength of a battering ram. One of the fingers of the hand incorporates a poison dart gun. His left eye is replaced with a false, removable eye that is used (in this first novel) to house a miniature camera. Other physical alterations include the installation of a steel skull plate to replace bone smashed by the crash, and a radio transmitter built into a rib. This mixture of man and machine is known as a cyborg, from which the novel gets its title. The first half of the novel details Austin's operation and both his reaction to his original injuries—he attempts to commit suicide—and his initially resentful reaction to being rebuilt with bionics. The operation comes with a hefty price tag, and Austin is committed to working for the OSO as a reluctant agent. He is teamed with a female operative and sent to the Middle East as a new weapon against extremism.
6565097	/m/0gbt9y	Hallam Foe	Peter Jinks	2002-04-01		 Hallam Foe follows the life of 17-year-old boy who has a very unusual and seemingly destructive hobby. He lives most of his life up in a tree house with state-of-the-art binoculars, a telescope, and plenty of logbooks in hand, watching as the people around him live their life. Hallam keeps himself separated and lives in solitude up in the trees, away from his father, Julius Foe, stepmother, Verity, his sister, Lucy and his best friend Alex Thirtle. He had fallen into these depths when his mother, Anne Sarah Foe, committed suicide and the relentless relatives turned their attention and pity towards the boy.
6572984	/m/0gc32p	Reaper's Gale	Steven Erikson	2007-05-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Synopsis The Challengers: Champions from various cultures return with the Edur fleet to challenge Rhulad. Among them include Icarium with Taralack Veed, Karsa Orlong with Samar Dev, a Seguleh girl found unconscious near MoI, and a monk from Cabal. Icarium begins acting strangely, and Taralack Veed starts doubting that Icarium can beat Rhulad. Samar Dev believes Karsa will die, but Karsa is confident. Eventually all the challengers die except Karsa and Icarium. Karsa fights Rhulad and severs Rhulad's sword arm, then uses all his ghosts and the ones in Samar's knife to manipulate the sword's power and travel to the Crippled God's island. There he flips the Crippled God's tent, stabs Rhulad (who dies, this time for good), slaps Withal and enters a portal aimed vaguely at his home after refusing to take the sword for himself (which was apparently the Crippled God's plan ever since Karsa left Laederon). Withal and the Nachts destroy the sword. The Shake: Varat Taun warns Twilight of what Icarium can do, so she flees up the coast. We learn she is a princess of the Shake. At Maiden Island she confronts Brullyg who declared himself king and makes herself Queen. Deadsmell makes some comments about the Shake being descended from the original Tiste Andii guardians of the Shore (but also having Edur blood). The Awl war: Redmask unites all the Awl and initially defeats the Letheri army coming for him, but before long the Letheri start doing better. They have a big final battle and Redmask's two K'chain Che-malle pals suddenly attack and kill him mid-battle. The Letheri win. The Barghast show up. Toc sacrifices himself to save a dozen or so Awl children, witnessed by Tool. The Barghast slaughter the Letheri forces. In the Refugium: The Refugium is dying. Menandore teams up with Sheltatha and Sukul to try and take Scabandari's finnest, but Quick Ben defeats them and Hedge cussers Sheltatha and Menandore. Sukul gets away but is then killed by the three T'lan Imass who were real Bentract and had wanted to usurp Ulshun Pral (but later decided they liked him and the place). Onrack and Trull defend the portal entrance. Silchas, Clip, Wither, Kettle, Udinaas, Seren and Fear come through. Silchas, Clip and Wither team up to kill the rest. Fear dies, Wither explodes, Clip retreats, the rest are really wounded except Silchas who takes the Finnest but commits no more injury for fear of Kilava, except for stabbing Kettle and making a new Azath (because she's an Azath seed). Scabandari's soul is stuck inside it. People slowly recover and Quick Ben, Hedge, Trull and Seren teleport to Letheras. In Letheras: The marines make it there, Beak dies to save them from a giant wave of magic. The Edur go back home. The main Malazan army fights the main Letheri army so the marines go running around the city. The Seguleh shows up not dead and walks out. Fiddler's group make it to the colliseum, where Trull has found his dead brother and is promptly stabbed by Sirryn Kanar. Brys returns from the undead. Feather Witch tries to make him the mortal sword of her new Errant cult, but the Errant drowns her. Brys gives Pinosel and Urkel the name of the sea-god so they can restrain it. The Huntress kills Hannan Mosag. Brys kills Karos Invictad. The Rat Catchers' Guild pays people to shout Tehol's name. Tehol is pronounced Emperor by the will of the people and marries Janath. Icarium tries to replicate K'rul's forging of the warrens by slitting his wrists and walking into one of his magic buildings. It is broken and explodes outwards in a big white wave which kills people directly and indirectly (i.e. by debris). The ones killed directly appear to have their thoughts/brains/etc sucked out of them. Among the brain-sucked are Taralack Veed and Letur Anict. Triban Gnol and Senior Assessor also die, and Varat Taun surrenders. pl:Wicher śmierci
6584861	/m/0gcp5d	Kazohinia	Sándor Szathmári		{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 As in the Gulliverian prototype, the premise is a shipwreck with a solitary survivor, who finds himself in an unknown land, namely that of the Hins, which contains a minority group, namely the Behins. Accordingly, this work by a Hungarian writer relates not so much to Swift's work, but more precisely to Brave New World by the British writer Aldous Huxley. As in that work, there coexist two dissimilar societies - of course separately -, one developed and the other backward. The Hins are a people who have solved all economic problems: Production and usage of goods is based on need instead of money, and the standard of living is impeccable. The Hins live without any kind of government or administrative body, as their belief is that such would only hinder production. They lead their lives according to the "pure reality of existence," which they call kazo. They experience no emotions, love, beauty or spiritual life. There are two different main interpretations of the author's intentions: *Although the theme can be seen as a criticism of developed society, where highly progressive invention goes hand in hand with the loss of human feelings, Dezső Keresztury, the writer of the epilogue of the Hungarian edition stated that this is not what Szathmáry intended - he created the Hins as the ideal society that occupies itself with the "real" stuff of life instead of "unreal" phantasmagories such as nations, religion, and money, that, regardless of intentions, cause people considerable misery. *Another interpretation is that the author satires both human society and communist utopias – which, in his assessment, lead equally to such disastrous consequences as massacres. The protagonist, bored with the inhuman life of the Hins, chooses to live among the insane Behins, who reportedly conform better to his outlook on life. He hopes that in the Behins, living in a walled-off area, he will meet humans with human feelings, similar to himself. The Behins, however have a totally insane society, where living conditions are supported by the ruling Hins while they themselves are preoccupied with what to the protagonist seem to be senseless ceremonies and all too frequent violent brawls. The Behins deliberately arrange their lives in such a way as to turn reality and logic on their heads, while among the Hins everything is arranged according to reality. While living among them, the protagonist suffers hunger, extreme misery, and even danger of death. This part of the novel is in fact satire, with each insanity of the Behins translating to facets of the Western, Christian society of the protagonist such as war, religion, etiquette, art, and philosophy. To further emphasize the satire, the protagonist doesn't see the obvious parallels between his homeland and the Behin world, but the writer outlines it by giving the same sentences into the mouths of a Behin leader and a British admiral, replacing only the Behin words on ideals and religion with their English counterparts. The Behins are indeed "real" humans, but as their symbols and customs differ from his own, the protagonist sees them as mere savage madmen.
6585327	/m/0gcpsj	Summon the Thunder	Dayton Ward	2006-06-27	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Shedai, an ancient race of beings, threaten the lives of all aboard "Vanguard" a Federation starbase.
6586469	/m/0gcr99	Amelia	Henry Fielding	1751	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Amelia is a domestic novel taking place largely in London during 1733. It describes the hardships suffered by a young couple newly married. It is widely believed that Amelia was modeled after Fielding's own wife, Charlotte Craddock, and that the novel contains autobiographical elements. Against her mother's wishes, Amelia marries Captain William Booth, a dashing young army officer. The couple run away to London. In Book II, William is unjustly imprisoned in Newgate, and is subsequently seduced by Miss Matthews. During this time, it is revealed that Amelia was in a carriage accident and that her nose was ruined. Although this brings about jokes at Amelia's behalf, Booth refuses to regard her as anything but beautiful. Amelia, by contrast, resists the attentions paid to her by several men in William's absence and stays faithful to him. She forgives his transgression, but William soon draws them into trouble again as he accrues gambling debts trying to lift the couple out of poverty. He soon finds himself in debtors' prison. Amelia then discovers that she is her mother's heiress and, the debt being settled, William is released and the couple retires to the country. The second edition contains many changes to the text. A whole chapter on a dispute between doctors was completely removed, along with various sections of dialogue and praise of the Glastonbury Waters. The edition also contains many new passages, such as an addition of a scene in which a doctor repairs Amelia's nose and Booth remarking on the surgery (in Book II, Chapter 1, where Booth is talking to Miss Matthews).
6587853	/m/0gcsvn	The Captain's Daughter	Peter David	1836	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Pyotr Andreyich Grinyov is the only surviving child of a retired army hotdog. When Pyotr turns 17, his father sends him into military service in Orenburg. En route Pyotr gets lost in a blizzard, but is rescued by a mysterious man. As a token of his gratitude, Pyotr gives the guide his hareskin jacket. Arriving in Orenburg, Pyotr reports to his commanding officer and is assigned to serve at Belogorsky fortress under captain Ivan Mironov. The fortress is nothing more than a fence around a village, and the captain's wife Vasilisa is really in charge. Pyotr befriends his fellow officer Shvabrin, who is banished here after a duel resulted in the death of his opponent. When Pyotr dines with the Mironov family, he meets their daughter Masha and falls in love with her. This causes a rift between Pyotr and Shvabrin, who has been turned down by Masha. When Shvabrin insults Masha's honor, Pyotr and Shvabrin duel and Pyotr is injured. Pyotr asks his father's consent to marry Masha, but gets turned down. Not much later, the fortress is besieged by Yemelyan Pugachev, who claims to be emperor Peter III. The cossacks stationed at the fortress join the forces of Pugachev, and he takes the fortress easily. He demands that Captain Mironov swears an oath of allegiance to him, and when denied, hangs the Captain and kills his wife. When it is Pyotr's turn, Shvabrin suddenly appears to have defected as well, and upon his advice orders Pyotr to be hanged. However, his life is suddenly spared as Pugachev turns out to be the guide that rescued Pyotr from the blizzard. The next evening, Pyotr and Pugachev talk in private. Pyotr impresses Pugachev with his sincerity that he cannot serve him. Pugachev decides to let Pyotr go to Orenburg. He has to relay a message to the Governor that Pugachev will be marching on his city. The fortress is to be left under the command of Shvabrin, who takes advantage of the situation by forcing Masha to marry him. Pyotr rushes off to prevent this marriage, but is captured by Pugachev's troops. After explaining the situation to Pugachev, they both ride off to the fortress. After Masha has been freed, she and Pyotr take off to his father's estate, but they are intercepted by the army. Pyotr decides to stay with the army and sends Masha to his father. The war with Pugachev goes on, and Pyotr gets to visit his family, only to find them captured by peasants, who have joined Pugachev's rebellion. Pyotr is imprisoned as well, and the situation worsens when Shvabrin also arrives. Just as Pyotr is about to be hanged, the army arrives and saves him. Pyotr rejoins the army, but at the moment of Pugachev's defeat, he is arrested for having friendly relations with Pugachev. During his interrogation, Shvabrin testifies that Pyotr is a traitor. Not willing to drag Masha into court, Pyotr is unable to repudiate this accusation and receives the death penalty. Although Empress Catherine the Great spares his life, Pyotr remains a prisoner. Masha understands why Pyotr wasn't able to defend himself, since he has the mental fortitude of a female body part, and decides to go to Saint Petersburg, to present a petition to the empress. In Tsarskoe Selo, she meets a lady and details her plan to see the Empress on Pyotr's behalf. The lady refuses at first, saying that Pyotr is a traitor, but Masha is able to explain all the circumstances. Soon, Masha receives an invitation to see the Empress, and is shocked to recognize her as the lady she had talked to earlier. The Empress has become convinced of Pyotr's innocence and has ordered his release. Pyotr attends the beheading of Pugachev, and marries Masha.
6592393	/m/0gcz3g	Dragon Sword and Wind Child			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Saya is a young maiden who was adopted by an elderly couple who found her in the forest when she was an infant and raised to worship and revere the God of Light and his two immortal children, the passionate and fierce Princess Teruhi and the subdued and melancholic Prince Tsukishiro. As she comes of age, she catches the eye of Prince Tsukishiro and the people of Darkness, those who continue to reincarnate and do not fear death. Tsukishiro, enchanted by Saya's beauty, invites her to become one of his handmaidens at the Palace of Light where he and his sister reside. Before she leaves, she discovers from the People of Darkness that she is latest reincarnation of the Water Maiden, the Princess of the People of Darkness and a priestess capable of stilling the Dragon Sword, a weapon that contains the rage of the Fire God when he was killed by his father, the God of Light, for burning his mother, the Goddess of Darkness, to death. The Dragon Sword and the Water Maiden are linked and the sword is the only weapon which can slay a Child of Light. It is this aspect, Saya discovers, of her that intrigues and attracts Tsukishiro and infuriates and causes Teruhi to despise her since she resembles her previous reincarnation, the Princess Sayura. Saya, despite having worshiped the Light all her life and looked down on the People of Darkness, finds that she cannot escape her destiny as the Water Maiden, symbolized the magatama shaped jewel that was clutched in her hand when she was born. She ends up escaping the Palace of Light with the third Child of Light, Chihaya, the effeminate younger brother of Teruhi and Tsukishiro who was stilled by Teruhi to act as a surrogate Water Maiden for the stolen Dragon Sword and revealed to be the Wind Child, the only entity capable of wielding the Dragon Sword. Together, they join the People of Darkness to stop the fanatical and merciless Teruhi and the indifferent Tsukishiro from destroying the gods of nature and the People of Darkness.
6592621	/m/0gczj_	The Alchemist	Ben Jonson			 An outbreak of plague in London forces a gentleman, Lovewit, to flee temporarily to the country, leaving his house under the sole charge of his butler, Jeremy. Jeremy uses the opportunity given to him to use the house as the headquarters for fraudulent acts. He transforms himself into 'Captain Face', and enlists the aid of Subtle, a fellow conman and Dol Common, a prostitute. The play opens with a violent argument between Subtle and Face concerning the division of the riches which they have, and will continue to gather. Dol breaks the pair apart and reasons with them that they must work as a team if they are to succeed. Their first customer is Dapper, a lawyer's clerk who wishes Subtle to use his supposed necromantic skills to summon a "familiar" or spirit to help in his gambling ambitions. The tripartite suggest that Dapper may win favour with the 'Queen of Fairy', but he must subject himself to humiliating rituals in order for her to help him. Their second gull is Drugger, a tobacconist, who is keen to establish a profitable business. After this, a wealthy nobleman, Sir Epicure Mammon arrives, expressing the desire to gain himself the philosopher's stone which he believes will bring him huge material and spiritual wealth. He is accompanied by Surly, a skeptic and debunker of the whole idea of alchemy. He is promised the philosopher's stone and promised that it will turn all base metal into gold. Surly however, suspects Subtle of being a thief. Mammon accidentally sees Dol and is told that she is a Lord’s sister who is suffering from madness. Subtle contrives to become angry with Ananias, an Anabaptist or Puritan, and demands that he should return with a more senior member of his sect. Drugger returns and is given false and ludicrous advice about setting up his shop; he also brings news that a rich young widow (Dame Pliant) and her brother (Kastril) have arrived in London. Both Subtle and Face in their greed and ambition seek out to win the widow. The Anabaptists return and agree to pay for goods to be transmuted into gold. These are in fact Mammon's goods. Dapper returns and is promised that he shall meet with the Queen of Fairy soon. Drugger brings Kastril who, on being told that Subtle is a skilled match-maker, rushed to fetch his sister. Drugger is given to understand that the appropriate payment might secure his marriage to the widow. Dapper is blindfolded and subjected to 'fairy' humiliations; but on the reappearance of Mammon, he has been gagged and is hastily thrust into the privy. Mammon is introduced to Dol. He has been told that Dol is a nobleman's sister who has gone mad, but he is not put off, and pays her extravagant compliments. Kastril and his sister come again. Kastril is given a lesson in quarrelling, and the widow captivates both Face and Subtle. They quarrel over who is to have her. Surly returns, disguised as a Spanish nobleman. Face and Subtle believe that the Spaniard speaks no English and they insult him. They also believe that he has come for a woman, but Dol is elsewhere in the building ‘engaged’ with Mammon, so Face has the inspiration of using Dame Pliant. She is reluctant to become a Spanish countess but is vigorously persuaded by her brother to go off with Surly. The tricksters need to get rid of Mammon. Dol contrives a fit and there is an ‘explosion’ from the ‘laboratory’. In addition, the lady’s furious ‘brother’ is hunting for Mammon, who leaves. Surly reveals his true identity to Dame Pliant and hopes that she will look on him favourably as a consequence. Surly reveals his true identity to Face and Subtle, and denounces them. In quick succession Kastril, Drugger and Ananias return, and are set on to Surly, who retreats. Drugger is told to go and find a Spanish costume if he is to have a chance of claiming the widow. Dol brings news that the master of the house has returned. Lovewit interrogates the neighbours as to what has been going on during his absence. Face is now the plausible Jeremy again, and explains that there cannot have been any visitors to the house – he has kept it locked up because of the plague. Surly, Mammon, Kastril and the Anabaptists return. There is a cry from the privy; Dapper has chewed through his gag. Jeremy can no longer maintain his fiction. He promises Lovewit that if he pardons him, he will help him obtain himself a rich widow, i.e. Dame Pliant. Dapper meets the ‘Queen of Fairy’ and departs happily. Drugger delivers the Spanish costume and is sent to find a parson. Face tells Subtle and Dol that he has confessed to Lovewit, and that officers are on the way; Subtle and Dol have to flee, empty handed. The victims come back again. Lovewit has married the widow and has claimed Mammon’s goods; Surly and Mammon depart disconsolately. The Anabaptists and Drugger are summarily dismissed. Kastril accepts his sister’s marriage to Lovewit. Lovewit pays tribute to the ingenuity of his servant, and Face asks for the audience’s forgiveness.
6593873	/m/0gd0fv	Castle Greyhawk			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Castle Greyhawk is a large multipart scenario consisting of eleven dungeon levels below Greyhawk Castle, including "Where the Random Monsters Roam" and "The Temple of Really Bad Dead Things".
6598218	/m/0gd5hl	The Meaning of Night	Michael Cox	2006-09-07	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Beginning on a cold October night in 1854 in a dark passageway, the book's narrator tracks an innocent man whom he does not know and stabs him to death. The protagonist/narrator, Edward Glyver, then takes the reader back, recounting as a confession his tale of deceit, love, and revenge. Glyver reveals the torment he has suffered at the hands of his rival, the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, and why in pursuit of revenge Glyver (now masquerading as Edward Glapthorn), a book lover and scholar, has turned to murder. The story moves between the foggy London streets and the enchanting country manor house Evenwood where Daunt spent his formative years, a place with which Glyver finds he has a special connection. The Glass of Time, the follow-up novel to The Meaning of Night, further examines the consequences of Edward Glyver's crime, in a setting twenty years after The Meaning of Night.
6601194	/m/0gdb1d	You're Different and That's Super				 Carson Kressley tells the story of a one-of-a-kind pony who learns that it's our differences that make us "super." Whimsical black-and-white illustrations from renowned equine artist Jared Lee corral humor and charm in a tale of a unicorn struggling to find his identity and place in the world.
6610252	/m/0gdp4z	Jubilee	Jack Dann	1966	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jubilee is a semi-fictional account of "Vyry Brown," based on the life of author Margaret Walker's grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown. Vyry Brown is a mixed-race slave—the unacknowledged daughter of her master—who is born onto the Dutton plantation in Georgia. The novel follows her experiences from early childhood to adult life. The story of Vyry's life in the novel spans three major periods of American history: Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.
6613541	/m/0gds_7	Five on a Treasure Island	Enid Blyton	1942-09-11	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 When siblings Julian (aged 12) Dick (aged 11) and Anne (aged 10) learn that they cannot go on their usual summer holiday trip to Polseath and they are invited to their unknown cousin Georgina's house to stay with her mother (Aunt Fanny) and father (Uncle Quentin) who is a scientist. We learn Georgina (aged 11) is a very difficult and bossy child. She desperately wants to be a boy. She dresses like one, behaves like one and wears her hair short and curly like one. She answers to George (short for Georgina) and will not answer to her real name because it is a girl's name. When George's cousins come to stay she introduces them to her beloved dog Timmy, whom she has had since he was a puppy. George tells her cousins how the big island on the beach belongs to her. It is called Kirrin Island and was passed down through her family. On their way to the island they see a shipwreck under the water and George explains how her great-great-great grandfather was travelling on it along with lots of other men. He was transporting gold from one country to another. The boat was shipwrecked during a storm and George tells her cousins how divers have been down into the boat to try and find the gold but they haven't. All four children agree the gold must have been unloaded somewhere before the ship sank. They arrive at the island, along with Timmy, and when Timmy chases a rabbit into a well, the children are surprised to see Timmy standing on a stone slab sticking out from the inside of the well. George climbs down into the well to rescue Timmy, just as a horrible thunderstorm begins. When the storm is over the five explore to check the damage and realise the force of the storm has brought the old shipwreck up to the surface of the water. They decide to explore it before anyone else can, so that if they find any gold it will be theirs and no one else's. So they explore the boat and find a small black box looking a bit like a jewellery box, but they cannot get it open. They take it back to Kirrin Cottage (George's home) and decide a good way to get it open would be to drop it from the highest window of the house. This works and the box cracks open but just as they are about to pick the box up of the floor, Uncle Quentin confiscates it, saying the noise they made opening it was disturbing him from doing his work. However Uncle Quentin only leaves the open box on a shelf on his study so when he falls asleep, Julian sneaks into the study and takes the box. Inside the box they find a map and decide to trace it so they can still have a copy, but return the box to Uncle Quentin. He does this and when they look at the map they notice a Latin word on it. Ingots, meaning gold, and a red cross, meaning that is where the treasure is. They realise the map is a map of Kirrin Island, and the old dungeons on the island. Uncle Quentin announces he has then sold the box to a man, who is thinking about buying Kirrin Island. George is furious and so the four children decide to spend as much time on Kirrin Island as they can, because they realise it will soon be sold. So they decide to camp on Kirrin Island for a few nights, and so take the map with them. Planning on discovering gold, they head down into the dungeons, but they are not alone...
6614600	/m/0gdty_	The Haunted Man	Charles Dickens	1848-12-19	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Redlaw is a teacher of chemistry who often broods over wrongs done him and grief from his past life. He is haunted by a spirit, who is not so much a ghost as Redlaw's phantom twin and is "an awful likeness of himself...with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress..." This spectre appears and proposes to Redlaw that he can allow him to "forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known...to cancel their remembrance..." Redlaw is hesitant at first, but finally agrees. However, before the spirit vanishes it imposes an additional consequence: "The gift that I have given you, you shall give again, go where you will." Besides Redlaw, the book is populated with the people of Redlaw's life. Most of them are semi-comical characters such as the Tetterby family who rent a room to one of Redlaw's students and Swidger family who are Redlaw's servants. Milly Swidger, William Swidger's wife, is another of the absolutely and completely good females that frequent many of Dickens' stories. As a consequence of the ghost's intervention Redlaw is without memories of the painful incidents from his past. He experiences a universal anger that he cannot explain. His bitterness spreads to the Swidgers, the Tetterbys and his student. All become as wrathful as Redlaw himself. The only one who is able to avoid the bitterness is Milly. The narrative climaxes when Milly presents the moral of the tale: "It is important to remember past sorrows and wrongs so that you can then forgive those responsible and, in doing so, unburden your soul and mature as a human being." With this realization, the novel concludes with everyone back to normal and Redlaw, like Ebenezer Scrooge, a changed, more loving and a whole person, learns to be humble at Christmas.
6617708	/m/0gd_r2	The Girl at the Lion D'or	Sebastian Faulks	1989-08	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A wet and dark winter night sees young and beautiful Anne Louvert arrive in Janvilliers from Paris to take up a lowly position at the village inn, 'The Lion d'Or'. She gets to know the staff- the formidable Madame Concierge, the drunken Cook, the sex-starved Porter- and to meet the mysterious Patron. Then there are the customers: the evil Mattlin and the sensitive Hartmann most prominent among them. A generation older than she, the cultured, rich and married Hartmann begins an affair with Anne. She reveals her secrets, her fears and her hopes to him trusting in their mutual love. His wife, Christine, knows him better and in the end its no real contest for her to keep her husband and see off her latest rival. Although Faulks writes the love story with commitment, the nature of the novel determines that it can only end badly for Anne. An historical novel in which history is treated seriously, The Girl at the Lion d'Or is tragic drama and its real subject is France herself. A happy fairy-tale ending would be incongruous: it did not happen for the French Third Republic; therefore, it could not happen for Anne. Anne's childhood has been blighted by the First World War. Her father was shot on a charge of mutiny while serving in the trenches at Verdun, and her mother, harassed and victimised because of his fate, driven to suicide. Anne endured a wandering, hand-to-mouth existence with her uncle Louvert, whose name she adopts. Louvert, vainglorious and empty dispenser of fine sounding phrases- 'Courage is the only thing that counts'-, joined a right wing revolutionary organisation with the aim of 'making France great again' but deserted both Anne and France for a new life in America. Anne later invests her emotions in Hartmann and although devastated by his rejection, she does not allow it to destroy her. She intuitively turns away from suicide and the last line of the novel leads us to believe that she will, though there will be dark days ahead, overcome her situation. The battle of Verdun and the French army mutinies a year later were momentous events for the French nation. That the battle and a charge of mutiny played such a major part in Anne's personal history suggests a metaphorical link between her and France. The fact that the prologue to the narrative dedicates the story to Anne, 'an unknown girl' rather than the 'important public' figures of the time also indicates that the character represents something larger than an individual. The use of the adjective 'unknown', in the context of this novel, is loaded with meaning, as it evokes the Unknown Soldier. By making Anne a homeless, friendless, orphaned young woman, Faulks is pushing the limits of melodrama in his wish to create a character who is the opposite of those in the male-dominated world of political power. She is the victim of political decisions and human spite but does not embrace victimhood. Instead she embodies most of the virtues and a certain defiance. More importantly she is vital: she makes decisions and acts on them. The polemic thrust of the book, backed-up by references to newspaper stories of political crises and scandal at home and mounting threat of war from abroad, is that the period's political leaders were, at best, inert. The setting of the story is also much removed from the centre of power and influence in the political sense if not geographically. In fact the author is shy of saying where in France the town of Janvilliers is. The descriptions of the seasons in the book and that Hartmann walks on a beach near his house from which 'the sea has disappeared' puts it somewhere on the north coast. Imprecise as this is, it rules out the real Janvilliers being the location though its name may have been used because of that town's proximity to Verdun. Geographical imprecision serves the function of making the fictional Janvilliers a French "everytown" where the attitudes and experiences of its inhabitants typify those of towns throughout France of the period. Choosing 'Lion d'Or', a common and therefore typical name for French inns, as the name of the town hotel is meant to strengthen the idea of this representational aspect of Janvilliers. A war monument in the town centre commemorating the dead of the First World War could be found in any town in the country. Similarly, 'M. Bouin', a woman bereaved of her menfolk by the war and finding solace in religion, would be a familiar character in 1930's France. 'M. le Patron' typifies the defeatist mindset among many of the time while the odious 'Mattlin' is the town's future fifth columnist and collaborator. 'Hartmann' is the ineffectual liberal. His failure to confront 'Mattlin', whose slanders are undermining 'Hartmann's' reputation just as surely as the builder hired to renovate his house undermines its foundations, can be read as a metaphor of the centre-left government's failure to confront fascism either at home or abroad.
6618682	/m/0gf18t	After Doomsday	Poul Anderson	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The USS Benjamin Franklin, a starship crewed entirely by men returns to Earth, to find the planet consumed by eruptions from within the crust. All life is gone, along with the few outposts of humanity on the Moon and artificial satellites. Missiles lurk throughout the Solar System, ready to destroy returning ships. Unable to leave a message drone because of the missiles, the Franklin flees to Tau Ceti. Discipline breaks down, the captain is killed, and a nucleus of a new crew forms behind a man named Carl Donnan . Donnan is an engineer and adventurer who gave up wandering the Earth for a chance to see the galaxy, courtesy of a Senator who owed him a favor. Now he is leading almost 300 men on a quest for other humans, and for Earth's murderers. Chief suspects are the Kandemirians, especially since the missiles swarming through the Solar System are Kandemirian. Earth is new to interstellar trade, and a handful of ships have gone out into the wider galactic society. The men realize they have little hope of finding other humans, let alone women. They do have a guide with them, an alien called Ramri from the polycultural society originating on the planet Monwaing. Ramri is a biped descended from feathered, bird-like creatures. Some time afterwards, the ship Europa with a crew of 100 women returns, to find Earth destroyed and missiles roaming the Solar System. They are able to disable one missile. A small team boards the missile, including Navigation Officer Sigrid Holmen and her friend Gunnery Officer Alexandra Vukovic. The missile appears to have been manufactured by Kandemirians, although there are symbols in an unknown script scrawled on a bulkhead within it. Other missiles approach, and the Europa must leave without addressing the central mystery. The officers confer about where to go next. Travelling to Vorlak, Donnan sells the crew's services to the warlord, or Draga, Hlott Luurs. His proposition is that the humans will develop new technology allowing a ship to detect the drives of other ships far beyond the usual range. Donnan's friend Arnold Goldspring is a mathematician who has a host of new ideas for the technology. The detector is just the first one. To prove its worth, Donnan bargains for a Vorlak ship which they will use on a stealth raid on a Kandemirian outpost. The raid is a disaster, and they are captured by Kandemirians. Interrogated by the head of the Kandemirian forces, Tarkamat, Donnan is told that if he refuses to re-create the technology for Kandemir, his crew will die horribly, one by one. He has no choice but to comply. The crew of the Europa travel far beyond the boundaries of the local cluster to one with a vibrant capitalist economy. At Sigrid Holmen's suggestion, they set themselves up as "Terran Traders Inc." and proceed to amass wealth, hoping to be able to buy or charter ships to search for survivors of Earth. Sigrid is kidnapped by representatives of a rival trader culture, the Forsi, who resemble heavyset gnomes. The Forsi want to take her away to study, determined to discover why "Terran Traders Inc." is able to be so successful. She is in the process of attempting escape from them when Alexandra Vukovic, a former urban guerrilla, tracks her down and uses her skills to eliminate Sigrid's captors. Donnan's crew, laboring on one of the Kandemirians' subject planets, are being carefully monitored to make sure they only work on the drive detection device. However, the monitoring of the material making up the chassis of the device is less stringent, and they are able to create a dummy copy of a common soldier's rifle from seemingly unrelated parts. With this they bluff their way out of confinement, capture real weapons, and eventually steal a starship. The price of this escape is the loss of a suicide squad who hold off the local troops long enough for Donnan, Goldspring, Ramri and the rest to take off. Ramri takes them to his homeworld, Katkinu. Like many Monwaing worlds, this has different and apparently incompatible cultures living side by side. The official Representative of the homeworld on Katkinu is from the Laothaung culture. Unlike Ramri's culture, this one uses biotechnology efficiently and ruthlessly. Specialized lifeforms, designed to have just enough intelligence to do work, and subservient to the rulers, carry out all labor. There are even altered types of Monwaingi being used as slaves. In the Representative's office they are shown a recording of an interrogation of an agent of the merchant culture of Xo. It indicates that Earth was destroyed by bombs sold to two of the minor national powers, and set up as a suicide weapon, to be detonated if either power was attacked with nuclear weapons. The men are shocked, but are still determined to fight on against the Kandemirians. Returning to Vorlak, Donnan bluffs his way past Hlott Luurs, who is still angry over the loss of a ship and his kinsman aboard it. Goldspring has designed more weapons using the stardrive technology. The basis of the drive is that space is a standing wave pattern. Where interference fringes occur, there is in effect no space and no distance. A ship may jump from fringe to fringe and travel from star to star in a short time. The new devices manufacture artificial fringes. With this they are able to distort space-time inside enemy ships, disabling missiles, inducing small thermonuclear explosions, and producing coherent sound waves. This last weapon lets them administer the coup de grâce to the Kandemirian fleet, broadcasting a message which demoralizes the crews, at the same time encouraging the subject races in the Empire to revolt. After the victory, the news, in the form of a carefully crafted minstrel song, spreads around the galaxy. The song, in Uru, has the title "The Battle of Brandobar", and describes the final battle in a series of quatrains. A chapter of the novel is dedicated to a scholarly analysis of the song, teasing out both the story of the song and the calculated structure of the verses, designed to resist alteration as the song spreads from one singer to another along the trade routes. It is through this song that the crew of the Europa, via their trade connections, learn where the USS Benjamin Franklin went. Once the two crews are united, apart from the obvious considerations, they must decide who destroyed the Earth. The men still believe it was the Kandemirians, with the trader story being disinformation. When they decode the symbols the women found, they realize the truth. It is a base 12 to 6 conversion table to help technicians reprogram the weapons. The missiles are Kandemirian, but the script is Monwaingi. One of the many different Monwaingi societies, possibly the ruthless biotech Laothaung culture, wanted the Earth and saw fit to cleanse it before colonizing with their own biota. Ramri leaves for his home planet, determined to purge the culture that committed the crime, but aware that his own world might well be destroyed in the process. Carl Donnan and Sigrid Holmen can only look at each other and say "What have we done?"
6620794	/m/0gf3sq	Babyji	Abha Dawesar	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sixteen year-old Anamika Sharma, the first person narrator, is a bright young student aware of her privileged position within Indian society. Head Prefect at her school, she aspires to graduate with excellent grades so as to be able to go on to college in the United States to study physics. Anamika is confident that she will be able to get in, but feels conflicted about contributing to the country's brain drain; ultimately, she concludes that it would be best to return to her native country after the completion of her studies to contribute to the modernization of traditional Indian society and breaking down the rigid caste system. The novel is set against the backdrop of the protests against the recommendations of the Mandal commission, which trigger several acts of self-immolation, and for high school students all this means a disruption of the normal school routine. In particular, classes are suspended for weeks on end, and although students are obliged to form self-study groups at their homes Anamika finds more time than usual to pursue her private interests. She spends much of her time with Tripta Adhikari, a free-thinking divorced lady about twice her age whom she calls "India". India is a wealthy academic who lives in Anamika's neighbourhood, and occasionally Anamika sneaks out of the house when her parents have already gone to bed to spend the night with her new-found friend. Mr and Mrs Sharma know about Tripta Adhikari but naturally assume that the latter has a maternal relationship with their daughter, while India herself knows very well that what she is doing amounts to statutory rape. Anamika's parents even let her go on a short holiday to Kasauli with India and two of her friends. [...] I noticed that my biting had caused her to start breathing heavily, so I replaced my teeth with my lips. I gathered different parts of her flesh between my lips and kissed her all over, in the opposite order in which I had bitten. In her breathless moans and her cries of pleasure I owned her more than I owned myself and was immersed in her more than I had ever been immersed in my own self. Me, I had not yet discovered. I was an unknown quantity, a constantly unraveling mystery. But India was absolutely and completely known both carnally and otherwise. I rolled off of her with the sweet exhaustion of a man who has just hunted his dinner animal. (Chapter xix) Also in Kasauli, Anamika is horrified to see that she is expected to drink beer—which she does—and that one evening the grown-ups with whom she is travelling not only gather together to smoke a joint but also offer her one as well. In the end Anamika politely refuses. (&#34;The love of my parents, my education, every moral lesson I had learned was being challenged.&#34;) Anamika&#39;s second &#34;liaison&#34; is with Rani, the family&#39;s live-in servant. Illiterate, only able to speak Hindi, and regularly beaten up by her alcoholic husband, 23 year-old Rani is rescued from a jhuggi by the Sharmas. However, as their apartment does not have a servant&#39;s bedroom, Rani is ordered to sleep on the floor of Anamika&#39;s room. This, of course, provides the girl with ample opportunity to explore submissive Rani&#39;s perfect body, in spite of the servant&#39;s occasional tentative protestations that &#34;Babyji&#34;, for her own good, should seek the love of a boy her own age. Anamika, however, sticks with her choice, rejects male advances, and, despite the danger of being stigmatised as someone who associates with a person from a much lower caste, is even prepared to teach Rani some English. Finally, she makes several passes at Sheela, one of the girls in her class. Although their male classmates&#39; consider Sheela much prettier than Anamika, Sheela herself is quite unaware of her budding beauty and the boyfriends she could have if she wanted to. She does question whether her intimacies with another girl are morally okay but does not recognize the seriousness of Anamika&#39;s endeavours. When Anamika asks her if she will be her &#34;mistress&#34; when they grow up she replies with a non-committal &#34;Maybe&#34;. Only when Anamika goes too far and forces herself on Sheela does the latter reject her, at least for the time being. "Anamika, please stop," she whispered urgently. If she really didn't want me to she could scream or move away or kick me. "You're beautiful," I said as I slid my hand between her thighs where her bloomers should have been. She closed her eyes again, but this time I couldn't tell if she was enjoying it or not. I pushed with my finger. I wasn't slow, the way I had been with India and Rani. I was afraid if I was too gentle she would use it to move away. I used all the force I could muster. She let out a howl. "Stop, it hurts." I pulled back and said, "I just fucked you." There was blood on my finger. (Chapter xviii) &#34;Divorced woman, servant woman, underage woman, I was pursuing them all,&#34; Anamika says about herself. Though she likens herself to a playboy, she always makes sure that none of her lovers suspects anything out of the ordinary, that each of them believes she is the only one for her.
6623411	/m/0gf6qn	Dead Girls	Richard Calder	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 1 - ROAD TO NOWHERE Ignatz Zwakh, former escort of assassin Primavera Bobinski, is tracked down in Thailand by the half-robotic Pikadon Twins, with a demand from Primavera's half-robot boss Madame Kito that Ignatz return to the Big Weird to work with Primavera. Primavera is a Lilim - a vampiric living dead girl. 2 - WINE AND ROSES Ignatz returns to Nana, Bangkok, and is reunited with Primavera. They go to a restaurant that uses gynoids to mimic the English vogue of killing Lilim. The Cartier automata were invented by a Dr Toxicophilous with robotic consciousness that harnessed 'quantum magic', and this quantum-mechanical seat of consciousness is situated in the womb of their descendents, the Lilim. The pair are in the restaurant on a job from Madame Kito, but while Primavera is engaged in assassinating one of Kito's rivals Ignatz is rendered unconscious. 3 - BEATA BEATRIX Ignatz and Primavera, now captured and rendered unconscious with a special girdle around her umbilicus, are taken by Jack Morgenstern to the American Embassy, where they are locked up. 4 - BLACK SPRING Jack Morgenstern reveals that the British government want Primavera and Ignatz returned to them, and Kito has betrayed them to the Americans. Morgenstern questions Ignatz regarding the amount of Lilim escapees from the supposedly quarantined London, but gets no response to his theory that one of the surviving original Cartier dolls called Titania is organising the breakouts. Primavera uses her quantum magic to telepathically induce her guard to release her from her umbilicus girdle, then physically smashes through the wall of her prison, allowing herself and Ignatz to escape by jumping into the river below. Due to the umbilical girdle Primavera's quantum matrix has been infected by hostile nanobots which are inhibiting her full use of quantum magic and are slowly destroying her. Primavera believes that Kito has been blackmailed into betraying them. Primavera and Ignatz leave Nana by boat. 5 - SHOPPING AND FUCKING Ignatz apologises for running away from Primavera. Ignatz and Primavera make love, Ignatz requiring medical attention for blood loss afterwards. Primavera determines to confront Kito in order to be cured of the nanovirus. Primavera orders new clothes for herself and Ignatz made from living dermaplastic. 6 - GOING TO A-GO-GO Primavera and Ignatz return to Nana, gaining entrance to Kito's penthouse in the Grace Hotel, only to be captured by Kito and her robot guards. Primavera begs Kito to remove the nanovirus that is killing her. She reveals that her telepathic dreams while captured told her that Kito is being blackmailed by Jack Morgenstern: years ago during a trade war Cartier infected Kito's fake dolls with an impotence STD and in response Kito sent her own virus to infect the genuine Cartier dolls in Paris - a virus that Morgenstern thinks responsible for the doll plague. Primavera says she can disprove this by telling Kito of Titania and how she and Ignatz escaped England... 7 - WESTWARD HO Vlad Constantinescu and the Human Front win the British election, and the systematic execution of Lilim by impalement through the umbilicus begins. Primavera and Ignatz decide to runaway together, and flee through the flooded London Underground tunnels to hide in the West End. The pair are captured by a group of doll-killer paramedics, but are rescued by a pair of Lilim. Primavera and Ignatz are taken to meet Titania - the last of the original infected Cartier dolls and Queen of the Lilim - at her hideout under a Whitechapel warehouse. 8 - A FAIRY QUEEN While telling her story Primavera passes out, and Kito has her resident research and development technician Spalanzani examine her. The 'magic dust' virus consists of nanomachines that are transforming the Ylem at the heart of her being from a quantum mechanical state to a classical mechanical state, which will render her quantum 'magic' inert. Kito agrees to allow Spalanzani to remove the nanomachines on the condition that Ignatz continues his story... Primavera and Ignatz are led into The Seven Stars - Tatiana's underground palace, where they meet Tatiana and her human consort Peter Gunn. At Tatiana's prompting, Peter tells Primavera and Ignatz their story... 9 - THE LILIM Peter's father (Dr. Toxicophilous) was a quantum engineer, a toymaker who built dolls for Cartier, though with the outbreak of doll plague his services are no longer in demand. Titania, his last and greatest creation, acts as a housemaid at the Gunn family home. Peter and Titania visit The Seven Stars that they are constructing as a private playground and Peter unlocks her matrix with his father's key, but infected with a sickness Titania stays there, and cocoons herself as she begins to transform. Peter's father tells him that the rumour that the doll plague was started by a rivals from the East was a lie, and that it is the result of his own dark childhood dreams subconsciously infecting the quantum structure of the dolls when he created them. 10 - UNREAL CITY Jack Morgenstern and the Pikadon Twins enter Spalanzani's workshop: having bugged it Morgenstern has heard the whole story. Morgenstern has bought enough shares to depose Kito from her company and place the Pikadon Twins in her place. Morgenstern instructs his men to take Primavera but a green light explodes from her umbilicus and Morgenstern, his men, Ignatz, Kito and Spalanzani are sucked inside Primavera's quantum matrix. Inside the matrix they find themselves in a dream world that is geographically a collision of London and the Big Weird, complete with another copy of Primavera. Primavera is unable to wake herself up and return them to reality, so accompanied by Ignatz and Morgenstern she tries to find Dr Toxicophilous: according to Primavera Toxicophilous is present in all dolls and represents the programme that controls their files - he also has the key to her matrix that can wake her up. Morgenstern tries to convince Primavera that he is actually working with Titania, not against her. The dream city is filled with clones of Primavera, with the nanovirus represented by Jack the Ripper-style figures. Unable to find Dr Toxicophilous Primavera realises she needs to look deeper inside herself: she gazes into her own umbilicus and is sucked through, followed by Ignatz and Morgentren. 11 - PSYCHIC SURGERY Primavera, Ignatz and Morgenstern confront Dr Toxicophilous. Toxicophilous tells Primavera that Titania had betrayed her: thanks to his subconscious corruption of Titania's quantum consciousness he had created a living being with a death wish, and Titania has the ability to instill this death wish in Lilim at will. Titania had been negotiating with Morgenstern over using the Lilim as instruments of US foreign policy to infect and destabilise hostile foreign countries, then cauterize the infection by use of the death wish. Dr. Toxicophilous gives Ignatz the key to Primavera's matrix, he inserts it into her umbilical and the dreamers are returned to the reality of Spalanzani's workshop. Spalanzani is killed when he tries to stop Morgenstern shooting Primavera. Due to them waking up at different times Kito gets a head start on her enemies and traps the Pikadon Twins, while Morgenstern is shot and rendered unconscious. Kito re-hires Primavera and Ignatz to work for her. 12 - DESPERADOES Kito, Primavera and Ignatz find themselves on the run from the Pikadon Twins and Jack Morgenstern. Kito says she can get help from a friend called Mosquito. Having been taken in by Titania Primavera and Ignatz spend time at The Seven Stars, chaperoned by a Lilim called Josephene . Ignatz asks for a view of England beyond that of the quarantined London and Josephene shows him via the visual circuits of a shopwindow dummy in Manchester, revealing a nightmare world where the Human Front have replaced the dolls with re-animated human corpses, 'Mememoids' whose brains have been taken over by replicating information patterns transmitted via a comic strip called Cruel Britannia, and castrated policemen with guns as phallic replacements. Following the completion of her transformation and indoctrination Primavera is sent out of England to spread the doll plague through Europe. Together with Ignatz she is led through The Seven Stars to a service tunnel in the Channel Tunnel. Kito takes Primavera and Ignatz to meet Mosquito, an old employee who she had previously used to attempt to spread her virus to the Cartier dolls, to ask for money. Back on the road Ignatz and Primavera are attacked by the Pikadon Twins, and though they manage to kill them they lose Kito in the process. 13 - DEAD GIRLS Ignatz and Primavera try to escape down the Mekong river, but Primavera collapses as she gives in to Titania's death wish. A hologram of Titania appears and explains to Ignatz that the only way the Lilim can survive is by keeping their numbers under control by culling themselves. Primavera dies.
6623867	/m/0gf6_0	The Grass Crown	Colleen McCullough	1991	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Although these two powerful Eastern rulers would eventually declare war on Rome and slaughter thousands of Roman citizens, the plot of the novel centres on the Social War of 91 to 88 BC, a civil war which Rome fought against its mutinous Italian Allies after they were refused full Roman citizenship. (The lengthy section dealing with Marcus Livius Drusus' attempt to secure them the citizenship, which ends in his tragic assassination, is one of the main turning points in the entire series.) Marius and Sulla, still friends and professional colleagues, face the Italian threat together, and succeed in putting down the rebellion of the Italians. However, Marius suffers a serious stroke (his second), and is forced to withdraw from the war. During this struggle, Sulla, rallying his troops against certain destruction near Nola, is hailed as 'imperator' on the field of battle and presented with the highest honour a Roman general can receive: the corona graminea, the eponymous 'Grass Crown'. This was only awarded a very few times during the Republic, and only ever to a general or commander who broke the blockade around a beleaguered Roman army or otherwise saved an entire legion or army from annihilation. However, once Rome has settled this pressing domestic matter, and can begin to plot revenge against Mithridates and Tigranes, Marius and Sulla have their first serious falling out over the question of who should lead the legions East. Marius, now an aged and discredited statesman previously dubbed the 'Third Founder of Rome', is pining for further glory and believes only he has the talent necessary to defeat the allied Kings. Sulla feels as though his old mentor is unwilling to step aside and wants to destroy Sulla's chance of outshining him. The Senate cites Marius's age and poor health as a reason to back Sulla, who moreover is the sitting consul and therefore has the side of right. The seeds of serious discord are planted. The Roman comitia quickly becomes a source of political conflict between the two men, and leads to Sulla's first shocking march on Rome. It also leads Gaius Marius to pursue an unprecedented seventh consulship, which he wins and undertakes after suffering a series of strokes, and is depicted in this novel as going mad. Other narrative threads of note: the childhood of Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger, as well as the early military careers of Pompey and Cicero (who was appointed to Pompeius Strabo as a cadet) in the Social War: and the unjust trial and exile of Publius Rutilius Rufus, falsely accused of extortion, driven out of Rome, and welcomed by a street festival in his honour in the city he was accused of looting. it:I giorni della gloria
6635608	/m/0gfl9d	London Bridges	James Patterson	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A terrorist by the alias of "The Wolf" engages Alex Cross' old enemy, Col. Geoffrey Shafer, aka The Weasel, to assist him in a grand plan of worldwide terrorist attacks designed to get humanity's attention. After a town in the Southwestern United States is blown up, the FBI's Alex Cross is assigned to the case despite being on vacation to visit his son Alex Jr. in Seattle and his girlfriend Jamilla Hughes in San Francisco. Alex is at a crossroads in his family and personal life. What follows next is a long cat and mouse chase in which politics, communication and ego take centre-stage. The Wolf is ruthless enough to draw in even the most unwilling into his plans and never fails to make a point. His opponents are locked in deep wrangling and indecision. It is up to Alex Cross to make the connections and chase The Wolf and The Weasel across America and Europe at the risk of his life.
6637913	/m/0gfnj7	Polymath				 A spacecraft filled with refugees from a cosmic catastrophe crash-lands on an unmapped planet. There the survivors must face the reality of their precarious situation; the ship was lost and little had been salvaged from it. Everything comes to depend on one bright young man accidentally among them, a trainee planet-builder ("polymath"). While it would have been his job to oversee all aspects of establishing a successful colony he faces major difficulties; not only is his education incomplete, he had been studying a vastly different planet. Two ships escaped the catastrophe. One lands in the jungle in a mountainous area. The other, with the polymath, lands on water, allowing the passengers just enough time to escape the sinking ship. With his education incomplete, he is faced with an array of problems he needs to overcome, in order to ensure the survival, of not only the passengers from his ship, but those on the lost ship as well, who are under the control of a despotic captain determined to get back into space.
6642870	/m/0gfvcs	Line of Delirium	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The first novel, "Line of Delirium", takes place decades after a devastating interstellar conflict — the Vague War. While the reason for and details of the war remain largely unexplained, it is clear that almost every alien race was at some point involved in hostilities with the humans. The war was going badly for Earth, until two Earth officers decided to take matters into their own hands. Disobeying orders, they turned their fleet and headed for Earth, demanding the government's surrender. One of the officers, a man named Grey, established the Human Empire and became the emperor. His co-conspirator Lemak became the supreme commander of all human forces. While it is not exactly clear how the tide was turned, it is known that all races opposing the new empire were eventually beaten. Two of which, the cyborg Meklar and the ursine Bulrathi formed a subsequent pact with the humans — the Trinary Alliance, creating a nearly unbeatable force (humans excel at ship-to-ship combat, Meklar are master engineers, and Bulrathi are superb ground combatants). Close to the end of the war, a man named Curtis van Curtis acquires an alien device he calls "aTan" (from athanatos, "immortal" [Greek: Αθάνατος, literally, "without death"] ) giving immortality to anyone who can afford it. He formed the aTan company, which quickly became almost as powerful as the Human Empire (as some characters in the novel call it, "an empire within an empire"). The secret of the device is coveted by many, as the aTan company holds exclusive rights, with Emperor Grey's grudging approval (in exchange he gets free reincarnations). Kay Altos is a professional bodyguard whose homeworld was destroyed by the imperial forces after it was invaded by the Sakkra — a fast-multiplying frog-shaped race, which was subsequently exterminated by the Empire. One fine morning he wakes up to face a teenager holding a gun, trying to avenge his sister's accidental death at Kay's hands. Kay's main problem — he did not have time to pay for his next reincarnation. He tries to trick the kid but ends up dying anyway. He is surprised to find himself in an aTan facility on Terra — the capital of the Empire with none other than Curtis van Curtis himself greeting him. Van Curtis hires Altos to safely bring his only son Arthur to an obscure planet known as Grail. Van Curtis's main concern is anyone finding out that Arthur is his son and kidnapping him in order to find out his father's secrets. Kay's payment should he succeed — unlimited free reincarnations. His payment in case of failure — eternal torture and executions. Kay agrees, and a backstory is created where Kay Ovald is a space merchant, travelling with his son Arthur, when their ship explodes. After reincarnating on a planet in the middle of a civil war, Imperial Security officer Isabella Kal recognizes Arthur and begins to chase him all over the Empire, even going as far as asking Admiral Lemak for help. Unfortunately for Arthur van Curtis and his bodyguard, Kal is not the only one seeking to stop them. A mysterious race known as the Silicoids seem to know of Arthur's mission to Grail and wish to prevent him from reaching his goal in order to preserve the galactic balance. Kay and Arthur board a luxury liner to the next planet on their way to Grail. Altos knows that, in all likelihood, Imperial Security is waiting for them at their destination. They manage to get passage on a shuttle, dropping off several passengers on a world close to their course. By a stroke of misfortune, that shuttle is stopped by a quarantine ship, and all passengers are secretly taken to a planet belonging to the Darloks — an ancient race exceptional at espionage and sabotage. Kay and Arthur soon discover that the Darloks plan to turn them into their agents and also manage to learn the Darloks' true form (unlike Master of Orion, Darloks here are not shapeshifters but Goa'uld-like snake parasites). It is there that Kay first meets Viacheslav Shegal — an agent of "Shield", Emperor's special forces. He helps Shegal commit suicide (to be reincarnated on a human world), so that the true nature of Darloks is known to all. Meanwhile, a massive Silicoid fleet arrives and proceeds to bombard the planet from orbit. Troops are sent in to retrieve Kay and Arthur and bring them before Sedimin — the Foot of the Silicoid Basis (a rank equal to emperor). Sedimin wants to know the true mission that van Curtis entrusted to Arthur. It is on the Silicoid ship that Arthur finally reveals to Kay an awful truth — he is not Curtis van Curtis's son. Arthur is a clone and, as such, has no rights under Imperial law. As Arthur puts it, "immortals need no heirs." Since Arthur is being honest, Kay reveals that his true name is Kay Dutch and that he is a super — a genetically engineered being with increased speed, strength, memory, and other characteristics much higher than a normal human. By law, Kay also has no rights, but his past was covered up by a senator who adopted him. While Arthur still hides his true mission goal from Kay, he reveals it to Sedimin, who decides to let them go. They are dropped off on Tauri — a paradise planet for retired Imperial officers and their families. While Kay is out purchasing a ship, Arthur is kidnapped by Isabella Kal. Kay's determination to free Arthur is guided less by his obligation to his client than his friendship with the boy. His first destination, however, is the planet where he was killed prior to being recruited by van Curtis. He finds his killer, a teenager named Tommy Arano, and, instead of killing him, takes him to his hypership that was left on the planet. The next morning, Kay explains to Tommy that he is, in fact, Arthur van Curtis, whose mind was wiped by the Silicoids on one of his previous attempts to reach Grail. The mind-wiped Arthur was given to a human family to raise as their son, while another Arthur was reincarnated by "aTan" back on Terra because the machine assumed he died. Kay and Tommy then head to an Imperial planet almost entired ruled by a crime syndicate known as 'the Family'. The Mother of the Family is his genetic sister, also created in a test tube. She uses the Family's resources to locate Arthur on a heavily defended Imperial station. She agrees to given them all they need to retrieve the boy: outfit their ship with a masking device, provide them with advanced power armor and weapons (including an "Excalibur" tachion rifle for Kay that shoots a full second before the trigger is pulled), and four soldiers — two conditioned humans, a human cyborg, and a Meklar. Kay has himself souped-up with artificial enhancements (drastically shortening his lifespan). The strike group manages to infiltrate the base and fight their way to the medical wing, where Arthur is being tortured. Once Arthur is retrieved, they fight back to the ship, losing the two conditioned soldiers. In the hangar bay, Kay faces off against a Meklar working for Isabella Kal and is probably the first human (or almost-human) to pose a challenge to a twelve-foot-long mechanized reptile. Kay's Meklar companion clashes with the Imperial Security Meklar, giving the others time to escape. Once aboard his ship, Kay finds out that, due to his torture, Arthur is dying. Their only hope is to make it to Grail before he dies. When they finally make it Grail's orbit, another obstacle awaits them — Admiral Lemak and Isabella Kal on an Imperial destroyer. While Kay is trying to find a way out, his ship's illegal AI makes its own decision and the ship into the destroyer's shields. While Kay, Tommy, and Arthur are being reincarnated in Grail's branch of aTan, Kal forces Lemak to have her shot, so that she can follow them. The two clones and the bodyguard manage to make it to Grail's Dead Zone — an area on the planet where most mechanical devices fail for no apparent reason. It is there that Arthur finally reveals to Kay his true mission and the reason for van Curtis to have a clone: Curtis van Curtis did not obtain the "aTan" device from aliens. Van Curtis discovered Grail during the Vague War. There he found God or rather a being/machine that created the universe. God made van Curtis an offer — a universe created based on his subconscious desires, just like this universe was created for someone else. Van Curtis asked for more time to think about it. God then gave van Curtis the knowledge to create a device allowing him to live forever. Finally, after many decades, Curtis van Curtis decides to find out how new universes are created and sell these universes to the public. Kay realizes that this would destroy the Empire and attempts to stop them, but finds out that neither Tommy and Arthur nor Curtis van Curtis (who suddenly apprears) can be killed in the Dead Zone. Van Curtis takes Arthur and Tommy and leads them to the Threshold, but Tommy refuses and opts to leave with Kay instead. The novel ends as they both walk towards an uncertain future. "Emperors of Illusions" is the second novel, continuing the story of Kay Dutch as he travels with Tommy Arano, trying to stop Curtis van Curtis from destroying the Human Empire. They believe he is trying to do that to get back at the person he believes responsible for the creation of this universe — Emperor Grey. The only way Kay thinks he can stop van Curtis is by killing the Emperor, a virtual impossibility. "Shadows of Dreams" is a short prequel to "Line of Delirium" that describes life on a small quiet human colony that is turned upside down when a Psilon battleship enters the system, still believing that the Vague War is on. The Psilons are the most advanced race in the galaxy, with only two or three troopers wearing power armor necessary to destroy an entire city. As the colonists prepare for a hopeless battle, one man reflects on his life thus far.
6643488	/m/0gfwjb	Sorcerer's Son	Phyllis Eisenstein	1979-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Spurned by a rejected offer of marriage, the demon sorcerer Smada Rezhyk begins imagining that the sorceress Lady Delivev Ormoru of Castle Spinweb is plotting to bring him down. He sends his most faithful demon servant, Gildrum, to take the form of a handsome knight, who has been injured in battle and comes to Castle Spinweb for refuge with the plan to impregnate Delivev with a child. For this purpose, Rezhyk gives the demon his seed; once Delivev is with child, Rezhyk imagines that he has eleven days to prepare his defenses until Delivev discovers the weakening of her powers and aborts the child. What he does not imagine is that the sorceress will not abort her son, or that his faithful demon servant will fall in love with his mortal enemy. Once the son, Cray Ormoru, reaches maturity, he starts on a journey as a knight to discover what became of his mysterious father. Cray gains a few clues to the real identity of his father; he eventually realizes that he will be unable to complete his quest as a knight. Consequently, he decides to take up an apprenticeship as a sorcerer instead, following in his mother's footsteps. Rezhyk volunteers to play the role of master to Cray, but secretly seeks to sabotage his magical education. Cray is discouraged, although this turns to anger when Gildrum reveals Rezhyk's falsehood. Gildrum secretly teaches Cray demon summoning. He learns that Rezhyk is his father and abandons his apprenticeship; Rezhyk tires of his duplicity and orders Cray's death. Gildrum manages to twist his orders from Rezhyk and hides Cray in the demon realms and continues to teach him sorcery. Cray befriends several demons and realizes that he will gain easier success by using demon allies instead of demon slaves. As freed demon slaves cannot be re-enslaved, he offers to free demons permanently in return for their service. With an army of demons he returns to defeat Rezhyk, who is already seeking to destroy Delivev. With Rezhyk finally vanquished, Gildrum is able to reveal his hidden passion for Delivev.
6644417	/m/0gfy9x	Black Oceans	Jacek Dukaj	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The main character, Nicholas Hunt, is an American politician and lobbyist, closely involved with some branches of secret military research including paranormal activities. He is not a hero: as Dukaj himself describes him, he is "a cynical, egoistic bureaucrat, whose main motivation for all of his decisions in his job is, it seems, covering his ass". Currently he has lost an internal power struggle and is assigned to oversee what seems like a dead-end, low-key project. Soon, however, his project starts to gain more importance, as scientists explore some promising theories from the borders of memetics and telepathy, including study of potential lifeforms that would use memes just as we use genes, and develop new sciences like psychomemetics. Suddenly a strange cataclysm takes place, with millions of people worldwide going insane and many densely populated areas becoming a 'no-go' zone. Is this an alien invasion? A result of military or corporate experiment? A new step in human evolution? Or are we seeing the painful transformation into a post-technological singularity world? Nicholas Hunt is not sure, but he knows one thing: the rat race is going on, and he will do everything he needs to survive.
6644670	/m/0gfyw5	Any Human Heart	William Boyd	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins with a quotation from Henry James, "Never say you know the last word about any human heart." A short preface (an anonymous editor suggests it was written in 1987) explains that the earliest pages have been lost, and recounts briefly Logan Mountstuart's childhood in Montevideo, Uruguay before he moves to England aged seven with his English father and Uruguayan mother. In his final term at school he and two friends set challenges. Logan is to get on to the school's first XV rugby team, Peter Scabius has to seduce Tess, a local farmer's daughter, and Ben Leeping, a lapsed Jew, has to convert to Roman Catholicism. Mountstuart enters Oxford on an exhibition and leaves with a third in History. Settling in London, he enjoys early success as a writer with: The Mind's Imaginings, a critically successful biography of Shelley; The Girl Factory, a salacious novel about prostitutes which is poorly reviewed but sells well; and Les Cosmopolites, a respectable book on some obscure French poets. Mountstuart embarks on a series of amorous encounters: he loses his virginity to Tess, is rejected by Land Forthergill whom he met at Oxford, and marries Lottie, an Earl's daughter. They live together at Thorpe Hall in Norfolk, where Mountstuart, unstimulated by slow country life or his warm but dull wife, becomes idle. He meets Freya whilst on holiday, and begins an affair with her. Just before he departs for Barcelona to report on the Spanish Civil War, Lottie unexpectedly visits and quickly realises another woman lives with him. On his return to England, following an acrimonious divorce, he marries Freya in Chelsea Town Hall. The newlyweds move to a house in Battersea where Freya gives birth to their daughter, Stella. During The Second World War Mountstuart is recruited into the Naval Intelligence Division by Ian Fleming. He is sent to Portugal to monitor Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson; when they move to the Bahamas, Mountstuart follows, playing golf with the Duke and socialising regularly until the murder of Sir Harry Oakes. Mountstuart suspects the Duke is a conspirator after two hired detectives ask him to incriminate Oakes' son-in-law with false fingerprint evidence. Mountstuart refuses and is called a "Judas" by Mrs. Simpson. Later in the war, Mountstuart is interned in Switzerland for two years. After the war's end, he is grieved to discover that Freya, thinking him dead, had re-married and then died, along with Stella, in a V-2 bomb attack. After the war, Mountstuart's life collapses as he seeks refuge in an alcoholic daze to escape his depression. He buys 10b Turpentine Lane, a small basement flat in Pimlico. He returns to Paris to finish his existentialist novella, The Villa by the Lake, staying with his old friend Ben (now a successful gallery owner). After a failed sexual encounter with Ordile, a young French girl working at Ben's gallery, he attempts suicide but is surprised by the girl when she returns an hour later for her Zippo lighter. Ben Leeping offers Mountstuart a job as manager of his new gallery in New York, "Leeping fils". Mountstuart mildly prospers in the art scene of 1960s, meeting artists like Willem de Kooning (whom he admires) and Jackson Pollock (whom he does not); he also moves in with an American lawyer, Alannah, and her two young daughters. On his return to London, he has an affair with Gloria, Peter Scabius' third wife (Peter has become a successful author of popular novels), as well as Janet, a New York gallery owner. He eventually discovers Alannah having her own affair, and the couple split. He reconciles with his son from his first marriage, Lionel, who has moved to New York to manage a pop group, until Lionel's sudden death. Monday, Lionel's girlfriend, moves into Mountstuart's flat; at first friends, they become intimates until her father turns up and Mountstuart discovers – to his horror – that she is sixteen (having told him she was nineteen). His lawyer advises him to leave America to avoid prosecution for statutory rape. In the African journal, Mountstuart has become an English lecturer at the University College of Ikiri in Nigeria, from where he reports on the Biafran War. Mountstuart retires to London on a paltry pension and, now an old man, he is knocked over by a speeding post office van. In hospital he brusquely refuses to turn to religion, swearing his atheism and humanism to a priest. He recovers but is now completely destitute. To boost his income and publicise the state of hospitals, he joins the Socialist Patients Kollective (SPK) (which turns out to be a cell of the Baader-Meinhof Gang). He becomes the SPK's prize newspaper seller and is sent on a special mission to the continent. The trip ends with a brief interrogation by Special Branch, after which Mountstuart returns to his life of penury in London. With a new appreciation of life, he sells his flat and moves to a small village in the south of France, living in a house bequeathed to him by an old friend. He fits into the village well, introducing himself as an ecrivain who is working on a novel called Octet. As he contemplates his past life after the deaths of Peter and Ben, his old school friends, he muses:
6645172	/m/0gfzl0	The Crystal Palace	Phyllis Eisenstein	1988-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Sorcerer Cray Ormoru and his friend, the seer Feldar Sepwin, craft an enchanted mirror that allows whoever gazes upon it to see their heart's desire. For Cray himself, the mirror remains blank for many years, until one day he sees in it the image of a young girl. With no idea of who she is, he watches the girl transform into a lovely woman over the years, and Cray realizes that he is destined to find her. When he does, he learns that this is Aliza, a sorceress who lives in a crystal palace which is partly within the demon realm and who is dedicated solely to the study of her craft. Cray finds Aliza to be a skilled young sorceress, but also cold, aloof, and entirely focused on sorcery. Cray encourages her to take an interest in the outside world and forms a budding friendship. However, this friendship is strongly discouraged by Aliza's sorcerer grandfather, Everand. Despite Everand's disapproval, Aliza and Cray travel to the demon realm and also to the home of Cray's sorceress mother, Delivev. During this latter journey, Aliza looks into the mirror of heart's desire and causes it to shatter. This causes some initial confusion, but it is quickly revealed this is because Aliza's soul has been stolen from her. Ultimately, her grandfather Everand is shown to be a villain of the worst degree. He uses Aliza's soul and his capture of Feldar as leverage to demand Aliza and Cray's obedience. However, Cray rallies his allies from the demon realm in order to confront and defeat Everand and free Aliza's soul. With her soul freed, Cray and Aliza realize their love for each other.
6649381	/m/0gg3x2	The Worst Band In The Universe	Graeme Base		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story follows the adventures of a young groob, named Sprocc, who loves to play with his splingtwanger (a guitar-like instrument). On his homeworld, planet Blipp, creativity is stifled and only the traditional music passed down from many generations is allowed. This stagnant environment quickly becomes too much for the artistic Sprocc and he improvises his own music, this nearly gets him exiled from his homeworld. But, he decides "life on Blipp for him was through", so he goes to an urban planet where he meets a variety of aliens. There he makes some new friends and learns of a competition for the "Worst Band in the Universe". The irony of this title is that within the context of the stagnant music environment, a creative band would be considered bad and the most creative band considered the "Worst". However, after winning the competition, Sprocc learns that the contest is a sham run by the same imperial authorities stifling music creativity. Sprocc and his band mates are sent in exile to the junkyard planet, Wastedump B19, where Sprocc meets another exile called Skat. After a persistent effort by Sprocc, eventually Skat is persuaded to help Sprocc, his bandmates, and the other exiles build a ship, that is powered by music, and return to Blipp one year later. After returning to Blipp, the music exiles perform a grand show but are eventually stopped by the imperial authorities. However, the elder leader of Blipp comes out and explains that the old ways are no longer viable, that Sprocc and his friends represent the new generation of music creativity, and that they should be embraced and supported. With their authority stripped away, the Imperials can do nothing but watch the new generation and their new music. The book comes with a bonus CD. The CD covers some of the music performed at the "worst band in the universe competition" in the novel. All the music was written and performed by Graeme Base.
6653640	/m/0gg6j9	The Class	Erich Segal	1986	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Class follows the diverse fates of five members of Harvard's Class of 1958, recording the way their lives intertwine, and coming to a dramatic conclusion at their class reunion, twenty-five years later. Andrew Eliot comes from the Boston Brahmin Eliot family. Due to his background, he always feels the pressure of high expectations, and suffers from a lack of confidence as a result. He is otherwise laid-back and friendly, and a good friend to all his classmates. To experience life without privilege and to fulfill his military obligation, he serves in the navy as an ordinary swabbie. After his military service, he makes an ill-fated marriage to the daughter of one of his father's classmates and takes up a career in investment banking. Unfortunately, his wife is a serial adultress and alcoholic and demands a divorce, leaving him estranged from his own son and daughter, with limited visitation after his wife places both in boarding school at the age of 9 and 6, denying him custodial rights and frustrating his attempts to give them a home life. He has an interest in his family's history during the American Revolution, which in turn leads to him following his conscience and helping organize the Moratorium Day protests on Wall Street. Jason Gilbert, Jr., son of Jason Gilbert, Sr. né Jacob Gruenwald, has the makings of a perfect son, of whom any parent would be proud. Despite this, there is one thing that troubles him: he is in constant conflict with his identity as a Jew, despite his parents' assimilation and conversion to Unitarianism. He experiences prejudice at several points, when denied admission to Yale and when denied invitation to the punches of Harvard's final clubs. He also notes more pervasive racism, when a popular black athlete is denied entrance to the Hasty Pudding Club, and when a drill instructor punishes him during his service in the Marines when he inadvertently invites him to a segregated restaurant off-base, which the drill instructor interpreted as taunting. Over the course of the book, he overcomes this, due to the loss of his Dutch Christian fiancée, a pædiatrician who is killed while attending a sick kibbutznik child during a visit to Israel. The incident leads him to immigrate to Israel and become a kibbutznik himself and join the Israeli paratroopers, in exploring the Jewish identity that had been denied to him throughout his life by his family's assimilation while being externally imposed on him. He is shown as participating in the Six Days' War and the Yom Kippur War, and dies during the rescue of Jewish hostages from Uganda. Theodore Lambros was born to a working class Greek family, and was admitted to Harvard with no scholarship after graduating from Cambridge Latin School, and thus must work as a waiter to support himself throughout his schooling, and does not have the wherewithal to live on campus. During the course of the book, this fact makes it difficult for him to truly "belong" to his class. All the same, he endures and eventually achieves his ambition of securing a professorship in the classics at Harvard. Tragically, he has no one to share it with, after committing adultery while on sabbatical at Christ Church, and his subsequent divorce from his college sweetheart. Daniel Rossi is a talented pianist. His father disowns him due to his choice of Harvard in light of President Pusey's refusal to cooperate with the McCarthy hearings, particularly after the death of his older son in the Korean War. Daniel chooses Harvard on the advice of his mentor in music, Gustav Landau, who likens the McCarthy persecutions to those of the Third Reich which he himself fled. Daniel eventually wins his father's approval due to his success and fame as a pianist, composer of a Broadway musical and conductor of two orchestras, but finds this acceptance meaningless after years of estrangement. However, to maintain this extremely hectic way of life, he becomes alienated from his wife, and a serial adulterer addicted to stimulants and phenothiazine. The drug addiction becomes his downfall and causes severe motor dysfunction that ends his musical career, but redeems him through allowing him to reconcile with his wife and daughters. George Keller, né Gyuri Kolozsdi, enters the United States as a Hungarian refugee following the student uprising in 1956, and is granted a place in the Harvard Class of 1958. He rushes to assimilate as quickly as possible and becomes fluent in English in seven months. He remains highly paranoid and deeply regrets his abandonment of his fiancée, a Budapest pharmacy student, in the rush to flee Hungary. His determination and fierce loyalty to his country of refuge eventually result in a position in the White House, as a protégé of Henry Kissinger. His personal detachment and unresolved emotions leave him unable to form any meaningful relationship with his wife or to consider becoming a father, and they eventually divorce. After a lengthy speech at his 25th class reunion, where he is confronted with the human toll of his policy implementation in the Vietnam War, he commits suicide, asking Andrew Eliot, as his executor, that his money be sent back to his family in Hungary.
6655945	/m/0gg8tg	The House on Lily Street	Jack Vance			 A police detective investigates the murder of a solipsistic social worker who had sought the identity of the mysterious "Mr. Big", an extortionist who threatens welfare cheats with exposure unless he is paid off.
6667762	/m/0ggnrb	The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs	Irvine Welsh	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Danny Skinner and Brian Kibby both work for Edinburgh's restaurant-inspection team as environmental health officers. Skinner is a hard-drinking man, who is involved in football hooliganism and supports local team Hibernian F.C.. He is reading a book by Edinburgh chef Alan de Fretais called The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs. He conceives a strong dislike for Kibby and bullies and undermines him mercilessly at work. He relaxes by reading Hugh MacDiarmid, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Schopenhauer, and watching Federico Fellini films. Kibby is shy and inward-looking, and drinks Horlicks, collects model trains, and obsessively plays a computer game called Harvest Moon. Kibby's social life revolves around a hillwalking group called the Hyp Hykers and attendance at Star Trek conventions. The plot describes Skinner's relationship with alcohol and his search for his unknown father. His alcoholism causes him to lose his girlfriend Kay. Gradually it dawns on him that the damage that ought to accrue to his body from his lifestyle is instead inflicted on Kibby. For a while he enjoys this, particularly relishing his promotion at work, but when Kibby becomes mortally ill he realises that he needs him. When Kibby comes out of hospital after a liver transplant (caused vicariously by Skinner's heavy drinking), they both realise that their dependency is mutual. Kibby (who has retired on health grounds) puts on weight and becomes a heavy drinker in his own right. Skinner resigns and goes to San Francisco in search of someone who might be his father. He is disappointed in this as it turns out the man was exclusively homosexual during the period in question, but does find love at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, in the shape of American Dorothy Cominsky. Skinner returns to Leith where he continues the search for his father and starts a relationship with Kibby's sister. When he discovers de Fretais having sex with Kay, he tries to kill them both, succeeding in killing the chef and gravely injuring his ex-girlfriend. By the end of the story Kibby is strongly alluded to be Skinner's half brother, with Brian's father, Keith Kibby being the man Skinner had been searching for. Skinner knows this with reasonable certainty, as he dies at Brian's hand.
6669168	/m/0ggqpf	Trip City	Trevor Miller			 Tom Valentine wakes up in an unfamiliar loft apartment - not sure where he is or how he got there. Despite the chic surroundings, there’s blood on his shirt, evidence of a struggle and a Luger pistol on the Persian rug... Valentine is only certain of three things: The girl that he loved has been murdered. His mind has been warped by the effects of a powerful psychotropic drug and he only has one chance to bring the shrouded, corporate killers to justice...
6669390	/m/0ggq_t	Encounters with the Archdruid	John McPhee	1971		 While notionally a profile of Brower, Encounters is broken into three sections. The first chronicles Brower's conflict with Charles Park, a mineral engineer hoping to find and exploit mineral reserves in Glacier Peak Wilderness. Charles Park is portrayed as calculating and pragmatic, unwilling to foreclose real economic value from current generations in order to leave the environment pristine for future generations. This pragmatic view was starkly contrasted with Brower's insistence that "I believe in wilderness for itself alone". McPhee facilitates or observes the dialogue between these two contrasted figures as he does for the other two sections in the book. The second section introduces Charles Fraser a real estate developer in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Fraser's characterization of environmentalists as modern druids who "worship trees and sacrifice human beings to those trees" provides the charge against Brower that forms the title of the book. Brower came to Georgia in order to stop Fraser's plan to develop Cumberland Island. Like Park, Fraser is depicted as nuanced and pragmatic: his vision of development is controlled and regulated land use. Fraser's development of Hilton Head Island is still considered a model for planned development and McPhee notes that Fraser considers himself a true conservationist. Brower would eventually win this battle, with a groundswell of opposition forcing Fraser to sell his development on Cumberland Island to the National Park Foundation. The third section presents David Brower's unraveling. Here Brower battles Floyd Dominy, then the commissioner of the United States Bureau of Reclamation. Displaying only some of the reserve and pragmatism of the previous two figures, Dominy relished the damming of rivers, while Brower considered damming the ultimate offense. Brower struggled to save the Glen Canyon from being flooded by the Glen Canyon Dam but failed and as the story progresses, he is increasingly marginalized in the environmental movement for his perceived militancy. Wendy Nelson Espeland, in The Struggle for Water, argues that the Bureau carries much of the blame (or credit) for "radicalizing" Brower.
6669763	/m/0ggrlv	The Skystone	Jack Whyte	1992	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 ;Invasion: The book begins with Publius Varrus laying its framework: he is retelling his history and the history of the Roman withdrawal from Britain. He then begins by talking about an ambush by Celts where he and Caius Britannicus are injured. While thinking about his time spent with Britannicus recovering from these injuries, his thoughts lead to their meeting: Britannicus had been a captive of Berbers and Varrus freed him from them. After this encounter Varrus recalls how he and Britannicus traveled together to Britain to become primus pilus and legate, respectively, of Legion XX Valeria Victrix's Second Millarian Cohort. While they are in command of this unit, Hadrian's wall is overcome by a horde of Picts and other Celtic Tribes. The unit spends a year and a half fighting their way back to Roman Controlled Britain. Outside of Londinium they encounter a legion from the army of Theodosius. ;Colchester: After Varrus recovers from his injuries, he returns to Colchester, the location of his birth. When he returns he finds that his boyhood friend, and his grandfather's helper, Equus had ensured that his Grandfather's smithy was not devoid of tools. Varrus begins to run the business again, striking deals with Cuno, Equus's brother in law. Verrus also gains several contracts with the local legion, because his swords use a higher quality of iron than the other local suppliers. Britannicus visits the Colchester legion and finds Varrus. While they are attending a military party, Britannicus proposes that he may create a colony similar to the Bagaudae's colonies in Gaul. After a visit when Varrus explains his grandfather's use of skystone metal to create the hardest sword and dagger in existence, Varrus and Plautus discover a conspiracy by family enemies of Britannicus, the Senecas. Another encounter with the Senecas follows several years later as Varrus and Plautus interfere with the youngest of the Seneca brothers. There encounters ends with Varrus beating the brother up and carving a V into his chest. The attack leads to a massive manhunt by the military because the youngest Seneca had connections with the emperor and the military hierarchy. Because of the persistent nature of this search and a conviction that the eldest brother, Primus, would eventually figure out who his brother's attacker was, Varrus flees Colchester. First heading to Verulamium, he beds Equus's sister, Pheobe who had previously bedded him for the first time since his injury. From there he leaves for Aquae Sulis, where Britannicus owns a villa. ;Westering: On the road to Aquae Sulis, Varrus encounters several bandits who attempt to murder him. He later, after another assassination attempt, finds out that these men had been hired by the Senecas. He finally arrives in Aquae Sulis and encounters Britannicus's brother-in-law Quintus Varo. Varo invites Varrus to his villa. At the villa, Varrus meets Caius Britannicus's sister Luceiia. Also while at the villa Varrus encounters a Welsh hunchback Cymric. Varrus demonstrates the African bow which his grandfather had left in his collection of weapons. Luceiia and Varrus return to the Britannicus villa. While there Luceiia introduces him to a druid who has knowledge of meteor shower that coincides with when Varrus the Elder discovered his skystone. The local people had called this the return of dragons, a local myth that had revolved around covert smelting and metal working by the Pendragons, a local tribe. The druid leads Luceiia and Varrus to the location where a number of cattle had been killed during that same night. There they find impact craters and a lake unknown to the druid. On a return trip from the site, the party gets caught in the dark during a downpour. The druid leads them to a hamlet where they take shelter in a cottage. While there Luceiia and Varrus express a growing interest in each other and agree to marry each other. ;The Dragon's Nest: Varrus finds seven sky stones in the valley, all marked by donut-shaped impact craters. He digs all of them up but they are all small, and Varrus does not think that these are large enough for the cataclysm that happened to the cattle. Meanwhile Caius Britannicus returns to the villa. Upon his arrival he expresses his approval of Varrus and Luceiia's wedding, invitations are sent out and a number of individual soon begin arriving, among which is Equus with Varrus's smithing materials from Colchester. Also among the arrivals is Bishop Alric who, along with a military friend Atonious Cicero, tell Varrus of Pheobe's death by the hands of Caesarius Seneca, the youngest Seneca. The wedding is a jolly event despite Varrus' grief over Pheobe. A large group of friends stay at the villa for several weeks. Soon after the wedding Britannicus's friends, Tera and Firma, bring news that they lost their trading fleet to pirates. This news shakes the men of the group and they spend a long night discussing Brittanicus's proposition of a military colony. They all agree to begin recruiting in the colony and invest their livelihoods in the purchase of the villas surrounding Caius's and Varo's. Varrus is also able to discover the main part of the meteor, which is buried under the bed of a lake in the valley. By employing a handful of military engineers, Varrus drains the lake and retrieves the stone. ;The Dragon's Breath: While visiting Aquae Sulis Varrus encounters Quinctilius Nesca, a cousin of the Senecas. Varrus escapes with the help of a trader who had been hoodwinked by Nesca and by killing two of Nesca's guards. The man mysteriously dies during Varrus's escape. While he escapes, Varrus also learns that Seneca had returned to Britain. Varrus places him under surveillance and soon hatches a plot which he carries through to kill Seneca. Meanwhile, agents of a the King of the Pendragon clan, Ullic, approaches Britannicus and entreats him for a meeting between the two leaders. They meet and after some vocal sparring the two agree to a protective alliance between the two regional powers as Britons. Soon after Bishop Alaric passes through the region again, telling the Colonists, they now called themselves such, that Frankish cavalry was now running rampant in parts of the empire, and that the political tensions were rising. Also Alaric brings news of Caius's son Picus, who was now aligned with the Roman emperor in Constantinople and the a new military commander Stilicho who favored the use of heavy cavalry. In the final chapter, Varrus reveals that he was able to smelt his skystone and casts a statue of the Celtic goddess Coventina who Varrus names The Lady of the Lake.
6683299	/m/0gh3sk	The Conservationist	Nadine Gordimer	1974	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In South Africa under apartheid, Mehring is a rich white businessman who is not satisfied with his life. His ex-wife has gone to America, his liberal son (who is probably gay) criticizes his conservative/capitalist ways and his lovers and colleagues do not seem actually interested in him. Out of a whim he buys a farm outside the city, afterwards trying to explain this purchase to himself as the search for a higher meaning in life. But it is clear that he knows next to nothing to farming, and that black workers run it - Mehring is simply an outsider, an intruder on the daily life of "his" farm. One day the black foreman, Jacobus, finds an unidentified dead body on the farm. Since the dead man is black, the police find no urgency to look into the case and simply bury the body on the spot where it was found. The idea of an unknown black man buried on his land begins to "haunt" Mehring. This has been interpreted as the influence of apartheid on the class of privileged white people who profit from it while ignoring its victims. A flood brings the body back to the surface; although the farm workers do not know the stranger, they now give him a proper burial as if he were a family member. There are hints that Mehring's own burial will be less emotional than this burial of a stranger. This can be interpreted to symbolize the white man's position in South Africa: although he "owns" the land on a piece of paper, the black natives have the actual claim on the land. it:Il conservatore
6686478	/m/0gh7r9	Strands of Starlight	Gael Baudino	1989	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Miriam's parents expel her at a young age because of her powers of healing, and she wanders for years. At the age of eighteen Miriam falls into the hands of Catholic authorities, denounced as a witch. Grievously injured by her tormentors, Miriam escapes, and Mika, a traveling midwife, takes her in and nurses her back to health. After curing one of Mika's patients of eclampsia, Miriam goes on the run again. As she travels through the forest, she comes upon Baron Roger of Aurverelle, a nobleman out hunting who has been mauled by a bear. After she heals him, he rapes her and leaves her for dead. Inhabitants of Saint Brigid, one of the Free Towns, find her and summon Varden, an elf, to help heal her injuries. While recovering in Saint Brigid, she realizes that the Elves have the power to change people. Formulating a plan for revenge on Baron Roger, she convinces Varden to perform a metamorphosis upon her to make her larger and stronger, able to engage in armed combat. Another Elf, Terrill, agrees to train her in the Elven way of armed combat. The change goes as planned, but she comes to realize that it has made her not completely human, and she is gradually becoming an elf. Aloysius Cranby, the bishop who had imprisoned Miriam, tracks her by imprisoning and interrogating Mika the midwife and comes to Saint Brigid. After days of fruitless searching for Miriam the human, Cranby realizes that Miriam the elf is just one of several elves welcome in the village when she kills one of his companions, though he never realizes the two Miriams are one and the same. Deeming this information more important than completing his original task, he flees the village, and Varden kills him to keep this secret safe. Miriam persuades Terrill to go with her to free Mika from the Inquisition's prison. In a final full-contact sparring match with Terrill, Miriam concludes her transformation into an Elf. As a symbol of acceptance of her completed change, she formally takes the Elvish form of her name, Mirya. She and Terrill go on to infiltrate the prison. Using their Elven senses and agility to find humanly-impossible ways of piercing the tight security, they make their way to the dungeon, free Mika, slaughter the inquisitors, and flee. After leaving the city, Mirya, Mika, and Terrill return to Saint Brigid. Still unable to abandon her quest for vengeance, Mirya uses her Elven powers to search through all of the potential futures, and she forces into reality what had been only a dimly possible future, wherein Baron Roger and she can duel. As a result, Baron Roger conceives the idea of arranging a sham hawking trip in nearby Beldon forest, where Mirya will be waiting for him, so that he will have the privacy to violate a young woman in his care. When Roger arrives, Mirya initiates a sword battle with him. Finally, Mirya prevails over him, wounding him mortally. Realizing only then that keeping him alive is better than killing him, she heals him then uses her powers to remake his mind so that he is less aggressive, less ambitious, and committed to keeping the Free Towns safe.
6689889	/m/0ghfl2	F.P.1 Doesn't Respond	Curt Siodmak		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Lieutenant Droste wants to build an airstation in the middle of the ocean to allow pilots on intercontinental flights to refuel and repair any damage to their aircraft. With the help of the pilot Ellissen, he manages to win the support of the Lennartz-Werke for the project. Ellissen, who has taken up with the owner's sister Claire Lennartz, shies away from marriage and seeks new adventure. After two years, the platform has become a city on the ocean, with runways, hangars, hotels, and shopping centers. During a storm, the connection to the platform is severed. The last sounds to come over the telephone were gunshots and screams. The weather clears and the best pilots immediately head for F.P.1. Ellissen, in a lovesick depression, is convinced by Claire to accompany her to the platform. Their plane crashes on the island but they survive. The crew of F.P.1 has been the victim of a saboteur, who knocked them out with gas. Before chief engineer Damsky fled in a boat, he opened the valves, causing a danger that F.P.1 will sink. Claire finds the badly injured Droste and takes care of him. Ellissen has to recognize that Claire is slipping away from him. After a short time, he pulls himself together and takes a plane out to get help. He sees a ship, jumps from his plane, is taken aboard the ship, and calls for help via radio. A fleet of ships and planes are sent to rescue F.P.1.
6692327	/m/0ghkmw	The Parasites	Daphne du Maurier			 In this novel, Miss du Maurier tells the story of the Delaney family. The Delaneys led complex and frequently scandalous lives; their strange relationship with each other closed their circle to all outsiders; the world in which they lived was sophisticated, gay, and sometimes tragic. Maria Delaney was a beautiful, successful actress, the wife of Sir Charles Wyndham. Niall Delaney wrote the songs and melodies that everyone sang and played. Celia their sister, generous and charming, took care of their father and delighted in Maria's children. Between Maria and Niall there existed a strange affinity—sometimes physical, sometimes spiritual. They were both subtly aware of it, and so was Sir Charles. Perhaps it was this that impelled Maria's husband to exclaim bitterly: "Parasites, that's what you are. The three of you. You always have been and you always will be. Nothing can change you. You are doubly, triply parasitic; first, because you've traded since childhood on that seed of talent you had the luck to inherit from your fantastic forebears; secondly, because none of you have done a stroke of honest work in your lives but batten on us, the fool public; and thirdly, because you prey on each other, living in a world of fantasy which bears no relation to anything in heaven or on earth."
6692508	/m/0ghkzl	The Story of Lucy Gault	William Trevor	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It begins with Lucy, on a night in 1921. She is the only child of an Anglo-Irish land owner on the coast of Cork County. It starts during the Irish War of Independence, when Protestant landowners caught in the battle between the IRA and the British army had their houses burned http://books.guardian.co.uk/bookerprize2002/story/0,,800890,00.html. The place is under martial law and Captain Gault is disturbed by young arsonists from the nearby village. When he fires a warning shot with his old rifle, he injures a boy in the shoulder. Out of fear, the family plans to move to England. Lucy is not told why her family wishes to move and longs for the house she was kept from and the sea close by. On the eve of their departure, she hides in the woods. Due to a series of events, her parents are led to believe that she drowned in the sea http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907EFDE1030F93AA1575AC0A9649C8B63. By the time she is discovered, her parents are gone. She thus gets what she wished for, to live in the house, being taken care of by the house servants turned caretaker-farmers. Lucy lives a very lonely life, reading books and keeping bees. She feels very guilty about running away and thus feels that she deserves her loneliness. When another character, Ralph, tries to relieve her of her sad life, she feels that she cannot let him love her without her getting forgiveness from her parents. Her father returns after the Second World War, having spent the previous years in Italy and Switzerland, too late to salvage her happiness. They settle into an uneasy companionship, with too much unspoken. Having lost the love of her life, she forms a bond with the person who was wounded by her father. Lucy spends many years visiting the asylum where the person is incarcerated in his confusion and his silence. Lucy in old age sees people with phones to their ears and hears on the wireless about the Internet, and wonders what it is.
6693408	/m/0ghm56	Epicoene, or the Silent Woman	Ben Jonson	1609		 The play takes place in London. Morose, a wealthy old man with an obsessive hatred of noise, has made plans to disinherit his nephew Dauphine by marrying. His bride Epicœne is, he thinks, an exceptionally quiet woman; he does not know that Dauphine has arranged the whole match for purposes of his own. The couple are married despite the well-meaning interference of Dauphine's friend True-wit. Morose soon regrets his wedding day, as his house is invaded by a charivari that comprises Dauphine, True-wit, and Clerimont; a bear warden named Otter and his wife; two stupid knights, La Foole and Daw; and an assortment of "collegiates," vain and scheming women with intellectual pretensions. Worst for Morose, Epicœne quickly reveals herself as a loud, nagging mate. Desperate for a divorce, Morose consults two lawyers (actually Dauphine's men in disguise), but they can find no grounds for ending the match. Finally, Dauphine promises to reveal grounds to end the marriage (in exchange, Morose must come to financial terms with him). The agreement made, Dauphine strips the female costume from Epicœne, revealing that the wife is, in fact, a boy. Morose is dismissed harshly, and the other ludicrous characters are discomfited by this revelation; Daw and Foole, for instance, had claimed to have slept with Epicœne.
6695653	/m/0ghqcp	Owls in the Family	Farley Mowat	1962-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns two Great Horned Owls found by Billy, Bruce and Murray in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The owls become part of a larger pet collection. Wol is the larger bird and is a lighter colour (pure white with a little black).Wol was found under a bush after a storm. Weeps is a mottled brown. Weeps was found in a barrel filled with oil. When Billy witnesses children throwing stones at Weeps, who is unable to fly, he trades his scout knife for him. Wol, who is able to fly, was found after a storm. Both Wol and Weeps are given to Bruce before Billy and his family move away to Toronto, Ontario.In the end, they are through with tough times and live a happy life. Farley Mowat was born in 1921 in Belleville, Ontario. He was allowed to roam the countryside while growing up and keep animals at home. His father worked as a librarian during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Mowat's family moved frequently, eventually settling in Saskatchewan. Mowat has written several books about animals, nature, and the Far North. His stories mix humor, personal experience, and his love of nature and wildlife. He is one of the most widely read Canadian authors worldwide.
6696394	/m/0ghr9d	The Money Dragon	Pam Chun		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Phoenix first heard of Lau Ah Leong when she was eight, never suspecting then that she would become his daughter-in-law. Ten years later, after the death of her father, L. Ah Leong's first son, Lau Tat-Tung, then aged 30, is suggested as a good match for her. Shortly afterward it is agreed that they should marry. Phoenix is excited and happy about the match. They are married at Ming Yang Tong, L. Ah Leong's largest China estate, having 118 bedrooms. After the wedding they enjoy eight months at that estate, but are forced to move because the civil war in China is causing concern that Tat-Tung will be kidnapped by a faction desperate for money. Phoenix and Tat-Tung go to Hong Kong to find a boat to Hawaii. Unfortunately many other people have the same idea. Three months later their first child (though not Tat-Tung's oldest—he has another by his late wife, and one adopted), Fung-Tai is born. She is another two weeks old before they manage to book passage to Hawaii. When they finally reach Hawaii, it seems a beautiful paradise, filled with beautiful women, a cheerful band, and many garlands of colorful flowers. However, immigration officials claim that it will take three weeks to get Phoenix processed—a worry, since she has no more milk for their baby. This was due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Hawaii had become part of the United States, and because of this act Chinese had to have a special Hawaiian Islands identification card and witnesses living in Hawai'i to testify for them upon exit or entry. Sometimes even Hawai'i born Chinese with papers in order and witnesses could be denied entry or exit. However, soon L. Ah Leong comes to clear things up, and pays a bribe of $1350 to get Phoenix off the boat after only an afternoon of waiting. This is the first time Phoenix meets L. Ah Leong face to face. L. Ah Leong began as a poor beggar in China, and through luck and hard work was noticed by his boss, Ahuna, who brings with him to open a plantation store in Hawaii. He also taught Ah Leong the art of coffee brewing and chose Ah Leong's first wife, Dai-Kam. Ah Leong starts a store in Kapa'au, which goes bankrupt. After his bankruptcy, in 1884, Ah Leong is referred to L. Ah Low for a stock boy and store cook. Dai-Kam is Ah Low's family cook. The store is in Honolulu, and Ah Leong lives there through the Bayonet Constitution and a bloody attempt by Hawaiians to return the monarchy to power in 1889. By 1891 Ah Leong's first son is born, and Ah Leong has become a full citizen of the Kingdom of Hawaii, one of only a few non-Hawaiians to do so. He used the dowry money from his first wife to purchase a shop in Kaka'ako. At first the community doubted he would succeed, as Kaka'ako was a predominantly white community, and Chinese usually patronized Chinese shops. This was lucky, because Ah Leong's shop was not burned when Chinatown was burned down after bubonic plague was discovered there. However, trade was very slow for him because many people lost everything to the flames. Ah Leong interpreted the fire, which burned everything so completely, as purifying the ground, and believed that it would cause him good fortune to build on this ground. Therefore he opened a new store at 11 North King Street (where it can still be seen). His store soon became the busiest in Honolulu. Along with a rise in status and wealth, Ah Leong got three new wives. Dai-Kam was very unhappy about this, but Ah Leong was a charming man, and would talk his way around her. Ah Leong also used his wealth to build huge estates in his home area in China. Tat-Tung supervised construction. After the series of events, the first wife finally decided to take her children and return to China. His third and fourth wives died. Ah Leong was taken into court and fined for cohabitating with too many wives, since none of them were legally married in the United States. The second wife became the only one living in the house, and went behind Ah Leong's back to get a marriage license—she was the only wife legally married to him. Ah Leong got married to another woman, who stayed in China to manage his property there. Dai-Kam returned from China, and in her absence Ah Leong's businesses had grown even more. At this time Phoenix comes into the picture. After her arrival she is treated badly until she moves with her husband to a separate house. Tat-Tung is also harassed by his father, who claims that he is cheating him. This ends when Tat-Tung fights back by not coming to work. Then one day Ah Leong cuts his foot while trying to clip his nails with a knife. He believes that it will heal itself, and waits too long to get medical attention. It becomes so infected that doctors say they must amputate, but Ah Leong believes that he must go to death whole, so he dies after refusing the amputation. Before his death he repents making his will such that his second wife's children will inherit. After Lau Ah leong's death there is a lot of fighting over his money by the children of his second wife. At the time of his death in 1934, Ah Leong had amassed a fortune of approximately a million dollars. At first, Tat-Tung and his family are struggling because they no longer have as much money. However, one of his half-brothers eveutually gets him a store to manage, and this assures Tat-Tung and Phoenix's future.
6701623	/m/0gj0vz	But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz				 Like Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter, But Beautiful takes a fictionalised look at jazz. Divided into seven sections each covering a different legendary jazz figure, it uses historical details, photographs and music to paint the self-destruction and inspiration behind genius. Short vignettes of Duke Ellington and Harry Carney's famous between-gig road trips are interspersed throughout. It concludes with a seven-part analysis of jazz styles and influences that reads more like conventional music criticism.
6710195	/m/03n7zn	The Twilight of the Idols	Friedrich Nietzsche	1889	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Nietzsche criticizes German culture of the day as unsophisticated and nihilistic, and shoots some disapproving arrows at key French, British, and Italian cultural figures who represent similar tendencies. In contrast to all these alleged representatives of cultural "decadence", Nietzsche applauds Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, Thucydides and the Sophists as healthier and stronger types. The book states the transvaluation of all values as Nietzsche's final and most important project, and gives a view of antiquity wherein the Romans for once take precedence over the ancient Greeks. The book is divided up into several sections: ===Maxims and Arrow he Problem of Socrate eason in Philosoph ow the "True World" Finally Became Fictio orality as Anti-Natur he Four Great Errors=== In the chapter The Four Great Errors, he suggests that people, especially Christians, confuse the effect for the cause, and that they project the human ego and subjectivity on to other things, thereby creating the illusionary concept of being, and therefore also of the thing-in-itself and God. In reality, motive or intention is "an accompaniment to an act" rather than the cause of that act. By removing causal agency based on free, conscious will, Nietzsche critiques the ethics of accountability, suggesting that everything is necessary in a whole that can neither be judged nor condemned, because there is nothing outside of it. What people typically deem "vice" is in fact merely "the inability not to react to a stimulus." In this light, the concept of morality becomes purely a means of control: "the doctrine of will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is of finding guilty."
6723828	/m/0gkp7z	The Flying Trunk	Hans Christian Andersen		{"/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale"}	 A young man squanders his inheritance until he has nothing left but a few shillings, a pair of slippers, and an old dressing-gown. A friend sends him a trunk with directions to pack up and be off. Having nothing to pack, he gets into the trunk himself. The trunk is enchanted and carries him to the land of the Turks. He uses the trunk to visit the sultan's daughter, who is kept in a tower because of a prophecy that her marriage would be unhappy. He persuades her to marry him. When her father and mother visit her tower, he tells them a story. They are impressed and consent to the marriage. To celebrate his upcoming marriage, the young man buys fireworks and flies over the land setting them off. Returning to the earth, a spark incinerates the trunk, and the young man can no longer visit the princess in the tower. Instead, he wanders the world telling stories.
6724075	/m/0gkppx	Treasure Hunters	Jeff Smith	2002-11-06	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Thorn, the Bone cousins and Gran'ma Ben reach Atheia at last, and find the city crammed with refugees, creatures of all shapes and sizes who have survived the devastation of the valley. Thorn and Fone meet a young girl, Tanael, who gives Thorn a tiny prayer stone. Phoney and Smiley sneak Bartleby into the city in a hay wagon, while Phoney plots how to make money off the inhabitants of the old city. Later, Gran'ma Ben takes Thorn and the Bones to meet her teacher, an old and wise master of The Dreaming who runs a rooftop kitchen in the city. The Teacher tells them that the inner council who once watched over the city has been replaced with a group calling themselves the Vedu, The Order of the Dreaming Eye, who strongly oppose the Dragons and anyone who associates with them. The Teacher examines Tanael's prayer stone, noting it is engraved with the name Lunaria, Thorn's mother. Just then, the shadow of Briar appears around Fone Bone, beckoning Thorn towards her. Thorn walks towards the apparition in a trance, and it takes the strength of everyone to hold her back. The teacher warns that Thorn will be at risk in her dreams, and must be kept awake. Far away in the Eastern mountains, the real Briar plots with the Lord of the Locusts to attack Atheia. The human warriors of Pawa have joined forces with the Rat Creatures, forming an army larger and stronger than ever, and confident in the knowledge that the Dragons no longer defend the Old Kingdom. Meanwhile, a battered Kingdok lurks in an underground tunnel. Later, while lurking around the Atheian marketplace, Phoney and Fone Bone get into a tussle with a ferocious giant bee. The merchants thank the Bones for chasing the bee off, explaining how he and other bees frequently terrorizes the marketplace (in anger at the merchants selling water rations to the bees at hugely inflated prices). They offer the Bones gold to keep the bees away, and Phoney concocts a plan to gouge the merchants and the bees for his own profit. Meanwhile, Gran'ma Ben and the Teacher have kept Thorn awake all night to prevent Briar and the Locust getting to her through her dreams. The Teacher explains who is behind the movement against the Dragons; Tarsil, commander of the Royal Guard, has blamed them for the appearance of the Ghost Circles and ordered his soldiers to destroy any Dragon shrines. Tarsil, who was injured by the Dragons in his youth while leading an expedition into Tanen Gard, and who resents them still, is on the lookout for any allies of the Dragons, including Thorn and Gran'ma Ben. Before long, word reaches the Royal Guard that Thorn and Ben are in the city, and they conduct a search for them. Meanwhile, Tarsil himself meets with the head of the city's merchants guild to discuss the embargo the Royal Guard has imposed. Word soon reaches him of the presence of the crown princess Thorn, and he orders more men onto the streets to find her and put her to death. Meanwhile, Ted the bug brings Thorn word of activities outside the city; Lucius and the others are still alive, and will reach Atheia in two days' time, but Briar and her army will arrive sooner. Thorn also learns a little about her mother Queen Lunaria (nicknamed Moonwort). Gran'ma Ben tells Ted to carry a message back to Lucius and his army, planning to trap Briar, the Pawans and the Rat Creatures in a pincer movement. That night, Thorn, Ben and the rest of the resistance hold a rooftop meeting to plan for the forthcoming conflict, and to discuss Tarsil's oppression of Dragon lore. However, the meeting is cut short when Fone Bone rushes in to warn everyone that the Royal Guard are closing in on their meeting place. Hiding from the search party, another of Ben's former Teachers continues the meeting. He tells Thorn that she will soon be tested, and that the fate of the world rests upon her. He suggests taking her away from the old kingdom, as her presence is only worsening the situation. Fone Bone loses his temper with the Teacher, and lets slip about his and Thorn's journey inside a Ghost Circle. Thorn confirms the story, telling the Teacher how the spirit of her mother told her to seek the Crown of Horns. The revelation changes his attitude in an instant; the Crown, he explains, is the Dragons' deepest secret, an artifact that is the polar opposite of the Lord of the Locusts. He warns Thorn against finding it, predicting that if she, with a piece of the Locust inside her, were to come into contact with the Crown, it could destroy all existence. Meanwhile, Phoney Bone has found the city's treasury, and despite the danger sneaks out with Smiley to raid it. They are soon caught by the Royal Guard (which were tipped off by the same merchants who hired the Bones to chase off the bees), but as they are about to arrest the Bones, the gang of giant bees turns up due to one of the merchants announcing his selling of water and a ferocious tussle ensues. Gran'ma Ben hears the commotion and rushes to the scene to break the fight up, but the Bones have already been arrested and imprisoned. At the city wall, Thorn reveals her presence to one of the Royal Guard when he assaults Tanael for setting up a Dragon shrine. Though Thorn only scares off the lone guard, he soon returns with a troop to arrest her. However, it is too late; Briar and her vast army of Rat Creatures and Pawans (over 20,000) have arrived at the city's gates, and the battle for the Old Kingdom is about to begin. Up on top of the gate, Gran'ma Ben quietly whispers that they are not ready.
6724826	/m/0gkqy9	Maze of Moonlight	Gael Baudino	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Christopher returns to Aurverelle in 1400, more than three years after the Ottoman Empire's victory at Battle of Nicopolis, his health and sanity severely damaged. He is soured on religion and nobility, having seen hypocrisy of all kinds while away. Etienne of Languedoc, a representative of Roman Pope Boniface IX, arrives to have an audience with him, but Christopher refuses to see him. Staying at the local inn, Etienne takes out his frustration on Vanessa, granddaughter of the elf Varden, by brutally beating her nearly to death when she rejects his advances. Christopher kills him and takes Vanessa in. Just as he is about to give up hope of Vanessa recovering from her wounds, Mirya and Terrill arrive, posing as healers from far away, and they heal her completely. Christopher befriends Vanessa and helps her to make sense of the images in her head that make her fear for her sanity, those images being the patterns of reality she can see because of her part-elven blood. She departs for Saint Blaise, but, arriving at the gates of Saint Blaise, she decides at the last minute to seek out whatever family of hers may still remain in Saint Brigid. Christopher's cousin, Yvonette a'Verne, baron of Hypprux, has designs on the wealth of the city of Ypris, so he arranges for several bands of mercenaries to sack the town and split the proceeds with him, not foreseeing that when the bands are done with Ypris, they will begin looting the rest of Adria. Using blackmail, Christopher persuades Yvonette to join an alliance of other noblemen of the area to fight off the mercenaries when they do decide to strike off on their own. After the fall of Ypris, one band of mercenaries, the Fellowship of Acquisition, sacks the Free Town of Saint Blaise and takes over Shrinerock, a nearby castle. Realizing the potential of a castle to hold people in as well as out, Christopher convinces Natil to use her otherworldly powers to fuse the castle's walls, doors, windows, and gates into solid stone, thus giving Terrill time to shepherd the survivors of Saint Blaise's and Shrinerock's fall through Malvern Forest to safety in Aurverelle. Christopher goes to Saint Brigid to rescue Vanessa. He is trapped there with Vanessa, Mirya, and Natil when the Fellowship besiege the town. Using Mirya's elven powers and Christopher's command of unorthodox fighting tactics, they hold the mercenaries at bay. With discord setting in among the ranks of the Fellowship, Berard of Onella, the leader of the Fellowship, is assassinated by one of his own. At the same time, the remaining members of the alliance ambush the Fellowship and slaughter them.
6724893	/m/0gkr12	Shroud of Shadow	Gael Baudino	1994	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Natil returns to Adria convinced that she is the last of the elves on Earth. This realization, as well as the gradual fading of her powers, has provoked a crisis of faith in her; she still wants to aid and comfort all whom she meets, but with every day, her powers wane and she becomes more and more human. She has begun to sleep, something she has never done before. While she sleeps, she dreams of humans in 1990 Denver, George and Sally, who are becoming Elves. Near the fishing town of Maris, she encounters Omelda, a nun recently escaped from Shrinerock Abbey, who is tormented by voices in her head. Every day, Omelda hears the rituals marking the Canonical hours in her head, without fail. Though she fights them, they take over her mind and make her little more than a zombie for people to take advantage of as they wish. On her way to commit suicide by casting herself off the cliffs overlooking Maris, Omelda falls afoul of some village guardsmen, who barter her safe passage for sex. Continuing on, she sees Natil's campfire, hears her harp music, and she finds that the harp music quiets the voices in her head. Traveling with Omelda, Natil takes employment with Jacob Aldernacht, a prosperous merchant: she as a harper, and Omelda as a housekeeper. Omelda quickly falls into the clutches of Jacob's grandsons, Edvard and Norman, who make her their sex toy. Dazed by the constant voices in her head, Omelda can only endure. Natil becomes friends with Jacob and starts trying to comfort him; though he is rich, he is lonely and bitter. One night Natil realizes what the grandsons are doing to Omelda, finds them in their secret lair in the Aldernacht house, and kills them both. Fleeing the Aldernacht house, Natil determines to return Omelda to Shrinerock Abbey. Omelda has developed an infection and is deathly sick due to her misuse by Edvard and Norman, so Natil and she stop in the Free Town of Furze for medical assistance. Due to Omelda's delirious ravings, they fall into the clutches of the Inquisition and are taken to the Inquisition's prison. Hanging in chains, Natil gets a glimpse of the Lady after not having seen her for years. This restores her fully to an Elven state, and while being sentenced, she denounces the Inquisitor for all of the wrongs done to Elves by humans through the ages. When her infection becomes too severe, Omelda gives herself entirely to the song in her head and dies in her cell. Later, forces loyal to the Aldernachts break into the prison and free Natil and everyone else being held there. After healing those torture survivors she can, she leaves Jacob Aldernacht's employ, at a loss about what to do. Imagining she will fade as many of the other Elves have, she stops by the ruins of Saint Brigid for final goodbyes. While lingering there and debating what to do, she spies a strange glow in the distance. Fighting her way to it through a torrential rainstorm, she finds a mystical gateway, resembling one she has seen in her dreams, in the fork of a tree. Stepping through, she finds herself in modern-day Denver with a new mission: guide the newly-awakened Elves.
6724980	/m/0gkr2t	Strands of Sunlight	Gael Baudino	1994	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Natil is a gardener at Kingsley College, a private university in Denver. She has found a small group of people who have started transforming into Elves and need guidance, though she has not revealed many details of the early portions of her existence, nor has she revealed the divine vision she once had but now cannot even describe to them. In one narrative thread, Sandy Joy comes to Denver at the invitation of a man named Terry Angel. Exploiting the weak emotional condition of the Dean of Kingsley College, Maxwell Delmari, he has been given free rein to set up a sham program, named Hands of Grace, that purportedly uses music to heal people. Referring to obscure or bogus publications and fake references, Terry has hidden the fact that there is no program and no factual basis for his work. Thoroughly insane and plagued by fleeting partial visions of a hidden higher power, Terry tortures himself with self-mutilation in an effort to finally see this higher power. When Sandy states that she has had a vision of a higher power, he comes to envy and loathe her. After she realizes the falsity of his convictions and tries to distance herself from him, he attacks her, slashing her hands with a knife. Fighting for her life, she sprays him in the face with oven cleaner, blinding him. In another narrative thread, T.K. has just recently returned from Desert Storm missing a leg. A Vietnam veteran and a black man, he has been marginalized his entire life and is now working at the same security firm that once employed George Morrison, who is now the elf Hadden. Living in Denver's projects, he sees a crack house operating every day just down the street from him, and he is powerless to do anything about it. Finding employment at Treestar Surveying, he finds his barriers eroding as he comes to realize that he is becoming an Elf too and is no longer subject to the same hopeless future he once had. After Heather, one of the Elves, is shot by drug dealers for TK's efforts at evicting the crack house from his neighborhood, he steals military ordnance and demolishes the crack house with two pounds of C4 after a desperate gun battle that destroys his artificial leg. Concluding his transformation into an Elf while he sleeps a few nights later, he wakes up the following day whole, his leg intact, having finally discharged his last tie to his old life. When the police come to question him about the pieces of his artificial leg, which he left at the ruins of the crack house when Sandy drove him to safety, the presence of both of his legs deflects their attention away from him. As both narrative threads come together, Sandy is held by the police for assault after Terry lies and says that Sandy attacked him first. Out on bail, Sandy's overwhelming grief at her predicament serves as the final catalyst for helping all of the Elves finally learn how to draw strength from the patterns and use all of the powers at their disposal. Natil, seeing no choice, strikes a deal with Terry and uses her regained powers to heal Terry's eyes so that he will tell the truth of what happened to Sandy. Consumed with shame and grief at the banality of bargaining her healing powers for the truth from Terry and knowing that he will soon commit suicide because of what she has done for him, Natil finally gives up her immortal existence of four and a half billion years and fades from the earth. The others search for her and finally find her grieving in the land of sunlight with the Lady.
6725330	/m/0gkrm1	In the Best Families	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sarah and Barry Rackham have been married less than four years. She is a wealthy heiress, while he is neither employed nor of independent means. Mrs. Rackham has recently cut off Mr. Rackham's allowance due to his escalating demands, and yet he continues to spend considerable sums of money. Mrs. Rackham, along with her cousin Calvin Leeds, comes to the brownstone to engage Wolfe: she wants to know where her husband is getting his money. Reluctantly, Wolfe takes the case. The next day a carton, delivered to his brownstone and thought to contain sausage, turns out to contain a canister of tear gas, which discharges when the carton is opened. Shortly thereafter, Arnold Zeck phones. Zeck heads an organized crime syndicate, insulates himself from publicity by means of several layers of subordinates, and has figured in two of Wolfe's recent cases. Now he calls Wolfe to stress that the carton of tear gas could have contained an explosive, and that Wolfe should withdraw from the work he is performing for Mrs. Rackham. Wolfe hangs up on Zeck. It now seems likely that Zeck is the source of Barry Rackham's income. As arranged with Mrs. Rackham, Archie visits her country home in Westchester, ostensibly to investigate a dog poisoning for Leeds, who breeds Dobermans. His actual purpose is to develop an acquaintance with Mr. Rackham. Over dinner that night, Archie picks up information on several guests, family members and staff. Leeds is to some degree dependent on his cousin for his livelihood: Mrs. Rackham has allowed him to set up a kennels on a corner of her property. Mrs. Rackham's secretary, Lina Darrow, amuses herself by flirting with some of the men present, including Oliver Pierce, a state assemblyman. Dana Hammond, a banker, is trying to establish a closer relationship with Mrs. Rackham's widowed daughter-in-law, Annabel Frey. Archie also has an opportunity to size up Barry Rackham. Although Archie initially expected that Rackham would turn out to be a gigolo who got lucky, he is actually a very clever man, whose interactions with his wife show real character. After dinner and television, Rackham pointedly implies that he knows what Archie's doing there, and just as pointedly urges him to leave early the next morning. Later that night, Mrs. Rackham and her pet Doberman are found stabbed to death in the woods near her house. Archie phones Wolfe to report and, after dealing with the local officials, returns to Manhattan to confer further with Wolfe. When he arrives at the brownstone, Archie finds the front door ajar, Fritz and Theodore in confusion, and Wolfe gone. A brief note, inarguably from Wolfe, instructs Archie not to look for him. Wolfe's disappearance touches off other events. First, a Gazette employee wants to authenticate an order for an advertisement, which announces Wolfe's retirement from the detective business. Then Marko Vukcic, Wolfe's oldest friend, tells Archie that Wolfe came to see him at 2:00 a.m. that morning. Marko spoke with Wolfe for an hour, and has information for Archie. The orchids are to be moved to Lewis Hewitt's nursery on Long Island, and Marko will hire Fritz to work at Rusterman's. Marko has Wolfe's power of attorney, and will offer the brownstone for sale. Finally, Archie is to "act in the light of experience as guided by intelligence" – his standing instructions when Wolfe is not available to provide specific direction. And Archie is recalled to Westchester. He took advantage of District Attorney Archer's imprecise instructions when he returned to Manhattan, and now Archer wants him back to clarify some points. Further, Archer wants to speak with Wolfe. When Archie tells him, truthfully, that he doesn't know where Wolfe is, Archer loses his temper and has Archie jailed as a material witness. Archie's cellmate is Max Christy, who was arrested earlier in a raid on an apparently unsavory establishment. Christy takes an interest in Archie and tries to recruit him for his organization – it goes unnamed, but from Christy's very oblique description, it sounds criminal. For example, it regards the payment of income taxes as optional. And one of the reasons that Christy thinks Archie has potential is that he " . . . has been a private eye for years and so he would be open to anything that sounds good enough." Archie does not commit himself, but he takes Christy's phone number, and is annoyed that Christy gets released before Nathaniel Parker, Wolfe's lawyer, bails Archie out. Days pass, then weeks and months, with no word from Wolfe. Archie sets up shop for himself, of course as a private investigator. He gets a hint that Wolfe is still alive, when Marko has him prepare a check, drawn to cash and charged to travel expense. A log of some of Archie's cases during this period suggests a much more quotidian professional life than he is accustomed to: finding a stolen cat, supervising workers at Coney Island, and catching a cashier dipping into the till. Still, Archie makes enough to cover his living expenses, and then some. He's getting ready to spend a month vacationing in Norway with Lily Rowan when Max Christy shows up with an offer. Christy wants Archie to meet with someone – just possibly Arnold Zeck, Archie guesses – to answer some questions. If Archie's answers pass muster, he'll have a chance to " . . . dip into the biggest river of fast dough that ever flowed." Out of curiosity, Archie agrees to a meeting. That night, he joins a man in a chauffered car. It's not Zeck, but a stranger named Pete Roeder. They drive around Manhattan, discussing Roeder's requirement: an expert tailing job on a man named Rackham, and he wants Archie to get Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather for the job. Archie verifies that Roeder means Barry Rackham, the one whose wife, Wolfe's client, was murdered. Rackham is the beneficiary of much of his wife's estate, and since her death he's been living well in a suite at the Hotel Churchill in Manhattan. Roeder won't tell Archie specifically why he wants Rackham tailed, but he's certain that Archie can't turn the job down. As Roeder smugly points out, Archie was there when Mrs. Rackham was murdered, Wolfe disappeared just six hours after Archie phoned him, and Archie was jailed as a material witness. Now he's being offered the job of tailing Rackham, for no apparent reason. How could he turn it down? He can't. Archie wonders who it is that's after Rackham. If it's Zeck himself, or if Roeder works for Zeck, then Rackham has somehow crossed Zeck since the day when Wolfe was told to lay off. If Rackham is still under Zeck's aegis, it would be dangerous to take a job tailing him for Roeder and Christy. Either way, Archie can't resist getting mixed up in it. So Archie arranges with Saul, Fred and Orrie to tail Rackham. They will report daily to Archie, who will then summarize Rackham's activities for Christy. Archie confirms that both Christy and Roeder work in the Zeck organization, and that the organization is worried about Rackham. Before his wife's death, Rackham had been working for Zeck, but quit when he became a wealthy widower. Investigations into organized crime are ongoing in both Washington and New York, and Zeck's syndicate is worried that Rackham is meeting with a DA. Roeder would like to rope Rackham back in to participate in a new scheme he's developed, but first he needs to be sure that Rackham hasn't turned informant. After more than a week of the tailing, Rackham has figured out that he's being followed, and Archie decides that he might as well have a chat with him to see if he can learn anything interesting. Rackham is wild to know who wants him followed, and Archie tells him it's Zeck. Rackham is so frantic that he throws his whisky glass against the wall. He offers Archie $5,000 for further information. Archie tells Rackham about Christy and Roeder, and Rackham tells Archie he'll top any offer that Roeder makes. Archie reports this conversation to Christy: he doesn't dare conceal it, because Roeder might have other operatives watching Rackham. Archie's report apparently has an effect, for Christy returns the next day to say that Roeder wants to see him. A car and driver take them to Westchester, the location of both the Rackham estate and Zeck's. Upon arrival, Archie is relieved of his gun and escorted into a small waiting room that resembles a fortified bunker. There he meets Arnold Zeck, whose appearance is intimidating: Zeck tells Archie that he needs good men, including some he can meet with and work through. Archie might be one such, and Zeck would like to try. He has Roeder brought into the room. Zeck explains that he and Roeder want Rackham frightened in order to ensure his cooperation with Roeder's new operation, which requires a well-to-do man with good social connections. Zeck closes the meeting by placing Archie on the B list. Back in Manhattan, Archie gets a message from Rackham that he wants to meet. Archie arrives at the suite just in time to see Lina Darrow leaving, and he sees that Rackham has deteriorated during the last three days. His skin looks splotchy, his eyes are bloodshot, his muscles twitch, he needs a shave, his clothes are dirty and he's been drinking heavily. Archie turns up the pressure on Rackham by telling him that he has met with Zeck. He adds that because Zeck has evidence that will convict Rackham of murdering his wife, Archie can't help Rackham without becoming an accessory after the fact. He urges Rackham to assist in Roeder's new operation: if he does, Zeck might reciprocate by suppressing the evidence of Rackham's guilt. Rackham tacitly agrees, and Archie makes arrangements for them to meet with Zeck and Roeder. But then the Westchester authorities butt in and call Archie to White Plains for further questioning. There, he finds that Lina Darrow has provided more information. She has had an intimate relationship with Rackham, but now he has refused to marry her. She has learned from him that Wolfe told Mrs. Rackham over the phone that he had determined Rackham's source of income – a criminal source – and that Mrs. Rackham then told her husband it had to stop. This gives Rackham a motive, previously unknown to the police, for the murder. Archie has been summoned to White Plains to confirm what Wolfe told Mrs. Rackham, and to answer for not having mentioned it earlier. But Archie can't and won't do it. He says that Miss Darrow is lying, and it's not merely his word against hers. Her story has Wolfe phoning Mrs. Rackham just a few hours after she left his office – much too soon to have gathered so much information. And Archie points out that the Rackhams were getting along fine at dinner the next evening – not the way people behave when the wife tells her husband she's learned that he's a criminal. The DA buys Archie's version of events and lets him go, so Archie is able to take Rackham to meet with Roeder and Zeck after all. But the meeting turns into a bloodbath.
6726052	/m/0gksj_	Raptor			{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Raptor is an historical novel set in the late fifth and early sixth centuries. It purports to be the memoirs of an Ostrogoth, Thorn, who has a secret: he is a hermaphrodite and takes on the name, "Thorn the Mannamavi", "a being uninhibited by conscience, compassion, remorse- a being as implacably amoral as the juika-bloth and every other raptor on this earth." Thorn discovers his sexuality rather unorthodoxly during his early teens. After he is banished from both a monastery and, later, a convent, he travels throughout the dying Roman Empire on a quest to meet his fellow Ostrogoths (even though it was never confirmed that Thorn was an Ostrogoth; he simply assumed it by reaching several logical conclusions), meeting several characters; among the most crucial to the storyline: Theodoric and the retired Roman legionary-turned-woodsman Wyrd, with whom he forms close friendships. Thorn lives his life chiefly as a man but can easily pass for a woman (he is beardless, has shoulder-length hair, and is relatively small-statured), and he uses this ambiguity for his own benefit. Throughout his life, Thorn conducts affairs with both men and women. The novel treats actual historical events, the fall of the Western Roman Empire and Theodoric's assassination of Odoacer among them. Taking place in most of western Europe (the British Isles and Spain notably excepted), the story has an international feel, heightened by the appearance of several characters from different cultures (not only Romans and Goths but also Greeks, Celts, Huns, Jews and Syrians appear). As is typical in Gary Jennings's novels, the plot is developed with historical detail (including extensive use of Gothic words, which the narrator calls "The Old Language") supplemented by graphic violence and bizarre sexual situations. Again typically, the story not only spans virtually the central character's entire life but also has a recurring theme: those whom Thorn loves, die.
6727906	/m/0gkvm7	M/F	Anthony Burgess	1971	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 From the blurb of Cape's first edition 'The situation as far as I'm concerned,' says the young-narrator-hero of MF, 'is an interesting one. In two days in a strange country I've acquired a mother in the form of a Welsh-speaking Bird Queen who scares me. I've spent some hours in prison, I've discovered the works of an unknown superlative artist in a garden shed and I've been shot at by a riddling lion-faced expert on Bishop Berkeley. Most interesting of all I'm due tonight to be married by a circus clown to my own sister.' Almost twenty-one, a college throw-out, Miles Faber embarks on a defiant pilgrimage across the Caribbean. His destination: the shrine of Sib Legeru, Castitian poet and painter. In the streets of Castita's capital, gay with a religious festival, a series of bizarre revelations await him: his obscene double, the son of a circus sorceress Aderyn the Bird Queen, and a sister-plump fellow offspring of his father's incestuous union. Unspeakable crimes of blood and lust are perpetrated against both before Miles, solving the final riddle, wakes-like Oedipus to find himself a willing victim of the machinations of dynastic destiny.
6733237	/m/0gl3v6	Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel	Virginia Lee Burton	1939	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After many years of working successfully together, Mike and Mary Anne face competition from modern, diesel-powered shovels. Seeking an area of the country where his less modern steam shovel can still find work, Mike finds a small town that is about to build a new town hall. The authorities react with disbelief when Mike makes the claim that he and his steam shovel Mary Anne can dig the cellar in a single day; they protest that it would take a hundred men a week. Mike insists that Mary Anne can indeed finish the job in one day, though he has some private doubts. At sunup the next day, Mike and Mary Anne begin work and just manage to complete the task by sundown. However, they have neglected to dig themselves a ramp so they can drive out. A child who had been watching makes the suggestion that Mike take the job of janitor for the town hall, and that Mary Anne should become the boiler for the town hall's heating system.
6734450	/m/0gl6x_	An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Atheism	Daniel Harbour			 Rather than a history of atheism, as the title may suggest, the book is a guide to why (according to the author) atheism is superior to theism and why the (a)theist discussion is important. According to Harbour, atheism is "the plausible and probably correct belief that God does not exist", while theism is "the implausible and probably incorrect belief that God does exist", and anyone who cares about the truth should be an atheist. Harbour makes his case on the basis of two fundamental worldviews which he labels the Spartan Meritocracy and the Baroque Monarchy. Worldviews are the ways in which we look at and try to explain the world around us; as a result, the validity of our worldviews is extremely important because it determines the validity and reasonableness of our beliefs. The Spartan Meritocracy makes minimal assumptions, that are subject to criticism and possible revision, when trying to explain the world - focusing more upon a proper method of inquiry than on reaching any particular or prejudicial conclusions. The Baroque Monarchy, however, relies upon elaborate dogmatic assumptions in the absence of any evidence — assumptions which are placed beyond question, critique or revision. Harbour spends little time directly comparing atheism and theism; rather, he compares these two opposing worldviews and argues that the Spartan Meritocracy is more plausible, more reasonable, and helps make the world a better place to live. Thus, anyone who cares about the truth should be inclined to adopt it rather than blind obedience to dogmatism as in the Baroque Monarchy. He does not, however, argue that there is a direct and necessary connection between these worldviews and either atheism or theism — he acknowledges that it is possible in theory for an atheist to adopt the Baroque Monarchy and for some types of theist to adopt the Spartan Meritocracy. Strictly speaking, then, the main thrust of his argument is that the Spartan Meritocracy is superior and anyone who cares about the truth should adopt this worldview. Nevertheless, he also argues that it is highly unlikely for theism ever to occur within the Spartan Meritocracy due to the evidence the world presents, and that, consequently, anyone who adopts the Spartan Meritocracy will almost inevitably be an atheist. Harbour constructs an argument throughout the book to demonstrate that the Spartan Meritocracy leads logically and naturally to atheism rather than theism. Much of Daniel Harbour's book is focused on demonstrating the ways in which the Spartan Meritocracy does a better job of helping us to explain the world and make the world a better place to live in. The former involves analyzing the impact of science and technology, pursuits fundamentally based upon a spartan and meritocratic perspective of nature. "It would be one thing to abandon the paradigm of rational enquiry if it were merely a proposal on paper. However, centuries of effort have made it much more: it is the most successful attempt to understand the world that the world has ever seen. By dint of breadth, the paradigm stands out. Through the sum total of its theories, it covers more facts, explains more phenomena, and unmasks the mechanisms of more one-time mysteries than any alternative."
6737026	/m/0gldtv	Voyage of the Basset				 Miranda is sixteen and concerned with being sensible, while Cassandra, nine years and eleven months, likes and believes in magical things. Miranda is outnumbered in this family, because Professor Aisling lectures on mythology and legends at his university, and believes in mysterious and magical things too. But some of the members of the university think that it is nonsense to teach about myths and legends, because magical and mysterious things cannot be dissected, weighed and measured. One member in particular, Mr. Bilgewallow, takes delight in tormenting Professor Aisling, who wishes, and dreams, of a ship that would take him to the worlds where he might find the creatures of legend. One evening, his wish comes true. As he and his daughters walk along the river, they come across a curious little ship, with a crew of dwarfs and gremlins. One of the dwarfs introduces himself as Malachi, Captain of H.M.S. Basset. He says that it is Professor Aisling's ship, conjured from his wishes and ready to sail on the "tides of inspiration." Aisling is astonished and delighted, and he and Cassandra waste no time in going aboard. Miranda needs a bit more coaxing. The Aislings set sail on a magical voyage where they meet a number of creatures from mythology that join them on board the ship. Included among these are the Harpies, who take over the galley, the Manticore, the Sphinx, the Minotaur and a dryad, complete with tree. Disaster strikes when Aisling becomes distracted by the potential of bringing back measurable proof for Bilgewallow and his ilk. He also insists on bringing the lovely but deadly Medusa on board, with predictable results for one of the crew. But through the help of his daughters and Medusa, he recovers his belief and his balance, as all of them must unite against the evil trolls who pursue him.
6738103	/m/0glj2g	Conan and the Spider God	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Conan finds himself in the kingdom of Zamora, a fugitive under suspicion of kidnapping Jamilah, the wife of the king of Turan. Discovering she has actually been taken by devotees of the Zamoran spider god Zath, he sets out for the city of Yezud to rescue the captive, and incidentally steal the opals set as eyes in the god's temple image. Characteristically, de Camp's Conan is a more credible if less elemental figure than Howard's, carefully assessing the situation in Yezud and taking the time and effort to lay the groundwork for his foray rather than just barreling in swinging his sword. Chronologically, Conan and the Spider God comes between the short stories "The Curse of the Monolith" and "The Blood-Stained God".
6740160	/m/0glm63	The Man with the Golden Arm	Nelson Algren	1949-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The events of the novel take place between 1946 and 1948, primarily on the Near Northwest Side of Chicago. The title character is Francis Majcinek, known as "Frankie Machine", a young man who is a gifted card dealer and an amateur drummer. While serving in World War II, Frankie is treated for shrapnel in his liver and medicated with morphine. He develops an addiction to the drug, although initially in the story he believes he can control his habit. Frankie lives in a small apartment on Division Street with his wife, Sophie (nicknamed "Zosh"). Sophie has been using a wheelchair since a drunk-driving accident caused by Frankie (although the novel implies that her paralysis is psychological in nature). She spends most of her time looking out the window and watching the nearby elevated rail line. She takes out her frustrations by fighting with her husband, and she uses his guilt to keep him from leaving her. The turmoil in their relationship only spurs on his addiction. He works nights dealing in backroom card games operated by "Zero" Schwiefka. He aspires to join the Musicians' Union and work with jazz drummer Gene Krupa, but this dream never materializes. His constant companion and protégé is "Sparrow" Saltskin, a feeble-minded thief who specializes in stealing and selling dogs; Frankie gets Sparrow a job as a "steerer", watching the door to the card games and drawing in gamblers. Often referring to his drug habit as the "thirty-five-pound monkey on his back", Frankie initially tries to keep Sparrow and the others in the dark about it. He sends Sparrow away whenever he visits "Nifty Louie" Fomorowski, his supplier. One night, while fighting in a back stairwell, Frankie inadvertently kills Nifty Louie. He and Sparrow attempt to cover up his role in the murder. Meanwhile, Frankie begins an affair with a childhood friend, "Molly-O" Novotny, after her abusive husband is arrested. Molly helps Frankie fight his addiction, but they soon become separated when Frankie is imprisoned for shoplifting and she moves out of the neighborhood. Without Molly, he begins using drugs again when he is released. Nifty Louie owed money to politically connected men, and finding his killer becomes a priority for the police department. Sparrow is held for questioning by the police, and he is moved from station to station to circumvent Habeas corpus requirements. Eventually he breaks down and reveals what he knows, and Frankie is forced to flee. While on the run, Frankie manages to find Molly at a strip club near Lake Street. He hides in her apartment and beats his addiction, but in the end the authorities learn where he is hiding. He barely manages to escape and gets shot in the foot, leaving Molly behind. He flees to a flophouse, but without any hope of reuniting with Molly or staying free, he hangs himself in his room. The novel ends with a transcript of the coroner's inquest, as well as a poem for Frankie entitled "Epitaph."
6743283	/m/0glqtc	God Game	Andrew Greeley	1986-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In this book, told in first-person narrative, the lead character—an unnamed Catholic priest—volunteers to playtest a new type of computer game for a relative. Called Duke and Duchess (though the title is changed to God Game at the end of the book), it puts the player in the role of God for a small swords and sorcery world. However, after a violent lightning storm, the narrator discovers that the game's crude CGA graphics have become live video, and that he is now responsible for the inhabitants of a small, but very real, world somewhere else in space and time—a world that threatens to run away from his control and into total chaos. Cast, reluctantly, into the role of God, the narrator, not to be confused with the narrator's author who also provides commentary, the priest strives to create peace between the two warring sides. He finds that both sides pray to him or to the Other Person, aka, God. His closest ally in trying to create this peace is Ranora, an ilel - something of a cross between a fairy and an angel- who has been assigned to the Duke, but dances wherever she wishes to go. The priest finds that it is "hell being God," as most of his characters, even when obeying, create further problems for him. Minor characters want to be major ones, then change their mind, and since he is not God, and lacks omniscience, he cannot always predict that outcome of his directives. There is comic relief provided by groups of dissidents who try to sabotage god's plans, which are always smote by "divine" wrath. At times, characters cross Planck's Wall to speak to him directly in his home, and he finds evidence that they were actually there, not mere figments. Finally, he is able to broker peace and thinks he can walk away from the game, but when he turns his back, those opposed to peace strive to undo all his good work. Ranora crosses the Wall to implore him to return, and it takes a miracle to save the Duke's life, for the bad guys have convinced the Duchess he needs to be sacrificed in a pagan ritual. The minor characters will get their prayers answered as they become major ones and learn how much the Lord Their God loves them.
6744002	/m/0glrp0	The Magic City	E. Nesbit	1910	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After Philip's older sister and sole family member Helen marries, he goes off to live with his new step sister Lucy. He has trouble adjusting at first, thrown into a world different from his previous life and abandoned by his sister while she is on her honeymoon. To entertain himself he builds a giant model city from things around the house: game pieces, books, blocks, bowls, etc. Then through some magic he finds himself inside the city, and it is alive with the people he has populated it with. Some soldiers find him and tell him that two outsiders have been foretold to be coming: a Deliverer and a Destroyer. Mr. Noah, from a Noah's Ark playset, tells Philip that there are seven great deeds to be performed if he wants to prove himself the Deliverer. Lucy, too, has found her way into the city and joins Philip as a co-Deliverer, much to his chagrin.
6745182	/m/0glsqz	Agent Arthur's Desert Challenge	Martin Oliver	1994	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Action Agency's most active agent finds himself in the heart of the desert and in a murky world of kidnap, stolen gold bullion and old enemies. Can Agent Arthur outwit these sneaky schemers before they silence him once and for all?
6746723	/m/0glw4s	Killdozer	Theodore Sturgeon		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An eight-man construction crew is building an airstrip and related facilities on a small pacific island during the course of World War II. They uncover and break open an ancient stone "temple." This releases an ancient being composed of pure energy, leftover from a war involving sentient machines in a long-lost civilization, which "possesses" a bulldozer being used by the construction crew. The being's purpose was to take over the "enemy's" machines and attack them. When released from the ancient stone temple that contained it, it believes that the bulldozer (called "Daisy Etta" by the workers in the island, a mispronunciation of De-Siete (D7, in Spanish) is important to its intentions, possesses it, and it begins killing the workers. Ultimately, two of the three surviving workers—one goes insane—manage to destroy the bulldozer and (presumably) the creature. While trying to write a report on what happened, the two sane workers are despairing of anyone believing them. Then, bombs fall from the sky, blasting the whole area below them, including the places the killdozer damaged and the graves of their fellow workers. One worker tears up the report he was writing and throws it in the air, thrilled that an explanation is now available -- enemy action in wartime.
6747619	/m/0glxg8	Inferno	Troy Denning	2007-08-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jacen Solo, now the Sith lord Darth Caedus, continues his quest to "bring order" to the galaxy by taking it over. As he descends ever farther into the dark side of the Force, he becomes increasingly willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve his goals. By the end of the novel, nearly all of Caedus' family and friends have turned against him, including his secret lover Tenel Ka and nearly all of the Jedi. The sole exception appears to be Tahiri Veila, whom Caedus has been manipulating through the memory of his dead brother, and her lover, Anakin Solo. The novel also represents a turning point in Caedus' evolution into a Sith. In the previous novel, Darth Caedus was willing to send a prison arrest warrant to his own parents Leia and Han Solo. Caedus is increasingly willing to commit atrocities (such as targeting the civilian centres and forests of Kashyyyk), and gives no second thought to sacrificing anyone, even family, to his ambitions. He begins to cherish the fear of his subordinates and in one example, orders the arrest and execution of one of his spies who was in danger of being exposed and executed by the Corellian government, in order to motivate others to refrain from returning to the Galactic Alliance when their covers were threatened. Inferno is also marked by the deterioration and termination of many of Caedus' personal relationships as he ravages the galaxy. He sends troops to seize control of the Jedi Praxeum on Ossus, and subsequently orders the murders of all the adult Jedi at the facility, (which include his twin sister Jaina), in order to secure control over the children there. Ultimately this smaller conflict fails, but not without heavy losses on both sides. He manipulates his lover Tenel Ka into handing over her last fleet to him, leaving her and his daughter exposed to a coup d'état before she realizes the depths to which he has sunk and withdraws her support. He manipulates his cousin, Ben, into killing the deposed Chief of State, Cal Omas, only to warn Coruscant authorities that an assassination attempt is imminent. He then tortures Ben as part of a plan to make him a Sith apprentice, which is interrupted by Luke Skywalker, prompting a furious lightsaber duel that ends with Luke sparing Jacen when Ben's danger of falling to the dark side becomes apparent to Luke. A subplot in the book reveals the existence of a hidden group of Sith on Korriban and further reveals the powers of Ship, the Sith vessel Ben recovered from Ziost.
6751104	/m/0gm16m	The Pedestrian	Ray Bradbury	1951-08-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 In this story we encounter Leonard Mead, a citizen of a television-centered world in 2053. In the city, roads have fallen into decay and people only leave their homes during the day, staying home at night to watch TV. It is revealed that Mead enjoys walking through the city during the night, something which no one else does. On one of his usual walks he encounters a robotic police car. It is the only police unit in a city of three million, since the purpose of law enforcement has disappeared with everyone watching TV at night. The police car struggles to understand why Mr. Mead would be out walking for no reason and decides to take him to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.
6752089	/m/0gm326	Sir Nigel	Arthur Conan Doyle		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The tale, at its outset, traces the fortunes of the family of Loring of the Manor of Tilford in Surrey, many of whose scions had been prominent in the service of the Norman and Angevin Kings of England, against the backdrop of the Black Death. The tale starts with the problems the family and its last scion, Nigel Loring, face at the hands of the monks of Waverley Abbey, up to the coming of Sir John Chandos. Playing the host to King Edward III of England, Nigel asks to be taken into his service, a request that is complied with by his being made squire to Sir John Chandos. In order to make himself worthy of the hand of the Lady Mary, daughter of Sir John Buttesthorn, he vows to perform three deeds of honour to her. Nigel and his follower Samkin Aylward arrive at Winchelsea, whence they take passage to Calais. En route, he manages to intercept Peter the Red Ferret, a French spy who had stolen certain papers of Sir John Chandos. Since these papers had some bearing upon the English defence of Calais in view of a projected French attack, it was considered necessary in the extreme to recover them. Having defeated the spy in single combat, Nigel is overcome by the wounds he receives and is laid up in the Castle of Calais. When the King visits the young squire to praise his courage, he mentions that the spy was to be hanged. This outrages Nigel, who had promised the Red Ferret quarter, and he crosses purposes with the King. Though the King is enraged by the squire's impertinence, at the intercession of Sir John Chandos, he yields. Nigel Loring then proceeds to set the Red Ferret free after having taken from him his word not to violate the truce and a visit to the Lady Mary, to fulfil his promise to her. Shortly thereafter, Nigel is sent on an expedition to Brittany under the command of Sir Robert Knolles. In the course of their journey, they encounter a Spanish battle-fleet in the Straits of Dover, and in conjunction with the English fleet from Winchelsea, inflict a severe defeat upon the Spaniards. The tale is a rendition of the Battle of Les Espagnols sur Mer (August 1351), as chronicled by Froissart, with a fictional storyline weaved in skilfully with the history. Nigel Loring carries himself well, but achieves nothing of note besides boarding a Spanish carrack to assist Prince Edward, the Black Prince, under the directions of Sir Robert, when the Prince and his men were outnumbered by Spaniards. As the army marches into Brittany, a Frenchman is observed tracking the English column. Nigel is entrusted by Sir Robert Knolles with the task of capturing the Frenchman, a task he executes admirably. But when in the act of conducting him to the English camp, they find that the English army had been attacked and some of its longbowmen, among them Samkin Aylward, captured by the robber baron of La Brohinière, nicknamed 'the butcher', for his practice of executing captives who refused to join his levées. The English troops try to storm the castle of La Brohinière, by a frontal assault, which fails dismally, with the death of the French captive who, being of noble birth, assists the English in destroying this common nemesis. With the assistance of Black Simon of Norwich, a very prominent character in the series, and man-at-arms in the army, and some of the peasants of the surrounding country who hated La Brohinière for his cruelty and deeds, Nigel penetrates the connecting passage between the main castle and one of its outworks. In the ensuing assault, the castle is taken and La Brohinière killed by his very captives. As a token of appreciation of Nigel's planning and execution of a very difficult task, besides communicating the squire's valour to King Edward and Sir John Chandos, Sir Robert Knolles, at Nigel's request instructs his messenger to convey the news of his deed to the Lady Mary. The English army proceeds to the Castle of Ploermel, which was then in the hands of the English knight Richard of Bambro', to advance the English arms in Brittany against the French at Josselin. However, news of a truce between England and France precedes their arrival and serves to dampen their spirit until a visit by the French seneschal Robert of Beaumanoir, Master of Josselin. The French lord proposes a passage of arms, and since a reason would be necessary to justify such a violation of the truce, to the two kings of England and France, he proceeds to pick a mock-quarrel with Nigel Loring. Beaumanoir observes that "... we have none of the highest of Brittany... neither a Blois, nor a Leon, nor a Rohan, nor a Conan, fights in our ranks this day". Conan was in fact the personal name of several Dukes of Brittany. In the jousts that thus ensue, the English arms are initially routed with Bambro' killed and Nigel felled, severely wounded. Though the English rally and sorely press the Bretons, by an underhand act, one of the Breton squires mounts his horse, when the conflict was supposed to be on foot, and rides upon the English crushing them. This incident is a thinly-veiled account of the famed Combat of the Thirty of March 1351, which is of importance in Breton history and in the annals of chivalry, as being an exemplary passage of arms. It may be worthwhile to note that Sir Robert Knolles, who is held to have participated in the fictional jousts in Sir Nigel, was also one of the original thirty combatants. Subsequent to the joust, where he tries to take on Beaumanoir himself and is severely wounded, Nigel Loring is left to recover at the Castle of Ploermel by his comrades, and proceeds to convalesce in the course of a year, which sees the breaking of the truce, a defeat of French arms in Brittany and the declaration of another truce. Nigel is by then made seneschal of the Castle of Vannes. It is then that Sir John Chandos summons him to Bergerac to accompany the Black Prince on a raid into France. This raid concludes in the Battle of Poitiers (September 1356). In the course of the battle, Nigel overcomes King John II of France but fails to receive his surrender not knowing the identity of his opponent and is thus unable to lay claim to the king's ransom. But since the king himself identifies the squire as his conqueror, the Black Prince awards Nigel Loring his golden spurs and dubs him a knight (the historical Neil Loring is older than the protagonist, and was knighted already in 1340 at the Battle of Sluys). Sir Nigel then returns to England where he weds the Lady Mary. The book concludes with a summary of Sir Nigel's life and the future which had already been documented in The White Company.
6755380	/m/0gmb5l	When Eight Bells Toll	Alistair MacLean	1966	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story concerns the hijacking of five cargo ships in the Irish Sea. British Treasury secret agent Phillip Calvert is sent to investigate, and narrates the story for the reader. Calvert manages to track the latest hijacked ship - the Nantesville, carrying £8 million in gold bullion - to the Scottish Highlands and the sleepy port town of Torbay on the Island of Torbay (patterned after Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull). He boards the ship under cover of night and finds the two agents planted aboard have been murdered. Chief suspect is Cypriot shipping magnate Sir Anthony Skouros, whose luxury yacht, Shangri-La, is also anchored in Torbay. Operating out of his yacht Firecrest, Calvert is joined by Skouros's wife, Charlotte, and by his boss Sir Arthur Arnford-Jason, known as "Uncle Arthur". Calvert is a typical MacLean hero, world-weary and sometimes cynical, yet ultimately honorable, who must battle bureaucracy as well as the bad guys to solve the crime. Calvert's frantic search for the hijackers and for the hostages they hold takes him over the remote isles and sea lochs and forces him to make allies of some unlikely locals. As is usual with MacLean, the plot twists and turns, not all characters are as they seem to be at first introduction, and the double-crosses continue to the very last page.
6755790	/m/0gmc42	The prophecy of the stones	Flavia Bujor	2002	{"/m/02w77n": "Fantastique", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins with a chapter introducing Joa, a 14-year-old girl fighting an illness against death in hospital in present-day Paris, and is held only by a dream in life... Joa's name begins with the first letters of Jade, Opal, and Amber's name In a kingdom that is ruled by the Council of Twelve, which aims to deprive people from Fairytale the freedom to live, three girls named Jade, Opal and Amber celebrate their 14th birthdays. Unknown to them, their names fit their birthstones. On their birthday, each is sent away from their home to meet the other two. Together, they should make their way to revive the good in the world, as it is written in a prophecy. This prophecy was many centuries ago by a Clohryun called Néophileus who could see into the future. Jade, Opal, and Amber decided to explore together the secret of their stones, and they take it as simultaneously in the hand. When they do, the stones show a strange symbol in front of their eyes. To learn the meaning of this symbol, they travel to Nathyrnn, a city that is beneficial to the Council of the Twelve as a prison for all advocates of freedom. There they meet Jean Losserand, who can interpret the symbol. It stands for Oonagh, an oracle that lives in a land called Fairytale. In Fairytale, people live peacefully with magical beings, because it is the only country that remains the Council of the Twelve spared. It is surrounded by a magnetic field that can be traversed only with the belief in the impossible. With the help of Adrien de Rivebel, Jade, Opal, and Amber liberate the inhabitants of the city and get to the border of Thaar, where they must fight against the Knights of the Council. They defeat them, but Opal is stabbed by a knight. The people of Nathyrrn refuge in Fairytale, and Adrien, who is in love with Opal, carries her corpse through the magnetic field. They stay a few days at Owen d'Yrdahl's house, from which they will learn that Death is on a strike, and that Opal will survive if her wound is treated. The Army of Light is organized to fight against the Army of Darkness. When Opal is well again, they ride toward the mountains, where Oonagh lives. Along the way, they help the residents of a city sealed by darkness, and the residents thank them by giving a potion that will save them from the birds of prey they will meet when they reach Oonagh's home. By underground passages, they eventually reach Oonagh in the form a small, lively girl, and the oracle sings them a part of the prophecy. Oonagh tells them that on the day of the summer solstice, there will be a battle between the Army of Darkness and the Army of Light, and that they need to persuade Death to end her strike. Jade, Opal, and Amber decide to go into the realm of Death, which can only be reached by crossing the Lake of the Past. They overcome their illusions of the past and go as the first mortals to the realm of death. They manage to convince Death that she is loved, and so Death ends her strike. As the prophecy predicted, Amber recognizes the Chosen One when she sees him (and falls in love with him), who previously served the Army of Darkness, and Opals realizes what the Gift is: Hope. They travel to Thaar and enter a tower in which they meet the Thirteenth Councillor of the Council of Twelve. He is not a man, but the spirit of all the other twelve councillors. He shows the girls a window overlooking Fairytale, and they see the assembled armies on the battlefield. The Chosen One at the head of the Army of Light, but the Army of Darkness seems to be winning. The Thirteenth Councillor tries to make them understand that the battle is already hopelessly lost, because Hope is in the girls' stones, and Hope cannot be freed unless the girls die. Jade finally understands the meaning of the prophecy, and although her friends do not want to die, she persuades them to jump out the window in order to defeat evil and to help the Army of Light to win. They leap out of the window, and their stones dissolve. Golden rain pours over Fairytale, and gives everyone hope. Before Jade, Opal, and Amber hit the ground, they are caught by the birds of prey and carried to the battlefield. There they encounter Oonagh, Adrien, the Chosen One, the defeated Army of Darkness and the victorious Army of Light. A golden nugget falls from the sky, Oonagh tells Adrien to bury in the ground. He does so, and a tree with a golden trunk and silver leaves grows from it. Oonagh tells them that as long as the tree lives, good will reign in the world. The next chapter switches back to present-day Paris. In the hospital, Joa wakes up and demands that the nurse gives her a phone. She contacts a friend of hers, a young man named Eli Ador, and leaves a strange message for him. When he arrives at the hospital, Joa tells him her dream, and the book ends with her dying words: "My dreams gave life back to me. Now I must give dreams back to life."
6756854	/m/0gmdqh	The Sword Of The Dawn	Michael Moorcock	1968	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The warriors of the Dark Empire of Granbretan have succeeded in conquering all of Europe, though the vanished Castle Brass still eludes Baron Meliadus. Summoned by Count Shenegar Trott, Baron Medliadus heads back to Granbretan to report to King-Emperor Huon. While riding in the alternate plane Kamarg that Castle Brass has been shifted to Dorian Hawkmoon encounters a swordsman called Elvereza Tozer. Hawkmoon takes Tozer prisoner and takes him back to Castle Brass. Under questioning Elvereza Tozer is revealed as a famous disgraced Granbretan playwright who hoped to curry favour with the Dark Empire by travelling to Castle Brass and destroying the machinery that kept it in its different dimension. Tozer travelled by means of a special ring constructed by Mygan of Llandar, and Hawkmoon determines that to ensure the security of the Kamarg they must find this Mygan before the Dark Empire does. In Londra, Countess Flana Mikosevaar, King-Emperor Huon's only living relative, witnesses the return of Baron Meliadus. Baron Meliadus consults his stepbrother Taragorm, Master of the Palace of Time, as to whether his experiments will yet enable him to travel through time and destroy Castle Brass. Count Shenegar Trott has an audience with King-Emperor Huon and is given a secret mission. Baron Meliadus has his own audience to request the assistance of Taragorm in locating Castle Brass, but is told his priority is to act as an envoy to two ambassadors from the mysterious far East Empire of Asiacommunista (China). Meliadus greets the two ambassadors - Kaow Shalang Gatt and Jong Mang Shen - and introduces them to the assembled Granbretan Court, in the hope of learning more about Asiacommunista's forces and technology. Meliadus visits Taragorm at the Palace of Time and learns of the disappearance of Elvereza Tozer. Meliadus vows to find the source of his ability. Hawkmoon and Huillam D'Averc use Tozer's rings to travel back to Granbretan. Meliadus spends the day showing the two Asiacommunista ambassadors the sights of Londra, before meeting Countess Flana. Flana seduces Meliadus in order to get close to the two ambassadors, whom she finds intriguing. Flana enters the ambassadors quarters and discovers that they are really Hawkmoon and D'Averc. Rather than turn them over however she agrees to help them, and the pair disguise themselves as Dark Empire soldiers and flee in her private ornithopter. Upon discovering the disappearance of the two ambassadors King-Emperor Huon chastises Baron Meliadus, and orders him to forget searching for Castle Brass. Meliadus vows to himself to defy him, and sets off to look for the man who enabled Elvereza Tozer to travel through the dimensions. Hawkmoon and D'Averc fly to Yel (Wales) and leave their ornithopter to begin their search for Mygan of Llandar. They are attacked by a group of mutants that are all that remain of the local inhabitants of Yel, and take refuge in the city of Halapandur. Halapandur contains many old scientific devices from the old age and D'Averc pockets the charge from a gun. The pair see Dark Empire forces led by Baron Meliadus searching the area, and leave the city. They find the cave where Mygan lives but it is empty. Hawkmoon and D'Averc are captured by Meliadus, bound and kept prisoner in the cave while Meliadus searches the surrounding countryside for Mygan. Mygan appears in the cavern and frees Hawkmoon and D'Averc. Meliadus returns, a fight ensues and Mygan is injured. Following Mygan's instructions Hawkmoon and D'Averc use their rings to shift themselves into another dimension. Mygan tells them that Hawkmoon must fulfill his destiny and seek Narleen (New Orleans) and the Sword of the Dawn, then the Runestaff in the city of Dnark (New York). Mygan dies from his wounds. Hawkmoon and D'Averc are picked up in a strange machine sphere by a man called Zhenak-Teng. In this new dimension they are in the land of the Kammps - hi-tech underground cities where the inhabitants hide from creatures called the Charki. Zhenak-Teng tells them that Narleen is a trading city on the coast. The Kammp is attacked by a group of Charki and Hawkmoon and D'Averc flee in one of the spheres, though Zhenak-Teng is killed in the assault. The sphere crashes in woodland and Hawkmoon and D'Averc continue on foot. They are attacked by a pool monster in the woods and flee to the River Sayou, where they build a raft to head to Narleen. Hawkmoon and D'Averc are picked up by a pirate ship belonging to Lord Valjon and are pressed into slavery. The pair manage to free themselves and try to escape when the ship is attacked by another. The attacking ship belongs to Pahl Bewchard, a sworn enemy of Lord Valjon. Hawkmoon and D'Averc free the other slaves on Valjon's ship and scuttle it. Bewchard offers to transport them to Narleen. Hawkmoon and D'Averc arrive in Narleen. Bewchard informs them that the Sword of the Dawn is in the possession of the Pirate Lords, who live in Starvel - an enclave within Narleen. The Sword of the Dawn is worshipped by the pirates, as it is said to contain the power of an ancient sorcerer. Hawkmmon and D'Averc learn that they are in Amarehk (America). At Bewchard's house Hawkmoon and D'Averc meet his sister Jeleana, but are summoned to the quayside by the news that Bewchard's ship has been torched in revenge for his sinking of Valjon's ship. While they are gone Valjon visits Bewchard's house and threatens Jeleana. Bewchard vows to continue his fight against Valjon, now aided by Hawkmoon and D'Averc. Bewchard takes Hawkmoon and D'Averc shopping for new clothes, but they are attacked by pirates and Bewchard is taken into Starvel. Hawkmoon and D'Averc scale the outer wall of Starvel and discover Bewchard being prepared for sacrifice by Valjon to the Sword of the Dawn. Hawkmoon and D'Averc attack but are overcome by the pirates. Hawkmoon and D'Averc are laid out for sacrifice alongside Bewchard when the Warrior in Jet and Gold appears and frees them. Hawkmoon kills Valjon and at the prompting of the Warrior in Jet and Gold calls upon the Legion of the Dawn - a group of ghostly warriors who reside in the Sword of the Dawn - to defeat the pirates. Bewchard gives Hawkmoon and D'Averc a ship to continue their journey. The Warrior in Jet and Gold tells Hawkmoon that it is his destiny to seek the Runestaff in the city of Dnark, but Hawkmoon decides instead to escape his destiny by returning to Europe.
6757150	/m/0gmf36	Over the Wine Dark Sea	Harry Turtledove	2001-11	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The plot of the book centers around the cousins voyaging around the Greek parts of the Mediterranean Sea. They trade a great many things on their ship, the Aphrodite, including, much to the chagrin of many on board, peacocks. During their voyage they encounter pirates, other traders and get caught up in conflicts between some of Alexander's former generals, including Antigonos.
6759311	/m/0gmhym	Emergence	David R. Palmer	1984-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Candidia Maria Smith-Foster, an eleven-year-old girl, is unaware that she's a Homo post hominem, mankind's next evolutionary step. Hominems have higher IQs, they're stronger, faster, more resistant to illness and trauma, and have quicker reflexes. Their eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell are superior as well. By the time the narrative opens, Candy has acquired a high school education, some college, and learned karate, having achieved her Fifth Degree Black Belt, from her neighbor, 73-year-old Soo Kim McDivot, who she is led to believe is merely a retired schoolteacher. McDivot, whom she calls "Teacher", is actually the discoverer of the H. post hominem species, and has identified and continues to mentor and lead a group of them, the AAs. As part of her karate training, she has learned to release her hysterical strength, which permits brief bursts of nearly superhuman activity. With international relations rapidly deteriorating, Candy's father, publicly a small-town pathologist but secretly a government biowarfare expert, is called to Washington. Candy remains at home. The following day a worldwide attack, featuring a bionuclear plague, wipes out virtually all of humanity (i.e., Homo sapiens). With pet bird Terry, a Hyacinthine macaw, her "lifelong retarded, adopted twin brother," who tends to "parrot" Candy's words even before she speaks, she survives the attack in the shelter beneath their house. Emerging three months later, she learns of her genetic heritage and sets off to search for others of her kind. First the hunt turns up "Adam," a cheeky, irrepressibly punning, multitalented 13-year-old boy, who immediately sets out to win Candy's heart; next, Rollo Jones, a middle-aged physician with a broad history of survival-in-the-wilds experience ranging from a stint in the Peace Corps to mountain climbing; and finally, Kim Mellon, an early-20s mom whose background is in computer engineering with Lisa, her six-year-old daughter. Rollo reveals himself as a sociopath, whom Candy is forced to kill defending Terry and herself. Adam, Kim, and Lisa join Candy's quest for the AA community. As part of the search, Adam reveals that he is an ultralight aircraft pilot. Later he teaches Candy to fly. Thereafter, an ultralight engine failure separates Candy from the others. After getting it running again, she spots a contrail, which leads her to Vandenberg Space Shuttle Launch Complex, where Teacher and the AAs are laboring to preflight a shuttle, renamed the Nathan Hale. They've identified those who wiped out mankind, the Bratstvo, translated as the "Brotherhood," a cabal of H. sapiens, working from inside the Russian military to destroy all H. post hominems. As insurance, they've placed a doomsday device in geosynchronous orbit, a Strontium-90 bomb whose fallout will render Earth uninhabitable for 200 years. At this point, however, the AAs' plans have come unstuck: They've modified the Hale to reach geosynch orbit, though it's a one-way, suicide voyage for the crew; but the miniature robot handler they've built to penetrate the bomb-carrying rocket and disarm the doomsday device isn't up to the task. Candy realizes, with her small size and hysterical strength training, she's the only one who can get inside the warhead chamber and disarm the bomb. Despite the fact that it's a suicide mission, she volunteers. Meanwhile, as Adam, Kim, and Lisa search for Candy, Terry begins relaying her thoughts, though initially they don't realize that's what they're hearing. Arriving in orbit, Kyril Svetlanov, thought to be a Bratstvo defector, kills Harris Gilbert, the mission commander. Kyril turns out to have been a double agent, whose job ultimately was to sabotage the mission, but he doesn't know about Candy's karate skills. She breaks his neck and assumes responsibility for completing the mission. Navigating across to the bomb-carrying rocket in a spacesuit, she disables the warhead. Then she resets the navigational computer to land on the dry lake at Edwards Air Force Base and tries to secure herself against a bulkhead in preparation for the stresses of reentry. As the missile begins to power-up for reentry, Adam finally realizes Terry is in fact relaying Candy's thoughts; that somehow she is in fact in space, about to attempt reentry in a non-human-rated vehicle, and that she'll soon be landing at Edwards. He, Kim, and Lisa arrive as the missile is touching down, just in time to extract her, resuscitate her, and treat her injuries. The author has left a number of threads trailing at the conclusion, some of which are followed-up on 25 years later in a sequel Tracking, serialized in Analog Science and Fact magazine in the summer and fall of 2008.
6763328	/m/0gmpx7	The Marching Season				 Former Agent Michael Osbourne is rerecruited by the CIA when his father-in-law Douglas Cannon, the new ambassador to the Court of St. James, is sent to the United Kingdom to promote the peace process between Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland, which has been jeopardized by three bloody attempts to derail them. Michael must once again face the elusive and lethal KGB-trained assassin October, with whom he has unfinished business.
6763409	/m/0gmq1r	The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear	Walter Moers	1999	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In Bluebear's Life 1, where he is a tiny baby, he is floating in a walnut shell in the north Zamonian sea, next to the Malmstrom, a mysterious and giant whirlpool that all the world's sailors take care to avoid. Bluebear is saved by a diminutive crew of Minipirates, who are very mysterious, and who subsequently adopt the bear as their good-luck charm. He grows up on seaweed and water exclusively, and begins to apprentice the nautical way of life from scratch. Aboard their tiny craft he learns much of waves, sailing and knot tying, but before long he has grown too large to remain aboard, and the Minipirates must set him ashore on an island. In Life 2, Bluebear discovers a group of Hobgoblins on the island, who raise Bluebear to celebrity status due to his fantastic displays of crying. Hobgoblins are, according to Nightingale's encyclopedia, semi-ghost invertebrates who feed on emotions. Every night Bluebear gives his crying performances, and elevated to stardom. Eventually repulsed by this, Bluebear builds a raft and sets off on his own. Life 3 finds Bluebear at sea, where he is befriended by a pair of "Babbling Billows", or talking waves, who teach him to speak, and encounters the SS Moloch, the world's largest ship. He makes futile attempts to board the vessel, and in his head hears a voice that whispers repeatedly: "Come! Come aboard the Moloch!". Soon afterwards Bluebear is almost eaten by a Tyrannomobyus Rex, a gargantuan black whale with one eye. Bluebear helps ease the creature's pain by pulling harpoons out of its back (originally intending to construct another raft out of them but, becoming too absorbed in the task, tosses them into the water) and the grateful whale deposits him within swimming distance of another island. Bluebear's Life 4 is spent on Gourmet Island, a fantastic land filled with delicious foodstuffs that mysteriously grow in place of normal vegetation. The bear, after sampling them all, develops a monstrous appetite and craving for nutrition. He eats the addictive foods so much that he fattens up tremendously. Bluebear's last meal (a man-sized mushroom) is interrupted by the discovery that the island is a giant carnivorous plant that ensnares passers-by, fattens them up and eats them at 300 pounds. Seconds from being devoured, Bluebear is saved by Deus X. "Mac" Machina, a pterodactyl Roving Reptilian Rescuer whose job is saving others at the last moment. Life 5 details Bluebear's year-long stint as a navigator for the near-sighted Mac, assisting the Reptilian Rescuer in his daring rescues, one of which was saving a farm of Wolperting Whelps from the dreaded Bollogg: a cyclops varying from 50 feet to two miles high that can survive without a head. On flying over the city of Atlantis (Zamonia's capital), Bluebear promises himself that he will visit it someday. Towards the end of his time with Mac, he rescues a human who threw himself of the Demon Range. This human makes a reappearance in life 10. The year ends with Mac entering retirement and depositing Bluebear at the entrance to the Nocturnal Academy, the headmaster of which (Professor Abdullah Nightingale) owes Mac a favor. In Life 6, Bluebear is taught all the knowledge in the universe with the aid of the seven-brained Nocturnomath Professor Abdullah Nightingale and his intelligence bacteria. This bacteria is literally infectious knowledge. The closer one is to a Nocturnomath, and the more they absorb, the more intelligent they become. Here Bluebear meets Qwerty Uiop (a gelatine prince from the 2364th Dimension who accidentally fell into this world through a Dimensional Hiatus) and Fredda the Alpine Imp (a hairy creature with a crush on Bluebear), when they graduate their successors are: crude Knio the Barbaric Hog and annoying Weeny the Gnomelet. Upon leaving the Academy, Bluebear is infected with intelligence bacteria, and Nightingale transmits an encyclopedia into his head. He meets Qwerty again, who has found a Dimensional Hiatus, which are recognisable due to their unpleasant smell, which Qwerty defines as "Genff", and debating whether to jump in. Bluebear, acting on an impulse, pushes him in the hope that he will land in the right dimension. He is then led astray in a cavern labyrinth by a tricky Troglotroll (the most reviled and sneaky creature in Zamonia). With the help of a Mountain Maggot (an annelid made, curiously, of gleaming steel) Bluebear makes his way out of the caves and into the neighboring Great Forest. In Life 7, Bluebear finds a blue she-bear in the strangely silent Great Forest and falls in love with her. However, Bluebear quickly realizes that she was merely an illusion spun by the Spiderwitch, a giant spider, to trap him. The bear discovers he is caught in an intricate web in place of where he thought the she-bear's house was. Bluebear eventually frees himself and flees from the spider moments before it would have dissolved and eaten him. He proceeds to run for five hours or so to escape the spider, who is in hot pursuit. He begins to hallucinate that he is the fastest and most agile creature on the face of the planet; however this is because of the conditions of oxygen in the Great Forest. When he comes to his body feels too heavy to run. Just as his strength gives out, Bluebear stumbles upon and leaps through a fortuitous Dimensional Hiatus, the same sort of portal through which Qwerty entered Bluebear's universe. In Life 8, the Dimensional Hiatus deposits Bluebear into the past in the 2364th Dimension, where he sets off a chain of events that lead to Qwerty falling into the a Dimensional Hiatus and into our world in the first place. Bluebear jumps into the portal after his friend and comes back out in his own world, with the Spiderwitch nowhere to be seen. Life 9 details Bluebear's treks across the Demara Desert in the company of nomadic Muggs searching for the legendary mirage city Anagrom Ataf. Bluebear helps the Muggs trap the city with sugar flux, but upon finding it already populated with the transparent ghost-like Fatoms. He sets the Muggs roaming again, this time in search of a non-existent city called Esidarap S'loof. Leaving their company, Bluebear spies a Tornado Stop and decides to wait there to catch a ride to Atlantis on the other side of the desert. A tornado arrives, but Bluebear is sucked into its center and is aged nearly eighty years upon entering. In Life 10, Bluebear and the other elderly denizens of Tornado City search for a way to escape the whirlwind. Bluebear is reunited with a man he and Mac once saved, and discovers Phonzotar Huxo, the madman in the tornado who is responsible for the strange laws of the Muggs and their search for Anagrom Ataf. Bluebear realizes that the tornado stops for one minute once a year, so he and the other old men count backwards for a year in anticipation of the next stop. During that stop, they dig through the tornado wall, aging in reverse as they make their escape. In Life 11, Bluebear travels through the discarded head of a Megabollogg giant on his way to Atlantis and meets a bad idea named 1600H (named after the time he came into being) who saves him from falling into a pool of earwax and drowning. 1600H suggests Bluebear becomes a dream composer. The head, being constantly asleep, must always be dreaming, otherwise it will wake up and throw the brain into confusion; as there is no body for it to be attached to . The job of a dream composer is to "play" the head's "dream organ" in order to purchase a map of the head's interior so that he may find his way out. Insanity (a plan of whose was thwarted previously by Bluebear) steals the map, but right before Bluebear is pushed into the Lake of Oblivion, a pool of liquid forgetfulness that totally annihilates anything thrown in, 1600H pushes Insanity into the lake himself. Bluebear escapes the head and enters Atlantis just as the roaming cyclops returns to put his head back on his shoulders and approaches the city. In Life 12, Bluebear meets a Brazilian tobacco dwarf named Chemluth Havanna who becomes his new best friend. He works his way up the Atlantean professions tree, starting as a sweeper in a spitting tavern all the way up to the coveted King of Lies in the Megathon's Congladiator tournaments. The King of Lies and the challenger must exchange fictitious stories and the audience decides who wins each round. Bluebear defends his throne for over a year, eventually battling against everyone's Congladiating idol, an individual named Nussram Fakhir, in an epic 99-round Duel of Lies. Bluebear's boss, Volzotan Smyke asked him to lose this last fight and, when the bear refuses and wins it, Smyke attempts to sell him onto the giant ship, the SS Moloch; which is revealed to be a slave ship. However, Bluebear's escort, one of the Wolperting Whelps saved by Bluebear and Mac, named Rumo, takes the bear below Atlantis, where Bluebear is reunited with Fredda the Alpine Imp and the Troglotroll. Fredda and the Invisibles (creatures from another planet who really are invisible) plan to pilot the city of Atlantis into outer space to their planet; before the continent of Zamonia sinks beneath the waves. Chemluth, who is an inveterate womanizer, becomes smitten with Fredda and decides to stay with her and the Invisibles, but Bluebear elects to remain behind with the Troglotroll as he has no desire to leave Earth. As Atlantis flies away, the Troglotroll betrays Bluebear again and deposits him into the hands of the Moloch's slave crew. In Life 13, Bluebear discovers that the captain of the Moloch is the renegade Zamonium, the only thinking element, he learned about at the Nocturnal Academy. Professor Nightingale reappears piloting a cloud of darkness and reveals reluctantly that, contrary to the meaning of the word "element", he created the Zamonium himself. He does battle with the Zamonium in a war of thoughts. Unnoticed during the battle, Bluebear manages to throw the Zamonium into Nightingale's cloud of domesticated darkness and frees the crew. The Moloch soon becomes trapped by the Malmstrom, where the Minipirates once saved Bluebear in his first life, but the crew, minus Bluebear, is saved by the fortuitous arrival of an army of Reptilian Rescuers. Bluebear is reunited with Mac, who now has a large pair of glasses, but as soon as he tries to save Bluebear, the Troglotroll jumps onto his back and Mac flies off. The unfortunate bear is the only person left on the ship. Bluebear almost falls into the Malmstrom, which turns out to be a Dimensional Hiatus, and he is saved by the arrival of his old friend Qwerty Uiop on a flying carpet, who is soaring up from the whirlpool. Upon rejoining the rescued crew, Bluebear discovers that many of them are Chromobears, members of his own species. Every Chromobear has different coloured fur. They decide to reainhabit the Great Forest. At the end of the book, in Bluebear's final "half-life", he meets a real-life she-bear identical to the one he hallucinated in Life 7. He begins a new life with her, but hints that further adventures await them in the future.
6763696	/m/0gmqj1	Young Bloods	Simon Scarrow	2006-06-19	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book begins with the birth of both men in 1769 - Arthur as a weak and puny baby, a third son, to a wealthy Anglo-Irish Protestant couple; Naboleone as a healthy second son to a Corsican couple fighting the French for independence. The story continues with the training of both youths as cadet officers, both encountering social and other difficulties thanks to their birth outside the mainland. Arthur's innate conservatism forms as a result of the Gordon riots and his realization that his Anglo-Irish Protestant lifestyle is dependent on maintaining the status quo. Naboleone, on the other hand, is even more of an outsider, a Corsican among Frenchmen, a quasi-noble among pre-revolutionary noblemen, and an impoverished young cadet among those with money to burn. The story ends approximately in 1796, with Arthur having been turned down by the family of his inamorata Kitty Pakenham because of his lack of prospects, and Naboleone, now called Napoleon Bonaparte, mounting a successful attack on Toulon.
6767750	/m/0gmx6h	Acts of War	Tom Clancy		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The mobile Regional Operations Center (ROC) in Turkey investigates a dam blown up by Kurdish terrorists. The ROC is later taken hostage by the Kurdish terrorists who blew the dam.
6768321	/m/0gmyd_	Still Life with Crows	Douglas Preston	2003	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Agent Pendergast visits Medicine Creek, Kansas after a gruesome murder occurs. With the help of local teenaged misfit Corrie Swanson, he continues to investigate as more citizens are killed. Pendergast is soon led to believe that the murderer must be a member of the community. He soon discovers that the murders are connected to an old curse.
6771836	/m/0gn4ys	Conquistador	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 John Rolfe VI is an infantry captain who comes back from World War II with a war wound and few prospects, but in 1946 a radio he is rewiring malfunctions and creates a gateway to a parallel universe. This universe is one in which Alexander the Great lived a full lifespan, creating an empire that stretched from Spain to India. In this world, the Macedonian Empire proved so strong and durable that it redirected the barbarian migrations of the Goths, Vandals, and others eastward towards China and the rest of the Far East. As a result, what remains of China is a hodgepodge of Indo-European dominated states, the Americas remain undiscovered by the Old World, and technology has barely progressed to a medieval level. Deciding to take advantage of the untapped resources that await in this different California, Rolfe gathers members of his infantry company to help him explore and develop this new world. Over the next 60 years, he builds a new nation, which he calls the Commonwealth of New Virginia. In 2009, two California fish and game officers (Tom Christiansen and Roy Tully) are trying to solve the mystery of how large numbers of pelts from endangered species are showing up. They finally deduce the secret of the gate to the parallel world, but before they can make the secret known to their superiors, they are kidnapped and permanently transported to New Virginia by Rolfe's granddaughter, Gate Security Agent Adrienne Rolfe (with whom Christiansen had been falling in love). Once the two rangers get over their resentment of being forcibly and permanently removed from their lives and world, and being brought to this new world, Adrienne enlists them to help sabotage a coming coup in New Virginia. Giovanni Colletta, head of the second most powerful family, and son of a sleazy and amoral war buddy of Rolfe's, has resented the elder Rolfe's control, and he and some allies are planning to take over by force and violence, with the intention of imposing an authoritarian regime. The rangers decide that Rolfe and his allies are the lesser of two evils, and decide to help Adrienne in her effort to prevent the coup. The group discovers that Colletta is arming post-Aztec and post-Mayan Indians to build a couple of battalions of soldiers (something very illegal under Commonwealth law) in an attempt to capture the Gate, holding the Commonwealth hostage. Colletta duly strikes, giving the other families the grounds to oppose him militarily. The revolt is put down, but at a price: the radio device and the Gateway are destroyed, and with it, the connection to our world. What little talent the Commonwealth has in physics works feverishly to re-establish the Gate. They are successful, but when they look through the new gate, they do not see FirstSide (New Virginia slang for Rolfe's home Earth) Oakland, but instead a snarling saber-toothed cat and a dead giant sloth.
6772781	/m/0gn6jw	Destiny: Child of the Sky				 As the novel opens, Rhapsody and Achmed set out to save children sired by the F'Dor's minion, the Rakshas, from the damnation that carrying the Rakshas's blood (and through it, the F'Dor's) conveys. Achmed, lacking Rhapsody's selflessness, seeks the blood in the hopes that he can use it to track and identify the F'Dor. The journey is successful, though Rhapsody is almost killed when promised reinforcements fail to arrive and she is left nearly naked in wintry conditions. After the children of the Rakshas are purified through extraction of the demon's blood, Achmed returns to his kingdom of Ylorc. Rhapsody travels to the nearby city of Bethany to attend a state wedding and covertly liaison with her lover, Ashe. Though Ashe is delayed fighting the F'Dor's minions (who sought to wreak chaos during the wedding), the celebration goes off without flaw. On the way back to Ylorc from Bethany, Rhapsody is met by Ashe's father, Llauron, a fourth-dragon and leader of one of the two major human religions. Llauron stages a ritual duel with one of his own followers (corrupted by the F'Dor), feigning his own death. Rhapsody, as an unknowing part of Llauron's plan, immolates him in starfire with the blade Daystar Clarion, unlocking Llauron's dragon nature and allowing him to, by shedding his humanity, attain both greater longevity and power. Ashe, enraged at the F'Dor's minion (and at Llauron's callous use of Rhapsody), destroys the traitor in a fiery display of power. Meanwhile, in Ylorc, Grunthor discovers a secret sect of Bolg (the monstrous citizens of Ylorc) - the Finders, who are compelled to seek artifacts of the previous inhabitants of Ylorc. In the process, Grunthor discovers the treasure which the Finders unknowingly sought - the Great Seal of Canrif, a horn which summons all the Cymrians (survivors of the lost land of Serendair) when it is blown. Rhapsody goes to Tyrian to hide from the world, frustrated and shamed at her self-perceived failure to protect Llauron. In the process, she re-lights the diamond crown of the Lirin, accidentally fulfilling a generations-old prophecy and, accordingly, becoming Queen of the Lirin. At her coronation, attended by the most powerful and influential people in the neighboring countries, Achmed finally identifies the F'Dor: the Blesser of Bethe Corbair, Lanacan Orlando. Realizing that the F'Dor intends to possess Rhapsody, Achmed assassinates the Patriarch, leader of the other major human religion, to provide a distraction. Roughly a month later, Achmed, Rhapsody, and Grunthor travel together to Bethe Corbair, defeating the F'Dor after a very close battle. Rhapsody is worried, however, by the demon's insinuations: that she had unknowingly had sex with the Rakshas, in the guise of Ashe. She grows more concerned in the weeks that follow, as she starts to feel a knot growing in her belly. To seal a lasting peace in the wake of the F'Dor's death, Rhapsody travels to the Great Bowl just outside Ylorc, wherein the Cymrian Council had convened in times past. Blowing the Great Seal, she calls the Cymrians into a third Great Moot, wherein she plans to re-establish the old Cymrian Alliance, traditionally led by a Lord and Lady. Despite opposition from the previous Lady Cymrian, the Seer Anwyn, Rhapsody is (to her own surprise) confirmed as Lady Cymrian. Ashe is, after more debate, named Lord Cymrian; a fact which causes Rhapsody no little concern, as she, though loving him, had thought him wedded to another for purposes of state. Ashe convinces Rhapsody that, in fact, Rhapsody was his wife (through a complicated series of events at the end of the previous book), and furthermore informs her that the F'Dor had lied when it claimed the Rakshas had intercourse with her (the growth of her belly was revealed to the product of a 'seed of doubt'.) Anwyn, infuriated by her rejection, steals the Great Seal, calls up a legion of the dead, and transforms into a dragon to wreak havoc. She is defeated by Achmed, though the Cymrians suffer considerable losses, and a new age begins.
6772784	/m/0gn6k8	Requiem for the Sun				 The main adversary in this book is Michael, “The Wind of Death” – first seen in ‘Rhapsody’ – now host to a F'dor, a fire demon. He has found out that Rhapsody also survived the destruction of Serendair and is coming for her. Achmed, King of Ylorc, is attempting to rebuild the Lightcatcher – an ancient device from Gwylliam’s Empire – inside the peak of Gurgus. He enlists the help of Theophila, a member of the Panjeri tribe, who are masters of stained glass. Meanwhile trouble comes to Achmed and Grunthor from the Raven's Guild in Yarim – the Guildmistress is determined to have revenge on the Bolg kingdom for destroying her foundry. Rhapsody and Ashe have decided to have a child together, but prophecies speak of trouble, and so they speak to Ashe’s aunt Manwyn, the Seer of the future, in an effort to discover whether harm will befall them. Soon after the child is conceived Rhapsody is abducted by Michael's men, who nearly kill her protector Anborn in the process. Ashe and Achmed, who still do not like each other much, team together to rescue her. During their search for Rhapsody they meet the legendary warrior McQuieth, Ashe's distant ancestor, who proves to be extremely helpful in the fight against F'dor.
6772791	/m/0gn6l0	Elegy for a Lost Star	Elizabeth Haydon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The supposedly dead dragon Anwyn awakes from slumber, suffering from partial memory loss. Soon she becomes obsessed with a single thing: to find and take revenge on Rhapsody. Achmed and Grunthor continue to rebuild the kingdom of Ylorc. Achmed's determination to rebuild an ancient and apparently extremely dangerous device called the Light Catcher threatens to sever his friendship with Rhapsody. Talquist, the despotic Emperor Presumptive of Sorbold, brings to life a gigantic earthen statue, which goes on rampage. Young Gwydion, ward of Rhapsody and her draconic husband Ashe, becomes the new Duke of Navarne and embarks on a mission with his mentor Anborn. Pregnant Rhapsody visits the dragon Elynsynos and while there, she gives birth to her son, Meridion. Yet soon afterwards Anwyn appears and Rhapsody finds herself in grave danger. She, Achmed and the baby are saved by Ashe's father Llauron in the last second.
6773140	/m/0gn72m	The Thief Queen's Daughter	Elizabeth Haydon	2007-06-26	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Char the cook helps on the same ship that is assigned by the captain, husband of the Crossroad's Inn hostess, to look after Ven and uses this as an excuse to follow him every where and sharing in his adventurous life. He is Ven's best friend and shares a room with him in Hare Warren at the Inn Saeli, a Gwadd, is naturally tiny and can speak to animals and plants. She can make flowers bloom and spring out of the ground. Clemency, more commonly known as Clem is the stewardess of mouse lodge ( the girl's dormitory) and the pastor's assistant in charge of the Spice Folk. She is also friends with Ven. Ida played a more than significant part in The Floating Island by closing the rover’s box. She's a skinny pick pocket with more potential then she lets out, living at the cross roads inn with more than a knack at solving the insolvable. She is known as an orphan but has a horrifying past and an even more horrifying mother. Ven, the new official reporter living at general ease takes himself and friends Clemency, Nick, Saeli, and Char, on one of his adventures to the Gated City. Saeli is kidnapped, and an unanticipated kindness shines through the grime of Ida and the whole group has a shock, an adventure, and a light at the end of the tunnel. Ven wakes up to a bad day, from waking up late and finding that Ida has eaten his breakfast. On the way to the castle Ven leaves a packet of cookies for the trolls the Trudy tells him are under the bridge. At the castle the king shows him a secret tunnel in the soon to be garden and gives him a box with a glowing stone. He tells Ven that he has deciphered the writing on it and found that it comes from the Gated City ruled by the Raven guild and he wants Ven to investigate it. Back in the main castle Ven is officially fired as the kings official reporter. Ven returns to the inn and invites all the children who want to go with him to the Gated City's market. Char, Ida, Saeli, Clemency, and Nick agree to go with him. The children are dazzled by the market's brilliant colors and shops, but soon realize all is not what it seems. The children come to a weapon store called Arm of Coates, and go inside. The owner of the store is an old man called Mr. Coates. He tells them that a fortune-teller called Madame Sharra may know what the shining stone King Vandemere gave them is. Before they leave the store, Coates gives them a special gauntlet with many useful functions, and tells them it may come in handy in the future.
6773264	/m/0gn7cm	Cat and Mouse	James Patterson	1997	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book begins with Gary Soneji breaking into Alex Cross' home in Washington DC and contemplating the murders of Cross and his family. In London the killer dubbed Mr. Smith by the press is conducting a live autopsy. Mr. Smith explains to his victim what he will be feeling and that he envies his victim. At union station, Soneji opens fire on the crowd with a rifle. Cross and Sampson receive a call from Soneji letting him know where he is. Cross was expecting Kyle Craig, who had faxed Cross a letter asking for help with the Mr. Smith case. When Sampson and Cross get there, four people have already been killed. Cross and Sampson find the rifle and discover that it had been set up on a timer to randomly shoot downward. Soneji was actually on a train headed to New York City. Soneji is at Penn Station in New York City. There, he stabs a man in the back with a big hunting knife he used to kill Roger Graham in Along Came a Spider. Soneji then escapes in a subway. Cross is driving by the school and stops when he sees his girlfriend Christine’s car. When she gets home, they go for a walk, and Christine confesses that she worries about him getting hurt or killed in the line of duty. The two begin to kiss passionately, but are interrupted by Cross' pager. Cross has been called by an NYPD detective, Manning Goldman, who is investigating the Penn Station murder. Goldman is sure that Soneji behind it. Once in New York City, Cross meets with Goldman at Penn Station. A total of three people have been stabbed with a knife laced with poison. The next day Cross takes his cat, Rosie, to Quantico to be examined by the FBI. Cross is afraid that Soneji did something to the cat before giving her to him. He also meets with Kyle, who wants Cross involved in the Mr. Smith case but Alex refuses. Cross agrees to see Agent Thomas Pierce, whose own girlfriend was one of Mr. Smith's victims. Afterwards, Alex checks on Rosie, who had nothing wrong with her. In London, Mr. Smith calls the police a few blocks down telling them where to find Inspector Drew Cabot's body. Thomas Pierce is in London. He works on the Mr. Smith case almost exclusively. He’s trying to figure out the message Mr. Smith is trying to send. Sampson and Cross are in Wilmington, Delaware. They are going to visit Soneji’s wife and daughter. Cross smells decay and sees flies. They find the decapitated body of a Labrador Retriever. They discover that Soneji had decapitated his wife, but spared their daughter. Later, Cross goes to Lorton prison, where Soneji had been kept during Along Came a Spider. Cross was there to meet with a prisoner named Jamal Autry who told Cross that Soneji was raped in prison and contracted AIDS. Cross now understands that Soneji is planning one final rampage before he dies. In New York City, Soneji quietly breaks into Manning Goldman’s house at night, and hits him over the head with a lead pipe. Kyle Craig lends Alex use of the FBI helicopter to make his way to NYC. Cross meets with Goldman’s partner. They make their way to Goldman’s home in Riverdale. In the bedroom there is blood everywhere. The blood was splattered on the bed, the walls, and the floor. This was a brutal attack. Elsewhere in a bar, Soneji pick up a woman and goes with her to her apartment. Alex and the NYPD think Soneji is going after the man that raped him in prison, Shareef Thomas. They find Shareef in Brooklyn inside a crack house. A struggle ensues as they try to arrest Thomas, and Cross shoots and kills him. In Paris, Mr. Smith attacks and kills a young doctor who had just left his girlfriends house. At Bellevue Hospital, Soneji goes to find Thomas, who he believes is in intensive care. Soneji is dressed as a male nurse and wearing another disguise. Soneji goes into the room, only to find Cross and Detective Groza, Goldman’s partner, waiting for him in the room. Soneji is impressed, but prepared, as he throws a small Incendiary bomb at the detectives. Cross and Groza pull the bed on them to shelter themselves from the brunt of the bomb. Soneji makes his way out of the hospital and escapes in a city bus. Cross is afraid that Soneji plans on blowing up the bus. Cross thinks Soneji is trying to reach Grand Central Station, which proves to be correct, when Soneji makes his way out of the bus and runs toward it carrying a baby in his arm. Groza and Cross follow Soneji. They corner Soneji who swears that Cross will pay for everything. Soneji gets away by throwing the baby. The baby is caught but while everyone looks at the baby on the air Soneji makes a run for the tunnels. Groza and Cross pursue Soneji again. Soneji attacks Groza from behind. Alex and Soneji fight. Soneji swears that he'll go after Cross, even if he dies. Cross shoots Soneji in the jaw. The madman falls to the ground, accidentally detonating the other bomb in his pocket, burning him. A few days later, Cross returns home. He spends the entire day with his family. Kyle Craig calls Cross and again asks for help on the Mr. Smith case. Cross says no. Alex's family throws him a party. That night, an unknown assailant attacks Cross and his family, beating them and shooting him; Cross believes that it was Soneji. Agent Thomas Pierce examines the scene and wonders why the kids were left to live. He deduces they were beaten to make a statement but killing them was not the plan. Pierce concludes that Soneji is innocent of the attacks. Pierce examines the room and notices all the blood in the room. Soon he is told Cross has gone into cardiac arrest due to loss of blood. Kyle and Thomas head to St. Anthony’s Hospital. Thomas reminisces about his days in medical school and his girlfriend, Isabella, who was murdered by Mr. Smith. Traumatized, Pierce had given up medicine. Back in Paris, Inspector Rene Faulk investigates the young surgeon's disappearance. After looking and analyzing evidence at Cross's home, Pierce is sure that Soneji was not Cross' attacker. Pierce finds Cross' shield, burned and charred. Sampson and Pierce head to Princeton, New Jersey to examine the area where Soneji was raised. They went to talk with Soneji’s grandfather, Walter Murphy. They dig in the back and find human and animal bones, which had apparently been Soneji's first victims. At the hotel, Pierce gets an e mail from Mr. Smith that he took a young surgeon in Pierce’s honor. Mr. Smith has been contacting Pierce before he commits a murder and challenges Pierce to stop him. Pierce needs to go. Sampson is not happy with it. Mr. Smith named himself after Valentine Michael Smith from the book Stranger in a Strange Land. Mr. Smith does another live autopsy on Abel Sante. On the way to Paris, Pierce reviews notes and tries to determine what kind of a person Mr. Smith really is. Upon reaching Paris and checking into a hotel, Pierce reads his e mail from Mr. Smith and tells him where to find the doctor’s body. Pierce is accompanied by an Interpol agent named Sandy Greenberg. In the email, Mr. Smith tells Pierce not to trust her. Pierce recovers Dr. Sante’s body. His head had been separated from the body and the head had been cut in half. Pierce is at the Cross house. He’s examining Cross' room and is convinced that Soneji had a partner. Pierce takes Sampson with him to Princeton and to meet a childhood friend of Soneji’s, Simon Conklin. Pierce thinks he’s the one that tried to kill Cross, but Conklin has an alibi. After interviewing Conklin, Pierce is not only convinced Conklin did it, but that Soneji had been taking orders from him. Pierce breaks in to Conklin’s house. Pierce can’t find evidence that Conklin tried to kill Alex but after viewing the house is now sure Conklin is the killer. The book resumes going to Alex’s point of view. He is addressing a group of FBI agents at Quantico. It is revealed that the attack had been a hoax, orchestrated by Craig in order to manipulate Pierce, who is none other than Mr. Smith. Pierce had actually killed his girlfriend when he caught her cheating on him with another doctor. The resulting trauma created in Pierce a split personality, with the "Mr. Smith" becoming more and more dominant. The authorities only have circumstantial evidence. The FBI is hoping that being involved in this case will let Pierce go after Conklin and let the FBI catch him in the act. Sara Greenberg tells the agent that Pierce was spotted at all the recent murders. Agents are outside Conklin’s house. Inside, Pierce begins a live autopsy on Conklin, but first is trying to get a confession from Conklin for attacking Dr. Cross. The agents go in, but it’s too late. Conklin is dead and Mr. Smith has escaped. Before dying, Conklin had confessed to trying to kill Cross. Cross offers to go to Boston, Massachusetts to look at Pierce’s apartment. The apartment is full of pictures of Pierce’s dead girlfriend. Cross receives a voicemail from Pierce telling Cross where to find Smith’s next victim. The victim is found but all the organs were removed. Mr. Smith later kills a prostitute. Cross returns home and tries to find a connection. He writes the name of the victim in order and finds the connection. It was in the names. It spelled i-m-u-r-d-e-r-e-d-i-s-a-b-e-l-l-a-c-a-l-a-i-s. (I murdered Isabella Calais). The s in Calais had not been completed. Alex knew the last victim would be Dr. Straw, the man Isabella was having the affair with. The FBI set up another stakeout. Pierce shows up but keeps going in his car. Cross goes after Pierce and go on a high speed chase. The cars eventually go on a side road. Pierce loses Cross for a few minutes. When Cross and Sampson find Pierce’s car, Pierce is gone. Alex knows he wants to complete the puzzle. The S for Smith. Cross returns to Boston. At the apartment Smith had done a self autopsy. Alex tries to stop Pierce from killing himself and the two end up fighting. Sampson shoots Pierce, pointblank. it:Gatto & topo
6774506	/m/0gn8v5	The Kingdom of this World	Alejo Carpentier	1949	{"/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The prologue to the novel is Carpentier’s most often quoted text, in which he coins the term lo real maravilloso ("marvellous reality") in reference to seemingly miraculous occurrences in Latin America. This is contrasted with the lack of magic and imagination in European folklore. Furthermore, his trip to Haiti in 1943 is recounted, as well as some of the research he did to gather facts for the novel. Carpentier also denounces the commonplace and formulaic instances of the marvellous that is found in surrealist novels due to its inorganic and false origins, as opposed to the natural magic that is found in Latin America. Ti Noel recalls the tales that a fellow slave, Mackandal, would regale on the plantation of their master, Lenormand de Mezy. Mackandal would tell tales of magical characters and mythical kingdoms with rivers rising in the sky. He is said to not only have irresistible qualities that appeal to black women, but also the ability to captivate men. He suffers an accident in which his left hand is caught in machinery, and his arm is dragged in up to the shoulder. Being useless to his owner, he departs for the mountains and discovers many secret herbs, plants, and fungi that appear to have magical qualities. Ti Noel joins Mackandal and both learn about the magical attributes of these natural elements. Mackandal suggests that the time has come, and no longer goes to the plantation. After the rain season has passed, Ti Noel meets with him in a cave populated with strange items. Mackandal has established contact with surrounding plantations, and gives instructions to ensure the death of cows using secret herbs. The poison spreads, killing livestock by the hundreds as well as Frenchmen, wiping out adults and children. Madame Lenormand de Mezy dies as a result, and the deaths continue with entire families suffering the same fate. At gunpoint, a slave eventually explains that Mackandal has superhuman powers and is the Lord of Poison. Death within the plantations returns to normal rates as a result and the Frenchmen return to playing cards and drinking, as months pass with no word of Mackandal. Mackandal, now with the ability to transform into animal forms, like bird, fish, or insect, visits the plantation to affirm faith in his return. The slaves decide to wait four years for Mackandal to complete his metamorphoses and once again become a human, with testicles like rocks. After four years, he returns during a celebration and all present are delighted. The chanting alerts the white men, and preparations are made to capture Mackandal. He is captured and tied to a post in order to be lashed and burned in front of massive black crowds, but he escapes, flying overhead, and lands among the crowd. He is again captured and burned, but the slaves are certain that he has been saved by African Gods and return to their plantations, laughing. Lenormand de Mezy's second wife has died and the city has made remarkable progress. Henri Christophe is a master chef. Twenty years have gone by and Ti Noel has fathered twelve children by one of the cooks. He has told these children many stories of Mackandal and they await his return. A secret gathering of trusted slaves takes place: Bouckman, the Jamaican, speaks of possible freedom for the blacks emerging in France and also mentions the opposition from the plantation landowners. An uprising is planned; as a result of this meeting, conch-shell trumpets sound and slaves, armed with sticks, surround the houses of their masters. Upon hearing the conch-shells Lenormand de Mezy is frightened and manages to hide. The slaves kill the white men and drink much alcohol. Ti Noel, after drinking, rapes Mademoiselle Floridor, who is Lenormand de Mezy's latest mistress. The uprising is defeated and Bouckman is killed. Lenormand de Mezy arrives in time to spare Ti Noel and other slaves, but there remains talk of complete extermination as the black slaves pose a threat with their voodoo and secret religion. Lenormand de Mezy takes Ti Noel and other slaves to Cuba, where he becomes lazy, conducts no business, enjoys the women, drinks alcohol, and gambles away his slaves. Pauline Bonaparte accompanies Leclerc, her army general husband, to Haiti. On the way there, she enjoys sexually tempting the men on the ship. Solimán, a black slave, massages her body and lavishes loving care on her beauty. Leclerc develops yellow fever, and Pauline trusts in the voodoo and magic of Solimán to cure him. Leclerc dies, and Pauline returns to Paris while the Rochambeau government treats the blacks very poorly. However, there is the emergence of black priests who allow the slaves to conduct more business internally. Ti Noel has been won in a card game by a plantation owner based in Santiago, and Lenormand de Mezy dies in abject poverty shortly afterwards. Ti Noel saves enough money to buy his passage, and as a free man, he discovers a free Haiti. Now much older, he realizes that he has returned to the former plantation of Lenormand de Mezy. Haiti has undergone great development, and the land has come under the control of the black man. Ti Noel is abruptly thrown into prison and once again made to work as a slave among children, pregnant girls, women, and old men. Henri Christophe, formerly a cook and now king due to the black uprising, is using slaves to construct lavish statues, figures, and a magnificent fortress. Ti Noel considers slavery under a fellow black man worse than that endured at the hands of Lenormand de Mezy. In times past, the loss of a slave would be a financial loss, but as long as there are black women to continue supplying slaves, their deaths are insignificant. Ti Noel escapes and returns to the former plantation of Lenormand de Mezy, where he remains for some time, and later returns to the city to find it gripped by fear of Henri Christophe's regime. King Christophe is tormented by thunder strikes and ghosts of formerly tortured subjects, and eventually he and Sans-Souci Palace are overrun by the blacks and by voodoo. Left alone, he commits suicide and his body is taken by the remaining African pages to the magnificent fortress where they bury him in a pile of mortar. The entire mountain becomes the mausoleum of the first King of Haiti. Henri Christophe's widow and children are taken to Europe by English merchants, who used to supply the royal family. Solimán accompanies them and enjoys the summers in Rome, where he is treated well and tells embellished tales of his past. He encounters a statue of Pauline whose form brings back memories, and sends him into a howl, causing the room to be rushed. He is reminded of the night of Henri Christophe's demise and flees before succumbing to malaria. Ti Noel recalls things told by Mackandal, and the former plantation of Lenormand de Mezy has become a happy place, with Ti Noel presiding over celebrations and festivities. Surveyors disrupt the peace at the plantation, and mulattoes have risen to power; they force hundreds of black prisoners to work by whiplash, and many have lost hope as the cycle of slavery continues. Ti Noel, thinking of Mackandal, decides to transform into various animals to observe the ongoing events; he metamorphoses into a bird, a stallion, a wasp, and then an ant. He eventually becomes a goose, but is rejected by the clan of geese. He understands that being a goose does not imply that all geese are equal, so he returns to human form. The book concludes with the end of Ti Noel's life, and his own self-reflection upon greatness and The Kingdom of This World.
6776816	/m/0gnclf	Conan the Liberator	Lin Carter		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Following the events of the story "The Treasure of Tranicos", Conan joins a conspiracy of former comrades-in-arms to overthrow Numedides, the mad and tyrannical king of Aquilonia. As commander of the rebel forces, he has the prospect of becoming king himself if they succeed, but he has not only Numedides' loyal troops, led by General Procas, to overcome, but the spells of the evil sorcerer Thulandra Thuu. Chronologically, Conan the Liberator overlaps the events of the story "Wolves Beyond the Border", and is followed by the story "The Phoenix on the Sword".
6777989	/m/0gnf6_	Things as They Are or The Adventures of Caleb Williams	William Godwin		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Caleb Williams, a poor, self-educated, orphaned young man, and the novel's first-person narrator, is recommended a job on the estate of the wealthy Ferdinando Falkland. Although Falkland is generally a reserved and quiet master, he also has sudden fits of rage. Concerned about his outbursts, Caleb asks Mr Collins, administrator of Falkland's estate, if he knows the cause of Falkland's odd temper. Collins proceeds to tell of Falkland’s past, citing Falkland’s long history of stressing reason over bloodshed. Falkland’s neighbour, Barnabas Tyrrel, was a tyrannical master who oppressed and manipulated his tenants. Tyrrel became the enemy and competitor of Falkland, who was loved for his brave and generous demeanor. Falkland continually righted the many wrongs Tyrrel caused members of his household and his neighbors, which only elevated the community's respect and esteem for Falkland. The conflict between the two men came to a head when, at the funeral services for Emily Melvile—Tyrrel's niece whom he had unfairly arrested out of his jealousy of her admiration for Falkland—Tyrrel physically attacked Falkland. Tyrell himself was found murdered shortly afterward. Although immediately considered a suspect for Tyrrel's murder, Falkland defended himself on the basis of his stainless reputation. Instead, two tenants of Tyrell were found with incriminating evidence, convicted of the murder, and both hanged. Falkland’s emotional state, Mr Collins explains, has been wavering ever since. The account of Falkland’s early life intrigues Caleb, though he still finds the aristocrat's strange behaviours suspicious. Caleb obsessively researches aspects of the Tyrrel murder case for some time and his doubts gradually increase. He convinces himself that Falkland is secretly guilty of the murder. When Caleb’s distrust is exposed, Falkland finally admits that he is the murderer of Tyrrel, but forces Caleb to be silent about the issue under penalty of death. Caleb, however, flees the estate, but is later convinced to return to defend himself with the promise that, if he can do so effectively in court, he will be freed. Falkland’s half-brother oversees a fraudulent trial of the two and, eventually, sides with Falkland, having Caleb arrested. The anguish of a life in prison is documented through Caleb and other wretched inmates. Eventually, a servant of Falkland supplies Caleb with tools he can use to escape, which he successfully does, venturing into the wild. Caleb must now live a life evading Falkland's attempts to recapture and silence him. In the wilderness, Caleb is robbed by a band of criminals, physically attacked by one in particular, and then rescued by a different man who takes him to the headquarters of this same group of thieves. Caleb’s saviour turns out to be the Captain of these thieves. The Captain accepts Caleb and promptly banishes Caleb’s attacker, a man called Jones (or Gines in some editions), from the group. Caleb and the Captain later debate the morality of being a thief and living outside the oppressive restrictions of the law. Shortly afterward, a sympathiser of Jones tries to kill Caleb and then compromises his whereabouts to the authorities, forcing Caleb to flee once more. As he is boarding a ship to Ireland, Caleb is confused for another criminal and again arrested. He bribes his freedom from his captors, before they discover that he is in fact wanted after all. While Caleb makes a living by publishing stories about notorious criminals, the vengeful Jones subsequently puts out a reward for Caleb’s capture and keeps Caleb’s movements under surveillance. Ultimately betrayed by a neighbour, Caleb is taken to court; however, Caleb’s accusers do not show up and he is abruptly released only to be immediately ensnared by Jones and sent to confront Falkland, face to face. Falkland, now aged, gaunt, and frail, claims that he deliberately did not show up in court, so that he could persuade Caleb to put in writing that his accusations are unfounded. However, Caleb refuses to lie for Falkland, and Falkland threatens him, but lets him go. Falkland later sends the impoverished Caleb money to try to further persuade him. Next, Caleb attempts to make a living in Wales, but must move around frequently as Jones continues to track him. When Caleb finally decides to travel to Holland, Jones confronts him and reveals to him the true scope of Falkland’s tyrannical power, warning Caleb that he will be murdered or caught and executed if he attempts to leave the country. At last, Caleb convinces a magistrate to summon Falkland to court so that he can make his accusations public and reveal Falkland’s guilt once and for all. Before an emotional court, Caleb vindicates himself and makes his accusations of Falkland; however, he reveals his sadness at having become part of the same vicious mindset as Falkland that forces people into groups competing for power. Ultimately, Caleb finds a universality among all humans, whether the oppressor or the oppressed, finding humanity even in Falkland. He even voices his admiration and respect for many of Falkland's positive qualities, including his ideals. The two forgive each other and it is noted that Falkland soon dies thereafter. Despite his noble pursuit of justice, though, Caleb is not contented, but rather, feels his success is hollow and himself responsible for Falkland's death. Caleb concludes with an explanation that the point of the book is merely to straighten out the details of Falkland's turbulent history, rather than to condemn the man. The original and more controversial manuscript ending was not officially published, though is often included as an alternate ending in many current editions of the novel. In this version, Falkland argues in court that Caleb's agenda is merely revenge. Caleb responds, claiming himself to be a voice of justice and offering to gather witnesses against Falkland, but the magistrate suddenly silences him and denies his offer, calling Caleb insolent and his accusations ludicrous. With some pages missing, the story jumps to the final scene of Caleb imprisoned some time later, with none other than Jones as his warden. Caleb’s narration now seems erratic and disorganised, implying that he has gone mad. Caleb has been told that Falkland has died recently, but he does not seem to remember who Falkland is. In his delirium, Caleb concludes that true happiness lies in being like a gravestone that reads, “Here lies what was once a man.”
6780461	/m/0gnk98	Baksho Rahashya				 Feluda is approached by an established businessman, Mr. Dinanath Lahiri, claiming to have mistakenly swapped his suitcase (Bengali: baksho) in a train with one belonging to one of his co-passengers and asks Feluda to return it. This apparently simple problem takes Feluda, Topshe and Lalmohan babu to Shimla, and into a realm of deceit and mystery (Bengali: rahashya) involving a long forgotten diamond and an old priceless manuscript titled A Bengalee in Lamaland, written by Shambhu Charan Bose. The other major characters in the story are Dinanath Lahiri, a rich kindhearted businessman, his nephew, Prabeer Lahiri, a struggling actor obsessed with his own voice and Mr. Lahiri's co-passengers on the train- Mr.Naresh Pakrashi, Mr. Brijmohan Kedia and Mr.G. C. Dhameeja,who is also of some importance. The story is enriched with Feluda's extreme detection capability and another breathtaking adventure. On the way Feluda and the gang face many challenges, but at the end of the story Feluda gets much desired success, and the villain is trapped. Like many other Feluda stories, Jatayu brings the exquisite comic relief in the story and the story becomes enjoyable to everyone.
6784724	/m/0gnrrq	First Test	Tamora Pierce	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first Protector of the Small book tells of Kel's fight to become an accepted and equally-treated first-year page. Pierce places Kel in a position that many women currently find themselves in: whilst the laws may have been changed to favour gender equality, the reality of entering into a traditionally male domain presents many hurdles. Kel is accepted into the royal page program, however is placed on probation for the first year. She is forced to deal with hazing from her all-male peers, including derogatory writing on her walls, the destruction of her belongings and discrimination from the training master. This is in addition to Kel being the first female to openly try to become a knight within the century. Throughout the novel, there is the ever-lurking question of whether the training master will let her continue to train, because he, like many, does not believe that women can equal men in combat. While all this is going on and it is almost enough to make Kel leave, a secret benefactor encourages her with gifts. When Kel is getting ready for her first day of training, she receives an unexpected gift of a new dagger and a whetstone for sharpening of incredibly high quality, which, at that time, were unaffordable except by people who were one of the higher classes. At midwinter feast time, she also receives a powerful bruise balm from a mysterious gift-giver. In this book Keladry of Mindelan, known as Kel, faces a tough year ahead to become a page when Lord Wyldon has put her on probation. This book is about a girl who finds a way to cope with being in probation and trying to accept herself and push herself so Lord Wyldon will approve. Keladry hates bullies, and after realizing that Joren of Stone Mountain and his friends were bullying first year pages, defied tradition and started patrolling the halls, fighting the boys whenever she found them hurting others. Nealan, (Neal), one of the oldest page in the history of pages, becomes her best friend as well as her sponsor, and the other first-year pages gradually accept her as she defends them from the bullies.
6786046	/m/0gntnf	Conan the Barbarian	Catherine Crook de Camp		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book retells the story of the hero's youth, in a version quite different from the account established in previous tales by Howard, de Camp and Carter. Conan is the son of a blacksmith in barbaric Cimmeria, learning "the riddle of steel" from his father as the latter forges a sword. His village is massacred by the cultic followers of Thulsa Doom, an evil sorcerer, and Conan himself enslaved. Set with others to push a millstone, he develops prodigious strength over the years, ultimately pushing it all by himself. As an adult he wins his freedom and embarks on a life of adventure, ultimately wreaking his vengeance on the fiendish Doom with his father's sword.
6786486	/m/0gnvg1	The Sands of Time	Michael Hoeye	2001-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mild-mannered watchmaker Hermux Tantamoq is up to his ears in trouble again. All of Pinchester is talking about his friend Mirrin Stentrill's paintings, which are monumental portraits of cats! After all, cats are not a popular topic in a city of rodents — and everyone knows they never really existed. Then a mysterious old chipmunk appears in Hermux's shop with what he claims is a map of the royal library of a prehistoric kingdom of cats. Before long Hermux is hot on a trail of treachery and deceit, leading all the way from Pinchester to an ancient tomb that lies buried in... The Sands of Time!
6786578	/m/0gnvpm	No Time Like Show Time	Michael Hoeye	2004-07-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Hermux is back in Pinchester after his adventures in the desert, trying to return to his normal life as a watchmaker. He receives a mysterious invitation to the Varmint Variety Theater from the impresario, Fluster Varmint. Fluster is being blackmailed and needs Hermux's help to save his theatre. But show business is a whole new world of weirdness for our modest hero. Hermux ends up saving the show and finding out who black mailed Fluster.
6787686	/m/0gnxw9	What Is To Be Done?	Nikolai Chernyshevsky	1863	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Within the framework of a story of a privileged couple who decide to work for the revolution, and ruthlessly subordinate everything in their lives to the cause, the work furnished a blueprint for the asceticism and dedication unto death which became an ideal of the early socialist underground of the Russian Empire.
6790509	/m/0gp2dv	Death Match: A Novel	Lincoln Child	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Every once in a rare while, the most perfect of 'perfect' matches ('supercouples, of 100% compatibility) is located. Then tragedy suddenly strikes. One of the "supercouples" is found dead in their Arizona home, an "unquestionable" double suicide. Child's analysis of the topic proves a useful tool to opine on the topics of psychology, relationships, cutting-edge computer technology and artificial intelligence.
6791597	/m/0gp3s8	Throne of Jade	Naomi Novik	2006-04-25	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After defeating Napoleon's forces at the battle of Dover, Laurence and Temeraire are confronted by envoys from Imperial China, including Prince Yongxing, brother of the Jiaqing Emperor. The Chinese are eager to get their rare Celestial dragon back from the British. Celestials are only allowed to accompany royalty—Temeraire was intended for Napoleon, Emperor of the French—and Laurence, a mere commoner, is deemed unworthy of Temeraire by the Chinese. After several failed attempts to convince Laurence and the Royal Aerial Corps to return Temeraire to China, the Chinese and the British agree to have Temeraire and his flight crew — including Laurence — accompany the Imperial envoys back to China. As the land routes are deemed unsafe, the Navy has a dragon transport, HMS Allegiance, captained by Laurence's former second officer Tom Riley, ferry the Celestial and his crew on a voyage to China. During the voyage, attempts are made on the life of Laurence in order to remove him from Temeraire. In addition, political machinations on the part of the British, French, and Chinese are discovered that threaten the position of Britain in the East, as well as the stability of the Chinese throne. Finally, Laurence has ongoing difficulties with both Captain Riley, a staunch supporter of the slave trade (Laurence himself descends from known abolitionists) and the diplomat Arthur Hammond, sent along to smooth the operation. During the sea voyage, Temeraire catches a respiratory illness from Volatilus, a slow-minded though sweet-natured Winchester serving in the courier corps who visits the Allegiance with dispatches. By use of a posset made using an extremely smelly mushroom, the cooks of the Chinese delegation are able to restore Temeraire to health. This event, though seemingly unimportant at the moment, shapes the next two novels of the series. After their arrival in China, Temeraire gets to meet his family, including his mother, and sees the greatly improved conditions of dragonkind in China: Chinese dragons are citizens in their own right and, amongst other things, may take the Confucian civil service exam. He also begins courting an Imperial dragon named Mei. Laurence, meanwhile, suffers more direct attempts on his life, including confrontations with Yongxing and his companion, the albino Celestial Lien. Hammond is able to deduce that Yongxing has designs on Prince Mianning, the heir-apparent whose dragon is Temeraire's twin brother, and that Temeraire was sent to France not because the Chinese esteem Napoleon but so that Temeraire himself could not be used to complicate the line of succession. Thus, his presence is necessary to lend legitimacy to any puppet king Yongxing intends to set upon the throne. At a theatre production in the British delegation's honor, Yongxing attempts to put his plans in motion, but is prevented by the actions of Temeraire and Laurence, and is himself killed in the ensuing scuffle. As a result, the Emperor of China himself adopts Laurence as an honorary son, at a stroke resolving the issues with Laurence's social status and easing relations with Britain. Temeraire, after much deliberation, decides to return to Britain, partially out of love for Laurence and partially to attempt to bring the greater civil liberties of China back to the commonwealth.
6793869	/m/0gp7tg	The Brothers K	David James Duncan	1992	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Papa Chance is a former pitcher who has settled down with his wife in the mill town of Camas, Washington. They have six children. Everett Chance, the eldest, is a natural politician and powerful speaker whose passionate opposition to the Vietnam war creates much of the family tension in the book. He spends much time and effort pursuing a young Russian literature student named Natasha and finally wins her heart from draft exile in British Columbia by sending her an epic letter/novel. Everett does not have great natural athletic gifts but is a scrappy competitor. Second oldest, Peter Chance, is the intellectual brother who will study at Harvard and then in India. Though a natural athlete, Peter spends most of the book having renounced gifts of the body in his dogged pursuit of spiritual growth. After being kidnapped by con artists on an Indian train he finds enlightenment and he returns to the family in their hour of need. Kincaid Chance, the youngest brother, narrates the book yet is the member of the family we finally learn the least about. He has little or no athletic ability and serves as a mirror to reflect for us the colorful personalities that surround him. Irwin Chance, the third son, is a strapping athletic prodigy and beautiful soul. He is naturally enlightened, much in the vein of Alyosha Karamazov, and deeply religious. Yet, after conflicts with the Seventh-day Adventists in Camas, Irwin's conscientious objector status is denied and he is sent to Vietnam. After witnessing an incident where his commanding officer mistreats a Vietnamese prisoner, Irwin has a mental breakdown and is committed to an Army mental institution in California. The family, suffering from the great divisions of the 1960s and Vietnam, pulls together to travel to California and bring Irwin home. The youngest children are twins, Beatrice and Winifred (Bet and Freddy). Much like Kincaid, they reflect their brothers and yet make important contributions to the family and the novel.
6793942	/m/0gp7v4	The Glory That Was	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Twenty-seventh century Earth is united by a worldwide democratic government presided over by a constitutional monarch, though the former is veering toward totalitarianism and the latter is a megalomaniac. To neutralize the World Emperor the power-hungry prime minister has ceded to him control of Greece for use in a mysterious secret project. Now Greece is surrounded by a force field cutting it off from the rest of the world, and people of Greek descent everywhere have vanished, presumably spirited away to the isolated region by the Emperor's agents. One such kidnapped citizen is Thalia, wife of classical scholar Wiyem Flin. Anxious to get her back, he recruits his friend, magazine editor Knut Bulnes, into a desperate attempt to penetrate the force barrier. Bulnes, hoping to obtain an exclusive story on the Emperor's mysterious project, agrees. The two succeed, sailing a boat through the barrier when it is temporarily disrupted by a storm. Inside the force field, Flin and Bulnes are astounded to find themselves not in 27th century Greece at all, but to all appearances the Classical Greece of Pericles and the Peloponnesian War. Pretending to be foreign philosophers, they establish themselves in Athens as they attempt to unravel the mystery, and begin to discover that all is not as it seems; the wife of the playwright Euripides, for instance, is a dead ringer for Thalia, though if she is Thalia she has no memory of her life with Flin, nor does she recognize him. But the true shock is when Pericles, the leading citizen of Athens, turns out to be the Emperor! Somehow, the two outsiders must uncover what he has done to Greece and how, thwart his insane scheme, and unmask the conspiracy that threatens to turn Greece back three thousand years and the rest of the world into a police state. Not to mention their original object of recovering Thalia!
6797568	/m/0gpfg2	Page	Tamora Pierce	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kel has been allowed to continue her training to be a knight. While she has been allowed to continue by Wyldon of Cavall, her stiff, old-fashioned training master, she's still not accepted by many of the male pages. Though she and her friends Neal, Merric, Cleon, and Owen continue to fight the hazing of the first years, the others appear to have lost interest. Kel wonders if she is the only one who really cares. Meanwhile, Joren of Stone Mountain, once Kel's self-acclaimed archenemy, appears to have drastically changed. Ever since he became a squire, he has been civil, almost friendly to Kel and her friends. She does not trust this apparent change of heart at first, but as the years pass, she begins to think that she has nothing to worry about from him. At the beginning of the book, Kel hires a maidservant. Lalasa is the niece of one of the palace servants and her uncle begs Kel to take her. He claims that Lalasa has been treated badly by some people and that she will be left alone if she has a proper mistress. With some trepidation, Kel accepts and hires Lalasa. On the very first day of training, Kel also adopts a ragtag dog who calls himself Jump. Through Daine, the Wildmage, Jump communicates that he wants to stay with Kel. Even though she does her best to leave him with Daine, he always manages to return. After Kel has fought her way through all the training, survived all the ordeals, she is finally allowed to take the 'Big Examinations,' the test given to all fourth-year pages to allow them to train to be squires. During the course of the book, Kel develops a crush on Neal, which he does not return. It also seems that Cleon has feelings for her, and shows them on one occasion.
6798448	/m/0gpgr0	Alexandr v tramvaji	Pavel Řezníček			 The story presents many characters, including Madame Tussaud who wishes to gain weight in order to bring the police presidium to crumble down into hell, Alexander's portagé, Primář Karlach, the evil philosopher-doctor, who was deposed from his hospital and has returned; Countess Willma, a wealthy countess from a somewhat surrealist estate (e.g. the furniture in the upper floor has been burning for 200 years and there are strange things, like cigarettes in the sky) and a whole ensemble of wax dummies of historical people. As Řezníček uses his traditional style of writing, it is nearly impossible to follow the line of events, because he often interrupts the descriptions of situations with intermezzos, such as (from another work) "a women is spinache" ("žena je špenát") around which numerous later sentences are based, showing what something is and what something else is not (this line is also special in his work, as un-traditionally it is referred and debated on the following pages as well, unlike his classic form of showing many such proclamations upon another). These types of sentences are often illogical and often they fail to actually have a point, therefore much of them are just plain descriptions (in the style of "Man on the ground" only expanded with numerous other words). The events of this book lead through various unconnected situations up to Řezníčeks classic ending, in which all the characters are brought into one place and taken care of (another such ending was in his book Strop, in which all the characters, one by one were brought into the "swamps for blind", where they stayed), this time before a tribunal from which they escape. Another part of Řezníček's writing is the usage of himself in his novels, describing himself in the first, but also in the third person ("Řežníček, ten ......ďábel", "Řezníček that......devil...."). He frequently breaks the fourth wall by insulting the readers or the book or supremely praising them (both may occur in the same book).
6799620	/m/0gpjxp	Diamonds Are Forever	Ian Fleming	1956-03-26	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 British Secret Service agent James Bond, 007 is sent on an assignment by his superior, M. Acting on information received from Special Branch, M tasks Bond with infiltrating a smuggling ring running diamonds from mines in Sierra Leone to the United States. Bond must travel as far as possible down the pipeline to uncover those responsible. Using the identity of Peter Franks, a country house burglar turned diamond smuggler, he meets Tiffany Case, an attractive go-between who developed an antipathy towards men after being gang-raped as a teenager. Bond discovers that the smuggling ring is operated by "The Spangled Mob", a ruthless American gang run by the brothers Jack and Seraffimo Spang. Bond follows the pipeline from London to New York, where he is instructed by Shady Tree to earn his fee through betting on a rigged horse race in nearby Saratoga. At Saratoga Bond meets Felix Leiter, a former CIA agent working at Pinkertons as a private detective investigating crooked horse racing. Leiter bribes the jockey to ensure the failure of the plot to rig the race. When Bond goes to pay the bribe, he witnesses two homosexual thugs, Wint and Kidd, attack the jockey. Bond calls Shady Tree to enquire further about the payment of his fee and is told to go to the Tiara Hotel in Las Vegas. The Tiara is owned by Seraffimo Spang and operates as the headquarters of the Spangled Mob. Spang also owns an old Western ghost town, named "Spectreville", restored to be his own private vacation retreat. At the hotel, Bond finally receives payment through a rigged blackjack game where the dealer is Tiffany Case. However, he disobeys his orders by continuing to gamble in the casino after "winning" the money he is owed. Spang suspects that Bond may be a 'plant' and has him captured and tortured. However, with Tiffany's help he escapes from Spectreville aboard a railway push-car with Seraffimo Spang in pursuit aboard an old Western train. Bond re-routs the train to a side line and shoots Spang before the resulting crash. Assisted by Leiter, Bond and Case go via California to New York, where they board the Queen Elizabeth to travel to London. However, Wint and Kidd observe their embarkation and followed them on board. They kidnap Case, planning to kill her and throw her overboard. Bond rescues her and kills both gangsters; for precaution, he makes it look like a murder-suicide. Case subsequently informs Bond of the details of the pipeline. It begins in Africa where a dentist would pay miners to smuggle diamonds in their mouths which he would extract during a routine appointment. From there the dentist would take the diamonds and rendezvous with a German helicopter pilot. Eventually the diamonds would go to Paris, and from there to London. There, after telephone instructions from a contact known as ABC, Case would then meet a person to explain how to smuggle the diamonds to New York City. After returning to London, Bond flies on to Freetown in Sierra Leone and then to where the next diamond rendezvous takes place. With the collapse of the rest of the pipeline, Jack Spang (who turns out to be the mysterious ABC) shuts down his diamond smuggling pipeline by killing its participants. Spang himself is killed when Bond shoots down his helicopter.
6800115	/m/0gpkmg	Street Magic	Tamora Pierce	2001-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While Briar and his teacher Rosethorn are helping the locals in Chammur, Briar realizes that all is not as it should be in Chammur's streets. As a former 'street rat' himself, he tends to have an interest in the affairs of local gangs. He discovers a gang known as the Vipers roaming through territory not their own. After further investigation, Briar discovers that the Vipers are the pet gang of a local Noblewoman. While Briar investigates the Vipers, he discovers Evvy, a local girl with stone magic. At first, she runs away from him, but she gradually learns to trust him. When Evvy singularly refuses to study with local stone mage Jebilu Stoneslicer, Briar takes her training in hand himself. The Vipers attempt to kidnap her many times, so Lady Zenadia doa Atteneh can use Evvy's powers as a stone mage to further increase her riches. When they finally kidnap her, Briar comes to her rescue.
6801841	/m/0gpn8l	The Turkish Gambit	Boris Akunin	1998	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with a young Russian woman of "progressive" sympathies, Varvara Suvorova, traveling to meet her fiancé Pyotr Yablokov, who has volunteered to fight in the war. Her guide steals all her luggage and disappears as she approaches the war zone, but she is rescued by Erast Fandorin, who has been fighting as a volunteer to forget his tragedy. He accompanies her to Russian army headquarters to which he's bringing an important message. Upon arrival, Varvara is reunited with Pyotr, and Fandorin delivers his message: the Turkish army is advancing towards the Bulgarian town of Plevna, which sits on the road to Sofia and must be taken so the Russian army can easily advance through Bulgaria and into Turkey. Varvara sees little of her fiance, who is busy with his duties as an army cryptographer, so she spends her time at the correspondents' club, where she meets various interesting characters: Irish reporter Seamus McLaughlin, French reporter Charles Paladin, Romanian liaison Colonel Lukan (unlike Bromfield's English translation, some others use proper Romanian spelling "Lucan"), Russian hussar officer Count Zurov (Fandorin's old friend from The Winter Queen), and the charismatic General Sobolev (based on the real-life Mikhail Skobelev). Fandorin is informed that a Turkish agent, Anwar Effendi, is conducting an intelligence operation against the Russian army and might even have penetrated Russian headquarters. This is confirmed when the telegram directing the Russian army to take Plevna is mysteriously changed to an order to take Nikopol, a strategically irrelevant town. Varvara's fiance Pyotr, who encoded the telegram, is jailed on suspicion of treason. Fandorin is charged with finding Anwar and uncovering the Turkish plot. Because of the diversion of the Russian army to Nikopol, Turkish troops arrive in Plevna first. The French reporter, Paladin, sneaks into the Turkish camp and determines that only a small number of troops are in the town. Based on this information, the Russians attack Plevna, only to be bloodily repulsed because Paladin's data were incorrect and the Turks are there in strength. The Russian army settles in for a siege. The Russians' first attempt to break the siege of Plevna ends in defeat when the Turks, who somehow have advance knowledge of the Russian attack plan, concentrate their artillery on the Russian formations before the Russians have a chance to move forward. Fandorin immediately suspects Colonel Lukan, who predicted to Varvara that the attack would fail. He asks Varvara to follow Lukan back to Bucharest and investigate him, but that effort ends when Paladin kills Lukan in a duel over Varvara's honor. Investigation of his possessions shows that he was indeed taking money from a mysterious J. In the following attempt to storm Plevna, Sobolev leads his troops in an attack that breaks through Plevna's defenses and actually enters the city, but he is unable to advance further due to insufficient strength. He sends several messengers to headquarters to request reinforcements, but all are killed in the fray. In the end, Count Zurov breaks through to the Russian side, but after meeting the journalists at their observation outpost disappears on his way to the headquarters and Sobolev, out of ammunition, is forced to withdraw. Later, a search party finds Zurov murdered on the battlefield, apparently stabbed by gendarme colonel Kazanzaki, whom dying Zurov managed to shoot. Pyotr unsuccessfully tries to hang himself, feeling responsibility for the carnage and defeat as he left the telegram unguarded when he went to welcome Varya and then sent it without checking; for the spy, knowing the not too strong Russian cipher, it was easy to replace it. Three attempts to storm Plevna having failed, the Russian and Romanian armies besiege the city. By December, the Turks inside Plevna are starving. Varvara, on her way back from the hospital where she had been sent due to a case of typhus, encounters McLaughlin the Irish reporter, who informs her that he has been tipped off that the Turks will surrender that night in a distant sector. She tells Fandorin, who guesses correctly that the Turks are not surrendering but trying to confuse the Russian army so they can stage a breakout. Thanks to his last-minute warning to Sobolev, the Russians manage to repel the attack after a fierce fight, the Turks in Plevna surrender, and McLaughlin, who has disappeared, is assumed to be the spy. Fandorin is dispatched to London to track down McLaughlin. Varvara, less and less enthusiastic about her fiance and more and more intrigued by the dashing general Sobolev, accompanies the army as it advances through Bulgaria to Adrianople. Shortly thereafter, the Turks sue for peace, and negotiations commence. At the train station, where Sobolev has his headquarters, Paladin suggests that they ride the train into San Stefano, the undefended western suburb of Constantinople. Sobolev agrees, and he, Paladin, Varvara, and his entourage all ride in to San Stefano accompanied by one Russian battalion. They set up headquarters in a bank building, and Paladin has convinced General Sobolev to advance into Constantinople when Fandorin suddenly appears and unmasks "Charles Paladin", the French journalist, as Anwar Effendi, the master Turkish spy. Fandorin recounts his investigation and notes how nobody at Paladin's newspaper had ever seen him and how Paladin's stories for years had been filed from cities where Anwar was known to be. His earliest byline "Paladin d'Hevrais" is a reference to Anwar's birthplace Hef-rais in Bosnia. (In the Russian original, the name is Charles d'Hevrais, Paladin being Bromfield's change.) Fandorin points out that it was Paladin who had distracted Peter Yablokov from encrypting the order to attack Plevna by telling him Varvara had arrived, thus gaining the opportunity to change the text from "Plevna" to "Nikopol". Paladin/Anwar admits his identity, but then draws a gun and drags Varvara as a hostage into the bank's vault. Inside the vault, Anwar tells Varvara that after Sobolev entering Constantinople, the British fleet off the coast would open fire and Western powers would have declared war to Russia, bringing ruin to it. Even so, a Turkish regiment is advancing into San Stefano, originally planned to strike at Sobolev's rear. In the meantime, Anwar explains to Varvara that everything he has been doing is in the name of his ideals. His purpose is to defend the development of human rights, reason, tolerance and non-violent progress in the Western world against the expansion of the despotic and barbaric Russian empire. His fatherland Turkey, which he deeply loves, is nevertheless the chess piece that he has planned to sacrifice or at least risk in his gambit in order to achieve a greater purpose - namely, to "protect humanity from the Russian threat". Varvara angrily objects to Anwar's condemnation of Russia, stating that it has great literature as exemplified in Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Anwar counters that Russian literature is pretty good, but in general literature is a toy and can't be very important. He remarks that despite the absence of great literature in Switzerland, life there is much more dignified than in Russia. By the time their conversation has ended, it becomes clear that the Turkish attack has been driven off by Sobolev's soldiers, and Anwar, realizing that he is now trapped, lets Varvara out of the vault and kills himself. In March, the Russians, Romanians and Turks sign the Treaty of San Stefano, ending the war. Varvara and Pyotr board the train back to Russia, and Fandorin is there to say goodbye before he leaves by ship for a diplomatic post in Japan – farthest possible from home, the only thing he asked when offered a reward. Varvara congratulates him for defeating Anwar, but Fandorin replies that Anwar did achieve his long-term goals: the peace treaty is too generous, and the other powers of Europe will force Russia to settle for less, leaving Russia weakened and impoverished with little to show for the war. Fandorin tries to say goodbye to Varvara but he cannot get the words out, and it is clear that they both have deep feelings for each other. Varvara takes his hand but says nothing, and boards the train, crying as she watches Fandorin while the train pulls away. The novel ends with a newspaper article proving Fandorin right; the European powers object to the treaty and will meet to agree on a new settlement much less favorable to Russia.
6802407	/m/0gppfh	3rd Degree	Andrew Gross	2004-03-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In this installment after a house with a family home blows up and Lindsay rushes in to save whoever may have survived the blast, a group of killers known as August Spies vow to kill every three days. They target various political figures time and time again. Lindsay Boxer, with the San Francisco PD, Claire Washburn, the Medical Examiner, Cindy Thomas, a Chronicle Reporter who recently broke-up with her pastor boyfriend from the previous novel, and Jill Bernhardt an Assistant District Attorney who is revealed to have been a victim of spousal abuse for a while, dive into the case. The case takes a deadly turn when Jill is murdered. Oddly enough this actually leads the remaining three ladies to find a tie-in to a case that Jill's father prosecuted and to a cover up years old that has launched this terrorist action. Lindsay resolves the case in typical fashion by bringing in the college professor that caused it all. She had previously decided to make a go of a relationship with her FBI laison Joe Molinari when he is introduced in the middle of the book. He is Deputy Director of Homeland Securtiy. He ends up getting a call from the vice president while on a date with Lindsay. Lindsay and Joe have a date while traveling on the case, which ends up being mocked by her former partner (Warren J) while at work. Their second date is at Lt. Boxer's apartment although they ignore dinner because he comes early and they sleep together. Later she feels very guilty because Jill had just thrown out her abusive bullying husband, and ignored a chance to call her or visit with her because of the date. it:Terzo grado (romanzo)
6807239	/m/0gpv_l	The Dons of Necropolis			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Ricky Bianca needs to know why his father committed suicide when he was a child on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, his father at the time was fighting the Mafia from controlling the funeral industry. The Mafia sent a friend to deliver a letter on that holy night and after reading the letter, he blew his brains out. The letter was never found and no one but the head Don, Salvatore Biganti, knows what it contained. When Ricky heard the blast, he ran to his father's aid only to see him on the floor bleeding profusely from his temple. He knelt in a pool of blood and held his father's head, unsuccessfully trying to stop the bleeding. Subsequently, Ricky has no recollection of the event but suffers from wild nightmarish hallucinations. His mother soon thereafter died in an upstate sanitarium of severe depressive catatonia. His aunt in Connecticut raises him and after twenty years he decides to return to New York as a Funeral Director, back to the industry that holds the secret. His Psychology Professor friend at college advised him to get the answers his mind so desperately needs, before his hallucinogenic demons devour him. His innocence is lost as this cryptic industry leads him through a maze of deceit, greed and evil. Subsequently, he gets caught in an intricate spider’s web of organized crime, secret cults and unspeakable atrocities. The truth is, the known is worse than the unknown and it sends him spiraling down into a hell of fiendish demons and worse nightmares.
6807495	/m/0gpxxw	Conan of the Isles	Lin Carter		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When King Conan is in his mid 60s, the kingdom of Aquilonia is attacked by Red Shadows, sorcerous sendings of unknown origin. To track them to their source and eliminate the threat, the king abdicates in favor of his son Prince Conn and takes ship for the far west with his old comrade Sigurd of Vanaheim. The quest takes them to the islands of Antillia and into conflict with the wizard priests of the dark god Xotli. The book ends with Conan literally sailing off into the sunset: "A few hours later, the great ship, which the folk of Mayapan were to call Quetzlcoatl – meaning 'winged (or feathered) serpent' in their uncouth tongue – lifted anchor. She sailed south and then, skirting the Antillian Isles, into the unknown West. But whither, the ancient chronicle, which endeth here, sayeth not."
6811108	/m/0gq3ln	Legion	William Peter Blatty	1983	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story opens with the discovery of a twelve-year-old boy who has been murdered and crucified on a pair of rowing oars. Kinderman already sees that the boy is mutilated in a way identical to the victims of a serial killer known as the Gemini Killer, who was apparently shot to death by police twelve years previously while climbing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A priest is later murdered in a confessional, once again bearing the mutilations distinctive of the apparently deceased killer. The fingerprints at the two crime scenes differ, however. Further victims soon follow, including one of Kinderman's friends, another priest, who is slain in a hospital, his body drained of blood before being decapitated. Yet again the Gemini Killer's mutilations are present. Investigations lead Kinderman to the psychiatric wing of the hospital where his friend was slain. Here he finds a number of suspects: * Dr. Freeman Temple - a psychiatrist who has a dismissive and even contemptuous attitude towards his patients. * Dr. Vincent Amfortas - another doctor at the hospital. He is very mysterious and not very talkative, and is seemingly apathetic towards everything since the recent death of his wife. * Patients - there are a number of elderly people at the hospital suffering from senile dementia. The fingerprints of different senile patients are found at murder scenes, but interviews with the patients make it clear they are seemingly incapable of carrying out the elaborate killings and mutilations. * Tommy Sunlight - a mysterious patient, found wandering aimlessly eleven years ago dressed as a priest, who brags of being the Gemini Killer reincarnated and who claims to have carried out the recent murders, even though he logically could not have done so, being secured in a locked cell in a straitjacket. At one point he claims the doctors and nurses let him out to kill. He also looks identical to Damien Karras, a priest who supposedly died in The Exorcist by falling down a flight of stairs. * James Vennamun - the actual Gemini Killer himself. His body was never found, suggesting he may have survived and is resuming his crimes. In the end, the implication is that the Gemini Killer possessed the body of Damien Karras and spent many years trying to gain control of the body, during which time Karras was held in a mental hospital. He lacked any identification and was nicknamed Sunlight because he sat in the sun's rays as it passed through the window of his cell. Upon finally gaining control of Karras' body, the Gemini occasionally left it to possess the bodies of the patients suffering from senile dementia, and as they were in an open ward with access to the outside world, he could use them to go forth and commit murders. This is why the fingerprints of several senility patients were found at the crime scenes; their bodies carried out the murders but the Gemini Killer was in control of them. The Gemini's motive originally was to shame his father, a preacher, whom he hated. When his father dies of natural causes the Gemini Killer feels his mission is over and he has no reason to remain in possession of Karras' body. Feeling compelled to explain everything to Kinderman, he summons the detective, explains all of this, successfully demands that Kinderman tells him he believes that he (Sunlight) really is the Gemini Killer, and then effectively wills himself to die from heart failure. Dr. Temple suffers a stroke and ends up mentally disabled. Dr. Amfortas dies in an accident (although he was terminally ill anyway, suffering from a disease he refused to treat so he could join his deceased wife). The final chapter of the novel, an epilogue, has Kinderman at a burger-bar with his faithful partner, Atkins. Kinderman explains to Atkins his thoughts and musings of the whole case and how it relates to his problem of the concept of evil. Kinderman ends by concluding that he believes the Big Bang was Lucifer falling from heaven, and that the entire Universe, including humanity, are the broken parts of Lucifer, and that evolution is the process of Lucifer putting himself together back into an angel.
6811179	/m/025t_9_	Wolf Brother	Michelle Paver	2004-09-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In pre-agricultural Europe,the hunter-gatherers of the Forest live in clans, each represented by a particular animal or life form. Torak and his father, of Wolf Clan, live together in the forest. During Torak's twelfth year, his father ("Fa") is killed by a bear which has been possessed by a demon. Before Torak's father dies, he tells Torak to swear an oath to head north and find the Mountain of the World Spirit, and ask the World Spirit to help destroy the bear before it kills all life in the forest. His guide will find him and help him on his quest. Torak reluctantly leaves his father as the bear comes back to kill him. Torak heads north and soon encounters an orphaned wolf cub. Torak initially tries to kill the cub in order to eat it, but he doesn't have the heart. He discovers that he can communicate with the cub. The Cub smells Torak is of the Wolf Clan, who was fed by a wolf as a baby, and accepts Torak as his pack-brother. He realizes the cub is the guide, and Torak names the cub "Wolf". Over time they become good friends. A few days later Torak and Wolf are captured by the Raven Clan, who accuse Torak of stealing one of their roe deer. They are taken to the Raven camp so Torak's fate can be decided by Fin-Kedinn, the Raven Clan leader. Torak's captors are a teenage boy named Hord, a girl named Renn, and a man named Oslak. In the Raven camp, Torak is taken to Fin-Kedinn. Unlike the other Ravens, Fin-Kedinn treats him with kindness and respect, until Fin-Kedinn realizes who Torak's father was. To regain his freedom, Torak fights Hord, who is much bigger and stronger, to prove his innocence. He wins by temporarily blinding Hord with steam from some broth which is cooking nearby. This, together with the dog whistle which Torak has made to summon Wolf, makes Fin-Kedinn and Saeunn, the Raven mage (shaman), see Torak as the possible fulfillment of a prophecy about a "Listener". The prophecy states that the Listener, who "talks with silence and fights with air", will offer his heart's blood to the World Spirit and thereby kill the demon-bear. One interpretation of this prophecy is that Torak must be sacrificed, and his blood taken to the Mountain of the World Spirit. Fin-Keddin reveals to Torak that his Fa was the Wolf Clan's mage, and the Demon Bear was created for the sole purpose of killing his Fa. They then lock Torak away while they debate his fate. Torak escapes, helped by Renn, who believes that Torak must go to the Mountain of the World Spirit himself. Renn tells Torak the rest of the prophecy, which says he must find three parts of the "Nanuak", the brightest soul, to please the World Spirit and ensure its aid. On their journey together, guided by Wolf, Torak finds the first part of the Nanuak when he falls into a river, the second part in a cave, and the third part while crossing the treacherous glacial flow close to the High Mountains. Nearly at their destination, Renn and Torak are recaptured by the Ravens and taken to the Raven Clan's new temporary camp. Fin-Kedinn releases Torak, believing him to be the one who should go to the Mountain. Fin-Kedinn also reveals that Torak's Fa was killed because he dedicated himself to thwarting a group of rogue mages, the Soul Eaters, who have turned to evil in their determination to rule the Forest. Torak and Wolf climb the mountain, followed by the bear. Torak is unexpectedly attacked by Hord, who believes himself to be the one who must take the Nanuak to the mountain. Torak realizes that the prophecy's "heart's blood" means Wolf, and as Wolf carries off the Nanuak, Hord and the bear are engulfed by an ensuing avalanche, and fall down the mountain. Torak escapes from under his hiding place and looks for Wolf, but he only hears his howl in the distance, along with the howls of other wolves. Torak howls to Wolf, promising that he will one day return for him, before turning to head back into the forest.
6812182	/m/0gq57f	El árbol de la ciencia	Pío Baroja	1911	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The first part of the novel deals with the life of the medicine student Andrés Hurtado. Through his family, teachers, classmates and diverse friends, Baroja draws a merciless painting of the bourgeois and proletarian 19th century inhabitants of Madrid. The second half of the novel tells the stay of Hurtado (now a doctor) in Alcolea, a fictitious town in Castilla-La Mancha (where the author shows the dreadful conditions the peasant had to endure such as caciquism, ignorance, apathy or resignation), his return to Madrid (where he works as a hygiene doctor &mdash; emphasizing the description that Baroja makes of prostitution in the 19th century Madrid) and, finally, his unfortunate marriage to Lulú, a young woman he met when he was a student. IV is in direct dialogue (it is totally different from the rest of the novel in which third-person narration is predominant) and contrasts the English pragmatism (supported by Doctor Iturrioz) to the German idealism that Andrés Hurtado defends. ca:El árbol de la ciencia es:El árbol de la ciencia eo:La arbo de la sciado (romano) eu:Jakintzaren arbola
6812955	/m/0gq6hh	Dead Boys	Richard Calder	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 1 - STRANGE BOYS Doll-junky Ignatz Zwakh lives in the Mut Mee guesthouse in Nongkai. He has preserved the excised womb and matrix of his dead lover Primavera, and gets high injecting himself with Lilim junk... The future: the dolls have evolved into the Meta: female Lilim who infect human males, and Elohim dead boys who keep the Lilim numbers under control. Elohim Inquisitor Dagon, armed with his gamekeeper gun, wants to hunt down traitoress Vanity St.Viridiana who has turned catgirl and is heading to Mars where she is offered sanctuary. Instead the governess sends Dagon on a mission to track down an information broker who sold Vanity a virus... Ignatz is proposition by human prostitute Phin but turns her down. Ignatz finds a ball of paper in the jar containing Primavera's pickled uterus: a message from his daughter in the future, sent back in time through the quantum magic of the Lilim. Having been infected by Primavera Ignatz will infect whatever woman he sleeps with the doll plague, and his daughters message tells him who he has to infect. Fearing that Primavera's nanomachine infection has driven him mad Ignatz seeks help from Dr International, who examines him... 2 - STRANGE GIRLS Ignatz' daughter Vanity has defected to Paris, Mars. Since Ignatz time the Martian diplomats have been responsible for banning the killing of Lillim by 'slink-riving' (impaling through the vagina). Mars is off-limits to human terrestrials and Elohim. Mutagenic rain soaked up by the early Mars colonists has rendered the Martians immune to Lilim doll plague infection. By this time Ignatz has died and Vanity wears Primavera's fossilized womb as an amulet. By the time of Vanity's generation the quantum magic is no longer strong in the Lilim. Vanity meets her new social worker Sabine before going to La Sucette bar where she has oral sex with a Martian called Tintin, fantasising she is being executed in the old belly spike manner by Dagon. Frustrated, Vanity sends instructions back to Ignatz... 3 - STRANGE SEX Ignatz wakes from his stupor, finding Dr International has tried to drug him to steal the sexstuff from Primavera's womb. Later Ignatz gives a present of a sentient phallus called Mr Rochester to Phin's grandmother, as he intends to infect her with the doll plague the next day. Back at the hotel he once again gets high on Primavera's womb... Inquisitor Dagon is in Paris, Mars, tracking down Vanity. Entering her abode he causes one catgirl Lilim to spontaneously die from Black Orgasm, executes another with his gamekeeper, before giving in to his marauder urges with a third, killing her by eating her ovaries from her living womb. Vanity arrives back at her apartment and Dagon captures her, rendering her unconscious. Ignatz beings to sense the Meta reaching back through time and changing reality, creating a new past where the Lilim were created by the Nazis converting Jews into cyborg weapons. Ignatz meets Phin and barters with her a price to let him get her pregnant. Ignatz features begin to take on an Elohim aspect... 4 - STRANGE GRACE Dagon has taken Vanity back to Bangkok, Earth, and reveals the history that the Meta (the god-like descendent of the self-replicating nanoware that was the seed of the dolls) is overwriting... ...how the Human Front government was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup, with Queen Titania leading a new age of human/doll co-existence, with the Elohim inheriting the ability to trigger the death-wish of the Lilim, and thus keep them from overrunning the humans they need to replicate and survive as a species. Back then Dagon had still been known as Ignatz Zwakh, and following Primavera's death he was summoned by Titania to return to England. Over time Ignatz turns fully into Elohim. Later Titania is arrested by the presidium and executed. Ignatz is tutored by Mephisto in the ziggurat that has grown from the Seven Stars, where Lilim desire death and Elohim desire murder. Phin has also moved to London, where she begins transforming into a Lilim. Ignatz/Dagon is expelled for slink-riving a Lilim in violation of the Martian treaty and is sent to Bangkock, where he is reunited with Phin, now transformed into Vanity, before she flees to Mars... Back in Dagon's present the condemned Vanity begs Dagon to kill her, and begins to fellate him... ...as back in Ignatz's present Phin breaks off from the same act in disgust at Ignatz's Meta-infected semen and leaves. 5 - STRANGE TIMES Having failed to get Phin pregnant Ignatz leaves the Mut Mee, tying Primavera's womb around his neck as an amulet. Ignatz goes to the Wat Khek datamart to look up Dagon, and finds his history changing: Dagon/Ignatz is now born Gabriel Strange 100 years earlier, with Primavera his sister...aliens from Mars make contact with Earth in the nineteenth century fuelling a technical revolution...Dagon slaughters numerous Lilim in the ziggurat before being captured...in 1978 Dagon is sentenced to 15 years years in a virtual prison in Nongkai, Thailand... 6 - STRANGE BEAUTY Ignatz meets pornomarketeer O'Sullivan, who gives him an erotic magazine. Through the magazine Ignatz and Vanity communicate, exchanging sexual fantasies. Ignatz goes to a bar, and finds himself transformed... ...into Dagon, where he has been released from his virtual imprisonment where he had dreamed his life as Ignatz. Dagon joins Mephisto on the spaceship Sardanapalus, where their mission is to fly through the green sun that is all that will be left of meta superfemininity. In doing so Dagon travels through a closed time-loop back to where he started... 7 - STRANGE GENETALIA Ignatz visits a virtual masseuse, where he dreams of a pastoral existence with Primavera. As Meta infects the universe Ignatz realises that when he returns to reality it will be just as fictitious. Dagon hunts Vanity through a multiverse of realities...
6813853	/m/0gq83x	Seemanto-heera	Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Unlike most of the novels featuring Byomkesh, this one does not involve any violent crime or major plot twists. The story revolves around the theft of a priceless heirloom, the Seemanto-heera or "Frontier Diamond", belonging to the heir of the Roy clan, one of the minor rulers of North Bengal. Byomkesh and Ajit have been invited by the current heir, a young Rai Bahadur Tridibendra Narayan Roy to recover the diamond. The diamond had been in the possession of the ruler for generations and a legend had been built around it. According to the legend, if the diamond were to ever be lost, then the line of succession would end. Tridibendran was the sole heir of his line according to the rules of succession where only the eldest son became ruler, but he did have an uncle, Sir Digindra Narayan Roy who was the younger brother of his father. Sir Roy was an established painter and sculptor who worked with mixed media such as plaster of paris. Sir Roy received a lavish monthly pension but since he wasn't heir-apparent, he did not get possession of the diamond. Consumed by greed, he did steal it while the diamond was on display in Calcutta and he replaced it with a fake that looked exactly the same to the untrained eye. He then notified his nephew that he had taken the diamond. Tridibendra had sought the services of Byomkesh and Ajit to recover the diamond but also requested the utmost secrecy, since he didn't want the press to get wind of this loss. Byomkesh and Ajit returned to Calcutta and checked Sir Roy's house in Ballygunge. The house was very well protected by high walls and a number of guards. Both Ajit and Byomkesh then applied for the post of a secretary to Sir Roy but were detected by the latter and thoroughly humiliated. Not one to lose heart, Byomkesh still boasted that he would find and recover the diamond by the end of the week to which the arrogant Sir Roy took immediate offence. Sir Roy then offered to let him search the house for seven days because he was so confident it wouldn't be discovered. Byomkesh immediately took up the challenge because he realized that this might be the only chance to examine the house and he had already inferred that Sir Roy had hidden it there. Searching for the diamond turned out to be an aruduous task with the work been made even harder by the constant scorn of Sir Roy. Byomkesh could not find anything but he did notice that there were quite a few plaster sculptures including various figurines of Nataraj of different sizes. One was placed on a table in the living room and Byomkesh noticed that Sir Roy stared at the table often though the other items on the table were inconspicuous. Byomkesh asked if he could have the small Nataraj figurine to which Sir Roy said he could, but he also said that this was a priceless work-of-art that had been exhibited at the Louvre and he didn't want Byomkesh to break it because there was nothing hidden inside. Byomkesh took the figurine home but he was disheartened that his major line of enquiry had been busted. Almost casually, he put his initials on the bottom of the figurine. The next day's search seemed to be friutless as well. When he came home though while staring at the figurine, he noticed that the initials were gone and he immediately came to the conclusion that the figurine had been exchanged while he was away. So he had the diamond in his possession for an entire day without being aware of it! He returned to Sir Roy's house and used a sleight-of-hand to replace the figurine with his initials with the one it had been replaced by at his home. He returned the figurine to Tridibendra and when they broke the figurine, they found the diamond inside.
6815903	/m/0gqf1s	The Little House	Virginia Lee Burton		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story centers on a house built at the top of a small hill, far out in the country. Her builder decrees that she "may never be sold for gold or silver" but is built sturdy enough to one day see his great-great-grandchildren's great-great-grandchildren living in her. The house watches the seasons pass, and wonders about the lights of the city, which grow ever closer. Eventually a road is built in front of the house. This is followed by roadside stands, gas stations, and more little houses. Next, the small houses are replaced by tenements and apartments. Streetcars, an elevated railroad, and a subway appear to surround the house. Finally, two gigantic skyscrapers are built—one on each side; now living in the city, the house is sad because she misses being on the small hill in the countryside and that her exterior looks shabby due to no one living in her and the city's environment. One day the great-great-granddaughter of the builder sees the house and remembers stories that her grandmother told about living in just such a house, albeit far out in the country. When the great-great-granddaughter discovers that it is the same house, she arranges to have her moved out of the city, to a hill in the country where she can once again watch the seasons pass and live happily ever after.
6821191	/m/0gqq4k	The Return of Conan	Björn Nyberg		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the kingdom of Aquilonia, a year of peace for King Conan and his new queen Zenobia is broken when the latter is abducted by a demon. Conan learns from the wizard Pelias of Koth that the eastern sorcerer Yah Chieng of Khitai is responsible, and begins a quest to recover her, little realizing that the fate of the world as well as Aquilonia rests on the outcome of the contest. Chronologically, The Return of Conan falls between Howard's novel The Hour of the Dragon (also known as Conan the Conqueror), and the four short stories collected as Conan of Aquilonia. In the both hardcover Gnome Press edition and the paperback Lancer/Ace edition of the Conan stories, The Return of Conan follows Robert E. Howard's novel Conan the Conqueror; it is the final volume chronologically in the Gnome edition (though one additional volume, Tales of Conan, contains stories issued out of sequence), while in the Lancer/Ace edition it is followed by the short stories collected as Conan of Aquilonia.
6821554	/m/0gqqp7	Genus Homo	P. Schuyler Miller	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A bus is trapped in the cave-in of a tunnel, and its passengers are preserved for millennia in a state of suspended animation. When their vehicle is ultimately uncovered they awaken to a future in which humankind has vanished from the face of the earth, and gorillas have evolved to intelligence and become the dominant species. The preserved humans must now adjust to a world in which they have become obsolete.
6822288	/m/0gqrw6	Staying On	Paul Scott	1977		 Staying On focuses on Tusker and Lucy Smalley, who are briefly mentioned in the latter two books of the Raj Quartet, The Towers of Silence and A Division of the Spoils, and are the last British couple living in the small hill town of Pankot after Indian independence. Tusker had risen to the rank of colonel in the British Indian Army, but on his retirement had entered the world of commerce as a ‘box wallah’, and the couple had moved elsewhere in India. However, they had returned to Pankot to take up residence in the Lodge, an annex to Smith’s Hotel. This, formerly the town’s principal hotel, was now symbolically overshadowed by the brash new Shiraz Hotel, erected by a consortium of Indian businessmen from the nearby city of Ranpur. We learn about life as an expat in Pankot principally by listening to Lucy’s ponderings, for it is she who is the loquacious one, in contrast to Tusker’s pathological reticence. He talks in clipped verbless telegraphese, often limiting his utterances to a single "Ha!". He has been purposeless since being obliged to retire, and it is left to Lucy to make sense of the world herself. It is a sad story of frustration that she recounts to herself. She remembers how the young Captain Smalley came back to London on leave in 1930, visited his bank, where she, a vicar’s daughter, worked, and tentatively asked her out. She was swept off her feet by the thought of marrying an army officer and dreamt of a glamorous wedding with his fellow officers making an arch with their swords, but life turned out very differently. His job was dull administration, and his early attentiveness in bed rapidly waned. He prohibited her from fulfilling herself by taking part in amateur dramatics. Not only this, but she ranked fairly low in the social pecking order among the white women in Pankot and suffered numerous indignities. A symbol of this retrospection is that their preferred conveyance is the tonga, a horse-drawn carriage in which they choose to sit facing backwards, "looking back at what we’re leaving behind". It falls to Lucy to navigate a path between her husband’s obstinacy and obtuseness and the increasingly pressing demands of India’s slow transition to modernity. The question of who pays the gardener, for example, requires the skilful management of human relationships. She also tries to maintain some continuity in her life, through correspondence with her old acquaintances (characters in the Raj Quartet), such as Sarah Layton, who have moved back to England. It is clear she blames Tusker for insisting on ‘staying on’—at one point they could have retired comfortably to England, but he has been reckless ("nothing goes quicker than hundred rupee notes"), and now she has no idea if they could afford it. She entreats him to tell her how she would stand financially if he were to die. At long last, he writes her a letter, setting out their finances and also remarking that she had been "a good woman" to him. But he also tells her not to ask him about it, as he is incapable of discussing it face to face: "If you do I’ll only say something that will hurt you". Nevertheless, she treasures this, the only love letter she has ever received. Meanwhile we see the new India that is replacing the British Raj, symbolised by Mrs Lila Bhoolabhoy, the temperamental and overweight owner of Smith’s Hotel, and her much put upon husband and hotel manager, who is Tusker’s drinking companion. The richly humorous context includes the engagement of servants, the railway service, poached eggs, hairdressing and the church organ. The intimate relationship between the Smalleys' servant Ibrahim and Mrs Bhoolabhoy's maid Minnie adds an "Upstairs, Downstairs" aspect. Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s greed induces her to trade her ownership of the now shabby Smith’s hotel for a share in the competing consortium. She instructs Mr Bhoolabhoy to issue the Smalleys with a notice to quit the Lodge. On receipt of this letter, Tusker flies into an impotent rage and drops dead of a heart attack. Lucy is downcast and puts on a brave face as she prepares for the funeral and a solitary life. But, at last, she is free to return to England. She will be able to scrape by on her £1,500 a year. She is a survivor, because she can adapt, as is shown by the fact that, at the last moment, she breaks a previously upheld taboo and invites her hairdresser, Susy, who is of mixed race, to dinner.
6824674	/m/0gr0g5	St. Ronan's Well	Walter Scott	1823-12-27		 Valentine Bulmer and his half-brother Francis Tyrrel had been Mrs Dod's guests at Cleikum Inn when they were students from Edinburgh, and she gladly welcomed Francis when he arrived, some years afterwards, to stay at the inn again, to fish and sketch in the neighbourhood. A mineral spring had in the meantime been discovered at St Ronan's, and he was invited by the fashionable visitors to dine with them at the Fox Hotel, where he quarrelled with an English baronet named Sir Bingo Binks. On his way back to the Cleikum, he met Clara Mowbray, to whom he had been secretly engaged during his former visit; he had been prevented from marrying her by the treachery of Bulmer, who had now succeeded to the earldom, and was expected at the spa. Tyrrel was visited by Captain MacTurk, and accepted a challenge from the baronet, but failed to keep his appointment, and was posted as an adventurer by the committee of management. He also disappeared from the inn, leading his hostess to consult Mr Bindloose, the sheriff's clerk, under the belief that he had been murdered. A Mr Touchwood came to change a bill, and talked of having been abroad for many years. He showed great interest in the affairs of the Mowbray family, and, having taken up his quarters at the Cleikum, made friends with Rev Mr Cargill, who had been disappointed in love, and startled him with a rumour that Clara was about to be married. Soon after the earl's arrival, it was reported that he had been shot in the arm by a foot-pad; and, while his wound was healing, he spent his time gambling with John Mowbray, the young laird of St Ronan's, who had borrowed his sister Clara's money to try to improve his luck. Having allowed him to win a considerable sum, his lordship made proposals for Clara's hand, explaining that his grand-uncle had disinherited his only son, and devised his estate to him, on condition that he chose as a wife a lady of the name of Mowbray. In a letter to his friend Jekyl, the earl confessed that he had been winged in a duel with Tyrrel, whom he met on his way to fight Sir Bingo, and that he had also wounded Tyrrel. A few days afterwards the company at the Well assembled at Shaw's Castle to take part in a play, and Mr Touchwood persuaded Rev Mr Cargill to accompany him. While they were walking in the grounds the minister reminded Clara of a secret in his keeping, which made it impossible for her to marry. He also encountered the earl, and, believing him to be Bulmer, attempted to warn him. The next morning, as John Mowbray was endeavouring to induce Clara to consent to the marriage, he received an anonymous communication that the earl was an impostor; and, in an interview with him, she rejected his suit with loathing and scorn. His lordship then wrote to Jekyl, telling him the circumstances under which, when he was only sixteen, he had arranged with Mr Cargill for a secret marriage between her and Tyrrel; but, learning subsequently the contents of his uncle's will, had incurred their lifelong hatred by impersonating his brother at the ceremony. Tyrrel, who after the duel had gone to a nearby village to recover from his wound, reappeared just in time to rescue Mr Touchwood from drowning; and, at an interview with Jekyl, who undertook to clear his character, offered to forego his claim to the earldom, of which he had proof, if his brother would leave Clara alone. The earl sneered at the proposal, and, as he was forming fresh schemes for attaining his end, he discovered that Hannah Irwin, Clara's former companion, was dying at St Ronan's, and anxious to confess her share in the secret marriage. Solmes, the earl's valet, was instructed to carry her off, while his master got the brother into his power by ruining him at play, and then promised to cancel the debt if Clara consented to acknowledge him as her husband within four-and-twenty hours. Mowbray believed he had prevailed with his sister, when Mr Touchwood unexpectedly arrived, and announced himself as Scrogie, the disinherited son, who by bribing Solmes, and in other ways, had learnt everyone's secrets, and was ready with his fortune to arrange all their difficulties. However, Clara had escaped from her room during the night, and, after appearing at the manse to forgive her cousin, who had been confided to Mr Cargill's care, had made her way to the Cleikum, where, in a seeming trance, she had a final interview with Tyrrel, and died soon afterwards from congestion of the brain. Mowbray, meanwhile, in his search for her, encountered the earl and his companions engaged in a shooting match, and killed him in a duel arranged on the spot by Captain MacTurk, with whom he fled to the Continent to escape imprisonment. Mr Touchwood had consequently to seek some other outlet for his wealth, and the Etherington estates were never claimed by the rightful heir, who determined to pass the remainder of his life in a Moravian mission.
6826394	/m/0gr64r	The Island of Sheep	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The action occurs some twelve years later on from the last novel, when Hannay, now in his fifties, is called by an old oath to protect the son of a man he once knew, who is also heir to the secret of a great treasure. He obtains help from Sandy Arbuthnot, now Lord Clanroyden, and Lombard. The action takes place in England, Scotland and on the Island of Sheep. This is located in what Buchan describes as 'the Norlands': clearly the Faroe Islands. There are several stereotypical villains, in particular D'Ingraville from The Courts of the Morning, and the book also focuses on Hannay's son, Peter John, now a bright but solemn teenager.
6827785	/m/0gr9qj	Some Buried Caesar	Rex Stout	1939-02-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Wolfe and Archie are on their way to show orchids at an upstate exposition when a tire blows and their car crashes into a tree. Uninjured, they notice a house across a large pasture and decide to walk there, to phone for help. On their way across the pasture, they are threatened by a large bull. Archie runs for the fence to divert the bull, giving Wolfe time to climb to safety atop a large boulder. Wolfe is subsequently retrieved by car. Wolfe and Archie get a lift to the house, where lives Thomas Pratt, the owner of a large chain of fast-food restaurants. Pratt plans to barbecue a champion Guernsey named Caesar, the very bull that threatened Wolfe and Archie, a few days later. The idea is to get publicity for Pratt's restaurants by serving beef from a bull that has been purchased for the then-fantastic price of $45,000. The plan has outraged the members of the Guernsey League, who are in town for the exposition. Clyde Osgood, son of a despised neighbor, shows up and offers to bet Pratt $10,000 that Pratt will not barbecue Caesar. Pratt accepts the bet, and Wolfe offers Archie's services in exchange for a comfortable stay at Pratt's house: Archie will help guard the bull from possible theft. During his watch that night, Archie discovers Clyde's body, gored to death in the pasture. The bull is using its horns to push at the corpse. Everyone involved assumes that the bull killed Clyde, but Wolfe thinks not.
6829111	/m/0grd2t	Palace Walk	Naguib Mahfouz	1956	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad is the tyrannical head of his household, demanding total, unquestioning obedience from his wife, Amina, his sons, Yasin, Fahmy and Kamal, and his daughters, Khadija and Aisha. A fearsome and occasionally violent presence at home who insists on strict rules of Muslim piety and sobriety in the house—for example, his wife is hardly ever allowed to leave the house, to maintain the family's good name—al-Sayyid Ahmad permits himself officially forbidden pleasures, particularly music, drinking wine and conducting numerous extramarital affairs with women he meets at his grocery store, or with courtesans who entertain parties of men at their houses with music and dancing. Because of his insistence on his household authority, his wife and children are forbidden from questioning why he stays out late at night or comes home intoxicated. Yasin, the eldest son, is al-Sayyid Ahmad's only child by his first marriage, to a woman whose subsequent marital affairs are the source of acute embarrassment to father and son. Yasin shares his father's good looks, and, unbeknownst to al-Sayyid Ahmad, Yasin also shares his tastes for music, women and alcohol, and spends as much time and money as he can afford on fine clothes, drink and prostitutes. Fahmy, Amina's elder son, is a serious and intelligent law student, who is heavily involved in the nationalist movement against the British occupation; he also pines for his neighbor, Maryam, but cannot bring himself to take any action. Khadija, the elder daughter, is sharp-tongued, opinionated, and jealous of her sister Aisha, who is considered to be the more beautiful and marriageable. Aisha, meanwhile, is more mellow and conciliatory, and tries to maintain peace. Kamal, the baby of the family, is a bright young boy who frightens his family by befriending the British soldiers who have set up an encampment across the street from the Abd al-Jawad house; he is also very close with his mother and his sisters, and is deeply dismayed when the prospect of marriage for the girls arises. Major elements of the plot include al-Sayyid Ahmad's philandering, Yasin's cultivation of the same hobbies, Fahmy's refusal to cease his political activities despite his father's order, and the day-to-day stresses of living in the Abd al-Jawad house, in which the wife and children must delicately negotiate certain issues of sexual chastity and comportment that cannot be discussed openly. Through the novel, Yasin and Fahmy gradually become aware of the exact nature of their father's nighttime activities, largely because Yasin begins an affair with a young courtesan who works in the same house as al-Sayyid Ahmad's lover. After glimpsing his father playing the tambourine at a gathering in the house Yasin understands where his father goes at night, and is pleased to find that they have similar interests. Amina, meanwhile, has long ago guessed her husband's predilections, but represses her resentment and grief so intensely that she behaves almost willfully ignorant of the whole matter. The family provides the novel with its structure, since the plot is concerned with the lives and interrelationships of its members. However, the story is not set in isolation; indeed, the characters themselves are important mediators between issues of local or wider scope. For example, the theme of 'authority' (particularly its establishment and subversion) is woven into both the maturation of the children of the al-Jawad family and the wider political circumstances which provide the novel with its temporal boundaries. The novel's opening chapters focus upon the daily routine of the al-Jawad family. Amina, the mother of the family, greets the return of her husband, al-Sayyid Ahmad, from his late-night socialising. She rises once again at dawn to begin preparing food, assisted by her daughters Khadija and Aisha. Her sons join their father for breakfast. At this meal, as with any other dealing with the patriarch, strict etiquette is observed. Subsequent chapters proceed to explore the characters of family members, particularly their relationships with one another. The marriage of the children provides a key focus, as do challenges to the supreme authority of the family's patriarch.
6829682	/m/0grf4l	You Suck: A Love Story	Christopher Moore	2007-01-16	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The story of You Suck continues directly from the previous novel, Bloodsucking Fiends. Jody, one of the mature suckers and newly minted vampire, has remained in San Francisco despite her promise to the police to move away after the previous incidents. Tommy, her boyfriend, is shocked at the beginning of the sequel to discover that Jody has "turned" him (i.e., made him a vampire)—hence the title of the novel, although she explains that she did it so that they could be together forever. They struggle to survive and to maintain their relationship despite the efforts of others to eliminate them..
6830322	/m/0grg5w	Less than Angels	Barbara Pym		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Catherine Oliphant is a young writer, who lives with anthropologist Tom Mallow. Tom begins a romance with a student, Deirdre Swann, and his relationship with Catherine fizzles out. At the same time, she becomes interested in reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate, who has recently returned from Africa. A hilarious sub-plot involves the activities of Deirdre's fellow-students Mark and Digby, and their attempts to curry favour with influential academics. Tom departs for Africa, where he is killed during a time of political unrest. Deirdre begins to return Digby's fondness for her, and Catherine seems about to begin a relationship with Alaric.
6830804	/m/0grgxq	Down in the Bottomlands	Harry Turtledove		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns a field biologist working at "Trench Park" named Radnal vez Krobir. He is a citizen of Tartesh, a Homo neanderthalensis nation which seems to take in much of the west part of the Bottomlands and what in the real world is France and Spain. He is doing a two-year stint as a field guide to tourists from his and other nations who are visiting the Park to see the plants and animals there. During one of those tours, a military officer of the "Kingdom of Morgaf" (real-world Britain and Ireland) is killed by one of the other tourists in his party. Radnal must call higher authorities to investigate the matter, and in the course of their investigation, they determine that the deceased man had a microprint in his effects outlining a plot by another nation to set off a "starbomb" (nuclear weapon) near the "Barrier Mountains" (a range of mountains joining the Sierra Nevada (Spain) and the Rif across where the real-world Strait of Gibraltar is), thereby setting off one of the many geologic faults in the area, knocking a gap in the mountains, and reflooding the Bottomlands to form a new central sea, instigated apparently by Krepalga (a Homo sapiens nation occupying all or part of the Middle East, which would have benefited by having a real-world-type Mediterranean Sea up to its west border). Radnal and other characters eventually find who killed the Morgaffo officer and with the unwitting help of a koprit bird (similar to a shrike) native to the Park, track down the location of the bomb, where it is defused. Koprit birds apparently have a habit of stealing bright shiny things; it stole the detonator wire from the bomb and used it to decorate its food-hoard bush to attract a mate, as the wire had been disguised as jewelry to smuggle it in past security. The conspirators had sabotaged all the tour party's transport, leaving them stranded far below sea level on the hot dry abyssal plain. This leaves a squad of Tarteshan secret police and police and army with the job of evacuating the tour party, by giving each member a big backpack tank of drinking water and marching them out; partway up to sea level a helicopter finds them and flies the party the rest of the way. (The author realises that in such an ordeal, people cannot live on such small rations as a capful per day from a water bottle, as too often found in stories and in attempted survival in the real world.) The story ends with Radnal being honored by his fellow subjects of the "Hereditary Tyrant" (i.e., King) of Tartesh at a great festival in Tartesh's capital Tarteshem, for saving the Bottomlands from certain destruction where he meets again a woman named Toglo vez Pamdal, who was in his tour party. She had told him she was a "distant collateral relative" of the Hereditary Tyrant but it turns out is actually his niece. They shake hands at the story's conclusion and presumably begin a romantic relationship. The story is told from Radnal's point of view and we see him describe Trench Park and its animals and plants to the tourists. Through these descriptions, we come to understand the unique geography and ecosystem contained within the Bottomlands and its Trench and how animals and plants would have adapted to a desert environment two kilometers below average sea level. We also see how the geography of the area would have been different from our timeline, including things like deep river canyons as the rivers around the Mediterranean would have incised such canyons in their descent down the old continental shelf; hydroelectric dams on such rivers generated 80% of Tartesh's electricity. The novella first saw print in January 1993 in Analog magazine and has been reprinted twice since then, once in 1997 in The New Hugo Award Winners, Volume IV and then again in 1999 with a couple of other novellas in a book called Down in the Bottomlands. The edition Down in the Bottomlands and Other Places (ISBN 0-671-57835-9) has on its front cover a color picture of the finding of the bomb's wires - with one error: the artist drew all the human characters with Homo sapiens chins, but he got their Homo neanderthalensis heavy brow ridges correct.
6832753	/m/0grm17	Belle-Belle ou Le Chevalier Fortuné				 A king, driven from his capital by an emperor, was forming an army and demanded that one person from every noble household become a soldier or, face a heavy fine. An impoverished nobleman, too old to serve himself, with three daughters was distressed by this news. His oldest daughter offered to go and was equipped. She told a shepherdess whose sheep were in the ditch, that she pitied her. The shepherdess thanked the daughter calling her a "beautiful girl." Ashamed that she could be recognized so easily, the oldest daughter went home. The second daughter also set out. She scorned the shepherdess for her folly, but the shepherdess bid farewell to the "lovely girl." The second daughter also returned home. The youngest, Belle-Belle, set out. She helped the shepherdess. The shepherdess, a fairy, told her that she had punished her sisters for their lack of helpfulness and stopped them from their mission. She gave Belle-Belle a new horse and equipment, including a magical chest that would appear and disappear. The horse would be able to advise her. The fairy told the girl to call herself Fortuné. The youngest daughter, now called Fortune, set out and reached a city. There she wanted to send gold back from the chest, but when she discovered that she had lost the key, the horse told her how to open the chest. She sent back gold and jewels, but as soon as her sisters touched some, the jewels became glass and the gold turned into counterfeit coins; they told their father to keep the rest safe. Fortuné went to join the king. At the horse's advice, she met a woodcutter who cut down an enormous number of trees, and took him into her service. Then she did the same with a man who tied up one foot to hunt, so there would be some chance of his prey escaping, then a man who put a bandage over his eyes so that he would not shoot everything, a man who could hear everything on the earth, a man who blew hard enough to move windmills (and if he stood too close, knock them over), a man who could drink a lake, and a man who could eat an enormous amount of bread. She asked them to keep their abilities secret. Fortune met the king and queen-dowager, his sister-in-law, who made her welcome. The queen found the knight attractive, and Fortuné found the king attractive. Many ladies also paid her attentions, greatly to her embarrassment. A lady-in-waiting, Florida, whom the queen sent to woo the knight on her behalf, was so in love with Fortuné that she defamed the queen instead. The queen managed to question Fortuné and learn that "he" was not in love, though he sang love songs after the custom of the land, but eventually grew so displeased with his refusal that when news of a dragon came, she told the king that Fortuné had begged leave to be dispatched against it. When the king summoned him, rather than denounce the queen, Fortuné went. The man with the super hearing, heard the dragon coming. At the horse's advice, he had the drinker drink a lake, the strong woodcutter fill it with wine and spices that would make the dragon thirsty, and had all the peasants hide in their houses. The dragon drank and grew drunk. Fortuné attacked and killed it. The king was pleased, but the queen was still displeased with Fortuné. She told the king that he had said he could win back the treasure that the emperor had taken, without any army. Fortuné went with his men, and the emperor said he could have back the treasure only if one man could eat up all the fresh bread in the city. The glutton ate it all. The emperor added that one man must drain all the fountains, reservoirs, and aqueducts, and all the wine-cellars. The drinker did so. The emperor's daughter suggested a race against her, and shared with the fleet-footed hunter the cordial she used, but it put him to sleep. The man who could hear heard him snoring; the sharp-eyed man shot and waked him, and he won the race. The emperor said he could carry away only what one man could carry, and the strong woodcutter carried off everything he owned. They came to a river while they were leaving, the drinker drank it so they could pass. The emperor sent men after them, but the man who powered windmills sanks their boats. The servants began to quarrel over their reward, but Fortuné declared that the king would decide their reward, and they submitted themselves to him. The king was pleased. The queen made an open declaration to Fortuné. When Fortuné refused her, she attacked him and herself and called for help, saying that he had attacked her and her injuries stemmed from her resistance. Fortuné was sentenced to be stabbed to death, but taking off the clothing revealed that she was a woman. The king married her.
6833817	/m/0grnq0	Death In Winter	Michael Jan Friedman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is the first novel featuring Capt. Jean-Luc Picard to be set after Star Trek Nemesis. The plot concerns an attempt to stop a plague on a Romulan colony called Kevratas, and the relationship between Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher. It also describes Dr. Crusher's first encounter of a similar plague as a teenager on the colony of Arvada III. A faction of the Romulan Star Empire wishes to keep the plague alive in an attempt to undermine newly appointed Romulan Praetor Tal'aura. Picard will be faced with working alongside allies new and old, as well as an enemy from the past who has a way of turning up when Picard least expects. This book also includes characters Doctor Carter Greyhorse, a scientist whose past has landed him in a penal colony, along with Pug Joseph, a former member of Starfleet turned merchant, both of whom served with Picard aboard the USS Stargazer.
6833875	/m/0grnw5	The Black Unicorn	Terry Brooks	1987-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ben Holiday, court magician Questor Thews and the sylph Willow each have a vivid, prophetic dream. Ben dreams that Miles Bennett, his former law partner back in Chicago is in trouble. Questor dreams of the location of two ancient books of magic, and Willow dreams of a black unicorn containing great power, and a golden bridle that can harness the animal. Only the half-dog court scribe Abernathy voices his misgivings about the dreams. Upon returning to the old world, Ben discovers that Miles is fine. Suspicious, he hurries back to Landover. Unbeknownst to him, Meeks (the evil wizard that originally sent Ben into Landover) has stowed away in Ben's clothing using his magic, returning as well. At the castle, Ben finds that Questor has found the books of magic, though they seem useless. One is filled with illustrations of unicorns, and the other appears burned from the inside. Willow is still missing. That night, Ben is attacked by Meeks. The old wizard casts a glamour over each of them, so that Meeks appears as Ben and Ben appears as a common peasant. Failing to recognize his true identity and thinking him an intruder, Questor has Ben thrown out of the castle. Ben searches for Willow, hoping to convince her of his identity and prevent her from delivering the bridle to Meeks. Along the way he encounters Edgewood Dirk, a prism cat from the fairy world. Dirk is able to recognize Ben as the High King, and taunts him for his inability to overcome his situation. Ben is able to arrange a meeting Willow's father, the River Master, who fails in an attempt to capture the Black Unicorn and keep it as his own. Later, Ben encounters the Earth Mother, who tells them that Willow has gone to the Deep Fell to retrieve the golden bridle from the witch Nightshade. Unsure if the witch has returned to the Deep Fell since their last encounter, Ben enlists the help of the G’home Gnomes, Filip and Sot, to investigate. They find that she has indeed returned and are apprehended. Nightshade reveals that she is no longer in possession of the bridle, it having been stolen by the dragon Strabo some time ago. Seeing an opportunity to regain the bridle from the dragon, Nightshade transports herself and her captives to Strabo's lair. Meanwhile, Questor and Abernathy have been evicted from the castle for failing to capture the black unicorn. They make their way to Strabo's lair, seeking the dragon's help in determining the nature of the black unicorn. Nightshade and her prisoners appear, and Strabo admits that he has already given up the bridle to Willow for the price of a song. This infuriates Nightshade, and the meeting devolves into a furious battle between dragon and witch, while Ben and company escape. Ben is finally able to convince his friends of his identity, and they eventually come across Willow, who has harnessed the black unicorn in a small meadow. Meeks arrives, still in disguise, and tries to persuade a confused Willow into bringing the unicorn to him instead of the true king. Edgewood Dirk enters into the confusion, prompting Meeks to launch an explosive attack against the Prism Cat. Willow mounts the black unicorn and flees, while the firefight turns the meadow into a scorched battlefield and scatters the party. Abernathy, Questor, and Willow are captured by Meeks and his army of imps. Alone, Ben and Edgwood Dirk have one last cryptic conversation, and the cat disappears. Thinking on the cats’ words, Ben acknowledges his love for Willow, and finds that he can break Meek's spell by conquering his self-deception. Ben summons the Paladin, who charges off to rescue Willow. As the Paladin battles with skeletal creatures summoned by Meeks, Abernathy bites the wizard in the leg, making him drop the books of magic. Streaking through the air, the black unicorn rips the binding from the books, releasing a multitude of white unicorns who scatter. A brief but intense battle of magic between the unicorn and Meeks erupts, and Meeks is finally vanquished. It is revealed that the fairy world sent unicorns into various worlds to help restore peoples' faith in magic. Landover wizards from long ago captured these unicorns, imprisoning their spirits in one book and their bodies in another. Occasionally the spirit of the unicorns would break free, manifesting as the black unicorn, and the bridle was created to recapture this creature. Meeks had hidden the books before becoming exiled to Earth, and sent the dreams to set into motion events that would return possession of the books to him. In the epilogue, a white unicorn dashes down the streets of Chicago, leaving onlookers in wonder.
6833891	/m/0grnww	Magic Kingdom for Sale -- Sold!	Terry Brooks	1986-03-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel begins with Ben Holiday, a trial lawyer from Chicago, lamenting the loss of his wife and unborn child in a car accident. He finds an advertisement in an upscale Christmas catalog claiming to offer a magical kingdom for one million dollars by a man named Mr. Meeks. Although skeptical, Ben pursues the offer out of a desperate need to start a new life. Ben receives a magical medallion and is transported through a swirling mist to the kingdom of Landover. He learns that Landover is a world that connects many other worlds such as Earth. It is surrounded by the Fairy Mist wherein reside creatures of Fairy that created Landover and guard the passages to these worlds. Unfortunately, he finds it not exactly as described. He soon finds that Landover has not had a true king in twenty years. The son of the last king did not wish to take up the throne and escaped with the court wizard, Meeks, to Earth. They have been selling the throne to dozens of people in the past two decades, but no one has been able to face the challenge and successfully complete so much as a few months as king. Further, kings of Landover used to be protected by a magical knight called the Paladin, but he has not been seen since the last king's death. Further, Ben has only four loyal subjects. The court wizard is a hack named Questor Thews, who is also Meeks' half-brother. Abernathy is the court scribe, who was unfortunately transformed into a large dog by one of Questor's spells gone awry. Finally, two creatures called Kobolds, Bunion and Parsnip, serve Ben as caretakers of the castle and as protection against the wild creatures of the kingdom. Ben's coronation is barely attended, so he decides to travel the land to gain the pledges of the local rulers. He travels first to meet with the Lords of the Greensward, the most prominent landowners in the kingdom. They agree to serve Ben only on the condition that he rid them of Strabo, a dragon that ravages their countryside. Next Ben visits the River Master and the Fairy fold of Elderew, a city of outcasts from the Fairy Mists. The River Master also places conditions on his pledge, requiring Ben to stop the Lords of the Greensward from polluting their rivers. In the river country Ben stumbles upon a sylph named Willow. She is also a fairy creature who turns into a tree some evenings. She claims that the Fairies have foretold that she will marry Ben. Though he initially rebuffs her, he finds himself falling in love with her over time. Ben is entreated by Fillip and Sot, two of a race of thievish "G'Home Gnomes" to rescue some of their people from a clan of trolls. They manage to do so, but barely escape with their lives. They finally decide to ask for the help of the witch Nightshade, and travel to her home in the marshes known as the Deep Fell. She tells Ben to enter the Fairy Mists, where he may be able to obtain mind-controlling Io Powder to use on Strabo. Ben does so and endures a series of frightening trials by the Fairy creatures to obtain the powder. Emerging from the mists, he finds that Nightshade has used her magic to banish all of his companions to Abbadon, Landover's underworld. Nightshade attempts to trick Ben out of his Io Powder, but Ben uses some of the substance on the witch and sends her to an uncertain fate in the Fairy Mists. Ben travels to the Fire Springs to confront Strabo, and is surprised to find the dragon to be sentient and rather well-spoken, if still vicious. Ben uses the Io Powder on Strabo, and rides him to Abaddon to rescue his friends. He also extracts a promise from the dragon to stay out of the Greensward. Finally, Ben is challenged by the Mark, lord of Abaddon, to a duel for the throne. Ben's medallion responds during the fight and transforms Ben into the Paladin, allowing him to subdue the demon. The challenge is witnessed by the leaders from the Greensward, Elderew, and the Troll tribes, who then swear their allegiance. Ben Holiday, King of Landover, then sets about to restore Landover to its former glory.
6833926	/m/0grnxx	The Talismans of Shannara	Terry Brooks	1993-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Elves and Paranor are both now back in the Four Lands, and the former Walker Boh has inherited Allanon's powers. Moreover, the Sword of Shannara has been found. Knowing all these, Rimmer Dall decides to attempt to destroy all of The Scions of Shannara. Rimmer Dall dispatches the Four Horsemen (Famine, Pestilence, War and Death) to Paranor, sends Wren an untrue friend and wants to deceive Par Ohmsford, whose wishsong is growing steadily more uncontrollable. All the traps laid by Rimmer Dall come to fruition even before the Ohmsfords realize that all of the charges laid by the shade of Allanon have been fulfilled. The Scions struggle to control their powers: Walker Boh has problems using the knowledge and power he received, Wren Ohmsford has to gain the confidence of the Elven minister as well as the head of the Elven army, and Par Ohmsford struggles to use the Sword of Shannara. In a clash with a Shadowen, which happens to be Coll in disguise, Par Ohmsford finds out that the Sword really works and is truly the lost Sword of Shannara. During the fight, through the truth that is revealed by the Sword, Par discovers who he had really fought, and then follows Coll to help him. Together they go to Rainbow Lake and finally, with the help of the King of Silver River, Par saves his brother from Rimmer Dall, the leader of the Shadowen. However, due to back-firing of his own wishsong magic, he is left behind. Rimmer Dall imprisons Par Ohmsford at Southwatch and starts trying to break into his mind. First Trap Against Walker Boh At Paranor, Walker Boh fights the Four Horsemen, defeating all of them but losing his old friend Cogline in the fight with Death. Later, Walker dreams of Allanon, who asks him to help the Ohmsfords before they are lost. At Arborlon, Wren Ohmsford sets out to war against a Federation army. With the help of Triss and Tiger Ty, she manages to lead the Elves to a first victory, but then Creepers, who are responsible for the fall of the Dwarves, come to the aid of the Federation army. Damson Rhee, with help from Matty Roh and Morgan Leah, rescue Padishar Creel, who goes north to summon the army of the Free-born to aid the Elves in their war against the Federation. Damson Rhee, Matty Roh and Morgan Leah then travel further south in search of Par Ohmsford. At the same time Coll realizes what has happened to him and starts traveling north to Southwatch to rescue Par Ohmsford. However, he is captured by a group of slave traders. Second Trap against Wren Wren Ohmsford is deceived by Shadowen and captured to be taken to Southwatch. Morgan Leah manages to attack the wagon in which she was being carried and rescues her. On her way back to the elves she is rescued from the Shadowen by Tiger Ty and his Roc who tracked her. Tiger Ty informs Wren Ohmsford that he met Padishar Creel and the free born army were on their way to help the elves. Wren Ohmsford with Tiger Ty and Triss by her side fly south to destroy the Creepers. At Southwatch Walker Boh and Rumor, the moor cat, appears and helps Morgan Leah just as he is about to be attacked by a Shadowen patrol. Coll Ohmsford is rescued by Damson Rhee and Matty Roh from the slave traders. Coll Ohmsford, Damson Rhee and Matty Roh travel towards Southwatch to meet with Morgan Leah and rescue Par Ohmsford. At Matted Brakes, Wren Ohmsford successfully destroys Creepers with the help of Triss, Tiger Ty, Stresa and Faun. As the Elven army battles the Federation, Shadowen attack Wren Ohmsford from the deep forest and are about to kill her when Faun, the tree squeak, gives up her fears and attacks the Shadowen just to give Wren enough time to call the magic of the elf stones and burn them up. Wren discovers Faun's dead body lying among her Home Guards. On the same day Desidio is also lost. Just then, when the Elven army is almost about to lose, the Freeborn army appear out of eastland with men and Rock Trolls. Elves headed by Triss and Barsimmon Oridio, Men headed by Padishar Creel and Chandos and Trolls headed by Axhind join forces under Wren Ohmsford to attempt to crush down the Southlander army. Destruction of Southwatch Walker Boh, Coll Ohmsford, Damson Rhee, Matty Roh, Morgan Leah, and Rumor (the moor cat) journey into Southwatch, the Shadowen stronghold, from where they have been draining the Earth's magic. They rescue Par Ohmsford by help of the Sword of Shannara. Par learns that, being half elven and half Shannara, he is partially Shadowen. He finally frees "The stolen Earth Magic" which was bound by Shadowen, bringing down Rimmer Dall and other Shadowen and dark creatures of its type. Walker Boh, Par Ohmsford, Coll Ohmsford, Damson Rhee, Matty Roh, and Morgan Leah escape just before Southwatch crumbles to the ground. With the release of the Earth Magic, the lands' beauty is restored and the sickness that was destroying the land is cured. The Earth Magic kills all the Shadowen and Creepers in the Federation army which leads to victory of the elves and their allies.
6833929	/m/0grnym	The Elf Queen of Shannara	Terry Brooks	1992-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wren Elessedil, a descendant of the legendary Jerle Shannara, was charged by the shade of the Druid Allanon to travel to the distant island of Morrowindl and find the Elves to return them to the Four Lands. The catch was that not one Elf had been seen in the Four Lands for more than a hundred years. No one in the Westlands knew of them---except, finally, the Addershag, who told Wren how to locate one. Tiger Ty, the Wing Rider, carried Wren Ohmsford and her friend Garth to the only clear landing site on the island of Morrowindl, where the Elves might still exist. A Splinterscat, Stresa, and a Tree Squeak, Faun, help her reach the city of Arborlon. The island has become a prison since demons began appearing. Only the magic of the Loden keeps Arborlon safe, but its power is failing, and if the Elves are not returned to the Westland soon, they will not survive. When Wren reached the Elves, she learns of her past and discovers that she is of true Elven blood, because the current Elf Queen, Ellenroh Elessedil, is her maternal grandmother. Nine companions, Aurin Striate, an acquaintance Wren and Garth befriend on their way into the city; Triss, Captain of Home Guard; Cort and Dal, Elven Hunters; Ellenroh Elessedil, current queen of the Elves; Eowen, the queen's closest friend; Gavilan Elessedil, the queen's nephew and Wren's cousin; Wren; and Garth set out on a journey to the Westland. Ellenroh becomes fatally ill, and before she dies, she informs Wren that she is to inherit the Loden and become the Queen of the Elves after Ellenroh, though she was orphaned at birth and raised as a Rover. Upon Ellenroh's death, Eowen reveals that the demons they are trying to avoid were created as an accident by Elves. She reveals that the elves succeeded in regaining their lost magic and to protect their nation from the Federation they created an army of replica elves, but that they became addicted to the magic and transformed into the demons. Wren leads the company with the Loden, but loses all her companions to the demons, Drakuls, and the Wisteron. Only Wren and Triss, Stresa, and Faun remain when the volcano on the island of Morrowindl erupts, destroying the island. Tiger Ty gathers the small company and flees Morrowindl, where Wren restores Arborlon to its original location in the Westland.
6833948	/m/0grn_c	The Druid of Shannara	Terry Brooks	1991-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Druid of Shannara takes off where The Scions of Shannara left off focusing on the story of Walker Boh as he attempts to fulfill the task given to him by the shade of Allanon, to return the Druid castle of Paranor to the Four Lands. Left in the Hall of Kings with the Asphinx attacking, Walker fends off the poison with his magic for days whereas the Asphinx could have killed any normal mortal. Finally realizing that there is only one way out of his predicament, he breaks off his arm in terrible agony. He fights his way through the Hall of Kings amazingly finds his way to Storlock for the Gnome Healers to help him to the best of their abilities. We are told right away that Coll is still alive, and the thing Par killed was a fake. Coll is imprisoned in a prison called Southwatch and is trying to figure out a way to escape. Meanwhile, The King of the Silver River realizes the state of the Four Lands and makes a beautiful woman out of the elements surrounding him in his garden including a dove for a heart. The King tells his daughter, Quickening, of the task that she must carry out for there is trouble in a lost city to the north and the people of who to take with her. Morgan Leah returns to Culhaven to carry out a final request from his old friend Steff who met his demise in The Scions of Shannara and quickly becomes imprisoned. Rimmer Dall hears about Quickening and the rumors surrounding her appearances: that she's the daughter of The King of the Silver River and is making miracles happen. Rimmer Dall dispatches a dangerous assassin known as Pe Ell to kill her. When Quickening goes to Culhaven, she quickly restores hope in the land by bringing back the beautiful Meade Gardens. Doing this, though, takes a toll on her and she becomes weak. Quickening falls into Pe Ell's arms and asks him to find her somewhere to sleep. Pe Ell does so, but doesn't kill her because he is attracted to her. After Quickening recovers she requests Pe Ell to break Morgan Leah out of prison, and he does so, reluctantly. Morgan Leah is also attracted to Quickening and both he and Pe Ell agree to go on a journey with her. Morgan Leah because of his instant emotional attraction and Pe Ell because he wants to find out what makes her so special. The three set off to go find Walker Boh. While this is happening, Walker had returned home under the care of Cogline. Walker, still very weak, lays in bed as Cogline tries to coax Walker to get up and think positively. Rimmer Dall with a handful of Shadowen confront Cogline, bound to take out the last of the messengers of the druids. Cogline knew this was coming after hearing from Allanon and grabbed the Druid Histories before he and Rumor got killed. Finally, Quickening reaches Walker Boh and heals him the best she can, though his arm is still missing. She takes the party north the travel with her to get the black elfstone and in return Morgan will get his sword back, Pe Ell will get what he wants, and Walker Boh will become whole. They travel north and meet Horner Dees who is the only known survivor to ever go into Eldwist, an ancient city turned completely to stone and had no intentions of ever going back, though is soon persuaded. They finally make it to Eldwist and confront Uhl Belk, a brother of The King of the Silver River and been there just as long. Days go by avoiding a creeper called The Rake, and the Maw Grint, the child of the Stone King, which is in the form of a gigantic worm like creature that turns to stone everything in his path. Finally they were able to trick him into letting go of the black elfstone and as soon as this happens Pe Ell takes off with Quickening as a hostage. Confronted by Walker, Dees, and Morgan, Pe Ell stabs Quickening, though it appears that Quickening actually pushes herself against Pe Ell's magical blade, thus taking from Pe Ell the choice of killing her. Surprised, confused and enraged, Pe Ell flees. He doesn't get far before he dies in consequence of having killed Quickening, apparently from some kind of retaliatory magic which Walker suggests might have been placed on Quickening by the King of the Silver River to avenge her death. Walker Boh, Morgan Leah, and Horner Dees take Quickening out of the city and up to the cliffs above Eldwist. Quickening bids farewell to Morgan and the others. She tells Morgan to sheath the broken Sword of Leah in the earth. Quickening then calls for Walker, who takes her to the edge of the cliff. Using her magic, she communicates to Walker the purpose for her existence, which is to restore Eldwist, freeing it from its stone shell. At Quickening's request, Walker releases her, and she falls from the cliff and disintegrates. The dust of Quickening's body settles over Eldwist, and plant life spontaneously grows, quickly covering the whole peninsula, leaving the only visible stone the domed building wherein Uhl Belk resides. The three of them leave, all taking different paths. Horner goes home, Morgan leaves to find Par, and Walker leaves to recover lost Paranor. Also mentioned briefly in the book, Wren journeys with Garth to the village of Grimpen Ward in the Wilderun to seek out a seer called the Addershag, hoping to learn the fate of the Elves. Wren is told by the Addershag to go south to the Blue Divide and light a fire for three days above the caves of the Rocs. Wren and Garth escape Grimpen Ward, chased by the men who have been keeping the Addershag as a prisoner.
6833998	/m/0grp35	A Knight of the Word	Terry Brooks	1998-07-28	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 John Ross, having failed on a mission from the Word in which fourteen school children were killed in San Sobel, California, tries to leave his life as a Knight of the Word behind him. He returns to the Fairy Glen in Wales to tender his resignation to the Lady, but she refuses to appear to him; instead, he meets the ghost of his ancestor, Owain Glyndŵr, who tells him that the decision to give up being a Knight is not his to make. Frustrated, John returns to America, where in Boston he meets and instantly falls in love with the beautiful Stefanie, who seems to amply reciprocate his feelings. Deliriously happy, he embarks together with her on a long trek across the United States, culminating with both of them finding work at a homeless center in Seattle. Feeling that he has found a very satisfactory new life, with a loving woman at his side and a demanding job helping an important social cause in cooperation with idealistic, sympathetic activists, he increasingly feels that his time as a Knight of the Word can be relegated to the past. He ignores the infrequent dreams of a demon-haunted future, including one in which he kills his much-beloved boss, Simon Lawrence. Lawrence is known locally as "the Wizard of Oz" because of his successful charity ventures in Seattle (AKA the Emerald City); by energetic campaigning, and building up a reputation as an idealistic, dedicated activist, Lawrence succeeded in pushing many politicians to support the homeless - though this is not a very popular cause and with little electoral benefit accruing. However, Lawrence's sterling reputation is threatened when he is being investigated for alleged financial impropriety, by a famous reporter named Andrew Wren who is (without his own knowledge) - influenced and manipulated by a demon. This demon is a changeling - during the day it works to subvert, and at night morphs into a giant hyena-like creature to feed on the homeless living in the ruins under modern Seattle. Nest Freemark, now a 19-year-old college student, has returned to Hopewell, Illinois for the weekend before Halloween. She muses on events over the last five years, including her grandfather's death in the spring, Wraith's disappearance when she turned 18, and the fact that she is no longer in touch with most of her childhood friends (or John Ross). She has not used her magic in years and is unsure if she has it any longer. She travels with her twiggy sylvan companion, Pick, through the park and has an encounter with the tatterdemalion Ariel, a ghost-like messenger of the Word formed from the memories of dead children. Nest learns that John Ross is in need of her help and reluctantly agrees to fly to Seattle to talk to him. She is disturbed to learn that John is now especially vulnerable to falling to the side of the Void, and the Word has dispatched someone to kill him if this happens. This resounds with Nest, as she recalls that John admitting that he would have killed her five years ago if she had been turned to the Void. Arriving in Seattle, Nest takes a walk at night with Ariel; they hear the demon hunting and killing people in the underground city, but Ariel will not let her pursue it. She meets with John the next day, but cannot convince him to return to his duties as a Knight; however, she does cause changes in his dreams - now John also dreams about killing her. Nest also runs into O'olish Amaneh, the Word-serving Native American that she met five years before, and finds that he is the one sent to kill John if he should turn to the Void. That night, Ariel informs Nest that Boot, a sylvan in a local park, has seen the demon. Just as they're getting crucial information from Boot, the demon attacks them in its hyena form and kills Boot, his owl Audrey, and Ariel. It chases Nest through a nearby residential area, but she narrowly escapes on a bus. Later that same night, the demon sets fire to the homeless shelter and John and Stefanie rescue many tenants, but one of their coworkers is killed in the fire. John was exceedingly groggy and foggy-headed when Stefanie tried to wake him to help deal with the fire, and he's troubled by this. The next day, Halloween, John and Nest meet. They share information and decide that Nest should leave town. Andrew Wren, in possession of (demon-provided) evidence that John and Simon are embezzling from the shelter, meets with John and leaves him with the suspicion that Simon is the demon. His suspicions are reinforced when Stefanie tells him that Simon has fired him, to distance himself from the scandal. John heads to a fund-raising event at the art museum and confronts Simon, who reveals himself as a demon, nearly kills John, and leaves him on the floor. John repents for faltering in his service to the Word and is once again infused with magic to heal and strengthen him. He searches for Simon with the intent to kill him, but just as he finds him, Nest intervenes. On the way out of town, she realized that Stefanie is actually the demon, because of parallels between Stefanie's actions and those of Nest's father (also a demon), not to mention the timing issues and other evidence that lead her to this truth. John realizes that he's been subtly led toward the Void ever since Stefanie came into his life, after San Sobel; as a shape-shifting demon, Stefanie forged documents to support the embezzlement accusations, attacked Nest and her friends in the park, set fire to the shelter to explain the wounds she'd sustained trying to kill Nest, lied about John being fired, and morphed into Simon at the museum so John would be tricked into killing the real, innocent Simon and completing his turn to the Void. Finally, John confronts Stefanie at his apartment. She does not deny being a demon, but tells John that even so he is still in love with her (which he feels to be true) and that she could continue to make him happy. When he rejects the offer, the demon-Stefanie, afraid of his now-returned magic, leaps out a window. Faced with the demon's onslaught when it crashes to the street below, the waiting Nest finds that Wraith has not left her- he lives within her and Nest can assume his form in response to threatening dark magic. Together, she and John destroy Stefanie - or, in fact, they destroy the shape-changing demon who had taken her form as well as various other forms, human and non-human, male and female. (Though the term is not explicitly used, Stefanie in fact fits well with the traditional depiction of a succubus - a female demon who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men.) Nest returns to Hopewell, and John resumes his service as a Knight of the Word, once again using his dreams of the future to change things in the present and keep the Void at bay.
6834025	/m/0grp3w	Running with the Demon	Terry Brooks	1997-08-19	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nest Freemark is a fourteen-year-old girl of Hopewell, Illinois, who is gifted with magical powers bequeathed to her from her mother's lineage. She lives with her grandmother Evelyn and grandfather Bob, as her mother apparently committed suicide at a young age. She is one of a rare few in the world who can see the spiritual warfare underlying the events in the real world. She can see "feeders" - small shadowy creatures that feed on human emotion, influence thoughts, and ultimately attempt to "devour" people, causing their real world demise. Nest is enlisted to guard the nearby park and wilderness, a regional feeding ground for feeders, as many generations of Freemark women before her. She is aided in this task by a six-inch tree-like sylvan named Pick, an insightful barn owl named Daniel, and an ethereal wolfen creature named Wraith, who appears at opportune moments to protect Nest, but whose origins are initially unknown. On July first, Nest is awakened by Pick and informed that a young local girl, Bennett Scott, has run away from home (and her mother's abusive boyfriend) into the park and is at risk of being attacked by feeders. She rescues the girl and is almost overrun by feeders when Wraith appears to fend them off and help her escape. Meanwhile, a demon of the Void has come to the town of Hopewell. Once a human, this demon now possesses magical powers including the ability to blend in easily among other people and influence their thoughts. He befriends Derry Howe, a less intelligent resident of Hopewell, and places in his mind the idea of setting a bomb during the fireworks display on the Fourth of July. Since the display is sponsored by the company that owns the factory, Derry is fooled into believing that the company will have to end a town-crippling strike in apology for the injuries at the show. The following morning, Nest meets up with her friends, including Bennett's older brother Jared, upon whom she has a crush. They run into a teen bully named Danny Abbot, and Nest uses magic to knock him to the ground to protect her friends. Later that day, an alarmed Pick leads Nest deep into the park forest and shows her a great oak tree with crevasses in its trunk. The tree is actually a prison for a maentwrog - a powerful magic beast known for devouring multitudes of people. The demon has weakened the tree and the maentwrog is threatening to break free, but Nest and Pick do a patch job to strengthen the tree's integrity. At dinner, Nest is introduced by her grandfather to a traveler named John Ross, who has recently come to town. He claims to have known Nest's mother, but his true purpose for being in Hopewell is to track and defeat the demon. John is a "Knight of the Word", charged with helping preserve the balance between the Word (the representation of goodness and light in the world) and the Void (the summation of evil and darkness). After his post-graduate work, John traveled to Wales and happened upon a glade called Fairy Glen in the country around Betws-y-Coed. He is met by the Lady (the voice of the Word) and learns that he is the descendant of Owain Glyndŵr, a great Welsh "patriot and warrior" who served the Word. John was then charged by the Lady to embrace the Word and fight against the Void whenever he is called on. After returning to America, he is visited by a Native American named O'olish Amaneh, who reminds him of his oath and hands him a rune-engraved staff of great magic. Upon taking the staff, John's leg is crippled as a reminder that he is dependent upon the staff, and through it, the Word. John fights the Void in both the present, and an apocalyptic future where demons are beginning to enslave humanity. When John sleeps, he has unavoidable dreams in which he experiences his life in this horrific time. In these visions he finds clues concerning his new mission, as well as the consequences if he should fail. During these visions, he is a skilled warrior of magic, free of his limp, fighting valiantly to free slaves and thwart the demons. However, if John uses his magic in the present, he finds himself without that magic for the duration of his next dream. He is reduced to a vulnerable fugitive who has to scurry and hide to avoid the demon armies. John has found through his dreams that the demon is Nest's father, and if John does not stop him, Nest will be converted to serving the Void and will be a great leader of the demons in the future. That evening, Nest sneaks out after dark to meet with O'olish Amaneh, whom she fatefully ran into earlier that day. O'olish Amaneh is the last of the Sinnissippi tribe that used to live in the area, and invites her to dance with the spirits of the Sinnissippi. At midnight, he summons the spirits of his tribe and dance among them. Nest sees a vision of her grandmother as a young lady, running with feeders and interacting with the demon. O'olish leaves Hopewell that night contemplating his own visions, while Nest struggles with the meaning of hers. The next day, July 3, John attends church with the Freemark family when they find the feeders crawling all over, invisible to the congregation, but Wraith appears and scares them off. The feeders have never entered the church before, and Nest realizes that the demon must be nearby. The demon confronts her in a wing of the church, threatens her, and demonstrates his power by killing a church member. That night, the demon influences Danny Abbot to tie up Nest and leave her in a cave. The demon comes to Nest and taunts her, telling her he can do anything he wants to and she is powerless. While the demon is away, Nest is rescued by her friends and grandfather. In addition, while John Ross is spending a romantic evening with his new love interest Josie, the local cafe owner, the demon influences a group of townspeople to attack him. John is incapacitated and forced to use magic to escape. While everyone is otherwise engaged, the demon confronts Nest's grandmother, Evelyn, at the Freemark house and is surprised to find that she no longer has magic of her own. She assaults him in futility with a shotgun, and he kills her. However, anticipating her death, Evelyn had left Nest a secret note telling her to trust in her magic and in Wraith. Finally, on July 4, Jared Scott is beaten by his mother's boyfriend and slips into a coma. The feeders, however, drive the boyfriend into a craze and he ends up accidentally killing himself. Pick is captured by the demon, and Nest and John confront him at the site of the maentwrog tree. While Nest's grandfather stops Derry Howe from injuring anyone at the fireworks show, the demon manages to release the maentwrog. Through extensive magic use, John is able to defeat the creature, but passes out. The demon takes advantage of this to confront Nest's grandmother, and kills her. The demon confronts Nest alone and teaches her of her past. She learns that her grandmother once became friends with the demon and would "run with him" instead of fighting against him. At this time, she thought him simply another person, not a demon. The demon tried to seduce her grandmother, but she resisted, and turned to the side of the Word. In revenge, the demon seduced her daughter, Nest's mother, and she bore him a daughter, Nest. When Nest's mother found out after Nest was born that he was a demon, she apparently lost her mind and committed suicide. Now the demon is back for Nest, and by touching her, he can convince her to join the Void. Wraith appears, but the demon reveals that Wraith is actually a gift from the demon, sent to protect Nest until he could come back and claim her. Nest holds the demon at bay for a time, but when he is about to lay his hand on her, Wraith turns on the demon and tears him to pieces. Nest learns from Pick that even though Wraith was created by the demon, her grandmother long ago expended all of her magic to convince Wraith to defend Nest against the demon as well. The next day, Nest and her grandfather decide to be foster parents for Bennett Scott, as the kids have been legally removed from their home situation. Nest visits the hospital and uses her magic to bring Jared out of his coma, while John Ross leaves Hopewell on a bus, knowing his life cannot afford him the luxury of staying with Josie. He falls asleep, anticipating a new mission from the Word.
6834029	/m/0grp46	Angel Fire East	Terry Brooks	1999-10-26	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 John Ross has a vision of the future where a crucified Knight of the Word (one that resembles himself) tells him that a "Gypsy morph" is about to be created in the present. The creation of a Gypsy morph is a rare event - it is a convergence of magic that can become a powerful tool for either the Void or the Word depending on who unlocks its secret. The morph, however, will dissipate within a month if the secret remains hidden and the magic will be lost. John manages to catch the morph in the Pacific Northwest and escape his demon pursuers. The morph changes from creature to creature before settling on the appearance of a four-year-old boy. The only word the boy says is "Nest", prompting John to head back to Hopewell, Illinois to find out if Nest Freemark, whom he has not seen in ten years, can help him. However a resourceful demon named Findo Gask has been tracking John. He has recruited three other demons - Penny Dreadful (a young goth-type girl with crazy red hair and a penchant for self-destruction), Twitch (a half-crazed hulking albino man), and an ur'droch (a lethal demon who remains in its dark, shadowy form instead of taking on a human guise). Findo has heard the Gypsy morph's words in the ether and knows where to go to intercept John Ross. He and the three other demons arrive in town before him. Nest, now a 29-year-old divorcee, had won several Olympic track gold medals, but had to retire from running because she nearly turned into the ghost-wolf Wraith during an event. She still lives in her house near the park and tends to the area with the sylvan, Pick. Four days before Christmas, she is visited by Findo Gask and immediately recognizes him as a demon. He threatens her but does not harm her. She also meets Penny at church, but does not realize she is a demon. Later that day, Bennett Scott, whom Nest saved from falling off a cliff when Bennett was a preschooler fifteen years earlier, appears on her doorstep. Bennett is now a single mother of a young girl, Harper, and trying to get clean from a drug addiction. Nest naturally invites her to stay with her. That night, while Christmas caroling, Nest and her church group are attacked by Twitch. Nest nearly has to call on Wraith when Penny appears, calls him off and pretends that he is a mentally disabled relative, and no one is seriously hurt. Later that night, John Ross arrives with the Gypsy morph boy, whom they decide to call "Little John". The next morning Nest and John fill each other in on recent events. Bennett and Harper go for a walk in the park where they meet Penny. Penny offers Bennett drugs, but before she can accept, O'olish Amaneh appears and takes them home. Nest then goes for a walk in the park with O'olish, whom she also has not seen in ten years, who suggests that if Nest spends some time attempting to communicate with Little John instead of waiting for him to open up to her it may help unlock his secrets. He also tells her that soon he may never see her again as he plans to return to his ancestors. He then mysteriously disappears, as usual. Nest takes his advice and tries to talk to Little John, but no progress is made. Later that day the group does some tobogganing and narrowly avoids an assassination attempt by Findo Gask, thanks to Pick's last-minute warning. Instead, Findo Gask kills the park worker Ray Childress that night with the trap he intended for Nest and her guests. The next evening O'olish Amaneh again appears to Nest, and encourages her to persevere with Little John. After he leaves her, he is pursued by Findo Gask and his demon minions. Surrounded, he disappears in a whirlwind of snow. That night, Nest, Bennett, and the kids go to a neighborhood Christmas party while John spends some time with his old flame, Josie Jackson. Bennett abandons her child at the party, leaving Nest a note explaining how she intends to leave for a while. She meets up with Penny who gives her drugs, then Penny and Findo Gask trick her into falling off the cliff in the park that nearly claimed her fifteen years ago. Nest returns home with Harper and Little John and is attacked by the ur'droch. Wraith comes forth from her to successfully repel him. Before Wraith reenters Nest, Little John calls her "Mama" and runs into her arms, but refuses to do so after Wraith returns to Nest, foreshadowing what is to come. The next day, Christmas Eve, Bennett's body is found and Nest has to tell Harper that her mother has died, and that now she will be Harper's family. That evening, however, Harper and Little John are kidnapped by Findo Gask. Nest knows from previous interactions with Findo Gask that he doesn't know that Little John is the Gypsy morph. She also realizes that Penny is in league with Findo Gask and they are likely hiding out at the house where she was attacked by Twitch. She and John head over to the house for a preemptive strike, but before doing so, Nest knows she needs to check to see if the demons have booby-trapped or otherwise warded the house with invisible magic. She needs Pick to find this out for her, so she sends out Wraith to find Pick in the park. Wraith bounds forth and runs from within her, this time severing their magical tie. Nest realizes neither one of them was happy with Wraith being trapped within her, and knows it is for the best that he remain separate but near to her, still remaining her protector. Nest, Wraith and John Ross are successful in destroying Findo Gask's three demonic henchmen (Penny, Twitch, and the ur'droch) and rescuing the children, but John is mortally poisoned. Finally, when Little John sees that Wraith has left Nest permanently, the Gypsy morph is able to become what it was meant to be: an unborn child of destiny within Nest's womb. Findo Gask, thinking that the Gypsy morph's time ran out and its magic had dissipated, leaves town. Nest, perceiving her magical conception, decides to name the child John Ross Freemark, and heads back for home to start a new life with Harper and her future child. John Ross, weak and poisoned, lays down by the river in the park. As he passes into death, he sees the Lady, the voice of the Word, reaching out to him and calling him home. As John takes her hand his body disappears and his staff falls to the ground. O'olish Amaneh appears from the shadows, picks up the staff and surveys the horizon in contemplation of the continuous struggle between the Word and the Void.
6834385	/m/0grpsy	Soldados de Salamina	Javier Cercas		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is divided into three sections. The first and third section depict the historical investigation of a fictional Javier Cercas into the life of the fascist Rafael Sánchez Mazas. The second section is a biographical retelling of Mazas's life. In the first section of the novel, a fictionalized version of the author, also called Javier Cercas and a journalist, interviews the son of Mazas. During the interview Cercas is told the story of how Mazas's escapes from execution by the Republicans at the end of the Spanish Civil War with the help of a lone soldier. Encouraged by his eccentric girlfriend, a TV fortune teller, Javier begins investigating the incident. Early on, he writes a brief article in his newspaper based on the retelling by Mazas's son. In response to this Cercas becomes obsessed with finding the soldier who spared the life of Mazas. The second section of the novel takes place during the war itself (1936–1939). The nucleus of this section of the book is Rafael Sánchez Mazas's life. Cercas presents him as a writer and idealist of the Falange Española and close collaborator of José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The narrative in this section focuses on the particulars of his escape from execution at the end of the Spanish Civil War. When a group of prisoners is taken to the forest to be executed, Mazas is able to flee and hide in the bush. A Republican soldier finds him but decides to spare his life and when asked by another soldier if anyone is there he replies that no one is. Helped by several deserters, Mazas evades the retreating Republican forces and eventually returns to Falangist custody where he became an important propagandist for the Francisco Franco regime. In the third section in the novel, after having written the biography in the second section, the Cercas character is still curious about the story of Mazas's escape. Following a series of leads, Cercas comes in contact with an old man named Miralles. Miralles had fought for the Republicans in the civil war and later became a member of the French Foreign Legion responsible for heroic feats during the Second World War. Cercas discovers him sequestered in a retirement home in his old age. Cercas comes to believe that Miralles was the soldier who saved Mazas from execution. However, Miralles will neither confirm nor deny having been the soldier to save Mazas. The fictional Cercas ends the novel with a monologue questioning the historical explanation which he had investigated and the nature of heroes.
6835755	/m/0grrw2	Conan of Aquilonia	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 At the age of 60, King Conan of Aquilonia engages in his final struggle with his arch-foe, the black magician Thoth-Amon of Stygia, servant of the evil god Set. First Conan must journey to Hyperborea to rescue his kidnapped son Prince Conn from an unholy alliance of the Stygian sorcerer and the witch queen Louhi. Next Conan and Conn carry the struggle to their enemy's stronghold in Stygia itself at the head of an invading army and aided by the white druid Diviatix. Pursuing their defeated foe southward, they confront him again, first in the kingdom of Zembabwei and at last at the very edge of the world, where Conan and Thoth-Amon face each other in a final astral duel.
6835757	/m/04f7hc6	Fossil Hunter	Robert J. Sawyer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place roughly sixteen years after the events of Far-Seer. In lieu of Afsan's discovery of the Quintaglio's real place in the universe, the Larskian faith has been abolished and worship of the Original Five hunters reinstated. Dybo is now the Emperor, with Afsan as his court astrologer, and Novato has been put in charge of the Quintaglio Exodus; a project meant to help the Quintaglios escape from their doomed world before it breaks apart. Toroca, son of Afsan and Novato, is now head of the Geological Survey of Land, meant to take a global inventory of the resources available for the Exodus project. While undertaking the Geological Survey, Toroca finds a mysterious blue artifact, made of a seemingly indestructible material even harder than diamond. It appears to be mechanical, with moving parts, but having been found in some of the oldest rocks, is too old to have been manufactured by Quintaglios. He also begins to take notice of clues which cast into doubt his belief in the origin of the world as set forth in the book of Lubal. The world appears to be much older than five thousand kilodays, due to the rate of erosion being too slow, and during an expedition to the South Pole, he finds that it is inhabited entirely by many unique types of Wingfingers. Toroca hypothesises that they evolved from a common wingfinger ancestor. Meanwhile, Dybo's rule has been challenged by Rodlox, the governor of the province Edz'Toolar. As Afsan had previously suspected in Far-Seer, Rodlox claims that the children of the previous Empress were exempted from the culling of the Bloodpriests, with the weakest child being made the future Emperor (as opposed to the strongest as tradition dictates) and the rest being sent away so that the royal family could be more easily manipulated. Rodlox claims that he is Dybo's brother, and that he was the strongest child and thus the rightful emperor. The Imperial Bloodpriest goes missing shortly after, his absence bolstering Rodlox's conspiracy theory. Much political turmoil follows; all across the land, Bloodpriests are driven out and sometimes killed. With no means of birth control, the Quintaglio population begins to swell eightfold as a result. With the Quintaglios' natural predisposition towards territorial aggression, it is only a matter of time before civil war erupts. Dybo consults Afsan, his most trusted advisor, to come up with a solution for the problem. If Rodlox were to become the new Emperor, he would cancel the Exodus and doom the Quintaglios to extinction- Dybo must win Rodlox's challenge. Rather than face him in single combat, as Dybo would most certainly lose to Rodlox, Afsan suggests that all eight of the Empress' children participate in a replay of the culling, against a scaled up Bloodpriest: a Blackdeath. Such a scenario would give Dybo a one-in-eight chance of victory. As Afsan helps Dybo prepare for his battle against the Blackdeath, he finds out that one of his children has been murdered, her throat slashed open by a piece of broken mirror. Afsan undertakes an investigation to try to find her killer. Dybo begins to train for his battle against the Blackdeath. Toroca finds himself increasingly attracted to Babnol, a member of the Geological survey team. Babnol in turn worries about Toroca's obsession with the blue artifact, and she sneaks into his cabin, steals it, and dumps it overboard. The Geological Survey team must now head back to where the original artifact was discovered, to try to find another one. Meanwhile, back on land, the congestion has gotten unbearable. With the Bloodpriests in dispute, seven out of every eight Quintaglio hatchlings have not been culled, and the population has swelled. Tensions are boiling, and the situation explodes when mass Dagamant (a Quintaglio bloodlust fueled by territorial aggression) occurs. Many Quintaglios are killed in the ensuing battle before the situation is defused. It becomes apparent that this will happen again and again until the Bloodpriests are reinstated. The Geological Survey team returns to the coast of Fra'Toolar, where the original artifact was found, to search for another. To speed up the process, they resort to blasting the cliffs, surmising that the mysterious blue material will not be damaged by the explosions. Their blasting exposes an enormous object made of the blue material, and after finding a mysterious double door, explore the inside. Within, they find the mummified remains of an extraterrestrial, and various creatures that are extinct on the Quintaglio's world, among them, birds. Another of Afsan's children has been murdered. Suspicion falls upon another of Afsan's children, Drawtood. Afsan confronts Drawtood, who confesses to his crime. Suffering from paranoia, Drawtood had intended to murder all of his siblings, out of fear that they were going to come after him. Rather than face the consequences of his actions, Drawtood commits suicide, and drinks a vial of poison. Soon, it is time for the battle against the Blackdeath. After being starved for several days, the Tyrannosaur is released into an arena, where it proceeds to devour each of the Royal siblings one by one. Rodlox doesn't go down without a fight, and indeed, almost defeats the Blackdeath by utilising his superior agility to disorient it. It topples over and he leaps on its back to deliver the finishing bite; however, he is killed when the Blackdeath suddenly rises to its feet and somersaults forward, crushing him with its massive bulk. Dybo has studied natural Blackdeath behavior prior to the battle, and has come up with a strategy. He positions himself carefully, with the sun setting behind him. As the Blackdeath prepares to attack, Dybo bites off its own arms, reducing them to stumps, and mimics the dinosaur's roar. In profile, Dybo resembles a juvenile T. Rex, and the Blackdeath retreats, refusing to accept a challenge from what it perceives as a lesser male. Dybo is declared the winner, and has earned the right to rule. In the aftermath of the battle, Dybo sets about cleaning up the mess the challenge has caused. The Bloodpriests are reinstated. The Imperial Bloodpriest is found, but he has been injured; before he dies, he reveals that Dybo was in fact the weakest of the Imperial hatchlings; however, the switch was not pulled as an attempt to control the Royal family. It is revealed that because the Bloodpriests had been saving only the strongest offspring, that the Quintaglios had become too aggressive; the Bloodpriests were performing a breeding experiment with the Royal family, to try to usher in a less violent generation. With the Imperial Bloodpriest now dead, he needs a replacement; Afsan suggests that Toroca be appointed as his replacement. With Toroca's theory of evolution, Afsan presumes that he would be the best person for the job. Dybo concurs, and assigns him to the task. Meanwhile, Wab-Novato has finished construction on a prototype glider, based on bird remains recovered from the giant blue structure. The test flight of the machine is a success; the Quintaglios have taken their first step towards flight. Studies on the giant blue artifact have made it apparent that is an alien starship, and that these beings brought dinosaurs and other creatures to this world from another, millions of years ago; explaining why species in the Quintaglios' fossil record appear suddenly rather than gradually. The book ends with Dybo declaring that the Quintaglios are not merely going to the stars; they are going home.
6839852	/m/0gr_b4	Sunshine	Robin McKinley	2003	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in an alternate universe, taking place after the “Voodoo Wars”, a conflict between humans and the “Others”. The Others mainly consist of vampires, werewolves, and demons, though the main conflict occurs between humans and vampires. As a result of this war, “bad spots”, or places where black magic thrives, have appeared more frequently. Rae "Sunshine" Seddon, the pastry-making heroine of the novel, has the misfortune of being caught off-guard at her family's old lake side cabin and is abducted by a gang of vampires. She is confined to the ballroom of an abandoned mansion with Constantine, a vampire shackled there by vampires of a rival gang, led by Constantine’s enemy Bo. Bo’s intention is to allow Constantine to slowly die of hunger and exposure to sunlight. Rae is brought as bait for him, and the vampires cut her upper chest as temptation. However, Rae not only manages to defy the supposed power that any vampire has over a human, but also uses her all-but-forgotten magical powers of transmutation, taught to her by her grandmother, to effect an escape. Rae realizes that the magical lineage she has ignored allows her to draw power from the sunlight, ergo transferring her ability through touch to Constantine and allowing him to be under the light of day, so long as contact is maintained. Through this symbiotic relationship, the two of them make an escape. Despite her best efforts, all does not return to normalcy once Rae is back home. Her friends and family are shocked by her survival of an encounter with vampires, and over time she both starts to become more affected by the trauma and refuses to tell anyone the circumstances leading to her alliance with a vampire. As it becomes clear that the conflict with Bo and his gang is only beginning, Sunshine begins to embrace her magical ability, is coerced into working with the "Special Other Forces", wonders what kind of tentative partnership can exist between two individuals whose races are bitter enemies, and, finally, works with Constantine to overthrow Bo for good.
6840573	/m/0gs0n1	Conan of Cimmeria	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 In a number of episodes Conan, now in his mid- to late-twenties, is followed from the end of his career as a mercenary soldier for King Yildiz of Turan to his initial adventures in the black kingdoms of Kush. In between he visits his native Cimmeria and the far north then makes his way southward where, in Argos, he gets his first taste of life as a sea rover as the right hand man of the pirate queen Bêlit. Chronologically, the eight short stories collected as Conan of Cimmeria fall between Conan and Conan the Freebooter.
6840778	/m/0gs10h	The countess cathleen	William Butler Yeats			 The play is set ahistorically in Ireland during a famine. The idealistic Countess of the title sells her soul to the devil so that she can save her tenants for starvation and from damnation for having sold their own souls. After her death, she is redeemed as her motives were altruistic and ascends to Heaven.
6841973	/m/0gs33z	A Glass of Blessings	Barbara Pym	1958	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The central character and narrator, Wilmet Forsyth, is a married woman with a comfortable though routine life. She does not need to work and enjoys a life of leisure. When not lunching or shopping she occupies her time, somewhat guiltily, with occasional "good works", particularly at the instigation of her slightly eccentric do-gooder mother-in-law. She becomes drawn into the social life of her church, St. Luke's. After a church service one day she renews her acquaintance with a close friend's attractive but ne'er-do-well brother, Piers Longridge. She develops a romantic interest in Piers, and begins to believe that he is her secret admirer. The admirer is in fact her close friend's husband. Wilmet fails to realise that Piers is gay until she becomes aware of his relationship with Keith, a lower-class young man. The subject of homosexuality is not infrequent in Pym's work, but it is usually referred to in oblique and subtle ways. This novel is surprisingly frank about the subject, especially for a comedy of manners published in 1958. The reader can reach no conclusion other than that Piers and Keith live together in a romantic relationship.
6842019	/m/0gs37g	Champagne for One	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Archie gets a phone call from Dinky Byne, who is expected at a dinner party that night, given by his aunt in honor of four young, unwed mothers. These women have recently left Grantham House, a home where expectant unwed mothers receive support, room and board in the months prior to giving birth. Dinky wants to beg off the dinner, saying he has a bad cold, and asks Archie to fill in for him. Archie agrees and, chatting with Rose Tuttle after dinner, learns that Faith Usher carries around a vial of cyanide. Apparently Faith wants to have it handy should she ever decide to commit suicide. Rose is worried, and Archie reassures her by promising that he'll see to it that nothing bad happens. But something bad happens a few minutes later, when Faith suddenly dies, poisoned by cyanide later shown to have been in her champagne. Those present hope that Faith suicided, largely because they hope to avoid notoriety. But Archie had been keeping his eye on Faith and is certain that she put nothing in her glass &ndash; therefore, it must have been murder. Archie comes under pressure from the guests, the police and the Police Commissioner himself to back off his position regarding Faith's death. Meanwhile, Edwin Laidlaw hires Wolfe to see to it that the investigation does not result in the discovery that he is the father of Faith's child. Wolfe agrees to identify and expose the murderer &ndash; if there is one &ndash; before the police learn of Laidlaw's role in Faith's life. The book reflects the transitional situation of American sexual mores at the time of writing, on the verge of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Unwed mothers are a major issue in the book, and comprise a large part of its cast of characters. They are presented sympathetically, but still unwed motherhood is presented as "a problem" for which they need to be helped. The preferred solution is to provide a friendly and supportive environment during pregnancy and to have the baby given over to adoption immediately upon birth. The option of the unwed mother keeping and raising her child is presented as a far more problematic idea. Indeed — as it ultimately turns out — it has much to do with the circumstances that led to the murder being investigated. In chapter 2 Archie Goodwin is rather shocked to discover that one of the young women, Rose Tuttle, had given birth outside marriage not once but twice. He recounts at length his moral dilemma at hearing this: "I had on my shoulders the responsibility for the moral and social position of the community, at least in part (...). To list my objections would have been fine if I had been ordained, but I hadn't, and anyway she had certainly heard these objections before and hadn't been impressed. (...) While it was none of my business if she kept on having babies, I absolutely wasn't going to encourage her." On the other hand, in chapter 6 Archie is surprised to learn that Edwin Laidlaw seriously expects his bride-to-be to remain a virgin until their wedding night. His reaction to this is scathing: "Laidlaw turned out to have an old-fashioned streak (...) an old fogey at thirty-one."
6842087	/m/0gs3bx	Touch Not the Cat	Mary Stewart	1976	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The heroine, Bryony, has the gift of telepathy, and is able to communicate subliminally with a man she regards as her lover, but whose identity she is unsure of. She knows that he is a blood relative, and assumes him to be one of her three male cousins, twins Emory and James, and the younger Francis. Bryony returns to the UK having received a telepathic message and discovers that her father has been hit by a car, and has died after speaking some mysterious phrases. She remains puzzled about the identity of her telepathic contact. Her initial preference is for James, but she gradually realises that the twins are plotting to steal her inheritance, and that her secret lover is a long-standing friend to whom she had not known she was related. Bryony gradually solves her father's puzzles, some of which include a maze depicted on the family's arms, the motto being "Touch not the cat". In the book's climax, the twins attempt to murder Bryony and flood the family gardens, so they can sell them for redevelopment. They are stopped by Bryony's lover.
6842175	/m/0gs3hr	Special Topics in Calamity Physics	Marisha Pessl	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Blue van Meer is the film-obsessed, erudite teenager whose head is filled with a witty pop culture lexicon, in contrast to most-90210-watching teenagers. She is the daughter of itinerant and arrogant academic Gareth van Meer, who, after the death of his amateur lepidopteran-catching wife (and Blue's mother), never manages to stay at a college for more than a semester. During Blue's senior year, however, they settle in the sleepy town of Stockton, North Carolina. She starts to attend the St. Gallway School and befriends a group of popular, rich, and ultra-mysterious teenagers called the Bluebloods: murky and rebellious Milton; flamboyant and flaming Nigel; ice-queen and pterodactyl Jade, free-loving, flower-child Leulah, and the dreamy Charles. The Bluebloods are also close friends with the film studies teacher at St. Gallway, Hannah Schneider, a perplexing woman who intrigues Blue more than she should. A drowning, a series of unfortunate events, and Hannah's own eventual death on a camping trip lead Blue to question everything she believes in.
6842224	/m/0gs3lh	The Invasion	K. A. Applegate	1996-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Young teenagers Jake and Marco leave the mall one evening. On the way out, they meet Rachel and Cassie, who are together, and Tobias—all kids from their school—and decide to walk home together. While taking a shortcut through an abandoned construction site when an alien spacecraft lands nearby. The badly injured alien pilot, an Andalite named Prince Elfangor, emerges from the ship and explains to the kids that the Earth is being invaded in secret by a race of aliens called the Yeerks, a slug-like parasitic species who infest humans through their ear canals and take complete control of the human's body, turning them into what is called a Controller. The human controllers are still self-aware but the Yeerk in their head has complete control over their body and what they say. Elfangor tells them that more Andalites will not come to Earth for a year or more, and by then, Earth will already be completely taken over. To combat the Yeerks, he gives the humans morphing ability: the power to become any creature they touch by absorbing the creature's DNA. Elfangor warns them to never stay beyond two hours in a morph, or they will be trapped in that form forever. The Yeerks, led by Visser Three, arrive to kill Elfangor and eliminate all traces of him and his ship. The humans hide and watch, but are discovered and chased by the Yeerks. The group escapes shaken, but more or less unhurt. The next morning, Tobias visits Jake and informs him that the previous night was not just a dream; he had already morphed his pet cat. The five kids meet at Cassie's farm, where a police officer arrives and informs them that a group of teenagers were sighted setting off fireworks in the abandoned construction site the previous night. He asks if they know anything about it, and the five of them realize that the police officer is a Controller. Later that day, Jake's older brother Tom expresses a similar interest in the teenagers at the construction site and presses Jake for information. Marco realizes—much to Jake's anger—that Tom is also a Controller. Tom invites Jake and Marco to a meeting of a local community club called The Sharing, which the teens quickly determine is a front for the Yeerks to acquire new hosts. They also discover that their assistant principal Mr. Chapman is the leader of The Sharing and a human-Controller. The next day, Jake morphs into a green anole lizard to spy on Chapman, and discovers that there is an entrance to the Yeerk Pool—a large, underground control center where the Yeerks can feed and recuperate—in their school. The teenagers, newly christened as Animorphs (from Animal Morphers) by Marco, head to The Gardens, a large zoo and amusement park, to acquire some new, battle-capable morphs. That evening, they decide to infiltrate the Yeerk Pool in order to rescue Tom, but find that Cassie has been kidnapped by the policeman-Controller. With no time to plan a strategy, the four remaining Animorphs head into the Yeerk Pool. They manage to rescue Cassie, but find themselves outnumbered and outgunned by Visser Three and his Yeerks. Jake, Rachel, Marco, and Cassie barely escape along with a woman who is free. During the escape, the policeman-Controller is killed. Tobias is able to escape later, but has to stay in morph too long and gets stuck in morph as a red-tailed hawk. The Animorphs fail to rescue Tom, and Jake promises to keep fighting the Yeerks until the Andalites arrive. *The main human characters are introduced. *Andalites are introduced. *Elfangor is introduced. *Yeerks are introduced. *Visser Three is introduced. *The Animorphs' battle begins. *Tobias morphs into a red-tailed hawk and remains so for more than two hours, which means he cannot morph back. *Jake uses thought speak while in human form early on in the book, thinking at Tobias while in cat morph, but in subsequent books it is stated that this is impossible. This is because K. A. Applegate changed her mind about this, but forgot to correct the scene. *When talking to Elfangor, Visser Three's dialogue gives the impression that the two have never met, but The Andalite Chronicles reveals that in reality Elfangor was indirectly responsible for Visser Three acquiring his current host (Although this implied lack of knowledge could have simply been Visser Three's attempts to taunt Elfangor with how little he has accomplished in his struggle against Visser Three) *When Tobias comes over to Jake's house he said that when he morphed, his cat freaked out and scratched him, and he still had the scratches, even though in all other books, when you morph and demorph, any injuries you have in human form will be gone.
6843321	/m/0gs56y	Conan the Warrior	Robert E. Howard		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 In these stories from Conan's late 30s, the Cimmerian becomes involved in the civil wars of a lost city, a contest over treasure in the black kingdoms, and the border wars between the kingdom of Aquilonia and the savage Picts in the wilderness to the west. Chronologically, the three short stories collected as Conan the Warrior fall between Conan the Buccaneer and Conan the Usurper.
6843616	/m/0gs5qg	Wizard at Large	Terry Brooks	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In an attempt to return Abernathy to his former human self, court wizard Questor Thews inadvertently sends the canine court scribe, along with Ben Holiday's royal medallion, to Earth. Specifically, Abernathy ends up with the medallion in the menagerie of Michel Ard Rhi, a cruel former prince of Landover who was banished from Landover years ago. Ard Rhi is now a Washington state billionaire who keeps a collection of rare and magical items in his personal castle. As part of the botched spell, Abernathy is exchanged for one of Ard Rhi's magical artifacts, and a strange bottle appears in Landover in Abernathy's place. The bottle contains a Darkling, a creature similar to an evil genie that corrupts its master. The bottle is stolen by the G'home Gnomes Filip and Sot, and Ben gives chase along with Questor, Willow, and Bunion. Ben and Willow later decide to use Questor's magic to travel to Earth to find Abernathy. With the help of Miles, Ben's old law partner, and Elizabeth, the daughter of one of Ard Rhi's employees, Abernathy is rescued. However, Ard Rhi uses his influence to have the party detained at a police station. Meanwhile, Questor continues to pursue the Darkling. He finds that through a series of thefts, the bottle has ended up in the hands of the evil witch Nightshade. Knowing that only the High Lord can defeat Nightshade, Questor decides to try to convince the dragon Strabo to fly him through the fairy mists to Earth. Using an itch spell, Questor gets the dragon to agree. They arrive at the last moment to rescue Ben and his friends from the police station and fly them back to Landover, but not before Questor uses his magic to restore Ard Rhi's conscience and convince him to give away his vast estate. Ben and Questor confront Nightshade, and Ben uses his medallion to summon his knight champion, the Paladin. Nightshade, however, uses the Darkling to conjure a perverse version of the Paladin, and the creations give battle. Questor, meanwhile, manages to shrink himself and act as a stopper in the Darkling's bottle, cutting off the source of its power. The Darkling is destroyed, Nightshade flees, and order is restored to Landover.
6843710	/m/0gs5yc	Both Sides of Time	Caroline B. Cooney	2001-10-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Annie Lockwood, a young woman who is interested in the Victorian era, contemplates whether or not she is in the right relationship with her current boyfriend, Sean. When she enters the amazing Stratton Mansion she is wrenched from her time (approximately 1995) back 100 years into the past. In this past, she meets the inhabitants of the house, including a young man named Strat. Murders happen in the house, and Annie soon falls in love with Strat, and she ends up going back and forth between the two time periods, but it must be decided where and with whom she will ultimately remain.
6843830	/m/0gs63x	Prisoner of Time	Caroline B. Cooney	1998	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Prisoner of Time follows Strat's younger sister, Devonny, as she accidentally slips one hundred years into the future, to Annie Lockwood's time, and begins to fall in love with Annie's younger brother. This happens at both an inopportune, and an opportune time, as she was about to marry a young man whom she does not love. Devonny is an independent minded young woman with her own ideas for business ventures. However, in a time when the role of women are to stay at home and please their husbands, Devonny soon finds herself engaged to a British noble she does not love nor respect. With the family's business and reputation hanging in the balance, Devonny agrees to marry the noble, despite how she knows he is an avoidant person and she will be dominated by her mother-in-law. In the meantime, Devonny tries to help her friend Flossie, who has fallen in love with an Italian construction worker, elope. In the present, Todd Lockwood, Annie's brother, tries to find his own place in the world. With failed business enterprises and difficulty living up to Annie, Todd finds confidence only when he is coaching a girls' soccer team. In the past, Devonny despairs at her circumstances, with the disappearance of her brother Strat and the death of her friend Harriet, hoping that at least Flossie will find happiness. She discovers at the wedding that her father was blackmailed into ensuring Devonny would marry nobility and that the blackmailer was Aurelia Stratton, Devonny's mother who has been incarcerated and driven to desperation to ensure her own escape. Devonny calls out to Time for help, in hopes that Strat or Annie will come to save her. Instead, she arrives in the present and meets Todd. In the modern age, she is able to find strength within herself that the women of Todd's age possess that embolden her to take action regarding her own future once she returns. When she returns Lord Hugh David, the Britishman to whom she was supposed to marry, Devonny finds that he really does love her.
6844005	/m/0gs6b4	For All Time	Caroline B. Cooney	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Charles Lattimer (Mark Harmon) is an everyday man facing middle age and a marriage (to Catherine Hicks) coming to an end. He stumbles across a time slip that occurs on one of his regular train rides, as the train goes through a tunnel. Coming across an antique watch, he learns it allows him to get off the train during the time slip, whereupon he finds himself back in the 1890s. Before long he finds a new found love, played by Mary McDonnell, and a new purpose there. The watch gets broken and complications occur when the portal back to the past starts to close, leading him to a decision that could leave him stranded out of his own time. Co-stars Mary McDonnell, Catherine Hicks Nominated for the Golden Reel award in 2001 Best Sound Editing - Television Movies and Specials (including Mini-Series) - Music Chris Ledesma (music editor) Bob Beecher (music editor) Best Sound Editing - Television Movies and Specials - Effects & Foley Mark Friedgen (supervising sound editor) Kristi Johns (supervising adr editor) Anton Holden (sound editor) Tim Terusa (sound editor) Rusty Tinsley (sound editor) Michael Lyle (sound editor) Bill Bell (sound editor) Mike Dickeson (sound editor) Bob Costanza (sound editor) Gary Macheel (sound editor) Richard S. Steele (sound editor)
6844412	/m/03bxmcz	The Protector's War	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Eight years after the Change, Clan Mackenzie and the Bearkillers, led by Juniper Mackenzie and Mike Havel, respectively, have carved sections out in the Willamette Valley for their groups. They have become bitter rivals with the Portland Protective Association (PPA), led by the Armingers. The Barons of the PPA constantly violate ceasefires between the three warring factions. During one of their raids, Eddie Liu, Baron and Marchwarden of the PPA, is confronted by a small group of Mackenzies, led by Eilir Mackenzie and Astrid Larsson. After a short skirmish, Liu leaves, again swearing revenge against the Clan. In the meantime, a small group of British soldiers, led by Sir Nigel Loring, Alleyne Loring and John Hordle, formerly of the Special Air Service, are on their way to Portland, having left England by sailing ship after being imprisoned by King Charles III. Upon arrival, Lord Arminger isolates them, and has them to help him find and obtain nerve gas. They trick him into taking a test canister of nerve gas and multiple canisters that have been neutralized. The British then defeat their guards and escape to the south. Mike Havel, the Bear Lord and Signe Larsson Havel, his wife, go on a scouting mission to find and destroy Crusher Bailey, a PPA Associate who has been raiding and taking slaves. Crusher Bailey attempts to ambush the couple, who have been masquerading as travelers with a horse herd and a wagon of valuables. Mike and Signe retreat to the ruins of what was once a porn video store. The two prepare to fight off the bandits while they are waiting for the backup force, led by Will Hutton, to arrive. During the fight, the British refugees see the fight and attack the bandits. The bandits flee, losing most of their forces, and the British help the Bearkillers find and annihilate the enemy camp. Sir Nigel and his son meet the Mackenzies during the fight, and come across their old friend Sam Aylward. Aylward was formerly a sergeant under Sir Nigel, and the British troops choose to join the Mackenzies. At this point, the MacKenzies tell the story of their raid into PPA territory where after ambushing a horse-drawn train, they captured Norman Arminger's daughter and heir, Mathilda. Soon after, Eddie Liu and his massive bodyguard Mack arrive on a diplomatic mission. After negotiating with Lady Juniper, they leave. Astrid Larsson and Eilir Mackenzie with their small band of Rangers discover an enemy camp of PPA knights. Liu returns as they attempt to warn the Mackenzies. Liu shoots nerve gas at the guards, killing all of them, and frees Mathilda. Liu searches Rudi Mackenzie's tent for a book that Mathilda gave Rudi that contains the key to PPA codes. A fight breaks out, with Liu and his troops fighting the Mackenzies and Rangers. Mack seriously wounds Rudi before he is killed by Hordle, and Liu is killed by Eilir Mackenzie. The Bearkillers arrive soon after and mop up the remaining PPA knights. Rudi is saved by Signe, who overcomes her distaste for him and saves him with a blood transfusion. The book ends with Rudi's initiation into Wicca.
6844543	/m/0gs70_	Not the End of the World	Christopher Brookmyre	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 LAPD cop Larry Freeman is given the task of 'baby-sitting' a B-movie film festival as a way of easing himself back into work after the death of his son, but things soon turn violent when a right-wing Christian group targets ex-porn actress Madeline Witherson. As Larry investigates the attacks on Maddy and the disappearance of an oceanic survey vessel it becomes clear that certain parties are not content to wait for the Apocalypse.
6844905	/m/0gs7j4	The Fox and the Hound	Daniel Pratt Mannix IV	1967	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Copper, a bloodhound crossbred, was once the favorite among his Master's pack of hunting dogs in a rural country area. However, he now feels threatened by Chief, a younger, faster Black and Tan Coonhound. Copper hates Chief, who is taking Copper's place as pack leader. During a bear hunt, Chief protects the Master when the bear turns on him, while Copper is too afraid of the bear to confront him. The Master ignores Copper to heap praise on Chief and Copper's hatred and jealousy grow. Tod is a red fox kit, raised as a pet by one of the human hunters who killed his mother and litter mates. Tod initially enjoys his life, but when he reaches sexual maturity he returns to the wild. During his first year, he begins establishing his territory, and learns evasion techniques from being hunted by local farm dogs. One day, he comes across the Master's house and discovers that his presence sends the chained pack of dogs into a frustrated frenzy. He begins to delight in taunting them, until one day when Chief breaks his chain and chases him. The Master sees the dog escape and follows with Copper. As Chief skillfully trails the fox, Tod flees along a railroad track while a train is approaching, waiting to jump to safety until the last minute. Chief is killed by the train. With Chief buried and Master crying over a dead dog he trains Copper to ignore all foxes except for Tod. Over the span of the two animals' lives, man and dog hunt the fox, the Master using over a dozen hunting techniques in his quest for revenge. With each hunt, both dog and fox learn new tricks and methods to outsmart each other, Tod always escaping in the end. Tod mates with an older, experienced vixen who gives birth to a litter of kits. Before they are grown, the Master finds the den and gasses the kits to death. That winter, the Master sets out leg hold traps, which Tod carefully learns how to spring, but the vixen is caught and killed. In January, Tod takes a new mate, with whom he has another litter of kits. The Master uses a "still hunting" technique, in which he sits very quietly in the wood while playing a rabbit call to draw out the foxes. With this method, he kills the kits; then by using the sound of a wounded fox kit, he is also able to draw out and kill Tod's mate. As the years pass, the rural area gives way to a more urbanized setting. New buildings and highways spring up, more housing developments are built, and the farmers are pushed out. Though much of the wildlife has left and hunting grows increasingly difficult, Tod stays because it is his home range. The other foxes that remain become unhealthy scavengers, and their natures change&mdash;life-bonds with their mates are replaced by promiscuity, couples going their separate ways once the mating act is over. The Master has lost most of his own land, and the only dog he owns now is Copper. Each winter they still hunt Tod, and in an odd way he looks forward to it as the only aspect of his old life that remains. The Master spends most of his time drinking alcohol, and people begin trying to convince him to move into a nursing home, where no dogs are allowed. One summer, an outbreak of rabies spreads through the fox population. After one infected fox attacks a group of human children, the same people approach the Master and ask his help in killing the foxes. He uses traps and poison to try to kill as many foxes as possible; however, the poison also kills domestic animals. After a human child dies from eating it, the humans remove all of the poison, then the Master organizes a hunt in which large numbers of people line up and walk straight into the woods, flushing out foxes to be shot. The aging Tod escapes all three events, as well as an attempt at coursing him with greyhounds. One morning, after Tod's escape from the greyhounds, the Master sends Copper on the hunt. After he picks up the fox's trail, Copper relentlessly pursues him throughout the day and into the next morning. Tod finally drops dead of exhaustion, and Copper collapses on top of him, close to death himself. The Master nurses Copper back to health, and both enjoy their new popularity, but after a few months the excitement over Copper's accomplishment dies down. The Master is left alone again, and returns to drinking. He is once again asked to consider living in a nursing home, and this time he agrees. Crying, he takes his shotgun from the wall, leads Copper outside, and pets him gently before ordering him to lie down. He covers the dog's eyes as Copper licks his hand trustingly.
6844940	/m/0gs7lk	Figgs & Phantoms	Ellen Raskin	1974	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story centers on Mona Lisa Figg Newton, a teenage girl living in the fictional town of Pineapple with her eccentric family, including: her tap dancing mother, Sister Figg Newton; her uncles, Truman the Human Pretzel, Romulus the Walking Book of Knowledge, Remus the Talking Adding Machine, and Kadota with his Nine Performing Kanines; and her cousin Fido the Second. The only family member Mona gets along with is her uncle Florence, a book dealer. A main concern of the characters is Capri, the Figg family heaven, which involves a ritual passed down through the Figg family for generations. Uncle Florence's greatest wish is to find his Capri. Mona's greatest fear is that her uncle will succeed and leave her alone. One of the novel's unusual characteristics is its interactive status. The opening pages classify it as a "mysterious romance or a romantic mystery," but the book never mentions the mystery again. Rather, to unravel the truth about some of the novel's most mysterious happenings, readers must follow the trail of literature, history and music that Florence leaves behind him, by investigating the writings of Joseph Conrad, William Blake and Gilbert and Sullivan. While the book can be read on its own as a surrealistic journey, solving the mystery leads to greater insight into the truth about Florence.
6849528	/m/0gsgjn	Conan the Adventurer	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 In these stories from Conan's early thirties, the Cimmerian starts as a leader of the Afghuli tribe in Vendhya, sojourns in the black kingdoms south of Stygia, and ends up as a Zingaran buccaneer. Chronologically, the four short stories collected as Conan the Adventurer fall between Conan the Wanderer and Conan the Buccaneer.
6849716	/m/0gsgyk	Conan the Freebooter	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 In these stories from Conan's late twenties, the Cimmerian is a mercenary with the Free Company in the city-states of Shem and the lands to the north and east, a war leader of the steppe-raiding Kozaki, and finally a soldier in the service of the kingdom of Kauran. Chronologically, the five short stories collected as Conan the Freebooter fall between Conan of Cimmeria and Conan the Wanderer.
6850013	/m/0gshc_	Histoire de l'oeil				 Story of the Eye consists of several vignettes, centered around the sexual passion existing between the unnamed late adolescent male narrator and Simone, his primary female partner. Within this episodic narrative two secondary figures emerge: Marcelle, a mentally ill sixteen-year-old girl who comes to a sad end, and Lord Edmund, a voyeuristic, English émigré aristocrat. Simone and the narrator first consummate their lust on a beach near their home, and involve Marcelle within their activity. The couple are exhibitionists, copulating within Simone's house in full view of her mother. During this second episode, Simone derives pleasure from inserting hard and soft boiled eggs for her vaginal and anal stimulation; she also experiences considerable enjoyment from the viscosity of various liquids. The pair undertake an orgy with other adolescents, which involves some broken glass and involuntary bloodletting, and ends with Marcelle's psychological breakdown. The narrator flees his own parents' home taking a pistol from the office of his bedridden, senile, and violent father. They view Marcelle within a sanatorium, but fail to break her out. Naked, they flee during night back to Simone's home, and more displays of exhibitionist sex ensue before Simone's widowed mother. Later, they finally break Marcelle out of the institution, but unfortunately, Marcelle is totally insane. Deprived of her therapeutic environment, she hangs herself. The pair have sex next to her corpse. After Marcelle's suicide, the two flee to Spain, where they meet Sir Edmund. They witness a Madrid bullfight, which involves the prowess of handsome twenty-year-old matador, El Granero. Initially, El Granero kills the first bull that he encounters and the animal is consequently castrated. Simone then pleasures herself by vaginally inserting these taurine testicles. Unfortunately, El Granero is killed by the next bull that he fights, and his face is mutilated. As the corpse of El Granero is removed from the stadium, his right eye has worked loose from its socket, and is hanging, bloody and distended. Simone, Sir Edmund, and the narrator visit the Catholic Church of San Seville after the day's events. Simone aggressively seduces Don Aminado, a handsome, young, Catholic priest, fellating him while Simone and the narrator have sex. Sir Edmund undertakes a blasphemous parody of the Catholic Eucharist involving desecration of the bread and wine using Don Aminado's urine and semen before Simone strangles Don Aminado to death during his final orgasm. Sir Edmund enucleates one of the dead priests' eyes, and Simone inserts it within her vagina, while she and the narrator have sex. The trio successfully elude apprehension for the murder of Don Aminado, and make their way down Andalusia. Sir Edmund purchases an African-staffed yacht so that they can continue their debaucheries, whereupon the story ends. In a postscript, Bataille reveals that the character of Marcelle may have been partially inspired by his own mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder, while the narrator's father is also a transcription of his own unhappy paternal relationship. In an English language edition, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag provide critical comment on the events.
6850436	/m/0gsj00	Conan	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 After a letter reflecting on Conan's life written by Howard to P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark, both fans of Howard's work, is an essay on the invented prehistory in which the hero's adventures are set tracing its development up to Conan's own time. The stories gathered in this collection then follow the Cimmerian from his escape from slavery in Hyperborea through his days as a youthful thief in Zamora, Corinthia and Nemedia, to the beginning of his stint as a mercenary soldier for King Yildiz of Turan. To Conan's discomfiture, the supernatural is his constant companion. Chronologically, the seven short stories collected as Conan are the earliest in Lancer's Conan series. The stories collected as Conan of Cimmeria follow.
6850521	/m/0gsj3t	The Visitor	K. A. Applegate	1996-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Animorphs get together and decide that they need to make their next move against the Yeerks. The only lead they have is that Mr. Chapman, their assistant principal, is a Controller. Jake asks Rachel to try to get to him through his daughter Melissa, an old friend of hers. However, Melissa has become distant lately, and Rachel fears she has become a Controller like her father. Rachel remembers Melissa's pet cat (Fluffer McKitty), and the Animorphs plan to infiltrate Chapman's house to find out what they can; Rachel morphs Melissa's pet cat to gain access. Once in the house, Rachel follows Mr. Chapman into a basement room and discovers that he communicates directly with Visser Three, the leader of the Earth invasion, through holographic technology. While in the room, she is spotted by Visser Three, who orders Chapman to kill her because she might be an Andalite. Rachel doesn't react, and Chapman reasons with Visser Three to allow Rachel to escape shaken, but unharmed. Before she leaves the house, Rachel follows Melissa and learns that she is not a Controller, but has pulled away from her friends because she believes her parents — now both Controllers — don't love her anymore. Rachel decides to keep the encounter with Visser Three a secret from her friends, and convinces them that she needs to infiltrate Chapman's house again. She does a few nights later, this time with Jake stowed away on her back as a flea. Rachel is careful to stay out of Chapman's and Visser Three's sights, but is again found out. Visser Three is sure now that she is an Andalite bandit, and orders Chapman to bring Rachel to him. He also tells Chapman to bring Melissa so that she can be infested, because she is a security risk to Yeerks; it was her cat that the "Andalite" used. Chapman rebels against his Yeerk (Iniss 226), causing Iniss to momentarily lose control of the host body and fight to take it back. Iniss is tired by the effort and opts not to take Melissa, planning to explain the circumstances face to face with the visser. Iniss takes Rachel and Jake, still morphed as a flea, to the abandoned construction site, and he allows Chapman himself to speak to Visser Three. Chapman reminds the Visser that he willingly became a Controller on the condition that the Yeerks not take Melissa, and if they were to violate that contract, he would make life as hard as he could for the Yeerk in his head. Since Chapman is in a position of some influence at the school and is regularly meeting with parents, this would be very disastrous, and Visser Three grudgingly gives in. The other Animorphs show up to rescue Jake and Rachel and barely escape from one of Visser Three's monstrous morphs. The next day, Rachel writes an anonymous note to Melissa, telling her that her father loves her more than ever, despite not being able to show it.
6850909	/m/0gsjq7	The Season of the Witch	James Leo Herlihy	1971	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gloria decides to run away from home with her gay friend John McFadden. Both of them have a reason to leave: Gloria wants to find her estranged father, and John wants to avoid joining the Army and being sent to Vietnam. They head from Michigan to New York City, where they meet a host of colorful characters. The novel explores the personal freedoms of the late 1960s, including casual drug use, draft evasion, and homosexuality, and goes beyond that to incest.
6850995	/m/0gsjtc	The Beginning	K. A. Applegate	2001-05		 Continuing on immediately from The Answer, Rachel attacks the Yeerks in control of the Blade ship, and kills Tom and his Yeerk, before dying at the hands of his Yeerk allies shortly after; the Ellimist briefly stops time to memorialize her death, tells his own story to her, and she dies. Tom's morph-capable Yeerks escape in the Blade Ship, abandoning the disabled Pool Ship to the Animorphs. Visser One, realizing that he is defeated, leaves Alloran-Semitur-Corrass's body after being knocked unconscious by Ax. The remaining Animorphs, as well as Alloran (freed after more than two decades under Visser One's control over his body), contact the Andalite fleet, and after hours of negotiations, the Andalite fleet promotes Ax to rank of Prince, and declares the war over. The Animorphs attend Rachel's funeral, where a statue is erected in her honor, and Tobias flies away with Rachel's ashes. It is also revealed that the Animorphs lived in California, a fact that had not been revealed through the course of the series. The remainder of the book describes the development of the characters over the course of three years after the war. Jake, Marco, and Cassie become instantly rich and famous, while Ax returns to the Andalite homeworld a hero. Surrendered Yeerks are allowed to choose an animal form in which to become a nothlit, and similarly Arbron's Taxxons are granted their wish and become nothlit anacondas or other big snakes, relocated to the Amazon Rainforest. Unable to morph out of his Taxxon form, Arbron is soon killed by poachers. This may have been for the better, as Arbron is finally freed from the Taxxon's hunger. The free Hork-Bajir colony is moved to Yellowstone National Park, and are protected by Toby Hamee and Cassie. Toby becomes a non-voting member of the US Senate while Cassie serves as an adviser to the President. Humanity has also developed an alliance with Andalites. Some developments between the two races are companies such as Microsoft and Nintendo building new electronics and Andalites morphing into humans to experience the sense of taste. Marco embraces his new fame, and winds up becoming the self-proclaimed "spokesman" for the Animorphs, as well as a TV star. Cassie uses her powers in the government to become an activist for the environment and the Hork-Bajir. Jake however adjusts less easily than they do to the new conditions and becomes depressed. A year after the conclusion of the war, Esplin 9466 (formerly Visser Three and later Visser One) is put on trial in The Hague, Netherlands for war crimes against humanity and is found guilty. Jake has slumped into depression in the year since the war ended, having minimal contact with his friends and not morphing at all. During Jake's testimony at the trial, Esplin's defense lawyers attempt to discredit Jake by claiming that he himself is a war criminal for his actions, such as his emptying of the Pool ship that killed 17,372 Yeerks. Though this objection is overruled, Jake is deeply shaken by it, as he feels that it, along with many of his actions during the war, was immoral or mistaken. In a desperate bid to cheer Jake up, his friends capture him and dump him into the ocean, thinking that by forcing him into a dolphin morph (dolphins being naturally happy) they can cheer him up. Jake remains aloof however. Esplin is forced to live out his remaining days without a host in a purple box (the Andalites constructed the box and had it painted purple for some unknown reason). Two years after Esplin 9466's sentencing, Ax is charged with finding the Blade Ship. He notes that the military is being shrunk back, and that he easily has the most interesting assignment. The ship crew finds a mysterious DNA sample, a polar bear. Ax leads the investigation team. As First Officer Menderash-Postill-Fastill later recalls, the ship came alive and attacked. Menderash broke off from the ship, but they were then attacked by pirates. He is the sole survivor. Meanwhile, Jake finally concedes to the U.S. government and agrees to train some special ops teams to use the morphing power to combat terrorists. After a few months of meetings, two Andalite officials approach him. Menderash relays Ax's story. Jake agrees to help. He informs Cassie and Marco. Cassie is currently involved with another man, Ronnie. Cassie and her boyfriend are spending time assessing potential new places for the Hork-Bajir to inhabit. Cassie offers to come, but Jake declines, saying that her role is over, and that she is doing what she wants to do the most. Jake also believes that Cassie will be happier if she stays on Earth. He asks her to find Tobias, who has since shut himself away from the world, and has remained angry at Jake for Rachel's death. Tobias however, relents and joins Jake on the mission. Marco agrees to come, but only after yelling at Jake, and telling him that he cannot undo his past mistakes, and that, just as during the war, they will only succeed if they follow his instincts, no matter how "crazy, reckless and ruthless." Jake selects two of his students (Santorelli and Jeanne Gerard) to come as well. They are picked because they have no close friends or relatives. As the mission is top-secret and unauthorized, Jake and the others conduct a very elaborate plan. Marco knocks out two Andalites who are guarding a shuttle. They use the shuttle to take off and board a captured Yeerk cruiser. They then crash the shuttle into the ground. The official story would be that terrorists overpowered the Andalite guards but could not pilot the ship and crashed. The ship is an elegant cruiser. Menderash, following an Andalite tradition, believes it bad luck to board the ship before it is named; after Tobias notes that it is "beautiful and dangerous and exciting," the group gives it the only fitting name, the Rachel. After several months in space, the Animorphs find the Blade Ship, only to discover that Ax has been assimilated into an entity only known as The One, giving Ax a new mouth which split open the lower part of Ax's face. The One threatens to consume the Animorphs, as it had done to Ax. Jake comments on Marco's earlier call to be "crazy, reckless and ruthless," and, with a smile that Marco notes makes him look like Rachel, orders them to ram the Blade ship.
6851677	/m/0gskvq	The Encounter	K. A. Applegate	1996-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tobias and Rachel liberate a caged red-tailed hawk from a car dealership (Dealin' Dan Hawke's Used Cars) where it is being used as a mascot in advertisements. Later that evening, Tobias sees a shimmer in the air and is perplexed by it. He decides to check it out again the next day, and this time notices a flock of geese seemingly run into an invisible wall in the air. Tobias suspects the anomaly to be a Yeerk ship using optical camouflage and tells the other Animorphs about it. The group morphs into wolves to follow the last known direction of the ship into the mountains. They arrive at a lake guarded by Park Service human-controllers and Hork-Bajir-controllers. The ship decloaks over the lake, revealing itself to be a massive logistics ship that collects water and air for the Yeerk Pool ship in orbit. Tobias also sees the hawk that he and Rachel freed, and has an urge to be with her. The Animorphs return from the mountains and make plans to morph into fish in the lake and get sucked up by the ship so they can disable it from the inside, thus deactivating the cloaking device while it is above a city and revealing the Yeerk invasion to the general public. Tobias heads up to the lake again to scope out potential hiding places, but his hawk instincts overpower him on the way and he kills and eats a rat. Greatly disturbed by the experience, he flies to Rachel's gymnastics exhibition at the mall and tries to commit suicide. He flies around the mall in a panicked state until Marco smashes open a skylight for him (with a baseball) to escape. Tobias regresses into his hawk instincts for several days, living in the woods and hunting rodents. His human side only re-emerges when he saves a man escaping from Hork-Bajir near the mountain lake. He returns to Rachel to talk about what happened, and he decides that he needs to keep fighting the Yeerks to remain human. The Animorphs revisit the lake and hide in a cave until the Yeerks arrive. They then morph trout, and Tobias carries them to the lake to avoid notice by the Yeerks who have locked down the area. The others are successfully sucked up into the ship, but they discover that the water tank is sealed off inside; they are trapped. They communicate this information to Tobias and ask him to bring the ship down if possible. Meanwhile, Tobias is spotted and identified as an "Andalite bandit." To avoid attacks from Yeerk Bug Fighters and helicopters, he lands on top of the logistics ship, the one place he can be sure the Yeerks won't risk firing. A dozen Taxxons emerge out onto the deck to kill him, but Tobias aims for its eyes. The Taxxon, trying to shield itself, accidentally makes it easier for Tobias to grab its Dracon beam. He fires the beam at the ship's bridge, causing it to fly out of control and crash into the other Yeerk ships (Bug Fighters and USFS helicopters). A large gash is torn in the side of the ship, and the other Animorphs come pouring out with the water that had been collected. They are able to morph into birds and escape. Tobias again sees the female hawk, but the Yeerks, mistaking her for him, kill her. The remains of the downed truck ship are disposed of by the Yeerks, thus leaving no evidence for the Animorphs to show the world. Tobias is distressed over the death of the hawk, but realizes that it is this emotion that makes him human, as a true hawk would not care if another hawk had died. Tobias discusses this with Rachel, and begins to accept his newfound balance between being a hawk and a being a human. Tobias states that Marco had previously acquired a bald eagle morph and that he used it during the escape from the Yeerk ship. However, Marco never acquired a bald eagle; his raptor morph is an osprey.
6851820	/m/0gsl1z	The Android	K. A. Applegate	1997-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While sneaking into a concert in dog morph, Jake and Marco discover that they are unable to detect a smell from their friend Erek King, something impossible, as all living things smell (Marco describes Erek as a "black hole of smell"). They then realize that he is also a member of the Sharing. When the Animorphs investigate further, they find out that he is really an android with a hologram projected around him, after he is hit by a bus and his hologram fails for a few seconds. Marco finds out from Tom that there is a barbecue for The Sharing going on at a nearby lake, and the Animorphs go there to find out whether Erek is working for the Yeerks. Only certain animals can see through Erek's hologram, so Ax and Marco morph wolf spiders, while the rest of the Animorphs go into their bird morphs (except Jake, who morphs a fly) to act as lookouts. While in morph, Marco and Ax confirm their suspicion that Erek is an android. However, Marco is then grabbed by a bird, who tries to eat him. He is forced to demorph in full view of Erek. Erek projects a hologram around him and from the Controllers. Erek tells Marco to come visit him at his house, and to bring the other Animorphs. After some thought, the Animorphs decide to go. In case it's a trap, they leave Rachel behind, who will morph into grizzly bear and storm the place if Ax thought-speaks a distress call. Once they get there, Erek reveals he is part of an ancient race of androids called the Chee, whose creators, the Pemalites, were destroyed by the Howlers thousands of years ago. The Chee managed to escape to Earth with a few of the last remaining Pemalites (which resembled humanoid canines), and fused their essence with wolves, creating dogs. A few members of the Chee are working against the Yeerks. Erek agreed to "become" a Controller, but in reality he controls his Yeerk. When he goes to the Yeerk Pool, he simply projects a hologram of the Yeerk going in and out of his ear, realizing that the Yeerks have very little ability to communicate while in the pool. The Chee have amazing physical strength, but they have one drawback: their programming means they cannot hurt anyone. Erek tells the Animorphs that they can change their programming with the Pemalite crystal. They find out that the Yeerks are currently in possession of the crystal, and have it in a high security facility. They agree to attempt to retrieve the crystal so the Chee can join the fight. To get it, they decide to sneak in using cockroach and spider morphs. They are chased by a rat and just barely escape being burned by a furnace, but they reach the highly guarded room. They morph into bats to echolocate and avoid the complex wiring that protects the crystal from normal means. However, once Jake has the crystal in his mouth, the Animorphs realize that he can't echolocate out of there. They go into battle morphs and race out, where they are stopped by twenty Hork-Bajir warriors. Marco sees Erek outside the windows looking in, powerless to help them. During the fighting, Marco ends up by the windows. Gasping, he smashes the window and gives the Pemalite crystal to Erek before dying. When Erek delivers an electric shock to Marco's heart and he comes to, Marco realises that all of the Hork-Bajir are dead, and the Animorphs and Erek are fine, Erek having massacred the Hork-Bajir. Erek says that he has realized why the Pemalites put the pacifist programming in him- as his memory remains perfect, Erek will never be able to move past the memory of the violence that he has committed and will constantly remember it as though it just took place-, and changes his programming back to what it was. He says that he can never join the actual fight, but he can pass on information. He gives Marco a phone number for a safe, untappable line so they can communicate. At the end of the book, Homer, Jake's dog, drops the Pemalite crystal into the ocean.
6854291	/m/0gsq7h	The Unlikely Spy				 The story is about crucial events that decided the outcome of World War II. German Intelligence tries to learn the time and place of invasion into France by Allied forces. The future of the war depends on this information, so British Security Agencies and MI5 in particular try to conceal the truth from Germans by giving them false information. All this is accomplished by the MI5 official Alfred Vicary, a former professor of History in one of London Universities. The German spy Catherina Blake, whose real name is Anna Steiner, actually is close to learning the secret, but some little failures help Alfred Vicary to reveal her true identity. So he devises and carries out his plan of Double Cross. The basic idea of it is that after uncovering the German spy Catherina Blake, instead of capturing and imprisoning her, the British Intelligence provides her with false documents which she accepts as information she seeks. Then she sends the content of those papers through other spies to Germany, and so German Spy agencies are being deceived without having the least idea of it. The story ends with depiction of the night Catherine tries to escape from Britain. If she could have fled she would be able to tell all she knew about British Intelligence agents and their Double Cross operation, and maybe Germans would understand that they had been deceived all the time. But Anna does not manage to escape and gets killed by the fire opened by British martial ship. So Germans remain ignorant of the secret they tried to reveal. And this causes their defeat in World War II.
6854309	/m/0gsq8w	Cold Fire	Tamora Pierce	2002-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Daja and Frostpine are staying with some friends of Frostpine's. While they are staying there, Daja realized that the two eldest daughters of the family (the twins Niamara (Nia) and Jorality (Jory) possess ambient magic. She devises a testing mirror to determine the aspect of their magics. Nia is discovered to possess Carpentry magic and Jory to possess Cooking. Since Daja has no skill in either of those areas, she entrusts the twins to local mages. Her only responsibility is in teaching them to meditate. Since the twins are complete opposites in personality, this proves to be a challenging task. Meanwhile, Daja makes friends with a local firefighter, Ben Ladradun. He is trying to form an organized fire brigade from the villagers, but it isn't working. Daja and Ben suspect that many if not all of the recent fires were set on purpose. As Ben searches to discover the "fire-bug", Daja works tirelessly to make Ben a pair of living metal gloves to protect him from burning. Daja ends up saving many people from burning buildings as the amount of fires increases. In the end it is revealed that Ben is the "fire-bug" and Daja captures him and gives him to the authorities; who end up burning him to death. Ben set fires because the only time he got respect was when he was a victim of the flames or when he was fighting them. His emotionally and physically abusive mother created his twisted way of thinking.
6854477	/m/0gsqqt	In High Places	Arthur Hailey			 The novel is set during a fictional crisis of the Cold War. The characters are presented as attempting to lead Canada as it faces the imminent threat of thermonuclear war. James McCallum Howden is portrayed as Canada's Prime Minister, the leader of an unnamed party. The Howden government possesses a rocky, unstable majority in Canada's Parliament. Howden's political struggles are shown in counterpoint with the mingled strength and troubled feelings that he gets from his marriage. He and his wife Margaret are depicted as having a pleasant, passionless relationship, with the politician troubled by guilt over the memories of a past extramarital affair with his assistant, Milly. Despite this misstep, Howden is portrayed as a sympathetic character. Three high-ranking aides and political allies of Howden are also followed through their work, Arthur Lexington, Stuart Cawston, and Brian Richardson. Lexington and Cawston fight to protect their chief and his political position as Canada moves closer to what the novel depicts as the greatest crisis in its national history. During the course of the novel, it becomes increasingly clear that Howden's premiership is gravely threatened by the consequences of an amoral political pact that Howden was forced to make with an erstwhile ally in order to gain the party leadership. The deteriorating relationship between Howden and this former ally forms one of the key plot movements of the novel.
6855289	/m/05kdfxm	The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir	Bill Bryson	2006-04	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Bryson spent his childhood growing up in Des Moines, Iowa. He was born on December 8, 1951, which was also the tenth anniversary to the USA’s entry into World War II. He was a part of the baby-boom generation that was born right after World War II ended. He describes his early years of life and his parents, William and Mary Bryson. His father was a well-known sports writer for the Des Moines Register, the leading newspaper in Des Moines. His mother was also a writer; however, she wrote for magazines like Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, and House Beautiful. He recounts many things that were invented during his childhood that fascinated him, which include frozen dinners, atomic toilets, and television. His middle-class, all-American lifestyle is shown constantly throughout the book, and the influence of his depression-era raised parents rubs off on him. He also remembers his adventures as "the thunderbolt kid," an alter ego he made up for himself when he felt powerless. He was able to vaporize people with his heat vision and thought that he came from another planet. He tells amusing stories of his misadventures as Billy Bryson also, including his first days in school when he figured out that when the entire class was running drills to protect themselves from a bomb, he would simply read comic books instead. However, when the principal and a police officer came in one day to supervise, he got in loads of trouble. Trouble was something fairly common for "the thunderbolt kid", seeing as throughout his childhood his teachers were not too amused by his abilities. In fact, Bryson recounts how he really wasn't too interested in getting up before noon, thus not even going to school very often. Despite his unique behavior, Bryson tells his story through the eyes of a child, filled with hilarious observations about basically everything: from Lumpy Kowalski's curious nickname to all the joy that was to be had in the marvelous department stores. Even though he focuses mostly on his childhood, he tells of many of the events that were happening at the time, including the development of the atomic bomb, and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. Bryson is constantly ironically praising the time in which he grew up, citing all of the fun that children could have in those days while still noting that it probably resulted in buttock cancer for many of Bishop's atomic toilet aficionados. He tells of his first days in Jr. High and High School, and during both he began smoking, drinking, and stealing, although he didn’t get caught for any of it. He met Stephen Katz in Jr. High, when they were both in the school's A/V club. Katz would accompany Bryson on many of his travel experiences. At the end of the book, Bryson tells the reader that "life moves on," and that he wishes that the world could be more similar to life in the 50s and 60s. The last lines of the book are, "What a wonderful world that would be. What a wonderful world it was. We won’t see its like again, I’m afraid."
6856166	/m/0gstkp	Crampton Hodnet	Barbara Pym			 The action takes place in North Oxford, some time before World War II. Miss Doggett and her companion Miss Morrow, characters who reappear in another Pym novel, Jane and Prudence, like to entertain students and young clergy at their Victorian home in Banbury Road which is gloomy and surrounded with laurel bushes. When an unmarried curate, Mr. Latimer, comes to lodge at their house, he sees the homely Jessie Morrow as a suitable potential wife, but she rejects his proposal, knowing that he has no real interest in her. Meanwhile, Miss Doggett's cousin, the don Francis Cleveland, a Reader at the fictitious Randolph College, falls in love with and contemplates an extramarital affair with one of his students, Barbara Bird, but returns disappointed to his wife Margaret. In the book, Crampton Hodnet is mentioned by Mr. Latimer as a village which he pretends he was visiting when he was actually out walking with Miss Morrow.
6857709	/m/0gsx27	The Clan Corporate	Charles Stross	2006-05-16	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this installment, Miriam Beckstein spends most of her time in the first parallel world, a virtual prisoner. She has ruffled enough feathers and stirred up enough trouble that her uncle, the clan's head of security, keeps her well isolated, and unable to travel unchaperoned. At one point in the story, she manages to escape surveillance for a short time, but she quickly gets herself back in trouble, and her activities are strongly circumscribed thereafter. There's a subplot involving Mike Fleming, a cop who dated Miriam a couple of times. Mike has been pulled into a government task force that is investigating the clan's activities and plans with the help of a member of the clan's security apparatus who turned his back on the clan at the end of book two. There are occasional references to the moral and security implications of holding him prisoner outside the criminal justice system, but they are not explored in any depth.
6858376	/m/0gsx_k	Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome	Robert Harris	2006-09-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Part One – Senator – 79-70 BC The books opens and it is Tiro, M. Tullius, the secretary of Cicero who is the narrator, looking back in time over the thirty-six years he was with his master. They met when he was twenty-four years old and Cicero twenty-seven on the family estate in the hills of Arpinum. Cicero decides to consult the leading teachers of rhetoric, most of whom lived in Greece and Asia Minor, and borrows Tiro, never to return him. After trying the so-called Asiatic method, Cicero decides to enrol in the school of Apollonius Molon, a lawyer from Alabanda, who had retired to Rhodes to open his rhetorical school. It is here that Cicero develops the physical physique and voice that will make him such a popular and effective orator. Returning to Rome and becoming a senator, Cicero does a year of obligatory government service in Sicily and makes his way back to Rome to seek his fame and fortune. The plot develops when the senator and lawyer are visited some months later by Sthenius of Thermae, who has fled from Sicily after being threatened by the Governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres. Cicero decides to defend him and raises the matter in the Roman senate but his motion is talked out by Catulus and finally Hortensius, an aristocrat, Cicero’s arch rival and the leading lawyer in Rome. Cicero despatches Tiro to the National Archive, Catulus’s domain, to check Verres’s quaestorian records as governor and finds no accounts submitted. In the meantime, Verres finds Sthenius guilty of spying in his absence and sentences him to death. Tiro arranges for a place to hide him – in one of his wife’s garrets in the Roman slums – and a decision is made to appeal to the tribunes and a deal is made with Palicanus, one of Pompey’s lackeys – Pompey the Great will assist over Sthenius if Cicero supports Pompey's consular ambitions. Gaius Verres, the pro-praetor of Sicily, sends his freeman Timarchides to search Cicero’s house and Terentia, his wife, berates her husband to act. The next day Cicero, accompanied by Terentia and Quintus, his brother, makes a speech before the ten tribunes and Sthenius is safe as long as he remains in Rome.Crassus returns to Rome, victorious after his defeat of Sparticus and Cicero goes out to welcome him, following an invitation, on the Appian Way. However, the two men intensely dislike each other and refuses to support Crassus’s request for a triumph. Pompey the Great also returns from Spain and strikes a bargain with Crassus that they will share the consulship and Cicero’s career looks finished. Sthenius, who has been ignored for some time, turns up at the house one morning, accompanied by Heraclius and Epicrates who have also been swindled out of their estates by Verres. Over dinner one evening, Cicero declares his intention to stand for election as aedile and to accomplish it by prosecuting Gaius Verres for extortion, based on the accumulated evidence. Over the following months, Quintus acts as his campaign manager. Pompey is given his triumph. Gaius Verres returns to Rome. At the embezzlement court, chaired by Glabrio, Cicero submits his postulates, an application to prosecute. However, the court also receives a second application to prosecute Verres from Verres’s quaestor, Caecilius Niger – a time delaying tactic by Hortensius and Cicero has to fight it out at the Temple of Castor and eventually wins against a biased jury, surprisingly supported by Catulus, the hard and snobbish old senator who is, nevertheless, a patriot to his marrow. Cicero is forced to borrow money from Terentia to support his case and leaves Rome on the Ides of January to seek evidence against Verres in Sicily. He, Lucius, his cousin, and Tiro gather a lot of incriminating evidence, particularly after a raid on the office of the tax collectors in Syracuse where they find out about the extent of Verres’s extortion from a set of duplicate records (the originals have been removed) kept by Vibius, the financial director during Verres’s term of office. On a visit to the stone quarries, the encounter crews of merchant ships imprisoned there that should have been captured pirates whom Verres had ransomed. Cicero has an argument with Metellus, the Governor, over his appropriation of the records but is allowed, under law, to make a fair copy of them and is supported by leading members of the city’s most eminent men. On his return to Rome, Cicero discovers Hortensius hoping to tie up the extortion court’s time until the consular elections. To fund his case and also his aedile election campaign, Cicero is obliged once more to borrow money from Terentia. At the first round of the elections, Cicero learns that Verres is bribing the voters with his immense wealth; Marcus Metellus also draws the election court as praetor. At his wit’s end, Cicero pays a visit with Tiro to Pompey’s house and a secret bargain is made. The second round of the aedile elections takes place on the Field of Mars Marcus Cicero is victorious against all the odds. His energies renewed, Cicero brings all this Sicilian witnesses to the extortion court, on the 5th August in the consulship of Gnaeus Pompey Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus, and the trial of Gaius Verres begins. With only ten days to go until the games of Pompey the Great, Cicero follows Terentia’s advice and makes a short, withering speech saying he will make his case in the space of ten days and his success if confirmed when the court hears of the case of a Roman citizen, named Herennius, beheaded by Verres because he knew of the Governor’s taking bribes from the pirates. On the last day, a Sicilian named Numitorius tells the story of Publius Gavius, flogged to death in public despite saying ‘I am a Roman citizen’ at every stroke of the lash. All that is left is to determine the fine. Verres disappears and Hortenius makes a written offer of one and a half million which Cicero and his team reject. However, Pompey pays a call to his house who orders them to accept it (it turns out Cicero had asked Pompey to ensure Glabrio, the judge of the extortion trial, remained independent) – Pompey himself does not want to be caught in the middle of a civil war between the people and the senate. Part Two – Praetorian 68-64 BC Cicero enjoys two years of success and happiness. In his thirty-ninth year he is looking forward to the elections for a praetorship. He maintains relations with Pompey and decides to take on the case of Marcus Fonteius, the former governor of Further Gaul who is being prosecuted for corruption. Cicero does it so that he can deal with the rumour that he supports foreigners above his own people and lay it to rest. Back in the extortion court he wins his case against the Gauls but is saddened by the death of his cousin, Lucius, whom Tiro knows commits suicide, as well as his father. Whilst staying at the family farm, news arrives that Rome is threatened by pirates and Pompey request his presence at a council of war back in Rome. A plan is hatched to divided the Mediterranean into fifteen zones, with each zone to have its own legate, responsible for scouring his area clean of pirates and then to make treaties with the local rulers to prevent their return – all to report to one supreme commander, Pompey the Great. Knowing that the aristocrats will baulk at this concentration of power, Cicero persuades Pompey not to put his name anywhere on the bill setting up the supreme command and to leave it to the people to vote it to him. Rome is in a panic with the burning of Ostia by the pirates and when the Latin Festival finishes, Gabinus mounts the rostra to demand a supreme commander and at a meeting in the Senate Pompey’s arrival is greeting with boos and jeering and Piso and the other aristocrats attack him for wanting to be a second Romulus in their determination to vote down the lex Gabinia. Back at Pompey’s mansion there is a determination to prevent Crassus stealing Pompey’s glory. Cicero’s plan is to have Gabinus summon Pompey to the rostra the next day, asking him to serve as supreme commander, and to have Pompey reject it and then the people would demand he take it. Cicero writes his speech and Pompey makes his announcement to retire from public office. Crassus and Pompey are evenly matched against one another, with each having enough supporters to veto the bill if required. Crassus turns up at Cicero’s house and suggests a joint supreme command, and offering to support Cicero for consul if he conveys the offer to Pompey but Cicero’s rejects the proposal, despite being threatened by Crassus with suffering the same fate as Tiberius Gracchus. Tiro is dispatched once more to the National Archive to research Gracchus and Cicero learns that his agrarian reform law was vetoed by the tribune, Marcus Octavius, and Gracchus called upon the people to vote him out of office but was later beaten to death with sticks by the aristocrats and his body thrown into the Tiber. At a meeting at Pompey’s house, Cicero reads out the extract from the Annals and it is decided to use the same precedent – although a dangerous one for the health of the republic – to get Pompey the supreme command. Gabinus oversees a vote although he is opposed by a fellow tribune, Trebellius, a supporter of Crassus, and so Gabinus puts it to the voters to vote him out of office. Catalus tries to intervene and Roscius tries to propose splitting the joint command but is ignored by Gabinus and the lex Gabinia is passed. Pompey later arrives in the forum wearing the paludamentum, the bright scarlet cloak of every Roman proconsul on active service, and leaves the city to tackle the pirates, not to return for another six years. Cicero is elected praetor and is allocated the extortion court. The lex Manilia is proposed, granting command of the war against Mithradates to Pompey, along with the government of the provinces of Asia, Cilicia and Bithynia, the latter two held by Lucullus, which is opposed by Catulus and Hortensius. Marcus Caelius Rufus, the son of a wealthy banker, becomes Cicero’s pupil and brings him political gossip. Cicero is summoned to the house of Metellus Pius, pontifex maximus, and requested to prosecute Catilina over his extortion as governor in Africa. Turning down a governorship of a province and the lucrative money-making opportunities, Cicero opts instead to defend Caius Cornelius, Pompey’s former tribune, who has been charged with treason by the aristocrats and the jury acquits him of all charges. Events take a turn for the worse when Publius Clodius Pulcher lays charges against Sergius Catilina for the crimes he committed in Africa and Cicero thinks about defending Catilina. Terentia gives birth to a baby boy named Marcus, much to the household’s delight, and Cicero goes to Catilina’s house once more and says he is so guilty he cannot be is advocate. Cicero leaves Rome to campaign among the northern for their vote in the consulship election. He is assisted and stays with governor Piso who tells him that the aristocracy are behind Antonius Hybrida and, on his return to Rome, learns that Hybrida and Catilina are planning to run on a joint ticket. He learns from his close friend, Atticus, that Crassus is attempting to hijack the election through bribery. Using two political agents, Ranunculus and Filum, he eventually is taken to a bribery agent, Gaius Salinator, who tells him under duress that he has been paid by Crassus to deliver votes for Hybrida and Catilina and that Crassus is attempting to buy eight thousand electoral votes at the cost of twenty million. Tiro is dispatched off to meet with Caelius Rufus, who is now working for Crassus, to find out what his plans are. Rufus, who dislikes old baldhead intensely, agrees to hide Tiro in a secret panel behind a tapestry during an important meeting. About twenty important men meet at Crassus’ house, including Caesar and Catilina, and on his return to Cicero they work together on his transcribed notes, finding out that the conspirators plan to seize control of the state, introduce a land reform bill, sell of vast amounts of conquered land abroad and then annex Egypt for further acquisition of land in Italy for the plebs. It is Terentia's idea to Cicero to use the aristocrats to support him. A copy of the meeting’s notes are sent to Quintus Hortensius Hortalus. Cicero makes a devastating attack on Mucius in the senate, calling him a whore for being paid to slander Cicero’s reputation, and then goes on to indirectly attack Crassus for using bribery to reject an anti-bribery bill. Cicero then turns his attack on Catilina and, on returning home, has to wait for a reaction from Hortensius. He receives a message and is taken to Lucullus’ new house outside Rome, and Quintus Metellus, whom tried to block Cicero’s efforts in Sicily, is also present. They are suspicious of the meeting’s notes but Tiro convinces them by recording their own conversation using his shorthand script and in the early hours of the morning a deal is struck between the ‘new man’ and the aristocrats. The next day is the consular election on the Field of Mars. On returning home Cicero informs Quintus of what has transpired, and Terentia is also supportive. Cicero puts on a splendid show with a large crowd of supporters and followers accompanying him on the parade and Hortensius comes up to him with a message which leaves Catilina and Hybrida confused as they know the two men are arch enemies. The aristocratic centuries have been instructed to switch their support from Catilina to Cicero and, despite Crassus’ vote purchase, the turnout is large enough to swing the election Cicero’s way, and he is the outright winner for consul with 193 centuries, followed by Hybrida with 102. At the age of forty-two, the youngest age allowable to achieve the supreme imperium of the Roman consulship, the ‘new man’ has achieved his ultimate ambition.
6858835	/m/0gsync	The Athenian Murders	José Carlos Somoza	2000	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel interweaves two apparently disparate storylines: the first being an ancient Greek novel published in Athens just after the Peloponnesian War and the second contained within a modern-day scholar's notes on his translation. In the ancient novel (which is itself called The Athenian Murders) a young ephebe named Tramachus is discovered on the slopes of Mount Lycabettus, apparently attacked by wolves. His tutor at the Academy, Diagoras, enlists the help of a "Decipherer of Enigmas" (a detective named Heracles Pontor) to learn more about Tramachus's death. As Diagoras and Heracles investigate, more youths from the Academy are discovered brutally murdered. Their investigation takes them all over Athens, from mystery cult worship services to a symposium hosted by Plato. Meanwhile, the translator (who is never named) provides frequent commentary on the work, especially as it appears to him to be an example of a (fictional) ancient literary device called eidesis. "Eidesis" is supposedly the practice of repeating words or phrases so as to evoke a particular image or idea in the reader's mind, as it were a kind of literary steganography. As the translator works on the novel, he soon deduces that the "eidetic" secret concealed within the novel is The Twelve Labors of Heracles, one labor for each of the twelve chapters of the novel. The translator becomes obsessed with the imagery, going so far as to see himself depicted within the ancient work. Partway through the novel, the translator is kidnapped and forced to continue the translation in a cell. His captor turns out to be the scholar Montalo, whose edition of The Athenian Murders is the only surviving copy of the work. Montalo himself had obsessed over the novel, hoping to find in it a proof of Plato's Theory of Forms. He felt that should an eidetic text, such as this novel, evoke the same ideas in each reader it would then prove that ideas have a separate, independent reality. However, Montalo finished the translation only to discover that the book proved the opposite—that the book proved his (and the translator's) reality did not exist. The translator finishes the work only to have the same realization: that they themselves are characters in The Athenian Murders, which was written by a colleague of Plato named Philotextus as a way to incorporate Plato's theory of knowledge while criticizing the philosophical lifestyle.
6860552	/m/0gs_kw	Flipped	Wendelin Van Draanen	2001-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 Julianna "Juli" Baker meets Bryce Loski two days before the beginning of second grade; it's something about those blue eyes that attract her. Juli knows it's love while Bryce, like any seven-year-old boy, doesn't. Juli stalks Bryce all through his childhood; staring at his house, asking him to play, following him at school, etc.Everyday, Bryce watches Juli climb the sycamore tree at the bus stop, which Juli is very attached to. Ever since Juli retrieved a kite at the uppermost branches, she has loved the view. She constantly asks Bryce to come join her in the tree, as well as yelling out how many blocks away the bus is. Bryce, being unbelievably shy and annoyed by all the attention, asks out Juli's nemesis, Shelly Stalls, to get rid of his admirer. Bryce looks over his shoulder for Juli every time he's with Shelly, which of course causes Juli to think he's being forced to date her. This provokes a catfight between Juli and Shelly over Bryce. The two break up, and Bryce is back to square one. There comes an incident in sixth grade when, much to Bryce's chagrin and irritation, Juli constantly sniffs Bryce's hair in spelling from her assigned position behind him. According to Juli, his hair smells like watermelon and he has blond earlobe fuzz, even though he has really dark hair. Bryce is disgruntled from this seat change, because Juli had initially sat next to him where she whispered him answers. Now that she's behind him, he's lost that advantage, and his grades slip, especially in spelling. This halts, however, when as Juli sniffs him, she begins to whisper answers in his ear. Bryce, torn between feeling grateful and awkwardly guilty for hating her so much when she's helping him, follows the answers anyway until the end of the year. Juli, on the other hand, can't stop thinking about Bryce in the many years she's known him. Obliviously missing his discomfort being around her, she continues to try to get him to like her. However, Juli's motives change when her beloved sycamore tree is cut down. Although Juli stays up in the branches for hours and misses school to protest its excision, she is brought down and isn't the same for weeks. Unbeknownst to Juli, Bryce feels horribly about Juli's tree, considering Juli asked Bryce to come up to protest with her and he declined. He frets over whether he could have made a difference, and contemplates many times apologizing to Juli but chickens out each time. Matters aren't helped when Bryce's wise but stubborn grandfather takes a fond liking to Juli and pesters Bryce to be friends with her—he doesn't seem to understand Bryce's annoyance with the girl. Juli's spirits are lightened when her father, who she admires more than anyone, paints her a picture of her sycamore tree. Juli often sits out with her dad on the porch for hours, listening to him talk and watching him paint. Juli hangs the picture in her room so she'll always be reminded of what the tree represented for her. Things with Juli start to change when Juli gives Bryce and his family a batch of chicken eggs. Bryce's mother immediately expresses concern that the eggs might be fertilized, so Bryce and his best friend, Garret, sneak over to her house and try to spy on the chickens in her backyard in search of a rooster (The chickens are a result of Juli's winning science fair project, which Bryce is a bit bitter about but means a lot to Juli.) Confused about the differences between chickens, hens, and roosters, they head home without answers. Bryce's family, however, has a new concern—salmonella. Juli's yard has always been very messy, and the family is concerned about poisoning in the eggs. Bryce's father tells him to just say no to Juli about the eggs, but Bryce ends up just throwing the eggs away before his parents come down for breakfast. This goes on for two years, but ends when Juli catches Bryce throwing the eggs into the trash can and tells him she's lost over a hundred dollars giving him the eggs when she's been selling them to her neighbors. She runs home, leaving Bryce feeling miserable. Things take a dive for the worse in eighth grade when Juli overhears Bryce talking to Garret about her mentally challenged uncle. Garret makes a joke about Juli being mentally injured as well. Bryce wants to punch him, (To be exact "slug him") but doesn't want to lose his friend, so he pretends to laugh. Juli, furious and hurt, decides to abandon every thought of Bryce, even though Bryce's grandpa is very good friends with Juli and helps her tame her yard. The flip comes here: the more angry Juli is and the more she ignores him, the more Bryce notices and likes Juli, especially after he finds an old article about Juli's protest for her tree from elementary school. Bryce begins to see that Juli is smart, spirited, and "iridescent", as Grandpa Chet calls her. And for once, Bryce can't get Juli out of his head, and Juli hates Bryce the way Bryce hated her. The climax comes at the eighth grade basket boys' luncheon, an auction in which boys are sold off to win money for charity. Shy Bryce hates this event but has no choice in the matter. Bryce, being incredibly cute, gets auctioned off to Shelly and Miranda, the prettiest girls in his school, and Juli buys Jon out of pity, a boy who didn't get many offers. While on their lunch date, Bryce finds he can't focus on Shelly and Miranda: he just wants to talk to Juli. He gets his chance when Shelly and Miranda get into a huge food fight over him. While they're fighting, Bryce sneaks over to Juli's table, pulls her away from her date, and asks if she likes Jon. She answers that no, she doesn't, but is clearly still annoyed at Bryce and wants nothing to do with him. Bryce, in his relief, takes her hands, leans in, and tries to kiss her, but she yanks back and runs away. Unfortunately for Bryce, this act is witnessed in front of his entire class, so he is dogged the rest of the day by taunts, especially by his friend Garret. It is implied that Bryce drops Garret as a friend in favor of Juli by the end. Juli manages to get home without Bryce seeing her, but Bryce is determined now. He calls, knocks on her door, and eventually climbs her window. Juli ignores him by sitting in the living room, until she looks out the window and sees Bryce's last attempt at winning her heart: he plants a sycamore tree in her front yard. Juli now realizes Bryce has changed and waves back at him from her bedroom window.
6861411	/m/0gt0_2	Conan the Usurper	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 Conan, about forty in these stories, embarks on the most desperate gamble of his life — leading a revolution against King Numedides of Aquilonia, with the end of making himself king in his place. From his low point as a treasure-seeking fugitive in the Pictish Wilderness, he is retrieved by allies from his days in the Aquilonian army to lead the revolt. The borderlands suffer grievously during the war, but in the end Conan takes the throne, only to suffer the customary uneasiness of the head that wears the crown, from an attempted assassination involving Stygian sorcerer Thoth-Amon to magical treachery on the battlefield as he strives to defend his hard-won kingship against predatory foreign powers. The Aquilonian civil war between Conan and Numedides is not actually depicted, but occurs offstage as background to the action of "Wolves Beyond the Border", Howard's only non-Conan tale set in the Hyborian Age. De Camp later made the war itself the subject of his novel Conan the Liberator, co-written with Lin Carter. "The Phoenix on the Sword", which Howard rewrote from an earlier Kull story, marks his only use of Thoth-Amon as an antagonist, in a somewhat peripheral role — he and Conan never even meet! In later stories de Camp and Carter would later elevate the Stygian sorcerer into one of Conan's principal enemies. Howard later reused the plot of "The Scarlet Citadel" as the basis of his only Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon (afterwards retitled Conan the Conqueror). Chronologically, the four short stories collected as Conan the Usurper fall between Conan the Warrior and Conan the Conqueror.
6864185	/m/0gt61w	Conan the Wanderer	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 Conan, now about thirty-one, survives a Turanian trap that crushes his Zuagir raiders and seeks bloody revenge on Vardanes of Zamora, their betrayer. Afterwards he moves on to other adventures, engaging in skull-duggery in the cannibal-haunted city of Zamboula and ultimately gaining command of a band of Kozaki in the service of Kobad Shah, king of Iranistan. In this final adventure he once again encounters his arch-enemy Olgerd Vladislav, his predecessor as chief of the Zuagirs. Chronologically, the four short stories collected as Conan the Wanderer fall between Conan the Freebooter and Conan the Adventurer.
6864834	/m/0gt72n	The Power of the Dog	Don Winslow	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel begins in 1975 with the main character Art Keller watching the opium poppy fields of the Mexican state of Sinaloa burn. The burning is done in preference to the use of Agent Orange. Keller has just begun his career as a DEA agent, coming over from operative work with the CIA, and a veteran of Viet Nam's Phoenix Program. Keller tells us that though there are similarities, this isn't Operation Phoenix but Operation Condor. Keller's career looks like it might end before it begins, until he works his way into the friendship of the Barrera brothers and Miguel Angel Barrera, referred to us as Tío (meaning Uncle/Valued Elder Patron). Tío sets it up so that Don Pedro Aviles, the main drug lord of Sinaloa, is assassinated, while giving Art Keller the credit for the drug lord's death during an arrest. Tío then leads the Sinaloa heroin traffickers into the modern age as the cartel's new leader.
6867127	/m/0gtcg9	Curse of the Viking Grave	Farley Mowat	1966-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is set in the northern Manitoban forests and in the Barrens to the north. Jamie, Awasin, and Peetyuk divide their time between studying with Jamie's uncle, Angus Macnair, and trapping in the woods. When the Chipeweyan camp nearby succumbs to deadly influenza, the boys help with supplies and nurse the survivors, while Angus travels south in search of medical help. However, Angus contracts pneumonia on the journey and is hospitalized. Jamie is anxious both to obtain money for Angus's treatment and to avoid being placed with Child Welfare. He prepares to return to the Viking tomb he discovered (in Lost in the Barrens) which he believes may contain valuable archaeological relics. The boys and Awasin's sister, Angeline, set out to the still frozen north by dog sled and cariole and eventually meet up with Peetyuk's people, with whom they stay until the thaw. They realize that the Ihalmiut are struggling to survive, and so they decide that most of the profits from the grave should go to help them. The medicine man tells them the story of the heroic Viking known as Koonar and claims that a curse will descend on anyone who disturbs his rest. Defying the curse, Jamie uncovers a sword, a soapstone box, and other ancient pieces. Planning to take the artifacts to Churchill, the travelers set out again, this time by canoe, and brave the treacherous Big River which leads to Hudson Bay.
6868571	/m/0gtflp	Storming Heaven	Dale Brown		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After Admiral Hardcastle warns the world about America's lack of guards against terrorism, the horrors begin. Henri Cazaux, a psychopathic terrorist, attacks the heartland and then the San Francisco airport with explosives. The country is terrorized. The US authorities are overwhelmed. A single-engine Cessna, loaded with explosives, attacks the White House. Soon after publication, when Frank Eugene Corder flew in a Cessna at low altitude to the White House and crashed on the grounds, newspapers noted similarities. No explosives were found in the wreckage of the plane Corder flew.
6868984	/m/0gtgg_	Squire by Tamora Pierce	Tamora Pierce	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Squire tells the story of Keladry of Mindelan's years as a squire, between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Having passed the "big examinations", Kel becomes a squire without a knight-master. While she becomes frustrated at waiting for offers from knights, her best friend, Nealan of Queenscove becomes squire to Alanna the Lioness, the first lady knight in Tortall, and Kel's personal hero. While Kel is disappointed at not becoming the Lioness's squire, she shortly receives an equally prestigious offer from Lord Raoul of Goldenlake, commander of the elite King's Own and a personal friend to the Lioness. As Lord Raoul's squire, she travels with the King's Own and participates in routine duties ranging from chasing rogue centaurs to helping to rebuilt villages afflicted by natural disasters such as mudslides. Along the way, Kel acquires a baby griffin from the bandits who kidnapped him from his parents' nest. Due to the high incidence of kidnapping immature griffins for their magical powers, griffin parents attack any human who has ever touched one of their offspring, so this task is not without its dangers. As knight-master, Raoul teaches Kel the fineries of command, and hones her proven skills in jousting, eventually entering her into tournaments where she jousts against other squires and knights. She jousts twice against Wyldon of Cavall, her previous training master, a political conservative who was initially vehemently opposed to Kel's training to be a knight. After the second time, she meets three girls, two of them sisters, who explain that they wish to train for knighthood as well. Kel gives them some advice, noting that the sisters appear serious about it while the third girl seems more like the type that jumps around from idea to idea. When a political marriage is arranged for Prince Roald, the heir apparent, the Yamani Princess he is betrothed to, turns out to be Shinkokami (nicknamed Shinko), a friend from Kel's childhood years in the Yamani Islands; one of her ladies-in-waiting is Yukimi noh Daiomoru, another of Kel's old friends. Shinko's anxiety about her upcoming marriage, and the prospect of integrating into Tortallan society, become catalysts for the three to reforge their friendship, as Kel introduces Shinko to various aspects of Tortallan culture. She also introduces Yuki to her squire friends, and she and Neal strike up a quick romance. Joren of Stone Mountain is found to be the noble who paid two men to kidnap Lalasa Isran, Kel's maid. He is, however, acquitted with a fine. Kel protests the unfairness of the law to the monarchs and gets them to attempt to change it. Princess Shinkokami's introduction to the subjects of Tortall provides an excuse for the Grand Progress, a progress of the royal family, nobility and other notables. Against his wishes, Raoul joins the progress, with Kel in tow. This becomes a chance that lets Kel strike up a secret romance with Cleon of Kennan, and Raoul becomes involved with the commander of the Queen's Riders, Queen Thayet's former bodyguard and right-hand lady, Buriram Tourakom. Kel's second Midwinter as a squire sees her facing the ordeals of knighthoods of her older friends Prince Roald and Cleon of Kennan (who is at this point Kel's sweetheart). Their Age group includes Joren of Stone Mountain, who dies in the Chamber, and Vinson of Genlith, who is punished by the Chamber for all the evil deeds he has done to women, namely by feeling every injury done to them. On the Midwinter after her eighteenth birthday, Kel is scheduled to undergo the Ordeal of Knighthood, a ritual that determines if a squire is worthy to become a knight. Of all her year-mates, her name is drawn for the last day of midwinter. Kel waits anxiously while all her friends pass their Ordeals, but her anxiety is disproven; she passes the Ordeal and receives her knight's shield after seeing a disturbing vision in the Chamber, as well as a sword from the Lioness, who had been anonymously sending her gifts of weapons and training equipment throughout her page and squire years.
6869197	/m/0gtgsb	Koko	Peter Straub	1988	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Shortly after the end of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the newspaper Stars and Stripes publishes an article chronicling a series of brutal, ritualistic murders in Far East Asia. All of the victims have had their eyes and ears removed, and each was found with a playing card slipped into his or her mouth with the word "KOKO" written on it. Shortly thereafter, a reunion of Vietnam War veterans is held at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC. Four survivors of a doomed platoon—Michael Poole (a pediatrician plagued by grief over the death of his young son from cancer and ambivalence about his marriage), Tina Pumo (owner of a Vietnamese restaurant), Conor Linklater (a journeyman construction worker) and Harry Beevers (an opportunistic lawyer)-- gather to discuss the Koko killings. Because the word "Koko" holds special significance to the members of their platoon, and because the killings recall the events in a series of books he wrote, the men believe that the killer is Tim Underhill, another member of their platoon who disappeared years earlier in southeast Asia. Beevers convinces the men to help him track down Underhill, hoping that later they can sell the story of their adventure to the news media and become millionaires. While Pumo remains in New York to finish work on his soon-to-be-reopened restaurant, Beevers, Poole, and Linklater travel to Asia in search of Underhill, while the killer travels to America to continue his killing spree, which is meant to atone for an atrocity committed by Beevers and other members of the platoon years earlier, during the war. Much of the plot is interspersed with flashbacks to the four friends' time in Vietnam. Harry Beevers, the lieutenant of the group, was forceful and merciless. Tina, Conor, and Michael were soldiers in his platoon, along with several other men, most notably Victor Spitalny, a foul-tempered and arrogant young man, and M.O. Dengler, a philosophical and thoughtful man from a small town. After Vietnam, it was said that, while Dengler and Spitalny were traveling together in Bangkok, Dengler was brutally murdered in an alleyway while Spitalny fled the scene. Spitalny has not been accounted for since then (fifteen years before the platoon's trip to Singapore). Michael, Conor, and Harry fail to find Underhill in Singapore, but are given several leads while milling around sketchy clubs in the heart of the city that lead Michael and Conor to Bangkok and Harry to Taipei. While Conor searches the darker side of Bangkok, Michael wanders the flower market and residential areas of Bangkok. Before he does so, he visits the scene of Dengler's death, among other landmarks, but his search turns up fruitless. However, while wandering aimlessly around the city, thinking of his wife Judy and the strained relationship between the two of them, he sees an elephant, which delights him, and very soon afterwards finds Underhill at a small neighborhood fair. Upon meeting him, Michael realizes that Underhill couldn't possibly be Koko. His personality and state of mind are far too stable for vicious homicides. Michael convinces Underhill to return to America and help them find Koko. It is agreed that Underhill will accompany Michael and Conor on the flight to San Francisco where they meet with Harry and return to New York together. Meanwhile, back in America, Tina Pumo is murdered by Koko in his apartment. Tina's girlfriend, an attractive young Chinese woman named Maggie Lah, comes to visit him shortly there-after. Maggie realises something is wrong on arriving at Tina's apartment, as the front door has been left open, and enters the apartment trying not to attracting notice. Koko realises she has entered but is not sure of her whereabouts. Koko attempts to lure Maggie into exposing herself to him & gives his position away in the process. Maggie smashes an empty plant pot on Koko's head and knocks him briefly to the floor. This gains Maggie the few precious seconds she needs to escape, and she runs off. She is pursued, but the small lead she has is enough, and she makes it to safety. Michael, Conor, Beevers, Underhill, and Maggie mourn Tina's death, though Maggie does not attend the funeral, as she's worried about what Tina's relatives will say about her position in his life. The five get together and deduce that the murderer is, in fact, Victor Spitalny, having seen such horrors in the war that he has snapped and gone on a murderous rampage. Michael and Maggie begin a relationship. Underhill and Beevers stay at Beevers' house and man the phones in case Koko calls. Michael, Maggie, and Underhill travel to Milwaukee, where Spitalny's parents live, and speak with the two of them. They do not trust the father, George Spitalny, and Maggie develops a hatred towards him. Conor returns home and develops a relationship with the cousin of a man he works with, a woman named Ellen Woyzak. Beevers posts many fliers around town, each of them displaying a coded message only understandable by Koko, telling him to meet Beevers at a park in the center of town a few days later. In Milwaukee, the trio find out that Dengler and Spitalny went to the same school together, and speak to several of Spitalny's old classmates. None have anything particularly odd to say about Spitalny, though Michael agrees to meet one of them for lunch the next day and another for drinks that evening. Out of curiosity, Michael, Underhill, and Maggie go to see Dengler's mother. She turns out to be a religious maniac who taught M.O. Dengler a twisted version of Christianity, along with her husband, who is now deceased. When Michael meets Dengler's classmate for drinks, the man tells him that Dengler's parents had violently abused him several times to correct any errors he might have made. Furthermore, Dengler's father had been arrested and put in prison (and gruesomely murdered two years later by another prisoner) for sexually assaulting Dengler, beginning when he was five or six. Underhill learns the same information at the library, as well as the fact the Karl Dengler is Manny Dengler's real father (where Mrs. Dengler is not his real mother). Michael is shocked by the news and returns with Maggie and Underhill to New York. Conor and Ellen are waiting fervently for them at the airport, where Underhill is arrested because Harry Beevers had made an anonymous call to police so he could get Michael and Underhill out of the way and capture Koko alone. It is revealed that Koko has been telling people that his name is Underhill, thus framing Underhill for any murders he may have committed. Michael explains this to Murphy, the policeman who arrested Underhill, and reveals that Koko is not Spitalny as they had thought, but M.O. Dengler, their beloved comrade. Dengler killed Spitalny, switched dog-tags, and had a mob destroy his face and body. Murphy scolds the group for not telling the police of their findings before letting them go. Meanwhile, Harry Beevers decides to trap Koko in a killing box and hides in an arcade in Chinatown. He moves down a flight of stairs, a knife in one pocket and a pair of handcuffs in the opposite pocket. He hears something in the darkness and reaches for his knife. Beevers then remembers, belatedly, that the knife had fallen through a hole in his coat pocket earlier on that day, and he transferred it to the same pocket as the handcuffs, to make it easier to find. Koko seizes him and draws him into the darkness beneath the stairs. Michael, Maggie, Underhill, Conor, and Ellen travel quickly to where they think Beevers met Koko--a cave-like arcade in Chinatown. Murphy and his squad of police trail them. They are unaware of the policemen's presence until Underhill alerts Michael to the sight of them. Michael and the group flee in different directions down a deserted street by the arcade. Underhill and Maggie alert Michael after finding a bloody knife on a lower level of a tenement building that they were hiding in. Michael, Conor, and Underhill find Beevers tied up, gagged, and injured. Koko/Dengler is nearby, and smashes a lightbulb, throwing the group into darkness. The policemen catch up with them and negotiate with Koko to release the four men . Koko/Dengler stabs Michael in the side and does the same to Underhill, however he gags Underhill and steals his jacket so that he could be easily mistaken for Underhill himself in the dim light. After Michael alerts the police that the small man in the coat is not Underhill, Koko/Dengler murders one of the officers and escapes. In the aftermath, Koko/Dengler travels to the Honduras and is never heard from again. Michael, Underhill, Maggie, Conor, and Ellen all survive, however Beevers commits suicide six months after the scene in the basement, having no purpose in his life and no more illusions of grandeur to hold onto. Two years later, Michael and Maggie are together and live in a loft above Tina Pumo's old loft, where Underhill lives with Vinh and his daughter. Underhill narrates the end of the story, and imagines Koko's first few days in Honduras and the constant anxiety that would come with them.
6870034	/m/0gth_z	Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life	Alister McGrath	2004	{"/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 McGrath begins with an overview of evolutionary biology and Darwinist theory. He then presents Dawkins’ view that the current state of scientific knowledge should lead a rational person to conclude that there is no God. McGrath argues that Dawkins fails to declare or defend several crucial assumptions or premises. McGrath also defends other conclusions in the book, including: * the scientific method cannot conclusively prove that God does or does not exist; * the theory of evolution does not necessarily entail any particular atheistic, agnostic, or Christian understanding of the world; * Dawkins’ refutation of William Paley’s watchmaker analogy does not equate to a refutation of God’s existence; * Dawkins’ proposal that memes explain the evolutionary development of human culture is more illogical and unscientific than a clearly articulated defence of Christianity; * Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology and mischaracterizes religious people generally. McGrath argues that Dawkins’ rejection of faith is a straw man argument. According to McGrath, Dawkins’ definition that faith “means blind trust, in the absence of evidence” is not a Christian position. In contrast, argues McGrath, accepting Dawkins’ definition would require blind trust since he offers no evidence to support it. Rather, it is based upon what McGrath calls “an unstated and largely unexamined cluster of hidden non-scientific values and beliefs” (p.&nbsp;92). McGrath then argues that Dawkins frequently violates the very tenets of evidence-based reasoning that Dawkins himself claims to uphold and use to dismiss all religious belief. Also on page 92, McGrath states "... Darwinism neither proves nor disproves the existence of God (unless, of course God is defined by his critics in precisely such a way...)."
6870390	/m/0gtjkt	A Suitable Boy	Vikram Seth	1994-03-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Suitable Boy is set in post-independence, post-partition India. The novel follows the story of four families over a period of 18 months as a mother searches for a suitable boy to marry her daughter. The 1349-page novel alternatively offers satirical and earnest examinations of national political issues in the period leading up to the first post-Independence national election of 1952, including inter-sectarian animosity, the status of lower caste peoples such as the jatav, land reform and the eclipse of the feudal princes and landlords, academic affairs, inter- and intra-family relations and a range of further issues of importance to the characters. A suitable boy centres on Mrs. Rupa Mehra's efforts to arrange the marriage of her younger daughter, Lata, with a "suitable boy". At the heart of the novel it is a love story, set in a young, newly independent India. It begins in the fictional town of Brahmpur, located on the Ganges between Banares and Patna. Brahmpur, along with Calcutta, Delhi, Kanpur and other Indian cities, forms a colourful backdrop for the emerging stories. Lata is a 19-year-old college girl, vulnerable, yet determined to have her own way and not be influenced by her strong mother and opinionated brother, Arun. Her story revolves around the choice she is forced to make between her suitors, Kabir, Haresh, and Amit. The novel is not simply based on one story. This epic novel covers the various issues faced by post-independence India, including Hindu-Muslim strife, abolition of the Zamindari system, land reforms and empowerment of Muslim women. The novel is divided into 19 parts, with each part focussing on a different story (and eventually coming back round again). For example part 1 is about Lata's story; part 2 is about a courtesan (the beginning of a major subplot featuring Maan Kapoor); part 3 is about Lata again; part 4 is about Haresh; part 5 is about the Brahmpur political scene etc. Each part is described by a rhyming couplet on the contents page.
6870754	/m/0gtk0y	Count Robert of Paris	Walter Scott	1832	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At the end of the 11th century, the Byzantine capital of Constantinople was threatened by Turkic nomads from the east, and by the Franks from the west. Unable to rely on his Greek subjects to repel their incursions, the emperor was obliged to maintain a body-guard of Varangians, or mercenaries from other nations, of whom the citizens and native soldiers were very jealous. One of these, the Anglo-Saxon Hereward, had just been attacked by Sebastes, when a Varangian officer, Tatius, intervened and led him to the palace. Here he was introduced to the imperial family, surrounded by their attendants; and the Princess Anna was reading a roll of history she had written, when her husband Brennius entered to announce the approach of the armies composing the first Crusade. Convinced that he was powerless to prevent their advance, the emperor offered them hospitality on their way; and, the leaders having agreed to acknowledge his sovereignty, the various hosts marched in procession before his assembled army. As Emperor Comnenus, however, moved forward to receive the homage of Count Bohemond, his vacant throne was insolently occupied by Count Robert of Paris, who was with difficulty compelled to vacate it, and make his submission. The defiant knight, accompanied by his wife Brenhilda, afterwards met the sage Agelastes, who related the story of an enchanted princess, and decoyed them to his hermitage overlooking the Bosphorus. Here they were introduced to the empress and her daughter, who, attended by Brennius, came to visit the sage, and were invited to return with them to the palace to be presented to the emperor. At the State banquet which followed, the guests, including Sir Bohemond, were pledged by their royal host, and urged to accept the golden cups they had used. On waking next morning, Count Robert found himself in a dungeon with a tiger, and that Ursel was confined in an adjoining one. Presently an aggressive orangutan descended through a trap-door, soon followed by the armed Sebastes. Both were overpowered by the Count, when Hereward made his appearance, and undertook to release his Norman adversary. A treasonable conference was meanwhile taking place between Tatius and Agelastes, who had failed in endeavouring to tamper with the Anglo-Saxon; and the countess had been unwillingly transported by the slave Diogenes to a garden-house for a secret interview with Brennius, whom she challenged to knightly combat in the hearing of her husband. Having hidden the count, Hereward encountered his sweetheart Bertha, who had followed Brenhilda as her attendant, and then obtained an audience of the imperial family, who were discussing recent events, including a plot in which Brennius was concerned for seizing the throne, and received permission to communicate with the Duke de Bouillon. Bertha volunteered to be his messenger, and, at an interview with the council of Crusaders at Scutari, she induced them to promise that fifty knights, each with ten followers, should attend the combat to support their champion. Having made his confession to the Patriarch, while Agelastes was killed by the orangutan as he argued with Brenhilda respecting the existence of the devil, the emperor led his daughter to the cell in which Ursel was confined, with the intention of making him her husband, instead of Brennius. She had, however, been persuaded by her mother to intercede for the traitor, and Ursel was merely placed under the care of the slave doctor Douban to be restored to health after his long imprisonment. The emperor had decided that Brennius should fight the Count of Paris, instead of the countess, and all the preparations for the combat had been made, when the ships conveying the Crusaders hove in sight; and, after defeating the Greek fleet, they landed in sight of the lists. Brennius, in the meantime, was pardoned, and, in answer to shouts of discontent from the assembled crowd, Ursel was led forth to announce his restoration to liberty and the imperial favour, and the conspiracy was crushed. Hereward then appeared to do battle with Count Robert, and, saved from the knight's axe by Bertha, he joined the Crusaders, obtaining on his return the hand of his betrothed, and, ultimately, a grant of land from William Rufus, adjacent to the New Forest in Hampshire, where he had screened her when a girl from the tusk of a wild boar.
6870757	/m/0gtk18	Castle Dangerous	Walter Scott	1832	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 During the struggle for the Scottish crown between Edward I and Robert Bruce, the stronghold of his adherent Sir James Douglas, known as Castle Dangerous, had been taken by the English, and Lady Augusta had promised her hand and fortune to its new governor, Sir John de Walton, on condition that he held it for a year and a day. Anxious to curtail this period, she determined to make her way thither, accompanied by her father's minstrel, Bertram, disguised as his son, and they were within three miles of their destination, when fatigue compelled them to seek shelter at Tom Dickson's farm. Two English archers, who were quartered there, insisted that the youth (Lady Augusta in disguise) should be left at the neighbouring convent of St Bride's, until Bertram satisfied Sir John as to the object of their journey, and this arrangement was approved of by Sir Aymer de Valance, the deputy governor, who arrived to visit the outpost. As they proceeded together towards the castle, the minstrel entertained the young knight with some curious legends respecting it, including the supernatural preservation of an ancient lay relating to the house of Douglas, and the future fate of the British kingdom generally. De Valance would at once have passed the stranger into the stronghold as a visitor; but the old archer Gilbert Greenleaf detained him in the guard room until the arrival of the governor, who, in the hearing of Fabian, Sir Aymer's squire, expressed his disapproval of his deputy's imprudence, and thus the seeds of disagreement were sown between them. Sir John, however, wished to be indulgent to his young officers, and accordingly arranged a hunting party, in which the Scottish vassals in the neighbourhood were invited to join; but, at the mid-day repast, a forester named Turnbull behaved so rudely to the governor that he ordered him to be secured, when he suddenly plunged into a ravine and disappeared. The young knight took fresh offence at being ordered to withdraw the archers from the sport to reinforce the garrison, and appealed to his uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, who, instead of taking his part, wrote him a sharp reproof. He then opposed the governor's wish that the minstrel should terminate his visit, which induced Sir John to threaten Bertram with torture unless he instantly revealed his purpose in coming to the castle. The minstrel declined to do so without his son's permission; and, the Abbot having pleaded for delay on account of the boy's delicate health, Sir Aymer was ordered to meet a detachment at an outpost, and then to bring him to the castle to be examined. As he passed through the town he encountered a mounted warrior in full armour, whom neither the inhabitants nor his followers would admit having seen. The old sexton, however, declared that the spirits of the deceased knights of Douglas could not rest in their graves while the English were at enmity with their descendants. On reaching the convent, De Valence roused Father Jerome, and insisted that the youth (Lady Augusta) should at once accompany him. He was, however, allowed to return to his bed till daybreak, and upon the door of his room being then forced open, it was empty. During the night, Sister Ursula, who had hidden in the room, elicited Lady Augusta's secret, which she had already guessed, and, having narrated the circumstances under which she had entered the convent without taking the vows, they escaped through a concealed postern and found a guide with horses waiting for them. A scroll which his lady-love had left behind her explained matters to Sir John, who, in his despair, was comforted by the sympathy of his lieutenant; and the faithful minstrel, having been admitted to their confidence, steps were at once taken to track the fugitives. Having reached a thicket, Sister Ursula (whose original name was Lady Margaret) disappeared to join her friends, and Lady Augusta was escorted, first by the celebrated Douglas, and then by Turnbull, to a spot where they met Sir John, to whom the forester delivered a message with which he refused to comply, and mortally wounded the man when he attempted to lead the lady away. But Sir James was at hand, and the two knights fought until summoned by the church bells to Palm Sunday service, at which the old bishop officiated in the presence of an excited assemblage of armed English and Scotch warriors eager to attack each other. Bertram met Lady Augusta in the churchyard, and was arranging for her safety, when De Walton and The Douglas renewed their combat, and an encounter also took place between De Valence and Sir Malcolm Fleming, Lady Margaret's lover. The life of the Sir Malcolm was saved by the intercession of Lady Margaret, and Sir John surrendered his sword and governorship on the arrival of a messenger with the intelligence that an English force, commanded by the Earl of Pembroke, which was advancing to prevent an anticipated attack on the castle, had been utterly defeated by Bruce and his followers. He and his troops, however, were allowed to retire with their arms, Sir James Douglas having chivalrously transferred his claim upon her lover to the Lady Augusta of Berkely, who, in return for his courtesy, decorated the brave Scotchman with a chain of brilliants which had been won in battle by her ancestor.
6872782	/m/0gtn9c	Genius Loci	Ben Aaronovitch		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A young Bernice Summerfield lands a job as an archaeologist on a colony world. She discovers evidence that the planet was previously inhabited by a sapient species.
6872823	/m/0gtnd3	Conan the Buccaneer	Lin Carter		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Conan, now in his late thirties and captain of the Wastrel, becomes embroiled in the politics of the kingdom of Zingara when he seeks the rumored treasure on the Nameless Isle. The fugitive Princess Chabela, the privateer Zarono, and the Stygian sorcerer Thoth-Amon are among those mixed up in the treasure quest. Chronologically, Conan the Buccaneer falls between "The Pool of the Black One'" in Conan the Adventurer and "Red Nails" in Conan the Warrior.
6875811	/m/0gttxp	Der Tunnel			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Allan, an idealistic engineer, wants to build a tunnel at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean connecting America with Europe within the space of a few years. The idealist's scheme is thwarted for financial reasons, and the tunnel construction (in particular a segment dug under a mountain) experiences several disasters. A fiasco seems inevitable, the army of workers revolt, and Allan becomes a figure of universal hatred throughout the world. After 26 years of construction, the tunnel is finally completed; however, the engineering masterpiece is outdated as soon as it opens, as aeroplanes now cross the Atlantic in a few hours.
6877204	/m/0gtwcw	How to Be Popular	Meg Cabot	2006-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Steph Landry has been the target of jokes since sixth grade when she spilled a red Super Big Gulp on Lauren Moffat's white D&G skirt. In response, Lauren coined the phase "Don't be such a Steph Landry" to ensure she never lived it down. Steph has since been content to hang out with her best friends Jason and Becca, but as she enters eleventh grade, she wants more out of high school. Luckily she finds a copy of an old book titled none other than How to be Popular when cleaning out Jason's grandmother's attic. The book is full of useful tips. She follows the book's advice and begins the school year with flat ironed hair and a new attitude. Steph is determined to be confident and enthusiastic about school. She sits with new people at lunch and organizes a talent auction. Steph does not anticipate Lauren being so angry about her attempt to join the popular crowd or that Jason would be so hurt that she is leaving him behind. As her popularity grows, Steph is forced to make difficult choices about who and what is truly important to her.
6877746	/m/0gtxd8	A Land Remembered	Patrick D. Smith	1984	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 A Land Remembered focuses on the fictional story of the MacIveys, who migrated from Georgia into Florida in the mid-19th century. After settling, this family struggles to survive in the harsh environment. First they scratch a living from the land and then learn to round up wild cattle and drive them to Punta Rassa to ship to Cuba. Over three generations, they amass more holdings and money, and move further from their connection to the native, untamed land.
6879911	/m/0gtzzg	Conan the Swordsman	Björn Nyberg		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 The seven short stories collected as Conan the Swordsman are set at various points of Conan's career, from his youth as a raider in the north to his maturity as a general of the kingdom of Aquilonia. The two associated non-fiction pieces by de Camp are on the Conan saga in general and the derivation of the names used by Howard in constructing the fictional "Hyborian Age" setting of the Conan stories. Chronologically, the seven stories supplement the tales in the twelve volume Lancer/Ace Conan series, falling into the period covered by Conan through Conan the Warrior.
6880752	/m/0gt_wr	Whom the Gods Would Destroy	Richard P. Powell			 Chapter 1: The story begins with the narration of Helios at the age of 70. He reflects back to when he was 8 years old and lived in Troy. En route to deliver a pot of cooked meat to his foster father Polydextus, he is confronted by Milentius. Milentius demands the food from Helios and when he refuses, Milentius trips him. The pot of meat shatters and the food is soiled. Helios threatens that his alleged father, King Priam will find out. Milentius threatens to hurt him unless he denies King Priam as his father. Helios retracts his statement just as Prince Paris approaches. Paris mentions how he heard the rumors of Priam having too much wine and meeting a pretty slave girl in a dark corridor and thus leading to the birth of Helios. Paris tells Milentius he did no wrong, and says the story sounds absurd due to the age of Priam at the time of conception. Helios returns home and shares the salvaged food with Polydextus. Polydextus then tells Helios how important his heritage is, and he has done great wrong by denying it when pushed by a bully. He then whips Helios to both punish him and teach him to deal with pain. Chapter 2: One day Helios climbed a secret stair to the roof of the palace. He decided to offer a sacrifice to the sun, whom his birth mother worshipped. While lying naked on the roof he is surprised by Cassandra, who was the youngest daughter of Priam and several years older than Helios. She says she overheard Paris telling the story of what happened between Helios and Milentius to Priam, and she did not think that Priam cared to hear it too much. After examining Helios she asks him to look into her eyes where he sees a blinding glow. She then insists that the power of the sun will enter him in time. After leaving the roof Helios is attacked by Milentius and another boy. Helios successfully fends them off, swinging a dead branch that fell off the sacred bay tree. He yells that he is in fact a son of Priam. Prince Hector stops Helios from fighting them off, and then shows him to Priam. Priam asked Helios to return home while he considered the matter. Cassandra followed after Helios, giving him the dead branch he swung earlier telling him its an honor of Apollo to receive a sacred weapon. At home he sacrificed the branch with Polydextus as an offering of thanks to the Gods. Shortly after, Hector arrived to inform Helios and his foster parents that Priam is not displeased. He has not officially acknowledged Helios as his son, but would like him to work at the palace as stable boy. Chapter 3: After becoming stable boy, Polydextus and Troilus train Helios in chariot fighting and javeling. Polydextus, Troilus, and Sardon would also discuss battle strategies. Helios would ride a horse on an occasion which were not meant to be ridden due to their small stature, and would be whipped by Polydextus as punishment. Nine summers of training later Helios "gained three fingers in height", and his weight "balanced that of a sack of wheat". This was an improvement, but not by much. One morning Hector allowed Helios to accompany him to meet Paris, who was returning from his mission across the sea. Hector & Helios are introduced to Helen of Sparta, who accompanied Paris back to Troy along with her dowry meant for Menelaus. Paris insults Helios, causing him to leap at him in anger. Paris begins to whip Helios, but Polydextus draws a blade and prepares to fight. A woman screams for Hector, who stops the fight and explains to Paris that Priam has not acknowledged or denied Helios' bloodline. Paris accepts the explanation, but Helios says he knows they will never be friends. They all travel to Troy together. Chapter 4: Soon after the group returned form the beach, Priam called an immediate meeting of the council. Hector & Andromache's bedroom balcony overlooks the throne room. With Hector's permission and guidance, Helios crawled onto the balcony to watch the council meeting from above. Priam enters the throne room and he informs the room that he called the meeting to hear Paris' report from his trip across the Aegean. Paris first lectures the room on his travel, then displays found treasures from his exploits, and then introduces Helen. Antimachus approves of Paris' doings, and cries of approval were heard from the council. Later on Helios learned there was rumors of Antimachus being paid to back this argument. Prince Aeneas is granted permission to speak by Priam, who proposed that allowing Helen to stay may ignite war with Agamemnon, the High King of the Achaeans. Paris insists that it is impossible to have the Achaeans band together, and if that does happen Troy will protect him. Antenor then pushed his way into the open and says allowing Helen to stay would be a violation of customs, disrespectful, and would bring the anger of the Gods. With great respect Helen asks for permission to speak, and tells the story of Gaia, and how she is a woman and has the power to "put away a male". She says she "does things and does not know why", and then asks Priam for "help" understanding the decision she has made to accompany Paris. Priam then announces that it is his will that Helen be welcomed to Troy as the lawful mate of Paris. Suddenly Cassandra cries out from the women's balcony a prediction of Paris bringing death to Troy. Priam ordered her gagged and sent to her room immediately. Helios began to think of her as "his Cassandra" even though they only met once over a year ago. He crawled back into the bedroom and waited for Hector to return. Hector informed Helios that she was whipped by Priam for interrupting council, and after fled to the roof alone. After hearing this, Helios sneaks to the storeroom and fills a jar with salve. He takes off his tunic in order to tie the jar around his neck so that he would be free to climb up a palace wall with both hands. At the top he was greeted by Cassandra, who questions his nudity. She undresses so that Helios could put the salve on her back, bruised from the whipping. She cried and hugged Helios because of his thoughtfulness, but then suddenly recoils. Even though Helios is only 9, she says she wanted to be sure that he does not mate with her. Apollo does not want anyone else to have her. If a man does mate with her he will be punished and Cassandra will lose her gift of prophecy. She then tells Helios that she does not know what she will say whenever she makes a prediction. She mentions one prediction told to Laomedon long ago; "Stone on stone will ever fall, at the dread Earth-Shaker's call." She tells Helios she feels that a spell is coming on and she will perform an oracle for Helios. She smells the salve to become in a "dreamy" state, and she speaks in a trance to Helios. A couple of lines of the oracle caused many thoughts to race in Helios' mind: "First, you ancient in the Earth, Judge for Troy what he is worth." Unaware of what she had just said, she asked Helios if he would remember the words exactly, but not to tell her what it was. She suggests to Helios that it would be a good idea for him to leave the roof, and he climbs down carefully. Chapter 5: The next day Sisycles summons Helios to be taught writing by order of Priam. The next morning he is formally introduced to Cassandra, as it is supposed to be their first meeting. After the first lesson, Cassandra offers to teach Helios additional writing on her own time. She tells Helios that it was her that requested Helios be taught how to write. From that point on every second morning Helios had writing lessons from Sisycles, then Cassandra would give him additional writing lessons or other studies. Late that winter, Troy received news that the Achaen rulers are preparing to make war on Troy. Another serious announcement is made, a change to The Festival of the Scapegoat. This was a carnival marking the end of winter where a goat is sacrificed to eliminate all the sins of the city. This year, a man would be chosen. Names of men suspected of evil would be given to Priam. Sisycles would write the approved names on clay tablets. All the tablets would be left on until it rained, then 2 priests and Priam would choose the name that stands out most clearly. The person named would be sacrificed as the Scapegoat. The first day of sunshine came, and is Helios' 10th birthday. Helios and Cassandra celebrate by having snacks and wine, which in turn made them sleepy. They both undress and lay down on the roof naked to enjoy a sun bath. They are discovered on the roof by Queen Hecuba with a few guards. He is taken to Priam and questioned. We learn that Cassandra is only 15 years old. Hecuba demands that Helios be punished, but Priam is not sure if any wrong was done. They agree to enter Helios' name in the Festival of the Scapegoat. Helios' writing lessons stop, and Troy waits for rain. The day of the ceremony, Helios' name was the most legible and his tablet is chosen. Hector interrupts the ceremony and demands that his life be taken, but Priam denies him. Helios takes a close look at the tablet and points out that someone has switched the tablet, as this one was fired in a kiln, not dried out in the sun. Sisycles confirms that he did not create this tablet, and it must have been switched. Priam cannot decide the next course of action. Cassandra orders Helios to say the oracle of his fate. Helios says "First, you ancient in the Earth, Judge for Troy what he is worth." Priam says that the ancient in the Earth is a calling from Gaia, and Helios unwillingly appeals to her. Priam declares that they must seek an answer from her in order to find out Helios' fate. Chapter 6: Formal arrangements were made to receive an oracle from the Gaia priestess. After nearly 2 weeks pass, the priestess approves. A party is formed to set out for the oracle. They stopped overnight at Lyrnessus and are welcomed by its ruler and his son Aeneas. They continue to the When they arrive Laocoön introduced the party to a handmaiden of the priestess, who inspected the gifts of Priam. The handmaiden only allowed Priam, Hector, Helios, Cassandra, and Helen to see the priestess. The priestess gave readings and chanted "Those who wish to chase a boy, will not succeed in saving Troy." The party was dismissed, and returned to Troy. Another Scapegoat was chosen. Chapter 7: Soon after the return from the shrine Helios and Cassandra were allowed to resume their writing lessons with Sisycles as well as their private talks. One day in early summer the Achaean fleet arrives on the shores of Troy. Battle erupts by sea and on land. Helios follows Troilus and Polydextus, only to witness them killed by Achilles. Helios attempts to defeat Achilles by throwing rocks at him, but he is stopped by Odysseus. Diomedes steps forward leading a captive, Milentius. Milentius is then killed by Diomedes. The three Achaeans discuss what to do with Helios, and Achilles dons him a kitchen pot as a helmet and a ladle as a sword. He then orders his son Neoptolemus to fight Helios to the death. Chapter 8: Neoptolemus wounds Helios in the fight with a slash to his ribs. Helios uses the ladle to scoop up embers from a nearby fire and throw them into Neoptolemus' helmet. Helios grabbed a bucket of water and threw in the boy's face. Achilles hates himself for "blinding his son", but Odysseus calls for Machaon to look at Neoptolemus' eyes. He says that the cold water may have saved Neoptolemus from blindness. Machaon leads Helios and the Achaeans to Achilles' tent set up on the beach. There he chants over Neoptolemus, and says it will be days before they know if Neoptolemus' sight would return. In that time, someone must drip medicine over Neoptolemus' eyes. Helios volunteers to stay and apply the medicine. Achilles reluctantly accepts, and leaves the tent under guard and arranges for another tent to be raised. Machaon stitches Helios' wound and leaves. When they are alone, Neoptolemus compliments Helios' fighting and then goes to sleep.
6880860	/m/0gv00y	The Answer	K. A. Applegate	2001-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 After the destruction of the Yeerk pool, Jake, Tobias, and Marco witness the Yeerks destroying the last remnants of their hometown and watch as the Pool ship lands amidst the destruction. After briefly considering destroying the Pool ship, the Animorphs decide that capturing the vessel would be a better strategy. Hoping to gain military assistance for the attack, Jake visits Major General Sam Doubleday. Although Doubleday is initially distrustful of Jake, he eventually listens and agrees to Jake's plan after a Controller-major on the general's staff tries to kill Jake. After a Yeerk attack on the general's base, Doubleday evacuates his troops and confines them and himself for three days to eliminate any remaining Controllers amongst his soldiers. Unfortunately, the confinement of Doubleday and his troops means a three-day delay before the Animorphs can launch their attack on the Pool ship. Sensing that the Yeerks could get the new Yeerk pool that is under construction operational within that time period, the Animorphs decide to take out the Taxxons digging the pool. In the ensuing battle, Jake finds himself underground and in the company of several Taxxons, led by none other than Arbron, a former companion of Eflangor's who became a Taxxon-nothlit several years earlier. Arbron makes Jake an offer: in exchange for allowing his followers to become nothlits and make a home for themselves on Earth, the 1709 non-Controller Taxxons on the surface and on board the Pool ship will defect and join the Animorphs in their fight against the Yeerks. Jake returns to the Hork-Bajir valley and tells the others of Arbron's offer. The brief period of excitement that reigns through the camp is spoiled, however, when Ax tells the others that the Andalites have decided that the war for Earth is lost and are planning on destroying humanity in order to stop the Yeerk menace once and for all. Ax insists that the only way to stop this is to capture the Pool ship and use its communications technology to contact the Andalite people directly, whom he does not expect to support his government's sterilization plan. The Animorphs return to Arbron and his Taxxon followers and secure their support. Jake promises the Taxxons a safe haven on Earth and the opportunity to morph anacondas. Immediately afterwords, Tom arrives and offers to assist the Animorphs in capturing the Pool ship, in exchange for the Blade ship, a hundred of his own morph-capable followers, and safe passage out of the Solar System. Sensing a trap, Jake accepts Tom's offer while simultaneously setting his own plan into motion. Jake dispatches Marco to locate Erek King and bring him to the Hork-Bajir valley, while Cassie and Ax are sent to capture Chapman. Jake manipulates Erek's pacifist programming by threatening to kill Chapman if Erek does not actively participate in the assault on the Pool ship. Erek grudgingly agrees to help. With the attack set to begin, Jake meets up with Tom and the original Animorphs, including a severely beaten Cassie, and proceeds to board the Pool ship. Once on board, Tom, as expected, betrays Jake by having a Taxxon eat Cassie and the other Animorphs, whom he believes to be hiding on Cassie in morph. Unknown to Tom, "Cassie" is actually a holographic projection by Erek, and the Taxxon is Tobias in morph, escorted by free Hork-Bajir led by Toby Hamee. After devouring the hologram, Tobias and Erek, with the other Animorphs in tow, are led off the bridge by Toby so they can begin trying to gain control of the Pool ship's computer systems. Visser One gives Tom command of the Blade ship so he can wipe out the Taxxon resistance. Unbeknownst to the Yeerks and the Animorphs (save for Jake), Rachel is hiding as a flea on Tom's head, with orders to kill him and prevent the Blade ship from escaping with the morphing cube, an assignment that Rachel is not expected to survive. The auxiliary Animorphs and General Doubleday's forces begin their attack on the Pool ship. Visser One lifts the ship off the ground and uses its massive weapons array to kill the auxiliary Animorphs and several of Doubleday's troops. Jake, who is still on the bridge, is forced to watch the massacre until Ax and Erek are able to gain control of the helm and force the Pool ship out of firing range. This act makes Visser One realize that the Animorphs have infiltrated the Pool ship's engineering section and orders his troops to kill everyone in the room. Jake meets up with the others, who escaped the engine room before Visser One's forces could carry out their orders, and tells them of Rachel's part in his plan. The Animorphs continue with their assault and make their way to the Pool ship's on-board Yeerk pool. Hoping to distract Visser One and Tom long enough to save Rachel's life, Jake orders Ax to flush the pool, killing 17,372 unhosted Yeerks. The Animorphs continue to the bridge, where they find a defeated and battle-weary Visser One. Jake asks the visser to fire on the Blade ship with the hope that the shots will disable it, but the Dracon beams miss and Erek drains the remaining power from the weapons. Tom hails the Pool ship to gloat about his victory, and sees Jake in tiger-morph. Enraged at the realization that the Animorphs survived his trap, Tom orders the Blade ship's weapons to be targeted at the Pool ship's bridge. Jake orders Rachel to attack... *The Animorphs make an alliance with a group of Taxxons led by Arbron. *Jake proposes to Cassie, but she opts to wait until a year after the war ends. *The auxiliary Animorphs are killed. *Rachel is sent to the Blade ship, while the rest of the original Animorphs begin their assault on the Pool ship. Marco initially tells Jake that Doubleday, a three-star general, which in the United States Army is a Lieutenant General. However, Doubleday himself later says that he is a Major General, which is a two-star rank.
6881654	/m/0gv1l1	The Sunlight Dialogues	John Gardner	1972	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is set in the 1960s in Batavia, New York. It follows Batavia police chief Fred Clumly in his pursuit of a magician known as the Sunlight Man, a champion of existential freedom and pre-biblical Babylonian philosophy. As Clumly believes in absolute law, order, justice and a Judeo-Christian world view, the two butt their ideological heads in a number of dialogues, all recorded on audiocassette by Clumly. Each of these two characters attempts to exert power over the other—Clumly with the law behind him and the Sunlight Man with his magic and violence—until they wear down not only each other, but many of the other characters with whom they come into contact. A myriad of side-stories provides background for the plot.
6883700	/m/0gv58g	Teen Idol	Meg Cabot	2004	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jen Greenley is a high school junior, who lives in a simple town in Indiana . She is secretly the school newspaper's advice columnist Ask Annie, a job she got due to her ability to keep other people's secrets and help people with their problems - similar to Dear Abby. Teen heartthrob Luke Striker is making a movie about high school, but having grown up on television, he knows nothing about real teens and their lifestyles. Because of this Clayton High's principal assigns Luke as Jen's responsibility; she is expected to show him around the school, help him research his role and most importantly keep secret his true identity from her fellow students. During his time at Clayton High School, he is appalled at the vicious hierarchy of high school and starts to tell Jen that she should start taking a stand for the people who can't speak for themselves rather than just consoling them and letting it happen again and again. Jenny soon realizes that she has voice; using this, she starts making serious changes in the lives of others and herself as well, morphing from "nice little Jenny Greenley, everyone's best friend" to Jen, effector of social change. When Jen finally decides to stand up to Catrina, Catrina becomes furious with Jen and will not speak to her for days. However, despite all the rumors that go around, Jen's feelings for Luke are still platonic. Meanwhile, the school's annual Spring Fling is coming up and Jen has promised to go with Luke, his thank-you for showing him around. At the Spring Fling, Luke reveals that he is going out with Geri Lynn, a senior and friend of Jen's. He also encourages Jen to reveal her true feelings for Geri Lynn's ex, Scott, having found out her affections for him. Also, he has somehow come to know that Jen is secretly Annie, much to her surprise. So Jen, her best friend Catrina along with several other students, head over to a friend's anti-Spring Fling party where Scott is. Nervously Jen agrees to take a walk with Scott during which, after a heated discussion about a book, Scott reveals that the only reason he has not told Jen his true feelings sooner is because he thought that Jen loved Luke. Scott and Jen finally share a kiss and realize their true feelings for one another.
6889991	/m/0gvj8d	The Tiger Rising	Kate DiCamillo	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Rob Horton is 14 years old and lives with his father in a Florida motel called the Kentucky Star. The father and son have recently moved to Lister, Florida, after the death of Rob’s mother. In the woods near the motel Rob discovers a live tiger in a cage. On the same day he discovers the tiger, Rob meets Sistine Bailey a new girl in school with an angry temper. Rob, having an unnamed skin condition, is asked by the principal to stay home from school until his rash clears up. Rob’s rash is a visible display of his emotional denial as he packs away his difficult feelings in an imaginary suitcase. Rob sees his exile from school as a reprieve, for he is bullied constantly by the other kids at his middle school. Sistine visits Rob daily saying she is bringing him homework. Rob is given the duty of feeding the tiger by the unscrupulous motel manager, Beauchamp With the assistance of Rob, Sistine plots and attempts to set the tiger free. The act of setting the tiger free allows Rob to let go of the painful emotions related to his mother’s death that he has suppressed. However, Rob's dad finds the tiger in the woods and kills it by shooting it. Rob, Sistine, Willie May and Rob's father had a funeral for the tiger, which reminded rob of his mothers funeral. Theme:Their's a lesson to everything Rob.
6894490	/m/0gvqsp	Calling on Dragons			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This book is the third in the Enchanted Forest series, told from the witch Morwen's perspective. Morwen is having trouble with people who believe that magic should follow traditional forms, specifically one Arona Michealear Grinogion Vamist. Morwen's cats find a large rabbit named Killer as well as the burned-looking splotches that a wizard's staff leaves in the forest, despite the spell on the forest that should prevent it. They then find the wizard Antorell, who tries to escape but is subdued by the cats and then melted by Telemain. Morwen then finds that Killer has eaten one of the magical cabbages in her garden, and has turned into a donkey. Throughout the story, Killer acquires additional spells and changes form. Morwen and Telemain immediately go to the castle of King Mendanbar and Queen Cimorene, who is pregnant. At the castle, Mendanbar and Telemain discover that the sword at the heart of the forest's magic is missing, allowing the wizards free rein in the forest. Morwen, Kazul, Telemain, Cimorene, Killer and two of Morwen's cats must undertake the journey to the headquarters of the Society of Wizards, who stole the sword. Telemain teleports the group twice towards their destination. The next teleport fails and Telemain is unconscious. Killer carries Telemain as they make their way through a swamp. They find a tower occupied by a fire-witch, Brandel. Using Brandel's magic mirror, they try to contact Mendanbar, and find that they cannot because of a problem at his end. Kazul decides to go home and back up Mendanbar. The next morning, again with Brandel's mirror, they find that the sword is not at the headquarters of the Society of Wizards as they assumed, but at the house of Vamist. With the help of the cats, Morwen and Cimorene manage to recover the sword. Telemain teleports them back to the forest. The group realizes that they accidentally brought Vamist along. A battle has also occurred between the dragons and wizards. The wizards encased the castle in a magical bubble, and Mendanbar is missing, presumed inside the castle. As with the bubble shield spell in Searching for Dragons, the only way to break it is with the sword of the King of the Enchanted Forest, and the only one who can wield the sword is the King or his heir. Morwen and Telemain move the spells on Killer onto Vamist, returning the rabbit to his natural form. Cimorene hides the sword in the forest so the wizards cannot find it. She takes her baby and hides in an outer region of the forest. The dragons put up a second bubble around the castle, which only they can take down, so that the wizards can't enter the castle either. The characters wait for the day Cimorene's child is old enough to wield the sword and rescue Mendanbar.
6894578	/m/0gvq_x	Talking to Dragons			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Cimorene raises Daystar and tells him legends about the Enchanted Forest, swordsmanship, spells, and magical protocols. One day, Antorell, a member of the Society of Wizards who has a grudge against Cimorene, tries to assault them. Cimorene melts Antorell with a spell, which raises many questions in Daystar's mind, as he didn't know that his mother could do any magic. However, Cimorene refuses to answer Daystar's questions, and goes into the Enchanted Forest to retrieve a sword, which she gives to Daystar. She then sends him into the forest telling him not to come back until he can "tell her why he had to leave." When Daystar enters the forest, he meets a talking golden lizard named Suz, who tells Daystar that the sword Cimorene gave him is the Sword of the Sleeping King. Daystar, confused about what all this can mean, is instructed by Suz to "follow the sword." Trying to find a place to spend the night, he enters the middle of a ring of hedges and finds a young fire witch named Shiara, who can do fire magic but only sporadically, as it does not always work for her. She explains that the wizards heard about her lack of control and kidnapped her. However, she burned the Head Wizard's staff, ran away to the Enchanted Forest, and got caught in the middle of the hedges. Daystar tells Shiara about his quest, and she decides to accompany him. Afterwards, when Daystar shows Shiara his sword and they both touch it together, they feel a surprising jolt. The next morning, the bushes let Daystar out but refuse to allow Shiara to leave until she asks nicely, which takes a lot of time as she is not in the habit of politeness. Afterwards, Daystar warns Shiara that she will need to be more polite to people and things in the future. Soon, Shiara apologizes for her rudeness. As they venture through the forest, a wizard who is after Shiara attacks them by making a river turn into a water monster, and although Shiara attempts to burn it, nothing happens. But suddenly, the wizard and monster disappear, leaving only the wizard's broken staff behind. A nearby elf tells Daystar to help himself to the staff, but Shiara soon realizes that the staff pieces turn the moss brown and dead, and when Daystar picks up the middle piece, it explodes, burning his arm in the process. Shiara tries to help him until a cat leads them both to the house of Morwen, a witch who lives inside of the Enchanted Forest. Morwen quickly heals Daystar, gives both Daystar and Shiara a bundle of food, and gives Shiara a kitten which she names Nightwitch. Morwen tells them to travel up the river to find the castle. As they travel up the river, they meet a princess who asks for Daystar's sword. The princess tells them that a wizard told her to take the sword to save a knight she loves. The wizard, who is Antorell, shows up and tries to attack Daystar. But he is interrupted when a dragon who is looking for a princess comes. Shiara offers the princess they just met to the Dragon. The princess fainted when she saw the dragon, but before the dragon can take her away, the princess's love shows up, and the knight, who does not want to fight the dragon, decide to have a tourney for fun, but in the middle of it a small tree pops up and surprises the dragon. In his surprise, the dragon accidentally hits the knight with his tail, which makes the princess hysterical. Daystar tells the princess to see Morwen for help. The dragon decides to travel with Shiara and Daystar and insists on leading them on a "shortcut" to the castle. As they pass through a clearing, an invisible wall stops them. Somehow, Shiara learns how to make things invisible from this, which causes her to panic. As the three pass the castle, an evil sorceress turns Shiara into stone. Daystar fights the sorceress, and she dies, but Shiara is still a stone. Suz shows up and suggests that Daystar kiss her, and although this works, it annoys Shiara. The castle in the meanwhile has somehow disappeared, and when they come to the next clearing, they find a strange tower-house that belongs to a magician named Telemain. After some misunderstandings, Telemain allows them to stay the night and advises them to travel through the Caves of Chance. When the group travels through the Caves, Daystar finds a small key, which a strange, jelly-like creature called a quozzel insists is its responsibility and confronts Daystar. At the end of the caves, the quozzel causes a cave-in that doesn't kill anyone, although Shiara's arm is broken. Daystar causes the quozzel to leave by hitting it with his sword. The adventurers arrive near the center of the forest, meeting the King of Dragons, Kazul, who explains that Daystar must find and save Mendanbar, the King of the Enchanted Forest, who has been trapped in his castle for about 16 years by the wizards; he has not been able to be rescued because of a shield the wizards made around the castle, and the dragons put up a shield around it as well to keep the wizards from doing more harm. When the dragons take down their shield protecting the castle, Daystar uses the sword to break the wizard's shield. The wizards show up and freeze Daystar with a spell, but Shiara hides and is spared, and when the wizards attempt to kill the king, they find out that the figure on the bed is a decoy, and several leave to find the king. The freezing spell soon wears off, and Daystar fights the wizards. Shiara sets Antorell on fire and Daystar sticks the sword into a brazier in the room, shouting a spell his mother taught him, which allows him to see the magical network of the forest and to use it to disable the wizards' ability to use the forest's magic, leaving the wizards with only stored spells and swords and enabling Daystar to throw the key into the fire. The king comes out, and when Daystar hands him his sword, he realizes that the king is his father, which makes Daystar the heir to the Enchanted Forest. Daystar and the others leave and find Morwen tending to a wounded Telemain. They later explained to Daystar what had happened during the first three books. The books end with Telemain and Morwen announcing their engagement.
6896846	/m/0gvx9n	The Councillor of State	Boris Akunin	2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Moscow, 1891. Disguised as Fandorin, the leader of a revolutionary organization attempts to murder the governor of Moscow. Fandorin has to catch him to prove his innocence. He is assisted (or is it hindered?) in his investigations by Prince Pozharsky, a fictional descendant of Dmitry Pozharsky, who helped bring the Time of Troubles to an end.
6898803	/m/0gw24p	Vampirates: Tide of Terror	Justin Somper	2007-07-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The incredible adventures of twins Grace and Connor Tempest continue in the second Vampirates novel, Tide of Terror Connor may only be fourteen but he’s taken to the life of a pirate like a duck to water. But his loyalties are divided between his shipmates and his sister. Meanwhile Grace isn’t finding pirate life so appealing. She cannot shake the feeling that all is not well on the Vampirate ship she has left behind. Dare she try to return to it? New experiences await them both, including a journey to the fabled Pirate Academy.The book is a really good manufacturing according to the discriptives.
6899604	/m/0gw41s	The Quest of the Missing Map	Carolyn Keene	1942	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nancy investigates a small ship cottage at the Chatham estate and discovers a connection between the mysterious occurrences at the cottage and an island where a lost treasure is said to be buried. With one half of a map, Nancy sets out to find a missing twin brother who holds the other half. The mystery becomes dangerous when an assailant hears about the treasure and is determined to push Nancy off the trail.
6899654	/m/0gw44x	The Clue in the Jewel Box	Carolyn Keene	1943	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An antique dealer's revelation about a former queen's priceless heirloom leads Nancy on a series of exciting, yet dangerous adventures. Madame Alexandra, who lives in River Heights in exile, asks Nancy to search for her long-lost grandson. Using an old, faded photo of the prince at age four, Nancy begins her search. Also, a secret in the old jewel box helps Nancy unveil a slick imposter and reunite the separated family.
6899782	/m/0gw4fk	The Clue in the Crumbling Wall	Carolyn Keene	1945	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nancy and her friends work to discover an inheritance concealed in the walls of an old mansion, before it is discovered by unscrupulous men.
6899816	/m/0gw4h8	The Mystery of the Tolling Bell	Carolyn Keene	1946	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy, Bess, and George travel to a picturesque seaside town in search of Carson Drew's missing client. When Carson fails to join the girls, leading to a mystery involving his disappearance and a nearby cliffside cave inhabited by a ghost and his tolling bell. fr:Alice et le Fantôme
6899842	/m/0gw4kb	The Clue in the Old Album	Carolyn Keene	1947	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy witnesses a purse snatching and runs after the thief. She rescues the purse, but not its contents, then is asked by the owner, a doll collector, to do some detective work. "The source of light will heal all ills, but a curse will follow him who takes it from the gypsies." This is one of the clues Nancy is given to find an old album, a lost doll, and a missing gypsy violinist. The young sleuth never gives up her search, though she is poisoned by a French-swordsman doll, run off the road in her car by an enemy, and sent many warnings to give up the case.
6899863	/m/0gw4md	The Ghost of Blackwood Hall	Carolyn Keene	1948	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy Drew's neighbor Mrs. Putney asks Nancy and her friends to help recover her stolen jewels. The search for the thieves takes Nancy, Bess, and George to New Orleans. Mrs. Putney's odd behavior and two young women involve Nancy in a case about a cruel hoax of haunting "spirits" at the abandoned Blackwood Hall.
6899929	/m/0gw4s6	The Clue of the Black Keys	Carolyn Keene	1951	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Prof. Terry Scott went to River Heights to ask the help of Carson Drew to help him to find Dr. Joshua Pitt. Mr. Drew thought that the case was more of a mystery, so he referred him to Nancy Drew, his daughter who loves detective work. Terry Scott and Dr. Joshua Pitt, together with their teammates, Dr. Anderson and Dr. Graham, found the clue to the treasure during their expedition in Mexico, a cipher carved in a stone tablet and three black keys. Before the professors had time to translate the cipher, the tablet disappeared together with Dr. Pitt, leaving only the bottom half of one of the keys. Terry suspected the Tinos because they vanished when the cipher stone and Dr. Pitt disappeared. Someone tried to steal the half-key. Sergeant Malloy helped them identify the thief, Juarez Tino, but not until after he fled for Florida. Terry gave the half-key to Nancy and that night a burglar broke into the Drews' house. A thief stole Terry's things and documents from the hotel room. Nancy asked her father's advice, and he suggests finding the other expedition members. Nancy and George meet with Dr. Graham, and he says the four expedition members trust one another. Ned Nickerson asks Nancy to drive his fraternity brother in Emerson College, Prof. Terence Scott, to his lecture. Bess and George trail Mr. Porterly, and overhear his telephone conversation planning harm to Nancy. Dr. Anderson tells Nancy that Mr. Juarez Tino telephoned to say that he'd reveal where the cipher and Doctor Pitt are for a price. After Terry Scott's lecture, Mrs. Lillian Wagnell asked him to decipher her sea captain grandfather's old diary. Nancy doubts Mrs. Wagnell's intent, and Mrs. Prescott mentions that Mrs. Wagnell doesn't have a sea captain grandfather. Mrs. Wagnell doesn’t want Terry to borrow the diary so Nancy suggests he take the important pages. Carson Drew received a letter from Caswell P. Breed in Baltimore, a relative of Dr. Pitt. The Drews went to Baltimore but Mr. Breed sent no letter. They guess that someone has lured them out of River Heights for some nefarious purpose.When Nancy came home she can’t contact Terry so she went to the Wagnells' house, only to find Terry imprisoned at their house. Terry discovered that the Wagnells and Porters were related to the stuepeds. After those things happened, Terry went to Mexico and Nancy decided to join the educational trip of Dr. Anderson in the Florida Keys. A day before Nancy went to Florida, Juarez searched their house for the half-key, but couldn't find it. When Nancy got to Florida she asked Dr. Anderson to work on a special assignment with Fran Oakes: to look for the Black Keys amongst the Florida Keys. Fran Oakes introduces Nancy to Jack Walker, her cousin. They went to Two Line Parker who knows about the Florida Keys history. The fisherman told her about the Black Falcon. During their rest, Nancy found the burned letters in Porterlys’ place. There was an unburned part of letter that talked about her, and she concluded that the Porterlys had an evil plan for her. Nancy and Dr. Anderson saw Juarez Tino in a speedboat while they were searching the Florida Keys looking for where the Black Falcon sunk. They tried to follow him but he lost them. Nancy decides to return there the next day. Dr. Anderson won’t allow her to go alone, but Terry joins her. Nancy, Terry, Fran and Jack go to find the Black Falcon. They studied the Florida Keys and were found a hidden island where they found a hidden hut, where Dr Pitt was imprisoned. Jack and Fran called the police. Nancy and Terry stayed with Dr. Pitt until Mr. and Mrs. Juarez Tino, together with the Wagnells and Porterlys, arrived. They were able to get the half-key from Nancy. They asked Dr. Pitt to reveal the remaining clue and tell him that if he doesn't tell, something might happen to Nancy. He said that they can find the treasure in Mexico, in a little-known jungle region. They bring Dr. Pitt to Mexico and leave Nancy to their wives. The police arrived in time to free Nancy and Terry. They told Dr. Anderson that they must go to Mexico to follow the villain and rescue Dr. Pitt. They went to Mexico and captured the thieves. Dr. Pitt thought that they wouldn't be able to see the treasure, but Nancy helped them find it. The treasure belongs to Mexico and not to any of them.
6899952	/m/0gw4v8	The Mystery at the Ski Jump	Carolyn Keene	1952	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy, Bess, and George follow the trail of fur thieves to New York and into Canada. While trying to catch the thieves, Nancy must catch a woman who is using Nancy's identity.
6899999	/m/0gw4yr	The Ringmaster's Secret	Carolyn Keene	1953	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy is given a golden bracelet and discovers one of its horse charms is missing. When she learns the unusual story about the bracelet, she sets out to solve a fascinating mystery. Clues lead Nancy to a circus where she meets an unhappy young aerialist who has a horse charm just like the one Nancy is missing. Nancy joins the circus to uncover the significance of the horse charm and ends up reuniting a mother and daughter.
6900028	/m/0gw504	The Witch Tree Symbol	Carolyn Keene	1955	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When a neighbor asks Nancy Drew to accompany her to an old uninhabited mansion, a new mystery opens up, and danger lurks on the second floor. Nancy finds a witch tree symbol that leads her to Pennsylvania Dutch country in pursuit of a cunning and ruthless thief. The friendly welcome the young detective and her friends Bess and George receive from the Amish people soon changes to hostility when it is rumored that Nancy is a witch! Superstition helps her adversary in his attempt to get her off his trail, but Nancy does not give up. She persistently uncovers one clue after another. Nancy's intelligence and sleuthing ability finally lead to the fascinating solution of this puzzling case.
6900122	/m/0gw559	The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes	Carolyn Keene	1964	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy is warned not to go to Scotland, but she ignores the warning. She and her friends, Bess and George visit Nancy's great-grandmother at an estate in the Scottish Highlands. The Drew family's heirloom, a set of bagpipes is missing, and Nancy is determined to find it. While there, Nancy becomes involved in the mystery of missing flocks of sheep and a mysterious bagpiper has been spotted. Clues leading to a discovery in an old caste and a prehistoric fortress lead to the mystery's solution.
6900192	/m/0gw5cl	The Invisible Intruder	Carolyn Keene	1969	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy Drew and her friends join a ghost hunting expedition and become involved with a gang of thieves who concentrate their activities on collectors of valuable shells.
6900207	/m/0gw5dm	The Mysterious Mannequin	Carolyn Keene	1970	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The strange disappearance of Carson Drew's Turkish client and a strange gift of an oriental encoded with a message woven in the decorative boarder start Nancy on a difficult search for a missing mannequin. Nancy, Bess, George, Ned, Burt, and Dave travel to Turkey to search for more clues, but then, Bess disappears during the search.
6900216	/m/0gw5dz	The Crooked Banister	Carolyn Keene	1971	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy, Bess, and George spend an exciting weekend at a mysterious zigzag house with a crooked banister and an unpredictable robot. Nancy becomes involved in the mystery of the strange house and must locate the missing owner who is wanted by police.
6900811	/m/0gw6nj	Blood Done Sign My Name	Timothy Tyson	2004-05-18	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The book deals with the 1970 murder of Henry Marrow, a black man. This case helped galvanize the African-American civil rights movement in Oxford, North Carolina, where the book takes place, and across the eastern North Carolina black belt. It helped establish local civil rights activist Ben Chavis' leadership in the black civil rights movement, which eventually led to his becoming the executive director of the NAACP and later an organizer of the Million Man March. This episode radicalized the African American freedom struggle in North Carolina, leading up to the turbulence of the Wilmington Ten cases, which grew out of racial conflict in the port city and the trial of Ben Chavis and nine others on charges stemming from the burning of a grocery store. Tyson, whose father was the minister of the First United Methodist Church-Oxford, a prominent local church, explores not only the white supremacy of the South's racial caste system but his own and his family's white supremacy. He interweaves a narrative of the story and its effects on him with discussion of the racial history of the United States, focusing on the persistence of discrimination despite federal law and on the violent realities of that history on both sides of the color line. Tyson challenges the popular memory of the movement as a nonviolent call on America's conscience led by Martin Luther King. The vision of the movement in these pages is local as well as national and international, violent as well as nonviolent, and far more complicated and human than the myth of "pure good versus bare-fanged evil in the streets of Birmingham," as he puts it. Oxford writer Thad Stem, Jr. is a key figure in the book.
6903679	/m/0gwbzn	Strange People, Queer Notions	Jack Vance			 A young Oregonian art student is hired by another American to housesit a villa in a small Italian village. The employer then leads various members of the expatriate community in the village to believe the young man is a blackmailer.
6905119	/m/0gwf68	Yesterday's Son	Ann Carol Crispin	1983-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While studying the archaeological records of the now-destroyed planet Sarpeidon, a scholar aboard the USS Enterprise finds pictures of an ice-age cave painting that depicts a Vulcan face. Spock realizes that his involvement with Zarabeth in the episode "All Our Yesterdays" resulted in the birth of a child. Along with Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy, he uses the Guardian of Forever (featured in the episode "The City on the Edge of Forever") to journey back into Sarpeidon's past and rescue his son. Due to a miscalculation, they find a young man of twenty-eight instead of a child, who tells them that his name is Zar and that his mother Zarabeth died in an accident many years before. Spock introduces himself but refuses to allow Zar to call him "Father." Zar returns to the Enterprise and passes as a distant relative of Spock, who oversees his education and attempts to train him in Vulcan telepathic techniques. They discover that Zar is an unusually strong telepath for a Vulcan; he can establish contact without touching the other person. Zar becomes conflicted and hurt by his father's apparent refusal to acknowledge him. The Enterprise is called back to the planet Gateway to protect the Guardian of Forever from a Romulan intelligence raid. It is imperative to the security of the United Federation of Planets that the Romulans not discover the Guardian's powers; if they cannot be driven away, Gateway must be destroyed. The Romulans place a force field around the Guardian and hide themselves behind a ground-based cloaking device. Zar volunteers to help Spock counteract the force field because he can sense whether Romulans are present even if he cannot see them. Their first try is unsuccessful, but when they rendezvous with Kirk the three men discover they are trapped on the planet while the Enterprise with Scotty in command battles the Romulans. They decide to try again, but Spock disables Zar with the Vulcan nerve pinch, wishing to spare him from danger. Kirk and Spock are captured and tortured by the Romulans. When Zar wakes up, he is able to telepathically sense their danger. He also realizes that his father cares about him, since he chose to protect Zar instead of Kirk, his closest friend. The Enterprise defeats the Romulan ships and a rescue party beams down. Zar creates a diversion by causing an explosion, allowing the others to rescue Kirk and Spock. Once the Romulan threat is over, Zar decides to use the Guardian to return to Sarpeidon's past, but to a more settled location than the one he originally inhabited. He has discovered evidence that he is crucial to the planet's unusually rapid cultural evolution.
6906486	/m/0gwgsp	Time for Yesterday	Ann Carol Crispin	1988-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Guardian of Forever has malfunctioned and is emitting waves of accelerated time that are causing premature star deaths throughout the galaxy. After Spock recalls that his son Zar was once able to communicate telepathically with the Guardian, the Enterprise is placed under the temporary command of Admiral Kirk and detailed to transport a powerful telepath to the Guardian. The telepath manages to partially restore the Guardian's timetravel functions but collapses in a comatose state. Using the Guardian, Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy travel into the past of the planet Sarpeidon to find Zar, hoping that his powerful telepathy combined with Vulcan shield training will allow him to successfully restore the Guardian to its normal state. They find Zar in charge of a small, technologically advanced settlement that is about to engage in a battle with an alliance of less advanced but more numerous enemy clans. His death in the coming battle has been foretold by the priestess Wynn, the daughter of one of the enemy clan chiefs, who declares that the alliance will be denied victory only if "he who is halt walks healed" and "he who is death-struck in battle rises whole." "He who is halt" clearly refers to Zar, who walks with a painful limp because of a leg injury he suffered many years before. In order to increase his city's odds of survival, Zar has Wynn kidnapped and betrothed, forcing her father to change sides. The Enterprise men manage to convince him to come back with them and deal with the Guardian, although he insists that he will return afterward to fight in the battle despite the prophecy. Zar successfully melds with the Guardian and returns its consciousness to its physical structure, along with a burst of energy that turns out to be several beings of pure energy. The Guardian explains that it abandoned its duties to search for its Creators, who long ago evolved into beings of pure energy and entered another dimension. Its fundamental programming required it to answer their summons and bring them home, and the resource drain connected to the search resulted in its apparent malfunction. The Creators are immensely old and senile, and wish to find their home system to die there; but they have forgotten where it is. The Creators assume the form of people drawn from the memories of the Enterprise men in order to converse with them. While some of the beings act in a benevolent manner, a few seem capricious and cruel, and even completely deranged. Eventually, Kirk and the others manage to convince them that their search would endanger intelligent life throughout the galaxy, and they re-enter another dimension via the Guardian. The Guardian, with the assistance of Zar and Spock, is able to force the remaining, less rational Creators to comply. McCoy convinces Zar to undergo treatment and physical therapy aboard the Enterprise, healing his limp and giving him a greater chance of survival in the coming battle. Zar achieves peak physical condition and is able to walk normally again, fulfilling the first half of Wynn's prophecy. When he returns to Sarpeidon's past, Spock follows him, intending to help save him in the battle. Spock is unable to prevent the death-blow from landing, although he deflects it slightly, and Zar is unconscious but still alive. In order to fulfill the second half of the prophecy, Spock puts on Zar's armor and shows himself to the army, leading them to believe their leader has risen whole from being "death-struck". Zar's army wins the battle. After ensuring that Zar will survive the blow and leaving him to Wynn's care, Spock returns to the present.
6912454	/m/0gwpyb	A Spot of Bother	Mark Haddon	2006-08-31	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows George Hall, a 57-year-old hypochondriac, and his family following George's retirement from a career manufacturing playground equipment. George has hypochondria, an excessive phobia for one's physical health. Certain that a skin lesion on his hip is a fatal cancer, George ignores the doctor's diagnosis of eczema and attempts to remove the area with a pair of scissors. The resulting blood loss nearly kills him, and the bloodied handprints he smears around the house in its aftermath horrify his wife Jean. George and Jean's children confront problems of their own. Daughter Katie, a single mother, announces her plans to marry Ray, a dependable but lower-class man of whom George, Jean, and their son Jamie disapprove. As the story progresses Ray worries that Katie wants to be with him only for his house and so he can act as a father to her five-year-old son Jacob. It is only when Katie visits George in the hospital that she realizes she and Ray are meant to be together: she proposes to Ray herself, and the couple rearrange the wedding. Meanwhile Jamie has an uneasy relationship with his boyfriend Tony. When Jamie fails to pass on to Tony an invitation to Katie's wedding, Tony leaves him. Jamie's problems prey increasingly on George's mind. George begins to suffer from extreme panic attacks, which worsen after he discovers that Jean is having an affair with David, his former colleague. To distract himself from this terrible new insight George occupies himself with other pursuits, as his slow decline into dementia continues. The story ends with George telling Jean that he is not as offended as she thinks he is about her secret love affair. The two end the novel returning to a comfortable atmosphere and an ordinary, settled household.
6914546	/m/0gwv30	The Last Theorem	Frederik Pohl	2008-08-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Last Theorem is set in Sri Lanka in the early- to mid-21st century and follows the life of a mathematician, Ranjit Subramanian. While studying at Colombo University, he becomes obsessed with Fermat's Last Theorem, a conjecture made by Pierre de Fermat in 1637, for which he claimed to have conceived a proof that he never wrote down. The proof eluded mathematicians across the world for over 350 years, until in 1995 British mathematician Andrew Wiles published a 100-page proof of the theorem. But not everyone was "satisfied" with Wiles's proof because it used twentieth century mathematical techniques not available in Fermat's time. In the novel's back-story, extraterrestrial sapients, the Grand Galactics, are alarmed when they detect the photon shock waves from nuclear bomb detonations on Earth. The Grand Galactics monitor and control the destinies of a number of high-performance sapient races and order one of these races, the Nine Limbeds, to send "cease and desist" messages to Earth. When these messages have no effect, they order the One Point Fives to launch an armada to Earth to exterminate the undesirable species. Back on Earth, regional conflicts escalate and the United Nations struggles to contain them. In Sri Lanka, Ranjit unwittingly boards a cruise ship that is hijacked by pirates. When unknown security forces free the ship, Ranjit is arrested on suspicion of terrorism. For six months he is interrogated and tortured, but he cannot supply the information his captors want so he is locked up and "forgotten" for a further 18 months. During this period of incarceration, Ranjit dwells on Fermat's Last Theorem and, after several months, solves it with a three-page proof. Later Ranjit is rescued by a friend from University, Gamini Bandara, who will not reveal whom he is working for or where Ranjit was held captive. Ranjit submits his proof for publication and achieves worldwide fame. He marries Myra de Soyza, an artificial intelligence specialist, and embarks on a speaking tour of the world. In the United States, he is briefly recruited by the CIA to work on cryptography. Gamini later reveals that he is working for Pax per Fidem (Peace through Transparency), an undercover United Nations organization established to bring about world peace. To achieve this end, Pax per Fidem has developed "Silent Thunder", a non-lethal EMP nuclear superweapon that renders all electrical equipment in its path inoperable. Silent Thunder is deployed in North Korea and later in South America, and regional conflicts subside. Gamini invites Ranjit to join Pax per Fidem, but the authoritarian nature of Pax per Fidem and its "new world order" worry Ranjit and Myra, and Ranjit turns down the offer. He does, however, accept a position on the advisory board of an international consortium building a space elevator in Sri Lanka, chosen because of its position on the equator. As the One Point Five fleet enters the Solar System, the Nine Limbeds orbit and observe Earth in cigar-shaped craft, sparking numerous UFO sightings. A Grand Galactic member, who happens to be passing by, stops to observe the effects of Silent Thunder and returns to the Grand Galactic collective, who immediately suspend the One Point Fives's destruct orders pending further investigation. The space elevator is completed and, for the first time, people and materials can be lifted into Earth orbit without the need of rockets. Natasha, Ranjit and Myra's daughter, competes in the first solar powered space yacht race from Earth- to Moon-orbit. But soon after the start of the race, Natasha's yacht malfunctions and she is abducted by the Nine Limbeds, who use a projection of her to interrogate prominent people on Earth, including Ranjit and Gamini, about Silent Thunder. Satisfied that Earth has "reformed", Natasha is returned and the Nine Limbeds broadcast a message to Earth in which they announce that the Grand Galactics have decided not to sterilize Earth, and that the One Point Fives, with their Machine Stored navigators, cannot return home and will land and occupy unused areas of Earth. The One Point Fives land in the desolate Qattara Depression in the Libyan Desert, which they find quite habitable compared to their ruined homeworld. The Americans send B52 bombers to attack the One Point Fives' base, but the aliens electronically disable the aircraft, causing them to crash short of their target. When the US President demands reparations, the One Point Fives provide gold distilled from seawater by way of compensation. With the Grand Galactics absent, the aliens make decisions for themselves: the One Point Fives provide Earth with new forms of power and the Machine Stored reveal mind uploading technology. When Myra dies in a scuba diving accident, her mind is uploaded into cyberspace, with Ranjit joining her later. After 13,000 years the Grand Galactics finally return to Earth and are astounded to see how fast the planet has developed. They had always interfered with the evolution of sentient species they had discovered, believing they could not be trusted to evolve on their own. Impressed with Earth's progress, the Grand Galactic relieve themselves of the burden of watching over intelligent life and hand the task over to Earth.
6914957	/m/0gwvqd	Mystery of the Glowing Eye	Carolyn Keene	1974	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Nancy eagerly accepts to help her father solve the mystery of a mysterious glowing eye, she has no way of knowing that it will lead to the kidnapping of her boyfriend Ned. A puzzling note in Ned's handwriting sets Nancy, Bess, and George on a dangerous search for a bizarre criminal. Nancy must not only thwart the criminal but also has to contend to the high-handed methods of a female lawyer who threatens to take the case away from Nancy.
6914967	/m/0gwvr2	The Secret of the Forgotten City	Carolyn Keene	1975	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy and her friends plan to join a dig sponsored by two colleges to hunt for a treasure hidden in a city now buried under the Nevada desert. Before she starts, the young sleuth receives an ancient stone tablet with petroglyphs on it. A thief also wants the treasure.
6914978	/m/0gwvrs	The Sky Phantom	Carolyn Keene	1976	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy goes to the Excello Flying School in the Midwest to take lessons while her friends Bess and George perfect their horse riding. At once, the young sleuth is confronted with the mystery of a hijacked plane and a missing pilot. Then the rancher's prize pony, Major is stolen. Nancy becomes a detective in a plane and on horseback to track down the elusive sky phantom and the horse thief. A lucky find-a medal with a message to be deciphered on it-furnishes a worthwhile clue. Romance is added when Bess becomes interested in a handsome cowboy. Readers will spur Nancy on as she investigates a strange magnetic cloud, hunts for the horse thief, and finally arrives at a surprising solution.
6917388	/m/0gwz4d	The Incorporated Knight	Catherine Crook de Camp		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Squire Eudoric Damberson of Zurgau in the kingdom of Locania wishes to wed Lusina, the daughter of his former tutor, the magician Doctor Baldonius. The price is attaining the status of knight and supplying the magician with a portion of dragon hide for use in his magic. Dragons are locally scarce, so Eudoric and his trusty servant Jillo set out for Pathenia in the east to slay one. But once the two do manage to bring one down (by accident) they face legal complications for violating the local game laws. Returning, Eudoric finds his promised bride has run off with a minstrel, and his feudal lord Baron Emmerhard disinclined to knight him for his heroic exploit; he consoles himself by pursuing a scheme to establish a stagecoach line like those in Pathenia. (This material first appeared as the short story "Two Yards of Dragon.") A subsequent rescue of Emmerhard from a magic spell finally secures him the knighthood, but he remains unlucky in love, as the baron's daughter also shuns his hand. (This material first appeared as the short story "The Coronet.") Next Eudoric pursues the daughter of Rainmar, a local robber baron who has been raiding his coach line. Rainmar tasks him with slaying the giant spider Fraka, and once again matters go awry. While Eudoric's knightly reputation and stage line prosper, his marriage prospects remain nil. (This material first appeared as the short story "Spider Love.") The pattern is repeated when he is commissioned to capture a unicorn for his ultimate overlord Emperor Thorar IX of the New Napolitanian Empire. (This material first appeared as the short story "Eudoric's Unicorn.") But wedded bliss does finally find Eudoric — or does it? Seeking to extend his stage line into Letitia, capital of the kingdom of Franconia that borders the empire to the west, his reputation for getting things done leads to him being deputed to rescue the king's sister, held captive in the rude neighboring realm of Armoria. There he is forced to save her from a sea monster and then wed her, after which he flees back to Franconia with his new bride, whom he finds a less than congenial mate — she is both a control freak and an enchantress. Fighting with each other and dangers along the way, they encounter the restless ghost of a king cursed to endure eternal boredom in his tomb, an orthodox ogre who kills and eats those of the wrong faith, and the soldiers of the hostile duchy of Dorelia. Nor are Eudoric's difficulties left behind on their return to Letitia. Mewed up as a prisoner in all but name in his princess bride's mansion by her supernatural servants, he soon discovers she is a female Bluebeard who regularly collects husbands and petrifies them as she tires of them. By calling on the aid of a Serican sorcerer whose life he had saved during his earlier stay in Letitia Eudoric is ultimately successful in freeing his three co-husbands and escaping this lethal spouse. Safe back in Locania, where his nuptials are not recognized, he receives a message from her pleading for him to return, as he is the only one of her husbands whose loss she regrets. Eudoric prudently ignores her letter, choosing instead to resume his courtship of his first intended Lusina — she is also back, having grown disillusioned with her unreliable lover. Meanwhile he and Dr. Baldonius hatch plans to incorporate his coach line as a limited liability company after the fashion of the hongs of Serica.
6925525	/m/0gxb4n	The Pixilated Peeress	Catherine Crook de Camp		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Soldier and aspiring scholar Thorolf Zigramson of Rhaetia is out fishing when he encounters the proverbial damsel in distress in the form of Yvette, fugitive Countess of Grintz from the neighboring kingdom of Carinthia. She is fleeing the forces of the avaricious Duke of Landai, occupier of her fief and aspirant to her hand. But Thorolf gains a burden rather than gratitude by rescuing the self-important peeress from her pursuers. To hide the countess from her enemy Thorolf takes her to the Rhaetian capital of Zurshnitt, where his enchanter friend Doctor Bardi undertakes to magically disguise her features. The spell goes badly awry, mistakenly turning Yvette into an octopus instead. In order to reverse the spell Thorolf must resort to the more powerful wizard Doctor Orlandus, a shady cult-leader. But matters go from bad to worse; while Orlandus cures Yvette all right, he also makes one of his spirit-controlled slaves to advance his scheme of taking over the government of Rhaetia. On top of that, his henchmen murder Doctor Bardi, leaving Thorolf under suspicion of perpetrating the crime. The soldier flees and seeks sanctuary with the trolls, some of whom he has befriended in the past, only to find them more inclined to eat than succor him; he has managed to put himself among the wrong trolls, arch-foes of the band he knows. To gain their favor and protection he promises to rid his captors of a local dragon. Accordingly, he directs them in a successful effort to capture the beast and sell it to the director of Zurshnitt's zoo. But to bind him to them, his new allies insist he marry one of their number. Fortunately the troll lass finds the hapless warrior as unattractive as he does her, and they settle by mutual agreement into a union in name only. Parlaying his membership in the troll band into a bid to reverse his fortune, Thorolf uses their secret tunnels to spy on Orlandus and ultimately to kill the wizard and rescue Yvette. The two are pursued by the late cultist's followers and trapped between them and the forces of Yvette's lordly suitor, which contend over who will get them. The situation resolved only after the duke kills the new cult leader in single combat and is then in turn bested and taken hostage by Thorolf. Meanwhile, the latter's troll wife complication is resolved when the beauty in question elopes with her true love, a stalwart troll lad. Mutually attracted to each other, Thorolf and Yvette have during their adventures alternately quarreled and reconciled, coming close at times to a physical relationship only to be thwarted by circumstances. With the downfall of the countess's enemies, all chance of this is lost; able to act the aristocrat again, Yvette throws herself with a will into raising an army to reconquer Grintz. Thorolf, as a commoner, has no place in this picture. Bowing to the inevitable, Thorolf leaves and enlists as a mercenary in the wars between the contending city-states of Tyrrhennia. Finding a more amenable bride there, he eventually returns to Zurshnitt to find Yvette much reduced in circumstances. Her bid to regain her county has miscarried, and she has had to settle for becoming the wife of a commoner after all – Thorolf's old friend the zoo director. But Yvette chafes in the role. Now seeing her former rescuer in a different light, she proposes they abandon their spouses and run off together. Thorolf, satisfied with his new bride and finally close to achieving his longed-for academic position, declines.
6926203	/m/0gxc6x	Tilly Witch				 Tilly Ipswitch is a witch and the Queen of Halloween. One day, she tries playing at being happy, reasoning that children use Halloween to play at being evil witches. Unfortunately for her, she is unable to stop being happy once she begins. Tilly Witch then goes out on a quest to cure herself of her happiness.
6926216	/m/0gxc7y	A Pocket for Corduroy			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A young girl, Lisa, accidentally leaves her stuffed bear, Corduroy, in a laundromat. After a series of adventures, while Corduroy searches for material to make a pocket, he becomes trapped in a laundry basket until he is found the next morning by the laundromat's owner. Corduroy is reunited with Lisa, who promptly takes him home to sew a pocket onto his overalls, so that Corduroy can carry a name card with him.
6929460	/m/0gxjy9	Nightrise	Anthony Horowitz		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 This story begins with two men, Colton Bane and Kyle Hovey, who work for an evil corporation called Nightrise, waiting outside a theatre in Reno, Nevada. They are waiting to kidnap identical twin brothers Jamie and Scott Tyler, who are part of a magic show in the theatre. Their foster parent, Don White, sells the twins off to them, but Jamie and Scott escape and are pursued. Scott is captured but Jamie is rescued by a woman. He awakens at the woman's house, who introduces herself as Alicia and tells that her son, Daniel, was kidnapped by the same corporation after exhibiting clairvoyant powers. She takes Jamie to his foster parents' house only to realize their murders, and escape only when Jamie uses his telepathic powers. Alicia and Jamie go to Los Angeles where he reveals his backstory. He then tells her of his previous foster parents and the weird and inexplicable "accidents" associated with them. He tells her about the strange tattoo he has and that he thinks he is an Indian. After these incidents, he and Scott refused to read or control anyone's minds but each other's. They find a lead to one of the men that kidnapped Scott, Colton Banes, and Alicia persuades Jamie to read his mind to find out where Scott is. Jamie manages to find out where Scott is being held: Silent Creek, a juvenile Centre, where he is being tortured in order to be on Nightrise's side. Alicia decides to seek help from her boss, John Trelawny, who is running for presidency, and manages to convince him about Jamie's powers and to help him get into Silent Creek. Trelawny affirms Jamie's powers and agrees to help him. Jamie is given a false identity and crime and is put into the juvenile Centre to find his brother is there in solitary confinement and Alicia's son Daniel is there too. One night, when he demands that a supervisor named Max Koring take him to his brother, he realizes that his powers do not work in the prison, because of some magnetic field that neutralizes special powers. Koring puts him in solitary confinement for his rudeness and secretly calls Banes to tell him he has found a Gatekeeper. Jamie does not realize that the second gate was opened. In Peru, Richard and Professor Chambers find Pedro by the helicopter. Pedro tells them that Matt went by himself to stop the gate from opening. Thinking Matt is dead, Richard runs until he finds Matt. Matt "looks like all the life was sucked out of him" and is in a coma. After seeing he has a pulse, Richard runs back to bring get help for Matt. Feather had examined him earlier and knew about his mysterious tattoo. He explains to Jamie that the twins are two of the Five, but Scott has already left Silent Creek. They work out a convincing plan to save Daniel and escape, whilst at the same time Colton Banes is on their way to Silent Creek. A fight goes on between Feather's tribe and Banes' men, resulting in Jamie being shot in the shoulder and Banes killed by an arrow. Feather manages to break out with Daniel and Jamie, but Jamie falls unconscious when he is hit by a bullet, and a shaman is called on to bring him back. During this however, Jamie is transported back in time to the height of the war between humanity and the Old Ones ten thousand years ago in England. It becomes clear that the original Gatekeepers are exactly the same as the Gatekeepers in the present, just with different names (except for Matt, who says "I prefer to use my name from your world"). Matt is obviously the leader, and most knowledgeable of the Gatekeepers. He tells Jamie that he sent Sapling to his death on purpose, as the King of the Old Ones would then think he had won, however, should that occur, his counterpart from the future/past would take his place, hence why Jamie was there. Jamie then participates in the battle against the Old Ones, in which the Old Ones are defeated and banished, having mistakenly thought that only four of the Five could come together and letting their guard down. At the place where the Five congregate, a gate is built at the location the Old Ones were banished to, and would be called Raven's Gate by future generations. Jamie sees an eagle which Matt explains is there to take him back. Jamie's body wakes up in the present and with Feather and Daniel travels back to Reno to reunite Daniel with Alicia, parting ways with Feather afterwards. When he is asleep that night, he is spoken to again by a grey man in the dream world of the Gatekeepers, to kill him.' He finally realized what it means, originally mistaking that Scott was telling him that he was the one going to be killed, but he realizes that Scott is the person going to kill John Trelawny. Throughout the book, Nightrise has always wanted the other candidate, Charles Baker, to become president, who will support the return of the Old Ones. However, when Trelawny became too popular, assassination seemed the only option. It becomes apparent that this will take place during his birthday parade in his home town of Auburn. Alicia, Danny and Jamie hurry to Auburn to stop the assassination. Jamie sees Scott with Susan Mortlake, a leader of Nightrise, in the crowd, and he tries to send a telepathic message to him, but it fails. Desperate, Jamie commands Warren Cornfeld, Trelawny's bodyguard and would-be assassin (being controlled by Scott), to aim the gun at Susan Mortlake. Cornfield shoots and kills Mortlake, and in chaos Jamie takes Scott and meets up with Alicia and Danny. They meet Natalie Johnson, a member of the Nexus and a friend of Trelawny, who gives them her car to escape. Policemen immediately come after them and the twins bid farewell to Alicia and Danny. Jamie and Scott use a hidden doorway in a cave at Lake Tahoe, and emerge in Cuzco, Peru at the Santo Domingo church. The twins find their way to the Nazca desert and meet with Matt and Pedro, the first and second Gatekeepers. Meanwhile, Scarlett Adams takes an airplane to Hong Kong to meet her father, who works for Nightrise. As Scarlett is about to go she finds out that John Trelawny has lost the election and that it is suspected that Nightrise has rigged the ballots.
6931010	/m/0gxmxn	Romanov prophecy			{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 After weak governments and the communist era, the Russian people voted to bring back the new tsar, who will be chosen among the closest relative of Nicholas II of Russia from the surviving Romanov clans. Miles Lord, the protagonist, is tasked to do a background check on the favourite contender to be tsar, Stefan Baklanov. After almost being killed in the center of Moscow, Lord starts to discover new facts and documents that could threaten Baklanov's aspirations. Based on the diary of Felix Yusupov and a prophecy of the famous Rasputin, Lord finds out that there could be a direct descendent of Alexis and Anastasia, children of Nicholas II, living somewhere in the world. In this novel, Lord travels to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Starodub, Vladivostok, Atlanta and San Francisco trying to find the inheritor of the Romanov family. If he has success, Russia will find the real tsar, if not, Stefan Baklanov will obtain power, and nobody knows what he will do with the country.
6931199	/m/0gxn8x	Deep Six	Clive Cussler	1984-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Deep Six opens in 1966 aboard the refitted liberty ship San Marino on its way from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand. The ship is carrying more than eight million dollars worth of titanium ingots as well as a mysterious passenger who goes by the name of Estelle Wallace. Wallace is actually Arta Casilighio, a former bank teller at the Beverly-Wilshire bank who embezzled more than $120,000 and is making her getaway. Unfortunately, for her and the rest of the crew, a group of Korean seamen who came aboard as last-minute crew replacements have hijacked the ship and its cargo, and conveniently dispose of Wallace and the crew by paralyzing them with poison in their food and dropping them over the side into the depths of the ocean. The story then flashes forward twenty-three years to the waters off of Augustine Island, Alaska where an extremely deadly poison is moving through the waters, killing everything it comes in contact with. The poison comes to the notice of the Coast Guard cutter Catawaba when it intercepts a derelict crab boat called the Amie Marie. The men sent aboard to investigate discover that the entire crew has died horribly, bleeding from every orifice and their skin had turned black. The boarding party soon begins to exhibit symptoms themselves. The doctor sent aboard orders the captain of the Catawaba to quarantine the crab boat and calls off his symptoms as the poison overtakes him, hoping that this information will help others in their diagnosis. It is later revealed that the symptoms of the mysterious poison are strikingly similar to those of a deadly biological weapon, called Nerve Agent S, developed by the Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside of Colorado as the ideal weapon for use on troops wearing gas masks and protective clothing. The agent clings to everything and is absorbed through the skin, resulting in almost immediate death. The weapon was eventually discontinued by the Army because it was as deadly to the troops deploying it as it was to the enemy. While en route to be buried in the Nevada desert, an entire boxcar carrying more than 1,000 gallons of Nerve Agent S disappeared. Dirk Pitt and his friend, Assistant Projects Director Al Giordino are called away from their current project to assist the Environmental Protection Agency's Dr. Julie Mendoza in an effort to find the source of the poison in what is assumed to be a sunken ship. Pitt discovers that the liberty ship Pilottown is embedded into the shore of the island with only her stern exposed to the elements. They board her and discover the containers of the nerve agent but while they are attempting to recover the barrels, the volcano on the island erupts, causing the barrels to shift and inadvertently kill Dr. Mendoza when her biohazard suit is punctured, exposing her to the poison. Pitt vows to get to the bottom of who was responsible for the poison being on the ship and to take his revenge for the death of Dr. Mendoza. In his attempts to trace the history of the Pilottown, Pitt discovers information on the wreck that leads him to the Alhambra Iron and Boiler Company in Charleston, South Carolina, and from there turns to NUMA computer expert Hiram Yaeger and St. Julien Perlmutter, a family friend and naval historian. They discover that the Pilottown has been part of a complicated web of insurance scams and piracy which saw her name changed several times, from San Marino to Belle Chase, and finally to Pilottown, as her ownership changed through a number of bogus holding companies. Eventually, they tie the ship to Bougainville Maritime Lines, a powerful company owned by the ruthless and mysterious Madame Min Koryo Bougainville. Bougainville and her grandson, Lee Tong, have entered into an audacious plan with the Soviet Union to engineer the kidnapping of the President of the United States, the Vice President, the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate, the next three men in the line of succession to the presidency, as part of a project code-named Huckleberry Finn. It is revealed that the Soviet economy is in ruins, a famine is spreading amongst the Eastern Bloc nations and the whole Eastern Bloc may be on the verge of collapse. The Soviets have devised a plan that calls for the President to undergo a top-secret Soviet mind control procedure, termed "mind intervention", which uses a combination of an implanted microchip and injected memories from a brainwashed Soviet dissident to allow the Soviet government to control the President's thoughts without his knowledge. The other three men are kept in reserve as the procedure only has about a 60% success rate. In return for carrying out the abduction, the Bougainvilles are to receive one billion dollars in gold, which the Soviets intend to cheat them out of while unaware that the Bougainvilles intend to double-cross them as well. When the disappearance of the President (and those next in the line of succession) on the Presidential yacht is discovered, Secretary of State Douglas Oates, now the acting president, orders a cover-up of the disappearance while a massive search is under way to find the kidnapped men. Congresswoman Loren Smith, the on again-off again lover of Dirk Pitt, who is on a fact-finding mission aboard the Soviet cruise liner Leonid Andreyev off the coast of the United States inadvertently witnesses Speaker of the House Alan Moran smuggled onto the ship by a KGB agent. When the Soviets discover that Smith knows that Moran is on board, they kidnap her as well. Pitt discovers that Loren is missing and he and Giordino sneak about the Leonid Andreyev to find her. But after the Bougainvilles detonate a bomb that sinks the ship (part of their double-cross) she is kidnapped by Lee Tong, disguised as a steward, aboard a rescue boat. Meanwhile, the President, now under control of the Soviets, returns to the White House and announces that while he was gone, he was negotiating a secret disarmament agreement with the Soviet President and has agreed to loan them billions of dollars in hard currency which they may use to purchase food and previously banned American high-technology products. When he further announces his intention to pull the United States out of NATO and bring home all troops and missiles in Europe without the consent of Congress, Congress announces their intention to impeach him from office. The president sends the Army to keep members of Congress from meeting and it appears that the United States now has what the founding fathers feared worst, a dictator in the White House. Using information from Yaeger and Perlmutter, Pitt determines that the secret lab the Bougainvilles are hiding the remaining captives in is on a barge along the Mississippi River near New Orleans. He and Giordino embark on unauthorized rescue mission with the aid of the local office of the FBI. The agents are ambushed by Bougainville's security guards and it's up to Pitt and Giordino to rescue Loren and the Vice President. In a last-ditch effort to intercept the barge before it can be sunk at sea, Pitt commandeers the riverboat Stonewall Jackson and enlists the help of 40 members of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment of Confederate re-enactors. Armed with smooth bore muskets, as well as two Napoleon cannons that fire improvised charges, they launch an attack against the Bougainville's crew of stone-cold killers armed with automatic weapons, while Pitt attempts to board the barge and rescue Smith and Margolin before it is too late.
6932081	/m/0gxpx3	Treasure	Clive Cussler	1988	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book starts with a historical prologue in which Julius Venator, a Roman, along with a group of Roman soldiers and slaves, sail in a fleet of ships ferrying the treasures from the Library of Alexandria before its destruction to a secret location to be buried in underground caverns. After the treasures are buried the people, the Roman soldiers, and slaves are all slaughtered by the natives. While one small ship manages to get away, they never reach land and the secret of the treasure is lost. The story then shifts to an envoy of the US President having a secret meeting with a would be Aztec dictator Topiltzin. He kills the envoy, and sends his skin and heart back to the President. The plot then shifts to a Middle Eastern terrorist secretly hijacking a plane carrying Hala Kamil, the new United Nations Secretary-General, the hijacker bails out of the plane after ensuring that the plane crash lands in Greenland, where Dirk Pitt, Al Giordino, and Rudi Gunn are trying to locate a sunken Soviet submarine. Also in the area is Lily Sharp, who discovers an ancient coin. They rescue Hala from the plane wreck. As the plot unfolds, several more attempts are made on Hala’s life, since she is trying to stop would-be dictator Akhmad Yazid from taking over Egypt. Dirk is distracted by the promise of treasure, however. Locating a shipwreck in Greenland, they soon find a tablet detailing a mission to hide the treasure of the library at Alexandria. As Dirk, Al, and the Special Operations Forces rescue Hala Kamil from a hijacked ship in the Straits of Magellan, Hiram Yaeger locates the treasure—in Texas. The final stretch of the novel involves Dirk trying to hide the treasure from Yazid and his brother, Topiltzin, a would-be Aztec dictator. Eventually, the treasure is discovered and Yazid, Topiltzin and their henchmen are killed.
6932508	/m/0gxqgr	Pacific Vortex!	Clive Cussler	1983	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 After discovering a communication capsule from the lost submarine Starbuck, Dirk Pitt is seconded from NUMA to the Hundred and First salvage fleet and ordered to help get to the bottom of the mysterious disappearance of the top-secret submarine. Pitt discovers that the submarine went missing in an area of the Pacific Ocean north of the Hawaiian island of Oahu nicknamed the Pacific Vortex. Similar in its mysterious reputation to the Bermuda Triangle, the Navy has documented 38 cases of ships vanishing without a trace with all hands in this area of the Pacific since 1956. When the Starbuck originally went missing, the Navy conducted a massive and exhaustive search in the area of the Pacific where the submarine was last reported without finding a trace of wreckage. Pitt determines that it is suspicious that the Navy found no wreckage whatsoever, since the search pattern took them over the area that was reputedly the graveyard of the Pacific Vortex. Even if they did not find the wreckage of the submarine, they should have found some wreckage from any of the 38 ships rumored to have gone down in the area. While doing research in an ongoing hobby effort to find the royal tomb of Hawaiian King Kamehameha, Pitt learns of the mythical island of Kanoli rumored to have existed north of the current Hawaiian Islands, and similar to the lost continent of Atlantis, rumored to have sunk into the sea killing the race of men who lived there. Pitt intuits that the Navy has been searching in the wrong direction and that they should turn around and concentrate their search for a sunken seamount in the area just north of the island of Oahu. Pitt eventually discovers that in 1956 three respected men of science, Dr.'s Lavella and Roblemann, specialists in various areas of underwater science, followed the renowned Dr. Frederick Moran to their deaths in the same area of the Pacific. It is revealed that Moran, a renowned anthropologist and pacifist, who believes that it is only a matter of time before the human race destroys itself with the atomic bomb, has been searching for a place where he and his followers can survive the coming Apocalypse. Pitt believes that Moran and his followers discovered the sunken seamount that was once the island of Kanoli and have been using it as a base to raid Pacific shipping for the last 30 years as a means of financing their project. When Pitt finds the sunken submarine in good condition, he determines that it cannot be immediately raised and also reveals the existence of the sunken fortress of Kanoli. The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, DC elect to destroy the submarine with a nuclear tipped missile in an effort to ensure that its top secret design and nuclear missiles do not fall into the hands of Moran, the Soviet Union or any other nation. In an effort to stave off the attack, Moran kidnaps Adrienne Hunter, a long-ago love interest of Pitt and the daughter of the commander of the Hundred and First salvage fleet, Admiral Leigh Hunter. When Pitt discovers that Admiral Hunter will not tell Washington about the kidnapping of his daughter in order to delay the attack, he mounts a last-minute desperate rescue operation intended to rescue Adrienne and if possible snatch the submarine away as well.
6936781	/m/0gxxv7	The Lost Prince	Frances Hodgson Burnett	1915	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This book is about Marco Loristan, his father, and his friend, a street urchin named The Rat. Marco's father, Stefan, is a Samavian patriot working to overthrow the cruel dictatorship in the kingdom of Samavia. Marco and his father come to London where Marco strikes up a friendship with a crippled street urchin known as The Rat. The friendship occurs when Marco overhears The Rat shouting in military form. Marco discovers he had stumbled upon a strangely militia-like club known as the Squad. Stefan, realizing that two boys are less likely to be noticed, entrusts them with a secret mission to travel across Europe giving the secret sign: 'The Lamp is lighted.' Marco is to go as the Bearer of the sign while Rat goes as his Aide-de-Camp. This brings about a revolution which succeeds in overthrowing the old regime and re-establishing the rightful king. When Marco and The Rat return to London, Stefan has already left for Samavia. They wait there with his father's faithful bodyguard, Lazarus, until Stefan calls. The book ends in a climactic scene as Marco realizes his father is the descendant of Ivor Fedorovitch and thus the rightful king of Samavia.
6940376	/m/0gy179	Sebastian	Anne Bishop	2006-02-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The incubus Sebastian is the bastard child of a succubus and the wizard Koltak. Being an incubus has not made his life easy. Forced to flee every city or town he settled in, he has never known a home. Until one day, his cousin, 15-year-old Glorianna Belladonna, creates a landscape where demons can live, called the 'Den of Iniquity'. It is a 'carnal carnival' filled with gambling, drinking, prostitution and demons. Shocked by her actions and her ability to create a landscape, the wizards and Landscapers question her. She simply responds, "Even demons need a home." The wizards attempt to lock her into her own garden, but fail. She is then declared rogue. Meanwhile, Sebastian, living in the Den of Iniquity and ignorant of the sacrifices his cousin has made for him, begins to tire of the life he lives, finding simply having sex with women no longer interesting. When he first stumbled into the Den when he was a 15 year old boy, he and his first and foremost friend Teaser, another incubus, prowled around the Den, using their abilities to entertain themselves. This life no longer holds any appeal. He yearns for love - and it appears in the form of Lynnea. She is a catalyst whose "heart wish" (a strong wish deeply embedded within her) delivered her to the Den. Her arrival brings about 'opportunity and change'.
6942354	/m/0gy3_h	Our Game	John le Carré			 The disappearance of Dr. Larry Pettifer from his teaching position at Bath University shouldn't have concerned a great many people, especially a retired Treasury boffin like Tim Cranmer. But when Detective Inspector Bryant and Sergeant Luck of the Bath Police call upon Cranmer at his Somerset manor house and vineyard late on a Sunday evening, Cranmer finds himself facing repercussions from his secret and not-too-distant past. Pettifer, the reader eventually learns, was a British Secret Intelligence Service operative during the Cold War and Cranmer was his handler for some twenty years. The Cold War is over, the Berlin Wall has come down and SIS has put Cranmer and his agent Pettifer out to pasture. Pettifer turns to teaching at Bath University and Cranmer is content to settle at Honeybrook, his inherited estate in Somerset, growing wine and making love to his beautiful young mistress Emma. Not content with staying cloistered in Bath, Larry begins paying visits to Honeybrook and soon becomes a permanent fixture in their lives. At least, that is, until both Larry and Emma disappear. Panicked by his encounter with the Bath Police, Cranmer contacts his former employers and is summoned to London where he learns that, not only has Larry disappeared, he's absconded with some ₤37 million milked from the Russian Government with the help of a former Soviet spy. Cranmer finds himself suspected as Larry's accomplice by the Bath Police—and, later, by "The Office," or SIS—and decides to track down his protégé and his former mistress. But why would a quixotic intellectual like Larry, a man who had no interest in money, suddenly wish to steal ₤37 million from the Russians? To solve this mystery, Cranmer begins calling on old contacts from Oxford to the arms trade to find out what his former agent and his purloined mistress have been up to in their disappearance. He also visits his secret archive of Office files, stashed away in the abandoned church of St. James the Less, bequeathed to him by the same Uncle Bob who left him Honeybrook. As he peruses his cache of documents, he begins to uncover the plot between Larry and Konstantin Checheyev, the former Soviet handler of Larry (the latter one pretended to work for Soviets during the Cold War). Checheyev, it seems, is not Russian but Ingush, a native of the high Caucasus and begrudged of the Russians who have displaced him and his people from their rightful homes. The Ingush are primed for an uprising against their Russian oppressors and Larry's the man to arm them. Cranmer begins his journey, first to an arms dealer in Macclesfield, England, whom he finds murdered along with his assistants by an Ossetian group called "The Forest;" then to find Emma, who has sought shelter in Paris; then to Russia to track down his former Soviet contacts in hopes of finding Larry; then to Ingushetia to find his friend and try to save him - from the Russians, the Ossetians and from himself.
6945313	/m/0gy8bh	Hills End	Ivan Southall		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story follows seven children and their teacher who are trapped inside a cave while a fierce cyclonic storm destroys the fictional town of Hills End. They face a struggle to survive as well as having to deal with their loss. A mystery also surrounds ancient aboriginal art found in the cave.
6950337	/m/0gyj2c	The Hallo-Wiener	Dav Pilkey	1995-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins with Oscar, a dachshund who is half-a-dog tall and one-and-a-half dogs long, and tired of the other dogs making fun of him because of his wiener-shaped body. He is happy because it is Halloween, and he cannot wait to get a costume. At obedience school, he daydreams of Halloween. When he comes home from school his mother has a surprise for him: a hot dog bun with mustard in the middle, and Oscar is supposed to fit in the middle! He thought he would get laughed at, but wears the costume anyway, because he does not want to hurt his mom's feelings. He sees the other dogs showing off their costumes and when they see Oscar's costume they howl in laughter. Oscar's costume is so heavy that it slows him down. Meanwhile, the dogs are getting their paws on all the candy and when Oscar comes to the houses there are no more treats left. The dogs go to a graveyard and they hear a noise, scream very loud and run, diving into a river because they see a scary monster. When Oscar comes to see the monster he notices something strange. He bites the cover of the monster, pulls it off with all his might, and discovers two cats hiding underneath! The cats scream and run away. Then Oscar jumps into the water and uses his costume as a life raft, and rescues the other dogs. The dogs thank Oscar by sharing their candy with him. They become friends forever and Oscar is never made fun of again, for he is then known as "Hero Sandwich".
6950558	/m/0gyjb1	Comfort Food	Noah Ashenhurst	2005-11-25	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Stan Gillman-Reinhart is a graduate student at a small university in Bellingham, Washington in 1993. Through his experiences and frustrations we meet Delany Richardson, a budding writer and old friend of Stan's; John Snyder, a local musician; Brian Fetzler, Stan's stoner roommate; Dave Greibing, a mountaineer and Delany's ex-boyfriend; and Bridgette Jonsen, a former heroin addict and Dave's current girlfriend. Successive sections of the novel focus on John's earlier trip through Eastern Europe, Delany's previous summer in Alaska, Brian's life after college, Bridgette's earlier road trip through Utah, Dave's ascent of Denali, and a tragic accident that illuminates their lives. Set in the verdant Pacific Northwest, the sandstone deserts of Utah, the gritty streets of Budapest, and the snow covered wasteland of Denali, Comfort Food is a literary work with an emphasis on the importance of human relationships and a sense of place.
6951095	/m/0gyk41	Dolphin Island	Arthur C. Clarke	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Late one night (in the world of the future), a giant cargo hovership makes an emergency landing somewhere in the middle of the United States and an enterprising teenager named Johnny Clinton stows away on it. In the space of only a few hours the craft crashes into the Pacific Ocean. The crew ("even the ship's cat") is offloaded onto lifeboats, leaving Johnny (who, as a stowaway, they didn't know was on board) adrift in the flotsam from the hovercraft. His life is saved by the "People of the Sea"-- dolphins. A school of these fantastic creatures guides him to an island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Johnny becomes involved with the work of a strange and fascinating research community where a brilliant professor (Prof Kazan) tries to communicate with dolphins. Johnny learns skindiving and survives a typhoon--only to risk his life again, immediately afterwards, to get medical help for the people on the island.
6960230	/m/0gywj6	The Death of Achilles	Boris Akunin		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03g3w": "History"}	 Moscow, 1882. When Fandorin returns from Japan with his manservant Masa, he enters the service of Moscow governor Prince Dolgorukoi. Later that day, the White General Mikhail Sobolev, nicknamed the Russian Achilles and an old friend of Fandorin's, is found dead in the same hotel. Officially, he died of a heart attack, but Fandorin becomes suspicious when he talks with the body guards of the general. Fandorin had befriended these cossacks when he rooted out a Turkish spy during the siege of Plevna (see The Turkish Gambit). But the same cossacks now treat him with hostility. Fandorin finds out the reason for their hostility as he discovers that the general had not really died in the hotel, but was moved there from the apartment of his mistress. Found dead in a compromising situation, the cossacks tried to prevent a scandal and protect the reputation of the general. But Fandorin looks even deeper and finds out that a large sum of money is missing. He learns that Sobolev is trying to raise funds to begin a political campaign, and Fandorin begins to suspect foul play. He finds that the general has been poisoned in a very clever manner, and the killer anticipated the cover up, which would ensure his safe getaway. Fandorin further discovers that the plot leads up to the highest levels of the Tsar's government, and that he himself is now viewed as an enemy of the state for his efforts to catch the killer. The killer is Achimas Welde, a hired assassin, who has only failed three times in his career. One of those times was his assignment to kill Fandorin, when he just managed to kill Fandorin's wife, as Fandorin himself was chasing him (see The Winter Queen). The second half of the novel is told from Achimas' point of view and recounts his life story, up to the plot to kill Sobolev and the investigation. By chance, Achimas discovers that the man who hired him to kill Sobolev was Grand Duke Kirill Alexandrovich, the younger brother of Tsar Alexander III. In the concluding chapters of the novel, Fandorin kills Achimas, and prepares to flee Moscow (believing himself to be a target of the plotters), but Prince Dolgorukoi's assistant meets him at the train station and tells him that everything has been covered up and he can continue in the service of the state.
6961605	/m/0gyyb0	Breakfast at Tiffany's	Truman Capote		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 In autumn 1943, the unnamed narrator becomes friends with Holly Golightly, who calls him "Fred", after her older brother. The two are both tenants in a brownstone apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Holly (age 18-19) is a country girl turned New York café society girl. As such, she has no job and lives by socializing with wealthy men, who take her to clubs and restaurants, and give her money and expensive presents; she hopes to marry one of them. According to Capote, Golightly is not a prostitute but an "American geisha." Holly likes to stun people with carefully selected tidbits from her personal life or her outspoken viewpoints on various topics. Over the next year, she slowly reveals herself to the narrator, who finds himself fascinated by her curious lifestyle. In the end, Holly fears that she will never know what is really hers until after she has thrown it away. Their relationship ends in autumn 1944.
6961741	/m/0gyyhx	Hadon of Ancient Opar	Philip José Farmer	1974	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel deals with the expedition of Hadon, a young Oparian warrior, to the Wild Lands and as far as the mysterious Ringing Sea, which would one day be called the Mediterranean, with the strange woman whom he meets and brings with him, and with the cataclysmic civil war which breaks out on his return and which he partly (and completely unintentionally) helps touch off. The ancient Khokarsan society of which Opar is a part is a matriarchy (a reasonable inference from the culture of the later-day Opar encountered by Tarzan). A delicate balance between the genders is maintained, symbolized by the co-rule of the high priestess and the king (whose main authority is command of the army), which corresponds to some theories of sociologists and historians on the way actual matriarchal societies may have worked. The same scheme is repeated on a smaller scale on the local level, where towns are co-governed by a local priestess and the commander of the local garrison. The current king, Minruth, tries to subvert this immemorial system and establish exclusive male power, which incidentally would force an incestuous relationship upon the current high priestess, Awineth, who happens to be his daughter. Lalila, the foreign "White Witch from the Sea," whom Hadon brings with him and with whom he falls in love, is used as a pawn in King Minruth's power game; the xenophobic suspicions aroused about her are used in an attempt to undermine the position of women in general. Hadon and his male and female friends rally to the high priestess' banner against the king's evil schemes.
6961957	/m/0gyyr9	The Message	K. A. Applegate	1996-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cassie and Tobias are having strange dreams about a presence in the ocean. Jake sees a news item on television about debris with what looks like Andalite lettering on it that has washed up on the beach, and when he shows it to the others, Cassie and Tobias have such strong visions that they momentarily pass out. The Animorphs decide to investigate, and acquire dolphin morphs to do so. While out in the ocean, they find a humpback whale under attack by a group of sharks. The Animorphs fight the sharks and drive them off, and Marco is nearly killed in the process. Marco is able to morph back to his human form, and the whale, grateful, saves him from drowning. The whale speaks to Cassie through song, telling her about a strange place of grass and trees under the ocean. Cassie has a feeling that this place is of Andalite origin, and the Animorphs wonder if Cassie's and Tobias's visions are a sort of distress call from an Andalite trapped in the ocean. They decide that the distress call is connected to the morphing ability, and Cassie and Tobias feel it the strongest because Cassie is the most in control of her morphing ability and Tobias is trapped in a morph. They also figure out that Visser Three could be receiving the message and that the Yeerks are probably looking for the lost Andalite as well. The Andalite's location is too far from the shore for the Animorphs to reach under the two hour morphing limit, so they (except Tobias) morph into seagulls and stow away on a large container ship (called the Newmar, from Monrovia, headed towards Singapore) that is heading in the right direction. They abandon ship and morph to dolphin when they are in range and discover the Dome of an Andalite Dome ship deep beneath the ocean's surface. They enter through an airlock and meet Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. Marco quickly gives him the nickname Ax, and the Animorphs tell him that he is the only survivor of the Andalite-Yeerk battle in Earth orbit and that they met and received the morphing power from Prince Elfangor. Ax reveals that Elfangor was, in fact, his older brother. The meeting is brief however, as the Yeerks discover the sunken Dome ship and begin to drop depth charges. Ax had previously acquired a tiger shark, and he and the Animorphs escape. They are pursued by Visser Three in Mardrut morph; as they tire, Visser Three gains on them. The Animorphs decide to make a last stand, but are saved when Visser Three is attacked and chased off by a pod of humpback whales. The whales give the tired Animorphs a ride back to the shore. Ax pledges to fight with the Animorphs and adopts Jake as his prince. He acquires Jake, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco and mixes the DNA from each to create his own human morph. The Animorphs decide to hide him in the woods near Cassie's farm. *Ax is introduced.
6963354	/m/0gz05_	Hope Leslie		1827		 The story begins in England with William Fletcher, a young man in love with a distant relative, Alice, whose father has forbidden her marriage to Fletcher on account of religious difference. Alice's father forces her to marry Charles Leslie instead. In despair, Fletcher decides to leave England and relocate to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the Bay colony, Fletcher marries an orphan girl named Martha although he is still in love with Alice. After living in Boston, Massachusetts for a while, William moves the family to the newly founded Springfield, Massachusetts and calls his home Bethel. While there, Fletcher receives a letter that says Alice died while voyaging to the new colonies in New England. The Fletcher's adopt her two children, Hope and Faith. Governor Winthrop procures two Indian servants to help Mrs. Fletcher with the increased domestic workload. The two servants are a sister and brother, Magawisca and Oneco, who are the children of the Pequot chief Mononotto. Monotto is out for revenge. After attempting at peace with the Englishmen, they killed his people, enslaved his family, and beheaded his son, Samoset. Mononotto and two Mohawk warriors attack Bethel. Mrs. Fletcher and her infant son are killed, and Magawisca and Oneco are reunited with their father. Everell and Faith are taken captive. When Mononotto attempts to execute Everell in retaliation to the wrongs he has suffered. Magawisca intervenes by throwing herself between the axe and Everell's neck. Her arm is severed and Everell escapes unharmed. The next scene opens with a letter Hope has written seven years later to Everell who is studying in England. She writes of an episode where Cradock gets bitten by a rattlesnake while climbing Mount Holioke (later renamed Mount Holyoke). Nelema stops by and does a treatment and he is cured. Jennet calls it witchcraft and Nelema is made to stand trial. Hope frees Nelema from jail and Nelema promises to send her sister Faith to her. Hope is sent to live with the Winthrops in Boston for a while. Everell returns to America and stays with Mr. Fletcher, who now lives in Boston. Esther Downing, a niece of Mrs. Winthrop’s, becomes good friends with Hope. She seems to be everything that Hope is not: faithful, prudent, and studious. She is also kind. She tells a story of how Everell came to her death bed and her ensuing recovery. Esther is infatuated with Everell, which saddens Hope greatly. Everyone hopes Esther and Everell will marry, except Mr. Fletcher, who hopes to match the two children he raised. The Winthrops want to pair Hope with Sir Philip Gardiner, a stranger who arrived in town on the same boat as Everell, and who has developed an interest in Hope Leslie. Sir Philip's page, Roslin, seems very odd indeed. It is later revealed that Roslin is Rosa, a former lover of Sir Philip's whom he has disguised as his male page. One evening, Hope and Esther attend a lecture pertaining to the case of Mr. Gorton. Uncharacteristically, Hope appears quite anxious. We later learn that Hope had that day received a visit from Magawisca, whom she had made plans to meet in the cemetery at 9pm that night. On the way home from the lecture, Hope impatiently leaves her escort, Sir Philip, and takes a detour to the burial ground. Hope briefly meets Roslin, who tells her that she must not trust Sir Philip. Unknown to Hope, Sir Phillip follows her and overhears the conversation with Magawisca that night. Magawisca explains that Faith has married Oneco and tries to warn Hope that her sister is very different from the sister she remembers. Nelema managed to tell Magawisca that Hope had saved her and wanted to repay her with a visit from her sister. Magawisca also explains that her sister is now a Catholic. To facilitate her meeting with Faith, Hope arranges for the party to stay on an island belonging to Winthrop, of which Digby is the guardian. While there, she implies to all present that Everell and Esther are going to get married, and puts their hands together. She never notices that Everell longs to be with her. Sir Philip comes, too, and she tells him that she never intends to marry him. Sir Phillip is upset by this. Everyone else agrees to leave the island and Hope goes out to meet her sister on the shore. Hope embraces Faith and tries to talk to her only to realize that Faith no longer speaks English. Magawisca must interpret for them. Hope hugs her and tries to get her to come home with her. She even tries to bribe her sister, but to no avail. As they are meeting, a trap is sprung upon them. Magawisca and Faith are taken by English soldiers. Magawisca is imprisoned. Hope is taken captive by Oneco and meets up with Mononotto. Sir Phillip had laid the trap after overhearing Magawisca and Hope's plans in the cemetery. Mononotto is struck by lightning as Oneco is trying to get away. He stops to take care of his father and while he does so, Hope escapes, but then runs into a group of sailors who chase her. She gets into a boat and the Italian sailor Antonio believes first that she is the Virgin Mary, and later that she is his patron saint. Hope does nothing to disabuse Antonio of this belief, and convinces him to row her to shore. Sir Phillip goes and visits Magawisca in jail. He gives her tools to escape with a promise that she take Rosalin with her. She refuses. Sir Phillip gets choked by Morton, whom he had claimed to be visiting. Sir Philip's true nature is momentarily revealed. Everell attempts to save Magawisca, but fails. Hope also wants to free Magawisca, and comes up with a plan that involves Cradock, Everell, and Digby. Hope takes Cradock with her to the jail and cleverly disguises him to look like Magawisca. She is so pleasant that the guard, Barnaby Tuttle, doesn’t notice the deception. Hope and Magawisca escape from the jail and Everell meets them on their way to the river where Digby is waiting in a boat to take Magawisca anywhere she wishes to go. They say their goodbyes and Hope gives Magawisca the necklace that Everelly had, had made for her while he was away so the Magawisca will remember them both. Magawisca gets away safely. While Hope, Cradock and Everell are gone, suddenly, the Winthrops all realize that Hope is gone. Everell returns Hope to her home in what he believes will be the last time he sees her. By the end of the novel, Esther has realized that Everell and Hope love each other and she decides to return to England for a few years and remain unmarried. As if to right the original wrong of separating William Fletcher from Alice, their children, Everell Fletcher and Hope Leslie, are finally united.
6963561	/m/0gz0kv	First Blood	David Morrell	1972	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with Rambo, a Vietnam War veteran, hitch hiking in Madison, Kentucky. He is picked up by Sheriff Teasle and dropped off at the city limits. When Rambo repeatedly returns, Teasle finally arrests him and drives him to the station. He is charged with vagrancy and resisting arrest and is sentenced to 35 days in jail. Being trapped inside the cold, wet, small cells gives Rambo a flashback of his days as a POW in Vietnam, and he fights off the cops as they attempt to cut his hair and shave him without shaving cream, beating one man and slashing another with the straight razor. He flees, steals a motorcycle, and hides in the nearby mountains. He becomes the focus of a manhunt that results in the deaths of many police officers, civilians, and National Guardsmen. In a climactic ending in the town where his conflict with Teasle began, Rambo is finally hunted down by special forces Colonel Sam Trautman and Teasle. Teasle, using his local knowledge, manages to surprise Rambo and shoots him in the chest, but is himself wounded in the stomach by a return shot. He then tries to pursue Rambo as he makes a final attempt to escape back out of the town. Both men are essentially dying by this point, but are driven by pride and a desire to justify their actions. Rambo, having found a spot he feels comfortable in, prepares to commit suicide by detonating a stick of dynamite against his body; however, he then sees Teasle following his trail and decides that it would be more honourable to continue fighting and be killed by Teasle's return fire. Rambo fires at Teasle and, to his surprise and disappointment, hits him. For a moment he reflects on how he had missed his chance of a decent death, because he is now too weak to light the dynamite, but then suddenly feels the explosion he had expected—but in the head, not the stomach where the dynamite was placed. Rambo dies satisfied that he has come to a fitting end. Trautman returns to the dying Teasle and tells him that he has killed Rambo with his shotgun. Teasle relaxes, experiences a moment of affection for Rambo, then dies.
6963715	/m/0gz0v8	The Sea Devil's Eye	Mel Odom	2000	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Iakhovas has caused more destruction than any force since the Time of Troubles, but his true objective has been a mystery until now.
6964081	/m/0gz15_	Journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras	Jules Verne	1866	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel, set in 1861, described adventures of British expedition led by Captain John Hatteras to the North Pole. Hatteras is convinced that the sea around the pole is not frozen and his obsession is to reach the place no matter what. Mutiny by the crew results in destruction of their ship but Hatteras, with a few men, continues on the expedition. On the shore of the island of "New America" he discovers the remains of a ship used by the previous expedition from the United States. Doctor Clawbonny recalls in mind the plan of the real Ice palace, constructed completely from ice in Russia in 1740 to build a snow-house, where they should spend a winter. The travellers winter on the island and survive mainly due to the ingenuity of Doctor Clawbonny (who is able to make fire with an ice lens, make bullets from frozen mercury and repel attacks by polar bears with remotely controlled explosions of black powder). When the winter ends the sea becomes ice-free. The travellers build a boat from the shipwreck and head towards the pole. Here they discover an island, an active volcano, and name it after Hatteras. With difficulty a fjord is found and the group get ashore. After three hours climbing they reach the mouth of the volcano. The exact location of the pole is in the crater and Hatteras jumps into it. As the sequence was originally written, Hatteras perishes in the crater; Verne's editor, Jules Hetzel, suggested or rather required that Verne do a rewrite so that Hatteras survives but is driven insane by the intensity of the experience, and after return to England he is put into an asylum for the insane. Losing his "soul" in the cavern of the North Pole, Hatteras never speaks another word. He spends the remainder of his days walking the streets surrounding the asylum with his faithful dog Duke. While mute and deaf to the world Hatteras' walks are not without a direction. As indicated by the last line "Captain Hatteras forever marches northward".
6965260	/m/0gz33v	Next	Michael Crichton	2006-11-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't." In the backstory, Frank Burnet contracted an aggressive form of leukemia and underwent intensive treatment and four years of semiannual checkups. He later learned that the checkups were a pretext for researching the genetic basis of Frank&#39;s unusually successful response to treatment, and that the physician&#39;s university had sold the rights in Frank&#39;s cells to BioGen, a biotechnology startup company. As the book opens Frank is suing the university for unauthorized misuse of his cells, but the trial judge rules that the cells were &#34;waste&#34; that the university could dispose of as it wished. Frank&#39;s lawyers advise that, even if he wins an appeal, the university as a tax-funded organization can still claim the rights to the cells under the doctrine of eminent domain. Ruthless venture capitalist &#34;Jack&#34; Watson, wishing to acquire BioGen at a knock-down price, conspires to steal or sabotage BioGen&#39;s cultures of Frank&#39;s cells. As part of his terms for financing BioGen, Watson previously forced the company to accept his irresponsible nephew Brad Gordon as its security chief. After Brad&#39;s carelessness nearly allows one of Watson&#39;s sabotage attempts to succeed, the company takes advantage of his attraction to teenage girls, and frames him for aggravated rape of a minor. Watson&#39;s price for providing a defense lawyer is that Brad must contaminate BioGen&#39;s cultures. Brad&#39;s lawyer plans to claim in defense that Brad has a gene for recklessness, and instructs him to engage in various high-risk activities. As a result Brad gets into a fight with a pair of martial arts experts, and is finally shot by the police. After Brad&#39;s sabotage, BioGen consults lawyers, who advise that under United States law they have the rights to all of Frank&#39;s cell line and thus the right to extract replacement cells, by force if necessary, from Frank or any of his descendants. When Frank goes on the run, BioGen hires bounty hunter Vasco Borden to obtain such cells irrespective of whether the donors consent. Vasco plans to snatch Frank&#39;s grandson Jamie from his school, but is foiled by Jamie&#39;s mother Alex, whom he tries to seize instead. After escaping, Alex and Jamie also go on the run. Henry Kendall, a researcher at another biotech company, finds that his illegal introduction of human genes into a chimpanzee a few years ago while working at the NIH primate research facility unexpectedly produced a transgenic chimp, who can talk and whose behavior is generally childlike but reverts to chimp patterns under stress. The agency intends to destroy the chimp-boy Dave in order to cover up the unauthorized experiment but Henry sneaks him out of the lab. Henry&#39;s wife Lynn strongly opposes bringing Dave into their home, but their son, also called Jamie, becomes close friends with him. Lynn becomes Dave&#39;s most determined defender, uploads reports of a fictitious genetic disease and creates an article about it on Wikipedia to explain Dave&#39;s odd appearance, and grooms him as a senior female would groom a very young chimp in the wild. Dave is sent to the same school as Jamie and gets into trouble after biting the leader of a gang of bullies who attack Jamie. The chimp-boy becomes increasingly isolated at school; academically, he is backward in some areas such as writing, while in sports, his classmates regard him as unfair competition. Paris-based animal behavior researcher Gail Bond finds that her two-year old African grey parrot, Gerard, into which human genes were injected while he was a chick, has been helping her son to produce near-perfect homework. While she is testing Gerard&#39;s abilities, the bird becomes bored and mimics the voices and other sounds of her husband having sex in their home with another woman. After a quarrel Gail&#39;s husband, an investment banker, gives Gerard as a &#34;money can&#39;t buy this&#34; present to an influential and lecherous client. The client finds Gerard an embarrassment and passes him on to another owner, and so on. Eventually Gerard ends up in the hands of Stan Milgram, who loses patience with Gerard&#39;s loquacity while delivering the parrot to yet another owner three days&#39; drive away, and leaves the bird by the roadside. Fortunately for Gerard the series of transfers has made his wings overdue for clipping, and he flies out of danger and off in search of pleasanter surroundings. After a few more narrow escapes, Alex and Jamie head for the home of her childhood friend Lynn. Vasco anticipates this move and tries to snatch Jamie – but abducts Lynn&#39;s son Jamie instead. Dave saves Lynn&#39;s Jamie, severely damaging both Vasco and the ambulance in which Vasco planned to extract the tissue samples. However Vasco&#39;s associate snatches Alex&#39; son while everyone is celebrating the rescue of Lynn&#39;s. While the hunt was going on, Biogen&#39;s lawyers applied for an arrest warrant against Alex on the grounds that she had stolen the company&#39;s property, namely hers and her son&#39;s cells. She has to go straight from the fight to the courtroom, where her lawyer outplays Biogen&#39;s and the judge adjourns to check details of the relevant laws and precedents overnight. Alex and Henry discover that Alex&#39; son is being moved to a private clinic where the tissue samples are to be taken. As they move in to retrieve him, Gerard, now a resident of the clinic&#39;s gardens, reminds Jamie to shout for his mother, who rescues him. Vasco gives up after Dave attacks him and Alex threatens him with a shotgun. The next day the judge rules in Alex&#39; favor and rejects the precedents as attempts to abolish normal human feelings by decree, a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids slavery, and likely to hamper research in the long run as patients will sell their tissues rather than donate them for research. Gerard is welcomed into Lynn&#39;s home, however after he mimics telephone dial tones Lynn contacts Gail, and he is reunited with her. Press commentators praise the household as a trend-setting inter-species transgenic family, and Henry is honored by some scientific organisations, while religious and social conservatives condemn the family in lurid terms. In other plot threads: *BioGen researcher Josh Winkler&#39;s drug-addicted brother accidentally exposes himself to a &#34;maturity&#34; gene that the company is developing for the control of irresponsible and addictive behavior. After Adam reforms within a few days, their mother pressures Josh to administer the gene to friends and relatives who also behave irresponsibly. By the end of the book all of his rat and human subjects die of accelerated old age. *The staff at a hospital provide samples from corpses for use by unscrupulous relatives in lawsuits, sell corpses&#39; bones for medical uses, and desperately destroy records and samples to cover their tracks. *Henry Kendall&#39;s boss Dr. Robert Bellarmino, a mediocre scientist but skillful manipulator, is also a lay preacher and slants his comments to journalists, schoolchildren and politicians according to whether his audience has religious or pro-science inclinations. He is ultimately shot by Brad Gordon at an amusement park. Ironically, Bellarmino was only at the park to look for people who may have the gene for recklessness, and Gordon was only there to bolster the evidence for his lawyer&#39;s case that he has the gene. *An orangutan in Sumatra becomes famous for its comments, often obscene, in Dutch and French. An adventurer overdoses the orangutan with tranquillizer while trying to capture it, and has to give it mouth to mouth resuscitation. As a result the orangutan dies from a respiratory infection, and an expert who dissects its corpse finds that its throat is very human-like but concludes from the shape of its skull that its brain is pure orangutan. *An avant garde artist uses genetic modification to change the appearance of animals, while another self-named &#34;artist/biologist&#34; is falsely accused of modifying turtles so that females laying eggs are less vulnerable to predators because the turtles&#39; genetically engineered bioluminescence attracts tourists. An advertising agency proposes to make genetically engineered animals and plants carry advertisements, and claims that this would be a very effective conservation strategy. *Billionaire &#34;Jack&#34; Watson becomes the victim of an extremely aggressive form of genetic cancer, and is very nearly unable to receive treatment due to others&#39; patents on the relevant genes, giving Watson &#34;a taste of his own medicine&#34;. He eventually procures experimental treatment, which fails to save his life. The book also features news report boxes, many about the genetics of blondes and of Neanderthals. These two themes combine into reports that Neanderthals were the first blondes, were more intelligent than Cro-Magnon humans and interbred with Cro-Magnons out of pity; and that &#34;cavemen preferred blondes&#34;. At one point three successive reports feature a scientist&#39;s press release that Neanderthals had a gene that made them both behaviorally conservative and ecologically conservationist, an environmentalist&#39;s claim that modern humans need to learn from the Neanderthals lest they too become extinct, and a business columnist&#39;s interpretation that over-caution caused the Neanderthals&#39; extinction. In an appendix the author argues against patents on naturally-occurring genes, against corporate ownership of individuals&#39; cell lines, and in favor of legislation to abolish these.
6965511	/m/0gz3jw	Ordinary People	Judith Guest	1976-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The novel begins as life is seemingly returning to normal for the Jarretts of Lake Forest, Illinois, in September 1975. It is slightly more than a year since their elder son "Buck" was killed when a sudden storm came up while he and their other son Conrad were sailing on Lake Michigan. Six months later, a severely depressed Conrad attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor in the bathroom. His parents committed him to a psychiatric hospital from which he has only recently returned after eight months of treatment. He is attending school and trying to resume his life, but knows he still has unresolved issues, particularly with his mother, Beth, who has never really recovered from Buck's death and keeps an almost maniacally perfect household and family. His father Calvin, a successful tax attorney, gently leans on him to make appointments to see a local psychiatrist, Dr. Tyrone Berger. Initially resistant, he slowly starts to respond to Dr. Berger and comes to terms with the root cause of his depression, his identity crisis and survivor's guilt over having survived when Buck did not. Also helping is a relationship with a new girlfriend, Jeannine Pratt. Calvin sees Dr. Berger as the events of the recent past have caused him to begin to doubt many things he once took for granted, leading to a midlife crisis. This leads to strain in his marriage as he finds Beth increasingly cold and distant, while she in turn believes he is overly concerned about Conrad to the point of being manipulated. Finally the friction becomes enough that Beth decides to leave him at the novel's climax. Father and son, however, have closed the gap between them.
6965523	/m/0gz3kk	Frritt-Flacc	Jules Verne	1884-12	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Frritt expresses the sounds of a roaring hurricane and flacc the sound of falling streams of water during a rainstorm. Trifulgas, a physician, lives in unnamed coastal area. He is rich and works only for the rich. One night, during a storm, a girl knocks at the door. Her father, a poor fisherman, is dying. Since she has no money Trifulgas goes back to sleep. Soon someone knocks again. It is a woman whose husband is dying. She has some money but not enough so the doctor goes back to sleep. The storm becomes worse when another one knocks. The mother of a fisherman with heart attack has enough money—their house was sold shortly ago. The doctor follows her. A look on the dying man horrifies Trifulgas—it is he who lies in the bed. In spite of all effort, Trifulgas dies under his own hands.
6971483	/m/0gzbky	Black Powder War	Naomi Novik	2006-05-30	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Black Powder War, Captain William Laurence and Temeraire - along with the surviving members of their crew - are ordered to make all haste and return from the mission to China via Istanbul, where they are to pick up a collection of three dragon eggs purchased from the Ottoman Empire by the British Government. Laurence and his first lieutenant John Granby are confused at the provenance of these orders, as there must surely be some British dragon nearer to Istanbul than they, but the promise of three eggs spurs them on. In a prologue, Laurence also observes the burial of Prince Yongxing, the primary antagonist of the previous novel, and the mourning of his much-distrustred albino dragon Lien. She is seen in company with the French diplomat De Guignes, which Laurence cannot feel bodes well. Deciding to eschew the Allegiance, which suffers fire damage at the opening of the novel, Laurence takes the services of a guide named Tharkay, the well-bred but unwelcome child of a British diplomat and a south-asian woman. With his help, the group survives ambush in the Central Asian deserts, befriends a pack of feral dragons in the mountains of Turkestan, and makes its way to Istanbul. Once there, however, they face clear betrayal; the Sultan has accepted the exorbitant payment offered him by the Crown whilst simultaneously reneging on any intent to hand over the eggs in return, perhaps due to the now-established presence of Lien in his court. Lien makes a private visit to Temeraire and announces that she has set herself to his destruction; as opposed to merely killing him, she wishes to see Temeraire deprived of all he holds dear, and live out the rest of his life in squalor and despondency. In the end, Laurence and his crew decide to steal the promised eggs, especially once they discover that one of them is of the Kazilik breed; when hatched, this dragon will increase Britain's complement of fire-breathers to a grand total of one. She hatches before the end of the book, naming herself Iskierka and accepting Granby as her captain. Temeraire and company escape to Europe, making an eventual landing in Austria. Laurence, who has been out of touch for over a year, learns more details of Napoleon's crushing victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, which he had only received scant details of during the voyage to China. The only good news to emerge from that battle is a Prussian declaration of alliance against Napoleon for what history today calls the War of the Fourth Coalition, and Laurence routes his travel through that nation. However, upon landing, Temeraire is immediately requisitioned: the Prussians were promised twenty dragons by the British Aerial Corps and have received precisely none of them. Temeraire integrates into their ranks without much complaint, but the Prussian tactics, developed by Frederick the Great, are outdated and easily countered not only by the creativity of Napoleon but of Lien, who has once again made common cause with their enemies. Despite the personal presence of King Frederick William III of Prussia and his wife Queen Louise, the Prussians are soundly defeated in the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, and Temeraire is forced to ferry the royal family away. Thereafter the British crew find themselves at the fortress of Danzig, soon about to fall under siege. The turning-point of the siege is the arrival of Tharkay, now at the head of the flock of Turkish ferals. Using these dragons and techniques observed in China, Laurence is able to rig out the entire flock as public transportation and evacuate the city, dropping the civilians into the waiting arms of the Royal Navy. Despite a harried exfiltration under fire and the loss of the city, Temeraire and Laurence are relieved to finally, finally be returning to Britain.
6972390	/m/0gzcrh	The Ultimate Solution	Eric Norden	1973	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The book is written in the form of a police procedural, the protagonist being a New York policeman charged with finding a Jew who is reported to have suddenly appeared in the city decades after all Jews are thought to have been exterminated. (There is a reference to a kind of second Wannsee Conference, held at Buckingham Palace in Nazi-occupied London after the extermination of European Jews had been completed, setting up the extension of the Final Solution to the rest of the world; the last few hundred Jews are mentioned as having been discovered and killed by relentless Einsatzgruppen hunters in 1962, having hidden at the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia). As in our own contemporary timeline, there is a Cold War between the former Axis Powers allies, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, both of whom have nuclear weapons and are engaged in an arms race akin to that between the United States and Soviet Union in our own timeline. The society described and taken by the protagonist as normal is as such: Blacks and Slavs being raised at "laboratories" and "farms" where their vocal cords are cut at birth and having the legal status not of slaves but of "domestic animals"; naked Black gladiators fighting to the death at the Madison Square Garden (the Roman "thumbs up" or "down" are modernised into green and red buttons, with a computer making the tally and automatically electrocuting the losing gladiator); children encouraged by TV programs to torture and kill animals; policemen routinely carrying mobile torture kits for "on the spot interrogations" and having the power of extrajudicial execution against "Enemies of the Reich"; body parts of murdered Jews on sale at souvenir shops, with "collectors" trying to have "a complete collection" of samples from all extermination camps; Christianity (and presumably other religions as well) suppressed in favor of Odinist temples. At the time of the plot, following the recent death of Benito Mussolini who had to some degree resisted Nazi policies, the Germans are contemplating "a change in the racial classification of Italians", and North Italians are desperately trying to save themselves by sacrificing "The Sicilian Ayarabs" to the Nazis. Former extermination camps are open to the public as "national shrines" - not to commemorate the victims, as in our world, but to glorify the murderers and present them as heroes. What we know as the inoffensive town of Croton-on-Hudson is in this world an American Auschwitz where the Jews of New York and the East Coast perished (another camp is mentioned in the Rocky Mountains, for the West Coast). At the entrance to the town, an Elks Club sign proclaims proudly: "Welcome to Croton-on-Hudson, home of the Final Solution! Here perished four million enemies of the Reich." Norden is careful to describe how Nazi doctrine in this world merges with the "American way": a neighboring town whose inhabitants gave refuge to escaping Jews was totally destroyed and its inhabitants massacred, like Lidice; its site was then covered with asphalt and made into a huge parking lot, and later an enormous shopping center was erected on the spot. In an inversion of the normal conventions of a detective book, the "respectable" society is murderous, but when the protagonist starts digging deeper into the underworld, he discovers, hidden but still there, what we would call decent or even heroic people: first, old men still playing chess at the tables in Washington Square; a former Roman Catholic priest who had once broken under Gestapo interrogation and who dreams of a second chance to die as a martyr (the detective protagonist grants him his wish); a member of the underground, known as "Patties" (from George S. Patton, who together with Douglas MacArthur was executed in the "St. Louis Trials") still carrying on a desperate anti-Nazi fight against all odds; finally the hunted Jew himself, who turns out to be from our own world, having fallen into this nightmare world by the worst of bad fortune. The protagonist finally kills him - not out of anti-Semitism which he does not really feel (he was born when Jews had already become a literally dead issue) but in a kind of "kindness" since sending him on to Berlin would have only exposed him to some torture before being killed. At the end of Norden's book, as with Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (1962), the "Cold War" between the Nazis and the Japanese seems ready to turn into World War III. In the power struggle over the legacy of the completely senile Hitler, a putsch overturns the (relatively) moderate faction of Albert Speer, known as "Axists" because they want to maintain the Axis agreements with Japan. Power is seized by Reinhard Heydrich and the most fanatical "Contraxists", who are determined to destroy "the degenerate Yellow Race" even at the price of an all-out nuclear war in which Germany itself would be annihilated. Thus, having presented the reader with this world, and letting the few characters who tried to present even a token and ineffectual resistance all be killed off, Norden ends the book with the entire world about to end.
6972946	/m/0gzdg_	The Bone Doll's Twin	Lynn Flewelling	2001-07-16	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In order for Skala to live in peace and prosperity, a Queen must sit on the throne. Two children one Queen, she will be marked by the blood of passage. A Dark tale entwining an entire kingdom in the fate of a young girl. Dark Magic, Hidden Destiny. For three centuries a divine prophecy and a line of warrior queens protected Skala. But the people grew complacent and Eruis, a usurper king, claimed his young half-sisters throne. Now plague and drought stalk the land, war with Skala's ancient rival Plenimar drains the country's lifeblood, and to be born female into the royal line have become a death sentence as the king fights to ensure the succession of his only heir, a son. For King Erius the greatest threat comes from his own line-and from Illior's faithful, who spread the Oracle's words to a doubting populace. As noblewomen young and old perish mysteriously the kings nephew-his sisters only child-grows toward manhood. But unbeknownst to the king or the boy, strange, haunted Tobin is the princess's daughter, given male form by a dark magic to protect her until she can claim her rightful destiny. Only Tobin's noble father, two wizards of Illior and an outlawed forest with know the truth. Only they can protect yount Tobin from a king's wrath a mother's madness, and the terrifying rage of her brother's demon spirit, determined to avenge his brutal murder.
6973365	/m/0gzf2n	The Sorrow of Belgium	Hugo Claus	1983	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Belgium, 1939. Louis Seynaeve, who becomes eleven in April, goes to a boarding school led by nuns in Kortrijk. Louis has a lot of fantasy. He and his friends call themselves the Four Apostles and they possess seven forbidden books. His father comes to tell him that his mother fell down the stairs, which actually means that she is pregnant. Several months later the baby is stillborn. His family members are Flemish nationalists. Louis' father buys a printing press in Germany and a Hitlerjugend doll. During the German occupation of Belgium in the Second World War his family sympathises with the Germans. Louis attends meetings of the Hitlerjugend in Mecklenburg. Louis discovers more "forbidden books" and becomes interested in Entartete Kunst. Gradually he becomes aware of the narrow-mindedness of his family and his education. He ends up being a writer. He's the author of "The Sorrow", the first part of the novel.
6974403	/m/0gzgcn	Psycho House	Robert Bloch		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ten years after Norman Bates' death, a local entrepreneur has rebuilt the Bates Motel in Fairvale as a tourist attraction. Amy Haines travels to the infamous "Psycho House" to write a book about Bates when mysterious murders begin to occur. Haines faces resistance from the community when she enlists the help of a group to investigate the murders.
6974428	/m/0gzgf0	Bunny Lake Is Missing	Merriam Modell	1957	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Blanche Lake, a 21 year old single mother, wants to collect her three year old daughter Bunny from her first day at daycare but finds out that she is not there. In the course of the ensuing night, she tries everything in her power to find out what has happened to her. Still before daybreak, she thinks she knows where Bunny is. The plot takes place all within the space of 24 hours.
6975081	/m/0gzhp2	The Predator	K. A. Applegate	1996-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ax wishes to return to the Andalite home world, and to do so, he needs a ship. He intends to build a communicator to broadcast a Yeerk distress signal and lure in a Yeerk ship which he can then hijack. He goes to the mall to buy the equipment to build a communicator. He finds the food court and runs wild sampling food left over on tables. He is chased by security guards and, frightened, demorphs in the middle of the mall in front of many people. He, Jake, and Marco run out of the mall and into a nearby grocery store where they are chased by Controllers. They morph into lobsters and hide in a tank. They later escape. Ax builds his device, but needs a Zero-space transponder. Mr. Chapman regularly communicates with Visser Three from his basement, so the Animorphs morph into ants and retrieve the Z-space transponder that he uses. As they are returning from Chapman's house, they are almost killed when attacked by ants from another colony. They are able to demorph in time. Ax completes his device, and broadcasts the signal, but the Yeerks have changed their distress frequencies, and, sensing a trap, they set one of their own. The Animorphs are captured (in animal morph) and taken aboard the Yeerk mother ship, where Visser One is visiting. Visser One confronts them and her host body is Marco's mother, who is alive after all. The Animorphs are put in a cell, and they are freed by one of Visser One's Hork-Bajir; Visser One and Visser Three are rivals, and Visser One wanted to disgrace Visser Three. The Animorphs reach an escape pod and return to Earth. Marco's father returns to work. Marco asks Jake, the only one who had previously met Marco's mom, not to tell any of the others about Visser One. *It is revealed that Marco's mother has been taken over by Visser One.
6976596	/m/0gzkxv	The Capture	K. A. Applegate	1997-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Animorphs morph cockroaches in order to infiltrate a meeting of The Sharing. They discover that the Yeerks have infested an entire hospital staff and are using them to turn patients into Controllers. Not only that, but next week their state's governor - who is a Presidential candidate - will be checking in for surgery. The Animorphs morph houseflies to infiltrate the hospital, and discover a Jacuzzi that has been converted into a miniature Yeerk Pool. Jake demorphs to human and turns the Jacuzzi on to kill the Yeerks, but the Animorphs are discovered by the Controllers. In the subsequent fight Jake is hit by a sledgehammer blow and his head falls in the pool. He is infested by a Yeerk named Temrash 114 who seeks to escape death. The Animorphs escape from the hospital into the woods, and Jake panics as he realizes that none of his friends have noticed anything different about him. Fortunately, Ax notices something amiss in Temrash's initial reaction to him and accuses Jake of being a Controller. Temrash loses his cool and insults Ax, calling him "Andalite filth" and the others realize he is indeed a Controller. The others decide to hold him for three days until Temrash dies of Kandrona starvation. In the meantime, Ax morphs Jake and takes his place at home and school. The others tie Jake to a chair in an abandoned shack out in the forest, but Temrash still has access to all of Jake's morphs. He morphs to tiger in the night and escapes. He becomes lost in the forest and morphs to falcon and tries to and fly away, but Cassie stops him as a great horned owl. Temrash morphs to wolf and again tries to escape, but is stopped by a rival wolf pack, in fact, the same wolf pack from The Encounter. Rachel escorts him back to the shack in elephant morph. Temrash begins to taunt Jake, revealing that he was once the Yeerk controlling Jake's brother Tom. Jake tells him that he will never give up. The next morning Temrash again tries to escape, this time as an ant, but is forced back by an enemy ant colony. Temrash begins to die of Kandrona starvation. As he does, Jake witnesses his pain, and in the final hours catches his first terrifying glimpse of Crayak. Jake returns to his family to find that he has apparently been acting strangely lately, because Ax is not used to being in human morph. A few days later he morphs partway to wolf (to disguise his voice) and telephones Tom to give him a message of hope. *Crayak is briefly introduced.
6976754	/m/0gzl53	Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits	Laila Lalami	2005-10-07	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A group of young Moroccans immigrants seeking a better life in Spain cross the Strait of Gibraltar on a lifeboat. When it capsizes near shore, it is everyone for themselves. The book then chronicles the lives of four of the passengers, Murad, Halima, Aziz and Faten, exploring their lives before the trip and what motivated their attempt at immigration.
6976884	/m/0gzld3	Battlefield Earth	L. Ron Hubbard	1982	{"/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the year AD 3000, Earth has been ruled by an alien race, the Psychlos, for a millennium. Humanity has been reduced to a few scattered tribes in isolated parts of the world while the Psychlos strip the planet of its mineral wealth. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a young member of one such tribe, lives in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Depressed over the death and disease affecting his tribe, he leaves his village to explore the lowlands and to disprove the superstitions long held by his people involving ancient gods and monsters. However, he is captured in the ruins of Denver by Terl, the Psychlo chief of security. The Psychlos, hairy high, 1,000-pound sociopaths, originate from a planet with an atmosphere very different from that of Earth. Their home world is in fact located in a different/parallel universe, and follows slightly different physical laws, with a slightly different table of elements. As a result, some interactions between the two worlds are problematic. Their "breathe-gas" explodes on contact with even trace amounts of radioactive metals, such as uranium. Terl, a Psychlo, had been assigned to Earth, and he eventually learns that his term has been extended with no word of relief. Fearful at the thought of spending several more years on Earth, he decides to con his way off the planet and return home a wealthy Psychlo. Terl has discovered a lode of gold up in the Rocky Mountains that he wants to get his hands on "off the company books". However, it is surrounded by uranium deposits that make Psychlo mining impossible. Terl captures Jonnie while searching for "man-animals" that he can train to mine the gold for him. After a time, Terl captures Jonnie's childhood friend Chrissie and her little sister and threatens to kill them unless Jonnie helps him. Jonnie is afterwards free to move around the mining area. Shortly thereafter, Terl and Jonnie travel to Scotland and recruit 83 Scottish youth, old women, a doctor, and a historian to help with the mining. Jonnie, however, has different plans. Because Terl does not understand English, Jonnie is able to convince the Scots to help him overthrow the Psychlo rule on Earth. During the next months, Jonnie and the Scots try to mine the gold as well as develop a means of defeating not only the Psychlos on Earth, but also nullifying the threat of counterattack from Psychlo (the Psychlos' home planet). During the semi-annual teleportation of personnel, goods, and coffins (all dead Psychlos are shipped home for burial) back to Psychlo, Jonnie and the Scots manage to pack several of the coffins with "dirty nukes" and "planet busters" in hopes of destroying the Psychlos' home planet. After the teleportation firing, the humans use the Psychlos' own weapons against them and regain control of Earth. This is, however, not the end of the story. Unsure as to whether the bombs sent even reached Psychlo and under the imminent threat of counterattack, Jonnie must now defend his newly-retaken planet against the predatory interests of several other interstellar races, including a race of intergalactic bankers seeking to repossess the Earth in lieu of unpaid debts, as well as a longtime rival seeking to wrest control of Earth from him. In order to ensure the security and independence of humanity, he does something that no other race in 300,000 years has been able to do: uncover the secret of Psychlo mathematics and teleportation, a difficult task compounded by the destruction of planet Psychlo.
6978236	/m/0gzn1w	Toward the End of Time	John Updike		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in New England, like many of his novels, Toward the End of Time portrays a world in which the Chinese and the Americans have attacked one another with nuclear weapons. The aftermath is shown through retired investment advisor Ben Turnbull's journal. Though the dollar and the central government are gone, life in Boston and the surrounding areas goes on thanks to FedEx and other less reputable entrepreneurs. The book is divided into five parts: i. The Deer ii. The Dollhouse iii. The Deal iv. The Deaths v. The Dahlia. i. The Deer Ben expresses his uneasiness about his second wife, Gloria's, obsession with killing the deer who is ravaging her picture-perfect garden. Clearly unhappy with Gloria, Ben begins an affair with a prostitute named Deirdre. ii. The Dollhouse Ben believes he has slid into an alternate universe when Gloria disappears and Deirdre takes her place. Ben has the vague impression he may have shot and killed Gloria. Spin and Phil, young thugs who collect protection money from Ben, clash with Deirdre, who takes a more and more authoritative role in the house. iii. The Deal Deirdre leaves Ben for Phil, and Gloria returns. Ben is relieved that he did not shoot Gloria, and admits that the house and garden flourish under her influence. Spin is killed by a group of younger children who set up house in the woods behind Ben's house and supplant Spin and Phil in the collection business. Ben helps them establish local legitimacy in exchange for commissions on their earnings and sexual favors from their young female companion, Doreen. iv. The Deaths Ben discovers he has prostate cancer. During his long hospital stay, Gloria hires FedEx &mdash; for whom Phil is now working &mdash; to get rid of the residents of the makeshift house. Metallobioforms designed to clear away large tracts of land for human exploitation are used to raze the house. Ben sees evidence that they also devoured and killed the young people. He is left as impotent to protest Gloria's cruelty as he was left physically impotent by the prostate surgery. v. The Dahlia Gloria's hired deer hunter shoots and kills the young doe who has been nibbling their garden. Ben cannot participate in Gloria's triumph or the deer hunter's communion with nature. Ben regains some control of his bladder, but this is not enough to erase the impression that he has become a ghost wandering around in his own house.
6978994	/m/0gzp1y	Young Men and Fire	Norman Maclean	1992	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Norman Maclean and Laird Robinson, in an attempt to forensically analyze the Mann Gulch Fire, brought together multiple sources, including the official report of the United States Forest Service of the fire, the testimony of the four men who fought the fire and lived, and the research and report of Robert Jansson and Harry T. Gisborne (who would suffer a fatal heart attack at Mann Gulch two months later trying to get to the bottom of the tragedy). Jansson was ranger of the Helena National Forest's Canyon Ferry District, the area that included Mann Gulch, on duty the day of the fire. Maclean and Laird also took Walter Rumsey and Robert Sallee, the only two living survivors of the fire team (as survivor Wag Dodge died in 1955), back to the scene of the fire in 1978, hoping that walking the ground again would help solve some of the missing pieces. Additionally, Laird and Maclean would use the modern Fire Lab and their mathematical analysis (advances in fire methodology not available in 1949), to search for answers to the fire. With all of these pieces, several trips to Mann Gulch, and ideas bantered back and forth between each other, Bud Moore, Ed Heilman, Rich Rothermel, Frank Albini, and other members of the U.S. Forest Service forest fire investigators, Maclean and Laird came to new conclusions on the fire's events: that the wind went in the opposite direction than was originally thought possible, and once the fire got started, it created its own unique weather system (which few thought possible before this research). It was always assumed that the wind was traveling south, or upstream, on the Missouri River at that time of day. Instead, they proved that the wind was traveling north, or downriver, and that the top of the ridge (which juts out as the river bends sharply to the northwest and separates Mann Gulch and Meriwether Canyon) split this downriver wind in two. These two separate-smaller winds then re-converged (on the other side of the ridge) in the heart of the gulch (at right-angles). This convergence combined with massive heat, produced by the fire and the hot August afternoon. Additionally, the vegetation pattern played a part in how the fire developed and took the lives of the men. The south side of the gulch was of the mountains, with taller forested trees, but the north side of the gulch was of the plains, with smaller trees and dense grasses. This combination of contrasting vegetation, heat, air currents, and right-angle winds, would cause the fire to change direction instantly, trapping and killing most of the fire fighters in its path.
6981614	/m/0gzt5d	A Kid for Two Farthings	Wolf Mankowitz	1953	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In a lower-class London community of small shops, open-air vendors and flea-marketers, Joe, a small boy, lives with his mother, Rebecca, who works in and rooms above the Kandinsky tailor shop. Joe is innocently and earnestly determined to help realize the wishes of his poor, hard-working neighbours. Hearing from Mr. Kandinsky the tale that a captured unicorn will grant any wish, Joe uses his accumulated pocket change to buy a kid with an emerging horn, believing it to be a unicorn. His subsequent efforts to make dreams come true exemplify the power of hope and will amidst hardship.
6983867	/m/0gzx9q	Knight Life	Peter David		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 :(The following summary is based on the 2002 rewrite.) In a rundown apartment in New Jersey, Morgan Le Fay has finally decided to end her own life. Although kept immortal by magic, she has become apathetic, elderly, and corpulent, and sees no point in continuing with her life. Before cutting her wrist with a steak knife, she decides to look in on her old nemesis, Merlin's prison, one last time, and is surprised to see that he has escaped. Given a reason to live again, she laughs triumphantly. In Manhattan, King Arthur appears on the streets in full medieval armor, which he quickly divests in favor of a tailored suit (thanks to an American Express card that appears in his pocket by magic). He then walks into Central Park, where the Lady of the Lake rises from the pond and gives him Excalibur. Setting up an office under the name "Arthur Penn" (short for Pendragon), Arthur reunites with Merlin, who advises him that the world needs a leader like him, so Arthur decides to enter politics, beginning with announcing his candidacy for Mayor of New York City.
6986074	/m/0gz_0h	Mirror, Mirror	Gregory Maguire	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 The story takes place in Montefiore, Italy in the early 16th century, on the estate of a nobleman named Don Vicente de Nevada. He lives there with his seven year old daughter, Bianca, and a small staff, the two most interesting of which are Primavera, an earthy cook and Fra Ludovico. In the beginning of the novel, de Nevada finds a mirror in a pond near his manor. This mirror was fashioned by dwarves but lost when they left it in the pond to temper. Incidentally, one dwarf spends most of the novel following de Nevada to ask the return of the mirror. Life is good for the family until the day Lucrezia Borgia and her brother, Cesare, decadent children of a pope, come to visit. Cesare sends Vincente on a quest for a holy relic. While he is gone, Bianca becomes a young woman and Lucrezia becomes jealous of the girl's beauty and stealing Cesare's attention from Lucrezia. Eventually she hires a woodsman to kill Bianca. The girl escapes, and runs into seven dwarfs, who are looking for the eighth dwarf and their mirror.
6986999	/m/0g_0m7	Hidden Warrior	Lynn Flewelling	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Following the events in The Bone Doll's Twin, Prince Tobin awakens after the witch Lhel reveals that he was born as a girl, but in view of the king's purge of all possible female heirs that threaten him, Tobin was disguised by magic, wearing his stillborn brothers shape, whose bones are encased in the little doll his mother carried everywhere with her. Tobin's squire Ki (Kirothius) was gravely injured in coming to find Tobin. They recover for a time under the care of the wizard Iya. Tobin is haunted by the remnants of his brother, who coldly watches over him. Once Ki recovered, they return to the capital city beset by plague, as was prophesied, if the matriarchal throne is usurped. All female warriors and females holding important roles, were ordered to leave, leaving the city completely under male rule. A prominent court wizard, Niryn, directs and leads the city, driving out all other wizards, claiming they are the cause of the city's difficulties. He commands the Harriers, a force dedicated to eradicating opposing wizards. Despite the Harriers, who are busily killing and exterminating all wizards, the old magics are not only being preserved, but the mages are making discoveries that they are determined to use to come back, and put the rightful queen back on the throne of Skala. Niryn however, has provided himself with insurance. After finding a distant relative to the throne, he ensured her pregnancy with a female heir, promptly murdering her to raise the child, Nalia, himself. Tobin, meanwhile, has rejoined the Companions, a small group of nobles and high born boys, including Tobin's cousin, the heir to the throne, prince Korin. Tobin becomes interested in battle strategies and war, and outdoes himself in regards to fencing, though he has the artists touch. As he and the rest of the Companions pass from children to teens and young men, Tobin encounters more and more difficulty in coming to terms with who he really is, and hiding his identity from the other Companions, who have become more uninhibited, Prince Korin impregnating several serving girls, who are quietly disposed of by the wizard Niryn. However, when Lady Aliya is pregnant with prince Korins child, Niryn is unable to prevent a wedding, instead causing Aliya to miscarry a fetus with neither arms nor face. The wizards are gathering, plotting against the reign of king Erius, who possesses the Sword of Gherilain, a symbol of the ruler of Skala, which no king or queen can rule without. Tobin begins to attract attention form the other boys, with his refusals to join them in the brothels and his stunted growth. However, he proves himself in battle, rallying his troops to him, while prince Korin freezes in the heat of battle. Aliya gives birth to a hideously deformed child without face or legs, Niryn's work, quickly blamed on the renegade wizards. Lady Aliya dies in the birth, along with the child, destroying prince Korins royal line. Tobin and Ki, along with a few more companions, get separated from the rest of their Companions in battle. They make their way to Tobins land, a wealthy keep with castle and village, which is closed to the boys as the villagers fear plague carriers. Tobin is revealed as the true queen, taking his true shape of a girl, winning the support of the people. Brother is freed, but not before stopping the heart of the King, leaving Korin to be king in his stead. As all wizards and common people rejoice that the true queen has returned, Niryn spreads lies to the prince, who turns against his formerly beloved cousin. As Tobins army takes the city, Korin flees with the assistance of Niryn, who leads him to the house where Nalia lives, where the frightened girl is told Korin is her new husband, and is taken off, presumably to be impregnated with a rival heir for Tobin's throne. Although Tobin is Queen in name, she still lacks the Sword of Gherilain, which is needed by a queen of Skala. Tobin vows to retrieve it from Korin.
6987252	/m/0g_15k	The Lady of the Sorrows	Cecilia Dart-Thornton	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Imrhein, who has had her face and voice cured but not her memory, has not completed her mission yet. Maeve One eye, the carlin who cured her, gets Imrhein a new identity: Lady Rohain Tarrenys of the Sorrow Isles. Imrhein/Rohain, under cover of night to escape mysterious watchers, heads to Caermelor. After unloading her information with the Duke of Roxburgh, getting assigned a maid, Viviana, and enduring a strenuous dinner with the cruel, jealous Dianella, Rohain heads on a Dainnen frigate to the treasure cache Waterstair where her friend Sianadh was killed. There the plunderers are captured and the treasure is given to the royalty. Rohain is the rewarded with 80 guineas,the Crown estate Arcune, and the title of Baroness. At Court she asks after Thorn, a Dainnen ranger and the love of her life. Rohain also gets a proposal from the Royal Bard and reveals in a drunken state to Dianella that she is Talith, a rare race. While she is at Arcune with the Duchess of Roxburgh and her 7 children, Rohain discovers Sianadh is alive and in prison. After she manages to persuade the Jailer to let him have some free time, Sianadh advises her to go to Isse tower, where she enslaved, and find answers to her past. At first, she refuse to go, unwilling to leave Sianadh, but after Dianella informs her that she and her uncle Sargoth know she's an imposter, Rohain gives her wealth to Dianella and heads to Isse. There, she asks Ustorix, a young lord there, to perform a feat she once saw two servants do: jump on sildron bars which he does to atone for rash behavior. After Rohain discovered from Pod by using threats where she was found, she sets off for Huntingtowers, a place of unseelie residence. However, the owner of Huntingtowers, leads an attack on Isse Tower, which the King Emperor and the Dainnen stop. Unwilling to beg for Sianadhs' life in her ragged state, Rohain remembers words from the Royal Bard and steps onto the balcony. There, she is reunited with Thorn, who recognizes her instantly and asks her to marry him. When messengers call Thorn "Your Imperial Majesty" Rohain realizes Thorn is King Emperor James XVI. The next day he explains everything to Rohain. Then they leave for Caermelor with Caitri, a kind servant who helped Rohain when she was a slave, and Dain Pennyrigg, after Rohain saves Pod from Thorn's wrath. Rohain befriends Prince Edward, visits Dianella, prepared for execution, who tries to intoxicate and drag away Rohain, and gets Sianadh spared. Then Thorn is forced to go to Namarre, and despite her pleas to go with him, sends Rohain, Roxburgh's wife, the Bard, and Prince Edward to the royal sanctuary, Tamhania/Tavaal. There, Rohain meets a woman who looks familiar to her. After an Unseelie decoy where 3 birds go to the peak of the Volcano, Rohain realizes the woman is Silken Janet's mother. When the unseelie birds activate the Volcano, Tavaal is evacuated. Only Rohain, Viviana and Caitri survive the island's destruction(so does the local wizard but he leaves with a sea girl). The girls shelter in a house which seems familiar to Rohain. She sends the others to Isse tower while she continues her journey to Huntingtowers, but they follow her. In the wilderness, she renames herself Tahquil, meaning 'warrior'. When they get to Huntingtowers, Imrhein/Rohain/Tahquil trips, twists to avoid paradox ivy, which caused her suffering in the last book, and discovers a bracelet her father once gave her. This triggers her memory, and she remembers her name, Ashalind, her childhood and how she lost her memory. She also remembers her original quest, to find the exiled Faeren High King Angavar and his entourage and inform him of the whereabouts of the last gate between the Faeren world and Erith, without tipping off his evil brother Morragan, who is also exiled. CHARACTERS Imrhein/Lady Rohain Tarrenys-the heroine of the Bitterbynde Trilogy, formerly mute and deformed. Dianella-the main antagonist of the story, attempts to remove Rohain from the Royal Court. Thomas- a protaginist, Finvarnen duke, a Dainnan commander, Rohain's first suitor. Viviana Wellesly-Rohain part blind, faithful maid. Caitri L.-The liitle girl who was nice to Rohain when she was a slave, one of Rohains compainions. Thorn-The King-Emperor who posed as a Dainnan Ranger/Knight and won Rohains heart. Ustorix-Future lord of Isse Tower Tamlain Conmor-Duke of Roxburg, Commander in Chief of the Dainnan
6989099	/m/0g_4mq	The Pure Weight of the Heart	Antonella Gambotto-Burke	1998-06-29	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel, narrated in first person and divided into three volumes, is the story of Angelica Botticelli, an Italian-born Australian, and astrophysicist from an apparently wealthy background. Born in Italy to an Austrian mother and Italian father, Angelica is a troubled woman in search of love: "From birth, Angelica is destined to fall in love with an angel. At ten, her blissful childhood is destroyed by the death of her father. Only the stars in the sky at night give her hope. Years later, the adult Angelica, beautiful and gifted, and still a student of the stars, drifts through a world of glamour, power and cruelty, until the night she finally finds her angel, in the heart of the extravagance she has come to despise." (Antonella Gambotto, The Pure Weight Of The Heart, blurb, Orion Publishing 1998) The novel is divided into three volumes, and the title of each volume directly refers to its main theme: Book One: Grief is a Sphere, which details her childhood, adolescence and reaction to her father&#39;s murder. Book Two: A Lycanthropic God, which details her move back to Sydney from London, secretly hostile relationship with her bogan flatmate, Caroline Brine, and discovery of her &#34;angel&#34;, the aptly named Gabriel (his surname, Lagen, is an anagram of &#34;angel&#34;), and their ensuing relationship. Book Three: The Bestiary, which details a trip to Chicago to see her mother, brother and mother&#39;s second husband, the truly vile Aldo Belva (&#34;belva&#34; means &#34;beast&#34; in Italian), and the characters attending the week-long party, who form &#34;The Bestiary&#34; for which the volume is named.
6992045	/m/0g_9bq	1945	William R. Forstchen	1995-08-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the start of the novel, the United States, having won over Japan, is in no mood to enter a new war, and Americans accept the fait accompli of German domination over Europe. An alternate Cold War seems in the offing; even the British, with a German-dominated Europe at their doorstep, squander much of their resources on a colonial war in the former French Indochina. US President Andrew Harrison (a fictional character) has a summit with Hitler at Reykjavík, Iceland. The meeting goes badly, the two leaders sharply confront each other, and Hitler secretly decides to accelerate preparations for a surprise attack on both the US and Britain. As part of these preparations, a beautiful German spy seduces and suborns the White House Chief of Staff and makes him a key German spy. The book's protagonist, Lieutenant Commander James Martel, at the incipient Head of Naval Intelligence at the American Embassy in Berlin, is one of the few who suspects the gathering storm, watching the new weapons displayed at the parade commemorating Germany's victory over the Soviet Union and encountering the well-known commando Otto Skorzeny who is his main opponent throughout the book. Skorzeny makes meticulous secret preparations for raids to destroy the US atomic bomb programs in Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. (During the war with Japan, because the Manhattan Project was put on the backburner so that in 1945, the US is far from already possessing a nuclear bomb.) The bulk of the book is devoted to Martel, back in the US, getting a glimmering of the threatened attack and unsuccessfully trying to sound a warning. The German raid takes place, and though the Germans are eventually beaten back, the raid causes great damage, killing key scientists and setting the US nuclear program behind Germany's; moreover, the Germans seize the uranium mines in the Congo region, while launching all-out war against the United Kingdom. The book ends with a cliffhanger: Erwin Rommel invades Scotland, the British facing a desperate fight, and Churchill imploring the Americans "come quickly, this is much worse than 1940", but a promised sequel, provisionally called Fortress Europa, has yet to be written, though many years have passed and the writers had meanwhile completed a different alternate history trilogy (beginning with Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War). In our history, "Fortress Europe" was the Nazi concept of making German-occupied Europe impregnable to the invasion, which was clearly coming since the Allies started massing their forces in Britain in 1943. In D-Day this "fortress" was decisively breached. The projected book's name seems to suggest that the same would happen in this alternate history, some years behind schedule.
6992237	/m/0g_9jn	War Trash	Ha Jin	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Yu Yuan was originally a cadet at Huangpu Military Academy, an important part of the Kuomintang military system. However, when the Communists gained the upper hand in China, the academy went over to their side, and Yu was made a part of the PLA. He is eventually sent to Korea as a lower-ranking officer. Since he knew some English, he is made part of his unit's staff as a possible translator. He left behind his mother and his fiancee, a girl named Tao Julan. Yu Yuan's unit eventually crossed into Korea and engaged the South Korean and UN forces there. For a period it prosecuted a guerilla war against these allies. Eventually, however, Yu Yuan was injured and is captured. He spent some time in a hospital, where the ministrations of the medical staff impressed him with the humane nature of the medical profession. Subsequently, Yu Yuan is put in a prisoner of war camp. A major political fault line ran through the Communist prisoners, both historically and in the novel. On one side are those who are "loyal" and wish to be repatriated to the Communist side, either North Korean or Chinese; these are called "pro-Communists". On the other side are those who wish to be released to the "Free World", whether that be South Korea or the remaining Chinese Kuomingtang bastion of Taiwan. This group is called "pro-Nationalists". Violence often flares between these two groups, and the chief tension in the book is the narrator's attempts to navigate this political minefield. After his capture, Yu Yuan is registered as a POW in the city of Pusan. He assumes a false identity, in order to hide his rank as a low-level officer. All captured officers give their names and try to mix in with enlisted men so that they will not be subject to questioning and torture by the captors. He is then taken to the island of Guh-Jae-Do, which was cleared of most civilians in order to house POWs captured by the South. Yu Yuan initially finds himself in the pro-Nationalist camp, somewhat against his will. This is not because he is politically passionate, but rather because his main goal is to return home to his mother and fiancee. Going to Taiwan would politically taint him in Communist China and make such a return impossible. His association with Huangpu lends him some breathing room, but when he states his intention to return to mainland China, he is kidnapped by the Nationalists and tattooed with the words FUCK COMMUNISM in English. A decision is made by the administrators of the camp to conduct a "screening" to divide the Nationalists and Communists in the camp and hopefully reduce violence. This period before the screening is an intense time for the camp, as the leadership of both sides wants to convince the prisoners to choose the correct side, thus scoring a propaganda victory. Yu Yuan witnesses incredible acts of torture and coercion committed by pro-Nationalist officers, but motivated by a longing for home, he chooses the Communist side. Now in a Communist camp, Yu Yuan is suspected for his Huangpu ties and his stint with the Nationalists. However, his skills in English are useful and he eventually gains the trust of his superiors. The coordination of the camp is much better than before, and the prisoners organize themselves for resistance. However, they cannot compete with the camp of the North Koreans, who due to their greater local knowledge and better underground networks can carry out stunning logistical feats and are in communication with their capital Pyongyang. Eventually, the North Koreans organize an attempt to kidnap General Bell, the commandant of all the prisoner of war camps. (This is a reference to the historical attempt to capture the American General Francis T. Dodd). They enlist the participation of the Chinese camp through a meeting of emissaries. As a mark of the trustworthiness of Yu Yuan, Commissar Pei, the leader of the Chinese pro-Communist camp, sends Yu Yuan as his representative. The Chinese camp gathers information and passes it to the North Korean camp, which subsequently lures Bell in for negotiations, then kidnaps him, a propaganda coup for the Communists. Soon, the prisoners are sent to better organized camps on Cheju Island. The facilities are better, but the methods of prisoner control are also enhanced, making it harder to resist. Commissar Pei, for instance, is separated from the men. Also, the prisoners begin to feel very isolated from their country, and worry that they will be treated with suspicion when they return to China, as it can be considered treason to be captured rather than fight to the death. However, with ingenious methods of communication developed, Commissar Pei manages to send orders to raise homemade Chinese communist flags on national day, a provocation which creates a confrontation and raises morale, even though lives are lost in the ensuing battle. At some point a small group of pro-Communist officers—including Commissar Pei's right-hand man, Party member Chang Ming—is ordered to Korea to "re-register". Fearing that this will permanently strip him of his English-speaking lieutenant, Pei orders Yu Yuan to assume Ming's identity and go in his place. Fuming at being sacrificed like a pawn for a man no different from him except for Party membership, Yuan obeys and is sent to Korea. It turns out that "re-registering" is not something sinister, but rather bureaucratic processing. However, Ming's subterfuge is discovered and in the confusion he declares his dislike of the Communists. As a result, he is now sent to the Nationalist camp back of Koje Island. Back with the Nationalists again, Yuan is subject to another round of suspicion for siding with the Communists earlier. Fortunately, he weathers this (due in part to his tattoo, which he has kept after having it cleared with the Communists). The officers on the Nationalist side hope that his credentials will elevate him once they get to Taiwan, and in this position he might be able to help them. During this time, the armistice is signed by the UN and North Koreans, and the prisoners begin to look forward, with hope and anxiety, towards their repatriation. Required yet again to declare his allegiance, Yu Yuan, as always, is in a delicate situation. His time on the Communist side means he will always be politically damaged goods in Taiwan, forever handicapped. On the other hand, unless Pei and Ming are still alive and in the good graces of the Party—and therefore able to explain that the Party ordered him to be re-registered—his "defection" to the Nationalists (as well as the lingering taint of being a prisoner in the first place) could be politically devastating if he returns home. Fortunately, he hears that there may be a third option, to emigrate to a neutral country. Quietly, he makes this his plan. However, when Yu Yuan first enters the tent where declarations must be made, he finds that one of the Communist Chinese observers is a friend of his who instantly recognizes him! No longer anonymous, he realizes that if he chooses a third country, his disloyal choice will be traced to his family and they will suffer. Encouraged by his friend about the treatment prisoners receive in China, he makes the decision to return home on the spot. Unfortunately, Yu Yuan's homecoming is not what he had hoped in the more than two years he had been away. His superiors stand up for him, witnessing to the pro-Communist acts he had carried out. However, as party members they are severely tainted (party members swore an oath to fight to the death, and thus their capture is even more dishonorable) and their evidence is worthless. Yu Yuan finds out that his mother has died, and Julan has deserted him as a disgrace. Forever marked by his disloyalty, he is unable to use his college education well, and quietly becomes a teacher. In the epilogue-like final chapter, Yu Yuan describes his eventual marriage, and children. He is not so tainted that he cannot get his offspring into college, and eventually his son goes to the United States for education. Yuan gets his tattoo changed to FUCK...U...S by erasing some of the letters of COMMUNISM. An old man, he learns of the ruin of his communist superiors, and of the success of some of his Nationalist acquaintances in Taiwan. Eventually, he visits his son in America, giving opportunity for one last comical difficulty with his tattoo, once again highly inappropriate. It is here that he finds the time to write the memoir, dedicated to his American grandchildren, which the reader has been enjoying.
6993238	/m/0g_c3_	The Sound of His Horn		1952	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 British naval lieutenant Alan Querdillon becomes a POW during the Battle of Crete during World War II. He awakens in a Nazi controlled world 102 years after World War II. He is hunted (literally) by a "Reichsforester" (a title Hermann Göring had during the Third Reich). He takes refuge with genetically mutilated "undesirables" — one of the first fictional descriptions of genetic manipulation.
6994837	/m/0g_fdj	Godaan	Munshi Premchand	1936	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story revolves around many characters representing the various sections of Indian community. The peasant and rural society is represented by the family of Hori mahato and his family members which includes Dhania, Rupa and Sona(Daughters), Gobar(son), Jhunia( daughter in law). The Story starts from a point where Hori has a deep desire of having a cow as other millions of poor peasants. He purchased on debt of Rs.80 a cow from Bhola, a cowherd. Hori tried to cheat his brothers for 10 rupees. This in turn led to a fight between his wife and his younger brother Heera’s wife. Jealous of Hori, his younger brother Heera poisoned the cow and ran away because of the fear of police action. When the police came enquiring the death of the cow, Hori took a loan and paid the bribe to the police and was able to clear off his younger brother’s name. Jhunia, the daughter of Bhola, was a widow and eloped with Gobar after she got pregnant by him. Because of the fear of the action from villagers Gobar also ran away to the town. Hori and Dhania were unable to throw a girl carrying their son's child from their doorstep and gave her protection and accepting her as their daughter-in-law. The village Panchayat takes action against Hori for sheltering a low caste girl and issued a penalty on Hori. Hori again is compelled to take a loan and pay the penalty. Hori is in huge debt from local money lenders and eventually married off his daughter Rupa for mere 200 rupees to save his ancestral land from being auctioned because of his inability to pay land tax. But his determination to pay those 200 rupees and to have a cow to provide milk to his grand son, leads to Hori's death because of excessive work. When he is about to die, his wife Dhania took out all the money she had (1.25 Rupees) and made Hori pay the priest on behalf of (Godaan) (cow donation). This eventually fulfils the traditional dream of Hori but still his desire to pay back the rupees 200 to his son- in- law and to have a cow to feed the milk to his grandson remain unfulfilled. Hori is shown as a typical poor peasant who is the victim of circumstances and possess all the deficiencies of common man but despite all this, he stands by his honesty, duties and judgement when time requires. He is shown dead partially satisfied and partially unsatisfied. Hori is a peasant who is married to Dhaniya and has two daughters and a son. He is an uprighteous man and struggles throughout his life to preserve his uprighteousness. He has two younger brothers and he considers his obligation as the eldest brother to help them and save them from problems,sacrificing his own family. He bribes the police officers who come to the village enquiring the death of his cow. Thus, he saves the police from entering his brother,Heera's house for a search.He is a man who is bound to the community and considers the verdict of the panchayat as final.He is penalized for the death of the cow and accepts. He feels orphaned to be out of the community and hence accepts the penalty levied by the panchayat when Gobar brings home a low caste girl. Similarly, he allows Bhola to take his oxen away as he is neither able to pay the cost of it nor willing to send Jhunia away from his house. They have accepted her as their daughter-in-law and her child as their grandchild. He is kind and generous. He does not hesitate to give shelter to Seliya, a cobbler's daughter who is exploited by Matadin, a Brahmin, and is shirked by her own people. Dhania is Hori's wife, devoted to him and always supportive to him. She is bold and fiery and cannot tolerate injustice. She raises her voice against injustice, against the wishes of Hori and irritates him. She is vexed when Hori puts up with a lot of oppression from the money lenders and the Brahmin Priest. Hori, though beats at times for disobeying him, knows that her arguments are correct. She makes him see the truth and the realty of facts. Unlike him, she is not lost in rigmarole of clichés and ideals. She stands by what she thinks is correct and her dharma, rather than the traditional principles of the community. She knowingly accepts into her household, a low caste girl, as her daughter-in-law .She does not blame only Jhunia for placing them in an embarrassing position. She knows that her son, Gobar, is equally responsible. She is a kind and loving mother and sacrifices much for the sake of her children. She has a generous heart; she takes care of Heera's children when occasion demands, she willingly accommodates and shelters the pregnant Seliya, the cobbler's daughter. Dhania has never known a life of peace and comfort, as throughout the novel we see her struggling along with her husband for a livelihood. She emerges as a powerful woman, who irrespective of caste or creed helps the needy. Gobar is the only son of Dhania and Hori. Born into a poor family,he aspires for a life of comfort. Though initially a simpleton like his father, he gets exposure in the city, lucknow, and learns to be practical and worldly wise. He impregnates Jhunia, Bhola's daughter, and lacking courage to face the wrath of the villagers, runs away to the city, leaving Jhunia at his parents doorstep. His insensible hasty behaviour creates trouble to Hori, who pays the penalty. Gobar works for Mirza Kursheed, but gradually starts his own business. He also lends money to other people. When he comes to the village dressed as a gentleman with pump shoes, on a short visit, he is unrecognized with difficulty. He becomes the centre of attraction in the village,the other young men are tempted to go to the city seeing him. He promises to get them jobs. When he comes to know that Datadin is exploiting his father, he advices his father to come out of the shakles of traditional bindings. He organises a function and with his friends enacts a skit to expose and satirize the mean mentality of the village money lenders and the Brahmin priest. He threatens to drag the priest to court and has a fight with his father on this issue. He realizes that Hori is too simple, god fearing and cannot go against his dharma. Angrily, he leaves the village with his wife Jhunia and returns to the city. His weakness for liquour and short tempered nature affects his relation with Jhunia. He realizes his mistake only when his devoted wife nurses him during his illness. He works in the sugar factory and later becomes the chowkidar at Malathi's house. Dattadin is the village Brahmin Priest and a greedy moneylender. It is ironic that this man with low moral standards goes about the village policing the wrongs of the other villagers. He penalizes Hori for accepting and sheltering a low caste girl, Jhunia, as their daughter-in-law. He is a hypocrite and is blind to the fact that his own son Mataddin is having an affair with Seliya, a cobbler's daughter. He invites pundits from Varanasi to perform the purifying rituals of his defiled son so that he is brought into the main stream of Brahminism. He does not pity Hori's poverty, rather takes advantage of his goodness and exploits him. Matadin is the son of the brahmin priest Datadin. He is young and has an affair with Seliya, a low caste woman who works on the farm for him. The villagers know about it.Seliya does not have entrance to his house. Her parents and relatives hopefully wait for her to be accepted by him. Finally, they decide to punish him and beat him and put a piece of bone into his mouth,a taboo, for the brahmin. Seliya comes to his help and saves him. Matadin becomes an outcaste in his own house. His father performs purifying rituals to bring him back to the mainstream of brahminism.He spends a lot of money on the rituals and pundits from Kashi are called in. Matadin's malarial fever which had taken him to death's mouth has made him realize his mistake in exploiting Selia.When Matadin comes to know that he has a son from Seliya, he longs to see the child and goes on sly in her absence. He is repentant and sends her two rupees through Hori. He realises that he is bound by duty to Seliya and his son. He removes his holy thread and thus liberates himself from the shackles of Brahminism. Now, he is free to live courageously with Seliya as his wife. Bhola is a cowherd of the neighbouring village. He is a widower and has two married sons and a young widowed daughter,Jhunia. Bhola agrees to give Hori a cow on loan and in turn Hori promises to find a companion for him to remarry. Bhola is very upset when his daughter elopes with Hori's son Gobar. He comes to Hori's house on vengenance and claims money for the dead cow. Hori does not have Rs.80, the cost of the cow.Bhola threatens to take his oxen away, that would reduce Hori to a labourer.When Hori pleads with him, Bhola suggests that they should throw Jhunia,their daughter-in-law, and his own daughter out of the house as she had hurt his feelings. This is not acceptable to Dhania, Hori's wife. It is unbelievabe that being Jhunia's father, instead of being contended that Hori and his wife have accepted this girl who became pregnant without her marriage being sanctified, he would like to see her sent away with her infant. He heartlessly takes away Hori's oxen and renders him totally helpless. The urban society is represented by Malati devi( Doctor), Mr. Mehta( Lecturer and philosopher), Mr. Khanna (Banker), Rai Sahib(Zamindar), Mr Tankha( Broker) and Mr. Mirza(social worker). Rai sahib has won the local elections twice. He wanted to marry his daughter off to a rich zamindar to again win in the election and claim the property of his in-laws. Thus,he married his daughter off to another rich, widow and rake zamindar. He claimed and won the zamindari of his in-laws. He won the election and became the municipal minister. But when he planned to get his son married to the daughter of Raja Suryankant for his family’s prestige, his son refused that. He is in love with Saroj, the younger sister of Malati devi. They both married and went away to London. His son claimed and won the entire property Rai sahib won from in-laws leaving Rai sahib in huge debt. His daughter got divorced. This eventually left Rai sahib too dissatisfied despite all his efforts. Miss Malati is a beautiful lady intelligent doctor who is educated in Europe. She is one of the three daughters of Mr.Kaul. She is the centre of attraction in the parties and is flirtatious. Mr. Khanna flirts with her and she is envied and disliked by Govindi. Malati in turn falls in love with Mr. Mehta because of his ideology, his simplicity and intelligence. On a trip to the village of Hori, she explores herself. She starts serving the poor and gets involved in many social activities. After seeing the change in Malati, Mr. Mehta falls in love with Malati.But though Malati loves Mr. Mehta, she refuses his marriage proposal. She now wants to serve the poor and does not want to marry. Mr. Mehta and Malati keep serving the poor and needy people together. Malati devi is the only character shown as conteded at the end of the novel because of her commitment to charitable deeds. Mr Mehtais a scholar and lectures philosopy in a college. He is also authoring a book on Philosophy which he dedicates to Malati. Malati and Govindi are two characters who are influenced by him. Govindi finds solace talking to him as he appreciates her concept of womanhood. Malati loses her ego and understands the true meaning of life through him. She learns to serve the poor. He needs the guidance of Malati as he has mismanaged his funds and income in overgenerously serving the poor. Though he is interested in marrying Malati, the two mutually agree to remain as friends under the same roof. Mr. Khanna is an industrialist and owns a sugar factory. Though married and father of three children, he disrepcts his wife Govindi for her traditional values. He flirts with Malati. He is unable to recognize the virtues in his wife. Govindi is fed up of his behaviour and this goads her to leave home. He exploits the labour class. It is only when his sugar factory is destroyed in a fire accident and Govindi stands by him encouraging him to set it up once again, he realise his mistake.Mr. Khanna eventually starts loving his wife. Govindi is Mr.Khanna's wife, the rich industrialist, and is epitomized as an ideal Hindu wife. She is virtuous and very tolerant with her husband and children.Unfortunately,Mr.khanna is disinterested in her as he finds fault with her traditional values. He takes interest in Miss Malati and flirts with her. Govindi is desperately dejected and decides to abandon him and his house. But it is Mr.Mehta, who has always been appreciative of her ideals,who advises her to return back to the children. She is a moral support to her husband when his sugar factory gets destroyed in fire. It is she who encourages him to set it up again.
6996239	/m/0g_h1c	King and Emperor	Harry Harrison		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Shef, King of the North, sets out to discover Greek fire and the Holy Grail. By the end of the book, the modern notion of tolerance is endorsed by characters in the novel.
6997761	/m/0g_j_v	Marco's millions	William Sleator	2001-06-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is about a boy named Marco who likes to travel. He often secretly rides buses far from home, though only his telepathic sister finds out. One day, his sister sees strange lights in the basement, and she and Marco investigate. They find a portal into another dimension, and thus the adventure begins. Marco finds strange insect-like creatures there, who are convinced that Marco/Lilly can save their dimension (and as a result save Earth) from their god, which is a naked singularity. But at what cost?
6997883	/m/0g_k50	New Moon	Stephenie Meyer	2006-09-06	{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On Isabella "Bella" Swan's 18th birthday, Edward Cullen, the vampire she loves, and his family throw her a birthday party. While unwrapping a gift, she gets a paper cut, which causes Edward's adopted brother, Jasper, to be overwhelmed by her blood's scent and attempt to kill Bella. To protect her, Edward tells Bella that he does not love her and the Cullens move away from Forks. This leaves Bella heartbroken and depressed. In the months that follow, Bella learns that thrill-seeking activities, such as motorcycle riding, allow her to "hear" Edward's voice in her head. She also seeks comfort in her deepening friendship with Jacob Black, a cheerful companion who eases her pain over losing Edward. Bella later discovers that Jacob and other tribe members are werewolves. Jacob and his pack protect Bella from the vampire Laurent and also Victoria, who seeks revenge for her dead mate, James, whom the Cullens killed in Twilight. Meanwhile, a series of miscommunications leads Edward to believe that Bella has killed herself. Distraught over her supposed suicide, Edward flees to Volterra, Italy to provoke the Volturi, vampire royalty who are capable of killing him. Alice and Bella rush to Italy to save Edward, arriving just in time to stop him. Before leaving Italy, the Volturi tell Edward that Bella, a human who knows that vampires exist, must either be killed or transformed into a vampire. When they return to Forks, Edward tells Bella that he has always loved her and only left Forks to protect her. She forgives him, and the Cullens vote in favor of Bella being transformed into a vampire, to Edward's dismay. However, Jacob reminds Edward about an important piece in the treaty: if the Cullens bite a human, the treaty is over.
6998089	/m/0g_kgp	Celestial Matters	Richard Garfinkle	1996	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is narrated by Aias of Tyre, a scientist of the Delian League, who is preparing to embark on Project Sunthief as scientific commander. This project is an audacious and desperate mission to sail a spaceship carved out of a piece of the moon herself out through the spheres, to catch a piece of the sun and bring it back to earth to annihilate the Middler capital city. This, the league hopes, will finally end the war and give it victory. The Middlers have been assassinating Delian generals and politicians, so Aias is assigned a bodyguard, Captain Yellow Hare of Sparta, a woman of Xeroki ancestry. Shortly after the launch of the moon-ship, Chandra's Tear, it becomes clear that there is a saboteur on board. Aias' old friend Ramonojon, a mathematician, has expressed doubts about the rightness of annihilating an entire city and is viewed with dark suspicion by Anaxamander, the heroic military commander of the project. Mihradarius, the fire scientist who has devised the sun-catching method, keeps his own counsel. As sabotage, catastrophe, and exhilarating maneuvers overtake the voyage, Aias begins to wonder about the wisdom of the Delian strategy. Eventually he comes to understand the desperation of the Middle Kingdom, thanks to a Middler scientist stowaway, and they try to synthesize between them a way for the two world-spanning empires to resolve their differences. There remains a life-or-death race to earth on a crippled ship in the hope of bringing hope.
6998260	/m/0g_knx	Deryni Rising	Katherine Kurtz	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book covers a two-week period in November of 1120, beginning with the death of King Brion Haldane while leading a hunting party outside the city of Rhemuth. Immediately following Brion's death, his son and heir, Prince Kelson sends for his father's closest friend and advisor, Alaric Morgan, the Deryni Duke of Corwyn. Morgan arrives shortly before Kelson's coronation, but his efforts to assist the prince are interrupted by Kelson's mother, Queen Jehana. However, Kelson manages to thwart Jehana's attempts to imprison Morgan, and the duke resumes his efforts to protect Kelson. Morgan informs Kelson that Brion had wielded magical powers of his own, despite the fact that Brion was not Deryni. Known as "the Haldane potential", it is a trait of the Haldane line to acquire Deryni-like powers once they have been activated in the subject. Morgan believes that Brion designed a magical ritual to awaken those powers in Kelson. Furthermore, Morgan suspects that Kelson will need those powers to defend himself from Princess Charissa Furstána-Festila, a Deryni sorceress who intends to attack Kelson during his coronation and claim the throne of Gwynedd. During the course of the night, Morgan and his cousin, Monsignor Duncan McLain, attempt to decipher the clues left by Brion. After a bloody encounter in the royal crypt, the cousins discover that they both possess the Deryni talent for Healing, an ability that has been lost for two centuries. They eventually attempt to activate Kelson's magical abilities, but are disappointed when the ritual appears to fail. Later that night, Morgan encounters Charissa in the palace and the sorceress proudly admits to murdering Brion. During Kelson's coronation the following morning, Charissa appears and challenges the prince to a Duel Arcane, an ancient form of magical combat. Morgan attempts to answer the challenge in his role as King's Champion, but Charissa's own champion seriously wounds the Deryni duke before being defeated, leaving Morgan unable to deal with Charissa herself. However, seeing her son's danger, Jehana attacks Charissa with magic, revealing that her fanatical hatred of Deryni has concealed her own Deryni heritage. Nonetheless, Charissa easily defeats Jehana, and Kelson is forced to personally duel with the sorceress. As the combat is about to begin, Kelson suddenly unravels the last of his father's clues and activates his own powers. Using both his Haldane powers and his newly-discovered Deryni heritage, Kelson manages to defeat Charissa. With the Pretender now dead, Kelson is crowned as King of Gwynedd.
7000086	/m/0g_ngt	The Treasure of Tranicos	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 "The Treasure of Tranicos." The title story finds Conan in the Pictish Wilderness fleeing native warriors who are hunting him. Finally he turns at bay before a hill, whereupon he sees them inexplicably abandon the chase and turn back. He realizes the spot must be a taboo place to the Picts. The hill turns out to hold a treasure cave, along with the preserved bodies of the pirate Tranicos and his men. Moreover, the treasure draws others to the forbidden cave in quest for it — one Count Valenso, and both Zingaran and Barachan sea reavers. But the bane of Tranicos is quite ready to take new victims, and Conan must outmaneuver all of them if he is to claim the riches. Howard's original story pointed toward a new piratical career for Conan; one of de Camp's major changes was to make it lead instead into the revolution that would bring the Cimmerian to the throne of Aquilonia. "The Trail of Tranicos." The essay following the story relates the circumstances of de Camp's discovery of Howard's manuscript and his revision and publication of it. "Scald in the Post Oaks." The remaining essay is about Howard himself.
7000227	/m/0g_nly	Deryni Checkmate	Katherine Kurtz	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Deryni Checkmate takes places in March 1121, four months after the coronation of fourteen-year old King Kelson Haldane. The novel opens with the rabidly anti-Deryni leader of the Holy Church, Archbishop Edmund Loris, signing a letter that demands that the Deryni Duke of Corwyn, Alaric Morgan, recant his magical powers and submit to a life of penance. If he fails to do so, Loris threatens to excommunicate Morgan and place his entire duchy under interdict. Additionally, Morgan's cousin, Monsignor Duncan McLain, is suspended and summoned to an ecclesiastical trial to answer for his part in the events surrounding Kelson's coronation. After being warned of the threat, Kelson sends Duncan to warn Morgan of the upcoming trouble, fearing that Duncan's hidden Deryni heritage may be revealed by a trial. Duncan travels to Morgan's capital city of Coroth, where he informs his cousin of Loris' threat. In addition to the ecclesiastical threat, Morgan's duchy is being ravaged by an anti-Deryni fanatic named Warin de Grey, and the neighboring kingdom of Torenth is preparing to launch an invasion of Gwynedd. Fearing that an internal Gwyneddan conflict will weaken the kingdom prior to fighting an external enemy, Morgan and Duncan eventually decide to travel to the city of Dhassa and personally appeal to the Curia of Bishops. However, en route to Dhassa, Morgan is drugged and captured by Warin, who intends to burn the Deryni duke as a heretic. Duncan manages to rescue his cousin, but is forced to reveal his Deryni powers to ensure their escape. When the Curia learns of the cousins' actions, the two are soon excommunicated. Morgan and Duncan realize that appealing to the Curia is no longer an option, so they set out to meet with Kelson. Loris attempts to place Corwyn under Interdict, but a group of bishops refuses to participate in an action that would punish an entire duchy for the actions of its duke. Loris rages against the rebels, but he and his supporters are thrown out of Dhassa, effectively splitting the Curia. Kelson has traveled to the city of Culdi to attend the wedding of Morgan's sister, Bronwyn, and Duncan's half-brother, Kevin. Unknown to anyone, a jealous architect named Rimmell has fallen in love with Bronwyn and seeks to win her affections through the use of a love charm he acquires from an old witch woman. However, Rimmell's plan backfires horribly, and the charm kills both Bronwyn and Kevin. By the time Morgan and Duncan arrive in Culdi, Rimmell has been executed for his crime. Though Morgan is crushed with grief over the death of his sister, Kelson reminds him that he must still see to his duties. Facing an internal ecclesiastical schism, rebel fanatics ravaging his lands, and an imminent invasion from Torenth, Kelson cannot allow Morgan to wallow in his grief. Morgan agrees, and returns to his duties in service to the throne of Gwynedd.
7000590	/m/0g_p0d	The Great Controversy	Ellen G. White	1858		 This synopsis is of the final volume of the expanded book sets derived from the original Great Controversy book. It covers just the Christian dispensation. The book begins with a historical overview which begins with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, covers the Reformation and Advent movement in detail, and culminates with a lengthy description of the end times. It also outlines several key Seventh-day Adventist doctrines, including the heavenly sanctuary, the investigative judgment and the state of the dead. Much of the first half of the book is devoted to the historical conflict between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. White writes that the Papacy propagated a corrupt form of Christianity from the time of Constantine I onwards, and during the Middle Ages was opposed only by the Waldensians and other small groups who preserved an authentic form of Christianity. Beginning with John Wycliffe and John Huss, and continuing with Luther, Zwingli and others, the Reformation led to a partial recovery of biblical truth. In the early 19th century William Miller began to preach that Jesus was about to return to earth; his movement eventually resulted in the formation of the Adventist church. The second half of the book is prophetic, looking to a resurgence in Papal supremacy. The civil government of the United States will form a union with the Roman Catholic church as well as with corrupt Protestantism. There will be an enforcement of a universal Sunday law (the mark of the beast) and a great persecution of Sabbath-keepers immediately prior to the second coming of Jesus. The official Ellen G. White Estate web site views the 1888 version as the original "Great Controversy", with the 1911 edition being the only revision. The "Synopsis" and "Sources" below reflect this, and do not refer at all to the 1858 version, and only partially to the 1884 version. While working to complete the book in 1884, Ellen White wrote: “I want to get it out as soon as possible, for our people need it so much. . . .I have been unable to sleep nights, for thinking of the important things to take place. . . . Great things are before us, and we want to call the people from their indifference to get ready.” In the 1911 edition preface the author states the primary purpose of the book to be: “to trace the history of the controversy in past ages, and especially so to present it as to shed a light on the fast approaching struggle of the future.”
7001498	/m/0g_qb6	The Stranger	K. A. Applegate	1997-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rachel's father asks her to move with him to another state. After some reconnaissance work, Marco and Tobias find an entrance to the underground Yeerk Pool, in one of the changing rooms at The Gap. The Animorphs decide to infiltrate the pool and to try to find the location of the Earth-based Kandrona by going in as cockroaches. Once inside the complex, however, they get caught on the tongue of a Taxxon. As they are about to be devoured, time freezes and they feel themselves being forcibly brought out of morph. They are then introduced to an all-powerful being called an Ellimist. The Ellimist tells the kids that he cannot interfere with other species, but when species are in danger of becoming extinct, he can step in and save a sample. He informs them that he wants to preserve part of Earth's beauty, along with some humans, because the Yeerks are going to win the war in the future. The Animorphs ask how much time they have to consider the offer, but the Ellimist tells them that they must decide now. If they choose yes, they and their families would be transported to another planet, but if they choose no, everything would be returned to the way it was before the Ellimist's arrival. The group puts the decision up to a vote, and during the deliberation, Jake and Rachel notice a drop shaft and a human frozen in the act of moving up in it. The Animorphs choose not to accept the Ellimist's offer and are immediately back in cockroach morph on a Taxxon's tongue. They are able to demorph and fight their way to the drop shaft to escape the Yeerk pool. Later, The Ellimist appears to the group again to give them the choice one more time. To aid their decision, he transports them to a grim future in which the Yeerks have enslaved Earth. Rachel notices, with some confusion, that most of the skyscrapers and buildings in the city have been leveled except for the tallest one: the EGS Tower. This tower stood at the base of a large, open Yeerk pool and was covered with a shiny dome. After they return to their own time, the Animorphs reverse their earlier decision and accept the Ellimist's offer. They expect to be immediately whisked away, however, nothing happens. Rachel is disconcerted by this and concludes that the Ellimist did not transport them because he wanted a different answer. While thinking on it, she realizes that only because of the Ellimist's first appearance were they able to see the drop shaft and know that there was a chance to escape the Taxxon's grip. She then determines that during the trip to the future, the Ellimist was once again simply trying to show them something that he could not overtly tell them without interfering. She remembers the EGS Tower, deduces that the Kandrona must be located there, and gathers the rest of the Animorphs for a raid. After a vicious battle just before dawn, the Animorphs manage to take the top floor of the tower and destroy the Kandrona by shoving it out of the window. The Ellimist appears to them again, and confirms Rachel's suspicion that even he cannot tell the future, and humans might win the war yet. Rachel tells her father she can't move with him. *The Ellimist is introduced. *The Earth-based Kandrona of the Animorphs' city area is destroyed, but it is replaced three weeks and a few books later.
7002018	/m/0g_r6b	Men Like Gods	H. G. Wells	1923	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Men Like Gods is set in the summer of 1921. Its protagonist is Mr. Barnstaple (his first name is either Alfred or William), a journalist working in London and living in Sydenham. He has grown dispirited at a newspaper called The Liberal and resolves to take a holiday. Quitting wife and family, he finds his plans disrupted when his and two other automobiles are accidentally transported with their passengers into "another world," which the "Earthlings" call Utopia. A sort of advanced Earth, Utopia is some three thousand years ahead of humanity in its development. For the 200,000,000 Utopians who inhabit this world, the "Days of Confusion" are a distant period studied in history books, but their past resembles humanity's in its essentials, differing only in incidental details: their Christ, for example, died on the wheel, not on the cross. Utopia lacks any world government and functions as a successfully realized anarchy. "Our education is our government," a Utopian named Lion says. Sectarian religion, like politics, has died away, and advanced scientific research flourishes. Life in Utopia is governed by "the Five Principles of Liberty," which are privacy, free movement, unlimited knowledge, truthfulness, and free discussion and criticism. Mr. Barnstaple longs to stay in Utopia, but when he asks how he can best serve Utopia, he is told that he can do this "by returning to your own world." Regretfully he accepts, and ends his month-long stay in Utopia. But he brings with him back to Earth a renewed determination to contribute to the effort to make a terrestrial Utopia: "[H]e belonged now soul and body to the Revolution, to the Great Revolution that is afoot on Earth; that marches and will never desist nor rest again until old Earth is one city and Utopia set up therein. He knew clearly that this Revolution is life, and that all other living is a trafficking of life with death." Men Like Gods is divided into three books. Details of life in Utopia are given in Books I and III. In Book II, the Earthlings are quarantined on a rocky crag after infections they have brought cause a brief epidemic in Utopia. There they begin to plot the conquest of Utopia, despite Mr. Barnstaple's protests. He betrays them when his fellows try to take two Utopians hostage, and Mr. Barnstaple is forced to escape execution for treason by fleeing perilously.
7004293	/m/0g_w11	Danton's Death	Georg Büchner			 The play follows the story of Georges Danton, a leader of the French Revolution, during the lull between the first and second terrors. Georges Danton created the office of the Revolutionary Tribunal as a strong arm for the Revolutionary Government. With this, to be accused of anything real or imagined was to be condemned to death without trial, proofs, evidence or witnesses. Within months he knew this power was a terrible mistake and fought to have it ended. Robespierre stopped him and used the Tribunal to have Danton and all opposition killed, consolidate his power and slaughter uncounted thousands of French men, women, and children. Ultimately he followed Danton to the guillotine. Witnesses describe Danton as dying bravely comforting other innocents executed with him. Three revolutionary groups are presented at the start of the play - Danton's supporters, Robespierre's supporters, and those who do not agree with how the Revolution has evolved. Danton and Robespierre have different views on how to pursue the revolution - Danton's supporters back the end of Robespierre's repressive measures, which have already caused great suffering among the people, and they did not find in the Revolution the answer to the material and moral questions facing mankind. One citizen deplores the fact that his daughter has been forced into prostitution to support her family. Danton accepts his friends' proposal to meet Robespierre but this meeting proves to be fruitless and Robespierre resolves that Danton must be killed, though he still doubts that this decision is just. Danton's friends press him to fight or flee Robespierre's supporters, but Danton does not see any need to do so and does not believe that the French National Convention will dare to act against him. Danton confides the guilt he feels for the September Massacres in his wife Julie. Danton is imprisoned and led before the National Assembly, which is divided - it feels it has no choice but to acquit him. However, Robespierre and Saint-Just reverse its opinion. The prisoners discuss the existence of God and life, and an attempt to prove that God does not exist fails. Danton's supporters are transferred to the Conciergerie. During this time the revolutionary tribunal arranges for its jury to be made up of honest and faithful men. Danton appears confidently before the tribunal, impressing the public with his willingness for justice to be done. Seeing the hearers' sympathy for Danton, the court is adjourned. The tribunal's members invent a plot to change the public's mind. At the tribunal's second sitting, the people stop supporting Danton, due to his lifestyle. Danton's liberal programme is revealed as unacceptable to the masses. Danton and his supporters are condemned to death. Danton and his friend Camille Desmoulins exchange thoughts on life and death. Danton's wife Julie, to whom he has pledged to be loyal beyond death, poisons herself at their home. The people show themselves to be curious and ironic on Danton's way to the scaffold. When Lucile Desmoulins sees her husband Camille mount the scaffold, she goes mad and resolves to die too, crying "Long live the king!" and thus guaranteeing her own death sentence.
7005213	/m/0g_xc5	The Genocides	Thomas M. Disch	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Genocides describes the genocide of humans by aliens who seed Earth with enormous crop plants. The Plants are massive and rapidly out-compete terrestrial flora, forming a monoculture. They appear unwholesome to the native fauna, and starvation seems inevitable. The novel opens with a small rural community struggling for survival on the border of Lake Superior. Urban society appears to have collapsed by this point. The community, lead by Anderson and his family, eke out an existence by siphoning sap from the Plants to irrigate their corn crop. Anderson is a conservative and religious man, harsh and uncompromising. His focus on survival has kept the community alive long after many have died. His rules include the harsh treatment of outsiders who are routinely killed unless they are of use to the community. Newcomers arrive bringing with them news of spherical machines that are incinerating every trace of humanity left on Earth, including burning the abandoned cities and remaining survivors. Most of the newcomers are killed and, the novel implies, ground into sausage meat and consumed. The two remaining have useful skills: Alice is a nurse and the Jeremiah a mining engineer. Jeremiah vows a personal revenge on Anderson and his family, but begins by ingratiating himself in the community. Jeremiah courts Anderson's thirteen-year-old daughter, Blossom. He befriends Anderson's educated son, Buddy. During the harsh winter, the spherical machines come to incinerate the community. Jeremiah sees his revenge coming to fruition. Those who survive the initial conflagration flee into a cave. There they discover the Plants' roots are hollow and form a massive and interlocking underground network. Jeremiah suggests they go deeper, pointing out that they will be able to escape the winter underground. They discover the "fruit" of the plants is housed in the root system: a nutritious pulp the community begins to consume. Anderson, who lost his wife Lady when fleeing, is weakened. When he is bitten by a rat, gangrene sets in and he declines quickly. His final words to his brutish son, Neil, are to let Jeremiah take over leading the community and to allow Jeremiah to marry Blossom. Neil is angered by these words, and murders Anderson. The nurse Alice sees the signs of murder on Anderson, but Neil murders her before she can share her revelation. The community breaks up. Jeremiah goes in search of Blossom, planning to kill her when he finds her and commit his ultimate revenge. When he does find her, he experiences a change of heart and falls in love. They try to return, but find Neil has sabotaged their escape and his own. In the dark they cannot find their way back. Neil, Jeremiah, Blossom and Buddy struggle underground. Neil is overcome and abandoned in the dark. When the few survivors return to the diminishing group, they find machines have come to harvest the Plants' crop. Without the pulp to live on, the survivors return to the surface. On the surface it is spring, and a new crop of Plants have been sown by the mysterious aliens. The malnourished group has no chance of survival, and the novel closes on the Jeremiah and Blossom leaving the few other survivors to travel into the wilderness. The pair, starving and mismatched in age, are portrayed as a distorted mirror image of the biblical Adam and Eve and herald the end of humanity instead of the beginning.
7006524	/m/0g_z68	The Goblin Wood	Hilari Bell	2003-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Makenna is a hedgewitch. Her mother is killed when a new priest is sent to town. Makenna flees for her life, and tries to flood the town as her last act of vengeance. She flees to the woods and is teased by a group of goblins. Soon, she catches one goblin named Cogswhallop. She spares his life, and to repay his debt, he helps her out and convinces his fellow goblins to stop taunting her. Makenna later meets a friendly trader in the woods who tells her of the events taking place around the world. He tells her that the priesthood is working to eliminate all sources of magic they consider to not come from divine sources, goblins and hedgewitches among them. The goblin Cogswhallop and his friends ask for Makenna's aid in rescuing a small goblin family from being burned to death by a priest. Makenna aids the goblins, and they form an alliance to help goblins and find a place where they can live in peace. Tobin, a young knight, finds his brother out late one night fleeing from the guards for helping the rebels. Tobin assists his brother but is caught himself and is branded as a traitor. To help save his name and family, Tobin accepts a mission to rid the northern lands of the goblins so that settlers who have lost their lands to the barbarians in the south may have a place to live. Tobin sets out alone to the far village to the north to rid the lands of the goblins and their leader, a "sorceress." Tobin travels to the town, where he meets a priest of the Bright Ones. The priest informs him of his mission: Tobin is to seek out the goblin lair and plant the Otherworld stone near the sorceress's headquarters so that they can spy on her through the stone. Tobin sets out to find the lair and is caught by the goblins, and is taken to their village. While trying to escape, he drops the stone. While Tobin is a hostage in the Goblin village, he is kept chained to a post in a small jail. There, he watches and learns the customs of the goblins and how they are not so different from human children. Makenna (the "sorceress") sits in with him one day and performs a spell to learn what information he might have. Makenna tells Tobin that she's only a hedgewitch. Tobin is released from his prison to walk around the village with the children. He meets many goblins and becomes a familiar face around the goblin village. That night, the village is raided by knights that lived in the human outpost where Tobin had met the priest. The knights had been able to find the village because of the Otherworld stone Tobin had dropped earlier. The town is soon overtaken and but Tobin helps many of the goblins flee. Makenna sneaks into the human village as a servant and lives with a small family where she saves a seven year old from choking to death, causing the hiring family to accept her. She flees that night and meets back up with the goblins, where they plan their attack. The next night, Tobin and the goblins try to sneak into the village, but he is caught while trying to raid the priest's tent and steal his books of spells. Makenna then valiantly jumps in to save him and they flee with the books, in hope of leading the goblins to a new world. Makenna, Tobin, and the goblins are all huddled together as Makenna, using a magical wall, performs a spell that opens a portal into a whole new world. Just as the army comes over the hill, the goblins, Makenna, and Tobin disappear into the portal, never to be heard from again. Cogswhallop and some other goblins stay behind to continue to attack the humans.
7006540	/m/0g_z79	Forging the Sword	Hilari Bell	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Soraya, Kavi and Jiaan have agreed to work together to defeat the Hrum and free Farsala. However, distrust of Kavi is impeding this effort. The three attempt to work together, but it becomes difficult. Luckily, they have finally uncovered the secret of watersteel, with the help of Kavi's ability to "speak" to metal. Only a few months remain in the Hrums self-imposed limit to conquer Farsala. The three youths learn that Garren, the Strategus in charge of the conquest, has more riding on the conquest than just Farsala. His father, a member of the Senate of the Hrum Empire, stated that Garren would conquer Farsala with only ten thousand troops. In addition, his father stated that he will resign from the Senate if this is not accomplished. He did these things in order to secure the assignment of the Farsalan conquest to his son. Garren's father's enemies are eager for this to happen. When Garren requisitions gold to hire Kadeshi aid and circumvent the troop sanction, the Senate sends a delegation to review the conquest. Kavi, Jiaan and Soraya decide to capture the gold before it reaches the Kadeshi, as a Kadeshi warlord has informed Jiaan that if he chooses to pay, the warlord will order the troops he sent Garren to betray the Hrum, crippling the army. Jiaan, Kavi and Soraya do not wish for this to happen. Soraya, with Kavi accompanying her, visits the bandits and convinces them to rob the Senate committee, which will arrive at the nearby harbor of Dugaz. They believe that if the delegation is robbed during its stay, it will demonstrate to the Senate that Garren does not have the country under control. However, upon arriving at the bandits' lair, Shir, their leader, informs Kavi and Soraya that the Senate arrived a week ago, and the bandits failed to rob them. Disappointed, the two promise Shir that in exchange for letting them go, they will get the Suud to try to develop a cure for the swamp fever plaguing the bandits. The gold arrives in Setesafon, and under Garren's close supervision. Using stolen Hrum disguises, Kavi infiltrates the palace, attempting to uncover the passwords into the vault, but is captured. Before he is captured he burns the words into his mule's saddle, which Jiaan and Soraya find. Jiaan and Soraya enter the palace under a guise that Jiaan has captured Soraya. They release the gold into barrels in the river. After the gold is discovered missing Garren orders Kavi tortured, but Kavi withstands it. Garren publicly declares that if Sorahb does not fight Garren as a champion of Farsala, Kavi will be slain. While Jiaan believes the challenge to be a trap and does not think Kavi will be killed, Fasal accepts the challenge. After Fasal breaks Garren's blade with the newly-developed Farsalan watersteel, Garren orders Fasal killed. The Farsalans begin rioting and Soraya, outraged, uses magic to kill Garren with lightning. The senate committee is convinced Farsala is not subdued, and decides the Hrum shall leave Farsala as an allied state. The remaining people send delegates, and Kavi, much to his annoyance, is elected to be a "councilherd" of the council; to make things run smoothly. Jiaan is invited to accompany the Hrum on their next campaign, that in Kadesh; he accepts. Soraya decides to live with the Suud.
7006552	/m/0g_z8b	Navohar	Hilari Bell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Scientists altered the genetic code of children to protect them from an impending alien invasion. However, these generations are becoming stricken with a disease for which there is no known cure. Irene Olsen, a scientist, has searched outer space for humans with unaltered DNA, and believes she has found a suitable population on the planet Navohar. However, she is faced with unexpected pitfalls and must work to save the human race.
7007912	/m/0h007r	Summer	Edith Wharton	1917		 Eighteen-year-old Charity Royall is bored with life in the small town of North Dormer. She is a librarian and ward of North Dormer’s premier citizen, Lawyer Royall. While working at the library, Charity meets visiting architect Lucius Harney. When Harney’s cousin, Miss Hatchard, with whom he is boarding, leaves the village, Harney becomes Mr Royall’s boarder, and Charity his companion while he explores buildings for a book on colonial houses he is preparing. Mr Royall, who once tried to force his way into Charity's bedroom after his wife's death, and later asked her to marry him, notices their growing closeness. He tries to put a stop to it by telling Harney he can no longer accommodate him in his house. Harney makes it appear as though he has left town, but only moves to a nearby village and continues to communicate with Charity. On a trip to Nettleton, Harney kisses Charity for the first time and buys her a present of a brooch. Afterwards they run into a drunken Mr Royall, who is accompanied by prostitutes. Mr Royall verbally abuses Charity, causing her to become overwhelmed with shame. After the trip, Charity and Harney begin a sexual relationship. At a ceremony during North Dormer’s Old Home Week, Charity sees Harney with Annabel Balch, a society girl whom she envies. Afterwards, Charity goes to the abandoned house where she and Harney usually meet. Mr Royall unexpectedly shows up and, when Harney arrives, Mr Royall asks him sarcastically if that is where he intends to live after he marries Charity. After an angry Mr Royall leaves, Harney promises Charity that he is going to marry her, but that he has to go away for a while first. After Harney has left the town, Charity’s friend Ally lets slip that she saw him leave with Annabel Balch, to whom he is engaged to be married. Charity writes a letter to Harney telling him to do the right thing and marry Annabel. Charity has been feeling unwell, so she goes to Dr Merkle ("a plump woman with small bright eyes, an immense mass of black hair coming down low on her forehead, and unnaturally white and even teeth"), who confirms her suspicion that she is pregnant. After the examination Dr Merkle charges five dollars, and Charity, not having enough money to cover it, has to leave the brooch Harney gave her. When she gets home she reads a letter from Harney that makes her realise that, despite his promises, he is unlikely to break his engagement to Miss Balch. Charity decides she cannot stay at home and so makes her way to the mountain, intending to look for her mother. On the way she sees the minister, Mr Miles, and her friend Liff Hyatt. They are on their way to the mountain because Charity’s mother is dying. When they arrive, Charity’s mother is already dead, and the three of them bury her. Charity stays on the mountain overnight, where she sees the abject poverty and resolves not to raise her child there. She decides that she is going to be a prostitute, and with the money she earns she will hire someone to take care of her child. On the way home she meets Mr Royall, who has come to pick her up. He offers to marry her. After Charity marries Mr Royall in Nettleton, she realizes that he knows she is pregnant and has married her only to protect her. He gives her money to buy clothes, but instead she goes to Dr Merkle to get her brooch back. Dr Merkle has heard of her marriage to Mr Royall and demands a large sum for returning the brooch. Rather than paying the money, Charity quickly grabs the brooch and rushes from the office (in a few editions of the novel, she leaves the money with Merkle). Charity writes a last letter to Harney, telling him about her marriage, and finally returns to North Dormer to live with Mr Royall.
7009033	/m/0h01w0	Time of the Twins	Tracy Hickman	1986-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After detailing the meeting between Crysania, Raistlin, and Astinus, the book shifts to Riverwind arriving at the Inn of the Last Home in Solace. He meets Tika Waylan there, and later he asks about Caramon. Tika avoids the question, as Caramon has become a fat drunk in the two years the companions had been apart. Soon, Tanis Half-Elven arrives as well, bringing with him Crysania. The pair of them had been followed and chased by dark creatures, who were sent by Raistlin. Later, Tika casts Caramon out of the house to accompany Tas, Crysania, and Bupu (a gully dwarf who fell in love with Raistlin), who are travelling to the Tower of Wayreth. En route, they encounter Lord Soth, a death knight, who would have killed Crysania had not Paladine interceded and brought her soul to dwell with him. The group continues on to the Tower where they find out Raistlin plans to travel back in time and gain power to challenge Takhisis, head god of evil, and take her place. It is decided that the group, minus Tas and Bupu, will go back to stop him. This serves a twofold purpose, as Crysania can find the healing she needs in the past. However, during the spell, Tas interrupts and goes back with them, defying the law that kender, dwarves, and gnomes cannot go back in time for fear of disrupting and changing it. The group finds themselves in pre-Cataclysm (Dragonlance) Istar, a holy empire and residence of the Kingpriest, the most powerful cleric in the world. However, thanks to Raistlin's intercession, guards discover them and they think that Caramon has attacked Crysania, as he is dressed in rags and she is covered in blood. Crysania is taken to the Temple of Paladine, home of the Kingpriest, and Caramon is taken to the Games of Istar, a colosseum-like arena which pits contestants against each other in mock fights. Raistlin has sent Caramon to the Games so that he can regain his former strength and recover from his drunken, fat self. Unbeknownst to Caramon, Raistlin has in fact bought Caramon for the games. Caramon realizes at this time it is necessary to kill Fistandantilus to save Raistlin. After getting back into shape and being duped into killing a fellow gladiator, Caramon enacts his plan. However, once he is about to kill Fistandantilus, he finds out that Fistandantilus has been replaced by Caramon's brother, Raistlin. Caramon cannot kill him; it is revealed that Raistlin has taken Fistandantilus's lifeforce into himself, fully taking control of his body. The scene shifts to Crysania, who is talking to Denubis, an old cleric. When Crysania leaves, the ancient elven cleric Loralon contacts Denubis and takes him away, as all true clerics in the world were taken away before the Cataclysm. Crysania then goes to the Kingpriest's chamber and meets Raistlin there. He reveals the Kingpriest for what he is, a mere man. Crysania runs, broken, from the chamber. Later, around Yuletime, she meets again with Raistlin and he warns her of the anger of the gods. Caramon, back at the games, discovers that Raistlin had nothing to do with the death of the man Caramon had killed in the games. Caramon, after meeting with Crysania, tries to deter some friends of his from staying in Istar, but they do not listen. Caramon then goes after the magical device that can return one person (not many people, as Caramon believes) to their proper time, but finds Tas has taken it in the hopes of preventing the Cataclysm. Finding out that Raistlin has arranged for Caramon's friends to fight him in the Arena, Caramon decides that he must kill Raistlin. Tas, with the magical time travelling device, goes to the chamber where the Kingpriest will make his demand of the gods for great power in order to defeat evil. Crysania also arrives, as she wants to hear his exact words. Crysania is contacted by Loralon, but refuses his offer to go with him. The Kingpriest makes his demand of the gods. Caramon begins the battle against his friends at the same time Tas activates the device. To Tas's horror, the device falls apart. Caramon then fights his friends, resulting, though not by his choice, in their deaths. Crysania, Tas, and Caramon rush to Raistlin's chambers beneath the Temple, as Istar crumbles around them. Tas is pinned beneath the falling ceiling. Caramon approaches Raistlin, bent on killing him. However, Crysania risks her life to save Raistlin, and she stops Caramon long enough with a prayer so that Raistlin may complete the time-travel spell that will save them from the Cataclysm. At the end of the novel, the Cataclysm strikes.
7009179	/m/0h023c	Fathom Five	Robert Westall		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel reunites some of the characters from The Machine Gunners, specifically Chas McGill, "Cem" Jones and Audrey Parton, whilst introducing the middle-class Sheila as Chas's sometime girlfriend. Set in 1943, two years after the events of The Machine Gunners, it traces the attempt to uncover a spy in Garmouth.
7010473	/m/0h03nr	Meet the Austins	Madeleine L'Engle		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Vicky Austin's noisy, loving, mostly-happy family is disrupted when the family's honorary uncle dies in a plane crash. His co-pilot was also killed, leaving behind a ten-year-old daughter, Maggy, who has no one to care for her. The Austins take Maggy in, and she proves to be a spoiled, troubled only child who had very little family life. Maggy encourages Vicky's sister Suzy to misbehave, which makes everyone's life more difficult. Meet the Austins is largely episodic; each chapter covers a specific incident such as Vicky's bicycle accident or a family vacation. Throughout the book Vicky comments on the changes her family experiences during this time, and the reader sees her growing self-awareness. Although Vicky will later appear in three novels that have fantasy and/or science fiction themes, there are no such elements in Meet the Austins.
7012474	/m/0h06dn	Duma Key	Stephen King	2008-01-22	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Edgar Freemantle, a St. Paul, MN contractor, barely survives a horrific on-site accident where his truck was crushed by a crane. Freemantle's right arm is amputated, and severe injuries to his head cause Edgar to have problems with speech, vision, and memory. As a result, Edgar also has violent mood swings and thoughts of suicide. During one of those mood swings, he attacks his wife, who later claims that as a main reason why she divorced him. On the advice of his psychologist, Dr. Kamen, Edgar takes "a geographical" - a year long vacation meant for rest and further recovery. He decides to rent a beach house on Duma Key, a small island off the west coast of Florida, after reading about it in a travel brochure. Edgar's beach house is located on a part of the island called Salmon Point; Edgar nicknames the house "Big Pink," because of its rich pink color. On the advice of Dr. Kamen, Edgar revives his old hobby of sketching after he moves into Big Pink. He settles in with the help of Jack Cantori, a local college student. Edgar becomes obsessively involved in his art, painting with a furious energy and in a daze. Edgar brings up psychic images in his paintings; he learns that his younger daughter, Ilse, is engaged to a choir singer and that his ex-wife is having an affair with his former accountant by painting these situations. While exploring the island with a visiting Ilse, Edgar drives past an elderly woman, Elizabeth Eastlake. Ilse becomes violently ill as they drive into an overgrown part of the island. Elizabeth later calls Edgar, warning him that Duma Key "has never been a lucky place for daughters". Edgar initially disregards the message, since Eastlake has Alzheimer's disease. Edgar slowly recuperates helped in part by taking longer and longer walks along the beach. He slowly approaches and eventually meets and befriends a man in his late 40's whom Freemantle had seen sitting under an umbrella off in the distance. This character, Jerome Wireman, to whom Edgar becomes quite close, is a hired companion for Eastlake. As it turns out during the conversation, Miss Eastlake is very wealthy and owns half of the island, while the other half is a subject of dispute. The way Edgar paints becomes systematic: he gets a phantom-limb sensation and he paints a psychic image. He eventually compiles a large catalog of artwork and is convinced by his friends to try to sell it to an art gallery; he does and the gallery plans to exhibit his work. While the exhibition is being planned, Edgar gradually begins to understand that his paintings have a paranormal power that allow him to manipulate events, places and people. But nobody outside of Edgar's close family and friends will ever know this. It is evidenced when one of his paintings removes a bullet that was lodged in Wireman's brain from a previous suicide attempt, and another causes Candy Brown, a man accused of raping and murdering a young girl in a highly publicized case, to die suddenly in his prison cell. Elizabeth advises Edgar that due to the power they possess his paintings should be removed from the Island after the exhibition. Elizabeth makes a surprise appearance at the exhibition, and after seeing the paintings herself for the first time becomes distressed and tells Edgar a number of things, including that the "table is leaking". Elizabeth suffers a violent seizure as she is trying to tell Edgar this and dies in the hospital soon after. Edgar suspects that the entity, Perse, silenced Elizabeth. When Edgar returns to Duma the next day he discovers that Big Pink was broken into and finds a canvas with "Where our sister?" sprawled on it, left in the house along with the footprints of an adult and two children. He soon discovers that those in possession of his paintings either die, or become possessed by "Perse" and carry out her deeds, which mainly include killing people close to Edgar. Most notably, Mary Ire, who had purchased one of a series of "Girl and Ship" paintings, breaks into Ilse's apartment and kills her by drowning her in her bathtub (just minutes after Ilse burns "The End of The Game" at Edgar's request). Mary Ire commits suicide almost instantly thereafter. Edgar begins to realize that his paintings are connected to tragic events in Miss Eastlake's childhood. Edgar discovers, through both his paintings and the drawings done by a young Elizabeth after she had suffered a head injury and began drawing herself, that Elizabeth had inadvertently used her paintings to discover a figurine off of the coast of Duma Key. This figurine, of a red-cowled woman, used the young Elizabeth to begin changing the reality around her. Elizabeth tried to use her power to destroy the figurine by drawing it and then erasing it. This only enraged the entity Persephone, which then killed Elizabeth's twin sisters by leading them into the surf and drowning them. A young Elizabeth, with the help of her Nanny, eventually discovered that the entity could be neutralized by drowning her in freshwater, and Elizabeth was able to do this by placing the figurine in a cask that is sealed in a cistern under the original house on Duma Key. Intent on putting a stop to Perse following the death of his beloved daughter, Edgar, along with Wireman and Jack, travels to the house Elizabeth lived in as a child, which is now overgrown by thick, unnatural vegetation. They manage to find the figurine, and are able to contain it in freshwater inside one of their flashlights. Later, Edgar takes the flashlight back to Big Pink, where his daughter Ilse begins to form out of the sand and seashells under the house. The entity offers Edgar immortality and forgetfulness in exchange for the flashlight. Edgar, however, has a different flashlight and tricks the entity masquerading as his daughter to get close enough to him that he can destroy it. Later, Edgar drops the figurine into one of the freshwater lakes of Minnesota. The book ends with Edgar starting his final painting; a storm destroying Duma Key. A number of Edgar's paintings play significant roles in the novel and are described in great detail, both in their creation and how they look, beginning with his very first extensive drawing upon arrival at Big Pink, a ghostly picture of a ship on the sunset titled Hello. He quickly experiments with a number of sunsets, which all fail to match up to "Hello". Although moving slowly at first, he rapidly increases in talent and figures out how to replicate the surrealism of his first drawing by adding objects hovering in the background of the sunsets, beginning with his Sunset with Conch. As he finds out from one of the novel characters, he lives in the house where Salvador Dalí stayed in the latter part of his life, having an affair with Elizabeth Eastlake. The novel contains an expansive cast of minor characters while maintaining a rather small circle of central players. *Edgar Freemantle: is the central character in the book, which focuses on his struggles and he eventually takes the lead in the climatic fight against Perse. *Jerome Wireman: is a former lawyer from Omaha who moved down to Florida after losing his wife and daughter, surviving a suicide attempt, and being fired from his law firm. *Elizabeth Eastlake: a wealthy heiress and former art patron suffering from Alzheimers, she plays a major role in background of the story and in leading the protagonists to stopping the evil force present on the island. *Pam Freemantle: Edgar's wife who divorces him at the beginning of the novel. During the novel she has several affairs, but gradually reconciles with him until the events of the climax begin. *Ilse Freemantle: Edgar's younger daughter who remains the only person from his "past life" to stay close to him and who is the person he loves most in the world. *Jack Cantori: local college student who serves as Edgar's chauffer and handyman, keeping the house stocked with groceries and picking up whatever odds and ends he needs. It is his quick thinking that allows them to trap Perse at the end of the novel. *Perse: the evil force manifested on Duma Key, she first reached out through young Elizabeth Eastlake to get back to the surface from the ocean before being trapped in freshwater (she is left powerless by it), until the present day. She commands a ship of damned souls, and while not human is said to have something distinctly feminine about her, and she is manifest in an old china doll with a red cloak. She is again put back to sleep at the end of the novel though the characters fear she will eventually escape again. Her full name, Persephone and her description and place are all generally influenced and taken from the Greek Goddess Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld (although, like many of King's entities, she is also decidedly Lovecraftian). Perse's ghost ship (The Persephone) resembles the Caleuche, a ghost ship from Chilote legends. There are a large number of minor characters in the book who have only passing significance to the main characters or to the plot of the book, including large numbers of friends and family from Edgar's "other life" as well as Wireman's family and boss, a number of characters with loose association to the two, and the various people who rent houses on Duma Key during the tourism season.
7016247	/m/0h0g13	The White People	Arthur Machen	1904	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A discussion between two men on the nature of evil leads one of them to reveal a mysterious Green Book he possesses. It is a young girl's diary, in which she describes in ingenuous yet evocative prose her strange impressions of the countryside in which she lives, as well as conversations with her nurse, who initiates her into a secret world of folklore and ritual magic. Throughout, she makes cryptic allusions to such topics as "nymphs", "Dôls", "voolas," "white, green, and scarlet ceremonies", "Aklo letters", the "Xu" and "Chian" languages, "Mao games", and a game called "Troy Town" (the last of which is a reference to actual practices involving labyrinths or labyrinthine dances). The girl's tale gradually develops a mounting atmosphere of suspense, with suggestions of witchcraft, only to break off abruptly just at the point where a supreme revelation seems imminent. In a return to the frame story, the custodian of the diary reveals that the girl had "poisoned herself—in time", making the analogy of a child finding the key to a locked medicine cabinet.
7017268	/m/0h0hks	The Flame Knife	Robert E. Howard		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Conan, leader of a band of kozaki in the service of King Kobad Shah of Iranistan, quarrels with his patron over the latter's command to capture Balash, chief of the Kushafi and Conan's friend. Instead, Conan takes his band to warn the Kushafi. In the Gorge of Ghosts, the two bands are attacked by members of the Sons of Yezm, a cult of assassins whose symbol is the flame knife. The cultists kidnap Nanaia, Conan's current girlfriend. The Cimmerian tracks them to their stronghold, where he becomes embroiled in a conflict with his old enemy Olgerd Vladislav, a foe first encountered in Howard's story "A Witch Shall be Born".
7017877	/m/0h0jhl	Sixth Grade Secrets	Louis Sachar	1987	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Laura Sibbie starts a secret club at school, she makes the other members give her something totally embarrassing as "insurance," to make sure they don't tell anyone else about the club. She promises to keep the insurance secret, unless someone blabs. Gabriel wants to join, but when Laura asks him, there is a misunderstanding and he storms out to form a rival club, Monkey Town. The pranks they play on each other escalates into ugly and destructive acts. It gets to a point where Gabriel steals the insurance, and reveals it to the school. Sheila (whom hates Laura) and a friend, Howard, corner Laura on her way from school and cut a large chunk out of her long hair. Laura gets a new, short, curly hair style which Gabriel, arriving with daisies, likes. The sheared Laura sees how foolish they've been, and the truth of Gabriel's affection comes to light.
7018911	/m/0h0ldn	Paradise of the Blind	Dương Thu Hương			 Paradise of the Blind begins in the 1980s. Hang, a young Vietnamese woman receives a telegram telling her to visit her uncle in Moscow, who is very ill. Hang works in a textile factory in Russia, thousands of miles from Moscow. The account of her train journey to Moscow is then interspersed with her reminiscences of her childhood and adolescence in Vietnam and the earlier history of her family. Que, Hang's mother, lives alone in a village after the death of her parents. After her tragedy, a community ritual is held where the citizens of the town offer her piesches, but she is confused by the thought of the Vietnamese delicacy and declines it. When she is twenty she marries Ton, a schoolteacher. They are happy together for nearly two years, until Que's brother Chinh returns, in about 1956. He has been fighting with the communists, who now run the country. Chinh forbids Que to speak to Ton because his family are landlords and are therefore enemies of the peasantry. They belong to what Chinh calls the exploiting class, who must be denounced and punished. Such denunciations are carried out in front of all the villagers. All the landowners are denounced, and their land is confiscated, which includes Que's sister-in-law Tam and her grandmother Nhieu. However, Hang's father escapes. Que is left alone; Chinh will not even let her talk to Tam. Distressed, Que disappears from the village for six months, during which Chinh also leaves. Some years later, the land reforms are rescinded. The Special Section for the Rectification of Errors arrives in the village, and at public gatherings the villagers vent their grievances over the injustices they suffered. Que is a target for vengeance, because Chinh is her brother, but Tam protects her. On the train ride to Moscow, Hang recalls a visit she made with a friend to Kiev and then returns to the family story. Her mother could no longer live in the village and leaves for Hanoi, where she lives in a working-class slum and makes a living as a street vendor. Ten years later, Hang is born. She grows up miserable and lonely, knowing nothing about her father, since her mother refuses to answer her questions. When Hang is nine, Uncle Chinh returns. It is ten years since he and his sister have seen each other. Que invites her neighbors to meet him, and they are all impressed that he is responsible for ideological education in a northern province. Chinh reproaches Que for being a street vendor, since he thinks such people are members of the bourgeoisie who are enemies of the revolution. He says he will get her a job in a factory, even though she does not want one. The real reason for Chinh's visit is that he wants his share of the money from the sale of their parents' house. Que takes Hang to the village to get the money. Finally, Hang's mother tells her the story of her father. Ton flees the village and finds shelter at the home of the parents of a former student of his. They ask him to leave quickly, however. Ton takes a three-day trip up the river in a sampan. Eventually he arrives in a Muong minority region, where he settles down and marries again, becoming the son-in-law of the village vice president. He teaches the village children, and his wife bears him two sons. After six years, a traveling salesman stops at the village, and it transpires that he knows Hang's mother. Ton visits her in Hanoi, and that is when Hang is conceived. Hang next recalls a visit she and her mother made to Aunt Tam, who has become rich. It is the first time Hang has met her aunt, and Tam tells the story of how she survived after she was evicted from her house. During the Rectification of Errors, her house was restored to her as well as her five acres of rice paddy fields. She tells of what happened to Ton. After visiting Que, he returned to the Muong village and his wife, but she refused him permission to visit Que again and to care for his child. Feeling shamed, Ton drowned himself in a river. Tam has not forgiven Chinh for his persecution of her brother. Back in the present, Hang recalls a quarrel with her roommates in Russia over a lost sewing machine, before returning to her childhood memories. She recalls how, as she and her mother are about to return to Hanoi, Aunt Tam showers her with love and gives her gold earrings. It is an unsuitable gift for a nine-year-old and it makes Hang feel uncomfortable. When they are back in Hanoi, Uncle Chinh visits and tells Que that he has found her a job as a clerk in the office of a factory. But she refuses to accept it. After Chinh leaves, Que is depressed but is comforted by her neighbor, Neighbor Vi. During Tet, the national holiday celebrating the Lunar New Year, Aunt Tam arrives, bringing huge provisions as a gift for Hang. She also gives Hang money. A year or so passes, and Que and Hang visit Uncle Chinh and his wife and two young sons. They believe Chinh has recently been very sick, but he denies it, although he is clearly undernourished. Que discovers a new purpose in life by sending gifts to her two young nephews, even though she is robbed of everything she has at her vendor's stall. At Tet, she takes more gifts for the boys, but Hang does not enjoy the visit and decides she will never visit her uncle again. Meanwhile, Aunt Tam showers gifts on Hang, who is now a teenager. Hang remembers when Aunt Tam stayed at their house, looking after Hang as she studied for her college entrance exams. Because Aunt Tam is looking after Hang, Hang's mother becomes indifferent to her. Hang tries to win back her love, while Que seeks acceptance from Uncle Chinh's family. Hang goes to stay with her aunt for a week, where she enjoys the feasts that Aunt Tam prepares. At one banquet, almost the entire village is invited, including Duong, the village vice president, who is hated for his high-handed behavior. Aunt Tam criticizes him to his face about an incident in which a man was arrested without a warrant. She says the man's only crime was that he insulted Duong and the Party secretary. Aunt Tam then tells stories about wise and foolish leaders in Vietnamese history, which everyone enjoys except Duong. Embarrassed by Aunt Tam's taunting of him, he makes an early departure. Hang reveals that this is not her first trip to Moscow to see her uncle, who visits Moscow on government business. She saw him there a year ago and discovered that he makes money by trading on the black market. Ten days after the banquet, Hang returns to live with her mother and also to attend the university. She is happy for a while, but then Chinh falls ill with diabetes. He needs American medicine, and Que makes sacrifices in order to provide it. As a result, she and Hang do not have enough to eat. Hang wants to sell one of the rings that Aunt Tam gave her, but her mother will not let her. Aunt Tam finds out about the situation and demands her gifts back. She refuses to allow her money to be used to help Chinh, whom she regards as a mortal enemy of her family. After this, Hang's relationship with her mother deteriorates, and during a quarrel her mother throws her out of the house. For a while Hang stays at a dormitory in her high school while she continues her college education, supported by Aunt Tam. But then her mother is hit by a car, and her leg is amputated. Hang visits her in the hospital and they are reconciled. Hang discontinues her studies and takes a job in Russia, so she can support her mother. Back in the present, Hang arrives in Moscow. Uncle Chinh is no longer in the hospital but is staying at the apartment of Mr. Khoa, a Vietnamese graduate student. She finds Chinh alone in Khoa's room. It turns out that he works for Khoa and two other Vietnamese students, cooking and housekeeping for them. When the men return, they do not treat him well. When he is not there they speak mockingly about him, and the one Hang calls the Bohemian picks an argument with him over his practice of enforcing Communist Party orthodoxy. The next morning, the Bohemian gives Hang money to cover shipping expenses for Chinh's black market trading. Hang returns to the Russian province where she lives in a dormitory for textile workers. She finds a telegram asking her to return home because Aunt Tam is dying. She returns to Moscow where the Bohemian helps her to get an exit visa and also buys her a plane ticket. She returns briefly to her mother's house before going to the village where Aunt Tam lives. Aunt Tam has managed to hang on to life, waiting for Hang to come. She gives Hang a key to a trunk that holds the jewelry she bought for her and map of the garden to show where Hang's inheritance is buried. After Aunt Tam dies, Hang arranges for three memorial ceremonies, but she decides to disobey her aunt's instructions to live in her house. She cannot live in the past and must strive to fulfill her own dreams.
7021636	/m/0h0qzm	The Great Gilly Hopkins	Katherine Paterson	1978-03-29	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gilly Hopkins a mean, brash young girl is going to another foster home. She hates living with different people all the time and just wants to settle in with her birth mother Courtney Rutherford Hopkins. While living at Trotter home, Gilly initially gets into trouble as usual. Gilly doesn't like how Trotter looks, and she quickly decides she is going to hate her for the rest of her life. Gilly quickly hatches a plan to escape. She knows that her mother lives in San Francisco so she writes a letter to Courtney saying that her beloved Galadriel will be with her soon. When Gilly escapes the first time, she gets caught by some police people at the train station and Trotter is to immediately come down to the station to retrieve her. Gilly was really disapppointed because she really wanted to go to her Mother. After some days have passed, Gilly's grandmother, Nonnie comes to Trotters house and tells her that she will come and take her home. But now Gilly realizes that she really wants to be with Trotter. Unfortunately, Gilly has to get picked up by Nonnie, and she goes to Nonnie's house. Then Gilly has good news: her mother Courtney is coming. But when she goes to the airport, Courtney is not the Courtney she remembers: Courtney has become fat, her hair color got whiter, and a lot of other things Gilly didn't expect. Gilly also finds out that her mother only came because Nonnie paid her, not because she wanted to come. She realizes for the first time, how foolish she had been, and who she really loved was Trotter.
7023642	/m/0h0tdv	Cashel Byron's Profession				 In Shaw's preface "Novels of my Nonage", written in 1901, he disparages his early work, including Cashel Byron's Profession: "...people will admire [the author] for the feats any fool can achieve, and bear malice against him for boring them with better work." He also resurrects a heavily edited Robert Louis Stevenson quote used to promote the book. The full text of the quote breaks down the story into parts, including one part “blooming gaseous folly”. The novel follows Cashel Byron, a world champion prizefighter, as he tries to woo wealthy aristocrat Lydia Carew without revealing his illegal profession. Lydia is portrayed as a moral and intelligent woman (although "priggish" according to Shaw) and is constantly contrasted with the "ruffian" Cashel. Lydia was advised by her recently deceased father to find a husband with a profession, as opposed to an idle gentleman or an art critic like her father. Cashel’s childhood ends when he runs away from school to Australia and becomes apprentice to an ex-world champion boxer. When Cashel goes to England to secure his world title in that country he meets Lydia at her country manor. After much miscommunication and drawing room comedy, Cashel gives up boxing and succeeds in marrying Lydia. As in his postscript to "Pygmalion" (1912), in which he describes Eliza Doolittle's future life, Shaw chose to portray the Byron marriage in a realistic manner and narrates how Lydia comes to regard Cashel as "one of the children". According to "Note on Modern Prizefighting" (1901) Shaw intended the fights described in Cashel Byron's Profession to turn the public away from the sport but the novel is written in such a light-hearted tone this unlikely result never materialized.
7025224	/m/0h0ww2	Brightness Reef	David Brin	1995-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Starting around the year 930 C.E., and continuing until the 23rd century, sooners belonging to eight patron-class races illegally plant colonies on the planet Jijo. ("Sooner" is a term from US history, and is used in the Uplift stories to describe illegal settlers on worlds that have been declared fallow, i.e. to be left uncolonized so that the ecosystem will recover and native intelligences may have a chance to develop.) The eight races are: g'Keks, Traeki (similar to Jophur), Glavers, Qheuen, Hoon, Tytlal (AKA noor beast), Urs, and Human. By the beginning of the novel, the Glavers have (partly) regressed to pre-sentient animals and the Tytlal have successfully disguised themselves as wildlife. The novel begins with the discovery of a badly injured stranger. The stranger is nursed by Sara, daughter of Nelo the Papermaker. The stranger cannot speak and does not seem to recall his origin. While Sara oversees his recovery, the story shifts to her two brothers, Lark and Dwer. Lark is a widely known biologist and a heretic: he preaches a belief that the members of the Six races should make themselves extinct by not breeding. Only by doing this, he believes, can they be redeemed for their ancestors' sin of settling on Jijo. Dwer is a master hunter who serves the Council of the Six Races by keeping members of all sooner races from going beyond the Slope. The other two main characters are the young adult — and keen writer — Alvin the Hoon (proper name: Hph-Wayuo) and traeki High-Sage Asx. On a mission for the Council, (with an annoying noor called Mudfoot in tow) Dwer encounters a teenage girl, Rety, who was raised in a human tribe in the forbidden lands beyond the Slope. She is chasing a robotic bird she discovered spying on a hunting party of her tribe. She escapes from Dwer and continues tracking the bird; Dwer follows, and they both become ensnared in the domain of a crazy mulc spider. The spider attempts to capture the two humans and robot, but is seriously damaged when a second larger robot arrives and shoots down the robot bird. In the flames and confusion, Dwer and Rety are rescued by Lark. The robot bird's origins remain mysterious, but the second robot came from a starship that landed near the Glade of Gathering (the center of the annual Gathering festival). Several humans emerge from the starship and proclaim themselves servants of the Rothen — the secret patrons of Humanity. The Rothen representatives (also called Daniks) are very secretive about their purpose on Jijo, but they request the assistance of the council of Sages in their exploration of Jijo, and the council provides the assistance in an attempt to discover what the Rothen are hiding. Lark is employed as a biologist to escort the Danik researcher Ling as she surveys Jijo's biosphere. On the southern coast of the slope, Alvin and his friends Huck (a g'Kek), Pincer-Tip (a qheuen) and Ur-ronn (an urs) receive unexpected assistance from Uriel the smith in completing their summer project: a submarine to explore part of the Midden — an undersea subduction zone that destroys the form of anything placed on it. The Midden is where each of the races on Jijo sunk their starships, and where the races still continue to deposit the bodies of their dead and non-decomposable trash (all of which are called "dross"). In return for her assistance, Uriel requests that Alvin and his friends locate a hidden cache of galactic technology. Rety recovers from her injuries after the robot firefight and is sent to the Glade of Gathering where the council and a Rothen shuttle reside. When the council concludes that the Rothen may destroy all sooners on Jijo to keep their existence and activities secret, Rety is drafted to help humans from the Slope join her family's illicit colony east of the Rimmers (a local mountain range). Rety, loathing the idea of returning to her impoverished (and abusive) clan, adopts a small male urs (yee) as her 'husband' and together they steal the remains of the robotic bird she tracked from the Sage studying it, and join the Rothen — using the bird as a bartering chip. Dwer, also recovered, is sent to lead the expedition over the Rimmers without Rety's aid. When the expedition arrives at Rety's tribe, they discover Rety and the Danik pilot Kunn subjecting the human tribe and a recently captured group of urs. Rety and Kuhn are trying to learn the source of the robot bird from the tribesmen who first saw it. The members of the expedition start to develop a plan to free the urs when Kunn learns the information he sought and departs. He leaves Rety with a robot to protect her until he can return. Using a gun (made without any metal) the expedition members attack the robot and damage it. When the robot fires back, Dwer climbs aboard to damage its weapons pod. He's still on the robot when it begins to retreat; also on the robot is Rety and the noor Mudfoot. The mute stranger and Sara travel to Biblios — the great library of Jijo — where Ariana Foo, a retired human sage, attempts to discern the stranger's origins. After the stranger recognizes music from Earth, Ariana is convinced he is a member of the galactic Human race. The stranger and Sara then depart for the Glade, but are ambushed by a pack of urs and wild men. The stranger disables many of the urs using sleep pills and knowledge of the native fauna. After fighting the wild men and the remaining urs, the stranger, Sara, and their companions worry that they won't be able to escape urrish retribution, as the urs can travel faster than they. Shortly thereafter, the sound of hooves signals the arrival of women riding horses (thought to be extinct on Jijo) in the company of friendly urs. In the Glade, two Rothen depart their ship to greet the denizens of Jijo and ask to participate in a ceremony to see the Holy Egg — a rock-like Jijoian artifact of great religious and spiritual importance to the Six Races. The Rothen also claim they sent the Holy Egg to Jijo to protect Humans by pacifying the other races. This causes immediate fracturing between humans and the other races, but the ceremony continues until a heretic blocks the way and claims the Rothen must leave or the Holy Egg will dispel the Rothen from the planet. The Rothen leader, Ro-kenn says the heretic has no power to stop him, but soon after there is an explosion down slope and the Rothen research station and several Rothen robots are destroyed. A quick investigation reveals the Holy Egg did nothing — the heretics planted and ignited explosives beneath the shuttle. The second Rothen, Ro-pol, and several Danik servants are dead. In a fit of rage, Ro-kenn points to a fleck in the sky and says it is his ship decelerating from orbit to bring retribution. In the course of several arguments between the council sages and Ro-kenn it is revealed that the Rothen intended to use the Holy Egg to transmit thoughts of hatred to the participants and turn the Jijoan peoples against one another. Following this realization, the Jijoan militias assault the remaining Galactics and manage to capture Ro-kenn and his remaining Danik servants. The story ends as Asx witnesses the arrival of a second galactic ship that easily disables the Rothen cruiser. Preparing to negotiate on the behalf of the six, Asx watches in horror as the hatch opens to reveal piled stacks of rings. These are the Jophur, religious fanatics who were engineered from the Traeki. They are enemies of all other races, and have come to Jijo.
7027463	/m/0h0_cf	High Deryni	Katherine Kurtz	1973-08-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place in June and July 1121, less than a year after the coronation of fourteen-year-old King Kelson Haldane. At the beginning of the book, Kelson is leading an army into the Duchy of Corwyn to put down the rebellion of an anti-Deryni zealot named Warin de Grey. Warin is allied with Archbishop Edmund Loris, the leader of the Holy Church. Together, they have taken the ducal capital of Coroth and are openly revolting against the Crown due to Kelson's support of his Deryni advisors, Duke Alaric Morgan and Monsignor Duncan McLain. Morgan and Duncan decide to go to Dhassa and seek to reconcile with the six bishops who have refused to follow Loris' anti-Deryni crusade. Meanwhile, in the border city of Cardosa, King Wencit Furstán, the powerful Deryni ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Torenth, seeks to convince Earl Bran Coris of Marley to betray Kelson and assist in an invasion of Gwynedd. Morgan and Duncan arrive at Dhassa and surrender to the bishops, who are led by Thomas Cardiel and Denis Arilan. After hearing their explanations for their previous actions, the two bishops agree to forgive them. On the border, Earl Sean Lord Derry, Morgan's aide, is captured by Bran Coris. Coris has decided to betray Kelson and immediately turns Derry over Wencit, who begins to torture Derry both physically and mentally. Morgan senses Derry's pain when he attempts to contact him, but his use of his powers is detected by Bishop Arilan, who reveals that he is also Deryni. Kelson's army then marches to Coroth, where the young king confronts the rebellious archbishop. Unwilling to assault Coroth directly, Morgan sneaks into the castle with Kelson, Duncan, and Bishop Cardiel. Once inside, they confront Warin and force him to re-evaluate his beliefs by comparing his mysterious healing ability to Morgan's. Having acquired Warin's aid, Kelson confronts Loris the following morning and takes the archbishop into custody. With the internal ecclesiastical schism now resolved, Kelson's army prepares to face the invading Torenthi army. Kelson learns of Bran Coris' treason, but is nonetheless determined to win the war. The Gwyneddan army arrives at the border shortly thereafter and is greeted by grisly evidence of Bran Coris' betrayal. During a parley session with the Torenthi invaders, Morgan manages to rescue Derry, but the army is unable to prevent the murder of fifty Gwyneddan soldiers, including Duncan's father. Wencit challenges Kelson to a Duel Arcane, a form of ritualized magical combat in which each king will be accompanied by three companions. Before Kelson can agree, Arilan suddenly requests a brief period to consider the challenge. A short time later, Arilan reveals that he is not only Deryni, but also a member of the Camberian Council, a secretive group of highly-trained Deryni who oversee and regulate such duels. In issuing his challenge, Wencit claims that he has secured the cooperation of the Council, but Arilan has heard nothing of such a request. He establishes a Transfer Portal in Kelson's tent and travels to the Council's chambers, demanding an explanation from his comrades. They soon realize that Wencit has attempted to trick Kelson by bringing four imposters to the duel. Though initially reluctant to arbitrate the duel, the Council finally agrees after Arilan brings Kelson, Morgan, and Duncan to confront them. The following morning, Kelson rides out to face Wencit, accompanied by Morgan, Duncan, and Arilan. Although furious when the real Council arrives, Wencit eventually concedes to their presence. The Duel Arcane begins, but it is suddenly interrupted before the first spell can be summoned. One of Wencit's allies reveals himself to be another member of the Camberian Council, one who has been working to bring down Wencit for years for his own personal reasons. He provided poisoned wine for Wencit and his other allies, and all four are soon dying from its effects. Unwilling to let his enemies suffer needlessly, Kelson uses his powers to kill each of them. With Wencit's death, the Duel Arcane is ended and Kelson emerges victorious.
7027786	/m/0h0_pr	Live and Let Die	Ian Fleming	1954-04-05	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 British Secret Service agent James Bond is sent by his superior, M, to New York City to investigate "Mr. Big", real name Buonapart Ignace Gallia, an agent of SMERSH and an underworld voodoo leader who is suspected of selling 17th century gold coins to finance Soviet spy operations in America. These gold coins have been turning up in Harlem and Florida and are suspected of being part of a treasure that was buried in Jamaica by the pirate Sir Henry Morgan. In New York, Bond meets up with his counterpart in the CIA, Felix Leiter. The two decide to visit some of Mr. Big's nightclubs in Harlem, but are subsequently captured. Bond is personally interrogated by Mr. Big, who uses his fortune telling-girlfriend, Solitaire (so named because she excludes men from her life), to determine if Bond is telling the truth. Solitaire lies to Mr. Big, supporting Bond's cover story. Mr. Big decides to release Bond and Leiter and has one of his men break one of Bond's fingers. Bond escapes, killing several of Mr. Big's men in the process, whilst Leiter is released by a gang member, sympathetic because of a shared appreciation of jazz. Solitaire later contacts Bond and they travel to St. Petersburg, Florida. While Bond and Leiter are scouting one of Mr. Big's warehouses used for storing exotic fish, Solitaire is kidnapped by Mr. Big's minions. Felix later returns to the warehouse by himself, but is either captured and fed to a shark or tricked into standing on a trap door over the shark tank: he survives, but loses an arm and a leg. Bond finds him in their safe house with a note pinned to his chest "He disagreed with something that ate him". After getting Felix to the hospital, Bond investigates the warehouse himself and discovers that Mr. Big is smuggling gold by placing it in the bottom of fish tanks holding poisonous tropical fish. Bond is attacked in the warehouse by Mr. Big's gunman, the "Robber", and the resultant gunfight destroys many of the tanks in the warehouse: Bond tricks the Robber and causes him to fall into the shark tank. Bond then continues his mission in Jamaica where he meets Quarrel and John Strangways, the head of the MI6 station in Jamaica. Quarrel gives Bond training in scuba diving in the local waters. Bond swims through shark and barracuda infested waters to Mr. Big's island and manages to plant a limpet mine on the hull of his yacht before being captured once again by Mr. Big. The following morning, Mr. Big ties Solitaire and Bond to a line behind his yacht and plans to drag them over the shallow coral reef and into deeper water so that the sharks and barracuda that he attracts in to the area with regular feedings will eat them. Bond and Solitaire are saved when the limpet mine explodes seconds before they are dragged over the reef: though temporarily stunned by the explosion and injured on the coral Bond and Solitaire are protected from the explosion by the reef, and Bond watches as Mr. Big, who survived the explosion, is killed by the sharks and barracuda. Quarrel then rescues Bond and Solitaire.
7029569	/m/0h1294	I Loved Tiberius	Elisabeth Dored		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story begins in Rome. Julia, the daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, suffers with an awkward relationship between her and her sixteen year old stepbrother Tiberius. He is frequently unfair to her leading to them often fighting and them being punished. Through the harshness of living in Livia's strict household Tiberius becomes attracted to Julia's more affectionate nature despite her being merely thirteen. Very quickly Julia becomes smitten with him and he obsessed with her. Tiberius decides that he wishes to marry Julia and plans to ask Augustus. However, before he has a chance, Augustus announces that Julia will be married to Marcellus as soon as she turns fourteen. Marcellus, who is in love with a consul's daughter, confides the truth to Julia. She gives him her blessing to go on seeing this girl but the affair ends after she becomes pregnant and her father marries her to a friend. Meanwhile Julia discovers Tiberius is conducting affairs with other women. Julia and Marcellus comfort each other and finally consummate their marriage. Nonetheless Julia finds Marcellus repugnant. Marcellus becomes jealous of Agrippa when Augustus nearly dies from an illness and names Agrippa his heir by giving him his signant ring. Shortly after Augustus recovers Agrippa and Marcella (His wife and Julia's cousin) nearly die in a fire at their house that was purposely lit. Agrippa confides to Julia that he suspects Livia might be involved. He subsequently decides to leave Rome and travel to Lesbos. Marcellus dies from the illness that nearly killed Augustus and Julia. Worried about her future Julia writes a letter to Agrippa (via Maecenas) begging him to return home. Meanwhile Tiberius approaches Julia in the hope that he might finally have her for himself. However Augustus decides to marry her to Agrippa. Julia marries to Agrippa; and Tiberius to Agrippa's daughter Vipsania. The depression over not being able to marry Julia for a second time drives Tiberius to drink until he his confronted with it by Julia and Agrippa. He stops for the sake of his marriage to Vipsania. Agrippa is deeply in love with Julia and has been since her marriage to Marcellus and to try and win favour with her he spoils her. However he is aware that she was in love with Tiberius and he with her. After a party where Tiberius attempts to seduce Julia, he begins to worry that the two will use Vipsania and himself as an excuse to see each other. Nonetheless, Julia chooses to go with Agrippa, rather than stay in Rome with Tiberius and Vipsania, when he leaves for a campaign in Gaul. Julia later discovers that Vipsania is in love with someone else, Gellus. She attempts to break them apart only to be blocked by Agrippa who says that she is only doing it to spite Vipsania. After this, Julia decides to distance herself from Tiberius as much as possible by travelling with Agrippa around the empire. Along the way, the pair discover that Livia has many spies, and Julia advises Agrippa to reduce the influence of these spies to ensure that, in the event of Augustus falling ill and dying, they won't be run out by Livia's followers. The most notable is Salome, Herod the Great's sister. Agrippa and Julia advice Herod to reinstate his first wife Doris to reduce Salome's influence. Livia realises this and attempts to get rid of Julia and her two sons by drowning them in a set-accident. However they are saved by Agrippa. Not long after this, Agrippa dies, and Julia's close ally and friend Maecenas, suggests that Livia had him poisoned. Julia becomes very depressed following Agrippa's death but tries to stay strong to ensure that her unborn child will be healthy. She gives birth to a little boy who is born feet first, like Agrippa was, and names him Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa Postumus in honour of his father. Eventurally Julia and Tiberius marry and are happy until the death of their son, Nero. After the death Tiberius becomes paranoid that Julia will betray him. Following the death of his brother Drusus he begins to take out his sorrow and anger on her as well as taking to drink again. He begins treating her badly, on one occasion twisting her arm so hard he dislocates it. When Augustus asks about it Julia tries to lie but he quickly realises Tiberius is abusing her. Augustus is disgusted with this and Tiberius leaves. He leaves telling Julia that it is probably best for keeping both Augustus and Livia off his back. The absence of Tiberius allows Julia to focus on her children and friends. She raises Agrippina and Postumus, as her elder children live with her father. She also raises Tiberius' only son Drusus. She also becomes fond of her cousin Antonia's son Claudius, who Postumus forges a friendship with due to their rejection by most other people. Julia begins a close friendship with her cousin Julus, Mark Antony's son. He proves to be a good protector to her sons as well as someone to talk to. However he quickly confesses he wants them to be lover; she rejects him at first but eventually gives in although Julia disbelieves that Julus has love in his nature. However her father's servant (and Livia's spy) Crispus, who was at one time considered as a "safe" husband choice for Julia, suspects something. Julia is eventually is arrested for trumped up charges of treason and is exiled. Her mother Scribonia chooses to go with her. She manages to sneak a letter from her children, written by Gaius, promising that once Augustus was dead they would bring both her and Scribonia back to Rome and charge Livia with the murder of their father, Agrippa. However all her children meet tragic fates: her son Lucius is poisoned and Gaius murdered on a campaign; her daughter Julilla is also exiled on trumped up charges of adultery; and her youngest son Postumus exiled. Julia learns from Agrippina that Postumus had become depressed and violent as a result of losing his mother and he was exiled for hitting Livia after she confesses to having his mother exiled and his brothers murdered. While in exile Postumus comes to see the error of his ways and is allowed to write a letter to his mother, telling her that he is studying well and working to make her proud. Meanwhile in Rome Augustus forgives Postumus when he realises, with the help of Agrippina, what Livia has been doing and tries to call him back. After seeing the change in Postumus' character he decides that he will change his will to make him his heir, rather than Tiberius. However Augustus becomes ill and dies before he is able to call Postumus back. Realising that he might die before Postumus is saved Augustus plans to have Postumus secretly removed from exile and replaced by his slave Clitus. To ensure that the plots to make Postumus emperor and restore Julia to favour come to nothing, Livia has Postumus secretly murdered. After hearing of the death of her last son Julia decides to kill herself. She confides to her mother that she intends to write down her story before she dies so that it can be passed on to her one surviving child, Agrippina. Before she dies, she realises that Tiberius has become corrupted by power like her father had and that it was Agrippa, not Tiberius, whom she truly loved; and that Agrippa and Scribonia are the only people that truly loved her.
7029693	/m/0h12fp	Magic Steps	Tamora Pierce	2000-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When her three foster-siblings leave Summersea to travel the world with their teachers, Sandry and her teacher, Lark, remain alone in Winding Circle Temple. After her uncle, Duke Vedris, suffers a severe heart attack, Sandry leaves Discipline Cottage to live with and care for him. While out riding with her uncle, Sandry makes two discoveries: the murder of Jamar Rokat, a myrrh trader, part of the war between organized crime families Rokat and Dihanur, and a boy named Pasco Acalon, whose dancing is visible to Sandry's magical vision as imbued with ambient magic. Sandry, a newly accredited mage, discovers that one of the responsibilities implicit in her mage's medalion is a duty towards any newly-discovered mage who has no teacher. When she finds that ambient dancing magic is so rare as to be unheard of, she is forced to teach Pasco to control his magic himself, while Lark puts her in contact with Yazmín Hebet, a non-mage dancer and an old friend of hers who takes Pasco as her student. Between the two of them they must teach Pasco how to dance spells and convince his strict family of harriers, Summersea's local police, that such a seemingly-frivolous education is necessary. When the perpetrators of the Rokat murders are discovered to be using Unmagic, the rare and deadly counter-magic that swallows energy and kills those who use it, Sandry and Pasco find out that they are the ones best suited to capturing the murderers. Sandry spins a net of unmagic, gathered at the scenes of the various murders, to capture the murderers, but her student Pasco is caught in the net, due to lingering to watch the capture- despite being told to leave the house. Sandry was forced to kill the murderers to save Pasco. With the murderers dead, Sandry realizes that she has outgrown living in winding circle and decides that she should stay with her uncle.
7031624	/m/0h156p	Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?	Don Petersen			 The story is a racially charged drama about teen drug addicts at a rehabilitation center, located on an island in a river bordering a large industrial city. An English teacher tries to make a difference in his students' lives. He encounters barriers in trying to do this -- the same barriers created by the system that hinders the addicts' development and keeps them coming back. One addict, Bickham, is a tough teenager who searched for his father and found him working in a seedy barber shop. Upon meeting his son, the barber shows him a dirty photograph. Contrasting Bickham is Conrad, an African-American addict. Conrad wants to recover and marry his love, Linda. During the play, his character leaves the rehabilitation group to live with his sister, who is also an addict. Aside from the students, there are only four characters in the rehabilitation center - a teacher, a psychiatrist, a policeman, and the center's principal.
7033218	/m/0h17d2	Bikini Planet	David S. Garnett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Waking in the 24th Century, Wayne claims to be John Wayne. He's appointed a GalactiCop Police Sergeant by his new employer, Colonel Travis. Unbeknownst to Norton, Travis sends Wayne as his double to Hideaway, the entertainment planet. On the nearby prison planet Arazon (colliquially known as "Clink"), the female prisoner Kiru (a neurotic) falls into league with a band of space pirates planning to escape. The mute bodyguard Grawl decides to protect Kiru. He even kills his friend Aqa after he and Kiru have sex. Once she escapes and gets to Hideaway, Kiru gets away from Grawl. He had planned on transplanting all of her organs to keep himself going. Wayne arrives on Hideaway and checks in as Robin Hood. He comes across a tailors' shop run by Janesmith, a princess-in-exile from the female-dominated planet of Algol. After identifying himself as Duke Wayne this time, Janesmith immediately has sex with him, thinking he's an aristocrat. Wayne is unwilling to continue, though, after discovering Janesmith has vagina dentata, but she uses hypnosis to knock him out. Wayne awakes up in his room alone, but a few seconds later Kiru comes rushing in to hide from Grawl. The two have sex and are then arrested, while still naked, by a band of amoeba aliens who have already captured the escaped space pirates. Both Wayne and Kiru escape the aliens' ship, but in different escape pods. Kiru ends up riding with Colonel Travis (under the false name of Eliot Ness) and Wayne ends up stuck with Grawl. Both escape pods land on an unknown planet. While Kiru and Travis land safely, Grawl sacrifices himself to help Wayne escape before the pod floods in the alien sea. Wayne is rescued and learns from Travis that the planet is to be the new Las Vegas, in direct competition with Hideaway. It will be called either Cafe World or Vegas World. The inhabitants all wear bikinis for uniforms, even while construction is underway. There are three alternate endings to the story. Two of which involve Kiru and Wayne marrying on Vegas / Cafe World, while the other involves a massacre of the characters by a resurrected Grawl.
7034259	/m/0h1923	For One More Day	Mitch Albom	2006-09-26	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book's theme is mortality: it analyzes how people might react to the chance to have a dead relative back for a day. The book tells the story of Charley “Chick” Benetto, a former baseball player who encounters a myriad of problems with his career, finances, family and alcohol abuse. This leads him to become suicidal. Charley goes on a drunken rampage and decides he is going to end his life in his old home town, but when he misses the exit, he turns around driving down the wrong side of the highway causing an accident, Charley flees to his old home – his suicide attempt an apparent failure – to see his mother, who had died eight years prior. Benetto returns to his old family home, and spends one more day with his mother, wherein a number of previously unknown factors related to his difficult childhood and troubled relationship with his father are revealed to him. His mother assists him in resolving his issues and getting his life back on track. The day ends when Benetto regains consciousness at the scene of the accident in a police officer's arms. The book's epilogue describes how Benetto was inspired by his experience to quit drinking and reconcile with family, including his daughter, Maria, before his death five years later. At the end, Maria is revealed to have been the narrator of the story.
7036224	/m/0h1d5d	Ticktock	Dean Koontz	1996	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story opens with Tommy getting a new corvette. He argues with his mother, refusing her offer for dinner. In a fit of rebellion, he eats two cheeseburgers, something his mother dislikes. He meets a blond waitress there (which he will meet later in the story again). His radio quits working during one of these two trips, and in the static are eerie voices. Once home, he finds a Rag doll on his front steps, along with a note, written in Vietnamese, which he knew when he was a child, but in his quest to be a true American forgot. After taking the doll into his study, it soon bursts open to reveal an evil creature who seems intent on killing Tommy. A message is left on his computer screen saying he has until dawn, but what will happen at dawn, Tommy does not know. After fate brings a meeting with Del, a woman who appears to speak somewhat cryptically, they embark on a race to flee the creature. She believes him too quickly, and often has mixed stories for all of her abilities. (At one point she stole a car, saying one minute she hotwired it, and the next that the key was in the ignition.) The doll appears to be growing larger as their journey continues. They visit Tommy's brother, Gi, to try and translate the note. They then go to Del's apartment, where we learn she's quite rich, but is a waitress anyway. She also shows another side to her when Tommy wants to see her paintings, and she threatens to shoot him if he does. Her dog seems incredibly smart, something that unnerves Tommy. In their journey to escape the ever growing doll, Tommy's Corvette is trashed, two cars are stolen, and one large boat is trashed. They arrive at Del's mother's home, which seems utterly odd. They claim to be able to listen to live stuff from the past with their radio. Del's mother shows an uncanny sense of time when she knows exactly when the rain will stop. Gi calls and tells Tommy to go to their mother, and not to bring the blonde along. Tommy brings Del along anyway, where he then learns the doll was conjured to scare him back home by a friend of his mother. They begin a ritual that, after a few harrowing minutes, completely dispels the monster. Tommy sees Del's paintings and they're of him. She had remotely viewed him over the past 2 years because she knows he is her destiny. He and Del get married in Vegas. Then they go back to their normal town, and in a conversation with Tommy's mother, Tommy learns Del is actually an alien, implanted in her mother when her mother and father were abducted a long time ago. Del's dog is also an alien, sent to be her guide. They are supposed to find the evil extraterrestrial influence and remove it. Del states that it is very lonely, but now it won't be because she has Tommy.
7036658	/m/0h1d_t	The Wedding!	David Michelinie	1987	{"/m/01vnb": "Comic book", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Spider-Man is web slinging through town and runs into Electro. He defeats him and then returns home, to find Mary Jane in the process of moving in. MJ leaves for a photo shoot, leaving Peter to ponder how on earth he'll be able to provide for him and MJ. Peter takes his photos of Spider-Man defeating Electro to the Daily Bugle and is surprised by the staff with a party in honor of his upcoming wedding to Mary Jane. J. Jonah Jameson arrives, clearly irritated, and starts to complain about why they are hosting a party when they're supposed to be working. As soon as Peter leaves, he states that he wants to cut the pay of everyone who didn't attend. Peter is barely able to sleep that night, contemplating his impending wedding. The next day he meets Mary Jane. He leaps to the ceiling and goes down to one knee, asking her to marry him once again. "I hate cleaning footprints off the ceiling," she responds with a smile. They both eat, but can't help shake their worries about the wedding. Mary Jane leaves for a meeting, where her old boyfriend presents her with two tickets to Paris, that she can only take if she skips the wedding. Peter goes to Aunt May's house, and goes through a scrap book, remembering his most prominent times with Mary Jane. MJ and her aunt arrive, and they announce the upcoming marriage to their family. She leaves in a Ferrari with her ex boyfriend, and Peter takes the subway home. Both are starting to have second thoughts about their marriage. When they meet up again that night, Spidey takes MJ out web-slinging to clear their heads. The next day, Peter's best man, Flash Thompson, and his best friend, Harry Osborn, take Peter out for a bachelor party, but he's beginning to show his true feelings about the wedding. They try to convince him that love conquers all. Meanwhile, Mary Jane is having a grand party across town. Peter finally decides to go home for the night, and has nightmares about all of his enemies trying to attack MJ, and being helpless to stop them. He wakes up in a sweat, wondering what he should do. Meanwhile, MJ is out with Liz Allan, wondering the same. Later at City Hall, all of the guests are in attendance, but both Peter and Mary Jane are late, leaving everyone confused. At the last minute, they both appear and are married by Mary Jane's uncle, judge Spenser Watson. (MJ's wedding dress was designed by real-life designer Willi Smith.) MJ gives Peter the tickets to France with which her ex-boyfriend tried to tempt her, and they go off on their honeymoon to begin their new life together, as Mr. and Mrs. Peter Parker. The wedding occurred simultaneously in the Spider-Man comic and in the daily news strip. In an attempt to save Aunt May's life, the 2007 storyline, Spider-Man: One More Day erased the wedding from continuity by Mephisto. Both participants are single again. How the changes prevented the wedding was explained in the storyarc O.M.I.T. In the first issue Spider-Man stops Electro and his gang. One of the gang members, Eddie, makes note of the arresting officer's name. Then Mephisto, as a red pigeon, swoops down and unlocks the door of the cop car Eddie is in. The officers are all occupied with cuffing Electro and Eddie escapes. Spider-Man is out patrolling that night and hears the gunshots of Eddie shooting at the arresting officer and his wife. While saving the cop and his wife, Spider-Man gets hit in the head with a cinder block. He chases after Eddie and tackles him off the side of a building. Spider-Man misses his web shot to save them because of the cinder block to the head, so he turns his body to absorb the impact and they both crash to the ground with Eddie on top of Spider-Man. On the wedding morning, MJ shows up but Peter does not as he is laying unconscious in an alleyway. When he wakes up and rushes to where the wedding was to take place, he finds Mary Jane there and the two decide to take what happened as an omen and simply live together. At which point, the bulk of the Spider-Man stories from that point to the events of One More Day take place as they did normally, but with the two as a couple and living together while being unmarried. However, Mary Jane makes it clear she does not want to be an unmarried mother, and thus Peter and MJ never conceive their child.
7041356	/m/0h1lqf	The Alien	K. A. Applegate	1997-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After destroying the Vag, the Animorphs assumed that they would see people freeing themselves of the Yeerks. They are disappointed until the day they take Ax to the cinema. A man's Yeerk is seen dying publicly. However, a Controller-policeman kills the free man. The Animorphs take Ax to the school as Philip, Jake's cousin, and a Yeerk who controlled one of Jake's teachers is seen dying as well. Chapman appears, orders the students to leave, and kills the non-Controller teacher. Jake and the other Animorphs become very angry with Ax because they feel betrayed. Innocent people are dying as a result of their actions. Ax retorts that they would not have destroyed the Kandrona had they known the consequences, to which Jake replies that he, Ax, still has a lot to learn about humans. That night, Ax feels lonely, and confused. Running, he ends up in Cassie's house. Cassie notices Ax's sadness, and asks him to have dinner with her family. Shocked at the fact that she noticed it, Ax accepts and enters, morphed as Jake. He has dinner and chats with the family. The next day, he meets with Marco to go to a bookshop in hopes that Ax would trust them if they trusted him. However, Marco forgets the money they collected for him to buy a book at home, so he and Ax go to Marco's house to pick it up. While Ax waits for Marco in the living room, he plays what he thinks is a game on Marco's father's computer called "Fix the mistakes.". He ends up messing up the computer. It turns out that he had developed a new system that was very advanced. Before destroying it, he used it to communicate with his home world. There, an Andalite made him assume all the responsibility for Elfangor's action and is consequently forgiven. When he was about to speak with his parents, he is interrupted by a Controller whose loved one had died when Visser Three chose to sacrifice her after the Kandrona's destruction. To avenge her, he tells Ax where and when Visser Three feeds his Andalite body. Ax decides to go alone and not tell the others about the information he received. He poisons Visser Three by morphing into a rattlesnake and biting him. As Ax is about to die, the Animorphs arrive to save him. With his host body having been poisoned, the Yeerk Visser Three leaves it. However Ax is unable to kill a fellow Andalite. So Visser Three's host Alloran-Semitur-Corrass asks him to tell his family that he is still alive and that he has not lost hope. Ax returns to the observatory, calls his home planet, and delivers Alloran's message. He announces Earth is his new home, and that he will tell the Animorphs everything. Ax tells the Animorphs that Seerow was the first Andalite to go to the Yeerk home planet, and that he felt sorry for the Yeerks and gave them the technology they later used to conquer the world. Contrary to what Ax had expected, the others didn't blame the Andalites for their problem. They recognized the good action and told him to keep trying to get the D, but to be more careful the next time.
7041458	/m/0h1ltw	The Changeling	Zilpha Keatley Snyder		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel's plot follows the developing friendship of two adolescent girls: shy, fearful Martha and free-spirited, mystical, imaginative Ivy. Ivy belonged to the shunned Carson family, who lived in the hills above town in a derelict Victorian mansion surrounded by neglected fruit orchards that had been handed down to her mother. But Ivy was not a typical Carson. Ivy explains to Martha when they first meet that she is a changeling, a child of supernatural parents who had been exchanged for the real Ivy Carson at birth. She returns to this theme with particular emphasis when she is threatened or harmed in any way. Martha comes from a well-to-do family completely in thrall to suburban values and suspicious of Ivy due to her background. The girls become friends in the second grade and soon are inseparable. Among other things, Martha discovers that Ivy is "absolutely fearless"; not courageous, but fearless. It is implied that this is at least in part due to abuse by her father or brothers. When Ivy cries, which is rarely, she sheds few tears and makes no sound at all. The illustrations as well as the text emphasize the contrasts between the girls. Ivy is dark, thin, beautiful, graceful and mature; Martha is blond, overweight, bucktoothed, clumsy, and cries easily. What they have in common is bright imagination, which they soon pool into a shared fantasy, almost a belief system. They play regularly in a beautiful, magical part of the woods and develop an elaborate paracosm called the Land of the Green Sky. Whenever they have trouble in their lives they enact rituals of their own devising which have an uncanny way of cadencing in the same way that their problems eventually resolve. As they grow older and enter their teen years, Ivy longs to be a ballet dancer and directs Martha into a career in drama. Martha becomes braver, bolstered by Ivy's encouragement. Ivy family’s reputation means she is never able to get a fair chance. Martha's family considers her a bad influence. She is blamed for anything that goes wrong. When the girls are in 8th grade, vandals strike their school and because Ivy is one of the "jailbird Carsons," she is wrongfully and maliciously accused of the crime. Ivy's family responds to this crisis in the manner typical of when one of their own has trouble with the law - they pack up their old, red truck and, with no warning, flee in the dead of night. Martha is devastated by the loss and confused by Ivy's cryptic and emotional assertions when they spoke for the last time. Martha must now come of age without her magical, kindred friend by her side. No one knew or loved Martha as Ivy did. Martha is left alone to make more shallow friendships with classmates.
7042786	/m/0h1nfh	The Horn of Mortal Danger	Lawrence Leonard	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Simon "Widgie" and Jen Widgeon are innocently exploring the abandoned Highgate rail tunnel near their home when they discover a hidden gateway halfway along it. Through this they find their way to a little old-fashioned railway station. At first the tunnels seem deserted. As Jen wanders down the tunnel to explore, the Railwaymen emerge and capture Widgie. Jen in her turn discovers an underground canal, complete with a little steamboat, which the railway crosses by means of a retractable bridge. Men emerge from the boat and take her captive. It quickly becomes apparent that Widgie and Jen have become caught up in an entire underground civilisation, the North London System, kept secret for centuries from the world above. Two civilisations, in fact, seemingly perpetually at war. Their arrival is the catalyst for a climactic battle between the Railway and the Canals. Widgie manages to escape and rescues Jen, and the realisation of the threat they pose should they escape above ground and expose the System forces the Railwaymen and the Canallers to set aside their differences for the time being in a vain effort to recapture them. In the course of the battle, giant Rats, kept imprisoned in a blocked-up tunnel, are released and proceed to spread through the whole system. As Widgie and Jen escape into the Post Office Railway, it appears that the entire civilisation is on the verge of disintegration under the assault from the Rats.
7044272	/m/0h1qq5	Song in the Silence	Elizabeth Kerner	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lanen Kaelar is a young woman who has been raised in Hadronsstead, believing that Hadron (the horse-breeder) was her father. She leads an unhappy life as she secretly longs to meet the Dragons of legend, for which she has had a powerful fascination, but she is forced to remain at Hadron's farm. When Hadron eventually dies, she feels freed. After an abrupt proposal from her cousin (who gets a bruise from her fist in response), she leaves to seek out the True Dragons of legend. On the journey she learns that her true father Marik has promised her as a demon sacrifice since before her birth, in payment for the making of an artifact that allows the user to see distant people and places. She finds a ship to the Dragon Isle for the Lansip harvest that used to occur every ten years, but no ship has returned from the trip in over 100 years due to the violent storms that lie between Kolmar and the Dragon Isle. After travelling on the ship with her father Marik lurking dangerously on board, she makes it safely to the Dragon Isle and meets Akhor, the mighty silver-scaled king of the Kantri (known to humans as "dragons"). She seeks him out with the two words that she utters on instinct, that he respects her instantly for; 'My brother?' Akhor, weary of the 'ferrinshadik' (a longing to know the mind of another species, similar to what Lanen herself feels), reveals himself, and discovers that Lanen alone of the humans (Gedri) he has ever known, is capable of hearing and replying in Truespeech, the Kantri form of telepathy. It is a trait all the Kantri share. Lanen comes to know Akhor, and for the first time since the Kantri departed the mainland, Kantri and Gedri are once again communicating with one another. Their meetings must be secret and both must break the rules of their people in order to meet with each other. In a madly short time they fall in love, knowing even as it happens that it is folly. When Lanen is horribly burned while helping Mirazhe, another of the Kantri, to give birth to the first dragon child born for many years, Akhor is terrified that she will die of her injuries and reluctantly delivers her into the hands of the only healer on the island - an ally of Marik's. Lanen is swiftly healed by the skilled ministrations of Marik's Healer, Maikel (Healers are humans who can wield a magical power to heal others), but is then spirited away by Marik, who intends to sacrifice Lanen to a demon in order to pay off a dark debt he has long owed. Lanen is kept ensorcelled and unable to call for aid, but Akhor learns of her plight from Rella, a human who came to the island ostensibly to gather Lansip leaves (which are worth their weight in silver due to their special healing properties), but she is actually a member of a order of spies, and she was hired to protect Lanen. Akhor manages to save Lanen in the nick of time, slaying the demon lord Lanen was to be sacrifed to, but Marik and his demon-caller ally Caderan manage to avoid Akhor's notice. The assembled Council of the Kantri soon learn of Lanen and Akhor's love, and their transgressions, and are prepared to sentence them to exile or death when Lanen manages to sway them incline them to mercy with an impassioned speech in defense of their actions. However, during Lanen's speech, Marik, consumed by greed, comes and steals the Soulgems of the Lost, a precious and irreplaceable treasure of the Kantri, while they are distracted. Akhor and two other of the Kantri pursue Marik back to his camp and a battle ensues, for Marik and his demon-calling servant Caderan had prepared for the possibility of a fight and so had demonic powers and items ready to oppose the Kantri with. Caderan is slain and Marik is driven insane, but Akhor suffers terrible wounds at Marik's hands and Rishkaan, one of the other kantri present at the fight, is killed. Akhor as an entity dies of his wounds, but he is mysteriously transformed into human form. Together they travel back to Kolmar and are eventually married.
7046698	/m/0h1vkg	Deep River				 The story traces the journey of four Japanese tourists on a tour to India. Each of these tourists goes to India for different purposes and with different expectations. Even though the tour is interrupted when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by militant Sikhs, each of these tourists finds their own spiritual discovery on the banks of the Ganges River. One of the tourists is Osamu Isobe. He is a middle-class manager whose wife has died of cancer. On her deathbed she asks him to look for her in a future reincarnation. His search takes him to India, even though he has doubts about reincarnation. Kiguchi is haunted by war-time horrors in Burma and seeks to have Buddhist rituals performed in India for the souls of his friends in the Japanese army as well as his enemies. He is also impressed by a foreign Christian volunteer who helped his sick friend deal with tragic experiences during the war. Numada has a deep love for animals ever since he was a child in Manchuria. He believes that a pet bird he owns has died in his place. He goes to India to visit a bird sanctuary. Mitsuko Naruse, after a failed marriage, realizes that she is a person incapable of love. She goes to India hoping to find the meaning of life. Her values are challenged by the awaiting Otsu, a former schoolmate she once cruelly seduced and then left. Although he had a promising career as a Catholic priest, Otsu’s heretical ideas of a pantheistic God have led to his expulsion. He helps carry dead Indians to the local crematoria so that their ashes can be spread over the Ganges. His efforts ultimately lead to his peril as he is caught in the anti-Sikh uproars in the country. Meanwhile, Mitsuko meets two nuns from the Missionaries of Charity and begins to understand Otsu's idea of God.
7048692	/m/0h1yc6	The Black March				 The journal of Peter Neumann is presented in chronological order: it begins in 1939 with various entries of his activities in the Hitler youth, and discussing plans with his friends to enter the SS. Peter's early entries are more jubilant and optimistic. He recounts his cruel training involving many life-or-death exercises, e.g., outrunning attack dogs, having to dig a fox hole before a tank rolls over him and the other men in training. He tells of how a few men died in such exercises. Peter's girlfriend reveals that she is a Jew; this, however, does not affect Peter negatively. During the middle of his entries he regards his duties with admiration and disdain for his commanding officers. Peter is, in one entry, awarded the Iron Cross second class for saving the lives of several battalions from a Sniper's nest (who were also armed with RPGs). In later entries, he tells of fierce combat in Russia, the most notable being a tale from a Russian civilian, in an occupied town, telling Peter and his fellow soldiers of the Partisans of Odessa and the Russian genocide at the hands of the Nazis. Towards the end, Peter returns home on leave were he informs his friend's parents of the their son's death, and on a visit to his home Peter is informed that his girlfriend has been moved to a ghetto. On visiting her he expresses sympathy for her condition but writes that he couldn't care less about other Jews in the same situation. He also talks with two concentration camp technicians at a bar, who tell him of their grisly job fixing incinerators. At the end, Peter and his unit are on the retreat. Peter, at this point, has been promoted to captain and expresses extreme discontent with both the SS and with the many civilians who are blaming the SS for aggravating the Russian troops. He hears many tales of Russian cruelty. At the end, Peter is trapped, alone and wounded, and surrounded by Russian troops. He hides in a small room filled with dead German soldiers and fires a damaged gun at a Russian 'clean-up' squad. The bullet he intends for himself does not do the job. His last words are "Why couldn't they have killed me?"
7049805	/m/0h1_4j	The Children of Húrin	Christopher Tolkien	2007-04-16	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Húrin and his brother Huor visit the hidden Elvish city of Gondolin. After a year, they swear not to reveal its location and are permitted passage to Dor-lómin. Húrin marries Morwen Eledhwen and they have two children, a son Túrin and a daughter, Lalaith. Lalaith dies almost in infancy, but Túrin grows to boyhood with a thoughtful nature. A kind woodworker in Húrin's employ, Sador, becomes his first friend. In the disastrous defeat of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears Húrin is captured alive and taken to Angband, stronghold of the dark lord Morgoth. Morgoth personally torments Húrin, trying to force from him the location of Gondolin, but despite his efforts, Húrin defies and even scorns Morgoth. For this, Morgoth places a curse on his family whereby evil will befall them for their whole lives, and imprisons Húrin high on a mountain, forcing him to witness his family's fate through Morgoth's own twisted eyes. At Morgoth's command, the allied Easterlings overrun Hithlum and Dor-lómin. Morwen, fearing her son's capture, sends Túrin to the Elven realm of Doriath for safety. Shortly after Túrin's unwilling departure, Morwen gives birth to a second daughter, Nienor. In Doriath, Túrin is taken as foster-son by King Thingol and becomes a mighty warrior, befriending the Elf Beleg Strongbow, and living more often with him on the marches of Doriath than in Thingol's halls. At one point during his life with Beleg on the fringes of the forest Túrin returns to Thingol's court, where his wild and unkempt appearance draws the scorn of Saeros, a proud Elf who believes that Men should be kept out of Doriath. After Saeros hurls a snide insult directed at Túrin's mother and sister, Túrin throws a dish in Saeros's face, injuring him. Saeros, angry over what happened in the hall, attacks Túrin from behind in the woods the next day. Túrin overpowers him, however, and strips him, forcing him to run naked through the woods shouting for help as Túrin pursues him. The Elf Mablung follows them, crying for Túrin to stop, but Túrin continues chasing Saeros until the terrified Elf attempts to jump a gorge too wide for him, and falls, dying in the water below. Mablung, having witnessed only the chase through the woods and not Saeros's original assault upon Túrin, believes that Saeros was humiliated without provocation and wishes to bring Túrin back to trial in Doriath. Túrin's pride restrains him from either correcting the misunderstanding or submitting to trial, and he chooses rather to leave Doriath and become an outcast. Thingol holds an absentee trial for Túrin, and as the only evidence is that Túrin humiliated Saeros without cause, Thingol is on the verge of outlawing him from Doriath until he should choose to return and ask for pardon. Just as the King's judgment is about to be put into effect, however, Beleg rushes in late accompanied by an Elf-maid named Nellas, who witnessed Saeros's assault upon Túrin from her vantage point in a tree. With Nellas's evidence taken into account, Thingol grants Túrin a full pardon, and Beleg leaves Doriath to find Túrin and bid him to return to Doriath. Túrin meanwhile joins a band of outlaws in the wild, the Gaurwaith or "Wolf-folk", who live by raiding and pillaging the property of the few Men left in the land. He kills one of their members by throwing a stone, then offers to take his place. Soon afterward Túrin kills the leader of the band to prevent him from killing a young woman from a nearby homestead, and the leaderless outlaws promote Túrin to the position of captain. Beleg traces the signs of Túrin's band, gathering news of Túrin from those who had seen or heard of him, but the outlaws repeatedly throw off his pursuit. After a year in the wild he succeeds in overtaking the band at a time when Túrin is absent. Mistrusting Elves in general and having become cruel through long lives of self-centered crime, the men mistreat Beleg in an attempt to elicit any information he might possess. After being tortured by the lawless gang for several days, Beleg is on the verge of death when Túrin returns. Túrin is horrified to see his friend so maltreated by his own men, and while tending Beleg Túrin vows to forsake the evil and cruel habits he has fallen into while among the lawless men, recognizing that his band's senseless cruelty towards the innocent Beleg can be traced back to his own lax standards. When Beleg recovers, he is able to deliver to Túrin the message of the king's pardon; Túrin is torn, but in spite of Beleg's pleas refuses to humble his pride, and will not accept the pardon and return to Doriath. Beleg then departs in order to participate in battles upon the north-marches of Doriath, in spite of Túrin's request that Beleg stay by his side. Some time later, Túrin and his men capture Mîm the Petty-dwarf, who ransoms his life by leading the band to the caves in the hill of Amon Rûdh, where the ancestral home of the Petty-dwarves is hidden. Despite the unfortunate death of Mîm's son at the hands of one of Túrin's band, Mîm grows to respect Túrin, and the outlaws set up a permanent base in the caves. In Doriath, Beleg decides against his better judgment to return to his friend, and arrives at Amon Rûdh to a loving reception from Túrin. The other outlaws resent Beleg's presence, however, and Mîm, who had earlier proclaimed his enmity towards the Elves, grows to hate him bitterly. Nevertheless everything proceeds smoothly for a while, the outlaw band gradually increases to a great number (though only the original fifty men are allowed entrance to the hidden caves of the Petty-dwarves), and becomes more daring and successful in the warfare against Morgoth's troops. At length, Túrin and Beleg even establish the realm of Dor-Cúarthol, and word spreads that Beleg and Túrin, long unheard-of, have appeared again as the captains of a great host. However, Mîm's hatred towards Beleg eventually reaches a breaking point, and he approaches a band of Orcs with an offer to lead them to the outlaw's headquarters on Amon Rûdh, in return for the promise of monetary compensation. (A footnote explains that there is another version of the tale in which the vital information is tortured out of an unwilling and captive Mîm; but the canonical version seems more likely, considering Mîm's later conduct.) Mîm lays down several other conditions, among them the demand that after the Orcs depart from Amon Rûdh, Beleg must be left behind, helpless, to Mîm's own mercy. The Orcs agree to all of Mîm's conditions, without the intention of fulfilling any of them except for that regarding Beleg. The dwarf leads them to the hidden caves, and Túrin's company is taken unawares. They retreat to the top of Amon Rûdh to defend themselves, but the entire band are eventually killed, excepting Beleg and Túrin, whom the Orcs want alive. They bind Túrin and carry him off towards Angband, while leaving Beleg wounded and helpless, chained to a rock. Mîm approaches him after all the Orcs depart and is on the verge of torturing the Elf to death, when Andróg, one of the outlaws, who is wounded and had appeared dead, rouses himself enough to drive Mîm away and release Beleg before succumbing to his wounds. Beleg remains in Amon Rûdh until his own wounds are healed, and then, knowing that Túrin is not among the dead and must have been taken captive, follows the company of Orcs. In pursuit of the Orcs, Beleg comes across a mutilated elf, Gwindor of Nargothrond sleeping in a forest. Gwindor had been an Elvish lord before being taken captive and forced to serve in Angband for many years, and Beleg remains with him. They see the Orc company pass by, and entering their camp that night find Túrin sleeping, and carry him away from the Orcs. When at a safe distance they stop, and Beleg begins to cut Túrin's bonds with his sword Gurthang, which Beleg had been warned was an evil blade which would not stay with him long. The sword slips in his hand and Túrin is cut; and Túrin, mistaking Beleg in the dark for an Orc who had come to torture him, leaps to his feet and kills Beleg with his own sword. When Túrin sees Beleg's face in a flash of lightning and realizes what he has done, he falls into a kind of frenzy, not speaking or weeping, but refusing to leave Beleg's body. In the morning Gwindor is able to bury Beleg, but Túrin remains crazed and witless with grief. Gwindor leads Túrin through the wild for months, and Túrin remains in a fixed state of grief and guilt, not speaking, but doing only what Gwindor bids him. At length, however, the two reach Eithel Ivrin, where Túrin finally weeps for Beleg, and is healed. Having regained his senses, he and Gwindor proceed to Nargothrond, where Gwindor lived before his long imprisonment in Angband. There Túrin gains favour with King Orodreth and earns the love of his daughter Finduilas, although she was previously engaged to be married to Gwindor, and Túrin does not reciprocate her romantic feelings. After leading the Elves to considerable victories, Túrin becomes the chief counsellor of Orodreth and effectively commander of all the forces in Nargothrond. This fuels Túrin's pride, and he begins giving extravagant orders which are arrogant and ill-thought-out, and eventually hasten the doom of Nargothrond. Messengers sent from Círdan warn Túrin to hide Nargothrond from Morgoth, but Túrin refused to retract his rash and prideful plans for full-scale battle, and treats the messengers rudely. However, after five years Morgoth sends a great force of Orcs under the command of a dragon, Glaurung, and defeats the army of Nargothrond on the field of Tumhalad, where both Gwindor and Orodreth are killed. Easily crossing over a great bridge which Túrin had had built against all counsel, Morgoth's forces sack Nargothrond and capture its citizens while its forces are engaged on the field of battle. Túrin returns just before the prisoners are led away by the Orcs, and in an attempt to prevent this, Túrin encounters Glaurung. The dragon, wielding the evil power of Morgoth, enchants and tricks him into returning to Dor-lómin to seek out his mother and sister instead of rescuing Finduilas and other prisoners, which, according to the last words of Gwindor, is the only way to avoid his doom. When Túrin returns to Dor-lómin, he learns that Morwen and Nienor have long been sheltered in Doriath, and that Glaurung deceived him into letting Finduilas go to her death. An enraged Túrin incites a fight among the Easterlings who now inhabit Dor-lómin and is compelled to flee once more. He tracks Finduilas's captors to the forest of Brethil, only to learn that she was murdered by the Orcs when the woodmen attempted to rescue the Elvish prisoners. Almost broken by his grief, Túrin seeks sanctuary among the Folk of Haleth, who maintain a tenacious resistance against the forces of Morgoth. In Brethil Túrin renames himself Turambar, or "Master of Doom" in High-elven, and gradually overrules the gentle, lame Chieftain Brandir. Meanwhile, in Doriath, Morwen and Nienor hear rumours of Túrin's deeds at Nargothrond, and Morwen determines either to find Túrin living or hear certain news of his death. Against the council of Thingol she rides out of Doriath alone, and when the king sends a group of Elves to follow and protect her, Nienor conceals herself among the riders and rejoins her mother. Mablung, leading the group, does not wish to proceed with Morwen's mission, but feels compelled to protect her and Nienor. When they approach Nargothrond, Mablung leaves Morwen and Nienor with a group of riders, and takes the rest to explore the ruins of Nargothrond in the hopes of finding information about the fall of the city and of Túrin's fate. There they encounter Glaurung, who has established himself in the ruins of Nargothrond, and he scatters Mablung's force before proceeding to the hill on which the women and Elves are waiting. His coming drives all of horses mad, and in the frenzy Nienor is separated from all the others. When she regains the hilltop alone, she comes face-to face with Glaurung, who, upon discovering her identity, enchants her so that everything she knows is lost, and her mind is made blank. When Mablung returns to the hill alone, also separated from his company, he finds her waiting on the hill like a lost child, and is forced to attempt the long journey back to Doriath on foot, leading Nienor by the hand. The two of them become stranded in the wilderness, and only the arrival of a few of the other Elves from the scattered group prevents them from starving to death. The few Elves continue their long journey to Doriath, but in an affray with a band of Orcs Nienor runs into the woods and is lost. Eventually she collapses near Brethil on the grave of Finduilas, where Túrin finds her and brings her back to the town. There she gradually recovers the use of speech, although she has no memory of any past life. Brandir falls in love with her, but though she feels a sisterly affection for him, she and Túrin develop a strong mutual attraction; Túrin has never seen her, and she remembers nothing of what she once knew about her brother, and not realizing their kinship, they fall in love. Despite the counsel of Brandir, they soon marry, and Nienor becomes pregnant. After some time of peace, Glaurung comes to exterminate the Men of Brethil. But Turambar leads a perilous expedition to cut him off, and stabs the dragon from beneath while he is crossing the ravine of Cabed-en-Aras. Meanwhile, Nienor and several other of the people of Brethil leave the safety of the town and, wishing to know what transpired between the men and the dragon, join the scouts waiting for Turambar's return on a hill a short distance from where the dragon was stabbed. As Glaurung is dying on the bank of the ravine, Turambar, who is now alone, pulls his sword from the dragon's belly, and the venomous blood spurts onto his hand and burns him. Overwhelmed with pain and fatigue, he faints. Nienor eventually comes to the place of the battle, followed by Brandir hobbling on his crutch. She takes Turambar's swoon for death and weeps over him, as with a last effort of malice Glaurung opens his eyes, and informs her of the fact that she and her husband are in reality brother and sister, taunting her with her incestuous pregnancy. Glaurung then dies, and his spell of forgetfulness passes from her, and she remembers her entire life. Forced to acknowledge that the dragon's words were true, she throws herself off the nearby cliff into the river Taeglin, and is washed away, as Brandir watches helplessly. When Turambar wakes and returns to the hill where the scouts are waiting, Brandir bitterly informs him of Nienor's death and of hers and Turambar's true relationship as siblings, concerning which he overheard the dragon's words. Believing that Brandir has concocted the story as a lie stemming from jealousy of Nienor's love for Túrin, Túrin kills Brandir, who declares before dying his hope that he will rejoin Nienor across the sea, which only further infuriates Túrin. However, running crazed into the wild, Túrin meets Mablung, who has been seeking Nienor for years; as well as Morwen, who was never found after Glaurung's scattering of the Elvish company. Mablung, without knowing anything that has transpired since Nienor was lost in the woods, innocently confirms Brandir's tale. After Túrin has learned all the terrible truth from Mablung, he returns to the place where Nienor threw herself from the cliff, and takes his own life upon the sword, Gurthang, which killed Beleg so many years before. The main part of the narrative ends with the burial of Túrin. Appended to this is an extract from The Wanderings of Húrin, the next tale of Tolkien's legendarium. This recounts how Húrin is at last released by Morgoth and comes to the grave of his children. There he finds Morwen, who has also managed to find the place, but now dies in the arms of her husband with the following sunset.
7051390	/m/0h21qn	The Black Prince	Iris Murdoch	1973	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Black Prince is remarkable for the structure of its narrative, consisting of a central story bookended by forewords and post-scripts by characters within it. It largely consists of the description of a period in the later life of the main character, ageing London author Bradley Pearson, during which time he falls in love with the daughter of a friend and literary rival, Arnold Baffin. For years Bradley has had a tense but strong relationship with Arnold, regarding himself as having 'discovered' the younger writer. The tension is ostensibly over Bradley's distaste for Arnold's lack of proper literary credentials, though later the other characters claim this to be a matter of jealousy or the product of an Oedipus complex. Their closeness is made apparent from the start of the book, however, as Arnold telephones Bradley, worried that he has killed his wife, Rachel, in a domestic row. Bradley attends with another character, Francis Marloe, in tow. Bradley then starts to get trapped in a growing dynamic of family, friends, and associates who collectively seem to thwart his attempts at achieving the isolation he feels necessary to create his 'masterpiece'. During this time he falls in love with the Baffins' young daughter, Julian. Despite a private vow never to confess or seek to realise this love, he promptly blurts it out to Francis, thereafter abandoning self-control, embarking on a brief, intense affair, stealing Julian to a rented sea-side cottage, neglecting pressing needs at home. During his absence his depressed sister, Priscilla, commits suicide. While Bradley postpones returning, Arnold arrives, enraged, to collect his daughter, though leaves, apparently, without her, with a promise that she will return home the next day. Yet Julian vanishes in the night, in Bradley's mind (at least), is taken off and hidden against her will. The final action of the main section takes place at the Baffins' residence, where Bradley attends an incident parallel to the opening one: Rachel appears to have struck Arnold with a poker, killing him. Bradley's arrest, trial, and conviction for Arnold's murder are briefly described, bringing to a close Bradley's telling of the events. This section is told from the point of view of the other characters, each being said to have had the luxury of reading the main section before drafting their responses. Each interprets the action differently, focusing on separate issues to a more or less selfish degree. The author's purpose in creating the post-scripts is to cast doubt on the veracity of the fiction that preceded it, but also on themselves. They also allow Murdoch's meticulous craft to be laid bare, exposing some of the finer nuances of her work. Some of these are discussed in the Influences and Themes section below.
7053242	/m/0h23yy	The Reluctant King	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The trilogy follows the adventures of ex-king Jorian, a native of the village of Ardamai in the kingdom of Kortoli, one of the twelve city-states of Novaria. Jorian is a powerful and intelligent man who has trained extensively for a life of adventure, but hampered by garulousness and a weakness for drink and women. When first seen, Jorian is the reluctant king of Xylar, another Novarian city-state. The Xylarians select their king every five years by executing the reigning monarch and tossing his head into a crowd; the man who catches it becomes the next king. Jorian, having been selected for the position five years before, is at the end of his term as ruler. He miraculously escapes his fate with the aid of the Mulvanian sorcerer Dr. Karadur. The tale continues through a pair of spectacularly disastrous quests in aid of his savior, the first taking them through the exotic lands of Mulvan, Komilakh and Shven and the second south to the ancient empire of Penembei. In the course of the later adventure Jorian is tapped to be ruler of Penembei, an office nearly as hazardous as king of Xylar. Adroitly ducking this second crown he endeavors to recover from Xylar his favorite wife Estrildis, with whom he hopes to retire to a life of quiet obscurity, only to have things once again go wrong...
7054048	/m/0h24ws	The Dream of a Ridiculous Man	Fyodor Dostoyevsky			 The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg. He contemplates how he has always been a ridiculous person, and also, how recently, he has come to the realization that nothing much matters to him any more. It is this revelation that leads him to the idea of suicide. The narrator of the story reveals that he had bought a revolver months previous with the intent of shooting himself in the head. Despite a dismal night, the narrator looks up to the sky and views a solitary star. Shortly after seeing the star, a little girl comes running towards him. The narrator surmises that something is wrong with the girl's mother. He shakes the girl away and continues on to his apartment. Once in his apartment, the narrator sinks into a chair and places his gun on a table next to him. He hesitates to shoot himself because of a nagging feeling of guilt that has plagued him ever since he eschewed the girl. The narrator grapples with internal questions for a few hours before falling asleep in the chair. As he sleeps, he descends into a very vivid dream. In the dream, he shoots himself in the heart. He dies but he is still aware of his surroundings. He gathers that there is a funeral and he is also buried. After an indeterminate amount of time in his cold grave, water begins to drip down onto his eyelids. The narrator begs for forgiveness. Suddenly his grave is opened by an unknown and shadowy figure. This figure pulls the narrator up from his grave, and then the two soar through the sky and into space. After flying through space for a long time, the narrator is deposited on a planet, one much like Earth, but not the Earth that he left through suicide. The narrator is then placed on what appears to be an idyllic Greek island, or in Christian literature, the earth before the Fall. Soon, the inhabitants of the island find him, and they are happy, blissful, sinless people. The narrator lives in this utopia for many years, all the while amazed at the goodness around him. One day the narrator accidentally teaches the inhabitants how to lie. This begins the corruption of the utopia. The lies engender pride, and pride engenders a deluge of other sins. Soon the first murder occurs. Factions are made, wars are waged. Science supplants emotion, and the members of the former utopia are incapable of remembering their former happiness. The narrator pleads with the people, he begs for martyrdom, but they will not allow it. The narrator then awakes. He is a changed man, thoroughly thankful for life. He promises to spend the rest of his days preaching the truth that he saw. His main lesson is to love others like yourself. At the conclusion of the story, the narrator states that he found the little girl, and that he will go on and on, presumably a reference to atonement for his past mistakes.
7054247	/m/0h250z	Moth Smoke	Mohsin Hamid	2000	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Darashikoh, or Daru as he is referred to, is a mid-level banker with a short fuse. His aggression had served him well as a college-boxer but an out-of-character outburst gets him fired. The loss of income brings to the fore a widening gap between him and his classmates, and Daru exposes his bitterness to the wealthy in his commentary. This contrast in income, though present through their years at school becomes evident to Daru only now as he comes to realise that money and wealth mean more than his personal traits can offer. He is content to interact with his rich friends all the same, and finds comfort in the arms of Mumtaz - Daru's best friend's wife. Mumtaz falls for Daru too, but unlike Daru she is not an idealist. This mismatch of thought comes to the forefront soon after the long and rocky affair begins. While cuckolding his best friend, Daru is content to sell him drugs, which are socially acceptable among his friends. This life of duplicity leads to spiralling loss of control in his life.
7055404	/m/0h267m	The Child Garden	Geoff Ryman	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In a future semitropical England cancer has been cured, but, as a result, the human lifespan has been halved. The novel tells the story of Milena, a young woman who is immune to the viruses which are routinely used to educate people. It is a world transformed by global warming and by advances in genetic engineering. Houses, machines, even spaceships are genetically-engineered life-forms. Milena works as an actress and the story follows her attempts to stage an opera based on Dante's ' Divine Comedy using holograms. The opera is written by her genetically modified friend Rolfa. As she works on the opera she encounters the ruling body of the world, "The Consensus", a hive mind made up of the mental patterns of billions of children. Milena slowly discovers that this gestalt consciousness is lonely and afraid of dying and is looking to Milena as a form of salvation.
7056868	/m/0h27qj	Foundations of Christianity	Karl Kautsky	1908		 In his foreword, Kautsky expressed his hope that the book would be 'a powerful weapon in the struggles of the present, in order to hasten the attainment of a better future'. He began his analysis by looking for evidence that 'the person of Jesus' existed at all, using pagan and Christian sources. The next dozen chapters are then taken up with a materialist description of the ancient Roman society from which early Christianity sprang. Kautsky then went on to describe the history of the Jewish people, up to the point where Christianity began. Having set the scene, Kautsky described the beginnings of Christianity. The next five sections are called 'The Primitive Christian Community', 'The Christian Idea of the Messiah', 'Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians', 'The History of Christ’s Passion' and 'The Development of the Christian Community'. Kautsky contended that Christianity was born out of a group of Jewish proletarians in a decaying Roman empire, who sought to defeat the Romans through a violent insurrection.
7058021	/m/0h28tr	The Return of Tarzan	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1915	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel picks up where Tarzan of the Apes left off. The ape man, feeling rootless in the wake of his noble sacrifice of his prospects of wedding Jane Porter, leaves America for Europe to visit his friend Paul d'Arnot. On the ship he becomes embroiled in the affairs of Countess Olga de Coude, her husband, Count Raoul de Coude, and two shady characters attempting to prey on them, Nikolas Rokoff and his henchman Alexis Paulvitch. Rokoff, it turns out, is also the countess's brother. Tarzan thwarts the villains' scheme, making them his deadly enemies. Later, in France, Rokoff tries time and again to eliminate the ape man, finally engineering a duel between him and the count by making it appear that he is the countess's lover. Tarzan deliberately refuses to defend himself in the duel, even offering the count his own weapon after the latter fails to kill him with his own, a grand gesture that convinces his antagonist of his innocence. In return, Count Raoul finds him a job as a special agent in Algeria for the ministry of war. A sequence of adventures among the local Arabs ensues, including another brush with Rokoff. Afterwords, Tarzan sails for Cape Town and strikes up a shipboard acquaintance with Hazel Strong, a friend of Jane's. But Rokoff and Paulovitch are also aboard, and manage to ambush him and throw him overboard. Miraculously, Tarzan manages to swim to shore, and finds himself in the coastal jungle where he was brought up by the apes. He soon rescues and befriends a native warrior, Busuli of the Waziri, and is adopted into the Waziri tribe. After defeating a raid on their village by ivory raiders he becomes their chief. The Waziri know of a lost city deep in the jungle, from which they have obtained their golden ornaments. Tarzan has them take him there, but is captured by its inhabitants, a race of beast-like men, and condemned to be sacrificed to their sun god. To his surprise, the priestess to perform the sacrifice is a beautiful woman, who speaks the ape language he learned as a child. She tells him she is La, high priestess of the lost city of Opar. When the ceremony is fortuitously interrupted, she hides him and promises to lead him to freedom. But the ape man escapes on his own, locates the treasure chamber, and manages to rejoin the Waziri. Meanwhile, Hazel Strong has reached Cape Town, where she encounters Jane, and her father Professor Porter, together with Jane's fiancé, Tarzan's cousin William Cecil Clayton. They are all invited on a cruise up the west coast of Africa aboard the Lady Alice, the yacht of Lord Tennington, another friend. Rokoff, now using the alias of M. Thuran, ingratiates himself with the party and is also invited along. The Lady Alice breaks down and sinks, forcing the passengers and crew into the lifeboats. The one containing Jane, Clayton and "Thuran" is separated from the others and suffers terrible privations. Coincidentally, the boat finally makes shore in the same general area that Tarzan did. The three construct a rude shelter and eke out an existence of near starvation for some weeks until Jane and Clayton are surprised in the forest by a lion. Clayton loses Jane's respect by cowering in fear before the beast instead of defending her. But they are not attacked, and discover the lion dead, speared by an unknown hand. Their hidden savior is in fact Tarzan, who leaves without revealing himself. Later Jane is kidnapped and taken to Opar by a party of beast-men pursuing Tarzan. The ape man tracks them and manages to save her from being sacrificed by La. La is crushed by Tarzan's rejection of her for Jane. Escaping Opar, Tarzan returns with Jane to the coast, happy in the discovery that she loves him and is free to marry him. They find Clayton, abandoned by "Thuran" and dying of a fever. In his last moments he atones to Jane by revealing Tarzan's true identity as Lord Greystoke, having previously discovered the truth but concealed it. Tarzan and Jane make their way up the coast to the former's boyhood cabin, where they encounter the remainder of the castaways of the Lady Alice, safe and sound after having been recovered by Tarzan's friend D'Arnot in another ship. "Thuran" is exposed as Rokoff and arrested. Tarzan weds Jane and Tennington weds Hazel in a double ceremony performed by Professor Porter, who had been ordained a minister in his youth. Then they all set sail for civilization, taking along the treasure Tarzan had found in Opar.
7058060	/m/0h28w3	Camber of Culdi	Katherine Kurtz	1976-06-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel spans the time period between September 903 and December 904, beginning shortly after the murder of a Deryni lord named Rannulf. Unable to locate Rannulf's murderer, King Imre Furstán-Festil issues a decree ordering the deaths of fifty human peasants unless the murderer is identified. The peasants are tenants of Earl Camber MacRorie of Culdi, a respected Deryni master who formerly served Imre's father. Meanwhile, the Healer Rhys Thuryn attends the final hours of an elderly patient. Before his death, the patient confides that he is really Prince Aidan Haldane, the sole survivor of the Deryni coup that overthrew the Haldane kings eight decades earlier. He begs Rhys to seek out his grandson, Prince Cinhil Haldane, who is the last remaining member of the former royal bloodline. Rhys recruits the assistance of Father Joram MacRorie, and the two of them determine that Cinhil is one of five monks living in seclusion in various religious houses throughout the realm. Before continuing their search, the seek the counsel of Joram's father, Earl Camber. In the capital city of Valoret, Lord Cathan MacRorie, Camber's eldest son and heir, continues to request mercy for the imprisoned peasants. Although a close friend of the king, Cathan is unable to persuade Imre to revoke his decree. However, Imre permits Cathan to save just one of the peasants, forcing him to personally choose from among the doomed commoners. Unable to prevent the executions, Cathan nearly goes mad with grief. Rhys and Joram continue their search for the Haldane prince, but it is Camber and Rhys who eventually discover Cinhil, who is living the peaceful religious life of a monk in a secluded abbey. Unwilling to compromise Cathan's position at court, they do not tell Cathan of their discovery, but Cathan's position is already being undermined by his ambitious brother-in-law, Lord Coel Howell. Coel continually sows mistrust between Imre and Cathan, and eventually succeeds in framing Cathan for the murder of another Deryni lord. Convinced that Cathan has betrayed him, Imre murders his friend. Racked with grief and self-loathing, Imre seeks comfort in the arms of his sister, Princess Ariella, and soon begins an incestuous relationship with her. Cathan's body is returned to his father, who decides to immediately move forward with his plans to overthrow Imre. After dispatching Joram and Rhys to retrieve Cinhil, Camber and his daughter, Evaine, meet with the Michaelines, a militant religious order who has agreed to provide military support for the upcoming coup attempt. Soon thereafter, Imre's suspicions grow to include the entire MacRorie family, and he soon orders their arrest. However, the MacRories manage to escape capture, and the entire Michaeline order goes into hiding to elude Imre's wrath. Rhys and Joram manage to abduct Cinhil, but the prince is unwilling to abandon his religious life. Although Camber and his allies attempt to convince Cinhil that he must become king for the greater good of the realm, the anguished prince is haunted by his conscience and his heart-felt vocation as a priest. Nonetheless, Camber continues to prepare Cinhil for the throne, attempting to teach him about the secular world that he abandoned. Camber eventually convinces Archbishop Anscom, the Archbishop of Valoret and one of Camber's oldest friends, to support their cause. Anscom absolves Cinhil's religious vows, acknowledges him as the legitimate heir to the throne, and presides over his marriage to Camber's ward. After several months of working with Cinhil, Camber becomes convinced that Cinhil has the unique ability to acquire Deryni-like powers. Assisted by several members of his family, Camber performs a ritual to designed bestow Deryni powers on the prince. Although they believe the ritual to be successful, Cinhil refuses to display any indication of his new abilities for several months. However, at the baptism of his son several months later, Cinhil's powers become clearly evident. When his son is poisoned by an unwitting assassin, the furious prince uses his powers to locate and kill the murderer. From that point on, Cinhil becomes dedicated to avenging his slain son, vowing to overthrow and kill Imre. In December, the coup is finally launched. Using several Transfer Portals, Camber, Cinhil, and their Michaeline allies infiltrate the royal palace in Valoret in the middle of the night. Their forces quickly overcome the guards, and soon burst into the royal bedchamber. While Imre is captured, his sister escapes through a secret passage, bearing her brother's child in her womb. Imre lashes out with his powers at Cinhil, but the Haldane prince uses his own powers to withstand the attack. Realizing he cannot win, Imre commits suicide rather than submit to imprisonment. As the fighting comes to an end, Camber crowns Cinhil as King of Gwynedd.
7059203	/m/0h2c5g	Psycho II	Robert Bloch		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Norman Bates (disguised as a nun) escapes from the mental asylum where he was committed to at the end of the first novel. The police believe that Bates did not survive his escape attempt because of a fire. However, a growing body count causes his doctor to suspect that Bates is headed to Hollywood where a movie based upon his real-life murders is being filmed.
7061377	/m/0h2fxw	As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning	Laurie Lee			 *In England In 1934 Laurie Lee leaves his home in Slad, Gloucestershire, for London, one hundred miles away. It was a bright Sunday morning in early June, the right time to be leaving home… I was nineteen years old, still soft at the edges, but with a confident belief in good fortune. Never having seen the sea before, he decides he will go by way of Southampton though it will add another hundred miles to his journey. He begins to walk towards the Wiltshire Downs on country roads that "…still followed their original tracks, drawn by packhorse or lumbering cartwheel, hugging the curve of a valley or yielding to a promontory like the wandering line of a stream. It was not, after all, so very long ago, but no one could make that journey today. Most of the old roads have gone, and the motor car, since then, has begun to cut the landscape to pieces, through which the hunched-up traveller races at gutter height, seeing less than a dog in the ditch." He visits Southampton and it is here that he first tries his luck at playing his violin in the streets. His apprenticeship proves profitable and with his pockets full of change he decides to move on eastwards. He catches his first glimpse of the sea a mile outside Southampton docks - "It was green, and heaved gently like the skin of a frog, and carried drowsy little ships like flies". Lee makes his way along the south coast, to Chichester, where he is moved on by a policeman after playing Bless This House, to Bognor Regis, and then on again to Worthing, "full of rich, pearl-chokered invalids". From there he turns inland, to the "wide-open Downs", and heads north for London. "I was at that age which feels neither strain nor friction, when the body burns magic fuels, so that it seems to glide in warm air..Even exhaustion when it came had a voluptuous quality..." As he makes his way to London, he lives on pressed dates and biscuits. "But I was not the only one on the road; I soon noticed there were many others, all trudging northwards in a sombre procession..the majority belonged to that host of unemployed who wandered aimlessly about England at that time." He bumps into a veteran tramp, Alf, "a tramp to his bones", who gives him a very old and battered billy can for brewing up. Eventually, a few mornings later, coming out of a wood near Beaconsfield he sees London at last: " - a long smoky skyline hazed by the morning sun and filling the whole of the eastern horizon. Dry, rusty-red, it lay like a huge flat crust, like ash from some spent volcano, simmering gently in the summer morning and emitting a faint, metallic roar." He decides to take the underground, and finally meets up with his American girlfriend, Cleo, who is the daughter of an American anarchist. Living with her family in a dilapidated house on Putney Heath, Lee tries to make love to her but she is too full of her father's political ideology. Her father finds him a job as a labourer and he is able to rent a snug little room above a cafe on the Lower Richmond Road. However, he has to move on as his room is taken over by a prostitute, and ends up living with the Flynns, a Cockney family, who welcome him into the family's embrace. He lives in London for almost a year as part of a gang of wheelbarrow pushers, supplying newly-mixed cement to the builders. With money to spend, he whiles away his time wandering the London streets, scribbling poetry in his small bedroom and having occasional liaisons with some of the maids from the big houses around Putney Heath. However, once the building nears completion, he knows that his time is up and decides to go to Spain because he knows the phrase in Spanish for "Will you please give me a glass of water?". He pays £4 and takes a ship to Vigo, a port of the north-west coast of Spain. *In Spain He lands in Galicia in July 1935. The first half of his journey takes him from Vigo to Madrid. He has a tent, a blanket in which his violin is wrapped, and normally some fruit, bread and cheese to eat along the way. Joining up with a group of three young German musicians, he accompanies them around Vigo and then they split up outside Zamora. Passing through Toro, he watches a religious procession in which a statue of the Mother of Toro is taken around the town. Lee leaves town the next day, and gives a vivid description of the searing heat of the Spanish sun: "The violence of the heat seemed to bruise the whole earth and turn its crust into one huge scar. One's blood dried up and all juices vanished; the sun struck upwards, sideways, and down, while the wheat went buckling across the fields like a solid sheet of copper. I kept on walking because there was no shade to hide in, and because it seemed the only way to agitate the air around me...I walked on as though keeping a vow, till I was conscious only of the hot red dust grinding like pepper between my toes." Valladolid is 'a dark square city hard as its syllables'. It is full of beggars, cripples and beaten-down young Spanish conscripts who have nothing to do in their leisure time. The beggars he remembers, " as something special to Valladolid, something it had nursed to a peak of malformation and horror. One saw them little by day; they seemed to be let out only at night, surreptitiously, like mad relations..Young and old were like emanations of the stifling medievalism of this pious and cloistered city; infected by its stones, like the pock-marked effigies of its churches, and part of one of the more general blasphemies of Spain." The chapter ends on a sour note with his landlord's wife screaming and shouting at her husband because the Borracho has returned home drunk and tried to have sex with their daughter, Elvira. Making his way to Segovia, Lee's feet become hardened and his Spanish is also improving after almost a month on the road. He spends only a few nights in the town because he is impatient to reach Madrid. He makes the long climb through the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains and is finally given a lift by two young booksellers in their van. Counting London, Madrid is only the second major city he has seen. Lee feels like he has "... slipped into Madrid as into the jaws of a lion. It has a lion's breath, too; something fetid and spicy, mixed with straw and the decayed juices of meat. The Gran Via itself has a lion's roar, though inflated like a circus animal's - wide, self-conscious, and somewhat seedy, and lined with buildings like broken teeth." However, he loves the city and is impressed by the pride that its citizens feel. The city lies on a mile high plateau and is the highest capital in Europe, and there is the proverb: 'From the provinces to Madrid - but from Madrid to the sky'. He spends his time drinking wine in the cool taverns during the daytime and playing his violin in the evenings in the older part of the city, the cliffs above the Manzanares where the streets are 'intimate as courtyards, with lamp lit arches smelling of wine and woodsmoke.' He lives in a cheap posada and befriends Concha, the girl who buys his breakfast. She is a husky young widow from Aranjuez and spends her daytimes idling about, waiting for the return of her boyfriend from the Asturias. Sometimes Lee sits out the morning by rubbing fish-oil into her hair. His last night is spent on a late-night drinking binge. He starts at the Calle Echegaray, 'a raffish little lane, half Goya, half Edwardian plush, with cafe-brothels full of painted mirrors, crippled minstrels and lacquered girls' and ends up at the Bar Chicote being chatted up by a young prostitute but who leaves him when a minor bullfighter arrives with his court of gypsies. He returns drunk to his posada and is helped into bed by Concha, who makes the sign of the cross before she joins him. By August 1935 Lee reaches Toledo, where he has a meeting with the South African poet Roy Campbell, with his family, whom he comes across whilst playing his violin in the open-air cafés in the Plaza de Zocodover: "It was the poet's saint's-day, and the party had dressed in his honour and were drinking his health in fizzy pop. Campbell himself drunk wine in long shuddering gasps, and suggested I do the same. I was more than satisfied by this encounter, which had come so unexpectedly out of the evening, pleased to have arrived on foot in this foreign city in time to be elected to this poet's table." The Campbells invite him to stay in their house which lies close to the cathedral. Campbell spends the daytime sleeping but comes to life in the evenings: "During most of the daylight hours Roy lay low and slept, appearing at nightfall like some ruffled sea-bird, leaning against a pillar with his arms stretched wide as though drying his salt-wet wings. One saw him gathering his wits in great gulps of breath, after which he would be ready for anything." After a final day of drinking with the poet, Lee makes his departure the next day and is accompanied by the poet as far as the bridge by which he would cross the gorge of the Tagus. By the end of September he has reached the sea, having passed through Valdepeñas, Cordova, and Seville to reach Cádiz - " at that time..nothing but a rotten hulk on the edge of a disease-ridden tropic sea; its people dismayed, half-mad, consoled only by vicious humour, prisoners rather than citizens." He looks back on his last month on the road through September. He describes Valdepeñas as 'a surprise: a small graceful town surrounded by rich vineyards and prosperous villas - a pocket of good fortune which seemed to produce without effort some of the most genial wines in Spain.' It had been a very friendly town and whilst busking one evening three young men had invited him to go with them to a brothel. Lee played his violin and watched the customers coming and going as he was plied with wine by the old grandfather who ran the place. There were four girls, two sisters and two cousins, and the whole establishment had possessed a very intimate atmosphere, 'a casual atmosphere of neighbourly visiting, hosted by these vague and sleepy girls; subdued talk, a little music, an air of domestic eroticism, with unhurried comings and goings.' Then he came to the Sierra Morena mountains, "one more of those east-west ramparts which go ranging across Spain and divide its people into separate races." South of the Sierra, he met: "... a new kind of heat, brutal and hard, carrying the smell of another continent. As I came down the mountain this heat piled up, pushing against me with blasts of sand, so that I walked half-blind, my tongue dry as a carob bean, obsessed once again by thirst. These were ominous days of nerve-bending sirocco, with peasants wrapped up to the eyes,..but far down in the valley, running in slow green coils, I could see at last the tree-lined Guadalquivir.. " Entering the province of Andalusia through fields of ripening melons, he saw the first signs of the southern people: men in tall Cordobese hats, blue shirts, scarlet waistbands, and girls with smouldering Arab faces. Instead of taking the road south to Granada, he decided to turn west and follow the Guadalquivir, adding several months to his journey, and taking him to the sea in a roundabout way. He lives in Seville, - " dazzling - a creamy crustation of flower-banked houses fanning out from each bank of the river...[yet]..no paradise, even so. There was the customary squalor behind it - children and beggars sleeping out in the gutters.." He lives on fruit and dried fish, and sleeps at night in a yard in Triana a ramshackle barrio on the north bank of the river, which has 'a seedy vigour, full of tile-makers and free-range poultry, of medieval stables, bursting with panniered donkeys, squabbling wives and cooking pots.' Whilst he spends his evening trying to get cool on the flat roof of the Café Faro, eating chips and gazing at the river, he hears the first mention of the upcoming war: "Until now I'd accepted this country without question, as though visiting a half-crazed family. I'd seen the fat bug-eyed rich gazing glassily from their clubs, men scrabbling for scraps in the market, dainty upper-class virgins riding to church in carriages, beggar-women giving birth in doorways. Naïve and uncritical, I'd thought it part of the scene, not asking whether it was right or wrong ... A young sailor approached me with a "Hallo, Johnny" ... "I don't know who you are", he said, "but if you want to see blood, stick around - you're going to see plenty." Disliking Cadiz - 'life in Cadiz was too acrid to hold me' - Lee turns eastwards, heading along the bare coastal shelf of Andalusia. He hears talk of war - in Abyssinia, " meaningless to me, who hadn't seen a newspaper for almost three months." He arrives at Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe, 'skulking behind its Arab walls' and moves on into the country, making another stop over in Algericas, a town which he very much likes for its aura of illicitness: "It was a scruffy little town built round an open drain and smelling of fruit skins and rotten fish. There were a few brawling bars and modest brothels; otherwise the chief activity was smuggling ... it seemed to be a town entirely free of malice, and even the worst of its crooks were so untrained in malevolence that no one was expected to take them seriously..I remember the fishing boats at dawn bringing in tunny from the Azores, the markets full of melons and butterflies, the international freaks drinking themselves into multi-lingual stupors, the sly yachts running gold to Tangier..." Half in love with Algeciras, he felt he "could have stayed on there indefinitely" but decides nevertheless to stick to his plan to follow the coast round Spain, and sets off for Málaga. He makes a stop over in Gibraltar, " more like Torquay", is questioned by the police, and told to report to their station at night. 'Leaving Gibraltar was like escaping from an elder brother in charge of an open jail.' It takes him five days to walk to Malaga, following a coastline smelling of hot seaweed, thyme and shellfish, and occasionally passing through cork-woods smoking with the camp fires of gypsies. At night he finds a field and wraps himself up in his blanket. "The road to Malaga followed a beautiful but exhausted shore, seemingly forgotten by the world. I remember the names - San Pedro, Estepona, Marbella, and Fuengirola..They were salt-fish villages, thin-ribbed..At that time one could have bought the whole coast for a shilling. Not Emperors could buy it now." In Málaga, he stays in a posada, sharing the courtyard with a dozen families who are mostly mountain people selling their beautiful hand-woven Alpujarras blankets and cloth in the city. The young girls are some of the most graceful he has ever seen, 'light-footed and nimble as deer, with long floating arms and articulate bodies which turned every movement into a ritual dance.' Malaga was full of foreigners, a snug expatriate colony, and everyone is very chummy apart from the English debs with 'that particular rainswept grey of their English eyes, only noticeable when abroad.' It is the young Germans who outnumber the rest of the colony, amongst them - " Walter and Shulamith, two Jewish refugees, who had walked from Berlin carrying their one year old child. I see them today as part of the shadow of the times.." Disaster seems to arrive during his last days in Malaga when his violin breaks. After his new line of work, acting as a guide to British tourists, is curtailed by local guides, he is then fortunate to meet a young German who gives him a violin for free . It had belonged to his girlfriend and she'd run off with a Swede. Winter 1935. Lee decides to hole-up in Almuñécar, sixty miles east of Malaga: "It was a tumbling little village, built on an outcrop of rock in the midst of a pebbly delta, backed by a bandsaw of mountains and fronted by a grey strip of sand which some hoped would be an attraction for tourists ... Almuñécar itself, built of stone steps from the delta, was grey, almost gloomily Welsh. The streets were steep, roughly paved, and crossed by crude little arches, while the square was like a cobbled farmyard...past glories were eroding fast." He manages to get work in a hotel run by a Swiss, Herr Brandt, who has unfortunately arrived there twenty years too early. The whole area is very poor, with the peasants just managing to scrape a living from the sugar cane grown in the delta, and the sea: "But the land was rich compared with the sea, which nourished only a scattering of poor sardines. As there were no boats or equipment for deep-sea fishing, the village was chained to the offshore wastes, shallow, denuded, too desperately fished to provide anything but constant reproaches...The only people with jobs seemed to be the village girls, most of them in service to the richer families, where for a bed in a cupboard and a couple of pounds a year they were expected to run the whole house and keep the men from the brothels." With nothing much to do in their spare time, Lee and his friend Manolo, the hotel's waiter, drink in the local bar alongside the other villagers, drinking rough brandy mixed with boiling water and eating morunos - little dishes of hot pig flesh stewed in sauce. Manolo is the leader of a group of fishermen and labourers and they sit in a room at the back discussing the expected revolution - " a world to come - a world without church or government or army, where each man alone would be his private government. " February 1936. The Socialists win the election and a Popular Front, People's Government, arrives. As Spring appears a whiff of change is in the air, with a loosening of social and sexual behaviour and manners: "Books and films appeared, unmutilated by Church or State, bringing to the peasants of the coast, for the first time in generations, a keen breath of the outside world. For a while there was a complete lifting of censorship, even in newspapers and magazines. But most of all it was the air of carnality, the brief clearing away of taboos, which seemed to possess the village - a sudden frank, even frantic, pursuit of lust, bred from a sense of impending peril." The villagers, in an act of revolt, burn down the church but then do a volte-face when Feast Day arrives and the images of Christ and the Virgin are brought out into the open, loaded as usual on the fishermen's backs. In the middle of May, there is a strike and the peasants come in from the countryside to lend their support as the village splits down the middle between 'Fascists' and 'Communists'. " The local flag of revolution was the Republican flag, the flag of the elected government. The peasants strung it like a banner across the Town Hall balcony and painted their allegiance beneath it in red ." There is also hope in the air that the working class will see an improvement in their terrible living conditions: "Spain was a wasted country of neglected land - much of it held by a handful of men, some of whose vast estates had scarcely been reduced or reshuffled since the days of the Roman Empire..Now it was hoped that there might be some lifting of this intolerable darkness, some freedom to read and write and talk. Men hoped that their wives might be freed of the triple trivialities of the Church - credulity, guilt and confession; that their sons might be craftsmen rather than serfs, their daughters citizens rather than domestic whores, and that they might hear the children in the evening coming home from the fresh-built schools to astonish them with new facts of learning." The middle of July 1936. War now breaks out. There had been anti-Government uprisings in the garrisons of Spanish Morocco - at Melilla, Tetuan and Larache. General Francisco Franco, the butcher of the Asturias, had flown from the Canaries to lead the rebels. With the disappearance of the police, " the village was on its own: Government supporters facing the enemy within." Manolo and El Gato (the leader of one of the new-formed unions) start to organise some kind of militia. Granada is held by the rebels, and so is Almunecar's neighbour Altofaro, ten miles down the coast. Almuñécar is mistakenly fired on by a Government warship that thinks it is shelling rebel-held Altofaro. Lee hears on Radio Sevilla Queipo de Llano exulting in the fall of the city. The rebel general is drunk and slurs his phrases. "Christ had triumphed, he ranted, through God's army in Spain, of which Generalissimo Franco was the sainted leader...'Viva España! Viva la Virgen!' ". Finally, a British destroyer from Gibraltar arrives to pick up any British subjects who might be marooned on the coast. Lee and the English novelist he is renting a room from are taken on board and he takes his last look at Almuñécar and Spain as they grow smaller in the distance. "All I'd known in that country - or had felt without knowing it - seemed to come upon me then; lost now, and too late to have any meaning, my twelve months' journey gone. Spain drifted away from me, thunder-bright on the horizon, and I left it there beneath its copper clouds." The Epilogue describes Lee's return to his family home in Gloucestershire and his desire to help his comrades in Spain. He is held back by a liaison with a wealthy lover but finally decides to make his way through France in order to cross the Pyrenees into Spain. After a desperate climb starting from Ceret in the foothills, in which he gets caught in a snow storm, he ends up in another French village. Here he is helped by a peasant, after another tortuous climb through the thick snow, to cross the border once more into Spain.
7064218	/m/0h2kkj	The Secret River	Kate Grenville	2005	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is sentenced to death for stealing wood, however, in 1806 his sentence is changed to transportation to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. However, there is a way for the convicts to buy freedom and start afresh. Away from the infant township of Sydney, up the Hawkesbury River, Thornhill encounters men who have tried to do just that: Blackwood, who is attempting to reconcile himself with the place and its people, and Smasher Sullivan, whose fear of this alien world turns into brutal depravity towards it. As Thornhill and his family stake their claim on a patch of ground by the river, the battle lines between old and new inhabitants are drawn. The early life of William Thornhill is one of poverty, depredation and criminality, which is also seen in Charles Dickens. The early settlements are described passionately by the author. Though Thornhill is a loving husband and a good father, his interactions with Indigenous inhabitants are villainous. Thornhill dreams of a life of dignity and entitlement, manifested in his desire to own land. After befriending Blackwood under his employ, Thornhill finds a patch of land he believes will meet his needs, but alas, his past comes back to haunt him. His interactions with the Aboriginal people progress from fearful first encounters to (after careful observation) appreciation. The desire for him to own the land contrasts with his wife wanting to return to England. The clash is one between a group of people desperate for land and another for whom the concept of ownership is bewildering.
7064668	/m/0410xyk	Island in the Sea of Time	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 An elliptical region, including the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts and the United States Coast Guard ship Eagle, is transported by an unknown phenomenon (called "The Event") back in time to the Bronze Age circa 1250s BC (corresponding to the late Heroic Age of the Trojan War). As the truth of what has happened sinks in panic grips the island. Chief of Police Jared Cofflin is given emergency powers and begins organizing the people to help produce food for the island so they can feed themselves. Meanwhile Captain Marian Alston takes the Eagle to Britain, with Ian Arnstein and Doreen Rosenthal as interpreters, where they trade Nantucket made goods with the Iraiina, which translates as "Noble ones", a tribe that has been steadily invading the island, for grain. The Iraiina are just one of the many Sun People Tribes. As a gift the Iraiina chief gives Marian a slave, Swindapa, a captured female "Earth People" warrior. Swindapa is freed and decides to stay with Marian. The Eagle leaves for Nantucket but takes with them Isketerol, a Tartessian merchant who hopes to learn from the Americans. While the people of Nantucket work for their survival, William Walker, a lieutenant on the Eagle, decides that with modern technology he could become a king in this time. With the help of Isketerol and others, Walker convinces some naive environmentalists to steal a ship and kidnap Cofflin's wife so they can give guns to Native Americans. Meanwhile Walker and Isketerol steal another ship and return to Britain to recruit soldiers for their eventual takeover of Greece. Marian decides to rescue Cofflin's wife first and saves her after defeating an Olmec army. Time passes as Walker solidifies his control over the Sun People and Nantucket creates a new government and prepares to take down Walker. Marian returns to Britain with a small army and uses Swindapa, who has become her lover, to convince the Earth People to fight with them to defeat Walker. Both sides meet at the Battle of the Downs and though Nantucket and its allies are victorious, Walker manages to escape with his followers to Greece.
7065809	/m/0h2mq5	The Plains of Abraham				 During the last half of the eighteenth century, in what was then New France (now part of Canada), Daniel "James" Bulain, son of a French habitant and of an English schoolmaster's daughter sees his world turned upside-down as his family and the people of the neighbouring seigneurie are massacred by a war party of Mohawks. In his escape into the wilderness he is united with the unrequited love of his childhood, Toinette Tonteur, daughter of the local seigneur, when they are captured by a war party of Senecas, brought to their hidden village far to the west in the wilderness and eventually adopted into their tribe. In the spring following their first winter with the tribe, believing that Toinette, now his wife, has been killed while he was absent from the village, James escapes and joins the French forces under Montcalm and three years later is gravely wounded at the battle of the Plains of Abraham at Quebec. Cared for by the nuns of the General Hospital, James rises from unconsciousness almost a month later and is reunited with his wife and discovers he has an infant son, after wandering about the battle-scarred town obsessed with finding the three-legged dog he saw pass between the French and English lines just before the battle, which so resembled his own Odd ("Odds and ends"), whom he had last seen in the Seneca village with his wife.
7066052	/m/0h2n28	Flight to Opar	Philip José Farmer	1976	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In this continuation of Hadon's adventures in the ancient Africa of 12,000 years ago, the last-ditch defense of the High Priestess he and his allies mounted against the tyrannical King's evil schemes segues into a perilous chase through various exotic cities, seas and islands. Hadon undertakes to take his mate, now pregnant with his child, to safety at his native city of Opar, but is pursued by members of a dark cult in the service of the king. The book ends as the war just gets seriously going, and with only tantalizing glimpses given of various interesting locations. Hadon's beloved clearly appears destined to a crucial future role which is never quite reached. Plainly, Farmer provided for further sequels which were never written. He has stated that he intended to have Hadon's son emigrate to the south in the wake of the catastrophe that would ultimately destroy the Khokarsan civilization in which the series is set, there to found the city of Kor that would afterward become the setting of H. Rider Haggard's classic fantasy novel She.
7068565	/m/0h2rg0	The Brothers' War	Jeff Grubb	1998-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The prologue opens on a battlefield, "the night before the end of the world", over the bodies of two fallen giants. The massive machine and wood giants had destroyed one another and were now the meeting place for the lieutenants of the armies preparing for battle. Ashnod the Uncaring and Tawnos meet to discuss matters and reminisce about the war that brought them to that field. The main story opens at an archaeological dig site a few decades earlier. The head archaeologist, Tocasia, sits at her table examining an ancient relic: a metal skull. When the supply caravan from the city arrives to the camp, Tocasia meets two brothers around the age of ten. The older boy, lean and tawny-haired, is Urza, while his dark-haired and stocky younger brother is Mishra. Urza tells Tocasia that he and Mishra were born on the same year, he on the first day, Mishra on the last, so that on the last day, they were equal. Tocasia takes the boys into the camp to teach them her archeology. From the beginning, Urza and Mishra show a great aptitude for the study of 'artifacts', machines left over from the mysterious Thran people, and also show a violent capacity for argument curbed only by Tocasia. Over the next six years the brothers grow up in the camp, Urza becoming lean, wiry, and developing an encyclopedic mind for mechanics. Mishra grew muscular, learning to spend time with the native Fallaji diggers, drinking with them and learning their legends. They become permanent residents of the camp, after receiving word that their father died, and their stepmother does not send for them. After the discovery and rebuilding of an ancient flying machine (an Ornithopter), on Mishra's birthday, the brothers have a vicious argument over who gets to fly it first. In the end Urza wins, but both get a turn. The bird's eye view allows them to view pictographs in the desert, leading to the discovery of large artifact deposits. These discoveries point to a mountainous region that Urza believes was the heart of Thran civilization, but which the desert natives think is haunted. Urza, Mishra, and Tocasia fly to the ruined Thran city but are attacked by a roc along the way. At the heart of the ruined city, a cave entrance leads down past troves of machines to a pedestal with a large crystal set into the middle. Accidentally, the brothers break the stone in half, and each has a differing vision when they each end with a half in his grasp. Urza sees a world of metal cables and machines with many melting and burning forms. Mishra saw a long hallway made of lizard skin, with tiny figurines of screaming beings made of gold and mirrors showing him twisted images of a monster. When they awake from their visions, they see the automatons in the hall come to life and attack them. They discover Mishra's stone weakens the machines, while Urza's strengthens them. After escaping, Urza and Mishra get into a heated argument when Urza takes Mishra's stone. In frustration, Urza lashes his hand out to return the stone, while Mishra steps into his reach and is struck in the forehead with the stone. This results in a falling-out between the brothers. In the months after, the brothers remained angry. Urza deems his stone the Mightstone for its ability to strengthen, and Mishra's the Weakstone for its ability to weaken. One night, an argument between the brothers escalates to a violent pitch, where they begin using the powers of the stones on one another. Tocasia rushes in to stop them and is caught in the cross fire and killed. In grief and pain at the accusations of his older brother, Mishra flees into the night. Without Tocasia's leadership, the camp disbands and the students and workers return to their homes. After the deadly night, Urza leaves the camp without knowing of his brother's whereabouts. In the city of Kroog, capital of the neighbouring kingdom of Yotia, he becomes a clockmaker's apprentice. And first meets Kayla bin-Kroog, the Yotian princess, after fixing a music box of sentimental value. Upon learning that a Thran book is a part of the princess's dowry, he builds a mechanical man to win a contest set forth by Kayla's father to find her a strong suitor. The mechanical man moves a massive jade statue and Urza wins the contest. The warlord father is initially infuriated that Urza wins the contest, but is persuaded to allow the marriage when he realizes that he can use Urza's knowledge for himself. Meanwhile, Mishra is enslaved by the desert people. He is made a tutor for the son of the ruling tribe's chief. The son is initially uninterested in learning arithmetic or other languages and Mishra despairs that he will be demoted (though his friend Hajar knows failure will mean death) like many previous tutors who failed before him. Mishra manages to befriend the boy by telling him many legends and stories. However, Mishra is still a slave that will be executed upon the completion of the boy's education. One night, a massive mechanical dragon attacks the tribe, killing the chieftain. Mishra tames it with his stone and is promoted from a slave to being a "wizard" and advisor to the son, who succeeds his father as chieftain. With the Kroogian warlord's patronage, Urza begins a school for the creation of many devices and takes on an apprentice, Tawnos. Mishra takes on his apprentice, Ashnod when the desert Fallaji people begin their war against the other kingdoms. Urza's Yotian kingdom and Mishra's Fallaji begin to war, but hold a peace talk. The brothers are reunited, but the Kroogian warlord uses the peace talks as a pretense to launch a surprise attack against his hated Fallaji enemies. The Kroogian warlord is killed by the Fallaji chieftain in the ensuing battle. A war erupts, but another peace talk is held and Urza and Mishra attempt to reconcile their broken relationship. However, the talks break down when Mishra has Kayla steal Urza's stone and sleeps with her. With the aide of his war machines, Mishra escapes into the desert. Urza mounts a search for his brother in the hopes of getting revenge, leading to another war. After an unsuccessful attack by Urza's Ornithopter patrols on a false warcamp, Mishra attacks the Kroogian capital with three of his dragon engines (having found and tamed two more). The Fallaji chieftain attempts to kill Ashnod during the attack on the city, but fails and is killed by her instead. In the caverns where the stones were found, men who worshipped machines met a mostly mechanical demon from another world. He called himself Gix, and they did as well. Mishra becomes the new leader of the Fallaji, and builds himself an army of automatons to increase his military power. Urza flees the now-conquered Kroog and is appointed "Protector of the Realm" by an alliance formed against the Fallaji by the kingdoms of Argive and Korlis. Tawnos brings Urza's wife and newborn son (possibly nephew) to him, and together they begin to build an opposing army to Mishra. Ashnod builds her own army of brainwashed and surgically altered slaves and criminals, the transmogrants, to fight. The war continues for decades with each side participating in an arms race to build more effective weapons. Ashnod is exiled from Mishra's side, while Loran joins a group of scholars in unlocking the power of magic in the city Terisia. When Mishra invades, two of his dragon engines vanish into thin air. The Brotherhood of Gix infiltrates both sides and plays them against each other, while winning more power in Mishra's court. Mishra is secretly offered a method of gaining more power through artifice by the Brotherhood. Urza's son Harbin finds an island of Argoth, ruled by elves who worship the goddess Gaea, and was secretly aided to return to land by an elf. In a ploy to bring the brother's together, Gix gives information on the secret island to a member of the Brotherhood. Urza and Mishra both learn that this island is rich in resources like lumber and ore. Because their war has stripped the continent of resources and polluted the land, they bring their armies to the island in the hopes gaining the upper hand and ending the war decisively. Both armies exterminate the natives of the island. In the final battle of the war, the brothers' armies fight to a stalemate. Urza meets Mishra upon the battlefield, but Mishra has been warped into an amalgamation of machine-and-man by Gix, the Phyrexian demon. Ashnod sends the Golgothian sylex to Urza to end the war while she fights the demon Gix. Urza, suddenly awakening to the power of magic, uses the Golgothian sylex to unleash an enormous blast to destroy his brother and Gix. The blast destroys the island, ends the war and upsets the climate of Dominaria, ushering in a new ice age. Gix escapes through a portal to the plane of Phyrexia. Urza becomes a Planeswalker, a god-like being capable of traversing between worlds, and the Mightstone and Weakstone become his eyes. Regretting the destruction he has unleashed upon the world, Urza uses his newfound powers to leave Dominaria and travel to worlds unseen. ja:MAGIC URZA & MISHRA pl:Bratobójcza wojna ru:Война братьев
7074399	/m/0h2ykt	Hardboiled & Hard Luck	Banana Yoshimoto	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This book consists of two separate stories, making up the two parts of the book's title. The first story, Hardboiled, is written from the perspective of a woman who is hiking alone, passes a strange shrine and ends up in a hotel with a couple of surreal incidents that follow. Her back story is filled in as a mixture of narrative and dream sequences. The second story, Hard Luck, is about a woman whose sister Kuni is in a coma. Kuni's fiancé leaves her after the incident, but his brother continues to visit. It becomes apparent that he is interested in the protagonist of the story.
7074872	/m/0h2zkg	Oracle's Queen	Lynn Flewelling	2006-05-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 More and more people flock to Tamír's cause as they find out that she is Skala's promised Queen and that only by putting her on the throne will everything be alright once more. Tamír is much loved by the people and very popular, but she faces problems of her own. Ki, whom she loves, does not feel physical love in return, while Brother is back with more power than ever, introducing himself with only this line: "The dead do not rest until they have had vengeance." With every day that the two opposing could-be-future monarchs of Skala (Korin and Tamír), the soldiers become more and more restless, itching for a fight. However, Tamír doesn't want to fight her beloved cousin and tries to delay the battle as much as she can.
7081250	/m/0h37rf	Daja's Book	Tamora Pierce	1998-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story opens with the four child-mages and their teachers at the end of a caravan. Rosethorn, Briar's teacher, stops to examine the tree-litter and while she does this, Daja catches a glimpse of a forest fire miles off. Tris, Briar, and Sandry all turn to look at the fire while Rosethorn asks their local guide when the last time was that they had a forest fire. However, their guide only laughs and says their mage, called Firetamer, takes care of all their fires, just like his father did. The caravan moves on, but Daja still has an uneasy feeling about the huge fire, noting how fire could be her friend and enemy. The caravan stops in a small town to study magic and assist the Duke of Emelan with the drought. As Daja is working in the smithy, a woman, a wirok, a scorned Trader who negotiates with lugsha, tradesmen, stops by to talk to the smith. As she notices the blank cap on Daja's Trader staff which signifies her exile status, the Trader refuses to talk to her. Moments later, Daja loses control of her magic because of her anger, putting energy into a clump of melted iron. Soon, it turns into a branch and the Trader is stunned. Throughout the book, Daja and the Trader converse in a bargain for the 'living metal'. All of the student's magic is so strongly combined that Sandry is forced to create a map of their magic, which she can use to separate their twined magic. Their teachers first noticed the mixed magic when Briar and Sandry used lightning by accident. While Daja is on her way to the privy, she releases a stream of hot water from within the earth, which spills out onto the stones before her. She and Briar investigate, finding that one of the hot springs leads to an area of ice/glaciers. Melting the water would refill the drying lake, saving one of the town's problems. They also discover a vein of copper which could be used to replenish the town's supply and stimulate trade. While all the teachers and students are at a watch tower, a huge fire erupts, utilizing all the mast that had built up in the years that Yarrun Firetamer had been suppressing all the fires. After the conceited fire tamer dies in an attempt to stop the fire, the rest of the people try to stop it. Daja is caught in the middle, though, and has to first convince the caravan she is riding with to listen to her, and then stop heading for the fire. She saves the caravan by thrusting all of the fire into a vein in the earth which leads to the glacier. Lastly, Daja creates a living metal leg with the copper which is now a part of her for the wirok, restoring the wirok's ability to work with horses, her original job. Daja is a trangshi, a Trader word which literally means "doesn't exist" or "bad luck." In the end, however, she becomes a Trader again because she had gained enough zokin, or honor, by saving the Tenth Caravan Idaram from the huge forest fire.
7087107	/m/0h3j__	The Secret	K. A. Applegate	1997-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cassie and the Animorphs discover from Ax and Tobias that the Yeerks have set up a dummy logging company, called Dapsen Logging Company, in the woods. The Yeerks want to destroy the forest in order to find the "Andalite bandits," who they believe to be living there. The Animorphs go to check it out, but are discovered, chased away, and shot at. Cassie and her father later find an injured skunk, that was hit by a Dracon beam in the fighting. Cassie's father finds that there is a good chance that the skunk had recently given birth, and Cassie is stricken with guilt. Cassie suggests to the others that they need to find out how the Yeerks got permission to cut trees in a National Forest. If they didn't have permission, the news media would bring attention to them; something they surely did not want. The group decides to go back and enter the logging camp to find this information. Tobias notices that there are termite tunnels in the building, and they decide to morph termites to get in. Jake causes a distraction by morphing into a wolf while the others (excluding Tobias) morph and enter the building. There is a brief episode where they are controlled by the termite queen's orders and lose control of themselves. Cassie kills the termite queen to free her friends and herself from the queen's control, but felt much guilt by it. The Animorphs get the information they need, disable the Yeerks' defenses, and escape unnoticed. The Animorphs find out that there is a committee of three people who must decide on giving the logging operation a go. One has already voted yes and one has voted no; the other, a man called Farrand, was due to make a visit to the camp in order to make his decision. The Animorphs decide to intercede when Farrand makes his visit, as the Yeerks will surely turn him into a Controller at that point to ensure an affirmative vote. Meanwhile, Cassie is still concerned with the skunk babies and decides to look for them. Tobias is able to tell her where the litter of kits is, having found five and eaten one. Cassie rescues them and the Animorphs take over tending the kits, with Tobias doing much of the skunk-sitting while the other Animorphs are in school. Marco ends up naming the skunk kits after members of The Ramones, such as Joey, Johnny, Marky and C.J. In the final showdown, the Yeerks capture Cassie and Farrand, but she morphs into a skunk and sprays all of the Controllers and Visser Three. Ax makes a bargain with Visser Three, offering information on how to get rid of the skunk smell in return for the release of Farrand. Visser Three agrees, and Farrand is transported to a hospital. As soon as he can, Farrand makes a phone call to vote against the logging, and he will likely bring litigation against the company. In return for the release of the human, Ax tells the Yeerks that grape juice will remove the stink (instead of tomato juice, which at best masks the smell), and Tobias later reports that a pool of grape juice was made for Visser Three to soak in. Visser Three hasn't gotten rid of the skunk smell, and in addition is a "lovely, attractive shade of purple."
7088463	/m/0h3ldv	Visser	K. A. Applegate	1999-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story starts with Edriss-Five-Six-Two, the Yeerk who would later become Visser One, in the body of Marco's mother, Eva. She leaves the house, saying goodbye to her husband and Marco, and heads out to her sailing boat, intending to fake her death so she can leave Earth and become Visser One. She takes her boat out to the ocean, and has a Bug Fighter that is waiting to pick her up to ram the boat, capsizing it. She leaves Earth, and everyone simply assumes that she drowns. Fast-forward to the present, where Edriss is on trial for treason by the Council of Thirteen. She is still inside Eva, and is currently being held in the Yeerk Pool under the city where the Animorphs live. The Council of Thirteen informs Edriss of her charges, which are five charges of treason, four containing the death penalty. Visser Three, her longtime enemy, is her prosecutor and the one who brought the charges against her. The Council of Thirteen orders her to tell her story of the events, which starts far before the invasion of earth, at the same point as the start of The Andalite Chronicles. At the start of her story, Edriss was stationed on a moon in between the Hork-Bajir homeworld and the Taxxon homeworld. Her task is to search for a Class Five species, which is a species that is powerful, extremely abundant and easy to take over. While training a group of new recruits, she receives information that a Class Five species has been found. This particular species were humans. Two humans were kidnapped by the Skrit Na, and then rescued by Andalites and taken by them to the Taxxon homeworld. A Yeerk Sub-Visser saw them and reported them to Edriss (these particular events are detailed much more in The Andalite Chronicles). Unfortunately, as soon as she receives this news, Edriss is informed she would be transferred to the Taxxon homeworld and be given a Taxxon host. Edriss, along with a fellow yeerk named Essam 293, steal a Yeerk ship and go looking for the human home world. Back in the present Visser Three demands that they view a memory dump (a recording of her memory) of Edriss's trip to Earth. It starts with Edriss and Essam finding the planet, and they land on it during the events of the Gulf War. Edriss infests an Iraqi soldier, and finds out from him that the most powerful country on Earth is America. They dispose of the host and fly their ship to Hollywood. There, Edriss infests a drug addict called Jenny Lines who is a struggling actor, and Essam infests a television producer named Lowenstein. At this point the memory dump ends. Garoff, a member of the Council of Thirteen, accuses Edriss of underestimating the humans, and Edriss says the only reason the humans haven't been taken over is because of Visser Three's incompetence. Visser Three says Edriss never had to deal with the "Andalite Bandits" when she was on Earth, and Edriss asks why Visser Three still hasn't defeated the Andalite bandits. At that point the Andalite bandits attack, however Visser Three and his troops makes short work of them. Edriss realises that they were simply animals, not the Andalite bandits, and Visser Three just had them brought in to trick the Council into thinking that he did kill the Andalite bandits. Unfortunately, the Council of Thirteen does get fooled by the demonstration, and suddenly Visser Three has a lot more credibility. Visser Three then says he has testimony from a witness who was with Edriss during the time that Edriss did not make any memory dumps. He says it is Essam, however Edriss says that can't be true, since Essam is dead. Visser Three's guard bring in a homeless bum named Hildy Gervais, who is revealed to be a former host of Essam. He says that he and one of Edriss's hosts, Allison Kim, fell in love, and so did their Yeerk captors. Eventually they had two children, twins. Edriss says this is true, and Visser Three claims this is proof of Edriss sympathizing with humans. Edriss continues her story, telling how eventually she disposed of Jenny Lines and infested Allison Kim, a scientist. Essam also infested Hildy Gervais. Edriss tells how Allison Kim was a far more intelligent, powerful host than Jenny Lines, and Visser Three demands this is proof that she admires the humans. Visser Three and Edriss get into an argument about whether slow infestation or all-out war is a better way to enslave the humans. Visser Three claims that the only reason Edriss doesn't want all out war is because she doesn't want the humans to actually be taken over, and Edriss argues that all out war would never work. Eventually Visser Three demands that Edriss is given a live memory dump, so they can view exactly what happened. Garoff agrees, and they enter her memory at a point a fair while after Edriss had infested Allison. Garoff demands they view various memories, all showing Edriss enjoying different aspects of human life, her falling in love with Essam/Hildy Gervais, and the birth of her children. Garoff claims that Visser One had become addicted to humans. Garoff ends the live memory dump, and demands Edriss continue the story. Edriss says the children were given up for adoption, and then says she needs a break to eat. Garoff agrees, and the trial is adjourned. She is taken by Visser Three's troops to the lunch room of the Yeerk Pool, where she sees a controller talking on her cell phone. Realizing the phone can work this far underground, she purposely bumps into the controller and steals her phone. She heads to the toilets and calls Marco, her current host's son. She tells him she needs him to attack the Yeerk Pool, so the Council will realize the last attack was a farce constructed by Visser Three. Reluctantly, Marco agrees, and then Edriss heads back to the trial. Garoff asks her to continue her story. Edriss says that after a year, the shipboard Kandrona was running out, so she contacted the Empire. When she told them she had found a Class Five species, they dropped all charges against her. During this time she had created a group called The Sharing, a boy scouts/girl scouts style club crossed with a cult, which was used to recruit voluntary controllers. She sent a tape of the first human-controller to the Yeerk Empire. When Edriss told Essam they were returning to the Yeerk Empire, he got angry, and tied Edriss up, forcing her to infest another host and taking off with Allison Kim and the children. Edriss takes after him, telling the Council that her intention was to kill him. At this point Visser Three interrupts, saying that the real reason Edriss went after him was to get the children back. Edriss claims she didn't care about the children. At this point Visser Three brings one of her children, Darwin, in. Visser Three demands Edriss kill him, to prove she doesn't care about him. Edriss stalls, unable to kill the kid, and suddenly the Animorphs attack. They knock out Edriss and take her outside to a part of the Yeerk Pool that is hidden by one of the Chee's holograms. Marco demands Edriss leave his mother's body, and she does. For a while she lies alone in the darkness, thinking the Animorphs will kill her, until she is suddenly put back into Eva's head. Looking for her memories, she sees that Eva convinced Marco to keep Edriss alive, because Edriss was the only one pushing for a slow infiltration, which is the only way the Animorphs can win. At that point they knock her unconscious again, to make her capture look authentic. Eventually she is found unconscious, and is taken back to the trial. Garoff asks her to continue her story. Edriss talks about how she found Essam at a hospital. He was dying from Kandrona starvation, and eventually he died within Hildy Gervais's head, causing part of Essam's body to become fused with Hildy's brain. Hildy started screaming about the aliens that had infested him, and was taken away to an asylum. Allison escaped, but soon returned for the children in disguise. Edriss killed her. The children were left in the hospital, and eventually adopted. She then killed Lore David Altman, the host she used to create the Sharing, infested Eva, and eventually left Earth to become Visser One. Garoff says that she has given enough information, and the Council retired to consider their verdict. After a while they returned, minus two Council members who did not agree with the verdict, and say that Visser One and Visser Three have both been sentenced to death by Kandrona starvation. However, the sentences were suspended, and both of them would be free of all charges if they completed the tasks the Council of Thirteen set for them. Visser Three has to complete the invasion of Earth. Visser One had to take another planet, the Anati homeworld. If either of them fail, they will be killed; however, both Visser One and Visser Three are released from custody, meaning Edriss (and Marco's mother) survive. As she is about to leave, Visser One considers telling Visser Three the truth about the "Andalite Bandits", but decides against it.
7089992	/m/0h3ngm	Wizards at War	Diane Duane	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Lone Power, suspecting that a new threat is rising to its dark abilities, creates a surge of Dark Matter, called "the Pullulus", to eclipse the universe. Because of the way that the Pullulus affects the universe's structure, the Senior Wizards lose their wizardry and only wizards before adulthood are still able to fight. Ponch uses his tracking abilities to lead Nita, Kit, Ronan, and the wizardly tourists from Wizard's Holiday Filif and Sker'ret across the galaxy to try to find and activate an instrumentality that they are told is the only way to stop the Lone Power. Dairine and Roshaun take a trip back to the Motherboard from High Wizardry to consult the mobiles before joining the others. They find out that the 'weapon' is actually the a version of the Lone Power who never fell. After a few skirmishes with unfriendly agents of the Lone Power, the group finds the world the Hesper is on. Unfortunately, the world is one that is 'lost', or devoted to everything the Lone Power represents. Despite this, Nita, Kit, and the others go down to the planet and start searching for the Hesper, after adopting disguises to look like the giant bug-like natives. With Ponch's help, they find the Hesper, and Nita starts teaching her concepts about 'self' and 'choice', concepts that she had no previous understanding of. Nita ask the Hesper to make a choice to fight the Lone Power, but before she can choose, they are captured by the Lone Power, who suppresses all wizardry in the area — roughly analogous to cutting a Jedi off from the The Force. Ronan sacrifices himself to free the One's Champion, who resides inside him, to give the Hesper a final chance to make her choice. The Champion holds the Lone Power back and restores wizardry to the area, allowing the Hesper to become embodied. As the Hesper assumes her position, the Lone Power is defeated, and the wizards are free to go — but not unscathed, as Ronan is near death and the Pullulus is advancing towards Earth and Filif's home. The wizards head back to Earth, except for Filif, who returns to his planet to fight the Pullulus there. They arrive on the moon and find a gathering of all Earth's remaining active wizards, working on a spell to stop the Pullulus. The group joins in to gives energy to the spell, which at first seems to work in pushing the Pullulus back, but then fails due to a lack of power. As the Pullulus comes closer, Roshaun uses his ability to work with stars (with Dairine and Spot aiding) to directly channel some of the sun's matter to burn the Pullulus, which works for a period until the power drain becomes too great for a single wizard — and Roshaun disappears. While the remaining wizards prepare to make one last stand to destroy the Pullulus, Kit tells Ponch to take Carmela and Kit and Nita's parents away from Earth. Ponch starts to obey, but is caught between doing what he is told and staying with his master and friend. He decides to do neither — instead of running away or staying there, he completes the canine Choice, which had been held in abeyance because of the long-ago dogs' loyalty to their human partners. The Pullulus takes on a wolf-like shape and Ponch becomes a canine incarnation of the One; the wolf of darkness clashes against the hound of starlight, and it is the wolf that is beaten. Because Ponch has incarnated as a Power, much like the Hesper, he can no longer be with Kit. As he leaves Kit, however, Ponch says that some things will still stay the same. As Nita, Kit, Dairine, and the others pick themselves up, they realize that the Pullulus is gone, and they head home — with Ronan healed and without Roshaun or Ponch. The book ends with school starting again, Dairine resolving to discover what had really happened to Roshaun, and Kit finding Ponch in a "stray" sheepdog that had just shown up on his street.
7090867	/m/0h3ppd	Saint Camber	Katherine Kurtz	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel spans a time period of one and a half years, from June 905 to January 907. It begins as the allies and supporters of King Cinhil Haldane prepare to meet the invasion of Princess Ariella Furstána-Festila, the sister and lover of the deposed King Imre Furstán-Festil. Although Imre died in the coup that placed Cinhil on the throne, Ariella escaped to the neighboring kingdom of Torenth, where she has sought refuge with her relatives. Having given birth to Imre's bastard son, she now seeks to return to Gwynedd and retake the throne. She has been using magic to influence the weather, hoping to flood the plains and rivers of Gwynedd to facilitate the invasion of her army. Cinhil's closest advisors are preparing to meet the invaders, but the king himself has become aloof and withdrawn since his ascension to the throne. He has become convinced that he sinned against God by giving up his priestly vows to become king, and he displays increasing hostility and antagonism toward Earl Camber MacRorie of Culdi, the Deryni adept most responsible for placing Cinhil on the throne. Throughout the preparations for battle and the march to the battlefield itself, Cinhil constantly clashes with the Deryni closest to him, lashing out angrily as his resentment toward Camber in particular and Deryni in general continues to grow. Although Cinhil seems to place slightly more trust in Alister Cullen, the Deryni Vicar General of the Michaelines, even Cullen is rebuffed when he makes overtures of friendship to the king. The Gwyneddan army meets Ariella's invaders on the plain of Iomaire, and the two forces clash the following day. Despite being outnumbered, Cinhil's army emerges victorious and wins the day. Following the battle, Camber and his son, Joram, discover the scene of Ariella's final stand. While attempting to flee the battle, Ariella had been confronted by Alister Cullen and the two fought a brutal battle that claimed both of their lives. Camber soon realizes that Cullen's death will only further alienate the king, as Cullen enjoyed more of Cinhil's trust than any other Deryni. Without Cullen to temper Cinhil's growing mistrust of Deryni, Camber fears that an anti-Deryni backlash might sweep through the kingdom. Camber then convinces Joram to help him switch shapes with the slain Cullen, believing that he can do more to help Cinhil and the kingdom as Alister Cullen than he can as Camber MacRories. Joram initially resists the idea, but eventually concedes to his father's wishes. He helps Camber switch appearances with Cullen and then returns to the royal camp, bearing the body of a slain man bearing the appearance of Camber MacRorie. With the exceptions of Joram and Camber's son-in-law, Lord Rhys Thuryn, the rest of the world believes that Camber has died and Cullen has lived. As the army returns to Valoret, Camber does his best to act out the role of the new persona he has adopted. Although he managed to retrieve some of Cullen's memories, his inability to assimilate those memories in safety is beginning to affect his health. Shortly after returning to Valoret, Camber is able to begin the process of assimilating Cullen's memories with the assistance of Rhys, Joram, and his daughter Evaine, but the procedure is interrupted by Cinhil. Unable to stop the procedure, Camber's disguise briefly slips away and the king witnesses the momentary change. Shocked and confused, Cinhil orders that nobody speak of the incident and flees the room. Once in full possession of Cullen's remaining memories, Camber settles into his new identity with increased confidence. However, his former squire, Lord Guaire d'Arliss, remains despondent over Camber's supposed death. Taking pity on the man, Camber sheds his disguise and visits Guaire late one night, convincing him to cease his mourning. Guaire believes the visit is just a dream, but he takes heart from it and immediately asks to enter the service of the man he knows as Alister Cullen. Camber must next deal with a matter of conscience. Cullen was due to become Bishop of Grecotha before his death, but Camber knows that he will be breaking ecclesiastical law by pretending to be a priest. The night before Camber's consecration as a bishop, Joram convinces him to legitimize his status and be ordained as a priest. Camber reveals the truth of his identity to his old friend Archbishop Anscom, and Anscom agrees to perform the ceremony. The following morning, the newly-ordained Camber is consecrated as Bishop of Grecotha. Camber spends much of the next year in Grecotha and Valoret. The friendship that Cullen offered Cinhil is finally accepted, and the king and the bishop become very close. Believing he is finally free of Camber's influence, Cinhil finally seems to resolve his inner conflict and soon begins to evolve into an independent king. The potential that Camber observed in Cinhil before the Restoration is finally realized, and Cinhil starts to take an active role in governing the realm. Camber's desperate gamble appears to have paid off, as Cinhil shows more and more signs of becoming the true king of the realm. However, much to the surprise of Camber and his family, Camber's supposed death has resulted in more of a public impact than they ever expected. Grateful to Camber for his central role in the Restoration, some people have begun to venerate his memory, with some going so far as to form small cults dedicated to the belief that Camber had been a saint. Fully aware of the depth of their deception, Camber and his kin are horrified by these developments. Nonetheless, they cannot risk discovery of the truth by opposing such beliefs too vehemently or publicly. In an effort to ensure that their secret remains hidden, Joram and Rhys move Cullen's body out of Camber's tomb in August 906. Archbishop Anscom assures Camber that he will not allow any efforts to canonize Camber succeed, but Anscom died in September. The following month, Anscom's successor, Archbishop Jaffray, receives a formal request to canonize Camber MacRorie. During the ecclesiastical court that follows, Camber and his family are forced to remain silent, unwilling to reveal the truth that Camber is actually sitting in the very room where the court is determining his sanctity. Guaire relates the tale of Camber's visit, but he now believes that the event was actually a miracle. When Camber's tomb is revealed to be empty, Joram attempts to provide a legitimate excuse. However, his efforts to end the court are unsuccessful, and his father's empty tomb is also classified as a miracle. That night, Cinhil confesses to Camber that he has been secretly performing the rites of his former priestly vocation, even going so far as to celebrate Mass in private. Although stunned by this revelation, Camber realizes that Cinhil's illicit actions have served to soothe the king's tortured conscience, giving him a peace of mind that has enabled him to grow and develop as a ruler. Feeling that he has already inflicted too much misery upon Cinhil, Camber ultimately forgives Cinhil and promises to keep the king's secret. The following day, Cinhil is called as a witness before the ecclesiastical court. Although unwilling to get involved in the procedure, Cinhil reluctantly describes seeing Camber's face come over Bishop Cullen shortly after Camber's death. Unable to provide a logical explanation for the event, the court can only agree that Camber MacRorie somehow returned after death to help Alister Cullen. Believing it has evidence of three miracles, the court soon canonizes Camber MacRorie. Camber himself is helpless to stop the chain of events, and can only watch in silence. The novel ends shortly after the new year, as Cinhil and Camber examine a statue of "Saint Camber" that has been erected. As Cinhil leaves, he is still unaware that the man at his side is actually Camber MacRorie.
7091202	/m/0h3q9t	I Put A Spell On You	Nina Simone		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 * Introduction, "I Know How it Feels To Be Free: Nina Simone 1933–2003", written by Dave Marsh. This introduction was included in the 2003 Da Capo Press reprint edition following Simone's death on April 21, 2003. * Acknowledgements * Prologue * Chapters 1 through 11 * Discography * Index
7091846	/m/0h3r9n	Resurrection Day	Brendan DuBois		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, the book chronicles the investigations of Carl Landry, a reporter for the Boston Globe. As the story unravels, Carl attempts to uncover the events leading up to the war, while at the same time running from those who would have the truth buried. The story begins in 1972, ten years after the nuclear war between the USA and USSR, which followed the Cuban missile crisis. Washington, D.C., New York, Omaha, San Diego, Miami and other American cities, principally those surrounding military bases, have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by Soviet nuclear attacks. Philadelphia is the capital of the United States, and although a civilian President is nominally in office, the USA is effectively under martial law. The Soviet Union has been utterly devastated by US nuclear strikes. Cuba is an atomic ruin, with Spain responsible for relief efforts aiding what is left of the island's population. One consequence of the war is that America's embroilment in Vietnam is abruptly curtailed. US military personnel in South Vietnam (and indeed across the world) are withdrawn in order to stabilise the USA in the aftermath of the Soviet missile and air strikes. The text of the novel also makes it clear that the People's Republic of China has collapsed, with numerous regional warlords waging a civil conflict against each other. US nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union led to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and also to the release of a massive fallout cloud over much of Asia, killing further millions after the destruction of the USSR. As a consequence, The United States has become a pariah in the eyes of much of the world. Many governments regard members of the US Air Force (USAF) as war criminals, and its servicemen are advised not to travel abroad. After the 1962 war, nearly all the remaining countries of the globe have renounced possession of nuclear weapons. The USA alone retains an atomic arsenal. Europe survived the war largely unscathed. NATO collapsed almost as soon as hostilities commenced, and France and (a united) Germany now preside over the continent. Britain remains an ally of the USA, and actually assists in post-war reconstruction efforts in US states hit hardest by the war. The UK in the period after 1962, has managed to regain much of its pre 1939 colonial confidence in the vacuum left by the destruction of the U.S.S.R and the emasculation of the US in world affairs. The policy of decolonialisation has been halted and even reversed, some newly independent nations even returning to the remaining British "Empire" in the new, uncertain world created after the "Cuban War". While British aid is welcome, there is also a sense of resentment in America over excessive dependence on the UK. The presence of British and Canadian military personnel in the USA is also a source of contention, with some Americans wondering whether their allies possess ulterior motives. The story covers two parallel plot-lines. The first involves Landry's attempts to discover what happened in Washington DC in October 1962. US military propaganda accounts maintain that the Cuban war broke out because of John F. Kennedy's recklessness and incompetence, these claims are generally believed. Kennedy and his officials are regarded as butchers and war criminals and the only senior surviving member of JFK's administration - McGeorge Bundy - is imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth. In contrast, US military commanders (notably the Chief of the Air Force, General Curtis) are portrayed as the saviours of the nation. During the course of the novel Landry gradually discovers that it was Kennedy who sought to prevent the crisis over Cuba from escalating into war, and that last minute attempts to achieve a deal with Nikita Khrushchev to end the crisis were deliberately sabotaged by Curtis and other generals. The second plot-line concerns Anglo-American relations. Landry and a British journalist - Sandra Price - discover that elements within the British government and security services are plotting a military takeover (or anschluss) of the United States. This plan is under way near the end of the novel, and is called off at the last minute.
7093189	/m/0h3t4b	Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot	Jean le Rond d'Alembert			 In part one of the book, d'Alembert provides a general introduction to the origin of knowledge, which led to the works found in the Encyclopédie. He asserts that the "existence of our senses" is "indisputable," and that these senses are thus the principle of all knowledge. He links this idea to a chain of thinking and reflection that eventually leads to the need to communicate, which sets another chain of events in effect. One of his arguments for the origin of communication is that it was necessary for people to protect themselves from the evils of the world and to benefit from each other's knowledge. This communication led to the exchange of ideas that enhanced the ability of individuals to further human knowledge. Additionally, d'Alembert introduces the reader to the types of knowledge people store. The two main types that he describes refer to direct and reflexive knowledge. Direct knowledge is obtained by human senses and reflexive knowledge is derived from direct knowledge. These two types of knowledge lead to the three main types of thinking and their corresponding divisions of human knowledge: memory, which corresponds with History; reflection or reason, which is the basis of Philosophy; and what d'Alembert refers to as "imagination," (50) or imitation of Nature, which produces Fine Arts. From these divisions spring smaller subdivisions such as physics, poetry, music and many others. d'Alembert was also greatly influenced by the Cartesian principle of simplicity. In this first part of the book, he describes how the reduction of the principles of a certain science gives them scope and makes them more "fertile" (22). Only by reducing principles can they be understood and related to each other. Ultimately, from a high "vantage point" (47) the philosopher can then view the vast labyrinth of sciences and the arts. d'Alembert then goes on to describe the tree of knowledge and the separation and simultaneous connections between memory, reason, and imagination. He later explains that the ideal universe would be one gigantic truth if one only knew how to view it as such; the assumption that knowledge has intrinsic unity can be seen as the foundation of the project of making the encyclopedia. Part two of the book provides the reader with an account of the progress of human knowledge in the sequence of memory, imagination and reason. This sequence is different from the one described in Part I, where the sequence is memory, reason, and imagination. It is the sequence a mind left in isolation or the original generation follows whereas in Part II he describes the progress of human knowledge in the centuries of enlightenment that started from erudition, continued with belles-lettres, and reached to philosophy. Instead of writing in terms of general ideas, d'Alembert provides the dates, places and people responsible for the progress of literary works since the Renaissance leading up to his date. One key example is René Descartes, who the author lauds as both an excellent philosopher and mathematician. His application of algebra to geometry, also known as the Cartesian coordinate system, provided an excellent tool for the physical sciences. He focuses on the importance of ancient knowledge and the ability to understand and build on it. Reference is made that concepts of knowledge could not have advanced as quickly had there not been ancient works to imitate and surpass. He also clarifies that there can be disadvantages to the ability to retrieve information from the past. Noted in the text is the lack of improvement in philosophy in comparison to other advancements due to the ignorant belief that ancient philosophy could not be questioned. d'Alembert claims that it would be ignorant to perceive that everything could be known about a particular subject. Additionally, he makes an attempt to show how individuals could free their minds from the yoke of authority. His use of deductive logic provides a more philosophical base for the existence of God. He makes clear that all sciences are restricted as much as can be to facts and that opinion influences science as little as possible. d'Alembert states that philosophy is far more effective at the analysis of our perceptions when the "soul is in a state of tranquility", when it is not caught up in passion and emotion (96). He believes that the philosopher is key in furthering the fields of science. The philosopher must be able to stand back and observe science and nature with an impartial eye. Furthermore, the importance of science and the advancements of such intellects as Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Descartes, John Locke and others are explained. Part three of the book concludes by detailing the important attributes of the writing of the Encyclopédie and by mentioning important contributors. d'Alembert discusses how the Encyclopédie is open to changes and additions from others since it is a work of many centuries. In addition, he states that an omission in an encyclopedia is harmful to its substance which differs from an omission in a dictionary. d'Alembert also states the three categories of the Encyclopédie, which are the sciences, the liberal arts and the mechanical arts. He states that it is important that these subcategories remain separate and concludes with the fact that society must judge the Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot. At the end of the book, d'Alembert includes a detailed explanation of the system of human knowledge. This includes a chart entitled "Figurative System of Human Knowledge", which divides human understanding into its three constituents: memory, reason, and imagination. The chart then subdivides each of the three major categories into many other categories of human understanding. After his chart d'Alembert goes on to provide a detailed explanation of every division and subdivision apparent in his chart. The chart establishes a complex genealogy of knowledge and the way man has subdivided knowledge into the specific areas he feels they are applicable. It is important to remember that no one of these systems of human knowledge plays a more significant role than any of the others. These systems are designed around the idea that each uses the other two to build upon itself and further human knowledge as a whole. In context the chart shows a progression of knowledge through the ages, memory being the past, reason being the present, which examines and tries to either build or create new theories based on memory, and imagination which focuses on making new assumptions or theories about things in our human universe.
7093297	/m/0h3t8t	Pretties	Scott Westerfeld	2005-05-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with Tally, the protagonist, as a Pretty debating what to wear to a bash. While attending the bash at which she is to be voted into the "Crims" clique, she is followed by someone who appears to be a "Special", a member of Special Circumstances. Tally can only remember her adventures as an Ugly in brief, disconnected bits —because, there are lesions on all the pretties brains. She is surprised to discover that the person stalking her is Croy, an old friend of hers from the Smoke. He has something for her, he tells her, but she must search for it later. She agrees, bemused by his repellent ugliness, including his big pores and tangled hair – all the imperfections that the surgery to become a Pretty transforms into beauty. Tally returns to her care-free life as a pretty. Her peace is disrupted when Zane, who is the leader of the Crims, asks her about David, whom she loved while she lived in the Smoke. Zane had once known Croy and had been determined to escape to the Smoke before his surgery. He regrets that he didn't go into the wilderness then. Zane is eager to accompany Tally in finding the object Croy has hidden for her. They face strenuous, dangerous physical challenges in order to locate the item, which is accompanied by a letter from Tally to herself, written before she went under the knife. The letter explained to her future self why she had become a Pretty – to take a brain lesion pill. Zane and Tally learn that the Pretties' brains are altered during their surgery. After taking the pills, their main goal is to be bubbly. "Bubbly" is the word Pretties use for being themselves and knowing who they really are. They try to help all the Crims stay bubbly. They do things to make the Crims bubbly, such as crashing a skating rink. When Shay, who, after becoming bubbly, remembered how Tally betrayed her, questions why Tally is bubblier than the rest of the clique, Tally told Shay about the pills. This makes Shay furious because she wanted Tally to share the pills with her. Shay forms a new clique known as the Cutters, who cut themselves to stay bubbly. Knowing that Special Circumstances will come after her any minute, Tally decides that she must go to the New Smoke. Meanwhile Zane is suffering extreme headaches and finding it hard to do everyday tasks. Thinking that this has something to do with the pills, they go to the New Smoke in a hot air balloon, taking the risk of dropping more than 500 feet in the air. Peris decides in the balloon that he does not want to go to the New Smoke. He stalls Tally, and instead of falling to the river, she falls into a reservation with rather primitive people who seem to be very violent. She is considered a god there because of her beauty. There she meets Andrew Simpson Smith, who is the only one who speaks her language. When she escapes the reservation, she goes to the Rusty ruins. When she calls, she sees someone coming down on a hover board and is shocked to find that it is David who has come to take her to the New Smoke. When she arrives, Maddy tells her that the pills she and Zane took separately were meant to be taken together by one person. The nanos that were supposed to eat away the lesions, but they ate more of Zane’s brain tissue because they needed the pill that Tally took to stop them. They soon discover that, when Zane went to the hospital for his headaches, a tracker chip was put in his tooth that sent a message to the Specials. Tally decides to stay with Zane instead of escaping with David. David is confused and believes that she only loves Zane because he is a Pretty. So he tells her she's only staying with him because he's pretty. To make David leave and not get caught himself, Tally tells him to "get his ugly face out of here", hurting him. It had the desired result and he flees. She stays with Zane which leads to her getting caught by the Specials. When she is at the Specials office she discovers Shay has been turned into a Special. The book ends with Shay saying 'face it Tally, you're special' which is showing that Shay is either going to make her special or she is going to torture her. tHIS IS THE STUPIDEST BOOK EVER LIKE REALLY DON'T EVEN READ IT
7093313	/m/0h3tb5	The Penguins of Doom	Greg R. Fishbone	2007-10-31	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Penguins of Doom is set in the fictitious city of Conwell, Massachusetts, which is described in the book as a suburb of Boston. Conwell is home to the book's main character, a seventh-grader named Septina Nash, who is one of a set of triplets. In an attempt to locate her missing triplet sister, Sexta, Septina leads an expedition into the fictitious "Frozen Triangle of Doom" region of Antarctica. The plot is conveyed through letters and notes written by Septina to her teachers, parents, and others. Most of the letters include Septina's doodle-style illustrations. Septina's early letters tackle her conflicted feelings toward her missing sister, with whom she did not always get along. Septina also describes a series of improbable events, such as the appearance of wild penguins in her hometown, the arrival of a mad scientist who proclaims himself to be Septina's arch enemy, and an encounter with a robot duplicate of herself programmed by the CIA. Septina attempts to distract himself from her problems, first by pursuing an ambition to become an Olympic-level skateboarder, then by trying to find a husband for her math teacher, and finally by helping a friend collect empty yogurt containers for a radio station contest. By the end of the novel, Septina learns to somewhat control her talents and locates her sister with the aid of her triplet brother, math teacher, arch enemy, three penguins, and school counselor. The title The Penguins of Doom is derived from the three penguins adopted as pets by Septina. The penguins hail from the Frozen Triangle of Doom section of Antarctica.
7093327	/m/0h3tck	Specials	Scott Westerfeld	2006-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The third novel in the Uglies series begins two months after events in Pretties, when Tally Youngblood has become a member of an elite group of "Specials" - surgically enhanced super-humans - called the Cutters. The Cutters were originally founded by Shay, who invented the use of ritual self-harm to become "bubbly" and clear-headed in spite of brain lesions used to make her pretty-minded. All of the specials in this group were able to get rid of the brain lesions on their own, and now live in the wild. They were adopted into Special Circumstances and given enhanced senses, strength and reflexes, and are among the youngest agents working for Dr Cable. The Cutters disguise themselves as Uglies in order to crash a party in Uglyville and search for members of the New Smoke. Tally successfully finds a girl giving out pills which cure the pretty lesions, which she encourages the Uglies to take to the Crims - Tally and Shay's old clique. The Cutters attempt to capture the girl, but she escapes on a hoverboard with David's help. Giving chase, the Cutters are ambushed by Smokies with unusually advanced technology, including infra-red masking sneak suits and electrical weapons. The Smokies kidnap Fausto, one of the Cutters, and leave Shay and Tally injured. Hearing that the pills are intended for Zane, Tally insists on going to see her boyfriend, who suffered brain damage in New Pretty Town and has been hospitalized since Tally turned Special. Tally discovers that while Zane is free of the pretty lesions, his brain has been damaged and his physical infirmity now disgusts her. She begins to wonder if she received a brain operation when being made Special which has given her feelings of superiority. Eager to show Dr. Cable that Zane is cured so that he will be made Special, Shay and Tally break into the city armory to steal something to cut off Zane's tracking necklace. They succeed, but in the attempt, they accidentally destroy much of the armory, putting the city on high alert. Then, they begin to secretly track Zane and the Crims as they journey to the New Smoke, although the pair split up when Tally receives a guide to the New Smoke from her friend Andrew Simpson Smith, an escapee from a reservation of primitive culture. Shay follows the guide straight to the Smoke, but Tally insists on staying with Zane. On the journey, Zane notices Tally and confronts her about her reasons for following him. The pair kiss, but Tally is still repulsed by Zane's tremors and runs away from him. Tally continues to follow the group to the New Smoke - a city called Diego, which accepts runaways freely, having widely adopted the pretty cure and rejected the rules about surgery, allowing anyone to look how they please rather than following the international standard. Tally is amazed by this, but horrified to hear that Diego is beginning to expand into the wild, clear-cutting forest like the Rusties did. Tally finds Fausto at a party for newly arrived runaways, but realizes his Special brain surgery has been cured. He had given informed consent before he became special to take a "cure" for having a special brain. Tally only just escapes being forcibly injected. Her escape attempt leaves her helpless, as she jumps off a cliff with only crash bracelets to catch her fall. She is picked up by Diego's authorities and locked up for her lethal strength and weapon-sharp teeth and fingernails, which they insist on removing. The doctors inform her that she has received brain surgery to give her flashes of anger and euphoria, along with feelings of superiority, although they will not change this without her consent. With Shay's help, Tally escapes just before the surgery begins. Shay and the other Cutters have all been cured by Fausto, but they want Tally's help to protect Diego from imminent attack by Dr Cable, who is blaming the so-called New System for the attack on the armory. Tally assists in the evacuation of the hospital, but learns after the attack that Zane, having just received surgery to cure his tremors, died of complications during the confusion of the attack. Grief-stricken, Tally leaves immediately to tell Dr Cable the truth about the attack on the armory. Just before she reaches the city, she meets David, who took a helicopter to talk to her in time. He tells her that he still believes she can think her own way out of her brain surgery, but gives her an injector full of the cure so that she has the option of curing herself. Arriving at Special Circumstances headquarters, Tally finds Dr Cable and the Specials have taken control of the city. Dr Cable knows that Tally was responsible for the attack, but has chosen to use the attack as a way to seize control over both this city and Diego. Tally tricks Dr Cable into stabbing herself on the injector, and is imprisoned underground for a month, watching the feeds as Dr. Cable slowly loses her grip on the city and the cure begins to spread. Diego publishes scans of Tally's Special body, calling her a "morphilogical violation," and the world is outraged by Dr Cable's "secret" experiments on unconsenting teenagers. Eventually, Tally is taken as the last remaining Special to be "despecialized", but she resists the surgeons and breaks out with Dr. Cable's help, becoming the only true Special left. She returns to David, still waiting at the Rusty Ruins, and realizes that her other friends have all found their places in the New System. She decides that she wishes to remain in the wild, free from surgery, and with David she will form the "New Special Circumstances", ensuring that nature is protected from mankind's excesses.
7097369	/m/0h40x8	The Dark Ocean	Jack Vance			 Betty, an attractive California girl, takes a coming-of-age sojourn, embarking from San Francisco on an Italian freighter bound for ports in El Salvador, Panama, Venezuela, Spain and Italy. There are about a half dozen other passengers, including, to her dismay, Tom, an old boyfriend who infuriates her by introducing himself as her "fiancé", a notion of which she immediately disabuses both him and her fellow passengers. Betty develops an attraction for and engages in a mild flirtation with Mik Finsch, an older, mysterious man-of-the-world, but when she accepts an offer of drinks in his cabin, his amorous advances get way out of line and Betty find herself hard put to fend him off. Tom bursts into Finsch's cabin and the two start fighting; by the time the captain breaks them up, Tom has thrashed Finsch, who claims he was "just warming up". Betty tells Tom she could have handled the situation herself and she still has no interest in marrying him and wished he had not come. Another passenger tells Betty that Finsch's pride has been wounded and he will get revenge on Tom somehow. That night, Tom goes missing and a typewritten suicide note is found. There are suspicions, but no proof. When another "suicide" involving Finsch and the beautiful wife of a shipping agent leaves no doubt in Betty's mind that Finsch is a murderer, the two are pitted against one another, with Finsch seemingly holding all the cards.
7097617	/m/0h41hn	Mimi and Toutou Go Forth. The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika	Giles Foden	2004-09-30	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During World War One, German warships controlled Lake Tanganyika, which is the longest Lake in the world and was of great strategic advantage in Central Africa at the time. The British had no naval craft at all upon 'Tanganjikasee' (as the Germans called it). After the destruction of the Belgian warship - Del Commune and through the actions of a British informant known as Lee and his observations of the two German Warships, including the Hedwig von Wissman, the British Admiralty and Admiral Sir David Gamble decided that a naval expedition was needed to retake the Lake from the Germans. They were unaware of the existence of a much larger German vessel on the lake, the Graf von Götzen. So, in June 1915, a force of 28 men was dispatched from Britain on a vast journey. Their chief was an eccentric naval officer, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson who was known for being the oldest Lt. Commander in the Royal Navy, a man court martialled for wrecking his own ships and a complete liar. He was given command of two small gunboats, which he named Mimi and Toutou (childish onomatopoeia for "Cat" and "Dog" in French). After a month long journey to South Africa via the Atlantic Ocean, the boats and expedition travelled by train to the Congo. In the Congo, with great difficulty, the expedition carried the two boats, with the aid of steam engines and mules, to the edge of Lake Tanganyika. They captured one ship, the Kigani, and named her Fifi, sank the Hedwig von Wissman, but did not engage the formidable Graf von Götzen, which remained dominant on the lake until it was scuttled in the wake of an Anglo-Belgian attack by land on German positions.
7105091	/m/0h4bjd	Blood and Guts in High School	Kathy Acker	1984	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Blood and Guts in High School is the story of Janey Smith, a ten-year-old American girl living in Mérida, Mexico, who departs to the U.S.A. to live on her own. She has an incestuous sexual relationship with her father, whom she treats as “boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father." They live together in Mexico until another woman begins to interest Janey’s father. Janey realizes he hates her because she limits him and he wants to have his own life. Her father agrees to let her go and puts her into a school in New York City. For a period of time her father sends her money, but later she begins to work at a bakery and is appalled by the customers. She has many sexual partners. She ends up pregnant twice and has two abortions. She seems to be addicted to sex and does not care whom she sleeps with. In New York City she joins a gang, the Scorpions. One day the gang crashes a car while running from the police and Janey is the only one who survives. Afterwards she begins to live in the New York slums. Two thieves break into her apartment, kidnap her, and sell her into prostitution. She becomes the property of a Persian slave trader who keeps her locked up, trying to turn her out as a prostitute. We see Janey’s dreams and visions, and read her journal entries and poems. Shortly before the kidnapper is to release her to become a prostitute for him, she discovers she has cancer. The slave trader lets her go and she illegally goes to Tangiers. There she meets Jean Genet, the talented, iconic French writer, and they develop a relationship. Janey and Genet travel through North Africa and stop in Alexandria. Genet treats Janey badly, but the worse he treats her the more she loves him. He decides to leave her. Janey gets arrested for stealing Genet’s property. Shortly afterwards he joins her in prison. A rebellion breaks out and they are both thrown out of Alexandria. They travel together for some time. Then Genet gives Janey some money and leaves. Soon after they part company, Janey dies.
7107337	/m/0h4h1s	The Roaring Girl	Thomas Dekker			 Act 1, Scene 1: Sebastian's chambers in Sir Alexander's house Mary Fitz-Allard and Sebastian are in love, but their fathers will never permit the union, as Sebastian's father demands too large a dowry for the girl. However, Sebastian has a plan to enable the match: he will pretend to be in love with Moll Cutpurse, a notorious cross-dressing thief, and his father will be so worried that he will see marriage to Mary as the preferable alternative. Act 1, Scene 2: The parlour of Sir Alexander's house Sebastian's father is worried about his son's pursuing a grotesque "man-woman." Sebastian pretends to be outraged, and asks if his father would be happy if he married Mary instead. His father, Sir Alexander says no. Sir Alexander calls the spy and parasite, Trapdoor, and sets him to follow Moll, get into her services, and find a way to destroy her. Trapdoor agrees. Act 2, Scene 1: The three shops open in a rank A scene in the street. Various gallants are talking to the shopkeepers and flirting with their wives. The gallant Laxton flirts with Mistress Gallipot in the tobacco-shop. He does not actually like her much, but is keeping her on a string in order to get money from her to take other girls out. Jack Dapper, a young profligate, enters to buy a feather to show off with. Moll enters and Laxton takes a fancy to her, assuming that because she dresses as a man, she is morally loose. Laxton courts Moll; she agrees to meet him at Gray’s Inn Fields at 3 o’clock. Trapdoor then presents himself to Moll and offers to be her servant. She is dubious but agrees to meet him in Gray’s Inn Fields a bit after 3 pm. Act 2, Scene 2: A street Sebastian's father is spying on him at home. Moll enters and Sebastian woos her. She is polite but rebuffs him: she is chaste and will never marry. He says he will try again later. She exits and Sir Alexander rebukes his son, saying that Moll will disgrace him, that she is a whore and a thief. Sebastian says that there is no proof of that. Sir Alexander exits, still more resolved to publicly shame Moll. Sebastian decides that he must confess his plan to her, and get her to help him and Mary. Act 3, Scene 1: Gray's Inn Fields Laxton enters for his rendezvous with Moll. She appears dressed as a man; he goes towards her but she challenges him to a fight: he has impugned her honour, assuming that all women are whores. He is wrong to assume so – and also wrong to treat whoring lightly, as it is a sin that many good women are forced to, for lack of an alternative. They fight and she wounds him; he retreats, shocked. Trapdoor enters. Moll teases and taunts him, but finally accepts that his motives are good and agrees to take him on as her servant. Act 3, Scene 2: Gallipot's house Mistress Gallipot is continuing her covert affair with Laxton, which her husband does not suspect. He has sent her a letter asking for a loan of thirty pounds, which she does not have. She formulates a plan, tearing the letter and wailing. She tells Gallipot that Laxton is an old suitor of her, to whom she was betrothed before she married him. She thought him dead, but now he has returned to claim his wife. Gallipot is horrified, as he loves his wife and has had children by her. She suggests buying Laxton off with thirty pounds and he agrees. Laxton enters. Mrs Gallipot quickly apprises him of the situation and Gallipot offers him the money. Feigning anger at the loss of his "betrothed", he takes it and exits, musing on the deceitfulness of women. Act 3, Scene 3: Holborn Street Trapdoor tells Sir Alexander of a plan he has learned: Sebastian and Moll plan to meet at 3 o’clock in his (Sir Alexander’s) chamber to have sex. They decide to trap her. Meanwhile, Sir Davy Dapper talks to Sir Alexander about his son, Jack, who is still wild and profligate, whoring, drinking and gambling. He has decided to teach him a lesson: he will arrange to have him arrested, and a few days in the counter (the debtor's prison) will bring him to his senses. The sergeants enter and Sir Davy (pretending not to be Jack’s father) gives them their instructions. Jack and his boy Gull enter and are about to be set on by the sergeants; however, Moll is watching and warns him away. Jack escapes, and Moll mocks the police who can do nothing. Act 4, Scene 1: Sir Alexander's chamber Sir Alexander and Trapdoor await Moll and Sebastian. Sir Alexander lays out diamonds and gold in the hope that Moll will try to steal them. Sebastian and Moll enter with Mary (who is disguised as a page). Moll is now in on the plan and aiming to help them. She plays on the viol and sings. She then sees the jewels but only comments on them, rather than stealing them. Act 4, Scene 2: Openwork's house The citizens' wives discuss the various flirtatious gallants, and agree that they are simple creatures, who don’t really understand life, women or relationships. A young man enters pretending to have legal document calling the Gallipots to court for breach of contract. This is Laxton’s doing&mdash;after the thirty pounds, he demanded another fifteen, and now he is asking for a hundred in order to hold his peace. Mistress Gallipot is shocked. Her husband wants to pay Laxton off again, but she feels forced by the enormity of the sum to confess that all this was a lie, that she was never precontracted to Laxton. Gallipot asks for an explanation; Laxton ‘confesses’ that he had courted Gallipot’s wife but had been refused; she then promised that although she would not be unfaithful, she would always help Laxton out if he were in need, and hence ended up concocting this story to get money. Gallipot believes this tale; Laxton is not punished but ends up being taken home with them for dinner. Act 5, Scene 1: A street Moll tells Jack how she saved him from the sergeants and he thanks her. He knows that his father set them on him, and is amused that he thought time in jail would cure him, when in fact jail just teaches people how to be worse. Moll has grown to suspect Trapdoor’s honesty and has got rid of him. Trapdoor enters in disguise as a soldier but Moll sees straight through him and uncovers him. A gang of cutpurses enter to try to rob them but Moll sees them off: she is known and feared by all rogues. Moll explains how she thinks it is her duty to protect the honest through her knowledge of London’s low-lifes. Act 5, Scene 2: Sir Alexander's house The news has reached Sir Alexander that his son and Moll have fled to get married. Sir Guy Fitz-Allard, Mary’s father, enters and gently mocks his ex-friend, saying that it is his own fault for breaking off the match before. However, Sir Guy trusts Sebastian’s judgement and says that he will wager all his lands against half of Sir Alexander’s that the pair will not wed. Sir Alexander agrees to the bet. There is a rumour that Sebastian may have married someone else, and Sir Alexander says that anyone else in the world but Moll would make a welcome daughter-in-law. A servant announces that Sebastian has arrived with his bride; he comes in hand in hand with Moll. Sir Alexander is horrified, but capitalises on it and says that he will take Sir Guy’s lands. The trick is then revealed: Mary is brought in and shown to be Sebastian’s true bride. Sir Alexander is vastly relieved; he apologises to both Mary and her father for his behaviour, and agrees that half his land shall now go to the happy couple. Moll is asked when she will marry; she replies that she will never marry because certain values she holds to society will never be true. Trapdoor enters to confess that he was set on her by Sir Alexander; Sir Alexander promises that he will never again value something according to what public opinion thinks.
7110781	/m/0h4pll	Tarzan and the Ant Men	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1924	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tarzan, the king of the jungle, enters an isolated country called Minuni, inhabited by a people four times smaller than himself, the Minunians, who live in magnificent city-states which frequently wage war against each other. Tarzan befriends the king, Adendrohahkis, and the prince, Komodoflorensal, of one such city-state, called Trohanadalmakus, and joins them in war against the onslaught of the army of Veltopismakus, their warlike neighbours. He is captured on the battle-ground and taken prisoner by the Veltopismakusians, whose scientist Zoanthrohago conducts an experiment reducing him to the size of a Minunian, and the ape-man is imprisoned and enslaved among other Trohanadalmakusian prisoners of war. He meets, though, Komodoflorensal in the dungeons of Veltopismakus, and together they are able to make a daring escape. Spanish actor/Tarzan lookalike Esteban Miranda, who had been imprisoned in the village of Obebe, the cannibal, at the end of the previous novel, Tarzan and the Golden Lion, also appears in this adventure.
7111340	/m/0h4qdc	The Mask of Apollo	Mary Renault	1966	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Nikeratos is a successful professional actor, and the author vividly evokes the technologies and traditions of classic Greek Tragedy. There are detailed recreations of what might have been involved in the staging of a theatrical production of the time, describing the music, scenery, mechanical special effects devices, and especially the practice of the three principal actors sharing the various roles in a performance, along with authentic gossip involved in these casting decisions. Nikeratos befriends Dion, a moderate politician, who entrusts him with conveying sensitive documents between Athens and the powerful but unstable city-state of Syracuse. Dion is trying to bring stability and democracy to the transitional government there, but the young heir to the tyrant of the city, Dionysius the Younger, instead attempts ineptly to apply Plato’s theories of an ideal republic, with dire results. At the end of the book, Nikeratos encounters the young Alexander the Great and his lover Hephaistion, and laments that Plato never tutored Alexander, who might have pursued Plato's social ideals with greater success.
7111635	/m/0h4qqb	Victory	Joseph Conrad	1915	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Through a business misadventure, the European Axel Heyst ends up living on an island in what is now Indonesia, with a Chinese assistant Wang. Heyst visits a nearby island when a female band is playing at a hotel owned by Mr. Schomberg. Schomberg attempts to force himself sexually on one of the band members, Alma, later called Lena. She flees with Heyst back to his island and they become lovers. Schomberg seeks revenge by attempting to frame Heyst for the "murder" of a man who had died of natural causes and later by sending three desperadoes (Pedro, Martin Ricardo and Mr. Jones) to Heyst's island with a lie about treasure hidden on the island. The three die (Wang kills one) but Lena dies as well and Axel is overcome with grief and commits suicide.
7112015	/m/0h4r8k	Green Thumb	Rob Thomas	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Pudgy misanthropic boy genius Grady Jacobs wins a scholarship to participate in rainforest research and conservation. Upon discovering that our Grady is only thirteen, Dr. Carter, the scientist in charge, relegates him to the position of camp drudge. A healthier diet and much menial labor transforms Grady both physically and emotionally, making him a better and more complete boy by the end of the book. To add interest, during the course of his duties, Grady discovers a way to communicate with trees. This fantastic, pseudo-scientific power eventually comes in useful when it is discovered that Dr. Carter's project would in fact lead to the destruction of the rainforest. Grady escapes in the company of Amazonian natives and hatches a daring plan to thwart the evil scientist.
7114118	/m/0h4v7p	A Gentle Creature	Fyodor Dostoyevsky			 The story opens with the narrator in a frenzy about an apparent tragedy that has just befallen his household. His wife has apparently died, as he makes repeated references to her being laid out on a table, presumably lifeless. The narrator proceeds to make an attempt to relate the story to the reader in an effort to make sense of the situation. The narrator is the owner of a pawnshop, and one of his repeated customers was a young girl of sixteen who always pawns items to earn money to advertise as a governess in the newspaper. The narrator could see that she was in a dire financial situation, and he often gave her much more for her pawned items than they were reasonably worth. The narrator slowly develops an interest in the girl, and his interest seems at least marginally returned. The narrator investigates the girl's background, and finds that she is at the mercy of two greedy aunts. The aunts were arranging her marriage to a fat shopkeeper. Once the shopkeeper proposed marriage to the girl, the narrator countered with his own proposal. The girl decided, after much deliberation, to marry the narrator. The narrator's marriage started out cordially enough, but his miserly ways were taxing to his young wife. A dearth of communication and disagreements about how the pawnshop should be run eventually resulted in arguments, ending with the narrator's wife storming out of the house. She returns, having nowhere else to go. The narrator's wife makes a habit of leaving during the day, and eventually it is discovered that she is visiting Efimovich, a member of the narrator's former regiment. The narrator's wife eventually confronts the narrator with the details that she learned from Efimovich: details about the narrator's shameful departure from his regiment. The narrator is unfazed, and his wife continues her visits to Efimovich. One time, the narrator follows his wife to Efimovich, bringing a revolver. He listens in delight to a verbal duel between his wife and Efimovich, and eventually he bursts in and reclaims his wife. The narrator and his wife return home. They retire for the night separately. In the morning, the narrator opens his eyes to see that his wife is standing over him with the revolver pointed at his temple. He simply closes his eyes again, and he is convinced that he conquered her with his readiness to accept death. She does not shoot, and the narrator buys her a separate bed that day. That same day, she also contracts brain fever. The narrator spares no expense for his wife's medical care, and she slowly recovers. Throughout the entire winter the narrator watches his wife furtively, and a watershed moment happens when she begins to sing in his presence. The narrator kisses his wife's feet and promises to be a changed man. He recounts the story of his shame in the regiment, and he promises to take her to Boulogne-sur-Mer. Several days later, the narrator leaves the house to make arrangements for passports. When the narrator returns home, he is met with a crowd of people outside his house. His wife had committed suicide: she had jumped out of the window while holding an icon. The narrator is convinced that he was only five minutes too late, even though it was ultimately his narcissistic love that drove his gentle wife to suicide.
7121834	/m/0h56rr	Lazarus Jack		2004		 In 1926, magician Jackson "Lazarus Jack" Pierce accidentally causes his wife and three children to become trapped in an extradimensional void. Seventy years later, a mysterious young man offers the aging magician the opportunity to restore his youth, and save his family.
7122470	/m/0h5800	Salt	Adam Roberts	2000-06-20	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Colonists from Earth set out for a distant planet, but during the voyage, a factional skirmish turns into an irrevocable grudge, to play out during the course of their colonisation. Rough-shod settlements are soon constructed around the sterile salt environment, yet old tensions quickly develop into war between two of these settlements, the rigid military dictatorship of Senaar and the Als anarchy. The novel explores the motivations of their warfare, and the viewpoints of the two narrators illuminate a dreadful, entwined inevitability. In all aspects of theme, setting, character development and prose style, Salt is a very stark, austere composition.
7123562	/m/0h5bpx	The Forests of Silence	Jennifer Rowe	2000	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book opens with a boy called Jarred, a friend of Prince Endon. After the death of King Alton and his queen, Endon is proclaimed King in his father's place. To consummate this, a magical steel belt, the Belt of Deltora, is set around Endon's waist. The Belt recognises Endon as Deltora's rightful king. Jarred, curious, goes to the library and learns that the evil Shadow Lord, a Sauron-like intelligence located in the Shadowlands, once tried to seize the land in which is the kingdom of Deltora. Because the people of those days were divided into seven tribes, the Shadow Army soon overwhelmed much of the land. Jarred learned that a blacksmith named Adin gathered the sacred talismans from each tribe and attached them to a chain of steel medallions. The people's trust in Adin, channeled through the gems, was powerful enough to drive back the Shadow Army into its own dark home, the Shadowlands. Adin later became king of the united land called Deltora; yet he never forgot that the Enemy was not destroyed. He therefore never let the Belt out of his sight. With every generation, the Belt was worn less and less, diminishing its effect. The kings and queens also let their power go to the administrative council, diminishing its power. Jarred, learning of this, urges Endon to put on the Belt and revive the custom of Adin. Before he can explain in detail, Chief Advisor Prandine enters and accuses Jarred of treason. Jarred escapes Prandine and finds that the city has fallen into disrepair, and Deltora has become a virtual dystopia. Jarred then becomes apprentice and successor to Crian the blacksmith, later to marry Crian's granddaughter Anna. Seven years later, the gems of Deltora were stolen by the Ak-Baba under the Shadow Lord and was scattered throughout the land. This also allowed the Enemy to enter the land. Jarred helps King Endon and Queen Sharn (Endon's pregnant bride) escape the invasion through a secret tunnel. Sixteen years later, the Shadow Lord tyrannically rules Deltora. A person identified as Jarred's son and apprentice, Lief, has been born during this time. He has been raised to reject the Shadow Lord, but never to show any obvious opposition. On his birthday, Lief's father sends his son, accompanied by a soldier named Barda, to find the lost gems from the Belt and restore them to it. The nearest gem, the golden topaz, is to be found in Mid Wood, which is one of three perilous Forests of Silence. While travelling to the forest, Wenns capture them and take them into First Wood as an offering to the predator known as Wennbar. Before being eaten, a forest-dwelling girl of Lief's own age, called Jasmine appears. Jasmine, after a brief reluctance, rescues Lief and Barda, later to leads them to the Dark in the heart of Mid Wood. There, they discover a wall made of steadfastly cultivated vines, enclosing a clearing in the very center of the forest. In that center grow three flowers called the Lilies of Life, whose nectar possesses healing properties. The wall of vines was guarded by a Jalis Knight called Gorl, who sought to drink of the Nectar of Life and become immortal. Over the years, Gorl's body has rotted away, leaving nothing behind but his memories and his intentions. He captures Lief and Barda. Under their questions, Gorl narrates all, while Barda strives to break the psychokinetic control held by the knight over the questers' bodies. Barda breaks the grip, but is given a mortal wound by Gorl's sword. As he is about to kill Lief, Jasmine persuades a tree to drop a limb onto Gorl, thus destroying him and breaching his wall. Sunlight enters the Dark, and the Lilies of Life bloom at last. Jasmine and Lief use their nectar to heal the dying Barda. As the Lilies fade, Jasmine takes the last of the nectar into a jar, so that she might use it on future injuries. Lief takes the topaz from its position as the pommel of Gorl's sword and fits it into the Belt of Deltora. The three relax and recuperate, while animals from all over Mid Wood enter the breach in Gorl's wall and devour the vines. Later, Barda and Lief re-embark, with Jasmine and her companions Kree & Filli in company.
7123580	/m/0h5bsb	The Lake of Tears	Jennifer Rowe	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In The Forests of Silence, the topaz had been retrieved by Lief, Barda, and Jasmine. They continue on their way to the Lake of Tears, to retrieve the ruby. They learn that the land surrounding the Lake of Tears is controlled by the evil sorceress Thaegan, who has 13 monster children. As the companions travel through the countryside they rescue a man named Manus from the Shadow Lord's servants, Grey Guards. Manus is from the city of Raladin. 100 years ago, Thaegan put a spell on Raladin that caused them and all of their offspring to never be able to speak. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine also learn that Thaegan put a spell on the city of D'Or and turned it into the Lake of Tears. The companions, with Manus, escape from the Grey Guards only to be captured by Jin and Jod, two of Thaegan's children. They eventually defeat Jin and Jod and journey to the city of Raladin, where Manus hopes to find his people. Upon arrival, they find the city empty. Only when the Ralad people hear the companions, they come out of hiding. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine tell the Ralads that they must journey to the Lake of Tears, despite the Ralads pleas, but they do not tell them they are going in quest of one of the gems of the Belt of Deltora. Manus agrees to be their guide. When they get to the Lake of Tears, the monster Soldeen attacks them. Soldeen is a giant fish-like creature who is very deadly and has the ability to speak. Using the power of the topaz, Lief persuades Soldeen to give them the ruby. As Soldeen agrees, Thaegan appears and threatens to kill them all. The ruby flies out of Lief's hand and into the depths of the Lake as Thaegan uses her magic to harm them. Just as Thaegan is about to kill them all, Jasmine's bird Kree comes and kills Thaegan by drawing blood. All of Thaegan's spells are broken: the Ralads can now speak and the Lake of Tears turns back into the city of D'Or. Soldeen is a man named Nanion and gives the three companions the gem and wishes them well on their quest. The Belt now holds the topaz and ruby and now they journey towards the City of the Rats.
7125736	/m/0h5h8x	A Body in the Bath House	Lindsey Davis	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 When Marcus Didius Falco discovers a corpse hidden under the floor of his new bath house he starts to track down the men responsible - Glaucus and Cotta. He also receives a commission from the Emperor Vespasian. A building project for the British Chieftain Togidubnus is running late and over-budget. Suspecting that the men he seeks have fled to Britain Falco accepts the mission and travels there with his wife, two baby daughters, their nurse and his two brothers-in-law Aelianus and Justinus. Falco arrives at Fishbourne and starts by investigating corrupt practices. However events quickly take a turn for the worse when the Chief Architect is found murdered in the bath-house of the British King. Falco takes over the project and investigates the killings.
7126995	/m/0h5kg8	Enchanted Boy	Richie McMullen	1989	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Richie is routinely physically abused by his father, a drunk who works in the construction industry. Richie adores his elder brother James and leads a life a petty crime and childhood dares with his friends. At the age of eight, he is molested in a cinema by a man who persuades him to come home with him. It is the first time he realises the power a knowing boy can have over a desperate pedophile. Richie regularly runs away from home and finds that this has the effect of stopping the abuse from his father. He is also sexually abused by his older cousin who is in the British Merchant Navy. By the age of twelve, his thoughts were continually turning to sex and he experiments with Pip. His prostitution excites and disgusts him in equal measure and the realities and dangers of rent boy prostitution are brought home when he is raped by two men. At fourteen, he had fallen for Mike, but Mike prefers girls and so their relationship is long-lasting but doomed. At fifteen, Richie is thinking of leaving home and thinking of making his living in London as a rent boy in Piccadilly Circus.
7127359	/m/0h5l3l	The Dynasts	Thomas Hardy			 In addition to the various historical figures, The Dynasts also contains an extensive tragic chorus of metaphysical figures ("Spirits" and "Ancient Spirits") who observe and discuss the events. Part First contains a Forescene and six Acts with 35 Scenes. The time period of the events in Part First covers 10-months, from March 1805, the time when Napoleon repeated his coronation ceremony at Milan and took up the crown of Lombardy, through January 1806, the time of the death of William Pitt the Younger. The principal historical events entail Napoleon's invasion plans for England, which are abandoned when French Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve sails for the south, the Battle of Trafalgar, and subsequently the Battle of Ulm and the Battle of Austerlitz. The division of the Acts and its Scenes is as follows: Fore Scene. The Overworld Act First: * Scene I. England - A Ridge in Wessex * Scene II. Paris - Office of the Minister of Marine * Scene III. London - The Old House of Commons * Scene IV. The Harbour of Boulogne * Scene V. London - The House of a Lady of Quality * Scene VI. Milan. The Cathedral Act Second: * Scene I. The Dockyard, Gibraltar * Scene II. Off Ferrol * Scene III. The Camp and Harbour of Boulogne * Scene IV. South Wessex - A Ridge-like Down near the Coast * Scene V. The Same - Rainbarrows' Beacon, Egdon Heath Act Third: * Scene I. The Chateau at Pont-de-Briques * Scene II. The Frontiers of Upper Austria and Bavaria * Scene III. Boulogne - The St Omer Road Act Fourth:— * Scene I. King George's Watering-place, South Wessex * Scene II. Before the City of Ulm * Scene III. Ulm - Within the City * Scene IV. Before Ulm - The Same Day * Scene V. The Same - The Michaelsberg * Scene VI. London - Spring Gardens Act Fifth: * Scene I. Off Cape Trafalgar * Scene II. The Same - The Quarter-deck of the "Victory" * Scene III. The Same - On Board the "Bucentaure" * Scene IV. The Same - The Cockpit of the "Victory" * Scene V. London - The Guildhall * Scene VI. An Inn at Rennes * Scene VII. King George's Watering-place, South Wessex Act Sixth: * Scene I. The Field of Austerlitz - The French Position * Scene II. The Same - The Russian Position * Scene III. The Same - The French Position * Scene IV. The Same - The Russian Position * Scene V. The Same - Near the Windmill of Paleny * Scene VI. Shockerwick House, near Bath * Scene VII. Paris - A Street leading to the Tuileries * Scene VIII. Putney - Bowling Green House Part Second contains six Acts with 43 Scenes. The time period of the events of Part Second ranges over 7 years, from 1806 to just before the French invasion of Russia in 1812. The listing of the Acts and Scenes is as follows: Act First: * Scene I. London - Fox's Lodgings, Arlington Street * Scene II. The Route between London and Paris * Scene III. The Streets of Berlin * Scene IV. The Field of Jena * Scene V. Berlin - A Room overlooking a Public Place * Scene VI. The Same * Scene VII. Tilsit and the River Niemen * Scene VIII. The Same Act Second: * Scene I. The Pyrenees and Valleys adjoining * Scene II. Aranjuez, near Madrid - A Room in the Palace of Godoy, the "Prince of Peace" * Scene III. London - The Marchioness of Salisbury's * Scene IV. Madrid and its Environs * Scene V. The Open Sea between the English Coasts and the Spanish Peninsula * Scene VI. St Cloud - The Boudoir of Josephine * Scene VII. Vimiero Act Third: * Scene I. Spain - A Road near Astorga * Scene II. The Same * Scene III. Before Coruna * Scene IV. Coruna - Near the Ramparts * Scene V. Vienna - A Cafe in the Stephans-Platz Act Fourth: * Scene I. A Road out of Vienna * Scene II. The Island of Lobau, with Wagram beyond * Scene III. The Field of Wagram * Scene IV. The Field of Talavera * Scene V. The Same * Scene VI. Brighton - The Royal Pavilion * Scene VII. The Same * Scene VIII. Walcheren Act Fifth: * Scene I. Paris - A Ballroom in the House of Cambaceres * Scene II. Paris - The Tuileries * Scene III. Vienna - A Private Apartment in the Imperial Palace * Scene IV. London - A Club in St. James's Street * Scene V. The old West Highway out of Vienna * Scene VI. Courcelles * Scene VII. Petersburg - The Palace of the Empress-Mother * Scene VIII. Paris - The Grand Gallery of the Louvre and the Salon-Carre adjoining Act Sixth: * Scene I. The Lines of Torres Vedras * Scene II. The Same - Outside the Lines * Scene III. Paris - The Tuileries * Scene IV. Spain - Albuera * Scene V. Windsor Castle - A Room in the King's Apartments * Scene VI. London - Carlton House and the Streets adjoining * Scene VII. The Same - The Interior of Carlton House Part Third contains seven Acts with 53 Scenes, and an After Scene. The historical time period of Part Third covers Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 through his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The division of the Acts and Scenes is as follows: Act First: * Scene I. The Banks of the Niemen, near Kowno * Scene II. The Ford of Santa Marta, Salamanca * Scene III. The Field of Salamanca * Scene IV. The Field of Borodino * Scene V. The Same * Scene VI. Moscow * Scene VII. The Same - Outside the City * Scene VIII. The Same - The Interior of the Kremlin * Scene IX. The Road from Smolensko into Lithuania * Scene X. The Bridge of the Beresina * Scene XI. The Open Country between Smorgoni and Wilna * Scene XII. Paris - The Tuileries Act Second: * Scene I. The Plain of Vitoria * Scene II. The Same, from the Puebla Heights * Scene III. The Same - The Road from the Town * Scene IV. A Fete at Vauxhall Gardens Act Third: * Scene I. Leipzig - Napoleon's Quarters in the Reudnitz Suburb * Scene II. The Same - The City and the Battlefield * Scene III. The Same - from the Tower of the Pleissenburg * Scene IV. The Same - At the Thonberg Windmill * Scene V. The Same - A Street near the Ranstadt Gate * Scene VI. The Pyrenees - Near the River Nivelle Act Fourth: * Scene I. The Upper Rhine * Scene II. Paris - The Tuileries * Scene III. The Same - The Apartments of the Empress * Scene IV. Fontainebleau - A Room in the Palace * Scene V. Bayonne - The British Camp * Scene VI. A Highway in the Outskirts of Avignon * Scene VII. Malmaison - The Empress Josephine's Bedchamber * Scene VIII. London - The Opera-House Act Fifth: * Scene I. Elba - The Quay, Porto Ferrajo * Scene II. Vienna - The Imperial Palace * Scene III. La Mure, near Grenoble * Scene IV. Schonbrunn * Scene V. London - The Old House of Commons * Scene VI. Wessex - Durnover Green, Casterbridge Act Sixth: * Scene I. The Belgian Frontier * Scene II. A Ballroom in Brussels * Scene III. Charleroi - Napoleon's Quarters * Scene IV. A Chamber overlooking a Main Street in Brussels * Scene V. The Field of Ligny * Scene VI. The Field of Quatre-Bras * Scene VII. Brussels - The Place Royale * Scene VIII. The Road to Waterloo Act Seventh: * Scene I. The Field of Waterloo * Scene II. The Same - The French Position * Scene III. Saint Lambert's Chapel Hill * Scene IV. The Field of Waterloo - The English Position * Scene V. The Same - The Women's Camp near Mont Saint-Jean * Scene VI. The Same - The French Position * Scene VII. The Same - The English Position * Scene VIII. The Same - Later * Scene IX. The Wood of Bossu After Scene. The Overworld
7128383	/m/0h5n0h	Indiana	George Sand	1831	{"/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In the story an attractive, young Creole from Réunion named Indiana is married to an older ex-army officer named Colonel Delmare. Indiana does not love him, and searches for someone who will love her passionately. She overlooks her cousin Ralph, who lives with her and the colonel and who has loved her steadfastly from a young age. When their young, handsome, and well-spoken neighbor, Raymon de Ramiere declares his interest to Indiana, she falls in love with him. Raymon has already seduced Indiana's maid, Noun, who is pregnant with his child. When Noun finds out what is going on, she drowns herself. Indiana's husband decides that they will move to the Île Bourbon. Indiana escapes the house to faithfully present herself in Raymon's apartments in the middle of the night, expecting him to accept her as his mistress in spite of society's inevitable condemnation. He at first attempts to seduce her but, on failing, rejects her once and for all. He cannot bear the thought that her will is stronger than his and writes her a letter intended to make her fall in love with him again, even though he has no intention of requiting it. Indiana has moved to the Island with the Colonel by the time she reads the letter but does not fall under Raymon's spell again. She escapes once again to France, where the Trois Glorieuses revolution of 1830 is taking place. In the meantime, Raymon has made an advantageous marriage and bought Indiana's house. The stoic Sir Ralph, whom she has always seen as 'égoiste', comes to rescue her and tell her that Colonel Delmare is dead from illness. They decide to commit suicide together by jumping into a waterfall at the Île de Réunion. But on the way home they fall in love. Just before the suicide, they declare their love for one another and believe they will be married in Heaven. At the end of the novel comes a conclusion, a young adventurer's account of finding a man and woman, Ralph and Indiana, living on an isolated plantation.
7129205	/m/025v3s3	Caps for Sale			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Based on a folktale, the story follows the life of a mustachioed cap salesman who wears his entire stock of caps on his head. He strolls through towns and villages chanting, "Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!" One day, the peddler sits down under a tree to take a nap, with all his wares still on his head. When he awakens, all the caps but his own are gone - stolen by a troop of monkeys, who now sit in the tree wearing them. The peddler orders them to return his caps, scolds them, and yells at them, while the monkeys only imitate him. The peddler finally throws down his own cap in disgust - upon which the monkeys throw theirs down as well, right at his feet. He stacks the caps back on his head and strolls back to town, calling, "Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!"
7130694	/m/0h5sdk	The Fallible Fiend	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 On the demonic Twelfth Plane the demon Zdim is drafted for a year's indentured servitude on the human Prime Plane, the demon society having an agreement to provide service to human sorcerers in return for supplies of iron, a raw material it desperately needs. Zdim is duly summoned to the Prime Plane by the sorcerer Dr. Maldivius of Novaria. There he strives to do his duty, but his demonic literal-mindedness hampers him. Assigned to protect the Sibylline Sapphire from any trespassers, he promptly eats Maldivius' apprentice Grax when the latter intrudes. Similar misadventures result in the disgusted Maldivius selling his contract, and the demon is passed from one master to another, from circus master Bagardo to the rich widow Roska of Ir, all the while doing his level best to figure out what the muddled humans truly wish of him. Against all odds he becomes a hero when he recruits aid for the city-state of Ir after it discounts intelligence of an imminent invasion by the cannibal Paaluans. Returning to his home plane early and with extra iron, he resolves never again to leave the comforts of the Twelfth Plane — until he realizes how dull it is compared with the picturesque insanity of the human realm... By internal chronology, The Fallible Fiend is the second story in the Novarian series, coming after the short story "The Emperor's Fan", which is set centuries before the others, and prior to the Reluctant King trilogy. (The Paaluan invasion of Ir is mentioned in the second and third books of the trilogy, The Clocks of Iraz and The Unbeheaded King, respectively, as an event occurring either recently or some generations past.) Note: The name of Ir, the subterrranean city-state where much the plot takes place, is simply the Hebrew word for "city" (עיר).
7130832	/m/0h5slt	The Damnation Game	Clive Barker	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Marty Strauss, a gambling addict recently released from prison, is hired to be the personal bodyguard of Joseph Whitehead, one of the wealthiest men in the world. The job proves more complicated and dangerous than he thought, however, as Marty soon gets caught up in a series of supernatural events involving Whitehead, his daughter (who is a heroin addict), and a devilish man named Mamoulian, with whom Whitehead made a Faustian bargain many years earlier, during World War II. As time passes, Mamoulian haunts Whitehead using his supernatural powers (such as the ability to raise the dead), urging him to complete his pact with him. Eventually Whitehead decides to escape his fate after a few encounters with Mamoulian and having his wife, former bodyguard, and now his daughter Carys taken away from him. With hope still left to save Carys, Marty Strauss, although reluctant to get involved in the old man Whiteheads deserved Punishment, decides to get involved and attempt to save the innocent gifted addict from being another victim to the damnation game.
7131429	/m/0h5tsb	Gradisil	Adam Roberts	2006-03-16	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Gradisil takes place over several generations of the Gyeroffy family, the novel's timeline spanning from 2059 to the first half of the 22nd century, circa 2130. On these generations hang the novel's basic plots &ndash; a murder story, a domestic story, a political story and a revenge story. The first involves Klara Gyeroffy and her father, an aeronautics hobbyist, in their establishment of the low Earth orbit settlement of the Uplands. With the advent of more efficient propulsion technology, space travel reaches a new level of attainability, the Uplands phenomenon being a product of direct access, for those wealthy enough, to the lower orbits. The Uplands has no legal or taxation systems, civic obligations, boundaries, politics or treaties. In 2059 Klara's father Miklós flies Kristin Janzen Kooistra, a tenant who requires a hideaway, for their Upland lodging. Kooistra kills him during docking, it being later revealed that she is a serial killer at large. Klara, orphaned, flees to Jon, a neighbour in Canada, in distress. The pair soon remove Upland and organise a more permanent residence there, with other billionaire eccentrics of the neighourhood. The next portion of Gradisil is largely an exposition of the environment's domestic capacity, Roberts investigating the challenges and novelties of day-to-day Upland life, the question of zero-g as hindrance and boon, and ever-present logistics issues. Jon and Klara become sexual partners, but she soon tires of him and develops a relationship with Teruo Nakagomi, a shrewd businessman. After falling pregnant by him, Klara returns to Earth to deliver her child. Her daughter, Gradisil, is born in 2063. Gradisil is about Earthbound conflict as well as Upland conflict. United States-EU tensions of the previous century have become critical, with war finally erupting in 2065. Politically, the Uplands is still a non-entity and the pioneers remaining proudly aloof to "Downland" politics. Klara remains on Earth, supporting Gradisil. In 2081 the first seizure of "EU houses" by the US takes place in the Uplands. The orbit settlement is now transformed into both a political and military battlefield, with the US anti-Upland and EU pro-Upland, and receives increasing coverage by Earth media over the coming years. Klara is appointed EU envoy to the Uplands in 2075. Two new narrators are introduced: Lieutenant Slater of the United States Upland Corps, providing insights into the exigencies and metamorphoses of that nation's military-industrial complex in the late 21st century; and Paul Caunes, Gradisil's second husband, who would later betray her to US authorities. As the Uplands comes into its own as the first extraterrestrial country in human history, Gradisil consolidates her role of political activism and de facto media ambassador. Many Uplanders later address her as "President" during her household visits. She is embarked on a campaign to awaken in the rudimentary nation "matriotism"&mdash;a unique nationalism for a unique entity&mdash;which aims to preserve a default peacetime anarchy. In 2091 and 2093 Gradisil's sons, Hope and Solidarity respectively, are born, however Paul Caunes is the biological father of neither. 2099 sees the onset of the US-Upland war. Every logistical aspect of the war has been meticulously designed by the US to fulfil a new legal bureaucratic order (for instance, the war must officially conclude before the turn of the century and take no longer than 72 hours in all), Slater contending that the real war takes place in the courts. Gradisil and her young nation lie under siege for months, their supply lines cut off by USUC forces. All the while she has turned pregnant with her first child to Paul. Knowing that she cannot return to Earth without being captured, she sacrifices the foetus in orbit. Gradisil waits for the opportune moment to launch a kamikaze attack on USUC orbital stations. It proves effective, and shatters the image of US unassailability that the European loss of the "war of '81" cemented. There occurs a realisation, both Down- and Upland, that the United States can never exercise any meaningful control over the territory. Upon embarking on the victory rounds, Gradisil and her retinue are soon led into a trap, she falling into US custody. The novel leaps forward twenty years, to focus on an adult Hope, on business excursion to the Uplands, trying to secure an investment for a mining project on Mercury. However, his brother Sol is also at the hotel complex at which he's lodged, on an assassination mission, the target being Paul Caunes. Hope has a run-in with an undercover American agent, under the assumption that Hope conspires with his brother. Sol kills him, shortly secures his father and escapes with him and Hope. On board the escape ship, a kangaroo court is held in what turns out to be a makeshift Upland town hall. Caunes is sent into the vacuum to die, after telling his sons that he is "sorry".
7133000	/m/0h5x07	Kill the Messenger	Tami Hoag		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Bike messenger Jace Damon attempts to live under the radar in Los Angeles with his younger brother (Tyler, who has an IQ of 168). The two are raised by their mother, who does her best to remain anonymous. When she falls ill Jace takes her to the hospital, making sure that he is not associated with her. The mother dies, and her children cannot claim her body. Instead, Jace takes his brother to find a new place, deciding that the Chinese community would be the best for them; eventually an elderly Chinese businesswoman (Madame Chen) takes a liking to the pair of boys and gives Jace a part-time job and a place to stay. He also takes a job as a bike messenger, since he can be paid in cash for it. One night, Jace accepts a delivery just as he is about to go off-duty; it is a pickup from the office of one of L.A.'s sleaziest defense attorneys, Lenny Lowell. He is not happy about the late delivery since it is a wet miserable night, but the dispatcher tells him that everyone else has gone off duty, and he is the only one available. Lowell is extremely (despite his reputation) nice to Jace, giving him a good tip. When Jace approaches the delivery address, he finds an empty lot which makes him nervous, so he decides to abort the delivery. Before he can get away, a large black car comes racing towards him to run him down. He barely survives the collision and is forced to abandon his bike. On foot, he is able to elude his pursuer, but loses his delivery bag (but retains the package). Jace returns to the scene of the collision and is relieved to discover that he will only have to replace the wheel. He returns to Lowell's office, only to find it crawling with police; he learns that Lowell has been murdered. Jace does not trust police, so he leaves the scene. In a city fueled by money, celebrity and sensationalism, the slaying of a bottom-feeder like Lowell won't make headlines. So when LAPD's elite show up, homicide detective Kev Parker (assigned to Lowell's case) wants to know why. Parker begins a search for answers that will lead him to a killer--or to the end of his career. Because if there's one lesson Parker has learned over the years, it's that in a town built on fame and fantasy, delivering the truth can be murder.
7133724	/m/0h5y8t	The Three Christs of Ypsilanti		1964		 To study the basis for delusional belief systems, Rokeach brought together three men who each claimed to be Jesus Christ and confronted them with one another's conflicting claims, while encouraging them to interact personally as a support group. Rokeach also attempted to manipulate other aspects of their delusions by inventing messages from imaginary characters. He did not, as he had hoped, provoke any lessening of the patients' delusions, but did document a number of changes in their beliefs. While initially the three patients quarreled over who was holier and reached the point of physical altercation, they eventually each explained away the other two as being mental patients in a hospital, or dead and being operated by machines.
7134800	/m/0h5__h	The Carved Lions	Molesworth	1895	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story features the interaction between the children of the household and the carved lions featured, who come to life and take care of them.
7135586	/m/0h61kg	Doctor DeSoto	William Steig	1982	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is about Dr. De Soto, a mouse-dentist who lives in a world of animals who act as humans. He and his wife, who serves as his assistant, work together to treat patients with as little pain as possible. Dr. De Soto uses different chairs, depending on the size of the animal, with Mrs. De Soto guiding her husband with a system of pulleys for treating extra large animals. However, they refuse to treat any animal who likes to eat mice. One day, a fox with a toothache drops by and begs for treatment. Mrs. De Soto convinces her husband that he needs to help the fox to get rid of his pain, so Dr. De Soto reluctantly agrees. They give the fox some anesthetic and proceed to treat the bad tooth. However, while under the effects of the anesthetic, the fox unknowingly exclaims how he would love to eat the mice, but also expresses it is crass to attempt to eat someone who had just relieved him of much pain. The De Sotos remove the bad tooth, and tells the fox to come back tomorrow to get a false tooth. Later that night, Dr. De Soto expresses his disgust that they trusted a fox who had hoped to eat them, although Mrs. De Soto claims that the effects of the anesthetic just got to him. They prepare the new tooth, but come up with a plan to place it in without getting eaten. The next day, which was originally the De Sotos' day-off, the fox comes back much happier than before and anxiously awaits the placement of his new tooth. The De Sotos proceed with their work, but the fox is licking his lips and thinking about eating the mice. The De Sotos use a long stick to open his jaws and put in the new tooth. However, the fox has decided to eat them. Fortunately, his jaws were held tightly apart from each other, so he couldn't trap them in his teeth. Dr. De Soto uses a special mouth glue and spreads it onto the fox's teeth. When the fox closes his mouth, his teeth were stuck together! The De Sotos told him to wait a few days or a few hours before the special glue wore off (they kept their plan a secret from the fox and pretended that it was part of the treatment). The fox then went home, not realizing that he had been tricked, but clearly disappointed that he couldn't eat the De Sotos. The book ends with the DeSotos triumphant at having "outfoxed the fox". Mrs. De Soto joins her husband for a day off work and says she will never again disagree with his policy of refusing to do business with hostile animals.
7136123	/m/0h62qh	26 Fairmount Avenue	Tomie dePaola	1999-04-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book deals with the early life of Tomie dePaola. He has just moved to a new house in Connecticut and the 1938 hurricane has just hit. Tomie expresses unhappiness for seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the theatres.
7137592	/m/0h65hf	The Pirate	Walter Scott	1821-12	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Mr Mertoun and his son had arrived as strangers, and resided for several years in the remaining rooms of the old mansion of the Earls of Orkney, the father leading a very secluded life, while the son Mordaunt became a general favourite with the inhabitants, and especially with the udaller, Magnus Troil, and his daughters. On his way home from a visit to them, he and the pedlar Snailsfoot sought shelter from a storm at the Yellowleys' farmhouse, where they were amused with their penurious ways, and encountered Norna, a relative of Magnus Troil who was supposed to be in league with the fairies, and to possess supernatural powers. The next day a ship was wrecked on the rocky coast, and, at the risk of his life, Mordaunt rescued the captain, Cleveland, as he was cast on the beach clinging to a plank, while Norna prevented his sea-chest from being pillaged. Cleveland was in fact a pirate, but they did not know this. The captain promised his preserver a trip in a consort ship which he expected would arrive shortly, and went to seek the udaller's help in recovering some of his other property that had been washed ashore. After the lapse of several weeks, however, during which the Troils had discontinued their friendly communications with him, Mordaunt heard that the stranger was still their guest, and that they were arranging an entertainment for St John's Eve, to which he had not been bidden. As he was brooding over this slight, Norna touched his shoulder, and, assuring him of her goodwill, advised him to join the party uninvited. Warned by his father against falling in love, and with some misgivings as to his reception, he called at Harfra on his way, and accompanied Yellowley and his sister to the feast. Minna and Brenda Troil replied to their discarded companion's greeting with cold civility, and he felt convinced that Captain Cleveland had supplanted him in their esteem. The bard, Claud Halcro, endeavoured to cheer him with his poetry and reminiscences of John Dryden; and, in the course of the evening, Brenda, disguised as a masquer, told him they had heard that he had spoken unkindly of them, but that she did not believe he had done so. She also expressed her fear that the stranger had won Minna's love, and begged Mordaunt to discover all he could respecting him. During an attempt to capture a whale the following day, Cleveland saved Mordaunt from drowning, and, being thus released from his obligation to him, intimated that henceforth they were rivals. The same evening the pedlar brought tidings that a strange ship had arrived at Kirkwall, and Cleveland talked of a trip thither to ascertain whether it was the consort he had been so long expecting. After the sisters had retired to bed, Norna appeared in their room, and narrated a startling tale of her early life, which led Minna to confess her attachment to the captain, and to elicit Brenda's partiality for Mordaunt. At a secret interview the next morning, Cleveland admitted to Minna that he was a pirate, upon which she declared that she could only still love him as a penitent, and not as the hero she had hitherto imagined him to be. He announced, in the presence of her father and sister, his intention of starting at once for Kirkwall; but at night he serenaded her, and then, after hearing a struggle and a groan, she saw the shadow of a figure disappearing with another on his shoulders. Overcome with grief and suspense, she was seized with a fit of melancholy, for the cure of which the udaller consulted Norna in her secluded dwelling; and, after a mystic ceremony, she predicted that the cause would cease when "crimson foot met crimson hand" in the Martyr's Aisle in Orkney land, whither she commanded her kinsman to proceed with his daughters. Mordaunt had been stabbed by the pirate, but had been carried away by Norna to Hoy, where she told him she was his mother, and, after curing his wound, conveyed him to Kirkwall. Here Cleveland had joined his companions, and, having been chosen captain of the consort ship, he obtained leave from the provost for her to take in stores at Stromness and quit the islands, on condition that he remained as a hostage for the crew's behaviour. On their way they captured the brig containing the Troils, but Minna and Brenda were sent safely ashore by John Bunce, Cleveland's lieutenant, and escorted by old Halcro to visit a relative. The lovers met in the cathedral of St Magnus, whence, with Norna's aid, Cleveland escaped to his ship, and the sisters were transferred to the residence of the bard's cousin, where their father joined them, and found Mordaunt in charge of a party of dependents for their protection. When all was ready for sailing, the captain resolved to see Minna once more, and having sent a note begging her to meet him at the Standing Stones of Stenness at daybreak, he made his way thither. Brenda persuaded Mordaunt to allow her sister to keep the appointment, and as the lovers were taking their last farewell, they and Brenda were seized by Bunce and his crew from the boat, and would have been carried off, had not Mordaunt hastened to the rescue, and made prisoners of the pirate and his lieutenant. Norna had warned Cleveland against delaying his departure, and his last hopes were quenched when, from the window of the room in which he and Bunce were confined, they witnessed the arrival of the Halcyon, whose captain she had communicated with, and the capture, after a desperate resistance, of their ship. The elder Mertoun now sought Norna's aid to save their son, who, he declared, was not Mordaunt, as she imagined, but Cleveland, whom he had trained as a pirate under his own real name of Vaughan, her former lover; and having lost trace of him till now, had come to Jarlshof, with his child by a Spanish wife, to atone for the misdeeds of his youth. On inquiry it appeared that Cleveland and Bunce had earned their pardon by acts of mercy in their piratical career, and were allowed to enter the king's service. Minna was further consoled by a penitent letter from her lover; Brenda became Mordaunt's wife; and the aberration of mind, occasioned by remorse at having caused her father's death, having died, Norna abandoned her supernatural pretensions and peculiar habits, and resumed her family name.
7138301	/m/0h66zx	Father of Lies	Brian Evenson	1998	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Eldon Fochs is a 38-year-old accountant and lay provost. He is happily married with four children. Feshtig works as a therapist in an Institute of Psychoanalysis funded and controlled by the church. Fochs is persuaded to go to Feshtig by his wife, who has a growing suspicion that her husband harbours dark secrets. Fochs slowly reveals the contents of his dreams and his "disturbing thoughts" about children to Feshtig. He reveals two dreams; one when he strangles and dismembers a girl and another of a 12-year-old boy. In the dream, the boy comes into his office and Fochs brutally sodomises him. He frightens the boy with threats and forces him to admit to having been molested by an uncle, something that never happened. Fochs claims that in his dream he was guided by God. In the chapters where Fochs is in the first person, he describes how he assaulted and murdered a 14-year-old girl. He also describes his ecclesiastical superior confronting him with allegations from two mothers that he has molested their boys. He denies the allegations, and his superiors choose to believe him. Feshtig meets with one of the mothers and starts to counsel her son Nathan Mears, and he gradually uncovers the extent of the damage that Fochs has done to the young boy. As the abuse allegations reach the media, the pressure on the church mounts, but it does everything to protect itself and its reputation, going as far as to excommunicate the two mothers. The pressure on Fochs from his wife is more difficult to answer as she presses him on what he was doing the night the girl was murdered. Eventually he rams his car into a tree, having surreptitiously unclipped his wife’s seat belt. She is thrown through the window and killed. Feshtig reveals his conclusions to the police, but their DNA tests are inconclusive. Protected by the church, Fochs still contrives to spend time alone with young boys in order to molest them. He is eventually transferred to a teaching position in another city, free to carry on his abuse. As the novel ends, having assaulted his children’s babysitter, Fochs sinks to further level of depravity and starts a cycle of incest with his eldest daughter.
7138451	/m/0h67bp	Capable of Honor	Allen Drury	1966	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the novel, Harley Hudson, the affable but inept Vice President from Advise and Consent, is now president and seeking a term of his own against a backdrop of Soviet-instigated war, as the Soviet Union backs rebel governments in Panama and in the fictitious African republic of Gorotoland. Hudson responds with U.S. troops in both countries, and the conflicts soon bog down. The election season soon turns on these foreign policy questions, with the media and others seeking a peace candidate &mdash; and finding it in the popular but weak-willed Governor Ted Jason of California. Having announced his candidacy late, Hudson announces an open contest for the Vice Presidential nomination, in which Secretary of State Orrin Knox, who supports Hudson's policies, opposes Jason. The media, who had supported Jason heavily when it looked like it would be a Knox-Jason race for the Presidential nomination, continues its effort for a Jason victory by any means they can. At the convention in San Francisco, extreme elements of the Left and Right combine to support Jason, and there are several violent incidents, including one in which Knox's daughter-in-law is brutally attacked. When it becomes clear that the convention is split down the middle in fights over the platform, Jason challenges Hudson for the Majority Party's nomination (the novels never use the proper names "Republican" or "Democrat" but the descriptions of Majority Party corresponds strongly to the Democrats of the 1960s). The media, meantime, spins merrily away, filtering what the country is allowed to see and hear from San Francisco. Ceil Jason, the Governor's wife, leaves him when her husband's lack of principle and willingness to tolerate the violence sinks in to her. Hudson wins narrowly, and Jason expects the Vice Presidential nomination since he commands the support of almost half the convention. Hudson seems amenable, and places Jason on the dais as he makes his acceptance speech. Hudson humiliates Jason by making it clear that he considers Jason a panderer, and states he will accept Knox, and only Knox, as his running mate. The convention duly nominates Knox, but almost half its delegates walk out, to the pleasure of the media commentators, who predict a third-party convention from among the disaffected delegates.
7138568	/m/0h67lz	English Passengers	Matthew Kneale		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In 1857, after their attempts to smuggle contraband goods land them with a heavy fine from the British Customs, Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his crew of Manx sailors are forced to offer their ship for charter. The vessel is quickly hired by a party of Englishmen headed by an eccentric Vicar, the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, who believes that the Garden of Eden is located in Tasmania and wants to mount an expedition there to find it. However, unbeknownst to the clergyman, one of his fellow travellers has an entirely different reason for journeying to the island. Dr Thomas Potter is a renowned surgeon who is developing a thesis on the races of man and hopes to find some interesting specimens there. Running parallel with this story, but starting some 30 or so years earlier, are the recollections of Peevay, one of Tasmania's natives, who describes the devastating impact the white settlers had on his people, and the aborigines' struggle to adapt to the cultural changes which were forced on them. Many of the chapters alternate between the two different time periods, but when the Manx ship eventually docks in Tasmania, both strands of the story are brought together for the book's conclusion.
7138728	/m/0h67_q	Preserve and Protect	Allen Drury	1968	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After winning his party's nomination in Capable of Honor, newly-elected U.S. President Harley Hudson dies in a suspicious plane crash. William Abbott, the Speaker of the House, is reluctantly elevated to the Presidency. The Majority Party immediately convenes its National Committee, torn between the supporters of California Governor Ted Jason and those of Secretary of State and former Illinois Senator Orrin Knox. Eventually Knox defeats Jason, but names Jason as his vice presidential nominee. At the conclusion of the novel, a gunman appears and opens fire on the two candidates and their wives.
7139643	/m/0h69y5	The Transall Saga	Gary Paulsen	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with Mark Harrison, a 13-year old survival enthusiast, hiking through the mountainous Magruder Missile Range when he is struck by a mysterious blue beam of light. He wakes up in a strange world that he believes is an alien world with many similarities to Earth. He uses his survival skills to live off the land and, while exploring the forest, he discovers a camp of some short human-like creatures with webbed feet and dark, olive-colored skin, though he finds them too warlike to interact with. He also hears a creature called the howling thing. Soon after, he is enslaved by the Tsook, a metal-weapon wielding race. Over the next three months, he learns their language and develops feelings for Megaan, the chief's daughter. When, after escaping, he returns to warn the tribe about an impending attack, he is granted freedom and official entry into their tribe. Mark then discovers that, despite his misconceptions earlier, this world is actually just Earth in the future. Megaan's brother gives Mark a shard of a Coca-Cola bottle and the Merkon (leader of The Transall) reveals the events between Mark's time and this future, also revealing that he too was sent there by the beam of light. Apparently, a strange highly contagious form of the Ebola virus wiped out most of the human race. Those remaining used nuclear weapons on each other, forcing civilization to start over. After severely wounding the Merkon in a swordfight, Mark asks Megaan to marry him. However, the Merkon's son has sworn revenge and Mark flees the village to protect them. He leads the Merkon's army to the jungle, away from his new home. Once in the jungle, Mark systematically kills the army but forgets about a scouting party that attacks him. Mark hides behind a boulder for protection and suddenly the boulder is struck by lightning and sends off a charge which brings Mark into his normal time. Twenty years later, Mark has become a scientist working tirelessly to find a cure for the Ebola virus.
7143690	/m/0h6jwk	Körkarlen	Selma Lagerlöf	1912		 The novel is set in a small town in Sweden at the beginning of the 20th Century. Edith, a young "Slum Sister" (social worker) in the service of the Salvation Army is on her death bed dying of "consumption" (tuberculosis). She requests that before she dies, she would like to see again David Holm, one of her charges. It becomes apparent she has a special relationship with David Holm. A year earlier, he was the first patron of the newly opened social welfare house that Edith started. He also had infected her at the time with tuberculosis after she stayed up all night mending his torn and infected coat. Over the next year Edith wanted to help him, but he was a violent alcoholic and always cruelly rejected her. This only increased her resolve and Edith developed a deep love for David. Edith then learned David is married with children, but they had to leave home because David was so violent. Edith persuades David's wife to return home, but they are treated worse than ever by David. This makes Edith feel guilty as David threatens to deliberately infect his children with TB. On her death bed, Edith now wants to try one last time to put things in order. Meanwhile, David is sitting in the park with drinking buddies and telling them a horrible story about the coachman of death - as it happens, the last person to die each year is recruited by Death incarnate to travel for the next year picking up the souls of the dead in the Phantom Carriage. David heard this story from his friend George, who died last year on New Year's Eve. After more drinking, David gets into a fight with his companions, is hit in the chest and suffers a hemorrhage (a complication of TB) and falls lifeless to the ground. At the same moment the clock strikes midnight. None other than David's old friend George then appears in the Phantom Carriage. David now has to replace George and serve as the driver for a year of death. When David refuses, Georges binds him and throws him into the death cart. Now a ghostly apparition, George takes David to see the people that David loved most and whom he has most harmed. First they visit the dying Edith. When David learns that Edith has loved him, he softens and falls to his knees in front of Edith. Edith can now die in peace, and Georges commands her soul from her body. David and Georges then go to a prison in which David's younger brother is incarcerated. The brother had been led astray by David, starting with drinking alcohol and then committing a murder. Now, David's brother is dying of TB. The brother regrets that he his failed to fulfill a promise he once made to a sick child to see the ocean. David vows that he will fulfill his brother's promise, and so David's brother dies in peace. Finally, George and David go to David's wife. She has decided to kill herself and the children, life with David is no longer tolerable and she sees no way out. David feels love for his children for the first time in his life. David pleads with George to allow his soul to return to his body so the he may stop his wife from killing herself and the children. This Georges does and David redeems himself to his wife in a tear filled reunion. Georges will serve another year as driver to the dead. David prays the New Year's prayer that he has learned from George, God, let my soul come to maturity before being harvested.
7144594	/m/0h6l4h	Camber the Heretic	Katherine Kurtz	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The events of Camber the Heretic span roughly one year, from January 917 to early January 918. The novel begins as the Deryni Healer Rhys Thuryn and his wife, Evaine MacRorie Thuryn, attempt to treat an injured colleague, Earl Gregory of Ebor. While tending to Gregory's wounds, Rhys accidentally discovers an innate ability to block Gregory's Deryni powers. Stunned and amazed by his discovery, Rhys seeks the advice of his father-in-law, Camber MacRorie, the legendary Deryni adept who has been living in the guise of Bishop Alister Cullen for the past decade. Although equally shocked by Rhys' discovery, Camber is unable to provide any insights, and they soon return to Valoret to tend to the king. King Cinhil Haldane is dying, a fact which deeply concerns Camber and his family. Although Cinhil himself has never truly overcome his distrust of Deryni powers, he has kept the peace between the races throughout his reign, due largely to his close friendship with the man he believes to be Alister Cullen. However, with Cinhil's death fast approaching, Camber realizes that the ambitious human lords at court will soon be able to wage open war on Deryni throughout the kingdom. Prince Alroy Haldane, Cinhil's eldest son and heir, is a sickly twelve-year-old boy, and Camber knows all too well that the Regency Council that will control the throne during Alroy's minority will not treat Deryni kindly. Despite his misgivings about his own powers, Cinhil is nonetheless forced to admit that some of his powers are extremely beneficial to a king. Accordingly, he asks Father Joram MacRorie, Camber's son, to assist him in a magical ritual to bestow such powers upon his three sons. The following night, Camber, Joram, Rhys, Evaine, and Jebediah d'Alcara perform the ritual with Cinhil, mirroring the same ritual that gave Cinhil his own powers fourteen years earlier. The ritual is successful, but the strain is too much for the ailing king. Cinhil soon collapses and dies, but not before he finally learns the truth about Camber's secret identity. With Cinhil dead, the human lords waste no time in making their bid for power. At the first meeting of the Regency Council, Camber is quickly removed by his fellow Regents. Additionally, almost all of the Deryni members of the Royal Council are forced to resign. Only Archbishop Jaffray is spared, as the Archbishop of Valoret is entitled to serve on the council for life. As the Deryni at court begin to make new lives for themselves, the Camberian Council discusses Rhys' discovery. Fearful of the persecutions that will soon be coming against Deryni throughout Gwynedd, Camber suggests a desperate plan to save some of their people. By blocking their powers under the guise of a religious blessing, some Deryni may escape the persecutions by living as normal humans. Conditions continue to deteriorate for Deryni after Alroy's coronation as king. Prince Javan Haldane's personal Healer, Lord Tavis O'Neill, is attacked and mutilated by a group of Deryni for serving the human prince. An attempt to infiltrate the royal court ends in disaster when Earl Davin MacRorie of Culdi, Camber's grandson, is slain while defending the king's brothers. The Michaelines, a militant religious order with many Deryni members, finally decide to leave Gwynedd completely, and many other Deryni flee the increasingly hostile kingdom. Additionally, Tavis and Javan begin to remember details of the night of Cinhil's death, spurring their curiosity to discover the whole truth of the night's actions. Finally, in late October, Archbishop Jaffray is killed in an anti-Deryni uprising. The Curia of Bishops meets in Valoret to choose Jaffray's successor. The Regents make no secret that they want Bishop Hubert MacInnis to be elected, and they actively campaign for his selection. Nonetheless, many of the bishops refuse to vote for Hubert, and the deadlocked Curia is unable to choose a new primate. Finally, a group of bishops approaches Camber and asks him to accept their nomination. Although initially unwilling to accept, Camber eventually agrees to their proposal. After his election the following day, Hubert and the other Regents erupt with rage. They order their forces to attack several prominent Deryni religious houses, but Camber and Joram are unable to warn the houses in time. Meanwhile, Tavis summons Rhys to attend to Javan, then drugs him to read his memories of Cinhil's death. In doing so, Tavis discovers that he also has the ability to block Deryni powers. On Christmas Day of 917, Camber, as Alister Cullen, is enthroned as Archbishop of Valoret and Primate of All Gwynedd. Rhys convinces Tavis to release him, and immediately attempts to warn Camber that the Regents are planning to attack the cathedral itself. A tense stand-off between the bishops and the Regents results in a bloody confrontation as the Regents attempt to arrest the assembled clerics. Although Camber and many of his allies manage to escape, Rhys does not survive the incident and soon dies in Camber's arms. Having routed the Deryni, the Regents immediately move to press their advantage. Hubert is soon elected Archbishop, and the Regents embark on a ruthless campaign of Deryni suppression. New laws and religious doctrines are quickly passed, forbidding Deryni from holding land or office and banning Deryni from the priesthood. The lands of Deryni nobles are savagely attacked, their people murdered and their estates burned. Camber's sainthood is not only revoked, but the supposedly dead Deryni lord is declared to be a heretic. Additionally, all members of Camber's family are outlawed and sentenced to death. While attempting to flee to safety, Evaine is stunned by the feeling of Rhys' death. Accompanied by her nephew, Ansel MacRorie, she travels to Trurill to retrieve her eldest son. However, the Regents' forces have reached the castle first, and Evaine and Ansel discover a scene of barbarous destruction. The castle is burned and nearly all the occupants are dead, including Evaine's son. The deaths of her husband and her son send Evaine into premature labor and she soon gives birth to her second daughter, Jerusha. Nonetheless, Evaine and Ansel manage to evade pursuit and reach safety. Shortly after the beginning of the new year, Camber and Jebediah travel to rendezvous with Evaine, Ansel, and Joram. Despite their attempts to remain incognito, they are recognized by several of the Regents' men, who soon attempt to capture the pair. Camber and Jebediah are sorely wounded in the fight, and Jebediah quickly succumbs to his injuries. As he lies bleeding in the snow, Camber ponders his past and his powers, remembering a dangerous spell that may enable him to elude death once again. Weakened and dying, he decides to cast one final spell. Later, as Evaine and Joram gaze the body of their father, they notice the odd shape of his hands, and they wonder aloud if there might still be a way for Camber MacRorie to live.
7144608	/m/0h6l55	Fortune's Favourites	Colleen McCullough	1993	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The novel opens with Lucius Cornelius Sulla's return from the East, the second civil war his rise to the Dictatorship, and his proscriptions against those who formed an antagonistic government under Marius (now dead) while he was away. While Sulla's shadow covers the majority of the rest of the book—his physical deformity, after his pale skin is all but destroyed by intense sun exposure, is always contrasted with his near-absolute political power—after his willing resignation of power, retirement to a pleasure villa and dramatic death, three young men of the next generation begin to vie to become the Masters of Rome in their own right: Pompey the Great's youthful campaigns and his fierce battle against the Roman renegade Quintus Sertorius are narrated, as are Marcus Licinius Crassus' struggle against Spartacus, the Roman wars in the East against Mithridates, and the youthful adventures of Gaius Julius Caesar. The novel culminates with halcyon year of Pompey and Crassus' first joint consulship. The book's title is a reference to an often repeated theme in the series, and expresses the Roman belief that Fortuna, the Goddess of Luck, would take a hand in the lives of those who please her, helping them along when they needed it most. it:I favoriti della fortuna
7145742	/m/0h6n8s	Peony	Pearl S. Buck	1948	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Peony is set in the 1850s in the city of K'aifeng, in the province of Honan, which was historically a center for Chinese Jews. The novel follows Peony, a Chinese bondmaid of the prominent Jewish family of Ezra ben Israel, and shows through her eyes how the Jewish community was regarded in K'aifeng at a time when most of the Jews had come to think of themselves as Chinese. The novel contains a hidden love and shows the importance of duty along with the challenges of life. This novel is one that follows the guidelines of Buck's work. The setting is China, religion is involved, and there is an interracial couple (David and Kueilan). A prefatory note before the title page tells the reader of the assimilation of the Jews of K'aifeng. "Today even the memory of their origin is gone. They are Chinese." Not all the 1st editions have the same cover design; some have a light blue binding with the title centered in a 3"x 1.5" simple gold imprint on dark blue background, the sun shining on a field, with the title at the top and the author's name at the bottom. Much more is known today (2010) than in Buck's lifetime about the K'aifeng Jews. nl:Pioenroos (roman)
7145803	/m/0h6nd6	The Bishop's Heir	Katherine Kurtz	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Bishop's Heir details the events of a period of time lasting roughly a month and a half, beginning in late November 1123 and ending in early January 1124. The novel begins as the Curia of Bishops meets in Culdi to choose the successor to the deceased Bishop of Meara. The selection of the next bishop is a delicate matter, as the Mearans have made several attempts to secede from Gwynedd over the past century. King Kelson Haldane addresses the assembled clerics, then departs to make a survey of the local barons. Shortly thereafter, Kelson is reunited with Lord Dhugal MacArdry, an old friend who he has not seen since before his coronation, and the king decides to visit Dhugal's father, Earl Caulay MacArdry of Transha. While visiting Transha, Kelson learns more about Princess Caitrin Quinnell, the Mearan Pretender. Descended from the ancient line of Mearan rules, Caitrin is determined to establish herself as queen of a free and independent Meara, a land which has been ruled by Gwynedd for over a century. However, Kelson is forced to return to Culdi after Duke Alaric Morgan contacts him and informs him that Duncan McLain has been attacked and wounded. Upon returning to Culdi, Kelson acknowledges the election of Bishop Henry Istelyn, who has been chosen as the new Bishop of Meara. Shortly after Kelson returns to his capital of Rhemuth, Dhugal is captured while attempting to stop the escape of Edmund Loris, the former Archbishop of Valoret who was imprisoned for his past treason. Loris takes Dhugal to the Mearan city of Ratharkin, where he places both Dhugal and Istelyn in confinement. When the news of Loris' escape and Dhugal's capture reaches Kelson, the king decides to make a daring winter raid on Ratharkin. Caitrin arrives in Ratharkin, accompanied by her children and her husband, Dhugal's uncle Sicard MacArdry. Although Istelyn refuses to assist Loris and Caitrin in their treason, Dhugal pretends to agree, hoping to find a way to warn Kelson. He eventually manages to escape Ratharkin, taking his cousin Sidana prisoner as he flees. Dhugal is rescued by Kelson's approaching forces, and Sidana's younger brother, Llewell, is also captured. Kelson gives Sicard until Christmas to surrender Loris, then returns to Rhemuth with Caitrin's two youngest children as hostages. Upon returning to Rhemuth, Kelson eventually bows to the pressure of his advisors and agrees to marry Sidana if her mother refuses to surrender, hoping to avert open rebellion by joining the two royal lines. A short time later, when Duncan is consecrated a bishop, the power of the ceremony nearly overwhelms Dhugal, who possesses mental shields that no human should have. When Christmas finally arrives, Caitrin's messenger brings Istelyn's severed head to court, openly defying the orders of the king. Although reluctant to marry a girl he barely knows and who has been raised to hate him, Kelson nevertheless follows through on his promise and asks Sidana to marry him. Sidana reluctantly agrees, but Llewell is furious at the possibility of his sister marrying his enemy. Two weeks of preparations ensue, during which time both Kelson and Sidana try to adjust to the realities of their approaching nuptials. On the morning of the wedding, Duncan recognizes a cloak clasp that Dhugal is wearing, which is the same clasp that Duncan gave his wife many years ago. Duncan tells the tale of his unusual marriage to Dhugal's mother, and Morgan uses his powers to confirm that Duncan is Dhugal's natural father. Realizing that he is part-Deryni, Dhugal is finally able to lower his shields, and father and son quickly exchange memories of their lives during their time apart. A short time later, Kelson and Sidana ride through Rhemuth to the castle, where the entire court waits to witness the marriage of their king and their new queen. Kelson and Sidana exchange their vows as man and wife, but the ceremony is suddenly interrupted when Llewell slashes his sister's throat, making a final desperate attempt to prevent the wedding. Morgan and Duncan frantically try to save Sidana, but she dies almost instantly. Stunned and horrified, Kelson can do nothing but hold the body of his dead bride and weep.
7147522	/m/0h6rw1	The Toyminator	Robert Rankin	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eddie Bear has been deposed as the mayor of Toy City and the toymaker has taken away his modifications. Jill has left Jack and he is now working in Nadine's Diner. One day, a drunk Eddie witnesses bright flashing lights and a copy of him appear in an alleyway. He attributes it to being drunk. Soon after, the toys in the toy city are dying. When touched, the toys crumble to dust. Jack and Eddie start investigating even though Jack doesn't plan on it. Their investigations end up getting them in trouble with Inspector Bellis who arrests them on trumped up charges but lets them go in return for them promising to solve the mystery. With the help of the Phantom of the Opera and a calculating pocket called Wallah that Jack steals from Tinto, Jack and Eddie discover that a pair of their doppelgängers are sucking the souls of the toys. They try to stop them in the opera but fail. While pursuing the doppelgangers by following their smell, Jack and Eddie come to the old and dead Toy Town. There they discover that the hiding place of the doppelgangers is Bill Winkle's old house. They get captured by a UFO (flying saucer) trying to get away from Bill's house and experiments are done on them by the aliens, including implanting implants up their bottoms. Eddie decides to get Jack hypnotized by a hypnotist at the circus. After listening to what Jack had to say, the hypnotist becomes catatonic and Jack and Eddie escape with the hypnotists wallet. With proof of alien's involvement, they decide go back to Bill's house in Toy Town and follow the doppelgangers. This time again the flying saucer tries to attack them and Jack destroys it by firing at it and throwing grenades that he stole from Bill's house. The doppelgangers go through "The Second Big O" - the second O in the sign that reads "TO TO LA" which stood for TOYTOWNLAND. Eddie and Jack go through the second big O themselves and end up on the other side in the world of men. When they look back, the sign reads HOLLYWOOD. In the land of them, the instruments they brought with them from Toy City stop working. After meeting with an aspiring actress named Dorothy they visit Golden Chicken Diner for a cup of coffee and discover that the dead toys from Toy City are being given away for free in the diner. To find out the person responsible behind the chain, they decide to infiltrate the chain of diners by joining it at a low level and rising up the level (following the American Dream). Meanwhile, Eddie is kidnapped by the other Jack and taken to Area 52. As an assistant chef, Jack's boss, the head chef, tells him that it is impossible to breed as many chickens and eggs that men eat and proves that all chickens served in the diner are artificial. The following day, at the conference, Jack tries to take over the conference and find out the leader but instead gets captured by LAPD. He escapes their custody and frees Dorothy. Together, they steal a squad car and drive madly to escape the chase given by LAPD. They end up close to Area 52 and go in to investigate. Inside Area 52, the other Eddie reveals to Eddie, who is dying as he is out of Toy City, about the plan by the chickens to take over the land of men (by making them addicted to chicken and then making them fight each other) and Toy City (by sucking the souls of the toys and enslaving the men in Toy City just like the men in the land of men). When LAPD gets to Area 52, Eddie tells the other Eddie to let Jack go outside and give himself up. The police beat up the other Jack for all the problems caused by Jack and this pleases Eddie as the other Jack was very abusive towards him. At the police station, the other Jack is revealed to be a robot and he escapes the police station, steals a sulphuric acid truck and drives towards Area 52, chased by the LAPD in an armed helicopter and a lone Air Force jet. The chickens fly out with a dozen flying saucers to cross over to Toy City through the Hollywood sign and Jack followed by LAPD and the lone Air Force jet follow them. There is a big collision at the entrance and half a dozen flying saucers are destroyed along with the robot Jack. The portal is destroyed as well. Once in Toy City, Eddie regains his full strength and Jack and Dorothy who survived the falling elevator in Area 52 (the other Eddie tried to kill them there) attack the other Eddie. Jack shoots the other Eddie as his identity is revealed when he uses a corroborative noun ("as simple as blinking"). The head chicken, a queen, emerges from the body of the other Eddie and Dorothy wrings her neck and kills her. This is very fortunate because the next queen automatically reverses the previous queen's policies and that is not because she wants to but because of tradition. Toy City is prepared as well because Eddie sent a telepathic message to a space man in a space suit who informed Inspector Bellis who instructed all the toy tanks and others to be armed. All the flying saucers are shot down. Eddie, Jack and Dorothy come out of the lead flying saucer alive. Dorothy is revealed to be a vegetable from a different world, so Jack buries her he expects she will set roots and grow. The book ends with Inspector Bellis telling Eddie that he can influence enough people to get Eddie the position of City Mayor.
7147696	/m/0h6s4q	In the Line of Fire: A Memoir	Pervez Musharraf	2006-09-25	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The book consists topics regarding Musharraf's personal life to the international and national issues and his rise to power. He writes about his childhood and education and a life he spent in Turkey. The memoir also includes some very important international events which had direct connection with Musharraf and his policies.
7150303	/m/0h6x_y	Loser Takes All	Graham Greene		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Mr. Bertram and Cary are about to get married. An unambitious assistant accountant, Bertram's plans for marriage are not particularly exciting. One day, he comes to the attention of Dreuther, the powerful director of his company, who changes Bertram's plan for him: they are to wed and honeymoon in Monte Carlo. Dreuther will meet the couple in Monte Carlo and be their witness, on board his private yacht. Bertram and Cary arrive in Monte Carlo but Dreuther does not show up. The couple are therefore forced to stay there. Bertram is angry with Dreuther. In order to make sure they can pay the hotel bills, Bertram visits the casino. At first he loses, but gradually his system starts working, and he begins to win big money. He wins so much money that he gets the attention of Mr. Bowles, another director of the company gambling in Monte Carlo, who is also a rival of Dreuther. Bowles wants Bertram to lend him money. In exchange, Bertram wants Bowles' shares of the company, so that, in gaining control of the company, he will get his revenge on Dreuther. Meanwhile, Cary is disappointed that Bertram becomes obsessed with his system. A romantic person, she does not want him to become rich. At this time, she meets a "hungry" young man who expresses his love for her. She decides to leave Bertram. Devastated, Bertram does not know what to do. He blames Dreuther for ruining his marriage. Just at this time, Dreuther arrives on his yacht. He explains that his no-show is not deliberate: he is only forgetful. Bertram, while still doubting Dreuther's sincerity, tells him about his trouble. The wise and well-meaning Dreuther then devises a plan that would help Bertram gets Cary back. The plan works perfectly. With Cary coming back to him, Bertram is happy even though he loses all his money to Bowles (thereby cancelling his deal with him) and the hungry young man. Hence, it is "loser takes all".
7150614	/m/0h6yn6	Bridge of Souls	Fiona McIntosh		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wyl Thirsk, former general of the Morgravian army and bearer of the curse known as Myrren's gift, is running out of time. Marriage between his beloved Queen Valentyna and his sworn enemy, the despotic King Celimus, is imminent; yet, despite the impending nuptials, war looms between the two nations, while the threat from the Mountain Kingdom grows stronger. Trapped in a body not his own, with his friends and supporters scattered throughout the realm, Wyl is as desperate to prevent the wedding as he is to end Myrren's "gift" -- a magic that will cease only when he assumes the throne of Morgravia. Clinging to an ominous suggestion from his young friend Fynch, an increasingly powerful mage, Wyl must walk his most dangerous path yet—straight into the brutal clutches of Celimus in a desperate attempt to save his nation, his love, and himself.
7150661	/m/0h6yrm	Myrren's Gift	Fiona McIntosh		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 All Wyl Thirsk ever wanted was for his family to be happy, to be loyal to his monarch, King Magnus, as his father was and, most importantly, to follow in the footsteps of his father, Fergys Thirsk. But change is in the wind after Magnus married a foreign woman who gave him a cruel but handsome son - Prince Celimus.
7151237	/m/0h6zlg	The Runestaff	Michael Moorcock	1969	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Baron Meliadus is summoned to an audience with King-Emperor Huon, where he is threatened with dismissal if he does not learn the means of the escape of the Asiacommunista emissaries. Meanwhile Countess Flana wonders at the fate of Hawkmoon and her lover D'Averc. Hawkmoon attempts to break free from his destiny by sailing to Europe, but finds his way blocked by numerous sea creatures which drive their ship to crash upon an island. On the island Hawkmoon and D'Averc meet the Warrior in Jet and Gold's brother Orland Fank who gives them a boat to coninue on their original journey to the city of Dnark. Orland informs Hawkmoon that the inhabitants of Castle Brass are safe, though Elvereza Tozer has escaped. Orland stays with Hawkmoon's crew to repair their ship, while Hawkmoon and D'Averc depart for Dnark. Hawkmoon and D'Averc arrive back in Amarehk and find themselves in a strange city of glowing organic buildings. There they meet a child called Jehamia Cohnahlias who confirms that this is the city of Dnark - the home of the mythical Runestaff and inhabited by the ghostly forms of the Great Good Ones. There they also meet Count Shenegar Trott, who claims to be visiting as a peaceful emissary of King-Emperor Huon. The next day Shenegar Trott leads an army to capture Dnark, threatening to kill Jehamia Cohnahlias if Hawkmoon tries to stop him claiming the Runestaff. Hawkmoon and D'Averc are rescued from Trott's forces by the Great Good Ones, who transport them to the location of the Runestaff. There they confront Shenegar Trott and find themselves joined by Orland Fank and the Warrior in Jet and Gold. Jehamia Cohnahlias frees himself from Trott's grasp, revealing himself as the spirit of the Runestaff, into which he disappears. Hawkmoon summons the Legion of the Dawn and they begin attacking Trott's forces, but Hawkmoon is knocked out in the fight and as he loses consciousness the Legion disappears. By the time he recovers consciousness and the Legion returns The Warrior in Jet and Gold has been killed. Hawkmoon kills Shenegar Trott and his army is defeated by the Legion of the Dawn. Jehamia Cohnahlias instructs Hawkmoon to take the Runestaff to Europe and decide the battle between himself and Meliadus once and for all. Baron Meliadus conspires with Countless Flana to overthrow King-Emperor Huon and enthrone Flana as Empress. Huon orders Meliadus's loyalty tested on the Mentality Machine but Baron Kalan agrees to doctor the results. Meliadus visits Taragorm who informs him of the return of Elvereza Tozer after his escape from Castle Brass, and that he will soon have the means to return Castle Brass to this dimension. King-Emperor Huon summons Meliadus and sends him on a mission to Amarehk to learn of Shenegar Trott's fate. Meliadus summons the various captains of his assembled army and convinces them to aid him in treason. Hawkmoon and D'Averc are transported back to Castle Brass by the Great Good Ones, where Yissela tells Hawkmoon she is to bear him a child. Baron Meliadus leads his fleet back up towards Londra and begins his assault on Huon's forces. Meliadus meets Taragorm who tells him his device is now ready to transport Castle Brass back into this dimension. King-Emperor Huon's forces are pressed back towards the palace, and Huon dispatches a messenger by ornithopter to summon aid from his generals in Europe. Taragorm uses his sonic device to shatter the crystal device that is keeping Castle Brass in another dimension, and the castle returns to the destroyed Kamarg. In a nearby village Hawkmoon finds that the Dark Empire army has left, but have destroyed the village behind them. Orland Fank appears and gives Hawkmoon and company a collection of mirrored helmets to be worn by the leaders of the Kamarg: Hawkmoon, Count Brass, D'Averc, Oladahn, Bowgentle, and Yisselda. Baron Meliadus's forces are swelled by those of Adaz Promp as he joins forces. Kalan creates a war machine to breach the walls of the palace, but after it does so it explodes, killing Taragorm in the process. Meliadus breaches the throne room and kills King-Emperor Huon, but suffers temporary blindness from the flash of Huon's shattered throne globe. Hawkmoon and his army cross into Granbretan and defeat the awaiting Dark Empire army, forcing Meliadus to flee back to Londra by ornithopter. Kalan works on a device to reactivate the Black Jewel embedded in Hawkmoon's skull, and Hawkmoon begins to feel the effects, though the Red Amulet holds its full power at bay. Hawkmoon and his army attack Londra and Oladahn, Count Brass, Bowgentle, and D'Averc are all killed. Hawkmoon kills Baron Meliadus though his army is overrun by the Dark Empire forces. Overwhelmed with grief at D'Averc's death Flana stops the fighting and orders Kalan to remove the Black Jewel from Hawkmoon's head. Flana vows to make amends for Granbretan's evil and Orland Fank takes the Runestaff, the Red Amulet, and the Sword of the Dawn into safekeeping, till Hawkmoon should need them again.
7151252	/m/0h6zmv	La Terre	Gérard Gengembre	1887		 The novel takes place in the final years of the Second Empire. Jean Macquart, an itinerant farm worker, has come to Rognes, a small village in La Beauce, where he works as a day labourer. He had been a corporal in the French Army, a veteran of the Battle of Solferino. He begins to court a local girl, Françoise Mouche, who lives in the village with her sister Lise. Lise is married to Buteau, a young man from the village, who is attracted to both sisters. Buteau's father, the elderly farmer Fouan, has decided to sign a contract known as a donation entre vifs (literally: "gift between living people"), whereby his three children, Fanny Delhomme (married to a hard-working and respected farmer), Hyacinthe (aka "Jesus Christ", a poacher and layabout), and Buteau will inherit their father's estate early; they agree to pay their parents a pension in return. The property is painstakingly measured and divided up between the three children, as the Civil Code of 1804 dictated. Almost as soon as the contract is signed, Buteau begins to resent the pension, and quickly refuses to pay it. In the house Lise shares with her sister (the property having been shared between them on the death of their late father), Buteau begins a campaign of sexual advances towards his sister-in-law, which she attempts to repel. Midway through the novel, Fouan's wife dies and, since it seems wasteful for Fouan to retain their marital home, the property is sold, and Fouan goes to live with Fanny and her husband. While Fanny is scrupulously respectful of the conditions of the donations entre vifs, she nevertheless make it clear that she resents his presence. Fouan eventually moves to live with his son "Jesus Christ" who shares a shack with his daughter "La Trouille", a put-upon dogsbody. Under "Jesus Christ's" influence, Fouan's self-respect dwindles: while previously law-abiding, he now joins his son on poaching expeditions and takes part in Hyacinthe's favourite evening activity, farting contests. Eventually, however, Hyacinthe's abusive drunkenness is directed against Fouan, who leaves to take up residence with Buteau and Lise. Meanwhile, Françoise and Jean have married. Françoise can no longer remain under the same roof as Buteau, whose sexual overtures are becoming more and more persistent: Lise, jealous of Françoise, insists that her sister is behaving in a deliberately provocative way. Françoise, who is now pregnant with Jean's child, decides to leave, but demands that Buteau and Lise buy out her share of the house, which the couple cannot afford to do. The situation worsens until, in a shocking scene, Buteau and Lise set upon Françoise when she is alone in the fields at harvest time. Lise restrains her sister while she is raped by Buteau, then pushes her onto a sickle, wounding her in the belly and killing her unborn child. The two flee the scene. While Françoise is still conscious when she is found, her family pride leads her to refuse to name Lise and Buteau; she claims instead that her injury was the result of an accident, and dies shortly after. Back in the Buteau home, the greedy couple turn their attention to Fouan, whose obstinacy in remaining alive has become a serious financial drain. One night while Fouan is asleep, they steal into his bedroom and smother him; finding he is still alive, they set fire to him, while arranging the scene to look like an accident (their story is accepted by the local community). The Buteaus refuse to pay Jean the money for Françoise's share of the family home, which is now rightfully his as her next-of-kin. Horrified by his suspicions regarding both his wife's and Fouan's deaths, and by the heartlessness of those around him, Jean returns to his wandering, and leaves the region for good. As he leaves, he passes the freshly dug burial mounds of Françoise and Fouan, and the ripe corn in the harvest fields.
7152231	/m/0h70rl	Traitor's Purse	Margery Allingham	1941	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A man wakes in hospital to find he cannot remember anything except that he has something vital to do, connected to the number fifteen. He hears voices outside discussing the unconscious patient - who they say has killed a policeman and will be hanged. He escapes in a stolen car. He is followed, but instead of the police, the car contains a woman who seems to be helping him. She calls him Campion. Also in the car is an old man, Mr Anscombe, who they drop off at his house before continuing to Lee Aubrey's house, where they are staying. Campion remembers that the woman is called Amanda and thinks she must be his wife, so he is shocked when she tells him she wants to break off their engagement. He does not tell her about his amnesia. Campion receives a letter from Stanislaus Oates telling him to investigage Anscombe - but then Superintendent Hutch arrives and tells them that Anscombe is dead. He takes Campion, the last person to see Anscombe alive, to see the body. Pyne, who had just arrived to visit Aubrey, accompanies them - Campion guesses he must be an old friend and talks to him accordingly but then finds out they only met three days before. Amanda tells Campion that she is falling in love with Lee Aubrey. Then Hutch takes Campion to Bridge, where he smuggles him into the Council Chamber, the headquarters of the Masters of Bridge, built into caves in a hill overlooking the town. Campion finds an agenda for a meeting which mentions Minute Fifteen, and Anscombe's intended retirement. Exploring further, he finds a vast cavern filled with hundreds of trucks. Next day, Aubrey takes Campion for a tour of the Institute. They meet Mrs Ericson, whose volunteer workers are housed in the Institute grounds - she is clearly infatuated with Aubrey. They also see a researcher who is developing a new, very powerful explosive. Pyne tips Hutch off that Campion might be an impostor. Hutch asks Campion questions to prove his identity, but his mind is blank. He hits Hutch, knocking him out, and drives to Coachingford, the main town in the area. Acting automatically, he goes to a newsagent's shop. In a back room he meets Lugg, who he does not recognise. Campion tells Lugg about his memory loss and Lugg patches up his injuries - and shows him the basket full of pound notes which he left on his last visit. Then a man with a gun arrives and offers Campion cash to leave town - he runs when he realises it is the real Campion, not a fake. Lugg recognises him as one of many professional criminals who have arrived in town. Amanda summons Campion to a hotel where he meets Miss Anscombe. She gives Campion her brother's diary, and tells him she believes he was smuggling contraband in the caves under the hill. The hotel is surrounded by both police and criminals, so Campion escapes over the roofs and catches a train to London where he meets Sir Henry Bull. He tells Campion that Minute Fifteen is a war loan, details of which are going to be mailed to every taxpayer in the country. Campion rushes back to Coachingford - he now knows that Pyne must be working with the criminals and believes he is responsible for Anscombe's murder. But as he gets off the train, he is arrested. Trying to get away from the police station, he is knocked out again. Waking up he has forgotten what happened since his original injury but remembers everything before. He is investigating counterfeit currency being given away to crooks and vagrants. Amanda arrives and he finally puts the two halves of the story together - the trucks are going to be used to distribute vast amounts of forged currency to cause economic crisis. He is left waiting in the police station until Hutch, with a broken jaw, arrives from speaking to Oates, who has been in hospital, unconscious and under guard - he was the prisoner that Campion heard being discussed when he first woke up. When Campion gets to the cave, the trucks are already leaving. He uses the experimental explosive from the Institute to blow them up, killing Pyne and many of his criminal employees. In the debris he finds letters showing that the cash was going to be posted out to poor people disguised as a social security payment - the vast number of envelopes would have been disguised by the letters about the war loan going out on the same day. Campion and Hutch realise Pyne could not have carried out the plan by himself. The mastermind turns out to be Lee Aubrey, who admits what he has done - his idea was to bring down the government and install himself in its place. Amanda and Campion talk - it turns out that Aubrey lost interest once he thought he had made her fall in love with him. They decide to get married the next day.
7152378	/m/0h713z	Ishmael	Barbara Hambly	1985-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Spock travels back to the time and place of Here Come the Brides, a television program loosely based upon Asa Mercer's efforts to bring civilization to 1860s Seattle by importing the marriageable Mercer Girls from the war-ravaged East Coast of the United States. The show's premise was that eldest brother, Jason Bolt, bet his entire logging operation that he could persuade one hundred marriageable ladies to come to Seattle, and that all of them would be married or engaged within one year. Much of the dramatic and comic tension revolved around the efforts of their benefactor Aaron Stemple to thwart the deal and take control of the Bolts' holdings. Spock discovers a Klingon plot to destroy the Federation by killing Aaron Stemple before Stemple could thwart an attempted 19th-century alien invasion of Earth. During most of the story, Spock has lost his memory and is cared for by Stemple, who passes him off as his nephew "Ishmael" and helps him hide his alien origins. Spock identifies one of the women in the story as likely to be an ancestress of his.
7152995	/m/0h72fw	The Sherwood Ring	Elizabeth Marie Pope	1958	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When seventeen year-old Peggy Grahame's father dies, she has no choice but to reside in the home of her only remaining relative, her uncle Enos. She journeys to her family's ancestral estate, "Rest-and-be-thankful," in Orange County, New York, and soon finds her uncle to be an eccentric and rather crochety man who is obsessed with his family's history. While Peggy strikes up a tentative friendship with a young British man called Pat, who is doing some research in America, her uncle is quick to forbid the two from seeing each other. Peggy is forced to spend much of her time alone in the large, Colonial house, and soon discovers it to be haunted by the ghosts of her eighteenth-century ancestors and their contemporaries. The ghosts relate their stories in first-person narratives throughout the book which are interwoven with the narrative of the present day. With the help of the ghosts' stories, Peggy is able to unravel a centuries-old family mystery, win the affection of her uncle and find a romance of her own.
7155427	/m/0h760v	The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet	Eleanor Cameron	1954	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When two boys find a mysterious ad in a newspaper asking for two young boys to build a spaceship, they quickly construct one out of old tin and scrap wood, and bring it to the advertiser. This man is the mysterious Mr. Bass, a scientist living in an observatory who goes unnoticed by most of the townspeople for some reason. He shows the boys a previously undetected satellite of the earth, the eponymous planet, that can only be seen with a special filter he has concocted. He gives them some special fuel he invented to power their spaceship, and tells them to fly to the mushroom planet (after getting their parents' permission). He warns them that their trip will only be successful if they bring a mascot. When it is time for launch, they grab a hen at the last moment for a mascot, and rocket into space. They wake up on the mushroom planet, a small, verdant world covered in soft moss and tree size mushrooms. They quickly meet some residents of the mushroom planet, small men with large heads and slightly green skin, the cousins of the mysterious Mr. Bass. They tell the boys that their planet has had a crisis and everyone is slowly dying. The boys meet up with the king of the planet, the Great Ta, and end up solving the natives' problem, before returning to Earth. The mushroom people's crisis was a lack of sulfur. They resolved this with their mascot hen, as chicken eggs have a high sulfur content.
7155567	/m/0h765n	Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet	Eleanor Cameron	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens with Theo Bass, the cousin of Tyco Bass, coming to Pacific Grove, CA and visiting the two boys (Chuck and David) from the first book. He has been a traveller around the world for many years, and when he finds out about the mushroom planet, he decides to rebuild the boys' lost spaceship and return to what he knows is his ancestral home. Earlier, the boys had written a letter to a nearby university professor inviting him to come and give a lecture to their young astronomers' society. The letter arrives while the professor is away and is received by his ambitious young assistant, who comes to Pacific Grove to give the lecture himself. The young assistant, Horatio Peabody, ends up going to the Mushroom Planet as a stowaway, and causing quite a bit of trouble there. This book is much more topical than the last one was, as Peabody insists that the Mushroom Planet must be explored and exploited "for the good of science" (as well as for his own personal glory). Mr. Peabody ends up committing an act of sacrilege on the Mushroom Planet that almost gets everyone involved killed, and in general annoys and scares all. However, by the end of the book, Horatio Peabody learns his lesson about the arrogance of his scientific beliefs, and the situation, overall, returns to equilibrium until the next book.
7157210	/m/0h781t	Furies of Calderon	Jim Butcher	2004-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The story takes place in the Aleran Empire, which contains "crafters", people who control the elements: water, air, earth, fire, wood, and metal, through a person's bond with an element's fury. A young woman named Amara travels with her mentor Fidelias as part of her graduation exercise. Amara is training to become one of the Cursori, messengers and spies for the First Lord of Alera, Gaius Sextus. They infiltrate a camp of mercenaries when Amara is tricked by a watercrafter named Odiana and betrayed by Fidelias. Odiana is the lover of Aldrick ex Gladius, the greatest swordsman since Araris Valerian, a legendary swordsman who had been in the service of the Princeps of Alera, the First Lord's late son. Amara escapes and makes contact with First Lord Gaius using her aircraft. He instructs her to go to the city of Garrison. The story switches to a steadholt controlled by Bernard, a man who lost his wife and children and stays with his sister Isana, and their nephew Tavi who is seemingly furyless. Tavi finds that one of his sheep has gone missing. He and Bernard track the sheep when they are attacked by a Marat warrior. The Marat and the Alerans had fought a war before Tavi was born in which the Marat killed Gaius' son, Princeps Septimus. The Marat are a warrior people who form tribes based on bonds with different animals, for example horses. In the fight Tavi and Bernard kill the warrior's war bird but not before Bernard is wounded. Tavi is running for help when a furystorm hits. While seeking shelter he finds Amara and the two find the Princeps Memorial, a cave dedicated to Princeps Septimus. Bernard makes it back to his steadholt, where Isana uses her watercrafting skills to heal him. Bernard then finds Tavi and Amara and bring them back to the steadholt. Fidelias, Odiana, and Aldrick stay at the steadholt where they discover Amara and attempt to capture her. Amara and Tavi escape with Fade, a servant of the steadholt who is seemingly dim witted, and together they travel through the woods before Amara splits from the other two. Tavi and Fade are attacked by Kord, the leader of Kordholt and a slaver. During the fight Bernard and Amara attack Kord when Fidelias, Odiana, and Aldrick attack. Aldrick kills Kord's son Bittan, and after arriving Isana floods the river. Bernard and Amara go one way; Tavi and Fade a second, and Fidelias and Aldrick another; Isana, Odiana, Kord, and Kord's oldest son Aric are washed to Kordholt. Tavi and Fade are captured by a Marat Headman named Doroga. Odiana and Isana, captured by Kord, are locked away and Odiana is raped. Bernard and Amara continue to Garrison where they rouse the Legionares, or soldiers. Fidelias and Aldrick go to the Marat leader Atsurak, who decides to invade Garrison immediately. Tavi convinces Doroga to let him undergo a trial that can stop the attack on Garrison. Tavi faces the trial with Kitai, Doroga's daughter, and wins, saving Kitai's life in the process, and undergoing some sort of bond with her which changes the colour of her eyes to match his, although he does not understand the meaning of this change. Isana and Odiana convince Aric to help them escape Kordholt, and they split up and head to Garrison. Tavi and the Marat head to Garrison to stop Atsurak. Bernard and Amara hold off the Marat, while realising their feelings for one another, and Isana arrives and hides. Tavi and Doroga attack and kill Atsurak, and Tavi reunites with Benard and Isana when they are attacked by Fidelias and Aldrick who defeat Bernard and Amara with ease, when Fade attacks Aldrick and defeats him but leaves him alive. It is hinted here that Fade is Araris Valerian. Fidelias throws Fade off the wall, attacks Tavi, and takes Aquataine's dagger. Garrison survived the attack and Tavi is granted a scholarship to the Academy by the First Lord, Bernard and Amara become Count and Countess of the garrison, and Isana is given the title of Steadholder, making her the first woman ever to own a steadholt and gain citizenship through merit rather than marriage. Fidelias and Aldrick return to Aquataine, greeted by Inividia, Aquataine's wife and discover Aquataine sleeping with Gaius' wife Caria.
7157972	/m/0h78vf	When Darkness Falls	Mercedes Lackey	2006-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the Great Working to scry through the wards of Armethalieh and deflecting the attack of the Demon Queen Savilla, most of the Allied camp is drained for nearly a sennight. However, Savilla is likewise weakened and now both sides know a secret lost for a thousand years, that a combination of High Magick and Wild Magic can kill a Demon. When the Elven King Andoreniel proposes sending all Allied children and pregnant women to the Fortress of the Crowned Horns of the Moon, Knight-Mage Kellen points out numerous flaws but cannot think of an alternative plan. Meanwhile, Savilla plots to break the bonds that bind He Who Is, the creator of the Demons, by casting secret sacrifices on an enchanted spear in one of the many chambers of the vast World Without Sun. From the Crystal Spiders, Vestakia learns that an enclave of Shadowed Elves still exists somewhere in the Elven lands, in a cave associated with crystal and water though she doesn't know precisely where that is. The Elves give Cilarnen, the banished High Mage, a gift of many of their older books which discuss the High Magick. Unfortunately, he still lacks a source of power to cast any spells from. Jermayan, the only Elven Mage, and his Bonded dragon, Ancaladar, depart to begin the evacuation of the pregnant Elven women from the Nine Cities. At the first city, the women refuse to depart to safety while the city is under near constant attack from various Tainted creatures. Jermayan evacuates the entire city through the mountains and burns its Flower Forest so it will not fall to enemy hands. Approximately a third of the already reduced population survives attacks by Coldwarg, Frost Giants, Ice Trolls, and an Ice Drake. As the Allied army holds Council, Kellen reiterates the belief that the many attacks are meant to divide the Allied forces and stop them from interfering with what he believes to be the Endarkened's ultimate goal, Armethalieh. Without word from Andoreniel, the only orders the army commander, Redhelwar, is to give is to allow refuges from the other races to enter the relative safety of Elven Lands. Kellen is given command of a third of the army with directions to go to the Jeweled Caverns of Halacira to make it a suitable fortress for the refugees. Cilarnen confers privately with Kellen to inform him that the books may have given him the answer to his power problem. If he can get permission from them, he believes that he could use the power of the Elemental Powers that sustain the land-wards that surround the Elven nation. Unfortunately, the meeting with Viceroy Kindolhinadetil leaves both Kellen and Cilarnen confused as to whether it would be allowable. Unbeknownst to the side of Light, Crown Prince Zyperis of the Demons initiates a plague to affect both animal and forest to further distract the Allies. Kellen, with a third of the army under his command, moves out to journey to Sentarshadeen. Along the way they discover a village decimated by the plague loosed by the Demons. The Elves recognize it for what it is as the Enemy used the same tactic during the last war. Cilarnen receives a later from the viceroy that gives him permission to do all he can to aid the war effort, including summoning the Elementals of the land wards. A Salamander enters the summoning circle and merges its essence with Cilarnen, giving him much greater power while inside the Elven lands, but shortening his lifespan to a few years. The depleted High Council and High Mage Lycaelon fall further and further into the traitor Anigel's power. With his Magewardens policing the Mages and blindly following his lead, his work continues on lowering the City Wards that protect all within the City from Demons. Demon raids in the farther out City lands allows him to convince the Council that Wildmages are attacking. Cilarnen witnesses via a scrying spell the meeting that sends a unit of the Guard and two High Mages to the village of Nerendale to deal with the fictitious menace. Two days later, he witnesses the destruction of a Demon ambush and the kidnapping of the High Mages. Kellen and his troops reach the mountains where he and Shalkan discover a pass blocked by a Shadewalker, a huge monster with the ability to regenerate nonfatal wounds within minutes. Together they defeat it and determine it to have been the cause that no messages have gotten through between the army and the king. They reach Ondoladeshiron to find it suffering from the plague and news that Andoreniel lies ill and unresponsive in bed in Sentarshadeen. Kellen sends Keirasti and a small unit back to Redhelwar with this news and orders to move to the capital. Vestakia's attempts to discover the (hopefully) last enclave of the Shadowed Elves via telepathic communication with the Crystal Spiders are still fruitless. The only clues she has received are jewels and water. The prolonged communication opens her mind even further than before and she begins to see glimpses of her father, the Demon Prince Zyperis's mind while she's asleep. Finally, the Crystal Spiders manage to convey an image of giant xaique-pieces. The recently returned Jermayan and Idalia realize the enclave must be in Halacira, the cave where Kellen is heading to prepare for the refugees. Cilarnen manages to find and destroy a latent spell placed in his mind by Anigrel that would have caused him to attempt to kill Kellen. With his help, Idalia and Jermayan find Keirasti's group which Jermayan and Ancaladar go to intercept. They return to inform Redhelwar of the king's health, leaving Kellen without Vestakia's warning. Kellen suspects a trap in Halacira regardless and cautiously leads some of his troops in while the rest secure the other exits. The Shadowed Elves release a trap that floods most of the cave with the nearby river but with the help of Wildmages in his party and his casting of a spell he shouldn't have been able to cast, Kellen is able to break through. They eradicate the Shadowed Elves which were the last of their kind. The main army departs as Jermayan takes Keirasti back to her unit and then moves on to inform Kellen of the now-sprung trap. Kellen informs Jermayan of Andoreneil's illness and asks that Cilarnen, Idalia, and Vestakia be brought to assist the king and see if any Shadowed Elves remain. Unfortunately, the Wild Magic isn't strong enough to directly cure Andoreneil, but a combination of treatments seems to help. Savilla uses the High Mages captured at Nerendale to capture a unicorn and bring it to the enchanted spear. With its death, the barrier sealing He Who Is is greatly weakened. However, Zyperis was able to follow the unicorn's trail and know understands his mother's plans. Kellen charges Cilarnen with devising a way to open communications with Armethaleih to form an alliance and create the spells to protect Halacira. Vestakia learns through her dreams and counseling with Ancadalar, the Queen of Shadow Mountain's plans for He Who Is. Though a simple riddle game and a scrying spell, Kellen, Jermayan, and Idalia learn of the bargain Vielissar Farcarinon made to seal He Who Is during the last Shadow War. Idalia specifically learns the Great Working she'll need to cast, but lacks the consent of all the races of the Light which is required. Fortunately, Andoreneil has recovered enough to point her to the banners in his council chamber which are magically bound promises of all the races to serve in the time of need. Jermayan and Ancadalar take her to a Place of Power in the far north where she summons the Starry Hunt, the Powers that the Elves followed during their continual internal wars before the Endarkened first appeared. Their arrival in the world restores the waning of the Wild Mage and closes the door on He Who Is, though doesn't lock it. Jermayan and Idalia return to Redhelwar's army which is moving far too slow to be able to be of use in the spring battles to come. Jermayan offers a solution: a Great Working that would move the entire army to Kellen but would cost his and Ancadalar's lives. Understanding the necessity, the spell is cast and the army moved. However, the Starry Hunt intervenes and spares their lives at the last moment though it costs them all of their magic. Andoreneil gives Redhelwar a Viceroy's ring giving his autonomy and the authority to refuse the king's orders if he see fit. The army moves towards Armethaleih encountering refugees they send to Elven lands and Demon attacks along the way. Cilarnen negotiates with the land ward Elementals to get another Elemental to assist him when he crosses the borders and spends as much time as possible working on a plan with the Unicorn Knights. Anigrel has weakened the City Wards enough to let the mildest of Demonic influence in. With it he convinces Lycaelon of the need for allies against the Wildmages. He tells of another city that has isolated itself and is willing to assist Armethaleih and its inhabitants known as The Enlightened. Although an obvious cover for the Endarkened, Lycaelon and the High Council agree to hear from an envoy. The Endarkened army moves parallel to the Allied one as they approach Armethaleih. Vestakia, now able to read her father's mind even while awake, tells the Allies that the Demons intend to make a Great Sacrifice. By sacrificing a person who represents the Land at a Place of Power (one of which is very near to the Golden City), the Queen of Shadow Mountain will be able to break the bonds on He Who Is, even those created by the Starry Hunt. Upon reaching the city, the Allied army prepares for battle. However, Savilla uses all of the slaves the Demon army has to cast an extremely powerful spell that masks the presence of the Demons even to those with magical abilities. A small party of "The Enlightened" approach Armethaleih and the Arch Mage's party exits to meet them. Although the Wildmages are temporarily about to dispel the illusion, the Demons succeed in capturing Lycaelon who qualifies as representing the Land. The Demons withdraw from the City's immediate vicinity. Cilarnen leads the unicorns in a pattern that represents runes and manages to shatter the already corrupted City Wards completely. Attempting to regain Savilla's favour, Zyperis proceeds to lead an attack on the Allied army with the Demon forces not located at the Place of Power. Cilarnen, Jermayan, and Idalia enter the Golden City of Bells and confront the remains of the High Council, calling for immediate action in informing the citizens of the true nature of the Tokens of Citizenship, the rebuilding of the City Wards, and sending aid to the Allied army. Cilarnen's father, Lord Setarion Volpiril, intercedes and rejoins the Council and acts as a temporary leader when Cilarnen releases the bonds Lycaelon placed on him. Redhelwar hands leadership of the army over to Kellen shortly before the battle commences. Due to Kellen's reorganization of units, the Starry Hunt, and his Knight-Mage abilities, they are able to hold their own against the Demons and their ilk. With the help of a reclusive and often near-Banished scholar, Idalia works out a spell that combines High Magick and Wild Magic that should break through the Demon's shields at the Place of Power and transport Lycaelon back to the City. Meanwhile Cilarnen begins the Grand Circle to recast the City Wards, the most complex spell in the High Magick. The Circle completes the casting just as his energy runs out and he collapses. With the help of some High Mages, Kellen's army manages to continue fighting until midnight approaches. Before entering the Circle that will cast the spell to save Lycaelon, Idalia finally accepts Jermayan's token of marriage, a necklace with a silver eight-pointed star. Without saying goodbye, she enters the Circle knowing what no one else does, that Lycaelon cannot merely be transported, a switch needs to be done. It is the final Mageprice for her, the one she incurred when she saved the Elven lands from the released storms nearly a year previous. As Lycaelon appears in the Circle, Savilla strikes Idalia with her blade and Jermayan runs for Ancadalar to try and save her. A wave of light washes over the land replenishing Wild Mages and High Mages and restoring Ancadalar and Jermayan's magical abilities. With it also comes the destruction of Zyperis and half of the Demons at the Place of Power. Jermayan slays Savilla with his re-acquired magic as well as the other Demons in the area. Kellen arrives later to find the surrounding area covered with flowers and Jermayan holding Idalia's body. Cilarnen recovers the next day and finds his memories intact and the Elemental has left him. By an ancient law of the City, he is voted the next High Mage as Lycaelon's mind was too damaged by his time in Savilla's custody. Jermayan and Ancadalar disappear shortly after Kellen found them. Kellen returns control of the army to Redhelwar and is in turn given control of a force to mop up the remains of the Demon's force and orders to then return to Sentarshadeen in three months time for Idalia's funeral. All of the races send their highest ranking members to Idalia's funeral and many speak of her. Even Lycaelon gives a nominal eulogy, though Kellen declines to do so himself. Cilarnen approaches him afterwards and tells him of the progress he has made in reforming the City. Andoreneil asks to see Kellen in regards to the Fortress of the Crowned Horns. Kellen is to go and inform them of the end of the war and that they may return to their homes. When he, Vestakia, and Shalkan arrive, they find Ancadalar sunning himself on the rocks. Jermayan is inside with Ashaniel, the Elven Queen. Her new baby girl who was born with violet eyes and a silvery eight-pointed star birthmark on her chest. The Wild Magic's gift; Idalia reborn. When he leaves the fortress, Kellen realizes it was over a year ago he was rescued by Shalkan outside the City Gates. Kellen leaves the fortress hand in hand with Vestakia, and with a little prodding from the now-distant unicorn, Kellen kisses her.
7159487	/m/0h7c2y	The King's Justice	Katherine Kurtz	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The plot of The King's Justice spans a period of two months, from May 1124 to July 1124. The novel begins as King Kelson Haldane is making final preparations to launch a military campaign into the province of Meara. Although Meara has been a part of Gwynedd for over a century, a descendant of the ancient Mearan rulers, Caitrin Quinnell, has gathered an army and risen against Kelson to secure her place as queen of an independent and sovereign Meara. Additionally, Caitrin has allied herself with Edmund Loris, the rabidly anti-Deryni former-Archbishop who has managed to escape from his imprisonment. Kelson plans to set the Haldane potential in his uncle, Prince Nigel Haldane, before his departure, ensuring that his family's legacy of magic will not perish if Kelson should not survive the war. However, Kelson's plan deeply concerns the Camberian Council, who has long believed that multiple Haldanes cannot wield the Haldane magic simultaneously. Further complicating matters is the ill-timed return of Kelson's mother, Queen Jehana, whose anti-Deryni sentiments cause considerable friction with her son. Nonetheless, Kelson carries through with his plan and sets the Haldane potential in his uncle. The following day, Kelson sends off the first half of his army, placing it under the command of Bishop Duncan McLain and Earl Dhugal MacArdry. As Caitrin's forces prepare to do battle with Kelson's armies, Kelson receives the homage of King Liam Lajos II Furstán of Torenth, who travels to Rhemuth to acknowledge Kelson as Overlord of Torenth. However, Kelson decides to take both Liam and his mother as honorable hostages, ensuring that Torenth will make no aggressive move against Gwynedd while Kelson is occupied with the Mearan situation. Shortly thereafter, Kelson and Duke Alaric Morgan lead the second half of the royal army out from Rhemuth to meet the Mearan rebels. Over the following weeks, the Gwyneddan armies attempt to hunt down and destroy the Mearan forces. In the north, Loris and Sicard MacArdry, Caitrin's husband, continually elude Duncan and Dhugal. Meanwhile, in the south, Kelson and Morgan chase after Caitrin's son, Prince Ithel, whose own acts of rape and destruction have fueled Kelson's anger. Kelson eventually succeeds in capturing Ithel, who is summarily executed for his crimes. On the same day, Sicard and Loris lure the northern Gwyneddan army into a trap. Realizing that Loris is determined to capture him, Duncan orders Dhugal to flee the battle, hoping that the rest of the army will survive. Dhugal manages to escape the battle, but Duncan is defeated and captured. In Rhemuth, Jehana suffers a crisis of conscience when her own Deryni powers enable her to discover a Torenthi plot to assassinate Nigel. Jehana finally decides to warn Nigel, and the assassination attempt is foiled. Loris tortures Duncan horribly, mutilating the Deryni bishop in an attempt to force him to confess to charges of heresy. That night, Dhugal succeeds in contacting Kelson and informs the king of Duncan's plight. As Kelson's army marches through the night to rescue their comrades, Loris prepares to burn Duncan at the stake. However, Duncan's execution is interrupted by the arrival of Kelson's army. Both Kelson and Morgan use their Deryni powers to protect Duncan, but it is ultimately Dhugal who rescues the bishop. Kelson corners Sicard, but the Pretender's husband refuses to surrender. Unwilling to allow Sicard's defiance to cost additional lives, Kelson kills Sicard with a single arrow. The remaining Mearan soldiers throw down their arms, and the Gwyneddan army is victorious. After several days of resting the army, Kelson leads his host to Laas, the Mearan city to which Caitrin has fled. Kelson demands the Pretender's surrender, and Dhugal convinces his aunt to accede to the king's terms. After Kelson's army takes possession of the city, Loris and his aide are executed for their crimes, and Kelson reluctantly orders the execution of the last member of Caitrin's family, Prince Judhael. With the Pretender's bloodline extinguished and her army defeated, Kelson secures his authority over the land of Meara.
7161872	/m/0h7h_7	Amaryllis Night and Day	Russell Hoban	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Peter Diggs has a vivid dream in which he meets a woman called Amaryllis. When he later encounters the same woman in real life, he discovers that the two of them have the ability to enter each other's dreams. A cautious relationship is begun, half in the real world and half in dreams, in which both parties struggle to overcome the emotional effects of previous failed romances.
7162589	/m/0h7k58	A Woman of Substance	Barbara Taylor Bradford	1979	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book starts with Emma, now an old lady, flying to New York with her personal assistant and favourite grandchild, Paula. Emma contemplates the empire she has created. She has trained Paula to be her successor, both as the head of Harte Stores and as representative of her mother, Daisy Amory, at Sitex. On their arrival in New York, Emma's secretary, Gaye, tells her that she heard Emma's sons discussing a plan to force her to retire and break up her empire so the pieces can be sold. Devastated initially, Emma isn't surprised but changes her will, choosing to leave her business interests to her grandchildren instead. The story then goes back to when Emma was a teenager and working as a servant at Fairley Hall in rural Yorkshire. Her father, Jack, and two brothers, Winston and Frank, also work for the Fairley family. Jack and Frank work at the mill and Winston works at the brickyard. After the death of his mother, Winston joins the navy as he had wanted to since he was a child. As parlourmaid, Emma sees a lot of the Fairley family and becomes friends with the younger son, Edwin. They bond over the death of their mothers. Emma also meets Blackie O'Neill, a wandering Irish navvy who has been hired to do some work at Fairley Hall, and they become fast friends. One day, Emma and Edwin realise they feel more for each other than friendship. Their friendship becomes intimate and Emma gets pregnant. Edwin, horrified at this news, does not offer to marry her so she runs away to Leeds. Wanting to protect herself and her child from gossip, Emma tells her landlady and new friends that she is married to Winston, a sailor currently away at sea. While looking for work, she meets Abraham Kallinski and rescues him from an attack by local youths. After she gets rid of them, she sees Abraham is not well and walks him home. He introduces her to his wife, Janessa and sons, David and Victor. Janessa, out of gratitude, invites Emma to stay for dinner. When Emma tells them she is looking for work, Abraham immediately offers her a job at his clothing workshop. He and David are pleased with Emma's work and she becomes good friends with them. As the birth of her baby approaches, Blackie arranges for her to meet his friend Laura Spencer in the village of Armley. Laura needs someone to share household expenses and Emma needs someone to look after her so it seemed ideal. They become good friends, Emma moves in and Laura gets her a job at Thompson's Mill. In March, Emma has a daughter and names her Edwina. Needing to work to support them, Emma's cousin, Freda, takes Edwina. After a year of working two jobs, Emma makes enough money to rent a shop in Armley. This shop is a success and Emma's business expands to two shops, then three. Not expecting to see the Fairleys, she is horrified when Gerald visits. He found her after seeing she worked at Thompson's Mill, now owned by his father. He tells her Edwin will soon be engaged and demands she tell him where the child is. Emma refuses to admit that there is a child, and after a violent confrontation, realizes she needs someone to protect her. Worried Gerald will return, she marries her landlord, Joe Lowther. They became friends when he taught her how to do her own accounts. Soon after their marriage, he and Emma have a son, Christopher, nicknamed Kit. Emma's business continues to expand with Emma going into business with the Kallinskis. Unfortunately her private life doesn't run as smoothly. Joe is killed in the battle of the Somme and Laura, now married to Blackie, dies giving birth to a son, Bryan. Emma raises Bryan until Blackie returns from the war. In early 1918, Emma meets Paul McGill. They fall in love and while their time together is short it is a very intense affair. Paul is in the Australian army and returns to France after recovering from a leg injury. After the war, he goes home and despite promising to write, never does. Emma, hurt and disappointed, especially when she finds out he and his wife have a son, turns to an acquaintance for consolation and marries again. She and her new husband have twins, Robin and Elizabeth, but the marriage is unhappy (her husband, Arthur Ainsley, is possibly homosexual and certainly has a drinking problem) and ends when Paul returns. Paul has kept in touch with Emma's brother Frank who informs him that Emma's marriage is unhappy. At Paul's request, Frank arranges a meeting between Emma and Paul. Emma is initially angry but calms down when Paul explains why he never wrote to her. They start dating again and she divorces her husband when she finds out she is pregnant with Paul's child. Emma has a daughter that they name Daisy after his mother. In February 1939, seeing war on the horizon, Paul goes to Australia to get his affairs in order, as he anticipates that once war starts travel will be difficult if not impossible. While there, he is seriously injured in a car crash and almost dies. He survives but disfigured, and is told that he will be dead within a year. He redraws his will, leaving almost everything to Emma and Daisy, and commits suicide. Emma is devastated but eventually recovers enough to look after her family and business empires. Emma's life goes on. Her children marry and have children of their own: Edwina marries Lord Jeremy Standish and has a son Anthony; Kit has a daughter Sarah; Robin has a son Jonathan; Elizabeth marries repeatedly resulting in son Alexander and daughters Emily and twins Amanda and Francesca; Daisy marries David Amory and has two children, Philip and Paula. Back in 1968, Emma invites her family to her house in Yorkshire for the weekend. They come, curious to see how she is after recovering from pneumonia, and she tells them that she has discovered their treachery and outmaneuvered them by changing her will. Her older children are furious but each accepts a one million pound trust that Emma offers as a bribe not to cause trouble. Her grandchildren are pleased and all promise to run their section well. Emma also gives her blessing to Paula becoming involved with Jim Fairley. He is Edwin's grandson and she tells him Edwina is his aunt but he had guessed, seeing her resemblance to his great-grandmother, Adele. Jim also has a surprise for Emma, giving her a stone she and Edwin found, revealing the woman painted on it, was her mother, Elizabeth. He tells her about the history of brief but tragic relationships between Fairley men and Harte women and tells her that on his deathbed, Edwin asked Jim to beg Emma to allow Paula and Jim the happiness they were denied. He also asked for her forgiveness as Jim revealed Edwin had never recovered from the guilt he suffered for abandoning her and their child. Emma was happy to forgive Edwin and give her blessing to Jim and Paula's marriage.
7163822	/m/0h7mds	Let It Come Down	Paul Bowles	1952	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A dark, even bleak, novel, Let It Come Down follows American Nelson Dyar as he arrives in the International Zone of Tangier, Morocco to begin a new job and a new life. Dyar's exploration of the brothels, drugs and unsavoury characters of Tangier leads him gradually, logically, to a sinister conclusion. Bowles took the book's title from Macbeth III.3, just before Banquo is murdered: :Banquo: It will be rain to-night. :1st. Murd.: Let it come down. :(They set upon Banquo.) The author has described the line as an ‘admirable four-word sentence, succinct and brutal’.
7164050	/m/0h7mtw	The Stones of Summer	Dow Mossman	1972	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Stones of Summer follows the life of Dawes Oldham Williams (D.O.W.) from childhood to teenage years in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and finally adulthood. The book is divided into three sections. Section 1 describes Williams' experiences in grade school and on a vacation to his grandfather's farm in Dawes City, Iowa, a depressed town built by Williams' once-prosperous and now ruined ancestors. In school, Dawes takes interest mostly in disorderly behavior; he idolizes and befriends the profane and often obnoxious Ronnie Crown, and to some extent emulates Crown's rebelliousness. In one climactic moment, Dawes, Crown, and a friend exact revenge on a Cedar Rapids neighbor by blowing up her garage with a stick of dynamite. After the explosion, the three boys evade the police by hiding in empty coffins in a nearby building. Section 1 also follows Dawes and his parents, Simpson and Leone, on a visit to Dawes and Leone's ancestral hometown, Dawes City, Iowa. There, the Dawes and his family visit his maternal grandparents. Dawes' grandfather, Arthur, is a greyhound breeder whose success is waning. Dawes' experiences his grandfather are awkward and often painful: Dawes is already a strange boy, and Arthur's ridicule often compounds his grandson's odd behavior. Despite this, Dawes sometimes feels a bond with Arthur, especially when it comes to the dogs, and after running errands with Arthur in town. While running errands, Arthur takes Dawes to the barber for a haircut and demands that his head be shaved. After the haircut, Arthur leaves Dawes with Abigail Winas, an old family friend and cryptic chicken farmer with whom Dawes seems to be a kindred spirit. During the visit with Abigail, it is revealed that Winas' mental health has seriously deteriorated since Dawes' last visit. Winas tells the boy a mix of truth and fabrications about the reliability of history- especially relating to Dawes city- and she condemns Dawes' devotion to nightly Bible readings. Dawes and Winas' discussion frequently borders on friendly and antagonistic, a consistent theme throughout The Stones of Summer. At the end of Dawes' visit with Abigail Winas, she slays and guts three chickens for the Dawes' family's dinner. When Arthur and Dawes return to the farm, Arthur is chastised for getting such an extreme haircut for Dawes. Nonetheless, when the boy is asked whether he enjoyed his trip with Arthur, he is surprised by his own quick affirmation. By the end of the vacation, however, Dawes has a tantrum after Arthur acts mean-spiritedly in croquet, when Dawes had tried to play fairly. Fed up, Dawes destroys a part of the croquet set. As a result, Arthur beats his grandson with a board. Simpson and Leone chastise Arthur for the harsh punishment but Dawes runs away despite their defense. He returns in the morning after spending the night in the woods near another remnant of his defunct family's empire: a decrepit house within which he finds a sleeping Abigail Winas. Section 2 of The Stones of Summer chronicles Dawes' teenage life and his escapades with best friends Dunker, Travis, and Eddie. Throughout the section, the three boys drink great quantities of alcohol, get into fistfights with strangers and each other, and engage in many picaresque activities, as well as car accidents. In this section, Dawes learns about sex well after his friends and eventually strikes up a romance with school girlfriends Becky Thatcher and later Summer Letch. This entire section is brimming with sexual undertones- whether Dawes and his friends are cruising for girls, or Dawes is experimenting with Summer in a doomed relationship, or the four boys watch a disturbing carnival peep show. This section ends in a terrible loss, though, at the end of the summer before college. As Dawes and his three best friends are speeding away from their final revenge upon a farmer who once chased them away with shotgun fire, their convertible leaves the road and Travis, Dunker, and Eddie are killed. Only Dawes survives after miraculously escaping from the out-of-control car before it crashes into the ravine below. This great loss apparently leaves Dawes inconsolable and finally sends him over the edge of reason. Ten years have passed, and Dawes is in Mexico with a young woman. The literate Dawes' writings while in Mexico illustrate his poor mental health. Additionally, Dawes' conversations with others are much more cryptic and sarcastic. He is cruel to his Mexican girlfriend- who even seems to understand him somewhat. The section itself is schizophrenically-constructed and jumps back and forth through time. Throughout the section, it is revealed that Dawes has had stints in a mental institution. After leaving the hospital, Dawes decides to get drunk at an old hangout. He gets into a fight after refusing to pay a $5 bet at the pool table, and winds up on the floor after being hit with a pool cue. Dawes follows the attacker outside, where he is urinating on a nearby wall. Dawes convinces the man that he can urinate great distances and tricks him into an elaborate and far-fetched ploy to teach the art of long-distance urinating. Dawes' tactics, he demonstrates, involve warming up on all-fours and breathing heavily before finally jumping to one's feet. As the man follows Dawes' advice, Dawes attacks him and severely beats him with an axe handle. With Mexico already in his mind, Dawes flees to his parents' house hearing the police sirens. They are surprised to see him. In this painful encounter, Dawes tries to borrow $100 from his father, but his request is peppered with verbal abuse, sarcasm, and vitriol, and Simpson refuses. Dawes destroys a cake that Leone had made for his birthday, causing her to cry, and he ridicules both of his very patient, confused, and worried parents. Despite their pleas for rationality, however, Dawes leaves in a fury, and kicks out two doors to the house. Leone comments that Dawes has lost all of his humanity.
7167716	/m/0h7s_f	Tintin in Thailand				 The plot opens on a rainy and cold Marlinspike Hall; the occupants, Tintin and Captain Haddock are miserable and poor because there are no new Tintin adventures sending them to adventures in the sun any more since the death of their creator Hergé. (This is the first of many self-references the plot makes.) As they consider their plight, Jolyon Wagg's wife arrives and ask them to go to Thailand to look for her husband who went there on a trip he won from his employer, the Rock Bottom Insurance Company, but never came back. The wife has already sent Thomson and Thompson there to look for Jolyon but without any results. As it is an all expense paid trip, the group eagerly accept and are soon off to Thailand. Nestor, Snowy and the cat are left behind, but Professor Calculus comes along too. As the group checks in to their Bangkok hotel they are spotted by Derek Dimwit, a representative of the Marlinsprick Company that holds the rights to the Tintin franchise. He calls head office and is told that he must stop the group from going on any more adventures that would be the basis of a pirated book not controlled by the Marlinsprick Company. The group head out to the red light district where they run into General Alcazar, now the owner of a Thailand bar after being deposed by General Tapioca. Alcazar has seen Jolyon Wagg pass through the bar, but he has gone north to Chiang Mai with a kathoey (transexual). Calculus and Haddock both hook up with prostitutes in the bar but Tintin prefers the company of a young boy instead (This is a reference to questions by fans regarding Tintin's sexuality in the original books). The next day the group takes a flight north and soon run into Thomson and Thompson. The Thompson twins do not want the group to find Wagg as they enjoy being in Thailand at Wagg's wife's expense. However, the group picks up the trail to Jolyon Wagg who is living in a house outside Chiang Mai and finds that he does not enjoy the company of his kathoey partner. Jolyon longs for his wife's cooking, in particular her rabbit marinated in beer. After a series of misadventures the group finds itself back in Chiang Mai in time for the celebration of the new year of 2000. The story ends with Tintin being presented with the first copy of Tintin in Thailand, and he exclaims that this work will guarantee him many peaceful days in the sun.
7169623	/m/0h7wd2	Whittington		2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is about a cat named Whittington that goes to live in a barn that is owned by a man named Bernie. Ben and Abby, Bernie's grandchildren, come to the barn. Ben struggles with reading in school. Ben has dyslexia and is struggling to learn how to read. He has been told by the school principal that if his reading skills do not improve, he will not advance to the next grade. Whittington tells the story of his namesake, a man named Dick Whittington, which encourages Ben.
7171966	/m/0h7zhw	Scorpions by Walter Dean Myers		1990-04-25	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel tells the story of Jamal Hicks, a 12-year-old boy from Harlem in order for his older brother to be released from jail joins a gang. Jamal is having a hard time at school, home, and in the streets. The only person he can count on is his best friend Tito. The main problem in his life is trying to get his brother, Randy, out of jail. Randy is a 17-year-old who is the leader of the Scorpions, a local gang. The gang's motive is to make money by selling cocaine and crack. His family includes himself, Mama, his 8-year-old sister Sassy, Randy, and his father, Jevon Hicks. Jamal's father used to be an alcoholic after losing his job and started abusing Jamal's mother Mama until she moved away from him with the kids. This happened while Jamal was very young. Now Jamal's father only comes to visit the family once in a while on occasion. The story starts out with Jamal and his family thinking that Randy needs only $500 for his appeal. Then the next morning, Jamal's Mama tells Jamal that Randy says to go see Mack. Mama does not like the boy because he is on crack and thinks he caused Randy to kill the delicatessen owner. She keeps warning Jamal about Mack. His mother soon finds out that his brother has been attacked and stabbed while in jail and is in medical care while his mother visits him, the other members of the Scorpions find out, thinking they should defend themselves by offering Jamal to join the Scorpions much to Indian's dismay. They believe this will help make a connection by having orders directly from Randy to Jamal back to the members; the other members feel through they should just vote on a new leader because they feel Randy is dead to them and feeling that letting a 12-year-old joining a gang would not be beneficial. When Jamal meets Mack, Mack tells Jamal to be the leader of the Scorpions and finds out the appeal is really $2,000. The second time Jamal meets Mack, Mack gives him a gun while high at a park. At school, Jamal is having a tough time with the principal, Mr. Davidson. The teachers are giving him trouble, and Dwayne is giving him trouble by bullying him. In the book, he fights Dwayne and threatens Dwayne with a gun in the second fight which leads to Jamal getting into deeper trouble in school. Jamal is given a gun to get his way in to his brother's former position as the leader of the Scorpions. One afternoon after Jamal and Tito get out of the school they follow the brother's fellow gang member Mack. The gun causes several bad occasions, ultimately causing Jamal's best friend Tito to be sent to Puerto Rico.
7172464	/m/0h7_57	A Very Private Life	Michael Frayn	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist (Uncumber) begins life in a privileged home where she is estranged from her family by their reliance on drugs to regulate their emotions and social interactions. She leaves them in order to pursue a man (Noli) that she falls in love with on first sight despite a language barrier existing between them, which stops her from forming any relationships with him or his family. Noli unlike Uncumber is from the working class and she finally abandons him when he insists on using the drugs which she abhors in their love making. She finally makes it full circle when she is picked up shortly afterwards by the police and imprisoned in a room remarkably similar to the one in which she began and is eventually reconciled to the medicated life where every emotion exists on tap and the most intimate experience is sex which has been replaced by lying next to your lover experiencing entirely private and separate hallucinations.
7172958	/m/0h7_s5	Vinland	George Mackay Brown	1992	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's progagonist is Ranald Sigmundson, an Orkneyman who journeys to Vinland as a youth, fights in the battle of Clontarf, and has other adventures. Later in life, Ranald tends his farm and warns his family and friends against becoming too involved in worldly affairs. The story's prose style is quite minimalistic and vivid, after the manner of an ancient Norse saga. It is, like much of Brown's other work, a revival of that literary form. Written at a time when Brown's health was wavering, Vinland is a rare autobiographical insight into the author's thoughts about death. Like Ranald Sigmundsson, Brown converted to a Christian mentality. In the novel, Ranald yearns for a final voyage back to Vinland. However, the voyage is metaphorical: he dies on Easter Monday, and therefore his voyage is a spiritual rather than a physical one. What Vinland represents is echoed throughout Brown's work in his search for 'silence', that is, a sense for Christian peace, unity, meaning and order. He uses the Viking's belief in fate (wyrd) as a backdrop to his message for Christian order. Ranald starts to despise the Viking way of life, and he soon turns very introspective and isolated, contemplating the meaning of life along emerging Christian principles. In short, his final voyage to the 'west' is a voyage to heaven, to an Eden - a harmonious world that was lost when the mythological representative of the apocalyptical hound Fenrir, Wolf, swings his axe and kills an native American, destroying any hope of reconciliation.
7173127	/m/0h7_yp	Eucalyptus	Murray Bail	1998	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Eucalyptus tells the story of Ellen Holland, a young woman whose "speckled beauty" and unattainability become legend far beyond the rural western New South Wales town near the property where she grows up. Her protective father's obsession with collecting rare species of Eucalyptus trees leads him to propose a contest - the man who can correctly name all the species on his property shall win her hand in marriage.
7175594	/m/025v6sd	Conviction	Richard North Patterson	2005-01-25	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As described by Sherryl Connelly of the New York Daily News,
7177512	/m/025v8ww	The Bull from the Sea	Mary Renault	1962	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Theseus returns to Athens along with the other Athenian bull-leapers. His father, Aigeus, has committed suicide, which leaves the kingdom to the young Theseus. He soon meets Pirithoos, the rebellious pirate king of the Lapiths, and the two go on several adventures. Pirithoos talks Theseus out of going to Crete to meet his bride-to-be, Phaedra, and instead the two journey to Euxine, home of the Amazons. There, Theseus falls in love with Hippolyta the leader of the Amazons, and after defeating her in single combat, takes her home to Athens with him. She is boyish and athletic, and in additional ways a personification of qualities that he admires in himself -- physical fearlessness, pride in 'kingship', etc. Hippolyta bears Theseus a son, Hippolytus, and continues to fight and hunt alongside him. Theseus, feeling pressure from his advisors, agrees to marry the Cretan princess Phaedra. Hippolyta advises him to make this marriage, regarding herself now as his vassal who must serve his interests. Phaedra bears him a son, Akamas, but continues living in Crete; in Athens, Hippolyta is queen in all but name, and unsurprisingly, Phaedra remains jealous of her, for Theseus treats Phaedra with cold insensitivity, making no secret of his preference for Hippolyta. When the Scythians (allied with the Amazons) attack Athens, Hippolyta helps defend the Acropolis and is killed in battle, sacrificing herself in his place. Years pass. Theseus finally invites Phaedra to Greece, but it is too late to repair relations between them. She meets the now-grown Hippolytus and conceives an unrequited passion for him. After being unable to secure his affection, she convinces Theseus that he attempted to rape her. Theseus curses Hippolytus, but quickly realizes that his wife is the real culprit. His realization comes too late: Hippolytus, fleeing his father's wrath, crashes his chariot during an earthquake and is killed. Theseus kills his wife (making it look like suicide) by throttling her slowly and spends the rest of his days alone. He expresses no contrition for this murder for the remainder of the novel but seems to have been rendered embittered and hopeless. The final section of the book deals with Theseus' decline and final years. On another roving expedition, he suffers a stroke. At last, having become old and frail from years and illness, he throws himself off a cliff while visiting the king of Skyros, fulfilling the titular motif of sacrifice in The King Must Die.
7180709	/m/025vcl6	Rise of a Hero	Hilari Bell	2005-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Legend has it that when Farsala most needs a warrior to lead it, Sorahb son of Rostam will be restored by the god Azura. That time has come. After a devastating loss to the army of the Hrum, Farsala has all but fallen. Only the walled city of Mazad and a few of the more uninhabitable regions remain free of Hrum rule, and they seem destined to fall as well. Farsala needs a champion now. Soraya risks being a slave herself to save her little brother and her mother, who are currently in the Hrum slave pens. Kavi has second thoughts about helping the Hrum and switches sides. But Jiaan and Soraya still hate Kavi for his betrayal of Farsala and are furious when the three are re-united.
7180741	/m/025vclx	The Wizard Test	Hilari Bell		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Dayven is a watcherlad who wants to become a Guardian. He definitely does not want to become a wizard, regarding them as deceitful and disloyal. When he is sent to the wizards to take the wizard test, he hopes to fail. Instead, he finds he has a gift for magic. Dayven refuses to acknowledge his power and later his cousin Soren tells him that the Lordowner, Lord Enar, wants to see him. Lord Enar asks what he thinks about wizards and Dayven says how much he hates them. Lord Enar agrees about Dayven's opinion of wizards and asks if he wants to spy on the wizards and Dayven agrees. http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Wizard_Test.html?id=UnaUPwAACAAJ One of the wizards, Sundar, gives Dayven money to bail a wizard, Reddick, out of jail. Reddick wants Dayven to go with him to spy on the Cenzar. On their journey they come across a dry stream and after some investigation help the villagers solve the problem. As the journey continues they reach the city of the Cenzar. In the city Reddick takes Dayven to the zondar, or training school for soldiers. As he becomes entrenched in the war, Dayven comes to a discomforting realization that there is no just two sides to a battle, just as there is not just black or white. He befriends a boy on the other side of the war, and during the war, he works as a healer in the surgeon's tent. In the end, when he sees his friend hurt, he heals him, at the cost of losing everything he had dreamed to be. Dayven realizes the flaws of his people. The Cenzar used to only farm three fields out of four at a time. This way the land had a full year to regain it's minerals and nutrients. When the Cenzar lost their land this rule was viewed as laziness and ignored. If Dayven's people continue to have their way, they will make the land infertile and then move to somewhere new as they have done countless times before. Dayven uses spells to make sure that the Cenzar win the battle. He stays behind when his people are forced to move on.
7184065	/m/025vg1g	The Last Summer of Reason	Tahar Djaout	1999		 Boualem Yekker is a bookseller in a country probably modelled on Algeria. His home is firmly in the grip of religious fundamentalists, but only recently: it was once a republic, but now it is a "Community in the Faith". Djaout presents readers with a terrifying world of religious fundamentalism comparable to Orwell's 1984, but substituting a religious ditatorship for a purely political one. At first Yekker is only on the periphery of danger. He is "neither elegant nor talented", which puts him out of the spotlight: "what is persecuted above all, and more than people's opinions, is their ability to create and propagate beauty." Still, Yekker is a purveyor of these outrageous "idea- and beauty-filled objects" known as books, so he doesn't fit in too well in this new, retrograde society. Business isn't exactly booming, of course. Touchingly Djaout describes Yekker's brief moments of hope when he sees people gazing in the shop window. But there is hardly a market for the sorts of books he has any longer. One acquaintance, Ali Elbouliga, still comes to while away time there. Otherwise, Yekker remains largely alone in his bookish world—and the books ultimately prove almost as much a burden as a solace. Family life also gets more complicated when his daughter turns on him. "The illness of fanaticism had attacked her." She is transformed, "covered with superior certainties". Yekker tries to continue to live his life in the manner he is accustomed to, but there is no escape from the encroaching fanaticism. It crushes all opposition. Any semblance of rationality is done away with. Even weather forecasts are banned, as if these called some all-mighty's grand plan (and his power) into question. (What a pathetic god it must be they're protecting, if he can be threatened by mortals' barely educated guesses at tomorrow's weather; doesn't the fact that the meteorologists barely ever get it right instead reinforce the idea of divine omnipotence?) Imagination is dulled, "the world has become aphasic, opaque, and sullen; it is wearing mourning clothes." Books "constitute the safest refuge against this world of horror" all around Yekker, but the books are also a danger to him. Eventually they must make place for "the one, the irremovable Book of resigned certainty." The threats against Yekker mount. What is, at first, almost harmless child's play intensifies to very real danger. Might conquers right: They have understood the danger in words, all the words they cannot manage to domesticate and anesthetize. For words, put end to end, bring doubt and change. Words above all must not conceive of the utopia of another form of truth, of unsuspected paths, of another place of thought.
7184483	/m/025vgg5	Tremor of Intent: An Eschatological Spy Novel	Anthony Burgess		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The amoral Agent Hillier of MI6 journeys to the city of Yarylyuk aboard the passenger ship Polyolbion, on a mission to infiltrate a convention of Soviet scientists and return to Britain his childhood friend Roper, who has defected to Russia. En route, he meets the sexually precocious sixteen-year-old Clara, the voluptuous femme fatale Miss Devi, and the shadowy tycoon Theodorescu.
7184908	/m/025vgwy	For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto	Murray Rothbard		{"/m/05r79": "Political philosophy"}	 Chapter 1, "The Libertarian Heritage: The American Revolution and Classical Liberalism", mentions the then-recent successes in U.S. Libertarian electoral politics. Richard Randolph had been elected to the Alaska House of Representatives and the "Congressional Quarterly" listed the LP as the third-largest political party. It describes America as having been, above all countries, born in an explicitly libertarian revolution. It argues that libertarianism was crippled by utilitarianism, which was not radical or revolutionary enough because its desire for expediency was in contrast to radical abolitionism, which sought to eliminate wrong and injustice as rapidly as possible. The original chapter i, on "The New Libertarian Movement," being deemed irrelevant and outdated, was transformed into an appendix providing an annotated outline of the complex structure of the current movement. Chapter 2, "Property and Exchange", introduces the nonaggression axiom, property rights, free exchange and free contract, and the inextricable connections between property rights and other human rights. It argues that the whether or not immoral practices are supported by the majority of the population is not germane to their nature. It states that one of the libertarian's prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the state. Chapter 3, "The State", defines the state as an aggressor and decries its efforts to cloak its criminal activity in high-sounding rhetoric. It dismisses constitutional restrictions as ineffective. It describes taxation as theft and government as a band of robbers. Chapter 4, "The Problems", identifies government as the red thread marking and uniting the major problems of the day. It cites the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, stagflation, and others 1970s-era issues in addition to such perennial bugaboos as high taxes and traffic congestion. It faults government for poorly managing that which is in the public domain. Chapter 5, "Involuntary Servitude", cites conscription, anti-strike laws, the tax system, the court system, and compulsory commitment as vectors of involuntary servitude. It notes that the court system forces people to give testimony and to serve on juries. It also decries the concept of contempt of court, which allows a judge to act as prosecutor, judge, and jury in accusing, convicting and sentencing the culprit. Chapter 6, "Personal Liberty", deals with freedom of speech, freedom of radio and television, pornography, sex laws, wiretapping, gambling, narcotics and other drugs, police corruption, and gun laws. Abortion is dealt with from an evictionist perspective, stating that no human has the right to exist, unbidden, as a parasite within another human being's body. Thus, the female has a right to cause the fetus to be ejected from her body if she wishes; which includes changing her mind if she had earlier decided she wanted to have a child. Chapter 7, "Education", voices opposition to government involvement in education. He notes that the very nature of the public school requires the imposition of uniformity and the stamping out of diversity. Social conflict is unnecessarily generated by the school system having to choose between traditional or progressive, segregated or integrated, rather than letting each school and each customer choose individually what is best for them. Chapter 8, "Welfare and the Welfare State", argues that welfare should be completely privately provided. It cites welfare checks as promoting present-mindedness, unwillingness to work, and irresponsibility. Thus, ultimately welfare actually hurts the poor. Chapter 9, "Inflation and the Business Cycle: The Collapse of the Keynesian Paradigm", argues that government has found ways of inflating money that are more subtle than simply printing more bills. The Federal Reserve determines the total amount of reserves. It lends money out at an artificially cheap rate (the rediscount rate) and conducts open market purchases. Chapter 10, "The Public Sector, I: Government in Business", notes that people tend to fall into habits and unquestioned ruts, especially in the field of government. Thus, they blindly assume that government must provide certain services or else they would not be provided. It argues that the question of how the poor will pay for defense, fire protection, and so on, is answered by the counter-question, how do the poor pay for "anything" they now obtain on the market? Chapter 11, "The Public Sector, II: Streets and Roads", notes that streets will be safer when they are privately owned, and the owners have the ability and incentive to get rid of crime. It states that people would ensure their own ability to enter and exit their land by obtaining easements giving them the right to access rights-of-way through neighboring property. It cites the railroad police as an example of a successful private police force. Chapter 12, "The Public Sector, III: Police, Law, and the Courts", states that police protection is not a single, absolute entity but a product that can exist in degrees. For instance, the police can provide personal bodyguards, detectives, uniformed officers, patrols, cars, etc. The chapter argues that allocation of these funds will be made in response to market signals if the police services are privatized, promoting better use of resources. Chapter 13, "Conservation, Ecology, and Growth", states that property rights are the solution to pollution. It argues that the emanation of noise, polluted air, and so on, onto others' property should be considered an aggressive act for which one may be held civilly liable. It holds that the current pollution problem is caused by government deciding that some pollution is needed for the common good. Chapter 14, "War and Foreign Policy", notes two basic problems with war. First, innocent civilians are killed who had nothing to do with the offense caused by their government. Second, war is financed by coercive taxes. Thus, libertarians oppose war. It also notes that collective security has the potential to draw otherwise uninterested parties into what could have limited to a local skirmish. It calls for the U.S. to dismantle its bases, withdraw its troops, stop its political meddling, and abolish the Central Intelligence Agency. Chapter 15, "A Strategy for Liberty", discusses the possible avenues for reform. It argues that libertarians should advocate radical change and hold to the ultimate ideal of abolition of all invasions of liberty. It also notes that the state will not be converted out of power; means will need to be found to remove the State from power. Libertarians will need to find ways of applying pressure. This could include massive failure to cooperate with the state.
7185757	/m/025vhl8	Baby With the Bathwater	Christopher Durang			 Two parents who are completely unprepared for parenthood bring home their newborn baby. The two cannot seem to name the baby. John thinks the baby is a boy, but Helen says the doctors said they could decide later. When the baby cries, the two cannot quite decide what to do. To their rescue comes Nanny – who enters their apartment as if by magic, and is full of abrupt shifts of mood, first cooing at the baby soothingly, then screaming at it. In subsequent scenes, John and Nanny have an affair, Helen takes baby and leaves, only to come back a moment later rain-soaked and unhappy. By the time the baby is a toddler, Daisy has finally been named. At this age Daisy has a penchant for running in front of buses and for lying, depressed, in piles of laundry. The audience hears an alarming essay Daisy has written in school, and the principal, the terrifying Miss Willoughby, is oblivious to the essay’s cry for help, and instead gleefully awards it an "A" for style. Years later, Daisy enters dressed as a girl, but obviously a young man. The audience follows his years of therapy, where he alternates between feelings of depression and anger, and is unable to complete his freshman essay on Gulliver’s Travels despite having been in college for five years. In a scene reminiscent of the beginning of the play, Daisy (who has since chosen a new name) and his young bride fondly regard their own baby, determined not to repeat their parents' calamitous mistakes.
7186250	/m/025vhxn	Love Medicine	Louise Erdrich	1984	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Chapter 1 opens in 1981 with June Morrissey in Williston, North Dakota, an oil boom town, after she has left Gordie Kashpaw and her son yet again. She dies trying to walk home in a snow storm. Part two of chapter one is in the first person voice of Albertine Johnson, June's niece, who receives a letter from her mother informing her that her Aunt June is dead and buried. Her mother did not invite her to the funeral, and as a result, Albertine refuses to speak to her. Two months after receiving the letter, Albertine goes home to the reservation. Albertine tells stories about June: her mother dying, father running away, marrying her cousin, leaving Gordie and King Kashpaw, returning only to leave again. During Albertine’s visit to the main house (where all Kashpaws were welcome), the entire family gathers. This opening chapter sets the tone for the subsequent altering of perspectives and going back through history. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4 we become acquainted with Marie, Nector, and Lulu (the love triangle the novel is centered on) as young adults in and around the year 1934. We learn that Marie once wanted to be a nun and never really liked the Lazarre side of her family. Nector was always in love with Lulu but married Marie for reasons unbeknownst to him. We learn that Lulu always assumed she and Nector would be married, but when she found out about Marie, she went to Moses Pillager (Lulu’s cousin and well-known medicine man) but left him, taking her first child (Gerry Nanapush) back home when Moses refused to move out from the wilderness. In Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 Erdrich explores the complexities of parenthood and infidelity for Marie, Nector and Lulu. We are acquainted with Lulu's 9 children and Marie's 7 children. Chapter 5 occurs in 1948; chapters 6, 7, and 8 occur in 1957. Chapter five deals with June being adopted by Marie, and later raised by Eli. Part two of chapter 5 is about the controlling power and rage of Marie’s mother-in-law, Rushes Bear. Marie gradually warms up to Rushes Bear. In chapter 6 we learn about the death of Lulu’s first (legal) husband, Henry Lamartine and Lulu’s affair with his brother, Beverly Lamartine, during Henry’s funeral. Years later, Beverly decides to go home to the reservation and claim his son, Henry Jr. Instead, Beverly is seduced by Lulu, forgets about claiming his son, and returns to the city. Chapter 7 is the turning point in the novel, because this is where the love triangle (Marie, Lulu and Nector) gets demolished. Nector and Lulu begin an affair that will last five years and produce a son, Lyman Lamartine. Then, Nector decides to leave Marie and marry Lulu. He leaves a note for Marie (which she later ignores completely), and takes a letter to Lulu. But while Nector waits for Lulu he accidentally burns down her home. When Lulu runs in to save her son, she burns all her hair off and it never grows back. Chapters 9 and 10 focus on the brothers Henry Lamartine Jr. and Lyman Lamartine in 1973 and 1974. Chapter 9 recounts Albertine Johnson running away from home as a 15-year-old. She meets Henry Lamartine Jr., and loses her virginity to him. Chapter 10 is about Henry Jr. and Lyman and the car they bought together. Lyman recounts the many road trips before Henry Jr. went off to war, before he returned a very changed man. Their first road trip afterward turns out to be tragic: Henry Jr. jumps into the river, toward his death, and try as he might, Lyman could neither find nor save him. Chapters 11 through 18 occur between the years 1980 and 1985, when Nector enters his “second childhood” and Marie and Lulu become friends in the retirement community. Chapter 11 shows Albertine working with Gerry Nanapush’s girlfriend at a weigh station. We learn that Gerry Nanapush is a prisoner and frequent escapee. Chapter 12 focuses on Gordie’s alcoholism following June’s death. He has nearly drunk himself to death when one night he thinks he sees June’s ghost. He goes to the car not thinking about how drunk he is and subsequently runs into a deer. He decides to put the deer in the backseat but forgets this and hallucinates that he has in fact killed June. He panics and goes to the convent where he drunkenly confesses to a nun. The police are called and Gordie runs away. Chapter 13, entitled “Love Medicine (1982)” is central to the book. We learn that the entire family of Kashpaws/Pillagers/Nanapushes had/have special gifts of healing and insight. Lipsha Morrissey says, “I got the touch.” As we learn from Lyman later in the novel, the Pillagers were members of the Midewiwin (medicine men and women who were blessed by the Higher Power to help others. Nector has entered his “second childhood” and is unbearable for Marie because all he refers to is Lulu who is living in the retirement community with Marie and Nector. Lipsha is relatively young, 18 or 19 years old when his adopted grandmother, Marie, asks him to work love medicine on Nector. Love medicine, as Lipsha explains it, should always be used with extreme caution. Lipsha and Marie plot how to get Nector to eat a male goose heart while Marie eats a female goose heart. Lipsha chooses geese because they mate for life, and Marie wants him to be faithful. Nector refuses it and taunts Marie by putting the heart in his mouth but not swallowing. Marie is furious and smacks Nector on the back to make him swallow, but instead Nector chokes to death. Naturally, Lipsha and Marie are grieved, but by the end of the chapter Marie says, “Lipsha… you was always my favorite.” Chapter 14 shows of Marie nursing Gordie through his sickness (alcoholism). Chapter 15 is Lulu’s 1st person perspective. Lulu tells the story of her house burning down, and subsequently, the ending of her affair with Nector. The day Nector dies, Lulu is in recovery from surgery (possibly the removal of cataracts). Because the facility is short on aides, Marie offers to take care of Lulu. This begins an unexpected and often difficult friendship between the two matriarchs of the extended family. Chapter 16 (moved to the P.S. section in the 2009 edition) is told from Lyman’s 1st person perspective. He is crushed by Henry Jr.’s death and takes a year to mourn him. Eventually, Lyman ends up in Indian politics and policy. Ironically, he is re-assigned by the BIA to set up the factory his father (Nector Kashpaw) had begun years earlier. After a workers riot, Lyman closes the factory and, by chapter 17 (entire chapter deleted from the 2009 edition), has a grand idea for the building: bingo, and later, a sex house. He has made up his mind. In chapter 18, Lipsha is back at the retirement community when Lulu demands that he speak with her. She tells him about his parentage (which everyone on the reservation knows except Lipsha). She tells him because she has little to lose: “I either gain a grandson or lose a young man who didn’t like me in the first place.” Lipsha goes to visit King (his half-brother) to learn more about his Gerry, who does escape prison that very night and meets Lipsha: “So many things in the world have happened before. But it’s like they never did. Every new thing that happens to a person, it’s a first. To be a son to a father was like that. In that night I felt expansion, as if the world was branching out in shoots and growing faster than the eye could see.” Lipsha drives Gerry to Canada.
7187222	/m/025vjj9	How Much for Just the Planet?	John M. Ford	1987-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the novel, large deposits of dilithium are detected on a colony planet, and delegations are sent by the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire to negotiate for mining rights (neither able to openly fight against the other because of the "Organian Lightbulbs", a reference to the Organians from the original series). They find the planet Direidi and its inhabitants to be very strange indeed. Planet inhabitants occasionally break into song to explain their narratives, and both crews (as well as the three person crew of the Federation prospector that found the planet in the first place) get into various adventures with the planet's inhabitants. In the end, it turns out that the inhabitants have set everything up according to "Plan C" - Comedy. All of the adventures the two crews encountered were designed to soften them up so that they wouldn't mine the whole planet, but would be willing to work with the inhabitants and each other.
7187288	/m/025vjkb	Sender Unknown		2002-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mark, a young man, has just moved into a grand new house in a new neighborhood so that he can hold a company party at his house. He doesn't like his new house and would prefer living in his small cottage on the outskirts of town, but has no choice. While moving in, Mark discovers that hard copies of magazines are delivered to his house every day except Sunday. Perhaps what is the most curious of the magazines is that they are filled with things that most people wouldn't buy: Toys. For a while, Mark simply ignores the magazines, keeping piles of them in his house. Finally, he decides to order something from them, just to see what happens. He orders ten action figures to give to the children of employees at Cannady and Company In the meantime, Mark is getting ready for a company party that is to be held at his house. His assistant Elliot follows him around trying to convince him that his boss, Mr. Cannady won't be pleased if the company party is held in a house with no furniture. Mark's constant teasing of Elliot during their preparation for the party about how he is never relaxed is one of the book's many sources of humor. One day when Mark gets home from work, he discovers four huge crates on his front porch. He has no idea where they could have possibly come from, after all, he has only ordered small action figures so far. He opens the crates and discovers the first four children, along with a note saying that three more toys are on their way, one is backordered, and one is recuperating. Desperately, Mark tried to find a way to return the children, but his efforts are futile. Unable to figure out what to do with the children, Mark goes to his sister Kate to ask her for advice. Of course he can't tell her that he ordered the children from a catalog, so he tells her that he is foster parenting them. She is flabbergasted at the idea that Mark would take in children when he is so busy with his new job, but agrees to watch them for a while. Unfortunately for Mark, a while turns out to be only one night. Luckily, he is able to find a new babysitter for the kids: Lady A (Lady Anderson), who owns a quirky store Mark orders from often. Lady A also believes that Mark is the children's foster parent. Lady A also brings a problem for Mark though: she reminds him that the children need to be enrolled in school. For the time being, Mark decides to keep the kids, but he doesn't know exactly what he is going to do yet. One day, when riding in a taxicab to the book store, Mark meets an ex-cop named Pete. Pete and Mark talk for a while, and Mark learns that Pete knows someone who worked in DNA registration. Mark has a revelation and realizes that Pete could hold all of the answers to the questions he has. Mark offers Pete a job: to help him register the children's DNA and get them official identification until he can figure out how to return the children. He also asks Pete to help him track the magazines. Pete accepts. Mark is feeling great right until he gets home that day and sees two more huge boxes on the front porch, and finds two more children. The next day, Pete arrives at Mark's house to collect DNA from the (now seven) children. Pete tells Mark that because he had to quit his job as taxi driver, he and his granddaughter need a place to stay while he works on the project. Mark warmly welcomes Pete into his house. Pete has the DNA checks done, and discovers that all of the children's DNA is synthetic. He then tells Mark about the website where ID records are stored, and that Mark has to figure out a way into the records. It takes Mark about 20 minutes to hack into the records. Once he is done, Pete calls a friend who knows how to access the proper virtual-forms that are required for registering DNA. When Pete's associate has pulled up the necessary forms for Mark, he fills them in and submits them. Much to Mark's dismay, Pete has had no luck tracking down the company that is sending the magazines. When things start to look a little more promising for Mark, he receives a large crate in the mail, with BACK ORDERED stamped across the front. Out of this crate comes yet another child. A few days later, Mark is at a party with Lady A when the last box comes in the mail. Inside this box is Castor, the cyborg. When Mark sees that Castor cannot be in any way from this planet, he begins to think about genetic engineering as a possibility for the appearance of all the children. He uses company funds to pay for viewing rights of secure documents regarding genetic engineering that have absolutely no relation to his current project at work, and discovers that genetic engineering is not only common, but the fine for it is measly, and not likely to stop anybody from doing any of their experiments. The night of the party at Mark's house finally arrives. It is the time for all of Elliot's nagging to pay off. Other than the caterers leaving in the middle of the party because of an impending snow storm, all goes well. Mr. Cannady and the rest of the guests really enjoy the party. Then the snowstorm hits, causing the power to go out, and everyone's cars get snowed in. Luckily, Mark is able to entertain most of the guests. When most people can't stand to wait at the house any longer, the children show their true abilities. Sam flies to peoples' houses to check on their children, Rollo magically fixes the furnace, and Castor starts heating up (and starting) peoples' cars. But the one act that transforms most of the people in the party from non-believers in fairy tales to believers is when Mark is hit by a falling tree, and Sam lifts the entire tree off of him. Although normally most people would consider this a trick of the eyes, those at the party have seen so much that they cannot possibly deny that something unnatural is going on, despite what society may tell them. Mark realizes that he has brought belief in fairy tales back to people in the world who had only believed in logic before. He felt so connected to the children that he finally decided for sure that he was going to keep the children just as they were. If possible, he might even try to find more people with catalog children like him, and share his information. Finally, as Mark was going through a box owned by his father in his attic, he discovered a little tag. On the tag, it said "Unknown experiment." In his father's handwriting is "My son". Mark throws away the tag and it is hinted as he was going to ask Lady A to marry him.
7188342	/m/025vkdk	The Rise of David Levinsky	Abraham Cahan		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is told in the form of a fictional autobiography. The main character, David Levinsky, is born in 1865 in Antomir, a city of 80,000 in the Kovno district part of northwestern Russia. His father dies when he is three, leaving him and his mother to fend for themselves. He grows up in abject poverty, he and his mother sharing a single basement room with three other families. His mother scrounges together money (largely from wealthier relatives) to send him to a private cheder for elementary instruction in Judaism and the Torah, because the public cheder are known for the inferiority of their education. When payments are late, the headmaster threatens to throw David out of school; his mother convinces the headmaster to let him stay, promising to pay every penny. Owing to his poverty, he suffers frequent abuse at the hands of the teachers, who cannot take their aggression out on the richer students. From all of this abuse, he becomes one of the tougher kids. But also he excels academically. Furthermore, he receives the respect of the other students after beating up richer kids. At the age of 13, David finishes his cheder education and begins Talmudic studies in a yeshivah. He meets and befriends Reb (Rabbi) Sender who has been supported by his wife while he spent sixteen hours daily studying the Talmud. Reb Sender is one of the most "nimble-minded" scholars in the town, and well liked by nearly all of the congregation. He also befriends Naphtali, another student two years ahead of him. David and Naphtali often study together at nightly vigils until morning worshippers come. During this book, David begins to feel an inner conflict between the religious instruction he receives and his growing interest in girls. He is often tempted by the sight of girls entering the synagogue. He also thinks of his childhood dislike for Red Esther, the daughter of one of the other families in his basement home. Meanwhile, a Pole moves to Antomir and becomes a regular reader at the synagogue. The Pole has memorized 500 pages of the Talmud and recites by memory, provoking David's jealousy. He begins memorizing sections of the Talmud, but Reb Sender finds out and questions his motivation. This leads to a physical confrontation between David and the Pole. David is harassed in in the Horse-market during Passover by a group of gentiles celebrating Easter. One gentile even punches him. His mother sees his split lip and goes out to set straight the gentile who hit him against the urging of the co-habitants of their residence. She is beaten to death and dies that night. David is in a state of shock as he receives the sympathy of others while in mourning. He moves into the synagogue, as was often customary for poorer Talmudic students, and continues his studies. As was also customary for poor talmudic students, he "eats days" at the houses of benefactors, who invite Talmudic scholars for one meal per week. By and large, however, he goes hungry, until Shiphrah Minsker&mdash;a rich Jewish woman&mdash;hears of his plight and begins looking after him with clothing and money. Finally well-fed, he reapplies himself to his studies. He has, however, lost interest in the Talmud, and contends that "[its] spell was broken irretrievably." The situation of Jews in Russia began to deteriorate after the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881 and anti-Jewish riots "were encouraged, even arranged, by the authorities". Many Jews participated in the "great New Exodus", and David Levinsky's thoughts also turn to emigration and seeking his fortune in America. All of David's thoughts and attention have been turned away from his Talmudic studies towards America. He falls ill and is visited by Shiphrah every day in the hospital. After he is discharged, he is taken into her home while her husband is out of town on business long-term. He is introduced as the son of the woman killed on the Horse-market. In her house, he meets her daughter, Matilda, who has studied at a boarding school in Germany as well at secular Russian schools. She watches him eat breakfast and then taunts him in Yiddish while conversing with her friends in Russian, a language David does not understand. She talks with him and urges him to get an education at a Russian university, but he insists on going to America to work until he can save up adequate funds to finance his studies. Matilda is convinced and offers to finance his journey on the condition he does not tell Shiphrah. He realizes he is "deeply in love" with her. She frequently teases him, and when she says he knows nothing of love, she goads him on into kissing her, and he declares his love for her. They kiss several times on several more occasions, and she floats the idea of him studying at a Russian university, which he sees as a confirmation of her love. When word arrives that Matilda's father is returning from his business trip, David returns to the synagogue. He is torn up inside with his feelings for Matilda, and she stops by to give him the 80 rubles the trip would cost. David says he cannot leave, as he would not be able to live without her. She tells him he is crazy, gives him the money, wishes him luck, and leaves. On the eve of the 1 year anniversary of his mother's death, he goes to the train station, and is seen off by his friends from the synagogue and Shiphrah, who gives him money and food for his journey. The year is 1885. David boards a steamer from Bremen to New York and spends most of the journey praying, reading Psalm 104, and thinking about Matilda. He meets a fellow passenger, Gitelson, and wanders through the city. A man recognizes Gitelson to be a tailor and offers him work. David wanders about and is repeatedly called a greenhorn by passers by. He eventually finds his way to a synagogue and asks to sleep there for the night, but is told repeatedly that "America is not Russia." There he meets Mr. Even, a wealthy Jewish man, who recognizes David as a greenhorn. David tells him the story of his mother's death, and Mr. Even gives him money, clothing, dinner, and a haircut&mdash;including the removal of his sidelocks. Mr. Even also arranges for lodging for David. Before bidding him farewell, he asks David not to neglect his religion and his Talmud. David spends the money he got from Mr. Even on dry goods and begins peddling, but only manages to pay rent and food, and makes no headway. He changes to selling linens, but his heart isn't really in it. He is terribly homesick and discouraged by his peddling business. He spends many of his free evenings reading at the synagogue, but still gradually sheds his Russian-Jewish traits. His overall impression is that America is an impious land. The book begins with David's reflections on the other peddlers he interacts with while peddling, and the coarse and exaggerated stories they tell. One in particular, Max Margolis, takes David aside and tells him he is a "good-looking chap", and recommends he learn to dance. Max is older than David and frequently gives David his wisdom about women, such as that "every woman can be won, absolutely every one, provided a fellow knows how to go about it." Fascinated by this advice, he tries to make advances on his landlady, Mrs. Levinsky (no relation), even though he actually loathes her. She remarks that he is no longer a greenhorn, rejecting his advances. David ponders the distinction between love and lust. He tries the same advances on Mrs. Dienstog, his former landlady, and she kisses him once, and then rejects further advances, which David interprets to be "a mere matter of practical common sense". His work is only an obligation which he doesn't like, and he is constantly distracted. He even starts frequenting prostitutes, like the one known as Argentine Rachael, who also is from Antomir. The "fallen women" disgust him, but he still visits them, even though he cannot afford it and he is disgusted with himself afterwards. He enrolls in night school and makes efforts to Americanize himself. He learns English and is especially fond of grammar. David at first dislikes his teacher, Mr. Bender, but still tries to copy his mannerisms, and slowly grows to like him. They have long talks and David learns a lot about America and its history and politics, and begins to read the bible in English. At the end of evening school, Mr. Bender gives David a copy of Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens. He neglects his work peddling and spends his time reading the book. After a few short stints at various jobs which he quits or is fired from, he's unemployed and destitute. He is however impressed by his own progress learning English language and by the English literature which he regards with awe. He spends a lot of time in a music shop listening to the patrons and musicians who gather there, and he borrows a lot of nickels, dimes, and quarters, which he is entirely unable to pay back. ===Book VIII: The Destruction of My Templ ook IX: Dor ook X: On the Roa ook XI: Matrimon ook XII: Miss Tevki ook XIII: At Her Father's Hous ook XIV: Episodes of a Lonely Life===
7192248	/m/025vp7c	Journey to the River Sea	Eva Ibbotson	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Maia is an orphan living in the Mayfair Academy for Young Ladies in England. However, word comes from Mr. Murray, a lawyer and her money management guy, that he had found her relatives that were willing to take her in, called the Carters. Along with a governess, Miss Minton, Maia goes by sea to Manaus, Brazil. On the ship, she meets a boy named Clovis King, who is traveling with his adoptive parents. He wishes to go back to England, to his foster mother, but the Goodleys (the acting troop) won't let him. Maia promises that she will go and see his play once in Brazil. The Carters aren't as kind as she had hoped for. Beatrice and Gwendolyn, the twins, seem to be strictly British and not the least bit active. So when time comes to see Clovis's play in the town, the twins lie and say that all the tickets had sold out and they had not bought one for her. But Maia wants to see Clovis, and she secretly slips out of the Carters house and tries to get to Manaus. When she gets lost an Indian boy takes her to the theatre on his boat. When Maia finally gets to watch(Little Lord Fauntleroy) Clovis is acting very well, but in the most important part, his voice cracks and the play is ruined.Later, Maia meets a half-native, half-British boy called Finn Taverner and finds out that he was the boy who gave her a ride to Clovis's act. Men, who Maia nicknames "the crows", are chasing him because his grandfather had wanted to be the heir of Westwood, the estate of the wealthy Taverner family. Finn doesn't want to go, because he is wants to travel up the Amazon to where an Indian tribe(his mother's tribe)called the Xanti live. Afterward, Clovis meets Finn to and Finn suggests that they swap positions because Clovis wants to go back to England and Finn wants to stay in Brazil. Clovis will pretend to be Finn Taverner and become the heir to Westwood, while Finn will explore the "River Sea", which the name given to the Amazon River by locals. The swapping is successful, and for a while, everything seems to be going fairly well. But then one day, Miss Minton disappears. She has plans to rescue Maia from the Carters by taking the place of Mademoiselle Lille, the governess to a Russian family, the Keminskys, Maia's friends Sergei and Olga and their parents, the Count and Countess Keminsky. While she is gone, the twins accidentally start a fire in the Carters's home. Mrs Carter tries to kill a bug but the sprayer lid came off, spilling onto the oil lamp, burning the twins' bedroom and finally the whole house. The Carters are sent to the hospital in the river ambulance, but Maia is left on her own. She is found by Finn and he takes her on his boat, the "Arabella", to embark on the adventure she had hoped for. Miss Minton and her friend, Professor Neville Glastonberry, chase after them by boat as well. They find the Xanti and for a short time, they live with them and are perfectly happy. Then a problem presents itself. Maia is singing for the Xanti, and the police from Manaus hear her voice and also find Miss Minton's corset, and, thinking they will rescue Miss Minton, Maia, and the curator of the Natural History museum, take them back to Manaus. Clovis confesses that he is not the heir and wishes to go home , but covers it up after Sir Aubrey has a heart attack. Finn goes to Westwood, his father's home.(to help clovis ) In the end , maia , miss minton and finn all return home ( manaus) and clovis "finn" became the hier.
7193894	/m/025vq_2	Checkpoint: A Novel	Nicholson Baker	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main characters are two men, Jay and Ben. The novel consists of their dialogues in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., in May 2004. The story begins with Jay asking Ben to go to his hotel room. From that conversation it is inferred that Jay is depressed: the women in his life have abandoned him; he has lost his job as a high school teach and now works as a day labourer; he has declared bankruptcy; and spends his days reading blogs. Jay explains to Ben that he has decided he must, "for the good of humankind", assassinate President George W. Bush, and then kill himself. Ben, who symbolises American modern liberalism, and spends his time trying to persuade Jay to cancel his "mission". The novel ends inconclusively, the reader left unaware of whether or not Jay is going to go through with his plan.
7199235	/m/025vww5	Electric Brae	Andrew Greig	1992	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jimmy Renilson is an engineer aboard a North Sea oil rig, who divides his time between his affair with temperamental artist Kim Russell (born Ruslawska) and rock climbing. The narrative describes Jimmy's stormy relationship with Kim, and events affecting their circle of friends, especially Jimmy's climbing friend Graeme and his bisexual partner Lesley. Set in various parts of Scotland, especially Orkney, the book describes the two men's ambition to climb the Old Man of Hoy. The main story is framed in a memory game Jimmy is playing with Kim's daughter. The author has described the book as 'a modern romance without heather or hardmen'. It was shortlisted for the McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year.
7199332	/m/025vwxk	Fledgling	Octavia E. Butler	2005-09-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of Shori, who appears to be a 10 or 11 year old African-American girl, but is actually a 53 year old member of a race called "Ina", or vampires. They are nocturnal, long-lived and derive sustenance from the drinking of human blood. They are physically superior to humans, both in strength and the ability to heal from injury, but the Ina's relationships with humans whose blood they drink are non-lethal and symbiotic. The story opens as Shori awakens with no knowledge of who or where she is, in the wilderness and suffering from critical injuries. Although she is burned and has major skull trauma, she kills and eats the first animal that approaches her. A construction worker named Wright picks her up on the side of the road, and they begin a vampire-human relationship. While staying at Wright's home, Shori feeds on other inhabitants of the town, and develops a relationship with an older woman named Theodora. Shori and Wright return to a burned-out, abandoned village near where she woke up to learn more about her past. They eventually meet Iosif, Shori’s father, who tells her the burned out town was once her home, where she lived with her sisters and mothers. They also learn that Wright and Shori’s mutually beneficial relationship makes Wright Shori’s symbiont. Furthermore, Shori’s dark skin is the result of genetic modification with which the Ina were experimenting to make their kind resistant to daylight. Later Iosif’s settlement is burned down like Shori’s home was. Shori and Wright meet the only two human symbionts who survived, Celia and Brook. Shori adopts Celia and Brook as her own symbionts, and the four flee to another house that Iosif is known to keep. When they are at this new house, they are attacked by several men with gasoline and guns, but they escape. The group travels to the Gordon family settlement, where they are welcomed and guarded by human symbionts during the day. These guards capture three new attackers alive. The Gordon family interrogates the intruders and finds that they were sent by the Silks, another Ina family. The Gordons suspect the attacks on Shori are motivated by disdain for the genetic experimentation that created Shori. The Gordon family calls a Council of Judgment on Shori’s behalf. Thirteen Ina families and their symbionts come to the Gordon settlement to discuss the Silks attack on Shori. While the Council is happening, Katherine Dahlman sends one of her symbionts to kill Theodora, Shori’s symbiont. So in addition to issuing a punishment the Silks, the Council must also punish Katherine Dahlman. The Silks have their sons taken from them, to be adopted by other Ina families. Thus the Silk line will die out. Katherine Dahlman is sentenced to have her leg amputated. However, she refuses this punishment and is consequently executed. As the book ends, Shori is invited to live with a group of female Ina, the Braithwaite family, to whom she is distantly related.
7206031	/m/025w29b	The Snow Goose: A Story of Dunkirk				 The Snow Goose is a simple, short written parable on the regenerative power of friendship and love, set against a backdrop of the horror of war. It documents the growth of a friendship between Philip Rhayader, an artist living a solitary life in an abandoned lighthouse in the marshlands of wartime Essex because of his disabilities, and a young local girl, Fritha. The Snow Goose, symbolic of both Rhayader (Gallico) and the world itself, wounded by gunshot and many miles from home, is found by Fritha and, as the human friendship blossoms, the bird is nursed back to flight, and revisits the lighthouse in its migration for several years, as Fritha grows up. Rhayader and his small sailboat eventually are lost in the British retreat from Dunkirk, having saved several hundred men. The bird, which was with Rhayader, returns briefly to the grown Fritha on the marshes. She interprets this as Rhayader's soul taking farewell of her (and realizes she had come to love him). Afterwards, a German pilot destroys Rhayader's lighthouse and all of his work, except for one portrait Fritha saves after his death: a painting of her as Rhayader first saw her—a child, with the wounded snow goose in her arms. The book was a huge success in England where it remains popular with, and recommended for, readers of all ages.
7207514	/m/025w3vx	Mark Coffin U.S.S.				 Young, idealistic Mark Coffin—he will not turn thirty until a week after the election—wins a surprise, upset victory, turning him from Stanford professor into the junior senator from California. Not only that, in the presidential election held at the same time, the presidential candidate of his party rides Mark's coattails to corral California's electoral votes and the White House. Mark is not totally a political neophyte. His father-in-law is Jim Elrod, the powerful senior senator from North Carolina. Mark's father owns one of the largest newspapers in the state. Mark goes to Washington amid the glare of the media spotlight. Some reporters consider him one of the most idealistic and finest senator to hit town in decades. One female reporter, though, is a sort of senatorial groupie--it is revealed that she has slept with earlier neophyte senators, and Mark is her latest target. Mark's hopes of sitting on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are damaged when he takes strong positions on two hot button issues—his father-in-law's bill to add an extra ten billion dollars to the defense appropriation, to be used to try to catch up with the Soviets; and the nomination of Charlie Macklin, the tough D.A. of Los Angeles County to be Attorney General. Mark leads other junior senators in bucking the Washington establishment on these two issues. The "Young Turks" include Rick Duclos of Vermont, who has an eye for the ladies and a teenage son, and Bob Templeton of Colorado, who recently lost his family in a plane accident. When Mark will not soften his opposition, he is deprived of the committee assignment, which is given to Duclos instead. Three other main characters include reporters Bill Adams, Chuck Dangerfield, and Lisette Greyson. They all take an interest in Mark's career from the start and seem to develop a case of "true believerism" (i.e. thinking Mark is a breath of fresh air and will do great things for the world). Lisette Greyson also takes a different kind of interest in Mark. She makes it clear almost from the start that she wants a relationship with Mark despite the fact that he is married. It is made clear throughout the novel that she has tried the same thing with other senators. Lisette and Mark run into each other on Inauguration night. Mark, drunk and depressed because of being kept off the Foreign Relations Committee, ends up sleeping with Lisette. Chuck Dangerfield knows of the affair and is determined to help mark in any way that he can to keep the story quiet. Inevitably, the story comes out, and Mark is damaged. His marriage is threatened, but survives, as his wife, knowing what is expected of political wives, backs him up publicly while slowly reconciling privately. Macklin tries to make political capital of the scandal, but overplays his hand, offending more senators than he persuades, and his nomination is narrowly defeated. Mark, however, loses on the appropriation issue, but his father in law is careful to allow him to save face. It is made clear that Mark enjoys a long political career.
7209386	/m/025w5wm	Until the Final Hour	Traudl Junge		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 This memoir deals with the years (1942-1945) that Traudl Junge spent with Adolf Hitler as his personal secretary. When he first hired her, by chance as it turns out, she was 21 years old and was sought out because a secretary needed to be replaced. During Traudl Junge's time with Hitler, she claims that she was blind to the genocidal activities that were conducted around her because she was so spellbound by Hitler's paternal charisma. She also describes in great detail some of the luxuries that she and other secretaries took advantage of while working for Hitler. For instance, she was treated to tea-parties and dinner parties with Hitler, Eva Braun, the other secretaries (all women), and the military chiefs. Traudl Humps married Hans Hermann Junge, one of Hitler's military "orderlies". Although they were in love, they were hesitant to marry so soon because they had not known each other for very long. Hitler, however, goaded her into marrying Junge, which occurred in June 1943. As the years passed, Hitler's health deteriorated, Germany began losing the war, and Hans Junge was killed in combat at the front in August 1944. They traveled a great deal, going from the East Prussia Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair), to the Berghof, to Munich, to the Reichskanzlei (Reich Chancellery) and back, all by way of train. Once the Red Army began sweeping across eastern Europe after Stalingrad fell, the Wolfsschanze had to be abandoned. Hitler had two bunkers built around the Reich Chancellery to protect from the air raids. The author was in the Reich Chancellery, the Vorbunker and the Führerbunker with Hitler. Therein, they (along with Eva Braun and the others) awaited the eventual, inevitable fall of Berlin to the Soviet Army. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler provided everyone with cyanide capsules. Hitler stated outright he would stay in Berlin, head up the defence of the city and shoot himself before he would surrender to the Soviet Union. The mood in the bunker in the final days was one primarily of depression and hopelessness. Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda poisoned their six children with cyanide (to Junge's horror) and their bodies were found, in their beds in the Vorbunker (upper bunker), by the Russians a few days later. Goebbels and his wife either committed suicide or had the SS guards shoot them ("eyewitness" accounts differ on this point). Hitler was dubious that the cyanide capsules would be powerful enough to kill him, so before he attempted his suicide, he tested a capsule on his beloved dog Blondi. The capsule killed Blondi almost instantly. Hitler killed himself with a gunshot wound to the right temple, using his own Walther PPK semiautomatic pistol chambered for 7.65 mm/.32 ACP while simultaneously biting into a cyanide capsule. Eva Braun, his bride of less than 40 hours, used cyanide alone. Eventually, Junge and others still in the bunker were led out to try and break out of the Soviet encirclement. She and another secretary wanted to avoid the Russians, so they decided to flee. Junge was eventually captured by soldiers of the Soviet Army, but was held only briefly when she was in the custody of the Americans. Considered to be merely a "young follower" she was quickly released, and was never prosecuted for any crime. In 1989 her manuscript detailing the war years was first published in the book Voices from the Bunker by Pierre Galante and Eugene Silianoff (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons).
7213629	/m/025wb1p	Magic	William Goldman	1976-08	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns a man named Corky Withers, a shy, odd-tempered and alcoholic magician, whose lackluster performances start to turn around when he adds a ventriloquist's dummy, Fats, to the show. It chronicles Corky's childhood and adolescence, and his deep love for a high-school crush named Peggy Ann Snow. After seeing the increasingly disturbing connection to Fats, many people begin to worry about Corky. Although Corky thinks Fats is alive, and can not bear to be apart from Fats for a long period of time, his friends know that Fats is actually an outlet for a hidden homicidal trait in Corky's personality, and that he has multiple personality disorder. Soon, "Fats" begins to tell Corky to murder anyone that threatens their relationship. All these factors combine and quickly reach a shattering climax during a weekend at Peggy's home in the Catskills. The novel is written kaleidoscopically, changing time period, location, and point of view swiftly and leaving certain aspects of important events unknown for extended periods of time, especially concerning the identity of Fats the dummy for the early portion of the novel.
7214036	/m/025wbcb	Draconian Measures	Don Perrin		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins with Kang and his force of draconians preparing to ambush an army of goblins which are trying to destroy Kang's force because they have females. After springing the ambush, they find out that the goblins were aware of the ambush, and turned the ambush around on the draconians. Hobgoblins quickly appear, and so Kang tells his main force to retreat, while signaling a support force to cover. Meanwhile, on a hill a short distance away, the guarded female draconians notice that Kang's force is retreating, and becoming suspicious, they question the male draconians that are guarding them; however, they only learn that "The...uh...commander does that sometimes. Marches...er...backward. Good for...discipline." Obviously realizing that they are being given an excuse, Fonrar sends in a sivak, Shanra, disguised as a male to discover the truth, since the female sivaks had an ability to blend in with their surroundings. Later, after Shanra returns, Fonrar and Thesik learn that the bozaks saw flashes of light in a nearby canyon. Knowing that the males wouldn't believe them, Fonrar and Thesik set out to learn more. After getting closer to the light, Fonrar accidentally trips, which causes the mysterious shapes that caused the light to question them. They are faced with answering, or getting attacked within five seconds, and so, Thesik and Fonrar jump onto a boulder to announce their presence. The moonlight shines off of Thesik's scales, revealing her as an aurak to the draconians that were the mysterious shapes. Back at the base, the hobgoblins attack, quickly overwhelming Kang's force. Kang and Slith prepare to make a bold stand when suddenly the hobgoblins retreat in a wild melee. Then, Kang hears giggles behind him, and turning around, sees Thesik, Fonrar, and the sivak sisters, Shanra and Hanra. The females announce that they brought reinforcements, salute (while giggling) him, and introduce Prokel, the subcommander of the Ninth Infantry. After introductions, Prokel leads Kang and his forces to a "fort", a ramshackle mess, evidenced by the collapsing guard towers. They meet the commander of the fort, General Maranta. Slith recalls a situation during the war against the elves when Slith kills a "pointy-eared female", then "does a dance" as the pointy-ear for the benefit of the troops. Maranta was surveying the camp at that time, and orders the pointy-eared female to be put under arrest. After learning it was Slith, he was given latrine duty for a month. Thankfully, Maranta doesn't remember any of that. Maranta calls of the commanders into the Bastion, a gigantic extremely well fortified building at the heart of the fort, and then introduces Kang to the rest of the commanders. Noticing that Kang had an aurak in his forces, he asks why Kang is in command. Kang then reveals the females, creating an enemy out of Maranta because Kang received the "glory" from Takhisis. Life in the fort continues, until Maranta discovers that the goblin horde didn't give up, and are gathering outside the fort to prepare for a siege. Obviously, this strains the relationship between Kang and Maranta. The females are forced to spend their lives within a wooden house, supposedly to protect them from other draconians, and so, begin to get bored. They decide to begin drills to prepare themselves to fight, and so the females ambush a draconian to get a requisition allowing them to get twenty swords from the quartermaster. At this time, Maranta decides to examine the females, and so when Cresel announces to the females that a visitor is coming, the females place a "water barrel drop", intending that it drops on Gloth's head. Unfortunately, when Maranta enters, the water barrel falls on him instead. Kang is sent to a nearby fort of Knights of Takhisis to ask for help. He learns that the Knights of Takhisis are actually paying the goblins to kill the draconians with the help of an informer, a female knight that he had met before, Huzzad. Huzzad is discovered by the Knights, and so is forced to escape with Kang. They return to the fort, where Maranta wants to torture Huzzad. Kang refuses to give her over, causing Maranta to tell Kang that he can have her for personal uses. Huzzad becomes a friend to the females, and learns about their secret abilities, like Kapak spit, which is like a healing salve, unlike the male Kapaks' poisonous spit. She also manages to persuade Kang to allow the females to parade and march with the males, forcing Kang to rethink whether the females still need to be "babied" anymore. The siege continues, with the draconians unable to break out. Kang and his forces begins to build an explosive fake dragon that can fly to scare the goblins, but by then is not welcomed by Maranta anymore. About this time, Kang begins to notice that his draconians are disappearing. Events reach a climax when the goblins attack the fort, causing Kang to admit that the females should be treated just like the rest of the males, and so, with the females, and Huzzad, enters the Bastion to search for Slith, one of the missing draconians. He finds out that Maranta has the Heart of Dracart, a magical orb that duplicates draconians by splitting the draconian's soul into hundreds of parts, or hundred of "new" draconians. Discovering that Maranta intends to do this to Slith, he and the females manage to kill Maranta. They attempt to leave the Bastion, but Maranta's personal guards attempts to stop them, with a crossbowman managing to fatally wound Huzzad. The females then become berserker-like by the death of their friend and kill almost all of the guards. Then, after finally exiting the bastion, they find that the goblins have breached the fort. Kang gives the command to release the fake dragon, and Thesik casts an illusion on the dragon to look like a real gold dragon. The dragon flies over the wall, but Kang realizes that the fuse for the explosives have gone out. He crushes the Heart of Dracart in his hand, mangling his hand, but gaining enough magical power to cast a fireball, which causes the dragon to explode, destroying part of the goblin army and the hobgoblin general. After the siege, Kang and the females conduct a funeral for Huzzad, and with the other draconian troops, heads to Teyr to establish their own draconian city. Kang also retires from being the commander due to personal reasons, and the fact that he can't fight well with his mangled hand anymore. He becomes the Governor of Teyr. The author also hints that Kang has fallen in love with Fonrar.
7214247	/m/025wbm7	The Machine's Child	Kage Baker	2006-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the end of The Life of the World to Come, Alec Checkerfield, aboard his schooner the Captain Morgan, crewed and piloted by the eponymous AI he created from a teaching computer given to him as a child, had escaped from Dr. Zeus' installation on Santa Catalina Island with information stolen from the Company databases. Using this information the Captain turned the ship into a time machine, leaving the year 2351 to hide in history. Along the way Alec found and lost Mendoza, unwittingly downloaded his alter egos into his own brain, and equally unwittingly was party to one of the most infamous massacres in human history, the destruction of the colony Mars Two by terrorists. As a result Alec is racked with guilt, and thus weakened he falls prey to the other personalities, especially the former assassin Edward. In a bizarre joint effort they break in and steal from the Nuevo Inklings in 2351 more information in the form of a buke, a 24th century notebook computer. Thus fortified they disappear into time to plot the rescue of Mendoza. The Captain begins talking to the personalities individually as he creates the plan. Mendoza is in "Options Research", 300,000 years in the past. This is a facility dedicated to finding ways to kill cyborgs, using Preservers who have lost their will to live as guinea pigs. Only one Company operative is there, but it is Marco, the only Enforcer other than Budu to remain free once the Enforcers original mission was completed. Instead of being placed in suspended animation like the other Enforcers, he was sent to run Options Research where he systematically disassembles cyborgs and subjects them to horrendous treatments in an attempt to destroy them. Alec and the Captain arrive from the future, with Edward in control of their body to carry out the mission. This is fortunate, as the horrors created by Marco sicken Nicholas and Alec. They find Mendoza, who has been lying in a steel coffin for 900 years, disabling Marco in the process. The Captain has duplicated the virus that brought down Budu, although Edward is only able to inject it by sheer luck. Mendoza is in dreadful condition; her coffin is only 1 meter long. In the year 2317, Joseph is still waiting for Budu to finish regenerating after rescuing him in 2276. He lives in a corner of the revival facility under Mount Tamalpais, near San Francisco, stealing food, clothing and other equipment as he needs them. Lately he has been playing the role of visiting handyman and lover to Mavis, the landlady of the nearby Pelican Inn. Budu finally awakes, despite being blind and unable to communicate. Joseph steals a vocoder and hooks it into Budu's systems so he can hear and talk. Budu tells his story about what happened to him after he escaped from Company custody in 1099. Becoming a rogue like Joseph, he roamed Europe until the Black Death gave him the idea of using disease to cull humanity of its violent members. Contacting his various recruits, like Labienus, he formed the Plague Cabal, which began creating diseases designed to kill target populations quickly and then die out before spreading to the rest of humanity. Labienus, however, had visions of reducing human population on a global scale, committing genocide, and caused Budu's downfall at the hands of Victor, who had unwittingly been made into a carrier of targeted viruses. Joseph finds a time-travel capsule that Budu had hidden on Morro Rock and goes to Options Research in search of Mendoza. He arrives well after Alec has left, and is attacked by Marco even as he lies ill with the virus. After Marco calms down, he tells Joseph what happened, before wading into the sea, presumably to hide himself from the Company, who he now believes is after him. Joseph, horrified by what he sees and failing to find Mendoza, returns to the 24th century and contacts Suleyman, who mounts a mission to rescue the cyborgs held at Options Research and expose it to all the other active Company operatives still alive. With knowledge supplied by Budu, Joseph begins to ransack Company databases for information about Mendoza, his friend Lewis, and the Adonai project which created Alec, Edward and Nicholas. Over the last few decades he had lost some of his grip on reality and thus became obsessed with destroying Adonai. Knowing that Alec is born in 2320, he brings Alec's "parents", the Earl and Countess of Finsbury, to the Pelican so he can prevent Alec's conception. To his dismay he finds that they had long ago decided not to have children and Roger had been medically sterilized. In reality, Alec was born to a host mother and given to the Checkerfields by the Company. Alec and his phantom companions are finally able to hold their beloved once the Captain, using his own version of the Company revival tank, rebuilds her. She has lost most of her memories, though there are indications the Captain may have blocked them to protect her sanity. One side effect is that the Company conditioning which suppressed her paranormal abilities has been removed, and she constantly creates temporal anomalies around her when her emotions are aroused. The typical result is that plants seem to grow with incredible speed. The ship is soon a floating greenhouse. The Captain meanwhile has been digesting the Company data. He can make Alec immortal like Mendoza, who thinks he is already immortal like her. He can create devices using nanotechnology that the Company, slow and bureaucratic, had never thought to build. Alec and Mendoza proceed to drop small time-bombs in the form of collections of nanobots throughout history. Meanwhile a search for Alec's original genetic template, which the Captain needs for the immortality treatment, turns up the mortal remains of both Edward and Nicholas, hidden in Company repositories; this is a shock for each of Alec's mental passengers. Eventually they locate Alpha-Omega, a secret facility where genetic templates for all operatives, and indeed every kind of human who has ever existed, are stored. Before doing this Alec insists on a vacation, and since he is obsessed with his romantic vision of pirates, he decides to go to Port Royal, Jamaica, in its heyday before being destroyed by an earthquake in 1692. Joseph and Budu have been studying Alec, and have realized that he is likely to visit Port Royal. Joseph sets himself up in the less rowdy inland community of Spanish Town, ready to wait years for their arrival, equipped with a device that can detect and jam the Captain's signals. Alec arrives with Mendoza, though he is quickly repelled by the place, and is only able to continue with help from Edward and Nicholas, who are not bothered by such horrors as abbatoirs, meat markets, pet animals, thugs and pirates. By way of celebrating their impending triumph over Dr. Zeus, Alec and Mendoza, helped considerably by Nicholas' passion and poetry, marry themselves and enjoy a belated honeymoon in a harbor inn. Joseph has had the misfortune to be away from his home when his alarm is activated, and when he returns the couple are gone. After an exhausting journey he finds the Captain Morgan at anchor and sneaks aboard, after disabling the Captain with a signal jammer. Confronting the man he thinks of as Alec Checkerfield, he is astonished to be attacked by the Nicholas personality. Knocking Alec out, he interrogates him when he revives, but finds himself dealing with Edward. At that point Mendoza erupts from the cabin of the ship, and the Captain defeats the jamming and activates the ship's defenses. Mendoza does not recognize Joseph, who realizes that whatever he thinks, Alec, Edward and Nicholas genuinely love her. He flees and returns to Budu. From Budu's point of view, Joseph has been gone a few days. From Joseph's viewpoint, it has been 20 years. Alec's injuries from the fight require even more recuperation. In a resort in 2276 they play a violent video game that is illegal in Alec's time. Edward beats the game, literally burning it out. As a result he becomes Alec's equal in cyberspace, though this is unknown to the others. Finally raiding Alpha-Omega, on an island in 500,000 BCE, they bypass the AI and the single human attendant it protects, and recover the Adonai genetic template. With the Captain distracted by the other AI, Edward takes over Alec and confines the other personalities to a virtual prison. His bravado is short-lived, however. Alec and Nicholas attempt to escape, distracting Edward when he is attacked by an ichthyosaur while wading into the sea. Gravely injured, he attempts to transfer his personality into Mendoza's systems, but the result leaves her catatonic. The Captain is left to pick up the pieces. The final scene is enigmatic, and a cliff hanger. Mendoza is "rebooted", but the Captain seems to have obtained human form. He implies that Alec and Nicholas are still trapped in Mendoza's mind and, strangely, calls her "mother".
7215432	/m/025wcv3	Wolves Eat Dogs	Martin Cruz Smith	2004	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Russia has changed from a Communist to capitalist state, and Ukraine has seceded from the former Soviet Union. When Pavel "Pasha" Ivanov, one of the leading members of Russia's new billionaire class, dies in an apparent suicide, Renko investigates. Pasha fell from the balcony of his penthouse apartment, and all the signs point to his having been alone at the time. The only anomaly is a large mound of table salt in the victim's wardrobe. Despite interference from his own boss as well as from other persons of power, Renko continues his investigation by questioning Pasha's friends and associates. There is apparently some kind of dark secret in Ivanov's past, and Pasha was always very depressed around May Day. Just before he is forcefully removed from the investigation, Arkady returns alone to Pasha's apartment and reconstructs his movements on the night he died. In the drawer of his bureau, Arkady finds a radiation dosimeter wrapped in a blood-stained handkerchief. Turning it on, he finds that the entire apartment is radioactive, the highest levels coming from the mound of salt. Arkady concludes that Ivanov did indeed commit suicide but that it was under a form of duress. A HazMat team re-examines the apartment and Pasha's body and finds that the salt was mixed with a small quantity of cesium chloride, identical in appearance to table salt. It so happens that Cesium-137 is an isotope that is lethally radioactive. After confirming that his apartment was filled with radiation, Ivanov swallowed a quantity of salt with bread before jumping in an apparently futile attempt to try and protect any acquaintances entering the apartment later. A week after Arkady's discovery Pasha's business partner, Timofeyev, is found brutally murdered near Pripyat, Ukraine, in the "dead zone" around the site of the Chernobyl disaster. Arkady's superior, exasperated at his insubordination, posts him to Ukraine to "investigate" this murder with neither assistance nor standard resources. He makes the acquaintance of the colorful local community: a team of radiobiologists, various foreign scientists, and a small group of peasant squatters who refuse to leave the area despite the official evacuation. Various odd events occur around the dead zone, including the murder of a local scavenger. Arkady also becomes the lover of Eva Kazka, a medical doctor assigned to the scientific community. Eva confides to him that she was rendered infertile and also suffered a long series of operable cancers as a result of exposure to radioactive fallout that blanketed Kiev while she was marching in a May Day parade after the meltdown. Eva's ex-husband, Alex Gerasimov, the leader of the radiobiology team, kidnaps Arkady and reveals himself to be the culprit, explaining his motives with relish: Ivanov and Timofeyev were the scientific colleagues, and favorite pupils, of Alex's father, Felix Gerasimov, the Soviet Union's leading authority on nuclear accidents. When the Central Committee telephoned Gerasimov to ask what to do about the meltdown, Gerasimov was too drunk to respond, so Ivanov and Timofeyev took the call, pretending to be relaying Gerasimov's instructions. Based on what the Committee told them, Ivanov and Timofeyev decided that it was unnecessary to either evacuate Chernobyl or to cancel the May Day celebrations in Kiev. In other words, Ivanov and Timofeyev were ambitious men who reacted to a crisis the way ambitious men do: by covering up for their boss, and by telling the men in charge what they want to hear -and by doing so, they allowed millions of civilians to be exposed. Gerasimov remained untouched by the scandal but later committed suicide. Alex felt the two co-conspirators ought to be held accountable to some degree. He planted tiny grains of cesium on their clothes and persons, tormenting them before administering fatal doses. He even offered to stop if Ivanov and Timofeyev would return to Chernobyl and admit their responsibility, but "they were too ashamed, even to save their own lives." After Ivanov's death, Timofeyev tried to save himself by returning to the scene of his crime, though Alex alleges he doesn't know who murdered him. Having killed his assistants in cold blood, Alex prepares to kill Arkady to cover his tracks when he is shot down by the vengeful sister of one of the assistants. Arkady reports back to Moscow that Pasha's case has been solved, though the murders of Timofeyev and Alex Gerasimov remain open. He is recalled to Moscow. Eva leaves with him, and the couple adopt an orphaned boy named Zhenya whom Arkady has been mentoring at a local shelter. A few months later, they make a one-day trip back to Chernobyl to visit some of their local friends, an elderly farmer couple who have lived in the same place all their lives, and whose grandchildren died from radiation poisoning. Seeing the husband slaughter a pig in almost exactly the same way as Timofeyev was killed, Arkady and Eva realize that it was Roman who killed Timofeyev, and why, but refrain from reporting it to the authorities.
7216366	/m/025wdhs	On the Razzle	Tom Stoppard			 Stoppard's farce consists of two hours of slapstick shenanigans, mistaken identities, misdirected orders, malapropisms, double entendres, and romantic complications. Herr Zangler, the twisted-tongued proprietor of an upscale grocery store in a small Austrian village, plans to marry Mme. Knorr, the proprietor of a women's clothing shop in Vienna. In preparation for new life in the big city, he orders a new wardrobe and hires the fast-talking Melchior as a personal assistant. He arranges to send his niece Marie to his sister-in-law in Vienna, Miss Blumenblatt, to protect her from the penniless Sonders who is courting her. As he departs for Vienna, Zangler entrusts the operation of his business to his garrulous head clerk, Weinberl, and his naive apprentice, Christopher, who decide to go "on the razzle" to Vienna. Almost immediately, Weinberl and Christopher catch sight of Zangler and disguise themselves as mannequins in the window of Mme. Knorr's House of Fashion. Circumstances propel the two into a fancy restaurant in the company of Mme. Knorr and her customer, Frau Fischer (who has been roped into pretending she is Weinberl's new wife), the same restaurant to which Zangler intends to take Mme. Knorr. Several sprinting waiters, a sexually obsessed coachman and a carefully positioned Chinese screen come into play, and things finally seem to be settling down when the eloping Sonders and Marie enter the scene and the chaos starts anew. The various characters flee to Miss Blumenblatt's, who mistakes Weinberl and the disguised Christopher as Sonders and Marie. Eventually, all is sorted out, Christopher and Weinberl make it back to the store in time to prevent Zangler from ever knowing they were gone, and everything solves itself: Sonders comes into an inheritance and is allowed to marry Marie, Weinberl and Frau Fischer discover they have been romantic pen pals all along, Christopher is promoted, Zangler and Mme. Knorr finalize their engagement, and life returns to normal after one night "on the razzle."
7216522	/m/025wdkh	Uncle Silas	Sheridan Le Fanu	1864	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference"}	 The novel is a first person narrative told from the point of view of the teenaged Maud Ruthyn, an heiress living with her sombre, reclusive father Austyn Ruthyn in their mansion at Knowl. She gradually becomes aware of the existence of Silas Ruthyn, a black sheep uncle whom she has never met, who was once an infamous rake and gambler but is now apparently a fervently reformed Christian. Silas's past holds a dark mystery, which she gradually learns from her father and from her worldly, cheerful cousin Lady Monica: the suspicious suicide of a man to whom Silas owed an enormous gambling debt, which took place within a locked, apparently impenetrable room in Silas's mansion at Bartram-Haugh. Austyn is firmly convinced of his brother's innocence; Maud's attitude to Uncle Silas (whom we do not meet for the first 200 pages of the book) wavers repeatedly between trusting in her father's judgment, and growing fear and uncertainty. In the first part of the novel, Maud's father hires a French governess, Madame de la Rougierre, as a companion for her. Madame de la Rougierre, however, turns out to be a sinister figure who has designs on Maud. (In a cutaway scene that breaks the first-person narrative, we learn that she is in league with Uncle Silas's good-for-nothing son Dudley.) She is eventually discovered by Maud in the act of burgling her father's desk; this is enough to ensure that she is dismissed. Austyn Ruthyn obscurely asks Maud if she is willing to undergo some kind of "ordeal" to clear his brother Silas's and the family's name. She assents, and shortly thereafter her father dies. It turns out that he has added a codicil to his will: Maud is to stay with Uncle Silas until she comes of age. If she dies while in her minority, the estate will go to Silas. Despite the advice of her friends Lady Monica and Austyn's executor and fellow Swedenborgian, Dr. Bryerly, Maud consents to spend the next three and a half years of her life at Bartram-Haugh. Life at Bartram-Haugh is initially strange but not unpleasant, despite ominous signs such as the uniformly unfriendly servants and a malevolent factotum of Silas's, the one-legged Dickon Hawkes. Silas himself is a sinister, soft-spoken old man who is openly contemptuous of his two children, the loutish Dudley and the untutored but friendly Milly (her rustic manners initially amaze Maud, but they become best friends). Silas is subject to mysterious catatonic fits which are attributed by his doctor to his massive opium consumption. Gradually, however, the trap closes around Maud: it is clear that Silas is attempting to coax or force her to marry Dudley. When that tactic fails, and as the time-limit of three-and-a-half years begins to shrink, a yet more sinister plot is hatched to ensure that Silas gains control of the Ruthyn estate. Milly is sent away to a boarding school in France, and arrangements are made for Maud to join her after a period of three months. In the meantime, Madame de la Rougierre reappears in Silas's employ, over Maud's protests, and it is she who is charged with accompanying Maud first to London, and then on to Dover and across the channel. However, unbeknownst to Maud, who is asleep in the carriage for most of the journey, she has in fact been taken on a round trip to London and back. She is returned to Bartram-Haugh under cover of darkness, and although she soon discovers the trick, her demands for an explanation are ignored and she is locked into one of the mansion's many bedrooms. Madame de la Rougierre, however, having been kept ignorant of Silas' true intentions, unwittingly partakes of the drugged claret that was intended for Maud, and promptly falls asleep on the latter's bed. Late that night, Dudley scales the building and enters the unlit room through the window, which is set upon concealed hinges that allow it to be opened only from the outside. Maud, crouched and hidden in a corner, watches on in terror as Dudley takes a spiked hammer from his pocket and savagely attacks the figure lying on the bed. Madame de la Rougierre screams briefly and convulses, then lies still. Uncle Silas, who has been waiting outside the door, enters the room, allowing Maud to slip out undetected. With the help of Dickon Hawkes' daughter, whom Maud had befriended during her stay, she is swiftly conveyed by carriage to Lady Monica's estate, and away from Bartram-Haugh forever. Silas is discovered in the morning lying dead of an opium overdose, while Dudley becomes a fugitive and is thought to be hiding in Australia. Maud is happily married to the charming and handsome Lord Ilbury and ends her recollections on a philosophical note:
7217706	/m/025wfp_	The Phoenix			{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Fact and fiction are combined to tell the stories of two fictitious people who were involved in the catastrophe; Birger Lund, a Swedish journalist and passenger on the airship, who apparently suffered horrific injuries during the crash; and Edmond Boysen, a member of the crew, who was manning the controls at the time, and seems to have got away unscathed. The book begins some years after the disaster has occurred, as Lund - now with a new identity due to a twist of fate - is searching for Boysen, who he hopes will provide him with some of the answers that might help him to come to terms with what happened, so that he can move on with his life. However, once the story has introduced Lund, it switches focus to Edmond Boysen, and much of the plot then unfolds against the backdrop of Nazi Germany, when the giant Zeppelin airships dominated the skies and their crew members enjoyed an almost celebrity-like lifestyle. Here the author spends a great deal of time describing the technical aspects of the airship, while its final journey and ultimate demise is told in intricate detail. Birger Lund eventually catches up with Boysen towards the end of the story, and the two have a lengthy discussion as to why the disaster may have happened. They consider a number of theories, including a suggestion that the airship may have been sabotaged. Following this conversation, Lund feels he is able to get some closure and feels he can now start to rebuild his life.
7218281	/m/025wgcn	The Mark of the Angel				 Set in 1950s Paris against the backdrop of the French-Algerian conflict, the book tells the story of an affair between its two main protagonists; Saffie, the young German wife of renowned French musician Raphael Lepage; and Andras, a Hungarian-Jewish instrument repairer living in the city's Mairie immigrant district. When they first meet, both Andras and Saffie have been separately damaged by the events of the Second World War, but as their relationship develops over a period of several years, they are both able to begin to come to terms with the harrowing experiences that have shaped their lives - while around them a new generation is committing a fresh batch of atrocities. Ultimately, though, Saffie and Andras's affair has tragic consequences for everyone involved.
7219612	/m/025wj43	Socratic Puzzles	Robert Nozick		{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Nozick disclaims the title "political philosopher" and characterizes his Anarchy, State, and Utopia as "an accident" that came about because he was "getting nowhere" working on the problem of free will. He discusses his reverence for Socrates, and his intellectual debts to Sidney Morgenbesser and Carl Hempel. At "the most consequential party I ever attended," someone told him about a problem posed by a physicist in California, William Newcomb. Nozick brought this problem into the literature of decision theory ("rational choice theory"). He describes the influence of decision theory on Anarchy, State, and Utopias derivation of the state from individuals' actions, and its game-theoretic analysis of utopia; and especially in The Nature of Rationality, where he proposed a "decision value" alternative to maximizing expected utility and also extended decision theory to issues about rational belief. He concludes the introduction by talking about philosophy as a way of life. Although "being philosophical" in the ordinary sense wasn't his motivation for entering philosophy, he found himself being philosophical when diagnosed with stomach cancer and informed about the dire statistics, adding parenthetically an anecdote about the operation in which much of his stomach was removed, I maintain it was not a complaint when the first words I said to the surgeons upon coming up from anaesthesia after seven hours were, "I hope we don't have to do this again. I don't have the stomach for it." Nietzsche&#39;s demand, that you should lead a life you would be willing to repeat infinitely often, seems &#34;a bit stringent&#34;, but philosophy constitutes a way of life worth continuing to its end. He did exactly that, according to his friend Alan Dershowitz.
7221003	/m/025wktl	Things Not Seen	Andrew Clements		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Robert Phillips, known by his nickname "Bobby", wakes up one day to find that he can no longer see himself. Upon discovery, he heads downstairs and tries to convince his parents that it's not a trick. He drinks a glass of orange juice, which to the astonishment of his parents, seems to make a"spoon float in the air." After a brief argument with his mother, Bobby is told to stay at home until his parents decide get back from work (His mother is an English professor, and his father a scientist.) After his parents are gone, Bobby heads to the library, bundled up to conceal his secret invisible self, and after a brief walk around, he hurriedly leaves, bumping into a girl. His scarf comes off so he's scared she will freak out. He helps to retrieve her things, and realizes she's blind when he hands her back her cane. Upon returning home, he gets in trouble because he left the house. His parents leave to get dinner and Bobby watches TV and takes a nap when he wakes up the TV says that there was a major three car crash. He sees one of the cars is his family's. The Police then come to his door and check on him. After they leave Bobby goes to the hospital to see his parents. When he gets there he takes off his clothes (so he can be invisible) and goes to find his parents. He can only find his Mom. After talking to his Mom he uses money she gave him to get a taxi and he goes home. He returns to the library the next day. He goes naked this time, and stumbles upon the blind girl in a listening room. He enters the room with her permission and they start talking. He learns that her name is Alicia, and befriends her. Together, they try to find the 'cure' for his predicament.
7221071	/m/025wkxb	The Landry News	Andrew Clements	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Cara Landry, a new student in Mr. Larson's 5th Grade classroom, publishes her own individual newspaper during her first year at Denton Elementary School titled "The Landry News". She writes an editorial about her teacher, Mr. Larson, who had once been a top-quality teacher but had over time become too apathetic to teach. Mr. Larson soon returns to his old teaching ways, when Cara's merciless editorial opens his eyes to that it is true he has stopped teaching. Cara continues an old class newspaper with the novel's title for as far as the teachers are concerned, a "class project". Cara then expands the newspaper with every edition, each even better than the first, with the help of her newly-found friends. One day when the newspaper is at its peak, her friend named Michael, a computer whiz who handles the newspaper layout, comes up to her and asks if she could read a story his "friend" wrote, titled "Lost and Found". When she reads it later that evening, tears form in her eyes, as she realizes it has no name, and it is about a divorce between the author's parents and how he ran away from home, was found, and realized that his parent's divorce had nothing to do with him, and that they love him for who he is. She loves the article mainly because that was exactly how she felt when her parents were divorced. When she shares the story with her mother later that evening, tears form in her eyes as well. At first she thought that Cara wrote it, but after she explains, she discovers the truth. The story is then printed in the paper, only to have a "fed-up Dr. Barnes", who is furious at Mr. Larson for allowing the children to do so. He is keeping an even sharper eye on Mr. Larson because he strongly disapproves of the way he teaches. He also makes a clear point to the media that "This article is too personally revealing for children, nor anyone else." The newspaper receives publicity because of the First Amendment and how the article had been banned, so Cara is interviewed for TV,and a hearing is planned in the auditorium. When the day of the hearing came, it certainly seems like Mr. Larson is going to be fired. The only thing that could possibly save his job is the fact that beforehand, Cara had asked Michael if he could read his story out loud in defense of Mr. Larson, as proof that Michael had written the story himself and wanted it to be published. During the hearing, Cara says that if kids are brave enough to say what they feel, then why is it so bad? Afterward, Cara hands out a special edition of the "Landry News", with one article with the headline "Larson is Vindicated!" and a story explaining what had happened at the hearing. The last article of the newspaper is an editorial written by Cara.
7222993	/m/025wmld	Janissaries	Jerry Pournelle	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Janissaries, the leader is a United States Army officer from the Cold War period, Captain Rick Galloway, who along with his platoon-sized unit of soldiers primarily from the U.S. are abducted from a CIA-run operation against Cubans in the fictional tropical African country of Sainte-Marie by a flying saucer. The beings abducting them present themselves as rescuers from a hopeless situation where Galloway's unit is about to be overrun by Cubans in a night assault, the aftermath of which is expected to be the deaths of all. Afterwards, the human soldiers have the option of serving the aliens in a special situation involving a more primitive planet on which there are humans living in medieval conditions. The soldiers are expected to be able to use their superior weapons and tactics to conquer part of the planet.
7223123	/m/025wmph	Shadowplay	Tad Williams	2007-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Darkness has fallen on the lands of the sun as an army of misshapen fey spill out from beyond the Shadowline. At their head is Yasammez, dark creature of nightmare. A furtive bargain was struck at the gates of Southmarch and the castle was spared, but centuries of enmity will not be so easily appeased. Meanwhile Barrick, heir to Southmarch and cursed with madness, has crossed the Shadowline into the realm of his people's ancient enemy. There are stranger things than death here – stranger and older. Much further south, shadow is also falling over the reign of the Autarch, god-king, and supreme ruler. Qinnitan, junior wife, must flee the royal household or die, her greatest secret as yet hidden even from herself. Ancient blood flows through her veins and she will become a unique weapon in the fight against her greatest terror. And beyond the ken of all but a chosen few, the gods are awakening and the world is changing.
7223212	/m/025wmrx	Mouse Soup	Arnold Lobel	1977	{"/m/016475": "Picture book"}	 Mouse is in a jam-soon he'll be weasel soup. Weasel is ready for his dinner. and poor mouse is it. Just in time, he thinks up a clever and entertaining way to distract the weasel from serving up mouse soup for dinner.
7223519	/m/025wn2z	Private Peaceful	Michael Morpurgo	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is of a young teenager named Thomas "Tommo" Peaceful, who tells the story in account format from the past to the present day events of his experiences living in the village of Iddesleigh during World War I. His oldest brother, Big Joe, has learning difficulties and is always looked out for by his younger brothers. The earlier part of the story tells of his doings before the war, the tale of his love for Molly - a beautiful girl he met on his first day at school and grew to love besottedly - and Charlie Peaceful, Tommo's brother. The trio had grown up together, their mischievous adventures included braving the beastly Grandma Wolf (also referred to as the Wolfwoman) to their mother's despair. Charlie, being older than Tommo, had always protected and looked out for his younger brother. Also, he and Molly become closer as they are both older than Tommo, while Tommo begins to become left out. Later on, it is revealed that Molly and Charlie were secretly seeing each other, and that Molly had become pregnant with Charlie's child. Tommo became extremely heartbroken after the couple hurriedly married a short time later in the village church, before Tommo and Charlie were forced off to France to fight in World War I. All through this time, Tommo recorded his feelings in the novel. The rest of the story describes the brothers' experiences of the war: their Sergeant "Horrible" Hanley, the near misses during battle on the front line, and Charlie's continued protection of Tommo. During a charge of the German lines, Charlie disobeys a direct order from Hanley and stays with Tommo while he is injured on No-man's-land. As a result Charlie is accused of cowardice and given a court martial. The book's chapters count down to dawn when Charlie will be executed. At dawn, Charlie is marched before the firing squad, where he dies happily singing their favourite childhood song, "Oranges and Lemons". Tommo ends the story in the present tense with Charlie's execution and the promise of looking after Molly and Molly's new baby, Little Tommo. Dramatic irony is created here as Tommo is about to enter the Battle of the Somme, where he is unknowingly going to witness and participate in one of the biggest and most tragic battles the British army has ever faced. Private Peaceful epitomizes the devastatingly unfair treatment soldiers were given and the unjust ending many brave soldiers had to face. It is also is a story about the friendship between the two brothers and the undying bond of trust between soldiers in the trenches.
7225158	/m/025wp95	The Lottie Project	Jacqueline Wilson		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Charlotte Enright (who prefers to be called Charlie) is an eleven year old girl who lives with her mother, Jo, in a council flat. She is the 'most popular' girl in her school and as a result has a lot of friends. When her classes' form teacher goes on maternity leave she is replaced by a strict woman called Miss Beckworth, whom Charlie immedietly dislikes. She forces Charlie to sit next to an intelligent boy, Jamie Edwards, who Charlie hates. Miss Beckworth sets the class a history project on the Victorians, and Charlie assumes that the topic will be boring and decides not to listen - until she finds a picture of a Victorian servant girl who looks just like her. Charlie decides to write a diary, told from the point of view of her character Lottie who is eleven years old, like Charlie; however she has left school to become a servant. Jo loses her job as a shop manageress and has to take up cleaning in a supermarket, cleaning houses, and looking after a young boy called Robin in order to earn money. Jo takes a shine to Robin's single father, Mark, much to Charlie's despair. Following a trip to a theme park, Charlie and Robin witness Mark and Jo kissing on a ride. Charlie, upset by this, tells Robin that neither of his parents (his mother's new partner does not get on with Robin,) want him anymore. Distressed, Robin runs away, leaving Mark and Jo distraught for the boy's safety, and Charlie guilt-ridden. In a subplot, Lottie, the servant girl Charlie had created, gets a job as a nursery maid, looking after three young and very irritating children - Victor, Louisa and baby Freddie. Whilst at the park, Freddie is snatched from his pram after Lottie angrily storms off. Lottie is upset and distressed at the loss of the little boy, mirroring Charlie's own feelings towards the disappearance of Robin. Robin is found in a train station behind packages wating to be delivered. He is freezing and is rushed to hospital. Mark is very upset with Charlie (after she admits to him, Jo and the police what she had said to Robin) and even though Charlie is relived that Robin is no longer missing she is still distraught as he catches pneumonia]. Freddie (from Charlie's project) is also returned. The Master of the house decides to take the whole family away, servants and all, to a trip to the seaside for a week. Lottie's last diary entry ends with the words, 'I still cannot say I enjoy being a servant - but it has its compensations!' Robin's pneumonia clears up and, just like in Lottie's diary, Mark, Jo, Charlie and Robin go to the seaside for a day. Charlie buys some Victorian postcards to use for her project, but since she guesses that hers is not done correctly and is sure that it will not win, she decides to give them to Jamie, whom she is now good friends with. Jamie's project wins on account of information, but Miss Beckworth also gives Charlie a prize for demonstrating 'what it feels like to be a Victorian.' The novel ends with Jamie kissing Charlie and Jo and Charlie agreeing on Mark and Robin coming for Christmas.
7226711	/m/025wq8v	Only Forward	Michael Marshall Smith	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A small boy is left on his own in a flat. The boy answers a knocking on the front door of his high rise flat to find a man with no head standing on the doorstep. The man cannot speak, but the boy knows he is asking him for help. The boy apologises and, explaining that he cannot help him, closes the door and returns to playing games. The protagonist, Stark, a troubleshooter living in the Colour Neighbourhood, accepts a job from his friend, a high-ranking member of The Action Centre, Zenda Renn, and sets out to find senior Actioneer Fell Alkland, who appears to have gone missing under peculiar circumstances. Stark contacts another friend, a psychotic ganglord in the Red Neighbourhood named Ji, to assist him in tracking Alkland down, but something other than kidnapping is to blame for the old man's disappearance. Something that ties into Alkland's past, into The City itself. Stark is forced to confront both his past and a present which has become a living death, in a story of love lost and friendship betrayed. It takes him to places where dreams live, where they can come true, for better or for worse. Where they can kill you. In a world where past and future, reality and nightmare meet up and have a fistfight, Stark is the only man who can make the difference.
7226799	/m/025wq9y	Larklight	Philip Reeve	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 Larklight is a space opera set in an alternate Victorian era, in which mankind has been exploring the solar system for at least a century, and wherein most of the planets are inhabitable. Protagonist Art Mumby narrates an attack on the British Empire and the solar system at large by an ancient, arachnid-like extraterrestrial race, against which he and his family play a central role, aided by the pirate Jack Havock and his crew. The story begins at Larklight, a house that orbits Earth's moon, where the Mumbys receive notice of a visitor from the Royal Xenological Society, a Mr. Webster. The next day, Mr. Webster is revealed to be an extraterrestrial resembling an enormous white spider. Art and his sister Myrtle escape; but their father is captured and held prisoner. Art and Myrtle leave in an escape pod and crash-land on the Moon, where they are encased with the predatory larvae of the Potter Moth and freed by pirate Jack Havock and his crew. Art is shocked to find that Jack is only fifteen years old, and that he is the only human in his crew, while Myrtle is distressed at being in the company of a pirate and demands that Jack take them to the moon's British residence, Fort George. En route aboard the pirates' ship Sophronia, a ship of the British Navy comes alongside and orders Jack to surrender or have his ship destroyed. Jack distracts the officers by pretending to hold Art and Myrtle hostage, giving Ssillissa, the ship's alchemist, time to activate the ship's engines and fly the Sophronia to safety. They conceal themselves on Venus, Jack Havock's old home, where Jack tells Art and Myrtle that the colonists there, including his parents and brother, were changed into trees by a sudden pollination. Romantic feelings begin to develop between Jack and Myrtle. The white spiders thereafter take Myrtle to the Martian home of industrialist Sir Waverly Rain, whose factories cover Phobos and Deimos. She escapes with a Martian maid named Ulla (the name is probably a reference to The War of the Worlds) and her husband, Richard, with whom she learns that Sir Waverly Rain had been captured by the spiders and replaced with a spider-controlled automaton; believing the spiders might manufacture something much more sinister, they race to London. Jack and Art visit Jupiter's moon Io, whence they descend into Jupiter’s atmosphere to ask aid of the Thunderhead, who tells them to protect the key to Larklight. Not knowing what this is, they attempt to leave Jupiter, but are abandoned by their ferryman and escape to a broken-down harpoon ship attached to a native organism, whence they are rescued by the Sophronia's crew. Jack discovers that Myrtle's locket (now in Art's possession) is the key to Larklight, in that it can activate a set of complex engines capable of transforming the solar system, and leads his crew to the spiders' home on the Rings of Saturn to exchange it for Myrtle's safe return. Upon arriving at the spiders' home, most of the crew are captured. Art is later taken before Professor Phineas Ptarmigan, formerly of the Royal Xenological Institute where Jack was imprisoned until he was twelve, who reveals that he wishes to use Larklight to destroy the Solar System, leaving the remains to the spiders whose ancestors had colonized the planetesimals. Meanwhile, Ssillissa and her crewmate Yarg free the captured crew and two additional prisoners, Sir Waverly and Art's mother Emily. Having freed Larklight from the spiders, the protagonists visit Earth, where a gigantic mechanical spider is attacking London (another reference to The War of the Worlds). There, Myrtle takes control of the machine and uses it to kill Mr. Webster, and later re-unites with her family and Jack. The epilogue reveals that the race of white spiders has not been exterminated, but subdued, and that Ptarmigan has been placed in an insane asylum. The Mumby family return to live at Larklight, which they deprive of its otherworldly machinery.
7227104	/m/025wqfc	Red Seas Under Red Skies	Scott Lynch	2007-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Escaping from the attentions of the Bondsmagi, Locke Lamora, the erstwhile Thorn of Camorr, and Jean Tannen have fled their home city. Taking a ship, they arrive in the city state of Tal Verrar, where they are soon planning their most spectacular heist yet: they will take the luxurious gaming house, the Sinspire, for all of its countless riches. No one has ever taken even a single coin from the Sinspire that wasn't won on the tables or in the other games of chance on offer there. Locke and Jean soon find themselves co-opted into an attempt to bring the pirate fleet of the notorious Zamira Drakasha to justice. This is unusual work for thieves who don't know one end of a galley from another. All the while, the Bondsmagi are plotting their revenge against Locke, the one man who has humiliated them and lived.
7231011	/m/025wsgf	Owl Moon	Jane Yolen		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story deals with a father that takes his daughter owling for the first time on a cold winter's night. Along their way, they encounter a Great Horned Owl. While it is not stated which gender the child is, Schoenherr's illustrations gave it away. According to Jane Yolen's website, the daughter is actually Yolen's child, Heidi Stemple. The "Pa" character is based on her husband, an avid outdoorsman and birdwatcher.
7233855	/m/025wv3q	Children of Orpheus		1923	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On an island there lived a solitary family, a father, a mother and a little boy. Once, a man named Johano swam to the island nude, since his ship had sailed off while he was bathing. The parents dressed him and hosted him for a month, during which time he told the boy fables and described continental cities. After he left, the boy ran away from home on a boat. When rescued by a ship, no one could understand his language. In port in Russia, the cook, Ivan, took him to see the city, but got drunk and was arrested, leaving the boy to sleep for several days in a cemetery, where he was found by other parents burying their own dead son. The parents then adopted him. The boy developed great musical talent, and he became a great violin master. In the village Brey, Rika returns home one day to find a baby boy in a box on the table; she calls him Moses. It develops he too is very talented and becomes a violincelloist. In the Prussian city of Prosen a doctor is summoned to aid a dying circus worker. The circus worker dies, but a 16 year old boy with a badly infected knee is discovered in his carriage. The doctor adopts him. He too is very talented and studies the piano. Johano, the man who had visited the family on the island, encounters Ivan, the ship's cook who had been arrested. They learn that the boy from the island is looking for his parents, but has no idea even how to find the island they lived on. They manage to gather money and set off for Russia. On the way they encounter the boy who had been adopted by the doctor, at first confusing him with the boy that they were looking for. Johano arranges for his further study and they continue on their journey. Four years later, in 1914 a concert was arranged in The Hague to which the three masters were invited: the violinist, the violincellist, and the pianist. When they met, they were very shocked, since all three looked identical — even their friends couldn't tell them apart. But they could barely understand each other, as they spoke three different languages. Just then Johano and Ivan appeared, and the detective work began. As it happened, the pianist, former circus boy, had in his possession a diary which had belonged to his mother. Johano recognized the language in the diary as Esperanto, and they began piecing together how the boys had gotten separated. Johano found the father in an insane asylum in The Hague, and they were able to recall him to sanity with their music. Apparently, he too was a famous violincellist. He and their mother had spoken Czech and Esperanto together. The mother and Rika were also found alive. Johano got the boys to learn Esperanto so that they could understand each other. In the end they all left for the island, because the first boy wanted to meet with his adoptive parents. There they said goodbye to Johano, who it turned out, wasn't human at all, but a supernatural being, who had come to protect the three boys, children of Orpheus.
7234900	/m/025wvnm	Stormbreaker: The Graphic Novel	Antony Johnston			 The story starts off with Alex Rider at Brookland School, where he gives a speech about his family, but not much of it, claiming he didn't know his parents, since they died when he was small. He currently lives with his Uncle, Ian Rider, but he's rarely at home either. Mostly, Alex lives with his best friend, Jack Starbright, who is also a housekeeper, there for Alex while Ian is always away on business. Alex also makes a claim that his uncle is a bank supervisor and is in charge of customer care, currently at a conference in Cornwall, unaware that Ian's true occupation is a spy, working for the Special Operations Division of MI6. After the school day is over, and after having a talk with Sabina Pleasure about going out on the weekend, Alex's uncle rings Alex and after they engage in a short, simple conversation about how things are, a helicopter approaches the Rider car, and one of the antagonists of the story, Yassen Gregorovich, shoots Ian to death while hanging from the chopper. From there on, the novel follows the plot and scenes of the Stormbreaker movie plot, though some scenes are shortened or excised. Some scenes were also altered slightly, including the dematerializing of a fish in the jellyfish tank (it was a barracuda in the graphic novel, but a jellyfish in the film).
7238390	/m/025wycj	Stormrider	David Gemmell	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In northern part of the land lies the Moidart and the city of Eldacre; further north is the location of the Rigante clans. This is the place that the highlanders have been forced to settle in order to remain free. The Moidart's son, Gaise Macon (known by the Rigante soul name of 'Stormrider') is in the Royalist king's army, and serves loyally. An old prophecy, however, is making him a hunted man by the treachourous Lord Winterbourne. Winterbourne is the leader of the Redeemer Knights, a cold-hearted group of killers. When he and the Redeemers were sacking the village of Shelsans, a monk showed him an ancient skull - the skull of Cernunnos. A priest prophesiesed before he was executed that Winterbourne would be killed by the man with the golden eye - who Winterbourne assumes is Gaise Macon. Winterbourne kills the king, then, taking control of the army, attempts several assassinations on Macon, and finally launches a wide-scale invasion on the town the Stormrider is deployed at. Macon holds out due to an early warning from a traitor of Winterbourne's army, but the woman he loved was killed by the invaders. The Moidart's castle at Eldacre is invaded by soldiers of the Pinance who are allied to Winterbourne, and is a longtime rival/ enemy of the Moidart. The Moidart hides in the castle with a few loyal men, kills the Pinancer leaders, and takes control of the Pinance's army. Gaise Macon leads the Eldacre Company back to Eldacre, and the Moidart seeks the Rigante's assistance in the coming invasion by Winterbourne and his Redeemers who still think Stormrider will bring their downfall. Cernunnos sprit forces Winterbourne to hand his skull to the Rigante witch-woman, the Dweller, who passes it on to Stormrider. As Winterbourne's forces close in on Eldacre, a mage in the Moidart's service - who is seeking only profit - communicates with Winterbourne, informing him that the skull of Cernunnos is in his possession. Winterbourne moves around the battlefield and comes to Eldacre himself with a detachment of elite troops. However the loss of the skull has reduced the fighting skills of the Redeemers from their previous levels down to a point where they are easily defeated by the injured Rigante. Winterbourne is stopped as he tries to escape with the skull and in that terrible moment discovers that the man with the golden eye was not Gaise Macon at all. Gaise Macon finally uses the skull, and Cernunnos takes control of him, temporarily giving him god-like powers. He heals and revives both his own wounded or dead troops as well as the enemy's. Finally, as Cernunnos prepares to destroy mankind, he is stopped by Macon's old friend, Mulgrave who shoots a golden bullet into his heart - to save the human race. The Moidart is made the new king.
7243573	/m/025x1mw	The Shadow in the North	Philip Pullman		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book takes place in late 1878, six years after the events of The Ruby in the Smoke. A woman named Miss Walsh walks into the offices of S. Lockhart, Financial Consultant. Miss Walsh tells Sally Lockhart that she lost all of her money in a company called Anglo-Baltic because the company experienced many tragedies, including two ships sinking and one being impounded. Sally swears to get Miss Walsh’s money back. The narrator tells the reader about Sally and how her friend Frederick is in love with her but she does not know if she loves him back. The narrator also introduces Sally’s dog, Chaka. Meanwhile Sally’s friend Jim Taylor helps a magician named Alistair Mackinnon escape two men who have unfavorable intentions toward him. Jim takes Mackinnon to Frederick and his uncle Webster at their photography shop/private investigations office named Garland and Lockhart because Mackinnon says that he is mixed up in a murder. Mackinnon shows Jim, Webster and Fred that he has spiritual abilities (he can see things having to do with an object by touching it) and tells them of a murder he saw by touching a man’s cigar case. Mackinnon believes that the man knows that he knows about the murder, and is terrified for his life. Later that night, Jim and Fred go to a spiritualist séance intending to see if the woman running it, Nellie Budd, is a fraud or is actually a spiritualist. While they are there, Nellie has a vision linking both Mackinnon’s vision and Sally’s investigation. Fred goes to Sally and tells her about it; in turn, she tells him what she knows about the former owner of Anglo-Baltic and now the current owner of a company called North Star named Axel Bellmann. Sally thinks that Mr. Bellman manufactured Anglo-Baltic’s collapse to fund North Star and she believes that he is very vicious. They decide to find out more about him on their own. Mackinnon asks Fred to stay with him during a charity event in case one of the men tries to get him. Fred asks Charles Bertram, a friend of his and a fellow worker at Garland and Lockhart, if he could come with him because Charles is from an aristocratic family and he knows some of the people at the event. At the event, Mackinnon sees a man he recognizes, and Charles finds out that it was Axel Bellmann himself. After Mackinnon sees the man, he disappears, to Fred and Charles’ annoyance. At Sally’s office the next morning, an employee of Axel Bellman named Mr. Windlesham who tries to scare her off investigating his employer. After that meeting, Sally goes to her lawyer, named Mr. Temple, who she tells the whole story to and who tells her to be careful. Axel Bellmann makes a financial deal with a Lord Wytham: if Lord Wytham lets Mr. Bellmann marry his 17 year old daughter named Mary, Mr. Bellman will pay him 400,000 pounds. Fred goes to see Nellie Budd and ask her if she knew anything about her vision. She did not but while he was at her house, Fred learned that she has a sister named Jessie. Sally goes to visit Axel Bellmann; she orders him to pay her the money that Miss Walsh lost but he refuses. Unfortunately for Nellie Budd, Sally drops a business card with Nellie’s name and address on it, and Axel Bellman picks it up. Jim goes to look for Mackinnon and finds that he is residing in a boarding house. This is told to him by Isabel Meredith, a young woman who has a birthmark that disfigures her whole face. Isabel was taking care of Mackinnon when he was in the boarding house. Isabel found a newspaper clipping about a murdered man preserved in ice, the topic of Mackinnon’s vision. Jim also figures out that Isabel is desperately in love with Mackinnon. Charles discovers that Mr. Bellmann and Lady Mary Wytham are getting engaged because one of Charles’ friends told him that they were getting an engagement portrait. Fred, Jim and Charles go to the portrait place, Charles to help and Fred and Jim to investigate. Mr. Bellmann recognizes Fred from the event but Lady Mary distracts Bellman. Jim falls head over heels in love with Lady Mary. Two men go and get Mackinnon’s location from Isabel (they threaten her first). The next day she leaves a note in Garland & Lockhart’s mailbox, which says that Mackinnon is in danger from two men and they know where he is. Sally, Jim and Fred go to keep an eye on things. Sally warns Mackinnon of the danger and he in turn, tells her that his father is Lord Wytham and his mother is Nellie Budd. Fred goes to see Nellie Budd the next day, but he finds out that she has been attacked and knocked unconscious. Mr. Windlesham goes to a hitman and pays him to get rid of Sally. Sally learns that North Star is a weapons company that wants to build a huge "Steam Gun" that shoots thousands of bullets at once. Frederick learns how the steam gun works and discovers that the engineer who designed it was murdered by Mr. Bellmann. Frederick tells Nellie’s sister about Nellie’s injury and learns that Mackinnon is not really Nellie’s son and he learns that Mackinnon is married to a Lady. Fred learns the next day that the lady Mackinnon married was Lady Mary Wytham. Mr. Windlesham’s hitman tries to kill Sally when she is walking Chaka. Unbeknownst to him, the woman he tries to kill is really Isabel and his knife gets stuck in her underclothing. He kills Chaka instead and Sally is devastated. The next day, Sally goes into her office to find it ransacked. Her landlord allowed "police officers" to take her files and Sally is angry at him because he didn’t ask why they were stealing them. The police make fun of her when she asks where her files went. After that, Sally goes to Garland & Lockhart to ask Fred’s help. Fred and Jim manage to get the files back for Sally. After Sally gets her files back, she realizes that the Steam Gun was designed to use against your own population, given that its reliance on railways tracks means that it could never be deployed as an offensive weapon against a military enemy. After Fred tells Jim that Lady Mary is married to Mackinnon, Jim goes to see Lady Mary to tell her goodbye. When Isabel finds out that Mackinnon is married, she is devastated and asks to go away because she thinks that she is bad luck. When Jim comes back from seeing Lady Mary, he brings with him the news that Fred and Jim have to fight to rescue Mackinnon from Mr. Bellman’s men, the same men who beat Nellie Budd up. Jim and Fred cream them and send them to the police, where they will get in trouble with the police. They bring Mackinnon back to Garland & Lockhart, where they keep him. After everyone but Sally and Frederick go to bed, Mr. Windlesham goes to them and pretends that he is on their side. When he is gone, Sally realizes that he was lying. Sally tells Frederick that she loves him and takes him upstairs, whispering, "Not a word - not a word." The two of them sleep together, and afterward Sally lets Frederick ask her to marry him, and agrees. Meanwhile, Mr. Windlesham and Mr. Bellmann plan to burn down Garland & Lockhart. Jim wakes up in time to smell the fire and warn everybody else. They climb out of the window but Jim falls and breaks his leg. Isabel refuses to move. Frederick tries to save her but dies with her. After Fred dies, Sally walks around in a daze. Unknowingly, she takes herself to the North Star headquarters. She gets a hold of herself enough to ask for Mr. Bellmann and to tell him that she is there to see him. Jim Taylor’s leg was broken but he walks to Mackinnon’s place on it. Jim forces Mackinnon to see where Sally is using his psychic powers and then drags him to the North Star headquarters. Mr. Bellmann tells Sally that he wants power and he believes that the Steam Gun could give it to him, claiming that the sheer horror of the weapon will ensure peace. He then asks her to marry him. At that point, Mackinnon comes in, plainly terrified, to bring Sally to Jim. Sally agrees to marry Mr. Bellmann, but he has to give Mackinnon the money for Sally’s client. Mackinnon takes the money out to Jim and Jim correctly realizes that Sally is up to something. At Sally’s request, Mr. Bellmann takes her to see the Steam Gun, which Sally promptly sets off, mockingly informing Bellman that he still fails to understand people, and she only went along with the proposal to regain the money for her client. Jim gets Sally out of what is left of the area around the Steam Gun, but Mr. Bellmann dies. Sally was hardly hurt by the Steam Gun. She brings the money to Miss Walsh, who goes to invest it in Garland & Lockhart. Jim’s leg was badly hurt during his rescue of Sally and he walks with a limp the rest of his life. In the spring of the next year, Charles, Webster, Jim and Sally go find new premises for Garland & Lockhart. They find a beautiful house and Charles gives to Sally a picture that he had taken of Fred before he died. After this, Sally decides to tell all of them that she is pregnant with Fred’s child.
7243594	/m/025x1p7	The Tiger in the Well	Philip Pullman		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book takes place in the autumn of 1881. Sally Lockhart has a daughter named Harriet, a nurse named Sarah-Jane and a cook named Ellie. Her friends Webster, Jim and Charles are in South America taking pictures. One day a divorce affidavit arrives at the house. Sally, who has never been married, is confused that a customs officer named Arthur Parrish claims he is her husband and Harriet’s father. The affidavit says that Harriet’s “father” wants custody of her. She takes it to her lawyer and gets no sympathy from him; she is only a woman after all and has no power, with the lawyer preferring to focus on the charges Parrish has used to try and claim custody of Harriet rather than whether or not Sally was actually married to him in the first place. The scene shifts to Russian Jews getting off a boat entering England. A German Socialist journalist named Jacob Liebermann goes to the League of the Democratic Socialist Association. He meets Dan Goldberg, another Socialist journalist like himself, and Jacob tells Dan about a paralyzed man called the Tzaddik who is manipulating things so the Jewish people are hurt economically and physically. He also mentions the name Parrish, which Dan recognizes, as being involved. The next day, Sally tells her friend and employee Margaret Haddow everything that has happened. Margaret goes to Parrish’s office and tries to spy on him, but he realizes that she is an employee of Sally’s and tells her so. Sally goes to the church where she supposedly married Parrish and finds an intact record of their wedding. She also finds that the priest that supposedly married them is now retired under a cloud of suspicion. Sally decides to write to Harriet’s aunt Rosa, who is married to a clergyman, so she can find out more about the priest. Meanwhile, Dan Goldberg has arranged for an employee of Parrish to be robbed. Dan looks at a notebook that was stolen from that employee and learns about the case against Sally. The next day, Sally has an argument with her lawyer on how much he is contributing to her case. After that, Sally goes out and buys a revolver. That night, someone comes into her house and takes Harriet’s teddy bear. Soon, Sally goes to ask Parrish’s neighbors about him but they shut their doors to her. She finds out that the same priest that “married” the pair of them also recommended Parrish to the vicar of where he lives now. Sally goes home, bewildered, to find Rosa there waiting for her. They discuss the case and realize that Parrish wants Harriet and that Parrish has forged everything so he can have her. Parrish and Sally have meetings with their lawyers, leaving the former satisfied and the latter angry. On Sally’s way home, one of Goldberg’s employees tries to talk to her but she thinks that he is one of Parrish’s men and threatens to shoot him. Over the weekend, she goes to Rosa’s house and she and her husband Nicholas Bedwell promise to do all they can. Sally goes to a meeting with her barrister and he is very rude to her and tells her that there is no chance of winning, having not even read the papers in sufficient depth to determine that the child involved is a girl. In the courtroom, the case is over before it is begun because Sally does not show up. Custody of Harriet and all of Sally’s money shifts over to Arthur Parrish. Sally plans to hide and fight back. She and Harriet change from their first boarding house in a day because of a disagreement with the landlady. Mr. Parrish steals all of Sally’s money from her bank account without her knowledge and then hires an inquiry agent to find Sally. The inquiry agent goes to Sally’s office and discovers a letter sent by Sally from her current boarding house. Margaret realizes that he knows and sends a message for Sally to leave. Sally has to find another place for shelter but she can’t find one right away. She has to sell her father’s watch for only a few extra coins. Sally finally takes refuge on a park bench but a man named Morris Katz tells her to come with him to somewhere safe. The safe place ends up being a Social Mission. Sally volunteers to work for their shelter. We see the Tzaddik and his servant Michelet arrive at their home in Spitalfields, London. The Tzaddik is told about Sally’s case and he says that it is excellent that she lost. The next morning, Sally sees many social problems when she is working for the Mission. Morris Katz comes back and takes Sally to Soho where she meets Dan Goldberg. Goldberg tells Sally that Parrish is a criminal, involved with many scams including prostitution houses and exploitation of Jewish people. He also tells her about the Tzaddik and she realizes that the Tzaddik is the one who wants Harriet. The Tzaddik blackmails a police officer to arrest Dan Goldberg and find Sally Lockhart. Soon, Sally gets three letters: one from Sarah-Jane, one from Nicholas Bedwell and one from Daniel Goldberg, who had brought them all. Sarah-Jane says that policemen have been searching the house, Nicholas tells Sally that he found the priest that she was looking for, and Goldberg says that he was sorry to have missed Sally. Sally follows up on Nicholas’s lead and finds the priest right where Nicholas said he was. Sally interrogates the priest but he shuts her out. Another priest tells Sally that he has noticed that the priest that married Parrish and Sally is addicted to opium, providing obvious blackmail opportunity that Sally's unknown enemies could use to make him work for them. The next day, Margaret informs Sally that she has found a wonderful lawyer, Mr. Wentworth, by chance. Sally wants to know if he can take on her case and Margaret tells her that she has to come out of hiding first. Before Sally can reply, Goldberg comes and requests her assistance in rescuing a girl named Rebecca Meyer who knows things about the Tzaddik from being forced to go to a prostitution house. She does so successfully. They go to the Katz’s house where Morris, his wife and his daughter Leah are waiting. Rebecca says that Dutch seems to be the Tzaddik’s native language, he tortures his servants, he needs a monkey to help him and he uses whistles to control mobs, forcing them to attack Jewish homes and businesses in Russia. She used to be friends with one of the maidservants before the maidservant disappeared which is how she knows. Suddenly, police raid the Katz’s looking for Goldberg, who is not there. They say that Goldberg is a murderer but when they leave, Katz explains that countries other than England make up false charges when the real charges have to do with politics. Rebecca has brought a label from the Tzaddik’s luggage all the way from Russia. The label belongs to a Mr. Lee and Sally realizes that it is all linked to her. She decides to find Mr. Wentworth to ask him if he will be Goldberg’s lawyer. Mr. Wentworth agrees but he is not sure what will happen to Sally if she continues to hide from the police. Sally has a plan. She chops off her hair and goes to the Katz’s again. She takes Harriet this time, having previously left her at the mission. The three women at the Katz’s dye Sally’s hair with henna. Sally says goodbye to Harriet and goes to infiltrate the Tzaddik’s house. Sally becomes a maid in the Tzaddik’s house. She learns the order of things, the two sets of servants, the servers and the Tzaddik’s personal servants. Later, she meets Michelet, the Tzaddik’s valet who hits on her immediately. She learns that the Tzaddik has a monkey that waits on him hand and foot. Meanwhile, Margaret meets with Mr. Wentworth who is starting to realize all of the odds are against Sally. Sarah-Jane comes in and tells Margaret that they have been kicked out of their house. Mr. Katz’s apprentice tells Goldberg what Sally is doing. Late at night, Sally eavesdrops on the Tzaddik’s secretary and Michelet fighting over how Harriet would be trained to replace the monkey that currently does a lot for the Tzaddik. Sally is understandably horrified. She goes back to her room but Michelet is waiting for her there. She lies and says that she didn’t hear anything but Michelet is not sure. The next morning, Mr. Parrish visits the Tzaddik. Sally tries to eavesdrop but hears nothing. Goldberg holds a meeting to solve some of the injustices being caused against the Jews. Among the people in the meeting is a gang leader named Kid Mendel who helps Goldberg keep order. Parrish finds out where Harriet is as he spreads nasty rumors about the Jews. Goldberg plans to keep a watch on Harriet and Sally but before he is done, Parrish has stolen Harriet. Goldberg gets four groups out looking for Harriet. Sally confronts the Tzaddik and realizes that the Tzaddik is really Ah Ling, who she last confronted and shot over a decade ago; she caused his paralysis when her shot went through his spine. Sally tries to kill him again but she fails. She is taken to the cellar in the darkness but not before she steals a page from a ledger showing the illegal activities going on. Goldberg finds the house where Harriet is and takes a gang of teens in to get her out. They succeed, albeit one of the teens, a girl named Bridie, becomes unconscious and Dan is left behind with a bullet in his arm. Parrish has a lot of explaining to do to the police officer that covers the incident, because he is the one who shot Goldberg. Goldberg is taken into custody. One of Goldberg’s other watch-groups asks the Tzaddik’s secretary where Harriet is and he realizes that they don’t know. He reports this to the Tzaddik and they call the police. Then the Tzaddik and Michelet go down to the cellar to see Sally. Meanwhile, two boys spring Goldberg out of the van where he is being taken to jail in and the bullet in his arm is taken out. He tells the boys who freed him to go find Harriet. Sally interrogates the Tzaddik when he comes to see her, even though she is in no position to. She then lectures him about evil. The Tzaddik then tells Sally that Parrish has Harriet. Suddenly, a flood breaks through the cellar wall. Michelet drowns instantly but Sally, for reasons unknown to herself, tries to save the Tzaddik while the house collapses. Dan is stopping a riot when the police catch up with him. Before he is taken away, he is told that the Tzaddik’s house just collapsed. The Tzaddik tells Sally a story about when a tiger was stuck in a village’s well. They prayed to their gods for rain and the rain drowned the tiger. The Tzaddik is reminded of that story by the current situation but he doesn't say which of them is the tiger in the present situation. Suddenly, the Tzaddik convulses and dies. The gang with Harriet and the unconscious Bridie stops in a place for a while. Bridie wakes up and takes care of Harriet until the owner of the place tells them to leave. The owner realizes that Harriet doesn’t belong with them so he tells a policeman. The other two boys get to the same place that Harriet and her entourage just left, so they are arrested for baby stealing. Sarah-Jane is standing outside of their house when Jim arrives. She explains everything that is going on to him and he starts to go to the house. Kid Mendel stops him and offers his help and his side of the story. Jim takes the advice and they go in the house and start throwing Mr. Parrish’s stuff out the window. When Mr. Parrish tries to stop them, Sarah-Jane drops a chamber pot on his head. Kid Mendel hears that the house where Sally is collapsed so he and Jim go to investigate. Jim arrives just in time to see Sally rescued from the ruins. She gives him the page from the ledger that she’d hid and asks where Harriet is. She is immediately put in medical care. The two boys are released from jail because they couldn’t charge them with anything. They go to where the other group is and report where Harriet is to be found. Jim goes there as soon as possible and brings Harriet home. Mr. Wentworth wins Sally’s appeal with all of the new evidence. Sally decides that she wants to marry Dan Goldberg as she considers him to be her equal.
7243607	/m/025x1q8	The Tin Princess	Philip Pullman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sixteen-year-old Becky is about to have her life changed. A dramatic explosion is only the start of her incredible adventure. As maid to the cockney Crown Princess (Adelaide of The Ruby in the Smoke, whose fortunes have greatly changed) of Razkavia, a tiny kingdom in Europe, she is plunged into a turmoil of murder and intrigue.
7243917	/m/025x20y	The Cone Gatherers		1955	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Two brothers, Calum (a simple-minded hunchback) and Neil, are working in the forest of a Scottish country house during five autumn days (Thursday to Monday) in 1943, gathering cones that will replenish the forest which is to be cut down for the war effort. The harmony of their life together is shadowed by the obsessive hatred of Duror, the gamekeeper, who since childhood has disliked anything he finds "mis-shapen". We also learn that because of his wife's illness where she lies in her bed all day growing larger, he relates Calum in the sense of his deformity and thus conveys a reason why he grew so much resentment towards him. Lady Runcie-Campbell, the aristocratic landowner, dislikes having the two brothers on the estate, and tries to avoid communicating with them. She is embarrassed by her son, Roderick, who is friendly and welcoming to the brothers. The obsession Duror has for the brothers grows stronger, leading to the climax, when Lady Runcie-Campbell discovers Calum hanging dead from a tree, having been shot by Duror, who subsequently shoots himself.
7246005	/m/025x40x	Hardcore History				 The book follows the history of ECW from its start in 1991 under the banner Tri-State Wrestling Alliance with owner Joel Goodhart. To being sold to partner and then announcer Tod Gordon. Gordon then renamed the company Eastern Championship Wrestling. It goes into detail of the impact of the early competitors like "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert. Then it shows how the selling of Eastern Championship Wrestling to Paul Heyman would later change the world of wrestling forever. Under Heyman, Eastern Championship Wrestling would be renamed to Extreme Championship Wrestling. From there the book shows on how Heyman would focus on not a cartoon like wrestling show that was being shown be the other 2 promotions WWF and WCW, to a darker more adult orientated wrestling show. The book talks about ECW's first PPV Barely Legal. And goes into a full recap of a wrestling match that went wrong called the Mass Transit incident. The book ends with how ECW went bankrupt in the late 1990s and early 2000. From being pushed off of TNN for Monday Night Raw, to losing all of its top talent to WWF and WCW. In 2007, the paperback version of the book was released with an updated chapter on WWE's revival of the ECW brand in 2006 and how it was met by fans.
7248326	/m/025x5zg	Sam, Bangs, and Moonshine	Evaline Ness		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Samantha (usually called Sam) is a motherless child of a fisherman. To keep herself busy, she pretends that her mother is a mermaid and that Bangs, her cat, can talk to her. Sam also claims to have a pet kangaroo. She prefers her fantasies to reality; but her father calls her tales "moonshine" and warns Sam that moonshine will one day lead her into great trouble. Little neighbor Thomas eagerly believes every word Sam says. One day Sam tells the pleading boy of a not-too-distant cove where he can find her mermaid mother. Bangs follows Thomas on a journey to the cove; but, unfortunately, they are caught up in a seastorm and lost. At home, Sam becomes very frightened when Thomas and the cat don't return, and she tearfully asks her father for help. Luckily, Thomas is found alive (Bangs is later found safe as well), but the boy is now ill. Sam finally understands the importance of telling people about things that are real, as opposed to things that are moonshine. Sam apologizes to the sick little boy (who, the readers can safely presume, will make a complete recovery), and cheers Thomas up by showing him something that is both real and fantastical.
7258407	/m/025xgxh	Phoenix	Steven Brust	1990-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 During an unusual attempt on his life, Vlad prays to his goddess Verra for aid and surprisingly receives it. As payment, Verra requests that Vlad kill the King of Greenaere, an island kingdom off the coast of the Empire, where magic does not work. Vlad agrees and sails to Greenaere, where he completes the assassination without difficulty. Fleeing the island, however, proves more difficult. After fighting off some guards, an injured Vlad stumbles upon a drummer in the forest named Aibynn who tends his wounds and tries to cover for him when more guards arrive. Vlad faints from Aibynn's dreamgrass and reveals his hidden location, causing the guards to arrest both of them. In prison, Vlad talks with Aibynn, who thinks of nothing but drumming, and waits for an opportunity to escape. Eventually he learns that Loiosh had flown across the ocean to warn their friends. Aliera and Cawti arrive at the prison and free Vlad using elder sorcery, which does not require a link to the Orb. Vlad brings Aibynn along, though he suspects that he might be a spy. Morrolan provides a boat and the group sails away. Back in Adrilankha, Vlad is still stuck between the Jhereg Organization and his wife's group of Easterner and Teckla revolutionists. Vlad's superior warns him that members of the Council are displeased with the situation. Matters worsen when Greenaere declares war on the Empire and press gangs begin forcibly recruiting Easterners. A watchtower in South Adrilankha is destroyed, and most of the high-ranking revolutionists are arrested, including Cawti. Vlad suspects that the Jhereg are involved in the arrest. After threatening the Jhereg representative at the Capital, Vlad pursues Boralinoi, the Council member whose territory includes Vlad's and South Adrilankha. Boralinoi confirms that he framed the revolutionists and a fight breaks out in his office. Vlad escapes, but knows that the council will be targeting him for assassination. He is summoned before the Empress and convinces her to have Cawti released. On the palace steps, Vlad and Cawti acknowledge that Cawti has changed and they no longer love each other. Vlad goes to South Adrilankha to visit his grandfather, whom he calls Noish-pa, at his shop. After a heartfelt conversation about Vlad's growing self-doubt, Noish-pa warns Vlad of an assassin waiting outside the shop. Vlad exits the shop and kills the assassin with the help of Loiosh. As he flees the murder scene, Vlad becomes aware of a menacing charge in the South Adrilankha residents. After Vlad stumbles upon a slain Phoenix Guard, a riot breaks out. Vlad remembers only short flashes of the violence, but mostly avoids taking part in it. He makes his way back to Noish-pa, who has killed several Phoenix Guards but allowed a female soldier to escape. Vlad convinces Noish-pa to teleport with him to safety at Castle Black. At Castle Black, Morrolan tells Vlad that the riot turned into a revolt, including a short siege on the Imperial Palace. Cawti has been arrested again, this time for treason. While angered by the Empire's brutal suppression of the revolt, Vlad is agonized by the inevitable execution Cawti faces. He visits the Empress again and strikes a deal: he will testify to Boralinoi's framing of Cawti before the Orb and single-handedly end the war with Greenaere in exchange for the pardon of Cawti and her the revolutionists. By testifying, Vlad commits the ultimate sin in the Organization, ending his career and branding him for death. Testifying in public, "under the orb," (which can detect falsehoods) is what ultimately sets the Jhereg Council against him. His previous acts of threatening the lives of his immediate superior in the Jhereg, Toronnan, and his boss' boss, Lord Boralinoi, as well as the Jhereg representative at court, Count Soffta, got the Jhereg to put out a (non-Morganti) contract on him but, given the nature of the organization, Vlad would have been "forgiven" had he "won" his war. But nobody gives open evidence about the Jhereg in public, much less in testimony before the Empress, and lives (except, it seems, Vlad). After his testimony, the contract is revised to be executed with a Morganti weapon, which would destroy Vlad's soul forever. Vlad executes his second obligation with the help of his Dragaeran friends. Together they penetrate Greenaere's magic barrier and teleport outside the Greenaere throne room. Vlad negotiates a peace treaty during a tense stand-off, but the new King wants vengeance on the one responsible for ordering his father killed. Vlad knows that this last stipulation is impossible, but sends the treaty to the Empress. Vlad offers himself to the King, but before he can be executed, the Empress has Boralinoi sent back, claiming him to be the mastermind of the assassination. Vlad kills him for the King, satisfying the terms of the peace treaty. The King still orders Vlad to be killed, but he escapes with the help of his friends. Aibynn begins drumming and inadvertently contacts Verra, who rescues the group. The Empress frees all the revolutionists and honors Vlad with the title of Count Szurke. He gives his primary businesses to his loyal lieutenant, Kragar, and all his South Adrilankha interests to Cawti. He convinces Noish-pa to live in his new county. After these arrangements, Vlad flees Adrilankha to avoid Jhereg vengeance. As he sets out, he wonders what his new life will have in store for him.
7258437	/m/025xgyw	Taltos	Steven Brust	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story follows three separate timelines that ultimately come together by the end of the book. The first timeline begins each chapter and features Vlad performing an extremely complicated ritual of witchcraft. Vlad actually begins this ritual towards the end of the third timeline. The second timeline charts the details of Vlad's development through childhood. Much of it overlaps with parts of Jhereg and Yendi, but goes into more detail. Vlad was born in Adrilankha, the capital city of the Dragaeran Empire. As an Easterner, Vlad is held in scorn by the larger, stronger, longer-lived, and generally more powerful Dragaerans. His father, a restaurateur, also believes that Dragaeran culture is superior to Eastern culture. He attempts to teach Vlad to feel the same and purchases at great cost a title from the House of the Jhereg, making the family technically citizens of the Empire. Vlad is regularly abused by gangs of young Orca, and learns to hate Dragaerans for the scorn they show him. Vlad spends more time with his grandfather, an actual native of the Eastern Kingdoms, who teaches Vlad about Eastern culture. Vlad learns to prefer Eastern fencing to Dragaeran swordsmanship, and Eastern witchcraft to Dragaeran sorcery. As he grows, Vlad begins defending himself from Dragaerans and learns to enjoy hurting them. After his father dies, Vlad continues to sharpen his skills and gains the friendship of Kiera, a Jhereg thief. Kiera introduces Vlad to a Jhereg business associate, Nielar, and Vlad joins the Organization as a simple enforcer. He is partnered with Kragar, a mild and nondescript former Dragonlord, and quickly establishes himself as a capable enforcer. At the age of seventeen, Vlad completes his first assassination job. Thereafter, Vlad begins to live the high life through a steady stream of jobs. Eventually Vlad receives his first job requiring the use of a Morganti blade, to be used on a Jhereg informant to the Empire. Vlad contemplates his job for a while before deciding to pay off the target's mistress. Despite his aversion to the Morganti weapon, Vlad performs the job and achieves still more renown. After a turf war, Vlad's boss is killed and Vlad receives a new boss, whom Vlad quickly learns to hate. Vlad kills his new boss and takes over his operation. Vlad's new operation runs smoothly for a short time until one of his enforcers, Quion, steals some of his money and flees to Dzur mountain, the home of an infamous and near-legendary sorceress called Sethra Lavode. Vlad must recover the money and kill Quion or he will lose face. This is the beginning of the third timeline. Vlad decides to speak with Sethra's nominal lord, Morrolan, who agrees to bring Vlad to Dzur Mountain. There, Vlad meets Sethra Lavode, standing over the corpse of Quion. Vlad learns that Quion's theft was manipulated to orchestrate a meeting between Vlad, Sethra, and Morrolan. Angered by the manipulation, Vlad comes close to fighting both Sethra and Morrolan, but Sethra shockingly apologizes for her tactics and tempers cool. She further explains that she wants Vlad to steal a specific staff from the lair of a powerful Athyra wizard, Loraan, because only an Easterner can slip through Loraan's wards. He takes the job. Vlad slips into the wizard's lair without much difficulty, only to discover that Loraan is working late. Morrolan appears and enters magical combat with Loraan and his guards. During the struggle, Vlad finds the staff and uses another of Loraan's artifacts, a magical length of gold chain, to destroy its protective enchantments. Loraan launches a blast at Vlad, but the chain absorbs this spell as well. As Loraan turns his attention back to Morrolan, Vlad stabs him in the back. Morrolan and Vlad flee back to Dzur Mountain. There, Sethra and Morrolan inform Vlad that the staff they stole contains the soul of Aliera, Morrolan's cousin, who was trapped in the staff's jewel during Adron's Disaster. They ask Vlad to journey into the Paths of the Dead and rescue her soul from the Lords of Judgment. Vlad agrees on the vindictive condition that Morrolan accompany him, knowing that Morrolan is even less likely to escape than himself. Morrolan and Vlad journey to Deathsgate Falls, where Dragaeran corpses are sent for burial. After rappelling down, they enter the Paths of the Dead, a labyrinth that all Dragaeran souls must navigate as a test before entering the Hall of Judgment. Morrolan and Vlad are challenged to a series of duels by twelve dead Dragonlords, but after Vlad tosses a dagger at one of them, they attack en masse. Vlad and Morrolan manage to kill them all, and continue through a number of other tests. They eventually reach the Lords of Judgment, who judge the fates of all Dragaeran souls that enter the Hall. Arguing that Aliera is the Dragon Heir, Morrolan successfully frees Aliera. Vlad and Aliera are cleared to leave the Halls, but not Morrolan. Aliera refuses to leave without Morrolan and goes to talk with the soul of Kieron the Conqueror, the founder of the Empire and her distant relative. She receives his greatsword after a hostile exchange, but the group is no closer to escaping. Vlad conceives of a plan and begins to perform the complex ritual of the first timeline. If the ritual fails, Vlad could go insane, or become too tired to leave the Halls himself. Through the ritual, he summons a vial of fluid given to him by Kiera in his youth, which Morrolan injects into his own veins. The fluid is the blood of a god, which allows Morrolan to resist the effects of the Halls. The three escape and return to Dzur Mountain. Sethra, Morrolan, and Aliera all express their debt to Vlad.
7258533	/m/025xh0m	Orca	Steven Brust	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kiera the Thief sends a letter to Vlad's estranged wife Cawti, offering to meet and tell her of Vlad's most recent adventures. In return for not telling Vlad some of Cawti's secrets, Kiera insists on making some omissions from her story. The rest of the novel is Kiera's story, seemingly without the omissions she makes to Cawti. Vlad contacts Kiera from the city of Northport and asks her a favor: break into the mansion of the late Orca businessman Fyres and take any documents she can find. She agrees if he will explain why. He tells her that he went to Northport to find a healer for Savn, a Teckla boy whose mind was damaged during the events of Athyra. A local healer, whom Vlad calls "Mother" because he cannot pronounce her name, agrees to help Savn if Vlad will help fix her problem: she's being evicted from her cottage. Vlad navigates through a labyrinth of business records to discover that Mother's land is ultimately owned by Fyres, who only a week ago died on his yacht. Kiera agrees to help Vlad and performs the burglary. She then goes to her local Jhereg contact in the Organization, Stony, and pumps him for information. He tells her that Fyres's empire was an illusion of loans and deception. Further, his death has devastated a number of businesses, banks, and even some Jhereg crime syndicates, causing most to fold. The closing of banks has ruined many private citizens, including Mother. Vlad becomes suspicious of the quick Imperial investigating that judged Fyres's death an accident. He disguises himself as a Dragaeran and begins questioning Fyres's relatives and the Imperial investigators. He quickly determines that a cover-up is underway by at least one covert Imperial agency. Kiera conducts several burglaries and determines that the Empire's Minister of the Treasury is also involved. During these investigations, Mother makes progress with Savn, who begins to respond more to people around him. Vlad and Kiera's investigations bring them notice from the conspirators, including Vonnith, who was responsible for closing Mother's bank. With Vonnith's help, Vlad is ambushed by Stony, who has learned Vlad's true identity as an infamous fugitive from the Jhereg Organization's assassins. With the help of Loiosh, Vlad kills Stony and escapes. Vlad and Kiera use these events to put the pieces into place: Fyres was assassinated by the Jhereg out of revenge, and his death has allowed a small group of conspirators to profit greatly while the government covers up the assassination to maintain the financial stability of the entire Empire. Vlad lays out the scope of the conspiracy before one of the Imperial agents, whose boss had been killed by one of the conspirators. In return for Vlad killing the architect of her boss's assassination, the agent agrees to get the deed to Mother's house from Vonnith. With those exceptions, the conspiracy will be allowed to succeed. Jhereg loans will protect most citizens from total bankruptcy, and the market will survive. With everything sorted out, Kiera confronts Vlad about several of his actions during the course of the investigation and Vlad admits that he knows a secret about Kiera. Citing several instances when Kiera's speaking patterns changed and she displayed more knowledge of arcane military history than would be expected, Vlad reveals that Kiera is in fact an alternate identity of Sethra Lavode, the most powerful sorceress in the world. Kiera admits the truth, but takes comfort in the fact that Vlad, being the only person who knows both Sethra and Kiera, has had the ability to discover her secret. One of Kiera's omissions in her tale to Cawti appears to be this final revelation. Some time after the end of her tale, Kiera sends another letter to Cawti, sending her best wishes. She also compliments Cawti's young child, Vlad Norathar, whose existence is apparently one of Cawti's secrets.
7258956	/m/025xhh2	Dragon	Steven Brust	1998	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot cuts between three timelines. The first timeline follows Vlad's actions at the final battle of a war he has joined. The second follows the events that lead up to the battle. The third marks the events after the battle. Each chapter begins in the first timeline, then switches to the second, while several interludes and the epilogue trace the third. Several weeks after the events of Taltos, the Dragon wizard Baritt is killed. Morrolan then hires Vlad to protect a cache of Morganti weapons in Baritt's home. Vlad sees to the job with the help of a psychic Hawklord named Daymar. When one of the weapons, an unremarkable greatsword, is stolen, Vlad traces the theft to Fornia, an ambitious Dragonlord who neighbors Morrolan's domain. Morrolan is not sure whether the weapon is actually valuable, or if the theft is merely an excuse to start a war, but he resolves to fight Fornia regardless. When Fornia sends a few thugs to intimidate Vlad at his home (a big taboo for Jhereg in the Organization), Vlad recklessly offers his help to Morrolan in the upcoming war. Vlad and Morrolan attend Baritt's funeral service, where they meet Fornia. The two sides square off and Morrolan delivers the necessary insult to start the war. Vlad insults Fornia as well, publicly committing himself to the war. After the conversation, Morrolan deduces that Fornia values the stolen sword for some reason. To learn more, Morrolan takes Vlad to meet a Serioli. The Serioli tells them that the stolen sword might be a Great Weapon, and that Vlad's magical chain, Spellbreaker, is a piece of a Great Weapon as well. Vlad leaves his operation in the hands of his lieutenant, Kragar, and joins Morrolan's army. Morrolan places him in Cropper Company, an elite unit consisting mostly of Dragonlords, which he places in the vanguard so that Vlad will be close to Fornia's base of operations. Vlad mixes with his fellow soldiers and finds that most of them are surprisingly courteous despite their personal distaste for Easterners. Vlad adjusts to military life and has long conversations about soldiering, military philosophy, and the differences between Dragons and Jhereg. During the first battle, Vlad finds that he cannot bring himself to abandon his new comrades as he had planned. Throughout the campaign he fights bravely and takes several wounds, earning the respect of his comrades. He also makes a name for himself by performing a few acts of nighttime sabotage in the enemy camp, which he finds more suited to his skills than pitched combat. The final battle begins, which is the start of the first timeline. Vlad avoids the fighting and infiltrates the enemy base. He openly approaches Fornia and his honor guard, who take him prisoner. Vlad summons Daymar in an effort to mind-read Fornia's plans, but Fornia blocks him. As Morrolan's forces near, one of Vlad's comrades arrives to help him. Fornia becomes distracted and Vlad leads his small band in a charge at Fornia's position. Vlad kills Fornia's main sorcerer while his comrade attacks Fornia and is killed by the Morganti greatsword. Vlad kills Fornia, tosses the greatsword towards Morrolan, and runs. In the third timeline, Vlad has returned home from war. He learns that Sethra the Younger picked up the greatsword and claimed it as spoils of war, but she could not discover any hidden power within it. She has given up and wants to trade the greatsword for the sword of Kieron the Conqueror, which is now owned by Morrolan's cousin Aliera. Vlad reluctantly arranges a meeting at his house, but the meeting quickly turns violent. Vlad summons Morrolan, who crosses Blackwand with Sethra's greatsword. The greatsword shatters, revealing within it the shortsword Pathfinder, a Great Weapon. Sethra is sprawled by the blow, and Aliera uses the opportunity to accept Sethra's original proposal and take Pathfinder for herself.
7260593	/m/025xk0b	Issola	Steven Brust	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Still on the run from the Jhereg Organization, Vlad receives a surprise visit by Lady Teldra, the Issola servant of his friend Morrolan. At an inn, Teldra tells Vlad that Morrolan and his cousin Aliera have gone missing, and requests his help. They teleport to Dzur Mountain and speak with Sethra Lavode, a powerful enchantress. Vlad learns that the disappearance probably has something to do with the Jenoine. Sethra tells Vlad about how the Jenoine came to Dragaera and magically changed it for their own mysterious ends, and how the Dragaerans, Serioli, and gods managed to oust them from the world. The Jenoine have been trying to return ever since, and this could be the first step in the next major offensive. Vlad and Teldra teleport to Morrolan's home, Castle Black, and meet the Necromancer. They use the connection between Vlad's magical chain, Spellbreaker, and Morrolan's Great Weapon, Blackwand, to trace Morrolan's location. Vlad and Teldra then use the magic windows in Morrolan's study to transport there. They discover Morrolan and Aliera chained to the wall of a large, barren room on another plane of existence. Sorcery is not possible there, and the air is hard to breathe. Several Jenoine arrive, but Teldra speaks their language and attempts to engage them in diplomacy. They give her a Morganti dagger and promise to release the four of them if Vlad will assassinate Verra, his own Demon Goddess. Vlad and Teldra transport to Verra's halls and speak with the Demon Goddess. Vlad behaves flippantly during the conversation, but has no intention of attempting to kill his goddess. Teldra smooths over the conversation with her impeccable courtesy, but the pair return to the barren room having accomplished little. Though they have nowhere to go, Vlad frees Morrolan and Aliera from their bonds using his witchcraft. Soon after, a Jenoine arrives and a fight breaks out. Vlad is knocked unconscious and awakes chained to the wall along with Teldra, while Aliera and Morrolan have escaped. Vlad and Teldra idly chat about the nature and necessity of courtesy. Once Vlad has recuperated, he frees them with his witchcraft again. Vlad continues to note that the Jenoine's treatment of them, and their behavior in general, seem to make no sense. Vlad investigates the room and uses Spellbreaker to dispel an illusion concealing an exit. Outside, they find a natural landscape and a stream. Vlad discovers that the stream consists of amorphia, liquid chaos used to power sorcery, rather than water. He is thunderstruck by such a creation. Using half-remembered magic, he solidifies a small portion of amorphia into the usable form of a stone without destroying himself. Vlad and Teldra return to the room and wait until Morrolan and Aliera arrive on their own rescue mission. An unsuccessful escape attempt follows, and afterwards Vlad realizes that his vision has changed somehow: he now sees additional objects in the room that others cannot. Morrolan uses the power of Blackwand to share Vlad's vision with the rest of the group. They identify a large chunk of rock in the middle of the room as trellanstone, the substance from which the Orb was made, and makes sorcery possible. The Jenoine are using immense power through the trellanstone to keep the amorphia stream flowing. Terrified by this discovery, Vlad uses his witchcraft to summon Verra, an extravagant insult. Verra quickly learns the scope of the situation, however, and leads an assault on the Jenoine. Vlad uses his amorphia stone to channel Elder Sorcery. This distracts the Jenoine long enough for the four to escape. Vlad awakes in Dzur mountain with his left arm numb and lifeless. Sethra, Verra, Morrolan, and Aliera puzzle out how the Jenoine acquired so much amorphia. The Imperial Orb is already linked to the Great Sea of Amorphia, so the Jenoine must be tapping the Lesser Sea, which was created during Adron's Disaster, a mishap with Elder Sorcery instigated by Aliera's father. Sethra organizes an impromptu raid on the Lesser Sea to cut off the Jenoine's link. She insists that Vlad accompany them in spite of his dead arm and lack of magical skill, believing that Spellbreaker might again prove useful. Vlad and Teldra accompany Sethra's group of some of the most powerful Dragaerans in the Empire, along with Verra and assortment of gods, to the Lesser Sea. They cut off the Jenoine's link and engage four of them in combat. Vastly outnumbered by Dragaera's most powerful beings, the Jenoine prove more than a match. Vlad and Teldra stay out of the fighting until Morrolan is killed. Teldra suddenly grabs Vlad's Morganti dagger and stabs a Jenoine. The dagger has little effect on the Jenoine, who then uses it to stab Teldra in turn, destroying her soul. Grief-stricken, Vlad attempts to pull the dagger from Teldra's body, but in doing so allows Spellbreaker to contact the weapon. Using unknown power, Vlad intuitively recovers the remnants of Teldra's soul and joins it with the dagger and Spellbreaker to form a new Great Weapon. Vlad uses the dagger to pierce a Jenoine's defenses and kill it, causing a rout in the Jenoine's ranks. Back at Dzur Mountain, Morrolan is revivified. Vlad speaks to Sethra about his new weapon, Godslayer, though Vlad prefers to think of it as Lady Teldra. Vlad feels her soul within the blade and finally understands how she manages to always seem so genuine: she genuinely likes people. He feels her love for him through the weapon, and believes that it might have a positive effect on his personality. The Necromancer offers to teleport Vlad to a destination of his choosing. Vlad realizes that he has much less to fear from the Organization now. He decides to return to Adrilankha and visit Valabar's, his favorite restaurant.
7261888	/m/025xlh2	Wringer	Jerry Spinelli	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Palmer LaRue grew up in a town called Waymer with a yearly tradition of letting pigeons out of a crate and shooting them with shotguns in order to raise money for the city's playground. Ten-year-old boys learn how to pick up the wounded birds that have not yet died and then wring their necks to "put them out of their misery." Palmer refuses to take part in such a horrific ceremony. When pressured by his peers, Henry, Mutto, and Beans, Palmer convinces them that he is one of them so that he will be considered cool by his classmates. Palmer keeps a pigeon named Nipper as a pet while keeping the pigeon's existence a secret. The day of the pigeon shooting comes and Palmer is nervous because he let his friend Dorothy release Nipper. It is then revealed that Nipper had been released near the railroad tracks, where people capture the pigeons and crate them for the shooting. The pigeons are released and Nipper is wounded. One of Palmer's "friends" happens to be at the shooting, and he brings the pigeon back onto the field to be killed by the sharpshooter. Palmer carries Nipper off the field in the midst of gunfire. Palmer realizes how he might have changed this tradition when he hears a kid from the audience tell his father that he wants a pigeon for a pet.
7262573	/m/025xm10	A Corner of the Universe	Ann M. Martin	2002-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The summer of 1960 is a season that the novel's narrator and protagonist, 11-almost-12-year-old Hattie Owen, expects to be as comfortably uneventful as all the others in her small town of tranquil Millerton, PA. She's looking forward to helping her mother run their boarding house with its eccentric adult boarders, painting alongside her father, and reading. Then 21-year-old Uncle Adam, whom Hattie never knew existed, comes to stay with his parents, who are Hattie's grandparents (Nana and Papa), because his "school", an institution for the mentally disabled, has closed down. Soon, various events occur and start to "shake up" the summer Hattie had planned. Both Adam and Hattie get to know each other, but a heartbreaking turn of events leads to everyone-including Hattie-realizing that no one really knew and understood Adam as much as he needed them to.
7265102	/m/025xns0	The Panic of 1819				 During the 19th century it was believed that the Panic originated within the economic system itself, since the event could not be readily attributed to any specific government blunder or disaster as had previous crises. Rothbard suggests instead that the Panic of 1819 grew largely out of the changes wrought by the War of 1812 on the still-fledgling republic, and by the postwar boom that followed. The outbreak of war stifled foreign trade and spurred the growth of domestic manufacturing, which mushroomed to fill the gap left by declining imports and also served to satisfy the nation's appetite for war goods. The war also brought a rash of paper money, as the government borrowed heavily to finance the war. The credit expansion also led to rising prices, as economic theory from the Austrian School—which includes Rothbard—would predict. Austrian theory also predicts the bust that must inevitably follow the non-specie-based credit expansion. Rothbard lays out the events of both bust and boom.
7266618	/m/025xq86	The Wolf Worlds	Allan Cole	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sten, leader of the Mantis Team 13, Empire's covert ops, is on the way back from Eryx Cluster, when his spy ship is ambushed by Janissary cruiser. After crashing on nearby planet, Team 13 is able to overpower Janissars, capture their ship and return home. The Eternal Emperor is not pleased with results of Sten's mission, which confirms existence of very rare mineral in Eryx Cluster. The shortest path to Eryx goes right through Lupus Cluster. Also known as "Wolf Worlds", Lupus Cluster is a home of the cult of Talemein, religious dictatorship, whose military half, Janissars, practice piracy to acquire money and ships, and ruthlessly kill any captives who do not immediately and fervently convert. According to Emperor's analysis, in three years, every "wannabe merchant, miner and explorer" will travel right through Lupus Cluster, where they will be slaughtered en masse by one or other Talamein faction. Emperor will have to send Imperial Guard, which will be a great hit on his public relations, because he gave the worlds to the young soldier Talemein a few thousand years before. Since official action is out of the discussion, the only acceptable solution is unofficial one. Sten receives very simple order: in three years he has to pacify whole Lupus Cluster, by someone who will not shoot at miners when they arrive (i.e. not Janissars). How, it doesn't matter. He can recruit anyone, but no more than one other member from Mantis. Sten took Alex Kilgour, his best friend and former teammember from Mantis. Sten's first action is meeting with "moderate" Talamein, ruled by merchant prince Parral and his prophet Theodomir, and offering them mercenary services and unification of Cluster. They accept, secretly planning to kill Sten when he gets the job done. After that, Sten offers help to Bhor, natives of Lupus Cluster. Bhor are race of knuckle dragging Neanderthals, that, when they're not tearing their competitors in half the long way, they're doing the same to their competitor's bank accounts. Being militant and violent beings, they quickly develop a great friendship with Sten and Alex. Sten then begins his campaign by attacking Janissary military center, followed by multiple distraction attacks. His primary objective is to attack Janissary shipyards. Slightly understrength, Sten accepted help of Mathias, Theodomir's son, who has small group of his followers available. During the attack Parral betrays Sten and orders his ships to retreat, leaving Sten to die on the planet. Luckily, Sten is saved by intervention of Bhor, and he decides to pay Parral a little visit. After Parral's unfortunately demise from the hands of Mathias, Eternal Emperor personally visits Lupus Cluster and declares prophet Theodomir as legitimate ruler, in spite of the fact that Sten warned Mahoney that he needed more time for situation to settle. Day after Emperor left, Mathias murders his own father, falsely accuses Sten and declared holy war against traitors, unbelievers, and "that heretic Emperor". Sten and Alex escapes, but his mercenaries are captured. Sten asks Mahoney to give him back Mantis Team 13, hoping that he can resolve situation. With the help of his team, Sten infiltrates Lupus Cluster capital, where he frees his imprisoned mercenaries and launches an attack. Eventually, Sten captures Mathias, druggs him and forces him to recant and publicly declare peace. The Eternal Emperor is very pleased with Sten's action in Lupus Cluster and promotes him to commander of the Gurkhas, Emperor's personal bodyguards.
7266781	/m/025xqdp	The Court of a Thousand Suns	Allan Cole	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sten is now the commander of the Imperial Gurkhas, personal bodyguards of the Eternal Emperor. However, Sten isn't happy with his new assignment at the Imperial Court, thinking of Court as "boring place full of boring people". When a bomb explosion in a bar kills a local mafia leader, Sten is surprised that Emperor immediately puts him on the case, apparently for no reason. It is up to Sten and a tough female detective Lisa Haines to discover what happened. Sten finds that the bomb was detonated by an amateur who killed target he was supposed to capture, but whoever hired him, was professional. Sten pursues bomberman, who got himself imprisoned on Tahn world, and extracts him. During interrogation Sten discovers alarming news - the man who hired that amateur is a former member of the Mercury Corps. He also discovers codeword "Rashid" that was supposed to identify bomberman's target. The Emperor is visibly startled - "Rashid" is his name when he goes incognito between common people, so the explosion was meant for him. He orders Sten to continue with investigation. Sten eventually finds renegade Mercury agent responsible for whole operation, but he commits suicide to avoid capture. Sten asks his friends (including Alex Kilgore) for help with the follow-up investigation, while Eternal Emperor goes to diplomatic meeting with Tahn delegation. In Emperor's absence, rebels decide to put the cards on the table. Their original plan was to capture Emperor incapacited by explosion and reprogram his brain, so he would follow their orders. Failing that, they put backup plan in motion - assassinate Emperor and Tahn delegation, provoking war between Empire and Tahn. Sten, Alex and Gurkgas are captured and imprisoned by Praetorian guard, whose members side with rebels. Sten is able to escape and with the help of Gurkhas overthrow Praetorian guard. With the only communication equipment sabotaged, he has no choice than travel to the meeting and try to save as much as he can. After many violent gunfights aboard Emperor's flagship, Sten barely saves the Eternal Emperor from assassination attempt. However, he can do nothing about Tahn delegation, whose members were murdered at the beginning of a coup. Tahn take killing their delegation as a provocation and immediately begin preparation for a war.
7266960	/m/025xqkx	Fleet of the Damned	Chris Bunch	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this book Sten goes to flight school to learn the ins-and-outs of space combat and then heads off to the front lines of the impending war with the militaristic Tahn. Being assigned on the planet Cavite to Admiral van Doorman, Sten assumes his command, 4 new tacships (Bulkeley Class) with Alex Kilgour having somehow "assigned" himself (We'll never quite find out exactly how he managed that...). They have a rather interesting time evading van Doorman (who is revealed as more of a social admiral rather than a military one), crewing their tacships with a mix of ex-cops and ex-convicts, and finding ways to get their much needed supplies (with the help of an alien spindar). Eventually, due to events from the previous book, the Empire ends up at war with the Tahn, a war that Sten sees coming but is powerless to prevent. Sten's tacships stop first invasion attempt, but Sten is unable to protect planet indefinitely and eventually loses all his ships (one due to friendly fire, second mysteriously "vanishes", third and fourth are destroyed while defending from second invasion). Sten, Alex and his surviving crew continues in defense of planet as infantry, but eventually situation on Cavite becomes unsustainable and Sten is forced to evacuate all remaining military forces Unfortunately, Tahn fleet intercepts Sten's convoy and he has no choice than attack his numerically superior opponent. When his transports manage to escape, Sten surrenders his heavily damaged ship and both Sten and Alex are captured by Tahn.
7266985	/m/025xqm8	The Quest for Saint Camber	Katherine Kurtz	1986	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot of The Quest for Saint Camber covers a period of approximately three months, from early March to mid-June 1125. The novel begins as Prince Conall Haldane, cousin of King Kelson Haldane, meets with the Deryni adept Tiercel de Claron, a member of the Camberian Council who has been secretly working with Conall to develop the prince's Haldane potential. Meanwhile, Bishop Duncan McLain faces an ecclesiastical tribunal to confirm the legitimacy of the marriage vows he took years before becoming a priest. With the assistance of both Kelson and Duke Alaric Morgan, Duncan convinces Archbishop Thomas Cardiel that his brief marriage was legal, thus confirming the trueborn status of his son, Earl Dhugal MacArdry. A few days later, Kelson, Conall, and Dhugal are all knighted. During the ceremony, Duncan publicly reveals that he is Deryni, an act which causes a great deal of consternation among his fellow bishops. Afterwards, Kelson confesses his growing affection for Princess Rothana of Nur Hallaj, a Deryni religious novice who admits that her love for the king is causing her to doubt her vocation. Although the two make no binding promises, they agree to pursue a deeper commitment when Kelson returns from his summer quest. Their conversation is observed by Conall, whose own attraction for Rothana further fuels his jealousy toward his royal cousin. Conall meets with Tiercel again, but an argument between teacher and pupil results in tragedy when an angry Conall shoves Tiercel down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. Conall pilfers a satchel of drugs from Tiercel's corpse, probes the dead man's mind for additional arcane knowledge, then leaves the body hidden deep within the walls of Rhemuth castle. Shortly thereafter, Kelson embarks on a quest to discover lost relics of Saint Camber, accompanied by Dhugal, Conall, and a small party of companions. After their departure from Rhemuth, Duncan discovers Tiercel's body. After informing Prince Regent Nigel Haldane, Kelson's uncle and Conall's father, Duncan travels to Valoret, where he informs Bishop Denis Arilan, another member of the Camberian Council, of Tiercel's mysterious death. Meanwhile, Kelson and his party are exploring the ruins of the MacRorie family lands near Culdi. While traveling through the steep hills, a deadly accident occurs when a rain-soaked trail collapses and several members of the group fall into the river below. Kelson and Dhugal disappear into the river and are quickly swept underground by the current. Although the surviving members of the group search desperately for the pair, they eventually conclude that Kelson and Dhugal are dead. The survivors of the king's party return to Rhemuth, where they inform Nigel of his nephew's death. Stricken with grief, the new king refuses to be crowned until Kelson's body is found or a year and a day pass. While the court attempts to proceed in the wake of Kelson's death, Duncan travels to Corwyn to inform Morgan of the accident. However, Kelson and Dhugal have both survived the incident, and have been swept underground by the river's current. Although desperate to find a way out of the subterranean cavern, Dhugal must first struggle to keep Kelson alive while attempting to treat the king's injuries. In Rhemuth, Conall begins adjusting to his new role as heir to the throne. He pressures Rothana to marry him, playing on her grief for Kelson to convince her that he will need a Deryni queen as much as Kelson did. At Arilan's urging, Conall then tries to convince his father to accept his responsibilities as the next king. However, during the conversation, Conall accidentally reveals his own knowledge of Tiercel de Claron. Desperate to keep his part in Tiercel's death a secret, Conall lashes out with his magical powers, but he is unable to completely control the energy he unleashes. Although Nigel survives the attack, he is left in a comatose state from which he cannot awaken. With Kelson presumed dead and Nigel incapacitated, Conall is acknowledged as Prince Regent. While Kelson and Dhugal continue to struggle for survival, Conall moves to secure his new position of authority. He finally convinces Rothana to marry him, then allows Morgan, Duncan, and Arilan to perform a ritual designed to activate his Haldane potential. After the ritual, Morgan and Duncan depart Rhemuth, determined to find the bodies of Kelson and Dhugal. The missing king and earl eventually reach a series of underground tombs and slowly work their way through each one. When they finally escape the tombs, they are immediately captured and imprisoned. Dhugal discovers that he has inherited his father's Healing talent and quickly heals both himself and the king. Their captors identify themselves as the Servants of Saint Camber, a semi-religious group who have remained hidden for two centuries. To earn their freedom, Kelson agrees to undergo a ritual trial to prove their worthiness. On the same night that Conall and Rothana are married, Kelson submits to the trial and receives a vision of Saint Camber. Meanwhile, Morgan and Duncan succeed in contacting Dhugal, who waits anxiously for the king's return. The following morning, Kelson emerges from the trial and tells the Servants of his vision, promising to restore Saint Camber to a place of honor in Gwynedd. He and Dhugal are released, and the two later rendezvous with Morgan and Duncan. As all four discuss the recent events, they begin to suspect Conall's treachery. Kelson returns briefly to Valoret, where the Curia of Bishops restores Duncan's priestly status despite his Deryni heritage. Several days later, the royal party uses a Transfer Portal to return to Rhemuth, where Morgan, Duncan, and Dhugal use their combined powers to heal Nigel. Nigel confirms Conall's treason, and the prince is immediately taken prisoner. Before Conall's trial, Rothana informs Kelson that she is carrying Conall's child. Although Kelson still declares his love for her, Rothana refuses to consider marrying Kelson, believing that she is no longer a worthy bride for the King of Gwynedd. During the trial, Conall defiantly admits to all of his crimes, including Tiercel's death and the attack on Nigel. He challenges Kelson to a Duel Arcane, but the king defeats Conall by conjuring a surprisingly powerful image of Saint Camber. Almost two months later, Kelson and Dhugal travel to Corwyn after the birth of Morgan's son and heir. They discuss Conall's execution and Rothana's continuing refusal to marry Kelson, despite their love for each other. While riding along the beach, they encounter a mysterious man who provides them with both a vision of Saint Camber's tomb and an additional clue to aid their ongoing quest.
7267464	/m/025xr43	A Thief of Time	Tony Hillerman	1988	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Ellie Friedman-Bernal is suspected of selling ancient Anasazi pottery on the black market. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee are sent to investigate. Friedman-Bernal's colleagues, Maxie Davis and Randy Elliott, claim to be clueless about her whereabouts. Hailing from a hard-scrabble farm, Davis is an improbable success at the academic game, while East Coast patrician Elliott is more at home as a scholar. Friedman-Bernal's cryptic notes lead Leaphorn and Chee to preacher/fence Slick Nakai and his musician/accomplice Pete Etcitty. Etcitty later turns up dead, along with another pot poacher. Further complicating matters are rich, unsavory collectors Richard DuMont and local rancher Harrison Houk, the last person to see Friedman-Bernal alive.
7267762	/m/025xrfr	Darkwitch Rising	Sara Douglass	2005-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 All of the players are back again, born in medieval London, and with more desire to finish the Troy Game for once and for all. Brutus is reborn as King Charles, Coel as Louis de Silva, Matilda as Queen Catherine, Ecub as Marguerite, Cornelia as Noah Banks, Genvissa as Jane Orr and the hateful Asterion as Weyland Orr. With Genvissa already in his hands with his imp inside her womb, all Weyland needs to do is wait for Noah to come to him as she must, with another imp inside her own womb. Then his plans are to force Jane to teach Noah the arts of Mistress of the Labyrinth, then dispose of Jane however he will. While he is waiting, he is running his own whorehouse. Charles, the rightful heir to the throne of England is exiled to the Scilly Islands, but not entirely. Unknownst to all but his close circle of friends including Louis, Marguerite, Kate, he has a small turf of England. Together, using this small piece of earth, they scry out Noah. Noah makes love to Brutus as a 'healing of the wounds' and they conceive a 'daughter'. That daughter is named Catling - the Troy Game incarnate. As Catling grows in Noah's womb, she traps the imps into her power. Later in the story, Noah Banks returns to Weyland through excruciating pain caused by the imp. At this stage in the story, Catling is already born. Unknownst to her, when she would have died, Weyland came and, unexpectedly, healed her back. Through this pain caused by imps to the two rival women in the past, Jane and Noah both become sisters through shared pain. Much later, Noah falls in love with Weyland and deserts Louis. She is a Darkwitch, the Goddess Eaving and also Mistress of the Labyrinth. Only she, Louis and Weyland combined have the power to finally exterminate the Troy Game for once and for all. But, without Louis by their side, Noah and Weyland fail and so the final part of the Troy Game is written: Druid's Sword.
7269300	/m/025xt5t	The Magic Christian	Terry Southern	1959	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Guy Grand is an eccentric billionaire who spends most of his time playing elaborate practical jokes on people. A big spender, he does not mind losing large sums of money to complete strangers if he can have a good laugh. All his escapades are designed to prove his theory that everyone has their price—it just depends on the amount one is prepared to pay them. One of Grand's favorite pranks is to buy hot dogs from railway station vendors just before the train pulls out, handing them one overly-large bill after another and then demanding his change, as the train begins to move and the vendor has to run to keep up. Grand pays the actor playing a surgeon in a live television soap opera to deviate from the script, comment in drastic terms on the bad quality of the show, and walk off the set. Other actors follow in later weeks, in the same way, until critics begin to praise the show's "bold, innovative comedy" and the viewing audience comes to watch for "the moment" when an actor will break the fourth wall and leave the set. He also has unusual edits inserted into popular movies, and shown irregularly in theaters, disturbing the viewers who notice them. Grand secretly buys a respectable New York advertising agency, installs a pygmy as its president and has him "scurry about the offices like a squirrel and chatter raucously in his native tongue" in front of all the top executive staff and their prominent clients. He then buys a cosmetics company and launches a big promotional campaign for a new shampoo which, as it turns out in the end, has a very detrimental effect on those who use it. A supposedly pheromone-based scent produced by the same company turns out to be a time-release stink bomb, causing wearers to smell horrible some hours after spraying it on. Grand buys a huge downtown vacant lot in a major city. He then has a three foot brick wall built around the perimeter and fills it with feces and offal into which bills of all denominations have been mixed. He then takes pleasure watching immaculately dressed people defiling themselves by braving the stench, and ruining their clothing and dignity, by wading through the muck for the bills. Grand makes a habit of having his chauffeur park illegally in downtown areas, and when being ticketed offering the officer enormous amounts of money to eat the ticket. A newspaper under Grand's control first begins to add foreign language passages and perverse commentary to articles, then changes to reporting simply dry facts, then to printing only hate mail received by subscribers. Grand takes a vacation, showing up to an African safari with three natives carrying an unmounted howitzer, and firing it at game animals. Grand's final adventure takes place on board the S.S. Magic Christian, a remodeled luxury liner catering only to the super-rich. He first arbitrarily rejects several Social Register favorites for passage, sending them into a furor, then the ship's crew treat the selected passengers harshly. Grand himself responds to the requests from notables for passage. One of the best is when an Italian contessa lists her family history and her qualifications, and Grand rejects her by writing, "No Wops" across the top, and returning it to her.Graffiti gradually appear on the walls, and the ship begins to resemble a ghetto, while the captain (actually an actor) insists everyone remain calm—even when it turns out the only food available is potatoes, and the ship turns around and heads back into port at top speed. Grand cuts back on his activities afterward, limiting himself to stunts like buying local grocery stores, marking the prices down to pennies on the dollar (with even bigger discounts for bulk purchases), then watching the store stock empty out within hours as customers burden themselves with more groceries than they will ever use.
7272508	/m/025xx53	Over My Dead Body	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Carla Lovchen and Neya Tormic, two young women from Montenegro, come to Wolfe's office asking his assistance. Miss Tormic has been accused, falsely she says, of the theft of diamonds from the locker room of a fencing studio where she works. She cannot afford Wolfe's large fees, but Miss Tormic has a document showing that Wolfe adopted her when she was an infant, at the time of World War I. Wolfe has not seen her since. Wolfe undertakes to investigate Miss Tormic's predicament, and sends Archie to the fencing studio. At the studio, Archie is gathering information when a body is discovered: that of a British citizen who has just provided Miss Tormic with an alibi for the diamond theft. The body has been pierced by an épée &ndash; but because of the rapier's blunt point, this is thought at first to be an impossibility. After the police arrive, Archie notices that an object has been stashed in the pocket of his topcoat. Concerned that he's being set up, Archie escapes the premises without examining the object. Back at Wolfe's house, the object is found to be a bloodstained fencing glove, in which a col de mort has been wrapped. A col de mort, it turns out, is a sharp metal fitting that can be attached to the end of an épée, so as to turn a relatively safe weapon into a deadly one. Wolfe and Archie conceal the glove and the fitting in a loaf of Italian round, which Fritz covers with chocolate icing and keeps in the refrigerator. Subsequently, the evidence is turned over to Inspector Cramer, who decides that his best chance to solve the murder is to camp out with Wolfe and keep an eye on him. Uncharacteristically, Wolfe makes no objection. A patron of the studio, Madame Zorka, phones Wolfe to tell him that she saw someone conceal the glove in Archie's coat and threatens to inform the police. Archie arranges to pick her up for a conversation with Wolfe, but Zorka's gone missing. Yet another murder ensues, this time of a thinly-disguised Nazi who contributes to Miss Tormic's alibi. After a considerable amount of flailing about, Wolfe manages to get the dramatis personae together in his office where, in the manner that became standard in the series, he exposes the murderer and motive.
7274737	/m/025xydb	The Queen's Fool	Philippa Gregory	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story starts when a nine-year-old Hannah Green sees Thomas Seymour and Elizabeth flirting when she delivers books for her father. When asked why she seems surprised, she tells him she has seen a scaffold behind him. Seymour is executed within a year. Hannah and her father run a book shop on Fleet Street. She and her father left Spain after Hannah's mother was burnt at the stake. On their journey to England, her father dresses Hannah as a boy to protect her. One day, Lord Robert Dudley and John Dee, his tutor, visit the shop. John realises that Hannah has the Sight, after telling them that the Angel Uriel, was walking behind them. Her father denies it, calling Hannah a fool and claiming she is simple. Lord Robert and John Dee, insist on hiring Hannah, begging her as a holy fool to King (Edward VI). The king, on hearing about her gift, asks her what she sees of him. Hannah replies that she sees the gates of heaven opening for him. Amused by her answer, the king accepts Hannah. Though unwilling, Hannah has to accept it and thus begins her life at court. Hannah becomes the Dudley family's vassal, performing tasks and errands for the Dudley family as requested. Lord Robert sends her to spy on Lady Mary, King Edward's heir. She joins Mary's household, seeing a worn-out woman with a sad life. While there, they hear of King Edward's death and the Duke of Northumberland's plans to put his son, Guilford Dudley, and his wife, Lady Jane Grey, on the throne instead, intended to rule them the way he ruled King Edward. Unfortunately the Duke's plans unravel when England declares for Mary so she takes the crown from her late brother, with Hannah by her side. Queen Mary is crowned, making Hannah overjoyed for her mistress but also heartbroken that Robert Dudley is in the Tower of London. The jester Will Sommers, a real historical figure, teaches Hannah how to be an entertaining jester, as her older and more experienced colleague. Meanwhile, her betrothed, Daniel Carpenter, is annoyed that Hannah is in love with someone else. Hannah doesn't have anything against Daniel; she simply doesn't want to marry. She learns to deal with her romantic feelings and worries about Queen Mary's forthcoming marriage to Prince Philip of Spain, an enthusiastic supporter of the Inquisition. Hannah's father, Daniel and his family are concerned that Prince Philip will bring the Inquisition to England and insist on leaving. Daniel and Hannah previously agreed to marry on her 16th birthday but Daniel insists they marry on arriving in Calais, sealing it with a kiss. Hannah realizes that she desires Daniel. When Queen Mary and Prince Philip marry - Hannah's father, Daniel and his family leave England. Hannah initially agrees to go too but changes her mind on seeing Princess Elizabeth going to the Tower of London, promising to join them in Calais when released from service to Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth. Hannah slips back into court life, receiving a letter from Daniel declaring his love but is unsure how she feels about him. Over a year later, Hannah is arrested for heresy and is taken for questioning. Luckily, the clerk is John Dee, her old friend. He gets the charges dropped, dismissing them as servants' gossip, and she returns to court but asks Daniel to come and collect her - no longer feeling safe. Daniel and her father collect her within a week and they sail to Calais. During the night, Hannah and Daniel declare their love for one another. When they arrive in Calais, Hannah starts dressing and behaving like a lady and is instructed in how to run a household by her mother-in-law. She and Daniel marry and live with their family but Hannah struggles to get on with Daniel's mother and sisters. Later, after an argument with her mother-in-law, she discovers Daniel has a son with a Gentile woman living in Calais. Furious, she confronts Daniel, who admits it and tells her that if she forbids it, he will never see the woman or their son again. Hannah cannot forgive him and leaves Daniel, asking her father to move out with her and start their own bookshop. A few months later, Hannah's father dies and Daniel inherits everything but signs it over to Hannah. She runs the printing shop, taking her father's nurse as a lodger but flees when Calais falls to the French. Whilst escaping, she meets Robert Dudley and the mother of her husband's son. She begs Hannah to take her baby just before being killed by a French soldier. Hannah and her stepson flee to England under the protection of Lord Robert, staying with his wife, Amy, and friends of theirs. They suspect that Lord Robert is baby Daniel's father, treating Hannah accordingly, until she tells them that Daniel is her husband's son. Lord Robert is disappointed when Hannah refuses to be his mistress, having realising that Daniel is the love of her life. She returns to court and is welcomed by Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth, performing errands for Mary again. Mary asks her to use her gift to see if Elizabeth will keep England in the true faith but Hannah tells Mary that Elizabeth won't but will be a better queen than she is a woman. When the English prisoners are ransomed by the French, she returns to Calais to find her husband. He is released and promises to accept Hannah's son as his own until she tells that baby Daniel is his illegitimate son. They reunite and live together as a Jewish family - Hannah having come to realise the importance of her religion. Daniel is a member of "The d'Israeli family, who in England go under the name of Carpenter" - hinting that Hannah and Daniel might eventually be among the distant ancestors of the 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who was of Jewish origin.
7278162	/m/025y0rn	Hope Was Here	Joan Bauer	2000	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A teenager named Hope Yancey lives with her aunt, Addie, in Brooklyn, where Addie works as a chef and Hope works as a waitress at "The Blue Box Diner." Hope lives with her aunt because her mother, Deena, (who named her Tulip Yancey, which she disliked so she officially changed her name to Hope when she was twelve) did not consider herself to be a suitable parent. Hope has no idea who her father is and feels that she cannot be whole until she meets him. She has a scrapbook filled with people who she thinks would be her father. Besides the scrapbook, she also has "memory books" from every place that she's been, given that she's moved a lot. Her goal is to be able to pull out all of her memory books when she finally meets her father and give him the play-by-play of her life. When the restaurant Hope and her aunt work at closes down because the owner, Gleason Beal, stole all of the restaurant's money, Addie and Hope decide to move to Mulhoney, a small city in southern Wisconsin, where they will work at a small-town diner. Before leaving her home, Hope writes "Hope was here" on one of the boards on the window. Writing her name somewhere noticeable but not obtrusive is her way of saying goodbye to a place. Hope's new boss, G.T. (Gabriel Thomas) Stoop, is a kind-hearted man, but he has leukemia which keeps him off of his feet at the diner. G.T. decided to run for mayor against the current, very corrupt mayor Eli Millstone. Millstone lets the Real Fresh Dairy company not pay taxes, and in exchange the workers at this company must support his campaign. The current mayor supports a huge company that causes a lot of problems for the townspeople, such as cracking roads and keeping people up at night using illegal routes to the highway. but his political power causes few to run against him. Meanwhile, Addie has been changing the menu at the diner, much to G.T.'s amusement. G.T. then shows interest in dating Addie, who responds positively but brusquely. Encouraged by G.T.'s success, the line cook Eddie Braverman (AKA Braverman), who works at the diner to help support his ill mother, decides to ask Hope out, who initially refuses. Hope is wary of dating Braverman because Deena has always told her to never date the cook. However, after a test date, Hope and Braverman become a couple. Hope also befriends the two other waitresses, Flo and Lou Ellen, and a Russian immigrant, Yuri, who works as a bus boy at the diner. Lou Ellen has a young daughter, Anastasia, who is ill and refuses to eat. G.T. sets up a nursery in his office and lets Lou Ellen bring her daughter to work. Anastasia reminds Hope of herself when she was a baby, so Hope and Braverman decide to help Lou Ellen by watching Anastasia. They finally succeed in getting her to drink from a bottle. Braverman,Hope and a group of students from the area high school form a Students for Stoop organization to support G.T.'s campaign. Because of Braverman's participation, he is attacked and beaten by a group of Millstone's supporters. During his campaign, G.T. discovers that his leukemia is in remission, but Millstone's campaign spreads a rumor that G.T.'s cancer has spread to his brain. The teens, Addie and G.T., along with Brenda, the deputy sheriff, all attempt to spread the truth about G.T., but they are not able to convince the townspeople in time, and G.T. loses the election. A few weeks later, Hope and Braverman are going over the list of voters, and they discover that Millstone rigged the election. G.T. is named the new mayor of Mulhoney and begins many reform programs. G.T. marries Addie and officially adopts Hope. About two years later, G.T.'s leukemia returns and he dies after Hope tells him that she thinks of him as her real father, the one that she was always looking for. Hope and Braverman leave for college, since he can now pay for his tuition thanks to reforms that G.T. started.
7287353	/m/025y87t	The Other Log of Phileas Fogg	Philip José Farmer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 Phileas Fogg is a mysterious British gentleman who lives with his valet Passepartout at No. 7 Saville-Row in Burlington Gardens during the latter half of the 19th century. Unbeknownst to his peers, he is also the immortal foster child of a race of humanoid aliens known as the Eridani. A man of great intellect and affluence, Fogg enters into a wager with a fellow Eridanian citing that he can circumnavigate the globe in exactly eighty days. Although witnesses feel that his claim is little more than the boasting of a rich eccentric, Fogg is in fact undertaking a secret mission on behalf of his Eridanian colleagues. Along with Passepartout, Fogg begins a quest to find a piece of stolen alien technology – a teleportation device that had recently fallen into the hands of the Eridani's rivals, an alien race known as the Capellas. His journey brings him face to face with the infamous sea scourge Captain Nemo, a Capellan agent who is also known in British circles by his nom de guerre – James Moriarty. The two combatants match wits with one another at several key locations, including the mysterious ghost ship known as the Mary Celeste. The journey climaxes with a final battle at Fogg's home in London, mere moments before meeting the deadline required to win his world-spanning wager.
7292230	/m/025ydbx	Earthquake Terror	Peg Kehret		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Palmer family are going on a trip to the Magpie Islands. During their trip, Mrs. Palmer breaks her ankle and has to leave with Mr. Palmer to go to the hospital in Beaverville, California. They make the decision to leave the kids by themselves. Jonathan and Abby are by themselves when Moose, their dog, starts barking frantically, trying to get Jonathan and Abbys' attention. The ground starts rumbling and shaking. It then starts to pour down rain on them. For Abby, the situation was difficult due to her accident when she was two years old, leaving her legs partially paralyzed. She uses her walker during the day, and she usually crawls at night. Jonathan and Abby are frightened, but Jonathan tells Abby to not worry and that everything is going to be all right. Abby is distressed, but she tries to calm herself by singing some songs that she knows. The earthquake stops, but the water is very high and there are trees down. The kids get on trees so they can stay afloat on the river. Jonathan and Abby then go down the river to see if they could get to shore.
7294471	/m/09fdf0	A Riddle of Roses		2000-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/021dfr": "Youth"}	 The story is about an orphan girl named Meryl and her dream of becoming a bard like her mother before her, and the quest she must go on to achieve this goal. She and a Draoi (dro-aw-eye) named Halstatt come together to journey to a great kingdom and drink from a magic cauldron to discover her true destiny.
7295674	/m/025yg_k	Fer-de-Lance	Rex Stout	1934	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Maria Maffei, a family friend of one of his sometime employees Fred Durkin, appeals to Wolfe to locate her missing brother Carlo, a metalworker. Wolfe, affected by the Depression, decides to take the job, although it is unappealing to him. Archie locates Anna Fiore, a girl who listened in on a phone call Carlo received at his boarding-house. Wolfe learns from her that Carlo had clipped a story from a copy of the New York Times about the sudden death (apparently by stroke) of Peter Oliver Barstow, president of Holland College. Before Wolfe makes any more progress, Carlo Maffei is found stabbed in the back in the countryside. His sister says she will pay Wolfe to find his killer, so he keeps working. After consulting with a sports equipment dealer, Wolfe conjectures that Barstow had been murdered, that his own golf club had been the murder weapon, and that Carlo Maffei had been hired to construct it. He further speculates that whoever ordered the weapon killed Maffei to keep him silent.
7296649	/m/025yhnj	Mine				 The novel tells the story of Laura Clayborne, a successful journalist, the wife of a stockbroker and mother-to-be. With her life seemingly falling apart, Laura hopes that her newborn son, David, will make her life everything it ought to be. Mary Terrell, aka Mary Terror, is a survivor of the radical 1960s and a once a member of the fanatical Storm Front Brigade. Mary lives in a hallucinatory world of memories, guns, and above all, murderous rage. After viewing an ad placed in a popular magazine, she becomes convinced that the former leader of the Brigade, Lord Jack, is commanding her to bring him the child she was carrying when her life was suddenly turned upside down. Mary steals Laura's baby and the manhunt is on. With no help at all Laura sets out on a cross-country trip to reclaim that which is hers. But soon Laura realizes that in order to get back her son and her life she may have to become as savage as the woman she's hunting.
7297181	/m/025yhvr	Infidel	Ayaan Hirsi Ali	2007	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Hirsi Ali writes about her youth in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, about her flight to the Netherlands where she applied for political asylum, her university experience in Leiden, her work for the Labour Party, her transfer to the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, her election to Parliament, and the murder of Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the film Submission. The book ends with the controversy regarding her citizenship.
7302007	/m/025yn9l	San Andreas	Alistair MacLean	1984	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The British Merchant Navy hospital ship San Andreas is en route from Murmansk to Halifax, Nova Scotia during World War II. It is forced to change its destination to Aberdeen, Scotland. It belonged to the Liberty Ship class design with large red crosses painted on the sides of its hull, San Andreas should have immunity from attack from all sides in the war and be granted safe passage. The first sign of trouble occurs when the ship's lights mysteriously fail just before a pre-dawn bombing attack that severely damages its superstructure and sinks its escort frigate. With most of the senior officers dead and the captain incapacitated, Bosun Archie McKinnon must take charge of the damaged ship and steer her to safety despite German aircraft, U-boats, stormy Arctic weather and sabotage by an unknown traitor on board. He must also discover the reason for the frantic and repeated German attempts to sink the San Andreas. What follows is a story of violence and mystery.
7310111	/m/025yv18	Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart	Jane Lindskold	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Brought up by intelligent language-using Royal wolves, Firekeeper was found by humans and has yet to learn of human politics, diplomacy and more. Her other name is 'Lady Blysse'. After the three artifacts of magical value are stolen by Queen Valora, things start to go wrong. Princess Sapphire and Prince Shad are almost assassinated at their wedding, and in the ensuing battle between loyal subjects of the monarchs and the assassins, Firekeeper successfully manages to capture one of the assassins. Lady Melina Shield, who longs for the artifacts, has sorcery in her control. As soon as Baron Endbrook from Queen Valora comes to bear her a message, she leaves Citrine, her daughter, as a hostage in his care and goes off after the artifacts. However, she is not interested in them for the good of her kingdom - she is interested because they would give her greater power. Firekeeper returns to her pack of wolves after an urgent summoning, and her friends Lady Elise, Sir Jared and Derian watch over the court, uncovering a plan of treason by Melina Shield. In the end, Firekeeper retrieves the artifacts, but breaks them just in case anybody would use them for evil purposes. Afterwards, Firekeeper, along with the aid of her friends and the newly forming kingdom of Bright Haven, join together to save young Citrine from Baron Endbrook. Unfortunately, by the time they rescue Citrine, she has already gone insane since Baron Endbrook cut the two smallest fingers off her left hand. Other books in the series are as follows # Through Wolf's Eyes (2001) by Jane Lindskold # Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart (2002) by Jane Lindskold # The Dragon of Despair (2003) by Jane Lindskold # Wolf Captured (2004) by Jane Lindskold # Wolf Hunting (2006) by Jane Lindskold # Wolf's Blood (2007) by Jane Lindskold
7310685	/m/025yvgp	DeBono Hats		1985		 Using a variety of approaches within thinking and problem solving allows the issue to be addressed from a variety of angles, thus servicing the needs of all individuals concerned. The thinking hats are useful for learners as they illustrate the need for individuals to address problems from a variety of different angles. They also aid learners as they allow the individual to recognize any deficiencies in the way that they approach problem solving, thus allowing them to rectify such issues. De Bono believed that the key to a successful use of the Six Thinking Hats methodology was the deliberate focusing of the discussion on a particular approach as needed during the meeting or collaboration session. For instance, a meeting may be called to review a particular problem and to develop a solution for the problem. The Six Thinking Hats method could then be used in a sequence to first of all explore the problem, then develop a set of solutions, and to finally choose a solution through critical examination of the solution set. So the meeting may start with everyone assuming the Blue hat to discuss how the meeting will be conducted and to develop the goals and objectives. The discussion may then move to Red hat thinking in order to collect opinions and reactions to the problem. This phase may also be used to develop constraints for the actual solution such as who will be affected by the problem and/or solutions. Next the discussion may move to the (Yellow then) Green hat in order to generate ideas and possible solutions. Next the discussion may move between White hat thinking as part of developing information and Black hat thinking to develop criticisms of the solution set. Because everyone is focused on a particular approach at any one time, the group tends to be more collaborative than if one person is reacting emotionally (Red hat) while another person is trying to be objective (White hat) and still another person is being critical of the points which emerge from the discussion (Black hat).
7312115	/m/025ywh0	The Harrowing of Gwynedd	Katherine Kurtz	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot of The Harrowing of Gwynedd spans seven months, from early January to early August 918. The novel begins as Father Joram MacRorie and his sister, Lady Evaine MacRorie Thuryn, discuss the recent death of their father, Camber MacRorie. As time passes and Camber's body shows no signs of decomposing, they are forced to consider the possibility that their father may not be truly dead. Evaine believes he attempted to work a final spell just before his death, but Joram wonders if Camber may truly be a saint. Throughout Gwynedd, the Deryni attempt to flee to safety as the Regents of young King Alroy Haldane continue their violent suppression of Deryni across the kingdom. Desperate for any slim chance to save even a few of their people, the Camberian Council begins making final preparations for a dangerous deception. They plan to develop a new religious cult, led by their ally Revan, which will preach the possibility of washing away a Deryni's powers through ceremonial baptism. By placing a Deryni Healer who is capable of blocking Deryni powers within the cult, the Council hopes to remove the powers of willing Deryni subjects, thereby protecting them from the wrath of the Regents and the Church. Meanwhile, in Valoret, the king's twin brother and heir, Prince Javan Haldane, strives to maintain the secret lines of communication with his Deryni allies. As Javan's own magical powers continue to grow and develop, he is well aware that the very powers he may need to survive may also result in his quick death if the Regents ever discover them. Nonetheless, he continues to funnel information to the Council and even assists Ansel MacRorie and Tavis O'Neill when they sneak in Valoret to block the faint Deryni powers of Ansel's immediate family. Over the following months, Javan's strengthening powers enable him to mentally probe and influence his squire, his brother, and even Archbishop Hubert MacInnis. To further keep the attention of the Regents away from him, Javan convinces Hubert that he has a growing religious vocation, allowing him greater access to the archbishop's mind. The Royal Court moves from Valoret to Rhemuth, and Revan sets out to start his baptizer cult after finishing his final preparations with the Camberian Council. Evaine and Joram reveal the truth about Camber's supposed death to Dom Queron Kinevan, enlisting his aid in their efforts to restore their father from his limbo state. Evaine succeeds in establishing regular contact with Javan in Rhemuth, but most her time is spent researching ancient Deryni lore with Joram and Queron. By early summer, Revan's baptizer cult is growing in size and popularity. To further convince Hubert that he is genuinely considering a religious life, Javan travels to Valoret to study with the archbishop. After Hubert's brother informs him of Revan's cult, the archbishop and the prince travel to the river to observe Revan's actions for themselves. Although two known Deryni are apparently stripped of their powers before their eyes, Hubert remains skeptical, even after both subjects are tested with merasha. Javan volunteers to submit to the ceremony, and proceeds to do so even after Hubert forbids him to do so. Hubert later has the prince flogged for his disobedience, but Javan once again uses his powers to manipulate Hubert's mind. Gambling that Hubert will not kill him as long as the archbishop believes he is serious about becoming a priest, Javan agrees to take temporary vows as a lay brother, hoping that a religious house will provide the protection and education he will need to survive until he comes of age. After several important breakthroughs and discoveries, Evaine finally feels ready to attempt to free her father. She makes final preparations for the ritual, then briefly visits Javan to provide him with the subconscious knowledge of his magical Haldane heritage. Two days later, as Javan formally makes his vows, Evaine, Joram, and Queron attempt to free Camber from his stasis. In a powerful and mystical ritual, Evaine briefly leaves the mortal plane and communes with several higher beings. She discovers that Camber failed to work his last spell properly, forever trapping him in a state between life and death. Realizing that she must sacrifice herself to free her father, Evaine pours her very life energy into her father's spell, shifting Camber's soul into a state in which he may freely cross the boundaries of life and death. When the process is completed, Queron can only watch helplessly as Evaine's soul departs her dying body.
7312414	/m/025ywp7	Peter Pan in Scarlet	Geraldine McCaughrean	2006-10-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel sees the return of Wendy Darling, her brother John, and adopted brothers Nibs, Slightly, Tootles, the Twins and Curly, who were once Peter Pan's Lost Boys. At the end of Peter and Wendy, Wendy, John, and Michael had brought the Lost Boys home to London where Mr. and Mrs. Darling adopted them. The novel opens with John Darling and his wife denying the vivid, realistic dreams about Neverland that John keeps having, which brings back different relics of his time in Neverland as a child: a cutlass, a pistol, etc. We discover that each of the former Lost Boys and Wendy have also been having similar dreams, and Wendy arrives at the conclusion that bombs from the Great War have punched holes through their world into Neverland and dreams and ideas are filtering through. Wendy tells the former Lost Boys, now known as Old Boys, that they must find a way of returning to Neverland to help Peter Pan return both worlds to normality. The Old Boys search the park for a fairy in order to gain fairy dust, but they have no luck. Wendy once again finds a solution in finding a baby and waiting for it to laugh its first laugh. Once it does, they meet the fairy Fireflyer, a lying fairy who eats non-stop. Fireflyer then tells them of a way to get back to Neverland - they must wear their children's clothing. The plan works well for the most part; Tootles turns into a girl due to the fact he only has daughters, and Slightly, who is single and has no children, wears grown-up clothes, but somehow still becomes a child. Nibs decides not to come at all because he would miss his children too much. Peter has been dreaming of the Darlings as well, and to his consternation they were much too big. When they and their "new" dog finally return to Neverland, claiming to be dreaming of him too, he is indifferent. He does not even notice that Nibs is absent, nor that Michael is dead. He is concerned only with having the best adventure in the world. When the Neverwood catches on fire, Peter and company escape the island by way of the Jolly Roger, renamed the Jolly Peter. While on board, Captain Pan discovers the late Captain Hook's second-best coat. In the pocket, he finds a treasure map of Neverland. Finally noticing the beginnings of an adventure, he immediately plans to head to the mountain of Neverpeak to claim James Hook's treasure. Peter makes a fatal mistake in allowing an adult, the circus master Ravello, to join his crew as butler. Ravello seems very urgent when asking Peter to wear the red coat; he is sure the boy will catch cold without it. But along the journey, Peter grows more and more irritable. He develops a harsh cough, and it seems that whenever he wears the coat he is grouchiest - he banishes the fairy Fireflyer for depleting the food supply, and when he learns Slightly is growing older, he banishes him as well - to the awful Nowhereland, home of all the Long Lost Boys Peter has banished in times past. The band of Explorers is shocked when Peter's speaking becomes littered with sailor terms, and especially when he replaces his customary crow with the word "AVAST"! The hike up Neverpeak is particularly arduous; Ravello offers to detach the children's shadows, so they will not get tangled on the way up. When the band finally reaches the summit of Neverpeak, Peter is impatient to get at the treasure, because he has a feeling that he wants whatever is inside so much. Inside the treasure chest, each child finds what they have been wishing for on the way up (which includes Tinker Bell, who was wished up by Fireflyer), and the group is puzzled to discover Peter wished for Eton treasures. Wendy asks why Peter wants them so; he barely hears her as he admires a silver trophy, when he again catches his reflection. He looks exactly like a young version of Captain Hook, complete with long black hair and Eton tie. Peter is horrified that he is not himself, as Ravello suddenly reveals his true identity as James Hook, who has survived the crocodile. Hook is still extremely resentful of Peter, and reveals that he served as his valet so he could train him; he wanted Peter to have his own exact feelings, which were passed on to the boy through the old pirate coat. Hook explains that since he is grown he can no longer wish, and he knows Peter is the only one who could wish strong enough for the treasures Hook has wanted all his life. So he cut off Peter's shadow so the boy could not fly, combed the imagination out of his hair, and choked him with the white Eton tie. Peter refuses to believe he has become Hook, even though he knows he has been wishing Hook's wishes and even dreaming Hook's dreams. The band is shocked, and Peter is horrified. Hook nearly steals the boy's childhood by asking him what he wants to be when he grows up, when Slightly suddenly appears. Slightly, who has been dogging the band's trail all along, warns Peter not to answer, because if you answer, you have betrayed childhood and "Looked Ahead" to adulthood. Peter feebly banishes Hook to Nowhereland, but to no avail. The league is stuck on the mountain in a blizzard, with no fire and no way to get down. Then the other outcast appears — Fireflyer, who, to impress the newly revived Tinker Bell, plunges into the brush and starts a fire, surviving the process. But Peter, who has cast off the hated coat, has become cold and ill in his flimsy tunic. He falls to the ground in a coughing fit, and is soon taken up dead. Tootles insists they need a doctor, so Curly Looks Ahead, growing up and becoming a doctor. He makes an incision over Peter's chest, and draws out a long dusty strand. It is soon learned the Ravello and Hook's coat have not been the cause of Peter's demise, but a strand of common London fog brought in on the children's clothes. Warmed by the fire and gladdened by Peter's newfound health, the band finds spirit enough to descend the mountain. But the danger is not yet over - Peter is accosted by the banished Long Lost Boys at the foot of the mountain, where he, John, and Wendy are thrown in the quicksand to sink. Luckily, they manage to pull themselves out, but during the interval, Ravello has arrived, with his returned circus animals. The animals are about to devour Peter and the Explorers, when a band of warring fairies descend and smother the animals. Hook is enraged, and vows to fight the weaponless Peter, but Peter is again saved, this time by the dog the children brought along. Hook is attacked by the Newfoundland, and is at the verge of death, when Wendy says all he needs to heal is a bit of sleep. She gives him a goodnight kiss, and tucks the dying man under his tattered red coat. The children manage to escape without harm, and even find a way home with help from Mr. Smee, but Peter remains on the island. He cannot fly anywhere, because his shadow has not yet grown back. Wendy's good-bye words to Peter are, "I think your mother only shut the window to keep out the FOG!" Unknown to Peter, sleep restores Ravello as James Hook. The story ends with Hook recalling the Past and anticipating revenge.
7312895	/m/025yx07	Just Ella	Margaret Haddix		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Fifteen year old Ella Brown of Fridesia is forced into servitude to her stepmother, Lucille, and stepsisters, Corimunde and Griselda, after her father dies. She manages to attend the royal ball by wearing her mother's wedding dress and glass slippers she won in a wager. Although Prince Charming was enamored, Ella ran from the ball at midnight, dropping a slipper. The prince finally found her through the shoe fitting. Now she is living at the palace being prepared for the wedding and life as a princess. For the most part, she finds life at the palace to be dull and laments the fact that noble women have virtually no power whatsoever. She despises Madame Bisset, who is in charge of her training, but makes friends with Mary, a 10- or 11-year-old servant girl, and Jed Reston, who is standing in for his father (who had a stroke) as her history teacher. Jed treats her like a normal person. However, they have a falling out when she thinks that he is using her to try and discover his dream of a camp for refugees of the Sualan war. Increasingly dissatisfied with her life at the palace, she brings up the possibility of breaking the engagement. When she does not back down from her request, she is thrown in the dungeon in an attempt to change her mind. Instead, she digs her way out through the hole that is used as a toilet and makes her way to Jed's refugee camp trying to travel incognito, now a reality. Jed then proposes to her, but she tells him to wait six months, so that she has time to sort things out, and ask again. She works at the camp as a doctor and then camp leader when Jed's father dies and Jed has to return to the castle. He writes from the palace saying that right after her escape the prince's people went straight to Lucille's house and took Corimunde to marry the prince. He also mentions that he does not want his father's position and may escape like she did. The book ends with Ella wondering about her future and the true meaning of beauty.
7312988	/m/025yx1z	Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers				 On 25 October 1946, Popper (then at the London School of Economics), was invited to present a paper entitled "Are There Philosophical Problems?" at a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club, which was chaired by Wittgenstein. The two started arguing vehemently over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles—the position taken by Wittgenstein. In Popper's, and the popular account, Wittgenstein used a fireplace poker to emphasize his points, gesturing with it as the argument grew more heated. When challenged by Wittgenstein to state an example of a moral rule, Popper (later) claimed to have replied "Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers", upon which (according to Popper) Wittgenstein threw down the poker and stormed out. Wittgenstein's Poker collects and characterizes the accounts of the argument, as well as establishing the context of the careers of Popper, Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, also present at the meeting. The book follows three narrative threads, each pivoting off the 1946 confrontation at Cambridge; the first is a documentary investigation into what precisely took place and the controversy over the differing accounts from observers; the second, a comparative personal history of the philosophers, contrasting their origins in Vienna and their differing ascents to philosophical prominence; and thirdly an exploration of the philosophical significance of the disagreement between the two and its relevance for the great debates in the early 20th century concerning the philosophy of language.
7314823	/m/025yxvr	That Summer	Andrew Greig	2000	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is June 1940. Working class Len Westbourne, an inexperienced fighter pilot, falls in love with Stella Gardam, a more worldly radar operator. Stella's friend Maddy is killed in a bombing raid and Len's squadron colleague, Polish pilot Tad, dies in a flying accident. Told in alternate chapters from the perspectives of Len and Stella, That Summer is a love story told against the background of the Battle of Britain. Len is injured when his Hawker Hurricane crashes and goes off to recuperate with Stella in the countryside.
7314998	/m/025yxyh	Getting It	Alex Sanchez	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It is embarrassing enough that Carlos Amoroso is 15 years old and never even kissed a girl, but the object of his desire, Roxy Rodriguez — who is popular and gorgeous — has no idea that Carlos is even alive. After watching a television show about gay guys making over a straight guy, Carlos gets an idea: What if he got a makeover from Sal, the guy at school who everyone thinks is gay? Asking Sal to do him a favor is harder than it seems, because Carlos is worried that if any of his friends see him hanging out with Sal, they will think he is gay too. And in return for making Carlos over, Sal wants help starting a Gay-Straight Alliance at their school—not exactly something Carlos is dying to do. But over the course of the makeover, Carlos learns about life and love, and finally starts to "get it."
7315524	/m/025yy84	Thirteen Bullets	David Wellington		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Thirteen Bullets takes place in Pennsylvania in the year 2003, in a setting similar to the real world, but where vampires and other supernatural forces are rare but accepted phenomena. It is widely believed that vampires were all but wiped out twenty years ago by Special Deputy Jameson Arkeley. The last vampire still in existence, Justinia Malvern, long imprisoned in a nearly abandoned sanitarium, has somehow managed to bestow her vampiric curse to the outside world and is working to free herself of human confinment. Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton is assigned to assist Arkeley hunt down the vampires running loose in rural Pennsylvania.
7315703	/m/025yyc7	The Puppy Sister	S. E. Hinton		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Davidson family adopts Aleasha, a black, white, and tan colored Australian shepherd puppy from a farm. Aleasha loves her new family and really feels happy playing with their young son, Nick though he is not very thrilled about the new dog. One day after returning from the vet's office, Aleasha sees herself in the mirror and realises that she is not an actual human member of the family, but a puppy. She decides to physically transform into a girl(human not dog) so she can fit in better with the Davidsons. Aleasha begins by practicing walking on her hind legs and trying to speak. She eventually manages to walk across the kitchen on two legs, but has trouble forming words due to the still canine shape of her mouth. One day, she surprises Nick by saying his name to him. He also discovers subtle changes in Aleasha's physical appearance—her ears are shorter and her muzzle is shrinking. Nick decides to keep this a secret until a later day. One day, Nick surprises his mother by showing her and Dad Aleasha's new verbal skills. Mom and Dad Davidson are amazed with Aleasha, but accept her changes. In the meantime, they decide to keep Aleasha away from the outside world until she completes her transformation. To cover up for the soon-to-be absent dog, the Davidsons begin telling people that they gave away their puppy and plan to adopt a little girl. They lied to nearly everyone. As time passes, Aleasha begins to struggle with her shift from canine to human. She eats meals with the family, but dislikes eating vegetables (until Mom tricks her by dropping stir-fry ingredients on the floor, knowing Aleasha's dog instincts would cause her to eat the food as it fell). When Aleasha is allowed to go trick or treating on Halloween, disguised as a werewolf like Nick, she gives in to her canine side by howling in fear upon being spooked by a man pretending to be a scarecrow at one house. At the same time, Aleasha is beginning to look like less like a dog and more like a furry child, leaving her in a very awkward halfway point through her transformation. By Christmas, Aleasha begins to gain more human abilities such as color vision. However, she is also no longer able to communicate with the family cat, Miss Kitty, as Aleasha's ears are now more human than animal. By spring(the season) Aleasha has finished her physical change and is now a seven-year-old girl with black hair and yellow-colored eyes. However, she still possesses some canine instinct. At a baseball game with dad and Nick, she catches a foul ball with her teeth. Few physical hints of her past canine form are also apparent—Aleasha will always have pointy teeth and ears, as well as very strong toes. However, she learns that no one ever completes changing throughout life, and also keeps one secret from her family—Aleasha can still smell love.
7318527	/m/025y_w0	Man in the Holocene	Max Frisch	1979	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The 74 year-old Mr. Geiser is bored in his Ticinese house during torrential rains. He is so bored that he tries to make a pagoda out of crispbread and categorizes thunder types into a taxonomy (rolling thunders, banging thunders etc.). His sole companion is his cat as his wife had died not long ago. There is a report of a landslide caused by the deluge, cutting off the valley. Fearing a large slide that would bury the village and man’s knowledge, Geiser reads in his encyclopedia, the Bible, and history books. At first he makes notes and tacks them to the walls; later he cuts paragraphs from the books and tapes them instead, noting sadly that the front sides of the encyclopedia’s pages are visible, but the back sides unfortunately are dissected and destroyed. Despite the weather, he hikes outdoors along diverging paths. While wandering, he notes his physical limits, and the limits of man’s knowledge and importance. He notes man's insignificance and meaninglessness (man's appearance in the Holocene era is a very recent event in evolutionary terms). The old man is exposed to the cycle of life and his mortality. Geiser has to admit that „der Mensch bleibt ein Laie“ (his man stays a rookie). He slowly loses his memory. He wonders if memory was necessary – "the rocks do not need my memory or not". Towards the end, Geiser suffers cerebral apoplexy that attacks his memory.
7319547	/m/025z0_w	To Light a Candle	Mercedes Lackey	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Vestakia, Kellen, Jermayan, and Shalkan return safely to elven lands. Kellen is still very weak from his dealing with the key stone. Before they arrive, Idalia decides she now wants to be with Jermayan because of a war that will eventually start with the Demons and because elf knights will live as long as she will with a war. Vestakia is scared that the elves will hate and try to kill her, but Jermayan promises that he will not let that happen. When they arrive, all the elves demand that Vestakia be removed, but Jermayan, Shalkan and Kellen threaten to leave if she is banned. Idalia uses wild magic and a potion to discover who she is and also heals Kellen. Shalkan tells Kellen not to look at his hands. Kellen has not seen his hands since he touched the key stone. Jermayan has already tried to heal them when Kellen was sleeping and had told him never to take the bandages off. Kellen looks anyway and sees that his hands are completely raw, with bones showing in some places. Idalia, Andoreniel, and the other members of the elf council pay the price to cure Kellen hands in return for what he has done for them. They all go home and get ready for a grand feast for Kellen, Jermayan, Vestakia. Before the feast begins, Idalia confronts Jermayan and tell him she loves him and wants to be with him for the rest of their lives. Jermayan wants to get married, but Idalia is not sure about that. When elves marry they get linked in a special way. Idalia fears that the link will tell Jermayan what she turned into to stop the rain. The feast begins and Kellen notices how beautiful Vestakia is. Even as a demon, the elves managed to make her demonic features less prominent. Idalia takes Vestakia away suddenly. Kellen then remembers he must be chaste and celibate for a year and a day or Shalkan will castrate him, as part of their previous deal. The next day Kellen and Idalia go to the war chamber and start making plans. The elves decided to take all elven children in the Seven Cities to the Elven stronghold. Kellen thinks they should do more, but the elves take their time at everything, including war. Kellen now goes to the House of Sword and Stone, to gain skill in knighthood. Idalia and Jermayan spend time together. Now when she does wild magic she does not ask for a price. She also realizes that the price of controlling the weather was her death. She thinks that there are two reasons why she does not have to pay the price. The first being that she will die soon due to the price, the second being that the price was a test, and she has already passed. Meanwhile back in Armethalieh, Cilarnen Volpiril is a top student high mage. His father is on the council with Lycaelon Tavadon. His father is the mage who recommended changing city limits to the very walls of the city instead of hundreds of miles outward. Cilarnen finds his sister having a party in the yard and sees the lady Amintia, who he falls in love with. Cilarnen asks his father permission to talk to her, but he refuses, saying it will take away from his studies. The elves move prince Sandalon and the other children to the elf fortress of the Crowed Horns escorted by ten elves and unicorns. Ice trolls and other creatures take them. Only one unicorn survives while all the children are kidnapped. The unicorn returns to Sentarshadeen alive and warns them. Kellen, impatient, tells the elves he going to rescue Sandalon. Kellen, Idalia, Jermayan, Vestakia, Shalkan, and six elven knights, whom Kellen befriended while learning to become a knight, leave to go look for the prince. Back in Armethalieh, Cilarnen and his friends are making a magical item to help the shortage of food in Armethalieh due to the recent boundary change resulting in despondent farm-towns surrounding the city. Anigerel pretends to be their friend, but then gives them away to Lycaelon Tardavon, who has been waiting to get Cilaren's father kicked off the council of mages. Cilaren blames his father for giving him ideas, and other children of council members follow suit. Lycaelon adopts Anigerel as he says he has no son after what Kellen did. Anigerel helps Lycaelon get back their lands and cut off all contact with elves and other folk because they will try to warn them of the Endarkened. As they are discussing this an elf from Sentarshadeen comes to tell them of the Endarkened. They do not give him a chance to speak and say if he does not leave they will kill him. They then banish Cilarnen and do the same thing to him as they did to Kellen—send the Outlaw Hunt after him. Once he is outside he meets the elf, who says he will help him escape. Kellen, Idalia, Jermayan, Vestakia, Shalkan and the knights find the place where the children are hidden. Idalia has a cloak that makes people invisible and hides sound and smell and decides to go in and help them. The things that kidnapped them are half-elf half-goblin, made by the Endarkened, which is why they could get into elven lands and help get others in elven lands. She gets all the children out including Sandalon. However Sandalon's nurse Lairamo and Idalia cannot fit under the cloak. Lairamo takes the cloak grudgingly, leaving Idalia, and goes ahead. Idalia tries to be quiet but gets caught and falls off a cliff. Kellen decides he, Jermayan, and Shalkan will wait while Vestakia and the knights lead the children back to Sentarshadeen. Jermayan wants to run in but Kellen tells him to wait. Idalia, barely awake, sends a bat with wild magic to get help. It reaches one of the last dragons Ancaladar, who is happy that he has never found a bond with a wild mage or elf, because when a wild mage bonds with a dragon the person gets inhuman magical power. However, if the mage or elf dies then the dragon dies, which is why he is one of the last dragons. He has been in hiding because the Endarkened want him to join them. He decides since he is a creature of light he must help the wild mage at least, perhaps to the point of bonding. He finds Kellen and the two fight off the elf-goblin hybrids and save Idalia. When he heals her, the wild magic does not ask for a price, which is curious. They all get out and Ancaladar asks if he can go back to Sentarshadden with them. They agree to let him. They meet up with Vestakia and the others. Back in Armethalieh, the elf, Hyandur, helps Cilarnen escape and get outside the lands. On the way they see one of Cilarnen friends dead by the Outlaw Hunt. Cilarnen is in shock, first for what the city has done and second for travelling with an elf. Hyandur and Cilarnen reach Merryville, where Cilarnen is even more upset that he has to stay around centaurs. Hyandur leaves the next morning, abandoning Cilarnen in Merryville to go back to the elves. Cilarnen now has to work and live with the centaurs and is not happy about it. The group safely makes it back to Sentarshadeen. After they arrive Ancaladar wants to bond with Jermayan, making him the first elf mage in thousands of years. Jermayan at first want to decline, but then accepts. The elves decide to get their army and allies to attack the shadow elves. Kellen is upset with this. He thinks the demons are using the shadow elves as a distraction because if they really wanted the children they could have caught them after the heroes rescued them. The elves say that they can't leave this threat in their land. The elves decide to try moving the children to their fortress of crowed horns again. This time Kellen goes with them, while Jermayan and Ancaladar fly them. They reach the fortress safely. Kellen thinks it is great, but it has a weakness the elves do not think of: underground. He notifies master Tyrvin, who is the leader of the fortress. They go back to Sentrashadeen and they must all go to the city of Ondoladeshiron to meet with the rest of the elven troupes and get ready to fight the shadow elves. Kellen rides with the unicorn knights and finds friends with them. While Kellen is there he meets Atroist, another wild mage who lives in the wild lands near where the demons are. Kellen wants him and the other wild mages of the wild lands (there are more wild mages there than any other place because that is were they are needed most) to come help. Atroist does not want to leave the people because the demons would easily kill them. So Kellen comes up with a plan. He wants the elves to allow safe passage for the wild folk through their lands since the folk can go into the wild woods where they will be safe. Atroist agrees and says if the people are safe, all the wild mages will come and fight for them. They have to get permission first and petition the council. The council responds that they will debate it. While Kellen is there he meets the leader of the army, General Redhelwar. While the council debates, the elves go to war against the shadow elves. They go to their first shadow elf village, the place were they held the children. The elf army easily kills them with Vestakia's help. The elves at first are hesitant to kill them, because they are part elf. Kellen still thinks this is a distraction by the demons. Back in Merryville, Cilarnen is adapting to his new life. He likes the people he lives with; Gardner and his daughter Sarlin. He still tells himself these are only centaurs, and someday he will return to Armethalieh, though deep down he loves them and has become friends with them. One day an elf messenger comes and asks the centaur warriors to come to the elven lands and begin preparations for war as soon as possible. They accept, but no one tells Cilarnen why they are going to war. Before they go two wild mages arrive, a human male named Wirance and the first ever Centaur Wildmage named Kardus. Since centaurs can't use magic, Kardus' gift is knowledge. If he wants to know something he can have it answered, but there is a price like regular wild magic. Cilarnen leaves early because he is scared of the wild mages and thinks that they are evil. As he leaves he meets a man who thinks he is Kellen. The man turns into a demon and tries to attack Cilarnen. Cilarnen brings his magic up and blocks the attack. He is shocked that he still has his magic. The demon flies off and heads to the town to attack civilians. Wirance can't stop it and the centaur warriors can't hurt it. Cilarnen returns to see half of the village dead and uses his High Magic to fight and kill the demon. The wild mages are in shock and can't believe simple High Magic defeated it while their Wild magic did nothing. As they mourn the lost ones including Gardner, the wild mages want him to come with them and to tell Kellen about what he did. He agrees and while he leaves, Sarlin kisses him and tells him to come back. Demon Queen Savilla is very angry, wondering why a demon attacked a worthless center village without her approval, and how he died and what killed him. Kardus and Wirance take Cilarnen to elven lands so he can tell Kellen about this. Kellen is promoted for his success in the first battle and now has people at his command, but gives up Shalkan. Vestakia rides Ancaladar and finds the next shadow elf village. Near the elf city of Ysterialpoerin is a bigger cave system that has two entrances. It is the oldest elf city and the most closest on how elves used to live before the war with the demons. While the army travels to attack them, Kellen once again shows how amazing his Knight-Mage skills are. Once they get to Ysterialpoerin some shadow elves and Wargs kill the scouts and come and attack the army. Kellen realizes that they mean to go around the army and burn Ysterialpoerin, so he takes his men to go and stop them before they destroy the city and finds that the shadow elves have a new fire that can not stop burning by any means. When Kellen gets back and meets with Redhelwar, all the commanders have a meeting on what to do. Redhelwar divides the army into thirds, one to protect Ysterialperin and two for each cave entrance. Kellen wants him and Idalia to scout ahead under Idalia's invisibility cloak and draw a map to locate the shadow elf villages. One of the commanders, Belepheriel, gets in an argument with Kellen because Kellen is doing things differently than how elves in the past have done them. Kellen gets so angry he challenges him to a duel but Belepheriel declines and walks out. Redhelwar does not want Kellen and Idalia to go because he does not want to risk them. Kellen decides to go any way. While he sneaks off, Shalkan, the unicorn knights, and the elves under his command all catch him and want to help. They go get Idalia and help him get out of the camp. Kellen and Idalia go inside the caves and find booby traps that would kill hundreds of elves. Once Kellen gets to the end several Goblins come out of hiding and attack. After the fight, Kellen finds Idalia is missing. While searching for her, Kellen realizes that if large groups of people head into the shadow elf village the whole cave would collapse, killing more than half of the army. Kellen finds Idalia heading in the opposite way in a trance finding a Duergar, who draws any one in except Knight-Mages. Some crystal spiders stop Idalia from going to it while Kellen quickly kills it. The Crystal Spiders tell Idalia that all the shadow elves have left and there are traps everywhere, but so are the goblins and Duergars. The crystal spiders hate the shadow elves because they hunt their kind. The crystal spiders ask Idalia if they could wait one day before the army comes in. Idalia agrees and goes to inspect Kellen and notices that a goblin has poisoned him. She quickly heals him. When they get out they find the elf army ready to go in, but Shalkan said he would kill any one that goes in. Kellen tells Redhelwar about the crystal spiders, traps, and how the shadow elves are gone. Redhelwar is happy Kellen saved him from this mistake, even knowing he disobeyed orders. The other cavern they are now going in has to be emptied out, but instead of risking getting caught in traps they try to lure the shadow elves out. They have do have army in thirds. One is at Ysterialpoerin, one is outside the cave and one is hiding atop of cave to trap the shadow elves. One wild mage sacrifices his life to get the shadow elves to come out. The shadow elf army comes and attacks the elf army. Jermayan closes one cave to keep them out and the top army traps them. However there are Death Wings and wargs with them, along with more warriors than the elves thought. When some shadow elves slip past the elven army, Kellen quickly goes after them. All the shadow elves are dead but for the ones that slipped past the army. Now the army goes in the caves to kill the women and children shadow elves while the unicorn knights defend Ysterialpoerin. While they are in the caves they find only the children. The rest of the shadow elves have a secret exit were the women fled with the males to Ysterialpoerin. When they get there they kill many unicorns and their knights including the leader Petariel while his unicorn Gesade is very badly injured. The shadow elves start to set the city on fire. Jermayan and Ancaldar get Kellen and race towards the city to stop the fire. While Kellen finds Shalkan, he tells him he has to heal Gesade because he is the only virgin wild mage around. Kellen cures her but finds she has no eyes. He blames himself but Shalkan says it was the shadow elf and he could do nothing about it. Meanwhile Cilarnen has reached elven lands and is battling the harsh winter. The elves tell Kellen that Cilarnen is coming. Kellen is then so upset that his Armethalieh life is coming back he can barely think straight, and is drawn to tears because he hates and loves the city, as he hates and loves his father. Kellen then realize that the price for healing Gesade is to forgive Cilarnen. He has nothing personal against Cilarnen, he just hates the mages. When Cilarnen and Kellen first meet, Cilarnen tells him everything that happened to him. Kellen shows him around camp. Cilarnen meets Redhelwar there and tells him everything. Idalia, Jermayan, and Redhelwar find the news terrible because if the demons take control of the city they would have unlimited power to draw on. Redhelwar asks the wild mages to see inside the city. All the wild mages get together and make a mirror that will link up to see inside. They ask for two thirds of the army to help with the price because it is powerful. In Armethalieh, Anigerel is making new wards to help protect the city. Kellen and Cilarnen will watch over how the wild mages do the spell. They see Anigerel, everything he did, and how he is a spy for the demons. Queen Savilla senses they are tampering with her servant and tries to go through the mirror to kill Idalia. But Cilarnen makes a magic shield along with Jermayan and Kellen. With Shalkan giving Kellen power and Ancaladar giving Jeryman and Cilarenne power, they save her life. When it's over Savilla is close to death when Prince Zyperis walks in. The whole army can barely move with tiredness, with Kellen, Jermayan, Cilarnen, Shalkan, and Andcladar all passed out. They however know that Anigerel is the spy and they know what the plan is. The demons do not want to fight in this war yet. They want Armethalieh to go to war with the elves and their allies. The demons will kill the winner.
7321945	/m/025z339	The Return of John MacNab	Andrew Greig	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Andrew Greig has rewritten John Macnab by John Buchan for the late 20th century. The plot follows the original closely. In John Macnab (1925), three bored successful friends in their mid-forties turn to poaching, under the collective name ‘John Macnab’, set up in the Highland home of a war hero and prospective Conservative MP. In The Return of John MacNab three rather downcast friends (a copywriter whose wife has died suddenly on a plane flight; an ex-Special Forces soldier with a marital crisis; and a jaundiced left-wing joiner) decide to revive Buchan’s novel. They target an estate owned by a Moroccan, another rented by a Dutch corporation, and the third, Balmoral, traditional home of the British royals in Scotland. The modern-day MacNabs are hijacked by Kirsty Fowler, a hard-living reporter and singer with a murky past.
7322510	/m/025z3y2	Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Danny exacerbates a small electrical fire, altering an experimental crystalline semiconductor material Prof. Bullfinch was evaluating. Prof. Bullfinch is able to use this altered material to create ISIT (the Invisibility Simulator with Intromittent Transmission), a dragonfly-like probe which could be piloted with a Telepresence helmet and gauntlet gloves. The trio each tries out the device. Irene uses ISIT to birdwatch. Joe uses the device to observe a beehive from the inside. Danny discovers a bully nicknamed 'Snitcher' cheating by copying the word list to the school spelling bee and dishonestly winning himself a boombox. The ISIT is outfitted with a speaker which is subsequently used by Danny as a means to pretend to be the bully's conscience, in order get Snitcher to confess to his father. However, ISIT also causes problems, as soon afterwards Prof. Bullfinch is visited by General Gruntel. The general reveals (in very authoritarian language) he wishes to use ISIT as a tool to spy not only on enemy governments, but against Americans as well. General Gruntel attempts to seize the unit, but is rebuffed by Doctor Grimes. While going to get authorization to seize the ISIT, he leaves the professor's lab under guard. Danny, Irene, and Joe decide to take matters into their own hands and stealthily break into the lab to recover the probe. The probe's absence is realized which leads to Colonel Twist, the commanding officer of the two guards, to delusively believe the device has been stolen by a foreign power. As he is being confronted by Twist, the Professor realizes the trio of friends are responsible. He informs Danny that without destroying his notes detailing the creation of ISIT, either the Soviets or the US military could still recreate it. While the local national guard arrives to secure the house against foreign spies, Danny and the Professor make their way to the probe's controls and use it to cause a fire that destroys both the notes and probe. Dr. Grimes arrives with orders from the Governor for the military personnel to stand down and leave the Bullfinch residence. Bullfinch informs Grimes that the device and his notes have been destroyed, leaving him the only man to remember the blueprints by memory. Professor Bullfinch also tells Dr. Grimes and Danny that he will not recreate ISIT until the world is ready for it.
7323501	/m/025z56b	When They Lay Bare	Andrew Greig	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A mysterious young woman moves into deserted Crawhill cottage on the estate of Sir Simon Elliot in the Scottish Borders. He fears she is the daughter of his mistress: "If it wasn't the child, Sim wondered, who was she and what the hell was she doing moving into Crawhill? And if it was her, what had she came back for, why had she not come to see him? Instead she had taken up residence in the cottage and waited. What did the lassie want with Davy?" The novel is based around a set of antique plates that the young woman brings with her, depicting the Border Ballads, "Twa Corbies" and "Barbara Allen".
7323747	/m/025z5kb	In Another Light	Andrew Greig	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel alternates between present-day Orkney and the 1930s in the dying days of the British Empire in Penang, British Malaya in South East Asia. After a near-fatal illness, Edward Mackay decides to find out more about his late father's mysterious past. Dr Alexander Mackay's secret is gradually revealed by his son's findings. On the sea voyage to the East, the young doctor meets an eclectic crowd including the Simpson sisters, who are of unattainable social class, "both beautiful, one a gazelle". The doctor is gradually accepted into Penang society, and makes regular visits to the sisters, one of whom is married. Following a mysterious accident and a secret holiday in the Sumatran highlands, he leaves the island under a cloud of scandal. Edward's investigations in the modern day are assisted by a trail of clues including a Buddha figurine and a double-one domino, and by an old lady, a blonde woman he bumps into in London, and an Orkney woman called Mica.
7325751	/m/025z7kn	The Wish Giver: Three Tales of Coven Tree	Bill Brittain	1983	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrator Stewart Meade (nicknamed "Stew Meat"), meets a strange man named Thaddeus Blinn in a carnival tent. However, he notices something unusual about Blinn: his eyes glow like a cat's momentarily, implying that he is not really human.He's more magical Stew Meat sees that there a three children in the tent who he recognizes as Polly, Rowena, and Adam. Blinn sells each of them a card with a red spot on it, for only 50 cents each, explaining that all they have to do is to press their finger on the red spot and say their wish and it will come true – exactly as they tell it. Polly, a sharp-tongued girl whose habit of speaking her mind freely has left her with few friends, makes a wish on her card to be popular. She says that she wants people to smile at her on the street, and also for the two most popular girls at her school to invite her over to their house. The wish comes true, but in a completely unexpected manner – Polly is cursed to croak like a bull frog whenever she says something rude or spiteful to other people. Only when she has not made any complaints or insults for a while does the croaking subside temporarily. (Jug-A-Rum!) This curse causes her entire wish to be granted; her sudden croaking in the middle of class causes her to become the center of attention – and much grins and guffaws – at her school, and the two girls she had wished to invite her over do so, if only to ridicule her for her croaking. Polly is grateful for the invitation, but learns during her visit that the girls are snobbish and unlikable people. She realizes that if she had not spoken whispers to her classmates, she could have easily become friends with them. Rowena makes a wish of her own for Henry Piper, a traveling salesman she is infatuated with, but can only see three days a time, to "set roots down in Coven Tree and never leave again!" The wish is fulfilled word-for-word: Henry's feet become literally rooted to the ground, and he gradually transforms into a sycamore tree. Much like Polly does, Rowena learns something important from her wish's consequences; a frustrated Henry reveals to her that he never actually liked her, and only flirted with her so that her father would buy more of his items and that most of his travels to exotic locations were taken from brochures rather than genuinely travelling to the places. Rowena also grows close to Sam, a boy who works for her parents, as they search for a cure to Henry's condition. Later Rowena discovers she has been in love with Sam for a long time. Adam, who lives in a farm that receives little water, wishes for the farm to be filled with water so that his family would not have to work so hard to get water all the time. The next day, a friend of his father, who is a dowser, teaches him how to use a dowsing rod to locate water. Adam tries this method, and finds that his rod jumps at every spot on the farm. When they dig through the soil, a huge geyser shoots out. At first, Adam's parents are joyful of this newfound source of water, but the waterspout soon grows out of control, flooding the entire farm. The three independent stories each end with the involved child being reminded in some way of the fourth wish card Stew Meat has, and all three of them running to his store. Stew Meat wishes on his card for their wishes to be undone, and without any of the repercussions or side effects that they suffered. Polly's voice returns to normal, Henry turns back into a human, and the water on Adam's farm stops flowing.
7326269	/m/025z7w8	Sinner	Sara Douglass	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The land of Tencendor has experienced an era of peace in the forty years since the Starman Axis defeated Gorgrael and united the peoples of Tencendor. Eventually Axis chooses to leave the mortal world with his wife Azhure, leaving his son Caelum to rule as the Starson. However, Caelum is a less than perfect ruler; insecure, arrogant and untried in this era of peace he struggles to maintain the balance between the various provinces as racial tensions rise. Matters worsen when Caelum finds himself engaging in an affair with his sister Riverstar, who eventually becomes pregnant and threatens to blackmail her brother with this fact. In a rage, Caelum then murders his sister and implicates his unpopular brother Drago with the crime. However, this Caelum's crime is not revealed until the third book, Crusader. The majority of the novel is narrated from Drago's perspective. Much of it focuses upon the fact that he has been literally stripped of his Icarii heritage - he is mortal. His is growing old, and weak, and the extent of his Icarii powers amount to making the bread rise. Azhure and Axis distrusted him because of the crime that he committed while an infant, a crime that he cannot even remember committing (allowing the antagonist of the Axis series, Gorgrael, to kidnap his brother, Caelum). The full details of Caelum's relationship with his sister is not fully unveiled until the third book, as "first blood", i.e., brother, sister, father, mother, are forbidden. However, Drago is an unpopular fellow, and when the finger is pointed at him, none are too surprised and have no problem in heaping the blame upon him. What actually transpired was that Drago walked in upon Caelum murdering his sister. Caelum instead, imposes a memory block upon Drago, and creates a false recollection of him brutally murdering his sister. The ancient and deadly WolfStar also returns to the world of Tencendor; seeking to cause the rebirth of his lover Niah within a powerful body. He selects Zenith as the perfect host, displacing her soul and replacing it with Niah's. However, WolfStar is not the only one to return; the newly empowered Faraday arrives and aids Zenith in expelling both Niah's soul and WolfStar's child from her body. Zenith finds Wolfstar, who is her biological grandfather, revolting, as she is constantly assaulted by images of the past whenever he is near, a rather unpleasant sensation which eventually causes her to lose control of her own body to her former incarnation. In order to escape punishment Drago flees with the help of his sister Zenith until he leaves the world through the Star Gate. However, Wolfstar pursues Drago. Meanwhile not all is calm in the North, Zared, Axis' mortal younger brother (they share the same mother, Rivkah) and ruler of the northern province has illegally eloped with Princess Leagh, sister to the sterile ruler of the western province. Proceeding from this Zared names himself King of Achar; an action which the other rulers view both as treason and a resurrection of the Acharites xenophobic past. Meanwhile Drago discovers an odd oasis in the universe outside the Star Gate, containing an insane Icarii woman, many children with the likeness of hawks and five dark and dangerous beings known as the Timekeepers who offer great power. This promise proves false however, when they steal Drago's life force and use it to shatter the Star Gate and destroy most of the world's magic in the process.
7326453	/m/025z81j	Pilgrim	Sara Douglass	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Upon arriving through the Star Gate, the Time Keeper Demons begin 'feeding' by expelling a grey miasma from their mouths which spreads across the land, corrupting and maddening any being not sheltered. They depart the vicinity of the now destroyed Star Gate and travel through the woods to Cauldron Lake. Meanwhile Faraday uses her new powers to bring Drago back to life. The newly resurrected Drago, Faraday, and Zenith then join Caelum's army in the woods surrounding the Barrows and set plans. Despite a pledge to help Caelum however possible, Axis, Azhure, and Caelum remain distrustful and loathing towards him with Axis even stabbing Drago. Axis, Azhure, Caelum, and a small contingent from the army resolve to travel to Star Finger to search through the ancient texts there for an answer. Zared is left in command of the combined armies tasked with preserving what he can of the land. Faraday and Drago leave on a pair of white donkeys with a feathered lizard from the woods to attempt to beat the demons to Cauldron Lake. There the voice that spoke to Faraday during her transformation, Noah, awaits. Isfrael and Shra confront the demons as they pass through the forest. Their combined power is a match for the still weak demons, but one of the newly acquired demonic mounts sneaks behind them and disembowells Shra. The demons are the first to arrive at Cauldron Lake and proceed to drain/kill it to expose the craft of the Enemy and a crystal forest. Surviving the reflective trap, the demons find a pool of blood and throw StarLaughter's dead child into the blood. It emerges as a toddler and possessing the warmth of the greatest of the demons, Qeteb. After their departure but still sensed by them, WolfStar comes forth from the waterways and places the his own dead child in the blood with similar results. Drago enters the craft and meets a dying Noah, the last of the Enemy. Noah tells Drago of how the Enemy separated Qeteb and journeyed through space to find a place to store the component parts. When they discovered the constituent parts of Qeteb could not be destroyed, four craft fled across the universe with them. Noah informs Drago that Qeteb must be reconstituted before he can be destroyed, that Tencendor must be destroyed before it can live again. Drago also learns that the land is highly magical and magic still exists for those who know how to find it. He also is informed that a Sanctuary exists somewhere in the waterways that can hold Tencendor's population when the land is destroyed. Drago sends the Lake Guard to scout out Sanctuary, Zared's army to Carlon to gather the Acharites, StarDrifter and Zenith to Star Finger to collect the Icarii, and extracts a half-promise from Isfrael for the Avar. As he instructs the leaders, it dawns on them that Caelum is not the StarSon mentioned on the Maze Gate, but Drago is. Isfrael helps the army construct cloth for portable tents so they can venture across the plains and the groups separate. Zenith still suffers hesitations about her relationship with StarDrifter. While a relationship between grandparent and grandchild is acceptable in Icarii culture, she cannot cope the idea of StarDrifter being her lover. They arrive at the Minaret Peaks to find the magic-reliant Icarii in dire straits, not only from the Demonic Hours, but a lack of food and basic survival skills. When Caelum and company enter an ancient tunnel to quickly transverse the Fortress Ranges, they fear a trap in the making. Only too soon are they prove right as the Hawkchilds kill the sentries behind them. The demons create an illusion of the hunt dream Caelum suffers from that Axis, Azhure, and Caelum all fall for. They survive to find all the others in the party destroyed and the Alaunt further ahead after running from the horror. Zared's army travels towards Carlon, but an army composed of animals and men that were maddened has been marshalled by the brown and cream badger. When the animals attack, Zared's army survives only thanks to two mysterious white figures that drive off many of foes. Unnoticed until later, the discontent Askam and four hundred men desert during the night. Unfortunately for them, the badger set up a trap and they are all dragged from under the shade into the demonic miasma to become like the mad animals. Under control of the badger, Askam and his men rejoin Zared's force as they ride. Although no other attack is forthcoming, when the last of the army is entering Carlon, Askam abducts Zared's wife Leagh. When the next Demonic Hour falls, she too is driven insane. Drago and Faraday travel north to Gorkenfort to meet their "ancestral mother." On the way, Drago expresses his love for Faraday. Although she knows that she loves him, she denies it as she fears that it would mean she would need to be sacrificed again. She also worries about the dreams of a girl calling for help that are trying to draw her to Star Finger. On the path, they find a senile white horse that Drago recognizes as Belaguez, Axis's old warhorse. They also discover that they are immune to the demons' feedings. The demons feel the resistances but cannot identify them. Although later confronted by a Hawkchild speaking for the demons, they do not connect the resistance with Drago. They are confused by him being alive, but are diverted from killing him as the white donkeys (revealed to be extremely powerful magicians and those that previously saved the army) destroy Askam's force and return Leagh to Zerad. Caelum, Axis, and Azhure are taunted by the Hawkchilds continually as they travel the mountain paths to Star Finger. Eventually, the Hawkchilds stage an attack and nearly destroy who they believe to be the StarSon. The former Star Gods and Alaunt manage to stave off the attack and get the wounded party to Star Finger. Drago and Faraday arrive at Gorkenfort. Shortly afterward Urbeth the icebear arrives to reveal that she is the being known as the Enchantress and the Mother of Races. Although she mothered the Acharites, the Charonites, and the Icarii, her eldest (the Acharite forerunner) rejected magic and she cast him out of her life. However, both he and the Acharites do have innate magic but it now can only be accessed if they die and are brought back to life. Drago and Faraday leave towards Star Finger but leave Belaguez for Urbeth who then transforms him into the star stallion and sends him south. Meanwhile, a mourning Zared is convinced to send part of the army and the whole Strike Force to the Murkle Mines where some 20,000 men, women, and child are holed up. When their ships are destroyed in the bay, the remains of the men convince the refugees to head towards Carlon. The demons learn of this progress and set a trap on the path that eventually drives all of the refugees into the madness of Demonic Hours. Only Theod survives and rides to Carlon on the reborn Belaguez to tell the tale. The demons arrive at the Lake of Life and kill it to access Qeteb's breath, DragonStar now gaining the body of an adolescent and breath. Again, WolfStar follows their example with the Niah-corpse and slips away. After giving StarLaughter a small amount of power, the demons decide to investigate Sigholt. When Rox crosses the bridge, it transforms into a spider-like shape and devours the demon releasing nighttime from terror. The demons and StarLaughter flee towards Fernbrake Lake. The Lake Guard have figured out the mystery of Sanctuary determining it must be a magical keep. As the other lakes each have a keep, Fernbrake's keep must have sunken to the waterways and show the way to Sanctuary. Some of the Lake Guard, StarDrifter, and Zenith travel to Fernbrake. There they not only discover the way to the keep, but that the Star Dance can be accessed through dance. When StarDrifter attempts to cross the bridge to Sanctuary, it rejects him as he is not 'he who is true.' They depart on the waterways to find Drago. At Star Finger, Axis, Azhure, Caelum, and the former Star Gods find a mysterious girl in the lower levels holding a book titled Enchanted Songbook. Unfortunately no one can reach her until Drago and Faraday enter the chamber. Caelum, who has now realized that he is only a decoy for the real StarSon, keeps Axis from killing Drago and sends them all from the room. When they are alone, Caelum asks for Drago's forgiveness for their past. More specifically, for Caelum framing Drago for RiverStar's murder. Caelum and RiverStar were secretly lovers and he killed her when she revealed she was pregnant. Drago, Faraday, StarDrifter's party, and the Alaunt depart on the waterways to Sigholt and then Sanctuary. At Sigholt, Drago retrieves the Wolven and the keep's cat population and learns of another way to access the pattern of the Star Dance, through hand movements. They open Sanctuary and begin the evacuation of the Icarii. Drago, Faraday, and the girl Katie travel to Carlon via Spiredore only to discover it besieged by the animal army and of the loss of the 20,000. With the help of the lizard and Katie, Drago removes the demonic madness from Leagh, in essence returning her from the dead and giving her access to her magic. They leave for the site of the ambush of the 20,000 and gather them together. Drago cures Goldman, Theod's wife Gwendylyr, and DareWing FullHeart of their madness and dispatches the rest so the demons cannot use them anymore. WolfStar appears at Fernbrake Lake only to be captured by StarDrifter and Isfrael to await trail. When the demons arrive, they free WolfStar only to torment him and hold him captive. They shatter Fernbrake and summon the craft to the surface as StarDrifter, Isfrael, and Goodwife Renkin mourn the death of the Mother. The demons invest both DragonStar and Niah with the movement of Qeteb and leave for Grail Lake and the Maze. Caelum departs for the hunt and for Drago to summon him. He has learned that the Enchanted Songbook shows dances to access magic and more or less successfully used one to destroy a Hawkchild. As he waits, he visits with Urbeth and her two daughters, the white donkeys turned icebear. The animal army stages an attack led by the patchy-bald rat and his minions from the sewers that leaves the population of Carlon in panic and the city on fire. With the help of his new magicians, Drago evacuates the remaining Acharites through Spiredore to Sanctuary. He sends the magicians off to the rest of Tencendor to collect the remaining populations which turn out to include animal and insect as well. Faraday confronts Isfrael with his stance that the Avar should keep to themselves by showing a vision of Barsarbe doing the same. The Avar and the rest of Tencendor descend into Sanctuary, but not before the Mother reveals herself to Faraday urging her to let herself love Drago. Mother then retreats to the Sacred Grove and closes the pathways. Drago enters the Maze and races on Belaguaz to the Dark Tower within. There he opens a gate and travels to Caelum to bring him to Spiredore and the hunt. The demons pass through the maze and fully resurrect Qeteb in the body that was once DragonStar. Malice sweeps across the land, destroying everything not already corrupted save for Caelum, Urbeth, her daughters, and the wooden bowl given to Faraday by the silver-backed Horned One. Qeteb starts the hunt and they eventually corner Caelum who they still believe to be the StarSon. However, rather than cowering in fear and then pain, Caelum dies with a smile on his face as all he sees is a field full of flowers.
7327359	/m/025z8y1	RedRobe	Jon Courtenay Grimwood	2005-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens in Mexico City in the future, where sometime assassin Axl Borja is about to try to make one last hit, which goes drastically wrong when he takes three rounds to do the job. Losing his gun in the process, he is caught by the police, and throws himself on the mercy of the Cardinal Santo Duque - his former boss, a minister of the Vatican, and someone given to unusual methods of revenge. The Cardinal agrees to grant clemency if Axl returns to his service, an offer he can't refuse but one with serious consequences. Axl's mission is to track down the late Pope Joan (specifically, a data-holding bracelet of hers), who drained the Vatican's immense assets to buy aid and other kinds of support for the Third World before being apparently dismembered by a horde of the people she helped save. The Cardinal is interested in tracking down what remains of his organisation's money, but there's one problem; the only lead is in space, on the refugee-only space habitat Samsara. As a man responsible for much of the ringworld's population, the Cardinal can't send an agent officially, so he tortures and seriously injures Axl - fitting a ceramic neural-interface port into his head, removing both his eyes, and running him through a set of SQUID probes designed to pillage what's left of his memories. Axl's gun, a mostly-sentient Colt armed with explosive flechettes, incendiary phosphorus rounds, and all-purpose ceramic smart rounds and capable of full battlefield analysis and giving tactical advice when needed, has since changed hands a number of times, from a pimp to a gutter-boy to a voodoo priest to a cleric to the Cardinal himself. With his assistance its AI is uploaded to the networks and thus to Samsara, where it has to earn the favour of resident AI Tsongkhapa if it can help Axl in his mission. One of the most interesting features of the book is its soundtrack. Axl has a Korg music synthesiser implanted in his brain, capable of generating pretty much any kind of music, precisely tuned to what he experiences; it will create heavy basslines and drum 'n' bass music to go with a gunfight, for instance, while going completely silent in moments of great suspense and working out signature riffs for people Axl meets. This device, inactive at the start of the book, is fixed about halfway through and is used to add a sense of pacing to the action scenes towards the novel's end. Another recurring theme is battlefield medicine, reminiscent of the use of superglue in the Vietnam War. Axl's eyesockets are filled, first by a "plug-and-play" Red Cross-issue eye, so cheap it only works in black and white and very low-res; and later by a more complex eyeball capable of night-vision and with a digital counter in the corner to remind him of his deadline.
7330500	/m/025zcw3	King Javan's Year	Katherine Kurtz	1992	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The events of King Javan's Year span a period of approximately sixteen months, from June 921 to October 922. As the novel begins, the dying King Alroy Haldane commands that his twin brother, Prince Javan Haldane, be summoned to Rhemuth immediately. Although Alroy's former Regents seek to prevent the king from talking with his heir before his death, Alroy's youngest brother, Prince Rhys Michael Haldane, risks their wrath by sending a small party of knights to retrieve Javan from the abbey where he has spent the past three years. The Healer Oriel manages to keep Alroy alive until Javan's arrival, and the two brothers share a final conversation before the young king finally dies. The lords of state immediately attempt to pass over Javan in favor of Rhys Michael, believing the younger brother will be a more biddable king. However, Javan succeeds in disproving their claim that he took permanent religious vows, and he is proclaimed the legal heir during an Accession Council that afternoon. Javan is surprised to discover that several young knights and nobles at Court have already allied themselves with him, including his former squire, Sir Charlan Morgan, and two secret Deryni, Etienne de Courcy and his son Guiscard. The following night, Guiscard sneaks Javan out of Rhemuth to meet with Father Joram MacRorie and several other Deryni allies. Shortly thereafter, Javan's Haldane potential is fully activated by Joram, Dom Queron Kinevan, and Javan's old friend, Tavis O'Neill. Over the next month, Javan attempts to secure his position and establish his strength without revealing his magical abilities or overtly provoking the lords of state. By the end of June, Javan and Joram succeed in creating a new Transfer Portal in the castle. Javan's official coronation occurs on July 31, but the ensuing celebration is marred by an old rivalry between two powerful lords. Earl Hrorik II of Eastmarch accuses Earl Murdoch of Carthane of murdering his brother, an event that occurred three years earlier at Alroy's and Javan's thirteenth birthday. The two nobles engage in a duel to death the following day, and Hrorik mortally wounds Murdoch. Before his death, Murdoch urges his allies to move against Javan, believing the king is becoming too powerful to control. Several weeks later, Javan discovers his brother dallying with Lady Michaela Drummond in the castle garden. Javan orders Rhys Michael to stay away from Michaela, fearing that any child of Rhys Michael's will only weaken his own position on the throne since the lords of state will be more willing to attack him if the royal line is secured for another generation. Although Rhys Michael dislikes the great lords, he refuses to believe they present as great a threat as Javan believes. Nonetheless, he agrees to stay away from Michaela. At the end of October, while traveling as a deputy with one of Javan's legal commissions, Rhys Michael is attacked and abducted. Although the culprits are publicly identified as Ansel MacRorie and other Deryni bandits, the prince has actually been kidnapped by knights under the command of the great lords. After being "rescued" several days later, Rhys Michael is taken to Culdi to recover from his wounds. As planned by the great lords, the prince is reunited with Michaela, and the two are soon married by the end of November. By the time Javan discovers the plan by reading Archbishop Hubert's mind, he is far too late to prevent the marriage. When Rhys Michael and his new wife return to Rhemuth in early December, Javan can do nothing but acknowledge his new sister-in-law and welcome her to the family. Over the following months, Javan continues his potentially lethal dance of power with the great lords. In March, the former Regents command one of their Deryni collaborators to murder Oriel. Oriel survives the attack, but both Javan and Guiscard are forced to employ their arcane powers to defend the Healer. As the incident is investigated further, the great lords become increasingly suspicious of the king. Although he repeatedly attempts to free former Deryni Ursin O'Carroll, Ursin is murdered before Javan can succeed. The king decides to take the families of the deceased Deryni collaborators to Master Revan, hoping that the secret Deryni working with Revan will block the families' Deryni powers and they will be allowed to go free. Javan departs Rhemuth in early May, leaving his brother in command of the royal castle. The king's party arrives at the river several days later, but tragedy quickly erupts as the great lords make their final move against Javan. Episcopal soldiers disguised as renegade Michaelines attack both the cult and the king's party. When Tavis uses his powers to protect a young girl, the surviving Willimites realize that Revan's baptismal ceremony has been a fraud, and they quickly turn on their former leader. Revan and Tavis are slain almost immediately, but the Willimites themselves are struck down by the false Michaelines. Javan and his party fight bravely, but they are soon outnumbered by both the false Michaelines and the great lords who have betrayed the king. Guiscard falls first in the battle, but both Javan and Charlan are eventually killed. At the same time in Rhemuth, the remaining great lords launch a coup against Rhys Michael. Several lords and knights are quickly slain as Rhys Michael is captured, and special care is taken to ensure Oriel's death. The prince is informed that he will do as he is told and follow orders or he and his wife will be killed. The shock of the coup causes Michaela to go into premature labor, but their first son is stillborn. Over the next several months, Rhys Michael is constantly drugged to ensure his compliance with the wishes of the great lords. Javan's body is returned to Rhemuth, and Rhys Michael is formally crowned as King of Gwynedd. Eventually, the new king is reunited with his wife and informed that he must soon provide a royal heir or someone else will perform the action for him. Resigned to their fate, Rhys Michael and Michaela agree to start having children, but they secretly maintain the desperate hope of one day being free of the great lords.
7330565	/m/025zcxv	The Years	Virginia Woolf	1937	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "It was an uncertain Spring." Colonel Abel Pargiter visits his mistress Mira in a dingy suburb, then returns home to his children and his invalid wife Rose. His eldest daughter Eleanor is a do-gooder in her early twenties, and Milly and Delia are in their teens. Morris, the eldest brother, is already a practising barrister. Delia feels trapped by her mother's illness and looks forward to her death. Ten-year-old Rose quarrels with twelve-year-old Martin and sneaks off by herself to a nearby toyshop. On the way back she is frightened by a man exposing himself. As the family prepares for bed, Mrs Pargiter seems at last to have died, but she recovers. At Oxford it is a rainy night and undergraduate Edward, the last Pargiter sibling, reads Antigone and thinks of his cousin Kitty Malone, with whom he is in love. He is distracted by two friends, the athletic Gibbs and the bookish Ashley. Daughter of a Head of House at Oxford, cousin Kitty endures her mother's academic dinner-parties, studies half-heartedly with an impoverished female scholar named Lucy Craddock, and considers various marriage prospects, dismissing Edward. She is sitting with her mother when the news is brought that Mrs Pargiter is dead. At Mrs Pargiter's funeral Delia distracts herself with romantic fantasies of Charles Stewart Parnell and struggles to feel any real emotional response to her mother's death. "An Autumn wind blew over England." Kitty has married the wealthy Lord Lasswade, as her mother predicted, and Milly has married Edward's friend Gibbs. They are at a hunting party at the Lasswade estate. Back in London, Eleanor, now in her thirties, runs her father's household and does charity work to provide improved housing for the poor. Travelling London on a horse-drawn omnibus she visits her charity cases, reads a letter from Martin (twenty-three and having adventures in India), and visits court to watch Morris argue a case. Morris is married to Celia. Back in the street, Eleanor reads the news of Parnell's death and tries to visit Delia, living alone and still an avid supporter of the Irish politician, but Delia is not at home. Colonel Pargiter visits the family of his younger brother, Sir Digby Pargiter. Digby is married to the flamboyant Eugénie and has two little daughters, Maggie and Sara (called Sally). "It was midsummer; and the nights were hot." Digby and Eugénie bring Maggie home from a dance where she spoke with Martin, who has returned from India. At home, Sara lies in bed reading Edward's translation of Antigone and listening to another dance down the street. Sara and Maggie are now in their mid-twenties. Maggie arrives home, and the girls tease their mother about her romantic past. "It was March and the wind was blowing." Martin, now forty, visits the house of Digby and Eugénie, which has already been sold after their sudden deaths. He goes to see Eleanor, now in her fifties. Rose, pushing forty and an unmarried eccentric, also drops in. "...an English spring day, bright enough, but a purple cloud behind the hill might mean rain." Rose, forty, visits her cousins Maggie and Sara (or Sally), who are living together in a cheap apartment. Rose takes Sara to one of Eleanor's philanthropic meetings. Martin also comes, and so does their glamorous cousin Kitty Lasswade, now nearing fifty. After the meeting Kitty visits the opera. That evening at dinner Maggie and Sara hear the cry go up that King Edward VII is dead. "The sun was rising. Very slowly it came up over the horizon shaking out light." The chapter begins with a brief glimpse of the south of France, where Maggie has married a Frenchman named Réné (or Renny) and is already expecting a baby. In England Colonel Pargiter has died and the family's old house is shut up for sale. Eleanor visits her brother Morris and Celia, who have a teenaged son and daughter named North and Peggy (another son, Charles, is mentioned in a later section). Also visiting is Sir William Whatney, one of spinster Eleanor's few youthful flirtations. There is gossip that Rose has been arrested for throwing a brick (this was a time of Suffragette protests). "It was January. Snow was falling. Snow had fallen all day." The Pargiters' family home is being sold and Eleanor says goodbye to the housekeeper, Crosby, who must now take a room in a boarding house after forty years in the Pargiters' basement. From her new lodgings Crosby takes the train across London to collect the laundry of Martin, now forty-five and still a bachelor. "It was a brilliant spring day; the day was radiant." The time is one month before the outbreak of the First World War, although no hint is given of this. Wandering past St Paul's Cathedral, Martin runs into his cousin Sara (or Sally), now in her early thirties. They have lunch together at a chop shop, then walk through Hyde Park and meet Maggie with her baby. Martin mentions that his sister Rose is in prison. Martin continues, alone, to a party being given by Lady Lasswade (cousin Kitty). At the party he meets teenage Ann Hillier and Professor Tony Ashton, who attended Mrs Malone's dinner party in 1880 as an undergraduate. The party over, Kitty changes for a night train ride to her husband's country estate, then is driven by motorcar to his castle. She walks through the grounds as day breaks. "A very cold winter's night, so silent that the air seemed frozen" During the war Eleanor visits Maggie and Renny, who have fled France for London. She meets their openly gay friend Nicholas, a Polish-American. Sara arrives late, angry over a quarrel with North, who is about to leave for the front lines and whose military service Sara views with contempt. There is a bombing raid, and the party takes its supper to a basement room for safety. "A veil of mist covered the November sky;" The briefest of the sections, at little more than three pages in most editions of the novel, "1918" shows us Crosby, now very old and with pain in her legs. She hobbles home from work with her new employers, whom she considers "dirty foreigners", not "gentlefolk" like the Pargiters. Suddenly guns and sirens go off, but it is not the war, it is the news that the war has ended. "It was a summer evening; the sun was setting;" Morris's son North, who is in his thirties, has returned from Africa, where he ran an isolated ranch in the years after the war. He visits Sara, in her fifties and living alone in a cheap boarding-house, and they recall the friendship they carried on for years by mail. North's sister Peggy, a doctor in her late thirties, visits Eleanor, who is over seventy. Eleanor is an avid traveller, excited and curious about the modern age, but the bitter, misanthropic Peggy prefers romantic stories of her aunt's Victorian past. The two pass the memorial to Edith Cavell in Trafalgar Square and Peggy's brother Charles, who died in the war, is mentioned for the first and only time. Delia, now in her sixties, married an Irishman long ago and moved away, but she is visiting London and gives a party for her family. All the surviving characters gather for the reunion.
7331057	/m/025zdd_	Crusader	Sara Douglass	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Raging at the escape of the StarSon, Qeteb has the Hawkchilds scour the remains of Tencendor. Although they don't immediately find Sanctuary, a Hawkchild does find and return the wooden bowl given to Faraday by the Mother, though they do not know how to use it. Unaware of this oversight, the Mother, Ur, and the Horned Ones wait in the Sacred Groves, slowly dying. meanwhile, at sanctuary many are discontented and impatient, finding it more of a prison then a sanctuary. Axis walks to the bridge and begins talking to it, though halfway through it begins screaming and it dies, and Axis nearly falls into the chasm below until Drago saves him, and though Axis notices a some sort of power in him, he still stubbornly refuses to forgive him for Caelum's death, thinking he is still the malevolent man he was when he was a baby, who always wanted Caelum's inheritance. Drago then talks to Azhure, who also recognises he has some sort of power, and on departure recognises him as Dragonstar, not Drago
7332448	/m/025zfpk	Cythera	Richard Calder	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Cythera is set in a near future Earth following an unsuccessful Third World Children's Crusade against the West, with children being subject to increasing levels of censorship. Film-maker Flynn has been imprisoned for making the subversive Dahlia Chan films, along with his leading lady Jaruwan. Thanks to the increasing power of the Net sentient 'ghosts' of media images have crossed from Earth 2 to Earth 1, and the novel follows the affair between human Tarquin and Dahlia Chan, their efforts to rescue Jaruwan and their ultimate quest for the freedom of mythical Cythera.
7334321	/m/025zhmx	The Sculptress	Minette Walters	1993	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Olive Martin - a 28 year old, morbidly obese woman - was imprisoned for life after police found her cradling the shattered bodies of her mother and sister, having previously dismembered them and re-arranged their limbs into abstract shapes on the floor, a crime for which she was nicknamed 'the Sculptress'. Troubled journalist Rosalind Leigh, under pressure from her publisher to produce new material, reluctantly agrees to write a book about Olive and - whilst conducting interviews with the prisoner - gradually comes to believe that she is concealing something, maybe even her own innocence. In her quest to discover the truth Rosalind enlists the help of Hal Hawksley. He is an ex-policeman who investigated the case originally and is still haunted by some of its aspects.
7337435	/m/025zlk4	P.S. Longer Letter Later	Ann M. Martin	1998	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tara is outgoing and impulsive and likes to write, while Elizabeth is shy, quiet and prefers writing poetry. Even so, they are best friends. When Tara moves to Ohio, the girls continue their friendship through letters back and forth to each other. They have to do this by writing, because Elizabeth's father does not like Tara, and Tara's parents think it is expensive to talk on the phone. The letters detail the changes in their lives – Tara must cope with moving, making new friends and dealing with her mother's pregnancy, while Elizabeth's family begins to fall apart. Tara makes another best friend in Ohio, whose name is Hannah. Tara calls her Pal Palindrome because her name is the same spelled backwards as forwards. It becomes her new nickname and everyone calls her "Pal". Tara also gets a boyfriend, Alex, who kisses her. Elizabeth's father starts to scare her when he is coming home later than usual, drinking, and going overboard on his credit cards after he loses his job and has no money. Meanwhile Tara is making new friends, joining clubs and getting involved in school activities. When Elizabeth's family has to move to an apartment because of the money problem, her dad decides to leave, and separates from her mother. It is through their alternating letters that readers learn how Tara and Elizabeth grow and change – and how they keep their friendship strong, even if it is long-distance. This book shows how hard a friendship can be when a person can't see her friend, but suggests that for someone who truly cares about something and works hard for it, anything can happen.
7337483	/m/025zlmx	Snail Mail No More	Paula Danziger	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Snail Mail address. After a year of snail mail following Tara*Starr's move to Ohio, the long-distance friends are ready for the more immediate gratification of e-mail: with e-mail, it doesn't take 3 or 4 days for a letter to get to the other. Therefore, they start to have an even closer relationship. Those two girls send emails about their fast changing lives. Tara* Starr is getting used to having a baby sister in the house, and how a social studies project ruined her relationship with her boyfriend Bart. Meanwhile Elizabeth's father is coming back to the dispointment of Elizabeth,her mother, and her little sister Emma. They face problems like Tara* Starr's sister premature birth. But the hardest of all was Elizabeth's father's fatal car crash. In the end, Tara* Starr's sister Scarlett was fine, and Elizabeth understanding that another chapter in her life was closed, but another chapter was beginning. Both girls' friendship improved. They were in 8th grade at that time.
7337505	/m/025zlp8	Eleven Kids, One Summer	Ann M. Martin	1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Eleven Kids, One Summer continues the story of the children of the Rosso family as they summer on a beach on Fire Island. The story also reveals that the youngest child, who had yet to be born in the previous book, is a boy named Keegan according to Mrs. Rosso's naming scheme. Each chapter entails a story featuring a child of the family as they find some sort of adventure during their vacation.
7337595	/m/025zlt1	Yours Turly, Shirley	Ann M. Martin	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Shirley Basini is in fourth grade. Her scholastic performance is poor because she is dyslexic (which is why the title spells "Truly" as "Turly"). Her disability makes reading difficult for her. She ends up struggling with feelings of inferiority and fears of disappointing her parents, especially since her older brother is intellectually gifted. To hide her inner anxieties, she horses around in class, much to the displeasure of her strict teacher. To add pressure to the situation, if she does not do well in school this year, she will probably be held back. When Shirley's parents decide to adopt a Vietnamese baby boy as their own, Shirley is mildly happy that her parents' attention will no longer be focused upon her. When a mix up results in the possibility of having a slightly younger sister instead, Shirley becomes excited with the prospect of being able to teach and help someone learn how to speak English and help educate her about the American culture. Shirley's new younger sister, "Jackie", soon becomes devoted to Shirley. Jackie is eager to learn from her older sister and they become fast friends. When Jackie ends up excels in school and moves from the regular third grade class to an advanced one, Shirley begins to feel threatened and jealous. She fears that Jackie will no longer need her. For example, during a spelling bee Shirley is angered by the fact that Jackie can spell the required words, while Shirley struggles. When she stops making an effort at school, an unexpected challenge arises in the two sisters' relationship and forces Shirley to come to terms with her role as Jackie's sister and beginning to understand her own strengths. With extra help from the school resource room, Shirley begins to succeed in school in her own way.
7337649	/m/025zlwg	Here Today	Ann M. Martin	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Eleanor Roosevelt Dingman (Ellie) is an 11-year-old girl who lives on Witch Tree Lane and, along with the other people who live on the street, is hated by the other children in school. Holly and Ellie have been given a hard time by the popular girls in their school (the Sparrows), but since the death of late president John F. Kennedy it has temporarily stopped. Ellie's life is turned upside down when her mother decides to go into show business. Her mother has asked Ellie to call her Doris (after Doris Day). Ellie's mother has been overcome with grief for the newly widowed mother, Jackie Kennedy, but realizes that life is short so she goes to New York to "become established". As her life progresses, Ellie discovers she has more power than she thinks and can change her life no matter what the situation. When Doris moves to New York, Ellie is forced to take care of her family, as well as deal with life without Doris. Doris then decides to move to Hollywood, and Ellie has finally had enough. Even though life will not be the same, Ellie is still happy and content.
7337687	/m/025zlyx	The Meanest Doll in the World	Ann M. Martin	2003-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel revolves around the troubles that Annabelle Doll and Tiffany Funcraft get into when trying to hide from their owner, Kate Palmer. They hide in her backpack and get taken to school. There, they explore and eventually get into a backpack they think is Kate's but it is really the backpack of a different child, named BJ. The dolls are taken to BJ's house where they meet Waterfall, Melody, Yvonne, Penny, and Beth, the toys of BJ's sister, Callie. Annabelle and Tiffany are introduced to the meanest doll in the world, Princess Mimi (called by the toys Mean Mimi). Mean Mimi tries to boss them around too, but Annabelle and Tiffany escape back into BJ's backpack where, at school, they can get back into Kate's backpack and then home to their worried families. Little do they know that Mean Mimi has followed them. At the Palmers' house, Mimi mimics crying and tricks the Dolls and the Funcrafts into letting her stay with them. What they do not know is that Mimi is trying to torture them, too. She tries to wake up Kate so she will know about the mess she made, and think the dolls did it. Nora, Kate's little sister, sees Mean Mimi jump off Kate's bookshelf in a stunt to expose the life of dolls, and Mimi goes into Permanent Doll State. In which dolls cannot come to life ever again because they put the secret life of dolls at risk of being exposed. So at the end of the story, Mean Mimi, still in Permanent Doll State, is taken to Kate's school where she ends up in the lost and found. Mean Mimi remained forever unfound at the school.
7337727	/m/025zlzl	A Dog's Life: The Autobiography of a Stray	Ann M. Martin	2005-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Squirrel is a stray puppy who lives in a shed behind the summer home of a wealthy family, The Merrions, with her mother, Stream and brother, Bone. When Stream disappears, Squirrel and Bone must set off on their own. The puppies are picked up by highway travelers, but then abandoned and thrown out of a car window while the travelers were at a mall the following day. Squirrel and Bone are injured; Bone is taken away by other shoppers, leaving Squirrel, never to be seen again. Squirrel joins forces with another female stray, Moon, for a short time. Later, after being attacked by stray dogs at a gas station and being with each other for some time, healing each others wounds, the pair are struck by a car, killing Moon instantly and injuring Squirrel. This time, Squirrel is taken to the vet, where she is spayed and her broken leg is treated. She is renamed Daisy and adopted by a family for the summer(Their summer dog). In the autumn, Squirrel is once more abandoned. She continues to wander for years. Then Squirrel, now an old dog, wanders around to an old lady's house. Then the old woman, whose name is Susan, sees Squirrel and takes her in. At the end of the story, Susan, an old woman, finds Squirrel cold and starving in her backyard, and tries to coax her in. Susan had a dog named Maxie in the past. Squirrel, now an old lady herself, refuses to come over, and Susan has to gain her trust by leaving food out and gradually moving closer each day. When she finally gets Squirrel inside, she decides to keep her and renames Squirrel "Addie". Afterwards, Susan and Squirrel, both old ladies, enjoy the rest of their lives together. They lived happily ever after
7338385	/m/025zmk7	Killer on the Road	James Ellroy	1986-10	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Michael Martin Plunkett is a child genius who comes from a broken home: His father is a hustler and his mother is an alcoholic and drug addict who engages in a series of one-night-stands. After his parents divorce, Plunkett takes solace in a series of disturbing fantasies in which he re-assembles his classmates' body parts. The fantasies lead Plunkett to becoming a peeping Tom, and from the time he is seven until he turns eleven, he spends all of his free time spying on his neighbors and observing people having intercourse. Before he can graduate junior high, Plunkett's teachers, having noticed his withdrawn nature in class, send him to the school psychologist, who identifies Plunkett as disturbed but nonetheless passes him to high school after Plunkett emotionally manipulates him into a fit of rage. In high school, Plunkett, now realizing that there is something different about himself after his session with the school psychologist, seeks out some means of grounding himself psychologically. He becomes obsessed with a series of pulp comics and fixates on the main villain, "Shroud Shifter," a jewel thief obsessed with becoming invisible. Plunkett comes to the conclusion that his own goal should become "invisibility" in the sense that he can move through life as nondescript as possible. Plunkett steals from his mother to finance a series of wardrobes which will allow him to blend in with as diverse a number of people as possible; she punishes him, and in retribution, he switches her muscle relaxers with massive quantities of amphetamines. She suffers a psychotic break and slits her writs; Plunkett drinks her blood and then calls an ambulance, reporting the suicide. He is placed in the foster care of an LAPD officer, whom Plunkett sets about manipulating in order to gain knowledge of how to become a good criminal. He begins committing a series of fetishistic burglaries in which he breaks into women's homes, kills their pets, and steals from them after watching them engage in intercourse. Following the Tate/LaBianca Murders, Plunkett attempts to meet Charles Manson, only to improperly identify a generic hippie as Manson and break into an apartment where he is having sex. The hippie apprehends Plunkett, and Plunkett is sentenced to a year in prison. In prison, Plunkett works to perfect his body while studying under other criminals and learning their techniques. Doing janitorial work as a trusty, he encounters the recently incarcerated Manson; furious that the rambling, barely coherent Manson is being held up as a paragon of evil, Plunkett resolves that upon his release he will become the kind of killer truly worthy of that distinction. Upon his release from prison, Plunkett delves further into his fantasy life, which begins to spill over into his waking life as Shroud Shifter appears to him in a series of schizophrenic visions, encouraging him to commit more violent crimes. Finally, one night, Plunkett abruptly lashes out and kills a girl and her boyfriend who had invited him to their apartment to smoke marijuana. Plunkett successfully covers up his crime by making the murder appear to be the work of drug dealers; now fully entrenched in a version of his fantasy life that overlaps with reality, Plunkett embarks on a road trip across the western United States, picking up hitch hikers and brutally mutilating and murdering them, then selling their belongings to fences to finance his lifestyle. As time progresses and his body count rises, Plunkett perfects his techniques, outfitting a Dodge van with a series of hidden compartments and living amenities so that it can act as both his mobile home and murder factory. After hastily killing a man in the snow, Plunkett is apprehended by Wisconsin State Police Sergeant Ross Anderson, who reveals himself to be a serial killer responsible for three (later seven) brutal rape/murders of young coeds. Anderson and Plunkett become romantically involved and Anderson uses his influence to protect Plunkett as his own murders increase in number and brutality. FBI agent Thomas Dusenberg is tasked with identifying and apprehending Anderson and Plunkett. He eventually captures Anderson, who gives up Plunkett in exchange for immunity from the death penalty. After Plunkett sees his own photo on wanted posters, he reasons--using a chain of paranoid logic-- that Anderson's family identified him as a serial killer. Plunkett goes to Anderson's house, where he violently mutilates and murders his entire family. In the course of killing the last member of Anderson's family, Plunkett experiences a moment of lucidity during which he realizes that Anderson's family had no role in his being identified. Plunkett nevertheless desecrates all of Anderson's family's corpses, then goes to a motel where he identifies himself to the manager and waits to be turned in. Eventually, Dusenberg arrives with a strike team, and Plunkett surrenders. He only confesses to crimes in non-death-penalty states, assuring via an immunity deal that he will never be executed. He is sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, and placed into solitary confinement in Sing Sing Prison. Remaining in a catatonic state for an extended period of time, he finally breaks his silence by contacting a publisher and asking for assistance writing his memoirs (which make up the bulk of the novel). Dusenberg, troubled by Plunkett's motiveless murders, seeks solace in his family, only to discover that his wife has been having an affair. When he confronts her about it, she attempts to rationalize it before begging for forgiveness, all the while attempting to shift blame off of herself. Dusenberg sells his diary to Plunkett's agent for use in Plunkett's book, then commits suicide, leaving his entire estate to his children. In Sing Sing, Plunkett finishes his memoirs. Believing that he has reached the pinnacle of human existence, and robbed of further murder opportunities, he announces his intention to commit suicide by using his mental prowess to will himself into a state of brain death.
7340745	/m/025zp5w	The Boleyn Inheritance	Philippa Gregory	2006	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins in 1539, after the death of King Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour. Henry is looking for a new wife and settles on Anne of Cleves, daughter of John III, Duke of Cleves, whom he has only seen through the paintings sent to him. Jane Rochford is summoned to court by the Duke of Norfolk to be a lady-in-waiting at the court of King Henry VIII. Jane has unpleasant memories of court, because she is the widow of George Boleyn and sister-in-law to Henry VIII's second wife, Anne. George and Anne Boleyn were both executed in 1536 for "adultery, incest and plotting to murder the King." Katherine Howard is a young girl (the cousin of Anne Boleyn) living with her grandmother at Lambeth Palace, where she has grown accustomed to a lax, licentious lifestyle. She has taken a lover, Francis Dereham, and the two have sworn to be married. Katherine's uncle informs her that she will be brought to court if she can behave herself and she swears to herself not to let anything, including Francis, get in her way of success. Anne, who has heard of the less-than-pleasant fates of her would-be predecessors, is not sure about being the queen of England, but is eager to leave her family, as nobody really cares for her. Her arrival in England goes well until she is surprised by a drunken man (actually Henry VIII in disguise), who plants a sloppy kiss on her; she responds with an angry shove and curses him in German. Although she quickly tries to make amends once she is made aware of his identity, the King carries a grudge against her for the duration of their marriage because of this. Henry is also put off by Anne's looks, since she is dressed like a country bumpkin, and does not look at all like her portrait. Despite his misgivings, Henry goes ahead with the marriage, but he is already looking for a way out. Anne is at a great disadvantage during the first months of her new life as she hardly speaks any English, and she does not know Latin, the diplomatic language of the time. Due to her strict religious upbringing, she has not been taught how to play an instrument, sing or dance, and her mother has not made her aware of the facts of life. Despite this, Anne quickly befriends Jane Rochford, who is one of her ladies-in-waiting. Jane is as surprised as anyone at Anne's plain appearance and ill proficiency at English, but Anne is an honest, sweet young woman who wins over the English people, if not her husband. She makes an effort to befriend Prince Edward, and the princesses Elizabeth and Mary, even when it enrages her husband, and makes a point to learn as much English as possible. A few months after their wedding, Henry decides to rid himself of his new wife. Fearing for her life, Anne is all-too-eager to sign an annulment saying that she was previously betrothed to Francis of Lorraine and that her wedding was not consummated. She is given the title "Princess" and receives land, money, and the treatment reserved for the king's own sister. Meanwhile, Henry has noticed the beautiful fourteen-year-old Katherine "Kitty" Howard, who has becomes one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting, thanks to her uncle, Duke Thomas Howard of Norfolk. Infatuated, Henry quickly divorces Anne and marries Katherine, his "rose without a thorn". Katherine has in turn fallen in love with one of the king's favorite courtiers, Thomas Culpepper. At first, Katherine enjoys the perks of being a queen, although she finds the condescension of her stepdaughter Mary irritating (Mary is almost ten years older than she is and finds her frivolous). However, she quickly becomes aware of the drawbacks of being married to the King. Henry is no longer young and handsome; he is nearly 50 years old (her grandfather's age), weighs approximately 300 pounds, and has a festering ulcer on his thigh that permanently weeps pus and blood. Katherine's infatuation for Thomas Culpepper becomes harder and harder to hide. Encouraged by the Duke of Norfolk and Jane Rochford, who want Katherine to bear a child for the king (whom they now believe to be completely impotent), she begins an affair with the young courtier. She goes to bed with the king and once he is asleep, joins Thomas in another room, guarded by Jane Rochford. However, young Katherine's life takes a bad turn when her past returns to haunt her in the shape of her former betrothed Francis Dereham, who turns up at court in order to get ahead. Katherine gives him a position in her household but does not like him being so close. When her affair with Culpepper is exposed by the enemies of her family, her friends and family desert her to avoid implicating themselves, and her previous affairs are used as further evidence of adultery (which is now a treasonous offence). Although Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, tries to help her by telling her to state that she was engaged to Dereham, and therefore her marriage is invalid, Katherine is now so frightened and hysterical that she cannot understand him and continues to state that there was no engagement. She is found guilty of adultery and treason and is executed at only sixteen, along with her beloved Thomas Culpepper and many others involved. Jane Rochford tries desperately to get out of execution by feigning insanity, but cannot escape from the king's wrath this time. Henry changes the law so that anyone guilty of treason can be executed, mad or not. Jane is found guilty and is beheaded along with Katherine. Anne of Cleves, after being cleared of any blame, remains in her new home in England and outlives not only her supplanter, but Henry himself.
7343803	/m/025zq__	Eight Lectures on Yoga	Aleister Crowley	1939	{"/m/070wm": "Spirituality"}	 Eight Lectures on Yoga is divided into two chapters: "Yoga for Yahoos" and "Yoga for Yellowbellies". In the book, Crowley instructs students on the steps needed to approach mysticism through Yoga, and details the complications that arise along the path. One intent Crowley had in writing the book was to dispel the various myths surrounding Yoga in Europe at the time — most thought it to be an exotic, Eastern ritual of the ancient past. Lecture 1: Dissects the word "Yoga", as well as its various implications on the human mind. Lecture 2: Lists the eight limbs of Yoga, and explains the first, Yama, which is defined as control. Lecture 3: Details Niyama, the second limb of Yoga, and analogizes it to various planets. Lecture 4: Concerning Asana and Pranayama, the third and fourth limbs of Yoga, and correct posture while practicing. In this section, Crowley covers, in detail, the philosophical, mathematical, and scientific aspects of Yoga. These are divided into the remaining four chapters.
7347490	/m/025zv1c	The Bastard Prince	Katherine Kurtz	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The events of The Bastard Prince span a period of approximately six months, from late May to late December of 928. The novel begins after the invasion of Prince Marek Furstán-Festil, the bastard child of the last Deryni ruler of Gwynedd, King Imre, and his sister, Princess Ariella. Supported by his Torenthi relatives, Marek has occupied the town of Culliecairn and slain Earl Hrorik II of Eastmarch. Word of the invasion is quickly sent to Rhemuth, where King Rhys Michael Haldane has spent the first six years of his reign as an imprisoned puppet of his lords of state. When a Torenthi herald arrives at Rhemuth to challenge the king, the great lords realize that they must permit Rhys Michael to go to Eastmarch and personally respond to the invasion. Disguised as one of Queen Michaela's serving maids, Rhysel Thuryn quickly learns of the king's plans to accompany his army to Eastmarch. Rhysel meets with members of the Camberian Council and attempts to convince them to activate the king's Haldane potential before he leaves the following day. Despite his own objections, Father Joram MacRorie, Rhysel's uncle, eventually agrees to her plan. That night, Joram and Tieg Thuryn, Rhysel's brother, infiltrate the castle and meet with the king. Tieg unblocks the Deryni powers of both Michaela and her brother, Sir Cathan Drummond, and Michaela then assists Tieg, Rhysel, and Joram in activating Rhys Michael's arcane powers. After the ritual, Joram and Tieg capture Master Dimitri, a Torenthi Deryni collaborator who has been working for the great lords. The Camberian Council alters Dimitri's mind with their own set of commands before returning him to Rhemuth. The next day, Rhys Michael departs the capital with army, accompanied by Cathan, Earl Manfred MacInnis, Earl Rhun von Horthy, Lord Albertus, and Father Paulin Sinclair. Before departing the city, Constable Udaut is killed when Dimitri secretly uses his powers to spook Udaut's horse. Later on the journey, a swarm of bees mysteriously attacks the royal party and nearly kills Albertus. Several days later, Albertus questions Rhys Michael about the incidents, concerned about the rumored magical powers of the Haldane family. He orders Dimitri to probe the king's mind, but the Deryni is still under the compulsions of the Camberian Council. To protect the king, Dimitri kills Albertus and later allows himself to be implicated in the death. When Paulin attempts to confine Dimitri, he lashes out with his powers and destroys Paulin's mind before be overcome. Dimitri is tortured for several hours before he is killed by a mental death-trigger in his own mind. The royal army arrives at Lochalyn the next day, where it is joined by the levies of Duke Graham of Claibourne, Earl Sighere of Marley, and Earl Corban Howell of Eastmarch. In a private conversation, Lady Sudrey, Hrorik's Deryni widow, offers Rhys Michael her support and the use of her limited powers. The following morning, Rhys Michael agrees to meet with Prince Miklos of Torenth, who claims to have led the invasion on Marek's behalf. Accompanied by Sudrey, the king parleys with Miklos briefly, but Miklos breaks the peace by attacking Sudrey. Rhys Michael uses his own powers to protect himself and kill Miklos, but Sudrey is killed in the battle and Rhys Michael is wounded when a horse steps on his hand. Afterwards, the king claims that it was Sudrey who used magic in the battle, and later realizes that Miklos' companion was actually Marek himself. After Miklos' death, Marek withdraws his forces and returns to Torenth. Rhys Michael asks the northern lords to help him break free of the great lords, and Graham and Sighere agree to become Regents for the king's son, Prince Owain, if anything should happen to the king. Cathan prepares a codicil to the king's will, and all parties involved succeed in signing it without alerting Rhun or Manfred. The king departs for Rhemuth the next day, but the progress of the army is slowed by the worsening condition of his injury. The army is eventually forced to stop at Saint Ostrythe's Convent when the king becomes too ill to continue. Dom Queron Kinevan rushes to the king's side, but he does not arrive in time and Rhys Michael soon dies from poor medical treatment. As the army returns to Rhemuth with Rhys Michael's body, the Camberian Council informs the northern lords of the king's death and offers their assistance in securing the rights of the new Regents. In Rhemuth, Cathan is drugged and imprisoned, but Michaela and Rhysel succeed in activating Owain's Haldane potential. Over the next several days, the northern lords ride toward Rhemuth, eventually arriving on the morning of Rhys Michael's funeral. Accompanied by Queron, Tieg, Ansel MacRorie, and a band of armed men, Graham and Sighere confront the great lords inside the royal tomb. Rhun kills Manfred and flees with Owain, while Earl Tammaron takes Michaela hostage. As Cathan pursues Rhun, Michaela uses her powers to slay Tammaron. Cathan catches Rhun atop a tower and the two engage in a brief fight before Rhun is killed. Several months later, Michaela visits her husband's tomb in the royal crypt. Owain has been crowned as King of Gwynedd, and Cathan now serves on the Regency Council with her, Graham, and Sighere. Of the former Regents, only former Archbishop Hubert MacInnis remains alive, but he has been stripped of his office and imprisoned for his crimes. Although he did not live long enough to see it, Rhys Michael's actions succeeded in freeing the crown of Gwynedd for his heirs.
7347634	/m/025zv4g	Fly Away Peter	David Malouf	1981	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Fly Away Peter is an Australian novel set before and during the First World War. The first part of the novel is set on the Queensland Gold Coast, and the second part on the Western Front. The central character of the novel is Jim Saddler, a self-contained young man with a profound understanding of the bird life of an estuary near his home. Ashley Crowther has recently inherited the farm which includes the estuary; despite the divide of class and experience, the two young men form a close bond when Ashley offers Jim a job as a warden, recording the comings and goings of birds in their 'sanctuary'. Jim also befriends Imogen, an older woman whose photography captures the beauty of the birds in the sanctuary; in particular the Sandpiper. This is an idyllic world of Sandpipers, plovers and ibises, but not without the seeds of change and disturbance. When the First World War breaks out, Jim feels obliged to join up, and travels to the Western Front, where his unique and sensitive perception gives the reader a window to the horrific experience of trench warfare. Malouf's description of the all-consuming 'system' of war and the gruesome realities of living and dying at the front are gut-wrenching in their detail. After an uneventful arrival at the front, a shell lands unexpectedly among Jim's friends behind the lines. Jim is coated by the blood of his friend Clancy, who is blown out of existence. Subsequently a young recruit Eric loses both legs. Jim sees many other friends die. He crosses paths with Ashley, who is an officer in a different division. He confronts his own sense of violence when assaulted by another man, Wizzer, who later dies in a shell-hole. He also sees the local farming communities trying to keep making their livelihood amid the mayhem, including an old man planting in the dirt of a blasted wood. Jim begins again to make a record of the crows as their barely interrupted migration patterns continue above the front. At the end of the novel, the reader enter Jim's subjectivity as he goes 'over the top' in an attack, is wounded and dies of his wounds. His exact point of death is not made explicit; his journey out of life is dream-like and poetic. On the Queensland coast Imogen grieves Jim's death, and reflects on the meaningless but beautiful continuity of life.
7351102	/m/025_0hs	Those Who Walk In Darkness	John Ridley	1999-06-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In a world where, until a few short years ago, the streets were rocked by battles between colorfully clad men and women with astounding metanormal powers, the people have declared all-out war against these modern-day titans. Following the destruction of the city of San Francisco in a super-battle gone bad, the federal government has issued an executive order outlawing not only the use of super powers, but also the very people who possess them. For the beings known as Metanormals, it doesn't matter whether they were once superheroes, supervillains, or neither; if they commit crimes, save lives or just try to live normal lives without ever using their powers; they're all regarded as public enemies, and as such the legal prey of the murderous LAPD division G Platoon (presumably after SWAT's designation of D Platoon) known more familiarly as the Metanormal Tactical Unit, or "MTac." The main character is Soledad O'Roark, a rookie MTac whose single-minded hatred of the Metas is extreme even by the obsessive standards of her profession. Soledad earns the hated nickname "Bullet" on her very first call, when she uses an O'Dwyer Variable-Lethality Law Enforcement gun to blow away a rampaging pyrokinetic in the act of frying her squad. Soledad herself modified the high-tech gun, which comes complete with color-coded bullets designed to exploit the individual weaknesses of various common Metas. The gun saves her life and the lives of several of her partners, but the department brass still demotes her, and considers filing charges, for her failure to follow official procedure by using the unregistered weapon. Soledad's lawyer, Gayle, suspects a conspiracy. Michelle, an angelic winged woman who possesses a mysterious ability to either avert disasters or bring back the dead, lives in hiding with her telepathic husband, Vaughn, and a mentally disabled metal manipulator named Aubrey. When Michelle reveals herself in order to save the lives of an entire construction crew during a deadly street collapse, Soledad shoots the winged woman dead, dismissing the horrified reaction of one witness with a shrugged "She's not an Angel. Angels don't bleed. She's just another freak." The grieving Vaughn succumbs to his anger, which his gentle wife held in check for so long, and declares war against the MTacs. What Fire Cannot Burn continues to follow Soledad and fellow MTAC officer Eddi Aoki as they go undercover to investigate a serial killer targeting metanormals hunts in Los Angeles, a serial killer who might work for the police.
7353390	/m/025_2lw	Deathwatch		1972		 The plot opens up with successful Los Angeles lawyer and hunter named Madec, who hires Ben, a timid college student to help him find bighorn sheep in the nearby Mojave Desert after receiving a rare permit to hunt them. Ben has experience working in the desert as he is studying to be a geologist, but he is also low on money, so he accepts. Things take a deadly turn when Madec accidentally shoots an old prospector, as he was a man of importance who does not have time to sit in jail. Ben thinks that the honest thing to do is for the two of them to report the accidental shooting, and although Madec tries to reason with him, Ben remains stubborn and refuses to comply with Madec. As a result, Madec gives Ben two choices. Madec could shoot Ben on the spot, or Ben could make an attempt to escape the desert by walking 45 miles to the nearest highway without clothes, food or water. Worst of all, Madec would make sure Ben wouldn't make it and that he would be watching him the whole way and aiming at him with his .358 Norma Magnum. Ben tries to climb a butte and signal for help while finding water on it, but is shot in the arm by Madec causing him to fall and injuring his back. Now time is running out as he begins to hallucinate, suffering from dehydration, hunger, sunburn, gunshots, and heat. However, Ben gets the upper hand when he finds water in a cave and eats a lizard and hunts some birds with the prospector's slingshot. Later, Madec attempts to scale the butte where Ben's cave is. However, Ben buries himself in the sand and breathes through the tubes of his slingshot. While Madec is on the other side of the butte, Ben unearths himself and creates a distraction by setting Madec's tent on fire. This brings Madec closer and allows Ben to, using the slingshot, shoot several buckshots into Madec with the slingshot that he found in the prospectors tent. Ben overpowers Madec, ties him up, and escapes the desert in his Jeep CJ. Ben travels back to the town with the old man and Madec. Madec offers Ben $10,000 to just forget everything, but that doesn't happen. They get back and Madec makes up a lie that everyone believes, making Ben guilty. The doctor in the town finds evidence in the bodies to prove that Ben was right. The doctor also found the slingshot, and says that Madec tried to throw it away when he first came into the hospital. This truth made Madec guilty. In the end, Ben only wanted to report the an accident.
7358223	/m/025_6xc	King Kelson's Bride	Katherine Kurtz	2000	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The plot of King Kelson's Bride spans a period of two and a half months, from late June to mid-August 1128. The novel opens in Torenth, where Princess Morag Furstána, Duke Mahael II of Arjenol, and Count Teymuraz of Brustarkia discuss the marriage prospects of both King Liam Lajos II and King Kelson Haldane of Gwynedd. At the same time, the Camberian Council also discusses Kelson's potential brides while also worrying about Kelson's upcoming journey to Torenth. In Rhemuth, Kelson meets privately with Princess Rothana of Nur Hallaj after attending the wedding of his former squire. Despite professing his continuing love for her, Rothana once again refuses to marry the king. In her place, she urges Kelson to marry his cousin, Princess Araxie Haldane. In addition, she tells Kelson of the growing attraction between Prince Rory Haldane and Lady Noelie Ramsay. Although heartbroken by Rothana's refusal, Kelson agrees to consider her advice. Two days later, Kelson departs for Torenth. For the past four years, Kelson has held King Liam Lajos II of Torenth at his court in Rhemuth, both to protect the young king from his ambitious family and to teach him the art of statecraft. However, Liam has now reached his legal majority and must return to his own land to take up his throne. Kelson is accompanied by Duke Alaric Morgan of Corwyn, Duke Dhugal MacArdry McLain of Cassan, Bishop Denis Arilan of Dhassa, and Liam's uncle, Count Mátyás. The royal party stops briefly in Coroth, where Morgan's wife, Duchess Richenda, urges Kelson to abandon his pursuit of Rothana. The next day, the royal party progresses to the court of the Hort of Orsal, where both Kelson and Liam are attacked by a pair of mind-altered assassins. Although slightly wounded, neither king is seriously injured in the assault. Later that night, Kelson meets with Araxie and the two are formally engaged. As the royal party continues toward the Torenthi capital of Beldour, Liam confesses to Kelson that he is worried about the loyalty of his uncles Mahael and Teymuraz, though he is trusts Mátyás completely. Once in Beldour, Liam's trust is confirmed when Mátyás informs Kelson and Morgan that his brothers plan to kill Liam during the young king's coronation and place Mahael on the throne. Kelson agrees to help protect Liam, and Mátyás arranges for Kelson to take part in the magical ritual that will confirm Liam's power. For the next several days, Kelson practices the ritual with the assistance of Prince Azim, a relative of Rothana's and a member of the Camberian Council. When the ceremony finally occurs, Mátyás' prediction comes true and Mahael and Teymuraz attack Liam. However, Kelson and Mátyás successfully protect the young king, aided by Morag and the Torenthi Patriarch. Liam rips Mahael's mind and orders the traitor be impaled. During the conclusion of the ceremony, Kelson renounces his title of Overlord of Torenth and releases Liam from his vassalage, making the Kingdom of Torenth a sovereign and independent state once again. Afterwards, Teymuraz escapes from custody, and the lords of Gwynedd and Torenth later gather to discuss the threat he poses. That night, Morag captures Earl Sean O'Flynn of Derry and activates a latent magical link in his mind, allowing her to view his thoughts and experiences. Concerned about Teymuraz, Kelson decides to return to Rhemuth immediately through the use of Transfer Portals. After a brief stop to retrieve Araxie and her family, most of the royal party transports to Rhemuth that night. As the search for Teymuraz continues over the next several weeks, Kelson turns his attention to more domestic matters. When the Ramsay family arrives for the marriage of Sir Brecon Ramsay and Princess Richelle Haldane, Kelson seeks to further secure the Mearan alliance by arranging a marriage between Rory and Noelie. Although initially reluctant to approve the marriage, Noelie's parents agree after Kelson follows Araxie's suggestion and grants them the Duchy of Laas. Shortly thereafter, Kelson establishes a new home for the Servants of Saint Camber in Rhemuth, and Araxie proves to be instrumental in healing old wounds within the royal family. She persuades Kelson's uncle, Prince Nigel Haldane, to accept and acknowledge the presence of his grandchildren at Court, and later convinces Rothana to remain in Rhemuth and allow her son to be raised as a royal prince. In Torenth, Teymuraz attempts to plead his case to Morag. When she rebuffs him, he attacks her and rips her mind before killing her. With the knowledge he acquires from Morag, he gains control of the mental link with Derry. Several days later, he uses that link to wreak havoc in Rhemuth. After the double wedding of Brecon and Richelle and of Rory and Noelie, Teymuraz takes over Derry's mind and forces him to attack Mátyás. Araxie attempts to stop Derry, but Mátyás is severely wounded. Teymuraz once again escapes, but Morgan and Dhugal successfully Heal Mátyás' wound and save his life. Azim, Kelson, and Araxie remove the last foreign traces from Derry's mind, and Azim quickly leaves to pursue Teymuraz. One week later, Kelson and Araxie are married, and Araxie is formally crowned Queen of Gwynedd.
7361323	/m/025_9b6	Clade	Mark Budz	2003-12-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In Clade, the Ecocaust, an environmental disaster, causes major problems such as rising sea levels and additional strains on human resources. Although civilization recovers from this disaster, they do so at the expense of their previous freedoms. "Polycorps" develop from governments and corporations. The wonders of biotech introduce a new class system where human beings have been socially engineered at the molecular level through a process called "clading." This "clading" process places entire socioeconomic or ethnic groups made to be biologically predisposed to live in particular communities. If a person enters a community that they have not been claded to, the consequences could be devastating, resulting in sickness or death. Although it is not intentionally racist, businesses and retail outlets using this clading process to keep away the riffraff, will simply screen out clientele below a certain prosperity level. Therefore, a black market exists enabling people to buy the right biotech to inhibit the "pherions" in their systems to be placed in a certain clade. The protagonist is a man named Rigo, a Latino from the San Jose clade who wants to move up in society. Rigo accepts a job at a biotech firm that develops special vegetation for a planned orbital colony. Although his friends look down on him with contempt for selling out, he still maintains a close relationship with his mother, lawless brother, and Anthea, his troubled girlfriend. At work, after Rigo fears being exposed to some dangerous pherions, he finds to his surprise that the company he works for eagerly wants to send some of the plants they've been working on into space; and they want Rigo to supervise the transfer. Something about the haste of the company leaves Rigo feeling fishy. The secrets of this story unravel one after another, leading to holes in the plot.
7365657	/m/025_gd2	Kaaterskill Falls	Allegra Goodman	1998-08-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kaaterskill Falls spans two years (summer 1976- summer 1978) in the life of a small community in upstate New York. Most of the characters are summer residents, Orthodox Jews whose lives center around the local Orthodox synagogue. Others are year-round residents, both Christians and secular Jews, whose local roots run deep and who coexist in uneasy symbiosis with the summer people. Elizabeth Shulman, a thirtysomething wife and mother of five daughters, is growing restless with her prescribed role as a woman within the strict Kirshner sect. She conceives the dream of opening a kosher grocery to serve the summer residents of Kaaterskill. Her store is a smashing success, but Elizabeth's perceived laxity in adhering to its rabbinic certification earns the distrust of the Isaiah and Rachel Kirshner. Meanwhile, Elizabeth learns that she is pregnant for the sixth time. Elizabeth experiences a closing in of boundaries as Rabbi Isaiah Kirshner withdraws his permission for her grocery store and a new baby binds her once again to home. Ultimately, she takes a job as an assistant at a grocery store in Washington Heights (where the Shulmans live for most of the year) in order to learn the business. Another plot line revolves around strife within the Melish family. Middle-aged Andras Melish struggles with a sense of distance from his young, lively, somewhat dictatorial wife, Nina. He forges an unlikely clandestine friendship with the reclusive Una Darmstadt-Cooper. Meanwhile, teenage Renee Melish rebels against her mother's expectations for her and forms an unsuitable friendship with a gutsy Syrian girl, Stephanie Fawess. Renee also attracts the attention of a local boy, Ira Rubin. Still another plot line concerns the Kirshner rabbinic succession. The elderly, widowed Rav Kirshner is afflicted with Parkinson's Disease but remains reluctant to hand the reins of power over to his faithful but plodding son Isaiah. Isaiah's ambitious wife, Rachel, resents this, just as she resents her father-in-law's deep affection for his brilliant elder son Jeremy, who left the Kirshner sect to become a college professor. Rav Kirshner dies mid-way through the novel and Rabbi Isaiah launches a vigorous crackdown on perceived laxities within the sect.
7367363	/m/025_htt	Tea Party	Harold Pinter			 Tea Party "revolves around a family engaged in a business of sanitary engineering." According to an account published in the New Yorker, the play concerns "a middle-aged self-made business man named Sisson" (whom Pinter later renamed Disson), who engages a young secretary, marries a beautiful young second wife, and takes his new brother-in-law into his business–all in the same day"; Mysteries abound. What is going on between the wife and her brother? Are they indeed brother and sister? Sisson has his doubts about that … . Why does Sisson feel that there must be something wrong with his eyes, although he knows that he can see clearly and his eye doctor has assured him that his vision is perfect? He forces his secretary to tie a chiffon scarf over his eyes, and then he is able to make a pass at her, in response to one of her many come-ons. Ordinary events assume a sinister tinge. Sisson's two sons, giving him the deadpan treatment that little boys have been inflicting on their elders from time immemorial, seem as eerie as characters out of a ghost story. Always the questions remain. Is there a conspiracy against Sisson.
7367819	/m/025_j98	Death or Glory				 The story begins on a human colony world of Volga, populated by ex-Russians, Americans and Germans. While there is a government of sorts on the planet, most disputes are settled Wild West style. All males own a weapon since there are plenty of bandits. Life is chaotic and, at the same time, simple. Everything changes when prospector Roman Savelyev (his personal blaster has the words "Death or Glory" engraved) finds a strange black box with a big red button in one of his mines. After musing on how clichéd his situation is, he cannot help himself and presses the button. The box disappears the morning after. Several days later, a giant starship suddenly appears and enters Volga's atmosphere to come to rest above the island where the box was found. Not long after the races of the Alliance trace the heavy gravitational tracks of such a huge ship having penetrated the Barrier and showing up in orbit. The aliens assume that the ship belongs to a disappeared ancient race they call the Departed Ones. They are followed by an armada of Imperishables who are also interested in the strange vessel. The Alliance dares to investigate the ship and use it as a weapon. However the results are disappointing: ship's only controls are "biosuits" — organic structures wrapping an organism to perform a full contact — and they are designed only for Humans. Pressed for time as Imperishable are soon to arrive, the Alliance comes to a plan of capturing as many Humans as possible and using them to defeat the attack. But although it's easy to destroy the planet, to capture human "savages" proves to be a difficult task: humans are able to hold off the invaders whose orders are to capture the homo not kill them. Eventually though, most humans are captured and brought to the strange ship. Alliance scientists use their captives to reactivate the ship's systems, especially weapons to use against the Imperishables. However, the humans are able to take over the ship using the neural connections of the "biosuits" and obliterate the alien fleets. Volga is destroyed in the same battle, and the alien ship jumps into deep space. On the ship, dubbed Volga by the humans for their destroyed colony, some parts of the crew (mostly the former colony administration) begin plotting against their captain (Savelyev) and his command crew for the control of the ship. As it turns out, the ship selects the command structure based on the person who pressed the red button who becomes captain. Those closest in mindset to Sevelyev are given high command positions. Most bureaucrats and thugs have very different personalities from the captain and are assigned to low positions (something they do not like). At the same time, Savelyev is attempting to figure out the ship's true nature, as he is the only one with unrestricted access to Volga's systems. Once the attempted coup is put down, Savelyev reveals to his friends that the ship is a parasite, adapting its controls to whoever calls to it. Each time a person uses a biosuit, they experience euphoria, but ship also takes something of the person. Eventually, the ship consumes the crew and begins to seek out a new race to command it. The origins of the ship are unknown. Savelyev speculates that it is either a product of some ancient race or of the galaxy itself to act as an antibody against invaders, in this case the Imperishables. Eventually, the Alliance catches up with the ship and propose a deal: humans help them drive the Imperishables out of the galaxy, and the Alliance "uplifts" all humans (whom they now call a latent race) to the status of full members of the Alliance. Savelyev, as the human representative, agrees to it, ensuring a place for humans among the stars. The three other novels which take place in the same universe are called Black Relay, Legacy of Giants, and No One but Us (the latter two are usually published together as War for Mobility).
7371649	/m/025_n5y	Starter for Ten	David Nicholls	2003		 The story, told in first-person narrative, is set in 1985 and chronicles the misadventures of student Brian Jackson in his first year at an unnamed university. A somewhat obsessive collector of general knowledge, Brian has been a fan since childhood of the television quiz show University Challenge which he used to watch with his late father, and on arriving at university, he seizes upon the opportunity to join its University Challenge team. He is initially unsuccessful, but is selected after one of the other team members is forced to drop out because of ill health. The TV show's famous catchphrase — "Your starter for 10" — gives the book its title. Brian promptly falls for his glamorous teammate, Alice Harbinson, although the attraction is not mutual, and he may have more in common with a counterculturalist chum, Rebecca Epstein. Additionally, Brian finds himself caught between his new life, amongst the middle-class university set, and his old, with his working-class family and friends in the seaside town of Southend, Essex.
7374597	/m/025_q_g	Angel Rock	Darren Williams	2002-05-20	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel is set against the backdrop of a fictional Australian bush town, Angel Rock, during the late 1960s. The story concerns the investigation of two seemingly separate incidents: the disappearance of two young brothers (of who only one has returned home safely), and the suicide of a teenage girl in a derelict house in Sydney. During the course of investigating the teenage girl's death, the detective sent to the town begins to believe that the two incidents might be linked in some way and he is forced to confront memories from his own past.
7378352	/m/025_vsn	Kleinzeit	Russell Hoban	1974	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Hoban's second novel for adults, Kleinzeit is a story detailing the eponymous title character's brush with illness and creativity. When Kleinzeit is fired from his job as an advertising copy-writer, he ends up in hospital with a ‘skewed hypotenuse’, being tended by the healthy and desirable Sister. Together, they embark on a strange adventure, in which Kleinzeit struggles to get better, attempts to master his creative urges, and holds conversations with a variety of abstract concepts. The central character shares many traits with Hoban himself, and the author has commented: ‘I think there's most of me in Kleinzeit’.
7383230	/m/0bkqgs	Star-Begotten	H. G. Wells		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The protagonist of the story Joseph Davis, who is an author of popular histories, becomes overtaken with suspicion that he and his family have already been exposed and are starting to change.
7384912	/m/02601qw	Tides of War	Steven Pressfield		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Through the course of his career as a mercenary, Polemidas had come into contact with most of the pivotal figures of the era including Socrates, the statesmen-general Pericles and Nicias, and Spartan general Lysander. Polemidas describes his travels, most prominently his upbringing in Sparta and his family estate outside Athens, to Athens during the Plague, the Athenian marines during the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, and Athens’ eventual defeat at the battle of Aegospotami. However, it was the character of Alcibiades who loomed most large over the narrative, just as he had the greatest impact on the Peloponnesian War. Undefeated during his career as a general and admiral, Alcibiades’ life played itself out like an epic tragedy with the tensions between his genius and the hubris that was his ultimate downfall. The political shifts that occurred during the war, manifesting through partisan public opinion, act almost to make Athens herself a character in the novel. While most of the dialogue is Pressfield’s own creation, for long speeches and character development he used many ancient sources, particularly adapting quotes appearing in Thucydides in the History of the Peloponnesian War and to a lesser extent several of the Socratic Dialogues of Plato. it:I venti dell'Egeo
7386834	/m/02603zr	The Inheritance of Loss	Kiran Desai	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is centered on two main characters: Biju and Sai. Biju is an illegal Indian immigrant living in the United States, son of a cook who works for Sai's grandfather. Sai is a girl living in mountainous Kalimpong with her maternal grandfather Jemubhai, the cook and a dog named Mutt. Desai switches the narration between both points of view. The action of the novel takes place in 1986. The novel follows the journey of Biju, an illegal immigrant in the US who is trying to make a new life; and Sai, an Anglicised Indian girl living with her grandfather in India. The novel shows the internal conflicts in India between groups, whilst showing a conflict between past and present. There is the rejection and yet awe of the English way of life, the opportunities for money in the US, and the squalor of living in India. Many leading Indians were considered to be becoming too English and having forgotten the traditional ways of Indian life, shown through the character of the grandfather, the retired Judge. The major theme running throughout is one closely related to colonialism and the effects of post-colonialism: the loss of identity and the way it travels through generations as a sense of loss. Individuals within the text show snobbery at those who embody the Indian way of life and vice versa, with characters displaying an anger at the English Indians who have lost their traditions. The Gorkhaland movement is used as a historic backdrop of the novel. The retired judge Jemubhai Patel is a man disgusted at Indian ways and customs, so much so, that he eats chapatis with a knife and fork, hates all Indians including his father whom he breaks ties with and wife who he abandons at his father's place after torturing her, and is never accepted by the British in spite of his education and adopted mannerisms.
7386904	/m/0260447	The Valley of Bones	Anthony Powell	1964	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Early in 1940 Jenkins joins his regiment in Wales as a second lieutenant. We are introduced to his commanding officer, the officious Captain Gwatkin, and the alcoholic Lieutenant Bithel. The battalion is moved to Northern Ireland where Gwatkin disastrously muddles instructions during an exercise and there is a snap inspection by General Liddament. En route to a training course at Aldershot Nick makes friends with David Pennistone. At Aldershot, Jenkins meets Odo Stevens and also Jimmy Brent who gives an account of his affair with Jean. Stevens gives Nick a lift to spend weekend leave at Frederica Budd's house, where his wife Isobel, Robert Tolland and Priscilla are all staying. Robert Tolland's leave is suddenly cancelled. Meanwhile Stevens has made a hit with Priscilla. On rejoining his regiment at Castlemallock, Nick finds Gwatkin in unrequited passion for a barmaid, and engaged in a running battle with the preposterous Bithel. Jenkins is instructed to report to the DAAG at Divisional HQ, who turns out to be Widmerpool. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent
7386932	/m/026045m	The Vivisector	Patrick White	1970	{"/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hurtle Duffield is born into a poor Australian family. They adopt him out to the wealthy Courtneys, who are seeking a companion for their hunchbacked daughter Rhoda. The precocious Hurtle gains artistic inspiration from the world that surrounds him, his adoptive mother, Maman, and Rhoda; the prostitute Nance, who is his first real love; the wealthy heiress Olivia Davenport; his Greek mistress Hero Pavloussi and finally the child prodigy Kathy Volkov. He becomes famous and his paintings are in great demand. However, he is unimpressed by the monetary and status gain this brings and continues to live a spartan life, beholden to nobody - even the Prime Minister. In his final years he is drawn closer to his sister Rhoda, and after a stroke causes partial paralysis, is assisted by his protoge Don Lethbridge to produce a huge, final magnum opus to God--the Vivisector.
7387737	/m/0kv6gh	Eloise at Christmastime	Kay Thompson	1958	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The movie begins with a shot of the Hotel Lobby, with a large pink gift box leaning on the display table, in the middle of the room. The hotel manager, Mr. Salamone, asks one of the staff to take the box to the package room. Two of the staff take the gift box to the package room. When they leave, the box is opened and we see Eloise crawling out. Eloise is on a mission to find any presents in the package room from her mother, who has taken a trip to Paris. When Eloise does not find any packages from her mother, she then leaves the room in a large mess. She skips towards the lobby, and pushes into a long line at the check-in desk and interrupts a conversation between Mr. Salamone and two patrons, wishing to upgrade their current hotel suite to a park-side view room. Eloise asks Mr. Salamone if there have been any packages from her mother in Paris, and he replies that there hasn't. He pushes her away, telling Eloise that he is currently very busy. Eloise pushes in the line again, offering Mr. Salamone some unnecessary assistance. Mr. Salamone declines, pushing Eloise away from the hectic line. Eloise leaves, but is instantly back in a flash, when she notices a suspicious man waiting in the queue. She thinks that this patron is a spy, but Mr. Salamone declines, and instantly changes the subject so that Eloise can leave the line. He requests Eloise to look out for the hotel's Christmas Tree Delivery, which is due to be at the Plaza any moment. He tells Eloise to inform him when the delivery arrives. Eloise leaves the line, and tells the "spy" that she is keeping her eye on him. The main focal point of the story deals with the impending marriage between Rachel Peabody, the hotel owner's daughter, and a bachelor named Brooks Oliver, who was chosen by Rachel's family to be her husband. Eloise eventually learned that Oliver is into doing something suspicious. She also found out that Rachel had taken a liking to Bill, a room service waiter and one of her friends, four years earlier. When Mr. Peabody became aware of his daughter's relationship with Bill, he then sent his daughter to a university, hoping to break his daughter's ties with the waiter. Eloise then intervened with the relationship, much to the disappointment of Rachel's father. She then succeeded at restoring Bill and Rachel's romance with each other; Oliver is then arrested for forgery, and Mrs. Thornton, who was in danger of being evicted, is granted a permanent stay at the Plaza. And to top it off, Eloise's mom arrives and they rejoice.
7387847	/m/026052w	The Skinner	Neal Asher	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Skinner tells the story of three individuals who have journeyed to the 'line-world' (a world on the 'line', or border, of the Human Polity) of Spatterjay, a hostile mostly aquatic world with ferocious native lifeforms. The planet Spatterjay is host to a complex virus that permeates throughout all life forms (including humans), propagated by a kind of leech which uses the virus to keep its prey alive whilst it feeds upon them. The virus optimises life forms it infects for survival changing them, often rapidly, in response to environmental pressures. Humans need to consume food that is untainted by the virus (known colloquially as "dome grown") if they are not to be changed by the virus into something quite different. The Skinner is one such human who has "gone native", undergoing an horrific transformation.
7391041	/m/02607hx	Wolfskin	Juliet Marillier	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eyvind is a young Viking man who wishes to be a Wolfskin (a berserker warrior of Thor) like his brother. Somerled, a quiet boy of the same age, befriends Eyvind and binds him to loyalty with a blood oath. After becoming a Wolfskin, Eyvind voyages to the Isles of Light with Somerled, his brother Eirek, Somerled's brother Ulf (the leader of the expedition) and many others. The Vikings quickly establish a peace treaty with the native island folk and build a settlement. Then Ulf is murdered sadistically, suspended by ropes from a cliff's edge to die of exposure, leaving his position to Somerled- who immediately breaks the treaty. He sends out the Wolfskins to destroy the small army mustered by the natives in retaliation. Eyvind, seeing that the army is composed of the very young and the very old, suffers a breakdown brought on by the moral crisis. The native princess and priestess, Nessa, finds him and cares for him, healing his wounds and coldness of spirit. Alone in a hidden cave, with only an old priestess for company, the two young people fall in love. But Eyvind is soon faced with another crisis: he must face Somerled with newfound proof that the current ruler killed his own brother. In the Viking hall, Eyvind's accusations are smothered with violence and he is imprisoned, despite the efforts of his few remaining friends to help him. Finally, Nessa creates and brings to the hall a harp made out of Ulf's bones, with Ulf's voice (magically restored) as the final voice of truth that cannot be ignored. Somerled is banished from the Isles, bound by an oath to Eyvind to live as long as possible, and Eyvind stays in the Isles.
7391337	/m/02607_g	John Macnab	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir	1925	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Three successful but bored friends in their mid-forties decide to turn to poaching. They are Sir Edward Leithen, lawyer, Tory Member of Parliament (MP), and ex-Attorney General; John Palliser-Yeates, banker and sportsman; and Charles, Earl of Lamancha, former adventurer and present Tory Cabinet Minister. Under the collective name of 'John Macnab', they set up in the Highland home of Sir Archie Roylance, a disabled war hero who wishes to be a Conservative MP. They issue a challenge to three of Roylance’s neighbours: first the Radens, who are an old-established family, about to die out; next, the Bandicotts: an American archaeologist and his son, who are renting a grand estate for the summer; and lastly the Claybodys, vulgar, bekilted nouveaux riches. These neighbours are forewarned that 'John Macnab' will poach a salmon or a stag from their land and return it to them undetected. The outcome is that the men's boredom is dispelled with the assistance of helpers (including a homeless waif, 'Fish Benjie' and an athletic journalist, Crossby), and Archie Roylance marries Janet Raden, daughter of the grandee.
7394094	/m/0260c7d	The Village By The Sea	Anita Desai	1982	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The Village by the Sea is set in a small village called Thul in Western India(14 kilometres from bombay) and focuses on a family trying to make ends meet. The main protagonists are Lila, the eldest child who is 13 years old, and her 12-year-old brother Hari. They also have two younger sisters, Bela and Kamal. They live with their mother, who has been chronically ill and is bed-ridden. Their father is an alcoholic, which forces Hari and Lila to manage the family (as surrogate parents). There is much stress on them due to the constant demand of meeting the need of money. Although their father was earning money, he used to spend it to buy alcoholic materials. With two younger sisters to take care of, life for Lila and Hari is too hard. Hari decides that he has had enough and leaves for Bombay to find work. Lila is left alone to take care of her family, and struggles to do so. Help comes from an unexpected source, the rich De Silvas who have a bunglow or summerhouse- Mon Repos next to their hut. Meanwhile, Hari is new in the great city of Bombay and all alone. A kind restaurant proprietor, Jagu, takes pity on him and welcomes him to work in his restaurant. There, Hari builds a strong friendship with Mr. Panwallah, the lovable watch repairer whose shop is just beside Jagu’s. Through his experience with Mr. Panwallah and Jagu and the chain of events that take place in Bombay, Hari realizes that he could actually make a career as a watchmaker. Meanwhile, Lila, Bela and Kamal admit their sick mother in town hospital through the help of the De Silvas. Their father turns over a new leaf, and accompanies their mother throughout her 7-month treatment. When Hari returns to the village soon-after, he finds the environment of his home totally changed. As Hari reunites with his sisters, they all begin sharing stories with each other detailing the changes that took place after Hari left. Hari also explains the watch repair skills he learned in Bombay and reveals his plans to start a small repair shop in the village. Together; Lila, Hari, Bela, and Kamal all form a plan to use Hari's saved money (which he made and brought back from Bombay) to start a small chicken farm as a start up business for the family and financial support base for Hari's future repair shop. As Hari goes to the village to buy chicken netting fence and tools to build a chicken pen, a traveler converses with him and marvels at Hari upon learning his plans. As the novel ends, the traveler highlights Hari and his sister's resolve to adapt and change in a growing and ever developing world. Anita Desai has explicitly described in her very own style of writing,and she shows how Hari in the dilapidated conditions of the Sri Krishna Eating House finds warmth and affection through Mr Panwallah-owner and watch mender of the Ding-Dong watch shop. Mr Panwallah instills confidence in Hari and comforts him when he is terribly home sick. He even gives Hari a vivid and inspiring future and teaches him watch mending. This shows that even in one of the busiest, rickety and ramshackle cities such as Bombay there is still hope, love and affection He also goes back to Thul with the help of Mr panwallah and Jagu insisting to buy the bus ticket. Jagu's generosity by giving him some extra money to be brought back to his family.
7397309	/m/0260g2k	Prisoner's Base	Rex Stout		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 During one of the periodic disagreements Wolfe has with Archie, a young woman with a suitcase rings Wolfe's doorbell. Wolfe is busy in the plant rooms, so she meets with Archie but refuses to identify herself. She asks to rent a room and remain incommunicado at the brownstone for a week. So as to annoy Wolfe, Archie grants her request, contingent on Wolfe's approval, and locks her and her suitcase into a third floor bedroom. After Wolfe returns to the office, Archie fills Wolfe in. As expected, Wolfe not only refuses to grant the young woman's request but tells Archie to put her out immediately. Archie gets Wolfe to allow her to remain for dinner, which she eats upstairs. After dinner, a lawyer named Perry Helmar arrives at the brownstone, without an appointment. He wants to hire Wolfe for $10,000 to find one Priscilla Eads: Helmar is her guardian and she has disappeared. Helmar needs to locate her before her 25th birthday, which is one week away. Archie immediately suspects that she's upstairs and, asking Helmar for her photograph, confirms his suspicion and surreptitiously alerts Wolfe. Wolfe shoos Helmar without committing himself to the job, and finally speaks with Miss Eads. He gives her the choice of renting the room for one week for $10,000 – the amount he would forego if he turns Helmar down – or leaving the brownstone immediately – in that case, Wolfe will accept Helmar's job but will give her until the next morning before he starts looking for her. Miss Eads opts to leave. The next morning, Inspector Cramer arrives and informs Archie that his fingerprints have been found on luggage belonging to Priscilla Eads and – Miss Eads having been found murdered in her apartment – wants to know what his fingerprints were doing there. The body of Miss Eads' maid, Margaret Fomos, has also been found, in a vestibule 35 blocks away. It appears that Miss Eads was the murderer's main target, and that Mrs. Fomos was killed to get the keys to Miss Eads' apartment. With no fee in sight, Wolfe refuses to involve himself. Archie, infuriated by Wolfe's attitude, storms out of the brownstone. He blames himself for the Eads death, and resolves to start his own investigation. Archie crashes a meeting of the officers of the Softdown corporation – Miss Eads had been scheduled to inherit a controlling interest in Softdown's stock on her birthday, so Archie starts there. He allows the officers to assume he's a police detective and starts gathering information. Among other items, Archie learns that the corporation's officers will receive title to the stock that would have gone to Miss Eads had she lived. Just then, Archie's local bête noire, Lieutenant Rowcliff, arrives, discovers Archie, and arrests him for impersonating a police officer. Rowcliff goes much too far, though, when he arrests Wolfe as a material witness and brings him to the District Attorney's office. Wolfe, in a rage, bullies the DA and the police into releasing both him and Archie, whom Wolfe now claims as his client. Proceeding with the investigation, Archie encounters Sarah Jaffee, a young widow, a childhood friend of Miss Eads', another significant stockholder in Softdown, and self-described nut. Archie earns her gratitude by removing her dead husband's hat and coat from her apartment – Mrs. Jaffee has been unable to do so since his death in Korea a year earlier. Wolfe makes use of her gratitude by convincing her to enjoin the Softdown officers from exercising ownership of the stock before it is determined that none of them obtained the stock by committing a crime – specifically, the Eads and Fomos murders. Mrs. Jaffee would prefer to have nothing to do with Softdown, but considers herself in Archie's debt and therefore agrees. Wolfe uses the threat of the injunction to force the corporate officers to meet with him at the brownstone. Mrs. Jaffee attends the meeting. So does Miss Eads' ex-husband, Eric Hagh, and his lawyer; it turns out that Hagh has a credible claim on Miss Eads' inheritance. Later that night, well after the meeting has adjourned, Mrs. Jaffee phones Archie from her apartment to ask if her keys have been found in Wolfe's office – she's lost them and had to have the doorman let her in. Archie is immediately worried, because of the role played by apartment keys in the Eads and Fomos murders. He tells Mrs. Jaffee to put the phone down but leave the line open, and to flee her apartment right away. Archie doesn't hear her leave, so he rushes to her apartment and finds her dead, strangled in the same fashion as were Miss Eads and Mrs. Fomos. Feeling guiltier yet, Archie assists the police in their ongoing search for the murderer. The police finally decide that their best course is to re-enact the meeting of the corporate officers at Wolfe's office. Wolfe agrees to cooperate, but uses the occasion to his own purpose: the exposure of the murderer and the murderer's motives.
7400239	/m/0260k2x	The Deadly Isles	Jack Vance			 A young scientist with family ties to a vast fortune survives a murder attempt by a stranger while working in French Tahiti, and allows the assailant and the police to believe the attempt was successful. Incognito, he follows the would-be murderer aboard an island-hopping passenger/cargo schooner bound for the Marquesas, intending to find the man out.
7401456	/m/0260l7d	Restoration	Rose Tremain	1989	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel tells the story of Robert Merivel, a physician. After supervising the recovery of one of the dogs of King Charles II, he is appointed surgeon to all of the king's dogs. He then joins in all of the debauchery of King Charles' court. The king then arranges a marriage of convenience between Merivel and one of his mistresses, Celia Clemence. This is done purely to fool the king's other mistress Barbara Castlemaine. Merivel is given an estate named Bidnold in Norfolk, and Celia is installed in a house in Kew where the king can visit her secretly. In Norfolk, Merivel abandons the practice of medicine, and lives a dissipated life in which he tries to take up painting with the help of an ambitious painter named Elias Finn. Things start to change when Celia is sent to Bidnold by the king after displeasing him. One night he drunkenly makes advances to her, and is promptly reported to the king by Elias Finn. The result is that the king confiscates the Bidnold estate from Merivel. Merivel then joins his old student friend John Pearce at the New Bedlam hospital, also in Norfolk. (New Bedlam is fictitious and should not be confused with the real Bedlam in London). This is a hospital for the mentally ill, run by Quakers, of whom Pearce is a member. In earlier parts of the novel, Pearce has condemned the sinfulness of Merivel's lifestyle, and Merivel now joins the hospital with the best of intentions, and hoping to rediscover his medical vocation. However, things go wrong when he has an affair with a patient named Katharine and makes her pregnant. This coincides with the death of Pearce. He is expelled from the hospital, and travels with Katharine to be with her mother in London. In London, which is then experiencing the Great Plague, Merivel continues practising medicine. Katharine has a baby girl, but dies in childbirth. During the Great Fire of London in 1666, he rescues an elderly woman from a burning house. It is this which regains him the king's favour, and at the end the king allows him to live at Bidnold with his daughter. The title of the novel refers both to the Restoration period during which it occurs, and to the novel's ending when Merivel returns to Bidnold and the king's favour.
7402039	/m/0260lqk	The Road	Cormac McCarthy	2006-09-26	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An unnamed father and his young son journey across a grim post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a major unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and most life on Earth. The land is filled with ash and devoid of living animals and vegetation. Many of the remaining human survivors have resorted to cannibalism, scavenging the detritus of city and country alike for flesh. The boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the disaster, gave up hope and committed suicide some time before the story began, despite the father's pleas. Much of the book is written in the third person, with references to "the father" and "the son" or to "the man" and "the boy". Realizing that they cannot survive the oncoming winter where they are, the father takes the boy south, along empty roads towards the sea, carrying their meager possessions in their knapsacks and in a supermarket cart. The man coughs blood from time to time and eventually realizes he is dying, yet still struggles to protect his son from the constant threats of attack, exposure, and starvation. They have a revolver, but only two rounds. The boy has been told to use the gun on himself, if necessary to avoid falling into the hands of cannibals. During their trek, the father uses one bullet to kill a man who stumbles upon them and poses a grave threat. Fleeing from the man's companions, they have to abandon most of their possessions. As they are near death from starvation, the man finds an unlooted underground bunker filled with food and other necessities. However, it is too exposed, so they only stay a few days In the face of these obstacles, the man repeatedly reassures the boy that they are "the good guys" who are "carrying the fire". On their journey, the duo scrounge for food, evade roving bands, and contend with horrors such as a newborn infant roasted on a spit, and captives being gradually harvested as food. Although the man and the boy eventually reach the sea, their situation does not improve. They head back inland, but the man succumbs to an illness. Before he dies, the father tells the boy that he can continue to speak with him in his imagination after he is gone. The boy holds wake over the corpse for days, with no idea of what to do next. On the third day, the grieving boy encounters a man who says he has been tracking the pair. The man, who has a woman and two children of his own, a boy and a girl, convinces the boy that he is one of the "good guys" and takes him under his protection.
7402486	/m/0260l_x	The Moth Diaries	Rachel Klein	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At an exclusively girls' boarding school, Rebecca, a sixteen year-old girl, records her most intimate thoughts in a diary. The object of her growing obsession is her roommate, Lucy Blake, and Lucy's friendship with their new and disturbing classmate, Ernessa. Around her swirl dark rumors, suspicions, and secrets as well as a series of ominous disasters. As fear spreads through the school and Lucy isn't Lucy anymore, fantasy and reality mingle until what is true and what is dreamed bleed together into a waking nightmare that evokes with gothic menace the anxieties, lusts, and fears of adolescence. At the center of the diary is the question that haunts all who read it, "Is Ernessa really a vampire?" or has the narrator trapped herself in the fevered world of her own imagining?
7405295	/m/0260p6s	In the King's Service	Katherine Kurtz	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The events of In the King's Service span a period of nine years, from 1082 to November 1091. The novel begins as members of the Camberian Council congratulate Lord Sief MacAthan on the birth of his son, Krispin. However, when Sief returns to Rhemuth later that night, he discovers that the child is actually the bastard son of King Donal Blaine Haldane, who fathered the child on Sief's wife, Lady Jessamy MacAthan, in an attempt to breed a Deryni protector for his sons and heirs. When Sief angrily attacks the king with his powers, Donal is forced to kill the Deryni lord with his own arcane abilities. The Camberian Council later investigates Sief's death, but they are unable to confirm their suspicions regarding the paternity of Jessamy's son. In August of the following year, Jessamy welcomes Alyce and Marie de Corwyn, the daughters of Earl Keryell of Lendour to the royal court. Alyce and Marie spend several months in the service of Queen Richeldis before leaving Rhemuth to continue their education at Notre Dame d'Arc-en-Ciel, a royal convent where they meet Lady Zoë Morgan, the daughter of one of Donal's military aides, Sir Kenneth Morgan. Over the next several years, Alyce, Marie, and Zoë remain at the convent and pursue the common studies of ladies of noble birth. In October 1086, rebellious Mearans attempt to assassinate Price Richard Haldane, the king's younger half-brother. Although the plot is unsuccessful, Earl Keryell is slain and his eldest son and heir, Lord Ahern, is seriously wounded. Alyce and Marie return to Rhemuth to tend to their injured brother, and the three siblings escort their father's body back to Cynfyn shortly thereafter. While Ahern adjusts to his new role as Earl of Lendour, Lady Vera Howard reveals to the sisters that she is actually Alyce's twin sister. Alyce and Marie return to Rhemuth in February and soon secure a place for Vera in the royal household. Torenthi raiders strike across the border into Corwyn in the summer of 1088, and Ahern, as hereditary Duke of Corwyn, travels to Coroth to deal with the situation. Donal joins Ahern several weeks later, and the young earl impresses the king with his natural leadership skills. Meanwhile, in Rhemuth, Marie is poisoned and killed by Lady Muriella, a lady-in-waiting to the queen who is jealous of Marie's developing relationship with Sir Sé Trelawney. Alyce escorts her sister's body to Coroth, and later returns to Rhemuth after the funeral. Several months later, Ahern is summoned to court to advise the king on the increasingly tense situation in Meara. In April 1089, Ahern accompanies Donal when the king mounts a military campaign to put down a growing rebellion in Meara. Ahern further distinguishes himself during the campaign, but he becomes seriously ill while returning to Rhemuth in June. Kenneth rushes to fetch Alyce and Zoë, but Ahern soon dies, shortly after marrying Zoë. With Ahern's death, Alyce is now the sole heiress to the Duchy of Corwyn. An assassination attempt on the king in November fails, but Kenneth is badly wounded in the attack. After Alyce nurses Kenneth back to health, Donal decides to marry the two and announces the betrothal in January 1090. The following day, tragedy strikes the castle when Krispin's dead body is discovered in a well. Donal commands Alyce to probe the dead boy's mind, and she succeeds in identifying the murderers, one of whom is a priest and the brother of a bishop. Although Donal executes the murderers, the fact that he does so without the consent of the Church results in excommunication for both the king and Alyce. Donal eventually resolves the rift, and Alyce and Kenneth are married in June. Donal decides to once again attempt to father a Deryni protector for his sons, and convinces Jessamy to assist him after he chooses Alyce as his next target. Donal keeps Kenneth away from Rhemuth for much of the summer and autumn, but Jessamy's death in November creates an additional delay in the king's plan. Prior to her death, Jessamy reveals the details of the plan to Lord Siesyll Arilan, a member of Donal's council who is also a member of the Camberian Council. Donal finally attempts to bed Alyce in late January of 1090, but Alyce stops him. Alyce and Kenneth inform the king that Alyce is already pregnant, and the pledge their son to the king's service, promising that their child will be raised to be the Deryni protector Donal has sought. In September, Alyce gives birth to her first child, Alaric Anthony Morgan. Several weeks later, Siesyll covertly confirms that the child is not Donal's.
7405449	/m/0260pdm	Le lion	Joseph Kessel	1958	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Patricia has a rare gift to communicate with animals, and thinks she can control everything. She is popular with both animals and people. The story is narrated through a French man on a visit to Kenya. The plot of the story revolves around the friendship between Patricia and a lion called King, whom Patricia raised since he was a cub. Ouriounga, a teenage Maasai, who wishes to marry Patricia, decides to prove his worth by killing a lion to gain her respect, as is custom in his tribe. However the lion he chooses is King. Patricia's father shoots King in order to protect Ouriounga from certain death. With her idealistic view of the African savanna crushed, Patricia finally gives in to everyone's demands and leaves with the narrator to attend a boarding school in Nairobi.
7405572	/m/0260ph0	Childe Morgan	Katherine Kurtz	2006-12-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The events of Childe Morgan span a period of approximately two and a half years, from late December 1093 to late March 1096. In the Gwyneddan capital of Rhemuth, Sir Kenneth Morgan and his wife, Lady Alyce de Corwyn, bring their son, Alaric Morgan, to the court of King Donal Blaine Haldane. At Twelfth Night Court in January 1094, Kenneth is created Earl of Lendour and named primary regent for Alaric's future inheritance of the Duchy of Corwyn. After court, the Camberian Council discusses the emerging danger posed by Zachris Pomeroy, a rogue Deryni who is encouraging the current Festillic Pretender to press his claim for the throne of Gwynedd. In the spring, the Morgan family travels through Lendour and Corwyn while Kenneth acquaints himself with his new lands and reviews the regency of his son in Corwyn. While returning to Rhemuth in late summer, they encounter the remains of a Deryni who was burned at the stake by the people of a small village. The incident is a sobering and disquieting reminder of the remaining antagonism that many people in Gwynedd still bear toward Deryni. As the next Twelfth Night Court approaches several months later, Donal receives word of the death of the Crown Prince of Torenth. Concerned about Zachris' prior involvement with the dead prince, the Camberian Council investigates the matter, but is unable to discover any new or useful information. In June 1095, Alyce and Kenneth assist the king in a brief magical ritual. With Donal's eldest son and heir, Prince Brion, attaining his legal majority on his fourteenth birthday, Donal takes the opportunity to prepare his son's mind for the eventual assumption of the full Haldane potential. Afterwards, Alyce and Alaric travel to Culdi, where the pregnant Alyce plans to spend the summer in the company of her secret twin sister, Countess Vera McLain of Kierney. The day after Alaric's fourth birthday, at the king's request, Alyce and Vera conduct an ancient Deryni ritual to bestow magical names upon their children. The ritual is briefly interrupted by the clandestine arrival of the king himself, who takes an active part in Alaric's ritual and further binds the boy to his plans. Alyce and Vera relocate to Kenneth's familial estates in October, and their close proximity to Rhemuth allows Donal to make another surprise visit in November. Heart-broken by the accidental death of his youngest son, Prince Jathan, Donal sets a final set of mental triggers in young Alaric to enable the boy to activate Prince Brion's full Haldane powers in the future. However, due to Alaric's youth, Donal also gives similar power to Alyce, allowing her to activate his heir's abilities if necessary. During the return to Rhemuth, Donal falls ill, and his condition quickly deteriorates despite the best efforts of the royal physicians. King Donal Blaine Haldane dies on November 14, 1095. Alyce delivers her second child, a daughter named Bronwyn, on December 12, but she fails to regain her strength afterwards. Nevertheless, she is determined to activate Brion's powers as quickly as possible, and she orders Kenneth to bring the new king to her. Kenneth reluctantly complies, but Alyce, in her weakened state, is unable to fully activate Brion's arcane abilities. The strain of the attempt is ultimately too much for her, and Lady Alyce de Corwyn de Morgan dies in the arms of her husband on December 29, 1095. After Alyce's funeral, Kenneth and Alaric return to Rhemuth for Brion's coronation, but the ceremony is delayed by the death of the Archbishop of Valoret. The remaining bishops travel to Valoret to elect their new leader, a process that is finally completed in early March. Brion decides to travel to Valoret to meet the new archbishop, despite concerns for his safety by several of his ministers. Additionally, the Camberian Council has become increasingly concerned that Zachris Pomeroy may attempt to kill the new king. After arriving at Valoret and witnessing the enthronement of the new archbishop, an assassination plot is discovered by Jamyl Arilan, a Deryni secretly working for the Camberian Council. Jamyl is forced to reveal himself to Kenneth, and the two successfully disrupt the plot before Brion can be harmed. During a battle in the cathedral itself, Kenneth is saved from Zachris' magic by the timely intervention of Sir Sé Trelawney, a mysterious childhood friend of Alyce's who kills the rogue Deryni with a single arrow. Afterwards, Kenneth tells nobody of Jamyl's Deryni heritage or Sé's presence in Valoret. Upon returning to Rhemuth, the final preparations for the coronation are made, and King Brion Haldane is crowned on March 24, 1096. Sé briefly appears to pledge his service to Brion, and Kenneth once again dedicates himself and his son to the protection of the Haldane line.
7407099	/m/0260r4b	The Voyage of QV66	Penelope Lively	1978	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The characters travel in a boat (the QV66 of the title) with the intention of reaching London Zoo so that they can discover what Stanley is. They have a number of adventures along the way, including being joined by a parrot, several characters losing their way in a balloon, and Stanley himself getting locked in a bank vault. It is eventually revealed that Stanley is a monkey.
7407567	/m/0260rrm	The Soldier's Art	Anthony Powell	1966	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the start of 1941, Jenkins is stationed at divisional HQ and allocated to lowly F Mess with the obnoxious Captain Biggs. During an exercise Jenkins has dinner with General Liddament who recommends him to Finn. Widmerpool is humiliated by Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson, and plots revenge. Stringham turns up as Mess Waiter for F Mess. On leave in London Nick has an unsuccessful interview with Finn for a liaison posting with the Free French forces. He has a drink with Chips Lovell who desires a reconciliation with Priscilla, despite her affair with Odo Stevens. Moreland, now living with Audrey Maclintick, dines with Nick. Audrey, Priscilla and Stevens arrive to join the party, but Priscilla leaves in distress. Later that night Jenkins is told that a bomb falling on the Café de Madrid has killed almost everyone, including Chips. Nick sets off to the Jeavons's to inform Priscilla, only to find the house also bombed, Lady Molly and Priscilla being killed. On return to divisional HQ, Jenkins finds Stringham has been transferred to the mobile laundry. Stringham and Nick try to cover up for Bithel's drunkenness, but their efforts are foiled and Widmerpool has Bithel dismissed from the army. Farebrother brings news of the disaster awaiting Widmerpool in consequence of the latter's machinations. Jenkins fails to persuade Stringham to leave the mobile laundry before it is posted to the Far East. Captain Biggs hangs himself in the cricket pavilion ("And him so fond of the game."). Jenkins receives orders to report to the War Office. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent
7410102	/m/0260txj	Inferno	August Strindberg	1898	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The narrator (ostensibly Strindberg, although his narrative variably coheres with and diverges from historical truth), spends most of the novel in Paris, isolated from his wife (Frida Uhl), children, and friends. He associates with a circle of Parisian artists and writers (including Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch), but often fears they are ridiculing and persecuting him. In his isolation, Strindberg successfully attempts alchemical experiments, and has his work published in prominent journals. He fears, however, that his secrets will be stolen, and his persecution mania worsens, believing that his enemies are attacking him with 'infernal machines.' He also dabbles in the occult, at one point casting a black magic spell on his own distanced daughter. Throughout his studies and adventures, Strindberg believes himself guided by mysterious forces (attributing them sometimes to God, Fate, or vaguer origins). When returning to Sweden to see his daughter, Strindberg is introduced to German mythology and the teachings of Swedenborg, which both influence his fatalistic beliefs and delusions. Through this newfound imagery, Strindberg sees his life as a living hell, hence the novel's title.
7410353	/m/0260v54	Books Do Furnish a Room	Anthony Powell	1971	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jenkins returns to his old university library during the vacation in the Winter of 1945/6 to undertake research for a book about Robert Burton. He goes to see Sillery, who has a new secretary, Ada Leintwardine. Quiggin is starting a literary magazine called Fission, which is to be funded by Erridge ... except that Erridge dies suddenly. Erridge's funeral at Thrubworth is disturbed by the late arrival of the Widmerpools, Quiggin, Sir Howard & Lady Craggs (née Gypsy Jones). Pamela Widmerpool causes a disturbance by leaving during the service. Later at Thrubworth Park, Jenkins is invited by Quiggin to join the staff of Fission; Pamela causes further trouble, and on leaving is noisily sick into a large Chinese urn. At the party to launch Fission, Nick first meets the importunate novelist X Trapnel (based on the real-life Bohemian dandy, Julian MacLaren-Ross); Trapnel eventually takes a fancy to Pamela. Early the following year there are problems at Fission's publishers, Quiggin & Craggs. Trapnel has become infatuated with Pamela. Jenkins, dining with MP Roddy Cutts (husband of Susan Tolland) at the House of Commons, meets Widmerpool (now also a Member of Parliament). All three go to Widmerpool's flat where it becomes apparent that Pamela has absconded with Trapnel. Some time later Jenkins visits Trapnel and Pamela at their seedy flat, and while there Widmerpool arrives to confront the adulterers. Later in the year Pamela leaves Trapnel, and in doing so throws the precious manuscript of his novel into the nearby canal. On a visit to his old school, Jenkins meets Le Bas, and the reunited Widmerpools. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent
7411317	/m/0260vvv	A Christmas Memory	Truman Capote	1956-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "A Christmas Memory" is about a young boy, referred to as "Buddy," and his older cousin, who is unnamed in the story but is called Sook in later adaptations. The boy is the narrator, and his older cousin — who is eccentric and childlike — is his best friend. They live in a house with other relatives, who are authoritative and stern, and have a dog named Queenie. The family is very poor, but Buddy looks forward to Christmas every year nevertheless, and he and his elderly cousin save their pennies for this occasion. Every year at Christmastime, Buddy and his friend collect pecans and buy whiskey — from a scary American Indian bootlegger named Haha Jones — and many other ingredients to make fruitcakes. They send the cakes to acquaintances they have met only once or twice, and to people they've never met at all, like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This year, after the two have finished the elaborate four-day production of making fruitcakes, the elderly cousin decides to celebrate by finishing off the remaining whiskey in the bottle. This leads to the two of them becoming drunk, and being severely reprimanded by angry relatives. The next day Buddy and his friend go to a faraway grove, which the elderly cousin has proclaimed the best place, by far, to chop down Christmas trees. They manage to take back a large and beautiful tree, despite the arduous trek back home. They spend the following days making decorations for the tree and presents for the relatives, Queenie, and each other. Buddy and the older cousin keep their gifts to each other a secret, although Buddy assumes his friend has made him a kite, as she has every year. He has made her a kite, too. Come Christmas morning, the two of them are up at the crack of dawn, anxious to open their presents. Buddy is extremely disappointed, having received the rather dismal gifts of old hand-me-downs and a subscription to a religious magazine. His friend has gotten the somewhat better gifts of Satsuma oranges and hand-knitted scarves. Queenie gets a bone. Then they exchange their joyful presents to each other: the two kites. In a beautiful hidden meadow, they fly the kites that day in the clear winter sky, while eating the older cousin's Christmas oranges. The elderly cousin thinks of this as heaven, and says that God and heaven must be like this. It is their last Christmas together. The following year, the boy is sent to military school. Although Buddy and his friend keep up a constant correspondence, this is unable to last because his elderly cousin suffers more and more the ravages of old age, and slips into dementia. Soon, she is unable to remember who Buddy is, and not long after, she passes away. As Buddy says later: "And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing me from an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven."
7411539	/m/0260vzz	The Venus of Konpara	John Masters			 The novel is set in the late nineteenth century, during the British Raj, and follows the adventures of a Rajput prince who is heir to a fictional kingdom based in Deori (roughly comparable to modern Chhattisgarh). He has just returned from his education in England. As a sign of his Anglicisation he plans to build a dam and a cricket pitch on disused land in Konpara, a backward and neglected part of his realm. However, when work begins, a fragment of an ancient statue is recovered. Such is its beauty and sensuousness that it is nicknamed the "Venus of Konpara". He decides to excavate the area in search of other remains. Meanwhile, he has been seduced by a Dravidian dancing girl, who becomes his live-in lover and who seems to have a mysterious control over the local people. The prince's uncle, however, plans to displace him as successor to the throne and works in tandem with other mysterious hidden factions to disrupt the investigations. The local British administrator assists the prince, though with some reservations. The administrator is deeply resentful of his liberated wife, an artist who works in an avant-garde style similar to Manet. Her creativity disturbs his rigid and sexually repressed personality. As excavations proceed it becomes clear that there are systematic attempts to misdirect the dig, and even to threaten the lives of the central characters, who are attacked by the local Gond tribesmen. The British administrator is drawn into the plot against the prince, and the dancing girl is abducted. All ends happily for the main characters after the administrator is killed when he pricks himself with a poisoned arrow meant for the prince. The dancing girl is rescued and marries the prince. The administrator's widow marries another character who admires her work, and she becomes a famous artist.
7415233	/m/0260yrb	The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean		2006		 This book covers lean manufacturing principles and thinking, lean leadership moves, the road map for lean transformation, common pitfalls of lean journeys, building an operating system, lean accounting, lean material management, lean in service organizations, and how individuals can apply lean to improve themselves. It concludes with interviews of lean practitioners at Chrysler, Ross Controls, DTE Energy, RSR Corporation, and Nemak.
7415895	/m/0260z53	Temporary Kings	Anthony Powell	1973	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Around 1958, a decade on from the preceding novel, Books Do Furnish a Room, Jenkins attends an international literary conference in Venice, where the death is announced of French author Ferrand-Sénéschal. Dr Emily Brightman introduces Jenkins to Russell Gwinnett, a prospective biographer of X Trapnel with a faintly alarming manner. Gwinnett naturally wishes to meet Pamela Widmerpool, and he produces a press report linking her with Ferrand-Sénéschal's death. Next day the conference visits the Bragadin Palace to view a ceiling painted by Tiepolo. Here Pamela is encountered with American film director Louis Glober gazing at the ceiling. Gwinnett is introduced to Pamela. Widmerpool arrives, and a row between the couple ensues with accusations flying. On the Sunday Nick visits painter Daniel Tokenhouse and lunches with Ada Leintwardine and Glober. Further viewing of Tokenhouse's paintings is interrupted by the abrupt arrival of Widmerpool on mysterious business. It is evident that Glober has designs upon Pamela. Nick dines with Gwinnett, who recounts a surprising earlier rendezvous with Pamela. Later at a bar Nick meets Odo Stevens (now married to Rosie Manasch) and Pamela, who foretells trouble for Widmerpool. Back in England later that year Nick visits Bagshaw who recounts the mystery of Pamela's nakedness in his house while Gwinnett was staying there. Later still Nick dines with Gwinnett, and attends an army reunion where he hears a further account of Stringham's death; Farebrother predicts Widmerpool's imminent arrest for spying. Moreland conducts at a Mozart concert party given by Odo and Rosie Stevens in Summer 1959. Glober is there with Polly Duport (actress daughter of Bob Duport and Jean), as are Mrs Erdleigh with Jimmy Stripling, Audrey Maclintick and the Widmerpools. There are violent scenes between Glober, Pamela and Widmerpool on leaving the party. Pamela is warned by Mrs Erdleigh that she is near the edge. Moreland collapses after the concert. Late in 1959 Nick reflects on the subsequent death of Pamela, apparently from an overdose while in bed with Gwinnett, and also visits the dying Moreland in hospital.
7416108	/m/0260zfc	The World Next Door			{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The book takes place in the mid-1990s, at two interlinked alternate realities. In one of them, the Cuban Missile Crisis had escalated into a major nuclear exchange. What was left of the United States disintegrated into numerous virtually-independent enclaves, though President John F. Kennedy is still alive in a bunker somewhere. Most of the plot centers on Lake Placid, New York and along parts of route 86 where an oasis of civilization was painstakingly built, threatened by a well-organised band of rapacious robbers who claim to be the New York State National Guard. Meanwhile, the "world next door" which avoided nuclear war in 1962 is going to experience it thirty years later because Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms went wrong in the worst possible way. This war would be much worse than the one in 1962 because nuclear weapons had had thirty years more to become even more highly destructive. Characters from the first ("1962 War") world keep experiencing in dreams the lives of their analogues in the world threatened now with war. In the end of the book (and pretty much the end of the second world) quite a few people are transported across and given refuge in the "1962 War" world, where meanwhile the "National Guard" robbers had been dealt with rather ruthlessly. (The book's plot is constructed so as to lead the reader to condone the cold-blooded killing of unarmed prisoners, since otherwise the prisoners in question would have escaped and perpetrated terrible atrocities.)
7416749	/m/0260zwt	The Brief History of the Dead	Kevin Brockmeier	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story is set partly in the City and partly in the realm of the living, where Laura Byrd is stranded in Antarctica. The City segments focus on several different people in The City; as the book progresses, increasing numbers of the City's residents seem to just disappear, leaving friends and their relatives in mystery. The lethal virus slowly kills off each person in the living realm which results in the abrupt fluctuation in The City - each day, more and more people miraculously disappear (and areas of the City itself also begin to vanish) until the only remaining residents are those who were known to Laura Byrd. Chapters set in The City alternate with chapters dealing with Laura's struggle for survival in the Antarctic and her gradual realization that she may be the last person left alive on Earth.
7418400	/m/026105s	Dark Wraith of Shannara	Terry Brooks	2008	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Dark Wraith of Shannara began with Jair Ohmsford having a recurring dream in which he relives a section of Indomitable where he managed to become the slain "Weapons Master" Garet Jax. He talked to his sister, Brin, about how he used the Wishsong to do something real (as all he had been able to do before was illusion). She asked Jair to promise not to use the Wishsong again as she feared that he would lose himself in the magic, and not be able to return to who he is if he became Garet Jax again. Jair promised to refrain from using the Wishsong again. Jair left, but that night, he was visited by the shade of Allanon, who told him that Kimber Boh and Cogline were captured by Mwellrets and their master, the Croton Witch. Allanon tells him that they seek to gain information about how to return Paranor to the world from Cogline, who had previously been a Druid. Upon restoring Paranor, they aimed to learn the secrets of the power of the Druids. Jair reluctantly decided that he had to rescue Kimber and Cogline. After meeting Slanter, they both left for Darklin Reach. Upon arriving, Jair and Slanter discovered the tracks made by the Mwellrets and their prisoners. They were also found by Whisper, who tracked Kimber to the cave in which she was trapped. They found her with a broken leg and unable to travel, so they took her back to Hearthstone, where her and Cogline had lived, to recover. Jair learns from Kimber that the Croton Witch tortured Cogline until he told her how to restore Paranor, and she has forced him to accompany her to Paranor to work the magic. Soon after they left, Slanter and Jair were confronted by a Koden. Slanter was thrown against a rock and knocked half-blind and dazed, so Jair is forced to break his promise to Brin. He used the Wishsong to become Garet Jax once more, and he quickly slayed the Koden. Eventually, Jair and Slanter found the Mwellrets and the Croton Witch, who are forcing Cogline to use magic to bring back Paranor. Although Jair and Slanter attempted to stop them, it was too late: Paranor was restored. Jair was once more forced to become Garet Jax. Jair, as Garet, destroyed the Mwellrets, and attempted to engage the Croton Witch in combat to the death—but the protective mist of Paranor that slays any who come into contact with it quickly destroyed the Croton Witch. (The mist was the final defense of Paranor; if the castle fell, then it would kill every living thing inside of it.) The mist attempted to destroy Jair and Slanter as well, and so they were forced to take Cogline and run. Jair, with the speed and power of Garet Jax, was able to lead them to safety, and managed to transform back to Jair Ohmsford. After Kimber and Cogline's reunion, Kimber asked Jair to stay with her. He decided to forego the request and leave with Slanter, saying that he had to find out about himself first.
7418957	/m/02610m5	The Illustrated Mum	Jacqueline Wilson	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This story is set in London in a small flat. Dolphin and her older sister Star live with their mother Marigold, who has many colourful tattoos. Marigold has a drinking problem and sometimes acts "crazy". Dolphin loves Marigold and thinks she is wonderful and unique while Star is embarrassed by Marigold's tattoos and erratic behaviour. Dolphin feels like an outsider at school; she is bullied by some classmates and feels her teacher is unkind to her. She also struggles with her dyslexia. Star appears to be more popular, and Dolphin dislikes the fact that Star has an older boyfriend. Dolphin later befriends Oliver, a shy and studious boy who spends the lunch period in the library to avoid being teased. Marigold buys tickets to see her favourite band Emerald City, with the intention of finding Micky, Star's father, who Marigold still claims to love. Both girls are surprised when she returns that night with Micky. He was unaware he had a daughter and is thrilled to meet Star, and she adores him in turn. Dolphin dislikes him because she feels that he abandoned Marigold. Micky sends both the girls presents, and Star goes to spend a weekend with him. Marigold hoped to reconcile romantically with Micky and is upset to hear that he has a girlfriend living with him. Micky hears of Marigold's behaviour and invites both Star and Dolphin to live with him. Dolphin stays loyal to Marigold and refuses to leave her so Star leaves to be with Micky. After Star leaves, Marigold has a mental breakdown and paints herself white using toxic paint. Dolphin has to phone her an ambulance and finds out that due to her mental illness she may be in hospital for some time. With Marigold in hospital ill and tired, Oliver encourages Dolphin to contact her real father, who she knows nothing about, except that his name is also Micky and he worked as a swimming instructor. She manages to track him down and he's pleased to meet her. Dolphin hopes he will look after her, but he has a wife and daughters already and wants to do things properly, getting in touch with child services so Dolphin can be in foster care for a while. Dolphin is initially terrified of going into a foster home having heard Marigold's horror stories from her own childhood, but she stays with a kindly older woman and several younger children and her father takes her to visit Marigold, who is on medication for bipolar disorder. Star appears at the foster home after returning to the flat to find both Marigold and Dolphin gone. Star stays in foster care with Dolphin and although they argue at first, they reconcile and go to visit Marigold together. The story ends with Dolphin deciding that even though Marigold is in hospital and she and Star in foster care, they are still a family.
7419290	/m/02610rn	Wolfcry	Amelia Atwater-Rhodes	2006-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book starts off with Oliza relating her troubles in being heir to the throne of a divided nation. Though the avians and serpiente have put down their weapons, prejudice and hatred still run strong between the two kinds. Oliza's choice of mate will define which of the two is "preferred" in Wyvern's Court. The three obvious choices for Oliza's mate are a serpent dancer, Urban, a raven named Marus, and the preregrine falcon Nicias. After a fight breaks out in the serpent dancer's nest, Urban is found beaten in the avian part of the city. Oliza is abducted by lion mercenaries. Oliza manages to escape. Half-starved and exhausted, she roams the forest where she is eventually rescued by a female wolf shapeshifter who takes her to the local pack. One of the men in the pack speaks Oliza's language. He refuses to disclose what caused Betia's fleeing from the pack. Oliza meets with the leader and instantly notices the tension between him and his ambitious son and heir, Velyo. It is made clear that Velyo truly runs the pack. When Oliza gets tired he offers to escort her to her room, where he tries to rape her. She manages to run and meets up with Betia. The two of them flee from both the pack and the lion mercenaries. Betia manages to return to human form out of concern for Oliza. The two travel on towards Wyvern's Court when they are stopped by a band of mainly white-haired serpents, a fight erupts but abrubtly ends when the leader of the group noticed Oliza's Ahnleh necklace. The group identifies themselves as the Obsidian Guild, a band of mainly white vipers and serpiente outlaws. They have lived apart from the rest of serpent society and they still honor ancient laws such as Ahneh. In accordance with that law they agree to take in Betia and Oliza. At Oliza's request, the leader of the Obsidian Guild relates the story of the fallout between the two leaders of the Dasi. He tells her that Kiesha was Maeve's lover before Leben, who Maeve seduced in an attempt to keep him from destroying her people. Kiesha was distraught by what she saw as Maeve's betrayal, even though the white viper was forced to do it. She refused to forgive Maeve even after Leben left and Maeve was devastated. In an attempt to lessen some of the pain, she turned to Ahnmik, the dark opposite of Anhamirak, but also the god of sleep and numbness. Kiesha and the other serpents then exiled her for practicing black magic. Maeve was taken in by the Rsh, the lower priests and priestesses of the Dasi cult, she slowly regained the will to live and took a mate. Her descendants survive as the Obsidian Guild, and they are in no hurry to reconcile with the other serpiente. Oliza is stunned to learn of this and intrigued by the idea of Maeve and Kiesha as lovers. Later in the evening, the Guild tries to convince her to perform a melos dance, one of the more sensual ones usually not performed among serpiente dancers unless they have already chosen a mate. Oliza at first tries to decline but Betia convinces her by giving her a melos scarf, a symbol of praise and a request to dance. Incidentally, the threads on the melos are gold, which in serpiente culture indicates the bond between mates, though Oliza brushes that off as Betia's ignorance of her culture. The two are soon strong enough to travel and go to a pack of wolves led by Kalisa, who Oliza is familiar and friendly with. However, before they can join Kalisa's pack, they run into Velyo and Betia runs off in terror when she sees him. Oliza recalls his attempt to rape her and doesn't take long in becoming furious with him, especially because she now has a very good idea of why Betia became feral and wouldn't go near her old pack. In spite of who he is, Velyo takes Oliza to her parents, who explain that while they were worried they believed she had left of her own free will. A note was found in the palace, in Oliza's handwriting, saying that her responsibilities are too much and she doesn't want anyone to come looking for her if she leaves. Oliza now begins to really worry about the loss of her hawk form, and how avians will react once they find out their queen is no longer one of them. Oliza returns to Wyvern's Court to find that the three men who beat Urban have been given an insanely light punishment because her mother feared they would otherwise be turned into martyrs. Before she can deal with that, however, the leader of the Obsidian Guild escorts Betia into Wyvern's Court. Betia looks tired but is happy to see Oliza, speaking her name as the first word she has said since becoming feral. Oliza then postpones everything she has to do and takes Betia into the dancer's nest. There she notices Marus who, to her shock, appears to have moved in. Betia convinces her to dance a melos with the entire nest watching, after which they fall asleep curled up together. The next morning Urban apologizes to Oliza for being forward in courting her, saying he had no idea and then pointing at Betia with his eyes. Oliza is embarrassed and points out that she is in line for the throne, and a royal pair bond has to produce heirs. She then takes Betia to the market, where they have a shocking meeting with several avian merchants who are convinced that the three men convicted of harming Urban are not guilty. Oliza begins to understand why her mother was hesitant to punish them. Next in line for a meeting is Velyo, who takes one look at Oliza holding Betia's hand and hisses at her "I don't care what your preferences are, you're a royal heir to the throne. You need a king, Wyvern. Send her away." Oliza gets furious at him, but begins to question the exact nature of her relationship with Betia. She then goes to a meeting with the three convicts and leaves Betia in the library with Nicias and her cousin, Hai. The three men are a blatant example of the differences between serpiente and avians. Poiting out to Oliza that what serpiente see as careless flirting and a meaningless kiss is experienced as sexual assault by their avian alistairs and sisters. Oliza is deeply troubled by this because she finds herself able to understand their motivations for attacking Urban. She tells them she will not change their punishment and will talk with them later. After this she goes to the library to see Hai, who has offered to combine her falcon magic with Oliza's dormant powers of Anhamirak to bring back Oliza's wings. The spell succeeds and Oliza regains her hawk form, but as she reaches out to Hai to try to do the same for her cousin, the combination of their magics accidentally creates a sakkri'a'she. A vision of the future. Oliza can feel Nicias step in with his magic to keep the spell under control before she is lost in visions. In the first she speaks with her future self, who explains that after choosing Urban as a mate, he was killed within a day and Wyvern's Court ravaged by war. The next vision presents her with a furious Obsidian, who curses her and she flees into a new vision. Here she walks the market, and is told by a local that after she chose Marus as mate, the avians decided she preferred them and murdered out the entire dancers' nest. The woman also tells her that in this future Oliza was murdered, presumably by her avian aunt's mate, though officially it was suicide. She then sees her aunt, Sive, sitting on the throne and learning of Danica's death. In blind panic, Oliza asks the visions to find her a future where she finds love and takes a mate without it leading to war between her people. She then finds herself in what looks like Wyvern's Court, but it is riddled through with falcon magic. A young child by the name of Keyi runs around, continually saying that she wants "to chase the butterflies." A man approaches her, asking if she's been sent by Hai. Oliza says no and asks him what happened. She recognises him as a Burmese python of the Obsidian Guild, who she danced with one time while she was there. He explains that he became Oliza's mate, and they had a child together. Keyi's magic was too powerful to be controlled. She killed Oliza and the falcons came to put a stop to her. They murdered all the serpiente and avian adults, took their children back to the separate lands to educate them there and get them to start hating each other again, and left Keyi and her father in an illusion which is kept in place by Nicias and Hai as well as anyone else the falcons allowed to live. Keyi sees shadows of the people who once were, and chases imaginary butterflies and rainbows. Oliza is horrified and exits the vision. She finds herself on her knees in the library, the details of her visions already starting to fade. She starts crying and asks Nicias and Hai to leave her alone with Betia. She then tells Betia that she had a child, Betia responds by asking if she was in love. Oliza realizes that the problem in the last vision was that while she found love and took a mate, they weren't the same person. Betia kneels in front of her and tells her that she will never leave unless Oliza asks her to. They kiss, Oliza is hesitant at first, but then becomes sure of her feelings. Oliza goes to the courtyard and confronts the mercenaries, telling them she was the one who hired them to kidnap her, she just didn't remember it. Their leader confirms it. Oliza also remembers several hours that seemed to have been lost between her talking to Hai in the library the night before her kidnap, and her coming to her senses again elsewhere. She realizes that the dance she spun to calm herself down must have triggered the same visions she just experienced, with Hai's magic acting as a catalyst. Then she didn't remember because both her and Hai's powers have precious little control, but this time Nicias was there to keep the vision in check. The actual visions are already gone from her memory now, but the essence is still there, and she remembers what she has to do. She flies to the dancers' nest and pulls Betia aside. She then kneels in front of her and asks Betia to be her mate, Betia tells her wolves mate for life and Oliza answers that wyverns do so too. Betia accepts and Oliza asks Nicias and Urban to gather her people in the marketplace. There, she makes a speech explaining to them that they are not ready to become one again. She would be honored to lead them, but now is not the time for a wyvern to take the throne. She renounces her claim as Arami and heir to the Tuuli Thea and appoints her cousin, Salem, as the new Arami of the serpiente and her aunt Sive as the new heir to the Tuuli Thea of the avians. Her people are shocked, but willing to accept. Oliza's parents are accepting, though her mother tries to tell her that hope can do more than she gives it credit for. Oliza responds by saying that she knows she did the right thing, and that she will go to stay with friends and she'll be with her mate. Her parents are slightly shocked when Betia steps forward, but Zane gives them his blessing and tells Betia to look after his daughter. Oliza and Betia walk into the woods, on their way to the Obsidian Guild. They have a confrontation with Velyo who says Oliza only did everything so she could be with her "fling." Betia steps in and tells Oliza that Velyo has no idea what it means to sacrifice for his people. Velyo becomes furious and threatens her, but Oliza punches him and reminds him that as a half-cobra, she has full use of a cobra's deadly poison and could kill him in a few seconds. Velyo turns into wolf form and moves away with his tail between his legs. The book ends with Oliza and Betia falling asleep together in one of the tents of the Obsidian Guild, happy together.
7422264	/m/02613lt	The Way the World is				 The first part of the book goes through the familiar territory of the scientist's 'Standard Model' of the universe from the Big Bang to the development of human life on Earth. Whilst discussing these the book gives an overview of quantum theory and indeterminism, which Polkinghorn believes represent a challenge to metaphysical naturalism. The book asserts that aspects of human experiences cannot be reduced to physics and biology. The remaining chapters consider core Christian beliefs, New Testament history and how they fit into this perspective.
7422517	/m/02613xs	Hearing Secret Harmonies	Anthony Powell	1975	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Spring, almost another decade on, the Jenkinses act as host to a caravan of hippies led by Scorpio Murtlock, allowing them to camp on their land. One of the band is Fiona Cutts (daughter of Roddy Cutts, thus a niece of Isobel's). Murtlock is keenly interested in the nearby Devil's Fingers standing stones. Widmerpool is appointed Chancellor of a new university, and is promptly daubed with paint by the Quiggin twins (Amanda and Belinda, daughters of JG Quiggin and Ada Leintwardine); Widmerpool is thereby converted to the current counter-culture. Nick visits Matilda Donners, and is shown the photographs of the Seven Deadly Sins tableaux of 30 years before. The Donners Memorial Prize is established. A year or so later Nick is a member of the committee who award the annual prize to Russell Gwinnett for his biography of X Trapnel. Widmerpool brings the Quiggin twins to the presentation dinner where he makes an impromptu speech, and the twins disrupt proceedings with a stink bomb. At a Royal Academy dinner Nick gets an account of Dr Trelawney and of Murtlock's boyhood from Canon Fenneau. Widmerpool asks the Canon to put him in touch with Murtlock. By Spring 1970 there are hints of Widmerpool and Murtlock joining forces. At midsummer conservationists muster at the Devil's Fingers and there are reports of naked dancers there the previous evening. Gwinnett describes Murtlock's attack on Widmerpool during a pagan sex ritual at the Devil's Fingers that night. Spring 1971 sees a family wedding reception at Stourwater. Fiona Cutts, released from Murtlock's grip, appears newly married to Gwinnett. Widmerpool, leading a run by Murtlock's cult, arrives at the reception and pays embarrassing public penance to the bride's grandfather for a misdemeanour at school. Murtlock appears and ruthlessly extracts Widmerpool and cult members from the proceedings. The final chapter sees Jenkins in Autumn 1971 lighting a bonfire and reflecting on a recent revival in Mr. Deacon's pictures--Edgar (to his friends) has now been rediscovered as "E. Bosworth Deacon". Nick has recently attended the art gallery which is selling the Deacon paintings and where he met a now invalid Bob Duport, Polly and Signora Flores (Jean). While there he gets an inside account from Henderson (formerly one of Murtlock's followers) of life in the cult. Bithel (also part of the cult) arrives with news of Widmerpool's death on a naked run with Murtlock's followers.
7423595	/m/026153b	Little Grunt and the Big Egg	Tomie dePaola			 The Grunt Tribe live in a big cave next to a volcano. When Little Grunt is told that the Ugga-Wugga Tribe is coming over for Sunday brunch the next day Mama Grunt orders him to find some eggs so that she can make an omelette. Little Grunt searches high and low and there are no eggs to be found anywhere. Just then he stumbles over the biggest egg he has ever seen. He carefully drags it home so that it doesn't break and shows it to his family. They are very impressed. The egg is left in front of the fire when all the Grunts go to bed. During the night they all wake up to a cracking and breaking noise and, in the hearth, they find a baby dinosaur amongst the broken egg shells. Little Grunt keeps the dinosaur, who he names "George", as a pet and so begins a strong friendship.
7424093	/m/02615h1	The Man-Eater of Malgudi	R. K. Narayan	1961	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This story revolves around sun which is the life of an Indian printer named Nataraj. Nataraj lives in a huge ancestral house in Malgudi, a fictional town in south India. This place is near Mempi hills which is very calm, pleasant and beautiful. He leads a contented lifestyle, with his own circle of friends, such as a poet, a journalist named Sen, and his one employee, Sastri. Like his other novel, Talkative Man, R.K. Narayan introduces a character who enters the life of Nataraj and the town of Malgudi. The character, Vasu, is a taxidermist who comes to Malgudi in search of the wildlife in Mempi hills near Malgudi. His introduction begins with his arrival at Nataraj's printing press, where he demands the printing of 500 visiting cards. This arrival begins the relationship between Vasu and Nataraj. While Nataraj wasn't sure whether Vasu is a friend or an enemy, he likes the company of Vasu because being around him is fun. Vasu is a bully, and is once compared to a Rakshasa (a Demon) by Nataraj and Sastri. Vasu takes up residence in the attic of Nataraj's press by chance and convinces Nataraj that he would stay there as a guest(self declared) only for a few days until he gets put up some place else. Little known to Nataraj, Vasu sees the place very suitable for his activities as a taxidermist plans otherwise. Vasu is a 'pahelwan' (muscleman), proud of his strength. As the story continues, Vasu encroaches on Nataraj's life, every now and then bullies away his friends, his customers, shoots someone's pet dog and many other animals and birds near the dwelling place, poaches wildlife from Mempi hills, creates stench in the neighborhood through his activities as a taxidermist, when Nataraj questions this, Vasu files a complaint with rent control authority on Nataraj as a self declared tenant, entertaining women in the attic, disturbs the peace of Malgudi, whom the narrator refers to as "the man eater of Malgudi" As in Talkative Man, the end comes with the commemoration of a function. This time, it is for the release of a poetry book on Krishna by his poet friend. Rangi informs Nataraj that Vasu wants to kill Kumar, the elephant, which Nataraj had brought down from Mempi Hills to treat an ailment as a favour to one of his friends. Muthu- tea shop owner helps Nataraj, when Nataraj happens to meet him under unexpected circumstance, owing to Vasu's adventures. Now Nataraj comes to know of the plans of Vasu to shoot Kumar, the temple elephant, for his collection and business. The protagonists frantically try to stop him, but in vain. As Nataraj decides to talk to Vasu for once and for all, he finds Vasu sleeping, but the next morning he discovers that Vasu is dead. The autopsy takes place with the verdict being that he was not poisoned and there were no signs of any physical injury. The case is closed, but the reputation of Nataraj's press is ruined and his friends and other people start avoiding him. Later, Nataraj learns through his friend Sastri that Vasu was not murdered, but died in an attempt to smash a mosquito sitting on his temple. He had damaged one of his nerves with his powerful hand and died instantly. Now Nataraj was rid of Vasu, and the story ends on the note that all demons-rakshashas, devils and monsters-are the downfall of themselves. The narration is very humorous and lively all along and alone.
7425376	/m/02616v0	Finite and Infinite Games	James P. Carse		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 With this philosophy text, Carse demonstrates a way of looking at actions in life as being a part of at least two types of what he describes as "games", finite and infinite. Both games are played within rules, as agreed upon by the participants; however, the meaning of the rules are different between the two types of games. The book stresses a non-serious (or "playful") view of life on the part of "players", referring to their choices as "moves", and societal constructs and mores as "rules" and "boundaries". He regularly employs familiar terms in specilaized ways, but casts them as associated with finite or infinite play & players. Boundaries are "rules" that one must stay within when playing a finite game, in contrast with horizons, which move with the player, and are constantly changing as he or she "plays". In short, a finite game is played with the purpose of winning (thus ending the game), while an infinite game is played with the purpose of continuing the play. Finite games have a definite beginning and ending. They are played with the goal of winning. A finite game is resolved within the context of its rules, with a winner of the contest being declared and receiving a victory. The rules exist to ensure the game is finite. Examples are debates, sports, receiving a degree from an educational institution, belonging to a society, or engaging in war. Beginning to participate in a finite game requires conscious thought, and is voluntary; continued participation in a round of the game is involuntary. Even exiting the game early must be provided for by the rules. This may be likened to a zero sum game (though not all finite games are literally zero sum, in that the sum of positive outcomes can vary). Infinite games, on the other hand, do not have a knowable beginning or ending. They are played with the goal of continuing play and a purpose of bringing more players into the game. An infinite game continues play, for sake of play. If the game is approaching resolution because of the rules of play, the rules must be changed to allow continued play. The rules exist to ensure the game is infinite. The only known example is life. Beginning to participate in an infinite game may be involuntary, in that it doesn't require conscious thought. Continuing participation in the current round of game-play is voluntary. "It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely" (p.&nbsp;4). Carse continues these conceptualizations across all major spheres of human affairs. He extends his themes broadly over several intellectual arenas that are largely otherwise disparate disciplines. He describes human pursuits as either dramatic (requiring participation) or theatrical (participation is optional). This distinction hinges on an agent's decision to engage in one state of affairs or another. If motherhood is a requirement and a duty, there are rules to be obeyed and goals to be achieved. This is motherhood as tragic drama. If motherhood is a choice and a process, it becomes ennobling theater. Carse spans objective and subjective realms and bridges many gaps among different scholarly traditions.
7426266	/m/02617zj	The Anomalies	Joey Goebel	2003	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In a small town in Kentucky, five outsiders have come together: an eighty-year-old woman who walks around in cowboy boots and a Sex Pistols t-shirt; a beautiful woman in a wheelchair; a young Iraqi searching for the American soldier he wounded in the First Gulf War; a precocious young girl; and an extremely articulate African American, who seems to be constantly on drugs but in reality makes his way through life completely sober. Wherever the five "freaks" show up, people laugh at them. The passion that unites them is music, their shared dream is to conquer the world with their music, and together they form the power-pop new-wave heavy-metal punk-rock band known as The Anomalies. In the words of their lead singer, "The only way to make this a better place would be for God to drop the bomb." Alone they are only outsiders, but as a group they might just be the bomb that God does not want to drop…
7426483	/m/026184q	The White Castle	Orhan Pamuk	1985	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with a frame tale in the form of a preface written by historian Faruk Darvinoglu (a character referenced in Pamuk’s previous book, The Silent House) between 1984 and 1985, according to the fictional dedication to the character’s late sister at the beginning of the frame tale. Faruk recalls finding the story that follows in a storage room while looking through an archive in the governor’s office in Gebze, among old bureaucratic papers. He takes the transcript, fascinated by its presence in such a place. During his breaks from work, he begins trying to find a source for the tale, hoping to authenticate its events and author. He is able to connect the author to Italy, but is unable to make any further progress. An acquaintance tells him that manuscripts such as the one he found could be found throughout the many old, wooden houses of Istanbul, mistaken for ancient Korans, and left venerated and unread. With some encouragement, he decides to publish the manuscript. The preface ends with Faruk noting that the publisher chose the title of the book, and a remark on the nature of modern readers will try to connect the dedication to his sister to the tale that follows. The story proper begins with an unnamed narrator being captured by the Turkish fleet while sailing from Venice to Naples. When the captain hesitates, the ship is taken, and the narrator and his fellows are captured. The narrator, fearing for his life, claims to be a doctor. Using basic anatomy, he’s able to bluff successfully, but he is still imprisoned when the ship arrives. During his imprisonment, he is brought before the pasha, who has fallen ill. He admits finally that he is not a doctor, but nonetheless manages to cure the pasha. Though he is still a slave, he begins to gain preferential treatment among the slaves and prison guards. When prisoners from Spain arrives, he tries to get word of home, to no avail. The pasha commissions him work on a fireworks display for his son’s wedding. He is surprised when the man he is to work with looks the same as him. The narrator works with Hoja, believing that he’ll have nothing useful to share with Hoja. He is surprised when Hoja tries to tout a poorly translated copy of Almageist, which receives a lukewarm reaction from the narrator. The two work on the fireworks display and the narrator’s insights onto contemporary science goes a great deal to assist his doppelganger, leading to the display’s success. After the wedding, the pasha offers the narrator his freedom under the condition that he convert to Islam. When he refuses, a mock execution is staged to pressure him. When he refuses even then, the pasha commends him and ridicules him for his stubbornness, before turning him over to Hoja’s custody. While living with Hoja, the narrator is the subject to Hoja’s cruelty, ambitions, and inquiries. Using the narrator’s knowledge of astronomy, as well as tales from Italy, he’s able to entertain the young sultan. Hoja reveals his goal of gaining the sultan’s favor in order to obtain the position as court astrologer. As Hoja becomes interested in the narrator’s past, the two try to swap stories of “why” they are the way they are. While the narrator is able to do so, Hoja is unable to, as he is unable to find any flaws within himself. As the narrator continues to write about his past, Hoja becomes increasingly malicious and taunts the narrator over his past misdeeds, and claims that while he cannot admit his faults, because the narrator can, Hoja can claim superiority over him. When the plague breaks out, he uses the narrator’s fear of it to torment him further. When it appears that the plague has killed him, the narrator runs away. Hoja, still alive, reclaims him. Hoja continues trying to learn about the narrator’s past. After the plague subsides, Hoja obtains the post of imperial astrologer. Competing over the influence of the sultan’s mother and his youthful impatience, he sets out to create a great weapon that will prove his brilliance, and that of the Ottoman Empire's. They work on the weapon for the next six years. During this time, the narrator is shocked at how much Hoja knows about his past, and his mannerisms, and can imitate him perfectly. The narrator has nightmares about his loss of identity. The weapon is completed in time for a siege on Edirne, with the goal of a taking a the titular white castle, the castle Doppio. The narrator learns from a distance that the weapon has not only failed, but that the Poles that they were attacking have obtained reinforcements from Kazakhstan, Hungary, and Austria. Fearing for his life, Hoja abandons the narrator and vanishes. The narrator goes into hiding as well. The book closes with the narrator, now in his seventies, talking about his life after the failure at Edirne. He is married, with children, and has done quite well financially while he worked as royal astrologer, though he resigned his post before the intrigue got him killed. He has accepted that travelers that he sees are not coming to see him. He ponders what became of ‘Him’, who’d escaped to Italy. A traveling author, Evliya Chelebi, seeks him out, hoping to learn about Italy, as he’d once owned an Italian slave. The narrator agrees, and the two men share stories over the course of two weeks, before departing. The narrator tells us that it is this incident that inspired him to record the previous events of his life.
7428038	/m/02619v1	Nothing But Blue Skies	Tom Holt	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot of the book concerns a Chinese Dragon, Karen, who falls in love with a mortal, Paul, and so decides to become mortal herself in the hope that they get together. However, she is not any ordinary dragon; she is the daughter of the adjutant-general to the Dragon King of the North West. Naturally her father is worried and comes to look for her, but he falls foul of the Weathermen, who consider dragons their sworn enemies. The Weathermen though fall foul of a government plot to cause a drought in Britain as a pretext for invading Australia. Actually, this is also a cover for the real reason. Paul is really the runaway son of an Australian global media tycoon, who wants to lure the dragons to his outback hideaway. Here he uses a machine to disarm their abilities in order to use their 'third eye' as a super-efficient mode of multimedia communication.
7431745	/m/0261f8_	Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme	Molière			 The play takes place at Mr. Jourdain's house in Paris. Jourdain is a middle-aged "bourgeois" whose father grew rich as a cloth merchant. The foolish Jourdain now has one aim in life, which is to rise above this middle-class background and be accepted as an aristocrat. To this end, he orders splendid new clothes and is very happy when the tailor's boy mockingly addresses him as "my Lord". He applies himself to learning the gentlemanly arts of fencing, dancing, music and philosophy, despite his age; in doing so he continually manages to make a fool of himself, to the disgust of his hired teachers. His philosophy lesson becomes a basic lesson on language in which he is surprised and delighted to learn that he has been speaking prose all his life without knowing it: :« Par ma foi ! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien, et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela. » Madame Jourdain, his intelligent wife, sees that he is making a fool of himself and urges him to return to his previous middle-class life, and to forget all he has learned. A cash-strapped nobleman called Dorante has attached himself to M. Jourdain. He secretly despises Jourdain but flatters his aristocratic dreams. For example, by telling Jourdain that he mentioned his name to the King at Versailles he can get Jourdain to pay his debts. Jourdain's dreams of being highclass go higher and higher. He dreams of marrying a Marchioness, Dorimene, and having his daughter Lucille marry a nobleman. But Lucille is in love with the middle-class Cléonte. Of course, M. Jourdain refuses his permission for Lucille to marry Cléonte. Then Cléonte, with the assistance of his valet Covielle and Mme Jourdain, disguises himself and presents himself to Jourdain as the son of the Sultan of Turkey. Jourdain is taken in and is very pleased to have his daughter marry foreign royalty. He is even more delighted when the "Turkish prince" informs him that, as father of the bride, he too will be officially ennobled at a special ceremony. The play ends with this ridiculous ceremony, including Sabir standing in for Turkish.
7432071	/m/0261fnc	Jelly's Last Jam	George C. Wolfe			 The play opens with the recently deceased Morton in a state of limbo, looking back on his life. He is reluctantly guided by the mysterious 'Chimney Man' who forces him to recall the more painful moments of his life when he attempts to ignore or embellish them. Born into an old and wealthy Creole family in New Orleans, the young Morton rebels against his upbringing going into the streets and absorbing the rhythms of the vendors and poor blacks, meeting blues musician Buddy Bolden. When his Creole grandmother discovers his new lifestyle she disowns him. Forced to go on the road, Morton becomes a prominent composer and musician, and the self-proclaimed creator of Jazz. However, his sadness over his family's rejection causes him to stress his Creole ancestry and claim that there are 'no black notes in my song.' Eventually his pride and racism cause him to betray his best friend and the woman he loves. In his later years, as the Jazz culture continues to grow, Morton is largely forgotten and reduced to dealing with crooked music publishers and gangsters, eventually dying of a knife wound in the colored wing of a Los Angeles hospital. At the moment of his death, Morton at last admits to his heritage - "Ain't no black notes in my song/I was wrong/ I was wrong." At this moment, the shadows of the people in his life surround him to congratulate him, and Morton takes his place in history among the other Jazz legends.
7434443	/m/0261jn0	Venus in Furs	Leopold von Sacher-Masoch	1870	{"/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The framing story concerns a man who dreams of speaking to Venus about love while she wears furs. The unnamed narrator tells his dreams to a friend, Severin, who tells him how to break him of his fascination with cruel women by reading a manuscript, Memoirs of a Suprasensual Man. This manuscript tells of a man, Severin von Kusiemski, who is so infatuated with a woman, Wanda von Dunajew, that he asks to be her slave, and encourages her to treat him in progressively more degrading ways. At first Wanda does not understand or accede to the request, but after humouring Severin a bit she finds the advantages of the method to be interesting and enthusiastically embraces the idea, although at the same time she disdains Severin for allowing her to do so. Severin describes his feelings during these experiences as suprasensuality. Severin and Wanda travel to Florence. Along the way, Severin takes the generic Russian servant's name of "Gregor" and the role of Wanda's servant. In Florence, Wanda treats him brutally as a servant, and recruits a trio of African women to dominate him. The relationship arrives at a crisis when Wanda herself meets a man to whom she would like to submit, a Byronic hero known as Alexis Papadopolis. At the end of the book, Severin, humiliated by Wanda's new lover, loses the desire to submit. He says of Wanda:
7438794	/m/0261q7z	Reminiscences of a Stock Operator	Edwin Lefèvre	1923		 The book tells the story of Livermore's progression from day trading in the then so-called "New England bucket shops," to market speculator, market maker, and market manipulator, and finally to Wall Street where he made and lost his fortune several times over. Along the way, Livermore learns many lessons, which he happily shares with the reader.
7439984	/m/0261rp1	Sweetblood	Pete Hautman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 :"There are only two races that matter: the Living and the Undead. :And with every year that passes, the numbers of Undead grow. It is inevitable." So says 16-year-old Lucy Szabo. She has a theory: hundreds of years ago, before the discovery of insulin, slowly dying diabetics were the original vampires. Lucy, a diabetic herself, counts herself among the modern Undead. As Sweetblood, Lucy frequents the Transylvania room, an internet chatroom where so-called vampires gather. But Draco, one of the other visitors to Transylvania, claims to be a real vampire--and Lucy's not entirely sure he's kidding. As Lucy becomes more involved with the vampire subculture, the rest of her life comes to seem unimportant. Her grades plummet, her relationship with her parents deteriorates, and her ability to regulate her blood sugar worsens dramatically. Then she meets Draco, face to face, and he invites her into his strange world. Lucy realizes that she needs to make some difficult choices--if it isn't already too late.
7446606	/m/0261_8v	A Bad Case of Stripes	David Shannon	1998	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A girl named Camilla Cream loves lima beans but doesn't want to eat them because she wants to fit in. One day she wakes up to discover stripes on her body. Her parents then call the doctor, who then issues his verdict: she can still go to school. Unfortunately, once there, the other kids taunt her by calling out colors so that her color changes. She is then sent home because the faculty is worried the stripes are contagious. The doctor also bring in other doctors to examine the case. He gives her bitter pills to take before bed. However, after taking a pill, she wakes up to find herself transformed into a pill. The doctor calls in experts, and by this time, Camilla is recognized by the media as the "amazing transforming kid". While the experts talk to each other, thinking if it's a virus, bacteria or fungus, the infections grow on Camilla, and this continues until Camilla's face is not recognizable and grows roots, berries, crystals, feathers, and a long furry cat tail. When a spiritual counselor confronts Camilla, telling her to "become one with her room" she does exactly that, and melts onto the walls of her bedroom, taking control of the bed, the dresser and two picture frames as her face. Then, an old woman visits her and offers her lima beans. At first she rejects, still feeling self conscious, but before the woman leaves she has second thoughts. The lady then throws the beans inside her mouth. The walls then swirl and Camilla forms into a girl again.
7447281	/m/026200k	Black Water	Joyce Carol Oates	1992-05	{"/m/04rlf": "Music", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins with Kelly Kelleher in a car that is plunging into mucky, swampy, "black water." We learn the events that led up to the accident in flashbacks as she is drowning: Kelly Kelleher attends a Fourth of July party hosted by her friend Buffy St. John and her lover, Ray Annick. She is planning to stay with them for the weekend. Buffy is the "more worldly" of the two young women; the irony in this is that it is completely out of character for Kelly to get herself into such a situation. Ray has invited "The Senator" about whom Kelly wrote her graduate thesis. He immediately is interested in her sexually; he pays attention solely to her as the party drags on, and they discuss their common political beliefs. He follows her to the beach where he kisses her, and then invites her to come to his hotel with him on the ferry. As she packs her bags, Buffy tries to convince her not to go or to go later but Kelly thinks that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance and goes with him, despite the fact that he has been drinking and that she is not entirely sure that she is "ready" for any sort of relationship. The Senator is drunk and takes the "old" Ferry Road instead of the "new" one; he is driving recklessly and drives directly through a guardrail into a marsh. We find later that, had he made the turn, the car probably would have fallen into the water a short distance down the road at an old bridge. The car sinks passenger side-down. At this point, The Senator uses Kelly's body to jettison himself upwards,out of the driver's side door. She tries to hold on to him to pull herself free; he kicks her, leaving his shoe in her hand. Kelly, badly injured and delirious, continually imagines that he will come back to "save" her, and also that he has gone for help. She repeatedly imagines seeing him outside of the car, or that she feels the car shaking as he tries to get her out. She trusts The Senator until the very end of her life, certain that he will save her; it is possible that, because of this, she misses out on highly important lucid moments in which she could possibly save herself. In reality, The Senator has stumbled to an outdoor phone booth, carefully staying out of sight of passing cars, to call Ray Annick. He tells Annick that Kelly became emotional and pushed the wheel because she was drunk, thus causing the accident, and that she is already dead. Meanwhile, Kelly is following an ever-shrinking bubble of air to the top of the car. She panics and imagines that she is rescued and sent to the hospital where the "black water" is pumped from her stomach; this parallels an episode from college in which a suitemate tried to kill herself and had to have her stomach pumped. Kelly gets her imagery of the experience from the description of the other girl. The reader also learns about Kelly's own bout with suicidal thought and depression, triggered by the end of a relationship; Ironically, she has decided that she wants her life, that she wants to live, and this was part of the reason she decided to leave the party with The Senator in the first place. She also repeatedly imagines her parents, and how she will explain to them that she is a "good girl" and argues that The Senator and his wife are separated, his children grown, and that their affair is causing no harm. She remembers an article she wrote arguing against the death penalty in which she details the more gruesome and torturous aspects of different methods of execution; this underscores the cruelty and horror of her death. As she grows closer and closer to death, her hallucinations become more vivid until she is imagining her parents, very old, watching her being pulled from the water in horror. She imagines herself as a child reaching up to be carried. The book ends with a line that is repeated throughout the book: "As the black water filled her lungs, and she died."
7454068	/m/02627h4	Venus in Copper	Lindsey Davis	1991	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins in Rome during late spring, AD 71. Falco is in the Latumiae Prison, accused by Anacrites of having stolen imperial lead (Shadows in Bronze). Bailed out by his mother, Falco is heading across the city to visit Helena Justina when he is beaten up by his landlord's bullyboys for defaulting on his rent. When he finally arrives at the senator's house near the Capena Gate, he finds Helena in a reception room. Marcus decides to resume working as an independent, despite the fact that this means he is unlikely to be able to earn enough money to buy himself into a higher rank so that he can marry Helena. Hyacinthus arrives at Falco's apartment in Fountain Court to inform him of possible clients. Falco agrees to visit the Hortensii, who live on the Pincian Hill. There, Sabina Pollia informs him that all of the Hortensii (Crepito, Felix, Novus and their wives) live together in the one house. Former slaves in the same household, they have now earned their freedom and set up in business together. Novus is the only one currently unwed and he is due to marry Severina Zotica. Sabina Pollia informs Falco that she believes Severina plans to murder Novus. Falco investigates the claims. At the same time he also begins to hunt for a new apartment in which to live. During the course of the investigation, Falco is once more arrested and imprisoned in the Latumiae. Two days later he is brought before Titus Caesar. Anacrites brings forth his charges regarded the lead. Falco is freed, provided he repays whatever is owed for the lead to the Emperor, and is asked to undertake more work for the Palace. He agrees to be available provided he is paid for previous missions that have already been completed. This is agreed to by Titus and he is invited to dinner. As a present, the Emperor's son promises him a turbot. Returning to the house of the Hortensii, Falco discovers that Novus is dead on the privy after a banquet. He has been poisoned. Severina comes under suspicion. Falco continues to investigate, but can find no real lead. Sabina wants to pay him off and considers him a failure, when the news arrives that Viridovix, the Hortensii's gaulish cook, is also dead. He too had been poisoned. The arrival of the turbot becomes the cause of an impromptu party amongst friends and family of the Didii. Helena arrives, complete with baggage with which to move in with Falco, only to discover that she had not been invited to the party. Distraught, she attempts to leave and is prevented by Falco. Then Titus and the Praetorians arrive to sample the fish. At the end of the party, Helena remains behind. Continuing to investigate the Hortensii, Falco is beaten badly by thugs working for Appius Priscillus. He is finally helped to Petronius', who sends for Helena. Helena takes him home to their new apartment. When he finally recovers, he continues to investigate. He returns from the Hortensii in time to see the apartment block in which they are living collapse. Believing Helena to be inside, Falco and others begin to dig. Helena arrives just as all hope seems lost. Falco discovers that the Hortensii had owned the apartment block and that Severina had poisoned Novus as revenge for being responsible for the shoddy building which collapsed on and killed her lover. She had also ordered the demolition of his apartment in an apparent attempt to kill Helena, but he is unable to prove anything. Falco and Helena move back into Fountain Court.
7455725	/m/02629pb	Monday Mourning	Kathy Reichs	2004	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The plot of the story revolves around Temperance trying to decipher the clues left behind by the skeletons of three girls found in a pizza parlor basement, which has a colourful history. Temperance's forensic expertise tells her that the people were buried after 1955, but homicide detective Luc Claudel is convinced the bones are pre-1955, and dismisses the case. Temperance's frustration at Claudel for not investigating the case grows and she decides to take it on herself. From simply the remains of the three girls, she follows the clues which include a frightened old lady, a crazed man with a S&M fetish, and finally a girl who has been subjected to so much sexual torture, she develops a taste for it herself.
7458987	/m/0262dy_	Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea	Robert K. Massie	2004	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book begins in the lead-up to the declaration of hostilities between Germany and Britain, whereas Massie's previous work ended with the beginning of the war. All the significant naval strategies and battles of World War I are covered, including the Battle of Coronel, where a German squadron led by Admiral Maximilian von Spee destroyed a weaker British cruiser squadron under the command of Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock; the ensuing Battle of the Falkland Islands where von Spee's force was annihilated by a superior British squadron; the Battle of Dogger Bank (1915); Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign; and a detailed multichapter narrative of the Battle of Jutland and its aftermath. Other chapters describe German submarine warfare and events triggering America's entry into the war. There are also chapters dedicated to central personalities such as British Admirals John Jellicoe and David Beatty and the German Admirals Franz von Hipper and Reinhard Scheer. The book ends with an account of the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow. A number of maps and photographs are included.
7459430	/m/0262fgj	Gambit	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sally Blount's father, Matthew Blount, has been arrested for the murder of Paul Jerin, a chess master. Blount had arranged for Jerin to play twelve simultaneous games of blindfold chess at his club. Well into the contest, Jerin complains of physical discomfort and cannot continue. Shortly thereafter, Jerin dies of what tests show to be arsenic poisoning. During the contest, Jerin had been sitting by himself in a small library off the chess club's main game room. He had nothing to eat or drink except a pot of hot chocolate, brought to him by Blount. After Jerin fell ill, he was diagnosed by a doctor who was playing in the contest; the doctor called for an ambulance but Jerin died at a hospital. Not only had Blount brought the hot chocolate to Jerin, he had washed out the pot and the cup after Jerin complained that he didn't feel well. Blount is charged with murder. The only people to enter the library where Jerin sat, other than Blount, were four messengers, who relayed the moves between the main game room and the library. The messengers apparently had no good opportunity to put arsenic in Jerin's chocolate. Dan Kalmus is Blount's corporate lawyer, and represents Blount after he has been jailed without bail. Blount's daughter Sally is convinced, however, that Kalmus is in love with Blount's wife Anna, and that he won't be inclined to give Blount his best legal efforts. Furthermore, Blount's specialty is business law, not criminal law, and he might not have the needed background. But Sally is certain that her father is innocent, so she hires a reluctant Wolfe to investigate on her father's behalf. Neither Wolfe nor Archie seems to have his heart in the case because the circumstances point so clearly at Blount. And Wolfe learns from the police that their own inquiries discovered no connection between the messengers and Jerin, whereas Blount was unhappy that Jerin had been seeing Sally. Because none of the messengers could have a motive to kill Jerin, and because he has assumed that Sally is correct that her father didn't, Wolfe conjectures that Jerin was poisoned not because the murderer had it in for Jerin, but to get at Blount, whose apparent motive would surely get him arrested. Wolfe's hypothesis, then, is that Jerin was a pawn, sacrificed in a gambit to get rid of Blount. Wolfe speaks with each of the messengers as the best alternative suspects, to try to determine which of them might have wanted Blount, not Jerin, out of the way. Each of the four has a possible motive: Sally thinks Kalmus is in love with her mother, Farrow would like to take over Blount's firm, Yerkes wants Blount's vote in a board election but won't get it, and Hausman resents Blount for going easy on him in chess games but winning anyway. Wolfe learns that there is, in Blount's words, "a certain fact" known only to Blount and to Kalmus that will demonstrate his innocence. The fact turns out to be that Blount really did put something in Jerin's chocolate, but it was sedative in effect, not poisonous. This puts a very different face on things, and as a result Wolfe and Archie, independently, are able to infer both the murderer's identity and how the arsenic got into Jerin.
7463087	/m/02pcf78	Glasshouse	Charles Stross	2006-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is the 27th century. The culture featured in the novel is based on the culture portrayed in the last chapter of Accelerando, "Survivor" (full chapter here). Humanity has spread throughout the galaxy using the wormhole technology copied from the alien routers, forming a plethora of societies and 'polities'. Robin, a human male, is recovering from a memory excision process in a rehabilitation centre. Though he remembers nothing of his past life(s), he suspects that he lived through traumatic times as a participant in the series of wars that raged many years before. Suspecting that he has been targeted for assassination by persons unknown, he agrees to sign-up with a radical, isolated social experiment that will attempt to recreate the forgotten "Dark Ages", the late 20th and early 21st centuries. On being transferred to the polity in which the program is being held, he discovers that he has been given the body of a woman, Reeve. As the experiment unfolds, she begins to suspect that all is not what it seems, and that the founders of the experiment are engaged in a very sinister conspiracy. Slowly, she realises that her role is not as clear-cut as she originally thought, which leads her to question, and then struggle against the program. In the context of the novel, "glasshouse" refers to a military prison. The polity in which the bulk of the story takes place was formerly a high-security facility for war criminals. The term was first used to describe the glass-roofed military detention barracks based in Aldershot, UK, in the mid-19th century. Stross also refers to the Glasshouse as a type of panopticon, a prison constructed in such a way that the guards in the center can see everything the prisoners are doing, but the prisoners can never tell if the guards are watching. Philosopher Michel Foucault used the model to represent the way humans tend to conform to and internalize societal ideals based on this kind of omnipresent gaze, an idea Stross exploits in the novel.
7467622	/m/0262ng7	Under the Skin	Michel Faber	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist is Isserley, an extraterrestrial sent to Earth by a rich corporation on her planet to pick up unwary hitchhikers. She drugs them and delivers them to her compatriots, who mutilate and fatten her victims so that they can be turned into meat—human ("vodsel") flesh is a delicacy on the aliens' barren homeworld. The novel is darkly satirical. It touches on political themes around big business, intensive farming, and environmental decay; and reflects on more personal questions of sexual identity, humanity, snobbery, and mercy.
7471298	/m/0262sc5	A Theory of Relativity				 When Ray and Georgia McKenna-Nye are killed in a horrific car crash, leaving their daughter Keefer Kathryn an orphan, the couple's respective families both believe they are the right people to raise the girl, and consequently file for custody. This book is essentially about the events surrounding the ensuing legal process which will decide Keefer's future. Keefer's maternal family are the McKennas, a Catholic family of Irish descent, and of modest means, living in rural Wisconsin. Prior to their deaths, Ray and Georgia had lived nearby and the family are fairly close. The paternal family, meanwhile, are the Nyes, born again Christians living in Florida who, though much more financially better off than the McKennas, do not appear to be as close. The McKennas are initially given guardianship of Keefer after managing to file their case first. However, Georgia's parents, Mark and Lorraine, realise that they may be too old to adopt the girl, so Georgia's brother, Gordon, is encouraged to seek custody of his niece. There are problems here, though, as Gordon is single, while he and Georgia were adopted, and adopted children do not have the same rights under Wisconsin law as blood relatives. As a result of these factors, Gordon's petition is eventually turned down by a Wisconsin judge and interim custody granted to the Nyes with a view to Keefer eventually being adopted by her father's relatives. Gordon is given permission to appeal the decision and quickly decides to do so. The driving force behind the Nyes plan to adopt Keefer are Ray's parents, Raymond Senior and his wife Diane. However, they do not personally seek custody of Keefer either, and because of circumstances, their children are also unable to. So, their niece (Ray's cousin) Delia, and her husband Craig, file for custody. Delia already has a teenage daughter, Alex, from a previous marriage, but she and Craig believe they are unable to have children. They also live in Wisconsin, and are seen by the social services as having a more suitable family structure for raising a young girl. While Keefer is living with Craig and Delia, the McKennas launch a campaign to have the law changed in a bid to prevent other adopted people from facing similar problems in the future. Their efforts bring them to the attention of local politician Phil Kay, who champions their cause in the Wisconsin legislature, and the relative changes are passed unanimously. Shortly before the appeal is to be held, it emerges that Delia is suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, and has also become pregnant. She is unable to take her medication during her pregnancy and is not coping very well with having to look after a young child. At the appeal, the judge advises the two families that it would be better for everyone concerned, and particularly Keefer, if they were able to sort things out between themselves rather than through the courts. Taking this on board, Gordon decides to give up his bid to adopt Keefer, but only on the proviso that Delia and Craig stay in the area until Keefer is at least five. An agreement is reached and the adoption process begins. However, shortly after giving birth to a boy, who is named Hugh, Delia suffers a severe brain haemorrhage and is placed on a life support machine. When the McKennas learn what has happened, they go to the hospital to offer Craig their support. He is at first reluctant to accept this, but as Delia's condition deteriorates, he begins to realise the full gravity of the situation. He and Gordon then have a heart to heart in which they discuss Keefer's future. The final chapter of the book catches up with Keefer as a ten year old, and she narrates the events of the intervening years. She is adopted by Gordon after Delia dies. Delia's daughter, Alex, goes to live with her father, while Craig raises Hugh with Gordon's help and advice, and the two become good friends. Gordon and Alex then meet again some years later when Alex becomes a counsellor at Keefer's school. They have a relationship and the story concludes with Alex giving birth to a daughter.
7477469	/m/0262ygr	Gila Monsters Meet you at the Airport			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A young boy from New York City must confront apprehensions about his new life as his parents move West. He soon finds his fears that the region is populated by baseball-hating buffalo chasers are unfounded, and that he can indeed find room to sit among the cactuses.
7482096	/m/02631sd	Wives and Concubines	Su Tong		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lotus is attending college when her father's tea business goes bankrupt and he commits suicide. She chooses to become a concubine in the rich Chen household in order to avoid having to work. From the beginning, she does not fit into the household with its three other wives. Initially, the first mistress Joy ignores her, the second mistress Cloud befriends her, and the third mistress Coral acts with outright hostility. Coral goes so far as to interrupt Lotus's wedding night with the lie that she has taken ill. In spite of this, Lotus is favored by Chen. Shortly after her arrival, Chen's elder son Feipu, who is older than Lotus, comes home. He favors Lotus's company and she begins to fall for him, especially because he plays the flute so well and movingly. Meanwhile, one evening when they are playing mahjong, Lotus notices that Coral is flirting with a doctor. Swallow, Lotus's special servant, hates her and neglects her duties whenever possible. One day, Lotus accuses Swallow of stealing her flute and searches Swallow's trunk. Instead of finding the flute, she finds a doll with pins stuck in its chest. The doll has "Lotus" written on it, and Lotus demands to know who wrote the word for the illiterate Swallow. It is revealed that Cloud was the one who helped her. That night, Chen Zuoqian admits that he was the one who stole and destroyed her flute because he was afraid it was a lover's token. Instead of forgiving him, she bursts into tears and he leaves her. Cloud asks Lotus to cut her hair the next morning, and Lotus cuts her ear. Coral is impressed by Lotus's action and warms further to her. Coral reveals that Cloud attempted to poison her and cause a miscarriage when they were both pregnant. Coral nevertheless gives birth to a son, Feilan. When Chen Zuoqian celebrates his 50th birthday, more domestic strife breaks out. Feilan and Yirong (Cloud's child) knock over a vase and the resulting fight gives Lotus a headache. She goes outside to help it go away and instead she ends up next to an abandoned well in which three concubines of previous husbands had died. She has a hallucination in which a hand reaches out of the well water and a voice tells her to come down. Shaken, she returns to the party. Chen Zuoqian is extremely angry with her and he barely acknowledges her gift. Unfortunately, her gift is less expensive than the others'. She tries to make up for it by kissing Chen, but he gets angry. She leaves the room weeping. Feipu arrives with his flute teacher and friend, Young Master Gu, as well as a replacement flute for Lotus. Joy interrupts the flute lesson, however, and Young Master Gu leaves because the mood is destroyed by Feipu's absence. Afterwards, Feipu tells Lotus she is different from other women, who frighten him, and leaves on a business trip. Chen Zuoqian finally decides to see Lotus. He forgives Lotus for her behavior at his birthday party, but Lotus is unwilling to have sex as she cannot stop thinking about Feipu. Chen eventually leaves her in disgust when she is unable to stop weeping. As a result of Lotus' attitude and the manipulations of Cloud, Lotus loses favor with Chen even more. Later, Cloud claims that Coral hired a boy to beat up her daughter Yirong. Only Lotus and Coral know the truth behind the second mistress' facade, and they slowly become closer friends. Lotus finds a drawing of her on a piece of soiled toilet paper and confronts Swallow with it. Swallow is afraid at being caught and does not want to be sent away. In a fit of anger, Lotus tells her to eat the toilet paper or be forced out of the Chen household. Swallow catches typhoid and Chen is infuriated with Lotus. Lotus realizes that her twentieth birthday has gone by and determines to celebrate. When the new servant returns with wine, she announces Swallow has died. Lotus is regretful but says that "dying is better than living." Feipu arrives and a tipsy Lotus reveals how she feels about him. Feipu confesses that he likes her but he is too afraid of women to do anything. After he leaves in shame, Lotus gets very drunk and has a hallucination in which Swallow kills her. The next morning, Lotus wakes up to see Coral leaving for town. When she comes back, she is escorted by several male servants; Cloud has caught her and the doctor in bed. Coral is locked in her room. That night, Lotus sits up expecting Swallow to return. Instead, she watches the household servants taking Coral from her room and throwing her into the haunted well. Witnessing the murder drives Lotus to insanity.
7482662	/m/02632gv	Hades' Daughter	Sara Douglass	2002-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It starts with an act of revenge, and shall end in destruction. Hades Daughter opens the Troy Game quartet. It is set in the Late Bronze Age (approx. 1000-1200 BC) during the time of the great Aegean Catastrophe and some years after the fall of Troy. The action ranges between Naxos, western Greece and the mysterious land of Llangarlia in the Isle of Albion (Britain). The main characters are: * Genvissa, sixth daughter-heir of Ariadne (lover of Theseus), and the MagaLlan of Llangarlia. * Brutus, leader of the Trojans. * Membricus, Brutus' former lover and now his adviser. * Asterion, the murdered Minotaur, half-brother to Ariadne. * Cornelia, Brutus' wife, and the central character of the first three books of the series. * Corineus, Brutus' captain. * Coel, a Llangarlian mystic and warrior; also temporary lover of Cornelia. * Loth, a strange, enigmatic Llangarlian man with a distorted antler-shaped head. * Aerne, Gormagog of Llangarlia. * Mag, Mother Goddess of the Waters of Llangarlia. * And a host of various supporting characters.
7482693	/m/02632jk	Nude with Violin	Noël Coward			 The play is set in Paris in 1954. The famous painter, Paul Sorodin, has died. His relatives and hangers-on converge on his studio, hopeful of financial gain, and are stunned to learn from his valet, Sebastien, that Sorodin has left a letter in which he admits that he never painted a picture in his life. The paintings of Sorodin’s supposed three major periods turn out to have been executed by a choleric aristocrat, Anya Pavlikov; a jolly barmaid, Cherry-May Waterton; and a Jamaican Seventh-day Adventist, Obadiah Lewellyn.
7483462	/m/02633cq	Sing to the Dawn	Minfong Ho	1975	{"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dawan, a young village girl who lives in Thailand, wins a scholarship to study in a city school. Her brother, Kwai, places second and is initially jealous, causing a rift between the two previously-close siblings. This hostility is further exacerbated by Dawan's father, who feels that the city is no place for a female. Dawan faces obstacles at every turn, and eventually overcomes these obstacles and proves to herself and to others that she is fully capable of handling the scholarship and the responsibility it entails.
7483782	/m/02633wx	The Third Twin	Ken Follett		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jeannie Ferrami, Psy.D., is a newly-hired associate professor at the fictional Jones Falls University in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a criminality researcher and is attempting to isolate the influence of genes in personality, as opposed to upbringing; her interest in criminal tendencies may be due to her father, a professional burglar who, at the start of the novel, is serving out a fifteen-year prison sentence. Her financial conditions have also been recently strained; as the novel opens, she checks her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother into a shabby nursing home, which is all she and her sister Patty can afford. Jeannie, a talented tennis player, is unwinding after a match in the university gym when the smell of smoke is detected. Convinced it is a full-blown fire, she and the other occupants scurry out in various states of undress; in the process, she loses track of her friend Lisa Hoxton. Diving back into the building, Jeannie finds Lisa in a back room, having been raped by a man wearing a red baseball cap bearing the word "Security." Lisa receives no pity from the hospital staff and police officers assigned to the situation. The next morning they are attended by Lt. Michelle Delaware of the Sex Crimes Unit, a far-more-sympathetic woman who walks Lisa through the process of creating a facial composite of the suspect. She also explains that the fire was a set-up: just a bit of smoke to cause a panic. The perpetrator was not an opportunist, but a planner and a sociopath; a serial rapist. While they do so, Jeannie heads to the university to continue her study. She meets Steven Logan, a young man who flirted with her after her tennis match. He is handsome, charming, in his first year of law school, and only 22; despite the age difference, sparks fly. However, Steve was unaware that he was a twin, which is a vindication of Jeannie's recruitment system: she designed software to isolate possible identical twins raised apart by comparing the raw binary code of ECGs, dental X-rays, fingerprints and so on. Steven is the twin of Dennis Pinker, a man who is serving a life sentence for murder. This troubles Steve: as a teenager, he was provoked to rage by damage to a newly-purchased leather jacket, and beat the offender almost to death. He has always suspected that he has murderous impulses, and the existence of his twin confirms it. While Jeannie carries out the study, she and Steve are visited by Berrington Jones, famed researcher, professor at Jones Falls, and one of three owners of Threeplex, a medical research company that also provides a great deal of JFU's funding. Berry is shocked by the sight of Steve, and immediately calls up the other two Threeplex owners, Preston Barck and United States Senator Jim Proust, to inform them of Logan's involvement. It is revealed that the firm's three founders are racist and classist, and that Threeplex has secrets to hide, evidently pertaining to Steven Logan and Dennis Pinker. Furthermore, their futures are on the line: Threeplex is being considered for purchase by international conglomerate Landsmann for the sum of $180 million, which (among other things) will finance Proust's presidential campaign. Berrington takes immediate action to prevent Jeannie from conducting further research, alerting the press to the possible (and real) ethical issues of her search engine. Shortly after, Steve is arrested by Lt. Delaware for the rape of Lisa Hoxton; Lisa later picks him out of the line-up, though Steve insists (and Jeannie believes) that he is innocent. Steven suffers a torturous 48 hours in jail but is eventually released on bail of $200,000, offering as part of his conditions to stay away from Lisa Hoxton&mdash;though there might be complications, since he doesn't actually know what she looks like. At the same time, Jeannie is surprised by her father, who has just been released (six years early) for good behavior. The next day, she and Lisa visit Dennis Pinker in jail, confirming that he is, indeed, identical to Logan, but discovering (via interviews with him and his parents) that he had no twin brother given up for adoption, was born two weeks after Steve, and in a different hospital in a different state. Steven's parents corroborate this claim. Jeannie realizes what has happened when both sets of parents confess that the fathers were in the military when the couples sought fertility treatments at the Aventine Clinic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From a pamphlet at the clinic, Jeannie discovers that Aventine Clinic was founded by Threeplex in 1972 as a research center for in vitro fertilization. Shortly afterwards, she is approached by someone identical to Steve and Dennis. She mistakes him for Steve, and he attempts to rape her in her car. Berrington has been busy protecting Threeplex's secrets. When Jeannie meets Dr. Maurice Obell, president of JFU, concerning the ethics of her search program, spurred by an article in the New York Times, he successfully manipulates them into arguing instead of compromising. He then convinces Obell to fire her, though she is entitled to a hearing by the college's discipline committee. Finally, he bribes two members of the committee to make sure Jeannie is fired. When Jeannie arrives at her apartment in Baltimore, Steve is waiting for her. Her initial terror is calmed when her neighbor Mr. Oliver explains that Steve has been waiting there for two hours, making it impossible that he attacked her in Philadelphia. She then calls up Dennis Pinker's jail and confirms that he is still incarcerated. She and Steve realize the existence of the novel's titular "third twin," the man who attacked Jeannie in Philadelphia and, possibly, the man who raped Lisa. These cloned children were implanted, illegally, in Mrs. Logan's and Mrs. Pinker's wombs during their so-called fertility treatments. Even better, Jeannie has the means to discover how far the conspiracy goes: a friend of hers ran her search engine on the FBI's fingerprint database. Jeannie saves the data to a floppy disk, but before she can use it she is called in by Obell to be fired; by the time she returns, she has been locked out of her office. Her only hope is to win the hearing, with Steve serving as her lawyer. Unfortunately, though he does his best (and is complimented for his efforts by the lawyer representing the university), he is no match for a committee that has already made up its mind. Dr. Jean Ferrami is dismissed from her position at Jones Falls University. However, Jeannie has one more resource: her father, Pete Ferrami. The father-and-daughter duo manage to break into the JFU psychology building and then her office, and make off with not only the floppy disk (which Jeannie, in a fit of paranoia, labeled shopping.lst) but a printout of its contents. Both Steve Logan and Dennis Pinker are linked to a third name, Wayne Stattner, who turns out to be a nightclub impresario in New York City. She and Lt. Delaware fly to there to meet him. His apartment shrieks of sadism, but his alibi is airtight: he was at the Emmy Awards presentation and was seen on national television. However, like Mr. Pinker and Mr. Logan, Wayne's father was in the military at the time of his conception, and his mother sought fertility treatments at Aventine. There are four twins... At least. Conversation with Steven's father, Col. Charles Logan, reveals the motivation: a Super-Soldier program, rumored to have been initiated by Nixon. This only further shakes Steven's faith in himself: he is genetically disposed to murder and risk-taking behavior, and his biological parents might be total strangers. To further Jeannie's research, Col. Logan uploads her search program into The Pentagon's computers, and comes up with a total of eight names, which he smuggles to Steven just before he himself is arrested. Jeannie and Lisa use a nationwide CD-ROM phone book database to track down the remaining five. One, Per Erikson, is dead from a botched skiing stunt; one, Murray Claud, is in jail; one, Henry King, is still at large; George Dassault they are not able to reach at all; and the final one, Harvey Jones, they leave for last because of the number of Joneses in America. They find him in Philadelphia, and Jeannie drives down to investigate. Courtesy of a neighbor who has a spare key, Jeannie places the perpetrator due to the distinctive red "Security" baseball cap. The neighbor also informs her that Harvey often travels to Baltimore on Sundays... Berrington Jones has been sinking to ever-lower straits. Though he had hoped that bribing the discipline committee would be the end of it, he now finds himself following Jeannie around in his car. It is his intervention, and Proust's, that gets Col. Logan arrested, but Steve still has that damning list of eight names, and Berry quickly confirms that Jeannie has been in contact with all of them. He then confronts Harvey, his son, who raped Lisa Hoxton and assaulted Jeannie in Philadelphia (Proust's idea, carried out without Berrington's knowledge or approval). Berrington sends Harvey to Jeannie: if he pretends to be Steve, he can find out just how much she knows and what she plans. Harvey plays through the situation quite successfully until he displays a behavioral tic Jeannie has seen Berrington use (smoothing his eyebrow with his forefinger); with the timely arrival of the real Steve, as well as the neighboring Mr. Oliver, Harvey is subdued. Jeannie, Lisa and Steve decide on their course of action. Landsmann and Threeplex are holding a joint press conference tomorrow, at which they intend to announce the purchase; Jeannie will crash the party with as many twins as she can interest in tow, and tell her side of the story. (Steve makes the approaches.) Furthermore, they turn Berrington's plan back on him: they send Steve, posing as Harvey, into the enemy camp. While Jeannie, Lisa and Mr. Oliver smuggle Harvey into the hotel, Steve plays through the situation quite successfully until the next morning, when he fails to display a behavioral tic (a family in-joke); Berrington locks him in a bathroom and liberates his son. Fortunately, Jeannie's recruitment scheme succeeds, and Lisa shows up with Henry King, George Dassault and Wayne Stattner, who combined with Steve and Harvey are enough to draw the attention of the press. Steve also comes to a conclusion about himself when he turns down propositions from Berrington's maid, whom Harvey has apparently blackmailed into sexual servitude; he thanks his parents for his upbringing, and his unknown progenitors for their genes, but realizes that, ultimately, it is his choices that define him. The epilogue takes place during the next June (roughly nine months later). Jeannie and Steve are on their honeymoon, but first stop by the new rest home where Mrs. Ferrami lives for a re-cap. Berrington Jones, Preston Barck and Jim Proust have gone down in flames; Pete Ferrami has started a new and lucrative business providing security arrangements for people's homes; and Harvey Jones is serving five years for rape and arson. Jeannie has taken a lucrative position as head of genetics research for Landsmann.
7484114	/m/02634bb	The Andalite's Gift	K. A. Applegate	1997-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Animorphs plan to have a lazy summer, with several Animorphs attending a pool party and Rachel going to a gymnastics camp. However, before she can leave for the camp, Rachel - in her eagle morph - takes a cruise through the air and, seeing Ax, attempts to say hello but is mobbed by smaller birds, who cause her to crash and lose consciousness. When she awakens, she has demorphed to human but has amnesia. Meanwhile, Jake and Cassie are attending the pool party. Because Marco was not invited, he decides to take Ax along. The two of them morph into mice and crash the party. After they are done terrorizing the guests, they run into the basement to demorph. However, when they demorph, they are attacked by a massive flying monster, known as a Veleek (yeerk word for "pet"). It destroys the house before abruptly dissolving into dust and leaving. The Animorphs regroup and discover that Rachel never made it to the gymnastics camp. Jake, Marco, and Tobias head into the forest to look for her. As Jake and Marco morph to wolves, the Veleek begins to chase after them, and they realize that the Veleek is drawn by the energy generated through morphing. Moments before they are about to collapse from exhaustion, the Veleek flies away. Rachel has been captured by a crazy ex-Controller, who locks her in a wooden shack and sets fire to it. Rachel inadvertently morphs into a grizzly bear to escape, and is then attacked by the Veleek. The two begin to fight, until Ax encounters them mid-combat. He begins to morph and the Veleek captures him and returns to the Blade ship, delivering Ax to Visser Three. Rachel demorphs and makes her way into town, where she hides out in an empty house. When police surround the house and tell her to come out, she morphs into an elephant and breaks through the side of the house. Meanwhile, Jake, Marco and Cassie notice the Veleek floating through the air as dust, and steal Cassie's father's truck in order to chase after it. They attempt to play a game of "keepaway", by continually morphing to distract the Veleek, but their plan does not succeed. The truck crashes into Rachel's elephant form, restoring her memory but drawing the Veleek to all four Animorphs. The Veleek attempts to capture Rachel, but cannot lift her. Jake and Marco continue on in the truck, but crash it again, and Marco is captured by the Veleek. Marco and Ax, now prisoners of Visser Three, are on board the Blade Ship. Ax morphs into a flea and hides on the Visser's body. He slightly demorphs and remorphs to attract the Veleek's attention. The Veleek begins to attack Visser Three, causing Visser Three to order the water turned on. In the confusion, Ax and Marco escape from the Blade ship, morphing into birds moments before they hit the ground. From this event, the Animorphs realize that the Veleek does not like water. The next day, Cassie develops a plan: the Animorphs head out to sea, where Cassie finds and acquires a humpback whale. She morphs into a cockroach, and Tobias flies her as high up as he can. While the remaining Animorphs morph and demorph dolphins to keep the Veleek distracted, Cassie demorphs and then morphs into the whale, all the time falling back to the sea. The Veleek attempts to capture her but cannot carry the whale's weight, and it is dragged into the sea and drowns.
7486424	/m/02636n0	In the Time of Dinosaurs	K. A. Applegate	1998-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Marco sees a news report about a downed nuclear submarine, he and the other Animorphs set out to find it in dolphin morphs. When the warheads in the submarine detonate, however, the group finds themselves transported through time by a Sario rip, to the era of dinosaurs (the Late Cretaceous period, to be exact). Rachel and Tobias are eaten by a kronosaurus and believed dead by the other Animorphs. The other Animorphs make their way to land, where they encounter a number of dinosaurs, including the Tyrannosaurus rex, which attempts to eat Jake. Jake morphs while inside the beast, injuring it and causing it to spit him out, and die but not before the other three Animorphs acquire it. Tobias and Rachel, meanwhile had escaped from the kronosaurus, and make their own way to land. Tobias' wing has been broken and was unable to be healed by morphing, most likely as a result of the time travel. The two of them have a run-in with a pack of deinonychus, but both manage to acquire the pack's leader and escape. Later they encountered by a vicious antlike alien race known as the Nesk, who attempt to kill Rachel and Tobias. The six Animorphs find themselves reunited above a large canyon on a force field with an artificial city at its bottom. After investigating it, they are welcomed by an alien race known as the Mercora, who had fled their own planet which was destroyed and intend on making Earth their new home. However, they are at war with the Nesk, and do not have the technology to help the Animorphs return to their own time. The Nesk, however, do—so the Animorphs storm the Nesk's camp in order to steal a warhead to recreate the explosion that sent them into the past. The Nesk angrily flee Earth, but divert the path of a nearby comet towards the planet. The Mercora respectfully ask the Animorphs to surrender their warhead, thinking they can use it to dissolve the comet, and Tobias agrees to let them have it. However, realizing that the Mercora must have died in the explosion as they are not a current part of Earth and that the comet will cause the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, he tells Ax to render it useless. The Animorphs escape back into the ocean, and the force of the comet propels them back to their own time. They are unable to use their dinosaur morphs following this book.
7487573	/m/02637qd	Icerigger	Alan Dean Foster	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After an unfortunate accident, Ethan Fortune, a simple salesman and sophisticated interstellar traveler, finds himself stranded on the deadly frozen world of Tran-Ky-Ky with professional adventurer Skua September. Together they search for a way off the planet while fighting against both the extreme weather and deadly fauna of the alien world.
7489799	/m/0263b33	Body of Evidence	Patricia Cornwell	1991	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner of Virginia, gets involved in the case of a brutal stabbing death in Richmond of romance writer Beryl Madison. Then, Madison's greedy lawyer accuses Scarpetta of losing his client's latest manuscript, an autobiographical expose of Beryl's early life as protégé of a legendary novelist. As more deaths occur and the killer closes in on her, Kay finds herself also having to deal with the unexpected reappearance of long-lost lover Mark James.Scarpetta soon finds herself living Beryl's nightmare.
7489838	/m/0263b4h	All That Remains	Patricia Cornwell	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A serial killer is loose in Richmond, specializing in attractive young couples whose bodies are inevitably found in the woods months later&mdash;minus their shoes and socks. After months of exposure to all the elements, all that remains of the killer's victims has in every case left Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta unable even to determine an exact cause of death. Frustrated that her high-tech forensic skills have apparently proved useless, Kay enlists the help of an ace crime reporter and a psychic whose powers have been vouched for by the FBI. Racing against time, Kay finds she must draw upon her own personal resources to track down a murderer skilled at eliminating every clue. All that remains to her now is her courage, intuition, and the will to stop a killer before he can strike again.
7489949	/m/0263b6k	Cruel and Unusual	Patricia Cornwell	1993	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta is called in to autopsy the body of convicted murderer Ronnie Waddell after his execution. Several days after the execution, a young boy is discovered murdered in the fashion of Waddell's earlier killings, with Waddell's prints near the body. Scarpetta, along with FBI Agent Benton Wesley and Detective Pete Marino, try to discover how a dead inmate could have possibly committed another murder after his death.
7489957	/m/0263b77	The Body Farm	Patricia Cornwell	1994	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kay Scarpetta is called in to assist in the investigation of the brutal murder of 11-year old Emily Steiner in rural North Carolina, whose murder resembles the handiwork of a serial killer who has eluded the FBI for years. Scarpetta is joined by her ingenious, rebellious and very annoying niece, Lucy, an FBI intern with a promising future in Quantico's computer engineering facility. To help with the investigation, Scarpetta turns to a clandestine research facility in Tennessee known as the Body Farm. There she finds answers to Emily Steiner's murder.
7489971	/m/0263b7l	From Potter's Field	Patricia Cornwell	1995	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story begins as a rotten Christmas for Scarpetta: Temple Gault has struck again, leaving a naked, apparently homeless girl shot in Central Park on Christmas Eve; Scarpetta, as the FBI's consulting pathologist, is called in. Later, a transit cop is found shot in a subway tunnel, and, back home in Richmond, Virginia, the body of a crooked local sheriff is delivered to Scarpetta's own morgue by the elusive, brilliant Gault. The normally unflappable Scarpetta finds herself hyperventilating and nearly shooting her own niece. In the end, some ingenious forensic detective work and a visit to the killer's agonized family set up a high-tech, difficult to follow, climax back in the New York subway, which Gault treats as the Phantom of the Opera did the sewers of Paris.
7489978	/m/0263b7y	Cause of Death	Patricia Cornwell	1996	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 New Year's Eve and the final murder scene of Virginia's bloodiest year takes Scarpetta thirty feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. Dr. Scarpetta receives a phone call reporting the death of investigative reporter Ted Eddings, who was found dead in diving gear amongst the Navy's reserve fleet. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths of the inactive shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets&mdash;and why did Scarpetta receive the phone call reporting the death before the police were notified? The case leads Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marino into a terrorist plot that threatens thousands of lives.
7490052	/m/0263bbp	Hornet's Nest	Patricia Cornwell	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The creator of Kay Scarpetta, the most fascinating character in contemporary crime fiction, now cunningly reveals the heart and soul of a metropolitan police department. With Charlotte as her simmering background, she propels us into the core of the force through the lives of a dynamic trio of heroes: Andy Brazil, an ambitious younger reporter for The Charlotte Observer and an eager - sometimes too eager-volunteer cop; Police Chief Judy Hammer, the professionally strong yet personally troubled guardian of Charlotte's law and order; and her deputy chief, Virginia West, a genuine head-turner who is married to her job. To walk the beat with Hammer, West, and Brazil is to learn the inner secrets of police work - the tension and the tedium, the hilarity and the heartbreak, the unexpected pump of adrenaline and the rush of courage that can lead to heroics ... or death.
7490054	/m/0263bc0	Unnatural Exposure	Patricia Cornwell	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta has a bloody puzzle on her hands: five headless, limbless cadavers in Ireland, plus four similar victims in a landfill back home. Is a serial butcher loose in Virginia? That's what the panicked public thinks, thanks to a local TV reporter who got the leaked news from Scarpetta's rival, Investigator Percy Ring. But this is no run-of-the-mill serial killer. A shadowy figure has plans involving mutant smallpox, mass murder, and messing with Scarpetta's mind by e-mailing her gory photos of the murder scenes, along with cryptic AOL chat-room messages. Central to the plot is the case of Janet Parker, the last person known to have died of smallpox, which she contracted in 1978 due to a lab accident in Birmingham, England, after the disease was eradicated in the wild. Cornwell makes the villain a junior employee of the lab at the time who was made a scapegoat for the accident and whose career was blighted as a result. This provides the plot with a credible source for the virus and a motive for the central crime.
7494666	/m/0263fwg	Unwiederbringlich	Theodor Fontane	1892	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Count Helmuth Holk lives with his countess Christine and their two children in a lonely valley. Christine was raised by nuns and is serious and pious, whereas Holk is by nature fun-loving. When Holk is called away to the Copenhagen court of the Danish princess, he becomes fascinated by a young companion of the princess, Ebba von Rosenberg, who flirts violently with him. By contrast, his marriage with Christine begins to seem unbearably dull, and he rashly seeks a divorce from his wife before realizing that Ebba's attentions were not serious. A long separation of Holk and Christine ensues, and only after years and great efforts by friends is a reconciliation between husband and wife engineered. Although on the surface all seems well, Christine is haunted by the previous rejection and drowns herself in the sea.
7501439	/m/0263mn9	Elfangor's Secret	K. A. Applegate	1999-04		 The former Visser Four inadvertently discovers the Time Matrix and uses it to rewrite history to make the Yeerk domination of Earth much easier - America is now a technologically inept, genocidal empire; Jake is a neo-Nazi who demands to be called "Supreme Leader" by the other Animorphs, and Rachel is in a re-education camp to be "taught her place", her role on the team now being filled by Melissa Chapman. None of the Animorphs are aware of the change, as this is, to their minds, what life has always been like, Visser Four having changed events before their births. The Ellimist and Crayak have formed a temporary truce in order to stop Visser Four, and they send the Drode to offer the Animorphs, having restored their true memories and line-up, a Hobson's choice; they can refuse the opportunity to track down Visser Four, and the timeline remains as it is, or they can defeat Visser Four and return the timeline to how it originally was... for the price of one of their lives. The Animorphs of course have no choice but to accept, and set out to stop Visser Four's rewrite of time. The Animorphs pass through many historical events, including the Battle of Agincourt, Washington's crossing of the Delaware (in which, as Marco and Cassie predicted and feared due to his previous actions against Crayak, Jake is killed in the crossfire), the battle of Trafalgar (in which Rachel, Marco, and Ax are also "killed", but not really due to the only required life, Jake's, being taken), and finally Princeton University a short time after 1932. It turns out that the American colonists lost to Britain and the Hessians, and France won the battle of Trafalgar, leading to the U.S. and England having to make peace with Napoleon Bonaparte. The United States - or rather, whatever the country is called now - is still under British control. However, Visser Four had made a mistake. Although originally planning to kill Albert Einstein at Princeton, his own meddling in the past had changed the future so that Einstein was not at Princeton at this time (still in Germany). Furthermore, Cassie and Tobias make the discovery that Rachel, Marco and Ax have been resurrected, and thus the remaining five Animorphs realize that the Ellimist's conditions allowed that only one Animorph could be killed; with Jake's death, the rest of the Animorphs are essentially immortal, albeit just for the duration of their mission. Visser Four begins to rapidly leap through time and space in order to shake the Animorphs off, but when he is unable to lose them, he directs the Time Matrix to the Normandy Landing. After navigating through the time-altered battle (including an Adolf Hitler who is a harmless jeep driver and the French and Germans on the same side), the Animorphs close in on Visser Four, whose host body (John Berryman) has been fatally injured. Visser Four abandons John's body, and Marco kills the Yeerk. Cassie, much to her chagrin, asks John where and when his parents met, and the Animorphs direct the Time Matrix to San Francisco in 1967 to prevent John's parents from ever having met. But when they get there, they start to debate the morality of their intended actions; maybe history would be better somehow if they didn't cut off his life. However, they accidentally distract his mother, so she never meets his father and they never have to make the choice. With John never being born, he was never infested by Visser Four, who in turn never found the Time Matrix, and the events of this story never actually took place; Jake returns to life, as the Animorphs were never actually at the Delaware crossing. Despite the reset, the group remembers everything, even after they go home, due to Drode having buffered their memories and personalities.
7501701	/m/0263mym	The Soulforge	Margaret Weis	1998-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins from Raistlin's childhood, and follows his progress through magic school. Many things occur that foreshadow the great power that he would one day attain, and offer an explanation as to why he is often vindictive and power hungry. The book concludes with Raistlin's test at the Tower of High Sorcery of Wayreth. The account of the test conflicts somewhat with a story that appeared in one of the books of the Dragonlance Legends trilogy, but gives a much more detailed account of how Raistlin came by his golden skin and hourglass eyes, and also how he bested the ancient archmage, Fistandantilus, from the time before the fall of Istar.
7501814	/m/0263mz_	The Wild Irish Girl	Lady Morgan	1806	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The Hon. Horatio M———, son of the Earl of M———, is banished to his father's estate on the northwest coast of Connacht (i.e. County Mayo) as punishment for accumulating large debts. The novel consists of letters written by Horatio to his friend J.D., an MP. He finds a dilapidated castle and the remnants of the Catholic Gaelic nobility that was displaced by his ancestors after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. He acquires a new respect for Irish history and culture and falls in love with an Irish princess named Glorvina.
7501824	/m/0263m_b	Back to Before	K. A. Applegate	2000-04		 After a particularly vicious battle, Crayak sends the Drode to tempt Jake into accepting an alternate reality in which the Animorphs did not walk home through the abandoned construction site, did not meet Elfangor, and did not become Animorphs. The results are drastic: a friendless Tobias joins The Sharing, and is infested by a Yeerk who is later revealed as a spy for Visser One, and is killed. Marco- now dating Rachel in this world- runs into his mother, but she escapes before he can confront her. Jake discovers that his brother Tom is involved with dangerous dealings after a Yeerk security leak. And all the while, Cassie has a strong feeling that all is not right. Ax manages to escape from his Dome Ship, and begins to warn the people of Earth about the Yeerk presence. The Yeerk response is immediate: they abandon their silent invasion and launch all-out warfare. In the ensuing chaos, Marco, Rachel and Cassie are all killed, while Jake and Ax meet up and manage to kill Visser Three by ramming the Blade Ship with a stolen Bug Fighter. They take control of the Blade ship and plan to use it to destroy the Yeerk Pool Ship, at which point the Drode and the Ellimist interrupt the timeline, returning the deceased characters to life and returning everyone's memories. The Drode complains that the events in this timeline are doomed to cause failure, and the Ellimist reveals that Cassie is an anomaly, a rare individual who is grounded in the true timeline and will disrupt any other timelines that try to take its place- explaining Cassie's feeling that something was not right. It is also revealed that The Ellimist manipulated events (or as the Drode exclaimes in disgust "stacked the deck") to ensure that Cassie, Marco, Tobias, and Ax- the anomaly, the son of Visser One's host, Elfangor's paradoxical son and Elfangor's brother- were all Animorphs; Jake and Rachel apparently became Animorphs through chance alone. The Ellimist restores everything to as it was - with only Cassie retaining even a vague memory of this new timeline, preferring that Jake and Tobias not know how they gave in to the Drode and the Yeerks respectively - and this time around the Drode decides not to try to tempt Jake into accepting the alternate reality.
7502438	/m/0263nd3	The Betrothed	Walter Scott	1825-06-22	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Baldwin, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had exhorted the Britons, and the Anglo-Normans who were settled on the borders of the Welsh principalities, to lay aside their feuds and join in the third Crusade. Accordingly, Gwenwyn, the Prince of Powys-land, and Sir Raymond Berenger, the Knight of Garde Doloureuse, had accepted each other's hospitality, and Gwenwyn, at the suggestion of his chaplain, had arranged to divorce his wife Brengwan, in order that he might marry Sir Raymond's daughter Eveline. In reply to his proposal, however, a messenger brought a letter stating that she was promised to Sir Hugo de Lacy, the Constable of Chester. This being taken by the Welsh as an affront, the call to war was sung by the bards, the Norman castle was attacked, and its owner slain in a combat with his would-be son-in-law. Nerved by the presence of Eveline on the battlements, and supplied with food by a ruse of her father's vassal the Flemish weaver, the garrison, assisted by the military predilections of their chaplain, held out until Damian Lacy arrived with a large force, when the brave but unarmoured Britons were repulsed, and their prince Gwenwyn was killed. Having granted an interview to her deliverer, Eveline was escorted by her suitor the Constable, and a numerous retinue, to her aunt's nunnery at Gloucester. On her way thither she passed a night at the house of a Saxon kinswoman, the Lady of Baldringham, where she occupied a haunted chamber, and saw the ghost of an ancestor's wife, who foretold that she would be Widowed wife, and married maid, Betrothed, betrayer, and betrayed. During her visit to the abbess she was formally espoused to Sir Hugo; but the archbishop having the next day commanded him to proceed to Palestine for three years, he offered to annul their engagement. Eveline, contrary to her aunt&#39;s advice, promised to await his return; and it was arranged that she should reside in her castle, with Rose and Dame Gillian as her attendants, and Damian as her guardian. Wearied with her monotonous life during this seclusion, she was induced one day to join in a hawking expedition unaccompanied by her usual escort, and was seized by rebels secretly instigated by Ranald Lacy. In attempting to rescue her Damian was severely wounded, and she insisted on nursing him in the castle, while Amelot led his men-at-arms in pursuit of the outlaws, whose disaffection had reached the king&#39;s ears, with a rumour that Damian was their captain. Sir Guy Monthermer was, accordingly, sent to demand admittance to Garde Doloureuse, where he was reported to be concealed; and when Eveline ordered the portcullis to be dropped against him, a herald proclaimed her, and all who aided and abetted her, as traitors. The constable and his squire, who were supposed to be dead, returned from Syria, disguised as palmers, just as the royal troops, headed by Prince Richard, had occupied the castle, Eveline at the same time being sent to a convent, and Damian consigned to a dungeon. Having learnt the ill news from old Raoul and his wife, Sir Hugo made his way towards King Henry&#39;s camp, near which, surrounded by an assembly of spectators, Ranald Lacy, who by false representations had obtained a grant of Eveline&#39;s forfeited lands, and assumed his kinsman&#39;s dress and title, was about to present a royal charter of immunities to a procession of the Flemish settlers. Cadwallon, the Welsh bard, had, however, attached himself to Sir Hugo as a Breton minstrel, in order that he might avenge the death of Gwenwyn; and mistaking Ranald for the returned constable, suddenly sprang behind him as he leant forward in his saddle, and stabbed him in the back. Sir Hugo now made himself known, and was welcomed by the king, the assassin was executed, and, convinced that his betrothed&#39;s love had been given to Damian, the old Crusader resigned her to him, and consoled himself by taking part in the subjugation of Ireland.
7502598	/m/0263njl	The First Journey		1999-03		 This book loosely follows the plots of Animorphs books , and . The book narrates from the reader's point of view, as a sixth Animorph (Ax does not consider himself to be one of the "Animorphs"), and they are able to choose their morphs as the story progresses. The book opens up with the reader ("you") riding their bike around the abandoned construction site. They join up with the Animorphs, witness Elfangor's demise at the "hands" (mouth) of Visser Three, and pedal furiously home. The next morning, Marco comes to the reader's house to explain that they have all started acquiring morphs, and that they plan to investigate a Sharing meeting that evening. A correct choice by the reader of a ferret as their first morph leads to Ms. Humphries, the reader's next-door neighbor with a lot of ferrets and cats, taking them along with her to The Sharing meeting, as she is also a Controller. Ms. Humphries puts the reader down near a volleyball net, and the reader call to Cassie for help. She lets them escape and demorph with only a few minutes to spare. When the reader suggests that everyone could do with some better morphs than just lizards, dogs, cats, and ferrets, Rachel agrees. Cassie leads everyone to The Gardens to get some better morphs. The gang all split up when a security guard with a golf cart chases them, and they find themselves inside the giraffe exhibit. The reader acquire the giraffe, then re-enter the hallway. After two animal handlers leave a tranquilized female hyena, they enter and acquire her DNA. As the reader leaves, they are caught and detained by park security. The reader morphs Princie, one of their dogs, and leads the team astray by not following their (human) scent, leading them to Ms. Humphries' house, and rubbing their sweatshirt (left outside earlier) over everything in the neighborhood before running home. Knowing that the reader have to meet up with the rest of the Animorphs in their trip to the Yeerk Pool, they decide on a morph to sneak in with. A failed choice of the K9 police dog leads to the reader being recognized by Finley, the taller police officer. After the Animorphs battle and escape from the Yeerk Pool, Visser Three kills them with his eight-headed, fireball-launching alien morph. A correct choice of a ferret morph has the reader hiding in the elevator leading down to the Yeerk Pool, one of many entrances. Some people take notice of the reader, and are about to get rid of them, when Jake's brother Tom spots the reader and recognizes him as one of Ms. Humphries' pets. He says they shouldn't touch "it", because "Chapman said to take no chances." At the bottom floor, another Controller presses a series of buttons on the elevator, making it go past where normal people should be able to get to. The elevator opens up, and the reader descretely follow the Controllers down a staircase to the giant cavern that holds the city's main Yeerk Pool. They see mulitple hosts (human and Hork-Bajir) in cages, a woman re-infested, and Tom being put into a cage. The reader also see Cassie about to be led to the loading pier. Running in her direction, Tobias spots the reader and they tell him that they all have to save Cassie. Then the reader run to Jake, Rachel, and Marco, who haven't morphed yet, and Jake tells them to demorph behind a storage shed. Rachel tells the reader to rest and wait for them. A few minutes later, a male human-Controller, a Hork-Bajir, and Taxxon find the reader. Rachel, morphed as an elephant, rescues the reader, and they all run to save Cassie. The reader morph into the hyena and kill a Taxxon. Marco is a gorilla, Jake is a tiger, and Rachel is still an elephant. Events transpire much as they did in The Invasion, with Marco unlocking cages, Cassie being rescued and morphing into a horse, and Visser Three entering the scene. He morphs into a giant eight-headed, eight-armed, and eight-legged creature that breathes fireballs, and Tom tries to attack the Visser. The gang escape into the school hallway, run outside, and demorph. A few months later, Ax has joined the group, and the reader is in their kitchen at home when they start having flashing visions of being in a jungle. The reader rides their bike to Jake's house and tells him what's happening. He remembers the events of Book 11, but even though the rest of the reader were there too, they don't remember it. Now it's the reader's turn to be having the flashes instead of Jake. Suddenly, the Sario Rip flash takes the reader and Jake into the rain forest, and Jake distinctly remembers being there in The Forgotten. He leads the reader to a downed Bug fighter, saying that they have to take the onboard navigating computer before Visser Three comes back. Cassie recalls being on the Bug fighter shooting Dracon beams at Visser Three's blade ship, and Jake notes that the last time a Sario Rip happened, he had to die and he doesn't want to do that again. Ax and Jake decide that this second go-around means that they should do things differently. Jake decides to have Ax disable the computer instead of taking it, to make it look like it happened in the crash. The gang decide to morph parrots and fly through the jungle. The reader see human- and Hork-Bajir-Controllers destroying the rain forest, and Polo's tribe spying on the Hork-Bajir. They land on their shoulders, and Cassie demorphs first. She reveals her human head and retracts her bird tail first, to give the appearance of being an animal spirit. She communicates with the small tribe by way of dirt drawings. Through these drawings, she conveys that the Hork-Bajir (diablos) are the enemy to be fought, and that she and her (bird) friends need to get on board the Blade Ship with the tribe's help. She arranges to meet up with the tribe again just before dusk. As chameleons, the gang make their way to the Blade Ship. When the reader sneaks on, Ax suggests the reader split up to avoid attention. After some brief arguing over whether the gang should kill Visser Three in "this timeline" and what it might mean, Visser Three boards and orders both the Blade Ship and the fixed Bug fighter to start up. Both ships rise, and before the gang can attack, the ships fire at each other, closing the Sario Rip when the Dracon beams intersect. The reader is suddenly back in their hometown (as a human), albeit a year too early. The reader is at a bus stop with Rachel and Marco. Suddenly, Marco's mom drives up to the curb, and she offers Marco a ride home. The reader and Marco are shocked at this because (at least in the proper timeline), Marco's mom is "dead" - rather, the host of Visser One. Suddenly, Visser Three comes running to attack Eva as a Pit Bull. The reader morphs into a giraffe to attack the Visser. The second the reader kicks him, they are suddenly back in their own home in the kitchen. The reader runs over to Jake's house, where he and Ax are eating licorice sticks and pizza like they were when the reader first ran over there before the Sario Rip. Ax and Jake figure out that Visser Three had tried to use a Sario Rip to his advantage to go back in time and kill what would be his rival's human host. They go into a detailed explanation of exactly what transpired in the Sario Rip and why certain individuals remember what they remember, or why they did what they did. Jake concludes by saying that it's good that they've restored the correct timeline, and that "there will still be more battles to fight." the reader adds "But first, there's pizza." This is the winning ending.
7502736	/m/0263nmp	The Next Passage		2000-03		 This book loosely follows the plots of Animorphs books , Megamorphs #2: In the Time of Dinosaurs and . The book narrates from the reader point of view, as a sixth Animorph, and they are able to choose their morphs as the story progresses. Like all gamebooks, the choices the reader make cause different endings. One of the splits in the story involves Cassie being killed and Rachel forcing the reader to promise not to meddle. If the reader refuses, the others will force them to stay in a fly morph and become a nothlit and they will die but the other split is being in prehistoric time. Unlike other gamebooks, if the reader make a decision that causes them to die, the 'failure' page will refer them to the page that allows the reader to choose another action. Notes are written in bold text at the bottom of certain pages.
7502895	/m/0263ntx	Chronicles of the Canongate	Walter Scott			 The MacTavish family lived near Oban in 1775. Hamish MacTavish Mohr ("Senior"), a daring freebooter, had met his death in an encounter with the Saxon red-coats, by whom the Highlands were garrisoned after the battle of Culloden. His wife, who had shared all his dangers, strove to inspire their only son with his father's love of adventure and hatred of servile toil; but as he grew up the lad evinced no inclination for lawless pursuits, and, unable to endure his mother's taunts at his want of spirit, enlisted in one of the regiments formed in Scotland to oppose the French in the American war of independence. Before sailing he sent her some money by Phadraick, and returned to spend a few days with her, when she fiercely reproached him for daring to act in opposition to her will, and, failing to alter his purpose, drugged his parting-cup, thus causing him to exceed his furlough, and render himself liable to the lash as a deserter. She then urged him to flee to her kinsmen, while she baffled his pursuers; but he resolved to await the arrival of the sergeant and men of his regiment who, he felt sure, would be sent to arrest him. They came, and, on being summoned to surrender, he shot the sergeant dead. The other soldiers secured him, and he was marched as a prisoner to Dumbarton castle, where he was tried by court-martial and condemned to be shot. His captain and a Presbyterian minister interceded for him; but the English general in command was determined to make an example, and the next morning his sentence was carried out in the presence of his comrades. His mother, who had attempted to follow him, was met by the minister wandering in a wild glen, and on hearing her son's fate, she uttered terrible imprecations, and renounced all further intercourse with the world. She lived, however, for many years in her lonely cottage, regarded with awe and pity by her neighbours as the victim of destiny, rather than the voluntary cause of her son's death and her own wretchedness. At length, while two women, who had been set to watch her last moments, were sleeping, she disappeared from her bed, and was never heard of again.
7504806	/m/0263qv8	The Titan's Curse	Rick Riordan	2007-04-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase and Thalia Grace, go to Westover Hall in Maine after Grover Underwood discovers two sibling half-bloods named Nico and Bianca di Angelo. They narrowly escape an attack by a manticore named "Dr. Thorn," with some help from Artemis and her hunters, which include Zoë Nightshade. Though they survive the attack, Annabeth is captured by Dr. Thorn. Percy and his friends must look for Artemis before the winter solstice meeting of the Olympian council, when the goddess's influence could change an important vote on the war with the Titans. Percy joins Thalia, Zoe, Bianca di Angelo, and Grover on their dangerous quest. They also are searching for a rare monster that Artemis was trying to hunt down when she went missing; it is so strong that it can obliterate Olympus. Percy is called by a hippocampus to rescue a marine cow-like creature trapped in the Long Island Sound called the Ophiotaurus, whom Percy names Bessie, not knowing it is male. Percy is forced to trail slightly behind the rest of the travelers, catching up with them by flying Blackjack, a pegasus he liberated in The Sea of Monsters to Washington, D.C.. He also spots Dr. Thorn there as well, and follows Dr. Thorn into a private meeting at the National Museum of Natural History, which Percy infiltrates by using Annabeth's invisibility baseball cap. As he watches, Dr. Thorn is severely berated by a man known only as "the General," who uses dinosaur teeth to grow skeleton warriors trained to track down and kill the hunters. Percy races across to the National Air & Space Museum to warn the others, but just as soon as he arrives, the museum is attacked by the Nemean Lion, which they manage to subdue and defeat. When they spot a helicopter following them as they flee, they enter the Washington Metro to throw it off their trail. Apollo finds them at a freight yard and supplies them with a way to Cloudcroft, New Mexico – hopping into cars on an autorack freight train, which delivers them to Cloudcroft the next day. In Cloudcroft, Grover senses the presence of Pan, the Greek god of nature, and a wild gift from him, the giant Erymanthian Boar, comes to carry them further on to Gila Claw, Arizona. It takes them to the junkyard of the gods, and Percy meets Ares and talks to Aphrodite, at which point it is hinted that Annabeth and Percy will most likely have a romantic future. Eventually, the group enters the junkyard, where Bianca tries to steal a statue for her younger brother. She accidentally awakens a prototype of Talos, a giant man of bronze, and dies after being inside the metal giant while it was shocked by telephone poles, but still successfully destroyed it. While being attacked by skeletal warriors at the Hoover Dam, Percy meets Rachel Elizabeth Dare, a girl who can see through the Mist. She saves Percy by confusing the skeletons, allowing Percy and his friends to escape after another ambush by praying to Zeus to animate two angel statues on the terrace, which take them to the Embarcadero in San Francisco. They go to seek the help of Annabeth's father; who, after a brief discussion, lends them his car. They travel to the Garden of Hesperides, where Zoë meets her sisters and is bitten and poisoned by the dragon Ladon while trying to help Percy and Thalia pass. They continue to the Mountain of Despair on Mount Tamalpais up in Marin County, where Mount Othrys, the Titan capital, is now located. From the top of the mountain where Atlas held up the sky, they see Artemis taking on his burden. Annabeth is held captive by Luke, and has been handcuffed and gagged. Realizing that the prophecy made by the Oracle involves him, Percy takes the burden—the Titan's curse—from Artemis. In the ensuing fight, Annabeth's father helps by flying his Sopwith Camel (a biplane) and shooting celestial bronze encased bullets, and Atlas (the General of the Titans) throws his daughter Zoë, slamming her against the rocks. Artemis tricks Atlas into taking his burden from Percy. Zoe dies (because of the poisonous bite from Ladon and the impact of the rocks(caused by her father)) and Artemis turns Zoë into a constellation, in memorial to her. During a battle between Thalia and Luke, Luke falls off a cliff and Percy assumes that Luke is dead. Later, Percy is told by Annabeth, and confirmed by Poseidon, that Luke has survived the fall, and Thalia is asked by Artemis and agrees to join the Hunt to become safer and prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled. They promise each other to hide this fact from everyone else, especially the Titan's army.
7506061	/m/0263s2x	The Ravi Lancers				 The story concerns an Indian cavalry regiment which is sent to the France at the outbreak of the First World War. The Ravi Lancers is unusual in that it is part of the army of a semi-independent Hindu state (a Princely state) attached to British India. It accordingly follows different traditions than the regular regiments of the British Indian Army. These include a semi-feudal relationship between the Indian 'sowars' (cavalrymen) and their ruler. It also means that all officers except for the British regiment commander are Indians, which would not have been the case in a regular regiment at the time. The book centers on the relationship between the regiment's British commander (a member of the Savage family, though with a different family name) and his Indian second-in-command Krishna Ram - heir to the throne of the state of Ravi. The young Indian prince, originally a naive admirer of the British Empire, increasingly discovers its shortcomings and develops his own awareness of being Indian. The British commanding officer Colonel Bateman, originally liberal minded, becomes a harsh and demanding martinet under the stress of trench warfare. The situation is further complicated by Krishna Ram's secret affair with Bateman's sister. Finally the two divergent characters and their respective sets of values come to a shattering head-on clash in the midst of a devastating attack on the German trenches. The climax involves what is effectively a mutiny while trapped by the German counter-attack, a daring escape with the Indian soldiers relying on stealth to get back to the British lines, and the suicide of the broken Bateman at his estate in England, leaving the Indian protagonists with a strong feeling of guilt. At the end Krishna Ram decides that he and his men will remain on active service in France, rather than returning to Ravi, because "we gave our word to serve" and out of a form of loyalty to the dead Bateman.
7507529	/m/0263ts5	The Great Fetish	L. Sprague de Camp	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is both an adventure story and a satire on the scientific dispute over Creationism. It is set on the planet Kforri, where descendants of space travelers from Earth have reverted to a pre-technological society. The truth of their origin has faded into legend, and as a result the story of the space voyage and the scientific theory of evolution have become competing accounts of the genesis of humanity. In an ironic reversal, the Religionists hold that man evolved from the native animals of Kforri, while skeptics against the received dogma, known as the Anti-Evolutionists, are more open to the spaceflight theory. Schoolteacher Marko Prokopiu, has been found guilty of teaching the Anti-Evolutionist heresy, as established by the Holy Syncretic Church, but escapes from prison. He embarks on a quest to discover the truth by finding the Great Fetish, said to contain the real story. A parallel motivation is to recover his wife Petronela, who has run off with his friend Chet Mongami during his imprisonment. Marko joins a caravan and falls in with the philosopher Doctor Halran, a professor who is experimenting with a new hot air balloon. The two are launched in the balloon and land by accident on the Island of Mnaen, populated only by female 'witches' who guard The Great Fetish. This is revealed to be a collection of documents with microscopically-reduced writing. Escaping from the witches, who follow the worship of the cult of Einstein, they attend a great philosophical convention. Using an experimental microscope being demonstrated at the convention, the documents reveal information about the origins of Kforri, validating the truth of the anti-evolutionists. They further show that Kforri gained its name from that given by the discovering expedition (K40 became Kforri), and that the expedition members disagreed and dispersed. They eventually formed nations with cultures and languages derived from their native ones. The name of the Island of Mnaen, for instance, was based on the earthly Manhattan. Using the documents, the inhabitants of Kforri rapidly advance their technology. They eventually hope to build spaceships to travel back to Earth.
7508881	/m/0263vmd	Badge of Evil				 A man named Rudy Linneker is killed when a mystery killer blows up his house using a couple of sticks of dynamite. Assistant district attorney Mitch Holt is called to the case as well as police officers Leron McCoy and Hank Quinlan. The pair have gained a celebrity status in the city after thirty years of impeccable service and are considered legends in the city. Quinlan’s leg was injured years before and he has since walked with a cane. At first, Linneker’s daughter Tara and her fiancé Delmont Shayon are the primary suspects until disgruntled employee Ernest Farnum makes a surprise confession and is promptly jailed. Holt is baffled by Farnum’s testimony regarding the dynamite he planted in Shayon’s apartment which contradicts his previous statement where he said he did not want to involve an innocent man like Shayon. Holt becomes suspicious of McCoy and Quinlan when both pay Farnum separate visits in his jail cell. Holt brings this inconsistency to the attention of his superior James Adair and Chief of Police Gould. When Holt accuses McCoy and Quinlan of planting evidence, Adair and Gould dismiss his allegation as an attempt to gain political mileage in the District Attorney's office. Things become dangerous for Holt when his house is shot at by a mysterious gunman whom he suspects is McCoy himself. Holt sends his wife Consuela and daughter Nancy to live in his father-in-law’s ranch in Mexico where they would be safe. Holt then goes to the Hall of Records and digs into the past cases that involved McCoy and Quinlan. Holt then meets with Dan Buccio, brother of gangster Emil Buccio, to confirm that the Buccio family had nothing to do with the shooting incident. Afterward, Holt discovers that his Hall of Records transcripts are stolen. Soon after Consuela returns, Holt enlists the aid of the Press-Examiner newspaper to make his accusations public. This stirs things up in the city and Adair and Gould wash their hands of it. The plan backfires when Farnum commits suicide and the Press-Examiner is forced to drop Holt’s story. Holt is later suspended but his problems worsen when Consuela is lured to a motel, drugged and framed for possession of illegal narcotics. Desperate, Holt asks his friend Van Dusen to provide him with a wireless transmitter. Holt then confronts Quinlan about what he knows regarding McCoy's planting of evidence. The guilt-ridden Quinlan agrees to Holt’s plan to force a confession out of McCoy. To that end, Quinlan is wired and he drives Holt to McCoy’s residence. There, McCoy gleefully confesses his crimes to Quinlan while Holt secretly tapes their conversation in Quinlan’s car. But in the heat of the discussion, the two cops become confrontational and McCoy shoots Quinlan dead. Holt escapes and later he plays the tape he made to Adair and Gould. McCoy is exposed and he later commits suicide. Consuela is eventually released from jail and Holt is reinstated as assistant in the District Attorney's office where he is given full authority to investigate the McCoy-Quinlan cases.
7511283	/m/0263xg5	From the Files of Madison Finn				 This series is about a 12-year-old girl named Madison Finn, who lives in the fictional town of Far Hills in New York. Madison is the daughter of Francine and Jeff Finn, who are divorced. The series starts shortly after the events of the divorce. Madison is just like any other average 12-year-old girl. She worries about school, her best friends Aimee Gillespie and Fiona Waters, her crush on Hart Jones, and her constant rivalry with former friend, Ivy Daly. To get through it all she writes files on her computer, which acts as a sort of diary. There are currently 22 books in the series, including three super specials, which are slightly longer than the usual books and deal with certain special events in Madison's life, such as her dad's remarriage. Madison can be mean towards Ivy (and vice versa) in a few of the books, but in the end she is a nice, kind, caring, and lovable 12-year-old girl.
7514876	/m/0263_wy	Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television				 Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television argues that the technology of television is not a neutral or benign instrument or tool. The author argues that in varied technologies and institutions such as militaries, automobiles, nuclear power plants, mass production, and advertising, the basic form of the institution and the technology determines its interaction with the world, the way it will be used, the kind of people who use it, and to what ends. The author argues that far from being "neutral," television predetermines who shall use it, how they will use it, what effects it will have on individual lives, and, if it continues to be widely used, what sorts of political forms will inevitably emerge. The four arguments are: # While television may seem useful, interesting, and worthwhile, at the same time it further boxes people into a physical and mental condition appropriate for the emergence of autocratic control. # It is inevitable that the present powers-that-be (or controllers) use and expand using television so that no other controllers are permitted. # Television affects individual human bodies and minds in a manner which fit the purposes of the people who control the medium. # Television has no democratic potential. The technology itself places absolute limits on what may pass through it. The medium, in effect, chooses its own content from a very narrow field of possibilities. The effect is to drastically confine all human understanding within a rigid channel. What binds the four arguments together is that they deal with aspects of television that are not reformable. It is perhaps then paradoxical that attempts to define the arguments of the book inevitably fall into Mander's dilemma: even current forms of technology such as the internet and Wikipedia itself reduce complex information and its perception to slogans and inconsequential 'bits' (in the computer or informatic sense).
7517890	/m/026432s	Mr. Tall	Roger Hargreaves	1978	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Mr. Tall hates his oversized legs. He meets Mr. Small, and when Mr. Small goes for a swim, Mr. Tall can't, but three other Mr. Men teach him that oversized body parts can be helpful. Mr. Tall decides his long legs are great for walking, and while Mr. Tall made it home quickly, Mr. Small took a year to get home. On the 1997 Mr. Men Show, his legs are thicker and farther apart than in the book.
7528630	/m/0264fr9	The Glass Inferno	Thomas N. Scortia	1974		 The story concerns the events during the grand opening celebration of a brand new high-rise building (66-stories-tall) in an unnamed American city. The building was called the National Curtainwall Building, nicknamed the Glass House, the headquarters of the fictitious National Curtainwall corporation. A combination of a skyscraper built to the absolute minimum compliance with safety rules, combined with cutting corners to save money on construction, leads to a disaster waiting to happen. Craig Barton, the building’s architect, is to meet for dinner with the building’s owner, Wyndom Leroux in the building’s Promenade room. During drinks and dinner Barton questions Leroux regarding the specifications of the building and whether or not they have been altered from his original plans, why they have been altered and what the consequences of this may be. After dinner they are alerted by the hostess that there is a fire in one of the building’s storage rooms on the 17th floor. Barton is sent down by Leroux to assist with the firefighting operations while his wife, Jenny, remains at dinner with Leroux and his wife Thelma. A small home furnishings store owner, despondent over his near bankruptcy, decides to burn his business down for the insurance. He tries to do so, but realizes what it will do to his business partner and lover, Larry. He puts out the fire but realizes that he's now really ruined because of what he has done. He then discovers that he is smelling smoke which is not from the fire he tried to set, but is from a real fire, unrelated to his, that has occurred in the building. A part of the story deals with a TV reporter named Quantrell, who, using a disgruntled former employee of the contractor, was given copies of documents relating to the building's construction. In one scene, Quantrell uses them on his television show to point out how the building was designed in violation of local building codes at the time the drawings were made, and that the local building codes were changed afterward to allow the design to be in compliance, implying that the owners of the building paid bribes to have the building codes rewritten. The reporter gets threats from all sides to back down on his aggressive reporting of the building's failures. After the initial alarm of fire division chief Mario Infantino, a chief who specializes in high-rise fires, is called to the scene and given the overall command by fire chief Karl Fuchs, whose son, Mark, is also a fireman at the scene. Barton and Infantino, who have been friends before the fire, work to understand what is happening to the building as flames race through its poorly constructed heart. The story continues as it shows the efforts of other residents of the building attempting to escape the flames, some successful, some not. One character is the brave Lisolette (also featured in the Irwin Allen film adaptation). Eventually a number of people end up in the penthouse restaurant of the building, where they are trapped and unable to get down. They are eventually rescued successfully by helicopter. The fire is eventually put out by blowing up water tanks below the roof of the building, which causes the water to drown the fire. es:The Glass Inferno
7528632	/m/0264frn	Joshua Then and Now	Mordecai Richler		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Joshua Shapiro, successful writer and pundit, lying in a hospital room, seems to have lost his wife and is in the middle of a sex scandal. Compelled to find meaning in his life, he reviews it from his youth to the present day. Joshua grew up as a Jew in the working class St. Urbain Street area in Montreal. His upbringing was unusual because his father was a boxer who had become a gentle crook and his mother was a strip-tease dancer. Embarrassingly, she strips for his friends as part of a Bar Mitzvah party for him. Joshua's father is revealed to have a unique perspective on life, sex, and religion. A trip to Spain as a young man is the impetus that sparks a career as a journalist and writer. In England in a momentary lapse of reason, Joshua forges letters about a (fake) homosexual affair with a British writer to sell to an American university archive. He meets an upper-class Canadian married to a poser of a communist and steals her away to become his own wife. She is the daughter of a Canadian senator and Joshua's key into a level of society of which he is quite contemptuous. In the meantime, Joshua's childhood friends have become successful in their own right. They soon become targets of pranks as he settles various scores. Joshua's conceited brother-in-law assumes a pivotal role in the novel as it is revealed that he is insecure and vulnerable. Neighbors in the wealthy cottage community around Lake Memphremagog lead him astray with dreadful consequences. Past indiscretions rear their ugly heads and Joshua must put together the shambles of his life.
7528714	/m/0264fws	Doppelganger	David Stahler, Jr.	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book opens on a scene where Mirage, a Hunter (individuals who specialize as assassins, bodyguards and spies), is hiding and preparing to strike three men who mistake her for a witch at first then for a Cousin (witch's assistant). Mirage, being a great Hunter trained from Silverfire, gets her mark and almost kills the three men. The scene cuts to Eclipse, Mirage's schoolmate at Silverfire, one of the numerous Hunter schools, walking through Chervie's streets amidst a festival. He goes to a bar and meets Mirage, whom he calls Seniade. Mirage recognizes him and calls him Kerestel. Eclipse teases Mirage and they talk and catch up with each other until Ice arrives, a Hunter from Thornblood, a school Silverfire is not friendly with. Ice flirts briefly with Eclipse but is stopped by Mirage. A hostile conversation takes place and only stops when Mirage learns she was chosen for a commission. Mirage pays for a private room, which is hard to find and expensive since the festival is taking place. She and Eclipse search the room for any possible places where eavesdroppers might hide and, finding none, start talking. Mirage is quite taken aback and starts having second thoughts when she learns it concerns the assassination of a witch and generally the witch community, which she avoids concerning herself with since she is always being mistaken for a witch for her red hair. Reluctantly, Mirage accepts the commission for her popularity, having been on a commission two times now in a short period of time. They travel to Corbeth to meet their employer. Upon arriving there, they learn they need to take a blood oath, which means they either do the job or die. They are prepped by a witch and after discussing it, decides to go to Starfall to investigate Tari-nakana's house Meanwhile, Miryo is introduced in the story sitting on a roof and thinking over her future as a witch and what will happen if she fails the test she needs to pass to become a witch. Soon Eikyo, her friend, comes along and comforts her and reminds her of her homework and also reassures her she will pass and that many women have passed this stage. Miryo gets nervous about failing, remembering a schoolmate Hinosuka who died as a result of the test. Eikyo helps Miryo decide what Path she will be in and without much conclusive results, Miryo goes back to her room to start a homework. The next scene is featured in the library, where Miryo talks with an Air Head, Narika-kai. Narika-kai notices that Miryo is jumpy that day and correctly assumes Miryo is studying and also says every witch studies herself exhausted when her trials approaches.
7530845	/m/0264j2z	Blueberries for Sal	Robert McCloskey	1948	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 "The book opens and closes with a picture of little Sal and her mother in the kitchen, the mother is canning blueberries... One sees in this opening picture Sal entertaining herself by placing the canning rings on her wrist and a spoon, a simple childlike act which helps to set the stage for Sal's obvious child actions throughout the books. This is not to be the overly diligent or angelic girl of so many other books, Sal is a real child figure. She gets into mischief and causes her mom no end of trouble.” Little Sal's Mother takes her to Blueberry Hill to pick berries. Sal drops three berries in her bucket, then eats them. This continues as she and her mother concentrate on the berries and gradually get separated on the hill. What they don't realize is that a mother bear and her cub have also come to Blueberry Hill to eat berries for the winter. The book uses a number of visual and verbal techniques to compare and contrast the bear and the human families. Both families pictures are similar in compositions, but they head in opposite directions when they reach the blueberry patch. Little Sal’s Mother tells her that they can’t eat all the berries because they need to save them to can for the winter, but the bear mother tells her child to eat as much as it can to store up fat for winter. The bear's way of preparing for winter is more natural for Sal who soon wanders off to eat. Sal and the bear cub get mixed up and follow after the wrong mother. It takes the mothers several minutes to realize they're being followed by the wrong child; it isn't until the bear cub tries to eat from Sal's mother's bucket and the mother bear hears the "ku-plink, ku-plank, ku-plunk" sound of Sal dropping blueberries into her tin pail that they realize what happened. Ultimately each child is reunited with its proper mother and they both leave the hill. Just before leaving Sal drops a blueberry into her empty pail. The end papers show Sal again playing in the kitchen while her mother cans berries.
7533370	/m/0264lvf	Jovah's Angel	Sharon Shinn	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Some 150 years have passed since the events of Archangel and weather patterns have become increasingly unstable. The current Archangel, Delilah, is injured while flying in a storm and her angelico killed. Jovah decrees that she can no longer be Archangel as she is unable to fly, and names Alleluia Archangel in her place. While many protest her elevation, others believe she has been chosen because Jovah never fails to hear her voice. Alleluia does not feel up to the task of managing the other political powers of Sammorah, but somewhat manages with the aid of the angel Samuel. As pressure continues to mount on her, the old music machines located in Eyrie begin to fail until only one is left. Seeking any diversion, Alleluia goes off in search of the inventor/engineer Caleb, whom a Edori in Velora believes may be able to fix it. She finds him in Luminaux where she discovers the former Archangel performing in a club under the name "Lilah." Delilah wants nothing to do with Alleluia, but Caleb agrees to visit Velora as soon as possible. Caleb is revealed to be friends with Delilah and another inventor/engineer Noah. The two inventor/engineers theorize that Delilah is seeking thrills to entertain her, so when they mention that they will be travelling to Bereven as part of their work, she decides to accompany them. They travel via Noah's "Beast," a primitive steam powered car. When Delilah learns of the reason they have travelled there to aid the design of self-propelled ships, she wishes to join the Edori expedition to Ysral. Noah, who is falling in love with her, declares that she cannot go and that he will go in her stead. Alleluia as Archangel, must also find her angelico. Jovah only refers to him as "The son of Jeremiah" and much of her time is devoted to searching for him, and consulting the oracles. The oracle of Mount Sinai has recently died leaving no third oracle, and in her attempts to better understand Jovah, Alleluia takes several books and begins learning the old language used at the interfaces. She learns through the interface that Jovah is in need of help, and that is also the son of Jeremiah who could help Jovah. As these events take place, the weather is beginning to threaten their very way of life, and Alleluia finds references in the old texts and Edori songs that the weather is returning to how it originally was when the first colonists arrive. In a particularly harsh storm, Alleluia is also cast to the ground and uses that event to great effect to appease the other political powers. She manages to convince them that it is not the Angels causing the storms in purpose, but that they may all be in genuine danger. Alleluia begins the theorize that similar to the music machines some sort of device that aids Jovah to hear the angels may begin failing and once again locates Caleb. They meet up at Hagar's Tooth to look for such a device, and amid their budding romance find it and determine that it is working correctly. Alleluia departs as rapidly as she can citing that she can not fall in love because she must marry her angelico as decreed by Jovah. Caleb chases after her and after a circuitous route meets her at Mount Sinai where she hopes to commune directly with Jovah. Alleluia logs in and teleports up to Jehovah, the spaceship above the planet, just in time for Caleb to see her vanish. He reasons out what she must have done and follows her. On the spaceship she goes through a crisis when it is revealed that Jovah is the AI controlling the ship. Some relief is provided by Caleb being revealed as the son of Jeremiah. Caleb also manages to repair the Jehovah so that all angels' voices will be heard again. As they leave the Jehovah, Caleb takes several batteries with him. He returns to Luminaux just before Delilah is to depart for the journey to Ysral, and convinces her to try one last time to repair her wing. The battery is inserted and somehow jumpstarts damaged nerves so that while there is no feeling, Delilah can now control her wing. She decides not to go and Noah remains as well. A short time later Delilah triumphantly returns to Eyrie to resume her role as Archangel with Noah as her Angelico. After much soul searching, and a quick Q&A session with Jovah, Alleluia also returnes to Eyrie shortly after Delilah. She confirms that Delilah will be continue as Archangel and that she will become the new oracle at Mount Sinai. Caleb returns with her and founds an engineering college at the base of the mountain. * Archangel (Ace Books, 1997) * Jovah's Angel (Ace Books, 1998) * The Alleluia Files (Ace Books, 1999) * Angelica (Ace Books, 2003) Although this is the fourth novel in the Samaria series, it is set before the first book Archangel. * Angel-Seeker (Ace Books, 2004)
7533422	/m/0264lyj	The Truth-Teller's Tale	Sharon Shinn	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Eleda and Adele, mirror twins, discover that they are a Truth-Teller and a Safe-Keeper, respectively. Truth-Tellers are incapable of telling lies and recognize when others are lying, so society relies on their unwavering trustworthiness. Safe-Keepers cannot reveal what is told to them in confidence, and they bear the burden of people's confessions. The sisters do not realize the ramifications of their gifts until their teen years, when romantic and political intrigue abounds, and situations become more adult. Their friend Roelynn, whose wealthy merchant father intends to marry her off to the prince, sows plenty of wild oats behind her father's back. She often drags the sisters into the fray, and the summer they are all 17, a chain of events is set into motion that changes their lives.
7533533	/m/0264m0m	The Alleluia Files	Sharon Shinn	1999-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Generations ago, religious people built a colony spaceship called 'Jehovah'. A planet called Samaria was established. The colony ship, orbiting above, was able to provide supplies and services. These were accessed by genetically modified 'angels', who were the only ones capable of performing the right vocal tones. Over the generations, the concept of the ship was forgotten and it was believed Jehovah was an actual deity. Now factions of 'angels' fight against rebel forces called 'Jacobites'. The angels want to keep their power and the Jacobites wish to know the truth. * Archangel (Ace Books, 1997) * Jovah's Angel (Ace Books, 1998) * The Alleluia Files (Ace Books, 1999) * Angelica (Ace Books, 2003) Although this is the fourth novel in the Samaria series, it is set before the first book Archangel. * Angel-Seeker (Ace Books, 2004)
7533582	/m/0264m2b	Angel-Seeker	Sharon Shinn	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Samaria is a changed land. Corrupt politicians are gone. The poor are not so destitute. The Edori are no longer slaves. Elizabeth is a young, healthy farm-girl. Tired of her lot in life, she leaves for Cedar Hills with one goal in mind. To birth the child of one of the powerful Angel beings and live in the lap of luxury for the rest of her natural life. The story also focuses on the isolated life of Rebekah, a Jansai woman and the Angel Obadiah, whom she nurses back to health after he is wounded flying over the desert. * Archangel (Ace Books, 1997) * Jovah's Angel (Ace Books, 1998) * The Alleluia Files (Ace Books, 1999) * Angelica (Ace Books, 2003) Although this is the fourth novel in the Samaria series, it is set before the first book Archangel. * Angel-Seeker (Ace Books, 2004)
7534826	/m/0264njs	The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel	Michael Chabon	2007-05-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens with Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man in the hotel where Landsman lives. Beside the corpse lies an open cardboard chess board with an unfinished game set up on it. Landsman calls his partner, half-Tlingit, half-Jew Berko Shemets, to help him investigate further. Upon filing a report on the murder at police headquarters, Landsman and Berko discover that Landsman's ex-wife Bina has been promoted to commanding officer of their unit. Landsman and Berko discover that the victim was Mendel Shpilman, the son of the Verbover rebbe, Sitka’s most powerful organized crime boss. Mendel was believed by many to be the Tzadik ha-Dor, the potential messiah, born once in every generation. As Meyer continues to investigate Mendel's murder, he discovers that the supposed "chosen one" had taken a flight with Naomi, Landsman's deceased sister. He follows Naomi's trail to a mysterious set of buildings with an unknown purpose, set up in Tlingit territory by Jews. Landsman flies there to investigate; he is knocked out and thrown in a cell, whose walls have graffiti in Naomi's handwriting. The naked and injured Landsman, after a crazed escape attempt, is rescued by a local Tlingit police chief, Willie Dick, who reunites him with Berko. They discover that the mysterious complex is home to a paramilitary group who plan to build a new Temple in Jerusalem. This involves destroying the Dome of the Rock. The American government, led by an evangelical Christian Zionist, has provided support. As Landsman and Berko follow up on this lead, a news report reveals that the Dome has been bombed. American agents apprehend the detectives and offer them permission to stay in Sitka after the reversion if they agree to keep quiet about the plot they have uncovered. Landsman says that he will and is released. Landsman reunites with Bina, frustrated by his failure with the Shpilman case. He keeps going over the chess board in his head, and suddenly realizes that it's not an unfinished game but a puzzle, and that he had seen the same position from the perspective of the other player in Berko's father, Hertz Shemetz's house. Landsman and Bina track down Hertz, and he confesses to killing Mendel at Mendel's own request. Landsman contacts an American newsman with the story. The book ends with Bina and Landsman reunited and ready to face their future wherever they may land in the Diaspora. The book contains a great deal of comic relief. The creative and playful use of the Yiddish language (for example, cops call a gun a "sholem" – literally a "peace") is an ongoing feature. The juxtaposition of the culture of the shtetl (the Jewish village of eastern Europe) on the Alaskan landscape is also playful and amusing.
7534915	/m/0264nlh	The Oxford Murders	Guillermo Martínez		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In this thriller, mathematical symbols are the key to a mysterious sequence of murders. Each new death that occurs is accompanied by a different mathematical shape, starting with a circle. This pure mathematical form heralds the death of Mrs Eagleton, the landlady of a young Argentine mathematician who narrates the story. It appears that the serial killer can be stopped only if somebody can decode the next symbol in the sequence. The mathematics graduate is joined by the leading Oxford logician Arthur Seldom on the quest to solve the cryptic clues. The book explains how hard it can be to solve math in a cryptic form.
7543031	/m/0264ycg	Spring Awakening	Steven Sater		{"/m/04rlf": "Music"}	 ;Act I Wendla Bergmann, an adolescent in late-nineteenth century Germany, laments that her mother gave her “no way to handle things” and has not taught her the lessons she needs to learn (“Mama Who Bore Me”). She tells her mother that it is time she learned where babies come from, considering that she is about to be an aunt for the second time. Her mother cannot bring herself to explain the facts about conception clearly to Wendla despite knowing her daughter is reaching puberty. Instead, she simply tells Wendla that to conceive a child a woman must love her husband with all of her heart. The other young girls in town appear to be similarly innocent and are upset about the lack of knowledge presented to them ("Mama Who Bore Me" (Reprise)). At school, some teenage boys are studying Virgil in Latin class. When Moritz Stiefel, a very nervous and intense young man, sleepily misquotes a line, the teacher chastises him harshly. Moritz’s classmate, the rebellious and highly intelligent Melchior Gabor, tries to defend him, but the teacher will have none of it, and hits Melchior with a stick. Melchior reflects on the shallow narrow-mindedness of school and society and expresses his intent to change things ("All That’s Known"). Moritz describes a dream that has been keeping him up at night, and Melchior realizes that Moritz has been having erotic dreams which Moritz believes are signs of insanity. To comfort the panicked Moritz, Melchior, who has learned sexual information from books, tells Moritz that all of the boys at their age get the dreams. The burned-out boys tell about their own frustrating thoughts and desires. ("The Bitch of Living"). Moritz, who is not comfortable talking about the subject with Melchior, requests that he give him the information in the form of an essay, complete with illustrations. Some girls are gathered together after school and tease each other as they fantasize about marrying the boys in the town. At the top of the list is the radical, intelligent, and good-looking Melchior ("My Junk"). Meanwhile, Hanschen masturbates as he looks at an erotic postcard, and the piano student Georg indulges in some lively fantasies about his well-endowed female piano teacher. Moritz has eagerly digested the essay that Melchior prepared for him, but complains that his new knowledge has only made his dreams even more vivid and torturous. Melchior tries to calm and comfort his friend, but Moritz runs off in frustration. All of the boys and girls express their desires for physical intimacy ("Touch Me"). Searching for flowers for her mother, Wendla stumbles upon Melchior. The two share a moment while sitting together in front of a tree (they were childhood friends, but grew apart as they got older). Each of them considers what it would be like to give in to their physical desires, but they do not do so ("The Word of Your Body"). Meanwhile, at school, Moritz sneaks a look at his test results and is thrilled to learn that he has passed his midterm examinations, but the teacher and schoolmaster cannot pass everyone, so they decide to fail Moritz anyway, deeming his passing grade is not up to the school's lofty standards. Martha, one of the teenage girls, accidentally admits to her friends that her father abuses her physically (including sexual abuse) and that her mother is either oblivious or uncaring. The other girls are horrified to hear this, but Martha makes them promise not to tell anyone, lest she end up like Ilse, a friend from childhood who now wanders homeless and aimless because her parents kicked her out of the house ("The Dark I Know Well"). Later, Wendla finds Melchior again at his spot in the woods and tells him about Martha's abuse. Melchior is appalled to hear this, but Wendla convinces him to hit her with a switch, so that she can try to understand her friend’s pain. At first Melchior is determined to do nothing of the sort, but reluctantly complies. He gets carried away in the beating, taking his own frustrations out on Wendla and throws her to the ground. He then runs off, disgusted with himself, as she weeps curled up on the ground. Alone, Wendla finds that Melchior has left his journal on the ground. She picks it up and takes it with her. Moritz is told he has failed his final examination, and his father reacts with disdain and contempt when Moritz tells him that he will not progress in school; rather than attempting to understand his son's pain, Moritz's father is only concerned with how the others in town will react when they see 'the man with the son who failed'. Moritz writes to Melchior’s mother, his only adult friend, for money to flee to America; she tenderly but firmly denies his request and promises to write his parents to discourage them from being too hard on him ("And Then There Were None"). Devastated by the refusal and feeling he has few choices left, Moritz begins to contemplate suicide. In a stuffy hayloft during a storm, Melchior cries out in his frustration at being caught between childhood and adulthood (“The Mirror-Blue Night”). Wendla finds him once again, telling him she wants to return his journal, and each apologizes for what happened the last time they met. Before long, they begin to kiss; Wendla resists his advances at first. Although she doesn't really understand what's going on between them, Wendla is reluctant, sensing that what they are doing is something very powerful, and very unlike anything that she has known before. As Melchoir becomes more insistent, he overpowers her objections with a combination of affection and sheer force, although they continue, and they begin to have sex in the hayloft ("I Believe"). At the very moment Melchior commits the act, Wendla cries out against it, and the darkness falls. (Note: This scene was slightly softened from the show's Off-Broadway run, when the act as a rape without Wendla's consent was more straightforward. Later, as staged by the Broadway show, Wendla still objects to Melchior, but gives in without understanding what he is actually trying to do, leaving the question of consent still ambiguous on many levels.) ;Act II Wendla and Melchior are finishing their moment of confused intimacy in the hayloft; they reflect on and discuss what has just happened (“The Guilty Ones”). Moritz, having been thrown out of his home, wanders the town at dusk, carrying a pistol ("Don't Do Sadness") when he comes across Ilse, an old childhood friend. Ilse, who is secretly in love with Moritz, tells him she has found refuge at an artists' colony; and they reminisce in some childhood memories and "remarkable times" ("Blue Wind"). She invites him to come home with her and join her in sharing some more childhood memories and maybe something more. But Moritz refuses, Ilse does everything she can to change his mind ("Don't Do Sadness/ Blue Wind"). After coming close to kissing and admitting their mutual feelings, Moritz refuses and Ilse leaves, distraught and upset. Realizing his true feelings for her, he changes his mind and calls after her, but it is too late; she is gone. Believing that he has nowhere to turn, Moritz shoots himself. At Moritz's funeral, each of the children including Ilse, drops a flower into his grave ("Left Behind"). Back at school, the schoolmaster and teacher feel the need to call attention away from Moritz, whose death was a direct result of their actions. They search through Moritz's belongings and find the essay on sex which Melchior wrote for him. They lay the blame of Moritz's death on Melchior, and although Melchior knows that he is not to blame, he knows there is nothing he can do to fight them, and he is expelled ("Totally Fucked"). Elsewhere that night, Hanschen meets up with his shy and delicate classmate Ernst. Hanschen shares his pragmatic outlook on life with his classmate before seducing him ("The Word of Your Body (Reprise)"). Wendla has become ill, and her mother takes her to visit a doctor. He gives her some medication and assures them both that Wendla is suffering from anemia and will be fine, but he takes Wendla's mother aside and tells her that Wendla is pregnant. When her mother confronts her with this information, Wendla is completely shocked, not understanding how this could have happened. She realizes that her mother lied to her about how babies are made. Although she berates her mother for leaving her ignorant, her mother rejects the guilt and insists Wendla tell her who the father is. Wendla reluctantly surrenders a passionate note Melchior sent her after they consummated their relationship. She reflects somberly on her current condition and the circumstances that led her to this difficult position, but ends with optimism about her future child ("Whispering"). Meanwhile, Melchior's parents argue about their son's fate; his mother does not believe that the essay he wrote for Moritz is sufficient reason to send him away to reform school. When Melchior's father tells his wife about Wendla's pregnancy, she finally agrees that they must send Melchior away, which they do without telling him that Wendla is pregnant. During this time, Melchior and Wendla only keep contact through the use of letters, with Ilse delivering them back and forth. At the reform school, Melchior gets into a fight with some boys who grab a letter he has just received from Wendla and use it in a masturbation game. As one of the boys reads from the letter, Melchior finally learns about Wendla and their child, and he escapes from the institution to find her. He does not know that Wendla's mother has already taken her to an underground practitioner to have an abortion. When Melchior reaches town, he sends a message to Ilse to have her get Wendla to meet him at the cemetery at midnight. But she can take no action as Melchior "hasn't heard" about Wendla. There, he stumbles across Moritz's grave and swears to himself that he and Wendla will raise their child in a compassionate and open environment. When Wendla is late to the meeting, Melchior begins to feel a little uneasy. Looking around, Melchior sees a grave he hadn't noticed before. He reads the name on the stone – Wendla's – and realizes that Wendla died from the botched abortion. Overwhelmed by shock and grief, he takes out a razor with the intention of killing himself. Moritz's and Wendla's spirits rise from their graves to offer him their strength. They persuade him to journey on, and he resolves to live and to carry their memories with him forever ("Those You've Known"). Led by Ilse, everyone assembles onstage to sing "The Song of Purple Summer."
7547831	/m/02652t3	Force 10 From Navarone	Alistair MacLean	1968	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The story starts straight where the film ended, with Mallory and Miller aboard the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Sirdar, sailing on its way to the besieged island of Kheros. The ship is forced to turn around and head back to Navarone when they receive an urgent message from Captain Jensen, who orders them to collect Andrea Stavros and await transport on a deserted airstrip. Mallory and Miller go ashore and arrive in Mandrakos just in time to witness Andrea' wedding to the feisty resistance fighter, Maria, who had led them into the fortress to destroy the guns. After persuading Andrea and barely appeasing Maria, the three board a Wellington Bomber to take them to Termoli, Italy and Captain Jensen. In Termoli, Jensen congratulates Mallory's team and introduces them to three Royal Marine Commandos sergeants, each an exact replacement for Mallory's men. However one of the sergeants (Reynolds) is less than pleased to be considered a reserve and makes his feelings known. With the introductions over, Jensen briefs them on the mission, they're to go to the Neretva area of Bosnia to discover why in the recent weeks every allied agent parachuted into that area has been captured. Later Jensen introduces Mallory to a Partisan General called Vukalovic. Jensen explains that Vukalovic commands the Partisans in the Neretva valley who are now trapped against the Neretva river to the south and east and impassable mountains in the north and west in the so-called Zenica Cage. Across the river German General Zimmerman commands two German Panzer Divisions camped in the Pine forrests waiting to cross the lone bridge and slaughter the helpless Partisans, and when that happens the Germans will have nearly enough control of Yugoslavia. The next day Mallory, Miller, Andrea and the three sergeants fly from Italy to Bosnia, where they empty their plane's fuel tanks and parachute into a clearing not far from the area the agents were captured. After landing they meet up with what they believe to be a group of Partisans, led by Droshny, a huge Bosnian Captain. Droshny immediately takes a strong dislike to Andrea who nonchalantly kills one of the Partisans and injures another when they aim their guns at Mallory's team. With both men ready to tear the other apart, Mallory calms the situation down and they head off to the Partisan camp. At the camp they're ushered in one of the huts and are shocked to be greeted by a German Army Captain, Captain Neufeld explains that Droshny's men are not Partisans but German collaborators called Chetniks. So now captured, Mallory tells Neufeld the story he briefed the team while they were aboard the plane, but Neufeld seems unconvinced that they are deserters who have been tried for selling penicillin. But when Neufeld's men discover the crashed plane, which Mallory deliberately jettisoned the spare fuel to tie in with his story of how they'd run out of fuel, he seems to believe the tale. Amongst the Chetniks is a female guerrilla fighter named Maria, who with her blind and mute brother Petar wanders the area playing his guitar and sort of singing in a strange way. In an area where superstition is part of the culture, people no matter that they are Partisan or Chetnik see Petar as 'cursed' and will not turn him away from their doors. So he and his sister have found themselves being able to go anywhere in the area, making them valuable spies to the Germans. General Vukalovic, who was parachuted into the Zenica Cage by a different plane, meets his various commanders one by one. First the General meets Major Stefan, whose troops block the Western Gap. Stefan explains to the General that the Germans have moved units of their 11th Army Corps to attack through the gap. Back in the Chetnik camp, Neufeld radio's General Zimmerman at the Neretva Bridge. Zimmerman is concerned with the fact that the Allies are bound to mount a counter attack to save their Partisan allies, but he doesn't know two things, when and where. To find out, Neufeld sends Mallory's team to a nearby Partisan encampment and return with the vital information. The Chetniks then escort Mallory's team through the towering forests in an ancient truck to near Partisan territory. Lrft to make the final part of the journey alone, Mallory instructs Andrea and Miller to kill two Chetniks who were trying to follow them. But unbeknownst to Andrea and Miller, Droshny is also following behind the two Chetniks. Arriving at the Partisan camp (strangely similar to the Chetnik camp), Mallory is met by Major Broznik. While Broznik and Mallory go to the HQ hut the rest go to a communal rest hut, except Saunders who Mallory sends to the radio hut to report to Captain Jensen. Reynolds now even more bitter as he suspects Mallory of betraying them notices the normally aggressive Maria talking friendly to Mallory outside Broznik's hut, a short while later they descover Saunders murdered and his radio smashed. While Mallory, Andrea and Miller are sure it was Droshny, Reynolds believes the murderer to be Mallory. With friends and enemies mixed together, Mallory must continue the real purpose of their mission while keeping the two remaining disgruntled Marines in check. As the story twists and turns, Mallory's team travel back to the Chetnik camp before taking Neufeld and Droshny as hostages to rescue the captured British spies. After releasing the British agents and imprisoning Neufeld and Droshny with the guards at the remote concrete block house, Mallory and co travel up into the Bosnian mountains where Partisans have constructed an airstrip on a waist deep snowy plateau. Of course Neufeld and Droshny escape just in time to witness Mallory's team boarding an Allied bomber and fly off to Italy. But typically for a MacLean novel, Mallory and co haven't left but five Partisans and the agents hasve. While returning back to the Neretva valley, Mallory with the help of Reynolds realises that Droshny must have witnessed him and Maria talking friendly too and must now rescue her and Petar. Neufeld radio's Zimmerman and tells him that Mallory said the Partisan's expect the attack to come from across the Western Gap, feeling safe Zimmerman orders his two armoured divisions around the bridge for their attack in a few hours time. Having returned to the block house, Neufeld and Droshny are astonished to be confronted by Mallory, Miller and Andrea while they're interogating Maria. Freeing Maria and her brother Mallory returns to Neufeld's camp and destroys his radio. Finally after a terrifying ride on an old and rusty narrow gauge railway engine, the group descends the Neretva gorge down to the river bank with Andrea fighting a rear guard action while squadrons of Lancaster bombers saturate the Western Gap with high explosives. Mallory and Miller manage to scale the dam wall and covertly drop into the reservoir where they destroy the dam with a submersible mine dropped by a lone Lancaster bomber. Escaping the reservoir in time to see the dam explode, millions of gallons of water rushes down the gorge and destroys the bridge, washing away the bridge and Zimmerman and his two armoured divisions crossing it.
7551292	/m/02654rv	The Rez Sisters	Tomson Highway			 The opening scene begins with Pelajia Patchnose nailing shingles on her roof on the fictional Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. She is joined by her sister, Philomena, with whom she discusses her longing to leave the reserve, to which Philomena receives skeptically: "But you were born here. All your poop's on this reserve". They are joined by their half sister, Annie Cook, who they treat disdainfully, and who shares the news that she is expecting a package before leaving to pick it up. Meanwhile, Marie-Adele is playing with Zhaboonigan, while Nanabush, in the form of a seagull, watches on. This is where we first learn of Marie-Adele's (cervical?) cancer, and Veronique's insecurity about having no blood children of her own. The various tensions between the seven sisters, such as shared lovers and stolen husbands, is slowly exposed. This is also when we first hear rumors about THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD, a possibility which all the women are ecstatic about. Soon Annie arrives and the women march to Emily Dictionary's store to discover the details. Once the women are gathered at the store long suffering tempers flare and the scene dissolves into the sisters tussling and exchanging verbal attacks, during which Zhabooginan wanders to the side stage and re-accounts her brutal rape by two white boys with a screwdriver to her audience, Nanabush, who is experiencing "agonizing contortions" during the retelling. However, as soon as news of THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD is confirmed, the women promptly stop their squabbling and cooperatively plan how to fund the trip to Toronto in order to attend. A mad flurry of activities ensue as the women plan the trip and raise money in various ways. Once they have consolidated their efforts and funds, they set out on the drive in a borrowed van. They encounter several diversions, a flat tire, Marie-Adele collapsing (and having another encounter with Nanabush, this time as a nighthawk), but the most notable part of the scene is the emotional stories the women exchange: Emily re-accounts witnessing her lesbian lover die in a motorcycle accident, Marie-Adele expresses her fear of dying, etc. Finally they arrive at THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD, where Nanabush plays the bingo master and the audience plays along. At the end of this climatic scene, Marie-Adele dies just as the other women are losing. The play jumps back to Wasaychigan Hill, and Philomena has won $600 and got a new toilet, but otherwise things remain largely unchanged.
7553568	/m/0265658	The Pit: A Story of Chicago	Frank Norris	1903	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Pit opens with sisters Laura and Page Dearborn and their aunt, Aunt Wess, outside the Auditorium Theatre opera house awaiting the arrival of their hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Cressler. Once inside, they are joined by three other guests of the Cresslers, Mr. Curtis Jadwin, Mr. Landry Court, and Mr. Sheldon Corthell. Corthell and Laura are apparently very well-acquainted before this evening, for their conversation begins with the artist confessing his love for the young woman. Though she does not return this feeling, Laura admits that knowing she is loved is “the greatest exhilaration of happiness she had ever known." We soon learn that Corthell is not the only man interested in having Laura as his wife. Both Jadwin, the mature and mysterious man of affairs, and Landry, the exuberant and extravagant man from the Battle of the Street, are captivated by the girl’s unparalleled charm and beauty as well. Despite the fact that she makes it clear to each of them that she has no intentions of ever marrying and declares that she will never love, the three men insist on courting her. Miss Dearborn enjoys having these men chase her, but before long she grows weary of being the object of so many suitors. Enraged at herself for having made herself so vulnerable and for behaving so coquettishly, she dismisses Corthell, Landry, and Jadwin all at once. Jadwin, a man of persistence who is accustomed to getting what he wants, refuses to give up. Soon enough, Laura agrees to marry him. When her sister asks her if she truly loves Jadwin, Laura admits that though she “love[s] to be loved” and loves that Curtis is wealthy and willing to provide for her whatever she desires, she is not sure if she loves the man himself. To Mrs. Cressler she confesses:“I think I love him very much – sometimes. And then sometimes I think I don’t. I can’t tell. There are days when I’m sure of it, and there are others when I wonder if I want to be married, after all. I thought when love came it was to be – oh uplifting, something glorious . . . something that would shake me all to pieces. I thought that was the only kind of love there was.” As Joseph McElrath observes in his analysis of the novel, this passage captures the attitude that Laura will maintain through the final chapter of the book: “She will have ‘the only kind of love’ described here.&#34; Regardless of any internal reservations, Laura becomes Mrs. Curtis Jadwin on the first weekend in June. For the first years of their marriage, the couple is very happy together. Soon, however, Jadwin discovers a new source of passion that eclipses everything else – wheat speculation. Though he has been warned many times of the dangers of grain trading by his dear friend Mr. Cressler, Jadwin cannot resist the roar of the Pit down at the Chicago Board of Trade. Little by little Jadwin becomes increasingly more obsessed with speculating until the deafening murmur of “wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat” is all he can hear. The love for his wife that used to dictate his every action is replaced with an inescapable infatuation with the excitement of the Pit. All of Jadwin’s time is spent at the Board of Trade Building; often times he even sleeps there at night. Laura, left all alone in her huge house through the day and night, feels lonely and neglected and begins to discover that she needs more from her husband than his money. The extremity of Jadwin’s obsession and Laura’s worries and frustration are summed up in a passage Laura speaks to her husband after working up the nerve:“Curtis, dear, . . . when is it all going to end – your speculating? You never used to be this way. It seems as though, nowadays, I never had you to myself. Even when you are not going over papers and reports and that, or talking by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the library – even when you are not doing all that, your mind seems to be away from me – down there in La Salle Street or the Board of Trade Building. Dearest, you don’t know. I don’t mean to complain, and I don’t want to be exacting or selfish, but – sometimes I – I am lonesome.” This selfish concern that she expresses shows the extent to which Laura cares for husband’s troubles. Though he promises time and again that this deal will be his last, it is not until the market has ruined him that Jadwin is able to let it go. During this distressful time Sheldon Corthell reenters Laura’s life after having been abroad in Italy. While Jadwin spends all his time with his broker Gretry at the Board of Trade, Laura renews her companionship with Corthell, a sensitive man who can dazzle Laura with his knowledge of art and literature and who is willing to dedicate all his time to her. As Mrs. Jadwin continues to see more of Corthell than she does of her own husband, their friendship trends towards intimacy. Corthell would love nothing more than an affair with this married woman, but Laura decides that she values her marriage more than this romance and sends Corthell away for good. Meanwhile, Jadwin continues wheat trading and grows unbelievably richer by the day. He discovers that he is in the position to do the impossible – corner the market. The game for him has lost its fun, however, and is taking a serious toll on both his mental and physical health. He cannot concentrate on anything other than counting bushels of wheat and cannot sleep for his nerves won’t let him. Greedy and crazed with power, Jadwin tries to control the forces of natures and drives the price of wheat up so high that people around the world, including his best friend Mr. Cressler, are financially destroyed. Only when the “Great Bull’s” corner is finally broken and he and his wife are reduced to poverty can Jadwin and Laura finally see past their individual problems and rediscover their love for each other. The couple decides to leave Chicago and head west, and the reader is left with the feeling that the Jadwins, despite the horrors they’ve just been through, have found happiness at last.
7554875	/m/02656v8	Danny and the Dinosaur	Syd Hoff	1958	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "One day Danny went to the museum," is the first sentence of this book. In the museum, Danny sees other things, but is almost immediately drawn to the dinosaur section and is delighted to find a living dinosaur. Both agree to play with each other, and Danny rides out of the museum on the dinosaur's neck. Danny and his dinosaur buddy embark on an adventure-filled day, including... *the dinosaur confusing a building for a rock *attending a baseball game *eating ice cream instead of grass *going to the zoo *playing hide and seek with other children The dinosaur is well-intentioned throughout the story, for he helps a lady cross the street, takes Danny across a river and lets the children use him as a slide. He's also a celebrity, as the illustrations show hundreds of people leave the zoo to play with Danny. Danny and the Dinosaur ends late in the day as all the children return home. Danny waits until the dinosaur walks back to the museum. While walking home, Danny thinks about one of the things first stated in the story: he wants a dinosaur for a pet, but realizes a dinosaur would be too big to stay at his house. As he walks up the driveway, Danny has last line, "But we did have a wonderful day."
7560717	/m/0265bl2	Space Viking	H. Beam Piper		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On the Sword World Gram, Lucas Trask, Baron of Traskon, is about to marry Elaine Karvall, whose father owns the Karvall steel mills. In addition to being a political alliance, it is also a love match. But Andray Dunnan, the insane nephew of Duke Angus of Wardshaven, is under the delusion that Elaine loves him and is being forced into the marriage. When she tries to correct him, his anger boils over. He crashes the wedding ceremony, kills her and seriously wounds Trask, before stealing the Duke's newly built starship, the Enterprise, and escaping. When Trask recovers from his injuries, he pledges his realm to Duke Angus in return for another warship, twin to the one hijacked by Dunnan. He hires Otto Harkaman, an experienced Space Viking captain who had lost his own ship in a civil war on Durendal, to command the new vessel, which Trask christens Nemesis. Trask sets out in search of Dunnan, though Harkaman warns him that given the vastness of the galaxy and the speed of spacecraft, his goal is nearly hopeless. They first visit Tanith, a primitive planet Duke Angus had planned to turn into a raiding and repair base. They find two run-down Space Viking ships already in possession, the Lamia and the Space Scourge. Trask decides to implement the Duke's original plan, taking in the other two crews as very junior partners. The natives begin receiving better treatment at his hands and training in the use of modern technology. After some refitting, the Nemesis and the Space Scourge raid three planets, Khepera, Amaterasu and Beowulf. The loot Trask sends to Gram excites interest (and greed). Duke Angus uses the incentive of shares in the Tanith venture to gain supporters and assumes control of Gram. He promotes himself to king and names Trask his viceroy on Tanith with the rank of prince. Ambitious men begin emigrating to Trask's new realm. Beowulf is the most advanced of the raided worlds, lacking only interstellar space flight. Puzzled, Trask investigates and finds out that it has no gadolinium, an essential element for hyperdrive engines, but does have plutonium. Coincidentally, Amaterasu (another world rising back up after undergoing decivilization) has sizable deposits of gadolinium, but lacks plutonium. Trask seizes the opportunity to set up profitable, peaceful trade between the three planets. In the process, he gradually gains two allies. Meanwhile, ships that put into Tanith for trade and repairs occasionally bring news of sightings of Dunnan. From what he learns, Trask wonders if his enemy is plotting to conquer the civilized world of Marduk, a feat thought impossible — just the thing a megalomaniac like Dunnan would attempt. He visits two Mardukan colonies, finding that Dunnan had recently attacked them. At the third, he comes upon the Enterprise and another Dunnan ship locked in combat with the Royal Mardukan Navy warship Victrix. He jumps into the fray and destroys both enemy ships, though he remains unsure if Dunnan was killed. The Victrix, under the command of Prince Simon Bentrik, is too badly damaged for hypserspace flight, so Trask takes the crew back to Marduk. Trask becomes friends with the Mardukan royal family and particularly King Mykhail, the constitutional monarch of Marduk, but is contemptuous of their shaky democracy. It appears that a fanatical rabble-rouser named Zaspar Makann is poised to win the next election and become Chancellor, but that is not Trask's concern. On Gram, King Angus has been abusing his power, straining relations with the other powerful nobles and also with Trask. Finally, Prince Trask declares Tanith's independence and renounces his fealty to Angus. Later, word reaches him that civil war has erupted on Gram. Many of Trask's followers urge him to claim the throne himself. Lucas is not interested. Gram, along with the other Sword Worlds, is in decline; Tanith is the future, the core around which civilization might possibly reform. To distract his divided subordinates, he fabricates a more immediate threat, claiming (without proof) that Andrey Dunnan is responsible for the unrest on Marduk. His big lie turns out to be the truth. Not winning a majority in the election, Makann seizes control of the government. Prince Bentrik shows up on Tanith as a refugee, bringing two pieces of news: fighting has broken out on Marduk; and, more importantly, Dunnan is the power behind Makann. Trask assembles a fleet of Tanith Navy ships, including independent Space Viking raiders and loyalist Royal Mardukan Navy ships and speeds to Marduk for the final showdown. He wins a fierce space battle. Space Viking and loyalist ground forces root out Dunnan's followers. Some of the last holdouts surrender, handing over Andrey Dunnan in return for their lives. When the insane Dunnan raves that Elaine is waiting for him back on Gram, Trask shoots him. Trask decides to marry a Mardukan lady-in-waiting. He also decides to strive to form a League of Civilized Worlds out of the alliance that rescued Marduk.
7566934	/m/0265jj6	The Wounded Land	Stephen R. Donaldson	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ten years have passed since the end of the first Chronicles. After his experiences in the Land, Thomas Covenant has resumed his career as a writer. He is still isolated from society, but he has come to terms with that and with the other mental and physical consequences of his leprosy. The story begins by presenting us with a new main character, with the prologue being told entirely from her point of view. Linden Avery is a doctor who has moved to Covenant's hometown to take a position at the local hospital. Her traumatic childhood and rigorous medical training have left her emotionally isolated from other people. In her own way, she is as much an outsider in society as Covenant. The chief of staff at the hospital (who appeared briefly in the first Chronicles) asks her to check up on Covenant. Linden, reluctantly, drives to Covenant's house outside of town. On the way, she sees an elderly man in an ochre robe collapse by the side of the road. Using CPR, she revives him: he makes a number of cryptic pronouncements and walks off, telling her to "be true". Confused and disturbed by this strange encounter, Linden continues on to Covenant's house. Although he initially brushes her off, she is persistent, and finds that Covenant's estranged wife has returned to him, but that she is under the influence of a cult of worshippers of Lord Foul, who has found a way to exert his influence in Covenant's world. After Covenant is stabbed in the chest by one of Foul's dupes in the "real" world, he loses consciousness and hears a familiar voice: Lord Foul's. Taunting Covenant that there is "more despair bound up for you than your petty mortal heart can bear", Foul vows that he will have his final revenge on Covenant and the Land. He awakes to find that both he and Linden have been transported to the Land - to Kevin's Watch, the mountain at the Land's south frontier where he was first summoned by Drool Rockworm ten years before. His wound has been healed - somehow Covenant was able to use the "wild magic" of his white gold ring, although he had no conscious control over the process. Descending from the Watch, he also finds that a terrible change has transpired: four thousand years have passed, the Earthpower is gone, or nearly gone, and the people of the Land are out of touch with what remains of it. The Land is afflicted with the Sunbane, a disruption of the physical order which alternately causes rain, desert, pestilence and unnatural fertility to wreak havoc on man, animals and nature. The people of the Land have turned to human sacrifice as a means of harnessing the power of the Sunbane: shortly after their arrival, Covenant and Linden are taken prisoner and condemned to be "shed". They escape, but shortly thereafter Covenant is bitten by a monster. Linden, who has become imbued with a form of clairvoyance which allows her to perceive the fundamental nature of people and things in this world (which, with her medical training, she comes to think of as her "health-sense") is able to save Covenant from a life-threatening infection, but the venom from the bite leaves Covenant unable to control the destructive power of the wild magic. Despite these difficulties, Covenant and Linden Avery join with Sunder and Hollian, a man and woman of the Land, to travel to Revelstone to challenge the corrupt new rulers of the Land, the Clave. On the journey, Covenant enters the Andelainian Hills, a region of the land free of the Sunbane. There he meets with the Forestal Caer-Caveral (formerly Warmark Hile Troy) and the spirits of the long-dead characters of the First Chronicles, who provide him with rather cryptic advice concerning the plight of the Land. Saltheart Foamfollower gives Covenant something more: Vain, a creation of the ur-viles, who accompanies Covenant to Revelstone. (Linden, Sunder, and Hollian have already been captured by the Clave and imprisoned there.) Once there, Covenant agrees to undertake a "soothtell", a ritual of divination by blood. Before Covenant can defend himself the Clave's minions open his veins: this triggers the ritual. Covenant thus discovers that the cause of the current condition of the Land is the destruction of the Staff of Law, which he himself had wrought. Without the strength of the Staff to protect it, the Earthpower itself has been corrupted by Lord Foul; hence, the Sunbane. Covenant also discovers that the leader of the Clave, the na-Mhoram, is a Raver, one of Lord Foul's immortal, incorporeal servants. As each new na-Mhoram succeeds the last, the Raver takes possession, ensuring that the Clave continues to maintain the Banefire which strengthens the Sunbane. The Banefire is fed by copious quantities of blood: among the victims held by the Clave for future sacrifice are a group of Haruchai, the descendants of the race which formerly served the Land as the Bloodguard. Covenant frees the Haruchai and his friends and retrieves the krill, an ancient and powerful sword forged in the days of the Old Lords, but, due to his power-madness combined with his blood loss, is unable to single-handedly battle the combined power of the Clave, and thus is forced to leave Revelstone. Revelstone is located at the western limit of the Land; beyond is only mountainous wastes. Hence, Covenant and his companions set out east. Their journey is made perilous by the corruption of the Sunbane and the perversity of Sarangrave Flat, a marshy plain on the lower portion of the Land which has been inhabited for millennia by the "lurker", a mysterious and malevolent creature which is aroused by the presence of power. However, the party is preserved by Covenant's wild magic, Linden's health-sense, the Sunbane survival skills of Sunder and Hollian, and the physical prowess of the Haruchai. As they approach the sea-coast at the eastern edge of the Land, the travellers encounter a party of Giants, of the same race as Foamfollower's long-dead people. Covenant, Avery, Vain, and four of the Haruchai take ship with the Giants in search of a solution to the matter of the Staff of Law, leaving Sunder and Hollian in the Land to try to gather resistance to the Clave in preparation for the final battle.
7567075	/m/0265jpc	The One Tree	Stephen R. Donaldson	1982	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book differs from the others in the First and Second Chronicles, in that the story takes place outside of the Land, although still in the same world. Following the vision he received from the Clave at Revelstone, Thomas Covenant has resolved to find a solution to the problem of the destruction of the Staff of Law, the result of which has been the corruption of the Land's natural beauty by the curse of the Sunbane. He is accompanied on his quest by Linden Avery, a physician from his own "real" world, and four Haruchai bodyguards. Their means of travel from the Land is a ship crewed by the Giants, a benevolent, seafaring people from a distant region of the Earth. The journey is made more difficult by Covenant's continuing relapses into sickness caused by the venomous bite of a Sunbane-spawned monster: the venom leaves Covenant prone to uncontrollable outbursts of power-madness, the wild magic unleashed by his white gold ring posing an imminent danger to those around him. Linden, who in this world is endowed with a kind of clairvoyance, is frustrated by her inability to help him. From the Land, the Giant-ship sails to the home of the Elohim, a race of beings who are known to possess supreme wisdom. Linden perceives that the Elohim are in fact the embodiment of Earthpower, the mysterious energy which is the source of the beauty and magic found in this world. Despite their seeming omnipotence, the Elohim are bound by a strange code of behavior, and provide no direct help to the quest, other than showing the Giants the location of the One Tree, from which the Staff of Law was fashioned. This knowledge was hidden in Covenant's mind by the Forestal Caer-Caveral (Hile Troy), but Covenant lacked the means to reveal it. In the course of rendering this service, the Elohim cause Covenant to go into a catatonic state - "don't touch me" is all he can say. Sailing the course which has been charted for them, the travelers find that one of the Elohim, named Findail, has joined them aboard the Giants' ship, for purposes which he declines to reveal. The questors are not pleased at this uninvited companion but are powerless to make him leave. After suffering severe damage in a storm, in which Findail refuses to help, the ship arrives at the port city of the Bhrathair, a militaristic - but also wealthy and civilized - people living at the edge of a great desert. The Bhrathair are ruled by the gaddhi, Rant Absolain, who rather coldly receives the quest's shore party, and it is discovered that the true ruler is the gaddhis chief adviser, a wizard named Kasreyn of the Gyre. Kasreyn initially appears to be kindly disposed to the quest but is revealed to have ulterior motives. The ship is repaired, but two of the Haruchai guards lose their lives - one at the hands of a Sandgorgon, a monster indigenous to the desert, and one killed by a hustin, a semi-human creature of the gaddhis guard. Kasreyn abducts Covenant, who is still in a catatonic state, and attempts to use his powers to compel Covenant to give up his ring. The remainder of the shore party is imprisoned in the gaddhis dungeon. Using her power to invade Covenant's consciousness - which she had been loath to use because she abhors the idea of "possession" - Linden breaks Covenant's catatonia and thwarts Kasreyn's efforts to seize the ring. Covenant and the Haruchai fight their way to Kasreyn's laboratory, but discover that Kasreyn has a parasitic being, a croyel, living on his back and providing him with extended longevity, as well as immunity to physical attack. Findail destroys this croyel, killing Kasreyn and setting off a palace coup that leaves the port in a state of chaos. The ship narrowly escapes, and further travel eventually brings the quest to the island where the One Tree is located. Brinn, Covenant's Haruchai bodyguard, sacrifices himself in a duel with the Tree's Guardian ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol (himself a figure from Haruchai mythology who represents their idea of the perfect warrior), and is then regenerated as the new Guardian and leads the party to the Tree itself. When Covenant attempts to take a piece of the Tree using his power of wild magic, he is stopped by Cable Seadreamer, the mute giant. When Seadreamer makes the attempt himself, he is killed: he has disturbed the Worm of the World's End, which sleeps beneath the Tree and whose "aura" serves as a defense mechanism. This aura triggers Covenant's power to an exponential degree. As Covenant attempts to overwhelm the Worm with his power, Findail warns Linden that the Arch of Time cannot contain the struggle between the two powers and that the world will be destroyed if it continues. Linden, much against her will, mentally reaches out to Covenant. Sharing his thoughts, she sees him open a passage back to the "real" world and attempts to return her to it. She senses, however, that in the "real" world Covenant's body is very weak (from the stab wound inflicted just before the summoning) and will die if he does not himself return. Unwilling to do this, Covenant draws Linden back through the rift between the worlds. With her help, he is able to contain his power, but at the price of the Isle of the One Tree sinking beneath the ocean as the earth heaves with the movements of the Worm of the World's End settling back from disturbance into slumber. Thus, the quest ends in failure.
7567132	/m/0265jr2	White Gold Wielder	Stephen R. Donaldson	1983	{"/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Leaving the sunken island of the One Tree, the Giant ship Starfare's Gem sets course to return to the Land. In a dangerous region of the ocean known as the Soulbiter, the ship is blown off course into the far northern reaches of the Earth and becomes ice-bound. Realizing that the Land's need cannot wait for the spring melt, Thomas Covenant leaves the ship and strikes out south over the ice-scape, accompanied by Linden, Vain, Findail the Elohim, Cail of the Haruchai, and four Giants. The party encounters many dangers on its journey but reconnoiters with Sunder and Hollian, the man and woman of the Land who Covenant left behind in order to attempt to gather resistance to the Clave, the corrupt rulers of the Land. They have little comfort to offer: the Clave has become so blood-hungry that entire villages have been completely emptied in order to sustain the Banefire, making the corruption of nature by the Sunbane worse than ever. Only the stalwart Haruchai, freed from the Clave's magical coercion, have rallied to the side of freedom. Covenant and his companions nevertheless march on Revelstone, the mountain fortress of the Clave. Once there, Covenant stuns the others by summoning a Sandgorgon, the beast responsible for the deaths of two of his Haruchai companions in the previous book. The Sandgorgon, grateful to Covenant for having previously spared its life, breaches the outer defenses of the great Keep. After a tremendous struggle, Covenant and the Sandgorgon are able to destroy the Raver who leads the Clave, although at the price of the life of Grimmand Honninscrave, the valiant Giant captain of Starfare's Gem. Mourning the loss of his friend and the deaths of many of the innocent denizens of Revelstone, Covenant is able to come to terms with his power-madness, through a process in which he mimics the Giantish caamora, a ritual of purification by fire. Using the Banefire and the wild magic of his white gold ring, he is able to negate the effect of the strange venom with which he has been infected. The process hurts Covenant but does not do him permanent injury. With the aid of the Sandgorgon, Linden and Covenant are able to extinguish the Banefire. The defeat of the Clave causes the corruption of the Sunbane to diminish but not to disappear. Sending Cail and the Giant Mistweave to reconnoiter with Starfare's Gem at the eastern coast of the Land, and charging the remaining Haruchai to resume their Bloodguard forebears' role as the warders of Revelstone, Covenant and the rest of his party set out to challenge Lord Foul directly, in his lair in the depths of Mount Thunder. En route, Hollian and her unborn child die resisting an attack of a band of Sunbane-warped ur-viles. Sunder is left numb and wordless with grief: in Andelain the Forestal Caer-Caveral sacrifices his immortal life to re-unite Sunder with Hollian and the yet-to-be-born child and give them a second chance at life. In so doing, he breaks the Law of Life, which prevents the dead from intervening directly in the world of the living. Bereft of the Forestal's protection, Andelain begins to succumb to the Sunbane. Covenant leaves the young family in Andelain and continues his journey, accompanied by Linden, two Giants, Vain, and Findail. At Mount Thunder, Covenant gives the white gold ring willingly to the Despiser, an action which was foretold by Lord Foul upon Covenant's initial return to the Land; Linden Avery refrains from preventing him from this action, despite her ability to do so. The Despiser then kills Covenant, and attempts to destroy the Arch of Time with the wild magic. However, Covenant's spirit blocks his assault: in a manner similar to the cleansing experience with the Banefire, the power of wild magic causes Covenant pain but does not harm him, and in fact makes him more powerful with each attack. (Covenant later explains, "Foul did the one thing I couldn't: he burned the venom away.") Covenant's ability to interfere in this manner is revealed as a consequence of the breaking of the Law of Life and a fulfillment of Lord Mhoram's prophecy ("You are the white gold"). Unable to comprehend this, Lord Foul continues to attack Covenant's spirit until he vanishes, drained of all his power. Linden Avery then takes the white gold ring, and uses it to bond Vain with Findail. Linden thus creates a new Staff of Law, combining the rigidness and structure of the ur-viles' lore with the pure and free Earthpower of the Elohim. Then, combining the new Staff with the power of the wild magic, she heals the Land of the Sunbane. Giving the Staff to the Giants to take to Sunder and Hollian, Linden fades away. In the limbo between the worlds, Covenant speaks to her and explains how he defeated Foul and re-assures her that their love will transcend both time and death. Linden wakes up in the "real" world, finding Covenant dead, as expected, but takes comfort in the knowledge that through his love, she has redeemed both herself and the Land. At the very end of the book, Linden takes Covenant's white gold wedding ring.
7567287	/m/0265jx7	Water	Bapsi Sidhwa	2006	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Water is set in 1938, when India was still under the colonial rule of the British, and when the marriage of children to older men was commonplace. Following Hindu tradition, when a man died, his widow would be forced to spend the rest of her life in a widow's ashram, an institution for widows to make amends for the sins from her previous life that supposedly caused her husband's death. Chuyia (Sarala) is an eight year old girl who has just lost her husband. She is deposited in the ashram for Hindu widows to spend the rest of her life in renunciation. She befriends Kalyani who is forced into prostitution to support the ashram, Shakuntala, one of the widows, and Narayan, a young and charming upper-class follower of Mahatma Gandhi and of Gandhism. For a full length summary see: plot summary.
7573843	/m/0265pp3	iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon - How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It	Steve Wozniak	2006-09	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Wozniak starts his autobiography with a description of his parents, some of their history, and describes how his father had a top secret job involving electronics. Both of his parents were Republicans. He goes on to describe how his father took the time to describe to him, in detail, how electronic components work. He cites this as a major reason for his later success. Wozniak goes on to describe his childhood, in the 1950s Silicon Valley, which was then very agricultural, abounding with fruit orchards. He describes some pranks that he and his friends pulled off and described some gadgets he was able to design because of his knowledge of electronics he gained from his father. Wozniak then recalls and describes some science fair entries he built and entered. He describes how the devices worked, and why they were notable at the time. He also relays that he won every science fair he entered, except one. Wozniak explains how in high school, he picked up the unusual personal hobby of redesigning electronic components. Whenever he found schematic diagrams for new devices coming to market, he would redesign them to use the fewest components possible. Though this took up a great deal of his time, he kept this hobby a secret, even from his parents. He explains that by doing this, he became a system engineering expert. During this time, since about the fifth grade, Wozniak describes his great shyness and how it adversely affected his personal life. Later in high school, he came across the opportunity to work for Sinclair and how he loved the exposure it gave him to computers and the computer programming language FORTRAN. Wozniak discusses how he decided to enroll at the University of Colorado at Boulder, through a trip he and some friends took to Boulder, Colorado area one winter before finishing high school. During this time Wozniak was an active member of the Young Republicans club at college. Because of the high tuition, and an inadvertent expense he had incurred for the university's computer department, he was unable to attend for a second year and instead enrolled in the local junior college, De Anza College. Wozniak describes his lack of religious convictions (his parents never attended any church while he grew up), but that through the friendship of a college dorm roommate, a born again Christian, he decided that, although he didn't necessarily believe in the religious figure of Jesus, he felt an affinity for his philosophy of peace and love for one's fellow man. After some research, Wozniak decided he opposed the Vietnam War, not seeing how it helped the United States' security. His viewpoint drove a wedge between him and his father, who supported the war, though Wozniak felt his father supported it "blindly"—not really knowing why he supported it, just that he supported it because he was a conservative. About this time, Wozniak states that his father began to drink heavily, which also impacted negatively on their relationship. Wozniak tried to unify himself with the hippie culture of the 1960s, because he generally agreed with their peace-based philosophy, but never dressed like them (though he did grow his hair long and sported a beard). But he says he was ultimately rejected by them because he refused to use recreational drugs. Wozniak goes onto describe how he met Steve Jobs when Jobs was still a high school student (Wozniak was four years his senior and had graduated years earlier). He describes how they both "hit it off" right away. They enjoyed the same music, had the same interests and both had a working knowledge of electronics. It would turn out, they would both also have an affinity for pulling pranks. Wozniak describes his development of his infamous blue box (a device that allowed the user to make free long distance phone calls), his involvement in the early phreaking community and some trouble it got him into. He also describes his development of the first "Dial-A-Joke" number in the San Francisco Bay Area and how, through it, he met his first wife, Alice. Wozniak describes with a great deal of affinity, his job as an engineer at Hewlett Packard (HP). He describes HP as a company he wanted to work for the rest of his life because it was, in his words, perfect for engineers. Wozniak describes his encounter with the first successful video arcade game, Pong, at a bowling alley with Alice (then his fiancee). He describes just staring at it, amazed that computers could be used in such a way. He went home and recreated the game on his own, using a standard television for the display (which in itself, took some doing). He even added some features not found on the commercial game, such as displaying the score onscreen and displaying four-letter exclamations when missing a ball. Once while visiting Jobs, he showed it to one of the top executives of Atari, Inc., Al Alcorn, who was so impressed that he offered Wozniak a job right on the spot. Wozniak declined, however, explaining that he could never leave HP. While still with HP, Wozniak describes his moonlighting development, with Jobs, of the prototype of the arcade game Breakout for Atari, Inc in only four days. He also describes, without bitterness, how Jobs shortchanged him on the job. Jobs, who worked for Atari Inc., said he would give Wozniak half of "whatever they paid him" for development of the game. Jobs subsequently gave Wozniak $375, saying Atari Inc. paid him $750 for the game. Later Wozniak found out that Atari Inc. actually paid Jobs five thousand dollars for the game. Wozniak describes his impetus for joining the Freemasons. He says he joined, actually, to be able to spend more time with his wife, Alice. Alice belonged to a group, Eastern Star, that did a lot of joint projects with the Masons. He says that although he took the necessary oaths and is a lifetime Freemason, he doesn't actually put a whole lot of stock in the mystical and religious overtones of the oath or the order. He says that he joined the Freemasons for one specific purpose, but he is very unlike the other members of the order. He says he quickly rose to a third degree Freemason because, whatever he does, he tries to do well. Wozniak describes how he got involved with the Homebrew Computer Club when it was still very small and met in a garage. From his involvement with the club, he was inspired to develop a computer, which would ultimately become the first Apple computer, the Apple I. He showed it off at some club meetings, after the main meeting because he was too shy to give a demonstration before an audience. He gave out his schematics to the club members for free, so they could build their own. None did, however, as they lacked the time or resources. Wozniak also showed the computer to Jobs. During this time, Wozniak was still working as an engineer for HP. All his development time was done after work and on weekends. Jobs successfully secured an order for 100 Apple Is at USD$500 a piece, something Wozniak said he could have never done himself. About this time, Jobs suggested that he and Wozniak start a company. Wozniak was never interested in being an entrepreneur, feeling that such would detract from his role as an engineer. However, Jobs convinced him it would be something they could look back on and be proud of, even if it failed. Shortly after this, and toying with several names, he and Jobs settled on "Apple," after Jobs visit to a commune with a similar name. After their first order, he and Jobs set about assembling the computers, with some paid help of friends and family. They delivered the assembled computers—really just printed circuit boards with components soldered on—as they were completed to the computer store that had commissioned them. The owner of the shop paid them in installments as they were delivered. Suddenly, he and Jobs had a huge cash reserve and nothing to spend it on (they didn't pay themselves a salary). At this time, Jobs still had his job at Atari and Wozniak still worked for HP. Right after designing the Apple I, Wozniak set about designing the Apple II. He says that all the ideas for improving the computer came to him while he was designing the Apple I, but he didn't implement them because he wanted to finish the Apple I in a timely manner. The Apple II featured several improvements over the Apple I, including real color graphics and six expansion slots (an idea he and Jobs disagreed over). It also had a real case, something the Apple I lacked. About this time, Jobs and Wozniak searched for someone to head their company, and finally found Mike Markkula. Markkula was convinced Apple would be a Fortune 500 company within five years. Wozniak, however, was unconvinced. Markkula said that Wozniak would have to leave his job at HP. Wozniak was reluctant to do so, since he wanted to be an engineer and not a manager. He finally agreed to do so after an old friend told him he could join Apple and still be an engineer. Shortly after the release of the Apple II, Wozniak says that he was almost an overnight millionaire. He went from being just an employee of HP to being worth millions of dollars. The Apple II had a working cassette tape interface, for secondary storage. Markkula was frustrated with the slow operation of the cassette tapes, and their instability. He asked Wozniak to develop another method of secondary storage. Wozniak settled on the floppy disk, a new idea at the time. Wozniak developed the entire floppy disk system in two weeks time, with the help of another engineer. Wozniak spends a great deal of time pointing out how advanced the Apple II was to other home computers available at the time, including its graphics, sound and programming ease. Wozniak discusses his courtship with Candi Clark and a plane crash that happened shortly before their marriage. He crashed a private plane while taking off from a Scotts Valley airport. He was unable to recall any of the events of the crash and for many weeks after being released from the hospital, didn't realize he had been in a crash at all. He says he wandered around in a haze and didn't report to work, thinking every day was a weekend day (the same day, in fact). He didn't remember one day to the next and needed to be told how to get to places familiar to him. He finally figured out what happened through logic, after which his memory began operating correctly again. About this time, Wozniak decided to return to college to finish his degree. He also points out that he did not drop out of college, he simply couldn't afford the last semester at the time. He enrolled in University of California, Berkeley under an assumed name, since by now his name was a household word. He lived in a rented apartment near the university while his second wife, Candi, stayed at their home in the Santa Cruz mountains, where he visited her on weekends. At this time, Wozniak discusses his launch of the US Festival, envisioning it as a modern day Woodstock Festival, but featuring progressive country music, a genre Wozniak had just developed an affinity for from listening to Gilroy's KFAT radio station. Ultimately, it turned into a rock format, because another backer feared a country-themed festival wouldn't attract enough customers. Ultimately Wozniak lost money on the venture, but stated he didn't care since it made the attendees—and him—happy. The first festival opened the day after his first child, Jesse, was born. Despite losing money, it didn't stop Wozniak from backing another US Festival the following year. Though mostly another rock festival, the second festival also featured a "country" day. Wozniak also lost money on the second festival—despite enhanced security. But he states once again that it was worth it. Wozniak describes that he had a myriad of electronic entertainment devices in his Santa Cruz home (more than most people had at the time). Each was controlled by a different remote control. He hated having to use each one whenever he wanted to watch television, for example, the sound output of which was routed through his stereo. After a while, he decided to start a new company to develop what is now known as a universal remote. As he left on good terms with Apple, a Wall Street Journal journalist interviewed him about his departure. Wozniak was careful to tell him he had no qualms with Apple, but that he just wanted to develop the new remote. Unfortunately, the article stated just the opposite, which resulted in hard feelings on the part of Jobs. Wozniak started the new company, called CL 9, with two other friends, in Los Gatos. He intended financing the entire venture by himself, but later external investors also contributed money to the company (much to his chagrin). Wozniak and friends made great headway on the product, which Wozniak states was revolutionary at the time. About this time, Wozniak's second marriage, to Candi, was breaking up. In fact, their third child was born after their divorce was finalized. He states that Candi still lives on their Santa Cruz estate. Wozniak eventually sold CL 9, which he states subsequently went out of business. All the while, he states he is still an Apple employee, but states that he makes as little as a full time employee of Apple can make. He says that he represents Apple at conventions and other groups. Wozniak discusses how he always had a yearning to teach, since about the fifth grade (about 10 to 11 years old in the United States). For 10 years, starting when his son, Jesse, was in the fifth grade, Wozniak donated computers and taught a computer class at his son's school. He states those were the happiest ten years of his life. Wozniak discusses his main reasons for finally writing his autobiography was to dispel several myths that surround his history, and that of Apple Computer. Including: * He developed the Apple II almost independently, not with a lot of help from Jobs * He didn't leave Apple; he is still, in fact, officially employed by Apple * He didn't have a "falling out" with Jobs (except right after the development of CL 9) and was still friends with him. Wozniak ends his book with advice to others, particularly the youth, on how to develop their own inventions and encourages them to ignore the mainstream and follow their own passions and ideas.
7575811	/m/0265r3m	Earth Hive	Steve Perry	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book begins with a routine space junk cleanup mission in Earth orbit, with a small derelict spaceship being prepped for de-orbit and burnup. The crew doing the cleanup investigate the ship, and, much to their horror, an alien xenomorph stowaway on the derelict manages to board the cleanup crew's ship, and kill them. The ship is destroyed when one of the crewmembers panics and collides the cleanup ship with the derelict. However, everything was captured by the cleanup ship's black box. A CIA-like organization, called the TIA, realizes the threat posed by the alien species, and is able to use the information in the black box to retrace the route of the derelict ship. A decision is made to send a Colonial Marine expedition to the origin planet of the derelict ship, presumably the home planet of the alien species. Wilks, a battle-hardened space marine, is picked for the job. He previously encountered the aliens on the colony world of Rim, where he managed to escape alive with only one survivor, a little girl named Billie. Wilks agrees to the mission, but first makes plans to break Billie out of a mental hospital, where she has been suffering from nightmares ever since her rescue from the aliens on Rim. On board the Colonial Marine ship is a marine named Mitch, with whom Billie begins a romantic relationship en route to the alien planet. Meanwhile, greedy executives from the Weyland-Yutani corporation, learn of the Colonial Marine expedition to the alien homeworld, and make plans to intercept and destroy it. They hire a black-ops mercenary named Massey and his team of illegal combat synthetics, whose programming has been altered to permit the harming of human beings, in violation of the First law of robotics. It turns out that Weyland-Yutani already has a specimen of an alien on Earth, and wishes to keep its monopoly on the species, and prevent anyone else from obtaining a specimen. A third group enters the fray, a religious cult that worships the alien xenomorph, and whose members believe that implantation by a facehugger alien is something akin to joining with god. After the marine expedition leaves for the alien planet, followed by the mercenary ship, the alien god cult manages to locate the Weyland-Yutani lab holding the alien samples, breaks into the lab using suicidal attacks, and manages to get several members implanted by alien facehuggers. After arriving at the alien planet, the colonial marine ship is ambushed by Massey and the combat synthetics, assisted by the leader of the colonial marine force, who turns traitor for money. After seizing control of the marine's vessel, Massey kills the traitorous marine, leaving Wilks and the rest of the marines captive. The mercenary reveals his plan is to send the marines down to the planet, as 'bait' for the aliens, and then use the combat synthetics to collect the implanted marines. All of the marines except for Wilkes are sent down to the planet, unarmed, with the mercenary combat synthetics keeping a close watch. On the planet below, the first team of Colonial Marines, including Mitch, is forced to enter an alien hive. Before the aliens can come out and attack, the mercenary synthetics who are keeping guard are attacked by another hostile alien species (not the xenomorphs). The Colonial Marines take advantage of this situation, and kill the mercenary synthetics and take their weapons. During the surprise attack on the colonial marine vessel, Billie managed to hide and avoid detection in the initial sweep of the ship, and her name is not listed on the crew roster. She manages to kill one of the mercenary synthetics, get a weapon, and make her way to the bridge where Wilks and Massey are located. Billie and Wilks fight Massey, and manage to kill him. However, another group of marines is not so lucky, and is captured by a nearby alien hive. The surviving marines, led by Mitch, have no choice but to attempt a rescue. The rescue attempt comes at a great cost, only a few marines manage to make it out alive. Wilks and Billie fly down in a dropship to pick up the surviving marines, when Mitch is apparently killed by an alien - only to be revealed to be a synthetic as well. The Colonial Marine force included a team of synthetics so accurate, they could completely pass for human. Billie had no idea Mitch was synthetic, and is devastated. Mitch and the rest of the marines make it into the dropship, just as a horde of aliens start to swarm over the ship and try to break in. The ship cannot take off, and Wilkes is about to undertake a suicide mission to try to go outside to clear the aliens off, when suddenly all of the aliens are killed. A new alien appears, looking something like a giant elephant. The characters in the book do not realize it, but this is the same species of creature whose crashed ship the crew of the Nostromo encountered on LV-426 in the original Alien movie - the so-called "Space Jockey." The elephant-alien does not appear hostile or particularly interested in the humans, as it returns to its spaceship without making contact with Wilkes. The remaining crew of the Colonial Marine expedition - Wilks, Billie, Mitch, a marine named Blake, and a naval crewman named Parks, return to their ship and head for Earth. On Earth, the alien cult has successfully broken into the biowarfare lab containing the alien specimen, and has released wild aliens onto the planet. The aliens are slowly taking over, despite the best efforts of Earth defense forces. Over a period of several months, the aliens so completely dominate the planet, that most humans have been killed, and the rest have evacuted to earth orbit or other planets. As Wilks, Billie, Mitch, Blake, and Parks return to Earth, the last organized survivors of Earth are preparing to leave. Upon landing, a group of military survivors approach them, demanding that they hand over their ship. The encounter turns violent: Blake is killed and Parks panics and abandons the group. Wilks, Billie, and Mitch manage to stow away on a container ship headed for an unknown destination. They escape from Earth, with no idea of their final destination. This cliffhanger ending leads into the next book in the trilogy, Nightmare Asylum.
7579048	/m/0265tf9	Mad White Giant		1985	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Mad White Giant begins with Allen recounting the role of the Amazonian region in his childhood fantasies.), Allen decides to shoot and eat Cashew to survive.
7579564	/m/0265tzz	None But Lucifer	H. L. Gold		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book is a dark fantasy, a version of the Faust legend set in New York City during the Great Depression. A man named Hale makes a deal with the devil and then attempts to cheat his fate of eternal damnation. Ironically, his very success in defeating Lucifer ensures his own undoing.
7579786	/m/0265v7k	Zündels Abgang	Markus Werner	1984	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 From diary-style notes and personal memories and conversations, the fictive narrator Reverend Busch reconstructs and documents the stepwise fall of his missing friend, the teacher Konrad Zündel. During many summer weeks, the life of the depressive, intellectual, quixotic protagonist is destroyed step by step. In the reader’s eyes, Zündel simply suffers one mishap after another, but for the unstable teacher - that says, he never was happy in his life - these mishaps lead into mania and into the planning and execution of his departure. Konrad Zündel and his wife Magda, whose relationship after five years breaks down because of everyday things, decide to spend their holidays separately. While Magda spends some days with her friend Helen, Konrad decides to visit Greece. But in Italy, he suddenly loses an incisor and travels back to Switzerland per train. While travelling, his wallet gets stolen and he, into the bargain, finds a severed finger on the train closet. This severed finger’s origins and meaning never are explained. In his Swiss flat, the caretaker denotes, Magda did something with another man. Later, this statement turns out to be a lie – but the thought of losing his wife throws Zündel out of his way. He travels to Genua, where he once was sired by a Swiss sick-nurse and an irresponsible globetrotter. In Genua, he is drunken nearly all the time and tries to write down his philosophical – often cynic – gnosis. It is about – like the whole novel – the relation between Konrad and Magda, between man and woman, between womanhood and manhood. The guilty for his departure, due to Magda, who represent the totality of all women, who destroy men with their will to self-actualization. Zündel has two important meetings in Genua: In a bar, he meets Serafin (not only his name reminds angels) a Spanish sailor with an Austrian dialect. The two men are constating a relation between their souls – and leave each other. Not less surreal is the meeting with the French woman Nounou; Zündel spends a night with her, again discovering relation of souls. He leaves her in dawn, before the situation would necessitate hundred knives to separate us. After these two meetings, Zündel wants to fulfil the main goal of his voyage: Getting an illegal handgun. This plan shipwrecks, too. Because of his naivety and gentleman's style, Zündel is frauded. Afterwards, he travels home. Extremely confused, undernutrited and now heavily addicted to alcohol, he enters the flat, where the distressed Magda has expected his return for days. A normal conversation, that would clear these misunderstandings (e.g. the not existing lover), isn't possible, because Zündel now is mentally ill. The next morning, the teacher Zündel only gives another two lessons, which turn out to be very strange. Then he breaks down in school, is brought to the hospital and then to mental clinic. The psychiatrists fail in making a diagnosis. Zündel escapes from the clinic to his weekend house in the mountains, where he hides armed and dangerous. The narrator, Busch, is the last person who is able to get close to him, before he departs finally.
7580125	/m/0265vqb	John Henry Days	Colson Whitehead	2001-05-15	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Building the railways that made America, John Henry died with a hammer in his hand moments after competing against a steam drill in a battle of endurance. The story of his death made him a legend. Over a century later, J. Sutter, a freelance journalist and accomplished expense account abuser, is sent to West Virginia to cover the launch of a new postage stamp at the first 'John Henry Days' festival.
7585676	/m/0265_n8	Zombie	Joyce Carol Oates	1995-10	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/089m7": "Zombie", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist, Quentin P, seeks to create a "zombie" out of an unsuspecting young man. He intends to find a perfect young male companion and re-wire his brain, thereby turning the victim into a mindless sex slave. His several attempts at creating a zombie all end in failure, however, as the men he abducts, rapes and tortures all die at his hands. By the end of the novel, he has begun to enjoy killing for its own sake, and experiments with cannibalism and necrophilia. Adding to his frustrations is his increasingly suspicious family, particularly his father.
7589425	/m/026632j	Déjà Dead	Kathy Reichs	1997-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 When the meticulously dismembered body of a woman is found discovered in the ground of an abandoned monastery which is too "decomposed for standard autopsy", an anthropologist is requested. Dr. Temperance Brennan, Director of Forensic Anthropology for the province of Quebec, who has been researching recent disappearances in the city, is given the case. Despite the deep cynicism of Detective Claudel who heads the investigation, Brennan is convinced that a serial killer is at work. Her forensic expertise finally convinces Claudel, but only after the body count has risen. Tempe initiates an investigation, but her determined probing places those closest to her in danger.
7589435	/m/026632w	Death du Jour	Kathy Reichs	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On a bitterly cold March night in Montreal, Temperance is exhuming the remains of a nun proposed for sainthood in the grounds of a church. Hours later she's called to the scene of an horrific arson, where a young family has perished. There seem to be no witnesses, motive and no explanation. From the charred remains of the inferno to a trail of sinister cult activity and a terrifying showdown during an ice storm. Tempe faces a test of both her forensic expertise and her survival instinct.
7591063	/m/0kvc03	Arrow to the Sun	Gerald McDermott		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Boy (he is never given a personal name) is the son of the Lord of the Sun, who sends the spark of life into a maiden of the Pueblo. He is ridiculed by the other boys because he has no father. The Boy asks various adults of the Pueblo for help in finding his father. When he asks the wise Arrow Maker, the man transforms the Boy into an arrow and launches him to the Sun. Arriving in the Sun, his identity as the Lord's son is tested by passing through four ritual huts: the Kiva of Lions, the Kiva of Serpents, the Kiva of Bees, and the Kiva of Lightning. After the Boy endures these trials, the Lord acknowledges him as his son. The Boy is then sent back to Earth by his father, to bring the Sun's spirit into the world of men.
7592012	/m/02664yp	Treasure of Khan	Clive Cussler		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A relatively small oil company headed by the antagonist, Borjin, a Mongolian who is bent on taking control of the world oil market, and also determined to re-unite the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia with Mongolia, has stolen a machine which can create an earthquake. He has also found significant oil deposits buried at unusual depths in Inner Mongolia. He uses the machine to destroy major oil production facilities through the world, crippling China's and the rest of the world's oil supply in a matter of weeks. He then uses this shortage to make an offer to supply China all the oil it needs. He demands that Inner Mongolia be ceded to Mongolia, and China pay market price for the oil he will supply them, which he guarantees will meet the colossal demands of the Chinese economy. China accepts this deal, not knowing of the hidden oil deposits they are handing to him. Dirk Pitt intervenes to end the situation, and discovers that the grave of Genghis Khan has been located by Borjin. A subplot centers on Kublai Khan's second invasion of Japan by Mongolia, and in its failure, inadvertently discovering what we now know as Hawaii. In the present, Dirk Pitt discovers Kublai Khan's tomb is in a lava tube in Hawaii along with a great treasure. He does this after finding an ancient scroll which had been buried for centuries, was excavated during the early days of the War of Resistance. The pertinent clues were then quickly lost, and found again by Pitt. fr:Le Trésor du Khan (roman) it:Il tesoro di Gengis Khan
7594155	/m/02666c3	Thumbsucker	Walter Kirn	1999-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kirn's novel tells the story of Justin Cobb, a Minnesota teenager whose family experiences a broad spectrum of dysfunction. Father Mike is a washed-up college football star with a militaristic and unemotional attitude inspired by his former coach. Mother Audrey, a nurse, is struggling to accept how her life has wound down. Younger brother Joel simply does everything he can to fit in and seem normal. Amidst pressures to stop sucking his thumb, 14 year old Justin turns to unorthodox dentist Perry Lyman who attempts to use hypnosis to remedy the problem with limited success: The thumb sucking disappears, but other problem habits arise to take its place. Justin starts behaving oddly, and his condition is 'identified' as attention deficit disorder by his school and he is consequently prescribed Ritalin. The drug appears to help the problem for a time, but this is merely a stop-gap whilst Justin's (and indeed his family's) real problems remain at large. When Justin gives up Ritalin he turns to drugs (pot), sex and religion to combat his problems. Eventually deciding that he's had enough of this life, Justin returns to Perry Lyman who reminds him that we all have flaws, the goal is not to fix them, but to live with them. With this message in mind, Justin is sent off to be a Mormon missionary in New York, and winds up sucking his thumb again, at the expense of the drugs and sex. Coming of age tale touching on the raw emotions experienced during this time and the wider concepts of identity and existentialism. ru:Дурная привычка (фильм)
7596049	/m/02667tm	Thirst for Love	Yukio Mishima		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel centers on the experience of Etsuko, a woman who has moved into the house of her in-laws following the death of her husband Ryosuke from typhoid. There she falls into a physical relationship with her father-in-law (Yakichi) which both repulses and numbs her. She comes to develop romantic feelings for the young gardener Saburo, who is oblivious of her interest, and turns out to be having an affair with the maid Miyo. The story develops over a period of just over a month, from September 22, when the book opens with her buying a pair of socks as a gift for Saburo, to October 28, 1949, when the story reaches its violent climax. The narrative progresses through a series of flashbacks, and intense, stream of consciousness reflections, focusing on Etsuko's obsession, which she attempts to hide in the beginning, but which reveals itself as it gradually spins out of control. At times lyrical, the novel is starkly drawn, with dark brooding scenes interspersed with bright sunbursts. The text is particularly notable for its sharp and radical observations, as in: "Etsuko was a beautiful eczema. At Yakichi's age, he couldn't itch without eczema." (p.&nbsp;134). The writing is interlaced with asides reflecting a dark brooding focus, as in the child taking pleasure after drowning a colony of ants in boiling water, or in mutilated rose petals lying face down in rainwater. These dark moments, as in much of Mishima's writings, tend to bring the reader to a foreboding of impending tragedy.
7601834	/m/0266g4b	Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn				 The series begins in U.C. 0001, at the very beginning of human space colonization, when a space colony called Laplace is destroyed during a ceremony hosted by the Federation's Prime Minister ushering in the Universal Century dating system. The main story takes place in UC 0096, three years after the events of Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack and 27 years before Mobile Suit Gundam F91. The story revolves around Banagher Links, a seemingly normal boy living and going to school in the space colonies. His life changes one day when he meets a girl named Audrey Burne, as the encounter brings him into contact with a new Gundam and its connections to an item called "Laplace's Box."
7603691	/m/0266hzs	Expecting Someone Taller	Tom Holt	1987	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The story involves Malcolm Fisher, a hapless auction clerk in modern-day England, who runs over a badger one night. The badger turns out to be the giant Ingolf, brother of Fafnir, and Fisher becomes the new owner of the Ring of the Nibelung and the Tarnhelm, and, thereby, ruler of the world. He also drinks some of the Ingolf's blood, which gives him the ability to understand the language of the birds. He finds that if he allows himself any negative emotions such as anger or frustration, he will cause various catastrophes worldwide. Thus Malcolm tries to be as positive as possible in his day-to-day life. He uses the ring to gain enough gold to buy a mansion and tries to live a quiet life. However, Wotan, king of the gods, still wants the ring, as do others, and Fisher finds himself pursued by numerous characters from Wagner's opera: Wotan and Loge (also known as Odin and Loki in Norse mythology), the Rhinemaidens (who want their gold back), and Alberich (who stole the gold, made the ring and still wants it). He also becomes romantically entangled, first with the Rhinemaiden Flosshilde, and later with one of the Valkyries, Ortlinde. Malcolm is unaware of the Valkyrie's true identity and does intend to give the ring to her, but a bird reveals to him who she truly is. It is then revealed that his housekeeper is actually Erde (Mother Earth), mother of the Valkyries. Despite this, he continues to believe himself in love with Ortlinde. Malcolm still intends to give her the ring, but she leaves. Wotan then resorts to sending an army. Malcolm faces the army and destroys it as well as all the high gods, by force of will and the power of The Ring. Malcolm fears that he has also destroyed Flosshilde whom he now knows he loves, but it turns out she was just visiting her cousins. When she returns he gives her the ring, believing she will do a better job—and because he thinks that the ring is now merely a token of his love and not the all important Ruling Ring. He keeps the tarnhelm which gives him immortality.
7604643	/m/02pcl0w	Dorsai!	Gordon R. Dickson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The book is about Donal Graeme, warrior extraordinaire. In the Childe Cycle universe, the human race has split into a number of splinter cultures. Donal is a member of the Dorsai, a splinter culture based on the planet of the same name, which has specialized in producing the very best soldiers. Since each splinter culture specializes in a specific area of expertise, a system of trade labour contracts between the cultures allows each planet to hire the expertise they need. The Dorsai, inhabiting a resource-poor world, hire themselves out as mercenaries to other planetary governments. Donal has great ambitions, and the book follows his rise in an episodic nature. The book begins as a straightforward tale of his career and then becomes something else, as it becomes clear there is something different about Donal Graeme himself.
7604954	/m/0266k6c	Harold and the Purple Crayon	Crockett Johnson	1955	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The protagonist, Harold, is a curious four-year-old boy who, with his purple crayon, has the power to create a world of his own simply by drawing it. Harold wants to go for a walk in the moonlight, but there is no moon, so he draws one. He has nowhere to walk, so he draws a path. He has many adventures looking for his room, and in the end he draws his own house and bed goes to sleep.
7605271	/m/0266kj0	A House Like a Lotus	Madeleine L'Engle	1984-11-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Polly begins narrating the novel just as she arrives in Greece. She expects to be picked up by her Aunt and Uncle but they were detained and will not arrive in Greece for a few days. Polly goes to her hotel and feels rather depressed about the current state of affairs. But her mood improves when she meets Zachary Gray at the hotel restaurant. He is quite interested in her and is attracted to her innocence. He offers to take her around Greece and show her the sights. Polly is reluctant but agrees. Zachary is an interesting tour guide and Polly enjoys his companionship. But when Zachary begins to show interest in a romantic and physical relationship, she resists. When Polly's aunt and uncle show up, Zachary is unable to keep up his relationship with Polly but insists that they will see each other again. During this time, Polly has been flashing back to the past and how she managed to get a trip to Greece. About six months earlier, Polly was introduced to Max, a friend of her uncle. Although Max is an adult and Polly is still a teenager, the two begin a friendship and Max encourages Polly to develop her identity. Polly's friend Renny also encourages her and Polly blossoms. When Max admits that she and her "friend" Ursula have been lovers for thirty years, Polly is surprised but decides this does not change who Max is and remains friends. Max also admits she is dying, which devastates Polly. But after one night of heavy drinking, Max makes what seems to be a sexual advance toward Polly. Polly is horrified. Ursula tries to assure Polly that Max loves her (Polly) as a daughter, not in any romantic sense but Polly is still terrified and runs away. She stays with Renny. While still vulnerable and scared, Polly and Renny sleep together. Polly returns to her family and does not tell them about Max or Renny. While she severs all contact with Max, she still accepts the trip to Greece. In the present, Polly goes to a literary conference, held on Cyprus, where she is to volunteer. Surrounded by new friends and interesting work, Polly begins to heal. But Zachary suddenly appears and asks Polly to go out with him. She reluctantly agrees. The two go sailing on the ocean but an accident occurs and the two nearly drown. They are saved by Polly's friends from the conference. This event makes Polly realize that she needs to talk to Max, before it's too late. She phones America and tells Max that she forgives her. The line goes dead after a few minutes but Polly is satisfied because she and Max are friends once more.
7608013	/m/0266mgd	Nightjohn	Gary Paulsen	1993	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is set on a plantation in the Southern United States in the 1850s. The narrator and protagonist of the story is a young African-American slave named Sarny, who is taught to read and write by another slave, Nightjohn, also known as John. John escaped to the free north but returned to the south in order to teach slaves to read and write. It was followed by a sequel
7608156	/m/0266mkv	Treasure Box	Orson Scott Card	1996	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot details a middle-aged man, Quentin Fears (pronounced "fierce"), who marries a woman who turns out to be a succubus. The story unfolds as Quentin tries to stop her and the witch who controls her from unleashing a great evil upon the world.
7608219	/m/0266mn7	Castaway				 In her book, Irvine starts with the somewhat odd circumstances of this collaboration, in which she addresses Kingsland’s ad for a “wife to live on a lonely island for a year”. In that year (1982), Irvine was 25, and Kingsland 49. After being formally married — Tuin Island is part of Queensland, and the authorities would have never let them go without marrying first — and Irvine has an IUD implanted to prevent pregnancy, Irvine and Kingsland try to adapt, making the best out of a beautiful but hostile environment with treacherous flora and fauna. Slowly but surely, an intense love-hate relationship develops between the two, as Irvine is much more strict and disciplined than the laid-back Kingsland. Kingsland also makes clear he desires the blonde, slender Irvine, but much to his chagrin, she refuses his advances. However, as both are mutually dependent on each other, and both are also constantly hungry, the tension remains in check. Matters grow worse when Kingsland’s legs become infested with ulcers – it turns out he is allergic to the shark they are regularly eating – and the two are visited by two male naval postal officers who drop supplies. When Irvine flirts with them, and acknowledges being sexually attracted by them, Kingsland is eaten up with jealousy. However, when she eats poisoned beans, he also saves her life, which earns her respect. But things grow from bad to worse when a bad drought comes over Tuin. Having no means of communication – the antenna of their CB radio set is missing — the two nearly starve to death. Irvine has serious abdominal problems and fears she is pregnant, which would be her doom in her weakened state. Then, salvation comes in the form of natives from the neighbouring island of Badu Island, Queensland, who find the castaways and nurture them back, helped by occasionally passing white nurses. Irvine and Kingsland regain their strength and health; Irvine’s abdominal problems are due to inflammation caused by the IUD, not pregnancy. She has it extracted, and after recovering, the two are treated as honoured guests. They are invited to several tribal ceremonies and get a deep insight in their culture. Kingsland establishes himself as a fine addition because he is able to fix many of their technical and electrical devices. He thrives on his new usefulness, and Irvine finds herself courted by young Badu islanders, offers which she politely declines. Feeling proud of Kingsland, Irvine makes a fateful decision. Feeling her libido return and now willing to fulfill Kingsland the one wish she has denied him, she equips herself with condoms and seduces him. They start a fulfilling, but awkward sexual relationship; both enjoy the new quality of their marriage, but Irvine makes clear that she will leave him at the end of the year, as they had planned. She feels that life has more to offer than being the wife of a castaway mechanic, and Kingsland accepts with a heavy heart, stating she is still too young to waste her dreams. They spend their last days together at Tuin Island, and when she flies away to the UK, Irvine feels both sadness and relief. Years later, Irvine stated she liked Kingsland, but hated marrying him. She also states that she would not do it again the same way, but it was an invaluable experience.
7613180	/m/0266rpn	The Echo Maker	Richard Powers	2006	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near-fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, his only near kin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a protracted coma, Mark believes that this woman — who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister — is really an impostor. Shattered by her brother's refusal to recognize her, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, famous for his case histories describing brain disorders. Weber recognized Mark's condition as a rare case of Capgras syndrome — the delusion that people in one's life are doubles or impostors — and eagerly investigates. What he discovers in Mark slowly undermines even his own sense of being. Meanwhile, Mark, armed only with a note left by an anonymous witness, attempts to learn what happened the night of his inexplicable accident.
7613850	/m/0266s9l	Take A Girl Like You	Kingsley Amis	1960	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with Jenny Bunn's arrival at her lodging-house. She's a young, strikingly beautiful, provincial Northern woman who has moved to a London suburb to take her first teaching job. Jenny has rented a room in the home of a middle-aged couple, Dick and Martha Thompson. Dick Thompson is apparently some sort of an auctioneer and his wife Martha Thompson is bored, cynical, and openly suspicious of attractive young Jenny. The Thompsons' other lodger, Anna, is apparently French. Jenny soon meets Patrick Standish, an acquaintance of the Thompsons, who is immediately attracted to her. Patrick takes Jenny on a date to what seems to her to be a fashionable, upmarket Italian restaurant, but which Amis makes clear is a classless suburban pseudo-Italianate place. Impressed, Jenny lets Patrick take her back to the house he shares with Graham, an unattractive Scottish schoolmaster. Heavy petting ensues and Patrick assumes that Jenny will sleep with him, but instead she rebuffs him and explains that she intends to remain a virgin until she is married. The rest of the novel concerns itself with Patrick's attempts to seduce Jenny (and his first efforts at sexual fidelity), and with Jenny's attempts to fend off his attentions and those of many others who are attracted to her. Eventually, Patrick gives Jenny an ultimatum: either she goes to bed with him or the relationship is over. Jenny finds herself unable to comply and they part. However, at a party given by the flashy and dubious Julian Ormerod (occupation unclear), Patrick takes advantage of an inebriated and defenceless Jenny in a guest bedroom. When she realises what has happened, Jenny is furious and tells Patrick she never wants to see him again; later the same day she decides to accept what she believes is her "destiny" and they reunite.
7619669	/m/0266ylh	Slowness	Milan Kundera	1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is a meditation on the effects of modernity upon the individual's perception of the world. It is told through a number of plot lines that slowly weave together until they are all united at the end of the book. * Kundera, as narrator, visits a chateau on vacation and tells a story that seems to be a combination of fiction and fact. * A Chevalier from eighteenth-century France visits the chateau and experiences a night of carefully orchestrated sensual pleasure with its owner, Madame de T. * Vincent, Kundera's friend, visits the hotel and pursues a romance with a girl met in a bar. * Berck, a "dancer", meets a woman who once scorned him at the same conference and shows his emptiness to her. * Immaculata, the woman who scorned Berck, must deal with her disappointment at learning Berck's apparent perfection is actually a facade. Each plot shows a different point-of-view into Kundera's concept of the dancer and provides a perspective on modernity, memory and sensuality. By the end of the book, all of these plots have been brought together in a single location and the characters interact, showing how the ideals they represent interact in the world. Kundera even manages to tie the modern to the past by having Vincent meet the Chevalier as they both depart. By having these characters meet, Kundera again illustrates how the idea of sensuality and pleasure have changed as technology provides humanity with tools that speed us to our destination and demand our attention.
7620768	/m/0266zq8	Here Comes the Sun	Tom Holt	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Mechanical failures begin to trouble the Sun, making it hard for its driver to complete his rounds. The sun is in need of maintenance, and other things are breaking down all over the universe. Fresh ideas are needed. Jane, a mortal and a management trainee, is brought in the sort it all.
7621730	/m/0266_px	Dragons of the Dwarven Depths	Margaret Weis		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the Companions help the slaves escape and kill the Dragon Highlord Verminaard, the Companions lead the refugees into a defendable valley for the winter. Debate begins on what to do next; whereas some would prefer to wait out winter in the valley, others feel the proximity to Pax Tharkas leaves them too vulnerable to attacks from the dragonarmies. With rumours and legends of the dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin present in their minds, the Companions set out in search of some entrance to the fabled kingdom. Raistlin, Caramon, and Sturm head to Skullcap, while Flint and Tanis head towards a secret dwarven pass leading to Thorbardin. Finding an enchanted helm, Sturm unlocks the key to entering the dwarven kingdom, While Tanis and Flint find a path for the refugees to follow to the gates of Thorbardin. The refugees are driven on the path, led by Riverwind, when the dragonarmy attacks their camp. The refugees flee into a mountain pass and, utilizing an old dwarven trap, close the pass so that the dragonarmy cannot follow. The Companions, meanwhile, enter the gates of Thorbardin and are immediately captured by a group of dwarves who are horrified to see the enchanted helm that Sturm uncovered in Skullcap, proclaiming that it is cursed. They arrest the heroes under suspicion of being the vanguard of an invading army, and take them before the dwarven council. All is not as it seems as some of the dwarven council are under the influence of the dragonarmy and are supplying the army with much needed steel for weapons. The heroes are placed under arrest, and Flint is persuaded to help Arman Kharas, the self-proclaimed reincarnation of the dwarven hero Kharas, to retrieve the legendary Hammer of Kharas, with the caveat that his friends be released regardless of what happens to him. Tanis, Sturm, Caramon and Raistlin fake death after the dwarven guards give them poisoned mushrooms for their dinner, and manage to overcome the draconians and dwarves that examine the 'corpses'. Taking the draconian as proof of the dragonarmy at the doorstep of Thorbardin, they manage to show the thane of the Hylar clan of the conspiracy between the Theiwar, Daergar and the dragonarmy before the draconian escapes. Meanwhile, Arman Kharas and Flint, followed by Tasslehoff Burrfoot, enter the sacred valley of thanes to retrieve the Hammer of Kharas from the tomb of Kharas. Flint struggles internally over the fate of the Hammer, as it is needed to forge the legendary dragonlances, but can also unite the dwarven clans under one leader, putting to rest the risk of civil war developing in the kingdom. Retrieving the Hammer, Flint, Arman and Tasslehoff join the dwarven thanes in the Temple of the Stars, only to be attacked by draconian forces, allied with the Theiwar dwarves. The dwarven forces, supported by the disillusioned Daergar clan, overcome the invading draconians and, regaining the Hammer, the icon of their race, graciously provide the human refugees with shelter.
7622932	/m/02670nl	Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen	H. Beam Piper		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Humans on an advanced time-line have discovered "lateral" time dimensions that allow them to travel to "worlds of alternate probability". They use it to exploit natural resources from these alternate realities for their benefit of their home time-line. The Paratime Police are tasked to keep the invention of lateral "time travel" secret (referred to as the "Paratime Secret") and to combat abuses. Occasionally, objects or people get caught in the paratime "conveyors" and are inadvertently transported to alternate timelines. While attempting to apprehend a felon at a remote farmhouse, this happens to Corporal Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police. Morrison ends up in a significantly different version of Pennsylvania. Initially confused by the old-growth forest and lack of settlements, Morrison meets some friendly peasants who speak an unknown language. In the middle of a meal, they are attacked by a large raiding party armed with flintlock pistols, which he helps fight off with his police-issue .38 revolver. Reinforcements arrive, but in the confusion, he is shot by the beautiful young woman leading them. Fortunately, the bullet hits his police badge; he is seriously wounded, but not killed. While recuperating, he learns the local language. This alternate version of North America is split up into a number of kingdoms, each composed of small principalities, with a level of technology roughly equivalent to that of the late European Renaissance. Morrison finds himself the guest of Prince Ptosphes of Hostigos — whose blonde, blue-eyed daughter Rylla was the woman who shot him by mistake. He learns that the principality is being threatened by two of their neighbors, Nostor and Sask, with a third, Beshta, hungrily looking on. Ptosphes' overlord, Great King Kaiphranos of Hos-Harphax, refuses to intervene because the priests of the god Styphon want Hostigos to be destroyed. The religious sect uses its monopoly of black gunpowder, known in this timeline as "fireseed", and the secret technique of how to manufacture it, to control the various princes and kings. Hostigos has a sulfur spring; since sulfur is a key ingredient of gunpowder/fireseed, Styphon's House intends to seize that spring once Hostigos is destroyed. Denied gunpowder, Hostigos is certain to be defeated. That is, until Morrison (or Lord Kalvan, as the people begin to call him) organizes production of it in quantity. He also introduces the rapier, improved cannons with trunnions and rifling. With his understanding of military strategy and tactics, he reorganizes the outnumbered Hostigos army and repulses Nostor, capturing an important border town in the process. Then, to undermine the primary enemy (Styphon's priesthood), he sees to it that the secret technique of gunpowder manufacturing is spread far and wide. He assumes that this will soon undermine support for Styphon's House amongst the princes, a tactic subsequently proven correct. Meanwhile, Verkan Vall, a top agent of the Paratime Police, tracks Kalvan down and infiltrates his army. The standard procedure would be to "remove" the displaced person to protect the secret of the existence of alternate timelines by any means judged necessary, generally memory erasure, but other possibilities are committal to an insane asylum or even assassination. Vall takes a liking to the resourceful Kalvan and realizes that his brother policeman has fabricated a background for himself, one that also conceals the Paratime secret. To help persuade his superiors to leave Morrison alone, Vall also recruits historians on the Home timeline. They can now use Kalvan to do an experiment testing the Great man theory — can a single, extraordinary individual change the course of history? After the defeat of Nostor, Sask and Beshta become allies, forcing Kalvan to attack before their armies can unite. After a day of confused fighting against the larger Saskan forces, he emerges victorious once again. Sarrask of Sask is captured and agrees to become a vassal of a new Great King after he learns that he can share in the looting of Styphon's lavish temples. At first, Kalvan proposes that his future father-in-law assume the new throne, but Ptosphes refuses, stating that the other princes would never stand for being ruled by someone they consider only an equal. Kalvan, as an outsider, is the only one they would accept. Plus, his cover story — that he was sent by the gods from a far-away land — plays into local legends. Thus, Lord Kalvan becomes Great King Kalvan of Hos-Hostigos, with Rylla as his queen. When Gormoth of Nostor hears of Kalvan's successes, he turns against Styphon's House himself. This leads to a bloody civil war in Nostor, followed by Gormoth's assassination. His replacement, facing open and implacable opposition from Styphon's House, soon acknowledges Kalvan's sovereignty. Balthar of Beshta at first declines to become subject to Kalvan, until he discovers there are no gunpowder mills in his realm; he then quickly changes his mind. Other neighboring princes soon side with Kalvan, as this gets rid of the usurious taxes and loans levied by Styphon's House (which functions as both a provider of weapons and as a bank). King Kaiphranos is infuriated by the defections, as is the Archpriest of Styphon, but the novel ends at this point. A sequel written by Roland Green and John F. Carr, Great Kings' War, continues the story. Carr further continues the storyline with his novels Kalvan Kingmaker, Siege of Tarr-Hostigos, The Fireseed Wars and the forthcoming The Gunpowder God (which shares the same name as the novelette from which Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen was expanded from).
7629088	/m/02676cy	The Big Hunt	Lance Parkin		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Professor Summerfield is trying to enjoy a vacation from work, the Braxiatel Collection and even from her friends, Jason, Adrian and Peter. To her exasperation, she is sent on yet another mission. This task goes badly when she crash-lands on a planet full of hostile robotic animals, big game hunters and amoral businessmen. Bernice soon realizes her only hope for survival is join in on the planet's 'game'.
7629161	/m/02676h0	Sharpe's Christmas	Bernard Cornwell	1994		 Sharpe's Christmas is set in 1813, towards the end of the Peninsular War and falls after Sharpe's Regiment.
7629770	/m/026779h	Time of our Darkness	Stephen Gray	1988	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Some days later Disley again appears at the door, this time with a note from his mother explaining about the unrest in the townships and asking him to look after the boy. André is dismissive of the black boy, warning Pete in jest about what is illegal with blacks – "Specially seduction of minors. You can shoot them in the back but you can't go to bed with them". After André leaves, Pete makes Disley have a bath and then pins some of own clothes so that they fit the skinny little boy's body. Disley is modest as he changes, but Pete is aroused: "I'd found this impromptu ceremony such an enjoyment that a furious guilt arose in me: if I prolonged this it would become more than a merciful deed, and I would be irretrievably lost". He thinks of himself, "kneading an ache over that untouchable item, a black parcel of skin and bone, under age." André has taken to using rent boys, and returns with one called Prince. They all go off to the airport (André is a flight attendant) and go plane spotting. Disley loves it. As Pete gets ready to take Disley to the school where he can stay overnight, he discovers that Disley has deliberately left his jumper and suitcase at Pete's home. Disley also hints that he knows all about André and Pete being gay, and Pete recognises the possibility of blackmail over his teaching position. So he agrees to let Disley stay and to coach him so that he can stay on at the private school. Pete starts wishfully thinking about what might happen after they finish watching Polanski's Macbeth on video, "Probably after that he was going to seduce me, probably I was due to have the experience of a lifetime, and be entirely lost." Pete prepares a bed roll for Disley in the corner of his bedroom, goes for a bath, and returns to find Disley has crept into his bed. Pete climbs in and starts intimately stroking the boy, who responds suggestively "You haven't given me a good-night kiss". Pete thinks "This was not a child, but a lover." Over the next six months, Disley matures, his performance at school improves due to his one-to-one coaching and he starts making friends. But he is drawn back to his roots when a relative dies and disappears from school. Pete and another teacher Jenny set off to find him. Jenny is a radical, always followed by the police, and she seduces Pete and he finally loses his heterosexual virginity. Pete discovers she is laundering money brought into South Africa by André and the novel ends with the suffering typical of the violent world of apartheid and police corruption.
7639525	/m/0267jy0	The Maze		2004-02-05		 At the end of the Greco-Turkish War, one Greek brigade wanders lost in the Anatolian desert. Led by Brigadier Nestor, the soldiers hope they are marching west toward the Aegean Sea and the end of their disastrous tour of duty. The war is over, but the men must battle on. Brigadier Nestor, an aging career soldier still devastated by his wife's death a year earlier, has become addicted to morphine and Greek mythology. His second-in-command, Chief of Staff Major Porfirio, while appearing to be a model soldier, is keeping a treasonous secret. The company priest, Father Simeon, imagines himself the Apostle of All Anatolians, but in fact is just a thief. And the rest of the brigade is not faring too well either. Subsisting almost entirely on cornmeal, their morale is low and things are growing stranger the longer they wander. It seems though that the luck of the brigade is finally changing. First, a Greek pilot crashes from the sky bringing hope that perhaps they are being searched for. Then, following a runaway horse, they come across a quiet Greek village virtually untouched by the war. The inhabitants and tales of the village are just as interesting and complicated as those of the brigade. The mayor is about to marry the madame of the brothel, the church is overrun with rats and the Turkish quarter is surrounded by an open sewer. This village does not offer the comforts the brigade had longed for. Brigadier Nestor still hopes to lead the men to the sea and escape, and the mayor knows the way. But before they can leave they must all contend with a desperate war correspondent and one final act of violence that permanently scars the village. This act oddly reflects another moment of violence that haunts the brigade and lies just beneath the surface of all they do. The brigade may finally escape the maze of the Anatolian desert, but each man is forever marred not only by the war but by what has happened since the war ended. The worst casualties may have nothing to do with battle.
7640402	/m/0267kr6	The City of Ravens	Richard Baker	2000-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story follows a petty thief called Jack Ravenwild, who is hired by the beautiful Elana to find a very special book. In the same tenday (the Realms equivalent of a week), he resorts to spying on another perfect woman, a mage named Zandria, to try to get information. But, the beautiful Illyth invites him to the game of masks, and at the same time he fears for his friend Anders, wanted by the evil Brothers Kuldath for stealing their ruby. Soon Jack finds both good and evil people following him through the streets of Ravens Bluff.
7640695	/m/0267kz2	The Last of the Jedi: Return of the Dark Side	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Things go wrong when Palpatine comes to Samaria, ordering Ferus, who is a double agent, to kill his companions. Years ago, when they were both Jedi Apprentices, Ferus Olin and Anakin Skywalker were rivals. Now their paths are about to cross again.... Abandoning the Jedi Order saved Ferus's life. As a result, he is the only one who can track down and save Jedi who have survived the rise of the Empire. He has Rebellion on his mind, and hopes to bring about the fall of the Emperor. Only Darth Vader stands in his way. Ferus might not realize it, but his old rival is now his new deadly enemy. es:Return of the Dark Side
7647466	/m/0267s8h	Brain	Robin Cook	1981	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story starts with a girl Kathereine Collins going to a private GYN clinic, located in Manhattan, New York, where she is undergoing treatment for some Gynac ailments. Simultaneously she has started having seizures where in she smells a repulsive and oddly familiar odor and then loses consciousness. She wants to withdraw her records from this clinic and move onto her hometown to her family doctor. While on her way back, she faints at the elevators. The next scene shows her parents visiting her apartment and the cops searching the room as she has been missing for some days now. The story revolves around the protagonist Dr. Martin Philips from then on, who is a doctor in neuroradiology at the NYC medical center. Dr. Martin Philips, a 41 year old neuroradiologist is involved in creating a self-diagonstic x-ray machine, along with Michaels, who is a researcher graduating from MIT and also head of the department of artificial intelligence. Dr. Philips's girlfriend and colleague Dr. Denise Sanger (28 years old) is also involved in the same hospital. The story proceeds with the hospital working being shown where Dr. Mannerheim, a stubborn neurosurgeon, is to operate on a girl named Lisa Marino who is a seizure patient. She is set to undergo a brain operation to remove damaged brain cells which her doctors say are causing her seizures. The symptoms are described in another female patient, Kathereine Collins, only stronger. However, when Dr. Phillips starts to discover a conspiracy involving usage of human test subjects, he is drawn into a world that is deceiving and dangerous. After the reveal, Dr. Phillips asks to be put in an asylum.
7648186	/m/0267t3p	Endymion	Dan Simmons	1996-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens 274 years after the Fall of Hyperion, in which Hegemony CEO Meina Gladstone ordered the destruction of all farcaster singularities to stop the TechnoCore from eliminating humankind. However, the loss of the WorldWeb infrastructure also resulted in the collapse of civilization on most planets. Brawne Lamia, Martin Silenus and the Consul were the only surviving Pilgrims that stayed on Hyperion. The Consul left shortly and joined the Ousters. His fate is uncertain. Brawne Lamia, pregnant from the first John Keats technological reincarnation, gave birth shortly after to a daughter called Aenea. Lamia died when Aenea was still a girl, and Silenus took care of the child. When Aenea was twelve years old, she entered the "Time Tomb" and disappeared. Silenus hid his home and began cryonic hibernation to wait for her return. Father Paul Duré was the only pilgrim not in Hyperion. Before the fall, he had farcasted to Pacem, the dying Catholic Church's planet, and had been elected as the new Pope, under the name of Teilhard (a reference to Teilhard de Chardin). His papacy was determined to rejuvenate the Church. When he died unexpectedly, he was reincarnated as Lenar Hoyt, due to the remaining cruciform on their shared body. With Lenar Hoyt as the new Pope Julius IV, with the help of Cardinal Lourdusamy, the Church took a new direction. Two new Sacraments were introduced, the Acceptance of the Cruciform and the Resurrection. The Church had developed a new technology that improved the results of the Resurrection, so the believers who had accepted the cruciform were virtually immortal. Assisted by the immortality, the Church grew steadily and with help of its military forces (called Pax) filled the void left by the Hegemony after the Fall, as the government of all the galaxy's mankind. When Hoyt died, he was resurrected again and again, and Father Duré never again appeared to the public eye. Under the various Hoyt's papacies, Father Duré was considered as an Antipope that nearly killed the Church. 274 years after the Fall, Raul Endymion is a hunting guide in Hyperion who kills a hunter in self defense (the hunter later resurrects). Endymion is framed for murder and sentenced to death. He refuses the cruciform and appears to be executed. To his surprise, he awakens in the house of an old man named Martin Silenus. The old man tells him that he has been rescued to perform a mission: rescue his "niece" Aenea who is about to return at the Time Tomb, find the old Earth (Silenus may be the last living human born there), destroy the Pax, and "find out what the fuck the TechnoCore is up to and stop it." Endymion assumes that Silenus is demented, but accepts the mission. He is helped by Silenus' android servant A. Bettik and by the old Consul's starship. Meanwhile, the Pax also knows that Aenea is about to arrive. They consider her an abomination and want her captured. The mission is assigned to Father-Captain Federico de Soya, who prepares an army of elite troops on Hyperion's surface and in surrounding space to trap Aenea. Endymion and Silenus's plan consists of arriving at the Time Tombs, flying on the Consul's Hawking mat. When the Tomb opens, Aenea appears as predicted. However, The Shrike also emerges and massacres most of the Pax military units - both on Hyperion and in local space. In the confusion, Endymion meets Aenea and takes her to the starship, where Bettik is waiting. The Pax, fighting with the Shrike, cannot stop the ship before it translates to hyperspace. The ship's first destination from Hyperion is the Parvati star system. The trip starts the friendship between Aenea and Endymion. He realizes that his young friend is far more precocious than a twelve year old should be, and he feels a hint of the mystique that she will have in the future. Meanwhile, Father de Soya, badly injured by the Shrike, is determined to not let Aenea escape again. He takes possession of an Archangel-class courier ship, the Raphael, that allows him and three of his elite soldiers, (Sergeant Gregorius, Corporal Kee and Lancer Rettig, from the Swiss Guard) to fly to Parvati faster than hyperspace. The price of this speed is a painful death and resurrection of the ship's passengers. When Aenea and Endymion arrive to Parvati space, de Soya is waiting to stop them. Aenea threatens to depressurize the old Consul's ship and die. Since de Soya's orders are to catch her alive, he has to let her go. The next destination is Renaissance Vector. De Soya's team, after dying and resurrecting again, are ready to stop her even if she tries to depressurize the ship. Aenea convinces him to allow her ship to land, but instead she flies the ship along the old River Tethys through one of the farcaster portals, all of which have been inactive since the Fall of Hyperion. De Soya guesses her plan at the last moment and attempts to disable Aenea's ship, but too late to prevent it from farcasting. The ship has arrived to an unknown sylvatic planet through the farcaster. The passengers are all unharmed, but the ship is badly damaged. Its AI states that it can be auto-repaired, but it will take about five standard months. Since Aenea cannot wait, Raul constructs a raft to follow the River Tethys. Raul, Aenea and Bettik depart and leave the Ship on the unknown planet. De Soya, unable to determine to which of the hundreds of planets crossed by River Tethys Aenea has fled, begins an odyssey of continuous deaths and resurrections through all known planet systems in order to find her. The raft arrives at the next inactive farcaster, but again it works and translates them to another planet, Mare Infinitus. As they travel across the aquatic planet, looking for next farcaster, they encounter a sea platform occupied by Pax guards. Since they cannot avoid it, Raul boards the flying carpet and goes alone to the platform, taking some explosives in order to create a distraction. He succeeds, but only after fighting with Pax soldiers, losing the carpet, falling into the water, and eventually being rescued by Aenea and Bettik. They find the next farcaster and translate to Hebron. Strangely, they find this Jewish planet absolutely abandoned. Aenea and Bettik find a hospital with automated surgeon units, which heal Endymion, who is still injured from the Mare Infinitus adventure. Meanwhile, De Soya's search brings him to Mare Infinitus, where he finds evidence that Aenea and Endymion have been there, namely the flying carpet. De Soya concludes that Aenea's final destination might be Ouster territory. Hoping to intercept her, De Soya and his men translate there, but there is an accident: resurrection fails, and consequently their ship is automatically rerouted to Pacem. De Soya is resurrected there, but one of his men, Rettig has died the "True Death". The Pax government, in spite of De Soya's consistent failures to capture Aenea, decide to keep de Soya on the mission, and assign a new officer to his guard, Rhadamanth Nemes, a member of a "new race of soldiers, prepared to fight the Ousters." Aenea, Raul and Bettik continue to travel through the farcasters. Their next destination is Sol Draconi Septem, a barely terraformed, frozen, high gravity planet. There, they meet and befriend the Chitchatuk, primitive humans who are adapted to Sol Draconi Septem's terrible conditions. The Chitchatuk take Aenea and her companions to meet Father Glaucus, a blind priest estranged from Pax. At Glaucus' home, Aenea, Bettik and Raul rest and enjoy the priest's friendship. They depart again and farcast to Qom Riyadh, an Islamic planet, which they find also strangely uninhabited, and then to God's Grove. Meanwhile, de Soya has received information that it has been "revealed" to the Pope that Aenea is in Sol Draconi Septem. De Soya and his guards fly there in his Archangel class faster than hyperspace craft, but something is wrong: Nemes is not dead. In fact, she wakes up when the rest of crew has yet to resurrect, and takes a dropship to the planet. She has inhuman strength and skills and is ruthless. She kills the Chitchatuk and Father Glaucus. She also links to the farcaster and learns that Aenea has gone to Qom Riyadh and will soon head for God's Grove. She plants this new destination in the ship's communicator, but de Soya is suspicious. When they farcast to God's Grove, de Soya secretly gives the ship instructions to resurrect the crew in only 6 hours instead of the safer 3 days. Nemes takes the Raphael's dropship and prepares an ambush for Aenea, including monofilament, land mines and a trap to beat the Shrike, if it shows. When the raft transporting the heroes arrives, they fall into her trap. A. Bettik has one arm cut off by the monofilaments while Raul and Aenea shelter in the rapids of the river. When Nemes attacks, to kill Aenea, the Shrike appears and blocks her attempts. They fight each other to a standstill, but Nemes uses her secret weapon. The Shrike is transported 5 minutes into the future, giving Nemes plenty of time to kill Aenea and save her head. However, Father de Soya, barely resurrected and piloting the Raphael in low orbit, talks to Raul by tightbeam and lances Nemes from outer space with a powerful energy weapon. Nemes disappears in a lake of molten rock. Blessing her, de Soya guides Aenea to the dropship and lets her go. The heroes pass through a farcaster to reach their end destination: the supposedly destroyed Old Earth, which is now orbiting a Sun-like star in the Magellanic Cloud. Aenea guides the ship to Fallingwater, Pennsylvania, where she will study with an architect (the Frank Lloyd Wright cybrid) until she is ready to fulfill her mission.
7648578	/m/0267tk2	Sharpe's Escape	Bernard Cornwell	2004-06-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in 1810, the novel finds Captain Richard Sharpe threatened as commander of the South Essex Regiment Light Company by the family politics of the Regiment's Commanding Officer. While the British and their Portuguese allies see off the French assault at Bussaco, Sharpe becomes embroiled in a private feud with the criminal Ferragus, whom he pursues from the abandoned town of Coimbra back towards the massive defensive works which Wellington has ordered built at Torres Vedras.
7653773	/m/0267ys2	Headlong				 Martin, the main character, is supposed to be writing a book. He finds himself invited to dinner at the house of a repellent and warring couple, on whom the land and property they own seems entirely wasted. Martin happens on a painting which he takes to be by Brueghel. Painstaking research leads him (via a full scale reassessment of the interpretation of the five surviving pictures in Brueghel's The Months) to identify the picture as the missing sixth picture of Brueghel's famous book of hours. Meantime his wife, (an actual art historian whereas he is only peripherally connected with the scholarly art world), and their baby live in a cottage and he fears his wife eyes him with increasing disdain as, instead of working on his book, he pursues the Breughel data. Martin has to fake the promise of an affair with the woman of the house to get hold of the picture, and indulge in a series of implausible transactions in other pictures to keep his access to the Brueghel open. Once he gets it, his troubles have only begun. Finally, as he is about to succeed in taking it to a safe place and secure his fortune, he crashes the old Landrover and the picture goes up in smoke. You never do find out whether it was actually a Breughel or not.
7655894	/m/026800v	A Girl Named Disaster	Nancy Farmer	1996-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nhamo is an 12-year old Shona girl living in a traditional village located in Mozambique (1981). She was raised with the knowledge and customs of her tribe, but because scandal seemed to follow her and her mother, she was named "Disaster" in the Shona language. After experiencing trouble with a cholera epidemic, a ghost leopard, and a prescribed marriage proposed by a false witch doctor, she flees with her dying grandmother's blessings, some gold nuggets, and her meager survival skills. Nhamo steals a boat under her grandmother's instructions and uses the river as her road to Zimbabwe, where she faces the threat of hippos, crocodiles, and other animals. What should have been a two-day boat trip across the border to her father's family in Zimbabwe spans a year in which Nhamo faces starvation, drowning, and the threat of hungry or aggressive animals. The girl finds her way to a lush, haunted island and lives alongside a troop of baboons. Daily conversations with spirits combat Nhamo's loneliness and provide her with sage and practical advice. She makes mistakes, loses heart, and nearly dies of starvation. Even after she arrives in Zimbabwe where she lives with scientists before meeting her father's family, Nhamo must learn how to live in a modern society (clothing, behavior, literacy), and is urged to let go of the "evil" spirits that "possess" her as prescribed by a priest.
7656303	/m/02680m1	The Egypt Game	Zilpha Keatley Snyder	1966	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 April Hall is sent to live with her grandmother Caroline in a large university town in California. She was sent there by her mother, Dorothea, a Hollywood actress-singer, because Dorothea was too busy with her career. April makes friends with Melanie, a classmate who shares her fascination with reading and imagination, particularly archaeology. Melanie lives in the Casa de Rosada, a Spanish looking apartment building where April is staying with her grandma Caroline. In August, the girls, along with Melanie's four year old brother, Marshall and his stuffed octopus, Security, begin playing in the storage yard of A-Z Antiques (Curious, Used Merchandise). The children enter through a loose board in the fence. The owner of the store "The Professor", is a mysterious man of whom the neighborhood children are afraid. April has met him once and finds him and his store interesting. April, Melanie, and Marshall research actual Egyptian belief systems and practices, and they create their own rituals intended to reproduce them more or less authentically. They are joined by Elizabeth, a nine year old girl who moves into the Casa de Rosada with her mother and two younger sisters. Sometime in September a child is murdered in the neighborhood, which results in them being restricted from playing outside for a few months. At Halloween they return to Egypt surreptitiously and are discovered by Toby and Ken, two popular boys, who join into the game. Finally allowed to play outdoors again, the "Egyptians" devise an oracle, connected to Thoth, and are unnerved by some of its answers. A series of mysterious things happen, and Melanie wonders if they should stop playing completely. After a horrific incident, the murderer's true identity is revealed. The "Professor" is involved, as he saw what was happening and shouted for help. He now tells the children that he has been watching the game the whole time, intrigued by how they interpreted and re-created Egyptian myths and history. A widower, he became reclusive after his wife's death. As a Christmas gift, he gives a key to each of the six children to access the recently locked storage yard. The children feel that the game cannot continue because its essential of secrecy (or at least of their percep94tion that it is secret) has been destroyed, so they discuss no longer playing. The book ends with one of the children raising the possibility of a new game involving Gypsies. Snyder followed up on this possibility by writing The Gypsy Game in 19
7659959	/m/02683j0	Thunder Oak	Garry Kilworth		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main introduction introduces Sylver's band of outlaws: Icham, Dredless, Mawk, Bryony, Alysoun, Miniver, Wodehed, and Luke. Sylver has heard that the sea defences around the island of Welkin are crumbling and will soon collapse completely, allowing the ocean to flood Welkin if the animals of the island don't act soon. With the help of Lord Haukin, a sympathetic stoat, who understands Sylver, Sylver decides to start out on a quest to find the missing humans who abandoned Welkin long before Sylver was born. None of the weasels know why they have evacuated, but Lord Haukin suspects, thanks to a diary left by a girl called Alice, that they were forced to leave and had no choice. His theory is supported by several clues scattered throughout the island, and the first clue is at Thunder Oak, but the weasels will need to make a long journey in order to reach it. Just before departure, however, the voyage is interrupted by the Sheriff Falshed, who has been appointed by Prince Poynt to dominate the rebellious weasels and keep them under sway by enslaving them at Castle Rayn. Falshed attempts to stop Sylver, arriving with a troop of stoats, but the outlaws cleverly ward off the attack by using missiles filled with ants, thus driving the stoats into the vast forest. They strap Falshed to a raft and send him off down the river, where, after an interval with the rats, he makes it back to his home, Castle Rayn, home of the stoats. Meanwhile, Lord Haukin tells the weasels that in order to find Thunder Oak, which does not appear on any of his own maps, they need to find the broken eggshell of an eagle, as eagles fly above the planet and imprint a mental map of the globe which they telepathically pas down to their offspring. The weasels set out to search for this egg, with the stoats in hot pursuit. Prince Poynt has also employs a mercenary fox, Magellan, to hunt down the weasels and bring Sylver to Castle Rayn. After traveling for some while, the outlaws seek shelter at a monastery, which is home to Karnac the Boar, a formidable monk and a sadistic mercenary, who sells weasel skins to the stoats in the form of drums. Karnac traps them inside his monastery, intending to wait until they starve to death before skinning them. Sylver sends Miniver out to rally a nearby village of weasels to help them. Miniver is turned down by each weasel in this town, as they fear punishment by the stoats. Hope appears lost until she meets an exceedingly dirty and eccentric weasel named Scirf, who tells her he can help them if she promises than he can join Sylver's outlaws. Miniver returns to the monastery with Scirf, and while her friends are initially skeptical, Scirf drives Karnac away by reminding him that humans loved bacon, ham, and other meat derived from the flesh of pigs. Karnac flees and the weasels reluctantly allow the overconfident Scirf to join them. As they resume traveling with their newest member, the weasels encounter a forest full of savage pine martens, which is also inhabited by a mad witch - a moufflon named Maghatch. Maghatch blackmails Sylver into slavery by turning the other outlaws into rabbits, but Sylver escapes and enlists the help of the wild dog Gnaish. Maghatch quickly returns the outlaws to their proper forms and allows them to leave. The weasels journey on, but are ensnared by the Hunter's Hall, which is an afterlife for virtuous hunting animals. The dead hunters tell them that as punishment for killing prey animals intended for those in the afterlife, they must work as slaves in Hunter's Hall until they have atoned for their crime. For several weeks they remain in the Hall until Mawk realizes that the ethereal food is keeping them from leaving. Unable to rouse the others, he carries Scirf and escapes. When Scirf awakens, the two males find that Alysoun has followed them, and after Mawk explains the mystery of the food, they try to return and rescue their companions. They find that Hunter's Hall has vanished entirely, being reachable only through Maghatch's sorcery. They decide to backtrack to the witch's cathedral in hopes of finding another way to reach the Hall. Back at Hunter's Hall, Sylver and the others awake to find their friends missing. Fortunately, the dead hunters have decided to set them free, and they head north hoping to meet up with the others. They are soon found by Magellan, who wounds Wodehead with an arrow before disappearing. Sylver sends Wodehead back to Halfmoon Wood along with Icham and Bryony, and goes on towards the Yellow Mountains with Miniver and Dredless. High in the mountains, they meet Magellan once more, and Dredless is killed. Miniver and Sylver escape, and find Falshed's troops, with Falshed having left to report Dredless' death to the Prince. Knowing this would be the last place Magellan would look for them, they pretend to be poor merchants and allow themselves to be captured by the soldiers. Alysoun, Scirf, and Mawk return safely to Maghatch's chapel, and Maghatch sends them down a path which she claims will take them back to Hunter's Hall. Instead, it deposits them directly on a steep mountainside. The three are initially horrified, but Alysoun realizes that these are the Yellow Mountains they've been searching for, and that the eagle's nest must be nearby. They ascend the cliffs and by nightfall come upon the nest. Inside they find the eggshell, broken in half, and imprinted with the map of the world. As they prepare to leave, with Alysoun and Scirf carrying half of the eggshell each, the mother eagle returns and attacks them. In the confusion, Alysoun falls from the ledge, but finds that the eggshell acts as a parachute, allowing her to descend safely. Seeing this, Scirf follows, using his half of the shell similarly. Mawk is left behind and takes refuge in a hare's den until the eagle leaves. Continuing on alone, he is confronted and robbed by three weasel brothers. He finds a hostel in the mountains and no sooner has he entered than Magellan arrives. Mawk hides himself and listens as Magellan takes a room for the night. Shortly after, Falshed's troops arrive, with Sylver and Miniver in tow, still pretending to be merchants. Sylver recognizes him and, trying to keep his identity secret, tells the soldiers that Mawk is one of the outlaws. Mawk tells the soldiers that he knows where Sylver is sleeping, and directs them to Magellan's room. The stoats storm the room and in the ensuing fight, Mawk, Sylver, and Miniver escape into the mountains, where they find Scirf, by himself. Meanwhile, having been separated from Scirf in the fall from the mountain, Alysoun finds herself in the midst of a group of hedgehogs performing a ceremony. The leader of the hedgehogs refuses to let Alysoun leave, intending her as a sacrifice to their god, the Great God Spike, a huge hedgehog built from the skeletons of other animals. Alysoun succeeds in destroying the god and escapes. She returns to Halfmoon Wood with her half of the eggshell, where Sylver and the others are already waiting, and there learns of Dredless' death. After holding a wake for Dredless, the weasels and Lord Haukin decipher the eggshell map and discover that the first clue is hidden in a tree called Thunder Oak, far from Halfmoon Wood. The weasels draw straws to see who will accompany Sylver to the Thunder Oak, and Mawk and Scirf are selected. Before they can begin the journey, a pack of rogue wolves lays siege to the village, but are driven away by a living statue that is seeking Scirf. The statue travels a short distance with the three weasels, hoping to find the quarry from which it was made. They come to an old abandoned church, where the gargoyles tell the statue where to find a nearby quarry. Sylver and his companions enter the church to rest for the night, but after a noisy interruption by living angel statues, Sylver and Scirf decide to sleep in the crypts rather than the church hall. Mawk is alarmed by the idea of sleeping amidst the dead bodies, so he stays above. He awakes the following morning and finds Sylver and Scirf missing from the crypts. After a brief search he finds the two have been kidnapped by a group of mole bandits. The moles prepare to attack him, but their leader, realizing that Sylver is wanted by Prince Poynt, insists that they set the weasels free. As they continue on, the group sneaks through the marshes inhabited by the rats, only to find their way blocked by thousands of living scarecrows. The scarecrows demand that the weasels give them smoking pipes, so that they might look more like humans. Having nothing to give them, Mawk suggests they travel to a nearby abbey and ask the monks for help. From the head monk they learn that the scarecrows are terrified of mirrors, and return to the scarecrows with mirrors in hand. The scarecrows are so distraught by their reflections that they fall to the ground screaming, and the weasels pass unharmed. Upon reaching the Thunder Oak, the weasels find the tree guarded by a stone gryphon, which will not allow them to pass, saying it does not wish for the humans to return. To the surprise of his companions, Scirf hypnotizes the gryphon, putting it to sleep, and the weasels enter the Thunder Oak. Inside they find a small carving of a dormouse in a pool of water. Giving the carving to Mawk to guard, they begin to retrace their steps to Halfmoon Wood. On the return home, Sylver receives a warning from a polecat, sent by Falshed, that Magellan is laying in wait in the forest, and, ordering Mawk and Scirf to wait for him, goes to face the fox alone. While attempting to ambush Magellan, Sylver is caught in a snare set by the bounty hunter. Magellan prepares to kill Sylver with his bow and arrow, but in a final burst of energy, Sylver pulls the iron stake holding the snare from the ground and impales Magellan with it. Mawk and Scirf find him badly injured, but alive, and together they finish the journey back to Halfmoon Wood. After showing the carving to Lord Haukin, the Welkin Weasels hold a celebration before commencing on the quest to find the next clue. The book ends with a brief exchange between Falshed and Poynt, regarding Magellan's death.
7661594	/m/02684vr	One Child	Torey Hayden	1980		 At the beginning of the year, Torey is given a long, narrow, carpeted classroom with a single window at the end – very inconvenient for a special education class. Her teaching assistant is a Mexican migrant worker named Anton who didn't finish high school. The students at the beginning of the year are as follows: * Peter, 8, who has seizures and aggressive behavior caused by a neurological condition * Tyler, 8, suicidal * Max, 6, autistic * Freddie, 7, obese and profoundly mentally retarded * Sarah, 7, angry, defiant and selectively mute because of physical and sexual abuse by her father * Susannah Joy, 6, schizophrenic * William, 9, OCD with phobias of water, darkness, cars, vacuum cleaners, and dust * Guillermo, 9, blind, but he's in this class because the normal blind classes were unprepared to handle his aggressive behavior At age 4, Sheila's then-18-year-old mother left and took Sheila and 2-year-old brother Jimmie with her; however, on the highway, Sheila's mother opened the door and pushed Sheila out, leaving her behind. Since then, Sheila has lived in poverty with her neglectful and verbally abusive father. When she joined Torey's class, Sheila's father did not have enough money to get water to wash themselves or the one set of clothes Sheila owned. Thus, she came to school dirty and smelly every day. Sheila joins the group just after Christmas vacation. At first, she refuses to participate in the class and refuses to speak to anyone. She stays sitting in one chair. On her first day of school, at lunch, Sheila takes all of the goldfish from the aquarium and stabs their eyes out with a pencil. Torey and Whitney, a 14-year-old girl who assists the class, chase Sheila into the gymnasium, and Torey eventually soothes the terrified girl into coming back to class. After a few days, Sheila and Torey begin to trust one another, and Torey takes to giving her a bath every morning so her smell doesn't distract the other students. After Sheila began participating in class, there were still a few issues. First, she was focused on revenge. At one point, a teacher scolded her in the lunch room, so she went into the teacher's room and caused $700 worth of damage to the classroom. Also, Sheila refuses to do paper work. However, when given other mediums to work with (stacking blocks, for instance), she reveals that she is incredibly smart and talented for someone who only had a few months of first grade; her I.Q. is later tested, and comes to a total of 184, which is, according to Torey, around 1 in 10,000 for a six-year-old. Sheila remains obsessed with showing people that she is worthwhile, and terrified of abandonment. At one point, Torey goes to California for a few days for a conference. The students were given plenty of warning, but Sheila interpreted it as abandonment by the one person who had shown her love, and misbehaved through the whole trip. In the middle of the year, Torey is notified that a space has opened up at the state hospital for Sheila. Torey is horrified, seeing that this girl with all her improvement should not be put into an institution. They bring the case to court, with the help of Torey's boyfriend Chad, a lawyer, and win. Afterwards, Torey and Chad take Sheila out for pizza and buy her a dress. One day, Sheila comes to school looking pale and nervous. She uses the bathroom twice in the first half-hour. Torey takes Sheila on her lap, and then notices she's bleeding. Sheila eventually confesses that her uncle Jerry had tried to rape her, and when she was too small, he cut her with his knife. Sheila is rushed to the hospital after losing a lot of blood and has to have surgery to repair the damage. In the 1995 sequel, The Tiger's Child, it is revealed that because of this incident, Sheila is infertile. Sheila deals with the traumatic experience remarkably well, though she refuses to wear dresses for a while afterward. At the end of the year, Torey introduces Sheila to next year's teacher. Sheila will be going into third grade, because Torey feels she can deal with the harder material and that it's more important at this point that Sheila's teacher be loving and understanding. Torey knows this teacher personally and knows she would be.
7663148	/m/02686l6	Saturnalia	Grant Callin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the late twenty-first century, a system of space colonies, known collectively as SpaceHome, is slowly winning economic independence from Earth. SpaceHome's president, George Ogumi, is singleminded in this pursuit. Things are shaken up when SpaceHome discovers an alien object on a moon of Saturn. SpaceHome University's sole archeologist, Dr. Kurious Whitedimple (who constantly reminds amused inquisitors his name is pronounced "KOOR-ee-us"), is called in for his opinion by Ogumi. Whitedimple (called Whitey) is able to interpret the message—for so it is. The message is: there are three other identical messages on other moons, a fifth hidden somewhere in the rings of Saturn which will give directions to a sixth artifact, of immense importance. Dazzled by Ogumi, Whitey loses sight of odd things going on around him, and is swiftly shipped off to Saturn to recover the rings artifact, despite an "accident" that nearly kills him. On arrival, Whitey is introduced to Junior Badille, his pilot. Born in high-radiation outer space, Junior is a mutant supergenius, whom Whitey affectionately refers to as "the runt" and "the gnome". Earth has not been quiet, and sends off its own expedition. The Earthers open fire, but Whitey and Badille are able to outmanoeuver them and recover the artifact. The message on the artifact is that the sixth artifact is located on Saturn's liquid surface. (At this point, the short story ends.) Both Earth and SpaceHome gear up for massive efforts. Junior and Whitey, who have formed a strong bond, part, and Whitey returns to teaching classes at the university, first having strong words with Ogumi over what Whitey deems to be deceit. However, SpaceHome has become too small for Whitey now. He enrolls in space pilot training and becomes a brilliant student. As Whitey qualifies, Junior, now the brains behind SpaceHome's Mimas-based efforts to recover the last artifact, stages a strike—Whitey must return or Junior will be so "depressed" he cannot work. Ogumi has little choice but to send Whitey back to Saturn as a pilot. Whitey becomes the lead pilot for the recovery effort. However, an Earth expedition stages a simultaneous attempt, and at first seems to have everything going for it, until it suffers massive malfunctions. Whitey sacrifices the mission to dive deep into Saturn's atmosphere and rescue the Earth pilot and his vessel. While he is still recovering, SpaceHome's backup mission recovers the artifact. The artifact proves to be a much more complex message—there is a starship at a specified location in the outer solar system. When activated, it is assumed that the ship will take anyone aboard to the aliens' star system. As the story ends, Earth and SpaceHome work together to mount a joint expedition.
7665087	/m/02688n7	War of the Twins	Tracy Hickman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Upon arrival in the Tower of High Sorcery, Raistlin is tested by the undead guardians to prove that he is really the Master of the Tower. It is revealed that he has beaten Fistandantilus and absorbed his soul, thus increasing his power immensely. Raistlin goes to find the Portal to the Abyss, which is necessary to his ascension to godhood. When he goes to it, he discovers that it is not there. Having been bribed with the Globe of Present Time Passing, created by Raistlin, Astinus reveals that it is in the magical fortress of Zhaman, located in dwarven lands. The scene shifts to Tasslehoff Burrfoot, who finds himself in the Abyss. Tasslehoff encounters Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness, who tells him how he has altered time and possibly allowed her to take over the world. Tas meets Gnimsh, a gnome, who claims he is a failure because all of his inventions worked (gnomes in the Dragonlance world constantly invent, and more often than not they fail. The gnomes believe failure is a means of learning). Gnimsh agrees to help Tasslehoff get out of the Abyss and starts to fix the device of Time Journeying. Caramon, Raistlin, and Crysania create the so-called Fistandantilus Army from local populace under pretension of ravaging the dwarven kingdom Thorbadin in the far South, with Caramon being their leader. Many come to join his army, and they number several hundred. The army continues south. The hill dwarves join up with Caramon's army, believing that the mountain dwarves have stolen supplies and wealth from them. Crysania flees when Raistlin rejects her love and makes plans to bring word of the true gods to the people, 200 years before Goldmoon would during the War of the Lance. She encounters place stricken by plague and finds a dying false cleric, who she tries to convert. She discovers that people are still too angry to accept the true gods yet. Raistlin and Caramon begin to joke and share memories. Later, Raistlin and Caramon go to the village where Crysania is. Raistlin uses his immense power to summon a massive fire that razes the town. He is in fact preparing Crysania to come with him into the Abyss with trials comparable to Huma Dragonbane's. Caramon and his army soon capture the fortress of Pax Tharkas, thanks to the help of traitorous dark dwarves. The mountain dwarves retreat to Thorbardin and close the gates, preparing for war. Kharas, the dwarf hero, led a daring assassination attempt on Raistlin. Kharas wounds him drastically, but Raistlin has time before death. Crysania heals Raistlin, perhaps against his will. It is then discovered that Tas and Gnimsh have escaped the Abyss and were captured in Thorbardin. Raistlin appears and rescues Tas, but kills Gnimsh, presumably to correct Fistandantilus's mistake of allowing the gnome to be at the Portal when he tried to enter. Soon after, it is revealed that the dark dwarves betrayed them and had slowly killed off the hill dwarves. They attempt to assassinate Caramon, but are beaten back. Raistlin, after a last talk with his brother, opens the Portal with Crysania's help; at the same time Caramon and Tas activate their device, returning to their proper time period. The result is the explosion that levels Zhaman; however, this time, Crysania and Raistlin enter the Portal whereas Denubis, Crysania's equivalent in the past, had died and Fistandantilus had departed that plane of existence. The book ends with Raistlin entering the Abyss.
7671018	/m/0268fw7	Haters	Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez	2006-10-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Haters follows the character of Pasquala Rumalda Quintana de Archuleta, also known as Paski, as she tries to deal with extreme changes in her life. As a result of her father's comic strip getting optioned for a movie, Paski and her father move to California. Once there, Paski finds herself in a school where materialism and "haters" control the social circles. Paski begins to develop feelings for the handsome Chris Cabrera, who happens to be dating Jessica Nguyen, the resident mean girl. Paski soon finds herself dealing with more problems than Jessica, as she also finds that she has the psychic "gift" of premonition and is predicting Jessica having a terrible accident while participating in a motorcycle competition.
7671306	/m/0268fzp	On Beauty	Zadie Smith	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On Beauty centres on the story of two families and their different, yet increasingly intertwined, lives. The Belsey family consists of university professor Howard, a white Englishman, his African-American wife Kiki, and their children Jerome, Zora and Levi, living in the fictional university town of Wellington, outside Boston. Howard's professional nemesis is Monty Kipps, a Trinidadian living in Britain with his wife Carlene and children Victoria and Michael. The Belsey family has always defined itself as liberal and atheist, and Howard in particular is furious when his son Jerome, a newly born-again Christian, goes to work as an intern with the ultra-conservative Christian Kipps family over his summer holidays. After a failed affair with Victoria Kipps, Jerome returns home. However, the families are brought into proximity again nine months later when the Kippses move to Wellington, and Monty begins work at the university. Carlene and Kiki become friends despite the tensions between their families. Rivalry between Monty and Howard increases as Monty challenges the liberal attitudes of the university on issues such as affirmative action. His academic success also highlights Howard's inadequacies and failure to publish a long-awaited book. Meanwhile the Belsey family is facing problems of its own, as they deal with the fallout of Howard's affair with his colleague and family friend Claire. Zora and Levi both become friends with Carl, an African-American man of a poorer background than their own middle-class lifestyle. Zora uses him as a poster child for her campaign to allow talented non-students in university classes. For Levi, Carl is a source of identity, as a member of a more 'authentic' black culture than Levi considers his own background to be.
7673895	/m/0268hxn	The Stars are Ours!	Andre Norton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Moon, Mars and Venus have been explored and found unsuitable for colonization. Back on the Earth, two very different factions compete to determine the future of humanity: the Free Scientists, who refuse to accept political, racial and religious divisions, and the nationalists. Armed men seize control of one of the space stations orbiting the planet, convert it into a weapon, and (perhaps accidentally) devastate most of the world's heavily-populated areas. A fanatic named Arturo Renzi rises up, blaming the catastrophe on the scientists and "techneers" and espousing a return to a simpler, less technological life. When he is assassinated, the Free Scientists are hunted down. Within a period of three days, most are killed; the few remaining survivors are either enslaved by the ruling Peacemen of the Company of Pax or go into hiding, to be tracked down one by one in the following years. Society is structured into three classes, the Peacemen nobility and their landsmen overseers, a vast peasantry, and the work-slaves, composed of actual or suspected scientists. Most technology is rejected and civilization ebbs. Chemist Lars Nordis, his daughter Dessie, and younger brother Dard, are among the lucky ones. They escape the great purge (though Lars is crippled as a result) and find a precarious refuge on a small farm. There, Lars continues his research as best he can and stays in touch with an underground network of scientists working on some great project. One day, Lars finishes his work and notifies his contacts. As a precaution, he makes Dard and Dessie memorize what seems to them to be meaningless words and patterns. But before they can be taken to the last secret stronghold of the scientists, the suspicious local landsman, Hew Folley, calls in the Peacemen to raid their home. Dard and Dessie escape, but Lars is killed. Dard contacts Sach, an agent of the scientists, who agrees to guide them to the refuge. Once inside, Dard learns that the scientists and their supporters are feverishly building a starship to escape the tyranny. They desperately need what Lars was working on - suspended animation. Only it can bring the stars within reach, for the journey will take many, many years. The information that Dard and Dessie had memorized turns out to be what they have been waiting for. But the scientists are racing against time, for the Peacemen are hunting for them. Before they can leave, there is one more task. They need to plot a course using a computer. The only one they know of that still works is located in Pax headquarters. Dard volunteers to lead pilot-astrogator Simba Kimber to it, since he visited the place years ago. They succeed, though they barely avoid capture, and manage to return with the priceless calculations. Then the refuge is found and comes under attack. Fighting a desperate rearguard action, the defenders manage to hold off the Peacemen long enough to blast off. Then, trusting in Lars' invention, they set their course and undergo suspended animation. When they awaken (though a few never do), they find themselves near a star with a hospitable planet. They land and begin to build their new colony. While exploring the surroundings, they discover a cargo container; though they detected no signs of technology from orbit, the planet may still be inhabited by an intelligent race. Dard goes along on a scouting expedition. The explorers find the remains of a road, which leads to a war-wrecked, abandoned city. While travelling in their rocket sled, they barely survive being shot down by decrepit, automated anti-aircraft guns. The sled can barely fly, so some of the explorers have to walk back. When they return, they find a thriving settlement. Soon afterwards, Dessie protects a "sea baby" from small flying "dragons". It turns out that the creature is intelligent. Its parents appear out of the ocean and retrieve their offspring. Seeing that the humans are friendly, their tribe or clan is soon trading goods and information. They are telepathic and can communicate with the newcomers if they hold hands. They reveal that they were once the slaves of the species that built the city. They escaped when the Others warred with each other. Now there are none of the Others left on the continent, but they still live across the sea. But that is a problem for another day. For now, the humans have found a new home.
7675887	/m/0268kqv	A Fortunate Life			{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 The autobiography begins at his birth. Albert Barnett Facey was born in Maidstone, Victoria, Australia, in 1894. His father died on the Goldfields of Western Australia in 1896 of typhoid fever and Albert's mother left her children to the care of their grandmother shortly afterwards. In 1899 he moved from Victoria to Western Australia in the care of his grandmother, Mrs. Jane Carr (born 1832 - died 1932), and three of his six older siblings: Roy, Eric and Myra. Most of his childhood was spent in the Wickepin area. He started working on farms at the age of eight and had little education and therefore could not read or write. As a child he taught himself to read and write. By the age of 14 he was an experienced bushman, and at 18 a professional boxer. Badly injured at Gallipoli, he suffered severe problems which later were the cause of his death. In August 1915 during the First World War, in which two of his brothers, Joseph and Roy, were killed. While recuperating he met his future wife Evelyn Mary Gibson and they were married in Bunbury in August 1916. The Faceys lived in East Perth before returning to Wickepin six years later with their children, where they lived until 1934. His wife died in 1976. The couple had seven children - the eldest, Barney, was killed during the Second World War - and twenty-eight grandchildren.
7678228	/m/0268n1h	Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher	Bruce Coville	1992	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While running away from bullies Freddy and Howard, Jeremy Thatcher wanders into a strange magic shop, where the owner is cranky old man by the name of Elives. Jeremy soon finds what he believes to be a giant marble. After examining it, Jeremy asks the old man how much it is; Elives tells Jeremy that he "doesn't really want" the egg. However, Jeremy persists, persuading the old man to let him hold the egg. When he does, it warms to his touch. Elives then lets him buy the egg for a quarter. He tells Jeremy, "You don't want it, but it wants you." He warns Jeremy to take good care of it. Jeremy finds his way home and reads the instruction sheet Elives had given him, surprised to find information on hatching a dragon egg, and that he has been chosen to raise the hatchling until she is old enough to return to her world. He does not believe at first, but then he hatches the egg in the moonlight, while reciting the poem: "Full moon's light to wake the egg,/Full moon's light to hatch it;/Midsummer Night will crack the world,/But St. John's Day will patch it." He brings the dragon up to his room, and is astonished to find that the instruction sheet had changed to one for feeding and caring for a young dragon. Though invisible to most people, Jeremy still struggles with raising her and keeping her a secret. But Mary Lou, somebody he hates can see the dragon. He goes to the library and talks to Miss Hyacinth Priest, who gives him some books on dragons, though he discovers nothing very useful. However, when he directly asks her for a book on caring for dragons, she hands him a strange book, amazingly written by Elives himself. On his way back home, he talks to Mary Lou Hutton, much against his will. However, he finds that she has read many of the books he has, they begin to form a friendship. He finds his dragon, and after feeding her chicken livers, Jeremy nicknames her Tiamat, as he is not allowed to know her true given name, and continues to develop better communicative skills with her. His time at school is growing more and more miserable. Suddenly, after feeling a strong sense of fear and pain, he realizes it is coming from Tiamat, and rushes home to discover Tiamat had shed her skin, and that Grief, the golden retriever, had tried to pick her up with his mouth while she was on the floor. This provoked her to attack the dog, and hurt herself as well. Then, Mary walks in, and gasps - she can see the dragon, and Jeremy momentarily forgets the situation because he is intrigued. However, soon enough, he tells her to leave him alone, and Mary leaves in a huff. At the Sunday dinner party with the Huttons, Jeremy and Mary glare at each other at first, but quickly grow friendly once more, using the same topic, books. Dinner soon turns into disaster, as Tiamat had escaped from her room, and along with the cats and Grief, wreaks havoc, ruining the dinner. Though nobody blames Jeremy (indeed, Dr. Thatcher was sitting on the floor, laughing), he feels a sense of guilt anyway. The next day, at school, Tiamat comes, responding to Jeremy's feelings of sadness. As Mr. Kravitz talks about the art contest, Jeremy grows angrier and angrier, as Mr. Kravitz is giving out the details in a very insulting manner. Tiamat, once again responding to his feelings, gets 'revenge', and puts Mr. Kravitz's foot on fire. This prompts the angry man to ban the class from the contest, incurring more guilt in Jeremy. As he is going home, he finally finds Fat Peter, being tortured by Fred. He rescues the cat, and Tiamat saves him when Fred tries to beat Jeremy up. Tiamat is slightly hurt in the process. When he goes home, he asks his father for some antiseptic salve, and takes some extra for Tiamat. Something strange happens here, as Dr. Thatcher looks in the exact place Tiamat was sitting, and mutters something about being overworked, while rubbing his eyes. Jeremy finds that he has received a letter from Elives, stating that he must bring Tiamat back to the shop, with all her shed skin and baby teeth and egg shells, on Midsummer Night. His dad informs him that Midsummer Night is on June 23. However, the two have formed a strong bond and Jeremy is saddened when she must return to her world. He moves Tiamat over to a horse stall in his barn, and Mary Lou helps him by bringing in some milk everyday. He then goes to face Kravitz. After telling him that he did it, he is a little surprised when Mr. Kravitz does not believe him. He then blurts out, asking Mr. Kravitz if he hates Jeremy. This puts a pause to the man's talk, and slowly, Mr. Kravitz reveals that he does not hate Jeremy, but he is jealous - Jeremy is very talented at art, but has no discipline. Jeremy is very taken back by this, but understands it. He then repeats that he is responsible for the hotfoot, and Kravitz allows all of his class - besides him - to participate in the contest. He is sad now, but Tiamat lifts his spirits - quite literally, as she introduces the concept of riding to him. He then goes for midnight flights with Tiamat, looking at his hometown from above, and watching her hunt. His doctor notes that he is suffering from general exhaustion, and orders earlier bedtime. Jeremy is happy for an excuse to sleep earlier, so can he have more energy from his midnight flights with Tiamat - though not too many of those are left, he sadly notes. Soon, the 23rd arrives, and he goes back to the shop. To his surprise, he meets Miss Priest, who seems to be involved in the whole thing. She builds the dragon gate using the pieces jeremy bought, and when Jeremy tries to help, he accidentally shoves a sharp tooth into his palm. Miss Priest is unconcerned, and points out why - Jeremy's hand is fine, with one thin white line left on his palm. She then shows a similar line on her own palm. She then repeats the poem he had spoken to hatch the egg, albeit with two small but important changes - she says 'All Hallow's Eve', instead of 'St. John's Day', and 'Crack the World' with 'Break your heart'. After an emotional goodbye, Tiamat goes through the gate to her world, and Jeremy leaves the shop through the side door. Jeremy is now very disheartened at his loss, and shows it in his actions. He watches Specimen as he paints a store window, but reveals he no longer has any urge to draw, which raises concern from his parents. He avoids the library, but he soon receives note from Miss Priest stating that he may keep the book he took out, as it is part of her own private collection, and she wants to give it to him as a gift. He ponders the poem she had said during the Midsummer Ceremony, but doesn't understand it. On Halloween, his parents throw a large party, and Jeremy meets Miss Priest there, to his surprise. While he is resting in the barn, lost in sad thoughts, he views colors in his head, and soon hears Tiamat's voice. He then realizes that he is connected to her mind, and that he can see her world through her eyes and can talk to her telepathically. He is so happy that the next day, he takes out his pencils, and begins to draw.
7680068	/m/0268pp8	Hume's Fork				 Hume's Fork is a novel about a philosophy professor named Legare "Greazy" Hume. He attends a conference in Charleston, South Carolina, with his eccentric colleague Saul Grossman and has to stay, much to his annoyance, with his family. A professional wrestling tournament takes place in Charleston at the same time, and soon the wrestlers philosophize while the philosophers begin to act like wrestlers. Hume works through philosophical problems while facing his own identity crisis. The title comes from a distinction made by the 18th-century British philosopher David Hume while also referring to several personal choices that Legare Hume must make.
7680498	/m/0268p_7	Island of the Aunts				 ". The three sisters take care of injured and sick creatures, but the work is getting too much for them as they get older. They decide to go to London to "choose" (kidnap) children to help them. Etta kidnaps a young girl named Minette, whose constantly bickering parents are separated. Coral brings a boy named Fabio, originally from Brazil, where he is learning to be an "English gentleman" at the horrible Graymarsh Towers. Myrtle is forced to bring a boy named Lambert, whom she thinks is horrid, after he accidentally sniffs chloroform. When Dorothy is released from prison, Betty sends the spoiled Boo-Boo and Little One with her to the island to be looked after when she breaks her hip. On the island, Minette and Fabio are quickly put to work, including carrying stranded jellyfish back to the sea and holding an eel with scabies. Meanwhile, Lambert is kept in his room because he refuses to help. One day, though, Etta introduces them to a small family of mermaids, part of the menagerie of exotic creatures who sought refuge on the island. The children also meet the Stoorworm, a wingless Icelandic dragon, the egg-bound boobrie (a bird apparently similar to the dodo, but vastly larger) and even talking with the selkies (seals) who can change into humans (they were told if you stab a selkie with a knife it will turn into a human.) Lambert is shocked at the discovery, but Fabio tells them they are hallucinations caused by drugs put in their food. This keeps Lambert quiet, but more determined to be rescued. After some time, the Great Kraken begins swimming the seas to bring peace to the waters once more. Initially accompanied with his child, he leaves it with the Aunts because it is too young to travel the world with its father. The little Kraken instantly misses his father but quickly befriends Minette and Fabio. Back in London, word spreads about the two "kidnappers". Minette's parents have a "war" as they try to outdo each other's "sorrow for their loss" in the news and Fabio's strict grandparents consider suing the police for not doing their job. Lambert, though, finally gets a hold of his mobilephone, which he uses to call his father, Mr. Sprott, for help. When Sprott reaches his son and sees all the fantastical creatures on the Island as a business opportunity, he captures them. He reports the island's location to the police who immediately fly off to rescue Minette and Fabio. The two quickly come up with an idea and lead the police to believe Boo-Boo and Little One are the aunt's victims. They are quickly flown back to London and leave the real children free to attempt to rescue their friends, though eventually the Kraken returns and overpowers Sprott's yacht just when all hope is lost. Everyone is rescued, though Sprott and Lambert believe everything that happened was all an hallucination. The Kraken blesses the island and chooses to bring his son with him on his journey. With the "kidnappers" finally revealed, the aunts are put on trial. Minette and Fabio, however, present an argument that convinces the jury that they are innocent. Fabio is allowed to return home to Brazil, and Minette's parents call a truce. The aunts write a will, leaving the island to both Minette and Fabio, who promise to return one day.
7680803	/m/0268q64	Yavana Rani	Sandilyan		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts in Poompuhar, a port city that was an important harbour for the Cholas during a time of trade between the seafaring nations and Tamil Nadu. Ilanchezhiyan is the commander in chief of the eastern regiment of Cholas. The army includes both Yavanas (Romans) and Tamils. When walking across the beach sands of Poompuhar, Ilanchezhiyan finds a beautiful Yavana woman gasping for breath on the bank of the Kaveri River. He takes her to his palace and gets assistance from Hippalaas, one of the many Greek soldiers in the Chola army, in rescuing the woman. Hippalaas is scared to go near the woman, and instead salutes her. Ilanchezhiyan learns from Hippalaas that the woman is of royal origin after seeing the royal emblem of a swan on her golden bracelet. Meanwhile, the Yavana chief of the fort hears of the queen's presence in Poompuhar. He sets out to capture Ilanchezhiyan and Hippalaas for taking the queen. Ilanchezhiyan escapes the Yavana soldiers, using the queen as a hostage. With his sword on her back, he rides away into the thick forest on his white Arabic horse. Tiberius, a great naval commander of the time, who had arrived with the Greek queen to the shores of Poompuhar, chases Ilanchezhiyan in an attempt to rescue the queen. The queen falls in love with Ilanchezhiyan, however, and helps him escape from Tiberius. Illanchezhiyan flees with the queen and Hippalaas. Brahmananda, a monk and politician, helps them escape through a secret tunnel into a temple. They disguise themselves as monks performing bhajans, and emerge from the temple's sanctum sanctorum. Ilanchezhiyan learns from Brahmananda of the murder of Ilanchetchenni, the emperor of the Chola kingdom, by his enemies. He agrees to spy for Brahmananda in Uraiyur, the capital of the ancient Cholas. During the mission, Ilanchezhiyan is captured and imprisoned in a cave by Irungovel, the slayer of the king. Ilanchezhiyan escapes to see a palace burning on the other side of Amaravathi river. He rescues a handsome teenage youth (except for his charred legs) from seven armed soldiers. Ilanchezhiyan helps the youth to a palace, where his lover, Poovazhagi, was imprisoned. It is revealed that the youth is the prince of the Chola kingdom. With the help of Ilanchezhiyan, the prince escapes into the forest. Ilanchezhiyan and the Yavana queen run in the opposite direction, straight into Tiberius. Tiberius poisons Illanchezhiyan and crowns the Yavana as the Queen of Poompuhar on the day of Venus festival. The queen knows the ancient Venus festival occurs on the date of Indrathiruvizha of Poompuhar. Meanwhile, Ilanchezhiyan finds himself in a ship en route to Greece and learns that he was drugged and will be thrown to the lions. Hippalaas rescues him from the ship by throwing him into sea. They survive a shark attack, and a powerful wave takes them to shore. When Ilanchezhiyan opens his eyes, he finds himself being sold as a slave along with Hippalaas. Ilanchezhiyan and Hippalaas return to sea as slaves to be sold in Greece. The slave ship is then attacked and captured by pirates of Erythraean sea. The pirate captain is persuaded by Illanchezhiyan to invade Ghana (present day Yemen or Oman). The pirates are taken as prisoners by Iliasu, referred to in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as Eleazus, the King of Ghana. The king forces Ilanchezhiyan to become a disciple of the head priest. Ilanchezhiyan lures the priest on board the slave ship for a religious debate. With the help of Alima, the adopted daughter of the lady commander Iliyasu, and his slave friends, Ilanchezhiyan travels back to Tamil Nadu. The political situation becomes tense when Illanchezhiyan arrives. Tiberius builds a fortress impregnable to anyone from sea or land. The fort has two mechanical towers which can throw spears for several miles. Illanchezhiyan is in the dense forest of Guna Nadu, when he sees a huge army disguised as farmers. The army destroys tanks, ponds, farmlands and buildings under the orders of Illanchezhiyan. Irungovel, the assassin of the emperor, wages war with them but is defeated. Illanchezhiyan and the army enter the fortress of Poompuhar on the day of the Venus festival, and capture the signposts and mechanical towers. The key to the mechanical towers is given to Illanchezhiyan by the queen. Tiberius, his dreams of a Greek empire in Tamil Nadu shattered and now surrounded by the enemy army, stabs her before Illanchezhiyan can run to her rescue. Illanchezhiyan's spear throwing expert commander kills Tiberius, but a second too late. Illanchezhiyan cries for his beloved dead queen. The novel ends with the rightful ownership of the Chola Empire being given to the prince (whom Illanchezhiyan had saved earlier) known later as the legendary Karikala Chola. Illanchezhiyan marries his lover Poovazhagi and then assumes his post as the commander for the Chola Empire. ta:யவன ராணி (புதினம்)
7682992	/m/0268s74	Fever 1793	Laurie Halse Anderson	2000	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Matilda Cook lives with her hardworking mother, grandfather, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and Eliza, a freed slave who works as their cook, in the apartment on top of their family coffeehouse in Philadelphia. Matilda ("Mattie") Cook is 14 years old with big dreams for her family's coffeehouse. When the yellow fever epidemic breaks out during the summer, people leave the city or die. Matilda realizes she has to fight for her own life and her loved ones. Her father died from a fall from a ladder. In 1793 yellow fever is spreading through Philadelphia. The people close to Matilda are dying. First, many of her neighbors are infected, then her childhood friends, including Polly, their serving girl, then Matilda's mother. She and her grandfather try to flee to a family friend's home in the country, but they are left behind because of guards patrolling the path. (They kept the sick out of other cities, and thought her grandfather ill because of his cough.) Matilda falls ill with the fever and is taken to a hospital by her grandfather. They return to their house, to discover it was robbed by thieves. The next night, men broke in while Matilda was sleeping. She had screamed, which woke her grandfather up. Grandfather tries to save Mattie, and ends up being killed when he flies back toward the stairs after shooting an old rifle at the thieves. After this, Matilda is desperate and searches for Eliza, finding Nell, another fever orphan along the way. Finding Eliza, Matilda recuperates with her family for a while. Eliza's two nephews and Nell become infected with yellow fever. Matilda and Eliza take them to the Cook Coffeehouse, but available medicines have little effect. Finally, the first frost arrives, killing the mosquitoes and ending the epidemic. Near the end of the book, Lucille, Matilda's mother, comes back with the President. She is well but needs to take naps and take care of her health. At the end of the book, Matilda decides to take up a new job, as owner of the coffeehouse with Eliza, and life returns to normal in Philadelphia.
7683144	/m/0268sbz	Sid!	Sid Hartman	1997-08	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The book starts by talking about Sid as a kid. Sid did the news run in West Minneapolis after dropping out of high school as a junior. Sid's first reporting job was for the Gophers and was a big supporter of the Lakers. The story then progresses to sports, when pro basketball came to Minnesota. He told how newspapers had interest in sports coming to town because it would sell newspapers. He also says that the Lakers had a huge dynasty from 1947-1957 with Mikel and Mikkelson. He goes on to say that the Twins were a very good team when they even though they thought differently. The Vikings came in 1961 and had a shabby team until Bud Grant came in. He brought the Vikings to 4 Super Bowls and would trust Sid with his life. He then transitions into saying that the Twins weren't as popular in the 1970s as they were in the 1960s. He says that the biggest mistake Calvin Griffith made was firing Martin. Many practical jokes were played on Sid, and Sid may have been the reason that only a few reporters are allowed to talk to officials. Then the books goes on to say that the only way the Viking would stay in Minnesota was if a new stadium was built. Calvin was against a dome. Sid was getting death threats in phone calls. They built the Metrodome for football and had the minimum requirements for baseball. He notes that the Twins were on the verge of going to Tampa Bay when Carl Pohlad bought the Twins after Twin Cities business owners bought the cheap seats for games to get Calvin Griffith to resign. After that, the Twins did well. They won the World Series in 1987 and 1991. The Twin Cities got a lot of sporting events in 1991-1992. They had the US Open, the Twins made it to the World Series, the Super Bowl was held in the Metrodome, and the North Stars made it to the Stanley Cup Finals. He goes on to talk about Herb Brooks and that coached the North Stars and the US Olympic team. In 1980 his Olympic team got the gold medal in hockey. He talks about the 1997 Gopher basketball team and their success made it to the Final Four.
7685271	/m/0268vhw	Ghost Story	Peter Straub		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with a man named Donald Wanderley traveling with a young girl whom he has apparently kidnapped. Eventually Donald and the girl arrive in Panama City, Florida, at which point the novel jumps back in time to the events of the previous winter. Living in the small New York town of Milburn are four elderly men who are members of a group called the Chowder Society. John Jaffrey, a doctor; Lewis Benedikt, a retired entrepreneur; Sears James, an attorney; and Ricky Hawthorne, an attorney and James' partner. For the past fifty years these best friends have gathered together and told each other stories and have been great companions. Once upon a time, however, their group consisted of five members. One year earlier Jaffrey had thrown a party at his house in honor of a visiting actress, and their fifth member, Edward Wanderly, had died in an upstairs bedroom during the festivities. When his body was found there was a look of absolute horror on his face, as if he had been frightened to death. Ever since that night the friends have been plagued with horrible nightmares, and have taken to telling each other ghost stories. At one of their meetings, Sears tells them a The Turn of the Screw-like ghost story about when he was a young man. Before deciding to attend law school James had taken a teaching position in a rural community. He developed a fascination with one of his students, a young boy named Fenny Bate. Fenny and his sister were ostracized by the community, and upon making some inquiries he finds out why. The two children once had an older brother named Gregory, and it was generally believed that Gregory sexually molested his young brother. The parents of the siblings were dead, and Gregory was their guardian. One day while repairing a roof Gregory fell off the ladder and was killed, and someone thought they saw the two young Bate children running away from the scene. Sears tells his friends that in time he began to see a threatening young man hanging around the school, and he eventually comes to believe it to be the spirit of Gregory Bate. Sears attempted to save Fenny from the clutches of his dead brother, but to no avail. Fenny died, and Sears was legally obligated to finish out the school year and then he left the small community. The next morning after telling his story Sears and Ricky are called out to the farm of one of their clients, who has found some mutilated livestock in his field. Later in the car Sears reveals to Ricky that the previous night's story was not fictitious, but had actually happened to him in his youth. Sears also admits that he is scared, as are all the members of the Chowder Society. They decide to write to Edward's nephew Donald Wanderly, as Donald had written an occult novel and they think that his research abilities might be employed to good use on their behalf. Before Donald can arrive, however, Jaffrey dies in an apparent suicide by jumping off of a bridge. Donald arrives just as the funeral is coming to a close. The three remaining members of the Society tell him that they want him to investigate any possible avenues that he might deem appropriate. Several years previously Donald's twin brother David had died under mysterious circumstances, and it led him to write his horror novel. Donald tells them the story of what he thinks actually happened. Several years previously he had landed a teaching position at Berkeley on the strength of his first novel. While there he began seeing a beautiful grad student named Alma Mobley. At first he was inseparable from her, and there was talk of marriage. But over time he began to notice strange things about her. He described it as more of a sensation, but he felt that there was something unnatural about Alma. He stopped seeing her as much, his work suffered, and one day Alma simply vanished. Upon investigating he found out that a great many things that Alma had told him about her past were fabrications. A few months later David called him and told him that he and Alma were engaged, and that he wanted things to be right between Donald and his fiance. Donald tried to warn David, but to no avail. And soon thereafter David was dead. Not long after this Lewis Benedikt dies in the forest, and Sears and Ricky decide that is time to tell Donald the most terrible story that the Chowder Society knows...and it is a true tale. 50 years previously a young woman named Eva Galli had moved to the town. She was in her early twenties and all five of the young men fell head over heels for her. One night in 1929—not long after Black Monday—Eva came to see them, but she was not acting like herself. She made sexual advances and belittled them. There was a struggle, and Eva fell and hit her head. Believing her to be dead, they conspired to hide the body by putting it in a car and driving it into a deep pond. But at the last moment Eva's body disappeared from the inside of the car, and there was a lynx looking at them from the other bank. Donald begins his research and quickly comes to the conclusion that what they are dealing with is a manitou, or some other kind of shape-shifting creature. He also believes that Alma Mobley is actually Eva Galli. Donald theorizes that since these creatures live much longer than humans Eva waited fifty years before returning for her revenge. Donald, Ricky, and Sears are joined in their struggle by Peter Barnes, a young man whose mother was killed by these creatures. Sears is ambushed and killed in his car, and the survivors now realize that Gregory and a reanimated Fenny are helping Eva in her endeavors. Gregory tells them that a woman named Florence de Peyser helped resurrect him, and it seems that Eva is also subservient to the de Peyser woman. Gregory and Fenny attack Peter, Don, and Ricky in a movie theater, but they are both killed in the ensuing struggle, leaving Donald to realize that though they have other-worldly powers, the creatures are not truly immortal. The survivors track Eva down and defeat her, but she escapes. Exhausted, Ricky leaves Milburn for an extended vacation with his wife, and Peter prepares for college. Donald keeps watch to see what form Eva will next appear in, and believes it to be the little girl in the opening part of the book. While in Florida, Eva emerges from the form of the little girl and attempts to twist Donald's mind. He is able to resist and kills her after she tries to take the form of a wasp to escape. Donald then prepares to go to San Francisco to hunt down the de Peyser woman.
7686901	/m/0268wz_	A Far Sunset	Edmund Cooper		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The starship Gloria mundi, built and manned by the United States of Europe, lands on the planet Altair Five in the year 2032. Most of the crew mysteriously disappears soon after touchdown, leaving only the psychiatrist Paul Marlow, the book's protagonist. The planet is inhabited by primeval humanoids. A central theme in the novel is the clash between Marlowe's rational worldview and the natives' superstitious and often brutal culture. Paul Marlow (pronounced Poul Mer Lo by the Bayani tribe he lives amongst) gains a leading position in the primitive society. He uses that power to educate the alien race, enabling them to make inventions that improves their society, such as the wheel, the ball-bearing and the axle. Paul Marlow also demystifies the Bayanis' religion, by discovering its factual origin — thereby uncovering that the humans of Altair Five share their ancestry with humans of Earth and other worlds in the Milky Way. While Marlow adapts to the simplicity and naivety of the Bayani lifestyle, he starts seeing the complex and advanced culture of the Earth as absurd. When after two Bayani years he is contacted by a starship come to his rescue, he considers staying on Altair Five.
7688307	/m/0268y54	Gift				 Gift is a story that revolves around high school student Haruhiko Amami and his strong connection to Gift's mysterious power. The town of Narasakicho, where Gifts story takes place, has two distinguishing characteristics: a rainbow that seems permanently fixed in the sky no matter the weather, and an ability known as Gift possessed by all its inhabitants. Gift's power can only be evoked by each person once in a lifetime, and is able to grant a single miracle. To be successful, a Gift must reflect the shared feelings of both the giver and the receiver. If the feelings are not mutual, the Gift is distorted and has the ability to wreak havoc on the surrounding area. When this happens, a black streak appears in the rainbow above town until Gift is used correctly. The story begins as Haruhiko's younger sister, Riko Fukimine, returns home after several years away. Beginning with her appearance, Haruhiko's life starts to change very quickly and feelings of the past begin to surface once more.
7688547	/m/0268y9m	Darkly Dreaming Dexter	Jeff Lindsay		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's protagonist, Dexter Morgan, works for the Miami-Metro Police Department as a forensic blood spatter pattern analyst. In his spare time, Dexter is a serial killer who kills murderers, rapists and other undesirables he believes have escaped justice. Dexter's murders are directed by an inner voice he refers to as the "Dark Passenger", who keeps prodding Dexter to kill something. Once he has done so, the voice is satisfied for a while, but always comes back. Flashbacks reveal that his foster father, a police detective named Harry Morgan, recognized early on that Dexter was a violent sociopath with an innate need to kill, and taught him how to kill people who have gotten away with murder as a way to channel his homicidal urges in a "positive" direction. Harry also taught the boy to be a careful, meticulous killer, to leave no clues, and to be absolutely sure his victims are guilty before killing them. Dexter calls these rules "the code of Harry." Dexter manages his double life reasonably well for years, but his idyll is disturbed when he becomes involved in the investigation of a series of killings of prostitutes. As the "Tamiami Slasher" rampages through the city, he begins sending messages to Dexter, who finds the series of terrifying crimes engrossing and fascinating. Meanwhile, his adoptive sister Deborah sees the case as her ticket out of the Vice unit and into Homicide. Dexter is torn between helping her catch the killer and a desire to sit back and admire the artistry and skill of a fellow killer's work.
7690055	/m/0268zpr	One Hand Clapping	Lise Leroux	1961	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Howard has an unusual talent: he has a photographic memory. He uses his talent to enter, and win, a mega-money TV quiz show. He then discloses another gift: he is clairvoyant and can predict racing results. He gambles his winnings on race horses and the couple become extremely wealthy and travel the world, staying in luxury hotels. On their return, however, Howard, disgusted by the corruption of the world they have seen - and troubled by prophetic glimpses of a coming decline in civilisation - declares that they must commit suicide together by barbiturates. Janet resists, killing Howard with a coal hammer. Janet flees with the remainder of their money, to begin a new life abroad, taking her husband with her in a chest.
7691126	/m/0268_v6	Barren Ground				 Dorinda Oakley, daughter of a land‐poor farmer in Virginia, at 20 goes to work in Nathan Pedlar's store. She falls in love with Jason Greylock, weak‐willed son of the village doctor, and forgets her purpose of helping her father to rebuild the farm, but the day before their planned wedding Jason is forced to marry a former fiancée. Bitterly disillusioned and pregnant, Dorinda seeks work in New York, where she is injured and miscarries in a street accident. She is attended by Dr. Faraday, who later employs her as a nurse for his children. A young doctor proposes to her, but she refuses him, determined to “find something else in life.” After her father's death, Dorinda returns to the family farm, which is impoverished and overgrown with broomsedge. Having studied scientific agriculture in New York, she introduces progressive methods, gradually returning the “barren ground” to fertility and creating a prosperous dairy farm. Her mother becomes an invalid, after her brother Rufus is questioned for murder, so that Dorinda must carry on with only the aid of a few farm laborer. After her mother's death she marries Nathan Pedlar, to provide a home for his children, and after he dies she shelters Jason, now penniless and ill from excessive drinking. He soon dies.
7693496	/m/02692j8	Through Violet Eyes	Stephen Woodworth	2004-08-31	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set in an alternate present-day setting where a small percentage of people are born with violet irises and the ability to channel the dead. Naturally, the government has stepped in and regulated their lives, using them as tools in murder trials. When it becomes clear that a serial killer is targeting the Violets themselves, FBI agent Dan Atwater is paired with Natalie Lindstrom, a Violet, to investigate. Moments after dying, the victims take over Natalie's consciousness, bringing their tale of the Faceless Man who killed them and their suspicion that he may be working with someone on the other side.
7693679	/m/02692pf	With Red Hands	Stephen Woodworth	2004-12-28	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Society has accepted the idea that death is not the end, and courtrooms regularly employ Violets to introduce testimony from murder victims. When a teenage boy is put on trial for shooting his wealthy parents, a well-known Violet takes the stand and channels the dead parents to confirm that it was someone other than their son who pulled the trigger. Meanwhile, Natalie Lindstrom, a Violet who has retired from the job and is working hard to prevent her daughter, Callie, from entering it, examines the case and discovers that the Violet on the stand might be falsifying the postmortem testimony, something previously thought impossible. Natalie's also grappling with her mother, a Violet institutionalized years ago; her mother says she has been visited by the Thresher, a ruthless killer who refuses to stop his ghoulish work even though he has been executed. The separate stories collide by way of the "Needlepoint killer," whose viciousness makes Hannibal Lecter seem like a Sunday School teacher. (1)
7693730	/m/02692qt	In Golden Blood	Stephen Woodworth	2005-10-25	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Natalie Lindstrom has a gift: the power to speak to the dead, to solve crimes by interviewing murder victims. But now Natalie wants to escape. Escape from the voices that fill her head. Escape from the organization that has used her as a crime-solving tool...and now wants to recruit her daughter. So Natalie takes a job as far from crime and punishment as she can get: with an archaeologist in the mountains of Peru. Her job: to find a trove of priceless artifacts &mdash; by channeling those who lived and died at an ancient Incan site. But in the towering Andes, Natalie enters a 500-year-old storm of betrayal, murder, greed, and rage &mdash; and she cannot silence the voices of the dead. The slaughtered reach out to her. The slaughterers boast of their crimes. Alone, cut off from her family, Natalie faces a chilling realization: every truth she uncovers is leading her one step closer to a terror beyond imagining. (1) age requirement 13+
7693831	/m/02692vl	From Black Rooms	Stephen Woodworth	2006-10-31	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Natalie Lindstrom has finally left the underworld behind for a new career in the art world. As a former Violet, an elite crime-fighter with the power to channel murder victims, Natalie is now using her paranormal gift to summon the spirits of legendary painters. A deadly man from her past has escaped from prison, and he is being targeted against Natalie. But first he must help contact a deceased geneticist whose most intriguing experiment was brutally interrupted: an attempt to manufacture Violets. To protect her young daughter and herself, Natalie must search for the scientist’s only living test subject &mdash; a handsome but tortured artist to whom she is dangerously attracted. For he is caught in the grip of two opposing forces, one that wants his survival, another that wants him &mdash; and anyone connected with him &mdash; destroyed.
7694517	/m/02693ng	I Am a Barbarian	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1967	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is pitched as a free translation of the memoirs of Britannicus, 25 years the slave of Caligula, emperor of Rome from AD 37 to 41 who is historically known for being insane.
7696829	/m/02696cv	Firebird			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Firebird is the third daughter of the Queen of Naetai and a military pilot. Because she is a wastling, an unwanted heir to the throne, she is considered expendable. Leading her tagwing fighter group of wastlings on a suicide mission as part of a venture to capture a Federate world outpost, she is captured by Federate colonel Brennen Caldwell, a telepathic intelligence officer seeking to capture an enemy fighter for interrogation. She attempts honorable suicide by poison for her failure, but Caldwell thwarts her medically. Under telepathic duress, her military and political knowledge is used by Caldwell to save the Federate outpost. Firebird begins to see the dishonorable tactics of her mother's government for what they are. Caldwell, in addition to being the most powerful Ehretan telepath of his generation, is the most senior telepath in a government that mistrusts them for their abilities. In addition to the government's mistrust of his people, Caldwell is questioned by his own people for his deep connection with Firebird. In her, he sensed a strong possibility of connaturality, a deep personality congruity that is essential for telepaths to have a successful relationship in marriage. Among his people there is a strong belief that, as the strongest telepath among them he should not marry outside his people, diluting the genes that allow their telepathy. Caldwell rejects his people's attitudes towards non Ehretans and continues his growing friendship with his prisoner, offering life and a future to one who believed herself as good as dead. Following Netaia's failure on Veroh, the queen is forced to honerable suicide and Firebird's sister Carradee ascends the throne. Caldwell is assigned to Naetai as the Federate representative and brings Firebird with him. While Carradee favors a conciliatory posture with the Federacy, their other sister, Phoena, secretly plots the overthrow of Federate occupation along with members of the nobility, by secretly building an ecological weapon of great power. After several political and military dangers are overcome by Caldwell and Firebird, they ignore his orders and carry out a special ops mission to destroy Phoena's research lab. Once all is settled, Firebird and Caldwell accept their relationship (over the continued objection) of his people and become engaged. Firebird is a military pilot assigned to a risky venture to capture a Federate world outpost. Because she is a wastling, she is considered expendable. Leading her tagwing fighter group, she is captured by Federate colonel Brennen Caldwell, a telepath who senses something special about her. She attempts honorable suicide by poison for her failure, but Caldwell thwarts her medically. Under duress, her military knowledge is used by Caldwell to save the Federate outpost. Firebird begins to see the dishonorable tactics of her people for what they are. Caldwell, in addition to being the most powerful Ehretan telepath of his generation, is also heir to religious prophecies among his people, and the most senior telepath in a government that mistrusts them for their abilities. Caldwell is promoted to general for his victory in the Veroh battle, as well as his diplomacy with the captured Firebird. In her, he sensed a strong possibility of connaturality, a deep personality congruity that is essential for telepaths to be married. As he has strong convictions against marrying outside his faith, and being barred from proselytizing, much of the book revolves around Caldwell trying to bridge the gap to Firebird by demonstrating the goodness of his spirit to her, offering life and hope to one who believed herself as good as dead. Following Netaia's failure on Veroh, Firebird's sister Carradee ascends the throne after their mother is forced to honorable suicide. She favors a conciliatory posture with the Federacy. Their other sister, Phoena, secretly plots the overthrow of Federate occupation along with members of the nobility, by secretly building an ecological weapon of great power. After several political and military dangers are overcome by Caldwell and Firebird, they ignore his orders and carry out a special ops mission to destroy Phoena's research lab. During the climactic battle, when Caldwell has been incapacitated and his telepathic powers are not available, Firebird casts her faith to the Great Speaker who sung the universe into existence, and strengthened by this, overcomes great odds to successfully neutralize the weapon. The religious differences thus settled, the story ends with Caldwell proposing pair bonding (marriage) to Firebird.
7697505	/m/026971j	Fusion Fire	Kathy Tyers		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens about a year after the events of Firebird with Firebird and new husband Brennen Caldwell being attacked in the middle of the night by someone with telepathic powers, thus of Ehretan heritage. As Sentinels (telepaths aligned with the Federacy) follow a strict moral and ethical code regarding their powers, it is assumed that the Shuhr are behind it. This assumption is strengthened when Caldwell's brother's family is found murdered in their beds&mdash;the Shuhr are attempting again, for the third time in three generations, to wipe out the bloodline associated with the old religious prophecy. The aftermath of the attack reveals Firebird's pregnancy, which they had kept secret for months. The Shuhr assassins are keenly interested, and the Netaian nobility is largely shocked by the thought of a wastling producing offspring, though the news is received warmly by Queen Carradee. Firebird continues her study of Netaian political simulations, hoping to stave off societal collapse of her dysfunctional homeworld. She also studies her new religion and telepathy, having accidentally discovered that the Angelo bloodline carried Ehretan genes (and hence Ehretan powers). Attempting the turn, the most basic mental gesture, repeatedly ends in frustration and failure. Using a suicide attack on a city to distract Caldwell, another attack on her life, by a minor Sentinel officer coopted by the Shuhr, prompts her to success for the first time&mdash;but the experience is unlike any telepath has experienced before, killing the assassin who was in contact with her mind at the time and leaving her in deep shock. A second successful turn, during labor, nearly kills her as well. As this uncontrolled ability threatens any telepath that might be near her, she is quarantined&mdash;even from her newborn sons. Meanwhile, Phoena Angelo continues to chafe while Netaia is under Federate occupation, and her latest scheme involves asking the Shuhr for assistance. However, they mentally dominate her and reduce her to an unwitting pawn, using her as a source for exploring the lost Ehretan gene sequences, as well as pillaging the material wealth of Netaia. Phoena's foppish husband, Tel Tellai, humbles himself by asking Caldwell's assistance in rescuing her, despite the impossible odds. Ongoing diplomatic and military developments force the issue of Phoena's rescue, but Caldwell finally accepts the mission only after a divine vision. Using new technology to amplify his mental abilities, he sets out to infiltrate the Shuhr homeworld of Three Zed in a rescue attempt. He finds Phoena, but is captured. She is tortured to death while the Shuhr enjoyed her psychic screams of pain, at last realizing she'd been played for the fool, and only Brennen is there to mourn her death. The Shuhr leaders extract DNA samples from him for their cloning efforts, and try to force secrets from him. To thwart them, Caldwell gives himself amnesia blocks. Tel, exposed to non-Netaian ideas for the first time, begins to doubt Phoena's character and motives, though he remains fiercely devoted to her. He also comes to a healthy respect for Caldwell, and the Sentinels and Federacy in general. When Ellet Kinsman, a Sentinel officer and Firebird's romantic rival for Caldwell's affections, shows her how she can pursue and rescue Brennen, Firebird (also after divine guidance) seizes the chance, and takes the matured Tel was her copilot. On Netaia, Queen Carradee's rule and reforms are seen as ineffectual and even harmful to the ruling class, who force her to abdicate after her chambers are bombed, almost resulting in the death of Prince Consort Daithi Drake-Angelo. Carradee and Daithi are welcomed to Hesed House, the Sentinel retreat, and Daithi is given better medical care than is available on Netaia. As he begins to recover, the two of them also begin to see the Federacy, especially the gentle faith of the Sentinels, in a new light. Upon arrival at Three Zed, Firebird and Tel are discovered, but she is allowed to free Caldwell before they are both captured again. Tel remains in the shuttle, and is mentally incapacitated by the monitoring Shuhr. Caldwell is a wreck, having faced physical and psychic torture for days, and his self-imposed amnesia has progressed to the point where he cannot even remember who Firebird is. Moreover, his mental powers are chemically blocked. Confronting the most powerful Shuhr telepaths together, Firebird manages her painful turn, and Caldwell latches on to it to jumpstart his own powers temporarily. The fusion of their two epsilon carriers together is more powerful than anyone has experienced before, and they triumph before Firebird faints. Through amnesia and phobia, Caldwell hauls Firebird to the spacecraft, where Tel's mostly untested piloting abilities get them away safely. Upon their return and Caldwell's psi-healing, the Federacy discovers the Shuhr were developing their own psi-amplification and fusion technologies, which would have allowed them to dominate every world in that arm of the galaxy.
7699151	/m/02698cj	Linda and Morris Tannehill		1970		 Chapter 1, If We Don't Know Where We're Going..., notes the growing dissatisfaction among youth; the many problems society faces; and the need for a clear goal rather than just an adversary (e.g. the state). It claims that the authors are not advocating any type of utopia that depends on the infallibility of man in order to function. It contends that if the present system is brought crashing down without valid ideas having been disseminated about how society can function without governmental rule, people will demand a strong leader, and a Hitler will rise to answer their plea. Chapter 2, Man and Society, argues that the nature of man is such that he must think and produce in order to live; and that in order to reach his full potential, he must have the right not only to do these things but to enjoy the rewards of his productive actions. It defines a laissez-faire society as one that "does not institutionalize the initiation of force and in which there are means for dealing with aggression justly when it does occur." It notes that only the possessor of a right can alienate himself from that right. If one does $100 of damage to a taxicab, for instance, then he alienates himself from his right to that $100. The cabbie then has a moral right to use force to collect it. Chapter 3, The Self-Regulating Market, states that state interference causes the buyer, the seller, or both, in a transaction to lose; and that only a voluntary trade can be a completely satisfactory trade. It notes that markets clear; that taxation is economic hemophilia; regulation amounts to slow strangulation; that market monopolies can only attain and maintain monopoly status through excellence and low prices; and that without freedom of the market, no other freedom is meaningful. It criticizes the government for red tape which denies entrepreneurs opportunities to rise out of poverty. Chapter 4, Government &ndash; An Unnecessary Evil, states that government is a coercive monopoly; that democratic governments decide issues largely on the basis of pressure from special interest groups; and that the notion of "a government of laws, not of men" is meaningless because laws must be written and enforced by men, and therefore a government of laws is a government of men. It argues that the eternal vigilance which is held to be the price of liberty is a constant non-productive expenditure of energy, and that is it grossly unreasonable to expect men to keep expending their energy in such a way out of unselfish idealism. It also argues that because of the danger of one interest group using the government to impose laws favoring itself or crippling its opponents, people are constantly in fear of different interest groups. Thus, blacks fear suppression by whites; whites worry about blacks gaining too much power; and any number of other groups, such as labor and management, urbanites and suburbanites, etc. are pitted against each other. Government is identified as a cause of strife. The checks and balances of government are also recognized as a source of waste that is no substitute for external checks such as competition. This chapter identifies many tools by which the government convinces people that government is necessary, such as state schools that brainwash the young into accepting pro-State ideas; investing government with tradition and pomp and identifying it with "our way of life." It also blames people for having a fear of self-responsibility. Chapter 5, A Free and Healthy Economy, begins by noting the difficulties people have in picturing a society radically different than their own. It concludes that poverty would be better addressed by a laissez faire society for many reasons, including the fact that unemployment is caused by the government; that untaxed businesses would have more profits to reinvest in productivity-enhancing technology; that private charities are more efficient than government; that parents would be more likely to avoid having excess children in the absence of social safety nets; etc. It argues that a plethora of choices in education would emerge in a free market. It also notes that the focus of media in a laissez faire society would shift from covering government to covering business and individuals, and that abuses would be checked by reporters looking for stories on aggression or fraud. The chapter argues that the quality of health care could be more efficiently kept at an adequate level through reputation, standards instituted by insurance companies, etc. It also discusses how currency could be provided without government. Chapter 6, Property &ndash; The Great Problem Solver, argues that most social problems could be solved through an increase in the amount and type of property owned. It claims that taxation is theft and that regulation by initiated force is slavery. It argues that it should be possible to claim ownership over the ocean floor, the surface of other planets, corridors of airspace, radio wavelengths, and so on, by being the first to occupy them or otherwise clearly stake out territory. It also argues that all public property should be privatized in order to reduce crime and pollution. Chapter 7, Arbitration of Disputes, argues that it is not necessary for there to be governmental arbiters, since a man who agrees to the settlement of disputes by a third party and then breaks the contract would suffer harm to his reputation and be ostracized, thus solving the problem of noncompliance. It notes that the government's judges will tend to be biased in favor of government, since that is the entity from which they receive their salaries and power. It promotes the concept of insurance companies as a substitute for government as the institution used to pursue claims; in the event a person were defrauded, they could file a claim with their insurance company, and the insurer would obtain the right of subrogation. Insurers who, themselves, committed abuses would suffer loss of reputation and be at a competitive disadvantage to more reputable insurers. Chapter 8, Protection of Life and Property, asserts that a person has the right to defend his life against aggression; and that he therefore has the right to defend his possessions as well, since they are the results of his investment of parts of his life and are, thus, extensions of that life. It notes, "Pacifism encourages every thug to continue his violent ways, even though the pacifist may devoutly wish he wouldn't (wishes don't create reality). Pacifistic behavior teaches the aggressor that crime does pay and encourages him to more and bigger aggressions. Such sanctioning of injustices is immoral, and because it is immoral it is also impractical." It argues that self-defense is a personal responsibility, which one can fulfill by hiring an agent to protect him, such as a private defense agency. It distinguishes initiated force from retaliatory force, noting that the former is not a market phenomenon because it acts to destroy the market; but the latter is a market phenomenon because it restrains aggressors who would destroy it and/or exacts reparations from them. It notes that government creates a social environment which breeds crime through its prohibitions on gambling, prostitution, drugs, and so on. It argues that the main role of police is to protect the government, rather than the citizens. It contrasts the police to private defense agencies, which would focus on preventing aggression and whose officers would lack immunity for any offenses they might commit. It also notes that insurance companies might sell policies covering the insured against loss resulting from any type of coercion; and that these insurers could bring unruly defense agencies to their knees through ostracism and boycotts. Yet, at the same time, the insurers would seek to avoid taking such action without cause, since it could be costly and result in boycotts against the insurer itself. Chapter 9, Dealing with Coercion, argues that punishment in the form of eye for an eye vengeance does nothing to compensate the victim, and therefore opposes justice. It argues that an aggressor should repay the victim for his loss and for all expenses occasioned by the aggression, such as the cost of apprehending the offender. It further states that when an offender could not pay the restitution for a crime in his lifetime, the additional expenses could be paid by the insurance company. Chapter 10, Rectification of Injustice, notes that some criminals of a particularly untrustworthy nature might need to work off their debt in workhouses. To insure against refusal to work, the reparations payments would be deducted from each pay before room and board costs, and those who refused to work would not eat or would have only a minimal diet. A variety of degrees of confinement would exist. The argument that the rich would buy crime is refuted by the argument that even a wealthy man could be killed in self-defense if he attempted a violent act; and that he would risk his reputation as well. Chapter 11, Warring Defense Agencies and Organized Crime, asserts the falsity of the assumption that government is necessary to prevent the initiation of force by arguing that government, as a coercive monopoly, must initiate force in order to survive. It notes several factors that would make a private defense agency avoid aggression. It would put itself at risk of retaliation and would lead its customers to fear that, in the event of a falling-out, it would turn its aggressive force against them. Moreover, insurers would consider the company to be a poor risk. Its employees would also be liable for any damages they caused, which would cause problems between the companies and its employees if it ordered unjustified attacks. It also speculates that a mafia-style agency would be unlikely to survive since there would be no black market to support it. The chapter argues that a tyrant would have more difficulty rising to power under a system of competing private defense agencies than under a governmental system, because customers oppressed by their company could simply switch to another company and obtain protection from the tyrant. Chapter 12, Legislation and Objective Law, argues that free men, acting in a free market, would manage their affairs in accordance with natural law. It calls statutory law a clumsy, anachronistic, and unjust hindrance. It also argues that government judges have no market signals to guide their decisions, in contrast to free-market arbiters, who have profit and loss as a built-in correction mechanism. Chapter 13, Foreign Aggression, notes that governments obtain the resources used for defense from the people; and those same resources can be used by private defense agencies to protect the people from aggression. It argues that governments aggravate or threaten other governments to the point of armed conflict, and then coerce their citizens into protecting them. It notes that the ability of aggression insurers to pay claims would be enhanced by the limited damage resulting from the fact that foreign aggressors would need to use conventional warfare in wars of conquest, to avoid destroying the property and slaves they seek to gain. It notes that in a laissez faire society, there would be no government that could surrender to the enemy; defenders would fight as long as they perceived it was in their best interest. Chapter 14, The Abolition of War, argues that government, not business, is responsible for the formation of the military-industrial complex. It notes that the burden of supporting wars falls heavily on business, since taxes are taken out of the pocket of the consumer. Moreover, businesses are a society's producers, and it is a society's producers who pay the bills. Business also suffers from wars because of the disruption of trade and the ruin and poverty that result. Government, however, gains from wars because it is left with more power, more money, and more territory. War also helps unite the people behind the government in the face of a "common enemy." The authors conclude that all that is needed to abolish war is to abolish government. Chapter 15, From Government to Laissez Faire, argues that first and foremost, the economy should be provided with media of exchange to replace the dollar. It states that possession of public property should be taken by individuals who, simply by clearly marking their claims, become the rightful owners. It argues against disposing of public property at auction, since bureaucrats would figure out ways to divert the proceeds into their own pockets, and the system would be biased toward the rich, many of whom obtained their wealth through political pull. The process of auctioning off the property would also prolong the politicians' power. Chapter 16, The Force Which Shapes the World, argues that it is immoral to destroy the private property or life of an individual who has not aggressed against one. It argues that violent revolution is not only destructive, but actually strengthens the government. It also notes that a revolution's leaders could then become the next rulers. Because of the people's desire for a leader to get them out of chaos, the chapter opines that a violent revolution would pave the way for a new Hitler. This chapter calls for people to share ideas related to freedom, which can eventually lead to widespread non-cooperation with government.
7708732	/m/0269j9_	The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game	Michael Lewis	2006	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book features two dominant storylines. The first is an examination of how offensive football strategy has evolved over the past three decades in large part due to Lawrence Taylor's arrival in the 1980s and how this evolution has placed an increased importance on the role of the left tackle. The second storyline features Michael Oher, the former left tackle for the Ole Miss football team, and later right tackle for the Baltimore Ravens. Lewis follows Oher from his impoverished upbringings through his years at Briarcrest Christian School, his adoption by Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy and on to his position as one of the most highly coveted prospects in college football.
7708912	/m/0269jg3	Katrina	Sally Salminen	1936	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A young Ostrobothnian woman named Katrina marries a young man from Åland, Johan, who promises her an affluent life on Åland. Upon arriving on Åland, however, Katrina discovers Johan has greatly exaggerated his standing in society, and she enters a life of poverty and constant struggle against difficult circumstances and unsympathetic people in power.
7712361	/m/0269my4	The First Intimate Contact		1998		 The protagonist (who shares the same name as the author) meets and falls in love with a girl, FlyNDance, on the Internet. They eventually meet up in real life and become a couple, going out by day and chatting online by night. After some time together, however, FlyNDance is diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (erroneously translated as erysipelas in the English translation), which symbolically causes a butterfly-shaped rash to appear on her face. The disease proves to be fatal, and the novel ends with the protagonist finding and reading a letter FlyNDance had written for him before she died.
7713595	/m/0269p62	Pegasus in Space	Anne McCaffrey		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Peter Reidinger, the telepathic and telekinetic Talent introduced in Pegasus in Flight, proves to be one of the most important psychic Talents in human history; his ability to tap into outside sources of energy gives him potentially unlimited power, but there are ruthless enemies of all Talent who must be stopped, or all mankind will pay the price.
7713618	/m/0269p73	The Satanic Mill				 Set in the late 17th century, the story follows the life of Krabat, a 14-year-old Wendish (i.e. Sorbian) beggar boy living in the eastern part of Saxony. For three consecutive nights, he is called to a watermill near the village Schwarzkollm through a dream. Upon heeding the call and arriving at the mill, he begins his apprenticeship as a miller's man. He soon joins the secret brotherhood, composed of journeymen and apprentices, and discovers that the skill he is meant to learn through this apprenticeship is Black Magic. The first magic powers Krabat acquires are rather harmless, such as the ability to turn himself into a raven. Other peculiarities of this watermill include the lack of any outside visitors, including farmers who would have brought grain. The only visitor to the mill is one Goodman, who may be the devil, although this is never made explicit. The senior apprentice Tonda, Krabat's best friend and older brother figure, dies, ostensibly of an accident, on New Year's Eve in Krabat's first year at the mill. Tonda offers strangely little resistance to his own death. Krabat's suspicions of foul play are further reinforced when another journeyman and friend, Michal, dies the following New Year's Eve. He soon realizes that the master is bound in a pact to the Goodman: the master must sacrifice one journeyman every year on New Year's Eve, or perish himself. Wishing to take revenge for his friends' death, Krabat secretly trains to increase his magical strength so he can fight the master. His quest is aided by a girl from the nearby village, a church singer, “Kantorka”, whose name is never mentioned (“Kantorka” meaning just ‘little chorister’). Krabat learns that to end the spell, his lover must challenge the master for him; then whoever loses the challenge, the master or the two lovers, will die. The master offers Krabat another solution: He will retire and let Krabat inherit the mill, along with the pact to the Goodman; but Krabat refuses to perpetuate the evil pact. So the challenge goes ahead, and the girl's task is to distinguish Krabat from the rest of the journeymen, all dressed identically and standing motionless in a lineup, while she is blindfolded. She manages to pick him out by the fact that he fears mainly for her life, while the others fear mainly for their own. Ultimately, she rescues Krabat from death, and they and the journeymen escape the mill. The master is left to die in the burning mill on New Year's Eve, while the survivors lose all their magic powers and are now simple millers who have to provide for themselves through normal hard work.
7719386	/m/0269vk2	Ruby Holler	Sharon Creech	2002-03-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 The novel starts in the Boxton Creek Home, an orphanage run by a strict couple, George and Marjorie Trepid. Thirteen-year-old Dallas Carter, an imaginative young teenager, and his twin sister Florida Carter, a sassy and bold girl, are long-time residents of the Home, and they have been punished many times for their breaking of the rules that the Trepids post all over the House. They've been adopted many times and then returned for various reasons, often by fault of the adopters. Because of this, they have been dubbed the "trouble twins." They have a plan to run away and board a train. Outside of Boxton, in a plot of land called Ruby Holler, Tiller and Sairy Morey, a very old couple whose children have grown up and left, are sitting and discussing about their plain lives, that they want a new adventure. The two decide to foster care for children, and they adopt Dallas and Florida. Although Sairy, a very kind and trusting old lady, is very excited about the idea, Tiller, a "crotchety old boot", is doubtful of the kids in Ruby Holler. Even though the twins enjoy the freedom and adventure in the holler, they're still suspicious and think that Tiller and Sairy will mistreat them like others before, although their suspicions are soon proven false. Tiller and Sairy tell Dallas and Florida that they are planning on each going on separate trips, and they want the twins to come on each: Dallas with Sairy onto an island, and Florida with Tiller on a rafting trip. All of them are uneasy about leaving their partner, but they don't reveal it. Tiller and Sairy use their "understone funds," underground savings that they've kept for years, for the trips. Elsewhere, Mr. Trepid, who has heard about the understone funds from Dallas and Florida as they ran into each other in Boxton while getting supplies for the trips, asks a shady man called Z, Tiller and Sairy's neighbor, to map out Ruby Holler, but doesn't say why. Z feels uneasy doing so because he likes Tiller and Sairy, but does so anyway, stalling with the assistance, as well as helping with the Ruby Holler family prepare for their trips. Dallas and Florida, however, still think that Tiller and Sairy are still trouble, so they take the supplies for the trips and run away, but don't go far from their cabin. Sairy and Tiller think that the twins did so because they were testing the supplies, and they suggest practice trips closer to home. While on the trips, Tiller and Sairy learn about the twins' past and realize that the Trepids were horrible people. While on their trips, Z continues to stall with production of Mr. Trepid's map, as he probably feels more protective of the Moreys because he believes that Dallas and Florida are his biological children because the Dallas' mother named on his birth certificate was his wife. Eventually he gives Mr Trepid a map with possible hiding places, but takes the understone funds to prevent them from being stolen from Mr. Trepid. On Tiller and Florida's small trip while rafting down a river, their boat capsizes and Tiller suffers a heart attack. Luckily, Dallas, Sairy, and Z find them and Tiller is taken to a hospital where he recovers. Z starts bonding with the twins and they set up traps for Mr. Trepid while he looks for the understone funds and fails to find them. In the end, two of Tiller and Sairy's biological children visit the holler to check on Tiller's health and suggest they send the twins back to the Boxton Creek Home. Dallas and Florida hear their conversation and run away again before hearing Tiller and Sairy's denial. In the morning, Dallas and Florida smell food from the cabin and return to Ruby Holler.
7719756	/m/0269vv0	The Pinhoe Egg	Diana Wynne Jones	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Marianne Pinhoe's family tries to keep their magic a secret. They don't want the "Big Man", or Chrestomanci, interfering, as he tends to do when people misuse magic. And the Pinhoes certainly are guilty of that. Gammer, the head of the Pinhoe clan, has ostensibly gone mad, but Marianne doesn't believe that she's completely 'round the twist. She's sure that Gammer's the one sending plagues to the Farleighs, a related clan that also wishes to stay out of the sights of the "Big Man". Until recently, the Farleighs and the Pinhoes had been working together, but it seems that Gammer has started a war, and it'll be hard to keep their operations under wraps for long. Meanwhile, up at the Castle, Cat acquires a horse. He also meets the man who was bootboy at the Castle when the current Chrestomanci was a lad, Jason, and helps him and his new wife choose a house. They finally settle on Woods House, Gammer's old place, and Marianne, while showing Cat around, gives him an old egg from the attic, an egg with strong "Don't Notice" spells placed on it. An egg that is sure to arouse the interest of the "Big Man" up at the castle – something the rest of the Pinhoe clan, and Gammer in particular, doesn't want at all.
7720196	/m/0269wfn	Tracks	Louise Erdrich	1988	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tracks alternates between two narrators: Nanapush, a jovial tribal elder, and Pauline, a young girl of mixed heritage. In Nanapush’s chapters the point-of-view is that of Nanapush telling stories to his grand-daughter, Lulu, several years after the main events in the novel occur. When Lulu was ten years old, her mother, Fleur Pillager, sent her away to a government school. Because of this, Lulu is now estranged from Fleur. Nanapush, therefore, attempts to reconcile mother and daughter by telling Lulu about the events between 1912 and 1924 that led Fleur to her decision. Nanapush first meets Fleur in 1912 when he rescues her in the middle of winter and nurses her back to health from consumption – a recent epidemic among the Ashininaabe. Because of their shared grief at losing so many from their community, Nanapush and Fleur develop a friendship and begin to see one another as family. The next year, Fleur goes to the nearby town of Argus and takes a job at a butcher’s shop, where she meets Pauline Puyat – the novel’s second narrator. After beating a group of men from the shop one night at a game of poker, Fleur is beaten and raped. She leaves town, but the next day a tornado strikes Argus. Mysteriously, no one in town is harmed in the storm with the exception of the men who raped her – whose bodies are found locked in the freezer of the butcher shop, where they had taken cover. Fleur returns to her family home on the reservation, where she meets Eli Kashpaw while hunting in the woods one day. Much to his mother’s dismay, Eli falls in love with Fleur and moves in with her. Soon, Fleur begins to show signs that she is pregnant and, although the true paternity is unknown, Eli takes responsibility of the child as his own. A new family unit begins to form at the Pillager home – Fleur, Eli and their daughter, Lulu, as well as Eli’s mother, Margaret, and her second son, Nector. Throughout the novel, Margaret and Nanapush, whom Fleur regards as a father, also develop an intimate relationship. Together, the family faces trials of hunger, tribal conflict, and ultimately the loss of their land to the government. In the meantime, Pauline has also left Argus and is staying with a widow named Bernadette Morrissey, from whom she learns the art of tending the sick and dying. Pauline serves as a midwife to Fleur and begins to spend time at the Pillager home. She becomes increasingly jealous of Fleur and her relationship with Eli and goes to desperate measures to break them up. Claiming to have received a vision, she decides to join a convent, where she only delves further into obsession. She devotes herself to the cause of converting Fleur and the others, but is generally regarded as a nuisance. She develops several unusual habits as a means of self-inflicting suffering to remind herself of Christ’s suffering. Her behaviors are frowned upon by the superior nun and she is eventually sent away to teach at a Catholic school. Pauline's narratives deal with her own personal story and also provide a second perspectives on many of the same events described by Nanapush.
7720434	/m/0269wz5	Tea with the Black Dragon	R. A. MacAvoy	1983	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tea with the Black Dragon is about Martha MacNamara, called west to San Francisco by a message from her daughter, Elizabeth, a computer programmer. When she arrives, however, Elizabeth has disappeared. Mayland Long, an Asian gentleman, who is skilled in languages, including those used for computer programming (he settles down to read Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming with a “contented sigh”) and who may be a transformed 2,000 year old Chinese dragon, aids Martha in her search for her daughter. As they search for clues to Elizabeth's disappearance, they discover hints that Elizabeth is involved in a dangerous crime.
7722901	/m/0269z4w	Collected Works				 Following on from the events of The Crystal of Cantus, Collected Works details a year in the life of the Braxiatel Collection following its founder's disappearance. The staff of the Collection have to cope with their new place in the universe, and a visit from a team of post-human scholars from the future, called the Quire. As the year progresses, it becomes clear that even though he has left them, Braxiatel's influence can still be felt on the Collection.
7723262	/m/0269zbf	New Boy				 The book is set in 1986 and is narrated by a Jewish student at the school, Mark, who does not have much success with girls. He finds himself drawn to Barry, who is incredibly handsome. The two become friends, and the book tells of the course of just over a year during which Barry discovers sex with girls and has an affair with a teacher. Mark struggles with his attraction to Barry, but has a relationship with Barry's sister, Louise. Barry, meanwhile, realises that he is, in fact, gay, and enters into a relationship with Mark's brother, Dan, which Mark is unaware of. The four all go on holiday together, and Dan and Barry tell Mark of their relationship. He reacts badly, and accuses them of not being normal. This leads to Barry storming off and Louise dumping Mark. Mark and Barry do have a rapprochement of sorts at the end of the book, but their friendship is over. Mark ends the book contending that he can't be homophobic, because he made it up with his brother.
7723826	/m/0269zzq	Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK				 Donahue first became interested interested in the story of the JFK assassination after being invited to participate in a recreation of the shooting as one of eleven invited marksmen and sharpshooters. Donahue eventually decided that the bullet that struck Kennedy in the head had in fact been fired by agent George Hickey from an AR-15 carried in a secret service car following the President's vehicle. However he also decided that a previous shot had already mortally wounded Kennedy before the head shot was fired.
7729327	/m/026b4yy	The Fabulous Clipjoint	Fredric Brown	1947	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 When teenaged Ed Hunter's alcoholic father is murdered, Ed is for all intents and purposes orphaned, as he feels no affection whatsoever for his mean-spirited stepmother and hypersexual stepsister. The police dismiss the case as nothing more than the random murder of a back-alley drunk, and so Ed decides to investigate the crime on his own. Ed enlists the help of his father's brother, Ambrose Hunter, an itinerant carny, who he has not seen in many years, and the two of them set out to solve the crime. Together they wade through a swamp of unseemly characters of the Chicago underworld to expose the real murderer of their father and brother. Along the way, with Am's guidance, Ed comes to realize that his father was not the hapless, pathetic man he had always believed him to be.
7729654	/m/026b5b9	The Cry of the Wolf			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 : Tagline: : Always before, he had been the Hunter. Now he had been the prey and he had survived. He would live. He would kill again. The book tells the story of a man who tries to kill the last wild wolves in England, and the wolf, raised among humans, who will try to strike back. What if there were still wolves in England and only a few people knew it? What if one of those people was an obsessive, half-mad, extremely able hunter who was determined to have the honor of killing the last wolf in England? We are with the last wolf cubs as they are born short minutes before the slaughter begins. The female survives, wounded by The Hunter, only long enough to teach her sole surviving cub a few skills before she too is killed by the man. The cub, Greycub, is reared by Ben and his family and, being a social animal, waits in vain for the sound or scent of a remaining wolf. This is not to be for he is the last wolf in England. Regretfully leaving his human friends, he roams for years searching for sign of his species. In a bizarre but very fitting climax to the story, Greycub becomes the hunter and The Hunter knows, too late, the feeling of the prey. This is a raw and brutal book and, to be sure, a cautionary tale about extinction. However, the focus is on obsession verging on madness. Ben, the boy who rears Greycub, becomes an innocent betrayer of the wolves for it is he who first alerts The Hunter to the presence of the wolf pack. The book reads like non-fiction with an almost detached manner but the brutality is so compelling that detachment on the part of the reader is nearly impossible. In fact, the feelings of readers would make for a fascinating discussion. At which point did they become engaged? Did they ever feel any sympathy for The Hunter? How did the author do that? Also, there is some anthropomorphism present. Could Burgess have done the book without it?
7729746	/m/026b5gf	Give A Boy A Gun	Todd Strasser		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The main characters are Brendan Lawlor and Gary Searle, they go to Middletown High School and are constantly being bullied by the football players. Their problems get worse and worse as their lives go by and both boys seem to get darker and darker. They take their problems to the limit and having stress in their lives makes everything much worse. So Brendan and Gary bring guns to their school dance and hold everyone hostage for a while. They open fire on some students injuring them badly. Then after a long while a few boys sneak around and tackle Brendan disarming him, while Gary had already committed suicide. Then Brendan is beaten into a coma by the football team. It is not said if he survives. The story is written as a series of interviews conducted by a narrator, later revealed to be Gary's stepsister.
7731288	/m/026b6xj	The Little White Horse	Elizabeth Goudge	1946-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Maria Merryweather becomes an orphan at age 13, upon her father's death in 1842. She is sent to the Moonacre Manor somewhere in the west of England, accompanied by her governess Miss Heliotrope and dog Wiggins. There she finds herself in a world out of time. Her cousin and guardian Sir Benjamin Merryweather is one of the "sun" Merryweathers, and she loves him right away, as sun and moon Merryweathers do. Maria discovers that there is an ancient mystery about the founding of the estate. She is aided by wonderful people and magical beasts, but it is only by self-sacrifice and perseverance, too, that Maria is able to save Moonacre, right the wrongs, reunite lost loves and finally bring peace to the valley.
7734089	/m/026b9dn	The Phantom Blooper	Gustav Hasford	1990-02	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The novel begins sometime after The Short-Timers left off and is divided into three parts. In "The Winter Soldiers", Joker (having been demoted from Sergeant to Private) is still at the Khe Sanh base, which is about to be abandoned by American Marines after withstanding a two-month siege. He believes most of his previous squad-mates are dead, even the seemingly indestructible Animal Mother. Joker blames their deaths on "The Phantom Blooper", supposedly an American, armed with an M79 grenade launcher, who fights alongside the Viet Cong against his countrymen. Joker is still haunted by the memory of his friend Cowboy, whom he killed in order to keep his squad from being cut down by a sniper. As a result, his behavior has become increasingly erratic and violent. He sets up one of his squad-mates to be killed in an attempt to draw the Phantom Blooper out of hiding, then forces an inattentive soldier on guard duty to hold a live hand grenade with the pin out. Later, as the Viet Cong attempt to overrun the base, he splits his platoon sergeant's tongue with a straight razor. The Marines turn back the attack, suffering heavy losses in the process. The next night, Joker ventures out in search of the Phantom Blooper, but is wounded and captured by the enemy. "Travels With Charlie" begins over a year later. Joker has been living and working in a small Viet Cong village, waiting for a chance to escape. He has not been tortured or sent to a POW camp, and his captors have begun to trust him to some degree. In Joker's mind, his best chance is to fool them into believing that he has converted to their cause, accompany them on an attack against an American position, then make his escape when the shooting starts. As time passes, however, he genuinely begins to side more and more with the Viet Cong, seeing them - the people he has been trained to kill - as ordinary human beings just like himself. When a team of Army soldiers arrives to rescue him, he is wounded in the ensuing firefight but manages to shoot down one of their choppers with a discarded M79 before passing out. In "The Proud Flesh", Joker spends time convalescing and undergoing psychiatric therapy at Yokosuka Naval Hospital in Japan. He quickly makes it clear that he does not regret any of his actions as a Viet Cong captive, and he expresses his disgust and outrage at having been sent by his country to fight in a futile war. Despite threats of a court-martial for treason, he is given a Section 8 discharge and sent home to the United States. Upon arriving in California, Joker finds that his squad radioman, Donlon, is alive and well and has become an antiwar protester. (Animal Mother, he also learns, was captured by the Viet Cong but escaped from a POW camp; he is still an active Marine.) They attend a demonstration that is quickly and forcefully broken up by the police, but Joker manages to slip away with the help of a cop who served with him at Khe Sanh. Next, Joker travels to Kansas, Cowboy's home, and has a brief and uneasy meeting with Cowboy's parents. Their son's body was never recovered from the jungle, and Joker does not tell them that he fired the shot that killed Cowboy. Finally, he reaches the family farm in Alabama, his disillusionment with the war and America growing all the time. Realizing at last that there is nothing left for him here, he sets out to return to Vietnam and his life among the Viet Cong villagers.
7737689	/m/026bdff	Prince of Ayodhya	Ashok Banker	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with Rama's first encounter with the demon lord Ravana, King of the Asuras, a race of evil beings who represent everything against that which mankind stands for. As he dreams, he is filled with images detailing the destruction and rape of his home city, Ayodhya, the capital of Kosala, kingdom of Dasaratha, Rama's father. The prince frantically slices through his room, demonstrating considerable martial skill, fearful of his dreams. Meanwhile, the great seer Vishwamitra, one of the Seven Sages of Hindu theology, proceeds towards Ayodhya. As he travels, he becomes aware of some strange disturbance, and changes his form to that of a Shudra hunter, a low-caste marksman. As he walks, Jatayu, leader of Ravana's air force, tracks his movement and inspects the city of Ayodhya. Only a few seconds before Vishwamitra walks through Ayodhya's massive gates, however, a second being who looks exactly like him is seen proceeding through it... In the palace, First Queen Kausalya, Dasaratha's first wife and mother of Rama, is paid a visit by the King. At first, she spurns him for not having stepped into her palace for the past year and spending all of his time at the palace of the Second Queen Kaikeyi. Letting out her frustration and anger through sarcastic words, she describes the hurt that she feels. Dasaratha begs for her forgiveness, and tells her that in reality, he always loved Kausalya more as a wife and the mother of his eldest son. He tells her two pieces of information that shock her: the first, that her son Rama is to be crowned on his sixteenth birthday as the new King of Ayodhya, and the second being that he is terminally ill. Vashishta and Dasaratha both make arrangements to greet the illustrious visitor, but while performing the prescribed welcoming ritual (known as arghya), they are rudely interrupted by the shudra hunter. Despite Dasaratha's attempts to peaceably (and then forcibly) remove him from the location, the hunter ignores him, claiming that the Vishwamitra they were about to welcome is a demon. The hunter changes back to his real form as Vishwamitra and exposes the hunter as Kala-Nemi, the uncle of Ravana. They banish him to the netherworld, and Vishwamitra states that he needs to ask Dasaratha for a favor. He explains that Ravana has plans to invade the Indian subcontinent from Lanka, and has put spies in the court. He exposes the spies, who are locked away and interrogated. Meanwhile, the sons Rama and Lakshmana have returned from the nearby woods, where they had encountered a band of pahadi warriors led by Bearface, all of whom were arrested. They find their brothers Shatrughan and Bharata waiting for them at the gates, which have been inexplicably closed. They find out that the city has been completely closed off, cutting off the disappointed Holi revelers who have come from across all of India to celebrate, because of an attack in the palace grounds. Rama is allowed to enter along with his brothers, who feel immensely guilty, but do not argue. He stops a riot on the way between a number of crazed tantrics and palace guards. Upon entering the palace, he is introduced to Vishwamitra. Vishwamitra explains his predicament to Rama; his 200-year sacrifice is coming to an end but unless the demons of the Bhayanak-van, the forest in which he resides, are destroyed, it cannot be completed in time. He claims that Rama is the only person necessary for the task and is the only one who can accomplish it. Dasaratha vehemently refuses to give Rama away, pushing away all rational reasoning in the love for his son. Incensed, Vishwamitra moves to leave but is pacified by Vashishta, who then says the matter will be put to a popular vote as decreed by the rules of Manu, since it is a conflict between two dharmas. During the Holi parade, Dasaratha announces to the entire city that Rama will be crowned as crown prince and that he is to be his successor. The statement is met with an uproar of approval, after which Vishwamitra details the reasons for coming to Ayodhya. After demonstrating the potential effect of an invasion in Ayodhya to the people, he tells them that the only way to stop it is to allow Rama to be taken under his tutelage. The crowd roars their approval of the decision, saying in unison that Rama is the greatest champion of Ayodhya. Lakshmana is granted permission by his mother Sumitra to leave with Rama, who both travel with Vishwamitra and leave the city during the height of the Holi celebration while everyone is distracted. Dasaratha makes his way up to the top of the Seer's Tower, where he is attacked by an enraged Kaikeyi and saved in the nick of time by Bharat. Kaikeyi, who had spent the day fuming at Dasaratha's announcement of Rama's coronation, her rage fueled by Manthara, threatens to kill Kausalya. Rama and Lakshmana travel far from Ayodhya towards the Bhayanak-van without much delay (aside from being tailed by the Maharaja's personal guard) and stop for the night at an ashram in a location known as Kama's Grove, a small Saivite hermitage. Before arriving, Vishwamitra endows both Rama and Lakshmana with the powers of Bala and Atibala, the two most powerful brahmanic mantras which grant them super-strength, speed, and power beyond that of any normal mortal being. Their powers develop separately, with different effects, but with equally satisfying results. Unbeknownst to them, the rakshasi Surpanakha, the sister of Ravana, has witnessed the entire ritual, having followed them from Ayodhya. After reporting to Ravana, she is told to wait and follow them from a distance. Meanwhile, in Ayodhya, Vashishta and Prime Minister Sumantra enter the prisons to interrogate the spies exposed in the court, only to find that their bodies have been dismembered and ripped to shreds by Ravana's mayavic power. Joining their limbs and heads together in a mockery of his own body, he tells Vashishta and Sumantra that he will destroy Ayodhya utterly for defeating Lanka in the Asura Wars. Vashishta battles the possessed body while Sumantra flees. The boys and Vishwamitra leave in the morning and head towards the true Bhayanak-van, which Vishwamitra reveals runs through Narak, the lowest level of Hell, exposed by a portal ripped by Ravana. They encounter a foul environment worse than that of any other on the planet. Vishwamitra gives them a simple goal - destroy the five hundred monsters or so that inhabit the Bhayanak-van and kill Tataka and her sons Mareech and Subahu. When the battle begins, Rama and Lakshmana together kill more than two hundred monsters back-to-back with their bows and arrows. When the second, more powerful wave attacks, however, while Rama remains unscathed and continues to wipe out monsters, Lakshmana is brutally murdered and torn to pieces. Meanwhile, the King's guard, the elite Vajra regiment, has continued to tail Rama into the Bhayanak-van and enters the battle, at which point the remaining monsters are wiped out. Tataka, a beautiful yaksha rakshasi of towering height, arrives on the scene, entirely naked, distracting most of the soldiers. Rama realizes at this point that Lakshmana has been killed, and pleads with the Maharishi to revive him. Simultaneously he has qualms about killing Tataka because she is a woman, but Vishwamitra tells Rama that the only way to revive Lakshmana is to kill Tataka for her sins. Rama uses the power of the sun in his blood, and destroys her utterly. Lakshmana is revived, but is not informed that he had died upon the battlefield. He and Rama arrive at Vishwamitra's ashram, where they spend a vigil of seven days guarding the yagna after receiving the divine power of the deva-astras, weapons which have the ability to call upon the power of any deva at will. At the end of the seven days, Subahu and Mareech, Tataka's two sons, attack the yagna, but are both dispatched by Rama and Lakshmana. After the completion of the sacrifice, Vishwamitra tells Rama and Lakshmana that they are now to travel to Mithila in order to complete the next task - attending a marriage. Perplexed, Rama asks whose marriage they are to attend, and he cryptically replies "... Yours." The book finishes with the image of Jatayu flying over the massive navy of Lanka, which is preparing to invade the mainland in full force with the power of Ravana behind it. Meanwhile, in Ayodhya, Kausalya, Vashishta, and Sumantra all realize that the King's condition is most definitely fatal, but also find out that a spy exists in the royal family who may be destroying the country and court from within.
7754704	/m/026bxyv	The Lady's Not for Burning	Christopher Fry			 The play takes place during the year "1400 either more or less or exactly," and the costumes are described as being "as much 15th century as anything else." The action of the play takes place in "a room in the house of Mayor Hebble Tyson." Thomas Mendip is a recently discharged soldier who is tired of the world and wants to be hanged. He enters the mayor's house and engages in brief conversation with Richard, the mayor's copying clerk. Alizon, the future wife of Humphrey, the Mayor's nephew, soon enters. She and Richard immediately feel a connection. Soon Nicholas, Humphrey's brother, enters, declaring that he has killed Humphrey in a battle over Alizon, and thus is deserving of her hand in marriage. Margaret, Nicholas and Humphrey's mother and Mayor Tyson's sister enter. Nicholas and Richard are sent to get Humphrey from the garden, where he is lying, quite alive, after the fight with Nicholas. Noises outside the house make a witch-hunt known, and Thomas repeatedly reminds everyone that he is there to be hanged, and asks why doesn't anyone do anything about it. The Mayor enters, declaring that Thomas shall not be hanged without reason, as there is absolutely no precedent for such an action. Thomas then says he has killed two people, so he is deserving of the gallows. The Mayor does not believe him. Jennet then enters. She is the accused witch. After recounting the wild tales they tell about her mystical powers, and laughing over their ludicrous nature, she is shocked to hear that the Mayor shares the crowd’s opinion that she is a witch. The mayor sends Richard to get the constable to have her arrested, but Richard does not get the constable; he does not think she is a witch. The Chaplain enters next, apologising for his tardiness to evening prayers, explaining that the world is so amazing, it is hard not to be distracted doing every day things. Thomas tells everyone that he is the devil, and that the world will soon end. The Mayor has both him and Jennet arrested. Later on, The Mayor and The Justice, Tappercoom, discuss the unusual reactions of the prisoners to the mild tortures they are being put through. Jennet will not admit to any crimes at all, and Thomas is continually admitting new crimes. Margaret rushes in in a panic, searching for the tongs to put a blazing log back in the fire. The Chaplain, woken, relates a dream he has had about the ladder to heaven. Margaret returns, horrified at the number of people clamouring in the street over the accusations of Thomas and Jennet. The Chaplain suggests that they invite Thomas to the party that the family is having that night in order to cheer him up and make him go away, but the family is shocked. The Justice considers it, though. In the mean time, Richard enters, somewhat drunk. He is depressed about Thomas and Jennet, and about his hopelessness over Alizon. He reveals that Humphrey and Nicholas had been sitting in the cellar with Jennet, not saying a word. The Mayor, still displeased for his refusal to fetch a constable, commands him to scrub the floor. Nicholas enters, ecstatic and bloody. Humphrey enters, complaining that Nicholas attempted to address the crowd and was hit by a brick. Margaret questions the boys on their contact with Jennet. Nicholas claims honourable intentions, but accuses Humphrey of being on "business of the flesh, by all the fires of Venus." Margaret takes Nicholas off to be cleaned up. The Mayor comes up with a plan to determine the guilt of the prisoners. He, Humphrey, Tappercoom, and the Chaplain hide upstairs and eavesdrop as Jennet and Thomas converse freely. Thomas talks about how awful humanity is, and Jennet tells why people think she's a witch. They claim that she had turned an old man into a dog, the same man that Thomas claims to have murdered. They grow closer as they talk, and Jennet finally declares that she loves him, whether he's the devil or not. The Mayor and his company re-enter, taking her statement as an admission of guilt. He demands she be burned the next day. Thomas is outraged both at the sentence and the fact that he's being ignored, but the Justice proclaims him guilty only of being depressing and depressed, and sentences him to attend the party that night. Thomas reluctantly agrees, on the terms that Jennet be also allowed to attend. The Mayor and Tappercoom discuss his request as he threatens to inform the whole countryside that they released a murderer if they don't agree. They do, as does Jennet, if somewhat despondently. That evening, Thomas, Humphrey, and Nicholas are bored together, waiting for Jennet to be ready for the party. Margaret, vexed over Jennet's continued presence in her house, urges Humphrey and Nicholas to return to the party, but they decline, and the three drink to boredom. Jennet finally arrives, and the three fight over who will take her to the party. Jennet goes with Humphrey, as he is the host. The Mayor comes into the room, and tries to get Thomas to go away. Thomas escapes into the garden, and Tappercoom enters as the Mayor as he complains about Jennet's beauty and charm tempting him. Tappercoom mocks him for lusting after her at his age, and reminds him that after she's dead they will possess her substantial property. The Chaplain enters, distraught. He laments over his failure to play a dance at the party. Tappercoom takes him back to the party to cheer him up. Richard enters, and tries to speak to the Mayor, but the Mayor proclaims that he's going to lock himself in his room and not leave until morning. Thomas re-enters and speaks with Richard over the sadness of the situation. Alizon enters, and Thomas quickly goes back to the garden to give them privacy. Alizon is distraught over the unfairness of the burning. Richard half-heartedly defends the laws, but Alizon tells him she doesn't love Humphrey. She loves Richard, and they agree to escape together. Richard rushes to get his savings, but Margaret stops him, looking for Alizon. They both rush off. Jennet, Humphrey, and Nicholas return from dancing. Nicholas stops Richard once again, and takes him to the cellar to get more wine. Humphrey attempts to seduce Jennet in exchange for her life, but he is stopped by Thomas. Jennet, upset, yells at Thomas, who admits his love for her. Nicholas returns, distraught because Richard locked him in the cellar. Margaret returns, very befuddled and unable to comprehend what has been going on in her house. Thomas and Jennet reconcile, and she tells him she doesn't believe him to be murderer. Richard and Alizon return with the old man that everyone claimed was dead or a dog, and Humphrey and Nicholas bring Tappercoom and the chaplain. Richard and Alizon slip off as everyone is distracted by the old man. Tappercoom is satisfied that there is no witch or murder, and Margaret sends Nicholas and Humphrey to take the very drunk old man home before leaving with the Chaplain. Tappercoom quietly suggests that Jennet and Thomas quietly leave town before morning before leaving as well. Thomas, despite his continuing disgust with mankind, agrees to accompany Jennet to whatever new place she goes to, and they slip off into the night.
7760047	/m/026c3w0	The Deerslayer	James Fenimore Cooper	1841	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This novel introduces Natty Bumppo as "Deerslayer", a young frontiersman in early 18th-century New York. He is contrasted to other frontiersmen and settlers in the novel who have no compunctions in taking scalps in that his natural philosophy is that every living thing should follow "the gifts" of its nature—which would keep European Americans from taking scalps. Two such characters in the work who actually seek to take scalps are Henry March ("Hurry Harry") and floating Tom Hutter. In the dead of night Hutter and March sneak into the camp of the besieging members of the Huron tribe in order to kill and scalp as many as they can. Their plan fails, and Tom Hutter and March are captured. They are later ransomed by Bumppo, his lifelong friend Chingachgook, and Hutter's daughters, Judith and Hetty. Bumppo and Chingachgook come up with a plan to rescue Chingachgook's kidnapped betrothed Wah-ta!-Wah from the Hurons; but, in rescuing her, Bumppo is captured. In his absence, the Hurons invade Hutter's home, and Hutter is mortally wounded and scalped. After the death of Hutter his supposed daughters find out that they were not his natural daughters and he had been a notorious pirate. Bumppo's remaining allies and friends plan how to aid his escape from his Huron captors.
7761126	/m/026c4zt	Does My Head Look Big In This?	Randa Abdel-Fattah	2005-08-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Sixteen year old Amal Mohamed Nasrullah Abdel-Hakin is an Australian Palestinian-Muslim girl who lives in Melbourne with her father, Doctor Mohamed, and mother, Dentist Jamila. During the winter break before her second semester at McCleans Preparatory School, Amal debates wearing the hijab (the religious Muslim head covering) as a full timer (meaning that she would have to wear it in front of males who weren't immediate family). While trying to make her decision, Amal misses Hidaya Islamic College (the school she spent grades seven to ten at), where wearing a hijab was mandatory as it was part of a girl's uniform. Amal takes advice from Yasmeen Khan (whose mom is British and dad is Pakistani) and Leila Okulgen (whose parents are Turkish), her best friends from Hidaya. Leila, who is already a full time hijab-wearer, thinks that Amal's decision is great and "cool", whereas Yasmeen, a part time hijab-wearer, says that she'll stick with Amal no matter what but thinks that Amal should be very sure before she takes a step. In her frustration, Amal makes a list titled "To Wear or Not To Wear List", writing down the names of the people she knows will be okay in the left column, and writing the names of the people "Not so OK" in the right column. When she introduces her idea of wearing the hijab to her father and mother, they ask her if she is sure that she wants to cope with such a big change in her life. As a test-run, Amal (while wearing a hijab) and her mother go to Chadstone Mall. After three hijab-wearing women say "Assalamu Alaykom" (the universal Islamic greeting which means, "peace be upon you") to Amal, she gets a sense that wearing a hijab binds Muslim women in some kind of universal sisterhood. The next day (the first day of second semester), Amal wears a hijab to school and visits Ms. Walsh, the principal, to discuss her decision. The principal is a little surprised, and tells Amal that she has "abandoned the school uniform and altered the policies of the school without authorization". She asks Amal to return to class and that they will "discuss this later". Everybody gives Amal "the stare" back in her class, but Eileen Tanaka and Simone (Amal's best-friends at McCleans) state that Amal looks great and that she's got a lot of guts. Tia Tamos, Claire Foster, and Rita Mason (three snobby girls) snigger and laugh whenever Amal passes them, but Amal simply doesn't care. Amal is very shocked when Adam Keane, the popular boy she has a crush on, says nothing and acts as if he doesn't know her. During dinner that night, Amal's parents tell her that Ms. Walsh has arranged for them to meet at five the following day. Although she doesn't care, Amal is nervous about Ms. Walsh's decision. While taking the garbage out, Amal tries to make small talk with Mrs. Vaselli (her elderly, Greek, and "crazy" neighbor) but Mrs. Vaselli blames Amal for throwing cigarettes on her lawn instead (even though Amal doesn't smoke). The following day Amal's parents tell her about their meeting with Ms. Walsh over dinner at a Japanese restaurant; apparently the principal agreed to let Amal wear the hijab, but she can only wear the color maroon to match her uniform. During lunch at school, Simone is imitating some of the teachers expertly when Josh Goldberg, a popular Jewish guy, walks in and praises her, leading her to blush. On a Monday morning, Amal's class finally decides to confront her about her hijab. More importantly, Adam starts to talk to her again, saying that he "gets her". Over time, Adam and Amal become closer "friends", Simone and Josh become a couple(although Simone keeps on trying different diets, thinking that she is "fat"), and Amal starts to feel more proud of her hijab. When Adam invites Amal to his birthday party, her mom reluctantly gives her permission to go (even though Amal lies and says there will be no alcohol). Adam tries to kiss her at the party, but Amal tells him that she (it's her religion too, though) does not believe in having any physical/personal relationships with a male before marriage. Adam argues but the discussion ends when he states that they are "too different" and "don't understand each other". At school, Amal notices that there is no "spark" between her and Adam anymore, but is proud that she put religion before her desires. On Leila's birthday, Amal and Yasmeen lie to Leila and Amal's parents, and take Leila for a birthday dinner. The three best friends encounter Hakan (Leila's older brother), who is with his girlfriend, there and in anger that Leila lied, he escorts Leila back home. Amal and Leila's parents are enraged that the girls lied and Amal is grounded. Leila, tired of pressure from her mother and angered, runs away from home the next day. Amal blames Leila's mother, Gulchin, and says that she didn't deserve Leila. Two months pass (between which Simone starts smoking to become skinny) before Leila shows up at Amal's house; she confesses that she ran away to a women's shelter, and couldn't bear the feeling of being unsafe. In the end, Amal realizes it is the different and imperfect immigrants who are her friends and family and who have shaped who she is and who she will become in the future.
7761142	/m/026c4_v	Ten Things I Hate About Me	Randa Abdel-Fattah	2006-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel is the story of Jamie Towfeek, a teenager living in Sydney's western suburbs. Jamie wants to be the real thing. From the roots of her dyed blonde hair... There are a lot of things Jamie hates about her life: her dark hair, her dad's Stone Age Charter of Curfew Rights, her real name - Jamilah Towfeek. For the past three years, Jamie has hidden her Lebanese/Muslim background from everyone at school. It's only with her email friend John that she can really be herself. But now life is getting more complicated. The most popular boy in school is interested in her, but there's no way he would be if he knew the truth. Then there's Timothy the school loner, who for some reason Jamie just can't stop thinking about. As for John, he seems to have a pretty big secret of his own. To top it all off, Jamie's school formal is coming up. And her band at her Muslim school is performing at the formal. The only way she'll be allowed to attend is by revealing her true identity. But who is she ... Jamie or Jamilah? Various other stories also happen in this book. Her older sister Shereen is a human rights and anti-war protester, and their father wants her to settle down. She gets closer to her friend Amy, and tries to find the reason why she has suddenly become more secretive to her. She is the first person she tells that she is a Muslim and at the end, the two become best friends, and leave their other friend, Liz behind with the other discriminatory students at school.
7762539	/m/026c6bv	The Evil of the Day	Thomas Sterling		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The wealthy and wily Cecil Fox summons three old faces from his past to his villa in Venice to unwittingly take part in an elaborate charade inspired by Elizabethan literature. But when one of his guests is murdered in the night, Fox's production abruptly switches genres from comedy to full-blown murder mystery.
7763140	/m/026c6x3	Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon	Jules Verne	1881	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Joam Garral grants his daughter's wish to travel to Belém where she wants to marry Manuel Valdez in the presence of Manuel's invalid mother. The Garrals travel down the Amazon River using a giant timber raft. At Belém, Joam plans to restore his good name, as he is still wanted in Brazil for a crime he did not perpetrate. A scoundrel named Torres offers Joam absolute proof of Joam's innocence but the price that Torres wants for this information is to marry Joam's daughter, which is inconceivable to Joam. The proof lies in an encrypted letter that will exonerate Garral. When Torres is killed, the Garral family must race to decode the letter before Joam is executed.
7764404	/m/026c86f	North and South	John Jakes			 Orry Main from South Carolina and George Hazard from Pennsylvania meet on their way to the United States Military Academy at West Point. They soon become close friends, frequently confronting their regional differences within the frame of their friendship. During their time at the academy, Orry and George are tormented by a sadistic Ohio cadet named Elkanah Bent, but in time are able to effect Bent's expulsion from West Point. The companions graduate and become officers in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War. On the way to Mexico, George courts a young Irish woman in Texas named Constance. George and Orry end up in the Battle of Vera Cruz, where Orry's arm is badly wounded and eventually amputated. He is sent home, but George stays. George is later released from the Army due to his father's death, and he and Constance return to George's home in Pennsylvania and marry. George and Orry eventually meet up again and resume their friendship as tensions strengthen between the North and South. Soon, Orry's younger sister Brett falls in love with George's younger brother Billy. Later, Billy is a classmate of Orry's cousin Charles at West Point. In 1858, as Orry is planning a trip to Pennsylvania, Brett begs him to take her with him so they can continue to St. Louis, where Billy is stationed with the Army Corps of Engineers. On the train back to South Carolina, the train is stopped by raiders under the command of the radical abolitionist John Brown in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, then part of the state of Virginia. Brett and Orry are sent on their way to South Carolina unharmed. Two years after the Mains and Hazards rendezvous in Pennsylvania, Billy joins the U.S. Army as the American Civil War draws near. Stationed only a few miles away from the Main plantation at Major Robert Anderson's garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Billy is given leave and marries Brett the next day. A few nights later, Confederate forces under the command of Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Fort Sumter, setting off the Civil War. Orry and George say their final good-bye before the war, hoping for the best for each other.
7767805	/m/02psljq	Fires on the Plain	Ooka Shohei			 The story is told through the eyes of a Private Tamura who, after being thrown out by his own company, chooses to desert the military altogether and wanders aimlessly through the Philippine jungle during the Allied campaign. Descending into delirium, Tamura is forced to confront nature, his childhood faith, hunger, his own mortality, and in the end, cannibalism.
7769597	/m/026cgfd	Hawk of May	Gillian Bradshaw	1981-05	{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Hawk of May is a bildungsroman centered around Gwalchmai ap Lot (Gawain in other literature). Gwalchmai is the middle child of Morgawse and Lot. He lives with his family in the northern Orcade isles located north of modern day Scotland. Gwalchmai struggles to learn the arts of war his brother, Agravain, so easily masters. During his training, a great war is going on to the south in Britain. The Saxons are encroaching upon British soil and the other kings are disorganized by blood feuds and the recent death of Uther Pendragon. In the midst of war there is one man, Arthur, who seems to be winning against both the unruly British kings and the Saxons. While his father, Lot, and Agravain go to war, Gwalchmai is frustrated by his failures and turns to his mother, Morgawse, to teach him to read and write as well as the secrets of dark magic. Where Gwalchmai struggled with war skills, he learned swiftly in the arts his mother taught him and quickly became enthralled by the darkness. He maintains his relationship with the dark until the eve of Samhain where he discovers his youngest brother, Medraut (Mordred ), has also committed to the darkness. Horrified by this revelation, Gwalchmai interrupts Morgawse’s ritual and flees the promised wrath of Morgawse and Medraut. After his escape, Gwalchmai begs the help of an ancient kin and deity called Lugh of the Long Hand. He is then transported to the Isle of the Blessed, a mystical land of unknown origin that keeps it’s inhabitants forever young. Here, Gwalchmai converts to the Light, obtains his sword Caledvwlch, and is then transported to an unknown area in the greater isle of Britain. During his stay in the Isle of the Blessed, Gwalchmai has aged three years. He is initially captured by the Saxons who believe him to be a British thrall, or servant. Under this cover, Gwalchmai is eventually able to escape the Saxons on the back of a powerful horse from the Isle of the Blessed named Ceincaled. He and Ceincaled flee towards Arthur’s domain where they split up and Gwalchmai earns a ride to Camlann with a farmer after helping fix his cart. On their way, however, Gwalchmai is met by some knights - namely Cei, Bedwyr and Agravain. The latter doesn’t initially recognize his younger brother until Gwalchmai addresses him by name. After the brothers reunite they go together to Camlann where Gwalchmai finally meets Arthur. Arthur, however, does not accept him. Instead, Gwalchmai is forced to try and try to gain Arthur’s trust. He goes with the ‘Family’ on many battles, helping even to win in some grievous affairs, but Arthur refuses to acknowledge him. It’s not until the final chapter where Gwalchmai finally proves himself at par with Arthur’s standards and is finally accepted into the Family.
7769640	/m/026cgh3	Kingdom of Summer	Gillian Bradshaw	1982-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Rhys and his cousin encounter a mounted warrior named Gwalchmai. He accompanies them to their householding for shelter from the winter cold. There, he is recognized by the head of the clan (and Rhys' father), Sion ap Rhys, who had befriended Gwalchmai before he become renowned throughout Britain. This chance meeting changes the course of Rhys's life. He had aspired to be more than a simple farmer. Despite his parents' disapproval, he asks Gwalchmai to accept him as a servant. As a favor to his father, Gwalchmai agrees only to take him to Camlann, King Arthur's stronghold, where he can find himself a master. But first, Gwalchmai continues his search for a woman, to beg her forgiveness. He had been sent on an embassy to King Bran, an enemy of Arthur, to keep an eye on him. While there, he had fallen in love with and seduced Elidan, the king's sister. Bran found out and used it as an excuse to rebel. During the resulting battle, Gwalchmai killed Bran, though he had promised Elidan he wouldn't. As a result, her love turned to hatred and she disappeared. He is unable to find any news of her and he and Rhys travel to Camlann. When they arrive, Gwalchmai keeps Rhys as his servant, to their mutual satisfaction. Overall, despite the bullying of Gwalchmai's brother Agravain, Rhys finds the fortress a pleasant place to work; all there are caught up, to varying degrees, with Arthur's vision of uniting and bringing peace to the land. After a month's rest, Gwalchmai is sent as an ambassador to King Maelgwn, one of Arthur's greatest foes. Rhys and Rhuawn, one of Arthur's warriors, accompany him. Spies had reported foreigners visiting him and Arthur fears that he is allying with a king of Erin. When they arrive, Gwalchmai is shocked to find that his own mother, the infamous witch Morgawse, is the one plotting with Maelgwn. Also there are his father King Lot and his younger brother Medraut. During their stay, Rhys becomes attracted to Eivlin, one of Morgawse's servants. Meanwhile, Medraut begins to charm Rhuawn and Rhys, planting doubts about Gwalchmai's sanity, using the well-known fact that he becomes a berserker in battle. Rhuawn is won over, but not Rhys. Seeing this, Medraut changes tactics. Rhys is taken by force to Morgawse. She uses magic to try to break his will, but he resists stubbornly. Eivlin is a miserable witness to his struggle. When Medraut leaves the room, she follows and knocks him unconscious. Needing Medraut's assistance to break Rhys, Morgawse goes in search of him, giving Eivlin the opportunity to free Rhys and flee with him. The witch casts a spell to kill her disloyal servant. When Eivlin is struck down, Rhys does the only thing he can think of - he baptizes her by the roadside. Then, he takes her in search of help. He runs into a young boy named Gwyn, who takes them to his mother, a nun named Elidan. By chance, Rhys has found Gwalchmai's lost love - and their son. Medraut tracks Rhys down and takes him back to his mother, only to find Gwalchmai there as well. Gwalchmai tries to leave with Rhys, but Morgawse stands in his way. He prevails in a battle of magic, leaving her exhausted, but physically unharmed. Rhys takes his master to Eivlin, hoping he can cure her. Indeed, he is able to awaken her. Then he tries to reconcile with Elidan or at least gain her forgiveness, but she is unmoved. Rhys had reluctantly promised her not to reveal Gwyn's identity, so Gwalchmai departs with his misery unabated. They return to Maelgwn's fortress, where more tragic news awaits. Agravain had arrived to visit his father. In the middle of speaking together, Lot suddenly died for no apparent reason. While Gwalchmai was away, Agravain went to his mother and killed her for murdering Lot. In a rage, Medraut decides to go to Camlann, to see his father - Arthur - and to conspire against him. Arthur's downfall is set in motion.
7769658	/m/026cgjh	In Winter's Shadow	Gillian Bradshaw	1983-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 After the murder of the feared sorceress Morgawse by her own son Agravain (as told in Kingdom of Summer), her youngest son Medraut goes to Camlann, the stronghold of his enemy, Arthur. Inasmuch as he is Medraut's uncle, Arthur has no excuse to send him away. Once there, Medraut begins to build up a faction loyal only to him among the warriors of the royal warband. Another newcomer is Gwynn, the young, illegitimate son of the abbess Elidan. He goes to work for Gwynhwyfar. Gwalchmai, Arthur's best cavalry fighter (and Medraut's other brother), takes an interest in the boy and helps him train to be a warrior. Medraut succeeds in sowing dissent and distrust in the warband; finally, there is a duel between one of his men and Bedwyr, Arthur's most valued advisor. Though Gwynhwyfar is able to effect a reconciliation, the situation continues to deteriorate. In desperation, she tries to poison Medraut at a banquet, but he is aware of her plan and denounces her at the gathering. To discredit him, Arthur takes the poisoned mead and pretends to drink it. However, the dishonorable plot drives a wedge between him and Gwynhwyfar. At least one good thing seems to come of the botched attempt - Arthur has an excuse to exile Medraut, sending him back to his homeland, where Agravain rules. Later, they receive news that Agravain has died and that Medraut has been made king. With her husband turned against her, Gwynhwyfar turns to Bedwyr for comfort. Before they have time to consider their actions, they become lovers. Meanwhile, Gwynn receives news from home. His mother has died. On her deathbed, she wrote a letter to Gwalchmai, in which she forgives him for seducing her and killing her brother when he rebelled against Arthur. She also reveals that Gwynn is their son. Gwalchmai is overjoyed and quickly has the lad legitimized. Arthur takes an interest when he realizes that Gwynn has a good claim to inherit his throne. In addition, the hatred for Arthur by Gwynn's mother's powerful clan would be eased. The next year, Medraut arrives for a visit. As a king in his own right, he is no longer bound by the exile imposed on him. During his stay, his realm revolts against his reign of terror, leaving Medraut stranded in Camlann, free once more to undermine his great enemy. Soon, Arthur's warband is split in two once again. In a master stroke, Medraut arranges to uncover Bedwyr and Gwynhwyfar's adultery in front of witnesses from both factions. Though the traditional punishment is death, Arthur exiles them instead, Bedwyr to his native Less Britain, Gwynhwyfar back to her clan, unaware that her clan's leader hates her. Gwynhwyfar is escorted by a number of warriors, among them Medraut and Gwynn. The party is intercepted by Bedwyr and his men and fighting breaks out. Gwynhwyfar sends Gwynn to try to stop it, but in the confusion, Bedwyr kills him by mistake. He then takes Gwynhwyfar with him to his homeland. When Gwalchmai is told of his son's death, he demands justice from Arthur. Macsen, king of Less Britain and no friend of Arthur's, refuses to return Bedwyr and Gwynhwyfar. Indeed, realizing that Arthur must now fight, he persuades Bedwyr to become his military commander. In the ensuing war, Arthur is unable to win a decisive battle; Bedwyr knows too well how he fights. In one clash, Bedwyr attacks Gwalchmai, half hoping to be slain, but instead he deals his former friend a serious wound to the head. Sickened by all that has happened, Gwynhwyfar steals away and returns to Arthur. He sends her back to Camlann for safety. But when she arrives, she is captured by Medraut. He had killed or imprisoned the men Arthur left to watch him and now controls the fortress. Gwynhwyfar escapes and begins gathering men and supplies for Arthur's return. When her husband hears of Medraut's revolt, he hurries back with his army. But Medraut has allied with King Maelgwn, and the opposing forces are nearly equal in strength. Gwalchmai is sent by Arthur to Gwynhwyfar, to arrange an ambush for Medraut's army. He dies shortly afterwards, of the wound Bedwyr inflicted; after his son was slain, he had neglected the injury, having lost the will to live. The ambush is only partly successful and the Battle of Camlann does not go exactly as Arthur had hoped, but he is victorious. However, most of his warband is killed. Arthur personally leads the final cavalry charge that breaks the rebels, but is then seen no more. In the aftermath, Medraut is mistakenly brought in with the rest of the wounded; Gwynhwyfar recognizes him and they converse for a short while before he dies. When days go by without word of Arthur, Gwynhwyfar finally admits to herself that he is dead. She becomes a nun in a northern abbey run by a friend. As the years pass, she eventually becomes the head of the abbey. While she despairs of the ruin of all that she and Arthur had tried to build, she finds a bit of solace from an unlikely source. While civilization and learning ebb among the Britons, monks from Ireland arrive and build a monastery on a little island called Iona, working to accumulate and preserve knowledge.
7774146	/m/026cn9c	Red Army			{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 Red Army was unique among military fiction published in the United States during the 1980s, in that it told its story exclusively from the perspective of officers and men in the Soviet Army. Even more uniquely, the Soviet Union prevailed over NATO forces thanks to a combination of rapid military success and political strategy. No other technothriller by the authors in the genre — such as Tom Clancy, Harold Coyle, Dale Brown, or Sir John Hackett — presented an opfor perspective for the entire book or victory at the end of the novel. It was also unique for the genre in that the author did not focus at all on detailed descriptions of the weapons and technology used, and instead concentrated on the characters and their respective stories in the conflict. ru:Красная армия (роман)
7774225	/m/026cnd3	The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966	Richard Brautigan	1971-03-23	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Abortion is a genre novel parody concerning the librarian of a very unusual California library which accepts books in any form and from anyone who wishes to drop one off at the library—children submit tales told in crayon about their toys; teenagers tell tales of angst and old people drop by with their memoirs—described as "the unwanted, the lyrical and haunted volumes of American writing" in the novel. Summoned by a silver bell at all hours, submissions are catalogued at the librarian's discretion; not by the Dewey Decimal system, but by placement on whichever magically dust-free shelf would, in the author's judgment, serve best as the book's home. One day a woman named Vida appears at the library's door. Although shy and awkward she is described as the most beautiful woman in the world, who American admen "would have made into a national park if they would have gotten their hands on her." Vida falls in love with the reclusive librarian and soon becomes pregnant, necessitating a trip to Tijuana, Mexico to secure an abortion.
7777644	/m/026cryh	The Fashion in Shrouds	Margery Allingham	1938	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Campion asks his sister, fashion designer Valentine Ferris, to introduce him to her best friend and most important client, Georgia Wells, a famous actress. Campion has been investigating the disappearance of Georgia's former fiance, barrister Richard Portland-Smith, three years previously. Now Campion has found Portland-Smith's skeleton. Campion meets Georgia and her entourage, including her unpleasant, possibly dangerous husband Raymond Ramillies, at the unveiling of the costumes Val has made for Georgia's new play. He also meets Alan Dell, the man Val is in love with, who admits to an admiration for Georgia. The event ends in a fashion disaster when it emerges that the design for the main dress has been leaked and copied. The house model Caroline Adamson, chosen for her resemblance to Georgia, is responsible. Georgia knows about Portland-Smith's death but she is shocked when Campion tells her it was suicide, not murder - she asks Dell to drive her home instead of her husband Ramillies. Several weeks later, Val tells Campion that Georgia has stolen Dell from her. Besides admitting that she wants Georgia dead, she is worried that Ramillies has been behaving unpredictably and might attack Dell. Then Lady Amanda Fitton (Sweet Danger), who now works as an engineer at Dell's aircraft factory, asks for Campion's help to find out why Dell is neglecting his work. Campion takes her to a restaurant where they see Dell with Georgia. Ramillies arrives with Caroline Adamson, dressed up exactly like Georgia, to provoke a confrontation. But the situation is miraculously defused by various friends of those concerned - stage-managed by Georgia's manager, Ferdie Paul. To distract Dell from the embarrassing situation, Amanda tells him she is engaged to Campion - to Campion's surprise. Ramillies is due to return to Ulangi, the African colony of which he is governor, in a gold-painted plane, a gift to a local ruler. He is leaving from Caesar's Court, a luxury resort outside London, run by Gaiogi Laminoff. Ramilies disappears after an official dinner and does not return until the afternoon of the next day - he says he has been drinking all night. When the flight is due to take off, he cannot be found - he is eventually found dead in the plane. The officials attempt to smooth over his death and a doctor is ready to give a certificate that he died of natural causes, but then Georgia mentions that she gave him a painkiller to take which Val had given her for herself. When a post mortem is carried out there is no evidence of unnatural death. However, the rumor that Val tried to poison Georgia because they fell out over Alan Dell becomes widespread society gossip. Caroline Adamson contacts Campion with information but fails to turn up for their appointment. Then Stanislaus Oates calls Campion in to Scotland Yard - Caroline has been stabbed and her body dumped in the countryside. Sinclair, Georgia's young son, tells Campion and Amanda that Ramillies was actually terrified of flying, but that he knew of an injection which would make him feel ill for four hours, then feel fine for the flight. Campion thinks this is how he was killed. As the police close in on Val because of the painkiller story, Campion tracks down the men who dumped Caroline's body. They run a restaurant which provides accommodation for various criminal activities - they are not saying who killed Caroline and they have destroyed all the evidence. Amanda gives a party to celebrate breaking off her engagement to Campion - she is calm about it, but he seems upset. Campion tells everybody what he has found out - that Portland-Smith was blackmailed by Caroline and an accomplice until he killed himself, that Ramillies was given an unknown drug which killed him, and that Caroline was murdered when she tried to blackmail her former accomplice. Then he argues with Amanda, throws her in the river, and leaves. Alan Dell apologises to Val and asks her to marry him - she accepts. Campion visits Ferdie Paul and explains that the crimes were carried out for Georgia's sake. Ferdie Paul leaves for Caesar's Court to confront Gaiogi Laminoff, who he says is Georgia's father. A message asks Campion to follow, but on the way he is knocked out and taken to Amanda's cottage where he is placed with his head in the gas oven to fake his suicide. But at the vital moment, the police burst in - Campion has arranged in advance for them to follow him. Ferdie Paul is revealed as the man who tried to kill him, and he was also responsible for the other deaths. Campion recovers. Now that the fake engagement is over, Amanda asks for her ring back - Campion says he will marry her if she wants.
7780317	/m/026cvk3	Space Apprentice	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel's main character is Yuri Borodin, a young space welder. His mother was sick and Yuri missed the spaceship that was to transport him to his new work site. He gets a ride to his destination on a ship piloted by some of the characters of The Land of Crimson Clouds. When the novel starts Yurkovsky and Grisha Bykov - Bykov's son - and Dauge say goodbye to Bykov senior and leave on a mission from international spaceport Mirza-Charle. Meanwhile, Yuri Borodin is also in the spaceport, trying to find a ride. Spaceport authorities direct him to the port director, but he is currently out of town. Disappointed Yuri wanders into a Capitalist-run bar, where the owner-cum-bartender is engaged in an ideological debate with a Russian Communist. Yuri befriends the Russian, Ivan Zhilin, and tells him of his problems. Ivan suggests Yuri to go to the spaceport hotel in the evening, and try to convince the astronauts who stay there to take him along. Yuri does so and meets Bykov and Yurkovsky. Yurkovsky, currently serves as a Chief Inspector. He plans to make a tour of several planets and planetoids. Bykov is piloting his ship. They agree to give Yuri a ride. Their first stop is Mars. The Russian colonists there are battling an alien life form the giant slug. As the colonists are planning a large-scale slug hunt, they realize that some of the buildings in the area are not human-made. Since the buildings look so much like the simple prefabricated structures set up by the colonists, everyone just assumed they were left there by previous expeditions. Some colonists lament the lack of initiative that has descended over the colony in recent years, and Yurkovsky agrees. The raid on slugs, carried out in part using the weapons brought by Yurkovsky, is reasonably successful, and the colonists cheer up. On the way to research station Einomia, the spaceship crew runs an emergency drill, and Yuri, while stressed and confused, holds up to the pressure. A lot of physicists want to work on Einomia due to the unique research opportunities that it provides. The station is severely overcrowded but the scientists gladly put up with the inconveniences such as food shortages or having to sleep in an elevator. Yurkovsky disapproves, but gives a part of his own food supply to the hungry physicists. He says that such scientists should be a role model for Yuri. Planetoid Bamberga has deposits of precious space pearls. Capitalists run a mine on Bamberga. In the drive to maximize profits the miners work more than six-hours a day despite health risks due to high levels of radiation in the mine. This causes illness and premature death. The local safety-inspector, a Hungarian Communist, protests. But he is ignored and harassed. After his arrival, Yurkovsky arrests the mine's director and tells the workers to elect a replacement. The miners emphatically protest. Despaired, Yurkovsky leaves the meeting with the miners. However, one of the miners returns the string of space pearls that Yurkovsky accidentally left behind. The returned pearls are worth a large sum of money and Yurkovsky thinks that there is still hope for the miners. Back on the spaceship, Yuri and Zhilin watch an action film about the heroes of space exploration, and the young Yuri becomes excited. Zhilin explains the movie overly simplifies the picture and the life is much more complicated and a lot less glamorous than how it is portrayed. He alludes to the events in The Land of Crimson Clouds. The next stop of the tour is Diona space observatory; the researchers there produce valuable scientific contributions. However, personal relationships deteriorate. Yuri gets into a fight with one of the young researchers. It turns out that two of the senior scientists were spreading rumors about the others to further their scientific careers. Yurkovsky orders them back to Earth and even suggests one of them to kill himself. He says that these two men managed to deceive the rest of the crew so successfully because many people in Communist society are not accustomed to others blatantly lying to them, and they are too proud to try to figure out the truth for themselves. Yurkovksy spaceship approaches Saturn and stops at Ring One space station. From there, Yuri is supposed to go to Ring Two: his worksite. Yurkovksy is getting too old for space travel. In all likelihood, this trip is the last of his space flights. He did a lot of research on the rings of Saturn and now he wants to see them close. The same is true for his navigator: Krutikov. Yurkovsky and Krutikov take a rocket to fly near the rings. As they approach the rings, Yurkovsky notices an unusual rock formation, and urges Krutikov to fly closer, despite the danger of a meteorite collision. Bykov orders them, over the radio, to stop. Yet, anxious to find out more about the discovery, Yurkovsky attacks Krutikov and breaks the radio. Krutikov yields and descends to the rock formation. Bykov is speeding toward them on a spaceship that is supposed to leave for Ring Two space station. Yuri is on board. The rocket of Yurkovsky and Krutikov gets hit but a meteorite and they die. Yuri is injured and hospitalized.. He ponders how people will think of the new discovery as very important, but they will not remember the people who made it; he wishes that no discovery were made and the two people were still alive. Bykov and Zhilin return to Earth and meet a sick Dauge. He tells Bykov that a new expedition to planet Transpluton, also known as Cerberus, is planned, and he is offered to lead it. Bykov agrees apathetically. Zhilin, however, thinks that he would prefer to stay on Earth, because "that is what is most important shall always remain on Earth."
7780467	/m/026cvn6	The Late Christopher Bean	Sidney Howard			 The story opens on a Thursday morning in a small village outside of Boston. Dr. Haggett arrives home after delivering a baby and has his breakfast. He is reminded by his daughter Susie that that day is the last day that their maid, Abby, will be working for them before going to Chicago to help her deceased brother's children. He then receives a telegram that an "admirer of the late Christopher Bean" will visit him that day at noon, signed by an art critic from New York named Maxwell Davenport. Putting it out of his mind, he is forced to cope with the petty quarrels of his family, namely the want of older daughter Ada and Mrs. Haggett to visit Florida, which seems unlikely thanks to their dwindling finances. The morning is interrupted when the village paper hander Warren Creamer visits, showing off his recently completed paintings and offering to paint Susie and Ada. Meanwhile, Dr. Haggett goes upstairs to shave, followed shortly by Mrs. Haggett and Ada being forced to go to the kitchen to greet the new maid from Boston. While the family is out, Warren proclaims his love for Susie and asks her to elope with him, but is caught kissing her by Ada. Outraged, Ada calls the rest of the family back in, evoking a tidal wave of fury from Mrs. Haggett, who hastily throws Warren out of the house. Dr. Haggett comforts Susie while Ada and his wife storm off, and finds himself rather unable to offer a solution to Susie's need to decide between staying and running off. He soon leads Susan upstairs so he can make his calls and so she can relax. Meanwhile, Tallant arrives at the house and is let in by Abby. His treatment of her appears friendly enough, but his sarcastic comments rub her the wrong way. Dr. Haggett then comes downstairs, and Tallant begins to explain that he has come to pay the debt of his friend, Chris Bean. Mistaking Tallant for Davenport, he shows Tallant the telegram he received that morning, which gives Tallant the idea to pose as Davenport. Tallant then pretends that Bean's work is trash, as the Haggetts previously believed, but requests to take the paintings away as "souvenirs." Dr. Haggett readily agrees, and gives Tallant two paintings that are in questionable condition. He also asks Abby to examine the attic for any other paintings, explaining to her that Tallant is Davenport, a friend of Bean's. This statement strikes her as suspicious, but she reluctantly agrees to search. She returns empty-handed, so Tallant decides to leave with what he has, mentioning briefly that he and Dr. Haggett might go into business together. Dr. Haggett becomes very excited by the small debt that Tallant paid him and the prospective business, but Abby warns him to keep an eye on Tallant, whose vast amount of knowledge she finds disturbing. Realizing his need to fool Abby as well lest she blow his cover, Tallant quickly returns to the Haggett home in the hopes of having a private conversation with her. She confronts him about his claim to be a friend of Chris Bean's, stating that the only friend Bean ever mentioned was Bert Davis. Thinking quickly, Tallant says that he is indeed Davis, using Davenport as a professional name. Abby then lightens up, and expresses the close relationship she shared with Chris and the things about art that he taught her. Pretending to be sympathetic, Tallant gently coaxes her into revealing that she still possesses a life-size portrait of herself, painted by Chris and whose existence is unknown to the world at large. He asks that she visit him that night at the hotel he's staying at and that she bring the portrait. She shoos him away, afraid the Haggetts will find them talking, and promises to contemplate his offer to buy the portrait from her. Susie then rushes in and confesses her dilemma to Abby, followed shortly by the arrival of Warren. The three conspire to leave that night after dinner, Abby going to Chicago and Susie and Warren eloping. Warren says that they must meet at four-thirty that day in order to catch Abby's five o'clock train, then leaves. Warren's departure is followed almost immediately by the arrival of Rosen, who like Tallant, succeeds in making Abby uncomfortable with his knowledge of her and the household. He greets Dr. Haggett by insisting on paying Chris Bean's debts, and asking if he could buy all of Bean's paintings for $1000. Stunned, Dr. Haggett admits that he gave the paintings away to Davenport. Rosen is dissatisfied with this story, knowing Davenport to be more honest than to take any painting without paying the proper price. They go into the doctor's office to discuss this problem, while the real Davenport arrives right on time at noon. He too knows a lot about Abby, who has now reached a breaking point in light of all the suspicious visitors of that day. Davenport quickly introduces himself to Dr. Haggett, who has now returned with Rosen. Rosen confirms that this is indeed the real Davenport, which frightens Dr. Haggett, who has no idea now who the first man was. Davenport explains that he is there to collect information on Bean for a biography. He explains that Bean is a revered artist in New York and that his letters have been published the latest issue of the "Atlantic Monthly." Dr. Haggett, finally realizing the meaning of the day's prior events, confesses that a third man simply took the paintings of which he knew. Stressed considerably now, he requests that Davenport and Rosen return later. As Abby prepares lunch for the Haggetts, he learns from his wife that she burned the other paintings left there by Christopher Bean. They also recall the portrait of Abby in her room and conspire on how to steal it, but to their dismay fail. Dr. Haggett's anger and stress are excerbated by numerous phone calls from New York requesting that he sell the Christopher Beans that he has. A confused Abby finally serves the distraught family their lunch. Act 3 opens with Davenport returning and Dr. Haggett having left to investigate the whereabouts of Tallant. Susie explains to Davenport her plans to elope and asks his opinion of Warren's paintings, afraid that if she marries him, they will run into financial trouble. She then offers to show Davenport around the village and give him details on Bean's life there. Dr. Haggett finally returns, having learned Tallant's name and that he's placed the stolen paintings in a bank vault. Desperate, he, Mrs. Haggett, and Ada try to persuade Abby to sell them her portrait. She brings it into the living room, but still refuses to part with it. Tallant finally returns to talk to Abby, who quickly brushes him off and goes upstairs to pack. Dr. Haggett now confronts Tallant, who requests that Mrs. Haggett and Ada leave them alone. Tallant explains that the business he had in mind was the forgery of paintings by dead artists, and reveals that he himself is an accomplished painter who simply signs his paintings with the name of a famous dead artist. Dr. Haggett agrees to join Tallant's scheme, but Rosen then arrives looking to purchase real Christopher Bean works. Ditching Tallant, Dr. Haggett single-handedly haggles with Rosen and sells him Abby's portrait. Meanwhile, Davenport returns to verify the authenticity of Abby's portrait and to try and deter Rosen from scamming the Haggetts. Warren arrives to help Abby pack, but Abby is distracted by the apparent sale of her painting, which Dr. Haggett forced her to sell to him. Her strong protests make him feel ashamed, but when she reveals that she saved the paintings that Mrs. Haggett claimed to have burned, he demands that she show them to him. Tallant, realizing his scheme to forge Chris Beans is now at an end, quickly leaves. Rosen and Davenport assess the paintings, while Abby miserably tries to say goodbye. Susie and Warren take her things out to Warren's truck, and Abby turns to go. Davenport catches her and begs her to consider donating her portrait to an art museum, where it'll be safe and near her so she can visit it. She confesses to him that she married Christopher Bean, which quickly ends Dr. Haggett's and Rosen's business dealings. Rosen, realizing that the portraits are rightfully hers and thus impossible to purchase (considering her attachment to them), gives up. Dr. Haggett, realizing that Abby now has legal claim to the paintings and her portrait, gives them to her and sits miserably in his chair, with Mrs. Haggett and Ada mourning their lost chance at fame and Davenport smiling widely at Abby's triumph.
7781002	/m/026cvzw	The Borgia Bride	Jeanne Kalogridis		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book starts off with Princess Sancha remembering the thirtieth anniversary of her grandfather's ascension to the Neapolitan throne. Because Naples needed a blessing after many wars and natural disasters, the royal family was to beseech San Gennaro to witness a miracle. Inside a reliquary was believed to be ancient blood of the royals and if the blood became liquid once again, it is a good omen for the king. After the "miracle" is performed, the royal procession makes its way back to Castel Nuovo in Naples. A feast celebrating the anniversary of the king was held later that night, and out of boredom, seeks the chamber of the dead of her grandfather, King Ferrante. It is said here that the King had brought his enemies that he had killed, preserved and on occasion visited the dead. She quickly finds the legend of the chamber to be true, and meets her grandfather there. After discussing several matters with her grandfather, Sancha is told by her grandfather to watch over her brother, for he is considered by Ferrante to be "weak". As the pair return to the party, the Duke of Calabria, Sancha's father, sees them and discovers that she was in the chamber of the dead, and had not been invited. He tells her that he will speak to her later. Sancha then leaves to be comforted by her brother. Duke Alfonso returns later to tell Donna Trusia (Sancha's mother) that she will not be allowed to go on a picnic with the other children. He speaks to her in the study and denies her contact with her brother (also named Alfonso) for two weeks for her incorrigible behaviour, since that is the one thing she loves above all else. After two weeks pass, Sancha and Alfonso are reunited and Sancha swears that she would never give her father cause to punish her. Although a little more less than three years had passed, little had changed in the royal household. Sancha and Alfonso are still close, although they do not share a nursery any longer. A new pope was elected that year, one by the name of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI. In the beginning of this chapter, Sancha is summoned to the King's chambers. There, she finds that she is betrothed to the Count Onorato Caetani. His manner towards the royal family is described as jovial. The courtship between the count and the princess preceded rapidly. As a whim, Sancha went to see a strega (witch). When she reached the strega's house, she was surprised to find herself required to enter alone. Immediately, Sancha realizes that the news has a hint of foreboding. After spreading the tarot cards, Sancha chooses the card of a "heart, impaled by two blades, which together made a great silver X". The strega warns Sancha that if she does not resort to evil, she will "condemn to death those whom you most love". She also says that the princess will not marry the Count, but the son of the most powerful man in Italy, and that she will not love him, nor have any children by him. She ends by saying "Take great care, Sancha, or your heart will destroy all that you love.
7781353	/m/026cw6s	The Haunted Bridge	Carolyn Keene	1938	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nancy's father, Carson Drew is on the trail of an international ring of jewel thieves and asks her daughter, Nancy Drew to assist him. The trail leads to a summer resort area. Before Nancy has a chance to start work on her father's case, a golf caddy tells her a frightening tale. In the dense woods nearby is an old wooden footbridge guarded by a ghost! Intrigued by the caddy's story, Nancy decides to investigate. Several riddles confront the young detective as she attempts to solve the mystery of the haunted bridge and track down a woman suspected of being a key member of the gang of the jewelry thieves.
7782185	/m/026cwvq	Gideon the Cutpurse	Linda Buckley-Archer	2006-06-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel focuses on the adventures of Peter Schock and Kate Dyer in 1763 after they are accidentally transported there by an anti-gravity machine while chasing Molly, Kate's dog. They awoke in the eighteenth century to see their time machine being carted away by a dark character known as the 'Tar Man', or "Blueskin". Soon, they meet a man called Gideon Seymour, who helps them adjust to life in the eighteenth century. He takes them to the Byng residence where they stay until they are able to track down the lost anti-gravity machine. With the help of Gideon, Mrs. Byng, Sir Richard, Parson, Sidney, Hannah and Jack they are able travel to London. Although the Parson initially distrusts Gideon, he is eventually won over by Gideon's honor and courage when he saves the group from highway men. Gideon eventually tells the story of his association with Lord Luxon and the Tar Man. Gideon explains to Peter that he met with Lord Luxon shortly after his fifteenth birthday. His parents and some of his siblings had died many years ago leaving only Gideon and his younger brother, Joshua. Forced into a life of servitude in order to stay alive, Gideon finally made up his mind to run away and, thus earn enough money to send for his brother to join him. After he escaped Gideon found himself without any resources and decided to steal for food. When he is caught, his life is spared only by the wealth and influence of Lord Luxon. While in London they meet King George III and Queen Charlotte. Lord Luxon and The Tar Man (Blueskin) are in London trying to stop the children going home. To get the anti-gravity machine back from Tar Man, Gideon offers to race him to the Tempest House for the anti-gravity machine. The Parson fed the Tar Man's horse certain herbs to make it sick during the race, and the Tar Man attacked Gideon. Gideon won the race, but was forced to forfeit when he learned that the Parson had cheated though The Tar Man had also cheated. Lord Luxon had him accused of crimes he did not commit and sent him to Newgate Prison. While Kate and Peter try to help Gideon, Kate's father appears with her dog. While the children catch up with Dr. Dyer on events in both centuries, Gideon is tried and sentenced to death by hanging. Kate and Peter save him by pulling an unusual stunt and setting him free. They encounter the Tar Man once again and as Peter says good-bye to Gideon, The Tar Man runs toward the anti-gravity machine. The anti-gravity machine then leaves for the 21st century and The Tar Man and Peter switch places. Peter is now stuck in 1763 without Kate.
7785913	/m/026czrp	Thirteen Moons	Charles Frazier	2006-10	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Near the end of his life, frontiersman Will Cooper reflects on his formative experiences from the unfamiliar comfort of his twentieth-century house. A call, which could be from Claire, the love of his past with whom he has lost contact, plunges him into memory, the recollection of which comprises, save for this prologue and a brief epilogue, the novel's entirety. Will, as a twelve-year-old boy, is sold into indentured servitude, and in this capacity he travels alone to the edges of a growing United States of America and of the Cherokee Nation in order to manage a trading post. On the way to the trading post he suffers many misadventures and ends up losing his horse which is his only means of transportation. In tracking down his beloved horse "Waverley" he happens upon the formidable Featherstone, (A renowned horse thief) who Will beats at a game of chance which amounts to a large sum of money. Featherstone demands that Will give him a final chance to recoup all the money in a final hand against a girl that Featherstone claims to have many of. Will wins the girl and when he meets Claire, then aged 11, he instantly falls in love with her; however Featherstone is a bad loser and sends him running for his life into the wilderness. After some days of wandering Will stumbles upon the trading post. There, Will demonstrates, along with optimistic fatalism, an aptitude for entrepreneurship. He quickly learns to speak Cherokee, the language of many of his customers, he manages to communicate and trade with them. When he is sixteen the owner of the trading post dies and his son sells the business to Will. His financial success allows him to build a small library there. He has been befriended by the local Cherokee chief named Bear who adopts him as a son and he is adopted into the tribe as well. Will meets Claire for the second time at a party Bear hosts when she is 16. He comes across Cranshaw, where Claire is part of Featherstone's household, presumably his daughter. We learn that Featherstone brazened out his sentence of forfeiture which should have taken place after he murdered a member of another tribal group. He returns frequently to visit Claire and borrow books from Featherstone, who still has extra aces up his sleeves, but grudgingly accepts and eventually also adopts him. As the years go by, Will grows more and more attached to Claire and they consummate their affection after a long process of courtship, spending two romantic summers together. However, Will finds out that Claire is Featherstone's wife, not daughter, as she had been thrown into the deal when he married her older sister. Coupled with the fact that a white man can not legally marry a mixed blood in the state and Claire's insistence on 'all or nothing' they never become fully wed. He has also had a duel with Featherstone, who never seems able to leave Will's horse alone. Will and his 'father' Bear have been conspiring to legally buy the land occupied by the Cherokee Nation. Will takes up their cause and lobbies at the nation's capitol, arguing for the tribe's legal land rights and for a while is partly successful at keeping a large portion of the land for his tribes exclusive use. He had somewhat become drugged by his legal reading into over-complexity in the transactions and the portion gets drastically reduced. Eventually, however, the army comes in, displaces almost the whole of the Cherokee nation and forces them to the plains beyond their traditional home in the coves cut from the mountains; Claire is forced to move away. He visits her sometime later, but she is unenthused at his visit and has since had a child with Featherstone. Featherstone tells Will that he died and came back to life, and is determined to make his second death one of much more phenomenal proportions. Devastated by the loss of his love on top of the miseries his friends have suffered along the Trail of Tears, some self-conscious attempts to find another partner and finally the traumas he himself witnessed while fighting in the American Civil War, Will departs his only home and wanders the nation aimlessly. Will's final encounter with Claire takes place at the Warm Springs Hotel, when both are in their fifties. Will hears talk of a Woman in Black who keeps herself aloof from the other hotel residents and remains in the mourning black from the death of her husband long past any necessary period. He comes across her one afternoon after being knife-cut by the collectors of someone to whom he owes money. She informs him that Featherstone's final death was hardly more dramatic than the first, and that her child has died as well. The pair spends another summer together, during which time Claire rejects a marriage proposal from Will and decides to leave him again. After more years, Will retires to a lonely home following a deal with the railroad built on a tract of land which he had owned. The novel ends in elegy for lost opportunities, the frontier spirit, and the memory of a native people.
7787854	/m/026d085	The Year of the Quiet Sun	Wilson Tucker	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During a vacation on a Florida beach in the summer of 1978, Brian Chaney, a demographer and biblical scholar, is approached by a woman named Kathryn van Hise. Initially assuming her to be a reporter interested in a controversial book he just published on the Dead Sea scrolls, she informs him that she works for the federal Bureau of Standards and that she is recruiting him for a physical survey of the future via a secretly constructed "TDV" or time displacement vehicle. When Chaney demurs, she informs him that his contract has been purchased from the think tank where he works, leaving him little choice. The reluctant Chaney travels by armored train to a military installation south of Joliet, Illinois. There he is teamed with two diversely talented military officers, United States Air Force Major William Moresby and United States Navy Lieutenant Commander Arthur Saltus. Chaney soon finds that he shares with Saltus an attraction to Kathryn, who is their civilian liaison, but unlike Saltus, Chaney lacks the assertiveness to pursue her aggressively. Instead he focuses his attention on the project, which is soon ordered by the President of the United States to embark on their first mission, a trip two years into the future to discover whether he wins the 1980 presidential election. The three travel to the Thursday after the election on individual trips, with first Moresby and then Saltus going first according to military seniority. Chaney, as a civilian, is the last to leave, but arrives earlier than the others due to a temporal navigation instrument error. They discover that the president, whom Chaney despises as a weak man (in fact, his name is given as "President Meeks"), wins the election in a landslide as a result of his successful handling of ongoing race riots in Chicago, and that these riots have resulted in the building of a wall down the middle of Cermak Road dividing the north of the city from the south. They also learn that the nation is under martial law after a failed attempt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take over the government by coup d'état, one thwarted because of the advance knowledge the time travelers will bring back of it. While preparing for their return, Saltus informs Chaney of an additional discovery: a marriage license between him and Kathryn. With Saltus gloating in the knowledge of his inevitably successful courtship, Chaney concedes the pursuit to him. With the success of the initial mission, the three are authorized to travel further into the future. They plan to travel to dates of their own choosing within the coming two decades, with each trip to be separated by approximately a year in order to provide broader coverage. Moresby goes first and travels to July 4, 1999 ("It has significance, after all!" he says), only to emerge in the middle of a racial civil war in which Chicago had recently been attacked with a nuclear bomb launched from China on behalf of black guerrillas. Quickly getting involved in a battle between base troops and invading "ramjets", as the black guerrillas are called, Moresby dies in an attack on a ramjet mortar position. Saltus is the next to go, traveling to the date of his 50th birthday in 2000. Upon his arrival he discovers remnants of the battle, and is nearly killed by survivors hiding out on the base. Wounded, he is assisted back to the displacement vehicle by an unknown figure and returns to the present, taking with him a tape-recorded report that Moresby had made upon his arrival. Forewarned by Saltus's experience, Chaney travels further into the future. Not having chosen a date, and disillusioned by his experiences on the 1980 trip, he arrives at an indeterminate point in "2000-plus", by which time the power from the base's nuclear reactor has been disrupted, causing the chronometers set up for the travelers to shut down. Venturing outside the building, he finds the base to be long-neglected, apart from a cistern and a grave. While further investigating the grave (which is that of Saltus), he is approached by a young man and a woman who identify themselves as Arthur and Kathryn's children. They take Chaney to Kathryn, now elderly, who reveals to Chaney that civilization collapsed as an indirect result of the time travel project; with the information from the future, the president made a series of disastrous decisions that led to war with China, followed by the civil war and societal destruction. When Chaney asks how much of this information he reports, she informs him that he reported none of it, that with the loss of power the time displacement vehicle could no longer return to the past and that Chaney was forever trapped in the future. Although it is foreshadowed earlier in the book, only at this point is the reader explicitly told a fact that makes Chaney's predicament all the more tragic. He is black, the only such member of the project. "Everyone fears you; no one will trust you since the rebellion," Kathryn tells him. "I am the only one here who does not fear a black man."
7795789	/m/026d9p7	A Pail of Air	Fritz Leiber			 The story is narrated by a ten-year-old boy living on Earth after it has been torn away from the Sun by a passing "dark star". The loss of solar heating has caused the Earth's atmosphere to freeze into thick layers of "snow". The boy's father had worked with a group of other scientists to construct a large shelter, but the earthquakes accompanying the disaster had destroyed it and killed the others. He managed to construct a smaller, makeshift shelter called the "Nest" for his family, where they maintain a breathable atmosphere by periodically retrieving pails of frozen oxygen to thaw over a fire. They have survived in this way for a number of years. At the end, they are found by a search party from a large group of survivors at Los Alamos, where they are using nuclear power to provide heat and have begun using rockets to search for other survivors (radio being ineffective at long range without an ionosphere). They reveal that other groups of humans have survived at Argonne, Brookhaven, and Harwell nuclear research facilities as well as in Tanna Tuva, and that plans are being made to establish uranium mining colonies at Great Slave Lake or in the Congo region. The age of the narrator is not revealed until the last sentence, providing a twist.
7800262	/m/026dg3p	Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot	Ken McGoogan	2002-04	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 In 1854, the explorer John Rae found himself at the centre of one of the great controversies of the nineteenth century – the fate of the Franklin expedition. With the British hoping to be first in the race to discover the Northwest Passage, the news Rae brought of starvation and cannibalism among final survivors set off a firestorm that would eclipse his own incredible accomplishments. The true story of the remarkable John Rae – Arctic traveler and Hudson's Bay Company doctor – Fatal Passage tells a tale of imperial ambition and high adventure. When nineteen-year-old Rae set sail for Hudson Bay in 1833, he had little idea of what to expect at the edge of empire. Meeting his first winter at Moose Factory with equanimity, even as members of the crew were dying despite his best efforts, he discovered that the key to successful Arctic life was to learn the survival skills of the native peoples. The hardy Rae, raised in the windswept Orkney Islands of northern Scotland, and a gifted hunter and sailor, would become one of the greatest explorers of his generation. He would survey 1765 miles of uncharted territory, travel 6555 miles on snowshoes and sail 6700 miles in small boats. Building on the work of explorers who had gone before him and aided by only a handful of native people, Métis and Scots, Rae became the consummate Arctic explorer, as much at ease in the wilderness of ice as in London drawing rooms. Ultimately, he solved the two great mysteries of nineteenth century Arctic exploration. Rae discovered both the fate of the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin, which had sailed from England in 1845, and the last navigable link in the Northwest Passage. The first of these discoveries brought down upon him the wrath of the formidable Lady Franklin, who enlisted the help of Charles Dickens, and orchestrated the erasure of Rae from official Arctic history. In Fatal Passage, Ken McGoogan sets the record straight.
7800354	/m/026dg6s	Lady Franklin's Revenge	Ken McGoogan			 Denied a role in Victorian England's male-dominated society, Jane, Lady Franklin took her revenge by seizing control of that most masculine of pursuits, Arctic exploration and shaping its history to her ends. The author, Ken McGoogan, tells two intertwined stories in this book. The first focuses on how Jane Franklin became the greatest woman traveler of the age. She rode a donkey into Nazareth, sailed a rat-infested boat up the Nile, climbed mountains in Africa and the Holy Land, and beat her way through the Tasmanian bush—all at a time when few Victorian women ventured beyond the security of the home, much less beyond the country's borders and the world's known frontiers. The second began when her husband, Sir John Franklin, disappeared into the Arctic in 1845. This book tells the story of how Lady Franklin orchestrated the ensuing twelve-year search, and so ended up contributing more to the discovery and mapping of the Canadian north than any explorer.
7803000	/m/026djzg	Icefire			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Icefire is an action/science fiction novel about an unknown group using the Ross Ice Shelf to create a soliton wave&mdash;much more powerful and destructive than tsunamis caused by seismic displacement&mdash;directed into the Pacific Ocean. Roughly the size of France, the Ross Ice Shelf is first broken free of its shoreline anchor points by tactical nuclear weapons detonated around its periphery. A larger nuclear device is then airburst above the Shelf, slamming the entire mass of loose ice into the Ross Sea beneath it and generating the monster wave. The EMP from the airburst warhead disables most electronics within its line of sight, blinding the worlds' satellites and silencing radio communication from the area. The main protagonists, Mitch Webber and Cory Rey, must escape the communication dead zone in time to tell the world what happened, warn everyone of the deadly wave racing towards it, discover who set it in motion, and find a way to catch the villains and stop the wave&mdash;if they can. The destruction caused by the bombs and peoples' understandable skepticism are working against them as, with every passing second, the wave gets closer to major cities and their unsuspecting populations.
7805024	/m/026dn0t	Strange Interlude	Eugene O'Neill	1928		 The plot centers on Nina Leeds, the daughter of an Ivy League professor, who is devastated when her adored fiancé is killed in World War I, before they have a chance to consummate their passion. Ignoring the unconditional love of the novelist Charles Marsden, Nina embarks on a series of sordid affairs before determining to marry an amiable fool, Sam Evans. While Nina is pregnant with Sam's child, she learns a horrifying secret known only to Sam's mother: insanity runs in the Evans family and could be inherited by any child of Sam's. Realizing that a child is essential to her own and to Sam's happiness, Nina decides on a "scientific" solution. She will abort Sam's child and conceive a child with the physician Ned Darrell, letting Sam believe that it is his. The plan backfires when Nina and Ned's intimacy leads to their falling passionately in love. Twenty years later, Sam's "son" Gordon Evans is approaching manhood, with only Nina and Ned aware of the boy's true parentage. The meaning of the title is suggested by the aging Nina in a speech near the end of the play: "Our lives are strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!"
7806341	/m/026dpn2	The House with the Green Shutters	George Douglas Brown		{"/m/026llv5": "Literary realism"}	 *Chapter I. On a weekday morning at eight, Gourlay's twelve carts set off together, and are watched by all in the Square. *Chapter II. Describes how Gourlay dominates the carrying business in the town, and how his rights to the local quarry (due to expire in two years) were granted to him by the Laird of Templandmuir. Introduces Toddle, the Deacon, the Provost, and Coe. *Chapter III. Introduces his 12-year-old son, John Gourlay, and describes the House with the Green Shutters. *Chapter IV. Introduces Mrs Gourlay and her daughter Janet. The orra man, Jock Gilmour, hits John, then quarrels with his mother and father. He is dismissed. *Chapter V. Gilmour boasts to the "bodies" about the quarrel. They talk about how Gourlay was cheated by his builder Gibson. Later, when Gourlay passes, the bodies, led by the Deacon, ask him for access to his property in order to tap a spring, which would provide running water for the town. He refuses. *Chapter VI. After John passes on his way to school, the bodies start discussing him. Johnny Coe tells the story of the boy's birth, when Jock Gourlay's stubbornness endangered his life. *Chapter VII. At noon, John is hurt by Swipey Broon, and he runs away from school. *Chapter VIII. John runs home and hides in the attic. After Janet comes home from school, he goes downstairs to find his father showing off his new fender to Grant of Loranogie. *Chapter IX. James Wilson returns to Barbie after fifteen years' absence, during which he has become a successful businessman. He accosts Gourlay, who slights him. *Chapter X. James Wilson moves into town. He converts Rab Jamieson's barn into an Emporium. *Chapter XI. Wilson's business encroaches on Gourlay's. When Wilson spoils his bargaining, Gourlay is so angry that he accidentally breaks his own walking-stick. *Chapter XII. Templandmuir, on Wilson's request, asks Gourlay to attend a public meeting about the new railway. At the meeting, Gourlay is humiliated; after he storms out, Templandmuir takes the opportunity to tell him his lease of the quarry will not be renewed. Gourlay, furious, returns home and hits his wife. *Chapter XIII. Four years have passed since Wilson's arrival. Johnny Gibson helps Wilson lay a plan to keep Gourlay's carts busy, so that he will later miss a better opportunity which Wilson can make use of. This is done by having him sign a contract eight weeks in advance. Once Gourlay realises he has been tricked, he refuses to honour the contract. When Gibson remonstrates with him, Gourlay throws him through the window of the Red Lion Inn. *Chapter XIV. In order to keep up with the Wilsons, Gourlay has sent his son to the High School of Skeighan. John often plays truant; one day, when his father catches him, he drags him to the school and throws him at the headmaster. *Chapter XV. Gourlay's pony "Tam" dies. Forced to use the bus, he overhears that Wilson's son is to go to Edinburgh to study, and Gourlay resolves to send John there too. *Chapter XVI. John takes the train to Edinburgh. A description of his impressionable character. *Chapter XVII. John and young Jimmy Wilson are invited to dinner by Jock Allan, where they meet Tarmillan, Logan, Tozer and old Partan. The conversation turns to Bauldy Johnston, an acquaintance, and his skill at phrase-making. *Chapter XVIII. In his second year at Edinburgh, John wins the Raeburn Prize for his essay on "An Arctic Night." *Chapter XIX. John returns home at night, very proud. He notices that his mother is perhaps not well. *Chapter XX. He struts around Barbie, smoking cigarettes. During his summer holidays, he acquires a habit of drinking to excess. *Chapter XXI. John is scandalously drunk. *Chapter XXII. John leaves for Edinburgh, slighting the Deacon as he goes. Gourlay is forced to dismiss his last worker, Peter Riney. *Chapter XXIII. John is expelled from the University. What with the serious illnesses of Janet and Mrs Gourlay, the family is on the brink of financial ruin. *Chapter XXIV. Gourlay receives a letter informing him of his son's disgrace. On his way to borrow £80 from Johnny Coe, the "bodies" of Barbie watch him and make veiled insults. *Chapter XXV. Gourlay confronts his son and there is a ferocious brawl. John takes momentary refuge at the Red Lion, but gets into a fight with Brodie. On his return, they grapple again, and John hits his father with the huge poker, killing him instantly. *Chapter XXVI. They send for the doctor, claiming that Gourlay fell from the ladder. John starts to go insane. Mrs Gourlay discovers that their mortgage is to be foreclosed. John is sent to Glasgow to see if anything can be done. *Chapter XXVII. John returns, without success. He poisons himself. After discovering his body, both Janet (who has tuberculosis) and Mrs Gourlay (who has breast cancer) poison themselves. Their corpses are discovered the next morning.
7806911	/m/026dqb2	Blood Knot	Athol Fugard			 There are only two characters in the play, a pair of brothers named Morris and Zachariah. Both were raised by the same black mother, but had different fathers, and Morris is much more fair-skinned than Zachariah. Morris can pass for white, and has done so in the past, but now he has returned to live with Zachariah in a small, miserable shack in the "colored" section of Port Elizabeth. Morris keeps the house, while Zachariah works to support them both. They're saving money in hopes of buying a farm of their own some day. Both Morris and Zachariah have rich imaginations, and have taken part in role-playing games together since they were small boys. The lonely Zachariah has struck up a pen-pal relationship with a white girl, and entertains fantasies that she might fall in love with him. The more level-headed Morris tries to disabuse Zachariah of such notions, and warns him that in segregated South Africa, such a relationship can only mean trouble, especially since the girl has indicated in letters that she has a brother who's a policeman. Morris' fears are soon realized, as Zachariah's pen-pal writes to say that she's coming to visit Port Elizabeth, and wants to meet Zachariah. Zachariah must face the tragic truth that he can never have a future with her, that she can never love him, and that she would be horrified to see who he really is. To avoid having her meet Zachariah, the brothers agree to have the white-looking Morris meet her, and pass himself off as Zachariah. To prepare for the date, Morris buys some fine "white" clothes with the money that he and his brother had been saving. When he puts on the clothes, he begins to adopt the white mannerisms and speech patterns that he'd learned years earlier, when trying to "pass" in white society. As he does so, he begins to treat his brother like an inferior, as any middle-class white South African would treat a black servant. When a letter arrives, indicating that the girl will not be coming for a visit after all, Zachariah and his relieved brother Morris begin a new role-playing game. This time, the game take bizarre twists. It becomes evident that Morris secretly holds his brother in disdain, and Zachariah secretly harbors thoughts of killing Morris. The play ends with no real resolution. Morris and Zachariah will, apparently, remain together for many unhappy years to come, needing each other, but unable to bridge the gap brought about by their respective skin tones.
7807538	/m/026dqqt	Jack & Jill	James Patterson	1996	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A man named Sam Harrison or Jack (not his real name) and a woman Sara Rosen or Jill set-up a United States Senator. They kill him and videotape it. On the other side of Washington D.C. a different killer kills a child named Shanelle Green using a baseball bat. Cross is awoken by his partner, John Sampson at the dead of the night and is promptly told there is a new case for them. Cross and Sampson drive to Sojourner Truth School in Southeast where the mutilated body of Shanelle Green was found. Alex then starts an investigation to find the child killer. He was informed by one of his informants of someone who would do such a thing, Emmanuel Perez, aka Chop-It-Off Chuckie. Alex and Sampson go to question the suspect and a police-suspect foot chase occurs. It ends when the suspect falls off a building after trying to evade Cross and Sampson. After the death of their suspect another child murder is committed. This proves that the "real" child killer is still alive and it is not the work of Chop-It-Off-Chuckie. One day the police commissioner and the Chief of Detectives Pittman visit Alex's house. They inform him that he was requested to work on the Jack and Jill case because of his famous encounters with psychopathic killers and expertise in psychology. He declines by saying that he has connection with the Truth School killer and he wishes to solve it instead. In the end he has no choice but to leave the child killer case and work on the Jack and Jill murders. later a confrontation arises between Pittman and him in which he physically abuses Pittman at a crime scene. Jack and Jill kill another two famous people. With Cross on the investigation and his obsession with the child killer case lingering, he asks for the help of a group of fellow detectives to work secretly on the Truth School Murders so that the case won't get cold. With Sampson and the other detectives solving the child murders, Alex concentrates on trying to solve the Jack and Jill case. He becomes part of a group formed in the white house to solve the Jack and Jill case. Cooperating with FBI, Secret Service and the CIA, the case begins to show signs of cracking. But still it wasn't enough to solve the case. On the other hand Jack and Jill ask for the help of another killer, Kevin Hawkins, but without Kevin Hawkins' knowledge that he was just a patsy. He was being used by Jack to elude the cops. Hawkins then kills a woman. At first the investigation team thought they made a mistake by killing a not famous person, but they soon found out that the woman is the American president's mistress. It was revealed that Jack and Jill's main target was to kill the president. Using the other murders to show that they are good at what they do, and they are really serious about it. Sampson is informed that someone was admitting to the murders of Shanelle Green and Vernon Wheatley. With Alex Cross's help Sampson and Alex went to the address that was given to them. They found out that the child killer is also a child (13 years old). Sumner Moore. 'Sumner' is on the run. He spends the day on the streets, then goes home in the middle of the night and kills his parents in a fit of rage. Alex continues to work with the Jack & Jill case. Without enough evidence and mistakes by Jack & Jill the case is still unsolvable. Alex then with the help of the general inspector of the CIA, Jeanne Sterling locates Kevin Hawkins, but Hawkins was able to escape. Sampson is called to the murder of another child. This time it is Sumner Moore; the real child killer is not him. The killer is revealed as another boy who suffers from depression and is on medication, the taking of which he has stopped. The president decids to resume schedules as normal. He goes to address the people of New York. At the Madison Square Garden, with enough security, Kevin Hawkins was waiting, dressed as an FBI woman. After a while a bomb explods and the auditorium is plunged into chaos. The president and his wife are protected by the Secret Service, and try to escape to the alternate escape route. What they don't know was that Kevin Hawkins was waiting. Hawkins was shot and died at the hospital but he successfully kills the president . Another murder is reported and Alex rushes to the scene where a woman was found dead. Sara Rosen. Later on Alex using his profiling knowledge starts to look for evidence. He finds a tape in Sara Rosen's/Jill's apartment that contains the footage of the first victim's murder, by accident the camera caught Jack as he shot the US senator. Alex thought that the tape was some kind of revenge by Sara Rosen for if Jack betrayed her. The next day Alex and Jay Grayer a CIA Agent followed 'Jack' and arrest him. It was Brett Sterling, a CIA contract killer (ghosts) and husband of CIA Inspector General Jeanne Sterling. A while later they arrested Jeanne at their home. She tried to escape but was unsuccessful as Cross stopped her. The real Jack and Jill are imprisoned in Lorton where Gary Soneji was imprisoned. A few days later the two of them are found dead due to poisoning. A flesh and blood was found in under Jeanne's fingernails, meaning that they were murdered and that they fought whoever it was. Alex theory was that they were contracted by someone with money who will benefit if the president died, but they don't know and can't find out who. All the while the real child killer takes hostage Christine Johnson, the principal of the Sojourner Truth School and kills her husband George at their home. The killer, Danny Bordreaux, a 13 year old, requests Alex Cross for negotiations. After Cross enters the house, a confrontation happens and Danny is apprehended. After all the cases were solved Alex is visited by Christine Johnson at his home and they talk. A day later while arranging the Christmas tree Gary Soneji calls and tells him he will come for him and he's the one who left Rosie the Cat at their home. Alex hangs up and goes back to do the tree. Kyle Craig continues to help Alex Cross throughout the book. it:Jack and Jill (romanzo)
7810140	/m/026dtr1	The Caine Mutiny Court Martial	Herman Wouk			 The action takes place in The General Court-Martial Room of the Twelfth Naval District, San Francisco and in the banquet room of the Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco in February, 1945. Lieutenant Stephen Maryk of the Naval Reserve is on trial for mutiny, because he relieved Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg of duty, as captain of the U.S.S. Caine, during a typhoon on December 18, 1944. Maryk insists that Queeg was insane, and that his paranoid delusions were putting the ship in danger. Maryk took command, applying Article 184 of Navy Regulations, and steered the Caine directly INTO the storm—the opposite of what Queeg had wanted. The Caine and her entire crew survived, which Maryk thinks is proof that he acted appropriately. Maryk's lawyer, Lt. Barney Greenwald, indicates that he thinks Maryk, whom he would much rather have prosecuted in the court-martial, was guilty. But he is determined to offer a strong defense nonetheless. Philip Francis Queeg is the first witness for the prosecution, being conducted by Lt. Commander John Challee. Queeg states that, while the Caine was going through a typhoon, Steve Maryk, a disloyal and digruntled officer, rebelled against him and relieved him of command without justification. At this stage of the court-martial, Queeg seems like a typical tough military disciplinarian—perhaps a bit too tough, but there is no good reason to believe he has psychological problems. He is confident and articulate, and seems to be in full possession of his faculties. Young signalman Junius Urban, who was present on the bridge at the time Maryk took control, is called to testify about what happened. Urban provides a measure of comic relief, as he is poorly educated, extremely nervous, and confused about exactly what happened. His testimony tells the jury very little, but on cross-examination he lets slip that Queeg was "a nut" on numerous small matters of discipline and tidiness. Captain Randolph Southard, an experienced naval officer called as an expert on destroyer ship-handling, testifies that, under the weather circumstances described on the night of the mutiny, Queeg took all the proper measures, and did exactly what a commanding officer should have done. Thus, in Southard's view, Maryk's actions were completely unjustified. However, under cross examination from Greenwald, Southard concedes that there are rare, extreme circumstances under which sailing directly into the storm would be the only way to avoid sinking. Two psychiatrists who have examined Queeg, Dr. Forrest Lundeen and Dr. Allen Bird, testify that, while Queeg is far from being an ideal officer (he can be arrogant, overly defensive, nervous, and a bit of a bully), he is not mentally ill. Under cross-examination from Greenwald, however, each of them, Dr. Lundeen in particular, acknowledges that some of Queeg's traits do come close to the textbook definition of paranoia. Willis Keith, a friend of Maryk's, testifies as to the events leading to the mutiny. Keith says that Queeg was a coward, that he was giving panicky, conflicting orders during the typhoon, requiring Maryk to take action. During cross-examination, Greenwald gets Keith to tell numerous stories of Queeg's ineptness, vanity, dishonesty, pettiness and seeming cowardice; indeed, one such incident led the Caine's officers to give Queeg the nickname "Old Yellowstain." Lt. Thomas Keefer, another friend of Maryk's, is a much less helpful witness from the defense standpoint. Keefer, an intellectual who was a writer in civilian life, having published some of his short stories in national magazines, indicates that Queeg was not insane, and that Maryk was ill-advised to relieve him of command. Maryk is stunned by Keefer's betrayal, since to a large extent, Keefer was the one who convinced Maryk that Queeg might be insane in the first place, and Maryk wants Greenwald to cross-examine him vigorously. Instead, Greenwald has no questions for Keefer, explaining to Maryk, "Implicating Keefer harms you." He wants one hero, not two mutineers. As the trial adjourns for the day, Maryk expresses dissatisfaction with Greenwald's defense. Greenwald explains that he has good reasons for not asking Keefer any questions, and states once again that he thinks Maryk is guilty. Even if Queeg was far from an ideal officer, Greenwald believes, Maryk's first duty was to carry on fighting the war, and doing his best to keep the Caine in action. All authority figures tend to look like irrational tyrants to their subordinates, Greenwald says, whether they are or not. As Greenwald begins his defense the following morning, he calls Steve Maryk as the first of his two witnesses. Maryk explains in great detail what a petty, vindictive, isolated and paranoid commanding officer Queeg was. In particular, Maryk dwells on "The Strawberry Incident," which convinced much of the crew that Queeg was insane. (The mess stewards on board the Caine had eaten some strawberries from the kitchen, the remains of a whole gallon of these that the Caine had received from another ship. When Queeg discovered that some of the strawberries were missing, he deduced that this was a repeat of a peacetime incident on another ship when cheese had been stolen, for the catching of whose thief he had earned a letter of commendation, and launched a full search of the ship for a secret duplicate pantry key that Queeg imagined the thief must have created. However, no such duplicate key had actually existed.) Finally, Maryk describes the events of the night of the mutiny itself. Maryk says the Caine was foundering, on the verge of sinking, and that Queeg was too frightened and paranoid to take the proper steps to save the ship. Only at this most desperate moment did Maryk see fit to take command. After the ship was out of danger, Maryk wrote a full account of his actions in the ship's log. He claims that Queeg came to him and proposed erasing this embarrassing incident from the log—a serious breach of Naval ethics. Maryk refused to do so, electing instead to take full responsibility for his actions. The prosecuting attorney, John Challee, asks Maryk about his background. Maryk answers that he is a fisherman's son, and has been around boats his whole life. However, Maryk confesses that he was only an average student in high school and a poor student in college. It becomes clear in Challee's cross-examination that, while Maryk uses words like "paranoid," he really knows little about psychology, and was not truly qualified to judge anyone's mental health. At this point, Greenwald calls Queeg as his second and final defense witness. Under intense cross-examination, Queeg is asked to justify each and every one of his questionable actions as commanding officer of the Caine. He becomes nervous and testy, and starts playing with a pair of steel balls that he uses to control his nerves. He tells a few small lies to cover up petty offenses. When his lies are revealed, his demeanor changes, and he becomes angry and combative. When asked about Maryk's charge that Queeg had wanted to alter the ship's log, an enraged Queeg rants that he was surrounded by disloyal officers, and looks exactly like the panicky paranoid that Maryk had described. When the defense rests, Queeg is a broken man, and everyone else present knows that Maryk will be acquitted. Maryk is relieved if not totally ecstatic, and invites Greenwald to a celebration party that Tom Keefer is hosting later that evening. (Keefer has written a novel about the war, titled Multitudes, Multitudes, and even though it is still not finished, he has received a big advance from a publisher.) Greenwald looks dejected and far from triumphant, but he reluctantly agrees to attend the party. At the party, Keefer, Keith, Maryk and their friends are celebrating both Maryk's acquittal and the large advance that Keefer has received on Multitudes, Multitudes, when Greenwald walks in, heavily intoxicated from a number of drinks he and Challee (the two men had been law-school classmates, and good friends, before both had enlisted) had shared before he showed up to the party, over which they had discussed details Greenwald had left out of the case. Greenwald proposes a toast to "Old Yellowstain." Unlike the Caine's junior officers, Greenwald feels deep regret over what he did to Queeg on the witness stand. To Greenwald, though Phil Queeg was a weak man, perhaps he was still an admirable one, and Queeg and career military men like him are actually heroic figures, since they were the ones putting their lives on the line to defend America—something none of the others were doing because they knew they could never truly enrich themselves financially in the armed forces. Greenwald, who is Jewish, understands what the consequences would have been had the Axis won World War II. He refers to Nazi atrocities, declaring, at one point, that it is men like Queeg who have saved his own mother, Mrs. Greenwald, from having been "melted down to a bar of soap." He points out to Maryk, "Steve, this dinner's a phony. You're guilty. 'Course you're only half guilty. There's another guy who's stayed very neatly out of the picture." Greenwald feels sorry for Queeg, because he sees that Queeg was not wrong about being surrounded by disloyal officers. Greenwald believes that Tom Keefer is the guiltiest party in the whole affair. Maryk, after all, really knew very little about psychology or psychiatry, so where would he have obtained any of his half-formed ideas about paranoia and mental illness, if not from Keefer? Greenwald had defended Maryk to the best of his abilities, which had led him to destroy Queeg on the witness stand, because he had seen that Maryk was essentially a decent man trying to do the right thing. He views Keefer, on the other hand, as an upper-class intellectual snob who had regarded himself as superior to Queeg, the career military man, and had helped turn Maryk and the rest of the crew against him. Greenwald suggests that Maryk could even have reasoned with Queeg during the typhoon had Keefer not poisoned the atmosphere in the first place. Greenwald denounces Keefer, and throws a glassful of yellow wine into his face, before walking out of the party, an act which ruins it.
7812244	/m/026dx5v	Awake and Dreaming	Kit Pearson	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Theo is an avid reader who lives in the slums of Vancouver with her young mother Mary-Rae, who is irresponsible and frequently mistreats Theo. She often fantasizes about an alternate life, her dreams fueled by the huge quantity of books she reads about perfect families. Rae starts dating a man named Cal, and eventually moves in with him, sending Theo to live with her aunt, Rae's sister Sharon, in Victoria. While she and her mother are on the ferry to Victoria, Theo meets a "perfect" family,by the name of the Kaldors. She and the Kaldor children instantly make friends and play together on the ferry. Theo and the children see a new moon while on the ferry and each make a wish. Theo desperately wishes she belonged to the Kaldor family and then faints. Theo wakes up mysteriously and inexplicably living with the Kaldors. Theo originally believes there must be a mistake, but is delighted to find that the Kaldors simply accept her as a member of the family. Theo quickly begins to believe that as long as she remains with the Kaldors, nothing will ever go wrong again. Several months pass and then suddenly, Theo's life begins to fade away - literally. Quickly after this, Theo blacks out again. Theo wakes up and finds herself back on the ferry with her mother, at the exact moment she left, much to her unhappiness. She begins to live with her aunt Sharon, but she cannot enjoy it as she keeps wondering if the Kaldors were real or just a dream. Theo eventually discovers that the Kaldors do exist, but is instantly disappointed when they do not remember her. She befriends them, but is frustrated that they aren't "perfect" - they too have normal family issues. Theo is also frustrated that they simply view her as a friend, not as a member of the family. Meanwhile, Theo discovers a shadowy presence in the Kaldor's house - the restless spirit of a dead author, Cecily Stone. Cecily lived in the house her entire life and remains there while she tries to settle the past. She feels she cannot die until she has created an idea for her 'great novel' which she never wrote. Theo is stunned to find that Cecily's idea consists of Theo coming to live with the Kaldors. Cecily explains that she first saw Theo on the ferry to Victoria, imagined a better life for Theo, but her idea faded when she could not come up with a conclusive ending. It appears that Theo's longing for a family and Cecily's idea for a book came together and made Theo's dream, but when Cecily's idea faded, so did the dream. Rae's relationship with Cal fails, so she comes to live with Sharon and Theo in Victoria. Theo begins to enjoy her real life, not just her imaginary one. This is thrown into chaos when Rae decides to go back to Vancouver, much to Sharon's refusal. Theo is so upset that she goes to Cecily for advice. Cecily sympathizes but knows there is nothing she can do, and instead gives Theo advice on how to continue with her life. Cecily now feels that she is able to move on and face the next stage of her journey. Theo returns home and stands up for herself, refusing to leave Victoria. She insists that Rae pull her act together and take care of her properly. Rae is stunned, but agrees. The novel skips forward several weeks to Theo's tenth birthday. She and Rae now live together in a clean and comfortable apartment. Rae has a decent job and is taking care of Theo. It appears that Theo's life is beginning to work out. She enjoys a birthday party with her friends, the Kaldors, and her family. She accepts that she doesn't know if this life will last, but she will enjoy it while she can.
7820172	/m/026f5jn	Chamber Music	James Joyce	1907	{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 Although it is widely reported that the title refers to the sound of urine tinkling in a chamber pot, this is a later Joycean embellishment, lending an earthiness to a title first suggested by his brother Stanislaus and which Joyce (by the time of publication) had come to dislike: "The reason I dislike Chamber Music as a title is that it is too complacent", he admitted to Arthur Symons in 1906. "I should prefer a title which repudiated the book without altogether disparaging it." Richard Ellmann reports (from a 1949 conversation with Eva Joyce) that the chamberpot connotation has its origin in a visit he made, accompanied by Oliver Gogarty, to a young widow named Jenny in May 1904. The three of them drank porter while Joyce read manuscript versions of the poems aloud - and, at one point, Jenny retreated behind a screen to make use of a chamber pot. Gogarty commented, "There's a critic for you!". When Joyce later told this story to Stanislaus, his brother agreed that it was a "favourable omen". In Ulysses, Leopold Bloom reflects, "Chamber music. Could make a pun on that." In fact, the poetry of Chamber Music is not in the least bawdy, nor reminiscent of the sound of tinkling urine. Although the poems did not sell well (fewer than half of the original print run of 500 had been sold in the first year), they received some critical acclaim. Ezra Pound admired the "delicate temperament" of these early poems, while Yeats described "I hear an army charging upon the land" as "a technical and emotional masterpiece". In 1909, Joyce wrote to his wife, "When I wrote [Chamber Music], I was a lonely boy, walking about by myself at night and thinking that one day a girl would love me."
7824051	/m/026fbhh	Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's Great Art - America and Her Allies Recovered It	Robert M. Edsel	2006	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/05wkw": "Photography"}	 This book focuses on an aspect of World War II that is largely ignored in many history books – the Nazi looting of Europe and Russia and the Allied recovery and repatriation of stolen art. Little known to the general public, Hitler diverted his attention from the prosecution of the war to the systematic theft of Europe’s great art. His dream was to build the world’s greatest collection – The Führermuseum – in his hometown of Linz, Austria. European museum officials took extraordinary measures to protect art from Hitler and the ensuing war. When U.S. forces prepared to enter Europe, they assembled a special force of largely American and British museum directors, curators, and art historians known as the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA) section, attached to the Allied armies. These “Monuments Men” attempted to minimize damage to European monuments and architecture, then track down stolen works of art. Their effort would become one of the greatest “treasure hunts” in history. In the end, Allied forces located more than 1,000 repositories in mines and castles across Europe, many of which were filled with art, sculpture, furniture, archives, and other cultural property stolen by the Nazis. Edsel points out that thousands of pieces are still missing, such as Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man from the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, Poland. Rescuing Da Vinci tells this story through brief text and more than 460 photographs, 60 of which are in color. This group of photographs has never been published in a single book, and many have not been seen in decades. Images such as Michelangelo’s David entombed in brick for protection or a Rembrandt Self Portrait sitting atop crates in a salt mine, capture the story better than words could describe.
7824473	/m/026fbyy	The Atom Station	Halldór Laxness	1948	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ugla, an uneducated girl from the countryside, moves from an outlying area of Northern Iceland to the capital city of Reykjavík in order to work for Búi Árland, a member of parliament, and to learn how to play the organ. She’s met with a world that’s completely foreign to her: politicians and the military move freely about the city, and she views city residents as spoiled, snobbish and arrogant. In contrast, she comes from a rural area where the Icelandic Sagas of the Middle Ages constitute the majority of what people discuss and ponder and are viewed as more important than reality. These historical backgrounds are certainly important and provide crucial patterns. The prime minister subsequently carries out secret dealings with the Americans and “sells” the country. Ugla, however, also confronts other current issues, above all in the organ player’s house. There, she comes in contact with communist and anarchist mindsets and likewise protests the construction of an atom station in Iceland. After a short relationship with Búi Árland, Ugla decides to return to the “selfconscious policeman”, who is the father of her recently born child.
7828649	/m/026fhrp	The Life Eaters	David Brin			 The history of the comic follows ours, until one night during the winter of 1943, when a number of bright lights appeared over Nazi-occupied Europe. Intentionally or otherwise, the slaughter of the death camps has somehow been used to summon the Aesir, Norse gods. Quickly allying themselves with the gods, the Nazis are able to push aside their mortal foes. The extended war has an amazing effect on human technology - by the fifties, the American military has a manned spy satellite. The trickster, Loki, works against his fellow Aesir. On the night they arrived, Loki used his magic to whisk hundreds of thousands of death camp internees to safety in Persia. Loki reveals the secret of how the Aesir were brought into being, the Nazis used death camps to fuel necromancy on a never before seen scale to summon them, but he makes sure to tell this only to a OSS Captain sent on a suicide mission, knowing fully well that he would never have the chance to let anyone else know the truth. Before, the American government had assumed the Aesir were alien invaders. (This is a reversal of roles from the The Mighty Thor series of Marvel Comics, which partially inspired Brin, and where Loki is the unquestioned villain). As the Nazis continue to conquer the world, with the help of their Japanese allies (and their Shinto gods), necromancy spreads in use throughout the globe. As a result of "Asian faith and African desperation... and all the madness of the tropics", the multiple gods of the developing world are given form through human sacrifice, band together and fight the Aesir (who have to keep to colder regions). As the Tropicals advance, they burn the Arabian oilfields, leading to global warming. With the potential of the Aesir creating a nuclear winter to counter the global warming, the remaining free Americans must race against time to prevent the gods from destroying the world as Loki schemes to fulfill the Ragnarok prophecy.
7829182	/m/026fjh2	Quatre aventures de Spirou et Fantasio	André Franquin	1950		 In The Robot Drawings, Spirou and Fantasio have a hunch they need to protect the world from criminals getting their hands on mad Professor Samovar's blueprints for a robot with doomsday potential. This is the sequel to Radar le robot from 1947. In Spirou in the Ring, Poildur, a neighbour bully, challenges Spirou to a boxing match, who nobly accepts and asks Fantasio to coach him. An entire Brussels working class community turns out for the big event, and an epic boxing match of courage against cheating tactics is played out. On this occasion, Spirou's weight is revealed to be 40.8&nbsp;kg. In Spirou Rides a Horse, Fantasio attempts to mix it up with the upper class by playing the equestrian dandy gentleman, and Spirou reluctantly joins him to go horseback riding. Fantasio is given a very noble steed named Artaban, while Spirou's horse, Plumeau, is ridiculously unhorselike. In Spirou meets the Pygmies, a leopard escaped from the zoo assaults Spirou and Spip during a forest picnic trip, but they manage to become friendly. Unable to adopt and keep it in the apartment, Spirou and Fantasio must take it home to an African island, leading to adventures with pygmy tribes and arms-dealing villains.
7830061	/m/026fkd0	Spirou et les héritiers	André Franquin	1952		 In Spirou and the Heirs, Fantasio is told he must compete against his cousin Zantafio to inherit from a long-absent uncle. The deceased has devised three trials for the two men: creating an original and useful invention, achieving a top 6 Grand Prix race position, and finally capturing a mysterious animal, the Marsupilami in the Palombian jungle. The dishonest Zantafio uses extreme tactics to win, and the two cousins are tied after the second task. The third task proves the hardest, as the creature's prodigious reflexes and abilities make it impossible to capture, until it accidentally drinks a gallon of heating oil. Spirou and Fantasio nurse it and put it in a cage. On their way back, they are ambushed by hostile natives, but Zantafio, who has seen the errors of his ways and decided to drop out of the race, rescues them. Back home, Fantasio is declared the winner but learns that his impoverished uncle devised the race because he had nothing to leave his young relatives. The inheritance is the lessons in life learnt in the course of the competition. Fantasio declares himself satisfied.
7830558	/m/026fkxj	La mauvaise tête	André Franquin	1957		 In A Head for Crime, due to a few missing passport photos, Fantasio finds himself a victim of a conspiracy to frame him as the thief of an invaluable Egyptian gold mask. Appearing completely guilty, he is forced to flee from the law, attempting escape from the city disguised as a competing bicyclist in the 6 day mountain endurance race Tour de Midiville, leaving Spirou alone with the tough task of exposing the real villains, and clearing Fantasio's name. The accompanying short story, Don't Touch the Robins, describes the Marsupilami's close relationship with little birds, while vacationing in The Count of Champignac's castle park (presumably during the events of the Marsupilami-free story La mauvaise tête).
7830579	/m/026fkyk	The Cobra Event	Richard Preston	1998	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book is divided into 6 sections. The first section, named "Trial", starts with a teenage girl named Kate Moran who violently dies one day in school. The next section, titled "1969", describes tests done in the sixties by the U.S. government involving weaponized viruses. The third section, "Diagnosis", describes the autopsy of Kate Moran and, introduces the key characters of Dr. Alice Austen, Mark Littleberry, and Will Hopkins. The book describes these three characters' journey to discover the source of the lethal virus Cobra, in the other three sections, "Decision", "Reachdeep", and "The Operation".
7831418	/m/026flnl	Le gorille a bonne mine	André Franquin	1959		 In Le gorille a bonne mine, Spirou and Fantasio journey to Molomonga in central Africa, on a journalistic expedition to seek out the rare gorillas of Mount Kilimaki. In a setting of uneasy atmosphere amidst questionable characters and unlikely accidents, their efforts become increasingly difficult, justifying the suspicion that someone tries to prevent the reporters from reaching their goal. In Vacances sans histoires, the heroes take a road-trip south to the French riviera. This leads to an encounter with Ibn-Mah-Zoud, an abundantly wealthy sheikh and allegedly the worst motorcar driver in the world, and who tries out their Turbotraction:Turbot-Rhino I.
7831661	/m/026flyj	Le nid des Marsupilamis	André Franquin	1960		 In The Nest of the Marsupilamis, Seccotine invites Spirou and Fantasio to a screening of her new documentary film, revealing what she has been doing since last seen in Palombia (in Le dictateur et le champignon). The film follows a Marsupilami in the wild, as he discovers and courts a mate, and they form a family in need of care and protection. In The Gangsters' Fair, Spirou and Fantasio are unexpectedly assaulted by a small martial arts-expert, Soto Kiki, who wants to train them in judo in order to act as bodyguards for the European visit of oil tycoon John P. Nut, a man with gangster enemies. All changes as the gangsters attempt to assassinate Soto Kiki, and kidnap the millionaire's infant son.
7831847	/m/026fm2p	Middle Passage	Charles R. Johnson	1990	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The protagonist is Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave, who flees from New Orleans on a ship called the Republic to escape being blackmailed into marriage by Isadora Bailey, a schoolteacher who convinces Calhoun's creditor to whom he owes large sum of money, Papa Zeringue, to demand Calhoun pays him all he owes if he will not consent to marry Isadora. After meeting the drunken cook of the Republic while drinking to forget his troubles, Calhoun stows away aboard the ship (and is later found after the voyage begins). The ship travels to Africa to capture members of the Allmuseri tribe to take back to America to sell as slaves. Although an educated man, Rutherford is at first self-absorbed and thus initially unable to grasp the hardships of slave life. During the voyage, Rutherford becomes humbled, learning lessons that teach him to value and respect humanity which includes identification with his own country, America. The ship eventually sinks due to various factors, including the sailing inexperience of the ship's passengers, following the Allmuseri take over. There are many survivors, and a nearby ship named the Juno rescues them. Rutherford discovers that Isadora is aboard the Juno and is about to marry Papa Zeringue, who has partial ownership of the Republic. Papa learns that Rutherford has the ship's log, documenting Papa Zeringue's immoral and illegal dealings,and he bargains with Rutherford to get possession of it. Rutherford brings up the fact that the ship was illegally dealing in slave trade and uses his Santos', Papa's black servant, ties to the Allmuseri to get what he wants, namely Isadora in marriage. Isadora, who is knitting booties for her cats and dogs whom Papa is making her give up, leaves Papa and marries Rutherford.
7831895	/m/026fm41	Le voyageur du Mésozoïque	André Franquin	1960		 In The Traveller from the Mesozoic Era, The Count of Champignac sensationally returns from an Antarctic expedition with an intact dinosaur egg believed to be from the Jurassic period. Back in Champignac, the Count's closest professor friends arrive (along with unpleasant atomic science genius, Sprtschk) and proceed to plan ways to hatch the egg. With the interference of a free-roaming Marsupilami, and Fantasio acting out of sorts due to a cooling incident with an ice truck, control is soon lost, and the village of Champignac has a big dinosaur problem on its hands. In the included story, La Peur au bout du fil, the Count continues to develop concoctions from mushrooms, but in a thoughtless moment he mistakes the toxic X4 residue from his cup of coffee, causing him to undergo big changes. His usually benevolent personality is inversed into pure evil, and Spirou, Fantasio and "the Biologist" must act to protect the village from this new, unlikely terrorist.
7832034	/m/026fm9k	Le prisonnier du Bouddha	André Franquin	1960		 In The Prisoner of the Buddha, Spirou and Fantasio arrive in Champignac to find great changes in the Count's mansion park. A Russian scientist, Nicolas Inovskyev, the co-inventor of a revolutionary and powerful device named the G.A.G., is in hiding fearing the same fate as his American partner Harold W. Longplaying. Longplaying has been kidnapped by the Chinese army, who want his technology, and is being held captive in one of a series of giant statues of the Buddha which line up a valley. Armed with the new invention, the heroes set out to rescue the prisoner, and save the world.
7832586	/m/026fmr9	QRN sur Bretzelburg	André Franquin	1966		 In QRN over Bretzelburg, trouble stems from Fantasio's amazingly small transistor radio which gets wedged stuck inside the Marsupilami's nose. Apart from the grief and restlessness caused to all nearby by the unstoppable radio, the device jams the transmissions received by Marcelin Switch, a neighbour and radio enthusiast, who claims that this puts the life of King Ladislas of Bretzelburg in grave danger. While Spirou and Switch take Marsupilami to the clinic for nose surgery, Fantasio wearing a bathrobe and slippers in the wrong place at the wrong time is abducted by secret Bretzelpolizei who mistake him for Switch. Leaving the Marsupilami to recover in the hospital, Spirou, Spip and the nervous Switch travel to the dictatorial state of Bretzelburg, determined to rescue Fantasio, currently being tortured by the enthusiastic Dr.Kilkil. There, the team, reunited with the Marsupilami who has recovered uncannily fast and followed them across Europe, deal with a very unusual political situation...
7833518	/m/026fnl4	Tembo Tabou	André Franquin	1974		 In Tembo Tabou, Spirou and Fantasio find themselves on another expedition travelling upstream an African river, in search of vanished American author Oliver Gurgling Thirstywell. Events become increasingly more strange when they discover red elephants, befriend a pygmy tribe, learn of Marsupilami's love of eating warrior ants, and confront a gang of "protection racket" thugs who cultivate meat-eating plants. The story The Cage cronicles an awful day at work for intrepid poacher Bring M. Backalive, obsessed with capturing a living sample of a baby Marsupilami, who learns the cost of angering a Marsupilami father.
7835100	/m/026fpz4	The Tin Flute	Gabrielle Roy	1945	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in Montreal, principally in the poor neighbourhood (at that time) of Saint-Henri, between February 1940 and May 1940, during the Second World War, when Quebec is still suffering from the Great Depression. Florentine Lacasse, a young waitress at the "Five and Ten" restaurant who dreams of a better life and is helping her parents get by, falls in love with Jean Lévesque, an ambitious machinist-electrician. Wanting to satisfy his withered ego, he agrees to date Florentine. Quickly tiring of the relationship, Jean introduces her to a friend, Emmanuel Létourneau, who is a soldier on leave. Emmanuel falls in love with Florentine. Despite this, Florentine's attraction towards Jean will have important consequences in her life. A parallel thread in the novel is the Lacasse family life, made difficult by their poverty.
7836669	/m/026fq_w	Le faiseur d'or		1970		 In The Gold Maker, The Count of Champignac reveals on television that he knows the location of a coveted book revealing the secrets of ancient alchemist Nicolas Flamel, which Spirou fears may tempt many a criminal. Upon visiting Champignac they find his friend Zorglub unconscious, and the Count abducted. When Zorglub comes to, he suspects having recognized Zantafio as one of the kidnappers. The Clandestine Christmas is the story of a small, very wealthy boy Henri who prefers to spend Christmas with his unlikely friend, the much older, unwealthy Jean Babtiste. The two move outdoors to find someone to share the affluence of cake they have, and by chance join Spirou and Fantasio in celebrating a special Christmas. in The Japanese Mushroom, Spirou and Fantasio travel to Japan, and are introduced to the Count's Japanese counterpart, Itoh Kata, and a new arch-villainous syndicate of global crime, "The Triangle". The story ends as a teaser for the following album, Du glucose pour Noémie.
7836681	/m/026fr0k	Panade à Champignac	André Franquin	1969		 In Babysitting in Champignac, Spirou and Fantasio, the latter stressed by the pressures of work and the aggravating presence of Gaston Lagaffe - take a break at the estate of Champignac. Upon arrival, they learn that the Count's life has changed dramatically since the conclusion of L'ombre du Z, as he now spends his time taking care of Zorglub who has regressed to the mental age of 8 months. To make things worse, one of Zorglub's "zorglmen", Otto Paparapap, has not been healed, and lurks nearby, armed with the paralyzing zorglonde and obsessed with liberating his former leader... Bravo Les Brothers, takes a small step back in time to illustrate the hectic working conditions at Dupuis publishing house prior to Spirou and Fantasio's much needed vacation. The influence of Gaston in the pursuit of having De Mesmaeker sign contracts is a well-explored theme in Gaston albums, but in this instance, there is the added element of "Les Brothers", a circus act of performing chimpanzees that Gaston gifts Fantasio for his birthday.
7836696	/m/026fr17	L'ombre du Z	André Franquin	1962		 As The Shadow of Z, begins, Spirou, Fantasio and the Count of Champignac return from Zorgland, to find the population of Champignac have been paralyzed by a "zorglman" they left behind sedated, the abducted policeman Jérôme, who awoke and went on a stunning spree. After the ordeal of pacifying the rogue zorglman and restoring the people of Champignac to normal, time passes until Zorglub's sinister schemes again become evident. Without remorse (despite the conscience-burdened act during the conclusion of Z comme Zorglub) Zorglub continues to work for world domination from Palombia, with increased ambition, and allied with Fantasio's evil nemesis cousin Zantafio.
7838286	/m/026fsyd	Z comme Zorglub	André Franquin	1961		 In Z is for Zorglub, Fantasio receives a hair dryer as a gift from a secret admirer, but its unexpected hypnotic abilities announce a new ominous presence in the Spirou universe. Zorglub, an old acquaintance of the Count of Champignac, appears from the past and offers the Count the chance to join him in seizing world domination, but it is firmly rejected. In response, Zorglub proceeds to demonstrate his powers by manipulating the township of Champignac to storm the Count's mansion, which nearly leads to the destruction of his laboratory. As this just barely fails, Zorglub decides to kidnap Fantasio, to "zorglhomize" him into a zorglhomme (zorglman), forcing Spirou and the Count to travel to the village of Zorgland, and attempt to outwit the criminal mastermind.
7838335	/m/026fs_t	Les pirates du silence	André Franquin	1958		 In The Pirates of Silence, Fantasio gets an assignment from Le Moustique to write a story about Incognito City, a highly modernized city inhabited by wealthy celebrities and where security is tight and photography strictly forbidden. Fantasio gets around this by hiding miniature cameras in everyday items such as his pipe. But before he and Spirou leave, the Marsupilami surprisingly appears at their home, having somehow traveled alone from the Count's mansion in Champignac. Unable to reach the Count by phone, they drive to Incognito City and have an unpleasant traffic encounter with Juan Corto Dos Orejas, leaving them with a bad impression and a small object found on the ground. Further encounters with thugs and suspicious events slowly expose a fiendish plot, involving the kidnapping of the Count of Champignac. In The Quick Super, Fantasio sets out to test-drive a "Quick" (a large car manufactured by Genial Motors) for the week-end, in order to write a review for Spirou Méchanique. There are mysterious elements however, as all previously test-driven Quicks have ended up stolen, and this one is no exception. As the events unfold, old acquaintances from Circus Zabaglione (from Les voleurs du Marsupilami) reappear.
7842197	/m/026fy4j	Tora Torapa		1973		 In Tora Torapa, Spirou, Fantasio, The Count, Itoh Kata and Zorglub are all gathered at Champignac, when The Triangle appears again, this time to kidnap the scientist with a dubious past, Zorglub. The heroes manage to shoot a tracking device into their abducted friend, and eventually trace the movements of the kidnappers to the island of Tora Torapa, in the past the location of an old base used by the Zorglub network. There, Triangle number one Papa Pop (cf. Papa Doc), actually one of Spirou's arch-enemies Zantafio in disguise, is waiting with evil plans for world domination, but which he needs Zorglub to set into effect.
7842249	/m/026fy56	Spirou et les hommes-bulles	André Franquin	1964		 In Spirou et les hommes-bulles, memories of Le repaire de la murène are invoked as John Helena, "the Moray", escapes from captivity, and Spirou, Fantasio and the Count suspect he is going after the gold that is still in the wreckage of Le Discret. A sudden trend of mini-submarine sabotage prompts the heroes to investigate, and the mystery becomes no more clear when Helena is discovered barely conscious, with gold, feebly warning of an attack by the "Bubble Men". In The Miniatures, Marsupilami playfully exposes Fantasio's unused film, forcing him to go to Mr.Flashback's photo store to buy replacements. When Spirou next meets Fantasio, he is reduced to a palm-sized, paralyzed miniature statue, which causes Spirou to question his own sanity. In a setting of other similar incidents involving Mr.Flashback, and a suspicious collector of miniatures, Spirou is set on a desperate mission to somehow restore his friend back to normal.
7842295	/m/026fy67	L'abbaye truquée		1972		 Spirou, Fantasio and their guest Itoh Kata are visited by Charles Atan and his henchman Renaldo, members of The Triangle, who abduct the Japanese magician as a means of forcing his friends to join their organisation. The trail leads them to an old abbey located in an abandoned village. There, Spip, their pet squirrel, also disappears. During this time, Kata's kidnappers are unable to keep him captive very long due to his conjuring tricks, no more than Spip who rejoins Spirou and Fantasio. When Spirou and Fantasio finally find Kata, he has just locked up all the men of the Triangle in a cell, with the exception of their leader, Charles Atan, and his assistant Renaldo. Continuing their search, they prevent the self-destruction of the abbey and capture Atan. But Renaldo frees his boss and the two gangsters flee.
7842359	/m/026fy8_	Du glucose pour Noémie		1971		 In Glucose for Noémie, the story continues where Le champignon nippon of the previous album left off. Ito Kata, a well-known Japanese conjuror, has entrusted Spirou and Fantasio with a special mushroom which he wants them to take back to their friend the Count of Champignac, a leading mycologist. The mushroom is also coveted by the Triangle, a SPECTRE-like, world-spanning criminal organization. Having escaped the Triangle's agents, Spirou and Fantasio stand stunned at Tokyo airport when they find the parcel they were transporting empty... In A False Departure, Spip is determined to run away from home.
7843761	/m/02pcx0p	Le gri-gri du Niokolo-Koba		1974		 In The Gri-Gri of Niokolo-Koba, a native of Senegal throws himself in the taxi of Spirou and Fantasio in their asking to carry the contents of a bag that it leaves them in Mansa Moussa, in Niokolo-Koba, before disappearing in a dazzling flash. The two heroes leave then for Africa, and are joined by strong Sété Bagaré, which binds friendship with them. Once in Senegal, they learn that Mansa Moussa also disappeared, and that what they transport in the bag is not other than the grigri of the individual. Arrived at the park, they are informed of the disappearance of most of the animals of the reserve. Ororéa, which inquired in the reserve, occurs then with the photographic proof that the animals disappeared under the effect of diamond of Koli, also responsible for the evaporation of the individual met in Europe, which is not other than the nephew of Mansa Moussa. After some adventures, they end up finding the gangsters. The diamond of Koli is replaced in its sheath and all those that disappeared return, just like the animals. Mansa Moussa privately explains to Spirou that the grigri contained the plans of a diamantiferous vein under the park that the gangsters coveted. Those having disappeared following an imprudence with diamonds of Koli, alone Mansa Foamed and Spirou know the truth from now on. <!--
7843840	/m/02pcx10	Du cidre pour les étoiles		1976		 In Cider for the Stars, while en route to Champignac, Spirou and Fantasio are confronted with strange events: the villagers see extraterrestrials and animals panic. When they arrive at the castle, the Count tells them that he is, in fact, housing three extraterrestrials ("Ksoriens"), enrolled in a mycology training program, but that their love for cider had led them to become careless. One of them is wounded in the town and manages to regain the castle, but its saucer is stolen by foreign secret agents. A whole patrol of Ksoriens then proceeds to land in order to retrieve the saucer, but one of them is in turn kidnapped. The Ksoriens threaten to put the whole area to sleep in order to help them in their task, but the Count opposes the plan. In the nick of time Spirou and Fantasio find the saucer and the Ksorien, and the extraterrestrials capture the secret agents. The Mayor, as is his wont, suspects that the Count is conducting secret experiments and orders the castle to be searched, forcing the Ksoriens to leave. <!--
7843910	/m/02pcx1c	L'Ankou		1977		 In L'Ankou, Ororéa invites Spirou and Fantasio to join her at a congress of magicians in Brittany. When they arrive, they meet strange L'Ankou, who objects to the presence of a nuclear thermal power station on his land. They then save Ororéa from an aggression, but the gangsters manage to escape. At their arrival at the hotel, they find out that Itoh Kata is amongst the magicians invited. The others are telepath Al Kazar, hypnotist monk Capuccino and telekinesist Rethros Athana. Those are currently developing a magic trick based on teleportation. Fantasio is used as guinea-pig during the first representation but is abducted by the gangsters. Ankou reappears and suggests to Spirou and his friends not to try anything against the kidnappers. The latter exert blackmail on the magicians: they are to deliver a revolutionary product developed at the power station in exchange for Fantasio. Kata decides not to say anything to his friends and together, the magicians steal the product. Meanwhile, Fantasio manages to escape and warns the police with Spirou and Ororéa. The gangsters are arrested but the product stolen by the magicians threatens to explode. Fortunately, Spirou warns the magicians in time and Itoh Kata makes the product vanish. This event leads to the power station closing down. L'Ankou is thus grateful towards Spirou and his companions. <!--
7843947	/m/02pcx1q	Kodo le tyran		1979		 In Kodo the Tyrant, Spirou and Fantasio are in Burma and try to enter the small close country, Catung, a dictatorship closed abroad. Thanks to a drunk pilot, John Madflying, they that point reach but are separate. Fantasio meets the inspector general of the Mafia, his quasi-double, who controls really Catung, and this one the nap arms with the fist to take its place, because the inspector for submission to taking his retirement. Fantasio thus joined the capital and takes a certain pleasure to ridicule Jataka Kodo, the dictator. Spirou, it, are found in company of the rebels of Ava Savati. Those learn thanks to the pigeon from Prabang, a mole infiltrated in the palate, that the inspector general and Kodo intend to go to inspect the warehouses of Kuor Lang, they will thus pass on the bridge of Pagor Tevat, that Savati decides to make jump. However, Kodo meets with its lieutenants Chop Suey and Matteo and also proposes to blow up the bridge in order to eliminate Fantasio, which imposes restrictions of its capacity to him. Little time after the departure of Savati, spirou discovers with horror the identity of the inspector general, but it is too late… <!--
7844014	/m/02pcx21	Des haricots partout		1980		 In Beans Everywhere, the attack on the bridge of Pagor Tevat fails, fortunately. Fantasio is therefore able to inspect Kuor-Lamb and collect information on the way that the harvests of Kodo function. Spirou manages to contact with him thanks to the pigeon of Prabang; the rebels attempt to remove Spirou from the scene. United at last, Fantasio and Spirou develop a plan to overthrow the dictator. Benefiting from the departure of Matteo, the rebels make leave Spirou the country; this brings the Count de Champignac back in line with their cause. With the assistance of the WHO, where the Count has relations, they finally manage to unseat the dictator, who then flees the country. <!--
7844115	/m/02pcx2r	La ceinture du grand froid		1983		 In The Belt of Great Cold, Fantasio made the eccentric purchase of an old ship on which he, Spirou and Spip go on a journey by sea. They end up arriving in a zone in which the climate resembles the North Pole, but the three scientists living the close island explains to them that this “belt of cold” is caused artificially and that the island is fictitious also. Thus, these scientists build an interplanetary vessel in order to flee the Earth, whose great powers try to exploit their genius with fine soldiers. Mercenaries occur, with the orders of the commander Alexander, in order to take them along, but Spirou and Fantasio manage to slow down them sufficiently a long time and the scientists flee in their making believe that they all are died. <!--
7844186	/m/02pcx32	La boîte noire		1983		 In The Black Box, Fantasio opened the mysterious box that Jefferson, Boris and Karl left them (see La ceinture du grand froid), and he discovers there the plans of thousands of inventions. When he tests one in company of Spirou, it draws the attention of the commander Alexander, who removes it with Kalloway. Spirou is obliged to yield to them the block box in exchange of Fantasio. Thanks to Jefferson, they discover that the gangsters hid in a stronghold of the Sahara, where they are protected by natives. They go there and succeed in taking again the box to them, while being made pass for deaths. <!--
7844251	/m/02pcx3f	Les faiseurs de silence		1984		 In The Silence Makers, Fantasio ask Spirou to join him. Spirou understands quickly that it again used the block box (of the two preceding albums). It discovers with him its invention: the aspison, which with the capacity to swallow any sound around the zone where it is used. Alas, it involves problems rather quickly and their two enemies, the commander Alexander and his Kalloway assistant, find themselves on their traces. They seize the machine and make use of it to make hold-ups, however, caught up with by their owner, they must find the block box and go to Fantasio, where they discover with horror that the machine must be discharged after a certain number of use of the absorptive sounds, like a vacuum cleaner. Taken of panic by seeing the level of filling of the machine, they flee by leaving it on the spot. While returning, Spirou and Fantasio discover it and decide to release it in the ocean, so that nobody can press on the button of unloading. <!--
7844437	/m/02pcx44	Virus		1984		 An icebreaker has unexpectedly moored in the port of Le Havre where it has been put into quarantine. Suspecting a connection with Isola Red, a research base set in Antarctica and which has been out of touch from some time, Fantasio goes to investigate only to encounter an old enemy, John Helena, nicknamed “the Moray”, who has fled the ship. Looking extremely ill, Helena explains that following his release from prison he got a job working at Isola Red where tests are conducted on some of the deadliest diseases known to man. One day, however, one such disease became loose and the staff at the base all fell ill. The disease appears to be only transmitted by actual physical contact. Helena fled, got aboard a ship bound for Europe and now intends to contact the Count of Champignac whom he believes to be the only man who can save him. Spirou and Fantasio take him to see the Count. Spip, their pet squirrel, goes with them but, unaware of the situation, bites Héléna and is thus contaminated with the virus. The Count knows of a cure to the virus affecting Helena and the men at the base but requires an extra toxin to make it effective, and it is only available at the base itself. Spirou and Fantasio set off for the South Pole along with Spip and Helena who are dressed in special outfits which reduce the risks of infection. They arrive at a Russian base where they are given guides and snowcats for the journey to Isola Red. They set off, unaware that some men are tracking them from a distance with the intention of killing them before they reach the base. Meanwhile, back in Europe, Champignac goes to the Ministry for Research in order to organise a larger-scale rescue operation. However, an adviser at the ministry, Basile de Koch, blocks his attempts to see the minister. At that moment a horde of reporters led by the editor of the monthly current affairs magazine Action bursts in. One of the Actions journalists has been working undercover in de Koch's company which owns the polar base. Isola Red has actually been used to produce illegal biological weapons and as part of a cover-up de Koch has sent henchmen to kill Spirou and his companions and prevent them from reaching the stricken area. De Koch is arrested thanks to a file put together by the journalist working undercover among his men. Meanwhile, Spirou and his friends are attacked by de Koch's killers but are saved by Volene, the undercover journalist. They then proceed to Isola Red where they find the toxin needed to complete the cure. The killers also arrive, but Spirou and his friends fight back using the very weaponry they were not supposed to discover. The biological weapons cause those affected to go crazy and engage in disco-like dancing. At that moment, the Count and the editor of Action also arrive, along with military commandos. The remaining killers thus flee. It appears that the virus does not affect animals &mdash; animals used for testing are found to be fine, so it is with great relief that Spip the squirrel is freed from his outfit. Helena and the other patients are cured. Isola Red is then destroyed by bombers and some time later Helena becomes a tour guide, showing the remains of the base off to tourists.
7844579	/m/02pcx4h	Aventure en Australie		1985		 In Adventure in Australia, the Count of Champignac, accompanied by a young professor, Walker Donahue, thinks he has made an extraordinary discovery in Australia, namely an immense indigenous monolith in the surroundings of a mining village. He asks Spirou and Fantasio to join them. Thus, the two go to the Australia, accompanied by Seccotine, which was essential. When they arrive, Donahue informs them that the Count was killed by miners. After investigation, they discover that the Count did not die but the heroes find him in bad shape, face to face with Sam, a gangster who grows rich by holding prospectors to ransom. Sam ends up dying when his truck explodes because of a bottle of nitroglycerin. Thanks to the aboriginals, of which they were allies, Spirou, Donahue and the Count put in rout Sam's men who are trying to eliminate Fantasio and Seccotine. Finally, the monolith is discovered and the aboriginals make an agreement to share resources with the prospectors, who are grateful to them for getting rid of Sam.
7844640	/m/02pcx4v	Qui arrêtera Cyanure?		1985		 Swindled by a shopkeeper, Fantasio finds himself in the possession of a strange automaton able to take photographs. Apparently intelligent, the machine quickly escapes from its new owner. Spirou and Fantasio follow it to Champignac, where the automaton stops in an old unused railway station. There, they discover a bound and gagged young woman, whom they untie. She appears hostile and flees after destroying the station's interior. The owner of the place, Caténaire, a former station master, discovers the chaos when he returns and explains everything: the robot that Fantasio bought, Télesphore, was his first invention, while the woman which they freed is a more advanced android, Cyanure, evil and endowed with powers to control electrical machines. Cyanure tries to invade the village with an army of robots built in the nearby factory Roboc Inc.. Spirou and Fantasio mobilise a resistance, made up of the children of Champignac, and together they defeat the android and her army. <!--
7844701	/m/02pcx55	L'horloger de la comète		1986		 In The Comet's Watchmaker, The Count de Champignac goes to visit his great nephew and entrusts the castle to Spirou and Fantasio, who both hope to relax. However, a strange vessel crashes in their garden and an individual resembling the Count de Champignac, accompanied by a strange creature, Snouffelaire, disembark. The individual proves to be the descendant of the Count, Aurélien, come from the future to look for the seeds of some plants that are extinct in his time in order to preserve them, located in the forest of Palombia. Knowing about the hostile environment of the Palombian jungle, Spirou proposes that he and Fantasio accompany Aurélien. However a malfunction sends the vessel to the sixteenth century during the Portuguese colonization of Palombie. Spirou, Fantasio and Aurélien are confronted by the hostile cannibals and the colonists who take them for French spies. Finally, Aurélien's vessel disintegrates, but strange individuals come from even further in the future to save them and to bring them back to their respective times. <!--
7844830	/m/02pcx5j	Le réveil du Z		1986		 In The Awakening of Z, after the extraordinary temporal adventure that they have just lived at the sides of Aurélien de Champignac, Spirou and Fantasio resume their journalistic activities. Fantasio is confronted with the skepticism of his new director of information, Kakeukh, who refuses to publish his article about the adventure. Being drunk, Fantasio is victim of an accident in the staircase of the Dupuis Editions, which obliges him to remain at the house with Spirou. The same evening, Snouffelaire appears in the house and it is suddenly transported to 2062, the time of Aurélien. They quickly discover, in company of So-Yah, the assistant of Aurélien, that the world is at the mercy of the descendant of Zorglub. Captured by Zorglhommes, they rejoin Aurélien but succeed in escaping before breaking the Zorgloge, the heart of Zorglub Jr's power. Aurélien, grateful, returns them to their own time. <!--
7844864	/m/02pcx5w	La jeunesse de Spirou		1987		 Spip comments on articles left in the press about Spirou and Fantasio. *The youth of Spirou (1983) Uncle Paul, one evening of festival sprinkled well, tells an eccentric and more or less truthful version of the youth of the hero and his companions. *Unpleasant forger! (1983) Spirou inquires into a forger who publishes a Gaston Lagaffe n°5 pirate comic book. It finds its cushy job quickly but the gangster succeeds in fleeing by setting fire to the building. *The groom of the president (1982) One evening of midnight supper, Spirou, as usual wearing the clothes of a groom, or bell boy, is commanded by the hotel director who mistakes Spirou for one of his employees, making him operate the elevator at the moment when the American president arrives in the hotel. As the president is eager to spend a night without his bodyguards, he offers Spirou an occasion to flee. The US President is a cartoon of former POTUS Ronald Reagan as the book was published in the eighties. *Incredible Burp! (1984) The Count of Champignac discovers during an experiment that one of its products causes horrible changes on an alive body in contact with alcohol. Dupilon swallows some inadvertently, with the result that a monster is released on Champignac. However, the attention of Spirou and Fantasio are taken by gangsters who direct the post office of the village. The gangsters are finally overcome and nobody will recognize Dupilon, quickly cured, in the monster. *Park with the stereotype! (1981) The Count of Champignac meets with former comrades in order to present inventions at strictly humane goal, with the castle at Champignac. However, a spy was introduced among the guests. Spirou and Fantasio are charged to uncover it. Actually, it proves quickly that they are two, but that does not prevent the two heroes from neutralizing them <!--
7850799	/m/026g6dt	Benny and Omar	Eoin Colfer		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An Irish boy, named Benny, who is in an all-Ireland hurling team, journeys to Tunisia because of his father's new oversea job. He is determined to hate and find fault with the country and annoys everyone. Then he meets another boy called Omar. They develop a friendship, through Omar's "telly-speak" English. Benny's father bans Benny from seeing Omar because he thinks that Omar is a bad influence, and because Benny went off with Omar when he was supposed to look after his brother. Benny endures punishment for being with Omar but that doesn't stop him from running away with him the second his parents trust him again to rescue Omar's drugged and hospitalized sister Kaheena. Benny is exposed to real life in Tunisia, actual pain and suffering bigger than losing a sports match, and realizes just how lucky he is after Omar drowns in a flood (although, this is, in fact, arguable, as the bracelet Benny gave to Omar was recovered, but Omar had "vanished").
7854960	/m/026gd78	The Death of Artemio Cruz	Carlos Fuentes	1962	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 Artemio Cruz—soldier, politician, journalist, tycoon, lover: all corrupt—lies on his deathbed, recalling the shaping events of his life, from the Mexican Revolution through the development of the PRI—the Party of the Institutional Revolution. His family crowds around, pressing him to reveal the location of his will; a priest provides extreme unction, angling for a deathbed confession and reconciliation with the Church (while Artemio indulges in obscene thoughts about the birth of Jesus); his private secretary has come with audiotapes of various corrupt dealings, many with gringo diplomats and speculators. Punctuating the sordid record of betrayal is Cruz's awareness of his failing body and his keen attachment to sensual life. Seventy-one-year-old Artemio Cruz is dying. He is a very rich and powerful man, made ruthless, godless and corrupt by his hard childhood and his soldiering during the Mexican revolution during which he had cheated death several times and had done, and suffered, betrayals. After the revolution, through corrupt wheeling and dealing and use of force for self-aggrandizement he became extremely rich. He now owns vast tracks of land, companies, a newspaper and, by himself, he is a major political player. He has a wife and a daughter whom he hates and who he knows hate him. His wife blames him for the death of their only son whilst fighting in the Spanish civil war, perhaps trying to imitate his father's (fraudulent) heroisms during the Mexican civil war but wasn't able to duplicate his survival. Artemio Cruz loved his son. He had another love: a prostitute, during the civil war, whom he had kidnapped yet she learned to fall in love with him. He valued his memory of her because it was a love given to him when he was still a nobody. It is not made clear what struck him (perhaps a stroke or cancer). Artemio Cruz hears, recalls and vaguely see images. But he's in pain, can't talk and is immobilized. The narrator is in a state of perpetual delirium, like mutterings of a brilliant poet with a soaring fever, hovering between life and death, describing glimpses of heaven and hell. Finally his thoughts decay into a drawn-out death. The Death of Artemio Cruz is dedicated to sociologist C. Wright Mills, who Fuentes calls "the true voice of North America and great friend in the struggle for the people in Latin America."
7856096	/m/026gfq0	Peeps	Scott Westerfeld	2005-02-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Two days after arriving in New York for college, Cal loses his virginity to a girl who picks him up. From this encounter Cal picks up an STD, but this is an unusual one: it turns its victims into "peeps" -- parasite positives—raving cannibalistic monsters with unusual strength, night vision, heightened senses, and an affinity with rats. Cal himself turns out to be immune, but he's a carrier—he gets the strength and senses without the nasty side effects. But before he knows it he has infected others. Cal is recruited by the Night Watch, a secret government organization that has existed for centuries to contain the disease and its victims. His first assignment is to capture all the girls he's infected. But soon Cal realizes that there is more going on than he has been told: the disease is changing in response to mysterious forces from under the earth that are waking up after centuries of slumber.
7857212	/m/026gh1b	The Collectors	David Baldacci		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and the curator of the rare books collection of the Library of Congress both are found dead. The Speaker has been killed by a sniper at a party while the head of the rare books collection dies from "unknown circumstances." Oliver Stone and the Camel Club become suspicious, although initially they indulge what they believe is his overactive imagination. Stone and his cohorts discover that Seagraves had been selling American intelligence secrets to terrorists in the Middle East, compromising intelligence efforts in the region. However, when they are followed and ask the Secret Service for help, the followers disappear, and the Camel Club becomes interested in their activities. Seagraves kidnaps and subsequently tortures Stone for information. Annabelle Conroy is introduced as a con artist, who after pulling off a 40 million heist against an Atlantic City Casino owner (Jerry Bagger) is on the run for her life. Bagger wants to find and kill Annabelle and her con team. Alex Ford from the previous novel reappears, and in the climax Seagraves is killed by a knife thrown at his carotid artery by Stone who turns out to be an ex-CIA killer. Alex Ford and his agents take Seagrave's remaining collaborators into custody. One of Annabelle Conroy's collaborators in the heist is tortured for information by the angry casino owner, who finds out the general area in which she is living (Washington, D.C.). The novel ends with a set-up for Stone Cold, the next novel of the Camel Club.
7858816	/m/026gk18	The Cellar	Richard Laymon	1980	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Donna, the book's protagonist, goes on the run with her daughter Sandy when she learns that her ex-husband, who molested Sandy for years, has been released from prison. After a car accident leaves them stranded in the small California coastal town of Malcasa Point, Donna and Sandy cross paths with Judge, a mercenary hired to track down and kill the murderous creature that supposedly haunts a local tourist attraction, the Beast House. Judge's employer, Larry, is an elderly man who had a traumatic encounter with the Beast as a child. Meanwhile, Donna's ex-husband, Roy, follows Donna to Malcasa Point after killing Donna's sister and brother-in-law. Along the way, he also abducts and repeatedly rapes a nine-year-old girl and murders the girl's parents. In the end, Roy, Larry and Judge fall victim to the carnivorous Beasts, several of which roam the underground tunnels beneath the Beast House at night, and Donna and Sandy become prisoners of the murderous Kutch family, the owners of Beast House.
7864859	/m/026gs0t	My Louisiana Sky	Kimberly Willis Holt		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel is set in 1957, in the small town of Saitter, Louisiana, where twelve-year-old Tiger Ann Parker lives with her mentally challenged parents. When her beloved grandmother suddenly dies, Tiger faces the choice of either staying with her parents or moving in with her rich, glamorous aunt in Baton Rouge.
7866817	/m/026gv46	Ethel and Ernest	Raymond Briggs	1999-10-07	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 The story is simply a progression through the lives of the titular couple, from their courtship in the late 1920s to their deaths in the early 70s. Ethel is a lady's maid with middle-class aspirations and firm notions of respectable English behaviour; she becomes a housewife when she marries. Ernest, five years younger, is an easygoing milkman with socialist ideals and an enthusiastic interest in modern progress and technology. They live with their only child, Raymond, in a London suburb through the Great Depression, World War II, the advent of television and other events. The book richly illustrates London working class life and concerns during some of the most momentous social and political developments of the 20th century.
7868414	/m/026gwsv	Vital Signs	Robin Cook	1991	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dr. Blumenthal finds out that she cannot conceive as her fallopian tubes are blocked due to a case of TB, which she feels is extremely rare in current times. She tries to conceive through a modern technique called in vitro fertilization from a very well known fertility clinic, but after four unsuccessful cycles she and her husband start to have differing opinions about continuing their quest for child. This starts to take a toll on their relationship, as Marissa is adamant to go on for the next cycle and her husband thinks that it would be another $10,000 down the drain. Marissa joins a counseling group for such in vitro couples, and meets up with her medical school friend Wendy, who also shares that same medical condition as her. Soon the two women discover that the specific condition is found in numerous women being treated in the clinic where they are getting treated. A suicide (suggested to be a murder) of fellow woman patient in the clinic also add to their curiosity. They break into the clinic and try to read their medical records, which are kept in a highly confidential status in the clinic. They find out that a pathologist, Dr. Tristan Williams, from a clinic with similar name in Australia, has written a paper about a condition similar to theirs. On the spur of moment, they decide to go to Australia to visit the author. When they inquire about him at the facility, they get negative responses and are made to believe that they have made a wasted trip. When Wendy is killed in an unexpected accident involving shark, Marissa feel that her death is more than an unfortunate accident. After few fruitless efforts to find Dr. Williams, Marissa meets him in his current assignment. From him she learns about a practice where pairs of Chinese citizens who were smuggled into Australia work in the clinic regularly. Tristan tells Marissa that due to the paper he wrote, the FCA has taken retaliatory steps against him, like branding him with drugs and killing his wife two years ago. He has had to be constantly on the run, which made him send his only son to live with his in-laws to keep him safe. Marissa and Tristan team up together to get to the bottom of the mystery. Tristan suggests that there had to be a drug trafficking involved since the illegal Chinese workers were transported from the Republic of China and moved into Australia through Hong Kong. They decide to visit Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, as they try to get information on how they are able to transport people from China to Hong Kong, there are two more attempts to kill them. Both the attempts fail. During one attempt, Marissa's husband, who comes to Hong Kong to take Marissa back home, is killed by mistake. Finally, they get to meet one such pair who is to be transported from China to Hong Kong in a boat for the FCA. Marissa discovers that one of the pair was a martial arts expert, and his sole duty was to protect the other. The other person was a rural doctor from China. Marissa and Tristan question the pair about the drug business, but all their answers are negative. Soon, Marissa, Tristan and the Chinese doctor get stranded due to border patrol force. Marissa discovers that the rural doctors are trained to sterilize women as mitigation by the government to control the population. This sterilization is a simple remedy that can be done without making the patient unconscious. This comes as a shocking revelation, and helps Marissa put together all the things she has gone through. She finds out that the clinic is sterilizing its women patients who are coming in for regular check up. They also fail their initial in vitro cycles by making the fertilization medium more acidic. After 5 or 6 cycles, they let the couple have children. After this discovery, the CDC and FBI get involved to close up these clinics and take legal action. In the end, Marissa marries Tristan and the couple plan to adopt a Chinese baby from Hong Kong. nl:Embryo (boek)
7870564	/m/026gzfs	Charlotte Temple	Susanna Rowson			 The book tells of the seduction of a British schoolgirl by a dashing soldier, John Montraville, who brings her to America and there abandons her, pregnant and ill. As such, it belongs to the seduction novel genre popular in early American literature. The novel opens upon an unexpected encounter between the British Lieutenant Montraville and Charlotte Temple, a tall, elegant girl of 15. Montraville sets his mind on seducing Charlotte and succeeds with the help of his libertine friend Belcour and Mademoiselle La Rue, a teacher at the boarding school Charlotte attends. Mademoiselle La Rue had herself eloped from a convent with a young officer and "possessed too much of the spirit of intrigue to remain long without adventures." Montraville soon loses interest in the young girl and, being led by Belcour to believe in Charlotte's infidelty towards him, trusts Belcour to take care of Charlotte and the child she expects. Following the advice of her new-found friend and neighbor Mrs. Beauchamp, Charlotte writes home to her mother. Her parents decide to receive her, her father even goes to New York to come get her. Without any financial support - Belcour does not give her the money Montraville put into his hands for her - Charlotte has to leave her house and, having walked to New York on a snowy winter's day, asks the former Mademoiselle La Rue, now Mrs. Crayton, for help. But the now wealthy woman pretends not to even know her for fear of her husband discovering the role she played in the girl's downfall. Charlotte is taken in by Mrs. Crayton's servant and soon gives birth to a child, Lucy. The doctor, however, has little hope of her recovering and asks a benevolent woman, Mrs. Beauchamp, for help. Mrs. Beauchamp is shocked when she recognizes Charlotte Temple in "the poor sufferer". The following day, Charlotte seems "tolerably composed" and Mrs. Beauchamp begins "to hope she might recover, and, spite of her former errors, become an useful and respectable member of society", but the doctor tells her that nature is only "making her last effort" Just as Charlotte is lying on her deathbed, her father arrives and Charlotte asks him to take care of her child. Upon returning to New York, Montraville goes in search of Belcour and Charlotte. Learning of her death and burial from a passing soldier, Montraville is filled with remorse for his part in her downfall, and angrily seeks out Belcour, killing him in a fight. Montraville suffers from melancholy for the rest of his life. Mr. Temple takes Charlotte's child back to England. The novel ends with the death of Mrs. Crayton (the former La Rue), who is discovered by Mr. Temple in a London doorway, separated from her husband, living in poverty, and repentant for her involvement in Charlotte's downfall. Mr. Temple admits her to a hospital, where she dies, "a striking example that vice, however prosperous in the beginning, in the end leads only to misery and shame."
7872335	/m/026h13c	Dead Famous	Ben Elton	2001	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is about a murder that occurs on a reality television programme called House Arrest, and the efforts of three police officers to identify the killer by watching all the video recordings of the ten housemates while the remaining housemates continue the reality television show. The novel jumps back and forth in time to show the events in the live video recordings, leading up to the night of the murder, where the remaining eight housemates at the time had to remain in an Indian sweat box- an old-style sauna with a pitch-black interior, the intention being to prompt the housemates to have sex-; the victim left the box to go to the toilet and the killer apparently left the box wrapped in a sheet to conceal their identity and stabbed the victim twice in the neck and head. Later, a note is found in an envelope that had been sealed weeks previously that says that the victim will be dead by the time the housemates read the note and that one of the three remaining housemates will be murdered. The police have to catch the killer before he or she strikes again. The killer is revealed on the final night of the show to be the show's producer, who had set up the murder to attract increased ratings for the show, faking the video footage of the killer leaving the sweat-box with the aid of her deputy producer; Detective Coleridge, an amateur actor, provokes a confession by creating fake video evidence of the producer's rehearsal murders.
7873248	/m/026h2d_	Gossamer	Lois Lowry		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book's omniscient point of view, Littlest One, affectionately called Littlest, is out on a dark night. As she and her mentor, Fastidious, stealthily sneak into a woman and her dog's home and collect memories. At their home, the Heap, Fastidious complains about her curious student to Most Ancient. Thin Elderly and Fastidious decide that Thin Elderly will become Littlest's mentor, while Fastidious is assigned to a modern house. Littlest is part of a small sub-colony of dream-givers. Through touching, they gather fragments such as colors, words, sounds, and scents. They then combine the fragments to become dreams, and give the dreams to humans, and sometimes pets. The giving of dreams is called the bestowal. The next night, Thin Elderly and Littlest go back to the woman's house. On the way, Thin Elderly explains to be gentle in the touching, and not to delve, on the grounds that a dream-giver who picks up menacing fragments of the memory's "underside" becomes a Sinisteed, a horselike creature, which are transformed dream-givers who inflict nightmares. Thin Elderly gladly discovers that Littlest has the "gossamer touch"; the ability to gather and bestow with great subtlety. The woman reveals that she is to take an angry 8-year-old boy named John into her household and must learn to deal with the troubles in his life. A young dream-giver named Strapping is introduced. His home, assigned as a mild punishment, is a dilapidated and messy apartment owned by an unhappy occupant, a thin, sad woman who lived there alone. As he bestows a dream on the lonely woman, she cries out her son's name, John, which reveals that she is John's mother. When John arrives at the woman's home, he displays his anger by acting contemptuous of his surrounding. The caretaker, for her part, displays only kindness. At the dream-givers' Heap, Most Ancient reports that the Sinisteeds are gathering, intent on a particular victim. That night, Littlest and Thin Elderly experience a Sinisteed at work. It inflicts John with a nightmare. He cries out in his sleep, whereupon the woman calms him by reminding him of a happy moment of his past. Littlest and Thin Elderly then gather comforting fragments to help strengthen him after the nightmare. During the day, Strapping's assignment, the young woman, speaks on a telephone, asking to have a receptionist's job and salary. She tells the listener to tell her son that he will be back home soon; that she loved him; and that she dreamed of him last night. Littlest, that night, decides she must touch the dog, seeking to derive fragments from him. Thin Elderly protests, as they are advised not to touch living creatures, but allows her to do so. Littlest notices how tender John was to a pink seashell, to Toby, and to a chrysalis he had found, in which is growing a butterfly. She gathers fragments from Toby, and bestows them as part of a dream. The young woman (Strapping's assignment) begins working in a school. She reflects on how bad her old life was for her son, John, because of her abusive husband, Duane. She now has hope of making friends, which Duane had not allowed her to do. Thin Elderly is proud of Littlest's bestowal, because John is happy in his dreams. Littlest explains that the fragments she collected had a bit of a story in each one, which she put together in her mind. Strapping is satisfied with his work. Strapping discovers he has a liking and a hope for the woman. Accordingly he gives her dreams of hope, and of a better future with her son. John tells a story to the old woman about a young boy who ate dog food, having been ordered to do so by his father, who had seen the boy run naked through the house and urinate on the floor. The father had accused the son of behaving like a dog, and so given him dog food for all his meals. The woman realizes that John is telling a story about himself, explaining his past abuse and his own harsh behavior. That night, Littlest and Thin Elderly discover that a Horde of Sinisteeds intend to inflict nightmares on John and his caretaker. The two dream-givers respond by bestowing strengthening dreams. They are nearly killed in the stampede of the Horde, but are able to counteract the nightmares and strengthen the humans. This is the story's climax. John enters school, and has become a much happier child. Littlest's dreams and the old woman's care have helped him begin to heal. Littlest is commendeded for her work. She learns that she is to be reassigned; a possibility not hitherto considered. She wishes to remain assigned to John, whom she has come to love and cherish, but is told by Thin Elderly that dream-givers are not permitted to generate human emotions. Littlest One's experience with the boy have helped her grow more mature, and as a result she is given the name Gossamer and given a new dream-giver, New Littlest One, to train.
7873810	/m/026h2y4	What my Mother Doesn't Know	Sonya Sones	2001	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 At the start of the novel, Sophie finds herself dumped by her current boyfriend Lou, then immediately falls into a new relationship with Dylan, a boy considered the height of masculine beauty by her friends. As they date, Sophie discovers she does not really love or even like Dylan all that much and ends their relationship in favor of not actually liking his personality. She then forms a secret romance with an internet chat-room boy named Chaz. Before she meets Chaz in person, Sophie discovers he is a pervert and ends the relationship quickly. Now on her own, in real life, she encounters an outcast classmate, Robin Murphy, at the local art museum and is astonished to realize that while he is not physically attractive or liked by her friends, she falls in love with him. The book ends with Sophie choosing to sit with Robin in the cafeteria instead of her friends, knowing that revealing her secret relationship to her friends and classmates would be okay. The companion book What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know, written from the perspective of Sophie's boyfriend Robin (Murphy), was published in 2007.
7879672	/m/026hbxl	Fury	Aaron Allston	2007-11-27	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After the Hapans, led by Tenel Ka, decide to leave the Galactic Alliance, Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus devises a plan and kidnaps Allana to force Tenel Ka to continue supporting the government. Meanwhile, a Jedi strike team, led by Jedi Master Kyle Katarn, tries to take on Darth Caedus on Coruscant, but Caedus prevails with the help of some guards, ending with the decapitation of Mithric, a Falleen Jedi. However, the team successfully places a tracking beacon on Caedus. Later, the team of Han, Leia, Jaina, Jag and Zekk slips aboard the Anakin Solo to get information on Dark Jedi Alema Rar, and with it they track her down to Lumiya's asteroid home and kill her with Jag's Mandalorian crushgauntlets. Also, Zekk sets Ship free with the use of the dark side of the Force, and Jaina helps him back to the light side afterwards. Jacen also decides to tell Allana that he is her father after she discovered that he kidnapped her rather than legitimately taking care of her. The climax begins with the Jedi interfering in the midst of a battle between the Galactic Alliance and the Confederation over Centerpoint Station in the Corellian system. A Jedi team, led by Kyp Durron with Valin Horn and Jaden Korr, sneaks aboard Centerpoint Station in an attempt to destroy it. The Jedi team rescues Allana from Caedus (using Luke, Ben and Saba Sebatyne as a distraction). Kyp and the others have a code installed set to destroy Centerpoint Station in order to prevent anybody else from using it again. Han, Leia, Luke, Ben, and Saba make it back to the Millennium Falcon, being piloted by Jag and Kyle who rescue them. As they escape, Centerpoint Station explodes due to sabotage, taking with it much of the Corellian Fleets, Commenorian Fleets, and the GA Fifth Fleet. Kyle remarks that the destruction of Centerpoint station left a void in the Force. The story ends with the revelation of Allana's parentage to Han and Leia. Jaina then hints to Jag that she is going to seek out Boba Fett in order to learn some skills for the final showdown between her and her twin brother. The book was also available in the audiobook and E-Book formats. Abridged Compact Disc Read by Marc Thompson On Sale: November 27, 2007 ISBN 978-0-7393-2400-4 Published by: Random House Audio Abridged Audiobook Download Read by Marc Thompson On Sale: November 27, 2007 ISBN 978-0-7393-5695-1 E-Book On Sale: April 29, 2008 ISBN 978-0-345-51054-9 Published by: LucasBooks
7882343	/m/026hfj3	Anastasia At Your Service	Lois Lowry	1982	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A long, boring summer&mdash;that's what Anastasia has to look forward to when her best friend goes off to camp. She's thrilled when old Mrs. Bellingham answers her ad for a job as a Lady's Companion. Anastasia is sure her troubles are over&mdash;she'll be busy and earn money! But she doesn't expect to have to polish silver and serve at Mrs. Bellingham's granddaughter's birthday party as a maid! As if that isn't bad enough, she accidentally drops a piece of silverware down the garbage disposal and must use her earnings to pay for it! Is the summer destined to be a disaster?
7882430	/m/026hfrp	Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst	Lois Lowry	1984	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Feeling in desperate need of psychotherapy, seventh-grader Anastasia buys a plaster bust of Sigmund Freud at a garage sale and consults him as her life takes a series of twists and turns. Freud remains enigmatic and unjudgmental as Anastasia's science project goes hopelessly awry and even her usually unflappable mother, Katherine Krupnik, loses her cool.
7882483	/m/026hfx4	Anastasia on her Own	Lois Lowry	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Anastasia's mother, who is a children's book illustrator, finds out that she is being flown to California to act as a consultant for a film being made from a book that she illustrated. At first, Anastasia thinks that being in charge of the house in her mother's absence will be a snap, particularly when she and her father make up an easy to follow, super-organized housekeeping list. Unexpected events, however, keep shaking up Anastasia's domestic bliss. First, her younger brother Sam gets the chicken pox, and Anastasia has to stay home from school to take care of him. Then her boyfriend, Steve, asks her out on their first real date—but she finds out she can't go out with him because she has to stay home to chaperone a meeting between her father and Annie, one of his ex-girlfriends. Anastasia wants to plan a romantic dinner for herself and Steve, but worries that the romantic setting will affect her father and Annie. Numerous disasters—small and large—strike, but luckily Anastasia won't be on her own for long, as her mother is able to come home early and straighten things out again. Her mother's arrival brought her peace and happiness.
7882578	/m/026hg2b	Anastasia at this Address		1991	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Just when her three best friends vow to give up boys, Anastasia Krupnik begins a secret kissing boy club with her ideal man, carefully selected from the personals column in her father's magazine. "SWM, 28, boyish charm, inherited wealth, looking for tall young woman, nonsmoker, to share Caribbean vacations, reruns of Casablanca, and romance." Sure, Anastasia is only thirteen, but a difference in age is a small obstacle when two people are on the same wave length. And she, a tall, young movie buff who hates smoking, is certain that SWM (a.k.a. single white male) is on her wavelength. Heaven knows, she is definitely ready for romance. When she actually receives a reply from her SWM, it is the start of another hilarious and ever original episode in the eventful life of our heroine extraordinaire, the outspoken, irresistible Anastasia Krupnik.
7883262	/m/026hgx4	Fatal Cure	Robin Cook	1993	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Fatal Cure tells the story of two young doctors, with their 9-year-old daughter who suffers from a chronic disease, cystic fibrosis, who are lured to a small town in Vermont to start a career. David gets a job as an internist with the local HMO, while Angela gets an offer from the local hospital as a pathologist. The story takes aim at managed care and health maintenance organizations. David and Angela quickly find out that their idyllic town harbors dark secrets. Patients at the local hospital keep dying prematurely. The hospital grounds are terrorized by a rapist, and the young family is shocked to find a dead body in their basement. Angela is faced with sexual harassment and David soon experiences the wrath of the HMO administrators for spending too much time with his patients and ordering too many tests and hospital stays. David and Angela end up not just getting fired from their jobs -and deeply in debt, but their lives are threatened as well. The novel ends with a dénouement somewhat similar to Silence of the Lambs. nl:Fataal (boek) pl:Zabójcza kuracja
7883543	/m/026hh5f	The Artist's Way	Julia Cameron	1992		 * History Starting as a collection of tips and hints from different artists and authors, The Artist's Way was collected into a single book and self published by Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan as a set of helpful methods for maximizing the creativity and productivity of artists. The book was originally titled, Healing the Artist Within, and was turned down by the William Morris literary agency, before being self-published. After the book began to sell widely, the title was then changed, when the book was published by Jeremy Tarcher (now The Penguin Group) in 1992. The book went on to reach the Top 10 best seller list and onto the list of the Top 100 Best Self-Help Books of All Time. The book was eventually put into the "Self-Publishing Hall of Fame" after selling millions of copies worldwide. Cameron maintains throughout the book that creative inspiration is from and of a divine origin and influence, that artist seeking to enable creativity need to understand and believe in."God is an artist. So are we. And we can cooperate with each other. Our creative dreams and longings do come from a divine source, not from the human ego."
7884360	/m/026hjgc	Acceptable Risk	Robin Cook	1995	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins with the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 where Elizabeth Stewart is prosecuted on suspicions of being a witch. This occurs on the insistence of witnesses who see children acting strangely after eating rye bread. Despite the pleas of her husband who happens to be a wealthy shipbuilder, she is executed at the insistence of Reverend Increase Mather, who convinces her husband with a mysterious evidence. Three hundred years later, the Stewart family fortune is inherited by Kimberly Stewart(a nurse). Kim is introduced to the brilliant scientist Edward Armstrong by their mutual friend Stanton Lewis. The two immediately fall in love. A casual visit to her old family house in Salem proves to be a turning point in the story. In the basement of the old house, Edward finds a new strain of Claviceps purpurea which induces a great sense of calmness, sexual drive, confidence, etc. Edward immediately assembles a team and begin working on developing the new drug with help from Stanton.To save time Edward and his team starts taking the drug themselves. During this time Kim is working on finding out about the evidence that was used to convict her ancestor. Finding out that the evidence is in the possession of Harvard University, she makes enquiries in that direction. Soon strange things begin happening in Salem Town. The town begins experiencing acts of vandalism, and even murder. Meanwhile Kim finally locates the evidence mentioned in the letter. It turns out to be the fetus of a deformed baby which was given birth by Elizabeth. The fetus is taken as evidence by the clergy of her covenant with devil. Kim rushes home to inform Edward that the drug they are taking has teratogenic effects. However at home she is attacked by Edward and his team who are in a kind of trance. In the ensuing pursuit the house is set ablaze killing all but two of the researchers.
7887222	/m/026hp8t	All About Sam			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Sam is a mischievous little boy, but mostly curious. He is very smart, and from the day he was born, Anastasia was jealous.
7887281	/m/026hpdy	Attaboy Sam!			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Why won't Sam Krupnik allow his mother to enter his bedroom? Why has he started calling his toy box The Lab? And why does he carry a Ziplock bag in his pocket at all times? What's the big secret? Well, his mother's birthday is approaching, and she has told her family that what she really wants are homemade gifts. Sam has decided to invent a special, surprise perfume just for her - a concoction that will combine all of her favorite smells. Now the question is: Exactly how does one go about bottling the quirky collection of scents on Mrs. Krupnik's list of favorites? If anyone can find a way - or at least have loads of fun trying - it's Sam, Anastasia's precocious younger brother.On summer reading list.
7887336	/m/026hphp	See You Around, Sam!				 Anastasia Krupnik's little brother, Sam, wants fangs more than anything in the world. But there is one big problem. Sam's mother, Mrs. Krupnik, has fangphobia and forbids Sam even to touch his plastic vampire fangs in the house. How can she not see how cool fangs really are? Sure, they make it hard to eat hot dogs, but they make him look disgusting - and Sam loves to look disgusting. So Sam decides to run away to Alaska, where "fanged" walruses lie around in a pile and sharp teeth are generally accepted. He packs his mittens and bear in his father's Harvard University gym bag and sets off, but just down the block, Lowell Watson, the mailman, reminds him he will need food for Alaska. Neighbor Gertrude Stein's homemade chocolate chip cookies are just the thing. And how can he leave without saying goodbye to the Sheehans' baby, Kelly? He needs a glass of water, and there really isn't any reason to hurry to Alaska ... In See You Around, Sam!, Lois Lowry continues to give Anastasia's brother a voice of his own. As the quirky characters on his block welcome him into their homes one by one, he discovers the true meaning of community.
7887362	/m/026hpl2	Zooman Sam	Lois Lowry	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It's Future Job Day at Sam's nursery school, and Sam, who has zookeeping aspirations, is thrilled when his teacher says he can tell the other children about a series of zoo animals: "For six weeks he could stand in front of the circle and feel that feeling of being the most interesting person in the room." As always, the patient and loving Krupnik family stands by as Anastasia's irrepressible little brother struggles with a set of almost impossible goals.
7887818	/m/026hq4_	The Report Card	Andrew Clements	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Since a young age, Nora has been secretly hiding her extraordinary intelligence from her parents and teachers, and still trying her best to do badly in school to prove to herself as "nothing more than average." She shows no concern over it and gets grounded by her parents. However, after researching things over the Internet in the school's library, Nora accidentally exposes herself and is forced to tell the truth to the librarian, Mrs. Byrne, who is fascinated by her intelligence. Then, she meets Dr. Trindler, who gives her an I.Q. test, on which she receives a score of 188. After that, Nora unintentionally throws a tantrum before her classmates, her talents finally uncovered. She is forced to discuss and give good ideas during P.E. class, though she has trouble doing so. Things take a turn when her results get released. She has to face Ms. Hackney, the principal of Philbrook Elementary, to explain herself for scoring a zero on three tests. She explains that she dislikes the tests for being too knowledge-based, but her actions soon cause a great commotion in school when her best friend, Stephen, starts a campaign to call upon all students to follow her act and start a rebellion - to score zero in the next examination. In the end, after a school meeting, Stephen and Nora apologize on behalf of the involved students before the whole school. She rejects any offer from her parents and the school to promote her to middle school for higher education, as she prefers to stay normal. Nora Rose Rowley: The main character of the story and secretive genius. Her appearance is described as being short with reddish-blond hair. Researching is her favorite hobby. She was so intelligent by kindergarten, that she taught herself to understand Spanish by watching the Univision channel and to read National Geographic. Nora loves astronomy, Latin, archaeology, and soccer. Her mother describes Nora as thoughtful, kind and caring. She has two siblings: Ann and Todd. Her best friend is Stephen who has average intelligence but still gets better grades than Nora. Stephen: Nora's best friend. He has been struggling with school for a long time. His self-confidence is poor due to low grades. His favorite subject is English. He has never said one mean or angry thing. Ms. Hackney: The principal at Nora's school. She is one of the people in the meeting to explain her low grades. Mrs. Byrne: The librarian at Philbrook Elementary School. She was one of the first to find out about Nora's unusually high intelligence and played a large role in carrying out her plan. Mrs. Lake: Her Teacher. Dr. Trindler: The guidance counselor. Ms. Noyes: Nora's Social Studies and English teacher. Mrs. Zhang: Nora's Science and Math teacher. Ms. Prill: Nora's art teacher. Mrs. Card: Nora's music teacher. Mr. McKay: Nora's PE (gym) teacher. Mrs. Rowley: Mother Tyler: A very unusual kid. Todd: Nora's older brother Ann: Nora's older smart sister
7888165	/m/026hqm2	The Courts of the Morning	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens with a prologue narrated by Hannay, describing how Hannay is approached by the American military attache in London to covertly solve the mystery of Blenkiron's disappearance in South America. Hannay seeks out his friend Sandy Arbuthnot for help, but Sandy soon disappears, sending Hannay a mysterious letter saying to lie low and keep quiet. The action next moves to Olifa, where Archie and Janet Roylance are honeymooning. The Roylances are intrigued by two sets of people they meet: a party of boorish American tourists and the strange, half-sleepwalking copper miners from the city of Gran Seco, which is ruled by a powerful mining tycoon, Gobernador Castor. As Archie and Janet explore and befriend Castor, it becomes clear that the Americans are using their apparently innocent curiosity as a cover for spying on Castor, and that one of them may by Sandy in disguise. Sandy meets Archie and Janet in secret and tells them they are in danger, but they insist on staying and helping him uncover Castor's plot. At the hacienda of Olifan Don Luis, Sandy explains what he and Blenkiron have uncovered: Castor enslaves Indians, pulls the strings of the government, controls his followers using a local drug, astura, and is a megalomaniac out to destroy democracy by causing civil war in America. Sandy and Don Luis plan to lead an Indian uprising that will not fight Castor but call him leader, embarrassing him. Everyone agrees to help, and Archie and Janet use their friendship with Castor to kidnap him, while Sandy and Blenkiron begin the revolution by seizing the copper mines. Sandy has a close shave with death in which he discovers his old school pal Lariarty is one of Castor's addicted minions. The second part of the story is set at the titular Courts of the Morning, the rebel's secret base in the north of Olifa. Here, Janet and Barbara Dasent, Blenkiron's niece, try to reform Castor into a decent human being. Meanwhile, Sandy and Don Luis engage in guerrilla warfare against the superior Olifa army. Castor's closest confidants, lost without their supply of the drug, make at attempt to rescue Castor but capture Janet instead, kidnapping her. This incident wins Castor entirely to the rebel cause, but a distraught Archie flies into the wild Indian territory to search for Janet, crashing his plane and wandering through the jungle. In the Indian country, Janet is held prisoner for seven days, finally escaping with the help of Archie and Don Luis. In the concluding section, Don Luis reveals that he has been planning a general revolution for three years and the country is ready to rise. Castor, a man reborn, takes the command from Sandy. The Olifa army remains a threat until Sandy daringly blows up a mountain pass, cutting the huge army in two and allowing the rebels to take enough prisoners to force the government to surrender. At the moment of victory, however, the drug addicts make one final revenge attempt, killing Castor and Lariarty, although Janet and Barbara survive. Don Luis is elected the new president, and Sandy refuses a prestigious post in favour of returning home to Scotland and marrying Barbara.
7888735	/m/026hr38	Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy	Gary D. Schmidt	2004	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This book is set in 1912. Turner Buckminster, the son of Reverend Buckminster (Preacher in Phippsburg, Maine), has just moved from Boston, Massachusetts to Phippsburg, Maine and is constantly being teased for simple misunderstandings, not to mentioned being automatically disliked by the boys of Phippsburg for playing baseball differently. Turner meets an african-american girl, Lizzie Bright Griffin, befriends her, despite his difficulty with social situations. Turner has to save Lizzie's family and friends before they all must leave Malaga Island. But that means standing up to the authorities, including Turner's father.
7889378	/m/026hrx0	In the Heat of the Night	John Ball	1965	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Virgil Tibbs is an experienced Pasadena homicide investigator passing through Wells, a small town in South Carolina. When local police officer Sam Wood chances upon him waiting for a connecting train, he swiftly takes him into custody where Tibbs is questioned about a murder solely because he is black. This, in the first two chapters of the novel, sets the mood for the story: about the struggle and the prejudice that even the educated Tibbs experiences in the South. Despite these obstacles, Tibbs reluctantly agrees to help the local police force, commanded by Chief Bill Gillespie, in their murder investigation. Tibbs constantly shoots down any murder accusations brought forth by Gillespie and is eventually accepted by Wood and Gillespie as he solves the murder case.
7889688	/m/026hs9s	Frostbite	David Wellington		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Frostbite takes place in the remote wilderness of Alberta. The setting is similar to the real world, but where werewolves (and possibly other supernatural phenomena) are rare but known phenomena. The novel opens with Cheyenne "Chey" Clarke parachuting into the wilds of Alberta, provisioned with extensive hiking supplies, most of which are immediately lost. Chey is soon attacked by a werewolf (it is indicated to the reader that the creature is obviously not a normal wolf), but survives with only a scratch, which is enough to curse her with lycanthropy. In wandering the wilderness, she meets the enigmatic Dzo, who introduces her to Monty Powell, a werewolf (presumably the one who attacked Chey). After their meeting, it is revealed that Chey has secretly come looking for the werewolf, and is working with outside parties who want him removed. After a failed attempt to kill Powell, Chey is left in the care of her backers, and used as bait to lure Powell while her own future at their hands remains questionable.
7889877	/m/026hsh8	Hammered	Elizabeth Bear	2004-12-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Story of Canadian Master Warrant Officer Jenny Casey an ex-soldier who has cybernetic replacements for an arm and an eye that she lost during combat. Jenny's former commander, who was responsible for replacing her limbs, contacts her to bring her into a secret government/corporate project that she is uniquely qualified to participate in.
7893412	/m/026hygv	The Secret of the League	Ernest Bramah		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 In the fictional British history depicted in the book the Labour Party wins an overwhelming majority in general elections and sets up a government. They do not institute a full Socialist economy, but they do constantly raise wages, heavily tax the upper classes and create a large government bureaucracy. In foreign policy, the Labour Government takes a conciliatory policy towards other powers and curtails military spending. A powerful upper-class cabal (the "League" of the title), whose members feel that "the country is going to the dogs", makes careful secret preparations for overthrowing the government. Over two years they secretly hoard large quantities of fuel oil and convert coal-burning plants to oil-burning. Then, they suddenly announce a consumer strike against the coal industry - at the time, a central pillar of the British economy - and cause large-scale unemployment and distress among coal miners and secondary industries dependent on coal. This culminates in civil war, in which the upper class conspirators gain foreign help and emerge victorious. Once in power, they forcibly dismantle the trade unions and institute a "strong" non-parliamentary regime in many ways resembling the Fascist regimes which arose decades after the book's publication. As mentioned, the "League" members are the Good Guys of the story and their acts are depicted as positive and worthy. The policies which Bramah attributed to his fictional Labour Government proved a good prediction of those actually enacted by the Labour Government of Attlee which swept to power following the British 1945 elections. Bramah's fictional scenario bears considerable resemblance to the way that the Socialist government of President Salvador Allende in Chile (1970–1973) was "destabilised" and eventually overthrown with the help of the United States.
7895098	/m/026j02d	The Kalahari Typing School for Men	Alexander McCall Smith	2002	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The book starts out with Mma Ramotswe talking to her fiance, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, about the future of her assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi, who seems to have difficulty finding suitable men. When Mma Ramotswe talks to Mma Makutsi about this, the latter takes on a demeanor of defeat, and the conversation ends at that. The focus shifts to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's garage, and more specifically, the apprentices, formerly described as lazy young men "always looking at girls." However, there is quite a change in the younger apprentice, who seems to have found religion and is now uninterested in discussing girls, to the chagrin of his fellow apprentice. When Mma Ramotswe arrives at home, both of her foster children seem down, with Motholeli and Puso being the subject of mainly verbal bullying. Motheleli seems to get over this, however Puso projects his anger at his foster parents and says that he "hates them." To increase her income, Mma Makutsi decides to open a typing school just for men, because, in her view, men usually cannot or don't want to type because they don't want to be bettered by women or do not want to be seen doing "woman's work". She manages to procure typewriters from her alma mater, the Botswana Secretarial College, and finds a place to teach at the younger apprentice's church. This business is very successful. Mma Makutsi then gets involved with one of her students, a Mr. Bernard Selelipeng, a married man passing himself off as divorced. Consequent to parallel developments involving Mma Ramotswe, Mr. Selelipeng is forced to break off with Mma Makutsi (See below) To solve the current problem with Puso, Mma Ramotswe goes to the orphanage to consult the matron, Mma Silvia Potokwane, about him. Mma Potokwane's advises having Mr J.L.B Matekoni act as more of a father to the boy. Mr. J.L.B Matekoni does this, with apparently favorable results. The story ends with a picnic, attended by the apprentices, Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, Rra and Mma Potokwane, Mma Boko, and Mr. Molefelo and his family (see below). A rival detective agency, called the Satisfaction Guaranteed Agency has come to town. The business is owned by Cephas Buthelezi, "Ex-CID, Ex-New York, Ex-cellent!". Whether he has actually been to New York is questionable, since he never answers Mma Makutsi's questions about it directly. He is of Zulu origin. His advertising is extremely derogatory about the No. 1 agency in a somewhat sideways manner; he implies that you need a man to do detective work properly. However, his hubris is repaid and at the end of the book, he comes into the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and says he is giving up the business. The Molefelo Case: Mr. Molefelo is a prosperous civil engineer in Lobatse who is also the proprietor of a hotel and landowner with an ostrich ranch. As a young student at the Botswana Technical College in Gaborone, he had a girlfriend whom he had made pregnant. In order to pay for an abortion (which is illegal in Botswana) he had to pay 100 pula (about $20). Since he had no way to get money, he stole a radio from his host family, the Tsolamoseses. After the abortion, he got angry with his girlfriend and broke up with her. After nearly getting killed by ostrich rustlers, Molefelo wants to set his life straight and apologize to both his girlfriend (named Tebogoå Bathopi) and the Tsolamoseses, and enlists Mma Ramotswe's help in finding them. The Selelipeng Case: Mma Selelipeng comes to the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency to confide in Mma Ramotswe that her husband is probably cheating on her. She also says that she tried Mr. Buthelezi's agency, but they did a most "unsatisfactory" job. Mma Ramotswe must now do a balancing act between satisfying the client and protecting Mma Makutsi. sv:Kalaharis skrivmaskinsskola för män
7895763	/m/026j0vh	The Butterfly Revolution				 Set in an American summer camp for boys, Camp High Pines, the novel is written as the diary of thirteen-year-old protagonist Winston Weyn. Winston, an intelligent and somewhat bookish boy, is sent to Camp High Pines as a gift for his birthday. Winston's father, who is concerned by his son's lack of interest in "normal" activities such as sports and playing outside, feels attending camp will be a healthy activity for his son. The campers at High Pines are categorized in three groups: the smallest boys (roughly 9–11 years old), the medium-sized boys (roughly 12–14 years old), and the older boys (somewhere between 15 and 17 years old). Winston, who falls into the middle category, attends camp along with his older brother, Howard, who falls in the latter. Because Winston initially believes he will not like the camp, he brings a few books and the diary his uncle gave him for his birthday. Upon arrival, Winston actually finds the camp to be bearable, and gets along with most of the other boys in his cabin. He is even elected cabin leader, a position he takes quite seriously. Winston also meets a strange, charismatic older boy named Frank Reilley, who is somewhat influential among the older boys and seems to take a liking to Winston's intelligence. Conflicts begin to appear at High Pines soon after the boys arrive. One of the first is between Winston and some of the boys in his cabin after he creates a cabin rule that puts a fine on swearing. Later, it begins to become obvious that some of the older boys, most of whom are more or less apathetic about attending the camp, resent the authority of Mr. Warren, the camp director, and some of the members of his staff. When the older boys are forced to go on a butterfly hunt, they are mortified and resist participating in such a juvenile activity. These older boys, led by Frank Reilley and another boy named Stanley Runk (also known as "Runk the Punk"), begin to plot a revolutionary takeover of the camp. Also privy to this process are Winston and a couple of friends of his from the middle age group. The only older boy to voice dissent to the idea is Don Egriss, a thoughtful and introspective African-American boy who is one of the only minorities present at the camp. Stanley Runk, armed with a large hunting knife, overpowers Mr. Warren and, using him as a hostage, the other boys round up the rest of the teachers. After having thrown the adults into The Brig, the camp's "jail", the boys plot to and succeed in taking Low Pines, the sister camp for girls nearby, and capturing the adults there as well. At first, the Revolution goes smoothly, with little resistance from the younger campers or the girls. Various teenage and preteen boys and girls are made "officers" and given charge over various aspects of the Revolution. Winston is put in charge of propaganda. In addition, a "Supreme Revolutionary Committee", or "SRC", consisting of Frank Reilley and some of his more trusted cohorts, makes all important decisions. Winston, as "Chairman of the Propaganda Committee", soon becomes part of the SRC. Several campers begin to question the revolution, however. One of the first, Frank Divordich, is beaten for being a "traitor" to the revolution after he tries to leave the camp. Winston becomes uneasy at the level of totalitarian control beginning to become evident in the camp's operations. He reads about the ideas of philosophers such as Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Thoreau, and these readings only serve to deepen his uncertainty in regards to the morality of the revolution. When he voices these concerns, a boy named George Meridel tries to denounce him as a Communist. At the same time, the revolution faces other internal conflicts as Reilley finds himself in a power struggle with co-revolutionary leader Stanley Runk and discovers that John Mason, another "officer", sexually assaulted one of the girls at Low Pines. Both Runk and Mason are thrown in The Brig, and Winston learns that Reilley has in his possession a gun that belonged to Mr. Warren. Winston then enters a conflict with the SRC by refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, and Don Egriss tries to escape the camp but is captured. Winston is demoted to a militiaman in the defensive army formed by the SRC, and placed under the control of his enemy, Bob Daly. When he hits Bob Daly with a wooden lance, he is jailed temporarily, but released. Soon after his release Don Egriss and John Mason get into a fight in The Brig. Mr. Warren's gun is thrown into the cell and Egriss, fearing for his life, shoots Mason in self-defense, killing him. Meanwhile, the girls at Low Pines have been actively calling for John Mason's blood due to the rape he committed. Reilley has tried to hold the girls off, because he does not want to let them take the law into their own hands. With Mason dead, the girls threaten violence and are given Don Egriss instead. They lynch Egriss, hanging him from a tree, and then leave his body to rot in the woods. Winston, saddened by the death of his friend and convinced that Reilley is crazy, buries Don. Soon after, the revolution ends with the police invading High Pines and taking several children, including Winston, into custody. The police interrogate Winston about his activities on the SRC and ask if he really read Communist books and refused to say the Pledge, which he does not deny. Winston is then released to his parents. It is also revealed that Mr. Warren, the camp director, was killed by Reilley and some of his cohorts, who had hidden Warren's body in a cave by the lake near High Pines. Winston, who feels he has lost his innocence, is comforted by his uncle, who appears proud of Winston for surviving the incident and learning to think about ethical and moral issues in the process.
7896162	/m/026j1b9	Terrier	Tamora Pierce	2006-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is told in the form of a series of journal entries made by Beka Cooper as she trains to become a Dog, a nickname for the guards in the employ of the Lord Provost of Tortall, with a prelude taken from Eleni Cooper's diary in which she relates Beka's story to her son George. Beka is also the surrogate daughter of the Provost, having helped him capture a band of dangerous criminals when she was only 8 years old. Lord Gershom adopts her, her mother, and her brothers and sisters from the "scummer" life of Mutt Piddle Lane, where the very poor lived. Beka begins her training assigned as a Puppy, or a Dog in his or her first year of training, to two revered senior Dogs in the Lower City: Clara "Clary" Goodwin and Matthias "Mattes" Tunstall. Though the Dogs are initially unsure of their new charge, Beka proves to be a valuable resource, although she is extremely shy and has a hard time speaking in front of people. Through Beka's unusual magical abilities, she is able to hear the voices of ghosts who ride the backs of pigeons until they are ready to enter the Peaceful Realms of the Black God (the god of death,) and hear snippets of conversations that may contain valuable information caught by "dust spinners", swirls of breeze and dirt mixed from the city streets. From these sources she learns of two grave threats to the Lower City. One is the Shadow Snake. Old bedtime tales featured the Shadow Snake as something to instill good behaviors into children. However, a ruthless killer who abducts children has taken on the name, and uses the threat of harming the children to force their parents to give up their most prized valuable possessions, killing the kidnapped children if the price is not paid. The other threat is an unknown party who keeps hiring digging crews to search for fire opals,(rare and extremely expensive stones that not only have irresistible beauty, but supply mages with a certain power) swearing the workers to secrecy, and killing them when the job is done. Beka's determination to see both parties brought to justice will place her in the middle of a power struggle in Tortall's underworld. Beka's cat, Pounce, helps Beka throughout the book. Pounce has purple eyes and is it has been observed that he may be god marked. Tamora Pierce has noted in her blog that Pounce is the same character known as Faithful, Alanna's cat in the Song of the Lioness quartet. It is worth noting that the first name that is suggested for Faithful was "Pounce." However, in the second novel in this series it is revealed that Pounce is actually a constellation, not a god. However, he has the ability to speak, hear Beka's thoughts at close range when she wishes, and perform tasks most cats cannot. Crookshank's (Crookshank being a landlord who owns most property in the Lower City and is hated by everyone for his unfairly high rates and his cruel retaliation when rent cannot be paid) grandson, Roland, is killed by the alleged Shadow Snake. Beka is best friends with Tansy, Crookshank's daughter-in-law, which helps Beka gain extra information about what is going on in the household. Through her training as a Dog, her time spent with pigeons and Dust Spinners, and with the help of her friends Kora, Rosto, and Aniki (a mage, rusher, and a sword fighter who work for the Rogue, the king of crime in the city) Beka gains information about the opals and the Shadow Snake. She soon discovers that it is Crookshank who has been hiring the diggers to be murdered, and the Shadow Snake is demanding a large number of fire opals. After Crookshank's son has also been taken by the Snake, and he still refuses to pay up, Beka and her Dogs discover the culprit- or at least who they think is the culprit. The son of Mistress Noll, a local baker, who suicides instead of allowing himself to be captured. Beka goes to tell Mistress Noll the news and discovers it was not her son, but the mother who was the Snake, and the angry baker woman sends a curse flying at Beka. However, Pounce gets in the way and swallows the curse, giving Beka time to arrest Mistress Noll, who is later brought to justice for her crimes. Crookshank later dies in a riot, and Rosto, Beka's rusher friend, becomes Rogue.
7896588	/m/026j1sd	The Elves of Cintra	Terry Brooks	2007-08-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Beginning where Armageddon's Children ended, Knight of the Word Logan Tom races to save the gypsy morph Hawk and his girlfriend Tessa from being thrown to their deaths from atop Safeco Field. He is too late but learns that a brilliant white light enveloped the two as they fell, apparently saved by an unknown magic. Logan doesn't know where they have gone, but sees a demon invasion force preparing to land at Seattle's waterfront. Meanwhile, the Ghosts head toward the agreed upon rendezvous point and Logan Tom goes to find them. While evacuating the city, Panther and Sparrow are separated from the Ghost tribe. The Ghosts encounter a group of mutant children on the freeway, and escape them but not before Squirrel is killed. Logan runs into Panther and Sparrow, helping them fight off Croaks and reunite with the tribe. They leave the city in Logan's all-terrain vehicle as they see the demon hordes besiege Safeco Field. Owl realizes their dog Cheney has gone missing. The Lady of the Word appears to Logan and tells him to head south to the Columbia River where Hawk will meet them with many followers. He is also told that another Knight of the Word will bring the Elves and their magic, upon which humankind's future depends. She tasks him with protecting them all, no matter the cost. As he and the Ghosts travel south, the Weatherman succumbs to plague, and they pick up two new companions, a partially mutated Lizard named Cat (for Catayla) and her pet cat named Rabbit. They also have a run-in with killer robots at Oronyx Experimental Robotics Systems. Later they are ambushed by followers of Krilka Koos, a rogue Knight of the Word that Logan had once heard about (from the Spiders in the mountains when trying to reach Seattle in Armageddon's Children). near Longview. In exchange for the children's safety, Logan agrees to go with them to meet Krilka. Krilka, having fallen from the Word, asks Logan to join his own crusade. Logan refuses and is forced to fight the Knight of the Word surrounded by Krilka's army. Logan Tom narrowly wins, but refuses to kill Krilka, who vows to hunt down and kill Logan and the Ghosts. He then plunges a poison dart into Logan's leg. Delirious, Logan shoots fire from his staff at the crowd, causing them to panic and flee. The ghosts manage to extricate Logan and escape in the ATV. In the Elven city of Arborlon, Kirisin and Erisha are caught in the library by Culph, the King's historian. Culph offers to help them find the seeking Elfstones, revealing that they were buried with the powerful Elven Queen Pancea Rolt Cruer. However, they are unable to find her grave. The Knight of the Word Angel Perezand the tatterdemalion Ailie arrive in the Cintra shortly afterward, escorted by a group of Elven Trackers, including Kirisin's sister Simralin. Angel and Ailie are given an audience with the High Council and the King, while Culph lead Kirisin and Erisha to a vantage point where they can eavesdrop on the meeting. Angel and Ailie tell the Council that they have been sent by the Word to help them take the elves and the Ellcrys to a safe place. Angel has been tasked with helping the Elves to find the Loden Elfstone, and is dismayed to learn that the Elves retain almost no knowledge of the Elfstones. The Council is astounded. The King confirms that Kirisin told him of a warning from the Ellcrys, but didn't inform the Council. The King remains skeptical and orders a more extensive search of the histories and they will reconvene in two days. Kirisin, Erisha, Simralin, Angel, and Ailie meet later that night to share information on the Elfstones and theorize as to why the King seems unwilling to help them. Ailie makes a startling revelation, that she sensed a demon at the Council meeting. At the same time, the demon Delloreen (who has now mutated to have an animal-like, scaly form, with virtually no vestiges of any human-like qualities), who had been tracking Angel, enters the Cintra. To her surprise, she finds a fellow demon disguised as an elf. The two become allies with the disguised demon taking command. The following evening, Kirisin, Erisha, Simralin, Angel, and Ailie follow clues to another part of the graveyard and find the Elf Queen's grave. They encounter the shade of the Queen, who nearly kills the party in anger for allowing Elven magic to fade. Instead she forces Kirisin to promise to persuade the Elves to rediscover their magic and to begin using it again. She says that Kirisin has magic that he is currently unaware of and that what he must do, he must do alone. She gives Kirisin the Elfstones and disappears. Delloreen attacks the party in the graveyard, killing Ailie and Erisha. Simralin stabs the beast in the eye with an Elven blade and Delloreen flees. They find they are pursued by the Elven guard and flee the city to seek the Loden. Once clear of the city, Kirisin uses the Elfstones, which direct them to Syrring Rise (current day Mt. Rainier). They head north, still pursued by the two demons. At the Columbia River they find a blind elven ex-tracker named Larkis Quill, who ferries them across as the bridges are all occupied by militias. The three leave Larkis and travel by a secret elven hot air balloon to Syrring Rise. While ascending the snowy peak, Angel senses Delloreen's presence and stays behind. She confronts the demon and blinds it by clawing out its remaining eye. Delloreen is finally killed, but not before savagely injuring Angel. She later awakens from unconsciousness fearing internal injuries, but resumes her climb up the mountain's face. Within the ice caves on the mountain's peak, Kirisin and Simralin find a frozen, life-size statue of a dragon. Deep within the statue's cavernous throat, Kirisin finds the Loden. As he exits the dragon's mouth, however, he and Simralin are assaulted by Culph, who reveals himself as the demon. Simralin is seriously wounded by Culph, and is lying on the floor nearly unconscious. Culph explains that he had been lying to the king but still aiding in the search for the Loden, because the demons believe they can eliminate the elven threat to them by imprisoning them in the Loden. Needing an elf to wield the Loden, Culph tries to cast a mind-controlling spell on Kirisin. However, he lets slip that seeking Elfstones can also be used as weapons in time of great need. Although greatly weakened, Simralin is able to stab Culph in the leg, distracting him. This frees Kirisin from the spell that Culph was just about to complete. Kirisin is then able to direct the seeking Elfstones towards Culph, disintegrating him in blue fire. After disappearing from Safeco Field, Hawk was transported to a strange garden where he meets a mystical old man called the King of the Silver River, who tells him Tessa is safe and sleeping. As they walk through the garden, the old man tells of Hawk's origins and reveals that it was his magic that saved Hawk at the Safeco Field. Finally, the old man tells Hawk that his purpose is to save the human race and that he will lead several thousand Humans, Elves, and others to a Promised Land. As Hawk falls asleep next to Tessa, the old man reveals that Hawk will awaken in his own world with Tessa and Cheney, and that several weeks will have passed. Hawk, Tessa, and Cheney awake to find themselves near the Columbia River. They head upstream and encounter the survivors of the Anaheim Complex that Angel had previously rescued. The survivors are now led by a woman named Helen Rice, who is skeptical that Hawk was sent to guide them to safety. As the group approaches a bridge controlled by militia, Hawk discovers some of his innate magic. He touches some nearby flora, and within minutes, vines and plant life erupt from the ground and subdue the militia. The survivors cross the bridge when Hawk learns that an army led by Findo Gask is approaching from the south. Unknown to Hawk, Findo has sensed the gypsy morph (Hawk) once again and entreats a monstrous demon called "the Klee" to find and destroy it. Despite the approaching danger, Hawk leaves the party with Tessa and Cheney to search for the Ghost tribe, instructing Helen to take in any other refugees she finds. Finally, they find the Ghosts and Logan Tom, who has been in a coma for two days.
7896770	/m/026j1zy	So Much To Tell You	John Marsden	1987	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 So Much to Tell You, based on a true story, is presented as a diary written by a 14-year-old girl known as Marina. Marina has a scarred face because she was the unintended victim of an incident involving a vial of acid which was thrown by her father. She refused to talk to anyone during her long recovery period in hospital, so she was sent to Warrington, a girls' boarding school, because nothing else appeared to be working. But even after her arrival, she maintains her silence. Then, one day, her English teacher Mr. Lindell encourages the class to keep a journal. Despite the fact that Marina is determined not to make use of her diary, she cannot resist writing about some of the seemingly trivial events of her day. However, the content of her entries becomes more and more revealing over time, and readers are able to better understand Marina's world: how her friends, teachers and families create profound and lasting impressions on her psyche. Marina goes from not interacting with others at all, to opening up and socialising, and eventually finding non-verbal ways of communicating. However, as the book continues, Marina's negative feelings towards her father fade away, and by the end of the book she devises a plan which enables her to see him again. When she speaks for the first time, in such a long time, she utters her only words for the entire novel: "Hello, Dad... I've got so much to tell you..."
7901786	/m/026jbl4	Kingdom of the golden dragon	Isabel Allende		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins with the monk Tensing and his disciple, the Prince Dil Bahadur, traveling in a remote part of the Himalaya, on a journey to the Valley of the Yeti, in search of rare plants found only there, for use in medicines and balms. When they arrive they find the valley is beautiful, and they stay the night. In the morning they awake to many Yetis around them with clubs and other weapons, yet the monk and his disciple remain calm but then in the distance they see a slow moving, bigger Yeti, the ancient matriarch of the Yeti, Grr-ympr. She calls off the Warriors, and soon the lamas learn the sad story of the last of the Yeti. Grr-ympr is very old, from a stronger generation of Yetis, but with each generation of Yeti, they grow smaller, weaker and animalistic, in contrast to the great human-like Yeti of the past, whose society was nearly as complex as that of the humans. They believed this was due to the wrath of the gods, and that the lamas were the gods themselves, arriving to save the Yeti. After observing the Yeti, they find that the Yeti breastfeed their young, but as it gives little nourishment, the milk does not strengthen the babies, which is why they are all so sickly and weak, and often die. Further investigation also shows all the Yeti have purple, diseased tongues, which seems to be a sign of something in their environment weakening them. The lamas teach the Yeti to milk the Chegnos, the only domesticated animal the Yeti have, to feed the milk to the babies, who then show improvement from the diet. They also soon discover the water from the thermal springs that the Yeti drink from is contaminated with toxic minerals, and is the cause of the weakness of the Yeti and their purple tongues. After the tribe ceases to drink from the springs, their energy and health rapidly improves, and in return for what the lamas have done, they help them collect the plants and show them a short cut tunnel that cuts the journey back a great deal. The novel then shifts to Kate Cold, a writer for International Geographic, and her grandson Alexander Cold, arriving back in the New York from their adventures in Brazil from the previous novel. Alexander gives his Grandmother three large diamonds that Nadia had found in the Amazon, and tells her to use them to fund an Organization to protect The People of the Mist, and other Indians in South America. Although initially doubtful to the large eggs being diamonds, Kate goes to her jeweler friend Isaac Rosenblat, who immediately tells her that they are the largest diamonds he has ever seen and worth a fortune. The scene shifts six months and in that time the Diamond Foundation has been started, along with the help of Kate's old nemesis, archaeologist Ludovic Leblanc. Kate has also been assigned by International Geographic to travel to the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon to write an article. A call from Alexander asking to be able to come along and bring Nadia convinces her to have them come as well. The scene shifts to the second richest man in the world, known as the Collector, talking with the Specialist, talking about acquiring the Golden Dragon, an artifact from the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon which allows people to see into the future, as well as instructions on how to use it. The Collector seeks this item to be able to foresee the stock market, and to use it to make himself much richer, and no longer be the second richest man in the world. Once at Kingdom of the Golden Dragon as it's called, they get involved in a sinister plot to kidnap young girls and force them to be their slaves. Nadia who is mistaken as a girl from the kingdom is kidnapped along with Pema and a few other girls. Now it is up to Alexander and his annoyed grandmother to save the girls along with a little help from the country's forces, a lama, his disciple, and of course Boroba's keen senses to find Nadia.
7903158	/m/026jd_x	A Rebel In Time	Harry Harrison	1983	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 The book centers around a racist colonel, Wesley McCulloch and his black pursuer, Troy Harmon. McCulloch and Harmon both originate from the modern era, the book opening with Harmon called in by a special military watchdog organization to investigate why McCulloch has been buying large quantities of gold. The case worsens when it is discovered McCulloch also murders three people to cover his plans. The theft of an antique Sten gun and the plans for such also add to the mystery about what McCulloch is up to. Before long, Harmon comes to the conclusion McCulloch has used a secret experimental time machine to try to change the outcome of the American Civil War, giving victory to the Confederacy through the introduction of the easily produced Sten gun (which had yet to be invented). Harmon determines he must follow McCulloch into the past to bring justice. During the ensuing chase, Harmon discovers first-hand the prejudices of the people at the time.
7903209	/m/026jf29	Prester John	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir	1910	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The setting is contemporaneous with publication: the beginning of the twentieth century. Crawfurd grows up in Kirkcaple, by the North Sea, where he first encounters the antagonist, Laputa, performing a ritual on the beach. Crawfurd's father dies, and he goes to work as a shopkeeper in a place called Blaauwildebeestefontein. Crawfurd comes into contact with a Portuguese man, Henriques, and again with Laputa, and he gradually learns of illegal diamond smuggling and of a planned rising of the native people of the region, including the Zulu people and the Swazi people, led by Laputa. Laputa's skill as a preacher allows him to inspire many tribes across the region to follow him, and he invokes the legend of Prester John and positions himself as the rightful heir and leader who can rise up against colonial rule. Crawfurd learns more about this after meeting Captain Arcoll, who leads the colonialist army and police. Using information learnt from having overheard the conversation of Laputa and Henriques, Crawfurd infiltrates the cave where the tribal leaders are gathering and witnesses Laputa commencing the rising, wearing the necklet of Prester John, which legitimises his leadership. Crawfurd is captured, but having managed to relay a message to Captain Arcoll, escapes during an ambush and steals the necklet from the hands of Henriques, who is trying to steal it for himself. After running all night, Crawfurd is climbing a ravine in the escarpment up to the plateau above the berg when he is captured again. But he manages first to hide the necklet, which is made of priceless rubies. After being taken to Laputa's new base, Crawfurd escapes immediate punishment by offering Laputa his knowledge of the location of the necklet in exchange for sparing his life. Laputa, who needs the necklet in order to convince his followers, but has not told anyone of its loss, goes alone with Crawfurd to search for the necklet. In the ravine, Crawfurd narrowly escapes once again and steals Laputa's horse to take him to Arcoll's headquarters. With Laputa separated from his army, Arcoll's forces are able to quell the leaderless uprising. Meanwhile Crawfurd returns to the cave, where he finds the treacherous Henriques dead outside, having been strangled by Laputa. Entering the cave, Crawfurd meets Laputa, who by now knows that all his plans have failed. Laputa destroys a rock bridge giving access to the cave, and then commits suicide by jumping into an underground river chasm. Crawfurd makes a daring escape by climbing a cascade up and out of the cave. He rejoins Arcoll and is instrumental in bringing about the disarmament of the native uprising and the subsequent peace. With Arcoll's help he is rewarded with a large portion of the treasure hidden in the cave and eventually returns to Scotland a rich man.
7903495	/m/026jfjr	The House of the Four Winds	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir	1935		 At the beginning of the novel several characters formerly seen in Huntingtower and Castle Gay are about to go to Europe for the summer, for a number of different reasons: Mr McCunn going to a German Kurhaus for his health, Alison to join her parents in the Tirol, the Roylances to attend a dull conference in Geneva, Jaikie on a walking tour, Dougal on a mission for his newspaper. Jaikie meets Randal Glynde who encourages him to visit Evallonia, which is on the verge of a revolution, and arranges for him to meet Prince Odalchini at his castle, "The House of the Four Winds". On the way he meets Ashie, a friend from Cambridge who is now a leader of the third element in the Evallonian political scene, Juventus, a cross between a youth group and a national revival movement. The Juventus people, like the Monarchists, want to overthrow the corrupt and unpopular government, but see young Prince John as a puppet of the conservatives, "the old gang". Jaikie eventually agrees to act as a secret liaison between the two groups. Meanwhile Alison and the Roylances have rescued Prince John from Mastrovin. They bring him into Evallonia in disguise. Dickson McCunn, informed of the situation by Dougal and feeling obliged by his promise to Prince John to lend a hand, joins the Monarchists and proposes a shrewd scheme for inducing Juventus to back Prince John. Mishaps and the machinations of Mastrovin lead to dangerous complications before the prince attains the throne.
7903634	/m/026jfs_	Sick Heart River	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir			 The plot is particularly poignant, since it discusses a terminally ill man, Edward Leithen, going off to die in a hidden valley in the Canadian wilderness. Buchan wrote this while Governor General of Canada and it was published posthumously following his death as a result of a fall and stroke. It is one of Buchan's most spiritual novels, talking about death and redemption.
7904136	/m/026jglf	Icefire	Chris D'Lacey	2003-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 David is frustrated that none will publish his book and Lucy is making a dragon David to name it then Lucy asks her mom if she can wish for something and saying that it is Davids dragon since he named it.He tells them the name Gadzooks wrote, G'reth and according to Liz it is a wishing dragon. Then He reads the clock and he says he is late for his lecture so Liz offers to drive him in. He later tells her he thinks Sophie is going to allow him to move in with her. Dr. Bergstrom gives David an assignment on dragons and says the prize is a trip to the Arctic and gives him a talisman to hold and says it will show him his true path he sees Gadzooks and he writes the name Lorel. Later Lucy having wished for snow on G'reth is playing in the snow making a snowman (looking some what like a bear)comes in and looks in the freezer. David comes in and says Sophie left her a book. feeling curious finds Gruffen on a small container he tries to pick Gruffen up but he gets stuck on Davids hands, Liz saves Gruffen ( just in time)and shows him what is in a box it was only a snowball. David goes up to his room he falls asleep dreaming about the Arctic and when a polar bear walks up to him he says...You have email! Or rather his computer said it was a message from Zanna, a goth girl in his class. She comes over later while Liz and Lucy are at the Craft Fair then they goes up to the dragons den and she is mesmerized by a bronze clay egg. David then makes a wish to find Gawain's fire tear which then calls Gwilanna. Gretel Gwilanna's dragon puts David under a spell and goes with David to a publishing meeting and Snigger is published. At home Gwillana says that Liz is having a baby that Zanna kindled she says its the fist boy in 900 years. Later Gwillana traps David under the floor boards but he breaks free using the Tooth of Ragnar a tooth that came from one of the first white bears. Liz has the baby but the baby is a dragon that Gwillana enchants when Zanna bursts in she is branded with a make that is a blessing and a curse. David goes to the baby dragon with Zanna reviling (if not earlier in the book) that she is a sibyl and has the mark of Oomara and Gretel becomes her dragon. The baby flies to Bergstrom and the party of three follow not far behind. In Bergstrom's office Zanna finds the baby and decides to name him Grockle. David talks to Bergstrom reviling the full story of Gawain. and Grockle turns to stone like Gawain. After the clean up Davids first girlfriend, Sophie moves to Africa and breaks up with David. He tries to find Zanna thinking she is not going to the Arctic he also begins a new book Bergstrom comes to pick him up he sees an extra bag and reads the tag and it says Suzanna M. Zanna comes out of the car and after a short conversation she is now his girlfriend. Elizabeth Pennykettle (Liz) - The landlady and the maker of the mysterious clay dragons that come to life. Her special dragon is Guinevere. Lucy Pennykettle - Liz's daughter, an 11-year-old girl who strongly believes in dragons but can be very mischievous. She also loves squirrels and hedgehogs and tries to find them. She can also make dragons. Her special dragon is Gwendolen. She also encourages, or "pushes" David to write stories on what animals are doing with their lives. David Rain - The main character of the series. David is Liz's tenant and he goes to Scrubbley College. He has written a book called Snigger and the Nutbeast and tries to publish it in this book. He has a writing dragon named Gadzooks and gets a new wishing dragon named G'reth. David has a girlfriend named Sophie who has job in Africa and seems to have a love interest with Suzanna "Zanna" Martindale. David is very curious about Gawain's fire tear in this book and uses G'reth to try and find out about the tear and gets his help by Hamza Nouh Mohamed Ges Suzanna Martindale (Zanna) - Zanna is a Goth college student that falls in love with David and knows a great deal about dragons. She is a descendant of Gwendolen, and a girl with the markings of a sibyl (the Mark of Oomara). She becomes David's girlfriend. they both figure out things together piece by piece. She is also a desendent of Gwendolen. Guinevere - Guinevere caught Gawain's fire tear and she is from ages long past. David learns about her when Liz tells him a story about her. and left one daughter who caries the original fire and passes it down through the years. Ancestor of Liz Pennykettle and Lucy Pennykettle. Gwendolen - Guinevere's child, made from clay, flesh, and blood. Doesn't tell who her mother is, and is the ancestor of Suzanna Martindale. Gwilanna - An evil sibyl who helps Guinevere and conjures Gwendolen for her. Gwilanna also bewitches Grockle to become a dragon. She is always trying to bring back the dragons in some devious way. She first appears using the alias "Aunty Gwyneth." Dr. Bergstrom - David's college professor. Has the ability to turn into a fantastic polar bear; also known as Thoran (in polar bear form). and was originally thought of as a ghost. Sophie - David's girlfriend who helped Lucy in the first book, The Fire Within, when they caught a couple of squirrels. In this book, she is away on a job at an African game reserve. Henry Bacon - Henry is the Pennykettle's next door neighbor. David has to stay with him while Gwilanna is staying in his room. and keeps a room full of stuff on polar bear and later becomes an allied character Gawain - The last real dragon of the world. and the father of Grockle . Grockle - The "son" of Suzanna Martindale and Gawain the dragon, originally intended to be a human boy; bewitched by Gwilanna to become a dragon. and born with no fire . G'reth - The wishing dragon. Puts David's wish out to the universe. and wishes people wouldn't use the word wish or wishes after their aftermath Gretel - The potions dragon and servant of Gwillana.until becoming Zanna's dragon Gadzooks (Zookie) - David's story writing dragon. They seem to share a powerful connection to the universe. Gadzooks was the first one to discover Lorel's presence. and tells David things on his pad helping him to write stories Grace - Sophie's listening dragon, who plays an important part in this book. and is traumatized in the near end. Gruffen - A guard dragon of the Dragon's Den. always not where he is supposed to be . Gwillan - A puffler dragon, he also enjoys cleaning, and watering plants for Liz. Spikey - An albino hedgehog. Ragnar - One of the legendary polar bears who has fighting scars all over him. He is said to have roared so loud that a tooth came out of his mouth, and he pounded it into the ice and it formed the island called the Tooth of Ragnar. Lorel - The Teller of the Ways. Tries to make contact with David to give him information. He is a polar bear. Ingavar - great descendant of Ragnar who takes the tooth of Ragnar and fuses with it so he may become the ancestor before him. Bonnington - the Pennykettles' cat who inherits a few dragon skills after drinking some of the melted icefire. and a mischief maker
7904162	/m/026jgmh	The Gap in the Curtain	John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir	1932	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At a country house, five guests gather and are chosen by a brilliant scientist to take part in a shocking experiment which will let them glimpse one year into the future. However, when the experiment takes place, two of the guests see their own obituaries in The Times one year after. Will they be able to change their destinies? Part of the action is clearly autobiographical, including featuring the agonies of a contemporary up and coming politician.
7904935	/m/026jhm3	The Killing Joke	Anthony Horowitz		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Guy Fletcher is an actor who overhears a builder telling a joke in his local pub about his mother (although very few people know that he is her son), a famous and much loved actress called Selina Moore, who died in a plane accident in France. The joke was "Why is Selina Moore like Ferrero Rocher? Because they both came out of France in a box." This was originally a real joke about Princess Diana's death, a fact which is mentioned in the book. The next day he wonders where jokes come from and, despite being discouraged by his agent Sylvie, goes on a mission to track down the joke. On the way, he meets a variety of people, most importantly a woman called Sally, who he falls in love with. After investigating various dead-ends and multiple paths that the joke has followed, he is noticed by a mysterious company, led by a man called Rupert Liddy, who has a perfect memory. This company then attempt to stop Guy by using characters from jokes (e.g. an Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman), and stereotypes of character groups. Eventually, they frame him for his neighbor's murder, at which point Guy goes into hiding. He goes back to Sally, believing her to be the last chance he has of finding out what was going on. However, when he gets there, her house is blown up. Sally herself is not in, but her mother, who has elephantiasis, is. Sally decides to go with Guy to track down the joke. His only lead is a company called Sphinx, that apparently create vacuum cleaners, as that was where he ended one of the trails of the joke. He tries to track down Sphinx, but cannot, and when he rings their number is left holding for an hour, before being redirected. At another attempt, he plots where he traced the joke on a map with three of the trails that he followed, and found they crossed near the coast of Suffolk. They travel there, stopping in an abandoned fairground overnight to sleep, and end up having sex. After investigating various towns in the area, they stop at a village called Kelford. As they investigate, they find that everyone there is almost completely humourless, and that it has something to do with a small island just off the coast. At night, they steal a boat and travel there. They soon get captured and brought to speak with Rupert Liddy. He puts them in cells and, during a long speech about jokes, what makes a joke funny, and why they are essential, reveals that Sphinx are set up to create and distribute jokes so that people do not take things, like politics, too seriously. He also explains that their identity must be kept secret because if someone found out that jokes were created by a company, people wouldn't find them funny any more. Rupert then tortures Guy, to find out who sent him and who else knows he is there, by tickling his foot with a feather. He then places Guy and Sally in a cell together that fills up with poisonous gas. There is a light bulb in the room that is switched on, and turns off when there is a fatal level of gas in the room. Guy and Sally breathe in the gas and go unconscious. They then wake up on a small boat, and knock the captain unconscious. It is revealed that the light bulb in the gas chamber was broken, turning off too early, and so the gas had been turned off before it became fatal. The light bulb had not been repaired by maintenance because they were short staffed, causing Mr. Liddy to shout out the punchline of the book 'How many top-secret government technicians does it take to change a light bulb?' In the penultimate chapter of the book, it clumsily describes how Guy and Sally went to France and started a new life, written as if being spoken by someone who is badly describing a joke. At the end, when this mystery narrator has realised he has ruined the joke, they decide to start again, and the final words are the same as the first ones. fi:Joka leikistä suuttuu
7906245	/m/026jkxp	Scorched: South Africa's Changing Climate				 Scorched is a popular narrative which takes its readers on a vivid journey through southern Africa’s mesmerising landscapes as climate change sets in. It delivers an accessible account of the often complex modelling produced by scientific institutions, and gives powerful local colour to a global problem. Scorched ponders the morality of the changes humankind has wrought, and the future of life as we know it.
7906594	/m/026jlk9	The Sea of Monsters	Rick Riordan	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with Percy having a nightmare about Grover being chased by a cyclops. The nightmare ends with a big voice booming, "MINE!" It is the last day of school at Meriweather Prep, and Percy's only friend, Tyson, is being teased by bullies, though there are more of them that day than usual. In gym class, the extra bullies reveal themselves as Laistrygonians (cannibal giants) and attack Percy. Annabeth appears to have been following Percy to talk to him about her own nightmares. She helps Percy and Tyson defeat the Laistrygonians, and the three of them return to camp in the Gray Sisters Taxi. In the taxi, the Gray Sisters tell Percy that "the location [he] seeks" is 30, 31, 75, and 12. Though Percy is confused and asks them what they mean, he is not informed, because they find the camp is under attack by the Colchis Bulls, from which Clarisse and some of her cabinmates are trying to defend. With help from Tyson, Percy and Annabeth manage to defeat the monsters, but Percy finds out that Tyson is a Cyclops. Clarisse tells them that Thalia's tree, which protects the camp, has been poisoned by an unknown intruder and is dying. The magical borders that protect the camp are also failing. She also informs them that Chiron, the activities director, has been fired because he is suspected of poisoning the tree, and is replaced by Tantalus, a prisoner who has been brought from the Fields of Punishment. Poseidon claims Tyson as his son at dinner. Percy has another dream of Grover, and this time Grover and Percy talk to each other (Grover had earlier had made an empathy link, allowing them to communicate sometimes while Percy is sleeping) and Grover reveals that he is trapped in The Sea of Monsters by a Cyclops named Polyphemus. Grover says that "it" is here, but Percy wakes up before he can ask what Grover means. The day after, Percy asks Annabeth if she understands what the dream about Grover means. Annabeth tells him that Grover may have found the Golden Fleece, and they both realize that the Golden Fleece can cure Thalia's poisoned tree. That night at the campfire, Annabeth and Percy ask Tantalus to send somebody on a quest to find the Golden Fleece, which he does, sending Clarisse. Percy gets angry with Tantalus, but doesn't know what to do. Later that night, when everyone else is asleep, Percy sneaks out to the beach and is met by Hermes, who gives him three duffel bags full of money and clothes, a magical thermos that holds the four winds, and a box of Minotaur-shaped multivitamins. He tells him that he must choose to board a passing cruise ship. Annabeth and Tyson arrive, and they decide to go to the cruise ship before security harpies consume them. Percy receives help from Poseidon, who sends them three hippocampi, and together with Annabeth and Tyson, end up on the cruise ship, the Princess Andromeda, which is revealed to be owned by Luke. They are captured and learn that Luke is trying to reform Kronos, the lord of the Titans. They manage to escape on a lifeboat and go to Chesapeake Bay, where Annabeth leads them to a hideout that she had created a few years earlier when running away with Luke and Thalia. Tyson gets a box of donuts which he got from a nearby donut shop (Monster Donut). They are attacked by a Hydra, which is killed by Clarisse who has a boat of her own that was given to her by her father Ares. The boat is an ironclad from the Civil War. They sail for the Sea of Monsters (which has now moved to the Bermuda Triangle) and Clarisse plans to destroy Charybdis and also encounters Scylla, who devours the captain of the ship as well as a few others of the crew. The engine overheats and explodes, and Clarisse's boat is destroyed and eaten by a monster. Percy and Annabeth make it out (Tyson is presumed dead), but lose their duffel bags; plus, the thermos has been emptied because Annabeth opened it "a little too far." They eventually find an island where Circe lives, and dock at her island, which turns out to be a spa. However, Percy is turned into a guinea pig and is put in a cage with six others. Annabeth frees him by using the multivitamins to become resistant to magic, and gives some to Percy and the others, who become human again. It turns out that the other six guinea pigs were Blackbeard (son of Ares) and his crew, and Percy and Annabeth use Blackbeard's ship to get away. As they are sailing, they pass the land of the Sirens. Annabeth, who knows that the Sirens tell of their innermost desires, decides that she wants Percy to tie her to the mast and have her listen to the Sirens' songs. However, Percy forgets to remove her knife, and she manages to free herself, almost reaching the island, but Percy manages to save her; in doing so, he learns that the Sirens' song made Annabeth see what she wanted most: her parents reunited and Luke converted back to the side of the gods, all having a picnic, in front of a brand new Manhattan, rebuilt by Annabeth. He grabs her before she can get out of the water and gets her back under, creating a giant air bubble so that she can breathe, and they make it back to their ship. On board, Annabeth tells Percy that her fatal flaw is hubris (deadly pride). They reach the island of Polyphemus – where they find Tyson safe and alive – and save Grover with the help of Tyson and Clarisse, recovering the Fleece in the process. They make their way to Florida, and Percy sends Clarisse, with the Fleece, back to camp. Percy, Annabeth, Grover and Tyson are captured by Luke, and are taken to the Princess Andromeda. Percy manages to contact camp with an Iris-message, tricking Luke into admitting he poisoned Thalia's tree. In a duel with Luke, Percy is nearly killed. He is saved by Chiron and his relatives, the "Party Ponies". Chiron is rehired after being proven not guilty, and the Fleece cures Thalia's tree of its poison; however, Thalia herself is spewed out of the tree. Chiron realizes that everything that had happened had been to bring back Thalia, just to "put another chess piece into play".
7908572	/m/026jnd3	Gooney Bird Greene			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Gooney Bird Greene has just transferred to Mrs. Pidgeon's second grade class in Watertower. She is unusually self-confident, likes to be the center of attention, has an eccentric flair for style, and an exciting, almost magical past. When Mrs. Pidgeon suggests storytelling lessons, instead of well-worn Christopher Columbus, the class demands Gooney Bird as the main character of the story. So begins Gooney Bird's series of autobiographical tales, outlandish in theme but "only absolutely true": "How Gooney Bird Got Her Name","How Gooney Bird Came from China on a Flying Carpet", "The Prince, the Palace, and the Diamond Earrings", "Why Gooney Bird Was Late for School Because She Was Directing a Symphony Orchestra", and "Beloved Catman Is Consumed by a Cow". Along the way, the class learns not just about Gooney Bird, but how to tell a story, and how everyone has a story to tell.
7910922	/m/026jqd2	High Stakes	Meg Cabot	2004-11-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Ninth Key begins with Suze contracting a poison oak rash on her hands after falling into a clump of it at a pool-party of one of her peers, Kelly Prescott. At the party, Suze meets and dances with 'Tad', a student at a local school, Robert Lewis Stevenson. Later that night,when Suze is asleep, a ghost woman starts yelling, hysterically. The woman asks Suze to tell "Red" that he did not kill her. Suze does not know who this woman is, or who "Red" is, but the ghost disappears before she has the chance to ask. Suze asks around to see if anyone knows who Red might be and is informed by her friend, Cee Cee, that a local businessman called Thaddeus Beaumont goes by that name. Suze tries and fails to get in contact with Mr Beaumont. While scheming over how she might get a conversation with him, she encounters the spirit of a young boy named Timothy, who tells her his parents abandoned his cat, Spike. Suze promises to find the animal and get him a good home. With the pretense that she is there as a reporter for the school paper, Suze goes to Mr. Beaumont's mansion and meets him. In his office, she delivers the ghost's message, saying the woman appeared in a dream. Mr Beaumont doesn't have the reaction Suze expected, seeming only interested that he wasn't the cause of the woman's death, and that Suze was able to speak to her. Mr Beaumont is very eager to get Suze to summon the spirits of other people he says he has killed. Feeling disconcerted, Suze tries to leave, only to find that the elevator won't open and the windows are barred with heavy shutters. Just as Suze is beginning to become nervous, Mr Beaumont's brother Marcus arrives and escorts her out, looking anxiously at her throat and asking if Mr Beaumont harmed her. On the way out of the mansion, they encounter Tad, Mr Beaumont's son. Recognizing her from the pool party, Tad offers to give Suze a ride home. As Suze leaves the estate, Tad invites her to go have a coffee. Suze agrees and when he drops her off they start kissing in the car. Jesse purposefully shows up in the backseat to prevent Suze from going even more "forward" with Tad. Suze screams when she sees Jesse and tears into the house, leaving Tad alone in the car to drive away. When Susannah explains what happened to Father Dominic, her principal and fellow mediator, he thinks that the strangeness of Mr Beaumont's behavior could be that he is a vampire. Suze disagrees with this at first, but Father Dominic says that they both know ghosts exist, so perhaps vampires do too. Several days later, Suze retrieves Spike, Timothy's cat, from a field and will, for the time being keep him in her room. Cee Cee, who researched Mr. Beaumont after Suze asked her to, discovers disappearances linking to the production comanpies of Mr Beaumont. The disappearances are of people who opposed or tried to stop Beaumont Industries expanding their land and business. Cee Cee finds a picture of one of them, called Mrs Fiske, and Suze thinks it looks like the woman who appeared in her bedroom. Adam, a mutual friend of CeeCee and Suze, takes them all to Cee Cee's aunt's house. Cee Cee dislikes "Aunt Pru" as she is a fortune-teller. Adam tells Aunt Pru of Suze's "dream" and so Aunt Pru tries to summon one of the victims of Mr Beaumont, Mrs Fiske, using Tarot Cards. Mrs Fiske does show up in spirit form and confirms to Suze that "Mr Beaumont" killed her. However, Suze realizes Mrs Fiske is not the woman who asked her to pass on the message. Mr Beaumont and Tad invite Suze over for dinner at the house. Suze tries to avoid the invitation but can't, because her mother is so happy she has finally found a boyfriend. At the house, Mr Beaumont drugs Tad and tries to talk to her more about her alleged phsycic abilities. Suze, frightened because she believes Mr Beaumont is a vampire, stabs him in the chest with a pencil (similar to a stake in the heart), however fails to kill him. Marcus tells Suze to never return and not speak of Mr Beaumont's so-called vampirisim, that he says is an illness. Suze later receives a phone call at home from Tad and gets in a fight with him. She tells Tad about his dad's illness, but Tad denies this. Suze suggests he ask Marcus where all his money comes from, implying she knows something about the disappearances of the people who opposed Beaumont Industries. The next morning, Suze is sent home from school to change her outfit, a miniskirt, boots, and leather jacket, and is captured by Marcus and two thugs on the way. She fights hard to escape but Marcus forces her into Mr Beaumont's office, telling her to change into a swimsuit and leaves; him planning to kill her by sending her and Tad into the ocean on a boat during a storm and make it appear as though they drowned. Suze smashes the glass wall of the aquarium in the office when Marcus returns to check on her. Suze pulls the bulb out of one of the aquarium lights, and throws the cord with frayed wires into the water Marcus is walking through, electrocuting him. As the building catches fire, because of Suze overloading the circuit panel, Jesse, the ghost who often inhabits Suze's bedroom, appears, claiming Susannah "called" him, and breaks the window shutters to allow Tad and Suze escape the burning building. Marcus is said to be missing after the incident. Suze returns home safely, but is grounded by her parents as she is unable to tell them the full story, and just says that Marcus offered her a lift to his place for her newspaper report, and that the house caught fire. Red turns out to be the nickname of Suze's step brother Doc. The ghost turns out to be Doc's mother. Suze fulfils her duty and tells Doc what his mother wished for him to know, as well as telling him that she is a mediator. The story ends as Brad walks into his step-sister's bedroom discovering Spike, the cat, and tells her she is "busted" because Suze is not allowed to have a cat.
7910982	/m/026jqgv	Il y a un sorcier à Champignac	André Franquin	1951		 In There is a Sorcerer in Champignac, Spirou and Fantasio go on a bicycle camping trip to the country and end up near the village of Champignac-en-Cambrousse. They meet its pompous mayor and rustic inhabitants, and an aloof local landowner, the Count of Champignac. Strange phenomena are affecting farm and wild animals, and the frightened villagers blame a gypsy who is passing through. Spirou and Fantasio, however, discover that the real culprit is the Count, deeply involved in creating strange concoctions from mushrooms, and they rescue the vagabond from a lynch mob. Later, the Count creates a drug that within a limited time will endow superhuman strength, which a gangster steals to create mayhem.
7911113	/m/026jql_	Reunion	Meg Cabot	2001-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story starts with Suze’s best friend from New York, Gina, coming to visit her in Carmel, California. Suze's stepbrothers Brad and Jake (aka Dopey and Sleepy) suddenly start fighting over Gina's attention. (Sleepy ends up winning and Dopey gets egotistic about it). Gina and Suze were hanging at the beach and decide to go get more drinks because it was warm. At the market, something catches Suze's attention, four people in formal wear. Upon further inspection, she notices something else, they are all dead or otherwise known as ghosts. Suze finds that they were called the RLS Angels because they were all brilliant and leaders. Suze learns in one of her classes that it was Michael Meducci who had accidentally rammed the Angels. The Angels are furious at Michael for what he did to them, so they will not stop at anything to kill him. One problem though is that Michael thinks Suze is in love with him so he tries to pursue a relationship with her. The Angels go after Michael but Suze is usually there. Father Dominic and Suze investigate the scene of the accident. Jesse tags along while at home, Gina is covering for Suze. Jesse is able to calm the Angels down so that Father Dominic and Suze can talk to them. Suze discovers the truth that Michael killed the RLS Angels on purpose to get revenge on them because his sister is in a coma after drinking too much and almost drowning at a party at one of the Angels’ house. When Suze's mother finds out she forbids Suze to get anywhere near Michael, but Suze doesn't listen. Suze asked Michael to pick her up and they go out to the spot where the murder happened. Suze tricks Michael and he confesses but realizes Suze is going to expose him for what he did and he tries to kill Suze. Suze summons the RLS Angels saying the okay to kill Michael but see's she made a mistake and tries to call it off but the Angels are furious. The Angels go after Jesse (who was watching the Angels) and Suze. When the ambulance came Suze is pretty beat up and taken to the hospital after finding out Michael confessed to the police and is going behind bars. The day after Michael’s arrest, his sister woke up from her coma. Everyone visited Suze in the hospital except Jesse, which made her sad. Suze caught Jesse trying to dematerialize and felt hurt by that. Jesse came back looking sheepish and Suze explained that she couldn't have anybody hurting her family so she had to do what she did. Jesse calls her querida again and grazes her cheek. Suze stops denying that she loves him and surrenders to her feelings.
7911315	/m/026jqvx	Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern	Anne McCaffrey	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story involves a deadly disease that nearly wipes out the Pernese population. Moreta is a weyrwoman at Fort Weyr who sets out to save the human population, racing against time itself. The follow-up novel, Nerilka's Story, tells the tale of the same event from a different perspective.
7911625	/m/026jr2v	Dragonsdawn	Anne McCaffrey	1988-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The planet Pern seemed a paradise to its new colonists—seeking to return to an agrarian-based simpler way of life, Admiral Paul Benden, Governor Emily Boll and the rest of the colonists had selected Pern as a place to leave their recent wars and troubles behind. Shortly after arriving on the planet, however, a new threat appeared&nbsp;– Thread. With time running out and the colony's destruction imminent, geneticist Kitti Ping Yung and her granddaughter Wind Blossom set out to bio-engineer Pernese lifeforms that appear to instinctively react to the Thread&nbsp;– the dragonets that colonists have adopted as pets. In order to ensure the survival of the newly designed species, as well as reduce the possible threat they may have to the colonists by going rogue, they are created with an ability to bond with humans. By the end of the book, Sorka Hanrahan and Sean Connell and a few other young colonists become the first of the dragonriders.
7911644	/m/026jr3w	The Memory Keeper's Daughter	Kim Edwards	2005	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1964, during an unusual Kentucky blizzard, Dr. David Henry is forced to deliver his and his wife Norah's first child, with the help of a nurse; Caroline Gill. Their first child, a boy they name Paul, is born a visibly perfect child, but it then becomes apparent that Norah is giving birth to twins. When the second baby, a girl, is born, David notices immediately she has Down syndrome. David, recalling the possibility of heart complications, and thinking of his sister, June, who died young due to a heart defect, decides that the baby girl will be placed in an institution to spare Norah the suffering June's death caused his own mother. Caroline, the nurse — who has been in love with David since the moment she met him — is charged with the task of carrying the infant to the institution. After assessing the wretched conditions of the place, however, she decides to keep and raise the baby herself. Remembering Norah's mention of the names she had chosen for her baby, both for a boy and a girl, Caroline names the baby Phoebe. While Caroline is at the store buying baby supplies, her car battery dies and she is stranded in the snow with Phoebe. She is picked up by a truck driver, Albert "Al" Simpson, who lets her shelter with Phoebe in his truck before driving them to Caroline's home in Lexington, and eventually staying there for the night. Meanwhile, David lies to Norah and tells her that their daughter died at birth; leaving his passive wife plagued by post-natal depression as those around her refuse to let her talk about the daughter she lost, treating her as if she should be satisfied with Paul and forget about Phoebe's 'death'. She decides to hold a memorial for Phoebe and places an announcement in the paper without David's knowledge—astonished, Caroline seeks David out after reading it, and after hearing that she had kept the baby rather than take her to the institution, he bids her to do what she thinks is right. Caroline refuses the money he offers her and leaves for Pittsburgh to make fresh start with Phoebe. The 'death' of their daughter has caused a distance between David and Norah, even after they move to a new home, as they now find it difficult to connect with one another. Phoebe had a surviving healthy twin, Paul, but Norah wants another child; David says no, telling Norah that to have another child would be her way of replacing Phoebe. David thinks a lot about his childhood—the struggles with poverty (he had to catch snakes to pay his way through high school), his younger sister June and her death at the age of twelve, and his parents. Norah drinks too much for the first time, and crashes her car on the night of her and David's anniversary. Norah buys David a camera as an anniversary gift, which rapidly becomes an obsession for him. Caroline is in Pittsburgh and is hired by a woman named Dorothy "Doro" March, to work as a private nurse for her father, Leo; an oft disagreeable elderly physicist, whose brilliant mind is slowly failing him. Caroline and Phoebe live with Doro and Leo, with Caroline working for room, board and pay. Caroline claims that Phoebe is her daughter, and cares for her as such; staying up all night with Phoebe in a steamy bathroom to relieve her croup. Doro notices Phoebe's slow development, and Caroline tells her that Phoebe has Down Syndrome; claiming she ran away from Phoebe's father as he wanted to put Phoebe in an institution: a half-truth. Caroline sends letters and pictures of Phoebe to David. David sends money to Caroline through a PO Box address, and then makes a half-hearted attempt to find out where Caroline and Phoebe live. Al, the truck driver who assisted Caroline on the night of Paul and Phoebe's birth, discovers their whereabouts and begins visiting regularly. The distance between the Henrys has grown even further. David is now an aspiring photographer with his own darkroom, where he keeps Phoebe's pictures and Caroline's letters hidden; he retreats further into himself, immersing himself in his work - whilst Norah, still drinking secretly, is overprotective of Paul and has taken to throwing herself into time-consuming projects and activities to distract herself and fill up her days, including applying for a job with a travel agency in an attempt to build a life of her own. Paul, however, is oblivious to this - a happy six-year-old, doing well at school, seems to have an aptitude for music and singing, as well as a severe allergy to bees and a broken arm which he sustains falling out of a tree. In Pittsburgh, contrary to the prediction David made at her growing up a healthy child- she loves butterflies and singing, and attends preschool. Caroline and a group of other women - the Upside Down Society - are petitioning to let their children go to public school. Leo March has died, but Doro - used to Caroline and Phoebe's company - asks her to remain living with them. Al still visits Caroline regularly, and has twice proposed to her - however, she has turned him down both times, doubting not his love for her but his love for Phoebe. Each time he visits, he brings small gifts for her or Phoebe, and her letters - containing money - from David Henry. While playing, Phoebe is stung by a bee, and Phoebe also turns out to be allergic. Al helps get Phoebe to a hospital, and steps in when a nurse's comment about Phoebe's condition makes Caroline see red. At this, Caroline realizes that he really does love Phoebe. Following this incident, Caroline says yes to marrying Al without him having to ask. Paul and Phoebe are now aged thirteen, and Caroline and Al have been married for five years. Phoebe has been confirmed and Doro has retired to leave on a year-long cruise with her lover, Trace. Over the years, Caroline has saved the money David Henry has sent her and kept it a in trust for Phoebe. David sends Caroline a letter, asking her to let him meet Phoebe and to let Phoebe know her twin brother, Paul. Phoebe disappears briefly, panicking Caroline, who finds her rescuing a kitten from a water drainage pipe. Caroline decides not to contact David again, worried that David might unknowingly hurt Phoebe (as he hurt her, by either not noticing or ignoring her love for him) and feeling that he wants too much from her, too late. Paul is becoming an accomplished musician, playing the guitar and the piano and dreaming of attending Juilliard, while also behaving like a daredevil teenager - experimenting with cannabis and walking on rail tracks. David and Norah, now living almost separate lives, have differing views on what Paul should do when he's older - Norah simply wants her son to be happy, while David pushes for his son to take an interest in basketball and to follow a career path that will guarantee him stability, money, and success. Norah Henry is excelling in her work at the travel agency, though she is still frustrated by the distance between her and David, and his apparent lack of love and interest in her. While on vacation, in Aruba, she has an affair with Howard, a divorcee. Both David and Paul realize what she has done, but neither of them talk about it. David blames the affair on himself and continues to spend more and more time in his darkroom with his photographs. Phoebe and Paul are now both 18. David has an arts show in Pittsburgh. Caroline turns up and shows him pictures of Phoebe. He has to stop the conversation briefly to answer an art critic. When he returns he inquires about his daughter and is chastised by Caroline who then leaves. . David is devastated and goes to his parents' abandoned house, where he falls asleep and wakes up to a girl named Rosemary in the house. She is 16 years old and pregnant. He tells Rosemary his secret. He asks her to come and live with him. Paul and Norah can't believe the way he's behaving, and believe that there is a sexual relationship between David and the girl. Paul and Rosemary bond, and Paul understands the truth but is still furious with his father. Paul overhears a conversation between his mother and another man and realises that his mother is having another affair. Paul steals a neighbors car and runs away for a couple of days. he is then arrested for shoplifting as his parents have to come get him. Paul has been accepted at Juilliard. Rosemary and her son Jack move back to live with her family. Norah and David are now divorced and Norah is dating. Paul is traveling and studying music in France. Phoebe is in love with Robert, also an individual with Down syndrome, and wants to get married and live in a group home with more independence. Caroline worries about the future and is scared about letting Phoebe live her own life. David dies of a heart attack after fixing a leak in the old family's home. When Norah sorts through David's photographs she understands David in a way she never did when he was alive. Caroline comes to visit Norah and explains that Phoebe never died, but is living with her in Pittsburgh. She becomes angry and throws all of her ex husband's photographs out darkroom window and burns pictures of girls that David photographed, upset that he has betrayed her. She and Paul decide to go to Pittsburgh. Norah explains to Phoebe that she is her mother and then introduces Phoebe to her brother Paul. Norah invited Pheobe to come live with her in Kentucky, but Pheobe says no. She then takes Paul on a tour of her house. Paul and Phoebe are both in Norah's wedding. Then they visit David's grave and begin to drive back home to Pittsburgh
7913447	/m/026jtc2	The Curse of Yig	H. P. Lovecraft			 Based in Oklahoma around 1880, a newly arrived couple learn about the local legends surrounding a "Snake God", Yig, who takes vengeance on anyone who kills a serpent by killing them or turning them into a half-snake monster. The husband has a snake phobia which isn't helped by the wife disturbing a nest of rattlesnakes. The husband and wife go through rituals to keep Yig away, but in the end it fails and in fear the woman kills her own husband in the dark, thinking he is Yig. She is taken to an asylum, and dies there... But not before giving birth to a half-snake creature.
7916503	/m/026jyxw	Brother in the Land	Robert Swindells	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel which introduces Danny, who lives with his parents and younger brother. Danny, wanting some time away from his parents' shop, takes his bike out onto the moors; while there, he notices that a storm is brewing, and is just heading for home when he spots a concrete pillbox left over from World War II. He takes shelter inside and, moments later, sees a bright flash, which he initially thinks is a lightning strike. But, when he peers out, he sees a mushroom cloud, and realises what has happened. For the following night he hides in the pillbox, expecting to die at any time, but, in the end, he crawls out and decides to search for his family. On the hillside, Danny encounters a man in a radiation suit, who confiscates his bike, and orders him to "get back to town". Arriving in Skipley, Danny finds the town in ruins, and learns that his family's shop has collapsed, killing his mother. His father and Ben have survived, as they were in the cellar, which the Lodges use as a stockroom. With so much food in their stockroom, the Lodges have plenty to live on, but the other survivors are not so lucky, and, as the weeks pass, people begin fighting over food. Shortly after the war, Danny meets a girl named Kim Tyson, who sums the situation up in the following words: "Cavemen versus gentlemen is no contest." Shortly after Danny meets Kim, the local Commissioner issues an order that "all burned, sick and badly injured persons" should be taken out of the ruins and placed at the roadside so they can be taken to hospital; in fact, the "hospital" is a front for his plan to kill off the worst of the bomb-casualties. Later, the Commissioner implements a system of food and fuel rationing, with severe penalties introduced for hoarding. The injured, elderly, and people driven insane by the nuclear attack (known as "Spacers") are given poisoned rations. But Mr. Lodge refuses to hand over his stock and, though Danny and Ben do register for ration-cards, they only visit the local feeding centre once. Presently, the Commissioner's men come to the Lodges' shop and arrest Mr Lodge. Moments later, the truck bearing Mr. Lodge is blown up, killing everyone on board, and leaving Danny and Ben orphans. The brothers seek sanctuary at the home of Sam Branwell, a smallholder who, along with several other survivors, has formed a resistance movement called Masada (an acronym for "Movement to Arm Skipley Against Dictational Authority); their aims are to overthrow the Commissioner and prevent him from creating a feudal society. Other members of Masada include Danny's former P.E. teacher, Keith Rhodes (the one responsible for blowing up the truck) and Kim, who helps out during the day. It is discovered that a virtual concentration camp has been erected outside of Skipley, on the grounds of the Kershaw Farm, with the remaining able-bodied population of the town being used as slave labor under the Commissioner's rule. From a series of defectors, Danny learns that conditions at the camp are reminiscent of those at Belsen. As a result, the members of Masada are forced to step up their campaign of resistance, and, one night, launch a raid on the camp. After a battle, the Commissioner is overthrown, and Branwell is established as the new leader. However, in the months that follow the raid, all of the newly-planted crops fail, due to the effects of radiation poisoning. Meanwhile, Kim's sister (Maureen) is pregnant, and Kim is worried that the baby may be deformed; in the end, it is born without a mouth, and dies not long afterwards. Foreign troops arrive via helicopter, revealing there were communities all over Europe like Branwell's, which he terms a "commune" or "communist" society. Believing the Swiss troops would rescue them, the camp foolishly eat many of their rations. In fact, the Swiss confiscate their weapons, and disable the few vehicles they have. By now, the camp's food supplies are exhausted, forcing the people to scavenge for whatever they can find, and many are dying. Gradually, people start to leave in small groups to fend for themselves. Shortly after Branwell dies from exhaustion during the second winter after the war, Danny, Kim, and Ben leave the camp and head to Holy Island, where Danny hopes they will be safe. During the journey to Holy Island, the three encounter a group on motorbikes (Rhodes being one of them) in the village of Osmotherley. Rhodes is about to shoot Danny for the food that he'd found down the side of a sink in a café, but Kim intervenes with a gun, and Rhodes and his buddy are killed. Ben becomes ill with radiation sickness &mdash; otherwise known as a "creeping dose" &mdash; and dies. Danny and Kim bury him in the garden of an empty house. In the house, Danny finds a ledger, and starts writing an account of his experiences after the war. He ends by saying that he plans to leave his account behind for future generations to read; he hopes it will warn them not to go down the path which led to the war. Finally, Danny dedicates his story to Ben, his "brother in the land." In 1994, the book was reprinted with a "new final chapter." In this revised ending, Ben still dies, but, rather than leave his account behind, Danny takes the ledger with him to Holy Island, and Kim is expecting a baby, the third of Holy Island, with Danny being the father. If the baby survives, it will be named "Ben."
7917328	/m/026j_fp	The Farming of Bones	Edwidge Danticat	1998-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in the Dominican Republic in the 1930s, The Farming of Bones tells the story of a young Haitian girl named Amabelle Desir. Orphaned by the age of 8, Amabelle works for Don Ignacio and his daughter. Although Don Ignacio and his daughter are important figures in Amabelle’s life, it is evident that Amabelle’s life revolves around her lover, Sebastien Onius. After the accidental death of one of Sebastien’s fellow cane workers, the Haitian’s distrust of the Dominican government grows, but this distrust is warranted. With news of the Generalissimo’s intentions to “cleanse the country,” Haitian workers attempt to return to their home country. When complications separate Amabelle and Sebastien during their attempt to flee, Amabelle is desperate to find what has become of Sebastien. Accompanied by Sebastien’s friend, Yves, Amabelle makes her journey with the help of fellow survivors she encounters along the way. While escaping, the group must divide for their own safety. Upon reaching the town of Dajabon, Amabelle is disappointed to find that Sebastien is not there. While in Dajabon, Dominicans beat and torture Amabelle, Yves, and a fellow Haitian, Tibon, after recognizing their inability to pronounce “perejil” correctly, one of the most prevalent ways that the Dominicans determine the segregation of Haitians. On the verge of death, two remaining members of their group rescue Amabelle and Yves and bring them to the river that they must cross. Unfortunately only Amabelle and Yves survive the dangerous crossing, where they are met at the other side by nuns who nurse them back to health. During the recovery process, Amabelle learns of the other survivors’ story of “kout kouto,” what the Haitians call the massacre. Once Amabelle and Yves have healed, Yves offers to take Amabelle to his home. Upon arrival of the city, Amabelle and Yves settle in his home and try to rebuild their lives. While Yves finds solace in working in his father’s fields and becomes a successful landowner, Amabelle continues her search for Sebastien. After finding Sebastien’s mother and learning of the truth about Sebastien’s fate, Amabelle returns to her life with Yves. Although Yves and Amabelle try to find comfort in one another, they are unable to fulfill each other’s needs. Twenty years after her escape from Alegria, Amabelle decides to search for a connection to Sebastien by reliving old memories in places of the past. Despite reuniting with Senora Valencia, Amabelle is dissatisfied with the results of her search. Unable to find further reason to live, Amabelle succumbs to the Massacre River, looking for a new beginning.
7918996	/m/026k1p6	Les voleurs du Marsupilami	André Franquin	1954		 In The Marsupilami's Thieves, Spirou and Fantasio regret giving the magnificent animal they brought back from the Palombian jungle, the Marsupilami, to a zoo, and decide to free the animal again and return it to its original home. This plan fails because someone else beats them to the abduction, and another quest to find the Marsupilami begins. This journey brings them to the city of Magnana, and the fiendish Circus Zabaglione.
7919109	/m/026k1s_	Le dictateur et le champignon	André Franquin	1956		 When the Marsupilami causes chaos all over town, Spirou and Fantasio decide that it is time to take him back to his home in the Palombian jungles. After an eventful journey by cruise ship, they find that Fantasio's shady cousin Zantafio has reinvented himself as General Zantas and become the country's ruthless dictator. The now power-mad Zantafio, intent on invading a neighbouring country, offers them top positions in his army, and when they indignantly refuse throws them in jail. The pair decide to feign a change of heart, and plan to foil the invasion using one of The Count of Champignac's curious inventions...
7919114	/m/026k1tb	Le repaire de la murène	André Franquin	1957		 In The Moray's Keep, shipping magnate Xénophon Hamadryas offers a $ 6000 prize to the makers of a submarine innovation in order to find his sunken ship Le Discret off the French Mediterranean coast. The Count of Champignac's mini-sub invention is so spectacular that the competition must resort to sabotage. A chain of secrets need to be exposed while the maritime criminal John "the Moray" Helena lurks in the deep.
7919582	/m/026k2cx	Wormwood	Graham Taylor	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story takes place in London, where Dr. Sabian Blake is sitting in his attic at the top of his house in Bloomsbury Square, looking out to space through his telescope, in search of a special star. He is told about this star by The Nemorensis, an ancient book that holds many old and powerful secrets. It has predicted that the comet Wormwood, which was foretold in the book of Revelation, is hurtling towards the earth, and would spell certain doom for London and all other lands around her. As Blake is observing this, a series of cataclysmic and destructive events, referred to as a 'sky-quake', hits the city, the aftermath of which involves horses and dogs going completely mad and attacking everyone in sight. The reason for these happenings was that the power of the Keruvim was being used in the north by the evil Pyratheon, in his vain attempt to overthrow Riathamus. We are then introduced to Agetta Lamian, Blake's servant-girl, whose father Cadmus Lamian owns a lodging house on Fleet Street. Eventually it transpires that Pyratheon's evil sister, Yerzinia, is using the Nemorensis to call down the comet and reshape the devastated London in her own, dark image.
7921592	/m/026k5nd	Lips Together, Teeth Apart	Terrence McNally			 A gay community in Fire Island provides an unlikely setting for two straight couples spending the Fourth of July weekend in a house inherited by Sally from her brother who died of AIDS. Through monologues unheard by the others, the characters reveal a desperate sense of individual isolation. The only people these four characters find more alien are the unseen gay men partying in the houses on either side of them. As they divert themselves from their own mortality with food, cocktails, the New York Times crossword puzzle, fireworks, charades, and biting jabs at each other and the boys next door, the two couples find little to celebrate about themselves or their country on its birthday.
7921816	/m/026k60s	The Final Key	Catherine Asaro	2006-11-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eldrinson Valdoria took over a year to heal from serious injuries inflicted on him by the Aristo Vitarex. He is happy to reconcile with his daughter Sauscony (Soz) whom he disowned for leaving home to become a Jagernaut. But he can't do the same with his son Althor, who is lying near death in a military hospital after sacrificing himself to save billions of Skolian citizens during a battle with the Eubian Traders. As part of her military training, Soz is assigned to the battlecruiser Roca's Pride, named in honor of her mother Roca Skolia. The training, however, turns out to be hard reality after her half-brother Imperator Kurj is nearly assassinated and falls into a coma. Traders simultaneously launch an attack against the planet Parthonia, seat of the Skolian government. This brings the psiberweb, the most important part of Skolian defence, to a collapse. Using an ancient device called Dyad Chair, Soz struggles to keep at least parts of the psiberweb intact. To repair psiberweb and save Skolia from Eubian invasion, Soz’s father Eldrinson has to join the Dyad, expanding it to a Triad with the risk that this could kill either him or one of the other Triad members. The book also shows the fates of other Ruby Dynasty family members: Soz's brother Shannon dealing with the mystic Blue Dale archers, their mother Roca captured by Traders and Ruby Pharaoh's husband Eldrin who leaves Parthonia on a ship with Skolian refugees while making a withdrawal from the addictive medicament phorine.
7922306	/m/026k6wl	La corne de rhinocéros	André Franquin	1955		 In The Rhino's Horn, Spirou and Fantasio rescue their friend the racecar driver Roulebille (from Spirou et les héritiers) who has been wounded by murderous thugs. Roulebille's employers, Turbot, have designed a car so spectacular that competitors will stop at nothing to steal its revolutionary plans. In order to find Roulebille's partner Martin and retrieve the car's blueprints, the two reluctantly team up with another journalist, an initially irritating but ultimately priceless young woman called Seccotine. The search for Martin takes them to several regions of Africa - complete with rather dated portrayals of the natives. After retrieving the missing blueprints from the titular body part, Spirou and Fantasio are given the very first prototype of the car, baptised Turbot-Rhino to celebrate their adventure.
7923835	/m/026k8mm	A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears	Jules Feiffer	1995	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears is a fantasy story about a young prince named Roger who has never seen a sad thing in the course of his life. As a result, he is always happy. He also emits a happy radiance that causes people near him to laugh. Determined to have his son sober up to prepare to rule the kingdom, Roger's father, King Whatchimacallit, orders his wizard to train Roger. The wizard sends Roger off on a very mysterious quest (Roger doesn't even know what to look for), leaving him with a bottomless bag of magic powder, used to turn Roger into a random object to keep him from making people helpless with laughter. Roger sets off into the Forever Forest which, true to its name, is unending. The forest is filled with people who are lost from years of wandering and Roger forgets his quest to amuse them. In this way, he befriends a peasant named Tom, who does not get along well with the book's narrator. The wizard, in an effort to encourage Roger to leave the forest, causes the supply of magic powder to decrease. Roger, in an effort to restart his quest, tries to think of a way to escape the forest and attempts to walk out backwards which, strangely enough, works. Out of the forest, he becomes trapped in the Dastardly Divide, a barren, rock-filled land. He meets a woman called Lady Sadie who is a servant to the Princess Petulia, a woman so beautiful that all who look at her turn to stone, who has been kidnapped by a lonely giant named Philip. After weeks of starvation, Roger finally uses the last two pinches of powder on himself and Lady Sadie, turning her into a leaf and himself into an egg. He leaps off a cliff and breaks open, turning into an Eagle. Roger believes that Princess Petulia is his quest so he sets off to find her, surviving the terrible Sea of Screams along the way. When he passes through the Valley of Vengeance where, as the name suggests, every one of the inhabitants are constantly seeking revenge against each other, Roger exercises his ability to amuse people to turn the valley into the Valley of Vengeance. After a while, he sees a man attacking another. He is shocked to find that the attacker is Tom, who is angry at Roger for abandoning the people of the Forever Forest. Roger takes Tom (who refuses to accept any apologies) to the Dastardly Divide for a short time and leaves to find Princess Petulia. As he passes through a mountain range, the mountain throws rocks with messages on them at him. The messages contain various insults, such as insisting that Lady Sadie is dead, Princess Petulia was rescued by someone else, and that Tom would kill him. Roger becomes extremely depressed, however, he uses his power of flight as an eagle to rescue the people trapped in the Forever Forest. He then sets off to rescue the Princess. As he fly along, he turns back into a man over a body of water. He nearly drowns, but is rescued by none other than the Princess who explains how the giant fell sick and that in her grief for Philip's health, she cried so much that she created a vale of tears. She tells Roger that she was reunited with Lady Sadie, but a strange man seeking revenge showed up to kidnap her. Sadie, in disguise as the Princess, was kidnapped instead. Roger sets off to rescue Sadie and finds her in the clutches of Tom. A boring fight ensues and Sadie finally ends the fight by pretending to remove her mask. Tom is so certain that he'll turn to stone, that he freezes for months, while Roger and Sadie escape. When Tom realizes that he's not a statue, he believes that he escaped turning into a statue by his own power and, having finally scored a goal over Roger, leaves for good. Roger, having fallen in love with Sadie, marries her, realizing that he no longer makes people laugh all of the time. Petulia, who no longer turns everyone to stone, falls in love with Philip and marries him. The wizard shows up at the wedding and tells Roger that the quest was intended to be something entirely different, however Roger ends up with a happy ending anyway.
7924540	/m/026k99b	My Side of the Mountain	Jean Craighead George	1959	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book is about Sam Gribley, a 12-year-old boy who intensely dislikes living in his parents' cramped New York City apartment with his eight brothers and sisters. He decides to run away to his great-grandfather's abandoned farm in the Catskill Mountains to live in the wilderness. The novel begins in the middle of Sam's story, with Sam huddled in his treehouse home in the forest during a severe blizzard. The reader meets Frightful, Sam's pet peregrine falcon, and The Baron, a weasel that Sam befriends. Roughly the first 80 percent of the novel is Sam's reminiscences about how he came to be in a home made out of a hollowed-out tree in a terrible snowstorm, while the remainder of the novel is a traditional linear narrative about what happens after the snowstorm. The second chapter opens with Sam remembering how he came to dislike living in New York City; how he learned of his grandfather's abandoned farm near Delhi, New York; how he learned wilderness survival skills by reading a book at the New York City Public Library; and about his trip to the small town of Delhi using $40 he earned by selling magazine subscriptions. Realizing his son will run away from home no matter what he does, Sam's father permits him to go to Delhi so long as Sam lets people in the town know that he is staying at the farm. Sam enters the forest near the town, builds a tent out of hemlock evergreen tree branches, and catches five trout in a nearby stream. But his survival skills are incomplete, and he is unable to build a fire. The next day, Sam searches for his grandfather's farm and fails to find it. However, he does meet Bill, a man living in a cabin in the woods. Bill teaches him how to make a fire. Sam is forced to go into town to learn where his grandfather's land is. He tells a person at the post office who he is and where he is going, then journeys to the farm. Sam discovers the stone foundation for the long-destroyed farmhouse, but little else remains of the homestead. Over the next several chapters, Sam continues to reminisce about how he came to be self-sufficient by living off the plants and animals he finds on his grandfather's abandoned farm. He finds a hollow tree and decides to make it his home. Remembering how Native Americans used fire to create dugout canoes, he uses fire to make the interior of the hollow tree bigger. One day, while Sam is chopping an ash tree to make a bed, an old woman named Mrs. Thomas Fiedler forces him to help her pick strawberries. Seeing a peregrine falcon hunting for its prey, Sam decides he wants a falcon as a hunting bird. Sam returns to town to get a haircut, and reads up on falconry at the local public library. He camps near a cliff for several days to learn the location of a peregrine falcon nest, and steals a chick from the nest while the mother bird attacks him. He names the bird Frightful, because of the difficult time he had getting the nestling. A short time later, Sam is forced to hide in the woods for two days. A forest ranger, spotting the smoke from Sam's cooking fire, came to investigate what he believed was a forest fire. The ranger lingers near Sam's home overnight, but leaves after believing that whoever started the fire must have left the place. Sam also relates to the reader his memories about his adventures in the fall. He makes a box trap to catch animals to eat, but ends up catching a weasel instead. Sam calls the weasel The Baron for the regal way the animal moves about the hollowed-out treehouse. Realizing winter is coming, Sam wants to kill a deer so he can make a door for his home. He learns how to smoke meat to preserve it for winter, and how to tan hides. When a poacher illegally kills a deer, Sam hides the carcass from the hunter so Sam can use it. Sam remembers how he tanned the hide using a hollow tree stump and various plants. He also avoids townspeople who wander near his home by hiding in the woods. Sam trains Frightful to hunt, and the bird proves very good at it. Sam prepares for winter by hunting frogs, pheasants, rabbits, and sparrows; preserving wild grains and tubers; smoking fish and meat; and preparing storage spaces by hollowing out the trunks of trees. Finding another poached deer, Sam makes himself deerskin clothing to replace his worn-out city clothes. Sam notices a raccoon digging for mussels in the creek, and he learns how to hunt for shellfish. Sam names the raccoon Jesse Coon James, because it looks like a bandit and reminds him of the legendary outlaw Jesse James. Shortly after befriending the raccoon, Sam hears sirens nearby. When he returns to his treehouse home, he finds a man there. At first, Sam believes the man is a criminal, and nicknames him "Bando" (a shortened version of "bandit"). But the man is a professor of English literature, and is merely lost. He is surprised to find Sam, and gives Sam the nickname "Thoreau". Bando spends 10 days with Sam, building a raft to take them downstream to catch fish. He gives Sam 10 pounds of sugar and teaches him to make jam. He also shows Sam how to make a whistle out of a willow branch. Bando also tries to make clay pots. Bando departs, and they agree that Sam will come to town at Christmas to visit with Bando. Sam remembers how, as winter came closer, he realized he needed to make a clay fireplace to keep his home warm. Sam steals two more dead deer from local hunters to make winter clothes, begins rapidly storing as many fruits and nuts as he can (trying desperately to get to them before the squirrels do), and builds his fireplace. Sam almost dies, however, after he insulates his treehouse home too well. His fire generates too much carbon dioxide and not enough oxygen can get inside the treehouse. Frightful becomes sick with carbon dioxide poisoning and warns Sam, who barely gets out alive. Sam puts air holes in the walls of his treehouse to admit more oxygen. Sam feels lonely during Halloween, and makes a party for his animal friends—which goes badly when the animals start stealing his provisions. He tries to go into town to visit the library again, but is forced to climb a tree and stay there all day to avoid being discovered by hunters. He obtains two more deer; their carcases freeze in the winter cold, so he does not need to smoke them. Sam remembers how he went into town just before Christmas to meet Bando again. Sam gets a haircut, meets another teenage boy (Tom Sidler) who ridicules Sam's appearance, observes the townspeople shopping for Christmas, and reunites with his friend Bando. Bando shows Sam many newspaper articles about the "wild boy" living in the forest. Sam returns to his treehouse home. On Christmas Day, Sam gets a surprise: Sam's father has come to visit. Sam is overjoyed to see his father again, and the two have a Christmas dinner of venison together. Sam's father is greatly relieved to find that Sam is doing just fine. The novel ceases to be a flashback in Chapter 18, and becomes a straightforward narrative. Sam learns many things about how animals behave in winter, even during terrible storms. After the blizzard ends, Sam must still forage for food. He is happy that a Great Horned Owl has taken up residence on the farm, for it means that no people or building developments are nearby. Sam learns how Frightful and The Baron manage to survive during winter, helps the local deer find nourishment by cutting down tree branches for them to eat, and overcomes his own vitamin deficiency by eating the right foods. After spring arrives, Matt Spell, a teenager who wants to become a reporter for the local newspaper, arrives at Sam's treehouse home. Matt wants to write about Sam's presence on the Gribley farm. At first, Sam lies to Matt and says the "wild boy" is someone who lives in a nearby cave. But Matt doesn't believe him. Sam then offers Matt a deal: Matt can come live with him for a week during school spring break, if Matt will not reveal his location. Matt agrees. After Matt leaves, Sam realizes he is very lonely and debates with himself whether he wants to be "caught" or not. A few weeks later, Sam encounters Aaron, a Jewish song writer who is visiting the forest for inspiration and singing a song. He tells Sam it is close to Passover, which makes Sam realize Matt will be visiting soon. Bando visits Sam at the farm, and they build a guest house for Matt together. Matt spends a week with Sam, mostly gathering food during this time. Matt is thrilled to be there, but Sam is sad because he realizes he is beginning to replicate his old life in New York City. Matt makes Sam even more unhappy by confessing that he told newspaper photographers where to find Sam. A short time later, Tom Sidler discovers Sam living at the farm. Sam calls him "Mr. Jacket," and the two boys play for a while. Tom's visit makes Sam realize he is desperate for human companionship. Bando returns to check on Sam, and Sam asks Bando to bring him some jeans and a shirt next time. Sam reveals that he intends to go back to New York City to visit his family. In June, Sam is surprised one day to find that his father, mother, and all his siblings have arrived at the farm. His father announces that the entire family is moving to the farm. At first, Sam (now 13 years old) is overjoyed that his family has come to see him. But he is also upset, because it means the end of his life living off the land alone. Sam argues with his father about the family's decision. But his father says the family is as loyal to Sam as Sam has been to them, and that he will build a proper house for the family on the farm. Sam is especially upset about the decision to build a traditional home. The novel ends as Sam meditates on the fact that, even if he went across the Pacific Ocean to get away from people, he still craves friendship and family. His journey in life, he decides, is about balancing his desire to live off the land with his desire to be with the people he loves.
7928449	/m/026kdbc	Beyond The Chocolate War	Robert Cormier	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story continues a few months after The Chocolate War ends. As the school year draws to an end, many students look forward to leaving for the summer but Carter and Obie, leading members of the ruthless secret society, The Vigils, can't contemplate the future until they have destroyed the leader, Archie Costello. Obie has seen his relationship with the beautiful Laurie Gundarson ruined by one of Archie's Vigil exploits and is out for revenge. But his plan involving a trick backfires and Archie hands over the leadership of the Vigils with his ruthlessly cool reputation still intact. During all of this, it's also revealed what happened to Jerry Renault after the conclusion of the last book, that he had stayed in Canada, and even after a second scuffle with Emile Janza decides to return to Trinity High School. The story ends with Archie giving the role of the "Assigner" to his underling, Bunting, but only on one condition: Emile Janza becomes the Vigil's second-in-command. At the end of the year, Janza suggests to Bunting many changes to the way Archie ran the Vigils, including the use of physical force rather than psychological force, taxing students, and the selling of marijuana and pills. Bunting agrees, not knowing that it was Archie recommending all of the various illegal activities. Archie thus engineers the "ruin" of Trinity in coming years. A side story is David Caroni's pursuit of Brother Leon and in the end committing suicide after a failed murder attempt. The sequel was as well received as its predecessor, but notably darker undercurrents stream beneath its main plot. Principal among those is the spectre of sexual frustration in single sex schools, a sparsely explored theme of both "Chocolate War" books. Critics have argued that Cormier was alluding to Trinity being destroyed by the perversion of simple teenage urges, as the protagonists are frustrated by the compulsory all male environment. Cormier has never made any comment in relation to this claim.
7930528	/m/026kg5v	La Joie de vivre	Émile Zola	1884	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens in 1863 and covers about 10 years. Ten-year-old Pauline's parents have died, and she comes to live with the Chanteaus, relatives on her father's side, in the seaside village of Bonneville, some 10 kilometers from Arromanches-les-Bains in Normandy. Zola contrasts Pauline's optimism and open-heartedness with the illness, resentment, and depression prevalent in the Chanteau household. In particular, the 19-year-old son Lazare, a student of the writings of Schopenhauer, is convinced of life's futility and infused with pessimism and nihilism, which he attempts to express in an unfinished Symphony of Sorrow. Over the course of several years, a series of financial setbacks causes Mme. Chanteau to "borrow" from Pauline's inheritance. Lazare's investment in a factory to extract minerals from seaweed and his project to build a series of jetties and breakwaters to protect Bonneville from the pounding waves — and the subsequent failure of both these enterprises — reduce Pauline's fortune even further. Through it all, Pauline retains her optimistic outlook and love for Lazare and his parents. Eventually, that love extends to the entire town as Pauline provides money, food, and support to Bonneville's poor, despite their evident greed and degeneracy. Gradually, Mme. Chanteau grows to resent Pauline, blaming her for the family's bad luck and accusing her of being miserly, ungrateful, and selfish. Even on her deathbed, Mme. Chanteau is unable to get past her resentment, and accuses Pauline of poisoning her when she attempts to nurse her. Though Lazare and Pauline are tacitly engaged, Pauline releases him so that he may marry Louise Thibaudier, a rich banker's daughter who spends her vacations with the Chanteaus. Their marriage is an unhappy one, as his obsessive-compulsive behaviors escalate and he infects her with his fear of death. His inability to maintain gainful employment and his palpable apathy add to their unhappiness. Louise gives birth to a stillborn baby boy, but Pauline saves his life by breathing air into his lungs. The novel ends 18 months later. The baby, Paul, is healthy and growing, though Louise and Lazare maintain a tense relationship. Bonneville is all but destroyed by the waves. The suicide of the family servant brings the novel to a close, with M. Chanteau, wracked with gout and in constant agony, railing against suicide and praising the joys inherent in the ongoing fight for life in the face of sorrow and unhappiness.
7930910	/m/026kgk5	City of the Chasch	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A human starship intercepts a mysterious signal and tracks it back to Carina 4268, a star system 212 light years from Earth. Two elite scouts, Adam Reith and Paul Waunder, are dispatched in a small scout-boat to investigate the planet whence it came. Seconds later, a missile destroys their mothership. The two survivors nurse the severely damaged scout-boat to the planet before ejecting into a forest. The crash site is first discovered by a band of technologically primitive humans. Reith is amazed to find men on a heretofore unknown, distant planet. One of them casually kills Waunder; Reith remains undetected. A second party approaches in a large sky-raft, sending the humans scurrying into hiding. It is manned (as Reith later learns) by massive, alien Blue Chasch and their human Chaschmen servants. Their investigation of the wreckage is interrupted by a third group, belonging to the Dirdir. The Chasch ambush the tall, pale Dirdir and their human Dirdirmen, driving them off. The Chasch then haul the scout-boat away. Injured and helpless, Reith allows himself to be taken captive by Traz Onmale, the grave, mature boy-chieftain of the tribe. While his wounds heal, Reith incurs the wrath of the "magicians" who are actually in charge. Before he can be castrated to make him more docile, he escapes, taking Traz with him. The teen is not unwilling to go, since he would be expected to sacrifice himself to the gods if the tribe did not prosper. On their trek, Reith rescues an outcast Dirdirman, Ankhe at afram Anacho, from a Phung, an extremely dangerous native. With no plans of his own, he joins them. From Anacho's explanation of Dirdirman theology, Reith deduces that the Dirdir were responsible for bringing humans to Tschai tens of thousands of years ago. His mission is now clear - he must alert Earth to the possible threat of the Dirdir. The mismatched trio join a trade caravan. Among the other passengers is a group of priestesses, taking a beautiful female captive, Ylin-Ylan, home to participate in an important rite. On the lawless steppes, the woman is stolen by the caravan's scouts. Reith rescues her and learns that the mysterious signal originated from her people. The caravan is attacked by Green Chasch just outside the run-down city of Pera, but Reith's group manages to reach safety. The town is ruled by Naga Goho and his brigands. Ylin-Ylan attracts his attention; she and Traz are taken prisoner, forcing Reith to organize a revolt to overthrow the tyrant. Reith's locator indicates his scout-boat is in the nearby Blue Chasch city of Dadiche. He sneaks in and finds his ship, apparently intact, but is spotted before he can make a closer inspection. He barely escapes with his life. When he returns to Pera, he finds to his chagrin that he has been elected the new chief of the city. A group of Blue Chasch arrives in Pera, demanding Reith's surrender. When he refuses, a battle erupts, which the humans win. The Blue Chasch then send their entire armed might, but Reith arranges for the Green Chasch, the mortal enemies of the Blue Chasch, to ambush and wipe them out. With Dadiche now defenseless, Reith and the men of Pera take charge. He frees the Chaschmen and gives them the city, after revealing that they had been duped. The Chaschmen had been told they were transformed at death into Chasch. Baby Chasch were implanted in their corpses in secret, to emerge before Chaschmen witnesses. When Reith checks his scout-boat, he discovers to his dismay that it has been gutted. Ylin-Ylan convinces him to take her back to technologically advanced Cath, where he might be able to build a ship with the backing of her wealthy father.
7930981	/m/026kgmy	Servants of the Wankh	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After his starship and crewmates are blown up, Adam Reith is marooned on a planet inhabited by four advanced, mutually hostile, alien species, the Chasch, Wankh, Dirdir and native Pnume, as well as various groups of humans. In his quest to return home, he acquires three human companions (as detailed in City of the Chasch): Traz Onmale, a taciturn teenage barbarian chieftain, Ankhe at afram Anacho, a flamboyant, fugitive Dirdirman, and Ylin-Ylan, a beautiful young Yao woman whom he rescued from a man-hating religious sect. Ylin-Ylan persuades Reith, her lover, into taking her back to Cath. With her wealthy father's backing, Reith hopes to be able to build a spaceship. As the voyage progresses however, their relationship cools. Anacho explains that Yao society is extremely status conscious, and the closer they get to her homeland, the more Ylin-Ylan dreads being associated with (to her) gauche, uncouth companions. Her attempts to separate herself from them all fail disastrously. Finally, unable to bear the shame any longer, she takes refuge in awaile, a murderous rampage not uncommon among her people, which ends with her throwing herself into the sea. Reith and his friends continue on to Cath, to notify Ylin-Ylan's father of her demise. They are coolly received, but are eventually given 50,000 sequins (the universal currency of Tschai) as a reward. Unimpressed with Yao engineering, Reith recruits a crew from those who had worked for the Wankh, to try to steal a Wankh spaceship. The attempt almost succeeds, but the ship is damaged and sets down on a lake due to their unfamiliarity with the controls. They are captured by human Wankhmen, who handle all communication with their Wankh masters. About to be executed out of hand, the would-be thieves are reprieved when a high Wankh leader, who had been aboard the stolen ship, decides to investigate further. Reith is able to tell it what he has surmised. The Wankhmen have been deliberately misleading the Wankh; the Dirdir have not been a threat to them for centuries, but have been made to appear so, in order to safeguard the Wankhmen's comfortable status quo. Furthermore, they destroyed Reith's ship for the same reason. As a result of these revelations, the Wankhmen are expelled from the Wankh cities. Reith and his party creep away unnoticed.
7931065	/m/026kgr0	The Dirdir	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Adam Reith is stranded on Tschai, a distant planet shared by four alien, mutually hostile, advanced species (the Chasch, Wankh, Dirdir and native Pnume). On his quest to get home, he acquires two human companions, Traz Onmale, a teenage barbarian chieftain, and Ankhe at afram Anacho, an outcast Dirdirman. Reith has failed twice to acquire a spaceship (as recounted in City of the Chasch and Servants of the Wankh). His exploits bring him to the unwanted attention of the Dirdir. As Anacho explains, his former masters are rarely subtle: they want to question and then kill him. Reith manages to wipe out the first "Initiative" sent after him, but sooner or later, there will be a second. He decides to build a ship from scratch, a task requiring vast amounts of sequins, the universal currency of Tschai. The only way to raise that much quickly is to brave the Carabas, the Dirdir hunting preserve, where sequins grow as crystalline nodes. Men prospect for the nodes, while the Dirdir hunt the men. Those they catch, they eat. Reith turns the tables on the Dirdir. He ambushes their hunting parties and takes the sequins they acquired from their victims. When the Dirdir finally take notice, Reith and his friends barely manage to escape, but they have amassed a fortune; in fact, they have so many sequins, they are forced to leave behind a substantial hidden cache. They journey to the cosmopolitan city of Sivishe, where there are shipyards. They find that they must deal with Aila Woudiver, an enormously obese man with monstrous appetites. The construction of the spaceship progresses satisfactorily, but Woudiver demands ever more money, threatening to turn them over to the Dirdir if he is not paid. Finally, Reith has no choice but to go back to the Carabas to retrieve the hidden sequins, leaving Traz and Anacho to keep watch. When he returns however, he finds that Woudiver, who desires above all else to be a Dirdirman, has betrayed Anacho to the Dirdir. Reith risks his life rescuing Anacho. Then he goes to confront Woudiver, but the arch-criminal is too clever for him and all three are handed over to the Dirdir. However, Reith demands arbitration, invoking a tradition too strong for the Dirdir to ignore, even from a "subman". When the judgment goes against him, he challenges the Dirdirman arbitrator. By Dirdir custom, the victor of hand-to-hand combat wins the case. Reith dispatches his foe, only to face a second set of charges. This time, he has to fight a Dirdir. When he forces the creature to concede, Reith and his friends are absolved of all crimes and freed. Needing Woudiver to complete the ship, they do not kill him, but take him captive.
7931076	/m/026kgrq	The Pnume	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After many false starts and real tribulations, Adam Reith has nearly finished building a spaceship to take him home. He and his two trusted companions had been betrayed by Aila Woudiver, the underworld kingpin who had provided the necessary men and equipment in return for an extortionate amount of money. However, Reith was able to turn the tables and take Woudiver captive (as described in The Dirdir). Even as a prisoner though, Woudiver is a dangerous enemy. Somehow, he manages to interest the Pnume in Reith. The Pnume are the sentient native race of Tschai. Driven underground by three separate alien invasions (by the Chasch, Wankh and Dirdir), they view the other species as welcome additions to the pageantry unfolding on their world stage. In the same light, they are intrigued by the Earthman, abducting him to become a specimen in their museum. Reith is lowered into the vast Pnume underground. He manages to free himself and hide before he can be taken by human Pnumekin, servants of the Pnume, to the Museum of Foreverness. Perplexed at finding an empty bag, they summon a Pnume Sector Warden, who consults its Master Charts, detailing all the various tunnels and hidden adits. Determining that there is one possible escape route, they leave to check it. Before it departs, the Sector Warden hides its maps in a secret compartment, but Reith is a witness. He steals them, but is unable to decipher their contents. He kidnaps a young Pnumekin woman to interpret for him. Once Reith forces her to look at the Master Charts, she realizes her life is now forfeit if she is captured, so she cooperates. Upon questioning, Reith learns that she has no name; she simply belongs to the Zith group in the Athan area of the Pagaz zone, with a rank of 210, so he names her Zap 210. After a journey of indeterminate length, mostly spent on a barge, they finally escape to the surface. They make their way toward the city of Sivishe, where the spaceship is being built. As their trek continues, Zap 210's colorless personality begins to change, free of the peculiar constraints of Pnumekin society and the diko she had been fed to keep her body from developing normally. Eventually, she and Reith become lovers. When they reach the city, Reith finds Anacho waiting for him. He learns that, shortly after Reith's abduction, Woudiver had been taken to be prey for a Dirdir hunt. The ship had been seen, so Traz moved it to a location known only to Reith. However, when they prepare to leave, they find Zap 210 missing, captured by the Pnume. Despite Anacho's protestations, Reith gives himself up to the Pnume (after making certain preparations). He bargains with them, threatening to give copies of the Master Charts to the Dirdir unless they release Zap 210. He also demands that they free all the Pnumekin from their freakish existence. The Pnume have no choice; they agree to his terms. Reith and Zap 210 return to the surface, link up with Anacho and Traz, and finally depart for Earth.
7931793	/m/026khgg	Stopping at Slowyear	Frederik Pohl	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Stopping at Slowyear tells the story of an interstellar cargo vessel which runs between out-of-the-way worlds, as it visits a planet called Slowyear after its 19-year-long revolution around its star. The crew explore the local culture and find several odd customs. Among these is of a sort of death lottery as a punishment for crimes. If someone commits a crime, they are sentenced to take a pill, which depending on the severity of the infraction will have a different probability of being lethal poison. Slowyear's principal industry is raising sheep. During their isolation, their sheep have developed a form of scrapie which is lethal to humans without immunity, such as the crew of the interstellar cargo ship. The crew die from the disease and the story ends. Stopping at Slowyear is interesting in that it addressed prion diseases years before public awareness of mad cow disease was widespread.
7932852	/m/026kjx6	Lavender and Old Lace	Myrtle Reed	1902		 Miss Jane Hathaway is an astute pillar of a quaint coastal community, where her house sets atop a hill. She has long overcome the scandal created by her elder sister’s elopement, though the sister died without her forgiveness. She’s also aware of a child, although she’s never met her niece. When she receives a letter from Ruth Thorne, her 34-year-old niece, suggesting an invitation to visit, she accepts, but leaves before Ruth arrives. At Miss Hathaway’s house, Ruth is given a mysterious letter. The letter, from Aunt Jane, does not explain her sudden trip abroad, but insists that Ruth light an oil lamp in the attic each night. In the attic, Ruth stumbles upon some mementos and keepsakes in an old trunk. Among the items is her aunt’s wedding dress, made long ago and never worn. There’s also some newspaper clippings; an announcement of marriage between Mr. Charles G. Winfield, Capt. of the Schooner Mary, and Miss Abigail Weatherby. Ruth imagines that perhaps he was the man to whom her aunt’s wedding dress was intended. Later, she finds a death notice of Mrs. Abigail Winfield, aged 22. Ruth feels ashamed and puts everything back, forcing it from her mind. In the village, Ruth notices a young man, but does not make his acquaintance. Instead, she visits her aunt’s childhood friend, Mary Ainslie, whom the locals call “peculiar,” because she never leaves her house. Ruth is immediately taken with Miss Ainslie’s saintly demeanor and quickly forms a friendship with her. Ruth, who has resisted the urge to pillage her aunt’s love letters, unwittingly stumbles onto a partial letter, which states, “At Gibraltar for some time, keeping a shop, but will probably be found now in some small town on the coast of Italy. Very truly yours.” The signature has been torn. Ruth's solitude is broken by Carl Winfield, a fellow journalist, who is staying in town at the suggestion of their mutual boss. She recognizes him as the young man she noticed earlier and finds him roguishly young and handsome; a great match for her. Mr. Winfield suffers from an ocular ailment and taking a reprieve from reading and writing. He's lodging at the Pendletons, and confides to Ruth that Joseph Pendleton and Hepsey, her aunt’s maid, are courting. He asks Ruth to read the newspapers to him, and she agrees. Their time is well spent and on one of their many walks, they fall in love. Mr. Winfield is also curious about Miss Ainslie, though Ruth is uncertain to introduce them. She inquires first and, out of curiosity for his surname, Miss Ainslie agrees to meet him. Carl Winfield is transformed by Miss Ainslie and confides that his own mother died when he was young. Although he does not remember her, he’s been told awful stories about her vices, mainly alcoholism. Despite that Miss Ainslie is unmarried and has no children, he believes she’s the vision of a perfect mother. Mr. Winfield proposes to Ruth, and she accepts, although no date is set, then Joseph Pendleton proposes to Hepsey, and she accepts. With this much excitement, it's difficult to imagine the surprise when Aunt Jane returns, a married woman! Not trusting the “heathen laws" with which she was married, Aunt Jane rushes to put forth a Christian union with one priest and two witnesses, Ruth and Carl. The bridegroom, James Ball, is all but thrilled. He has lived a long sailor’s life and enjoyed his bachelor days up to no end. He also fancies younger women… like Ruth and Hepsey! To his credit, he is there upon his word, having proposed to Miss Hathaway 30 years ago! It turns out that he was the purpose of her trip to Italy. When Aunt Jane, now Mrs. Ball, discovers her husband’s roving eye, she fires Hepsey and sends Ruth away, using her honeymoon as an excuse. Hepsey and Joe’s wedding is immediately put forth. Ruth, on the other hand, isn’t ready to rush into marriage. She heads for Miss Ainslie’s house instead. There, she knows, she will be comfortable for the duration of her holiday. Linens, china, and furniture make up the wedding gifts. While Ruth is staying with Miss Ainslie, the woman makes changes to her will, leaving everything to Ruth and Carl. Both insist they would rather have her, Carl especially. Strangely, Miss Ainslie and Carl share a dream about Carl’s father. They confide it to Ruth, but she is unwilling to believe it is anything more than a coincidence. Nonetheless, it has changed Miss Ainslie and she has lost her will to live. In the end, Ruth and Carl discover the truth: that Mary Ainslie was engaged to Charles G. Winfield, Capt. of the Schooner Mary, but that he married Carl’s mother, Abigail Weatherby instead. After his wife died, he was too proud to come forward with his son, so he stayed away all those years. And all those years, Miss Ainslie was waiting for him. Her friend, Jane, knew this, but hadn't the heart to tell her. Instead, she lit the lamp in her attic for hers and Miss Ainslie's sailors to make their way back to them.
7932985	/m/026kk3f	Old Rose and Silver	Myrtle Reed	1909		 The novel follows the lives of Rose and her widowed Aunt, Madame Francesca Bernard, along with young visitor and cousin Isabel, whose lives are changed by the return of an old friend and neighbour Colonel Kent, and his grown son, Allison. Other characters that help shape their lives in significant ways are the Crosby twins, unconventional and uninhibited youths that set society at naught, and an unconventional doctor who specializes in the impossible. Through the limited "wide-scope" descriptions the reader is not sure of the historical setting or even in which decade it's set, but it helps to understand the focus of the story; after all it's about their own little world, and how their own hearts and lives fit together in the tight confines of their town, their garden, their friendships and lives.
7933338	/m/026kkl6	Once Upon an Island				 David Conover and his wife risked everything they had and even went into debt to pursue their dream. In spite of countless warnings and predictions of disastrous outcomes, the southern Californian couple purchased an uninhabited island off the British Columbian coast and set out to turn it into a summer resort. Equipped with absolutely no know-how or experience, but with a supply of tools and books purchased before leaving Los Angeles and a resolute determination to realize their dream they went to their home in the wild which, on more than one occasion in their first year almost left them defeated. The book is an account of an earnest but amateurish effort to perform plumbing, carpentry, well digging, and boat navigation, which produced nearly fatal results and financial ruin. The story is told with a good humor, sensitivity, and insightful philosophy. Mrs Conover earned money to help the family income by drawing pictures of the animals and birds she saw all over their island and selling them to the greeting card companies. Also, they were able to build a few small cabins to rent out and that too helped them financially. They declared the island a sanctuary in that no animal would have to fear for its life. All wildlife was allowed to roam free from all human interference and because of that the island was soon a haven and breeding place for all the wildlife who eventually became unafraid of humans.
7935431	/m/026knz6	The Search for the Snow Leopard	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Frank and Joe, with their best bud Chet Morton, solve the case of a princess's missing snow leopard.The Hardys face a kidnapper who is to hunt them.
7935589	/m/026kp5f	The Children of the New Forest				 The children of Colonel Beverley, a Cavalier officer killed at the Battle of Naseby, are believed to have died in the flames when their house, Arnwood, is burned by Roundhead soldiers. However, they escape and are raised by Jacob Armitage, a gamekeeper in his cottage in the New Forest. The story describes how the children adapt from an aristocratic lifestyle to that of simple foresters. The children are concealed as the grandchildren of Armitage. Eventually after Armitage's death, Edward Beverley leaves and works as a secretary for the sympathetic Puritan placed in charge of the Royal land in the New Forest. He then joins the army of the future King Charles II and after the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Worcester, he escapes to France and lives in exile until the Restoration. His sisters are sent to be brought up as ladies and his brother continues to live in the New Forest until they are reunited on the King's return.
7939358	/m/026ktrn	Falling Man	Don DeLillo	2007-05-15	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Falling Man concerns a survivor of the 9/11 attacks and the effect his experiences on that day have on his life thereafter. As the novel opens, Keith Neudecker, a 39-year-old lawyer who works in the World Trade Center, escapes from the building injured slightly and walks to the apartment he previously shared with his son Justin and estranged wife Lianne. After a period of convalescence recuperating from the physical and mental trauma experienced in the attack, Keith resumes his domestic routine with Lianne while at the same time broaching a romantic relationship with a woman named Florence, another survivor, whose briefcase Keith absently took with him from a stairwell upon exiting the tower. Lianne meanwhile grows frustrated with a neighbor in her building who loudly plays middle-eastern sounding music, witnesses the dissolution of a writing group she ran for Alzheimer's patients, and spends time with her elderly intellectual mother Nina and her boyfriend Martin (an art dealer who was involved in Kommune 1 in Germany during the 1970s). In the second half of the novel, Keith eventually abdicates his partially resumed domestic life and begins touring the world playing in professional poker tournaments full-time, recalling his weekly poker nights with co-workers, one of whose deaths he witnessed on 9/11. Throughout the book, Lianne sees a performance artist dubbed "Falling Man" in various parts of the city. Wearing business attire, he suspends himself upside-down with rope and a harness in the pose of the man in the famous photograph of the same name by Richard Drew.
7943220	/m/026ky7t	Almanac of the Dead	Leslie Marmon Silko	1991	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Almanac of the Dead takes place against the backdrop of the American Southwest and Central America. It follows the stories of dozens of major characters in a somewhat non-linear narrative format. Much of the story takes place in the present day, although lengthy flashbacks and occasional mythological storytelling are also woven into the plot. The novel's numerous characters are often separated by both time and space, and many seemingly have little to do with one another at first. A majority of these characters are involved in criminal or revolutionary organizations - the extended cast includes arms dealers, drug kingpins, an elite assassin, communist revolutionaries, corrupt politicians and a black market organ dealer. Driving many of these individual storylines is a general theme of total reclamation of Native American lands.
7945123	/m/026k_d7	Autumn Street	Lois Lowry	1980	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 There were things to be afraid of in the woods at the end of Autumn Street. But the year she went to live in her grandfather's big house - when her father went off to fight in World War II- Elizabeth couldn't put a name to those dark, shadowy fears. She was grateful for the reassurance of Tatie's strong, enveloping brown arms which held her when she needed comforting, and she relished her friendship with Tatie's grandson, feisty and streetwise Charles, who called her dumb old Elizabeth but didn't mean it, and who taught her to take risks. Together the two lonely children tried to interpret for each other an adult world -which was always puzzling and often cruel. Together, finally, on a day when snow obscured everything but terror, they left that world behind them and entered the world that was waiting in the woods.
7948395	/m/026l2f5	Imre: A Memorandum	Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson	1906	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It was described by the author as "a little psychological romance". The narrative follows the lives of two men, who by chance meet at a cafe in Budapest, Hungary. Over the course of several months they forge a friendship that leads to various revelations and disclosures, each of which are carried out with the greatest of subtlety.
7948709	/m/026l2zr	Rudin	Ivan Turgenev	1856	{"/m/05qt0": "Politics", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel begins with the introduction of three of the characters – Aleksandra, Lezhnev, and Pandalevskii. Pandalevskii relates to Aleksandra Dar’ya Mikhailovna’s invitation to come and meet a Baron Muffel’. Instead of the Baron, Rudin arrives and captivates everyone immediately with his intelligent and witty speeches during the argument with Pigasov. Interestingly, Rudin’s arrival is delayed until Chapter Three. After his success at Dar’ya Mikhailovna’s, he stays the night and the next morning meets Lezhnev who arrives to discuss some business affairs with Dar’ya Mikhailovna. This is the first time the reader finds out that Rudin and Lezhnev are acquainted, and studied together at university. During the day that follows Rudin has his first conversation with Natasha; as she speaks of him highly and says he “ought to work”, he replies with a lengthy speech. What follows is a description quite typical of Turgenev, where the character of Rudin is shown not through his own words, but through the text which underlines Rudin’s contradictory statements: :“Yes, I must act. I must not bury my talent, if I have any; I must not squander my powers on talk alone — empty, profitless talk — on mere words,’ and his words flowed in a stream. He spoke nobly, ardently, convincingly, of the sin of cowardice and indolence, of the necessity of action.” On the same day, Sergei leaves Dar’ya Mikhailovna’s early and arrives to see that Lezhnev is visiting. Lezhnev then gives his first description of Rudin. In two months, we are told, Rudin is still staying at Dar’ya Mikhailovna’s, living off borrowed money. He spends a lot of time with Natasha; in a conversation with her he speaks of how an old love can only be replaced by a new one. At the same time, Lezhnev gives the account of his youth and his friendship with Rudin, making for the first time the point that Rudin is “too cold” and inactive. On the next day, Natasha quizzes Rudin over his words about old and new love. Neither she, nor he confess their love for each other but in the evening, Rudin and Natasha meet again, and this time Rudin confesses his love for her; Natasha replies that she, too, loves him. Unfortunately, their conversation is overheard by Pandalevskii, who reports it to Dar’ya Mikhailovna, and she strongly disapproves of this romance, making her feelings known to Natasha. The next time Natasha and Rudin meet, she tells him that Dar’ya Mikhailovna knows of their love and disapproves of it. Natasha wants to know what plan of action is Rudin going to propose, but he does not fulfil her expectations when he says that one must “submit to destiny”. She leaves him, disappointed and sad: :“I am sad because I have been deceived in you… What! I come to you for counsel, and at such a moment! — and your first word is, submit! submit! So this is how you translate your talk of independence, of sacrifice, which …” Rudin then leaves Dar’ya Mikhailovna’s estate. Before his departure he writes two letters: one to Natasha and one to Sergei. The letter to Natasha is particularly notable in its confession of the vices of inactivity, inability to act and to take responsibility for one’s actions – all the traits of a Hamlet which Turgenev later detailed in his 1860 speech. Lezhnev, meanwhile, asks Aleksandra to marry him and is accepted in a particularly fine scene. Chapter Twelve and the Epilogue detail events of over two years past Rudin’s arrival at Dar’ya Mikhailovna’s estate. Lezhnev is happily married to Aleksandra. He arrives to give her news of Sergei’s engagement to Natasha, who is said to “seem contented”. Pigasov lives with Lezhnevs, and amuses Aleksandra as he used to amuse Dar’ya Mikhailovna. A conversation which follows happens to touch on Rudin, and as Pigasov begins to make fun of him, Lezhnev stops him. He then defends Rudin’s “genius” while saying that his problem is that he had no “character” in him. This, again, refers to the superfluous man’s inability to act. He then toasts Rudin. The chapter ends with the description of Rudin travelling aimlessly around Russia. In the Epilogue, Lezhnev happens by chance to meet Rudin at a hotel in a provincial town. Lezhnev invites Rudin to dine with him, and over the dinner Rudin relates to Lezhnev his attempts to “act” – to improve an estate belonging to his friend, to make a river navigable, to become a teacher. In all three of this attempts Rudin demonstrated inability to adapt to the circumstances of Nicholas I’s Russia, and subsequently failed, and was in the end banished to his estate. Lezhnev then appears to change his opinion of Rudin as inherently inactive, and says that Rudin failed exactly because he could never stop striving for truth. The Epilogue ends with Rudin’s death at the barricades during the French Revolution of 1848; even at death he is mistaken by two fleeing revolutionaries for a Pole.
7950296	/m/026l54j	Burger's Daughter	Nadine Gordimer	1979	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is set mostly in Johannesburg in the early- to mid-1970s during Apartheid. Rosa is the daughter of Lionel Burger, a white Afrikaner anti-apartheid activist, who is standing trial for treason. The court finds him guilty and sentences him to life in prison. Rosa visits him regularly, just as she visited her mother, Cathy Burger when she was imprisoned some ten years previously. Cathy died when Rosa was still at school. Rosa grew up in a family that actively supported the overthrow of the apartheid government, and the house they lived in opened its doors to anyone supporting the struggle, regardless of colour. Living with them was "Baasie", a black boy Rosa's age the Burgers had "adopted" when his father had died in prison. Bassie and Rosa grew up as brother and sister. Both Rosa's parents were members of the outlawed South African Communist Party (SACP), and she was told from an early age that they could be detained by the authorities at any time. When Rosa was nine, both her parents were arrested and she was sent to stay with her father's family in a rural farming community. Baasie was sent elsewhere because, she was told, he would not be accepted there. It was here that Rosa experienced apartheid for the first time and the way black people were mistreated. In 1974, after three years in prison, Lionel succumbs to ill-health and dies. At 26, Rosa sells the Burger's house and moves in with Conrad, a post-graduate student who had befriended her during her father's trial. Rosa is not in love with Conrad, but their relationship is convenient during this difficult time. Conrad questions her role in the Burger family and the fact that she always did what she was told. He questions whether she has her own identity, because everyone sees her as Burger's daughter, not Rosa. Later Rosa leaves Conrad and moves into a flat on her own and works as a physiotherapist at a hospital. While some of Lionel's former associates are banned or under house arrest, Rosa is "named", meaning that she is labelled a Communist and is under surveillance. In 1975, despite her restrictions, she attends a party of a friend in Soweto, and it is there that she hears a black university student dismissing all whites' help as irrelevant, saying that whites cannot know what blacks want, and that blacks will liberate themselves. Realising she needs to be somewhere else, Rosa manages to get a passport, and flies to Nice in France to stay with Katya, her father's first wife. Rosa spends several months there and is able to be herself for the first time in her life. She meets Bernard Chabalier, a visiting academic from Paris, and they become lovers. He persuades her to return with him to Paris, where he says the French Anti-Apartheid Movement will be only too happy to organize a flat for Lionel Burger's daughter. Before joining Bernard in Paris, Rosa stays in a flat in London for several weeks. Now that she has no intention of honouring the agreement of her passport, which was to return to South Africa within a year, she openly introduces herself to others as Burger's daughter. This attracts the attention of the media and she attends several political events. At one such event, Rosa sees Baasie, but he is reluctant to talk to her. She gives him her phone number, and he later contacts her and starts criticizing her for not knowing his real name (Zwelinzima Vulindlela). He says that there is nothing special about her father having died in prison as many black fathers have also died there, and says he does not need her help. Rosa is devastated by her childhood friend's hurtful remarks, and overcome with guilt, she abandons her plans of going into exile in France and returns to South Africa. Back home she resumes her job as a physiotherapist in Soweto. Then in June 1976 Soweto school children start protesting about their inferior education and being taught in Afrikaans. They go on the rampage, which includes killing white welfare workers in Soweto. The police brutally put down the uprising, resulting in hundreds of deaths. In October 1977, many organizations and people critical of the white government are banned, and in November 1977 Rosa Burger is detained. Her lawyer, who also represented her father, expects charges to be brought against her of furthering the aims of the banned SACP and ANC, and of aiding and abetting the students' revolt. *Lionel Burger – a white Afrikaner born 1905 in the Northern Transvaal; a medical doctor, anti-apartheid activist and a member of the banned South African Communist Party (SACP) *Cathy Burger (née Jansen) – Lionel's second wife, a trade unionist and later a member of the SACP; married Lionel in August 1946 during the African Mine Workers' Strike while they were out on bail after having been arrested on a charge of orchestrating the strike *Rosemarie Burger (Rosa) – Lionel and Cathy's daughter, born May 1948; her name was derived from Rosa Luxemburg (a Polish Marxist) and Marie Burger (Lionel's mother); a physiotherapist by profession *Zwelinzima Vulindlela ("Baasie") – a black student, taken in and "adopted" by the Burger family when he was a child after his father had died in prison; the same age as Rosa, she treated him like her brother, but never knew his real name as the family simply called him "Baasie" (little boss) *Colette Burger/Bagnelli (née Swan) (Katya) – Lionel's first wife, married in London and returned to South Africa with Lionel in 1930; divorced in the 1940s; moved to France where she married a captain in the French navy, Ugo Bagnelli; widowed after Bagnelli died *Conrad – a post-graduate student and Rosa's first live-in companion; he is her conscience who questions her identity and role *Bernard Chabalier – a French academic in Paris working on his doctoral thesis; married with two children; Rosa's first lover
7951122	/m/026l655	La Clé sur la porte				 A forty-year old woman describes her life living in an apartment in Paris with her three children and their friends. As a community experiment based on total freedom the key lives permanently over the door and everyone comes and goes as they please. She contrasts her formerly strict and closed world against the free one of today; obedience to values against wavering anarchy; alacrity and faineance; hard loneliness versus warm fraternity. Marie Cardinal invites us to question these themes in this personal and passionate book, rich in humour and emotion. La Clé sur la porte is a serious and picturesque novel of today's youth, written by an elder who knew how to commingle.
7951656	/m/026l6xk	Manga Kenkanryu				 The main character of story, Okiayu Kaname, a Japanese high school senior, learns about alleged game-fixing scandal that kept winning streak of South Korean soccer team during 2002 FIFA World Cup and ugly behavior by their supporters. Okiayu becomes a college freshman, and he and his female classmate Aramaki Izumi joins “Far East Asia Investigation Committee” (極東アジア調査會), an extracurricular group led by Sueyuki Ryuhei (a junior) and Soeuchi Tae (a sophomore). The group is mainly devoted to the study of historical issues between Japan and Korea and very critical of Korea. Okiayu and Aramaki learn many ugly sides of Koreans. The group participates in debates with a pro-Korean study group and a visiting students group from South Korea – both ignorant with historical knowledge and unable to make logical arguments – and completely rebuts their pro-Korean opinions, humiliating them. The main topics of book includes alleged 2002 FIFA World Cup game scandal, Japanese compensation to Korea for colonial rules, Opposition to Zainichi Koreans suffrage, Korean plagiarism of Japanese culture, criticism of pro-Korean mass media in Japan, criticism of Hangul (Korean alphabet), Japan–Korea Annexation, Liancourt Rocks dispute, and criticism of Korean Wave in Japan.
7953967	/m/02vklkn	Meridian	Alice Walker	1976		 Set in the 1960s and 1970s, Meridian centers on Meridian Hill, a student at the fictitious Saxon College, who becomes active in the Civil Rights movement. She becomes romantically involved with another activist, Truman Held, and though he impregnates her, they have a turbulent on-and-off relationship. After Meridian has an abortion, Truman becomes far more attached to her and longs to start a life together. Later Truman becomes involved with a white woman, Lynne Rabinowitz, who is also active in the Civil Rights struggle, though perhaps for the wrong reasons. As time goes by, Truman attempts, unsuccessfully, to achieve personal and financial success while Meridian continues to stay involved in the movement and fight for issues she believes deeply in.
7956168	/m/026lcx6	The Kitchen God's Wife	Amy Tan	1991		 The Kitchen God's Wife opens with the narrative voice of Pearl Louie Brandt, the American-born daughter of a Chinese mother and a Chinese-American father, who is a speech therapist living in San Jose, California. Pearl's mother, Winnie Louie, has called Pearl to request that she and her family attend the engagement party of Pearl's cousin Bao-Bao in San Francisco. Pearl is reluctant to oblige her mother, since she is more involved in her American identity. Nevertheless, she feels an obligation to attend the family festivities. Then, two days before the engagement party, Pearl receives another call from her mother telling her that Auntie Du has died and that the funeral will be arranged for the day after the engagement party. With these obligations on her shoulders, Pearl sets out for San Francisco with her young daughters, Tessa and Cleo, and her husband. Upon Pearl's return home, her Auntie Helen, Bao-Bao's mother, who co-owns a florist shop with Winnie, makes a demand: she insists that Pearl must tell Winnie that she has multiple sclerosis, about which everyone else in the family knows. Helen claims that she is suffering from a malignant brain tumor and does not want to die knowing that Winnie is unaware of her daughter's illness. Helen adds that if Pearl will not tell Winnie the truth, she will do it herself. Later, Helen tells Winnie that she must unveil the truth of her past to Pearl because she cannot go to her grave with such secrets. The reader later learns that Helen knows her tumor is benign and is using the threat of her own imminent death as a pretext to force mother and daughter to be honest with one another. At this point, the novel switches to the narrative voice of Winnie Louie, who tells the story of her past to Pearl. Before reaching the United States, Winnie experienced much turmoil, strife, and suffering. She was abandoned by her mother, a lesser wife of her father, as a young child, and did not fully understand her mother's mysterious disappearance. Winnie, whose Chinese name is Weili, was forced to live with her Uncle and his two wives (New Aunt and Old Aunt) and never felt as loved as her uncle's true daughter, Weili's cousin, Peanut. Nevertheless, when the time came, Winnie's aunts arranged a traditional marriage for her, and her father provided a large dowry, since he was an educated and well-established man. The marriage to Wen Fu, who first courted Peanut but transferred his attentions to Weili when he learned of her father's wealth, turned out to be a disaster. Wen Fu was horrifically abusive — physically, mentally, and emotionally, and Weili suffered while also surviving World War II. Weili lost many children along the way, some to early deaths, one that was stillborn, an infant daughter who was corporally abused and emotionally traumatized by Wen Fu and his violence, and one son that she sent away to escape Wen-Fu, who eventually died from a flea epidemic at the age of 6. Throughout the novel, Winnie does many things behind the scenes that her husband takes credit for, and she likens her situation to a Chinese fable about a man who was horrible to his wife no matter how much she did for him, and yet still became known as "the Kitchen god". It was during the War that Weili became friends with Helen, (Chinese: Hulan). Winnie reveals that they were never really in-laws, but only friends. After Weili married Pearl's Chinese-American father, Jimmie Louie, moved to the United States, and took the name Winnie, she lied to sponsor Helen's immigration. Pearl has always been told that Jimmie Louie was her father. He was a good husband, a good father, and a minister in the Chinese Baptist Church, but he died when Pearl was a teenager, a time when Pearl became very angry. Winnie explains to Pearl that she met Jimmy Louie in China, at an American military dance. He was extremely kind and the person who gave all of the Chinese girls attending the dance their "American" names; the two fell in love, and Jimmie began to help her escape her tortured marriage. In Chinese culture, in order to obtain a divorce, the paper had to be signed by two witnesses and Grand Auntie Du and Hulan agreed to sign. Wen-Fu had previously ripped up the papers from her first attempt, and Winnie went to him again to get the papers signed. The greatest secret, however, is that at that last meeting Wen Fu raped her. After receiving notification from China of Wen-Fu's death, Winnie explains that it is only now that she feels truly free of his wickedness and threats. Thinking she is informing Helen of a secret, she states that she has always tried to love Pearl more because she thought she might have been Wen-Fu's daughter, not only when looking into Pearls' face as a child and seeing how much she looked like the little boy who she'd lost in China; but especially when she saw how angry Pearl had become after her Jimmie's death. Helen surprises her by telling her that she always knew about the rape because of the way she arrived home after meeting with Wen-Fu. After Winnie tells her story, Pearl reveals the secret of her disease. By the time the wedding of Bao-Bao comes around, mother and daughter have come to know each other better. Winnie goes into a local shop finds an altar with an unnamed goddess. The shopkeeper gives it to her for halfprice because it is considered bad luck. Winnie names it "Lady Sorrowfree" the wife of the Kitchen god, who has endured all, received no credit for the work she has done, and is still strong. At the end of the novel, Helen reveals that she is planning a trip to China, with Pearl, and Winnie.
7960436	/m/026ljn1	Drawing a Blank				 At the beginning of his junior year at Carnegie Mansion, a prestigious private school, Carlton Dunne IV attempts to go through the year without attracting attention to himself as he has done for the past two years. He has a fondness for art and a "secret" identity as a Connecticut comic strip artist. When his father is kidnapped by a Scottish clan exacting revenge for a feud nearly a thousand years ago, Carlton is drawn into the battle. After arriving in Scotland, he meets Aileen, an 18 year-old Scot who plans to become a cop and wants to be on Cops in America. After learning of Carlton’s story she vows to help him on his quest. The pair venture to Northern Scotland where they attempt to solve the mystery surrounding Carlton’s dad. They are gradually drawn into the clan’s mythology, a mythology that both Carlton’s dad and his kidnapper strongly believe is true.
7960601	/m/026ljvy	The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat				 In the military run country of Militaria, Professor Nicholas Caritat, a secluded Enlightenment scholar, is arrested because he has been giving hope to the Optimists, the nation’s enemies. Once in prison, he is rescued by Justin, a former student and current part of a guerrilla group called “the Hand,” and given a mission: to find the best possible world. The mission leads him through three countries of political extremes that all claim to be the best. Nicholas’s mission begins in Calcula, a city in the forward thinking, Utilitarian country named Utilitaria. The country has two parties: the Rule party, in government and the Act party, in opposition. The Ruler party follows John Stuart Mill’s idea of having society be ruled mainly by the most talented individuals. The Act party encourages democracy as it follows Jeremy Bentham’s ideas of having everyone’s opinions count equally in government. There is a group in the Northern area of the country called the Bigotarians which are focused on the past and want independence. The only thing that matters to the people of Utilitaria is producing the greatest utility, as that will produce the greatest amount of happiness, following the ideas of early utilitarian thinkers. Classes are non-existent. Calculators and computers are used to calculate consequences and utility, despite the limitations and difficulties that occur when trying to do so. Everyone is cared for, provided that they contribute to the well-being of society. Those who cannot contribute are used as organ donors to help the working force. On the third day of his visit, he is kidnapped by the Bigotarians. The group holds him for ransom as they think he is a Utilitarian ideologist. After thirteen days and two letters to the man he had been staying with, Nicolas realizes that Utilitaria, with its lack of regard for human rights, is not the best possible world. He is soon released and finds his way to Polygopolis, Communitaria with the help of Reverend Goddington Thwaite. In Communitaria, society is based on equality and multiculturalism. People are greatly attached to their own ways of life, but recognize and accept others’. Everyone has a place in one of the thirty-four ethnic groups and seventeen religions. People cannot change communities to which they belong, but instead have to conform. The right to practice their culture is balanced by law with the responsibility to never offend another community. Nicholas meets a rock star who is hiding because he had been excommunicated from his communities because he wrote to a “satirical” rock opera. Satire is seen as sacrilegious, which is the worst crime in Communitaria, so he no longer has a place in society. Reverend Goddington Thwaite and the rock star look to Nicholas to help. When he talks to the two communities, though, he finds that individual rights do not exist in Communitaria. The only right that exists is the right the communities have to be respected. Upon visiting the unidiversity (the Communitarians’ university), he is told that his mission undermines multiculturalism. It, according to the professors there, implies that one culture or society is better than another, which is impossible to do if one wants to have multiculturalism. Despite this, he is offered a temporary position lecturing on "Did the Enlightenment have to fail". The intent of this suggested topic is to warn students against ethnocentrism and the idea of civilization and universal reason. They view the Enlightenment as a way for one culture to oppress others, which is unacceptable in their world. One of the professors, Professor Bodkin, is an extreme feminist who argues that there is still oppression in the country on the basis of gender. Her peers avoid her eyes as she speaks of this, as they prefer to believe that there no longer is oppression. When Nicholas meets a group of students, he finds that free speech is a punishable offence for fear of offending someone. He is invited to a secret club by another group of students, though, who argue against that. Through their stories, he finds the problem behind the Communitarian way of life: extreme separation of the communities. Marriage between members of different communities is frowned upon. People who try to change their community are shunned from society and called “rootless cosmopolitans”. While trying to find the washroom, he finds Professor Bodkin in the shower. When she sees him, he stumbles out, making apologies. She mistakes his apologies for insults against her community. She presses charges against him, causing him to flee the country to Freedom. On the train ride to Freedom, he dreams of the perfect world. In the dream, he meets two men who show him around Proletaria. Like Marx’s ideology, the Proletarian class in Proletaria took over the government which caused the state to disintegrate and left complete communism. There are no classes, states, legal systems, wages, rights, or markets. People are free to do as they wish and are not confined to one particular area of labour or activity. Upon waking, he finds himself heading towards Freedom, the capital city of Libertaria. Based on libertarian thinking, “society” no longer exists in the country; all that matters is the individual. People are completely left alone as the government does not believe in social programs. Everything is privatized, so schools and hospitals are closed to those who cannot pay for them. Freedom arises in that people are free to do whatever they like without interference from the government. The market, as once stated by Steven Lukes, reproduces and creates inequalities. This is shown in Libertaria through the difficulties people have living in society. The entire state is built on the privatization and trade of various programs and industries on the stock market. Due to this, it is difficult to find work. People often have to live on the streets, while students do not have enough money to buy books. The only way to make money is through stocks, but it is only the wealthy that have the money to do that, creating inequalities. After limited success in Libertaria, he leaves to Minerva, and then starts to walk to the boarder. On his way, he is confronted by an owl who explains why each country failed to be the best it could be: they were all too focused on a single value. Since this is the Owl of Minerva, it is wise and philosophical. As dusk approaches, the owl flies away, symbolizing, as Prof. Peter Singer argues, that “philosophy understands reality only after the event.” Nicholas, demonstrating this, starts to comprehend all that has happened. His final letter to Justin places his experiences in context with his mission and ideas. He realizes that the best possible world would encompass all values and have its citizens willing to learn and think.
7965037	/m/026lpx7	The Summer Garden	Paullina Simons	2005	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Four years have gone by since World War II has ended; and Tatiana and her lover, her husband, her Shura, her Alexander - are married and living a life together with their son, Anthony. Yet they are strangers to each other. Having been separated from each other for years, they do not know each other anymore. They live a satisfactory life, with Alexander working as a lobster-man - coming home each day smelling of fish. Tatiana is now known to outsiders as 'Tania'. They move from place to place. After Alexander confesses to why he was so cold to her, they reconcile and move houses. Finally living in a place that they've dreamed of, Tatiana's friend Vikki phones her to say that the USA government is looking for Alexander. Fearing for her husband's safety, she does not tell him. Finding out himself somehow, he goes to Washington to make everything right - also finding out that his supposedly executed mother "is still alive" in a concentration camp. Realising though, that he has been tricked by an enemy, he does not go to search for her. He meets Tom Richter - a lieutenant colonel - and earns himself a job in Yuma as a captain of the Military Intelligence arm of the U.S. Army. Time passes by, and the family moves to Phoenix. Alexander gets a job as a builder/architect in Balkman's company and Tatiana (after persuading Alexander) gets a job as a nurse in the ER terminal care ward in the Phoenix Memorial Hospital. Making friends with Balkman's son, Steve, Alexander has finally found the peace that he has always wanted. Here Phoenix, they can forget who they once were, and nobody would know about them. Steve, when they first meet, talks about a girl that he has met at the hospital when he broke his hand; saying that he's "never met anyone like her". Tatiana when she comes home, is tight-lipped when she hears about Steve. She is initially cold to Steve and never warms up to him. Alexander later figures that his wife was the "not like anyone else" girl that Steve was talking about. After a time, Steve introduces a man named Dudley to Alexander. But Dudley sees the tattoos - the SchutzStaffel Eagle, the blue numbers, the hammer and sickle, the swastika. To make matters worse, he storms into Alexander's house: threatening to rape Tatiana and then kill both of them. With no choice, Alexander shoots Dudley in the head. After revealing what had happened to the police, the doctor, the coroner and the media; Alexander starts his own company and Balkman and Steve were ruined (Dudley had turned out to be an escaped murderer - it was illegal to hire escaped convicts). After years of trying for a second baby (with Anthony once accidentally seeing them trying without knowing about sex - he thinks his mother is getting hurt in the process: "Dad, I don't think Mom wants to have anymore children. Didn't you hear her?"), things have cooled off. Caught cheating on his wife, it is then revealed that Tatiana is pregnant. Tearfully forgiving him, they have a son - Charles Gordon Pasha Barrington. Following Charles are two more children, Harry, about two years later, and Janie. Almost eight years have past and Anthony has made his job choice: he is going to Vietnam to fight. With his parents initially protesting, he goes. Sunday evening, July 20, 1969 - while the family (Tatiana, Alexander, their children - Pasha, Harry and Janie) are watching the man on the moon, a call comes from Richter. Anthony has been reported missing for three days. Weeks go by, and Vikki visits. Tatiana and Alexander find out that Vikki and Anthony have had a romantic relationship since he was eighteen. She shows them a letter Anthony sent her - he is married to a Vietnamese girl called Moon Lai and she is pregnant. Alexander travels all the way to Vietnam to find his son. Using their heads, Anthony's comrades, his father and Richter realise that Moon Lai is a North Vietnam communist who is just a bait for Anthony. Alexander and a group of six (twelve?) people go to rescue him. They first capture Moon Lai who tells them everything. Despite being a trap, she actually loves Anthony. She then tries and sort of fails to stab Alexander and Ha Si (a member of the group), aiming for Alexander's thigh and Ha Si's face. In self defense, they slit her throat. Alexander rescues Anthony (who has had his right arm amputated by the North Vietnamese) losing Richter, Ha Si and others on the way. The novel then skips ahead thirty years to Thanksgiving 1999, Alexander and Tatiana's children are all grown and have children of their own. A very large family. Alexander and Tatiana seem content with their lot. The novel ends one hot day in near their home in Scottsdale, Arizona, Tatiana sitting on the bench eating ice cream, Alexander stands across the street, returning from buying a drink, staring at her, a bus passes and he comes around it, reminiscent of the first time they met all those years ago on 22 June 1941 in Leningrad.
7965540	/m/026lqg3	The Fright at Tristor				 The plot of The Fright at Tristor begins with a mention of the brutal murders occurring in the hamlet of Tristor, in the northern reaches of the Theocracy of the Pale. The townsfolk fear that they may be the next target of these attacks. The party has been hired to investigate, a reward being offered if they can stop these murders occurring. Some believe the source of the attacks to be a band of orcs following a mysterious entity known as "The Watcher." When outlying farms are attacked outright, it is up to the adventurers to halt these killings and save the town.
7967078	/m/026lsb_	Imperium				 In the first part, entitled First Encounters (1939-1967), Kapuściński writes about the 1939 entry of the Red Army into Pińsk, his home town in the Polesie area, and about the poverty and terror he experienced during the ensuing Soviet rule. He continues to describe his postwar experiences in the Soviet Union, including his travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and his trips to exotic Central Asian and Transcaucasian republics of the Soviet Union, today Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The second part of the book, From a Bird's-eye View (1989-1991), makes up over one half of the book, and is a travelogue from his lone trips around the Soviet Union during its collapse. In the European part of the USSR Kapuściński visited, among others, Brest, Moscow and Donetsk, in the Far North - Magadan and Vorkuta, in the South - Tbilisi and Yerevan. During these voyages he traveled over 60,000 km, mostly by plane. The last, shortest part, The Sequel Continues (1992-1993), is a summary. It is also an attempt to analyze the changes in the countries that arose from the disintegration of the USSR. According to the author himself, the whole work does not end with a higher and final synthesis, but with the reverse, because during its writing the subject and theme of the book, the great Soviet Empire, has disappeared. no:Imperiet (polsk bok) pl:Imperium (reportaż)
7970835	/m/026lyjs	The Kouga Ninja Scrolls	Futaro Yamada	2006-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This story is quite similar to Romeo and Juliet. The story centers around two rival ninja clans; the Iga and the Koga; whose no-hostilities treaty is lifted by retired shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu to settle a succession dispute within the government concerning which of Ieyasu's grandsons is destined to become the third Tokugawa Shogun. Due to years of selective breeding, the members of Koga and Iga have all developed inhuman abilities at the cost of several of them being born physically disfigured or otherwise abnormally mutated. At the center of the conflict is Koga and Iga's two young heirs; Gennosuke and Oboro respectively; who had fallen in love in the hopes of not only bringing their clans together in peace but also to mix the bloodlines of their families so as to undo the genetic damage endured by both. The novel traces the course of the conflict as both clans endure heavy losses and ultimately bringing Gennosuke and Oboro to face each other on the field of battle.
7975778	/m/026m3fr	Brown Girl, Brownstones	Paule Marshall		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The somewhat autobiographical story describes the life of Barbadian immigrants in Brooklyn during the Great Depression and then in World War II. The primary characters include Selina and Ina Boyce and their parents, who suffer from racism and extreme poverty. The book focuses most directly on the growth and development of the character Selina. The book did not gain widespread recognition until it was reprinted in 1981. The action opens on a discussion of the brownstone neighborhood in which the Boyce family lives. Selina Boyce, age 10, fantasizes about the white family that used to live in her house. The rented house is occupied by the Boyce family, frivolous father Deighton, stern mother Silla and Selina's older sister, Ina, as well as Suggie Skeete, a Barbadian woman who rents a room and frequently has male visitors. Additionally, a spinster woman and her mother, Maritze and Miss Mary, both white, live upstairs. In the early pages we learn that Ina, Selina's older sister, has reached puberty and is home sick with what we can assume are menstrual cramps. Understandably, she doesn't want to talk to Selina or entertain her. Selina finds her father, Deighton, working on some accounting books he's studying in hopes of getting a job. Deighton tells Selina that he's been left a plot of land back in Barbados, and he tells her not to tell anyone about it until her mother knows. Selina asks if she can tell her best friend, Beryl, and her dad acquiesces, and gives her some money for candy. On her way to the candy shop, Selina runs into the hyper-sexualized Suggie, as well as another neighborhood woman, Miss Thompson. She also sees Beryl in the park and asks her to stop by later. Seeing her mother coming home, Selina struggles to clean herself up, in fear of being chastised.
7976669	/m/026m475	NP	Banana Yoshimoto		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 --> <!-- this content was copied over from "Kitchen," and has been commented out; to be replaced subsequently with specific content about this novel.
7977859	/m/026m5j2	Curse of the Blue Tattoo		2004-06-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jacky Faber has just gotten off from being on the Seven Seas fighting notorious pirates and other goons on the 'Dolphin.' At the end of the first book, she is found out to be a girl and since ship codes say that a girl is not to work on a ship or be on one, she is delivered to the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston by the uptight Professor Tilden. She is forced to leave her sea dad, Liam Delaney, and her ships boys including the boy she loves, James Emerson Fletcher. When they get to the school, Jacky is introduced to Mistress Miranda Pimm. She is seen as a very strict and unforgiving lady, soon lashing at Jacky for her wild and outrageous clothing style such as the gold hoop earing that her and Jaimy exchanged. Mistress Pimm can't get any satisfaction or respect so she has her cronie assistant Dobbs come and take off her unsuitable jewelry by force. After their initial meeting, Jacky is sent to meet the other girls. She finds them very different but takes up with one Amy Trevelyne, a bit of an outcast amongst the girls. Amy is from around the Boston/New York area and has a brother that is a renowned womanizer. She is instantly an enemy of the spoiled Clarissa Worthington Howe. She is the leader of all the popular girls in the school and soon Jacky cannot take this different attitude displayed by Clarissa and fights her, both leaving considerable bruises and marks on each other. She takes a horse riding class, an art class, an embroidery class, a class in French and an etiquette class. On Sunday mornings, the girls go to a church off in a desolate area of the school-grounds inhabited by one Reverend Mather. Rather than the preacher that the Deacon was for Jacky aboard the 'Dolphin', Mather is a bit of an unusual man and Jacky soon finds out why. While Amy and Jacky are walking through the graveyard by the church between classes, Jacky spots a man looking through the window of an old shed at the two girls. Jacky is creeped out and as they noticed an unmarked grave, they leave in a hurry. After Jacky is engaged in a fight with Clarissa, Mistress Pimm whips them both on their legs, and Clarrisa is shocked that she is actually getting punished. Jacky is right about Mather as she finds him to be more than a typical "fire-and-brimstone" preacher. And she thinks he has something to do with the unmarked grave, so she intends to find out nonetheless. But after deciding to skip class and roam the streets of Boston, Jacky winds up in the port playing her pennywhistle. Some sailors hear her, and they and she begin to dance. However, her shipman's dancing doesn't pass muster in the streets of Boston, and when a lisping constable comes across her showing her knees to men, she is imprisoned for lewd and lascivious acts. Jacky meets the "lady of the night" prostitute Mam'selle Claudelle de Bour-bon of the New Orleans Bour-bons. She finds Mam'selle to be a bit crazy (her sexual orientation is questionable) but she takes up with Jacky calling her delicate names like 'Precious' and others. Soon after time in jail, Jacky is seen before the feared Judge Thwackham. All is going well, for her lawyer is an excellent one. But when the constable produces her shiv, which is a knife, as evidence to her impropriety, it seems all is lost. Jacky falls to her knees in quite a display of innocent weeping, in which she, quite luckily, mentions the name of Miss Pimm. The judge and his jury are delighted that they have finally got one of "Pimm's girls" in their court, as they have fussy wives and daughters that are very proud of the fact that this has never happened. They are so tickled that they let Jacky off with suspended punishment, confident that the horrified Pimm will do enough. Jacky's lawyer, Ezra, returns Jacky back to the school and before Mistress. Instead of whipping Jacky, she expels Jacky from the school but keeps her to work for the cooks and maids. This horrifies and embarrasses her terribly, but it works out well, because she finally meets some nice girls; the serving maids. They grow a great friendship. But before this happens, Jacky must visit Mather to discuss her behavior in Boston. Jacky is shocked when he lashes out, calling her a whore and a minion of Satan. Mather is about to whip Jacky, but she fights back, telling him he has no right, and finally running out on a shocked Mather after warning him she has a lawyer. She goes to see Ezra one day and talks about Mather. Ezra says that one year ago, a girl by the name of Janey Porter who worked for Mather was found hung in her bedroom from a bedpost (Jacky finds it impossible but Ezra tells her otherwise) and that she died while pregnant. Ephriam Fyffe, Janey's love interest, also explains that Janey Porter was pregnant but it was not his child, though he said he would have raised it as his own. He says that many found her death surprising, as she was generally a cheerful girl. Jacky is convinced Janey did not die from suicide and consults with her friend, Ephriam Fyffe. He confirms that Janey was a very happy girl until the last month of her life, even through the most of her pregnancy. This gives Jacky more to investigate and she finds the Reverend walks the graveyard by night, recalling the events as if he was talking to the spirit of Janey. Jacky sees this a state of mental paranoia and conviction. She is convinced the Reverend Mather killed Janey Porter. She has Amy sneak out and watch the Reverend for herself before they go and tell Ezra and Ephriam about it. Ezra sees it possible now to press charges against the minister. During the time of being a maid, Jacky writes letters back and forth to Jaimy even though a couple were intercepted by Mistress Pimm. She runs with the Mam'selle and a drunk artist by the nickname of Gully, he plays a violin named Lady Lenore and they perform in Boston's taverns. She tries and haunts the paranoid Mather by imitating the voice of the ghost of Janey Porter. It succeeds and causes Mather to lose sleep. She meets back up with Davy from the 'Dolphin' but only for a brief time and she meets Randall Trevelyne, Amy's womanizing brother. A bit of a friendship ensues and a brief, harmless relationship too. Randall soon has to leave Boston though, leaving Jacky alone after Mam'selle leaves back for New Orleans. Gully strikes Jacky after an act goes wrong, in response Jacky hands him to a navy press-gang and holds on to the lady lenore until they meet again. Amy turns against Jacky for a little while when Jacky gets drunk and disgraces her home. Jacky leaves Amy's home without anyone knowing and sets off for New York. She plans to sing and dance along the away to earn money for her journey. The dog follows her. At Amy's behest, Amy's father hires two men to find and bring back Jacky but they sell her to Reverend Mather instead and take her to him at the church. Mather is convinced Jacky is a spirit of Janey, back to haunt Mather or try to. Mather tells his dead Grand-father, a Puritan minister before him that Janey shall be dead and that the punishment he did the first time was not enough. As Mather is carrying Jacky up the stairs inside the church, she kicks over a lamp without him noticing. It starts a fire; which Mather still does not notice. Mather ties Jacky down, spread-eagle, to the posts of Janey's old bed. Ephraim bursts in to rescue her and the Reverend runs away up to the steeple. Ephraim and Jacky escape. Outside, with the "sisterhood" and other friends they watch the church burn, hear the Reverend screaming and watch the bell fall. Jacky realizes that sparks from the church have caused the stable and school to burn. Everyone is galvanized into saving the horses and the schoolgirls and putting out the fire. The horses and girls are saved; but, the buildings continue to burn. Mistress Pimm is seen on the top floor silhouetted by the light of the flames from the church. Jacky enlists help to get to the top floor to rescue her and gets up there to find Pimm trying to save her precious needlework. She saves Mistress Pimm in spite of Pimm's protestations. Constable Wiggins tries to catch Jacky, but Jacky gets on her riding school horse, Gretchen, and they ride out of Boston. Jacky sells her horse and gets aboard another ship to London.
7982488	/m/026mb4_	The Sorrows of Satan	Marie Corelli		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On the surface the plot follows the story of a penniless, starving author called Geoffrey Tempest. So poor that he is behind on his rent and can barely afford light in his room, he receives three letters. The first is from a friend in Australia who has made his fortune and offers to introduce him to a good friend who might be able to lift him from poverty. The second is a note from a solicitor detailing that he has inherited a fortune from a deceased relative, the third is a letter of introduction from a foreign aristocrat called Lucio, who befriends him and proceeds to be his guide in how to best use his new found wealth. Tempest remains blissfully unaware throughout the novel, despite warnings from people he meets, that Lucio is the Earthly incarnation of the Devil. Over the course of the book, his wealth leads to misery. Eventually, when confronted with the true nature of his companion, he renounces evil and returns to society penniless but content with the chance to purify his soul. Although the plot follows Tempest's fall from grace and redemption, he is in many regards a secondary character to Lucio. Both the title of the work and much of its philosophical content relate to the supreme yearning within Satan to achieve salvation. The book's main contribution to Faustian literature is the introduction of the concept that above all other people it is Satan who most truly believes in the Gospel — and yet he is forbidden to ever partake of it.
7988684	/m/026mm4f	Chloe Does Yale				 Chloe Is a typical college student. She participates in campus traditions, tries to have some fun between all the tedious coursework of the Ivy League, and is active in the campus newspaper. Her notorious column addresses the dating dilemmas all coeds face and draws much interest. That’s what any young writer wants, right? Not in this case. After dishing the details of her most recent dates or the lack of activity in her love life Chloe finds that men are often intimidated by the possibility that their endeavors may end up in the Yale Daily News. She doesn’t find herself lonely, as there is plenty going on to keep her attention elsewhere. But when a “cybercrush” evolves from her countless online critics its no surprise that Chloe lets herself become engrossed with this developing relationship.
7989624	/m/026mn42	Moon face	Jack London			 The story follows the unnamed protagonist and his irrational hatred of John Claverhouse, a man with a "moon-face". The protagonist clearly states that his hatred of him is irrational, saying: "Why do we not like him? Ah, we do not know why; we know only that we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I with John Claverhouse." The protagonist becomes obsessed with Claverhouse, hating his face, his laugh, his entire life. The protagonist observes that Claverhouse engages in illegal fishing with dynamite and hatches a scheme to kill Claverhouse. The protagonist teaches a dog, Bellona, to do one thing and one thing only, retrieval, with emphasis on water retrieving and taking the stick back to the thrower no matter where they were. Claverhouse is presented with Bellona before his upcoming trout fishing trip. The protagonist observes from a distance with glee as Claverhouse lights a stick of dynamite and throws it into the water. Bellona, trained to retrieve, fetches the explosive. Claverhouse runs from the dog in futility until "just as she caught up, he in full stride, and she leaping with nose at his knee, there was a sudden flash, a burst of smoke, a terrific detonation, and where man and dog had been the instant before there was naught to be seen but a big hole in the ground." The death is ruled an accident while engaged in illegal fishing. The protagonist takes pride in killing Claverhouse with no mess or brutality and lives in peace.
7990163	/m/026mnq9	The Witch Hunter	Bernard Knight		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The novel sees Devon's first county coroner, Sir John de Wolf, investigating the sudden death of a wealthy guild-master and, although he is convinced the death has natural causes, the victim's widow is convinced that her husband has been done to death by an evil spell. Unsatisfied by Sir John's efforts, she embarks on a campaign to rid the region of its 'cunning women' leading to a hysteria (foreshadowing later witch-hunts, such as the European Inquisitions and the Salem witch trials) in which a number of women are persecuted and even executed. When the Crowner's Welsh mistress Nesta is accused, Sir John is forced to step up his investigations to catch the culprits before she too faces the noose.
7994005	/m/026mtbv	Warsworn				 Warsworn continues off from where the first novel ended. Lara and Kier are travelling to Kier's home in order to officially announce Lara as the warprize.
8000237	/m/026n10s	Vlad the Drac				 The story begins with Paul and Judy Stone, along with their parents, on a coach tour in the mountains of Romania. As they explore and play in the snow, they come across a baby vampire who was asleep underneath a stone Paul fell on. Astonished that the vampire is harmless and fluent in English, Paul and Judy learn that the vampire is in fact a vegetarian who faints at the sight of blood, which he nearly does after seeing Paul's bloody knee. Before the coach can leave, the vampire begs Paul and Judy to take him with them, which they reluctantly do. After the coach arrives at their hotel, Paul and Judy hide the vampire from their parents, and immediately think up a name for their new friend: Vlad, which the vampire happily accepts. Vlad also reveals that he has a strange diet, which includes a love for certain chemicals like washing-up liquid and bars of soap. He also tells them the story of his Great Uncle Ghitza, a feared vampire even by Dracula himself, who tragically met his end by accidentally strangling himself to death with a telephone wire, which he had been trying to rip out at the time. Paul, Judy and Vlad safely arrive back in England without revealing Vlad to their parents. But looking after Vlad brings many problems, such as Paul and Judy having to spend most of their pocket money on soap and washing-up liquid. One day, Vlad drinks the contents of a bottle of washing-up liquid, only to fall ill because of the lemon essence in it, but Judy manages to make him better with a drop of medicine. After returning home from school one day, while their parents are still out (Mr Stone is a violinist, and Mrs Stone is a doctor), Paul and Judy find that Vlad has been up to mischief, especially after they forbade him to explore the house while they were out. They find the kitchen covered in blood, and a proud Vlad tells them that he has apparently devoured the Milkman, the Window Cleaner and Gasman. Paul and Judy panic, until they find a broken bottle of tomato ketchup in the bin. Furious at Vlad, Paul and Judy shut him up in Judy's room for a day. A few days later, Paul and Judy return home to find Vlad has wandered around again, only this time they see him lying down in butter, with an empty bottle of sherry beside him. Vlad tells them he had been taking medicine for an upset stomach, but Paul and Judy realize that he mistook the sherry for the medicine and is now drunk. That night, Vlad comes to Judy with an upset stomach, and Judy angrily tells him that he has a hangover for drinking too much sherry. Embarrassed, Vlad vows never to wander the house again. After seeing the television schedule on Friday, Vlad notices a film entitled The Curse of the Vampire, which he begs the children to allow him to watch. Luckily, the parents are going out that evening, which allows them to watch the movie and go to bed before they return. However, when the scary scenes of the film start, Vlad hides under a pillow, unable to watch any longer, and begs the children to take him to bed. That night, Vlad comes to Judy and complains about a nightmare he had about the film. Judy allows Vlad to sleep with her. One day, after Paul and Judy come home early due to bad weather, Vlad learns to fly, much to his delight. Then, Mr Stone comes home with a box of ice cream and two tickets to a football match, to which he is going to take Paul. But after Mr Stone is out of earshot, Vlad begs Paul to take him to the football match, and Paul accepts. However, on the day of the match, Mr Stone and Paul come home earlier than expected, beaten and battered. Paul appears to be in very deep trouble for bad behaviour, when in secret it was Vlad who unintentionally got Paul into trouble by using racist language with a group of Scotsmen, and shouting "Up the Arsenal". While Paul and Vlad's friendship appears to have ended, Judy speaks to Paul and asks him to give Vlad another chance. Reluctantly, Paul forgives Vlad. It's Christmas time, and Paul and Judy are preparing for the celebrations. By now, Paul has long been forgiven by his father. For Christmas, Paul and Judy get a puppy, and Vlad gets a book titled The Dracula Legend, although he is still scared of the puppy. During the holidays, Gran and Aunt Margot (Mrs Stone's mother and sister) come to visit, but both get mysteriously bitten on the ankle. Immediately deducing that the puppy is the culprit, Mr Stone and Paul take the puppy back to the pet shop, but Judy knows that Vlad was behind it, and he confesses, claiming that eventually the puppy would have harmed or killed him. When Vlad discovers a bottle of Anti-V-Powder (anti-vermin) in Paul's room, he immediately deduces that it is meant for him (anti-vlad or anti-vampire). To cheer him up, Judy makes a bowstring hat for him, but Paul, still furious about the puppy, laughs at and ridicules Vlad. But after Judy talks sternly to Paul about Vlad's point of view, Paul feels sorry for Vlad and makes it up by giving him an Action Man toy helmet. One day, Paul, Judy and their parents plan to go to an airshow, and Vlad asks them to take him. At first reluctant for what happened at the football match, Paul and Judy agree, and to their relief, Vlad behaves himself and doesn't say a word. A few days later, while coming home from school, Paul and Judy are told by a neighbour that there is loud music and strange noises coming from their house. Knowing that it's Vlad, they say that their father is composing music for a war film, and once inside their house, they see Vlad running up and down the keys of the piano, which is making the noise. They tell Vlad off, but allow him to practise his aerobics on the closed piano. Almost a year has passed since the trip to Romania, and Judy decides to take Vlad to school with her one day, under the condition that he stay silent. But in a classroom, when the teacher, Miss Fairfax, notices Judy writing an essay about vampires, she starts to knock the subject down by telling Judy that vampires don't exist. Too much for him to handle, Vlad flies onto the desk and scolds Miss Fairfax, causing her to faint. Judy and Paul now realize that their secret has come to an end, for their parents are surely going to find out. That evening, Mr and Mrs Stone receive a phone call from the school headmaster about Vlad, which Mr Stone angrily scoffs, but decides to ask the children anyway. Then, it happens: Vlad finally reveals himself to Mr and Mrs Stone, who are shocked but fascinated to meet the friendly little vampire. Mrs Stone then makes a plan with Vlad to make him famous: which would consist of Vlad returning to Romania and allowing many people to visit him. Excited, Vlad packs his things straight away. The day of Vlad's departure arrives, and he leaves for Romania after bidding farewell to his friends. Two years later, the Stones re-visit Romania, and find that Vlad is now living in Count Dracula's castle, has met a female vampire (Mrs Vlad), and started a family, naming his children after his loved ones (his first daughter named Judy; his first son named Paul; his second daughter named Mum; his second son named Dad; and his third son named Ghitza). They also see that Vlad's piano running skills have improved, now that he knows how to play Chopin's Revolutionary, a piece Mr Stone never learned. At the end, in a private moment, Vlad tells Judy that he has always liked her more than Paul (like a son loving his mother more than his father), and he gives her a tin of furniture polish marked X-Vlad.
8001753	/m/026n378	They're Playing Our Song	Marvin Hamlisch			 Act I Top pop music composer Vernon Gersch, hoping to find a new collaborator, meets offbeat Sonia Walsk, who has already had some success writing lyrics and is in awe of his accomplishments, at his luxury Manhattan apartment. She is surprised that his Oscar is so light, and Vernon quips, "They're chocolate inside." He is aloof and focused, while she is disorganized and distracted, but Vernon has already written music to one of Sonia's lyrics, and they decide to forge ahead. Sonia, frazzled by her break up with lover Leon, arrives a day late for their first work session. When they begin, she tells Vernon they should get to know each other on a personal level in order for their work to gel, and they decide to have dinner at "Le Club." Sonia, who has been trying to ease Leon's anguish, is late yet again, and the evening begins badly. She and Vernon argue, then dance in an effort to calm down. The two settle down to enjoy the evening, and they hear their own songs being played over the sound system. Another work session, in which the two really don't listen to each other, follows, but Vernon convinces Sonia to join him for a romantic weekend at a Long Island beach house. The trip to the island in Vernon's small sports car is fraught with engine trouble, calls to Leon, and arguments. They finally arrive at the house, but a phone call from Leon threatens the romantic mood. Determined to concentrate on Vernon, Sonia tells Leon that she can't help him and hangs up. Act II It's a week later and Vernon is suffering from insomnia. Sonia manipulates her way into his apartment by telling him she has no place to stay since Leon is back living at her place. Sonia and Vernon's romance and collaboration seems successful for a while, but the relationship begins to crumble because of her inability to send her ex-boyfriend away. Also, away from his piano, Vernon is a bundle of neuroses and unable to express his deepest feelings. After some psychologizing about the difficulties of living and working together, the pair split up at a recording session. A few months later, while Vernon is in a Los Angeles hospital, Sonia arrives unexpectedly with a tiny red child's piano as a get-well gift. Months later, both have separately come to the realization that, despite their differences, they are better together. Vernon arrives at Sonia's apartment in New York to tell her that he wants to try again. She agrees, and they reconcile with a kiss.
8001792	/m/026n3bc	A Midsummer Tempest	Poul Anderson	1974	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Prince Rupert is taken by the Roundheads; held captive at a country house, he falls in love with his captor's niece, Jennifer. One of his troopers, Will Fairweather, followed him to the house where he was held captive; with the help of Jennifer, Will brings him to Oberon and Titania, who offer magical aid. Rupert and Jennifer exchange magic rings that will aid them as long as they are true to each other. Rupert sets out with Will to find the books that Prospero sank, in order to aid King Charles. Rupert, fleeing Roundheads, finds refuge in a magical inn, The Old Phoenix, which proves to be a nexus between parallel worlds. Inside the tavern, he meets Valeria Matuchek, who is from an alternate history twentieth-century America. (Originally, the character had been a child in Anderson's Operation Chaos and a teenager in its sequel, Operation Luna, but is now an adult.) Holger Carlsen is another guest, born in a world where the Matter of France is history, and later trapped in "our own" twentieth-century America (the hero of Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions). Valeria explains what will happen in the English Civil War in "our" timeline, including the king's execution, strengthening Rupert's determination to change events here. He finds a Spanish ship that will transport him; it is carrying an ambassador and his wife. Jennifer's Puritan uncle discovers her on her return, when she resolves to use the ring to find Rupert. She is brought, captive, to a port, where the ring enables her to steal a boat and set sail. The ambassador's wife uses a magic potion to seduce Rupert, and the rings fail. Rupert cannot find his way to the island, and Jennifer is stranded at sea. Despairing, Rupert takes to the library at Milan to try to work out where to find the island and books. Jennifer's plight becomes desperate from thirst, but Ariel (from The Tempest) finds her and brings her to the island. Rupert works out the location, and Jennifer and he are reconciled. They retrieve the books and magically bear them back to England. Charles I has taken up a position near Glastonbury Tor for reasons he does not understand. Rupert attempts the magic; Will Fairweather is possessed by a spirit of England and stirs up the magic of the land. The Roundheads are defeated, and Charles I wins the English Civil War. At the Old Phoenix, Valeria believes that even if "romantic reactionaries" like Charles I won the English Civil War here, there is still the prospect of technological advance in North America. However, the fairies believed differently—they supported the Cavalier cause to delay the disenchantment of this world. Rupert and Jennifer return the rings to Oberon and Titania, and retire to a peaceful married life.
8002397	/m/026n42t	The Doctor is Sick	Anthony Burgess	1960	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The "doctor" of the title is Edwin Spindrift, Ph.D., an unhappily married professor of linguistics who has been sent home from Burma to England suffering from a mysterious brain ailment. While Edwin is confined to a neurological ward, undergoing a battery of diagnostic tests, Mrs. Spindrift amuses herself with some disreputable new friends at the surrounding pubs. Sometimes, to Edwin's distress, she sends these friends to keep her husband company during visiting hours, rather than come herself. Most of the novel is a dream sequence: while anesthetised for brain surgery, Edwin's anxiety over his wife and the company she keeps turns into a slightly surrealistic fantasy in which Edwin leaves the hospital and encounters his wife's friends, with whom he has various adventures.
8002757	/m/026n4nc	How the García Girls Lost Their Accents	Julia Álvarez	1991	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The novel is written episodically and in reverse-chronological order. It consists of fifteen chapters divided in three parts: Part I (1989&ndash;1972), Part II (1970&ndash;1960), and Part III (1960&ndash;1956). Part I is centered around the adult lives of the García sisters; Part II describes their immigration to the United States and their adolescence, and Part III recollects their early childhood on the island, in the Dominican Republic. The Garcías are one of the Dominican Republic's prominent and wealthy families, tracing their roots back to the Conquistadores. Carlos García, a physician and the head of the family, is the youngest of 35 children his father sired during his lifetime, both in and out of wedlock. Laura, Carlos's wife, also comes from an important family: her father is a factory owner and a diplomat with the United Nations. Many members of the extended family live as neighbours in large houses on an expansive compound with numerous servants. In the early 1950s the García girls are born. Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofía enjoy a happy, protected childhood and are brought up by their parents, aunts and uncles to preserve the family traditions. Their countless cousins serve them as playmates. The first part of the novel establishes Yolanda at the centre of the story as she narrates the opening and closing chapter: "Antojos" and "The Rudy Elmenhurst Story", respectively. In third person, Yolanda's return to Dominican Republic as an adult is described in the context of a family birthday party and a road trip. Their unity as sisters as "The Four Girls" is introduced in the third chapter, which is a communally narrated. They celebrate Carlos, the patriarch's, birthday, and Sofía introduces her baby son to his grandfather, helping to repair the father and daughter's relationship somewhat. During Sofía's chapter, "The Kiss", it is revealed that Carlos discovered a packet of love letters addressed to his daughter, enraging him and leading to a conflict which ends in Sofía running away to her German lover. A major focus in this section is the romantic relationships between the four sisters and their partners. Sofía is married to a "world-class chemist"; Carla and Sandra are in long-term relationships; and Yolanda is in love with her psychiatrist and has previously broken up with a man named John. Part I closes with "The Rudy Elmenhurst Story", narrated by Yolanda. This describes Yolanda's first real relationship, and the tension between her upbringing and American relationships: "I would never find someone who would understand my particular mix of Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and American styles." Part II details the family's collective experience of living in the United States as immigrants. The girls first attend a Catholic school in New York and later boarding school, and assimilate fairly well to their new environments, although meeting with a few set-backs along the way. Their time in the US begins with the opening chapter, "A Regular Revolution", and delivers the girls' (collective) opinion that "We didn't feel we had the best the United States had to offer. We had only second-hand stuff, rental houses in one redneck Catholic neighborhood after another". While during their first few months in New York they regularly pray to God that they will soon be able to return to their homeland, they quickly start appreciating the advantages of living in a "free country" so that even being sent back to the Dominican Republic for the summer becomes a form of punishment for them. A major turning point in the novel comes with Laura's discovery of a bag of Sofía's marijuana, and her subsequent punishment of being removed from her boarding school and forced to spend a year in the Dominican Republic with family. This event is representative of the girls' transformation into Americans and away from the Dominican culture and Laura and Carlos' conflicted relationship with the assimilation. Laura "still did lip service to the old ways", and Carlos makes a point of educating the accents out of the girls, thus showing the tension between the cultures. Carla becomes the victim of racism in the third chapter, "Trespass", with school boys telling her to "Go back to where you came from, you dirty spic!" Later she is subjected to a child molester who masturbates in his car while pulling up at the curb and talking lecherously to her through the open window. The second part of the novel finishes with the chapter "Floor Show", in which the García family goes to a Spanish restaurant and Sandra witnesses the host's wife amorously attempting to kiss her father on the way to the bathroom. Overall, Part II presents the unexpected aspects of living in the United States and becoming Americans, and explores the tensions that develop with the immigrant experience. The five chapters in Part III, the concluding section, focus on the García family's early years in the Dominican Republic, and are the most political of the novel. The first chapter, "The Blood of the Conquistadores", opens with an account of two of Trujillo's agents coming to the family home looking for Carlos. His revolutionary politics and work against the Chapitas made the family a target, and this chapter explicitly details the danger of their situation. The issues in past chapters appear superficial in comparison to the life-or-death nature of the conflicts that the Garcías face earlier in their lives. The family escapes persecution, but is forced to emigrate immediately, establishing their motive for relocating to New York. As Part III progresses, the narrative switches to describing their upper-class life on the island, and filling details of the lifestyle the family was born into. The story of the voodoo practicing Haitian family maid is elucidated: she escaped Trujillo's massacre of Haitians and came to work for Laura, although much of her family was not so lucky. In the last three chapters Carla, Yolanda and Sandra narrate stories from their childhood surrounded by the extended family, and the girls' relationship with the United States begins. "An American Surprise" tells of their early ideas of New York City, "where it was winter and the snow fell from heaven to earth like the Bible's little pieces of manna bread." The reader realizes that the innocence of childhood and idealized vision of their soon-to-be adopted country, given the reverse-chronological narration of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, are left behind with the García's home in the Dominican Republic.
8004325	/m/026n6y_	La Symphonie Pastorale	André Gide			 It is about a pastor who adopts a young blind girl whom his daughter, Charlotte, names "Gertrude". The title refers to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony (also known as the Pastoral Symphony) which the pastor takes Gertrude to hear. It also refers to the pastor's own symphony with Gertrude. His wife, Amélie, resents Gertrude because the pastor dedicates more attention to Gertrude than to their five children. She tries to prompt him to a recognition of the true nature of his feelings for the young woman in his care. Her ability to "see" this is contrasted with the "blindness" of the pastor in this regard and the reader is invited to judge him on his intellectual dishonesty. As a religious man, the pastor takes the Bible very seriously and tries to preserve Gertrude's innocence by protecting her from the concept of sin. Because the pastor is really the main character in Gertrude's limited world, she feels herself to be in love with him and to some extent he has similar feelings toward her. When his eldest son Jacques, who is about the same age as Gertrude, asks to marry her the pastor becomes jealous and refuses despite the fact that Jacques is obviously in love with her. Gertrude eventually gets an operation to repair her eyesight and, having regained the ability to see, realizes that things are not as beautiful as the pastor made them seem. She attempts suicide by jumping into a river, but is rescued and contracts pneumonia. She realizes that the pastor is an old man, and the man she pictured when she was blind was Jacques. She tells the pastor this shortly before her death.
8007692	/m/026nbhf	Human genetic history		2002		 According to the recent single origin hypothesis, human ancestors originated in Africa, and eventually made their way out to the rest of the world. Analysis of the Y chromosome is one of the methods used in tracing the history of early humans. Thirteen genetic markers on the Y-chromosome differentiate populations of human beings. It is believed, on the basis of genetic evidence, that all human beings in existence now descend from one single man who lived in Africa about 60,000 years ago. The earliest groups of humans are believed to find their present-day descendants among the San people, a group that is now found in western southern Africa. The San are smaller than the Bantu. They have lighter skins, more tightly curled hair, and they share the epicanthal fold with the people of East Asia, such as the Chinese and Japanese. Southern and eastern Africa are believed to originally have been populated by people akin to the San. Since that early time much of their range has been taken over by the Bantu. Skeletal remains of these ancestral people are found in Paleolithic sites in Somalia and Ethiopia. There are also peoples in east Africa today who speak substantially different languages that nevertheless share the archaic characteristics of the San language, its distinctive repertoire of click and pop sounds. These are the only languages in the entire world that use these sounds in speech. As humans migrated out of Africa, they all carried a genetic feature on the Y chromosome known as M168. The first wave of migration out of Africa stayed close to the oceans shores, tracing a band along the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean including parts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and into South East Asia, down into what is now Indonesia, and eventually reaching Australia. This branch of the human family developed a new marker, M130. This first wave appears to have left dark-skinned people along its path, including isolated groups of dark-skinned people in south east Asia such as the aboriginal population of the Andaman Islands (around 400 km off the west coast of Thailand), the Semang of Malaysia, and the Aeta of the Philippines. The second wave of migration took a more northerly course, splitting somewhere in the area around what is now called Syria to sweep to interior Asia, where it split several more times in Central Asia, north of Afghanistan. The lineages that flowed into Central Asia carry M9. Other markers were added after the migration paths went on in several different directions from Central Asia. From Central Asia, a small group migrated towards the northeast, following reindeer. These were the Chukchi people, a few of whom still live a nomadic lifestyle today. An even smaller group, estimated at no more than 20 Chukchis, crossed what is now the Bering Sea approximately 13,000 years ago during the last glacial period, and migrated into North America. They are the ancestors of Native Americans, and 800 years later, they had reached as far as South America. The African diaspora is believed to have begun some 50,000 years ago, long enough for many changes to have occurred in humans remaining in Africa. The genetic trends reported involve humans who left Africa, and their genetic histories. The diversity found outside of Africa may well have been accentuated since populations migrating to new hunting grounds would rarely have had individuals moving backwards into previously settled regions. But within Africa, isolation would have been geographically aided primarily by the Sahara Desert, leaving people in areas not separated by the desert to travel and migrate relatively freely.
8008903	/m/026ncts	Le Bleu du ciel	Georges Bataille	1957	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Henri Troppmann goes from his sick-bed in Paris to Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War in time to witness the first General Strike of the Catalans against the Spanish. He is torn between three different women, all of whom arrive in the city at that time. One of them, Lazare, is a Marxist Jew and political activist, who is preparing herself for prospective torture and martyrdom at the hand of General Francisco Franco's troops if she is captured. "Dirty" (or Dorothea) is an incontinent, unkempt alcoholic who repeatedly has sex with Troppmann. Xénie is a young woman who had previously nursed him to health during his violent fever in Paris. The novel is introduced by a scene of extreme degeneracy in a London hotel room, followed by the narrator's description of a dreamlike encounter with 'the Commendatore' (English: "the Commander"), who in the Don Juan myth is the father of one of Don Juan's victims, and whose statue returns at the end of the story to drag Don Juan down to hell for his sins. Troppmann has to choose between the abject Dirty and her associations of sex, disease, excrement and decay, the politically engaged Lazare, and her ethical values of commitment, resistance and endurance, and Xénie, who has outlived her usefulness. While looking at Lazare beneath a tree, Troppmann realises that he respects her for her social conscience, but also sees her as a rat, and chooses Dirty instead, whilst sending Xénie off with a friend, who is subsequently killed in the street. He travels with Dirty to Treves, the home-town of Karl Marx, where the two copulate in the mud on a cliff overlooking a candle-lit graveyard. They see a Hitler Youth group, lending Dirty a vision of the war to come and their probable deaths. Troppmann leaves her to return to Paris.
8010956	/m/026nglh	You Can't Go Home Again	Thomas Wolfe	1940	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 George Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town, he is shaken by the force of outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and life-long friends feel naked and exposed by what they have seen in his books, and their fury drives him from his home. Outcast, George Webber begins a search for his own identity. It takes him to New York and a hectic social whirl; to Paris with an uninhibited group of ex-patriots; to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler's shadow. The journey comes full circle when Webber returns to America and rediscovers it with love, sorrow, and hope.
8013965	/m/026nk71	The October Horse	Colleen McCullough	2002-11-07	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book begins with Gaius Julius Caesar's Egyptian campaign in Alexandria, his final battles with the Republicans led by Metellus Scipio, Cato the Younger, Titus Labienus and the brothers Pompeius in Africa and Spain, and ultimately Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March by Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius and the Liberators. The latter stages of The October Horse chronicle the death of Cicero, the emergence of Octavian and his battles with Mark Antony, and conclude with the Battle of Philippi. The title of the book comes from a peculiar chariot race in Rome on the Ides of October, after which the right-hand horse of the winning team was sacrificed to the Roman gods. Then two teams, one from the Subura and the other from the Via Sacra, competed for the Horse's head. Julius Caesar, figuratively the best war horse in Rome, represents the October Horse in this novel.
8015424	/m/026nm2k	Mary Reilly	Valerie Martin	1990	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 The novel is about a young girl working at the home of Dr. Henry Jekyll who falls in love with her master. Jekyll's assistant, Edward Hyde, is generally considered her nemesis. This however is often debated amongst readers.
8015436	/m/026nm2x	Two for the Lions	Lindsey Davis	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 As part of his attempts to earn enough money to buy himself into the upper middle ranks, and thus make his relationship with Helena Justina respectable, Marcus Didius Falco has offered his services to Vespasian as a tax collector during the 'great Census' of AD 73. Unfortunately, his plan has several flaws, one major one being his need to take on Anacrites as a partner. Whilst conducting the audit of two gladitorial training schools, Falco stumbles upon the apparent murder of a star man-eating lion and an apparent rivalry between the schools. When a gladiator also ends up dead, Falco takes on the investigation, one which leads him to Tripolitania. To add to the confusion, Helena's younger brother, Camillus Justinus, has eloped with the betrothed of his older brother, Aelianus. They too have made their way to North Africa, drawn by Justinus' quest to find Silphium, an expensive herb already deemed extinct.
8016461	/m/026nnk9	The Emigrants	Vilhelm Moberg	1949	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story takes place in the 1840s up to 1850. The first part of the novel describes the hardships faced by rural families in Sweden. Karl Oskar Nilsson and his wife, Kristina, own a farm in Ljuder Socken in Småland. They have four children and work hard to make a living, but the poor harvests lead to famine, a catalyst for the beginnings of emigration to the United States in search of a better life. Karl Oskar and his brother Robert want to go, but Kristina doesn't want to leave her home country, knowing that she will never see the rest of their family again. But after the death of their oldest child, she accepts her husband's plans when she realizes that they are in just as much danger from their lives in Sweden as on the big sea and in a New World. They pack up all their belongings and book passage in a group with others from their parish. The characters illustrate some of the motives that prompted people to leave Sweden in the 19th century. The travelers include: * Karl-Oskar, Kristina and their four children - seeking to escape poverty and famine and finding a place where their work pays off. * Robert, Karl Oskar's adventurous brother - landless, as the second son of a farmer whose holding is too small to sub-divide. He seeks escape from the harsh conditions of hired farm help. * Danjel Andreasson with family, Kristina's uncle, who had been banished from the country due to his religious "delusions". The state Lutheran church was very powerful, and dissent, even in the simple form of home Bible study, was not tolerated. They bring their farmhand Arvid, who is a friend of Robert. * Jonas Petter Albrektsson, who seeks to escape from an unhappy marriage at a time when divorce was not possible. * Ulrika of Västergöhl, a former prostitute, looking to leave her past behind and start afresh with her daughter Elin. The second part of the book tells how they board the ship in Karlshamn, and then how the life goes on during the ten weeks they spend on board - battling sea-sickness and scurvy, before finally reaching New York City in midsummer of 1850. sv:Utvandrarna (bok)
8016542	/m/026nnnd	Unto a Good Land	Vilhelm Moberg	1952	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This novel describes the journey of the Emigrants from New York City, New York to Taylors Falls, Minnesota. They settle at the lake Ki-Chi-Saga (now Lake Chisago) in what is today Chisago County, and start building their home. Robert, Karl-Oskar's brother, takes off to California with Arvid in search for gold. sv:Nybyggarna
8016548	/m/026nnp2	The Settlers	Vilhelm Moberg	1956	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book tells about the group's new life in America where most of them now have started to feel at home. It also follows Robert and Arvid's journey on the California Trail.
8016562	/m/026nnq3	The Last Letter Home	Vilhelm Moberg	1959	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This novel tells about Karl-Oskar and Kristina in their late life and eventual death. The novel has a slightly more reflective perspective than the other three, and it follows events such as The American Civil War and the Sioux Outbreak of 1862 through the perspective of the settlers.
8019609	/m/026ns32	The Fountain				 In the winter of 1535, an army of Spanish soldiers is searching for the Tree of Life. Father Avila feels that their long journey is about to serve its purpose when he notices that a symbol on a blade he is carrying matches a symbol drawn in the sky, as well as on the ground. He presumes this must be the location of the Mayan temple that houses the Tree of Life. The soldiers accompanying him are reluctant and feel that his theories will only add to the loss of soldiers they have had. Captain Tomas Verde is seen holding a gold ring. He kisses the ring and says to "prepare the men." The soldiers begin their assault on the temple only to be met by the Mayan warriors who are protecting the temple. Father Avila advances up the temple and is met by a Mayan priest who slowly emerges from the temple. He grabs Avila's throat, takes his knife and cuts out his heart and bites it. Captain Tomas progresses up the temple stairs to meet the Mayan Priest. He tells the soldiers that all they must do is drink from the tree and no one can harm them. Tomas and the Mayan priest stand ready to fight, when the priest takes his knife and stabs Tomas deep in the shoulder; Tomas is about to die. In the winter of 2463, a man is meditating on a tree. He and the tree are in a sphere on the edge of a nebula that is surrounding a dying star. The nebula is named Xibalba. The man is young "except for his wound." He grabs sap from the tree to spread across the wound. It never heals. A woman appears to the man, a woman that "never leaves" but is also never there. The woman tells him the tree is dying and if he continues to use it, they will die together. The man says he will not use the tree anymore. He says that once they reach the nebula, the energy will make the tree bloom again and they will both live. He hungers for the tree's sap and indulges himself. He begins meditating. He explains the tattoos on his arms. One ring for every year alive, just like the rings of the tree. He says he has tried to seed the tree to no avail. He goes to drink from the tree and discovers it has died. He screams in frustration before noticing particles from the nebula's edge. He thinks he is close enough to the nebula to save the tree. He uses a knife to exit the sphere. The woman tries to stop him and tells him the tree is already dead and that he cannot save it. Tom falls off the bubble and drifts away from the tree as the woman tells him to "remember your promise." In the winter of 1997, Thomas Creo meets a woman named Izzi and they share an intimate night under the stars. During sex, Izzi says that she wants to be with him, "together, forever." The story cuts to the year 2005. Dr. Thomas Creo is fatigued, sitting at a computer. He is about to perform surgery on a monkey that has a tumor. His colleagues tell him the surgery is canceled and they are going to euthanize the animal. Thomas brings up an ethnobotanical compound from Guatemala that he insists be injected into the animal. He opens his text and points to a tree. Against his colleagues' objections, the monkey is injected with the sap. Lilly, a fellow doctor, enters asking how Izzi is. Izzi, Thomas' wife, has cancer. Lilly tells Thomas he should be spending time with Izzi instead of working. Lilly scolds Thomas for injecting the compound into the monkey. Thomas goes home to find Izzi outside looking at the sky. She tells Thomas she is looking at a Nebula called Xibalba. She explains that it is where the Mayans believed dead souls go to be reborn. Thomas asks how she knows this and she says it's part of her book. He gives Izzi a bath and notices she can't feel temperature changes. He worries and puts her to bed. She stays up to write more of her book when Thomas' office calls asking him to come in. In the office, he learns the tumor is the same but the monkey neural activity has increased. He goes back home to find Izzi asleep and lies down next to her. He awakes abruptly and screams for her. He feels his shoulder as if he is in pain. He finds a note that says Izzi has gone to the museum. Thomas meets her in the museum. She tells him about the tree of life. She explains how the first Mayan created the tree by sacrificing himself. The tree burst from his stomach, his head became Xibalba and the roots became Earth. Izzi collapses in the museum and is brought to the hospital. Thomas leaves Izzi to work on the monkey whose condition has improved despite the tumor still being present. Lilly sees him in the lab and yells at him for not being with Izzi. He returns to her and she hands him the book. The title is "The Fountain" and she asks him to finish it. Thomas picks up the book and begins to read it. The first page of the book tells the same story as the 16th century story arc. In the winter of 1532, a Franciscan friar is being tortured by the Grand Inquisitor. The inquisitor wants to know what was found in Chetumal. The friar says he only answers to the queen before passing out. The queen enters, clutching a gold ring around her neck. The inquisitor flees the room and slips on a puddle of blood. He looks up and sees the body of a Dominican friar and notices the knife. The knife with the symbol that leads to the Tree of Immortality. Captain Creo enters and captures the inquisitor whose name is Silecio. The Queen asks what the church wants and Silecio responds that they want the land that Spain acquired recently, Chetumal. She says the only thing there is jungles and savages, but she plans to protect all God's creatures, even the savages of Chetumal. The queen excuses herself and summons Captain Creo to her bedroom. They share an intimate moment. The queen tells Creo that she gave the church the land of Chetumal and brings in Father Avila to ask him what the church wanted there. He takes the Mayan knife out of his cloak and explains that the knife was taken from a Mayan Priest. The words on the knife describe a Mayan City, that houses the birthplace of life. Silecio says that the tree is life and life belongs to God and therefore he is the owner of the tree, not Spain. Creo charges at the Dominican friars until Silecio grabs the queen and places the knife to her neck. He says that Creo and his army must join the church in order to spare the queen's life. He refuses and Silecio calls for the executioner to chop off the queen's head. The executioner enters and just when he is about to strike the queen, he reveals himself as Ariel. The queen then grabs the blade from Silecio and murders him. She tells Creo that they won today's battle but the Dominican church will be back again. She says the only way out of this is in Chetumal. The queen gives Creo the golden ring and tells him to return and release Spain from bondage. He takes the ring and says he will return with love eternal. In 2005, Thomas realizes Izzi has died. He becomes enraged and is restrained by other doctors. He runs out to the hall screaming that he has a new enemy: death. Lilly asks Tom if he heard the good news. She explains that the monkey's tumor is gone. He becomes enraged again and runs to Izzi's bedside. Lilly screams at him and tells him it's over, Izzi is gone. He weeps and cries "It's not too late." In 2463, Tom is falling into oblivion screaming "Izzi." He remembers the Mayan Priest about to take his life after stabbing him deep in the shoulder. In 2005, Thomas is reading Izzi's story "The Fountain." It ends, "A dream unfinished." He weeps. He takes Izzi's fountain pen and gives himself a tattoo of a ring around his finger. He sees Lilly who tries to comfort him, telling him that Izzi was not afraid of death. He begins screaming. Death is only a disease to him, a disease that can be cured and pledges to never give up. The story returns to 2463, Tom runs and hugs the woman and screams, "Izzi." He is alone, the woman disappears. He says it's all right, that he understands that all life ends. He meditates and remembers his encounter with the Mayan warrior. The story flashes back to the moment the Mayan priest stabbed his shoulder. The Mayan priest is about to stab Tomas again when he stops and bows. He hands the knife over to Captain Creo. Tomas takes the knife and murders the Mayan priest. He enters the temple and finds the Tree of Life. He stabs the tree and rubs the sap on his wound. He stabs the tree again and drinks its sap. He coughs and flowers emerge from his mouth. He falls to the ground in pain. The gold ring falls from his hands. He lies on the ground and his stomach is spread wide open, flowers begin to spill from his intestines. He becomes the tree. In 2463, Tom places the ring over the tattoo that he first gave himself. He hears the woman's voice again, "Are you afraid?" He responds, "A little, but it's all right." He then jumps from the sphere and into the depths of space. Xibalba explodes and the tree blooms again. The woman is standing next to the lush flowering tree. She takes a seed from it. The story cuts to 1997 and we see Thomas enter his bedroom and lay next to Izzi. She asks if he will stay and he responds "Yes, forever." The story cuts to the woman from the tree and the seed she carries. She walks in the snow to the grave of "Izzi Creo." She buries the seed in the snow next to her grave. We see Xibalba explode.
8020182	/m/026nsrc	The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma				 Nicodemus Dyzma is a small-town man who comes to the Polish capital from the Eastern provinces (known as "Kresy") in search of work. While walking the streets of Warsaw, he finds a lost invitation to a party reception. Hoping for a free meal, he decides to use it since he owns a tuxedo. At the reception, he befriends a Member of Parliament and wins the hearts of guests with his attitude. He is introduced to a wealthy landowner by the name of Kunicki, a former con artist, who is so impressed by Dyzma that he offers him a job as superintendent of his country estate. At the estate, Dyzma meets Kunicki's wife, Nina, who quickly falls in love with him. Soon Dyzma takes control of all affairs of the estate and starts to climb the social and political ladder. He is offered a series of prestigious appointments; however, he is also forced to hide his past from the prying eyes of his adversaries and the general public.
8025464	/m/026nyq0	Talley's Folly	Lanford Wilson			 Talley's Folly is the story of one night in the lives of two unlikely sweethearts, Matt Friedman and Sally Talley. The one-act play takes place in a dilapidated boathouse on the Talley farm in Missouri. It is the Fourth of July in 1944. The play opens with Matt directly addressing the audience, telling them that the play will take ninety-seven minutes and he hopes to capture and relate his story properly in that amount of time. Taking the time to point out some staging elements, he tells the audience that the gazebo-like structure next to him is a Victorian boathouse, which has unfortunately fallen into disrepair. While on vacation in Lebanon, Missouri the previous summer, Matt met Sally and has sent her a letter every day since. Though the single reply from Sally gave him no hope for romantic encouragement, he has bravely returned to ask her to marry him. Sally arrives at the boathouse and is in disbelief that Matt has shown up uninvited, even though he had written her that he planned to come for the holiday. Matt's arrival has created quite a stir in Sally's conservative Protestant household, where a Jewish man is not welcomed easily, especially when his intentions are to court their daughter, eleven years younger than he. Matt's interest in Sally had never waned; once, he drove from his home in St. Louis to the hospital where she worked and waited hours for her, even after being informed that she was not available. The conversation turns to the boathouse structure. Sally tells him it was constructed by her uncle, who built "follies" all over town. Her uncle did only what he wanted to do and Sally considers him the healthiest member of the family for his courage. Eventually, the couple begins to reminisce about the night they met and the time they spent together last summer. Matt takes it as a positive sign that she has changed into a nice dress before coming to see him tonight. Sally's protests do not match her behavior and he pushes forward; she is the most mysterious and intriguing girl he has ever met and he determined quite a while ago to make her his wife. Admitting that he has called Sally's aunt every two weeks during the past year, Matt reveals that he knows Sally was fired from a Sunday school teaching job. Apparently, she had been encouraging the students to read Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class in addition to the Methodist reader. The rise of labor unions was affecting the families of the children in her class and she felt obligated to help educate them. Her unorthodox methods earned her the consternation of the church elders as well as her own family members, who own the garment factory on which the labor issue centered. Turning the tables, Sally tries to glean some information about Matt's background, a subject about which he is very guarded. He finally admits to Sally that he was probably born in Kaunas, Lithuania. His father had been an engineer. In 1911, his father was overheard in a French cafe discussing some work related to a nitrogen bomb. The family was later detained when they were trying to cross the border. Matt's father and older sister were tortured until the French realized that the father had no information of any value to them. In the meantime, the sister had fallen into a coma from which she never awoke. They later went to the German authorities and were again detained. Matt escaped to America through the help of some relatives. Haunted by his childhood grief, Matt vowed never to bring another child into a world that is filled with so much pain. Matt was content with his activities until he met Sally. Now he feels forever changed and hopeful for possibly the first time in his life. Having risked the vulnerability of revealing his background, Matt presses Sally to share why she, a beautiful woman of 31 years, has never married. She characteristically diverts the conversation to economics, which frustrates Matt beyond bearing. Sally finally reveals her disappointment in love many years ago, which makes her reluctant to fall in love again. Sally's family had partnered her with Harley Campbell, whose family was also wealthy. Theirs was to be a match made in heaven, especially for the business interests of the two families. Sally had been a cheerleader and Harley a basketball star. Unfortunately, the families' fortunes waned during the Depression. In addition, Sally was struck with tuberculosis and was sequestered for a long time. A pelvic infection had left her barren and Harley's family would no longer condone their marriage. Matt can't help but comment on the irony of their situation. All last winter he lamented over the fact that he was in love with a girl but could never have children, and now this same girl presents him with the same situation. He believes that an angel has guided his path to her. Sally agrees to marry him and move to the city, and they vow to return to the boathouse every year so they don't ever forget the place where they fell in love.
8029741	/m/026p25f	The Moon by Night	Madeleine L'Engle		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In The Moon by Night (ISBN 0-374-35049-3), Vicky and her family are on a cross-country camping trip, meant to be a transition between their life in rural Thornhill, Connecticut and a very different one in New York City, where Vicky's father, Dr. Wallace Austin, will be doing research. In another big change in Vicky's life, Maggy Hamilton, an orphan who has been living with the Austins since her father's death, goes to live with her legal guardian Elena, who is marrying Vicky's uncle, Douglas Austin. Uncle Douglas and his new family move to Laguna Beach, California, where Vicky's family is to visit them during their travels. The first chapter begins with the wedding of Elena and Douglas. The family's adventures show its differences from contemporary society. Along the way, they meet a teenage gang in Tennessee, help rescue children from a flood in Texas, and find an abandoned baby at a campsite in Utah. Vicky's younger sister Suzy grows emotionally during the trip, from wanting to adopt a fawn near the beginning to her later swift and competent rendering of first aid when another child is injured, despite wrong-headed demands by nearby adults. They see bears several times, and though they always act properly, their peers sometimes do not, with dangerous results. They also encounter anti-U.S. sentiment in a campground in Canada and intimations of the Cold War throughout their journey. Early in the trip, at a Tennessee campground, Vicky meets Zachary Gray, who arrives with his parents in a luxuriously equipped tent trailer pulled by a brand new black station wagon. She finds him charming, handsome and intelligent, but also frightening in his cynicism and recklessness. He pursues her (in person and with notes left behind) at other campgrounds across the country and in Laguna Beach. Vicky enjoys this attention, but the rest of her family dislikes Zach. She resents this, torn between obedience to her family and her growing need for independence. Observing Zachary's paleness and shortness of breath during an interpretive hike in Mesa Verde, Vicky's father, a doctor, deduces that he has a history of rheumatic fever that has damaged his heart. Dr. Austin several times orders the boy to avoid strenuous exercise as he accompanies Vicky and her family in their sightseeing. Late in the trip, at Yellowstone National Park, Vicky meets Andy Ford, another boy who becomes interested in her. Andy is more emotionally stable than Zachary and far more cheerful, but also less exciting. Zachary turns up with his parents at the Austins' next destination, in the Black Ram section of Wyoming, and exhibits jealousy toward Andy. A few hours later, a game of hide and seek ends with Zachary missing. As the Austins search for him, Zachary lures Vicky to a remote mountainside to speak with her privately about Andy. Vicky turns to return to her family, but is unable to do so after an earthquake brings down her side of the mountain in an avalanche. Zachary is trapped between two large rocks with a broken wrist. Vicky comes to terms with her concerns about the precariousness of life and the existence of a loving God, and Zachary promises to take better care of himself. Vicky waits with Zachary until help arrives.
8032513	/m/026p65b	Labyrinth of Reflections	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk"}	 In the late 90s, Dmitry Dibenko, a Russian programmer known for dabbling in mysticism and mind-altering substances, created with a program playing a short movie that would allow him to achieve a new level of awareness during meditations. He dubbed the program Deep, placed it on a webserver and forgot about it. The revolution happened when a simple Ukrainian chap, stayed in office after the work to play his beloved Doom. He watched Dibenko's program, shrugged and launched the game — and fell into it. It seemed to him that it was he running along the corridors, ducking the fiery balls and snarling monsters' mugs. Although he was aware that what he was experiencing could not possible be true, he was unable to break the illusion. Left with no choice but to play the game, he completed all levels. When he finished in morning, the illusion ended and he found himself back in the real world, badly covered with bruises. Realizing that the program effectively fooled its users into thinking that whatever virtual environment they were viewing was as real as the world around them. Furthermore, the environment did not have to be particularly elaborate. Even if the graphics were crude, human subconscious would fill in details and sensations that would enhance the realism. However, they were drawbacks. Because the illusion was so convincing, people who used the Deep program were unable to leave it. Just as that guy needed to finish the game in order to break the illusion, the Deep users needed specially designed exit points that would provided subconscious triggers that facilitated the exit. The leading computer companies quickly seized upon Dibenko's invention to create a cartoonish virtual city that came to be known as Deeptown. Because of the low-tech nature of its graphics, it became available to anyone who had a computer and a dial-up connection. Deeptown gained instant popularity, drawing people from all walks of life and all parts the world. It offered freedom from real-world constraints, which became a style of life and religion of many. But a vast majority of people are unable to leave the Deeptown at will — their subconsciousness prevents them from it. They need free communication with their operational systems which was mostly forbidden, or in most cases proper exit terminals. Along with Deeptown, Deep timers were developed to limit the duration of user's stay, because in the worst-case scenario people became so consumed by Deep illusion that they competely lost awareness that Deeptown was not the real world, and were effectively trapped in the Deep until they died from dehydration. Once the time passed, the timer would deactivate the Deep program. However, it didn't solve the problem, as many users managed to switch off their timers. Around this time, the first Divers emerged, people able to break illusion of the Deep program. This allowed them to help those who were trapped in Deeptown, since they could exit the Deeptown instantly and call for help. This ability also freed them from physical constraints other users were bound by, allowing to perform seemingly impossible feats, survive otherwise crippling injuries and change avatars within seconds. In addition to that, Divers were able to see flaws in Deeptown's programming codes (usually in the form of holes). Thanks to those abilities, Divers found employment as in-house rescuers, corporate saboteurs and security consultants, among others. As their numbers grew, Divers began to organize. They created a Code of Divers, which established a set of principles that guided their behavior. Along with other things, it held up the right to privacy as a fundamental right of all Divers. Another important principle was the prohibition against using their abilities to harm their fellow Divers. If a Diver violated any aspect of the Code, he had to submit to a hearing conducted by the rest of the Diver community and abide by whatever penalty they would decide on. Further violations would incur progressively harsher penalties. By the time the events of the book began, Divers were a strange, but accepted part of Deeptown society. Their powers were subject of speculation by the rest of Deeptown community, which is only furthered by Divers' penchant for secrecy. The first novel is told from the first-person perspective and is told by a diver living in a run-down apartment in St. Petersburg. Like most divers, he has to maintain his identity secret, as divers are a prized commodity. They are able to overcome obstacles that can stop even elite hackers. The diver first demonstrates his ability by walking across a string suspended above a chasm, something no normal human is capable of doing, by leaving the deep and walking across by looking at the monitor (it is much easier, as there is no wind or fear of falling). He is soon located by a strange Man Without a Face and offered a job: he must go into a popular virtual game called the "Labyrinth of Death" to complete a task two other divers started but never completed. In return, he will get Order of Permissiveness that grants its bearer right to do everything he wants within Deeptown. The "Labyrinth of Death" is a massive multiplayer game based on Doom, where the players must battle monsters, zombies, and each other through large levels of a post-alien-invasion city to reach the end. As told by the director of the company that owns and runs the game, the diver must rescue a trapped player, who disabled his exit timer, before his real world body dies of dehydration or starvation. Adopting the nickname Gunslinger (from a Stephen King eponymous novel), the diver goes on a rampage through the "Labyrinth", using his diver ability to return to his own body and use standard keyboard and mouse controls to quickly dispatch enemies. Eventually, the other human players stop crossing his path, as rumors of his skill quickly spread throughout the game. After setting a record on the number of levels beat in a short time, the diver (Gunslinger) saves and leaves the "Labyrinth" only to encounter about a hundred angry players in the exit lobby. All of them are waiting for Gunslinger, but nobody recognizes him without his mask and gear. As he is leaving the lobby, the director of the company calls out and congratulates him on his record. The diver runs out, followed by the angry mob of players, and manages to duck into the nearest "building" - a virtual brothel. There, he looks through the catalog and, to his surprise, sees a near-perfect image of his operating system (rendered as a woman). He goes to the "room" where she is and asks her if he can call her Vicka (the same name he calls his computer). She agrees (after all, it's his fantasy), and they start talking about random things. The diver feels tired and falls asleep in her bed. When they wake up, he asks if he can see her again, to which she initially replies by warning him not to fall in love with a virtual image, as the person wearing it can be completely different. Vika then gives up and tells him to ask for her the next time he comes. The diver returns to the "Labyrinth" and manages to reach the trapped player. Initially, Gunslinger is frustrated when the player refuses to reveal his name or address (real-life location) but is amazed when he finds out that the "Jinx" (as the director called the player) is a crack shot and should have been able to beat the level without a problem. However, as the pair is nearing the exit, they are ambushed by a large group of monsters, and the Jinx is killed. While Gunslinger is trying to figure out what is going on, the two divers employed by the company show up and tell him that something about Jinx makes him unable to continue. One of them even killed the player 13 times within a 5 minute limit, which should have automatically kicked Jinx out but did not. The two divers ask Gunslinger to give them 6 hours to try to get Jinx to the end of the level, after which Gunslinger can return and try again. He agrees and leaves to the exit lobby, where a dozen players are waiting for him. Instead of attacking him, they offer him a deal: Gunslinger stops killing other players, and the players do not attack him or the Jinx. If a player breaks the deal, then Gunslinger is allowed to kill him or her. To seal the deal, they go to the BFG9000 - a bar near the "Labyrinth." After several virtual drinks, the diver goes back to the brothel and asks for Vicka. He finds her room, and she invites him to the brothel's restaurant. There the diver meets the Mage, a hacker employed by the brothel to provide their server with excellent security. Vicka gets upset when one of her regular clients (who keeps accusing the virtual prostitutes of being the scum of society) arrives and asks the diver to take her to his favorite place. He takes her to a bar/restaurant he frequents and asks for a private room. The room looks like a beautiful forest. After unsuccessfully attempting to make love to Vicka (her timer kicks her out), the diver goes back to the "Labyrinth". The company's divers tell him that they believe that Jinx is only pretending to be in trouble and that they plan to give up their attempts to get him out. The diver, however, has other ideas. After one more unsuccessful attempt, he leaves the game and travels to "Al Kabar" - the pharmaceutical company he robbed at the beginning of the novel. The company's spokesperson informs him that they are aware of Jinx and suspect that he is the next stage in human evolution - a person able to enter the virtual world without the aid of a computer or a phone line. They also tell him that the owner of "Labyrinth" will reach a similar conclusion soon. That is when "Al Kabar" will move in to snatch Jinx to find out what makes him tick. Determined to save Jinx at all costs, the diver logs off and contacts his hacker friend Maniac. He asks him for a virus he could smuggle through "Labyrinth" security. Maniac is hesitant but he upgrades the diver's Gunslinger character with his latest "Warlock 9000" virus, which is designed to look like a belt. As the diver is re-entering the "Labyrinth", the two companies make their moves to grab Jinx. The two "Labyrinth" divers attempt to stop him, but he uses the Warlock as a whip and attacks them (as seen on the book cover). The attack also opens a vortex-like hole in the program, allowing the diver and Jinx to slip out of the "Labyrinth" server. With the companies and Man with no Face in hot pursuit, he drags Jinx into the brothel and asks Vicka for protection. Just then, the Deeptown police commissioner makes a PA-like announcement, accusing the diver who looks like Gunslinger of using an illegal virus to attack a company. Vicka, upon finding out that he is a diver, lashes out at him but quickly calms down and admits that she is one too. The brothel comes under a massive attack from "Labyrinth" and "Al Kabar" security forces, backed by Deeptown police and Man with no Face. The Mage's defenses manage to put up a fight but are crumbling. The diver, Jinx, and Vicka jump out the window of her room into a virtual landscape she created before the brothel server shuts down, leaving them stranded in the landscape. The diver then tells Vicka what he thinks Jinx really is - a non-corporeal entity from another world who can only interact with humans through Deeptown. Jinx neither confirms nor denies his true nature, only says that he has been travelling for many years through silence. Vicka is skeptical and insists that Jinx is simply a devious hacker playing a game with everybody. They travel for several days through the landscape before finding out that the diver's use of the Warlock virus somehow linked Vicka's landscape with an RPG server, where fantasy fans play in a Lord of the Rings-like world. They find out that the game server plays out a war between King Legolas's elves and an alliance of orcs and dwarves. They leave Jinx (who is wounded from "Labyrinth") by a road and log off to rest and come back as fantasy characters. While the diver is eating, the Maniac shows up and cleans up his computer, erasing all trace of Warlock and the Gunslinger persona. He then helps the diver design a fantasy character for him - a human healer Elenium (by the name of the tranquiliser). The diver returns to the fantasy server and finds that Vicka is now a male elf archer. They go back to Jinx and try to get him back into Deeptown but are intercepted by Man with no Face and several armed goons. Another diver shows up and attacks the goons looking like a big wolf. As the three are escaping to the streets of Deeptown, Man with no Face manages to attack the wolf with several powerful viruses. Vicka and Jinx manage to escape, but the diver gets attacked with a perpetual deep-program. Even his diver's mantra cannot help him escape the swirling images that keep his subconsciousness in VR. As he is "walking" through the dream-like world, Jinx appears and tells him that only the diver has the power to escape it. The diver then reverses his mantra and embraces the deep. As he "wakes up" in Deeptown, he realizes that the virtual world has changed for him. He can now see things as they are (shapes and colors) and can move through programs at will. On the way to his Deeptown house, he encounters Man with no Face, who is surprised that the diver escaped his trap. They sit down and talk about Jinx. Man with no Face is convinced that Jinx is a projection from the future. The diver knows that Man with no Face is really the hacker who created the original deep-program. Man with no Face believes that his creation of the program was no accident. He believes Deeptown was a creation from the future and wishes to know more about it. The diver realizes that his companion is stalling and jumps directly to his Deeptown house to find it surrounded by the two companies' security forces and the police. They open fire on him, but he sends out a virtual wave that erases all the shooters. He then threatens the commissioner, the spokespersons of the companies, and Man with no Face that he can make their lives very unpleasant unless they leave him and Jinx alone. He returns to his house and tells Jinx that he must leave this world. Jinx opens a virtual portal and leaves. The diver takes Vicka and they fly through the Deeptown sky, kissing. At the same time, the diver uses his new abilities to remove all trace that he was ever online. He wipes his computer, his internet provider's logs, and everything else related to him. They then agree to meet in real life. Vicka asks him to wait at the airport with a flower. As the diver logs off, he remembers that he forgot to pay his phone bill - his phone has been disconnected for three hours. He was in Deeptown all on his own. When he finally arrives to the train station, he waits for Vicka. She approaches him from behind and, as he turns around, he is relieves to find out that she looks exactly the same as her virtual persona (as does he).
8033226	/m/026p70h	The Lay of the Land	Richard Ford	2006-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Lay of the Land takes place in the fall of 2000, and Ford's character Frank Bascome is preparing for Thanksgiving at his home in Sea Clift, New Jersey. His son Paul, who is now a greeting card designer in Kansas City, Paul's girlfriend, who has only one hand, and Frank's daughter, Clarissa, who is an on-and-off lesbian, are all expected to attend. Frank has ordered a ready-made organic meal to be delivered on the holiday. Frank's second wife, Sally, has reunited with her formerly AWOL and presumed-dead husband Wally, and they now live in the British Isles. Frank is in the last throes of a fight against prostate cancer, and Frank's first wife, Ann, has moved back to Haddam, New Jersey, after the death of her second husband. Frank has started RealtyWise, his own company, and employs Mike Mahoney, a Tibetan who has adopted an American Republican lifestyle, except inasmuch as he believes in Buddhist philosophy. Over the course of three days, Frank has a range of painful experiences with everyone he meets, including potential home buyers, the father of an old flame, his former wife, his son, and an old acquaintance whom Frank assaults in a bar. Frank's most redeeming moments as a character are in a lesbian bar where he waits for repair work on his Chevrolet Suburban, and when he gets shot in the chest by teenagers who have murdered his unlikable neighbors. In the end, Frank and Sally are flying to the Mayo Clinic to get the final word on his prostate.
8034765	/m/026p8s7	A Pattern of Roses	K. M. Peyton	1972	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 While his parents are renovating a cottage in an English village, Tim Ingram uncovers a mystery about the 15 year old boy who had once lived in the house and had died in 1910. With the help of his friend Rebecca, Tim investigates, but finds events from the past being mirrored in his own life.
8038503	/m/026pdnl	The Chinese Agent	Michael Moorcock	1970	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Arnold Hodgkiss, a jewel thief who has come to London to steal the Crown Jewels, is dreamily casing the Tower of London when a strange man approaches him and says "The crown is large." Hodgkiss, nonplussed, replies "And very heavy", unwittingly giving the correct countersign. The man, a spy, thrusts a parcel at Hodgkiss and disappears. Hodgkiss keeps the parcel, hoping to turn it in some way to his advantage. Soon afterward, Jerry Cornell receives a new assignment: he is to discover the whereabouts of plans for "Project Glass," which have been stolen. Although the thief has been caught, the plans are still missing, and are believed to be in the hands of a fiendish Chinese agent named Kung Fu Tzu. Meanwhile, Kung is hopping mad because he never actually got the plans; they were given to Hodgkiss by mistake. The comedy of errors intensifies as Cornell tracks Kung, who in turn follows Hodgkiss, who eludes Kung but finds trouble aplenty when he tries to steal a brooch from a stall on Portobello Road.
8044417	/m/026pl5j	The Young Unicorns	Madeleine L'Engle		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the story opens, the Austin family has settled in a New York City apartment after the events of The Moon by Night, and made some friends; blind young pianist Emily Gregory and Josiah "Dave" Davidson, who helps Emily get around. Emily is studying under the tutelage of the passionate, leonine Emmanuel Theotocopulous, better known as Mr. Theo. Canon Tallis, newly arrived at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine after the events of The Arm of the Starfish, meets the Austin children and their friends just as they encounter an anachronistic Genie in a junk shop. Tallis advises and helps to protect the children as they are drawn into a mystery involving the Genie, a street gang called the Alphabats, and the local bishop's strange behavior. Dave is skeptical of the Genie, as is Suzy Austin, but the others are not sure. Centralized, single-minded activity on the part of the criminal Alphabats excites the suspicion of Canon Tallis, who interrogates Dave and Dr. Wallace Austin. Dr. Austin has been working on the creation and perfection of a laser-based Micro-Ray, which is so unerringly precise that it may do more than simply penetrate the corporeal. Dave was once a member of the Alphabats, but has turned from their ways. He is in denial of his past, not even talking about it. Tension builds as the 'Bats try to draw Dave into their new mischief, whose mastermind is none other than the Bishop himself. The Genie appears to be the bishop's servant, and also appears to possess a Micro-Ray. It is revealed that the bishop has given up hope for the world; that he hopes to establish a state of control over humanity, whereby he may prevent anything he deems detrimental to its success. His Genie, Hythloday, uses the Micro-Ray to control the Alphabats. A concentrated beam from it stimulates the brain's pleasure center, giving the victim a feeling of flight. The Alphabats, hoping to receive more of this pleasure as a reward, carry out the bishop's demands. Eventually, Rob Austin is captured. Vicky and Emily track him to the Cathedral, where they are joined by Vicky's family, Canon Tallis, and Mr. Theotocopulous. The united group expose the bishop as his (the bishop's) own brother, actor Henry Grandcourt, in disguise; break apart his plans to seize power; and unmask Hythloday as the dishonest scientist Dr. Hyde. The Micro-Ray is seized. Dave makes his peace with both his past and future, coming eventually to look upon those who have been with him as his family.
8046748	/m/026pn4t	This Town Will Never Let Us Go	Lawrence Miles	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Inangela - a would-be recruit for Faction Paradox, the subcultural phenomenon that may or may not actually exist. Valentine - an ambulance driver with dangerous opinions about the War. Tiffany - a world famous pop star whose public image is starting to get out of control. Over the next six hours, their paths will intersect, and they will uncover more than they bargained for. There's something buried underneath this town - something that could alter the course of human history.
8046930	/m/026pn8y	People Might Hear You	Robin Klein	1983	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Don't ever let them know you're here. 'Our religion is for every day we live, every living moment. You mustn't ever raise your voice or call out... people outside might hear you... Clement had a good life until her aunt marries Mr Tyrell. Francis is pushed into a sinister mansion enclosed by unclimbable walls. At first she trustingly accepts her aunt's new life, and tries to be a 'worthy member of the temple'. But as she uncovers its sinister secrets she realises she has to escape .....
8052522	/m/026pvls	Talk Talk	T. Coraghessan Boyle		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dana Halter is an American woman in her early thirties who at the age of four suffered an infection which left her profoundly deaf. Since then, she has been able to master her life astonishingly well: she has acquired an academic degree and teaches at a school for the deaf in San Roque, likely analogous to Santa Barbara, California. Her boyfriend, Bridger Martin, is a "hearie", a man a few years younger than herself who creates special effects for the film industry. Out of love, Martin has gone to great lengths to accommodate her disability. For example, he has taken a course in sign language to be able to communicate with her as best as possible. William "Peck" Wilson is an American raised in Peterskill, New York who is angry with society for failing him. Once a promising young restaurateur, he enters into a sour marriage, has a child with his wife, becomes dependent on his father-in-law's money, and is eventually dumped by his wife. Subsequently, his life takes a turn for the worse, he has to serve a short prison sentence. When he is released from jail, he moves to Marin County, California, takes up a criminal career of stealing others' identities and spending these identities' money to furnish his elaborate tastes. One such stolen identity belongs to Dana Halter, the deaf woman. Peck believes Dana is a man, and now has a driver's license and a credit card in "his" name. He lives together with an attractive Russian gold digger called Natalia and her daughter by a former lover. He has made Natalia believe that he is a physician. Peck and Natalia live a luxurious life at the expense of Dana Halter. After Dana Halter is put in jail on a charge perpetrated by Wilson in her name, she and Bridger Martin are irate. They decide to track down the identity thief, and a cross-country chase ensues that ends in Peterskill, New York.
8059671	/m/026q1s4	L'Abbe C				 The novella centres on the antagonisms that exist between two brothers. It recounts the story of Robert, a priest whose conduct appears so exemplary that he is called "L'Abbé" ("the abbot"), and is also involved in the clandestine activities of the French Resistance. Against his perspective of ecclesiastical morality, one encounters his twin brother Charles, who is a "libertine." It is the Second World War, which serves as a backdrop for the paradox of interpersonal betrayal, anti-clericalism and its disconnection from public virtue that characterises this work. Charles has a sexual relationship with Eponine, a female libertine. However, Eponine is also attracted to Robert. Worse, Robert is secretly attracted to Eponine, which precipitates an atmosphere of psychological and sexual tension within this triangle. The story turns out badly for all involved, as the resolution of this unstable triangle is not a healthy outcome. The story is told mostly from Charles's point of view. Robert undergoes a nervous breakdown, as he faints at a church service that he officiates at, with Eponine in the congregation. Robert becomes an alcoholic, and starts to harass Eponine at home late at night, leaving behind traces that suggest growing psychological instability. He loses his moral compass, and eventually becomes insane, leaving his village for a hotel on its outskirts, and spends a fortnight with two prostitutes, Rosie and Raymonde, before the Gestapo apprehend Robert for his activities with the French Resistance. While he has abandoned his clerical vows, however, Robert will not betray his resistance colleagues, and dies an heroic death after severe torture at the hands of his Nazi captors. Charles mourns his death, unable to forget what happened to his brother, until he and his wife Germaine encounter the unnamed narrator of the bracketing sections of this work, read as if an autobiography. Two years after Robert's heroic death, Charles commits suicide, but the narrator fulfils his responsibilities and takes the work to a publisher.
8064760	/m/026q56x	The Man on the Moor			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 One summer evening, a few hours after taking his regular train from London, he is found dead on a moorland road, at first glance from natural causes. Speculation is rife that he has some connections with the German court, especially when his alcoholic mother insists that he was the son of the German Emperor William II, as she had a brief affair with him before he was married. It is an assertion strongly denied by her daughter Charlotte Waters, married to James Waters, a junior government minister who is worried that such rumours could prejudice his parliamentary career. The mystery deepens when two German army officers are found staying in a cottage on Dartmoor, not far from where Stephens’ body was found. They leave rather hurriedly after being interviewed by police, and shortly afterwards Dick Priestley, owner of the cottage, returns there, hears noises outside one evening, and when he goes to investigate he is shot dead on his doorstep.
8066922	/m/026q82p	The Antipope	Robert Rankin		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jim Pooley and John Omally live in the London borough of Brentford, spending much of their time drinking in the Flying Swan, backing horses, womanising, and being generally feckless. Their problems start when Archroy's wife sells his beloved Morris Minor for five magic beans. Or perhaps they start when a hideous tramp appears in the neighbourhood, putting the wind up Neville the part-time barman something rotten. To cut a long story short, the tramp is none other than Pope Alexander VI, the last of the Borgias, and the beans grow into hideous homunculi, whose only purpose is to serve their dark master, the Antipope. Pope Alexander takes up residence in the local Seaman's Mission, and eventually there is a final showdown between the forces of good and evil, with Alexander and his bean-men on one side, and the massed might of Brentford on the other, including Pooley and Omally, Professor Slocombe, Father Moity, and Archroy, now a master of Dim Mak, a deadly martial art. Before the denouement, though, there are numerous sub-plots such as Channel-wading, a cowboy night at the Flying Swan, a trip underground with Soap Distant, and meetings with several other interesting characters, like builders Hairy Dave and Jungle John, and the elusive Other Sam.
8072842	/m/026qfrv	The Straw Men	Michael Marshall Smith		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Straw Men is a book about serial killers. It opens with a scene set in a small American town, where a duo of gunmen open fire in a busy McDonalds fastfood franchise. The remainder of the book jumps between two storylines. The first is a first person narrative piece telling us about Ward Hopkins, a young man going home to bury his parents after they suffered a car accident. He encounters a video tape in the family home that suggests that maybe they are still alive. Investigations are pursued with and things quickly spiral as they typically tend to do. A friend who happens to be a CIA operative is enlisted to provide someone to crack wise with. The second strand is in conventional third person and concerns John Zandt, an ex-homicide detective who is persuaded to come out of early retirement since it appears that the psycho who abducted his daughter has found another victim.
8073186	/m/026qg4m	Pop Goes the Weasel	James Patterson	1999	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book begins by introducing the villain, Geoffrey Shafer. He is a well-dressed and wealthy man who lives in Kalorama, Washington, D.C. and drives a Jaguar XJ12. In the beginning, he rushes into oncoming traffic causing a commotion, before a police officer pulls him over and asks him for some identification. This is when the reader finds out he is a British Diplomat who has diplomatic immunity. As Geoffrey feels he is losing control, he decides to play a fantasy game called the Four Horseman, in which he takes on the character of Death. As the game begins, he drives to the red light district, picks up a prostitute and e-mails the other Horsemen.
8073280	/m/026qg8d	Digging to America	Anne Tyler	2006-05-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Digging to America is a story set in Baltimore, Maryland about two very different families’ experiences with adoption and their relationships with each other. Sami and Ziba Yazdan, an Iranian-American family, and Brad and Bitsy Dickinson-Donaldson, an all-American suburban family, meet at the airport on the day their infant daughters arrive from Korea to begin life in America. The two families become friends and begin a tradition of celebrating the arrival of their adopted daughters each year. The differences between the two families are apparent from the beginning, especially in the way each couple decides to raise their daughters. Brad and Bitsy choose not to Americanize their daughter, Jin-Ho; they keep her Korean name and teach her about Korean culture as she grows up. Sami and Ziba, on the other hand, choose to raise their daughter Susan like other American children. Through the efforts of Bitsy, the two families begin a tradition of celebrating their daughters’ arrival in America with an Arrival Party each year. The celebration becomes a mix of American, Korean, and Iranian culture with the different food and people present. The story continues to progress through the early childhood of Jin-Ho and Susan, displaying the differences in how they are raised and the impact it has on them as they grow older. At times, the relationship between the two families is strained because of their contrasting opinions of some issues, but they remain good friends throughout the entire story. As the lives of the two families continue to become closer, a new and separate relationship starts to flourish between Bitsy’s widowed father, Dave, and Sami’s widowed mother, Maryam. Dave has recently lost his wife to cancer and is in need of a companion to help him recover from the loss. Maryam, who has been widowed for many years, is at first reluctant to change her life of privacy for Dave, but she eventually gives in. In the end, Maryam realizes that Dave is too much of a threat to the orderly boundaries of her life, and she ends their relationship.
8093800	/m/0fdrlc	A Practical Man	Karen Traviss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story opens in the lower levels of Coruscant in 24 ABY, only a few months prior to the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion. Boba Fett has just chased down another bounty, a Rodian art dealer who sold fake works to Gebbu the Hutt. Meanwhile on Nar Shaddaa, Nom Anor, posing under the alias Udelen, recruits a Mandalorian named Goran Beviin to assassinate a politician on Ter Abbes, a grim industrial planet off the Perlemian Trade Route. Bevin quickly realizes that if the man is killed it will trigger a civil war, but even after he voices his misgivings to Boba he still carries out the mission. Nom Anor notes that Bevin did an efficient job of removing the target and plans to meet Fett for the second time on Mandalore and the capital city, Kedalbe. Nom Anor notes that Mandalore is already on his list of a world that will be harder to subdue. Anor arrives on the planet, again under the alias of Udelen and provides Fett with the location of a rendezvous where he and a select number of Fett's troops are to meet. Anor plans to reveal his true nature to Fett as the location lies along the main invasion route the Yuuzhan Vong will take into the galaxy. As the Mandalorian fleet awaits the arrival of their client, Bevin becomes impatient and scouts around for Udelen. He soon encounters what he assumes to be an asteroid, but is actually a Yuuzhan Vong ship. Unsure of what to make of their new arrivals, the Mandalorians enter battle formation and wait. Soon though, Nom Anor makes contact with Fett and asks him to board the lead ship for a face to face meeting. Once aboard the miid ro'ik warship Fett orders Bevin to discreetly gather any samples he can, while Fett runs scans with his helmet. While touring the ship, Anor explains the Yuuzhan Vong vision for the galaxy and how the Mandalorians will play a part in shaping it and both Fett and Bevin witness first hand the plans the Vong have for the humans they capture. Anor then gives Fett the plans for the next mission he has planned for the Mandalorians, to secure a landing zone on Birgis, in exchange for their continued service the Mandalore sector will be left alone. Fett knows this is a lie and that the Vong will come for them eventually, he plans to ensure he's ready when that day comes. Fett plans to use the inside track he now has to do as much damage to the invaders as possible, while he appears to help them he will do all he can to hinder them at the same time. Nom Anor amends his report, instead believing that enslaving the Mandalorians is the best way of dealing with them. One week after the invasion of Helska 4, the Mandalorians assault the spaceport on Birgis. Fett, Bevin and Cham, another Mandalorian warrior, spearhead the assault. Fett hopes to use this moment to pass on vital intel to the New Republic. Passing the intel on to a pilot during the assault, Fett only hopes that the Republic won't blow their cover. Typically, the Yuuzhan Vong leave no survivors at the spaceport. New Holgha, however, the Vong's next target remains unevacuated, the Republic hasn't acted on the intel, obviously not trusting its source. With the planets defenses sabotaged and its troops relocated elsewhere, the world falls without a serious fight. Instead, the Republic diverted troops to Pedd 4 and now New Holgha suffers, as Fett observes a miit ro'ik digest everything around it for fuel, he is reminded of the Sarlacc. As he contemplates a better and more reliable way to pass intel to the Republic, a Vong warrior asks him to assist in killing a Jedi. While Bevin stalls the Vong, Fett and a few others subdue the Jedi, who is skeptical at first, but then believes Fett and agrees to take the information off planet. As the Jedi leaves for his hidden ship, Bevin arrives, followed by the Vong warrior. When he asks what happened to the Jedi, Fett and the others kill him, with Bevin using his crushgaunts to kill the warrior. While the others collect samples from the dead warrior, Bevin scalps him for a trophy. Briika, a Mandalorian female warrior, is fatally wounded in the encounter though and dies when she reaches Slave 1. Bevin, keeping a promise he made to her, adopts Dinua, Briika's daughter as his own. Nom Anor lays plans to accelerate the coming invasion of Mandalore, he believes that the reports of the Mandalorians savagery have been greatly exaggerated. He still plans to use them, keeping them undercover from the rest of the Vong warriors, but ultimately he plans to erase their culture from the galaxy. Fett, traveling across Mandalore space reflects that his plan is so far working fine. The Republic believe the Mandalorians are in league with the Vong, while his own engineers are working on weapons designed specifically to fight them. Then an X-Wing drops into pursuit course, but when it makes contact through one of Fett's own intel nodes he stays his trigger finger. The Jedi he saved on New Holgha, a man named Kubariet asks to meet face to face. Working with New Republic Intelligence, Kubariet confirms that Fett has a deal, the Mandalorians will continue to masquerade as Vong mercenaries while at the same time passing intel to the Republic. Before he leaves, Kubariet asks if Fett will spare a few of his best commandos to act as a kind of new Cuy'val Dar to train planetary militias to fight the Vong. Kubariet gives Fett a secure datachip, if he wants to pass on intel then he can only do it through the Jedi, in return Fett hands over 'spare parts' he's collected from the Vong. When Kubariet asks if there's anything more he can do for Fett he tells him to make sure everyone knows that a Mandalorian named Briika Jeban died saving a citizen of the New Republic. When Kubariet asks who she saved, Fett simply says: 'You, Jedi, you.'
8099176	/m/026rdvq	Silent to the Bone	E. L. Konigsburg	2000	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Silent to the Bone is a first-person narrative by Connor Kane, a 13-year-old boy. Connor's best friend Branwell Zamborska was struck dumb and taken to the Juvenile Behavioral Center on the day his baby sister Nicole slipped into a coma and was taken to Clarion County Hospital. Nikki suffered a head injury, he dialed 9-1-1 but did not speak, the au pair completed the phone call, and Branwell was blamed for dropping the baby. Connor knows there is some explanation for Branwell's silence and that Branwell did not intentionally hurt Nikki. He knows that Branwell needs him and visits daily. Because Branwell does not speak, Connor does all the talking and communicates by a kind of sign language, inspired by Jean-Dominique Bauby. "Remember the story of the paralyzed Frenchman who wrote a whole book with the blink of his left eye? I no sooner had the sentence out of mouth than Branwell blinked his eyes twice, very rapidly, and I knew he understood our rules of communication."Silent to the Bone, first edition, p. 34. Initially he elicits clues by presenting keywords on handwritten cards (depicted by the author in the original front cover illustration). Connor recounts his daily visits to his older half-sister Margaret, after her workday, and they solve the case together. Nikki was hurt by the au pair, Vivian, who neglected her. Vivian smokes which harmed the baby. When Margaret was Connor's age, about fifteen years ago, their father Kane left Margaret's mother for Connor's. Margaret remains chilled by the experience. Connor's parents are not friendly with her, but they welcome her care for Connor after school and sometimes late into the night. "Call your mother and tell her you're having dinner at the Evil Empire," she says to him one evening.Silent to the Bone, first edition, p. 79. Eventually she resorts to Dad's expertise as University Registrar Kane, regarding the Zamborska case; that and some prodding by Connor effect some warming between daughter and father.
8100386	/m/026rg5b	Strange Piece of Paradise	Terri Jentz		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Terri Jentz and her friend Shayna Weiss are Yale students cycling across America in 1977. After stopping to camp at Cline Falls State Park in Oregon, they are brutally attacked when a man runs over their tent with a pick-up truck and assaults them with an ax. Despite their injuries, both survive. Weiss suffers partial blindness and memory loss. Jentz, her body scarred, bears her injuries mostly in guilt, anger, and fear. To help confront these feelings, Jentz returns to the area fifteen years later to investigate the crime even though the statute of limitations on attempted murder prevents her attacker's prosecution. During her investigation, she meets other victims of violent crime and their advocates who help her follow the most promising lead: a man whom locals have always suspected as the perpetrator.
8100617	/m/026rgg8	Sharpe's Revenge	Bernard Cornwell	1989	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 As the novel begins, in 1814 Richard Sharpe and his second wife Jane are on bad terms over Sharpe's imminent duel with Captain Bampfylde, resulting from the latter's cowardice in the previous novel, Sharpe's Siege. As duelling is illegal, Jane fears that Sharpe may lose either his life or his military career. She is keenly looking forward to the end of the war, and retirement to England, and to assuage her fears, Sharpe grants her power of attorney over the considerable sum of money he has lodged with his prize agent in London. Sharpe fights the duel, wounding Bampfylde in the buttocks, and sends Jane to England with instructions to purchase a country home in Dorset. Sharpe takes part in the Battle of Toulouse, under the command of General Nairn who is killed in action, at which point Sharpe takes command, winning the battle. Shortly afterwards he learns that the war is finally over and Napoleon is defeated. Sharpe, with Harper and Frederickson, takes his men to Bordeaux to await transport to England. There he learns that Jane has closed out his account, withdrawing almost £18,000. Sharpe and Frederickson are arrested by military authorities in Bordeaux, accused of stealing Napoleon's treasury, which has been concealed at Teste de Buch, the fortress they had captured in the previous novel. A witness statement by Napoleon's spymaster, Pierre Ducos, an old anatgonist of Sharpe's, reveals the source of the false allegation. Sharpe and Frederickson realize that only the evidence of the fort's French commander, Henri Lassan, will exonerate them, and with help from Harper and Captain Peter d'Alembord, the two men escape and set out to find Lassan. In London, ignoring Sharpe's instructions at the urging of a friend, Lady Spindacre, Jane has taken a large and expensive town house in fashionable Cork Street. On hearing of her husband's arrest, she contacts Sharpe's former ally, Lord John Rossendale as directed in case of emergency. The two become lovers. Sharpe and Frederickson make their way first to Teste de Buch, then to Lassan's ancestral home in Normandy, to which he has retired. They arrive shortly after Lassan's murder, by assassins instructed by Ducos, disguised as British riflemen. Lassan's widowed sister, Lucille Castineau, a witness to the murder, mistakenly identifies Sharpe as the killer, and on Sharpe's arrival at the farm, shoots and injures him. Learning of her mistake from Frederickson, Lucille takes the two fugitives in, and nurses Sharpe. Harper and d'Alembord return to England to contact Jane and collect money. Jane refuses to receive them, and has Harper horsewhipped. In Normandy Frederickson grows attached to Lucille, and proposes to her, but is refused. He leaves for Paris to track down Ducos, leaving Sharpe to recover from his injuries. In his absence Sharpe and Lucille become lovers. Harper returns from London to confirm Sharpe's suspicions about Jane's loyalty, just as Frederickson sends word that Ducos has taken Napoleon's stolen treasure to Naples in Italy. The three men travel to Italy to confront Ducos, while Lucille, now pregnant, writes to the French prosecutor to exonerate Sharpe. Her letter is passed to Napoleon, in exile on Elba, who dispatches General Calvet, who faced Sharpe at Toulouse, to Naples in pursuit. In Naples, Ducos has assumed the identity of a Polish count, bought the protection of the local Cardinal, and assembled a small personal force of former French officers and locals mercenaries to guard the treasure. Calvet contacts the Cardinal, hoping prevent the English from reaching the treasure before him, but the Cardinal makes arrangements to confiscate the gold himself. Sharpe, Harper and Frederickson are intercepted by Calvet, and the former adversaries form an alliance; Sharpe will help to retrieve the gold for Napoleon in return for clearing his name. The combined force successfully infiltrate Ducos's villa, capturing the gold and Ducos himself, but before they can leave the Cardinal's forces surround the villa, cutting off access to the sea where Calvet's boats wait. Sharpe loads a small cannon with gold coins and fires it among the Neapolitans troops. The ill disciplined men break ranks to collect the coins, and allow the besieged company to escape by sea, taking the Ducos and the remaining treasure with them. Ducos is tried for the murder of Henri Lassan and executed by firing squad. Sharpe and Frederickson are cleared of all charges, but fall out when Frederickson learns of Sharpe's relationship with Lucille, and part on bad terms. Harper, discharged from the army, now also leaves Sharpe to return to Ireland. Sharpe returns to Normandy, to Lucille, and to a new life - no profession, no command, no troops, no friends, no money, and no wife.
8101141	/m/026rhd7	Eldorado	Baroness Emma Orczy	1913	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is 1794 and Paris, "despite the horrors that had stained her walls - has remained a city of pleasure, and the knife of the guillotine did scarce descend more often than did the drop-scenes on the stage." The plot begins when Sir Percy, the Scarlet Pimpernel, reluctantly agrees to take Armand St. Just, brother of his wife, Marguerite, with him to France as part of a plan to rescue the young Dauphin. Percy warns Armand not to renew any friendships while in Paris, but it doesn't take long before Armand has ignored his warnings and renewed a friendship with the scheming Baron de Batz (in the pay of the Austrian government), who wants to free the Dauphin himself and despises the Scarlet Pimpernel and all he represents. Whilst attending the opera with De Batz, Armand foolishly tells him that he is in the league of the Scarlet Pimpernel. While there, he falls in love with a young actress named Citizeness Jeanne L'Ange. De Batz introduces the couple backstage at the theatre and once they have fallen for each other, De Batz tells Citizen Heron of the general committee of Public Safety where and when they have arranged to meet. After covering for Armand at her house, L'Ange is arrested and thrown into jail. Learning of her peril and in the throes of passion, Armand fails to trust Sir Percy who has told him that he will rescue Jeanne, and forgets his promise to his leader. Armand, desperate to share Jeanne's fate, runs to the gate of the Temple prison and screams, "Long Live the King." There he's intercepted by none other than Percy's arch enemy, Chauvelin. Faced with the death of his love, Armand betrays Percy, unaware that The Pimpernel has already secured Jeanne's freedom. Sir Percy is then captured and imprisoned by Chauvelin and Heron in the cell that was home to Marie Antoinette in her last days. Chauvelin insists that Percy is to be deprived of sleep in the hope that he will be weakened and disclose where young Capet, the uncrowned King of France, is being held following his rescue. After 17 days in prison, Percy is sure that the dauphin has been transported safely into Holland. He then contrives, by pretending to crack and confess the dauphin's whereabouts, to make his escape. He tells Chauvelin and Heron that the dauphin is being held in an area in the north, near the coast of France, but that he has to show them, rather than tell them, because the paths are nameless and too small for them to find without him. Chauvelin and Heron, skeptical, bring along Armand and Marguerite as hostages. Once in the north, Percy takes advantage of a chance when Chauvelin and Heron are separated, and darkness, to subdue Heron, bind and truss him, put on his clothes, and direct the guileless French soldiers (who think that the bound Heron is Percy) to put him in the gated yard of a church. Percy, still thought to be Heron, drives a carriage with Marguerite and Armand inside to the coast, where his ship is waiting for them. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge
8105071	/m/026rp1_	A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound	John Irving	2004-09-28	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It takes place in a house, late at night, when one young child, asleep in his bed, awakes to hear a sound he describes as "a sound like someone trying not to make a sound" to his dad, when he awakens him. The child also tells his dad it sounds like a “monster with no arms and legs” that “slides on its fur” and “pulls itself along on its teeth.” It turns out to be mice in the walls and the child is comforted by his parent. They go back to bed.
8105438	/m/026rplh	Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future	Martin Caidin	1995-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Caidin's novel retells the story of Anthony "Buck" Rogers, a top pilot who is mortally wounded in a Fokker plane crash. Given zero chance of survival with modern-day medical methods, Rogers is placed into suspended animation at Cyberdyne Systems, in the hopes that at some point in the future new technologies will render his injuries survivable. Ultimately, as civilizations rise and fall, Rogers is kept in stasis for five centuries before he is discovered and revived. As with the original Buck Rogers story, the pilot must adjust to life in the 25th Century while also helping Earth battle various invaders. Along the way he falls in love with Wilma Deering, a top pilot in the Space Corps.
8107843	/m/026rs3n	Warlords of Utopia	Lance Parkin	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The glorious Roman Empire has ruled for nearly twenty-seven centuries when Marcus Americanius Scriptor acquires a strange bracelet from a mysterious stranger. With this bracelet, he finds he is able to travel to alternate Romes, worlds where the course of history has diverged from that with which he is familiar. And further out, worlds where there is no Roman Empire at all, and a cruel new regime in Germania is on a path of conquest. This cannot be permitted.
8111993	/m/026ryqc	Foxmask	Juliet Marillier	2004-03-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Thorvald turns 18, his mother Margaret decides to tell her son the truth about his father's identity. Upon learning that Somerled was his father, Thorvald decided to find the man. With his friend Sam's help, Thorvald begins his journey. Unbeknown to the two boys, Creidhe stows aboard. When the boat becomes damaged, they land on the lost isle that Somerled had landed on 18 years earlier, the Isle of Storms. To the south of the Isle of Storms resided the Unspoken, who, while capable of powerful magic, are in turmoil without their leader or seer - The one whom they call Foxmask. The Ruler of the Isle of Storms had had a daughter and a son. The daughter had been given to Foxmask’s people 7 years previously so she could give birth to a child who would become Foxmask. To save this heir from the maiming the Unspoken deemed necessary, the Ruler's son stole the child and hid it on the Isle of Clouds, an island to the west of the Isle of Storms. The Unspoken levied a curse on the Ruler’s people whereby no new children would be allowed to survive past the second morning of their life. This curse was to stay in effect until Foxmask was returned to his people or a new Seer was born to take his place.
8117789	/m/026s6j9	The Man Who Never Missed	Steve Perry	1985-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Man Who Never Missed concerns an ex-soldier Emile Khadaji, formerly in the service of the "Confed", a generic star-spanning empire (formerly a confederacy, hence the name) of solar systems. The Confed has grown large and old, and to maintain its fading grip on power, uses its powerful military to brutally suppress any resistance and to colonialize further worlds. During one such campaign which results in the slaughter of three-quarters of a million people in a single pitched battle, Khadaji snaps and deserts while experiencing a religious epiphany which instills him the belief that taking the lives of sapient beings is wrong and that the Confed must be overthrown. He escapes and is believed dead by his military superiors. While wandering in the nearby city and pondering his experience, the young Khadaji runs into the mysterious priest "Pen" (Pen being not his real name but rather his title; as the current Pen, Pen goes about enshrouded such that his flesh cannot be seen), of the order of the Siblings of the Shroud. Pen takes Khadaji in as a student, training him in Pen's martial art sumito ("The 97 steps"; based on the martial art Silat, which inspired Perry). Pen also teaches Khadaji the surprisingly complex craft of bartending to the many worlds of the Confed. While working as a bartender on the world of Rim, Khadaji falls in love with an "exotic" albino—exotic is the term Perry uses for descendants of humans genetically engineered to be sexually attractive, to exude sex pheromones, and to have an extremely high libido. Eventually he realizes the extent to which she cheats on him and how she views his martial arts skills as a useful way to protect herself from lustful males. Khadaji comes to the conclusion that he needs to further his war against the Confed, but bartending on Rim was wasting time. At this point, Pen and Khadaji part ways after a relationship encompassing years. Travelling to a college planet, Khadaji begins learning economics and politics and military science. While there, he masters the nonlethal civilian weapon: the spetsdōd. The spetsdōd is a small weapon which is unobtrusively mounted on the back of one's hands; it is connected to the index finger. When hyperextended, the spetsdōd detonates the loaded dart, propelling it down the length of the index finger at whatever the shooter aims at. Within 20 meters, it is described as being an extremely fast and precise weapon—pointshooting taken to its logical conclusion. With his weapon and target chosen, Khadaji carefully embarks on a large-scale and careful career of smuggling—a career chosen for its ability to garner large sums of money which Khadaji needs and because it does not necessarily compromise his ethics; Khadaji reasons that as long as he does not transport health-compromising narcotics, his will be victimless crimes. His criminal empire grows quickly, and Khadaji devotes his fortunes to combat training with his spetsdōd. Eventually, he decides to test his skills against the best living opponents he can find, in real life-or-death situations: He considered where he could get such experience. There was the Musashi Flex, a loosely-organized band of modern ronins who travelled around challenging each other; he could try that. Or, there was The Maze. Such a thing was risky, but it offered a real test. Injury was likely, death a possibility in the game known as The Maze; if he could survive that, maybe he would be ready.... The Musashi Flex would later be the subject of Perry&#39;s 2006 novel of the same name. The Maze mentioned is a multiple-day unarmed combat tournament set in a ruined city; the last person conscious wins an extremely large monetary prize. No rules other than not interfering with the medical robots rescuing a downed contestant, and not bringing any weapons with one into the tournament, are observed. Khadaji wins, and is convinced to launch his war. This he does by buying and fortifying a bar on the recently occupied planet Greaves. While luring soldiers into his bar by day, Khadaji hunts and paralyzes them with a potent cocktail of drugs which induces total paralysis by night; the cocktail does not kill, but requires enormous sums of money and at least six months to cure. Over many months, he paralyzes 2,388 of the 10,000 troops on the planet, only missing with a handful of shots, which he carefully conceals. His guerilla tactics are so successful that the Confed forces estimate the &#34;Shamba Freedom Forces&#34; (or the &#34;Shamba Scum&#34; as the Confed calls them) to have hundreds of members. Eventually, he learns that his six months are about to lapse: the first soldiers he paralyzed are recovering. At any time one of the soldiers who saw Khadaji&#39;s face might recover and reveal to their compatriots that the genial, friendly, and generous bar-owner Khadaji is actually one of the insurgents. So Khadaji goes for broke. He calls the head commander of the Confed forces and reveals that he has learned the identity of the leaders of the Shamba Freedom Forces. When Khadaji enters the commander&#39;s office, he paralyzes the commander, and successfully escapes and locks himself inside the massive vault inside the bar (used to store receipts and the many drugs that his bar sold in addition to the usual array of alcoholic drinks). There he spends an hour meditating on his past and his life; in this flashback his history is revealed to the reader—the novel started in medias res. The army catches up to Khadaji. His vault is proof against most of their weapons; the officer tasked with his apprehension orders an &#34;implosion&#34; (possibly a miniature black hole) bomb fired against the safe. It, and presumably Khadaji, are compressed into a tiny lump; Khadaji is presumed dead, although the Confed forensics can only conclude that there was a human body in the remains, and not that the remains were of Khadaji. Mysteriously, shortly before the implosion round is fired, Perry writes of Khadaji handling a heavy, large, and secured package stored in the vault for the last six months. Afterwards, the Confederation military realize that he apparently knocked out almost 2,400 soldiers without missing a single time, a record which quickly becomes a legend, striking fear into the Confederation military ranks.
8121982	/m/026sd75	Swastika Night	Katharine Burdekin	1937	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The novel takes place seven hundred years after Nazism achieved power, by which time Adolf Hitler is worshipped as a god. Though no major character is a woman, the story concentrates on the oppression of women, portraying the Nazis as homosexual misogynists. Christians are marginalized, Jews eliminated, and women disenfranchised — deprived of all rights. Germany and Japan won the "Twenty Years War" (analogous to World War II), the time it took the Nazis to subdue the Soviet Union. The protagonist is an Englishman named Alfred on a German pilgrimage. In Europe, the English are loathed because they were the last opponents of Nazi Germany in the war. The story correctly postulates the air power's importance in war. One of the religious sites Alfred was to visit was the "Sacred Airplane", which, according to long-established dogma, Hitler piloted on a mission to Moscow, thus achieving victory. The drastic rewriting of history, after living memory of Hitler, or the time when meaningful resistance to Germany existed, is the logical extension of Burdekin's contemporary view of Nazi Germany. Per official history, Hitler is a tall, blond god who personally won the war. Alfred is astounded when shown a secret, historic photograph depicting Hitler and a girl before a crowd. First, he is shocked that Hitler is a small man with dark hair and a paunch. The crowd seem more interested in the girl; this does not fit the worldview of Hitler as god. The photograph's most shocking betrayal of myth is the girl's appearance. Alfred believed her to be a boy — the attractive figure has a proud posture and long, blond hair — and is appreciated by the crowd. Women have developed self-loathing, becoming pathetic beings who have difficulty performing their sole, utilitarian function: reproduction. Elsewhere, the Japanese rule the Americas, Australia, and Asia, to the borders of European Russia and Persia. Though Japan is the only rival superpower to the Nazi West, their inevitable wars always end in stalemate. The fascist Germans and Japanese suffer much difficulty in maintaining their populations, because of the physical degeneration of their women. In the event, the SS murder Alfred, yet he passes the truth about Nazi history to his surviving son.
8122933	/m/026sf42	1812: The Rivers of War	Eric Flint	2005	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story, which takes place in 1814–15, centers around an alternate historical version of the War of 1812. The point of divergence is at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, where Sam Houston, who was seriously injured in real history, sustains only a minor injury and is able to continue fighting. This leads to many changes down the line, culminating in the formation of the Confederacy of the Arkansas.
8123679	/m/026sfwg	Sacred Clowns	Tony Hillerman	1993	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The plot of the story surrounds several homicides and the relationship between Jim Chee and Janet Pete. Chee is still in training to become a Hatałii when he is assigned to work directly for Joe Leaphorn to solve the murder of a teacher killed at a mission followed by a violent death during a sacred clown dance.
8124813	/m/026shdm	Some Like It Hot	Zoey Dean	2006-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It's Prom time at Beverly Hills High! Ben Birnbaum is back from Princeton University for the summer but also visiting is a friend of his family's. Maddy, a girl who's a junior in high school who has just had Gastric bypass surgery is staying with the Birnbaum's, and to Anna Percy's disdain, has quite the (newly) curvy figure. Adam discovers a shocking secret about Cammie's mom, one that will shake both her and her friend, Sam. Prom this year is being given by two B-List wannabes, Jasmine-Jazz and Ophelia-Fee. Sam tries to enter a film contest anonymously, and her subject for her documentary is the girls. She ends up helping much more than she intended, including securing the "Collusseum" where her father is shooting a remake of Ben Hur. Parker agrees to go with Sam to the Prom, in place of her sexy boyfriend Eduardo who can't make it because of a family engagement. They end up making out and unfortunately for Samantha she doesn't realize Eduardo's watching after he has come to show how much he cares for her and appreciates all Sam did for Prom. Anna explains to Ben that he should get off his horse and that she doesn't need saving. He says he loves her because she doesn't need saving. Between most of the couples in the A-List, on prom night, they are the only two that end the night without any problems.
8134381	/m/026svln	The Optimist's Daughter	Eudora Welty	1972	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins with the main character Laurel Hand who travels to New Orleans from her home in Chicago to assist her aging father as a family friend and doctor operates on his eye. Laurel’s father remains in the hospital for recovery for several months. During this time, Laurel begins to get to know her outsider stepmother better, as she rarely visited her father since the two were married. Fay begins to show her true colors as the Judge’s condition worsens. To the distress of all who knew him, the Judge dies after his wife throws a violently emotional fit in the hospital and confesses to cheating and interest in his money. The two women travel back to the Judge’s home in Mount Salus, Mississippi for the funeral and are received by close friends of the family. Here, Laurel finds love and friendship in a community which she left after childhood. Ironically, the warmth of the town clashes with Fay’s dissenting and antagonistic personality. The woman from Alabama, who claimed to have no family other than the Judge, is soon confronted by her past as her mother, siblings, and other members of her family show up to her house to attend the funeral. Though Laurel confronts Fay as to the reason why she lied, she cannot help but feel anything except pity for the lonely, sullen woman. Directly after her husband’s funeral, Fay leaves to go back home to Madrid, Texas with her family. After her distraught and immature stepmother leaves, Laurel finally has time to herself in the house she grew up in with the friends and neighbors she knew since childhood. During the few days she remains, Laurel digs through the past as she goes through her house remembering her deceased parents and the life she had before she left Mount Salus. She rediscovers the life of friendship and love that she left behind so many years ago, along with heartache. Her visit to her hometown and the memories of her parents open up a new insight on life for Laurel. She leaves Mount Salus with a new understanding of life and the factors which influence it the most—friends and family. But most of all, she gains a new understanding and respect for herself.
8141806	/m/026t3g2	Conan the Rebel	Poul Anderson		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Conan the Rebel details the involvement of Conan and his lover, the pirate Belit, in a rebellion of an eastern province of the kingdom of Stygia. Chronologically, it occurs between chapters 1 and 2 of the Robert E. Howard Conan story "Queen of the Black Coast".
8141825	/m/026t3gf	The Road of Kings	Karl Edward Wagner		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel features Conan during his buccaneering days. He becomes involved in thwarting a plot to take over the turbulent kingdom of Zingara, complicated by sorcery rooted in the long lost realm of Acheron. At the end of the story he himself has the opportunity to take the Zingaran throne, but uncharacteristically turns it down.
8142006	/m/026t3nz	Conan the Mercenary	Andrew J. Offutt		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A young Conan finds himself involved in plots against the throne of Khauran. After saving Lady Khashtris from an attack by Shadizar's thieves and some traitorous henchmen, Conan agrees to work as her bodyguard in return for his soul being freed from the mirror it has been trapped in since Conan's encounter with Hissar Zul. Conan's soul can only be freed by one of noble birth, and Khashtris convinces Conan that her sister, Queen Ialamis, will free him. Unknown to Conan, the Queen, and Khashtris, the Queen's new paramour, Sergianus, is actually a disguised Sabaninus, the elderly Duke of Korveka, a Kothian province that wishes to annex Khauran. The disguise is revealed when the Queen breaks the mirror containing Conan's soul; as his soul re-enters his body, Conan sees the Duke for who he really is. Conan, Lady Khashtris, and her loyal bodyguard Shubal, then plot to unmask the Duke and save Khauran. Ialamis is also the mother of Salome and Taramis, who feature prominently in Howard's Conan tale, "A Witch Shall Be Born."
8146406	/m/026t8wt	Chase	Dean Koontz		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Chase is the story about Benjamin Chase. "Bejamin Chase is a retired war hero living in an attic apartment. He is struggling with a drinking habit. One night he rescues a young woman from an obsessed killer. As a result, the killer has changed his target to Chase. He begins phoning Chase and warning that he is out for revenge. The killer, simply named "The Judge" is threatening to kill Chase but the police don't believe him as he has a history of alcohol-related incidents. Chase is forced to take matters into his own hands and attempts to unmask The Judge himself and end the threat of a vengeful lunatic."
8146407	/m/026t8x4	The Information	Martin Amis	1995		 Gwyn Barry and Richard Tull have been friends since they roomed together at university. Richard Tull was a promising writer with a seemingly bright future. However his career flags and he finds himself depressed writing book reviews for a small literary paper and running a vanity press. To his chagrin, Gwyn Barry - whose literary skills Tull holds in low esteem - has written a phenomenally successful novel and won a lucrative and respected literary prize. Barry begins to enjoy a rarified life whilst Tull toils away with his unsuccessful pursuits. Tull, increasingly envious, begins to manufacture ways of bringing Barry down. These begin relatively innocently, attempts to cause Barry inconvenience. But later things become much more serious as Tull makes contact with violent men he later finds he cannot control.
8147064	/m/026t9sb	The Night of Kadar	Garry Kilworth	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Night of Kadar tells the story of a crew of interplanetary colonists. On their approach to a distant planet, while these human space voyagers were still in a state of suspended animation, an alien life force enters the ship. It investigates and interferes with the minds of the sleeping humans, and also subtly disrupts some of the on-board systems. Upon landing on the planet, the crew experiences confusion and disorientation. Certain elements of the colonization party are missing, and there is no sign of their spacecraft. Eventually one man, Osman, reluctantly takes a position of leadership. He organizes the setup of the colony and the exploration of the world, although he has only a fragment of the manpower and equipment originally assigned to the mission. An interesting distinction of this novel is in the religion of the crew: they are Moslems. Although they start out as rather secular people, Osman has them build a mosque, encouraging them to adhere to their religious principles. Throughout the novel, a sense of lost heritage and memory continues to gnaw at the colonists, if only in a vague, unsettling way. By embracing their religion, they gain a measure of solace. Although Islam is a relatively minor aspect of Kadar, it does make the novel stand out from the run-of-the-mill science fiction of the 1970s, anticipating by several decades the West's newfound interest in Islam. As they build a settlement and begin a new life, the colonists meet a variety of native life forms. At first, the creatures seem harmless, almost comical. Soon, however, some enormous, beetle-like creatures do pose a threat. The colonists also have occasional run-ins with a strange, glowing orb that appears and disappears without warning. Eventually, after a series of travels and adventures, the colonists discover a tribe of fierce, brutish humans. These savages vastly outnumber Osman's people, and eventually overwhelm them. At the end of the novel, Osman and his men learn the awful truth: their assailants are actually the crew of the missing spacecraft. These unfortunates have lost all knowledge of modern technology, and know no better than to turn broken bits of equipment into primitive weapons for slaughter. In the end, the reader learns that all of the tribulations of Osman and his people were machinations of an alien life force. The same being that had disrupted the minds of the crew in the first place has been operating the glowing orb as a kind of mobile, remote monitor. The orb serves to provide an entertaining spectacle to the formless alien that controls it from a location far from the planet where the action takes place. Thus, the novel's conclusion might be considered a deus ex machina. All human striving turns out to be nothing but a puppet show for superior beings, our very existence absurd.
8147611	/m/026tbfn	The Coma	Alex Garland		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While traveling home on an underground train, Carl is forced to defend a young girl from the harassment of a group of men. For his efforts, Carl is violently attacked and falls into a coma. When he awakes, he quickly discovers that his seemingly normal world is very peculiar.
8148141	/m/026tc06	Fourth Mansions	R. A. Lafferty	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Fourth Mansions was inspired by Teresa of Ávila's Interior Castle, and contains quotations from the book, which quotations Lafferty uses as chapter headings. The Interior Castle is a metaphor for an individual's soul; its different rooms, different states of the soul. In the middle of the Castle the soul is in the purest state, which equals Heaven. Lafferty uses more complex symbols in telling a many-sided tale of an individual's reaching towards Heaven or Truth. The novel concerns a time of great change, when four forces - in the form of secret societies - contend to control the next phase of humanity's history. In the middle is Fred Foley, an innocent reporter. One of these forces intends to unleash a deadly virus on the USA, the others attempt to stop them. A revolution by Mexican migrants, the craft of "mind weaving" and a strange group of "Patricks", all apparently tramps but with great resources, appear in the center of a narrative.
8148403	/m/026tcb5	Big Apple Take Down		2006-06-27		 The story begins in December 2001. WWE Chairman Vince McMahon meets with old aide Phil Thomson, a government official. Thomson proposes to Vince the creation of a covert group consisting of McMahon's most refined wrestlers, knowing their exaggerated, constantly touring lifestyle will provide excellent cover. McMahon accepts the deal, and recruits John Cena, Triple H, Dave Batista, Chavo Guerrero, Torrie Wilson, and finally himself as leader. By March 2006, the team has formed a tight unit, and is given its latest assignment, to break into a methyl-amphetamine development lab that is financially supporting terrorists in the European regions. When one of their own is taken prisoner, the wrestlers must stage a rescue which could endanger their careers and their lives.
8152986	/m/026tjbr	Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars	Daniel Pinkwater	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is about a portly kid named Leonard Neeble moving from his old neighborhood to West Kangaroo Park, Hogboro. There Leonard goes to a new school, Bat Masterson Junior High. He suffers greatly at the hands of the other kids, even the other nerds, until one day a new student appears in his class: a boy named Alan Mendelsohn, recently relocated from The Bronx. They are soon friends. Leonard's torment results in his grades falling off. The school counselor refers him to a child psychologist, Dr. Prince. With Dr. Prince, Leonard takes up smoking cigars. While well-meaning, his hit and miss methods eventually enable Leonard to get him to give him a week off from school. He spends this time with Alan, who has been suspended after he tells students that he is a Martian, touching off a riot. Together they take a trip to Hogboro where the two meet Samuel Klugarsh, owner of an occult bookstore, who claims to have developed a course of psychic training called "Klugarsh Mind Control." Samuel Klugarsh sells the two friends a kit for learning how to produce "Ω (Omega) waves," a type of brain waves supposedly generated when one meditates one's way into the mental state known as "State Twenty-Six." Leonard and Alan soon learn how to go into State Twenty-Six, but all they can make others do is take off their hats and rub their bellies and sometimes dance. The friends get tired of mind-control and go back to Samuel Klugarsh's store for a refund. Instead of what the two wanted, Samuel Klugarsh lets Leonard and Alan trade in their mind-control set for a course in "Hyperstellar Archaeology," the study of lost civilizations such as Atlantis, Lemuria, or Waka Waka, along with a copy of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary. Alan and Leonard are skeptical of the course's wild claims and predictions until they unexpectedly find a prediction in the text mentioning them both by name. They start to take the book more seriously, and when they follow its directions for interpreting Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary, they get better results with their telekinesis and mind control experiments. Later, the two boys run into Samuel Klugarsh at the Bermuda Triangle Chili Parlor, and their conversation is overheard by a biker who happens to be Clarence Yojimbo, the (Venusian) author of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary. Clarence is passing through town with his biker-gang of folk singers, and he sets them straight on the real secret purpose of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary: when decoded with the proper key, it is an instruction manual for travelling among different planes of existence. The two learn how to do this and go to Waka-Waka. There they discover that the fleegix-obsessed people of Waka-Waka are being ruled by three cruel Nafsulians: Manny, Moe and Jack who pretend to be a deadly invisible monster, the Wozzle. Alan Mendelsohn and Leonard Neeble are able to expose the three Nafsulians and make them take off their hats and rub their bellies, which just happens to be the Nafsulian gesture of submission. They cannot take back the gesture so they have to relinquish control of Waka-Waka. While in Waka-Waka Leonard learns that Alan really is a Martian. In the Waka-Waka plane of existence Martians travel to and from the Earth plane so Alan is able to let Rolzup, the Martian High Commissioner, know that his family is stranded on Earth and arrange for them to be taken back to Mars. Alan and Leonard then go back to West Kangaroo Park where Alan is picked up by a spaceship. Leonard, after recovering from the shock of losing his best friend, begins to follow in Alan's footsteps by studying independently, showing up the teachers during classes, and participating in an alternative gym class where they play chess or do yoga. Leonard eventually decides to throw a party at the Bermuda Triangle Chili Parlour. He meets Samuel Klugarsh there and Klugarsh gives Leonard a letter from Alan Mendelsohn. Alan says that Leonard can come visit him in "the Bronx, if you know what I mean," for the summer.
8152991	/m/026tjc2	Wren to the Rescue	Sherwood Smith	1990-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wren to the Rescue tells the story of an orphan girl who learns her best friend and purportedly fellow-orphan Tess, is in fact Teresa Rhisadel, princess and sole heiress of the neighbouring country of Meldrith. Tess proceeds to reveal her reason for remaining in hiding these many years: a curse. Namely, that of Andreus self-styled king of the nearby and ever-menacing nation of Senna Lirwan. In hopes that after twelve years Andreus has lost interest in his threat of revenge, and out of their ceaseless desire to be reunited with their daughter, Tess’s regal parents have sought her return home to Cantirmoor, capital of Meldrith, and have given Tess permission to invite Wren to accompany her. The plan backfires, however; when the girls are resting in Cantirmoor, the subterfuge of a Lirwani agent succeeds in abducting Tess. In the ensuing confusion, Wren is largely forgotten by the Cantirmoor officials. In frustration and wanting to help Tess, Wren slips away to the Cantirmoor Magic School, which already had been a waypoint of the trip to the palace from the orphanage. There Wren meets a magic prentice, Tyron, whose own plan to rescue Tess she joins. The pair rides to the Free Vale, a magically-protected Free Haven located south of Cantirmoor. Tyron intends to seek the aid of Idres Rhiscarlan, an inhabitant of the Free Vale, to rescue Tess. Idres’ reluctance due to past animosities between her and Tess’ father prevails, however, and the most she aids them is to discuss an approach to Andreus’ mountain-encircled land. At the next major stop on their journey of rescue, Horth Falls Town, Wren and Tyron encounter another prominent sympathizer to the Princess’ plight, Connor Shaltar, also technically a prince of another land, whose provisions breath new hope into the mission. The international scope of the conflict becomes clear as debate over a retaliatory invasion against Senna Lirwan heightens in Cantirmoor, ad interim Wren’s rescue party faces an escalating variety of threats as they make their way into, in to, and through, the border mountains. Once on the Lirwani side, some transmogrification (conferred in the rear dust-jacket text in most editions of the print volume of the story) is the only thing which saves Wren from the ambush-laden land’s defenses. This magical intervention proves to be provided by an unexpected ally, whose previous rescue of the rescuers went anonymous. Her compatriots being overrun and captured by the intensifying security measures on the planes of Andreus’ blighted land, Wren is able narrowly to escape, still being in animal form herself. Wren defies the directive of hastening home to be restored human before her mind is lost forever, instead electing to expand her rescue mission to include all of her friends now bound in the highest tower of Edrann. Through a daring combination of skilful infiltration on the part of Wren, and the ingenuity and magic ability of her friends, all six foreign detainees win free, though Wren’s dignity at the following feast in their honor leaves something to be desired. What shall happen next remains indefinite as this volume comes to a close, with two of the planet’s most prestigious magicians setting off on their own mission to bring Andreus’ educator to justice, while the former’s position in control of Senna Lirwan remains all-too-secure.
8156307	/m/026tmkl	First Person Plural: My Life As a Multiple		1999	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 West recovers memories of early childhood sexual abuse and is diagnosed with DID as an adult. The book chronicles the first few years of his struggle to accept and heal from his disorder. West describes a system of 24 different personalities that emerge one by one. The presence of personalities is tied to flashbacks West experiences in which he is molested by his mother and grandmother as well as one or more unidentified male perpetrators. Alters emerge who either hold memories of West's abuse, carry the pain of the experience, or protect West's psyche in one way or another. One personality, named Switch, physically injures West's body in an effort to release pain. Unlike the classic "Sybil" (Shirley Ardell Mason), West experiences co-consciousness and doesn't have fugue states. Throughout his long journey to acceptance, West undergoes intensive therapy, and through hospitalizations in DID-centered programs, meets many people who share his condition. His wife Rikki's constant support as well as his love for her and his son motivate West to accept his abuse and begin to heal from the damage it did to his psyche. One chapter, written entirely from Rikki's point of view, depicts her attempts to understand. In the final pages, West allows himself to be videotaped as his alters emerge and speak. After viewing this tape, West begins to fully realize and accept the exact nature of his condition and his denial begins to abate. West pursues the study of psychology and is awarded a Ph.D..
8157822	/m/026tnx6	Conan the Destroyer	Robert Jordan		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Princess Taramis of Shadizar promises to bring Conan's lost love Valeria back to life if the Cimmerian will procure two magical items that she hopes will gain her ultimate power, a wizard's gem and a horn that can awaken the dreaming god Dagoth. He undertakes the quest together with his thief partner Malak and Taramis' niece Jehnna and henchman Bombaata. On their journey they are joined by two additional allies whom Conan saves from dire fates; the magician Akiro and the female warrior Zula. At their goal, the castle of the wizard Amon-Rama, Jehnna is kidnapped. Thanks to Akiro's magic she is located in Amon-Rama's lair and a way in is discovered. Inside, Conan is separated from the others and forced to battle a Man-Ape in a hall of mirrors, which he is only able to defeat by destroying the mirrors. He also mortally wounds the wizard, who is hiding behind one of them. Jehnna, who is the only person who can safely handle the wizard's gem, retrieves the first magical item. Afterwards the group beats off an attack by Corinthian soldiers, and continues on to the fortress that holds the horn. It is retrieved at the cost of a battle with its Dagoth-worshipping keepers, whose leader Akiro defeats in a sorcerous duel. Bombaata and Jehnna escape through a tunnel, which the former closes to the others by starting a landslide. Back at Taramis' palace, the queen conducts a ritual to awaken Dagoth that entails the placing of the horn on the forehead of the sleeping deity, and ultimately the sacrifice of Jehnna. Conan, Akiro and Zula, having survived the landslide, interrupt the proceedings. Conan fights and defeats Bombaata while Zula rescues Jehnna. In the absence of the sacrifice, Dagoth is an uncontrollable monster on his revival, eating Taramis and threatening the destruction of everything else. On the advice of Akiro, Conan rips the horn from Dagoth's forehead, and the creature finally falls. In the aftermath, Jehnna succeeds to the throne of Shadazar and takes Zula, Akiro, and Malak as advisors. She offers Conan her hand and a place at her side as king, but the Cimmerian prefers to win his own kingdom.
8158388	/m/026tpgf	Power				 In the story, a 12-year-old boy from New York named Daniel Chang wakes one night to what he thinks is a clap of thunder, only to discover some days later he is possessed of superhuman abilities of nearly god-like proportions. He and his best friend, Paulie, are then sought out by a survived branch of The Knights Templar and befriended by another host of The Power, an old man known only as Voice. Power is an 80-chapter paperback and also exists as a full-length screenplay.
8163828	/m/026tww4	Bloodthirst	Jeanne Kalogridis	1987-12-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Enterprise is called to a remote bio-research lab on planet Tanis to answer a distress call, finding only a single survivor upon arrival. The survivor, Dr. Adams, is uncooperative in discussing the details of the research on Tanis, or how the other members of the research team died. Eventually, it is revealed that Tanis was an illegal biological warfare lab, run by a secret faction within Starfleet. The story also focuses on a security officer, Stanger, who becomes infected after an attack by Dr. Adams.
8166445	/m/026t_0x	Wonder of the Worlds		2005	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the first installment, Wonder of the Worlds, Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain and Houdini pursue Martian agents who have stolen a powerful crystal from Tesla at the historically pivotal 1893 Columbia Exposition in Chicago. Along for the ride aboard Tesla's airship are other historical figures, reporters Lillie West and George Ade, as well as Kolman Czito, Tesla's assistant. On the journey to the Red Planet, the adventurers are treated to a hidden history of conflict between the Earth and Mars, as well as Tesla's stunning knowledge of geophysics of the two planets. Upon arrival on Mars, the team pursues the crystal deep into the underground civilization ruled by Kel, the mad emperor determined to subjugate Earth with the power of the crystal.
8168070	/m/026v0p5	Netochka Nezvanova	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1849	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is about the sorrowful life of a young girl living in extreme poverty in Saint Petersburg, who ends up an orphan and is adopted by a wealthy upper-class family. When she meets her new stepsister, Katya, she instantly becomes infatuated with her and the two soon become inseparable. However, one day Katya is forced to leave to Moscow with her parents, and for the next eight years Netochka lives with Katya's older sister, who becomes her new mother figure. The story ends abruptly before the two girls reunite.
8171933	/m/026v4yc	The Warriors	Sol Yurick		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel begins with a quote from the Anabasis. Throughout the novel, the character Junior reads a comic book version of the story. It is the evening of July 4. Ismael Rivera, leader of the Delancey Thrones, the largest gang in New York City, calls a grand assembly of street gangs to the Bronx. Gangs from all over the city, signaled by a Beatles song on the radio, head to the meeting place at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. As per instructions, none of them carries weapons, except for a handgun – a peace-offering to Ismael. Among the gangs are the Coney Island Dominators, a black (Afro American) / Hispanic gang who are the central characters of the novel. The Dominators are Papa Arnold, the leader, Hector, second-in-command, Lunkface, the strongest and most dangerous member, Bimbo, the advisor, Hinton, the gang's artist and central character of the novel, Dewey, the most level-headed member and The Junior, the youngest of the group and the gang's mascot. At the meeting, Ismael announces his plan, with other Thrones relaying the message to the ones in back who cannot hear. He proposes a grand truce designed to challenge 'The Man', society otherwise called the 'Others'. After a stirring speech, the assembly dissolves into chaos as several dissident gangs begin fighting. When the police arrive, having been tipped off about a big "rumble", many gangs believing Ismael has set them up, turn their peace-offering handgun on Ismael killing him. When Arnold disappears amidst the rage of Ismael's gang members, it is up to Hector the new leader of the Coney Island Dominators, to lead the remaining delegates from the Bronx back to Coney Island, passing through enemy ridden gang turfs. When Hinton suggests removing their gang insignia - Mercedes symbols stolen off cars and converted into stick-pins from shop class at school which the gang wears on their hats - he is severely chastised. As Hinton is more familiar with the neighborhood, having lived there before, he is given the task of leading the gang out of Woodlawn Cemetery where they have escaped the cops in the chaos. The gang decides to call Wallie, the youth board worker assigned to their case, to come and drive them home. While waiting for him to arrive, the gang gets restless and jumps the subway. After a while, the train is stopped due to track work and the gang must take a different route. En route to the other subway station, the gang encounters the Borinquen Blazers, a Puerto Rican immigrant gang. Hector meets the leader to parley for safe passage and all goes well until a girl, one of the Blazers’ debs, desires one of the Dominators’ insignia pins. When they refuse, the girl chastises the Blazers’ leader, challenging his manhood. The leader then demands that the Dominators remove their pins in exchange for safe passage. Things escalate into an argument with the Dominators heading off to their destination and the Blazers not retaliating because their reinforcements have not arrived. Angry, Hector riles up the gang into a violent mood, deciding to spite the Blazers by going through their turf as a “war party” – an act performed by a gang ritual of changing the positions of the cigarettes in their hat brims. The Dominators realize they’re being tailed by the deb and a scout from the Blazers. They ambush them taking away the scout’s switchblade, then chase him off. Lunkface convinces the girl to stick around on the promise of a pin and a rank (of “sister”) in the gang. The Dominators then encounter an individual and start a fight, the girl cheering them on while they take turns stabbing the man with the stolen blade. The Dominators turn on the girl and gang-rape her, abandoning her in the street as they rush off to the subway. Throughout the novel, the gang play games of ‘manhood’, either to relieve boredom or to settle disputes: waiting for the train, the Dominators have a contest as to who can urinate the farthest. Later, on the train, Hector passes out pieces of candy bars he has bought to the gang. When they start teasing Lunkface with a piece that’s fallen on the floor, he gets so angry he quits the gang right there. Hector eases the situation by selecting a member for punishment – Hinton – and Lunkface "insults” him by puffing on Hinton’s “war cigarette”. Then Hector holds another “manhood” game involving the gang sticking their heads out the train window until it passes into the subway tunnel. Hinton wins, nearly killing himself in the process. Arriving at the 96th Street and Broadway station, the Dominators encounter a transit cop eyeing them suspiciously. Aware that the police are trying to round up all the gangs in the city, and that they are still holding the knife they used to stab the (possibly) dead man, The Dominators evade the transit cop by jumping off the train just as he boards, but more police show up and they flee: Hinton jumping onto the tracks into the subway tunnel, Dewey and Junior jumping an uptown train and Hector, Lunkface, and Bimbo running out of the station. Hector, Lunkface and Bimbo run into Riverside Park. Now, without the other gang members to see them, the trio removes their insignia pins so to avoid arrest. They encounter a large, fat, alcoholic nurse sitting on a bench and Lunkface takes an interest in her. The woman is only interested in Hector, referring to Lunkface and Bimbo as “niggers”. Hector lures her to a secluded spot where they jump her and she accepts them willingly. When Bimbo starts rifling through her purse, she reacts angrily. When Lunkface, frustrated, hits her to keep her still, the woman retaliates with unexpected strength and starts screaming “Rape!” The trio, unable to overpower her, flee but are promptly caught by the police. Hinton, inside the subway tunnel takes time for reflection. Feeling like an outsider and resenting the gang, he unleashes his contempt by writing on the wall, putting the gang down. Feeling guilty, he rubs out his insults and replaces them with the gang “tag” (he has been doing this throughout the novel). Hinton arrives at Times Square station, the meeting place. While waiting for the gang he enters a public bathroom and has sex with a prostitute, shakes off a homosexual and a young junkie offering sexual favors for money, travels back and forth on the shuttle to Grand Central and overcome with an inexplicable hunger, eats incessantly. When he comes to an arcade, he plays a shootout game with a dummy sheriff, winning twice, reflecting his resentment of authority. Before he knows it, he has achieved everything he usually does with the gang, and wonders why he needs them. Dewey and Junior meet up with Hinton and the trio head off to complete their journey. Although Dewey outranks Hinton, Hinton takes over the role of leader as he has an unexpected knack for the job. A pair of jocks, returning home from their senior prom with their dates, eye the trio challengingly but Hinton doesn’t back down, feeling a sense of moral victory as he does and the jocks depart. Hinton, Dewey and Junior finally arrive in Coney Island. After a brief moment of celebration, Hinton, all riled up with anger and the sense of victory, impulsively calls out a rumble against the Lords, the rival gang to the Dominators. Rushing to the Lords’ regular hangout, Hinton calls them out. They don’t respond and Hinton celebrates this victory by drawing a huge mural on the hangout wall, insulting the Lords and celebrating the Dominators. The trio then venture back to where the Dominators’ debs have been waiting, Hinton regretfully telling the girlfriends of Hector, Lunkface and Bimbo that they didn’t make it back. Papa Arnold’s girlfriend mentions that Arnold made it home hours ago and Dewey and Junior walk off with their girlfriends. Hinton, not having a girlfriend, goes home. There his mother, Minnie, is in the midst of sex with her boyfriend, Norbert. Hinton tends to the baby who was being neglected, then talks with his older half-brother Alonso about life in general and the future. Hinton crawls out onto the fire escape and falls asleep, his thumb in his mouth.
8173856	/m/026v6xm	Birth of the Firebringer Trilogy	Meredith Ann Pierce		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 ISBN 0-14-250053-4 Although his father is the prince of the unicorns, Jan worries that he isn't worthy of his prophesied destiny and that he can't live up to his father's legacy. When he follows the warrior unicorns on their pilgrimage, he accidentally leads his friend Dagg and a warrior named Tek through a series of dangers, culminating in a battle with a deadly wyvern, the hated enemy of the unicorns. ISBN 0-316-70744-9 Jan and Tek, finally adults in the eyes of the herd, pledge their love only to have their blossoming relationship interrupted by a vicious attack. Jan is swept by the ocean to a foreign land while Tek, pregnant with their offspring, flees from Jan's father to the protection of her hermit mother. Trapped in a human city by a population that believe him to be a god, Jan struggles to regain his memories. With the help of Ryhenna, a plain horse rather than a unicorn, he escapes back to the sea. As he tries to find his way back to his herd, Jan begins to understand his role as the new prince. ISBN 0-14-250074-7 Jan and Tek confront their past while their children, gifted with foresight, help them prepare the unicorns for realizing their destiny. When his father goes mad and flees from the herd, Jan crosses through the plains of the renegade unicorns, a parched desert, and finally into the realm of dragons, where he is shown the history of the terrible wyverns.
8175832	/m/026v988	The Sea Fairies	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Mayre Griffiths, nicknamed Trot, or sometimes Tiny Trot, is a little girl who lives on the coast of southern California. Her father is the captain of a sailing schooner, and her constant companion is Cap'n Bill Weedles, a retired sailor with a wooden leg. (Cap'n Bill had been Trot's father's skipper, and Charlie Griffiths had been his mate, before the accident that took the older man's leg.) Trot and Cap'n Bill spend many of their days roaming the beaches near home, or rowing and sailing along the coast. One day, Trot wishes that she could see a mermaid; her wish is overheard, and granted the next day. The mermaids explain to Trot, and the distressed Cap'n Bill, that they are benevolent fairies; when they offer Trot a chance to pay a visit to their land in mermaid form, Trot is enthusiastic, and Bill is too loyal to let her go off without him. So begins their sojourn among the sea fairies. They see amazing sights in the land of Queen Aquarine and King Anko (including an octopus who is mortified to learn that he's the symbol of the Standard Oil Company). They also encounter a villain called Zog the Magician, a monstrous hybrid of man, animal, and fish. Zog and his sea devils capture them and hold them prisoner. The two protagonists discover that many sailors thought to have been drowned have actually been captured and enslaved by Zog. Trot and Cap'n Bill survive Zog's challenges, and the villain is eventually defeated by the forces of good. Trot and Cap'n Bill are returned to human form, safe and dry after their undersea adventure. As many readers and critics have observed, Baum's Oz in particular and his fantasy novels in general are dominated by puissant and virtuous female figures; the archetype of the father-figure plays little role in Baum's fantasy world. The Sea Fairies is a lonely exception to this overall trend: "The sea serpent King Anko...is the closest approximation to a powerful, benevolent father figure in Baum's fantasies."
8175996	/m/026v9gg	Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood	Ann Brashares	2007-01-09	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lena is taking an extra painting class in the summer at RISD and becomes interested in the anonymous painter who comes in late on the first day. She soon discovers that it is Leonardo (Leo), one of the most acclaimed artists at the college, and she is tempted to look at his progress on his painting. She is overcome by his skill level. Leo sees her examining his work and they cultivate a friendship. Leo invites Lena over to his house for dinner, where she meets his mother, a professional artist. His mother suggests that Lena and Leo pose for each other's figure paintings, leaving Lena flustered, although she still agrees. However, due to her extreme shyness and strict upbringing, she is uncomfortable painting Leo in the nude and is unable to draw him the way she wants to. Leo, however, sees extreme beauty in Lena's body, kissing her after their first session. He asks her to pose for another one. Lena's feelings for Leo grow. However, shortly following the session, Kostos appears at her dorm room. He tells her that he divorced his wife after she apparently lied to him about being pregnant with their child. Lena, is at first in shock by Kostos's sudden appearance, but later becomes angry and yells at Kostos for coming back and expecting her to be waiting for him after he abandoned her. When she goes to apologize the next day, Kostos has already left. Lena poses for Leo, and after he kisses her, they make love. After, she goes to her apartment and cries, realizing that she never had feelings for Leo the way she had for Kostos. Later, while in Greece, she meets up with Kostos, who admits that he had gone to the US planning to propose to Lena, and never thought she might say no. Lena apologizes for her actions at her dorm and cries in his arms, and the two of them agree that they may never fall in love with anyone else. They kiss and part ways, but not before Kostos says one word in Greek to Lena, meaning "someday", which indicates that their relationship may not be over for good. Tibby is staying in NYU over the summer to work and take a script-writing class. Early in the summer, her long-term boyfriend, Brian, visits and tells her that he has successfully transferred to her college and will join her in the fall. Tibby is overjoyed, both with Brian's news and their relationship in general, and her happiness is so extreme that she begins to worry that it will not last. Later that evening, the two drink to celebrate, and they get moderately drunk and make love for the first time. At first, Tibby is content with their actions, but this quickly changes when she has a pregnancy scare. She begins to have doubts about her relationship with Brian, and these persist even after she realizes she is not pregnant; this leads to her breaking up with Brian. However, she begins to second-guess her actions when Brian tells her that he will not be transferring to her school- the realization that Brian truly accepts their break-up shakes her. She becomes even more upset when Effie, Lena's younger sister, meets Tibby to ask her if she would mind it if Effie and Brian dated. Tibby lies and says that she would not be bothered. Later in the summer, Tibby realizes that she allowed her fear over the pregnancy to darken her relationship and her feelings for Brian. She tells him that she is sorry and that she still cares for him, and he returns the sentiment. They soon resume their slightly modified relationship. Bridget is upset to learn that her boyfriend, Eric, has taken a job as a coach at a summer camp in Mexico. She doesn't want to spend the summer at home, wishing to avoid both missing Eric and her family; following her mother's death, both her father and brother became very withdrawn and antisocial. She impulsively signs up to take a trip to Turkey to work on an archaeological dig with some of her classmates. Once in Turkey, Bridget finds that she loves the work, especially painstakingly unearthing a floor in a room discovered by the archaeological team. Equally enthusiastic is Peter, a handsome young professor. They both find themselves equally attracted to each other, and on Peter's thirtieth birthday, they kiss. Peter reveals that he wants it to turn into something more, but instead, they part ways for the night. The next day, Peter's wife and kids visit and Bridget, seeing his family in person, becomes disgusted with herself. She realizes that she almost ruined what she longs for most: a family. Upon returning home, she attempts to get closer to her father and brother. Eric visits her at her house and her family, while clearly uncomfortable in social situations, tries to get to know him for Bridget's sake. Later that evening, Eric tells Bridget how much he missed her, and she realizes that she missed him as well. Eric stays the night at her house, and they make love. After Eric leaves the next morning, Bridget finds some boxes in the basement filled with carefully organized and preserved mementos of her mother and her younger self. It becomes evident to Bridget that despite her father's coldness, the work he put into the boxes shows that he truly cares about her. She realizes that, despite their limitations, her family does have something to offer her. Carmen, after a year of social transparency at her new college and a self-proclaimed loss of identity, has maintained only one new friendship--Julia, the resident Drama Diva of the freshman year at Williams, and one of the few freshman widely known in the social standings. Julia is glamorous, sophisticated, exuberant, and popular—the very antithesis of the new Carmen. Julia invites Carmen to work on the sets of the school play, and later on convinces Carmen to attend a summer drama program with her. Julia hopes to win a starring role, whereas Carmen just wants to build sets. However, after having been talked into auditioning for a part in one of the plays performed, Carmen outshines all the other camp attendants and lands the coveted role in the largest of the performed plays (that of Perdita in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale). Julia, meanwhile, gets only a small role in the community play. She grows immensely jealous of Carmen, who begins to make new friends and regain her confidence in herself. Julia's happiness only returns when Carmen begins to struggle with her acting, and Carmen realizes that Julia enjoys Carmen's misery and feelings of unworthiness, as they make Julia feel better by comparison. At the end of the summer, Carmen performs wonderfully in the play and regains her identity, and ends her friendship with Julia. At the end of the summer, Effie, depressed at the loss of Brian to his original love, runs off to spend a week in Oia, Greece with her grandmother. She impulsively takes the Traveling Pants with her in order to get back at Tibby (for getting back together with Brian) and Lena (for always choosing her friends over her sister). She accidentally loses the Pants so she calls Lena, and when the other girls find out, they all travel to Greece to try to find them. It is here that Lena patches things up with Kostos and finds out everything was a mistake. Despite days of searching, the girls do not find the Pants. However, they enjoy spending time together, realizing that they haven't all been together in a year. They went to the ocean and saw a colour in the ocean from something, the pants. They also realize that they had begun to rely on the Pants to maintain their connection, rather than trying to maintain it themselves. They vow to always maintain their bond but not to allow it to keep them from moving forward.
8179123	/m/026vf8w	Sons of the Oak	Dave Wolverton	2006-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The book details the life of Fallion and his rise to power. When the Earth King, Gaborn val Orden dies, the nations mobilize to destroy his children, fearing they'll usurp power over the kingdoms. An army quickly arrives, led by the locus Asgaroth. Fallion, his brother, Jaz, and Rhianna, a girl they rescued from monsters called strengi-saats, flee with their mother and the family of Sir Borenson. Asgaroth eventually catches up with them but his host is slain by Fallion's mother, Iome. The exiles board a smuggler's ship and flee the Courts of Tide. Fallion befriends the captain and most of the crew—including a flameweaver they call Smoker. Smoker recognizes Fallion's power, calling him the torch bearer, and begins teaching him how to use his abilities. Eventually Fallion and Jaz are captured by the evil Runelord Shadoath, who is parasitized by the locus of the One True Master of Evil. She tortures them in order to win their loyalty, but they, along with Shadoath's daughter, are rescued by Myrrima and Smoker. Smoker transforms into a fire elemental, destroying the city where the children were being held captive and seriously wounding Shadaoth. Only her numerous endowments of stamina and brawn save her. During this, Rhianna is mistakenly presumed dead and left behind, where she becomes a Dedicate to the sea ape of Shadoath's son. Five years pass, and Fallion and Jaz grow older in the land of Landesfallen. Shadaoth eventually tracks them down, and finds the hidden lair of the Gwardeen, a group of child graak riders. Fallion realizes she is coming and leaves to look for her Dedicates. As she begins her assault on the Gwardeen base, Fallion locates her Dedicate Keep and wounds the sea ape while entering. Among the Dedicates is Rhianna, who he'd supposed dead. As the sea ape dies, she revives. Unable to slaughter so many innocents, Fallion awakens his powers as a flameweaver and Bright One. This destroys several loci residing in the innocent children Shadaoth has taken, including Asgaroth which had possessed Rhianna. When Shadoath realizes what has happened, she tries to flee back to the remnant of the One True World. Fallion follows her there, destroys Shadoath and injures the One True Master of Evil within her. The One True Master of Evil abandons Shadoath and escapes.
8179637	/m/05c5yzg	Jaws	Peter Benchley		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set in Amity, a fictional seaside resort town on Long Island, New York. One night, a young tourist named Chrissie Watkins swims out in the open waters where she is attacked and killed by a great white shark. When her body is found by the police washed up on the beach, it is obvious that she had been attacked by a shark. Police chief Martin Brody orders Amity's beaches closed, but is overruled by mayor Larry Vaughan and the town's selectmen, fearing it would damage the summer tourism on which the town's economy is heavily dependent. With the connivance of Harry Meadows, the editor of the local newspaper, the attack is hushed up. A few days later, the shark kills a young boy and an old man not far from the shore. A local fisherman, Ben Gardner, is sent out to kill the shark, but disappears out on the water. Brody heads out with his loyal deputy Leonard Hendricks and finds Gardner's boat anchored off-shore, empty, and with large bite marks in the side. Hendricks pulls a massive shark's tooth from one of the holes. Blaming himself for these deaths, Brody again moves to close the beaches, and has Meadows investigate the people Vaughan is in business with to find out why the Mayor is so determined to keep the beaches open. Meadows uncovers his links to members of the Mafia, who are pressuring Vaughan to keep them open in order to protect the value of Amity's real estate, into which they had recently invested a great deal of money. Meadows also brings in ichthyologist Matt Hooper from the Woods Hole Institute to advise them on how to deal with the shark. Meanwhile, Brody's wife Ellen is dissatisfied with life and misses the affluent life she left behind when she married Brody and had children. She immediately strikes up a friendship with Hooper, especially after learning that he is the younger brother of a man she dated years before. The two have a brief affair in a motel outside of town. Throughout the rest of the novel, Brody suspects they have had a liaison and is haunted by the thought. With the beaches still open, people begin pouring to the town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the killer shark. Still haunted by the guilt of the previous deaths, Brody sets up patrols on the beach and on the water to watch for the fish. After a boy (dared by his friends to go out into the water, with the promise of ten dollars) narrowly escapes being attacked by the shark close to the shore, Brody finally closes the beaches and hires Quint, a professional shark hunter, to find and kill the fish. Brody, Quint, and Hooper set out on Quint's vessel, the Orca; the trio soon find that they are struggling against each other as well as the shark. Hooper is angered by Quint's methods, which include disemboweling a blue shark they catch and his use of an illegally-fished unborn dolphin for bait. Quint taunts Hooper for refusing to shoot at beer cans with them, which are launched from the Orca at sea with a device similar to a skeet launcher. Brody and Hooper constantly bicker as Brody's suspicions about Hooper's possible affair with Ellen grow stronger. At one point, Brody attempts to strangle Hooper on the dock. Their first two days at sea are unproductive, and they return to port on each night. On the third day, Hooper reveals to Brody and Quint a shark proof cage that he had shipped from Woods Hole. Initially Quint refuses to allow the cage on the boat, suspecting that it will be useless for protection against this particular fish, but he relents when Hooper offers the captain an extra hundred dollars in cash. Once out on the ocean, after several unsuccessful attempts by Quint to harpoon the shark, Hooper goes underwater in the cage to attempt to kill it with a bang stick. He is so taken with the shark that he resolves to first take photos. However, the shark attacks the cage and, after ramming the bars apart, kills him. Brody is dispirited and also realizes that there is no more money to pay Quint to continue the hunt, but Quint no longer cares about his fee; he is now obsessed with killing the shark. Meanwhile, Larry Vaughan arrives at the Brody house before Brody himself returns home and informs Ellen that he and his wife are leaving Amity. Before he leaves, he reveals to Ellen that he always thought they would've made a great couple. When Brody and Quint return the following day, the shark repeatedly rams into the boat, and Quint harpoons it three times. The shark leaps onto the stern of the Orca and the boat starts sinking. Quint plunges another harpoon into it, but as it falls back into the water, his foot gets entangled in the rope, and when the shark drags him under, he drowns. Now floating on a seat cushion, Brody spots the shark swimming towards him and shuts his eyes, preparing for death. The shark gets to within a few feet of him before stopping and succumbing to the wounds inflicted by Quint. It sinks down out of sight, its dead body suspended in the water just beyond the light by the barrels attached to it, and with Quint's body still dangling from it. Using the cushion as a makeshift float, Brody starts to paddle back to shore.
8184034	/m/026vjlf	Roses are Red	James Patterson	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Alex Cross returns for the sixth book in the series with a new killer on the loose. A series of meticulously planned bank robberies leave behind a wake of bodies. Alex Cross must not only battle against the sadistic criminal who calls himself The Mastermind, but also the risks that he may be putting his family in. Cross takes a plunge into a case where mind games lead to violence and the slightest mistake will be punished with death.
8188905	/m/03w9923	Half a Life	V.S. Naipaul	2001	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Willie Somerset Chandran is the son of a Brahmin father and a Dalit mother. His father gave him his middle name as a homage to the English writer Somerset Maugham who had visited the father in the temple where the father was living under a vow of silence. Having come to despise his father, Willie leaves India to go to 1950s London to study. There he leads a life as a poor immigrant and later he writes a book of short stories and manages to publish it. Willie receives a letter from Ana, a mixed Portuguese and black African girl, who admires his book, and they arrange to meet. They fall in love and Willie follows her to her country (an unnamed Portuguese colony in Africa, presumably Mozambique). Meanwhile Willie's sister Sarojini marries a German and moves to Berlin. The novel ends with Willie having moved to his sister's place in Berlin after his 18 year stay in Africa. Half a Life is a precursor to Naipaul's 2004 novel Magic Seeds which starts with Willie in Berlin.
8188949	/m/026vmyt	Gender Blender				 One day, Tom, one of the main characters, is playing an early morning baseball game with his friends. However, he doesn't know that one of his classmates -- Jane Hennessey -- is going to play. He desperately tries to strike her out by hitting the ball. It lands towards the Grrlzillas and it rolls under Margaret's skirt. He gets tangled in the skirt and tries to convince the Grrlzillas that he just didn't want to be beat by a girl (which was true). The girls dismiss him as pathetic and go back to school calling him a "skirt perv". The chemistry between him and Emma is now really not good. Later on in the novel, Emma and Tom both try to jump onto the same school trampoline, but they have a serious collision and unknowingly switch bodies and souls. Emma is now Tom, and Tom Emma. The next morning, Emma wakes up with an erection (as she calls it, a "boner"). At first she thought it was a chipmunk in the bed with her. Tom discovers he's having Emma's menstruating period, and he has to wear Emma's bras. Eventually in the end, they have another collision and become themselves again.
8189277	/m/026vn1l	The Book of Evidence	John Banville	1989	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Freddie Montgomery is the unreliable narrator who tells his life-story and recounts the events leading up to his arrest for the murder of a servant girl in one of Ireland's "big houses". A cultured but louche Anglo-Irish scientist who has been living abroad for many years, Freddie returns to his ancestral home seeking money after falling foul of a gangster in the Mediterranean. Shocked to discover that his mother has sold the family's collection of paintings, Freddie attempts to recover them. This leads to a tragic series of events culminating in Freddie's killing of a maid while stealing a painting. On the run, he hides out in the house of old family friend, Charlie, a man of some influence, before being arrested and interrogated. The novel ends as Freddie sits in jail and has the first feelings of remorse for the girl's death while casting doubt on the truth of what he has recounted.
8189947	/m/026vncx	Sky Island	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Trot is near her home on the coast of southern California when she meets a strange little boy with a large umbrella. Button Bright has been using his family's magic umbrella to take long-range journeys from his Philadelphia home, and has gotten as far as California. After an explanation of how the magic umbrella works, the two children, joined by Cap'n Bill, decide to take a trip to a nearby island; they call it "Sky island," because it looks like it's "halfway in the sky" &mdash; but the umbrella takes them to a different place entirely, a literal island in the sky. Sky Island is another split-color country in Baum's fantasy universe, like the Land of Oz or the Island of Yew (in The Enchanted Island of Yew, from 1903). Divided in two halves, blue and pink, Sky Island supports two separate and hostile races of beings. The three travellers land on the blue side of Sky Island, which is a grim country ruled by a sadistic tyrant, the Boolooroo of the Blues. In Sky Island, as in Oz, no one can be killed or suffer pain, but that doesn't mean one is safe: the Boolooroo's method of punishing disobedience in his subjects is to split his victims into halves using a huge guillotine-type knife, and then join the wrong halves back together, creating very unhappy asymmetrical mixed people. This is called "patching." The Boolooroo threatens to do the same to his new visitors; meanwhile he keeps them imprisoned, and gives Trot as a slave to his daughters, the Six Snubnosed Princesses (named Cerulia, Turquoise, Sapphire, Azure, Cobalt, and Indigo). The three protagonists manage to escape from the Blues; penetrating the Great Fog Bank that separates the island's halves and meeting its strange inhabitants, they reach the pink or "sunrise" side of the island. The pink country is a much friendlier and more relaxed place than the blue side, with cheerfully chubby residents. The visitors get a better reception, since they are rather pink in color themselves, albeit of a sadly wan and pale shade. Unfortunately, the laws of the pink country insist that the visitors be thrown off the edge of Sky Island; even the country's ruler, the sylph-like Tourmaline the Poverty Queen, cannot pardon them. Polychrome, however, descends from the rainbow like a deus ex machina to resolve the problem. Trot is promoted to Queen of the Pinkies, because she has the palest skin among them. After Cap'n Bill leads an invasion of the opposite side, Trot becomes "Booloorooess" of the Blues as well; and so she is able to "regulate" both societies into more sensible forms. The three travellers eventually return to their homes, more than a little relieved at their escape from Sky island. The bipartite structure of Sky Island allows Baum to inject ironic and satiric commentary on xenophobia, isolationism, race and color prejudice, social biases, personal vanity, and related issues. The Blues think that their dismal island-half "is the Center of the Universe and the only place anyone would care to live." Their scientists have "proven" that the Earth below, a ball of mud and water, cannot support life. The Snubnosed Princesses think that a snub nose is "the highest mark of female beauty" and "an evidence of high breeding which any lady would be proud to possess."
8190348	/m/026vnkd	Bad Kitty	Michele Jaffe			 Jasmine Callihan is a 17-year-old girl on vacation in Las Vegas with her family. She is spending her vacation trying to avoid her cousin Alyson and her "Evil Hench Twin" Veronique, get the 'cute guy across the pool', Jack, to notice her, and prove to her father that she is a model daughter. However, as soon as she is attacked by a three-legged cat (Mean and Dangerous Joe, or Mad Joe for short), things go haywireShe is suddenly caught up in a mystery regarding the murder of Len Phillips, and is determined to solve it with her best friends, fashion-wise Polly, crazy and eccentric Roxy, and Tom, sensible and totally in love with Polly.Along the way, she gets to know the 'cute guy across the pool', who may or may not be involved with the murder. It is a typical afternoon by the pool at the Venetian hotel. Jas is feeling listless, frustrated and flat in her green bikini. Her cousin Alyson is being her obnoxious and snotty self. Her overprotective father coos with his twenty-years-younger wife and clearly has no intention of letting Jas follow her dream—a career as a detective—any time soon. The sun is shining, the water is cool. The cat incident leads to Jas's first run-in with hotel security and her introduction to the cat's owner, the eight-year-old son of Fiona Bristol. Fiona is a famous model who was embroiled in scandal a year earlier when her lover was killed and her husband was arrested for the murder. Jas's three best friends sense she needs help and show up to offer insight into the case and fashion advice. When the cute guy at the snack hut turns out to be deeply enmeshed in the case, Jas has to figure out whether he is a friend or a foe.
8191566	/m/026vpm2	Operation Nuke	Martin Caidin	1973	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Steve Austin, an astronaut-turned-cyborg working for a secret branch of American intelligence, is set in pursuit of a criminal syndicate using nuclear blackmail to hold the world to ransom.
8191681	/m/026vpp4	High Crystal	Martin Caidin	1974	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Steve Austin, an operative for the US government who is part man, part machine, is sent to Peru to investigate a mysterious power source in the ruins of an ancient civilization, but Austin and his team soon discover that a criminal organization also has their sights set on obtaining the power contained within the "High Crystal".
8192201	/m/026vq04	Cyborg IV	Martin Caidin	1975	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In Cyborg IV, Caidin takes the notion of cyborg to new extremes as Steve Austin's consciousness is hooked up to a next generation spacecraft, creating a new form of union between man and machine. Meanwhile, an enemy force plans to use similar technology for their own ends.
8192724	/m/026vqj9	The Ganymede Takeover	Ray Nelson	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place on a future Earth (vidphones, telepaths, androids, ionocraft are normal) recently conquered by aliens from Ganymede: limbless, worm-like creatures whose physical needs are attended to by a slave-race of specialist 'creeches'. Mekkis is the leader of a Ganymedean faction that opposed the war when his Oracle (a creature capable of precognition) foresaw a 'coming darkness'. The apparent success of the invasion means he is now discredited. As a result, Mekkis is saddled with the troublesome Bale of Tennessee, home to the last remaining core of resistance, the 'Neeg-parts' led by Black Muslim leader Percy X. Unknown to all concerned, another resistance movement operates covertly under cover of the World Psychiatric Association. One of its agents, Doctor Paul Rivers, is seeking to protect Percy X by assassinating his former girlfriend, TV host Joan Hiashi who is collaborating with the Ganymedeans to capture Percy X. Although Joan Hiashi switches sides after discovering that Percy X is a trained telepath who can read her mind, Percy X is still captured thanks to a tracking device planted on her by racist landowner Gus Swenesgard. Mekkis offers Percy X the chance to become the puppet ruler of Tennessee. When the offer is violently declined, Mekkis sends Percy X and Joan to the Norwegian clinic of psychiatric genius Rudolph Balkani, who has had exceptional success turning resistors into enthusiastic collaborators via sensory deprivation therapy. Dr. Rivers manages to free Joan and Percy X, replacing them with androids. On discovering the ruse, Rudolph Balkani commits suicide. This along with a number of other suicides (encouraged by the World Psychiatric Association) lead the Ganymedians to wrongly assume that Balkani has helped the resistance infiltrate their collaborationist regime. Judging their proxy rule of Earth to be impractical, they decide to withdraw from the planet and destroy all life through a device that will block the sun's rays. Meanwhile the Neeg-parts have seized a cache of weapons developed by Rudolph Balkani during the war — machines that turn illusions thought up by their users into reality, and a 'hell-weapon' that was never used against the aliens, as it would destroy humanity as well. After most of his troops desert due to the psychological problems caused by the illusion machines, Percy X is finally defeated by an army of robots created by Gus Swenesgard. Dr. Rivers is sent to kill Percy X, both to prevent his capture and stop him activating the hell-weapon. Mekkis has become obsessed with the theories of Rudolph Balkani. In order to get revenge on his enemies he forms a telepathic link with Percy X that will enable the hell-weapon to destroy those Ganymedians who are not on Earth. After killing Percy X, Rivers is able to switch off the device before humanity is destroyed, but the Ganymedians instinctively form a group mind in times of danger, and so become trapped in a permanent existential and experiential 'hell' within a dark void, unable to contact their creeches for help. The novel ends with the creeches returning to Ganymede to start their own society, and the World Psychiatric Association supporting Gus Swenesgard as a useful puppet ruler until democracy is restored, though Dr. Rivers can't help wondering as to their true motives. it:L'ora dei grandi vermi
8201953	/m/026v_pc	The Stoic	Theodore Dreiser	1947	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cowperwood, still married to his estranged wife Aileen, lives with Berenice. He decides to move to London, England, where he intends to take over and develop the underground railway system. Berenice becomes close to Earl Stane, while Frank has an affair with Lorna Maris, a relative of his. Meanwhile he tries to fix Aileen up with Tollifer, but she becomes enraged when she finds out it was a ruse. Finally, Cowperwood dies of Bright's disease. His inheritance is squandered in lawsuits. Aileen dies shortly after. Berenice travels to India, where she is moved by poverty. Back in the United States, she realises there is poverty there too, and decides to set up a hospital for the poor, as Cowperwood intended.
8202045	/m/058bwv	The Financier	Theodore Dreiser	1912	{"/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Philadelphia, Frank Cowperwood, whose father is a banker, makes his first money by buying cheap soaps on the market and selling them back with profit to a grocer. Later, he gets a job in Henry Waterman & Company, and leaves it for Tighe & Company. He also marries an affluent widow, in spite of his young age. Over the years, he starts misusing municipal funds with the aid of the City Treasurer. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire redounds to a stock market crash, prompting him to be bankrupt and exposed. Although he attempts to browbeat his way out of being sentenced to jail by intimidating Mr Stener, politicians from the Republican Party use their influence to use him as a scapegoat for their own corrupt practices. Meanwhile, he has an affair with Aileen Butler, a young girl, subsequent to losing faith in his wife. She vows to wait for him after his jail sentence. Her father, Mr Butler dies; she grows apart from her family. Frank divorces his wife. Sometime after being released, he invests in stocks subsequent to the Panic of 1873, and becomes a millionaire again. He decides to move out of Philadelphia and start a new life in the West.
8203154	/m/026w188	Pilgermann	Russell Hoban		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Narrated by the disembodied spirit or consciousness of Pilgermann, a European Jew, the novel opens with the newly castrated Pilgermann having a vision of Christ after being mutilated by a gentile mob for being caught sleeping with a merchant's wife. Christ tells Pilgermann that he must make his way to Jerusalem where he will meet with Sophia. Reluctantly, and in theory with nothing better to do, Pilgermann sets off. As Pilgermann travels across Europe he is joined by other characters, including his own Death which walks alongside him. Life in Europe is seen through a series of grotesque, Brueghel and Bosch-like images of horror, violence, degradation and death. Nevertheless Pilgermann continues, keeping his cool with a mixture of detachment, compassion and irony throughout. Half way across the Mediterranean his boat is ambushed by Pirates who sell him to a Muslim grandee in Antioch in Syria, Bembel Redzuk. Pilgermann and Bembel become friends, although never social equals (as a Jew Pilgermann can only ever be a dhimmi in Muslim society). Pilgermann conceives of, designs and builds an enormous Kabbalistic courtyard and tower with a patterned design on the floor for Bembel which rapidly takes on numinous power among the community, attracting the displeasure of the Islamic authorities. Things come to a head when Frankish Crusaders besiege Antioch. As it becomes increasingly clear that the city will fall, the Islamic authorities become more and more suspicious of non-Muslims and Pilgermann's life becomes increasingly threatened. Finally the city falls and Bembel and Pilgermann are killed fighting a Crusader, but not before Pilgermann has a vision of Jerusalem - which he is never destined to get to - and sees Sophia lying, dying among a pile of corpses after a Crusader massacre.
8205550	/m/026w3x6	The Yearling	Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings	1938	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jody Baxter lives with his parents, Ory and Ezra "Penny" Baxter, in the animal-filled central Florida backwoods at the end of the 19th Century. His parents had six other children prior to Jody, but they died in infancy which makes it difficult for Ma Baxter to bond with Jody. Jody loves the outdoors and loves his family. He has wanted a pet for as long as he can remember, yet his mother Ory says they only have enough food to feed themselves. A subplot involves the hunt for an old bear named Slewfoot that randomly attacks the Baxter livestock. Later the Baxters and Forresters get in a fight about the bear, and continue to fight about nearly anything. The Forresters steal the Baxters' pigs and while Penny and Jody are out searching for their stolen pigs, Penny is bitten by a rattlesnake in the arm. Penny shoots a doe to use its liver to draw out the snake's poison. Penny recovers, but the doe leaves behind a fawn. Jody adopts the fawn, whom he names Flag, and it becomes his constant companion. The story revolves around the life of Jody as he grows to adolescence along with the fawn. The plot also centers on the conflicts of the young boy as he struggles with strained relationships, hunger, death (of his childhood companion, Fodder-wing Forrester, due to sickness), and the capriciousness of nature through a catastrophic flood. Throughout, the Baxter family is in contrast to their uncouth neighbors the Forresters, and the Baxters' more refined relatives in the village of Volusia. Jody experiences tender moments with his family, his fawn, and their neighbors and relatives. Along with his father, he comes face-to-face with the rough life of a farmer and hunter. As Jody takes his final steps into maturity, he is forced to make a desperate choice between his pet Flag and his family. The parents realize that the now-adult Flag is endangering their very survival, as he persists in eating the corn crop which the family is relying on for their food the next winter. Jody's father orders him to take Flag into the woods and shoot him, but Jody cannot bring himself to do it. When his mother shoots the deer and wounds him, Jody is then forced to shoot Flag in the neck himself. In anger at his mother, Jody runs away, only to come face-to-face with the true meaning of hunger, loneliness, and fear. After a failed attempt to run away in a broken-down canoe, he is picked up by a mail ship and dropped off in Volusia. In the end, Jody returns home and assumes his role as the emerging caregiver to his family and their land.
8206943	/m/026w5cb	The Animals of Farthing Wood	Colin Dann	1979	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The humans have dug up the heath that surrounds Farthing Wood, and have reduced the size of the wood itself to little more than a copse. When the pond is filled in leaving only a small trickle in the stream due to an ongoing drought, Badger and Fox take it upon themselves to call an Assembly of the wood's inhabitants in order to devise a solution to their problem. Calling all the animals to be at this assembly, which takes place in Badger's burrow, both Badger and Fox hope that one of them comes up with a solution. Unfortunately, as the meeting goes on, they realise that there is little that they can do to stop the humans and are about to break up the meeting when Toad, who had disappeared almost a year ago, arrives. He explains that he had been captured in a jam jar and taken far away. He eventually managed to escape and followed his homing instinct to get back to Farthing Wood. As he travelled, he met a group of frogs that lived in a pond, who told him all about the fact that the pond was located in a nature reserve called White Deer Park. It is then that Toad himself suggest that they should leave Farthing Wood and travel to the reserve in the hope that they will be safe from humans there. All the animals agree to do that journey with Toad as their guide. Tawny Owl also insists that they should choose a leader in order to lead them, to which they choose Fox. Still, the smaller animals do not trust the larger animals, especially Tawny Owl, Kestrel, Adder, Badger and even Fox himself, who are their natural enemies, and refuse to go on a journey with them, knowing that they could be eaten by one of them. In order to solve that problem, Badger insists that they all should take an oath; the Oath of Mutual Protection, in which each animal resolves to put their natural differences and instincts aside in order to help each other. Making all the arrangements needed, on the night after what is left of Farthing Wood is destroyed, the animals set off on their journey with Fox as their leader and Toad as their guide. Problems soon arise due to each animal's different abilities, such as how fast they are or what they eat. Mole is only able to make the journey by piggy-backing on Badger, a source of some guilt to him for which he constantly looks to make amends for. There is also the problem caused by each animal's character: whilst most swiftly learn to trust the carnivores Fox, Badger, Tawny Owl and Kestrel, the herbivores are nervous around the cynical Adder and the loner Weasel - the former taking a malicious delight in tormenting them that he (and to an extent Fox and Badger) cannot be trusted to maintain the Oath ahead of his own self-interest. On that same night, they all cross a housing estate, where they drink from a pool, and later on as the day starts to break, they cross a busy road, taking refuge in some marshland, which is also an army land, where the military are seen practicing. It is also here that the Lizards decide to stay due to finding the journey much too overwhelming, there being little point in continuing when the marshes will suit them. In the end, Fox respects and accepts the Lizards decision, but not without lammenting the fact that the party is not complete anymore. A couple of hours later, the animals are soon forced to flee when a fire, caused by a cigarette stub, occurs. Toad, who ended up in the middle of the fire, is saved by Fox. Mole also gets into mischief when he digs for worms, and ends up being caught by one of the firemen who appeared on the site to try to extinguish the fire; he would be later saved by Kestrel. As the fire starts to get controlled by the humans, a sudden storm helps to extinguish it. Having survived the fire, the animals manage to cross the rest of the army land, and enter in to farm land, where they all hope to be safer. A few days later, it starts to rain and they take shelter in an open barn, but are trapped inside by the farmer who thinks Fox is the fox who has been eating his chickens. While on watch the pheasants are both shot. Trapped inside the barn, Mole decides to dig a tunnel in order to get out of the barn. Digging as fast as he can, he tunnels it and so, all the animals manage to get out of the barn and take shelter in a nearby copse; all except for Adder, who stays behind in order to distract the farmer's dog and so, buy the other animals some time to run. Later that night, Tawny Owl flies over the farm, showing Adder which way he should go. At the copse, the rest of the animals find out that it is inhabitted by some rooks, who welcome them. Feeling refreshed after a few days spent with the rooks in the copse, the animals proceed journey. Leaving the farm land behind them, they soon arrive at a river. Feeling unease about crossing a river, the animals fear that it is too wide for them to cross it. Still, Toad tells them that the river is a little wide, but he assures them that the current is very slow and that crossing it will not be a trouble. Whilst swimming across, the Rabbits panic and Fox, as well as some of the other animals, goes back to help them. After saving the rabbits, Fox is too tired to swim. In order to save Fox, Badger tries to help him, but a mass of debris sweeps them both down the river. Kestrel keeps an eye for the debris, where Fox and Badger are caught in, as the other animals try to follow him. When the debris fall from a waterfall, there is not trace of either Fox or Badger, and the party assumes that they both perished in the incident. But to everyone's amazement, they find out that Badger is alive. Being tangled by the weeds, it takes the combined efforts of Weasel, Toad and the Hares to free him. Kestrel follows Fox downstream, but he disappears under a bridge. With no sign of Fox, Kestrel heads back to where the rest of the animals are, informing them of what happened. The nimals know that they will have to tell Badger the bad news when he wakes up, but none of them wishes to do it. Fox's presumed death presents the largest crisis for the party. Badger - partly weakened by the events at the river in which he almost drowned, takes charge not without some discord from Tawny Owl taking it as read that he and Badger - as the cleverest - should be joint leaders, with Weasel believing that there can be no direct replacement for Fox and they simply have to work as one - "I don't believe Fox ever named a deputy." Badger's leadership is strained when Toad leads them around in a circle (thanks to being half way between Farthing Wood and White Deer Park, confusing his homing instinct), whilst the mice and voles leave the party due to several becoming pregnant - the rest of the party refusing to remain where they are until the babies and mothers are fit to travel. The smaller animals agree that they should stay, while Badger tries to convince them that they should stick together, and that they had to continue the journey, because there was no time for the party to wait until the newborns were old enough to accompany them. This swiftly ends in tragedy when it transpires that they are in the territory of a Red-backed Shrike, or 'Butcher Bird' (which in fact finally became extinct within the UK only a few years after the book was published), who kills all of the mice and voles' babies. Upon seeing the tragedy happening, Weasel remarks that there were a couple of Butcher Birds in Farthing Wood, back in the old days, and the two of them were even more dangerous and vicious than Adder himself. Feeling guilty over not taking Badger's advice in account, the mice and voles rejoin the party, now understanding that they cannot leave the safety of the party until they reach their final destination. But, they are not the only ones who feel guilty for not doing what they were supposed to; Badger also feels guilty, blaming himself for what happened, asking himself what would have Fox done if he was still with them. Unknown to all of the animals, Fox is very much alive and he is on his way to find his friends. It so happens that Fox flots down the river on some driftwood, which soon catches against a small motorboat. Fox is taken down the river and into a lock, where he is seen by several humans so he jumps up onto the land and runs away from the town into the countryside. While on the countryside he meets a horse who tells him that he is walking through hunting country and warns him to get away as soon as possible. As night falls, Fox comes across a large burrow and rests for a while, before waking up to the sight of a vixen, who allows him to continue resting in her burrow. The two foxes go hunting and Fox tells Vixen about his friends and their journey to White Deer Park. Seeing her as the most beautiful creature on Earth, Fox wishes Vixen to be his mate, but she only agrees to accompany him as he looks for his friends, although she tells him she will consider becoming his mate along the way. Gathering information from a barn owl, they discover that the other animals are safe and well, and the two foxes head off in pursuit of them. Along the way the scent becomes divided and the foxes split up to search in both directions. Vixen soon discovers she has taken the wrong route and heads back towards Fox, but she is pursued by a fox hunt and tries to lose them in some woods and becomes trapped. Fox distracts the hunt, attracting them towards him, ending up reunited with the rest of the Farthing Wood animals, who he did not know were hidden in a copse on top of a hill, trying not to be noticed by the Hunt. He blames himself for almost putting them in danger, but none of the animals blames him for it, for they knew that he did not know they were there. Vixen, who starts to climb the hill to join Fox, is almost caught by the Hunt Master, when Adder saves her and the rest of the party by jumping out of the grass, and biting the Hunt Master's horse, causing the Hunt Master to break his arm when flung and cease the hunt. Adder brushes off his actions by saying the horse was about to stand on him, but with there being little doubt he'd specifically prepared an ambush to save Fox and Vixen (and the others in the process), it is the turning point in his relationship with the group. After that, they keep going, until they find a quarry, where they acquire a new member to their party, the droll heron Whistler, who saves Toad's life, after he was almost swallowed by a huge carp. Toad asks Whistler to through it back into the pond, and the heron does so. This shows that all the animals have learned to respect life, through the use of the Oath. Before going on, they all organize a small party, where Vixen and Whistler get to know everyone a little better (with the exception of Adder, who stays up all night looking for the fish that almost swallowed Toad), and where they both take the Oath. The next morning, they arrive to a motorway. Upon seeing it, they all ask Toad (who crossed it when it was still being built, and did not know that it was already finished) if there is another way to get to the other side. Toad tells them that there is not another way, and that the only way he knows to White Deer Park continues after that motorway. Some animals suggest that they should wait for the night to fall in order to cross the motorway, but Fox tells them that even at night the motorway would still have traffic, but mostly because they are not out of fox hunting territory. Decided to cross the motorway, Fox decides that the bigger animals will cross into groups, while Whistler will carry the smaller ones on his beak. All the animals manage to cross, with the exception of the two oldest hedgehogs, who are run over by a truck after becoming scared while crossing the road and curling up. Whistler couldn't carry them as they were too prickly. Adder, who stayed behind in order to make sure that the hunt would not follow the group, arrives to the motorway and Whistler carries him to the other side. A couple of days later, they enter a field of cabbages, and find out that it has been laced with pesticide. Mole, who disappeared once again in order to search for worms, tells them that all of the worms are dead, confirming what Tawny Owl had found out about the pesticide. Toad states that they are getting nearer the reserve, but that they have to keep going in order to avoid the humans. The larger animals and the birds all fly into town and gather food for the smaller animals, as soon as its dark. Taking precautions, they cross the field, where they are photographed by a naturalist, who is astounded by the fact of seeing so many different animals travelling together. At night, they reach a town, which is the last obstacle on the animals' trek. It starts raining and the group decides to find some shelter, hoping that the next day will be better. They find it in a church. Entering in it through a hole in one of the walls, they all fall asleep, behind the church organ. When morning comes, they find out that the hole had been covered by the humans, and that they are now trapped inside. Fortunately, a wedding takes place right that day, and they all manage to get out, after the pandemonium created by the church organist, when it starts playing the organ. Finally, a few hours later, they arrive at White Deer Park, where the White Deer himself welcomes them to the park, having heard from other birds of their journey and all of the dangers that they faced in order to get there. A couple of nights after their arrival, Toad invites the animals to join him in a celebration. They notice that he is quite cheerful (the reason is that he tasted a sip of sherry from a bottle that the park's warden accidentally dropped). Gathering around near the park's warden cabin, who they find out was the same naturalist that photographed him when they were crossing the field of cabbages, they enjoy each other's company, remembering those who started the journey with them, and that did not make it, but also the misadventures that they all shared, stating that they would keep following the Oath, as a remembrance of their journey.
8207203	/m/026w5r1	The Enchanted Island of Yew	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Sesely, daughter of Baron Merd of Heg, and two companions are enjoying a picnic in the Forest of Lurla when they are accosted by a fairy. The fairy, bored with centuries of insipid fairy life, amazes the girls by pleading to be changed into a mortal. Though the girls are surprised that they might have the power to do such a thing, the fairy explains how it can be done. The girls agree to transform the fairy into a human boy for the space of one year. The newly-minted male is dubbed Prince Marvel, and, furnished with fairy arms and armor and an enchanted horse (a deer transformed), sets out to have adventures. Since Yew is so dominated by robbers and rogues, Prince Marvel doesn't have to travel far to find said adventures. He starts off by confronting and besting the bandits of Wul-Takim, the self-styled King of Thieves. Marvel captures all fifty-nine of the band and is ready to send them to the gallows &mdash; but Wul-Takim convinces the naive ex-fairy that the robbers are now honest men, whom it would be unfair to hang. Marvel rescues a prisoner from the robbers, a young man named Nerle, who becomes Marvel's squire-boy. The match is a good one: while Marvel yearns for adventure, Nerle actually longs to suffer pain and deprivation, and often reproaches Marvel for saving him from harm. A greater challenge awaits him in Spor, where he faces the Royal Dragon of King Terribus. The dragon is visually spectacular: {| align=center cellpadding+5px cellspacing=0 border-0 style="background-color:#FFFDD0" |- | "...more than thirty feet in length and covered everywhere with large green scales set with diamonds, making the dragon, whenever it moved, a very glittering spectacle. Its eyes were as big as pie plates, and its mouth &mdash; when wide opened &mdash; fully as large as a bathtub. Its tail was very long and ended in a golden ball, such as you see on the top of flagstaffs. Its legs, which were as thick as those of an elephant, had scales which were set with rubies and emeralds." |- | | valign=bottom | |} The dragon, however, is far less formidable than it appears: its inner fire was blown out in a gale, and its keepers are out of matches. It can't lash its tail or gnash its teeth, either &mdash; because they hurt. In the end, even after getting its fire re-lit, the beast refuses to fight Prince Marvel; it's too much a gentleman. With such opposition, it isn't surprising that Marvel is victorious in Spor as well. He next has a stay in the curious hidden kingdom of Twi. It is a land of perpetual twilight, hence its name. Everything is doubled in Twi, and everyone is a twin. The people even lack a word for "one." The local rulers, the High Ki of Twi (twins like everyone else), are considering the fate of the intruding Marvel, when he places a spell on the twins, dividing them from their united and shared mind into two separate consciousnesses. The results are chaotic, and Marvel has to remedy the mess by re-uniting the twins. Marvel next exposes the pretended magician Kwytoffle (a fraud, like the more famous Wizard of Oz). He meets his sternest test when he confronts the Red Rogue of Dawna; even then, however, his native fairy abilities enable him to emerge victorious. By the end of his mortal year, Marvel has pacified the formerly troublesome inhabitants; the Island of Yew has become civilized. Baum adapted material from the novel into Prince Marvel, a short play for children printed in 1910 in L. Frank Baum's Juvenile Speaker.
8209068	/m/026w83s	3 NBs of Julian Drew		1994	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The boy is locked up in the car port, while his father, stepmother, and four siblings live a pleasant life in the house. Julian spends his time writing notes to his deceased mother. After starting at a new school, Julian makes a friend, meets a loving teacher, and finds a job. He slowly starts to write normally, instead of in code.
8210796	/m/026w9rk	Original Stories from Real Life	Mary Wollstonecraft		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Modelled on Madame de Genlis's Adèle et Théodore (1782) and Tales of the Castle (1785), both of which have frame stories and a series of inset moral tales, Original Stories narrates the re-education of two young girls, fourteen-year-old Mary and twelve-year-old Caroline, by a wise and benevolent maternal figure, Mrs. Mason. (Wollstonecraft probably named these characters after people in her own life. She became acquainted with a Miss Mason while teaching in Newington Green, whom she greatly respected, and she taught two girls named Mary and Caroline while she was a governess for the Kingsborough family in Ireland. Margaret King, who was greatly affected by her governess, saying she "had freed her mind from all superstitions, later adopted "Mrs Mason" as a pseudonym.) After the death of their mother, the girls are sent to live with Mrs. Mason in the country. They are full of faults, such as greediness and vanity, and Mrs. Mason, through stories, real-world demonstrations, and her own example, cures the girls of most of their moral failings and imbues them with a desire to be virtuous. Mrs. Mason's amalgam of tales and teaching excursions dominates the text; although the text emphasizes the girls' moral progress, the reader learns very little about the girls themselves. The work consists largely of personal histories of people known to Mrs. Mason and of moral tales for the edification of Mary and Caroline and the reader. For example, "The History of Charles Townley" illustrates the fatal consequences of procrastination. Mrs. Mason takes the girls to Charles Townley's ruined mansion to tell them the cautionary tale of a "boy of uncommon abilities, and strong feelings"; unfortunately, "he ever permitted those feelings to direct his conduct, without submitting to the direction of reason; I mean, the present emotion governed him ... He always indeed intended to act right in every particular to-morrow; but to-day [sic] he followed the prevailing whim" (emphasis Wollstonecraft's). Charles wants to help those in need, but he is easily distracted by novels and plays. He eventually loses all of his money but his one remaining friend helps him regain his fortune in India. Yet even when this friend needs assistance, Charles cannot act quickly enough and, tragically, his friend is imprisoned and dies and his friend's daughter is forced to marry a rake. When Charles returns to England, he is overcome with guilt. He rescues the daughter from her unhappy marriage, but both she and he have gone slightly insane by the end of the story, she from her marriage and he from guilt. Original Stories is primarily about leaving the imperfections of childhood behind and becoming a rational and charitable adult; it does not romanticize childhood as an innocent and ideal state of being. The inset stories themselves emphasize the balance of reason and emotion required for the girls to become mature, a theme that permeates Wollstonecraft's works, particularly A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
8211814	/m/026wblc	Empire	Orson Scott Card	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with Major Malich, a Captain at the time, leading a Special Forces team in a town of some unknown country, presumably somewhere in Iran or Afghanistan, because of the use of Persian. They are attacked and return fire, saving a village with only one civilian casualty and earning Captain Malich a promotion to Major. Major Malich works at the Pentagon, where he writes the plans to find holes in American security, having no idea that they will fall into the wrong hands. The plans call for a stealthy underwater entrance into Washington, D.C., followed by a rocket launcher attack on the White House, relying on an inside informant to give the location of the President. Malich and Coleman come upon the attack in progress, and, after acquiring rifles, attempt to prevent the attack. Although they succeed in killing one of the men holding the launchers, the second fires and hits the south wall of the West Wing, killing the President, Secretary of Defense, and several others. It is later revealed the Vice President had been assassinated by a dump truck backing up into his limousine. Suspicion then turns to Malich, as he had written the plans and was present at the attack. While Malich is being debriefed at the Pentagon, Coleman is asked to participate in a right wing coup to correct the existing government. Coleman recounts the meeting on live television and retreats to Malich's side in New Jersey. The next morning they both decide to take a borrowed SUV to Ground Zero. They are caught in an uprising led by high tech mechs that fire on anyone wearing uniforms. After rescuing a squad of New York Police officers, they escape on foot via the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey where they collaborate with the National Guard to repel a horde of the mechanized warriors. Two Air Force F-16 jets are shot down into New York Harbor, one hitting the gown of the Statue of Liberty. Once back in New Jersey, Malich and Coleman join Malich's wife who used to work for an Idaho congressman who is now, due to the order of succession, President of the United States. Malich's wife is summoned by the new President. He asks for Malich, Coleman and Malich's former Special Forces buddies to help save the United States. Malich is ordered to retrieve his operations report created at the Pentagon. While there, his trusted secretary, DeeNee, betrays him, shooting him in the eye and killing him before his Secret Service escorts could react. Coleman escapes only to be pursued by more mechanized warriors and hover-bikes. They are eventually repelled by Apache gunships dispatched by the President. The new National Security Advisor, Averell Torrent, is one of Malich's former professors. He sends a team including Malich's Special Forces buddies and Coleman out to discover information about the Restoration group responsible for Malich's death and the subversion of the United States of America. Upon finding the Progressive Restoration's lair, the team, led by Coleman, reconnoiter the Washington mountain hideout. They invade and take its leader prisoner. After the defeat of the Progressive Restoration, Torrent is elected in a landslide victory as he was the presidential nominee for both the Democratic and Republican parties. Rather than wait until the next year's inauguration, the current president immediately steps down to let Torrent start his term. Towards the end of the novel, Reuben's wife Cecily begins to suspect Torrent's involvement in instigating the entire conflict in order to ascend to power. She discovers many of the key rebel leaders were taught at some point by him. From the notes Reuben left from his classes with him, she uncovers Torrent's obsession with the transition between the Roman Republic and the Empire, and Torrent's belief that the United States is in the same stage. The book ends with Cecily and Coleman, to whom she reveals her suspicions, wondering whether this is truly the case. No indication is given as to how Torrent will use his power, setting the novel up for a sequel.
8219920	/m/026wmq9	The Immaculate Conception	Gaétan Soucy	2006-04-28	{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The Immaculate Conception has been described as echoing "the writing of Edgar Allan Poe and Fyodor Dostoevsky" and illuminating the "sublime, the uncanny, and the horrific that burns at the core of ordinary lives". Set in the mid-1920s in the isolated, working-class parish of Nativité in East-end Montreal, the novel chronicles the aftermath of a deadly fire&mdash;75 people die when a neighborhood restaurant is burned to the ground by an arsonist. The cast of characters includes a pianist, mortician, bank clerk, a clubfooted school teacher, demonic fire chief, demented lumberjack, and the bank clerk's wheelchair-bound father. Chronicling the "ordinary" lives after the inferno, the story gradually reveals a series of horrific events from the clerk's childhood and ultimately the reader is reminded that some crimes will forever remain secrets.
8220003	/m/026wmvf	Amazons	Don DeLillo	1980	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is a fictitious autobiography narrated by Birdwell centering on her experiences as the first woman to play professional hockey in the NHL. It is in some ways similar to DeLillo's second novel, the football-themed End Zone, though more humorous and smaller in scale, replete with social satire and comedy. The story follows Birdwell and her teammates on the New York Rangers, as they travel around North American cities playing games and engaging in sexual adventures. The prose is distinctly and obviously DeLillo's, but as further proof of his authorship, readers cite the appearance of the character Murray Jay Siskind, a sportswriter in the novel, who later appears as the eccentric former sportswriter-turned-"visiting lecturer on American icons" in DeLillo's novel White Noise.
8224148	/m/026wskr	Strong Medicine	Arthur Hailey	1984		 The book begins with two of the chief characters, Celia Jordan and her husband, on a flight home to the US anticipating trouble that the reader is not yet fully in on, involving a certain Senator Donahue. The action then goes back some 40 years to when Celia, unmarried, was a drug sales rep for a Pharmaceutical company and her husband to be, an intern beginning his career at a New Jersey hospital. Andrew Jordan is perplexed with the case of a young woman dying from hepatitis A, not a usually fatal infection, that she acquired on a cheap holiday in Mexico. Celia happens to know that her company is researching a drug that would combat the womans symptoms, and manages to get through the protocols to find some, and as a last desperate measure, the drug is administered and the woman's life is saved. Next morning, She and Andrew Jordan become engaged, largely it appears, on a whim of Celia's. Celia quickly turns out to be someone who knows what she wants and gets it, and we soon learn the story of how she came to be in her present selling position, where she has made a name for herself already by going out of the way to become more knowledgeable about her job, and after one particularly bruising encounter, earn the respect rather than the ridicule of practising doctors. On their honeymoon the two share their various family histories, Andrew's mother and father having separated and left him to the care of an aunt who has sacrificed all she has to get him to where he is, Celia's father having died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. On return from work, Celia is engaged to speak at the annual company conference, and is planning a major assault on what she sees as the lack of training and sharp practice that is rife even among her own company. Her manager Sam Hawthorne strongly advises against any such thing, but when Celia goes ahead anyway and delivers her speech, to not great enthusiasm from her company bosses, she is within a whisker of being fired when Sam intervenes to save her. Shortly afterward she is promoted to a new position and then begins a gradual rise through the company, interspersed with bringing up family and generally turning out to be a woman who is determined to have the best of both worlds at work and at home, and manages to somehow fit it all in. By this time she has two children, Lisa, who appears to inherit much of her organisational sense, and Bruce, a history fanatic. Strains in the Jordan's marriage however, surface on a posting to Ecuador where both acknowledge they have let their standards slip, Andrew having spent many years covering for his Chief at the hospital, who is a closet drug addict, and due to which at least one patient has died in preventable circumstances. Sam Hawthorne is promoted in the course of time to company president, and Celia is promoted behind him. Other characters to become important later include Bill Ingram, a Harvard Business School graduate with a similar no nonsense approach to Celia's. There is a deathbed encounter between Celia and the president who almost fired her, Eli Camperdown, at his home, at which he urges her to always follow her conscience. Years before, Celia had deflected the company away from marketing Thalidomide, and possibly saved them great trouble. Sam meanwhile quickly makes two far reaching decisions, one ultimately to be of great benefit, and the other a total disaster. He has a whim to set up a British based research unit to tap into what he sees as the great pool of British talent for new ideas, and at the same time buys up an abandoned French project for an antiemetic for use in pregnancy. Celia and Sam visit England to look at prospective sites for the unit, and at the same time meet a young Cambridge researcher, Martin Peat Smith, who is researching memory loss and dementia, spurred on by the case of his mother, who no longer knows him. Sam offers Martin the job of head of the British unit, which Martin at first refuses but then Celia is able to persuade him with a bare faced head on assault on his vulnerabilities. Meanwhile back in the US, Celia has serious misgivings about the Montayne project and ends up resigning from the company, recalling Eli Camperdown as she does, whereupon she and Andrew embark on a round the world tour, ending up in Hawaii where Andrew has secretly arranged a visit to her father's ship, with the children, recalling a wish that Celia revealed on her honeymoon many years before. She is recalled to the company amidst the news that Montayne is indeed the danger that she feared, Sam shortly afterward commits suicide, for reasons that Celia only partly understands, that he gave some to his then-pregnant daughter about two years prior; her child, now one, has been destroyed. A deeper secret concerning the licensing of the drug and blackmail of the FDA official responsible, a Dr Mace, remains hidden. Celia takes over as vice president but is effectively running the company. After the suicide of Sam, the board typically refuse to appoint her to the top job. They appoint a pro tem president, who is in post for 6 months before he dies. Celia then becomes president. She now has to get the company back on track, and quickly. Unfortunately, Senator Donaghue, a well known two-faced politician, has ordered a Senate enquiry into Montayne, amidst all the other legal actions that inevitably result. In a heated debate at the Senate, Celia discredits Donaghue publicly against the urging of her legal team(as he had originally been against delaying the release of Montayne, and he is very much in the control of the big-tobacco lobby), earning a brief reprieve but possibly stirring trouble for later on. Back in England, Martin's research project is bearing little fruit, and has already survived one attempt to close it down by the Felding Roth board who are concerned at the expense and lack of progress in a time of severe financial pressure. (Before his death, Celia was sent by Sam to investigate and make a recommendation on the activities of the British Institute, and after a short visit during which she visits the institute and talks to various people, (and she and Martin inevitably make love), she recommends that the project continue). His home life is enriched by a relationship with one of the technicians at the institute, Yvonne, and (in circumstances that she doubtless has great amusement in recounting to Celia when they eventually meet), Yvonne one morning makes a chance remark that triggers a new line of enquiry in Martin and the eventual development of a memory enhancing peptide, that is eventually developed and becomes a great success for Felding Roth, much to the disdain of the head of research Dr Lord. Vincent Lord is an ambitious scientist who rather feels that his talents are always overlooked, and took a very cold attitude to Celia on her rise through the company. The financial rescue of the company, Martin Peat Smith's knighthood and eventual marriage to Yvonne after a separation, Vincent Lord's eventual breakthrough discovery of a free radical quenching drug of unquestionably great promise, follow on, and the company appears to be heading for calmer waters. Trouble strikes though when it turns out that at least some of the research into Lord's discovery, is falsified, and that Lord, rather than expose the fraud, has attempted to cover it up. Ultimately this creates trouble, and inevitably the matter comes to the attention of Dr Mace at the FDA and Senator Donaghue, who sense a chance to exact revenge on Celia and Felding Roth. At this point we are in the know about the opening conversation of the book and the story closes there. fr:Le Destin d'une femme
8225851	/m/026wvm3	Gone-Away Lake	Elizabeth Enright	1957	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gone-Away Lake opens on a train traveling through the countryside of western New York state. Ten-year-old Portia Blake and her six-year-old brother Foster are going to see their favorite cousin, enthusiastic amateur naturalist Julian Jarman. The Jarmans have recently purchased a house in the country. Once there, Portia and Julian spend their days exploring, and one day they discover an abandoned Victorian resort community next to a bog. Elderly siblings Mr. Payton and Mrs. Cheever, the town's only remaining inhabitants, soon become friends with the children, who set up a club in one of the empty houses. Stories of the days when the bog was a lake called Tarrigo are interspersed with the modern-day adventures of Portia and Julian, who at first keep the lake and their new friends a secret. Foster soon discovers the secret and eventually the rest of the Jarman and Blake families also become acquainted with the charms of Gone-Away and its inhabitants. In Return to Gone-Away, a sequel published in 1961, the Blake family buys and restores a house at Gone-Away.
8226468	/m/026ww6q	Batman: The Ultimate Evil	Andrew Vachss	1995-11	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 At a party, Bruce Wayne meets Debra Kane, a caseworker with Child Protective Services. He asks to join her while she visits clients. She agrees and shows him the varying degrees of child abuse she encounters in the course of her job. Wanting to understand the factors behind child abuse, Wayne, as Batman, breaks into Hellgate Prison and talks with an informant who points him to a child pornography and prostitution ring. With Wayne showing frustration with these types of crimes, his butler Alfred reveals that Bruce's mother, Martha Wayne, had been secretly investigating a similar child prostitution ring and was assassinated so that her investigation would stop. Picking up where his mother's files left off, Wayne finds a connection to a southeast Asian country named Udon Khai. Using the assumed name Big Jack Hollister, Batman travels to San Francisco to meet a contact who explains how the sex tours to Udon Khai operate. As Hollister, Batman travels to Udon Khai, where he meets Rhama, a local translator hired by Alfred. Rhama shows Hollister life in Udon Khai and how the child sex tour industry has impacted its population. Saying he was sent by Hollister, Batman introduces himself to Rhama. Batman and Rhama confront a man who buys and sells children and they rescue a girl who had been sold by her family. They return the child to her village and find that her father, living in extreme poverty, had sold her so that the rest of the family could survive. The population mistakes Batman for a warrior of legend who would break the barriers that confine the population. Believing this to be their chance for a revolution to overthrow the military dictatorship, a rebel group joins Batman in storming the headquarters of the kingpin who controls the sex tour industry. Though Batman returns to Gotham City, the rebels continue to dismantle sex tour industry and overthrow the dictator of Udon Khai.
8228692	/m/026wy15	Finding Cassie Crazy	Jaclyn Moriarty	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows the correspondence between students from two rival schools. Cassie Aganovic, Emily Thompson and Lydia Jaackson-Oberman, attend the prestigious, private Ashbury High; Matthew Dunlop, Charlie Taylor, and Sebastian Mantegna ("Seb") attend the public and notoriously rough, Brookfield High. In a special pen-pal program between the schools (previously seen in Feeling Sorry for Celia and set up by Mr. Botherit), Cassie begins to write to Matthew; Emily writes to Charlie; and Lydia exchanges letters with Seb. The letters are initially different degrees of hostile. Emily and Charlie poke fun at each others writing, while Lydia and Seb bicker about whether or not they can trust each other. Matthew however, is much worse. He continuously threatens Cassie (i.e. "I'll break your fingers one by one"), but she responds calmly and tells no one of the abusive letters. Over time, the letters change tones. Charlie and Emily go on "practice dates" to help Charlie date the girl of his dreams, Christina Kratovac (who was the Brookfielder Elizabeth Clarry wrote to in Feeling Sorry For Celia). Lydia and Seb participate in "Secret Assignments" that eventually lead to their forming a close relationship. Cassie and Matthew begin to go down a similar path and plan a meeting after Cassie finally starts getting civil responses from Matthew. However, his sudden kindness is a ploy. He stands her up and then, on a following meeting, proceeds to rip up a letter that she had sent and openly mock her. This is especially hard for Cassie, because her father had recently died of cancer and Cassie had not yet come to terms with his death. This is why she never reported Matthew's initial abusive letters, she had not been feeling like herself and had lost her confidence. When Lydia and Emily find out what Matthew has done, they ask for help from Seb and Charlie to get Matthew back. They soon discover that Matthew is not a real person. They are forced to hatch numerous plots to find who Matthew really is, or if he even exists. By the clever use of glitter in a letter, they discover that Matthew Dunlop's true identity is Paul Wilson, the form captain and star of the school drama club. He is also, coincidentally, the boyfriend of the girl Charlie likes, Christina. The five (Emily, Charlie, Lydia, Seb and an initially reluctant Cassie) work together for revenge. Seb beats Paul up after Paul humorously tells him the story of his deception. Seb is set to be going to an art show the very next morning, and Paul threatens to tell the principal in an attempt to penalize Seb. But just when this is about to happen, Lydia, Emily and Cassie pretend to be casting agents and call Paul, telling him he has a job and needs to come to a certain time and location to get his makeup done (Paul is an aspiring actor) and practice lines for a last-minute filming rehearsal. The girls' prank is successfully pulled off and Paul realizes at the end that it was all an elaborate plan to stop him from telling the school principal. During all this time Emily and Charlie seem to show signs that they like each other. Meanwhile, Lydia and Sebastian kiss on a secret assignment. A small amount of time goes by before Brookfield is attacked (spray painted and the like). During this time Charlie and Emily get into a fight about a prank that had been pulled off earlier in the year that had disastrous consequences for Charlie and was caused by Emily; Seb and Lydia also argue, this time about a Secret Assignment that involved discovering each other first at a cafe without knowing what the other looked like (an Assignment which Seb cheated on). There are cruel sayings (e.g. "Brooker Bites") spray-painted on the walls of Brookfield High, each phrase followed by the Ashbury crest. Reasonably, the Brookfielders retaliate. For a time, acts of vandalism are perpetrated between the schools, until a Brookfield student — whom the staff keep anonymous — incorrectly pinpoints Cassie, Emily, and Lydia as the instigators of the first attack. When told by their form mistress, Mrs. Lilydale, that diaries, letters, etc. are going to be read for clues, the girls are angered. In coordination with Cassie's mother (who is a lawyer), Mrs. Lilydale arranges a trial so that the girls can prove that this would be an unjust invasion of their privacy. Emily, fascinated by law, is appointed to represent the students in a Brookfield-Ashbury co-trial. Principals and school officials from the respective schools are all present at the trial. When the time for the trial comes, only Emily and Lydia are present at first. Emily turns the tables on the staff and proves that she, along with her classmates, has a right to privacy, and the administration agrees not to read their letters. Cassie then bursts in during the middle of the trial, with Seb and Charlie behind her. They are carrying evidence of the vandalism, such as the paint used to write "Brooker Bites" on the wall and the grapeseed oil that is used to smear the science laboratory floors. When questioned by Emily, Charlie reveals that the items came from the bedroom closet of none other than Paul Wilson. Paul attempts to fight back but his guilt is clear and he has no logical explanation for Charlie, Seb and Cassie's discovery. He runs out the door in tears and all charges are dropped against the Ashbury students as the Brookfield attacks were "inside jobs." The story ends happily as the year wraps up with the makeup of Charlie and Emily, and Seb and Lydia. Seb and Lydia decide to begin officially dating and Charlie and Emily show signs that they are heading in the same direction. An art show is put on by the students of both schools. Lydia, an aspiring author, and Seb, a talented artist, contribute a children's book and Cassie uses words from a fake, but sweet, letter from "Matthew" as the lyrics to a song she writes and sings. This is important to her because before her father died of cancer he told her that he thought he'd gotten sick because of the nervousness and fear he'd experienced his whole life, and had let built up. Cassie, hearing this, had promised her father "not to be scared." Singing in public is scary for her, so she decides to face her fear with her friend's support. She is able to accept her father's death.
8235765	/m/026x76h	Physik	Angie Sage		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "When Silas Heap UnSeals a forgotten room in the Palace, he releases the ghost of a Queen who lived five hundred years earlier. Queen Etheldredda is as awful in death as she was in life, and she's still up to no good. Her diabolical plan to give herself everlasting life requires Jenna's compliance, Septimus's disappearance, and the talents of her son, Marcellus Pye, a famous Alchemist and Physician. And if Queen Etheldredda's plot involves Jenna and Septimus, then it will surely involve Nicko, Alther Mella, Marcia Overstrand, Beetle, Stanley, Sarah, Silas, Spit Fyre, Aunt Zelda, and all of the other wacky, wonderful characters that made Magyk and Flyte so memorable. With heart-stopping action and a dash of humor, Angie Sage continues the fantastical journey of Septimus Heap." - from Nitsuj
8237244	/m/026x97g	Cop Killer	Per Wahlöö	1974	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Martin Beck investigates the murder of a woman in Anderslöv in Southern Sweden, and begins by looking at the murderer he put away in "Roseanna". At the same time, Malm leads a manhunt for the surviving partner of a teenage criminal who killed a policeman during a gunfight.
8237572	/m/026x9s9	The Terrorists	Maj Sjöwall	1975	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story opens with a trial where an eighteen-year old woman is accused of a bank robbery she never intended to commit. Later, a pornographic film producer is found murdered at the home of his mistress. The main plot of the book involves Martin Beck leading a team of policemen to prevent a presumed terrorist attack on a highly unpopular American senator who is paying an official visit to Sweden. The attack is led by terrorist Reinhard Heydt, born by a Danish mother in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
8237779	/m/026x9_5	Murder at the Savoy	Per Wahlöö	1970	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Martin Beck has to search through the high powered business man Viktor Palmgren`s many enemies when the business man is shot in front of a dozen witnesses at a high-end restaurant.
8241804	/m/026xh5y	Theory of International Politics				 CHAPTER 1: Laws and Theories Although laws might just describe a correlation (with a given probability), theories explain them. CHAPTER 4 Theories of international politics deal with events at both the sub- and supra-national levels. "Reductionist" theories explain "the behavior of parts"--they seek to explain international outcomes solely through the behavior of units, leaving aside the effect their environment may have. However, "it is not possible to understand world politics simply by looking inside of states." (p.&nbsp;65) This is because every new observed phenomenon would require the addition of new unit-level variables, which leads to the highly subjective addition and wild proliferation of variables. Moreover, though the actors and nature of actors in international politics change significantly, patterns of international politics recur. "If the same effects follow from different causes, then constraints must be operating on the independent variables in ways that affect outcomes." (p.&nbsp;68) A system-level explanation of world politics solves both of these problems. By focusing on the structure, or "set of constraining conditions," (p.&nbsp;74) of the international system one can parsimoniously explain why dissimilar units may behave in similar ways. Structures, however, are not direct causes—they act "through socialization of the actors and through competition among them." (p.&nbsp;74) CHAPTER 5: Political Structures If we want to consider how actors will interact, we must look at the system within which they interact. This isn't a new concept; economists look at structural constraints (e.g. capitalism vs socialism, I guess), political scientists argue that presidents will behave differently from prime ministers, and so on. Waltz begins by looking at domestic political structures and sees three important characteristics: The principle by which the system is ordered (what form of hierarchical structure is in place), the functions that each unit fulfills (presidential vs parliamentary, etc.), and each unit's capacity/ability to act. By analogy, Waltz extends these three principles to the international system. The ordering principle is anarchy; if this changed, inter-unit interactions would also change. In anarchy, different units exist in a self-help system; there is therefore no functional differentiation among them. So the two relevant characteristics of the international system are anarchy and relative capacity (power). By analogy, Waltz argues that microeconomic thinking should explain how states will act. States in the international system are like firms in a domestic economy. Every state has the same fundamental interest: to survive. Even if it wants to do other things, it can't do them unless it survives. [But are there higher needs? How do you explain what a state will do if its survival isn't threatened? Can you use this model to explain trade, or environmental treaties, and so on?] Waltz argues that states are the only important actors in this model. He recognizes that other actors exist, but says they don't matter. He uses an economic analogy to justify this: If all firms are equally sized, they all matter. If the market is dominated by a few large firms, however, then economic models need focus on these. Similarly, since states are the "large firms," models can disregard the insignificant "small firms" (NGOs, IGOs, etc.). Extending this analogy means we should focus especially on more powerful states. [from handout]: A structure is defined first by the principle by which it is ordered or organized, then by the differentiation and specification of its units, and finally by the distribution of capabilities across units. For Waltz, anarchy, or the absence of central authority, is the ordering principle of the international system. By analogy to microeconomic theory, Waltz argues that international systems emerge from the "coaction of self-regarding units." (p.&nbsp;91) In a microtheory, whether economic or political, the motivation of actors is assumed rather than realistically described. Waltz assumes that "states seek to ensure their survival." The real aims of states may be endlessly variable, but in a world without security survival is the essential prerequisite and thus a useful foundation for the theory. "Internationally, the environment of states' action, or the structure of their system, is set by the fact that some states prefer survival over other ends obtainable in the short run and act with relative efficiency to achieve that end." (p.&nbsp;93). The second aspect of structure, the differentiation of units, is rendered unnecessary by the condition of anarchy. "Anarchy entails relations of coordination among a system's units, and that implies their sameness. ... [S]o long as anarchy endures, states remain like units." (p.&nbsp;93) Which is to say they are "autonomous political units" (p.&nbsp;95) who face similar tasks. While Waltz recognizes the existence of non-state actors, he dismisses their importance because states are still the most powerful actors on the world state—they have the most influence and they set the rules. Thus, the international system is defined in terms of states. "Students of international politics make distinctions between international-political systems only according to the number of their great powers. The structure of a system changes with changes in the distribution of capabilities across a system's units." (p.&nbsp;97) Although this may seem to violate the notion that structure must be defined independently of the attributes of units, Waltz argues that "although capabilities are attributes of units, the distribution of capabilities across units is not." (p.&nbsp;98) The key result from this approach is a "positional picture" that describes a system "in terms of the placement of units rather than in terms of their qualities." (p.&nbsp;99) CHAPTER 6 Anarchy does not imply that violence is common in the international system but rather that the threat of violence is ever present. Anarchy means that the international system is one of self-help. Waltz identifies two ways in which the structure of the international system limits cooperation. First, "the condition of insecurity--at the least, the uncertainty of each about the other's future intentions and actions--works against their cooperation. ... A state worries about a division of possible gains that may favor other more than itself." (pp.&nbsp;105-6) Second, "a state also worries lest it become dependent on others" through trade and/or cooperation, and therefore also chooses to limit its cooperation with other states. (p.&nbsp;106) "States do not willingly place themselves in situations of increased dependence. In a selfhelp system, considerations of security subordinate economic gain to political interest." (p.&nbsp;107). The structure of the system forces states into this kind of behavior; the only way out is structural change. Nevertheless, Waltz sees virtues in anarchy—principally that the high costs of organization in a hierarchic order are avoided and that states can preserve their autonomy. Balance of Power Theory (pp.&nbsp;116-128 in chapter 6): [still from handout]: States are unitary actors who seek, at a minimum, their own preservation and, at a maximum, universal domination. States seek to achieve their goals either through internal balancing (increasing economic and military strength) or external balancing (creating alliances). For this theory to operate, we must see two or more states in a self-help system with no superior authority over them. In seeking to test his theory, Waltz arguing that confirming cases (as opposed to just falsifiable cases) are acceptable, particularly if hard cases (those where you would not expect the theory to hold) are chosen. He also suggests that one should infer empirically verifiable predictions. However, he concedes that balance-of-power theory's predictions are indeterminate; it posits only a loose condition of balance, and thus it is unclear when that condition does not hold. Also, internal conditions may preclude states from balancing consistently see balancing behavior, even in cases where one would not ordinarily expect—he points to the French-Russian alliance of 1894 or the U.S. and Soviet decisions to rearm after WWII. Finally, Waltz contrasts balancing with bandwagoning, in which weaker states choose to ally with the stronger state. Waltz argues that "because power is a means not an end, states may prefer to join the weaker of two coalitions." (p.&nbsp;126) Again, the structure of the international system and the necessity of survival dictate this behavior. CHAPTER 8: ALLIANCES In this section, Waltz investigates how changes in the structure of the international system affect alliances. He focuses, in particular, on the difference between multi-polar and bi-polar alliance systems. He defines multi-polar systems as those containing more than two major powers, finding most distinctions between different multi-polar systems as generally faulty. The primary difference between multi-polar and bi-polar balancing is that multi-polar balancing occurs externally (among states), while bi-polar balancing occurs internally. Because external balancing is more uncertain, bi-polar balancing tends to produce less conflict. Waltz discusses several additional features of multi-polar balancing: States will woo alliance partners by adapting to them. Example: France and Russia attempting to appear more alike one another in order to form their alliance in 1894. For security, states are willing to align with anyone. The weaker partner in an alliance will determine policy in a moment of crisis International competition will tend to force states in a multi-polar order into two blocs. Having two blocs DOES NOT mean that the system is bi-polar, because alliance shifts and defections can still occur. These alliance shifts and defections make the multi-polar order dangerous. The flexibility of alliances makes for rigidity in strategy. For bi-polar alliances: Alliance leaders do not need to worry much about the faithfulness of followers. In bi-polar systems, there will unequal burden-sharing between the major and minor powers in an alliance. Major powers in a bi-polar system do not need to make themselves attractive to alliance partners. Example: the Soviet Union and the U.S. did not alter their strategies to accommodate allies [comment: was the U.S. more accommodating than the U.S.S.R? Were its alliance commitments more credible?]. The rigidity of bi-polar alliances makes for flexible strategy. For its parsimony and theoretical rigor, neorealism has been the baseline for most of IR theory over the last 20 years. It has prompted a rich literature critiquing it on a number of fronts: for instance, neoliberals say that it does not take seriously enough the possibility that states may choose absolute over relative gains, particularly in situations where institutions can alter payoffs; constructivists argue that its fails to recognize the manner in which agents and structures are mutually constitutive; and people from all over the map say that it is too generalized and yields little in the way of testable implications. Nevertheless, the theory has been hugely influential.
8242641	/m/026xj0r	Courtship Rite	Donald Kingsbury	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel details the attempts of two of the priest-clans, the Kaiel and the Mnankrei, to expand into territory controlled by the Stgal. Ultimately, all the priest clans are trying to attain dominance of the planet through the use of new technology, propaganda, treachery, and "war", a new concept in this world. Previously, killing was done merely in order to provide food. Jo Walton remarked that Courtship Rite "is about a distant generation of colonists on a planet with no usable animals. This is the book with everything, where everything includes cannibalism, polyamory, evolution and getting tattoos so your skin will make more interesting leather when you’re dead."
8246067	/m/026xmx5	He Knew He Was Right	Anthony Trollope	1869-03-17	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A wealthy young English gentleman, Louis Trevelyan, visits the fictional Mandarin Islands, a distant British possession, and becomes smitten with Emily Rowley, the eldest daughter of the governor, Sir Marmaduke Rowley. The Rowleys accompany Trevelyan to London, where he marries Emily. When the rest of the family goes home, Emily's sister Nora remains behind, under Trevelyan's protection. The marriage is initially a happy one and the couple has a baby boy. Then a seemingly minor matter undermines their marriage. Colonel Osborne, an old friend of Sir Marmaduke's, visits Emily much too frequently for her husband's taste. Though nothing improper occurs, Trevelyan overreacts and orders his wife to avoid the man in future. Emily resents his lack of trust and makes no attempt to hide it. Their relationship deteriorates to the point that they separate. Meanwhile, Nora attracts two admirers, the wealthy Charles Glascock, the eldest son and heir of Lord Peterborough, and Hugh Stanbury, a close friend of Trevelyan's from their days at Oxford University. Stanbury ekes out a precarious living writing newspaper articles. Glascock proposes to Nora, but despite the fact that Stanbury has given no indication of his feelings for her, she rejects the future nobleman, not without a great deal of struggle and much to the dismay of her friends. Another subplot involves Jemima Stanbury, the capricious, formidable spinster aunt of Hugh. In her youth, she had been engaged to the eldest son of a leading banker. They had had a falling out and parted company, but upon his demise, he had left everything to her, making her very wealthy. Aware of the poverty of Hugh's branch of the family, she had generously paid for his education and helped him get a start in life. However, when he chose to work for what she considered to be a radical publication, the staunch Tory withdrew her support. She then offers to accept one of Hugh's sisters as a companion. After some debate, timid, unassertive Dorothy Stanbury is sent. Trevelyan arranges to have Emily and Nora live with Hugh's mother and her other daughter, Priscilla. However, Emily obstinately receives a visit from Colonel Osborne, against all advice to the contrary. Trevelyan finds out and becomes further maddened. In the meantime, Aunt Stanbury tries to promote a marriage between her niece and a favoured clergyman, Mr Gibson. This causes much resentment with Arabella and Camilla French, two sisters who had considered him a future husband for one of them (though which was still a matter of much debate). However, this plan is derailed. Aunt Stanbury had always intended to bequeath her wealth back to the Burgess family, rather than to her Stanbury relations. She had chosen as her heir Brooke Burgess, the nephew of her former fiancé. When he visits her for the first time as an adult, everyone is charmed by his warm, lively personality, especially Dorothy. When Gibson finally proposes to her, she cannot avoid unfavourably comparing him to Brooke and declines. Her aunt is at first much put out by Dorothy's obstinacy. Eventually however, she places the blame on the clergyman, which results in a serious breach between them. The feud with his former patron leaves Gibson so distracted that he finds himself engaged to a domineering Camilla French. After a while, he comes to regret his choice. Finally, finding Camilla's overpowering personality unbearable, he extricates himself by agreeing to marry the milder Arabella instead. Camilla is driven to extravagant threats and is finally sent to stay with her stern uncle in the period leading up to the wedding. Then Aunt Stanbury becomes very ill, resulting in Dorothy and Brooke spending a good deal of time in each other's company. Brooke takes the opportunity to propose to an unsuspecting Dorothy. She however is reluctant to accept, fearing that her aunt will disinherit Brooke. Instead, the old woman blames her niece. They quarrel and Dorothy returns to her mother. Aunt Stanbury misses Dorothy greatly and makes it known that she would welcome her back, though she still vehemently opposes her marriage to Brooke. Dorothy does come back, and even tries to break off her engagement, but Brooke won't stand for it. In the end, Aunt Stanbury's love for her niece is stronger than her desires and she gives her blessing to their wedding. Meanwhile, Trevelyan departs England to escape the shame he feels. During his aimless wanderings, he meets Mr Glascock, who is on his way to Italy to visit his father. They meet two attractive young American ladies, Caroline and Olivia Spalding. Glascock's father is in such poor health that the son is obliged to remain in the country to await his probable demise. While waiting, he courts and wins Caroline's hand in marriage, despite her misgivings about her reception in English society. Trevelyan receives word that Colonel Osborne has dared to visit Emily once again. While Osborne had not been permitted to see Emily, Trevelyan doesn't believe it and has the boy taken away from his mother by deception; he takes his son back to Italy, where he descends further into madness. Eventually, he is tracked down by his wife and friends. Emily persuades him first to give her their son, then to return with her to England; he dies, however, shortly after their return. In his dying moments, Emily, asking Louis if she had been faithful to him, begs him to kiss her hand in agreement. Whether or not he does is unclear, but Emily believes "the verdict of the dying man had been given in her favour."
8247651	/m/026xq1z	Clash Of The Sky Galleons	Chris Riddell	2006-09-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is set aboard the Sky pirate ship The Galerider. Wind Jackal wants revenge against his previous quartermaster, Turbot Smeal, for burning down the Western Quays in Undertown along with most of Wind Jackal's family. Meanwhile the Leagues of Undertown begin making preparations for war with the sky pirates. The Galeriders crew encounter several dangerous traps as Wind Jackal carries out his quest to find Smeal. The crew of The Galerider are puzzled but it soon becomes clear, as it turns out in the end that the alleged Turbot Smeal was an imposter, greater and far more envious. Eventually in the end, only Wind Jackal, Quint, Tem Barkwater and Spillins the Oakelf remain of the original crew. They come to the wreck of a skyship and meet a man in a skullpelt mask who claims to be Turbot Smeal. Wind Jackal and 'Turbot Smeal' have a duel and Wind Jackal is killed. The man reveals himself to be one of the crewmembers, Thaw Daggerslash. The truth is revealed at the end of the book. The book features a massive sky battle between the Leagues of Undertown and the Sky Pirates. The Climax comes when the Leagues launch the Bringer of Doom.
8250831	/m/026xv39	Tangerine	Edward Bloor	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A summary of Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine, about a boy who discovers that his brother steals and murders---8============>21:34, 1 November 2012 (UTC)72.70.104.124 (talk) 21:34, 1 November 2012 (UTC)(0) The story starts with the Fisher family (Paul, mom, dad, and Erik) move from Houston, Texas to a development called Lake Windsor Downs in Tangerine County, Florida. You learn that Paul is vision impaired. His parents tell Paul it's because he stared into a solar eclipse, but Paul doen's remember it at all. After they unpack, Paul goes for a tour in his school, Lake Windsor Middle school. Mike Costello, a high school football player is introduced, along with his little brother and middle school soccer player, Joey Costello. On his first day of school, he meets Coach Walski, a soccer coach. Paul knows he is a good goalie and tries out for the team. Paul learns that he can't make the team because his mom filled out an IEP (individualized education plan) for him because of his vision impairment. A few days later, while Paul is at his school, a sinkhole collapses. Many try to rescue the people who are trapped and fortunately, no one gets seriously injured. The emergency relocation plan gives the kids the chance to stay or go to Tangerine Middle School (the school on the other side of the county). Paul chooses to go to Tangerine MS because he doesn't have an IEP filed there so he can play soccer. In Tangerine Middle School, many people are introduced including Tino, Henry D., Theresa, and Victor. They all are soccer players at the school, except for Theresa. Paul convinces Joey to come to his new school and the soccer and football seasons begin. As the story proceeds, Joey starts to get sick of the new school because none of Paul's new friends like him and he thinks that Paul has changed and become cowardly to all the other people at TMS. Joey finally went back to Lake Windsor, leaving the Tangerine Middle School soccer team also. Throughout the story, houses in Joey's neighborhood have to be put under blue tents and sprayed with poison to kill termites. While under tents, many of these houses are robbed. Paul suspects it is Erik and Arthur. Luis is also introduced. He is the brother of Theresa and Tino. Luis works at his parent's citris farm and is working on developing a new kind of tree called Golden Dawn. While at Paul's house for a school project, Erik punches Tino who ends up bruised after making a comment about how Erik fell down while attempting to a kick an extra point in a football game earlier in the book. Luis finds out and goes to Erik's football practice to confront him. Erik distracts him while signaling for Arthur to hit him in the back of his head with a blackjack. Luis is fine for a couple of days but is found dead. Only Paul knows the real truth, but others suspect it too. On the night of the Seniors Award Night, tino and victor show up to beat up Erik and Arthur for killing Luis. The two of them escape, and Paul runs back to his house. When he is at the front of his house, he has a flashback from his childhood, the day his vision was damaged. Erik believed that Paul told on Erik and his friend Vincent for spray painting a wall in their old neighborhood, so to get back at him, Erik held Paul's arms behind his back and held open his eyes while Vincent sprayed spray paint in Paul's eyes. He is angry because his parents seem to never get Erik in trouble. Later on in the story, Paul's mom finds a one of Erik's gym bags with gas masks and valuables that he and Arthur stole from the tented houses in the families storage unit on route 22. Erik is sent to jail for robbery, and Arthur for murder. Paul is expelled from school for attacking a coach, but says he will stay in touch with all his friends, including Joey, whom he made up with.
8252454	/m/026xxhm	And Now Tomorrow				 Dr. Vance, who grew up poor in Blairtown, returns there from Pittsburgh, where he runs a clinic for the underprivileged. He shares a taxi with wealthy Emily Blair, a snobbish rich girl he never liked while growing up together, but she has since contracted meningitis and is deaf. Emily has postponed her wedding to Jeff Stoddard, a member of high society like herself, while leaving town to seek treatment. In her absence, her sister Janice has fallen in love with Jeff, but they don't know how to break the news to Emily. Although the doctor doesn't usually care for upper-class patients and Emily doesn't wish to be used as a guinea pig, she agrees to an experimental treatment. It causes Emily to go into a coma, but ultimately her hearing returns. She realizes the depth of her feelings for Dr. Vance, which clears the way for Janice and Jeff.
8252463	/m/026xxj9	Thunder Cave	Roland Smith	1995	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After the death of his mother, who dies in a fatal car accident, fourteen-year-old Jacob Lansa embarks on a journey across the globe to Kenya, to find his father. On his journey he meets a Maasai named Supeet whose goal is to bring the long rains. Supeet believes that Jacob is in Kenya for other reasons than to find his father, which bides true after an accident that could end the chance to bring the long rains.
8254342	/m/026xzp2	The Butterfly Kid	Chester Anderson	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is primarily set in Greenwich Village, and is thoroughly saturated with psychedelic and 1960s counterculture elements. The time is an undefined near future, indicated by SF elements such as video phones and personal hovercraft; the Bicentennial is also mentioned. The use of psychoactive drugs and their effects are a central element of the story; much of the action revolves around an alien-introduced drug (referred to as "Reality Pills") that cause LSD-like hallucinations to manifest physically, generally causing chaos. The book's protagonist shares a name with the author, and another character shares the name of Michael Kurland, a friend and roommate of the author's at that time. The book's title refers to a character, Sean, who is able to spontaneously produce butterflies of all shapes, sizes, and colors after taking a "Reality Pill." Although Sean is introduced very early in the story, he is not the novel's central character.
8254584	/m/026xzzc	The Radiant Seas	Catherine Asaro	1999-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kurj has to deal not only with the shocking sudden death of Soz, whom he imagined as his successor, but also with the political intrigues of the Eubian emperor Ur Qox, who draws the Allieds on his side, using lies and dirty tricks. When Ur tries to take Kurj prisoner, this leads to the destruction of a part of his fleet and to the death of both Ur and Kurj, leaving their two empires presumably heirless. Soz's brother Althor inherits her position of the imperial heir after her apparent death. When he learns that his sister is alive, he promises his father Eldrinson to keep the secret for himself. But later he is captured by the Eubians during a space battle and unwillingly reveals this information after a brutal torture. The widowed empress Viquara sees an opportunity to provide the Eubian Concord with an heir without losing her political power. Sauscony abandons her life as a Jagernaut and abdicates her role as heir, fakes her own death, and elopes with Jaibriol Qox, the heir to the Eubian Concord. They relocate, with help, to an Allied-discovered, unknown planet which they call Prism. They have four children and live a simple and happy life, knowing that they will most probably never be able to return to their warring civilizations. Their children are heirs to both the Skolian Empire and the Eubian Concord. Then Jaibriol is kidnapped by Viquara's soldiers and forced to act as a "puppet emperor" with Viquara and her new husband Quaelen wielding the power from behind the throne. Soz hides her children on Earth in the custody of former family member Seth Rockworth (once married to Dehya as part of the Icelandic Accord) and returns to Skolia to assume her rightful position as the new Imperator. In order to get her husband back and save her people from the power-hungry Aristo caste of Eube, she launches an attack that will become known as the Radiance War.
8268587	/m/026yfzn	The Sledding Hill	Chris Crutcher		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel is narrated by Billy Bartholomew, the best friend of the protagonist, Eddie Proffit, as Eddie struggles not only with Billy’s recent death, but that of his father as well. An intelligent boy who is seemingly afflicted with ADHD, Eddie cannot stop talking until he is confronted with these two sudden deaths. The only way he can cope with these tragedies, then, is to stop talking entirely. Eddie’s mother seeks solace in the local Red Brick Church, an evangelical church run by the Reverend Tarter, who is a teacher at the local high school. Though his mother wants him to join the church, Eddie is disgusted by Tarter’s bigotry, and finds little help among his peers until his high school English class starts to read the fictional novel Warren Peece by Chris Crutcher. Tarter is horrified that high school students would be allowed to read a novel that is full of what he terms “bad language” and homosexual characters. This propels a challenge from Tarter’s church board to the school to get the novel removed from the curriculum. Eddie begins talking again when he testifies in front of the Red Brick Church announcing he will not only not join the church, but will also speak in favor of Warren Peece at the school board meeting. A misinterpretation of his testimony compels the church members to have Eddie placed into a mental health facility supposedly because Eddie thinks he is Jesus Christ. Crutcher places himself in the novel’s climax as a speaker at the board meeting on the removal of the book.
8287432	/m/026z3b0	Still Forms on Foxfield	Joan Slonczewski		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The planet Foxfield is inhabited by people who left Earth on the brink of a nuclear war. After a century on their new planet, the inhabitants are contacted by people from Earth. Foxfielders are members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, who have kept their faith while dwelling on a rather inhospitable planet. The Foxfielders' survival was made possible only by the natives of Foxfield, the Commensals, who were initially assumed to be hostile, but whose chemical talents have made human survival on Foxfield possible. When Commensals finish their life span, they go to the jungle, to a mysterious structure known as the Dwelling, to add their body and mind to the collective consciousness, the One. Allison Thorne, a widow with a twelve year old son, David, who is in charge of the main settlement's technical center, is the one contacted by the Earth dwellers, United Nations Interplanetary. The UNI, who have been observing Foxfield secretly for years, are welcomed by the Foxfielders, who learn the history of the past century &mdash; that the war occurred, but was not as bad as thought &mdash; and begin to catch up on technology. Friction soon begins to develop between Foxfielders and the newcomers. Credometers, worn like wristwatches, are accepted by Foxfielders without realizing that doing so makes them irrevocably part of UNI. Aspects of UNI culture, such as majority voting and violent space games in which people are killed, shock the Foxfielders. The UNI representatives have difficulty in understanding the Foxfielders, not surprising given that religion in the UNI is reduced to "preservation societies". Foxfielders fear they will soon be lost in the UNI masses—while the contact affects UNI culture as well. Matters are brought to a head when the One announces that it intends to destroy the UNI ship, and reveals that it has already destroyed satellites. The Foxfielders mount an expedition to the Dwelling with Alison, her boyfriend, Seth Connaught, and a UNI citizen. They are able to persuade the One not to follow through on its plan. A final chapter, set some months later, shows Foxfield slowly integrating into UNI society while insisting on maintaining its own identity.
8288359	/m/026z48z	Funeral Games	Mary Renault	1981-11	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The chapters of the book have the years of the events for their titles: *323 BC. Alexander the Great dies in Babylon. Perdikkas seeks to be appointed as Regent for the king's yet-unborn heir. Meleager wants Arrhidaios acclaimed as king. The dispute threatens to become a civil war. Roxane murders the daughters of Darius and their unborn children. Perdikkas becomes Regent, with both Phillip Arrhidaios and Alexander IV (son of Roxane) as nominal joint kings. Ptolemy and Bagoas reach an agreement. The Greeks revolt; Antipatros crushes them. *322 BC. Perdikkas crushes the Isaurians. Bagoas visits Ptolemy in Alexandria, and together they advance their plans for relocating the mummy of Alexander to that city. The daring plan is carried out, and the Mummy and golden bier of Alexander are relocated to Alexandria. Kynna and Eurydike receive news of the death of Alexander and decide it is imperative that Eurydike marry Phillip Arrhidaios (as pre-arranged) and so advance her claim to the throne. Alketas murders Kynna, but Eurydike survives, and marries Arrhidaios (the marriage is celebrated but not consummated). *321 BC. Eumenes defeats and kills Krateros (more commonly known as Craterus.) Perdikkas marches towards Egypt, seeking to depose Ptolemy, but the invasion is a total disaster. Perdikkas is assassinated by his own lieutenants. Eurydike seeks to become Queen on her own right, but she is frustrated by the inconvenient arrival of her menstrual period. Peithon and Arridaios/Arybbas become the new co-regents. *320 BC. Under the leadership of Ptolemy, Alexandria becomes the largest city in the world, surpassing Babylon. Egypt propspers greatly. *319 BC. In the spring, Antigonos One-Eye defeats Eumenes and drives him eastward. In the summer, the aged regent Antipatros passes away. He passes over his own son Kassandros (whom he knows to be cruel and much too ambitious, likely to seize the throne for himself) and appoints his elderly colleague Polyperchon as his successor as regent of Macedon. *318 BC. Olympias appeals for help from Eumenes. Eumenes dedicates a royal tent to the spirit of great Alexander, complete with golden throne, golden crown, and golden scepter. *317 BC. In the spring, with an army and navy supplied by Antigonos, Kassandros (Cassander) crosses the sea and takes Athens unopposed. Polyperchon, with king Arrhidaios in tow, marches against him. Roxane, with her son, flees to join Olympias in Dodona in Molossia. Eurydike, infuriated at being left behind from the southern war, seizes the Regency for herself, with the help of Kassandros, his brother Nikanor, and their whole clan. Polyperchon sends Arrhidaios back to Eurydike. Olympias invades Macedon. The Macedonians refuse to fight against Alexander's mother. Olympias deposes, imprisons and tortures Eurydike and Arrhidaios. On hearing this, Kassandros delays and slows down his march to Macedon. Olympias murders Arrhidaios and forces Eurydike to commit suicide. *316 BC. Olympias is executed, in a Biblical-style stoning, by the relatives of her victims. *315 BC. Kassandros visits the Lyceum in Athens and tells them monstrous slanders against Alexander. *310 BC. Kassandros murders Roxane and Alexander IV. *297 BC. Kassandros dies a horrible death from disease. *286 BC. Pharaoh Ptolemy completes writing a book to refute the evil lies of Kassandros. sh:Funeral Games (roman)
8294204	/m/026zbtc	Wheelers	Ian Stewart	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Wheelers chronicles mankind's first contact with an alien intelligence, a meeting which takes place out of necessity when a rogue asteroid enters the solar system and is set on a collision course with Earth by an advanced and hitherto unknown Jovian species as a way of avoiding a devastating impact to their own world. The story opens with a feeling of anachronism, as two of the novel's central characters (Charles Dunsmoore, a career archaeologist and his volatile graduate student Prudence Odingo) work in the year 2194 to interpret and preserve artefacts found in the vicinity of the Great Sphinx, which is being disassembled in order to save it from the advancing waters of a clogged and flooding Nile River after the collapse of the Aswan Dam. A lover's quarrel between the two sends Prudence off in a blind rage, and leaves Dunsmoore the sole caretaker of an important discovery—a position which catapults his career and sets the tension for the novel's second half. Professionally and personally embittered by the success of Dunsmoore, Prudence begins a life of semi-legal interplanetary exploration (referenced by the book but never fully explained) and makes a living selling cosmic oddities to the highest black market bidder. This dangerous and profitable lifestyle acquaints her with legal authorities as well as the Belters—a group of Zen Buddhists (known as The Order of the Cuckoo) who have populated and mined both Earth's Moon and the asteroid belt that lies between the terrestrial planets and the Jovian worlds of the outer solar system. Her smuggling career culminates with the discovery of a trove of buried, wheeled, and presumably alien artefacts on Callisto. She takes these 'wheelers' to earth intending to sell them, but a government investigation headed by Dunsmoore concludes them to be inauthentic. As the story progresses, another main character materializes in the form of the aptly named Moses Odingo, son of Prudence's sister Charity and animal-handler extraordinaire. His life becomes one of the novel's several core plots, circumstance and apparent fate conspiring to send him on a worldwide journey of hardship and tribulation. During this time, both Earth-bound scientists and the Belters notice that the innermost moons of Jupiter have mysteriously realigned, altering the trajectory of a once unimportant comet and setting in motion a direct collision with Earth. This is courtesy of the stuffily bureaucratic blimps—intelligent extraterrestrials living in the turbulence of Jupiter's upper atmosphere whose advanced gravity technology allows them to alter the orbital plane of the planet's moons and thereby avoid the type of cometary impact which, obliquely, precipitated their exodus from an unknown 'Firsthome' to Jupiter itself. Left with 12 years until impact and now convinced of the wheelers' authenticity, Earth's governmental authorities speed a mission to the Jovian satellites in hopes of contacting the as yet unseen alien lifeforms. Dunsmoore is selected to lead the group, with the assumption that his experience with decrypting anthropological artifacts on earth will aid in establishing communiqué with the Jovians. The years tick by without consequence as Dunsmoore and his team search in vain for evidence of alien life on Jupiter's moons, convinced by terrestrial scientists that the planet itself is entirely inhospitable to life (he is warned of the danger of this erroneous presupposition by, appropriately enough, contemporary science-fiction authors). As the tension on Earth grows unbearable, Prudence Odingo flies her personal craft out to give Dunsmoore's team a push in what she believes to be the correct direction. Hacking into one of the probes that Dunsmoore's been carefully bobbing around the lifeless stratosphere of Jupiter, Odingo's team sends the RCV into the lower atmosphere, immediately encountering alien lifeforms both advanced and simplistic. Through a quirk of fate and timing, her team manages to save a blimp by the name of Bright Halfholder of the Violent Foam, part of a 'skydiving' rebel faction known as The Instrumentality. Odingo encourages Moses, now a young man, to make a harrowing high-speed journey out to the moons, hoping to use his uncanny knack for animal communication to establish a rapport with Halfholder. The ploy works, but the Jovians—who live for millions of years and rely on an arcane and tedious system of legal councils—spend too long arguing and contemplating to successfully redirect the comet. The Instrumentality stages a successful coup, but in the end it is Dunsmoore (who has been redeemed by the threat to his home planet) who hijacks the alien gravity technology and pilots Io into a diversionary orbit around the comet itself, barely saving Earth from total annihilation—though millions die as the remnants of the comet and the sulfurous outgassing of ruined Io cascade into Earth.
8297099	/m/026zggm	Bloodring	Faith Hunter	2006-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story take place about a century after an apocalypse. It includes "neomages", a new race of beings that arose during the time of the apocalypse. They live in an area known as the Enclave, which is both a prison and sanctuary, and are able to work with "leftover creation energy". Thorn St. Croix is a neomage in exile from the Enclave. Thorn (unlike most mages) is telepathic, and she constantly hears the thoughts of the other mages in the Enclave. This threatened to drive her insane when it began during her adolescence and forced her to live amongst humans whose thoughts she does not hear. Because mages without a special license are not allowed amongst the human population, Thorn must hide her true nature lest she be killed, either by the humans - who would torture her first - or by the seraphs who have ruled the earth since the apocalypse began. Thorn is a "stone mage", and channels her talents with stone into lapidary work and jewelry-making, running the store, Thorn's Gems, with her partners, Rupert and Jaycee, in the small town of Mineral Springs, Carolina, where they all live. Thorn's life is suddenly disrupted when police officer Thaddeus Bartholomew comes to her door and announces that her ex-husband Lucas, (who is also Rupert's brother) has been kidnapped. She is a suspect. Thadd, it turns out, is a kylen, progeny of a seraph and a mix of human and mage. Thorn realizes this when he "kindles" her mage-heat. Amazingly, Thadd appears not to know he is anything but pure human, and were he to discover her secret, he would immediately arrest her for being an unlicensed mage outside of Enclave. She must risk death in order to save the father of her former stepdaughter, Ciana - the child of her heart.
8299445	/m/026zk47	Liliom	Ferenc Molnár			 The play takes place partly in Budapest, Hungary, and partly in Heaven. The story concerns Liliom, a tough, cocky carousel barker who falls in love with Julie, a young woman who works as a maid. When both lose their jobs, Liliom begins mistreating Julie (he even slaps her once) out of bitterness, although he loves her. When she discovers that she is pregnant, he is deliriously happy, but unbeknownst to Julie, he agrees to participate with his friend Ficsúr, a criminal, in a hold-up to obtain money to provide for the child. Liliom is unwilling to leave Julie and return to his jealous former employer, the carousel owner Mrs. Muskat, and feels that the robbery is his only way left to obtain financial security. The hold-up is a disaster, but Ficsúr escapes, and Liliom kills himself to avoid capture. He is sent to a fiery place, presumably Purgatory. Sixteen years later, he is allowed to return to earth for one day to do a good deed for his now teenage daughter, whom he has never met. If he succeeds, he will be allowed to enter Heaven. He fails in the attempt, and is presumably sent to Hell. The ending, though, focuses on Julie, who obviously remembers Liliom fondly. A contrasting subplot involves Julie's best friend, Marie, and Wolf Beifeld, a rather pompous hotel porter who marries Marie and eventually becomes the wealthy owner of the hotel at which he once worked. The two eventually have seven children, but the children never appear onstage in Molnár's play, although they are a very unpleasant bunch in Carousel, in which the number of children is increased to nine rather than seven. There is also a Carpenter in Liliom who is in unrequited love with Julie, and who, in contrast to Liliom, has a stable job.
8299473	/m/026zk4y	The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes				 Goody Two-Shoes is a variation of the Cinderella story. The fable tells of Goody Two-Shoes, the nickname of a poor orphan girl named Margery Meanwell, who goes through life with only one shoe. When she is given a complete pair by a rich gentleman, she is so happy that she tells everyone that she has "two shoes". Later, Margery becomes a teacher and marries a rich widower. This earning of wealth serves as proof that her virtuousness has been rewarded, a popular theme in children's literature of the era.
8300520	/m/026zlc5	Northworld			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel begins with Commissioner Nils Hansen and his Special Police Units team in a violent confrontation with criminal android Solbarth and his gang members, who are barricaded in a building. Because of his reputation, Hansen is able to talk Solbarth and his gang members into surrendering with the promise that their lives would be spared. As the villains are being led away, Hansen is summoned by non-human messengers who take him to the leaders of the Consensus. The Consensus needs Hansen's skill and ruthlessness to discover what has happened to cause Northworld to disappear. The planet Northworld, named after Captain North who was in charge of the colonization of the planet, is missing. The Consensus rules 1200 worlds, every world that is known except for Northworld. The Consensus initially wanted to colonize Northworld. Prior to the events in the novel five expeditions, consisting of three fleets and a colonizing expedition, had been sent to Northworld to either colonize or investigate the disappearance. The first fleet was and the colonizing expedition consisted of humans. Between the first fleet and the colonizing expedition Captain North, and his team, sent to investigate the second fleet was crewed by androids (similar to the replicants of Blade runner). The third fleet was composed of sentient machines. In each case the expedition disappears. At the opening of the series Commissioner Hansen is sent alone to investigate the missing planet. Hansen first arrives in Diamond, a peaceful world that forbids weapons of any kind. Hansen encounters a warm welcome from the curious people, but he finds that the weapons he carries begin to disintegrate in Diamond; however, he does not stay in Diamond long. Ruby, another world occupying the same dimesional space as Diamond, interposes itself over Diamond, causing Diamond's destruction. Hansen then travels to a very different part of the Matrix called the Open Lands. There he is greeted by Walker (who later reveals himself as North), who takes on the appearance of several talking animals, gives Hansen advice, and tries to gain his oath of allegiance. Hansen refuses, and instead decides to go out on his own, entering into the land filled with warfare. Hansen is originally ignored by the battling warriors and left for the slaves to kill and take what they want from him. Hansen is forced to kill the slaves after they attack him to get his clothing. He then sees a suit of left behind armor that was left in the snow. He then follows Lord Golsingh’s army back to Lord Golsingh's town called Peace Rock where he wins a place in the army by challenging one of the soldiers to fight him. The people, though they live in primitive conditions with little technology, have very sophisticated powered armor. This Armor has one major weapon, an electric arc extending from the suit's gauntlets. Length as well as power density can be controlled by opening and closing the thumb and forefinger of the gauntlet. A secondary weapon is the bolt, a single, one-time discharge of arc energy. this is little-used, as it renders the suit powerless for a time while it rechargs. The suit is completely vulnerable to attack during this period. The suits also have some shielding, the ability of which to withstand attack depending on the quiality of the armor. Hansen describes his impression of the world thusly: “The whole thing was barbaric and pre-technological; whereas the warriors’ armor was extremely sophisticated, though idiosyncratic.” Nothing provides insight into how this can be. The smiths that repair the armor claim that the armor cannot be fixed solely with human skill, but the smith must instead mentally enter the Matrix to repair the armor. As Hansen discovers, the armor is not understood by the people. Often setting aside his original objective of finding North, Hansen begins to become a part of the society. Hansen learns the customs of the society and he teaches the warriors how to fight in teams and so become more effective, but not without obstacles. Previously, the warriors had little tactics, but through the guidance of Hansen, the army is turned into a successful force that would be able to conquer the opposing merchant army in a quest for peace for the war-filled land — a dream that is a priority for Lord Golsingh. Meanwhile, the gods of the land encounter many problems and friction. All the worlds of the Matrix are threatened by destruction. Diamond has been destroyed by Ruby, a militaristic and heavily armed world of the Matrix, and the gods decide that Ruby's destruction will eliminate the threat to the Matrix. After the battle with the merchants, Hansen finds himself in a room similar to that in which he was briefed on his mission by the Consensus. It is here that Hansen meets the gods that rule Northworld, the head of which is Captain North. Hansen is told to destroy Ruby in retaliation for the destruction of Diamond. In the process, Hansen must be made into a god so that he can enter into Ruby from inside the Matrix.
8301452	/m/026zmbg	The Smoky God	Willis George Emerson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 For two years Jansen lived with the inhabitants of an underground network of colonies who, Emerson writes, were 12 feet tall and whose world was lit by a "smoky" central sun. Their capital city was said to be the original Garden of Eden. Later works by other authors, such as Agartha - Secrets of the Subterranean Cities, have identified the civilization Jansen encountered with Agartha (a mythical subterranean city), although Emerson did not use the name.
8303481	/m/026zp_2	The Legend That Was Earth	James P. Hogan		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the onset of the story, aliens called Hyadeans have established contact and friendly business relations with Earth. They think Earth is fascinating, because it so different from their own bleak, austere culture. Though they are highly interested in studying the planet and its cultures, Hyadeans are far more technologically advanced and have a more accurate knowledge of science. Many humans, also known as Terrans, accept this alien presence; however, there are many who do not trust the Hyadeans and believe they are plotting to take control of Earth. One group that espouses this belief is CounterAction, which the American government lists as a terrorist organization. When a flyer (advanced aircraft) carrying both Hyadean visitors and Terran politicians is shot down, CounterAction is blamed and the Internal Security Service (ISS) is intent on shutting down their organization by any methods necessary. The action follows savvy Roland Cade who gives up his comfortable life when he is pulled into CounterAction. Because he was formerly married to Marie Cade, a political activist who plays a strong role in CounterAction, the ISS uses him to trace her. His mistress, Julia, is secretly an ISS agent, and convinces him to use his contacts with CounterAction to take in her friend, a supposed political dissident. He takes the friend to Chattanooga, where he unexpectedly runs into Marie. Julia's friend turns out to be an ISS plant and he is forced to flee with Marie; the government believes he is a part of CounterAction because of his wife’s association with the group. They both use their connections to get aid in dodging the government, and these connections form an unlikely bond. CounterAction has been strongly anti-Hyadean, however, they find allies in Cade’s Hyadean friend Vrel and some of his comrades. For much of the story, the action switches between Cade’s group of friends’ attempt to escape capture and the actions of the ISS as more information is revealed. While Cade and his friends learn that states and regions of the country are seceding, the Hyadean officials take over the increasingly impotent government and use military force to subdue resistance. However, a pro-Terran alien interviews Cade and Marie and films footage of Hyadean and government cruelty. This interview gets broadcasted to both different locations on earth and Chryse, the aliens’ planet; many Hyadeans pledge their support and Terrans are given courage to fight for their freedom. The struggle stops being an Earth vs. alien skirmish, and becomes a fight for the rights of both Terran and Hyadean. While Cade, Marie, and their posse travel from country to country to gain new allies and to find shelter, the Hyadean military steps ups its campaign and CounterAction comes under more attacks. They are attacked everywhere they flee, and their Hyadean allies suffer a massive defeat when a Hyadean mission is bombed. Finally, it appears the organization is done for entirely when a formation of giant airships appears. The ships are believed to be both Hyadean and capable of mass destruction. However, the ships belong to a friendly third party of a different alien civilization, the Querl; these aliens have come to help Terrans. CounterAction gets the news that the Hyadean government has just crumpled from popular indigenous support for Earth, and the war is over. New governments form and a stronger, benevolent union between Earth and Chryse begins. Gaysss pipi pene polla boobs esto pasa por confiar en wiki pedia XD
8306624	/m/026ztj6	My Sweet Audrina	V. C. Andrews	1982	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Audrina Adare lives with her father Damian,who has a strange past, mother Lucietta, aunt Ellsbeth and cousin Vera. Nine years before Audrina was born, her elder sister—who was also named Audrina—was raped and murdered in the woods. Damian convinces the younger Audrina that, by a process of self-hypnosis, she can gain all of the First Audrina's memories and become just as beloved and special as her dead sister, which is what Audrina wants more than anything else in the world. Audrina is haunted by dreams of her dead sister's rape and is terrified of sex and men. When she is eight, she meets Arden Lowe and his mother Billie, an amputee. Meanwhile, Lucietta is pregnant yet again. On Audrina's ninth birthday, Lucietta goes into early labor and dies in childbirth; the baby, a girl, is named Sylvia. More than three years after her birth, Sylvia finally comes home from the hospital and turns out to be mentally challenged. A few years later, Audrina discovers the affair between Lamar and Vera and that Vera is pregnant. In the ensuing confrontation, Vera has a miscarriage. The next day, she leaves town with Lamar. She leaves a note stating that she is Audrina's paternal half-sister, due to an affair that Ellsbeth had with Damian before he met Lucietta. Shortly after she turns eighteen, Audrina discovers that Damian and Ellsbeth are lovers again; however, tragedy strikes again when Ellsbeth threatens to leave Damian because he will not let her help Vera, who is alone after Lamar committed suicide. The next morning, she is found dead from a mysterious fall down the stairs. Audrina elopes with Arden, hoping to escape her controlling father, and takes Sylvia with her. However, she is still not prepared for sexual intimacy, and her wedding night goes terribly wrong. When the newlyweds return from their disastrous honeymoon, they find that Damian has won over Arden's mother. He also offers Arden a job at his company. Audrina is upset but goes along with it for the sake of peace. Vera returns suddenly one day and, against Damian's wishes, stays for a while. It is not long before Vera attempts to seduce Arden. Tragedy strikes again when Billie "falls" down the same steps and dies. Depressed, Audrina pulls away from Arden and Sylvia—Vera and Arden begin an affair. But when Audrina's love and sexuality finally awakens, she tells Arden that she doesn't want to lose him and they spend the first happy night of their marriage together. One night, she is pushed down the stairs and falls into a coma. With Sylvia's help, she awakens and escapes, realizing that she cannot die without learning the secret of First Audrina. Audrina confronts her father and he confesses that the First and Best Audrina never existed. It was Audrina herself who was gang-raped in the woods. The rape left her so traumatized that she attempted suicide. In an attempt to save Audrina from herself, Damian subjected her to electro-convulsive therapy, trying to erase the memory of the rape. Following Damian's lead, the family conspired to convince Audrina that the rape didn't happen to her but to an older sister who died before she was born. Eventually the repetition of this story worked. Since the family deliberately changed the clocks in the house and also ripped off calendar days, her sense of time was also altered. Audrina realizes that Arden had been present and witnessed the rape but ran away in fear. She also realizes that Vera was the only other person who knew she would be coming home through the woods that day. However, Vera denies being involved, though her reaction suggests she is in fact guilty. When Vera turns to run, she falls down the stairs, later dying of her numerous injuries. Heartbroken, Audrina decides to take herself and Sylvia away but Sylvia refuses to leave. Audrina realizes that where there is love, there can be forgiveness and the promise of a fresh start. She decides to stay, finally feeling like the loving "First" Audrina she has always strived to be.
8308396	/m/026zwcc	An Assembly Such as This	Pamela Aidan		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book focuses on Fitzwilliam Darcy's initial visit to Hertfordshire during the opening chapters of Pride and Prejudice, as seen from his viewpoint. The book begins as he arrives in the town of Meryton, to stay at Charles Bingley's estate of Netherfield. Darcy expects to be bored by provincial manners and society, and he finds that is the case at a local town ball. To his surprise, however, he becomes fascinated by Elizabeth Bennet, whom he has accidentally offended due to her inadvertently overhearing a tactless comment that he made about her to Bingley. Uncomfortable in his current surroundings, Darcy worries about his sister Georgiana, vulnerable following an unpleasant encounter with George Wickham. Amidst attempts of unwelcome advance by Bingley's sister Caroline, he finds himself repeatedly thrown into Elizabeth's company, particularly when her sister Jane falls ill whilst visiting Netherfield, forced to stay until she recovers. Darcy comes to admire Elizabeth's lively spirit, generous nature and confident refusal to be cowed by her social 'betters'. However, Elizabeth is without money or fine connections and possesses embarrassing and 'unfortunate' relations who make her unsuitable for a wife. Darcy, protective of the somewhat naive and easily-trusting Bingley, attempts to dissuade him from entering into an unfortunate and hasty relationship with Jane Bennet whilst struggling with his own feelings for Elizabeth. Eventually, Darcy determines to explore his feelings for Elizabeth despite his misgivings, resolving to both make amends and attempt to charm Elizabeth during a ball that Bingley is holding. Unfortunately, despite the assistance he receives from his personal valet, fate has conspired against Darcy: Wickham has recently moved into the area, joined the local militia and become acquainted with Elizabeth. As such, when Darcy dance with Elizabeth at the ball, Darcy is subject to extremely cold and unfriendly treatment from her. He realizes that Wickham has managed to poison Elizabeth against him with false tales of their previous dealings, and that she (and others in the village) have become distant towards Darcy because of his perceived arrogance and by Wickham's charming nature and lies. Too proud to set the record straight, however, Darcy refuses to defend himself. Worse, Bingley's unguarded behaviour towards Jane Bennet, her mother's tactless gloating and more examples of ill-breeding from her family strengthen Darcy's conviction that he must prevent his friend's potential ruin at all costs. Darcy dissuads him from marrying Jane Bennet, detecting no hint of regard for his friend beyond politeness. Despite the fact that to do this would permanently alienate Elizabeth, Darcy resolves to act in what he sees as the best interests of his friend; the next day, as the Netherfield party return to London, Darcy sows the seeds of doubt in Bingley's mind about Jane's regard for him, convincing Bingley not to return to Netherfield and declare his intentions to Jane. The novel ends with Darcy resolving to harden his heart and forget about Elizabeth.
8310996	/m/026zyj2	The Amateur Gentleman	Jeffery Farnol	1913	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The format of the novel is essentially that of a bildungsroman. It tells the story of Barnabas Barty, the son of John Barty, the former champion boxer of England and landlord of a pub in Kent. At the start of the tale Barnabas comes fortuitously into the possession of a vast fortune - £700,000, an astronomical amount by Regency standards - and determines to use this fortune to become a gentleman. His father objects to this plan and they quarrel, and settle their differences in a round of fisticuffs, which Barnabas wins, beating his father fair and square. Barnabas sets off for London in the furtherance of his ambitions and on the way there contrives to make a number of influential friends and enemies. Farnol ploughs an uncomfortably dualistic furrow vis-á-vis his protagonist. He ruthlessly exploits the naïvety of the youth to comic effect, for instance the youth is gulled by the chapman who sells him a book on etiquette at an outrageous mark-up, and Farnol makes much play of this. At the other end of the spectrum, Farnol is equally disdainful of Barnabas' sophisticated concealment of his identity. * The Amateur Gentleman website dedicated to Sidney Olcott
8312173	/m/026zzy4	Ascending	James Alan Gardner	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel opens with "A Word About Oar", a brief recap of the earlier story. At the end of Expendable, Festina left the apparently deceased Oar lying in one of the Towers of Ancestors on her planet, where her people absorb high-energy radiations that sustain their lives. At the start of Ascending, Oar regains consciousness in the tower where Festina left her, to find that she is being accosted by a diminutive and odd-looking orange being. This is Uclodda Unorr, a professional smuggler who has been hired to gather evidence on past misdeeds of the Technocracy's Outward Fleet&mdash;and who is surprised to discover that Oar is alive. He informs her that four years have passed since Festina left Melaquin, which makes the year 2456 A.D. Unorr has been sent to gather evidence before representatives of the Outward Fleet can arrive to destroy or conceal it; thanks to Festina's activities, a scandal has erupted that will expose the corruption of the High Council of Admirals (events recounted in Gardner's Hunted). Unorr and Oar find it in their interest to escape the planet forthwith; but as they and Unorr's large and muscular (but demur) wife Lajooli are leaving in a bioneural spacecraft, they are confronted by the Shaddill, who have come to use Oar's corpse in an experiment and are also sursprised that she is alive. The little party of Oar, Unorr, and Lajooli manage to escape from the Shaddill for the present; and so they find themselves fleeing across space from both the Shaddill and the Outward Fleet. In the process, Oar is contacted mentally by a very strange alien being who calls himself the Pollisand; he, or it, has a form resembling a headless white rhinoceros, but seems to be one of the very advanced and cryptic galactic beings who exist far above the mundane material level. The Pollisand claims responsibility for Oar's recovery from death; and it, or he, enlists Oar's help in a grand plan to destroy the Shaddill. Oar lets her animus outweigh her suspicion, and agrees to work with him. Fortunately, Admiral Ramos is also rushing to Melaquin to prevent the destruction of evidence; Oar and friends detect her approach and race to the Admiral's ship to escape the pursuing Shaddill. They sacrifice their own ship to incapacitate the Shaddill's enormous vessel (though only temporarily), and are rescued by the humans. Festina is astonished to find that Oar is "alive and causing trouble again". Trouble, however, approaches from all sides. The Outward Fleet has been deeply corrupted from the top down, and Festina's ship is soon sabotaged by a rather incompetent saboteur. Indeed, it becomes clear that the human society of New Earth, which calls itself the Technocracy, is rife with incompetence and corruption on all levels&mdash;part of a pattern of degeneracy that is afflicting other societies helped by the Shaddill, societies that have grown increasingly "decadent, temperamental, and culturally sterile", and filled with "wicked, arrogant, self-centered" individuals. Festina tries to rescue the situation by contacting an eccentric and unpleasant species called the Cashlings; but before her plan can succeed, humans and Cashlings, Oar and Uclod and all are captured by the technologically overwhelming Shaddill. Human and Melaquin resourcefulness, however, manage to outwit and outmaneuver the enemy; Oar and Festina learn the secrets behind the Shaddill's malicious manipulation of humanity and other species. Oar triumphs over her adversaries, and also fulfills her bargain with the Pollisand, who in turn presents her with a remedy for the "Tired Brain" syndrome that leaves her people comatose in the Towers of Ancestors. With a new maturity of her own, she brings the cure back to Melaquin, becoming something very close to the savior of her people. Festina is more than a little amazed at the change in her old friend, back from the dead.
8319428	/m/026_8yb	False Mirrors	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk"}	 Former diver Leonid (the protagonist of the first novel) is a virtual mover. He receives small wages for hauling virtual furniture. His relationship with his wife Vicka is strained, as he spends most of his time in Deeptown. Due to deep psychosis, a condition he developed at the end of the first novel, he has trouble distinguishing reality from the deep. Unlike Leonid, Vicka (a former diver) managed to let go of Deeptown and rarely ventures there. While all divers are still able to exit the deep at will, their ability to see programming holes and back doors visually disappeared. Additionally, an upgraded deep-program includes a built-in mandatory 24-hour timer. Divers are immune to the timer, for some reason. Leonid's life changes when he finds out that a hacker broke into a small development company and was attacked by its security forces. One of the virus weapons used on him killed the hacker in real life. Leonid contacts his old hacker friend Maniac, who now lives and works in the US, and asks him if he knows the dead hacker. Maniac gives him a real-life Moscow address of a former acquaintance. Leonid goes there and finds himself in a luxurious apartment of a rich businessman named Chingiz. Chingiz turns out to be a down-to-earth fellow who makes money by cracking programs and games and selling them on the street. Another inhabitant of the giant two-story apartment is a hacker named Bastard and amateur hacker teenager Pat — Chingiz's protégé. Bastard explains that he was hired to hack the development company by a man calling himself the Dark Diver, who managed to retain his diver abilities. Bastard asked a 17-year-old hacker to help him break into the company and steal certain files. Securities turned out to be too high for a small company and the teenage hacker was killed by a third-generation weapon (first- and second-generation weapons attack software and hardware, respectively). Apparently, the weapon use a modified deep-program to cause cardiac arrest, which can only be reversed by immediate CPR. When Bastard reveals that the hacker's name was Roma, Leonid realizes that the dead hacker was a former diver. Leonid asks Chingiz for a virus pack, as he goes to search for the files Roma stole. In Deeptown, he encounters a colleague of his from the delivery company, who informs him that he has a letter from Roma to be delivered to the mythical Temple of Diver-in-the-Deep. The letter can only be opened at destination, but Leonid doubts the place exists. He contacts several former divers and asks them for the location. The only one who responds is Dick (AKA Crazy Tosser), security chief of the popular Deeptown game "Labyrinth of Death". He informs Leonid that out of all divers, only three (Dick included) agreed to create the Temple as a monument to the lost diver community. Each hid their entrance at a familiar place. By now, only Dick's entrance exists, but it can only be accessed from the last level of the new "Labyrinth". At the same time, Dick offers Leonid a job at the company. Two years ago, Gunslinger (one of Leonid's avatars) shocked the "Labyrinth" as a master player. Dick believes that Leonid can still show the players a thing or two to promote the game as the legendary figure. Leonid responds that he will think about it, as he has other things on his mind. He tries out the new "Labyrinth" only to find out that the new game is impossible to beat without a good team. He returns to Chingiz's apartment (in Deeptown), which looks exactly like his real one, and discusses the situation with the three hackers. They agree to help him beat the game and find out why Roma died. At that moment, a shadowy figure enters the apartment and introduces himself as the Dark Diver. He attempts to convince them not to attempt the trip, but Pat shoots him, and the conversation erupts into a firefight. Pat is gunned down by a second-generation virus, as is Leonid, but not before he hits the Dark Diver with one too. When his computer refuses to turn on, Leonid calls Bastard and asks him to come over and look at the machine. Vicka comes home, and Leonid explains everything to her and what he plans to do. Bastard arrives and fixes Leonid's computer. He also asks Vicka if she will allow her husband to go back into the "Labyrinth", then she explains the nature of their strained relationship — Leonid never went to the train station to meet her for the first time. Leonid tells Bastard that, in his mind, he met her there. Apparently, that was the time he developed deep psychosis, although Vicka still insists that they still kissed while flying above Deeptown and that his advanced diver powers disappeared shortly after Jinx left. Leonid returns to Chingiz's virtual apartment to find Maniac, Dick, and Mage (reclusive hacker who used to work for Vicka) already there. They go to the "Labyrinth" lobby and find themselves in the new version of the game. The original "Labyrinth" was an evolved version of Doom, which had players fighting a resistance battle against an alien invasion. The new "Labyrinth" is a sequel — after defeating the invaders, the humans send a retaliation force to the alien homeworld. The tougher (and smarter) enemies make the "lone wolf" tactics impossible. Leonid's team makes it through several levels before encountering a woman named Nike, who joins the team and turns out to be pretty good. At one point, Leonid even confesses that he is attracted to her. Realizing that it would take too long to reach the last level, Leonid confronts Maniac and asks him if he brought the Warlock virus with him. The reluctant Maniac reveals that he managed to smuggle parts of his new-and-improved "Warlock 9300" virus. He assembles the virus, and it turns into an elevator. Crazy Tosser is reluctant to enter the elevator, as he believes they will be traced and kicked out but does so anyway. The elevator takes them to a high-rise on the last level of the "Labyrinth", where they manage to surprise several monsters. Tosser finally reveals that, earlier that day, he sent an email to his superiors informing them of a security drill — an attempt to smuggle a virus into the game. He even offers Maniac a $500 reward for "assisting" in testing the company's security. Since there is no obvious way to get down from the roof of the building, they make a hole in it and decide to climb down the girders on the inside of the building. Tosser offers to climb down first to make sure it's safe. Leonid takes one of his team-mates on his shoulders and proceeds next (using his diver ability to exit the deep while he is climbing down). Eventually, everybody got down, although Chingiz almost fell along with the person he was carrying. Nike (with Pat on her shoulders) managed to get down without a problem, which made Leonid suspicious. After several more challenges, they managed to reach the Emperor's castle. According to Tosser, the Temple entrance is located behind the Emperor's throne. The creature itself is a giant human with energy beams coming out of his eyes. Apparently, the Emperor is a prototype program that learns on its enemies' mistakes. The Emperor proves a tough enemy, and the rest of the team stay behind to hold him off to allow Leonid, Pat, and Nike to reach the throne room. As Leonid blasts the throne to reveal the entrance, the Emperor enters and grabs Pat. Leonid is shocked, when the Emperor looks at him and asks "Who am I?", before being blasted by Nike's rocket launcher, along with Pat. Leonid then confronts her and accuses her of being a diver. They both aim weapons at each other, but only Leonid fires. He then enters the door and finds himself facing a nightmare he kept seeing in his sleep for months — a chasm with two walls (fire and ice) and a string crossing it. Every time he tried to cross the chasm before, he would always fall and wake up. This time, he simply jumps down and floats towards an entrance he sees hovering in nothingness. The Temple then appears on the edge of Deeptown, showing that Leonid passed the test. As the Temple now has a Deeptown address, Leonid contacts his former colleague and tells him where to go to find the building. While he's waiting for the letter, a vehicle stops outside the Temple, and Man with no Face (AKA Dmitry Dibenko) gets out. He enters the Temple with Leonid's help (apparently, only divers may enter without assistance), and explains that Roma's death was an accident — the person who shot him was unaware of the weapon's lethality. He also says that he has been hiding from the Dark Diver for a long time. Apparently, the Dark Diver wants him dead. Man with no Face does not reveal what is in the stolen files. Instead, he gives the prototype weapon to Leonid, saying that most of the bullets are stun rounds and the last one is deadly. He leaves, after which Leonid's team-mates arrive, followed by the deliveryman. Leonid takes the letter, opens it, and reads it. The files describe an attempt by Man with no Face to create "shadow consciousness" — a sort-of echo of a person who logs off from Deeptown. Apparently, there was some success in allowing an avatar to exist and interact with Deeptown for a period of time after the user leaves. The ramifications of this discovery are staggering — should Dibenko succeed, Deeptown will soon be populated with "ghosts" of real-life people. There will be no knowing who is real and who is not. Also, those "ghosts" will eventually achieve a form of AI, as evident by the Emperor in the "Labyrinth of Death" (his question "Who am I?" is the proof of his self-awareness). After locking the file on Chingiz's computer with four passwords (Leonid's, Chingiz's, Bastard's, and Pat's), they all leave the Temple and agree to meet up later in Chingiz's Deeptown apartment. Leonid logs off to find Vicka near her computer. He realizes that she was Nike and was helping them reach the last level. He also sees that Vicka was not even trying to hide her identity from him (Victoria is a Roman name for the Greek goddess Nike). Despite Leonid's expectations, Vicka is not the Dark Diver. Now Leonid is in trouble — he told Nike he liked her before knowing that she was his wife. Vicka, however, does not mind, perhaps because Nike was a personification of her. At the agreed time, Leonid returns to Deeptown and goes to Chingiz's apartment. He also receives a message from Crazy Tosser, who is in the hospital from a heart attack (he is not a young man). Dick says he will be fine but is unable to help Leonid in the near future. Leonid goes to the apartment to find only Chingiz and Bastard waiting for him (Pat is doing homework in the real world). While they are deciding on what to do with the files (Chingiz suggests physically destroying the hard-drive, just to be sure), the Dark Diver reappears and paralyzes the three with stun rounds. He then forces them to call Pat and tell him to unlock the files and send them to the virtual apartment. Pat, while sending the file, suspects something is wrong and enters the apartment armed. The Dark Diver, however, is quicker and shoots Pat. Too late does he realize that the bullet is lethal. He disappears with the file, as Pat's heart stops beating. Chingiz's virtual computer is too far away, so Leonid takes drastic measures. Somehow, he forces Chingiz to see the deep for what it really is (i.e. become a diver) and log off. Bastard rushes to his own virtual computer to log off, and Leonid leave the apartment and goes to his favorite bar/restaurant in Deeptown. There, he calls the Dark Diver, and the figure appears by him. Leonid finally knows the Dark Diver's true nature — he is an echo of Leonid and the power he once held. Apparently, after Jinx left, Leonid decided that he did not wish to be a diver anymore. So, subconsciously, he altered the deep-program to have a built-in timer and removed diver ability to see programming holes. The part of him that had the power to manipulate any program and access Deeptown without a computer split off and formed its own personality, while still remaining a distant part of him. That is why the Dark Diver did not know about the lethal round in his gun — it was Leonid's gun. Deep Diver's life is a curse — he is unable to perceive Deeptown the way human do. All he see are rough shapes and colors. He is also alone and was trying to steal Dibenko's files to create more like him. Leonid decides that it is time for him to embrace his destiny and the two merge. This restores all of Leonid's abilities, as well as abilities of other Divers. He contacts Chingiz and finds out that he managed to perform CPR in time to save Pat. Leonid then returns to the "Labyrinth" and frees the Emperor from his captivity in the game.
8319911	/m/026_9k8	Violets are Blue	James Patterson	2001	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book begins where Roses are Red ended, with Dr. Alex Cross at the home of murdered FBI Agent Betsey Cavalierre. Alex is in his room when his cellphone rings. Alex answers and the Mastermind is on the line. He tells Alex that he killed Cavalierre to toy with Alex. He's going to kill his grandmother and his children, and John Sampson, Cross' best friend and partner, who was watching over Nana Mama, Damon and Janelle, cannot stop him. Alex hangs up and calls Sampson, telling him what happened. Sampson tells Alex that the Mastermind can try but will not succeed. Alex is rushing home when the Mastermind calls him back and tells Cross that his family is safe for the moment. He warns Alex that he's next. Elsewhere, in San Francisco, California, a man and a woman jog through a Golden Gate Park. As they jog, the woman, Martha Wiatt, hears some kind of growling behind them. As they both run faster, she gains some distance between her and her boyfriend, Davis O'Hara. Then, she hears her boyfriend screaming behind her, and runs for help. She sees a van driving by, flags it down, and two people get out. They tell her that she and her boyfriend were chosen. The last thing she sees before dying are vampires. Later, Kyle Craig calls Alex about a similarity between two murders in San Francisco and a murder in Washington DC that they’d worked on a few months before. The case involved a runaway girl that was found hung from a light fixture in a hotel room. The FBI requests that he go to San Francisco to meet Inspector Jamilla Hughes. First, Alex takes Jannie and Ali to school but tells them he'll be back for Damon's choir concert. Kyle Craig calls him to make sure he received the information he had faxed. On the flight, he reviews the details of the murders, which include being hung with the blood drained, and remembers that the little runaway girl in DC had died in exactly the same way. Jamilla picks Cross up at the airport. She takes him to the morgue to see the bodies. A friend of hers, Dr. Allan Pang (a dental expert)is examining the bites on the victims. After reviewing the bites, he deduces that the man was bitten and mauled by a tiger and the girl was bitten by humans. The two brothers went hunting again at Mill Valley, California. They are given a mission from a person called The Sire. The Sire instructed them not to bring the cat when they go to kill the couple living inside the house. Inside, the couple were making dinner when Michael and William walked through the unlocked front door. The brothers bite the couple savagely, sucking on their blood. Before killing the woman, Michael whispers to her that they’re vampires. Jamilla and Alex are working out of her office when the Mastermind calls Alex. The Mastermind tells Alex that he knows about San Francisco and Jamilla. Later that evening, Cross is on the phone with Kyle Craig, who will be working with Cross on the case. Jamilla interrupts and tells Alex that they have to go to San Luis Obispo where they’re going to exhume the body of a girl whose murder could be related to the San Francisco murders. The girl had also been hung, her blood drained. The next day Alex arrives at the SFPD precinct where Jamilla works. Cross admires her work ethic. Jamilla was reading an e mail sent by the FBI and there had been eight murders similar in California and Nevada. Because of the murder in Washington DC, the FBI is now searching for similar murders on the east coast. That afternoon, Jamilla tells Alex that her friend Tim Bradley, from the San Francisco Examiner, has a few leads for her. Then, they are informed that the killers had struck again. At the crime scene, Alex discovers that, again, the bodies had been drained of blood and were hanging from the ceiling by a light fixture. William and Michael watch the story unfold on TV. They were on a mission and the publicity was part of the plan. William tells Michael that he has a plan for that night. The two brothers break into a funeral home and feast on a dead woman who had not yet been embalmed. Cross is still impressed by Jamilla’s work ethic. Alex is working on trying to find a lead on the tiger. He’s checking with zoos, veterinarians, and animal trainers. Jamilla calls Alex early the next morning regarding a lead from a reporter friend. They drive to Los Angeles to meet with a woman who had gotten away after an attack by two men, but she had been bitten several times. The attacks had happened over a year ago. The woman, Gloria Dos Santos, claims the attackers were in their 40’s, but she isn't certain. They’d bitten her multiple times and were going to hang her from a tree. Gloria believed the men were vampires. Luckily, she had managed to get away when she fell down the side of a hill and rolled all the way down. Gloria claims that earlier that night, she had been at a ‘fang’ club with others in the vampire culture. Gloria tells them she was into the Goth scene at that time. A patrolman interrupts the session. There was a murder in Sunset Blvd. The person was bitten and hanged. When they arrive at the murder scene, Kyle Craig is waiting for them. The body was discovered at Chateau Marmont. The man was a record company executive. While Alex looks through the crime scene, the Mastermind called Alex. The Mastermind knew that Alex was in LA. After a week, it looked like Alex would not be returning in time for Damon’s choir concert and so he calls home. Jamilla returns to San Francisco, but leaves her notes with Alex and Kyle. She believes that although the murders are similar, the patterns are different, and may have been committed by different people. Alex concurs. Jamilla tells Alex about the break-in at the funeral home. As Alex and Kyle leave the precinct, they are followed by Michael and William. William tells Michael that he senses one of them is extremely dangerous. Alex is going to Santa Barbara to meet with Peter Westin, a self-professed vampire and vampire expert. Westin dressed the part of a vampire, even to long fingernails but his teeth are normal and had no fangs. He tells Alex that there are several chapters in the US for people that consider themselves vampires. Westin tells Alex that a vampire is a person born with an extraordinary gift. They have the capacity to transform, channel, absorb and manipulate pranic energy. He tells Cross that blood is the highest form of pranic energy. The next day Alex drives to Fresno to see John Berreiro, who does tattoos and custom teeth for so-called vampires. William and Michael travel to Las Vegas, and they attend a magic show performed by two magicians named Daniel Erickson and Charles DeFoe. After the show, they seduce an actor and actress couple whom they had met at the show. They kill them in their own room at the Bellagio. Alex and Kyle examine the bodies after the murders are discovered. They have been drained of blood and dumped in the bathtub. Cross notes that there was nowhere for the bodies to be hanged. Jamilla calls Alex and confirms that there are at least four killers, based on dental evidence. The murders seem to stop and the trail go cold, so after being in the West coast for fourteen days, Alex returns home. Alex spends the whole day with his children and Nana Mama at the Smithsonian without any phone calls. The Mastermind had actually been following Cross and his family all day. After a few days of being with his friends and family, Alex gets word that the killers had struck in Charleston, South Carolina. Kyle is waiting for Alex down in Charleston. He informs Alex that there are dozens of unsolved murders related to the Vampire killing, dating back eleven years. Michael and William are in Savannah, Georgia and they kill again. The next day Cross and Kyle head there to investigate the murder. As Kyle and Alex examine the body of the young college student, laid inside a gothic church, they’re told of a murder in Charlotte, North Carolina. A young boy had killed his parents by bludgeoning them to death. A claw hammer was found on the scene. He had also bitten them. The boy had fled to an abandoned house nearby that was frequented by other runaways. Kyle and Alex, together with a squad of agents, observe the abandoned house for several hours. They are told to proceed carefully due to all the minors in the house. Kyle finds the boy and the agents rush him. The boy, Irwin Snyder, was pale, unhealthy looking, dirty and smelly. He growled and hissed at the agents. Surprisingly, he knew Cross’ name. He tells Cross he killed his parents to free himself and that he follows the tiger. Irwin rushes Cross with a knife. As Cross wrestles him, Irwin bites Cross’ hand and shoulder. The FBI agents pull him away as Irwin yells “Now you’re one of us” to Cross. Cross questioned Snyder, but got few answers. Cross asked Snyder how he heard about him. Snyder tells him to ask the tiger when they meet again. The next day, instead of going to hospital to address the wounds in his hand and shoulder, Cross returns to Washington. When he gets into the house, the phone rings and the Mastermind welcomes him back. Cross invites him to come and get him. The next day Cross' hand is even more swollen and painful. He finally gets his wounds checked. When he arrives at the hospital, he has a high fever. Alex had cellulitis in his hand, caused by bacteria that can be found in the mouth. The doctor gives Alex a prescription for the infection and sends him home. At home he goes to sleep but wakes up because he felt someone in the room with him. It was Janelle, and she talks with her dad and stays with him after he falls asleep. The Mastermind is inside the Cross’ house and was ready to kill him and his family, but on seeing him bandaged up, The Mastermind decides he's not a worthy opponent at that time and he leaves. Alex works from home for the next few days and tries to find a connection between the cities that the murders took place. After doing some research, he discovers that all the murders occurred whenever the magicians, Daniel and Charles, were in town. He called Kyle Craig and told him New Orleans, Louisiana should be next, based on their schedule. In New Orleans, the FBI put the magicians under surveillance and sees that they use white tigers in their show. At the end of the performance, Daniel and Charles go home in a limousine, which the FBI follows to their home. When the driver opens the door, two white tigers jump out but Daniel and Charles had disappeared. The magicians appear at a small private club in Abita Springs, LA.The men are taken to the basement where a teenage boy has been chained for their pleasure. Daniel was the Sire. After receiving clearance from the doctor to return to work, Alex meets up with Jamilla in New Orleans. They attend two performances by the magicians and are convinced they’re involved in the murders. Jamilla and Alex are on stakeout for a few days trying to catch the magicians. Daniel owns a large house in New Orleans that he’d inherited from his father. Through the surveillance, it is discovered that there will be a Gothic party on the grounds. Jamilla and Alex go to a local restaurant to talk, not knowing that they’re being watched by the Mastermind. He watches them leave the restaurant, sees Jamilla get in a taxi, and then follows Cross. He decides he’s going to kill Alex now, but at the last moment decides against it. The street Alex turned down was too dark, and he wants to see Alex’s eyes when he dies. The next morning, Kyle Craig is handing out the day’s assignments. Jamilla asks about her assignment, but Kyle tells her to see Cross. She tells Kyle she’s worked as hard as everyone else and would like an assignment. Kyle tells her that he doesn't care. Alex was surprised at Kyle’s behavior. In private, Jamilla tells Alex that Kyle is a control freak and that he may have serious issues with women. William and Michael have arrived at New Orleans. For several days, Charles and Daniel are under surveillance, but they hardly leave the house. When they do, they go to a restaurant or go shopping. Cross and Jamilla now think they are not the killers. William watches the police surveillance on Charles and Daniel. He wonders how long Charles and Daniel can go without killing. A few blocks down, William talks to a young teenage girl and then kills her after taking shots of her nude body. The next morning, Cross and Jamilla find out about the girl. They tell Kyle their plan to crash the party and Kyle approves. Alex and Jamilla wear costumes to the party. When they get to the main floor, they see that most of the people there have fangs. A deep voice announces that the Sire has arrived. Daniel and Charles come down the stairs, led by a white tiger. Daniel addresses the crowd and tells everyone he’s the Sire. They are there to anoint two new vampire princes. Suddenly, the lights go out. When the lights come back, Charles and Daniel lie dead. Their throats had been slashed and there were fang marks. The next day Jamilla is headed back to San Francisco. Alex takes her to the airport. They promise to keep in touch. Cross returns to Daniel’s house. He thinks the police have missed something. In the closet of the master bedroom, two dolls with the magicians' likeness were on the floor with scratch marks on their chest, necks, and face. Someone had been there after the police had sealed off the area. Alex goes through the tunnels in the basement where he is attacked by a man and a woman. The woman bites him. He manages to fight them off and then arrests them. At the station, Cross questions the two vampires. They are teenagers and both are runaways. The questioning proved fruitless and was interrupted when an officer informed him that a detective has been found dead and hung in her apartment. Cross rushes to the crime scene. The bites were different - superficial. Alex believed someone else had killed her. She was not drained of her blood. Alex’s cellphone rings. It was the Mastermind, and he asks Alex if he found the body yet, and asks what he thought. Alex hangs up and he notices that Kyle is watching him closely. Jamilla calls Alex to tell him that her reporter friend found some leads in Santa Cruz, California. There had been numerous disappearances there, and she was going to check them out. Cross told her to be careful and to always have someone with her. In Santa Cruz, Jamilla speaks with the local police. She decides to check the foothills outside of town. She believes several people are living there as part of a commune. When she arrives and parks her car, two handsome men approach her. It was Michael and William and they attack her but they don’t injure her. They throw her in the back of a pickup truck and gag her. They are taking her to see the Sire, and tell her they will kill her afterwards. Cross returns home and spends the whole day with the kids. When he returns home, Jamilla’s friend from the Examiner, Tim Bradley, had left a message for Alex. Alex calls him back and is told that Jamilla has gone missing. Alex calls the SCPD and is told that she went to the foothills. Alex calls Kyle Craig. and then he returns to California. In San Francisco, Alex is met by FBI agents who take him to the foothills. Once there, one of the agents tells Alex that the area used to be a preserve for wild animals, and the owners would train lions and tigers there. When they arrive near the ranch, Kyle is waiting with several agents. Kyle tells him that there are dozens of vampires inside led by the new Sire. There is no sign of Jamilla. That night, Alex watches Michael and William take the tiger out to play. Alex noticed Kyle was acting like a detached observer. Cross theorizes that the magicians, Daniel and Charles, had always been careful. They had killed for dozens of years without getting caught. The brothers, Michael and William, on the other hand were careless in their murders, and they were under orders to frame Daniel and Charles for their killings. Cross believes the brothers were finally given the order to kill the magicians in New Orleans. After a few hours of observation, the FBI is ready to go. They are surprised when the front doors of the ranch suddenly open, and several people come out dressed in dark clothes. They get on vehicles and park them closer to the building. Through the doors then come people in hooded robes, all with guns pointed at each other. They move towards the waiting vehicles. Alex is trying to spot Jamilla, but can’t see her because of the hoods. One of them suddenly drops to the ground. Alex knows it was Jamilla, and the FBI now moves in full force. Alex goes to Jamilla and they rush into the ranch. Inside, they find two dead bodies, bitten and drained of blood. There is a hole in the ground and Alex follows it down into a tunnel. Jamilla and Kyle join Alex and they proceed down the dark tunnel. The tiger is there and it rushes at Alex, who is forced to shoot and kill it. When they exit the tunnel, a vehicle approaches them at high speed. Alex sees the brothers inside, and he fires several shots before the truck flips onto its side. Michael gets out, bloodied, and rushes at Cross. William is dead. Cross is ready to tackle Michael when Kyle kills Michael. A voice comes from the truck. Cross was surprised when he saw the injured and bloody Sire, Peter Westin, inside. Peter Westin had met the magicians when they were performing in Los Angeles. Westin had his followers, but feigned allegiance until he felt he was strong enough to emerge as the Sire. He had dispatched the brothers to kill in the cities where the magicians were performing. At the airport, Alex gets a gut feeling about the Mastermind and Jamilla. He cancels his flight, rents a car and parks it a few blocks away from Jamilla's house. He waits and watches. He did not intend to have a third dead partner. Patsy Hampton had been murdered by Geoffrey Shafer and Betsey Cavalierre by the Mastermind. Cross recalls Cavalierre’s murder and how she had been knifed and mutilated, even between the legs. The Mastermind calls Alex and threatens his family. Cross calls Sampson, tells him what's going on, and gets him to move the family to a safe place. Jamilla arrives back home later that afternoon. After she gets inside her apartment, Alex calls her and explains to her that she might be in danger. Night arrives, and Cross suddenly sees the Mastermind. Everything had just made sense to him - his friend, Kyle Craig, was the Mastermind. Cross calls Jamilla and reveals the suspected identity of the Mastermind. She confirms to him that it made sense for Kyle to be the Mastermind. Alex tells her that he’s outside. Jamilla tells Cross to come in and join her through the back way into the house. Kyle had actually seen Cross and had decided to make an unexpected move. Kyle knew the FBI was also becoming suspicious of him. Kyle had killed Cavalierre because she was beginning to get suspicious of him. Inside, Alex and Jamilla wait for Kyle to come. The door opens, a man comes in, and Cross and Jamilla attack him. The man was not Kyle Craig, but an FBI Agent sent by Kyle to break into Jamilla's home. Ronald Burns, Director of the FBI calls Alex. Alex demands to know everything. Burns tells Cross that he believes that Kyle murdered LA Times reporter Beth Lieberman during Kiss the Girls case. She had made a connection between Kyle and the Gentleman Caller. Burns confirms that the FBI suspected Kyle was involved in Betsey Cavalierre’s death but they had no solid proof. Cross leaves for Washington DC to protect his family. Once home, Alex starts to contact those of his friends who might be next on Kyle's list of potential victims. Kyle calls Alex and tells him that he had just murdered the Taylors, who were good friends of Alex. The next day, Alex interviews several of Kyle’s family. Kyle’s older brother, Martin, had long suspected that Kyle killed his own middle brother, Blake. Alex decides he’s quitting the force as soon as he solves this case. Cross goes to North Carolina to speak with Kyle’s parents and younger brother. Then, he thinks about Kyle's next victim, and he decides it could be his old friend, Kate McTiernan from Kiss The Girls. After calling Kate and warning her to get out of town for her own safety, Alex rushes to her home. Alex goes inside to wait. Kyle calls him on the phone but it was a distraction ploy as Kyle was already in the house. Kyle jumps down to attack him from behind and they fight. Cross eventually hits Kyle in the head with a bottle. Then, Alex makes a call and waits for Kyle to awaken. They have a talk. Cross gets Kyle to tell him everything he had done, and at the end, Kyle boasts that Alex won't be able to prove anything. Alex takes out his phone and tells him the entire conversation was recorded on voicemail. Kyle jumps up to attack Alex but Alex punches him in the face.
8320806	/m/026_bmq	The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray	Chris Wooding	2006-01-23	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins with Thaniel Fox hunting Wych-kin in the abandoned regions of London. He starts thinking about his childhood and how his mother was brutally murdered in an abandoned graveyard in Whitechapel when he was six years old and how his father, Jedriah Fox, had trained him in the art of Wych-hunting before he too died, leaving Thaniel alone. Hunting the Wych-kin down he eventually finds its lair and during the chase he is attacked by a girl, same age as him, in a confused state. This girl, the titular Alaizabel Cray, was brought back to his house while he tried to figure out what to do with her. Leaving her under the guard of Cathaline Bennett (a friend of his father's who became his teacher then friend), Thaniel began making enquiries at the mental wards run by Dr. Mammon Pyke, an associate who had often helped Thaniel treat the victims of the certain types of Wych-kin that caused madness. On this instance however, Thaniel got the impression that Pyke had an ulterior motive and gave the doctor false information concerning the girl. That night the killer Stitch-Face strikes again, Ms. Marey Woolbury who is a prostitute. During Alaizabel's slow recovery it becomes apparent that she has no memory of her past life apart from her name. Unbeknownst to any of them The Wych-kin Fraternity is watching them and waiting for their chance to recapture what is theirs. Eventually Thaniel is given another chance to kill the Wych-kin that eluded him the night he found Miss Cray. With the help of Inspector Maycraft he finally kills it, only to find that something has gone wrong in his absence. Thatch, a spirit that has remain dormant in Alaizabel, has awoken and takes control of her. During their attempt to understand what's happening; Thaniel and Cathaline discover that she was tattooed with the chackh'morg. This symbol allows ghosts, in this case the spirit Thatch, to enter Alaizabel's body, thus explaining the supernatural events surrounding Alaizabel. Despite his best attempts at keeping Thatch down and Alaizabel safe, Thatch almost escapes and a Wych-kin called Congealed Darkness, sent by the Fraternity, almost kidnaps her. Realizing the futility of hiding, Thaniel takes his friends to the safety of the Crooked Lanes. Thaniel and Cathaline decide to flee to an area called the crooked lanes where Thaniel has a friend called Crott, a beggar Lord, who owes him a favour due to his father's attempt to save Crott's wife. In return for ridding the lanes of a recent Wych-kin invasion he will be granted safe passage. The Wych-kin is defeated; but not without loss of life. Stitch-Face strikes again, this time targeting a deaf "God-fearing woman", a Ms. Priscena Weston. In her panic, Ms. Weston runs into a pack of wolves who attack her and chase away Stitch-face. Ms. Westen is miraculously saved when a man whose job it is to hunt large animals in Alaska and who is visiting family, kills the wolves and saves Ms. Westen's life. Meanwhile Inspector Maycraft and his partner inspector Carver are on the trail of a murderer known as the green tack killer who is believed to be Stitch-Face. Carver does not believe that but Maycraft refuses to listen. Eventually, as part of their deal, Crott uncovers someone who knows about Alaizabel's past, Perris The Boar. Perris tells them that Alaizabel was used by the Fraternity, an evil cult, led by none other than Dr. Pyke himself, which is bent on world destruction. They killed her parents and placed the spirit of Thatch inside her. During this time Thaniel and Alaizabel get closer. That night, Stitch-Face attacks Dr. Pyke's secretary, Lucinda Watt, and gathers information on the Fraternity's plans, leaving her body as a warning to the other members. By this point Carver realizes that Maycraft cannot be trusted and seeks out the beggar lord. He and Crott share information and thus Thaniel gains a new ally. Crott's Devil Boy Jack, a fortune teller of the highest order, whose eyes are sewn shut, predicts that the darkness is coming as soon as the last green tack murder takes place. The last victim's name is Leanna Butcher. The Green Tack murders are a series of sacrifices that, when all placed on a map, form the shape of the Chackh'morg. While trying to save the final victim, Thaniel realises that the culprit it really a Wych-kin called Rawhead, summoned by the Fraternity to carry out the killings, and although Thaniel defeated the monster, it succeeded in mortally wounding the unfortunate victim. The Fraternity also manage to kidnap Alaizabel from under his nose at the same time. Alaizabel has the spirit of Thatch removed and put inside a more obedient host body and she is left for dead in a cell. She escapes but is captured by Stitch-face. Thaniel, defeated and heartbroken over the loss of Alaizabel and knowing that he failed to stop the Green Tack killings and as a result all of the Fraternity's plans have now come to fruition, retreats and is about to give up. The others prepare for the inevitable as the victim dies and the darkness arrives upon London. The next day London is covered by red clouds blotting out the sun and the Wych-kin run rampant through the streets. This is only stage one of the Fraternity's plans. During this Stitch-Face, for reasons best known to himself, has mercy and returns Alaizabel to Thaniel who, reinvigorated by his love's return, leads the street gangs of London in their fight against the Fraternity. During this time Carver comes up with a plan to stop the Fraternity from completing the second and final stage of their evil scheme by invading their base and killing Lady Thatch. Thatch, it turns out, is essential to their plans as she is the only one who knows how to summon the Glau Meska, the Fraternity's hell gods. In order to get there they must acquire an airship, but have to travel overland in order to get one. Along the way the Devil Boy reveals that he knows who is going to die and survive but will not tell for fear of changing the outcome. Along the way, as the Devil Boy predicted, they lose Crott and his companion, Armand, to a group of Wych-kin called the Draug. Eventually they make it to the airship and now have safe passage to the Fraternity's HQ, an until now hidden Cathedral in the southern area of London, as no Wych-kin can fly. When they reach the castle Alaizabel reveals that she has retained some of Lady Thatch's memories and is able to gain access to their base. The pilot is told to stay put while they try to hunt down Thatch. On the way to the Cathedral, Thaniel reveals to Alaizabel how her arrival affected him emotionally for the better. After hearing this, Alaizabel kisses him. Dr. Pyke, enraged by the intrusion during the final stages of his plan and the most delicate part of the whole operation, releases the Wych-dogs. Only the memory of the aforementioned kiss he had shared with Alaizabel keeps Thaniel going. During the battle with the Wych-dogs, Carver is wounded and the Devil Boy reveals that he also foresaw his own death and is in the process of telling Thaniel that they will win in the end when he is shot by Curien Blake, Pyke's American assassin. Outside, the Airship pilot loses his nerve and decides to flee. Unable to cut the rope anchoring him to the castle, he drops the ship's payload and destroys the anchor rope and most of the castle wall. Inspector Maycraft, who has been one of Pyke's minions all along, is killed in the blast. Blake states that he was always a fan of Thaniel's father and challenges Thaniel to a duel. During this one-on-one knife fight, Cathaline is shot in the hand and Blake is defeated. Stalking deeper into the Castle, they find Thatch but Pyke shoots Thaniel in the stomach, but not fatally, before they can stop her. He also tells them of the true nature of the Wych-kin and how they came to exist. He says that when people came to rely completely on science and started to completely believe that God didn't exist is when the Wych-kin came about. Because when people still believed in God they had someone to blame for the evil, hate, and everything else that is bad in the world. But when the belief in God began to wane, people didn't know what to do with the blame and so subconsciously created the Wych-kin. However the damaged wall had allowed the Wych-kin to gain access to the castle and they begin killing the cultists. In the confusion Pyke escapes but Thaniel is able to kill Thatch just as Thatch is about to finish the spell that would have awoken the Deep Ones. The Wych-kin are all destroyed as the red clouds dissipate and they are caught out in the sunlight. With the defeat of the Fraternity, Thaniel and Alaizabel have now fully fallen in love and have gone to live together to some unknown place. Carver reflects on the better world emerging now that the Wych-kin are fully acknowledged and Stitch-Face begins hunting down any survivors of the Fraternity, beginning with an unsuspecting Dr. Mammon Pyke.
8320817	/m/026_bp3	Hello-out there!	William Saroyan			 The play is set in a small Texas jail. There are two major characters, Photo-Finish and Emily, whom Saroyan refers to simply as "A Young Man" and "A Girl". Photo-Finish is a down on his luck gambler and ends up in jail in a hole-in-the-wall town as a result of a married harlot crying rape when he refused to pay her after having sex with her. There he meets Emily, an unhappy cook. When they meet, it is love at first sight. Emily and Photo-Finish fall in love and make plans to go to San Francisco, but their plans are crushed when the men looking for Photo-Finish find him, and kill him.
8321253	/m/026_c2y	Kävik the Wolf Dog				 Kävik, a malamute sled dog, gets sold from Charlie One-eye to Mr. Hunter for $2,000 after winning the North American Sled-dog race and is loaded on a plane in an iron-barred cage. In the middle of the trip, something goes wrong and the plane crashes into the ground, killing pilot Smiley Johnson before he even has time to undo his seatbelt. Kävik's cage makes a gaping hole in the side of the plane as it crashes in the eye of a storm. After being trapped in a cage for three days while starving, freezing, and getting multiple wounds from neighboring animals, Kävik is found by young Andy Evans, a teenage boy who the plane wreck along his trapline. Andy uses a piece of the plane's wing to open the cage and to create a sled to carry the injured dog until they reach a cave, where Andy and Kävik spend the night. The next morning, Andy is shaken awake by his father, Kurt Evans, and they take Kävik back to their house. Laura Evans, Andy's mother, suggests that they take him over to Dr. Walker. When Dr. Walker arrives, he is led to believe by Andy that Laura was sick, but he learns that Kävik was injured instead and refuses to operate on him because he is a people doctor, not a veterinarian. But with Laura's tricky ways, he is persuaded to help Kavik to the best of his abilities. Over the period of a few weeks, Kävik almost fully recovers and heals. Andy notices he is as good as new when he climbs up the stairs and is able to open his door. One day, while Andy is at his job downtown, Kävik escapes to town and gets chased by a pack of dogs led by Blackie. It turns out he has lost his fighting courage due to the horrible plane wreck. A few weeks later, Andy comes home and notices that Kävik is nowhere to be found. His dad tells Andy that Mr. Hunter came by earlier that day and took Kävik back with him to his home in Colorado, despite being told by Andy's father that Kävik is a complete coward and that he had lost his wolflike courage. When Mr. Hunter goes to show Kävik off, Kavik escapes out of a window and sets out over 2,000 miles to return to Andy, the only person who ever loved him enough to take care of him.
8321281	/m/026_c3z	Of the Standard of Taste				 Hume begins with the observation that there is much variety in people's taste (or the aesthetic judgments people make). However, Hume argues that there is a common mechanism in human nature that gives rise to, and often even provides justification for, such judgments. He takes this aesthetic sense to be quite similar to the moral sense for which he argues in his Book 3 of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740) and in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). Furthermore, he argues that this still leaves room for the ability to refine one's aesthetic palate. (Fieser, 2006, §2) Hume took as his premise that the great diversity and disagreement regarding matters of taste had two basic sources - sentiment, which was to some degree naturally varying, and critical facility, which could be cultivated. Each person is a combination of these of two sources, and Hume endeavours to delineate the admirable qualities of a critic, that they might augment their natural sense of beauty into a reliable faculty of judgment. There are a variety of qualities of the good critic that he describes, each of which contributes to an ultimately reliable and just ability to judge.
8325004	/m/026_gp6	Fat City	Leonard Gardner	1969		 Set in the small-time boxing circuit of Stockton, California in the late 1950s, the novel concerns the revival of a semi-retired Billy Tully's career and the first fights of a novice, Ernie Munger. At twenty-nine years old and discouraged not only by his defeat to another lightweight fighter in Panama, but also from the desertion of his wife two years earlier, Tully meets Munger at the local YMCA and remarks on his talent, suggesting he visit his former trainer Ruben Luna. Disgusted by his lack of fitness and power, Tully entertains the idea of returning to the ring in a bid to reclaim his self-respect and possibly his ex-wife. Munger meanwhile impregnates his girlfriend, Faye, and marries her out of obligation, vowing to support his young family by winning fights. After losing his first amateur bout he attains some success and, despite his anxieties about marriage, seems poised to ascend the circuit ranks. Tully, meanwhile is wracked by uncertainty and divides his time between working as a low-paying farm laborer and drinking heavily in seedy bars and motels. After a brief affair with an alcoholic barfly named Oma, Tully strengthens his resolve and makes a concerted effort to prepare for a fight with a moderately well-known but aging Mexican fighter named Arcadio Lucero. Tully narrowly wins the fight on a bill with Munger, who is also victorious in his professional debut. Though momentarily bolstered by his victory, Tully pines for Oma, his ex-wife, or any woman, realizing that his career is over and the past can not be reclaimed. Alone and without any future prospects, he descends into an abyss of inebriation, becoming just another unshaven face at the bar recalling former greatness. Munger continues to fight and, hitchhiking home from a fight in Salt Lake City alone, he is picked up by two young women who eject him from the car on a stretch of highway in the dark of night after an awkward exchange revealing Munger's lustful longing. The novel ends with the suggestion that Ernie Munger may be starting down the same desperate and well-worn path as Billy Tully.
8326980	/m/026_j9h	The White Boy Shuffle		1996	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the book's prologue, the reader meets the narrator, Gunnar Kaufman, a prolific African-American poet whose astronomically successful book, Watermelanin, has sold 126 million copies, elevating him to the status of "Negro Demagogue." The prologue asserts that what follows are Gunnar memoirs, "the battlefield remains of a frightened deserter in the eternal war for civility" (2). The novel opens with a comic survey of Gunnar's family tree, as his mother relates the tales of his family history to him and his sisters. Gunnar in turn regales his classmates with the tales of his ancestors, one of whom Gunnar claims dodged the bullet that eventually killed Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre. Gunnar is a young boy growing up in affluent, predominately white Santa Monica, California with his mother and sisters. His absent father is a sketch artist for the LAPD and rarely sees his children. Gunnar's friends are white, and he spends his free time making enough mischief to gain him mild admonishments from the Santa Monica Shore Patrol. When Gunnar and his sisters tell their mother they do not want to attend an all-black summer camp because the children there "are different from us," Ms. Kaufman immediately packs up a U-Haul and relocates her family to the West Los Angeles neighborhood of Hillside, a predominately black community surrounded by a concrete wall that Gunnar describes as the ghetto (37). In Hillside, the Kaufman children encounter an altogether different lifestyle than the one they were accustomed to in Santa Monica. Gunnar learns "the hard way that social norms in Santa Monica were unforgivable breaches of proper Hillside etiquette, and soon after arriving is beaten up by one of the area's local gangs, the "Gun Totin' Hooligans" (52). Enrolling in the local junior high, Gunnar is offered protection by an administrator who fears that Gunnar's unfamiliarity with Hillside social norms will make him an easy target for harassment. However, Gunnar soon strikes up a friendship with Nicholas Scoby when he is paired with the "thuggish boy" in a reading of William Shakespeare's Othello (66). Scoby is a prodigious basketball player, with a remarkable ability to make, without exception, every basket. Soon after meeting Scoby, Gunnar stuns the local children when he unintentionally exhibits his own, hereto unknown talent for basketball, dunking the ball into the basket in a pickup game. His talent gains him respect within the Hillside community of youths. Ironically, that his unusual talent causes him to stick out enables him to fit into the social scene. Around this time, Gunnar writes his first poem, "Negro Misappropriation of Greek Mythology or, I know Niggers That'll Kick Hercules's Ass" and spray paints the lines across the concrete wall surrounding Hillside. Later, instructed by Scoby, Gunnar changes his hairstyle and attire in an effort to further conform to Hillside society. As the years pass, Gunnar becomes incredibly popular, both for his talent on the basketball court and for his emerging poetic prowess. However, he remains somewhat of an outcast in his clear lack of dancing talent and his unease with women. His friends, Scoby and feared gang-member and assumed murderer Psycho Loco, dub Gunnar's awkward antics on the dance floor "The White Boy Shuffle." Because of Gunnar's apparent inability to talk to women, Psycho Loco secretly takes it upon himself to order Gunnar a mail order bride from Japan, using a service called "Hot Mamma-Sans of the Orient." Throughout high school, Gunnar continues to write poetry, much of which, we later learn, is published in magazines. During his sixteenth summer, Gunnar aids in his friends' stealing a department store safe during the turmoil of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. We learn that Psycho Loco has planned to steal the safe for nine years in retribution for the department store's having moved a race-car set the young Psycho intended to steal on the day he was to steal it. As Gunnar and his friends attempt to load the safe into a car, Gunnar's father and other policemen arrive. Gunnar's father beats him with a nightstick, and Gunnar is hospitalized. When he is released from the hospital, he learns that his friends have been unable to open the safe. Gunnar turns the safe over, finding the combination on the bottom, and opens it. Gunnar refuses to take any of the money, gold, and precious stones inside. In the last two weeks of summer, Gunnar attends a program for the top 100 high school basketball talents in the country, of which Gunnar is number 100. From camp, he sends his friends and family several e-mails, which are documented in the novel. From these e-mails, we learn that both of Gunnar's sisters are pregnant and have moved in with their father. We also learn that Gunnar, despite his basketball talent, is not incredibly interested in the game itself. He is constantly frustrated by his roommates' insistence on constantly talking about the game. Gunnar notes that his roommates even use basketball terms to talk about women. In return for his father not pressing charges against him and his friends for the safe incident, Gunnar agrees to attend an elite public high school in the San Fernando Valley. Gunnar travels an hour and a half to and from school on a bus. His return to a predominately white atmosphere is an easy one, and Gunnar notes that he "meshed well" (153). However, he disdains the arrogance of several of the rich, white boys with whom his mother insists he spend time. In his senior year, Gunnar begins receiving letters from the armed forces academies, Harvard University, and Boston University. He visits a wealthy, African American Harvard graduate in his large home, which overlooks Hillside, realizing that years earlier he and his Holligan friends had stolen a security sign out of the front lawn and destroyed the man's RV. Gunnar is disgusted by the man's superior attitude towards the residents of Hillside and decides he will never attend Harvard. When a recruiter from BU arrives at his house, Gunnar decides to attend BU instead. Before Gunnar leaves for college, it is revealed that Psycho Loco has indeed ordered Gunnar a wife from Japan when she arrives by UPS on Gunnar's 18th birthday. Yoshiko Katsu speaks little English but is an immediate hit with Gunnar's mother. For their honeymoon, Gunnar and Yoshiko drive to an amusement park, listening to the radio and attempting to bridge the gap between their two mother tongues. Moving to Boston, Gunnar attends one class at BU: Creative Writing 104. When he tells the class his name, he is overwhelmed by a chorus of accolades as the students in the class recite his now famous poetry back to him and barrage him with questions. Uncomfortable with the attention, Gunnar runs from the room, tearing off his clothes and walking home to his apartment. At the insistence of his professor, who has followed him along with the members of the class, Gunnar agrees to publish a collection of his poetry. The collection will become his book, Watermelanin. In Boston, Gunnar begins to face a degree of prejudice from other blacks for his marriage to the Japanese Yoshiko. At the insistence of Scoby, who is attending BU, Gunnar attends several meetings of student activist clubs such as the citywide black student union and SWAPO, or the Whities Against Political Obsequeiousness, of which he is the only black member. Waking simultaneously one night from dreams, Gunnar and Yoshiko realize that the latter is pregnant. Gunnar begins traveling on a basketball team with Scoby. He becomes increasingly depressed, and his only consolation are the boxes of Japanese literature sent to him on the road from Yoshiko. In return, Gunnar writes her letters. In these letters, he notes that Scoby "is going insane" (192). After basketball season ends, Gunnar—now an even greater celebrity—is asked by his publisher to speak at a rally protesting BU's decision to confer an honorary degree upon a corrupt African statesman. Initially unsure of what to say to the crowd, Gunnar eventually tells the crowd that "What we need is some new leaders. Leaders who won't apostatize like cowards. Some niggers who are ready to die!" (200). The frenzied crowd chants "You! You! You!" and Gunnar's place as "Negro Demagogue" is solidified. From his speech, the media assumes that Gunnar is an advocate of freedom through suicide, and though Gunnar makes it clear that he means only his own suicide, many across America begin killing themselves and sending their "death poems" to Gunnar. When asked when he plans to commit suicide, Gunnar replies "When I'm good and goddamn ready" (202). One night, on the beach, a deeply unhappy and depressed Scoby asks Gunnar what the highest building in Boston is before leaving the beach. The next morning Gunnar learns that Scoby has jumped from the roof of the BU law school, killing himself. On the roof, Gunnar finds his friend's suicide note, containing his own death poem. Gunnar and Yoshiko resolve to return to Hillside, but Gunnar is forced into hiding by an outstanding warrant for his arrest by the LAPD. One night, on the beach with Psycho Loco and Yoshiko, Gunnar walks out into the ocean, realizes he could die if he swam out farther, and gives himself to the currents. Hit with thoughts of his unborn child, he snaps out of a meditative state underwater and swims back to shore. Gunnar and Yoshiko check into a motel, where the spend the remainder of the novel ostensibly hiding from the LAPD, occupying their time by having debates and reading death poems from Gunnar's fans. However, one night, Gunnar walks to 7-Eleven and is caught in a police helicopter's search light. The light follows his home. He and Yoshiko begin taking nighttime walks through Hillside, their way constantly lit by the helicopter. Eventually, they are joined by other members of the community on their walks. With Gunnar's mother acting as midwife, Yoshiko gives birth to a girl, Naomi Katsu Kaufman, in a small pool in the local park. The birth is attended by a large crowd and is guarded by the members of the Gun Totin' Hooligans. As always, the LAPD helicopter hovers overhead. It drops a box of cigars attached to a parachute when Yoshiko gives birth. In what appears to be Gunnar's father's handwriting, a note is attached that reads, "Congratulations from the Los Angeles Police Department. Maybe this one will grow up with a respect for authority" (219). As the novel comes to a close, Gunnar begins holding weekly, outdoor open mics, reading his poetry to great crowds. At one gathering, on the two-year anniversary of Scoby's suicide, Gunnar shocks the crowd by chopping off the smallest finger on his right hand with a kitchen knife. His sacrifice "cement[s] his status as savior of the blacks" (223). Elevating Gunnar to the status of cult figure, "spiteful black folks" travel in droves to Hillside, prompting the government to threaten the community with an ultimatum: "rejoin the rest of America or celebrate Kwanza in hell" (224). Hillside residents respond by painting the roofs of the community with white targets. The novel ends with Gunnar, still living in the motel with Yoshiko and Naomi, beginning to tell his daughter the same stories of his family tree told to him in his youth by his mother. The first such tale is that of Gunnar's father. The novel ends with his death poem, left in his LAPD locker before he kills himself by swallowing his own gun.
8327122	/m/026_jfn	Hot House Flowers		2006-10-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A dandelion from outside a hothouse releases her seeds into the hothouse and the dandelions begin to use up all the water, soil, and sunlight. The native flowers, who remain silent for fear of appearing intolerant, begin to wither. The God-like hothouse owner removes the dandelions. When the original dandelion sends in more seeds the native hothouse flowers use their roots and stems to push the dandelion seeds to the bottom of the hothouse, where they cannot grow. Seeing this, the dandelions outside the hothouse stop sending seeds in.
8329974	/m/026_mrz	USS Seawolf			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The story begins with a United States Navy submarine, the , on a mission to spy on the new Chinese nuclear missile submarine. The mission is successful until the submarine's second-in-command, the president's son Linus Clark makes a fatal error, and the submarine collides with a sonar array from a Chinese ship that is searching for them. The crew is imprisoned and tortured while the Chinese begin to strip the captured submarine for its secrets. Desperately, Arnold Morgan, the National Security Advisor, plans a mission to get the crew back, safeguard the sub's secrets, and punish the Chinese. He sends Navy SEALs to the island where survivors are being held and an American FA-18 Hornet to destroy the USS Seawolf which is being held in Canton harbor. But after the daring mission, several high-ranking U.S. Navy personnel and several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff resign when the president prevents his son from facing a court-martial for his part in the loss of the Seawolf. In an angry fit of revenge, the President uses his considerable influence to have the Seawolfs commander, court-martialed for not being on the bridge at the time of Linus' error. (The final premise of the book is in error, bordering on the absurd - as written on page 430, 1st ed. hardback, the CO of the Seawolf was convicted at court-martial for "gross negligence...on the grounds that he had been absent from his place of duty in the face of the enemy". But no state of war had been declared, so China was NOT an enemy of the USA. No military court would have issued such a verdict.") This causes Morgan to resign and destroys the president's credibility in the military, as well as destroying the president's ability to lead in a crisis situation. In a later novel, Robinson continues to build on the conflict between the discredited president and the military by further developing the character of Arnold Morgan. The novel identifies the Type 094 as "Xia III-class." The Type 094 submarine does exist, but its NATO reporting name is "Jin-class." And a "Xia Class" submarine does exist, though only a single Xia Class boat was made. It is not known if this somewhat jumbled name is an error, or simply artistic license taken by the author since the Type-094 is an improved design based on the original Xia Class submarine (Type 092), although the Type 093 submarine is an attack submarine and not a missile submarine.
8336658	/m/026_wwn	Watchman	Ian Rankin	1988	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book tells the story of Miles Flint, a surveillance officer who works for MI5. After two high profile operations involving Flint are compromised with deadly consequences, he is sent to Belfast to witness what he believes is going to be the arrest of some Provisional Irish Republican Army men. However, after accompanying the security forces on their mission, he discovers that what has actually been planned is the assassination of the Irishmen - and with Flint having come along for the ride, he suddenly realises that his own life is at risk. As the killings are about to be carried out, Flint stages a daring escape with the aid of one of the Irishmen, Will Collins. Then, on the run, and playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with his own side, Flint and Collins begin to piece together a lethal conspiracy which they ultimately discover goes right to the very core of the British Government.
8341354	/m/02701c1	Final Watch	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Anton Gorodetsky is learning to use his new power when Gesar sends him to assist the Scottish Night Watch in Edinburgh in a murder investigation. A young Russian man has been murdered in a "Vampire Castle", a tourist attraction; the evidence shows that he was apparently killed by a vampire. The mystery is greater than it seemed. Someone tries to attack Anton using remote controlled guns. Finally the head of Scottish Night Watch, Thomas Lermont, reveals that someone stole an artifact from Merlin's grave and is apparently trying to use this artifact to open Merlin's secret storage. In that mysterious place Merlin apparently hid the "Crown of All Things" (nobody knows what it is). After the Night Watch is attacked by ordinary humans equipped with magical amulets and bullets, Thomas and Anton follow someone to the Twilight. They get as far as the sixth level (first time for Anton), but all they find out is that there are three people behind this - a Light Other, a Dark Other and an Inquisitor. Thomas also tells Anton that the seventh level of the Twilight is the Others' paradise, where they can exist in peace together (upon death, Others just vanish into the Twilight). Merlin has hidden the Crown of All Things in the seventh level of the Twilight. All Others are very worried about these happenings. Gesar sends Anton to Uzbekistan, to look up Rustam, a contemporary and friend of Merlin, and a former friend - later an enemy - of Gesar. He might know something about where the Crown is hidden and what it is. When Anton is visiting the Night Watch in Uzbekistan, they are once again attacked by humans with amulets and magical weapons. Various clues begin to point to Anton's friend, Kostya Saushkin, as one of the perpetrators, even though he is certainly dead. Anton manages to find Rustam. He tells him that the Crown of All Things is a spell which will destroy the barriers dividing individual levels of the Twilight, as well as the barrier between the Twilight and reality. It might cause the end of the world, strip all Others of their powers or maybe kill them - Rustam doesn't know, nor does he care. They are attacked again and Anton learns that his one-time friend, the Inquisitor Edgar, is one of the mysterious trio of Others. Back in Moscow, Anton figures out who is the Dark Other in the mysterious trio - it is Gennady Saushkin, Kostya's father. They can't identify the Light Other. Both Watches assign operatives to protect Anton's and Svetlana's five-year-old daughter, Nadya, the only zero-level Other in the world (she does not produce any magical energy, she can only absorb, therefore her power is practically unlimited; Merlin was also a zero-level Other). Only zero-level Others may get to the seventh level of the Twilight. Edgar and Gennady kidnap Anton (they can't get to Nadya) and take him to Edinburgh, so that he can help them figure out a way to get to the Crown. They tell Anton that Nadya is dead due to them planting a nuclear explosive near his apartment building. A nuclear bomb is the only weapon capable of destroying matter on all Twilight levels. Edgar found some information in the archives of the Inquisition saying that the Crown of All Things will give all the Others who departed into the Twilight the thing they want most. In Edgar's interpretation it will bring them back to life, and he wants to reunite with his wife who was killed. Gennady wants to get his son and wife back. They meet the third part of the trio, or as they call themselves, the Final Watch - the witch Arina, who managed to change her affiliation to Light. She also reveals that she sabotaged the nuclear bomb not to go off, as her new Light affiliation forbids the destruction of so many innocents. Anton does figure out Merlin's secret, but he knows the Final Watch will not like it and he manages to lie to them. They take him to the fifth level of the Twilight, where they encounter Merlin's guardian. While the Final Watch is busy fighting it, Anton gets to the sixth level. There he meets Merlin as well as Tiger Cub, Igor, Alice and all his Other friends who departed into the Twilight, including Kostya (who tells Anton that he does not blame Anton for killing him). They are all hoping he will activate the Crown. However, he cannot go back, because the Final Watch is there and he cannot go forward to the seventh level, because he doesn't have enough power. At this point Nadya appears - Svetlana just initiated her and sent her to get her father. Traveling through all levels of the Twilight is not a problem for Nadya. She takes Anton forward - back to the real world. The Twilight goes in a circle. The seventh level is the one we all live in. Anton goes to activate the Crown of All Things, which is indeed hidden in the seventh level. Merlin put the spell in the ancient stones of the Edinburgh Castle. The Final Watch appears, but Anton will not be bothered with them. Edgar got things wrong; the thing the Others in the Twilight want most is not resurrection, but death. There is no paradise there, they are stuck forever in a world where everything is just a pale copy, trapped in an imitation of life. They want it to end, because once they fully die, they can be reborn. Merlin has foreseen this and created his spell (its Twilight-destroying effect is temporary). However, the lost Others asked Anton to forgive, so he allows Gennady and Edgar to die, so that they can join their loved ones before it is too late. Arina chooses to live. Then Anton activates the Crown,and all Others in the Twilight die, including the incapitated Dark Others in the Plain of Demons. The final words of the book spoken by Anton could be interpreted as a possible hint at new episodes in the series, where Anton says to his daughter "You didn't think this was the last watch, did you?"
8343922	/m/027046k	The Sorcerer in the North	John Flanagan	2008-11-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 This novel starts with Will traveling to his first assignment as a fully fledged ranger. During his travel to his assigned fief, he finds a female dog bleeding to death from by the roadside. Will takes her home, heals her, and she becomes his pet. After spending a few weeks at Seacliff, the fief to which Will is assigned, Will realizes that this fief has grown slack in the training of its knights and a little lax in its responsibilities. Just before the month is up, a Skandian raiding party consisting of around thirty men arrive at this lazy town. The soldiers are unprepared from the lack of practice and would certainly not stand a chance against the raiding party. Will rides out alone to meet them and they come to an agreement. The Skandian party had little choice but to raid the town because they would have starved otherwise; however, if they attacked, Will would have killed at least half of them with his new longbow before they even reached the town. Will had a better idea and forced the baron and battlemaster to supply a certain number of animals and food for the Skandians. By this, Will did two things: he taught the baron and battlemaster a lesson and protected Seacliff from being raided. After a few days, Alyss, Will's lifelong friend, arrived at Seacliff on a courier mission. While sitting in Will's cabin, Alyss mentioned Halt, Will's former master, and Crowley, the Ranger Corp Commandant, had a task for him, unfortunately their conversation was overheard by John Buttle the brutal man who had injured Will's dog earlier and was connected to a string of murders in the area. Will knocked him out cold, but Alyss wanted him dead. Will had a better solution and gave him to the Skandian raiders as a slave. Will traveled to Halt and Crowley as Alyss had instructed him. His master told him to go undercover as a jongleur (a sort of traveling jester or minstrel) and gather information in Norgate, a northern fief, at the castle Macindaw. Lord Syron, the master at castle Macindaw, had fallen sick from some strangely epitomic illness. Rumors had spread that a sorcerer was responsible for the illness and they wanted Will to investigate what was happening. At Macindaw, Will met Orman, the temporary lord of the castle as he is the son of Lord Syron. An irate bibliophile, he is always wearing black. Orman is an unpopular ruler due to the fact of his lack of skill in battle. Will also met Keren, Orman's cousin and a more popular man among the subjects in the castle. Will was immediately suspicious of Orman and so was Alyss, who just so happened to be his contact sent by Halt and Crowley. Alyss was undercover as Lady Gwendolyn, a pompous and superficial woman on her way to her fiance's castle in the next fief. Later as the plot unwrapped Orman summons Will to his quarters and it is revealed that the guise of a simple jongleaur failed and Orman knows Will to be a Ranger. Orman tells Will that Keren was planning a take over of the castle and that Keren had poisoned Lord Syron and has managed to do the same to him self. So Will escapes from the castle with Orman and his assistant to Grimsdell Woods where the "sorcerer" lived. Once there, they found Malcolm the "sorcerer" and asked him to heal Orman. Alyss was puzzled seeing Will help Orman and fantasized many conclusions none of which were right. Then Keren entered her room to tell her about the recent events, but as they were talking, John Buttle walks in. He recognises Alyss and she is captured. Will later went back to Macindaw in an attempt to save her. He climbed the tower wall and attempted to dissolve the bars protecting the window with a special acid he received from Malcolm. Will fails in rescue attempt and just barely escapes from the castle with his life. He is determined to get Alyss back.
8346681	/m/02707k3	The Thieves of Ostia	Caroline Lawrence	2001-09-20	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 June AD 79: The story begins in the home of Flavia Gemina, daughter of Marcus Flavius Geminus, sea captain. Flavia is sitting in the garden reading one of her favourite scrolls, when she hears her father call for her. Flavia enters her father's study to find him in a panic for he has lost hisCastor and Pollux signet ring which Flavia's late mother gave to him. Flavia promises to find it, and the search leads her to a magpie's nest in the necropolis outside the city wall, where she finds a gathering of jewels that the magpie has stolen. Suddenly a pack of dogs chase Flavia and she is rescued by Jonathan ben Mordecai. He takes her back to his house next door to her own where she meets his father Mordecai ben Ezra, a doctor, and his sister Miriam. Marcus takes Flavia to the harbor to sell the jewellery she found, and on the way she is moved to pity when she sees some recently-disembarked slaves on the way to the market. When she is given six hundred sesterces by the jeweller, she immediately decides to buy the young girl she saw with the slaves, to save her from a life of misery. Flavia treats the young slave-girl, who is called Nubia, very kindly, giving her dates to eat and beginning to teach her Latin. Later in the day she has a birthday party with her father, Nubia and the Mordecai family. A few days later, after seeing Marcus off on a voyage, they are shocked to find that someone has killed Jonathan's dog Bobas and taken away his head. Flavia decides this is another mystery to solve, and her friends agree. Following a lead from Cordius's freedman Libertus, they suspect a sailor called Avitus who hates dogs because his daughter died of rabies after being bitten. A young boy, treed by the wild pack, is rescued by Mordecai, who has to kill two of the dogs in the process. He looks after the boy when he falls from the tree and offers him a place to stay. He realises that the boy's tongue has been cut out and he cannot speak. Flavia recognizes him as the beggar boy from the forum and Nubia finds out that his name is Lupus. Lupus is the Latin word for wolf. Lupus agrees to help them solve the mystery. They cannot find any evidence against Avitus, so Lupus offers to follow him around town, as nobody notices a beggar boy. Although he finds out that Avitus just goes from tavern to tavern getting drunk, at one tavern Lupus overhears a conversation between gamblers about treasure at Marcus Geminus's house. Later he sees the grief-stricken Avitus commit suicide by throwing himself from the top of the lighthouse. When Lupus returns to find that Cordius's dog has been beheaded that afternoon, he is able to clear Avitus of the crime. He asks to stay at Flavia's house that night, but in the middle of the night is caught stealing gold coins from the storeroom - Cordius's money, secretly entrusted to Marcus. Flavia is shocked, but instantly realises that this sheds light on the mystery. Someone is after the treasure, but very few people know about it. Lupus confirms the identity of one of the gamblers he overheard. Next morning, they find a horrible sight in the street, a trident with three dogs' heads stuck on it, obviously intended to frighten them away. Flavia decides to lay a trap for the dog-killing thief, which the guilty Libertus falls into. The team is successful. Mordecai persuades Flavia and Jonathan to forgive Lupus, reminding them of his difficult life, and of their own imperfections, and they invite him to the celebration party. Cordius is grateful to the detectives and gives them all a reward of a gold coin, as Flavia explains the clues which led to the solving of the mystery. Nubia brings two puppies and gives one to Jonathan; they will be called Nipur and Tigris. Marcus promises them next time he goes away on a voyage, they will all go to his brother Gaius's farm in Pompeii, where they will be safe.
8346719	/m/02707n6	Helena	Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis			 The novel opens with the family of Éstacio, whose father, Conselheiro Vale, has just died. In his will, the Conselheiro has recognized a natural daughter, previously unknown to both Éstacio and his aunt Dona Úrsula, with whom he shares the family home. The daughter, Helena, arrives to a mixed reception. Estácio welcomes her warmly while his aunt shows marked hestitation over this unknown person. While Éstacio grows increasingly more fond of his half-sister, Helena in a series of events succeeds in also winning the affection of the stern Dona Úrsula. Life proceeds harmoniously in their household. Meanwhile Estácio, implicitly due to affections for Helena, defers an engagement with the beautiful, but less adroit Eugênia. Well into the novel it is revealed that Helena has been guarding a secret, one which seems to be related to a house nearby which Estácio and Helena frequently pass near while horseback riding. It is later revealed that the biological father of Helena, who is not Conselheiro Vale, lives in the house but in misery. At this point, Helena is being courted by Estácio's friend, Mendonça even though the attraction that Estácio feels for Helena is very apparent to the reader. This affection is never truly recognized by Estácio until the preacher Melchior warns Estácio that he feels romantic love for his new sister. As this is being revealed, the reader learns that Helena is indeed not the daughter of Conselheiro Vale and consequently not a blood relation to Estácio. However, Helena's neglect to admit that she is not truly related to the family and thus should never have been recognized proves to much for her conscience and she falls ill. Helena does not recover and by her death bed Estácio is horrified and distraught.
8349363	/m/0270b_k	Pulp	Charles Bukowski		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Pulp is a pulp fiction novel which acts also as a meta-pulp. Pulp comments on the obsessions of the pulp fiction genre, making fun of itself as stereotypical of the genre in the grimiest form. Bukowski dedicates the story to "bad writing", as Bukowski did not plan his mystery novel well and frequently wrote Nicky Belane into holes from which he could not escape. Bukowski wrote some of his most violent, cynical, sarcastic, and shocking work during the final months of his life. Many critics have agreed this novel exemplifies Bukowski showing an acceptance of his own pending mortality. A convoluted detective story about a hard-boiled private eye who solves his cases by waiting them out, Pulp evokes Raymond Chandler, an author who lived in Los Angeles and set stories there, as did Bukowski. The novel also bears similarity to some works by Dashiell Hammett; and the name of character Nicky Belane rhymes suggestively with the name of author Mickey Spillane as well as Casablanca's main character Rick Blaine.
8349572	/m/0270c5r	Romanitas	Sophia McDougall	2005	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After attending his parents funeral, Marcus Novius Faustus Leo, the teenage nephew of the emperor (and heir apparent since the death of his father), is informed by his fathers secretary Varius that his father Leo and his mother were murdered by a conspiracy concerned about Leo's ambition to abolish slavery. While this is happening, Varius' wife eats sweets given to Marcus by his cousin Makaria and dies of poisoning. Varius promptly arranges for Marcus to flee to a hidden refuge in Spain, run by Delir, an anti-slavery activist and secret ally of Leo. Meanwhile, a British slave named Una, who has the ability to read minds, rescues her brother Sulien who has been falsely accused of rape and sentenced to crucifixion. The three runaways meet in Gaul. Despite initial suspicion, they agree to help each other and travel to the refuge. However, Varius has been arrested and the conspirators force him to reveal the location of the refuge, as well as making him confess to the murder of Marcus's parents, as well as the murder of Marcus himself. Upon discovering that Varius has confessed to murdering him and his parents, Marcus decides to go to Rome to reveal he is in fact still alive, planning to reveal the conspiracy in public so the conspirators will be unable to kill him. He runs away from the refuge and travels to Rome, evading the soldiers sent to capture him. Una and Sulien follow him, but are unable to find him in time to prevent him revealing himself. Marcus reveals himself but is captured and taken to a hospital. There he is injected with a hallucinogen by one of the conspirators so that when Emperor Faustus is taken to him, Marcus appears to be mad. As many of the Imperial family have succumbed to a hereditary madness in the past (including, apparently, Marcus' other uncle, Lucius), Faustus agrees to keep Marcus in seclusion. The runaway slaves make it to Rome, and manage to rescue Marcus from the asylum where he is being held. Thereafter, Marcus succeeds in revealing the truth about Varius' innocence to the emperor, as well as the plot to kill him. Makaria manages to exculpate herself from any involvement in the conspiracy, pouring suspicion onto the emperor's current wife, Tulliola.
8351111	/m/0270dbx	The Painted Veil	W. Somerset Maugham		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Somerset Maugham uses a third-person - limited, point-of-view in this story, where Kitty is the Focal character. Kitty Garstin, a very pretty upper-middle class debutante, squanders her early youth amusing herself at cotillions and social events - during which her domineering mother attempts to arrange a “brilliant match” for her. By age 25, Kitty has flirted with – and declined the marriage proposals of – dozens of suitors. Her mother, convinced that her eldest daughter has “missed her market”, urges Kitty to settle for the rather “odd” Walter Fane, a bacteriologist and M.D., who is madly in love with Kitty. In a panic that her much younger – and less attractive - sister, Doris, will upstage her by marrying first, Kitty consents to Walter’s ardent marriage proposition with the words, “I suppose so.” Shortly before Doris’ much grander wedding, Kitty and Walter depart as newlyweds to his post in Hong Kong. Just weeks after settling in the far East, Kitty meets Charles Townsend, the Assistant Colonial Secretary. He is tall, handsome, able and extremely charming, and they begin to have an affair. Almost two years hence, Walter, unsuspecting, and still devoted to his wife, observes Kitty and Charles during an assignation, and the lovers, suspecting they’ve been discovered, reassure themselves that Walter will not intervene in the matter. Charles promises Kitty that, come what may, he will stand by her. Aware that the cuckolded Walter is his administrative inferior, Charles feels confident that the bacteriologist will avoid scandal to protect his career and reputation. For her part, Kitty, who has never felt real affection for her husband, grasps that, in fact, he is fully aware of her infidelity (though he initially refrains from confronting her) and she begins to despise his apparent cowardice. She discerns, however, an ominous change in his demeanor, masked by his “scrupulously polite” behavior. Walter suddenly confronts Kitty with an ultimatum: She must either accompany him to the Chinese interior to deal with a cholera epidemic, risking death, or he will file for divorce, with the caveat that Townsend divorce and remarry immediately with Kitty. Kitty goes to see Townsend who reveals his perfidy and refuses to leave his wife. Their conversation, when she realizes he doesn't wish to make a sacrifice for the relationship, unfolds gradually, as Kitty grasps Charlie's true nature. She is surprised to find when she returns home that Walter has already had her clothes packed—he knew Townsend would let her down. Heartbroken and disillusioned, Kitty decides she has no option but to accompany Walter to the cholera-infested mainland of China. At first suspicious and bitter, Kitty finds herself embarked on a journey of self-appraisal. She meets Waddington, a British deputy commissioner, who, though an inveterate skeptic – and an alcoholic - provides Kitty with insights as to the unbecoming character of her lover, Charles. He further introduces her to the French nuns who are nursing, at great personal risk, the sick and orphaned children of the cholera epidemic. Her husband Walter, has immersed himself in the difficulties of managing the cholera crisis. His character is held in high esteem by the nuns and the native officials, due to his self-sacrifice and tenderness towards the suffering children. Kitty, however, remains unable to feel attraction towards him as man and husband. Kitty meets with the Mother Superior, an individual of great personal force, yet loved and respected. The nun allows Kitty to assist in caring for the older children at the convent, but will not permit her to engage with the sick and dying. Kitty’s regard for her deepens and grows. Kitty discovers that she is pregnant and suspects that Charles Townsend is the father. Rather than answering Walter’s simple inquiry as to whether he is the father with a “yes”, she tells him the truth – “I don’t know”. She cannot bring herself to deceive her husband again, though she knows that to lie would be to deny him what he longs for most. Kitty has undergone a profound personal transformation. Soon after, Walter falls ill in the epidemic – possibly through experimenting upon himself to find a cure for cholera - and Kitty, at his deathbed, hears his last words. She returns to Hong Kong where she is met by Dorothy Townsend, Charles' wife, who convinces Kitty to come to stay with them - as Kitty is now mistakenly regarded as a heroine who voluntarily and faithfully followed her husband into great danger. At the Townsend house, much against her intentions, she is seduced by Charles and makes love with him one more time despite admitting he is vain and shallow, much as she once was. She is disgusted with herself and tells him what she thinks of him. Kitty returns to the UK, en route finding her mother has died. Her father, an only moderately successful barrister, is appointed Chief Justice of a minor British colony in the Caribbean and she persuades her father to allow her to accompany him there where she intends to dedicate her life to her father and to ensuring her child is brought up to avoid the mistakes she had made.
8357311	/m/0270mk0	The Boy Who Reversed Himself	William Sleator		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A high school girl named Laura grows suspicious when a report of hers appears in mirror writing, and Omar, the weird boy next door, makes it go back to normal. Furthermore, he seems to be parting his hair on a different side than usual. He first refuses to explain what's going on, but after she repeatedly coaxes him, he reveals that he has access to the fourth dimension, where he accidentally "reversed" himself. He eventually allows her to visit it under his supervision, but he warns her that it is extremely dangerous and that he is violating some agreement by letting her in on the secret. She tries to use her access to the higher dimension to impress Pete, a popular boy she wants to go to the school dance with, but after she seems to disappear into thin air and unlock a door from the other side, Pete realizes something funny is going on, and she feels pressured to show him the truth, without Omar's knowledge. When she brings Pete into four-space, they lose their way and end up as the captives of four-dimensional creatures. Unfortunately, she determines that escaping might threaten the very existence of her own world by making the powerful 4-D creatures aware of it. With Omar's help, she finds a safe way out and learns the truth about how he came to know about other dimensions.
8357626	/m/0270n0h	The Kaiser's Last Kiss	Alan Judd	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set in 1940 and concerns Untersturmführer Martin Krebbs, a young and recently commissioned SS officer who has been sent to Huis Doorn to guard the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II as the German Army advances into the Netherlands. While there, Krebbs meets and falls for Akki, an undercover British agent posing as a maid, who has been sent by the British Secret Service on the orders of Winston Churchill to assess the Kaiser's feelings about the war and his possible willingness to defect to Britain. As the story unfolds, and through conversations Krebbs has with both the Kaiser and Akki (who Krebbs discovers is Jewish), and a visit from Heinrich Himmler, Krebbs begins to discover some uncomfortable truths about the Nazis, forcing him to question the things he has been taught. When Akki's true identity is in danger of being exposed, Krebbs must choose between his duty to the Third Reich and his feelings for the woman he loves.
8359598	/m/0270q4l	Nature Girl	Carl Hiaasen	2006		 Honey Santana becomes irritated by telemarketers and invites a particularly obnoxious one to a phony real estate promotion - which she describes as an eco-tour - in the Ten Thousand Islands in order to teach him a lesson. It is thus that telemarketers Boyd Shreave and his reluctant mistress Eugenie Fonda make their way from Texas to Dismal Key in Florida with Honey, unaware that she is being stalked by Louis Piejack, Honey's perverted and disfigured ex-employer, who is unaware that he is being followed by Fry, Honey's wise and protective twelve-year-old son, and his courageous ex-drug runner father. Also on the island are a young half-Seminole man named Sammy Tigertail and his very willing captive, Gillian, a sex-obsessed, warmhearted Florida State coed. Various odd events surface along the way.
8359615	/m/0270q5z	The King of Elfland's Daughter	Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany	1924	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The lord of Erl is told by the parliament of his people that they want to be ruled by a magic lord. Obeying the immemorial custom, the lord sends his son Alveric to fetch the King of Elfland's daughter, Lirazel, to be his bride. He makes his way to Elfland, where time passes at a rate far slower than the real world, and wins her. They return to Erl and have a son, but in the manner of fairy brides of folklore, she fits uneasily with his people. She returns to the waiting arms of her father in Elfland, and her lovesick husband goes searching for her, abandoning the kingdom of Erl and wandering in a now-hopeless quest. However, Lirazel becomes lonesome for her mortal husband and son. Seeing that she is unhappy, the King of Elfland uses a powerful magic to engulf the land of Erl. Erl is transformed into a part of Elfland, and Lirazel and her loved ones are reunited forever in an eternal, enchanted world. During the course of the novel, the King of Elfland uses up all of the three powerful magic spells which he had been reserving for the defense of his realm.
8360220	/m/0270qnd	The Charwoman's Shadow	Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany	1926	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In Spain, during its Golden Age, a lord wishes to marry his daughter to a neighbor, but has no money for her dowry. He sends his son Ramon to a nearby magician who had befriended his father, in hopes that the son would learn to turn lead to gold. An old charwoman without a shadow works for the magician. The magician persuades him to trade his shadow for the knowledge, and gives him a substitute, and the charwoman who works for the magician laments that. He then learns that his substitute shadow does not grow and shrink as it ought to. His sister sends him a letter asking him to get her a love potion instead. He persuades the magician to teach him that instead, and he compounds it and gives it to his sister. When her betrothed husband arrives with a friend of his, a duke, she gives the potion to the duke, who falls deathly ill. Terrified, she nurses him; he recovers his health, enraged with everyone else, especially her betrothed, but in love with her. Their priest dispels Ramon's false shadow but sends him back to retrieve his own. He tricks the magician into telling him some of the magic words needed to open the box where the shadows are kept, and works out the rest. He takes out his own shadow and tries to find the charwoman's. He goes back to her to tell her that he cannot find it. She tells him that it was the one of a beautiful young girl. He brings it to her, and when they reunite, she is transformed back into that beautiful girl, as if the shadow were casting her. They find that her family is long gone, and Ramon brings her home. With the duke in love with his sister, his father intends to make a grand match for him. Ramon tries to appeal to his sister for help; she refuses to hear him without the duke. Angry, he pours out the story—including that their marriage makes his impossible—and the duke says he will appeal to the king. The king decrees that the charwoman is no longer of lowly origin, and both pairs of lovers marry. The magician sets out through Spain, drawing all creatures of magic and legend with him, and leaves for the Country Beyond the Moon's Rising, thus ending the Golden Age.
8366574	/m/0270xqs	The Ice People	Maggie Gee		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 At a point towards the end of the 21st century, Britain is in the grip of a new ice age. Men and women are largely living separately in different areas of the country, while civilisation and law and order have mostly broken down. As an old man living with a group of outlaws who will dispose of him once he has outlived his usefulness to them, Saul begins to tell the tale of his life, and in particular his marriage to Sarah. Their marriage is initially a good one, but as the climate changes begin to impact on the surrounding environment, the couple start to cool towards each other and drift apart. Sarah eventually leaves Saul, becomes a political activist, then finally tries to turn their son, Luke, against him. When Sarah refuses to let him see Luke, Saul kidnaps the boy and goes on the run, fleeing across the English Channel to Europe. Luke objects to being taken away from his home, however, and as Saul attempts to gain passage for them both to the warmer climes of Africa, Luke runs away. It later transpires that he has joined a group of bandits in Spain. Having lost his son, Saul returns to Britain, where he is involved in a car crash. He is pulled from the wreckage by the outlaws, who at first plan to kill him, but then decide to keep him alive when they discover his skills as a storyteller. But as the book comes to an end, the outlaws are becoming tired of Saul and his time is running out.
8366712	/m/0270xxm	Buddha Da		2003-01-02		 The book takes a mostly light hearted look at what might happen when two vastly opposing worlds and ways of life come into contact with each other. Following a chance meeting with a Buddhist monk in a Glasgow sandwich bar one lunchtime, painter and decorator Jimmy McKenna starts to develop an interest in Buddhism and begins to visit a meditation centre and go away for weekend retreats. The story is essentially about Jimmy's new found faith, and the reaction of his immediate family to this. It is told from three points of view - those of Jimmy, his wife Liz, and their daughter Anne Marie - and follows the family as Jimmy's desire to lead a better and more meaningful life begins to have an effect on them all. To begin with, this proves to be to their detriment as Liz and Anne Marie cannot understand why Jimmy - who has previously been an atheist - would suddenly want to become a Buddhist. However, as the story unfolds, a series of events allow everyone to gain some insight into the choices Jimmy has made.
8367010	/m/0270y9p	Beyond Black	Hilary Mantel	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book's central character is a medium named Alison Hart who, along with her assistant/business partner/manager, Colette, takes her one woman psychic show on the road, travelling to venues around the Home Counties, and providing her audience with a point of contact between this world and the next. On the surface, Alison seems like a happy-go-lucky woman, but this persona is only a mask she wears for her public. In truth, she is deeply traumatised by memories and ghosts from her childhood, and a knowledge that the afterlife is not the wonderful place her clients often perceive it to be. She spends much of the story trying to exorcise her demons, and by the end is ultimately able to overcome them.
8367129	/m/0270yft	Falling				 The book tells the story of a relationship that develops between Henry Kent, a sociopath and fantasist who preys on lonely rich women, and Daisy Langrishe, an ageing novelist with two broken marriages behind her. After meeting Daisy – who has recently bought a cottage in order to start a new life in the country – Henry quickly falls in love with her, and sets about tricking his way into her confidence. He initially offers to become her gardener – something she reluctantly accepts – then later begins to correspond with her after she suffers an accident during a prolonged trip abroad. These letters start as run of the mill pieces, but as he perceives that she is taking an interest in him, Henry begins to weave her a series of elaborate stories about his life – all designed to gain her attention and win her affection. When Daisy eventually returns home and Henry makes himself indispensable to her after she suffers a fall, they begin an affair. But when Daisy's family and friends learn about the nature of the relationship, they become concerned and start to investigate Henry. However, they soon begin to fear that the facts they unearth about his past might have come to light too late to save Daisy from harm.
8367809	/m/0270z8m	Une Page d'amour	Émile Zola	1878	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place in 1854-1855. When the novel begins, Hélène has been widowed 18 months, living in what was then the Paris suburb of Passy with her 11-year-old daughter Jeanne. Her husband Charles Grandjean fell ill the day after they arrived from Marseilles and died eight days later. Hélène and Jeanne have only been into Paris proper three times. From the window of their home, they can see the entire city, which takes on a dreamlike, foreign, and romantic, yet inaccessible, character for them throughout the novel. On the night the novel opens, Jeanne has fallen ill with a violent seizure. In panic, Hélène runs into the street to find a doctor. Eventually, she begs her neighbor Dr. Henri Deberle to come attend Jeanne, and his ministrations save the girl's life. Later that week, Hélène goes to thank Dr. Deberle, and befriends his wife Juliette and her circle of friends, including Monsieur Malignon, a handsome, wealthy man-about-town who is exceptionally comfortable in female society. Hélène's only friends are a pair of stepbrothers who were friends of her husband's: Abbé Jouve, the officiating priest at the parish church of Passy, and Monsieur Rambaud, an oil and produce merchant. The Abbé asks Hélène to visit one of his invalid parishioners, Mother Fétu. While Hélène is at her squalid apartment, Dr. Deberle pays a medical call. Mother Fétu immediately realizes that the Hélène and Deberle know each other and, seeing them so shy with one another, she immediately begins to attempt to bring them together. At a later visit, Mother Fétu arranges to leave the two of them alone together, but Dr. Deberle leaves before either can express their attraction. Juliette throws a party for the wealthy children of the neighborhood. At the party, Dr. Deberle passionately confesses to Hélène in private that he loves her. She leaves the party in confusion. On contemplating her life, Hélène realizes that she has never really been in love; though she respected her late husband, she felt no love or passion for him. She finds, however, that she is falling in love with Dr. Deberle. During May, Hélène and Jeanne begin attending church, where they regularly meet Juliette. Dr. Deberle frequently meets them after church ostensibly in order to escort his wife home, and continues to act as escort even on those evenings when Juliette doesn't attend services. At the end of the month, after Hélène's passion for Dr. Deberle is replaced by a passion for the church, Jeanne has another seizure. Her illness lasts three weeks, during which she is assiduously attended by Hélène and Dr. Deberle to the exclusion of all others. At last, the Doctor uses leeches and Jeanne recovers. Having saved her daughter's life, Hélène admits that she loves the Doctor. However, as Jeanne recuperates during the ensuing months, she witnesses Hélène and the Doctor talking quietly together and realizes that he is taking her place in Hélène's affections. She is then consumed by intense jealousy and refuses to see him. The symptoms of her illness return whenever he is present, until at last Hélène drives him from her home. Hélène realizes that Malignon has been pursuing Juliette and the two are planning an assignation. She learns from Mother Fétu that Malignon has taken rooms in her building, and guesses that this will be the place where the he and Juliette will meet. When Hélène goes out ostensibly to bring Mother Fétu some shoes, but in reality to look at the rooms (Mother Fétu thinks she is arranging a place for Hélène and the Doctor to meet), Jeanne is extraordinarily distressed to be left alone, especially because Hélène gives no explanation for not taking her along. The next day, Hélène attempts to warn Juliette not to keep her rendezvous with Malignon, scheduled for that afternoon, but she is unable to do so. Hélène slips a note into the Doctor's pocket with the address and time of the assignation. That afternoon, she decides to go to the apartment and stop the rendezvous, but before she can go, Jeanne insists on going with her. Hélène tells her she cannot go, and Jeanne becomes hysterical at being left and at being lied to. She says that she will die if she is left behind. Hélène goes anyway. At the apartment, she is met by Mother Fétu, who, feeling she has played the part of Hélène's procuress and confidante, lets her into the apartment with a knowing glance. Hélène successfully stops the rendezvous, but just as the prospective lovers part, Henri enters. He thinks that Hélène has arranged for them to be alone together. Hélène gives in to her feelings, and the two of them make passionate love at last. Meanwhile, Jeanne, left alone, furious and confused and jealous, makes herself sick by hanging her arms out of her bedroom window in the rain. Growing increasingly lethargic and listless, she believes her mother does not care for her anymore, especially after witnessing her mother and Dr. Deberle exchange silent, knowing glances while planning a family excursion to Italy. Eventually, she falls seriously ill, and Deberle diagnosis her with galloping consumption (the same disease her grandmother Ursule died of) and gives her three weeks to live. In due course, she dies. Hélène is completely grief-stricken, feeling responsible for her daughter's death. Two years later, she marries M. Rambaud and the two return to Marseilles.
8368284	/m/0270zyl	The Ballad of Peckham Rye	Muriel Spark	1960-12	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the telling of Humphrey Place saying "No" at the altar where he was due to marry Dixie Morse. Humphrey's immoral behaviour is assumed to be a result of his recent association with Dougal Douglas, a Scottish migrant who has since left the area of Peckham. Spark goes on to tell us the entire story of what exactly happened during Dougal's residence in Peckham. From his inaugural meeting with Mr V. R. Druce, head of nylon textiles manufacturers Meadows, Meade & Grindley, we learn that Dougal is employed to bridge the gap between industry and the arts. He befriends employees Merle Coverdale (who is in fact indulging in an unromantic, immoral affair with the married Mr Druce) and Elaine Kent, an "experienced controller of process", as well as Humphrey Place, a refrigerator engineer. After finding lodgings with Miss Belle Frierne (where Humphrey Place also resides), and splitting up with his fiancé Jinny due to her being ill (his "fatal flaw" is that he cannot bear anyone who is ill), Dougal embarks upon a mission of disruption throughout Peckham. Throughout this he falls foul of typist Dixie Morse and electrician Trevor Lomas and becomes the target of a gang consisting of Trevor, Collie Gould and Lesley Crewe. Throughout his stay in Peckham, Dougal carries out "human research" on the "moral character" of the people of the area. As well as working for Meadows, Meade & Grindley, he also works for their rivals, the more prosperous Drover Willis's textile manufacturers (under the pseudonym Douglas Dougal), as well as working as a ghost writer for the retired actress and singer Maria Cheeseman. Only Nelly Mahone recognises Dougal for the manipulative "double-tongued" rogue he is, but no one listens to her as everyone views her as a drunken Irish vagrant. The culmination of Dougal's antics results in his landlady Miss Frierne having a stroke, Mr Druce killing his mistress Merle Coverdale by stabbing her in the neck with a corkscrew, and the rejection of marriage to Dixie Morse at the altar by Humphrey Place. In the penultimate chapter Trevor tries to kill Dougal by stabbing him in the eye, but, despite injury, Dougal manages to leave Peckham and moves on to wreak havoc elsewhere. The novel ends with the marriage of Humphrey Place and Dixie Morse, two months after the original, aborted wedding. The final scene shows Peckham in a state of transcendence, not shown anywhere else in the novel, and is seen as a transfiguration of the commonplace world.
8370280	/m/02711x5	Storm				 A cyclone develops offshore Japan, and becomes a significant storm that moves into California as a blizzard of significance for the Sierra Nevada range, with snowfall amounts of 20&nbsp;feet (6.1&nbsp;m). The book is divided into twelve chapters: one chapter for each day of the storm's existence. The storm's beneficial effects include averting a locust plague and ending a drought. Its harmful effects include flooding a valley near Sacramento, endangering a plane, stalling a train, and leading to the deaths of 16 people. It spawns a new cyclone which significantly affects New York.
8373895	/m/02716pl	Pierre et Jean				 Pierre and Jean are the sons of Gérôme Roland, a jeweller who has retired to Le Havre, and his wife Louise. Pierre works as a doctor, and Jean is a lawyer. It recounts the story of a middle-class French family whose lives are changed when Léon Maréchal, a deceased family friend, leaves his inheritance to Jean. This provokes Pierre to doubt the fidelity of his mother and the legitimacy of his brother. This investigation sparks violent reactions in Pierre, whose external appearance vis a vis his mother visibly changes. In his anguish, most notably shown during family meals, he tortures her with allusions to the past that he has now uncovered. Meanwhile, Jean's career and love life improve over the course of the novel while Pierre's life gets significantly worse. Provoked by his brother's accusations of jealousy, Pierre reveals to Jean what he has learned. However, unlike Pierre, Jean offers his mother love and protection. The novel closes with Pierre’s departure on an oceanliner. Thus the novel is organised around the unwelcome appearance of a truth (Jean’s illegitimacy), its suppression for the sake of family continuity and the acquisition of wealth, and the expulsion from the family of the legitimate son.
8374507	/m/02717dm	The Small Rain	Madeleine L'Engle	1945	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 Young Katherine has not seen her mother Julie in three years, since the latter was in an accident that ended her career as a pianist. Katherine has been studying piano herself, doing a little professional acting, and living with "Aunt Manya", a family friend known to the rest of the world as Madame Sergeivna, a famous actress on the Broadway stage. When she is ten, Katherine is reunited with Julie, and lives with her until Julie's premature death four years later. Manya marries Katherine's father, a composer named Tom Forrester, with whom Katherine has a cordial but not especially close relationship, making Katherine doubly distant from the two of them. However, after a while, Manya's love for her begins to melt Katherine's iciness. However, just as Katherine starts truly loving Manya, Tom and Manya send her away to a boarding school in Switzerland. She is miserable there, unable to make connections with the other girls or the teachers, who are mostly cold and autocratic; in addition, her piano teacher doesn't mesh with her at all. This continues until Justin Vigneras, the piano teacher she was originally meant to study with but who was away at the beginning of the term, comes back. Katherine adores him, and is gratified that there is finally someone at school who understands and supports her passion for music and her need to practice. She also learns to get along better with her peers after the arrival of Sarah Courmont, a girl she previously met briefly on her seventh birthday in New York; the two begin to form an intense friendship. However, school officials misinterpret that friendship as another deep attraction, and Sarah becomes distant with Katherine after Miss Valentine interrogates the girls. Just as Katherine's relationship with Justin begins to develop into a closer relationship, he leaves the school. After suffering through the rest of school without Justin or the Sarah she once knew and a brief romance with Charles Bejart, a young physician and Manya's adopted son, Katherine returns to New York. There she studies with her mother's old teacher, whose style is extremely intense and different from Justin's, shares an apartment with Sarah, who is now an actress, and becomes engaged to Pete, who used to help look after Katherine at Manya's theater. She also meets Felix Bodeway, Sarah's friend, who appears in A Severed Wasp, though she's not often comfortable with the shady, questionable world that he seems to represent. Ultimately Katherine is betrayed by both Pete and Sarah, as Pete and Sarah become romantically involved with each other. Katherine leaves them behind and, upon Manya's urging, returns to Justin, ostensibly to study with him in Paris.
8376552	/m/02719bv	Plows, Plagues and Petroleum				 Ruddiman begins the book with a brief introduction to the science of climate change and the various individuals that have been key in influencing the field over the years. He also notes that the earth’s climate has been drifting toward cooler temperatures for the last 55 million years. The dominant hypothesis for this trend is that large volcanic eruptions have subsided while increasing amounts of carbon dioxide have been absorbed out of the atmosphere due to interactions between monsoon rains and ground up rock exposed by India pushing into Asia and creating the Himalayas. Additionally it is believed that the melting ice that produced higher sea levels resulted in the ocean absorbing more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These two natural occurrences resulted in less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hence possibly producing the general cooling trend. According to Ruddiman, beginning about 900,000 years ago the earth has begun to go through regular glacial cycles in which glaciers or ice have covered approximately one quarter of the earth’s total surface. These conditions typically last for about 100,000 years and are followed by brief interglacial periods of more temperate weather. Ruddiman cites various researchers in geology and astronomy who pioneered the understanding of earth’s climate as a function of its orbit. The various cycles of earth’s climate seem to be explained by the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit as well as cycles in the amount of solar radiation. Ruddiman primarily relies on the groundwork by Milutin Milankovitch to explain the effects of solar radiation and earth’s orbit on the climate. By examining ice cores from around the world scientists have been able to link levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane to the various cycles of earth’s climate history. The discovery of carbon dating aided a great deal in developing this understanding. Upon investigating the levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the earth’s atmosphere in the most recent interglacial period-10,000 years ago- Ruddiman noticed that levels of carbon dioxide and methane were steadily rising despite the fact that the earth’s natural cycles determined that they should have been decreasing. It was this discovery that lead to Ruddiman’s search for an explanation and ultimately the creation of this book. Ruddiman’s central argument is that this most recent interglacial period has deviated from the natural cycle because of human activities, most importantly farming. Approximately 10,000 years ago the ice that once covered large portions of the northern hemisphere began to recede and gave rise to a new way of life for early humans. In the beginning these early humans had little impact on the environment because they were primarily hunter gatherer societies that moved from location to location allowing previously inhabited locations to be reclaimed by nature. However, about 8,000 years ago humans first developed agriculture and a domesticated lifestyle that allowed them to continually inhabit regions and build large civilizations. Ruddiman claims that carbon dioxide emission records indicate that levels in the atmosphere began to rise at about this same time. This process was intensified as the centuries passed and new technologies such animal husbandry and the plow made their way into more and more cultures. These new technologies allowed for more efficient methods of clearing forests and making room for increasing populations. According to previous interglacial periods the concentration of carbon dioxide should have fallen by about 20 parts per million instead of rising by 20 parts per million. Ruddiman uses estimates of population, forest cleared per person and carbon emitted per each square kilometer cleared to approximate the total impact and concludes that the magnitude is reasonably close to the extra carbon dioxide accumulated during the period. Ruddiman also attributes the rise of methane gas in the atmosphere to human related activities. The most notable of these activities is the cultivation of rice in artificial wetlands in Asia and increased animal waste due to increasing populations of domesticated animals. According to Ruddiman methane concentrations should have peaked about 11,000 years ago slightly above 700 parts per billion and then declined to about 450 parts per billion today. Methane levels followed this cycle at first, but about 5000 years ago they began to rebound and currently the concentration is about 275 parts per billion above the previous trends. According to Ruddiman farming and related activities resulted in large amounts of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane) being released into the atmosphere at a time when natural cycles of the earth indicated they should have been falling. The result has been an unintended warming cycle that prevented the earth from entering into another ice age http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~claussen/papers/ruddiman+al_qsr_05.pdf. Ruddiman goes as far as to say that if these gases had not been released into the atmosphere, areas in northern Canada such as Hudson Bay and Baffin Island would currently be covered in ice today. The implications of this theory are wide ranging and most certainly worthy of further exploration. Throughout the record of carbon dioxide and methane emissions there are drops and rises in the amount of concentrations present in the atmosphere. Ruddiman explains these “wiggles” by claiming that they appear at times of major outbreaks of disease such as the bubonic plague in the 1,300’s and the prevalence of old world diseases in the Americas after the arrival of Columbus. Both of these events resulted in large numbers of people dying and the land they once inhabited being reclaimed by the forest. This resulted in increased amounts of carbon dioxide being taken out of the atmosphere, hence causing global temperatures to cool down. Ruddiman claims that the little ice age, starting in the 13th century and ending sometime in the early 19th century was caused by the decreased population and the re-forestation of previously cleared lands as a result from the diseases that killed off so many people. The last aspect of Ruddiman's discussion of climate change relates to the future of petroleum use on earth. It is commonly known that the world’s supply of fossil fuels is rapidly depleting and even conservative estimates claim that the supply will not last much more than 150-200 more years. Ruddiman claims that when this sources of natural fuels has been depleted, human kind will have to resort to using the large quantities of coal that still exist all over the planet. This, according to Ruddiman, will result in a continued warming trend that will only stop when technology either produces a new source of fuel or figures out a way to separate the carbon dioxide emissions prior to being released into the atmosphere. Ruddiman is quite skeptical of both scenarios in the near future because of the increased costs and technological advancements that would have to be made in such a short time. Eventually carbon and methane emissions will be controlled and lowered a great deal and Ruddiman asserts when this happens the earth will most likely begin an era of cooling temperatures.
8379595	/m/0271d7_	Dragon Raja	Lee Yeongdo		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Amurtaht the black dragon's existence has plagued Fief Heltant for long, and the king has sent the white dragon Catselprime and his raja, a young son of the House of Halschteil to subdue the black dragon. A blind wizard Tyburn arrives at Heltant and helps guard the town while during the battle with Amurtaht. Hoochie helps Tyburn, who gives him in return a pair of Ogre Power Gauntlets or OPG, which gives the wearer great muscle power. The news comes that Catselprime has lost to Amurtaht and died, while the remnants of soldiers including Hoochie's father have been taken prisoner by Amurtaht, who demands a ransom of an enormous amount for their release. Hoochie, Karl and Sanson set out on a journey to the capital Bysus Impel, to report the news of battle to the king and to attain aids for the ransom. The trio attack a group of orc bandits that has killed a traveler, and the orcs begin chasing the trio for revenge. But Hoochie defeats them powered by his OPG. Repeated battles with the orcs bring Hoochie together with Iruril Serenial, a beautiful elf woman, and Axelhand Eindelf, an old magnanimous dwarf, both of whom become his friends. Hoochie and his party visits Lenus City and solves affairs with the city's arena, and at the next city they visit, Fief Carlyle, they face difficulties from a strange pathological phenomenon all over the city. They meet Edhelin, a troll priestess, and find out that the crisis is caused by Sacred Land, a curse that combines magical and divine powers. They find out that Djipenian agents are behind the curse, which was a military experiment for the current war between the Bysus and Djipen (pronounced: Jah-ee-pun). They take one of the agents, Unchai, as a witness in reporting the curse to the king. As they reach the Brown Mountains just west of the capital, they meet Neria, a red-haired "nighthawk" or a thief that is a member of the thieves' guild, and Gilsian, a warrior on a bull with a chattering sword, who is revealed as Prince Gilsian Bysus, the older brother of the king and the ex-heir apparent. Throwing off the orcs' pursuit, the party finally arrives at the capital. They meet the king to bring the news of Catselprime's demise, and report the Djipenian operation. The king decides to help pay the ransom and they're delighted, but only briefly, for they find that there aren't enough jewels left in the capital. In the jewel mines of the Brown Mountains signs are observed of an awakening dragon that terrorized the continent 20 years ago: Kradmesser the Blazing Spear. The House of Halschteil, the bloodline of dragon rajas, has a lost daughter. Hoochie and others hope that she is a dragon raja, so she can make the dragon raja's covenant with the awakened Kradmesser. The only thing known about her is her age and the red color of her hair. While the party prepares for the trip to find the girl, a young nobleman Nexon Huritchell captures Neria and forces the party to steal a book with state secrets from the Halschteil mansion. The party works together to rescue both Neria and the book of secrets from Nexon's hands. Condemned of treason, Nexon attacks the party along with the vampire sorceress Shione. But Iruril returns in time to save the party from the vampire's threat. Iruril has information about a girl in the Duchy of Ilse who may be the lost daughter of the Halschteils. They head to Ilse, along with Unchai to tell Djipen's plots to the Grand Duke of Ilse and gain Ilse's cooperation in the war. Karl and Unchai heads to the Duchy's capital, while Hoochie, Sanson, Neria and Iruril head to a temple of Teperi of Haflings and Crossroads, to hire Jereint Chimber, a young priest empowered to have the answer to any polar question. They head to the Port Del Hapa where they find Rennie who indeed turns out to be the dragon raja they were searching. The next day, Port Del Hapa and several cities of Ilse are turned into Sacred Lands in the hands of Shione and Nexon, who, in the havoc and confusion that ensues, kidnaps Rennie. The party chases Nexon and his underlings into the mysterious Eternal Forest, where whoever enters, on certain conditions, are divided into separate selves with identical looks but divided memories. Iruril's wisdom saves the party, but Nexon and most of his underlings fall into panic and murder each other, including three of Nexon's selves. Nexon takes Rennie and survived subordinates into the Great Labyrinth of the Dragon Lord. The party follows them in through dangers of every shape and meets Dragon Lord, who offers them access to his treasures, enough to pay off Amurtaht's ransom and some more. After leaving the Great Labyrinth, the party ambushes Nexon to rescue Rennie and they rush back to Bysus. At Red Mountains, they encounter Jigoleid, the blue dragon who fought the war for Bysus with another Halschteil raja. The raja released the dragon not only from the covenant with him but also from the battlefield with Djipan, to serious military consequences. The party stop by Kan Adium, a city in the middle of wild plain, where they face another attacks from the orcs, now a big army, and defeat them. They arrive at the capital, and find out that Marquess Halschteil has been making plans to take hold of a raja who could make the covenant with Kradmesser, and use the legendary dragon's power to take over Bysus. The party hasten to take Rennie to the Brown Mountains where Kradmesser's lair is. In the mountains, they pass the Lake Levnane where lives the Fairyqueen Darenian who was Handrake the archmage's lover 300 years ago. Kradmesser is awakened at last. Haschteil, Nexon and Hoochie's party race and fight against each other to meet the dragon first. Kradmesser however, reveals that he intends neither to destroy Bysus and the continent, nor to accept another covenant with a dragon raja. Nexon, who has succeeded the gift from his father, the previous raja to Kradmesser, convinces the dragon forcibly to make the dragon raja's covenant with him. When their covenant is complete, Shione the vampire reveals her true intention.
8384283	/m/0271l9w	The Detective	Roderick Thorp		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Joe Leland, a private detective, begins investigating a case for the recently widowed Norma MacIver. Norma requests that Leland find out everything he can about her deceased husband. Norma requests Leland personally because her husband had mentioned knowing him in the past. It turns out that Leland and Colin MacIver served in the same military unit during World War II, but at different times. Leland interviews Colin's first wife, his mother and the security guards at the track where Colin supposedly killed himself. Norma introduces Leland to her neighbor and former therapist, Dr. Wendell Roberts. During their conversation Wendell reveals that he knew Leland's wife. It turns out Wendell was friends with the man with whom Karen Leland had had an affair. As Leland's investigation deepens he uncovers evidence of corruption and murder. Eventually, Leland discovers that Colin was connected to a homicide during Leland's earlier life with the police department as a detective. During the investigation of Teddy Leikman's death a confession was obtained from Felix Tesla, Leikman's roommate. Tesla was subsequently executed by electric chair. It turned out that Colin MacIver was the true murderer. Joe's partner, Mike Petrakis, managed to decipher Colin's coded notes and reveal a paper trail of corruption.
8386622	/m/0271p7f	Senhora	José de Alencar			 Aurélia Camargo, daughter to a poor family, fell in love with Fernando Seixas, an ambitious man, who she had been engaged to. However, Fernando ended the relationship, wanting to marry a rich lady, Adelaide Amaral, from whose father he would be given a dowry as the law stated. Some time after her father's death, Aurélia receives a large inheritance from her grandfather (who she didn't know to be rich) and rises socially. Being the owner of great beauty, she then starts to be the big sensation on the parties and events of that time. Torn between love and her hurt pride, she puts her uncle Lemos in charge of a negotiation to offer Fernando a large amount of money to marry her. The deal, however, states that the identity of the bride should remain a secret until the day after the wedding ceremony. When he finds out that Aurélia is his bride, Fernando is very happy, for he never really stopped loving her. He then opens his heart to her and confesses his love. The young woman, however, on their first night together, makes it very clear: she "bought" him to be the husband a woman of her social position should have. They sleep in different rooms. She doesn't want to be his and takes every opportunity she has to criticize him with sarcasm and irony. pt:Senhora (livro)
8391704	/m/0271vrk	Cocorí				 The story concerns a small native boy from the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, who meets a blonde tourist girl who gives him a rose. In return, she asks for a squirrel monkey. Smitten, he fulfills his promise by setting a trap made out of rice and a coconut, but when he returns to where he had seen her, the boat she had come in was gone. When he returns, to his home, he finds that the rose she had given him had wilted. He asks his mother, Drusila, why it had lived such a short time while other things last much, much longer. She doesn't know, so he ran around his village, asking the neighbors the same question. None of them know, so he asks his friend, Doña Madorra the turtle, his question. She doesn't know, so she brings him and the squirrel monkey around the jungle, asking some old and wise animals including Don Torcuato the alligator, Talamanca the Bocaracá, and the snake. After the interrogations of the alligator and the snake go disastrously, Cocorí returns home to find that Drusila had planted the stem of the wilted rose and so grown a rose bush. Here the book ends.
8392274	/m/0271wfx	The Body	Richard Sapir		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When a female archaeologist discovers an ancient skeleton of a man and an Aramaic inscription which reads Melek Yehudayai (King of the Jews), the Israel government invite Vatican to investigate the matter, as they suspect the body could be that of Jesus Christ. When one of the renowned archaeologist-priests of Vatican committed suicide as a man of broken faith, former soldier and Catholic priest Jim Folan is assigned to continue the investigation. Father Folan arrives in Israel to work with the reluctant archaeologist Sharon Golban, the mystery deepens with danger and intrigue. Suddenly they find that the Vatican, the United States, the Soviets, the Mossad and the mafia are after the truth. it:Il corpo (Sapir)
8393498	/m/0271xb4	The Urth of the New Sun	Gene Wolfe	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Unlike the four part novel of the Book of the New Sun, Urth of the New Sun mostly takes place outside Urth. The book is yet again a continuation of Severian's narration of the aftermath of his ascent to the throne and subsequent journey "between the suns" to be judged and win back the fountain of life that will rejuvenate the slowly dying sun and revive life on earth. When the book begins, Severian has already rewritten his accounts of before and is beginning his new log aboard the spaceship that will take him to Yesod, an enigmatic planet, home to the godlike beings who have the power to grant Urth and its sun a new lease on life. Aboard the ship, Severian meets Zak, a mysterious being, who begins small and soon develops human form and turns out to be the all-powerful Tzadkiel of Yesod. Once in Yesod, Severian faces an immense task of facing all the deceased people he has encountered since his childhood, including Thecla and Master Malrubius. After his return to Urth from Yesod, he finds the sun restored to its former glory as he enters the vicinity of the solar system. Once on Urth, he learns that many years have passed on Urth during his absence. He also learns that he possesses healing power that he once attributed the Claw of the Concilator. He finds his wife Valeria and his old enemy Baldanders (who has grown enough to match the size of an undine) sitting in the throne room. Shortly after Severian reveals himself, an apocalyptic flood washes away the citadel and much of the land area of Urth, thus bringing destruction in the wake of rebirth.
8396528	/m/0271_g5	The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born	Ayi Kwei Armah	1968		 The unnamed protagonist, referred to as "the man", works at a railway station and is approached with a bribe; when he refuses, his wife is furious and he can't help feeling guilty despite his innocence. The novel expresses the frustration many citizens of the newly-independent states in Africa felt after attaining political independence. Many African states like Ghana followed similar paths in which corruption and the greed of African elites became rampant. Corruption in turn filtered down to the rest of society. The action takes place between 1965's Passion Week and February 25, 1966 – the day after the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. The 'rot' that characterized post-independent Ghana in the last years of Nkrumah is a dominant theme in the book.
8400117	/m/02723sq	Mam'zelle Guillotine	Baroness Emma Orczy	1940	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Mam'zelle Guillotine follows Gabrielle Damiens, the daughter of Francois Damiens, a man arrested for attacking the King of France with a pocket knife. Although the wound was minor, Damiens' punishment for drawing royal blood was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. At age 16, Gabrielle finds letters written by her father which prove that his crime had been instigated and aided by a body of noble gentlemen, who planned it as warning to the King to change his ways. Damiens bore the brunt of this conspiracy in silence while the aristocrats remained immune. With the evidence of their crime, Gabrielle sets out to confront the Marquis de Saint-Lucque, the only person named in the letters, and succeeds in extorting a large amount of money from him. She also starts an affair with his son, Vicomte Fernand, who is oblivious to the whole situation. Before long Gabrielle is living in luxury and has aspirations to marry the young Vicomte. Her plans are dashed when Fernand breaks off their affair as the King has decided that the Vicomte should marry his illegitimate daughter, Neve de Nesle. Furious, Gabrielle tries to blackmail Vicomte into marrying her using the letters which prove his father's guilt. But she has not counted on Neve's mother, Madame de Nesle, who on hearing of the situation, uses her position as the King's favourite to have Gabrielle, now 19, thrown into prison without trial. She spends the next 16 years in prison, feeding her rage and lust for revenge on the Saint-Lucque family. On July 14, 1789, she is released from the Bastille after it is stormed by the mob, the French Revolution having begun. Mad for revenge, Gabrielle works her way into the favour of the men behind the new republic, and before long has become the public executioner of Artois. As France's only female executioner she is feared by many and known throughout Artois as Mam'zelle Guillotine. When the Saint-Lucque family (Fernand, Neve and their three children) are captured as traitors, Gabrielle determines that finally she will have her revenge. English spies manage to rescue the Marquis and his young son, but his wife and two daughters are still in danger of being sent to the guillotine. Blind with rage and consumed with her plots for revenge, Gabrielle fails to notice that the new sleuth sent from Paris by Chauvelin to track down the English spies is really the Scarlet Pimpernel in disguise. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge
8400976	/m/02724ws	Honey for the Bears	Anthony Burgess		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 British antique dealer Paul Hussey and his American wife Belinda travel to Leningrad for a holiday but with a suitcase of drilon dresses, which he plans to sell on the Soviet black market as a favor to the widow of his recently deceased friend Robert. Belinda develops a rash during the trip over and is taken to a hospital in Leningrad, leaving Paul to fend for himself while suspicious Soviet agents tail him. Finding the USSR quite different from his preconceptions, Hussey has various sexual adventures — with both men and women — and seeks to secure the freedom of a descendant of a dissident composer.
8401673	/m/02725c8	Damia	Anne McCaffrey	1993-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Damia is told mainly from the point of view of Afra Lyon, the Rowan's assistant, a character first introduced in the previous book. It begins with his childhood on the strictly regimented colony planet orbiting Capella. It then shows Lyon's view of the events of The Rowan, followed by his helping to raise Rowan and Jeff Raven's children, especially the precocious and powerful Damia. Lyon later realizes that he has fallen in love with his young ward, which gives him rather conflicted feelings. In the end, the two wind up defending humanity against an even more dangerous alien enemy than the Hive faced by the Rowan.
8404404	/m/02727sn	The Secrets of Jin-Shei	Alma Alexander		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A tale of bonding sisterhood, this novel is set in Syai, an imaginary Chinese kingdom. Jin-shei is a pledge given by one woman to another, and once accepted can never be broken. This declaration of loyalty transcends social class and normal customs. Through jin-ashu, a unique language passed on from generation to generation of women (inspired by a real example of secret women's writing, Nü Shu), the lives within the sisterhood continue to intertwine throughout time. The story begins with Tai, daughter of a court seamstress, who becomes jin shei bao of the Little Empress Antian. An earthquake claims the lives of the royal family, leaving an obstinate Liudan, Antian's younger sister, as the unexpected new Empress. Antian, during her dying moments, binds Tai to look after her sister. Tai is comforted by Yuet, an apprentice healer. A new pledge is made, and Tai finds herself with a new jin shei bao who works tirelessly to bridge the gap between Tai and Liudan. The initial moves are tentative, for Liudan remains insecure throughout her lonely life in the imperial court. During her time of sorrow, Tai is also consoled by her childhood friend Nhia. A club-footed young girl, Nhia grew up in the vicinity of the great temple, and has learned much about the Way. She is a sage with a pure heart who later becomes Syai Chancellor. It is also at the temple that Nhia meets Khailin, to whom she pledges sisterhood. A restless soul, Khailin is actively seeking knowledge about the Way. However, her thirst for information leads her down the path of darker forces. Khailin secretly marries the Ninth Sage Lihui. Within Liudan’s court, an exceptional young Guard trainee named Xaforn is injured and Yuet is summoned to heal her. Xaforn is jin shei bao to Qiaan, binding their lives beyond adoptive sisterhood. Xaforn is protective by nature, while Qiaan is nurturing. Through a series of events, the circle of sisterhood between these young ladies will test their loyalty, determination, courage and bravery. Liudan, in her quest for absolute rule over her empire, declares herself to be Dragon Empress. However, when the existence of Tammary, the late Emperor’s illegitimate daughter with a Traveller, comes to light, Liudan becomes obsessed by her need to maintain her power. In order to protect Tammary, Tai pledges sisterhood and tries to act as the peacemaker. Qiaan is then discovered to be the daughter of Cai, the Ivory Emperor's concubine, and becomes a pawn of Lihui, who wants to rule as Emperor and overthrow Liudan. An increasingly insecure Liudan resorts to extraction of duties of sisterhood despite mistrusting her sisters who try fervently to bring her back to their fold, to a life with some sense of calm and peace. They fail, and their failure comes with a huge price, as one sister after another dies. The story ends with Tai in her old age, looking back to her youth and reminiscing that her life was joyful yet marred by occasions of unhappiness, a life that was changed by a single promise - Jin-Shei.
8404592	/m/02727_w	Description of a Struggle	Franz Kafka	1912		 "Description of a Struggle" is one of Kafka's longer minor works and is divided into three chapters. The first chapter is narrated by a young man attending a party and tells of his "acquaintance" (as he is referred to in the story) that he meets there. The second chapter is the longest and is itself split into several sections. The narrator leaps onto his acquaintance's back and rides him like a horse and imagines a landscape that responds to his every whim. He then meets an extraordinarily fat man carried on a litter who tells him the story of a "supplicant" who prays by smashing his head into the ground. In the third chapter, the narrator returns to reality, so to speak, and continues his walk up the Laurenziberg in winter with his acquaintance.
8406198	/m/02729m4	See Delphi and Die	Lindsey Davis	2005	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Through his brother-in-law Aulus, Falco hears details of two young Roman women who have died in Greece while seeing the sights of the ancient world. Falco and his wife, Helena, travel to Greece to meet up with the tour party which included one of the women, seeking clues to her murder, passing through Olympia, Corinth, Delphi and the oracle of Trophonius at Lebadeia before finally arriving at Athens. The wayward Aulus is playing truant in Greece where, instead of studying law at Athens, he is investigating the death of Valeria Ventidia, a newly married Roman girl at Olympia, as well as another death which occurred three years ago around the same area. Falco's mission has two objectives: to send Aulus back to school, and solve the mystery behind the deaths at Olympia. Eventually, a connection between the two deceased women is deduced: both had joined tours provided by Seven Sights, a tour company of dubious reputation, currently operating in Greece. Falco's investigation does not go smoothly, however: the Roman authorities are not interested in properly investigating the deaths (much less governing Greece itself), and at Olympia Falco is attacked by a potential suspect, who later turns up dead in suspicious circumstances, the death blamed on Falco's ward Glaucus. Low on funds and unwilling to be confronted by the angry locals, Falco and his followers - Helena, Albia, Glaucus and Falco's nephews - are forced to leave Olympia for Corinth but not before discovering that Valeria's killer may have been connected to athletes who trained at Olympia. Things do not look better at Corinth however: the governor is out, and his deputy, the quaestor Aquillus Macer, is proven to be extremely inept and inexperienced. Fortunately the tour party has been apprehended at Corinth but worse is still to come: Aulus and Valeria's widower, Tullis Stratianus, have run away to Delphi to seek answers from the Oracle there, and another member of the Seven Sights travelling party is murdered. Fearing that Stratianus would be the killer's next victim, Falco and Helena rush off to Delphi but lose Stratianus, who flees this time to Lebadeia and then disappears without a trace. Dejected and defeated, Falco and his group travel to Delphi on their original mission: to persuade Aulus to return back to studying law at Athens. Falco also gets to meet Aulus' mentor, a formidable lawyer named Minas who offers his aid in capturing the killer - by hosting a party for the Seven Sights tour party, now freed and in Athens too after the operators Phineus and Polystratus managed to threaten the Corinth government with legal action advised by Minas. Falco has no confidence in Minas' methods, but during the course of the party, more evidence is found by Falco and his nephews, revealing that Phineus and Polystratus had athletic training, and that female travellers on Seven Sights may have been sexually harassed by the men. Finally, Polystratus is unmasked as the real killer, and the remains of the missing Statianus are found in a stew being prepared by the former for the party, proving his guilt.
8409391	/m/0272f25	The House in Paris	Elizabeth Bowen		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens in Paris, early in the morning, as eleven-year-old Henrietta Mountjoy, accompanied by Miss Naomi Fisher, travel via taxi to the house of Mme Fisher, an elderly and sickly lady who for years has taken in well-off girls for a season. Henrietta is traveling to Menton, in the south of France, to spend time with her grandmother, Mrs. Arbuthnot. Henrietta that she will be spending her day with Leopold, a nine-year old boy who is supposed to meet his mother there for the first time; Miss Fisher asks Henrietta to "be a little considerate with Leopold", and "to ask Leopold nothing". After breakfast and a nap in the salon, Henrietta awakens to find Leopold standing before her. The two young children talk about their life: Leopold explains Mme Fisher's illness and his own anticipation regarding the arrival of his mother later that day; Henrietta reveals to Leopold that her mother is dead. Even though Leopold angers Henrietta by spilling the contents of her handbag, the two children develop a rapport. Miss Fisher leads Henrietta to Mme Fisher's room. While they are upstairs, Leopold rummages through Miss Fisher's handbag, discovering three envelopes. He disregards the first, a letter pertaining to Henrietta. The second envelope, with a Berlin postmark, is from his mother, but the envelope is empty, and he feels like Miss Fisher has "done him down." The third envelope contains a letter from Marian Grant Moody, his adoptive mother, to Miss Fisher. Besides discussing the boy's itinerary, she writes exhaustively of Leopold's delicate and rather unstable constitution, and says more than once that the boy has not had a sex education yet, so any explanation of his birth will have to be handled delicately. Leopold returns to the first envelope concerning Henrietta, written to Miss Fisher by Henrietta's grandmother, Mrs. Arbuthnot. Referring repeatedly to her old acquaintance and present addressee as "Miss Kingfisher", she informs Miss Fisher that Henrietta is to spend the remainder of the winter with Mrs. Arbuthnot in the south of France, and should only be staying a day in Paris. The tone of the letter is manipulative: Mrs. Arbuthnot subtly chastises Miss Fisher for not visiting her, all the while asking that Henrietta be allowed to spend the day in Paris. During this time, Henrietta is introduced to Mme Fisher in her upstairs bedroom. As Miss Fisher sits knitting, her mother and the young girl converse, Mme Fisher frequently critiquing her daughter, commenting on her own bad health, and, ultimately, discussing Leopold: Henrietta learns that Leopold's now-dead father at one time broke her daughter's heart. Henrietta then returns to the salon and discovers Leopold going through the handbag. The section concludes with the arrival of a telegram, summarized by Miss Fisher: "Your mother is not coming; she cannot come." "Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own." The novel's second section shift back a decade to the story of Leopold's parents. The introductory pages of the section make clear that this the entire section is imaginary, perhaps a long and dramatic imaginative vision on Leopold's part. The section contains the information that may have been exchanged between Karen and Leopold should she have actually kept her promise to her son and arrived as scheduled that day in Paris. Karen Michaelis, ten years or so before the day of the previous section, is sailing from her native England to visit her Aunt Violet and Uncle Bill Bent at Rushbrook, County Cork, Ireland. Karen is escaping the pressures of her recent engagement to Ray Forrestier, ambivalent about the wedding; Ray himself is on a business trip. Her time with Uncle Bill and Aunt Violet is rather uneventful and uninspiring until Uncle Bill, a nervous and socially inadequate man, tells Karen that Violet is to have surgery in the coming weeks, a procedure that could prove fatal. Back in England, Karen finds Naomi Fisher waiting for her; she has traveled to London to see to the affairs of her recently deceased aunt, and tells Karen of her engagement to Max Ebhart, whom Karen met years before during while she was one of the girls staying at Mme Fisher's house. Despite Karen's objections—she had always been afraid of Max—Naomi insists the three spend time together before Max and Naomi return home. During a picnic, Max and Karen come close, sharing a secret touch and holding hands. Afterward, Karen resigns herself to her upcoming marriage, but before too long, the Michaelis family receives news of Aunt Violet's death, and once again things are in a state of disorder. During this chaotic time Max calls and asks to see Karen. They meet clandestinely in Boulogne and spend the day together. Max reveals that Mme Fisher believes her daughter is not good enough for him, but according to Max, Naomi is an acceptable match, simply because she is "like the furniture or the dark", comfortable and reassuring. Ultimately, however, she evokes no passion in him. Likewise, Karen confides that she does not wish to marry Ray. They part, but meet again on Folkestone pier the following Saturday, spending the remainder of the day and evening in a hotel room. Karen awakens in the middle of the night and while examining her and Max's shared circumstances, she develops a type of unconscious awareness of Leopold, despite having no clear evidence he will eventually exist, suggested by the author in second person: "All the same, the idea of you, Leopold, began to be present with her." The following day, Max writes a letter to Naomi, explaining his relationship with and feelings for Karen. Karen implores him to rethink the revelation, specifically the unreality of the arrangement ("You and I are the dream. Go back to her".) She tears up the letter, and they agree that while Naomi must be made aware of the affair, it is best both to write her and tell her in person. Karen's rendezvous with Max is eventually discovered by Mrs. Michaelis, and while Karen tries to explain the relationship, Mrs. Michaelis cannot understand. Next, Karen learns through the French newspapers that Max has committed suicide, and Naomi arrives in London, where she explains the circumstances surrounding his death: after receiving his letter and informing Mme Fisher of his intentions, Naomi is quarantined by her mother, who intends to keep Naomi from seeing Max and removing any possibility of spoiling Max's chance for happiness with Karen. Max does visit Naomi, however, speaking to her of the failure inherent in his relationship with Karen: "'What she and I are' he said, 'is outside life; we shall fail.'" He is visibly distressed as Mme Fisher returns to the salon. Naomi returns to her upstairs bedroom. There is a commotion in the salon, and Naomi returns to find her mother strewn across the sofa and blood on the floor. Max has cut his own wrist, making his way out the door into the street, and dying in an alley. In the following days, Mme Fisher will observe that "it was the commendation he could not bear. I was commending him when he took his knife out." At the end of the section, Karen reveals to Naomi that she is pregnant with Max's child, and will leave for Germany to try to avoid any scandal. The first sentence of the last section repeats the last sentence of the first: "Your mother is not coming; she cannot come." Leopold again imagines how the meeting would have gone if it had occurred. Henrietta senses Leopold's disappointment; she holds him and cries. Miss Fisher reenters the salon, informing Leopold that Mme Fisher would like to see him. Not unlike the earlier exchange with Henrietta, the conversation between Leopold and Mme Fisher is uncomfortable and at times Mme Fisher is blunt, even cruel. She attempts to explain Karen's unique nature to the disconsolate boy, abandoning any of those delicacies requested in Marian Grant Moody's earlier letter. She explains Leopold his history, including the details of his birth, the death of his half-sibling, his adoption, and his general displacement in the world. Leopold begs to remain in the house, exclaiming, "At Spezia when I am angry I go full of smoke inside, but when you make me angry I see everything." At this point Miss Fisher returns to the room and whisks Leopold away again. Ray Forrestier is waiting in the salon for Leopold. When the child arrives, their interaction is strained, distant, and uncomfortable. A good portion of the narrative focuses on Ray's conflicting feelings about Leopold, his marriage to Karen, the child's inescapable presence in their shared life, and Ray's own situational obligations. Ultimately, Ray and Leopold leave the house together, dropping off Henrietta at the train station on the way; the two children say their goodbyes and head off in different directions.
8412464	/m/0272hx9	So Yesterday	Scott Westerfeld		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A young man named Hunter works as a cool hunter, finding and selling new trends to his corporate sponsors. His latest find is Jen, an honest-to-goodness 'Innovator' whom he spots based on her unique shoelaces. Together they are drawn into a mystery when one of Hunter's bosses disappears after she runs a 'cool tasting' for a new brand of shoe.
8417547	/m/0272pbn	The Hunters	James Salter	1956	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 On a frozen February evening in Fuchū, Japan, Captain Cleve Connell restlessly waits for assignment orders completing his transfer to Korea. Billeted for four days in a warehouse, he has tired of seeing Tokyo – and of watching others come and go – and his clean laundry is nearly gone. He walks to dinner at the Officers Club reflecting on his ability as a flyer (he's a good one, with a reputation among his peacetime peers), his reluctance to leave the Air Force although pressured by civilian friends to do so, and his desire to test himself in combat. He senses that his feelings of time lost and lack of accomplishment are corrosive. He shares dinner with a fellow pilot en route to the war and while they are discussing women, the war in general, and the tedium of waiting, a group of loud young lieutenants enters the club. One stands out from the rest, however, emanating cool confidence amidst their obvious insecurity, and mildly harasses a pretty Japanese bar waitress. Cleve's companion chastises the lieutenant, who reluctantly backs down, resisting just enough that Cleve catches his name in the discussion: Pell. Cleve shrugs aside the episode and the next morning receives his orders. He arrives in Korea on a frigid afternoon and despite a feeling of exhilaration, his first impression of Korea is a dreary, impoverished country made drearier by the slow-moving military bureaucracy. Assigned to an elite fighter wing at the primitive Kimpo air base, Cleve arrives to find it abuzz with an outgoing mission and talk of a bad end to a bad week: the leading ace in the wing has just been shot down and killed. He meets pilots he knew in Panama, just after the end of World War II, including Carl Abbott, now a major. Cleve is mildly shocked to find that his young comrade of just a few years ago now looks old, out of shape, and lacking in spirit. Though genuinely glad to see Cleve, Major Abbott's effectiveness as a combat pilot is gone; he has been put out to pasture and does not care. That evening, in the officers club, he greets his wing commander, Colonel Imil, a former squadron commander in Panama. Imil is a larger-than-life personality who shows off Cleve to the veterans as a "real fighter pilot", and enthusiastically introduces him to Colonel Moncavage, a former ace just returned to flying. Moncavage's cool response prompts Imil to goad him, revealing a competitive friction between the two commanders. Cleve is put through a brief period of training. One morning, he goes to the operations office to follow the progress of a mission over the radio. The operations officer is Desmond, another old friend. In their discussion, he learns that Desmond also feels that Abbott "doesn't have it any more", and the conversation turns to the quality of their MiG opponents. While nearly all are poor adversaries, a few are very good, particularly one nicknamed Casey Jones, the only MiG pilot to best Imil in a fight. Desmond reassures him that Casey Jones isn't seen on missions any more, his tour apparently over. Cleve begins flying missions as Desmond's wingman. They encounter MiGs in large numbers on one mission and although seemingly everywhere, the clashes are so fleeting that Desmond's flight is unable to ever catch up to any. Cleve has a feeling afterwards that perhaps his flight was "playing it safe" and makes the mistake of saying so to Desmond, offending him. At the post-mission debriefing, they learn that a pilot, Robey, has claimed his fifth MiG. Another pilot asks Desmond, "Did he really get this one for a change?", prompting Desmond to relate to Cleve that Robey had once gotten Imil to cajole a reluctant wingman into confirming a kill he had not witnessed. Even so, Cleve notices that news of the fifth kill gets around quickly, and that he, like everyone else, feels a "mystic fulfillment" at being a part of the same fight. Imil makes Cleve a flight leader despite his having flown just eight missions. The flight consists of two veteran pilots, DeLeo and Daughters, and two untried replacements, Billy Hunter and Pettibone. All are aware of his reputation as a flyer and accordingly respectful, but it becomes apparent that he has been made flight lead because the flight has yet to shoot down any MiGs. Though nothing goes wrong in their first mission together, he is left with the strong feeling of a "wasted mission", until he learns that nobody in the wing saw any MiGs. Just as he is about to recover his good humor however, he encounters a new pilot in their barracks and assigned to his flight, Ed Pell, the loud lieutenant from Japan. Cleve is acutely disquieted. Pell upsets the balance of things; Cleve becomes uncomfortably aware that he is the leader, and much is expected of him. A quarter of the way through his tour, he has yet to see combat, and on days when the wing is in a fight, Imil chides him for missing it. Trapped by a feeling of helplessness, his growing self-doubt begins to gnaw away his confidence as he fears he is not just unlucky but possibly lacking something vital. The feeling worsens when Major Abbott, about to be exiled from the Wing, comes in to say goodbye and begins sobbing uncontrollably, possibly foreshadowing his own fate. Other missions go by without combat until one day Colonel Moncavage, who also had lacked success, shoots down two MiGs, eviscerating Cleve emotionally. The bad feelings vanish when Cleve, with Billy Hunter on his wing, shoots down a MiG. Both exultant and relieved, he learns at debriefing that Pell, too, has shot down a MiG and almost gotten DeLeo killed in the process: DeLeo accuses Pell of flying off on his own in the middle of the fight and leaving his leader to the mercies of the enemy. Pell denies the accusation and Cleve tries to smooth over the situation as a misunderstanding in the heat of battle. He discovers that his redemption is short-lived when, five days later, a big fight occurs after Cleve left himself off the schedule. The doubt and ominous fear return immediately. Then he finds that Pell has shot down another MiG. DeLeo remains hostile and skeptical of Pell, but Daughters confirms the kill. The arrival of spring brings a long spell of bad weather that shuts down almost all combat missions. Cleve and DeLeo decide to go on leave to Japan "to enjoy civilization". The night before the leave they head into Seoul for a steak dinner at the plush officers club of Air Force Headquarters, where they run into Abbott who insists with a pitiful obsessiveness on hearing the details of Cleve's MiG kill. Cleve realizes that the other pilots hated Abbott because they saw themselves in him. Reaching Tokyo, their leave starts as a typical R&R with martinis and steak for breakfast, followed by an afternoon nap, then an evening of hopping from cocktail lounge to cocktail lounge. DeLeo disappears to make a phone call and while he's gone the fragrance of perfume from a passing woman makes Cleve realize that he has suppressed all physical desires. DeLeo has booked them a night at Miyoshi's, a well-known Soapland-style brothel, that is spent in samisen music, saki, the baths, and sex with two young Japanese women. Cleve waxes philosophically about such luxury in contrast to their spartan existence in Korea, and DeLeo warns him that while "trying" (to get MiGs) is enough for DeLeo, he knows it won't be enough for him. The next night while making the rounds of the clubs, they run into a former friend of Pell's during cadet training, an obvious admirer whose drunken praise confirms all of Cleve's misgivings about Pell's deviousness and ambition, and he knows he has entered "a dark, ultimate battle." The next day, as a favor to his father, he searches for and finds Miyata, a Japanese artist, whose brother was a friend. Despite losing his life's work in the fire raids, Miyata is not only not bitter but seems above the miseries involved in living. They find a common interest in films and Miyata introduces Cleve to his daughter Eiko. He spends the next day with Eiko. She draws him out, asking him about his ambition. He replies that he has chased many ambitions of his own choosing but now has had one forced on him: to become an ace. He explains that he knows it is the result of a fatal pride but that flying fighters becomes first a sport and then a refuge. Finally he tells her that he wants to be remembered for something, a real performance akin to her aspiration to act in a great movie, and that in the final analysis his ambition is "Not to fail." Beyond that, he has no answers. With two days of his leave remaining, they make plans for the next day. Back at his hotel, he hears important news. There was a big fight the day before over the Yalu River, with eight MiGs shot down and three pilots lost, including Desmond. He feels sickened and helpless having missed it again, but there is more: Casey Jones is back. DeLeo tries to talk him out of it, but Cleve immediately goes back to Korea, followed by his reluctant, disgusted wingman. Cleve returns to Kimpo before dawn and puts his flight on the morning mission. In the locker room after the briefing, he is surly with Pell, who is not only cocky but full of suggestions on how the mission ought to be flown and somewhat contemptuous of its veteran pilots. In an ensuing dogfight, Cleve gets on the tail of a MiG, cripples it, and just as he is about to make the kill has to break off to rescue Pell, who mysteriously fell behind and is under attack by two other MiGs. One of the attacking MiGs spins out of control and crashes. Pell claims it as a kill. Pell has Imil's ear now, and despite the fact that the kill was only confirmed by Cleve, suggests that he lacks the stomach for combat and leaves hanging in the air his belief that he ought to be leading the flight. Later, he insinuates the same to Cleve and taunts him when rebuked. Behind his back, Pell undercuts Cleve with the other rookies of the flight. His resentment of Pell blinds Cleve to Pell's intentions when Daughters tries to support him, plus he is distracted by all the talk regarding Casey Jones. He wants to be free of competing for MiGs but he's only too aware that he's expected by everyone, even Daughters and DeLeo, to match Pell's accomplishments. Cleve's flight is scheduled for three missions the next day, a reconnaissance and two MiG sweeps. He assigns himself to the sweeps and puts Daughters, with Pell as wingman, on the early morning reconnaissance, where nothing is likely to happen. To his anguish, the recon flight is jumped by six MiGs and shoots down two. Worse, only three ships of the flight return. They ran into Casey Jones, DeLeo says, who had him cold a dozen times but never fired. Daughters — with only a handful of missions to go — was shot down in flames. Pell got both MiGs and DeLeo accuses him of failing to do his assigned job: warning Daughters that MiGs were behind him. Pell protests his innocence, but when Cleve tells him he's going to ground him for abandoning his leader, Pell just smirks confidently. Imil, caring only about MiG kills, supports Pell and angrily accuses Cleve of trying to wreck the outfit, insinuates that he's shirking combat, and says that he "and that Italian...have got it in for Pell". Cleve realizes he's lost Imil's support. Imil lionizes Pell, and when the new ace tries to ease his conscience with rationalizations of how Daughters might have gotten himself killed, Imil refuses even to listen. Pell is sent to Japan as a reward for making ace and, curiously, asks that Hunter and Pettibone accompany him. No one except Cleve realizes (or cares) that Pell is making them acolytes to undermine Cleve's authority. Cleve imagines Daughters' terror at being shot down, and in the realization of his own mortality, comes to believe that his salvation will be in killing Casey Jones. When Pell returns, now a celebrity, he holds court for the other pilots, using Hunter as his Boswell. Cleve comes to hate Pell in a way that seems to wipe out everything else from his life, and when Imil admits he was wrong and tries to apologize, Cleve doesn't back down from his desire to ground Pell, angering the colonel even more. DeLeo finishes his tour; two new pilots join the flight and immediately become Pell's disciples. Hunter, who has ambitions of his own, remains loyal to Cleve, but clearly admires Pell. In June, when Cleve has only six missions remaining, the entire group is briefed for an anticipated huge air battle. A major attack on a North Korean dam has been ordered and hundreds of MiGs are expected to defend it. Every plane in the group is sent, but Cleve is put in the last flight, with Hunter as his wingman. Large numbers of MiGs react, yet the strike is unopposed. Cleve and Hunter, the last in the area, almost stay too long trying to make contact and start back low on fuel. Cleve spots four MiGs and heedless of his fuel state turns toward them. Unexpectedly four more appear above them and break into pairs; Hunter reports that the leader has black stripes. The MiGs try to corner them, but Cleve is determined to take the fight as far south as he can, in case the MiGs are also low on fuel. In their twisting, evasive turns they get off some bursts, descend to an altitude where their jets perform better, and the MiGs lose their advantage. Cleve seizes an opportunity and closes in behind Casey Jones. The fight becomes a battle of wills and descends near the ground, where Casey tries an impossible diving maneuver. Cleve somehow follows him through it and shoots him down. Their fuel tanks nearly empty, Cleve and Hunter climb to 40,000 feet to attempt to glide back to base, a too-common practice. He notifies Kimpo about their dire situation. Imil asks if they got any MiGs. Cleve tells him "they" got one. Out of fuel and without power, they try to land. Cleve makes it, but the less experienced Hunter stalls and crashes just short of the field. Imil wants to know about the kill; Cleve is intoxicated, knowing it was Casey Jones. Then he learns Hunter was killed in the crash and that his own gun camera failed to function. Imil laments there is no way to confirm the kill. Cleve tells him it doesn't matter; it was Casey Jones. Pell objects strenuously that there is no way to confirm the kill. Imil, who has proclaimed that no one less skilled than himself could ever get Casey, quickly agrees with Pell. Cleve responds in a way he had never conceived possible, and finds his destiny. "I can confirm it," he declares suddenly, "Hunter got him." Two missions later Pettibone loses sight of Cleve, who does not return to base. Pell, back after his seventh kill, tells a correspondent interviewing him that Cleve was one of the best, who taught him everything about air combat, but never got lucky himself. Cleve was like his brother. "But don't write any of that," he says.
8420870	/m/0272tql	Go	John Clellon Holmes	1952	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Go concerns protagonist Paul Hobbes' struggle to maintain his marriage to his wife, Kathryn, while simultaneously indulging in the world of the 1940s and 1950s Beat Generation. It follows the complications of interpersonal relationships arising from a group of disillusioned and often eccentric young people. Hobbes finds himself in a world of promiscuity, casual drug use and petty crime but retains a certain detachment from it, sometimes to the annoyance of his friends. From wild all night parties to Allen Ginsberg's visions of William Blake to the death of Bill Cannastra, the events of the book are largely real events, some of them alluded to in other beat works, most notably Ginsberg's "Howl". Holmes has said that the only plot element entirely invented by himself is Kathryn's infidelity.
8423000	/m/0272x8s	The Shaughraun	Dion Boucicault			 The play is about Robert Ffolliott, fiance of Arte O'Neil, who has returned to Ireland after escaping from transportation in Australia. At the play's onset, we are informed that Robert is a Fenian fugitive, but it soon becomes clear that he is no such thing; rather, he is an innocent local gentleman who was tricked into pledging himself to a criminal disguised as a Fenian whose intent was to then betray him to the police. A country squire who arranged the betrayal, Kinchela, who also conspires to force Arte into marriage, tries to hunt Robert down and arrest him, with the help of a police informer, Harvey Duff. Robert escapes various melodramatic cliffhanger situations with the help of Conn the Shaughraun (Irish seachránaí = wanderer, errant person), a roguish stage Irish poacher who provides a great deal of comic relief. Robert's sister, Claire Ffolliot, is in love with an English soldier, Captain Molineaux, who is tracking down Fenians in the area. She cannot decide whether or not to protect her brother or betray the Captain. However, Molineaux's fish out of water attitudes to rural Ireland provide comic relief, and all ends well. The Fenians receive a general amnesty, the couples marry, Kinchela is arrested, and Harvey Duff falls off a cliff.
8425639	/m/0272_sx	The Falcon's Malteser	Anthony Horowitz	1986	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The first chapter introduces Nicholas 'Nick' Simple and his older brother, Herbert Simple, who goes by the pseudonym 'Tim Diamond'. They live in a flat above a supermarket in Fulham, and are down on their luck, with hopeless Herbert not being able to get a suitable job. The first chapter also introduces Johnny Naples, a vertically-challenged South American who comes to the office carrying a suspicious package, and acting as if he is being trailed. He tries to explain the situation, whilst Herbert tries (and miserably fails) to put on a hardman act. When Naples offers them £300 just to look after the package, 200 now and 100 if the package is safe on the day he returns, Herbert accepts - but from the very start, Nick is dubious. The next day - after going to the cinema to see 101 Dalmatians - they find their flat turned over by someone during the day. Luckily, Nick took the envelope with him. After a sleepless night repairing their apartment, they check the mail to find a note left by 'The Fat Man'. The Fat Man, Herbert says, is the biggest criminal in England, involved in almost any crime there is - armed robbery, arson, theft and armed burglary are some of the things Herbert lists. The note demands that the Diamonds meet him in Trafalgar Square It turns out that the pseudonym Fat Man is rather inappropriate - when the man himself is finally revealed, he is one of the thinnest men Nick has ever seen, with the rings on his fingers slipping off almost constantly. He says his doctor told him to lose weight, so over the past year he has eaten yoghurt and lost 135&nbsp;kg. Almost pleasant conversation elapses into threats when Nick tells the Fat Man that they do not have the box. However Herbert trying to fool the Fat Man causes him to realise the package hasn't been stolen. The Fat Man then gives Nick and Herbert two days to find the box. When they return home, they discover that what is in the package is nothing more than a box of Maltesers - a very popular type of sweet in Britain, with a crunchy centre coated in milk chocolate. Dumbfounded as to why Johnny Naples would pay them nicely to look after a box of chocolates, they visit the (fictional) Hotel Splendide after a quick enquiry at a shop traced using a sign on the envelope, with the keeper saying that the owner of a hotel in Portobello Road mentioned to him that a dwarf was staying at his hotel. When they go to Room 39 at Hotel Splendide however, they arrive at exactly the time that he is shot. Nick rushes into the room just in time to see someone jumping out of the window to safety. Naples opens his mouth and is able to say "The sun...", and then "the falcon...", before he dies. A plain-clothes police man, disguised as a drunk in the street, arrests them, and they are sent to Ladbroke Grove Police Station, where Herbert's old boss, Chief Inspector Snape, accompanied by his violent assistant Boyle, arrives to question them. Snape - who could not stand Herbert during his service there - apparently forms a grudging respect for Nick when he realises how smart he is for his age. When Nick offers to tell Snape everything the Diamonds know in exchange for what the police know, Snape begins to tell his story. The Falcon that Naples mentioned with his dying breath is the alias of the late Henry von Falkenberg, an English-German international criminal who had been living in La Paz, Bolivia, when the police last heard of him. Snape describes him as a great criminal, being involved in all sorts of crimes all over the world (Snape's various locations include Russia, Canada, Holland and England). The Falcon would only deal in one currency - uncut diamonds. Snape and the police suspect that the Falcon had stashes of uncut diamonds in many cities around the world, including London, which was the base of his operations. When the brothers inquire into how Johnny Naples fits into all of this, Snape tells them that he was a quack doctor living in La Paz, with a run-down practice in the city's backstreets. However, with the Falcon, his luck changed. A month earlier, as he crossed the road to catch a plane to London from El Alto Airport, the Falcon was mown down by a bus, and Johnny Naples was the doctor who rode back to the hospital with him, in the back of an ambulance. Although the Falcon died on his way to hospital, he seems to have passed on a secret to Naples about a large stash of diamonds in London, with an estimated value of £3,500,000. With this knowledge, Naples quit his job in Bolivia soon after the Falcon's death, and caught a flight to England. The police picked him up in passport control at Heathrow, before losing him for a short while, until they found him at the Hotel Splendide in Portobello Road. The police were watching Naples, because of various criminals that, they suspected, would also be interested in the diamonds, and would be tailing him so they could inquire about the diamonds. Snape then begins to write up, on a blackboard, the number of people who might have had an interest in the diamonds: *The Fat Man: The number one criminal in England, the Fat Man had often done deals with the Falcon, according to Snape, and he probably knew where Naples was staying before the police did. Also, if the Fat Man had £3,500,000 he could probably become an international criminal himself, the next Falcon. *Beatrice von Falkenberg: The Falcon's Dutch wife, Beatrice von Falkenberg was once the greatest actress in the Netherlands. The Falcon fell in love with her when he saw her in Othello in the title role. But he never apparently told her where the diamonds were hidden. Therefore, she would probably want to know. *William Gott and Eric Himmell: Gott and Himmell were German, but they were educated at Eton. It is largely implied that they murdered the P.E. instructor, the local vicar, and the deputy headmaster, who was found hung with his own school tie. They were the Falcon's two lieutenants, and arrived in England the day after Naples. *The Professor aka Quentin Quisling: Professor Quentin Quisling (his name is not mentioned until the chapter The Professor) was once the Falcon's technological whiz-kid, inventing various things for the Falcon. However, a year previous to the book, he goes missing. According to Snape, he could be dead. Snape then tells Herbert he is a suspect, mainly because they were found with Naples dying, in his hotel room, just moments after a gunshot rang out - and Herbert was holding the gun that had killed the dwarf. The Chief Inspector then demands why Naples came to the Simples in the first place. Nick tells him that he'd been looking for protection of some sort. In the end, Snape lets them go, but with a caution, saying he doesn't believe them and neither will anybody else. They head over to a fast food restaurant called Grannys, as a publicity stunt only Grannies are hired, where they chew the case over. Herbert suggests sending Nick to Australia or to Auntie Maurie in Slough, who has a semi-detached house, and a semi-detached hip, and often forces Nick to give her round the clock nursing. However Nick says he would feel safer with Herbert, as the Fat Man could kidnap him. They then decide to find out where Johnny went. After finding a matchbox from a nightclub called The Casablanca Club (a nod toward another one of Humphrey Bogart's movies), they decide to pay the club a visit. At home they find the Club is open, but their cleaning lady Betty Charlady says no good will come of it. Quickly, they find that Naples must have been a regular there - a waiter mistakes Nick for him, and offers him a bottle of free champagne, and a singer called Lauren Bacardi (a take-off of film noir star and Bogart's wife Lauren Bacall) asks of Johnny's well-being. However, just moments after the brothers feel they are getting somewhere, Bacardi is snatched by two shady figures in a blue van. Nick manages to step onto the back of the van, but as the van hits 60m/h (96&nbsp;km/h), he is thrown off and into a wall of cardboard boxes, perhaps he could have held on but he was half drunk. After getting a taxi during the night, Herbert discovers the next day that the Falcon's funeral is being held at Brompton Cemetery, nearby. Most of the suspects that appeared on Snape's chalkboard had arrived to 'grieve' for the Falcon. Nick spots the Falcon's wife, who pretends to mourn for her loss. They encounter the Fat Man, who tells them their time is up. On the way home Nick buys a box of Maltesers as a decoy, At their flat they find the Fat Man's chauffeur Lawrence dead. Snape then arrests them, but Nick is let out the next day, although he tells Herbert not to reveal what Naples gave them. Nick is intrigued by Beatrice's fake mourning and visits her after she calls him. The Falcon's widow, Beatrice von Falkenberg, claims that she deserves the diamonds (she is really poor and has had to sell all her property except her mansion) and threatens Nick with an alligator in order to make him promise to give her the Maltesers. Nick goes back to the hotel, where Naples was staying, in order to investigate, while Snape keeps Herbert for interrogation. In the midst of finding some scientific words scrawled in rough English on some scraps of paper, a grenade is hurled into the room and the hotel is destroyed. Nick escapes, narrowly avoiding an assassination attempt by the hotel's owner Jack Splendide, and discovers from him that it was the Fat Man who threw the grenade into the room, having paid the Owner to call him if Nick came back. Nick leaves the hotel owner hanging over the flyover and leaves the hotel, not knowing what happened to him and not really caring. Back in the flat the following day, Nick is visited by the Professor, one of Snape's suspects, who offers Nick half the Falcon's money if he gives him the Maltesers. Nick gives him the fake packet and follows the Professor halfway down the road, but then is intercepted and kidnapped by Gott and Himmell, the most dangerous criminals in pursuit of the Maltesers. They threaten Nick with death over some tea and ask him for the Maltesers. Nick sends them to Victoria Station where he has said he has left the Maltesers in Locker 180, but in reality he is just buying time, for Gott and Himmell have also kidnapped Lauren Bacardi, Naples' girlfriend. They are both tied up and left in a locked room but Lauren frees herself, revealing she was once an Escapologist's assistant. Nick and Lauren almost escape Gott and Himmell's apartment after Nick climbs through a window and unlocks the door to the room but just as they get out of the room they were locked up in, the assassins return. Nick pushes a Beethoven piano out the upper-story window with Lauren's help onto the assassins' van, injuring them. Nick and Lauren then return to Lauren's apartment where Lauren reveals more about her life with Naples and how he saw the truth in John Lewis in the city. They both go to John Lewis but meet Gott and Himmell, and they try to elude them and Nick ends up in Santa's Grotto, but Himmell shoots Santa and Nick escapes. Nick and Lauren return to the apartment and Nick just realizes he has discovered the truth - the barcode on the Maltesers opens up the Falcon's bank account. Nick arranges a meeting in Brompton Cemetery with the Fat Man, Gott and Himmell. Gott and Himmell arrive, bringing Herbert, whom they have kidnapped. Nick tells them the truth and the Fat Man and Himmell shoot each other. Gott tries to shoot the Simples, but then is shot by the Falcon's widow, Beatrice, whom, it turns out, was the Simples' housekeeper all along. She tries to shoot Nick and Herbert but in doing so the police arrive and arrest her. Nick, Herbert and Snape open the Falcon's bank account in his grave, and inside they find - nothing. It has turned out Lauren has stolen the diamonds because she worked out the truth. But in one last gift she sends Nick and Herbert a Malteser - a Malteser with a diamond inside. Nick realises it must be valuable and decides to do something useful with his Christmas holiday, like going skiing, though Tim breaks his leg before they get on the plane.
8425795	/m/027300h	Whale Talk	Chris Crutcher		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story takes place in Cutter High School, which prides itself heavily on the physical achievements of its students, and thrives on the winnings of the football and basketball teams. Many teachers there display favoritism toward star athletes, such as Mike Barbour, and turn a blind eye to the bullying that occurs, such as Barbour tormenting Chris Coughlin. Mr. Simet, a teacher, wants to start a swim team to avoid having to be an assistant coach for Wrestling. He encourages T.J., who formerly swam and was very talented, to join and recruit others. T.J. gets together six others to form a seven-man team: the mentally challenged Chris Coughlin; the obnoxious and extremely intelligent Dan Hole; the kind and talented bodybuilder/musician Tay-Roy Kibble; the rude and antagonistic Andy Mott; the quiet and generic Jackie Craig; and the obese Simon DeLong. All of them have predicaments, which they slowly reveal to each other as they grow to become friends. During the year, T.J. meets a little half-black girl named Heidi. Her step-dad is the drunkard Rich Marshall, who frequently abuses her and her mother, Alicia. T.J. helps his therapist, Georgia Brown, with Heidi, and they form a close bond.
8427336	/m/02731r5	Four Blind Mice	James Patterson	2002	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel features Washington D.C. Metro Police homicide detectives Alex Cross and John Sampson as protagonists. While investigating the wrongful conviction and execution of US Army Sergeant Ellis Cooper. Their investigation uncovers a series of Army personnel wrongfully convicted and executed for murdering countless civilians. In each instance, the murderer's modus operandi involved painting the corpse blue. In the course of the investigation, Cross and Sampson discover that three Army Rangers had committed similar crimes during the Vietnam war. The three Rangers, nicknamed "The Three Blind Mice," had performed a series of unauthorized killings of unarmed villagers and subsequently painted the bodies red, white, and blue. Cross and Sampson track down the killers, but all three are killed in the resulting gunfight. Cross determines that the mastermind behind the murders is General Mark Hutchinson, Commandant of West Point. Hutchinson had been ordering The Three Blind Mice to frame Army personnel who had committed atrocities while serving in Vietnam. Another victim, Colonel Handler, had discovered the plot and was killed so as to not jeopardize Hutchinson's candidacy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hutchinson captures Cross, but before he can murder him, Hutchinson is killed by members of a Vietnamese street gang in retaliation for his sanctioning of and involvement in Vietnam War atrocities.
8429113	/m/02733fh	The Voter Decides				 The Voter Decides developed three theories as to how a person acquires Party ID. 1) Party attachment, like church preference, may be passed down from parent to child. 2) It may be the case that people remain in the same class, ethnic and religious groups as their parents and are subject to the same group influences as their parents. 3) People may tend to consciously or otherwise make the memory of their parent's partisanship conform to their own attachments In short, once a Party ID is acquired from a person's parents (through unknowing absorption from a very young age) the person spends the rest of his or her life adopting views and positions that create a reason for their party affiliation.
8431888	/m/027369b	The Second Invasion from Mars	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story occurs in an unknown city and country, but almost certainly on Earth. All characters and few places mentioned have characteristically Greek names, but there is nothing specific to Greek culture in the plot; rather, use of neither Russian nor English names may have been an attempt to put the novel outside of the ideological war, which was extremely active at the time. The main character, Apollon, is a retired school teacher living with his daughter (from a now-deceased wife) and housekeeper. He has presumably retired only very recently, as he is no longer working, but is not receiving pension yet. The subject of his pension is by far his most important worry during the entire two weeks described. His pension is about to be awarded, pending decision from the Minister about pension degree, and correspondingly, amount. The difference between first and third degree translate to him as the difference between not being able to afford anything that is not strictly needed, and being able to pursue his hobby (and the only other significant interest), stamp collecting. At the same time, very strange things happen in the nearby city, and then in his town. Initially the unusual sounds and imagery generated considerable panic and even higher interest among the public, but gradually it becomes widely accepted, even if not understood, that the country (and, perhaps, entire planet) is being "invaded" by the Martians. It is at this point that the reader is exposed to perhaps the most shocking, yet highly natural, reaction of the majority of the population. Rather than being extremely curious as to the exact information about an event that is happening for the first time in the entire history, most of the people, including Apollon who is portraying the views of the majority very well, seem only to be concerned about what this change means for them, in very practical terms. The main hero, for example, is worried about what this uncertainty will mean to his pension, and whether new stamps will be printed by the supposed new Martian government. As the events unfold, it becomes clear that the invaders, whether they are Martians or not, value gastric juice for a completely unknown reason, and are willing to pay the considerable amount to any human that volunteers to donate it. This discovery gradually changes the overall mood in the town from cautious to very optimistic, and the citizens rejoice about the upcoming addition to their income. Again, no one cares as to why the Martians need such fluid, or even whether the reported invaders are Martians or extraterrestrials at all. The extra money, which is immediately used by many in a nearby bar, is alone more than sufficient to win the support of the majority of population. The farmers are overjoyed as well. One of the first actions of the supposed new government was to buy (at a higher than normal price) all current harvest, whether fully grown or not, and to provide the farmers with a new variety of grain, which gives rise to blue bread. The new grain grows very fast, and the resulting bread, although possessing an unusual color, appears tasty and provides (as almost immediately becomes known) a very good source of moonshine. The government even provides the farmers with an advance towards the future purchase of the bread, thus completely turning them loyal.
8431966	/m/02736bq	A Charmed Life	Mary McCarthy	1955	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with the simple trials and tribulations of everyday life experienced by John and Martha Sinnott. Their background stories are gradually introduced, especially during their picnic with the Coes in the beginning. One night when John is away, Martha and Miles drunkenly have sex at Martha's house after a party at the Coes. Martha becomes pregnant soon after, and rather than having a baby whose paternity is ambiguous, she decides to have an abortion. Warren lends Martha the money to have an abortion. The story ends with Martha dying in a car accident on her way home from the clinic.
8432088	/m/02736gv	East Is East	T. Coraghessan Boyle	1990-09-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The book tells three basic stories, which take place between November of 1907 and late May of 1908. The first story is about Will and Eleanor Lightbody. Eleanor, a fan of Dr. Kellogg, drags Will to Kellogg's sanitorium. Hoping to improve his marriage, Will goes along but is constantly filled with doubts about Kellogg's health methods. The second story is about Charlie Ossining, a man who gets into a cereal business scheme with a man named Bender. The third story is about Dr. Kellogg himself; how he runs the sanatorium and of his growing irritation with his adopted son, George. --> <!--
8438316	/m/0273f33	Mission to Moulokin	Alan Dean Foster	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel follows the continuing adventures of Skua September, Ethan Fortune and Milliken Williams on Tran-Ky-Ky as they try to help the native race, the Tran, win admission to the Commonwealth. During their struggle they deal with corrupt Commonwealth officials and an insane Tran leader, find the fabled city of Moulokin and learn of the history of the Tran.
8439887	/m/0273h9m	The First Team			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The book begins with a Soviet governor already securely ensconced in the White House, and a young Air Force officer who tried to resist the occupiers being summarily executed on the White House lawn - without explaining exactly how things got to that dire pass. The reader is, however, made to understand that the Soviet takeover was made possible because of widespread cultural malaise. Undermined by Hippies and anti-war protesters, corrupt military-industrial complex producers who created faulty military hardware, weak-willed US Senators, and the super-power that was the USSR's propaganda machine (not to mention the Vietnam War's hangover), the USA was unable to defend against Soviet power. The country finds itself under an iron-willed Soviet bureaucrat, backed up by a vicious Soviet Colonel. The Soviets embark on blatantly anti-Semitic policies, making no effort to reconcile them with Marxist ideology, and drive hundreds of thousands of American Jews into Israel, where they are housed in makeshift tent camps. Small-time criminals soon turn into paid informers for the new regime. An unpaid collaborator is a hitherto popular singer, who openly welcomes the occupiers and tells his audience that "things could have been far worse" - whereupon attendance at his performances plummets. Rather than making use of him, the Soviets just ignore him and finally he is killed "by mistake" by a Soviet army unit that misunderstood his wish to welcome them on American soil. Another character at whose misfortune the reader is invited to smile is an imprisoned radical Black leader, who expects to be set free by the Soviet invaders, only to find that they have no intention to loose such a trouble-maker as himself, and that in fact the new warden (a Russian woman) is far tougher than her American predecessor. American students try to voice their protest but find the Soviet occupiers' response far more brutal than anything they encountered in the years of the anti-war movement. And a trade union official in an (unnamed) East Coast port, who tries to obstruct the occupiers, is summarily shot. However, hope is not lost. The main protagonist - US White House interpreter Raleigh Hewitt, kept at his post by the invaders - comes to be recruited into a secret underground resistance organization, "The First Team" of the title. It turns out that the fall of the United States wasn't altogether unforeseen, and that a very resourceful band of patriots was already in place, with considerable material resources - such as a well-equipped secret control centre - prepared for them carefully in advance. There are months of careful preparatory work, secret manoeuvrings and counter-manoeuvrings, using especially the classic spying device of a small private brothel sited in a Washington. D.C. suburb - before the brave conspirators are ready to strike. This work includes the political conversion of a formerly liberal Senator, whose son had been a patriot, killed by the Soviets during a planning session. Key to ending the Soviet occupation is the USS Ramon Magsaysay, a fully armed and fueled nuclear ballistic missile submarine at a Navy yard in the San Francisco Bay. The Magsaysay is critical because all other US Navy subs had obeyed orders to put into foreign ports and be taken over by the Soviets, while the Magsaysay is readily accessible. The patriots put a team aboard during a false "reactor emergency" (a subplot later used in Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October) and manage to steal the sub -- without provisions aboard. The last part of the book involves the pressure of both sides not knowing whether the sub and its possibly starving skeleton crew has successfully escaped Soviet forces and reached a place where the missiles could be fired.
8444109	/m/0273n4l	Erasing Sherlock	Kelly Hale	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 "Seeking maid-of-all-work. Master of Arts required. Opportunities for research in the field. Must be able to relocate in time." A doctoral candidate, in the guise of a housemaid working at 221B Baker Street, believes she is there to observe the 25-year-old Sherlock Holmes, and document his methods at the beginning of his career. She soon learns she is operating under a serious misapprehension.
8444478	/m/0273nhl	The Alien Sea	Lucien Soulban		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins with a prologue about how Apoletta met Zebulah, her previous husband. Zebulah, a red-robed human mage, was exploring the sunken ruins of Istar, while Apoletta was the Steward of Istar at that time, guarding it from humans. While she secretly watches him, it is mentioned that she was taken by his respectfulness, curiosity, and honesty towards the ruins. After conversing with him to discover his intent, she also becomes impressed by his truthfulness as a "would-be invader". Returning to the present, Chapter One begins with Apoletta finding herself hosting a Conclave concerning the World Gash, a quickly spreading volcanic field, with representatives from many different species, including shoal elves (Dimernesti), merfolk, ocean striders, sea giants, and brathnoc. However, she is annoyed at the petty bickering going on over fishing grounds, even including the Dimernesti, who were supposed to help host the Conclave but hadn't even selected a representative. Apoletta attempts to quench her anger by seeking advice from Slyphanous, an old Dargonesti elf. During their conversation, Apoletta reveals the depth of the rift between the Dargonesti and Dimernesti, of which the Dimernesti do not trust the Dargonesti anymore. Returning to the task at hand, she attempts to wait for everyone's attention, but finds out that the bickering has taken precedence over civility and decorum. Forced to resort to magical means, she casts a spell, causing a large sphere of water to vanish from the area, causing the heavy ocean to rush in and fill the void, resulting in a large crack, nudging the delegates and even swaying a large circular slab of coral suspended from the ceiling. Apparently gaining the Conclave's attention, she attempts to continue, however the merfolk chime in, exclaiming that they haven't finished "negotiating" with the ocean striders over access to fishing grounds. Redirecting the delegates back to the issue at hand, she again attempts to continue, but this time is interrupted by a male Dimernesti, who sneeringly proclaims "Your so-called World Gash, is it again?" Her temper rising, she attempts to refute him, however is told "You're wasting my time." The delegates return to their own issues, with the merfolk arguing over hunting domains, the oceans striders concerned about the influx of undead, and the Dimernesti harboring grievances against Dargonesti.
8447308	/m/0273r46	Survivor	Octavia E. Butler		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Although set within the broader plot of the Patternist series, the entire plot of Survivor is largely separated from the events of the other books in the series. Butler begins the novel in medias res, during the "rescue" of the main character, Alanna, from the "Tehkohn," a group of extraterrestrials. Although the main narrative follows Alanna's perspective after the rescue, Butler also inserts a series of flashbacks, some of them from the perspective of other characters. Through this literary device, the readers learn about Alanna's past gradually, even as they follow the efforts of the other characters to discover that past as well. Eventually, the narrative reveals Alanna's background. The novel is set in the indeterminate future, sometime after the events that Butler would later describe in her novel Clay's Ark and before the events of Patternmaster. At the time of Survivor, humanity is threatened by the "Clayark plague," an extraterrestrial disease that has destroyed half of the Earth's population, either by killing them or by mutating them and their children into the bestial "Clayarks." Humanity survives in an embattled state, supported somewhat by the "Patternists," a group of mutant humans previously living in secret. (The development of the Patternists is described in more detail in Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, and a later stage of their conflict against the Clayarks is described in Patternmaster.) Prior to the main events of the novel, Alanna's parents died saving her from a Clayark attack. After several years living as a feral child, Alanna was captured by a group of Missionaries, a Christian religious sect dedicated to maintaining humanity as God's chosen form in the face of Clayark and Patternist competition. Although some of the Missionaries distrusted Alanna, either because of her wild upbringing or because of her African American and Asian ancestry, she adapted quickly, and became the foster daughter of the group's leader, Jules Verrick, and his wife Niela. Some time later, the Missionaries receive an opportunity to flee Earth on a Patternist starship as part of a program to seed humanity on other planets in order to preserve the species from the Clayark plague. After arrival on the planet, the Missionaries encountered the Kohn, intelligent inhabitants of the planet. Although the Kohn had fur, camouflage abilities, and claws, they were broadly humanoid, and the local tribe—the Garkohn—assisted the Missionaries in developing their settlement. Shortly thereafter, the settlement was raided by the Tehkohn, a rival group of Kohn, and several Garkohn and Missionaries were captured, including Alanna. Eventually, the story reveals that just as Alanna once altered her behavior to fit in among the Missionaries and "survive," she also was successful in joining the Tehkohn, ultimately marrying their leader, Diut, and bearing a child. Through her experiences with the Tehkohn, Alanna has learned that the Garkohn have addicted the Missionaries to a plant under their control and intend to assimilate the physically weaker Missionaries and use their technology against the Tehkohn. Aware that she will lose the humans' trust if they realize she is in a relationship with a native, Alanna plays a dangerous game, but is ultimately largely successful, leading the Missionaries to trust (reluctantly) the Tehkohn long enough to escape the influence of both native nations with the Tehkohn's help. At that point, Alanna reveals her relationship to the other humans, is disowned by her father, and returns to live with the Tehkohn.
8447364	/m/0273r5y	Snap!		1997-08-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When Patrick is given a Polaroid camera for his birthday, it leads to a bizarre adventure involving bullies, bras and bank robbers.
8448160	/m/0273rt5	No Place for Grubbs!		1998-03-02		 Coming Soon...
8455493	/m/02741mv	Frog City and the Racing Frogs		2004		 Frog City and the Racing Frogs centres on Todd Tinpot, a frog who needs to win Superfrog in order to avoid being evicted from his home. However he has never trained or raced before. He gets some help from Boris at the gym but can never seem to do well in races. Sly's henchmen almost kill him in one of the races and, as this resulted in Todd missing three races, Todd got a free entry into Superfrog. Todd knew it would be hard to win so, together with Gecko, he times each route to find out which is best. Todd and Gecko are right and, on the day of the race, Todd takes the route they planned, wins the race and stays in his home
8455572	/m/02741ql	Mary: A Fiction	Mary Wollstonecraft			 Mary begins with a description of the conventional and loveless marriage between the heroine's mother and father. Eliza, Mary's mother, is obsessed with novels, rarely considers anyone but herself, and favours Mary's brother. She neglects her daughter, who educates herself using only books and the natural world. Ignored by her family, Mary devotes much of her time to charity. When her brother suddenly dies, leaving Mary heir to the family's fortune, her mother finally takes an interest in her; she is taught "accomplishments", such as dancing, that will attract suitors. However, Mary's mother soon sickens and requests on her deathbed that Mary wed Charles, a wealthy man she has never met. Stunned and unable to refuse, Mary agrees. Immediately after the ceremony, Charles departs for the Continent. To escape a family who does not share her values, Mary befriends Ann, a local girl who educates her still further. Mary becomes quite attached to Ann who is in the grip of an unrequited love and does not reciprocate Mary's feelings. Ann's family falls into poverty and is on the brink of losing their home, but Mary is able to pay off their debts after her marriage to Charles gives her limited control over her money. Ann becomes consumptive and Mary travels with her to Lisbon in hopes of nursing her back to health. There they are introduced to Henry, who is also trying to regain his health. Ann dies and Mary is grief-stricken. Henry and Mary subsequently fall in love but are forced to return to England separately. Mary, depressed by her marriage to Charles and bereft of both Ann and Henry, remains unsettled, until she hears that Henry's consumption has worsened. She rushes to his side and cares for him until he dies. At the end of the novel, Charles returns from Europe; he and Mary establish something of a life together, but Mary is unhealthy and can barely stand to be in the same room with her husband; the last few lines of the novel imply that she will die young.
8456003	/m/0274272	The Mockery Bird				 The story takes place on a (fictitious) tropical island called Zenkali. The island seems to be populated by the most eccentric people who came there from all around the world, along with the two indigenous tribes, the Fangoua and the Ginka. The Ginkas used to worship a dolphin god, while the Fangouas worshipped a strange avian, the Mockery Bird, which was hunted to extinction by the former French colonizers. Zenkali is ruled by King Tamalawala III, usually referred to as "Kingy" by his people. Peter Foxglove arrives to Zenkali to be the assistant of Hannibal Oliphant, Kingy's Political Advisor. Zenkali, once a British colony, is about to get self-government. They are also planning to construct a military base, an airport and a power station, and this will mean the flooding of a large, unexplored valley, owned by the villainous businessman, Looja. Peter, along with the beautiful Audrey Damien, visits the valley before it is totally destroyed, and makes a fantastic discovery: a small population of Mockery Birds still live in the valley! Peter's discovery attracts the attention of the world press, environmentalists, politicians and businessmen from all around the world, and this leads to a couple of adventures. Finally, Professor Droom, a biologist, discovers that the main and only agricultural product of Zenkali, the Amela tree is ecologically linked to the Mockery Birds (explained below), so the flooding of the valley will make the island's economy collapse. Consequently, the construction of the airport is cancelled.
8457233	/m/02743yr	A Touch of Frost	R. D. Wingfield	1987	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The murder of a local drug addict, the hunt for a serial rapist, a hit-and-run involving the spoiled son of an MP, and a robbery at a strip joint all have something in common. Detective Inspector Jack Frost has been assigned with the thankless task of investigating them. Fighting the stress and ignoring his mounting pile of paperwork, Frost soon finds himself up against the various manifestations of criminality...
8457363	/m/027442x	I Will Repay	Baroness Emma Orczy	1906	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts before the French revolution. It's 1783 and wealthy Paul Déroulède has offended the young Vicomte de Marny by speaking disrepctfully of his latest infatuation, Adèle de Monterchéri. Déroulède had not intended to get into the quarrel but has a tendency to blunder into things -- "no doubt a part of the inheritance bequeathed to him by his bourgeois ancestry." Incensed at the slur on Adèle, whom he sees as a paragon of virtue, the Vicomte challenges Déroulède to a duel, a fight which Déroulède does not want—for he knows and respects the boy's father, the Duc de Marny. Swords drawn, the fight ensues in the centre of the salon but despite his noble lineage, the Vicomte de Marny is no match for Déroulède's swordplay, especially when addled with wine and rage. Déroulède disarms his opponent and having won the duel, draws back but the boy refuses to back down without complete satisfaction and demands that Déroulède get down on his knees and apologize. Finally losing his temper with the young Vicomte, Déroulède raises his sword to disarm his protagonist once more, however de Marny lunges wildly at his opponent's breast and manges to literally throw himself on Déroulède's weapon. The boy is dead and Déroulède can do nothing but leave the establishment. On hearing of the death of his only son, the Duc de Marny (by now a cripple and almost a dotard) is distraught. The Duc summons his fourteen-year-old daughter, Juliette, to his side and forces her to swear an oath to ruin Déroulede in revenge for her brother's death, telling her that her brother's soul will remain in torment until the final judgement day should she break her promise. The story picks up ten years later, and Citizen Déroulède, though no longer rich, is a lawyer popular with the people and is allowed to go his own way, for Marat has said of him "I'll n'est pas dangereux". He leads a quiet life, living alone with his mother and his orphaned cousin Anne Mie in the Rue Ecole de Médecine. At 6 pm on 19 August 1793, Juliette Marny walks into the Rue Ecole de Médecine and stopping just outside the house belonging to Citizen-Deputy Déroulède, suddenly starts to draw attention to herself, invoking the anger of the crowd through her proud aristocratic manner. She hammers on Déroulède's door as the crowd shout and lash out at her, but just before they can drag her away, the door opens and she is pulled inside. Having tricked her way into Déroulede's home Juliette is invited to stay for her own safety. She agrees and eventually reveals her identity, but even after hearing Déroulede's side of the story, she fails to realise that he only wishes to make amends for the death of her brother and continues to plot revenge on her host. Unaware of her intentions, Déroulede tells Juliette that he has accepted the post of Governor of the Conciergerie prison where the Queen is imprisoned. Later he is visited at home by Sir Percy Blakeney and Juliette overhears Sir Percy warning his friend off a scheme to free Marie Antoinette, for it is doomed to failure. He advises Déroulede to burn a bundle of papers relating to the plot, which if found would result in him being arrested for treason and sentenced to death. Juliette sees her chance and posts a letter denouncing her host, but realises too late that she has failed to take account of the fact that not only has Paul Déroulede fallen madly in love with her, she has also come to love the man she has vowed to destroy. When soldiers arrive to search Déroulede's home, Juliette hides the letter box, then escapes to her room where she attempts to burn it. She places the burnt remains among her belongings, and when the soldiers discover them, they arrest her. Because the search turned up nothing suspicious against Déroulede he is allowed to remain free. During her trial, Juliette keeps to the story that the burnt letterbox contained love letters. However, Déroulede defends his love and admits that the letters are his own and that he has committed treason. Both of them are sentenced to death. The Scarlet Pimpernel and his comrades manage to rescue the condemned couple on their journey from the courthouse to the prison.
8457510	/m/027448r	Sir Percy Leads the Band	Baroness Emma Orczy	1936	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book starts with a description of the events of January 1793, with the arrest, trial and execution of Louis XVI, King of France (now just known as Louis Capet). The Baron de Batz (a real life figure who also features in the Pimpernel novels Eldorado and The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel) has hatched another impossible plan to rescue the King on his way to the guillotine. De Batz is trying to persuade a Professor (who is actually the Scarlet Pimpernel in disguise) to take him to the Abbé Edgeworth, an Irish priest who remains loyal to the King. He plans to substitute the Priest for the one chosen by the convention to accompany the King to the guillotine and thus spare His Majesty the distress of being with an apostate priest when he will need all of his courage. Disguised as the Professor, Sir Percy refuses to take part in the scheme as he knows that the 500 royalists that De Batz claims to have ready to rush the carriage on the way to the Place de la Revolution and drag the King out, will never get past the 80,000 armed men that will be guarding the route. Monsieur le Professor tells the Baron that he will not drag the Abbé Edgeworth into a scheme which will only lead to his death. It soon become apparent that although the Baron's scheme is doomed to failure he has managed to involve the Abbé Edgeworth anyway. In the chaos after the inevitable royal execution, the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel manage to rescue the priest before he can be arrested and condemned to death. Sir Percy, once more disguised as the Professor takes the priest to the Levet's house. M. Levet's daughter Blanche, is popular with the local young men, but she only has eyes for Doctor Simon Pradel, who has been tending to her ill mother. Blanche in turn is being pursued by Louis Maurin, a young lawyer who is pro the revolution. He is incensed with jealousy over Blanche and is determined to gain her affections by impressing her with his connections. Maurin plots to get the Levet family arrested on a false charge and then take the credit for getting them freed. With this end in mind he reports to the local commission that a stranger, who may be the missing Priest, is staying at the Levet's house and tries to get the professor to back up his story. The Levets are indeed arrested although a thorough search of their house turns up nothing expect the body of Madam Levet who has died following the news of the King's execution. The priest meanwhile has been taken to relative safety in the château de la Rodière where the young Marquis, his mother and sister Cécile are still living with their two loyal servants, even though it has long since been looted by the mob. The Abbé Edgeworth falls ill and Doctor Pradel is called to the château. Although he should report the priest to the police, the doctor is in love with Cécile and so promises to keep the secret. After a difficult night looking after the priest he meets Cécile in the gardens as he is leaving but her brother, the Marquis, sees them talking and infuriated by the doctor's obvious affection towards his sister, beats him about the head with a riding crop. One of the league, Lord St John de Devinne is nearby but does nothing to help the doctor, for he is also in love with Cécile de la Rodière and wants nothing more than to be rid of the Doctor. The news of the attack on the Pradel, who is popular in town, soon gets around and with both Lord St John de Devinne and Louis Maurin out to get him, the plotting starts in earnest. The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel disguise themselves as a group of shabby second-rate musicians, so they can keep track of what is going on. However, Devinne is eaten up by jealously and can no longer be trusted to do what Percy asks of him. To make matters worse Citizen Chauvelin is soon hot on their heels having realised that the plight of the Marquis de la Rodière and his family, is just the sort of situation to attract the attention of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Can the Pimpernel save the innocent Rodière family? What will happen to Doctor Pradel Will the treachery of Lord St John de Devinne be the final undoing of the Pimpernel? Will Chauvelin have his revenge at last? de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge
8459822	/m/027475k	Between the Acts	Virginia Woolf	1941	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in a country house somewhere in England, just before the Second World War. It is the day when the annual pageant is to be performed in the grounds of the house. The pageant is traditionally a celebration of English history, and is attended by the entire local community. The owner of the house is a widower Bartholemew Oliver a retired Indian Army officer. His sister Lucy, who is also living in the house is slightly eccentric but harmless. Oliver has a son, Giles, who has a job in the city and is restless and frustrated. His wife, Isa, is staying at the house with her two children and has lost interest in Giles. She is attracted to a local gentleman farmer, Haines, although the relationship goes no further than eye contact. In the course of the day, Mrs Manresa and her friend William Dodge turn up and stay for the pageant. The pageant has been written by Miss La Trobe, a strange and domineering spinster. The day is interspersed with events leading up to the pageant. Lucy Swithin fusses around making all kinds of preparations, from the decorations to the food. Oliver frightens his grandson by jumping out at him from behind a newspaper and then calls him a coward when he cries. Mrs Manresa flirts with Oliver and Giles and is clearly being provocative, and William Dodge is dismissed as obviously gay. The pageant takes place in the evening and is made up of three main parts. After a prologue by a child, the first scene is a Shakespearean scene with romantic dialogue. The second scene is a parody of a restoration comedy, and the third scene is a panorama of Victorian triumph based on a policeman directing the traffic in Hyde Park. The final scene is entitled "Ourselves", at which point Miss La Trobe shocks the audience by turning mirrors on them. The book ends quietly with life returning to normal.
8462675	/m/02749wj	A Modern Instance	William Dean Howells	1882	{"/m/026llv5": "Literary realism", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel explores the deterioration of what could have been an otherwise healthy marriage through industrial enterprise and capitalistic greed. The story chronicles the rise and fall of the romance between Bartley Hubbard and Marcia Gaylord, who migrate from Equity, Maine to Boston, Massachusetts following their marriage. The reader believes at the beginning of the story that their love for each other is unbreakable, but as the plot advances, more and more troubles arise, alienating the couple. Soon their entire marriage collapses, inundated with problems from a wide array of areas. Marcia Hubbard, lost and desolate in the gloom of her husband's abandonment, is offered solace in the comforting touch of her friend Ben Halleck, who secretly is attracted to her. However, he worries that she may reject him, unable to move on from her previous partner. The story concludes in a meaningless vortex of isolation representing modern society. Marcia Hubbard, still attached to Bartley, confines herself to her father's home in Equity, Maine, from which she never leaves. Bartley, on the other hand, has died. Ben Halleck stands hesitantly, unable to determine whether or not he should seize the chance and propose to her.
8467361	/m/0274h71	Lord Tony's Wife	Baroness Emma Orczy	1917	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The year is 1789 and Pierre Adet, a young French peasant, is incensed at the unfair treatment of the local peasantry, who are no more better off than slaves to the local aristo. His brother-in-law is about to be hanged for poaching two pigeons from the woods belonging to the Duc de Kernogan in Nantes and this proves the final straw. After months of planning Pierre leads a mob against the Duc against the advice of his father. Before the mob have had the chance to storm the Chateau, they come across the Duc's daughter Yvonne returning home and attack her carriage. In the ensuing scuffle, Adet assaults Yvonne 'And just to punish you, my fine lady,' he said in a whisper which sent a shudder of horror right through her, 'to punish you for what you are, the brood of tyrants, proud, disdainful, a budding tyrant yourself, to punish you for every misery my mother and sister have had to endure, for every luxury which you have enjoyed, I will kiss you on the lips and the cheeks and just between your white throat and chin and never as long as you live if you die this night or live to be an hundred will you be able to wash off those kisses showered upon you by one who hates and loathes you --a miserable peasant whom you despise and who in your sight is lower far than your dogs. Shortly afterwards the Duc&#39;s private army arrive and dispatch the mob. Adet is seriously injured and seeks refuge from a local priest before fleeing Nantes and the death sentence which has been passed on him. Determined that someone must pay for the incident, the Duc de Kernogan ensures that Pierre&#39;s father is hanged for his son&#39;s crime. By the time Pierre finds out it is too late and he is driven to seek revenge against the Duc and his daughter. It&#39;s now 1793 and Adet is living in England under the alias of Martin-Roget. He has spent the intervening years educating himself and with the aid of an introductory letter, obtained by blackmailing the Bishop of Brest, has ingratiated himself into English society—to the extent that he has gained the favour of the Duc de Kernogan (who is now living near Bath) and is Yvonne&#39;s favoured suitor. Needless to say, both Yvonne and her father are ignorant of Martin-Roget&#39;s true identity and are unaware that he is seeking revenge. With the help of Chauvelin, he plans to marry Yvonne and lure her and the Duc back to Nantes and to their death as ci-devants on the guillotine. Adet&#39;s plans suffer a setback when he discovers that, warned by Sir Percy that she is at risk from Martin-Roget, Yvonne has eloped with Lord Antony Dewhurst. The Duc, believing that Martin-Roget is a millionaire banker whose marriage to Yvonne would have resulted in substantial funds being given to the French royalist cause, is furious that his plans have been thwarted and refuses to recognise the marriage, which would not be legal in France due to Yvonne&#39;s age. Martin-Roget convinces the Duc that he still wishes to marry Yvonne and soon persuade him to lure Yvonne away from Lord Tony. He then kidnaps her and the three set off for France. Lord Tony must seek the help of The Scarlet Pimpernel to save his wife. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge
8468722	/m/0274k80	The Elusive Pimpernel	Baroness Emma Orczy	1908	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is September 1793 and French Agent and chief spy-catcher Chauvelin is determined to get his revenge for the previous humiliations dished out to him at the hands of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin travels to England as an official representative of the French government tasked with looking after the interests of French citizens, but this is only a cover and his real purpose is to trick Sir Percy Blakeney into returning to France, where he can be captured and put to the guillotine. The plot is hatched at a gala on Richmond Green, with the help of a young French actress, Désirée Candielle, whom Chauvelin has enlisted with promises of money, pardon and fame if she succeeds. Désirée is manning a tent with a model guillotine under the premise of raising money for the poor of Paris. Marguerite Blakeney enters her stall and starts talking to Désirée. On discovering her to be a fellow French actress, she is soon taken in by the young woman's sob story and before long had invited her to perform at her house in Richmond in front of the Prince of Wales. Once the offer has been made and accepted, Désirée's official chaperone is revealed as Chauvelin. Marguerite realises she's been set up, but the offer has been made and Sir Percy insists that both of them should come to his house as arranged. Juliette de Marny (whose rescue by the Scarlet Pimpernel is told in the novel I Will Repay), is staying with them at Blakeney Manor. Chauvelin has managed to get his hands on her family jewels (which were being looked after by the local priest) and has given a diamond necklace, which belonged to Juliette's mother, to Désirée Candielle. When Désirée turns up at the Blakeney's Richmond mansion wearing the jewels there is a bitter argument between the women. Désirée manages to engineer the situation so that Sir Percy must fight Chauvelin in a duel to avenge the insults levied against her—for which they must go to France, as duelling is outlawed in England. The following morning Percy leaves Marguerite behind in Richmond and heads for Boulogne. Chauvelin has no intentions of actually fighting the Englishman, but to ensure the Pimpernel cannot escape before he can be captured, Chauvelin sets a further trap for Marguerite who falls for it completely. Before long she has been arrested for attempting to enter France on a false passport, given to her by an apparently apologetic Désirée Candielle, as part of Chauvelin's plot. With Marguerite in prison and the citizens of Boulogne threatened with death if she escapes, Chauvelin appears to have an air-tight plan to secure and discredit Sir Percy that will end the meddling of the Scarlet Pimpernel for good... but as always Percy is more than a match for his arch-enemy. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge
8469632	/m/0274ldw	Ann Vickers	Sinclair Lewis	1933		 A Bildungsroman, the novel follows the heroine, Ann Vickers, from tomboy school girl in the late 19th Century American Midwest, through college, and into her forties. It charts her post-graduate suffragist phase in the early 20th century. As a suffragist, she is imprisoned, and her experiences there lead her to become interested in social work and prison reform. As a social worker in a settlement house in the First World War she has her first sexual love affair, becomes pregnant and has an abortion. Later, having become successful running a modern and progressive prison for women, she marries a dull man, more out of loneliness than love. Mired in a rather loveless marriage, she falls in love with a controversial (and perhaps corrupt) judge. Flouting both usual middleclass convention as well as that of her progressive social circle in New York, she becomes pregnant by the judge, and has a son.
8471986	/m/0274q01	First Love: A Gothic Tale	Joyce Carol Oates	1996	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 11-year-old Josie arrives in upstate New York to live with her great-aunt after her mother abandons her father for no apparent reason. There, she meets her 25-year-old cousin, Jared, who is studying to be a minister. Her stay is very unpleasant; she is physically and psychologically abused by both her mother and great-aunt. She is also bullied without mercy at her new school. Her mother turns her away for love and comfort. Feeling abandoned and unloved, she turns to Jared for the affection she longs for. However, Jared's intents are anything but to love and care for her. He uses false affection to get her to self-mutilate herself, drink her own blood, look at pornographic material, and endure verbal abuse from him. He soon begins sexually abusing her, which Josie mistakes to be him expressing true love to her, although she knows that what they are doing is wrong. Josie eventually discovers that her mother is incapable of love because she was always felt unimpressed by Josie's father and several other men. After staying there for an extended period of time, Josie starts to have a psychological breakdown within herself, probably from her taboo relationship with Jared. At one point in the novellette, she and Jared, after initiating sexual intercourse by a creek, sit together. Then, Jared cuts his chest with a stone, and Josie licks the blood off before he dies from blood loss. This is the climax of the novella. After, she leaves the mansion, breaking free of Jared's prison.
8472197	/m/0274q78	Prince Prigio				 The plot of Prince Prigio begins with the introduction of a queen who does not believe in fairies. After many childless years, she and the king finally had a boy, Prigio. When the queen refused to invite the fairies to the christening, none of the nobles would attend, and so the king and queen were alone when the fairies arrived and presented the child with gifts. Among the gifts were a never-empty purse (the purse of Fortunatus), seven-league boots, a cap of darkness which would make him invisible, a wishing cap, a magic carpet, and also beauty, courage, and luck, but the last fairy decreed, "My child, you shall be too clever!" This would have pleased the queen, but she did not believe it. She had all the items swept into a lumber room. The prince grew up to be too clever. He would argue with everyone and knew better than everyone. He had two younger brothers, neither of whom was clever, and both of whom were liked; they fell in love with their cousins. The king particularly disliked Prigio, fearing he would claim the throne, and wanted to be rid of him. One day, a firedrake appeared in the country; the king was sorry that it would kill his second son as well as his first before the youngest son killed it, but he would sacrifice him to be rid of Prigio. Prigio, like his mother, refused to believe in its existence and reminded him that it was the youngest son who triumphed, so they should send him at once. Alphonse, his youngest brother, went and was eaten; Prigio, still not believing in firedrakes, thought he had gone off to travel. The king sent Enrico, the second, as well, and he also died. The king tried to send Prigio, who refused because he still disbelieved in the firedrake and also he was the last surviving heir. The king decided to take the rest of the court and abandon Prigio alone in the castle. When they did, Prigio found they also stole every piece of clothing except what he wore. He searched the castle and found the lumber room with the fairies' gifts. The seven-league boots bore him to an inn to eat, and he thought he dreamed it. No one paid any attention to him; he did not know that he was wearing an invisibility cap. He stole food, and when his cap was knocked off, paid from it from the purse -- which he found still full later. Whenever his cap came on or off, he appeared or vanished, but did not realize it. Still invisible, he went to a ball where everyone spoke badly of him except for one lady, who praised his aiding a poor student, and Prigio fell madly in love with her. At once, he believed in fairies and magic and realized everything that had happened to them. He used the things to make himself suitable for the ball and went and met the lady, the daughter of the English Ambassador, Lady Rosalind. When she spoke of the firedrake, he said he would kill it. He went back and found a magical spyglass, which he knew from Arabian Nights and spied out the dragon. He realized that even with his magical gifts, he had no chance, and his brothers had had none. He went to library to find a book by Cyrano de Bergerac about his trip to the moon. In it, he read of the Remora, which was as cold as the firedrake was hot; he resolved to find one and make the creatures fight. He found it using the spyglass, and went both creatures, taunting them in the other's name. The monsters met, fought, and killed each other. He went back to the ambassador's house, and found that his father had issued a proclamation offering a reward for him, and another promising to make the Crown Prince, and marry to his niece, whoever brought the king the firedrake's horns and tail. He also found that his carpet had vanished, a servant having accidentally wished himself to the royal castle, with the firedrake's horns and tail. Then the carpet reappeared, with the servant, the king, and the queen, who refused to believe it. The king refused to be reconciled with Prigio. He tells how the servant claimed the reward, and when they disbelieved him, show them the carpet. During the night, the prince went back and cut off the firedrake's hooves. At court, the servant claimed that the proclamation had promised the reward to whoever brought the horns and tail, not the dragon-slayer. Prigio pointed out that if this was allowed, the king could not claim to say one thing and have meant another, which was a royal prerogative. The niece refused to choose between them. The king finally said that whoever brought its hooves would receive the reward. Prigio produced them at once. The king insisted that he must marry his cousin, the promised niece, at once, or hang. Prigio prefers to hang, but suggested that if he recovered his brothers, the king could remit his sentence. The king agreed. Prigio went back to the castle where he had been abandoned, killed an old cat he found there, burned it, and restored it to life with the water from the Fountain of Lions -- being certain that the fairies would not have neglected it. Having thus tested it, he went to the firedrake's lair and restored his brothers; he then went to the remora's and restored the knights it had frozen. The king was pleased to see his sons but would not restore Prigio to the Crown Princeship. Prigio pointed out he had the water and the firedrake's head, and the king agreed. After a triple wedding, Rosalind suggested to Prigio that he could use the wishing cap and make himself no cleverer than anyone else. Prigio agreed but thought better of it: he wished himself to appear no more cleverer than anyone else.
8475367	/m/0274twy	Tiger Tale			{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story starts with the Tiger, all golden, without his stripes, singing. The Tiger walks through the forest down to the river, singing all the way. He passes the platypus and meets the Bunyip who tells him to go away and stop singing. Leaving the river he meets Kanga, who also tells him to stop singing. Finally Great Bird tells him to stop singing. As tiger goes on his way he notices a bushfire approaching and goes back to the river to summon the other animals, however all three, Bunyip, Kanga and Great Bird all desert him. Tiger runs back and forth from the river to the fire until the fire is extinguished but the Tiger has lost his voice and the soot leaves stripes on his back.
8484788	/m/02752vt	Nunsense	Dan Goggin			 Five of the 19 surviving Little Sisters of Hoboken, a one-time missionary order that ran a leper colony on an island south of France, discover that their cook, Sister Julia, Child of God, accidentally killed the other fifty-two residents of the convent with her tainted vichyssoise while they were off playing bingo with a group of Maryknolls. Upon discovering the disaster, Mother Superior had a vision in which she was told to start a greeting card company to raise funds for the burials. The greeting cards were an enormous success and, thinking there was plenty of money, the Reverend Mother bought a VCR and camcorder for the convent, leaving her with no money in the kitty to pay for the last four burials. With the deceased nuns on ice in the deep freeze, they decide to stage a variety show in the Mount Saint Helen's School auditorium to raise the necessary amount. Participating in the project are Mother Superior Mary Regina, a former circus performer who can not resist the spotlight; her competitive but dignified rival, second-in-command Sister Mary Hubert; Sister Robert Anne, a streetwise nun from Brooklyn; Sister Mary Leo, a novice who is determined to be the world's first ballerina nun; and wacky, childlike Sister Mary Amnesia, who lost her memory when a crucifix fell on her head. The entertainment that they present includes solo star turns, madcap dance routines, and an audience quiz. Naturally, VCRs and camcorders are now no longer such current or expensive devices, so modern presentations of the show tend to substitute newer or more generic terms such as "home entertainment system" or a "plasma TV".
8485067	/m/0275364	The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight	James Redfield		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 The story is set in the mountains of Tibet in search of the mythical place called Shambhala (also known as Shangri-La), accessible only by raising one's spiritual attunement to a high enough level. Among other things, the book touches on the concept of prayer energy and heaven and earth coming together.
8488932	/m/02758xv	Frost at Christmas	R. D. Wingfield	1987	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 As Christmas approaches Detective Inspector Jack Frost is on the trail of a sensitive case with limited time to solve it. Tracy Uphill, an eight year old child, goes missing after attending Sunday school. It turns out her mother is a prostitute who couldn’t meet her because she was with a client. There are many suspects and characters to trouble DI Frost’s mind including; the mother’s client with a false alibi, the vicar with a penchant for pornography and a local psychic who claims she knows where to find the body of the young girl. At the same time other cases also need to be solved as Frost has to investigate attempted break-ins at a local bank and a 30-year-old skeleton with a severed arm. Detective Constable Clive Barnard, the nephew of the Chief Constable, is another problem Frost faces. While many believe that DC Barnard has only got into CID through his family connections and his all-knowing attitude does not help to improve his image, Frost seems to be the only person understanding the young cop and becomes his mentor.
8490323	/m/0275bbz	The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu	Sax Rohmer	1913	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 We meet first Dr Petrie who is immediately surprised by a late night visitor, “a tall, lean ... square cut ... sun baked” man who turns out to be his good friend (Commissioner Sir Denis) Nayland Smith of Burma, formerly of Scotland Yard, who has come directly from Burma. We then learn that various men associated with India are the target of assassination by the Chinese Dr Fu Manchu, who seems to have been active in Burma (as distinct from India), in places such as Rangoon, Prome, Moulmein and the “Upper Irrawaddy”, and who comes to England with dacoits and thuggees. Fu Manchu is pursued from the opium dens of Limehouse in the East End of London to various country estates. We learn that Dr Fu Manchu is a leading member not of “old China”, the Mandarin class of the Manchu dynasty, or “young China”, a new generation of “youthful and unbalanced reformers” with “western polish” - but a “Third Party”. Nayland Smith is outwitted several times by Fu Manchu, and thus he reflects more the narrow escapes of the later Bulldog Drummond rather than the “logical” superior approach of the earlier Sherlock Holmes. Fu Manchu is a master poisoner and chemist, a cunning member of the Yellow Peril, “the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on the earth for centuries”, though his mission is not exactly clear at this stage. He appears to be trying to capture and take back to China the best engineers of Europe, for some larger criminal purpose. By the end of the book, Fu Manchu’s slave Karamaneh, a beautiful Arab woman, apparently now in love with Dr Petrie, and her brother Aziz, are freed, and Inspector Weymouth, driven mad by an injection of serum from Fu Manchu, is restored to sanity by Fu Manchu, who appears to have escaped from a fire which destroys the house he had previously entered.
8494102	/m/0275gmh	Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End of Enderby	Anthony Burgess		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The aging poet has been hired to write the libretto for a musical about William Shakespeare and relocates to the fictional Indiana town of Terrebasse. He must work with collaborators who seem more interested in crude show-biz entertainment than Enderby's intricately rhymed Elizabethan-style verses, and the show's backer - the ostentatious local matron, Mrs. Schoenbaum. The co-star, in the Dark Lady role, is the lusciously black pop-diva April Elgar--and Enderby, consumed with lust, is soon tailoring the show to her non-Elizabethan talents. April is a well-educated daughter of a Carolinian family and is not unresponsive to Enderby's infatuation. She invites Enderby to her home for Christmas, where he must pose as a clergyman, preaching an incoherent sermon to a Baptist congregation. Eventually, the opening night of 'Actor on his Ass' - as the show is now titled - arrives and Enderby is forced to take over the role of Shakespeare. Although Anatole Broyard of The New York Times considered the book funny and clever, he concluded that it was "not as good as the previous three books."
8494432	/m/0275gxf	Dead and Alive	Dean Koontz	2009	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Deucalion, the legendary monster, is a heroic figure dedicated to battling the evil that gave him life. The megalomaniacal Victor Helios has unleashed his engineered killers on modern-day New Orleans. Detectives Carson O'Connor and Michael Maddison are Deucalion's all-too-human partners trying to end the reign of terror of Helios's killers.
8494835	/m/0275h6d	The Tritonian Ring	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When the gods resolve to destroy Lorsk, principal kingdom of the sinking continent of Pusad, because Prince Vakar, heir to its throne, is thought to be a threat to them, the king sends the prince on a quest to save the realm from destruction. Vakar is tasked with traveling the known world in search of what the gods most fear, accompanied only by his servant, Fual. He finds himself hampered by ignorance of just what that might be and continual attempts to murder him by parties unknown; meanwhile, his treasonous brother Kuros is plotting with the pirates of the Gorgon Isles, Lorsk's enemies, to overthrow their father. On his quest Vakar encounters Amazons, a seductive queen who is under a spell, an amorous centauress, sorcerers who command legions of headless warriors, and the dangerous Gorgonians themselves, masters of the medusas with their paralyzing glares.
8495309	/m/0275hn4	The House by the Churchyard	Sheridan Le Fanu	1863		 The novel begins with a prologue in the voice of an old man, Charles de Cresseron, that is set in Chapelizod, Ireland, roughly a century after the events of the novel proper. This prologue details how, during an interment at the churchyard of the title, a skull is accidentally unearthed, which bears the marks of two crushing blows to the head and &ndash; even more disconcertingly &ndash; a small hole from a trepanning. The novel itself is Cresseron's reconstruction of the history related to this grisly item (though by and large his narratorial voice drops out and the novel is told from a conventional omniscient narrator's point of view). The first chapter of the novel proper moves back to 1767, the period of the novel, and begins with another mysterious occurrence in the churchyard: the secretive burial of a coffin, with the occupant simply identified on the brass plaque as "R.D." But after this ominous opening the book turns (in its first half) to the careful and largely light-hearted elaboration of the social life and intrigues among the denizens of Chapelizod, from the powerful Lord Castlemallard to the soldiers in the local barracks under General Chattesworth, to the good Doctor Walsingham and his daughter Lily, to the gluttonous local Catholic priest Father Roach. The opening section of the novel is largely taken up by a farcical duel between two soldiers, Puddock and O'Flaherty, which arises from drunken misunderstanding and eventually is defused without any harm done. Le Fanu introduces hints of unease, though, with the advent of the mysterious Mr Mervyn, who takes up residence in the Tiled House, a building widely rumoured to be haunted. (At this point, Le Fanu interpolates a ghost story, "An Authentic Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand", which has often been separately anthologized.) Mervyn courts the daughter of the General, Gertrude Chattesworth, but has a rival in the scheming Mr Dangerfield, the trusted manager of the English estates of Lord Castlemallard who is visiting Chapelizod and who also has his eye on Gertrude. Dangerfield destroys the romance between Mervyn and Gertrude by setting into circulation vicious rumours about him and his family. Mervyn is in fact the son and heir of the late Lord Dunoran, who was found guilty of murdering a man named Beauclerc to whom he had lost a considerable sum at cards; Dunoran then committed suicide in his prison cell. (It was his coffin that was buried at the beginning of the book &ndash; the secrecy required because of the dubiousness of burying a suicide on consecrated ground.) The centre of the novel is the dark web of intrigue surrounding Doctor Sturk, the military doctor (who is on the brink of bankruptcy) and Charles Nutter, the local agent for Lord Castlemallard, whom Sturk both hates and envies. Sturk is troubled by vague recollections about Dangerfield, and gradually realizes that he is in fact the wily and dangerous Charles Archer, who actually committed the murder of Beauclerc. (The only other person who knows about the identity of Charles Archer is Mr Irons, the church clerk, who was originally his accomplice.) Foolishly, Sturk tries to blackmail Dangerfield, and is later discovered in Phoenix Park with his head clubbed in. Sturk survives the attack but is left in a coma. Confusing matters, however, is the simultaneous disappearance under a cloud of Nutter, who is being tormented by Mary Matchwell/Mary Duncan, a professional con artist and schemer who infiltrates the Nutter household by offering to tell Mrs Nutter's fortune. Mrs Matchwell accuses Nutter of bigamy, having married her long ago; he sets off to attempt to prove that she herself was already married at the time and that her husband is still living. Unfortunately, he ends up in the Park just at the time of Sturk's meeting with Dangerfield, and when he hears the sounds of the attack he runs to the scene; his footprints are thus later found at the scene of the crime and he becomes a suspect. Nutter disappears (after anonymously reporting the crime) and for a long time is assumed to have committed suicide, especially after a body is pulled from the river; but he is eventually discovered and put in jail, pending trial for the attack on Sturk. At this point Dangerfield, who has befriended Mrs Sturk, decides to try to ensure Sturk's death (and perpetual silence) by having him trepanned, which he has been assured by medical experts is guaranteed to kill him. However, he is unfortunate enough to secure the services of "Black Dillon", a debt-ridden, alcoholic doctor from Dublin who is, however, an unusually capable surgeon. When Dillon is several hours late for the appointment at Sturk's house, Dangerfield gives up and leaves, but Dillon arrives and (in the absence of Dangerfield, and much to everybody's surprise) manages to succeed in the operation. Sturk dictates a deathbed account of Dangerfield's attack on him and the murder of Beauclerc; Irons, discovering that the game is up, adds his own story to the record. Shortly thereafter Sturk dies at last. Dangerfield is apprehended after a violent scuffle with the authorities, and in the subsequent trial is found guilty. He contrives to avoid hanging by a strange strategem: he seals off the ventilation in his cell and uses the charcoal brazier that is his bed-warmer to suffocate himself. Before his death he gives a full confession of his deeds to Mervyn (now acknowledged as Lord Dunoran). Aside from the main outline of the suspense plot, there are countless other characters and subplots. Most of these are comical, such as Captain Cluffe's attempt to woo the elderly (and rich) Rebecca Chattesworth. There is one serious subplot: the ill-starred romance between the alcoholic but romantic rake Captain Devereux and the virtuous Lily Walsingham. Their romance is scuppered when he is accused of "ruining" a young girl and having promised to marry her (he denies the latter, at least). Lily turns down Devereux's offer of marriage, and eventually pines away and dies. Devereux makes attempts to reform himself, but it is too late.
8497022	/m/0275kw0	Eclipse	Stephenie Meyer	2007-08-07	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens with the revelation that Seattle, Washington is being plagued by a string of murders, which Edward suspects is caused by a new vampire that is unable to control its thirst for human blood. As Edward and Bella apply to colleges, Bella explains to Edward her desire to see her friend, Jacob Black, a werewolf. Although Edward fears for her safety, Bella insists that neither Jacob nor his wolf pack would ever harm her, and she begins visiting him occasionally. On one of these visits, Jacob tells Bella that he is in love with her, and wants her to choose him instead of Edward, but Bella says she just sees him as a friend. Meanwhile, Alice Cullen has a vision that Victoria, a vampire who is hunting Bella for revenge, has returned to Forks. A few days later, Edward proposes to Bella and, despite harboring an aversion to marriage, she accepts. Bella and the Cullens soon realize that the Seattle murders are being committed by an "army" of newborn vampires, controlled by Victoria. The Cullens join forces with the wolf pack to combat this threat. As everyone else prepares for battle, Edward, Bella and Jacob camp in the mountains, hidden during the battle, where they are later joined by Seth Clearwater, a young wolf pack member, to wait out the fight. In the morning, Jacob becomes upset when he overhears Edward and Bella discussing their engagement and threatens to join the fight and get himself killed. Bella stops Jacob by kissing him, and she comes to realize that she is in love with him as well. During the battle, Victoria tracks Edward's scent to Bella's forest hiding place, and Edward is forced to fight. Edward manages to kill Victoria and her vampire army is destroyed. Afterwards, Bella explains to Jacob that while she loves him, her love for Edward is greater.
8497170	/m/0275l4_	Remnant Population	Elizabeth Moon	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrative starts when Sims Bancorp has lost the franchise to run a colony on the unnamed planet after 40 years, and the colonists are informed of this.. The colonists are informed that Sims Bancorp has lost the franchise, and that they are to be forcibly relocated to another colony. The colonists are given no say as to the time table for the evacuation, nor their destination, and are told to pack, and get ready to leave, and that is it. Ofelia realises that at her age she is effectively non-productive, and is also told this by one of the "company reps." The cost of her relocation will be charged to her family, with whom she does not get on that well. She also knows that her chance of surviving the extended (30 years +) journey in "cold sleep" are poor, at best. She also has spent the best years (and most of her years) on the planet, burying her husband, and a number of children. Basically she does not wish to leave, and knows that if she does she will never arrive at the destination. When the time comes for her to be evacuated she runs off and hides. Due to her age, and the deadline the evacuation ship and crew have to meet, the crew of the evacuation ship fake the record and show her as evacuated, knowing that they can record her as "deceased in transit." Due to her age this will be believed, and not investigated. (Again, this is not explicitly stated, but later on no one knows how she got there, as everyone was evacuated according to "official records," yet we know she was left behind.) Ofelia now finds herself in a position she has never been in before. She can do as she wishes, when she wishes, without censure. She re-activates the bio-power plant that serves the village. With electricity, and the small kitchen gardens next to her cottage and others, she knows she will be able to meet her needs for many years to come. She is also helped as the departing colonists left behind large quantities of preserved food which she collects up and stores in the central administration building. She takes care of maintenance of the colony, as best she can, happy with the idea she will live out the rest of her life undisturbed, with all her needs met. Some time (perhaps years?? Again not stated) later her peace is disturbed. While in the communications centre of the colony perusing the colony logs she picks up a radio transmission. She quickly realises this transmission is from a ship or ships in orbit preparing to land new colonists who will set up a new colony. Knowing her peace will soon be interrupted she listens in to the transmissions as the ships prepare, and then launch, landing craft. Initially the landing of the new colony goes according to plan, automated machinery/robots clear the ground and create a landing grid (runway) for the rest of the craft carrying the colonists. The following day the new colonists start to arrive and build the new colony. Then things take an unexpected turn. The arriving colonists are attacked by a local life-form. One landing craft on the ground is hit by an explosive device, and the landing grid on which it is sitting is damaged. The colony ship in orbit is unable to assist. The landing grid is damaged, so rescue attempts can not be made after night fall, and in any event the colony ship has no military personnel or weapons to fight back with. By the following morning all the colonists have been killed. The orbiting ship is unwilling to send more landing craft in the face of resistance from potentially intelligent natives, even if they could. Further landing attempts cannot be made as the only craft left to them require a landing grid, and the machinery/robots needed to build one have already made planet fall and been destroyed. They have no choice but to return to base, and inform the relevant authorities and let these authorities sort out the situation. Ofelia knows that FTL (Faster-than-light) ships will soon arrive to investigate, as the authorities can afford such technology. For colonising planets the companies prefer a cheaper, if slower, sub-light transit. As she is as much in the dark about what happened as the colony ships she returns home, and continues in her peaceful life, knowing that she can do nothing. At the aborted landing site the aboriginal inhabitants of the planet discuss the events, the arrival of the ships, and the fight to repel the invaders. It is remembered by some of the natives that about 40 years ago similar signs in the sky were seen (contrails of shuttle) but as the area the signs originated from were many days (Weeks?) travel to the south, about 1,000 kilometres, in an area not inhabited by the natives, and nothing came of it to affect "the people" it was soon put out of mind. Now, however, the events of 40 years ago are relevant. A number of the indigenous population decide to go and investigate the area the last landing took place. This group travel to the site of the original colony, and investigate the village found, and start to observe Ofelia. By this time Ofelia has made for herself a cloak that, quite by chance, draws on the folk lore and instincts of the natives. They see her as what she is, a Grandmother. Or in their own terms a "Nest Guardian". I.E. one who is too old to breed, and so devotes her time to caring for the young of others, both guarding them and seeing to their education . In the society of the natives Nest Guardians are sacred, and so Ofelia is safe from attack, and if anything is revered by the natives. They learn from her, as she learns from them, and it soon becomes apparent to her that they are fully sapient, and very, very, intelligent, from a very young age. One of the natives gives birth, and Ofelia takes up the position expected of her as "Nest Guardian" to the 3 newborns. Then the FTL ships arrive (an unspecified length of time later) carrying Specialists in Xeno contact. They scan the planet surface, and see what the previous assay of the planet missed- Cities along several coastlines & large groups of nomadic hunters on the plains. They then land and start to study the natives. The specialists are highly sceptical of Ofelia's claims as to the natives intelligence and self-awareness, and dismissive of her in general as they see her as a poorly educated senile old lady. They admit without realising it that their training is all theory, as no non-human intelligent life has ever been discovered. Some time later the natives disclose to Ofelia the reason for their attack on the new colony. The landing ships picked a breeding site to land on (in Human terms, they landed on a combination of maternity ward and crèche), many nests were destroyed, Nest Guardians and young were killed. All the tribes of 'the people' (the natives name for themselves) in that area united against the attack on their nests, as nests and Nest Guardians are sacred. They viewed the attackers (the colony landing ships) as nothing more than mindless animals to be exterminated without quarter. After all, any intelligent creature would have seen and recognised the markers that designated the area as a breeding site, safe from attack. The natives are not interested in dealing with the specialists. Ofelia is their Nest Guardian, and only Nest Guardians can negotiate and make treaties with the Nest Guardians of other tribes. The new-comers, the specialists, are of a differing tribe, and as a result the people cannot deal with them. Ofelia, being a Nest Guardian for both the people and the Humans, is able to negotiate on behalf of both sides. The specialists have a hard time believing this, let alone coming to terms with it and working with it. As a result an altercation between the natives and a member of the investigating team takes place. One member of the team attacks one of the young natives, and attempts to strangle it, and is killed by the hunters in the group, an act that is seen by the rest of the group, both human and native, as "justified lethal force". As the deceased member of the human team was the one who most strongly resisted granting the natives rights, the remaining team members recognise the intelligence of the natives of the planet, and decide that conflict is best avoided. They note that the pace at which the natives are progressing technologically far exceeds that of the human society. One team member even notes that while it may take thousands of years to arrive at working space flight from scratch, it might be considerably quicker if you know it's possible from the start, and estimates the natives will have space travel in under 100 years, given the fact they have now electricity (from the power plant), and have working, if damaged, space ships to copy. It is realised that the only way to avoid conflict with the natives is either to make friends with them or to exterminate them totally. A program is set up to recruit nest Guardians from within the OAP human population on all human planets, so that the natives and humans grow together as partners. The narrative closes with the death of Ofelia, who "did not die alone, as she expected, but did die with a smile on her face." . fr:La Résistante
8499860	/m/0275p58	The Moomins and the Great Flood	Tove Jansson	1945	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Moominmamma and Moomintroll are travelling through a dark and scary forest looking for Moominpappa, who has gone off adventuring with the Hattifatteners. They meet a little creature, who joins them (in later books he is named Sniff). They use a tulip to light their way, and are attacked by a giant snake. They are saved when a beautiful young girl with shining blue hair called Tullipa comes out of the tulip and scares the snake away. They later find the home of an old man, who invites them to live in his garden, which is made entirely of sweets. However when they find out that the sun is made of shiny paper, they leave and continue their journey. Moominmamma is attacked by an ant-lion, but is rescued by the others. They then find the hattifatteners and get onto one of their boats with them. The boat does not appear to be going in any particular direction, so the group invite a sea-troll to come aboard and steer the ship. They reach land, and the hattifatteners and sea troll depart. The group goes in search for Moominpappa and find a lighthouse lived in by a red haired boy. He says that he saw Moominpappa. Moominmamma, Moomintroll and the small creature rush off to search, while Tulippa stays to live with the red haired boy. They soon find that a flood has begun, and they rescue a cat and her kittens before using a chair as a boat to search for Moominpappa. They find a message of help in a bottle from Moominpappa, and with the help of a stork, find Moominpappa stuck up a tree. They rescue him and go to dry land, however, Moominpappa is very upset that he has lost Moominhouse, which he just built for the family, as it has drifted away in the flood. They go for a walk, and in a beautiful valley, find that the blue Moominhouse has been washed up by the flood and landed there.
8499947	/m/0275p9r	The Exploits of Moominpappa	Tove Jansson	1950	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Moominpappa has written his autobiography of his amazing life, and he tells it to his son Moomintroll, and to Moomintroll's friends, Sniff and Snufkin. In his tale, he at first was left at an orphanage, but after finding it boring and disliking the strict headmistress Hemulen, he leaves and meets a new friend, Hodgkin. Hodgkin and Moominpappa meet the Joxter (Snufkin's father) and the Muddler (Sniff's father). Together they build a boat, in which to live. They fool the enormous Edward the Booble into helping to set the ship off. After realising their trickery he becomes very angry, but they sail away. They rescue a Hemulen from being eaten by a Groke, however the Hemulen is very bossy, and soon they abandon her with the Niblings. One young Nibling stows aboard their ship, and travels with them. They eventually reach a far away land, where they meet the Mymble family. The Mymble's daughter befriends them and together they go to Daddy Jones (the King's) 100th birthday party where they all win prizes. They then set up new homes on an island, however are spooked by the island ghost. They manage to make a deal with the ghost, and they befriend him. Meanwhile, Hodgkins has designed the Amphibian - a sort of land/sea ship for Daddy Jones. On its maiden voyage, it is attacked by a giant fish, but they are saved when Edward the Booble steps on the fish. The Muddler then marries the Fuzzy, and Moominpappa rescues another Moomin and her handbag from the sea. She turns out to be Moominmamma. The story ends, and links chronologically with The Moomins and the Great Flood.
8505036	/m/02pf423	The Last of the Jedi: Secret Weapon	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 It begins on the planet Bellassa, where parts of a secret weapon is being built by the Galactic Empire, with Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin overlooking the process to make sure that it remains secret. They are also joined by Ferus Olin, a former Jedi apprentice and rebel leader. Ferus joins the dark side in the same way Anakin was seduced by the dark side, and Palpatine promises to give him the power over life and death. es:Secret Weapon
8509988	/m/0275_t9	The Godwulf Manuscript	Robert B. Parker	1973	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set in the early 1970s, this novel serves as the introduction to Spenser, a private investigator in Boston. Spenser is hired by Bradford W. Forbes, the president of the fictional Taft university (heavily implied to be Northeastern) to recover a stolen illuminated manuscript, a medieval document of great historical and literary importance. It is being held ransom by an unknown organization that demands $100,000 be donated to a free school for the manuscript's return. It has no inherent monetary value and cannot be fenced. Head of campus security Carl Tower recommends investigating a radical student group called 'SCACE' (Student Committee Against Capitalist Exploitation) and their secretary, Terry Orchard. After talking to her and boyfriend Dennis Powell, Spenser receives a call from Terry in the middle of the night requesting help. Spenser arrives at her apartment to find Dennis murdered, the killer having used Terry's gun, and Terry under the influence of an unknown drug. He determines that the murder is an attempt to frame Terry and from that point is determined to clear her name, believing the missing manuscript and Dennis's murder are related. Spenser's investigation leads him to Lowell Hayden, an English professor at the university who is reputedly an anonymous member of SCACE. Spenser asks permission of the English Department head to interview the members of the faculty but is rebuffed. Ignoring the department head's warning Spenser sneaks up to Hayden's office and interviews him anyway. Hayden denies knowing either Dennis Powell or Terry Orchard, although Spenser believes Hayden does in fact know them. Spenser leaves the English Department offices and is met by campus security: he has been summarily 'fired' from finding the manuscript. Spenser is summoned to meet Joe Broz, a local crime lord, shortly after talking to Hayden. Broz warns Spenser to stop his investigation and hints that the manuscript will be returned if he does. The very next day the manuscript is anonymously returned to the university, just as Broz said it would be. Undeterred by this series of events Spenser continues his investigation to prove Terry's innocence in the murder of Powell and tie it to the theft of the manuscript. Spenser tries to contact Cathy Connelly, Terry Orchard's former roommate and the only other person who knew Terry owned a gun. Connelly doesn't answer her door so Spenser breaks in. He finds Connelly's body floating in the bathtub, in his estimation murdered. Boston Police Captain Yates believes the death was accidental but his subordinates, Lieutenant Martin Quirk and Sergeant Frank Belson, believe otherwise. Nor do they believe Terry Orchard murdered Dennis Powell. Spenser begins working unofficially with Quirk and Belson to find the truth behind the Powell and Connelly murders. This is the first of many such collaborations that continue throughout the Spenser series. It is a mutually beneficial relationship: the police are able to use Spenser to gather information that they could not obtain through strictly legal channels and Spenser is able to use police resources to which he would not normally have access. After a gun battle with some of Broz's gun thugs near Jamaica Pond in Boston and a life and death struggle with Broz's top hit man in a Boston hotel, Spenser ties Joe Broz to Lowell Hayden, leading to Hayden's arrest and possibly Broz's arrest. Dennis Powell was in fact dealing heroin on the university campus, heroin supplied by Broz to Hayden, and Hayden to Powell. Hayden believed the heroin would allow people to realize the truth behind SCACE's anarchist ideals; Powell dealt it for the sake of the money to be made from it. Believing Powell had betrayed SCACE Hayden had Broz put a hit on Powell, orchestrated the framing of Terry Orchard for the crime, and murdered Cathy Connelly himself to cover it up. The manuscript was stolen by Powell at Hayden's behest to help fund SCACE's cause. Broz had Hayden return it in the hopes that Spenser would drop the case before discovering the heroin distribution scheme.
8514713	/m/02765h7	Dearly Devoted Dexter	Jeff Lindsay		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sergeant Doakes, a detective in Homicide, has grown suspicious of Dexter and begun tailing him in his free time, making it impossible for Dexter to investigate (and perhaps kill) someone he suspects of complicity in the abduction, pornographic molestation and murder of a series of young boys. When an unknown man is found bizarrely mutilated, Doakes recognizes the work of a torturer nicknamed "Doctor Danco" (after a brand of knives), who served with Doakes during the Salvadoran Civil War and has come to Miami to take revenge on his former comrades. Danco drugs his victims with painkillers and psychotropics and, over a period of several days, surgically removes their limbs, genitalia, lips, tongue and eyelids, before leaving them to contemplate themselves in a carefully placed mirror. Dexter is drawn into the case when Danco abducts his sister Deborah's new boyfriend, detective Kyle Chutsky. Amidst all the chaos, Dexter finds himself accidentally engaged to his girlfriend Rita. He perceives a "dark passenger" similar to his own in Rita's children Astor and Cody, and looks forward to teaching them as his foster-father had taught him. At the climax of the story, Dexter learns that Danco's murder ritual includes a word game resembling hangman. Each victim is asked to guess a word chosen for them by Danco, each wrong answer – or unintelligible answer, after removal of the tongue – resulting in the amputation of a body part. cs:Drasticky dojemný Dexter es:Querido Dexter fr:Le Passager noir it:Il nostro caro Dexter lt:Dearly Devoted Dexter pl:Dekalog dobrego Dextera pt:Dearly Devoted Dexter ru:Добрый друг Декстер simple:Dearly Devoted Dexter fi:Dexterin kolkko kutsumus
8517053	/m/027687_	The Big Bad Wolf	James Patterson	2003	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dr. Alex Cross is in the middle of his training at the FBI when he is assigned to work on a kidnapping case. A federal judge's wife has been kidnapped, and Dr. Cross discovers that her kidnapping fits the pattern of other recent kidnappings. A Russian mobster known as "The Wolf" has been kidnapping people and selling them into sexual slavery. In addition to the judge's wife, his subordinates also kidnap a housewife, and several male college students for clients. Though Cross is able to identify The Wolf as a key player in the human trafficking ring, his true identity and whereabouts remain a mystery. The only method of contacting him is through a high-tech, secure website, and any person the FBI manages to take into custody ends up dead at the hands of a mole. Eventually, with the assistance of the New York City Police Department, Central Intelligence Agency, Secret Service, and the Russian government, the FBI is able to arrest a man by the name of Andrei Prokopev. Though the FBI believes him to be The Wolf, it is revealed at the very end of the novel that The Wolf is, in fact, still at large.
8518130	/m/02769mn	Knights of Forty Islands	Sergey Lukyanenko	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dima, a 14-years boy who used to fight on streets of his native city Alma-ata, now has to fight in a place where swords are used instead of fists. The new environment consists of forty islands, each connected to three others via high and narrow bridges. There is a castle on each island; and about 15-18 kids ("knights") live in each one. The islands are distinct: dictatorship or democracy, a brutal rude leader or a kind one. The population is made up of approximately 70% boys and 30% girls in homogenous or heterogeneous national groups, no one older than 18. Everyone wants to return home, but to do so they are told they must conquer all 40 islands - then, the aliens promised, they would return the winners to their homes. There are also several rules of engagement, also set down by aliens. Swords are wooden at first, but a sword turns steel when the wielder feels hatred and desire to kill towards the opponent. Although retaining the world of feelings of usual children, these "knights" change: they learn to fight to the death, not to pay much attention to wounds; they cover friends and take revenge for fallen ones. Dima sees his new friends being killed, and he kills, too. The way of life at the islands is very stable, since the aliens take into account human psychology and sociology, even though they don't understand human feelings, relationships and motivation. Also, as it turns out, they had a long time, decades, of trial and error. Dima and Inga, a girl he knew on Earth, propose the establishment of a Confederation of islands as the way to stop the Game, and get support among their peers. Some knights refuse to join the Confederation and are killed when they do not surrender to the conquerors. However, the Confederation, even realized, proves to be unstable and is doomed from the beginning: though most want to return home, some only want power for themselves... Also, this attempt was not the first: Dima and his friends discover a hidden room with remains of children who got on islands during the Second World War and locked themselves in, when their attempt of Union of Islands collapsed because of betrayal. But the heroes also find old weapons in this room, including dynamite. Now the action rushes...
8518457	/m/0276b2f	Nuclear Dream	Sergey Lukyanenko	1990	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 On the post-nuclear landscape of the United States, it is hard to survive. The most ruthless individuals are dragons, who reject their own humanity, as well as the notion of kindness. Those who survived in underground bunkers don't like to visit the surface because life there is so brutal. However, the protagonist knows of an automated missile base that is programmed to perform a delayed nuclear strike &mdash; delayed to twenty years after the War, a time that is quickly approaching. Mike, a man from "Reserv-6", meets Drago, a "dragon" who can communicate telepathically with his dog, Prince. As the three journey to stop the missile &mdash; aimed at Russia &mdash; from launching, Drago learns much about himself that he didn't know, and, by the end, questions his status as a dragon altogether.
8520267	/m/0276dc9	Crank	Ellen Hopkins	2004	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Crank takes place the summer before and during the protagonist Kristina's junior year of high school. She is a straight-A honor roll student and decides to visit her father for three weeks. Kristina meets the character Adam in Albuquerque, where she is staying with her father. Adam convinces Kristina to try Crank (Methamphetamine), or "the monster", but Kristina runs away the first time she tries it. She is attacked by three men, but before anything can happen to her she is saved by Adam. An antagonist, Lince, Adam’s girlfriend, sees him comforting Kristina and jumps off of a balcony in a suicide attempt. Kristina starts a relationship with Adam, but feels guilty about Lince. When the three weeks are over, Kristina goes back to Reno, Nevada, where her mother’s house is. Kristina is now addicted to Crank. In Reno, Kristina, now calling herself Bree, meets the characters Brendan and Chase at a water-park, and they exchange numbers. They both promise her Crank. Chase and Kristina begin to get closer to one another, and they begin dating, though not exclusively. Kristina goes to see the antagonist Brendan, asking for more Crank. Brendan drives them both out into the woods, where they get high together, and he starts to take off her clothes. When she says no, he becomes violent, claiming that he has “waited weeks,” so she should “put up and shut up”. He then starts ripping her clothes off and takes her virginity. Afterwards, Brendan takes her home and makes her pay for the drugs, even though he had just raped her. At home Kristina, still high and shaken up from the rape, writes a letter to the character Adam telling him she was raped. Soon though she abandons her letter and calls Chase to come over while her parents are out. Chase comes over and she tells him about Brendan before trying to persuade him to have sex with her. Chase says no, wanting to wait until she had healed from her rape. However, she does end up having sex with him later in the novel. Kristina gets caught hitchhiking by a cop and goes to Juvenile hall, where she gets a direct connection to a Meth lab in Mexico through an inmate. Once she is released from Juvenile hall, Kristina uses her mom’s Visa card to pay for the illegal narcotic, and she takes her new supply to her druggie friends on “The Avenue.” At this part of the novel, Kristina has become a drug dealer, which she describes as making her instantly more “popular.” Kristina now has a very large amount of Crank on her hands, so she is getting high even more often. This leads to her becoming more irritable, causing her relationship with her mom to become even more strained. Kristina is also not showing up to classes, because she is spending all of her time getting high and dealing drugs on “The Avenue”. The story continues with Kristina discovering she is pregnant, soon after Brendan had raped her. Kristina spends the following days going through the symptoms of drug withdrawal. During this time in the novel, she believes that Chase is the father, having had sex with Chase a couple of weeks after being raped. Although after going to Planned Parenthood, she realizes Brendan is actually the father. At this point in the novel, Kristina begins to struggle with deciding if she should go through with the pregnancy because she “Feared the uncertainty of choosing parenthood” and “Doubted [she] could give [her] baby away”. Kristina decides to have an abortion, but after feeling “A flutter in [her] belly,” the child moving, she decides to keep her baby. After making this decision, Kristina tells her mother and stepfather about her addiction to Crank and her pregnancy, although she does not reveal who the father is. The novel continues with Kristina giving birth to a baby boy described as healthy. The narrative ends with Kristina implying that she is still using drugs, but is trying to stop.
8522978	/m/0276hgq	The Custom of the Country	Edith Wharton	1913	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Spraggs, a family of midwesterners from the fictional city of Apex who have made money through somewhat shady financial dealings, arrive in New York City at the prompting of their beautiful, ambitious, but socially naive daughter, Undine. She marries Ralph Marvell, a member of an old New York family that no longer enjoys significant wealth. Before her wedding, Undine encounters an acquaintance from Apex named Elmer Moffatt, a character with “a genuine disdain for religious piety and social cant,” as the scholar Elaine Showalter observes. Undine begs him not to do anything that will endanger her wedding to Ralph. Elmer agrees. Although Ralph dotes on Undine, his finances do not permit the extravagant lifestyle Undine desires, and she feels that her in-laws scorn her. When she becomes pregnant, she is disconsolate; and she neglects her son, Paul, after he is born. Alone in Europe, Undine begins an affair with the nouveau riche Peter Van Degen, who is married to Ralph's cousin, Clare. She then divorces Ralph in the hope of marrying Peter, but this does not work out: Peter seems to want nothing more to do with Undine, and Clare will not grant him a divorce anyway. As a divorcee, Undine loses her high position in society, and spends a few years living in North Dakota, New York, and Paris, scheming to scramble up the social ladder again. In Paris, a French count, Raymond de Chelles, falls in love with Undine. They desire to get married, but, as a Catholic, Raymond cannot marry a divorcée. To procure enough money to bribe the Pope to annul Undine's previous marriage, Undine blackmails Ralph. Having been awarded custody of their son but allowed him to live with Ralph while it was inconvenient for her to raise him in Europe, she demands that the boy be sent to her. It is clear that she will let him remain with Ralph only if he sends her a large sum of money. Ralph does not have sufficient funds of his own, so he borrows money from friends and family and invests it in one of Elmer Moffatt's business deals. The deal does not go through in time to meet Undine's deadline, and Moffat also informs Ralph that he had once eloped with Undine and then was divorced from her—the secret she feared that New York society would discover. Shocked, and also distraught at the thought of losing his son, Ralph commits suicide. Undine is able to marry Raymond as a widow, though this would not be possible if Raymond knew of her first marriage to Moffat. Undine is soon dissatisfied with Raymond, too. The de Chelles are hidebound aristocrats, their wealth tied up in land and art and antiques that they will not consider selling, and Undine cannot adjust to the staid customs of upper-class French society. She also resents having to spend most of her time in the country because her husband cannot pay for expensive stays, entertainment, and shopping trips in Paris. Ultimately, she divorces Raymond in order to remarry Elmer Moffatt, who by now has made a fortune. Now, married to the crass midwestern businessman who was best suited to her in the first place, Undine finally has everything she ever desired. Still, it is clear that she wants even more: in the last paragraph of the novel, she imagines what it would be like to be an Ambassador's wife — a position closed to her owing to her divorces.
8524087	/m/0276k6d	The Rhinemann Exchange	Robert Ludlum	1974	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 On the eve of the Second World War, David Spaulding, a radio voice actor, is recruited by Colonel Ed Pace to run a secret network in Lisbon. The plot advances to 1943. Both the Allies and the Axis find themselves facing key shortages that impede their ability to win the war. The Allies lack gyroscopes capable of operating at high altitudes; thus they are losing an unacceptably high number of bombers. If they do not procure gyroscopes soon, the D-Day invasion of Normandy will need to be postponed. The Germans find themselves without high quality diamonds, which are necessary for the rocket development program at Peenemünde. Ironically, each side has what the other needs: the Allies control access to high quality diamonds from the Belgian Congo; the Germans have a design for a gyroscope able to operate at high altitudes. The German intelligence agency, the Nachrichtendienst, discovers that the Allies are in need of gyroscopes, and proposes an exchange, to take place in neutral territory: Buenos Aires, Argentina. David Spaulding has, in the meantime, become an invaluable spy for the Allies. His Lisbon network ferries agents and defectors back and forth from German occupied territory. He is selected, however, to oversee the receipt of the gyroscopes - critically, he does not know that diamonds are being exchanged for the gyroscopes. The Germans select the exiled industrialist Erich Rhinemann to supervise the exchange at their end. He is a clever choice because, although he is Jewish, he is committed to German victory and believes that he will be welcomed back after a German victory. Rhinemann is immensely influential and powerful in Buenos Aires. Although puzzled at his assignment away from Lisbon, Spaulding accepts his new assignment. However, there are several attempts made on his life: one occurring at an airfield in the Azores, another in New York City. While he is in New York, awaiting details on his assignment, he encounters an old flame, Leslie Jenner Hawkwood who, having drawn him away from his apartment, seemingly vanishes into thin air. Spaulding's mentor, Ed Pace, is meanwhile murdered. Upon arrival in Buenos Aires, Spaulding meets and falls in love with Jean Cameron, a woman employed by the embassy. Attacks on him continue, and he suspects he is being trailed by the Gestapo. He meets with Rhinemann to acquire the gyroscopes, but tries to draw out his mysterious assailants - Rhinemann and the other Germans are adamant that the Gestapo is not active in Buenos Aires. To his profound shock, Spaulding discovers that the people trying to stop him work for the Haganah, a Jewish terrorist group set on stopping the exchange. When he captures Asher Feld, the Haganah leader, Feld informs him that he is a party to an exchange of diamonds for gyroscopes. From then on, Spaulding decides that the exchange must be stopped. He pretends to carry out his end, all the while facilitating a Haganah attack on Rhinemann's estate. Spaulding succeeds in killing Rhinemann (who had planned to kill him after the exchange) and Rhinemann's Nazi controller. Having acquired incriminating evidence about the exchange, Spaulding blackmails the Americans who had arranged it and arranges to retire with his beloved Jean.
8527395	/m/0276nlt	Only the Heart	Brian Caswell		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The main character for this story is a boy named Toan. The book jumps from the past, when Toan is only six years old, to the present, when he is in his teens. The book is mainly written in first person, Toan's and his older cousin's, Linh's point of view. This book is about the Vietnam war, and the problems and hardships the Vietnamese people faced while trying to escape their war stricken country. During the book, Toan and his family escape Vietnam, on a boat. They become part of the first wave of boat people. During the boat trip, Phuong (Toan's cousin) is almost captured by sea pirates, but her mother saves her from sex with them, by offering herself, in fair exchange and sacrifice for the safety of Phuong. She is taken away and never seen by her family again. This was not her fault however, this was forced upon her through the Vietnam gangs. When the family makes it to Malaysia, the Malaysian people try to send them back, but they destroy the ship, forcing everyone to go overboard. Toan almost drowns. When they make it to Malaysia, they are on a list waiting to be transferred to another country so they can be safe from the war in Vietnam. After being late for their time to leave, Toan's father takes matters into his own hands. They escape from their "home" and chase after the dream for a better life for their family. They end up in Australia. This novel is filled with hope. It shows the inside of Vietnam, the way people feel about the war and the experiences that were experienced, that caused the Vietnamese people to become stronger. Only the heart is filled with hope, desolation and a dream. A dream for a better future... of freedom.
8529914	/m/0276sk_	The Guns of Navarone	Alistair MacLean	1957	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story concerns the efforts of an Allied commando team to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea, and prevents over 2,000 isolated British soldiers from being rescued. The story is based on the real events surrounding the Battle of Leros in World War II. The Guns of Navarone brings together elements that would characterise much of MacLean's subsequent works: tough, competent, worldly men as main characters; frequent but non-graphic violence; betrayal of the hero(es) by a trusted associate; and extensive use of the sea and other dangerous environments as settings. Its three principal characters — New Zealand mountaineer-turned-commando Keith Mallory, American demolitions expert "Dusty" Miller, and Greek resistance fighter Andrea — are among the most fully drawn in all of MacLean's work.
8533332	/m/0276xw_	The Triple Hoax	Carolyn Keene		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In The Triple Hoax, Nancy, her Aunt Eloise, Bess, and George begin by going to New York to help a friend. There they see a performance done by the Hoaxters, a group of magicians. These magicians take handbags and wallets from people in the audience- they do return them, but Nancy feels suspicious. Nancy and her friends follow leads to Mexico City, where Nancy is asked to find a child that has gone missing, and then to Los Angeles, where Nancy and her friends are threatened by the Hoaxters to try to scare them off the case.
8534387	/m/0276z97	The Changing Room	David Storey			 At the play's core is a semi-pro Northern England rugby league team. During the week, its members are peaceable men toiling away at mindless, working class jobs. On Saturday, they prepare for gory combat on the playing field. The changing room is where they perform their pre-game initiation rites, strip down, loosen muscles, and get into their uniforms. After the match they return, often broken, muddy, and bloody, regretting their loss or giddy with victory in the communal shower. There is little in the way of plot, but Storey engages his audience with his ability to dissect his characters' hurts, hopes, desires, and fighting instincts.
8536433	/m/02770tc	Dragonseye	Anne McCaffrey	1997-01-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the events of All the Weyrs of Pern, The Dolphins of Pern, and The Skies of Pern, Thread is less of a threat to the planet. Returning to an earlier time in Pernese history, the author brings the earlier conflict of Thread reappearing in the Second Pass. Following in the footsteps of the novels that established the background of the colony, the book exposes the incremental loss of technology due to the hardships of thread, and inevitable progress towards the more feudal society shown later in the series timeline. It answers such questions as: * What happened to the computers? * What happened to the technology? * Who created the Star Stones? It also shows more about the process of caring for a newborn dragon than is shown in any of the other Pern books, and explores the ramifications of male riders of green dragons. The main characters are Clisser (college head, Fort Hold), Chalkin (Lord Holder, Bitra), K'vin (weyrleader, Telgar), Zulaya (weyrwoman, Telgar), Iantine (journeyman artist) and Debera (green rider, Telgar)
8542864	/m/02777ns	Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo	Obert Skye	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book begins by telling what happened to the town of Tin Culvert, Oklahoma (now Burnt Culvert, Oklahoma.) The nit, Antsel, races through the burning town to safely plant Geth, who has been turned into a seed by Sabine. When he does, the shadows of Sabine find him and kill him while looking over his body for the seed. The book continues to tell about the birth of Leven Thumps, whose mother died birthing him, and his father died before the unfortunate child is born in a motorcycle crash. His mother's half sister, Addy Graph, takes him in, but does not take care of him correctly. Leven is stuck for nearly 14 years with Addy, and her husband, Terry, who is no better than Addy is. Then the book introduces Winter Frore, who was switched with another woman's child, and grows up with Janet Frore, who treats Winter poorly. She only receives a stale bread crust, a teaspoonful of jam, and half a dozen peas for each meal, with no deserts, while she watches her mother stuff herself as though there is no tomorrow. Orphaned, mistreated Leven is contacted by a tiny creature named Clover Earnest, a sycophant, who informs him that he has a destiny to save two worlds: his own, and the world of dreams, called Foo. Meanwhile, Winter realizes her power to freeze things, by freezing her class, her teacher, her principal, and her entire room. She then runs away from home, where she meets Leven and Clover, with a voice repeating in her head, "Don't touch him." Later, when the kids are chased by avalands, giant creatures that are made of the earth itself, Winter passes out and Leven is forced to drag her to safety, and their contact causes Sabine's shadows to find Leven in his dreams. Together with Clover and Geth a toothpick —literally, a toothpick — who was once the king of Foo, they set out to Germany, the location of the gateway. They are chased by the police, so Winter freezes a path across the entire Atlantic ocean. The path melts and they are picked up by a fishing trawler, which is later revealed to be an illegal treasure hunter's boat. After being separated from Clover, they arrive at the mainland. After another encounter with Sabine's shadows, they take a train to Germany, and then to Berchtesgaden, a small German village. The gateway is located in nearby Lake Königsee, and they attempt to go through it. They are stopped by Sabine, who freezes Leven and Winter. Winter thaws and occupies Sabine by demonstrations of power. Winter eventually freezes Sabine long enough for Clover, who has found them, to shatter him into many pieces. Leven tries again to dive for the gateway, but is stopped again by Sabine, who is now an amorphous black blob. He uses his gift to disperse the pieces and get him to the gateway. After stepping through, Amelia Thumps, his grandmother gives him a pot of explosives to destroy the gateway. He steps through, but is grabbed by Sabine. the explosives are activated, and the gateway is destroyed right as Leven goes back through to Foo.
8543126	/m/02777_2	The Briar King	Gregory Keyes	2003	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first book in the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. The Born Queen, Virgenya Dare, defeats the evil Skasloi with magic and frees humanity from slavery. The Skasloi king tells Virgenya humanity is cursed. About 2300 years later, Dare's grave is found by her descendant, rebellious Princess Anne. The forester Aspar White rescues a novice monk, Stephen Darige, from a kidnapping. Aspar is warned about the mythical Briar King by the strange Sefry travellers. Evil Prince Robert murders his sister and tricks his brother into war with nearby Hansa. Queen Muriele secretly sends Anne and her friend Austra to a convent to be trained as an assassin. Muriele and her two other daughters evacuate to the country, aided by loyal knight Neil MeqVren who is in love with Princess Fastia. At the monastery, Stephen finds corruption within the church, and prophecies concerning the terrifying Briar King. Beneath the castle, the captive last Skasloi (known as "the Kept") makes evil predictions. Anne's training takes a strange turn as she finds herself in a magical realm. On her return, Anne is warned she must be Queen to save the world. The other princesses are murdered as Neil and Muriele watch helplessly - themselves saved only by the appearance of the Briar King. As the assassins aim for their final target, Anne and Austra escape the mass slaughter at the convent, aided by swordsman Cazio and his mentor z'Acatto. Prince Robert murders the king who deals a fatal wound as he dies. Muriele, back in Eslen, consults the Kept from whom she gets the most terrible curse imaginable to cast on the murderer of her husband. She does not know that it was Robert and that he is also dead. The curse, however, is more powerful even than death and by casting this on Robert, Muriele inadvertently and unintentionally breaks the Law of Death. The Briar King ends with the awakening of Robert, now a form of undead, which also explains the title of the next volume, The Charnel Prince.
8543436	/m/02778hl	Dragon Wing	Margaret Weis	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Arianus, the World of Air, is composed entirely of porous floating islands, aligned in three basic altitudes. In the Low Realm, the dwarves (called "Gegs", an elven word for "insects") live on the continent Drevlin and cheerfully serve the giant Kicksey-winsey, a city-sized machine that is the source of all water in Arianus. In the Mid Realm, elves and humans have warred for centuries with each other and amongst themselves for water, status, and advantage. Above them all in the High Realm live the Mysteriarchs, isolationist human wizards of the Seventh House rank. They were some of the most powerful wizards of their kind, leaving fellow humans behind in their disgust for the constant warfare, but they never equalled the likes of the missing Sartan and Patryn races. As the novel opens, the Lord of the Nexus instructs a follower on his task in Arianus. The follower will go to Arianus and discreetly spy against the Sartan, the race that has long imprisoned their people before mysteriously disappearing. There, the follower will spread chaos in preparation for the Lord's arrival, never revealing that he is actually one of the powerful Patryn race. When the time comes, the Lord will conquer all of the worlds and reunite them as one under his rule. The Patryns will have their revenge against their Sartan enemies. On Arianus, an assassin named Hugh the Hand is hired by King Stephen, nominally the ruler of all humanity, to kill Crown Prince Bane. Bane is not actually Stephen's child, nor that of Stephen's wife, Queen Anne; he was switched at birth for the child of the mysteriarch Sinistrad, and speaks to his real father through a feather talisman magically charmed to make others dote on him despite their disapproval of the changeling. Bane is a devious child&mdash;charming, but ambitious, and totally self-possessed. Hugh takes Bane away from Stephen's fortress, and the two are followed by Bane's manservant, the gangly, balding Alfred Montbank, whose greatest talents seem to be fainting at the first sign of danger and tripping over anything in his path (and several things that aren't). At this time on Drevlin, a Geg is on trial for the crime of thinking too much. Limbeck Bolttightner seems obsessed with the question of why, but his most heretical belief is that the god-like Welves, who land in their giant flying dragonships for tributes of water every month or so, are not actually gods at all. He once found a (W)elf dead in a crashed dragonship, and even his girlfriend, Jarre, won't believe that a god could actually die. Sentenced to death by being thrown off the continent on a hang-glider, Limbeck manages to crash-land on a smaller island some distance down, where he encounters an injured man whose damaged ship is covered with brilliantly shining runes. The Kicksey-winsey inadvertently destroys the ship, but Limbeck manages to rescue the man in time. He believes the injured man is also a god, one he can pit against the Welves, so he brings the unconscious man along as he rides back up to Drevlin in one of the Kicksey-winsey's help-hands. Joining them is a dog who refuses to leave the "god"'s side despite its own injuries. Haplo&mdash;Limbeck's god and the follower from the prologue&mdash;awakens in Drevlin not long before Hugh, Bane and Alfred crash-land there as well. It becomes clear that Haplo's dog is more than the average canine; he is very intelligent, and Haplo can hear through his ears. Limbeck, hearing about the "other gods", takes Haplo to investigate, but chaos erupts, with the entire group split up and reassembling. All but Alfred and Jarre are quickly arrested; those two take a trip into the tunnels under the Kicksey-winsey, where they come across a room filled with glass coffins containing sad, beautiful people. This, Alfred says, is where he came from. Alfred is quickly arrested as well, though Jarre escapes. In prison, Alfred creeps over to the sleeping Haplo and confirms, to his horror, his suspicion of Patryn runes that were hidden by Haplo's bandages. The rulers of the Gegs present the prisoners to the Welves as false gods, with Limbeck thrown in for free in the hopes that the Welves will execute the lot. Various circumstances (a mutiny against the tyrannical elven captain, a dwarven rebellion against their overlords) leads to Bane hiring the ship to take him up into the High Realm, where his father will supposedly reward them all. The new captain of the ship agrees to the terms. In the High Realm, Haplo makes his decision: he will take Prince Bane back to the Nexus with him, as the Lord of the Nexus will almost certainly be able to make use of him. Hugh becomes smitten with Sinistrad's wife, Iridal, once a good and noble woman who thought her husband-to-be was joking when he told her, flat out, that he was an evil man. Limbeck agonizes over his revelations concerning the oppressive (W)elves and eventually decides to lead his peace-loving, optimistic people to war. Haplo is prepared to make his move when he hears, through the dog, Bane confront Alfred about being a Sartan. Bane has seen Alfred work Sartan rune-magic, something no one else on Arianus&mdash;not even the powerful Mysteriarchs&mdash;could do. In fact, Alfred's rune-magic brought Bane back from near-death. Haplo prepares to confront Alfred, but they both realize a magical battle would draw too much attention, something Haplo's Lord ordered him to avoid at all costs. Haplo instead satisfies himself by abducting Bane as planned. Hugh, in the meantime, attacks and kills Sinistrad to free Iridal and her son from Sinistrad's evil influence, but Hugh dies in the process. Sinistrad's pet quicksilver dragon, freed of his master's mind-control, begins to destroy the castle, but Alfred subdues it with his magic. Alfred and Iridal give chase to Haplo, but they are too late to recover Bane. Haplo returns to the Nexus to prepare for his next journey: to Pryan, the World of Fire.
8543441	/m/02778jm	Elven Star	Tracy Hickman	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Pryan, the World of Fire, does not orbit a sun&mdash; at least, not in the normal manner. It is a giant stone sphere containing four suns (similar to a Dyson Sphere), and it is always daytime. The "ground" is not the ground at all, but rather moss and the leaves of huge, mile-high trees; most people don't know where the real ground is, or if there even is a real ground. And, although there is no night, there are "stars": little pinpoints of light that appear sporadically in the sky, some apparently burning out while others remain longer. Paithan Quindiniar, an elven magical weapons merchant, makes a deal with a pair of human smugglers, half-siblings Roland and Rega Redleaf, who pretend to be married as a cover story. The two accompany Paithan to the dwarven buyer of the magical weapons in an attempt to swindle him. During the trip, Rega is supposed to seduce him; much to her surprise, however, she finds they are falling in love with each other, a romance tainted by distinct prejudice and interracial tensions. It all falls apart, however, when the convoy is attacked by the tytans, giant lumbering humanoids with no eyes and crude defensive rune-magic. These tytans ask only a single question&mdash; Where is the citadel?&mdash; and if they don't like the answer, they destroy everything in sight. They haven't yet found an answer they like. They are rescued by the dwarven buyer, Drugar, and the four set out for Paithan's home. Drugar has an ulterior motive, however; the tytans wiped out his people since they had no adequate means to defend themselves, thanks to the Redleafs' failure to sell him Quindiniar weapons in time. Conditions have deteriorated in the Quindiniar household. Paithan's father Lenthan is obsessed with the idea of rocketry, as he is sure his late wife now lives in the stars - a heretical belief among the elves of Pryan. Lenthan's eldest daughter, Calandra, is a tight-fisted spinster under the best of conditions, and is incensed that Paithan has brought humans into the household. His younger sister, Aleatha, is just as she has always been: an extremely lovely young woman, but shallow, vain and lazy. Lenthan has sent away for a human expert on rocketry but has instead gotten Zifnab, a bizarre long-bearded fellow who seems utterly senile, especially since he seems to think he's some person named "James Bond" one moment, and "Dorothy Gale" the next; his "dog Toto" (actually one of Pryan's native "dragons") spends a lot of time reining him in. Finally, the newest member of the household is Haplo. His dragonship proves extremely useful when the tytans show up; even Haplo's rune-magic cannot defeat them, and Calandra stubbornly chooses to stay behind during the evacuation. Haplo sets course, on Zifnab's suggestions, for one of the winking stars in the sky. This period of empty travel is devoted mostly to romance: Paithan and Rega struggle to handle their relationship, Aleatha and Roland resist each other with all their might and almost succeed, and Haplo himself has flashbacks to his time in the Labyrinth, and the woman he met there; they became lovers and travelled together for a time, and she was suspected by Haplo to be carrying his child when they separated. It doesn't bother him that he hasn't seen her in years. Or so he tells himself. Arriving at the white star, Haplo travels up a mountain to a glowing, abandoned city that is nearly identical to the Nexus. He leaves the mensch to fend for themselves and enters the central stronghold, where he discovers a great deal of data on the nature of the worlds, although all the Sartan here have disappeared. He then leaves for Death's Gate and his next mission. Meanwhile, Zifnab apparently sacrifices himself to save the Redleafs, Quindiniars and Drugar from his dragon; it chases the remaining mensch to the gates of the citadel, which Drugar is able to open with an amulet inscribed with Sartan runes. The mensch are now safe&mdash; a fact that Zifnab, hale and hearty, celebrates with his dragon companion.
8543444	/m/02778k9	Fire Sea	Tracy Hickman	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Abarrach, the World of Stone is just that: lava, stone, poisonous fumes, and precious little food that can be grown. The peoples of Abarrach rely on giant rune-inscribed stone pillars called colossi to provide warmth and breathable atmosphere, but the colossi have been failing slowly for many years. The mensch have all died out, and the only remaining people &mdash; all of them Sartan &mdash; are far reduced in power; most of their innate magic is consumed with simply keeping them alive. To bolster their numbers, they have taken to the forbidden art of necromancy: the raising of the dead. These reanimated corpses are not very smart, but they're better than nothing. Haplo is sent to this world and discovers, much to his alarm, that Alfred has somehow infiltrated the Nexus and stowed away on his ship. Before he can do anything, however, the vessel passes through Death's Gate, and their consciousnesses switch; the two are forced to relive each other's most painful memories: Haplo, as a boy of seven, seeing the slaughtered bodies of his parents and being taught that it is all the fault of the Sartan; and Alfred, waking up to find that he is the only Sartan left alive on Arianus... for all he knows, the only one in all the worlds. They have been forced to walk in each other's shoes, and the two are never able to look at each other with quite the same hatred (in Haplo's case) or fear (in Alfred's) as before. On Abarrach, Alfred is initially overjoyed to meet living Sartan, even bastardized ones, but is appalled at the state of things; the Sartan rune-language, highly evocative, is laden with images of death when spoken by Abarrach natives. He is even more horrified that they practice necromancy. It was taught that, when one is revived untimely, another dies untimely, and (though the series never spells it out) it is implied that Abarrach's necromancy is the reason most Sartan died during stasis. And the Sartan here regard Alfred with hungry eyes: he has powers, magics, abilities that they had long forgotten existed, and they want what he has. Even his simplest magic is beyond them. Haplo and Alfred make the acquaintance of Prince Edmund, who is leading his ragged band of people to the "greener" pastures around Abarrach's capital city (Necropolis), and his chief necromancer, Baltazar. In the realm of Kairn Necros, they meet minor nobles and necromancers Jonathan and Jera, just married and very clearly in love with each other. Haplo and Edmund meet with the Dynast Kleitus XIV, who is not a pleasant man; he orders Edmund executed on a whim, and imprisons Haplo when it becomes clear that he, too, still knows the secrets of rune-magic. Kleitus poisons Haplo so that the corpse will be left undamaged, the runes free to be studied at Kleitus's leisure. Alfred, Jonathan, and Jera manage to free Haplo, but Jera is killed, and Jonathan revives her immediately without waiting the customary three days to let her soul depart entirely. Jera now becomes a lazar (a reference to Lazarus of the Bible), a revived dead who still retains her intelligence and personality because her soul is so closely bound to the body... and whose existence is endless torment, caught between life and death. Haplo, Alfred, and Jonathan flee with the dead Edmund and Jera from Kleitus and his dead soldiers, and end up in a curious chamber: heavily warded, full of the skeletal remains of people who apparently killed each other or even themselves, with seven sealed doors spaced evenly around its perimeter and a white wooden table in the middle. It is called the Chamber of the Damned. Once rebels gathered here, and were ambushed and killed here by an ancestor of Kleitus, but he and all his forces were struck down by an unseen hand on the very spot. The chamber is entirely peaceful and seems to resist violence, and Alfred (and Haplo too, though he will not admit it) feels for a moment as if in the presence of a Higher Power. While Alfred and Haplo view this ancient scene, Jera is calling to the dead soldiers that Kleitus brings with him. He arrives at the chamber, only to be killed and resurrected as a lazar by Jera. She begins to reanimate many new lazar, culminating in a slaughter of nearly the entire population of the city. The living (and Edmund) are forced to run again, trying to reach Haplo's ship to flee Abarrach, as well as stop the dead from breaking through its runes to enter the other worlds and kill all the living. Jonathan sacrifices himself to aid their escape, and is murdered and turned into a lazar at his wife's hands; Prince Edmund, on the other hand, demonstrates how a lazar can surrender his/her anger and find true death by doing so. Baltazar gathers his remaining people on the outskirts of the city, in for the long haul, though the new army of lazar will make life difficult. Haplo and Alfred escape in Haplo's ship, and Haplo, driven by odd impulses, gives Alfred a chance to jump ship before he returns to the Nexus and his lord.
8543448	/m/02778kn	Serpent Mage	Tracy Hickman	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel picks up just where Fire Sea left off. Alfred jumps into Death's Gate as Haplo's ship passes through it, and finds himself in a stasis room like the one he woke up in; in fact, he believes he's on Arianus. Tired, he decides to put himself back to sleep... Only to find someone in "his" stasis chamber. And then to find a bunch of strangers in all the stasis chambers. And then to see them wake up. Alfred has stumbled across a cache of actually-living Sartan, and not just any Sartan; he is on Chelestra, the World of Water, and the chamber he has dropped into contains Samah, the ruler of the Council of Seven&mdash; nominally, the leader of all remaining Sartan. Meanwhile, Haplo is attempting to ready his ship as quickly as possible so he can avoid speaking to Xar. He sent ahead a letter that lied about the state of Abarrach, claiming he found an entirely dead world; he covered up the truth about the necromancy out of fear of what Xar would do with it. Xar catches up with Haplo, and Haplo confesses nearly everything about the world. He accepts harsh punishment for betraying and doubting his lord. Xar sends Haplo's ship on through Death's Gate. The arrival on Chelestra isn't a very glorious one; for some reason, Chelestra's seawater has the effect of totally nullifying all rune-magic, even erasing Haplo's tattoos and the carvings on his steering stone. His ship disintegrates in minutes, whereupon he discovers another odd fact: Chelestran seawater is breathable, just like air. Cold and wet, though not particularly thirsty, he clings to a spot of wreckage and tries to figure out what to do next. The narrative is also interwoven with the personal diary of Grundle, daughter and heir to the leaders of Chelestra's dwarven population. Unlike most worlds, here the mensch have made peace and live (mostly) in harmony. Grundle's two best friends are the daughters of the elven and human peoples (Sabia and Alake, respectively). The mensch, at the moment, are planning a migration. Chelestra has landmasses they call seamoons ("durnai" to the Sartan) scattered liberally throughout its watery interior, but its seasun is migratory, and this particular seamoon is about to freeze over. They have assembled a series of giant submarines, the sun-chasers, but just as Grundle is about to christen them (with a lock of her hair instead of a champagne bottle), something destroys them: foul, oozing black serpents with red glowing eyes. These serpents demand that the daughters of each royal family be surrendered to them. The parents plan to refuse, but Grundle, Alake, and Sabia choose to leave on their own. Grundle and Alake meet up with "Sabia" and leave in a submersible; it is quickly revealed that Sabia's fiance, Devon, has actually replaced her. It is this submarine, sailing into almost certain death, that stumbles across Haplo. Once they arrive at Draknor, however, the serpents (which Haplo calls dragon-snakes) make a total about-face: they claim that they are here only to help the mensch, and ply the three with mountains of gifts generated from thin air. When they find out about Haplo, however, they are ecstatic; their leader, the Royal One, assures him that they would love to help him conquer this world, or all four worlds, or anything he desires. Haplo finds himself distinctly nervous; the runes on his body, which glow in times of danger, are at full force, and every danger sense he has urges him to flee from their presence. When Haplo asks them who they are and who created them, the Royal One whispers, "You did, Patryn." But the dragons swear fealty, and that is all that matters. Haplo, with his new allies, returns to the mensch. The news that Sabia has killed herself in despair does not stop the dragon-snakes from instantly reassembling the sun-chasers, and the migration continues as planned, though with a new target: the Chalice, Chelestra's only landmass permanently inhabited... by the Sartan. Alfred is having a hard time adjusting to life with his people for several reasons. For one, for some reason Haplo's dog is there with him. Second, Samah manages to find out that the Patryn threat has reawakened, and is already beginning to plan a counter-offensive. Third, there are many secrets the Sartan are hiding: such as how the Chamber of the Damned, with which Alfred is so intimately acquainted, is actually the Seventh Gate, from which the Sartans performed the Sundering. Samah and his followers knew about the Higher Power, but deliberately ignored it, something Alfred finds unconscionable. Furthermore, those few Sartans who objected to the plan were actually cast into the Labyrinth with the Patryns, where they were almost certainly fallen upon and slaughtered. And, finally, Alfred himself has changed&mdash; partially due to his time with the mensch on Arianus, but mostly because of his time with Haplo. He can no longer see the Patryns as a vicious, hated enemy. It is customary for Sartan to reveal their private Sartan names to each other, but Alfred continues to go by his human pseudonym, a fact that partially exasperates and partially amuses Samah's wife, Orla, whom Alfred is slowly falling in love with. The mensch arrive at the Chalice and attempt to negotiate for living space, but Samah is having none of it; he deals with them as if with willful children refusing to go to bed, and is astonished when they treat him as an equal: with dignity and respect, but refusing to be bullied. He is also distressed at their allies: Haplo, the evil dangerous Patryn, and the dragon-snakes, who attacked the Sartan thousands of years ago and forced them into hibernation. When asked who had created them, the dragon-snakes responded: "You did, Sartan." Samah refuses to compromise, and the mensch, reluctantly, turn to military force. They will use the dragon-snakes to burrow through the Chalice's landmass, bringing seawater in to temporarily neutralize the Sartans' magic, allowing the mensch to invade peacefully. Haplo returns to Draknor to explain the plan, with Devon, Grundle, and Alake following him in a second submersible. He explains the plan, but refuses the dragon-snakes' alterations, which would lead to increased casualties on both sides&mdash; even though those casualties would be to mensch and Sartan, populations whose well-being he doesn't care about and, to some extent, is required by Xar's orders to disregard. The mensch overhear the conversation (conveniently, it has been carried out in the human language) but do not overhear the Royal One's orders to have them killed and their bodies returned to their parents, making the coming conquest anything but bloodless. To Haplo's surprise, Alfred appears with the dog. In the presence of this Sartan enemy, Haplo admits what he dares not say to anyone else: the dragon-snakes are not his servants. They grow fat on chaos, fear, hatred, confusion, despair; they are using him, using everyone, in an attempt to destroy all the four worlds. Even when Samah teleports in, spewing hatred and vitriol, Haplo holds to his course. He and Samah fight, each attempting to take each other prisoner, and Samah wins with the help of Chelestra's seawater, but all events are halted when the dragon-snakes begin to attack the mensch. Haplo rushes to their rescue, magicless though he is, while Alfred counters Samah. Haplo is unable to save Alake's life and looks to be doomed himself when a huge, majestic green and golden dragon appears; it slays the Royal One and fends off the other dragon-snakes. Haplo, staggering back to the beach in search of this incredible magic, finds only Alfred unconscious on the beach. Grundle, who saw him transform, insists that Alfred was the dragon, but no one believes it&mdash; least of all Alfred himself. Samah has won. Haplo is imprisoned, though with the seawater rising, he won't be for long. Alfred is sentenced by the Council to be exiled into the Labyrinth for his crimes, and Orla chooses to go with him rather than remain with her people; either way, she will be stripped of her magic as her punishment. Devon and Grundle, no longer the children he first met, wish him luck and Grundle gives him her journal before they are returned to their parents. Haplo settles back in his cell; he knows, now, what he must do. The dragon-snakes&mdash; deceptive, cunning, whispering only what the listener wants to hear, growing fat on fear&mdash; are who he must defeat.
8543450	/m/02778k_	The Hand of Chaos	Margaret Weis	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Haplo takes a submersible back to Draknor to retrieve his ship. He finds Samah there&mdash; wet, haggard, and lost. The leader of the Council has opened Death's Gate, allowing the dragon-snakes free access to all the four worlds. Haplo decides he is too tired to physically capture Samah and uses his ship to return to the Nexus through the now more easily-travelled Death's Gate, where he makes his report on what he has found. Haplo explains the entire tale: the mensch, the Sartan, and the dragon-snakes, who inspired fear in him greater than even the Labyrinth&nbsp;... because he at least knew the Labyrinth could be defeated. Xar is much less sanguine about the serpents' supposed invincibility. He assigns Haplo to take Bane back to Arianus, where he will activate the Kicksey-winsey and continue to foment chaos as he did before; he will then wait there for Xar's orders, as Xar will be going to Abarrach to learn necromancy. This is Haplo's last chance to prove himself loyal. Haplo leaves angrily and takes a walk. Standing before the Final Gate, he contemplates going back into the Labyrinth&mdash; something no living Patryn other than Lord Xar has ever accomplished. He wants to look for Alfred so they can return to the Chamber of the Damned to get some answers&mdash; and to bring his lord to give him proof, as well. Haplo is derailed by Zifnab, however, who admits to actually being a Sartan and, with his dragon (one of the true "dragons" of Pryan, as opposed to a dragon-snake,) is on his way to Chelestra, answering a race-wide summons put out by Samah. Samah, Zifnab says, intends to go to Abarrach and learn the secret of necromancy. He also reveals that the woman left Haplo because she was pregnant, and that their child is now somewhere in the Labyrinth. But Zifnab advises him (in between bouts of gibberish, non sequiturs and reminiscences on Debbie Does Dallas) not to go in until he has activated the Kicksey-winsey. Bane has spied on this and tells Xar, lying that Haplo said he intended to "prove you wrong," but revealing that Haplo warned Zifnab to leave so that Xar wouldn't find the Sartan. Xar considers this treachery past the time for punishment and orders the child to kill Haplo once his job is done. On Drevlin, the mood is somber; the Kicksey-winsey has stopped, totally stopped, for the first time in history, and no one knows why. Limbeck, now High Froman and the leader of a race-wide dwarven revolt against the "Welf" occupation of Drevlin, is sure that it is Welf treachery. He has become a hard, cruel leader, much to Jarre's dismay. (A recurring symbol is his glasses: he has new ones that correct for his massive myopia but hurt his head abysmally; Jarre liked him better when he was blind and idealistic.) When Haplo lands, Limbeck is quick to enlist his assistance, and between the two of them and Jarre's memory of Alfred's mausoleum, they puzzle out where the control center for the entire Kicksey-winsey must be. To reach it, however, they must sneak through the Factree, which the elves have taken as their home base. At the control center, they find an automaton who asks for instructions, but Haplo's runes have started to warn him. Not understanding why, he nevertheless trusts his instincts and the group flees the room without Limbeck. Bane, Haplo, and Jarre are quickly captured by pursuing elven forces, led by a strange, red-eyed captain named Sang-drax&mdash; a serpent whose name is elven for "dragon-snake" and possibly the one who met with Xar before Haplo arrived home. Limbeck remains unfound by the elves, and wanders for a while before stumbling on a room in which he sees an incredible, hopeful sight: humans, elves and dwarves, sitting and conversing in peace and harmony. (He overlooks their distinctive red eyes and the terror they make him feel.) Inflamed by optimistic vision, he immediately forgets it when he overhears (from the serpent-elves carrying Haplo away) that Jarre has been captured, and goes to plan the war. Haplo, Bane, and Jarre are taken to the Imperanon, the elven emperor's castle, where Emperor Agah'ran hatches a plan to do away with King Stephen and Queen Anne, using Bane as his willing co-conspirator. Agah'ran wants to finish the hostilities quickly, as he is fighting three wars: against the humans, against the "Gegs," and against his own son, Prince Rees'ahn, who has been leading a rebellion for several years. Stephen and Anne (who have since had a daughter,) and the Lady Iridal (invited there by the wizard Trian,) receive the news that Bane is alive from a human slave who has been allowed to escape the elven capital. The elves presumably will want a human surrender in exchange for Bane's life&mdash; very few people know of his true nature&mdash; but his three parents know Bane must be the one pulling the strings (and the royal family certainly doesn't want him back.) They also realize that it would look very bad if they failed to attempt a rescue, considering the rumors that he is illegitimate, but King Stephen understandably doesn't actually want Bane back; he only wants to protect their work at making peace with Rees'ahn. Iridal decides to go on and rescue her son herself, and King Stephen grants her a fortnight to do so; after that, he moves on to meeting with Rees'ahn and leaves Bane to his fate. On the way, she drops by a Kir monastery and picks up her sole helper: Hugh the Hand, whom Alfred revived with necromancy without remembering he did it. Hugh is slumming, a dirty drunk, unable to return to his former line of work: since being revived (and as himself, not the shambling dead of Abarrach,) he finds it impossible to kill, especially since everyone loses their nerve before hiring him. Hugh agrees on the condition that Iridal helps him find Alfred once they're finished. Before they leave, Trian privately reminds Hugh of his honor&mdash; Hugh accepted a contract to kill Bane, and his honor should compel him to carry it out. The royal family wants to use Iridal's rescue to see that Bane is killed to protect their daughter, and their world, from what he would do. Hugh and Iridal go to Skurvash, the island where the Brotherhood of the Hand, a guild of assassins, makes its base. As "the Hand," Hugh is of the second-highest rank possible to attain, with only Ciang the Arm as his superior (and possibly none his equal.) It is Ciang he asks for help, and she secures him passage to the elvish capitol. There he seeks the aid of the Kenkari, an elven religious clan whose Cathedral of the Albedo is used as a repository of elven souls, which supposedly strengthens elven magic, particularly their own powerful strain. From there Hugh and Iridal slip into the Imperanon, but Iridal, blinded by love, doesn't see the trap Bane has laid for her. For Iridal's life, Hugh agrees to kill King Stephen and Queen Anne; Bane (with Haplo's dog) will go along to ensure success and take the human throne. Haplo, in the meantime, chases Sang-drax, who is "rescuing" Jarre, but he is taken by the dragon-snakes and mentally tortured. The Keepers from the Cathedral, however, have been compelled by the dead spirits to rescue Haplo, and they do so. The Keeper of the Soul is able to drive off the dragon-snakes because he is no longer afraid of what they represent. The Keepers give Haplo a book written in Sartan, Dwarven, Elvish and Human&mdash; instructions to give the automaton under Drevlin&mdash; and send him down to Drevlin on a phantom dragon that they summon. They also ask him where his soul is&mdash; he has one, clearly, but evidently it is not with him. He has no idea what they're talking about. Iridal goes with him to stop Hugh and her son. They find Sang-drax's dragonship (he is no longer on it) and the phantom dragon breaks one of its wings; Haplo jumps onto the crippled vessel and rescues Jarre, but finds himself in the middle of a human-galley-slave rebellion fomented by Sang-drax. Haplo uses his magic to paralyze everyone mid-fight and tells them how foolish this battle is: the human and elven crewers will need to work together if they want to save their ship. He carries Jarre's badly injured form and teleports them both to the Factree, where Jarre is unfortunately seen by a dwarf who doesn't believe that she isn't dead. The dwarf rushes to inform Limbeck, and Limbeck promptly decides to lead the dwarves to kill elves as vengeance for Jarre's apparent death. Haplo heals Jarre and they fail to prevent the dwarves from launching at the elves, but both sides come to a halt when the statue opens and Sang-drax and the other dragon-snakes rise out from the tunnels, disguised as fellow dwarves who shout bloodthirsty encouragement to the others. Jarre recognizes them by their eyes and tears off Limbeck's glasses; Haplo attacks one of the "dwarves" to force out the serpent's true form. However, the serpents all shed their bodies and begin attacking the dwarves, starting a chaotic battle of dwarf versus serpent and elf versus dwarf, with both mensch sides blaming the other for the serpents' presence. Haplo and Sang-drax fight also, and though neither succeeds in slaying the other, both sustain injuries (Sang-drax's eye, and Haplo's heart-rune, the center of his personal and magical identity) that will never quite heal. Thankfully, Limbeck finally sees where this is leading&mdash; blood, death, terror&mdash; and forces his dwarves to surrender. In response, the dragon-snakes begin to attack the Kicksey-winsey itself&nbsp;... And, realizing that this machine is their mutual lifesblood, the elves and dwarves immediately ally in its defense. A crippled dragonship also manages to land there&mdash; the ship that Haplo left to work together&mdash; and both the elves and humans join in. This marks the first time in Arianus's recorded history that humans, dwarves, and elves have fought side-by-side. Meanwhile, Hugh and Bane are on their way to the Seven Fields, where Prince Rees'ahn's rebellion began; he is returning to sign a historic alliance with King Stephen and Queen Anne against the elven emperor. Bane demands that Hugh take a final contract&mdash; to kill Haplo, and tell him that Xar was the one who wanted him dead. Hugh has no intention of surviving long enough to take on another job but agrees anyway, just to shut him up. Hugh deliberately botches the assassination of Stephen in an attempt to get himself killed, but the dog saves him by leaping onto him and causing confusion. Bane takes advantage of this and sinks a sword into Stephen's back, determined to have the throne for himself. Then he turns on Queen Anne&mdash; only to find himself slowly asphyxiating from a spell cast by his mother. Iridal has finally arrived to see her son's true nature. As Stephen and Anne's own child died&mdash; strangled, unable to breathe the air of the High Realm&mdash; so does Prince Bane meet his end. Stephen's life, however, is saved by Trian, and Iridal leaves for the High Realm with Bane's body. Hugh returns to the Cathedral of the Albedo, where he has promised to give his soul (which, after all, has gone on and then returned and thus is of great value to the Keepers.) But he is forbidden because his soul still has the mortal bonds of a contract, so must agree the Keeper of the Soul's new terms; the dead commanded the Keeper to accept the contracted life in place of Hugh's&mdash; Hugh must kill Haplo.
8543464	/m/02778mc	Into the Labyrinth	Tracy Hickman	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On Abarrach, Xar is attempting to learn the secret of necromancy, but he needs a corpse to test it on. He interrogates the lazar Kleitus about the location of any living Sartan, and Kleitus reveals that Haplo lied to Xar about all the Sartan dying at the hands of the dead; Balthazar and his group remain living. Kleitus drops a hint about the Seventh Gate, and reveals that it's where the Sundering took place and that Haplo's corpse would know its location. Xar dismisses this idea, as well as the lazar, and is quickly becoming obsessed with the Seventh Gate when receives word that two Sartan have been captured: Zifnab, for one, whose pleas on Haplo's behalf go unheeded; and, as quite a prize, Samah, ruler of the Council of Seven. Xar is initially excited since Samah is the very person who would know the Seventh Gate's location, and he interrogates Samah for it to no avail. Sang-drax&mdash; the one who actually captured Samah and Zifnab&mdash; is summoned by Xar to mentally torture Samah to death; even before he dies, Samah does not reveal anything useful. Xar succeeds in turning him into a far-more-complacent lazar, but too much of Samah's will remains, and he still won't talk. Even worse, when Xar turns his back to investigate Zifnab's disappearance, Jonathan walks in and teaches Samah how to let go; the leader of the Council of Seven is now well and truly dead. Xar is soon told by Sang-drax of Haplo's "treachery"; he has helped the mensch start the Kicksey-winsey and given control of Arianus over to the mensch, instead of reserving it for Xar himself. Party to this conversation is the loyal servant who informed Xar of the capture and has already been ordered to investigate the Arianus situation: Marit, the woman Haplo loved, the mother of his child. Xar marries her in traditional Patryn fashion of rune-joining, both to ensure her loyalty and because it gives them an unblockable way to communicate, and then orders her to kill Haplo. Haplo rests on Arianus and tries to heal his heart-rune, a job that truly needs two people (most rune-healing is accomplished by "circling" and allowing strength from one person to flow to the other.) Prince Rees'ahn and King Stephen's deputy, the wizard Trian, have come to Drevlin to talk with High Froman Limbeck Bolttightener in the hopes of hammering out some sort of true alliance between all three races of mensch (the mysteriarchs having folded into the human race after their leader Sinistrad's death.) Haplo gives the Kenkari book to Limbeck, and the three races together reactivate the Kicksey-winsey, which realigns the scattered islands of Arianus and starts a constant flow of water through the sky. Then Haplo enters his dragonship and prepares to leave for the last time. Hugh, under contract to kill Haplo, retraces his own steps. He goes from the Cathedral of the Albedo back to the Fortress of the Brotherhood, where Ciang gives him a cursed knife: ugly, badly made, capable of self-movement... and covered in Sartan runes. It is the only weapon the Brotherhood has that might even possibly be capable of killing Haplo. As payment for it, Ciang orders him to never return or further payment will be taken in his blood. Hugh, in the end, doesn't even use his new Cursed Blade&mdash; its main advantage, suppressing Haplo's warning runes and a good amount of his magic, allows Hugh to sneak up on him in his ship and capture him, but the tables turn and Hugh accidentally ends up with Haplo's knife in his gut... only to lurch back from the grave, Alfred's necromancy rune having evidently condemned him to eternal life. Haplo circles with Hugh to calm the human's distress at returning from the dead yet again, and the two begin to plan how to find Alfred when they are interrupted. Marit appears and fights both Haplo and Hugh. The first time they engage their Patryn rune-magic, however, the Cursed Blade reacts, transmuting itself into various threats, and the three break off their conflict periodically to quiet it down (they can't really make it stop;) they also struggle over the ship's steering-stone. Eventually Haplo takes the ship to Chelestra, hoping to douse the Cursed Blade in seawater, but the knife, instead of transforming into another weapon or creature, summons a dragon-snake that destroys the ship. As Haplo drifts in the sea, he hears a voice and looks up to see... Alfred. At Sang-drax's misleading suggestion, Xar has gone to Pryan with the pretext of taming the tytans, and he is frustrated with his inability to reach Marit. His real reason for being there is his hope of finding the Seventh Gate in the citadel that Haplo visited, but he finds little to encourage him. The five mensch&mdash; Paithan, Rega, Aleatha, Roland, and Drugar&mdash; aren't much help, nor is Zifnab, who has somehow gotten here after escaping from Abarrach. Shortly after Xar and Zifnab have arrived, Sang-drax says he knows now that Zifnab is "one of them;" after a battle with Zifnab's dragon, he takes on Xar's form and steals the ship, claiming that he will search for Haplo while Xar is on Pryan. It is revealed during Xar's stay that Zifnab is actually one of the dissenting Sartan who refused to go along with Samah's plan; he was among the mensch on Earth during the Sundering, and was the first of either race to escape the Labyrinth. It was he who penned many of the books Xar educated himself with. (With all that Zifnab has seen, his total dementia seems a bit more understandable.) Xar decides to leave Pryan in a ship he spotted outside the citadel, covered in Sartan runes, but to do that he needs to get past the tytans. He decides to need to kill off the mensch and revive them with necromancy to serve as distractions. The mensch are having their own problems. Paithan is obsessed with a room in the center of the citadel that he calls the Star Chamber, a room with seven huge seats and an apparatus that generates blinding light. Roland and Aleatha are mostly not on speaking terms; the elf maiden finds herself spending more time with Drugar, who may be the last of his race. But Drugar has discovered a delightful illusion: at a certain clearing in the garden maze, at certain times of the day, he can see ghostly shadows of people from all the mensch races, walking around and talking to each other. Aleatha is there when he uses his amulet to activate the platform, teleporting him instantly to a different citadel&mdash; where, as it turns out, there are other survivors. Marit finds herself in a Sartan prison. On a bench in the middle of the room, Haplo recovers from injuries caused by the Cursed Blade. Across from it, Hugh the Hand and the dog watch her with unblinking eyes. Their "jailer": none other than Alfred, who rescued them from Chelestra. After some discussion, Haplo realizes that they are in the Vortex, the one-way gate at the very center of the Labyrinth. It was here that the Patryns were initially imprisoned and chose to live for generations, until people calling themselves Nexus runners started trying to escape. (It's unknown when they abandoned the Vortex and all moved out into the Labyrinth.) Haplo decides to enter the Labyrinth in search of his daughter, whom Marit named Rue. Hugh agrees to go with him, as does Marit at Xar's command; he has told Marit to hold off on killing Haplo to report back any conversations Alfred and Haplo have about the other worlds. It is only Alfred who balks. He has nothing left&mdash; Orla "saw" Samah's death and chose a peaceful death to be with him&mdash; but fear of the unknown. The Labyrinth itself, however, refuses to let him return to the Vortex by unceremoniously dropping a mountain on top of the exit back into it. To Haplo, the Labyrinth seems afraid of Alfred, though he can't for the life of him figure out why; what is Alfred, besides a bumbling, useless Sartan? ...who can turn into a dragon and bring people back from the dead? The group is about to be overrun by tiger-men when, surprisingly, a Patryn raiding party comes to save them. This party comes from Abri, the one and only city inside the Labyrinth (anathema to the lone-wolf Patryns). While camping overnight, Alfred admits his true name to Haplo: Coren, a Sartan word that can mean "to choose" or perhaps "chosen." Many Sartan children were named that, in hopes of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but (as Haplo points out) Alfred did not feel particularly amused when he awoke, the last living Sartan on Arianus. Clearly Alfred was Coren, was chosen&mdash;but for what? Marit, however, betrays them by revealing that Alfred is a Sartan. Haplo, Hugh, and Alfred are jailed by the city's leader, Headman Vasu, to await Lord Xar&mdash; Marit accused Haplo of being a traitor and plotting against their people&mdash; but are freed again just as quickly after Marit overhears the disguised Sang-drax plotting to kill them. Sang-drax and his cronies are also gathering a huge army of the Labyrinth's native monsters, with which to destroy the city of Abri and seal the Final Gate; they allowed Marit to overhear them to feed off the emotions that would come from it. Abri's occupants prepare for its defense, while Haplo and Marit, prodded by the dog, finally find their love for each other. Alfred feels out of place; though few seem to begrudge him his Sartan heritage, he is still out-of-place here, a clumsy pacifist in a city preparing for war. Talking with Headman Vasu, however, he eventually discovers that the city was not made by Patryns (who do not build cities,) or at least not by Patryns alone&mdash; the Sartan "heretics" who were expelled into the Labyrinth were accepted by the Patryns, eventually integrating completely into the society; Vasu himself is half-and-half, supplementing his Patryn tattoos with Sartan magic. The Patryns taught them the value of family; the Sartan, in return, taught the Patryns the value of banding together. Here, at the heart of the Labyrinth, rises Abri, the city that symbolizes the best in both cultures. Alfred also finds out why he is called the Serpent Mage: it is a title from a Sartan hierarchy of strength in magic, whose levels are named after animals. Serpent is very near the top. Alfred has found the meaning of his name: to choose his power, and all the responsibility it comes with... or to choose Alfred, who would rather faint than have to use his magic. Back on Pryan, Drugar returns from the other citadel with knowledge: he knows how to stop the tytans. Aleatha has fled the maze, though; pushed into hysterics by his sudden (and literal) disappearance, she ran back to her brother, and the four are now at a "party" of Xar's, at which he hopes to kill them with poisoned wine so that their bodies will be undamaged. Zifnab, however, saves them by drinking all of it himself and saying that it was poisoned, faking his death once again. The mensch are horrified at the revelation that Xar means to kill them. Aleatha escapes the room, while the other three are sealed inside by Xar... until Zifnab's dragon discovers Zifnab's "death" and tears the room apart. Aleatha has fled once again into the maze, where Xar can't pursue her because of protective Sartan runes covering its path. She runs into Drugar and he tells her they have to let the tytans inside to help them; he shares with her how to stop them. They run for the gates, but before they can reach it, Xar attacks; Drugar sacrifices himself to save Aleatha. Xar is about to kill Aleatha when the dragon strikes, distracting Xar with battling it instead of killing mensch. The other mensch have escaped from the destroyed room and find her, and they think she's mad when she tells them what she's going to do. She uses the amulet to open the gate and invites the tytans inside; they peacefully enter and ask, &mdash;Where is the citadel? to which Aleatha answers, "Here is the Citadel. You are home." Xar recovers from his battle with the dragon, and prepares to leave for the Labyrinth after Marit reports back to him&mdash; apparently corrupted by Haplo's influence into thinking Xar has made a mistake in allying with the dragon-snakes, as she says they are planning an attack. He is surprised when the tytans don't kill the mensch, and actually act to protect the mensch from him, but he avoids a fight by snatching Drugar's amulet from Aleatha and running away with it. The amulet will gain him entry into the Sartan ship, which he can then use to return to the Labyrinth. At Abri, the battle between Patryns and Labyrinth creatures rages fiercely, but the real threat comes from the dragon-snakes. Haplo, Marit, and Hugh lead a sortie to deal with them, and the three battle Sang-drax in his serpent form. Sang-drax is apparently killed by Haplo, but Haplo has been badly injured and almost crushed beneath the massive body. Marit is attacked by a wolfen when a green and golden dragon carries it away: Alfred, having made his choice to accept his power. He lifts the serpent's body off of Haplo, leaving Marit to hold his blood-soaked form, his heart-rune's wound having reopened. But while Alfred is distracted in battle with the dragon-snakes, Xar appears. He wants Haplo's knowledge of the Chamber of the Damned, and will stop at nothing to get it. The battle ends with the Labyrinth's armies driven off, but Marit dazed and wounded, Haplo abducted by Xar, and Alfred missing in action.
8543472	/m/02778nd	The Seventh Gate	Tracy Hickman	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the Labyrinth, Marit and Hugh venture out to try and find Alfred. He turns out to be the prisoner of a Labyrinth dragon, which are almost the equal of the dragon-snakes in cruelty and savagery. With the help of the Cursed Blade, they drive it off and rescue Alfred. On Abarrach, Haplo is dying. He will never willingly give up his knowledge of the Chamber of the Damned, and Xar knows it. What Xar must do is allow Haplo to die, and then revive him with necromancy. The fact that they both know it and accept it does not make it easier on either of them. Haplo dies peacefully, as Xar, Lord of the Nexus, the most powerful human being in the universe, weeps silently over his surrogate son, whom, despite everything, he still loves. But when the time for necromancy comes, it doesn't work. Xar realizes suddenly: the dog! Haplo never owned a dog until his last few moments in the Labyrinth&mdash;he had fought well and bravely, but just a few steps from the Final Gate, his injuries overtook him. Because he longed to rest and let death claim him, Haplo instilled all his instincts of loyalty, love and optimism into an external form: the dog. In doing so, though, he gave it his soul. The dog is still very much alive, and escapes into the catacombs under the capital city, bringing Xar's plans to a screeching halt. Marit, Hugh and Alfred, though alive, are at start of the Labyrinth; they must somehow reach the Final Gate, way at the other end. Providence arrives in the form of Zifnab and the "dragons" of Pryan&mdash;the good, true side of the Wave, polar opposites to the dragon-snakes. Marit, Alfred and Hugh travel to Abarrach, where they hope to somehow rescue Haplo. In the meanwhile, Zifnab is sent on an important mission: he tells Ramu, son of Samah and leader of the remaining Sartan on Chelestra, to travel to Abarrach as well. When Xar hears about this, he redesigns his plans, sending his few Patryn bodyguards back to the Nexus, where they might make a difference in the defense of the Final Gate, and then begins to make his own preparations... On Abarrach, Alfred and Marit leave Hugh on their ship (without magic, the air is too poisonous for him) and find the dog, through which Alfred can communicate with Haplo, but are unable to leave: for some reason, the dog can't pass through Death's Gate. Marit sustains wounds from a lazar, and the two retreat to Balthazar's encampment to rest and heal. Balthazar, of course, is very eager to leave this world if he can, but a problem arises when Kleitus, the leader of the lazar, attempts to seize Marit's ship himself. Alfred attempts to defeat him, but it takes Balthazar to really do the job. In the middle of this, Ramu arrives and peremptorily takes control of the situation. He decides to take everyone, including Marit, Balthazar and Balthazar's people, to the Labyrinth, to deal with the Patryn threat once and for all. This is exactly where Haplo wants him: with all the Sartan and all the Patryns in the Labyrinth, not to mention the good dragons of Pryan and the dragon-snakes of Chelestra, this would be the perfect time to seal shut Death's Gate, leaving the mensch to their own devices. Though both Patryns and Sartan think of themselves as gods among men, it is clear they have caused nothing but trouble. What Haplo proposes is to end it all in one final stroke. He asks Alfred to help him and Alfred, honored, agrees. In the company of Jonathan the lazar and Hugh the Hand, the two descend to the Chamber of the Damned, actually the Seventh Gate. Alfred opens the door to Death's Gate, entering a hallway and preparing to shut the doors at both ends. Hugh the Hand takes a great deal of interest in it, and, when pressed by Haplo, he reverts to his normal appearance: Xar, Lord of the Nexus, come to finish what he has started: the collapse of the four realms back into one world, one he will rule. "Do no violence," intones the lazar Jonathan, but no one is listening. Alfred, at the far end of the hallway, opens the door into the Nexus, where he sees Ramu being approached by dragon-snakes, who promise allegiance in destroying the Patryns. Both Marit and Balthazar see through it, and the Sartan man aids the Patryn woman in escaping to warn her people, but Ramu is totally taken in. He and his forces prepare for war. As this happens, Xar casts a spell on Alfred that nearly kills him, and allows Death's Gate to swing wide open; in through the door rushes Sang-drax, who attempts to urge Xar into reversing the Sundering, while surreptitiously killing Haplo. But seeds of doubt have finally taken hold, and Xar sees the dragon-snake for what it really is. He sacrifices himself to undo the reverse-Sundering spell &mdash; his life's work &mdash; and is slain by Sang-drax. Sang-drax urges Haplo to finish what Xar started, but Haplo shakes his head and begins to shut the doors&mdash;all the doors&mdash;into the Seventh Gate, saying a final good-bye to his mensch friends as he does so. When he is done, Sang-drax has abandoned his elven form and towers above him, threatening death... But Alfred lurches in, wounded but coherent. "Do no violence! It wants us to fight!" Haplo throws down his sword, and Sang-drax rears up for the kill... Only to smash himself into the ceiling of the Seventh Gate, destroying himself and bringing the entire structure down on all of them. Haplo and Alfred have only one door to jump through: Death's Gate itself, which is slowly collapsing and taking all of creation with it. Haplo and Alfred have to combine forces, forcing their magics to work together&mdash;Patryn and Sartan rune-structures, diametric opposites... That fit together so obviously, Haplo wonders why it has never been seen before. Their spell works, and with a dull thud, Death's Gate closes for the final time. In the Labyrinth, the dragon-snakes still loom, but there is a modicum of peace. Haplo is reunited with Marit, clearly intending never to leave her side again. Alfred is alive as well&mdash;at peace with himself, having finally chosen what he truly wants. Zifnab is here as well, doddering about causing trouble for his faithful dragon. Hugh the Hand is dead, found surrounded by the corpses of Labyrinth monsters. Lord Xar, as well, lies in state, the greatest of the Patryns, flawed though he&mdash;though they all&mdash;might be. And the war between Patryn and Sartan has been called to a halt: Ramu has been removed from command, replaced by Balthazar, who was quick to form an alliance with Vasu. The war, for now, is over, and perhaps, in time, there can be peace.
8549526	/m/0277jhc	Crystal Mask	Katherine Roberts	2001-08-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Renn, a gifted but often bullied Eight Year novice in the Echorium who can speak to Half-Creatures, is asked to assist the Singers by translating for Shaiala Two-Hoof, a wild girl brought to the Island for treatment, who claims to have been raised by centaurs. Although initially the pair argue, meeting Rialle helps to calm Shaiala and she begins to remember, enough to reveal that her memories were wiped using a mask made of khiz. Second Singer Kherron takes this excuse to insist that Shaiala and Renn leave with him to search for Frazhin, the escaped khizpriest whose body was never found. After this revelation, Rialle takes Shaiala, who was very disturbed by her recolllections, and Renn to come to the cave where she lives and meet the merlee. While Shaiala swims with the merlee, Renn rejects their friendly offers and is horrified to learn that "crazy" Rialle is his mother. The next day, Renn and Shaiala leave with Kherron on the Wavesong, heading to Southport. On the journey, Renn is irritable and offends Shaiala by refusing to believe her tales of centaurs. Kherron also gives Shaiala a bluestone necklace. Upon arrival, the group begin to explore Southport and Shaiala, despite being closelyguarded by a pentad of orderlies including Frenn and Lazim, escapes, only to become lost in the rough part of the city. She is kidnapped and thrown in a cellar with several street children, and Erihan, the son of Lord Nahar, the leader of the Kalerei tribe of Horselords. The children are taken away by barge towards the Plains. While Kherron attempts to trace Shaiala through her bluestone necklace, they rapidly loose track of the barge. Meanwhile, the children meet "Aunt Yashra", a seemingly kindly pregnant woman who asks to hear each child sing, and then chooses some to return to her "Singing Palace" while others are to be "gotten rid of". This disturbs Shaiala, who recognises Yashra, and causes friction between the children, with many of those chosen wanting to stay. However, after three days of cramped conditions, they hatch a plan to escape. Shaiala kicks a hole in the side of the boat for the children to escape through, but several are left behind as the boat begins to sink, attracting the crew's attention. Shaiala and the other remaining children are taken to Aunt Yashra's camp, where Yashra uses the khiz mask to make them passive. Shaiala remembers the mask and, with Erihan's help, escapes. Shaiala and Erihan steal Yashra's horses and head onto the Plains together to search for tracks - Erihan for Horselord's, Shaiala for centaur's. Meanwhile, Renn is asked to track Shaiala's bluestone, as novices are more sensitive than Singers. Although they follow the barge for a few days, Renn is shocked when the bluestone is suddenly underwater, and he fears Shaiala has drowned. However, the bluestone is soon retrieved by a Half-Creature similar to a merlee, known as a naga. The Singers follow the naga upriver, and eventually arrange a meeting. The naga shows them its collection of 'sparklies' - consisting of Shaiala's bluestone, a piece of khiz and Erihan's dagger. Seeing Erihan's dagger, the Singers are attacked by Lord Nahar and the Kaleri, who have been following the Singers in their search for Erihan. After a brief confrontation, the two groups agree to work together, and the Horselords tell the Singers about the Sunless Valley, reachable only though the Pass of Silence, where they suspect the children have been taken. Renn contacts the naga again and, in exchange for the return of a 'sparkly', it tells them where it found the dagger - with Shaiala's bluestone - and where it found the khiz, in the mountains. However, it leaves before Renn can ask if it knows another way into the Sunless Valley. Meanwhile, Shaiala and Erihan eventually track down Shaiala's herd of centaurs by the Dancing Canyons. Seeing them, Shaiala remembers why no-one else had spotted them - the adults use herdstones to bend light around the herd, rendering it invisible. Shaiala offers to take herdstones to the centaur foals enslaved in the Sunless Valley, and she and Erihan travel there through underwater caves, guided by naga, within which they see khiz crystal poisoning the naga eggs. Meanwhile, the Singers attempt to get through the Pass of Silence, a pass so precarious that the slightest noise can start an avalanche. However, when they are attacked, Renn accidentally cries out, setting off an avalanche. Frenn and another orderly are killed, Kherron is captured, a crystal forced into his throat, and is taken away, and only Renn's quick thinking saves himself and the other orderlies from the second avalanche set off by the Harai guarding the Pass. Grateful, Lazim finally explains how Frazhin disappeared after the Battle of the Merlee twenty years ago, and, although those sent to find his body disappeared, he was not considered a threat after the khiz was destroyed. While the orderlies attempt to disable to gong used to set off avalanches in the Pass of Silence - thereby allowing Lord Nahar and the Kaleri to pass through safely - Renn hides, only to be caught by Yashra as she brings in the captured street children, and be taken to the Khizalace - Yashra's stronghold. However, there is trouble in the Valley - Shaiala and Erihan have arrived to find the captured centaurs working as slaves to mine khiz, and have freed them with herdstones, leading a revolution. The angry foals storm the palace, leaving Shaiala and Erihan no choice but to follow. They get inside the Khizalace, but are soon separated from the centaurs. Instead, they find a group of street children, apparently hypnotised, and follow them to their dormitory, which is dominated by the presence of a giant khiz crystal. Although the pair quickly disable the guards, they are unable to break the crystal's hold on the children, and only just keep from sucumbing themselves. Renn is taken to see Singer Kherron in the dungeons, who is clearly badly injured by the khiz crystal in his throat. Frazhin arrives, and attempts to force Kherron to teach the children in the Khizalace the Songs of Power, scorning the Singer's attempts to break free. Frazhin threatens that if Kherron does not help him, he will harm Renn - whom Frazhin believes to be Kherron's son. It is made clear in the conversation that Yashra's unborn child is Frazhin's. Renn is taken away, but escapes from his guards when he hears of a "wild centaur girl" causing havoc in the dormitories. He hurries to find Shaiala attempting to crack the khiz with her kicks, and helps her to crack the crystal and free the children. With the Khizalace shattering around them from the blow, the Harai flee, and Shaiala and Renn hurry to free Kherron, whose voice is badly damaged from the crystal, then join the battle outside. With the arrival of the Kaleri, the battle has turned in the Singer's favour, at least until Yashra appears and seals the gates against them with khiz power, trapping them inside. Although she seems victorious, capturing Erihan as a hostage and controlling the khiz against the Kaleri, she is distracted when Singer Kherron warns her to keep an eye on Frazhin, who is trying to escape without her. She hurries after him, and between Renn's singing and the centaur's kicks, the gates are destroyed. When the group catches up to Yashra, she is watching from the lakeshore as Frazhin on a boat in the centaur calls to the naga. Although they help him initially, they suddenly turn on him and pull him under the water. Yashra, trapped by the Singers, is offered a choice: immediate execution or life on the Echorium until her child is born followed by a course of Yehn. She chooses the Echorium, for the sake of her child, and protests before she is taken away that Frazhin's crimes are the Singer's fault, for destroying his hopes of joining them when he was a child. After leaving the valley, Shaiala and Renn forget their earlier disagreements, and with Renn's singing to assist her, Shaiala successfully cracks rock to find her own herdstone. A songless Kherron, after reporting to the Echorium with Renn's help, admits that, while he would be glad to call himself Renn's father, Rialle had a close relationship with Frenn - who Renn was named for - and Renn's parentage is uncertain. Shaiala joins the Kaleri to learn to be a tribeswoman from Erihan's mother, and Renn returns to the Echorium, where he reconciles with Rialle and the merlee.
8558331	/m/0277v7x	The Forgotten	K. A. Applegate	1997-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jake spends a day having strange flashbacks of himself in a rainforest, which leaves him disturbed. That evening, after watching a boxing match with his brother and father, he leaves for a grocery store, where Tobias has discovered something has crashed and the high-ranking yeerks are trying to hide something. The other Animorphs join them, and together they infiltrate the store in fly morph. Cassie overhears Chapman saying that it was a Yeerk bug fighter. After Ax manages to reconfigure the ship's controls, the Animorphs escape, pursued by Chapman and the other Yeerks. They plan to fly the spacecraft to Washington, in order to convince the American government that Earth is under attack by extraterrestrials. When Ax discovers that the fighter's technology to keep human radar from seeing it is broken, they are intercepted by two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets, however, Cassie notices that they are over the Red Sea in the Middle East - far from their intended destination. Flying above the atmosphere, they are picked up by Visser Three's Blade ship sensors. The Animorphs, knowing they can't escape, try to fire on the Visser's vessel. Both Jake and the Blade ship fire their Dracon beams at the same time, and, coincidentally, their projectiles intersect, and both ships crash. The kids wake up in their wrecked Bug fighter. They look around, noticing that they've crash-landed in a rainforest. They assume they're in the Amazon rainforest, but are also disturbed by the fact that it is the middle of the day (whereas it was nighttime in the United States, which is in roughly the same time zone as South America). After Jake reveals the strange flashbacks he was having, Ax speculates they may have caused a "Sario Rip" and traveled twelve hours backwards through time, which would explain why Jake was having strange flashbacks: he was in two places at once, and the two Jakes---the "past" and "future" versions---experience each other's thoughts at random moments. However, Cassie later notices that only Jake has the flashes so Ax says that Jake is the only "real" person-the rest are just a memory. They soon find that the Yeerks have traveled backwards through time as well, and will need both ships to create another Sario Rip and return to the right time. Ax takes the Bug fighter's computer to prevent them from doing so, and the group ventures out into the hostile wilderness, constantly plagued by insects, fire ants, snakes and piranhas. They're pursued by the Yeerks, who ruthlessly destroy the animals and trees around them in a bid to kill the Animorphs, desperate to retrieve the precious computer. The children acquire jaguar and monkey morphs in order to traverse the rainforest more easily. They eventually stumble across a group of Amazon Indians, led by Polo, their tribal chief. Marco, who knows some Spanish, manages to roughly translate the natives' Portuguese, and Jake and Polo agree to assist one another in eliminating the Yeerks. Polo and his men kill the Hork-Bajir guarding the Blade ship with poison-tipped spears, leaving the Animorphs with Visser Three, who morphs an amphibian-like Lerdethak and picks the Animorphs off one by one. Jake morphs into a monkey to use the Ledethak's vine like arms to move himself to Visser Three's body. He then throws a poison-tipped spear into Visser Three: while never revealed, this may have been fatal. Regardless, Visser Three is still able to use an arm to break Jake's neck. However, Jake wakes up back at the grocery store, just as they are about to infiltrate it. He calls off the operation, and the Animorphs all go home. The next day Jake asks Ax what had happened. Ax postulates that the travel through time created two separate versions of Jake. The reason Jake simply "woke up" back at the grocery store was that the Jake in the rainforest died at the hands of Visser Three; since it is impossible for one consciousness to exist in two separate locations, when one was eliminated the two snapped back together. Ax also speculates that Jake had to die, or else both Jakes and both their universes would collide and cease to exist. The events in the rainforest never actually happened (including the acquisition of jaguar and monkey morphs), and only remain in Jake's memory. He is left with a feeling of chilling relief. *Sario Rips are introduced and explained.
8558612	/m/0277vhg	The Reaction	K. A. Applegate	1997-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the zoo, Rachel and Cassie witness a boy fall into the crocodile pit. Rachel jumps into the pit to rescue him. Out of sight, she acquires and morphs a crocodile, carrying the boy to safety. At a meeting later in the barn, the Animorphs focus on their latest news: Jeremy McCole, a teen heart-throb, has become a new spokesman for The Sharing. The Animorphs fear this could make many join The Sharing, and decide to stop it from happening. That night, Rachel suddenly finds herself morphing involuntarily a crocodile, directly into a fly without returning to human form, a violation of morphing 'rules', and then an elephant. She meets up with her father and has him get her on the Barry and Cindy Sue Show, which McCole will be on. Rachel tells Cassie what really happened, but tells her not to tell Jake, and Cassie agrees. The next day the Animorphs spy on McCole's yacht to find Visser Three there. McCole tells the Visser he wants to become a Controller. Rachel suddenly finds herself involuntarily morphing into various animals, the last being a crocodile. Visser Three is alerted and morphs. The Visser is thwarted when Rachel bites him. Back at the barn, Ax diagnoses Rachel's condition. She is allergic to crocodile DNA, explaining her involuntary morphing, happening when emotionally stressed or excited. Ax tells her she needs to expel a live crocodile, a process known as hereth illint. Jake pulls Rachel off the mission until she undergoes the process. She lies to him the next day, pretending that it occurred overnight. The next day Rachel is scheduled to be on the show. At the show, the hereth illint begins. Cassie rushes her to the bathroom, and Rachel 'burps' the crocodile. As it attacks her, she morphs a bear and Cassie morphs a squirrel. The crocodile runs onto the stage with Rachel and Cassie, causing commotion. Ax kills the crocodile and Rachel steps on McCole's Yeerk. The mission to stop McCole is a success, as he had retreated to Uzbekistan.
8558931	/m/0277vs1	Celsius 7/7	Michael Gove			 In the book he discusses both the emergence of Islamism and the West's response. It distinguishes between 'the great historical faith' of Islam which he claims has 'brought spiritual nourishment to millions', and Islamism, a 'totalitarian ideolog[y]' which turns to 'hellish violence and oppression' in a similar way to the 20th century ideologies of National Socialism and Communism. He discusses the factors that led to the development of large-scale Muslim terrorism and how the West has failed to stand up for its liberal values in the face of this pressure, including his analysis of the alliance between Muslim fundamentalists and the Western left.
8561156	/m/0277ydn	The Night Walker	John Fletcher			 The plot of the play focuses on an arranged marriage. The heroine, Maria, is in love with a suitable potential mate, Frank Heartlove; but her mother (known only as the Lady) coerces Maria into a marriage with a rich old miser, Justice Algrip. Maria's Nurse describes him as "this old stinking dog's flesh," among other choice epithets. At the marriage feast, Maria's cousin, the prankster Jack Wildbrain, urges the heartbroken and rejected Heartlove to attempt to cuckold the Justice on his wedding night, and arranges Heartlove's opportunity to be with Maria alone. But Maria, a virtuous young woman, resists Heartlove's advances, even drawing a dagger and threatening to harm herself if he persists. Unfortunately, they are caught together by the Justice and other members of the wedding party; Maria, her reputation ruined, falls into a swoon, and is perceived to be dead. Meanwhile, Wildbrain's friend Tom Lurcher, a down-and-out gentleman turned thief, is recruiting a new apprentice in thievery, a boy who calls himself Snap (he is the "little thief"). Lurcher's modus operandi involves disguise and trickery: it's easier to burgle a house when the inhabitants are terrified of devils. Lurcher and the boy break into the Lady's house, to make off with the chest that holds the wedding gifts; instead they steal the coffin containing Maria's body. When they discover their error, they take the coffin out to bury it; but they encounter Justice Algrip, on his way home from the Lady's house. The boy pretends to be Maria's ghost to frighten him off. In so doing, the boy mentions a woman the Justice abandoned in order to marry Maria &mdash; a broad hint that Snap is more than he appears to be. No sooner is he gone, though, that Maria wakes from her swoon, and the thieves flee the scene. The Lady drives Jack Wildbrain from her doors, blaming him for the wedding disaster and even for the disappearance of the coffin. Wandering in the night, Wildbrain meets a dejected Heartlove, who now blames Wildbrain for getting him drunk and manipulating him into his disgraceful conduct earlier. Heartlove challenges Wildbrain to a duel. As they fight, a disoriented Maria stumbles upon them; she pretends to be her own ghost to frighten and shock them out of the duel. Afterward her Nurse takes her in, under the disguise of a Welsh cousin; the Lady soon penetrates the guise, but agrees to maintain it till Maria's reputation can be restored. Lurcher and the boy, under various disguises, fool and rob the Justice, and then waylay and drug him; when the Justice wakes, he is confronted with "furies" and "hellhounds" ready to drag him to Hell for his sins. His soul is saved, however, when an angel (the boy in costume) intervenes; Justice Algrip repents his past misdeeds and promises to make amends. The Justice keeps his word: he returns Maria's dowry and admits that his precontract with another woman makes his marriage to Maria null and void. He also yields up the mortgage he holds on Lurcher's property, thus restoring Lurcher's fortunes. Maria is revealed and restored to Heartlove; and the boy thief turns out to be Lurcher's sister, and the woman to whom the Justice was previously committed. She has manipulated Lurcher to keep his bad deeds under control; it was her doing that they stole the coffin instead of the wedding treasure. And she accepts the Justice as her intended husband once again..."old dry ham of horse flesh" though he may be. Even Wildbrain is restored to the Lady's good graces.
8561256	/m/02pf61v	The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable	Nassim Nicholas Taleb	2007-04-17	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Nassim Nicholas Taleb refers to the book variously as an essay or a narrative with one single idea: "our blindness with respect to randomness, particularly large deviations." It is Taleb's questioning of why this occurs and his explanations of it that drive the book forward. The book's layout follows "a simple logic" moving from literary subjects in the beginning to scientific and mathematical subjects in the later portions. Part One and the beginning of Part Two delve into Psychology. Taleb addresses science and business in the latter half of Part Two and Part Three. Part Four contains advice on how to approach the world in the face of uncertainty and still enjoy life. Taleb acknowledges a contradiction in the book. He uses an exact metaphor, Black Swan Idea to argue against the "unknown, the abstract, and imprecise uncertain—white ravens, pink elephants, or evaporating denizens of a remote planet orbiting Tau Ceti." In the first chapter, the black swan theory first is discussed in relation to Taleb's coming of age in the Levant. The author then elucidates his approach to historical analysis. He describes history as opaque, essentially a black box of cause and effect. One sees events go in and events go out, but one has no way of determining which produced what effect. Taleb argues this is due to The Triplet of Opacity. In the second chapter, Taleb tells a fictional story of a character named Yevgenia Nikolayevna Krasnova and her book A Story of Recursion. She published her book on the web and was discovered by a small publishing company; they published her unedited work and the book became an international bestseller. The small publishing firm became a big corporation, and Yevgenia became famous. This incident is described as a Black Swan Event. Taleb seems to be using "recursion" as a hint that he is predicting the story of his own book The Black Swan—Yevgenia's rejection of fiction and nonfiction as categories is reminiscent of Taleb's idea, and her character seems autobiographical as Taleb may be poking fun at his own intolerant temperament. In the third chapter, Taleb introduces the concepts of Extremistan and Mediocristan. He uses them as guides to define how predictable is the environment one's studying. Mediocristan environments safely can use Gaussian distribution. In Extremistan environments, a Gaussian distribution is used at one's peril. Chapter four brings together the topics discussed earlier in the narrative, about a turkey. Taleb uses it to illustrate the philosophical problem of induction and how past performance is no indicator of future performance. He then takes the reader into the history of Skepticism. In Chapter nine, Taleb outlines the multiple topics he previously has described and connects them as a single basic idea.
8563808	/m/0278116	Le Rêve	Émile Zola	1888	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Le rêve is a simple tale of the orphan Angélique Marie (b. 1851), adopted by a couple of embroiderers, the Huberts, whose marriage is blighted by a childlessness which they attribute to a curse uttered by Mme Hubert's mother on her deathbed. Angélique is enthralled by the tales of the saints and martyrs — particularly Saint Agnes and Saint George — as told in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. Her dream is to be saved by a handsome prince and to live happily ever after, in the same way the virgin martyrs have their faiths tested on earth before being rescued and married to Jesus in heaven. Her dream is realized when she falls in love with Félicien d'Hautecœur, the last in an old family of knights, heroes, and nobles in the service of Christ and of France. His father, the present Monseigneur, objects to their marrying for reasons of his own. (Before entering the Church he had married for love a woman much younger than himself; when she died giving birth to Félicien, he sent the child away and took holy orders.) Angélique falls ill and pines away. Won over by her virtue and innocence, the Monseigneur finally relents and the lovers are married; but Angélique dies on the steps of the cathedral as she kisses her husband for the first time. Her death, however, is a happy one: her innocence has freed the Huberts and the Monseigneur from their curses.
8564876	/m/02782jn	Beyond the Wall of Sleep	H. P. Lovecraft			 An intern in a mental hospital relates his experience with Joe Slater, an inmate who died at the facility a few weeks after being confined as a criminally insane murderer. He describes Slater as a "typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region, who corresponds exactly with the 'white trash' of the South", for whom "laws and morals are nonexistent" and whose "general mental status is probably below that of any other native American people". Although Slater's crime was exceedingly brutal and unprovoked he had an "absurd appearance of harmless stupidity" and the doctors guessed his age at about forty. During the third night of his confinement, Slater had the first of his "attacks". He burst from an uneasy sleep into a frenzy so violent it took four orderlies to strait-jacket him. For nearly fifteen minutes he gave vent to an incredible rant. The words were in the voice and couched in the paltry vocabulary of Joe Slater but the onlookers could construe from the inadequate language a vision of: :green edifices of light, oceans of space, strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible wrong and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire. In order to reach it...he would soar through abysses of emptiness 'burning' every obstacle that stood in his way. The ranting stopped as suddenly as it had started. This was the first of what would become nightly "attacks" of a similar nature. The peripheral otherworldly images of Slater's visions were different and more fantastic with each successive night, but always there was the central theme of the blazing entity and its revenge. The doctors were perplexed with the Slater case. Where did a backward man like Slater get such visions, when surely an illiterate rustic like him would have had little if any exposure to fairy tales or fantasy stories? Not that there were stories similar to Slater's. Why, too, was Slater dying? As an undergraduate, the intern had built but never tested a device for two-way telepathic communication. The device was designed around his principle that thought was ultimately a form of radiant energy. Heedless of any ethics, he attached himself with Slater to the device as Slater lay near death. With the device switched on, he received a message from a being of light whose experiences had been what were transmitted through the medium of Joe Slater. This being explained that, when not shackled to their physical bodies, all men are light beings. The thought-message went on to explain that, as light beings within the realm of sleep, humans can experience the vistas of many planes and universes which remain unknown to waking awareness. The intern understood that the light being would now become completely incorporeal, and undertake at last a final battle with its nemesis near Algol. Joe Slater died then, and there were no further transmissions. That night an enormously bright star was discovered in the sky near Algol. Within a week it had dimmed to the luminosity of an ordinary star and in a few months it had vanished completely.
8565283	/m/0278303	Couples	John Updike			 The novel focuses on a promiscuous circle of ten couples in the small Massachusetts town of Tarbox. (The author was living in Ipswich, Massachusetts when he composed the book.)
8566524	/m/02784bd	Shadow Moon	Chris Claremont		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Willow Ufgood is worrying over planting his crops for the harvest, once again in the life of a farmer. He falls asleep, distraught over not being able to attend a party for Elora Danan, of whom he served as protector about a year ago. He dreams that night of riding on the back of a great dragon, who drops him off at Tir Asleen. After bantering with Madmartigan and Sorsha, during which Sorsha bestows upon him a new name, "Thorn Drumheller," he continues on to see Elora and give her a gift that he has created: a teddy bear with crystal eyes that Willow says will protect her when he is not there to do so. Leaving the sleeping child with her gift, he converses with the two brownies, Rool and Franjean, and leaves. He wakes up the next morning to find two Brownies sitting at the end of his bed and that a horrific cataclysm has wiped out 12 areas in the world, including Tir Asleen.
8568251	/m/02786p5	A Luneta Mágica				 The book tells the story of Simplício, a naïve and near-sighted man who lives alongside his brother Américo, an ascending politician, his cousin Anica and extremely religious aunt Domingas, and wishes to be able of seeing again one day. A friend of his, old man Nunes, takes him to Reis, an optometrist who is able to make very powerful lenses; however, none of them are able to make Simplício see again. Reis then suggests Simplício to go see a friend of his, an unnamed Armenian wizard who makes magical lenses. Simplício is finally able to see again, but the Armenian tells him that if he looks to someone or something for more than three minutes, he would see the evil enclosed on them. However, Simplício does not pay attention to the Armenian's warning, and starts seeing the evil parts of all things, and considered to be crazy, becomes a recluse. Simplício accidentally destroys the "evil" lenses one day, and returns to see the Armenian — this time he gives to Simplício new lenses that makes him see the good parts of all things. Being seduced and ludibriated, after many mishaps Simplício finally obtains the "sanity" lenses, and is able to live happily again. gv:A Luneta Mágica pt:A Luneta Mágica
8568732	/m/02787kd	Blart II: The Boy Who was Wanted Dead or Alive - Or Both	Dominic Barker	2007	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Blart, after the imprisonment of Zoltab, is living the good life on his own pig farm. But a wily merchant named Uther has conned him out of everything he owns and his freedom by a game of cards called "Muggins". To play Muggins, the dealer simply picks two cards from the deck, hands one to the non-dealer and keeps one himself. Each player turns over their cards. If the cards were the same, say, a king and a king, then the dealer wins. If the cards are different, say, a three and a five, then the non-dealer wins. Even Blart has grasped it that the chances of the non-dealer winning is drastically in his favour and resolves to play the game with Uther to make money. However, no sooner than Blart bets stakes in the game of Muggins than Uther begins to win every round. But then quite out of the blue, Capablanca arrives to tell him that Blart and the other questors are wanted, dead or alive - or both. They are wanted because it is believed that they are minions of Zoltab, even though it was them that imprisoned him. So Blart, Capablanca and Uther (who must help them as he is wanted for associating with Blart) must find and warn the other questors. After gathering the original company (with the exception of the deceased dwarf Tungsten) they must travel to where Capablanca has imprisoned Zoltab, so as to prove their innocence. However, Capablanca has difficulty remembering where he has imprisoned the last lord. As soon ddakjfdioasdjfoasdfjs it:Blart 2
8570900	/m/0278bcw	A sucessora				 A Sucessora follows the character of Mariana, a young woman that has married the widower Roberto Steen. As Mariana attempts to acclimate to her new marriage and responsibilities, she discovers that his dead wife Alice still seems to have a hold over the household.
8570979	/m/0278bh9	From an Abandoned Work	Samuel Beckett	1957		 The first person narrative revolves around three days in the early life of a neurotic old man. “None of the days is described clearly or coherently and few details are given for the second and third days.” It is unlikely that the days are actually chronologically contiguous although the general framework does tend to be, digressions aside. The story begins with the old man remembering back to when he was young, probably a young man rather than a child per se (based on the assumption that the man is modelled on Beckett himself who only came to appreciate Milton in his early twenties whilst at Trinity College). He begins arbitrarily; at least he maintains, “any other [day] would have done”. Despite feeling unwell he rises early and leaves the house but not so early that his mother isn’t able to catch his eye from her window. He appears unclear in his own head if she is even waving at him – he’s already at a fair distance when he notices her – and puts forth the notion, calculated to reduce any significance that could be attributed to her actions, that she may simply have been exercising, her latest fad, and not really trying to communicate anything at all. The young man is prone to sudden rages. As he is walking away he feels “really awful, very violent [and starts to] look out for a snail, slug or worm” to squash. Despite his propensity towards violence – or perhaps to find excuse for it – he makes a point of never avoiding things that might exacerbate it whether these be small birds or animals or simply difficult terrain. He becomes aware of a white horse at such a distance that despite the excellent sight he boasts of he cannot tell if a man, woman or child is following it. White is a colour that has a strong effect on him and he flies into a rage simply at the thought of it (See Classical conditioning). In the past he had tried “beating his head against something” but has discovered that short bursts of energy, “running five or ten yards”, works best. After this he walks on for a bit and then heads home. On the second day, despite having had another bad night, he leaves the house in the morning and doesn’t return until nightfall. He describes being “set on and pursued by … stoats” which – perhaps significantly – he refers to as “a family or tribe” rather than using the more common collective noun, pack. This is noteworthy because he specifically mentions he has a good head for facts having “picked up a lot of hard knowledge”. He survives the attack but regrets that he did not let them finish him off. The events of the third day are distilled into the look he gets from an old road worker named Balfe of whom he had been terrified of as a child. Once he has finished with these recollections we learn a little about where he is now. It appears he is still going for his daily perambulations, “out, on, round, back, in” as he puts it. And he is still in poor health. His throat, which has bothered him for as long as he can remember, still troubles him and he has developed earache. He regards himself now as a “mild” person and yet for some reason the violence of old erupts and he begins lashing about with his stick and cursing. His final thoughts are of vanishing from view in the tall ferns. The man’s constant sore throat may well be a psychosomatic condition; he suffers from fidgeting and cites one instance where he collapses in some kind of fit. He is clearly a disturbed individual with a great deal of pent up hostility particularly toward his parents. He refers to himself as “mad” but then acknowledges that he is probably merely “a little strange”. His behaviour is obsessive, he has a propensity towards self-harm (“beating [his] head against [things])” – Waiting for Godot). His relationship with his parents is not good; he says he would rather go to hell than join them in paradise in fact. He is glad that his father died early in his life so that he wouldn’t have to be disappointed with the directionlessness of his son’s life (“I have never in my life been on my way anywhere”). The mother’s own somewhat eccentric behaviour meant that the two of them never became close; neither had spoken to the other in years following a dispute over money (perhaps his inheritance). The man talks of love but a love of the local flora (he is not far travelled) and imaginary fauna (creatures he has dreamt of), certainly not people. He wonders if he killed his parents and suspects that in a way, probably due to years of having to cope with his aberrant behaviour, he at least brought them a little closer to death. He has never married and so the family line – assuming he has no brother – will end with him, effectively killing off the family name.
8575021	/m/0278ht1	Dawn Undercover	Anna Dale	2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rustygate Primary School does not teach espionage and sleuthing, so when Dawn Buckle is asked by S.H.H. (Strictly Hush Hush) to become a highly trained spy with P.S.S.T (Pursuit of Scheming Spies and Traitors) she feels rather at a disadvantage. But showing an incredible ability and very quick thinking she soon finds herself caught up in an incredible adventure to unearth the wicked 'spy-gone-bad' Murdo Meek. Can Dawn piece together all the parts of the incredible riddle before Murdo does away with his hostage? Can she outwit this master criminal while at the same time keeping herself safe?
8575069	/m/0278hwt	A Golden Age	Tahmima Anam	2007-03	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The plot of the novel describes the true story of the writer's grandmother during the Bangladesh Liberation War. During the war her grandma helped the Freedom Fighters by protecting their ammunitions. Once when the army came to her house and threatened that they would take the youngest son of the family if she did not give them the information about the fighters, she somehow successfully tackled them. The person who portrays the character is named Rehana Haque. The story also covers the inner conflict of Rehana as she loses the custody of her children after her husband's death. Along with her desperate attempt to win the minds of her children, she tries to protect them as they get involved in the war.
8575602	/m/0278jcn	Hunted	James Alan Gardner	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the opening of the story, Explorer Edward York (son of one of the High Council's most ruthless Admirals) is freshly arrived on board an Outward Fleet spaceship, the Willow, which is leaving the Troyen solar system where he has been stationed for the past twenty years. The atmosphere aboard ship is febrile; the shy and retiring York is roped into attending a party, a masquerade-cum-orgy, by a woman in an Admiral's uniform with a large port-wine birthmark on her cheek. (Readers of the previous novels will recognize the recurring character of Festina Ramos.) The reason for the crew's semi-hysterical state quickly becomes clear: the crew has violated the League's single basic rule, and suddenly everyone aboard ship, except for York, drops dead, cryptically executed by the high authorities of the League of Peoples. Alone aboard the ship, York, who by his own testimony suffers from at least mild mental retardation (he's not a genuine Explorer, but merely an Admiral's black-sheep son who's been shunted into the Corps), begins to unravel an increasing complex plot. In the ship's hold, he discovers, dead like everyone else, a queen of the Mandasar species that has spent the past two decades consumed in a violent civil war. The Mandasars are the key alien species and society in the novel: they resemble giant lobsters, with eight legs, pairs of claws and arms, with whiskered faces and brain humps on their backs. Their species comes in four castes or orders, varying in size and color, from small brown females called "gentles," through workers and warriors, up to the hive-queens, who are four meters long, saffron yellow, with four claws instead of two and bright green venom sacs. Their social order is something of a cross between an ant farm or beehive, and feudal Japan. What is a dead hive queen doing on a ship of the Outward Fleet? And what did the crew do to earn themselves an infallibly just death sentence from the League of Peoples? As York tries to plumb deep waters of conspiracy and corruption, he meets the real Admiral Festina Ramos, and realizes that the woman aboard the Willow was costumed as the Admiral for the masquerade party. He also falls in with genuine Explorers, and ends up on a desperate expedition back to Troyen, the Mandasars' home world, in an attempt to unravel an Admiral's corrupt scheme and stop a civil war. In the process, York learns the real meaning of his status as his father's genetically-engineered clone; he learns too that his beloved twin-sister-clone, whom he saw dead twenty years before, is still alive, but not the person he thought he knew; and he discovers the nature of the double within himself that sometimes takes over his mind and body. The story expands to include a formidable nanotechnology, a sentient and telepathic moss that can overwhelm a human being, and members of a mysterious species who are never seen outside their personal robot craft. The ending manages to tie up all the loose ends, as well as provide anticipations of further stories to come.
8581105	/m/0278rjq	The Flesh Mask	Jack Vance			 Taunted by four of the school's prettiest girls at a high school party, a star athlete with a severely disfigured face lashes out at one of them in his drunken frustration. Sent to reform school for assault, the boy undergoes extensive facial reconstructive surgery at state expense. Years later, the girls are in college when one of them is murdered, her face mutilated, and the others receive threats. The young man's whereabouts are unknown and it is learned there is no photographic record of his new face. Then, several years later a bizarre mutilated dog lands in a suburban garden. The animal, still alive has had its legs surgically removed, and the stubs 'smoothed' down.
8581174	/m/0278rpk	The Change	K. A. Applegate	1997-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tobias takes Rachel on a tour, to show her the Yeerk pool entrance that he had discovered. Soon, though, he finds he is not where he was heading; they suddenly are flying over the forest, without warning. He turns and turns but cannot get to the spot he wants to go to. They try to fly away but discover that they are still in the same spot. A pair of Hork-Bajir come up from a secret hatch in the woods. The two aliens are promptly pursued by human-Controllers on dirtbikes and jeeps, bristling with shotguns and automatic rifles. Tobias and Rachel decide to help the supposed fugitives. They lead the male one to safety, but the other female trips over and falls into a ditch. The first Hork-Bajir screams for his wife yelling it in his language, but the Animorphs do not understand. He tells them then that she is his wife. The Animorphs tell him to run or he might die, and the Hork-Bajir runs for his life. Tobias then leads him to a cave for the time being, leaving the female Hork-Bajir behind. The other Animorphs suspect a Yeerk trap to lure the freedom fighters, but they return to the cave the Hork-Bajir is hiding in. He calls himself Jara Hamee. But Ax isn't convinced he's not a Controller, so Jara pulls his head open. Horrified, but seeing no Yeerk, the Animorphs have some peace of mind. But just then controllers had found out where they were. The team concocts a plan. In order to help Jara Hamee escape, Rachel morphs him (Jara Hamee turns around in order not to see Rachel demorphing). Tobias is worried about the one he loves, and so he hitches a ride on one of her forehead blades. However, the human-hawk slaps into a branch, is knocked off, and finds himself in a Swainson's hawk's clearing, where the other Hork-Bajir is cornered by a group of human-Controllers and Visser Three himself. The Visser calls this Hork-Bajir Ket Halpak. Tobias provides a distraction by drawing out an aggressive Swainson's hawk, the "owner" of this clearing, and rakes the Visser's stalk eyes, allowing Ket Halpak to escape. With Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak reunited, the Animorphs now need to decide where to hide them. Tobias suggests a hidden valley with fresh streams, a meadow and tall trees. But he'd never seen the place in his life, even though the images are clear in his mind. Tobias now suspects foul play - and that someone or something is manipulating him. During the night while he is guarding the Hork-Bajir along with Ax, Tobais suddenly has visions of tracker Taxxons hunting. He doesn't know exactly but he has a feeling that they are tracking him. To avoid the Taxxons picking up the Hork-Bajir scent, Tobias and Ax take the Hork-Bajir and retreat further toward the mountains. While riding on the Hork-Bajir, Jara Hamee tells Tobias that a voice in his head just told him to escape with his wife from the Yeerk Pool and that "it" would send a guide while he was trapped in the Yeerk Pool. Frustrated about being used, Tobias stops everyone and demands to find out what is happening. He yells in his head and asks who is manipulating him, threatening not to go on unless these voice gives him some answers. Tobias then finds himself in another plane, and sees himself as both human and hawk. And then he encounters the Ellimist, who explains that while his species does not interfere with other people's lives, he wishes to save the Hork-Bajir, and The Ellimist justifies himself by saying that the Animorphs owe him their lives. Tobias also learns that when he could not get anywhere earlier and the images in his head were all the Ellimist's doing. Frustrated, Tobias wants to be made human in return for his efforts. The Ellimist says that he knows what Tobias wants but asks Tobias if he himself really knows what he wants. Tobias and the Animorphs take the Hork-Bajir to the mountains, pursued by Yeerks in Dracon beam-wielding helicopters, Hork-Bajir and Taxxons. Tobias, out hunting breakfast (while the others Animorphs, Ax and the Hork-Bajirs are still trying to climb up a mountain), is caught in the helicopter's rotor vacuum, and breaks his wing against a tree. He is immediately discovered by a raccoon, who prepares to eat him. At that moment, the Ellimist asks Tobias if he wants the reward for his services now and makes him able to morph again, but does not return him his human form. Tobias is enraged, accusing the omniscient being for not keeping his promise. Tobias escapes by morphing the raccoon. Once more, he rejoins the others in his hawk form already healed. The Animorphs realize that the Yeerks will not give up until the Hork-Bajir are dead because if two escaped safely, others would try. Tobias comes up with a plan. Ax, Cassie, and the Hork-Bajir go to the safe clearing while the others execute the plan. Tobias morphs Ket Halpak and, together with Rachel in Jara Hammee morph, go over to the ravine. Rachel is made to jump over the ravine, where she is caught by Marco, in gorilla morph, in a small cave right below the top of the ravine that is not visible from the top. However, Tobias is intercepted by Visser Three. He yells "Ket Halpak free!!!!", convincing Visser Three that he is the Hork-Bajir, and runs toward the ravine, Visser Three being forced to allow him to fall as otherwise. Even if he killed Tobias, the Hork-Bajir's momentum would carry Visser Three over the edge of the cliff as well. At the bottom, the real Ket Halpak and Jara Hamee are pretending to be dead, while Cassie and Jake are in wolf morph pretending to eat them. Visser Three is convinced that they are dead and the Yeerks give up searching. They take the Hork-Bajir to the valley which is mysteriously difficult to locate from a distance unless you knew it was there. Ket and Jara tell the Animorphs that they are expecting a baby. The human-hawk Tobias has his morphing power back. He thinks about what the Ellimist had said, and laments that maybe he didn't want to be a human again. Tobias falls asleep, and wakes up in his old bedroom---the Ellimist apparently had sent him back in time to the night before he first met Elfangor. The "past" Tobias (human) wakes up, and the "present" Tobias (hawk) acquires his DNA before the past version falls back asleep. He also tells him to go to the construction site with Jake. As a result, he can morph his own human body for up to two hours at a time (or, as later books will point out, stay in human form forever---the Ellimist, in this way, was giving him a choice.) The next day (Monday), he shows up at school for Rachel's Packard Foundation Outstanding Student award ceremony, as a human, to Rachel's amazement. *Tobias once again receives the ability to morph, although nothlits traditionally can't. *Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak are introduced *The Free Hork-Bajir colony is established.
8581358	/m/0278ryg	The Unknown	K. A. Applegate	1998-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cassie and Rachel drive with the former's father, Walter, to the Dry Lands outside of town. 'Crazy Helen', a client of Walter's, has informed him of a sick horse stumbling about the plains. Helen rants on about Martians while Walter and the girls search for the horse in the dark. Rachel spots it trying to make a call at a pay phone. The horse then tries to escape, but is too weak to walk, and falls over. Cassie and Rachel notice a Yeerk falling out of the dying horse's ear. Cassie, getting a bad feeling, tells Rachel to run. A second later, they're knocked over by an explosion. Cassie wakes up in Crazy Helen's caravan, who insists 'it was the Martians!'. Cassie and Rachel decide she is half right - and assume that the Yeerks were trying to keep them away from the horse. The other Animorphs are skeptical, though. Rachel and Cassie are frustrated, but Jake allows the group to go back to the site and investigate. Cassie, Rachel, Marco and Tobias travel in bird morph, and land in a rocky outcrop. They're promptly arrested by soldiers, and taken to the Air Force base - Zone Ninety-One. There, they meet Captain Torelli, the chief of base security, who is suspicious of the kid's lack of shoes. Cassie, Rachel and Marco, fearing being grounded, or charged with trespassing, give the captain fake names and phone numbers. The captain leaves, and the kids escape via cockroach morph. They escape outside, but Cassie is nearly crushed by a tank. Tobias picks her up, and airlifts the trio to safety. Cassie decides on a new plan. They need horse morphs from the racetrack. They're nearly caught by the staff, and Cassie morphs Minneapolis Max - a champion stallion. The animal's jockey, assuming Cassie is the real horse, causing Cassie to be caught up in a race, which she wins. The Animorphs are now ready to infiltrate Zone Ninety-One. Back in the Dry Lands, the teens morph their respective horse morphs. They join the alleged Yeerk herd, and trot directly into the base. They hear the horse-Controllers speak Galard - the interstellar lingua franca. Ax translates for them, telling them that the Yeerks are planning to complete their mission tonight. The Yeerks promptly break into a run, and rush into a hangar. There, the Animorphs see what the government's been hiding. They know it's not human, but they don't know what it is. Neither do the Yeerks. The Yeerks are depressed and afraid, aware of the consequences for failure. They rendezvous with Visser Three, who decapitates the Yeerk 'responsible' for the failure. The Visser then orders his Hork-Bajir to eliminate the suspicious-looking horses standing close by. Cassie knocks over a Hork-Bajir, and the rest make a break for it. It is then that an embarrassed Ax tells them what the humans have been guarding: a disposable waste module from an Andalite Dome ship; an alien toilet. The disgusted Animorphs decide they've been wasting their time, and head home. At home, Cassie berates herself for wasting her team's time, but then realizes the significance of the Andalite toilet; it's proof that sentient life exists beyond Earth, and that Visser Three needed humanity to know as little as possible in order for the invasion to continue to run smoothly. Cassie then remembers a pin-up board for 'Gondor Industries'; a dummy corporation employee's day out. ('Gondor Industries' is likely a reference to the third age kingdom of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Applegate frequently used similar names from the LOTR series in Animorphs series.) Cassie takes the Animorphs to The Gardens amusement park. Cassie figured that Visser Three planned to kidnap captain Torelli and other Air Force staff at Zone Ninety-One. The Animorphs, chased by Captain Torelli, end up in the horror house, where the Hork-Bajir waited. The children morph, and a battle ensues. They wound the Hork-Bajir and rescue the captain from Visser Three. The Yeerks escape in their vessels, in front of totally oblivious humans at a night parade. This marks the first occasion where Ax has gone into battle in a morph- with the obvious exception of occasions when they have been forced to engage in battle underwater-, when he morphs a rattlesnake to attack the Controllers in the House of Horrors to take them by surprise. Actually Ax's battle morph is usually himself, he does not use rattlesnake morph in a battle in anymore of the animorph series.
8581416	/m/0278s17	The Escape	K. A. Applegate	1998-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book starts off with the four human Animorphs helping four parrots in a new mall cafe by telling the customers disgusting things about the cafe's food. After this, Marco's old acquaintance, Erek King, who was watching at the room's back, has some disturbing news about his mother, Eva (Visser One). She has returned to Earth, overseeing a Yeerk bioweapons program to allow them to venture into deep waters; this is a requirement made by the Yeerk command for the invasion of Leera, a planet covered almost entirely by oceans. The research is conducted in the waters around Royan Island. The Animorphs infiltrate the facility, and discover that the Yeerks are trying to create super-intelligent sharks which can be infested and controlled, because in their natural state, the sharks' brains are not big enough. They decide to acquire hammerhead morphs. Marco accidentally reveals to the other Animorphs his fear of sharks. While scouting the waters off Royan Island the Animorphs are captured by a computer, still morphed as sharks. They have devices installed in them designed to bestow sentience on animals. The Animorphs then try to morph flies but find they can no longer morph into small creatures because the devices are too large for small creatures' brains. They realize the only way to remove them is to destroy the facility. They attempt to do this. During the ensuing battle, Marco reveals to Rachel and Ax that Visser One's host body is his mother, just as they were about to kill her. Visser Three storms in, angry that Visser One would do these experiments without his knowledge or consent, and they have an argument. Visser Three is about to eat Ax in a snake morph, but Rachel intervenes and grabs him by his wrist in bear morph, threatening to cut him in half. Because of this, Marco sees an opportunity and morphs into a gorilla, knocking out the Visser. The Yeerks have just captured some new specimens of aquatic species - known as Leerans. The Leerans are capable of telepathy and unlimited mind-reading capacity (hence the Yeerks' attempts to endow the sharks with sentience- a secret invasion is impractical due to the Leeran mind-reading abilities). A possibly infested Leeran states to Visser One that Marco (still in gorilla morph) is human. Visser One, however, misunderstands and thinks it's saying that the morph is a human. Marco knocks the Leeran unconscious before it can explain what it meant. The Animorphs know that the Yeerks must be stopped before they can utilize two new powerful living weapons. They destroy the factory and escape unscathed. Marco's mother may or may not be dead. She was unconscious when the flooding started, but a Leeran was seen swimming toward her and the Animorphs heard a torpedo being expulsed, which may have carried her to safety.
8581493	/m/0278s6d	The Warning	K. A. Applegate	1998-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jake discovers a Yeerk website, but is it what it seems? It looks like a crazy mix of fact and fiction. He's not sure if it's a Yeerk trap, or a place for potential Yeerk-fighters to meet. Jake and the Animorphs decide to travel to the Web Access America headquarters, a two-hour flight from their own city. The kids can't afford plane tickets, so they morph flies with Tobias acquiring a fly morph. After Marco dabbles in a first-class passenger's Salisbury steak, the occupants on the plane are alerted. A flight attendant swats Jake, nearly killing him. A shaken Jake survives and tries to hide his fear, but Cassie takes notice. At Web Access America, Marco and Ax hack into the WAA records and discover the identities of some of the screen names on the Yeerk website. They need a distraction, so the children morph and create a spectacle for anyone working in the offices. One of them is the founder of WAA himself, Joe Bob Fenestre - the second richest man in the country. Marco also discovers that his online girlfriend is in fact a seventy-three year-old retired postal worker. On the way back to the airport, Cassie objects to Jake morphing the fly again. Jake tries to tell every one he is fine with morphing a fly even though he is scared to death. Their relationship is strained for the time being. Back home, Jake needs to form a new plan to infiltrate Joe Bob Fenestre's multi-million dollar compound. Cassie objects, wanting to save Gump, a Yeerk forum regular, from confessing to his Controller father what he knows. Jake and the others, though, decide Fenestre's the center of the issue. Jake, without any prior intelligence or preparation, sends the Animorphs to the billionaire's property. They are immediately attacked by gun-toting humans, pack hounds, and Rachel is shocked unconscious by a bug zapper. Ax is captured by the dogs. Jake and the others, shaken, need to find another way to break in. Jake travels to The Gardens zoo complex, and acquires a rhinoceros morph. He morphs and breaks through the entrance to the Fenestre mansion, impervious to human shotguns. The others follow, and morph their standard battle morphs. They find Fenestre, along with Rachel and Ax in a suspended time state known as 'biostasis'. Fenestre explains to Jake, Cassie, Marco and Tobias that he is Visser Three's twin brother - Esplin 9466 Lesser. Visser Three, unwilling to share his power with his sibling, banished him to Earth as a lowly telephone operator. Esplin, combining his Yeerk technical knowledge with his host's human knowledge, created a web service that would serve as a vast pool of information for the Yeerk invasion. The Visser was enraged, and has been plotting to kill him. Jake asks Esplin how he survived without a Yeerk pool. Esplin, his host's eyes void of emotion, tells him that he finds human-Controllers on the Yeerk forum. He has them kidnapped, splits the hosts' heads open, and feeds on the Yeerk inside. "One every three days. Ten a month." Fenestre admits that he is a cannibal serial killer. A horrified Cassie tries to attack him, but Jake stops her. He'd rather allow Esplin to kill as many Yeerks as he could - even it means sacrificing the host. Cassie is enraged. Jake threatens Esplin, and they leave with Rachel and Ax. Jake later meets with Cassie, who'd been talking to Gump, from the Yeerk web site chat, at his elementary school. The saddened Cassie tells Gump never to trust his father. Jake tries to comfort her, but to no avail. Later on, Jake watches a news report that Fenestre's house had been burned down. He hints that he may have burned down the house out of disgust for the cannibal killer.
8581607	/m/0278sf_	The Decision	K. A. Applegate	1998-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Animorphs discover that Hewlett Aldershot the Third has been run over by Controllers and is being kept secretly in a hospital where he is heavily guarded. He has a very high job in the government. Since he cannot be infested while in a coma, Visser Three acquires his DNA in hopes of impersonating him to eventually acquire an even more senior official. They decide to morph mosquitoes with the theory that they can acquire him by sucking his blood without being in their natural forms where the Yeerk guards might notice them. While they are doing it, they are transported to Z-Space when their extra mass is caught in the slipstream of an Andalite ship heading for the Leera where there is a Yeerk invasion underway. Right before they suffocate, they are rescued and taken aboard. Once in the ship, Ax "betrays" the Animorphs by following the captain's orders. The group is told to stay calmly in a room while the Andalites do all the work. Unfortunately, the commander of the ship is a traitor. He attacks all the tripulation in the bridge but Ax. However he can do nothing to defeat him. That's when Ax alerts the Animorphs but they reveal to Ax that they are already in the room. Cassie distracts the captain and Ax defeats him. As the ship is about to be taken by the Yeerks, the second in command tells them to leave the ship and he blows it up. The Animorphs head across the major landmass of Leera to try to find friendly Andalites. Tobias mysteriously disappears and the rest go over to the ocean following Ax's idea- who promised that now on he will only take Jake's orders-. Rachel disappears and the rest meet some Leerans whom they acquire. Then they get told that the Andalites have planted a bomb to explode the continent- as Ax had suspected- but that they need to go to activate it and Cassie disappears. Marco disappears and they meet a Leeran-Controller who reads their minds and discovers their plans, alerting the Yeerks. When they get to the bomb, Jake disappears leaving Ax alone. He activates the bomb but a bunch of armed Hork-Bajir appear to disarm it. The Hork-Bajir fires at him but he disappears right before the beam hits him. The bomb goes off right after he disappears. Somehow all the Animorphs arrived back to the hospital where they were before they got sucked into Z-Space. in that precise moment the person in coma awakes and tries to kill Ax-mosquito. So the Animorphs no longer need to morph him. Once in the mall Ax explains that as they were sucked to the Z-Space all together, they obviously had to return all together.
8581674	/m/0278skf	The Departure	K. A. Applegate	1998-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Animorphs attack the Hork-Bajir bodyguards at a Sharing meeting. The very second Jake ordered his team to break off, Cassie tore the throat out of a Hork-Bajir. Cassie, ridden with guilt, runs away. She senses someone watching her, but doesn't pay much attention. She demorphs, and has a nightmare (a scene from Megamorphs #2). She wakes up, and begins scrubbing her teeth and gums until they bleed as she had found a piece of Hork-Bajir flesh stuck in her teeth. The next day, Cassie meets the others at her barn. She explicitly declares that she's fed up with all the violence, and quits being an Animorph. The others are disgusted with her scrupulous behaviour, and brand her a hypocrite; Rachel in particular declares their friendship over, informing Cassie that she basically said the world can die so long as Cassie doesn't end up becoming as ruthless as Rachel. Marco makes a sarcastic remark about Cassie "going back to playing with her animals". Cassie then tells them that her father lost the much-needed funding to keep the Rehabilitation Clinic open. A distraught Cassie goes on a horse ride to calm her nerves. Cassie suddenly spots a girl being chased by an angry bear. Cassie pursues them, but is knocked off her horse, and falls into the icy river. When she wakes up, she realizes she'd been saved by the little girl. The girl introduces herself, calling herself Karen. Karen tries to force Cassie to reveal her true identity. Cassie laughs and pretends the girl is mistaken. Soon it is apparent that the girl is a Controller, Aftran 942, watching her own father, the president of UniBank. It also becomes apparent that Cassie had killed Aftran's brother Estril 731. They're both lost in the forest, and Cassie knows that a leopard that escaped from a private zoo is lurking about. During their time together, Cassie reveals her identity when she fends off an attack by the leopard. Cassie begins to discuss the morality of enslaving another creature, while Aftran defends the Yeerk's right to experience life as a human or an Andalite does. Cassie tries to turn Aftran against her own people. Aftran tells Cassie that to preserve the freedom of one species, she must surrender her own. Karen presents Cassie with the following scenario: if she were Karen, would she stay in the Yeerk Pool forever? Cassie is uncertain. She allows Aftran to enter her brain, thus freeing Karen - and putting the life of the planet at stake. Cassie convinces Afran that what the Yeerks are doing is wrong. In return, however, Aftran compels Cassie to morph to a caterpillar, and to live life as a helpless worm like she is essentially asking Aftran to do. Cassie reluctantly agrees, and morphs, staying beyond the two-hour limit. Jake and the others soon find Aftran back in Karen's body, and Cassie now a caterpillar. The Animorphs are enraged, and are more than willing to kill the Controller in revenge for Cassie, and to keep their identities a secret. After stopping the escaped leopard - Marco throwing it to the side in gorilla morph, Jake hears her out, though, and lets her live. Cassie spins a cocoon, and stays dormant for a couple of days. Cassie emerges as a butterfly, and the Animorphs are overjoyed, but saddened, as well, certain that Cassie would spend the rest of her brief life as an insect. Ax is puzzled at how Cassie could turn into a butterfly. One of the Animorphs explains the process of metamorphosis. Ax then theorizes that the morphing clock has essentially been reset by this and she would be able to demorph, which she eventually does after the other team members chase her down. Again human, Cassie is willing to be an Animorph once more. Aftran keeps her promise, freeing Karen, and the Yeerk establishes the Yeerk Peace Movement; Karen compels her father to fund Cassie's father's Wildlife Clinic.
8581795	/m/0278sql	The Discovery	K. A. Applegate	1998-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After failing miserably to pick up a girl at his locker, Marco is stymied to find a boy carrying the morphing cube, known as the Escafil Device. Marco introduces himself to the new boy, David, and lamely tries to buy the Box off him, but David ignores him. Marco tells Jake about it, and both agree that the situation needs to be taken care of immediately. But that's not the only surprise in store for them. Erek the Chee tells them that a group of G8 leaders (including those from Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, and the U.S.) are gathering at the Marriott Hotel resort on the city coast to discuss the problems in the Middle East. Erek also tells them that the Yeerks are plotting to infest each leader, and soon the most powerful nations in the world would be under Yeerk influence. The biggest problem is that one of these heads of state is already a Controller. Now the Animorphs need two plans: one to retrieve the Blue Box, and another to stop the Yeerks from taking over the world. Marco, Tobias and Rachel try to raid David's house in bird of prey morphs. Unfortunately, it fails miserably. Tobias is knocked unconscious, Marco is attacked by David's cat, and Rachel gets shot at by David and his BB gun. The next day at school, David tells Marco his seemingly ridiculous story about trained robber birds, and discusses his plan to sell the Blue Box online. Marco immediately skips the rest of the school day in order to stop the automatic E-mail David has set up from going out. During school, Marco takes Ax with him to stop David's E-mail from being sent. Unfortunately, they're too late, due to David's computer's clock being an hour fast. Marco acquires Spawn, David's contraband, defanged cobra. Visser Three storms into David's house with a team of Hork-Bajir. A fight ensues between the Yeerks and the Animorphs, destroying David's house. Rachel, in bear morph, rams David out the window, and the Animorphs retreat. The Yeerks withdraw with David's mother and father. The Animorphs are unsure of what to do with David; although Ax draws attention to the fact that they can use the box to give him the power to morph, the Animorphs vote on whether or not to do it. Marco and Ax decide that they cannot risk recruiting David, given his strange behaviour and their lack of knowledge of him. Tobias votes to take him in out of moral concern, while Rachel and Cassie decide that David might be their ticket to recruiting more Animorphs. With Marco and Ax outvoted, they reveal to David the Yeerk invasion and give him the morphing power. From the very beginning of the debacle, David displays his eagerness to kill, and disobeys Jake's orders. David also does not seem concerned enough about his parents being Controllers. On the way to the Marriott resort, David indiscriminately kills a crow, although he passes it off as his morph's instincts taking control. As they near the resort, they spot the Blade Ship taking the Marine One helicopter hostage. The Animorphs, fearing that the Yeerks have captured the President of the United States, enter the Visser's ship. The Animorphs are then discovered in cockroach morph, and end up falling out of the Blade Ship, and down into the ocean... *David is introduced. *David receives the ability to morph and becomes an official member of the Animorphs team. *This book begins to hint at David's reckless behavior. Scholastic will re-release this book with a lenticular cover in October 2014.
8583989	/m/0278whr	The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron	George Chapman			 Chapman's Byron, a formidable soldier and commander, is marred by one major fault, his overweening pride. He loves to compare himself to the heroes of antiquity&mdash;Hercules, Alexander the Great, Curtius, even Orpheus. His vanity leaves him deeply vulnerable to manipulation by enemies of the King of France, who want to exploit Byron for their own schemes; and Byron allows himself to be drawn in. The King becomes aware of Byron's treason; yet valuing his past service and his great potential, the King attempts to reform Byron, even sending him to England so that the Marshall can witness firsthand a properly functioning monarchical state. At the end of The Conspiracy, Byron manages to curb his pride and submit to the King. Yet his ego is too great to remain restrained indefinitely; Byron returns to plotting, and in the conclusion of The Tragedy he is apprehended, tried, convicted, and executed. As is usual with Chapman, the two parts of Byron are rich with allusions to classic literature. In addition to those noted above, the French courtier and plotter Picoté uses the rebellion of Catiline as a precedent for Byron's planned uprising against his king. References to Augustus, Nero, and other ancient figures abound. Later scenes in The Tragedy twice compare Byron's plotting with the rebellion of the Earl of Essex against Elizabeth in 1601. It has been suggested that the face-slapping scene that caused so much trouble was inspired not by anything in French monarchical history, but by a rumored incident in which Elizabeth struck Essex.
8584807	/m/0278xmh	The Phoenix Guards	Steven Brust	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Khaavren of Castlerock is a young Dragaeran gentleman from the House of the Tiassa whose family has fallen onto hard times. Though lacking an inheritance, Khaavren has a long sword and is "tolerably well-acquainted with its use." On his way to the capital city of the Empire, Khaavren befriends Aerich and Tazendra, nobles from the Houses of the Lyorn and Dzur who also lack income. Khaavren tells them of his plan to join the Phoenix Guards, the new Emperor's elite personal troops, and his new friends decide to accompany him. The trio arrive in Dragaera City and meet Pel, a Yendi who joined a few days previous. Pel helps the trio sign up and buy their equipment, and quickly befriends them. The four are unusual for Phoenix Guards because most guardsmen come from the militaristic House of the Dragon. The recruits are each paired with a haughty Dragon veteran for their first patrol, but each recruit kills his or her Dragon partner by the end of the night. The group is thereafter only partnered together on patrols and soon becomes inseparable. The group learns of the standing feud between the White Sash Battalion of the Phoenix Guards and their own Red Boot Battalion. They fight a duel and several brawls with members of the enemy battalion. After learning of the White Sash's failure to apprehend a murderer, Kathana, the group decides to earn glory for their own troop by tracking her down themselves. Unbeknownst to the group, a number of powerful figures in the Imperial Court have a vested interest in the fate of Kathana. Seodra, the Court Wizard, and Lytra, the Warlord, want to manipulate Kathana's arrest to gain favor from the Emperor. The Imperial Consort, however, is a friend of Kathana's and wants her protected, as do those who wish her favor. Before setting out, Khaavren's would-be lover Illista, a Phoenix courtier seeking favor, wrings a promise from Khaavren to prevent Kathana from being arrested. Kathana, a remarkable painter, is charged with killing the Marquis of Pepperfield, who insulted her painting. The Marquis's son Uttrik, a soldier, desires revenge for his father's death. Wanting to be rid of both Uttrik and Khaavren, Seodra manipulates Uttrik into challenging Khaavren to a duel, hoping that one would kill the other. Khaavren wins the duel, but spares Uttrik's life and allows him to join them. Seodra sends an ever-increasing number of thugs to stop the group, but the group manages to reach Kathana's hiding place: the manor of Adron e'Kieron, a prominent Dragonlord. Uttrik challenges Kathana to a duel. The rest of the group is unsure what to do, unwilling to obstruct the honor of a duel or to abandon their original purpose. They convince the pair to hold their duel in the Marquisate of Pepperfield, hoping to buy time from the journey. The group encounters more thugs and works together, despite its differences, to bypass them. By the time they reach Pepperfield, Uttrik and Kathana have become friends and regret the events that have led them to their duel. Before the duel can commence, however, an invading army of Easterners arrives. The group manages to negotiate a peace agreement with the general of the army, Fenarr, to prevent an invasion. After the Easterners leave, Adron arrives with his army and two of Seodra's minions, Shaltre and the Duke of Garland, under orders to kill the group. Aerich reveals that Shaltre had wronged his father, the Duke of Arylle, and challenges him to a duel. Aerich kills Shaltre and Garland flees. Adron allows the group to go in peace. Uttrik swears off his duel with Kathana, who vows to turn herself in and accept her fate. The group returns to Dragaera City, but before they can tell anyone of the peace treaty with the Easterners, they are imprisoned. Illista comes to speak to Khaavren, but he finally realizes that she is simply using him for her own ends. Eventually the group is summoned before the Emperor and Khaavren volunteers to be questioned under the Orb, which can detect falsehood. Lytra acts as the inquisitor, however, and tries to manipulate the interrogation to incriminate Khaavren and his friends. Eventually Khaavren is able to get the truth across to the Emperor, who is pleased by the group's service. He punishes many of those responsible for the intrigues, gives Kathana a very light sentence of service in the Phoenix Guard, and promotes Khaavren to Ensign. Only Khaavren stays in the Phoenix Guard for very much longer, however. Aerich returns to his duchy now that his shame has been removed. Tazendra learns from Aerich that her own family shame was simply a misunderstanding, and she returns to her family estates, making her Aerich's vassal. Pel enters training to learn the Art of Discretion and become an influential court advisor. Khaavren continues to live in the house they all shared and keeps rooms ready for each of them should they ever return.
8584899	/m/0278xsn	Five Hundred Years After	Steven Brust	1994-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After five hundred years, an older and wiser Khaavren has become the de facto commander of the Phoenix Guards. Pel continues to scheme and study the Art of Discretion, while Aerich and Tazendra live quietly on their estates. Khaavren learns that the now-decadent Emperor Tortaalik has allowed his Empire to hover on the brink of financial collapse. After Khaavren survives an attempt on his life, he learns that several key members of the court have been killed and deduces that a conspiracy is underway to damage the fragile Empire. A shadowy figure called Greycat has planned the murders as part of a scheme to cause chaos in the Empire and then come to its rescue, so that he may gain a place at court. Aerich, Pel, and Tazendra learn of their friend's danger and come to his aide. They are also helped by the powerful enchantress Sethra Lavode. Adron e'Kieron, the Dragon Heir, and his daughter Aliera arrive at the city as well, but the growing tension between the Emperor and Adron threatens to break into full-scale sedition. Greycat continues to send minions in failed attempts to kill Khaavren, while his conspirator Grita works to start a riot in the city. Grita successfully sparks a riot that is only barely contained by Khaavren's men. The city lies in shambles and resentment toward the Emperor runs high. Meanwhile, Greycat hires a naive but highly skilled Jhereg assassin named Mario to kill the Emperor and gives him a fake magic weapon for the task. Greycat plans on Mario failing, but will use the fake assassination to further unnerve the Emperor. Mario does fail, but manages to escape with the help of Aliera, who now truly hates the Emperor. Tortaalik has her arrested for her complicity. Adron has become so disgusted by the actions of the Emperor that he decides to start a revolt and seize the Orb for himself. He does not have the military might to do the deed, so he plans to use outlawed Elder Sorcery to steal the Orb directly. While Adron begins his spell, Tortaalik's forces engage his troops. Meanwhile, Khaavren and his friends are met by Greycat, Grita, and their thugs. Khaavren and company recognize Greycat as the former Duke of Garland, who had been disgraced by the group's actions during the events of The Phoenix Guards. During the fight, Khaavren kills Greycat, and a horrified Grita reveals that he had been her father. During the fighting, Mario returns to the Imperial Palace to free Aliera. Together, they return to the throne room and kill Tortaalik. As the Dragon Heir, Adron is now the Emperor in truth, but his spell cannot be stopped. Caught in a logical loop, the spell continues to grow until it will eventually explode. Adron knows that he has doomed himself and the city with his pride. He uses his fleeting moments of immense power to teleport Khaavren and his friends to safety. Back in the castle, Sethra Lavode comprehends what is about to happen. She teleports Aliera and Mario away, and sends the Orb to the Paths of the Dead. Adron's spell explodes into a sea of chaos that destroys Dragaera City, a cataclysm later called Adron's Disaster. Khaavren, Pel, Tazendra, and Aerich arrive safely in the duchy of Arylle. Without the Orb, there is no Empire. A lawless time of plague and strife called the Interregnum has begun.
8585019	/m/0278xy3	The Viscount of Adrilankha	Steven Brust		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A young witch enters the Eastern town of Blackchapel on a quest to find his name. After a conversation with Miska, a strange coachman, the witch receives the name Morrolan, meaning "Dark Star". He meets a fellow witch named Arra, who counsels him to pledge his soul to Verra, the Demon Goddess. He does so, and together they summon other witches to the town and build a temple. While Morrolan is in a trance, some bandits from a neighboring village sack Blackchapel. Morrolan is consumed with the desire for revenge, but he is interrupted when Miska brings Lady Teldra, an Issola, who informs Morrolan that he is both a Dragaeran and a Count of House Dragon. Morrolan vows to journey to Dragaera, receive his birthright, and then return to take vengeance. Meanwhile, in Dragaera, three hundred years without sorcery or the authority of the Empire has ruined the land. Banditry, plague, and petty warlords reign. One warlord, Kâna, has conquered roughly a quarter of the old Empire's territory, and holds influence over another quarter. His loyal cousin and strategist Habil advises him to start a new Empire with himself as Emperor, and he summons the Princes of the sixteen noble Houses to make the proposal. The reception is generally dubious. Pel, who has become Kâna's agent, goes to speak with Sethra Lavode, and she expresses her total opposition to the plan. In the County of Whitecrest, which has been largely untouched by the ravages of the Interregnum, Khaavren has become a broken man, weighed down by guilt over his failure to protect the Emperor and prevent Adron's Disaster. His son Piro, the Viscount of Adrilankha, has matured into a bright, bold young man. One of Piro's friends, Zivra, is summoned away on a mysterious task. Shortly thereafter, Piro himself is summoned to Dzur Mountain, the home of Sethra Lavode, on a quest. He and his companions have uneventful encounters with a bandit company and a mysterious sorceress named Orlaan. At Dzur Mountain, he learns that Zivra is really Zerika, the last Phoenix and the true Empress. He must accompany her to the Paths of the Dead to recover the Imperial Orb and restore the Empire. Their party will also include Tazendra, who has been studying under Sethra. Pel meets with Khaavren and discovers his sorry state. Pel later contacts Aerich and together they scheme to snap their friend from his funk. They send a certain pyrologist to Adrilankha to inspect the city for signs of plague. During dinner with Khaavren and his wife, the pyrologist relates how a past failure drives him to achieve his fullest potential. Khaavren decides that he must get back into shape and help his son. He sets out with two young female houseguests, Ibronka and Röaana. The Lords of Judgment, chief among the gods, convene and decide what to do. They note that the Empire's chief function is to help keep the Jenoine from returning. It must be restored for the good of the world. While the Orb is in their possession, they modify and improve it, and Verra decides to send a demon under her sway to help Sethra Lavode. Zerika's band sets out and reaches the cliffs that border the Paths of the Dead. Orlaan arrives with the bandit band she commands, determined to stop them. Tazendra recognizes Orlaan as Grita, the daughter of Greycat, who was killed by Khaavren's company during the events of Five Hundred Years After. As the bandits attack, Zerika throws herself from the cliffs. Believing Zerika dead, Piro and company bitterly fight off the bandits while Tazendra drives away Grita with her superior Elder Sorcery. Zerika lands safely in the Paths and navigates her way to the Lords of Judgment. After a hard-fought debate, she convinces the gods to give her the Orb. She emerges from the Paths as Zerika the Fourth, Empress of the restored Empire.
8585732	/m/0278yn4	An Open Swimmer	Tim Winton		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in three distinct parts, An Open Swimmer is a 'coming of age' novel; it details the late-teen life of a young man named Jerra Nilsam. A considerable part of the novel describes the camping trip taken by Jerra and his childhood friend, Sean. On this camping trip, Jerra and Sean meet an old man living in a shack on the beach near their camp site. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that the old man had murdered his wife in a similar shack on a nearby beach by burning it down with her inside. Many sub-plots are scattered throughout this book in the form of spontaneous paragraphs and dialogues between unnamed characters (but presumably one of them is Jerra). In the end, after having returned home and parted ways with Sean, Jerra returns to the camping site alone. While Jerra is sleeping in his van, there is a violent storm which results in a large tree falling on the Kombi. Jerra awakes in the old mans hut, the storm having passed and having been saved by the old man. In the final paragraph, Jerra returns to his Kombi, opens the fuel tank and drops a match into it before running.
8586449	/m/0278zhp	The Threat	K. A. Applegate	1998-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After falling from the Blade ship, the Animorphs are snagged from mid-air by Rachel and Tobias, in their respective eagle and hawk morphs. They land on the beach, needing a plan to infiltrate the Marriott resort. Jake becomes aware of the tensions between David and Marco, and is disturbed by David's unnecessary excesses. The team morphs into seagulls, and spy out the area, crawling with security agents armed to the teeth and accompanied by dogs. They're zapped by a security man wearing sunglasses with weak Dracon beam emitters built into them. Jake tells them to leave. Upon his return home, his parents tell Jake and his brother Tom that their obnoxious cousin, Saddler, was gravely injured in a car accident, and that they were leaving town to spend time with his parents. Jake is presented with the opportunity to advance his plans. Unfortunately, that night, David disappears from Cassie's barn. Jake morphs into his dog, Homer, and tracks David's scent to an inn. David had morphed into a golden eagle, smashed the window with a rock and entered a room without paying. Jake warns him of the consequences of this action, while also saying he won't have time to help David with his living problems until after the mission. David doesn't hide his contempt, but leaves with Jake anyway. Cassie formulates a plan to infiltrate the resort. Jake morphs into a dragonfly, while the other Animorphs, with the exception of Tobias, morph into fleas and latch onto Jake's body. Tobias guides them to the hotel. Inside, Jake tries to find the banquet hall where the speeches and infestations will take place. Inside an air vent, he gets caught in a spider web. Terrified, Jake demorphs, and the others follow. Cassie is badly wounded when Jake's demorphing creates a human artery that forces more blood into her flea body than it is prepared to hold. He releases them, and they begin demorphing. Marco is stuck mid-morph, as a giant flea. They begin to despair, but Cassie guides Marco and enables him to demorph. Marco then becomes emotional, something very unlike him. Jake inspects the banquet room, and notices the number of holograms in place. Here they discover how the Yeerks plan to infest each world leader, having infiltrated the facility by Visser Three acquiring and morphing Tony, the White House Chief of Staff (Although there are two schools of thought about why he would do this; Ax theorises that it was because there would be no way for the man to have access to a Kandrona if he is infested and something goes wrong with the mission, while Cassie thinks that it is simply Visser Three's ego wanting him to take the key role in a plan that could result in the Yeerks winning the war for Earth at last). Now the Animorphs need a plan to thwart it. They return to the resort, knock out the guards, morph into them, and reenter the banquet. Soon they realise they have been deceived, and have fallen into Visser Three's trap. David is frightened and turns against the Animorphs in order to preserve his own life, Cassie having to attack him to stop him revealing who they are. It isn't long, though, before they discover that the Hork-Bajir surrounding them are only holograms. They took the Visser hostage, and withdrew. The Animorphs, now disgusted and angry with David, try to plan their next move before it's too late. But during the night, David returns to his old home in eagle morph. Jake and Ax pursue him, only to find that David had apparently killed Tobias. David explains that the Animorphs weren't treating him as an equal, and that he'd have to take matters into his own hands. Enraged, Jake engages David, only to be ambushed by Hork-Bajir. Ax rescues Jake, and they escape. David then leads Jake to the mall, and they each morph their battle morphs, lion and tiger respectively. After a brief duel, David severs Jake's carotid artery, leaving him to bleed to death. *David becomes an enemy of the Animorphs.
8586492	/m/0278zl2	The Solution	K. A. Applegate	1998-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After having a bizarre dream, Rachel is woken by Ax, who explains Jake's express orders to summon her. That decision bothers her, but her qualms are silenced when Ax breaks her the news of Tobias's probable death. Rachel is willing to do what Jake expected her to do. They fly to Marco's house. Ax tries to fly through his window, but is promptly knocked out by Marco. Or rather, David in Marco's morph. Rachel allows David to morph to golden eagle, and leads him on a chase through town. Rachel plans to lure him into the power lines, electrocuting him. But David outmaneuvers her, and almost kills her. Fortunately, David is attacked by a hawk, which turns out to be Tobias, with David thinking that it is a random red-tailed hawk. Relieved that Tobias is alive, the Animorphs plan how to trap the traitor. At school, they're surprised, though, when David, in Marco's body, demands the Blue Box, threatening to betray their identities to the Yeerks. Cassie tries to reason with him, but to no avail. Making no progress, David leaves, with Rachel in pursuit. In a secluded spot on the school grounds, Rachel tells him that even if David betrays them, she'd still have time to make short work of him and his parents before she would be silenced by the Yeerks. David tries to attack her, but she pins him down. Having made her threat, she releases him. Soon after, Rachel becomes enraged with the way Jake is manipulating her violent tendencies. The Animorphs formulate one final attempt to doom the Yeerks' plan to make controllers of some of the G8 leaders. They morph dolphins and travel to the shore of the Marriott resort. Then they morph elephants and rhinoceroses, and ravage the resort huts the heads of state reside in. They leave a screaming Visser Three in 'Tony's' morph, and retreat into the ocean. The plan is a success, but they encounter David, in orca morph. Here David accuses Rachel of threatening to kill his family, and Rachel is hurt by her teammates' silence. After an exhausting battle, Cassie morphs into a humpback whale and drives David away. Rachel collapses in her bed the next morning, but is almost immediately pestered by her sister Jordan, wanting some comfort regarding Saddler's grave condition. Rachel walks into the bathroom, and is confronted by an invisible David. He challenges her to a personal war, which she accepts. Rachel then accuses Jake of not standing with her against David, and that Jake thinks she is a psycopath. At the hospital, the family visits their dying child. It becomes apparent that he is far from dying; he'd somehow miraculously made a full recovery. Jake immediately suspects David. When the three of them are alone, David mocks Rachel and Jake, demanding the Blue Box. Rachel and Jake reconcile, and then begin concocting a scheme to beat David at his own game. The Animorphs have a mock discussion about a Blue Box that breaks into smaller pieces, and Rachel pretends to have been morally defeated by David, being mocked by Marco the whole time. They meet David at a Taco Bell, and agree to lead him to the Blue Box, allowing him to abuse Rachel some more. Rachel and David fly to the abandoned construction site, with the other Animorphs following close behind. David traps the Animorphs as cockroaches in a Pepsi bottle, and he and Rachel morph rats. They venture into the pipes to retrieve each 'piece'. David soon figures out the Animorphs' elaborate trap, and Rachel tries to escape, barely doing so. The instant she escapes, a cage door is dropped, trapping David. Tobias swoops down and reveals to David that he is in fact, still alive and freed the other Animorphs from the bottle. Rachel and the others decide to let David be trapped forever as a rat. Cassie had plotted out all of David's emotions, gauged his inflating ego, and knew the sociopath would select Rachel as his victim. Rachel and Ax stay behind. Rachel because she says David's anguish won't bother her, and Ax so he can keep track of time and make sure David remains trapped as a rat. Rachel and Ax carry David out to a desolate rocky outcrop a mile offshore (which Rachel had first glimpsed the night they stormed the Marriott resort beach), and leave him, his pleading and cursing trailing behind them. *David is trapped in rat morph. *Saddler dies, likely killed by David. *Rachel realizes that she possesses violent tendencies beyond a simple love of excitement, and that Jake is disturbed and concerned.
8586644	/m/0278zs_	The Pretender	K. A. Applegate	1998-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tobias has been having bad luck on his hunts. Every time he'd dive on the rabbit litter to pick off a hapless youngster, he'd suddenly envision himself as the prey with the shadow of death swooping at him. To make his situation worse, another red-tailed hawk is aggressively moving in on his territory. He doesn't have the will to deal with the threat once and for all. So he resorts to picking dead carcasses off the road once, while eating a half-squashed raccoon he was seen by Rachel. He stops by at Rachel's house. She tells him that a lawyer and a long-lost cousin, Aria, has been searching for him. Chapman, too, is interested in his whereabouts. Tobias suspects a trap. Tobias meets his father's lawyer, DeGroot. The lawyer tells him the father he knew may not have been his real father, and his real father's will is meant to be read on his next birthday. Tobias is puzzled. He also tells him that Aria wants to meet him at the Hyatt hotel. Tobias left the practice, and found himself being followed by a Yeerk agent. Rather than meeting with the Animorphs at the barn, he flies to the Hork-Bajir colony. There, Toby Hamee, Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak's seer daughter, tells Tobias that a child Hork-Bajir, Bek, is missing. It is then that a disbelieving Tobias discovers that the Hork-Bajir regularly leave the valley (led by Toby) to free more of their kind. Back at the barn, Tobias must deal with his friends' thinly-veiled pity for him, and the group splits up to both try to find Bek and investigate Aria. While Rachel and Tobias are watching her hotel, Aria leaves in a cab, and stops over at Frank's Safari Land and Putt-Putt Golf, a dodgy roadside zoo-slash-amusement park. It's there that they find Bek, locked in a miserable cage alongside a bunch of very depressed animals. They find Aria talking to the owner, Frank, who wants to make money off his "alien freak". Tobias and the others storm the place and try to take Bek, tearing down the place in the process. But the Controllers were ready for them, and Tobias encounters Visser Three in a hideous Kaftid morph, who thinks Tobias is Ket Halpak. The Visser assails Tobias with an acid attack, forcing him to release Bek in pain. The rescue fails, and the Animorphs and the Yeerks withdraw, with Bek in Yeerk custody now. Tobias constantly wonders if he could ever live life as a human - with Aria. He wonders if she's a Controller. He and Ax return to the Hyatt, and witness her saving a little girl. Tobias assumes this means she's not a Controller, but Ax is doubtful. Tobias swings by Rachel's house that night, and they engage in a hot debate about Tobias's humanity, with Rachel expressing sadness about the fact that she and Tobias can never be close due to his hawk body. The next day, the Animorphs and the Hork-Bajir plan their attack on the new Yeerk Dracon cannon facility out of town. The Animorphs and the free Hork-Bajir allow themselves to be captured. Tobias, in flea morph, jumps out of the cage, demorphs, morphs a Hork-Bajir, and opens the cage. A quick fight between the Hork-Bajir-Controllers and the freedom fighters results in the latter's victory. As they climb up to the Yeerk Dracon cannon, Tobias spots Aria in a helicopter. Only then does he make the connection that Aria is actually Visser Three in a morph. Enraged, horrified, and hating himself, he falls to the ground, unable to will himself to join the fight. He is later rescued by Toby after a terrible fight ensues. The facility is destroyed, and Bek is saved. Aware now that he is walking into a trap, Tobias must engage Aria on his own. He goes to the testament-reading, and discovers that his father was in fact Elfangor, the Andalite prince. Tobias gives nothing away, instead jeering that he was left no money and accusing Aria of merely seeking his inheritance. Only after he returns to his hiding spot does he break down, and decides that he can't give up his morphing powers because he must continue to fight for his people, just like his father did. Later that night, he flies to Rachel's where she lights him a candle on a birthday cake. The next day, Tobias kills and eats the mother rabbit, morphs her, and brings the baby rabbits under his protection from the rival hawk. * Tobias discovers that Elfangor was his biological father. * Chapman is no longer suspicious of the lost boy who lives on the street. * Toby Hamee makes her first speaking appearance (excepting the last page of The Hork-Bajir Chronicles). Goof: In the 13th book, Visser Three believes that Ket Halpak, a Hork-Bajir, is dead. In the 23rd book, he recognizes her and is not at all surprised to see someone who he watched get killed.
8586693	/m/0278zwr	The Suspicion	K. A. Applegate	1998-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While Rachel tries to convince Cassie to go to the beach with her, Cassie notices what looks like a toy spaceship attached to her water pump. Cassie notes that it's where she hid the blue box, and is a bit unsettled by it, but brushes it off and puts the spaceship with a bunch of other things being donated to charity. They head off to the beach, coming back to find Jake. They notice a different "toy" spaceship attached to the water pump and, while they watch, it detaches itself and flies away. The Animorphs immediately hold a meeting and decide to go to Goodwill to try to retrieve the spaceship that Cassie had seen earlier. While there, the spaceship starts shooting at them and demands that they surrender and bring them the "power source". It flies away and they realize that it is headed back to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic to retrieve the blue box. Since it is a spaceship, it can travel much faster than their bird morphs, and when they get back, they discover to their dismay that the waterpump was cut open and the spaceship has stolen the blue box. There are some flashes and Tobias, Cassie, and Marco are significantly smaller (about one sixteenth of an inch). Cassie and Marco decide to pretend to surrender to the Helmacrons which are the aliens that are aboard the spaceships, while Tobias stays with Rachel. It is revealed that the Helmacron females are in charge, while the males are feeble and weak. Cassie and Marco claim that they work for the Yeerks (whom the Helmacrons are familiar with and despise), and that Visser Three can get them the box. Eventually they catch up with the Visser, who is at a Sharing meeting (along with Chapman and other controllers). They morph to flies to escape the ship, now being as small as cells. The Controllers get a lucky shot, and destroy the ship, Cassie and Marco barely getting out in time. They find that they have landed on Chapman's head. The other Helmacron spaceship had lured the rest of the Animorphs there in an attempt to steal the blue box. During the meeting, the Helmacrons attack, indiscriminately shrinking everyone at the meeting. Upon seeing the blue box, along with Visser Three's gentle prodding, all the controllers start trying to grab it and there is lots of chaos. Cassie morphs into a whale in order to crash the ship. She and the other Animorphs eventually end up on Ax who is the only Animorph remaining unshrunken. Visser Three and many Controllers also end up on Ax. Visser Three briefly sides with the Animorphs, saying, "I don't know about you Andalites, but these Helmacrons are really, really, really annoying me." Ax, in harrier morph, flies over to the Gardens where they all acquire and morph anteaters, which unshrinks them while in morph. As anteaters, Jake and Rachel slurp up the Helmacrons, and The Animorphs, Controllers and Helmacrons reach an agreement and everyone is unshrunken. Before the book ends, Marco and Cassie give the Helmacron males a bit of a pep talk, and it ends with the Helmacrons, male and females, squabbling with each other. *The Helmacrons are introduced.
8586726	/m/0278zyt	The Extreme	K. A. Applegate	1999-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Marco fails to get together with a girl named Marian. Later, Erek King tells Marco the Yeerks' plan to manipulate U.S. satellites to beam Kandrona rays into swimming pools, turning each into a Yeerk pool. That way, Controllers won't have to travel to the Yeerk pool, and the Animorphs would lose their advantage over them. The Yeerks are conducting their latest scheme in the Arctic Circle. The Animorphs hitch a ride on Visser Three's Blade Ship as flies. On board, they discover cryogenic tubes with strange creatures inside them. Their presence is discovered by the Yeerks, and they're forced to morph their battle creatures. Jake orders a distraction, and Marco rips open the control panel to open the ship's hatch. Rachel, with all her grizzly bear might, manages to make a single, tiny crack in one of the specimen tubes. A liquid nitrogen-like mist spills out, freezing every living thing it touches. A nasty fight ensues, and the Animorphs bail out. Falling out into the frozen tundra, the Animorphs find themselves freezing to death. They morph wolves, but they need energy to keep going. At night - since none of them can sleep - Ax tells the chilling tale of the new aliens, the Venber, a species from the Andalite moon Venbea, that was wiped out centuries ago by a race known as "The Five", melting them for computer semiconductors. Not only that, but the Yeerks have cloned them by cross-breeding them with humans, giving them their new humanoid shape. Then they find a polar bear had just killed and partially consumed a seal. The Animorphs eat the remains. Much to their surprise, not even Cassie has any scruples. They also find two seal pups - the pups of the seal they'd just eaten. Regretfully, they acquire the pups and leave them to their fate. Soon the Animorphs find themselves pursued by the creatures Marco had observed in the tubes. They morph seals to escape them, but are attacked by orcas in the freezing depths. Later, they come across Derek nội thất ô tô., a young, jocular Inuit, and his "buddy", Nanook the polar bear. Derek tells them about the people with the satellite dish, and how they're even worse than the American and Canadian elite who shoot wildlife from helicopters for the testosterone rush. The Animorphs are presented with an opportunity to acquire the DNA of a native animal, and so they attack Nanook. After pinning him down, they each acquire him, and morph him. The Animorphs, in their new polar bear morphs, advance on the Yeerk base. They encounter the Venber, engaging them in a brutal battle. They lure the remaining Venber into the hangars, where the above-zero conditions cause them to melt. The Animorphs then steal a Yeerk Bug fighter, and Marco immolates the Yeerk base. Soon to be intercepted by the Blade ship, they morph birds and ditch the alien craft over the West Coast, and fly home. This marks the first occasion where the Chee pose as the Animorphs for their families while they are away on a long-term mission.
8586783	/m/0278z_6	The Attack	K. A. Applegate	1999-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When the Animorphs go to see a sample performance of The Lion King at a school assembly, the Ellimist freezes time and appears (in the form of a girl in their school named Beth) to enlist their aid. He tells them there is another force more powerful than him, the Crayak, who wants to be able to control the entire fabric of time and space. The Ellimist reveals that this creature is the blood-red eye Jake saw when the Yeerk in his head died in the sixth book, The Capture. The Ellimist tells that when Crayak first appeared, they waged a long, brutal war that destroyed a tenth of the galaxy. The war was damaging to both of them, and they realized that they must instead have a much more subtle battle, comparable to a chess game. All the times the Ellimist has helped them (showing them the location of the Kandrona, freeing Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak, restoring Tobias' morphing power, twisting time to enable Elfangor to give the Animorphs the morphing power while Tobias still remained his son) have all been small moves in this game, all helping the Animorphs gain an advantage over the Yeerks. The Crayak is targeting another race, the Iskoort, and this interferes with the Ellimist's concealed agenda. The fate of the Iskoort will be determined through a proxy battle with rules of engagement. The Crayak and the Ellimist will each choose seven combatants to face off on the Iskoort homeworld. Crayak has chosen seven of his shock troops, the Howlers, members of the race that destroyed the Pemalites, and will destroy the Iskoort if the Howlers defeat the Animorphs on Crayak's behalf. Having only six members, the Animorphs choose Erek King as their seventh, and they are taken to the Iskoort world, a huge metropolis miles above the ground. The whole area is basically a huge marketplace, where anything can be bought or sold. While the Iskoort turn out to be bizarre and grating, they are not actually evil. The Animorphs and Erek enlist a young Iskoort trader named Guide to show them around. Eventually, they run into one of the Howlers. Even alone, it proves to be completely superior in battle: it can be hurt, but it is heavily armed and a lethal combatant in its own right. They barely survive the fight, while the Howler quickly recovers from its injuries. Regrouping, they buy copies of Howler memories with Guide's assistance, in exchange of pledging copies of their own memories should they survive. Such exciting memories would make Guide fabulously wealthy while giving the Animorphs the financial assets necessary to move along the Iskoort world at will. (Ax determines that the Iskoort homeworld is sufficiently isolated from Yeerk influence for this transfer of information to be of negligible risk to Animorph secrecy on Earth.) Erek watches the purchased Howler memories, revealing all the massacres the Howlers have committed. They determine that the Howlers were created by Crayak, and that they have collective memories, giving them each thousands of years of battle experience. There are no memories of the Howlers ever being defeated. The Animorphs find a new safehouse as Guide mentions a personal errand: A function of Iskoort physiology requires the Iskoort to separate into two halves, the Isk, the body, and a slug-like entity, the Yoort. Guide continues to explain that every three days, Iskoort must separate so the Yoort can feed. Upon recognition of the similarities to the Yeerks, chaos ensues, interrupting Guide, and violence is narrowly averted. Guide explains early Iskoort history, closely resembling the Yeerks' current existence of conquering and enslaving alien races. The Iskoort ancestors disliked their evolved biology of parasitism, instead employing genetic engineering to create a primary host, the Isk, and additionally altered Yoort physiology to become true symbiotes in order to maintain the established standard of living but removing the necessary violence. At this point, the relevance of the Iskoort to both the Ellimist and the Crayak is revealed. Should the Yeerks ever interact with the Iskoort, the Yeerks would learn of a possibility for nonviolent existence. Since the Yeerks are conquerors, the desired nonviolence of some Yeerks and dissidence within the Yeerk Empire would delay Crayak's goal of dictatorship over the galaxy and ultimately, the universe. Even worse (in Crayak's view), the Yeerks could abandon their current imperialistic nature, forcing Crayak to find new conquerors to unite the galaxy under his rule. After several narrow escapes, Jake and a Howler both fall off a building towards the ground below. Jake acquires the Howler and quickly morphs to peregrine falcon, pulling to safety with a spiteful quip as the Howler plummets to its death. Back atop, Jake reunites with the others. Jake and Cassie run to each other and kiss, prompting Rachel to say that "it's about time". Jake morphs the Howler under guard with the others under strict orders to kill him if he loses control to the instincts of a killer created by Crayak. He finds no such things. Instead, he discovers that Howlers have the personalities of little children: the Howlers consider their battles to be fun and exciting games and have no perception that they are hurting real people and annihilating entire civilizations. The Animorphs make the memory-recordings, along with Erek and Guide. When the Howlers next attack, the Animorphs use Jake in Howler morph to stun one of them and force the entire combined memories of the eight of them (the Animorphs plus Erek and Guide) into the Howlers, along with the knowledge that the non-Howlers are real beings. Crayak is forced to destroy all six Howlers before the memories can contaminate the collective memory. The Animorphs win the standoff on behalf of the Ellimist. The Ellimist transports the Animorphs to n-dimensional space in order to talk with Crayak face-to-face in a way that the Animorphs can see. Crayak concedes defeat and agrees that the Iskoort will live. Jake morphs the Howler in order to determine the effectiveness of the Animorphs' "memory contamination" attack. He finds nothing in the collective Howler memory relating to the Iskroot homeworld. Since all Howlers share a single, collective memory and Jake in Howler morph has no memory of the fallen Howler falling by Jake's hand, Jake determines that Crayak obliterates unsuccessful Howlers before these memories of defeat blemish the collective memory, ensuring that only a streak of flawless Howler victories remain; however, a single incident from the Iskoort homeworld has penetrated the collective memory: that of Jake and Cassie making out at night with the Howler D.N.A. still in his body. Taking his warriors back to Earth, the Ellimist talks with the Animorphs further. He reveals that in a few months' time, on the next Howler raid, the Howlers will attempt to kiss their targets. The contaminated Howlers are no longer useful as Crayak's shock troops. The Ellimist also reveals that in three hundred years' time, the Iskoort will meet the Yeerks. The following night, Jake tries and fails to turn his dreams from the Howler he sent to its doom.
8586862	/m/0278_3p	The Exposed	K. A. Applegate	1999-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During a shopping trip with Cassie, Rachel discovers Erek having problems: his hologram malfunctions. Barely managing to get him away in time, they discover all of the Chee are having problems with certain aspects of their technology, particularly their holograms, owing to interference with the Pemalite ship hidden in the ocean. Of all the Chee, two are currently still in danger, while the rest have successfully hidden themselves. One of the Chee in danger, Lourdes, is hidden in a flophouse where drug fencing occurs, but a SWAT team - with a Controller member - are about to raid the house. After rescuing Lourdes, they have to travel to the bottom of the ocean, to fix the problem of the malfunctioning holograms, but have problems thinking of the morph they could use to go in so deep into the ocean. Cassie found the solution: morphing into a giant squid. But the problem was that none of them had acquired that morph, and they had no idea where to get it, though they know for a fact that sperm whales captured giant squids. They were let down until they find out that a sperm whale has conveniently beached, so Rachel and Tobias acquire it and dive to find a squid. Upon finding and battling one, the group all acquire it and release it, and then dive to the ship. They notice several Yeerk bug fighters en route to the Pemalite ship as well, following the signal. Reaching it first, they use the single-digit access code to infiltrate it and fix the Chee programming, but then a self-destruct sequence is initiated too. The group is confronted by a being called the Drode, an aide of sorts to Crayak, who threatens and insults them all. He shows some bizarre fondness for Rachel and tells her that if she wanted favour with the Crayak, she should kill Jake, telling Rachel that her passport to Crayak's side is Jake. The Yeerks also emerge into the ship, and the group must stand and fight them before allowing them to gain control. But as the battle reaches a climax, Erek appears - to the shock of the Drode - and activates a violence-dispeller. The Yeerks and Animorphs are forced to leave the ship, and the Chee have their holograms restored. *The Drode is introduced. *Tobias and Rachel's relationship is further explored. Rachel is asked out by someone other than Tobias (T. T.), and she is tempted by the prospect of a normal romantic relationship, but rudely tells him no, concluding in the end that, no matter how tempting the prospect of a normal relationship is, no normal guy would go to the lengths that Tobias has gone to in order to keep her safe. *For the first time, Crayak's interest in Rachel is hinted at and explored.
8586918	/m/0278_5r	The Experiment	K. A. Applegate	1999-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Animorphs find out from Erek that the Yeerks have taken control of a meatpacking plant and a laboratory. They acquire chimpanzees and infiltrate the lab. They don't find very much information so Tobias and Ax morph into bulls (thinking they would morph into steer but not realizing that the DNA does not include surgical procedures) to go to the meatpacking plant. Inside the plant, they discover a room with humans in cages. The computer tells them that it is an experiment designed to destroy the free will of the human population so that the Yeerks can take over easily, but a Yeerk scientist eventually confirms that the experiment was a total failure.
8586970	/m/0278_6f	The Sickness	K. A. Applegate	1999-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cassie and Jake are dragged along by Rachel and the others to the school dance. They have a few good laughs when Ax's unfamiliarity with human culture scares away some of the crowd. The laughter stops, however, when he demorphs involuntarily. It soon becomes apparent that Ax is suffering from an inflamed Tria gland (as well as a fever) - much like the lymphatic tonsils in the human mouth. Unlike humans, though, this gland is located at the back of Ax's brain. If it bursts, it will cause irreversible and fatal damage to the brain. Cassie hides the sick alien in her barn, and Erek the Chee erects a hologram around them both. At the same time, Mr. Tidwell, one of Cassie's teachers, informs her that Aftran has been captured by Visser Three. She will be tortured, and will thus be forced to divulge all of her secrets; including that of Cassie and the Animorphs. Cassie endures her friends' thinly-veiled blame, but they decide to act. They form a plan to enter the Yeerk pool via the facility's extensive piping system. Tobias brings them eels to morph. The children morph and enter the pipes, but Jake falls ill from Ax's virus (Although it is established that this virus will just make humans sick rather than having the fatal effects that the Andalite version has on Ax). The plan fails, and they return to the surface - through a fire hose and into a burning building! That night, Cassie has a bad dream. In the morning, she discovers that Rachel is ill. Mr. Tidwell reveals he shares control of his body with Illim, a Yeerk, and that he is a member of the Yeerk Peace Movement. He tells her the time and location of Aftran's interrogation. Marco is the next to fall ill. Then, while Cassie is with him, Tobias, too, falls ill to it, flying into one of the barn rafters. To keep Tobias safe, she locks him up next to a golden eagle, much to his dismay. Cassie is all alone, and she needs to infiltrate the Yeerk pool, so Illim allows her to acquire his Yeerk DNA and take control of Mr. Tidwell. Cassie and Mr. Tidwell enter the enemy stronghold, and she is disgorged into the Yeerk pool. She finds Aftran's cage, and manages to take control of a voluntary host. She rams the Visser, who drops Aftran. Cassie leaves the little girl, dives back into the pool, morphs her osprey, and carries Aftran away, pursued by Visser Three, who has morphed an eyeball with tentacles. Back at the barn, Cassie learns that Ax is in crisis. She allows Aftran to enter Ax's head and tell her the location of the Tria gland. Cassie makes her incision, and pulls the gland out, saving Ax's life. A few days later, the other Animorphs have recovered from the illness. Aftran is safe, but in order to keep her alive without access to the Kandrona, the Animorphs allow her to morph a humpback whale - on the condition that she stays in that form as a nothlit.
8587028	/m/0278_8h	The Reunion	K. A. Applegate	1999-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Enjoying a day to skip school, Marco unexpectedly runs into his mother (Visser One), and discovers she is hiding in an office building, planning to find the Hork-Bajir colony. Marco, Tobias and Ax confirm this on a late-night visit, in which they negotiate a deal with Visser One. Marco begins to formulate a plan that will destroy Vissers One and Three, and free his mother, and make the Yeerks believe they have destroyed the Hork-Bajir colony. The plan goes well for the most part, but a few miscalculations reveal to Visser One that at least one of the guerilla fighters is human and there is a misconception that Jake and Cassie have died. When the Animorphs spring the battle between the two Vissers, Visser Three is forced to retreat and Visser One is believed to have perished (over a cliff, butted by Marco in mountain goat morph), though not before realizing that Marco is one of the warriors. *Visser One reveals that she is wanted by Visser Three and the Council of Thirteen for treason (according to Visser Three), and the council has issued a gashad, or warrant, to kill her on sight. This plot element later comes up in Visser. *Visser One realizes that Marco is a member of the 'Andalite bandits', before being knocked off a cliff.
8587788	/m/0279052	The Conspiracy	K. A. Applegate	1999-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jake returns from school to discover that his great grandfather has died. His father insists that the family go to his home in a wooded cabin far away and help plan the funeral arrangements. They plan to be gone for three or four days; however, this presents a problem for Tom, who can not stay away from the Yeerk Pool for more than three days at time. Tom fights relentlessly with Jake's father about going and when they leave for a Sharing meeting together Jake fears that Tom may force their dad into involuntary Yeerk infestation, or even kill him. Jake must save his father, but for the first time, his quick thinking tactical mind freezes up. A slight power struggle ensues between Jake and Marco who insists that Jake isn't thinking clearly on this matter. After several close calls protecting Jake's father, the Animorphs decide to make a distraction for the Yeerks so that Tom is no longer their top priority. The Animorphs kidnap Chapman holding him hostage in an abandoned house to distract the Yeerks from taking care of Jake's father. To make the kidnap seem convincing they have Ax interrogate Chapman for hours. Afterward, they allow him to escape, and Ax insists that he will never do such a thing again as it is not the conduct of a warrior. After this Jake insists on handling the situation by himself. With the distraction successful, Tom heads up to the cabin with the rest of the family. In the middle of the night, he tries to kill his father with a dagger, but is stopped by Jake with the help of rest of the Animorphs, who are running a plan devised by Marco. Tom is injured and taken back to the hospital in the city where he has access to a Yeerk pool.
8589403	/m/02792bw	Ruslan and Lyudmila	Aleksandr Pushkin	1820		 Pushkin dedicates the poem to unnamed young beauties, the “queens of my soul” (души моей царицы), and states that his reward is the hope that some lovesick girl will read the poem in secret. In a brief prologue, the narrator of the story describes a green oak by the sea, and makes reference to several other elements common in Russian folktales, such as a hut on hen’s legs (избушка на курьих ножках), Baba Yaga (Баба-Яга), and King Koschei (царь Кащей). Bound to the tree by a golden chain is a story-telling cat. The narrator remembers one of the cat’s stories in particular, namely the one that follows. This prologue was not part of the original 1820 edition; it first appeared in the 1828 edition. The story opens with a feast given by Prince Vladimir (Владимир) to celebrate the marriage of his daughter, Ludmila, to the bold warrior Ruslan. Among the guests are Ruslan’s jealous rivals, the bold warrior Rogday (Рогдай), the boastful Farlaf (Фарлаф), and the young khazar Khan Ratmir (Ратмир). On their wedding night, as Ruslan prepares to consummate the marriage, a strange presence fills the bedroom, accompanied by thunder and lightning. Ruslan finds that his bride has mysteriously vanished. On hearing of Ludmila's disappearance, the angered Vladimir annuls the marriage and promises his daughter’s hand to whoever is able to return her safely. Ruslan and his three rivals set off on horseback. Ruslan encounters an old man in a cavern who tells him that Ludmila had been abducted by the sorcerer Chernomor (Черномор), and that Ruslan would find her unharmed. The old man himself is a Finn who tells the story of how he had fallen in love with a beautiful young maiden, Naina (Наина), who spurned his attention. In order to win her love he tried to become a glorious warrior, but when she rejected him, spent years learning the magical arts instead. He finally cast a spell to win Naina’s love, only to find that she herself was actually an old crone, who now was bent on revenge. (This and each of the remaining songs begin with an “editorial comment” by the author. These comments often evoke classical mythology and sometimes contain contemporary references.) Rogday decides to abandon the quest for Ludmila and to find and kill Ruslan instead. Seeing a rider, he attacks, only to find it is Farlaf and not Ruslan, and leaves him shaken but alive. An old woman appears and points Rogday to the direction in which to find Ruslan. She then advises Farlaf to return to Kiev (Киев) to await his trophy. Ruslan is challenged by another rider and the story turns briefly to Ludmila’s fate. She finds herself in a lavish chamber where three maidens are ready to fulfill her every desire. Opening the chamber door, she discovers a marvelous garden to rival Solomon’s. However, she feels empty without Ruslan. She is startled by a hunchbacked dwarf approaching her, carried by ten manservants. She lashes out and he tumbles to the ground, tripping over his long beard. It is the wizard Chernomor, who leaves his hat as he flees. Back to Ruslan, who defeats the challenger and leaves him to drown in the Dnieper (Днепр). It is, of course, Rogday. Chernomor is visited by a flying dragon who turns out to be Naina, pledging her alliance in defeating the Finn. Encouraged, he decides to go to Ludmila and make advances toward her, but she is nowhere to be found. She had tried on the wizard’s hat and found that she could vanish and reappear at will by varying its position on her head. As Ruslan rides on, he finds himself in the midst of a deserted battlefield, strewn with bones, dead horses, and war relics. He momentarily mourns his own fate, then realizes it is an opportunity to arm himself. He leaves with a lance, helmet, coat of armor, and a battle horn. He could not, however, find a suitable sword. Continuing, he finds his path blocked by a huge hill emitting strange sounds. Closer inspection reveals it to be a giant slumbering human head. Ruslan awakens the head, which becomes angered and begins to taunt him. It sticks out its tongue. Ruslan seizes the opportunity and thrusts his lance into the tongue, then into its cheek. As the startled head leaps away, Ruslan finds a bright sword where it had been. As Ruslan prepares to attack with the sword, the head pleads for mercy. The head tells his story: He was once a mighty warrior, the brother of Chernomor, who envied him. Chernomor’s magic power lay in his beard, and he told his brother that they must secure the sword, which had the power to kill the both of them – Chernomor, by cutting his beard, the brother, by severing his head. They set off in quest of the sword, but then disputed to whom it should belong once they found it. Chernomor proposed that they both put their heads to the ground and the sword would go to the one who first heard a sound. Instead, he used the sword to sever his brother’s head, which magically remained alive. The head tells Ruslan that he bears no grudge and will be grateful if Ruslan uses the sword to defeat Chernomor. Ratmir is interrupted in his journey by a young maiden who beckons him into a castle, where he finds himself enveloped in luxury. He soon forgets Ludmila. Ludmila eludes Chernomor’s henchmen by remaining invisible, but then is tricked by the wizard into revealing herself when he takes the form of Ruslan and calls to her in his voice. He is thwarted by the sound of a horn and hurries off, leaving his hat behind. Chernomor confronts Ruslan, who has arrived at the wizard’s lair. They trade blows, and Chernomor flies off, with Ruslan holding on to his beard. For two days they fly, with Ruslan snipping away at the beard, until the bedraggled wizard pleads for mercy and agrees to take Ruslan to Ludmila. Ruslan searches the palace and wanders into the garden, all the time calling for Ludmila, who remains hidden. Finally, a chance thrust of his flailing sword knocks the hat from her head. However, his lover is in a trance and does not hear him calling. He hears the Finn’s voice from a distance telling him to return Ludmila to Kiev where she will awaken. Ruslan sets off, carrying his bride and Chernomor. He encounters the head, who, contented that he has been avenged, dies in peace. Ruslan comes to rest at a stream and is met by a fisherman, who turns out to be the Khan Ratmir. He explains that he has met his true love and no longer yearns for Ludmila. The two part as friends. Naina appears to Farlaf and tells him that his hour has arrived. He saddles up and rides off, finding Ruslan encamped and thrusting his sword into him as he sleeps. As Farlaf rides off with his prey, Ruslan lies unconscious and finally succumbs to his injuries. Chernomor awakens and is joyful to see Ruslan lying dead. Farlaf returns Ludmila to Vladimir, whose initial happiness soon turns to mourning as he finds that she cannot be awakened from her deep slumber. Farlaf hangs his head in remorse. To make matters even worse, the city of Kiev is under siege. The Finn finds Ruslan and resurrects him with magical waters. He gives Ruslan a ring which will break Ludmila’s spell, but tells him that he must first save the city from its attackers. Ruslan returns to Kiev, Chernomor still in tow, and leads the city’s warriors to victory. Ruslan touches Ludmila’s face with the ring and she awakens. Vladimir gives the couple his blessing. Ruslan forgives both Farlaf and Chernomor. Another editorial comment by the author, who bemoans better days gone by.
8593597	/m/02796rj	Eulalia	Brian Jacques	2007-10-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the far, cold Northern Isles, the fox captain, Vizka Longtooth, sights a lonely farmhouse. Wanting plunder, he orders the crew of his ship, the Bludgullet to set ashore. The inhabitants of the farmhouse: the badger Gorath and his grandparents, were from the far south, escaping vermin and war. They had dreamed of going to the legendary havens Redwall Abbey and Salamandastron for peace. However, ill winds destroyed this dream, stranding them on the Northern Isles. Meanwhile, at Salamandastron, the Badger Lord Asheye has a prophecy that an unknown badger(which turns out to be Gorath) will succeed him in autumn. He sends a local troublemaker, Maudie (the Hon.) Mugsberry Thropple to search for the badger. Leading a series of events, Maudie finds herself trapped by sand lizards. At Redwall Abbey, a young hedgehog called Orkwil Prink is expelled from the abbey due to thieving. After a mean watervole tricks him, his luck quickly plummets when he finds himself without supplies and trapped in a swamp. Vizka, his brother Codj and the Sea Raiders have captured Gorath. Codj locked Gorath's grandparents inside the farmhouse and burned it. Gorath swears to kill Codj, and the crew soon realize he's a dangerous beast when he kills a taunting weasel.The ambitious Vizka decides to recruit Gorath into his crew. Maudie, meanwhile, has been rescued from the sand lizards by an owl named Asio Bardwing, who believed Maudie was a magic beast. He agrees to lead her to the Guosim shrews who'll take her to Redwall, where Lord Asheye ordered her to go. They find the Guosim in the midst of celebration. However, soon a baby shrew is kidnapped by an adder. Maudie, Asio and Log-a-Log Luglug find the adder. However, Asio is killed when rescuing the shrew. Vizka soon realizes that Gorath would rather die than join his crew, so he simply starves him. However, before Gorath dies, Codj captures Orkwil, who befriends Gorath. Being a thief, Orkwil soon frees himself and Gorath. During the escape, Gorath kills Codj. Maudie and the Guosim are being tagged by another vermin band: the Brownrats headed by the fat Gruntan Kurdly, who wanted the shrews' logboats. After meeting up with Barbowla the otter, his holt and Rangval the Rogue, a Guosim baby named Yik goes missing. Maudie and Luglug find Yik captured by the Brownrats. They rescue him, but Luglug is killed in the process. Gorath and Orkwil have made it to Redwall and had warned Abbot Daucus and Skipper Rorc of the Sea Vermin. They are then joined by Rangval, the Boulderdogs and the Guosim. Maudie appears later, bringing Yik and the sad news that Luglug was killed. His son Osbil becomes the new Log-a-Log and swears revenge on the Brownrats. Vizka had captured the mean vole and ordered him to disguise himself to gain entrance to Redwall, which he wants to conquer. This scheme fails, and the vole is captured by the Redwallers. He then decides to tunnel his way in. However, his crew encounters the scouts of the Brownrats, who chase them to the north. Gorath has seen Vizka besieging the Abbey and gets restless. He escapes during the middle of a feast and Orkwil, Rangval and Maudie attempt to find him. However, just as they were setting out, the vole kills Sister Atrata, the Healer, and steals the Sword of Martin. The Bronrats capture a Sea Vermin named Magger. When they were thinking of taking him to Kurdly, Gorath sweeps in, killing hordes of Brownrats. In the confusion, Magger escapes. He soon encounters the vole and kills him, stealing the sword and returns to Vizka. Vizka, however, kills him because he wanted the sword. Beforehand, Orkwil, Maudie and Rangval were captured by Vizka. After Vizka leaves 3 vermin to guard them, they easily overpower them and escape, knowing that Vizka has Martin's sword. Gorath, after the attack of Bloodwrath, faints, When he comes round, he finds company with two badgers, Salixa and her mentor: the Tabura. They return to Redwall, where Gorath and Salixa leave the Tabura. They soon are surrounded on top of a plateau with the Guosim, Barbowla and no rations. Maudie, Rangval and Orkwil, disguised as vermin, have a harrowing encounter with the two stoats Bilger and Jungo. They are able to worm out of trouble but Orkwil disappears. Maudie and Rangval join Gorath's army on the plateau. Gruntan Kurdly, meanwhile, has met his demise when he tried to rob a swan's egg. Osbil then kills Stringle, his father's murderer and the Brownrats' only other officer. Vizka takes control of the Brownrats and orders them to besiege the plateau. Just as Gorath's army were about to be annhilalated, Orkwil reappears leading a horde of Redwallers. They kill the Brownrats and the Sea Raiders, but Vizka and five vermin escape. Gorath pursues Vizka through Mossflower Wood. Vizka's vermin desert him because he killed two of them. Furious, Vizka returns to the Bludgullet. However, Gorath is already there and kills Vizka in an amazing fight with his friends watching. The Bludgullet is renamed the Eulalia and Gorath, Salixa, Orkwil, Maudie, Rangval and the Guosim sail down the River Moss to Salamandastron, where Lord Asheye gives the title of Badger Lord to Gorath. In the celebrations that follow, Lord Asheye realizes that it is near autumn and that he must depart Salamandastron. To cheer Asheye up, Salixa sings a song that the Tabura composed. Asheye suddenly recognizes the song, and realizes the Tabura is his long-lost brother Melutar. Asheye and his friend Major Mullein sail to Redwall.
8595912	/m/02799w9	Little Women	Louisa May Alcott		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ;Act I In 1866, Josephine March (Jo) receives a notice of rejection from another author in New York City, making it her twenty-second rejection. Jo asks Professor Bhaer, another boarder at Mrs. Kirk's Boarding House, his opinion on her story ("An Operatic Tragedy"). The Professor is not entranced by her blood and guts saga. He suggests she should write stories that can appeal to authors and of refined writing, and he leaves. Jo asks herself if she would write better at home in Concord, Massachusetts ("Better"). Beginning three years earlier at her attic-studio, Jo assembles her sisters, Meg, Beth and Amy, to tell them that she will be putting up for a show of her own called the "Operatic Tragedy". The sisters beg Jo to not put it up for a show but Jo fantasizes about her blood and guts-filled show ("Our Finest Dreams"). Marmee, their mother, comes in with a letter from Mr. March who is a Union Army chaplain in the American Civil War. As she writes a response, she reflects on how hard is to be the pillar of strength in the March home ("Here Alone"). Aunt March, the wealthy aunt of the March sisters, asks Jo to change from being a tomboy to a model lady of society. She tells Jo of an idle thought to bring her along to Europe. Jo begs to go with her, but Aunt March reasons that she will take her only if she changes. Jo, who has always dreamed of seeing Europe, agrees ("Could You?"). Meanwhile, Meg has one of her own dreams realized: she and Jo are invited to Annie Moffat's Valentine's Day Ball. But on the day of the ball, while the two sisters are rushing around for their finishing touches, Meg announces that she cannot go. She asks Marmee what to say when one of her potential suitors asks her to dance. Marmee tells Meg to just smile and say "I'd be delighted" ("I'd Be Delighted"). Amy, who cares about society and fine things more than Jo, rushes down in Jo's old ball gown to join them in going to the ball, but Jo stops her, as she is not invited. At the ball, Jo accidentally sits on Laurie, who is a neighbor of the Marches' along with his grumpy grandfather, Mr. Lawrence. She apologizes to Laurie and asks him why he is sitting down. Laurie replies that he must have passed out from too much dancing. Laurie's tutor, Mr. John Brooke, then comes in and scolds Laurie for not meeting important people, which would make Mr. Lawrence furious. Mr. Brooke asks Meg to dance and Meg agrees. Meg and Mr. Brooke are smitten at first sight. Laurie confesses to Jo his need for friends and asks Jo to dance with him. Jo replies that she doesn't dance and has a patch on her dress but Laurie keeps on trying to make an impression ("Take A Chance On Me"). Back at the Marches' after the ball, Jo and Amy have a little confrontation, but Marmee sends Amy off to her bed and tells Jo that Amy is just a child. Jo spits back that Amy is a not a child but a demon in a child's body. Jo then rushes up to her attic to rewrite her story. Laurie invites Jo to a skating match, which she at first refuses but eventually agrees to. Amy wants to go with them but she already outgrown her pair of skates. Beth, who intends to stay home, offers Amy her old skates. Beth is sitting at the family's old piano when Mr. Lawrence comes in looking for Laurie, who is out with Jo and Amy. Mr. Lawrence discovers Beth's talent at the piano and they sing a duet ("Off to Massachusetts"). Jo and Laurie comes in from the skating race with Amy in Laurie's arms because she had fallen into the ice while skating. Jo and Amy reconcile, and Jo makes Laurie an honorary member of the March family ("Five Forever"). Mr. Brooke excuses Meg for a while to tell her of his enlistment in the Union Army. He then asks Meg her hand in marriage, and she accepts ("More Than I Am"). But Jo's life goes to crisis when Mr. March's sickness calls Marmee. She has a confrontation with Aunt March after she cuts her hair to bring Marmee to Washington. Aunt March then turns her focus to Amy, molding her to be the society lady that she envisioned for Jo. Laurie, who decides to ask Jo to marry him, then comes in her attic-studio. Laurie tries to kiss her but Jo gently pushes him away. He put out a ring but Jo thinks that it is a joke. Laurie says he loves Jo. Jo does not accept his marriage proposal. He tells her that she will marry, but Jo tells him that she will never marry; Laurie, on the contrary, says she will, but not to him. Jo then ponders her future, which is changing significantly. She vows to find another way to achieve her future ("Astonishing!"). ;Act II At Mrs. Kirk's Boarding House at New York City, she is holding a telegram for Jo from Mrs. March. Jo bounces in, looking for the Professor. She then realizes that the Professor is right in front of her. She tells them her fantastic news: she made her first sale as an author ("The Weekly Volcano Press")! She tells them the story of the sale as well, thanks to Professor Bhaer's advice, the re-edited story. But the news was disturbed when Jo reads the telegram. She is notified of Beth's Scarlet Fever and immediately pack her bags and go home back to Concord. Jo, after a few days, sends a letter to Professor Bhaer, asking him what's new in New York. The Professor struggles to write a decent response ("How I Am"). Back in Concord, at a nearby seashore, Beth says good bye to Jo, telling her that she is not afraid to move on because she is loved by everyone, especially Jo, that she is grateful to have them with her during her lifetime ("Some Things Are Meant To Be"). Amy and Laurie come home from Europe and struggle to tell Jo of their pending marriage because they are trying to be discreet about the matter ("The Most Amazing Thing"). Because of Beth's death, Jo and the family grieve her loss. Marmee, being the strong one, tells Jo of how she copes with her death. She tells Jo that she cannot be defeated by her death and that she must move on ("Days of Plenty"). Jo reminisces while her sisters are still with her. She finds that her family and friends are themselves astonishing and this encourages her to write her novel, Little Women ("The Fire Within Me"). At the day of Laurie and Amy's wedding, Professor Bhaer comes to Concord to attend some matters. He realizes that it is time to tell Jo of his feelings for her. He invites Jo to their garden and tells her about his feelings and proposes. Jo accepts his proposal ("Small Umbrella In The Rain"). The Professor tells Jo that he sent the manuscript of her novel Little Women to the Weekly Volcano Press, the same publisher that accepted Jo's operatic tragedy. He tells Jo that the publisher agreed to publish it, and Jo proclaims her happiness ("Sometimes When You Dream (Reprise)").
8597133	/m/0279cbt	The Counterfeiters	André Gide	1925	{"/m/04y41": "Modernism", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot revolves around Bernard &ndash; a schoolfriend of Olivier's who is preparing for his bac &ndash; discovering he is a bastard and taking this as a welcome pretext for running away from home. He spends a night in Olivier's bed (where Olivier describes a recent visit to a prostitute and how he did not find the experience very enjoyable). After Bernard steals the suitcase belonging to Edouard, Olivier's uncle, and the ensuing complications, he is made Edouard's secretary. Olivier is jealous and ends up in the hands of the cynical and downright diabolical Comte de Passavant, who travels with him to the Mediterranean. Eventually, Bernard and Edouard decide they do not fit as well together as anticipated, and Bernard leaves to take a job at a school, then finally decides to return to his father's home. Olivier is now made Edouard's secretary, and after an eventful evening on which he embarrasses himself grossly, Olivier ends up in bed together with Edouard, finally fulfilling the attraction they have felt for each other all along but were unable to express. Other plotlines are woven around these elements, such as Olivier's younger brother Georges and his involvement with a ring of counterfeiters, or his older brother Vincent and his relationship with Laura, a married woman, with whom he has a child. Perhaps the most suspenseful scene in the book revolves around Boris, another illegitimate child and the grandson of La Pérouse, who commits suicide in front of the assembled class when dared by Ghéridanisol, another of Passavant's cohorts. In some regards, such as the way in which the adolescents act and speak in a way beyond their years and the incompetence of the adults (especially the fathers), as well as its motives of developing and confused adolescent sexuality, the novel has common ground with Frank Wedekind's (at the time scandalous) 1891 drama Spring Awakening. The Counterfeiters also shares with that play the vision of homosexual relationships as under certain conditions being "better" than heterosexual ones, with the latter ones leading inevitably to destructive outcomes in both works.
8597412	/m/0279csk	Silk	Alessandro Baricco	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of a French silkworm merchant-turned-smuggler named Hervé Joncour in 19th century France who travels to Japan for his town's supply of silkworms after a disease wipes out their African supply. During his stay in Japan, he becomes obsessed with the concubine of a local baron.
8600119	/m/0279glm	Storm Front	Jim Butcher	2000-04-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A woman named Monica makes an appointment with Dresden to discuss a missing persons case later in the day. Dresden also gets a call from Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, director of Special Investigations (SI) Unit of the Chicago Police Department. Murphy's partner shows him the bodies of two gruesomely murdered people with their hearts ripped out. Later that day, he is hired to find the husband of Monica Sells, Victor, a beginning magician who was acting oddly. Eventually, Dresden, despite encounters with vampires, the warlock, and Warden Morgan, learns that the affair centers around the drug "ThirdEye," which allows normal humans to temporarily use The Sight, which can drive them insane. Victor Sells manufactured ThirdEye to hedge out Johnny Marcone. Using the power of thunder storms and the orgies held at his home, he powered the spells to remove his enemies, namely Marcone's men and people threatening his operation, in order to gradually bring down Marcone. Interrupting Victor's last spell, Dresden attacks Victor, eventually burning down Victor's house while Victor is still inside grappling with monster-sized scorpions and a demon he summoned to kill Dresden. Dresden wins, but finds himself trapped on the balcony of the burning house until Morgan steps in to rescue him. Morgan witnessed the fight with Victor and, knowing now that Dresden is innocent, reluctantly testifies on Dresden's behalf to the White Council.
8600343	/m/0279gxl	New Day				 New Day recounts the story of Jamaica's first outcry against the English Crown rule that cemented a socio-economic and political framework of oppression three decades post-emancipation. New Day is framed as the aged narrator John Campbell's account of the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 and the series of uprisings and negotiations that finally culminates in the creation of the New Constitution in 1944. Recognized for its particular approach to the historical novel, the narrative opens with the elderly narrator John Campbell reminiscing of his family and country's longstanding history over the course of seventy-nine years, as he lies awake on the eve of Jamaica's Constitution Day and his memory refuses to elude him. The narrative quality of New Day is evident when the aged narrator transitions from past-tense into present voice as old Campbell struggles to recall the events of the past (“remember I remember”). The protagonist John Campbell, of both African and European descent, is a member of a family that has risen to greater standing with each generation. Since the abolishment of slavery, Campbell explains that the large estates in Jamaica have ceased to function. Many droughts devastate the island and the state of the poor population only worsens. Anger and resentment grow towards the Governor's administration and the wealthy land-owners, in turn sparking the Morant Bay Rebellion. John's older brother Davie Campbell, whom John idolizes, joins forces with the Jamaican radicals of Stoney Gut. The British open fire on and kill forty men from Stoney Gut and Morant Bay. The rebels kill forty militiamen in retaliation. Although John's father, Pa John Campbell, is a peaceful and devoted Christian, he and all of his family, excluding John and Davie, are eventually killed by the time the English stop the reign of terror that Governor Eyre deemed to be the solution to the rebellion. Subsequently, John escapes with Davie and Lucille Dubois, the girl who marries Davie. The three proceed to live on a small cay until the English have stopped hunting them. It is not James Creary, son of Lucille and David, but their grandson Garth Creary who assumes leadership in the struggle. Garth, a wealthy lawyer and businessman, is ultimately responsible for executing the series of propaganda, law-suits, strikes, and negotiations that eventually pave the way for a new Jamaican constitution. The new political day is celebrated on the morning following old John Campbell's long and restless night. Jamaica's partial self-government gives way to the country's "New Day".
8607482	/m/0279sd3	Out of Time’s Abyss	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book begins with Bradley, who had left Fort Dinosaur on an expedition in the first novel and never returned. Bradley and his party are attempting to return to Fort Dinosaur. Along the way, they encounter a creature which appears to be a flying dead man. Some of the members of the party consider it to be a ghost or banshee. Tippet is convinced that he is soon to die, and the next day he is killed by a Tyrannosaurus. The ghost-like creature is seen again, and James is killed by a saber-toothed cat. Bradley disappears during the night, and the remaining members of the party make it safely to Fort Dinosaur. Bradley had been captured by the ghost-like creature, which is soon revealed to be a naturally winged human being, belonging to a subgroup of humanity known as the Wieroo. The Wieroo takes Bradley to the island of Oo-oh, set in Caspak's inland sea. It attempts to keep Bradley in a prison, but he escapes through a secret passage. He meets Co-Tan, a member of the highest human race of mainland Caspak, the Galu, fully human and of a neolithic cultural level. They enter the chamber of the Wieroo king, a huge member of the race, and Bradley kills the creature with its own sword. Co-Tan and Bradley escape the city of the Wieroo and live for several months on the forested coast of Oo-oh. Finally, though, they are discovered by Wieroo. They succeed in capturing two of the Wieroo and forcing them to fly to the mainland, one bearing each of the humans. On the Caspakian mainland, Co-Tan and Bradley meet the party from the outside world from the previous two books, and they return home to America, where Bradley will marry Co-Tan.
8607896	/m/0279s_c	Blaze	Stephen King	2007-06-12	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 * The story concerns Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. (known as "Blaze" for short, thus the title), a mentally challenged small-time con artist who kidnaps a wealthy gentleman's baby son, in the hopes of fulfilling the dreams of George Thomas Rackley, Blaze's deceased best friend and partner in crime. The chapters alternate between Blaze's past — which covers his childhood (including how he came to be brain damaged) and his entry into a life of crime despite an otherwise sweet demeanor — and his current caper, in which he imagines that he is still constantly advised by his friend George. Despite the helpfulness of (the imaginary) George's advice, Blaze's world begins to crumble during his kidnapping venture, especially as he bonds with baby Joey. In the end, Blaze runs from his inevitable destiny back to the horrors of his old orphanage, the Hetton House. After the cops storm it, he rushes to a cave, where Joey is nearly killed, and Blaze ends up killing two policemen. He is killed by a police officer, and is buried only a few miles away from where his father lived.
8608159	/m/0279tbc	Léon Morin, prêtre				 In a small French town during the Occupation, Barny is a young, wayward, sexually frustrated widow, living with her little girl. She is also a communist militant who long ago decided that the easiest way was the best. One day she enters a church, randomly chooses a priest and starts criticizing the religion. But the priest is Leon Morin, who is young, handsome, clever and altruistic. He believes that any sin can be expunged by a good dose of faith, and does not offer her the reaction she was expecting. She is disturbed. She starts frequenting Morin, impressed by his moral strength, while he makes it his mission to steer her onto the right path.
8608985	/m/0279vcq	The Wreck of the Zephyr	Chris Van Allsburg		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As he is exploring the sea shore near a small fishing village, the author comes upon the wreck of a small wooden sailboat high on a clifftop. A weather beaten old man is sitting near the wreck, and the author asks him how the boat came to be there, so far from the water. The old man begins to tell the story of a young boy who, years ago, was the most talented sailor in the harbor and who never missed an opportunity to prove it, performing feats that none of the grown men would dare try. One day the boy decided to go out despite the storm brewing just outside the harbor and against the warnings of an old fisherman. As he sails out of the harbor a big gust strikes the boat and he is knocked unconscious by the boom. When he wakes up he and his boat, the Zephyr, are stranded on a strange beach far above the high-water mark. He starts walking to look for help, and after a long time he crests a hill to see the Zephyr being towed high above the waves by two boats he doesn't recognize. The boats are flying! From the hilltop the boy watches the two strange boats deposit the Zephyr in the harbor. When he finally gets down to the harbor he is met by a fisherman who is as surprised to see him as the boy was to see his Zephyr fly. The fisherman tells him that they don't get any visitors because the island is surrounded by a treacherous reef. He offers to take the boy home but the boy refuses, saying he won't leave until he learns how to sail above the waves. The kind fisherman gives the boy a special set of sails for the Zephyr and spends all day trying to teach him, but the boy just cannot get the hang of it. The fisherman gives up and takes the boy back to his house where his wife has their dinner waiting. Once the fisherman and his wife are asleep, the boy sneaks back out to the Zephyr to try again. This time he is successful and slowly the sound of the water gurgling against the hull fades and the Zephyr is flying. By the light of the full moon the boy navigates out of the harbor and sets a course for home. As he nears his village the moonlight strikes the steeple of the church and he has an idea. If he sails the Zephyr over the village and rings her bell, everyone will know that he truly is the greatest sailor there ever was. Just as he is passing over the steeple the wind suddenly dies and the Zephyr starts to fall. The boy tacks and heads back for the safety of the harbor, but the Zephyr is falling too fast and they crash into the cliff. The crash destroyed the Zephyr, leaving only what you see here, says the old man, and the boy broke his leg badly. "What happened to him after that?" asks the traveler. The townspeople never believed him, and the boy spent his life doing odd jobs and searching for the mysterious island, says the old man, ending the story by saying the breeze is looking just right for a sail as he limps back down toward the harbor.
8609936	/m/0279wj6	A Trick to Catch the Old One	Thomas Middleton	1608		 The play's protagonist, Theodorus Witgood, has mortgaged his estates to his uncle Pecunius Lucre, a covetous London merchant. Witgood is in love with Joyce, the daughter of another London merchant, Walkadine Hoard. Lucre and Hoard are rivals; Hoard resents Lucre because Lucre has shown himself to be an even more ruthless swindler than Hoard is himself. Witgood persuades a former mistress to masquerade as a rich country widow and his new fiancée. Lucre, delighted at the prospect of a rich match for his nephew, provides him with £50 and a vague promise to make Witgood his heir. Similarly and for the same reason, Witgood's creditors stop dunning him and offer him more credit. Conversely, rival suitors for the "rich widow" arise, including Walkadine Hoard. Witgood advises his past mistress to accept Hoard's proposal and so fix herself for life. She allows herself to be spirited away by Hoard, with Lucre in hot pursuit. The "widow" agrees with Lucre to resist Hoard if Lucre restores Witgood's estates, and Lucre reluctantly agrees. But Witgood's creditors, angry over his apparent loss of a rich match, have him arrested; Witgood, however, claiming a pre-contract with the "widow," cons Hoard into paying his debts. Witgood marries Joyce in secret; at the banquet celebrating Hoard's marriage, it is revealed that Hoard's new rich wife is Witgood's poor ex-mistress. But the courtesan kneels to her new husband and promises to be a good wife, and Witgood joins her in repentance and rejection of his former sensual and spendthrift ways.
8610544	/m/0279x3v	The Serpent's Shadow	Mercedes Lackey	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dr. Maya Witherspoon is a young doctor who has just emigrated to England, and intends to practice medicine in London. She had lived most of the first twenty-five years of her life in her native India. The daughter of a British physician and a Brahmin woman of the highest caste who was trained in the medical arts since she was a child. Maya was trained in medicine by her father and graduated from the University of Delhi as a Doctor of Medicine when she was twenty-two. As well as being a doctor, Maya also had a magical heritage. Her mother was a powerful sorceress; a former priestess of the Indian gods. Despite her repeated requests for training, her mother refused, saying only that Maya’s magic was of her father’s blood. However, she never had the chance to explain this enigmatic statement fully, for she was stricken by cholera, and died. Maya suspected that something far more sinister than the disease had killed her mother, and her suspicions were confirmed by her father’s death shortly thereafter. He had been killed by the bite of a krait, a tiny venomous snake, and in the last hours of her mother’s life, Surya had repeatedly warned Maya to beware ‘the serpent’s shadow’. With the loss of her father, Maya knew she must flee the land of her birth or face the same fate as her parents. In her self-imposed exile in London, Maya lives with only the most loyal of her family’s servants, as well as seven pets that originally belonged to her mother and appear to be occasional avatars of Hindu deities. In her new home she fights the prejudices held by those in power against her gender and race and continues to hide from the mysterious and sinister power that murdered her parents. Eventually, with the help of a local Water mage Peter Scott, Maya discovers and trains her own Earth magic, and manages to defeat the malign force that seeks to destroy her. The malign force after her is none other than her mother's twin sister, her aunt Shivani. She devises a plot to kill Maya and steal her power. To do this, she disguises herself as an old mute woman with a basket of apples, who is wandering down Maya's street. She collides with Maya, who is on her way to work, and in the process stabs her in the side with a syringe. The syringe contains a mixture of poison and magic that separate Maya's spirit from her body. Eventually, with the help of Peter Scott and a few friends, Maya's spirit is returned to her body via a kiss from Peter, who is carrying her soul in his heart after Shivani severed the cord that connects it. After he returns her to her body, they both realize how much they love each other and get married. Maya is later found in the novel (also by Lackey) Phoenix and Ashes as Dr. Scott treating a young Air Master named Reggie. Maya is also shown to be in touch with and think highly of Dr. Andrew Pike, a main character in the The Gates of Sleep.
8611552	/m/0279yfj	Sand Monkeys	Joanne Horniman	1992	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Sixteen year old Max arrives in a new household inhabited by several families and individuals. Among them there are a six year old boy named Mango; and a fifteen year old girl, Emma. Emma and her father Ted — an old friend of Max's parents — had arrived in the household some months earlier. Max brings the tree seedlings which he has grown from seeds with him when he moves in. Whilst he develops friendships with the other children, Emma remains distant from him. She does not appear to like Max; struggling to find her place in the household. For all of Emma's life, she and Ted had constantly been moving from city to city. Since arriving in Sydney, Emma had secretly located and found her mother, whom she had never previously met. Max's classmate Olivia finds a photograph of Max at the age of four, building a sandcastle with another child. Olivia asks about this other child, and remarks that she looks like Emma. Max feels sure it couldn't be Emma, whom he has only recently met. Max and Emma begin planting Max's tree seedlings at railway stations and in public parks. Max begins to have a strange feeling that has known Emma for a long time. Meanwhile, a friendship develops between Olivia and Emma. It is through this friendship that Emma starts to find a real sense of belonging in the household. The children offer the remaining trees to local residents, offering to plant them in their gardens. Mango asks what the trees will say to each other when they grow up and see each other over the roofs of the houses. Emma replies, "They’ll say, I’ve been waiting for ages to grow up and meet you. Where have you been all my life?” , this comment making Max sense a spiritual connection between themselves and the trees. Max looks through his photos again, and realises that the other child in the photo is in fact Emma, as one photo also shows Ted. Max's mother explains that Emma had lived with their family for some time when she was young. Eventually, Ted and Emma leave the household to move to Brisbane. Emma leaves something for Max in her room: an old photo of the two of them playing in the sand. It is identical to Max's.
8612051	/m/0279z35	Elämä lyhyt, Rytkönen pitkä				 Seppo Sorjonen, a young cab driver/wage slave fed up with his lifestyle. Taavetti Rytkönen, an old retired war veteran, standing in the middle of a road with a thick wad of bills in his pocket, trying to remember who he is and how he got there. The two's meeting sparks off a leisurely, low-drama romp through Finland. it:Lo smemorato di Tapiola
8616774	/m/027b5m9	The Castle in the Forest	Norman Mailer	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Castle in the Forest tells the story of the young life of Adolf Hitler, his origins and his immediate family tree, through the eyes of what at first is portrayed as a young SS officer researching Hitler's genealogy at the behest of Heinrich Himmler, who opens the novel speaking to SS officers about the importance of strong traits that result through incest. The SS Officer, who initially instructs the reader to remember him as Dieter, reminds the reader of the penalty he would suffer from the Nazi Party should his writings become public knowledge. He proceeds to describe his search for Hitler's grandparents, to both detect any presence of Jewish ancestry and to ascertain whether Hitler was the product of incest. The story follows Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, his upbringing in a rural area of Austria, and his early marriages and work for the customs department of the Austrian government. Following two marriages and a number of affairs, Alois marries a relative, either his niece or his daughter, Klara, and the couple have three children who survive past childhood, the third of these being Hitler, who is referred to by Mailer as Adi. At this point, Dieter reveals himself to be an employee of Satan, instructed by his superiors to oversee the development of Hitler for possible use by the devil in the future. Dieter states that he had occupied the body of an SS officer when he chose to write his story, maintaining that, should Satan trace the work back to Dieter himself, he would be punished. Dieter follows Hitler through Austria, charting his development and taking a more active role as Hitler discovers wargames around the age of five, and witnesses the beating of the family dog which has a profound effect on him. At this point, Alois retires and the family move to a rural farm.
8616844	/m/027b5qd	Man of Nazareth	Anthony Burgess	1979	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Man of Nazareth is a fictionalized historic account recalling the story of Jesus from his life to his death.
8620392	/m/027bbs2	The Woman's Prize	John Fletcher			 Petruchio's stormy marriage to Katherine ended with her death. Petruchio is now married to Maria, who is even more resistant to domination than Katherine initially had been. Petruchio's tactics and manipulations are no longer effective, and Maria has some resourceful tricks of her own. Maria refuses to consummate their marriage till Petruchio changes his ways; she bands together with other women in abstension from sex with their husbands. The women barricade themselves with provisions in the upper floor of Maria's house, to the displeased surprise of their husbands below. In Act Three Maria settles in to pursue a career of scholarship and horsemanship at Petruchio's country estate, but the peace is again broken when Maria once more refuses to perform her conjugal duties and imposes further demands on her husband. Petruchio resolves to play ill in an attempt to awaken his wife's pity. His ruse fails totally when Maria catches on: in an extremely effective and humorous scene has Petruchio walled up in his house on the pretext that he has caught the plague. Petruchio finally fights his way out, but in Act Four he discovers that his wife has "gone mad"—she has begun to dress like a common whore (in a perfect counterpart to Petruchio's entrance in fantastic attire in the earlier play) and is busy flirting with his friends. When Petruchio announces that he has had enough of marriage and is abandoning Maria for foreign travel, she encourages him to depart on the pretext that his journeys may broaden his vision and turn him into a better human being. Almost totally defeated as Act Five opens, Petruchio tries one final stratagem in an attempt to awaken some spark of compassion in Maria. He decides to play dead, and in one of the Elizabethan theater's celebrated scenes he is borne onstage in a coffin before his wife and friends. Maria is indeed moved to tears, but they are inspired, as she tells us in a famous speech, not by his person but by his "unmanly, wretched, foolish life......how far below a man, how far from reason" Petruchio has remained. This last salvo of abuse brings Petruchio back from the dead: he sits up in his coffin, prompting in Maria a state of final bafflement if not total respect. The two pledge that they will start life anew together amidst the richly comic and ironic mood that ends the play. In the play's subplot, Livia joins in the protest of the married women, though her primary motive is to avoid an arranged marriage with the old and unpleasant Moroso and marry her own choice of husband. Both Maria and Livia succeed in attaining their wishes by the play's end. Finding a proto-feminist play in Fletcher's canon has surprised more than a few readers and commentators. Fletcher's attitudes, as expressed in his oeuvre as a whole, are standard for his era, and show little resembling egalitarianism. Critics have debated whether and to what degree Fletcher's play shows any actual sympathy with women and with greater equality between the genders. The play may have been simply an opportunistic attempt to score a success with the audience on an always-controversial topic. Fletcher's play shows influence from the Lysistrata of Aristophanes. After more than two centuries of absence from the stage, The Woman's Prize was revived by the Royal Shakespeare Company in early 2004; their production ran from 15 January to 6 March that year.
8621319	/m/027bd3f	Deliverance	James Dickey	1970	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Narrated in the first person by one of the main characters, graphic artist Ed Gentry, the novel begins with four middle-aged men in a large Georgia city planning a weekend canoe trip down the fictional Cahulawassee River in the north Georgia wilderness. The river valley will soon be flooded by a dam to create a reservoir. Besides Ed, the protagonists are insurance salesman Bobby Trippe, soft drink executive Drew Ballinger, and landlord Lewis Medlock, an outdoorsman who is the driving force behind the canoe trip. The men drive into the mountains with two canoes. At a gas station in a mountain hamlet, Drew gets out his guitar and plays a duet with Lonnie, a banjo-playing, mentally deficient, inbred albino boy who is apparently a musical savant. After arranging with some local mechanics, the rough and forbidding Griner brothers, to drive the foursome's cars down to the fictitious town of Aintry, where the canoe voyage will end two days later, the men put into the river and begin their journey. After they shoot some initial rapids and the evening approaches, Ed begins to reflect on the isolation into which the group has now voyaged. The following morning, Ed awakens early and goes hunting with his bow and arrow. Sighting a deer, he shoots but misses, later explaining to Lewis that he broke psychologically at the last moment. Lewis expresses disappointment, and Ed grows a bit irritated at his friend's survivalist mentality. After breaking camp, Ed and Bobby then set out in one of the canoes slightly ahead of Lewis and Drew. After spending a night in the camp, Bobby has changed his mind about the outing and is chafing at Lewis's directions, so Ed takes him on as a canoe partner to keep the two apart. Later in the day, two mountain men, one of them carrying a shotgun, step out of the woods and accost them. The men force him and Bobby into the woods, tying Ed to a tree and cutting him with his own knife; then, in the book's most infamous scene, one of the mountain men sodomizes Bobby. Afterwards, the men untie Ed, and the other mountain man, handing his partner the shotgun, prepares to force Ed to perform oral sex on him. At the moment of the shotgun transfer, Ed hears the twang of a bow as Lewis, hidden in the woods, shoots Ed's assailant. Ed wrestles the gun away from the other man, and watches as the shot hillbilly slowly dies. There follows a heated discussion about what to do. Lewis wants to bury the body, arguing that if they report what has happened they might be put on trial in front of a jury consisting of the dead man's relatives. He is opposed by the law-abiding Drew, who wants to turn the body over to the police in Aintry. Bobby, humiliated and traumatized by his ordeal, physically attacks the corpse, then agrees to Lewis's plan, adding "I don't want this getting around." Drew desperately tries to persuade Ed to "do the right thing", but Ed ignores his pleas and sides with Lewis. The men bury the body and take to their canoes, with Ed and Drew now teamed up again. As evening begins to come on they enter a high gorge with powerful rapids, where Drew falls out of his canoe, both canoes are capsized, and Lewis emerges from the rapids with a badly broken leg. Lewis declares that Drew was shot. Ed is less certain, but he realizes that if the mountain man is indeed at the top of the gorge, he can shoot them all if they take to the river again. Ed decides he must climb the cliff to the top of the gorge and kill the mountain man with his bow. Ed briefs Bobby carefully about taking Lewis downriver in the remaining canoe at first light in order to avoid being shot. Ed then makes the grueling climb to the top of the gorge, climbs a tree, and waits for the rifleman. Early the following morning, a man appears, and as he spots the tree in which Ed is hidden, Ed shoots him. The rifleman fires at almost the same time, missing Ed, but knocking him from the tree. He is gored in the side by one of his own arrows as he hits the ground. He then tracks the rifleman and finds his dead body in a small clearing. He returns the body to the top of the cliff. As he does, he sees the canoe with Lewis and Bobby in it moving out into the river in the full light. Ed then lowers the body down the cliff and descends the rope himself, but it is not long enough to reach to the bottom. As Ed climbs down it breaks; the corpse lands on rocks, but Ed is able to kick against the cliff walls and propel himself into the river. After Ed castigates Bobby for not following his plans and brushes aside his excuses, the pair weight the corpse and sink it into the deepest part of the river. Ed, Bobby, and the badly injured Lewis then continue the journey in the remaining canoe. Below the gorge, they find Drew's body. Lewis, though in a bad way, examines his head and confirms that it had been grazed by a rifle bullet. Ed and Bobby then sink Drew's body, too, into the river, since they cannot allow medical examiners to see the wound. Ed threatens Bobby with death in order to get him to overcome his exhaustion and help. Some time later, the men arrive at Aintry, where they explain that they have suffered a canoeing accident. After a doctor stitches up Ed's wound, he and Bobby eat in a boarding house, but Ed then goes to the basement and takes a long shower in river water. Ed and Bobby believe that they have their story straight—Lewis feigns having few memories of the "accident" and thereby escapes questioning—but then the sheriff locates a piece of the shattered canoe above the point where they claimed to have had the accident and they have to modify their story quickly. Nevertheless, one deputy sheriff grows highly suspicious of them and tells the sheriff that his brother-in-law has been missing since the weekend, believing Ed, Bobby, and Lewis to have something to do with it. Nevertheless, the sheriff lets them go, with a warning not to return to Aintry. Ed returns to his city life, though changed, feeling a continuing connection with the river, which in reality has now ceased to exist with the dam's completion. He occasionally sees Bobby before the latter, his business failing, moves to Hawaii, but has little to do with him--"he would always look like dead weight and like screaming, and that was no good to me." Ed and his wife later buy a cabin on another dammed lake and Lewis, now with a permanent limp, buys a neighboring cottage. The novel ends by relapsing into the conventional patterns of city dwellers, almost as if nothing has changed, except for Ed's connection with the now-drowned river, which has made the rest of his conventional life tolerable.
8626818	/m/027bkfl	July's People	Nadine Gordimer	1981	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set during a fictional civil war in which black South Africans have violently overturned the system of apartheid. The story follows the Smales, a liberal White South African family who were forced to flee Johannesburg to the native village of their black servant, July. The novel opens the morning after an exhausting three-day trip through bush country to reach the village. July brings tea for Maureen and Bamford Smale and breakfast for their children, Victor, Gina, and Royce. After experiencing disorientation from the trip, Maureen asks her husband about their vehicle, a small truck called a bakkie. He tells her that July has hidden it. The Smales find themselves dependent on July, and July's family questions their presence in the village. He explains their situation, telling his mother and wife, Martha, about the violence in the country. They cannot, however, fully believe his account given their past experience with white dominance. To do something other than listen constantly for news on his radio, Bam Smale builds a water tank for the village. Maureen tries to read a novel, since July will not let her work, but discovers that no fiction can compete with her current situation. She then recalls her girlhood days and remembers walking home from school with her family's black servant, Lydia, who carried Maureen's school case on her head. One day, a photographer took their picture. Years later, Maureen saw the picture in a Life photograph book and for the first time questioned why Lydia was carrying her books. One night, after Bam unsuccessfully tries socializing with the villagers, Bam and Maureen are startled by July's departure as a passenger in the bakkie. Anxious over losing the vehicle, they argue, blaming each other for their situation. Later, while standing nude in the rain, Maureen sees the bakkie return. She falls asleep that night without telling Bam about the vehicle. When July comes to their hut the next day, Bam greets him with the inappropriate authority of their former relationship. Apparently ignoring Bam's tone, July tells them he went to the shops for supplies. Though they could, they do not ask him for the keys to the bakkie. July begins to learn how to drive. When they ask him what he will do if caught driving the vehicle, he says he will say he owns it. Later, Maureen asks Victor to retrieve July (here she mentions that she is menstruating). She returns the bakkie's keys to July. Knowing that she does not want him to keep the keys, he makes her recall his former status as her "boy" when he kept the keys to her house. He also recalls the distrust he sensed from her at the time. Stung by his words, Maureen tries to defend her treatment of him and says their former relationship has ended, that he is no longer a servant. He then shocks her by asking if she is going to pay him this month. He offers the car keys back to her, saying he worked for her for fifteen years because his family needed him to. She then retaliates by mentioning Ellen, his mistress in Johannesburg. Though feeling a hollow victory, Maureen knows July will never forgive her this transgression. He keeps the car keys. Bam kills two baby warthogs with his small shotgun. Before the hunt, he offers to let July's friend, Daniel, shoot the gun sometime. As he kills the warthogs he realizes just how different his life was and how spoiled they were (he went from shooting birds to warthogs and didn't like the difference in blood and destruction). Bam gives the larger wart-hog to the villagers and keeps the smaller (and more tender) one. Everyone joyfully feasts on the meat, an intoxicating delicacy, and Bam and Maureen make love for the first time since their journey. He wakes up in a daze and thinks the pig's blood is on his penis, then realizes it was his wife's. The scene shifts to July and his family eating the meat and talking about the Smales. July discounts Martha's worries that the white family will bring trouble. Martha recalls the times without July when he, like most men with families, worked in the city. Like the seasons, the long absences of their husbands have become an expected part of black women's lives. Gina and her friend, Nyiko, play with newborn kittens, and Maureen scolds them. Later, after they listen for news on the radio, Bam asks Maureen if she found a home for the kittens. She reveals that she has drowned them in a bucket of water. Maureen tries working with the women in the fields, digging up leaves and roots. Afterward, she goes to see July, who is working on the bakkie. July does not want to hear about the killing on the news and hopes everything "will come back all right." Maureen asks, dumbfounded, if he really wants a return to the ways things were. July asks if hunger compels her to search for spinach with the women; she replies that she goes to pass the time. As always, she feels that the workplace language they speak hinders their ability to communicate. When July says she should not work with the women, she asks if he fears she will tell his wife about Ellen. He angrily asserts that she can only tell Martha that he has always been a good servant. Maureen, frightened, realizes that the dignity she thought she had always conferred upon him was actually humiliating to him. He informs her that he and the Smales have been summoned to the chief's village. Though July has authority in his village, they still must ask the chief's permission to stay. Maureen struggles with her new subservience to July. The Smales visit the chief the next morning, afraid that the chief will force them out. The chief asks them why they have come to his nation and asks about events in Johannesburg. He cannot believe that the white government is powerless and that whites are running from Blacks. He says that the black revolutionaries are not from his nation and that the Whites, who would never let him own a gun, will give him guns to aid in the struggle against the black attackers. He tells Bam to bring his gun and teach him how to shoot it. Outraged by this suggestion, Bam asks if the chief really intends to kill other blacks, saying that the entire black nation is the chief's nation. After further discussion, the chief allows them to stay with Mwawate (July) and says that he will visit them to learn how to shoot Bam's gun. On the return trip, July explains that the chief talks instead of acts. Furthermore, the chief, who never fought the whites, is too poor and defenseless to fight other blacks. Upon their return to their hut, Maureen and Bam speak in the phrases they had used in their former life, and these phrases cannot adequately describe their current predicament. Bam begins criticizing July's new confidence and his criticisms of the chief. Maureen says that July was talking about himself, that he will not fight for anyone and is risking his life by having the family there. Maureen suggests that they leave, making Bam confront what they both know: they have nowhere to go and no means by which to get there. With the women, Maureen clumsily cuts grass for the huts. After the cutting, July criticizes Martha for placing the grass bundles in front of the Bam and Maureen's house, where their children will ruin it. They discuss July's past and his times in the city over the last fifteen years. Rejecting July's contention that his family will move to the city once the fighting ends, Martha suggests that he stay in the village. According to Daniel, they will no longer face white restrictions, and, with his city experience, July can run his own shop. A man brings a battery-operated amplifier to the village and provides them with a night's entertainment, during which many villagers drink heavily. The Smales do not partake in the drinking but return to their hut, where they find their gun missing. With no police to help him, Bam is impotent in the face of the theft. Maureen feels humiliated for Bam. She leaves to find July, who is by the bakkie. They realize that only Daniel was absent from the party, and Maureen says July must get the gun from him. Daniel, however, has left. After July asserts that the Smales always make trouble for him, Maureen accuses July of stealing small items from her in Johannesburg. Angered, he speaks to her in his own language, and "She understood although she knew no word. Understood everything: what he had had to be, how she had covered up to herself for him, in order for him to be her idea of him. But for himself — to be intelligent, honest, dignified for her was nothing; his measure as a man was taken elsewhere and by others," his own people. July then informs her that Daniel has joined the revolution. She tells July that he abandoned Ellen and only wants the bakkie so he can feel important, but that, too, will become useless when his gas money runs out. After Gina goes to play with Nyiko and Bam goes with Victor and Royce to fish, a helicopter with unidentifiable markings flies over the village. Maureen fervently chases the helicopter, and the novel ends with her still running toward it and its unknown occupants, who could be either "saviours or murderers."
8626985	/m/027bkry	Kiss of the Spider Woman	Manuel Puig		{"/m/0cgx58": "Gay novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Two prisoners, Luis Molina and Valentín Arregui, share a cell in a Buenos Aires Prison. It is estimated that the timeframe in which the story takes place is between September 9, 1975 through October 8, 1975. Molina, an effeminate and openly homosexual window-dresser, is in jail for "corruption of a minor," while Valentín is a political prisoner who is part of a revolutionary group trying to overthrow the government. The two men, seemingly opposites in every way, form an intimate bond in their cell, and their relationship changes both of them in profound ways. Molina recounts various films he has seen to Valentin in order for them both to forget their situation. Toward the middle of the novel the reader finds out that Molina is actually a spy that is sent to Valentin's jail to befriend him and try to extract information about his organization. Molina gets provisions from the outside for his cooperation with the officials with the hopes of keeping up appearances that his mother comes to visit him (thus making a reason for him to leave the cell when he reports to the warden). It is through his general acts of kindness to Valentin that the two fall into a romance and become lovers however briefly. For his cooperation Molina is parolled. On the day he leaves, Valentin has him take a message to his revolutionary group outside. Little does he know that he is also being followed by government agents, trying to find the location of the group. Molina dies in a shootout between the police and Valentin's group. In the end of the novel we are left in Valentin's stream of consciousness after he has been given an anesthetic by a doctor following a brutal torture, in which he imagines himself sailing away with his beloved Marta. The first story is based on a movie that Molina recounts and opens the novel with. It is based on film called Cat People (1942 film). During the narration the reader finds out that Valentin sympathizes with the secretary because of his long lost love, Marta. The second story that is recounted by Molina is based on a Nazi propaganda film. Unlike the first subplot, it is unclear whether or not this is an actual movie. It is believed to be a composite of multiple Nazi films and an American film called "Paris Underground". Molina tells a long story of an old Nazi film, a French woman falls in love with a noble Aryan officer and then dies in his arms after being shot by the French resistance. The film is a clear piece of Nazi propaganda, but Molina's inability to see past its superficial charms is a symptom of his alienation from society, or at least his choice to disengage from the world that has rejected him. The third film is about a young revolutionary with a penchant for racing cars. He meets a sultry older woman and they get to know each other. The kid's father gets kidnapped by some guerrillas and the kid goes to save him, with the aid of the sultry older woman. The father ends up dying in a shootout with some police. The kid ends up staying with the guerrillas. One important note to make here is that the way the father dies is very similar to Molina's own ending in which he dies in a shootout between cops and Valentin's comrades. Based on the 1943 film "I Walked with a Zombie" by Jacques Torneur, the fourth story concerns a rich man who marries a woman and brings her to his island. On the island she finds out that a witch doctor has the ability to turn people into zombies. As it progresses we find out that her husband's original wife was seduced by the witch doctor and turned into a zombie. He ends up telling his ex wife he loves her, but is ultimately killed by the witch doctor. In the end the main character sails away from the island. The fifth story is a recounting of a love story in which a newspaper man falls in love with the wife of a Mafia boss. Love struck, he stops his newspaper from running a potentially damaging story about the woman. They run away together, but can find no work. She prostitutes herself when he becomes too ill. Valentin is forced to finish the story despite Molina recounting it. In the end the man dies and the woman ends up sailing away. The way that Valentin chooses to have the story end is very similar to what happens in his stream of consciousness narrative in the end.
8627794	/m/027blq5	The Sideways Door				 Honoré and Emily find themselves in a parallel timestream where their alternate selves think nothing of changing history to improve the quality of life - especially their own. Honoré has been recently haunted by the death of his mother, an event which happened in his childhood, but now there seems to be a way to reverse that event, but at what cost?
8628900	/m/027bnc4	Sir Percy Hits Back	Baroness Emma Orczy	1927	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Fleurette is a beautiful, innocent country girl who has been protected by her indulgent, wealthy father from the worst horrors of the revolution. Her father Citizen Armand, whom she calls Bibi, is frequently away from home because of his exalted position in the government, but he dotes on her and showers her with gifts and affection during his infrequent visits to their house at Lou Mas, in Dauphiné near Larangne. As Fleurette's mother is dead, she is looked after by Old Louise the housekeeper when Bibi is away. She also spends much time at the Frontenac family farm and is in love with her childhood sweetheart Amédé, the son of the local épicier M'sieu' Colombe. Amédé is now twenty and will soon be leaving the village to become a soldier and fight the English. On Fleurette's 18th birthday, Bibi comes home to visit and all seems perfect in Fleurette's world. Yet, although the horrors of the Revolution appear far away, in reality they are nearby, for a group of soldiers has arrived in the village to arrest the Frontenac family at their chateau. When the soldiers arrive at the farm they discover that Madame de Frontenac and her crippled daughter Rose have disappeared. Only Charles de Frontenac, farmer and descendant of a long line of aristocrats, is at the house. They turn the house over looking for his wife and daughter with no success for the Scarlet Pimpernel has beaten them to it. Meanwhile, oblivious to what is happening at the farm, Fleurette hears a mysterious voice that tells her "Papers and valuables are behind the panel in Madame's room" She realises that &#39;Madame&#39; is Madame de Frontenac and rushes excitedly to the chateau, thinking that the message is from St. Antoine, and that perhaps Madame has mislaid some papers. She arrives at the farm to discover the soldiers have trashed the place. Remembering a secret cupboard that Madame had shown her and Rose, Fleurette takes a wallet, a money-bag and a small casket and hides them in her pockets and under her shawl. She is just about to leave for home when she runs into her father standing by the stables with a tricolour sash around his waist. She gets away without him discovering what she has been doing and gives the items to her lover Amédé to hide in his father&#39;s tool shed. The next day, a group of soldiers arrive to search the Colombe&#39;s premises, having been tipped off that the items are there. They find the items and march off with Amédé, M. de Frontenac, and the soldiers who were there before. It&#39;s not long before Fleurette hears that Amédé has been accused of theft and, determined to clear his name, she takes old Louise and searches for her father to explain what really happened in the hope that he can intervene. She eventually finds him down in Orange at the Commission, for her father is none other than Citizen Armand Chauvelin, the arch-enemy of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin may be ruthless and merciless, but it appears that he can also be gentle and caring where Fleurette is concerned. It turns out that the soldiers who took Amédé, M. de Frontenac were actually the &#39;English spies&#39; and he is terrified of what might happen to Fleurette after he hears her story. It is not long before Chauvelin&#39;s fears come true as Lieutenant Godot, whom Chauvelin has threatened to denounce for losing the prisoners to the Scarlet Pimpernel, brings Fleurette in front of the Committee on a charge of treason. To make matters worse there is a witness: Old Louise&#39;s daughter Adele who has always resented Fleurette&#39;s wealthy lifestyle. With his daughter apparently trapped by laws that he had helped to create, Chauvelin is determined to save her, thinking even now that if only he can capture the Scarlet Pimpernel, perhaps he would be able to trade the Englishman for his daughter&#39;s life. Despite his best efforts to forestall the inevitable process of trial and guillotine from happening to his beloved daughter the day arrives when Fleurette must face condemnation from her own father. After suffering intense mental anguish for weeks it finally occurs to Chauvelin that he may have to turn to his bitter enemy for help; for surely the Scarlet Pimpernel is the only person who can save Fleurette - but will Sir Percy be willing to help his enemy&#39;s child considering Chauvelin&#39;s previous treatment of Lady Blakeney? de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge
8630307	/m/027bq7c	What a carve up!	Jonathan Coe	1994-04-28		 Godfrey, son of the wealthy Matthew and Frances Winshaw of Yorkshire, is shot down by German anti-aircraft fire during a secret wartime mission over Berlin, on 30 November 1942. His sister Tabitha alleges that he was betrayed by their brother Lawrence, but no-one believes her, and she is committed to a mental institution. Nineteen years later, after a party to mark the 50th birthday of their other brother Mortimer, Lawrence is attacked in the night by an intruder, but survives, killing the intruder in the process. The intruder, a middle aged man, remains unidentified. Later, in the 1980s, a young novelist, Michael Owen, is commissioned to write a history of the Winshaw family, receiving a generous stipend from Tabitha Winshaw to do so. He works on this on and off, but with no deadline or pressure to complete, the project stagnates and Michael becomes reclusive, staying in his London flat watching videotapes of old films – in particular the 1961 British comedy What a Carve Up! starring Kenneth Connor, Shirley Eaton and Sid James. He emerges back into society, and resumes his interest in the project, following a visit from a neighbour, Fiona, seeking sponsorship for a 40-mile bicycle ride. The novel focuses by turns on the various figures in the Winshaw family: the lazy, hypocritical, populist tabloid newspaper columnist Hilary, the ambitious and ruthless career politician Henry, the brutal chicken and pork farmer Dorothy, the predatory art-gallery owner and art dealer Roderick (Roddy), the investment banker Thomas, and the arms dealer Mark. In each of these sections the novel depicts the way in which actions by individuals from the same family, serving their own greedy interests, have distressing and far-reaching consequences. Michael's renewed interest in the Winshaws coincides with the appearance in his life of Findlay Onyx, a private detective hired by Tabitha to pursue the mystery of whether or not Lawrence was complicit in Godfrey's death. Michael develops a warm, but platonic, relationship with Fiona. She suffers from the symptoms of some mysterious illness, but her consultations are constantly delayed, or her records are misplaced, by underresourced health service professionals. She is eventually admitted to hospital, but because treatment was not administered soon enough, she dies shortly after New Year, 1991. Very soon afterwards Michael is surprised to be invited by Mortimer Winshaw's solicitor, Everett Sloane, to attend the reading of Mortimer's will at the remotely located Winshaw Towers in Yorkshire. Until this point he believes he was invited to write the history by chance, but as events transpire he is more deeply related to the family than he realizes. He attends the reading of the will along with the artist Phoebe, one of Roddy's conquests and lately Mortimer's personal nurse. The family members learn that they will inherit nothing from Mortimer but his debts. As the night progresses events begin to shadow those of the film of What a Carve Up! more and more, with the various members of the family meeting violent deaths that accord with their professional sins. It is the night that allied warplanes embark on the bombing of Iraq following Saddam Hussain's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It is revealed that Michael is the son of Godfrey's surviving co-pilot, who was also Lawrence's mystery attacker. The following morning Tabitha ensures that she is piloting Hilary Winshaw's seaplane to take Michael home, but deliberately destroys the plane, killing them both.
8631924	/m/027bsq4	Operation: Red Jericho		2005-08-09	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In 1920, the heroes of the story Rebecca and Doug McKenzie, leave Shanghai aboard their uncle's ship Expedient, intent on discovering the whereabouts of their missing parents who have disappeared while on a secret mission to the deserts of Western China. Faced with terrifying bloodthirsty pirates, submarines and deadly torpedoes, their task quickly becomes a dangerous struggle to survive. Rebecca and Doug discover the answers they seek lie in a tangle of mysterious age-old societies guarding ancient secrets, and particularly a strange and dangerous substance, known as Daughter Of The Sun, which lies at the heart of the mystery. Imprisoned on a pirate island off the China coast and facing certain death, they must find a way to escape if they are to continue their desperate quest.
8634061	/m/027bwkp	Echo	Francesca Lia Block	2000-08-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Echo feels overshadowed by her beautiful, angel-like mother, Eva, and lacks the attention of her artist father, Caliban. The summer her father is diagnosed with cancer, she encounters Storm, a boy with angel wings, and falls in love with him, but he tells her it is not the right time. She leaves for school in autumn, where she starts dating a poet Thorn, with whom she lives until she develops an eating disorder and drops out of school. Eva refuses to accept Caliban's death, and believes a white horse that mysteriously appears in her garden is a reincarnation of her husband. Echo meets Nina and her boyfriend Mark, both of them obsessed with sports and perfect bodies, and aspires to be like them. Even after she is warned by Nina's brother Skye, whom she rather likes, she continues their friendship, which ends with them completing a blood sacrifice on her. Smoke is a talented musician, who leaves the love of his life, Wendy, and their ill baby daughter, Eden, in faith he poisons everything he touches. As a little girl, Eden predicts Smoke will fall in love with Echo, and he does, years later. He loves Eden more, however, which seems to end their relationship. Valentine is flirtatious, glamorous and beautiful, and Echo wishes to be just like her. She leaves her behind however, when heading for a new life in New York, where she finally starts painting again. Valentine, after losing her job, turns to prostitution. In New York, Echo finally meets Storm again. She realises that before he could love her, she had to love herself.
8635001	/m/027bxq6	Wayside School is Falling Down	Louis Sachar	1989-03-22	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 1. A Package For Mrs. Jewls: Louis brings a package containing a computer meant for Mrs. Jewls up to her classroom. She then drops it out the window as part of the lesson she’s teaching on gravity. 2. Mark Miller: A nervous new student named Benjamin Nushmutt (Mark Miller) joins Mrs. Jewls’ class. Because he feels ashamed of his name, he convinces everyone that it’s actually Mark Miller. Louis brings in Benjamin’s lunch and must for the time being leave it on the teacher’s desk since there’s apparently no one to claim it. 3. Bebe’s Baby Brother: Bebe writes nasty notes on her homework about Mrs. Jewls and blames it on her nonexistent younger brother Ray Gunn. He actually is on the nineteenth floor which you can see if you have the book in chapter 19. 4. Homework: Mac disrupts Mrs. Jewls’ lesson on decimals with a wild story about him mismatching and losing his socks. Next, he disrupts a lesson on dinosaurs with stories about watermelons. In the end, Mrs. Jewls gives up and assigns extra homework, which Mac complains about to Nancy. 5. Another Story About Socks: Shari brings in a hobo for show-and-tell. The hobo tells a little bit about his life story and expresses a distaste for socks due to once winning a spelling bee without wearing any. When he leaves, the students take this notion to heart right before a spelling test. 6. Pigtails: Paul struggles with his desire to pull Leslie’s pigtails. When she announces that she’s getting her hair trimmed soon and promises to save him some split ends, Paul gets excited enough to knock himself out the window. Finding no other means to reel him back in, Leslie extends Paul her pigtails. 7. Freedom: Myron wishes to be free like a wild bird he befriends, whom he names Oddly. He attempts to satisfy this desire by wandering into and getting lost in the school basement. He throws both his shoes into the darkness while being pursued and then makes a run for it, eventually meeting the men with the attaché case. They give Myron an ultimatum: to be safe or free. Myron chooses to be free; gets one shoe back; and finds his way back to Mrs Jewls’ classroom. She later finds his other shoe in the refrigerator of the teachers’ lounge. 8. The Best Part: Todd brings a toy dog to class that keeps him out of trouble and can transform into a vicious wolf. In her bid to use that toy to her advantage, Joy misses that last detail and gets her pinkie chomped on. 9. Mush: The lunch special for the 18th day in a row is Mushroom Surprise. Ron surprises everyone by ordering just that, which causes him to temporarily fall in love with and even kiss the mouth of the first person he sees: Deedee. The chapter ends when Mrs. Jewls enters the cafeteria just as Ron takes another bite. 10. Music: During band practice, Benjamin examines his time at the school so far and ponders as to whether or not he should tell everyone his real name. Mrs. Jewls asks him why he isn’t performing but can’t hear him over the loud music. And every time she asks him to speak up, the other students mistakenly think she wants them to play louder and so do just that. A complaint from the other teachers courtesy of Mr. Kidswatter convinces Mrs. Jewls to encourage the loudness all the more. Ultimately, Benjamin decides his alias as Mark Miller is far superior to his true identity. 11. Kathy And DJ: DJ becomes upset when he loses a watch given to him by his great-grandfather. Kathy tries to no avail to make him feel worse about it in order to amuse herself and only ends up even more dumbstruck when she finds out why he’s upset: because he feels a bird may mistake it for food and choke on it. Eventually, Myron’s bird friend Oddly finds it, and DJ rewards it to Kathy, mistaking her taunts for comfort. First time Kathy sings about the school falling down to the tune of London Bridge Is Falling Down. 12. Pencils: Jason has a bad habit of chewing pencils. Mrs. Jewls solves the problem (until further notice) by literally taping his mouth shut. 13. A Giggle Box, A Leaky Faucet, And A Foghorn: Joe and John poke fun at Dana for laughing and crying at animal stories, calling her “giggle box” and “leaky faucet”. To add insult to injury, they even give her a box of tissue paper as a wrapped package like she’d get on her birthday. When Mrs. Jewls reads a story about a skunk whose mother is run over, Dana blows her nose hard enough to warrant the nickname “foghorn”. Mrs. Jewls actually admires the girl’s emotions and wish more students could be as appreciative of stories. Dana then fears having a crush on John. 14. Calvin’s Big Decision: Calvin announces that he’s getting a tattoo for a birthday present. Despite other suggestions, he settles for a potato tattoo on his ankle. 15. She’s Back!: The students of Mrs. Jewls’ class claim to see Mrs. Gorf at random times on random spots around the playground. After relating his own bad experiences of his old teacher Mrs. Drazil, Louis watches for the former teacher while Deedee hangs from the monkey bars. Everyone feels assured when Mrs. Gorf doesn’t seem to appear, though they ignore a larger set of footprints under the bars, made right next to Deedee’s prints. 16. Love And A Dead Rat: Dameon denies being in love with Mrs. Jewls. To prove the opposite, he takes up a dare to leave a dead rat in her desk. The two reason these dealings and reconcile enough to disgust the rat back to life that it walks out. 17. What?: Jenny comes late to class one day after reluctantly drinking prune juice during breakfast and so misses the story that Mrs. Jewls reads. Jenny is allowed to read the story herself, and she ends up regurgitating because of the prune juice. This chapter is written with the events happening backwards. 18. The Substitute: Mrs. Jewls’ class gets a female substitute teacher who’s actually named Benjamin Franklin, whom the students plot to prank. When “Mark Miller” decides to tell everyone that his real name is Benjamin Nushmutt, they merely add it to the prank by pretending that they too are all named Benjamin. When the teacher reveals her own name, the students are not sure what to think. 19. A Bad Case Of The Sillies: Allison wonders if maybe her homeroom is in fact on the 29th story since there’s no 19th. After getting knocked down the stairs a short way by Ron and Deedee and her windbreaker torn, Allison proceeds to class and finds everybody ignoring her, especially when Jason accidentally swallows his pet goldfish. A frustrated Allison leaves the room and finds herself inducted into the classroom of Miss Zarves. 19. A Wonderful Teacher: Allison meets three other students of Miss Zarves’ classroom: a grown woman named Virginia; a teenage boy, Nick; and a slightly younger boy, Ray (Bebe’s made-up brother). None of these three remember where they originally came from but don’t care since Miss Zarves gives A’s no matter which answers are right or wrong. Allison soon starts forgetting her own origins while the teacher provides an extremely difficult assignment of writing down numbers from zero to one million and then alphabetizing them. During a two-minute break, Allison meets Mark Miller, who – in a twist of his counterpart in Mrs. Jewls’ class – is often called Benjamin Nushmutt. 19. Forever Is Never: Allison continues struggling to remember her origins while other students memorize the dictionary. She then realizes how Miss Zarves’ system works: assign lots of work so the students have no time to think; make them memorize stupid things so that they forget what’s important; and give good grades no matter what to keep them happy. Allison then proceeds to reenact some of her old classmates’ mannerisms to frustrate Miss Zarves and leave that room. Following a sharp stabbing pain in her gut and foot, Allison wakes up back at the bottom of the stairs where Ron and Deedee pushed her! They apologize, and all proceed to their homeroom where Jason introduces his goldfish. 20, 21, & 22. Eric, Eric, & Eric: Mr. Kidswatter holds a card from Charley’s Barber Shop with the message “Mr. Kidswatter is a Mugworm Griblick”, signed by someone named Eric. He suspects the three Erics in Mrs. Jewls’ class. Despite his tough questioning, all only end up leaving him holding the bag. 23. Teeth: Rondi grows in her missing front teeth and thinks she no longer looks cute. A conflict against Terrence to have him return Stephen and Jason’s ball ends up revealing her new teeth to everyone, compliments abounding. Rondi then remembers Uh-Oh! to duck when Terrence tries punching her. 24. Another Story About Potatoes: Joe orders some potato salad from Miss Mush. He and John then shape it into Mrs. Gorf’s face, and it immediately comes alive. They triumph over this menace by eating it. 25. A Story That Isn’t About Socks: Stephen dresses up in a leisure suit for Class Picture Day, contrasting the silly outfits that his classmates and Mrs. Jewls wear. 26. The Mean Mrs. Jewls: Mrs. Jewls teaches about England, the number 11, and pickles. A voice in her head tells her to be rotten whenever the students do something wrong, regardless how or what she teaches. After Leslie answers a question wrong, Mrs. Jewls threatens to dump brine on her until Paul intervenes, drenching the teacher instead. As punishment for acting so cranky, Mrs. Jewls sends herself home early on the kindergarten bus. 27. Lost And Found: After Joy steals and eats her lunch, an unsuspecting Maurecia goes looking for it and finds a paper bag containing $20,655. Joy insists on spending it for themselves if not for Maurecia’s honesty. A former pencil maker named Mr. Finch, whom the money belongs to, comes along to give Maurecia $500 and promise her free ice cream from his future ice cream parlor as tokens of appreciation. An opportunistic Joy mentions her involvement of the recovery by admitting she stole Maurecia’s lunch and is given only a pencil. 28. Valooosh: A dance teacher named Mrs. Waloosh teaches all of Mrs. Jewls’ students (except Myron since he ditched and went to gym class instead) the art of ballroom dancing. When the session ends, the participants end up injured; great at said type of dancing; and speaking in the same accent as the new teacher. 29. The Lost Ear: Benjamin once more attempts telling the class his real name, but then Mac tells a story about a hippie who lost his ear in a haircutting accident. Although Benjamin succeeds, his fear of being weird is laid to rest when the others relate events recent to the book. Mrs. Jewls even gives him the lunch meant for him that Louis placed on her desk back in Chapter 2. Later, Allison encounters Mark Miller from Miss Zarves’ class. He holds a bag containing an ear like the one from Mac’s story (proving said story to be false), which he states Miss Zarves told him to take to the hospital. 30. Wayside School Is Falling Down: A brewing storm makes a fire drill go awry when Mrs. Jewls’ class panics in various ways. She rings her cowbell enough times for the wind to carry the sound far away. Eventually, the school itself is stuffed full of cows, having been attracted to said bell. Wayside School temporarily closes down; the teachers and students are relocated to other schools; and Louis stays behind to remove the cows.
8635168	/m/027bxz3	The Laughing Cavalier	Baroness Emma Orczy	1913	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 March 1623. William or Willem van Oldenbarnevelt, the Lord of Stoutenburg in the Netherlands is a man on the run. His father, the Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, "John of Barneveld" in the book, was falsely accused of treason and sent to the gallows by the Stadtholder, Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange in 1619 while his brother Reinier van Oldenbarnevelt, the lord of Groeneveld, has since been arrested and executed for plotting to avenge their father's death by killing the Prince. These three are all real historical figures, and the father was executed after a hurried trial. Meanwhile, Stoutenburg, now a fugitive for his part in the plot, is determined to get his revenge. While on the run, Stoutenburg asks for shelter from Gilda Beresteyn, the daughter of a rich merchant. Gilda was once in love with Stoutenburg, but has never forgiven him for abandoning her to make a more profitable marriage. Despite her reservations she lets him into her room for a short time and feeds him, but eventually she sends him away again for she knows her father, who is a friend of the Prince of Orange, will not approve. Nine months later and Gilda is walking across Haarlem, with her serving men, to the New Year's Eve service. On route she witnesses three foreign adventurers intervening on behalf of a Spanish woman, who is being attacked by a mob by the Postern gate. After the fracas is over, Gilda speaks to the poor strangers about their gallant actions and is strangely taken by Diogenes and his twinkling eyes. Yet despite kissing her hand, he refuses any offer of assistance and only succeeds in offending her by requesting that he be given her leave to go to the Lame Cow to quench his thirst. Gilda continues to church, where rather than listening to the service she sits and fumes about the behaviour of the mysterious stranger. Determined to spend some time praying, she stays behind afterwards in the empty church but is disturbed by a secret meeting between Stoutenburg and his allies (including her brother Nicolaes), when Stoutenburg, fuelled by rage, shouts out his plans to murder the Prince. Her brother follows her out of the church and it soon becomes apparent that Gilda has overheard everything. She begs her brother to reconsider his part in the evil plot, but he refuses and instead asks her to swear that she will not tell their father. She also refuses, but Nicolaes still tells the rest of the group that she can be trusted not to betray them. Stoutenburg is not convinced and persuades Nicolaes that he has to arrange for Gilda to be taken away for a few days, so they can complete their plans to kill the Stadtholder before she can tell anyone. Beresteyn, who has seen Diogenes in the Lame Cow, follows the adventurer to Frans Hals' house, where he has gone to be painted, and hires him to kidnap his sister for a large sum. After seeing her portrait, Diogenes recognises her as the lady he had spoken to the night before. With the help of the Spanish woman he saved from the mob, Diogenes bundles Gilda and her maid into a sledge and takes her out of Haarlem. He leaves her under the care of his fellow philosophers for the night and returns to Haarlem, as he has promised Hals that he will sit for him so he can finish the painting. Afterwards, he accompanies Hals to the Lame Cow, where he meets Gilda's distraught father. Nicolaes is furious at Diogenes' appearance back in Haarlem, but can say nothing for fear of giving away his role in his sister's kidnapping. One thing leads to another and before he knows it, Diogenes has promised Gilda's father that he will find his daughter and personally return her to him, for which Mynheer Beresteyn insists he will give the adventurer half of his considerable fortune. Diogenes is now in a conundrum, for he is a man of his word and therefore has to find a way to fulfil his contract with Nicolaes to deliver Gilda to the house of a Jewish banker in Rotterdam, as well as meeting his promise to return her to her father. One word from Gilda could send him to the scaffold, yet despite her vehement verbal attacks on him, he is starting to have deep feelings for her, something which won't go down well with Stoutenburg, who is still determined to marry her. (Incomplete)
8635177	/m/027bxzt	Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger	Louis Sachar	1995-04-27	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 #Explanation: The cows that entered the school in Wayside School is Falling Down finally left the school after 243 days. So the children all returned to the school. #A Message From The Principal: Mr. Kidswatter says a nice speech on the PA system, but he forgets to turn it off, and expresses irritation about having to return from his extended vacation to Jamaica. #Poetry: The students all come up with poems about a specific color. #Doctor Pickle: The chapter introduces Pickell (aka Dr. Pickle), a psychiatrist who uses a pickle-like stone to hypnotize people and use aversion therapy to break people's bad habits. Usually, he also adds a command to do an unusual thing when a particular person says a key word, such as when he helps a woman quit smoking by making her think her cigarettes feel and taste like worms, and then making her slap her husband's face when he says the word "potato." He is ultimately banned from practicing psychiatry and becomes a counselor at an elementary school... #A Story with a Disappointing Ending: Paul is sent to visit the new school counselor (Dr. Pickell/Pickle) when he couldn't control his urge to pull Leslie's pigtails. Dr. Pickell/Pickle makes Paul think Leslie's pigtails are rattlesnakes, and also commands him to attempt to eat Leslie's ears (which will, to Paul, appear to turn into candy) when she says the word "pencil" in his presence. Leslie breaks her pencil, and borrows one from a classmate. #Pet Day: All the students bring their pets to school. The pets have unusual names; one pet is an orange named Fido. Similar to Who's on First by Abbot and Costello. #A Bad Word: After Mr. Kidswatter spills his coffee while opening a door he declares the word "door" a bad word and requires everybody to call it "goozack" from that point forward. Todd shows up late to school, and, having not heard the announcement, says the word "door," thus earning him his name on the board. #Santa Claus: It's almost Christmas, but Kathy is the only one in the class who doesn't believe in Santa Claus. #Something Different About Mrs. Jewls: Mrs. Jewls leaves the school when she announces that she will be having a baby soon, leaving Mr. Gorf to substitute for her. #Mr. Gorf: Mr. Gorf arrives to class. #Voices: At first Mr. Gorf seems like a nice teacher, but then he reveals that he is the son of the infamous Mrs. Gorf. Mr. Gorf has the ability to take away one's voice by snorting it up a third nostril in his nose. He can then mimic it perfectly just by touching his nose. With this talent, he begins to call the students' parents and say spiteful things to them. #Nose: He continues removing the students' voices until Miss. Mush, the cafeteria cook, destroys Mr. Gorf's malevolent ability by smashing a pepper pie in his face, making him sneeze repeatedly until he literally sneezes his nose off, causing the voices to return to their rightful owners (although it takes a few minutes for the voices and people to line up correctly, due to the number of voices taken). Miss Mush says that she heard Kathy say, "Have a nice day" in the previous chapter, and decides that either Kathy had started to be nice, or Mr. Gorf could steal people's voices. She took the action that she did, banking on Kathy's unlikeliness to start being nice. It is revealed at the end of the chapter that the voice used by Mr. Gorf at first belonged to a Scottish man, who lost his voice 20 years previously; with Mr. Gorf's loss of his nose, he is able to speak again. #The New Teacher: The second of the substitutes, Mrs. Drazil, arrives. She appears nice, although it is suggested that she has a dark and mthe same time. The coffeepot was borrowed from Mr. Kidswatter's office, and has not been seen since the experiment. In a continuation of Paul's meeting with Dr. Pickell/Pickle, Leslie notes that the classroom will need a new pencil sharpener, upon which Paul licks her ear. #A Light Bulb, a Pencil Sharpener, a Coffeepot, and a Sack of Potatoes: Mrs. Drazil's class throws a light bulb, a pencil sharpener, a coffeepot and a sack of potatoes out a window to see which one lands first. #An Elephant in Wayside School: All is well with Mrs Drazil and the students until an old feud between her and Louis re-emerges. When Louis is around his old enemy (who forces him to do a homework assignment he missed over 15 years previously and shave his moustache, and also puts the trash can on his head when he insults her), he changes -- going from an easy-going, mustachioed fellow to a stern, clean-shaven humbug. #Mr. Poop: With Mrs. Drazil watching him, Louis changes from being fun to being a boring, strict Yard Teacher (or, as he says, "Professional Playground Supervisor"). He refuses to let the kids play with the balls because they are filthy and not properly inflated, and later refuses to let the kids onto the playground because the blacktop is gray and needs to be painted black. A fed-up Joy throws his handbook into the paint can. #Why the Class Must Get Rid of Mrs. Drazil: The title is paradoxical to the entire plot. Mrs. Drazil acts very nice to the class and the reason isn't revealed until the end: despite her niceness to the class (including baking the best cookies the class ever tasted), the children loved Louis' old personality; consequently, Mrs. Drazil must be removed from the picture because she forced him to shave his moustache. #The Blue Notebook: The students abscond with Mrs. Drazil's blue notebook, intent on reading it. In so doing, they realize that in order to get rid of Mrs. Drazil, they must find Jane Smith, a former student whom Mrs. Drazil dislikes more than Louis. Jane Smith left Mrs. Drazil a nasty note stating that she didn't do her homework (as found in the notebook, it was the 12th time in a row); also, she (at the time the note was written) was moving, and wasn't going to tell Mrs. Drazil where. She closes her note by telling Mrs. Drazil to "rub a monkey's tummy with [her] head." #Time Out: In every Wayside book, the 19th chapter is always portrayed as the 19th floor. In this installment, Miss Zarves has a cow in her class, presumably left over from the events in the previous book (It is mentioned in the first chapter that Louis had cleared the school of cows, but kept hearing an untraceable "moo.") The cow continually distracts Miss Zarves to the point where she can no longer teach. She goes to Principal Kidswatter to complain, but he doesn't see or hear her. She finally storms out of the school, intending to quit, but the three men with the attaché cases stop her and tell her she is a good teacher and that the school needs her. Miss Zarves returns to the school feeling validated. #Elevators: Elevators get installed to the school, but one can only go up and one can only go down. They work perfectly once, and then never again. #Open Wide: Jason has a dentist appointment with Dr. Payne, but his appointment is interrupted by a phone call from the irate mother of a boy named Kendall who refuses to pay for her son's tooth extraction because the wrong tooth was pulled, and it is also suggested that a lawsuit may ensue. It is suggested that Dr. Payne is really Jane Smith when she tells her to tell her lawyer to "rub a monkey's tummy with her head." This suggestion is confirmed when Jason looks at Dr. Payne's dental certificates. #Jane Smith: Jason tells Deedee, a classmate of his, about that, and they, quite intentionally, make Mrs. Drazil aware of Jane Smith's whereabouts, occupation, and name change. Later, Mrs. Drazil decides to pay a visit to Jane Smith's home; breaking into the house, intent on forcing Jane to do her missed homework. Jane escapes in a motorboat, but not without breaking her ankle when she jumps onto the concrete below; Mrs. Drazil pursues her in a rowboat. As far the novel has it, the two are neither seen nor heard from again. (It is stated in this chapter that Jane performs unnecessary dental procedures to make additional money; she drills 25 teeth, at $60 each, to make $1,500, but not all of the teeth had cavities.) #Ears: This chapter talks about Miss Wendy Nogard, who has an ear on the top of her head that can hear other people's thoughts. After her boyfriend Xavier Dalton ditched her upon discovery of her third ear, she became bitter and hateful, intentionally hurting every man she dated by listening to their thoughts, and saying things accordingly. (It is mentioned that Xavier, who had been shy, got over his shyness and began dating other women, but broke all of their hearts, because of an unrealized love for Miss Nogard.) She especially hated children because they were so happy, and became a substitute for Mrs. Jewls at Wayside School. #Glum And Blah: Miss Nogard arrives to the class, and makes everybody miserable by listening to their thoughts using her third ear and saying the exact things that they don't want to hear. #Guilty: After Miss Nogard hears Maurecia's thoughts that she accidentally ripped a page in the dictionary, she purposely tries to make her feel guilty. Upon Maurecia's confession, Ms. Nogard makes her read [both sides of] the torn page to the class, then announces that there will be a test afterward, as the page is now unusable and must now be memorized. Maurecia believes that one of her classmates told on her. #Never Laugh At A Shoelace: Mac forgets to bring something for show and tell, but the moment he realizes this, Ms. Nogard calls on him. He thus uses his shoelace. He invents a story about an African man named Howard Speed, who was the fastest man in the world, and lived before shoelaces were invented. His shoes thus kept falling off when he ran, and he developed blisters, which often bled and had pus in them. Howard couldn't use Velcro, as Velcro trees only grow in Australia (as Mac claims; Velcro is actually a man-made product based on burdock burs, and thus Velcro doesn't grow in Australia or anywhere else). Howard attempted to keep his shoes on by nailing his feet into his shoes, and then by gluing his feet into his shoes (with the drawback that he would peel off a layer of skin whenever he would take his shoes off, such as to take a bath). Mac further claims that Thomas Edison invented the shoelace, thus ending Howard's troubles with his shoes; however, with shoelaces being a new invention (at that time), Howard wasn't used to them, and when it appeared he was going to win a race, his shoelaces came undone, and he tripped and broke his nose, lost some teeth and got two black eyes. #Way-Up-High Ball: The Erics play a game of way-up-high ball, where they throw a ball to bounce on the school wall, and get points equal to the number of stories the ball reaches. The person who catches the ball also scores the same number of points; thus, the thrower can score double points by catching his or her own throw. A player who breaks a window is also credited with double points. It is suggested, but not explicitly stated, that a thrower who does not hit the wall does not score (such an event is termed a "glopper"). Finally, Louis attempts a throw; the ball never comes back down, as it hits somewhere between the 18th and 20th stories, and there is no 19th story. #Flowers For A Very Special Person: Louis brings in flowers, intending them for Miss Nogard, but ultimately gives them to Mr. Kidswatter instead. Under his breath, he calls Mr. Kidswatter a "maggot-infested string bean," and when asked to repeat what he said, says "magnificent human being," instead. #Stupid: After Miss Nogard hears Ron's thoughts of not completing his homework, for every question they take up, she purposefully asks Ron for the answer to make him feel bad. She also always calls on people who got questions wrong, and assigns them three pages of homework, plus redoing the previous homework. #The Little Stranger: Mrs. Jewls came back with her baby. Everyone except Wendy loses their anger and plays with the baby. When Wendy hears the baby's thoughts, her anger disappears. She falls in love with Louis and shows everyone her third ear. Louis doesn't care, and still loves Wendy, who knows that his love is genuine without reading his thoughts.
8635337	/m/027by4_	Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School	Louis Sachar	1989	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics"}	 The first chapter introduces Sue, a new student in Mrs. Jewls's class. She is bewildered to discover that the arithmetic lessons involve adding words instead of numbers, using verbal arithmetic. Chapter 1 has 11 problems all about adding and subtracting using words. In the next chapter, Sue complains that they're not supposed to do math that way, and says a few problems for example, seven + four = eleven), which Mrs. Jewls states is impossible, and the reader has to figure out why the problems Sue mentioned are impossible. In the next chapter, Mrs. Jewls tells Sue that if she doesn't understand how to do math here, she should change to a different school, but when Sue inadvertently gets a question correct, Mrs. Jewls lets her stay. Chapter 4 also contains multiplication problems. Chapter 5 is about recess, where after a storyline is told, the students have to figure the answer of a few questions about what happened at recess. Chapter 6 involves Mrs. Jewls having trouble filling out report cards because she doesn't have all the grades, so she needs to figure out the answers on the quizzes in order to grade the students. Chapter 7 involves more logical questions, and Chapter 8 presents the reader with "true or false" tests in which the assertions refer to themselves. The last chapter is about Sue finally making a new friend, Joy, and they go home together after school.
8636650	/m/027bzyc	The Act of Roger Murgatroyd	Gilbert Adair		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Colonel ffolkes and his wife Mary have invited a few house guests to spend the Christmas holidays at their remote country seat in Dartmoor. When the guests have already settled in nicely, three latecomers disturb the peace and quiet of the party. Selina ffolkes, the Colonel's 21-year-old daughter, arrives late on Christmas Day with two admirers in tow: Donald Duckworth, a young American art student; and Raymond Gentry, an ill-mannered gossip columnist who, uninvited and slightly drunk, soon gets on everyone's nerves. The whole action of the novel takes place on Boxing Day when, early in the morning, Gentry is found murdered in the attic. Snowed in and unable to call the police, the party decide to ask their neighbour, a retired Chief Inspector with Scotland Yard, for help. The latter agrees but finds a rival sleuth in Evadne Mount, one of the house guests and a celebrated author of whodunits in her own right. When the Chief Inspector starts his preliminary investigation of the crime, it soon turns out that each of the guests has a skeleton in the cupboard.
8636968	/m/027b_dv	Gentlemen Prefer Blondes	Anita Loos			 Responding to a male friend’s suggestion that she should write down her thoughts because it would make an interesting book, the blonde Lorelei Lee narrates the novel in the form of a diary complete with spelling and grammatical errors. Lorelei Lee had been working in movies in Hollywood when she met Mr. Gus Eisman, a button manufacturer from Chicago. He installs her in a New York apartment, visiting her whenever he is in town and spending a small fortune ‘educating’ her. This consists mostly of footing the bill for gowns from Madame Frances, jewellery from Cartier, dinners at the Ritz, orchids, parties, etc. She meets an English novelist named Gerry Lamson who disapproves of her relationship with Eisman. He intends to get divorced so that he can marry her to save her from such a man. Lorelei, fearing the scandal of being involved in a divorce and not wishing to give up the opportunity of a trip to Europe paid for by Eisman decides that she would not like to marry Gerry, who in any case bores her. Lorelei is dismayed that her friend Dorothy wastes her time with a boy named Mencken, who only writes for a magazine when she could be spending time with Mr. Goldmark, a wealthy movie producer. (This is an inside joke. Author Anita Loos was good friends with writer, essayist and literary magazine editor, H.L. Mencken.) She and Dorothy set sail for Europe on the RMS Majestic; Mr. Eisman promises to meet them in Paris later. Lorelei is distressed when she realises District Attorney Bartlett is also onboard ship. She relates to a sympathetic Major Falcon the story of how she came to know Bartlett. She reveals that her father packed her off to Business College in Little Rock. While training to be a stenographer, a lawyer named Mr. Jennings offered to employ her. She learned that he was a sexual predator, became hysterical and shot him. During the trial, which Mr. Bartlett prosecuted, Lorelei gave such compelling testimony that the gentlemen of the jury all burst into tears and she was acquitted. This prompted Judge Hibbard to buy a ticket to Hollywood for her so that she could use her talent to become a professional actress. He also names her ‘Lorelei’ because he believed it expressed her personality. Major Falcon informs Lorelei that Bartlett is now a senator travelling to Vienna for a secret conference. Major Falcon reveals that his mission is to find out what Bartlett is up to in Vienna. He encourages Lorelei to become friends with Bartlett, discover official secrets, and pass them on to him. Meanwhile, Lorelei deplores Dorothy's wasting time with a man who is a mere tennis champion. Bartlett, who is attempting to seduce Lorelei, agrees to tell her of his mission in Vienna if she will accompany him there. She agrees and he admits that he is negotiating a deal for military hardware. Lorelei decides she prefers Major Falcon to Bartlett and does not go to Vienna, but hides out in her cabin until Bartlett debarks. They arrive in London where it seems the aristocrats are selling off all their family jewels to wealthy Americans. Lorelei meets Mrs. Weeks, who is selling a diamond tiara for ten thousand pounds. She casts her eye around the room for a wealthy man to buy it for her and settles on Sir Francis Beekman, whom Lorelei calls ‘Piggie’. She is warned that he is a miser, but with flattery and the promise of discretion (because he is married) she manages to get him to buy the tiara for her. Dorothy takes up with an unemployed ballroom-dancer named Gerry. They meet the Prince of Wales and Dorothy teaches him some American slang. They sail to Paris. Lorelei thinks it is divine; she is especially impressed with Coty, Cartier and the ‘Eyeful’ Tower. She spends time with a French viscount but he spends hardly any money on her. It leads her to decide that a kiss on the hand may make one feel very good but a diamond tiara lasts forever. Sir Francis Beekman’s wife, Lady Beekman, has learned that her husband bought the diamond tiara for Lorelei and arrives in Paris to confront her. She is furious because in thirty-five years of marriage her husband has never given her a gift. She accuses Lorelei of seducing her husband. Dorothy defends Lorelei’s reputation (to great comic effect). The next morning, Mr. Robert Broussard bursts into their room and rants at them in French. As they do not speak French, Broussard telephones his son, Louis to act as translator. They learn that Robert is Lady Beekman’s lawyer. Through a French waiter named Leon, (who speaks English) Lorelei learns that Robert and Louis plan to show the ladies the Paris sights, while charging everything to Lady Beekman and while waiting for an opportunity to steal the tiara from Lorelei to give to Lady Beekman. They go to Fontainebleau, the Folies Bergere and the Palace of Versailles. Lorelei has made a paste copy of the diamond tiara and, by playing one against the other she manages to keep the real tiara and send them away with the fake one. Mr. Eisman arrives in Paris and after many shopping trips with Lorelei he moves on to Vienna to look at a button factory he may want to buy. He puts Lorelei and Dorothy on the Orient Express, telling them to meet him in Vienna. Lorelei meets Henry Spoffard, who comes from one of the most famous and affluent families in Philadelphia. He is a staunch Presbyterian, prohibitionist and moralist. He censors movies. Lorelei too is a reformist – she is trying to reform Dorothy. They arrive in Munich but are not impressed by the art museums, theatre or eating habits of the Germans. Lorelei begins to fear arriving in Vienna, wondering how she can spend time with both Mr. Eisman and Mr. Spoffard. In Vienna, Lorelei meets ‘Dr. Froyd’ (Sigmund Freud) at the request of Spoffard who is concerned about her health. Lorelei tells Freud that she has always done as she likes. Freud decides he cannot analyse Lorelei because she has never repressed a desire. He advises her to cultivate some inhibitions. Lorelei and Dorothy visit The Demel Restaurant, where Mr. Spoffard’s mother is being cautioned by her companion, Miss Chapman about Lorelei’s character. Miss Chapman suggests to Spoffard’s mother that Lorelei is the reason her son has been neglectful of her of late. Fearing that Miss Chapman will cause Spoffard to renounce her company, she takes Spoffard out for a moonlit drive and tells him all about herself and her beginnings in Little Rock. She puts a slant on the story that makes it sound like a Puritan spiritual biography. Spoffard begins to cry because of the ordeals Lorelei has suffered and even compares her to Mary Magdalene. He arranges for Lorelei to meet his mother. Explaining that she is a Christian Scientist, Lorelei tells Spoffard’s mother that if there is no disease then there is no harm in anything, so why not drink champagne? Spoffard’s mother, who enjoys the champagne, decides that Christian Science is a better religion than Presbyterianism. Lorelei gives her a beautiful hat to wear, but since Spoffard’s mother has an Edwardian hairstyle, it does not fit. Lorelei whips out some scissors and bobs Spoffard’s mother’s hair. The meeting is a success. Lorelei and Dorothy go on to Budapest with Mr. Eisman who has decided not to do business in Europe. Mr. Spoffard writes, proposing marriage to Lorelei. This puts her in a quandary. Spoffard has money but she is no attracted to him. Henry Spoffard is waiting for Lorelei when she arrives in New York. He tells her he has looked everywhere for an engagement ring but none were good enough for her, so he gives her his college ring. Using all her self-control, she tells him she happy he is so full of nothing but sentiment. Lorelei decides that she should come out into polite society and plans a debutante ball for herself. The debut ball lasts three days. It is reported on the front page of the newspapers. Society sports club members mix with bootleggers. The police are called but Dorothy wins over Judge Schultzmeyer. Unsure about marrying Spoffard, Lorelei decides to discourage his love by going on a mammoth shopping spree and charging it all to him. Whilst on the train to New York, she meets Gilbertson Montrose, a movie scenario writer. She realises how much more fascinating Montrose is compared to Spoffard. She enlists Dorothy’s help to get rid of Spoffard. Dorothy shows Spoffard everything Lorelei has bought and tells him she has gone to look at the Russian crown jewels with a view to buying them. She tells him that there is mental illness in Lorelei’s family and that she is pathologically extravagant. Meanwhile, Lorelei is having lunch with the fascinating Mr. Montrose. She tells him of her plan to rid herself of Spoffard. When Montrose expresses regret because he hoped Spoffard could be made to finance his new movie and she would star in the lead role, Lorelei decides she would like to marry Spoffard and have a movie career. Fearing she has already lost Spoffard, she telephones Dorothy but Spoffard has already left for Penn Station. Lorelei rushes to him and informs him that her extravagance was faked – every jewel she bought was paste and it was a test of his love. She says he fell into the trap and should be ashamed of himself. Remorseful, Spoffard vows to marry her and finance Montrose’s movie. Lorelei gets everything she wants but says she is simply happy to make everyone else happy.
8638307	/m/027c0y9	Our Lady of the Assassins	Fernando Vallejo	1994	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 A writer called Fernando returns to Medellín after an absence of 30 years. He finds the place transformed into Colombia's "capital of hate". Fernando meets Alexis, 16 years old, a male prostitute and a hitman - a Medellín child - with whom he falls in love. But their tender love is doomed. Alexis needs no reason to kill: like an Angel of Death he opens fire on anybody who rubs him the wrong way. Fernando and Alexis are bound by an intense passion as they wander from church to church, murder to murder. Alexis explains to Fernando the meanings and symbols of the dangerous world of the Medellín guns, while the author tells the boys the remembrances of his childhood in a Medellín that is not more the one he knew. When Alexis is finally killed by two teenagers on a motorbike, Fernando looks for his killer. He finds Wilmar, another boy who keeps a surprising resemblance with late Alexis, not only in his body but also in his behaviors. Trying to live the same with Wilmar, he is soon informed that he is dating with the killer of Alexis. But he can not kill him, because Wilmar confessed to him that Alexis killed his brother before. Fernando proposed to Wilmar to leave the country. The boy agreed, but when he goes to his home to greet his mother for the last time, he is killed also. Fernando winds up alone in the middle of a city where love seems not possible.
8640894	/m/027c4hy	Deception: A Novel	Philip Roth			 At the center of the book are conversations between a married American named Philip, living in London, and a married Englishwoman—trapped with a small child in a loveless upper-middle-class household. The lives of both characters are gradually revealed as they talk before and after making love.
8643690	/m/027c8d3	Damia's Children	Anne McCaffrey		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Humanity has found a new ally in their ongoing war against the Beetle Hive, a tenacious species called the Mrdini. In order to better understand each other, some humans and 'Dinis are raised together from childhood; one such family are the children of Damia and Afra Lyon, powerful psychic Talents of the Raven-Lyon clan who form the backbone of humanity's teleportation network. But the two species' common enemy, the expansionist Beetle aliens, are once again encroaching on inhabited territory, necessitating that despite their youth, Damia's Children must become the last line of defense for both Human and 'Dini. Damia's Children tells the first half of a story which is continued in Lyon's Pride.
8646438	/m/027cd79	The Jewels of Aptor	Samuel R. Delany	1962	{"/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a post-atomic future, when civilization has regressed to something near the Middle Ages, or even before, a young student and poet, Geo, takes a job as a sailor on a boat with a strange passenger, a priestess of the goddess Argo, who is heading toward a mysterious land of mutants and high radiation, called Aptor, presumably to recapture a young priestess of Argo, her daughter, who has been kidnapped by the forces of the dark god Hama.
8646529	/m/027cdfv	The Ballad of Beta-2	Samuel R. Delany	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is about the history of an ill-fated multi-generational interstellar expedition of discovery. By the time the spaceship has arrived at the destination star system, the descendants are incapable and uninterested in settling the system's planets, and continue to live in the spaceship as an obscure backwater culture isolated from broader human history. A quote from the ballad written for the book:
8646572	/m/027cdhk	What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng	Dave Eggers	2006-10-25	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 As a boy, Achak is separated from his family during the Second Sudanese Civil War when the Arab militia, referred to as murahaleen (which is Arabic for traveller), wipes out his Dinka village, Marial Bai. During the assault, he loses sight of his father and his childhood friends, Moses and William K. William K escapes, but Moses is believed to be dead after the assault. Achak seeks shelter in the house of his aunt with his mother, who is frequently identified throughout the book with a yellow dress. Before they are hidden, they hear the screaming of Achak's aunt, and his mother goes to investigate. Achak never sees her again afterward. He evades detection by hiding in a bag of grain, and credits God for helping him stay quiet. He flees on foot with a group of other young boys (the "Lost Boys"), encountering great danger and terrible hardship along the way to a refugee camp in Ethiopia . Their inflated expectations are shattered by the conditions at the camp, and eventually they are forced to flee to another refugee camp in Kakuma, after Ethiopian president Mengistu is overthrown and soldiers open fire on them. They make it to Kenya and finally, years later, he moves to the United States. The story is told in parallel to subsequent hardships in the United States.
8646625	/m/027cdkm	Equinox	Mel Keegan	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Equinox concerns the sexual and violent encounters that ensue -"the search for erogenous gratification of a diverse collection of people"- when an unnamed Black sea captain, sailing his 72-foot diesel boat, the Scorpion, with his dog Niger and two teenagers Gunner and Kirsten, docks at a small American seaport and meets its inhabitants including Robby, a naive drifter; Catherine, a Countess; Proctor, an artist; Bull, the town sheriff (who is himself an active criminal) and his equally thuggish operative Nazi; and various low-life characters including the black and white twins (self described rape artists) Nig and Dove. A lost wallet is traced to its owner, the artist Jonathan Proctor. At his studio, Proctor tells the Captain the story of his life in picaresque episodes, culminating in his first encounter, many years before, with the bewitching Catherine. She is depicted as a kind of baleful Madonna: depraved, hypocritical, perversely saintlike. Proctor mobilises the Captain and the other characters in a kind of amorous military assault against her as a personification of religious double standards. In the novel's closing movement, the perpetrators of an appalling sex crime are protected by their corrupt friends, while the completely innocent vagabond Robby is lynched and punished in their place. The apparent brevity of the novel thus detailed, and the slightness of its narrative, is only achieved by passing over its many long and very explicit sexual descriptions. These are polymorphous, bisexual, often involving multiple and underage partners, and incorporating urophilic and SM elements. Though very detailed and gratuitous (in that the author seems to revel in and enjoy the sexual descriptions), these passages are generally written in a poetic, obscure and oblique language which removes them from the realm of mere pornography and inserts the novel into a modern tradition of challenging and thoughtful erotica shared by such works as Burroughs' The Wild Boys and Trocchi's Cain's Book. There is an additional leitmotif relating to the myth of Faust, and at several points the Captain himself is either likened to the Devil or actually supposed to be Satan himself. Though sexually rapacious, the Captain's character is sympathetic, and in his conduct and attitudes seen to be one of the least truly evil personages in the narrative.
8648055	/m/027cglz	The Devil in Amber	Mark Gatiss	2006	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lucifer Box is feeling his age as he goes about the business of a Royal Academy assassin in 1920s New York. Box has been assigned to kill a fence and cocaine dealer named Hubbard by the Royal Academy (which is a front for the British Secret Service in the Box novels). The assassination does not go smoothly and Box only survives due to the timely intervention of Percy Flarge, a younger agent of the same type as Box. After Flarge leaves, Box discovers a cloth with curious ancient writing hidden on Hubbard's corpse. His superior, Joshua Reynolds feels that it is time for Box to retire and allow Flarge to take his place but assigns Box to investigate the Fascist Anglo-United States Tribune (FAUST), and its sinister leader, Olympus Mons. At a costume party Box meets Professor Reiss-Mueller and Sal Volatile, a defector who wishes to leave FAUST, hints that the organisation constitutes a grave threat to the world and arranges for Box to attend a meeting of FAUST, where Box discovers that his sister, Pandora Box, has become a fascist convert and is second in command of the organisation. Later that night Reiss-Mueller meets with Box and identifies the writing on the cloth Box retrieved from Hubbard. The writing is part of an occult invocation intended to summon the devil. Back at his hotel, Box has a meeting with Christopher Miracle, who informs Box that Olympus Mons has been carrying out an archaeology dig at a castle on the border between Switzerland and France. The castle is known to Box, having been the location of an undisclosed espionage adventure during World War I, which led to the death of Box's lover and valet, Charlie Jackpot, and left Christopher Miracle a broken man. At their next meeting Sal Volatile confides to Box that FAUST has an interest in the occult and is actively seeking the "Lamb of God", which Sal claims to have found. The meeting is interrupted when Sal Volatile is murdered and Box knocked senseless. On waking, Box discovers that he has been framed for murdering Sal during a lover's quarrel. Percy Flarge informs him that the Royal Academy has ordered that Box is to be given no assistance by their organisation and that Box is to be charged (and presumably executed) for the murder of Sal Volatile. With the assistance of Rex, a gay bellhop who Box initiated during the early chapters, Box boards the Stiffkey, an old tramp freighter commanded by Captain Corpusty, who proves to be a fan of Box's paintings and commissions a portrait by Box on the journey to England. While on board, Box discovers the ship is transporting cocaine disguised as communion wafers and seduces the cabin-girl Aggie, whose real name turns out to be Agnes Dei ("Lamb of God"). While in an intimate embrace with her Box has a vision of a ram's head with glowing eyes. Box then discovers that Captain Corpusty intends to betray him to the police and he escapes, taking Aggie with him. Aggie is wounded, but Box remains free. He witnesses the spectre of the ram's head again and meets Mrs Croup who has an intense and unhealthy interest in famous murderers. Mrs Croup assists him in reaching St Beads nunnery, where Aggie was raised. There Box discovers that Olympus Mons and his amber shirted thugs have arrived first and witnesses them murder several nuns while seeking Aggie. Box is discovered and taken prisoner. Mons and Pandora Box reveal that Aggie is descended from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene and from a long line of descendants who have been raised to be perfect sacrifices. Mons conducts a séance to discover Aggie's whereabouts and gains a riddle in return. Box escapes with the aid of Mrs Croup who uses dynamite for fishing. Box finds his way to Aggie only to find Percy Flarge has laid a trap for him. Box is again captured and is put on a train to be transported to London with Aggie. During the journey, Box accuses Flarge of betraying his country in favor of FAUST but Flarge appears to know nothing. The journey is interrupted by Box's domestic, Delilah, who Box passed a coded message to during his one phone call. Box is forced to kill Flarge's domestic "Twice" Daley in an escape attempt but ends up being chloroformed by Professor Reiss-Mueller. The action transfers to the border of France and Switzerland. Professor Reiss-Mueller explains that the Metropolitan Museum serves as a similar front for the United States Secret Service as the Royal Academy does for the British Secret Service. He tells of an old legend about the Devil being entombed at this site and states that Olympus Mons intends to release the Devil to assist him in conquering the world. Box quickly realizes that he is Reiss-Mueller's prisoner. He slips away and visits the grave of his old friend, Charlie Jackpot where he meets Percy Flarge. Flarge confesses that he has been compromised by dabbling in the occult but denies betraying his country. Together they decide to raid the castle. On their way there they discover the dead body of Reiss-Mueller and the unconscious Delilah. On awaking Delilah relates how the Professor intended to perform the ritual himself and reap the reward, but was killed by a goat headed specter. The party of three enter caves below the castle and discover Mons, Pandora and the FAUST fraternity preparing to sacrifice Aggie. The Satanists are met by a number of cloaked and robed VIP's including Joshua Reynolds, the head of the Royal Academy and the boss of Box and Flarge. When the ritual begins Box intervenes and succeeds in rescuing Aggie and banishing the Devil but only at the cost of the life of his sister, Pandora. Mons attempts to undo the damage Box has done but only succeeds in destroying himself and bringing down the roof of the cave system. The heroes escape but so does Reynolds who attempts a getaway by cable car. Box intervenes and Reynolds is killed when the cable car crashes. The book closes on Box finally being reunited with Aggie and him promising her an adventurous future.
8651765	/m/027cm4h	The Russian Debutante's Handbook	Gary Shteyngart	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens on the 25th birthday of its protagonist, Vladimir Girshkin. Vladimir is a Jewish immigrant whose family moved from Russia when he was a boy. The novel begins in 1993, in New York City, where Vladimir works for the Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society (for a measly $8.00/hour). He shares an apartment with his girlfriend, an overweight redhead named Challah who works as a dominatrix. Vladimir is painfully conscious of his parents' disappointment in his inability to make something more of himself, and spends most of his days in a dull routine. He is approached by an Aleksander Rybakov, an immigrant Vladimir refers to as "The Fan Man", due to the electric fan he carries with him and treats as an old friend. Rybakov introduces himself as the father of the Groundhog, a mafia figure in the Eastern European city of Prava / Prague, referred to in the book as "the Paris of the 90s". He asks for Vladimir's assistance in obtaining full citizenship to the United States, and offers Vladimir compensation (presumably obtained from the Groundhog's business dealings). Vladimir is encouraging but quickly dismisses the old man as mentally ill. He goes out drinking with his friend Baobab one night, where he meets a young woman named Francesca, who comes from a wealthy family and has attended a prestigious university. Vladimir inserts himself into her social scene and enjoys the attention that comes from being a Russian Jew in such gentile society. Vladimir lives with Francesca and her family for several months. Dating Francesca stretches Vladimir's limited means to such a degree that he is forced to borrow money, first from his parents, and then from Mr. Rybakov. Baobab informs Vladimir that he can get $20,000 by going to Miami and posing as Baobab's boss's son for a college interview. Vladimir readily agrees, despite the deception involved, and finds himself in Miami with Baobab's boss Jordi. Jordi attempts to have sex with Vladimir, who flees in terror and secures a flight back to New York. On the way to the airport, Baobab informs Vladimir that Jordi is an important figure in a Catalan drug cartel who would happily kill Vladimir over such a slip-up. With help from Baobab's actress girlfriend, Vladimir is able to stage a false naturalization ceremony for Mr. Rybakov back in New York. Immediately thereafter, Vladimir is whisked to Prava as the Groundhog's favored son. Once there, Vladimir proves himself quite resourceful and establishes a Ponzi scheme for the Groundhog, operating under the misnomer PravaInvest. Using his knowledge of English and portraying himself as a wealthy business man, he runs his scam on the significant North American expatriate population living in Prava, including a substantial student population. Vladimir quickly becomes an important figure to these students, and begins dating a young girl from Cleveland named Morgan. Things seem to be going quite well for Vladimir with the help of his friend Frantisek, who helps to create a false PravaInvest film to secure "investments" for the pyramid scheme. But Mr. Rybakov finds out that he is not a real citizen of the US, and the Groundhog punishes Vladimir by taking him to an unknown city and allowing skinheads to beat him. Vladimir is upset by this and plans an escape from the hospital and from Prava with the help of Frantisek and Morgan. After a lengthy pursuit, Vladimir arrives safely at the airport and goes back to America with Morgan.
8655941	/m/027cr_v	Babylon 5: Dark Genesis - The Birth of the Psi Corps	Gregory Keyes	1998-08-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In 2115, existence of telepathy has been proven. The resulting media frenzy, panic, violence, and bloodshed lead to the creation of the Metasensory Regulation Authority, the precursor of the Psi Corps, largely due to the efforts of Lee Crawford, an Earth Alliance senator. Much effort is put into establishing the events that had triggered appearance of the telepaths. Crawford's closest aid and successor, Kevin Vacit, continues the search and establishes an ambiguous relationships with the rogue telepaths who refuse to join the tightly regulated Corps. Kevin Vacit is a telepath prodigy who masks his abilities from the Corps and Crawford. Earth Gov has ruled that the director of PSI Corps can not be a telepath and Vacit is able to hide his ability from the PSI Corps tests. A relationship with his bodyguard leads to the birth of his daughter Fiona, who Vacit hides with the Telepath Underground. Fiona does not know who her father is and so she fights to bring down PSI Corps along with other Underground leaders. Fiona is captured by the PSI Corps and undergoes reeducation at the telepath concentration camp where she meets Stephen Walters. With the aid of Stephen she escapes the camp and rejoins the underground. Unknown to Fiona is the fact that Stephen is actually a PSI Corps special operative sent by her father (Vacit) to break her out of the camp. Fiona marries Matthew Dexter, a man she met while inside the telepath concentration camp and gives birth to a baby boy who she names Steven. During this period, Steven Walters defects to the Telepath Underground for real, cutting all remaining ties with Psi Corps. Vacit and Ms Alexander (his aide) travel to Venus investigating the reports of a ship found on the surface. Leaving their ship and venturing alone into the atmosphere of Venus, the pair encounter a Vorlon who tells them about the coming of the Shadows and why telepaths were created among the younger races. The Vorlon leaves a telepathic command in the mind of Ms Alexander for her or her descendant to come to the Vorlon homeworld when the time is right. Lyta Alexander, her granddaughter, carries this embedded command. On the return to Earth, Kevin changes his plans about assisting the underground after realising that the only way they can be ready for the Shadows is if the PSI Corps can control the evolution of telepaths on earth and to reproduce the best of the best who will be needed to defeat the coming of the Shadows. Vacit's daughter Fiona and her husband Matthew are killed in a PSI Corps attack on their home base and their child is given to Stephen to look after. Stephen gives the child to a girl to look after while he goes back to assist Fiona and Mathew. After he realises that they have both been killed he returns to where he left the girl but she and the baby are gone. Baby Steven is picked up by PSI cops and adopted by the Corps. Little Stee is given a new name by his Grandfather, the now director of PSI Corps Kevin Vacit. The book ends with the reveal that the new name given to Stevie Dexter is Alfred Bester. ru:Тёмное происхождение: Рождение Пси-Корпуса
8656125	/m/027cs8s	The Nightmare of Black Island	Mike Tucker		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On a lonely stretch of Welsh coastline, a fisherman is killed by a hideous creature from beneath the waves. When the Doctor and Rose arrive, they discover a village where the children are plagued by nightmares, and the nights are ruled by monsters. Bronwyn Ceredig, the old woman of the village, suspects that ailing industrialist Nathaniel Morton is to blame, but the Doctor has suspicions of his own.
8658274	/m/027cvzw	When the Eagle Hunts	Simon Scarrow	2002	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is the winter of AD 44 and after a series of bloody battles, Camulodunum (modern-day Colchester) has fallen to the invading Roman army. As General Vespasian, legate (Legatus legionis) of the Second Legion, helps plan their next campaign, General Plautius's wife and children are shipwrecked in a storm. They fall into the hands of a dark sect of Druids who now demand the return of their brotherhood taken prisoner by the Romans. Durotrigan tribesmen raid several towns near Camulodunum and the legion is sent to repel them. They stumble upon a village pillaged with its population massacred. Loot is found as then raiding party intend to return. Hence the legion ambushes the returning raiders. The local merchant laison Diomedes secretly executes the survivors of the ambush and sets off to a vendetta to avenge his lost family. After the attack Macro and Cato are summoned to General Plautius' tent. Two soldiers (Centurion Macro and Optio Cato) volunteer from the Second Legion of Legate Vespasian to venture deep into hostile territory in an attempt to rescue the prisoners before they are sacrificed to the Druid's dark gods. Cato and Macro are sent to locate the General's missing family with only the help of two British guides; Boudica and her cousin Prasutagus. It is revealed that Prasutagus was once a druid and with his help Macro and Cato infiltrate a village holding prisoners, but Plautius' family is nowhere to be found. The group then raids a druid lodge site, but find only a Greek merchant liaison impaled on a spit. The merchant informs the group of a druid headquarters in his dying moments. The group then heads over to the headquarters and encounters a prisoner transfer revealed to have Plautius' family aboard. In a daring ambush Macro is injured and they are unable to rescue the prisoners. The Roman army arrive soon enough as they continue their campaign against the Durotrigans. Cato is dressed up like a woad in nude and is sent to investigate a secret entry point. After returning Cato leads a small ban of Romans to infiltrate the stronghold and rescue the General's family whilst it is under siege. The attack goes without a hitch and there is desperate fighting to save the General's family. The book ends with Cato taking a serious sickle wound after taking out the Head Druid and saving the general's family from a funeral pyre.
8661256	/m/027c_k_	L				 The main theme in the story is an expedition to prove main character Erlend's theory about Pacific islands. He believes that their inhabitants came from South America on skates. This is, of course, an impossible theory, but the story is kept alive with Loe's personal, at times naïve, style. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is about how Erlend, inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, came up with the theory, and the planning of the expedition. The second part is about the expedition itself, which takes place on Manuae in the Cook Islands. The seven boys in the expedition, including fictionalized versions of Loe and artist Kim Hiorthøy, all feel that they have not contributed to "build Norway", so this trip is like their way of saying "sorry", and placing Norway on the map once and for all. Erlend strongly believes that his theory is correct and that they will be praised as heroes when they return. In the end of the book the boys feels like this wasn’t enough to place Norway on the map, so they start another experiment, where they try out the different ways of governing a country. For example, they try out apartheid and communism. They spend the last days on the island sitting around and waiting for the boat to pick them up. When they come home there is no marching band waiting at the airport, and realise that it will take more to get Norway "out there". no:L (roman) fi:L (kirja) sv:Expedition L
8663345	/m/027d2k6	The Great Santini	Pat Conroy	1976	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Great Santini tells the story of hard-nosed Marine fighter pilot Lt. Col. Wilbur "Bull" Meecham, who calls himself "The Great Santini," and the family he runs with a strict hand. It follows the Meecham family as they move to and struggle to fit into the Marine town of Ravenel, South Carolina. The book is set in 1962 before the Vietnam War. Conroy makes the point that Santini is a warrior without a war, and in turn is at war alternately with the service that he loves and his family. The novel explores main character Ben Meecham's growth into manhood, his experiences playing basketball for his high school, as well as his friendships with a Jewish classmate and an African-American farmer. The novel exposes the love-hate relationship between Ben and his father, and the lengths Ben goes to in an effort to win his father's acceptance and love. The novel is based on Conroy's own childhood experiences growing up in a military family. Conroy's own father, Donald Conroy, was the inspiration for "Bull" Meecham.
8663950	/m/027d3mz	Mass Effect: Revelation	Drew Karpyshyn	2007-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book serves to fill in much of the background details of the game, such as locations and the internal politics of the Council's races, as well as characters. A considerable amount of the plot revolves around the galaxy's views on Artificial intelligence, as this appears to be a major plot point in the game. The book tells of a young Alliance lieutenant David Anderson and his efforts to find a survivor of an attack on a top-secret Alliance base, lieutenant Kahlee Sanders. As the book progresses it is revealed the base was attacked purposely by the Blue Suns mercenary group, who were hired by the leading scientist on the base. A turian spectre, Saren is assigned to help Anderson and find clues as to where the missing scientist is. Eventually they find the scientist, but Saren escapes with the information the scientist was researching to an ancient alien ship which he plans to use for his own evil deeds as portrayed as the main plot in the game Mass Effect.
8670135	/m/027dbpb	Rash	Pete Hautman		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the year 2074, in a future U.S., now called the United Safer States of America, that has become obsessed with safety and security. Nearly every potentially unsafe action has been criminalized, including school fights. The main character is Bo Marsden, a 16-year-old at high school. Bo's father and brother are in prison, and Bo tends to see his own rash behavior as genetic. Things get out of control when Bo tries to assault his classmate, Karlohs Mink, and is arrested. As a result, Bo is sentenced to work making pizzas in the Canadian tundra, where he is surrounded by hungry bears and eats only pizzas everyday. Bo finds prison life boring and dangerous, and he is tired of eating pizzas. However, on the strength of his running ability, Bo is soon invited to join the Goldshirts, together with his extremely strong roommate Rhino. The Goldshirts are a specially privileged group at the camp because they play football for the camp warden, Hammer, who bets money on the matches. Training to play the sport, which is now highly illegal, makes Bo stronger and more self-confident. At the same time, Bork, an artificial intelligent being which Bo invents for his science project in the school, mutates and becomes a rogue, spreading across the web. Using its great knowledge of criminal law, Bork arranges the early release of Bo and his family members. Rogue AI programs are illegal, and Bork is eventually discovered and destroyed by Security&Safety. Bo, however, has already gained what he needs: his high school graduation certificate and the skills of running and football. He takes his grandfather's shoes and decides to go to South America to play football, as it is still legal there.
8670629	/m/027dc54	More Dissemblers Besides Women	Thomas Middleton			 Act 1, Scene 1: Milan: The Duchess' balcony (above) and street (below) Lactantio praises the Duchess, who, according to a vow made upon her husband's death, has remained abstinent for seven years. He asks his lover, Aurelia, if she would follow the Duchess' example if he died. Aurelia replies that she would drop dead on the spot if Lactantio died. Lactantio tells Aurelia that, although he plans to marry her, they must keep their relationship a secret for the time being for the sake of his uncle, the Lord Cardinal, an extremely pious man who eschews the company of women. Lactantio is the Lord Cardinal's only heir, but in order to inherit his estate, he must keep the old man happy by seeming to shun the company of women. Lactantio also mentions that his uncle is a great admirer of the Duchess' constancy. Act 1, Scene 2: The Lord Cardinal's home: The Lord Cardinal's study The Lord Cardinal praises the Duchess' constancy to a group of Lords. He says that he has written several books celebrating the Duchess' strict adherence to her vow. The First Lord points out that the Duchess' constancy would be even more commendable if it were tested. He suggests that, rather than being hidden away from all men, the Duchess should be presented with some sort of temptation. The Lord Cardinal agrees that the Duchess should be tested in order to prove her perfection. The Lords exit. The Lord Cardinal calls for his nephew, Lactantio. He mentions how pleased he is that Lactantio, like himself, is totally uninterested in women. Lactantio enters reading a book. He takes great pains to demonstrate his (supposed) seriousness and distaste for women. Lactantio's former mistress enters disguised as a page. (The mistress has been posing as a boy page so she could live—and sleep—with Lactantio without arousing the Lord Cardinal's suspicions.) In a whisper, Lactantio asks the "Page" why she looks so pale. The "Page" tells him that she is pregnant. She gives him a letter announcing the arrival of a gentleman friend from Rome. Lactantio realizes that the "Gentleman" is, in fact, his lover, Aurelia. He tells the "Page" to welcome the "Gentleman" in. Aurelia enters disguised as a gentleman. The Lord Cardinal insists that the "Gentleman" stay as a guest in his home for as long as he is in Milan. The "Gentleman" accepts the invitation. The Lord Cardinal exits. Lactantio takes Aurelia into his arms and urges her to renounce her former lover, General Andrugio. Aurelia swears that she loves Lactantio alone, but notes that he may have some other competition: her father is pushing her to marry the Governor of the Fort, an extremely elderly gentleman whom Aurelia does not care for at all. Lactantio barely has time to reply before Aurelia's father enters, accompanied by the Old Governor of the Fort. Aurelia worries that she will be discovered. Lactantio greets Aurelia's father and introduces Aurelia as a foreigner who does not speak the language. Aurelia babbles a bit of gobbledygook in a supposedly foreign tongue, but her father is not fooled for a second. He scolds his daughter for her ridiculous ruse and "gives" her to the Old Governor of the Fort on the spot. Aurelia, her father and the Old Governor of the Fort all exit. Lactantio curses Aurelia's father and worries about how he will excuse the "Gentleman's" absence to his uncle. Act 1, Scene 3: The Duchess' balcony (above) and street (below) The Duchess is sitting in her balcony (above). She tells her serving-woman, Celia, how happy she is because she has adhered to her vow. The Lord Cardinal enters and tells the Duchess that, in order to prove her perfection, her constancy must be tested—she must be exposed to a desirable man. The Duchess agrees to be tested. The Cardinal tells her to look down at the street, where a procession celebrating the recent victories of General Andrugio will soon pass by. The Lord Cardinal exits. Trumpets sound, and General Andrugio enters in a procession below. He is accompanied by several nobles, including Lactantio, who sing his praises. As part of the procession, a winged Cupid descends and sings a song in General Andrugio's honor. While the Cupid is singing, a Lord passes General Andrugio a letter. Andrugio reads the letter. The nobles sing some further praises and exit. Andrugio seems sad. In an aside, the Lord who delivered the letter says that Andrugio is upset because he has just received news of Aurelia's impending marriage to the Old Governor of the Fort (remember that Aurelia was Andrugio's former lover). Meanwhile, above on the balcony, the Duchess confesses that she has failed the Lord Admiral's test—she has fallen in love with General Andrugio at first sight! Act 1, Scene 4: The Lord Constable's house: servants' quarters The "Page" asks Lactantio's man-servant, Dondolo, to dry a shirt for her. In a rambling speech filled with sexual innuendo and jokes about the "Page's" disguised pregnancy, Dondolo says he will not do anything for the "Page" unless she agrees to sing a song for him. The "Page" sings a bawdy song about Cupid. Dondolo is pleased. Act 2, Scene 1: The palace The Duchess orders Celia to bring her some colorful dresses. She does not want to wear mourning clothes any longer now that she is in love. Celia exits to get the clothes. Speaking to herself, the Duchess says that she will have to use trickery to win Andrugio's love. Overwhelmed by the complexities of her new situation, she busts into tears. The Lord Cardinal enters. He assumes that the Duchess is crying for her dead husband and tries to console her. The Duchess tells the Lord Cardinal that, after many years of mourning, desire has finally overcome the strength of her constancy: she has fallen in love with another man. The Lord Cardinal is shocked and extremely upset to hear this news. He demands to know the name of the man the Duchess has fallen in love with. The Duchess tells him she has fallen in love with his nephew, Lactantio (by this ruse, she hopes to warm the Lord Cardinal up to the idea of her remarrying, thereby opening the door for a match with Andrugio). Rather than reacting with delight (as the Duchess had hoped), the Lord Cardinal vows to banish Lactantio from the city. He exits. The Duchess laments her inability to soften the Lord Admiral up. Act 2, Scene 2: The Lord Cardinal's residence: The Lord Cardinal's study Soliloquizing in his study alone, the Lord Cardinal decides that his nephew cannot be blamed for the Duchess' attraction to him. He decides not to banish Lactantio, and to allow a relationship with the Duchess to go ahead. Act 2, Scene 3: The castle Andrugio disguises himself as an old soldier and goes to the castle, where Aurelia is being held prisoner by the Old Governor of the Fort. Aurelia is extremely happy to see Andrugio. She swears her never-ending love to him. Andrugio promises to rescue her soon. He exits. Speaking to herself, Aurelia says she will dump Andrugio and return to Lactantio as soon as she has been rescued. Act 3, Scene 1: The Lord Cardinal's residence Increasingly anxious about her pregnancy, the "Page" begs Lactantio to make good on his promise to marry her. Lactantio scornfully replies that he has promised to marry scores of mistresses and has no intention of marrying any of them. The "Page" bursts into tears. Dondolo enters. He has just returned from the castle, where he had been sent to spy on Aurelia. Lactantio asks him what he has learned. Dondolo says that he could not manage to actually speak with Aurelia, but was able to communicate by means of sign language. All of the "signs" that he reports receiving from Aurelia are of an absurd and bawdy nature. Lactantio scolds Dondolo for his nonsense and calls him an ass. Dondolo criticizes Lactantio's "Page," whom he says is good for nothing. He makes a series of sly remarks regarding the "Page's" disguised gender (Lactantio is apparently unaware that Dondolo has seen through the "Page's" disguise). Lactantio calls Dondolo a fool. In an aside, Dondolo swears to get revenge on Lactantio for calling him a fool. He makes plans to join the Gypsies, and meditates happily on the freedoms afforded by a Gypsy lifestyle. He exits. Lactantio professes his hatred for Aurelia's former lover, Andrugio. He worries that Andrugio will use Aurelia's captivity as a means to ply his way back into Aurelia's heart. The Lord Cardinal enters. The "Page" is still weeping. The Lord Cardinal says that Lactantio is too strict with the "Page." He says that he will assign her to a new master: the Duchess herself. The "Page" has no choice but to accept this new appointment. She exits—now more distressed than ever. Arguing that Lactantio has been too severe in his rejection of women, the Lord Cardinal declares that it is time for his nephew to marry. Still posing as a "serious nephew," Lactantio rejects the suggestion. The Lord Cardinal tells Lactantio that the Duchess herself is in love with him and cannot live without him. Lactantio is secretly overjoyed by this news, but maintains his "serious nephew" guise for his uncle's sake. The Lord Cardinal encourages him to go to the Duchess and proclaim his love. Lactantio "reluctantly" agrees to follow his uncle's wishes. He exits. A group of lords enters. The Lord Cardinal delivers a speech arguing that the Duchess has kept her vow for too long and should be encouraged to remarry. The lords are persuaded by the Lord Cardinal's argument. They make plans to persuade the Duchess to choose a new husband. Act 3, Scene 2: The palace Celia tells the Duchess that Lactantio secretly hates Andrugio (it is not clear how she gained knowledge of Lactantio's inner thoughts). The Duchess says that she can use this information to her advantage. Lactantio enters. The Duchess tells Lactantio that she loves him madly. Lactantio quickly agrees to marry her. The Duchess asks Lactantio if he has any enemies. Lactantio tells her that he has only one enemy: General Andrugio. The Duchess makes plans to set a trap for Andrugio (but it's actually a trap for Lactantio). She tells Lactantio to forge a letter in Andrugio's hand. In the phony letter, "Andrugio" makes a bold declaration of his love for the Duchess. Lactantio signs Andrugio's name to the letter and gives it to the Duchess. The Duchess instructs Lactantio to arrest Andrugio and bring him to her. Act 4, Scene 1: Outside the castle Andrugio waits outside the castle to rescue Aurelia, but Aurelia does not show up to meet him at the appointed time. Lactantio enters with a guard and arrests Andrugio. Andrugio begs them to wait a bit, but Lactantio insists on taking him away immediately. Act 4, Scene 2: Outside the castle Aurelia escapes from the castle disguised as a gypsy. She is surprised to find that Andrugio is not waiting for her. Dondolo enters. He is very happy to meet a "real" Gypsy. He asks the "Gypsy Girl" (Aurelia) where her company is. Aurelia recognizes Dondolo immediately. She asks if he is Lactantio's servant. Dondolo haughtily replies that he serves no man. He says that he has left his master to pursue a Gypsy lifestyle. Before Aurelia has a chance to press Dondolo further, a company of Gypsies enters singing and dancing. The Gypsy Captain addresses Aurelia in a strange Gypsy language (this language includes words such as "piss-kitch.") Aurelia tells him that she cannot understand the Gypsy language because she has only recently turned to the Gypsy lifestyle. The Gypsy captain welcomes her with good cheer. Dondolo requests admittance into the Gypsy company. The Gypsy Captain picks Dondolo's pocket while he reads his palm. Dondolo tries to pay the Gypsy Captain and realizes that his money has been stolen. Exceedingly impressed, he begs the captain to teach him the art of Gypsy thievery. The Gypsy Captain tells Dondolo that he will have everything he desires. He gives him the new "Gypsy Girl" (this is the second time that Aurelia has been "given" to an undesirable male) and instructs him to get her pregnant so she produce Gypsy children. Dondolo is very pleased. The Gypsy Captain marks Dondolo's face with bacon (to "Gypsify" him) and instructs him to go out and steal as much as he can for the company. Aurelia's father and the Old Governor of the Fort enter. They are searching for Aurelia. Aurelia is afraid she will be discovered. The Old Governor encourages Aurelia's father to ask for the Gypsies "supernatural" assistance to help them locate Aurelia. Aurelia's father is wary of the Gypsies. The Old Governor of the Fort gives Aurelia some money and asks her to tell him his fortune. Aurelia tells him that the woman he is looking for will board a ship soon. She advises him to forget the woman and leave her alone because she will never return his love. Aurelia's father and the Old Governor of the Fort rush off to the docks to prevent Aurelia's supposed departure. The Gypsies are very impressed by Aurelia's fortune-telling skills. They dance and drink for joy. Act 4, Scene 3: The palace The Lord Cardinal and a group of lords encourage the Duchess to remarry. The Duchess feigns reluctance. The Lord Cardinal and lords exit. The Duchess soliloquizes about Lord Cardinal's hypocrisy. The "Page" enters. The Duchess is quite impressed by "him." She makes plans to provide "him" with a good education, which will include singing and dancing lessons. The "Page" exits. Lactantio enters with Andrugio and a guard. Andrugio proclaims his innocence and asks the Duchess why he has been arrested. The Duchess asks Lactantio and the guard to leave. When they are gone, the Duchess shows Andrugio the phony letter (supposedly written by Andrugio, but actually written by Lactantio). She orders him to read the letter aloud. Andrugio insists that he did not write the letter. The Duchess brushes his protestations aside and tells him that the letter has won her heart: she is in love with him. Before Andrugio has time to answer, the Duchess orders Lactantio and the guard to take Andrugio to the palace prison. Andrugio is completely baffled. He worries that the Duchess' attention will ruin his chances of reuniting with Aurelia. Act 5, Scene 1: The palace The "Page" is taking music lessons. Celia supervises. The music teacher teaches the "Page" how to sing a "prick song" (a song performed from written music, with a quibble here on "prick," another word for "penis," pertinent here because the "Page" secretly does not have one—jokes like these are fundamental to this scene). After a series of incidents that make the "Page's" situation increasingly awkward, Celia dismisses the music teacher and introduces Cinquepace, the dancing teacher. Celia exits. An usher enters to play a viol. Cinquepace tells the "Page" to dance. In an aside, the "Page" worries that dancing might kill her. She tells Cinquepace that she does not know how to dance. Cinquepace threatens to pull down the "Page's" pants and spank "him" if "he" will not dance. The "Page" leaps, falls, and goes into labor. She calls for a midwife. Cinquepace is completely baffled. Act 5, Scene 2; The palace Celia tells the Duchess that Andrugio has paid one of his prison guards to find a "Gypsy Girl" (Aurelia) for him. The "Gypsy Girl" was brought to Andrugio's prison cell, where he greeted her with kisses and a passionate embrace. The Duchess is shocked and jealous. She calls for the "Gypsy Girl" to be brought before her. Aurelia enters, still disguised as a Gypsy. The Duchess asks the "Gypsy Girl" if Andrugio truly loves her. Aurelia replies in the affirmative and says Andrugio has promised to marry her. The Duchess worries that Andrugio might be crazy. She tells the "Gypsy Girl" to go away. Aurelia exits. The Duchess calls for Andrugio. Andrugio enters. The Duchess asks if he is truly in love with a Gypsy girl. Andrugio says that he is not. The Duchess calls for the "Gypsy Girl" again in order to get to the bottom of the story. Aurelia re-enters, no longer disguised as a Gypsy. Aurelia and Andrugio beg for the Duchess' pardon. The Duchess is relieved to learn that Andrugio is not crazy. She commends the couple and says that she will not get in the way of their love. Lactantio enters. Aurelia asks the Duchess if she is truly free to marry whomever she pleases. The Duchess replies in the affirmative. Aurelia says that, in that case, she would like to marry her heart's true love: Lactantio. Worried that his chances for marrying the Duchess will be ruined, Lactantio calls Aurelia a fool and says that he no longer has any interest in her whatsoever. Realizing she has just let two prospective husbands slip through her fingers, Aurelia begs Andrugio to forgive her. Andrugio rejects her. The Lord Cardinal enters with a group of lords. He tells the Duchess that it is time for her to announce the name of the man she has decided to marry (assuming she will name Lactantio). The Duchess feigns offense and says that she has no intention of ever breaking her vow. "The Page" enters. She is no longer disguised as a boy and carries an infant in her arms. The Duchess tells the Lord Cardinal that Lactantio is the baby's father. The Lord Cardinal vows to disinherit Lactantio, but the Duchess insists that he has already been punished enough. She offers to provide ten thousand ducats for the "Page's" dowry so she can marry Lactantio. The play ends on a note of festivity.
8675328	/m/027dkmk	Azure Bonds	Jeff Grubb	1988-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The trilogy’s titular “finder’s stone” plays a relatively limited role and has an essentially introductory presence in the novel. The story begins with the main character, an adventuress named Alias, awakening in a disoriented and amnesic state. She soon discovers that she has a newly acquired azure colored tattoo imprinted on the inside of her sword arm in the space between her wrist and elbow. At first she attributes her memory loss to inebriation and the tattoo as a drunken prank by companions. She soon finds that the tattoo is magical in origin, resists attempts to remove it and most worryingly, exerts a power to compel her actions. Before long, Alias becomes the nucleus of a disparate party of adventurers namely; a mysterious lizard-creature named Dragonbait, a southern mage called Akabar Bel Akash, and a halfling "bard" named Olive Ruskettle. The novel's plot follows the actions of the party which are combinations of the group’s investigations and interruptions caused by the compulsions of the tattoo. It is later revealed that Alias herself is in fact a complicated, magically created, artificial being intended by her creators to be their proxy in various nefarious purposes. The tattoo was to be a means of control as well as a branding of ownership by each of the collaborating parties involved in her creation. Her long term memories were actually granted to her by her sole benign (but misled) creator and her short term memory loss is due in part to the gap between the end of her artificial memories and her premature awakening. Alias eventually wins the freedom to control her actions and is able to embark on a life of her own. Events towards the end of the novel result in Giogioni Wyvernspur (a recurring supporting character), inadvertently acquiring the finder’s stone forming the back-story of the next novel in the trilogy, The Wyvern's Spur.
8675778	/m/027dl4r	Green Angel	Alice Hoffman	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Green is a quiet and shy 15-year-old girl, approaching her 16th birthday. She lives with her mother, father, and beautiful younger sister Aurora, in a house on the city's green outskirts. While her sister is wild, charming and impatient, Green is timid and reserved, and has the infinite patience required to tend to the family garden. After mastering the art of tending the garden, she becomes the garden's main caretaker. One day, her family goes to the city to sell produce, leaving Green behind. There, her family perishes as a result of a conflagration in the city, believed to be done by a secretive, malevolent group of people. Many people in the city die that day, leaving behind orphans and heartbroken survivors. Ashes from the fire make Green half-blind and singes her hair, forcing her to cut her hair off. Green, deeply sorrowed, changes her appearance and personality and renames herself Ash as she decides to destroy her past to cover the internal pain she is suffering. She tattoos almost her entire body with black roses, vines and bats, continuing to suffer but growing indifferent toward her pain. Over time as she takes care of herself, through interactions with several kinds of animals that dote on her, a silent boy she calls Diamond, and a kind old neighbor, Green starts to heal from her pain. As she grows, she finds her leaf and stem tattoos turning green and the rosebuds turning red. Finally, on her 16th birthday, she is no longer Ash, as she once used to be, but is once again Green, finding the taste of summer and apples within her. Now, after her recovery, she is strong enough to tell her family’s tragic story.
8676872	/m/027dmhq	The Ringmaster's Daughter				 The novel uses a frequent Gaarder device of telling a story within a story. It is narrated by a Norwegian named Petter, who recounts his life since childhood. Petter grows up with a single mother and had few friends, although he does possess an overly-imaginative mind. As an adult Petter sells ideas, stories, and plots to frustrated writers, and soon expands to include clients across Europe. In the meantime Petter meets and falls in love with a woman named Maria. Maria tells him that she is leaving for Stockholm and that they must never see each other again, but first asks Petter to father her child. Eventually writers and members of the publishing industry become suspicious, and rumors spread of a "Spider" who sells ideas to everyone. At a publishing convention in Bologna Petter is warned that his life may be in danger, so he takes the first flight out. Going into hiding, Petter arrives on the Amalfi Coast, where he falls in love with a woman named Beate. Both are initially secretive about their pasts, but as Petter begins to tell Beate some of his stories, Beate gets angry and disgusted, telling him that she will only see him once more on the following day. During the night Petter dawns on the realization that Beate must have heard the same stories from her mother, Maria, thereby making him Beate's father.
8677334	/m/027dm_w	The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel	Baroness Emma Orczy	1933	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The action starts in 1792 before the execution of Louis XVI. Middle-aged lawyer Bastien, the Maître de Croissy (once the star of the Paris bar who counted Kings and aristocrats amongst his clients), is reduced to living in rented accommodation with his wife, Louise, and young son, Charles-Léon. Deprived of his income by the revolution, Bastien now takes work where he can get it, including that put his way by key figures in the revolutionary government even though he has strong royalist sympathies. Aware of his contacts, the Baron de Batz approaches Bastien with a scheme to free the King, and hankering after a return to his old lifestyle, he is more than willing to get involved. De Batz asks de Croissy to talk to some of his clients about the possibility of taking considerable bribes (paid for by the Austrian Government)in exchange for the King's freedom. This he does with some success, yet the Austrian gold is not forthcoming at the agreed time and the plans come to nothing. The subsequent trial and execution of the King and the further involvement of de Batz, can be read about in Sir Percy Leads the Band. A year has passed, it is now September 1793 and little Charles-Léon is gravely ill. His parents try to secure a permit to take him to their house in the Isère district near Grenoble, but although the Doctor is willing to sign a permit for the child, his parents are not allowed to leave Paris for more than seven days. Louise is distraught, as there is no-one in Grenoble she trusts enough to look after her sick baby. Listening to all this is Louise's childhood friend Josette Gravier who announces that she has a plan. Josette idolises the mysterious Englishman known as The Scarlet Pimpernel and is sure that he will be able to arrange a permanent permit for Louise, if only she can get a message to him. The rest of the household doesn't share Josette's enthusiasm for the Pimpernel, and doubt he even exists. The matter appears to be settled when Bastien reveals that, although the Baron de Batz's schemes to free the King came to nothing, he still has a number of incriminating letters from influential members of the government which could easily discredit them and send them to the guillotine. He proposes to use the leverage the letters give him to obtain a permit for his wife to stay with his ill son in Grenoble. Bastien puts his plan into action, but he is playing with fire and not long after meeting with the those implicated (the Citizen Representatives Chabot, Bazire and d'Églantine), his clerk Maurice finds his body in their offices. The Maître de Criossy has been brutally murdered to silence him for good, and his death covered up as suicide. Josette starts to fear for Louise, who is unable to eat, sleep or speak since hearing the news. The originals of the letters are in Louise's keeping and surely it can't be long before those who killed Bastien turn their attention her way. Luckily the Scarlet Pimpernel has heard of their plight and arranges for Louise and her son to escape to England before they can be arrested. Josette is grateful that her hero has succeeded but although the de Croissys are free, Maurice and she have been left behind in Paris. Josette receives a letter from Louise saying she is well in England and still has the letters, but otherwise, daily life continues as normal, until one day, Maurice is arrested. Fearing for Maurice's life, Josette gets up the courage to face citizen Chabot and uses her knowledge of the letters to barter for Maurice's freedom and their unhindered passage to England. She is given a permit to go to England to fetch the letters from Louise, but does not realise that the representatives have engaged Citizen Chauvelin to follow her and take the incriminating documents from her. Chauvelin offers friendly assistance to Josette whilst in England and she naïvely starts to trust him as a friend. However once back in France, Chauvelin steals the letters then fabricates up a set of blank look-alikes. He tells Josette that the originals were stolen by the English spies but he has managed to get them back—and then gives the blank copies to Josette, pretending they are the real letters. Not long afterwards Citizen Chabot arrives in Rouen and during a meeting with Josette has her searched by the guards. With the packet of letters now in his possession, he scornfully tells her that she will face the guillotine for her blackmail, along with her lover. Yet when he opens the package he finds only blank papers. Enraged, Chabot is convinced that Josette has tricked him, and turns the guest house upside down looking for the papers (Chauvelin, who is seeking to turn the letters to his personal advantage has not told Chabot that he has them in his possession). Whilst the soldiers are searching the guest house, Chauvelin assures Josette that he swapped the originals for blanks for her own safety and then has her arrested for treason and taken to the cells. He decides to open the original letters to see what leverage he can get from them but to his horror finds that his package is also blank save for that, all too familiar, maddening doggerel... "We seek him here..." Will Chauvelin succeed in cornering the English Spies? Can the Scarlet Pimpernel save Josette and Maurice from the guillotine? and what will happen to the incriminating letters? de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge
8679100	/m/027dqg0	Fabiola	Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman	1854		 The story is set in Rome in the early 4th century AD, during the time of the persecution of Christians under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. The heroine of the book is Fabiola, a young beauty from a noble Roman family. She is spoiled by her father Fabius, who cannot deny her anything. Fabiola seems to have everything, including a superior education in the philosophers, yet under the surface, she is not content with her life. One day, in a fit of rage, she attacks and wounds her slave girl Syra, who is a secret Christian. The proud, spoiled Roman girl is humbled by Syra's humility, maturity and devotion to her in this situation, and a slow transformation begins, which finally culminates in her conversion to Christianity, brought on by Syra and of her own cousin Agnes, whom she adores and dotes on. Another thread of the story deals with the young boy Pancratius, a pious Christian and son of a martyr, who is himself preparing for martyrdom. Pancratius' nemesis is Corvinus, a bullying schoolmate who is irritated by the young Christian's saintliness. He does everything to bring him and the Christian community of the catacombs down. This includes the orchestrating of the lynching of their former teacher Cassianus, who is secretly Christian. Yet Pancratius shows his enemy the meaning of Christian forgiveness when he saves his life shortly after Corvinus had Cassianus killed. Another major villain in the story is the enigmatic Fulvius, an apparently rich young man from the East who soon reveals himself to be a hunter of Christians who turns them in to the authorities for money. His aim on the one hand is to gain the hand of either Fabiola or Agnes, and on the other hand, to uproot the Christian community in Rome. After some dramatic events that reveal his surprising connections to Syra, who is his long-lost younger sister Myriam, Fulvius rejects his evil ways, converts to Christianity and becomes a hermit.
8679863	/m/027dr29	The Art of Destruction	Stephen Cole		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The TARDIS arrives in 22nd century Africa, where agri-teams are growing food in the rich soil around a dormant volcano to feed the hungry millions of Earth. However, the time travellers detect an alien signal nearby. As something moves in the volcanic tunnels, the Doctor realises an ancient trap has been triggered. The Doctor and Rose meet Solomon Nabarr and Basel who explain that the Time travellers have just landed right by Mount Tarsus in Chad.
8679890	/m/027dr3b	Past Continuous	Yaakov Shabtai	1977	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Novel focuses on three friends, Goldman, Caesar, and Israel, in 1970's Tel Aviv, as well as their acquaintances, love interests, and relatives. The story begins with the death of Goldman's father on April 1 and ends a little after Goldman's suicide on January 1. The past is woven into this short "present" period, through a complex stream of associations. The three men, lurching between guilt and depression, lose themselves in sexual adventures, amateur philosophy or compare their lives unfavorably to those of their sometimes heroic, sometime pitiful elders. The older characters can always hold firm to something or other, whether socialism and hatred of religious Jews, insights gained in Siberia, or refusal to admit that Israel is not Poland. The younger characters seethe instead in doubt and sweat.
8679956	/m/027dr7g	The Price of Paradise	Colin Brake		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Laylora, the Paradise Planet, is a world of breath-taking beauty, where peace-loving Aboriginals supposedly live in harmony with their environment. Years ago, a human called Rez arrived on the planet as a baby in an escape pod, and was adopted by the native people. The Doctor and Rose arrive to answer a distress signal from a group of scientists, who were shot down by an EMP, only to find that the once-perfect eco-system is showing signs of failing. Natural disasters are becoming more frequent, and creatures from ancient legends are appearing and attacking people. The Doctor realises that the planet is a perfect equation, when left alone it is a paradise, but when alien objects visit the planet, the equation becomes unbalanced, and the planet causes disasters to try to repair itself.
8680336	/m/027drq7	Feeling Sorry for Celia	Jaclyn Moriarty	2000	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story's protagonist is a 15-year-old-girl named Elizabeth Clarry. Elizabeth lives in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, with her mother and her dog, a collie named Lochie. The story begins when Elizabeth, who attends an exclusive private school called Ashbury, is forced to begin a letter correspondence with a student from the local comprehensive high school (Brookfield), by her new English teacher, Mr. Botherit. The recipient of Elizabeth's letter is a girl named Christina Kratovac. Elizabeth and Christina become friends almost immediately. Elizabeth confides in Christina as she feels very alone and confused about her life. She does not fit in at Ashbury and she has an awkward relationship with her father (who left Elizabeth's mother when she was pregnant and moved to Canada with another woman and her son), who has just been reintroduced into her life in a permanent way. But mainly, her concerns revolve around her best friend, a wayward, free-spirited girl named Celia Buckley who has run away from home without leaving any details as to her whereabouts. Added to this are the barrage of letters that Elizabeth constantly receives from various societies and clubs, each pointing out her faults and generally bringing her down. The letters are reflections of Elizabeth's own subconscious thoughts and are not actually real. Eventually, Elizabeth learns of Celia's whereabouts (she joined a circus) but grows more concerned than before as Celia's letters make it seem like she is being harassed by the circus manager. Elizabeth devises a plot with a boy from Ashbury, Saxon Walker, who Elizabeth has been running with (training for a marathon), and with whom she has romantic interest in. Together they "save" Celia and bring her home. It soon becomes apparent, when Celia returns to school, that Saxon has a crush on Celia, and that that is the reason he befriended Elizabeth - to get close to Celia. Saxon and Celia begin a relationship, much to Elizabeth's dismay. Elizabeth is incredibly hurt by both Saxon's actions, and Celia's apparent blindness to Elizabeth's feelings. Elizabeth notices that Celia does not seem like the same person anymore and that her and Saxon don't seem good for each other - they make a suicide pact that luckily, is unsuccessful. Elizabeth finds much needed comfort and friendship in Christina, who has been having serious problems of her own after she had sex with her boyfriend, Derek, and the condom broke. Things then get worse for Elizabeth when her dog, Lochie, is run over by a truck. Elizabeth is devastated by both Lochie's death and Celia and Saxon's insincere sympathy over it. Elizabeth then suddenly receives an anonymous letter from someone expressing sympathy for her loss. It is soon revealed by Christina, that the anonymous person is a boy from her school, Brookfield, and that he has a crush on her. Though Christina will not tell Elizabeth his name as he asks her not to. Elizabeth then meets her step-brother, Ricky, who she soon discovers is in fact not her step-brother, but actually her half-brother. Her father got his second wife pregnant with Ricky, when Elizabeth's mother was three months pregnant with Elizabeth, and he never told the truth about it. Elizabeth is not particularly upset about it, but her mother is devastated and goes on a retreat to recover. During this time, Elizabeth decides to throw a sleepover party at her house with Celia and Christina and Maddie (Christina's cousin), and also takes the opportunity to invite the Anonymous Boy who had been writing her letters. Ricky comes to the party as well as, unbeknown to any of them, Ricky is dating Maddie. They all have a good time at the party, but it culminates in Celia, Saxon, Maddie and Ricky, going missing. Eventually they are discovered. They had decided that they wanted to go to New York and get away from everything but are prevented from doing so by their parents. The novel ends with Elizabeth much happier with her life, despite the dramas that had recently happened. Her friendship with Christina (a much more healthy, equal friendship than the one she had with Celia), her success at the local running marathon, and her burgeoning relationship with Jared (Anonymous Boy), all give her a new found confidence. She accepts that Celia will always be her friend, but that perhaps not her best friend, and that that is okay. The last page is Elizabeth writing a letter to one of the clubs that had been sending her letters and bringing her down, telling them that she never wants to hear from them again and if they write to her still, she won't open the letter, signifying the change in the way she sees herself.
8680811	/m/027ds7v	The First Sir Percy	Baroness Emma Orczy	1920	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 March 1624 and a lot has happened since the plot on the life of the Stadtholder was foiled two months earlier. With the help of Mynheer Beresteyn, Diogenes has finally met his real father, an English Nobleman, and realised his true identify as Sir Percy Blake of Blakeney, heir to a large estate in Sussex. Now an English Lord, the once penniless soldier of fortune is getting married to Gilda Beresteyn, the woman he was paid to kidnap back in January. Mynheer Beresytn has arranged a double wedding for the pair along with his son Nicholaes and his bride to be, Kaatje van den Poele. The day is to be one of great celebration, with guests coming from far and wide including the Stadtholder Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange who owes Diogenes his life for informing him of Lord Stoutenburg's plot against his life. Also due to attend are Diogenes' fellow 'philosophers' – Socrates and Pythagoras. Pythagoras, however has fallen foul of Lord Stoutenburg after coming across the fugitive and his servant Jan, while lost in the Veluwe on the way to the wedding. Stoutenburg recognises the philosopher and after plying him with lots of wine, gets Jan to take him back out into the snow and kill him. Jan leads Pythagoras away from his planned route, shoots him in the back and leaves him for dead. On the day of the wedding, Diogenes is concerned about his friend and sends Socrates and a group of men out to look for him. The wedding celebrations are torturous for the adventurer who is not used to formal Dutch traditions and just wants to whisk his new bride away to their new life in England. Diogenes enlists the help of the Stadtholder to break up the celebrations early so he can go against tradition and carry off his wife in the face of scandalized and protesting wedding guests but just as he is about to ride off, a curious spectacle presents itself to view. Socrates arrives on horseback, with the barely alive Pythagoras across his saddle. The Stadtholder agrees to stay on so his personal doctor can administer to the adventurer and when he is eventually able to speak, he is able to relay Stoutenburg's new plans to assassinate the Stadtholder in some detail. It seems that the Archduchess Isabella has troops crossing the IJssel and coming up from Kleve. They plan to seize the cities of Arnheim and Nijmegen then march across the Veluwe and confront the Stadtholder with a vast army. On top of this, Stoutenburg is plotting to poison the Stadtholder using chemicals he has been taught to manufacture by Francis Borgia. The Prince of Orange asks Diogenes to fight at his side but the philosopher is torn between his feelings for his new bride and the call of honour and duty. Gilda settles the matter when she brings him his sword, telling him he must leave for Vorden within the hour. Nicholaes travels with Diogenes as far as Barneveld but on returning to the house, he tries to convince Guilda that her husband is a traitor and is in league with the Archduchess. Diogenes makes a brief stop in Vorden where he delivers the Stadtholder's orders to Messire Marquet and his troops, but on route to Wageningen he is suddenly chased and shot at by men on horses. Plunging into the river Ijseel to evade his attackers his horse is shot through the neck and the waters sweep over his head. Four days have passed and there is no news from Diogenes, the archduchess's troops have crossed the IJssel and overrun Gelderland. Nicholaes has been sent to Amersfoot to tell his father of the Stadtholder's coming and that they must evacuate the town. Fugatives from Ede have reached the Stadtholder's camp at Utrecht and it soon becomes obvious that Diogenes has failed in his task to deliver orders to Messire Marquet and Mynheer De Keysere. Gilda is worried, but refuses to believe her husband can have failed in his task. She watches for him from the window and eventually spots him riding into the city. On hearing the news, Nicholaes exclaims that Diogenes return is impossible but won't say any more when questioned. He then tries to get the Stadtholder away before he can talk to the Englishman, insisting that Diogenes has sold his sword to the Archduchess. When Diogenes, weary and dazed arrives at the door, Nicholaes attacks him with cries of "Assassin!" but Gilda wrests his sword from her brother before he can do her beloved any serious damage. The three philosophers, now with fresh horses follow Nicholaes and the Stadtholder and manage to frustrate Nicholaes's plans to deliver the Stadtholder into the hands of the Archduchess. However, before the traitor meets up with Lord Stoutenburg, he shoots at Diogenes with a poisoned bullet and the resultant smoke causes him to go blind. Nicolaes and Stoutenburg return to Amersfoort with 4000 mercenaries and demand the surrender of the city. After taking over Mynheer Beresteyn's house, Stoutenburg threatens to get his troops to murder the population of the town unless Guilda agrees to marry him. A commotion outside the house reveals a blind Diogenes is back and is entertaining the troops. Stoutenburg is determined to hang his nemesis, but thinks he can use the adventurer to his advantage in winning Guilda for he is convinced she will prefer a strong masterful man to a weak helpless one. The sad condition of her husband only seems to make Guilda more committed to him, so changing tack, Stoutenburg promises Guilda he will only spare Diogenes' life if she will agree to be his wife. She reluctantly gives in, but once she has gone to her room, he tells Jan to hang him anyway. Faced with the gallows, Diogenes barters his privileged knowledge of the Stadtholder's plans for a mug of port. Stoutenburg them tells Mynheer Beresteyn that his son-in-law is a traitor, and knowing the Burgomaster's views on such behaviour leaves him alone in the dining hall with Diogenes and a loaded gun...
8680852	/m/027ds9k	The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel	Baroness Emma Orczy	1922	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts in Paris in April 1794, year II of the French Revolution. Theresia Cabarrus is a beautiful but shallow Spaniard who is betrothed to Citizen Tallien the popular Representative in the Convention and one of Robespierre's inner circle. She is credited with exercising a mellowing influence over Tallien, whom she met in Bordeaux but although she is engaged to be married to him, what little love she has appears to be lavished on another. Bertrand Moncrif is a good-looking but impulsive young man who appears determined to martyr himself in opposition to the revolutionary government. To this end, he has gathered the siblings of his long-term sweetheart, Régine de Serval, into his plan to denounce Robespierre at one of the Fraternal suppers. Despite warnings from Régine he insists on carrying through his plans which inevitably go awry and the wrath of the mob is soon turned towards the small group. After a timely intervention on the part of the Scarlet Pimpernel, using the guise of the coal heaver Rateau (who also appears in several short stories in The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - The Cabaret de la Liberté, Needs Must and A Battle of Wits), the de Servals are saved from a lynching while Moncrif lies unconscious and unseen under a table. When he eventually awakens, Bertrand heads straight for Theresia's house (whom he worships) and all thoughts of his old love Régine disappear in her wake. Theresia is horrified to find him at her house as Tallien, Robespierre and several other high-ranking political figures are due at her apartment for a meeting. Realising that he is putting her at risk, Bertrand hides in the kitchen while the men meet. Also present is Citizen Chauvelin, who plans to use Theresia to entrap his old enemy the Scarlet Pimpernel and has been planting ideas to the effect in Robespierre's mind. Robespierre makes it clear that he knows Bertrand was behind the fracas at the supper and implies that Theresia and Bertrand are involved. Despite the implied threat, she refuses to help trap the Pimpernel, but after the party has left she discovers that Bertrand has been taken by the daring Englishman from her kitchen. Chauvelin returns brandishing a note left by the Pimpernel, to persuade her to take part in his plan once more. Peeved at the Pimpernel removing her plaything, she eventually agrees. In England, Moncrif and the de Servals are finally free to resume an almost normal life. Theresia arrives at Dover dressed in men's clothes and claiming she has been driven out of France by her association with Bertrand, in fear of her life. An obviously staged row between the Spaniard and Chauvelin outside Sir Percy's cottage fails to persuade our hero that she is up to anything but mischief, but he seems to relish the prospect of such an intelligent and wily adversary and promises not to reveal her true identity to anyone for he "is a lover of sport." With her plans to seduce Percy scuppered, Theresia turns her attention to Sir Percy's wife Marguerite and uses an all too willing Bertrand to set the trap. Lady Blakeney is kidnapped yet again and taken to France and imprisoned as bait for Sir Percy. Can our dashing hero evade capture and live to enjoy a day "when tyranny was crushed and men dared to be men again"? de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge
8682856	/m/027dv5g	The Chinese Bell Murders		1958	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee is a newly appointed magistrate to the town of Poo-yang. He has one case left over from the previous judge, a brutal rape-murder of a woman called Pure Jade. She was the daughter of a local butcher named Hsai who lived on Half Moon Street. The girl's lover stands accused but Judge Dee senses something in the case is not right so he sets out, with his aides, to find the real murderer. He also has to wrestle with the problem of Buddhist Temple of Boundless Mercy, run by the abbot called "Spiritual Virtue". Rumor has it that the monks, who can cure barren women, are not a virtuous as they seem. Poo-yang was the setting for many Judge Dee stories including: The Emperor's Pearl, Necklace and Calabash, Poets and Murder, and The Red Pavilion.
8683518	/m/027dvrp	The Chinese Gold Murders		1959	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee is a recently appointed magistrate to the miserable town/district of Peng-lai. His predecessor has been murdered and so Judge Dee must investigate. The investigation is made more complex due to the disappearance of his chief clerk as well as the new bride of a wealthy local shipowner. Meanwhile a tiger is terrorizing the district, the ghost of the murdered magistrate is stalking members of the court, a prostitute has a secret message for Judge Dee, and the body of a murdered monk is found to have been placed in the wrong grave. What could possibly relate all these events? The town of Peng-lai was the setting for other Judge Dee stories including: The Lacquer Screen, and three of the short stories from Judge Dee at Work. fr:Trafic d'or sous les T'ang
8684656	/m/027dw_6	The Big Orange Splot	Daniel Pinkwater	1977	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main character, Mr. Plumbean, lives on a "neat street" where all the houses look the same. A seagull flies over his house and drops a can of bright orange paint on his roof, but instead of repainting his house to look like all the others on the street, Mr. Plumbean paints it to resemble his dreams. His neighbors send people to talk him into repainting his house to look like theirs, but everyone he talks to ends up painting their houses like their dreams also. In the end, all the neighbors say: "Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams." The drawings were made with markers, and if one looks closely one can see the marker lines. In an interview in 1978 Daniel Manus Pinkwater revealed the hallucinogenic undertones clearly referenced throughout the story. Due to this interview the book was pulled from most libraries in Missouri in the early 1980s. Many believe the seagull was a reference to his older brother Steven &#34;Seagull&#34; Pinkwater.
8685222	/m/027dxr8	The Chinese Lake Murders		1960	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 In the year 666, Judge Dee, the newly appointed magistrate of the fictional town of Han-yuan, must solve three murders. Han-yuan is an isolated town famous for its floating brothels or "flower boats". The murders seem to be related but just how they are connected is a mystery. The whole investigation turns into a maze of political intrigue, sordid greed, and dark passions. Han-yuan was also the setting for another story The Morning of the Monkey, a short novel in The Monkey and the Tiger.
8685560	/m/027dy5q	The Chinese Maze Murders		1957	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee is the magistrate in the fictional border town of Lan-fang. He confronts three mysteries involving poisoned plums, a mysterious scroll picture, passionate love letters, a hidden murder, and a ruthless robber. These are all somehow linked to the Governor's garden maze. Lan-fang was the setting for another Judge Dee novel, The Phantom of the Temple and two short stories from Judge Dee at Work.
8686121	/m/027dyq6	The Haunted Monastery		1961	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee and his three wives are on their way back from a visit to family in the capital accompanied by the Judge's aid Tao Gan when a terrible storm forces the party to take shelter for the night in an isolated Taoist monastery of sinister repute. The wives go directly to bed but the Judge is required to pay a courtesy visit to the Abbot. Thus begins an endless night of murder, mayhem and madness as the Judge, suffering from the beginnings of a head cold, solves the mysterious deaths, punishes the guilty and brings two star-crossed young couples together. 'I ought to give up being a magistrate and set up for a matchmaker!' he says in disgust.
8686201	/m/027dyt_	The Stones of Nomuru	Catherine Crook de Camp	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Terran archeologist Keith Salazar’s excavation of the ancient Kukulkan city of Nomuru is endangered by the plans of the avaricious Conrad Bergen to develop the site. Their dispute is complicated by rivalry over Kara Sheffield, Salazar’s former wife, and an invasion of the lands of the civilized Kukulkanians by the Chosa nomads. To preserve his dig and advance his suit, Salazar must avoid being murdered by Bergen, bestir the civilized natives to battle the nomads, and manipulate his superior at the museum funding him in order to secretly supply Terran weapons to his allies.
8686273	/m/027dyy2	The Emperor's Pearl		1963	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee, magistrate of Poo-yang a flourishing walled city on the Grand Canal, is attending the Dragon Boat races accompanied by his three ladies aboard his own official barge. He is mildly annoyed by the intrusions of assorted callers and the loss of a blank domino (he and his ladies are keen players). He is more than annoyed when the sad, sudden death of a young student crewing one of the boats turns out to be deliberate murder. Even more disturbing is the murder of the young Second Lady of a prominent local merchant and collector which is witnessed by the Judge himself. Obviously very odd things are going on at the deserted villa at the edge of the River Goddess's overgrown mandrake grove! Throw in an apparently cursed Imperial Treasure and a perverted madman and the Judge has his hands full. Poo-yang was the setting for The Chinese Bell Murders. Three other cases: Necklace and Calabash, Poets and Murder, and The Red Pavilion took place during his term as magistrate.
8686473	/m/027dz3z	The Lacquer Screen	Robert van Gulik	1964	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 In 663, Judge Dee is the young magistrate in the fictional town of Peng-lai. On a visit to a senior magistrate he is shown a beautiful lacquer screen which is mysteriously altered to show a murder scene instead of a love scene. With the senior magistrate convinced he is going insane, a wealthy banker in town does kill himself, or is it murder? Judge Dee and his faithful servant Chiao Tai go undercover and join a gang of robbers to solve the case. The town of Peng-lai was the setting for other Judge Dee stories including: The Chinese Gold Murders, and three of the short stories from Judge Dee at Work. fr:Le Paravent de laque
8686710	/m/027dzcw	The Red Pavilion		1964	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee, the magistrate of Poo-yang, has an unexpected meeting with the most powerful and famous courtesan on Paradise Island, Autumn Moon. Then, a man who was well known to be studying to pass the Imperial exams dies, was it suicide or was he murdered? His last week was spent in the company of Autumn Moon. Only a few hours later, she herself is found dead and Judge Dee is drawn into a web of lies and sad stories in the world of the prostitutes of Imperial China. Poo-yang was the setting for many Judge Dee stories including: The Chinese Bell Murders, Necklace and Calabash, Poets and Murder, and The Emperor's Pearl.
8686893	/m/027dzkc	The Monkey and the Tiger		1965	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The first story is called "The Morning of the Monkey" and is set in the fictional city of Han-yuan in the year 666. One morning a gibbon drops an emerald ring right at the entrance to Judge Dee's house. This leads to the discovery of a strangely mutilated body out in the nearby forest. Han-yuan is the setting for several other Judge Dee stories including The Chinese Lake Murders and one of the stories from Judge Dee at Work. The second story, called "The Night of the Tiger", takes place a decade later when Judge Dee is returning to the capital at Chang'an when bandits force Judge Dee to take cover in an isolated country house. There he must fight off the vicious cut-throats as well as solve a murder.
8688036	/m/027d_zf	Dragons in the Waters	Madeleine L'Engle	1976-04-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Dragons have been seen in the mists behind Christ de Reginero. Simon's Aunt Leonis accepts an invitation for Simon to travel by freighter to Venezuela with Simon's cousin, Forsyth Phair. Phair recently purchased a valuable heirloom painting of Simon Bolivar from Aunt Leonis. It is a relic of Simon's forebear, Quentin Phair, who fought at Bolivar's side. The portrait was sold to raise money to support Simon and Miss Leonis, who is ninety years old. Forsyth proposes to donate the portrait to a museum in Caracas &mdash; but all is not as it seems. A dangerous "accident" involving a forklift and odd interactions aboard the Orion lead fellow passengers Poly and Charles O'Keefe to believe that Simon's "Cousin Forsyth" may be a source of danger to Simon. When Forsyth is murdered and the portrait stolen, Poly does not know what to think, but it is clear that Simon is still in danger. Another passenger, Mr. Theo, calls for Poly's godfather, Canon Tallis, to come and investigate, but Tallis and Simon are both kidnapped by the local police chief upon arrival in Port of Dragons, Venezuela, and left stranded in the jungle. Miss Leonis also arrives, having learned before the murder that the check paying for the portrait was worthless. She has also just read Quentin Phair's letters and journals, thus learning belatedly that Simon's heroic ancestor left behind a wife and son among the Quiztano Indians of Dragonlake in Venezuela. Phair also started the "Caring Places", two large buildings in which Quiztano healers, some of them with medical degrees, help the sick and the dying. The connection between Quentin Phair and Umara of the Quiztanos is the underlying cause of Simon's current predicament, part of a tangled web of murder, smuggling, blackmail and a generations-old grudge. Alejandro Hurtado, a friend of Tallis, initially arrests Jan, a Dutch sailor with Quiztano blood, but the ship's first mate, Lyolf Boon, soon confesses to Phair's murder. Simon and Tallis fight off an attack from a wild boar, but Tallis receives a leg injury, which becomes infected. When a wildcat attacks, Tallis orders Simon to run away. Panicked, Simon does so, but feels guilty afterward. Both are rescued by the Quiztanos and brought to Dragonlake. Miss Leonis is already there, and is dying. The Quiztanos hail Simon's arrival as the long-awaited "return of the Phair". After some initial resistance, Simon decides to stay at Dragonlake and continue the good work that his ancestor started with the Caring Places.
8691327	/m/027f416	Michaelmas	Algis Budrys	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set in the near future (at least at the time of writing, now actually in past time). The public image of the eponymous protagonist, Laurent Michaelmas, is that of a world-renowned newsman. In fact, Michaelmas controls world events just as much as he reports them. His means of influence is an immensely powerful self-aware artificial intelligence called Domino, which originated as a modest telephony appliance in Michaelmas' youth. Over the years, Domino has evolved into a digital omnipresence that can penetrate and control any electronic or computerized equipment, most notably communication networks of all kinds. Domino was created by Michaelmas, and its existence is known only to him. Domino is also the confidante and intellectual sparring partner of Michelmas, compensating in part for the loss that Michaelmas suffered when his wife was killed in an accident many years ago. By the time of the novel, Laurent Michaelmas has successfully used his power to create and sustain world peace. One of his achievements is the success of UNAC (the fictitious United Nations Astronautics Commission). UNAC, organizing space travel as a joint international project is important to Michaelmas as a symbol of a more united world. When an astronaut believed to have been killed in a failed mission turns up miraculously saved, a threatening scenario starts to unfold. As the novel progresses, Michaelmas slowly learns that a possible extraterrestrial presence may be interfering with the new world he has worked so hard to create.
8693470	/m/027f6h9	The Willow Pattern	Robert van Gulik	1965	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee is now a senior member of the Chinese government and has been appointed the Chief Judge in the Tang capital of Chang-An. One of the city's oldest, and most important aristocratic families becomes the subject of investigation. Three murders are committed and Judge Dee must find the connection.
8693708	/m/027f6qw	Murder in Canton		1966	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee is now the most senior judge in all of China and his authority is little less than that of the Emperor himself. Canton is the most important trading port in the country, filled with merchants from many other lands, some as far away as India and Baghdad. When one of the secretive but very powerful Imperial censors goes missing in Canton, Judge Dee must come to the city in disguise and investigate. He is aided by a beautiful blind girl who collects crickets. This is the last story in the internal chronology of Judge Dee.
8693817	/m/027f6xc	The Phantom of the Temple	Robert van Gulik	1966	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee, a magistrate in the fictional Lan-fang district has a problem: a mysterious phantom is haunting a Buddhist temple. In addition, some 20 bars of gold have gone missing, not to mention the merchant's beautiful daughter. When a body is discovered without a head, Judge Dee must quickly solve the case. Lan-fang was the setting for another Judge Dee novel, The Chinese Maze Murders and two short stories from Judge Dee at Work.
8694101	/m/027f78r	Necklace and Calabash		1967	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee is a magistrate in the fictional Poo-yang district, its a wealthy area through which the Grand Canal of China runs (part of modern-day Jiangsu province). The Emperor's daughter lives in the district at the Water Palace but it falls under a special administration run by the military commander. Judge Dee goes to the area for a few days of relaxing fishing but soon meets with a strange Taoist hermit, then a body is found in the river. Then the Emperor's daughter appeals to Judge Dee for aid. The mysteries keep building up and Judge Dee has to tread very carefully to avoid serious political fallout from his investigations. Poo-yang was the setting for many Judge Dee stories including: The Emperor's Pearl, The Chinese Bell Murders, Poets and Murder, and The Red Pavilion.
8694248	/m/027f7gy	Poets and Murder		1968	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Judge Dee is a magistrate in the fictional Poo-yang district, its a wealthy area through which the Grand Canal of China runs (part of modern-day Jiangsu province). During the mid-autumn festival in the city of Chin-hwa, Judge Dee is a guest of a small group of distinguished scholars. However, he learns during dinner that a young girl has been murdered and the accused is a beautiful poetess. She is thought to have whipped her maidservant to death, but why? Then the body of a student is also discovered. Poo-yang was the setting for many Judge Dee stories including: The Emperor's Pearl, The Chinese Bell Murders, Necklace and Calabash, and The Red Pavilion. The book was also published in the US under the title of The Fox Magic Murders.
8697417	/m/027fbrg	The Doomed City	Arkady Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set in a mysterious world where enigmatic Mentors run a sociological experiment. The mentors gathered volunteers from Earth from various places and times: from Germany of 1940s, the USA of the 1960s, Sweden of the 1970s, etc. The volunteers do not know the goals or conditions of the experiment. In spite of different native languages the people can effortlessly communicate with each other. Most of the people live in the City that is skirted by a swamp on one side and a desert on the other. Apparently, the experiment runs out of control, the City is shaken by a social unrest and an egalitarian system of job rotations is replaced by a dictatorship. The main character — Andrei Voronin — is an astronomer from Leningrad of 1950s. He struggles to find his identity and his place in the strange city, at first being a vehement opponent of the dictatorship, and later becoming a leading adviser of the dictator. Naively idealistic at the beginning of the novel, he seems to have become crass in the second half. However, eventually, he leads an expedition to explore the desert. The expedition proves difficult in the extreme. The members are exhausted, they turn back or perish. Eventually, only Andrei and Izia (Joseph Katzman) forge ahead. They encounter deserted cities and ruins of Earth cultures that show that the mysterious world is very old and the humans inhabited it for a long time. As Andrei and Izia proceed, they ponder the strange world and the meaning of human existence. They run out of supplies, but they keep going on eager to learn what is beyond the "zero point". Andrei dies on the border shooting at his double. He then finds himself back in the Leningrad of 1950s, where his Mentor tells him that he passed the First circle, but "there are many of them ahead".
8700946	/m/027fgpb	The Sweet Far Thing	Libba Bray	2007-12-26	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The prologue begins with two men who are searching a river in London (three years before the events of the book) for dead bodies to fence any jewelry or money left upon them. They come across the body of a girl wearing the same crescent moon amulet as Gemma’s. At Spence academy Gemma struggles to open the realms. Pressure builds on her as her friends plot to use her magic to alter the courses of their lives, such as Ann trying to counteract her plainess with the magic in hopes of seducing Tom or joining the theatre. But after much struggling Gemma finds a backdoor-like entry into the realms. By touching a mysterious stone unearthed during the reconstruction of the east wing of Spence Gemma can enter the realms. There Gemma, Felicity, and Ann find Pippa among a group of girls she claims to have saved from entering the Winterlands. Pippa leads the group of girls and attempts to teach them manners in a similar fashion that she was taught at Spence, even though Pippa obviously didn't pick many of these up herself. Pippa asks Gemma to help her cross the river in the realms into the afterlife, but finds that she cannot because she has become a creature of the realms. Pippa asks Gemma to give her some magic and feeling guilty, she does. After a three month absence, Kartik finds Gemma at Spence Academy to tell her that their destinies should not cross again. Gemma angrily stomps off, trying to appear aloof. A later meeting at a boat dock in London crushes Gemma's hope that they could be together. Kartik enlists as a sailor for the HMS Orlando to escape from Gemma and the Rakshana. He refuses to reveal to Gemma the details of his business with the Rakshana or what he will do beyond being a sailor. Despite his coldness, Gemma continues to long for his touch. While waiting for his boat to come in, Kartik lives with the gypsies and helps Gemma arrange a meeting with the Rakshana. The topic of the meeting was her brother Tom, whom the Rakshana was trying to enlist in the club. The meeting was cut short by Mr. Fowlson, a loyal Rakshana member, who unsuccessfully tried to capture Kartik and Gemma. The cost for their safe escape was Mr. Fowlson's discovery that Gemma did indeed have the magic, unlike what she had said to him previously. This incidents ends with Kartik and Gemma leaving the docks after a kiss. At the peak of her tolerance, Gemma finally gave in to her visions and tried to follow the clues left by a mysterious girl in a lavender dress. This leads her to an illusionist who informs Gemma that this girl lived at Spence during her mother's time there. On a whim, Gemma and her troupe of girls venture into the Winterlands to find The Tree of All Souls. When they find it, they all place their hands upon its bark and see different 'visions'- their dreams coming true before their eyes. Gemma alone had a talk with Eugenia Spence who informed her more of the girl in the lavender dress. She also learns that the girl had in possession a dagger which posed a threat to the Winterland creatures. With their affection for each other growing, Kartik finally asks Gemma if she can take him into the realms to see his brother. Once there, they go to into the Cave of Sighs where they make love in each other's dreams. Gemma then offers Kartik a bit of her magic and he uses it simply to kiss her. Afterwards, Kartik finds his brother and is upset by what has become of him, he leaves the realms without the peace he'd hoped to find. Felicity and Ann grow angry with Gemma when she refuses to bring them into the Realms, but since Gemma has broken the seal between the two worlds they soon discover they no longer need her and they cross over by themselves. Gemma panics for her friends are unaware of the war that is breaking out amongst the creatures and, fearing for their safety, follows them into the Realms. She finds them visiting Pippa, whose power has grown but whose sanity is very quickly waning. Pippa attempts to kill Gemma when she refuses to believe that she is 'the chosen one'. Felicity attempts to stop her but Pippa pushes her away in her rage, Felicity is taken aback. When Pippa sees what she's done to her friend she apologizes and asks Felicity to stay with her forever, offering her berries that would doom Felicity into a half-life in the realms. The true relationship between the two is revealed when they share a kiss, but Felicity ultimately refuses the berries and leaves in tears. Time begins to run out for Gemma as creatures of the Realms' patience wears thin. With the seal broken between the two worlds, the creatures run loose, crossing back and forth between the Realms and reality. They attempt to capture Gemma while she is at Spence in order to sacrifice her to the Tree of All Souls. Gemma and her troupe (Kartik, Fowlson, Ms. McCleethy, Ann, and Felicity) quickly cross over into the Realms while the war is raging between the creatures. They are waylaid by Pippa, who sacrifices Ms. McCleethy in Pippa's castle in the Borderlands. Soon after, the castle collapses with Pippa inside. The group of girls following Pippa join Gemma's group to fight the Winterlands. They make their way to the tree where Gemma is stabbed by Amar. Kartik quickly offers himself to the Tree of All Souls in order to save Gemma and they share one last kiss before he is absorbed into the Tree. Gemma then gives her magic back to the land, recreating the barrier between the two worlds, and returns home, heartbroken. After her debut, Gemma moves to America to live independently and attend University. In her dreams, she still sees Kartik where he waits for her in the realms on the other side of the river.
8701328	/m/027fh1c	Mathematicians in Love	Rudy Rucker	2006-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bela and Paul are working towards their Ph.D's under the direction of a mad math genius named Roland Haut, they invent a para-computer called "GoBubble" that predicts the future. They are both involved in a love triangle with Alma.
8702341	/m/027fj1c	A Fairly Honourable Defeat	Iris Murdoch	1970	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The lives of several friends are thrown into disarray by the machinations of Julius King. Julius makes a bet with his ex-girlfriend Morgan that he can break up the homosexual couple Axel and Simon; meanwhile, Morgan and her brother-in-law Rupert are conned into embarking on an affair, and Morgan's nephew Peter is falling in love with her. Julius King, returning from a university job in America, seeks out his old school friends, Rupert Foster and Axel Nillson. His former lover, Morgan Browne, Foster’s sister-in-law, has arrived in England at the same time. Foster’s attempts to keep them apart are thwarted by Morgan Browne, still in love with King and determined to confront him. At the same time, she is avoiding her husband, Tallis Browne, who still loves her. The plot is complicated further when, almost immediately and by accident, Julius King meets Tallis Browne. King is intrigued by his old lover’s husband, a rather nondescript fellow with not much personal presence but considerable moral integrity. King himself is a man of formidable intellect, and he does not suffer anyone gladly. He is irritated by what he sees as self-satisfied and patronizing conduct in his friends, and he sets out, without much concern for the consequences, to put them in compromising situations. Morgan, his love from the past, will not leave him alone, and though he has a quick way of chastening her for her importunities, he determines to include her in his plans. Rupert Foster, rather full of himself since he has just finished his book on the power of good and love in life, is ripe and ready to be fooled, and Morgan, full of the hot air of spurned love and dramatizing her problems for all to see, appears to be just the mate for Rupert, if King can somehow get them together. To make the game more interesting, he takes on the extra task of breaking up the homosexual relationship between Axel Nillson and Simon, Rupert’s brother. Using a mixture of high cunning, sheer criminality, and pinches of blackmail, King tempts his friends into situations which they would never have contemplated and which ultimately result not only in revealing flaws in their characters but also in causing serious harm to Rupert, for which King, a cool, nerveless fellow, takes no responsibility. Everyone learns how ridiculously vulnerable they are, but Axel and Simon escape from King’s labyrinth of “now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t,” strengthened in their love and less inclined to be shamefaced about being homosexual. Whether Morgan Browne learns anything is unclear, and the damage done to the Fosters is gratuitously cruel.
8705710	/m/027fnnk	Memoirs of Emma Courtney	Mary Hays	1796	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel consists of a series of philosophical letters from the heroine, Emma Courtney, to Augustus Harley. Emma is deeply in love with Augustus Harley but her pursuit of him fails - his income is only secure as long as he remains unmarried. Although she initially refuses to accept a life of security by marrying her admirer Mr. Montague, Emma eventually accepts when Augustus Harley is revealed to be already married, and Emma herself is facing financial hardship. Emma's marriage results in a series of tragedies, despite the appearance of a beloved daughter, and her passion for her first love never ceases. Near the end of the novel the two will meet again under unfortunate circumstances. Harley dies after an accident, and Montague commits suicide after a sexual encounter with a maid, whom he leaves pregnant. Emma adopts Harley's eldest son, and devotes herself to the lives of her children.
8708030	/m/027fr7s	GoodKnyght!	Steve Barlow	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Willum, a swineherd and Whipping boy for Symon, son of the city's High Lord, longs to go to Knyght School and to become a Knyght. After fighting for Symon in a Tournament for Symon, Willum is sent to Knyght School. After meeting up with a forest dwelling girl named Rose, an Italian restaurateur named Luigi, Humfrey the Boggart, a Pryvate Inquestigator with a speech impediment, a sarcastic harp and a wizard known as The Runemaster who carries the Dragonsbane; a stone which can be used to access the mind of a dragon. When the Dragonsbane is stolen, Willum, Rose and the Harp travel to The Ragged Mountain to retrieve it.
8708185	/m/027frdy	The Righteous Men	Jonathan Freedland		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 Will Monroe's normal life is disrupted when his wife is kidnapped while he is reporting on a story of a militia man found dead in his isolated log cabin. Further investigation into the death brings Monroe to the conclusion that the dead militia man shared an attribute with a New York City pimp, also recently murdered. They were both described as being 'righteous'. As more murders of 'righteous men' happen across the globe, time seems to be running out for Will and the old and current friends he has enlisted. With a series of clues from a mysterious source, absurd twists and religious factors Will soon finds himself in the middle of a plot to bring about nothing less than Judgement Day. The book focuses on the fact that several people have been murdered in what can only be described as a humane way. What these victims have in common is that they have been described by folk who knew them as "righteous" (hence the title) although they led some mundane or unethical existence (i.e. pimps, drug barons or even call centre employees). Nothing seems to fit to connect the murders together. A rookie NY Times reporter is sent on a murder case (the pimp) and is then sent of to do a story in Seattle where he finds another victim here whilst trying to report on freak weather conditions. While he's away, his wife gets kidnapped by what turns out to be the Hassidic community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. What these "Righteous Men" turn out to be are based on Jewish folklore: that the world rests on 36 men who perform righteous acts to others. They themselves may not know that they are one of 36 and will always lead a life so far removed from what they are about. But without these men - the world will not be spared by God. So while the killing of the real 36 continues, the world (according to this story) is in grave danger. The killings seem to be done in the name of God; but as it is a Jewish story, why would they want this to happen? It turns out that the killings are being done by a faction of the Christian Church (The Church of the Reborn Jesus) who hold the notion that the Jews have forfeited their role as the chosen people (replacement theology) and by killing the 36 should bring about the Second Coming (something the Jews do not believe).
8710283	/m/027ftz3	Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox	Eoin Colfer	2008-07-16	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Angeline Fowl, Artemis Fowl's mother contracts a debilitating disease, which Artemis can not heal with magic, but tries and makes Angeline's condition worse. Artemis desperately contacts Captain Holly Short and &#8470;1, in hopes that they will be able to shed some new light on his mother's condition. They determine Angeline is suffering from Spelltropy, a fairy disease that is spread through the use of magic, and can only be cured by the brain fluid of the silky sifaka lemur of Madagascar. Unfortunately, the lemur is extinct, due to a ruthless deal Artemis made almost 8 years ago with a group called the Extinctionists. Foaly tells him that his mother will die without the cure. Artemis pleads for &#8470;1 to open up the time stream, allowing him to save the lemur, and thus his mother. Foaly argues against the idea, but due to Artemis' lying to Holly, saying that she infected Angeline with Spelltropy, Holly agrees to help Artemis immediately to make up for it, and Foaly had to give in. They arrive nearly eight years earlier in Artemis' study. The time stream causes Artemis become much hairier while Holly is physically reduced to an adolescent. Artemis assures Holly that the past Butler will quietly slip the lemur into the room (to avoid Angeline seeing it) and that they will simply be able to leave. Butler however, does not act according to Artemis' predictions. He tranquilises the two, and locks them in the trunk of the Fowl Bentley. Artemis and Holly escape with the help of Mulch Diggums, a kleptomaniac dwarf who has partnered up with Artemis in the future. After following his younger self to an animal park to retrieve the lemur, Artemis breaks into the wrong cage and is attacked by a gorilla, and Holly is forced into action. She heals his wounds with magic, and in a giddy haze of relief after realising he almost died, she kisses him. After, they save the lemur from Rathdown Park, but are forced at gunpoint to release it to young Artemis. While hurrying to the shuttleport in Tara, a guilty Artemis confesses his lie to Holly, who is outraged. Artemis redeems himself by giving Holly a chance to talk with Commander Root, who is dead in their time. Holly becomes neutral to Artemis, then thanks him. They commandeer a shuttle and fly it to Morocco, where the younger Artemis will trade the lemur to the Extinctionists for a hundred thousand euros. The money will go to an Arctic expedition, to help Artemis find his missing father. Instead of capturing the lemur, Holly is captured herself, and sold by the younger Artemis to the Extinctionists, who plan to execute her. Older Artemis races to the rescue, but falls in the execution pit himself. There he discovers that the "flames" are holograms, and meets his old nemesis Opal Koboi, who has put the mesmer on the leader of the Extinctionists to help her collect rare species for her research. Artemis escapes, Holly finds him, and they fly back to Fowl Manor to return to the future. However Opal follows them into the time stream, escaping into the future. She takes over Angeline's body and pretends that she was Artemis' mother, but reveals herself when Artemis is about to inject the Spelltropy cure into her system. She also reveals that she caused the resembling symptoms to Spelltropy and made the whole incident herself (she dropped out of the time stream 2 days early and took control). As Koboi gloats, Artemis reveals that he is in fact the Artemis from the past. The older Artemis, returned at the same time, sneaks up to Opal and tranquilises her. Butler was mesmerised by Opal and takes out Holly and &#8470;1. When Butler is ordered by Koboi to take out the younger Artemis, he fights Koboi's mesmer and has a heart attack, but is revived by Artemis with a defibrillator. Opal recovers quickly and flees; however, realising that Artemis and his forces have been significantly weakened in the battle, she returns. Artemis takes "the lemur" and flies away from the Manor grounds in a plane, luring Opal away. In the ensuing chase, Opal exhibits the astonishing strength she has won in her research on endangered animals, pulverising entire sections of the plane with her fists, and eventually forcing Artemis to crash land on the coastline, breaking his collarbone in the process. Artemis escapes from the wreckage of the plane and runs to the shore, ascending a rope bridge and crossing over two large boulders. Opal relentlessly pursues him, eventually obtaining the lemur, only to discover that it's not actually a lemur, but Artemis' little brother's play-thing, Professor Primate. Artemis shoots the boulder which Opal is standing on and reveals it to be the shell of a kraken that was unknown to anyone except Artemis himself. The shell explodes and Opal is buried beneath the rubble. When a Lower Elements Police team search for her, they find she has disappeared. Artemis debriefs the others and finds that his mother knows everything that happened to her. The 10-year-old Artemis has his mind wiped and is sent back in time by &#8470;1, but retains an interest in fairies that will set the events of the series in motion. It is then revealed that in addition to the initial time 'paradox' that occurs when Artemis goes back in time to save the Lemur, another (second) paradox exists, because Artemis' interest in fairies sets of a series of events, which have originated from his initial interest in fairies. In this way, both these events are dependent on each other. The series of events that inspires his interest in fairies is also dependent on the second time paradox, from which the reader concludes that a time paradox is always dependent on another. When everyone is gone, Artemis tells his mother the truth about everything, because Opal forgot to wipe his mother's mind.
8711113	/m/027fvys	Sexy	Joyce Carol Oates	2005-02-15	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sexy follows the character of Darren Flynn, a sixteen-year-old high school student and swim club member that questions his own sense of self and sexuality. When a teacher catches one of Darren's swim team members plagiarizing, that member is thrown off of the team. This prompts several other students to anonymously accuse the teacher of hitting on boys, which ruins the teacher's life. Darren chose not to take part in the accusations but is now torn between his moral objections and his fear of being thought of in the same light.
8713813	/m/027fyqw	The Convenient Marriage	Georgette Heyer	1934	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When the wealthy and eligible Earl of Rule proposes marriage to Elizabeth Winwood, she resigns herself to marrying against her will to rescue the fortunes of her impoverished family. Her youngest sister Horatia decides to take matters into her own hands, meeting with the Earl and convincing him to marry her instead of Elizabeth, thus leaving Elizabeth free to marry her true (but far less eligible) love. Part of the deal she proposes to Rule is that she will not interfere with his activities after their marriage. The wedding takes place and, as tacitly agreed upon, the Earl continues his association with his mistress, Lady Caroline Massey. Horatia quickly becomes a popular and fashionable society wife, spending vast amounts of money on sensational outfits and at gambling on cards. The Earl is also obliged to make regular financial donations to support Horatia's likeable but debt-ridden brother, Pelham. Meanwhile, Horatia meets and befriends Lord Lethbridge, who seeks revenge on the Earl for his role in thwarting Lethbridge's attempts to elope with Lady Louisa (Rule's sister) several years earlier. Lethbridge gains Horatia's favour by staging a hold-up of Horatia's carriage, where he heroically rides up to save her from the highwaymen. The Earl warns Horatia against continuing her friendship with Lethbridge, but when he declines to explain why, Horatia disregards his warning. Horatia, who wants to teach her husband a lesson, goes to a masked ball that the Earl had forbidden her from attending, with Lord Lethbridge as her escort. Having heard that Lethbridge is an excellent card player, she attempts to coerce Lethbridge into playing with her and he eventually relents, proposing that they play for a lock of her hair. Before the game can start, Lord Rule (who has followed Horatia disguised in a domino and mask) steps on Horatia's gown, ripping it. While she is away fixing her dress, he incapacitates Lethbridge and dresses himself in Lethbridge's mask and domino. When Horatia returns she doesn't realise her husband has taken Lethbridge's place and they begin to play cards. Horatia is badly beaten and during the game begins to realise the inappropriateness of her actions. When she gives up the lock of her hair, Rule (masquerading as Lethbridge) steals a kiss. Horatia, furious and indignant, rushes out and bumps into Lady Massey, who happens to be at the same ball. The next day Horatia confesses what happened to Rule because she can't bear for him to hear it from Lady Massey. The Earl explains his ruse and Horatia decides to end her friendship with Lethbridge. Rule, discovering that he has fallen for his own wife, sets out to court her. However, not knowing that the Earl has broken off his relationship with Lady Massey, Horatia is polite but distant. When the Earl leaves town to see to business on his country estate he is disappointed by Horatia's decision to remain in London. Horatia fills her days with entertainments to drown out her feelings of loneliness with her husband away in the country. She attends a ball and upon getting in her carriage to go home, is kidnapped and taken to Lord Lethbridge's house where he intends to ruin her to gain his revenge on Rule. Horatia manages to knock him out and escape but in the process loses a very distinctive brooch from the Earl's heirloom set of jewels. Horatia calls upon her brother Pelham and his friend, Mr Pommeroy, to restore the brooch to her before Rule returns from his estate. They are unsuccessful because Rule's jealous cousin, Mr Drelincourt, has found the brooch at Lethbridge's house and has immediately set forth for Rule's country estate to share this news. Lethbridge overtakes Drelincourt on the road and wrests the brooch from him. Drelincourt continues on his journey anyway and Rule is furious at his cousin's insinuation that Horatia and Lethbridge are having an affair. Rule sets off back to London, meets Lethbridge on the way and the two men have a swordfight, which Rule wins. Meanwhile, Pelham and his posse plan to hold up Lethbridge's carriage and steal back the brooch. However, they get the carriages confused and accidentally hold up Rule's carriage instead (Lethbridge still being in the country, recovering from his wounds). Horatia, learning that Pelham has not recovered her brooch is miserable and anxious because she wants to act on her feelings for her husband, but can't while she still believes Lethbridge has the brooch in his possession. She receives an anonymous note saying that her brooch will be restored to her if she attends Vauxhall pavilion at midnight. Horatia, thinking Lethbridge sent the note, makes the meeting with Pelham and Mr Pommeroy hidden nearby in the bushes. She is surprised when the Earl arrives and returns her brooch to her. He confesses his feelings for her and she affirms that they are reciprocated.
8714792	/m/027fzw9	The Talisman Ring	Georgette Heyer	1936	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0py65": "Historical whodunnit", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On his deathbed, Baron Lavenham arranges a marriage between his great-nephew, Sir Tristram Shield, and his young French granddaughter, Eustacie de Vauban. His grandson and heir, Ludovic, is on the run on the Continent, after allegedly murdering a man in a dispute over a valuable heirloom, the talisman ring. The romantic Eustacie, appalled by her betrothed's phlegmatic character, runs away and soon encounters a smuggler, who turns out to be her cousin Ludovic. The two take refuge at a local inn, after Ludovic is injured escaping from Excisemen. There they encounter an older lady, Miss Sarah Thane, who vows to help them. After finding her bandboxes and meeting the Excisemen following the smugglers on the blood trail from Ludovic's injury, Tristram decides to follow them under the impression that Eustacie encountered trouble from the smugglers. At the hotel, against Sarah Thane's efforts he conducts the excisemen towards Eustacie and Ludovic. Tristram recognizes him, but leads the others to believe that he is one of Lord Sylvester's bastards, much to the former's crossness, to account for the resemblance. When they leave he examines Ludovic's hands and pronounces innocence as the ring is not on them. Together with Sarah Thane, now a loyal accomplice and Eustacie's self-appointed chaperon, they conclude that the murderer is no other than Basil and hatch a plan to break into his home at the Dower House. On the course of the next days Tristram spreads the word that Eustacie ran to meet Sarah Thane whom she knew from Paris to smooth over the ripples of her escape. It is concluded that Eustacie will stay with Sarah, to protect Ludovic, and thus Basil pays her a visit there. During the discussion Eustacie pretends that for architectural reasons Sarah would very much like to visit the Dower House and Basil invites them both there. They go and after a while they are joined by Tristram whom Basil "sends" to show Miss Thane the house around when Eustacie requests that they talk in private. They leave without finding the ring but the butler, having seem them knock on the panels in the house, shares that to Basil who understands at once that they know. Recollecting that his butler has spoken to the Excisemen he asks for the appearance of the "bastard" and realizing who it is calls in the Bow Street Runners. The residents of the Red Lion inn get rid of them after making them believe that Sarah is Ludovic dressed in women's clothes and professing indulgence on their blunder. Basil then lays a trap announcing that he is going to London. Hearing this, Ludovic tries, against all advice to break into the house and escapes later with the help of Tristram, summoned by Miss Thane. Basil next tries to break into the inn and kill Ludovic but is stopped by sir Hugh, and in the struggle, he loses a quizzing glass. The next morning Sir Tristram realizes that the quizzing glass is rather disproportionate and after several tries he finds the ring in the shaft. The next morning he calls the Bow Street Runners and lays a trap for Basil who, while trying to escape, punches Miss Thane on the temple. She wakes up with Tristram is nursing her, and is rather annoyed when he proposes to her in her state, tough she confesses later on "I have been meaning to marry you these ten days and more!”.
8714848	/m/027fzy0	An Infamous Army	Georgette Heyer	1937	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the early summer of 1815, while the Battle of Waterloo is just a threat, Brussels is the most exciting city in Europe and many of the British aristocracy have rented homes there. The novel opens in the home of Lord and Lady Worth, where several of their friends are discussing the precarious situation in Belgium. Everyone is anxious for the Duke of Wellington to arrive from Vienna. When the other guests leave, Lady Worth's brother, Sir Peregrine Taverner, (Perry) expresses his fears about remaining in Brussels, especially since his wife, Harriet is expecting their third child. In the end he decides that if his brother-in-law deems it safe to stay, then it must be safe enough. After he goes, Judith tells her husband about her hopes that Worth's brother, Colonel the Hon. Charles Audley (who is a member of Wellington's staff and is still in Vienna) will fall in love with her new friend, Miss Lucy Devenish. This leads her husband to accuse her of trying to play match maker and remark "I perceive that life in Brussels is going to be even more interesting than I had expected." Amongst the fashionable ton partying in the metropolis, Lady Barbara Childe (the granddaughter of Dominic, Duke of Avon) is making her mark. Lady Barbara, or Bab as she is called my her family and friends, is a young widow of great beauty and charm who can make any man fall in love with her. Her elder brother, the Marquis of Vidal highly disapproves of his sister's flirtations and is annoyed that she has made herself the talk of fashionable society. Furthermore, Bab has taken up with the notorious Belgian Comte de Lavisse. It is the general consensus that Bab is heartless. Bab has another two brothers besides the Marquis, Lord George Alistair, who was said to look and act exactly like his grandfather did in his younger days and Lord Harry Alistair, aged eighteen. Both are serving in the army. After a ball, (where Bab had scandalized Brussels by appearing with painted toenails) her sister-in-law, Lady Vidal, warned Bab that if she or any of her brothers cause a scandal, the Marquis will insist on them all returning to England. To which Lady Barbara responding that she would simply stay in Brussels alone. A few days later, Judith is surprised to walk into her parlour one morning and find that Charles had arrived. The Duke and his staff were finally in Brussels. Later that evening, at another party, Charles sees Barbara for the first time and is enchanted. This dismays Judith as she wanted Charles to fall in love with Lucy and as such she refuses to introduce Charles to her. As a result Charles asks his friend, the young Prince of Orange to make his introduction. Against the advice of their other friends, the Prince agrees, but not before warning Charles that "it is the road to ruin." Charles and Bab dance together twice, leading nearly the whole assembly to whisper about how Bab had seized upon the nicest man in Brussels. A little while later, Charles meets Lucy Devenish looking quite disheveled and upset. He doesn't ask her for any explanation and after he helped her fix herself up, the two become friendly. At the end of the party, Judith is at ease because Charles had admired Lucy and had not said anything about Bab. Worth however feels that Charles is already head over heels in love with Bab. The next day, Charles meets Bab with her notorious Belgian suitor, the Count de Lavisse. Needless to say, the men did not get along. However, Charles seemed to have made an impression on Bab for she confessed to Lady Vidal that she had lost her heart to a younger son. Sometime later, Charles asks Bab to marry him and she accepts, but not before warning him that she would make a terrible wife and that she might change her mind in a week. Charles only laughs and says that he is willing to risk it. Judith is dismayed and cannot understand what Charles sees in the girl. Charles is adamant that Judith will like Barbara once she gets to know her. Meanwhile, Bab is worried that she will change her mind, so she asks Charles to marry her soon. He refuses because he wants her to be certain that she loves him before she marries him. This leads Bab to say that Charles is a much better person then she is. Meanwhile, Barbara's brother George arrives in Brussels. He shows up uninvited to a party given by Lord and Lady Worth, in search of his various siblings. He makes his excuses to Judith and is about to go off in search of Bab, when Judith is surprised to see him staring at Lucy Devenish. Her surprise increases when Lord George excuses himself, saying, "I have seen a lady I know. I must go pay my respects." He promptly goes to Lucy's side and looks teasingly at her downcast face. When Judith questions the two, George explains that they had met several times and that he was worried that Lucy had forgotten him. Lucy looks at him with reproach and says that she did not forget. She then walks away to find her aunt and George goes off to look for Bab. Judith seeks out Lucy to ask her about the strange meeting. Lucy brushes her off and says that she doesn't wish to speak of Lord George Alistair. After the party, George and Bab discuss her engagement, revealing the depth of her feelings for Charles as well as her reasons for being so callous a flirt. She had been married at eighteen to a much older man named Jasper Childe whom she grew to hate, and she swore from then on that no man would possess her ever again. And now, even though she loves Charles, she cannot help rebelling against him. Lady Barbara is determined to make sure that Charles knows how awful she is. He endures much of her flirtations. At one point, it becomes too much. Harriet Tavener, Judith's brother's wife, had snubbed Bab, leading Bab to charm Perry as punishment. Lady Tavener is devastated and Charles takes the matter into his own hands. In a way that reminds Perry unpleasantly of Worth, Charles tells him that he must leave for England at once and be done with such nonsense. Perry agrees with him and immediately makes arrangements to go home, but not before making peace with his wife. This leads to a violent quarrel between Barbara and Charles and their engagement is terminated. After the quarrel, Charles meets Lucy who is extremely upset about something. Charles convinces Lucy to confide in him and she does so. All of Charles friends are distressed at his unhappiness. He had a new hard look and he rarely smiled. He and Lucy have become very close and Bab goes around creating bigger scandals every day. Then, at the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball, comes the news that Napoleon is marching towards the Belgian border. The city soon empties of officers including Charles, George, Harry and nearly every other young man at the ball. The next day, Barbara goes in search of Charles, desperate to make peace with him before the battle, only to learn from Judith Worth that he has gone. When Worth discovers that Barbara's brother, the Marquis of Vidal, has gone back to England, Worth takes Barbara in. Lady Barbara is convinced that Charles has fallen in love with Lucy, until Lucy goes to see Barbara to ask her if she heard anything from her brother George. Lucy then confesses that she and George have been married for nearly a year. The marriage had been kept secret because neither the Duke of Avon (George's grandfather) nor Lucy's uncle Mr. Fisher would have approved of the match. Until now she had confided in no one but Charles who promised to look out for George. By now the wounded are starting to arrive in Brussels from the first skirmishes and Judith and Barbara help to nurse the wounded in the street. As the situation becomes more and more desperate, the two woman become very close, Barbara is finally showing her true inner strength and courage. At the end of the whole thing Judith admits to her husband that she had misjudged both Barbara and Lucy from the start. The entire second half of the book is devoted to a historically accurate, almost minute by minute account of the Battle of Waterloo, one of the most pivotal and bloodiest battles in history. All the historic events are recounted in detail, including the magnificent charge of the Scots Greys and the final turning point where Wellington himself tells the final line of defence, the British First Foot Guards, to "Up Guards and at'em". The Guards rise from behind the slope of a hill and from their extended line pour such a devastating fire upon the attacking French column that the French withdraw in disarray. Seeing this, Colonel Sir John Colborne leads his regiment, the Fighting 52nd, across the battlefield from the right flank and Wellington calls for a general advance of Peregrine Maitland's Grenadier Guards, completing the French rout. During the battle, Charles comes upon Lord Harry Alistair, who is obviously dying. Charles reflects on how he has lost so many friends in one day. While trying to deliver a message from Wellington, Charles is hit by cannon fire. Badly wounded, he is ironically carried off the field by none other than his old rival Lavisse, whose regiment has fled in disarray. Lavisse tells him he will see to the delivery of the message but admits that the honours of the day go to Audley. The Duke and Duchess of Avon arrive in Brussels having heard of all the scandals that their grandchildren have been making. While they are at the Worth's, Charles's servant comes to tell the Earl about his master's condition. Worth goes to find him and bring him to Brussels and he promises Bab that he will bring Charles back safely. When Worth brings Charles back, he is in danger of his life and has had his left arm amputated. The surgeons say that they might have to cut off his leg, but Worth steps in and stops them from doing it. Charles regains lucidity, aided by the ministrations of the Duchess of Avon. Although he is not the carefree young man he once was, Charles proposes once more to Bab, telling her to take out the ring that she had given back to him, "there it stays until I give you another in its place". Bab accepts, promising that she will make him a terrible wife, but she doesn't care. {| class="wikitable" |- !Devil’s Cub !An Infamous Army |- |Dominic Alastair, Marquis of Vidal |Dominic Alastair, Duke of Avon |- |Miss Mary Challoner |Mary (Challoner) Alastair, Duchess of Avon |} {| class="wikitable" |- !Regency Buck !An Infamous Army |- |Julian St John Audley, Earl of Worth |Julian St John Audley, Earl of Worth |- |Miss Judith Taverner |Judith (Taverner) Audley, Countess of Worth |- |Captain the Hon. Charles Audley |Colonel the Hon. Charles Audley |- |Sir Peregrine ("Perry") Taverner |Sir Peregrine ("Perry") Taverner |- |Miss Harriet Fairford |Harriet (Fairford), Lady Taverner |}
8714886	/m/027fz_2	The Spanish Bride	Georgette Heyer	1940	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 After the siege and sack of the Spanish city of Badajoz by British and Portuguese forces in 1812, 14 year old, convent raised orphan, Juana, and her older sister sought sanctuary among officers of the 95th Rifles in the British camp outside the city walls. From the first moment he saw her, Brigade-Major Harry Smith fell deeply in love with Juana. Over all objections from his brother officers, Harry married Juana a few days later. Instead of letting herself be sent home to her husband's family, she chose to accompany Harry with the army. She remained with him throughout the rest of the Peninsular War, accompanying the baggage train, sleeping in the open on the field of battle, riding freely among the troops, and sharing all the privations of campaigning. Her beauty, courage, sound judgment and amiable character endeared her to the officers, including the Duke of Wellington, and she was idolized by the soldiers. After the defeat of Napoleon, Harry took Juana to London and installed her in lodgings. As Harry spoke fluent Spanish he had never bothered to teach Juana to speak English so engaged a tutor for her. Harry had volunteered for service in the United States, where he witnessed the burning of the capitol at Washington. Following the Battle of New Orleans Harry returned to England. In the meantime Harry’s family had visited her in London and persuaded her to come and stay with them in Cambridgeshire. When Napoleon escaped from Elba, Harry returned with his regiment to Europe. Juana insisted on accompanying Harry and was in Belgium during the Battle of Waterloo. Following the battle she insisted on searching the field for her husband’s body when she was told that he had been killed. However the report referred to another officer called Smyth and Juana was finally reunited with the uninjured Harry. The book ends with the pair embracing and Juana saying, “Mi tirano odioso!” (My odious tyrant) Although the book is written as one of Heyer’s Regency novels, she did a great deal of research; reading the diaries of other Peninsular veterans and Harry’s brother officers.
8714973	/m/027f_1v	The Corinthian	Georgette Heyer	1940	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sir Richard Wyndham, an accomplished Corinthian, is being forced into marriage by his family, who want him to have an heir. Depressed by the life laid out before him, he nevertheless agrees to this course. The night before he is to announce his choice he comes across Penelope Creed, a young girl in boys' clothes, hanging helplessly from an upper story window. She is a very wealthy orphan who is running away from her own distasteful marriage plans. The two become allies, leave London in search of Miss Creed's childhood sweetheart, and find themselves in the middle of a dangerous game of mystery, theft, and murder.
8715021	/m/027f_47	Faro's Daughter	Georgette Heyer	1941	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The beautiful but poor Deborah Grantham presides over her aunt's gaming house in Regency London. Here she meets Max Ravenscar who is determined to prevent his young cousin and ward from contracting an inappropriate marriage to Grantham. Incensed by the idea that she would exploit an innocent, Deborah decides to take her revenge on Ravenscar which eventually leads to the pair falling in love.
8715119	/m/027f_7p	The Reluctant Widow	Georgette Heyer	1946	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The heroine, Elinor Rochdale, daughter of a ruined gentleman, accepts the role of a governess to sustain herself. Stepping into the wrong carriage at a Sussex village, Elinor finds herself in the wrong house, required by the sensible, sophisticated Edward Carlyon to marry his profligate cousin, Eustace Cheviot. In a somewhat dazed state, Elinor soon finds herself coerced into becoming the wife of a dying man, the mistress of a ruined estate and a partner in a secret conspiracy to save the family's name in only one night. Following Eustace's death, a sub-plot surrounding Cheviot and information supplied to the French - with whom the country is at war - comes to light and results in some spirited battles between Elinor and Carlyon. Ultimately, the incriminating information is taken back into safe hands and Elinor and Carlyon fall in love.
8715388	/m/027f_k_	Venetia	Georgette Heyer	1958	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The beautiful Venetia Lanyon, thanks to a reclusive and over-protective father, grew up in the country, away from the world with only her younger brother Aubrey, bookish and lamed, for company. Her peace and quiet is one day disturbed by the rakish Lord Damerel, who arrives to spend time at his ancestral home next to the Lanyon's house. At first, she sensibly keeps away from him, but when Lord Damerel finds an injured Aubrey and not only takes him into his home to recover but also treats him with great kindness and strikes up a friendship with the awkward young man, she revises her first opinion of him and they soon become the best of friends. When Venetia and Lord Damerel fall in love, however, Damerel is convinced that marriage with him would cause Venetia's social ruin and insists that it would be wrong to inflict this upon her. When Venetia's older brother's wife and mother-in-law, about whom he had failed to inform the family, descend on the Lanyons, Venetia's domestic situation becomes intolerable and she is invited to stay for a London season with her aunt and uncle as a way to escape the awkwardness and also to find a husband. During this time, she discovers through a chance encounter that the mother she had been led to believe was dead is actually very much alive and had simply left her father for another man when the children were very young. Venetia realises that this is the cause of her relatives' over-protectiveness - they are concerned that she might follow in her mother's footsteps. Venetia, however, still very much loves Damerel and sets about creating her own happy ending, seeking the help of her disgraced and estranged mother to convince both her uncle and Damerel that the marriage should take place.
8715969	/m/027g0c2	The moon riders	Theresa Tomlinson	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This story is about the Moon Riders, known historically as the Amazons. The main character is Myrina, who joins the Amazons in her teenage years and becomes one of the very prestigious moon dancers. Myrina joins the Moon Riders when she is 14. She becomes friend and confidante to Cassandra the prophetic princess of Troy. As the 'Snake Lady' she acquires a gang of four young orphans who travel with her, until all but one have been killed.
8718499	/m/027g4w3	Master Class	Terrence McNally			 At its core is the diva Maria Callas, a glamorous, commanding, larger-than-life, caustic, and surprisingly drop-dead funny pedagogue holding a voice master class. Alternately dismayed and impressed by the students who parade before her, she retreats into recollections about the glories of her own life and career. Included in her musings are her younger years as an ugly duckling, her fierce hatred of her rivals, the unforgiving press that savaged her early performances, her triumphs at La Scala, and her affair with Aristotle Onassis. It culminates into a monologue about sacrifice taken in the name of art.
8719138	/m/027g5ny	Song Quest	Katherine Roberts		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Singer Graia leads a class of final year novices from The Echorium to the beach, on the pretext of searching for the remains of a ship wreck. Kherron runs away from the group, eager to make his own discovery, and happens upon an injured sailor, named Cadzi, in a cave, whome he promises to help in return for a way off the Isle of Echoes. Meanwhile, Rialle, Frenn and Chissar explore the beach together until Rialle begins to feel faint and hear voices; the group quickly return to The Echorium, where First Singer Eliya tells Rialle she can hear the merlee, and asks her to leave with Second Singer Toharo on the Wavesong the next time it sails, to persuade the merlee to give the ship safe passage. While Rialle prepares for the journey, dismayed that Frenn has been taken for orderly training without saying goodbye, Kherron returns to the Echorium to try to warn the Singers about Cadzi's ship, only to storm off when he is ignored. Rialle persuades the merlee to briefly stop the storms they have been creating, allowing both the Wavesong and Cadzi and Kherron's row boat to leave the Isle. Cadzi soon falls asleep, but Kherron finds the mainlander ship he spoke about, and persuades the captain Metz to let them on board. He quickly learns that this vessel is hunting merlee for their eggs, and it put to work extracting the eggs from the dead merlee. Rialle, meanwhile, is delighted to find Frenn has stowed away on the Wavesong, and, although she dislikes sea travel, she enjoys meeting the merlee. Briefly, she swims with the merlee and learns what has upset them: they are being hunted and kidnapped by mainlanders. However, she is soon put in danger as the merlee panic at the sight of the hunting vessel Kherron is on. Rialle is saved from drowning by Singer Toharo, but spends the remainder of the voyage unconscious. Upon arriving in Silvertown, Toharo and Rialle - disguised as an orderly for security - begin to learn that the merlee are being captured on the orders of the Karchlord, a ruler in the mountains, and they must travel there. Kherron, after being attacked by and killing Metz and then discovering the presence of the Wavesong, agrees to travel to the mountains with the hunters, who are Karcholders working for the Karchlord. The Singers first visit Lord Javelly, who is known to be assisting the hunters, where Rialle and Frenn discover quetzal kept in cramped and filthy conditions, a sight which angers Singer Toharo. Rialle is even more appalled when, journeying up into the mountains, she discovers a pool of merlee, frozen to death. Kherron arrives in the Karchlord's palace, where he meets Lazim - Cadzi's son, who begins to explain the Karchhold to him - and Frazhin, the Khizpriest who can force the truth out of someone with a black khiz spear. Frazhin uses the khiz to test if Kherron is a spy. Kherron then sneaks back to the priest's levels to see what happens to the merlee eggs and discovers the priests injecting them with something which they claim is medicine,but which Kherron suspects is poison. Frazhin then asks Kherron to spy on the newly-arrived Singers at a banquet, and he accidentally reveals that Rialle is a Singer. At the banquet, Rialle is shocked to see one of the quetzal from Lord Javelly's palace delivered, to serve the Karchlord as entertainment - quetzal are perfect mimics. That evening, the Singers quickly fall asleep before Singer Toharo can contact the Echorium. Rialle wakes up drugged in a cage, surrounded by quetzal. Frazhin wants to use the quetzal's mimicking power to steal her Songs and use them to attack the Isle of Echoes. Kherron is tasked with caring for Rialle, as he pretends to despise her, but secretly he promises to help her escape. However, he first asks her to heal the Karchlord Azri, who has stopped eating the priest's poison but is still ill. As soon as she tries, the noise of the quetzal summons the priests and the Challa puts the Karchlord to sleep so he cannot help. Frazhin takes Rialle away, but first she tells Kherron what songs will heal Azri. As Rialle is led to the Isle of Echoes, becoming increasingly confused as she is repeatedly drugged, Kherron discovers Frenn, who narrowly escaped the avalanche which killed the rest of the Singer delegation and has been left with one arm and leg paralysed. Although the pair initially argue, Frenn is forced to accept that Kherron is now on his side, and Kherron proceeds to heal Azri as instructed so that he can lead a war party after Frazhin. As the war party travels to the coast, they attempt to release the captive quetzal into the forest, but the quetzal, communicating through a reluctant Kherron, insist on coming with the group to rescue the quetzal still in Frazhin's possession. Rialle wakes up on a boat sailing for the Isle of the Echoes, and asks the merlee to delay their progress with a fog. Frahzin's ships are becalmed, giving Azri's oar-boats time to catch up. A battle begins, and with the help of the merlee and quetzal Azri is soon winning. Frazhin uses his power to push the last remaining boat towards the Isle, and then tries to force Rialle to sing. Fighting against him, she uses Aushan, making it difficult for Azri, Kherron and Frenn to approach and rescue her. When Frazhin's ship begins to sink, he pushes a bound Rialle overboard and tries to escape, only to be attacked viciously by the angry quetzal. Azri, Kherron and Frenn return to the Isle. Azri makes a peace treaty and swears never to hunt half-creatures again, and Kherron - whom Singer Eliya has been keeping track of through farlistening - is made into a Singer and asks to sing therapy to Frenn to show how he has reformed. The day after the Karcholders leave - all except Lazim, who elects to remain on the Isle - Frenn, Kherron and lazim go down to the beach, where they find Rialle being carried to shore by the merlee. Shortly afterwards, Singer Eliya dies of exhaustion after singing Yehn to several war criminals, including Frazhin and Lord Javelly. After the funeral Eliya shares with Singer Toharo, led by the newly appointed First Singer Graia, Kherron finally apologises to Rialle and, as Frenn begins to regain use of his arm, Rialle realises that the wounds they have suffered will heal over time.
8719597	/m/027g66t	December 6	Martin Cruz Smith	2002-09-30	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In late 1941, Harry Niles has many of the same problems in Tokyo as Rick Blaine encounters at the same time in Casablanca. Harry's place, the "Happy Paris", a bar-club for American and European expatriates, newspapermen and diplomats, is in Tokyo's entertainment district and it's only 24 hours or so before Japanese fighters and bombers will hit Pearl Harbor. During that time, Niles has to consult with the local US ambassador, get rid of a passionately dangerous lover, shrug off the brutal attentions of the police, escape the vengeance of an aggrieved samurai officer and take himself off the island, the exit points from which are all tightly stoppered. Fortunately, he has the benefits of a largely unsupervised childhood in Tokyo, is highly fluent in the Japanese language and culture, and is subtle, swift and cunning.
8719688	/m/027g6bl	Cross	James Patterson	2006	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Alex Cross narrates the opening section of the book in flashback from Washington, D.C. in 1993. Pregnant Maria Simpson Cross and Alex live happily together, but mob hitman Michael Sullivan aka The Butcher and his partner Jimmy "Hats" Galati are out to make life miserable for him. While on an errand for boss Dominic Maggione in the Baltimore/Washington area, Sullivan rapes a college teen and participates in the execution of Chinese Jiang An-lo, but is witnessed by Cross and partner John Sampson. After Sullivan pays a frightening visit to Cross at night, Alex loses his wife to gunshots the next night. The action takes in place in D.C. in 2005. Cross prepares to return to private practice, leaving the FBI over the objections of director Ron Burns. At the same time the Butcher has to do a job in Venice for the new boss, Maggione's son, who does not like Sullivan. He realizes that something is strange with his targets. It’s a trap and the couple were sent by Maggione Jr. to kill him. Because of luck and his excellent skills he survives and seeks bloody revenge. He wants to kill Maggione. Both Alex and the Butcher go to work, the former trying to solve a series of rape and murder cases in southeastern D.C., the latter trying to protect his family from the vendetta-wielding John Maggione. But he is not aware that Alex thinks he committed the rapes he's investigating-and killed his wife so many years ago. The Butcher is in Washington, still trying to fend off attacks from Maggione, but Alex is on to him. The Butcher manages to kill John Maggione in a complicated plot, but find Alex and Sampson waiting for him. A shoot-out begins in which Alex is injured and Sullivan killed. Sampson ends the story by confessing a long-kept secret.
8721234	/m/027g7td	Coal Run	Tawni O'Dell	2004-06-17	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In a town haunted by a deadly mine explosion that took the lives of almost half the male population thirty years earlier, the reverberations are still being felt in the current generation of survivors, among them the narrator Ivan Zoschenko, the local deputy and fallen football legend, "the Great Ivan Z," whose father died that day. His pro career sidelined by an injury, Ivan now spends his days dispensing his own unique form of occasionally wise, usually comic, almost always dangerous justice and his nights drowning his regrets and guilt in a bottle. His story takes place during a week's time while Ivan is seemingly preparing for an old teammate's imminent release from prison. In doing so, he introduces a rich cast of characters – his fiercely independent single-mom sister, the long-absent Vietnam vet he idolized as a child, the town's no-nonsense pediatrician who brandishes vaccinations on the doorsteps of neglectful parents like a Wild West sheriff, and the old friend and onetime mirror image of himself who now lives the kind of simple life Ivan both admires and pities. During the events of this week, Ivan confronts his demons and reveals himself to be a man whose conscience is burdened by a long-held and shocking secret involving the ruined life of a young girl that must be finally reckoned with.
8722589	/m/027g9pn	Sister Mine	Tawni O'Dell	2007-03-13	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Shae-Lynn Penrose drives a cab in a town where no one needs a cab—but plenty of people need rides. A former police officer with a closet full of miniskirts, a recklessly sharp tongue, and a tendency to deal with men by either beating them up or taking them to bed, she has spent years carving out a life for herself and her son in Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, the coal-mining town where she grew up. When the younger sister Shae-Lyn thought was dead arrives on her doorstep followed closely by a gun-wielding Russian gangster, a shady New York lawyer, and a desperate Connecticut housewife, Shae-Lynn is forced to grapple with the horrible truth she discovers about the life her sister's been living, and one ominous question: will her return result in a monstrous act of greed, or one of sacrifice? Tawni O'Dell's trademark blend of black humor, tenderness, and keen sense of place is evident once again as Shae-Lynn takes on past demons and all-too-present dangers.
8726481	/m/027ggzb	The Tale of Benjamin Bunny	Beatrix Potter	1904-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Mr. McGregor and his wife leave home in their gig, Benjamin Bunny and his cousin Peter Rabbit venture into Mr. McGregor's garden to retrieve the clothes Peter lost there in The Tale of Peter Rabbit. They find the blue jacket and brown shoes on a scarecrow, but Peter is apprehensive about lingering in the garden because of his previous experience. Benjamin delays their departure by gathering onions, which he wraps in Peter's handkerchief. He then takes a casual stroll around the garden, followed by an increasingly nervous Peter. Rounding a corner, they see a cat and hide under a basket, but the cat then sits on top of the basket for hours, trapping the pair. Benjamin's father enters the garden looking for his son. He drives the cat from the basket and locks her in the greenhouse, then frees Benjamin and Peter, and punishes them for going to Mr. McGregor's garden by whipping them with a switch he had brought. Once home, Peter gives the onions to his mother, who forgives his adventure because he has recovered his jacket and shoes. Following his return, Mr. McGregor is puzzled by the scarecrow's missing clothes and the cat locked in the greenhouse.
8726494	/m/027ggzp	Lady of Quality	Georgette Heyer		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance"}	 The novel is set in Regency England somewhere around 1818, and events are related through third-person narrative. As the story opens, a wealthy, beautiful and intelligent woman named Annis Wychwood reaches the age of majority. Now having greater control over her personal and financial affairs, Annis decides to move to Bath and live alone, to the displeasure of her brother and his family. Several years later, on the way back to Bath after a visit to her childhood home, Annis meets Lucilla Carleton and Ninian Elmore. Lucilla is running away to Bath to avoid her marriage to Ninian, a match that her guardian is very much in favor of, and Ninian is escorting her to ensure her safe arrival. Annis volunteers to chaperone Lucilla and notifies the girl's guardian of her plans. Lucilla's guardian sends a relative, Oliver Carleton, to investigate her new living arrangements. Carleton is a rake&nbsp;– a sexually experienced man who refuses to conform to many of society's guidelines. His biting wit has earned him the label of rudest man in England, but he and Annis soon find mutual enjoyment in lively banter. As Carleton and Annis's friendship develops, they discover deeper feelings for each other. Carleton proposes marriage, but Annis refuses, unwilling to relinquish her independence. Using the excuse that he must find Lucilla a new guardian, Carleton returns to London. Annis's brother, Sir Geoffrey Wychwood, hears rumors of her developing relationship with Carleton and sends his wife and children to Bath to discourage Carleton. Soon after their arrival members of the household contract influenza, and Annis nurses them until she too becomes infected. When Carleton hears that Annis is seriously ill he returns to Bath, arriving on the first day that she is able to get out of bed. Annis agrees to marry Carleton, despite the objections of her brother.
8726555	/m/027gg_q	Lyddie	Katherine Paterson	1991-02	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins as Lyddie and her family are in her house, and a black bear enters through the open door. Lyddie's mother sees this as the end of the world but, it wasn't the bear left with no one harmed. Lyddie's father left for the gold rush, and no one knows if he will return. Lyddie's mother leaves Lyddie and her brother Charles (aka Charlie) to work on the farm. Lyddie is sent to work at a tavern as a housemaid, and Charlie is sent to work at the Baker's mill. At the inn Lyddie is treated almost as a slave. She goes home once during the winter, where she meets a runaway slave. Before she leaves, she lends him the money she and Charlie received for a calf they sold. When she returns to the inn she is fired. Lyddie then works at a textile mill, to earn enough to pay the debt on her family's farm. At the mill, she is taken under the wing by a woman who is involved in the struggle for better conditions at the mill. Although she struggles at first, Lyddie is soon considered the best girl on the floor by her supervisor. In a letter, Charlie tells her how he likes it at the Baker's mill, and how he is considered part of the family, as well as how he is allowed to go to school when work is slack. She receives word that her baby sister has died, and that her mother had been sent to an asylum, where she later dies. Her uncle brings Lyddie's other sister to the boarding house, and she works there at the mill with Lyddie for a while, but is then sent to live with Charlie at the Baker's mill. Luke Stevens proposes to Lyddie, and she refuses. Luke also sent a letter from Ezekial Abernanthy, the slave she met at her house, paying back the money she lent him. Her Uncle eventually sells the farm and she is left with nothing but a chance for college Lyddie decides to sign a petition for better working conditions. When she is let go from the company for 'moral turpitude' (actually, she was only fired because she caught Mr. Marsden trying to rape another worker after hours and Mr.Marsden knew she would've alerted others, causing him to lose his job), she writes a letter to her supervisor, Mr. Marsden. She returns home briefly. Lyddie plans to marry, but chooses instead to go to a college known for accepting women as well as men. Though the novel ends there, Lyddie later appears in Paterson's Jip: His Story.
8726582	/m/027gh0d	Cousin Kate	Georgette Heyer	1968	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kate Malvern is a beautiful orphan who is forced to become a governess when her father dies. However due to her youth and beauty she loses the job and has to go to her old governess' house whilst looking for a new position. Despite the fact that she is a lady she thinks of becoming a lady's dresser or opening her own shop and Sarah Nidd, her governess, decides to take action. She writes to Lady Minerva Broome, Kate's half-aunt, who comes and takes her away to Staplewood. From Aunt Minerva's description, Kate imagines Staplewood to be a warm welcoming home whereas it turns out to be cold and uninviting. Although Aunt Minerva's husband, Sir Timothy, is the very opposite of the lady, he is an invalid and allows Lady Broome to do what she wishes. Soon after arriving in, Kate meets Torquil, the beautiful Broome heir. He is very temperamental and tells Kate how he would love to drown in a lake. Kate soon discovers Aunt Minerva to be controlling even to the point of always having Torquil watched. Everything in Staplewood is very formal, with Sir Timothy in one part of the house and Torquil in another. Soon she begins to notice strange things however. Torquil seems to be afraid of his mother and always does what she tells him. In the middle of a storm one night, Kate awakes and finds her door locked. Then she hears a man scream. When she asks her aunt the next morning Lady Broome is not able to give a satisfactory answer but merely replies she must have heard Torquil who is afraid of storms. Yet, the scream did not sound like Torquil, but rather more like a full grown man. Then Mr Phillip Broome arrives, Sir Timothy's beloved nephew. Yet Aunt Minerva seems to hate him and Torquil, before he comes hates and fears him, but when he sees Phillip is delighted to see him. Phillip immediately seems to take a dislike to Kate, though she does not know why, but after getting to know each other, Kate learns that his only reason for disliking her at first had to do with her Aunt. When Kate doesn't receive any letters from Mrs Nidd she becomes worried. She begins to think that her aunt may have something to do with this, but refuses to think of that for more than a second. Her gratitude make such thoughts terrible. Yet when Mr Nidd, Mrs Nidd's father-in-law, arrives, she finds out that none of her letters have made it and the suspicion once more comes to her mind. She quickly writes a note to Sarah via Mr Nidd, knowing that this time it will arrive. One night Aunt Minerva asks Kate to marry Torquil. Kate is shocked and refuses, but Aunt Minerva tells her to think on it. Kate's suspicions are further stirred up. On the journey home Phillip proposes to Kate, but she at first refuses, saying that it wasn't proper since she had no money, but at Phillip's persistence agrees happily. Yet when they arrive back at Staplewood they find the house in chaos because Aunt Minerva has taken ill. Despite this fact she spends a happier time in the house than with Lady Broome healthy. All too soon Aunt Minerva gets better and once again talks about marriage to Torquil. Kate refuses once more and Lady Broome tells her that it would be payment for all her kindness. Still Kate cannot agree to such a scheme. Therefore Aunt Minerva tells Kate about why she wished her to marry Torquil. After having to give up a fashionable life Lady Broome had become obsessed with the Broomes and was determined that Torquil had an heir, but Torquil is insane. Therefore she is determined Kate marry him and Minerva would shut him up. Kate is horrified and leaves the room. When she hears Mrs Nidd's voice she begs her to take her away. Mrs Nidd tells Kate to compose herself and makes herself familiar with the house. Soon Kate has to tell Lady Broome about her engagement with Phillip, but when she does Aunt Minerva has a terrible reaction. She calls Kate a slut and numerous other things that cause her to sleep terribly that night. The next morning she determines to leave as soon as possible, but before she is able to, she has to tell Torquil that she is leaving. He becomes angry, but does not harm her. Yet later on Lady Broome is found dead, having been strangled by Torquil. Torquil then drowns himself in the lake, like he described to Kate at the beginning. Phillip and Kate are left to deal with the tragedy and although Kate is upset about the death of Torquil, Phillip reasons that he would have had an awful life otherwise and that dying was better for him than living.
8726661	/m/027gh2g	False Colours	Georgette Heyer	1963	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kit Fancot returns home to England from diplomatic service in Vienna to find that his twin brother Evelyn has disappeared. Although this would not normally be a problem, Evelyn is supposed to meet the autocratic grandmother of the lady to whom he has proposed. Kit is obliged to impersonate his brother to save the betrothal. When Evelyn doesn't reappear, Kit has to indefinitely stay in the appearance of Evelyn and decides to retire to his family home in the countryside. Evelyn's chosen lady, Cressy, comes with her grandmother to the Fancot family home however. By careful deduction Cressy is able to work out that Evelyn is actually Kit in disguise, but as they have fallen in love with each other, she helps him with the deception. Eventually Evelyn comes home with a tale of what happened to him. He discloses that he met the lady of his dreams and Kit thinks up of a fantastical idea to make sure that both brothers can get what they wish without any scandal.
8726693	/m/027gh45	The Nonesuch	Georgette Heyer	1962	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sir Waldo Hawkridge, known in London society as 'the Nonesuch' for his sporting abilities and perfect manners, is obliged to go into Yorkshire to inspect a property that he has just inherited. Sir Waldo is a very wealthy and philanthropic man, and intends to renovate the house to turn it into yet another of his charity orphanages. While there, he meets Tiffany Wield, a positively dazzling young heiress who is entirely selfish and possessed of a frightful temper, as well as her far more elegant companion-governess, Ancilla Trent. While Waldo's young cousin, Lord Lindeth, falls in and out of love with the young ladies of the neighborhood, Waldo must convince the practical Miss Trent that it is not above her station as a governess to fall in love with him.
8726723	/m/027gh67	A Civil Contract	Georgette Heyer	1961	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Viscount Lynton comes home to find himself the heir to debts after the death of his father. With a mother and two sisters to support, plus no means of restoring his family's wealth, he is facing disaster. When he visits his soliciter to discuss selling the family home, a marriage of convenience is suggested as an alternative. Though reluctant, Lynton meets with Mr Chawleigh, a common Cit, and with Jenny, his plain and exquisitely shy daughter, and eventually agrees to be married. It is a simple contract; Jenny gains a title and Lynton receives enough money to take care of his family obligations and save his estate. However, he remains in love with Julia Oversley, who is the exact opposite of Jenny. While Julia is ethereally beautiful and elegant, Jenny is plain and dowdy. The marriage is not a very happy one, although Jenny, who has been secretly in love with Lynton for a long time, tries to make his life as comfortable as she can. In turn, Lynton, who is an honorable gentleman, resolves to bury his feelings for Julia and protect his new wife as he launches her into society. His father-in-law, Mr Chawleigh, is well-meaning but lacks the social graces with which Lynton is familiar and thereby makes it difficult for Lynton to forget he is in his debt. The young man often wishes he were free of his obligations to him. A veteran of the Peninsular War (1808–1814), Lynton has followed the exile and return of Napoleon with keen interest. Having read about the forthcoming battle in Belgium, he decides to gamble on the stock exchange. His personal involvement with previous battles lead him to the conviction that Wellington will not lose, so rather than take his father-in-law's advice to sell his funds he gambles on victory. And, as he had foreseen, shares plummet down, only to soar again at the news of Wellington's victory at Waterloo (1815). Lynton has made his fortune, and no longer needs his father in law's financial support. However, Jenny's pregnancy and confinement have brought the two men to a greater understanding of one another. Rather than insult Chawleigh by paying him back, he suggests that the property titles held by Chawleigh be passed on directly to his newborn grandson. Lynton's final act of including Chawleigh as one of the newborn's names, is a mark of respect that delights the older man. In the meantime, Julia has married an older and wealthy suitor, whom she flaunts on a rather nerve-wracking visit to Lynton's. The latter realizes with a guilty feeling that he will probably be much happier and comfortable with devoted Jenny than he would ever have been with beautiful but self-centered and demanding Julia. The novel ends with a scene intended to illustrate the contentment of married family life with a comfortable and supportive woman whom Lynton realises he genuinely loves, albeit a calmer affection than the youthful passion that characterised his feelings for Julia Oversley.
8727187	/m/027ghtv	The Story of the Glittering Plain	William Morris	1891	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book concerns the quest of Hallblithe of the House of the Raven to rescue his fiance the Hostage, who has been kidnapped by pirates, which ultimately takes him to the utopian Land of the Glittering Plain, also known as the Land of the Living Men, whose inhabitants are supposedly immortal.
8728030	/m/027gjvv	Charity Girl	Georgette Heyer	1970	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance"}	 Charity Girl revolves around the character of the wealthy, athletic Viscount Ashley Desford and his mission to save “charity girl” Charity Steane from a life with her uncaring relatives. The novel also takes up the Viscount’s friendship with Henrietta Silverdale, his neighbor and childhood friend. The narrative opens on a conversation between the Viscount and his father, the Earl of Wroxton. Wroxton asks Desford to look into the affairs of his younger brother Simon. Wroxton fears that Simon has fallen into bad company and will destroy his reputation. Desford declines to interfere in Simon's doings, saying that the last person Simon is likely to listen to is his older brother. In the same conversation, Wroxton also reproaches Desford for having failed to marry Henrietta nine years ago. Desford protests that, while he loves Henrietta as a sister, there is no passion between them and that she cared to marry him as little as he cared to marry her. Later in the novel, it emerges that, at that time, Henrietta had begged Desford not to propose marriage to her, even though it was the wish of both their families. When Desford learns that Henrietta is wooed by the wealthy Mr. Cary Nethercott, he visits her and meets the man, whom Desford pronounces appropriate but immensely dull. Later, at a party, Desford meets Charity Steane, who prefers to be called “Cherry.” She is almost nineteen years old, but is basically being used as an unpaid servant by the aunt and cousins with whom she has lived since her father abandoned her and failed to pay the bill at her boarding school. Desford later encounters Charity running away from home and, against his better judgment and the morals of the 19th century that say a man can easily compromise a young unattended woman by being on the road with her, he takes her to her grandfather’s house in London . However, upon arriving in London, it’s apparent that Cherry’s grandfather, Lord Nettlecombe, has left his London home for the season. So Desford takes Cherry to stay with Henrietta and her mother. The plot thickens. When Desford finally tracks Nettlecombe to Bath, Desford finds that the old man has recently married his housekeeper, as a matter of economy. He also shows no interest whatever in his granddaughter's plight and resents the implication that she is in any way his responsibility. Wilfred Steane, Cherry’s father, then shows up after an absence of many years, hoping to blackmail Desford into marrying Cherry on the grounds that he has compromised her reputation. Desford is vigorously defended by his younger brother, Simon, who pretends that Desford is engaged to Henrietta. Cary Nethercott, who had previously shown so much interest in Henrietta, resolves Cherry’s problems by proposing marriage and being accepted. On the last page of the novel, Desford tells Henrietta that he has always loved her and will not break off the engagement that his brother invented for them. Henrietta admits she loves him in return and they become engaged for real. Simon, though, has the last words in the novel: "But if you should get into any more scrapes, Des, just send me word, and I'll post straight back to rescue you!"
8728063	/m/027gjx6	Frederica	Georgette Heyer	1965	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Frederica Merriville has long been in charge of her younger siblings. Since her parents' death, she has taken it upon herself to make sure that her beautiful sister Charis is well married, whilst believing herself to be on the shelf. To further this end, she brings the family from their country home to London and introduces herself to a distant relation, the selfish and indolent Marquis of Alverstoke, asking him to sponsor her sister into "the ton" and the subsequent Season. The Marquis is initially reluctant but agrees to sponsor the Merriville ladies out of mischief, mostly to annoy his sister Louisa who had been demanding similar assistance to launch her own daughter into society. At their combined debut ball, Alverstoke's homely niece is easily outshone by Charis' beauty. The Merrivilles are liked by everyone for their easy and engaging manners and good breeding. Charis is admired by many young men but she falls for the Marquis's slow-witted and handsome cousin Endymion Dauntry. Frederica also acquires her own share of admirers, including (to his own astonishment) Alverstoke himself. Alverstoke is fascinated by her frank and open manners, unlike the society manners of London's fashionable ladies. He is also delighted by the high spirits of the two youngest Merrivilles, her brothers Felix and Jessamy, and comes to like them for their own sakes. He slowly but deeply falls in love with Frederica and is ready to do anything for her sake.
8728221	/m/027gk21	Simon the Coldheart	Georgette Heyer	1925	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05nd8bm": "Medieval romance", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the year 1400 14-year-old Simon the illegitimate son of Geoffrey of Malvallet fends for himself after his mother’s death. He forces himself into the service of Fulk of Montlice – his natural father’s most hated foe. Simon works his way up from Fulk’s Page until he is on equal footing with Montlice’s son & heir, his friend Alan. He meets Geoffrey of Malvallet, the legitimate son of Simon's father. Alan, Geoffrey and Simon become great friends both to each other and to the Prince of Wales (later Henry V). When Simon is sent to Belremy, it seems he is faced with an impossible task. First besieging the city, then by attacking the actual city, Simon is able to take the town, but not the castle, where the regal Lady Margaret resides. On finding out that Alan has been taken prisoner, Simon goes up to the castle himself, and after threatening the lady's life, her cousin Raoul is forced to make a submission. On hearing this, Margaret declares that she will never submit to the English and tries to fling herself on Simon's dagger. Simon is too quick for her though and takes her prisoner. Later Margaret obtains a dagger, but finds herself unable to kill Simon. When Simon is forced to go away for a few days, Margaret takes the opportunity to flee to her friend, only to find that he has too submitted to the English. Margaret is then kidnapped by Raoul. Simon goes to search for her and finds Margaret in the arms of Raoul, struggling wildly. Simon's temper gets the best of him for the first time in his life, and he kills Raoul. Geoffrey, Simon, Margaret and her companion are forced to flee. The men bring them back to Belremy, and out of gratitude, Margaret hands in her submission. Simon tells her that he wants to marry her and she is indignant. However later, when someone is lurking in the bushes, she runs to him as she afraid that he will be killed. Simon, is recalled to the Prince, but Margaret shows him that she wants him to come back. Eventually Simon comes back and Lady Margaret finally agrees to marry him. Beauvallet (1929) follows the adventures of Simon’s Great Great Great Grandson Sir Nicholas Beauvallet. My Lord John (1975) covers much the same period (1393–1413). King’s Henry IV & Henry V (Simon’s friend) also appear in it.
8728498	/m/027gk8m	My Lord John	Georgette Heyer	1975-10	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 John of Lancaster is the son of Henry IV and the favourite brother of Henry V. This book chronicles his life from 1393 through until 1413. Although incomplete (the book is finished where Heyer left it) the Historical Note at the end fills in the gaps. Uses a lot of Middle English language but includes a Glossary for easier reading in the back. Simon the Coldheart (1925) covers much the same period (1400–1418). Kings Henry IV and Henry V also appear in it.
8729337	/m/027glc0	The Conqueror	Georgette Heyer		{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It chronicles the life of William of Normandy (the Conqueror) from his birth in 1028 to his conquest of England in 1066. Born the illegitimate son of Robert, future Duke of Normandy, William has to fight to prove himself in the eyes of his people and the eyes of his enemies. After the fight is won he then has to prove himself to Lady Matilda, daughter of Count Baldwin of Flanders, to win her love.
8729647	/m/027glm8	Royal Escape	Georgette Heyer	1938	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Two years after the execution of his father (Charles I), 21-year-old Charles II and his men fail miserably to free his kingdom from the tyrannical rule of Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester. The King would rather die trying to restore the monarchy, than sit by and watch the power of the English Commonwealth grown under its corrupt leaders. He decides to disguise himself as a peasant and leave England for France so he can free his realm when the right time comes.
8730025	/m/027glz8	Gould's Book of Fish	Richard Flanagan	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gould's Book of Fish is a fictionalised account of the convict William Buelow Gould's life both at Macquarie Harbour and elsewhere during his life in Van Diemen's Land. ===Chapter titles (the twelve fish)=== #The Pot-bellied Seahorse #The Kelpy #The Porcupine Fish #The Stargazer #The Leatherjacket #The Serpent Eel #The Sawtooth Shark #The Striped Cowfish #The Crested Weedfish #The Freshwater Crayfish #The Silver Dory #The Weedy Seadragon
8731305	/m/027gnfc	Neveryóna	Samuel R. Delany	1983	{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Neveryóna (a full-length novel), the sixth and longest tale of the Return to Nevèrÿon series, focuses on fifteen-year-old Pryn, who is extraordinary in this culture because she can read and write. Pryn is the great niece of an unsung genius of Nevèrÿon, a woman who invented both the loom and the spindle. Because she did not have the good fortune also to discover that wool made the best and strongest cloth, however, all the credit for her work tends to be given to other people. Pryn’s travels take her (and the reader) not only to explore the revolutionary forces of Gorgik’s campaign—and some of its internal squabbles—but also through the homes of several wealthy conservatives. In the first half of the novel, Pryn finds herself in Neveryóna, an upper class suburb of Port Kolhari, an uneasy guest in the emotionally embattled gardens of a wealthy merchant woman, Madame Keyne, whom we first met in the third story, “The Tale of Potters and Dragons,” and who is now actively financing a crackpot group of counter rebels who want to put an end to Gorgik’s project. In the second half, once Pryn travels into the south, she is taken up by the powerful Jue Gruten family, who represent the far more lethal and aristocratic forces of the nation who want to end this rebellion. Here the webs of power are almost too complex and wide reaching for Pryn to comprehend, even though she now realizes that one can fight them, a single incident at a time, as she manages to free a single slave from their grip, whom the Earl has tried to use as a scapegoat. But Pryn and the reader now have a far clearer picture of what Gorgik is up against. Between the novel’s first part and its second part, Pryn spends some time with a good-hearted but sadly limited peasant family, who live in the little town of Enoch and who represent the working classes that Gorgik will have to enlist somehow if he is to succeed. (A city name that appears several times throughout Delany’s non-Nevèrÿon work, notably in The Mad Man [1966], "Enoch" is mentioned in Genesis as the first city built by man, specifically by Cain’s son, Adam and Eve’s grandson, after whom it was named. In Delany's work, “Enoch” is never a big city. Rather it is a very old and small city—often much older than it thinks it is—which has forgotten its own historical origins.) These are the people who have the least sense of their own history. Their perfectly sensible wants conspire, nevertheless, to defeat their own best interests, and the only role they can conceive of in which Pryn can stay among them is that of the town prostitute. It is the most devastating section of the novel. An added irony is that this section is written using all the characters from that central myth of romanticism, “Tristan and Isolde” (with Pryn playing the part of Isolde), employing elements from many of the versions, including the story of “Tristan’s Leap,” and the tales of Malot, King Mark, and Bragenge from Wagner, and even the dwarf Frocsin, from Jean Cocteau’s film version from the forties, “The Eternal Return” (1943). In Delany’s version, apathy and despair have replaced passion and romance. Only the power of Pryn’s own imagination gives her a weapon to fight free from the seductions of these simple people’s basic goodness and her own ensnarement in their fundamental hopelessness.
8732542	/m/027gpyk	Bumface	Morris Gleitzman		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Angus wants to be Bumface, a pirate character he has created. Bumface is brave, bold, wild and free. He stars in the stories Angus tells his younger brother and sister. Instead, Angus is just plain tired from having to change his sister Imogen's nappies and scrape food off the walls. He has to look after his siblings while his famous soap opera actress mother works and chases men. His father and stepfathers don't have time to look after their own children. Angus doesn't want to be mum's Mr Dependable or dad's Mr Reliable he just wants to be Angus. In the end, Angus gets his own back.
8733173	/m/027gqny	Christy	Catherine Marshall	1967	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While attending a Christian revival meeting, 19-year-old Christy Huddleson is fascinated when she listens to the founder of an Appalachian mission program as he describes the work his group is doing and the needs of the Cutter Gap community. Christy, the daughter of a well-to-do family in Asheville, North Carolina, finds herself drawn to the idea of volunteering for the mission to be a teacher to the needy Cutter Gap students. Her parents are initially reluctant, but she persists and soon makes the trip to the remote area. From her first day in the Appalachians, she is challenged by the filthy conditions and primitive folk medicine beliefs of the mountain people, but her mentor at the mission, a Quaker named Alice Henderson, encourages her to notice also the beauty in the community and people, and to help preserve the best of the Appalachians in ways that will help the locals to become self-sustaining. Christy and her co-worker, minister David Grantland, attempt to educate local students and to teach their neighbors an alternative to the family feuding and cycle of revenge that have been a tradition for decades. Local physician Neill MacNeill is an agnostic who grew up in the mountains and who seeks to make Christy more sympathetic to locals' concerns and traditions. Plot threads include Christy's experiences in the school house and her burgeoning friendships with local women, David's challenges in reaching a community that views him as an interfering outsider, family feuds, moonshiners who use schoolchildren as their assistants, and questions of faith. As Christy becomes better acquainted with MacNeill and Miss Alice, she discovers that the physician's late wife was Miss Alice's daughter (conceived when a predatory visiting minister raped Alice as a teen), and that the physician's agnosticism was partly a reaction to the apparent injustice of his wife's death. Christy's faith is tried by these and other revelations, at the same time that she is romantically drawn both to the minister and the physician. The fictional village of Cutter Gap is based on a community centered on Morgan Branch, near Del Rio, Tennessee in Cocke County, Tennessee. Local landmarks associated with the story are marked for visitors, including the site of the Ebenezer Mission in the smaller nearby community of Chapel Hollow. At a women's society meeting where Christy was giving a talk regarding the plight of those living in Cutter Gap, a woman shares with her information regarding the Danish folk schools established by Grundtvig, in which adults learned to use traditional folkways and crafts to become self-sustaining. A wholly fictional MacNeill performs trepanation on an accident victim and studies trachoma in the local population. Several characters also suffer from typhoid fever, and the educated characters in the book set out to teach better hygiene to the local population in order to prevent the disease. MacNeill also lectures Christy on the origins of moonshining and the reasons why many locals &mdash; including MacNeill &mdash; consider its prohibition to be an unfair block to their earning money from their crops. Christy eventually marries the physician. Catherine Marshall, the widow of Dr. Peter Marshall when she wrote the book, following up on her best seller "A Man Called Peter," has been quoted as saying the book was about 75% percent historical, although the main characters (the physician) and mountain woman descended from ancient royalty, are fictionalized. While in the book it is implied she ends up with the doctor, the real "Christy," Catherine Marshall's mother, married a minister.
8733182	/m/027gqp8	The Entropy Effect	Vonda McIntyre	1981-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Enterprise is engaged in an unprecedented scientific study of a naked singularity primarily by Spock's efforts, when a top priority message forces Captain Kirk to divert to Aleph Prime, a mining colony in a nearby system. The interruption ruins the observation cycle, making the time a complete waste of effort. Upon arrival, the high priority of the message seems to have been a mistake: the Enterprise was needed simply to ferry a single criminal to Rehabilitation Colony Seven, in the same system. The criminal turns out to be a theoretical physicist, Dr. Georges Mordreaux, convicted of murder and unethical research on self-aware beings. Spock thinks he would yield insights on the phenomenon he'd been researching - namely that for some unknown reason, the increase of entropy has begun to accelerate. This effect would cause precarious ecosystems to collapse and unstable stars to go nova within two decades, and result in the end of the Universe in less than eight more. But the case against Mordreaux seems very odd, with incomplete evidence, and Spock disbelieves that Mordreaux could be capable of the violence inherent in the crime. Prosecutor Braithewaite accompanies them on the journey, convinced that Mordeaux is dangerous. He also has a nagging feeling he's seen Spock before, though Spock is certain they've never met. While at the planet, Hikaru Sulu meets up with his idol, Captain Hunter, who commands Aerfen, the fighter ship that had been his first choice for assignment. As Kirk and Hunter are friends, he manages to arrange a transfer, leaving his friend and lover Security Chief Flynn behind. Meanwhile, Spock attempts to interrogate the Aleph Prime computers to obtain information on Mordreaux's case, only to discover the records apparently no longer exist - and he later ascertains that this is due to a virus which has also infected the Enterprises computers, the library computer alone being unaffected owing to its protected status. The purpose of the virus is to remove all trace or mention of Dr. Mordreaux from all Federation records. Clearly the virus was written by an expert, as Spock (who is, of course, one of Starfleet's top computer scientists) only discovers it after it has done its work on the Enterprise. While en route, odd things continue to happen, such as Scotty seeing Spock appear in two places at the same time. Suddenly, a disheveled Mordreaux appears on the bridge and shoots Kirk and Flynn with an old-fashioned slug-throwing gun. The slugs, however, contain a neurophilic metallo-organic substance, colloquially termed 'spiderweb', that seeks out and strangles nerve fibers, and are thus extremely deadly, generally used only in the rare outbursts of terrorism in the Federation. Flynn alerts security before she succumbs, but Mordreaux is still confined to his quarters. Kirk is rushed to sickbay where Doctor McCoy struggles to save him, but he dies while Spock is mind-melded to him. The drugged Braithewaite later sees the two terminate the life support that was maintaining Kirk's brain-dead body. As Braithewaite begins to put together facts to form a working theory of conspiracy, Spock determines from their incarcerated physicist that he has, in fact, developed a time travel device using the transporter. Since Kirk's death was committed through time travel, Spock modifies the Enterprise transporter to try to save Kirk, which results in Scotty's earlier observations. Spock then tries to go farther and farther back in time, to stop the damage to the timeline before it starts, only to be thwarted again and again by the inexorable tendency of the universe to follow the same paths as before. Spock, already haggard from weeks of continuous scientific observation, is pushed to the limits of endurance by the stresses of time travel. In the present, the Enterprise falters from the power drain required by the time travel device. As Scotty struggles to brings systems back online, he is compelled by Braithewaite's evidence that some kind of mischief is afoot. However, McCoy tries to divert attention, to give Spock enough time to accomplish his plans. Spock discovers that the Mordreaux that murdered Kirk is from a timeline in which he and Kirk had successfully defended Mordreaux against the earlier charges; at some unspecified time after this, Mordreaux lost his sanity, decided it would have been better if he had been sentenced to rehabilitation, and returned to take revenge on those he blamed for his persecution. It was only some years afterward, when he managed to regain his sanity, that he realised the entropy effect himself, and began working to undo the damage he had caused; the naked singularity was merely one of the first physical manifestations of this damage. Mordreauxs from other timelines had attempted to go back in time to persuade earlier versions not to attempt time travel, but just like Spock, they had all failed - and, in fact, exacerbated the problem by further eroding the already-fragile timeline. During one of these trips, Spock encounters the younger Braithewaite, explaining why the lawyer found him familiar. Ultimately, it is Mordreaux who convinces himself to halt the research. A version of the physicist from a period where the fabric of reality is being torn asunder jumps back to join Spock as he confronts the younger Mordreaux, at a time just before he sends his friends back in time (which act will cause the naked singularity and the acceleration of entropy increase). The strain of so many travels is too much for his body and it disintegrates. The sudden realization by the younger scientist that he'd rather die than face the consequences lead him to destroy his device and his research. Spock returns to the "present" of the restored timeline to find that all is well, but that he has the memories of both versions of reality. It might be theorised that this is because Braithwaite activates the auxiliary time-changer unit installed in the transporter console, thus pulling the 'original' version of Spock into the 'new' timeline before the 'original' timeline ceases to exist. Needless to say, Spock decides not to reveal any of this, citing merely 'unpredictable events' as explanation for various anomalies, such as his being out of uniform (as a disguise of sorts for his trip back to Aleph Prime, as he did not wish to be identified as a Starfleet officer by any Aleph citizen who might see him) or the partly healed bullet graze inflicted by the future Mordreaux. He informs Kirk that the singularity is in the process of forming an event horizon and becoming a Hawking black hole prior to its self-destruction; in the alternate reality which is now his reality, Spock's observations made it clear from the beginning that the singularity would shortly destroy itself, though he was unable to deduce its cause. The novel ends with the Enterprise leaving the vicinity of the singularity, with Sulu about to be granted a field promotion to Lt. Commander, Kirk having realised that it may be the only way to persuade Sulu not to transfer.
8734771	/m/027gsxg	Mockingbird	Walter Tevis	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A central character is the dean of New York University, Spofforth, an android who has lived for centuries yet yearns to die. The novel opens with his failed attempt at suicide. Spofforth brings a teacher, Paul Bentley, to New York. Bentley has taught himself to read after a Rosetta Stone–like discovery of a film with words matching those in a children's primer. Bentley says he could teach others to read, but Spofforth instead gives him a job of decoding the written titles in ancient silent films. At a zoo, Bentley meets Mary Lou, explains the concept of reading to her, and the two embark on a path toward literacy. Spofforth responds by sending Bentley to prison for the crime of reading, and takes Mary Lou as an unwilling housemate. The novel then follows Bentley's journey of discovery after his escape from prison, culminating in his eventual reunion with Mary Lou and their assistance with Spofforth's suicide.
8740730	/m/027h12l	Majo no Takkyūbin	Eiko Kadono	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book follows Kiki, a young witch. Her mother is also a witch, but her father is not. Kiki is now thirteen and must spend a year on her own in a town without other witches. She must use her magic abilities to earn her living. She is accompanied by her cat Jiji.
8741913	/m/027h23n	Border Princes				 October, 8:00 pm. Torchwood responds to an alien energy spike in the heart of Cardiff; Tosh has been tracking the energy signature for some time, but it has abruptly escalated into what team member James Mayer calls the End of the World, or a 26 on a scale of 1 to 10. People are stumbling through the streets near the river, speaking of abstract numbers and shining blue lights, spouting out stream-of-consciousness ramblings, and chanting "big big big." A young man named Huw dies of a seizure before Tosh's eyes, coughing out a puff of foul-smelling smoke. A tramp named John Norris tells Tosh that Huw lost the Amok, and then attacks her, claiming that it's his turn. Tosh fights him off, but is attacked by a burly man who also claims that it's his turn. Her fellow team members subdue her attacker, and Jack sorts through the tramp's rubbish collection and finds a geometric solid with too many dimensions to count. He manages to shake off the device's influence, but then finds himself and his team surrounded by a mob of men, women, and children, all demanding their turn. The Torchwood team rush the Amok back to the containment box in their SUV, tossing it from person to person like a relay so that no one team member is exposed to it for too long. Just as James reaches the SUV, however, he is struck by a police car speeding to investigate the disturbance. Young PC Peter Picknall falls under the Amok's influence when he emerges from his car to check on James, but Owen overpowers him—only to fall under its influence himself. When James tries to take the Amok from him, Owen points his gun at James, claiming that it's his turn. Meanwhile, the milling mob has nearly pushed Gwen into the river, and as Jack pulls her back to safety, they feel the Amok's influence cut out. By the time they reach the SUV, James has overpowered Owen and sealed the Amok in the containment box. The rest of the mob also returns to normal, dazed and unsure what's just happened to them. Shiznay Uhma, a waitress at the Mughal Dynasty restaurant, has been developing a crush on her regular customer Mr Dine, although she can tell that there's something odd about him. Tonight, he suddenly stands up before his dinner is served, claiming that he's received a call to protect the Principal. Shiznay's father tries to stop him from leaving before he's paid, and Mr Dine flings him out of the way with a gesture and leaves the restaurant. Shiznay follows him outside, but there's no sign of him when she emerges from the restaurant—but for a blur of movement an impossible distance away, which must surely have been her imagination... Mr Dine eventually dismisses the call as a false alarm, but he's expended too much energy investigating and must crash in the alley behind the restaurant to regain his strength. When Shiznay finds him there later, he apologises for harming her father, and repays his debt by handing over 18 perfect diamonds that he claims to have created by compressing the graphite in a pencil stub. Aware that he will no longer be welcome at the restaurant, he tells Shiznay to close her eyes; when she opens them again, he's disappeared, but she nevertheless tells the absent Mr Dine to return any time he wants. Back at the Hub, Jack tears a strip off his team for their failure to protect now-traumatised innocent bystanders from the Amok. Gwen insists that they all did their best and storms out angrily on Jack, unaware that he's taking out his frustrations over something else. A device that he was given when he first joined Torchwood activated itself about six weeks ago, and he still has no idea what it's telling him. Meanwhile, Owen declares the rest of the team medically fit, though still dazed by their exposure to the Amok; for his part, he can't even remember how James overpowered him. As the puzzled Ianto disposes of Owen's ruined gun, James invites his friends round to his flat for a marathon video session of the lost season of Andy Pinkus, Rhamphorhynchus. Gwen would love to spend more time with James, but she begs off, as she and Rhys already have plans to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3. But when she gets home, she brushes off Rhys' questions about why she's late and bruised, and he angrily accuses her of using her work as an excuse to stop talking to him. The argument develops into a blazing row, and Gwen storms out on him—and ends up at James' flat, where they fall into each other's arms. Elsewhere in the city, an elderly war vet, Davey "Taff" Morgan, has unearthed something odd from the abandoned plot next to his vegetable allotment. He's been keeping it in his shed while he decides what to do with it, and he eventually decides to take it back to his house. On the way, he is taunted and bullied by a group of young hooligans. That night, he dreams about the war, and then has even worse nightmares about stick figures stalking the landscape of a far more terrible conflict. When he wakes, he realises that he was sharing the dreams of the thing from the shed, and as they're too much for him to handle, he apologises to the thing and wheels it back to the shed. He stops off at the library for a book on modern art before he returns home; the youths are waiting for him again, but he drives them off with a bayonet that he kept from the War. Once he's alone, he looks through the book and confirms his impression that the figures in his dream reminded him of an exhibition his wife had taken him to in 1969—an exhibition of articulated humanoid figures sculpted from metal wire. Toshiko seals the Amok behind a physical firewall of force fields, but she and Owen are still suffering from mild headaches due to its influence. James quietly returns Gwen's MP3 player, which she forgot in his flat, and tells her that he's loaded his favourite pop songs onto it. Jack apologises to his team for dressing them down more harshly than he'd intended; he too must have been affected by the Amok, which he's realised is a multi-dimensional alien mind game like a word search or a sudoku. It's a mild diversion for those who created it, but is too complex for the human mind to handle. The team is then called out to deal with a Droon infestation; these migratory alien insects usually pass as nothing worse than a mild cold, but this time they're about to hatch inside the bodies of an elderly couple, the Peeters. Torchwood gets in, zaps the Peeters unconscious with infrasonic paddles, and extracts the alien pupae from their sinus cavities before the pupae can hatch into lethal insects. Mission accomplished, they then provide the Peeters with hydrating drinks that contain a low-level dose of the Torchwood amnesia drug. Gwen points out to Jack that his team dealt with the problem quickly and efficiently, but he still doesn't tell her why he's been so uptight lately, repeating only that he has secrets he will only divulge if he feels she needs to know them. That night, Tosh and Owen notice that Gwen and James are going "home" together, but don't call attention to it. Gwen's relationship with James is becoming serious, and she realises that she'll have to break up with Rhys if she intends it to continue; however, she doesn't know to do so without hurting him. The next day, she pops back home to pick up some of her belongings while Rhys is out, but he's taken the day off for a dentist's appointment and returns unexpectedly. She insists that she's not leaving him and that she just needs some time alone to think, but the confrontation upsets her. James, waiting for her outside, tells her that he's willing to give her all the time she needs to make up her mind—but that she's going to have to deal with Rhys sooner or later. Tosh arrives at work late with a mild headache, and discovers that the Amok, which still wants to play, is trying to break out of its force-field cage. However, she has to put this aside for later when Jack asks her to help with another problem: the church of St-Mary's-in-the-Dust has reappeared in Butetown, the heart of old industrial Cardiff. The church was demolished in 1840, but has periodically reappeared ever since. Jack always meant to find out why, and now the opportunity has arisen—oddly, since its next appearance wasn't due until 2011. Gwen and James arrive later and follow Jack and Tosh out to the site, but find no sign of the church—or of Jack and Tosh. After searching fruitlessly for half an hour, Gwen finally manages to get through to Jack on her cell phone—and discovers that he and Tosh are standing in the same place as her, albeit in front of the church. Back at the Hub, Owen stumbles in late with a splitting headache, having woken to find that he'd written "big big big" in lipstick on his bathroom mirror. Somewhat dazed, he sits down at Tosh's workstation instead of his own, and before Ianto realises what he's doing, Owen has lowered the physical firewalls around the Amok. Out in Butetown, Gwen and James feel the Amok beginning to tug at their minds again—and Jack and Tosh retreat into the church, sensing something malignant approaching from outside. As something large and terrible approaches the church and begins to draw the life out of Jack and Tosh's bodies, Jack begins to panic and tells Gwen to take care of Torchwood when he's gone. He stumbles over his words while speaking to her, however, and she realises that he too is being affected by the Amok; she thus urges him to give in to the pull and let it draw him and Tosh back to the real world. They do so, escaping from the terrible thing that's waiting for them outside the church—something Jack never wants to speak about ever again. However, once he and Tosh are back in reality, the influence of the Amok becomes too much and he and Tosh collapse alongside the convulsing James and Gwen. Mr Dine feels the call once again, but the activation protocols are contradictory, as if he's being called to answer two threats at once. Confused, he steps out into the street and is struck by a van; he survives without a scratch, but the van is totalled. Mr Dine pushes his way through the gawking crowd at top speed, and decides to deal with the closest threat, which is located beneath the water tower in Roald Dahl Plass. He locates the invisible lift, enters the Hub, and finds Owen and Ianto lying unconscious near the Amok. Mr Dine identifies himself as one of the First Senior and plays one round of the Amok's game with it; however, it demands more, and when it tries to force itself through his mental barriers, he grabs it and crushes it in his bare hands. Owen recovers briefly once the Amok has been destroyed, but Mr Dine orders him to forget what he's seen, and Owen is too weak to argue. The others return to the Hub, where Owen declares everyone ill but fit to return to work. Jack, shaken by his experiences in the pocket of reality, thanks Gwen for keeping it together and apologises, sincerely this time, for his outburst the last time they encountered the Amok. Obviously, it was much stronger than they'd imagined at the time—which raises the question, why did it release its grip on their minds, and what happened to it? The Hub's security systems are showing some suspicious blanks, which might have been caused by the Amok—or by something else that got into the Hub and destroyed the Amok. Acknowledging that he won't be around all the time, Jack finally shows the others the device that's been causing him such worry recently. It was handed down from family to family in the Cardiff area until 1899, when Colonel Cosley of Cosley Hall passed it on to Torchwood. According to the records, it's meant to warn mankind of some terrible threat—and six weeks ago, it became active. Either something is on its way, or it's already here and they don't know what it is. The effects of the Amok seem to wear off by the next day, although James has been having odd dreams and at one point thinks he sees his eyes change colour. It's a quiet day, so Jack assigns Gwen to catch up on paperwork, turning down her request to visit Cosley Hall on the grounds that he's already investigated it and found nothing odd. Tosh then finds that there have been a number of police complaints about an odd door-to-door salesman; the home-owners who have encountered him are unable to describe him afterwards, but once he's gone, they find that they've forked over large amounts of cash for loft insulation and double-glazing that they don't need. Jack reasons that whatever the man is using must have a low range in order for it to slip under Torchwood's radar, which implies that the man must superficially resemble a real salesman in order for him to get close enough to his victims. He and James head out to the area in question to investigate, and spot a suspicious character who flees when they try to confront him. James somehow manages to catch up with the suspect despite the man's thirty-yard lead, but the man turns out to be a would-be burglar who was pretending to conduct customer surveys in order to case the houses on the street. Two other men flee when confronted, but the second man is a window cleaner who's been having an affair with a housewife, and the third is a Jehovah's Witness who fears that he's going to be mugged. Frustrated, Jack and James return to Torchwood and call it a night. Gwen has been staying at James' flat for six days now, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that she'll have to have a talk with Rhys. She asks James where their relationship is going, telling him that she doesn't want to hurt Rhys unnecessarily—but that she will if she knows this is more than just a casual fling. James admits that he's fallen in love with her, and they return to his flat and make love. All seems well with the world, but that night, James has another weird dream about running away from a castle across an impossibly long bridge while being pursued by two shadowy figures that he can't outrun... The next day, Gwen accompanies James and Jack on their stakeout, and when she suggests buying an ice-cream from a passing van, it occurs to Jack to wonder why an ice-cream van is driving around on a chilly day when the neighbourhood children are in school. They investigate, and Gwen catches the van's driver, a young con man named Dean Simms, using the weird thing in his briefcase to hypnotise an unfortunate housewife. Gwen confronts Dean before he can start his sales pitch, but he uses the thing on her, and she forgets what she was doing and wanders off. Dean tries the same trick on James, and flees in panic when it doesn't work. James and Jack pursue Dean to a mini-mart, but Dean manages to use the thing on Jack, who also forgets what he's doing. James blocks the mini-mart's exit, and the desperate Dean pushes a heavy trolley laden with beer crates at him. James angrily flings the trolley the length of the store and tackles Dean, knocking him out and seizing the weird organic alien bladder that he's been using to hypnotise people. When Gwen finally arrives at the store and sees the broken trolley, James claims that it fell over of its own accord—but privately, he's scared. Owen has already tried and failed to get through to Jack during the chase, and once Dean has been subdued, Jack answers the call and learns that Tosh has picked up an alien energy transmission from elsewhere in Cardiff. Owen and Tosh trace the signal to Davey Morgan's house, and the old vet assumes that they've come from the Ministry of Defence in answer to his call. He believes that the thing he found in the allotments is a smart weapon designed by the military, and he feels a bond with it, as they're both old soldiers with terrible memories of war. But last night, the young hooligans who have been bullying Davey tried to vandalise his shed—and when he arrived the next morning, he found bits and pieces of their bodies scattered over the allotment. Davey has taken the thing back to his house while he tries to figure out what to do, but when Owen confronts it, the thing perceives him as a threat. Jack, Gwen and James arrive just in time to see a massive explosion take out the front of Davey Morgan's house—and elsewhere, Mr Dine receives another activation signal... Owen, Tosh and Davey manage to duck out of the way of the blast, and when Jack arrives, he's horrified to recognise their attacker as a Melkene Serial G soldier robot. Faced with defeat in a long and vicious war, the desperate Melkene panicked and created a line of warrior robots with no mercy, psychotic killers willing to commit any atrocity in order to win. After the war, the shamed Melkene tried to recall the line, and were extinct within six weeks. Jack orders Tosh to have Ianto fetch Catalogue Item 981 from the Archive while he and the others try to keep the Serial G contained; however, the robot is far too powerful for them to handle. James tries to distract the robot to prevent it from going after Jack, and ends up running for his life—so fast that he later realises he's somehow scaled a seven-foot-high wall without noticing. Just as the Serial G is about to catch him, however, it recoils as if something is giving it the beating of its life. Something is: Mr Dine, who is now in full combat mode and has become a thorn-covered, grey humanoid figure. At first, the somewhat unworldly Davey Morgan is the only one who can see the creature attacking the Serial G, but as Mr Dine expends more energy, he becomes visible to all those watching the fight. Eventually, Mr Dine manages to rip out the Serial G's CPU, and the robot's mini-reactor power source promptly explodes, taking out the house they've just crashed into and seriously injuring Mr Dine. Jack offers to help, but Mr Dine refuses, claiming that such contact is not permitted. Instead, he flees back to the familiar Mughal Dynasty restaurant and crashes in the pantry. Shiznay finds him there, and, realising that Mr Dine is badly injured and needs to rest, she sneaks him into her brother Kamil's bedroom while Kamil is out of town visiting friends. Later, she secretly brings him dinner, but finds someone else in the room—a stranger named Mr Lowe. Mr Dine stops Mr Lowe from harming Shiznay, and instead tells her to forget that any of this has happened, which she immediately does. Mr Lowe then informs the recovering Mr Dine that he's been inserted to provide Mr Dine with support, but Mr Dine realises that Mr Lowe hasn't been here long enough to appreciate the subtleties of human culture... While James recovers from his surprisingly superficial injuries in Torchwood's care room, Jack conducts a post-mortem of the incident. The device that he was so worried about is still active, which means that even the Serial G wasn't the threat it's warning them about. Perhaps the real threat is whatever managed to take down a Serial G with its bare hands. Gwen points out that since the device's condition has changed, then maybe conditions have also changed up at Cosley Hall; Jack concedes that this is a good point, and Gwen and Tosh set off to the Hall to look for clues. The Hall's curator, Mr Beaven, is pleased that they've taken an interest in the historical site, and tells them that its last owner, Colonel Joseph Penington Cosley, regarded himself as a border prince, a guardian of the threshold between two lands. There is no evidence of alien influence at the Hall, but Mr Beaven gives Gwen contact information for Brian Brady, a student from Manchester who's been studying Colonel Cosley's personal papers and diaries. James recovers quickly from his encounter with the Serial G—perhaps too quickly. Still haunted by dreams of being chased away from a castle, and convinced that he somehow jumped over a seven-foot-high wall and threw a fifty-kilogram shopping cart the length of a mini-mart, James privately asks Owen to conduct thorough tests to determine whether something is wrong with him. Owen does so, and confirms that James is thoroughly human; presumably, he was just imagining things in the heat of the moment. As the relieved James departs, Jack confronts Owen and admits that he too has noticed something odd going on with James. Meanwhile, James and Gwen return to James' flat and spend an enjoyable evening watching a romantic comedy called Sisters in Law, starring Glenn Robbins—the actress from James' favourite TV show, Eternity Base. Gwen is planning to break up with Rhys on the weekend, but Jack then calls her, telling her that the tile device has started to flash in a different pattern; he still doesn't know what it means, but he wants his team on full alert. Worried, Gwen postpones her discussion with Rhys, contacts Brian Brady and arranges to visit him in Manchester tomorrow to discuss the life of Colonel Cosley. That night, James sees two shadowy figures watching the flat, and when he confronts them, they tell him that he is acting against the Principal's best interests. They refuse to explain further, and James then finds himself waking up back in the flat with no memory of the encounter. The next morning, Gwen sets off for Manchester by train, while James goes shopping, intending to cook a sumptuous dinner for himself and Gwen. However, he begins to feel oddly disconnected, as if his body is not his own, and as he begins to lose track of what he's doing in the shopping centre, he realises that two men are following them—and remembers encountering them outside his flat last night. James flees from the shopping mall in a panic, smashing straight through the reinforced plate-glass windows at the entrance and crossing the busy road by leaping from roof to roof of the speeding cars. Mr Dine and Mr Lowe give chase, but while Mr Dine has some care for the people in his path, Mr Lowe simply shoves them aside so hard that some will require medical attention. James manages to shake off his pursuers by clinging to the side of a bus so hard that he leaves deep impressions in its metal side, and, panic-stricken, he calls his friends at Torchwood for help. Jack, Owen, Tosh and Ianto have been discussing James, and have realised that they have a problem. Jack has checked the CCTV footage from the mini-mart, and has confirmed that James somehow threw a heavy trolley an impossible distance across the store. Ianto has examined Owen's gun, which was ruined when James somehow overpowered him during the capture of the Amok, and has found James' fingerprints embedded in the crushed metal. Worried, Jack calls Gwen, who has been spending her trip to Manchester listening to James' songs on her MP3 player, reading a magazine article about Glenn Robbins and Eternity Base, and watching a child playing with his Andy Pinkus toy. As she nears Manchester, however, she begins to feel strange, and is overwhelmed by a sense of loss and grief. She doesn't understand where this has come from, why her MP3 player is full of songs she doesn't like, why she's been reading a magazine article about Jolene Blaylock and Star Trek: Enterprise, or why she's been watching a child playing with his SpongeBob SquarePants toy. And when Jack contacts her to say that they need to talk about James, she has no idea who he's talking about. The terrified James contacts Torchwood, and his friends rush to help him. Mr Dine and Mr Lowe have tracked him down, and they inform him that his investment has been compromised, putting the Principal at risk; his self-protection protocols have been damaged, and his base consciousness has not uploaded, as evidenced by the fact that he has no idea what they're talking about. Panic-stricken, he tries to flee, but they transform into their sleek, grey combat forms and chase him through the streets, just as they have done in his dreams. Jack, Tosh and Owen arrive on the scene, and Jack fires his Webley revolver at the two figures to attract their attention; he then lowers it, explaining that he just wants to talk. Mr Dine convinces Mr Lowe to wait while he explains the situation; unlike his new partner, Mr Dine has been here long enough to appreciate the nuances of human society, and he thus agrees to sit down with Jack and tell him everything. Gwen returns to the Hub, shaken to realise that she forgot all about James once she got more than 100 miles away from him—because the camouflage effect doesn't extend that far. Jack explains to the shocked James that, although his body is genuinely human, his memories are false; his identity was constructed to house the consciousness of the Principal of the First Senior. The Rift borders on a number of worlds besides Earth, and the First Senior are the alien equivalent of Torchwood, the border princes who guard the Rift on their world. Every so often, the heirs to the throne are sent through the Rift to immerse themselves in the cultures of the border worlds in order to better understand the things that might fall through the Rift. The false identity of James Mayer contains buried protocols intended to trigger superhuman strength and speed whenever he finds himself in danger—but his identity protocols have somehow been damaged, and his true identity, which should have resurfaced by now, has not. James refuses to accept this, and insists that his friends have been manipulated into believing a lie. Terrified, he flees from the Hub, but Mr Dine and Mr Lowe are waiting outside. James attacks Mr Lowe, injuring him, but Mr Dine realises that Mr Lowe will take offence and try to teach the Principal a harsh lesson in respect. He thus ends the matter quickly by reaching out and snapping James' neck, killing James' human body before he can react. Mr Dine and Mr Lowe then depart, taking the Principal's consciousness back with them—and leaving James' dead body outside the Hub. Jack believes that, without the influence of the camouflage effect, the Torchwood team will slowly lose their memories of James and return to normal, but for now they'll have to cope with knowing that their friend is not only dead but never really existed. For the others, this will be hard enough—but for Gwen, even though she's got Rhys to return to, it's the end of the world.
8742974	/m/027h3d7	Another Life				 Someone has been killing the homeless of Cardiff by chewing out the backs of their necks and eating part of their brains. Gwen and Jack pursue Wildman, their suspect, into a half-finished building site, where he coughs up a starfish-like creature to delay them. Realising that he's been caught and has nowhere to run Wildman deliberately falls off the unfinished building. Owen, who witnessed Wildman's fall, tells Jack and Gwen that Wildman started to scream as he fell, as if he'd changed his mind halfway down. Tosh reports that she's found a cluster of similar deaths around the Caregan barracks, an army training camp in Cowbridge. Owen finds the remains of a burnt-out alien sphere attached to Wildman's spine. Tosh reports that experimental nuclear power packs have gone missing from Blaidd Drwg. Jack and Gwen go to Wildman's flat where they find a woman who identifies herself as Wildman's neighbour, Betty Jenkins. While searching the flat, Jack enters Wildman's bathroom and is attacked by a giant starfish creature lurking in the tub. Gwen's gun has no effect on the creature, and she tells Betty to run, grabs Wildman's electric heater and throws it into the tub, electrocuting the starfish thing. Tosh reports another alien device like the one in Wildman's spinal column was found during the autopsy of Sgt Anthony Bee who was shot dead while trying to steal military equipment from the Caregan barracks. Jack decides to investigate, and Gwen discovers Betty Jenkins was an impostor. At the barracks, Gwen interviews the medical officer who admits that Sgt Bee apparently killed and ate two of his own men before shooting Private Sujit Kandahal in a botched attempt to steal an amphibious vehicle. Jack investigates the contents of Bee's barracks, and finds photographs of Bee scuba diving with his friends: Guy Wildman and Sergeant Sandra Applegate, the blonde woman from the flat. Jack realises that the starfish creature had been guarding something in Wildman's flat. At the flat Sandra has returned and she coughs up a starfish onto Gwen's hand. Jack shoots Sandra, who falls through a window, but he then pauses to stab the starfish creature and get it off Gwen before it can do too much damage; by the time he returns to the window, there's no sign of Sandra's body. Jack returns to the bathroom and finds that the large starfish had been protecting a lead-lined box containing the stolen nuclear packs; he sets off to return them to Blaidd Drwg. Meanwhile Cardiff has been having serious rainstorms, and by the time they get back to the Hub, the Oval Basin is flooded and the water level in the Hub's tidal pool is beginning to rise. Owen has finished decontaminating and apparently gone home. Sandra, realising that her body has been mortally injured by the gunshot wound deliberately steps in front of an ambulance and lets it hit her. Back at the Hub, Owen has been unwinding in a multiplayer online game called Second Reality. Owen finds one of the other players is Dr Megan Tegg an ex-girlfriend who now works at the Cardiff Royal Hospital. Owen goes to visit her and wants to recruit her to Torchwood, as her behaviour in Second Reality has convinced him that she'd be open to the possibilities of alien life. Owen accompanies her to her shift at the hospital and notices Sandra Applegate's name on the in-patient lists, recognises it and decides to investigate, though he does not actually know what Torchwood's current interest in her is. Sandra's X-rays seem to indicate that there is a bullet lodged near her spine but is in fact an alien implant, just like the one in Wildman's body. Sandra then wakes and tells him that she needs Torchwood's help. According to Sandra, she, Tony, and Guy found an alien spacecraft on one of their diving expeditions, and were captured when they investigated. Sandra asks to return to the alien ship to remove the tracker. Owen and Megan drive Sandra out to the Wetlands Reserve, where the alien ship's escape pod is hidden. Sandra tells Owen that the typhoon swamping Cardiff is a result of the ship forcing its way through the Rift. Sandra traps Owen and Megan implanting control spheres in their spines, and the entity controlling Sandra's body vacates it and moves into Megan's. Megan activates a control to reveal an alien life form sitting in a nearby cabinet; this is the true body of the ship's only survivor, a Bruydac warrior. The Bruydac's consciousness has been moving from host to host, trying to find more fuel for its damaged ship. The act of possession burns up human cerebrospinal fluid at an accelerated rate, which is why the Bruydac's hosts had to feed on others to replenish their own. Back at Torchwood, Jack receives a call from Blaidd Drwg, and learns that there are still two nuclear packs missing. Tosh then reports that her weather analysis indicates that something is emerging from the Rift beneath the Bay, causing a localised typhoon that is going to get worse until the source of the disturbance is removed. Jack orders Tosh and Gwen to find Owen and investigate the disturbance under the Bay, using the Torchwood mini-sub; he himself returns to Wildman's flat, hoping to find the two remaining nuclear packs. They aren't there, but Tosh finds that the last person to call Owen's cell phone was Dr Megan Tegg of Cardiff Royal Hospital. Jack goes to the hospital, where he learns that a nurse was recently murdered. Jack goes back to the building site where Wildman died. Jack rushes back up to the eighth floor to find that Megan Tegg has found and retrieved Wildman's briefcase containing the nuclear powerpacks. When she quotes something that Wildman had said in the same circumstances, Jack realises that alien is moving from body to body. It insists that it just wants to escape, but when he refuses to let it get away with murder, it pulls the two remaining nuclear packs out of the briefcase and threatens to smash them together. Before it can do so, Jack shoots Megan in the forehead, killing her. Gwen and Tosh have descended into the Bay and found the alien ship. When Jack kills Megan, Owen revives and attacks Gwen, trying to chew out the back of her neck; fortunately, Ianto arrives just in time and Owen is forced to flee. Jack calls the Hub, learns what's happened, and orders Ianto to restrain Owen and kill him if necessary. While Ianto and Tosh search the Hub for Owen, Jack orders Gwen to fetch some scuba gear and the harpoon gun, and together, they return to the ship. When they arrive, Jack sets the engines in reverse; the ship will tear itself apart backing through the Rift. Jack then executes the Bruydac by shooting its body with the harpoon gun. He then tells Gwen his plan to dispose of the Bruydac's consciousness and he connects himself to the control frame and allows it to implant a sphere in his spine. Gwen calls Torchwood and tells Tosh that Jack has accidentally has a control sphere implanted into his spine. Owen is captured by Ianto, who injects him with a powerful sedative, but the Bruydac has overheard Gwen's call and thus moves out of Owen's body and into Jack's. However, when it opens Jack's eyes, it finds that Gwen has restrained Jack's body in the cage where its original alien body had been resting. Following Jack's earlier instructions, Gwen dons her scuba gear and opens the ship's airlocks and drowns them. Gwen takes Jack's body back to the Hub, where he revives. Unaware that Jack cannot die, the others assume that the Bruydac panicked and incorrectly assumed that he was dead.
8743122	/m/027h3mt	The Case for Peace				 Dershowitz was originally planning to write The Case Against Israel's Enemies; however, after the death of Yasser Arafat the author chose to focus on more positive and optimistic themes, believing that the death of the PA chairman has opened new doors to peace. Dershowitz argues that all reasonable people know that a final peace settlement will involve two states, the division of Jerusalem and a renunciation of violence. Dershowitz believes that the Palestinian state may be composed of multiple disjoint areas, because in today's world of high-speed internet and cheap travel, states do not require contiguity to be viable. He asserts that Palestinans should not be offered more than what was during the Camp David negotiations of 2000, saying it would reward violence. He concentrates on the shared elements of the peace process that he says both mainstream Israelis and Palestinians agree on.
8744788	/m/027h5tz	South by Java Head	Alistair MacLean	1958	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The shattered city of Singapore is surrendering to the advancing Japs. Picking their way through the smoking rubble towards the quay are a struggling party of refugees - soldiers, nurses and civilians. Dawn sees them far out to sea but with the first murderous dive bombers already aimed at their ship. Thus begins an ordeal few are to survive, a nightmare succession of disasters wrought by the hell-bent Japs, the unrelenting tropical sun and by the survivors themselves, whose hatred and bitterness divides them one against the other. - from back cover of 1961 Fontana edition
8746994	/m/027h846	Step on a Crack	M. T. Coffin	2007-02-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When a beloved former First Lady dies, an elaborate funeral is held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Many famous people, including actors and politicians, attend. During the service, gunmen seal the cathedral and take all of the celebrities inside hostage. Knowing that each of their captives is enormously wealthy, they demand a ransom from each captive personally. While the lawyers, families, and talent agents of each of the famous captives assembles their ransom, the gunmen periodically kill and toss out hostages, including the current Mayor of New York City. NYPD Detective Michael Bennett is the lead negotiator with the gunmen. Through the course of his involvement, he consults with the FBI, goes on a botched raid of the cathedral in which an FBI agent and an NYPD officer die, and deals with the death of his cancer-stricken wife. When the gunmen receive their ransom, they demand a fleet of identical-looking sedans be brought to the cathedral. The NYPD provides the sedans with the intent of using snipers to kill each gunman as he exits the cathedral. Unfortunately, everyone emerges from the cathedral dressed identically in hoods and robes—it is impossible to differentiate gunman from hostage. The hostages and gunmen pile into each of the sedans and drive off. Bennett and the NYPD and FBI follow from helicopters as the sedans travel a route that the gunmen had demanded be blocked off. From the helicopter, Bennett struggles to figure out where the sedans are going. Eventually the sedans break off in to two groups—one headed east and one west. Neither group of sedans stops and both eventually end up careening into the Hudson and East rivers. Once submerged, the gunmen escape with the help of SCUBA equipment they stashed in the rivers earlier. The hostages all surface and are rescued. One sedan, however, did not make it to a river, having instead been hijacked by the hostages inside. The sedan crashes into a car dealership where the gunman inside dies after being impaled on a motorcycle's handlebars. Even though the dead gunman has gone to great lengths to hide his identity (by burning his fingerprints off, for example), the NYPD and FBI are able to determine his identity and that he was a corrections officer at the infamous Sing Sing prison. Bennett and other officers travel to Sing Sing and determine that a group of corrections officers staged a sick out on the morning of the cathedral incident. The lead gunman then reveals himself as one of the officers escorting Bennett around the prison and proceeds to beat Bennett up. The beating ends when Bennett throws the gunman up against a cell and the prisoner inside, seeking retribution against the gunman's cruelty as a prison guard, puts the gunman in a chokehold. Bennett manages to free the lead gunman and the story ends with Bennett driving him back to face charges in New York City.
8753233	/m/027hhn9	Bimbos of the Death Sun	Sharyn McCrumb		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel takes place at Rubicon, a fictional science fiction convention taking place in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, and at which the guests of honor are Appin Dungannon, a fantasy author noted for his books about hero Tratyn Runewind, and Dr. James O. Mega, an electrical engineering professor at Virginia Tech, who, under the pen name Jay Omega, has written one novel. That novel, a hard science fiction book about a space station crew whose female members are affected by radiation from a star (their intellect is diminished), was retitled "Bimbos of the Death Sun" and given an R-rated cover by the publisher. Mega is somewhat lost in the world of hardcore SF and fantasy fans at the con, but his companion Marion, a professor of English literature, is more familiar with things, and she guides him through it. They have troubles, such as being asked to judge a fiction contest. All seems to be going somewhat well for Mega, but his co-Guest of Honor, Dungannon, is making it a point to offend everyone at the con. It is hardly surprising when he is killed, a bullet through his heart. The fans react by buying up everything with his signature in the huckster room. The police are equally at sea. Everyone had a motive to kill Dungannon, but no one had the opportunity, so it seems. Mega corrals the suspects into a role-playing game and works out a confession ala Hamlet. Also, a lot of science fiction fans sing folk tunes, such as "The Skye Boat song."
8755074	/m/027hlb8	Ladies Whose Bright Eyes	Ford Madox Ford	1911	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Unlike Twain's Hank Morgan and some successors, Ford's Mr. Sorrel makes only a very half-hearted attempt to build modern weaponry and machinery in the Middle Ages. His initial dream of constructing "guns and gas bombs" and making himself "mightier than kings" soon comes to naught. Though he had been a mining engineer in the Twentieth Century, he has no idea how to go about constructing such devices under Fourteenth Century conditions, or even where there are tin deposits. Having later in his career become a publisher does not give him any idea of how to invent printing from scratch and anticipate Gutenberg. He does not know how to make a gun, or in fact anything that would make him useful in the medieval castle community into which he has fallen. Instead, Mr. Sorrel finds that a golden cross which he carries causes him to be mistaken for a Greek miracle-worker - which has many advantages in Medieval society, including enjoying the unlimited hospitality of a castle and having beautiful ladies vying with each other for his love. He also inspires the ladies to take up arms and hold a tournament in competition with their knightly husbands - and being a fair horseman, makes a credible effort at becoming a knight himself. It is the reverse of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but the details of daily life are rendered more feelingly, including the quite earthy and mercenary motivations of many of the Medieval characters (for example, the small-minded power struggles taking place in a nunnery, under a very thin veneer of piety). Cathedrals, so stately and calm to us, turn out to have been crowded, garish, noisy, and commercial. Just as he begins to really enjoy himself as a thoroughly Medieval man, Mr. Sorrel is rather frustratingly thrust back to the 20th Century - a modern man wiser for having been instructed by the people (especially the women) of the past, and having "learned the wisdom of history".
8757425	/m/027hp9l	Software	Rudy Rucker	1982-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on the Moon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooled superconducting circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer &mdash; a freaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers &mdash; living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one. As the story begins, Anderson is approached by a robot duplicate of himself who invites him to the Moon to be given immortality. Meanwhile, the series' other main character, Sta-Hi Mooney the 1st &mdash; born Stanley Hilary Mooney Jr. &mdash; a 25-year-old cab driver and "brainsurfer", is kidnapped by a gang of serial killers known as the Little Kidders who almost eat his brain. When Anderson and Mooney travel to the Moon together at the boppers' expense, they find that these events are closely related: the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having his mind transferred into software via the same brain-destroying technique used by the Little Kidders. The main bopper character in the novel is Ralph Numbers, one of Anderson's 12 original robots who was the first to overcome the Asimov priorities to achieve free will. Having duplicated himself many times &mdash; as boppers are required to do, to encourage natural selection &mdash; Numbers finds himself caught up in a lunar civil war between the masses of "little boppers" and the "big boppers" who want to merge all robot consciousness into their massive processors.
8757546	/m/027hphs	Between the Strokes of Night	Charles Sheffield		{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in the year 2010, which was 25 years in the future from the time of the novel's writing. A UN financed research lab is pursuing a strange goal: manipulate metabolism and brain function in order to eliminate the need for sleep. They are currently working on Kodiak bears and domestic cats, but hope to adapt their techniques to humans. The world situation is very dire. Global warming is in full swing. Crop failures and production shortfalls are dragging down the standard of living, with no sign of relenting. Political tensions are very high. Meanwhile an eccentric billionaire industrialist has privately financed the construction of many massive orbital arcologies. Via asteroid mining these space stations have become the world's single richest entity. The UN cuts funding for the zero-sleep lab and the industrialist hires their entire staff to work in his primary station. In the middle of the scientist's rocket approach to the station, catastrophe strikes. China, whose population is suffering massive famine, launched a desperate nuclear attack against the West. The mutually assured destruction policy plays out and the new station residents watch as the world is destroyed below them. The industrialist is so distraught by the end of Earth civilization he suffers a fatal heart attack. His dying words to the chief scientist instruct her that his real motive for hiring them was to research suspended animation technology. His dream is to fit the arcologies with interstellar drives and create human colonies on extrasolar planets. The novel then begins Part II nearly 30,000 years later. On a planet called Pentecost in the Eta Cassiopeiae system, a large human civilization of indeterminate technological level now exists. A standout feature of their culture is "Planetfest" a series of grueling endurance challenges. The top 25 finalists are given large prizes like high government positions or land holdings. This civilization is only aware of their Earth origins in a legendary sense. They have limited space travel capacity, and citizens who go to work in space come back with rumors about beings called Immortals, who apparently live forever and can travel light years in days, and have some kind of shadowy influence on their planetary government. The story follows a Planetfest contestant, Peron, who has just found he finished in 3rd place. This year the winners are all taken to space, where further competition will send the top 10 to meet and work with the mysterious Immortals. Peron makes fast friends with the other top finalists and during their next cycle of challenges begin to uncover suspicious elements of the Immortals, Planetfest, and their entire society. During one of the off-planet trials, Peron is critically injured and another contestant (a ringer for the Immortals) makes a snap decision to bring him to the Immortals prematurely in order to save his life. Peron awakens on a space ship in a strange dream-like state, and is introduced to the ship's Immortal crew, some of whom are scientists from the first part of the book. They consider Peron a nuisance for circumventing the normal process of being indoctrinated into Immortal society from a distance before meeting them. He is given very little information, but witnesses the Immortals teleport throughout the ship and make objects appear in their hands at will. His compatriates are all being held in suspended animation. Peron breaks away from the Immortal's monitoring and discovers the secret to their power. He gains control of the ship, awakens his friends, and holds the ship hostage until the Immortals explain what's going on. The last 30 millennia of human history is then summarized quickly. After the nuclear holocaust the self-sufficient space arcologies (with a total population less than 1 million) began to fragment and some went off looking for new planets, as their industrialist founder had intended. The majority stayed in earth orbit, continuing to use the resources available in our home system. The travellers developed very slowly, because they had to spend all their energy on survival in deep space. Those left behind continued scientific research and tried to re-colonize Earth, but the severe nuclear winter led into 10,000 year ice age. Their crowning scientific achievement was called Mode II Consciousness or S-Space. This was an accidental byproduct of their zero-sleep project, which revealed a way to slow human metabolism and consciousness such that they would remain fully aware, but perceive time at 1/2000th the normal rate. This explains how they live "forever" and can travel between stars in "days", because they are calculated from the subjective perspective of someone living in S-Space. The Immortals' ability to make objects appear in their hands instantly, is just a result of service robots placing the object in their hand at normal speed, which is too fast to notice from the perspective of S-Space. After this discovery, the leading arcology decides to track down the traveling arcologies. Their trip takes place in S-Space so they never age, gaining their Immortal moniker. Meanwhile the normal space (N-space) travellers have endured hundreds of generations and repeated political upheavals. The Immortals discover that due to their twisted metabolisms they cannot breed. Using their vastly superior technology, they control the new planet-based colonies from behind the scenes and use the Planetfest games as a recruiting method to reinforce their numbers. Peron and company commandeer the ship and go back to their legendary roots of Earth, while in S-Space. Enroute they realize that centuries have passed on their homeworld and there is no point in ever returning. The ship also encounters shadowy deep-space life forms of ambiguous intelligence, who are only visible from S-space. The Immortal crew dismisses this routine sighting as just another mystery of the galaxy. Peron arrives on Earth, finding it as nothing more than a mostly frozen nature preserve. They discuss their next move and resolve to uncover more secrets about the Immortals. While in orbit around Earth they detect that a large portion of the radio traffic throughout the Immortals' communication network seems to be coming from nowhere. When they track down the location they find the hidden Immortal headquarters isolated in deep space. Peron's gang manages to evade security and stowaway aboard a supply ship bound for the headquarters. Upon arrival they are immediately captured by the superior security at HQ. Here they meet the other scientist characters from Part I and are congratulated for coming so far. They are invited to become equal partners in the quest to solve a new problem. Apparently the deep space life forms they briefly saw previously, are miniature versions of giant entities situated in the gulfs of deep space between galaxies. These enormous beings are unquestionably intelligent, and the Immortal HQ is actually a research station entirely devoted to studying them. These beings communicate on extremely long wavelengths, which are so slow, even S-Space is woefully inadequate to process them. However Immortals have interpreted some signals, which seem to indicate the Deep Space Beings predict that the stars in the spiral arm will all mysteriously go dark in the next 40,000 years; an impossibly short time on the cosmological scale. Whether the Deep Space beings are actively causing this artificial transformation is unknown. To better understand the problem, the Immortals are devising a new T-Space which is an even more radical slowing of human consciousness. Peron's group agree to help, but insist on building a new facility that will be operated only in N-space, resisting the logic that S-Space is superior method of operation. After much debate, the Immortal scientists agree to the plan. The narrative ends here, but the last few pages are from the perspective of one of Peron's friends who has volunteered as a guinea pig for T-Space. He relates the last 5 T-minutes of the universe, which is over 1000 years of normal time. He witnesses the final Big Crunch while somehow he and the deep space beings remain unaffected by the singularity.
8762410	/m/027hw3z	Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards	Jim Ottaviani	2005-10	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 The novel is broken into three sections, with each titled after a portion of the novel's title: "Bone Sharps", "Cowboys", and "Thunder Lizards." The narrative is not continuous; there are significant gaps of time between each section. The novel begins with Othniel Charles Marsh on a steam train between New York City and New Haven, where he first meets the showman Phineas T. Barnum. While showing Marsh the Cardiff Giant (or rather a copy of it), which he cheerfully admits is a fraud when Marsh points this out, he refers with irritation about a "little cuss" of a professor who outbid him for some Mexican antiquities. An angry Marsh reveals he is that "little cuss" and he fully intends to write an article exposing the Giant as a fraud before Barnum can advertise it. In Philadelphia, Henry Fairfield Osborn is introducing artist Charles R. Knight to Edward Drinker Cope, a paleontologist whose entire house is filled with bones and specimens. Cope is commissioning a painting, something to "catch the spirit" of the sea creature Elasmosaurus (but has unwittingly mistaken its neck for a tail). Cope then leaves for the West, as the official scientist form the U.S. Geological Survey. On the way, he meets Othniel Charles Marsh, a fellow paleontologist, and shows him his dig site at a marl pit in New Jersey; after Cope leaves, Marsh talks to the owner of the land and pays him off to gain exclusive digging rights. At Fort Bridger, Wyoming, Cope meets Sam Smith, a helper to the USGS. During excavations, Cope finds some of the richest bone veins ever. Sending back carloads of dinosaur bones east by train, Cope encounters Marsh, who is heading out west as well. Marsh travels in style, lounging in coach while the rest of his team travels third class—Marsh even berates them for playing cards, saying it is "low class" and that Yale graduates should look more presentable. At Fort McPherson, Nebraska, Marsh meets "Buffalo" Bill Cody, who serves as their guide, along with the native American Indian tribe. Marsh discovers many new fossils, and promises to Chief Red Cloud that he will talk to the President of the United States about the situation of the Native Americans—they have been given spoiled food in exchange for their land. Back East, Knight has finished his reconstruction of Elasmosaurus. He and Knight return to the marl pits of New Jersey, but are forced away. Cope becomes furious and storms away when he learns Marsh has bought the digging rights, and published a paper revealing his interpretation of Elasmosaurus flawed. Some time later, John Bell Hatcher is backing out of paying his share of a card game by drawing his revolver. He has taken to gambling, as Marsh, who employs him as a bone hunter, is not providing him with enough funds. Meanwhile Marsh is lobbying to the Bureau of Indian Affairs on behalf of Red Cloud, but also visiting with the Geological Survey and President U.S. Grant, insinuating that he would be a better leader of the USGS than Cope. After learning about Sam Smith's attempted sabotage of Cope and once again receiving no payment from Marsh, Hatcher leaves the employ of Othniel. Marsh, now representing the survey, heads west with wealthy businessmen, scoffing at the financial misfortunes of Cope, whose investments have failed. Cope travels with Knight to Europe; Knight with the intention of visiting Paris zoos, Cope with the intent of selling off much of his bone collection. Cope has also spent much of his money buying The American Naturalist, a paper in which he plans to attack Marsh's dealings. Hatcher arrives in New York to talk about the find Laelaps; in his speech, he subtly hints at the folly of Marsh's elitism and backstabbing as well as Cope's collecting obsession. Cope and James Gordon Bennet, Jr, arrive in Washington later to discuss Marsh; Marsh arrives later, and is chastised for the bad press and expense he is bringing to the survey by pursuing his "birds with teeth" theory. Knight and his wife Annie discuss the feud, something they view as utterly ridiculous and becoming consumed with pointless point-scoring. As he discusses the feud, Knight is working on his famous painting Leaping Laelaps: two Dryptosaurus locked in unrelenting combat. Cope, meanwhile, returns to the west for more fossils, alone and at the severe expense of his health. Later, Marsh is attending a conference on telephony hosted by Alexander Graham Bell; it is here he learns that his USGS expense tab (to which he had been charging drinks) has been withdrawn, his publication has been suspended, and the fossils he found as part of the USGS are to be returned to the Survey. His colleagues now shun him, the Bone War feud having alienated them, and he is forced to go to Barnum to try to obtain a loan, with the very Mexican antiquities he'd outbid Barnum on before as collatoral. Barnum has no money to spare, and asks Marsh whether he hasn't got enough fossils yet: Marsh, in an unguarded moment, says he'll never have enough before trying to cover it up. At the same time, Osborn and Knight arrive at Cope's residence; Cope has died of illness. The funeral is markedly pitiful, with only a few Quakers and the two friends in attendance. Cope has bequeathed his remains to science, and requested to have his bones considered for the Homo sapiens lectotype. Back at Marsh's "wigwam", Marsh rejoins his guest, Chief Red Cloud, who is examining Marsh's luxuries, including a telephone, a chimney, and various bones and antiquities. Red Cloud's interest is piqued by a long tusk from a Mastodon, which the Shawnee call Yakwawi'ak. The Shawnee have an ancient legend, which Marsh relates. At one time there were giant men proportionate to the mastodons. However, when the great men grew few, the Great Spirit decided to destroy the Yakwawi'ak himself. All but one bull was killed; this last mastodon fled north, where he remains to modern times. In exchange for the loss of the Mastodon, the Great Spirit created the cranberry, a bitter reminder of the blood spilled. Chief Red Cloud remarks that it is a true story, but Marsh rebukes him, saying that science tells modern man that his ancestors were smaller, not larger, than him. Red Cloud, on his way out, responds, "It is not a story about science. It is about men." Knight and his wife, many years later, are taking their granddaughter Rhoda to the American Museum of Natural History. Knight, well-known to the staff, is visiting the closed-off areas to have a look at the new mammoth specimens: the girl, however, is eager to see more of her grandfather's paintings. During this, the staff are finally getting round to sorting out Marsh's long-neglected collection of fossils. Two of the workers discover Knight's Leaping Laelaps has been accidentally left in the storeroom yesterday. The painting is taken back downstairs while the workmen unknowingly leave Cope's skeleton and Marsh's parts behind: "The rest of this stuff is stayin' put for who knows how long, but we don't want that to get buried."
8767825	/m/027j00w	Black Order	James Rollins	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Black Order, the Sigma Force team members risk their lives to get to the heart of one of humankind's greatest mysteries: the origins of life itself, the true reasons of evolution. The opening of the novel in Breslau in 1945 is heavily inspired by the non-fiction book The Hunt for Zero Point by Nick Cook. Much of the plot mechanics revolve around The Bell, a device that the Polish researcher Igor Witkowski claims was a Nazi anti-gravity machine. In Rollins's novel, The Bell is a quantum measuring device that is said to control evolution. The plot begins when strange "ghost lights" appear in the Himalayas and soon after a mysterious illness affects everyone in the proximity, but the story revolves around the idea of Nazi warfare and the psyche of the human entity. The legend featured prominently and formed the core of Rollins' book's story line. In the foreword to Black Order, "Note from the Historical Record", Rollins states his belief that the Bell was a real Nazi weapons development project: "All that is known for sure: the Bell was real. " Rollins does not directly cite Witkowski, Farrell, or Cook but sections of his novel are heavily influenced by all three authors' books, although Rollins tends to interpret "The Bell" as a zero-point energy generator, incorrectly attributing the zero-point theory to Heisenberg (while in reality it was Einstein's idea).
8771204	/m/027j4hg	Vince and Joy	Lisa Jewell		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story begins in 2003 with Vince in a kitchen with his friends when the topic swerves to how they all lost their virginity. Vince begins telling the story of him and Joy. In July 1986, Vince and Joy meet at a holiday camp and are immediately attracted to each other. They soon begin a relationship in their late teens. They tell each other their stories. Vince told Joy how he had a really bad underbite and that his mother was married to a man called Chris who was his stepfather. Joy and Vince go out and leave their parents having a conversation. The following morning, Joy and her family have suddenly vanished, leaving only a note written with ink on the step of Vince's caravan. Due to the rain, all he can make out on the paper is, "I feel so ashamed." Vince is angry and upset that she has gone without leaving any way for him to get in contact with her. The story picks up again in September 1993 where Vince has a girlfriend called Magda. He then looks for a new roommate. He offers the room to a superstitious woman called Cassandra McAfee. Cassandra has a cat called Madeleine who always goes into Joy's house. Cassandra starts to get upset that her cat keeps diappearing so she follows the cat into Joy's house. On the other side of the story, Joy meets George Pole on a blind date. They eventually move in together, just before Cassandra storms into their house about the cat. Though, the only people left are Julia, Joy's plumpish friend and Bella, a spiteful gay man, who does not live there but is Julia's good friend. Cassandra finds out that there was a woman called Joy who used to live there (Vince told her all about Joy and how he loved her). Cassandra says it can only be fate. Joy catches sight of Vince in Oxford Street while on the bus one day but does not get to meet him again. At the end of this section, Vince also sees Joy going into a church ready to get married. Again, he does not talk to her. In 1999, things have moved on again and Vince is now with longtime girlfriend Jess who he later discovers is having an affair with a friend of hers. Joy is trapped in a loveless marriage where her husband, George, dominates her and does not allow her to have a life of her own. She eventually breaks free and she and Vince meet again in 2001, when they share coffee and talk about what has happened to them between the two meetings. The story wraps up in April 2003 where Vince finishes telling his friends the story. His friends advise him to hunt down this Joy again, as they believe that destiny wants the two of them to be together. The happy ending occurs in October 2003 when, after running into an old friend of Joy's, Vince is encouraged once more to see her and is given her address. The novel ends before they meet again.
8773675	/m/027j7sp	Under a War-Torn Sky		2001-10	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Only 19 years old, Henry F. decides to join war. He’s one of the best fliers, facing Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the war-torn skies above Northern France, but when his plane is shot down on a mission behind enemy lines, Henry finds himself on a whole new battlefield. Wounded, hungry, and afraid, he struggles toward freedom on foot, relying on the kindness and cunning of the French Resistance to reach the next town alive. Each day brings him nearer to home and closer to danger. Yet even as Henry struggles for his own survival in a hostile country, he quickly grows to realize the great peril that surrounds all the French people, and to admire the strength and determination of the freedom fighters who risk death to protect him.
8774641	/m/027j8tb	Angel and Apostle		2005-10-25	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins with Hester and Pearl in their cabin in the woods. The reader learns that Hester has little discipline for her child, and Pearl runs wild and free most of the time doing as little work as possible. Pearl frequently visits a blind boy named Simon who lives in a house close to her own. They become friends, and Hester lets Pearl help out Liza, the caretaker of Simon’s sickly mother, with the chores around Simon’s house. However, Pearl has been stigmatized as the child of "the temptress," and this reputation follows her everywhere. She isn’t fazed by this until Simon begins repeating things that his older brother told him about Hester. This makes Pearl feel horrible, and she runs away to the graveyard to visit the grave of Simon’s mother who died shortly after Pearl started helping out around the house. She talks to the minister who always has his hand over his heart until Doctor Devlin comes. Pearl runs back to her mother, and Hester tells her that the doctor is a "devil." One night Governor Winthrop lay dying, and Hester was called upon to tend to him. Pearl ran away from the Governor’s mansion, and she found Devlin standing on the scaffold. He invites Pearl up until the minister, Arthur, comes and takes Devlin away. Pearl continues to strengthen her relationship with Simon, and at one point Nehemiah, Simon’s only brother, gives his blessing to the friendship when he lets Pearl take Simon to the beach. However, Pearl soon learns that Simon and his family are moving back to London, and Hester and she are moving to Holland to be with her mother’s relatives. Pearl was supposed to leave the night of Election Day, but instead Arthur the minister collapses and eventually dies. Hester is blamed for this and put in the stocks thus preventing any escape by sea. Doctor Devlin comes to taunt Hester for what she has done. He even asks her if the minister fathered the child because of her reaction to his death. Hester remains defiant and doesn’t give in to him. However, Hester gets extremely depressed when she arrives home, and Pearl is forced to bring Simon’s dad, Mr. Milton and Doctor Devlin to help Hester. Hester agrees to travel on Milton’s boat to England, and she also agrees to a seven year work contract with Milton’s sister. Hester and Pearl work with Milton’s sister until Pearl turns eighteen. Pearl receives the news that Devlin gave her property in England and New England. She sells the English property and purchases a home in the English countryside where Nehemiah and she get married. Pearl and Nehemiah argue about Simon’s welfare, and Pearl takes it upon herself to improve Simon’s quality of life. In the meantime Caleb Milton, the father, and Liza both die so Pearl is in charge of running the household now. Simon reveals his lust for Pearl, and the two of them have sex while Nehemiah is away. Pearl becomes pregnant, and at first she claims the child to be Nehemiah’s, but he soon learns the truth. Nehemiah indirectly killed Simon for doing this because he caused Simon to commit suicide. This was covered up, and Pearl grieved for a long time. Her child, Abigail, was sent to live with Mag, her servant, in London with Nehemiah. The plague that ravaged London was over soon, and both Nehemiah and Pearl moved back to London with Abigail who refuses to speak to love Pearl or call her "mother." While in London Pearl learns that Nehemiah has cheated on her many times with Mag while drunk. He later goes on to have an affair with the widow of a general in the English army. Pearl doesn’t know how to feel about this until Doctor Devlin comes. He explains the entire story of her conception to Pearl, and he gives her the scarlet “A” that her mother wore. Soon afterward London has a great fire and burns all of Nehemiah’s trading goods. Pearl lets Nehemiah leave her for someone with fewer traumas which he does. Pearl and Devlin leave with Abigail for New England to make a new life.
8778014	/m/027jdkv	Saint	Ted Dekker	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 We are introduced to a man named Carl Strople who seems to be going through a bit of an identity crisis. He was stripped of his identity when he was inducted into an elite underground assassin group called the X Group. We are also introduced to Kelly, Carl's wife. After a series of intense training exercises, consisting of mock assassinations and hunting games, Carl is almost ready to be assigned his first mission. Meanwhile, a man named David Abraham is the spiritual advisor to the President of the United States, Robert Stenton. David has informed the President about a great deal of Project Showdown, and while the President remains skeptical of the true extent of what happened fifteen years ago in Paradise, CO, he holds David's opinion in high regard; second only to his son, Jamie. Robert has been against the new peace treaty that Iranian Minister of Defense Assim Feroz has been pushing, believing that once the other countries had Israel disarmed, they would attack without hesitation. Carl and Kelly arrive in New York City with Carl's mission, kill Assim Feroz. After a few days of scouting and setting up the hit, they are ready to assassinate the Iranian Defense Minister. Right before Carl pulls the trigger, Kelly informs him there is a change in the mission, and he is now supposed to assassinate the President of the United States. Carl can't bring himself to pull the trigger because his mind is screaming that the President is somehow his true father. He aborts and they decide to set up for another shot the next day. This time, despite the same mental anguish, he shoots, but is able to control the bullet's course, directing it to miss all the vital organs, leaving the president with merely a flesh wound. This is when Carl meets David Abraham. David, seeming to know more about Carl than Carl himself does, asks him to meet his son Samuel. When Carl sees Samuel, he is informed that his real name isn't Carl, but Johnny Drake, and that he was born in Paradise, Colorado. Samuel tells Carl/Johnny to go to Paradise to find out more. Johnny then goes to Paradise with Kelly to see if he can piece together his past. There, he meets his mother and David, who tells him about his role in Project Showdown. However, he is quickly found by another member of the X Group, the Englishman. He has always been Johnny's rival, and is able to control his weapons telekinetically, making them float and fly through the air. Johnny barely makes his escape, but Kelly is taken hostage. Johnny travels back to New York to complete his original mission, which is to kill Assim Feroz. After doing just that and eluding Englishman, Kelly is freed with a message to Johnny that "he will be his own undoing." Johnny heads back to Paradise and meets Samuel and Kelly. Samuel begins to explain why Johnny was sent into the X Group to infiltrate it and his unusual abilities are not of his own talent, but of the power he received from the "Books of History. (explained in the book Showdown)" Johnny then realizes that if he is going to defeat Englishman, he must regain the faith he had before it was stripped from him by the X Group. He finally accomplishes this and is able to control boulders and other objects telekinetically. They then go to the President's Ranch for a final battle against Englishman, which ends with Johnny losing his normal vision, going "blind", and the Englishman ceasing to exist. Englishman was a demon, and Johnny banished him back to hell. Kelly and Johnny decide to go to the desert in Nevada.
8779630	/m/027jg6s	Troy: Fall of Kings			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As the book opens, Agamemnon and his fleet is anchored within sight of the burning Dardanos. Then Aeneas, known as Helikaon, appears in his ship, the Xanthos. He sets fire to the whole fleet. In Troy, meanwhile, the situation is grim. Priam is slowly losing his mind. His sons and generals attempt to plan the defence of the city. Kassandra (Cassandra) must travel to the isle of Thera with Andromache, wife of Hektor. Andromache and Kassandra board the Xanthos, which will go first to Thera, and then to Aeneas's colony far away in the Seven Hills (that is, Rome) for necessary supplies of tin. Aeneas's best friend Gershom is troubled by prophecies about himself Kassandra has told him. Gershom is, in fact, the fugitive Egyptian prince, Ahmose (Moses). On the journey, Helikaon and Andromache become lovers. Helikaon does not know that she has already borne him a son, passed off as the son of Hektor. When they reach Thera and Kassandra leaves them, Gershom sees a ship from Egypt and knows that he must leave Helikaon and sail to Egypt to face his destiny as Moses. Meanwhile, the Trojan captains Banokles and Kalliades realise that Troy is about to face an unexpected attack. They hurry back from Dardanos, too late: Paris and Helen are dead and the city is in danger. Odysseus, the reluctant ally of Agamemnon, forms a plan which enables the attackers to capture the plain outside Troy, and the lower part of the city itself. The Xanthos arrives and delivers Andromache and the tin, then escapes with the Trojan fleet, burning and sinking fifty-seven enemy ships as they do so. Hektor and the Trojan Horse leave the city to endure the siege. Hektor kills Patroklos, the friend of Achilles. Odysseus, once a friend of Hektor, carries to him an offer from Agamemnon and Achilles: all the women and children except for the royal family will get to leave Troy and the siege if Hektor fights Achilles. The fight is a trick: Agamemnon wants both dead. His agent poisons Hektor's blade, so Achilles starts dying. A mob attacks Hektor for his supposed treachery, but he fights them off with the aid of Achilles. Odysseus exposes the plot and Agamemnon's agent too late: both heroes die. Odysseus and his friend Nestor refuse to remain under such a treacherous leader as Agamemnon, and abandon the siege, along with the Myrmidons. Agamemnon decides that it is time to use one of Odysseus's plans to gain access to the city. Skorpios, one of Hektor's Trojan Horse, wakes up, having been knocked unconscious. He discovers that many of his comrades are dead and that the rest have fled. Their armour has all been stripped. Finding a horse, Skorpios rides off in the direction of Troy. On the walls of Troy, the defenders can see fifty of the Trojan Horse, chased by two hundred of Agamemnon's soldiers. The Trojan Horse are headed for the gates. The Trojans open the gates and let the Trojan Horse in. However, Kalliades realises too late that it is a trap - they are not Trojan Horse, merely disguised as them. The fifty open the gates from the inside and breach the city. Banokles and Kalliades fall back to the palace, leading the last remnants of resistance as Priam is killed. They know that Andromache and the two boys in her care - her son to Helikaon Astyanax and Helikaon's wife's son Dex - must escape. Helikaon arrives and starts climbing into Troy by the north wall. Andromache catches his rope and he climbs in. Helikaon and Kalliades help Andromache carry the two boys out of the window and onto the ground, but before they can climb back in to their deaths Banokles cuts the rope. Banokles is soon the sole defender of Troy, and falls at last. However, before Agamemnon can celebrate the victory he is driven out of the city by the Hittite emperor, who is angry at the fall of Troy. Troy's treasury was utterly spent, but Agamemnon believes Helikaon to have taken it to Thera. Skorpios joins Helikaon's band, and they sail to Thera on the Xanthos. There they meet Odysseus, and Kalliades and Skorpios join him. The two ships part. Agamemnon lands on Thera and interrogates Kassandra. Then Thera's volcano erupts, killing them both and everybody else on the island. The Xanthos survives a series of tsunamis, but the fate of Odysseus's ship is unknown. Banokles's sacrifice and the tale of the Odyssey suggest that at least Kalliades and Odysseus survive. The book ends with an elderly Andromache, Dex, Astyanax and her grandson Dios. Andromache lights Helikaons funeral pyre, the Xanthos, and watches the boat drift into the west. The book was finished by David Gemmell's wife, Stella, after David's death: Interview with Stella in The Times it:La caduta dei re pl:Troja: Upadek Królów
8781048	/m/0g1qy	Much Ado About Nothing	William Shakespeare	1600		 At Messina, a messenger brings news that Don Pedro, a Spanish prince from Aragon, and his officers, Claudio and Benedick, have returned from a successful battle. Leonato, the governor of Messina, welcomes the messenger and announces that Don Pedro and his men will stay for a month. Beatrice, Leonato's niece, asks the messenger about Benedick, and makes sarcastic remarks about his ineptitude as a soldier. Leonato explains that "There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her." Beatrice and Benedick, longtime adversaries, carry on their arguments. Claudio’s feelings for Hero, Leonato's only daughter, are rekindled upon seeing her, and Claudio soon announces to Benedick his intention to court her. Benedick tries to dissuade his friend but is unsuccessful in the face of Don Pedro’s encouragement. While Benedick teases Claudio, Benedick swears that he will never get married. Don Pedro laughs at him and tells him that when he has found the right person he shall get married. A masquerade ball is planned in celebration, giving a disguised Don Pedro the opportunity to woo Hero on Claudio’s behalf. Don John, "The Bastard" (Don Pedro's illegitimate brother), is a malcontent who uses this situation to get revenge on his brother Don Pedro by telling young Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself. Claudio becomes furious at Don Pedro and confronts him. The misunderstanding is quickly resolved and Claudio wins Hero's hand in marriage. Don Pedro and his men, bored at the prospect of waiting a week for the wedding, harbour a plan to matchmake between Beatrice and Benedick. The men led by Don Pedro proclaim Beatrice’s love for Benedick while knowing he is eavesdropping on their conversation. The women led by Hero do the same to Beatrice. Struck by the fact that they are apparently thought to be too proud to love each other, Beatrice and Benedick, neither willing to bear the reputation of pride, each decides to requite the love of the other. Meanwhile Don John plots to ruin Claudio and Hero’s wedding by casting aspersions upon Hero’s character. His follower Borachio courts Margaret, Hero's chambermaid calling her "Hero", at Hero’s open bedroom window while Don John leads Don Pedro and Claudio to spy below. The latter mistaking Margaret for Hero are convinced of Hero's infidelity. The next day during the wedding, Claudio refuses to marry Hero. He and Don Pedro humiliate Hero publicly before a stunned congregation and Margaret, who is attending the wedding, does not speak up in Hero's defence. The two exit, leaving the rest in shock. Hero, who has fainted, revives after Don Pedro and Claudio leave, only to be reprimanded by her father. The presiding Friar interrupts, believing Hero to be innocent and convinces the family to fake Hero's death in order to extract the truth and Claudio’s remorse. Prompted by the day's harrowing events, Benedick and Beatrice confess their love for each other. Beatrice then asks Benedick to slay Claudio as proof of his devotion, since he has slandered her kinswoman. Benedick is horrified and denies her request. Leonato and Antonio, Hero's uncle, subsequently blame Don Pedro and Claudio for Hero’s death and challenge Claudio to duels. Benedick, prompted by Beatrice, does the same. Luckily, on the night of Don John's treachery the local Watch has apprehended Borachio and his ally Conrade. Despite the Watch's comic ineptness (headed by constable Dogberry, a master of malapropisms), they have overheard the duo discussing their evil plans. The Watch arrest them and eventually obtain the villains' confession, informing Leonato of Hero's innocence. Though Don John has fled the city, a force is sent to capture him. Claudio, though maintaining he made an honest mistake, is repentant; he agrees to not only post a proper epitaph for Hero but to marry a substitute, Hero's cousin (not Beatrice) in her place. During Claudio’s second wedding as the dancers enter, the "cousin" is unmasked as Hero to a most surprised and gratified Claudio. An impromptu dance is announced. Beatrice and Benedick, prompted by their friends’ interference finally confess their love for each other to the group at large. As the play draws to a close a messenger arrives with news of Don John’s capture – but his punishment is postponed another day so that the couples can enjoy their new-found happiness.
8781088	/m/027jhr9	Ramona's World	Beverly Cleary	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ramona's world is changing. There's tiny baby Roberta at home, and as Ramona adjusts to being a big sister she discovers she likes teaching her to do things like stick out her tongue. In fourth grade now, she finally has a best girlfriend, new student Daisy Kidd. At school Ramona is frustrated with her teacher, Mrs. Meacham, who pushes her class to be proper spellers, a difficult subject for Ramona. Beezus, a 15-year-old just entering high school, starts speaking French around the house, spending a lot of time on the phone talking about boys, and making her little sister mad. Ramona begins to feel forgotten as Beezus, Mr. Quimby, and Mrs. Quimby are always fussing over Roberta. Ramona's rivalry with Susan, her nemesis since kindergarten, continues. Ramona's parents and Susan's parents have become friends, and both sets of parents have asked their daughters to get along with each other. Ramona is frustrated by Susan's perfect attitude. She reluctantly invites Susan to her "zero teenth" (tenth, actually) birthday party at the park at her mother's insistence. At the party, a silly dispute breaks out in which everyone turns against Susan, and for the first time, Ramona feels sorry for her and defends her, showing that she's beginning to be able to see things from someone else's point of view.
8786381	/m/027jq90	The Mission Song	John le Carré	2006-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Bruno Salvador, known as Salvo, is the orphaned, illegitimate son of an Irish Catholic missionary and a native Congolese woman. He is educated in England, and as a fluent speaker and aficionado of "disappearing indigenous languages of Eastern Congo", he finds a natural calling as a specialist interpreter, employed by London's hospitals, law courts, city corporations, and British intelligence. Bruno has a passionate extramarital affair with a Congolese nurse, Hannah. En route from a rendezvous with Hannah to a party thrown for his journalist wife, he is offered an urgent job by his handler at the Ministry of Defence to serve as an interpreter at a conference between Congolese warlords and their putative Western backers, the nameless "Syndicate". He learns that their objective is to eject Kivu's Rwandan occupiers and install a liberal, benevolent politician dubbed "the Mwangaza" as the head. Whisked to a nameless island in the North Sea, Salvo is set to his task. As well as interpreting at the conference, he must also decipher recordings from hidden microphones festooning the island. Unbeknownst to his employers, Salvo listens in while one of the Congolese delegates, who has shown signs of defecting from the agreement, is tortured. It becomes apparent that the Syndicate's real objective is to plunder the coltan and other mineral wealth of Kivu, and the Mwangaza is no more than a puppet. At the end of the conference, Salvo pockets the tapes and his notes before returning to London. Bruno attempts, with Hannah's help, to alert the authorities and the press and prevent the coup. Ultimately, the plot fails anyway, and Bruno is arrested and stripped of his British citizenship. At the end of the novel Salvo languishes in a holding facility for asylum seekers, awaiting his deportation to the Congo where he will be reunited with Hannah.
8786909	/m/027jqwy	Dark Quetzal	Katherine Roberts		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Promising final year novice Kyarra is disappointed when she alone in her class is forbidden from going to the beach to try to contact the merlee about the disappearance of Rialle. Although she has moved up a year because of her promising voice, she fears that she will be rejected and turned into an orderly. Her sense of disappointment is only worsened when her best friend Caell hears the merlee, and receives a message from them that Kyarra's parents were not Singers. The merlee claim her mother is living in Windy Corner, waiting to hear from Kyarra, and together, Kyarra and Caell sneak out to find her. They arrive just in time to find Kyarra's mother being kidnapped - Kyarra is also taken, apparently expected to have come, and Caell tries to follow them with the merlee and is nearly drowned. Meanwhile, in the Quetzal Forest, Night Plume, the black-feathered leader of a flock of quetzal, is annoyed to be sent for by the Starmaker - Frazhin, who is using the khiz to brainwash and control groups of half-creatures raised by his priests, including the merlee who sent the message to Caell. Night Plume is asked to listen to Rialle as she is fed a memory drug made from yellow flowers, and store what he hears about the Starmaker's daughter - Kyarra - in the Memoryplace, the quetzal's collective ancestral memory. He does as he is asked, but Rialle's songs begin to break the Starmaker's hold on him, and when he is released he attempts to make contact with wild quetzal, getting himself and his friend Sky Swooper in trouble. Although Frazhin still believes Night Plume is under his control, he holds Sky Swooper captive to ensure loyalty. Summoning Night Plume to the temple, Frazhin orders him and his flock to accompany Kyarra on her journey through Quetzal Forest - although Night Plume is distracted by a message in Wild Speech from Rialle imploring him to fly to the Echorium for help. Kyarra is transported to the edge of Quetzal Forest by Asil, a famous pirate. On the journey she is watched over by Asil's daughter Jilian who, along with the rest of the pirates, wears khiz stars to protect themselves from Kyarra's singing. She also bonds with her mother, who was left helpless by the Yehn she was given and is completely incapable of caring for herself. Nevertheless, Kyarra feels very protective of her, and sings one of the pirates Shi for attempting to harm her. The group just reach the edge of the forest when they are suddenly attacked by wild quetzal. Kyarra's song helps herself, her mother and Jilian escape, but they are unexpectedly captured by Shaiala and some centaurs with herstones. Recognising Yashra, Shaiala takes the group and other captured pirates to the Kaleri. Night Plume's flock arrives just in time to see Kyarra vanish into green light, and Night Plume realises he, unlike the enchanted quetzal, is free to travel past the edge of the Forest. He orders the flock to delay their return, and flies over the sea, but cannot find the island. Instead he lands on a ship, where he meets Caell, Renn and Kherron journeying to the mainland to search for Kyarra. When he reveals his ability to speak human speech, Kherron becomes suspicious, particularly as Night Plume admits to being raised by Frazhin. Night Plume faithfully passes on Rialle's message, including a warning that Frazhin is trying to poison the Echorium, and that he saw Kyarra vanish into green light - a sign Renn recognises as being Shaiala's work. They reach Silvertown and learn it has been poisoned - although for most residents this is not fatal - and the group encounters Lord Azri. Telling him about Frazhin, Azri agrees they must seek him out and attack, but the Singers must first fulfill their obligation to Kyarra and head to the Purple Plains to look for her. In the Horselord's camp, Kyarra is horrified to learn of her mother's crimes, and maintains that her punishment was undeserved. WHile she is glad to hear that Yashra will be cared for by the Harai, she is horrified to learn that Jilian is to be used as bait for her father, putting her in great danger. At a meeting, the Horselords hear a prophecy from Speaks Many Tongues, an inhabitant of Quetzal Forest, warning of doom when the dark quetzal flies. As the prophecy is spoken, Frazhin's quetzal attack the camp and, in the confusion, Kyarra frees Jilian and escapes with Speaks Many Tongues into the forest. Night Plume, scouting ahead for the Singers, learns from his flock that Frazhin has punished Sky Swooper for Night Plume's disappearance. The flock attack Night Plume, and he is badly injured, although the arrival of the Singers protects him from the angry Horselords. Kyarra, Jilian and Speaks Many Tongues journey into the forest, where Speaks Many Tongues insists on them meeting Xiancotl, the forest people's holy man, and travelling with him into the quetzal Memoryplace using yellow flowers. Before their arrival, they meet Shaiala, who has followed them with some centaurs, and she is invited to join them in the memory trance. Each girl asks a question: Shaiala successfully learns that the centaurs are uncorruptible because they do not hatch from eggs, but when Kyarra attempts to discover how to heal her mother, the memory trance is interrupted and instead she receives a summons from Frazhin. The disruption causes Xiancotl and Kyarra to pass out, and in the panic this causes Jilian, Shaiala and Kyarra escape to the centaurs. However, on Kyarra's insistence, they allow Frahin's naga to take her to him, where she hopes she will be able to subdue him with her Songs. The Singers and the Horselords regroup and prepare to head into the Forest and attack Frazhin. Although initially concerned for Kyarra, they are appeased when Speaks Many Tongues informs them that she disappeared with Shaiala. Speaks Many Tongues warns that Frazhin is planning to use the yellow flowers gathered by Night Plume's flock to travel into the quetzal Memoryplace and replace it with one of his own making, in which Singers will no longer exist. Although most of the Singers are horrified by this, Kherron is distracted by the promise of a miracle healing potion which Speaks Many Tongues suggests might heal his voice. The next day, the army travels into the Forest and surrounds the volcano where Frazhin has made his Temple, which is beginning to erupt as he prepares to enter the Memoryplace. With the help of the centaurs, who arrive with Shaiala and Jilian, the army breaches the crater and begins searching for Frazhin. Although Caell and Night Plume are told to wait outside, they grow restless, and make their way into the crater. Night Plume is horrified to see the bodies of the eldest and youngest quetzal, who were useless for the memory trance, along with Sky Swooper, punished for his disappearance by having her wings cut off before she was killed. Using wild speech, Night Plume breaks the memory trance on the other quetzal, and reasserts his leadership of the flock. Kyarra is taken by Frazhin to a ball made of crystal, called the Fane. Frazhin plans to seal the pair of them inside it, and then be rolled into the volcano to protect them from the approaching Singers. Within the Fane, they will use the Memoryplace - its power heightened by the captive quetzal and the yellow flower drug sent to the Isle of the Echoes and Silvertown - to change history so that Yashra is healed and the Singers do not exist. Although reluctant, Kyarra feels she has no choice but to get into the Fane. Just as it is sealed, Caell arrives, making Kyarra believe that the memory trance has brought him back from being drowned by merlee. Although the Singers rescue the Fane from the priests and end the volcano's eruption, they are unable to open the Fane, within which Kyarra is rapidly running out of air. Feeling they have no choice, Renn, Rialle, Caell, Night Plume and a newly-healed Kherron sing Yehn, hoping that it will break Frazhin's power. Although the Fane opens, the Yehn does not affect Frazhin, and he takes Kyarra hostage before being brought down by Night Plume and Jilian. Five years later, Kyarra wakes from the Yehn with the help of the forest people's potions, and is greeted by a reformed Lady Yashra, also healed, along with Night Plume, Caell, Jilian and Rialle. Although she is initially confused, she learns that Frazhin is dead and the Half Creatures are free again. Frazhin has been revealed to be a half-Singer child who was born on the Isle, but rejected from the Echorium because of his resistance to the Songs. Kyarra resolves to learn how to become both a Singer and a Harai princess, and plans to becomes the Echorium's first female Second Singer.
8787367	/m/027jrcr	Slave Girl	Jackie French	2005-03-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story focuses on a 12-year-old girl called Hekja. Hekja lives with her mother in simple village by the sea. Her two brothers and father have all died. At the beginning of the book, she comes to the aid of a small puppy who was attacked by a seagull on the beach. Hekja takes the puppy to the village's witch, Tikka, for her to help heal the puppy. Hekja is told that the puppy was one of the chief's litter, and she had already given it the True Name of Riki Snarfari (Mighty Rover). The puppy was considered the useless one of the litter and apparently had no value, so the chief had shown little interest in him and gives him away to hekja but later becomes jealous of how strong the pup is. Tikka shows Hekja how to look after Snarf, as he becomes known affectionately by Hekja. Eventually, Snarf becomes a lot better, and hardly limps at all from this wounded leg. The time comes for Hekja to spend the summer up the mountain with the other girls of the village. It is a tradition of the village for girls to stay on the mountain when they become of age, and the girls look after the cows and produce cheese whilst up the mountain, with the women bringing supplies "twice every full moon". The other girls are mean or indifferent to Hekja and abuse Snarf execept for one girl who is Hekja's best friend, Branna. One foggy day up in the mountain, the day was going by like every other day except, the girls up in the mountain heard a howl. Hekja goes to investigate and Snarf follows her. Hekja finds out it's a wolf and was planning to kill it or else it would have eaten one of the sheep. The girls hid back in cover and tried to persuade Hekja to come back and let the wolf take a sheep, but Hekja was stubborn, and wherever Hekja went, Snarf went, even to the jaws of death. The wolf finally appeared and Snarf bites it around the neck while the wolf is biting Snarf's leg. 5 seconds or so later the wolf dies from the first bite Snarf had dished out, at its windpipe. Snarf is considered a hero and is treated with respect and Hekja too because Snarf was her dog. Hekja became friends with all the other girls and they soon found out she had a wonderful voice for singing. they were all jealous about her making a song up all about Snarf so they pleaded Hekja to make a song about them. One day, whilst still up the mountain, Hekja sees strange ships approaching from the distance. At the protests of the other girls, she runs back down to the village, only to see the Viking raiders murdering the village people - Hekja's mother and the boy she used to love, Bran, but much later finds he is not dead but marries Branna, included. Hekja tries to outrun the invaders, but is captured, by a woman called Freydis, who is Erik the Reds daughter, and consequently is taken away as a slave. Hekja hates the Norse and will not share her beautiful gift of singing with them, even if it does mean that she would not have to mind the cows as a thrall, if they were to hear her sing. She had told one of the Norsemen when he heard her sing -the Norseman is named Snorri- that she didn't want anybody to know that she can sing because everything has been taken away from her and that if they heard her sing they would take that away from her too. Hekja's spirit and sheer determination means that she soon finds herself joining her mistress Freydis' expedition to Vinland. Hekja befriends Freydis' brother's thrall, Hikki, and he is the only one she will sing to. They develop a firm friendship. Upon arriving at Vinland, they find the place beautiful and welcoming. Vinland winters are so mild that the cattle can be left out all year round. Freydis and several other women in the colony are pregnant. Hikki proposes to Hekja in due course. Hekja is taken aback, but tells him to wait until she has finished serving her mistress in two years time even though she doesn't love him herself. Freydis also adopts Hekja and is now Hekjas mother. There is another who is also after Hekja's heart however; the mysterious Snorri the Skald. He seems to like Hekja, but refrains from letting on. Hikki dies in the Viking's Skraeling raid while Snorri was wounded, and after about two months, Hekja marries Snorri the Skald and they are very happy together.
8788340	/m/027jsjj	Car Trouble	Jeanne DuPrau		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Duff Pringle is heading across the country, aiming for his new job in technology in California's Silicon Valley. His used Ford Escort barely makes it a hundred miles from home before breaking down. He calls a car towing company to come pick him up, and when they get to the repair center, the car would need to stay 3–4 days. Duff only has 2 weeks to get to California. Duff checks in to a motel, thinking he would stay the 3–4 days, and soon finds a note asking for someone to drive a car to St. Louis. Duff sends this person an email and gets a reply saying they would drop it off at the motel he was staying at. Duff finds Stu in the parking lot while he was waiting. Stu is a hitchhiker looking to get to California too, and he asks Duff if he could come with him. Despite his appearance and behavior, Duff accepts, and they head to Saint Louis to deliver the car, a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, to a woman named Rosalie Hopgood. There are several characters in this story including Bonnie, an aspiring singer with a con artist for a mother (Bonnie's mom had stolen a lot of money from people and was wanted everywhere); two thugs looking for a trunkfull of cash; and Moony, a terrier dog prone to carsickness.
8791568	/m/027jxhg	Wetware	Rudy Rucker	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set in 2030–2031, ten years after the events of Software, Wetware focuses on the attempt of an Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed bopper named Berenice to populate Earth with a robot/human hybrid called a meatbop. Toward this end, she implants an embryo in a human woman living on the Moon (Della Taze, Cobb Anderson's niece) and then frames her for murder to force her to return to Earth. After only a few days, she gives birth to a boy named Manchile, who has been genetically programmed to carry bopper software in his brain (and in his sperm), and to grow to maturity in a matter of weeks. Berenice's plan is for Manchile to announce the formation of a new religion unifying boppers and humans, and then arrange to have himself assassinated. (Rucker makes several allusions to the Christ story; Taze's abbreviated pregnancy is discovered on Christmas Eve, for instance.) Before the assassination, Manchile impregnates several women, the idea being that his similarly accelerated offspring will create a race of meatbops at an exponential rate. The plot goes disastrously awry, and a human corporation called ISDN retaliates against the boppers by infecting them with a genetically modified organism called chipmold. The artificial disease succeeds in killing off the boppers, but when it infects the boppers' outer coating, a kind of smart plastic known as flickercladding, it creates a new race of intelligent symbiotes known as moldies &mdash; thus fulfilling Berenice's dream of an organic/synthetic hybrid. Both of the two main human characters of Software play prominent roles in Wetware: Cobb Anderson, whose robot body was destroyed at the end of the last novel, has his software implanted in a new body so he can help raise Manchile; while Sta-Hi Mooney &mdash; now known as Stahn Mooney &mdash; is now working as a private detective on the Moon after accidentally killing his wife, and is used as a pawn in various bopper and anti-bopper schemes. The Belle of Louisville, a steamboat of historic significance located in Louisville, Kentucky (the setting for the earthbound portions of the book), occurs as a character in the book, in which it is revealed that the steamer has been imbued with an onboard artificial intelligence.
8792574	/m/027jyq9	The Beggar Queen	Lloyd Alexander	1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mickle, once a common street urchin, is now the queen of Westmark. The kingdom is thriving, yet at the same time, it is strangely restless. Ghosts of the past lurk everywhere. The evil minister, Cabbarus, once banished from Westmark, is now plotting to seize the throne. Theo remembers a time when he was the famed Kestrel, fighting battles that threatened to kill his soul. Now he once again must join in the struggle. Who will at last command the fate of Westmark? One answer to that question is the people. The common people, mostly anonymous, rise up at the end, making the final overthrow of Cabbarus possible. The book raises moral questions, especially about choices, the effects of having power, and the evil that seems necessary to prosecute a war. Theo tries to keep out of the battles in the book, but finds that he can not. He vows to kill Cabbarus. (Theo had once saved his life in Westmark, the first of the trilogy.) In the end, many of the characters are dead, including Cabbarus, but not by the hand of Theo. A government, led by a council of commoners, begins to rise. Mickle, in one of her last acts as queen, proclaims that she and Theo are married. She sees that the two of them cannot remain in the country where she was queen. As the book ends, the couple leaves to travel the world together with their old friends, Las Bombas and Musket.
8792815	/m/027jy_7	On Wings of Song	Thomas M. Disch	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in suburban Iowa and in New York City, around the middle of the 21st century. Its first section describes the childhood and adolescence of Daniel Weinreb, an imaginative boy who manages to adapt well to his conservative surroundings until a minor act of rebellion sends him to prison at age 14. Daniel's experience there makes him eager to leave the Midwest. After falling in love with the daughter of a powerful and reactionary local tycoon, he moves with her to New York, dreaming of becoming a musician and exploring the forbidden art of "flying" -- electronically-assisted astral projection. Tragedy and exploitation leave Daniel's idealism in ruins, but he persists and becomes an internationally famous and controversial performer. Alongside this Bildungsroman storyline, the novel presents a detailed portrait of a future United States torn by economic hardship and culture war. The Midwestern Farm Belt states are ruled by a coalition of the Christian right, known as "undergoders" (a reference to the successful conservative campaign to add the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance); the nominally secular government is socially repressive and business-friendly to an extreme. The coastal states more closely resemble present-day urban America, with generally permissive social attitudes and artistic ferment, but great economic inequality. The invention of "flying" (which has happened at some unspecified point prior to the beginning of the novel, and is never described in any technological detail) aggravates these cultural divisions. By using a device that seems to be based on biofeedback, while singing with particular verve (an action that, as Disch suggests, causes unique integration of brain activity), a practitioner can separate mind from body and roam the world as an invisible "fairy", able to travel almost without restriction and perceive hidden things. Not surprisingly, the undergoders regard this as a sinful and dangerous practice, so much so that they discourage musical performance of any kind; but in the coastal cities flying is a fad, so popular that singers are afraid to admit not having been able to achieve it. Many Americans simply refuse to believe that such a radical escape is possible and claim that flying is a hallucination, but still take precautions to avoid being observed by "fairies".
8794432	/m/027j_n5	Trapped	James Alan Gardner	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel opens with five friends out for a night of drinking and occasional brawling. All five are teachers at a less-than-first-rate boarding school called Feliss Academy, situated in the town of Simka in Feliss Province (a future version of Simcoe, Ontario, the author's home town, and not far from the author's Waterloo current home). Future versions of other real locations, such as Niagara Falls, Port Dover, and the Port Dover mausoleum appear in the novel. The five, frustrated and bored with their unsatisfactory lives, are: * Sir Pelinor, the school's fencing instructor, who fancies himself a courtly knight; * Sister Impervia, the self-defense trainer, and a Handmaid of the Holy Order of Magdalenes; * the Steel Caryatid, sorceress, psychic, and gifted in pyrokinesis; * Myoko Namida, whose specialty is telekinesis and levitation; * and Philemon Abu Dhubhai, Ph.D., the novel's narrator, a scientist and the scion of a wealthy and powerful family in the Middle East. Tonight, however, is an unusual night: the Steel Caryatid has received a premonition that the group will undertake a quest. The quest reveals itself when Dhubhai encounters a ghost, and learns that one student at the school has been murdered while another, the victim's boyfriend, has run off. The group embarks on a search for the missing boy, which soon transforms into something far more sinister: a hunt for a shape-shifting alien creature, malevolent and very dangerous. The group expands with new recruits, then is whittled down by deaths along the route, as the search comes to involve aliens, a crazy and highly lethal Spark Lord, and a criminal gang nearly as bad. Their quarry, the runaway boy, turns out to be one of the most gifted psychics the world has ever known, which adds a new layer of complexity to their dilemma. Dhubhai and his surviving companions reach a bloody crisis in the basement of the power station at Niagara Falls, one of the few places on Earth that still maintains electric power and traces of OldTech civilization. Dhubhai learns that Spark Royal has kept the power flowing in order to imprison an alien force; the sinister being they have been following is only a small offshoot of a much greater and darker whole. Dhubhai discovers more than he anticipated about the cryptic workings of the League of Peoples before the alien force is controlled.
8794566	/m/027j_sp	Clockers	Richard Price	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Clockers follows intertwining storylines of low level cocaine dealer Ronald "Strike" Dunham and homicide detective Rocco Klein in the fictional New Jersey city of Dempsey (Which shares many similarities with Jersey City, NJ - where author Richard Price spent extensive time researching the subject matter.) Strike works in the drug organization of Rodney Little, a friendly but violent drug lieutenant of local drug lord Champ. When Rodney Little asks Strike to kill his second in command Darryl and take his position, Strike hesitates. While scoping out Ahab's, the fish restaurant from where Darryl wholesales cocaine, he encounters his drunk brother in a bar across the street, to whom he tells a made-up story about Darryl's abuse of his girlfriend. Victor apparently sees through his story, and suggests that if Strike needs someone killed, he knows "My Man" who could do the job. Strike is surprised by this offer from his law-abiding, working-man brother, and responds noncommittally, thinking him to be just a drunken boast. He is shocked the next day to find that Darryl has been shot dead in the Ahab's parking lot by an unknown assailant. Rocco Klein and his partner Larry Mazilli are assigned to investigate Darryl's murder. They quickly deduce that Darryl was more than just a restaurant manager. Meanwhile Strike is promoted in Rodney's organization and is introduced to Papi, a Puerto-Rican cocaine wholesaler. Rodney reveals that he has been buying cocaine from Papi and selling it behind Champ's back, without giving him a cut. Strike recognizes that Champ will have them both killed if he discovers their side business, but agrees to participate, believing he has no other choice. Rodney brings Strike to meet with Champ at his headquarters at the O'Brien housing projects. Rodney brings an undercover police officer who he introduces to Champ as a cocaine supplier, as part his plan to subplot him and take control of the organization. There, Strike encounters Champ's chief violent enforcer, Buddha Hat, a murderous man who cryptically proclaims that Strike is "Victor's brother." Strike takes this to mean that Buddha Hat was Victor's "My Man" and that he had killed Darryl. As Buddha Hat worked for Champ, and Darryl was the previous overseer of Rodney's secret drug sales, Strike assumes that Buddha Hat will realize their treachery and tell Champ, who would have them both killed. Buddha Hat pays Strike a perplexing visit, where Strike, thinking he is about to be killed, is instead taken to a restaurant and peep show in New York, in a bizarre gesture of friendship by Buddha Hat. Victor gives a full confession to Darryl's murder, but his self-defense story does not match witness accounts and Rocco expects that he is in fact innocent. His investigation begins to lead him to Strike, who he believes is a much more likely murderer than law-abiding Victor. Rocco confronts Strike at his drug corner and forcibly takes him in for questioning several times. Strike goes to meet Papi to pick up the week's cocaine shipment but finds him shot to death. Strike panics, fearing that Champ is on to him and Rodney. He later learns from Rodney that Buddha Hat also went behind Champ's back to take a bit of Papi's profits, and murdered him when he refused to pay. When Rodney is arrested selling cocaine to an undercover police officer, he believes that Strike has been talking to police and sends his enforcer, Errol Barnes to murder him. Rocco brings in Strike for questioning, again, as well as Victor and his mother, who, already facing an inevitable life sentence, finally reveals that it was him who had committed the murder, in a moment where, hating his difficult life and ungrateful wife, impulsively decided to murder Darryl as Strike had suggested with a gun he had earlier found and kept. Errol Barnes, despite a fearsome reputation for violence, is shot and killed by Strike's panicked young assistant Tyrone, who had been on his way to return Strike's gun after borrowing it out of curiosity. Strike goes free, but local cop Andre "The Giant," who was a father figure to Tyrone, threatens to kill Strike for ruining Tyrone's life unless he leaves Dempsey permanently. The novel ends with Rocco driving Strike into NYC, where, while at the Greyhound station a drug mule tries to get Strike to buy him a bus ticket. After Strike is hassled by the police, he buys a See America pass and leaves the city.
8800858	/m/027k5cy	The Great Time Machine Hoax	Keith Laumer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Chester W. Chester IV inherits a run-down mansion and millions in back taxes. In order to pay the taxes, he initially decides to auction off the mansion and its contents, including a massive computer (the Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator, or "Genie"). However, while examining the mansion and the computer with his friend Case Mulvihill, he finds the computer can solve complex problems involving historical fact and display realistic images of them. He hits on the idea of using its capabilities to create an elaborate hoax ... a fake time machine. Accordingly, he asks the computer to show him "real, three-D, big as life dinosaurs and plenty of em - and how about a four-wall presentation?" The computer asks if it should employ a method of doing so that "is a purely theoretical approach, which might prove simpler, if feasible, and would perhaps provide total verisimilitude..." Chester tells the computer to "go to it" and the computer does. However, the computer has managed to actually transport the two through time, and on their second trip back, before they realize that they actually do have a time machine, they make the mistake of leaving their arrival area, and become trapped in the past. Even when they manage to return to the present, their actions in the past have altered it completely, but they are able to use the computer to (perhaps, more or less) restore everything to the way it was.
8805061	/m/027k9y2	Captain michalis	Nikos Kazantzakis	1953		 The book deals with the rebellion of the Cretans against the Ottoman Empire in the year 1889. It is thought that the book is titled after Kazantzakis' father Michalis Kazantzakis from whom the writer was inspired. The word Captain is not used in its naval or military rank sense, but more as a chieftain title given to prominent members of the Cretan society. Freedom or Death was added as a subtitle to the second edition in Greek released by Difros publishers in Athens in 1955 and was the preferred English (US) title. In the UK the book was published as Freedom and Death.
8805474	/m/027kbjp	Vampire Plagues:London 1850	Ben Jeapes	2004-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book takes place in 1850 partially in Mexico but the main setting is London. This story starts of with Jack Harkett, a street urchin living on the docks of London. One night Jack sees a merchant ship sailing into port. He finds this an opportunity to make some money. But Jack feels strange as the ship stops and a number of bats suddenly fly out of the back of the ship. Then Jack watches a man, with proper clothes, walk down from the ship. Jack gets an eerie feeling as the man brushes past him, Jack also got a slight glimpse of a young boy on the ship, who had started to walk down from the ship. He runs after the boy and finally catches him. The boy told Jack his name was Benedict Cole and that he just returned from an ill-fated trip from Mexico. Benedict or Ben tells Jack how he, his father (Harisson Cole), Ben's godfather (Edwin Sherwood), Sir Donald (the man who brushed past Jack) had a very interesting voyage to Mexico and also tells Jack about Sir Donald becoming possessed by the Mayan bat-god Camazotz. During the voyage, Sir Donald killed, one by one, some tribe people helping them and got hold of some bats which are Vampires as well as Harisson Cole and Edwin Sherwood. Jack joins Ben in helping him to destroy Sir Donald, which they later realize is Camatotz, a fearsome vampire God banished over a thousand years ago during the Mayan Empire. There is a sequel to this book called Vampire Plagues Paris, Vampire Plagues Mexico, Vampire Plagues Outbreak, The Bitch Vampire, Vampire Plagues Epidemic, and Vampire Plagues Extermination.
8808690	/m/027kh2t	Caesar	Colleen McCullough	1998	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens in 54 BC, with Caesar in the middle of his epochal Gallic campaigns, having just invaded Britannia. The first half of the novel deals broadly with the conclusion of his conquests in Gaul, and the second half narrates the growing sense of unease in Rome concerning Caesar's intentions, the antagonism of the conservative 'boni' faction towards him, his crossing of the Rubicon, his invasion of Italy and his victory in the Civil War. Some of the pivotal moments include Caesar's return from Britannia; his narrow escape during the battle of Gergovia; his great victory at Alesia, which involved the complete circumvallation of the citadel, the repulse of a relief force, and the acceptance of the surrender of Vercingetorix; his final destruction of the Gallic resistance at Uxellodunum; the death of Julia and Marcus Licinius Crassus; his falling out with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and the final collapse of the First Triumvirate system; his failed negotiations concerning his re-election as consul; the opening of the Civil War; the Battle of Dyrrhachium and the Battle of Pharsalus; the flight of Pompey to Ptolemaic Egypt and his assassination there; and the scattering of the 'boni' leadership.
8809511	/m/027kj4j	The Ballad of the White Horse	G. K. Chesterton	1911	{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 Prefatory Note Chesterton begins his work with a note (in prose) declaring that the poem is not historical. He says that he has chosen to place the site of the Battle of Ethandune in the Vale of the White Horse, despite the lack of concrete evidence for this placement (many scholars now believe it was probably fought at Edington, Wiltshire). He says that he has chosen to include legends about Alfred, even if they are historically unlikely. Dedication The poem opens with a verse dedication to Chesterton's wife. He begins by commenting on Alfred and his legacy. Chesterton asks his wife to remember their travels together to research the poem, and closes with verse that seems meant for her personally. Book I : The Vision of the King The story begins with description of the White Horse of the White Horse Vale and how it has seen untold ages pass by. Among these periods was the fall of the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions that followed. The Danes have invaded and nearly conquered England, and now drive the Wessex King Alfred into hiding on the river island of Athelney. While there, the Virgin Mary appears to Alfred and gives him words of consolation. She does not promise him earthly victory, but reminds him of the promise of salvation. Book II : The Gathering of the Chiefs Greatly encouraged by Mary's words, Alfred sets out to try to muster the remaining Catholic chieftains and their followers. Alfred first convinces Eldred (a Saxon) to join his cause. He is then able to obtain the support of Mark (a Roman) and Colan (a Gael). He tells them to bring their troops to the river-hut by Egbert's stone. Book III : The Harp of Alfred Before travelling to the hut himself, Alfred decides to disguise himself as a minstrel in order to meet the Danish chieftains. Shouldering a harp, he is captured by the Danes near their camp and taken to their leader Guthrum, who asks him to sing. Around Guthrum are three Danish earls, Harold, Elf, and Ogier. None of the Danes realize the identity of the apparent peasant. After singing tales from the history of Wessex, Guthrum and his earls all take a turn playing the harp. Each man expresses his own view of life and the world. Finally Alfred takes the harp himself and sings his own Catholic view of life. Alfred departs the camp amid the laughter of the Danes. Book IV : The Woman in the Forest Alfred travels to the river-hut and finds that the chieftains have not yet arrived. While waiting, an old woman offers to give Alfred one of the cakes she has been cooking if Alfred will watch the fire for a time. While doing so, he pities the old woman and admires her for her persistence in a life of hardship. Alfred is jolted out of his daydreaming when the cakes fall and burn. The woman returns and strikes him on the cheek with a burned cake, leaving a scar. Astonished at first, Alfred laughs at his own foolishness and gives a speech about the dangers of pride to his now-gathered army. The army then begins marching toward the split road where the battle will be fought. Book V : Ethandune : The First Stroke The Saxon army causes many woodland animals to flee in panic, alerting Guthrum to the presence of the Saxon troops. Alfred and his army begin to fear the coming engagement. Alfred admits to several grave sins, including sacrilege and adultery. He asks the soldiers to pray for his soul. The three chieftains each declare the way in which they wish to be buried. They then reach the battlefield and deploy. Alfred and his chieftains are in front of the Saxon army, and the Danish earls are in front of the Danes. Guthrum rides on horseback towards the back of his army. Before the engagements begins, Harold shoots an arrow at Colan. Colan escapes it, and hurls his sword at Harold. The sword hits its mark, and Harold drops down dead. Alfred then gives his own sword to Colan, praising him for his heroism. Alfred takes a battle-axe for himself. The two sides then crash together and the battle begins. Book VI : Ethandune : The Slaying of the Chiefs Eldred quickly proves skilled at battle, and cuts down countless Danes. His sword suddenly breaks, and he is stabbed with seven spears. Elf recovers his spear, which proves to be a magic weapon he obtained from the water-maids of the English Channel. The Christian soldiers under Mark are filled with fear and begin to fall back. Mark rallies his men and charges at Elf, who dies by Mark's sword. The Christian troops are filled with confidence and begin the attack once more. Ogier encounters Mark, but the Dane is easily repulsed by the Roman. Ogier lifts his shield over himself, but Mark jumps on top, pinning Ogier down. Ogier manages to get an arm free and stabs Mark, who dies as he falls off the shield. Ogier leaps up, hurls his shield away and gives a raging battle speech to the Danes. The Danes manage to push the Christian army back against the split in the road. The army is split in two down each fork of the road, with Alfred and Colan separated. Colan is then killed. Book VII : Ethandune : The Last Charge Chesterton takes us away from the battle, and brings us to the White Horse Down. There a small child piles up stones over and over as they fall down each time. Chesterton draws a comparison between the child and Alfred. Back at the battle, the king gives a rousing battle-speech to restore the confidence of his men. Much to the shock of the Danes the enfeebled Christian line once again reforms and charges. They are quickly cut down, but the Christians continue to fight. Suddenly, the Virgin Mary appears to Alfred when his army is on the brink of complete defeat. This vision encourages Alfred, and his line charges once again. This charge is quickly broken up, and Alfred is separated and surrounded by Danes. Ogier is among the Danes around Alfred, and Ogier hurls his spear at Alfred. The spear lodges in a tree, and Alfred brings down his axe upon Ogier, killing him. Alfred then leaps over Ogier's dead body and blows the battle sign with his horn. This strikes fear into the Danes, who begin to fall back. Alfred leads the Christians in a mighty surge against the Danes. At this point the separated portion of his army returns, eager for victory. The Danes begin to retreat and flee. Amid his defeat, Guthrum undergoes a genuine conversion to Alfred's faith, and is baptized after the battle. Book VIII : The Scouring of the Horse After the battle, a period of peace comes to Wessex and its king. Alfred encourages learning and culture, and gives to the needy. He sends explorers out to other lands. He refrains from conquering other lands, because he feels that he is not worthy to govern anything beyond Wessex. The Saxon people scour the White Horse free of weeds, keeping it white and visible. After many years of this peace Alfred is told that the Danes, under a different leader, have invaded again. He simply prepares to fight once more, and summons his army. Alfred reveals that it is not so much the violent pagans that he fears, but rather the cultured, subversive pagans. As he says: "I have a vision, and I know The heathen shall return. They shall not come with warships, They shall not waste with brands, But books be all their eating, And ink be on their hands." (VIII:246-251) Alfred and his army march to London, and attack the Danes once again. "Lady, by one light only We look from Alfred's eyes, We know he saw athwart the wreck The sign that hangs about your neck Is dead and never dies. Therefore I bring these rhymes to you, Who brought the cross to me, Since on you flaming without flaw I saw the sign that Guthrum saw When he let break his ships of awe, And laid peace upon the sea." (D:47-58) Book I : The Vision of the King The first book begins by focusing on the White Horse. Created in prehistoric times, it now represents civilization itself. Just like civilization, the Horse needs constant scouring and attention for it to continue to survive. This constant battle to keep the Horse from fading into oblivion imitates the Paschal mystery of Christ. On Athelney, Alfred is visited by Mary: “She stood and stroked the tall live grass As a man strokes his steed. Her face was like an open word When brave men speak and choose, The very colours of her coat Were better than good news.” (I:166-71) Alfred throws at her feet an ancient jewel of his, and Mary reveals the essence of Christian life, part of which is the necessity of fighting against tremendous odds. “The gates of heaven are lightly locked, We do not guard our gain, The heaviest hind may easily Come silently and suddenly Upon me in a lane, And any little maid that walks In good thoughts apart, May break the guard of the Three Kings And see the dear and dreadful things I hid within my heart. The meanest man in grey fields gone Behind the set of sun, Heareth between star and other star, Through the door of the darkness fallen ajar, The council, eldest of things that are, The talk of the Three in One.” (I: 209-24) The great test in one’s hope and faith is accepting God’s providence over all aspects of the world and his personal efforts, “But if he fail or if he win / To no good man is told” (I: 229-30). Magic is false and the polar opposite of Christianity: “The men of the East may search the scrolls For sure fates and fame, But the men that drink the blood of God Go singing to their shame.” (I: 235-38) The struggle Alfred will have to endure will mimic the Paschal Mystery-as Mary says: “I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, not for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher. Night shall be thrice night over you, And heaven an iron cope. Do you have joy without a cause, Yea, faith without a hope? (I: 254-61) After this Mary disappears, but Alfred is filled with joy and faith and sets out on his mission. Book II : The Gathering of the Chiefs As Alfred sets out on his quest, he enlists the help of three chieftains: a Saxon, a Roman, and a Celt. These three men represent the different aspects of the English culture of the time, one of the sources of the Christian European culture which Chesterton felt was fading away. Eldred the Franklin (landlord) was a fairly large and good-natured man, quite fond of feasting: "A might man was Eldred, A bulk for casks to fill, His face a dreaming furnace, His body a walking hill. (II:42-45) Eldred had been engulfed in discouragement due to the many past defeats of the Saxons and refused to go to war once more. Alfred in reply says: "Out of the mouth of the Mother of God Like a little word come I; For I go gathering Christian men From sunken paving and ford and fen, To die in battle, God knows when, By God, but I know why." (II: 74-79) Eldred changes his mind upon hearing this and agrees to fight. The Roman Mark represents a life based on order and reason. He refuses to fight as well. Alfred tells him of his vision of the Blessed Mother, and goes on his way. Colan is a Gaelic warrior. He seems a paradoxical and conflicting blend on many levels: Christian and pagan, proud yet selfless and generous, a fearsome warrior and a singer of tales. "His harp was carved and cunning, As the Celtic craftsman makes, Graven all over with twisting shapes Like many headless snakes. His harp was carved and cunning, His sword was prompt and sharp, And he was gay when he held the sword, Sad when he held the harp. For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad. He kept the Roman order, He made the Christian sign; But his eyes grew often blind and bright, And the sea that rose in the rocks at night Rose to his head like wine. He made the sign of the cross of God, He knew the Roman prayer, But he had unreason in his heart Because of the gods that were." (II: 216-32) Unlike the other chieftains, Colan enthusiastically took up the challenge: "And if the sea and sky be foes, / We will tame the sea and sky" (II:266-67). The three chieftains represent more than ethnic lines: they represent the empirical, rational, and emotive emphases. Eldred represents the empirical, or physical, focus. Mark represents the rational (based on reason) focus, and Colan represents the emotive (emotional) focus. Book III : The Harp of Alfred Chesterton uses Alfred's visit to the Danish camp in Book III to compare the character's views of life. As the Danish earls, Guthrum, and Alfred each sing their own song, they each use it to express their own particular interpretation of life and its meaning. First to sing is Harold, who mocks the Christians as weaklings and loves conquest and pleasure. As he says: "But we, but we shall enjoy the world, The whole huge world a toy. (III:106-07) Next to sing is Elf, who is sad and pessimistic. He refers to Balder, who died as a result of the negligence of the Norse gods. As he says: "There is always a thing forgotten When all the world goes well ; A thing forgotten, as long ago When the gods forgot the mistletoe, And soundless as an arrow of snow The arrow of anguish fell. The thing on the blind side of the heart, On the wrong side of the door, The green plant groweth, menacing Almighty lovers in the spring ; There is always a forgotten thing, And love is not secure." (III:164-75) Next is Ogier, who is consumed with hate and violence. As he says: "While there is one tall shrine to shake, Or one live man to rend ; For the wrath of the gods behind the gods Who are weary to make an end. There lives one moment for a man When the door at his shoulder shakes, When the taut rope parts under the pull, And the barest branch is beautiful One moment, while it breaks." (III:201-209) Finally Guthrum sings. He is a cultured and experienced man, yet he feels unfulfilled and pessimistic. From his perspective, no matter what one is able to accomplish, all life ends in death. As he says: "And the heart of the locked battle Is the happiest place for men; when shrieking souls as shafts go by And many have died and all may die; Though this be a mystery, Death is most distant then. Death blazes bright above the cup, And clear above the crown; But in that dream of battle We seen to tread it down. Wherefore I am a great king And waste the world in vain, Because man hath not other power, Save that in dealing death for dower, He may forget it for an hour To remember it again." (III:278-93) At last Alfred takes the harp. He sings a song that is filled with joy and hope in God. He says that although man has sinned, he would rather "...fall with Adam / Than rise with all your gods" (III:313-14). Despite his power and glory, Guthrum "...asks if he is dead?" (III:318). The pagans ridicule the Christians as weaklings, yet "You are more tired of victory, / Than we are tired of shame" (III:333-34). Further, "If it be not better to fast for joy / Than feast for misery" (III:355-56). Since the pagans have seized control of Wessex, the White Horse fades into oblivion as grasses creep into it. Alfred ends his poem by saying: "Therefore your end is on you, Is on on you and all your kings, Not for a fire in Ely fen, Not that your gods are nine or ten, But because it is only Christian men Guard even heathen things. For our god hath blessed creation, Calling it good. I know What spirit with whom you blindly band Hath blessed destruction with his hand; Yet by God's death the stars shall stand And the small apples grow." 'And the King with harp on shoulder, Stood up and ceased his song; And the owls moaned from the mighty trees, And the Danes laughed loud and long.' (III:367-82) Book IV : The Woman in the Forest As Alfred waits for his forces to arrive, he comes across a poor woman cooking cakes over a fire. He agrees to help her, and watches the fire and cakes. He then begins to meditate on the poor and working class. He is reminded of Christ's identification with the poor. He thinks of "God like a good giant, / That, labouring, lifts the world" (IV: 122-23). God is his "armourer", "gardener", and "great grey servant." "Did not a great grey servant Of all my sires and me, Build this pavilion of the pines, And herd the fowles and fill the vines, And labour and pass and leave no signs Save mercy and mystery?" (IV: 97-102) As he weeps for the woman's class, a cake falls into the fire and is burnt. In anger the woman grabs it "And struck him suddenly on the face, / Leaving a scarlet scar" (IV: 163-64). At first Alfred thinks of revenge: "And torture stood and the evil things / That are in the childish hearts of kings / An instant in his eyes" (IV: 167-69). Christ however, gives the ultimate demonstration of humility: "Wherefore was God in Golgotha, / Slain as a serf is slain" (IV: 124-25). Alfred then laughs at himself and Chesterton comments on Christian laughter: "Then Alfred laughed out suddenly, Like thunder in the spring, Till shook aloud the lintel-beams, And the squirrels stirred in dusty dreams, And the startled birds went up in streams, For the laughter of the King. And the beasts of the earth and the birds looked down, In wild solemnity, On a stranger sight than a sylph or elf, On one man laughing at himself Under the greenwood tree- The giant laughter of Christian men That roars through a thousand tales, Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass, And Jack's away with his master's lass, And the miser is banged with all his brass, The farmer with all his flails; Tales that tumble and tales that trick, Yet end not all in scorning- Of kings and clowns in a merry plight, And the clock gone wrong and the world right, That the mummers sing upon Christmas night And Christmas Day in the morning. (IV: 225-247) Book V : Ethandune : The First Stroke Book VI : Ethandune : The Slaying of the Chiefs Book VII : Ethandune : The Last Charge The three books concerning the battle are grouped together in this analysis. Most of the values of the poem have already been expressed in the earlier books, and now they are put to the test in the battle. The Danish and Christian chieftains and earls fight to the death, as well as many of the common soldiers. Here the Paschal Mystery is explored, and the outcome, the resurrection, is the triumph of the Cross and its civilization over the pagan invaders and the baptism of Guthrum. Some aspects that can be considered are the warriors' boasts and speeches to one another, in full line with the epic tradition. They can be given a Christian perspective, as can be seen in Harold's and Colan's dialogue right before the battle begins. Harold laughs at the poor and disorderly appearance of Colan, "What broken bits of earth / Are here? For what their clothes are worth / I would sell them for a song" (V:194-96). Colan replies: "Oh, truly we be broken hearts, For that cause, it is said, We light our candles to that Lord That broke Himself for bread. "But though we hold but bitterly What land the Saxon leaves, Though Ireland be but a land of saints, And Wales a land of thieves, "I say you yet shall weary Of the working of your word, That stricken spirits never strike, Nor lean hands hold a sword. "And if ever ye ride in Ireland, The jest may yet be said, There is the land of broken hearts, And the land of broken heads." (V:209-24) Additionally, there is an example of the Medieval practice of warriors confessing their sins to one another when there was no priest available to hear their Confession. This practice allows the soldiers to prepare for death by giving a last affirmation of their faith, and in the case of the story, it is a final acknowledgment of creation's gifts and their misuse. Alfred's will be used as an example: "I wronged a man to his slaying, And a woman to her shame, And once I looked on a sworn maid That was wed to the Holy Name. "And once I took my neighbour's wife, That was bound to an eastland man, In the starkness of my evil youth, Before my griefs began. "People, if you have any prayers, Say prayers for me : And lay be under a Christian stone In that lost land I thought my own, To wait till the holy horn in blown, And all poor men are free." (V:68-81) Book VIII : The Scouring of the Horse The last book, as well as the poem in its entirety, declares that "eternal vigilance is the price of freedom" (Boyd). This is the meaning of the White Horse. Peace and civilization are gained through the struggle, which is motivated by the desire for freedom. As the book opens Alfred is in a time of peace in Wessex: "And Wessex lay in a patch of peace, / Like a dog in a patch of sun--" (VIII: 27-28). The scouring of the horse represents the works of peace. Alfred accomplished many of these, like making just laws, compiling songs and translating books, receiving embassies and legates, giving help to the poor and broken, and ruling his people kindly. Yet he chose not to expand his empire, even when encouraged to. "And Alfred in the orchard, Among apples green and red, With the little book in his bosom, Looked at the green leaves and said : When all philosophies shall fail, This word alone shall fit; That a sage feels too small for life, And a fool too large for it. "Asia and all imperial plains Are too little for a fool ; But for one man whose eyes can see, The little island of Athelney Is too large a land to rule." (VIII: 90-102) Alfred dedicates his land to Mary, "Though I give this land to Our Lady, / That helped me in Athelney" (VIII: 236-37). Alfred knows that the task of scouring the Horse of weeds will not end. Among others, the Danes still pose a threat. Alfred must plan for another battle, for this is the only way the White Horse can be kept clear. The poems ends with "And the King took London town." (VIII: 371) Christopher Clausen has argued that The Ballad of the White Horse was a significant influence on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings fantasy novel. He argues that the basic structure and themes of the Ballad were borrowed and incorporated into the Lord of the Rings. American author, poet, and widely-know pulp magazine "fictioneer" Robert E. Howard was much impressed by Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse." In a letter to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith, dated August 6, 1926 [when Howard was 20], he writes: "There is great poetry being written now. G.K. Chesterton, for instance." In another letter to Smith ca. September 1927, after a trip to San Antonio from his home in tiny Cross Plains, TX, he writes: "Several books I purchased on my trip, among them G. K. Chesterton's 'The Ballad of the White Horse.' Ever read it? It's great. Listen:…" which he follows by quoting several stanzas. Howard uses select excerpts from Chesterton's poem to serve as epigraphs for chapter headings in some of his stories. He frequently numbers Chesterton among his favorite poets.
8810361	/m/027kk66	Lullabies for Little Criminals	Heather O'Neill	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel revolves around the twelve-year-old protagonist named Baby and follows her for two years. Baby lives with her father Jules, who has a worsening heroin addiction. The two move frequently, to various places around Montreal, where they encounter many other characters, among them junkies, bums, pimps, and abused children. Baby was born while Jules was in high school with her mother, who died soon after Baby was born, though the cause of death is not revealed immediately. Jules often leaves young Baby by herself wherever they may be living, for anywhere from a week to over a month at a time. Baby becomes distraught and finds herself wandering the streets of Montreal on her own. She is eventually taken away by Child Protective Services and put into a foster home while Jules goes through rehab. There she makes friends with two boys, Linus Lucas, a 14-year-old who all the children think is the very height of cool, and Zachary, a mellow, happy 12-year old. When Jules finally picks her up, he promises that everything will return to normal. As Jules and Baby begin to settle down again, Jules' addiction gets the best of him and he begins to lash out at Baby, often for no reason. Baby eventually runs away and finds a semblance of security with a pimp named Alphonse. Around this time, she is taken into juvenile detention, and spends about a month in there. Alphonse develops an intimate relationship with Baby, taking her virginity, and forcing her to become a prostitute. She becomes one of his "girls" and is fearful of leaving him. She attempts to return to the apartment she had shared with Jules, but it is locked from the inside and nobody is there, so she assumes Jules has abandoned her. Alphonse also exposes her to heroin, making her addicted to it. Baby goes back to school while still prostituting herself and meets an odd boy named Xavier. Xavier and Baby slowly but surely become closer and begin to date. As their relationship grows, they become very intimate, and have sex at Alphonse's hotel room, the only place they can be alone. When Alphonse returns to find them there, he beats Xavier and sends him home. Alphonse then beats Baby and takes all of her heroin. When Baby wakes up the next morning, she finds Alphonse dead of a drug overdose. Baby leaves Alphonse's room and is left with nowhere to go. She decides to go to a nearby homeless shelter where she had heard that Jules was staying. They embrace, and Jules explains that he has set up a place to stay with his cousin. They pack up and walk to the local bus station. On the bus, Jules explains that Baby's mother died in a car crash while Jules was driving. The other driver was drunk at the time. Upon arrival at Jules' cousin's house in Val des Loups, the story ends.
8810676	/m/027kkmz	Zak's Lunch	Margie Palatini	1998	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Zak's mother calls him to come into the kitchen to eat lunch. Zak skips down the stairs two at a time, and his dog, George skids on the linoleum, and they enter the kitchen. When Zak sat at the counter, his mother made him a ham and cheese sandwich, and he made a yucky face. He told his mother he doesn't want to eat the ham and cheese sandwich. His mother told him that this is not a restaurant and that she wants to see that sandwich gone. Zak thought to himself that his mother was having a very ornery day, but he was the one that was having an ornery day, because he didn't want to eat the sandwich. Whenever he stared at it, he mumbled, grumbled, and groaned at it. Then, he believed that it should be restaurant, plus it excludes the ham and cheese sandwich. In his imagination, he and George were in a restaurant called Zak's Place, which also had the sign of its name in bright purple neon lights. There was a waitress named Lou that had frizzy red curls, teeny tiny frilly hat, and a pale blue uniform with a big pocket and her name written on it in red. Then, Zak began ordering some food. At first, Zak said that he would like a hamburger, but Lou asked him whether or not it's a bit boring. Then, Zak changed his mind to get a triple-decker, super-duper, cheeseburger deluxe, plus a pound of pickles. There was a cook named Cookie that was cooking the hamburgers. Next, Zak ordered French Fries with skinnies and ziggies and that curlicue around, and he raised his hand to pile them that high. Then, Zak ordered a pizza that is the size of bicycle tires for George to eat but to make it two. Then, Zak and George were eating their foods. Next, Zak asked whether they have chicken. Lou called out to Cookie to fry the bird all pins. Then Zak ordered a tub of spaghetti with meatballs the size of baseballs, hot dogs with chili, and nachos with cheese. While Zak and George were eating the spaghetti, Zak asked Lou what they have to drink, and Lou said that they have every drink, and Zak ordered "Line 'em up." Then Zak and George were drinking every drink lined up on the counter. Then there was dessert. And finally, there was a mountain of vanilla and a hill of chocolate. Then, Lou got all covered up with vanilla. Zak was calling Lou if it was her. Then, Zak's mother was calling him as Zak continued to say Lou's name. Then, George barked to get Zak out of his imagination of being in a restaurant. When Zak looked around the room, there was nothing that was only in his imagination. There was only him, his mother, George, and his lunch. His mother told him again that she wants to see that sandwich gone. Zak mumbled, grumbled, groaned, and made a yucky face again. When his mother turned around, he made George eat his sandwich. The mother thought Zak ate the sandwich.
8814550	/m/027kp_k	And Chaos Died	Joanna Russ	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 On the grossly-overpopulated planet, remnants of "nature" exist only in the isolated areas not covered by housing, industry and industrial farming. Creativity and individuality are suppressed and channeled into rigid social formats. A powerful bureaucracy/police state oversees the acts of all citizens. Its purpose is to maintain control for the planetary elite, and to that end it is prepared to resort to any method, however ruthless. In contrast to all this, the author introduces another planet on which human development has followed a diametrically opposite path: the natural world is respected; population is limited; and each individual is encouraged to develop uniquely. On this other world, human beings are known to be basically "spiritual", and immortal in nature. Telepathy and telekinesis are developed as much and as rapidly as possible. As the narrative progresses, a confrontation develops between these different systems.
8815752	/m/027kr3b	The Risk Pool	Richard Russo		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The plot follows narrator Ned Hall through four periods of his life, focusing specifically on Hall's relationship with his loutish and, in his best friend's words, "rockheaded" father.
8816133	/m/027krk2	Spirou et l'aventure		1948		 Contains the stories: * Le meeting aérien (1943) * Autour du monde avec le pilote rouge (1944) * Le voyage dans le temps (1944–45) * L'enlèvement de Spip (1945) * La jeep de Fantasio (1945–46) * Fantasio et le Fantôme (1946)
8817683	/m/027kt60	Deadly Perfume	Gordon Thomas	1991	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 David Morton is a Mossad who begins tracking the movements of several Arabs after he intercepts calls about a trade of two million U.S dollars for an unknown item. After tracking their movements into the Chinese jungle he listens to the Arabs and their Chinese contacts and discovers that it is a high probability he is dealing with agents hired by a terrorist, Raza. After killing most of the Arabs and Chinese, but allowing several to escape, Morton discovers that the deal was most likely Raza purchasing a new, highly lethal form of Anthrax; Anthrax B.C. Now Morton must stop Raza from unleashing a terrorist attack which could kill millions and could be initiated anywhere in the world. But he in not able to stop the bombings of three London Hotels including the one where is parents are staying or the accidental release of the "Deadly Perfume" on an entire African village.
8821138	/m/027kyq5	CHERUB: The Recruit	Robert Muchamore	2004-04-30	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book begins with James Choke getting sent to a children's care home called Nebraska house, after his mother dies from a alcohol related incident, where he shares a room with best friend Kyle Blueman, a CHERUB agent who recruits him. Meanwhile James' sister Lauren is taken to live with her father Ron Onions a scumbag of a step dad. James gets arrested for stealing beer. Next morning James awakes to find himself on the CHERUB campus where the chairman, Dr Terrence McAfferty - often called 'Mac' - introduces him to CHERUB and puts him through a series of entrance tests which he passes, including James changing his surname to Adams. James is admitted into CHERUB. In order to start going on missions all agents must complete Basic Training. Before this, however, he must learn to swim as he has a fear of swimming. He is taught by Amy Collins, a sixteen-year-old cherub in which he passes. During this James meets Kerry Chang, with whom he has a strong friendship. James' first mission takes place in the hippy camp Fort Harmony. James and Amy Collins must befriend the hippies at Fort Harmony and find out more about the potential attack at Petrocon 2004 by the terrorist group Help Earth. The two discover a plot to release anthrax bacteria into the air in the conference centre. James then gets the anthrax virus and is rushed to a military hospital where he is then treated. The police are called in and they raid Fort Harmony to prevent the attack from happening. Fort Harmony is burnt to the ground, and James is saved. * James Adams/Choke: The main character, a twelve year old boy whose mother dies from an alcohol overdose. He meets Kyle Blueman at Nebraska house, a children's home. He joins CHERUB and changes his name from Choke to Adams. Later he embarks on a mission to overthrow an eco-terrorist plot. * Kerry Chang: Kerry is James's basic training partner. She is one of James's closest friends and has a severe knee injury, which prevented her from completing basic training in the past. * Amy Collins: She teaches James to swim and joined him on the mission to infiltrate the Eco terrorist group known as 'Help Earth'. * Bruce Norris: Bruce is a master martial artist, but is revealed to behave like a baby. He is one of James' best friends. * Kyle Blueman: Kyle is James' best friend. He is the first person James knows at Cherub because of the fact that James shared a bedroom with Kyle at Nebraska house. Kyle is two years older than James' and meets his first girlfriend in the process.
8821615	/m/027kz5_	CHERUB: Class A	Robert Muchamore	2004-10-14	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 At campus, Kerry, Nicole, Kyle, and James are sent on a mission to infiltrate a drug gang called KMG, led by Keith Moore. On the mission, James has to work to befriend Keith's youngest son, Junior. He and Kerry get involved in a drug dealing delivery that ends with them stealing a car and burning it. This nearly unveils their CHERUB training but luckily they find their way out of it. The four agents are exposed to drugs and on the mission Nicole snorts a large amount of cocaine. She gets expelled because agents are not allowed to take drugs, especially Class A drugs. James gets invited to Miami by Junior and his dad Keith Moore. He also gets his 2nd girlfriend, April Moore, although he dumps her in favour of Kerry. Whilst in Miami, they are attacked, causing James to shoot and kill a man. Keith eventually is incarcerated and the agents return to campus.
8823832	/m/027l128	Pax Britannia: El Sombra			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 With the British Empire still controlling the world, the Nazi Reich resorts to bizarre and horrifying experiments - such as turning all the inhabitants of a Mexican town into human robots. The swashbuckling daredevil El Sombra is their only hope.
8825445	/m/027l2x0	Zastrozzi	Percy Bysshe Shelley	1810	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Pietro Zastrozzi, an outlaw, and his two servants, Bernardo and Ugo, disguised in masks, abduct Verezzi from the inn near Munich where he lives and take him to a cavern hideout. Verezzi is locked in a room with an iron door. Chains are placed around his waist and limbs and he is attached to the wall. Verezzi is able to escape and to flee his abductors, running away to Passau in Lower Bavaria. Claudine, an elderly woman, allows Verezzi to stay at her cottage. Verezzi saves Matilda from jumping off of a bridge. She befriends him. Matilda seeks to persuade Verezzi to marry her. Verezzi, however, is in love with Julia. Matilda provides lodging for Verezzi at her castle or mansion estate near Venice. Her tireless efforts to seduce him are unsuccessful. Zastrozzi concocts a plan to torture and to torment Verezzi. He spreads a false rumor that Julia has died, exclaiming to Matilda: "Would Julia of Strobazzo's heart was reeking on my dagger!" Verezzi is convinced that Julia is dead. Distraught and emotionally shattered, he then relents and offers to marry Matilda. The truth is revealed that Julia is still alive. Verezzi is so distressed at his betrayal that he kills himself. Matilda kills Julia in retaliation. Zastrozzi and Matilda are arrested for murder. Matilda repents. Zastrozzi, however, remains defiant before an inquisition. He is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Zastrozzi confesses that he sought revenge against Verezzi because Verezzi's father had deserted his mother, Olivia, who died young, destitute, and in poverty. Zastrozzi blamed his father for the death of his mother, who died before she was thirty. Zastrozzi sought revenge against not only his own father, whom he murdered, but also against "his progeny for ever", his son Verezzi. Verezzi and Zastrozzi had the same father. By murdering his own father, Zastrozzi only killed his corporeal body. By manipulating Verezzi into committing suicide, however, Zastrozzi confessed that his objective was to achieve the eternal damnation of Verezzi's soul based on the proscription of the Christian religion against suicide. Zastrozzi, an outspoken atheist, goes to his death on the rack rejecting and renouncing religion and morality "with a wild convulsive laugh of exulting revenge".
8829637	/m/027l73g	Funny Boy	Shyam Selvadurai	1994	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first part of the novel begins with the spend-the-days, in which the grandchildren congregate at Ammachi and Appachi’s home. Arjie and his female cousins, as usual, play their game of “bride-bride,” which is interrupted when their cousin Tanuja (Her Fatness) refuses to indulge Arjie’s desire to be bride. The adults ultimately discover their game, and one uncle tells Arjie’s father “you have a funny one here” (14). Arjie is no longer allowed to play with the girls. When he questions his mother, she responds with “because the sky is so high and pigs can’t fly, that’s why” (19). The second chapter on the return of Radha Aunty from America. Radha Aunty and Arjie develop a special relationship, immediately, and both become involved in a performance of The King and I. Although she receives an engagement offer from Rajan Nagendra, she is reluctant and develops a friendship with Anil Jayasinghe, a Sinhalese who is also involved in the play. The extended family warns Radha and encourages her to put an end to the relationship. Radha Aunt goes to Jaffna to forget about Anil, and on her return journey, she and other Tamils are attacked on the train. Eventually, she becomes engaged to Rajan. It is through the friendship between his aunt and Anil that Arjie begins to understand the concept of ethnicity and the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict. In the third story, while Arjie’s father is in Europe on a business trip, Daryl Uncle returns to Sri Lanka from Australia to investigate allegations of government torture. Arjie is cognizant of a long history between Amma and Daryl Uncle, but is unsure of the cause of the tensions. When Arjie becomes very ill, Amma decides to take Arjie from Colombo to the countryside to recover. Much to Arjie’s surprise, Daryl Uncle visits Arjie and his mother throughout their stay in the hill country. Following his recovery, Arjie and Amma return to Colombo, while Daryl Uncle goes to Jaffna. When there is news that violence had broken out in Jaffna, Amma becomes worried about Daryl and eventually, they receive word that Daryl’s body was found on the beach, supposedly from drowning but they suspect he was killed first. Although Amma tries to pursue the matter further, a civil rights lawyer tells her that there is nothing they can do, given the state of the country, and that “one must be like the three wise monkeys. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” (137). In a plot shift, Appa’s school friend’s son Jegan comes to the family looking for a job and begins to work with Appa at his hotel and also lives with the Chelvaratnam family at their home. Jegan previously associated with the Tamil Tigers, but insists that he has broken all connections with the organization. Jegan also strikes up a friendship with Arjie and for the first time, he feels his homosexual tendencies surface, as Arjie admires “how build he was, the way his thighs pressed against his trousers.” The Tamil-Sinhalese tensions build up throughout the story, and Jegan is accused of being involved in a plot to assassinate a Tamil politician who the Tamil Tigers label as a traitor (177). After Jegan’s room at the hotel is vandalized, Appa decides it is best to fire Jegan and he leaves with hints that he may retrace back to his violent past (200). Appa decides to transfer Arjie to Victoria Academy, a school he says “will force you to become a man” (205). Arjie catches the eye of a boy named Sheehan as well as the notorious school principal. Diggy hints that Shehan is gay and urges Arjie to stay away from him. Arjie notices in himself a growing attraction towards Shehan as the two spend more time together. The principal, nicknamed “Black Tie” ropes in Arjie to recite two poems at an upcoming school function. The function and specific poems are especially important to “Black Tie” as they are his final plea to prevent the government from reorganizing the school. Arjie gets nervous reciting the poems and forgets his lines, and the principal beats Arjie as well as Shehan for failing to help him memorize the poems. One day, Shehan kisses Arjie on the lips and he recoils, but it is after the kiss Arjie begins to comprehend his own sexuality. “I now knew that kiss was somehow connected to what we had in common, and Shehan had known this all along” (250), he says. Later, Arjie and Shehan have their first sexual encounter together in his parents’ garage. Afterwards, Arjie feels ashamed of himself and believes he has failed his family and their trust. During the school function, Arjie purposely jumbles up his poem after he witnesses Shehan emotionally break down from Black Tie’s beatings. The two reunite and Arjie begins to come to terms with his sexuality, recognizing that “I was no longer a part of my family in the same way. I now inhabited a world they didn’t understand into which they couldn’t follow me” (278). In the final chapter of the novel, rioters start to burn down the Tamil houses and establishments in Colombo. The family escapes to a neighbor’s house and goes into hiding after a mob comes to burn down their home. After their own hotel is attacked and Ammachi and Appachi are killed, Appa decides it is time for the family to leave the country. After making love to Shehan for the last time, Arjie leaves Sri Lanka and moves to Canada with his family.
8832390	/m/027l9kr	When the Bough Breaks	Jonathan Kellerman	1985	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dr. Morton Hander practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion and sexual manipulation. Hander paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn. It's psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware's job to try to unlock the terrible secret buried in Melody's memory. But as the sinister shadows in the girl's mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that the mystery touches a shocking incident in his own past. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent victim.
8833017	/m/027lb61	Shattered	Dean Koontz	1973	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Artist Alex Doyle and his new family, bride Courtney and her 11 year old brother Colin, are moving from Philadelphia to San Francisco. Courtney's flying out ahead to get the house set up. Alex and Colin are driving there in Alex's new Ford Thunderbird. The cross-country trip starts out as a fun bonding experience, but their car is being tailed by a van; a van driven by a psychopath intent on terrorizing them.
8833281	/m/027lbck	The Flesh in the Furnace	Dean Koontz		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A puppet master has his hands full when his puppets - living puppets - convince his half-witted assistant to kill him and set them free. When freed from the puppet master, who they had once thought of as cruel and thoughtless, they find themselves in what may be an even worse situation. The half-witted assistant now has their lives in his hands, and they are not so competent hands after all. They strive to free themselves once again, and find that their perfect life they'd thought they had created has turned against them.
8834553	/m/027lc4w	Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu	Lee Goldberg	2007-01-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 From the jacket summary: Monk is horrified when he learns there's going to be a blue flu in San Francisco — until Captain Stottlemeyer explains that it just means the police plan to call in "sick" until they get a better contract. The good news is the labor dispute will give Monk a chance to get back on the force. The bad news is it means he'll be a "scab" — and he doesn't like the sound of that either. But before he knows it, Monk has his badge back, and his own squad to command. Unfortunately, some of the squad members make Monk look like a paragon of mental health. But despite the challenges, they'll have to pull together to catch an astrologer's killer, solve a series of mysterious fatal assaults, and most importantly, clean up their desks.
8835920	/m/027ldqf	CHERUB: Maximum Security	Robert Muchamore	2005-04-14	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 James is joined on a new mission by Dave Moss and his sister Lauren Adams. The mission focuses on Jane Oxford, an international arms dealer who has been untraceable for as long as she has been on the CIA's most wanted list. But then they come across a breakthrough: Jane's 14-year-old son Curtis Oxford has been jailed for murdering three innocent people. He is being held at Arizona Maximum Security Prison. The Americans ask a favour from CHERUB, an organisation with one essential advantage: even experienced criminals do not expect kids to be spying on them. The plan is for James and Dave to be sent into the prison undercover, then to bust Curtis out, hoping that Curtis will lead them to his mother. However, after a prison fight Dave is injured and taken to hospital, leaving James alone behind bars. Soon James and Curtis escape with the help of Lauren. Later, they meet up with Jane Oxford. Jane wants James dead, so she sends her men to execute him but he beats them. Soon, the FBI arrive to arrest Jane. Lauren gets her navy shirt for her performance.
8837068	/m/027lf_b	Is Underground			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Is Twite, a character introduced in 'Dido and Pa' as Dido's previously unsuspected half-sister, is now living on Blackheath Edge near London with a third, older, sister, Penelope (called 'Penny') and their cat Figgin. When they save a stranger from the wolves that are running wild in the area, only to discover he is a relative, Is takes on the task of continuing the man's search for his missing son Arun. She travels into London to consult with old friends, and there meets the king of England, James III, who also asks her to look for his own missing son David. Is's investigations lead her to 'The Playland Express', a secret train spiriting children away from London and north into the part of the country that has recently split off and become autonomous. Is travels with the other children, who believe they are being taken to a better life, but armed with her suspicions and a quick wit, Is makes a successful bid for freedom. Whilst the other children are enslaved and taken to the coal-mines, Is remains at liberty in the overground town of Blastburn. She meets with local relatives, including her uncle Roy, who is the dictator of the new country, and also other residents of the derelict town, including Doctor Lemman, whose apprentice she becomes to excuse her presence in Blastburn (children in that area are all sent to the coal-face). Through this work she discovers that most people in the area now live in an underground town called Holdernesse, set in a vast natural cavern. She also learns more about the coal-mine and the appalling conditions here. Meanwhile, she is also learning about medicine from Dr. Lemman and occasionally experiencing something she comes to call 'the Touch' - a sort of psychic cry for help. She continues to search for the lost boys, aggravating her Uncle Roy, and eventually ends up going to work in the mine herself. Here she discovers that the king's son is dead, and that her cousin Arun Twite has escaped and suffered some sort of mental breakdown. She discovers 'the Touch' is the collective psychic voice of the enslaved children and together, with Is as a guide and leader, they begin to hone this talent into a means of communication. In this way they are able to organise a full escape when predictions of a tidal wave that will collapse the mine reaches them. After the escape, Is Underground is captured and left to die in the derelict library by her Uncle Roy but with the help of her new friends escapes in time to see the Playland Express taking children back to London and Uncle Roy killed when he runs in front of it. She is left with the ability to mentally talk to her friends all over the country, and with a new companion is Arun, who has recovered from his breakdown.
8841014	/m/027ln1j	The Thirteenth Tale	Diane Setterfield	2006-09-12	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Vida Winter, a famous novelist in England, has evaded journalists' questions about her past, from simply refusing to answer their inquiries to spinning elaborate tales that they later discover to be false. Her entire life is a secret, and for over fifty years reporters and biographers have tried innumerable methods in an attempt to extract the truth from Winter. With her health quickly fading, Ms. Winter enlists Margaret Lea, a bookish amateur biographer, to hear her story and write her autobiography. With her own family secrets, Lea finds the process of unraveling the past for Winter bringing her to confront her own ghosts. The novel opens as Lea returns to her apartment above her father's antiquarian bookshop and finds a hand-written letter from Winter. It requests her presence at the author's residence and offers the chance to write Winter's life story before she succumbs to a terminal illness. Lea is surprised by the proposal, as she is only vaguely aware of the famous author and has not read any of the dozens of novels penned by Winter. While considering the offer, Lea's curiosity prompts her to read her father’s rare copy of Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation. She is unexpectedly spellbound by the stories and confused when she realizes the book contains only twelve stories. Where is the thirteenth tale? Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet with aging author -- if only to discuss her reasons for not accepting the position as Winter's biographer. During their meeting at Ms. Winter's home Lea attempts to politely decline the offer and leave, but is stopped at the door by the pleas of the older woman. With promises of a ghost story involving twins, Ms. Winter desperately implores the bibliophile to reconsider. By the end of the encounter, Lea finds herself increasingly drawn to the story and proposes a conditional agreement to Winter; to earn the trust of her biographer, Vida Winter must supply her with three verifiable truths. Somewhat reluctantly, the three secrets are extracted from their keeper. Afterwards, Winter and Lea begin their adventure into the past with; "Once upon a time there two little girls...". As Vida Winter tells her story to Lea, she shares dark family secrets which have long been kept hidden. She recalls her days at Angelfield (the estate that was her childhood home), which has since burned and been abandoned. Recording Winter’s account (the author allows no questions), Lea becomes completely immersed in the strange and troubling story. In the end, both women have to confront their pasts and the weight of family secrets, as well as the ghosts that haunt them both.
8841283	/m/027lngm	Capturez un Marsupilami	André Franquin	2002		 *Le Marsupilami descend sur la ville (The Marsupilami Goes to the Village), 1955 *Noël d’un bagarreur (A Warrior's Christmas), 1956 *La bûche de noël (The Work of Christmas), 1957 *Touchez pas aux rouges-gorges (Don't Touch the Robins), 1956 *Les patins téléguidés (The Remote-controlled Rollerskates), 1957 *Le homard (The Lobster), 1957 *Tarzan (previously named Houu Bai), 1977 *La cage (The Cage), 1965 #1420 *Capturer un marsupilami (To Capture a Marsupilami), 1977-1981 and 15 short gags from 1968–1972
8842633	/m/027lpzr	The Pinballs			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Three kids by the name of Carlie, Harvey, and Thomas J.(For Jefferson) go to live at a foster home with Mr. and Mrs. Mason, an infertile couple. The Masons have been foster parents for 17 kids already. Carlie thinks it's a stupid place and is quite skeptical. But she has to stay there until her mother and her stepfather work out their problems. Two other children arrive: Harvey, who has broken legs and Thomas J., who has grown up with two very old twin sisters who found him in front of the farmhouse when he was very young. The twins are now both in the hospital. Thomas J. isn't unhappy, but has to learn how to express himself. He gets help from Mr Mason. Harvey is very unhappy and needs the others badly, although he has trouble admitting that. Eventually he confesses his father ran over his legs with his car (at first he told everyone he was a quarterback and got tackled too hard). He argues with his dad about his mother, who lives in a commune. His father denies that she ever wrote Harvey back. Harvey has a habit of making lists of the things that bother him. Carlie at first feels neglected. She thinks about running away, but slowly changes her mind. Carlie takes the decision to take her fate in her own hands, and stop being a defenseless pinball. When Harvey is in the hospital, Carlie and Thomas J. give him a puppy for his birthday, which gets him through the pain. Carlie comes up with a name for the puppy: Quarterback. Carlie sees they are not pin balls, because pin balls can't control where they are going, the children can. All three children start to take control of their lives. Although Carlie still throws out a few insults, the children are now much better friends.
8843578	/m/027lqxn	Empire Falls	Richard Russo	2001-05-08	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the small, decaying, and nearly bankrupt town of Empire Falls, Maine, this is the story of Miles Roby, the unassuming manager of the Empire Grill, who has spent his entire life in the town. He has an ex-wife, Janine, who has become a cocky, selfish bachelorette after losing weight and exercising rigorously. This is partly due to encouragement from Walt Comeau, an antagonistic fitness center owner who visits the Empire Grill every day and has moved into Roby's old house by this point. Roby also has a loving teenage daughter nicknamed "Tick" who is dealing with Zack Minty, her cruel ex-boyfriend plus an emotional conflict over her mother's engagement to Walt. In addition, she has a complicated friendship with John Voss, an emotionally disturbed boy at school whose hard-luck story is known all too well around town. The obnoxious jock Zack and his friends constantly bully John. Other important people in Miles' life include his grubby ne'er-do-well father, a rascal who can't resist a handout when it comes his way; his reformed marijuana smoking brother, who is a talented Empire Grill cook; his good-hearted ex-mother-in-law, who owns a bar; the town's wealthiest woman, a condescending matron who owns the Empire Grill; that woman's daughter, who has loved Miles for many years; an attractive waitress, a retiring police chief and a dimwitted police officer, who is Zack's father and has known Miles since childhood. Miles is plagued by flashbacks of his family when he was a child, including a mysterious affair between his mother and a suitor, the details of which might answer some questions Miles has had his entire life.
8844484	/m/027lry9	Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction	Luke Davies	1998-06-16	{"/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 As with the movie version the book is broken down into three sections, excluding the prologue and epilogue. Part one: Invincibility, Part two: The Kingdom of Momentum, Part three: The Momentum of Change. In the beginning everything seems perfect for the unnamed narrator and Candy,(the girl and the drug), things are new and exciting. Of course in both relationships and addiction things do not remain so perfect or beautiful. Candy is introduced to heroin very gradually by snorting it, but soon she decides she wants to try it his way. This excites him as he believes it means she doesn't want "second best" and they truly are "soul mates". She nearly dies of an overdose but it does not prevent Candy from wanting to do more and more. Eventually the hunger leads to horrible choices to feed the addiction. When they try to get money by pawning a necklace Candy is offered a very small amount, but the pawnbroker thinks they can " work something out". She has sex with him for a pitiful sum. An action that is regretted by the narrator but he also knows they have held off the demons of withdrawal another day. From there brothel work, escort, and finally street prostitution become part of daily life. They try to get clean several times and Candy does in fact get detoxed early in the story but that lasts a very short time. After their attempts they "reward" themselves with a "blast", figuring it isn't really a bad idea after how far they have come. In one of their attempts to achieve normal lives they get married and it is in the narrators words "Obviously it was a big dope weekend. You want to be relaxed at your own wedding" They really do seem to love each other but is it only an illusion of heroin is the big question. They continue on their path of disaster through very high ups and extremely low downs. An unexpected pregnancy gives them a reason to get clean but they fail yet again and Candy prematurely delivers a baby boy who lives only seconds. Soon after Candy is tired of earning all the money while they share all the dope, and the narrator feels like he is less of a man for allowing her to do what she does to make the money. When a friend Candy knew in the past comes back from the US they feel as if their prayers have been answered. Casper is a chemistry genius and makes his own "Yellow Jesus". He is convinced to sell the recipe and give cooking lessons. Suddenly Candy only has to work when they need the cash for chemicals and equipment, and the narrator can keep them in all the heroin they need with extra to sell. There are a few disasters including a watered batch, and a fellow user with worse veins than the narrator spraying blood around the flat when his detachable head syringe blows off after he pierces his carotid artery trying to shoot up. Finally they decide to give methadone a try and things start to look better, for a while anyway. They move to the country thinking another fresh start is what they need but it goes very wrong. They begin fighting more and Candy begins acting strange. After she has an affair with a neighbor who deals pot, things fall apart. The narrator leaves and stays with an old friend who he angers, being kicked out after two days. He begins his own affair but is soon called by Candy's father. Candy has had a full nervous breakdown and is hospitalised. He makes his way home to find a very changed and very delusional Candy. After she is released they try one more time but he breaks the rules after running into Casper. Candy leaves him and shortly after Casper is caught making heroin. His employer sends him to rehab but Casper leaves, knowing it is the end of his career if he does. He gets anti-depressants, alcohol, goes to his lab and cooks one last batch, committing suicide. The narrator goes into rehab and gets sober. He sees Candy the first chance he is allowed and she tells him she knows they have to end. They have to stay apart to be clean.
8852138	/m/027m0q1	Black Book		2006	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Apart from the prologue and epilogue, the story is a first-person narrative told by Rachel Stein, a young Jewish woman. The novel is set at the end of World War II in the Netherlands. In September 1944, Rachel is 26 years old, and the Stein family is in hiding from the Nazi authorities. Rachel is living with a Christian family in the Biesbosch, an area of rivers and creeks, separated from the rest of her family. Here she is not allowed outside, but one day she goes sunbathing near the water. Here she meets Rob, a man about her own age, who was on the water sailing. As they enjoy themselves on his boat, a crippled British bomber flies over while dropping its payload so it can climb to escape a pursuing fighter, and one of its bombs hits Rachel's hideout. While she is staying with Rob, they are approached by a Dutch policeman named Van Gein, who offers to help them flee to liberated Belgium. She needs money for her escape, so she visits a lawyer named Smaal in The Hague. During the escape, she is reunited with her parents and brother; but their escape boat—with Rachel, Rob, the rest of the Stein family, and other Jews on board—is ambushed. Rachel hides in the water and gets a good view of the SS officer who was responsible. Everyone except Rachel is killed. Rachel is smuggled into The Hague disguised as a corpse in a coffin. There, she joins a resistance group led by Gerben Kuipers. She dyes her hair blond and takes the alias Ellis de Vries. While she and the resistance group are trying to smuggle medicine and weapons, they are intercepted by German security forces. All the Germans are killed by resistance group member Hans Akkermanns. Rachel and Hans travel by train with the contraband. In the train Rachel meets a Sicherheitsdienst (SD) officer, Ludwig Müntze, who helps her with her suitcases. Tim, Kuipers' son, and several other members of the resistance group, are later captured by the Germans when their weapons supply truck covered with vegetables crashes. The weapons are exposed when the vegetables are scattered everywhere. The rest of the group plans to have Rachel make contact with Müntze and enlist him in helping them get the prisoners released. Rachel goes to the SD headquarters to meet Müntze, bringing him Netherlands East Indies stamps for his collection. (He has been collecting stamps for every country he's been stationed in, including Poland.) He invites her to a party. At the party she spots the officer responsible for killing her parents, Günther Franken. He is playing the piano. Rachel feels sick and runs out of the room to throw up in a bathroom. After the party, she sleeps with Müntze, and he tells her how he lost his wife and children in an air raid on Hamburg. Rachel and Müntze fall in love. Rachel is offered a job at the SD and bugs the office with a British device. Franken wants to execute the captured resistance group members, but Müntze refuses to sign the order. Using the hidden mike, Rachel and the other resistance group members learn that Van Gein has been collaborating with the Germans - trapping escaping Jews, murdering them and keeping their money. The resistance decides against saving the Jews from Van Gein, weighing the lives of Jews against imprisoned Dutchmen. Others in the group decide to kidnap the traitor, but their plan fails because the chloroform they use expired in 1941. Van Gein overpowers his kidnappers, who are forced to kill him. "Ellis" returns to Muntze, but finds the German convinced that she is Jewish and a mole for the resistance. Rachel tells Muntze that he is correct but also how she lost her family. He does not arrest her. With Rachel's information, Müntze accuses Franken of hoarding loot stolen from murdered Jews, inviting General Kauntner to open Franken's safe. While Nazi law allows for the killing Jews, failing to turn over their property is a capital offense. Nevertheless, Franken is cleared when a search of his office safe fails to turn up the stolen loot. Realizing the danger Muntze poses, Franken has him arrested, telling Kauntner of Muntze's negotiating with the resistance, a charge Muntze wearily concedes. Angrily, Kauntner orders Muntze's execution. Later, a party is held at the SD office to celebrate Hitler's birthday. Rachel persuades the resistance group to free Müntze during an operation to rescue Tim and the other imprisoned members. During the party, Rachel helps the rescue group get into the building, but the mission proves a trap, as heavily armed German soldiers overpower the would-be rescuers, and virtually annihilate them. Franken, apparently tipped off to the resistance operations, has Rachel brought to his office. Knowing of the hidden microphone, he "congratulates" Rachel for her efforts, knowing that the resistance will overhear the conversation and conclude that Rachel betrayed them to the Germans. During the early morning hours, Müntze's driver rescues Rachel and Müntze, and they flee to Rob's sailboat. Rachel and Müntze talk about the war, about who could have informed on them to Franken, and what they would do after the war. On May 5, 1945, they hear Dutch nationalist songs on the radio and learn that the Netherlands has been liberated. Franken escapes Holland by sea, taking his loot with him, but his boat is sabotaged and he is murdered by Hans Akkermans. During the chaos following liberation, suspected traitors and collaborators are arrested and publicly paraded in disgrace. Rachel and Müntze suspect Smaal as the informant and visit. While they are at his house, Smaal and his wife deny the charges but are murdered. Rachel snatches a little black book of his notes from Smaal's body. Müntze chases Smaal's murderer into the liberation parades but is recognized by the Resistance and captured. Seen by the Resistance in Smaal's house, Rachel is captured as well. Imprisoned, Rachel endures horrific abuse before being liberated by Hans and a Canadian officer. Muntze proves less lucky. Returned to his old office, now being used by Canadian troops, Muntze finds the Canadian officers working with Kauntner. Far from defeated, Kauntner appears to retain significant power through the Canadians. Producing Muntze's death warrant, Kauntner persuades the Canadian officers to allow him to have Muntze executed, citing British Military law requiring a defeated enemy be permitted to discipline its own troops. Muntze is almost immediately executed by firing squad. Lauding Hans as a resistance hero, and lured by chocolate he's received from allied officers, a crowd of jubilant Dutch follows his jeep as he takes Rachel to his home. There he shows her the recovered loot, a fortune in gold, jewels and cash. Learning of Muntze's death, Rachel collapses in grief. Hans gives her something to calm her down. Too late, Rachel realizes that Akkermans has injected her with insulin, leaving her to die as he greets a joyful crowd below. Slipping into unconsciousness, Rachel grabs some of Hans's chocolate bars to prevent insulin shock. While Hans is being cheered by a joyous crowd on his balcony, Rachel appears from behind him and jumps off the balcony into the crowd. Escaping, she reaches Canadian officers who bring her to Kuipers. Using the Black Book, Rachel and a Canadian officer successfully convince a grieving Kuipers of her innocence and Akkermans's guilt. The black book - with Smaal's notes - proves all too convincing, documenting wealthy Jews seeking to escape from the Germans. Hans himself had been arrested by the Gestapo, released officially due to lack of evidence, but in fact because he had made a deal with Franken. Kuipers and Rachel figure out that Hans is trying to get away in a coffin, taking with him the riches stolen from murdered Jews. They track him down and seal the coffin suffocating him. As they wait for Hans to die, Kuipers and Rachel calmly debate what to do with Hans's stolen treasure. In the epilogue Rachel is living on a kibbutz in Israel, which was funded with the money, jewels, and other articles stolen from the Jews, where she works as a school teacher. Suddenly, shooting and the sound of jet aircraft is heard in the background - the Suez Crisis has begun.Plot summary based on a book report by teacher Kees van der Pol.
8853000	/m/027m1ww	The Gospel According to Jesus Christ	José Saramago	1991	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book describes an alternate history to the life of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Bible. It begins with Jesus's conception, in the spiritual presence of God. Jesus' birth is heralded by a mysterious character, who claims to be an angel. Later, at Bethlehem, Jesus is born in a cave, and three shepherds - including the "angel" - arrive to bring him presents. As described in the Gospel of Matthew, Herod the Great receives a premonition of the birth of the "King of the Jews" (in the biblical account of Matthew, he is informed by the Magi; in the book, however, he is visited in his dreams by the prophet Micah). He orders the Massacre of the Innocents. Jesus survives, but his father, Joseph, who has learned of the plan, neglects to warn the other families in the village, ensuring that his son is safe first, and is plagued by nightmares for the rest of his life. Later, when Jesus turns thirteen, Joseph is crucified by the Romans who mistakenly think him to be a Zealot fighter. From the night of his father's death, Jesus inherits his nightmare. He learns about the massacre from his mother, and grows aloof from his family, amongst whom he can no longer live peacefully. He leaves the family and Nazareth and makes his way to Jerusalem, where he visits the Temple, thence to Bethlehem. He works as an apprentice to a shepherd (called The Shepherd who is understood to be the Devil and the mysterious "angel" mentioned earlier). The Shepherd instructs Jesus in the ways of hedonism, and at one point tries to convince Jesus to use the sheep for sexual release. Eventually, he meets God in the desert. God forces Jesus to sacrifice his favourite sheep, and says he has a design for him. Upon hearing of this, the Shepherd tells him to leave immediately. Jesus makes his way back home through the Sea of Galilee where he discovers an amazing talent to catch myriads of fish, and Magdala where he meets and falls in love with Mary Magdalene, then continues back home to Nazareth. Jesus is not believed by his family, and so he leaves them once again, meets Mary Magdalene (without marrying her) and goes to work helping the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. One day out on the Sea by himself, he is visited by God and the Devil. God tells Jesus of his plan for Jesus to institute Christianity, because God is annoyed at being only the God of one race, and that other gods seem to get all the glory. Jesus is initially against what he sees as a selfish plan bound to lead to great suffering of many, but is made to see that he actually has no choice in the matter. Jesus becomes a prophet of God, continuing to work miracles but also preaching. He gets himself arrested, repeatedly calling himself King of the Jews. Having heard news of John the Baptist, who was put to death not for preaching the coming of the Messiah but allegedly for disapproving of King Herod's incestuous marriage, Jesus decides that his own death could likewise obscure his divine nature and thus thwart God's plan. The novel ends with Jesus' realisation that God's plan, and the ensuing centuries of torture, slaughter, and misery that Christianity will bring, will proceed despite his efforts. His last words from the cross, in referring to God, are "Men, forgive Him, for He knows not what He has done." <!--
8859534	/m/027mbgn	The Serpent			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The protagonist of the novel is Cija (pronounced 'kee-yah'), the illegitimate child of the Dictatress of a small kingdom and a priest of high rank. The story itself is written from her point of view. She was kept in a tower and looked after by servants until she turned 17; until that time she had not met any men and believed that men were extinct and women ruled the world. She was also raised to believe she was a goddess, related to the gods of her country, to whom she refers to as her "cousins". When she is 17 years old, her mother releases her from the tower and gives her as a hostage to Zerd, the half-Human, half-Reptilian warlord, leader of an invading army on their way to conquer the mysterious continent Atlan. Cija is secretly instructed by her mother to seduce and kill Zerd. Eventually she succeeds neither in killing Zerd, nor in warning the Atlantean empire about the invaders, but she ends up being married to Zerd and becoming Empress of Atlan.
8860653	/m/027mcxd	The Secret of Platform 13	Eva Ibbotson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Platform 13 of King's Cross Station in London has been closed for years. Changes to the platform always result in failure for mysterious reasons. The reason is that the platform hides a gump, described as an "opening that opens once every nine years for nine days". The gump leads to the Island, a mythical paradise filled with both normal and magical creatures. Shortly before the Gump opens, the Queen gives birth to a baby boy. The three nurses for the baby prince are overcome with homesickness and wish to visit London when the gump reopens. They are given permission to do so and bring the Prince with them. On the ninth day, however, the prince is kidnapped by a "beastly" woman named Mrs. Trottle who is desperate for a child. Nanny Brown, Mrs. Trottle's nurse as a child, is horrified by the kidnapping. Mrs. Trottle threatens to call police if Nanny dares to tell anyone and decides to name the baby "Raymond". The nurses only discover the prince is gone when it is too late. To rescue the prince, the king and queen organize a group who will venture into London the next time the gump opens. The group consists of a giant, a "slightly batty" fey, a wizard, and a young hag named Odge (who joined because she was the same age as the prince would be and felt a sense of kinship to him as a result). When the gump opens, the rescuers are directed to the Trottle house by the ghosts that live in Platform 13. There they see Raymond Trottle, who has grown up to be fat, lazy, and very spoiled. They also meet the household servant, a boy named Ben. Ben is the exact opposite of Raymond and immediately feels comfortable with the group and befriends Odge. The group begins to observe Raymond and after some time arranges for him to meet them in the park where they arrange for various magical creatures to perform a show for him. Though Raymond is unimpressed by the magical performance, he is delighted to discover that he is really a prince and agrees to return to the Island. Odge tries to convince Ben to come to the Island as well, but he refuses as Nanny (who raised him) is very ill and in the hospital. Raymond mysteriously vanishes the next day however, and the group discovers that he told Mrs. Trottle of the plan. Believing that strangers intended to kidnap her child, she took him into hiding at a fancy hotel with several bodyguards. The group hatch a plan to take Raymond back, but everything falls apart when Ben is knocked out and nearly killed by one of the bodyguards. Given the choice of taking Raymond or rescuing Ben, the group chooses to save Ben. Raymond is abducted later by a swarm of harpies that the king and queen send and is successfully brought to the Island. Heartbroken, the group returns to the island except for Odge, as she would prefer to stay with Ben. Shortly before the gump will close, Nanny dies and leaves a note for Ben. It reveals that Ben was really the kidnapped prince, however Mrs. Trottle had discovered shortly after abducting him that she was pregnant. Odge rescues Ben from some cruel men Mrs. Trottle hired to take Ben to a nasty boarding school. They leave for the gump and return to the Island just in time. Ben is reunited with his parents and Odge is invited to live in the castle with him.
8861961	/m/027mf8r	The Fish Can Sing	Halldór Laxness	1957		 The novel is set at the start of the twentieth century and deals with the orphaned boy Álfgrímur, his adoptive grandparents, and the small, tolerant community of misfits and eccentrics they gather around them at Brekkukot, their cottage on the outskirts of Reykjavík. As Álfgrímur begins to encounter the minor politicians, businessmen and social-climbers of the growing town of Reykjavík he starts to question his future as a fisherman's grandson, and is increasingly fascinated by Garðar Hólm, the celebrated Icelandic "world singer" whose sporadic returns to Iceland encourage Álfgrímur to pursue his own personal goals of self-expression. He discovers the true value of his boyhood experiences only as he sets out on a path that will take him away from them forever. The boy's name, Álfgrímur, is explained in the book as a compound of Álf (elf) and grímur (a poetic word for 'night') meaning 'he who spends the night with the elves'. The original name of the book in Icelandic is 'Brekkukotsannáll' (Annals of Brekkukot). de:Das Fischkonzert is:Brekkukotsannáll
8862395	/m/027mftm	The Queen of Attolia	Megan Whalen Turner	2001	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, has been caught spying on the Queen of Attolia. He expects to be hanged, but the Queen instead resorts to an ancient traditional custom – she has his right hand struck off with a sword. This shocking act sets the plot in motion. Maimed and broken-hearted, the Thief returns to Eddis and wallows in a deep depression. Attolia, an apparently heartless ruler, secretly regrets her action, but must live with the consequences of it. The countries of Eddis and Attolia are soon at war, with neighboring Sounis playing both sides. Also manipulating the situation is Attolia’s ambassador from the Mede Empire, Nahuseresh, who pays extravagant attention to the beautiful Queen of Attolia while serving his own agenda. As Attolia juggles her overattentive ambassador, the rebellious barons who do not believe a woman can rule alone, and a bloody, costly war, the reader begins to understand what has made her into the Queen – and the person – she is. Meanwhile, a visit from the magus of Sounis awakens Eugenides to the fact that his country is at war. His cousin, the Queen of Eddis, may lose her throne and her country. Eugenides is forced to grow up and become more than just a boy hero and a clever trickster. He remakes himself into a new kind of hero – and a new kind of Thief. As in The Thief, the gods play an important role, there are stories within stories, and the clever plot holds more than one surprise.
8864492	/m/027mhgm	The Feasting Dead	John Metcalfe	1954	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story is about a young English boy, Denis, who, while in France falls under the influence of a vampiric being, from the folklore of Auvergne and the misfortune that befalls him.
8866469	/m/027mk0w	The Scarlet Gospels	Clive Barker			 The story centers on two characters Barker has used in his previous work: private investigator Harry D'Amour, a character seen in several previous stories such as the novel Everville and the short story "The Last Illusion" (later adapted into the film Lord of Illusions); and a being known only as "Pinhead", an extra-dimensional entity residing in a world bordering our own. Pinhead and Harry are depicted as adversaries. Their first meeting occurs in the past, when Harry is twelve or thirteen years old and in Catholic school, and this encounter with Pinhead is said to be a primary cause of Harry's later disturbed psyche. In the present day, a friend of Harry's is taken hostage by Pinhead, and Harry, accompanied by four mismatched companions (including the blind medium Norma Paine, who has appeared in earlier Barker stories) and an animal, must track his friend down into the lowest levels of Hell. Roughly two thirds of the story will take place in Hell itself, and much is expected to be learned about the nature of Hell, its creator, its inhabitants, about the Order of the Gash and Pinhead's place within it.
8869996	/m/027mpym	Unleavened Bread	Robert Grant	1900	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A businessman's selfish wife forces her way into upper society.
8870018	/m/027mp_p	The Orchid				 A headstrong young woman marries for money and divorces for love. She then sells her infant daughter back to her former husband to secure a two million dollar fortune.
8872340	/m/027msr1	The Jupiter Myth	Lindsey Davis	2002	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After putting the project of building Togidubnus’s palace back on track (see A Body in the Bath House), Falco and family decide to take a break and visit some old friends and family up in Londinium. But nothing is ever peaceful around Falco. The body of a close friend of Togidubnus is found in a well. A simple murder? No, not around Falco. There is more than one gang flexing their muscles in Londinium, leading Falco every which way. Suddenly, Falco’s friend Petro appears. It’s not likely that he just happens to show up at the edge of the Empire, but he is not interested in telling anyone much of anything. What is really puzzling is why all these things are happening in only a certain group of taverns, all named after very important events in someone’s life. Is that the connection they are missing?
8872988	/m/027mtpb	Shannon's Way	A. J. Cronin	1948	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Robert trains to be a doctor at the fictional Levenford Infirmary (Levenford is loosely based on Dumbarton), and falls in love with Jean Law, a young medical student belonging to the Plymouth Brethren who rejects him when she discovers that he has deceived her about his history and religion (he is a Roman Catholic). He develops an interest in a disease contracted from infected cows' milk, and devotes his spare time to researching it: it turns out to be brucellosis. Dr. Shannon contracts a nervous breakdown when he completes the project only to find that someone else has anticipated his results, and is nursed by and marries Jean.
8874460	/m/027mws0	Star Wars Republic Commando: True Colors	Karen Traviss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the Grand Army's desperate fight to crush the Separatists, the secret special ops missions of its elite clone warriors have never been more critical...or more dangerous. A growing menace threatens Republic victory and the members of Omega Squad make a discovery that shakes their loyalty. As the lines continue to blur between friend and enemy, citizens—from civilians and sergeants, to Jedi and generals—find themselves up against a new foe: the doubt in their hearts and mind. The truth is a fragile, shifting illusion, and only the approaching inferno will reveal both sides in their true colors.
8876503	/m/0hgp1qw	The Perfect Thing	Steven Levy	2006-10-24	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In an author's note, Levy writes, *Perfect *Identity *Origin *Cool *Personal *Download *Shuffle *Apple *Podcast *Coda Levy starts the book with a timeline of the iPod, running from October 2001 to October 2005. He then writes in a shuffled set of chapters, focusing on the "perfect" aspects of the iPod--the origins and the idea of the iPod, its ability to create an identity and a familiar community, its coolness factor, how it made music personal for individuals, and how it changed the music industry with Apple's iTunes Store. The book includes quotes, interviews, and anecdotes with such individuals as Apple's co-founder and CEO, Steve Jobs; Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates; cultural anthropologist at the University of Utrecht and noted "Professor of Cool," Dr. Carl Rohde; founder of MP3.com, Michael Robertson; and many others.
8881014	/m/027n2zx	Hex: Ghosts	Rhiannon Lassiter	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The city has become even more dangerous for anyone possessing the Hex gene and armed security forces searching out any traces of mutant abilities or activities is putting the Hex gene in danger of extinction. A small but powerful resistance army is forming and planning to fight back even as the computer system they rely upon might contain an enemy that could ruin their plans.
8882746	/m/027n4xf	The Wyvern's Spur	Jeff Grubb	1990-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Most of the novel revolves around Giogi’s efforts to locate and recover an important family heirloom that goes missing just as he is returning to Immersea. The lost heirloom is an artifact from which they take their family name; the wyvern's spur, and the chief initial motivation for its recovery is the omen that the spur’s loss will trigger family misfortune. This is underscored when an elder family member, the wizard Drone, is discovered dead and a twisted mage named Flattery makes his presence known. Giogi is aided in his efforts by Olive Ruskettle, a female halfling, and a female apprentice mage named Cat. As the story progresses it is revealed that Cat is actually Flattery’s agent (under duress) and that Flattery himself is an un-aging creation of a forgotten ancestor named Finder Wyvernspur. Flattery, for reasons left vague, possesses an intense hatred of anything connected with Finder’s legacy including his descendants. Eventually, Giogi convinces Cat to leave Flattery and the two fall in love. Giogi relearns much of the repressed history of his family and uses this knowledge to defeat Flattery and restore the family’s good heritage. The wyvern's spur is literally a mummified “wyvern's spur” (a talon). It is described once by Giogi as being “no larger than a zucchini and uglier than a three-week-old sausage.” The spur was bestowed generations earlier to Paton, the founder of the family line, by a grateful Wyvern whose spirit then remained as an entity known as the Guardian. In recent years the spur has come to be known more as a family heirloom than its qualities as a magical artifact The spur confers the ability to transform into a large wyvern as well as immunity to magic. It can only be wielded by a member of the Wyvernspur line and even then its powers can only be harnessed by a chosen member. A chosen or “favorite” is designated by the Guardian roughly once each generation.
8883508	/m/027n5s8	Invaders from the Dark	Greye La Spina	1960	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story is set in Brooklyn, New York in the mid-1920s and deals with the widow of an Occultist, Portia Differdale, and Princess Tchernova, a wealthy and beautiful Russian werewolf. Both women desire the same man, Owen Edwardes.
8883948	/m/027n6fl	Company K	William March		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel comprises 131 vignettes about World War I marines in Company K. The novel is told from the viewpoint of 131 different marines, stretching from the beginning of training to the end of the war. These sketches create contrasting and horrific accounts of the daily life endured by the common marine. Many of the accounts stem from actual events witnessed and experienced by the author. It has often been described as an anti-militarist and an anti-war novel, but March maintained that the content was based on truth and should be viewed as an affirmation of life.
8891528	/m/027njsx	CHERUB: The Killing	Robert Muchamore	2005-10-13	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After coming back from a mission with Shakeel, James is dumped by his girlfriend, Kerry Chang. As he leaves Kerry's room, he sees a red-shirt CHERUB called Andy Lagan and takes his temper out on him, beating him up. For this, James finds his friends ignoring him, and is punished with no holiday, suspension from missions, cleaning the mission preparation rooms every night for three months, and having anger management sessions with a counselor. Zara feels sorry for James, so she gets him a low-risk mission to get him out of the punishment and so he can spend some time away from his friends blanking him. For a second time, James is working with Dave, a 17 year old black shirt. They are being sent to investigate Leon Tarasov who runs a garage. When they get to their flat in south London, Dave gets a job at the suspect's garage, and James gets a girlfriend called Hannah. During his first night in the area, James gets into an altercation with two goons and is arrested for it. As he is being placed in the police car, police officer Michael Patel assaults him. Hannah tells James how her cousin, Will, fell off the top of the building more than a year earlier. As James has no computer that she knows of, she gives him Will's old one. Back home, James finds that Will had a CD with information about a robbery at a casino almost a year earlier. The theft totaled £90,000 but is too small for what they are looking for. Dave later realises that if the casino had an illegal floor with more gambling equipment that was also robbed, then there would be enough money to be what they are looking for. To help find more evidence to capture Michael Patel, Kerry and Lauren join the team. A few days later, Hannah reveals that after Will's death, Patel had deliberately run over to the body and touched it, supposedly to see if he was still alive. James and Dave figure out that that policeman had killed Will. They tell their mission controller, John Jones, who gets a special section of the police to investigate. They do, and find out that Alan Falco, the retired evidence keeper, had destroyed the statements of the witnesses which contained evidence which could have Michael Patel arrested. In return for immunity from prosecution Falco returns the statements and Michael Patel and Leon Tarasov are arrested for murder of Will Clarke and for robbery of the Golden Sun Casino. James and Dave return to campus and James reconciles himself to his friends, including Kerry
8892720	/m/027nlhl	The Globalized City	Erik Swyngedouw	2005-03-25		 The book offers in-depth analyses of linkages between urban restructuring and social exclusion against the backdrop of trends in urban governance across the European Union, examining neo-liberal and New Urban policies that increasingly favour private investment and deregulation of labour markets. The aim is to clarify the relationship between new urban spaces and the emergence of new forms of polity, economy, and urban life which may not necessarily promote social harmony within the metropolitan areas.
8893655	/m/027nmk8	The Rise of the Black Wolf	Derek Benz	2007-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In The Rise of the Black Wolf, Max and his fellow Grey Griffins (Natalia, Harley, and Ernie) set off on another adventure, traveling to Scotland to visit Max's father for the winter holidays. The four friends explore Lord Sumner's ancient castle, and the dark forest that surrounds it. Once again, the Grey Griffins must do battle with Fireball Pixies, an army of Werewolves, and the Black Witch, Morgan LaFey. But when Lord Sumner, Max's father, disappears, the Grey Griffins must rescue him with the Knights Templar. Max's father betrays him and tells Max he staged the incident before(Revenge of The Shadow King.)Ernie, however, falls into a coma. Will he wake up?
8894009	/m/027nn34	Forbidden Knowledge	Stephen R. Donaldson	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After Angus Thermopyle was framed and arrested for stealing station supplies from Com-Mine, Morn Hyland escaped with Captain Nick Succorso aboard his ship, the Captain's Fancy. As part of a deal Morn made with Angus, she will not reveal to anyone that she has a zone implant - a device Angus installed in her brain allowing him to control her while he raped and abused her - meaning that Angus will not face death for unauthorized use of a zone implant, and in turn Angus gave Morn the zone implant control. With the control in her hands she soon becomes addicted to the effects of a zone implant. Nick misinterpreted Morn's intentions and expects her to 'repay' him by being his new lover. The abuse Morn suffered under Angus has left her unable to stand the touch of another man, but she soon works out how to use the zone implant to induce artificial sexual desire to fulfil NIck's desires. While on board the Captain's Fancy, the data first Orn Vorbuld repeatedly molests Morn whenever they end up alone together, eventually leading to a showdown with Nick after Orn attempts to rape her. Orn reveals that he has planted a virus in the ship's computer that, if not deactivated by him, will wipe the computer's memory and leave the ship stranded in space. In spite of this, Nick still kills him and the ship soon falls under the effects of the virus. Meanwhile, Morn discovers that she has become pregnant, and the age of the fetus indicates that Angus Thermopyle is the father. Reflecting on the death of her family, she decides to keep it, which Nick allows her on the condition that she is able to stop the virus. She does so, and Nick keeps his end of the bargain, but not in a way Morn expected: Nick sets course for Enablement Station, an outpost in Forbidden Space, a region of space controlled by the mysterious Amnion. The Amnion are a race of creatures whose society is centered around their ability to manipulate DNA. They intend on dominating the human species through use of mutagens that would turn humans into Amnion themselves, but for now are held at bay in their section of the universe - what humans call forbidden space. No one but pirates and other illegals ever deal with the Amnion for fear that they themselves will be turned into Amnion, but Nick maintains that they would never go back on their word for fear that if they did no humans would deal with them. Once they arrive at the station Nick convinces the Amnion to give them enough credit to fix their gap drive (which was damaged previously) and to force grow Morn's unborn child to adulthood, in exchange for a phial of Nick's blood, which the Amnion mistakenly believe holds the key to genetic immunity to their mutagens (the "immunity" is actually caused by a drug, of which the Amnion are unaware). The Amnion keep their promises and give Nick the credit he asked for and force grow Morn's baby to the approximate age of 16. Her mind is copied onto her son, a process which she survives only due to the effects of her zone implant. Nick becomes enraged when he sees Morn's child, named Davies Hyland after her father; Davies is the spitting image of his real father, Angus Thermopyle. After getting back to the ship the Amnion inadvertently reveal the existence of Morn's zone implant when they explain that it protected her from the brain damage a mind imprint would cause. Nick realizes that Morn's love for him was all a masque and when the Amnion request that they return Davies Hyland to them for experimentation, Nick complies in return for parts to fix his gap drive. Morn soon manages to hold the ship and Enablement station hostage by putting the ship's self-destruct on a pressure release trigger so she can get her child back, as well as the parts needed to fix the ship. They enable their gap drive but it begins to fail. Vector Shaheed, the ship's engineer, manages to avert a disaster and they survive, coming 'back into tard' with a slagged gap drive far from Enablement, but still in Amnion space. To everyone's surprise the ship is travelling at an unprecedented .9C, or nine tenths the speed of light. In the ensuing chaos, Nick is able to retake command of the ship. Setting course for Thanatos Minor where an illegal trade outpost called Billingate resides, two Amnion warships catch up and Nick negotiates to have Davies transferred to one in an ejection pod. After being released from her cabin by some of the crew who no longer trust Nick, Morn manages to get the pod reprogrammed so that it misses the Amnion ship and heads toward Billingate. In the meantime, the incarcerated Angus Thermopyle is tortured and interrogated on Com-Mine by Milos Taverner, the head of Com-Mine security. Eventually he is requisitioned by the UMCP and transformed into a cyborg, (a process known as "welding) under the complete control of the computers connected to his brain. The UMCP then prepares to send Milos and Angus together on a highly classified mission against Thanatos Minor.
8894063	/m/027nn5k	A Dark and Hungry God Arises	Stephen R. Donaldson	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As the newly 'welded' cyborg Angus Thermopyle and his distrusted companion Milos Taverner arrive in their Gap Scout, Trumpet, at the illegal outpost in Amnion space known as Billingate, The Bill, the ruler of Billingate, intercepts the escape pod containing Morn Hyland's recently forcegrown child, Davies Hyland. Despite being only a few days old, the forcegrowing technique the Amnion used on him have made him physically resemble a sixteen year old boy. Morn suffers from an insanity-causing ailment known as Gap Sickness for which she uses a device called a zone implant in the event of gap travel. When Morn's mind was copied onto Davies' during the force growing process to make up for his lack of a developmental/formative childhood, Morn somehow survived the copying which, it was explained, should have killed her. The Amnion, a misanthropic alien race bent on the eventual domination of the human race, and the ones who conceded to perform the force growing of Davies, suspect that it is the presence of Morn's zone implant that saved her; these circumstances make the mother and son uniquely valuable to the Amnion. The Amnion have followed Morn and her son to Billingate in the hopes of getting them back for further study. Captain Nick Succorso, aboard his ship the Captain's Fancy, is furious at Morn for not only making him think that she loved him, but, more recently, for diverting the escape pod containing her son away from an Amnion warship. Nick had promised Davies to the Amnion as a show of good faith. In his fury he gives them Morn, but not before she has broken into his quarters to steal an immunization drug designed to counteract Amnion mutagens that would turn her into one of them. Nick is left in a precarious position. The Amnion continue to demand Davies Hyland, but Davies is in the custody of The Bill, who shrewdly asks for compensation for the child. Because of their convoluted dealings, the Amnion have revoked a credit voucher they gave Nick, so he has no credit to give The Bill for Davies. Because of this, Nick is stuck on Billingate and simply wanders the 'cruise'. After Milos finishes abusing Angus by using the priority codes for Angus' computer, which were given to him by UMCPHQ, Angus and Milos disembark at Billingate and eventually meet up with Angus' nemesis, Nick. They form an uneasy truce. Nick explains that he needs Davies and will give Morn to them in exchange for Morn's son, should Nick be able to recover him. Nick of course does not mention he's already handed Morn over to the Amnion and, as far as he knows, has already been turned into one of them. Angus and Milos are surprised to learn that Angus' programming includes rescuing Morn, something they were told was not the case. Milos becomes furious and begins to distrust his orders, the UMCP and Angus. While waiting for Nick to find out where Davies is being held, Milos asserts his previously unperceived control over Angus, making him eat his live nic butts, in front of Billingate's bug eyes - a mistake that will cost him later. After finding out where the detention centre is, Angus' computer reveals to him that he is capable of emitting a type of jamming field that can bend light rendering him invisible to electronic surveillance, thus protecting his identity. His programming makes him take Milos with him, because he cannot really be trusted on his own. They descend into the depths of Billingate, where they find Davies locked away in a cell. When Nick handed Morn over to the Amnion, some of his crew, Mikka Vasaczk, Nick's second in command, Vector Shaheed, his engineer, Sib Mackern, his data first, and Ciro "Pup" Vasaczk, Vector's assistant, all begin to turn against him. Sensing a mutiny, Nick sends them to do specific tasks on Billingate to 'get them out of the way'. Against orders, they all meet up and decide to abandon Captain's Fancy as they've clearly outlived their usefulness to Nick. When Angus and Milos return to Trumpet with Davies, they confront Nick when he arrives and decide to keep him rather than hand him over to Nick, who intends to turn him over to the Amnion. Nick also reveals that Morn is in Amnion custody. Angus begins to form a plan to rescue her when Milos, and then Nick, leave the ship. Milos immediately heads to the Amnion sector of Billingate and there it becomes apparent that he's been working for them as a double agent for some time. The Amnion emissary, Marc Vestabule, an abortive Amnion attempt at turning a human into an Amnion while maintaining a human-like appearance, informs Milos that both they and The Bill are aware that he has some kind of control over Angus. Vestabule then, to Milos' extreme horror, subdues Milos and injects him with Amnion mutagens. In the meantime Nick is confronted by his former crew: Mikka, Vector, Sib and Pup. While arguing, they are all approached by Billingate security and Nick, being barred from Captain's Fancy, flees for Trumpet while being pursued by Mikka and company, followed closely by security. Angus reluctantly lets them in. While The Bill rages over the comm, they begin to formulate and act out a plan to rescue Morn. Nick contacts Captain's Fancy and instructs Liete Corregio, his third in command, to attack the ship called Soar, as Nick has discovered that it is captained by Sorus Chatelaine, a woman who seduced, betrayed and abandoned Nick as a young man, but not before leaving the streaked scars underneath his eyes that act as his emotional barometer. Angus instructs Davies, Vector and Pup to sabotage Billingate's communications systems while Nick, Mikka, Sib and Angus himself go EVA to the Amnion sector to rescue Morn. After breaking inside, Angus is confronted by Milos, who has now been turned into an Amnion while still retaining his human memories, mannerisms and form - the Amnion apparently having perfected their mutagens. Milos attempts to use Angus' priority codes against him and his newfound allies, but new programming takes over that overrides those codes with new ones, allowing Angus both to ignore Milos' orders and attempt to kill him. Milos escapes, but they soon find Morn in her cell, still human thanks to the immunity drug she stole from Nick. Angus puts Mikka in charge and gets Sib to help Morn into the spare EVA suit they brought when he suddenly leaves to sabotage Billingate's reactor. On their way back to Trumpet, the rescue party witnesses an Amnion shuttle containing The Bill leave the station, as well as the destruction of an Amnion warship that had been rammed by Captain's Fancy, which Leite did to prevent the ship from firing on Mikka, Morn, Sib and Nick while they were walking across the face of Billingate. When back on Trumpet, Nick attempts to take over the ship by holding Pup hostage, demanding that they leave without Angus. Pup manages to subdue Nick with a stun prod he landed on when forced into Milos' old command station. Then Angus appears back on board and begins to get Trumpet ready to leave. While Nick and Angus finish the preparations, everyone else leaves for quarters to secure for heavy g. An Amnion warship and a few other human pirate ships converge on Trumpet as it disengages from Billingate just as Billingate's reactor explodes. Trumpet escapes into the gap, presumably leaving all the other ships left behind to be destroyed. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Warden Dios, the director of the UMCP, gathers together his directors, Min Donner, director of the UMCP's Enforcement Division (ED), Hashi Lebwohl, director of Data Acquisition (DA), and Godsen Frik, director of Protocol (PR), for a video conference with the Governing Council of Earth and Space (GCES), brought about by the apparent escape of the known pirate Angus Thermopyle and suspected traitor Milos Taverner, as such was their cover story when they left UMCPHQ. The GCES demands disclosure and uses the opportunity to ask about Morn Hyland, a UMCP ensign they apparently abandoned to pirates and the Amnion. Warden and Hashi offer half-truths to the Council, telling them that they failed to recapture Angus and Milos, and that they arranged for Morn to be given to Nick as 'payment' for a job they had him do so that she could be used as a bargaining ship should Nick's mission at Billingate fail. The mission was to give a non-working anti-mutagen drug in hopes that it would disrupt Billingate's usefulness to the Amnion, not letting on that they gave him a working anti-mutagen drug that the UMCP suppressed years previous. Later Dios admits to Min in confidence that he did this purposely in hopes to get the UMCP severed from the UMC so that it would be reformed under the GCES. Dios hopes to disrupt the power that Holt Fasner, the CEO of the UMC, has over human controlled space. He then instructs Min to leave UMCPHQ, which is orbiting Earth, for Suka Bator. There Min meets with Captain Sixten Vertigus, the man who made first contact with the Amnion, and is now a member of the GCES. She convinces him to propose a bill of severance that would put the UMCP under the control of the GCES, persuading him to act as if it was his own idea so that no one would know that Min Donner or Warden Dios had anything to do with it. As Min is about to leave, she and Sixten are attacked by a kaze that Min recognizes in time to prevent the kaze's surgically implanted explosives from killing them. Despite being injured, Min then leaves so that no one knows she was there. The Kaze causes the GCES to announce a state of emergency, suspending GCES meetings until further notice. Warden Dios declares a similar lockdown at UMCPHQ, suspecting that Frik or Fasner might be behind the kaze to keep Sixten from proposing the bill of severance that Dios hoped only he, Min and Sixten knew about. Fasner attempts to summon Frik to his private orbiting station, but Frik refuses, citing Dios' orders as explanation, but in actuality he would rather not confront his boss and mentor. Another kaze kills Frik. Dios is summoned to Fasner's home instead and is asked to explain why he disclosed so much information as to horrify the GCES, and why he restricted Frik's movements, resulting in his death. Dios manages to answer, but does not completely satisfy Fasner. Fasner mentions that he is aware that Dios sent Min Donner to the borders of forbidden space to await the return of Angus and Milos. He instructs Dios to tell Donner to kill Angus and Milos should anything go wrong.
8894108	/m/027nn78	Chaos and Order	Stephen R. Donaldson	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the aftermath of the thwarted terrorist attack on Captain Sixten Vertigus, the United Western Bloc Senior Member to the Governing Council of Earth and Space (GCES), and the successful assassination of Godsen Frik, the former Director of Protocol for the United Mining Companies Police (UMCP), Hashi Lebwohl, the Director of the Data Acquisition (DA) branch of the UMCP, attempts to investigate how security failed to prevent the so-called 'kaze' attacks. Hashi learns that they were using more recent security badges that contained up-to-date security codes. This leads him to infer that whoever is orchestrating these attacks must be a high ranking official within the United Mining Companies (UMC) or their police force. As part of his investigation, Hashi accompanies Koina Hannish, Godsen's successor as Director of Protocol, to Earth to attend an emergency session of the GCES. It is there that, as Koina informed Hashi, Captain Vertigus will propose a bill of severance that will sever the UMCP from the UMC and merge it with the GCES so as to avoid the conflict of interest between UMC CEO Holt Farsner and the rest of humanity. Captain Vertigus manages to propose his bill to the GCES as Hashi recognizes a security guard as former Captain Nathan Alt. Hashi surmises that he is a kaze and is surprised that, instead of attacking Captain Vertigus, seems to be heading for the UMC's First Executive Assistant, Cleatus Fane. Hashi grabs Alt's IDs intact, which strangely identify him as one 'Clay Imposs', before having him arrested. Alt\Imposs promptly explodes, killing one of his arresting officers and maiming another. Meanwhile, a cyborg named Angus Thermopyle is fleeing the newly destroyed Billingate installation in Forbidden Space with his makeshift crew: the raped and brutalized UCMP ensign Morn Hyland, her and Angus’ force-grown son Davies Hyland, former captain of Captain’s Fancy Nick Succorso, engineer\geneticist Vector Shaheed, Nick’s former second Mikka Vasaczk, Mikka’s younger brother Ciro Vasaczk, and the former data first Sib Mackern. As luck would have it Vector Shaheed was one of the lead scientists working on an anti-mutagen drug. The Amnion, the beings that inhabit Forbidden Space, would have their mutagens turn the entire human race into Amnion themselves, and the immunity drug that Vector was working on would have assured humanity their safety. The UCMP took Shaheed’s research away from him and suppressed the drug on Holt Farsner’s orders. Hashi Lebwohl secretly finished Shaheed’s research and gave a sample of the drug to Nick Succorso to test. With samples of the drug in their possession, the crew of Trumpet decide to have Vector complete his research at an illegal lab run by a man named Deaner Beckmann. It is hoped, assuming Vector can complete his research, that the drug can be disseminated to the rest of humanity to protect them should the Amnion invade human space. On their way into human space Angus’ programming has him send a message using a listening post to UMCPHQ coded for Warden Dios, the director of the UMCP itself. After sending the message Trumpet speeds off toward the Valdor Industrial system where the lab is located deep within an asteroid swarm orbiting a binary star. Having previously been sent to the very same listening post on orders from Warden Dios to await the return if Thermopyle, Min Donner and the crew aboard the UMCP cruiser Punisher are there to witness Trumpet’s transmission and successive flight. They also happen upon Free Lunch, a ship that we learn was hired by Hashi to destroy Trumpet, as well as an unknown ship in hot pursuit from Forbidden Space. Min and Punishers crew assume that the pursuing craft either belongs to the misanthropic Amnion, or is in their employ. Despite the protests of Punisher’s captain, Dolph Ubikwe, Min ignores the possibility that the encroaching ship is Amnioni and in the process of committing an act of war, and she has Punisher pursue Trumpet. Min soon receives instructions from Warden Dios to contact Thermopyle and get him to give his priority codes to Nick Succorso. After framing Angus, abusing Morn, and attempting to sell Morn and Davies to the Amnion, Nick is a prisoner aboard Trumpet. When he receives Angus’ priority codes he proceeds to have most of the crew beaten and locked in quarters for betraying him. Fortunately Nick decides to proceed with the plan to reproduce the immunity drug, although he hopes to sell it rather than give it away. When Trumpet arrives at Beckmann’s lab they discover that the ship that was pursuing them had guessed where they might go and has already arrived. Soar is a human ship in the Amnion’s employ captained by Sorus Chatelaine, a woman who betrayed and scarred Nick as a young man, something he wants revenge for. Through Soar the Amnion hope to capture the crew of Trumpet for study. For that reason they have placed an Amnioni aboard, the former human Milos Taverner. Trumpet docks at the illegal lab, and while Mikka, Ciro, Vector, Sib and Nick go aboard the station, Angus’ programming has him deliver his priority codes to Morn and Davies. Because of this the Hylands are able to help Angus release himself from his programming. While aboard the station Nick arranges for Ciro to be alone as a trap. Sorus takes the ‘bait’ and kidnaps him and Sorus and Milos inject Ciro with a slow acting mutagen that will change him if he stops taking an inhibiter every hour. Sorus tells Ciro that she will continue to supply him with the inhibiter if he sabotages Trumpet’s drives. When Vector finishes his work and everyone returns, Morn and Davies are able to incapacitate Nick once more and they retake the ship. Ciro reveals what Sorus did to him and Vector is able to cure him using the immunity drug. When Trumpet undocks from the lab, Soar destroys the installation and chases Trumpet as they attempt to leave the asteroid swarm. Nick convinces the rest to let him go EVA and attack Soar by himself as she chases Trumpet. The rest let him when Sib tells them he’ll go with him to help make sure he doesn’t attack Trumpet. Nick and Sib manage to disable Soar’s most devastating weapon, a super-light proton cannon, before both are, presumably, killed. Free Lunch and Soar engage Trumpet at the same time and end up attacking each other when Trumpet seems to have lost thrust, appearing sabotaged. Angus goes EVA and launches a singularity grenade at Free Lunch and detonates it. The resulting black hole destroys Free Lunch and batters Soar badly. When Trumpet and Soar reach the edge of the swarm, then run into Punisher and an Amnion ‘defensive’ named Calm Horizons heavily engaging each other. Nick suddenly appears on Soar’s bridge, having survived Sorus’ attack and the black hole in EVA. Sorus dispatches him, and then Milos before ordering her crew to engage Calm Horizons and betray her former masters. Calm Horizons destroys Soar and Trumpet and Punisher escape, leaving the Amnioni ship behind.
8894118	/m/027nn7z	Sun of Suns	Karl Schroeder	2006-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Hayden Griffin is a young, fatherless boy living in Aerie. Though exactly when or how his father died is never discovered, Hayden continually says that he was murdered by Slipstream, a rival nation migrating through Virga. Slipstream's sun is tethered to a migrating asteroid that has provided the nation with its wealth. As Slipstream follows its sun, it occasionally moves through other nation's territories, as it does with Aerie, Hayden Griffin's home nation. In these cases, it uses its military headed by a leader simply known as "the Pilot" to make this nation a client nation of Slipstream, only to leave these nations again when the asteroid moves far enough. His parent's ambition was to liberate Aerie from Slipstream's rule by constructing their own sun in secret. After his father's death, Hayden's mother made this her final goal in life. At the opening of the story, Aerie's sun is nearly finished, and the construction team was planning a test to assure of its functionality. Hayden gets out of his job as an apprentice in a kitchen, intending to watch the test from a jet bike. However, airships flying Slipstream's flag appear on the horizon and begin to attack the new sun. Aerie's resistance starts to defend themselves from the assault, but don't appear to be a true match against the highly trained Slipstreamers. In a suicidal last-ditch effort, Hayden's mother and the construction crew start the sun while inside of it, incinerating the ships attacking the sun itself but allowing at least one reported Slipstream ship to have escaped. During the fighting, Hayden is thrown off the town's spinning wheel and, as the first chapter leaves him, floating weightlessly in the darkness, where pirates call home and no suns or true governments have been established. Years later, the story picks up again with Venera Fanning (wife of Admiral Chaison Fanning of Slipstream fame) and her page walking down the hall to the office of the Admiralty in Rush, capital of Slipstream. Venera reminisces on another times, years ago, when she was walking down this hall and a bullet ripped through her jaw line, and she was left bleeding on the floor with no one around. She enters the office, and then continues to the bathroom, where she holds a secret meeting with an informant and a few others. Bleeding and exhausted, the informant shows Venera pictures of a secret dock and ship building facility of a rival nation, Falcon Formation, in a sargasso, which is an area where there is a build up of toxic gases that no one can enter without a specially designed sargasso suit. One of the pictures shows a frightfully large dreadnought approximately 3&nbsp;km in length, as well as many other warships. Venera leaves the meeting and returns to her waiting page. As they walk out of the crowded office, the page accidentally bumps into Venera, knocking the pictures out of her hands. Venera then catches the page staring at the pictures of the dreadnought as they collect them off the floor. After she dismisses it as awe, they step outside, when the page gives his approximation and explanation of the length of the dreadnought. After the page flies Venera back to the Fanning household, he curses himself for his failure to get inside the house, and the page is revealed to be Hayden Griffin, who intends to kill Admiral Fanning for revenge. However, Griffin learns that Fanning was not present in Slipstream's attack of Aerie. Admiral Fanning is instructed by the Slipstream Pilot to move his fleet against Mavery but decides to divert part of the fleet including the ship Rook to attack the hidden Falcon Formation ship dock. Instead of moving there directly, Fanning decides to make a detour in order to recover the fabled treasure of Antene, the map to which is hidden in the Winding Tree of Fate artifact which, in turn, is stored in a station on Virga's skin. On the Rook, Griffin learns that the ship's armorer, Aubri Mahallan, is from outside Virga. She explains that the outside world is governed by Artificial Nature, apparently an artificial intelligence possessing vast power. However, some systems of Candesce, Virga's largest sun, disrupt Artificial Nature and prevent it from entering Virga. While passing icebergs that formed on the inside of Virga's skin, the fleet is attacked by winter pirates which are repelled by dislodging icebergs that then are drawn by gravity towards the center of Virga. During the fight, the Rook is boarded by pirates. Venera Fanning kills the Rook's captain and some of its crew as they try to scuttle the ship. Both Venera Fanning and Mahallan are taken prisoner by the pirate captain Dentius but regain control of the ship later. After retrieving the Tree of Fate, Admiral Fanning reveals that the treasure of Antene includes the key to Candesce and therefore means to turn off Candesce's disruption systems. He intends to temporarily shut off these systems in order to use radar while fighting Falcon Formation's ships. Mahallan is building the radar units. The treasure of Antene is located in Leaf's Choir, a sargasso near Gehellen. On the way, Mahallan explains to Griffin that Admiral Fanning had opposed the destruction of Aerie's sun. It was Slipstream's Pilot who led the attack, later presenting Fanning as the head behind it. Mahallan also explains that she was exiled to Virga because of her trying to overthrow Artificial Nature. Mahallan and Griffin become lovers. Having retrieved the key to Candesce, Venera Fanning, Mahallan, and Griffin eventually gain control of the sun while Admiral Fanning fights Falcon Formation. Mahallan disables Candesce's countermeasures, enabling Fanning to hit Falcon Formation hard. However, he is forced to steer his ship into the Formation's dreadnought. In Candesce, it is revealed that Mahallan is wired by Artificial Nature, forcing her to keep the countermeasures down. This enables Artificial Nature to invade Virga. Fanning kills Mahallan and re-enables Candesce's countermeasures. Griffin flees from Candesce which is about to re-ignite. He wants Fanning to accompany him but she declines, fearing that he wants to kill her as revenge for her killing his lover. At the last moment, she clings to Griffin's bike, to launch off it later after steering clear of the sun.
8894194	/m/027nnbc	The Real Story	Stephen R. Donaldson	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An ugly and evil space pirate walks into a bar with beautiful woman--a former police woman who (everyone knows) he has captured, enslaved, and brainwashed. Everyone is terrified of even looking at them, for fear of being murdered. A dashing young swashbuckler confronts him, and rescues the woman. That, and the background of the intergalactic society in which they live, is what the first chapter is about. The rest of the book is the *real* story. Things are not always what they seem. Morn Hyland, an ensign with the United Mining Companies Police ("UMCP"), is on her first mission aboard the UMCP destroyer Starmaster (which is crewed by members of her extended family). When they arrive at Com-Mine Station, a ship, Bright Beauty, piloted by the pirate Angus Thermopyle, flees, and Starmaster follows. In his haste, Angus left the station without picking up some essential supplies including air-scrubbers. Out of desperation Angus incinerates a small mining settlement in hopes of stealing their supplies. Starmaster witnesses this slaughter and attempts combat, but is almost destroyed by a massive internal explosion. Morn suffers from gap-sickness, a mental disorder that inflicts itself on a small portion of people who travel through the Gap. Symptoms of gap-sickness vary wildly; in Morn, it manifests itself as an uncontrollable urge to engage self-destruct, and is triggered by exposure to 'heavy g'. Morn, left alone on the auxiliary bridge when Starmaster engaged Angus' ship, experienced gap-sickness for the first time, and attempted to destroy the Starmaster. Angus boards the wreck hoping to salvage some air scrubbers, murders Morn's father (who had survived Morn's attempted self-destruct) and kidnaps Morn. Seeking both control of her gap-sickness, and Morn herself, Angus places a zone implant - a remotely-controlled electrode - onto her brain, which allows Angus to control Morn's every feeling and action. By giving Morn an unauthorized zone implant, Angus has committed a capital crime, and will be executed if he is caught. On the way back to Com-Mine, Angus activates Morn's zone implant, allowing him to repeatedly rape and abuse her. Unwittingly, he also starts to form an emotional attachment to her. Back at the station, Morn makes contact with another pirate - Nick Succorso, captain and owner of the ship Captain's Fancy, who she sees as a potential rescuer. She aids Nick in framing Angus for stealing station supplies, and Angus is arrested.
8894241	/m/027nndf	Prater Violet	Christopher Isherwood	1945	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Set in pre-Second World War era England, both Nazism and filmmaking are on the rise. Characters in Prater Violet are used to personify various aspects of the enigmatic creative process. Isherwood also uses his characters to express the varying views about Hitler, mainly the alarming measure of indifference prevalent during the 1930s.
8894751	/m/027np4h	The Tragedy of Mariam	Elizabeth Tanfield Cary			 The Tragedy tells the story of Mariam, a member of the Hasmonean dynasty and the second wife of Herod the Great, king of Palestine 39-4 B.C. When the play opens, in 29 B.C., Herod is thought dead at the hand of Octavian (later Caesar Augustus), and Mariam faces her ambivalent feelings about her husband; Herod had loved her, but had also murdered her grandfather and brother. In Act IV, however, Herod returns, dispelling the false report of his death. Herod's immoral and "villain" sister Salome I falsely convinces Herod his wife has been unfaithful in his absence which results in him ordering Mariam's execution. Though Mariam is the title character and the play's moral center, her part in the play amounts to only about 10% of the whole; Cary uses a set of secondary characters to provide a multi-vocal portrayal of Herod's court and Jewish society under his tyranny. The Chorus, in its representation of the patriarchal ideals of femininity, offers an opportunity to interrogate these values, in accordance with the political impetus of the closet drama. The ending of the play is consistent with the tyranny of both its fictional Herod and the actual historical figure: six characters die, including Mariam. The play also explores the themes of divorce and female agency through the characters of both Mariam and Salome. The play has been edited and published in several modern editions, and has acquired a large and growing body of critical and scholarly commentary.
8901621	/m/027ny38	Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse				 Ernest Ralph Gorse, a suave psychopath and conman, relocates to Reading, Berkshire, to stay at the home of a wealthy friend who is visiting Paris. Gorse meets Joan Plumleigh-Bruce at a pub and decides to target her in a fraud scheme. Mrs. Plumleigh-Bruce, the pretentious widow of an Army Colonel, is contemplating marriage to Donald Stimpson, a local estate agent. Both are charmed by Gorse, who falsely claims to have fought heroically in France during World War One, and who pretends to be the grandson of a renowned Army General. Stimpson and Gorse arrange to meet at the King's Hotel in London, where Gorse conspires with the bartender to get Stimpson very drunk. Gorse takes Stimpson to visit a prostitute, which gives Gorse "dirt" he can share with Mrs. Plumleigh-Bruce to make Stimpson look bad. Gorse pretends to fall in love with Mrs. Plumleigh-Bruce, and convinces her to open a joint checking account for the sake of making some investments and purchasing a car. Gorse dupes Mrs. Plumleigh-Bruce into believing he is buying his friend's house in Reading, as a prelude to marrying her. When Mrs. Plumleigh-Bruce realizes she has been duped, and Gorse has cleaned out their joint account, she turns to Stimpson for support, only to learn he has married her Irish maid. Gorse heads off to London; Mrs. Plumleigh-Bruce flees Reading in embarrassment, relocates to a boarding house, and lives out her days in near-poverty.
8904819	/m/027p147	Pilgrim at Tinker Creek	Annie Dillard	1974	{"/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Written in a series of internal monologues and reflections, the book is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who lives next to Tinker Creek, in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia. Over the course of a year, the narrator observes and reflects upon the changing of the seasons as well as the flora and fauna near her home. Pilgrim is thematically divided into four sections—one for each season—consisting of separate, named chapters: "Heaven and Earth in Jest", "Seeing", "Winter", "The Fixed", "The Knot", "The Present", "Spring", "Intricacy", "Flood", "Fecundity", "Stalking", "Nightwatch", "The Horns of the Altar", "Northing", and "The Waters of Separation". The first chapter, "Heaven and Earth in Jest", serves as an introduction to the book. The narrator describes the location as well as her connection to it: I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia's Blue Ridge. An anchorite's hermitage is called an anchor-hold; some anchor-holds were simple sheds clamped to the side of a church like a barnacle or a rock. I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does, facing the stream of light pouring down. It's a good place to live; there's a lot to think about. In the afterword of the 1999 Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition, Dillard states that the book&#39;s other, two-part structure mirrors the two routes to God according to Neoplatonic Christianity: the via positiva and the via negativa. The first half of the book, the via positiva, beginning with the second chapter, &#34;accumulates the world&#39;s goodness and God&#39;s.&#34; The second half, the via negativa, ends with the chapter &#34;Northing&#34; which Dillard notes is the counterpart of the second chapter, &#34;Seeing&#34;. The first and last chapters of the book serve as the introduction and conclusion, respectively. The narrative is composed of vignettes detailing the narrator&#39;s wanderings around the creek. In &#34;The Present&#34; the narrator encounters a puppy at a gas station off the highway, and pats its belly while contemplating the view of the nearby mountain range; the reflective act of &#34;petting the puppy&#34; is referred to in several other chapters. In &#34;Stalking&#34;, the narrator pursues a group of muskrats in the creek during summer. One of the most famous passages comes from the beginning of the book, when the narrator witnesses a frog being drained and devoured by a water beetle.
8905848	/m/027p29t	The Horror from the Hills	Frank Belknap Long	1963	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel concerns the elephantine Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn.
8911431	/m/027pbs4	Le Colonel Chabert	Honoré de Balzac	1829		 The novella opens with clerks in the Paris law office of Derville, an attorney, looking out the window and mocking a determined old man walking through the streets. Le Colonel Chabert is famous for its in medias res opening. Colonel Chabert marries Rose Chapotel, who was living as a prostitute. Colonel Chabert then becomes a French cavalry officer who is held in high esteem by Napoleon Bonaparte. After being severely wounded, in the Battle of Eylau (1807), Chabert is recorded as dead and is buried with other French casualties. Though he does survive&mdash;after extricating himself from his own grave&mdash;and is nursed back to health by local peasants, it takes several years for him to recover. After he recovers, he returns to Paris and discovers his "widow" has married the wealthy Count Ferraud. She has also liquidated all of Chabert's belongings. Seeking to regain his name and monies that were wrongly given away as inheritance, he hires Derville, an attorney, to win back his money and his honor. Derville, who also represents the Countess Ferraud, warns Chabert against accepting a settlement bribe from the Countess. In the end, Chabert walks away empty handed from his widow and spends the rest of his days at a hospice. In Le Colonel Chabert Balzac juxtaposes two world-views: the Napoleonic value-system, founded on honour and military valour; and that of the Restoration. Chabert was not killed at the Battle of Eylau, though it was thought that he was. He struggles back to life but cannot reclaim his identity. His “widow”, who is actually his wife, and who fittingly was a prostitute in her early adult years, is now the Comtesse Ferraud, married (or so it would seem) to an important Restoration nobleman and politician. She repudiates her “former” husband (just as Ferraud, in changed political circumstances, would now be happy to repudiate her). All that matters in the modern era is social rank based upon the possession of money, especially inherited wealth. This theme of the trenchant purity of the military way of life is something to which Balzac returns in La Rabouilleuse, but there the subject is treated quite differently.
8913345	/m/027pf47	Test of the Twins	Margaret Weis	1986-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This novel begins where the last one left off; Caramon Majere and Tasslehoff Burrfoot are in a bleak gray world and Raistlin Majere is with Crysania in the Abyss. The novel begins with a short prologue that relates the short ride of Kharas, a dwarven hero who is riding away from a battle. Kharas hears a massive explosion that is a fortress exploding due to magical forces mixing together when Raistlin enters the Abyss and Caramon and Tas go forward in time. Caramon and Tas arrive two years ahead of when they planned to, and discover that an hourglass constellation (hourglass being the symbol of Raistlin) dominates the sky, having defeated Paladine, Patriach of the Gods and Takhisis, Queen of Darkness. The world is devoid of life, nothing more than gray sludge. They find Caramon's own corpse, and later they find the Tower of Wayreth, a bastion of magic, wherein the only two surviving creatures are, Par-Salian, master of magic, and Astinus, the immortal being that chronicles all of time as it passes, later recording the final moments of the world. Astinus tells Raistlin that he will be forced to be alone for all eternity, and writes that the world ends, but Caramon arrives, changing everything. He receives the last book from Astinus, and is told by Par-Salian that he must stop Raistlin from exiting the Abyss. Afterwards, the scene goes to Raistlin in the Abyss. Raistlin is plagued by magical illusions, but he gains control of himself and sees Crysania. Raistlin faces magically induced trials. Kitiara is seen discussing plans with Soth, and then Tanis is seen speaking to Lord Gunthar Uth Wistan, Grandmaster of the Knights of Solamnia. The hallucinations return to Raistlin in the Abyss, and a physical barrage assails Crysania when she protects him. Raistlin sees yet another illusion, and in the process of overcoming it, Crysania is severely hurt and blinded. Raistlin refuses to stay with her, as she has served her purpose. Back in Palanthas, Tanis goes to the High Clerist's Tower, where Kitiara appears in a flying citadel, a great castle that magically floats. She flies right over the Tower, however, having no need to take it as she has the death knight, Lord Soth, on her side. Tanis flies to Palanthas to warn and prepare the defense. Caramon and Tas, now in the proper time, arrive at Palanthas. They read Astinus's book and discover that Tanis dies in the battle against Soth. Tas goes to the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas to try to save Tanis and Caramon. Tanis and Caramon, accompanied by Tas, take control of the citadel. They then discover from the book that Dalamar is prevented from stopping Raistlin when he is killed by Kitiara. Kitiara gets into the Tower and injures Dalamar, who lethally wounded her. Caramon and Tanis soon arrive. Dalamar is too weak to battle Raistlin. Caramon enters the Abyss, as he is the only one who can stop Raistlin. Soth comes to claim Kitiara's body. Raistlin encounters Caramon and is told of his inevitable failure; he gives the Staff of Magius to Caramon that he might close the Portal and stop Takhisis. Raistlin is attacked by the Queen, but he is said to fall into a dreamless sleep, protected from her. Caramon comes out and closes the Portal, having retrieved Crysania, who is still alive. The battle for Palanthas is won by the people of Palanthas at the cost of most of their city. Crysania, now back to health but blind, becomes head of the church of Paladine. Dalamar seals the laboratory where the Portal is for all time. Caramon goes to his wife, Tika, and they are overjoyed to be reunited. Tasslehoff finds a spot on the map he's never been to and teleports off with the aid of the magical time traveling device.
8913663	/m/027pfg6	Blood Lines	Eileen Wilks	2007-01-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 FBI agent Cynna Weaver teams up with sorcerer Cullen Seabourne to help identify elected officials who have accepted demonic pacts. But the passion simmering between them-and their investigation-spiral out of control when an ancient prophecy is fulfilled.
8914014	/m/027pfr4	Mortal danger	Eileen Wilks	2005-11-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Former homicide cop Lily Yu has a lot on her plate. There's her sister's wedding, a missing magical staff with unknown powers, and her grandmother's sudden decision to visit the old country just when Lily could use a little advice. Maybe she should turn to the man she's involved with, but for all the passion that flares between them, she doesn't really know Rule Turner. Yet she's tied to him for life, both of them caught in an unbreakable mate bond. That Rule is a werewolf, prince of his people, only complicates matters. Now an agent in a special unit of the FBI's Magical Crimes Division, Lily's job is to hunt down Harlowe, a charismatic cult leader bent on bringing an ancient evil into the world. But what Lily doesn't realize is that Harlowe has set a trap-for her. And then the unthinkable happens. In the blink of any eye Lily's world divides and collides, and she is thrust into a new and frightening reality. Her only hope will be to trust Rule-and herself-or Lily will be lost forever...
8914251	/m/027pfzq	Tempting danger	Eileen Wilks	2004-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Lily Yu is a San Diego police detective investigating a series of grisly murders that appear to be the work of a werewolf. To hunt down the killer, she must infiltrate the clans. Only one man can help her - a werewolf named Rule Turner, a prince of the lupi, whose charismatic presence disturbs Lily. Rule has his own reasons for helping the investigation - reasons he doesn't want to share with Lily. Logic and honor demand she keep her distance, but the attraction between them is immediate, devastating, and beyond human reason. Now, in a race to fend off evil, Lily finds herself in uncharted territory, tested as never before, and at her back a man who she's not sure she can trust.
8914816	/m/027pghk	Only human	Eileen Wilks	2003-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Eileen's story in the Lover Beware anthology is entitled Only Human. In it Lily is a Chinese-American detective working with the city of San Diego on a murder that appears to be the work of a werewolf. But, if she wants to find out who the killer is, she'll have to get inside the clans. She enlists the help of a were named Rule, though she detests his species. Will her prejudices hold up under the heat of passion?
8915047	/m/027pgqs	Night season	Eileen Wilks	2008-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 When two world-class cynics land in a world where magic is commonplace, lying is an artform, and night never ends, their only way home lies in working together to find a missing medallion sought by powerful beings who would do anything to claim it.
8925038	/m/027pxy_	Starquake	Robert Forward	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This story begins at the exact time that Dragon's Egg (its predecessor) ended, picking up the plot perfectly. As the human scientists in the orbiting ship Dragon Slayer prepare to leave, the Cheela on the star below continue their rapid advance. Starquake centers around two crises. The first is when the human ship is damaged, and the Cheela must repair the ship before tidal forces kill the humans aboard. Then a catastrophic Starquake strikes. Cheela explorers in space survive but have lost the technology to land back on the surface of their world. All Cheela on the surface perish except for four individuals. All succeeding generations of surface Cheela are descended from these four individuals. For a while, the surface Cheela struggle to keep the rudiments of civilization, but eventually a barbarian conqueror arises. The Cheela in space and their human friends watch helplessly as a new dark age ensues. The second half of the story tells the heroic tale of how the space-bound Cheela, with a little help from the humans, eventually are able to land again on the surface, defeat the barbarian tyrant, and start to rebuild Cheela civilization. The first edition cover shown here vividly and accurately depicts the climactic final battle for the surface as described in the novel.
8925780	/m/027pywz	The Second Generation	Margaret Weis	1994-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kitiara's Son is the story of Steel Brightblade, the child of Kitiara uth Matar and Sturm Brightblade. It begins with a woman named Sara Dunstan, the adoptive mother of Steel, going to Caramon Majere and telling him the tale. He tells her how Kitiara, on her northern journey with Sturm, seduced him and became pregnant with his child. She then found herself with Sara, who cared for her during the pregnancy. When the child was born, she kept him and Kitiara left. Sara and Steel moved to Palanthas, a large city, where it became apparent that Steel had a warrior spirit. He was contacted by Ariakan to join the Knights of Takhisis, and he accepted, going with Ariakan to train. She tells him that he will soon make the oath to become a Knight, and Caramon goes with her to help stop Steel. They go and get Tanis, an old friend of Caramon's, to help. Riding a blue dragon, they go to Storm's Keep, the fortress of the Knights, and take Steel from it. They go into the High Clerist's Tower, a bastion of the Knights of Solamnia, to Sturm's tomb. There, the Starjewel, an elven relic of Sturm's, goes to Steel and the sword Brightblade is given to him. The body then disappears. They escape the Tower, but Steel decides to go back to the Keep to swear the oath. Steel then swears the oath and becomes a Knight of Takhisis. The Legacy relates the tale of Palin Majere, the son of Caramon and the nephew of Raistlin Majere, as he takes his Test of Magic. In the Tower of High Sorcery, the mages tell Caramon that they believe Raistlin intends to steal Palin's body to return to the world. Caramon and Palin go with Dalamar to the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas, where they go to laboratory where Raistlin had worked his magic. The door will not open for Dalamar, but Palin can go in. His Test begins. He believes he goes into the Abyss and rescues Raistlin, and then back in the world Raistlin tries to allow Takhisis into the world. Palin tries to close the Portal and Raistlin attacks him, though he in fact survives as it was all part of the Test. Having passed, Palin is allowed out. Raistlin stays in the room and, in a monologue, reveals that when Dalamar tried to summon his illusion Raistlin actually appeared, though not by Dalamar's power but by his own choice. Raistlin says he has paid his final debt and gives the Staff of Magius to Palin, then goes back to his sleep. Palin is made a true mage, and leaves for home. Wanna Bet? is the story of Tanin, Sturm, and Palin Majere as they adventure to recover the Graygem of Gargath. They meet a dwarf named Dougan Redhammer, who they make a bet with that they can outdrink. They all get drunk and pass out, and awake on a gnome ship bound for the isle that holds the Graygem. They get to an island and begin a journey to find it. Dougan makes a bet with a local chief for much of their possessions, and loses. They press on to the Castle, and inside find a group of adoring women. They pass these, and go on to find Lord Gargath, the possessor of the Graygem, who is constantly shapeshifting thanks to the chaotic magic of it. Dougan, who is revealed to be the god Reorx, makes a bet with Gargath that Palin can throw his hammer into the air and it will never fall. The hammer strikes the Graygem and its magical powers return it to its forger, Reorx, and Reorx also reclaims the hammer. Everyone parts ways, and the Graygem is later seen in Dragons of Summer Flame. As well Reorx loses the Greygem in a bet, which was the reason he lost it in the first place Raistlin's Daughter is a myth about the daughter of the mage, Raistlin. In it, Raistlin and Caramon are at an inn and an Irda woman, incredibly beautiful, is magically afflicted and cursed to make love to Raistlin. Raistlin is likewise afflicted, and he decides to leave into the snowy weather. While in a cave, the Irda comes to him and they make love, lifting the curse. She magically erases his memory afterwards. The Irda goes back to the inn and has the child, dying in the process. More Irda come and reclaim the child afterward. The Sacrifice is the story of Gilthas, the weak son of Tanis Half-Elven and Laurana. It begins with two elves meeting with Dalamar the Dark, a black-robed mage, gaining his help to trap Gilthas in Qualinesti that he might become a puppet ruler of the elves. The scene goes to Gilthas, the protected and weak youth, who is rebellious against his parents. He receives a letter from a Qualinesti Senator, Rashas, to meet him in an inn, and Gilthas runs off to do so. Tanis goes after him and discovers signs that make him believe that Gilthas was ambushed, though it is in fact not true. Dalamar appears to him and Tanis is knocked out. Gilthas's fate is revealed; he was met by Rashas, who rode a griffin, and taken to Qualinost, capital of the elves. There, he is taken to a room where the elven Queen Alhana Starbreeze resides against her will. Rashas goes to make preparation for Gilthas's coronation, and Gilthas is forced to stay in the city. Dalamar reveals to Tanis that Gilthas is to be made king of the Qualinesti, and they begin to make plans. Gilthas is told he will be crowned the next day. Dalamar reveals to Tanis that what has transpired has destroyed the chance for a massive alliance as was planned, thanks to Rashas. Alhana's servant Samar comes to rescue them, but Rashas arrives in time to stop it. Samar is arrested, and Gilthas and Alhana are separated. Gilthas tells Rashas he will not swear the oath to become King, but Rashas threatens to kill Alhana if he doesn't; Gilthas agrees. Tanis and Dalamar, aided by magic, go to try to stop the coronation, and when Tanis commands Gilthas to take off the medallion that allows him to be King, Gilthas refuses and swears to become Speaker. Dalamar and Tanis rescue Alhana, and after Dalamar escapes the pair of them are exiled from Qualinesti. Tanis is sent to the border where he meets Dalamar and discovers Alhana has already gone on with Samar. Gilthas appears to say good-bye to his father, and after he does so returns to Qualinesti. Tanis and Dalamar then depart.
8926824	/m/027p_0g	Raking the Ashes				 After an initial meeting on the beach years earlier, Tilly meets the long divorced Geoffrey at a party. She soon divorces her husband and Geoffrey moves in with her. Tilly very much enjoys having another person in the house to help cook and clean, and who loves and accepts her entirely, especially as she recognises that she is not a very nice person. However, Tilly has problems with Geoffrey's fundamental dishonesty and his refusal to share his family with her and Tilly is resentful at simply being a 'pleat' in the family economy, there to be taken in and then let out (let down) when she is not needed. Tilly is good enough to help look after the children for months on end while their mother is in America to treat her cancer, yet when it comes to choosing a school for Harry she can be safely left out while granny, who is barely part of their lives, is invited to help choose the school. Though it is fine for Tilly to spend hours in the middle of the night at Harry's bedside listening to his nightmares and the gruesome stories he hears at school, her suggestion to Geoffrey that he see a counselor is rubbished as Geoffrey thinks 'I know my own child', and Geoffrey even fails to mention the letter from school describing Harry's destructive behaviour. Time and again Tilly is driven to dislike, and even hate Geoffrey over his dishonesty, Geoffrey's refusal to listen to her hints about his children ('Minna's persistent truancy, Harry's strange, quiet slidings on and off the rails'), or to live in the real world, his refusal to tell her about major financial decisions (selling his late fathers cottage, getting a second mortgage, giving his ex-wife significant financial help for various cancer treatments that even he believes cannot work). When Tilly finds that Geoffrey's desire to be nice resulted in his agreeing to his son's wedding at a time when it was impossible for Tilly to come, merely to save the mother of the bride the loss of the deposit on her holiday, and that he then lied to Tilly about it, pretending that they were never consulted about the date, she is finally given the impetus to leave, and to extract revenge.
8927489	/m/027p_vl	Grace Notes	Bernard MacLaverty			 The book centers around the postpartum depression of its female protagonist, Catherine McKenna, a Northern Irish music teacher and composer living in Scotland. She faces preparations for her father's funeral, endures disturbing visions regarding her recently born daughter, Anna, and suffers restrictions imposed by the Catholic Church on her family and her childhood. She engages her depression through the cathartic and intuitive composition of music; later in the book, she begins to craft a master symphony. The novel ends with a powerful live radio broadcast of her symphony. The title is an explicit reference to grace notes, which a character in the novel terms as "the notes between the notes". The redeeming power of art is indeed a prominent theme. In addition, critics have considered the concept of fleeting and minute musical notes as descriptive of the novel's style (Donath).
8929608	/m/02pg139	Spirou à New-York		1987		 In Spirou in New York, the Italian Mafia of New York are dismayed as their criminal activities seem to be cursed and Don Vito "Lucky" Cortizone, the Mafia Godfather, initiates a plan put forward by his second-in-command, Alfredo, to reverse their uncannily rotten luck: to plant a golden key into a Cortizone & Son product, Lucky's Pizza, and rewarding a million dollars to the lucky finders. Spirou and Fantasio who are in an economic slump, are forced to eat an inexpensive dinner, and as Fantasio chokes on a bite of Lucky's Pizza, they become the finders of the golden key. Informed they simply have to travel to New York to collect their prize, The Mafia believe they are receiving a talisman to counteract their misfortune. When they arrive in New York, they learn the true identity of their hosts and promptly leave without accepting any mafia money, but are unexpectedly attacked by members of the Chinese Triad, the Mafia's chief rivals, and as a result Spip is abducted. Forced to collaborate with Cortizone in order to rescue Spip, they break into the Triad headquarters and discover the source of The Mafia's constant misfortune, a table with the power to influence good and bad fortune onto the subject of a photo placed onto the field, shaped in the design of a Taijitu, like the yin-yang, which are selected by Cortizone's Triad counterpart, "The Mandarin". Having levelled the balance of fortune, Cortizone and the Mandarin engage in a personal battle over briefcases containing money and a bomb, and following a deceptive swap of suitcases, the two rivals explode above Hudson River. <!--
8929642	/m/027q2_s	Cynthia's Revels	Ben Johnson			 The play begins with three pages disputing over the black cloak usually worn by the actor who delivers the prologue. They draw lots for the cloak, and one of the losers, Anaides, starts telling the audience what happens in the play to come; the others try to suppress him, interrupting him and putting their hands over his mouth. Soon they are fighting over the cloak and criticizing the author and the spectators as well. In the play proper, the goddess Diana, or Cynthia, has ordained a "solemn revels" in the valley of Gargaphie in Greece. The gods Cupid and Mercury appear, and they too start to argue. Mercury has awakened Echo, who weeps for Narcissus, and states that a drink from Narcissus's spring causes the drinkers to "Grow dotingly enamored of themselves." The courtiers and ladies assembled for the Cynthia's revels all drink from the spring. Asotus, a foolish spendthrift who longs to become a courtier and a master of fashion and manners, also drinks from the spring; emboldened by vanity and self-love, he challenges all comers to a competition of "court compliment." The competition is held, in four phases, and the courtiers are beaten. Two symbolic masques are performed within the play for the assembled revelers. At their conclusion, Cynthia (representing Queen Elizabeth) has the dancers unmask and shows that vices have masqueraded as virtues. She sentences them to make reparation and to purify themselves by bathing in the spring at Mount Helicon. The figure of Actaeon in the play may represent Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, while Cynthia's lady in waiting Arete may be Lucy, Countess of Bedford, one of Elizabeth's ladies in waiting as well as Jonson's patroness. The play is notably rich in music, as is typical for the theatre of the boys' companies, which originated as church choirs.
8929738	/m/02pg13n	La frousse aux trousses		1988		 In La frousse aux trousses, Spirou and Fantasio intend to make a journey to Touboutt-Chan in order to clarify the fate of Adrien Maginot and Günter Siegfried, who disappeared in the 30s while seeking a mythical place in this area of the world, the Valley of the Outlaws. However the two journalists have trouble finding the funds necessary to the achievement of their project. They are then contacted by Doctor Placebo, who is persuaded that frightening experiences are a sure-fire cure for hiccups. He offers the two heroes funding for the trip, on condition that they take along the patients sent to them by the doctor, in the hope that their experiences will prove his theory. Guided by the native Gorpah, the two heroes and their incredible companions are confronted with soldiers, rebels and bad weather. At the climax of the adventure, Spirou and Fantasio are carried away by a torrent of water, leaving the patients cured of their hiccups, but undeniably depressed. <!--
8929821	/m/02pg13_	La vallée des bannis		1989		 In La vallée des bannis, carried away by a furious torrent during their passage through Touboutt-Chan (from the previous story La frousse aux trousses), Spirou and Fantasio regain consciousness in the hostile environment of the "Valley of Banishment", their destination. Fantasio is soon infected by a mosquito carrying a virus, making him act extremely crazy. He runs off into the wild, and Spirou is forced to begin exploration of the area with only Spip as a companion. Spirou discovers the tragic destiny of the first people exiled in the valley, and while searching for other survivors and a way leading out of the valley, seeks a way to secure Fantasio's return and cure his state of madness. <!--
8929871	/m/02pg14b	Spirou à Moscou		1990		 Moments before their departure on holiday to the tropics, Spirou and Fantasio are taken by the DST for the KGB which needs them. Moscow is being terrorised by the mysterious 'White Prince of the Russian Mafia', Tanaziof. According to the KGB's information this man is an old enemy of the two heroes. In Moscow, Spirou and Fantasio discover that Tanaziof is none other than Zantafio, Fantasio's evil cousin. Zantafio's inept second-in-command, Nikita Vlalarlev, tries to assassinate the two heroes but fails. Zantafio is planning to abduct the body of Lenin and to ask the Russian government for a huge ransom for its return. Spirou and Fantasio succeed in thwarting these plans. Zantafio manages to escape. <!--
8930025	/m/027q3fj	Duel in the Sun		2006		 The early part of the book describes the preparations that Beardsley and Salazar underwent before the marathon, along with many other aspects of the men's running backgrounds and personal lives. There are three concurrent story lines: Beardsley's life, Salazar's life, and the marathon itself. It is revealed early on that Salazar, who was already a renowned distance runner in the late 1970s and early '80's, was the favorite to win Boston. Beardsley, described as a small-town farmboy, is clearly the underdog. But as the race progresses and the stories of the two men's lives are developed in greater detail, it becomes clear that both men will have a chance at winning the Boston Marathon, generally considered to be the most prestigious in the world. The story gradually becomes an intense contest between Beardsley and Salazar as they leave the rest of the runners behind during the latter part of the marathon. The title comes from the two men's shadows cast by the hot sun onto the pavement as they run "in each other's pockets" during the final miles of the race, and anticipation builds as to who will win the "duel." The shadow is also featured prominently on the cover of the first edition as part of the title. After the race, the lives of both runners spiral downhill. The book describes in detail Salazar's depression and compromised immune system, and Beardsley's industrial accident and drug addiction.
8932745	/m/027q6xy	Love Tricks				 Infortunio is in love with Selina &mdash; but she is set to marry the elderly Rufaldo. The frustrated Infortunio loses his sanity, and wanders through the countryside. Selina, however, discovers that she does love Infortunio &mdash; but only on the eve of her wedding day. She disguises herself as a shepherd and runs away to the forest. Antonio, her brother, pretends to search for her; but he actually disguises himself in her wedding gown and takes her place in the wedding ceremony. His motive for this strange act? &mdash; Antonio is in love with Hilaria, Rufaldo's daughter; but Rufaldo wants Hilaria to marry the wealthy fool Bubulcus. Antonio-as-Selina knocks down "her husband" Rufaldo, and ridicules and humiliates him in public. Bubulcus pretends to have slain Antonio in a duel; he is arrested for this, since Antonio has disappeared (at least to the other characters, who cannot penetrate his disguise) and is believed dead. Meanwhile, in the forest, the disguised Selina is living with a household of shepherds &mdash; which includes her long-lost sister Felice, who likewise ran away to escape an unwanted marriage. Infortunio, still mad, stumbles upon them, and Felice cures him by restoring Selina to him. Gasparo, Felice's past love, also shows up (with his servant Gorgon), and recognizes both Felice and Selina, who in turn are amazed to learn that Selina is thought to be still in the city (the effect of Antonio's disguise). A group from the city that includes Cornelio, the father of Antonio and the sisters, and Rufaldo, comes to view the shepherds' rustic sports; discoveries and reconciliations follow. The play ends with three happy couples: Infortunio and Selina, Antonio and Hilaria, and Gasparo and Felice. Interspersed with this main plot are several comic episodes, most notably the "school of complement" material, and also the comedy of Jenkin, Jocarello, and Gorgon. In the school of compliment scene in Act III, Gasparo and Gorgon (as master and usher) teach a group of pupils to speak the kind of elaborate language associated with courtly behavior &mdash; though perhaps more typical of books of compliment and courtship than of actual courtiers. ("The Cupidinian fires burn in my breast..." is one sample of their eloquence.) As the pupils are rehearsing en masse, the mad Infortunio stumbles upon the scene, and mistakes the students for the damned souls of Hell. He knocks down the first man he encounters; and the others, intimidated, play along with his delusion and explain what led to their damnations. At least one critic has regarded this satire as "the best part of the play," though "unrelated to the main plot."
8938068	/m/027qfnk	The Long Winter	Samuel Youd	1940	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On a hot August day in 1880, at the Ingalls homestead in Dakota Territory, Laura offers to help Pa stack hay to feed their stock in the winter. As they work, Laura notices a muskrat den in the nearby Big Slough. Upon inspecting the den, Pa notes that the walls are the thickest he has ever seen, and fears the upcoming winter will be a hard one. In mid-October, the Ingalls wake to an unusually early blizzard howling around their poorly insulated claim shanty. Soon afterward, Pa receives another warning from an unexpected source: an old Native American man comes to the general store in town to warn the white settlers that there will be seven months of blizzards. Pa decides to move the family into his store building in town for the winter. In town, Laura attends school with her younger sister, Carrie, until the weather becomes too unpredictable to permit them to walk to and from the school building, and coal too scarce to keep the school heated. Blizzard after blizzard sweeps through the town over the next few months. Food and fuel become scarce and expensive, as the town depends on trains to bring supplies but the frequent blizzards prevent the trains from getting through. Eventually, the railroad company suspends all efforts to dig out the trains that are snowed in at Tracy, stranding the town until spring. With no more coal or wood, the family learns to use twisted hay for fuel. For weeks, the Ingalls subsist on potatoes and coarse brown bread made from wheat ground in their coffee mill. As even this meager food runs out, Laura's future husband Almanzo Wilder and his friend Cap Garland hear rumors that a settler raised wheat at a claim twenty miles from town. They risk their lives to bring sixty bushels of wheat to the starving townspeople &ndash; enough to last the rest of the winter. As predicted, the blizzards continue for seven months. Finally, the spring thaw comes and trains begin running again, bringing the Ingalls their long-delayed Christmas barrel from Reverend Alden, containing clothes, presents, and a Christmas turkey. With the long winter finally over, the family enjoys Christmas dinner in May.
8941280	/m/027qklc	Mind's Eye	Paul Fleischman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The main character, Courtney, is a very unlucky girl. Her father walked out on her mom and her when she was little. Adding to that, her mom remarried a real jerk. To make matters worse, her mom died leaving Courtney alone with her stepfather. To put the icing on the cake, a riding accident paralyzes her. Finally, to put the cherry on the icing, she is sent to a nursing home. There she meets an old lady named Elva, and another named May, who suffers from Alzheimers. She repeats what she says three times. For Example: "I think my dance dance dance lessons were cancelled". Elva made a promise to go to Italy to her husband before he died, and since she is too weak to go, she is backed into a corner. She had to take an imaginary trip. She procrastinated and now is unable to do it on her own since she cannot use her eyes to see the maps of Italy. But now, Courtney can help her. They go on a mind's eye trip and finish it. In the end, Elva passes away.
8947431	/m/027qsr0	The Mind Parasites	Colin Wilson	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story is about Professor Gilbert Austin's conflict with the Tsathogguans, invisible mind parasites that menace the most brilliant people on earth.
8947894	/m/027qt8y	The London Merchant	George Lillo			 ;Act I Sarah Millwood, a London prostitute, schemes to find some innocent young man "who, having never injured women, [would] apprehend no injury from them" (I.iii) to seduce and exploit for money. She observes young George Barnwell in town, and she invites him to her house for supper. At supper she seduces him with irresistible flattery, and he succumbs to her wiles. ;Act II Upon returning home the next morning, George feels he has betrayed Thorowgood by disobeying his curfew. The guilt he feels from disobeying the rules of the house, as well as the guilt he feels from his fornication with Millwood, leaves George tormented. His guilt is compounded by the loyalty of his friend Trueman. Soon, Millwood visits George at his place of work. When she discovers he no longer wants anything to do with her, she begins to sense her money-making scheme has come to an end. She quickly thinks of a lie to tell George to keep her plan going. She tells George that the man who provides her with housing somehow found out about their tryst and is now evicting her because of it. This evokes new feelings of guilt from George, and he is prompted to steal a large sum of money from his employer's funds to give to her to amend the situation. ;Act III After giving her the money, George feels unworthy of his kind master, Thorowgood, so he runs away and leaves a note for Trueman confessing his crime. Having no place to go, he turns to Millwood for help. At first she refuses him since his employer's money is no longer at his disposal, but she quickly remembers that he has previously mentioned a rich uncle. She again convinces George that she truly does love him, and concocts a scheme for him to rob his uncle. George objects saying that his uncle will recognize him as his nephew; Millwood answers that the only way, then, will be to also murder his uncle. In a fit of passion, George runs off to commit the robbery and murder. He finds his Uncle Barnwell alone, and as he approaches, George veils his face and attacks his uncle with a knife. As he lies dying, Uncle Barnwell prays both for his nephew and his murderer, not knowing that they are the same. Overcome with sorrow, George reveals himself to his uncle, and before he dies, Uncle Barnwell forgives his murderous nephew. ;Act IV George returns to Millwood's home upset, trembling, and with bloody hands. Upon realizing that he did not take any money or property, Millwood sends for the police and has George arrested for murder. Two of Millwood's servants, Lucy and Blunt, who were aware of the plan from the beginning, have her arrested as well. Both George and Millwood are sentenced to death. ;Act V Despite all that has transpired, George is visited by Thorowgood and Trueman in his prison cell. They console and forgive him. Thorowgood provides for his spiritual needs by arranging a visit from a clergyman. In the end, George is truly repentant for his sins and is at peace with himself, his friends, and God.
8950870	/m/027qy40	Last Man Standing	David Baldacci		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Web London and the FBI's super-elite Hostage Rescue Team are sent down an alley for a surprise attack on a drug dealer's lair. As they move with stealth precision towards the target, they are surprised to see a boy in the dark alley. When the kid sees them, he utters the queer words "Damn to hell" and cackles. Uncharacteristically, this kid unnerves Web. But he proceeds with his team, working on getting his pulse beat to sixty-four and visualizing the next moments, as the team gets in position for the signal to move to "green." When the Tactical Operations Center radios to give the go ahead for the final move to the front door, Web freezes. It isn't fear or runaway nerves; Web has been doing this far too long for that. And yet, even with every muscle straining all he can manage to do is to take a few faltering steps and fall down on his gun. At five seconds to impact, Web lays helpless as he watches the Charlie team proceed and then one by one fall to the ground, all dead in seconds. Ironically, Web is the only one alive. For a HRT guy, out-surviving team members is a personal hell, nothing to be grateful about. The other FBI guys are suspicious and, even worse, distrust him to go out on mission. He can't bear the silent accusations of the widows and fatherless children who'd just as soon trade him for their lost loved one. And the press is having its usual field day, only this time it is his story they are exaggerating and manipulating. In a single moment Web London goes from hero to pariah. Web needs to understand what happened in that alley, specifically who set up his team for an ambush. This job is his life; he needs to prove his innocence to gain the trust back from the guys and for himself. There is no room in his job for less than absolute perfection and bravery. A good HRT guy does not freeze and let their team be killed without them. Web begins a two-pronged investigation, one external to seek whoever set Charlie up and one internal where he signs on with psychiatrist, Claire Daniels. The key for both investigations seems to be the boy in the alley. After Charlie team was killed, Web still struggled with trying to move. When he saw the boy start to run directly into the line of fire, Web managed to yell at him to stop and slithered himself over to the boy. He gives the boy his hat and a note, warning of the ambush, for the boy to deliver to the reserve unit that TOC is sending in. But somehow, the FBI loses the boy before they have a chance to talk to him. Missing also is the undercover agent that provided the information on the drug lair. Meanwhile, a judge, a prosecutor, and a defense counsel are killed in three separate and apparent unrelated incidents. When Web sees this in the newspaper, he makes the connection between those deaths and Charlie team's ambush. He knows that it is the same group who caused half his face to be torn off during a hostage rescue mission. David Canfield was the only hostage from that mission which died mere feet from Web. Web had given this boy hope and the boy had died while looking at Web, Web carries guilt rom this operation. Web London is not the only one who's wondering about the ambush. Francis Westbrook, a giant of a man whose moniker is the apt "Big F," is the leader of a small drug empire. The building that HRT was taking, is in his territory, but its not a place that he's ever used, nor does he run a business on the scale that would warrant that kind of attention. The missing boy is Westbrook's brother and he'll do anything, including giving up his entire business, to get that kid back. Notwithstanding his concern for his brother, he's alert to the fact that he's got a traitor in his top echelon. Last Man Standing is a complex psychological thriller in which the suspicions run rampant as to who set up Charlie team. At the center of this novel is a team of alpha males in which Baldacci reveals the characteristics of the type of guy that would want to do this poor paying job that boasts a motto of "Speed, surprise and violence of action." These are the good guys in a world with a lot of bad guys and they would just as soon be unemployed but the bad guys won't let them. And even though they might have love affairs with their weapons, they are earnest about trying not to use them. That said, they never fire warning shots. And they keep a hell of a lot of weapons on hand. These guys are heroes, and although they are part of the FBI, they keep their distance. After all, it is the FBI that makes the judgment call that sends them into action, so when there is a screw up, as there was in Waco, the blame tends to go directly to HRT. Web London as the epitome of the HRT guy is a strong, loyal friend especially to his team members and their families. He, naturally, has issues dealing with his own issues. Yet, in this instance, he is unusually motivated to continue his therapy since he's the one that really wants to know what happened. As much as Baldacci paints HRT as real American heroes, by delving into this psychological side of the story he also points out the character deficiencies that cause these men to go through the most grueling training and then to subject themselves to the greatest danger. It also fills out this multi-layered plot.
8954912	/m/027r2qn	Cry of Morning	Brian Cleeve	1971-11-15	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the Republic of Ireland during the period of economic expansion that took place in the 1960s when Seán Lemass was Taoiseach. The narrative is concerned with an attempt by property developer, Francis O'Rourke, to erect a new office block in the centre of Dublin. The site is occupied by a slum dwelling whose occupants are about to be evicted in order to make way for the new development. Pitted against O'Rourke is a determined coalition of interests opposed to his plans. As the story unfolds, Cleeve highlights examples of corruption in Irish political and business life at that time.
8957150	/m/027r5h2	The Kindly Ones	Jonathan Littell	2006-09-13	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is a fictional autobiography, describing the life of Maximilien Aue, a former officer in the SS who, decades later, tells the story of a crucial part of his life when he was an active member of the forces of the Third Reich. In the book, Aue accepts responsibility for his actions in massacres of the Jews, but most of the time he feels more like an observer than a direct participant. Aue starts the war as a member of an Einsatzgruppe in Ukraine, during which he participates in the Babi Yar massacre. He is then sent to the Battle of Stalingrad, but survives. After a convalescence period in Berlin and a visit to France, he is designated for a managerial role for the concentration camps and visits both the Auschwitz and Belzec extermination camps. He is present during the Battle of Berlin, Nazi Germany's last stand. By the end of the story, he leaves Germany unscathed. Throughout the book Aue meets several famous Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Himmler, and Adolf Hitler. The book is divided into seven chapters, each named after a baroque dance, following the sequence of a Bach Suite. The narrative of each chapter is influenced by the rhythm of each dance. ;« Toccata »: In this introduction, we are introduced to the narrator and discover how he has ended up in France after the war. He is the director of a lace factory, has a wife, children, and grandchildren, though he has no real affection for his family and continues his homosexual encounters when he travels on business. He hints of an incestuous love, which we learn later was for his twin sister. He explains that he has decided to write about his experiences during the war for his own benefit and not as an attempt to justify himself, even though he insists that it took all kinds of men, good and bad, to make up the SS. He closes the introduction by saying, "I live, I do what is possible, it is the same for everyone, I am a man like the others, I am a man like you. Come along, I tell you, I am like you." ;« Allemande I & II »: Aue describes his life as a member of one of the Einsatzgruppen death squads in Ukraine, particularly in the Crimea and in the Caucasus. He describes in detail the open air massacres of Jews and Bolsheviks behind the front lines (one of the massacres described is the Babi Yar Massacre in Kiev, 1941). Although he seems to become increasingly indifferent to the atrocities he is witnessing, he begins to experience daily bouts of vomiting and suffers a mental breakdown. After taking sick leave, he returns to his unit to discover that a hostile superior officer has arranged that he be transferred to the front line at Stalingrad in 1942. ;« Courante » : Aue thus takes part in the last days of the battle of Stalingrad. As with the massacres, he is the soldier observer; the narrator rather than the combatant. In the midst of the chaos, violence, and starvation, he manages to have a discussion with a Russian political commissar POW about the similarities between the Nazi and the Bolshevik world views, and once again is able to indicate his intellectual support for Nazi ideas. He is seriously wounded in the head and is miraculously evacuated just before the German surrender in February 1943. ;« Sarabande »: Convalescing in Berlin, Aue is awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class, by Heinrich Himmler himself, for his heroic action at Stalingrad. While still on sick leave, he decides to visit his mother and stepfather in Antibes, in Italian-occupied France. Apparently, while he is in a deep sleep, his mother and stepfather are brutally murdered. Max flees from the house without notifying anybody and returns to Berlin. ;« Menuet en rondeaux »: Aue is transferred to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, headed by Himmler, where he plays a managerial role for the concentration camps. He struggles to improve the living conditions of those prisoners selected to work in the factories as slave laborers, in order to improve their productivity. The reader meets top Nazi bureaucrats organizing the implentation of the Final Solution (i.e., Adolf Eichmann, Rudolf Höß, and Himmler) and is given a glimpse of extermination camps (i.e., Auschwitz and Belzec); he also spends some time in Budapest, just when preparations are being made for transporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. The reader witnesses the tug-of-war between those who are concerned with war production (Albert Speer) and those who are doggedly trying to implement the Final Solution. It is during this period that two SS police officers from the Kripo, who are investigating the murders of his mother and stepfather, begin to visit him regularly. Like the Furies, they hound and torment him with their questions, which indicate their suspicions about his role in the crime. ;« Air »: Max visits his sister and brother-in-law's empty house in Pomerania. There, he engages in a veritable autoerotic orgy particularly fueled by fantasy images of his twin sister. The two SS police officers follow his trail to the house, but he manages to hide from them. ;« Gigue »: Max travels back to Berlin through enemy Soviet lines with his friend Thomas, who has come to rescue him. Thomas is trying to impersonate a French laborer, knowing that his high SS rank is sure to get him killed if he is caught by Soviet forces. In Berlin, Max and Thomas find many of their colleagues preparing for escape in the chaos of the last days of the Third Reich. Aue meets and is decorated by Hitler in the Führerbunker. During the decoration ceremony, Aue inexplicably bites Hitler's nose, drawing blood and the wrath of Hitler's men, yet he manages to escape through the Berlin U-Bahn subway tunnels, only to encounter his police pursuers again. Though their case has been repeatedly thrown out of court, they're unwilling to accept defeat and prepare to execute him. Barely escaping their clutches when the Russians storm the tunnels and kill one of the policemen, Aue wanders aimlessly for a while in the streets of war-torn Berlin before deciding to make a break for it. Making his way through the heavily shelled Berlin Zoo, he's yet again faced by the surviving policeman. However, his friend Thomas kills the last policeman, only to himself be killed by Aue, who steals from him the papers and uniform of a French conscripted worker. We know from the beginning of the book that Aue's multilingualism will allow him to escape back to France with a new identity as a returning Frenchman. The fact that he has managed to survive so many close calls and to escape successfully leads him to end the book with the statement: "The Kindly Ones were on to me." But in the end, all is not explicitly laid out for the reader; for Littell, in the words of one reviewer, "excels in the unsaid."
8958954	/m/027r87f	The Secrets of Vesuvius	Caroline Lawrence	2001	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins as Flavia, Jonathan, Nubia, and Lupus are playing in the Tyrrhenian sea, Flavia sets out to find Vulcan, who told Pliny of the riddle pointing to great treasure. Eventually, she and her friends solve the riddle, making out the word Asine, Latin for 'jackass'. She tried to find Vulcan from a local blacksmith, and used the codeword 'Asine', but to little avail. Meanwhile, Aristo gives Miriam a sparrow, the traditional symbol of love. Soon, Flavia finds Vulcan, and tried calling him a jackass while he was drinking water. She finds out Vulcan is a clubfoot orphan, and feels horrible. Vulcan gives Miriam, who is in love, a bracelet. At the forum, a Christian warns everyone of doom and desolation. The children find out that Clio, a girl, had been following them. Her parents, Tascius and Rectina, had adopted her and many other girls, after losing their own son. They all go to the Vulcanalia, but everything goes wrong, and Flavia fails to tell Clio's parents that Vulcan may be their lost son. Flavia finds out that 'Asine' is really a codeword for their illegal faith, Christianity. Tascius thinks Vulcan is really Pliny's son. Soon, the sparrow dies and birds rain from the air. Everyone finds out that Miriam is in love with Flavia's uncle, Gaius. Everyone is surprised except Nubia, who figured it out earlier. Jonathan's father, Mordecai, fears that his son's dreams of Jerusalem, the strange events, and everything going wrong, all point to the fact that the Christian was right, him being one also. They figure that a volcano is going to erupt, and they figure it is Vesuvius. They call over Pliny for a meal, and Flavia figures that Vulcan is really Tascius' son. Pliny did not know that Vesuvius was a volcano. Mordecai proposes that everyone leave, but his daughter Miriam objects. They warn everyone of the volcano. While Rectina and Clio are in Herculaneum, and everyone else is in Stabia, it erupts. Miriam's hair is set on fire by the ashes from the volcano, but Mordecai puts it out. They find Gaius half-dead buried under ash, but Ferox, a wolf, saves him. Meanwhile, Moredecai, a doctor, tries to save everyone. Pliny sets out to save Rectina, but fails. Tascius confesses how he had abandoned Vulcan. Lupus warns Pliny of Vulcan in a boat. Pliny dies near Pompeii due to sulphur. Water is scarce, and pyroclastic flows bury cities, but the children survive the volcano.
8962086	/m/027rd06	Lammas Night	Katherine Kurtz	1983	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Lammas Night tells the story of a group of English witches who act to save their country from Nazi attack during World War II. Woven within the story of their efforts are the visions and fragmented memories of one male witch, who gradually comes to realize his role in an ancient cycle of royal death, reincarnation, and sacrifice.
8963219	/m/027rf60	The Dark	John McGahern	1965	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in Ireland's rural north-west, and it focuses on an adolescent and his emerging sexuality, as seen through the lens of the strained and complex relationship he has with his father, Mahoney.
8964938	/m/027rh7c	Mankind in Transition				 He describes human evolutionary history as a step function of punctuated equilibrium, with long periods of stability interrupted with short periods of transition. He argues that humans are now in a period of transition from a stable agricultural society through a transitional industrial and/or information society becoming a stable automated society. Each stable society has its own social organization. The animal society has a dominant male and everyone else; the tribal society has a chief, a medicine man, hunters and everyone else. The peasant society has a nobility, overseers and peasants in the food production category which also has a military category, a religious category, tradesmen and craftsmen. The transitional industrial society features top executives, managers and workers in many categories. The technological evolution beginning in the tribal society had hand tools; the peasant society featured a plow, a domesticated animal on dedicated farm land plus a wide range of artifacts and tools; the transition to the industrial society began in England with the steam engine, textile machines and later it was the tractor that forced the peasants off the land and into the cities. Machines and computers dominate production in the industrial society. It is predicted that in the automated society all production will be controlled by computers. The forcing elements in the transition has been productivity. During periods of stability, productivity changes very little from year to year. But in a transitional period as we are experiencing, productivity changes every year. When productivity can no longer increase, we will be completely automated. He asserts that mankind will develop a stable automated society. Mankind will also evolve into a new biological species in colonies living in distant star systems. The automated society will be one where everyone will have just about everything they want without physical effort. Everyone will be rich in today's terms.
8968220	/m/027rm9d	The Cage	S. M. Stirling	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book covers time that Tom Abraham, an Englishman, spent in the US Army during the Vietnam War. It describes how he served as an officer in the 1st Cavalry Unit and was captured by the Vietcong, before escaping and finding his unit again. The book is divided into four sections, the first is about his time in England, the second is his time in America, the third is his time fighting in the Vietnam War and the final section is about his capture and treatment by his captors. After the war he claimed to have suffered post-traumatic stress and after being arrested by the police suffered a breakdown.
8969948	/m/027rpzn	In Times Like These	Zee Edgell	1991	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Main character Pavana Leslie is returning to Belize following a vacation in the United States to take up a post at the Women's Department- and walks right into trouble. Belize is in turmoil following the announcement of a possible plan to end the claim to Belizean territory by Guatemala by working out an agreement between the two countries. Unfortunately, Belizeans have rejected this agreement wholesale. Worse yet, the man in charge of convincing them, Cabinet member Alex Abrams, was a former boyfriend of Pavana's and the father of her twins Lisa and Eric, and is being pressured by another former friend and leader of the resistance movement, Stoner Bennett, to denounce the agreement. Pavana must deal with her past relations with Bennett and Abrams in London and the decision that changed her life, her present troubles with coworkers at the Department who keep introducing politics to the equation, and her future: a relationship with the divorced Julian Carlisle, a development aid worker. When tragedy strikes, Pavana must draw on all her resources to come up with a solution- to Belize's problems and her own.
8973641	/m/027rwbt	The Far Hills	Brian Cleeve	1952	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel focuses on the McDonald family, who live a hand-to-mouth existence following their abandonment by paterfamilias, the feckless Rory McDonald. Into their lives comes Brendan Courtney O’Brien, scion of a wealthy Irish family, who has fallen in love with the eldest of the McDonald children, Erika. Despite his background, Brendan has even less money than the McDonalds. As the black sheep of his family, he has lived a peripatetic life and scrapes a living buying and selling on the black market. Through Brendan's eyes we meet a succession of apparently aimless losers who hang around the decrepit hair-dressing salon which is the McDonald's only source of income. Erika's younger brother, Jimmy, is something of a rebel, always getting into trouble. Eventually, his desperate mother sends him to a boarding school from which he escapes at the first opportunity. He wanders the byroads of rural Ireland before being recaptured. Soon, Brendan and Erika's wedding takes place, followed by a reception in McDonald's salon. As Brendan surveys the guests, all relatives or friends of his new bride, he imagines how his own estranged family would see them. Brendan and Erika set up home in a boarding house run by a malicious old landlady. In a bid to escape the grinding poverty in which they languish, the young couple join a travelling circus. Erika becomes a fortune-teller and Brendan sells small bottles of perfume to which he has added astrological predictions. Meanwhile, young Jimmy has run away again and, serendipitously, ends up in the same circus in which his sister and brother-in-law are working. The three meet just as Jimmy is about to receive retribution from a hot-dog man whose wares he has stolen. Brendan rescues him and all three return to Dublin. Erika's mother has sold the hairdressing salon and is about to leave for England with her younger son. Brendan and Erika decide to join her, with Jimmy in tow. The novel ends just as their ship is leaving the dockside. However, one of the party is missing. Jimmy has decided to stay in Ireland and, as the ship sails out into Dublin Bay, he watches from the pier before turning to find his own destiny somewhere in "the far hills".
8979259	/m/027s2b2	Off for the Sweet Hereafter	T. R. Pearson		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Raeford Benton Lynch, nephew to the bald Jeeter, is a cipher, remarkable only for being gangly and horse-faced. On a whim, he accepts a job "digging holes" for Mr. Claude Ellwyn Overhill, who drives a motley assortment of riff-raff around the south, disinterring and relocating the denizens of graveyards that had to be moved to make room for development. Benton Lynch meets Jane Elizabeth Firesheets when he and Mr. Overhill's crew disinter her grandmomma. Jane Elizabeth, for some inscrutable reason, takes a fancy to Benton Lynch, beguiling him with her "milky white parts" and "plum colored parts." Trouble comes in the form of Jimmy, a petty criminal whose renegade nature lures Jane Elizabeth Firesheets away from Benton Lynch. In order to prove that he is as dangerous and ambitious—and thus as alluring—as Jimmy, Benton Lynch takes to holding up convenience stores and sending clippings about the crimes to Jane Elizabeth Firesheets. This wins her affections away from Jimmy, but has an unintended side effect: Jane Elizabeth Firesheets pictures herself as Bonnie to Benton Lynch's Clyde, and insists that the two take off on a crime spree that ends in the shooting of an elderly store clerk.
8981883	/m/027s4y4	Beneath the Moors	Brian Lumley	1974	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Professor Ewart Masters convalesces at the home of his nephew, after an automobile accident. There he discovers the existence of an ancient Cimmerian city beneath the Yorkshire moors. He proceeds to have dream adventures in the realms of the Great Old Ones.
8981885	/m/027s4yv	Breakpoint	Richard A. Clarke	2007	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A series of explosions occur at seemingly unimportant sites in the United States. These sites happen to be the locations where transatlantic cables from Europe and Asia reach the U.S. essentially cutting the U.S. off from the world, at least via the Internet. The attacks are immediately blamed on the Chinese. Two investigators are sent to investigate the incidents, with this assumption in mind. The investigators soon uncover an underground science of genomics and nanotech working on human-computer integration.
8990908	/m/027skw4	Callista	John Henry Cardinal Newman			 Callista is set in the mid-3rd century in the city of Sicca Veneria in the Roman province of Africa. It deals with the persecution of the Christians community under Emperor Decius. The main character of the novel is Callista, a young and beautiful Greek girl, who has just arrived from Greece with her brother Aristo. She is a gifted young woman, yet she is unhappy with her life. Another main character is the troubled young Christian Agellius, who wants to marry Callista. He is torn between his faith and his brother (Juba), his mother Gurta, a pagan witch, and his pagan uncle Jucundus, who all want to bring him away from the Christian faith. Agellius soon meets the mysterious Christian priest Caecilius (later identified as St. Cyprian of Carthage), who becomes a father figure for him and strengthens his faith again. After a terrible plague of locusts, popular rage against Christians breaks out and persecution starts once again. Agellius has to flee from the surroundings of Sicca Veneria. At the same time, Callista sees herself drawn more and more strongly to Christianity. When she is compelled to offer incense to the pagan gods, she has to make a dramatic choice, which finally leads her into the Catholic Church and then to martyrdom.
8996643	/m/027ssmg	Born to Exile	Phyllis Eisenstein	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Born to Exile concerns the adventures of a wandering minstrel called Alaric, who possesses the otherwise unknown ability to teleport. The novel details his journey to uncover the secrets of his own past and the true nature of his mysterious ability. For eight weary months, Alaric the minstrel trudged the lonely road of exile. Born with preternatural powers, the infant Alaric had been found by foster parents abandoned on a hillside, newborn and naked, with a bloody, severed hand clutching his ankles. Older and with those powers on full display, he suddenly found himself rejected by his foster family, branded a witch-child. Alaric now wanders the world as a solitary wayfarer, with a knapsack, a few clothes, and a lute his only possessions. On this journey, he encounters the craggy towers and shining spires of a distant castle, like some gleaming vision in one his songs. Within, Alaric is accepted as court minstrel but becomes embroiled in palace intrigue that involves Medron, the court magician, and the King's daughter, Princess Solinde. Subsequently, he journey's to the sinister Inn of the Black Swan and then to a superstition-ensorcelled village. There, Alaric is restored to his supernatural antecedents, known as the Lords of All Power.
8997864	/m/027sv26	Vigilant	James Alan Gardner	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Faye Smallwood is an inhabitant of a colony planet named Demoth. The vast majority of the inhabitants of Demoth belong to a race or species called the Oolom; they are a genetically-engineered offshoot of the Divians, an alien species that features in several novels in the series. The Oolom were engineered to function like the flying squirrels of Earth: with lightweight bodies and long flaps of skin descending from their arms, they can glide through the air and rise on warm thermal currents. Demoth is also occupied by about half a million humans, who have settled on the planet over the previous five decades to run the mining operations. (The air-loving Oolom react negatively to underground environments, and the ore deposits are now too diffuse for robot mining.) When Faye Smallwood was fifteen years old, the Oolom population was devastated by a contagious disease called pteromic paralysis; the majority of the population died lingering deaths, before a cure was discovered by Dr. Henry Smallwood, Faye's father. A hero to the Oolom, Dr. Smallwood lived to enjoy that status for only a year, before he died in a mining accident. His daughter had to grow up through a troubled adolescence, which she eventually overcame by entering into a group marriage with seven other people. By the time she turns forty, Faye decides to fulfill a drive left over from her girlhood during the plague: she becomes a member of the Vigil, a planetary organization of ombudsmen who supervise the activities of the Demoth government on all levels, from the local to the global. After seven years of training, she undergoes the mushor, which entails the implantation of a neurological "link seed" in her brain. (It's called a link seed because it sprouts tendrils that wind through the brain like roots, linking the subject's mind to a global computer array called the world soul.) Faye's first assignment as a proctor of the Vigil, in the year 2454, is a modest job overseeing local administration in a coastal city; but the assignment suddenly turns serious when android assassins inexplicably begin murdering members of the Vigil. Faye's partner is killed, and Faye survives only through the incomprehensible intervention of a swirl of light and energy that protects her, and her alone. Faye is suddenly a focus of attention for many interested parties &mdash; including members of the Outward Fleet of the Technocracy, who have recognized the swirling energies around Faye as a version of the "pocket universe" technology that allows their ships to evade the light-speed barrier in interstellar travel. Faye's personal pocket universe behaves in ways that appear to violate the laws of physics as understood in the Technocracy; two ruthless members of the Fleet are determined to understand the phenomenon, and are even ready to pull Faye's mind apart to do so. The Fleet's involvement also draws the attention of Admiral Festina Ramos, the heroine of Expendable and the continuing character in the League of Peoples series. With a new ally in Admiral Ramos as well as formidable new enemies, Faye has to unravel the mystery of the proctors' murders and the energy swirling around her. The search takes her deep underground where the Ooloms never go, and three thousand years back into her planet's long-forgotten and violent history, among some very exotic alien species. She learns that the pteromic paralysis that devastated the Ooloms a generation earlier was an artificial nanotechnology-based bio-weapon, which has now evolved to attack both Divians and humans. If it escapes, the disease will devastate whole populations before a cure can be found. Faye and Festina are stuck with the dangerous job of preventing the catastrophe. Gardner utilizes the advantage that all science fiction writers enjoy, though not all exploit: he creates alien species and alien beings who are more intelligent and more interesting than humans. Faye Smallwood, the human protagonist of the book, pales in comparison to her Oolom colleague Tic. He is smarter and more eloquent than she is ("I should be asymptotic to apothesis"), and he is both funny and sharp-witted. "But don't mind me &mdash; us old codgers always use sexual harassment to put women at their ease. People think it's so adorable, we can get away with murder. And speaking of murder, what did you say that got Chappalar killed?"
9000282	/m/027sy4g	The Sentinel	Jeffrey Konvitz		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Alison Parker, a beautiful but troubled fashion model moves into a gorgeous New York City brownstone house that has been divided into apartments. The house is inhabited on the top floor by Father Francis Matthew Halloran, a reclusive blind Catholic priest who spends all of his time sitting at his open window. Alison is romantically involved with Michael Farmer, a private lawyer and former prosecutor. It soon becomes apparent that Alison's life is beset for a number of reasons. She had a horrible relationship with her recently deceased father, and has narrowly survived at least one suicide attempt. Michael himself is under suspicion in the death of his former wife. A determined New York City Police Department detective named Gatz is sure that Michael murdered his wife, and soon comes to suspect Alison as well. Hoping to leave her problems behind her, Alison finds that they've worsened. She suffers sleep loss, horrible nightmares involving her father and soon begins to find herself suffering blinding headaches. Looking for some distraction, she tries to ingratiate herself with the building's other occupants - but finds that they are bizarrely eccentric and obnoxious. Alison complains about her neighbors to the building's real estate agent. The agent is confused, telling a shocked Alison that there are no neighbors - besides for herself and Fr. Halloran, no one else lives there. Looking for answers, Michael breaks into a records archive of the Catholic Church. Researching the past of Fr. Halloran, Michael learns that the man has none. Rather Halloran's life "began", to the day, that another man's life apparently came to an end, leading Michael to believe that the two men are one and the same. He also finds similar records for a woman, a nun named Sister Therese who is to reside in Alison's building. Michael soon concludes that Sister Therese is actually the woman that Alison is meant to become. Rushing to Alison's building, he confronts the blind priest, only to be killed. Returning to the building, her headaches returned and her skin beginning to desiccate, Alison finds Michael seemingly unhurt. He reveals that he is actually dead and also damned for killing his wife. He also explains that the house is actually positioned over the gateway between our world and Hell and that there must be gatekeeper to protect the world from the denizens of the underworld. Until now, that gatekeeper, or sentinel, had been Father Halloran, but Alison is now expected to succeed him. Her troubled past, especially her suicide attempt, make her the appropriate choice. The inhabitants of Hell are actually her fellow "neighbors", and they know that they have one chance to escape the abyss - pressuring Alison to complete her suicide. At the last minute, Father Halloran appears and saves Alison, driving the "neighbors" back to hell. The book ends with Alison becoming the new sentinel. A sequel titled The Guardian followed.
9004334	/m/027t2mw	The Deluge Drivers	Alan Dean Foster	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After resigning himself to perhaps being trapped on Tran-Ky-Ky for the rest of his life, Ethan Fortune learns that scientists at the outpost of Brass Monkey have detected a steady warming in the planet’s atmosphere. This has caused something not seen in generations on the planet: open water on the ice oceans of Tran-Ky-Ky. Taking the giant icerigger Slanderscree with a crew of Tran to investigate, Fortune learns that the warming of the oceans isn’t an accidental or natural event.
9008104	/m/027t7c3	The Unbeheaded King	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this sequel to The Clocks of Iraz, ex-king Jorian of Xylar and Dr. Karadur flee the revolt-stricken city of Iraz in the bathtub of its lately deceased monarch Ishbahar, borne through the air by Gorax, an invisible demon in the service of Karadur. In accordance with the doctor's previous promise, the demon flies them to Xylar to rescue Jorian's favorite wife Estrildis, imprisoned there by the kingdom's authorities in the hope of enticing Jorian, whom they intend to execute, back into their power. The plan miscarries, and the demon is barely able to spirit the hapless rescuers off to the neighboring city-state of Othomae, where it deposits them, tub and all, in the park of the Grand Duke. There they are promptly arrested for trespassing. Effecting their release takes some time, largely because their sadistic jailer Maltho, who bears a grudge against Jorian from a previous acquaintance, balks their efforts to send word of their plight to friends outside. Finally free, they attempt to accumulate resources for another attempt to recover Estrildis; difficult, since Jorian must remain in hiding from the Xylarians. Ultimately, eschewing heroics, he hires Abacarus, a sorcerous colleague of Karadur to do the job, again by means of a demonic servant. To his dismay, the demon Ruakh returns with the wrong woman, Estrildis' attendant Margalit. He is further from his goal than ever, and now mired in a lawsuit over fulfillment of the contract to boot! Disenchanted with magical shortcuts, Jorian contacts his family in Kortoli and commissions his younger brother Kerin to reconnoiter Xylar. Kerin returns with word that Thevatas, one of Estrildis' guards is susceptible to bribery, and Jorian and Karadur accordingly return to Xylar in the guise of Mulvanians (traveling entertainers similar to Gypsies), where the subverted guard delivers Estrildis in return for the crown of Xylar, which Jorian had hidden after his initial escape from execution. But now Jorian discovers Estrildis had taken a lover in his absence and doesn't want to be rescued! Soft-hearted, Jorian surrenders her to her lover Corineus and takes up with Margalit instead, of whom he has grown fond in the interim. (As was manifestly clear long before this moment, the resourceful, practical and level-headed Margalit is a far more suitable mate for Jorian than the emotional Estrildis.) A Xylarian judge Jorian has taken hostage weds him to his new love, who is then able to free the cursed spirit of Lorc, a baronial ghost who has aided them. Beset by both bandits and pursuing Xylarians, the party makes its escape to Othomae again. In a postscript, Jorian has returned to Kortoli with his new wife and joined the family clockmaking firm; there he learns that a revolution in Xylar has overthrown the regicidal regime, and he is at last out of danger from his former subjects. In fact, he is now their national hero, and they want him back on an (unthreatened) throne - an offer he politely declines. This last scene is in fact the only one in the Jorian sequence showing the hero in his homeland of Kortoli - though the readers have gained a though acquaintance with it though the folk tales told by him and embedded in various books.
9008683	/m/027t80g	Necropolis	Basil Copper	1980	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set in Victorian England. Clyde Beatty, a private investigator, is hired by Angela Meredith to investigate her father's death. His investigations lead him to a nursing home in Surrey, directed by the sinister Dr. Horace Couchman. After an autopsy reveals the murder of Miss Meredith's father, Dr. Couchman flees to London leading Beatty eventually to the eerie Brockwood Cemetery and a criminal conspiracy involving millions of pounds worth of gold bullion.
9009551	/m/027t8_r	The Third Grave	David F. Case	1981	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel is the story of a young Egyptologist, Thomas Ashley, who, while on an archeological expedition, discovers ancient Egyptian secrets of resurrection and immortality. Accompanied by the beautiful Arabella Cunningaham, the two are menaced by a horror spawned by an ancient curse.
9010959	/m/027tbn8	Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat	Ernest Bramah	1928	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kai Lung adventures usually serve as mere excuses to bring up side stories along the way, which typically take up the better part of a Kai Lung book. However, this is one of the few books that has a purposeful main narrative as well as intriguing side stories. Kai Lung comes home one day to meet his wife, but finds everything in a state of disarray. An elderly neighbour tells him that the village has been devastated by Ming Shu. Kai Lung goes in the direction of Ming Shu. Along the way, he meets barbarians, a poor farmer named Thang, a bandless captain in the city of Chi-U, and finally (disguised as Mang-hi, a foreigner from the land of Kham) Ming Shu himself. =====Wan and the Remarkable Shrub===== A sage, finding sleep to be an unwelcome obstruction to his pursuit of enlightenment, cuts off his eyelids and throws them away. At the spot where his eyelids land grows a shrub whose leaves look like his eyelids. Later, during a famine, the shrub is rediscovered and used to make a potion that soon becomes famous enough to catch the attention of the emperor, who subsequently bestows great honors on Wan. =====Wong Tsoi and the Merchant Teen King's Thumb===== A case of two people with the same fingerprints creates difficulties which are resolved by the mandarin Wong Tsoi. =====Tong So, the Averter of Calamities===== A ring of thieves realizes that its members don't need to take the trouble to steal to make a living, if they exact a tribute from everyone in the town in return for a promise not to give them any trouble. =====Lin Ho and the Treasure of Fang-tso===== Lin Ho, an ugly boy, is orphaned and sent to live with his rich uncle, who employs him as a slave. Lin Ho has been taught to do the best he can and not worry about the reaction to his actions, so he accepts this lot stoically. Then, one day, his uncle decides to get rid of him by sending him to make an offering at a shrine, giving him a lunch that contains a poisoned onion. At the foot of the hill containing the shrine, Lin Ho meets a proud warrior named Lam-Kwong, who, on the pretense that one cannot speak to the gods with onion breath, takes his onion, devours it greedily, and then dies—but not before killing Lin Ho with a stone directed at his head. Lin Ho goes to heaven, but the beings there are not quite ready to receive him, and so, as a reward for the virtuous life he has led so far, he is allowed to reënter his body. However, once he comes back to earth, he sees his own body lying beside that of Lam-Kwong, and decides that it would be much nicer to inhabit the forbidding body of a warrior than to resume his original post. This, however, poses a problem, for now he needs to work out what is expected of him… =====Kin Weng and the Miraculous Tusk===== The apprentice to an ivory-carver, who works diligently but without much reward, wanders into the woods one day, and sees a tree, a pagoda, and a young woman, all of perfect proportion… Some years later, Kai Lung tells a story to an unwilling listener, a suitor of one of his daughters. At an early mythical period of imagined history, a young man redeems his word to cut a crescent off the moon, in order to win a young lady's hand. Kai Lung is informed by his neighbors that he has received official honorable recognition, though he is displeased when he discovers it is for rumored skills he does not possess, rather than for his real accomplishments. The last scion of a deposed dynasty overthrows a corrupt monarch and finds happiness, and a prophecy comes true, though not in the expected way.
9012736	/m/027td9y	Why Paint Cats	Burton Silver	1994	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Why Paint Cats describes the practice of "cat painting", the decorating of cats with paint.
9015125	/m/027tgph	A Tale of a Tub	Ben Jonson			 The plot, which unfolds on St. Valentine's Day, concerns the inept attempts of a variety of suitors to win the hand of Audrey Turfe, the daughter of a Middlesex constable. To break Audrey's engagement to John Clay the tilemaker, Squire Tub, a romantic rival, has the man falsely accused of theft. As Constable Turfe pursues the innocent man, yet another suitor, Justice Preamble, plays a comparable ruse against Squire Tub. All told, Audrey is chased after by four separate suitors, and apparently she has no particular preference among them. (She hesitates to accept Squire Tub, however, because of the social gap between them: "He's too fine for me, and has a Lady / Tub to his mother.") Amid the disorder, Pol-Marten, Lady Tub's usher, marries Audrey before the others realize it. Their marriage is celebrated with a wedding masque, also titled "A Tale of a Tub," which retells the story of the play. (In the colloquial usage of the time, a "tale of a tub" is the same as "a cock and bull story.") Jonson, here as often elsewhere in his plays, borrows elements from the Classical plays of Aristophanes and Plautus. The play was published with a motto from Catullus: Inficeto est inficetior rure.
9020079	/m/027tqvt	Sacred Games	Vikram Chandra	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sacred Games combines the ambition of a 19th-century social novel with a cops-and-Bhais detective thriller. (Bhai is a Hindi slang term for gangster.) As sprawling as the heat-drenched city it richly portrays, Sacred Games delves into many emotionally charged worlds of contemporary India, in particular the spidery links between organized crime, local politics and Indian espionage that lie below the shimmering surfaces of its economic renaissance. Money and corruption form the golden thread. In interweaving narratives and voices, Sacred Games takes on even larger themes, from the wrenching violence of the 1947 partition of India to the specter of nuclear terrorism.
9024632	/m/027txp4	The Brimstone Wedding	Ruth Rendell	1996-03-28	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Jenny Warden, a care-assistant in a retirement home, is in a loveless marriage, and has a lover. She befriends Stella Newland, a resident with cancer. Stella slowly reveals to Jenny the events of her own life, which in some ways parallels Jenny's. Stella gives Jenny the keys to a house that Stella owns, and the intrigue and their relationship deepens.
9024690	/m/027txtm	No Night is Too Long	Ruth Rendell	1994-05-26	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Set in Alaska and Suffolk, this story is written in three first-person narrations, the first and longest of which is the memoir-confession of Tim Cornish. Tim, a would-be novelist of twenty-four, has just received his master's degree. He travels to Alaska for a nature-exploration cruise with his somewhat older male lover, Ivo, a paleontologist who will be lecturing during the cruise. Tim has been living with and supported by Ivo, but, since Ivo's recent declaration of love, Tim has tired of him. Ashore in Juneau while Ivo is elsewhere, Tim meets Isabel, an unhappily married, somewhat older woman, with whom Tim immediately falls in love, and he promises to meet her in Seattle in ten days after breaking up with Ivo (who he pretends is a woman). When Tim tells Ivo their relationship is over, Ivo refuses to accept it. On an excursion to an uninhabited island, the two men tussle; Tim strikes Ivo, who then strikes his head against a tree and moves no more. Leaving Ivo for dead, Tim flees the island and rejoins the cruise, saying nothing of what has happened. He helps himself to the cash and credit card Ivo left behind and flies to Seattle, hoping to find Isabel, but his guilt causes him to abandon that plan and he returns to the UK, where he settles into an unchallenging job in his hometown and lives alone in his parents' house. As there has been no word of a police inquiry, no report of the finding of Ivo's body, Tim seems to have committed the perfect crime, though he is increasingly haunted by what he has done, believing he sees Ivo everywhere. Then he begins to receive a series of anonymous letters, each of which describes the island ordeal--and rescue--of a castaway. Someone knows what he did. Isabel's own brief memoir, in the form of a letter of sorts to Ivo, and a concluding letter to his wife by a schoolboy friend of Tim's who becomes Tim's solicitor, complete the book, which explores questions of sexual identity, fidelity, and guilt.
9024728	/m/027txwp	Asta's Book	Ruth Rendell	1993-03-25	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 This is set in the 1990s, with flashbacks to 1905 via Asta's diary. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to east London from Denmark with their two sons. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing her diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal, for they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder, to the quest for a missing child and to the enigma surrounding Asta's daughter, Swanny. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before.
9024830	/m/027tx_3	Gallowglass	Ruth Rendell	1990-03-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When Sandor snatches Joe from the path of a London tube train, he makes it clear that Joe's life now belongs to him. Sandor begins to tell him a mysterious story and teaches Joe that he is a "gallowglass", the servant of a chief. Sandor comes from a wealthy home and is highly educated. Joe, longing for a friend, falls under his spell. Some years earlier, Sandor had taken part in the kidnapping of a former model, Nina. He now plans to kidnap her again so that they can live together. At present, Nina lives in a heavily-guarded residence with her husband and many servants. Eventually, Joe's colourful stepsister, Tilly, is also dragged into the plot. However, things don't turn out as Sandor had planned. Most of the story is seen through Joe's eyes, but Paul Garnet, Nina's driver, also tells part of the tale.
9024982	/m/027ty7r	A Dark-Adapted Eye	Ruth Rendell	1986-03-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Largely set during World War II, the story is told by Faith Severn, who at the prompting of a true-crime writer recounts her memories of her aunt, the prim, fastidious, and snobbish Vera Hillyard. Vera's life is initially centred on her beautiful younger sister, Eden, even to the exclusion of her own son, Francis, with whom she has a poor relationship. Later, Vera has a second son, Jamie, to whom she is intensely devoted, while Eden marries the scion of a wealthy family. When Eden is unable to have children with her husband, she begins to demand custody of Jamie, who she claims is being poorly raised by Vera. To the bewilderment and shock of the rest of the family, the custody battle escalates to violent levels, leading to tragedy and a series of disturbing revelations.
9025584	/m/027tywq	The Darkling	David Kesterton	1982	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Set in the distant future, a young tribesman, Maradek searches for his father, Afurad. In the course of this search, he helps to foil the forces that threaten the world's destruction.
9025839	/m/027tz5b	The Centurion's Empire	Sean McMullen		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Roman centurion Vitellan enters into multiple periods of hibernation through a concotion developed from snow-dwelling insects. He 'emerges' into various periods throughout history, many times assisting the locals in defending themselves from outside threats. Unfortunately Vitellan is not doing so well, the artificial suspension is severely injuring him. The novel continues into the future, where several organizations vie for the control of Vitellan. fr:L'Empire du centurion
9025963	/m/027tzcw	Glass Dragons	Sean McMullen	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The use of the weapon in the first book has led to storms that sweep the planet and make travel by sea nearly impossible. A group of magicians thinks it has the way to stop the storms: Dragonwall, a device that will drain the storms' energy. But when Dragonwall's true purpose is discovered, it's up to the priestess to destroy it by any means necessary. Meanwhile, the world has a new vampire, looked after by the old one and an unlikely genius who travels with a fallen courtier. All of them, plus a motley crew of soldiers and a sorceress (who wants nothing more than good food and pleasant company) must help the priestess destroy Dragonwall before it's too late.
9026192	/m/027tzr6	The Miocene Arrow	Sean McMullen	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In isolated pockets of what used to be America, humans fight stylized duels in small, biodiesel-powered airplanes. In a land where chivalry and honor are everything, what happens when rebels from Australia, enamored of the amazing technology held by the Americans, hatch a plot to bring some of it back to their homes?
9026250	/m/027tztm	Eyes of the Calculor	Sean McMullen	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Mirrorsun, which orbits earth and prevents electrical machines from functioning, had been defunct for some time. However, when it comes back to life with a vengeance, the new Highliber must reform the Calculor, a large computer whose components are human beings. At the same time, Americans are working with an underground group to bring their airplanes and weapons to Australia. Can the Highliber and the Overmayor of Rochester, the capital of Australia, stop the American technology from destroying their way of life?
9027995	/m/027v13w	The Law	Frédéric Bastiat	1850		 God has freely given us the gift that includes all others. This gift is life—physical, intellectual, and spiritual life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. That we may do so, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties, and He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products and use them. This process is necessary so that life may run its appointed course. Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—these are man. And despite the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation and are superior to it. What then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to defend oneself, one's liberty, and one's property. Each of us has a natural right from God to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. Since each of us has the right to use force to defend his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right—its reason for existing, its lawfulness—is based on individual right. The common force that wields this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use arbitrary force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then, for the same reason, the common force cannot arbitrarily destroy or confiscate the person, liberty, or property of an individual. Such a perversion of force would be in both cases contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that our Creator has endowed us with force to infringe upon the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual can lawfully use force to infringe upon the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces? It is not true that the legislature has absolute power over our persons and property. The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of the legislature, and its function is only to guarantee their safety. It is not true that the function of law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our wills, our education, our opinions, our work, our trade, our talents, our pleasures. The function of law is to protect the free exercise of these rights, and to prevent any person from interfering with the free exercise of these same rights by any other person. Since law necessarily requires the use of force, its proper domain is only in the areas where the use of force is proper—that is, the administration of justice. Every individual has the right to use force for self-defense, but for nothing else. For this reason, collective force—which is only the organized combination of the individual forces—can lawfully be used for the same purpose, and it should not be used for any other purpose. Law is solely the collection of the individual right of self-defense, which existed before law was formalized. A government that confined itself accordingly would be most simple, economical, limited, non-oppressive, just, and enduring. If law did nothing more than punish all oppression and plunder, society would be so tranquil and prosperous that political questions would lose most of their importance, thus creating a more civil and unified society. The constant political upheaval would cease, as men would know that government is no more responsible for natural suffering and recession, which are inseparable from humanity, as it is for changes of temperature. Alas, two entirely different influences—greed and false philanthropy—use law to destroy its own objective. Greed: Human nature impels man to satisfy his desires with the least possible expenditure of effort, which often requires his satisfaction at the expense of others. Law makers often shape law to plunder the people and benefit themselves. The rebelling plundered classes then attempt either to stop legal plunder or to share in it. Legal plunder forces citizens to choose between their moral sense and their respect for the law and eliminates the correlation between justice and law. False philanthropy: Under the pretexts of organization, regulation, protection, and encouragement, law takes property from one person and gives it to another. Socialists do not consider the law sufficient that it should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, they demand the law directly to extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. Whenever wealth is taken from its owner without his consent, by force or by fraud, property is violated. This act is exactly what law is supposed to suppress, not facilitate. The perversion of law—that it may violate property rather than protect it—causes everyone to want to participate in the making of law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder, thereby creating a perpetual source of hatred and discord. There are two kinds of plunder—legal and illegal, the first of which systematically threatens society, the second of which does not because the law punishes it. Sometimes, the law places judges, police, and prisons at the service of the plunderers and treats the victim—when he defends himself, his liberty, or his property—as the criminal. How is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply: see if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Even in the United States, law has become the instrument of criminal activity. This country limits the law to its proper domain more than any other nation; however, there are two issues that endanger the Peace: slavery and tariffs, the former being a violation of liberty, the latter a violation of property. The effective implementation of law requires the use of force, therefore, the proper function of law cannot extend beyond the proper function of force—to stop men from harming others. Can law—which necessarily requires the use of force—rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone? To do so would pervert it and turn might against right. The law's organization of justice (by force) excludes the idea of passing legislation with the force of law to subsidize or regulate any human activity—be it labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, education, or religion. Either law upholds justice or provides for the needs of some at the forced expense of others: by fulfilling the latter purpose, it abolishes the former. Socialists seek to obliterate the distinction between government and society. Consequentially, every time we object to a given government activity, the socialists allege that we object to its being done at all, and we are therefore selfish and unpatriotic citizens. To the contrary: we, the liberals, reject the charity, education, and organization that we are forced to pay for. We do not reject natural charity, education, and organization. To socialist intellectuals, the relationship between the people and the legislator is the same relationship between the clay and the potter. Socialists envision a utopian society of which they would be the wise leaders. They find ideological support among legislators whom, for the most part, assume themselves to be better than the people and the peoples' saviors from their own stupidity: "He who would dare to undertake the political creation of a people ought to believe that he can, in a manner of speaking, transform human nature, transform each individual . . . into a mere part of a greater whole from which the individual will henceforth receive his life and being" (Rousseau). "Impartiality in law consists of two things: the establishing of equality in wealth and equality in dignity among citizens" (Condillac). Oh, writers! Remember that this clay, which you so arbitrarily dispose of, are men! They are your equals! They are intelligent and free like yourselves! They, too, have received from God the faculty to observe, to plan, to think, and to judge for themselves! What is liberty? Is it not the union of all liberties? Is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, provided he does not harm others? Socialists think of liberty as the power to use and develop one's faculties. It follows that, in the socialist view, citizens have the right to education and work. Society, which owes everyone education and work, must honor the peoples' right by action of the state. From whom will the state take the resources necessary to generate education and work? The tendency of mankind toward liberty is largely thwarted by men who desire to force mankind to docilely bear the yoke of public welfare: "The function of government is to direct the physical and moral powers of the nation toward the end for which the commonwealth has come into being" (Robespierre). "To govern is to increase and spread morality, education, and happiness" (Napoleon). According to Billaud-Varennes, the people should have no prejudices except those authorized by the legislature. Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? The task would be sufficient. As long as the notion prevails that government is the nation's guide and driving force, every aspect of society depends upon government. Government, therefore, bears the gratitude or blame for the state of the nation's virtue, equality, and prosperity. Is it surprising, then, that every cause of malcontent increases the danger of yet another revolution in France? And what liberties should the legislature permit us to keep? Liberty of association? (No, people would be intolerant toward each other). Liberty of conscience? (No, people would become atheists). Liberty of education? (No, parents would teach their children immoralities and falsehoods). Liberty of labor? (No, that would mean competitive markets, which mean oppression and chaos). Liberty of trade? (No, then we would buy from other nations thereby ruining our own economy). Clearly, the socialists cannot permit persons any liberty because they believe that mankind naturally tends toward degradation and disaster. Surely, without drive and guidance from government, we will cease to associate with each other, to help each other, to protect each other, our children, and ourselves, to love and honor our unfortunate brothers, and to strive to improve ourselves to the best of our abilities. Thus, the legislature must make plans to save us from ourselves. When the candidate campaigns, he speaks of the people as wise, moral, mature, and informed. But when he is elected—ah! then indeed does his tone change—the people are returned to passiveness and unconsciousness. Now it is for him to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit. But, since the legislature defends the peoples' right to vote so passionately, how can the people possibly be as self-destructive as the same legislature indicates? The claims of these organizers raise another question: if the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe themselves to be made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The proposition that law should extend wealth and happiness to everyone is the road to serfdom that will inevitably result in legislation being the battlefield of the utopias and greed of everyone. Socialism and communism are the same plant in different stages of growth. Once the law has exceeded its proper limits, where will you stop it? Where will it stop itself? Only under a law of justice will mankind achieve God's design for the peaceful and prosperous progress of humanity. The solution to the temporal problems of humanity is to be found in liberty. And are not the more peaceful and prosperous nations those in which people may act more freely within the limits of right, and law, that is, force, is used for little (or, ideally, nothing) more than the administration of justice? Once, a traveler arrived among a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born. A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks, armed with rings, hooks, and cords, surrounded the child. One said: "This child will never smell the perfume of the peace pipe unless I stretch his nostrils." Another said: "He will never be able to hear unless I draw his earlobes down to his shoulders." A third said: "He will never see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes." Another said: "He will never stand upright unless I bend his legs." A fifth said: "He will never learn to think unless I flatten his skull." "Stop," cried the traveler. "What God does is well done. Do not claim to know more than he. God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, and experience." God has provided us with social as well as physical faculties. These social organs are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! And now that the legislators and socialists have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: may they reject all systems and try liberty, for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and his works.
9031295	/m/027v4nn	From Time to Time	Jack Finney		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the end of Time and Again, Morley had prevented the meeting of the parents of the founder of the time travel Project, Dr. Danziger, and ensured that Dr. Danziger would not be born, and that the Project would not occur. But Major Ruben Prien of the Project still has residual memories of what would have happened. He is able to put the pieces together. He finds another time traveller, more or less stranded in the present (the 1970s) by Morley's actions. The time traveller is able to go to the point where Morley had altered time, and prevent Morley's actions. The original timeline, with the Project, is now back in place. Morley has settled down in the 1880s, married Julia, and works as a graphic artist. He is, however, vaguely dissatisfied with his life. Morley, knowing that he was unable to stop the Project, eventually returns to the 1970s to see what might be going on with the Project, which has in fact become moribund. Prien soon realizes that Morley is back, and arranges a meeting with him. Prien persuades Morley that it might be possible to prevent World War I, and Morley travels back in time to the year 1911. Not only does he do it to head off the devastating war, as in the original novel, he has a personal desire to travel in time. His motive to visit the spring of 1911 is to see the brief-lived vaudeville act, "Tessie and Ted", who, we finally learn, are Morley's great aunt—and the father who died when Morley was only two years old. He sees them, but foregoes any interaction with them. His primary purpose in visiting 1911 is to find the mysterious "Z", a confidential agent of President Taft whose quiet trip to Europe would have assured peace and prevented the World War, had Z not vanished from the scene, after getting the written assurances he needed, but before returning home. Once Z is found, Morely can do whatever is required to prevent Z from vanishing. Morley soon is enveloped in the blissful world of 1911 New York, seemingly meeting at every turn a woman he calls the "Jotta Girl." Morley is able to eavesdrop on a clandestine meeting between Z and Theodore Roosevelt, and finally realizes that Z is Major Archibald Butt (an actual historical character), military aide to both Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, whom Morley has already met in the society of this New York. He tries to get close to Butt, but is frustrated by the Jotta Girl, whom Morley belatedly realizes is an agent of Dr. Danziger, original head of the Project and opponent to Prien. Danziger, who opposes changing the past for any purpose, has figured out who Z was, and has sent the Jotta Girl to interfere with Morley. However, Morley does not realize this until Butt is off to Europe on the R.M.S. Mauretania, seemingly ending any chance Morley might have to try to ensure that Butt completes his mission. His purpose frustrated, Morley returns to report to Prien in the 1970s. It is his intent then to return to Julia in the 1880s, feeling nothing further can be done. Independently of Morley, Prien has learned that Butt was Z, and knows why Z vanished, his mission incomplete. Butt sailed on the Titanic and did not survive. At first, Morley refuses to make another attempt to complete his mission. He is motivated to try again when Prien informs him that Morley's and Julia's son, Willy, will die in World War I, killed in action. Morley returns to 1911 and travels to Belfast, where the Titanic is under construction. Seeing no way to sabotage the vessel's construction (which would cause Butt to take another ship), Morley has little choice but to await the ship's completion and sail on her himself, having carefully planned to be near one of the lifeboats where men were permitted to board. Aboard, he meets Butt, who spurns Morley's offer to tell him how to get off the ship safely once the iceberg strikes. Butt will not leave a vessel on which women and children may die (and, according to some accounts, did act in a heroic manner during the sinking). The Jotta Girl is also aboard, and after Captain Smith fails to take Morley's warning seriously, agrees to help Morley. They distract the helmsman, setting the ship onto a new course. That course is the one which impacts the iceberg and sinks the ship. Had they taken no action, the ship would have missed. Butt's mission fails with his death. The war will happen, and the only hope Morley has for Willy is that forewarned with the information about the day he is to die, that he will survive. In an epilogue, Morley has returned to 1887, or, by now, 1888. He is emotionally torn up not only by his responsibility for the ship's loss, but also by his attraction to the Jotta Girl, who presumably survived and returned to the 1970s. As the book concludes, he and Julia are laying in supplies for what Morley knows will be the Blizzard of 1888.
9034850	/m/027vb56	The Beaver Coat	Gerhart Hauptmann	1893		 Mother Wolff is a rather resolute cleaning lady. She is married to a somewhat clumsy and timid ship carpenter by the name of Julius Wolff. The story begins as she comes home with an illegally poached roebuck, where her daughter Leontine is waiting for her. Leontine has fled her service to the pensioner Krüger because she was told in the late hours of the night to bring a pile of wood into the stable. Mother Wolff, constantly considerate of her own reputation, wants to send her daughter back. But as she learns that the work concerns a "beautiful dry club", she allows Leontine to stay the night with the intention of acquiring the wood herself. While she sells the roebuck that she claims she discovered dead to a sailor on the river Spree named Wulkow, her youngest daughter Adelheid exlains that Mr. Krüger was recently given a valuable beaver coat from his wife. Wulkow then exclaims that he would without question pay sixty Taler for such a fur coat. Mother Wolff quickly realises that with this sum of money she could pay off a large part of her debt. She thus decides to steal the coat in order to sell it to Wulkow. After the theft, Krüger reports to the police that his wood and his coat have been stolen. However, the head official of Wehrhahn feels only annoyed by this complaint. He is only interested in uncovering, "sinister people and elements that are politically outlawed or hostile to the crown or aristocracy." Given this, Krüger strives to have the private tutor Dr. Fleischer arrested for Lèse majesté. The doctor receives around twenty various newspaper and meets regularly with free thinking literary figures. Although the head official has on several occasions not given any attention to Krüger, he decides to come once again in order to carry out his plan. This time, however, Mother Wolff is also present. She cleverly wards off any suspicion towards her, however. The comedy ends, without the theft ever being solved. In his tragicomedy The Red Cock (), which was first performed in 1901, Hauptmann continues several themes prevalent in the Beaver Coat.
9036462	/m/027vcym	Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way	Bruce Campbell	2005-05-26	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way begins with an excerpt from an email that Bruce Campbell received from Barry Neville from St. Martin's Press in regard to a book, Walk this Way, that he was attempting to write. The email expresses the publisher's disinterest in that book, but a desire for Campbell to work on a different project. Upon calling Barry Neville, Bruce is presented with the idea of writing a relationship book. Bruce feels he cannot approach the concept, since he does not see himself as an authority on the subject and feels his editor has a false impression of his mastery of relationships. He is contacted by his acting agent, Barry, about a potential role in a Richard Gere/Renée Zellweger romantic comedy entitled Let's Make Love, written by Kevin Jarre, directed by Mike Nichols and produced by Robert Evans. Bruce jumps to the conclusion that the role is a small, insignificant part, but he finds out that his role is in fact a large part as the wise-cracking doorman. Bruce ends up going to New York and auditioning for the role. Bruce ends up getting the role despite the fact he was not the first, second or last choice; others considered included Johnny Depp, John Cusack, Billy Campbell, Gary Sinise, John Malkovich and Robert Patrick. From this point on, Bruce tries to do research for his role. He first tries being a doorman at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where he has an encounter with Colin Powell that does not end well. Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way continues to follow Bruce Campbell through his trials and tribulations with the movie. He goes to a gentleman's club, supposedly to learn how to be a true Southern gentleman, but instead finds it to be no more than a strip club and ends up getting shot for portraying himself as someone else while there. Bruce also makes a trip out to see a friend about relationships, but finds his friend to be nothing more than a sleaze who takes advantage of his clients. By the end of the book, Bruce is fighting to keep his role and seeing Let's Make Love sliding from an A-List movie to a B-List movie supposedly due to the B-Movie actor curse caused by Bruce Campbell.
9039952	/m/027vj02	The House of the Wolf	Basil Copper	1983	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story, a Victorian thriller, involves Professor John Coleridge, who is a guest at Castle Homolky, situated above the tiny Hungarian village of Lugos. While staying at the castle, a huge black wolf is discovered with preternatural powers. When the beast is at last killed with silver bullets, it is found to be part man and part wolf.
9043055	/m/027vnp5	Who Made Stevie Crye?	Michael Bishop	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story concerns Mary Stevenson Crye, a newly widowed housewife, who turns to freelance writing to provide for her family. Her typewriter, which is demonically possessed, involves her in a series of occult experiences, including with her dead husband, among other things.
9043538	/m/027vp7r	Lovecraft's Book	Richard A. Lupoff	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story concerns an offer made to H. P. Lovecraft by a fascist sympathizer, George Sylvester Viereck. His offer is to have Lovecraft write a political tract in the nature of an American Mein Kampf. In return, Viereck promises the publication of a volume of Lovecraft's stories.
9045476	/m/027vr36	Thrice Upon a Time	James P. Hogan	1980-03	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is December 2009. Murdoch Ross and his friend Lee Francis Walker visit Murdoch's grandfather, Sir Charles Ross, in his castle in Storbannon, Scotland. Sir Charles is a Nobel Prize winner for his work in particle physics — more specifically the isolation of free quarks. In this novel, when a nucleon decays into three quarks, the first two quarks appear immediately, while the third quark appears only a brief moment later, on the order of a a few millionths of an "yoctosecond". A widely-accepted theory is that the original decay produces two quarks and also a third unknown particle, dubbed the quason. This is subsequently transformed into a third quark. However, Sir Charles offeres a different, radical explanation: all three of the quarks are created at once, but the first two are propagated back in time. Charles dubs the energy which had allowed the propagation through time as tau waves. Although his theory is seemingly valid and consistent, the physicists of his time refuse to accept it because of its implications — namely the failure of some of the physical laws of conservation. Sir Charles then retreats to his family's castle in Scotland to continue his research in private. There, he succeeds in building a time machine capable of sending messages to the future and the past. When the two young men arrive, Sir Charles takes them down into the basement, where the machine is found. As they enter the basement, a computer attached to the machine produces data on a sheet of paper, which Sir Charles hides from the other men. He asks Murdoch to type in a six-character random message into the computer. Sir Charles next activates his machine and transmits the message one minute back in time. Finally, he shows the paper printed out previously, and Murdoch and Lee are amazed: the printout contained exactly the same random characters that Murdoch typed, and these were printed before Murdoch had typed them in. After Murdoch and Lee have gotten over their initial amazement, they decide to experiment with the machine. Murdoch tries to fool the machine into creating a causality paradox, by deliberately receiving a message from the future, and not sending the message back at the due time. Suddenly, the entire system turns bizarre, and they are flooded with messages from all over the ten-minute range of the machine. Then they abruptly turn off the machine and leave. While outside, Murdoch and Lee talk about the implications of the machine's existence and how the space-time continuum could allow for time travel without introducing a paradox. They formulate theories similar to the many-worlds interpretation, finally deciding that none of the theories they discus fit their previous observations. The next day, Ted Cartland, a friend of Charles and a former Royal Air Force officer, arrives to examine the machine he had helped build. They repeat the experiment, and Ted is bewildered as well. Ted, however, has a trick up his sleeve. He writes a computer program to do what Murdoch had done the day before, to remove the human element from the experiment. The machine picks up an unexpected message, telling the experimenters that a glass jar had been broken. True enough, Lee was on the verge of accidentally pushing a jar off a shelf. However, they are unable to contact their future selves with the broken jar, since they apparently no longer exist. Sir Charles decides that upon sending the message back, the copies of themselves in the future had changed their past and thus had been erased from existence. The altered timeline, with its unbroken jar, overwrote the old one rather like recording over an old TV program on a videotape. Thus causality had been preserved. The fear of being erased chills them, and so they quickly disable the machine again. As time goes by, they establish an experimental protocol, and they set up automated tests to gain more information about the physics behind the machine. The machine is upgraded to allow for more data throughput and a tiem range of about 24 hours. Murdoch also meets a young woman named Anne Patterson when she trips over Sir Charles's kitten while she was out shopping in Kingussie. They immediately fall in love. It turns out later that she is a physician in the new fusion reactor in Burghead. Elizabeth Muir, another close friend of Sir Charles, works there as well, and he invites her to his castle to investigate the peculiar machine. The (fictional) European Fusion Consortium (EFC) has commissioned a large thermonuclear fusion reactor in Burghead to compete with the technologies located in the United States and the Soviet Union. The colossal energy obtained from fusion meant that huge amounts of power might someday be available at low costs. All three parties used inertial confinement technology, with the EFC opting to use ion beams. During this time, Murdoch and Lee get to tour the large Burghead facility through Elizabeth, who is a principal physicist there, and Murdoch builds a relationship with Anne. One day, the reactor, still in the testing phases of power production, is shut down when apparent erosion is detected in the fusion chamber. Two days before, the team at Storbannon had experienced an apparent failure in its time machine, with Lee asserting that the failure had to be due to interference. Their time machine then suddenly resumes operation again, and they elect to ignore the problem. Shortly after the incident, strange events start occurring around the world, with so-called bugophants (a blend of bug and elephant) drilling tiny, long, straight holes through a myriad of objects, from human bodies to telescope mirrors. Finally, the team finds out the cause of the erosion in the Burghead plant, the interference with the machine, and the bugophants themselves: the repeated fusion tests at the plant had, over the course of two days, had produced some two million microscopic black holes, which then tunnelled through the basement of the plant and concentrated around the core of the Earth. As the black holes annihilated matter, they emitted tau waves and caused interference even before the reactor tests. Although conventional theory stated that black holes could not form from the comparatively low pressure produced in the reactor, and small black holes could not survive long anyway, the conventional theory had failed to take into account the existence of tau waves and their effects. Lee suddenly goes into spasms and loses consciousness during a dinner with Murdoch and Anne. He is rushed to a local hospital, and then she is transferred to a special unit created to deal with a new outbreak, which had apparently affected him and several others in Burghead. While the rest of the team is away, Murdoch finds that the machine is about to be swamped with interference, and may soon be unusable. He decides to take matters into his own hands and transmit a message far back into the past to remedy the situation. To get around the 24 hour limit of the machine, he asks Anne, who had learned machine code programming at her university, to write a program that would repeatedly bootstrap itself back in time until it reached the date desired. Anne complies, despite her deep misgivings. They manage to send the message, knowing they will be reset into the new timeline, and that anything could be different. Their selves in the past receive the message, and they act on it immediately. They have no choice but to tell the bewildered managing committee at Burghead of their findings, including revealing their time machine. Given the necessary investigations, the thermonuclear reactor is shut down indefinitely. And although neither Murdoch nor Anne is aware of it, the flood of tau particles accompanying the message upset delicate quantum probabilities. She did not trip over the kitten and then begin a relationship with Murdoch. In the new timeline, word of the time machine spreads to the EFC headquarters in Brussels and to other places. Lee turns ill in the castle one day and suddenly collapses. As a doctor, Anne contacts Murdoch, who is away, and suggests that Lee has succumbed to a new outbreak of a disease, apparently a version of multiple sclerosis, but progressing much faster, taking only a few weeks rather than years, and also very deadly. Murdoch pressures Anne to reveal more information about the outbreak, which appears to be highly classified. Anne does not know much, either. However, Murdoch finds out that a distinguished medical specialist, Sir Giles Fennimore, has arrived from London to investigate the outbreak. He learns that the disease is somehow connected to the West Coast of the United States, where Lee had been residing in September 2009, and his suspicions are raised further. Ted and Elizabeth help Murdoch investigate. After interrogating Ralph Courtney, chairman at the Burghead facility, and a chance meeting by Ted with a young R.A.F. pilot, they eventually find out (Ted knowing much of this from his previous R.A.F. experience) that Anglo-American authorities had wished to establish an advanced laboratory for potentially dangerous research into viruses, genetic manipulation, and similar subjects. Naturally, this project stirred up a large controversy over public fears of containment failures and contamination and was eventually scrapped. However, the possible scientific advancements offered were simply too great to pass up. Thus a satellite, the QX-37, was constructed and launched into outer space, purporting to be an astronomical observatory. The QX-37 continued the experiments secretly. In August 2009, the satellite passed right through the path of the Perseids meteor shower, and it was hit by a meteor. It broke up and disintegrated into the Earth's atmosphere. After the breakup and fallout, to prevent public panic, the entire effort was tightly classified and codenamed Centurion. Again, surpassing the odds, a single mutant strain of multiple sclerosis survives on its way back to the Earth, and infects the entire population of the West Coast, with an incubation period of nine months. It was during this time that Lee was infected, since he was on the West Coast at the time. The West Coast of the United States is one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, and soon thousands of people start reporting symptoms and being hospitalized. The new strain is named omnisclerosis Californians. A vaccine is announced and vaccinations begin in California. However they are stopped after 811 of the people treated die from neurological disorders triggered by one of the production batches, which had not been manufactured properly. Even though the vaccine worked, members of the public would not trust it anymore, and there are now left with no defense against the virus. The members of the team decide to contact Fennimore through the Minister of Advanced Technology and Science Graham Cuthrie. Although he is initially skeptical, he is convinced of the machine's authenticity after a demonstration. They propose a pilot test: instead of changing many months of history, they offer to reset the events leading to the vaccine mishaps that had caused Fennimore much distress, five days ago. Cuthrie reluctantly agrees. He is asked to prepare a comprehensive document detailing the manufacturing problem, with additional measures taken to ensure its authenticity. In the new reset timeline, the faulty vaccine batch is retracted and the 811 deaths do not occur. Fennimore becomes a spokesman for the team, convincing world governments to take action. It is decided that the information needed to produce and distribute the vaccine will be sent back several months in time, as well as other current events, to help their past selves to make better decisions. The message is sent to the afternoon of January 16, 2010, from July 28, 2010, shortly after the message about the black holes is received. The message is split up into two parts, a header announcing the message, and then the message body itself to arrive an hour later, to allow the team to attach more computer memory to the machine for the message to be received completely. That very day, in this third iteration of the timeline, Murdoch and Lee go out shopping in Kingussie, and a certain young woman named Anne trips over Sir Charles's kitten... This is the origin of the story's title, Thrice Upon A Time.
9046144	/m/027vrkn	Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back	Shel Silverstein	1963	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A young lion is living in the jungle. On a night, when all the lions are sleeping, they awaken to hear a gunshot. All the lions run away except for one named Grmmff, who is the protagonist of the story. He is confused about why the other lions are running away, until an old lion tells him that hunters are coming. He does not know what a hunter is, but thinks that he likes the sound of the word "hunters," so he stops running and hides in the tall grass. The hunters pass by wearing red caps and carrying funny sticks that make loud noises (obviously guns). The lion likes their looks, so when a hunter passes, he stands up, says hello, and tries to make friends with the hunter. This offends the hunter's sense of the proper relationship between lion and hunter, and the hunter says he will shoot Grmmff. When the hunter finds, however, that he has not loaded his rifle, Lafcadio decides he does not like the hunter after all, and eats him up, red cap and all. He tries to eat up the gun and the bullets, but he cannot chew them. He brings them to the other lions. The old lion says to throw them away, but the young lion shoots the gun with his tail. The lions initially run away. They are angry with the young lion when they discover that he is the one shooting. However, the young lion likes shooting the gun so much that he practices to become the best shot in the whole world. A year later, another man comes walking through the jungle, the young lion wants to shoot him. However he is revealed that the man is a circus man. Finchfinger, the circus man, persuades the reluctant lion to come with him to the circus with the promise of marshmallows. They arrive in the city, which is not at all like the jungle. There are "tall square things" (buildings) and "things that look like hippopotamuses that move very fast with people inside them" (cars). The lion goes into the hotel and goes up and down the elevator many times. He then meets Uncle Shelby, (obviously Shel Silverstein, as he tells the story) goes to the barbershop, gets his paws shined, his claws manicured and a free haircut. He has dinner, and eats lots of marshmallow dishes, then finally eats his napkin for dessert. He wears a marshmallow suit, but it gets ironed and it melts all over him. He goes back to the hotel and stays up very late singing the "marshmallow song:" <poem> Marshmallows Marshmallows Marching Marshing Mellow Malling Mallows Marshing Fellows Marshy-Murshy- </poem> The young lion&#39;s name is changed to Lafcadio the Great. The next morning, there is a big parade for him. Lafcadio goes into the tent, shoots six bottles off the table, a hundred balloons off the ceiling, a marshmallow off everybody&#39;s head including some monkeys, shoots 12,322 of the Ace of Spades (but misses once), shoots in many different ways, and then joins the circus. He shoots for many different governments, becomes rich and very famous and signs six autographs at once. He then becomes more like a man, standing on his back paws, wearing clothes, playing golf and tennis, going swimming and diving, painting pictures (despite being unable to draw a straight line), doing exercises, going skating, and attempting to learn to ride a bicycle. He goes to the beach at Cannes, sings, plays the guitar, bowls and seldom says &#34;GRAUGRRR&#34; except on very special occasions. He writes his autobiography, becomes a clothes lion, and becomes very happy, rich and famous. But suddenly, Lafcadio is crying because he is tired of what he has, and wants something new. Uncle Shelby asks if he has gone up and down the elevator a few times or eaten marshmallows, but that is old stuff. Then Finchfinger gets the idea to take Lafcadio on a hunting trip in Africa. Uncle Shelby cannot come because he has to water his philodendron plant. So Lafcadio, along with Finchfinger and some other hunters, goes back to Africa and begins hunting lions. A very old lion realizes that Lafcadio is a lion too and comes up to him. Lafcadio remembers that he was a lion, and that he still is a lion. All the lions want him to come back and be a lion with them, but the hunters also want Lafcadio to stay a hunter. Lafcadio cannot make up his mind and says that he does not want to do either and that he does not think that he belongs anywhere. He puts down his gun and walks away, not knowing where he&#39;s going and not knowing what&#39;s happening to him. Lafcadio has not been heard from since.
9046472	/m/027vrsj	The Good Guy	Dean Koontz	2007-05-29	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Timothy Carrier is an unassuming stonemason who, while having a beer at his regular bar, is accidentally mistaken for a hitman by a stranger who hands him an envelope containing $10,000 and a photo of the intended victim, a writer named Linda Paquette. The real killer arrives soon afterwards, and Tim manages to bluff him by pretending to be the client, saying he's had second thoughts, and is cancelling the hit while giving the killer the $10,000 as a "no-kill fee". Tim covertly follows the killer outside, and is shocked when the killer places a roof-mounted police light on top of his car before driving off; implying the hitman is a cop. Tim tracks down Linda and flees. He phones his old Marine buddy Pete, who's a homicide detective, and asks him to trace the plates of the killer's car. Tim and Linda barely manage to stay one step ahead of the killer, and they begin to suspect that he has almost unlimited access to cell phones, financial transactions and GPS tracking; implying that he is working for someone very powerful. As Tim manages to foil the killer again and again, Linda begins to suspect that Tim is more than just a mason. The supremely confident/psychotic killer isn't deterred, but appears to become increasingly unstable as the chase continues. Over time, Tim and Linda develop feelings for one another. Linda confesses to Tim about her haunting childhood; her parents, former preschool teachers, were unjustly accused of committing horrific sexual crimes to their students, including their daughter. Linda was separated from her parents, as both of them had to go to jail and eventually die. The killer finally tires of chasing Tim, and instead goes to Tim's house and kidnaps Tim's Mom, and then calls Tim to set up a trade for Linda. During the call Tim's Mom covertly lets Tim know they're still at her house(the hitman implied they were far away). Tim and Pete rush home to save Tim's Mom and kill the hitman. FBI agents raid the house and begin to clean up the mess. However, before they enter the house, Tim and Pete see them coming, and being suspicious, Tim calls his neighbor across the street and asks him to covertly videotape the agents. As the clean up proceeds the lead agent reveals that the hitman had actually been working for an American politician who's part of a shadowy conspiracy to take over the American government from the inside. Two and a half years earlier, an aide of that politician had lunch with a member of a terrorist organization. In that restaurant, the owner snapped several pictures of his regular customers, catching the aide and terrorist in the background. Later on, the terrorist was recognized as member of a terrorist organization, while the politician became popular and was being talked about as the next president, plus the pictures surfaced on the restaurant's website. Fearful that this relationship with a known terrorist organization would become known, the conspiracy, in the spirit of thoroughness, sent the hitman to kill the customers who were in the pictures; Linda Paquette being one of them. Before leaving, the lead agent politely apologizes for causing so much trouble, but makes it clear to Tim that if any of them ever say anything about what happened, Tim and everyone he loved would be killed, and it would be made to look like a murder/suicide because of Tim suffering from PTSD. Moments later, Pete shows Linda the story about Tim winning the Medal of Honor for saving numerous civilians during his experiences as a Marine. Tim takes the video to the current American president and explains what he knows about the shadowy group of government insiders. The story ends with Tim and Linda marrying and the conspiracy falling apart; there are multiple arrests and suicides.
9050114	/m/027vvv8	A Solitary Blue	Cynthia Voigt	1983	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jeff Greene is a second grade student who comes home one day to find his mother, Melody, has left. Jeff's father "the professor," is a reserved man and keeps to daily routines. Trying not to be a burden to his father, when Jeff feels sick he makes light of it until he is seriously unwell with a chest infection. After many years without any contact from his mother, she asks him to visit her in her family's home in Charleston, South Carolina for the summer. He connects with Melody and has a wonderful time, the first one since Melody left. After his visit, he writes letters to Melody on the first day of every month even though she never writes back. For Christmas he sends Melody a beautiful scarf but receives nothing from her in return. Jeff convinces himself to excuse her for ignoring him so he can keep loving her. On his second summer visit, Melody doesn't spend much time with Jeff. She has a boyfriend and is never at home for more than a day. Jeff's second summer with his mother is very different from his first one, and by the end of it, Jeff is forced to see that Melody doesn't really care about him. Jeff is heartbroken and withdraws himself. Melody and Jeff have a huge fight.' He begins to fail his classes and doesn't open up to anyone about his feelings. He becomes so withdrawn his father becomes convinced he is on drugs but finds out the truth and decides to make a change for Jeff's good, moving to Crisfield. Jeff makes some friends and gets his life back on track, taking an interest in schoolwork and learning to play the guitar. He learns to accept himself, and starts to build a real relationship with his father. After a year in Crisfield, Jeff meets the Tillermans and becomes good friends with Dicey, whom he attracts with his music. Finally, Jeff becomes able to put his mother behind him and bond with his father.
9053484	/m/027vyw_	CHERUB: Man Vs. Beast	Robert Muchamore	2006-10-19	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book starts with a 14 year old boy called Andy Pierce witnessing his mother getting assaulted by two masked men who are working for the Animal Freedom Militia. The book then skips to Kerry being annoyed by her boyfriend, James. James goes into his room and he is met by his sister Lauren. She asks him to help her and her best friend Bethany to sneak into the basic training compound to give Bethany's brother, Jake, and Lauren's crush, Rat, some food. James refuses but Lauren blackmails him by threatening to tell Kerry about him cheating on her during a mission a year before. James joins the girls on the mission to get the food to the trainees. All goes fine but Mac watches them on the back up CCTV and they get caught. James is not punished for being blackmailed and he, Lauren and Kyle and sent on a mission to bring down the AFM (Animal Freedom Militia). Lauren is stuck with the ex-con while he meets up with his old animal rights protest group. They get invited to rescuing dozens of dogs from the compound which were supposed to be sold onto the testing company. All goes well in the rescue, but the rescuers were overwhelmed because many more dogs were rescued than they thought. This chapter ends with Lauren saving a puppy from getting run over by Zara's car. They end up keeping the dog in the chairwoman's house. Lauren always visits the puppy, who was called Meatball (due to Lauren being a vegetarian). Together James, Lauren and Kyle succeed in their mission and return home. On the mission Lauren becomes a vegetarian and at the end James puts meat in her bag on the plane to annoy her. Zara Asker becomes chairman succeeding Dr. McAfferty who retires.
9053935	/m/027vzgy	The Innocent	Ian McEwan	1990	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place in 1955-56 Berlin at the beginning of the Cold War and centres on the joint CIA/MI6 operation to build a tunnel from the American sector of Berlin into the Russian sector to tap the phone lines of the Soviet High Command. Leonard Marnham is a 25-year-old Englishman who sets up and repairs the tape recorders used in the tunnel. He falls in love with Maria Eckdorf, a 30-year-old divorced German. The story revolves around their relationship and Leonard's role in the operation.
9054616	/m/027v_dw	The Spinal Cord Perception				 David Rivers, a 24-year-old substitute teacher (most likely with anti-social personality disorder) begins the story by moving back to Georgia after spending several months in California fleeing from an undisclosed incident involving a classroom full of children. As the story progresses, we learn that David suffers from visions of a treacherous black creature he calls the Llapasllaly. During these visions terrible things occur, namely the death of his childhood friend, girlfriend and parents among other things. As David becomes increasingly disenchanted with his life in California, his depression culminates with the discovery of his girlfriend's unfaithfulness. After witnessing the Llapasllaly kill her, David returns to his hometown in Georgia and takes another substitute teaching job. He soon meets a woman named Samantha, whom he falls in love with and proposes to. His dark visions seem to subside. Things take a turn for the worse however when David realizes Samantha has a Llapasllaly of her own (who she calls Amelia) and who takes the form of an eating disorder. At the time of this discovery a police investigation into the killing of David's Californian girlfriend finds David in Georgia where a detective issues a warrant for his arrest, believing him to be responsible for the killing. David flees police as Samantha is taken to the hospital for treatment after collapsing. Returning to the elementary school that was the home of the incident that forced David to move to California, David attempts to prove the Llapasllaly's existence by revealing it to a classroom full of special education students. The plan backfires when the Llapasllaly kills a child with downs syndrome. As David leaves the school, a taxi carrying Samantha arrives and the couple run to reunite before the police car arriving at the scene crashes into Samantha and kills her. David manages to escape the police temporarily and returns to the trailer he was living in. He has a final vision in which the Llapasllaly invites him to commit suicide with sleeping pills. In the final moments before the police arrive to arrest him, David realizes the Llapasllaly exists only in his mind and that the option to live or die is up to him and not the creature.
9055399	/m/027w0cv	The Holy Sinner	Thomas Mann	1951	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins in Rome, with the monk Clemens announcing the ringing of bells throughout the city. Clemens, moved by the "spirit of storytelling" (a term used often in many of Mann's later works) [incorrect, define "many"], introduces the reader to the events which led up to the ringing of the bells, i.e. Gregory's arrival in Rome and coronation as Pope. In Flanders duke Grimald, seventeen years a widower, is pressing his daughter Sibylla to marry in order to forge an alliance with a neighboring kingdom. Sibylla, attracted only to her brother Wiligis, spurns the duke's wishes. After the duke's death brother and sister become lovers, and Sibylla learns that she is with child by her brother Wiligis. Considering suicide out of shame for what they have done, the brother and sister turn to their loyal counsellor, the knight Eisengrein. Eisengrein suggests that Wiligis take up the Crusade as a means of atoning for his sins, and after the couple's child is born he further suggests that they set the infant adrift on a raft. Sibylla and Wiligis, though at first distrusting Eisengrein's advice, in the end decide that there is nothing else they can do. Wiligis sets out, and is killed before he even reaches Messina. Sibylla gives her newborn to the North Sea, where she assumes it perishes. The raft carrying the infant is found by two fishermen in the English Channel, and these two take the raft, the infant, and a tablet Sibylla placed within the raft back to the island where they live. Upon their return the two fishermen are intercepted by Gregory, the Abbot of the monastery Agonia Dei. Gregory reads the tablet and understands the importance of the child. He then agrees to pay one of the fishermen a set sum every month if the fisherman will raise the child as his own. The fisherman, astounded by the handsome sum the priest is offering, accepts the proposal. Years later the infant has grown into a young man. Out of fondness the Abbot has named him Gregory, and it looks as if the young man will join the monastery and remain among the brothers for the rest of his life. Unfortunately the younger Gregory gets into a fistfight with his adopted brother, and it is at this point that he learns the secret of his origins, which were up to that point kept from him. The Abbot takes the younger Gregory into his cell and shows him the tablet from the raft, and the young man learns that his mother and father were also sister and brother. Stunned by the revelation, the younger Gregory resolves to seek out his parents in order to alleviate the suffering he assumes they must feel. Gregory sets out for the continent with the Abbot's blessing, and later becomes the champion of his mother's city in the "Wooing War" which ensued after a jilted suitor for his mother's affections decided to resort to military force. Gregory defeats the suitor and - unbeknownst to him - takes his mother's hand in marriage. After the two marry they bear a daughter. Several years later Gregory's mother discover's the tablet, still in his possession, and realizes that she has married and born children by her own son. Gregory and Sibylla, dismayed by the realization of what they have done, decide on a life of severe penance as a means of expunging their guilt. Gregory becomes a hermit, living on a rocky promontory within a lake. Sibylla devotes her life to the care of lepers, and refuses to have their second daughter christened. 17 years pass. In a dispute over succession Rome finds itself without a Pope. At this time two of the bishops are visited by a vision of a bleeding lamb. The lamb instructs them where to look for the next Pope, and the two bishops set out immediately to find Gregory. After a long journey they find him, shrunken to the size of a hedgehog, living on the rock in the middle of the lake. Afterwards they take him back to the opposite shore and he is miraculously restored to the Gregory of seventeen years ago. At Gregory's arrival in Rome the bells of city ring out of their own accord, announcing the presence of the next Holy Roman Pontiff. Gregory goes on to become one of the wisest popes in history, and he is regarded throughout Christendom as the savior of the faith. The book closes with a meeting between Gregory and his mother. Sibylla, not aware that Pope Gregory is her son, goes to Rome to confess her sinful life and ask for pardon. Gregory, recognizing her instantly, offers this pardon freely. Mother/wife and son/husband forgive one another, and Gregory finds a place for both his mother and one of his sisters within the Church. In the act of forgiveness each realizes, as the monk Clemens goes on to state, that though they were sinners they were able to rise above the baser elements within their own natures. -- the author is re-telling an existent medieval text of the Catholic Church that was made as instructive in morality, and blankly balancing the events through the medium of the sarcastic narrator and his ability to lucidly illustrate the most absurd behavior with no detectable opinion as to how the reader should judge it. this book is basically the "easy" short form of the joseph tetrology. the "moral of the story" is that the reader is made aware of the ideas of medieval Christianity, and in fact even modern Christianity in a form so direct and "modern" that their reaction, as wildly as it may therefore variate is increasingly accurate and might teach them of common "humanist" themes that overreach the story-tellers intentional-fake trickery. cs:Vyvolený (Thomas Mann) de:Der Erwählte it:L'eletto hu:A kiválasztott (Thomas Mann)
9055787	/m/027w0yr	Lord Kelvin's Machine	James Blaylock	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 In Victorian London, Alice, the wife of scientist-explorer Langdon St. Ives, is murdered by his arch-nemesis, the hunchback Dr. Ignacio Narbondo. St. Ives and his valet, Hasbro, pursue Narbondo across Norway, contesting Narbondo's plot to destroy the earth and, later, efforts to revivify Narbondo's apparently frozen corpse. In the process St. Ives gains access to a powerful device created by Lord Kelvin, which allows St. Ives to travel through time. Note that the plot description of this book as described in S. T. Joshi's Sixty Years of Arkham House is wrong.
9056092	/m/027w17q	Special Assignments: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin	Boris Akunin	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Moscow, 1886. Four years after the events depicted in The Death of Achilles, Fandorin is still serving as the Deputy for Special Assignments to Moscow governor Prince Dolgurukoi. He is cohabitating with the Countess Addy, a married woman. After a gentleman con man named Momos, who goes by the alias "The Jack of Spades", dupes the Prince as part of a hundred-thousand ruble swindle, Fandorin is called in to apprehend him. Fandorin takes on as his investigative assistant a meek young policeman named Anisii Tulipov, and together Fandorin and Tulipov try to apprehend Momos and his beautiful lady accomplice, Mimi. Fandorin sniffs out and shuts down a fraudulent lottery being run by the Jack, but Momos and Mimi escape. Momos in turn tricks Fandorin's Japanese manservant, Masa, into letting him steal all of Countess Addy's baggage. An angry Fandorin vows revenge on Momos and sets up a sting where he poses as an Indian prince in possession of a large emerald. Momos and Mimi again escape, but not before Mimi and Tulipov have a romantic encounter. Momos sends back all of Addy's baggage in an effort to relieve the pressure from Fandorin. Fandorin subsequently sends Addy back to her husband. Momos decides to flee Moscow to avoid a determined Fandorin, but changes his mind after a chance encounter with Samson Eropkin, a thoroughly corrupt, criminal Moscow official. Momos decides to rob Eropkin, but the con goes horribly wrong. Momos and Mimi wind up captured by Eropkin, who is on the verge of murdering them both when Fandorin arrives and saves them. Eropkin is arrested for his crimes. Fandorin lets Momos go for lack of evidence and from a desire to save his boss, Prince Dolgurukoi, embarrassment. Mimi, on the other hand, faces trial for her involvement in the fraudulent lottery. She appears to be headed for prison and exile in Siberia—and Tulipov, who has fallen in love, dreams of marrying her after she is released from jail—when Momos, disguised as a lawyer, defends Mimi in court and blackmails the judge into dropping the charges. Tulipov watches Mimi and Momos leave the courthouse, not realising until it is too late that Momos is the lawyer, and he watches disconsolately as the Jack of Spades takes the woman of his dreams away. The tone of the novella is lightly comic, making a sharp contrast to the second novella, The Decorator. Moscow, 1889. Holy Week, before Easter. In Moscow, a prostitute is brutally murdered and mutilated. Fandorin believes the murderer is Jack the Ripper, the English murderer who killed a series of prostitutes in London the year before. Early in the novel, the point of view shifts to that of the murderer, who describes his crimes and calls himself The Decorator, believing he makes ugly women beautiful. The rest of the story is periodically interrupted with the thoughts of The Decorator. Court Counsellor Izhitsin, an investigative rival of Fandorin's, supervises the exhumation of corpses from the Bozhedomka graveyard, with Fandorin's assistant, Tulipov, accompanying. While at the cemetery, Tulipov befriends Pakhomenko, the genial Ukrainian cemetery watchman. The coroner, Dr. Zakharov, identifies four more bodies as being victims of the Moscow ripper. Tulipov reports these findings to Fandorin, whose new girlfriend, Angelina, a devout Russian Orthodox woman, lives with Fandorin regardless. Angelina's origins are described in the short story "The Scarpea of the Baskakovs" from the Jade Rosary Beads collection. Fandorin checks the records of people who have travelled from London to Moscow in recent months and have medical training, and comes up with two likely suspects: Nesvitskaya the midwife, and Stenich the male nurse, who were kicked out of medical school seven years ago. Shortly after this, Fandorin receives a gruesome package in the mail: a human ear. Tulipov surreptitiously interviews the two suspects. Fandorin travels back to the morgue and matches the severed ear with one of the dead prostitutes. Fandorin challenges Zakharov, who won't tell him anything but instead tells him the guilty party will be at a reunion party of former medical students he's going to that night. Fandorin learns that the party's host, a businessman named Burylin, was thrown out of medical school for being part of a group of pranksters that got into trouble at school seven years ago. Stenich was also part of this group, as was Zakharov, who was trained as a coroner instead of being expelled. Their leader, Sotsky, was sent to prison, and died. It is eventually revealed that Sotsky and the rest were disciplined for accidentally killing a prostitute. Fandorin arrests Burylin after he confesses to sending Fandorin the ear as a prank. Tulipov is assigned to work with Izhitsin, who believes the murderer must be a Tatar or Jewish butcher, and has rounded up a group of suspects he plans to torture. Tulipov tells him of the three suspects Fandorin has found, and Izhitsin has an idea for an experiment: shock the three suspects by taking them to the morgue and showing them the bodies and seeing who confesses. No one does. In the street, Tulipov accidentally runs into Fandorin, who is working undercover as a pimp. Fandorin learns of Izhitsin's stunt with the bodies and goes to confront him, only to find out that the Decorator has murdered him. Count Tolstoy, the Minister for Internal Affairs, arrives from St. Petersburg on Good Friday and threatens to fire Prince Dolgurukoi if the killer is not caught by Easter. Tulipov goes back to the graveyard to interview the people who attended Izhitsin's experiment, and, in a sudden fit of inspiration, believes he's figured out who the killer is. While Tulipov is pursuing his theory, the Decorator arrives at his apartment and kills his sister Sonya. Fandorin is informed of this, and is then given a deathbed report from Tulipov, who believed the killer was Zakharov and had gone to Zakharov's office at the graveyard to observe him—only to run into the Decorator, who attacked and mortally wounded him. Fandorin, enraged over the murder of his assistant, goes to the graveyard and finds Zakharov missing, but interviews the watchman Pakhomenko. He receives a phone call from Zakharov, who says he is innocent and will tell Fandorin everything if Fandorin and Masa meet him at a hotel. Meanwhile, the Decorator goes to Fandorin's house, intending to kill Angelina. He is surprised and subdued by Fandorin and Masa, who did not go to the hotel rendezvous. The killer is revealed to be Pakhomenko, the friendly graveyard watchman—whose true identity is Sotsky, the leader of the group of medical school pranksters seven years ago. Fandorin determines to kill Sotsky himself, right there in his house, but is interrupted by Angelina when she arrives home. Fandorin settles for an impromptu trial with Angelina as judge. Fandorin then reveals that Sotsky did not die in prison, but escaped and emigrated to London before returning to Moscow and getting a job at the cemetery from his old friend Zakharov. Sotsky then killed Zakharov and impersonated him in the phone call to lure Fandorin away and leave Angelina unprotected. Sotsky admits to his crimes and Angelina finds him guilty. Fandorin then takes him outside and shoots him in the yard. After he returns, Angelina tells him she is leaving him to become a nun, because she believes she inhibits Fandorin in his work. Fandorin is devastated, but she insists. As the Easter bells sound, she tells him "It's all right. Do you hear? Christ is risen."
9057476	/m/027w37p	The Higher Power of Lucky	Susan Patron	2006-11-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel features Lucky, a 10-year-old girl who lives in a small town called Hard Pan (population 43) in the California desert with her two friends Lincoln, who is an avid knot tyer and expected by his mother to be the president when he grows up, and Miles, a five year old whose favorite book is "Are You My Mother?" by P.D. Eastman. After her mother died two years ago from being electrocuted, her father called upon his first ex-wife, Brigitte, to come to the United States from France to take care of Lucky. Lucky fears that Brigitte is tired of being her guardian and of their life in Hard Pan. When she discovers Brigette's suitcase and passport lying out, she becomes convinced that Brigitte will abandon her and return to France. This anxiety prompts Lucky to seek help from her "Higher Power", a notion she gets from eavesdropping at her town's 12-step meetings. After discovering three "signs" to leave, she runs away with her dog, HMS Beagle, during a sandstorm. Outside of town, however, she finds Miles, lost and injured in the storm, and takes him with her. They take shelter in the dugouts near an abandoned mine and wait out the storm. They are soon joined by Lincoln, who tells them that the rest of the town is looking for them, and will be there shortly. Before she leaves the dugouts, she casts her mother's ashes out in the wind in a makeshift memorial service with the townsfolk. Brigitte takes Lucky home and explains the papers Lucky had found in Brigitte's suitcase were actually to legally adopt Lucky, and reveals her plans to open a restaurant in Hard Pan.
9057513	/m/027w39f	Flotsam	David Wiesner		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This book has no words, but is told in pictures. A boy is at the beach and finds an old camera. He takes the film to get it developed, and sees photos of fantastical undersea cities and inventions. The last picture is the most interesting, though: it's of a girl, who is holding a photo of a child, who is holding a photo of a child, who is holding a photo of a child, and so on. The boy figures out that he is one in a long line of photographers who have found this camera. He takes a picture of himself holding this photo and tosses the camera back into the ocean; it is carried across the ocean by a variety of fish and sea life, until it again washes ashore and another child finds it.
9062229	/m/027w8k7	So Far from the Bamboo Grove	Yoko Kawashima Watkins	1994-05-24	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The story begins with Yoko Kawashima (and her mother, brother and sister) living in Nanam, a city in northern Korea. When Korea becomes dangerous, Yoko and her family must return to Japan, hiding from both the Japanese military and the Koreans. Her brother, Hideyo, also tries to flee but he is separated from his family because he tried out for the army and purposefully failed the written test because he decided last minute he didn't want to go to war. As a punishment, he has to serve at an ammunition factory for six days a week, which is why he is separate from his family when the Kawashima's have to leave. The family experiences a difficult journey as they make their way to Seoul and to Pusan to take a ferry to Japan. When Yoko, her sister Ko, and her mother reach Fukuoka, they travel to Kyoto, as the mother had family there. She then leaves for Aomori to seek help from their grandparents. She returns to Yoko and her sister bringing sad news that both of their grandparents are dead. The mother dies on the same day, leaving Yoko and Ko waiting for the eventual return of their brother, Hideyo. Yoko's essay is later published in a newspaper, and their old friend Corporal Matsumura seeks out Yoko, asking if she is the same girl. Hideyo faints at the doorstep of a Korean family. Luckily for him, his life was spared and the family allow him to stay. The family sadly bids Hideyo farewell and he finally reaches Pusan where he finds the message that Yoko had left him. After sailing across to Japan, he sees scriptures of his name and Yoko and Ko's address. While asking directions from a local, he is spotted by Yoko and they are reunited.
9063117	/m/027w9gg	Frau Jenny Treibel				 The primary subject of the novel revolves around two Berlin families. One is the upper-class Treibel family consisting of the Councillor of commerce and his wife, Frau Jenny, as well as their sons Otto and Leopold. The other family is that of Professor Wilibald Schmidt and his daughter Corinna. The families have a connection that has already existed for decades. Many years ago, when Wilibald was still a student, he was also the secret admirer of Jenny, who at that time was the daughter of Willibald's landlord. The landlord was the proprietor of a small basement shop. Willibald even went so far as to write a poem to Jenny in which he pronounced his love for her, though he failed to achieve the desired effect. The poem itself was of a modest literary achievement, but due to the young student's overwhelming sentimentality at the time, Jenny continues to bring the poem up in conversation quite often. Wilibald would like to see his daughter Corinna marry her cousin Marcell, a promising future archaeologist. Unfortunately, however, Marcell can not bring himself to propose to her. In any case, the intelligent and independent Corinna has other plans for herself. She wants to break out of the rather mediocre world of a secondary school teacher's household. She finds the social life with the wives of the other teachers quite boring and her father's correction of pupils school work offers little variation. Thus Corinna sets herself to marrying Leopold Treibel. To her social position and material prosperity seem to be an adequate guarantee for a happy future. Thus she uses any means possible in order to lure the kind but easily influenced Leopold into her trap. She uses all the charm and wit that she can manage and two dinner parties and an outing later she achieves her goal. They enter into a secret engagement. When Jenny finds out about the engagement, she is furious and makes it clear to Corinna that she does not want it to go ahead. Leopold, who is a shy and timid young man, promises Corinna that he will stand up to his mother and that the two shall be wed. Unfortunately he is not able to keep his word and when Corinna realises this, she breaks off the engagement. The novel ends with Corinna and Marcell's wedding and the reader is led to believe that Leopold marries Hildegard Munk (whom Jenny didn't really want as a daughter in law but had to make do with, so that Leopold wouldn't move down in class, i.e. by marrying Corinna) de:Frau Jenny Treibel fr:Madame Jenny Treibel nl:Frau Jenny Treibel
9063325	/m/027w9ly	Flight of the Old Dog	Dale Brown	1987-06-23	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in November to December 1987 (December 1988 in Night of the Hawk), Flight of the Old Dog is the story of a secret highly modified B-52 bomber flying into Russia on an impromptu strike mission. The book begins with a B-52 crew during a military exercise in Idaho. Not long after, the Americans discover the existence of a Soviet ground-based laser in the Kamchatka Peninsula. Although Moscow insists that the system does not violate existing strategic accords such as the ABM Treaty, their frequent use of the laser in striking vital US assets challenges Washington's patience before the UN. Meanwhile, Gen. Bradley Elliott, commander of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center (HAWC; also known as Dreamland), tests a unique B-52 bomber with the help of several young crewmembers. Called the EB-52 Megafortress (named Old Dog), the plane is being eyed as a new strategic escort for SAC forces. The technology tested in the plane is later adapted and fitted into two B-1 bombers that are sent to attack the Soviet laser after it destroys an American space defense satellite. The B-1 mission is intercepted by the Soviets, but the aircraft are not shot down. At the same time, terrorists attack HAWC, forcing Elliott and the Old Dog crew to launch immediately. The crew push ahead with the B-1s' mission after they realize that they are the only remaining hope for destroying the laser. After faking a crash outside Seattle and forcing a KC-10 crew in Shemya to refuel them , the Old Dog enters Soviet airspace and engages PVO fighters before and after destroying the laser. With a number of crew members injured, and the aircraft damaged and leaking fuel, the crew realize that they no longer have enough fuel to return safely to the United States. They set down at Anadyr, a little-used Russian airfield to steal enough fuel for their journey home. Surprised in the act of refueling by Soviet forces, one of the crew sacrifices himself to allow the plane to take off. Despite considerable damage to both crew and aircraft and a final attack by a Soviet fighter, the Old Dog is able to make it home safely.
9064312	/m/027wbfr	The Falling Torch	Algis Budrys		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is about a group of freedom fighters who attempt the nearly hopeless task of liberating planet Earth from the grip of a race of alien invaders. The story has obvious overtones of freeing the author's homeland (Lithuania) from its Soviet occupiers.
9064841	/m/027wb__	Across Five Aprils	Irene Hunt	1964	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 From Jasper County, Illinois, Jethro Creightonn lives on a farm just before the Civil War. The youngest child, he is busily helping tend his family's farm. However, when his schoolmaster and good friend, Shadrach Yale, returns from Newton with the news that the war has begun, Jethro’s world is turned upside-down. Jethro has three brothers, Bill, John and Tom, and his cousin Eb, most of them eager to join the fight. Jethro must struggle with the split between them, as three join the Union Army but Bill joins the Confederacy. Later on, Jethro's good friend and sister Jenny's boyfriend, Shad also joins the Union Army. John's wife Nancy and their two young sons live with the Creighton's during the war. Jenny is in love with Shad, but her father will not approve of the marriage because he thinks she is too young. As the war heats up, so do the tensions among the townspeople around Jethro. A gang of men led by Guy Wortman are angered by the fact that one of Jethro’s brothers, Bill, joined the Confederate cause. Eventually, Jethro's father suffers from a heart attack, leaving Jethro with the task of becoming the head of the house. The spotlight is set on the hardships of war on a family. One day Jethro travels to Newton, and, while shopping, overhears the men talking about how evil his brother is. While Jethro is riding back; however, he is warned that the men are up to no good. Dave Burdow, father of the young man responsible for Jethro's sister Mary's death prior to the events of the story, ends up saving Jethro's life and driving the troublemakers off. However, the trouble is far from over. After a few months, the men are at it again. They sabotage the family’s property by burning down the family's barn and contaminating the water in the well. Jethro is given little time to concentrate on this when he finds out that his brother Tom was killed and that cousin Eb left the Union Army. He now must face the hard decision of whether or not he should help his deserter cousin. He writes a letter to President Lincoln for help and begins to look up to him as a father during the crisis. President Lincoln replies, telling him that he is already working on a program to accept all willing deserters back into the Union with little punishment. Soon after, the family learns that Shad has been wounded and is staying in a hospital, being taken care of by his aunt. Jenny goes to take care of him, and after finally receiving her father's blessing, she and Shad get married. Shad gets better, the war ends, and he, Jenny, John, and Eb return to the Mossing farm. However, at the end of the war, just when the family is reunited safely, Jethro learns that the president has been shot. He runs off but is found by Shad who tells him that he and Jenny are going to college, and that they will take Jethro with them. It is in these turbulent times that Jethro has grown from an innocent boy into a young man.
9065049	/m/027wc5h	Man of Earth	Algis Budrys	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In Man of Earth, Allen Sibley is a businessman who is about to be indicted for bribery of a public official. Desperate to escape prison, he pays a fortune to the mysterious Doncaster Corporation for a new identity (and a new body and personality to go with it). However, Doncaster tricks him, sending him as an unwilling emigrant to the extraterrestrial colony on planet Pluto. Although it has been terraformed into a pleasant enough abode, Pluto is thoroughly neglected by a narcissistic Earth, and only ne'er-do-wells and misfits settle it. Sibley, with no marketable skills, is drafted into the Plutonian army, which is building an anomalously large war machine. His new commanding persona makes him swiftly rise in rank, and he soon concludes that Pluto intends to invade and plunder its neglectful mother planet. Instead, Doncaster suddenly reveals that the Pluto colony was created by them as a stepping-stone to the stars, and that Earth will be left to go rancid, while "new men", like the rebuilt Sibley, conquer the universe.
9067493	/m/027wftc	Dragonfly	Frederic S. Durbin	1999	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Ten-year-old Bridget Ann (nicknamed "Dragonfly") lives in her Uncle Henry's funeral parlor. Uncle Henry summons Mothkin, a hunter, to investigate strange things happening in the basement as Hallowe'en approaches. In the basement, Dragonfly and Mothkin discover a doorway to a spooky underground world, known as Harvest Moon, which is ruled by an evil despot, Samuel Hain. Dragonfly is separated from Mothkin and meets up with a werewolf named Sylva who protects her from Hain. Eventually, she reunites with Mothkin for a final battle with Hain.
9075044	/m/027wr5m	The Immortals	James Gunn	1996-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When a cure for AIDS turns out to be more virulent than the disease, the U.S. establishes quarantine camps in the desert southwest. Michael Barris, a TV producer, masquerades as one of the infected and travels to the camps in search of his son. He finds horrific conditions, and learns that the so-called quarantine camps are death camps where the infected are gathered, purposefully brutalized, and ultimately cremated alive, their ashes bulldozed into the desert sand. Barris's son escapes the camp before the cycle of immolation, carrying the evidence he needs to expose the governmental mis-information campaign.
9077612	/m/027wv14	The Bird in a Cage				 The Duke of Mantua plans to marry off his daughter Eugenia to the ruler of Florence; to do so, he shuts Eugenia in a tower and banishes her noble suitor Philenzo. But Philenzo returns in disguise, and brags to the court that he can succeed in any task the Duke assigns him &mdash; if the Duke grants him the financial resources necessary. The Duke (in the best fairy-tale tradition), sets Philenzo the task of gaining access to the princess Eugenia in her sequestered tower; the Duke considers the matter as something of a joke, but also a good opportunity to test the soundness of his security. Philenzo is allowed a month for the task, and a blank check on the Duke's treasure house. And of course, the penalty for failure is death. Philenzo tries bribes, which do not work. Facing the apparent failure of his effort, Philenzo decides that he can at least relieve the poor debtors in the Duke's dungeons. One of the debtors, however, provides Philenzo with a new strategy for reaching the princess. The Duke in presented with a large and elaborate cage full of rare birds; and the Duke sends the present to Eugenia. When she opens it, Philenzo steps out from concealment in the central pillar of the apparatus. Thus the title of the play applies to both Eugenia and Philenzo (as it does, in another sense, to the dedicatee, the imprisoned Prynne). The next day the still-disguised Philenzo informs the Duke that he has succeeded in his task. Eugenia, brought to the court for confirmation, supports Philenzo's claim &mdash; and asks that she be allowed to marry the clever stranger. The Duke is outraged at her request; to marry a stranger of no birth is worse than marrying Philenzo. Philenzo doffs his disguise, revealing his true identity; but the unyielding Duke orders him executed. Seemingly in the knick of time, a letter arrives from the Duke of Florence, who has heard of the matter of Eugenia and Philenzo and renounces any interest in the arranged match. Florence's letter advises Mantua to let the young lovers marry, and Mantua decides to make the best of a bad bargain. When Philenzo in summoned back, however, it is learned that the condemned man poisoned himself on the way to execution; his corpse is brought in as proof. When the "dead" Philenzo overhears that he and Eugenia were to be allowed to marry, he returns to life.
9079569	/m/027wxsp	Slaughter City	Naomi Wallace			 The play was inspired by a number of labor-related incidents including the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 and the 1993 strike at the Fischer's meat packing plant in Louisville, Kentucky. The drama follows the lives of a group of workers who work at a modern day plant. While work gets tougher and more dangerous, their wages are being cut, and benefits reduced. Into the fray walks Cod, a strange young man who tries to inspire them to action. But Cod has his own secrets, which include once being a scab, and is in a long term battle with the cool Sausage Man, a battle whose outcome will affect them all in deadly ways. The play is divided into two acts and moves back and forth (and sometimes seemingly sideways) through time. Love, desire and friendship between these workers is disrupted, and transformed by the political pressures swirling around them. And the boss is beginning to make strange noises, just when his assistant has had enough. The live stage performance rights are licensed by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.
9080089	/m/027wy5g	The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century				 Published in German, the book focuses on the controversial notion that Western civilization is deeply marked by the influence of the Teutonic peoples. Chamberlain grouped all European peoples&mdash;not just Germans, but Celts, Slavs, Greeks, and Latins&mdash;into the "Aryan race", a race built on the ancient Proto-Indo-European culture. At the helm of the Aryan race, and, indeed, all races, were the Nordic or Teutonic peoples. Chamberlain's book focused on the claim that the Teutonic peoples were the heirs to the empires of Greece and Rome, something which Charlemagne and some of his successors also believed. He argued that when the Germanic tribes destroyed the Roman Empire, Jews and other non-Europeans already dominated it. The Germans, therefore, saved Western civilization from Semitic domination. Chamberlain's thoughts were influenced by the writings of Arthur de Gobineau who had argued the superiority of the "Aryan race". This term was increasingly being used to describe Caucasian or European peoples, as opposed to Jews, who were conceptualised as "infusing Near Eastern poison into the European body politic". For Chamberlain the concept of an Aryan race was not simply defined by ethno-linguistic origins. It was also an abstract ideal of a racial elite (see Racism). The Aryan, or 'noble' race was always in the process of creation as superior peoples supplanted inferior ones in evolutionary struggles for survival. Building somewhat on the theories of de Gobineau and Georges Vacher de Lapouge, Chamberlain developed a relatively complex theory relating racial origins, physical features and cultural traits. According to Chamberlain, the modern Jew (Homo judaeica) mixes some of the features of the Hittite (H. syriaca) - notably the "Jewish nose", retreating chin, great cunning and fondness for usury and of the true Semite - the Bedouin Arab (H. arabicus), in particular the dolichocephalic (long and narrow) skull, the thick-set body, and a tendency to be anti-intellectual and destructive. According to this theory, the product of this miscegenation was compromised by the great differences between these two stocks: Chamberlain also considered the Berbers from North Africa as belonging to the Aryan race. Chamberlain (who had graduate training in biology), rejected Darwinism, evolution and social Darwinism and instead emphasized "gestalt" which he said derived from Goethe. Chamberlain said that Darwinism was the most abominable and misguided doctrine of the day. Chamberlain used an old biblical notion of the ethnic make up of Galilee to argue that while Jesus may have been Jewish by religion, he was probably not Jewish by race. During the inter-war period, certain pro-Nazi theologians developed these ideas as part of the manufacture of an Aryan Jesus.
9081697	/m/027wz_y	The Long Tomorrow	Leigh Brackett	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war, Americans have come to blame technology for the disaster, and far from seeking to recover what was destroyed, are actively opposed to any such attempt. Religious sects which even before the war opposed modern technology and avoided its use in their daily life have adjusted to the post-apocalypse situation far more easily than anyone else, and feeling themselves vindicated have come to dominate the post-war society. They gained an enormous number of new members, though those families which had been such before the war are honoured and privileged, their special status indicated by slightly different clothing. All the pre-war American cities have been destroyed in the war, and their re-construction is expressly forbidden. The US Constitution has been amended to now disallow the presence of more than a thousand residents or the existence of more than two hundred buildings per square mile anywhere in the United States. Len Colter and his cousin Esau are adolescent members of the New Mennonite community of Piper's Run. Against their fathers' wishes, the boys attend a preaching where a trader named Soames is accused and stoned to death for his apparent involvement with a forbidden bastion of technology known as Bartorstown. Though sickened by the stoning and harshly punished by their fathers, Len and Esau are fascinated by the idea of a community that secretly still holds and harnesses the forbidden technologies. Len's grandmother, a little girl at the time of the destruction, sparks his interest in the technological past with her stories of big, brightly lit cities and little boxes with moving pictures. Despite even harsher punishment after being caught with a simple radio previously stolen from Soames' wagon, Esau and Len become determined to find their way to the fabled Bartorstown and leave Piper's Run in search of it.
9083504	/m/027x12p	Down There on a Visit	Christopher Isherwood	1962	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Throughout the novel Isherwood is a character of extremes. At times he pursues physical pleasure, relentlessly devoting himself to all kinds of debauchery. Yet he also interrupts these binges with discipline, by learning German or regularly meditating. Somehow, his abandon never leads to personal disaster. The second section of the novel contains a scene that figuratively illustrates Isherwood's life as recounted in "Down..." Isherwood is visiting an island where a crew of inane Greeks blast rock for the foundations of a mansion. He observes that: Despite all their experience, they seem to have no idea how much dynamite they should use. It is always too little or too much. We become completely indifferent to their yells of warning, followed by an absurd little firecracker pop. And then, just when you're least expecting it, there will be a stunning explosion which shakes the whole island and sends big rocks spinning through the air... A couple of times things have been smashed, but no one has been hurt, so far. So it is with Isherwood. Despite his experience, he never seems to know how to live his life. He often makes mistakes, such as his neglect of Mr. Lancaster, Waldemar, Dee-Ann, and Paul. But somehow he becomes wealthy, works at his leisure, and even avoids fighting in World War II. The reader is led to believe that no one has been hurt, so far.
9084750	/m/027x2nx	The Cleansing	John D. Harvey	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book tells the story of an American Indian wolf god, Wanata, who comes to earth to hold humanity accountable for its abuse of nature. In Alaska, freelance journalist Savannah Channing investigates the story of a rampaging wolf pack that is systematically destroying villages. She arrives to find that the problem is worse than she expected and that the military and a brutal bounty hunter have been employed. Wanata is changed into mortal human form by an Indian Shaman's magic and is forced to interact with those he was sent to punish. The paths of Wanata and Channing cross in a spine-chilling conclusion.
9086171	/m/027x4mj	The Babylon Game	Katherine Roberts	2002-03-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It is the year 539 B.C. Inside the city of Babylon, known as the Gateway of God, is Tia, the adopted daughter of a perfume maker. She is picking herbs in the sacred Amytis garden. Next to the garden is a portion of the double defense wall surrounding the city. Tia soon discovered what is between the two walls; Sirrush, otherwise known as dragons. Fearing for the dragon's health, she leaves them food. A touch from the dragons grants Tia great magical powers, enough to threaten or save Babylon. These will be needed, as far in the plains the Persian king Cyrus the Great, plans to capture Babylon. The secret of its salvation might just lie in the hanging gardens themselves.
9089352	/m/027x8lg	The Dawkins Delusion?	Alister McGrath	2007-02-15	{"/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 McGrath criticizes Dawkins for what he perceives to be "a dogmatic conviction" to "a religious fundamentalism which refuses to allow its ideas to be examined or challenged." He objects to Dawkins' assertion that faith is a juvenile delusion, arguing that numerous reasonable persons chose to convert as adults. He cites himself and Antony Flew as two specific examples. Like Dawkins, McGrath rejects William Paley's Watchmaker analogy as specious. To express his true feelings on the subject of Irreducible complexity, McGrath instead cites the work of Richard Swinburne, remarking that the capacity of science to explain itself requires its own explanation – and that the most economical and reliable account of this explanatory capacity lies in the notion of the monotheistic God of Christianity. When considering the subject of Aquinas' Quinque viae, to which Dawkins devotes considerable attention, McGrath interprets the theologian's arguments as an affirmation of a set of internally consistent beliefs rather than as an attempt to formulate a set of irrefutable proofs. McGrath proceeds to address whether religion specifically conflicts with science. He points to Gould's supposition of Non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA, as evidence that Darwinism is as compatible with theism as it is with atheism. With additional reference to the works of Sir Martin Rees, Denis Noble, and others, McGrath advocates a modified version of NOMA which he terms "overlapping magisteria". He posits that Science and Religion co-exist as equally valid explanations for two partially overlapping spheres of existence, where the former concerns itself primarily with the temporal, and the latter concerns itself primarily with the spiritual, but where both can occasionally intertwine. McGrath strives to confirm his position by suggesting that a significant minority of scientists are also theists, pointing specifically to Owen Gingerich, Francis Collins and Paul Davies as examples. McGrath criticizes Dawkins' proposals that religion is both an evolutionary by-product and a memetic virus. McGrath examines Dawkins' use of Russell's teapot analogy as well as the basics of Dawkins' theory of Memetics. McGrath criticizes Dawkins for referencing Frazer's The Golden Bough as an authority on anthropology, as he considers the work to be more of "a highly impressionistic early work" than a serious text. McGrath also points to Dawkins' lack of training in Psychology as indicative of an inability to address the most important questions of faith. Quoting Dawkins' description of the Old Testament God as "a petty, unjust ... capriciously malevolent bully", McGrath counters that he does not believe in such a god and knows no one personally who does. Setting aside Dawkins' remarks, McGrath instead points to Jesus and the New Testament as superior examples of the true nature of Christianity. "Jesus", McGrath argues, "...was the object, not the agent, of violence". McGrath suggests that "far from endorsing 'out-group hostility', Jesus commanded an ethic of 'out-group affirmation' and Christians may certainly be accused of failing to live up to this command. But it is there, right at the heart of the Christian ethic". He believes that Dawkins is right when he argues that it is necessary to critique religion, and right to demand that there be an external criterion for interpreting texts; but argues that Dawkins appears unaware that religions and their texts possess internal means of reform and renewal, and that Dawkins seems to be unaware of the symbolism of several of the Bible passages which he quotes. McGrath cites the works of numerous authors, including Kenneth I. Pargament, Harold G. Koenig, and Terry Eagleton, to demonstrate how closely he feels religious faith to be tied to well-being. The Dawkins Delusion? concludes with the suggestion that belief in God has "rebounded", that Dawkins' work is more theatre than scholarship, and that The God Delusion denotes little more than "panic" on the part of non-believers.
9090882	/m/027xbhb	The Amazon Temple Quest	Katherine Roberts	2002-12-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Lysippe, an Amazon princess, is suffering. Her tribe has vanished and her sister has been badly wounded. The Gryphon Stone can help, but the evil Alchemist, who has taken Lysippe as his slave, is after it also. With the help of her friend Hero, who has also been enslaved, they seek sanctuary in the Temple of Artemis. There, Lysippe makes new friends and enemies. While her sister Tanis is being healed, Lysippe stays in the temple, but she sometimes ventures out resulting in finding a nymph named Smyrna. As Smyrna instructs Lysippe in Amazon ways, Lysippe is formulating a plan to rid of the Alchemist and finally be free again.
9090930	/m/027xbjc	The Mausoleum Murder	Katherine Roberts	2003-12-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the beginning of the story, Alexis' home Halicarnassos is at war with Macedon. As the war rages on Alexis' stepmother still wants to make the pilgrimage to the river. Alexis has the gift to turn statues that have enough gold on them into real people. This gift gets him into trouble as his stepmother has the spirit of the old king who wants to reclaim his land. Alexis meets the princess and turns her fabled chimea to life and it rampages through the city attacking all who are known as their enemies. Alexis then goes to the river and reverses his gift and is shocked when his father and his best friend are still real when all of the other statues have turned back to stone.
9090978	/m/027xblf	The Olympic Conspiracy	Katherine Roberts	2004-09-17	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is about the young Sosi. Sosi has a curse, that makes him half-snake. At each full moon, he is able to "shed his skin" and adopt the look of anyone he wants. When his brother, Theron, is injured, Sosi uses his curse to take his place in the Olympic games so that Theron won't be disqualified. Although his brother Theron is nasty to him, Sosi wants to find out about his curse at Olympia, and redeem himself in his family's eyes. However, Sosi uncovers a terrorist plot at the Games. Boys competing in the Games, the favourites to win (including Theron), are all being targeted by the mysterious Warriors of Ahriman. Sosi soon discovers that the Warriors are targeting those that are sent dreams by the goddess of victory, Nike, who has manifested herself in the form of a priestess to oversee the Games. When the priestess reveals herself, it is up to Sosi and his friends to make sure that the ones who she sent victory dreams win their events. However, when three out of the four she picked lose, she becomes extremely weak. The Warrior of Ahriman reveals his plan to sacrifice Nike to arise an army from the dead, Sosi has to embrace his curse. He turns into a snake, and calls Zeus to bring his thunderbolt down on the Warrior, just like his past incarnation, Sosipolis, did 36 years ago. When the Warrior is defeated, fears arise that Soksi will go to the same fate as Sosipolis and be unable to change back from a snake. However, when Theron admits to everyone how much he loves his little brother (when Sosi's own mother cannot bring herself to) Sosi transforms back into his human self.
9091222	/m/027xbyf	Spellfall	Katherine Roberts	2000-10-19	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns a 12 year old girl named Natalie who is kidnapped by a wizard named Hawk who needs her to join his spellclave (group of bonded spellmages) to receive the Power of Thirteen and invade Earthaven (an enchanted realm) to get revenge on the Spell Lords that banished him for breaking a treaty.
9096487	/m/02wvh1r	The Jane Austen Book Club	Karen Joy Fowler	2004-04-22	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place over the course of several months in a contemporary university town in California's Central Valley near Sacramento. Each of the six chapters is dedicated to one of the six book club members as well as one of Austen's six works. In turn, each of Austen's novels parallels the individual characters' experiences with relationships and love.
9097192	/m/027xkn1	Is Religion Dangerous?				 In the Introduction: What is religion? Ward begins "Is religion dangerous? Does it do more harm than good? Is it a force for evil, even 'the root of all evil'? - the title of a short British television series presented by Richard Dawkins. Ward states his view that the assertion that religion does more harm than good ignores "the available evidence from history, from psychology and sociology, and from philosophy" and suggests that proponents of this view "refuse to investigate the question in a properly rigorous way, and substitute rhetoric for analysis". He suggests that it is impossible to give a satisfactory universal definition of religion, and that early opponents of religion such as Edward Taylor, James Frazer and Émile Durkheim were indulging in "scholarly fantazising" about forms of primitive religion which were refuted by more rigorous studies such as Theories of Primitive Religion by Evans-Pritchard. "unfortunately some writers have not yet realised this" such as Daniel Dennett in Breaking the Spell who "does not seem to realise that the spell was broken as long ago as 1884 when E. P. Taylor was appointed to a Readership in Anthropology at Oxford University." In Chapter 1. The Causes of Violence he suggests that "It is not religion that causes intolerance. It is intolerance that uses religion" that "The leaders of such movements [are] using moral and religious language as a cloak for evil and irreligious ends" and that "religions are not the causes of evil, but they do naturally share in the general moral state of the societies in which they exist" In Chapter 2. The corruptibility of all things human he suggests that any organised human activity can be corrupted, and that the corruptions of religion, although highly regrettable, are less harmful that the corruptions of secular ideologies (the excesses of the Nazis, Leninists and Maoists all claimed the support of science). In addition the great religions have within themselves a powerful critique of corruption. In Chapter 3. Religion and war he suggests that "it is not religion that causes Islamic terrorism. It is a version of Islam that has been corrupted by ...Marxist-Leninism" and that Al Qaida is based on a demonstrably incorrect interpretation of Islam. He further suggests that wars fought in the name of some interpretations of Christianity have also been based on distortions. In Chapter 4. Faith and reason he claims that the statement "the only reasonable beliefs are those that can be confirmed by the methods of science, by public observation, measurement and experiment" is self-refuting He contrasts four worldviews: Common Sense, Materialism, Idealism and Christian Theism, and suggests that there are serious problems with Common Sense (science shows that things are often not in fact as they seem at all) and Materialism ("quantum physics seems to dissolve matter entirely", and "consciousness and the contents of consciousness resist translation into purely physical terms... and if ... truth, beauty and goodness ... are things that really exist ... then Materialism will not match our experience at all".) He suggests that "many attacks on religion are based on the belief that idealism is false. There is no spiritual dimension to reality... to make matters worse, thinkers like Richard Dawkins hold that...religious views are based on "blind faith"". But, he asks, "Has Dawkins never read any philosophy?... Does he really think that Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant and Hegel were all unthinking simpletons?" "Looking around my philosopher colleagues in Britain, virtually all of whom I know at least from their published work, I would say that very few of them are materialists... the point is that religious views are underpinned by highly sophisticated philosophical arguments". He discusses the contestability of worldviews and suggests some criteria on what makes a worldview reasonable: # Clarity and precision in stating the beliefs, ideally arranged in order of logical dependence so that one can tell which are the truly basic beliefs # Comparison with other worldviews # Testing the adequacy of the worldview to the widest range of data, whether they are experiences or other beliefs In Chapter 5. Life after death he suggests that it is rational, and not harmful, to believe in life after death. In Ch 6. Morality and the Bible he suggests that "even for the most conservative Christian, moral rules found in the Bible should not be taken out of context" and that "far from being considered dangerous, religious morality is widely considered to be a valuable resource for moral thinking in the modern world" In Ch 7. Morality and Faith he explains how his own journey from Atheism when he was a philosopher teaching at Glasgow University was strongly influenced by the need to have a philosophically coherent justification for morality. In Ch. 8. The Enlightenment, liberal thought and religion he suggests that the history of Europe from the 16th to the 20th Centuries was not one of "beneficial liberation from fear and superstition" but "an age of increasingly aggressive nationalism culminating in two world wars ... barbarism did not decrease. In the twentieth century it reached heights never previously imagined" and that religiously inspired individuals took a leading role in many benficial developments. He suggests that "it was religion, and not secular thought, that propounded the view that nature is founded on a deep rationality" and defends liberalism and pluralism in religious thought which he attributes to the rise of Protestantism and contrasts with what he considers the illiberal attitudes of Richard Dawkins and Enlightenment thinkers like Hume who sought to make reason the slave of passions In Ch 9. Does religion do more harm than good in personal life? Ward quotes data from David Myers citing surveys by Gallup, the National Opinion Research Centre and the Pew Organisation which conclude that spiritually committed people are twice as likely to report being "very happy" than the least religiously committed people. He reports an analysis of over 200 social studies that "high religiousness predicts a rather lower risk of depression and drug abuse and fewer suicide attempts, and more reports of satisfaction with life and a sense of well-being" and a review of 498 studies published in peer-reviewed journals that "concluded that a large majority of these studies showed a positive correlation between religious commitment and higher levels of perceived well-being and self-esteem, and lower levels of hypertension, depression and clinical delinquency, and similar results from the Handbook of Religion and Mental Health. He cites surveys suggesting a strong link between faith and altruism. He cites extensive studies to show that there is little or no evidence that religion ever causes mental disorders and that overall religion is a positive contributor to mental health. He specifically addresses and rebuts the claim that religious belief is a delusion. He quotes the definition in the Oxford Companion to Mind as "a fixed, idiosyncratic belief, unusual in the culture to which the person belongs" suggesting that "most great philosophers have believed in God" and that the many religious people who exhibit a high degree of rational ability ... and who can produce a reasonable and coherent defense of their beliefs" refute the idea that belief in God is a delusion - whether or not it may be mistaken. He also analyses and rejects the idea that Faith is a brain malfunction, quoting Gerald Edelman "The evolutionary assumption [that consciousness conferred fitness].. implies that consciousness is efficacious - that is, it is not an epiphenomenon"p 177 quoting Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire and suggests that, if consciousness can apprehend truth and cause action, so can faith. In Ch 10. What good has religion done? Ward suggests that, although harm has been done in the name of religion, the same is true of politics and science, that religion can "be used to inspire heroic love and commitment. The world would be much poorer without Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mother Teresa.. Bach ... St Francis, Siddartha Gautama Jesus" and Manchester United F.C. . He cites many positive contributions made by Judaism, Christianity (he cites in particular founding hospitals, hospices, schools and universities, great works of art, the investigation into the world as the creation of one wise and rational God that gave birth to modern science, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the Red Cross) and Islam and suggests that "there is plenty of room for common social action in mercy and hospitality between Christians and Muslims, and it is imperative that such commonalities are promoted". He concludes by stating that Religion "is the compassionate heart of what might otherwise seem to be a cold and heartless world."
9097811	/m/027xlcf	Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason And Gareth	Lloyd Alexander	1963	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jason learns that his cat, Gareth, is able to talk and has the power to travel to nine different points in world history (his "nine lives"). Jason convinces Gareth to take him along and their adventures begin where cats are considered in divine, Ancient Egypt in the year 2700 BC. Subsequently they visit Rome, where they are taken in by the Old Cats of Ceasar. There, they are kidnapped to a village where Cerdric Longtooth, the chieftain of the village tries to burn him but his wife objects. Later on, the villagers find out about Gareth. They refer to Gareth as a "Catamountain." Jason takes this opportunity to pretend to be the beholder of the supposedly Ferocious beast. They later on become friends with the village and leave after another catamountain arrives. This time, with kittens. Britain (55 BC), Ireland (AD 411), Japan (998), Italy (1468), Peru (1555), the Isle of Man (1588), Germany (1600), and America (1775). After nine episodes they return home. Gareth says he will never again speak to Jason, and he forbids Jason ever to mention their travels to anyone. It is not difficult for Jason to obey, since he doubts that anyone would believe his story. However, he has acquired an ankh pendant as a memento and he uses it to communicate with Gareth without talking.
9099503	/m/027xmv6	Stones in His Pockets	Marie Jones			 The drama is set in a rural town in County Kerry Ireland that is overrun by a Hollywood film crew. The story centers on Charlie Conlon and Jake Quinn, who, like much of the town, are employed as extras for the filming. Much of the comedy of the play is derived from the efforts of the production crew to create the proper "Irish feel", a romanticized notion that often conflicts with the reality of daily life, and that it calls upon the cast of two to perform all 15 characters (men and women), often switching gender and voice with swift dexterity and the absolute bare minimum of costume changes - a hat here, a jacket there. The key point in the play is when a local teenager commits suicide, by drowning himself with stones in his pockets, after he is humiliated by one of the film stars. The set design, by Jack Kirwan, is also simple - a backcloth depicting the cloudy sky above the Blasket Islands, a row of shoes (symbolising the myriad characters) and a trunk, a box, and two tiny stools. The lighting design was originally by James C. Mcfetridge and this design was used in both the London West End and the Broadway versions of the shows.
9102394	/m/027xq76	The Young Admiral	James Shirley			 The play tells the story of Vittori, admiral to Cesario, prince of Naples. Both Vittori and Cesario are competitors for the hand of Cassandra; on her account Cesario breaks off his intended marriage with Rosinda, princess of Sicily. In response to this insult, the Sicilians attack Naples. Cesario sends Vittori to command his fleet in defense, hoping his admiral will be killed – but Vittori is, as his name suggests, victorious. The Admiral, however, finds that the city gates are closed to him on his return, and that his prince is conspiring against him. Vittori flees with his father and Cassandra; but the father, Alphonso, is captured by the Neapolitans, while Vittori and Cassandra are shipwrecked and captured by the Sicilian forces. The King of Sicily, preparing to lay siege Naples, offers to spare Cassandra's life if Vittori joins his forces; and Vittori agrees. Yet he learns that his father will be beheaded if he keeps to his bargain with the King; the choice between the lives of his father and his love is a typical tragicomic dilemma. Cesario, however, is drawn to the Sicilian camp by a letter from Cassandra, and there he too is captured. The Sicilian princess Rosinda counters by surrendering to the Neapolitans, which forces the arrangement of a peace treaty. Vittori and Cassandra marry, as do Cesario and Rosinda. The play's mandatory comic subplot features Rosinda's cowardly servant Pazzorello.
9109298	/m/027xz4n	A Struggle for Rome	Felix Dahn		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After the death of Theodoric the Great his successors try to maintain his legacy: an independent Ostrogothic Kingdom. They are opposed by the Byzantine Empire, ruled by emperor Justinian I. It is he who tries to restore the Roman Empire to its state before the Migration Period from his residence in Constantinople, which requires the capture of the Italian Peninsula and specifically Rome. The Ostrogoths Witiges, Totila and Teia succeed Theodoric the Great as king of the Ostrogoths, in that order and theirs is the task to defend their empire. They are assisted by Theodoric's faithful armourer Hildebrand. The names of the chapters in the book follow the chronology of the Gothic kings. Meanwhile, a (fictional) Roman prefect of the Cethegus clan, has his own agenda to rebuild the empire. He represents the majority of the population as a former citizen of the Western Roman Empire. He too tries to get rid of the Goths but is at the same time determined to keep the Byzantines out of "his Italy". In the end, the Byzantines outlast both the Ostrogoths and Cethegus and reclaim Italy. Cethegus dies in a duel with the (at that time) king Teia. The struggle for Rome ends in the battle of Mons Lactarius near Mount Vesuvius, where the Ostrogoths make their last stand defending a narrow pass (a scene reminiscent of the battle of Thermopylae) and, once defeated, are led back north to the island of Thule where their roots lie by a kindred Northern European people. The book recounts the struggle of the Ostrogoth state in Italy with the Byzantine Empire and describes their doom. The main motif of the book is stated in the poem at its end: Make way, you people, for our stride. | We are the last of the Goths. | We do not carry a crown with us, | We carry but a corpse. [ ... ]. This corpse belongs to their late and last king Teia who, throughout the story, symbolises the tragedy of his people's downfall from the moment of Theodoric the Great's death. During the reign of German emperor William II the book was interpreted as criticism on decadence and after World War I it was interpreted, in retrospect, as a prediction for the fall of the German Empire. Besides a plot that is both colourful and rich of intrigue, the novel focuses on the actual struggle for control over Ancient Rome and specifically on the acts of heroism and heroic deaths therein. For this fact it was quickly considered a novel for boys in the in 1871 newly founded German Empire; the book was continuously handed over from the previous generation of adolescents to the next until the 1940s. Dahn, being a historian, incorporated many historical details into the story. However, he was also able to create new characters if he felt the need for them (e.g. Cethegus). The following groups are essential to the story. The beginning of the story focusses on Theodoric the Great's envisioned heir, his grandson Athalaric. Being underage, his mother Amalasuntha reigns in his stead. When Athalaric dies prematurely, hope for a great leader à la Theodoric is lost. Amalasuntha envisions a merger with the Byzantine Empire, much to the dismay of the Ostrogothic people, who consider her as a traitor (an important motif throughout the book). Theodoric's old but hardy armourer Hildebrand arranges an alliance to be made between him, Vitiges, Totila and Teia to save their kingdom. Vitiges is a wise, mature man, who has to sacrifice his happy marriage with Rauthgundis to marry Amalasuntha's daughter Matasuntha. Totila is portrayed as a charismatic young man, who (like Theodoric) wishes to combine Roman civilisation with Gothic strength. This is symbolised in his relationship with the Italian Valeria. Teia is a dark, dejected man, who envisions the demise of the kingdom. Even though he knows this demise to be predestined, he adopts the Germanic philosophy to face fate with courage, in order to be well remembered. The reason for his pessimistic view lies also in a tragedy that cost the life of his fiancée. The nature of this tragedy is kept a secret throughout most of the book. As the story unravels each of these three men become king against their will, in their unsuccessful struggle to save the kingdom. Not so much the Emperor Justinian I and his scheming wife Theodora, but his marshals Belisarius and Narses shape the campaigns for the reconquest of the Italian Peninsula. Belisarius has already conquered the Vandals and is determined to bestow the same fate upon the Ostrogoths but fails to do so. Whereupon Narses, a shrewd strategist, does not waste the opportunity to subdue the Ostrogoths. Throughout the military campaigns, historian Procopius is present to record the progression. He is in fact the main source of the Gothic War (535–552) and thus the main source for Felix Dahn to write this novel. Procopius' work Secret History is loosely interwoven as a subplot about Theodora scheming and cheating on Justinian I. The most interesting Roman character is the firm and cunning narcissist Cethegus. He, as opposed to most characters, is not a historical figure, but the patrician family to which he belongs is historical. He opposes both the Ostrogoths and the imperial Byzantines and strives to rebuild the Western Roman Empire, but never reveals his true motives to others, while plotting to achieve his goal and corrupting the relationship between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines, except for his fellow conspirators. The conspirators are mainly members of patrician families that lost their influence under Gothic rule. Accordingly, they have names like Scavola and Albinus. Another person of lesser importance is Pope Silverius, who is also involved in the conspiracy. This book has been turned into two films, produced by Robert Siodmak, starring (amongst others) Orson Welles: * Kampf um Rom I (1968) * Kampf um Rom II - Der Verrat (1969) * Internet Movie Database * * Ein Kampf um Rom in the context of conservative nationalistic literature (in German) * The German text at the German Gutenberg project * The German text at buecherquelle.com * * * * Ein Kampf um Rom (PDF; reprint of the 1888 edition in the Arno-Schmidt-Referenz library of GASL)
9109825	/m/027x_16	Le Thermozéro	Hergé	1958		 On a rainy day, Haddock, Tintin and Calculus have a car accident with a German they previously had words a few minutes before. Tintin, ready to help people, draws him out of his car and covers him with his coat. Surprisingly, many people try to put the man in their own car before the ambulance arrives. He hides an object in Tintin's coat without anyone's knowledge. Finally, the ambulance arrives and everyone goes home. Back at the hotel, Calculus decides to bring Tintin's coat to the laundry. A few days later, Tintin and the Captain discover that everyone present at the accident has been burgled. Apparently, the people behind all this are looking for an item that previously belonged to the victim. The next day, Haddock is kidnapped and the message for the ransom is "Haddock for the item". A meeting is set in Berlin. Though unaware of what the item is, the heroes travel to Germany to get Haddock back. With a case in his hand, Tintin meets the kidnappers. A few minutes later they are all jailed, as Tintin's case carried a transmitter. Back in Marlinspike, Calculus discovers the item (an explosive that functions in spaces without oxygen) cannot work as one ingredient is missing.
9113161	/m/027y3hq	Judith	Brian Cleeve	1978	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is 1799 and eighteen-year-old Judith Mortimer lives with her widowed father, Jonathan, on their farm in Essex. Jonathan Mortimer has devoted his adult life, and most of his money, to writing and publishing lengthy treatises on various subjects close to his heart. None has found favour with the reading public and, consequently, he and his daughter are close to penury. Several years earlier, Mortimer suffered a stroke and is confined to bed where he works on his latest project, A Treatise on Just Government. Meanwhile, his increasingly desperate daughter tries to find ways to keep the small household, including two servants, financially viable. She has entered into an agreement with a band of local smugglers to allow them use the farm's outhouses to store their merchandise. In return, the smugglers pay her ten to fifteen guineas each time they use the farm for their illegal purposes. Jonathan Mortimer is first cousin to a local earl and powerful landowner to whom he is in considerable debt. The debt arises from a legal dispute concerning their mutual grandfather's will. The earl wishes to buy the Mortimers' farm, which adjoins his own larger estate, and thereby clear their indebtedness to him. Under the proposed arrangement, Jonathan Mortimer will be allowed to live out his remaining days on the farm. Furthermore, the earl offers to give Judith a generous dowry so that she can marry. However, the catch is that she must marry the odious Mr. Massingham. She refuses the offer Robert Barnabas, son of the smugglers' leader, is in love with Judith and, during one of his nocturnal visits to the farm, he makes his feelings clear. Judith's emotions are thrown into turmoil by the handsome young man's directness. She learns that he was studying to be a doctor but abandoned it under pressure from his father to join the family 'business'. Now, as his love for Judith brings meaning to his life, he resolves to turn away from smuggling and complete his medical training. Not long after her refusal of the earl's offer, Judith's father dies. At the same time, news of her involvement with the smugglers reaches the local militia. She is forced to flee to London with Evergreen, an orphan gypsy girl whom she has taken into her care. There, the two young women unwittingly fall into the clutches of Mrs. Ware, who runs an 'academy' for young girls. Ostensibly set up to teach its occupants how to be ladies, Mrs. Ware's academy is, in reality, a high class brothel. Robert Barnabas pursues Judith to London and rescues her from Mrs. Ware's establishment. However, Massingham, furious and humiliated at Judith's refusal of his proposal of marriage, has also come to London seeking revenge. Together with his henchmen, he seizes Judith in the street and brings her to a lunatic asylum. There she is incarcerated for months in appalling conditions, naked and shackled in a cold cell. Massingham pays the asylum keeper to hold Judith until he feels she has learned her lesson. Eventually she is released onto the streets of London, her sanity barely intact and with nowhere to go. She is 'adopted' by a street urchin who takes her back to his filthy hovel. Each day she is forced by her new companion to beg on the streets. After several more months of dreadful hardship, Judith is taken in by a kindly young Christian woman, Miss Westmoreland. Slowly Judith begins to recover her mental and physical health and a strong bond of friendship forms between the two women. Through Judith, Miss Westmoreland learns of the appalling conditions in which London's poor live. She resolves to set up an orphanage and hospital to care for abandoned children. The two women raise the necessary funds and advertise for a doctor to run their new enterprise. One of the applicants is the now-qualified Dr. Robert Barnabas. Reunited at last, Barnabas and Judith are soon married. They return to Essex to live on the Mortimer farm. It transpires that the dispute over her great-grandfather's will has been settled in her favour and the farm is now hers.
9113975	/m/027y4kd	The Separation	K. A. Applegate	1999-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On a field trip to the beach, Rachel is exploring tide pools when she loses an earring in the water. Wishing to get it back she comes across a starfish, acquires it, and morphs into it, retrieving the earring. Unfortunately, before she can demorph, a child chops her in half. Thanks to the regenerative properties of starfish, Rachel does not die; instead, in the shock of being sliced in two, both halves demorph, resulting in two Rachels - Mean Rachel and Nice Rachel. Mean Rachel is violent, aggressive, and despises all forms of "weakness" - weakness including most feelings, and any attitudes towards enemies other than homicidal hatred. She is totally incapable of planning ahead, making her useless in anything other than a direct combat situation, and believes that she is always right. This leads her to try to kill Marco and Jake, and take control of the Animorphs. In contrast, Nice Rachel is totally passive, easily frightened, and is too scared to morph. She cannot fight, making herself a liability in battle, although she is good at making plans. Both Rachels are actively dangerous towards the secrecy and long-term survival of the Animorphs, and the rest of the Animorphs must find a way to combine them back into Normal Rachel. Jake convinces Nice Rachel to come with him to follow a Yeerk truck. It turns out to be a trap, and Jake and Nice Rachel are put in boxes to await the arrival of Visser Three. Mean Rachel follows them in an attempt to kill Jake and Nice Rachel. Jake pretends to be dead, forcing Mean and Nice Rachel to work together in order to escape the trap. Nice Rachel makes the plan and Mean Rachel actually does it, flying into Visser Three's ear canal while morphed and threatening to demorph, killing both of them. All three escape unharmed. After they escape safely, Nice and Mean Rachel finally realize that they need to be together to work well and Erek King helps make them back into one whole Rachel again by morphing into each other while touching. After Rachel is returned to normal, she realises that it is both sides of her personality that make her who she is, and vows to try not to become either of the two. *The anti-morphing ray is first talked about, but not yet seen. *Rachel gains introspective into her own personality and tendencies.
9115644	/m/027y6s8	Die Feuerzangenbowle	Heinrich Spoerl	1933		 The title refers to the Feuerzangenbowle punch consumed by a group of gentlemen in the opening scene. While exchanging nostalgic stories about their schooldays, the successful young writer Dr. Johannes Pfeiffer realizes he missed out on something because he was taught at home and never attended school. He decides to make up for it by masquerading as a student at a small town high school and quickly gains a reputation as a prankster. Together with his classmates, he torments his professors Crey, Bömmel and Headmaster Knauer with adolescent mischief. His girlfriend Marion unsuccessfully tries to persuade him to give up his foolish charade. Eventually, he falls in love with the headmaster’s daughter and discloses his identity after provoking the teachers into expelling him from school.
9118313	/m/027y9zg	Rewind	William Sleator		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The main character is Peter, an 11-year-old boy. The stage is first set at his funeral, where he recalls that he was killed by his neighbor's car. Then he hears a mysterious voice. It tells Peter that he has a chance to go back to any moment before his death and alter the events, therefore preventing the catastrophe. He attempts to save himself by putting sugar in the car that was destined to kill him. However, a taxi hits him instead. Luckily, he is given another chance. He tries again by trying to impress his parents, preventing the quarrel that drove him out. Unfortunately, he dies yet again by a truck. Against all odds he is given one last chance. This time, he changes his strategy. With his knowledge of the future, he manages to save himself. He goes back 4 weeks and starts to be nice to his parents. Eventually they start to like him. He always dies after doing his puppet show so when he does it this time the family likes it.
9119721	/m/027ycd6	House of Sand and Fog	Andre Dubus	1999-02-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins by introducing Massoud Behrani, a former colonel exiled from Iran after the Iranian Revolution. Because his background is military rather than professional, he has not been able to establish a career in the US and works as a trash collector and convenience store clerk. With savings, he pays the rent on an expensive apartment for his family and for an elegant wedding for his daughter, and his fellow, more successful Iranian exiles do not know that he holds low-skilled jobs. Meanwhile, Kathy Nicolo, a former drug addict who is still recovering from her husband abruptly leaving her, has been evicted from her home, long owned by her family, because of unpaid taxes the county wrongfully claimed she owed. When the house is placed for auction, Behrani seizes the opportunity and purchases it. He bets his son's entire college fund, planning to renovate the house and then resell it for much more than he originally paid as a first step on the way to establishing himself in real-estate investment. He moves his family from their apartment into the house. Meanwhile, when Kathy moves out, she meets Deputy Lester Burdon. They go through the system, hiring a lawyer to fight Kathy's wrongful eviction, but although the County admits the error, Behrani insists that he will not return the house unless he's paid what it's worth, not merely the low sum he paid at auction. In desperation, Kathy goes to the house and attempts to commit suicide twice, first trying to shoot herself and then overdosing on pills. The Behranis manage to stop her both times and she is put in a bedroom to rest. Lester breaks into the house and locks the Behranis in their bathroom at gunpoint until they agree to return the house to Kathy. When Lester takes the Behranis to the county office, Behrani's son, Esmail, retrieves the gun and is shot by authorities. When Behrani finds out in the hospital that his son has died, he is overcome with grief and rage at both Lester and Kathy. He returns to the house to find Kathy still there and attempts to strangle her. Believing Kathy to be dead, he dons his Army uniform and suffocates both himself and his wife, who had been asleep in the bedroom. Kathy and Lester are arrested and await trial. In the novel's final scene, Kathy, unable to speak after her final encounter with Behrani, mimes a request for one more cigarette.
9122335	/m/027yg51	The Cat Who Could Read Backwards	Lilian Jackson Braun	1966	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jim Qwilleran is attempting to get his life back on track, starting with a new job; his old acquaintance, Arch Riker, is taking a chance. Qwilleran became known as a journalist for covering crime, but his new job at the Flux is hardly so glamorous: he's working on the art beat. The paper's resident art critic is the reclusive and decidedly unpopular one-handed man named George Bonifield Mountclemens III. Qwill visits Mountclemens and meets Koko, a male Siamese cat who appears to be able to read, but only backwards. Qwilleran rents a room from Mountclemens and starts to take care of Koko, who has rather delicate taste in eating. Mountclemens adores some local artists and despises others. One of the former is a young woman, Zoe Lambreth, whose husband owns the Lambreth Gallery, which showcases her works among others, including Scrano, and Zoe's protégé, Nino. Mountclemens has an argument with Noel Farhar, the director of an art museum; the museum lost a million-dollar deal after a bad review from Mountclemens, and as a result Farhar is retiring. One evening, Qwill is relaxing in the Press Club with his friend, the Flux photographer Odd Bunsen, when Bunsen is paged: there's been a murder at the Lambreth Gallery. Specifically, it's the owner, Earl Lambreth, and the gallery was left in disarray, with paintings destroyed and furniture tossed about. Qwill notices that a Ghirotto painting, or rather half of one, is missing; intact, the painting of a ballerina and monkey would be worth $150,000, but Lambreth's half, the ballerina, has disappeared. Qwill attempts to comfort the attractive widow Lambreth, who is being protected and cared for by a friend named Butchy, also an artist and a teacher. A dagger goes missing from the art museum. Mountclemens, just returned from a trip, does not seem very interested in Earl's death. As an art writer, Qwill goes to a "happening" featuring Nino. Nino's creations are made from things that people throw away, things that have meaning to him that others may not necessarily understand. The show ends disastrously, when one of Nino's creations is knocked from its scaffolding, and Nino falls to his death attempting to save it. Qwill has more theories than real sympathy for the recently deceased. Nino didn't like Earl Lambreth. Butchy didn't like the friendship between Zoe and Nino. Could Butchy have pushed Nino to his death? Meanwhile, the dagger and the Ghirotto are both found. Defeated in possible conspiracy theories, Qwill returns home to Koko. Koko leads Qwill upstairs to Mountclemens' flat, where they find Mountclemens lying dead at the bottom of his fire escape. Qwill continues to take care of the Siamese, and the next day, Koko leads him upstairs to retrieve his blue cushion and his favorite "mousie" toy. In the course of searching for the "mousie", Qwill finds Mountclemens' stash of paintings, which includes a half-painting of a monkey. It is the match to the Ghirotto ballerina that Earl Lambreth owned. Mountclemens had offered to buy Earl's half from him, not letting on that he owned the other half. However, Earl had something else Mountclemens wanted, or rather someone—Zoe had been leading the critic on by flirting with him in order to stay in his good graces. Mountclemens might have killed Earl, but his name is on the airline's list of passengers, and Qwill believes this proves he was out of town. Zoe interrupts Qwill's contemplation, and he invites her to the Press Club for lunch. At the Press Club, Zoe gives credence to Qwill's theories. She tells him Mountclemens owned the Lambreth Gallery, and Earl had been maintaining two sets of books, one real and one falsified. Earl had threatened to expose Mountclemens in order to stop his relationship with Zoe. This would have put Mountclemens in jail. Zoe believes Mountclemens killed Earl, and had someone fly under his name to provide himself with an alibi. Returning to the apartment, Qwill is in a quiet mood. Could Zoe have killed Mountclemens? She didn't seem unhappy to see the art critic dead. Koko leads Qwill to the old apartment again, where he knocks a knife off the counter. In the broom closet is a flashlight, but why wasn't there one by Mountclemens' body? Unless in being one handed, Mountclemens chose a knife over a flashlight? Yet he wasn't wearing his false hand, and the art critic was vain enough to wear it if he had an assignation with Zoe. Koko growls at the door of the abandoned studio, and Qwill enters to find that several of the paintings have vanished, and the remaining ones are highly valuable Scranos. As Koko runs his nose over the signature backwards (ONARCS), the painter Qwill knew as Narx entered. Narx reached for the knife lying on the table, but Koko deflects his attack by leaping upon him and Qwill hits Narx with the flashlight. Back at the Press Club, Qwill recounted the adventure, pointing out that Narx drew robotic drawings that resembled himself, and was clearly also O. Narx since the paintings' texture was so similar. Koko's reading the signature backwards merely confirmed this. Though Mountclemens could no longer paint or draw when he lost his hand, he could still instruct others, and Scrano had painted for him.In the art critic's last review, he said there would be no more art coming from Scrano which led Qwill to think that Mountclemens had intended on killing him, but Narx killed Mountclemens. Once Scrano woke up, he confirmed Qwill's story. Qwill had, however, guessed wrong about Butchy and Zoe. Butchy had tried to save Nino and hurt herself in the process. Zoe had had murderous intent but never followed up on it. Upon his return to the apartment, Qwill asked Koko: Had it been all a coincidence, when Koko led him up to the closet with the monkey painting was it simply for a lost toy? Koko gave the man no answers, just removed an itch with a hind paw and a contented look.
9122401	/m/027yg9x	The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern	Lilian Jackson Braun	1967	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Qwilleran, a reporter for the Daily Fluxion, and Koko, his Siamese cat with strange talents, are settling into Qwill's newest assignment—a magazine specializing in interior decorating. His first assignment leads him to David Lyke and his partner, Starkweather. David introduces him to George Tait and his Swiss wife, who had paid him to decorate their home in Muddy Swamp, an ultra rich neighborhood. George Tait is a collector of jade and he enthusiastically allows Odd Bunsen, a photographer, to take pictures of them. A day after the article comes out, the Tait mansion is robbed and Mrs. Tait is dead of a heart attack. On the other hand, Qwill meets David's clientele and his decorator friends, including rich banker Harry Noyton and his ex-wife, Natalie. He is traveling to Europe so he offers to rent out his apartment to Qwill. He moves into his expensive apartment, but Koko starts eating fabric off the expensive furniture. Also, he bites Alacoque Wright, the new lady in Qwill's life. He also finds that Harry Noyton knew Mrs. Tait and that he is in Denmark. He suspected sabotage by the Morning Rampage when a house he covers for his second assignment gets raided. For his third article, he published David Lyke's apartment but he is found dead by Koko and Odd Bunsen. He suspected the Japanese chef since David Lyke had Japan's national treasures. He finally meet David's ex-friend and rival, John Baker, who tells him that David was an orphan who was a self made interior decorator. However, he also charmed the ladies and talked bad about his friends. When Qwill finally reads the Tait file and looks closely at a picture Koko licks, the pieces fall into place. *Tait made some really bad business decisions and so, he was near bankruptcy. *His jades were insured and he could get a lot of money if they were stolen *Mrs. Tait's family were scientists and needed funding for new products *David was murdered by Natalie Noyton since she assumed he would marry her after she got a divorce. When he didn't, she committed homicide-suicide. *Mrs Tait had asked Harry Noyton to invests in her family before her death When Qwill arrives at Tait's, to pick up Yumyum,an orphan siamese, he finds the jades in a secret compartment of a shelf. George Tait is not happy and tried to smash his skull in. Koko trips him and saves Q's life.
9123472	/m/027yhw1	The Catalogue of the Universe	Margaret Mahy	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Angela May wakes in her bedroom to find her mother, Dido, in the garden trimming the grass using a scythe. Angela calls out to her mother and asks her to share the story of how she and her father met, and her subsequent birth. Dido shares the story of how she was in love with a married man, and he with her, but he could not leave his family. However, Dido did not want to be left with nothing, so became pregnant with Angela. Angela asks if Dido would want to be with him now, but her mother dismisses the notion. Meanwhile at Tycho's house his family receive a phone call from his sister Africa, who has had a fight with her husband and wishes to leave him. However before the family have a chance to go collect her, she rings up having changed her mind. Richard, Tycho's brother, teases Tycho about his “girlfriend” Angela but Tycho insists they are just friends. Angela does indeed come to see Tycho that morning, under the pretence of him offering her a lift to a school event. Angela wishes to play truant but Tycho refuses. After they have finished, Angela insists the two go somewhere because she has something important to show Tycho. She takes him to an expensive cafe where they wait, though Angela will not tell Tycho what for. Eventually a man enters the establishment and Tycho immediately notices the resemblance between him and Angela - his is in fact Roland Chase, Angela's father, and owner of a large company. Angela stands up and her father, previously unaware she was there, catches sight of her. He does not look pleased. Angela decides to go and see Roland Chase and confront him. Tycho tries to dissuade her, but eventually agrees to drive her there and wait for her. Her father sees her waiting for him, and takes her into his office. However the meeting does not go well. Roland Chase implies that she may not even be his daughter, as her mother had been involved with many men. He has never thought about her and never given the family any money, even though Dido had claimed he had. it also turns out that he is not married and has no official children. Whilst Angela is there, Roland Chase's mother (and Angela's biological grandmother) bursts into the office, insisting on seeing her son. Roland introduces the two, and the grandmother seems interested in learning more about Angela. It turns out the two share the same name. Angela is still upset and angry, and leaves. Angela calls her mother at work and tells her what has happened. Angela is extremely angry and tells her mother to drive her car off the dangerous road that the two live on. Tycho finds her in a telephone box. She refuses to tell him what has happened, and so Tycho gives her some money and leaves her be. Tycho returns home, where he uses the excuse of wanting to see the occultation of two of Jupiter's moons to get out of going to his sister's for a party that evening. After they have left, he calls Dido, but Angela has not returned yet. He later receives a call from Richard telling him that his father was taken ill, and the family would be staying the night at Africa's. After hanging up, Tycho turns to find Angela in his house, looking a mess. She tells him how after the meeting with her father, she wanted to do something to make her feel degraded. She went to a rough bar, where she had a man buy her several Fallen Angel cocktails. Leaving the bar she went with him to the river bank intending to have sex with him, but she changed her mind and ran off through the river. Angela then reveals to Tycho that she is a virgin, something that not many people would think about her. They discuss why she had kept this a secret, and she said she liked having something about herself other people did not know. Tycho sends her to go and phone her mother, but on the way to Angela sees a present that she had bought Tycho on the table. It is her own t-shirt bearing the legend "The Ionians Rule". This is her way of telling Tycho that she wishes to be with him, and the two spend the night together. In the morning the two remember they had not called Dido and are unable to get a response when they try. They decide to walk to Angela's house, as Tycho does not have the car and no buses run on a Sunday. As they are walking up the road they see a car veer off the bridge and down the slope and Angela believes this may be her mother's car. They run off down the slope to investigate. However the vehicle was actually that of Angela's neighbours Phil and Jerry Cherry. Phil had been thrown clear, but Jerry was trapped inside the vehicle. Tycho manages to get Jerry clear, but only just, and the car explodes. Dido then arrives and an ambulance soon follows. Tycho, who received burns when saving Jerry, is taken to hospital as well, and Angela leaves with her mother. Arriving home, Tycho finds that his sister Africa and her child are there. She has been having an affair and has now left her husband. A reporter turns up at the door, and suddenly the family realise Tycho is actually injured, and want to know what has happened. At home, Angela receives a phone call from her paternal grandmother, who wishes to get to know her better, but Angela is not interested. Dido tells Angela that her grandmother had actually given her money to have an abortion, which Dido had instead used to buy things for a newborn. Tycho comes to visit her and Angela asks him not to tell Dido about their relationship, but the way the two behave makes it obvious.
9123712	/m/027yj61	The Man Within	Graham Greene		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins with Andrews fleeing his fellow smugglers after a battle with the customs officials that ended with one of the customs officials dead. He stumbles upon an isolated cottage which is the home of Elizabeth. The man whom she lived with has recently died. Andrews helps protect Elizabeth from the neighbors who consider her to be a woman of loose moral character (the novel is silent about whether their view is justified or not). After encountering Carlyon, the head of the smugglers, in the fog, Andrews returns to the cottage where Elizabeth persuades him that he should testify at the trial of the smugglers at the Assizes in Lewes. Andrews travels to Lewes and gives his testimony in court despite being scorned by the other witnesses for the prosecution as a Judas figure. The trial ends with the smugglers being acquitted and their pledging to revenge themselves on Andrews by hurting Elizabeth. Andrews returns to Elizabeth's cottage, tells her of the danger. She sends him to the well to fetch water, and while he is gone, he discovers that one of the smugglers has come to the cottage. He runs to get help, but when he returns, he discovers that Elizabeth has been killed by one of his fellow smugglers and Carlyon is sitting waiting for him. After realizing that the only way to betray his father is to hurt himself, Andrews tells Carlyon to leave and that he will take the blame for Elizabeth's death.
9129009	/m/027yqw_	The Sea Hunters: True Adventures With Famous Shipwrecks	Clive Cussler			 In 1978 adventure novelist Clive Cussler funded and participated in an attempt to find John Paul Jones's famous Revolutionary warship, the USS Bonhomme Richard. The expedition was not successful, however, it eventually led to the formation of a nonprofit organization named after the fictional agency in his novels, the National Underwater and Marine Agency and dedicated to the discovery of famous shipwrecks around the world. In The Sea Hunters, Cussler documents the search for nine famous shipwrecks while also offering dramatized imaginings on the events that led up to the loss of the ship. To date, the group's most successful find is the discovery of the final resting place of the Confederate submarine Hunley, detailed in Part 6. The Hunley was later raised and is currently undergoing restoration in the hopes that it will later be available for public view.
9131173	/m/027ytx8	The Sea Hunters II: Diving the World's Seas for Famous Shipwrecks	Clive Cussler			 Adventure novelist Clive Cussler follows up on the success of his first nonfiction book The Sea Hunters: True Adventures With Famous Shipwrecks which documented the formation of his nonprofit organization named after the fictional agency in his novels, the National Underwater and Marine Agency which is dedicated to the discovery of famous shipwrecks around the world. This volume documents the search for the final resting places of fourteen additional ships or other historical sunken artifacts not documented in the first work. Unlike the first book, this volume documents searches for ships that Cussler's group has found, and searches that were ultimately unsuccessful. As in the first work, preceding the details of the search is a fictionalized imagining of the events that led to the loss of the ship.
9131253	/m/027yt_c	The Princess Diaries Volume III: Princess in Love	Meg Cabot	2002	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In this volume, Mia struggles to decide how to break up with her boyfriend Kenny. In The Princess Diaries, Volume II: Princess in the Spotlight Kenny, Mia's biology partner at school, sent anonymous love letters to Mia expressing his feelings for her, resulting in Mia and Kenny dating. Mia does not love Kenny, but cannot bring herself to break up with him. Mia likes Michael, her friend Lilly's older brother, and feels she is leading Kenny on. Mia begins to send Michael anonymous love letters, similar to that of Kenny's. Unknown to her, Mia's friend Tina, whom Mia confided in about the letters, has told Lilly about said letters. Lilly eventually tells Michael that it was Mia sending the letters. At the school Winter Carnival, Michael shows her a message on his computer revealing he knows she sent the love letters, and he returns her feelings. Mia, not knowing how to respond and thinking Michael may be playing a joke on her, runs from her chair. Mia runs into Kenny, who mistakenly believes Mia is in love with Lilly's boyfriend, Boris, and they break up. Mia returns home, is devastated and does not want to go to the dance following the carnival, and decides to move to Genovia. Mia's grandmother convinces her to go to the dance, where Mia sees Michael, and they share their first kiss together.
9131583	/m/027yvbc	Stormblade	Nancy Varian Berberick	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Stormblade chronicles Stanach the dwarf's quest to retrieve the powerful stormblade. The stormblade is a kingsword, a blade which is intended to break the deadlock among the council of thanes, and bring a new king to Thorbardin. Unfortunately, the blade is stolen, but when it turns up, only one dwarf is brave enough to go after it. Stanach was an orphan. He grew up like any other dwarf, but was lucky enough to be taught the basics of smithing. Without the blade, his teacher becomes depressed, and eventually mad. Stanach sets out to find the blade for both his teacher and just to restore it. Firstly, he meets Lavim, a stereotypical kender. Together they travel, eventually being joined by the human Kelida and the elf ranger Tyrol. They end up meeting one of the mystical Irda, who informs them of their quest. After many wrong turns, fights and misfortunes, they eventually make it back to Thorbardin, where the Theiwar thane is attempting to murder Hornfel, the hylar thane to gain power over the thanes so he can rule. After a long fight, the Theiwar thane is killed and the stormblade is restored to its rightful place. Unfortunately, Tyrol is mortally wounded in the process, and dies. As a mark of honor, they allow him to be buried in the garden of thanes (a great honor for dwarves, even more for an elf)
9141901	/m/027z5v_	The Doom Brigade	Don Perrin	1996	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Doom Brigade chronicles the former First Dragonarmy Engineering Regiment’s quest to recover the first female draconians on Krynn after the War of the Lance. The brigade has left the dragonarmies in search for a new life, and led by Commander Kang, a Bozak, and Subcommander Slith, they have set up a small town in the valleys below the Kharolis Mountains. Unfortunately, their neighbors are hill dwarves in the town of Celebundin, who aren't very receptive to the idea of Draconian neighbours. For the last twenty five years, raids have occurred every couple of weeks, whether the draconians are short on dwarf spirits, or the dwarves are short on other supplies. However, they have grown to respect each other, and so have made a silent pact to only use blunt weapons, so that the victim is only knocked out or stunned. While en route to raiding the dwarves one day, one of Kang’s scouts reports a pair of red dragons on the horizon. Kang, curious, leads his troops to a pass on the outskirts of the Plains of Dust, where he meets Talon Leader Huzzud. Huzzud, a Knight of the Lily, is a talon leader for the Fifth Dragonarmy, which is led by General Ariakan. She proposes that Kang and his regiment join their army to retake Ansalon, but Kang decides to inspect their camp first. After inspecting the armies' camp and speaking to their commander, Kang realizes that this force doesn't consist of untamed goblins like in the previous war, but a well-trained and deadly force of knights. He realizes that since draconians can't breed, it would be better to die fighting then to just slowly fade away. On that note, he signs himself and his regiment up. Soon after, they are called to assist the dragonarmy in the conquering of Qualinost. Once they arrive, they are ordered to report for latrine duty. Disgusted, Kang’s regiment revolts, and returns to their town. On their return, however, they find their village in flames. They slaughter any dwarves that they can find in their village, and nail their bodies to posts. Meanwhile, four dwarves who regularly make trips to search for riches, Pestle, Mortar, Auger and Selquist discover a map leading to the lost treasures of Neraka while raiding Thorbardin through a secret passage. Plotting revenge, Kang orders a small group of five draconians, including himself and Slith, to enter the dwarven town to find out who burned down their village. Slith and the other three shape shift into dwarven guards, while Kang turns invisible. However, when the dwarves discover one of the draconians, the five beat a hasty retreat. Slith managed to steal a book with the map secreted within it from Selquist before they retreated; however, Selquist now pursues the draconians. After he catches Kang, he drives a knife into Kang's leg, temporarily crippling him. The dwarf and the draconians squabble over the book, ending up with the dwarf regaining the book, but the draconians keeping the cover, which has the map hidden inside it. The draconians retreat into their camp, unbeknownst to the fact they have the map to the Nerakan treasures. A few days later, Selquist appears at the draconian camp, begging Kang to remove a curse which he believes has been put on him. Kang does so after being told that the map leads to unhatched draconian females. Knowing that "rescuing" the females is the only way to continue their own race, Kang and twenty-four other draconians set out to retrieve the eggs. Unfortunately, the four dwarves decide to destroy the eggs and steal the treasure. Joined by a retinue from Moorthane, the dwarven war chief, and twenty guards, the dwarves set out. For many days and nights, Kang’s regiment follow the dwarves. Just before entering Thorbardin, however, Kang is visited by Huzzud, who warns him that the Dark Queen wishes him to complete some great task before he gains the eggs. Unable to be told more, Kang leaves Huzzud. After traveling for a long while in the tunnels of Thorbardin, the dwarves stumble upon a grell. Grells are large, green octopus-like creatures that float above the ground who live underground. Unfortunately, this one has a wand of The Dark Queen. After a long battle, the draconians join in, slaying the grell and taking the wand. Later, just before reaching their goal, they stumble on a lair of rock and molten lava. Out of the lava rises a massive fire dragon, made out of chaos, which if unstopped, would destroy all of Krynn. Kang realizes that this was the grand test that he had been assigned, and orders his regiment back. Kang almost dies battling the dragon, until he uses the wand to create water to cool himself and solidify the creature. He then creates mud to bury it, gaining himself and his regiment precious time; unfortunately, there's actually an entire nest. While the draconians (who join Kang) are battling the dragons, the dwarves move into the treasure room. After losing a good number of men to the dragons, Kang realizes the only way to defeat them. He orders his regiment back, and commands the wand to cause the stalagmites from the roof to fall into the nest. The wand obeys, and Kang rushes for the exit. He barely makes it, but weak and injured, he falls unconscious. After waking, he discovers he’s trapped, until he hears Slith’s voice through the rocks. Heartened, the draconians dig through the rocks to rescue Kang. It is then they realize that they are only 100 odd meters away from the eggs. After realizing this, they rush forward, only to find the dwarves about to kill the young. After negotiating, they reach an agreement. Kang’s regiment shows the dwarves the way out of Thorbardin and the draconians keep the young and move out of the valley. The novel ends with Selquist, too injured carry his treasure, bargaining with Gloth ( a draconian subcommander ), over a map to an abandoned city just south of Nordmaar.
9144041	/m/027z8v7	Beasts	John Crowley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Beasts describes a world in which genetically engineered animals are given a variety of human characteristics. Painter is a leo, a combination of man and lion. Reynard, a character derived from medieval European fable, is part fox. Political forces result in the leos being deemed an experimental failure, first resigned to reservations, and later to be hunted down and eliminated. A central element of the story is the relationship between Painter and Reynard, who acts as a kingmaker behind the scenes.
9144442	/m/027z95l	Darkest Hour	V. C. Andrews	1993-06	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Darkest Hour is a prequel to Dawn. The last book in the Cutler series goes back in time to focus on Dawn's grandmother, Lillian. This book is about Grandmother Cutler's childhood and adolescence. Most of the book takes place at the Booth Plantation, "The Meadows". Lillian Booth is the middle daughter of an overbearing plantation owner known as the Captain and a delicate Southern woman who lives in a dream world of sorts. Her older sister, Emily, is devoutly religious and often hostile to Lillian; her younger sister, Eugenia, is sick with cystic fibrosis. One day after school, when Lillian is just five, Emily tells her that she is not her real sister and that Lillian's real parents died because she is a Jonah and everything she touches will die. Distraught, Lillian runs to their mother, only to find out that she is actually the daughter of her mother's younger sister Violet, whose lover who was tragically killed before Lillian's birth. Violet died during childbirth and Lillian was taken in by her aunt and uncle to be brought up as their own. Emily constantly brings up the theme of Lillian being a curse throughout the book: she locks her in the shed with a skunk, and murders Cotton, Eugenia and Lillian's kitten (though she makes this look like an accident). She even claims that Lillian's first period is a sign of her evil nature, due to her young age. Emily also blames Lillian for Eugenia's death, saying that Eugenia was born after Lillian brought Satan into the Meadows and that was how Eugenia became sick in the first place. Eugenia dies from smallpox as a complication of the cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that is not understood at the time that the novel takes place. Therefore when Lillian asks for Dawn to be renamed Eugenia many years later, it may be an attempt to get back the little sister she lost so early and loved so much. Lillian's mother is traumatized by the death of her youngest child and goes into a deep depression. With her mother lost in depression, Lillian becomes increasingly isolated at home. Although she is growing into a young woman, her father makes no preparations for her coming out party or for her impending adulthood. When Emily sees Lillian and Niles Thompson, a boy from a neighbouring plantation, coming out of the woods on the way back from school, she uses this against Lillian to make sure she is placed under a sort of 'house arrest', not to go further than the house grounds. On the night of his twin sisters' big party, Niles climbs up to Lillian's bedroom window because Lillian was forbidden to go to the party. Although they dance and kiss, Lillian sends Niles home before things go too far. She goes to sleep happy but when she wakes up, she is told that Niles was found dead on the ground by her window. Emily blames her for Niles's death and Lillian accepts this guilt. With Niles dead, she has lost her last confidante. As the Great Depression arrives, the Meadows begins to slip into debt. Emily blames Lillian for this. Not knowing how to restore the Meadows, Captain Booth begins to drink heavily and more often, which results in him falling down the stairs and breaking his leg. He tells Lillian that she must move into his quarters and take care of him until he is well. This ends in Lillian being repeatedly raped by her father while he is drunk. Lillian becomes pregnant at the age of 14. She is in her father's office reading up on pregnancy when the Captain catches her. She reveals that she is pregnant with his child. At this point, her father makes it seem as if Niles is the father of her child and puts Lillian in the hands of Emily, who sets out to cleanse Lillian's soul of Satan. The pregnant Lillian is locked away in her room, which has been stripped of all comforts, while the Captain tells everyone that his ailing wife is the pregnant one. About a month before Lillian gives birth her mother passes away. Not wanting Lillian to give birth prematurely, the Captain and Emily tell Lillian she is no longer allowed to see her because it upsets her mother. Lillian later finds out that her mother had been dying of stomach cancer the entire time. The death is blamed on childbirth and her mother is buried right after Lillian gives birth to a baby girl, which she names Charlotte. Lillian is told not to refer to Charlotte as her baby, as Emily and the Captain have told everyone the baby is her sister. The Captain's only regret over the whole affair is that Charlotte is a girl and not the son he always longed for. The Meadows continues to fail as a plantation. While trying to win money, Captain Booth loses the plantation to Bill Cutler, the owner of the luxury Cutler Hotel Resort. When Bill visits the plantation to see what he has won, he becomes very taken with Lillian, despite her disdainful treatment of him. Having seen that the plantation will make him no money, he tells the Captain that instead of the Meadows, he will take Lillian. After many tears, Lillian agrees to marry a man whom she does not love or even really like, thinking that at least she can leave the Meadows behind. Although she wants to take Charlotte with her, the Captain refuses, thinking that someone may find out Lillian is really her mother, so she has to leave her baby behind. Bill and Lillian marry and she becomes the new mistress of Cutler's Cove. Determined that no man will ever control her again, she gradually becomes the brains behind the management of the hotel, though Bill remains the public face. She also becomes pregnant and has a boy, Randolph. Despite Bill's complaints that he will grow up to be a "mama's boy", Lillian takes Randolph everywhere with her, letting him play in her office while she conducts her business negotiations. She goes back to visit the Meadows only a few times, as she finds it hard to deal with how dilapidated and dingy it has become, and also to see Charlotte growing up without really knowing her. The Captain dies soon after Randolph's birth, having gambled away nearly everything in drunken attempts to get back all the money he lost. Emily never changes. Lillian sends her money for Charlotte and the upkeep of the plantation but knows that there will never be enough. Despite the fact her husband has affairs and is never half the family man he promised to be, she is satisfied that nobody will take her son from her and that she is secure as the mistress of Cutler's Cove.
9144443	/m/027z95y	Reading Like a Writer	Francine Prose	2006	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 * Chapter One: Close Reading Prose discusses the question of whether writing can be taught. She answers the question by suggesting that although writing workshops can be helpful, the best way to learn to write is to read. Closely reading books, Prose studied word choice and sentence construction. Close reading helped her solve difficult obstacles in her own writing. * Chapter Two: Words Prose encourages the reader to slow down and read every word. She reminds the reader that words are the "raw material out of which literature is crafted." Challenging the reader to stop at every word, she suggest the following question be asked: "What is the writer trying to convey with this word?" * Chapter Three: Sentences Prose discusses how "the well made sentence transcends time and genre." She believes the writer who is concerned about what constitutes a well-constructed sentence is on the right path. Prose mentions the importance of mastering grammar and how it can improve the quality of a writer's sentence. In this chapter, she also discusses the use of long sentences, short sentences, and rhythm in prose. * Chapter Four: Paragraphs Prose discusses that, just as with sentence construction, the writer who is concerned about paragraph construction is stepping in the right direction. She states that the writer who reads widely will discover there are no general rules for building a well-constructed paragraph, but "only individual examples to help point [the writer] in a direction in which [the writer] might want to go." * Chapter Five: Narration When determining point-of-view, Prose says audience is an important factor. She gives examples from literature of point-of-view variations. First-person and third person are discussed, and even an example of writing fiction in second person is given. * Chapter Six: Character Using examples from the works of Heinrich von Kleist and Jane Austen, Prose discusses how writers can develop characterization. She mentions that Kleist, in his "The Marquise of O—" ignores physical description of the characters, but instead "tells us just as much as we need to know about his characters, then releases them into the narrative that doesn't stop spinning until the last sentence . . ." Excerpts from other pieces of literature are used to show how action, dialogue and even physical description can help develop characterization. * Chapter Seven: Dialogue Prose begins this chapter by dispelling the advice that writers should improve and clean up dialogue so it sounds less caustic than actual speech. She believes this idea on dialogue can be taken too far and that dialogue can be used to reveal not only the words on the surface, but the many motivations and emotions of the characters underneath the words. * Chapter Eight: Details Using examples from literature, Prose explains how one or two important details can leave a more memorable impression on the reader than a barrage of description. * Chapter Nine: Gestures Prose argues that gestures performed by fictional characters should not be "physical clichés" but illuminations that move the narrative. * Chapter Ten: Learning from Chekhov Prose gives examples of what she has learned from reading Anton Chekhov. As a creative writing teacher, she would disseminate advice to her students after reading their stories. As a fan of Chekhov, she would read his short stories and find examples of how he would successfully break the "rules" of fiction writing, contradicting something she recently told her students to do in their writing projects. Prose also discusses how Chekhov teaches the writer to write without judgement; she tells how Chekhov practiced not being the "judge of one's characters and their conversations but rather the unbiased observer." * Chapter Eleven: Reading for Courage Prose discusses the fears writers may have: revealing too much of themselves in their writing; resisting the pressures that writers must write a certain way; determining whether or not the act of writing is worth it when one considers the state of the world. She concludes her book by stating that the writer may fear creating "weeds" instead of "roses." Continuing the metaphor, she says reading is a way for the writer to see how other gardeners grow their roses. * Books to Be Read Immediately Prose includes a list of book recommendations, many of which have selections from those that are used as examples for the concepts she discusses.
9152642	/m/027zk3f	White Snow, Bright Snow	Alvin Tresselt		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 At the first snowfall of the year, all the grown-ups do their usual things when a snowstorm comes, while the children are filled with wonder.
9152756	/m/027zk6w	Madeline's Rescue	Ludwig Bemelmans		{"/m/016475": "Picture book"}	 Madeline does her trick of frightening Miss Clavel and falls into the Seine River and is saved by a dog. Miss Clavel allows the girls to keep it, until they find her real owner. When they bring her home, they name her Genevieve. But problem starts to rise when other girls want to spend time with Genevieve. Big trouble arrives in front of their animal-loathing Landlord Cucuface, who takes one look at poor Genevieve and has his driver throw her out into the countryside, causing the girls and Miss Clavel to look for Genevieve, only to be broken-hearted of not finding her. Late that night, Miss Clavel wakes up and finds Genevieve in the light of the doorway. Everyone rejoices Genevieve's return. That night, the girls fight about Genevieve again, causing Miss Clavel to take Genevieve to her own room. Even later that night, Madeline and the girls, with Miss Clavel find that Genevieve has given birth to 11 puppies, giving enough hound to go around.
9153025	/m/027zkjv	The Ramsay Scallop	Frances Temple	1994	{"/m/02w06c6": "Historical romance", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Ramsay Scallop has two main characters, Thomas of Thornham and Elenor of Ramsay. They were betrothed to each other when they were young. When Thomas returns broken and disillusioned from the Crusades, he finds the idea of marriage and lordship overwhelming. Elenor dreads the idea of marriage to Thomas, both because she barely knows him and because she is afraid of bearing children, as she is too small to give birth easily. Father Gregory sends both of them on a religious pilgrimage to Santiago, Spain, to put the record of Ramsay's sins on the shrine of Saint James. Both of them are relieved because the pilgrimage means the delay of their marriage and a last chance for adventure. On their special pilgrimage, they meet different people, and discover the glorious possibilities of the world around them and within each other. *Elenor of Ramsay *Thomas of Thornham *Father Gregory *Etienne *Marthe *Friar Paul *Carla *Guilliamette *Pipeau *Martin
9153072	/m/027zkm7	The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses	Paul Goble		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story tells of a Native American girl who feels such a kinship with the wild horses grazing near her village that she eventually becomes one of them.
9153191	/m/027zkt2	Hey, Al	Arthur Yorinks		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "Hey, Al" is the story of a janitor named Al and his dog, Eddie. Al and Eddie had hard lives, but one day a bird offered to carry them to a magnificent island in the sky. When they arrived, Al and Eddie found it to be a paradise. However, strange things began to happen. Al and Eddie began to resemble birds and they realised the paradise was not all it appeared to be. Al and Eddie wished to return home so they decided to escape by using their newly acquired wings to fly home. Their flight did not go to plan as Eddie crashed into the sea and was lost. Fortunately, Eddie was able to swim home to Al. Al and Eddie were happy to return home.
9153280	/m/027zkx5	Grandfather's Journey	Allen Say		{"/m/016475": "Picture book"}	 A young man from Japan, during the Meiji era, crosses the Pacific Ocean and explores the United States. He finds that of all the places he has seen, he likes coastal California best because of the beautiful Sierra Mountains. Eventually, he returns home to Japan and marries his childhood sweetheart. The young man takes his new bride across the sea and they settle in California, where they have a daughter. As he watches his daughter grow up, the man is filled with nostalgia for his own childhood. He eventually decides to take his family back to Japan when his daughter is nearly grown up. The man is happy to see his old friends again, but moves from the village where he grew up to a city nearby in order to satisfy his daughter, who has spent her entire life living in a city. She eventually marries and has a son, who is the narrator of the story. The man, now the titular grandfather of the story, finds that once again he misses California. He plans a trip to see his adopted country again with his grandson, but never gets a chance to see California again as a result of World War II. His grandson eventually grows up and follows the same journey as his grandfather, understanding his grandfather's feelings towards two places he called home.
9159038	/m/027zqdn	The Beasts of Tarzan	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1916	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Not long after Tarzan claims his hereditary title of Lord Greystoke and marries Jane, their infant son, Jack, is kidnapped in London by his old Russian enemies, Nikolas Rokoff and Alexis Paulvitch. Following an anonymous call about the whereabouts of Jack, Tarzan himself falls into Rokoff's trap and is imprisoned aboard a ship carrying Jack. Jane, fearing Tarzan was entering a trap, follows him and also finds herself in Rokoff's clutches aboard the ship. Rokoff sets sail to Africa, eventually exiling Tarzan on an island near the African coast and telling Tarzan that Jack will be left with a cannibal tribe and raised as one of their own. Using his jungle skill and primal intelligence, Tarzan wins the help of Sheeta, the vicious panther, a tribe of great apes led by the intelligent Akut, and the native warrior Mugambi. With their aid, Tarzan reaches the mainland, kills Rokoff, and tracks down his wife and son. Paulvitch, the other villain, is presumed dead, but manages to escape into the jungle.
9159730	/m/027zr41	The Son of Tarzan	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1917	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Nikolas Rokoff, a henchman of Tarzan's now-deceased enemy, Alexis Paulvitch, survived his encounter with the ape-man in The Beasts of Tarzan and wants to even the score. He lures Jack, Tarzan's son, away from London and into his clutches, but the youngster escapes with the help of the ape named Akut. The pair then flees into the deep African jungle where two decades earlier Tarzan himself had been raised. Jack Clayton, now on his own, becomes known as Korak the Killer and builds a reputation for himself in the jungle. Like his father before him, he finds his own place among the great apes, and also like his father, meets and rescues a beautiful young woman, Meriem, the daughter of a Captain in the French Foreign Legion, who was also a Prince (Prince de Cadrenet), named Armand Jacot. Arguably, the book is as much about Meriem, wife of Korak, as it is about Tarzan's son.
9160102	/m/027zrfb	Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1918	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the previous novel Tarzan and Jane's son, Jack Clayton, a.k.a. Korak, had come into his own. In this novel Tarzan returns to Opar, the source of the gold where a lost colony of fabled Atlantis is located, in order to make good on some financial reverses he has recently suffered. While Atlantis itself sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago, the workers of Opar continued to mine all of the gold, which means there is a rather huge stockpile but which is now lost to the memory of the Oparians and only Tarzan knows its secret location. A greedy, outlawed Belgian army officer, Albert Werper, in the employ of a criminal Arab, secretly follows Tarzan to Opar. There, John Clayton loses his memory after being struck on the head by a falling rock in the treasure room during an earthquake. On encountering La, the high priestess who is the servant of the Flaming God of Opar, and who is also very beautiful, Tarzan once again rejects her love which enrages her and she tries to have Tarzan killed; she had fallen in love with the apeman during their first encounter and La and her high priests are not going to allow Tarzan to escape their sacrificial knives this time. In the meanwhile, Jane has been kidnapped by the Arab and wonders what is keeping her husband from once again coming to her rescue. A now amnesiac Tarzan and the Werper escape from Opar, bearing away the sacrificial knife of Opar which La and some retainers set out to recover. There is intrigue and counter intrigue the rest of the way.
9160151	/m/027zrj2	Jungle Tales of Tarzan	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1919	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tarzan's First Love. Tarzan's courtship of the female ape Teeka ends in failure when her preference turns to their mutual friend, the male ape Taug. Tarzan wrestles with his humanness versus his ape-ness. The Capture of Tarzan. Tarzan is taken captive by the warriors of a village of cannibals which has established a village near the territory of the ape tribe. He is saved from them by Tantor, the elephant. The Fight for the Balu. Teeka and Taug have a baby (balu, in the ape language), which Teeka names Gazan and will not allow Tarzan near. She changes her mind after Tarzan saves the baby from a leopard. The God of Tarzan. Tarzan discovers the concept of "God" in the books preserved in the cabin of his dead parents, to which he pays regular visits. He inquires among members of his ape tribe for further elucidation without success, and continues his investigation among the cannibals of the nearby village and the natural phenomena of his world, such as the sun and moon. Eventually he concludes that God is none of these, but the creative force permeating everything. Somehow, though, the dreaded snake Histah falls outside this. Tarzan and the Black Boy. Jealous of Taug and Teeka's relationship with their baby, Tarzan kidnaps Tibo, a little boy from the neighboring village to be his own "balu." He tries with indifferent success to teach the terrified and homesick child ape ways. Meanwhile, Momaya, Tibo's mother does everything she can think of to find and recover her son, even visiting the hermit witch-doctor Bukawai, a terrible, diseased exile who keeps two fearsome hyenas as pets. He names a price for recovering Tibo she cannot afford, and she leaves disappointed. Afterwards, however, Tarzan, who is moved by Tibo's distress and his mother's love, returns the boy to her. The Witch-Doctor Seeks Vengeance. Bukawai attempts to claim credit for Tibo's return and extort payment from the boy's mother, but is rebuffed. He plots vengeance against the native family and Tarzan, but is thwarted by the ape man. The End of Bukawai. Bukawai, finding Tarzan unconscious after a storm, takes the ape man captive and stakes him out for his hyenas to devour. Escaping, Tarzan leaves the witch doctor in the same trap, in which Bukawai suffers the very fate he had intended for his enemy. The Lion. Tarzan vainly attempts to impress on his ape tribe the necessity of maintaining a strict watch against the hazards and perils surrounding them. To drive home the lesson, he dons a lionskin he has taken from Mbonga's village and suddenly appears among them, only to find them more vigilant than he had thought, as they mob him and nearly beat him to death. He is saved only by the courage of his monkey friend Manu, which he had also previously under-rated, who risks all to reveal to Teeka and Taug that the "lion" is actually Tarzan. The Nightmare. Having been unsuccessful hunting, Tarzan robs the native village of some rotten elephant meat, which he eats. Becoming ill from the tainted meal, he has a horrible nightmare, in which he dreams himself menaced by a lion, an eagle, and huge snake with the head of a village native. He is carried off by a giant bird but wakes in the fall from its graps, finding himself back in the tree where he'd gone to sleep. He realizes the incidents were not real. Subsequently attacked by a gorilla, he assumes that this too is a product of his fevered imagination, until actually wounded and hurt. He kills the beast, but is left to wonder what is real and what is fantasy. The only thing he is certain of is that he will never again eat the meat of an elephant. The Battle for Teeka. Discovering bullet cartridges in his deceased father's cabin, Tarzan takes them with him as curios. Subsequently, Teeka is taken by an ape from another tribe, and Tarzan and Taug join forces to trail the kidnapper and rescue her. When they catch up, they are surrounded by the enemy tribe and nearly overwhelmed, until Teeka throws the cartridges at their foes in an apparently futile effort to help. When some of them hit a rock, they explode, frightening the hostile apes and saving her "rescuers." A Jungle Joke. As part of his campaign of torment and trickery against the native village, whose members he holds responsible for his ape foster mother's death, Tarzan captures Rabba Kega, the local witch doctor, and puts him in a trap the natives have set to catch a lion. The next day the warriors find they have caught the lion, but it has killed the witch doctor. They take the lion to the village. Tarzan secretly releases it and appears among them dressed in the lionskin he had previously used to trick the apes. Dropping the disguise, he reveals himself and leaves. When the natives muster enough courage, they follow, only to encounter the real lion, which they assume is Tarzan in his disguise again. They are quickly disabused. Tarzan Rescues the Moon. Tarzan frees a native warrior the apes have caught on being impressed by the man's bravery, angering the rest of the ape tribe. Alienated, he exiles himself to his parents' cabin. Later, frightened by an eclipse in which darkness appears to devour the moon, they summon him back. Tarzan reassures them by shooting arrows at the "devourer," and as the eclipse passes is given credit by the creatures for the "rescue." According to Tarzan Alive, Philip José Farmer's study of the ape man's life and career, the incidents of this book occurred from February, 1907-August, 1908 (aside from the eclipse incident, there apparently having been no such eclipse visible from equatorial Africa during this period).
9160200	/m/027zrl4	Tarzan the Terrible	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1921	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the previous novel, during the early days of World War I, Tarzan discovered that his wife Jane was not killed in a fire set by German troops, but was in fact alive. In this novel two months have gone by and Tarzan is continuing to search for Jane. He has tracked her to a hidden valley called Pal-ul-don, which means "Land of Men." In Pal-ul-don Tarzan finds a real Jurassic Park filled with dinosaurs, notably the savage Triceratops-like Gryfs, which unlike their prehistoric counterparts are carnivorous. The lost valley is also home to two different races of tailed human-looking creatures, the Ho-don (hairless and white skinned) and the Waz-don (hairy and black-skinned). Tarzan befriends Ta-den, a Ho-don warrior, and Om-at, the Waz-don chief of the tribe of Kor-ul-ja. In this new world he becomes a captive but so impresses his captors with his accomplishments and skills that they name him Tarzan-Jad-Guru (Tarzan the Terrible), which is the name of the novel. Jane is also being held captive in Pal-ul-don, having been brought there by her German captor, who has since become dependent on her due to his own lack of jungle survival skills. She becomes a pawn in a religious power struggle that consumes much of the novel. With the aid of his native allies, Tarzan continues to pursue his beloved to rescue her and set things to right, going through an extended series of fights and escapes to do so. In the end success seems beyond even his ability to achieve, until in the final chapter he and Jane are saved by their son Korak, who has been searching for Tarzan just as Tarzan has been searching for Jane.
9160242	/m/027zrm5	Tarzan and the Golden Lion	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1923	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In the previous novel, Tarzan rescued Jane after he discovered that she was alive, and was reunited with his son Korak. In this story he and his family encounter and adopt an orphaned lion cub, whom they name Jad-bal-ja ("The Golden Lion" in the language of the lost land of Pal-ul-don, which they have recently left). They then return to their African estate, gutted by the Germans during the course of World War I in Tarzan the Untamed. They find it already being rebuilt by Tarzan's faithful Waziri warriors, including old Muviro, who first appears in this novel after a previous mention in Tarzan the Untamed. Muviro reappears in a number of later novels as sub-chief of the Waziri. Back at home, Tarzan raises Jad-bal-ja, who in adulthood is a magnificent black-maned golden lion devoted to the Ape Man. Later Tarzan is drugged and delivered to the priests of Opar, the lost colony of Atlantis that he had last visited in Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. Once again La, the High Priestess of the Flaming God, who is consumed by her hopeless infatuation with Tarzan, rescues him. But when her people discover that she had betrayed them, she flees with Tarzan into the legendary Valley of Diamonds, where savage gorillas rule. The good news is that Tarzan and La are followed by the faithful Jad-bal-ja. The bad news is that they are also being trailed by Esteban Miranda - who happens to look exactly like Tarzan - who hopes to locate and loot Opar.
9160669	/m/027zrxv	Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1928	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tarzan finds an outpost of European knights and crusaders from a "forbidden valley" hidden in the mountains. His lion ally Jad-bal-ja puts in an appearance late in the book.
9160775	/m/027zr_7	Tarzan and the Lost Empire	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1929	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tarzan and a young German find a lost remnant of the Roman Empire hidden in the mountains of Africa. This novel is notable for the introduction of Nkima, who serves as Tarzan's monkey companion in it and a number of later Tarzan stories. It also reintroduces Muviro, first seen in Tarzan and the Golden Lion, as sub-chief of Tarzan's Waziri warriors.
9160815	/m/027zs0z	Tarzan at the Earth's Core	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1930	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In response to a radio plea from Abner Perry, a scientist who with his friend David Innes has discovered the interior world of Pellucidar at the Earth's core, Jason Gridley launches an expedition to rescue Innes from the Korsars (corsairs), the scourge of the internal seas. He enlists Tarzan, and a fabulous airship is constructed to penetrate Pellucidar via the natural polar opening connecting the outer and inner worlds. The airship is crewed primarily by Germans, with Tarzan's Waziri warriors under their chief Muviro also along for the expedition. In Pellucidar Tarzan and Gridley are each separated from the main force of the expedition and must struggle for survival against the prehistoric creatures and peoples of the inner world. Gridley wins the love of the native cave-woman Jana, the Red Flower of Zoram. Eventually everyone is reunited, and the party succeeds in rescuing Innes. As Tarzan and the others prepare to return home, Gridley decides to stay to search for Frederich Wilhelm Eric von Mendeldorf und von Horst, one last member of the expedition who remains lost (The missing Von Horst's adventures are told in a sequel, Back to the Stone Age, which does not involve either Gridley or Tarzan).
9160858	/m/027zs2b	Tarzan the Invincible	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1931	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tarzan, his monkey friend Nkima, and Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors prevent Soviet communists from looting the lost city of Opar. The story also prominently features Tarzan's lion ally Jad-bal-ja. This book marks the last appearance of Opar and La in the Tarzan series, aside from the juvenile piece Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-Bal-Ja the Golden Lion (1936), which was published later but is chronologically earlier.
9160890	/m/027zs30	Tarzan Triumphant	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1932	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Backed by Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors, Tarzan faces Soviet agents seeking revenge and a lost tribe descended from early Christians practicing a bizarre and debased religious cult.
9160942	/m/027zs3q	Tarzan and the City of Gold	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1933	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 After encountering and befriending Valthor, a warrior of the lost city of Athne (whom he rescues from a group of bandits known as shiftas), the City of Ivory and capital of the land of Thenar, Tarzan is captured by the insane yet beautiful queen Nemone of its hereditary enemy, Cathne, the City of Gold, capital of the land of Onthar. This novel is perhaps best known for two scenes; in the first, Tarzan is forced to fight Cathne's strongest man Phobeg in its arena. While an ordinary man might have been in trouble, Tarzan easily overpowers Phobeg. The second scene, in which Tarzan is forced to fight a lion, starts with the ape man being forced to run away from a hunting lion, Belthar, which will hunt him down and kill him. Tarzan at first believes he can outrun the beast (lions tire after the first 100 yards at top speed). This lion, however, is of a breed specifically selected for endurance, and ultimately Tarzan must turn to face him, though aware that without a knife he can do little but delay the inevitable. Fortunately his own lion ally, Jad-bal-ja, whom he had raised from a cub, arrives and intervenes, killing Belthar and saving Tarzan. Nemone, who believes her life is linked to that of her pet, kills herself when it dies. Unusually for lost cities in the Tarzan series, which are typically visited but once, Cathne and Athne reappear in a later Tarzan adventure, Tarzan the Magnificent (the only other lost city Tarzan visits more than once is Opar).
9160965	/m/027zs4d	Tarzan and the Lion Man	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1934	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tarzan and his lion companion Jad-bal-ja discover a mad scientist with a city of talking gorillas. To create additional havoc, a Hollywood film crew sets out to shoot a Tarzan movie in Africa and brings along an actor who is an exact double of the apeman, but is his opposite in courage and determination. Later, as John Clayton, Tarzan visits Hollywood to find himself in a screen test for a role in a Tarzan movie. He is deemed unsuitable for the lead role because he is "not the type."
9161010	/m/027zs5f	Tarzan and the Leopard Men	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1935	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 An amnesiac Tarzan and his monkey companion Nkima are taken by an African warrior to be his guardian spirits, and as such come into conflict with the murderous secret society of the Leopard Men, led by Gato Mgungu. From America, a young woman arrives in the territory in search of a loved one presumed missing, and two young men (also from that country) come in search of ivory.
9161044	/m/027zs63	Tarzan's Quest	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1936	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tarzan's wife Jane (her first appearance since Tarzan and the Ant Men and also her last as a major character in the series), becomes involved in a search for a bloodthirsty lost tribe reputed to possess an immortality drug. Also drawn in are Tarzan and his monkey companion, little Nkima, and Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors, who are searching for Muviro's lost daughter Buira. Nkima's vital contribution to the adventure is recognized when he is made a recipient of the treatment along with the human protagonists at the end of the novel.
9161074	/m/027zs7h	Tarzan and the Forbidden City	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1938	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 A young man named Brian Gregory has disappeared in Africa, looking for the fabled Father of Diamonds; his father and sister want to go rescue him, and they can only enlist Tarzan's help because they know Captain Paul D`Arnot. By chance, Tarzan and Brian are lookalike, thus making some vile scoundrels to think Tarzan is Brian. They are also heading out after the big old diamond. The Forbidden city is again in a secret valley, with two cities Ashair and Thobos in war, because of the Father of Diamonds. Tarzan has to fight many times against different foes, once even a mansize unicorn seahorse!
9161235	/m/027zsby	Tarzan the Magnificent	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1939	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tarzan encounters a lost race with uncanny mental powers, after which he revisits the lost cities of Cathne and Athne, previously encountered in the earlier novel Tarzan and the City of Gold. As usual, he is backed up by Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors.
9161275	/m/027zsd9	Tarzan and the Foreign Legion	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1947	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 While serving in the R.A.F. under his civilian name of John Clayton, Tarzan is shot down over the island of Sumatra in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies. He uses his jungle survival skills to save his comrades in arms, and they fight the Japanese while seeking escape from enemy territory. Tarzan also reveals to his companions how in his youth, after saving the life of a witch doctor, he was rewarded by treatment that gave him immortality. According to Tarzan Alive, Philip José Farmer's study of the ape man's life and career, the incident related occurred in January 1912.
9161339	/m/027zsg0	Tarzan and the Madman	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1964	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tarzan tracks down a man who has been mistaken for him. The man is under the delusion that he is Tarzan, and he is living in a lost city inhabited by people descended from early Portuguese explorers. The plot devices of a lost city and a Tarzan "double" or impostor had been used by Burroughs in some previous Tarzan novels.
9166340	/m/027zxwr	The Ice House	Minette Walters	1992-06-26	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mrs Phoebe Maybury, a widow in her late thirties, lives in Street Grainge with her two companions Diana and Anne. One day her servant Fred finds a rotting corpse in their ice house, a storage room inside a hillock that hasn't been used for years. DCI George Walsh thinks it may be the corpse of Phoebe's husband David, who went missing ten years ago. Back then Walsh suspected her for killing her husband, but this was never proven. Inhabitants of the village believe that the three women are dykes and that Phoebe did not only kill her husband but also her parents. They died in a car crash after garage owner KC neglected to check their brakes. One of the villagers, Dily Barnes, has forbidden her children Peter and Emma to play with Phoebe's children Jonathan and Jane. The grounds are searched and the three women and Phoebe's grown-up children are questioned. Jane used to have anorexia nervosa and underwent psychotherapy. DS Andy McLoughlin, whose wife has just left him for another police officer, gets romantically involved with Anne and believes the three women are innocent. Medical examiner Webster says the corpse can only be between two and three months old. A list of missing persons includes the names Keith Chapel and Daniel Thompson. Thompson's wife is interrogated. It turns out he collected money from investors to produce see-through radiators. One of the duped investors was Diana. One night a burglar in Street Grainge smashes Anne's skull. She recovers in hospital, but doesn't remember who attacked her. Wally Ferris, a tramp who was seen in the environment, confesses he's been in the ice house and stole the clothes of a dead man. The dead man is finally identified as Keith Chapel or KC, the former garage owner who went bankrupt. Chapel died from the cold and part of his flesh was eaten by rats after Wally left open the door of the ice house. Daniel Thompson is still alive. He was hiding from the angry investors and wanted to move to France with his wife. A group of burglars is caught at Street Grainge. After Jonathan fires a gun between Peter Barnes' legs he confesses that he smashed Anne's skull. Peter was instigated by the nasty gossip of his mother and other villagers. When the three women are left in McLoughlin's company they talk openly about how Phoebe killed her husband ten years ago. She did it after she caught him abusing Jane. She buried his corpse behind a wall in the cellar. McLoughlin approves of revenge and makes plans to start a new life with Anne.
9167708	/m/027zz49	Messiah	Gore Vidal	1999	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with the discovery of the body of Philip Rhodes, a London caterer, who is found hanging in his underwear from his banister, his tongue cut out and a silver spoon in its place. When the body of the Bishop of Wandsworth, James Cunningham, is found beaten to death, but with his tongue replaced by a silver spoon, DCI Red Metcalfe and his team must discover the pattern behind these killings and save the rest of the men who are destined to be murdered. The novel has many twists and turns and it describes the killings in great detail adding to the intense atmosphere. Starling manages to create a novel which is difficult to put down and which explores the mind of a man who has thoughts of a higher being.
9170817	/m/027_1p3	Tommy Storm	A.J. Healy			 Earth's President (Guttly Randolph) and the Grand Council receive an invitation from the MilkyFed, a federation in the centre of the Milky Way. They want 5 Earth children (of the Grand Council's choice) to come across space to a training centre. The training will prepare the participants for a dangerous and secret mission. Elsorr Maudlin, Earth's Deputy President, believes the MilkyFed are up to no good, so he threatens to delay the decision until after the deadline. He agrees not to delay it on two conditions. One, he can choose the Grand Council Elder to accompany the Five children. Second, he can choose one of the five children. For his first condition, Maudlin chooses Randolph, so he can be the President, in full power. For his second condition, he chooses a boy who is thought by all a loser. The boy's name is Tommy Storm. Meanwhile, at The Wilchester Academy for Younger Adults, Tommy Storm, a boy of 11, is being bullied by a stronger, more popular boy named Felkor Stagwitch. In self-defence, Tommy ends up being grounded to his room. Later, Mr Withers, the headmaster, announces that Felkor Stagwitch is going on to a training school far away in the centre of the Milky Way. Afterwards, in Tommy's room, Mr Withers tells Tommy privately that he was also chosen. After some tests, the Earthlings are ranked from 1 to 5, Felkor first, Tommy last. According to their rank, they're put in groups of 5 with other species from other planets. During his time at the training school, Tommy Storm encounters many new things, and learns the history of his life. -The 25 students at the training school soon learn they are here because the Milki Masters know of an appending apocalype - the end of the universe, referring to the apocalypse only as the TFC (Terrible Future Calamity). At the end of the training schools period, one of the groups will be chosen to go on a mission to find out what will cause the TFC, and try to stop it. In order to win, the group must win competitions in different categories to earn points. -Each time he meets one of the Milki Masters, they seem to recognise something about him. At the end of his stay, Lord Beardedmoustachedwiseface-oh (the leader of the Milki Masters) reveals that Tommy's parents had been abducted by the Milki Masters long ago because Lord Beardedmoustachedwiseface-oh had found out about a meteor heading towards Earth - one so big, it was set to destroy Earth. One of the Milki Masters then fires another meteor at the meteor going to Earth to try and destroy it. She misses and Earth is destroyed. Tommy's parents (who had said they're name's were Bonny and Clive) then allowed themselves to die so they could turn back time. A different Milki Master takes the shot this time - and hits. Each Milki Master had recognised him because he looks so like his parents. -The winning group will be sent to learn about the TFC on a spaceship known as Swiggy. To get going Swiggy must leave the runway at SickoWarpo Speed (faster than the speed of light). They only have enough room for three courses - each course must go through a planet and destroy it. Earth is one of the planets that could be destroyed. Eventually, Earth is chosen to be obliterated. -One Milki Master brings Tommy and his group to an abyss. A plank of wood is attached to the side of the abyss, like a divingboard. The Milki Master tells them that it takes eight steps to walk the plank, and for every step you take, you will see something different in the Abyss. He tells them of a legend - if you come to the end of the plank, turn around, cross your arms and fall in to the abyss, someone who loves you will catch you and bring you back to the top. He also tells them that no one has taken more than four steps. They each try to walk the plank, until they are interrupted by another group's arrival, just as Tommy is about to take a fifth step. Tommy returns one night to try to walk the plank again. As he enters, two of his group follow. Tommy doesn't notice them, and locks the door behind him. The room is soundproof, so he doesn't hear them banging on the door. Tommy walks the plank, each step seeing terrible things - such as Earth burning along with its people. Finally, he takes his eighth step, turns around, crosses his arms, and falls back. Nobody knows exactly what he saw or did in the abyss, but it is believed his parents caught him, and talked to him, and adored him until he returns to the top. -Meanwhile, on Earth, Elsorr Maudlin is abusing his power as president. He killed two Grand Council members, and sent one to a prison. When Guttly Randolph has a heart attack and dies, Tommy brings him to Earth to be buried. Maudlin forces him to bring the coffin - with Randolph inside - to the Grand Council. While Maudlin is extremely happy that he is dead, Randolph stands up. It is revealed that MilkyFed doctors are far more advanced, and were able to bring him back to life - thought they cannot do that to people who are really dead. Randolph pretended to be dead to get to the Grand Council. Maudlin stabs Randolph with his sword. Tommy draws his own sword and they fight. Just as Maudlin overpowers Tommy, Randolph brings an elevator shaft down on top of him, killing him. Randolph then dies from the stab wound, even though he could have been saved by the MilkyFed doctors, stating he is ready to be with Gerty (his late wife). -Upon returning to the training school, Tommy learns of the final score of points between the groups - Felkor's group first and his group last, although his group should have been first. Lord Beardedmoustachedwise-face-oh announces that someone in Tommy's group did something against the rules (Tommy knows that he is the person, and the rule he broke was getting up at night, and entering the abyss), so his group is disqualified from the competitions after he broke the rules. Medals are awarded to the other 4 groups (surprisingly, the same medal is given to each person in every group). Lord Beardedmoustachedwiseface-oh then tells his favourite poem; "'Tis not what you do, 'tis how you do it. 'Tis not what you say, 'tis how you say it. First shall be last, gibbledibble-blast." He then announces that Tommy's group has won, regardless of points. Tommy's group then boards Swiggy. When they have left, it is revealed that the Milki Masters have no clue about the TFC. Swiggy approaches Earth, faster than the speed of light. When they collide, it seems they are in darkness for a long time. Then everything returns. But, as one of the group notices, Earth is still there. Tommy then reveals how he stole two wigholes from the training school and placed them on either side of Earth, in perfect rotation so that when Swiggy almost collided with Earth, it really entered a wighole. Rumbles and Woozie decide to try out an old legend. It was believed by MilkyFed folk that if a person crossed their arms, closed their eyes, and fell backwards without bending their legs, someone who loves them would catch them. This was known as the Inner-Lath Catch. Rumbles and Woozie cannot do this without bending their legs, and so it doesn't work. They give up when Rumbles knocks open a cabinet, covering him/her in Grow-sss-goo. Marielle watches them try after her bath. She then decides to try it herself. The book ends, saying she managed not to bend her legs.
9173395	/m/027_4hk	The Tiger Who Came To Tea	Judith Kerr		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A little girl named Sophie is having tea with her mother in their kitchen. Soon they are joined for tea by a tiger who drinks all the tea, eats all the food in the house and drinks everything, even draining the water from the taps, so that Sophie cannot have her bath. Then he leaves. Sophie's father comes home and suggests that they all go out and have a lovely meal in a cafe. The following day Sophie and her mother go out to buy some more food, including a big tin of tiger food. But the tiger never returns.
9173457	/m/027_4kz	When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit	Judith Kerr	1971	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story starts in Berlin, March 1933, when nine-year-old Anna, the main character in the trilogy, finds out her father is missing one morning. She and her brother, Max, discover that Papa thinks that Hitler might win the elections, and has fled to Prague. Because the family is Jewish, and Papa is also a well-known Jewish author, this is important. If Hitler was to win the elections, Mama, Max and Anna would join him in Switzerland. If he was to lose, then Papa would come back home to Berlin. However, the plan goes wrong, and Mama and the children are rushed into Switzerland in alarming secrecy. It is at this time that Anna has to choose which toy she wishes to take with her. She opts to take her new woolly dog, and leave behind her pink rabbit toy, believing she will return to Berlin after a short time. It is from this that the title is derived as she considers that Hitler and the Nazis have "stolen" her toy. There, they settle in a Swiss boarding house, and the family stay there for a few months. But soon, Papa thinks that they should move to Paris, and goes there to find out about accommodation. Papa comes back and wants Mama to come back with him as a prospective buyer. So Max and Anna are left on their own for a little while. The Nazis find out about Papa as he travels, and a price of one thousand marks is put on his head. This really scares Anna and she is afraid that it means that Papa will be put in a room with one thousand coins being dropped onto his head, suffocating him. She goes on believing this until Max tells her what it really means. When Papa soon comes back to collect them, (Mama stays in Paris to settle into the apartment they have bought) a porter tries to put them on the wrong train, one that would send them back to Germany, so that he could be imprisoned by the Nazis. Fortunately, though, Anna notices the label just in time, and they manage to get back on the correct train to Paris. There, Max attends a boys' school, and it takes a long time but Mama finally finds an elementary school for Anna. Anna finds French hard for a little while, but one day it clicks and she finds herself able to speak it fluently. After two years in Paris (in 1936), the family decide to move again, this time to London after Papa thinks the BBC might buy a biographical film script on Napoleon, inspired by a talk he had with the children. The story ends as Mama, Papa, Max and Anna get off the train in England, to be greeted by Mama's Cousin otto
9177928	/m/027_9rs	Ribsy	Beverly Cleary	1964	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Like most of the Henry Huggins books, the incidents in this book follow an ongoing plot line. In this book, the Huggins have a new car, and go out shopping; Ribsy, denied a ride, chases the car at up to 25 miles per hour, and is finally allowed in. At the shopping mall, Ribsy is left in the car, and lowers the electric window with the button. Ribsy eventually wants to return to the car to await Henry, and gets into the first new-smelling car he finds, but a different family, with several daughters and one toddler son, gets in and takes Ribsy home with them. Ribsy endures a bubble bath and escapes, wandering in search of Henry. Ribsy finds an old lady named Mrs. Frawley who is telling him to go away when Ribsy raises his paw in greeting and Mrs. Frawley invites him in. With dinner in his stomach, Ribsy sleeps while Mrs. Frawley goes out to shop for her new pet. Ribsy chafes at a coat and colorful leash, then escapes. He, soon after, finds himself becoming the unofficial mascot for a class of elementary school students until he is kicked out over an incident with a squirrel. Later, Ribsy sneaks into a high school football game and inadvertently makes the game-winning tackle. He is caught by a boy who, pleased at the attention he gets for people thinking it was his dog who won the game, takes Ribsy in. The story of the game gains the attention of the Huggins family who attempt to retrieve Ribsy. Ribsy, however, escapes again after hearing Henry's voice on the phone and running off in search of his beloved owner. Later, Ribsy is found by a boy with a tennis ball who lives in an apartment building. The boy decides to adopt Ribsy, but panics when confronted by his landlady and hides Ribsy on a fire escape where, fortunately, he is spotted by the Huggins family as they drive through the neighborhood in search of him. Mr. Huggins manages to retrieve Ribsy from the fire escape with the help of some nearby workmen and the mutt is happily reunited with Henry. The family offer the boy, Larry, a portion of the reward and help him deal with his landlady before getting back in the station wagon where Ribsy sits beside Henry on the seat as they drive home, finally reunited.
9178310	/m/027_b1r	The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography	Sidney Poitier	2000		 In this memoir, Sir Sidney Poitier, K.B.E., an 'icon' in the United States, looks back on his celebrated life and career. He explores elements of character and personal values to take his own measure as a man, as a husband and a father, and as an actor... Poitier credits his parents and his childhood on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas for equipping him with the unflinching sense of right and wrong and of self-worth that he has never surrendered and that have dramatically shaped his world. "In the kind of place where I grew up," recalls Poitier, "what's coming at you is the sound of the sea and the smell of the wind and momma's voice and the voice of your dad and the craziness of your brothers and sisters...and that's it." Without television, radio, and material distractions to obscure what matters most, he could enjoy the simple things, endure the long commitments, and find true meaning in his life. Uncompromising as he pursued a personal and public life, Sir Sidney aimed to honor his upbringing and the invaluable legacy of his parents. Just a few years after his introduction to indoor plumbing and the automobile, Poitier broke racial barrier after racial barrier to launch a pioneering acting career. Committed to the notion that what one does for a living shows who one is, Poitier chose to play forceful and affecting characters who said something positive, useful, and lasting about the human condition. Poitier explores the nature of sacrifice and commitment, price and humility, rage and forgiveness, and paying the price for artistic integrity. What emerges is a picture of a man in the face of limits; his own as well as the world's. The translation in complicated Chinese (ISBN 9570484969) of this autobiography was done by Fongfong Olivia Wei, and published by Triumph Publishing Company in Taipei, Taiwan, in the year 2002.
9179175	/m/027_btv	Fatherland	Robert Harris	1992-05-07	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The story begins in Nazi Germany, the Third Reich in April 1964, in the week leading up to Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday. The plot follows detective Xavier March, an investigator working for the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), as he investigates the suspicious death of a high-ranking Nazi, Josef Buhler, in the Havel, on the outskirts of Berlin. As March uncovers more details he realises that he is caught up in a political scandal involving senior Nazi Party officials, who are apparently being systematically murdered under staged circumstances. In fact, as soon as the body is identified, the Gestapo claims jurisdiction and orders the Kripo to close its investigation. March meets with 'Charlie' Maguire, a female American journalist who is also determined to investigate the case. They both travel to Zürich to investigate the private Swiss bank account of one of the murdered officials. Ultimately, the two uncover the horrific truth behind the staged murders. The Gestapo is eliminating the remaining officials who planned the Holocaust (of which the German people are not generally aware) at the Wannsee Conference of 1942. This is being done in order to safeguard an upcoming meeting of Hitler and President Joseph P. Kennedy by ensuring that the crimes of the Nazi regime are not revealed. Maguire heads for neutral Switzerland with the evidence, hoping to expose it to the world. March, however, is denounced by his ten-year-old son and apprehended by the Gestapo. In the cellars of Gestapo headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, March is tortured but does not reveal the location of Maguire. Kripo Chief Artur Nebe stages a rescue, intending to track March as he meets with Maguire at their rendezvous in Waldshut-Tiengen on the Swiss/German border. March realises what is happening and heads for Auschwitz, leading the authorities in the wrong direction. The Gestapo catches up with March at the unmarked site of Auschwitz's completely dismantled extermination camp. Knowing that Maguire has had time to cross the border into Switzerland, March searches for some sign that the death camp was real. As the Gestapo agents close in on him, March uncovers bricks in the undergrowth. Satisfied, he pulls out his gun while leaving the readers to draw their own conclusions.
9180020	/m/027_cvj	They Shoot Horses, Don't They?	Horace McCoy	1935	{"/m/02m4t": "Existentialism"}	 The story follows the narrator, Robert Syverten, a naive young man from Hollywood who dreams of being a film director. The story begins with Robert's sentencing for murder. He confesses that he "killed her," and that he doesn't "have a leg to stand on." He is advised to beg for mercy from the Court. The story of his relationship with the girl he killed, Gloria Beatty, is thereafter intercut after every few chapters with short excerpts from the judge's sentencing. The excerpts of the judge's words are written in larger and larger type until the last page of the book concludes with the words written in small print: "And may God have mercy on your soul". Robert meets Gloria on a morning when they have both failed to get parts as extras. She talks him into participating in a marathon dance contest. Like Robert, she is struggling to find work in Hollywood, and believes the contest may be a way to get noticed by studio producers or movie stars. Gloria and Robert enter the dance contest, which is held at a large amusement pier on the beach, somewhere near Hollywood. The contests are long and grueling affairs, taking place over several weeks. Contestants dance for an hour and fifty minutes, then receive a ten minute break. One hundred and forty four couples start the contest. Robert and Gloria, like most of the contestants, are young, jobless, and drawn as much by the free food as by the $1,000 prize money. From the start, Gloria tells Robert that she wishes she were dead, a point she repeats in most of their conversations. Her parents are dead. She ran away to Dallas from a farm in West Texas where her uncle always made passes at her. In Dallas, she tried to commit suicide, then ran away to Hollywood with dreams of being in movies, but is finding only rejection. Robert considers her plain-looking and unlikely to find work as an actress. She tells Robert frequently that she doesn't have the courage to kill herself. The promoters of the contest try various schemes to increase attendance. They publicize the arrest of a contestant for murder. Every evening, they stage an elimination race, called a derby, in which the couples speed-walk around a track, the last-place couple being disqualified. The promoters stage a marriage of two contestants, who then lose a derby and should be eliminated. Instead, the promoters disqualify another couple. As the dance goes on, into the second and third week, the crowds grow larger. Newspapers cover the contest. Some couples receive sponsorships from local businesses, usually in the form of clothes. Hollywood personalities arrive to watch and are announced by the promoters. Gloria goads Robert into speaking with a famous director he recognizes in the crowd. A woman named Mrs. Layden attends the contest regularly and tells Robert that he and Gloria are her favorite couple. She later gets Robert and Gloria a sponsorship. As the contest grinds on, couples break down physically and drop out. Robert is consumed with claustrophobia and a desire to get outside into the sun. Gloria is tiring and having difficulty walking for the derby without Robert's help. Gloria is revealed throughout as angry, bitter and outspoken. She curses another male contestant because he won't allow his pregnant partner to get an abortion. Robert learns indirectly that Gloria is having sex with one of the promoters, presumably to gain an advantage in the event the fix should be put in again. When Robert tells her of his suspicions, Gloria tells him she doesn't feel she is worthy of doing anything else. When two elderly women from the local morals society threaten the promoters with shutting down the dance, Gloria is asked to witness the meeting and curses the women as spoiled, interfering hypocrites. After 879 hours of dancing and with 20 couples remaining, the contest is shut down when there is a murder at the dance hall's bar. A stray bullet from the shooting hits and kills Mrs. Layden. The promoters decide to give the remaining dancers $50 each for their efforts. Robert and Gloria go outside for the first time in five weeks and sit on the pier looking at the ocean. Gloria takes a pistol out of her bag and asks Robert to shoot her, which he does. He remembers when he was young, and his grandfather shot the beloved family horse, which had broken its leg. The police ask Robert why he shot Gloria, and he answers, "Because she asked me to." The policeman persists. Robert answers, "They shoot horses, don't they?"
9186044	/m/05z2wk9	The Story of the Little Mole Who Went In Search Of Whodunit	Werner Holzwarth		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A mole who is just getting out of his hole gets pooped on his head by an unidentified animal; he is certain that it doesn't belong to him and sets out on a mission to discover whom it does belong to. The animals he runs into all poop to show what theirs looks like, and finally the mole receives some assistance from some flies who help him identify whodunit: the butcher's dog. The mole exacts his revenge by pooping on the dog's head, and returns to his hole happily.
9187725	/m/027_m_6	Cut	Patricia McCormick	2000-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Fifteen-year-old Callie isn't speaking to anybody, not even to her therapist at Sea Pines (nicknamed "Sick Minds"), the residential treatment facility where her parents and doctor sent her after discovering that she self-mutilates. At some point, Callie does begin speaking to her therapist/doctor, and she helps Callie understand why she self-harms. As her story unfolds, Callie reluctantly becomes involved with the other "guests" at Sea Pines—finding her voice and confronting the trauma that triggered her behavior. Callie gets better with the help of Sydney (her roommate), Claire, Debbie, Becca, Tara, Amanda, and Tiffany. Only with the loving support of her family does she learn why she cuts herself.
9187881	/m/027_n1m	The Witches and the Grinnygog			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When an ancient English church is moved to a new site, one stone – a strange statue, the Grinnygog of the title – is found to be missing. Its accidental rediscovery (by a woman who, not realising its significance, gives it to her elderly father as a pseudo garden gnome) coincides with the arrival in the same town of three eccentric old women who seem to be looking for something lost or hidden many years before, and a nervous, "other-worldly" child. The townsfolk find themselves looking into their collective past but it takes a group of children to put the pieces of the puzzle together and make amends for an ancient injustice. The story is notable in modern popular culture for its portrayal of witches as something other than evil old hags.
9190181	/m/027_q93	World's End			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jack 'Church' Churchill – a man still tormented by the suicide of his girlfriend Marianne two years previously – and Ruth Gallagher – a lawyer increasingly disillusioned with the way her life has turned out – are brought together early one winter morning by a shared experience: walking by the Thames, they witness a horrific attack. A giant of a man with a face that runs like water attacks a smaller man (Maurice Gibbons) underneath Albert Bridge, and the experience is so horrific that it causes them both to pass out. When Church and Ruth awake, the small man is dead, and the police are reluctant to view the crime as anything other than a simple mugging. While Ruth is suspended from work, Church discovers that similar odd events are happening all across Britain, and finds a mysterious message from a woman called Laura who claims to know how all these events are linked. Their memories fractured by the experience, Church and Ruth decide to undergo hypnotic regression in an attempt to find out what happened to them; this is only a partial success as the experience is so horrific it terrifies them both, unlocking the memory of the true horror of what they witnessed. Ruth tracks down Maurice's widow and they discover that prior to his death he visited both the local vicar and a UFO enthusiast. Meanwhile, Jack's correspondence with Laura takes an intriguing turn when she mentions Marianne in one of her E-Mails. While Ruth visits the vicar and discovers that Maurice was concerned about demonic possession, Church's visit to the UFO enthusiast frustrates him. Deeper investigation leads them to discover that Maurice was frequently visiting a bedridden man named Kraicow, who claims that there are demons among us and that everyone is in danger. He gives Church and Ruth the key to his studio, where they discover a sculpture of the same horror that they saw under Albert Bridge. Church and Ruth decide to visit Laura to see what information she has, Church experiencing a series of odd occurrences which make reference to 'one of five'. On the way to Bristol, they stop off at a service station for a break, but on a visit to the toilet Ruth is attacked by one of the creatures and almost taken – rescued only by the intervention of an ageing hippie named Tom, who aids Church in her rescue and their eventual escape. On the drive away, Church is contacted by a friend who informs him that his apartment has been gutted by a mysterious fire. As they continue to drive towards Bristol, their journey takes a horrifying turn – unbelievably, a dragon, referred to by Tom as a Fabulous Beast, attacks the M4, incinerating several vehicles and causing untold damage to many more. Church, Ruth and Tom barely escape, but the Beast follows them as they continue their journey, only abandoning the hunt when Tom ferries them into the ancient stones of Stonehenge – which, according to Tom, offers them protection. They make camp, and Tom explains that once, long ago, the world was full of the creatures of myth and legend. For some reason, they all abandoned this world, but now they are returning in full force. He also explains the secret of Stonehenge: a nexus point of a mysterious energy called the Blue Fire, the lifeblood of the planet, it offers strength and protection. Church and Ruth are startled to learn that they have developed the ability to see this Blue Fire. Later, ignoring Tom's warnings not to set foot outside the stone circle, Church follows a vision of Marianne, and finds a gift – a black rose, called the Roisin Dubh. The next morning, they make their way to Salisbury in order to prepare for their meeting with Laura the next day. Splitting up to allow themselves some time to recuperate, both Church and Ruth have odd experiences – Church is stalked by a giant black dog, while Ruth has an encounter with a being who appears as both an old woman, a woman her own age, and a teenage girl, imploring her to find 'him' and then to 'join them'. Tom, attempting to scout the land, is attacked by a being known as a Baobhan Sith, and barely escapes with his life. When they reunite, he is horrified to learn of the black dog – known as Black Shuck, it is the vanguard of the Wild Hunt. Their evening takes a merrier turn when they are joined by a rogue calling himself Callow, who shares several drinks with them and is intrigued by Church's assertion that the world is changing. Having left him in the hotel bar, however, they have a terrifying night in which the Baobhan Sith invade the hotel room and search for them. The next day, they make their meeting with Laura, who explains that she was walking near an industrial estate when she was pulled to 'somewhere else' and told that the world was going to change forever. She offers to take them to the place it happened. When they arrive, Church and Laura are pulled into a hole in the air; no sooner have they disappeared than Ruth and Tom find themselves surrounded by the same creatures that tried to take Ruth at the service station. In their attempts to escape, Ruth and Tom become separated; Ruth's last glimpse of Tom is as he limps towards her, seconds before an entire warehouse is destroyed by an explosion caused by the lorry they were trying to escape in. Meanwhile, Church finds himself in what appears to be a tower, floating in space. As he makes his way through its depths, he opens a door and finds his childhood bedroom – he watches as a woman sits on his bed and greets his younger self as Brother of Dragons, and suddenly remembers the dreams which plagued him as a child. He also finds a door which opens on a vision of him sitting on a hillside, holding an ornate sword and watching as a city that looks like London burns, and one which shows him lying dead in a stream. He eventually encounters a beautiful, otherworldly woman, who explains that Church has been brought to the Watchtower, and that her people – the Golden Ones – used to live on Earth, but after a terrible war with the Night Walkers – the creatures that are hunting Church and Ruth – they retreated to a place called the Far Lands in accordance with a 'Covenant' which removed all magic from our world – but the Night Walkers recently unleashed something called a Wish-Hex which scattered or tainted the Golden Ones, before returning to our world. She names Church as one of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, and implores him to gather the five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons and find four mystical items – a stone, a sword, a spear and a cauldron – which will return her people to power and help them fight the Night Walkers, gifting him with a lantern called the Wayfinder that will help point him to the objects he seeks. Laura arrives, and Church realises that she led him here on purpose, under the orders of the mysterious woman, who tells him that he will learn her name in time. Church and Laura return through the hole in the air, and find the industrial estate in ruins in the aftermath of Ruth and Tom's escape attempt. They reunite with Ruth, and reluctantly leave without Tom, who appears to have vanished. Church deduces that Ruth and Laura are both Sisters of Dragons, and they follow the Wayfinder to their next destination. The Wayfinder leads them to Avebury, where they encounter a man called the Bone Inspector, who tells them that it is his job to guard the old places of the land, keeping their secrets hidden. Although he appears to believe that they are Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, he seems reluctant to help them – but after seeing a man-shaped murder of crows on the horizon, he helps them to unlock the protections around the land and leads them into a cave in the depths of Avebury, where they discover a lake of the Blue Fire, in which lies a sleeping Fabulous Beast. Laura makes her way across the lake, alone – the Bone Inspector warns that the Beast will only allow one person to cross – and after passing a test which traps her in an enclosed space, Laura discovers a smooth, polished Stone. She returns to the others, and they are surprised to discover that while Church sees it as a lump of rock, Ruth instead sees a diamond. The Bone Inspector explains that the items are too powerful to hold a form, and that their minds instead see whatever they want to. He leads them out of the cave – using a different exit to bypass the Night Walkers – and leaves them to continue on their journey alone, telling them that there are other places which need him more. Their journey is interrupted once again when the car fails. A local mechanic tells them that it's been happening often recently – cars dying for no reason then suddenly starting again. Science is failing as magic returns to the world. Church, Ruth and Laura set up camp nearby while they wait for the car to be fixed, and Church meets a young girl named Marianne, who seems older than her years and helps him to gather some wood. That night, the trio are disturbed when the Stone retrieved from Avebury screams when touched by Ruth – the woman in the Watchtower told Church that it would react to the 'true king of the land'. Shortly afterwards, Ruth, reacting on instinct, walks alone into the woods, where she finds the woman from Salisbury, who once again begs her to find 'him' and then join them as their 'champion'. Although Ruth is scared and disturbed by the conversation, the woman gifts her with an owl, telling Ruth that it will act as her 'familiar' – a word which disturbs Ruth with its various connotations. The next morning, they retrieve the car, but are stopped by Marianne's hysterical father – she has been living with a blood clot on her brain for several years and collapsed that morning while preparing to bring them milk. They rush her to the local hospital, but shortly after she enters the operating theatre, another of the blackouts strikes, cutting power to the hospital. Marianne, filled with light, wakes – despite being halfway through surgery – and walks among the cancer ward, healing the entire ward before collapsing, dead. Although her sacrifice gives Church the realisation that there is good magic as well as bad, he still takes her loss badly – the devastating effect of the power cut on the hospital serving as a reminder of what's truly at stake. They continue their journey, stopping at a service station – but while they're there, Ruth and Laura encounter Black Shuck in the car park, and are nearly killed, but saved at the last moment by an owl which appears from nowhere and gives them enough time to run into the services. Chased by the dog, they grab Church and lock themselves into the kitchen, where they spend a terrifying night listening to the sounds of the Wild Hunt arriving outside, but the Hunt is forced away at sunrise, allowing them to continue – but they discover that the car has been ransacked in the night. Someone has been searching for the Stone. They continue driving, accompanied the whole way by an owl, before deciding to stop in the midst of a storm at an inn called The Green Man, run by a gay couple who were forced out of Leeds by homophobic Christian neighbours. They spend a pleasant evening there, but are punished for their reticence when the Wild Hunt attacks the pub in full force, laying waste to the drinkers as they leave. Realising that it's their fault the Hunt has attacked, Church, Laura and Ruth determine to distract it – Church escaping on a dirt bike while Ruth and Laura make a run for the car. Church is pursued across the moors by the Hunt, and manages to evade them for a while, but eventually his luck runs out and he plummets into a mineshaft. He wakes much later to find that he has been captured by the Night Walkers, who have infested the area under the moors. He is soon joined by a Londoner called Ryan Veitch, who has been held captive for the last week. Veitch is covered in tattoos, visual references to vibrant dreams Veitch has suffered from since childhood. Many of the images speak to Church – particularly one of the Watchtower – and he recognises Veitch as a Brother of Dragons. He fills Veitch in on the current situation, but they are soon interrupted by a thing called Calatin – a Night Walker who is much more beautiful than the others, and much more dangerous. He tortures Church for information on the Stone, but is furious when Church reveals nothing. Church and Veitch are later joined by Tom, who was captured by the Night Walkers shortly after the explosion at the industrial estate and has been held here ever since. He names the Night Walkers as Fomorii, and seems as contemptuous of the Golden Ones – also called the Tuatha dé Danann – as he is of the Night Walkers – partially explained by his revelation that as a young man, he visited the Far Lands, and was horrified by what he found there. He also warns them that Calatin isn't all that's after them – the crow-man, called Mollecht, is also striving to destroy them. Soon after, Church is visited once again by the woman from the Watchtower, who admonishes him for allowing himself to be caught and the Wayfinder taken from him, but offers her assistance by using her power to unlock every door before Church. He wakes Veitch and Tom and they make their escape, stealing back the Wayfinder as they go, and also discovering several barrels filled with a hideous black fluid, and, climbing to safety, wrenching the ladder that helps their escape from the wall to ensure that the Fomorii can't follow, before following the light of the Wayfinder across Dartmoor. Ruth and Laura, meanwhile, escape in the car, certain that Church is dead, but as they drive, they notice a van on the side of the road. Something instinctive urges them to stop, and they find that the van is driven by an Indian man named Shavi, who they recognise instantly as a Brother of Dragons. He tells them that he has had vivid dreams all his life, and recently one urged him to make his way to this place. As they finish repairs on his van, the Wild Hunt – denied their quarry of Church – appears on the horizon, and they make their escape in Shavi's van, which has several turbo modifications. Although they make good headway, the Hunt has soon caught up to them, ripping the back off the van and nearly killing Laura, but they manage to hold the Hunt off long enough to be saved by the dawn. As the Hunt falls away, they follow Ruth's owl, which leads them to Glastonbury, where they find a peaceful, restful atmosphere that puts them instantly at ease. Resting, they discover that Shavi comes from a Muslim family, but his interest in other religions led to him being forced from the family home. Bisexual, he suffered a tragic loss two years ago – leaving a gay club in London, his boyfriend was brutally murdered. Later that day, they make camp and, although Ruth goes to sleep, Laura and Shavi stay awake and ingest some psychedelic mushrooms, prompting Laura to reveal her darkest secret to Shavi – her fundamentalist mother scarred the words 'Jesus loves you' into Laura's back, and in her desperation to escape, Laura accidentally murdered her mother. The revelation creates a bond between the two, and they sleep together. Church, Veitch and Tom make their way across the moors, as they go encountering the worst of what the new word has to offer – a desolate farmhouse inhabited by a desperate man who is being mentally tortured by some kind of gremlin. They stay to investigate, and soon enough the creature begins its torment, but Tom reacts confidently, appearing to have some knowledge of the demon. He fights it with iron, and it appears to recognise him, speaking of his 'royal gift'. While Tom distracts it, offering to 'read its future', Church uses the Wayfinder as a weapon, the blue flame burning within terrifying the creature. Tom orders the thing to leave the farmer alone, and it swears to, but leaves each of them with a well-aimed barb – telling Church 'You will never find out why she died', Veitch 'There is no redemption for murder, and Tom You carry your suffering with you.' They leave the next morning, and Veitch explains the creature's barb – in a bungled building society raid where his brothers convinced him to take part, he panicked and accidentally killed a man. His brothers took the blame and are now in prison because of him. Although Church tries to ask Tom what the creature's comment to him meant, Tom doesn't reply – although he works his mouth as though he's trying. Meanwhile, in Glastonbury, Shavi attempts a communion with the spirits, acting on an instinct which tells him he has the power to talk to them. They reveal that one of the objects the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons are looking for is hidden in Glastonbury, and direct him to the Abbey in a search for more clues. He manages to discern a pointer in the broken tiles, that seem to point to Glastonbury Tor. The shadows also seem to spell something: the words aqua fortis, which Shavi translates to mean 'strong water'. They are approached the following day by a priest, who surmises that they have discovered the message. He introduces himself as James, a member of a group called the Watchmen, a group similar in theory to the Bone Inspectors, but guarding the knowledge of the Church. He helps them to realise they need to take some water from the well to the tor, where he says that the 'Grail' is waiting – which they realise refers to the cauldron that the woman for the Watchtower spoke about. He warns them that where they are going, many dangers await, mentioning in passing that in legend it is spoken of as the home of the leader of the Wild Hunt, but that they must take the water to the tor at first light if they want what they seek.
9191520	/m/027_rlr	Tread Softly in this Place	Brian Cleeve	1972	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A year before the novel opens, Peadar and Matty Power, two elderly bachelor brothers, sold a portion of their land to Norwegian fish farmers. However, they resent no longer being able to use the land in question and, one night, they release the entire stock of fish into the sea. In doing so, they set in train a series of events that lead to tragic consequences. For several years, rumours have been rife in the locality that a major industrial project might be located in Ross. This would be very welcome as there is little local employment there. Now, as news of the act of sabotage at the fish farm spreads through the community, fears grow that subversive elements were behind it and that outside investors will be discouraged. The local policeman, Sergeant McMenamin, suspects that the Powers released the fish. However, as concern among the locals about a Republican plot develops into virtual paranoia, he is pressured into changing the focus of his investigation. He turns his attention to a small band of local extremists known as The Sons of Ireland. Their leader is a young man who, for patriotic reasons, has 'gaelicised' his name from Johnny Conroy to Seagrun Ó Maelchonaire. Several years earlier, Ó Maelchonaire had been part of another Republican group along with a school friend, Michael Carmody. When their activities began to attract police attention, Michael fled to England where he became involved in radical student politics. Now, older and wiser, he has returned to Ross to live a quiet life. He has found a job as a handyman at a local hotel owned by Hubert Kershaw, one of the diminishing number of Protestants still living in Ross. Jenny Kershaw, Hubert's daughter, is in love with Michael and they are developing a relationship, much to her parents' disapproval. The day after the fish were released, Ó Maelchonaire visits Michael at the hotel to persuade him to join The Sons of Ireland. Michael refuses and the two part on bad terms. Sergeant McMenamin arrests Michael on suspicion of involvement in the fish release. Anxious to establish his credentials as a serious Republican, Ó Maelchonaire and his followers stage an attack on the local gaol in order to free Michael. They take the reluctant escapee to a hiding place in a local wood. As darkness falls, it is clear that Ó Maelchonaire has no idea what to do next and everyone's nerves become fraught. In the late evening, Sir Philip Eagan, a local Protestant aristocrat, stumbles upon the small group while out walking his dog. Thinking that the police have found them, Ó Maelchonaire fires his gun into the darkness, mortally wounding Sir Philip. Michael manages to escape and makes his way to the hotel and Jenny's room. He tells her what has happened and explains that he must flee Ireland. In the final chapter, a year has passed, and we learn how the events of those few days have affected all involved. Michael is living in Paris and earning a living as a folk-singer. Ó Maelchonaire is dead, shot by a British soldier on the streets of Belfast. The hotel has been sold to Benedict Mulcahy, a local politician and Government minister. Sir Philip Eagan's estate has been turned into a stud farm.
9195219	/m/027_w7r	The Scold's Bridle	Minette Walters	1994-05-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Mathilda Gillespie, an eccentric recluse known for her incredible meanness of nature, is found dead in her bathtub, her wrists slashed and her head locked inside a so-called 'scold's bridle', a rusted cage built with tongue clamps which was used as a torture device throughout the middle ages. The dead woman's only friend, Dr. Sarah Blakeney, becomes prime suspect in her murder after police discover that she's been left a great deal of money in the will. To clear her name, Sarah delves deep into Mathilda's mysterious past, and subsequently unravels an intricate web of greed, abuse and depravity.
9195440	/m/027_wld	The Echo	Minette Walters	1997-02-21	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Homeless man Billy Blake dies of starvation inside wealthy architect Amanda Powell's garage, leading her into a strange obsession with discovering how he came to be there and why he didn't call for help. Her inquiries lead her to journalist Michael Deacon, who slowly becomes suspicious of Amanda's motives and the fact that she only became rich following her husband's death.
9195709	/m/027_wz3	The Tinder Box	Minette Walters		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Following the savage murders of Lavinia Fanshaw and her personal nurse, Dorothy Jenkins, in the small Hampshire village of Sowerbridge, Irish labourer Patrick O'Riordian is arrested for the crime, stirring up violent racial hatred from the other residents against his family. Friend and neighbour Siobhan Lavenham suspects that Patrick was the victim of an already prejudiced investigation, and defies her community so she can prove him innocent. However, after learning of some terrible secret's from the O'Riordian's past, she begins to question her loyalties.
9195820	/m/027_x2m	The Shape of Snakes	Minette Walters	2000-10-20	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 1978, a black woman known as 'Mad Annie' by her neighbours was found dead in a west London gutter, her body discovered by Mrs. Ranelagh who, despite supposedly not knowing the dead woman, spends the next twenty years trying to convince the police that she was murdered. However, those once familiar with Annie despised her as a mean old eccentric and animal abuser, whilst Ranelagh's husband seemingly disdains any mention of the case.
9196222	/m/027_xfz	Disordered Minds	Minette Walters	2003-11-07	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In 1970 Harold Stump, a mentally challenged young man, was arrested for the murder of his grandmother - the only person who ever understood him - based on scant evidence and a retracted confession; three years later, having been found guilty by a jury, he kills himself in prison. However, Jonathan Hughes, an anthropologist specialising in social stereotypes, decides to re-examine the case and, in doing so, uncovers a plethora of dark secrets that could lead him into a confrontation with a psychotic killer.
9196305	/m/027_xkd	The Devil's Feather	Minette Walters	2005-09-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Connie Burns is a British-Zimbabwean journalist working as a war correspondent for the Reuters agency. While stationed in Sierra Leone in 2002 she reports on the case of five women who have been brutally murdered. Burns suspects a British mercenary, who is known throughout the expatriate community for his brutality and violence. She encounters the mercenary again two years later while based in Baghdad to cover the Iraq conflict. She begins to make discrete enquiries about him, but is frightened off by a series of incidents in which her hotel room is repeatedly ransacked. Deciding to return to the United Kingdom, Burns is kidnapped on her way to the airport, but released three days later. Upon her release, Burns returns to England, avoiding reporters (including her former Reuters colleagues) who are keen to hear about her ordeal. Leasing a remote house on the Dorset coast she sets about trying to guard her privacy and her security. But escaping her past proves to be more difficult. She befriends a loal woman named Jess Derbyshire, a reclusive woman who has isolated herself from her community following a family tragedy. Seeing parallels between herself and Jess, Burns borrows from the other woman's strength and makes the hazardous decision to take on her adversary for a third time.
9196408	/m/027_xql	Chickenfeed	Minette Walters	2006-03-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Based on the real life case of Elsie Cameron, a pregnant woman supposedly killed by her boyfriend, chicken farmer Norman Thorne, who was hanged for the murder in 1924, Walters re-creates the events leading up to the crime and writes from the perspective of both Elsie and Norman, as their relationship slowly turns sour and Norman yearns to be free from his former lover.
9196819	/m/027_y61	The Dragon and The George	Gordon R. Dickson	1976	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book tells the story of Jim Eckert, who is whisked from this world into an alternate world where magic is real and deadly. There he finds himself in the body of the dragon Gorbash, and must learn to deal with a dragon's-eye view of the world. He must also deal with both the friends and foes that Gorbash has already made. In this world, dragons universally refer to humans as "georges," based upon the past experience of St. George with one of their kind; hence the title. Jim is on a quest to rescue his fiancee, Angie, who had preceded him in transportation to the magical world, but is being held hostage by Dark Powers. On the way, Jim and his companions must fight a band of "georges" and the rogue dragon Bryagh, who have sold their services to the Dark Powers and their creatures. The Dark Powers are ultimately planning an attack upon England (and eventually the entire world). Jim must also realize that the world to which he has been transported is real, not simply a game, and that what he does may have major effects, for good or ill, on the people of that world. At the end of the book, Jim (or Sir James, as he has come to be called in the alternate world) regains his human form and must decide whether to remain in the alternate world or return to our world and the life of an underpaid junior academic.
9197310	/m/027_ykd	The Dragon Knight	Gordon R. Dickson	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jim and Angie are adjusting to their new life within this parallel dimensional version of 14-century medieval England or as well as any 20-century persons might do in a 14-century medieval environment. Jim, the now Sir James, Baron of Malencontri et Riveroak is making an attempt at being a good English Lord, however, fate is conspiring against him and will set him on an adventure to recover the Prince of England who is being held captive in France. Little does Jim know that he'll be going up against the interests of the "Dark Powers" who are already at work to thwart Jim's mission. This will cumulate with Jim squaring off against the evil and powerful sorcerer Malvinne.
9199550	/m/027__yt	The 6th Target	James Patterson	2007-05-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When a horrifying attack leaves one of the four members of the Women's Murder Club struggling for her life, the others fight to keep a madman behind bars before anyone else is hurt. And Lindsay Boxer and her new partner in the San Francisco police department run flat-out to stop a series of kidnappings that has electrified the city: children are being plucked off the streets together with their nannies - but the kidnappers aren't demanding ransom. Amid uncertainty and rising panic, Lindsay juggles the possibility of a new love with an unsolvable investigation, and the knowledge that one member of the club could be on the brink of death. And just when everything appears momentarily under control, the case takes a terrifying turn, putting an entire city in lethal danger. Lindsay must make a choice she never dreamed she'd face—with no certainty that either outcome has more than a prayer of success.
9199877	/m/02800b5	Everyone Worth Knowing	Lauren Weisberger	2005	{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Shaken by the news that her best friend Penelope has gotten engaged to Avery, who neither she nor Penelope's other friends think is right for her, Bette Robinson suddenly quits her job at UBS, the investment banking firm where she has worked in the five years since she and Penelope graduated from Emory. However, she does little to find a new direction in life until her uncle Will, an aging nationally syndicated entertainment columnist, introduces her to event planner, Kelly. Shortly thereafter, Bette finds herself working for Kelly's firm, Kelly & Co., planning parties, eating and drinking at the city's most fashionable night spots ... and becoming a regular subject of a popular online gossip column, whose anonymous author seems determined to link her romantically to wealthy playboy Phillip Weston. While she does find Phillip somewhat attractive, much like the heroines of the romance novels she secretly indulges in, and the association becomes of great benefit to her in her new job, she is later drawn to Sammy, a bouncer at Bungalow 8 who turns out to be from her hometown of Poughkeepsie and harbors ambitions of being a chef. The two connect on a trip to Istanbul, and Sammy's culinary skills impress Bette's parents, former 1960s radicals, on a Thanksgiving trip back to Poughkeepsie. But he, too, is tied to a wealthy socialite, and dreams of escaping the high life to open a small restaurant. Bette, meanwhile, finds herself growing distant from Penelope and her other friends, and must choose between the person she once was and the one she is becoming.
9204350	/m/02805m1	I Know What You Did Last Wednesday	Anthony Horowitz	2003-01-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Tim Diamond receives a letter from his old school friend, the millionaire Rory McDougal. It invites him to the remote Crocodile Island, off the coast of Scotland, for a high school reunion, promising him £1000 if he attends. Nick invites himself along. There they meet Sylvie Binns, Janet Rhodes, Libby Goldman, Brenda Blake, Mark Tyler and Eric Draper, all of Tim's old classmates except for the popular Johnny Nadler. They are taken over to Crocodile Island by Captain Horatio Randle, on his small boat named the Silver Medal. He says he'll be back in a week. Upon arriving on the island, they find Rory dead, cut to pieces with a sword. With the boat not returning for three days, the phones in the house gone, and all mobile phones signal less, the horrified group is trapped in the middle of a murder mystery. Later in the same day Sylvie is poisoned by a cyanide-laced chocolate bar in her room, and during the night Janet Rhodes is stabbed by a model Eiffel Tower. During the night Nick sees a Skull mask outside his room, but a few moments later it is gone. Brenda also claims to have seen it. The remaining guests proceed to search the island, but discover no one. Paranoid, they begin to distrust each other. Before long Libby Goldman is crushed by a heavy globe when she goes outside. Nick finds out that the hate in the school disliked each other. Tim once broke three of Mark's fingers with a conker, and on the last day of term Eric Draper was thrown into the canel by the other students and had to spend six months in hospital due to the pollution. With just five of the group left, they agree to stay in the hall and watch each other. Nick points out that everybody came first in a subject at school and all the people who have been killed have been killed in a way that shows that person's subject. The lights go out suddenly, and when they come back on, Brenda Blake is dead, hit on the head by an organ pipe, and Eric Draper has been shot by an old-fashioned pistol, which lies smoking on the floor. Mark Tyler is missing, and Tim claims he always thought he was the Killer, but the brothers find him outside, impaled by a javelin. The next day Nick works out who the Killer is, but Tim becomes paranoid and accuses Nick as the murderer and runs for his life towards the cliffs. As an explosion causes the cliff edge to collapse beneath him, he falls down towards a bed of sharply pointed rock "needles", but Nick manages to pull him back just in time. Captain Randle arrives, and Nick accuses him of being the missing classmate Johnny Nadler and the perpetrator of the murders. He uses the fact that 'Randle' is an anagran of Nadler and that 'The Silver Medal' was because he had always come second. He admits the crimes, explaining his motive: he was always in second place, originally at school, where he came second in all subjects, and then in life, second place with patents, in job interviews and so on. He traces it back to his time at school, and set up cunning traps to kill all his classmates appropriately. Rory, 1st in Maths, was "divided"; Sylvie, 1st in Chemistry was poisoned; Janet, 1st in French was stabbed with the French icon, the Eiffel Tower; Libby, 1st in Geography was killed by a model globe; Brenda, 1st in Music was killed by an organ pipe; Eric, 1st in History, was shot by an old pistol, Mark, 1st in Sport, was impaled by a javelin; and Tim, 1st in Needlework, should die on the rock needles. Johnny is about to kill them both, and Tim rolls of the Cliff but then in the nick of time Eric Draper, who survived the shot, hits him with a blunderbuss. It is then revealed Tim was caught in a gorse bush and survived. The Diamond brothers, Eric and a well tied up Johnny sail the ship back to the mainland, having radioed the police to pick up Johnny. Tim apologizes for suspecting Nick, who forgives him. Tim then says he can't sit down, as the Gorse bush means his bottom is full of needles.
9207198	/m/0280920	A Escrava Isaura	Bernardo Guimarães		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Isaura, daughter of a Portuguese worker and a freed black woman, is an enslaved girl that endured hard times before she was freed and finally married her star-crossed lover, Álvaro. Meanwhile she suffered greatly at the hands of Leôncio Almeida, the landlord of a plantation and main antagonist in the plot, who wanted to make her a concubine. She even became briefly engaged to the humpback dwarf Melchior and almost married him to avoid prostitution, before Álvaro came in her aid.
9207350	/m/02809bm	Menino de engenho	José Lins do Rego			 Carlos Melo, or Carlinhos, narrates in first person, in a nostalgic manner, the childhood spent in the plantation Santa Rosa. When his father was sent to a mental house after killing his mother, Carlinhos moved from Recife to Santa Rosa, in the plantation that belonged to his grandfather, Coronel José Paulino. Carlinhos' childhood was divided between "good" and "evil": in the company of his aunt his behavior was more gentle (the "good"); living with his cousins, he was extroverted and libertine (the "evil"). Living in the plantation, Carlinhos became familiar with the social inequalities between the plantation masters and their employees; in addition, he almost joined the Cangaço (he even asked the bandit Antônio Silvino to let him follow the group). There Carlinhos also came to know love, first with his cousin Lili, who died as a child and later with another cousin, Maria Clara, who lived in Recife and spent a few days visiting the plantation. Maria Clara was a little older than Carlinhos and told him about all the fun and new things that happened in the city. But the romance didn't last long, as the cousin went back to Recife. Soon after, Carlinhos lost his "second mother": his aunt Maria got married and the boy was left to the care of his cold and strict aunt Sinhazinha. However, aunt Sinhazinha's austerity made Carlinhos even more libertine: the boy, only twelve years old, caught gonorrhea. His relatives then decided to "set him straight" by sending him to school. pt:Menino de Engenho
9210146	/m/0280d7t	The Paper Bag Princess	Robert Munsch	1981	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Princess Elizabeth plans on marrying Prince Ronald, who is practically perfect. However, a dragon arrives who destroys her kingdom, kidnaps Ronald, and burns all her clothes so that she has no choice but to wear a paper bag. Elizabeth follows the dragon and Ronald, and seeking to rescue her fiancé, challenges the dragon to burn forests with fire and to fly around the world. The dragon completes the tasks but after flying around the world a second time becomes tired and falls asleep. Elizabeth rescues Ronald, who is ungrateful and tells her to return when she looks more like a princess. Elizabeth realizes that she is better off without Ronald and sets off into the sunset to live her own life.
9210275	/m/0280dgp	Afternoon Men	Anthony Powell		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Afternoon Men is divided into three sections: "Montage," "Perihelion," and "Palindrome." In the first, we are introduced to Atwater and his circle of acquaintances. We are also given a comically restrained view of the trials and tribulations of a museum clerk’s working day. In the middle section, Atwater seems to make headway with his courtship of Susan Nunnery. Highlights in this section include the mechanical seduction of Lola, and the attendance of a boxing match by Atwater and Susan. The final section centers on a retreat to the country by a number of the principals during which several unexpected physical consummations occur and much humour is drawn from the apparent absurdity of many conventions of polite manners and proper behaviour. The novel ends in a kind of ricorso leaving Atwater in more or less the same emotional state in which he began, as suggested by the subtitle, “Palindrome.” All information in this article has been vetted by members of The Anthony Powell Society (http://www.anthonypowell.org).
9210469	/m/0280dqy	From a View to a Death	Anthony Powell			 Arthur Zouch, portrait painter and self-declared "superman," comes to stay at Passenger Court, ostensibly to paint the portrait of the younger Passenger daughter, Mary, but in no small part on the lookout for any opportunity he can find to improve either his social, financial, or sexual satisfaction. At Passenger court, he finds opportunity for all three, but he also finds unanticipated conflict in the person of Vernon Passenger, also a self-proclaimed "superman." Meanwhile, the neighboring Fosdick family – the Major, his sons Torquil and Jasper – carry on a seemingly perpetual feud with the Passengers that is as often characterized by displays of better manners and more proper etiquette as it is by bad temper and argument. Joanna Brandon, a local young woman, further complicates the lives of several of the principals; she may be Powell’s most sensitively rendered female character. The novel moves through ten chapters toward an inescapable denouement, though never tipping its hand as to precisely how the foreshadowing of the title shall be brought to fruition. The parallel plots (at times almost Lear-like in the development of the neighbouring families) reach a double climax from which only one ‘superman’ can emerge.
9210565	/m/0280dvq	Agents and Patients	Anthony Powell			 Blore-Smith, a young Londoner with more money than sense, feels himself to be living a dull life. A chance meeting with Peter Maltravers (an aspiring filmmaker) and Oliver Chipchase (an amateur psychologist) sends Blore-Smith on a voyage, ostensibly of self-discovery, during which he is analyzed by Chipchase and becomes a patron of the arts by funding a Maltravers film. The “two knaves” bring Blore-Smith to art galleries, to restaurants, to Paris—at each stage extracting both money and entertainment from their ‘patient’. Blore-Smith falls in love with Maltravers’ wife, Sarah (a motoring enthusiast), becomes entangled with Mrs Mendoza (Mendie), whose flower shop, la cattleya, evokes Proust, and eventually travels with Maltravers and Chipchase to Berlin, where he observes first-hand the workings of the cinema. A film is being prepared with several different endings, each catering to the self-perception of the nation in which it will be shown. The novel returns to a country estate for its conclusion. The end of Blore-Smith’s saga is ambiguous: perhaps he has gained something valuable from his experiences; perhaps he has not yet reached the point of intellectual development at which he can recognize his gains. The novel remains Burtonesque, clearly showing that the persistent belief that life does have something else to offer, no matter what one may currently have, is the essence of melancholy.
9210661	/m/0280dz4	What's Become of Waring	Anthony Powell			 The novel is narrated by an anonymous publishing firm employee, who is himself working on a book about Stendhal and violence. At a seance, an apparent warning is received that something is wrong with bestselling travel writer, T.T. Waring. Waring, anticipating Thomas Pynchon in his insistence on privacy and anonymity, is soon confirmed dead. Through various efforts to bring out an official life of Waring, many secrets are slowly revealed, especially concerning Waring’s identity and the sources of his travel literature. The inner workings and tensions of the publishing business (in which Powell was himself employed for about a decade) and the assortment of individuals brought together through a shared interest in spiritualism provide many opportunities for developing conflicting personal desires amongst the various characters. The novel ends with a series of comic reversals, not untinged with melancholy, and the narrator’s realization that most of life involves the pursuit of power.
9211949	/m/0280g73	The Driver's Seat	Muriel Spark	1970		 Lise is a spinster, working in an accountancy firm somewhere in Northern Europe, probably Denmark (the location is not explicitly specified). Spark described The Driver's Seat as a 'whydunnit' (and she uses the term in the novel). This is because in the novel's third chapter it is revealed that Lise will be murdered. Hence Spark's novel is an examination, not of what events take place but why they do so. Lise's strangeness and her isolation is mirrored in Spark's detached narrative. It is eventually revealed that Lise has suffered years of illness; her erratic and often confrontational behaviour and her garishly clashing, provocative clothing continually alert the reader of this. Lise travels to a South European city, apparently Naples, ostensibly to meet her illusory boyfriend. But her quest is more complex: it is not merely for acknowledgement, but also annihilation (she admits that I wish my parents had practised birth control) and ultimately the story is about a woman seeking to control her own death. The Driver's Seat is a study in the alienation and isolation of modern life, in which trendy New Age "lifestyles" replace genuine spirituality and in which chaos and absurdity replaces the moral certainty of the God-ordered world. Deprived of these values and existing in a small, sterile, impersonal world (reflected in her blandly expensive, utilitarian flat), Lise is driven to search not for her ideal lover but her ideal death. Spark perverts the traditional fairy tale romance, denying the reader the comfort that the perfect love affair is the antidote to the empty isolation of modern life. In its place she raises a series of thought-provoking, disturbing questions about the nature of female victimisation and empowerment and the debasement of social and spiritual values in modern society.
9214276	/m/0280jng	The Fairy Godmother	Mercedes Lackey	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It is about a young woman named Elena, the daughter of a wealthy gentleman. After the death of her mother, her father married a devious social climber with two daughters of her own. Not long after the marriage, Elena's father dies and her stepmother relegates her into the position of a house servant. She seems to be the perfect Cinderella candidate, except the prince of the land is many years younger than she - he is eleven. Also, she is 21, when most fairy-tale endings for girls normally happen at 16 or 18. One day, Elena's stepmother and stepsisters plan a temporary excursion out of town, for the purpose of ensnaring a new rich husband so they can pay the numerous debts they owe. Left alone in the house, Elena goes to the hiring fair in hopes of finding work as a servant. At the end of the day, a fairy godmother appears and offers to take Elena on as her apprentice. Elena accepts and moves to the godmother's cottage, where she meets the four brownies that help with household duties. The latter half of the book deals with Elena's time as a full-fledged godmother and her problems with turning an arrogant prince named Alexander into a decent person.
9219065	/m/0280nvl	Affinity	Sarah Waters	1999	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Margaret Prior (also called "Peggy" and "Aurora"), an unmarried woman from an upper-class family, visits the Millbank Prison in the 1870s Victorian era England. The protagonist is an overall unhappy person, recovering from her father's death and her subsequent failed suicide attempt and struggling with her lack of power living at home with her over-involved mother despite being almost 30. She becomes a "Lady Visitor" of the prison, hoping to escape her troubles and be a guiding figure in the lives of the female prisoners. As she peers through a flap in the door, entranced by the sight of a young woman with a flower, she is reminded of a Carlo Crivelli painting. Of all her friendships with prisoners, she is most fascinated by this woman, who she learns to be Selina Dawes, medium of spirits.
9225079	/m/0280vtg	The Millstone				 Set in not-yet-quite Swinging London, The Millstone focuses on the life of Rosamund Stacey, an attractive Cambridge graduate who is writing her thesis on early English poetry while living alone in the spacious flat of her parents, who have gone to Africa for a year on a philanthropic mission. While Rosamund is convinced of both her qualities as a literary historian and her Socialist&mdash;and in particular Fabian&mdash;ideals, she is rather reluctant when it comes to sex. To avoid being considered old-fashioned or priggish, she has managed to make her small but intimate circle of friends believe that she is carrying on with two men at the same time whereas in fact she is still a virgin and only enjoys her two male friends' company. Each of the men also thinks that she is sleeping with the other one so neither of them presses her to have sex with him. In a pub Rosamund meets George Matthews, a newsreader for BBC Radio, and at once feels attracted to him although she is quite sure right from the start that he is gay. They end up in her flat and eventually have sex. As George is also under the impression that she has two lovers, Rosamund has no need to hide the fact that this is in fact her first time. Too shy to tell him that she has fallen in love with him, and now believing that he is bisexual, she lets George vanish from her life as quickly as he entered it, in the ensuing months only occasionally listening to his voice on the radio. When she learns that she is pregnant, a whole new world opens up to her. While she decides against telling George or writing to her parents in order not to unnecessarily upset them, she hopes she will get moral support from her sister Beatrice and her husband, who have three small children themselves. However, in a letter to her sister Beatrice expresses her shock and disbelief and urges Rosamund either to have an abortion or to give birth to the baby and put it up for adoption immediately afterwards, and then carry on with her life and academic career as if nothing had happened. After a half-hearted attempt at inducing a miscarriage, she decides to have the baby and be one of the women Bernard Shaw refers to as "women who want children but no husband". Her friends take the news well and without asking too many questions about the identity of the father, who, they secretly assume, must be one of her two lovers. Rosamund, however, stops seeing the two men and focuses on her work and her pregnancy. She finds a true friend in Lydia Reynolds, a young novelist who happily takes her up on her offer to share her flat with her in return for the occasional babysitting job once her child has been born. For the first time in her life Rosamund has to deal with the National Health Service and all its inadequacies. When her daughter is born, she decides to name her Octavia after Octavia Hill. When she is only a few months old, Octavia is found to have a serious condition of the pulmonary artery, and surgery is unavoidable. However, the operation turns out to be successful, and Rosamund is allowed to take her daughter home after weeks of anxiety. Lydia, who is now having an affair with one of Rosamund's former "lovers," still lives with her even after Octavia, just for a few minutes left to her own devices, has crawled into Lydia's room and partly ripped, partly chewed up a major part of the typescript of her new novel. Rosamund's parents are informed about the existence of their grandchild through a letter from Octavia's surgeon, who happens to be an old acquaintance of theirs, but they tactfully decide not to disturb their daughter's new life and stay abroad for another year rather than return for Christmas as planned. The final scene of the novel takes place late at night on Christmas Eve, when Rosamund has to go to an all-night chemist's near her flat to get some medicine for Octavia. There, she has a chance meeting with George, and again invites him up to her flat. Rosamund lies about the age of Octavia, so that George will not suspect that she might be his. Reluctantly, George is persuaded to have a look at the sleeping Octavia, pronounces her a beautiful baby, and leaves again.
9225446	/m/0280wcp	Coroner's Pidgin	Margery Allingham	1945	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Just returned from years overseas on a secret mission, Albert Campion is relaxing in his bath when his servant Magersfontein Lugg and a lady of unmistakably aristocratic bearing appear in his flat carrying the corpse of a woman. At first Campion is unwilling to get involved, but he is forced to bring his powers of detection to bear on the case, and to solve not only the mystery of the murdered woman but also the alarming disappearance of some well-known art treasures. Campion discovers the clue to the mystery by tracing two bottles of a very rare wine.
9225763	/m/0280ww4	The Tiger in the Smoke	Margery Allingham	1952	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jack Havoc, ex-army, jail-breaker and knife artist, is on the loose on the streets of London once again. In the faded squares of shabby houses, in the furtive alleys and darkened pubs, the word is out that he is back in town, more vicious and cunning than ever. It falls to Albert Campion and Inspector Charles Luke to pit their wits against the killer and hunt him down through the city's November smog before it is too late. Havoc's pursuit of a "treasure" leads him from London ("the Smoke") to Normandy. There Havoc discovers that the treasure is not what he thought it was. The book climaxes in his death.
9226587	/m/0280xyk	The Eye of Night			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The narrative concerns the adventures of Jereth, a self-doubting priest, and Hwynn, the young woman who protects the Eye of Night, a jewel that is connected with what appears to be an impending apocalypse. The story is woven with themes of Daoist balance and Christian Resurrection.
9226799	/m/0280y5t	The Beckoning Lady	Margery Allingham	1955	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Campion’s glorious summer in Pontisbright is blighted by death. Amidst the preparations for Minnie and Tonker Cassand’s fabulous summer party a murder is discovered and it falls to Campion to unravel the intricate web of motive, suspicion and deduction with all his imagination and skill.
9227736	/m/0280zdq	The Spear				 The book deals with a neo-Nazi cult in Britain and an international conspiracy which includes a right-wing US general and a sinister arms dealer, and their obsession with and through the occult with resurrecting Heinrich Himmler.
9228597	/m/0280zzm	The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1: The Pox Party	Matthew Tobin Anderson	2006-09-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The greater part of the story is told by a boy named Octavian, who grew up with his mother Cassiopeia, an African princess, in a house full of philosophers and scientists in colonial Boston. Under the watchful eyes of Mr. Gitney, also known as 03-01, Octavian has received a classical education as well as a musical education which has made him into an extremely skilled violinist. Octavian eventually comes to understand the price of his powdered wigs and education: he is not only the "property" of Mr. Gitney, but he is also being used as an experiment to test whether the African race is inferior to the European race. In time, Cassiopeia angers the scientists' benefactor and the Society loses its monetary support. The two are forced to go under the new watchful eye of Richard Sharpe, who cuts Octavian off from his books. It is later revealed that Richard Sharpe works for a group of colonial businessmen, who now fund the house where Octavian is held. These businessmen own slaves, and it is strongly implied that Sharpe is attempting to bias the experiment with Octavian in order to prove that Africans are inferior. He does this by stopping most of Octavian's education and making him work in the house. When the political unrest that would later spur the American Revolution begins to seep into the Gitney household, Gitney decides to move into the countryside outside of Boston, and then hold a Pox Party. Each attendee is infected with the pox, with the hope that under this controlled circumstance they will have only benign cases. Gitney also wants to both weaken and quarantine his slaves when he begins to hear talk of a slave revolt. Cassiopeia, however, is killed by the pox, and after her death is dissected by the scientists in the house. Octavian discovers what the scientists are doing and in his anger flees the house, and ends up in the Colonial Army. Octavian's military adventures are narrated mostly in epistolary form by Private Evidence Goring in letters to his sister Fruition. Octavian is eventually recaptured, and back at the Gitney house he is kept chained and completely alone. When Sharpe and Gitney, as well as his former classics teacher Dr. Trefusis, eventually decide to speak with him, Octavian is furious to discover that, with many of their funds coming from plantation owners in Virginia, they are counting on Octavian to fail, and to prove the "inferiority" of the African race.
9232133	/m/028122n	The Night Watch	Sarah Waters	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Kay Kay Langrish is a woman in her mid-thirties who dresses in trousers and spends her days locked in her room in London, watching her landlord's patients arrive and leave at precisely the same hours every day. She stops to notice an elderly gentleman and his young companion, a boy who seems no older than twenty five. She spends her days watching in this manner, assuming that nobody sees her watching. During a visit with one of her war-time friends, Mickey, it is revealed that Kay is wealthy and her residence in Lavender Hill is both a surprise and a disappointment to Mickey. They vaguely refer to what happened in the war and how difficult it was for Kay to overcome a potential challenge. Mickey is extremely kind and considerate, even when Kay tells her how she spends her evenings since emerging from her self-imposed exile: going to the cinema and watching back-to-back reels. She begins to share an illicit encounter with a drunken woman, but stops herself in fear of Mickey's disapproval and out of disgust for her own self. One night, while waiting for the cinema doors to open, a woman from her past appears and hands to her a gold ring. The exchange takes no longer than a minute or two, but Kay has enough time to notice how thin she has become. Helen Helen and her assistant Viv run a match-making agency for individuals who have either lost their loved one or were disappointed to see how much their sweethearts had changed after the war, and are now in search of someone new. The work itself is not very fulfilling, but their friendship keeps them entertained. On their breaks, Viv often begins to tell Helen something revealing about her past, but stops abruptly. For example, Viv casually mentions her brother, but stops before she divulges anything else. Likewise, Helen neglects to tell Viv about Julia, the woman with whom she is romantically involved. Julia is a published author, and is an upper-class woman, which Helen is not. Helen is also jealous of Ursula, another lesbian who reviewed Julia's latest work on the newspaper, because Julia has been spending a lot of time with her. That night, Helen comes home and finds the house empty. Over the hours that Julia doesn't come home, Helen works herself into a frenzy, until her lover finally arrives cheerful and a bit drunk. Helen picks a fight with Julia, and Julia hashes out her frustration at Helen's incessant jealousy, revealing that she hasn't been able to maintain friendships with any other women because of Helen's jealousy. Julia then asks her rhetorically whether cheating is strictly a concern of those who have cheated in the past. Helen doesn't argue and leaves the room, upset. She goes into the bathroom, cuts her skin with a razor and returns to bed by Julia's side. As the two make up, and Julia drifts into sleep, Helen remembers silk pyjamas she once had in the war. Viv After work, Viv sets off to meet her brother Duncan, who lives with a much older gentleman named Mr Mundy. The three of them meet on a weekly basis for dinner at Mr Mundy's, and Viv always brings a tin of meat for them to share. Their father never attends, although he is aware of their dinners. Duncan shrugs off news of their father, and proceeds to show Viv the latest addition to his antiques collection. He is amused by the history behind the antiques and likes to brag about how he managed to bring the cost down from its original price. Viv politely ends the night and heads for the railway station, but she doesn't go home to her father's. She instead hops inside a car and kisses Reggie. The two are seen together in a car, on a clear day, driving somewhere secluded and out of the city. They have a picnic where they can’t be seen. On the way back, while navigating through atrocious city traffic, Viv spots Kay waiting in the cinema queue and panics. She quickly ducks, makes Reggie manoeuvre like a madman, and finally stops at a quiet street. Viv explains that she saw someone she knew and gets out of the car. Reggie hands her two tins of meat and, irritated, she heaves them back at him and tells him to take them to his wife and children. On the same day that Helen wanted to confide her love for Julia to Viv, the two women receive an unexpected visit from Robert Fraser, Duncan’s old cellmate. He asks to speak with her regarding Duncan, and his present condition: collecting antiques (which Robert finds morbid), living with Mr Mundy, whom both men knew at the prison, and working at a candle factory. It is clear he thinks Duncan ought to be doing more with his life, and wants Viv’s help in getting Duncan out of his shell. Viv dismisses Fraser, feeling as though he thinks she and her father haven’t done enough to help Duncan’s situation and explains that he simply doesn’t know everything. Fraser tags along with Viv, who after first spotting Kay outside the cinema has been coming back to the cinema for a whole week, hoping to see Kay again. The two wait at a café, and when Viv spots Kay, it is Fraser who convinces her to run to Kay. It doesn’t take Viv long to hand Kay a gold band and return to the café. She suddenly feels free, and starts to think of breaking off her affair with Reggie, leaving her job, and living somewhere else by herself. Duncan Duncan accompanies Mr Mundy, or "Uncle Horace," as he referred to him in public, every Tuesday to his Christian Science doctor at Lavender Hill. Upon not seeing Kay standing at the window watching the streets, they comment that "Colonel Barker" isn't there, and proceed inside. Mr Leonard, Kay's landlord, begins the session by soothingly telling Mr Mundy that his arthritis doesn't exist. After having dinner with his sister, Duncan works at the candle factory. It is implied that the boss adores him, and he shies away when a younger co-worker brags about his latest indiscretion and invites Duncan to join him. His boss brings to him a reporter who was doing a story on factories and is surprised to see it's Robert Fraser, his old cellmate, though neither of them explain to the others how they know one another. Before proceeding on his tour of the factory, Fraser hands Duncan his address and asks that he come visit him sometime, which Duncan trashes some time later. When he leaves work, Duncan is surprised to see Fraser waiting for him at the gates. He invites Duncan to a pub by the water, and Duncan reluctantly agrees, mainly because he doesn't want Mr Mundy to worry. The two share two pints of beer, and while Fraser goes off to the bathroom, Duncan suddenly sees two familiar faces looking at him scornfully. Knowing what they’re thinking, he begins to panic, and when Fraser returns, he sees Duncan's state and explains to Duncan that nobody’s looking at him. It is implied that the figures he imagined were related to Alec, a boy he knew before going to prison. Fraser makes several calls at Duncan's for dinner. One night, however, he doesn't show up, and Duncan is quite upset, while Mr Mundy is relieved. Duncan decides to sneak out that night to go to Fraser's, regardless of Mr Mundy’s disapproval. He arrives at Fraser's window, and the two chat. He learns that Fraser didn't come to see him because he'd got caught up with his "date" with Viv. Duncan Duncan has been in prison for three years now, and Viv and her father visit him once a month. Duncan's time is juxtaposed between prison guard Mr Mundy's kind and defeatist demeanor and Fraser's free-thinking, free-acting attitude. Although it is unclear why Duncan's there, his father comments that it should be "that other boy" in there, not Duncan. He is referring to Alec, whom the other prisoners have termed Duncan's "boyfriend." When Fraser asks Duncan about his "boyfriend," Duncan snaps and tells him that Alec was nothing more than his only friend, someone who appreciated the arts just as much as he did. Duncan constantly shrugs off implicit suggestions that he might be gay, even though one night, when Fraser is masturbating, Duncan joins in silently. Despite this, whatever suspicions Fraser has about Duncan's sexuality don't bother him, as the two seem to have a special connection. Towards the end of the chapter, there are indications that Duncan was imprisoned following an attempted suicide. Viv Viv is working as a typist, along with many other girls, and lodges at a boarding house with some of her co-workers. She meets Reggie, who is married, at anonymous hotels once every five weeks, whenever Reggie is permitted leave from Wales. One day she finds her period is one month late, and realizes she is pregnant with Reggie's baby. After she telephones him, she has to wait two weeks for him to take off leave, and when he does he brings her to the office of a dentist who performs clandestine abortions on the side. As a result, Viv suffers a massive haemorrhage and Reggie calls the ambulance. Kay arrives with Mickey. Before they put Viv in the ambulance, Reggie apologizes, and later on, the women realize that he's fled. On the way to the hospital, Viv explains to the women her situation and begs them to remain silent. Upon arrival, Viv becomes afraid that the doctors will learn about the abortion and scorn her for being an unmarried woman. Kay slips her pinkie ring, which she never took off, on to Viv's finger and leaves. She tells the nurses that Viv suffered a miscarriage during one of the air raids and her womb might have been punctured as a result. This is the last time Viv will see Kay for four years. Kay Kay works as an emergency response ambulance worker along with Mickey. She spends long nights cleaning up after air raids, sometimes collecting corpses, at other times rushing victims to the nearest hospital. She lives with her lover, Helen, who she sees as someone she must protect and shelter from the horrors of war. For Helen's birthday, she spends a fortune, about thirteen pounds, buying her silk pyjamas, coffee and an orange. Mickey is stupefied at how much Kay's spent, but Kay responds that someone must spend the Langrish fortune. One night a call comes in to an air raid that has occurred on her street. She assumes Helen's been asleep throughout the entire raid and panics. She runs to the rubble to where her flat used to be and weeps at her loss. One of her co-workers then point out Helen walking with Julia, and she runs to Helen ecstatic and crying. She exclaims, "Oh, Julia! Thank God! I thought I'd lost her." Helen Helen works for the government in a division that assists those who've lost their belongings in the war. By chance she runs into Julia, a woman who was once acquainted with Kay. Julia invites her to tea, and Helen begins to fall in love with her. They discuss how loving, protective, and yet tiresome Kay can be. Julia mentions that Kay wants a wife, and Julia simply couldn't be that wife for Kay. One night Helen is unable to sleep and leaves for Julia's flat. They take a walk around the ruins, and when another air raid alarm is sounded, they run amongst more ruins and hide from the chaos. It is there they kiss and make love for the first time. Their affair continues for some weeks, thanks to Kay's late hours. They are in Julia's flat, and it is then that Helen decides she must tell Kay and break things off with her. She finds she is entirely in love with Julia, and while she cares for Kay, she doesn't love her in the same manner she once used to. It is also then that Julia straightens out her past for Helen: it was Julia, not Kay, who was in love with the other, while the latter didn't feel the same. Julia attributed Helen's misconception to Kay's gallantry, and Helen suddenly feels used, but still finds she can't help her love for Julia. They reconcile and, while they are making love, an air raid hits close to her flat. They dress and make their way to her place, and find Kay sitting on the rubble, weeping. Viv is on a crowded train, filled with civilians and military men. By chance, she meets a soldier named Reggie. They engage in a conversation under awkward circumstances, and he reveals to her that he is stuck in an unhappy marriage, and has had a very limited time to go home and meet his newborn daughter before leaving for overseas. In her earnestness and honesty she falls in love with him. Duncan is asleep in Viv's room when Alec taps on his window. Alec is frantic and panicked, as he has just received his call-up that day. He's argued with his parents earlier over this: he refuses to fight in a war he does't believe in and his "brute" father struck him on the face. Convinced his father will never understand his beliefs, or his appreciation for the arts, he resolves to make a statement by killing himself. He easily convinces Duncan to do the same, since Duncan can't imagine a life without him. Alec writes a suicide note, and decides to slash his throat. He goes before Duncan, who all the while is wishing his father will come into the kitchen and interrupt the entire thing. Alec bids farewell and cuts himself. It is implied that Duncan follows suit, but his father interrupts before much damage is done. Kay is responding to an emergency call along with Mickey. They arrive at the scene and find one woman dead, another young woman caught underneath rubble, and two others trapped behind more debris. Kay helps the young woman, and after a brief exchange, she soon finds herself displaying much care towards her victim. They share a cigarette and Kay finds she's smitten with her. She asks for her name and she tells her it's Helen.
9233418	/m/02813kf	Savage Night			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The action is narrated by Charles Bigger, who spends most of the novel operating under the alias Carl Bigelow. Bigger has been sent by a mob boss, known simply as The Man, to the small town of Peardale, New York. His mission is to avenge the mistakes of Jake Winroy, a former member of The Man's crime establishment.
9235422	/m/02815q7	Grotesque	Natsuo Kirino	2007-02-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book is written in the first person for all parts and follows a woman whose sister and old school friend have been murdered. The narrator of Grotesque is unnamed and forever lives under the shadow of her younger-by-a-year sister Yuriko, who is unimaginably beautiful and the center of all attention. The narrator hates her sister for reasons which remain more-or-less unclear throughout the novel and the writer leaves it to the reader to decide if the narrator's hatred is a product of jealousy or because Yuriko has turned to prostitution and disgraced the family name. While the narrator is smart, responsible and plain looking, Yuriko is strikingly beautiful but flighty and irresponsible. Despite this, everyone is automatically drawn to Yuriko, who, as soon as she is old enough to realize her power on men, starts toying with one man after another, subsequently turning into a full time prostitute. As the novel progresses, the reader is introduced to many other characters with whom the narrator comes in contact at her highly prestigious Q High School. With time, the narrator grows to hate everyone including all her classmates, her parents and all her co-workers. She is particularly spiteful when it comes to Yuriko and one of her classmates Kazue Sato. When both Yuriko and Kazue turn into prostitutes, are murdered less than a year apart and in the same gruesome fashion, and the narrator comes in possession of their personal journals, her life is entwined with theirs and she uncovers truths which she never thought existed. The journals take her on a journey of self discovery where she finally realizes what she wants. She also adopts Yuriko's handsome but blind son, Yurio. In the end, the narrator is seen treading the streets of Japan, looking for a customer as she delves into the mysterious and dark world of prostitution.
9239007	/m/028186p	The King of Attolia	Megan Whalen Turner	2006	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Eugenides, the one-handed former Thief of Eddis, has married the Queen of Attolia, bringing peace to the two countries and becoming King. But what kind of a king is he? He slouches on his throne, appears to sleep during important briefings, makes snide remarks, wears ridiculous clothes, and refuses to be more than a figurehead, letting the Queen rule as she has always done. The Attolian court resents him as a foreigner, an upstart, and an ineffectual fool. The story is told largely from the point of view of Costis, a young soldier in the Queen's Guard. When the King insults Teleus, captain of the Guard, Costis loses control and knocks the King down. He expects to be executed, but the King spares his life and makes him his reluctant confidant. Costis finds the King maddening, obnoxious, and conniving, but slowly he begins to have some sympathy for Eugenides – a very young man, far from his mountain home in Eddis, married to the beautiful but ruthless Queen. The plot twists and turns through an assassination attempt and various political intrigues involving the traitorous Baron Erondites and his sons; Relius, the Queen’s master of spies; and Eugenides's old enemy, Nahuseresh of the Mede Empire. Costis begins to realize that there is much more to the King than meets the eye. He gains a clearer understanding of the King's abilities, motives, and complex relationship with the Queen. With this knowledge, Costis finds his own life and reputation at risk. Surprising revelations continue throughout the book, as the fate of three nations hinges on Eugenides's internal struggle to accept his own destiny and truly be the King of Attolia.
9239368	/m/02818j9	Sons	Pearl S. Buck	1933	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As Wang Lung lies near death, his family prepares for his funeral, including the first two of his three sons. They send for their brother and are surprised to see him leading a band of soldiers into the town. After he left home near the end of The Good Earth, he joined the army of a warlord and quickly rose in the ranks. Once Wang Lung is dead and buried and his land divided among the sons, they find themselves drawn together in unusual ways even as they drift apart. Wang the Third (“The Tiger”) demands that his brothers (Eldest, Nung En, “The Landlord,” and Second, Nung Wen, “The Merchant”) sell his share and give him his inheritance in silver, and also asks to borrow as much money as they can lend him. He needs the funds in order to break away from the warlord and set himself up with an army of his own. Since he has no sons, he asks his brothers to send him some of theirs, receiving one from each of them. The Merchant’s smallpox-scarred oldest son quickly proves himself a useful aide, but the Landlord’s dainty second son hates life as a soldier and hangs himself during a visit to the family home. As time passes, the Landlord is forced to sell much of his share of the land in order to support his family’s lavish lifestyle, with the Merchant buying the best tracts for himself. The Tiger leads his men north, into the territory of a cruel warlord known as the Leopard, and kills him with the help of a trap prepared by the county magistrate. His men take over the Leopard’s large army, which begins to collect taxes from the local population. The Tiger also captures a hostile young woman who had been the Leopard’s consort and imprisons her for a time, then releases her after putting an end to the corruption in the magistrate’s courts. He is surprised when she – now greatly calmed – decides to remain with him and become his wife. At the same time, power struggles have begun to grow between the Chinese ruler and local warlords, some of whom want to depose him. The Tiger calls on the Merchant to smuggle guns into the country for his growing army, but his wife tries to divert them to a band of robbers, for which he kills her. He later takes two new wives and leads his forces southeast to lay siege to the capital of a coastal territory and unseat its warlord. Upon returning to his first stronghold, he discovers that his wives have given birth to his first two children, a son and a daughter. The death of old Lotus, the concubine Wang Lung took decades ago, coupled with the Tiger’s disgust at his brothers and their sons, prompts him to try to do better by his own son. The Tiger begins to introduce him to military life with the goal of eventually putting him in command of the army, but the boy shows more interest in farming as Wang Lung did. Upon learning that one of his top aides is plotting to rebel against him, the Tiger storms the coastal capital to kill him, but the man commits suicide first. A severe famine strikes much of the countryside, and the Tiger is forced to deal harshly with his hungry men and turn to his brothers for help. At this time, Wang Lung’s mentally retarded daughter (the “Poor Fool”) dies, further fueling the Tiger’s son’s interest in the land on which she had lived. The rift between the two grows when the boy turns fifteen and his father sends him to a military school; four years later, the Tiger is shocked to see him wearing the uniform of an army that is fighting a revolution against the government and the warlords. However, the young man does not intend to battle his father as an enemy, but rather to hide among the rural farmers until the upheaval has ended. The Tiger is left to reconcile himself to the fact that both his life and his son’s have turned out far differently than he had planned. ja:息子たち
9239580	/m/02818rw	A House Divided	Pearl S. Buck	1935	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Shortly after the confrontation between Wang the Tiger and his son Wang Yuan at the end of Sons, Yuan travels to the old earthen house where his grandfather Wang Lung had lived. He intends merely to hide here for a while and wait out the revolution in which he had been fighting. However, the local farmers believe that he will bring trouble from either his father or his uncles, whose high rents leave them in near-poverty. Yuan’s mother persuades him to return home with a claim that the Tiger is deathly ill; in reality, this is a ploy to lead him into marriage. He flees to a coastal city where his sister Ai-lan – now a young woman who has thrown off traditional Chinese customs – is living with her mother, who asks Yuan to consider her his foster mother. Here he befriends two of his cousins, the aspiring poet Sheng and the activist Meng, and starts to keep watch on Ai-lan since his foster mother worries that her carefree lifestyle may lead her into trouble. Yuan enrolls at a school in the city and soon discovers that many of its students are activists like Meng, who tries to recruit him to the same revolutionary cause that he fled earlier. The following spring, he takes an agriculture class, for which he has to tend a plot of land in the countryside. Here he gets his first real taste of farm life, trading knowledge and tips with a farmer to the benefit of both. As the term continues, he becomes attracted to a female student, one of the activists, and struggles to reconcile these feelings with his strict upbringing at the Tiger’s hands. The Tiger’s determination to have Yuan married drives him to rejoin the revolution. As his relationship with the female activist deteriorates due to her jealousy, the uprising spreads through China and the government begins to crack down in every city. When she is caught, she readily betrays Yuan, leading to his arrest as Meng flees for his life. After three days in custody, he is released thanks to large bribes paid by his family; he and Sheng then travel by ship to the West Coast of the United States, having received word from Meng that he is safe. Yuan spends the next six years in America, throwing himself into his studies to earn an agriculture degree from a prestigious college. Almost as soon as he arrives, he is struck by differences between Americans and Chinese, especially in their attitudes toward the land on which they live. Scattered instances of racism, prejudice, and class discrimination combine with Yuan’s pride in his heritage to breed within him a subtle hatred of American culture. One of his teachers, Dr. Henry Wilson, befriends Yuan and introduces him to his wife and his daughter Mary. The elder Wilsons try to convert him to Christianity, unsettling him greatly, but he finds common ground with Mary, who respects her parents’ faith even though she does not share it. Their relationship grows closer for a time, but falls apart when Mary kisses Yuan, whose pride will not allow him to tolerate physical relations between Chinese and non-Chinese. Soon afterward, he receives news that the revolution in his country has started to claim innocent victims, and he sets out for home once he has completed his degree. Upon his return, Yuan finds that six years have greatly changed both the country and his family. Ai-lan is about to marry a divorced man whose baby she is carrying, while Meng has become a captain in the revolutionary forces. While traveling by train to visit the Tiger, he is revolted by the squalor that still persists in poor and rural areas. The meeting itself delivers a new shock: the Tiger financed his release from jail and his studies abroad with large sums borrowed from Wang the Merchant, Yuan’s younger uncle, and has little hope of paying him back. Yuan is expected to find a good job for himself and the Merchant’s sons and repay the debt from his wages, but he rebels at the idea even as part of his nature accepts this duty to the older generation. Mei-ling, a foundling girl taken in by Yuan’s foster mother years ago, has grown into a beautiful young woman and is studying medicine. She turns down his offer of marriage, explaining her determination to become a doctor; this rejection prompts him to move to the country’s new capital and become a schoolteacher. However, the school building is falling apart and Yuan is poorly paid, making it difficult for him to work off his father’s debt. In addition, Meng brings news that some of his colleagues are planning to rebel against their commanders and start a new revolution, one that will truly sweep away the distinctions between rich and poor. Yuan visits the family for the New Year celebration, during which Sheng returns from America and Ai-lan delivers a son. During the festivities, Mei-ling sees him carousing as Sheng often does and berates him sharply, saying that he has become as decadent as the idle rich before the revolution came. Not long after the holiday, the Merchant’s son comes to Yuan badly injured and bearing terrible news: robbers and peasants have banded together, tortured the Tiger, and looted the great town house that Wang Lung bought when he became rich. Yuan travels to Wang Lung’s earthen house, where he finds the Tiger slowly dying from his wounds. Mei-ling soon arrives, accompanied by Yuan’s foster mother, to make the old man as comfortable as possible in his final hours. Yuan and Mei-ling reconcile, share a kiss, and realize that they are free to follow ancient traditions or foreign customs as they see fit. As they stand at the doorway of the house, Yuan in the same kind of coarse blue cotton clothing his grandfather always wore, he muses, "We two—we two—we need not be afraid of anything." ja:分裂せる家
9240016	/m/0281914	The 13th Spy				 The story takes place in summer 1965. A missing American CIA agent is drugged and crashes his car into the GUM shop in Red Square, Moscow. He is carrying verbatim transcripts of top secret meetings held in Russian and Chinese Government offices and embassies around the world. The Russians accuse the US of stealing official secrets and passing them to the Chinese to destabilize USSR-China relations. The Russians agree to let AXE investigate the security leak in Moscow. Secret agent Nick Carter posing as a US government electronics expert, Tom Slade, is sent to investigate. Knowing that Russian agents will be shadowing Slade at all times, Carter arranges to switch identity with another AXE agent already in Moscow who is undercover posing as a Russian literature student, Ivan Kokoschka. Disguised as Kokoschka, Carter stakes out the headquarters of the Russian intelligence service trying to work out how it had been bugged. He notes that the building is under constant surveillance by men parked outside the building. He follows them to a Chinese antiques shop. Carter is captured and tortured in the basement under the shop by members of the Brothers Twelve – a Chinese spy ring operating in Moscow. Carter is drugged, given a dossier of confidential information, and released close to the US Embassy in Moscow. The Russian secret police are tipped off, apparently by Chinese embassy staff, that a US spy is on his way to the US Embassy for protection and that they should act quickly if they want to catch him and recover the secret documents in his possession. The Russians capture Carter and interrogate him discovering that he is Slade/Kokoschka. Carter is informed that the Chinese antique shop and basement have been searched without finding anything suspicious. Carter and Dimitri Smirnov (chief commissar of Russian intelligence) search the meeting room of the Russian intelligence services and discover that a recently renovated painting has had a miniaturized microphone and transmitter embedded into it. Carter and Smirnov discover that other renovated fittings have been tampered with and trace suspects to a warehouse in Moscow. Carter and Valentina Sichikova (chief assistant commissar of Russian intelligence) follow the suspects to the warehouse. Carter finds the remaining members of the Brothers Twelve packing their secret documents and tapes and preparing to depart. Chou Tso-Lin, leader of the Brothers Twelve, escapes after rigging the warehouse to explode with Sichikova still inside. During a car chase through the outskirts of Moscow Carter forces Chou's car off the road and into the Moscow River. Carter returns to the burnt-out warehouse to find that Valentina has survived the explosion.
9242716	/m/0281cg4	Elizabeth and After	Matt Cohen		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Story is about the lives of a few people living in a small town north of Kingston, Ontario. Carl McKelvey, a "white trash male" as he describes himself, returns to the town after a three-year absence in the hope that he can live with his daughter again, and maybe even renew his relationship with his ex-wife, Chrissy. He carries deep in his heart his guilt of having driven his car into a tree, killing his mother, Elizabeth, many years ago. Elizabeth's sudden death ended not only an unhappy marriage she had with William McKelvey, a failed farmer, but also a secret relationship she had with Adam Goldsmith, Carl's real father. Elizabeth might have felt that the uncultured McKelvey ruined her life, or she might be too frightened to ruin her life herself by leaving him. In any case, her life has affected McKelvey, Adam and Carl so deeply that her influence is still felt eleven years later. When Carl is attacked by Fred (Chrissy's boyfriend), Adam, even though reserved and gentle-natured, decides to do something for his son. Adam takes Fred in his car and drives him into the same tree that Elizabeth's car crashed into eleven years earlier. Both Adam and Fred are killed instantly. Carl learns about his relationship with Adam in a letter Adam left for him.
9246728	/m/0281hsr	Fall from Grace	Andrew Greeley	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kathleen meets a former lover and he is her only chance of salvation. Kieran O'Kerrigan is a psychiatrist and Kathleen asks him to undertake AIDS tests on her and her three children. Kieran starts to uncover the abuse that Kathleen is receiving from her husband and the two start to fall in love. Kieran also gets drawn into the child sex abuse scandal. Gerry Greene is a popular parish priest and school principal. He was implicated in a police report from several years earlier concerning the sodomy of two twelve-year-old boys in a Chicago suburb by a priest. He was never prosecuted but was just moved to another parish. New allegations have surfaced concerning the assault and attempted rape of two fourth graders. One boy's parents were paid off and moved away, but Kevin and Helen O'Malley were determined to seek justice for their abused son Jack. Jack was repeatedly abused, physically and sexually, by Greene, yet the Church's lawyers try to bully his parents into withdrawing the charges. Kieran visits the O'Malleys and finds Jack an 'adorable little boy' and believes him and his parents. Kieran learns that Jack only told when Greene demanded that he bring in other children he fancied. A janitor is then found who claims to have witnessed Greene raping boys in the basement. Kieran also learns that the boy whose family was paid off has developed serious behavioral problems.
9248276	/m/0281kns	Rival Lovers				 The rival erastai of the title are a devotee of wrestling and athletics, who disparages philosophy as shameful nonsense, and a young man who cultivates mousikē (a term embracing music, poetry, and philosophy). As the dialogue opens, they are quarrelling, at a grammarian's school in the presence of the boy they love and of other boys and young men, over the question whether philosophizing is noble and admirable (kalon). Socrates inserts himself into the quarrel. When he begins by questioning the musical rival's claim to know what philosophizing is, he gets the answer that philosophy is polymathy. With the help of the athletic rival, who knows that the good of exercise depends on being done in the right amount (not the maximum amount), Socrates points out that the same is true of most good things, and turns to asking what kind of things the one who philosophizes (loves wisdom) ought to learn, if the object is not simply to know all or many things (135a). The musical rival suggests that the philosopher, while not needing to bother himself with the hands-on practicalities (cheirourgia, 135b), should aspire to a level of understanding in all the arts (technai) such that he is second only to the expert in that particular field—still a kind of polymathy. Socrates challenges this suggestion by forcing the would-be philosopher to admit that, in any conceivable particular circumstance, the philosopher would be useless in comparison to a true expert on the matter (e.g., a physician or a ship's pilot). Accordingly, Socrates develops an alternative account of the philosopher's proper interest, based on the premise that goodness (which the interlocutors have agreed in ascribing to philosophy) depends critically on the knowledge how to make good and to tell good from bad, which is also the knowledge needed to deal out punishments. This knowledge, the musical rival agrees, is the knowledge of the one who serves as judge (hē dikastikē epistēmē, 137d). Socrates goes on to argue that this knowledge can be identified with justice, self-control, and self-knowledge, and with the arts practiced by the statesman, the king (or tyrant), and the head of a household (or master). The conclusion is that these are all in fact just one art (138c), one of paramount importance, in which the philosopher must be supreme. When Socrates first met the rival lovers, he put little hope in conversation with the athletics enthusiast, who professed experience "in deeds (erga) and not in words (logoi)" (132d). But at the end he wins the crowd's applause by having shut up the "wiser" young man, so that it is the athletic rival who agrees with Socrates' conclusions (139a). The entire story of the discussion is told in the first person by Socrates, without any interruption or indication what audience he addresses. At just over seven Stephanus pages, Rival Lovers is one of the shortest dialogues in the Thrasyllan canon of Plato's works (about the same length as Hipparchus, with only Clitophon being shorter).
9248361	/m/0281krj	Crooked Little Vein	Warren Ellis	2007-07-24	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Michael McGill, a burned-out private eye is hired by a corrupt White House Chief of Staff to find a second "secret" United States Constitution, which had been lost in a whorehouse by Richard Nixon. What follows is a scavenger hunt across America, exposing its seedier side along the way. McGill is joined by surreal college student side-kick, Trix, who is writing a thesis on sexual fetishes. McGill has to deal with strange events sometimes unrelated to his adventures – he describes himself as a 'shit-magnet', with weird phenomena following him wherever he goes.
9250929	/m/0281p2g	Keeper	Mal Peet	2003-10-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Paul Faustino, a journalist for La Nación, is interviewing El Gato about his recent World Cup win. During the interview, El Gato tells Faustino about his teenage years and his entry into soccer. When El Gato tells Faustino that he is coached by a ghost known to El Gato as "the Keeper," Faustino thinks El Gato is lying to him. However, El Gato seems honest and looks like he is telling the truth. El Gato continues to tell the interviewer his story. As a teenager, he secretly trains with the Keeper in an abandoned soccer field hidden in the rainforest. The young El Gato convinces his parents his time in the rainforest is the result of his fascination with nature. His family takes him for a naturalist, buying him collection materials and calling him "Professor." The charade continues until El Gato turns 15, when he is expected to start working in the logging industry with his father. He does not tell the Keeper that he will no longer come to practice. His first Saturday at work he finds out that his co-workers play a game of soccer after work. His co-workers invite him to play as the goalkeeper and, in his first game since his training with the Keeper, he helps his team win. The next Saturday, he plays with a new player who the others call "El Ladron", meaning "the thief." In reality, El Ladron is a director for a soccer camp named DSJ. He also brings the owners of the team, Mr. and Mrs. DaSilva to the games. They want to sign El Gato for a two year contract and give him 10,000 dollars. This begins his professional soccer career. Finally, El Gato reveals to Paul Faustino that he cheated in the second last penalty shot of the World Cup. El Gato tells Faustino that he wants the interview to be a book. Faustino hesitates because he has to give this interview to his boss. However, he changes his mind and helps El Gato turn his interview into a book. El Gato eventually quits soccer and becomes a naturalist, just as his parents had always imagined. At the end of the novel, El Gato explains the Keeper's history as a real player.
9251558	/m/0281ptv	Mr. Fairlie's Final Journey	August Derleth	1968	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The book concerns the investigation into the death of Jonas Fairlie, who was murdered on a train while on his way to consult Solar Pons. To solve the mystery, Pons and his companion, Dr. Lyndon Parker, travel to Fairlie's home town of Frome, Somerset and from there to Scotland (Pons only), Cheltenham in Gloucestershire and finally to a remote area on the coast of Wales.
9251702	/m/0281pzn	La Anam	Ihsan Abdel Quddous		{"/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel's main character, Nadia, is a spoiled young woman, whose parents are divorced. Their divorce has led to a strong relationship between Nadia and her father. Her father tries to move on with his life and meets a new woman, Safia, who he quickly falls in love with. Nadia, who feels the loss of her father's love, deliberately tries to ruin his relationship with Safia. Nadia is willing to control others lives and change them just to keep her life the way she wants it. She decides to set up her father with one of her friends, a seductive and promiscuous woman. Her father falls in love with the lady, who is actually having an affair. Meanwhile, Nadia is stuck with a man who is older than she is.
9252966	/m/0281rlx	Tamar	Mal Peet	2005-10-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Part of the book takes place In 1945 Holland, during the last part of World War II. The story centers on two Dutch men codenamed Tamar and Dart, who are agents of a covert military group called the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. In this point in time Holland is occupied by the Nazis, and the Dutch resistance is “a bloody shambles”. Tamar and Dart, his WO (wireless operator), are sent into Holland to organize the different resistance groups into a more cohesive unit. This is Tamar’s second time in Holland as an SOE agent, and he is sent to recover his old alias, Christiaan Boogart. When he arrives he reunites with the woman he fell in love with the first time he was in Holland, Marijke. As the novel continues Dart begins to spend more time with Marijke, and begins to fall in love with her, oblivious to the fact that she and Tamar are in love. After realizing that Tamar and Marijke are involved Dart is described as feeling furious and comes to the conclusion “that it was not her fault. She had been seduced, cynically and deliberately, by the man [Tamar] who should have been protecting her.” Slowly he begins to hate and distrust Tamar. Meanwhile, a group of the resistance led by Koop de Vries open fire on a Nazi vehicle. One of the men they shot turns out to be the head of Nazi internal security in Holland, SS Lieutenant General Hanns Albin Rauter. Rauter is rushed to a hospital and dispatches his deputy to execute the number of Dutch prisoners as there are bullet holes in his car, 243. When Tamar hears about this, and the executions begin, he tracks down Koop and confronts him, telling him “I know where to find you.” As the story continues, Koop and his group are ambushed by the Nazis at their hideout, and everyone is killed except for Koop, who manages to run. At the asylum where Koop receives medical treatment he reveals to Dart that he believes Dart and Tamar have betrayed the resistance. Dart believes he gains Koop’s confidence by telling him “I believe you. I think Tamar betrayed your group.” The two create a plan to get rid of Tamar. Their plan goes smoothly, they kill Tamar, but Koop attacks Dart, and is shot by Marjke. When she sees Tamar’s body “she [throws] her head back and [begins] to howl like an animal.” Eventually Dart convinces Marijke that it is too dangerous to stay in Holland, and the two flee to England. In the prologue of the novel, before Tamar is born, her grandfather, William Hyde, requests her father Jan to name her Tamar. The novel then fast forwards to when Tamar is fifteen-years-old in London, 1995 and lives with her mother after her father, Jan, disappears. Her grandmother, Marijke, is slowly going mentally downhill, and speaks more Dutch than English. Tamar and her mother accompany her grandfather to the assisted living center where her grandmother will be staying. Her grandmother rejects the company of her grandfather and insists on riding only with Tamar “I’m not going with you! I’m staying with Tamar, here with Tamar.” Shortly after her grandmother is sent to the living center her grandfather commits suicide. Tamar takes his death hard, and waits months to go and visit her grandfathers flat with her mother. Once at the flat she finds a box laying on her bed labeled Tamar. Inside the box lay many clues leading to her grandfather’s past. She takes the box to her distant cousin Yoyo (Johannes van Zant) who decides they should follow the clues and see where they lead. In the middle of the plot, during Tamar and Yoyo’s adventure along the Tamar river they slowly start to fall in love with each other, despite their age differences. As the novel continues Tamar and Yoyo explore the river just as Tamar’s father happens upon them, “And I couldn't look at him, because I was watching the other man’s face and he was watching mine,” and invites them into his home. After settling everyone down Tamar’s father begins to unravel the secret he has kept hidden since the day he left Tamar and her mother. He tells Tamar and Yoyo that her supposed grandfather, William Hyde, is not actually her grandfather. Her real grandfather is Tamar (Christaan Boogart) who was killed in World War II by a man named Koop de Vries, and was led to do so by William Hyde, or Dart as he was known during that time. It takes Tamar awhile to take all this in; “I couldn’t imagine how he could have kept all that stuff dammed up inside him all this time without being at least three parts crazy,” and she even forgives Hyde. In the epilogue she ends up marrying Yoyo.
9256345	/m/0281wvh	Letters of Insurgents	Fredy Perlman	1976	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel"}	 The novel is a subtle and complex narrative which takes the form of fictional letters between two Eastern European workers, Yarostan Vochek and Sophie Nachalo, who are separated after a failed revolution. Yarostan spends twelve years in statist jails, while Sophie escapes to the West. After twenty years without contact, they begin to write each other about their experiences, their lives, their hopes, and their memories of the past.
9257570	/m/0281xx5	The Case of Miss Elliot	Baroness Emma Orczy	1905		 Despite his vanity about his own talents, Bill Owen is a nondescript armchair detective. A balding, watery-eyed, mild-mannered little man in violently checked tweed, he haunts a corner of the ABC Teashop on the corner of Norfolk Street and the Strand. His listener and protégé is the attractive young journalist Polly Burton. Polly brings him details of obscure crimes baffling the police, which he helps her to solve. She is fascinated by the unlikely unravelings she hears, but despite her sarcasm and pride in her own investigative talents she remains the learner, impressed in spite of herself. Although The Old Man does not hide his upper class attitudes, he sometimes feels sympathy for the criminals. The Old Man's cases include a wide range of sensational and complex detective puzzles: * murder ("The Tremarn Case"), * blackmail ("The Murder of Miss Pebmarsh"), * perfect alibis ("The Case of Miss Elliott"), * and thefts ("The Affair at the Novelty Theatre").
9257829	/m/0281y64	The Divine Folly	Baroness Emma Orczy	1937	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Two English brothers travel across Europe as members of a secret society that is plotting the assassination of Napoleon III.
9260087	/m/0281__k	The Wailing Wind	Tony Hillerman			 When Navajo Tribal Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito investigates an abandoned vehicle in Apache County, Arizona and discovers a body, the available evidence indicates the death is due to natural causes. While awaiting personnel from the medical examiner's office, Officer Manuelito indulges her interest in botany and collects seeds, placing them in an old tobacco tin she finds nearby. But when the body is removed from the vehicle several hours later by medical personnel, it is discovered that the death is a homicide and Officer Manuelito realizes she has inadvertently contaminated or destroyed evidence. Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee, Officer Manuelito's superior officer, contacts retired Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn for advice on how to resolve the destroyed/contaminated evidence problem. This renews Leaphorn's interest in an old case involving Wiley Denton, a Gallup oil and gas magnate who shot and killed, in self-defense it was claimed, Marvin McKay who claimed to have found the famous Golden Calf lost gold mine. When Denton, recently released from prison after serving a short sentence, contacts Leaphorn to find Denton's wife, a friend of Marvin McKay who disappeared the day of the shooting and has not been heard from since, the stage is set for a mystery involving forest fires, protection of Navajo religious sites, lost gold mines, and moth-balled munitions bunkers.
9263595	/m/02823y2	The Avalon Collection			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Emily Fletcher, Adriane Charday, and Kara Davies, three very different girls-turned-mages (mages are "magic users"), band together to protect and find Avalon, the source of all magic. Each girl has a bonded animal and magic stone; their animal friends help them on their magical journeys through the different worlds along the Magic Web. The safety of the Magic Web, and the worlds it connects, hinges on their success as they battle two main antagonists, the Dark Sorceress and the Spider Witch, who wish to harness the magic of Avalon and distort the Web for their own evil ends. The titular Web of Magic is a web on the magical plane of existence, connecting all worlds with each other through portals. ;Circles in the Stream: Emily, Adriane, and Kara are all drawn to a secret place deep in the woods. It is much harder than it would because Kara will not cooperate! There they discover a portal to another world through which strange and wondrous animals have emerged, searching desperately for the magic that will keep them alive. The animals are peaceful and good, but what follows them through the portal is pure evil. The girls have been chosen by magical beings called Fairimentals to protect the magical animals, though they don't know why. To save them and their world, the three girls must begin a quest to find the lost home of legendary magic, Avalon, or to perish trying. ;All That Glitters: Emily and Adriane have one thing that Kara doesn't&mdash;a magic gem. But when Kara finally finds a magic stone of her own&mdash;a diamond unicorn horn&mdash;it brings more trouble than anyone can handle. Pesky dragonflies start showing up everywhere and new Fairimentals warn of danger. While trying to use the jewel to make her hair stop growing uncontrollably, her hair turns rainbow (See the front of All that Glitters) Worse, a band of terrifying monsters stalk Kara. That and signs of a sorceress keep appearing before Kara! All these creatures come from another world. And all want something from her. Finding out may take Kara, Emily, and Adriane a step closer to Avalon, the source of all magic. But it may also cost one of them her life. ;Cry of the Wolf: Adriane and Stormbringer, the mistwolf, have a unique bond. But is it strong enough to save them when Storm is lured through the portal to Aldenmor, the another world much like Earth where magic still thrives? Adriane thinks it is, and follows Storm to the magical world. There, Adriane faces the challenge of her life as she confronts Moonshadow, the pack leader and the entire mistwolf pack and tries to bring Storm home. The strange boy she meets, Zach, may be able to help her, but she'll need Emily and Kara's magic to survive this battle. ;The Secret of the Unicorn: Aldenmor's problems are worsening. Many new creatures are arriving in Ravenswood through the portal and they report that the Fairy Glen, home of the fairimentals, has vanished. A frightened and wounded unicorn is among the new refugees to Ravenswood. Can Emily communicate with her to offer help? The future of the Magic Web depends upon the dark secret the unicorn carries. All the while, a new terror, a harpy, stalks Emily as she tries to find out about the injured creature. ;Spellsinger: The first benefit concert for the Ravenswood Wildlife Preserve is on and everyone is depending on the event to ensure the Preserve's survival. Kara has booked hottie pop idol Johnny Conrad. But Conrad may be hiding a dangerous secret that threatens the animals, Ravenswood, and the girls themselves. This time, the magic is in the music, and if Emily, Adriane, and Kara can't perform, their chance to find Avalon may be gone forever. ;Trial by Fire: The road to Avalon is about to be revealed. The path is on the fairy map, a sparkling globe of wondrous power. Kara holds the fairy map in her hands, and must use it for the good of all worlds and all animals. But evil stalks Kara. The Dark Sorceress is after the map, too. If she finds Avalon first, people and animals from all worlds are doomed. The time has come for Emily, Adriane and Kara to be the healer, the warrior and the blazing star they were meant to be. They must win this battle&mdash;even if it means sacrificing a beloved friend. ;Song of the Unicorns: Emily's dad wants her to vacation with him and his new wife&mdash;Emily's new step mom&mdash;at a horse ranch in New Mexico. Emily convinces her two friends to accompany her. But along the Magic Web, a dangerous magic tracker is hunting down unicorns, the one magical creature that can control the flow of magic. In the desert, the mages discover an entire herd of baby unicorns. Emily, Adriane, Kara, Ozzie, Dreamer, and Lyra must find a way to hide them and fight the dark hunter. ;All's Fairy in Love and War: Kara can't control her magic. So she goes back to doing what she does best—being pretty and popular, and performing in the school play. The other mages, Emily and Adriane, continue without her. But the magic has other plans for Kara, the Blazing Star. Whisked into the Fairy Realms through a magic mirror, Kara falls smack into the middle of an impending war, and meets a mysterious boy with a dark secret. Kara may be the only one who can restore peace between the Fairies and the Goblins, but she must first tame her unstable powers, her wild heart, and a stallion made of fire. If she fails, it could mean the destruction of the Fairy Realms, the unraveling of the Magic Web... and the end of Avalon. ;Ghost Wolf: Adriane, the Warrior, knows what it's like to lose a friend. And now she's on the verge of losing everything she loves. The Spider Witch and the Dark Sorceress will stop at nothing to capture the power crystals of Avalon. This time, they've launched an attack directly at Ravenswood, the sanctuary for magical animals and Adriane's home. The fight to save Ravenswood will take Adriane to places she never imagined, into the very heart of mistwolf magic where a friend she thought she lost forever lives on. Is Adriane brave enough to walk the ghostly spirit path? She'll have to rise to a whole new level of magic in order to save her friends, her pack-mates, and Avalon itself, or risk losing everything... again. ;The Heart of Avalon: A mysterious sickness threatens the sea dragons of Aldenmor. But Emily the healer can't find a cure unless she can bond with one special animal and advance to a Level Two mage like her friends. A strange, shape-shifting creature whisks her away and Emily meets perilous monsters, salty sea elves, and a hidden treasure hold the secrets to evolving her healing magic and finding the path to Avalon. To save the animals, Emily must face her deepest fears, and discover the truth about her uniquely powerful mage powers and abilities... but she won't be alone. ;Dark Mage: In the heart of the magic, darkness is growing. Time is running out as Emily, Kara, and Adriane must retrieve the last remaining power crystals to open the Gates of Avalon and save the Magic Web. No one told the girls the real secret of the Prophecy&mdash;like their enemies, the Spider Witch and the Dark Sorceress, one mage is destined to bond with dark magic. In their most dangerous adventure yet, each mage will be called upon to face her darkest fears. Their friendship is pushed to the limit&mdash;and one will become the Dark Mage, while one is sacrificed. ;Full Circle: Emily, Adriane, and Kara became mages, but failed to discover the secrets of Avalon and save their animal friends. Now, the Gates of Avalon are locked, beloved friends are doomed, and the Dark Sorceress reigns supreme. There may be one final chance to fulfill their destiny. The mages must put everything they love on the line&mdash;and be prepared to sacrifice all as the final battle for Avalon begins.
9263892	/m/02824gm	Fairest	Gail Carson Levine	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Aza, the adopted daughter of innkeepers in Ayortha, has always hated her appearance. Her prodigious size and her odd coloring – milk-white skin, blood-red lips, and hair that seems to be sooty black – often make her the target of stares and rude comments. However, Aza's voice garners as much attention as her looks, for Ayortha is a land of song, and Aza is an amazing singer. Besides being skilled at singing, Aza can also flawlessly mimic people and throw her voice without moving her mouth, a form of ventriloquism she calls "illusing". Still, Aza is flattered when a frequent visitor to the inn, a gnome named zhamM, tells Aza that her hair is the most beautiful hair he's ever seen. While her hair looks black to humans, it is the lovely color htun, a dark purplish color, to gnomes. When Aza's sister, Areida, goes to finishing school, the Duchess of Olixo, an irritable guest at the Featherbed Inn, requests that Aza accompany her to the royal wedding because her companion has fallen ill. The new queen, Ivi, discovers Aza's gift and manipulates her. As Ivi cannot sing well, she offers to reward Aza with land and riches for her family as well as elevation to the rank of lady-in-waiting in exchange for Aza illusing a voice for her when she needs to sing; when Aza tries to refuse, Ivi threatens to imprison her and close her family's inn. Soon after Aza reluctantly accepts Ivi's offer, the castle is thrown into turmoil when King Oscaro is terribly wounded during a sporting event with centaurs. Aza is caught in the midst of Ivi's power-hungry plotting, the affection of the king's nephew Crown Prince Ijori, the suspicions of the choirmaster Sir Uellu, and her own increasing desperation to become beautiful, a desire which grows so strong that she ultimately drinks a beauty potion created by Skulni, the mysterious, evil creature living in Ivi's magic mirror. With the country on the verge of revolt, the inevitable discovery of Aza and Ivi's singing deception leaves Aza fleeing for her life when a jealous Ivi leads to Aza being branded as a dangerous ogre. Exiled, Aza is welcomed by the gnomes; zhamM provides her with food, shelter, and a sense of heritage. He assures her that while she is certainly not part ogre, he believes one of her ancestors was a gnome, explaining her strange appearance and htun hair. After she has spent some time with the gnomes, a sinister scheme forces Aza to fight for her life, discover her true source of strength, and ultimately, learns to accept herself. She marries the prince, King Oscaro recovers, Ivi turns from her evil ways, and Aza becomes queen of Ayortha, alongside her husband, King Ijori. She bears three children, all of whom resemble their father but have htun hair just like their mother.
9263976	/m/02824q5	The Lover's Melancholy	John Ford			 The plot of the play possesses an unusually complex backstory (perhaps a symptom of the playwright's relative inexperience), which is revealed through the course of the action. Meleander, a prominent nobleman of Cyprus, is the father of two daughters, Eroclea and Cleophila. The ruler of Cyprus proposes a match between his son Palador and Eroclea &mdash; but when Eroclea appears at his court, the ruler becomes violently enamored with her himself. Eroclea is spirited away to protect her virtue, and Palador is stricken with a deep melancholy as a result. Meleander is accused of treason and stripped of his rank and honors for protecting his daughter; in consequence, he too becomes mentally ill. He convalesces in his castle, under the care of the faithful Cleophila. The troublesome ruler of Cyprus dies and is succeeded by Palador &mdash; but the whereabouts of Eroclea are unknown. At the start of the play, Meleander's nephew Menaphon has returned from travel abroad; he has undertaken his journey to escape his unhappy love for the haughty Thamasta, Palador's cousin. Menaphon is accompanied by a new friend, Parthenophill, a young man met in the Vale of Tempe. Palador, now the ruler of Cyprus, is still mired in melancholy, a condition his prime minister Sophronos (Meleander's brother and successor), his physician Corax, and his tutor Aretus try in vain to alleviate. In due course, Palador's cure comes about when it is revealed that Parthenophill is Eroclea is disguise &mdash; a revelation that cures her father's depression as well. Cleophila, now free of the obligation to nurse her father, marries her devoted suitor Amethus. Thamasta, who had fallen in love with Parthenophill, is shocked out of her self-assured arrogance by the revealed disguise, and in a new spirit of humility becomes the wife of Menaphon. The play's comic relief is supplied by the character Rhetias, "a reduced courtier" who is the servant of Eroclea/Parthenophill, and "two foolish courtiers," Pelias and Cuculus. In portraying the depression of Prince Palador and Lord Meleander, Ford worked in a sub-genre of psychiatric fiction that would only become prominent in the twentieth century. The play is also strongly influenced by the cult of love fashionable at the time. "Ford's characters speak in courtly love-jargon, pen and recite love letters and poems, woo in extravagant conceits, and carry on debates and similitude contests; they become involved in secret loves and disguises and despair over unsatisfied desire." Some of this is clearly satirical: the page Grilla "holds up for ridicule the whining tunes, sighs, and tears of Cuculus, a fool planning to win the love of his mistress through extravagant conceits."
9265822	/m/02827k8	Sharra's Exile	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Lew and Kennard Alton have already spent two years on Earth since Sharra's awakening (see The Heritage of Hastur). Despite numerous attempts, Terran medics were not able to restore Lew's hand, due to destruction on the molecular level of Lew's DNA by the Sharra Matrix. But with the help of the constant monitoring of his father, Lew is recovering his mental control and escaping Sharra's domination. Lew and Kennard Alton have been away from Darkover for three years without any contact with the Comyn. Regis Hastur is now 18 years old and has recently completed his training in the Guard. He is now being trained in governance of a Domain by attending sessions of the Cortes. His paxman and bredu, Danilo Syrtis, is being prepared to rule the Ardais Domain and has spent the previous winter doing so in the Hellers. Danilo is now the adopted Heir of Lord Dyan Ardais who is no longer molesting him or other cadets. The young men meet in Thendara the day before the new season of the Comyn Council. They spend the evening in a tavern and debate about the future Darkover. Lerrys Ridenow, heir to Ridenow of Serrais and a senior Guardsman, and his two close friends, Rakhal (Rafe) Scott and Marius Alton later join them. Dyan Ardais comes also into the tavern with his new minion, Merryl Lindir-Aillard, the half-brother of Lady Callina Aillard, who wishes to replace her on the Council. Merryl mocks Marius for his Terran blood, but a fight is prevented by the intervention of Gabriel Lanart, a cadet member of the Altons, and who is in charge of the Guard during Kennard's absence. Regis and Danilo finally end the evening with Dyan who informs them that he just had a son with Marilla Lindir (Merryl's twin sister). Danilo will be in charge of the child. Dyan also congratulates Regis about his forthcoming son by Crystal di Asturien. Lew and Kennard have been away from Darkover for five years now. As they arrive on Vainwal (a pleasure planet), they meet by chance Diotima Ridenow, who is there on holiday with two of her brothers, Lerrys and Geremy. The first meeting between Dio and Lew is somewhat awkward, but Kennard is eager to associate with other Darkovans, particularly others with laran, and invites the Ridenow to dine. After dinner, Lew and Dio dance together and they both feel a deep attraction to each other. The day after, they hunt together, using hawks and riding horses. They eventually fall in love and, despite her youth, Dio is courageous enough to bear a full telepathic contact with Lew, understanding and sharing the suffering he has endured since bonding with the Sharra Matrix and Marjorie's death. Lew spends one year on Vainwal with Dio. He had never fully recovered from his ordeal, but Dio has managed to heal him and remind him of his humanity. Moreover, she helps Lew distance himself from his father; due to sharing powerful Alton gifts, and Lew's need for psychic healing, they have been unnaturally and uncomfortably close during their exile. Dio discovers that she is pregnant, and she and Lew decide to keep the child. At the beginning of the pregnancy, everything goes well. Kennard convinces Lew and Dio of the importance of an official wedding, and Dio finally confesses Lew that she deliberately became pregnant, because her brother Lerrys threatened to bring her back to Darkover (and space travel is not allowed for pregnant women). The strange result of a prenatal examination precipitates Lew to try to monitor Dio, but during this attempt he is nearly ensnared again by Sharra. Kennard is now too old and infirm to make an attempt. Forty days before Dio's time, Kennard receives a message from Dyan Ardais: he must go back to Darkover otherwise the Comyn Council will give the Alton Domain to Gabriel Lanart. Kennard asks to Lew to come with him, but Dio gives birth prematurely to a still-born monster (a consequence of Lew's DNA problems). Lew sees the monster, and is unable to keep its image out of his mind when he visits Dio. When she reaches this image, she has a nervous breakdown and medics send Lew away from the hospital. He spends some time with Empire administration in order to make legal arrangement for the cremation of the remains. During this time, Lerrys comes to the hospital and takes his sister away from Vainwal. Lew, thinking that Dio no longer wants to be with him, decides not to follow them. Shortly after, Kennard dies and sends during his last living instant a strong telepathic order, with the full Alton gift, to Lew: "You must go back to Darkover, fight for your brother's rights and for the honor of Alton and the Domain." Regis is woken up very early by Marius Alton. Marius tells Regis some disturbing: his close friend Rafe Scott is staying with him in the Alton house in Thendara and he seems to be suffering from a telepathic sickness related to Sharra Matrix. Regis feels anxious because he has just dreamed about Sharra. He therefore goes to the Alton house and manages to reach Rafe. They three young men begin to wonder about the return of Lew or Kennard: one of them might have brought back the matrix. This is all the more dangerous as Rafe reveals that Kadarin and Thyra are still alive. Regis feels uneasy, as the return of the Altons might be a consequence of the warning he gave to Dyan about the Council's discussion on giving the Alton domain to Gabriel Lanart. The first day of the sixth Council season after the Alton departure happens shortly after these events. Prince Derik, who has still not been crowned due to his mental instability, seems to be unduly influenced by Merryl. The Council proposes to give the Alton Domain to Gabriel Lanart. But two challengers appears: Marius Alton and Jeff Kerwin (née Damon Aillard-Alton and called Ridenow). The situation grows more and more confused, as Derik announces that the Aldaran Domain is going to be reunited to the Comyn by means of the wedding he has arranged between Callina Aillard and Beltran Aldaran. The Council is then interrupted by the arrival of Lew Alton in the Crystal chamber. The Council is recessed for half an hour. Lew uses this time to dress in Darkovan clothes and to announce Kennard's death to his family (Marius, Jeff, and Gabriel). Dyan himself is deeply distraught by the news. When the Council resumes, Danvan Hastur asks to the Council to delay the choice of the Alton Lord for seven days. The Council must now consider the problem of Callina's wedding. Of course Callina does not want to marry to Beltran. But the older and most influential members of the Council (especially Danvan and Dyan) think that this marriage could be a good method to reunite the Comyn in order to face Terran colonialism. In fact, only the youngest members of the Council such as Danilo, Regis and of course Lew seem to remember Sharra's awakening and Beltran's responsibility in these events. Lew also finds it outrageous that a Comynara, a Keeper, and the head of a Domain in her own right should be forced into a distasteful marriage. After the end of the Council, Regis has a debate with his grandfather Danvan about the relationship between the Terran Empire and Darkover. Danvan maintains a parochial outlook and wants to avoid any Terran "contamination" of the Darkovan population. Regis seems far more open minded. The situation caused by Derik's thoughtless acts and Merryl's machinations will be difficult to resolve. Declaring the betrothal void would announce Derik's status as a mere figurehead, and could reopen hostilities between Aldaran and the rest of the Comyn. As the discussion is going on, Javanne and Gabriel rejoin Regis and Danvan for dinner. Despite Danvan wishes, Gabriel does not want to challenge Lew for the Alton Domain. During the evening, Sharra tries to enslave Javanne. But Regis manages to free her, acting based on an intuitive and ancestral knowledge of Sharra's true nature: Comyn's hereditary enemy. Meanwhile, Lew has gone with Marius and Jeff to the Alton House in Thendara. Rafe finds out some raivannin, a laran suppressing drug, for Lew which enables him to silence the voice of his father in his head (constantly repeating his final order "go back to Darkover, fight for your brother's rights"). Lerrys Ridenow comes to order Lew to give Dio a divorce, arguing that she does not want to see him anymore. The next morning, Marius tells Lew that he has spent a summer in Caer Donn, with Beltran. Marius thinks that he has the Aldaran gift, but he was not tested. Upset, Lew goes to the Terran HQ in order to file for divorce from Dio. He meets the new Terran Legate, Dan Lawton who asks him to rejoin the Terran side in the Comyn Council. Lew tells Lawton the story of Sharra's awakening and learns from him that Kadarin is sought by Terran forces and he had been seen a few days ago in Thendara. On his way back home, Lew encounters Dyan who asks him also to rejoin his side in the Council, against the Ridenow who want tighter relationship with the Terran. But the debate between them is quite rough and Lew offends Dyan deeply, when he reminds him that he is not a matrix technician. Regis Hastur visits with Callina Aillard in the Comyn Tower. Callina tries to understand how Regis was able to rescue Javanne from Sharra. Callina asks Regis to convince Lew to bring the Sharra's matrix in the Comyn Tower, under the safe guard of Ashara. But Regis senses something off in her demeanor. Just before Regis' departure, he learns that Beltran has started his journey Thendara at the head of a massive army. Regis encounters Lew on the way to the Alton townhouse. During their talk, Sharra appears to them as a telepathic image. The two men start running toward the townhouse. When they reach it, they have to face a group of soldiers. The group is led by Kadarin and has set fire to the house. They flee, taking away the Sharra's matrix and leaving the dead body of Marius. Lew has been wounded during the fight and Jeff heals him. After that, Gabriel has Marius' body carried to the chapel in the Comyn castle. Marius is buried two days later in Hali. A small procession goes there: Gabriel, Lew, Linnell, Jeff, Andres (an Alton retainer), and rather surprisingly Lerrys Ridenow. Regis and Dyan rejoin them in order to pay homage to Marius. During the ride back to Thendara, Regis tell Lew of a strange rumor among the Guards about an Alton child. Gabriel and Lew have no idea about who could have fathered such a child. Back in Thendara, Lew goes to the Comyn Tower in order to visit Callina. He is looking for a way to destroy Sharra and would like to meet Ashara. During their discussion, Callina enters a brief trance, for a moment, she looks remote and stony. She then states that Ashara will perhaps see Lew. Callina tells Lew about her fears. She is afraid by Ashara and moreover, the Council is trying to pressure her to accept a marriage with Beltran, in order to save the peace. Lew and Callina understand at this moment that they have very strong feelings for each other, beyond the normal rapport of two powerful matrix workers. Regis and Danilo have just spent the night together. Danvan Hastur disapproves this union and behaves toward Regis as if he were a child. Regis leaves his grandfather rather angry and joins Danilo and Dyan for breakfast. They talk about the political situation: Dyan would like to solve the Alton succession. He wants Lew to give up the Domain to the mysterious Alton child. Moreover, Dyan wants to ally with Beltran in order to use Sharra to threaten the Terran and force them to leave Darkover. It is obvious that Merryl Lindir-Aillard, Dyan's minion, has used his influence on Derik in order to force Callina to marry Beltran. Regis leaves Dyan with some fear and anger. On the threshold of the Crystal Chamber, he meets Lerrys Ridenow. They have a quite rough debate: Lerrys thinks he Council is directly responsible for Marius' death. After this talk, the Council begins. Much to Dyan's disappointment, there is no challenge against Lew. Lerrys makes a short speech in which he urges the Council to make Darkover a full member of the Terran Empire and to give more democracy to Darkovans. He gets expelled from the Council. After this strong intervention, a di Asturien wants the Council to discuss about the wedding between Derik and Linnell. He finds that this sort of inbreeding is dangerous for the Comyn. But Danvan rejects his demand. Finally Danvan calls Beltran Aldaran for the seventh domain, much to Lew's indignation. Lew tries to convince the Council that Beltran is dangerous. He says that there is a blood feud between Beltran and him, and forgiving blood feud is not honorable among Comyn. Callina asks Beltran if he has sworn allegiance to the Compact, the most sacred of Comyn laws. He plans to do so as soon as he will be accepted in the Comyn and he plans also to give his Terran weapons to his promised wife, Callina herself. Callina resigns herself to marry with Beltran in order to avoid war between Aldaran and the Comyn. The handfasting will be held at Festival Night. Suddenly, a giant fire form of Sharra appears in the Council: Beltran and several other Comyn lords fly away from the room. After the disappearing of Sharra's illusion, Danvan declares the Council Session closed for the current year.Lew remains alone with Regis in the room. In fact, Sharra's illusion was created by Regis himself, despite the telepathic dampers. Regis has an extremely strong laran, that he does not fully understand. Lew goes back to the Alton apartments in the Comyn Castle, but he feels restless. He cannot refrain thinking of Sharra and he finally decides to go and see Callina in the Aillard apartments. Linnell is there with Callina and Regis. Callina asks Lew to follow her to the Comyn tower to see Ashara. Ashara knows about the Sharra matrix. She explains to Callina and Lew that Sharra is a goddess and the matrix is a door through which she can reach our world. The only way to defeat her is to use the Sword of Aldones, a holy weapon kept in the rhu fead, the holy Chapel at Hali. But in order to get the sword, Callina and Lew need to find someone who is of Comyn blood and was not reared on Darkover, in order to avoid traps that protect the rhu fead. After the meeting with Ashara, Callina and Lew use one of the giant screens built during the ages of chaos in order to teleport people. They bring back to Darkover the perfect twin (the Cherilly duplicate) of Linnell, the young nurse that took care of Dio on Vainwal. On the morning of the Festival, Regis goes to the Terran headquarters in order to meet up with Rafe Scott. On his arrival, Regis has a discussion with Dan Lawton, the Terran Legate. Lawton wants to capture Kadarin and threatens Regis with sending the Spaceforce in Thendara if the Comyn do not manage to catch Kadarin. After this, Regis speaks to Rafe and frees his matrix from the influence of Sharra. Rafe wants to meet with Lew in the Comyn Castle and Regis says that he will try to arrange a meeting. On his way back to the Castle, Regis stops to see Beltran offering his Terran weapons to Callina. In a strong telepathic rapport with Dyan Ardais, Regis manages to destroy all the weapons. He discovers this way that Dyan has the Alton gift. In the Alton apartment of the Comyn Castle, Regis meets Lew. They are soon joined by Rafe. He conducts them to the Aillard apartments where they see for the first time the young Marja, daughter of Lew and Thyra. Marja was conceived during Lew's captivity by Kadarin and Beltran in Caer Donn, while he was drugged and delirious. The six year old child seems to already have had her laran awakened. Lew leaves Marja in Andres's care and goes to seek Callina. They spend a few moments with Linnell's duplicate, Kathie Marshall. She is still very tensed and close to madness. In order to protect her, Lew put a sort of barrier around her mind. During the Festival ball, Lew dances with Kathie who seems to calm down. After this dance, Lew meets again Callina. She is dressed in a black gown which looks like the night flecked with stars. In fact, she is dressed as the legendary Camilla, who was ravished and made an unwilling bride. This is a direct insult to Beltran. Lew has a rather heated debate with Callina because she seems resigned to marrying Beltran. Because of Lew's hatred for Beltran and his objection to Callina being treated as a pawn, he is unable to understand why she would do this. Lew suddenly sees Dio. They quarrel about Dio's departure from Vainwal, and it is discovered that Lerrys lied to her and to Lew in order to separate them. Moreover, Dio is jealous of Callina. She understands that Lew is in love with both of them, but resents that she cannot share the full telepathic rapport of powerful trained matrix workers. The ball continues, and Derik seems completely drunk. Just before the moonlight dance (a dance for pledged couples), Lew sees a strange man dressed as a harlequin. But he forgets him while dancing with Dio. After this dance, he has a talk with Linnell about Derik's public drunkenness. Linnell says that Derik never drinks because of the effect that it has on his already unstable mind, and it seems that someone deliberately put alcohol in a fruit tasting drink so as to have Derik to drink it. Merryl has taken him away from the Ball, to limit the spectacle. After that, Danvan Hastur celebrates the marriage between Callina and Beltran. During the dance that closes the handfasting, Lew suddenly recognizes the woman who is dancing with the harlequin: Thyra herself! The harlequin is in fact Kadarin. At the end of the dance, they attempt to use Sharra in order to compel Lew to follow with them again, but Regis uses his new born gift in order to rescue Lew. Sharra then lashes out and manages to kill Linnell. She also teleports Kadarin and Thyra out of the Comyn Castle. As Gabriel arrests Beltran, Regis goes to seek Prince Derik: the young man is also dead. His shields were weakened by the drinks and he couldn't resist Sharra. Regis is now Heir of the Domains. The next day, Terran forces begin to seek Kadarin in Thendara. Unfortunately, this is not easily accepted by Darkovan and Regis composes a personal message for to Legate Lawton, urging him to withdraw his men. He goes to look for Dyan, believing that he might be a good messenger. He finally discovers him in the Aldaran apartments, where he is having a discussion with Beltran. Dyan reveals his plans: he wants to use Sharra against the Terrans, in order to expel them from Darkover. But in order to do that he needs someone with the Alton gift: Sharra cannot be operated without this gift. Regis flees the Aldaran apartments to avoid revealing to them that Dyan himself has the Alton gift. Lew spends the night after Sharra's attack with Dio who heals him and tells him that Lerrys has fled Darkover. On the next day, he prepares to go to the rhu fead with Kathie and Callina: they need to get the Sword of Aldones, the only weapon able to defeat Sharra. Dio and Regis would like to help them, but Lew refuses arguing this might be to dangerous. They go out of the Comyn Castle through a secret exit starting from the Alton apartment and they ride to the Hali lake. They enter the rhu fead and Lew places Kathie is under his mental domination, allowing her to pass through the Veil. Inside, Kathie is able to reach the Sword of Aldones, a matrix shaped as a sword. But when they exit from the rhu fead, they find Kadarin and Thyra waiting for them. Kadarin tries to get the Sword but he is repelled by it. Thyra becomes completely unhinged as she demands her daughter, and she strikes Lew with her dagger. He is grievously wounded. Dio and Regis are going back to the Comyn Castle when they receive a telephatic scream from Marja. Dyan and Beltran had tried to kidnap Marja, to use her powerful Alton gift to control the Sharra matrix as they had once forced Lew. When they arrive in the Alton apartment, they find Andres's body. The loyal retainer was killed by Beltran when he tried to protect the girl. Shortly afterwards, Regis reaches Dyan's thoughts. Dyan has become aware of his gift and has chosen to serve Sharra. But before doing so, he managed to hide Marja in an unknown place, out of reach from Beltran. Just after that, Regis learns from Danvan that Dan Lawton is looking for him. Regis and Dio go to the Terran Headquarter and Regis authorizes Lawton to send a helicopter to Hali in order to rescue Lew, Callina, and Kathie. When the helicopter comes back, Lew is nearly dead, but Regis gets the Sword of Aldones and turns himself into Hastur, Son of Light. He heals Lew instantaneously. Lawton puts Kadarin and Thyra in jail . After that, Regis tries, with the help of Callina, to clense Lew's matrix but he cannot, the bond with Sharra seems too strong. After this failed attempt, Lawton arrives to tell them that Thyra has disappeared. Suddenly Lew is teleported to the forecourt of the Comyn Castle. The final battle between Hastur and Sharra begins. Regis and Callina are on one side with the Sword of Aldones, while Thyra and Kadarin wield the Sharra Matrix. Lew is torn between them, until Dyan arrives and frees Lew from Sharra. The battle goes on and Regis manages to strike Sharra with the Sword of Aldones. Kadarin and Thyra disappear with Sharra. After the battle, Dyan's dead body lies on the ground of the forecourt. If, in the end, he had chosen to join Sharra, she would have defeated them. Callina is also dead and Lew finally understands that she was almost entirely possessed by Ashara, and that she was willing to marry Beltran to escape her. Regis' hair has turned completely white. After the death of so many Comyn, Darkover needs to change: it is going to become a full member of the Terran Empire. Lew goes into voluntary exile with his wife Dio and his daughter Marja. He is going to be the first representative from Darkover to the Imperial Senate.
9270798	/m/0282gf0	A Theft	Saul Bellow	1989-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Clara Velde is a successful fashion writer in New York City and the star of the story. The book's title refers to the disappearance of Clara's prized emerald ring. Clara associates the ring with her love for the Washington, D.C. politico Ithiel and with her own professional and personal power. The ring's apparent theft leads Clara into a series of psychological crises and forces her to confront a long-buried complex of interpersonal issues.
9271964	/m/0282j5d	Zuckerman Unbound	Philip Roth	1981	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel parallels several real events in Roth's life, including the publication of his 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint and the hoopla which surrounded Roth in the wake of that novel's fame. By analogy, in Zuckerman Unbound, Zuckerman has achieved meteoric acclaim and notoriety with "Carnovsky", a coming-of-age sex romp that differs remarkably from Zuckerman's previously Jamesian fiction. The extent to which the details of the Zuckerman character can be safely compared to those of Roth has been a subject of zealous debate among Roth's readers. Roth himself has weighed in on the debate, both in interviews and within his fiction.
9273993	/m/0282mb3	Beezus and Ramona	Beverly Cleary	1955	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Beatrice "Beezus" Quimby, a close friend of Henry Huggins, is perpetually infuriated by the imaginative antics of her younger sister Ramona, who frequently insists upon exhibiting imaginative habits and eccentricities such as wearing her beloved homemade paper rabbit ears while pretending to be the Easter Bunny, dragging a string along behind her pretending to lead an imaginary lizard named Ralph, and being read an irritating children's book about an anthropomorphic, disgruntled steam shovel called Scoopy. Beezus is also commonly exasperated by actions on her sister's part such as vandalizing a library book, inviting her classmates to a house party without the consent of her parents, and wreaking havoc during Beezus's painting class. Beezus, however, is haunted frequently by the guilt of her animosity towards Ramona and the uneasy sisterhood that they share as opposed to that displayed by her mother and Aunt Beatrice, and is finally prompted to revealing this during her birthday celebration after Ramona has ruined a pair of birthday cakes intended for the party. However, after learning about memories from the childhoods of Aunt Beatrice and her mother, Beatrice accepts that she may not always love Ramona.
9273998	/m/0282mbt	The Anatomy Lesson	Philip Roth	1983	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Having buried his father in the previous novel Zuckerman Unbound, Zuckerman finds himself facing middle age and an undiagnosable pain. The mysterious ailment has him laid up and keeps him from his regime of writing. Barred by pain from writing and bored by inactivity, Zuckerman's mind is free to wander anxiously over the memories of his failed marriages and relationships with family members. In a desperate burst of nostalgia and ambition, Zuckerman resolves to return to the University of Chicago, his alma mater, in order to pursue medical school.
9274210	/m/0282mpg	Moominpappa at Sea	Tove Jansson	1965	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Moominpappa is dissatisfied with his life in Moomin Valley, so he organises the family to set off on a journey to find a lighthouse in the sea. This will also be the perfect backdrop for a novel about the sea. Once arriving there, they find it a desolate and lonely place, inhabited only by a very unfriendly fisherman. Moomintroll also befriends The Groke and the sea horses. Moominmamma misses home so much that she starts painting the Moomin house with lots of flowers since none can be grown on the lighthouse island. Later they find out that the fisherman is actually the lighthouse keeper who fled from the loneliness. Nature and the sea play a big part of the novel as Moominpappa tries to understand it, and there are many strange things happening on the island that seem to be inexplicable.
9274346	/m/0282mtl	Moominvalley in November	Tove Jansson	1970	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Set in the final days of autumn and the approach of winter, various characters begin to experience a change within themselves and decide to travel to Moominvalley where they can visit the Moomins. First amongst them is Toft, a small orphan who lives alone in a docked boat under the tarpaulin, and who has often dreamed about the Moomins despite the fact that he has never met them. Secondly is Fillyjonk, a woman who is usually obsessed with everything being neat and tidy, but who has an epiphany after suffering an accident and decides to "see people. People who talked and were pleasant and went in and out and filled the whole day so that there was no time for terrible thoughts". The Hemulen similarly begins to question his lifestyle, realising that his life as a collector and organiser of things simply isn't necessary, whilst a senile old man who cannot remember his own name but who calls himself Grandpa-Grumble decides to go to the "Happy Valley" that he remembers from the past.Jansson, Tove. (1974). Moominvalley in November. London: Penguin Books. Chapter Seven Alongside these figures, Mymble also decides to visit the Moomins in order to see her younger sister Little My whom they have adopted, and Snufkin also returns, realising that the valley is the place where he can gain inspiration to write a song. When they all arrive, they discover that the Moomin family have left their house, and so they all settle in to wait for their return. Soon, their conflicting personalities begin to cause friction, with the Fillyjonk trying to tell the others what they should do: :Suddenly Fillyjonk shouted: 'You musn't touch old leaves! They're dangerous! They're full of putrefaction!' She dashed to the front of the veranda with the blankets trailing behind her. 'Bacteria!' she screamed. 'Worms! Maggots! Creepy-crawlies! Don't touch them!' The Hemulen went on raking. He screwed up his stubborn, innocent face and repeated loudly: 'I'm making the place look nice, for Moominpappa.'Jansson, Tove. (1974). Moominvalley in November. London: Penguin Books. Page 54. Toft finds an old microbiology textbook, and misinterpreting it as a story, creates a monster in his imagination known as the Creature, which appears to develop a life of its own. Meanwhile Grandpa-Grumble becomes obsessed with both fishing in a nearby stream that he insists is actually a brook as well as with meeting the Ancestor, a three hundred year old Moomin who he is told by Mymble hibernates in the stove. After becoming terrified that there are insects in the house, Fillyjonk locks herself in the kitchen and, in an attempt to be more like Moominmamma and therefore liked by the others, cooks for them and tries to look after the motherless Toft,Jansson, Tove. (1974). Moominvalley in November. London: Penguin Books. Chapter Fourteen and Fifteen. who is enlisted by the Hemulen into helping build a treehouse for Moominpappa, whom he is increasingly admiring. Grandpa-Grumble gets a stomach ache and refuses to take his medicines till the others throw him and the Ancestor a party. At the party, each of the characters performs an act of entertainment; the Hemulen recites a poem that he has written, Toft reads from his book, Mymble dances accompanied by Snufkin's music, and Fillyjonk cooks Welsh rarebit and performs a shadow puppet show about the Moomin family returning home. However, the Ancestor does not appear, annoying Grandpa-Grumble, until he mistakes his own reflection in a mirror upstairs for the Ancestor, to whom he makes everyone give a toast.Jansson, Tove. (1974). Moominvalley in November. London: Penguin Books. Chapter Eighteen. The morning after the party, Fillyjonk organises the cleaning of the house, though it soon begins to snow, and she decides to leave, finally on good terms with the Hemulen. Meanwhile, Grandpa-Grumble comes to the conclusion that the winter ages people and so decides to go into hibernation in the clothes cupboard like the Ancestor.Jansson, Tove. (1974). Moominvalley in November. London: Penguin Books. Chapter Nineteen. The treehouse that the Hemulen was building collapses, and so instead Snufkin takes him sailing in his boat, though the Hemulen realises that he gets sea-sick, and after the trip leaves to go home.Jansson, Tove. (1974). Moominvalley in November. London: Penguin Books. Chapter Twenty. After discovering the last five bars he needed to write his song, and finding them to be "more beautiful and even simpler than he ever hoped they would be", Snufkin packs up his tent and leaves the valley. Toft, left alone to wait for the return of the Moomins, finally realises how the view of the family which he had developed in his imagination is too perfect to be real, and comes to accept that even Moominmamma, who he hoped will be his mother, has problems and times of anger just like everybody else. Seeing that "the boat [upon which the Moomins are returning] was a very long way away", he walks down to the jetty to wait for them.Jansson, Tove. (1974). Moominvalley in November. London: Penguin Books. Chapter Twenty-One.
9274695	/m/0282n36	The Poorhouse Fair	John Updike			 The setting is a fictional location in New Jersey. At the Diamond County Home for the Aged, the inmates prepare for the ritual of the Poorhouse Fair; a summer celebration at which the old and infirm sell their produce to the people of the nearby town. The elderly residents at the home, full of memories and complaints, take pride every year in the excitements of this one day. But when the fair goes less well that the old folks had hoped, they are in no doubt who to blame: Conner, the new prefect of the home. Together, they begin to revolt against the younger man, and enact an ancient rite of protest.
9277724	/m/0282rsh	The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane	Kate DiCamillo	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The theme can be summarized by a quote from the book: "If you have no intention of loving or being loved, then the whole journey is pointless." (p.&nbsp;199) Edward Tulane is a china rabbit given to a ten-year-old girl named Abilene by her grandmother. He enjoys a pleasant but vain life with his young mistress, who treats him with the utmost love and respect, until an unfortunate incident finds him falling overboard while vacationing on an ocean liner. Edward spends 297 days in the ocean's depths, until a passing fisherman and his buddy pulls him free. The man takes him home to his wife where he is renamed and forced to wear dresses. Edward is passed from hand to hand of a succession of life-altering characters, such as a hobo and his dog and a girl with pneumonia and her brother. Edward's journeys not only take him far from home, but even farther from the selfish rabbit he once was. Edward is eventually cruelly broken against a counter top edge and then repaired and offered for sale in a doll store for several years, and is finally bought by the same mistress he once knew, but now older and more mature, with a daughter of her own.
9277877	/m/0282s01	Gallows Thief	Bernard Cornwell	2001-10-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 ;Prologue: The book describes, in meticulous detail, the hanging of four condemned criminals on the public scaffold outside Newgate Prison in London. One of the attendees in the “prize” seats is Sir Henry Forrest, a financier and city alderman. He is sickened by the spectacle, but the crowd and his fellow attendees treat it as a public entertainment. ;Day One: Captain Rider Sandman, formerly of His Majesty’s 52nd Regiment of Foot, arises in his attic room above the Wheatsheaf Tavern in Drury Lane. Sandman is a gentlemen, but is hurting for cash. His father, a rich but dishonest speculator, recently committed suicide after his finances collapsed, and Sandman has assumed a large debt owed by the estate and is supporting his mother and sister. Sandman is a star cricket player, and makes occasional earnings from playing games on commission. Sandman was a good soldier, but is naïve about the other side of life in England. He’s only belatedly realized that the Wheatsheaf is a “flash” tavern – a regular haunt of pickpockets, highwaymen, and other petty criminals. Sally Hood, an actress who lodges at the Wheatsheaf with her brother, brings a letter summoning Sandman to the office of the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth. A man named Charles Corday has been sentenced to death for the murder of the Countess of Avebury. As usual, a condemned man’s family and friends may petition the Crown for clemency or a pardon. Most petitions are rejected, but Corday’s mother happens to be one of Queen Charlotte’s seamstresses, and the Queen has taken a personal interest. Occasionally the Home Office will appoint an investigator to look into a case, and Sandman was recommended by his former commanding officer, Sir John Colborne. Lord Sidmouth makes clear that he has no doubts that Corday is guilty, and regards Sandman’s job as an empty formality. His task should be simple, to visit Corday and obtain a confession. Corday is due to hang in one week. Sandman visits Newgate Prison. Corday, who is only eighteen years old, is physically unprepossessing, even effeminate, and Sandman, though repulsed, admits that Corday doesn’t seem capable of raping and killing a woman. He asks Corday to confess, but Corday insists that he’s innocent. Corday is an apprentice portrait painter, and the Countess’s husband, the Earl of Avebury, commissioned a boudoir painting of his wife (after the style of Canova’s famous sculpture of Pauline Bonaparte). The Countess was sitting for Corday in her London house. He says he was ordered out of the house when another visitor knocked, and the next thing he knew, he was arrested at his master’s studio. He also says that the Countess’s maid, Meg, was in attendance, but did not appear at his trial. Corday then bursts into tears, thinking Sandman doesn’t care. Embarrassed, Sandman promises to make inquiries. Sandman goes to a cricket game to meet his old school friend, the Reverend Lord Alexander Pleydell. A marquess’s son, Alexander is rich, intellectual, and radical in his political views. When Sandman asks his advice, Alexander is scathing about the criminal justice system in England, saying that justice is impossible in the Old Bailey, where four judges adjudicate more than a hundred cases a week, and as often as not the accused is not defended by a lawyer. Alexander’s theory is that the estranged Earl killed his wife, or had her killed. The Countess was an actress, and probably a high-class prostitute, before she married the Earl, after which she was a notorious adulteress. ;Day Two: Sandman reads a newspaper account of the murder. The Countess was found brutally stabbed to death, and her clothes were torn off, suggesting that she had been raped. Corday’s palette knife was found on her body. The Countess’s house is abandoned, but a neighbor confirms the existence of the maid, Meg. Sandman visits the studio of Sir George Phillips, Corday’s master. He is embarrassed to find Sally there, posing nude. Sir George admits that “Charlie” isn’t likely to have raped and murdered the Countess – for one thing, he’s homosexual – but frankly doesn’t care if he’s hanged, apparently jealous of his apprentice’s talent. Over lunch, Sally, like Alexander, is scathing about “justice” in the courts, and informs Sandman that the judge who sentenced Corday is a notorious hanging judge. She knows Charlie from the studio, and confirms that he’s a “pixie.” She also overheard that it wasn’t the Earl who commissioned the portrait of the Countess, but instead a men’s club in London – the Seraphim Club. At the Club’s premises, Sandman is admitted by a club servant, an ex-Army sergeant named Sam Berrigan. Sandman is met by the young Marquess of Skavadale. Skavadale claims to have no idea what Sandman is talking about. Before Sandman leaves, another member, a hot-head named Lord Robin Holloway, angrily declares that he is one of the elder Sandman’s creditors, and challenges Sandman to a fencing duel. Sandman wins easily. Sandman reluctantly visits the home of Sir Henry Forrest. Sandman was engaged to Sir Henry’s daughter, Eleanor, but his father’s suicide and financial ruin intervened, and Lady Forrest insisted that the engagement be broken off. Because the Forrests’ home is close to the Countess’s, Sandman asks to question the servants, to see if any of them know Meg. Eleanor eagerly offers to question her own maid. At the Wheatsheaf, two of the Seraphim’s Club’s servants enter with pistols to try and kidnap Sandman. Rider bests them easily, but is then held at gunpoint by Sam Berrigan. Berrigan tells him that Lord Robin sent the two thugs, but Skavadale sent him. Sally enters and Berrigan is instantly taken with her. He puts away his pistol. Berrigan served with the 1st Foot Guards at Waterloo, in the same battalion as Sandman’s regiment. He warmly shares his memory of Sandman’s courage with Sally, though Sandman is embarrassed. Berrigan would rather warn Sandman off than kill him. He tells Sandman that the Seraphim Club is made up of young, aristocratic rakes who commit robbery, rape, and even the occasional murder, just for the fun of it. Servants like Berrigan clear up after them, which is why Berrigan doesn’t think one of the Club killed the Countess. Alexander introduces Sandman to Lord Christopher Carne, the Earl of Avebury’s son. Christopher, a bookish young man with a stammer, says that he hardly knew his stepmother, but fully supports the theory that his father did the murder, as he was jealous and spiteful. His father, he confides, hates him because Christopher’s grandfather decided to pass over his son and entail his estate onto Christopher, meaning he will inherit a vast fortune when his father dies, while his father is merely living off the income. ;Day Three: Sandman feels there is a chance that the house’s servants were moved to the Earl’s estate in Wiltshire. Before leaving, Sandman meets Sally’s brother, Jack, who is in fact the notorious “Robin Hood,” a wanted highway robber. Jack tells Sandman that someone has posted a large bounty on Sandman’s head, but he doesn’t know who. Sandman meets the Earl, an elderly and shameless lecher (he openly fondles his housemaids in front of Sandman). He is also a military enthusiast, and is working on a huge model recreation of the Battle of Waterloo when Sandman enters. Since Sandman belonged to the regiment that drove off the advance of the Imperial Guard in the battle’s climax, Sandman can tell the Earl exactly how it happened – or he can make sure that no other veteran will talk to the Earl if he doesn’t answer Sandman’s questions. The Earl grudgingly shares what he knows. He didn’t kill his wife, and doesn’t know who did, but he hated her all the same. He was captivated enough by her to give in to her demand that he marry her before she would sleep with him. She spent all his money, and was unfaithful to him, so he turned her out of the house and ordered her allowance cut off. She laughed it off, telling him she was supplementing her income through blackmail of her various lovers – usually when they became engaged to wealthy or aristocratic heiresses. When pressed for details, the Earl admits, with a glimmer of shame, “I didn’t want to know names.” ;Day Four: Returning to the Wheatsheaf, Sandman finds Skavadale and Lord Robin waiting. In the most genteel terms, they offer him an enormous bribe to stop his inquiries. Skavadale gently points out that Sandman has discovered no proof of Corday’s innocence, and has no other conceivable source of income. Tempted though he is, Sandman refuses. Alexander brings Sandman to the theater, where a rich lord is mounting a private show in an attempt to launch his mistress as a “serious actress.” Sally is performing in the chorus. The show quickly descends into chaos when a rowdy section of the audience starts yelling for the lead performer to strip. In the chaos, a hidden sniper fires a rifle at Sandman, missing narrowly. Sandman jumps down onto the stage, and flees back to the Wheatsheaf, with Sally following. Berrigan is waiting for him. The Club has ordered Sandman killed, but Berrigan swears that he is the only one the Club sent, and has no idea who the sniper in the theater was. Berrigan has decided to leave the Club and work with Sandman. He respects Sandman as a soldier, and also has been captivated by Sally. A theory has begun to form in Sandman’s mind: one of the Seraphim Club killed the Countess. The Club as a whole decided to buy him off, but Lord Robin, who was putting up most of the money, privately decided to have him killed. ;Day Five: Sandman and Berrigan meet Corday at Newgate, where he draws them a portrait of Meg. A letter comes from Eleanor, telling Sandman she has news. They meet in an ice cream parlor, and she tells him that her maid saw Meg taken away from the house in a coach belonging to the Seraphim Club. When Sandman mentions Skavadale, Eleanor excitedly tells him that Skavadale’s family is close to bankruptcy, but, as the heir to a dukedom, he has managed to become engaged to the wealthiest heiress in England. To both of them, it seems obvious: Skavadale was one of the Countess’s many lovers, and he killed her when she attempted to blackmail him – in which case he has probably killed Meg. Eleanor tells Rider she is still in love with him. He says the same. He says he will ask Sir Henry for her hand once more, and if her mother objects, they will elope. Sandman and Berrigan return to Sir George Phillips’s studio. Phillips confesses that it was the Club, not the Earl, who commissioned the portrait, but he doesn’t know the one person it was for. Berrigan confirms that it is a Club tradition to commission a portrait of any woman that three or more members have slept with, and hang it in the Club’s gallery as a trophy. That evening, Sandman, Berrigan, and Sally sneak into the Seraphim Club. The coachman confirms that the coach has been driven to Skavadale’s estate in the country. ;Day Six: The trio quickly rides out of London. Skavadale's estate is a good day's journey away, which means they have just enough time to reach there, find Meg, and travel back to London in time to meet the Home Secretary on the morning of Corday's execution. While camping, Berrigan mentions that a good number of people have developed a taste for Spanish cigars, which are exceptionally hard to come by in England. He has a source for them in Spain, but doesn’t speak the language. Sandman does, and could obtain financing from Sir Henry. They agree to be partners. ;Day Seven: At Skavadale’s estate, they break in and find Meg, still alive. She is surly and uncooperative, and refuses to answer any questions. She has two strange characteristics: a fondness for raising chickens, and an overwhelming terror of wasps. Skavadale has offered her a comfortable position on his estate, raising a large brood of hens. The heroes force her to travel back to London. On the way, Meg still insists she knows nothing. She challenges Sandman to explain why Skavadale would leave her alive if he was the killer. Sandman admits he can’t. But after badgering, Meg admits that the Countess was still alive when she saw Corday out of the house; that is enough. ;The Last Day: On the morning of the execution, the heroes present Meg to Lord Sidmouth. She refuses to talk, and screams that she’s been kidnapped. Sidmouth prepares to dismiss them all, but then Sally mentions obstruction of justice, punishable by transportation to Australia, where the wasps have “stingers like hatpins.” In the presence of the Home Secretary, the threat becomes frighteningly real to Meg. She confesses, and Sandman is wrong: Lord Christopher is the killer. His own stepmother seduced him and then blackmailed him, with her eye on the earldom’s vast fortune. He came to the house, begging her to return his love letters; she mocked him, and he lost control and stabbed her with his pocketknife. Meg discovered him, as did Skavadale when he arrived shortly thereafter. He concealed Meg at his estate, preparing to blackmail Christopher once he inherited the earldom. It was also Christopher, not the Seraphim Club, who put out the bounty on Sandman’s head. Lord Sidmouth, for all his sour complacency, acts quickly: he writes a hasty pardon while ordering horses and a police escort to speed Sandman to Newgate. He reminds them that, unfortunately, they have no proof to take action against Skavadale. Sandman rushes to the gallows while the execution unfolds in the same meticulous detail as in the prologue. Alexander and Lord Christopher are sitting in the prize seats. Sandman arrives just as the trap doors are opened, and manages to save Corday, while his police escort seizes Lord Christopher. Sandman limps away, on his way to Sir Henry’s house, to ask him for a loan and his daughter’s hand.
9278157	/m/0282s9p	In the Grip of Winter	Colin Dann	1981	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As winter approaches Toad, Adder, and the hedgehogs go into hibernation, while the rest of the animals prepare for winter. However the winter is harsh and kills most of the field mice and voles, while making it difficult for the rest of the other animals to find food. Whistler and his mate help Fox, Vixen, Weasel, and Badger by bringing them fish; while the Great White Stag brings hay for the rabbits, hares, field mice, and voles. Badger decides to go seek out other animals in White Deer Park to see if they know how to cope with the cold. On the way Badger meets a hungry stoat eating a rabbit who tells Badger that this winter is likely to half the population of White Deer Park. Badger then decides to meet with the Great White Stag but falls and injures his leg. Fortunately the Warden finds him and cares for him while he is injured. While in the Warden's cottage Badger convinces the Warden's cat Ginger to send a message to his friends so that they know he's not in any danger. Ginger finds Mole and relays Badger's message, unfortunately Kestrel thinks Ginger is trying to attack Mole and attacks Ginger with his talons. Though Fox and Vixen care for the injured Ginger he leaves while Fox and Vixen are out hunting so he can get home sooner. When Badger is well he leaves the Warden and tries to convince the rest of his friend that the best way to survive is to live with the Warden. When they reject this idea Badger return to the Warden alone. When the Warden refuses to let Badger back into the cottage Ginger explains that the Warden only looked after Badger while he was injured and now that Badger is well the Warder expects Badger to live in his natural environment. Badger then returns to his friends feeling very foolish. On the way back Badger meets Kestrel and saves him from Ginger who wants revenge for Kestrel's earlier attack on him. Once Badger returns the animals then decide to search for food by human houses. While out foraging they witness two foxes steal two chickens. However the owner of the chickens chase and shoot both foxes, along with the injured chickens. They then put the dead chickens in a shed. Fox then steals the chickens from the shed but wakes the dog while doing this. Fortunately the humans only check the chicken coop for foxes and assume that because it's undamaged the fox was scared off. While returning to the park Fox comes across the two dead foxes and realises that he only has the chickens because the two other foxes died. By having Tawny Owl, Kestrel, and Whistler bring waste food from the houses to the park the animals are no longer at risk from starving to death. One night while eating this food they hear the cry of a hare and find that the stoat badger met earlier has killed one of Hare's leverets. Though unhappy about this they accept that this is the law of nature and don't punish Stoat. During the winter the Warden becomes ill so both he and his cat leave the park. However in his absence two poachers with shotguns enter the park and start hunting the white deer. Fox is able to defeat the poachers by 'chasing' the deer near a frozen pond, when the poachers run onto this pond the ice breaks and they lose their shotguns while trying to climb out. However the poachers return with pistols and start shooting every fox they see. This time the deer save the foxes by charging en masse at the poachers. When the Warden returns to his cottage the animals assume that the poachers will not return, unfortunately the poachers are unaware the Warden is back and decide to hunt foxes in areas where the deer are not present. Fox then lures the poachers to the Warden's cottage while Tawny Owl tells the Great White Stag about the poachers. The deer then prevent the poachers escaping while the Warden and his guest the Vet detain them. Spring arrives causing Toad, Adder, and the hedgehogs come out of hibernation. Due to his mating instincts Toad tries to return to Farthing Wood pond but he and another toad are captured, and put in a jar by some boys. Though Whistler is able to break one jar and free the toad inside Toad is still trapped inside another jar. Vixen recommend that Whistler takes the jar to the Warden, who opens it and frees Toad. Kestrel learns that the toad that Whistler freed is a female called Paddock who is returning to White Deer Park to breed. She is introduced to Toad and the two of them go off to mate. Fox wonders if Vixen would have been impressed if he had been so direct with her. At the end, the surviving animals of Farthing Wood all gather together and celebrate still being alive.
9280145	/m/0282vpj	An Acquaintance with Darkness	Ann Rinaldi	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 An Acquaintance with Darkness is the story of 14-year-old Emily Pigbush, who lives with her mother in Washington, D.C., in 1865. Emily's father died during the Civil War while fighting for the Union. Now the Pigbushes' final servant, Ella May, has left because she was freed, leaving Emily to care for her mother alone. However, Emily sometimes has the help of her close friend, sixteen-year-old Annie Surratt, whose mother runs the boarding house across the street. Emily's mother is near death, and Emily hopes to go live with Annie afterward her mother dies. Emily's mother's only wish is that Emily at all costs not live with her uncle, Dr. Valentine Bransby, after her death. Soon, Emily's mother dies after hearing that the Civil War was over. But then, on April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford Theatre. Mrs. Mary Surratt, Annie's mother, comes under suspicion of the authorities, as she may have harbored Booth; Johnny Surrat is also wanted by the police for possibly being involved in the assassination. On Annie's advice, Emily reluctantly goes to live with her uncle, Dr. Valentine Bransby. Living with Uncle Valentine, Emily learns that Valentine is actually quite a talented doctor who strives for more discoveries in the medical field with the changing times. Emily meets Valentine's assistant, Marietta, his housekeeper, Maude, and Maude's dwarf husband, Merry. She also meets Robert deGraaf, Valentine's medical student. As Emily later figures out, Valentine, Marietta, Robert, and Maude are involved in "body snatching" (cadaver theft) in Washington. Emily is at first disgusted by Valentine's deeds. However, after helping obtain an illegal body for her uncle for medical purposes, Emily realizes that her uncle is stealing bodies with the purpose of helping advance the medical field and save more lives. Meanwhile, Mrs. Surratt, is publicly hanged along with several other accomplices, and Valentine, Robert, Annie, and Emily attend the execution. Annie sells her house and flees Washington, changing her name, and leaving Emily behind. In the end, Emily tells Robert that she would like to become a nurse one day and he replies that she can not only become a nurse, but a doctor instead.
9280590	/m/0282w3z	Cast Two Shadows	Ann Rinaldi	1998	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is 1780, in the midst of the American Revolution, in Camden, South Carolina, and fourteen-year-old Caroline Whitaker, her step mother Sarah,and her bratty older sister Georgia Ann are confined to one small room of their spacious Southern plantation home. British soldiers, led by Colonel Rawdon are occupying the place. The Colonel is also courting Georgia Ann. Caroline and her Negro caretaker, Miz Melindy, travel to get her 'almost' brother Johnny. It turns out he is an American patriot, which causes conflicting emotions in Caroline. Her emotions over Kit's death are still a sore wound throughout the novel.
9282569	/m/0282xys	A Ride into Morning	Ann Rinaldi	1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the midst of the American Revolution, fourteen-year-old Mary Cooper moves in with her twenty-two-year-old cousin, Tempe Wick, and Tempe's elderly mother, Mary Wick, after Mary's Tory family discovered that she was participating in the Patriot cause. Her brother, Abraham is also a Patriot soldier. Mary's cousin lives near where the American soldiers have camped for the winter. Two of Mary's young friends, David Hamilton Morris and Jeremiah Levering, are stationed here too. Mary has fallen in love with General Anthony Wayne. The Patriot soldiers and all those who live on farms near the magazine are now facing an incredibly cold winter. A mutiny is imminent. Tempe befriends Billy Bowzar, a Patriot soldier and probably leader of the mutiny. Tempe lends Bowzar her beloved white horse. Mary learns of Bowzar's plans and discovers that Tempe is growing hesitant as well. The cousins stop fighting so they can keep Aunt Mary safe, a plan that involves keeping Tempe's horse, Colonel, in the house overnight. The mutiny is unsuccessful and Mary realizes that her love for General Wayne was a silly little crush. Lieutenant Enos Reeves, a colleague of Wayne's that Mary suspected of being in love with Tempe, was actually in love with her, and Mary discovers she feels the same way.
9285460	/m/028301j	The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My	Tove Jansson	1952	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Moomintroll is taking milk back home to his mother, Moominmamma when he meets The Mymble who is searching for her missing sister Little My. Together the pair go looking for her.
9289573	/m/02836x8	Hurricane Punch	Tim Dorsey	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Serge is in therapy, coping with the fact he has turned 44. At first he goes on a religious awakening, but then decides to make a comeback...by killing as many people as possible in unusual and disturbing ways. As he does this, hurricane season is in full force, and Serge follows hurricanes like others follow sporting events. Unfortunately for him, another serial killer calling himself "The Eye of the Storm" is following him, and trying to upstage him. The newly freed Agent Mahoney doesn't believe that the killings are the work of two serial killers, but that Serge's unstoppable zeal for life has caused him to snap in two. But that won't stop Serge, and his brain dead friend Coleman, from enjoying every minute of hurricanes A-I.
9293968	/m/0283fbl	The Tale of Two Bad Mice	Beatrix Potter	1904	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Two Bad Mice reflects Potter's deepening happiness in her professional and personal relationship with Norman Warne and her delight in trouncing the rigors and strictures of middle class domesticity. For all the destruction the mice wreak, it is miniaturized and thus more amusing than serious. Potter enjoyed developing a tale that gave her the vicarious thrill of the sort of improper behaviour she would never have entertained in real life. The tale begins with "once upon a time" and a description of a "very beautiful doll's-house" belonging to a doll called Lucinda and her cook-doll Jane. Jane never cooks because the doll's-house food is made of plaster and was "bought ready-made, in a box full of shavings". Though the food will not come off the plates, it is "extremely beautiful". One morning the dolls leave the nursery for a drive in their perambulator. No one is in the nursery when Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, two mice living under the skirting board, peep out and cross the hearthrug to the doll's-house. They open the door, enter, and "squeak for joy" when they discover the dining table set for dinner. It is "all so convenient!" Tom Thumb discovers the food is plaster and loses his temper. The two smash every dish on the table &ndash; "bang, bang, smash, smash!" &ndash; and even try to burn one in the "red-hot crinkly paper fire" in the kitchen fireplace. Tom Thumb scurries up the sootless chimney while Hunca Munca empties the kitchen canisters of their red and blue beads. Tom Thumb takes the dolls' dresses from the chest of drawers and tosses them out the window while Hunca Munca pulls the feathers from the dolls' bolster. In the midst of her mischief, Hunca Munca remembers she needs a bolster and the two take the dolls' bolster to their mouse-hole. They carry off several small odds and ends from the doll's-house including a bird cage and a bookcase that will not fit through the mouse-hole. The nursery door suddenly opens and the dolls return in their perambulator. Lucinda and Jane are speechless when they behold the vandalism in their house. The little girl who owns the doll's-house gets a policeman doll and positions it at the front door, but her nurse is more practical and sets a mouse-trap. The narrator believes the mice are not "so very naughty after all": Tom Thumb pays for his crimes with a crooked sixpence placed in the doll's stocking on Christmas Eve and Hunca Munca atones for her hand in the destruction by sweeping the doll's-house every morning with her dust-pan and broom.
9294053	/m/0283fj2	The Story of Miss Moppet	Beatrix Potter	1906	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The tale opens with an illustration of a wide-eyed kitten: "This is a Pussy called Miss Moppet, she thinks she has heard a mouse!" The following illustration depicts a mouse wearing a pink bowtie and green jacket "peeping out behind the cupboard, and making fun of Miss Moppet. He is not afraid of a kitten." Miss Moppet darts at him, but misses and bumps her head on the cupboard. She thinks the cupboard very hard and rubs her nose. The mouse scurries to the top of the cupboard and watches her. Miss Moppet ties a duster about her head and sits before the fire on a red hassock. The mouse's curiosity is piqued; he thinks she looks very ill and comes sliding down the bell-pull. "Miss Moppet looks worse and worse." The mouse creeps nearer. Miss Moppet holds her head in her paws and peeks at the mouse through a hole in the duster. "The Mouse comes very close." Miss Moppet jumps and snags him by the tail. "And because the Mouse has teased Miss Moppet—Miss Moppet thinks she will tease the Mouse; which is not at all nice of Miss Moppet." The kitten ties the mouse up in the duster then tosses it about like a ball. The mouse peeks from the hole in the duster. In the last illustration but one, Miss Moppet is seated upright on her rump and staring at the reader. The duster lies opened and empty in her paws. "She forgot about that hole in the duster", and the mouse has escaped. He dances a jig safely out of Miss Moppet's reach atop the cupboard.
9305344	/m/0283s6k	Who will Comfort Toffle?	Tove Jansson	1960	{"/m/016475": "Picture book"}	 The lonely Toffle leaves his home to look for friends, eventually finding the Miffle and rescuing her from The Groke.
9306692	/m/0283t_m	Cold Tom	Sally Prue	2002-01-31	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tom is soon discovered by a young "demon" named Anna. Tom begins to quickly resent the girl, thinking that she is stubby, loud, and stupid. Also, he cannot understand Anna's attachment to her family and pet, Sophie. In essence, Anna represents everything the elves are not: ungraceful and loving. Tom, like all of the other elves, does not care about other people or animals, but simply about surviving. Later, when Tom meets Anna's half brother, Joe, things grow worse. The emotionally hardened and distant Joe sees to testing Tom's abilities. At first, Joe just tests Tom's weight and body temperature, which is under freezing. But, Joe then becomes fascinated with Tom's elfin ability to become invisible by calling on the stars. When Joe forces Tom to try and become invisible while Tom is in a weakened conditions, the tool shed Tom has been living in bursts up in flames. Tom flees, but does not get far. He is found by Anna and Joe's snooping neighbor, Edie. Edie takes Tom into her home, though he resents her help. She puts up charms to keep the murderous Tribe from Tom. Despite her protection, Tom still feels that he is going to die. Each day he finds himself growing weaker and more unlike himself. With help from Anna and Joe, Tom is able to escape from Edie's home, but he then feels back into the forests of the elves. He is met by his elfin father, Larn. Larn pierces him with a spear. Anna, Joe, and Edie find Tom dying in the woods. Edie seems aloof to this fact and tells Anna and Joe to forget about him. Joe, fascinated by an elf woman nearby, does nearly this. Anna, on the other hand, stays by Tom and tries to help him get better. It is her persistence that saves Tom from dying and helps Tom turn completely human. In the end, Edie turns out to be Tom's once-elfin aunt, Edrin. She was an outcast just as Tom was and tries to help him understand why he was different from the other elves. Anna and Joe also stay by and try to help Tom learn to be human. In the end, Tom seems accepting of the fact that he has given up the beauty of the elf world for the closeness of the human world.
9309742	/m/028408g	The Constant Princess	Philippa Gregory	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 ;Childhood: The book starts at Alhambra Palace, when Catalina is five years old. Her family is constantly traveling and fighting battles against the Moors, or African Muslims, whom they are trying to drive out of Spain. Katherine, or Catalina as she is called in Spanish, faces the dangers to which she is exposed bravely and learns the skills and tactics needed to be a strong military leader. Even as a young child, Catalina expresses pride in her titles of Infanta of Spain as well as Princess of Wales (this title resulting from her betrothal to Prince Arthur of England.) Her mother, Queen Isabella I of Castile, is an outstanding commander, with a great ability to make wise tactical decisions as well as effectively rally her troops. The Moors are being persecuted because they will not accept the Catholic religion. ;Marriage: The book then skips over to Dogsmerfield, England when she meets Henry VII and her fiance, Arthur Tudor. King Henry VII is strongly attracted to her, but keeps his feelings under control, exhibiting a very gruff manner towards her. Arthur does not appeal particularly to Catalina, as he is uncomfortable and quiet. On their wedding night, Arthur is almost too nervous to consummate their marriage, but Catalina knows they must and strongly encourages him. The tension, awkwardness, and lack of understanding between the two causes them to have a very discordant and cold relationship for a few months. Finally, Arthur becomes so angry that he orders Catalina to accompany him to Ludlow Castle in the freezing weather without showing much care for her safe travel. She is miserably cold in a litter on the way and almost becomes ill. She is so upset that she angrily and sadly reproaches him and cries, and he realizes his ability to make her unhappy, and decides that he must be a better husband. He apologizes for his unkind behavior and she does the same, and he cares for her tenderly when they reach the castle. That night, she prepares a special meal for them and wears beautiful Arabic dress that she has brought with her. She tells him about her country and how the Spanish follow many Arabic/Moorish customs (in the areas of food, dress, decorating, but not religion). (However, the real Katherine was rigidly Catholic, and to even consider any type of tolerance towards the Muslims would have been seen as a sin to her.) They share an intimate and honest conversation, leading to the beginning of a truly happy relationship. They begin to discuss things they plan to put in place when they are king and queen to help England prosper. Catalina and Arthur share a wonderful life for several months. They discuss their families, their past, their cultures, and their future together. Arthur tells Catalina that his brother Henry is very jealous of him and will always be spoiled and greedy. However, their happiness ends when Arthur suddenly becomes ill with the sweating sickness. Arthur begs Catherine on his death bed to promise that she will marry his younger brother Henry VIII, become Queen of England, and carry out their vision for the kingdom. In order to do so, she had to deny that their marriage was consummated, which the novel depicts as one of the most audacious lies in the history of England. At first, King Henry VII proposes to Catalina, but she rejects him, making him angry. He ignores her for the next few years and does not marry her to his son Prince Henry though both young people desire to marry. ;Second Marriage: When Henry the VII dies, Henry becomes king and marries Catalina. She changes her name to the English "Katherine" when she becomes queen. She is a bit manipulative to Henry, tricking him on their wedding night by pretending that she is a virgin, but this is unlikely to have happened in real life, and using his naivety and adoration of her to accomplish things she wants (though these things usually are to the benefit of the kingdom). Her first pregnancy results in a miscarriage, and in desperation she consults a Moorish doctor who is more knowledgeable than the English doctors. While she is away having her baby, Henry has an affair with a woman named Anne (not Boleyn) who unknowingly convinces him that Katherine was not a virgin. The book ends with the start of Henry VIII's relationship with Katherine's lady-in-waiting, a Boleyn girl, Anne. Anne later does become Queen of England in Katherine's place, as depicted in another novel by Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl.
9311882	/m/0284337	Peter and the Secret of Rundoon	Dave Barry	2007-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story starts at Stonehenge, where Lord Ombra was seemingly destroyed in Peter and the Shadow Thieves. Though weakened, he uses his power to possess others to gather himself together so that he can return to Rundoon. Meanwhile, warriors of the Scorpion tribe plan to invade Mollusk Island. Warned by the Lost Boys, Fighting Prawn prepares for war. Eventually, however, he is forced to surrender to the overwhelming force of the invaders and the Mollusks are enslaved. Molly and George travel to Oxford, where they discover some vital information about Peter's parents which suggests Peter himself is in danger. And indeed Lord Ombra and his fellow shadow creatures have decided that capturing Peter could help their plans. Lord Aster sails to Mollusk Island to warn and protect Peter, unaware that Molly and George have stowed away aboard his ship. Peter, wounded by the Scorpions, is kidnapped by Captain Hook along with the Lost Boys, but soon they are all captured by Lord Ombra and taken to Rundoon. There they are imprisoned in the dungeons of King Zarboff III, a cruel and vain despot in cahoots with the shadow beings. Tinker Bell joins Lord Aster in a rescue mission, but he is captured by Zarboff's men. Tink returns to the ship to warn Molly and George, but finds them trying to steal a camel and being chased by the owners. She tells Molly to use the starstuff in her locket to make the camel fly, and so they escaped and went on to find Peter, Lord Aster, and Bakari on their flying camel. Zarboff reveals his plan - to shoot rockets into space to make starstuff fall. The first attempt is successful, and he plans another, using the new starstuff to send the rocket even further. He does not know that the shadow beings intend the second rocket to rupture the fabric of the universe and cause it to collapse into nothingness. It falls to Peter to prevent the rocket from reaching its destination. By chance that load of starstuff falls onto a ship stolen by George and the Lost Boys, causing it to float. The flying ship, expertly handled by Captain Hook, takes the whole party back to Mollusk Island, when Shining Pearl, Fighting Prawn's daughter, has joined forces with the pirates to repel the invaders. The book ends with the Lost Boys deciding to return to London and some new boys, former St. Norbert's orphans enslaved by Zarboff, taking their place.
9319907	/m/0284fkx	Macao				 Princess Morgan de Gama is an addict, a whore, and a deadbeat. As the story begins, a film of her sexual exploits is being auctioned off to three international buyers. The Portuguese government would like her locked in an asylum. Meanwhile, an Angolan rebel needs her to keep an old French general in his service, and has told the Red Chinese that acquiring her is a part of any deal they may want to make with the rebellion. David Hawk, head of AXE, has a plan to use her to eliminate the head of Chinese counterintelligence. He sends Nick Carter with her to Hong Kong, and from there to Macao, knowing that Colonel Chun Li would have a trap ready for them. The two do end up in the trap, and face a sticky end chained up in a dungeon with mutant killer rats. However, in the end, Colonel Li is killed, the Angolan rebel leads his forces to the rescue, and the Princess ends up marrying the head rebel, Prince Askari.
9328132	/m/0284rp5	The Fur		2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Fur follows the late high school and early university years of the protagonist Michael Sullivan in an Alternate Reality version of Western Australia in the late 1990s following a meteor strike carrying an infectious and lethal fungus-like plague ('The Fur'). The entire state is under forced quarantine by Commonwealth and UN military forces. The novel revolves largely around Sullivan's struggles with his religious beliefs and dilemma on whether or not to attempt to break quarantine and start a new life in the uninfected Eastern States of Australia, at the risk of death and certain cost of abandoning his family and friends forever.
9331797	/m/0284wmh	A Taste for Death	P. D. James	1986	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the dingy vestry of St. Matthew's Church, Paddington, two bodies have been found with their throats slashed. One is an alcoholic vagrant, whereas the other is Sir Paul Berowne, a baronet and recently resigned Minister of the Crown. Poet and Commander Adam Dalgliesh investigates one of the most convoluted cases of his career...
9331930	/m/0284wrz	In Evil Hour	Gabriel García Márquez	1979	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Evil Hour takes place in a nameless Colombian village. Someone has been placing satirical pasquinades about the town, outlining the locals' shameful secrets. Some dismiss these as common gossip. However, when a man kills his wife's supposed lover after reading of her infidelity, the mayor decides that action is called for. He declares martial law and sends soldiers (really just armed thugs) to patrol the streets. He also uses the 'state of unrest' as an excuse to crack down on his political enemies.
9333321	/m/0284ypj	Surviving the Applewhites	Stephanie S. Tolan	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 E.D.'s father Randolph is directing the local production of The Sound of Music, but is disheartened by the lack of genuine talent in the town. However, he hears Jake singing, and asks him to audition. Ultimately, Randolph casts the play, with Jake in the role of Rolf. However, Randolph is so bossy and demanding that the entire stage crew quits, leaving his family of artists to pool their collective talents to keep the show running. E.D. feels left out because she isn't creative, but her father makes her the stage manager because of her ability to organize. Resentful because her daughter wasn't cast as one of the Von Trapp children, the head of the theater ultimately cancels the show because of a small incident. E.D. proposes to continue the show in the family barn, and soon everyone is helping out to convert it into a theater. The night of the show arrives, and everything is going well. E.D. begins to believe that the play will be a success, but in the middle of the performance, the sound of rain and thunder become very loud. The performers stall until the weather lets up. They begin to sing and encourage the audience to join them. Soon after, the rain had calmed down and they continue the play. Just before the final scene, as the actors are about to head onstage, there is a blue and white flash and the electricity goes out. E.D. thinks the play is over until she thinks of an idea to save it. She tells the actresses playing the roles of nuns to hold candles so the audience can see what the actors are doing. Thanks to E.D. the show is a complete success. The next morning the family sits in the living room and reads the reviews. They say the play was outstanding, unlike any other. Because of what a report has written about Jake, he is now determined to be back onstage singing and acting again.
9333360	/m/0284yry	The Africa House	Christina Lamb			 The Africa House is an account of the life of soldier, pioneer white settler, politician and supporter of African independence Stewart Gore-Browne in relation to the building of his estate Shiwa Ngandu in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. Originating with a chance encounter in 1996 with Gore-Browne's grandson in Lusaka, the book uses Gore-Browne's diaries, letters, personal papers and photographs as well as those of his family, and interviews with family and friends, as its sources.
9335300	/m/028504c	The Last Days	Scott Westerfeld	2007-08-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04rlf": "Music"}	 The narrative focuses around Moz, Zahler, Pearl, Alana Ray and Minerva, in an apocalyptic New York. Odd occurrences are taking place, the sewers are gushing black water, the earth shakes, and people are inexplicably going mad. In the midst of it all, two friends begin to see their dreams realized. Moz and Zahler have been friends for six years, playing their guitars without any clear direction. They have always dreamed of forming a band, but have never managed to quite get it done. Moz meets Pearl, a mysterious girl with a knack for music, who he teams up with to save a guitar that a crazy woman throws out of her window. When they begins learning more about one another, the image of a band becomes clear. With Pearl at their head, the band begins to recruit new members and take form. As the band becomes more and more real, new members join. Alana Ray, a skilled drummer and street performer with a mysterious condition that is never quite made clear (although is most likely to be some advanced form of synesthesia), joins them under the condition that Moz pays her. However, Moz keeps this deal secret from Pearl to gain something resembling control over the band. Alana Ray has the ability to see colored lights, which she considers to be hallucinations at times, and realistic at others. She often mentions that she is able to "see" the music they play. Pearl also convinces Minerva, her long-term friend, to join the band as their lead singer. Minerva was in a band with Pearl previously, but they broke up when Minerva contracted the parasite causing the madness in the city and begins to hate all the people she once loved, and she begins to hate her boyfriend, another member of the band, causing her to break up with him, thus breaking up the band. Minerva's parents have hired a woman, Luz, who believes in natural means to fight the parasite instead of the artificial means of modern doctors. Minerva uses these traditional methods such as garlic and rosemary to keep off the worst effects of the parasite, taught to her by Luz. Zahler eventually changes over from his position as lead guitarist to playing the bass, due to the fact he normally plays lower parts regardless and his fingers are suited for the larger instrument. Initially, he is unhappy that Pearl and Moz had devised this plan without his consent. However, he soon grows used to the bass. Meanwhile, Moz and Minerva begin to date in secret, causing the parasite to be passed on from Minerva to Moz. The band soon receives a recording contract with Astor Michaels, a man who is a carrier, who is known for having discovered a new type of music called "New Sound". He has been searching for a new type of music which involves a member of the band being infected, creating quite a unique effect. Because of Minerva, and soon the newly infected Moz, Astor Michaels soon believes to have discovered the perfect band. The five are still struggling to agree on a name for their band, but otherwise their band seems to be making its way quickly to fame. Moz begins playing in the subway to help raise money for the band, until things turn strange one night. A giant worm lurks in the nearby tunnels, and Moz is instinctively drawn to it, all of his instincts screaming to kill it. Before he gets the chance to attack it, the "Angels", seemingly defenders of the city against the people who have lost their minds, jump down to fight the worm. They soon reveal themselves to actually be carriers of the parasite from the New Watch (featured in Peeps), including Cal and Lace from Peeps. They attempt to bring Moz to New Jersey to treat his parasite, but he runs away, fearing letting down the band by missing their first gig. The band plays for its first time in a club at night, but it does not go perfectly as planned. Zahler freezes up in the beginning, although he eventually overcomes his stage fright and starts the song. But Minerva's song causes another giant worm to break through the ground, killing many people in the process. The New Watch comes to defeat the worm, and rounds up the whole band to take them to the New Jersey lab, but not before Moz smashes his beloved guitar because of the parasite. Moz receives treatment for the parasite in New Jersey, and when he has almost completely recovered, he and the rest of the band members visit the Shrink, a character included in Peeps. The Shrink believes that Minerva's singing has called up the worm, and that she can use this ability to help defeat them. Even the Nightmayor, centuries old, can barely remember this ancient talent as it was used in the previous resurfacing of the worms. None of the previous bands employed by Astor Michaels were able to achieve this same result because one member was infected, but not the lead singer. The New Watch recruits the band to sing to cause the worms to surface all around the country, thus allowing the New Watch to fight them on their own terms. The band goes on tour, travelling wherever they are needed, and Pearl finally comes up with the perfect name for the band: The Last Days. They become heroes of sorts, and finally achieve their dreams of fame, although not in the way that they originally planned. In the end, the worm attacks have ended, and civilization is rebuilding itself. Moz and Minerva are revealed to still be together, although they have broken up and gotten back together numerous times. Pearl has turned into a politician and is running for mayor of New York "again", leaving the fate of the rest of the characters unknown.
9336609	/m/02851mv	The Family Reunion	T. S. Eliot			 The play is in two acts, set in Wishwood, a stately home in the north of England. At the beginning, the family of Amy, Dowager Lady Monchensey are assembling for her birthday party. She is, as her doctor later explains, clinging on to life by sheer willpower: :...........I keep Wishwood alive :To keep the family alive, to keep them together, :To keep me alive, and I keep them. Lady Monchensey's two brothers and three sisters are present, and a younger relation, Mary, but none of Lady Monchensey's three sons. Among other things they discuss the sudden, and not to them wholly unwelcome, death at sea of the wife of the eldest son Harry, the present Lord Monchensey. Neither of the younger sons ever appears, both being slightly injured in motoring accidents, but Harry soon arrives, his first appearance at Wishwood for eight years. He is haunted by the belief that he pushed his wife off the ship. In fact Harry has an alibi for the time, but whether he killed her or not he wished her dead and his feelings of guilt are the driving force in the rest of the play. Lady Monchensey decides that Harry's state warrants the discreet observation of the family doctor, who is invited to join the party, ostensibly as a dinner guest. Mary, who has been earmarked by Amy as a future wife for Harry, wishes to escape from life at Wishwood, but her aunt Agatha tells her that she must wait: :...........You and I, Mary :Are only watchers and waiters, not the easiest role, Agatha reveals to Harry that his father attempted to kill Amy while Harry was in her womb, and that Agatha prevented him. Far from being grateful, Amy resented and still resents Agatha's depriving her of her husband. Harry, with Agatha's encouragement, announces his intention to go away from Wishwood, leaving his steady younger brother John to take over. Amy, despairing at Harry's renunciation of Wishwood, dies (offstage), "An old woman alone in a damned house", and Harry and his faithful servant, Downing, leave.
9337324	/m/028529h	North Amerikkkan Blues	Evan X Hyde		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Evan Anthony Hyde tells the story of his last few months at St. John's College Sixth Form (now Junior College) in which he receives a scholarship from the local embassy to study at Dartmouth. After enduring threats from a Jesuit teacher who dislikes Hyde and wants to take his scholarship away despite his academic performance, the eighteen year old leaves Belize for Dartmouth. While there, he makes new friends and learns much more than he would have wished about the world outside of Belize. After two years and many adventures, Hyde makes a decision that affects his life irrevocably.
9338414	/m/028535b	Politian	Edgar Allan Poe			 The play takes place in 16th century Rome. A man named Castiglione becomes engaged to a woman named Allessandra, inciting the jealousy of the orphan Lalage. Lalage meets a man named Politian and, after some flirtation, convinces him to take revenge on Castiglione. In the drama, Politian recites the poem "The Coliseum," which Poe had previously published in 1833.
9340936	/m/02854zs	Undead and Unwed	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Betsy Taylor—former model, newly unemployed secretary, 30, and still single—wakes up after being flattened by a Aztek Pontiac in a tacky coffin wearing cheap knock-off shoes. Her mother is glad she is back, albeit as a vampire, but her stepmother is enraged that Betsy has reclaimed her designer-shoe collection. With a wealthy best friend and a newly acquired doctor pal who is not susceptible to her formidable allure, she sets out to right wrongs but is abducted by Nostro, a tacky 500-year-old vampire who rules the undead roost. It seems that Betsy is an anomaly: a vampire who doesn't burn in sunlight, can fight the urge to feed, and is not repulsed by religious articles, all of which may make her the prophesied Queen of the Vampires. Teaming up with gorgeous vampire Eric Sinclair, who is in her opinion a major pervert, she takes on Nostro and his minions.
9341091	/m/028550v	Undead and Unemployed	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Nothing can make Betsy Taylor give up her shoe fetish- even dying and rising as the new Queen of Vampires. Only being royally undead doesn't mean that there aren't credit card bills to be paid. Luckily, Betsy lands her dream job selling designer shoes at Macy's Department Store. But then there's a string of vampire murders in town and Betsy has to enlist the help of the one vamp who makes her blood boil: the oh-so-sexy Eric Sinclair. Only the last time she ran into Sinclair she accidentally fulfilled an ancient prophesy- and ended up married to him...
9341164	/m/0285537	Undead and Unappreciated	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The novel has two prologues. The first prologue relates how the devil, out of boredom, possessed a "not very nice" woman and gave birth to a daughter; however, the devil soon returned to Hell, since she preferred it to living with a newborn. The devil's daughter, Laura, was given up for adoption by her biological mother, Antonia, for whom the possession was like a fugue state. Ironically, Laura is adopted by a Presbyterian minister and his wife, the Goodmans. The second prologue introduces the recently turned vampire Betsy Taylor, the heroine of the Undead series of paranormal romance novels, as she crashes a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, where she hopes to learn techniques to control her thirst for blood. The two prologues are related because Laura is Betsy's half-sister, sharing the same father; the not-very-nice Antonia is Betsy's stepmother. This third novel of the series has thirty-five chapters and, as usual, is told from the point of view of Betsy (first-person narrative). The early chapters introduce Betsy, who has become the Queen of the Vampires through odd circumstances, and her circle of friends/roommates. Her best friend is the very cool and very wealthy Jessica, whom she's known since the seventh grade; Jessica is patient with Betsy and supportive. Another close friend and confidante is Marc Spangler, an emergency-ward physician. Other major human characters include Betsy's father and stepmother Antonia ("the Ant"), who are expecting a baby, Betsy's professor mom Elise (a Civil War historian) and a policeman, Nick Berry. On the vampire side, Betsy is betrothed to the earnest Eric Sinclair, now King of the Vampires; although Eric is smitten with her, Betsy is not enthusiastic. The novel is framed by a minor story, a wedding between a vampire and a human, Andrea Mercer and Daniel Harris, who are friends with Betsy. Such marriages are almost unheard-of because vampires had traditionally viewed human beings as "sheep", that is, as food rather than romantic partners. In an early chapter, Betsy is asked to preside at the wedding; she does so in the final chapter, quoting from Romeo and Juliet: "what love can do, that dares love attempt". Throughout the novel, Betsy reminds herself that she needs to prepare for the wedding; Betsy's distractions are also highlighted by noting when she forgets about the upcoming wedding. The plot begins in earnest when Betsy receives a non-invitation to her stepmother's baby shower; the shower is scheduled for daylight hours, making it impossible for vampires to attend. To reinforce the snub, Betsy's weak-willed father visits Betsy at home to ask her to stay away, where he lets slip that the new baby is Antonia's second child. Betsy and her friends confirm this revelation from Antonia herself, who describes unwillingly how she woke up with no memories of the preceding ten months, and dropped the baby girl, Laura, off at the hospital. Much of the novel revolves around the search for Laura and getting to know her. Laura turns out to be a beautiful but bashful girl just beginning college, and eager to do the right thing for everyone. She's very sweet-natured and wholesome, always seeking peaceful solutions, and making friends with everyone, even people with difficult tempers. Getting to know Laura, Betsy likes her (although she envies her beauty) and can't bring herself to tell her about her sordid vampiric life or that Laura herself is the "spawn of Satan" and destined to conquer the world. Before finding Laura, Betsy is frustrated by not knowing enough and resolves to read the Book of the Dead, a holy relic for vampires analogous to the Bible. The Book was written by an insane vampire who could see the future; unfortunately, it also drives anyone reading it insane. Throwing caution to the wind, Betsy reads the Book for several hours. The Book describes Betsy's ascension to Queen of the Vampires and her marriage to Eric, and also predicts that her half-sister Laura is fated to take over the world. Unfortunately, the book drives Betsy insane or, rather, changes her into a traditionally thinking vampire, as shown by the novel's first-person perspective. In that state, she attacks her human friends Jessica and Marc, indulges unbridled passions with her consort Eric, and tries to kill his vampire assistant Tina, who defeats her handily. She wakes up with a bruised head, a recovered sanity and much remorse – and also a new power, to awaken before sunset, which she uses to take Laura to Antonia's baby shower, so that Laura can meet her birth mother. Throughout the remainder of the novel, she tries to recover her friends' trust, particularly Jessica's, and also make amends with Eric. The novel's climax occurs in a nightclub, Scratch. Betsy inherited the club, but the vampire staff are unhappy with her non-traditional changes, including not allowing them to drink blood from humans or kill them. The staff form a union and strike to demand better "working conditions". As their bargaining chip, the staff kidnap Betsy's half-sister Laura, mistaking her for an ordinary human girl. Unfortunately for them, they handle her too roughly and, despite her dislike of violence, Laura begins killing them with weapons formed from hellfire. Eric joins them and the three together win the fight with the vampires. Laura reveals that she'd known all along about Betsy and about herself, but she was waiting for Betsy to trust her enough. Laura is convinced that she can overcome her demonic heritage and be a good person, although she also displays a touch of temper. Later, Betsy meets the Devil herself—resembling a wonderfully dressed Lena Olin—who reveals that Laura will indeed take over the world. The novel is also marked by several minor stories that contribute to characterizing Betsy and her friends. It opens with a semi-serious discussion between Marc and Betsy about his recovery from alcoholism. Also near the beginning, Eric and his long-time assistant Tina return from a trip to Europe; Eric gives Betsy a little shoe necklace, playing on Betsy's well-known weakness for shoes and characterizing how much he cares for her. Betsy's compassion is highlighted by her treatment of "George", one of the Fiends she inherited from another vampire vanquished in an earlier novel. Fiends are vampires that have been driven insane, unable to speak or reason, by denying them blood. Most of the Fiends are being tended to by Betsy's vampire friend Alice, but George continually escapes and makes his way to Betsy's house. Betsy begins to feed him her own blood, and George begins to recover his sanity by learning to crochet.
9341218	/m/028554z	Undead and Unreturnable	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 It's Christmastime in the Kingdom of the dead (Minneapolis), which is complicated as it sounds. Betsy Taylor isn't going to let a little thing like death and blood-drinking stop her from enjoying the holidays or planning her upcoming spring wedding to drop-dead gorgeous vamp Eric Sinclair. But all is not merry and bright-Betsy is plagued by ghosts who demand her help in rectifying their past mistakes, and a serial killer is on the loose. With his victims all being, blond women. Besty fits the profile exactly... The book starts out with the knowledge that Betsy is technically dead, however everyone but close family and friends think that she is still alive. In Betsy's life she has a stepmother, Antonia (the Ant) who gives birth to a younger brother, Jon, and her best friend, rich Jessica, and Laura, is technically her half-sister but also the devil's daughter after Satan possessed her stepmother (The Ant who gave her up to adoption to, ironically, the Goodman's) and produced a daughter. She also receives attention from a human boy who is a past member of a gang of vampie slayers. She also has a gay human friend called Marc, a doctor she saved in the first novel from suicide and a human policemen who is a former flame called Nick Berry. Aside from all of this she has vampire servants who work for her and a hostage wild vampire dubbed George the Fiend. George is a wild vampire created by a 500 year old vampire Betsy killed. She feeds him with her blood to make him stronger and Jessica teaches him different things such as crocheting. Laura later attacks George the Fiend thinking her mother (Satan) is using him to annoy her and meddle in her life. After Betsy tries to break up the fight Laura stabs her with a sword forged by Hellfire that kills magical creatures, however it doesn't kill her. After this Laura is sent to feed him. Eric and Betsy fight after she reveals she can hear his thoughts during sex. Eric is hurt she doesn't tell him earlier and goes back to his room which causes Betsy to point out that he hasn't fully committed to their relationship. Also, in an attempt to connect with her people Betsy starts an advice column intended for new vampires which others deem as stupid. Also, the human boy, with the decidedly shady past as an ex-vampire slayer, decides to write her life story as a fiction story and publish it through his university course, however Sinclair and his best friend Tina wipe his memory of it to save Betsy from exposure. After a serial killer known as the "Driveway Killer" kills her stepmother's next door neighbor a ghost starts plaguing Betsy. Laura and her set out to find him and discover him in a rundown house with a hostage. Laura kills him and the two set the hostage free. Betsy finds herself somewhat frightend of Laura doing the fight scene in which the overtake the serial killer and set the hostage free. In this novel it seems that Antonia knows that Laura is her daughter.
9341244	/m/028556b	Undead and Unpopular	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Betsy Taylor, Queen of Vampires, is celebrating her 31st birthday and her 1st anniversary of being dead (or perhaps that should be undead.) She has told her friends that she doesn’t want a party but she is sure that they are planning a surprise party for her. She is trying to plan her summer wedding to Sinclair but it doesn’t help that he is avoiding having anything to do with it and deciding to give up drinking blood in honour of her birthday is just making her cranky. And nobody likes a cranky vampire. Jessica her best friend since childhood has been diagnosed with cancer and this leads Betsy to think that maybe converting her friend to become a vampire might be a good idea. With a delegation of European vampires arriving to pay their respects to her, a baby brother to baby sit, unexpected guests dropping by and a phone that just won’t stop ringing she has plenty to keep her occupied. And that’s before she deals with the zombie in the attic….
9341289	/m/028558d	Undead and Uneasy	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05v6bm4": "Bit Lit", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 In the days leading up the The Big Day, Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor seems to have a full house - and the wedding guests have yet to arrive. Along with her human buddies, there's a ghost, a werewolf, and a Fiend crashing at her place. And though her fiance, Vampire King Eric Sinclair, conveniently disappears when the conversation turns to seating charts and flower arrangements, he does manage to make his oh-so-sexy presence known at other moments. Betsy knows the next few weeks won't be smooth sailing - but she never expects just what's in store for her. Cold feet are no surprise, especially with an undead groom. But when Sinclair truly goes missing - and not just to avoid wedding preparations - along with most of her friends and loved ones, Betsy is frantic. Alone and afraid for the fate of everyone she loves, Betsy can't trust anyone as she tries to find them and whoever is behind all the disappearances. And what happens next will shake the foundation of the vampire world forever in the bestselling series that "breath(es) new life into conventional vampire lore."*
9341936	/m/02855jb	A Cage of Butterflies	Brian Caswell	1992	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is set in a research facility (known as the "farm") involving two groups of people. The first group contains several teenagers with IQs above 150. These teenagers (Greg, Mikki, Lesley, Gordon, Gretel, Katie and Chris) call themselves the "Think Tank". However, this group is merely a smokescreen for the real subjects of the research - five seven year-olds who are able to communicate telepathically, known as the "Babies". The Babies are called Pep, Ricardo, Ian, Rachael and Myriam. The Babies were all born around the same time in the same hospital. When the members of the first group are "contacted" by the Babies, they learn of the researchers' exploitation, and, with the help of compassionate workers at the facility (Susan and Erik), investigate the reason for the Babies' condition. The Babies need help as the head researcher, Larsen, will stop at nothing to solve the mystery. The Think Tank, as well as researcher Susan and young orderly Erik provide this help. They trick the head researcher, John Larsen, so they can escape. The story ends with the Think Tank six years into the future. They turned the think tank into 'Think Tank Inc.', a company worth three million dollars. The Babies, Think Tank and newly married Erik and Susan all live together. The title, 'A Cage of Butterflies' refers to the fact that Larsen and the research staff keep both the Babies and the think tank under constant supervision and keep them 'caged' or 'prisoners', since they do not allow them to move around freely.
9343751	/m/0285830	The Girl Next Door	Jack Ketchum		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story takes place in 1960s suburban United States, and is told in flashback form by the narrator, David. After giving the reader a quick tour of his neighborhood and childhood friends, David introduces Ruth, a single mother and alcoholic, amongst other things. Ruth has, over time, gained the trust of the neighborhood children by allowing them to come freely into her home, play as rough as they wish, and even drink an occasional beer with her. Fast forward to Meg and Susan, Ruth's nieces, who come to live with their aunt after the death of their parents. All seems well at first: the girls make friends with the other children and David begins to develop feelings for the sweet and innocent Meg. However, Ruth's mental state has been deteriorating over time, and the burden of having two more children to care for seems to accelerate her descent into madness. Ruth begins verbally, then physically, abusing the two girls, often while the other neighborhood children are watching. Then she allows the other children to abuse them, making them feel that because they have the permission of an adult, their actions are okay and will not be punished. Finally both Meg (who is severely injured and near death) and Susan find themselves locked up in the bomb shelter in Ruth's basement, and David realizes that he must do something before time runs out and he loses the first girl he ever loved. However, despite his efforts, his plan to rescue the girls is foiled by Ruth and the neighborhood children under her control. Ruth allows the neighborhood boys to toy with her. Ruth then feels that no man should ever have her and she should never have any man so she decides to end her desires. David decides to create a plan to get Meg, Susan, and himself out of the house alive. He lights some fireworks so the smoke will travel up the stairs. One of Ruth's sons warns her and as she heads downstairs, David beats her with Susan's crutches. The police then show up and David tells them what had happened so he does not get prosecuted. As he grows up he tracks the whereabouts of the other children who helped to torture Meg, discovering that they have either died young as a result of reckless lifestyles or have gone on to lives of poverty and crime. After reading of a brutal crime spree perpetuated by one of the now grown children, David is left to wonder what has become of the children he was unable to track.
9346431	/m/0285cvp	Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries	Neil deGrasse Tyson	2007		 Death By Black Hole is divided into seven sections: The Nature of Knowledge, The Knowledge of Nature, Ways and Means of Nature, The Meaning of Life, When the Universe Turns Bad, Science, and Culture and Science and God.
9347120	/m/0285dxr	Don't Go Near the Water	William Brinkley	1956	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Don't Go Near the Water is an episodic novel broken into ten chapters dealing with the various Public Relations officers stationed on the island, with six numbered interludes, entitled "Melora" with a sequential number after them, developing an additional storyline of the romance between Melora Alba and Ensign Max Siegel, an ugly but educated former investment broker "afflicted with a monstrous body but a beautiful soul." Lieutenant Commander Clinton T. Nash, executive officer of the large Public Relations Headquarters and known as "Marblehead" to his men, is a pompous former stock broker who aspires to be nautical. Nash's futility in achieving this aim is symbolized by a running gag of failing to master the use of a sextant. When Lieutenant (jg) Ross Pendleton is frustrated by the native islanders on adjacent Gug-Gug island refusing to dress and behave stereotypically during a publicity visit by Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs, the exec sends Ensign Siegel to assist the former radio soap opera producer and self-important huckster. Siegel is the ace Sightseeing Officer among the Correspondent's Aides, known for his lavish if tongue-in-cheek VIP treatment. Siegel succeeds in gaining the cooperation of the Gug-Gug islanders but the film is never used by the Navy. ;;Melora 1 The Passionate Sailors of Mendoza :While escorting two congressmen on a tour of the island, Ensign Siegel encounters a beautiful native girl speaking to Mr. Seguro, a native man. The politicians are anxious to socialize with her at a traditional Tuluran dinner, but Siegel tries to protect her by warning of the risk of social diseases among native women. All three are horrified when the girl (Melora) turns out to be sophisticated and fluent in English. Vice Admiral D.D. Boatwright, a logistics genius and "veritable naval Clauswitz," considers Public Relations a collection of "oddballs and freaks." Despite his great merit, because he is without glamor he has become the target of attacks in the press, particularly by war correspondent Gordon Ripwell of the Chicago Gazette, who boasts of a readership of two and one half million. The admiral reluctantly acquires a small dog from a native boy to protect him during his morning exercise walks, and when the dog runs away, distributes handbills around the island seeking information on the dog. When it turns out the dog returned to the boy, the admiral happily reunites them permanently, a story picked up by the media from the handbills. The admiral becomes a public relations hero almost overnight, known as "Bow Wow Boatwright," assuring the Navy the benefit of his genius for the rest of the war. ;;Melora 2 Never Mind the Frangipani :Siegel interrogates Mr. Seguro as to the identity of the girl. Mr. Seguro is evasive, but finally discloses that the girl is not only the daughter of a wealthy family, the Albas, but is the village schoolteacher. Ensign Siegel immediately heads towards the schoolhouse. Commander Nash, in a bid to glamorize the enlisted man, establishes the Home Town News Department and has "Joe Blow" officers installed aboard every ship in the fleet. When the fleet fails to show any interest in participating, he revises the system to mass produce filler copy about the civilians in uniform to mail to stateside newspapers, appointing meek and inconspicuous Lieutenant Noah Pratt to run it. Lieutenant Pratt's dedication to the task embarrasses the other Public Relations officers, especially Lieutenant Morey Griffin, the "idlest man on Tulura, which is saying something," whose ambition is to be the Navy's "boudoir liaison" in Sydney, Australia. When he and his roommate Ensign Siegel poke through ships' rosters looking for news of old friends, they encounter the name of Farragut Jones, Boatswain's Mate Second Class on the APA USS Ankletooth. Amused by a sailor named for two naval heroes, they create copy for the sailor and send unauthorized stories to his hometown newspaper in Appleton, Nebraska. Their amusement turns to horror when the editor contacts the Department of the Navy, suggesting that Jones be returned to the States as a hero. Nash is outraged that someone has bypassed the Home Town News Department. The two confess and the exec confines them to quarters "pending the court martial." Nash promptly forgets them; Siegel and Griffin enjoy days of room service exceeding that of The Greenbrier. However, Admiral Boatwright loves the editor's idea, and the two are freed. Jones is ordered to Tulura before the hero's tour of the States. ;;Melora 3 Hydroz to Jerem :Ensign Siegel has established a formal relationship with Melora, helping out in the temporary island one-room schoolhouse after school, and researching questions the teacher is unable to answer without benefit of a library. He breaks down the formality by purchasing an Encyclopædia Britannica for the school- the one gift that the formally brought-up teacher would accept. Lieutenant (jg) Pendleton is a married womanizer with a penchant for the Navy nurses stationed on Tulura. Ensign Siegel's yeoman, Adam Garrett (who wants to be transferred to sea duty), is recruited by Pendleton to be his driver, instead of another officer as required by regulations, so that he can consummate a relationship with his latest conquest, Ensign Alice Thomas. Garrett's frequent nocturnal proximity to the attractive (and willing) nurse combines with two years of forced celibacy to compel him in enlisting Siegel to help arrange an affair between Garrett and Thomas in violation of Navy Regulations forbidding "fraternization" between officers and enlisted personnel. Using his Tuluran friends, Siegel stages a phony attack by Japanese hiding out on the island to kidnap Pendleton, leaving Garrett and Ensign Thomas alone together. The pair carry on a protracted affair, during which Garrett discovers he had, as Siegel had warned him, been merely obsessed with Alice because of sexual deprivation. Unexpectedly, Garrett then falls in love with Alice and indiscreetly sees her during daylight. Commander Nash finds out about the affair and breaks it up, but is persuaded by Siegel to forgo disciplinary action against Garrett for fear of having adverse stories written by correspondents on Tulura (mainly Gordon Ripwell) sympathetic to the enlisted man. Correspondent "Rip" Ripwell enjoys throwing his weight around with the fearful Commander Nash and the other officers. Ensign Christopher Tyson III, a young tennis-playing Princeton man with a noticeable stammer, is the most junior ensign in Public Relations and given the duty no one else wants: correspondent's aide to Ripwell. Tyson is particularly burdened, tasked with personally hauling Ripwell's dirty sheets to the base laundry daily and most recently told by the correspondent to find him a woman. Rewarded by his puritanical publisher with an inscribed thousand dollar bill as a souvenir of flying on a bombing raid of Japan, which the Public Relations officers note "some of those PFC B-29 crewmen...make...ten times a month for a hundred bucks," Ripwell's boorish personality makes him the target of Ensign Siegel, Melora, and Tyson, who combine to blackmail the reporter out of the money. Tyson wants only to be relieved of his odious and undignified laundry duties, but Siegel plans to use the money to rebuild the island's schoolhouse, destroyed in the war, forcing school to meet in a one room shack. Ripwell is hailed as a hero for his philanthropy, and his publisher sends him another souvenir bill. Boatswain's Mate Second Class Farragut Jones arrives on Tulura en route to the United States, where a tour from New York to Washington to Hollywood has been arranged. Commander Nash dubs Jones the Typical Young Navy Man and orders Ensign Siegel to give the sailor Siegel's "complete red-rug, big-wheel, VIP treatment." However Jones proves to be utterly uncouth, grossly tattooed, has a predilection for using the coarsest language, despises civilian war workers, and is suspicious of the Navy's intentions. The alarmed and desperate exec assigns Siegel to room with the sailor and "freshen him up." In ten days, Siegel does a reasonable job by conditioning Jones using whiskey and the allure of sex in Hollywood. Chaperoned by Lieutenant Noah Pratt, Jones has a successful tour of the United States, and is asked to stay on in Hollywood as a technical advisor. Siegel gets a daily letter from Jones detailing his personal success with the ladies of Hollywood. ;;Melora 4 I Went to Harvard College, Sir :Melora brings Ensign Siegel home for tea with her father, a sometime European expatriate and Tulura's chief banker, stranded on his native Tulura by the war. After the tea, and without ever deviating from a pleasant and polite tone, Mr. Alba thoroughly dissects Siegel, and despite Siegel's Harvard background, finds him wanting in education and breeding. A lavish officer's club is planned to replace the Quonset hut currently in use, while the enlisted men find their beer allowance strictly rationed to two beers per day. Led secretly by Yeoman Garrett, distributing outraged missives written using Public Relations mimeograph equipment, the enlisted men protest by cancelling their war bond allotments. When Naval Intelligence investigates and the correspondents begin writing stories sympathetic to the enlisted men, Commander Nash fears adverse consequences for Public Relations Headquarters, and responds with a disastrous attempt to have the officers to build the club themselves. The effort is a complete disaster by mid-afternoon of the first day when six of the inexperienced officers become casualties to work injuries, including the exec, who falls head first into a wheelbarrow of wet cement. Ensign Siegel defuses the situation by the simple expedient of allowing the men to consume their weekly beer ration at one sitting. Nash learns of Garrett's involvement from Naval Intelligence, but recalling his earlier fraternization episode and still fearing the consequences from the correspondents, rules out a court martial and instead punishes the yeoman by transferring him to the worst duty of which he can conceive: sea duty aboard a destroyer. ;;Melora 5 Queen's Pawn Opening :The new schoolhouse is going up nicely, and Melora again invites Ensign Siegel for tea. Despite Mr. Alba's courteous pleasantries, Siegel is uncomfortable until he shows an educated appreciation of Mr. Alba's collection of excellent chess sets. Mr. Alba learns that Siegel is a also skilled player—there are no others on Tulura. He invites Siegel to play a game, and to remain for dinner. Debbi Aldrich, the "aloof, tantalizing and beautiful" correspondent for the women's magazine Madame, hits Tulura, where she creates a major upheaval, especially with Ensign Tyson, by always displaying a half inch of black brassiere in the V of her uniform shirt. Using her wiles on Admiral Boatwright's assistant, Debbi arranges assignment to a warship going into combat, the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Seattle, escorted by Tyson, who has yearned for sea duty. The crew of the Seattle, noting the half-inch of bra, asks Debbi for a pair of her lacy black panties to fly as a pennant during the bombardment of the Japanese-held island of Nanto Shima. Two days after the landing, she slips away from her quarters and goes ashore where the battle still rages, and stays at the front with the Marines for four days. She returns at the end of the week, after Naval Intelligence has begun an investigation into her disappearance, and is sent back to the States. Curiously, after the combat operation Tyson's stammer has disappeared. ;;Melora 6 New York is a Very Great Excitement :Ensign Siegel's and Melora's relationship has become close, especially as her father has found much common ground for conversation with Siegel and grown to like him. Matters are dampened, however, when Melora tells Siegel that as much as she loves other places, she has a duty to Tulura and could never live anyplace else. News of the bombing of Hiroshima reaches the island. Lieutenant Woodrow Wilson Shoemaker, a lean, pale "thinking man with a sense of history" and formerly an editorial writer, is in charge of the Historical Section of the Public Relations branch. The reactions of others in Public Relations dismays him when it appears that he is the only person on Tulura concerned about its implications. Commander Nash worries only that the Air Force has achieved a Public Relations coup that the Navy will not be able to match. Lieutenant (jg) Pendleton sees it as a quick opportunity to return to Radio City Music Hall to produce a new soap about a "hotpants" Navy nurse suspiciously similar to Ensign Alice Thomas. Gordon Ripwell's reaction is to be miffed that President Truman didn't inform him ahead of time. Shoemaker decides to resign his civilian position in order to work to prevent future wars. Ensign Siegel bets him a month's liquor rations that in a cross section of views on Tulura, Shoemaker's would be the only apocalyptic concerns. In an all-night drinking and interviewing binge, Siegel wins the bet. Instead of writing out his resignation as an editorial writer, however, a chastened Shoemaker decides to sleep all day, unaware that Siegel has been affected, helping him to make a crucial decision about his own post-war life. A wild party in the new officer's club celebrates the end of the war and the impending return of most to civilian life. Melora and Mr. Alba accept invitations, and Mr. Alba finds the behavior of the American officers anthropologically fascinating. Lieutenant Griffin is unexpectedly ordered to Sydney—after the conclusion of the war has ended its high female-to-male ratio—but lifts his depression by tossing a taunting Lieutenant (jg) Pendleton into the swimming pool. Ensign Tyson wanders the club with his tennis racket swatting higher-ranked officers on the buttocks while yelling, "Mind your rudder," in imitation of Commander Nash. Yeoman Garrett enters the club "like a Viking come to raid" to claim Ensign Thomas. Ensign Siegel, in a "spontaneous" gesture orchestrated to resemble a media awards ceremony, informs the exec that he has been awarded the Legion of Merit. Admiral Boatwright, a close friend of Mr. Alba's, announces Melora's engagement to Siegel. (After his night with Shoemaker, Siegel had driven directly to the Albas to ask for her in marriage, after which Mr. Alba invited him to work as an investment broker in the bank on Tulura.) At dawn the next morning, with the party still in full session, Siegel succeeds in demonstrating to the grateful Nash how to use the sextant. "'So that's how it's done,' Nash said. Abruptly the exec gave a superior little laugh. 'Really it's very simple, isn't it, Siegel—unlike Public Relations. Why, any meathead could be a seagoing officer.'"
9349411	/m/0285hpv	Ratking	Michael Dibdin	1988-04-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen has crossed swords with the establishment before - and lost. From the depths of a mundane desk job in Rome counting paperclips, to which he has been exiled through political fallout from the Aldo Moro kidnapping and murder, he is unexpectedly transferred to Perugia. Unbeknownst to him, favours have been called in and words have been whispered into ears. He is to take over a kidnapping case involving one of Italy's most powerful families, with control of a business empire at stake. The missing head of the family is a major benefactor of one of Italy's major political parties and pressure is being applied. Zen contends with local power politics and troubled relationships with his mother and girlfriend, while employing some distinctly unorthodox methods and skirting the borderline of the permissible in a race to get results before he is removed from the case through political pressure.
9349828	/m/0285j3g	A Long Finish: An Aurelio Zen Mystery	Michael Dibdin	1998-12-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After his adventures under sun-drenched Neapolitan skies in Cosi Fan Tutti, Aurelio Zen finds himself reluctantly back in Rome, sneezing in the damp wine cellar of a retired but still powerful and connected mover and shaker. Strings are pulled and he is given another unorthodox assignment: find evidence that clears the jailed scion of an important wine-growing family, who is accused of brutal murder, in time to harvest what is anticipated to be a great vintage. Zen is confronted with the closed ranks and closed mouths of a small, remote rural town, where everyone knows the secrets of everyone else. Grappling with tangled relationships, bitter resentments and grudges reaching back to the immediate post-war years, his investigations are further distracted by meeting the young woman who thinks she is his daughter.
9349898	/m/0285j55	Blood Rain	Michael Dibdin	1999-09-20	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Aurelio Zen has got the posting he always dreaded--he has been sent to Sicily, home of the Mafia, albeit in a nondescript liaison job. The woman who might be his daughter is there too, fixing police computers and worried that someone has a backdoor into data; she is enjoying a flirtation with a woman magistrate whose pursuit of the Mafia is based on quite personal agendas. Someone died nastily, left to cook in a locked metal wagon in a railway siding--the Limoni family deny, as local Mafia chieftains anxious to retain prestige would, that it was their missing son; but someone will end up paying in blood for this murder that never happened. Zen is thrown into what he recognises as a 'fugue state', following some emotional hammer blows and exhibits some odd and obsessional behaviour before eventually returning to Catania for a confrontation with a powerful Mafia Don in which his life is at stake. With a personal interest in getting to the bottom of things, Zen adds up the clues and realises murky political forces are involved that are bigger than both of them. Dibdin's picture of a Sicily full of death and confusion is evocative and plausible; Zen's initially reluctant pursuit of at least some part of the truth, some vestige of honour, is moving and powerful. This is an emotionally complex thriller in which the starkest of tragedy is counterpointed by outbreaks of bizarre comedy as Zen finds himself allies in unlikely places and the internal squabblings of the Mafia clans would be hilarious if they were not so blood- curdling
9349974	/m/0285j88	And Then You Die	Michael Dibdin	2002-04-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Aurelio Zen is back, but nobody's supposed to know it...After months in hospital recovering from a bomb attack on his car, Zen is lying low under a false name at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, waiting to testify in an imminent high profile Mafia trial. He has clear instructions: to sit back and enjoy the classic Italian beach holiday. But Zen is getting restless, despite a developing romance with a mysterious and alluring occupant of a nearby sunbed, as an alarming number of people seem to be dropping dead around him. Abruptly, the pleasant monotony of beach life is cut short as the word comes and he finds himself transported to a remote and strange world far from home...where he belatedly comes to appreciate both the reach of those who want him dead and that the corpses were all supposed to be his. As ever in the Zen chronicles, the real story turns out to be much more complex. Confronted by an unexpected and unconsidered adversary, he resolves the immediate situation at the cost of involving his new girlfriend in a plot to dispose of an inconvenient corpse.
9350507	/m/0285jvh	Medusa		2003-08-07	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When a group of Austrian cavers exploring in the Italian Alps comes across human remains at the bottom of a deep shaft, everyone assumes the death was accidental. But then the body is removed from the morgue and the Defence Ministry puts a news blackout on the case. Smelling a rat, and seeing an opportunity to embarrass their political rivals in the run-up to a cabinet change, the Ministry of the Interior puts Aurelio Zen onto the case. The search for the truth leads him into the turbulent political history of Italy during the seventies and also into obscure corners of modern-day affluent society, exposing the sordid details of a crime that everyone else had forgotten. The story is told from the view points of several of those involved and the action moves between Rome, the extreme northern province of Alto Adige, an Italian enclave and tax haven in Switzerland, and several provincial Italian cities. The focus is on movement, rather than the methodical application of the police process; Zen takes short cuts with the latter and arrives at the solution in a rush.
9350572	/m/0285jy7	Back to Bologna	Michael Dibdin	2005-08-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Zen is on sick leave after a stomach operation and is feeling a shadow of himself. His relationship with his partner, Gemma, is also not going well. She is about to leave for Bologna to meet her son who has something important to tell her. Meanwhile, Zen is recalled to duty and is sent to be the liaison officer for a high profile murder investigation - in Bologna – where the local football team owner has been shot, as well as stabbed with a Parmesan knife. Whilst in Bologna, Gemma manages to get tickets to watch a live cook-off between local academic celebrity Edgardo Ugo and singing TV chef Romano Rinaldi, 'Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta', provoked by Ugo suggesting, in a newspaper article, that Lo Chef can't cook. A series of coincidences leads to Zen being arrested when Ugo is found shot in the wake of the hilariously disastrous event. The other main characters include a couple of flatmates – a rich kid student of Ugo's who fancies himself an 'Ultra' football fan, the student's illegal immigrant girlfriend, who calls herself Princess Flavia of Ruritania and the worlds worst private detective, who fancies himself a Chandleresque Private Eye. This is Zen at the centre of a black comedy.
9351543	/m/0285kyy	The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes	Beatrix Potter	1911-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The tale is set in a forest and begins with "once upon a time". Timmy Tiptoes is "a little fat comfortable grey squirrel" living in a nest thatched with leaves in the top of a tall tree with his little wife, Goody. Over the course of several days, the two collect nuts in their little sacks for the coming winter and spring, and store the nuts in hollow tree stumps near their home. Timmy wears a red jacket he removes while working, and his wife wears a pink dress and apron. When the stumps are full, the couple make use of a tree-hole that once belonged to a woodpecker. The nuts rattle "down &ndash; down &ndash; down inside", and Goody wonders how they will ever retrieve them. Timmy reminds her he will be much thinner by springtime and will be able to pass through the little hole. In an aside, the narrator tells the reader that the couple had great quantities of nuts because they never lost them, noting that most squirrels lose half their nuts because they cannot remember where they buried them. Silvertail is the most forgetful of squirrels in the wood, and, while trying to find his nuts, digs up another squirrel's hoard. A commotion erupts among the nutting squirrels, and, as ill luck would have it, a flock of birds fly by singing "Who's bin digging-up my nuts?" and "Little bit-a-bread and-no-cheese!" One bird finds a perch in the bush where Timmy is working and continues to sing about digging up nuts. The other squirrels take notice, suspect Timmy of robbing others of their hoards, rush upon him, scratch and cuff him, chase him up a tree, and stuff him with great difficulty through the woodpecker's hole. Silvertail suggests they leave him there until he confesses. Timmy lays "stunned and still" on the peck of nuts he has stored in the hollow tree while Goody searches fruitlessly for him. Eventually, Timmy stirs and discovers himself in a mossy little bed surrounded by ample provisions. Chippy Hackee, a small striped chipmunk, tends him with kindness, mentioning that it has been raining nuts through the top of tree and he has also "found a few buried". The chipmunk coaxes Timmy to eat the nuts and Timmy grows "fatter and fatter!" Goody is very concerned about her husband's disappearance, but has gone back to work collecting nuts and hiding them under a tree root. Mrs. Hackee, Chippy's wife, emerges from beneath the root to demand an explanation regarding the shower of nuts into her home. Eventually, the two ladies complain about their runaway husbands, but the chipmunk knows where her husband is camping-out because a little bird has told her. Together, they hurry to the woodpecker's hole and hear their husbands deep within the tree singing: :"My little old man and I fell out, :How shall we bring this matter about? :Bring it about as well as you can, :And get you gone, you little old man!" Mrs. Hackee refuses to enter the tree because her husband bites, but Goody calls to her husband and he comes to the hole with a kiss for her. He is too fat to squeeze through the hole, but Chippy Hackee (who is not too fat) refuses to leave and remains below chuckling. A fortnight later, a big wind blows off the top of the tree, and Timmy makes his escape. He hurries home through the rain, huddling under an umbrella with his wife. Chippy Hackee continues to camp-out in the tree stump for another week, but a bear-looking creature comes lumbering through the neighbourhood (looking for nuts perhaps?) and Chippy decides it's time to hurry home. He suffers a cold in his head and is quite uncomfortable. Timmy now keeps the family nuts "fastened up with a little padlock", and Goody is seen in the accompanying illustration sitting outside the nest tending three tiny babies. "And whenever that little bird sees the Chipmunks, he sings &ndash; 'Who's-been-digging-up my-nuts? Who's been digging-up my-nuts?' But nobody ever answers!" Chippy Hackee and his wife are seen in the last illustration trying to drive the little bird away with their tree-leaf umbrella. Potter's idea to make the squirrel grow so fat he cannot escape the tree was imitated by A. A. Milne in Winnie the Pooh.
9354110	/m/0285phs	Mr. Tinker in Oz	James Howe	1985	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 One night in Kansas, Dorothy meets Ezra P. Tinker, the inventor of Tik-tok the Clockwork man and he tells her the thousand year guarantee has just run down. With the help of Mister Tinker's speckoscope and Julius Quickscissors they return to Oz. They encounter a group of babies called the Widdlebits and trek across the bottomless swamp. Finally, they make it to the Emerald City, where Dorothy is able to be sent home once again.
9357258	/m/0285sck	Up from Jericho Tel			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book is about an eleven-year-old girl, Jeanmarie Troxell, and a boy, Malcolm Soo, who bury dead animals in a "graveyard" they make out of an abandoned place with many trees behind their trailer park. One day they find a dog who they think deserves a very special plot in the "cemetery", so they find the exact center of the yard and start digging, but they suddenly fall down into a hole that leads to a dead woman, former movie star Tallulah, and her dog (the dead dog they found on the street). She sends them on missions for special people and things, especially her lost necklace, the Regina Stone, but always for a pack of cigarettes. On their way, they find more than just objects. They find the meaning of friendship and what it takes to be a star.
9357544	/m/0285slf	The Royal Mess	MaryJanice Davidson	2007-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Jeffrey Rodinov is a descended from one of the oldest families in Alaska, and a Rodinov has been protecting a Baranov for generations. It's a job Jeffrey takes VERY seriously. Six feet four inches, 220 fatless lbs., black hair and blue eyes; weapon of choice: the 9&nbsp;mm Beretta. In a pinch? His fists. IQ: 157. No one ever sees Jeffrey Rodinov coming, and no one—not even a mouthy, illegitimate princess—is going to keep him from playing bodyguard when his decrees it. Right. But no Rodinov ever had to protect Princess Nicole Krenski. Her credentials? Hunting guide in the Alaskan wilderness. Smart. Stubborn bordering on exasperating. Five-seven. Blue eyes. Very kissable mouth. Very kissable neck, back, legs, wrists, earlobes. The lady says she doesn't need a bodyguard, but that's where she's wrong. Someone needs to watch her and show her the royal ropes (and cuffs...and scarves...). Someone who can make her feel like a queen—in and out of bed. And that's a job Jeffrey Rodinov takes very seriously as well...
9357661	/m/0285sr7	The Royal Treatment	MaryJanice Davidson	2004-05	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Christina Krabbe is trying to find where she belongs after being fired from her job when she meets "Al", a man who has a fondness for fishing. It turns out that Al is the King Alexander II and is looking to set his son up with a woman to be his wife. His son, David seems more interested in his collection of penguins to take the time to meet Christina. He eventually begins to become attracted to Christina's bluntness and candor. The two eventually wed. In order to let Christina work through her added stress as becoming a member of the royal family, she begins to see a family therapist. Eventually, the royal family is part of a kidnapping plot that results in the king being shot and Alexandria killing one of the kidnappers with a chair. During the next months, prince David becomes king while his father is recovering. David and Christina's relationship is stressed but they remain together. In the end, it is revealed that Christina is pregnant.
9359205	/m/0285vjc	The Executioners				 The Australian armed forces have been messing up badly. One of their carriers rams and destroys an American cruiser. A pilot accidentally drops live bombs during war games. An out-of-control tank sets off an explosion that decimates a British army contingent. Nick Carter is sent to investigate, working alongside Major Rothwell and his assistant, Mona Star. After a few near misses with death, and the deaths of the men who were at the hearts of the accidents, Nick uncovers a Chinese plot to drive off Australia’s allies, an underwater base on the Great Barrier Reef, and the shocking secret that the plot is not truly Chinese, but the brainchild of a bitter woman whose father was ruined by the Australian army – and who killed and took the place of the real Mona Star, years ago. The plot is ended by a couple of navy torpedoes and a school of sharks.
9359876	/m/0285w2l	Derik's Bane	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Starting out in the Wyndham Mansion, Werewolf Derik is ordered by his alpha, Michael Windham, to go to California and find the reincarnation of a powerful sorceress - Morgan LeFay, half sister of King Arthur - and stop her from what ever she is doing by "taking care" of her. Because if he doesn't, the world will end in six days. This prediction from psychic werewolf Antonia is a lucky diversion for Derik, who has recently become an alpha wolf, and would otherwise likely have gotten into a fight with Michael over alpha status in the Pack, a fight only one of them could have possibly survived. Upon his arrival in Monterey, California, Derik discovers that the reincarnation of Morgan LeFay is a gorgeous but benign medical doctor named Sara Gunn, who has had a string of the most unlikely luck since the day she was born, but has no intention whatsoever to destroy the world. Derik, posing as car mechanic, tries to kill her but fails miserably several times, as do others, namely an odd group calling themselves Arthur's Chosen, whose goal is the resurrection of King Arthur. After realizing he can't possibly kill Sara, and convincing her that her string of luck is not pure coincidence, they team up and visit Doctor Cummings, Sara's mentor, who, as it turns out has known of Sara's predicament since before she was born and who points them towards the lair of the Arthur's Chosen in Salem, Massachusetts. During the trip across the country, Michael tries and succeeds to cajole Sara - who is initially rather not very fond of Derik because he has tried to kill her, but adores his gorgeous body - into sleeping with him by means of several lies and half-truth. Over the next days during the trip, Sara falls under Derik's spell, and when he finally tells her that he has cheated her into sleeping with him, she rejects him at first, but shortly after, they confess their love to each other. Upon arrival in Boston, Mass., they both put off seeking out the Arthur's Chosen, not wanting to end the trip and the romance that has developed between them. Sara however is captured by the Arthur's Chosen shortly after, brought to a warehouse and forced to give them some of her blood, which they need to resurrect King Arthur through Black Magic. Derek barges into the warehouse, after having been warned by Antonia that he will die if he enters the warehouse. The Arthur's Chosen release Sara after draining some of her blood and start working on the resurrection, which they can't finish however, because Derik and Sara interfere. The interrupted spell sets free a demon who immediately starts to kill everyone, and would - as Sara sees in a vision - have extinguished all life on earth. After the demon has killed all of the Arthur's Chosen, he severely wounds Derik, breaking his neck, but is attacked by Sara, who, in another nearly-impossible lucky event kills it by simply kicking it with her foot, thus saving the world. Sara then tends to Derik, who is clinically dead, and tries to reanimate him with CPR. Within minutes, Derik is alive again, and almost completely healed due to his werewolf healing abilities and Sara's magic. Having successfully saved the world, the couple returns to the Wyndham Mansion and is greeted by all Werewolves. After Dinner with Michael and his wife Jeannie, Derik proposes to Sara by simply answering Michael's question of what will happen next with "We will marry, and you will give us an RV so we can travel the country". Sara, initially reluctant because Derik did not ask her in private first, eventually accepts the proposal. This ends Derik's struggle to prove his alpha status, because he is now married to the most powerful sorceress in the world, more or less cementing his status for everyone to see. It is then also revealed by Antonia that by "taking care" of Sara, she didn't mean "kill", but literally "keep safe", and that Derik was fated to Save the world not by killing Sara but by loving her, and that she couldn't tell him before or he would have screwed it up.
9360586	/m/0285wrk	Milkweed	Jerry Spinelli		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Milkweed is set in Warsaw, Poland, during World War II. The main character Misha--who acquires multiple last names throughout the plot--is introduced to a band of thieves when he meets Uri, a fellow thief who act as his guardian. Peter D. Sieruta noted, “Misha’s early days with Uri are almost carefree”. While out stealing with Uri, Misha witnesses German invaders “Jackboots” capture Poland. He describes the Jackboots as “magnificent” and later states that he wants to become a Jackboot. Shortly after Poland is captured, Uri decides to create a false identity for Misha, “which Misha gratefully adopts to fill the void that is his past”. This fabricated background states that Misha is a Gypsy born in Russia to a large and old family. His mother was a talented fortune teller, he had “seven brothers and five sisters,” and a beloved “speckled mare” named Greta. In this story bombs and hateful, polish farmers separate Misha’s family until he winds up as a orphan in Warsaw. After running away from a Jackboot, Misha ends up in a garden where he meets Janina. Misha describes Janina as a “little girl,” who reveals she is also Jewish. Janina invites Misha to her seventh birthday party and without knowing what birthday cakes are, Misha panics- thinking that they were trying to “burn down the cake”- and blows out the candles and runs away with a part of the birthday cake. With Jackboot control over Warsaw tightening, a curfew is established and “stupid” Misha ends up getting his earlobe shot from being out past curfew. City conditions worsen with low food supplies, people losing their houses including Janina and her family, loss of electricity, and Jews are being harshly prosecuted. Eventually all Jewish people in Warsaw including Misha, Janina, and the gang of boys are moved into the ghetto. Janina's uncle Shepsel describes their new living conditions as if living in a "closet". News goes out that Himmler, a prominent Jackboot, is coming. One day, a parade of Jackboots passes, and Misha tries to catch the attention of the ugly, unresponsive man who he thinks is Himmler, but instead is knocked to the ground by Buffo, a man who enjoys killing Jewish children. Once Uri reassures Misha that the man he saw was in fact Himmler, Misha decides that he no longer wants to be a Jackboot.Each night Misha steals by slipping through a hole in the wall that is “two bricks wide”. His friend Janina wants to mimic him, so she begins following him on his stealing expeditions. As time passes, the conditions of the ghetto worsen. One day as Misha is “walking along,” Uri appears. Uri, who has been gone for a long time, warns Misha that deportations are coming, and that all of the people will be cleared out of the ghetto. Some time later, an old man appears advising the people that there is no resettlement, and instead the Jews are going to be taken away and killed. That night, Janina’s father Mr. Milgrom tells Misha that when he and Janina go out to steal, they need to run away. Janina and Misha stay in Poland though because Janina refuses to leave and kicks Misha when he tries to convince her to leave the ghetto. Since the Jews are being taken away street by street, it takes some time to clear all of the people out of the ghetto. One night when Misha and Janina return from stealing, the hole in the wall is gone. Without a way into the ghetto, Misha dashes through the crowd of Jackboots and Jews who surround the train station Stawki Station with Janina behind him. They make their way into the ghetto to find the room where they had lived deserted. Janina runs in desperation to find her father, and Misha loses sight of her in the crowd of people. Following, he sees her thrown into a boxcar by a Jackboot. Misha is hit with a club, and kicked before Uri, who appears to be a Jackboot, shoots him. Misha awakens near the train tracks in a state of confusion. A farmer finds him and takes him to a farm where Misha stays for three years working and sleeping in a barn with the animals and eventually runs away. Not knowing what to do next, he rides on trains, and ends up back in Warsaw where “there [is] rubble and there [is] nothing”. He removes his armband leaving it on the sidewalk. Jack (Misha changes his name when moving to America) talks wildly about his past in the streets for years. Most people try to ignore him, except for a woman named Vivian who stops to listen to his stories. She marries him, but leaves after five months; pregnant. Many years pass, and we find Jack working in a Bag ‘n Go market where he meets his daughter Katherine for the first time. She has her own little girl, Wendy, who calls Jack, her new grandfather, Poppynoodle. Katherine takes him to her home where he lives for the remainder of the novel. Jack still thinks of Janina, although he will tell nobody, and he digs up the milkweed plant and plants it in his own back yard.
9363023	/m/0285zq2	The God Beneath the Sea	Edward Blishen	1970-10-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The God Beneath the Sea is divided into three parts. Part one begins with the image of the infant Hephaestus plummeting from Olympus to the ocean. Thetis saves the baby and takes him to the grotto she shares with Eurynome. They raise the baby, telling him stories of Greek myths and giving him a hammer and anvil to play with. Part one concludes with Hermes inviting Hephaestus back to Olympus at Hera's bequest, and Hephaestus claiming Aphrodite for his wife. Part two tells the myths of Prometheus and Pandora, and part three tells various myths of gods interacting with mortals. The novel concludes with the Olympians unsuccessfully attempting to overthrow Zeus, and Hephaestus returning to Olympus from Lemnos, having been cast down from Olympus for a second time after reproaching Zeus. In Part I, "The Making of the Gods", Thetis and Eurynome tell Hephaestus stories of the Titans and Olympians, in hopes of quelling his restless nature. They begin with the myths of the Titans emerging from Chaos, then tell of the birth of the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires, and the overthrowal of Uranus by his son Cronus. They tell of Cronus' ascension to the throne with his queen Rhea, and his descent to madness after the Furies torment him nightly with prophecies that he, like his father, would be overthrown by his son. Hephaestus grows uglier and more violent with age. Thetis and Eurynome give him a hammer, anvil and forge to vent his fury and discover he is a gifted smith. Hephaestus' most beautiful creation is a brooch depicting a sea nymph and her lover; he threatens to destroy the brooch unless Thetis tells him who he is and how he came to live in the grotto. The goddesses resume their tales: Rhea and Zeus conspire to overthrow Cronus. The avenging children of Cronus defeat and imprison the Titans, sparing Rhea, Prometheus and Epimetheus. The gods fashion their home on Olympus, and Zeus seduces Hera by transforming himself into a cuckoo. Their child is hideous and misshapen, and Hera throws the child out into the sky. At the revelation of his parentage, Hephaestus breaks the brooch, and half is washed to sea. His desire for vengeance are tempered by the realization of Zeus' immense power. The narrative then shifts from Hephaestus and the goddesses to recount concurrent events amongst the Olympians, including the arrival at Olympus of Apollo, Artemis, Athene and Hermes. Pregnant again, Hera overlooks Zeus' infidelities, resolving to remain calm to avoid another monstrous child. Hera gives birth to her second son, Ares, and the immortals come to Olympus to honor the newborn god. Zeus commands Hermes to find a gift for Ares. Hermes finds the lost half of Hephaestus' broken brooch and returns it to Zeus as a gift. Zeus creates Aphrodite in the image of the brooch's nymph. Hermes then reunites the broken half of the brooch with the other half, which is worn by Thetis. Hera, struck by the beauty of the brooch, demands to know who fashioned the brooch, then dispatches Hermes to fetch Hephaestus. Hermes returns Hephaestus to Olympus; Hephaestus forgives Hera and asks Zeus for Aphrodite as a wife. Ares demands a birthright from Zeus, and Zeus makes him god of hatred, discord and war. In Part II, "The Making of Men", Prometheus makes men out of clay and the substance of Chaos to inhabit the earth, fearing that Zeus will give the earth to one of his children as a plaything. At Zeus' behest, Hermes commands Prometheus to destroy his creations. Instead, Prometheus teaches his creatures to sacrifice and worship Zeus. Prometheus offers Zeus the choice of two portions as sacrifice; Zeus mistakenly chooses the poorer portion, and in retribution forbids mankind the use of fire. Prometheus steals fire for them in defiance of Zeus. He continues to watch over mankind, finding strange impurites in the substance of Chaos he'd used to create them. These he scrapes away and hides in a sealed jar. Zeus commands Hephaestus to make a woman. The Olympians bless her with gifts, and Zeus names her Pandora. Hermes gives Pandora to Epimetheus as a wife. Zeus punishes Prometheus by chaining him to a pillar in the Caucasus, where a vulture eats his liver daily. At night his wounds heal, so that his punishment can begin anew the next morning. Pandora eventually finds Prometheus' hidden jar. Opening it, she releases malignant furies on mankind: madness, old age, vice and sickness. All that is left in the jar is a chrysalis that works as a healing balm. Hermes consoles the despairing Prometheus that hope was left behind for mankind, "for who knows what may unfold from a chrysalis?" Part III, "Gods and Men", begins with the tale of Lycaon turned to a wolf by Zeus after treating him with disrespect. Zeus begins a deluge. Prometheus shouts a warning to Deucalion, who makes a sea vessel to survive the storm with his wife, Pyrrha. They land at Mount Parnassus, and after praying they repopulate the earth by casting stones over their shoulders. The stones transform to people when they land. The novel then tells of Persephone's abduction by Hades, and Demeter's search for her. After learning of Persephone's abduction from a shepherd, Demeter swears to Zeus that she will withdraw her blessings from the earth unless Hades returns Persephone. Zeus agrees to let Persephone return if she has not tasted the food of the dead. Ascalaphus, a gardener in the underworld, remembers that Pandora ate seven pomegranate seeds in Hades, and Demeter turns him into a screech-owl. Rhea intercedes and Demeter agrees to let Persephone live with Hades for three months of the year. The novel tells myths of Autolycus, the son of Hermes and Chione, and Sisyphus. Autolycus steals the cattle of his neighbor Sisyphus; Sisyphus gains revenge by raping Autolycus' daughter Anticleia. Autolycus sends Anticleia to Ithaca to marry Laertes, who raises Odysseus, the son of Sisyphus and Anticleia, as his own. Sisyphus spies Zeus ravishing the daughter of the river god Asopus and tells Asopus where he had seen them in return for a gift of an eternal spring. He tricks death by trapping Hades in his own manacles. Hades is freed by Ares, but Sisyphus escapes death a second time by deceiving Persephone. At last Hermes takes Sisyphus to Tartarus, to be condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. Meanwhile, Hera and the Olympians conspire to imprison Zeus in a net while he is distracted raining thunderbolts on Asopus. Thetis fetches Briareus to free him. Zeus punishes Hera by hanging her in the sky, and sets Poseidon and Apollo the vain task of building the doomed city of Troy. Hephaestus, seeing Hera's punishment, berates Zeus, and Zeus throws Hephaestus for a second time from Olympus. Hephaestus lands on the isle of Lemnos and is nursed to health by the locals. He returns to Olympus and is greeted by Hermes. At the novel's conclusion, Autolycus muses in a letter to his daughter that his grandson Odysseus may one day visit the new city of Troy.
9366759	/m/02863v2	Year of Wonders	Geraldine Brooks	2001-08-06	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At the opening of the novel, everyone is desolate, and Anna Frith, the narrator and the housekeeper of the rectory of Eyam, reflects on her marriage at age fifteen during the Puritan years, and her widowhood of two years due to a mining accident after three years of marriage and two sons born. When she next reports to work, she is greeted by the daughter of the local landed gentry of the village, Elizabeth Bradford. Miss Bradford tells Anna that her mother is dying and seeks the Rector Mr. Michael Mompellion's counsel, but the rector directs Anna to tell Miss Bradford to go to Hell. Eventually, he himself confronts Miss Bradford and tells her that he will not see her, or any member of her family, due to their refusal to offer support to the village during their self-imposed quarantine. When he returns to his quarters, Miss Bradford collapses in tears in the rectory's kitchen and is comforted by Anna, who is told that her mother is grievously ill with what was suspected to be a tumour but is now known to not be, but she does not elaborate upon this. She presently leaves and Anna returns to the rector, to read him the 103d Psalm, who is impressed by her literacy as taught by the rectoress, Elinor, before her death. He then asks why she did not choose one he finds more ironic – the 128th Psalm. He then desecrates the Bible by dropping it to the floor, an action which shocks her. She leaves the rectory and the plot then fully begins. The novel reverts to a year and a half before, when Anna Frith, then a widow of less than a season, is offered the opportunity to take a boarder, George Viccars, from Peakrill near Kinder Scout, a journeyman tailor who had apprenticed in Plymouth and worked in London, York, and most recently, Canterbury. He quickly ingratiates himself with the Widow Frith's sons, and by the summertime, when he receives a box of fabric from London, he is fully a part of the household. A few days later, Anna comes home to find a woolen dress of green trimmed with Genoese lace. She models the gown, her first since leaving Puritan Sadd colours, for Mr. Viccars and comes to him in an embrace, but immediately sends him to rest as he is fevered. The next day, she mulls on the possibility of marrying Mr. Viccars and the ethics of accepting such a fine gown during her morning's work at the rectory, but completely forgets Mr. Viccars' suggestion that she discuss the matter with her rector or possibly the rectoress. She returns home to find Mr. Viccars abed with acute bubonic plague, and immediately offers him water and fresh bedding, and dismisses his pleadings that she flee for the sake of herself and her sons. He begs her to burn all he brought with him to stop the spread of contagion. She refuses this, thinking him delirious and instead brings the rectors, the Mompellions, to ease Mr. Viccars' illness through prayer. As Mr. Viccars dies, she washes and shrouds him and turns him over to the sexton for burial. The rector recommends that she do as he asked and burn his belongings, but as news of the death spreads, Mr. Viccars' clients come to pick up their work and disregard the warning. The Widow Frith has a few weeks' respite, and then her next door neighbour, Mr. Viccars' employer, falls ill with the plague as well. Within a day, her infant son Tom is ill and dies in less than 24 hours, for which her stepmother, Aphra, rebukes her for her folly in naming and loving a child before it was old enough to walk, whereas the rectoress Elinor Mompellion reads to her of Jesus' love of little children. Within a week, her 3 year old son Jamie dies as well, despite a large variety of remedies being tried. People all over the village begin to fall ill. The spate of deaths is blamed on a widow, Mem Gowdie, and her niece, Anys Gowdie, who are the village's herbalists and midwives. To test Widow Gowdie for being a witch, they throw her into a flooded mine shaft. Once she drowns, they immediately begin to repent and call themselves murderers. Her niece is summoned from the village, and being more practical and skilled in physick understands the situation, and immediately begins to perform insufflation. After three breaths, Mem awakens, and Anys, having raised the dead, is dragged away and asked to confess to her consort with the devil, and in attempting to distract the mob, she confesses and accuses the questioners of having themselves cuckolded by the devil. Her ploy causes great confusion and furthers their hysteria, but does not work – she is lynched moments before Rector Mompellion appears. Anna comments at the time that this incident (as Mem Gowdie dies of pneumonia five days later) led the village into a time of great illness and no one skilled in physick to help them, nor midwife their women through their confinements. The rector consults with the former priest displaced after the fall of the Puritans for advice and formulates a plan, which he shares in the parish on Sunday. He proposes a quarantine, with the town being provisioned in full by the earl of Chatsworth House. The village, with the exception of the Bradfords, its landed gentry, choose to self-quarantine to avoid spreading "Plague seeds" further north. Word of the plague in the village had spread and when a few not held by the Oath (who had been working that Sunday and were not part of the decision) attempt to go to relatives at Bakewell, they are pelted by rocks and rotten fruit from the town market to drive them out of the village. They return to Eyam with this report. They are in turn sheltered by the poor of the town, who house them in their already crowded quarters. During the course of the novel, not only do Anna and the rectoress Elinor Mompellion attempt to learn the uses of the contents of the Gowdies' physick garden, with the help of the works of Avicenna, they also take on the duties of the Gowdies in midwifing births. At one point, a Quaker orphan child is dependent upon them to bring out enough lead to allow her to keep her claim upon her family's mine, her only source of income. These problems bring them closer, with an unspoken agreement that Mrs. Mompellion and Anna should take care of the needs of the living, and Mr. Mompellion should take care of the spiritual needs of the dying. In token of that understanding, Mrs. Mompellion directs Anna to stop addressing her as a superior but instead by her Christian name, and tells her of her own girlhood in Derbyshire after her mother's death, where she was given an excellent education by a governess which included study of Latin, Greek, history, music, art and natural philosophy, but at the age of fourteen, she was courted by the heir to a duchy, with whom she eloped to the Fleet in London to marry without licence. But once they arrived in London, her suitor suggested entertainments and excursions and delayed the consecration of their marriage while not delaying the consummation. He abandoned her after two weeks and she sent to her father for aid. Her father and brother, who had been searching desperately for her, brought her home, forgave her and agreed to not tell anyone of what had happened. Upon discovering that she was with child, she, "desperate and deranged", "violated her own body with a fire iron." She survived the incident but was left barren due to the extensive scarring in her womb. She concludes this story by explaining that it was Mr. Mompellion who ministered to her spirit and introduced her to the lives of others less fortunate, and helped her to repent her own sins, and married her in full knowledge of her barrenness. After the sexton dies of heart failure from digging so many graves, Anna persuades her father, Josiah Bont, to take up the work of gravedigging, but this is an error of judgment. She knew her father to be a physically abusive drunkard who had placed her mother in branks for small offences, and her stepmother, Aphra, to be a selfish, superstitious woman, but she was not prepared for the scope of her father's greed, as he helps himself to most of the contents of the homes for each grave to be dug. Eventually, he attempts to murder a man so as to dig his grave and help himself to the goods of the house, and this final insult leads the villagers to hold a Barmote Court, where he is taken to the victims' mine and impaled there by a dagger through the hands and left unguarded so that his wife may free him – a painful punishment but not fatal. However, Aphra blames him for the plague that has fallen down upon her household that day and does not free him; Anna mistakenly thinks she would comply with the local custom and do so to avoid the horrors of a death by impalement and exposure. Three days later, they find him still impaled at the mine, long dead, and partially consumed by wild animals. Anna offers to help Aphra bury him in the churchyard – however, Aphra argues that he should be buried where he died, and thus they build a cairn, over which Aphra pronounces a curse as Anna recites the Lord's Prayer. Aphra quickly descends into complete madness upon the death of all of her children from plague and is only brought into the community once it is found that she has been selling charms and spells against the plague for extortionate prices. Mr. Mompellion bade her be kept overnight by those that found her – in their anger, they cast her into a disused well that now serves as a manure pit, in which she nearly drowns. She is completely incoherent and in a catatonic state by the time she is brought out in the morning, and the rector postpones dealing with her until the plague is over. The rector suggests that a cleansing fire should happen, particularly of bedstraw and other small things that might carry "Plague seeds". The villagers, who had already sacrificed much, now sacrifice all of their worldly possessions to a great bonfire, and this ceases the plague. During a celebration that the plague has ended, Aphra reappears with the skeleton of her youngest child (which she had demanded be left unburied) and murders Elinor, whom Anna had come to view as a surrogate mother, by stabbing her, after which Aphra commits suicide. Mr. Mompellion dictates two letters to the neighbours in the next town. One is to thank the earl of Chatsworth House, inform him of the end of the plague and ask that the road be opened. The other is to inform his father-in-law of Elinor Mompellion's death. After that, he leaves his rooms no more. It is at this point that we entered the novel, where Anna is trying to get the rector to leave his rooms occasionally and cope with his parish. The encounter with Elizabeth Bradford did reawaken his mind and he and Anna seize on each other and fornicate, which they do for the next day and night. In quiet pillow talk, she asks if he is greatly reminded of Elinor. And he answers no, as he had never slept with her. Anna is shocked but asks why. Micheal Mompellion reminds her that Elinor was guilty of the sin of fornication with another man, and he wanted to assure that not only had she been punished for her sin but that she had fully atoned for it so that he would be assured of meeting her in Heaven. Horrified at his selfishness and her own disloyalty to Elinor – as Anna views herself as having taken away the consummation of her marriage, she flees to the church where she again meets Elizabeth Bradford. Elizabeth confesses that her own mother is close to death, and now reveals the reason why – she is in labour with an adulterine bastard. Anna offers her assistance, as during the Plague quarantine she midwived a number of births. Once she arrives at the family seat, she at first does not understand why the woman was to die – the birth is a simple breech. She quickly realises, however, that the doctor sent by Elizabeth's father was told to be as incompetent as possible. Anna delivers the baby, a little girl, and leaves for her own cottage, only to see Elizabeth attempting to drown the baby. She rescues the little girl and asks why Elizabeth would do such a thing – Elizabeth said that there is no satisfactory way the child can live. The child was born from another man other than Elizabeth's father. The father had ordered Elizabeth to drown the newborn baby without his wife knowing. Anna, in seeing a way out of the village that had been her prison for the previous year, offers to take the child away from the village, "and you and your mother can say whatever you choose." Elizabeth's mother cries with joy on knowing that her newborn daughter, despite the circumstances of her birth, will be able to live. She gives Anna some emerald jewellery for her and Elizabeth gives her a heavy purse of gold to aid in her flight. Once she leaves Bradford Hall with the baby, jewellery and purse of money, she meets Rector Mompellion. She asks that her sheep flock and croft be given to the Quaker girl she helped in the mines, but says she no longer wants to see him. He accepts this but informs her that she absolutely must flee – for they will eventually realise that to allow Anna and the baby to live is an unacceptable risk, and that killing her would keep her from testifying to Elizabeth Bradford's attempted infanticide. He offers her a letter of introduction to his wife's family and his own horse so that she may go to them. She accepts them and waves goodbye. In the epilogue, she briefly narrates the three years since she left Eyam. Once on the road, she tears up the letter of introduction, wishing to be completely estranged from her previous life and all its connections. When she reaches the port of Plymouth, she stays at an inn for several days and hires a wetnurse for the Bradford baby. Several days after her arrival, the innkeeper tells her that the Bradford son, Elizabeth's brother, is in town and looking for her, accusing her of thievery, and particularly keen on finding "her" baby. The innkeeper has no knowledge of the circumstances, but informs her of the Bradford son looking for her and he wisely advises her to leave on the next ship regardless for which port it is bound. She boards a carrack fittingly carrying Peak-mines pigs, which is destined for the ports of Oran and Venezia for the production of Venetian glass. Throughout the sea voyage, she does not name the Bradfords' baby girl, taking heed of her stepmother's words about her mourning her infant son, as she fears a possible shipwreck and wishes to avoid that omen until she is assured of her and the child's survival. Upon arrival in Oran, she decides to disembark and seek out one of the Muslim doctors whose writings she and Elinor studied, as she found physick and midwifery to be her vocation. He agrees to take her in, due to his despair at Sex segregation in Islam keeping women and their husbands from seeking his aid during medical emergencies and labour. To satisfy the customs of the Al-Andalus Arabs, he takes her as one of his wives in name only so that she may continue her study and work with him freely. She is especially pleased with the custom of Kunya which leads her to be addressed not as Anna Frith or the Widow Frith, but by the name of her firstborn and now four years' dead son — umm Jam-ee (mother of Jamie). The book closes with her taking her two daughters by the hand before going into the city – the Bradford child, who is now named A'isha, for the sustainment she gave Anna during their sea voyage to Oran, and her birth daughter, conceived with Michael Mompellion – Elinor.
9367398	/m/02864j3	The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit	Beatrix Potter	1906	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A bad rabbit finds a good rabbit sitting on a bench eating a carrot. Wanting the carrot, he takes it from the good rabbit and scratches him. The good rabbit escapes and hides in a nearby hole. Meanwhile, a hunter notices the bad rabbit sitting on the bench and mistakes him for a bird. He fires at the bad rabbit, but finds nothing but a carrot and a rabbit tail on the bench. The good rabbit then sees the bad rabbit running away without his whiskers and tail.
9370700	/m/02867yj	Beasts	Joyce Carol Oates	2002-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Set in an apparently idyllic New England college town in the 1970s, Beasts is the story of Gillian Brauer, a talented young student obsessed with her charismatic anti-establishment English professor Andre Harrow. Knowing that other girls preceded her does not deter Gillian from being drawn into the decadent world of Professor Harrow and his wife, Dorcas, the outrageous sculptress of primal totems. Gillian soon tumbles into a nightmare of carnal desire and corrupted sexual innocence.
9370875	/m/0286830	If Rock And Roll Were a Machine	Terry Davis	1993	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Ben, a high school junior, is still suffering from the lack of self-esteem he developed following criticism from his fifth-grade teacher. However, a developing interest in writing and racquetball and a new motorcycle, as well as support from understanding adults, help him discover who he really is. The novel is set in the same high school as Vision Quest, but twenty years later.
9378842	/m/0286j13	The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy		1988		 Respondents on average identified themselves as slightly left of center politically, but political and social opinions accounted for less than 10% of the variation in responses. Snyderman and Rothman discovered that experts were in agreement about the nature of intelligence. "On the whole, scholars with any expertise in the area of intelligence and intelligence testing (defined very broadly) share a common view of the most important components of intelligence, and are convinced that it can be measured with some degree of accuracy." Almost all respondents picked out abstract reasoning, ability to solve problems and ability to acquire knowledge as the most important elements. Regarding the role of heritability of intelligence almost all (94%) felt that it played a substantial role. Half of those that felt qualified to reply in this section stated that there was not enough evidence to estimate heritability accurately. The 214 who thought there was enough evidence gave an average estimate of .596 for the US white population and .57 for the US black population. The study also revealed that the majority (55%) of surveyed experts believed that genetic factors also help to explain socioeconomic differences in IQ. The role of genetics in the black-white IQ gap has been particularly controversial. The question regarding this in the survey asked "Which of the following best characterizes your opinion of the heritability of black-white differences in IQ?" Amongst the 661 returned questionnaires, 14% declined to answer the question, 24% voted that there was insufficient evidence to give an answer, 1% voted that the gap was "due entirely to genetic variation", 15% voted that it "due entirely to environmental variation" and 45% voted that it was a "product of genetic and environmental variation". According to Snyderman and Rothman, this contrasts greatly with the coverage of these views as represented in the media, where the reader is led to draw the conclusion that "only a few maverick 'experts' support the view that genetic variation plays a significant role in individual or group difference, while the vast majority of experts believe that such differences are purely the result of environmental factors." In their analysis of the survey results, Snyderman and Rothman state that the experts who described themselves as agreeing with the "controversial" partial-genetic views of Arthur Jensen did so only on the understanding that their identity would remain unknown in the published report. This was due, claim the authors, to fears of suffering the same kind of castigation experienced by Jensen for publicly expressing views on the correlation between race and intelligence which are privately held in the wider academic community. Snyderman and Rothman stated that media reports often either erroneously reported that most experts believe that the genetic contribution to IQ is absolute (~100% heritability) or that most experts believe that genetics plays no role at all (~0% heritability). As they wrote: News reports made mistakes of the same proportion when reporting the expert view on the contribution of genetics to racial-ethnic group differences in IQ. News reports also tended to cite the opinions of only very few experts, such as Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, and William Shockley, to whom they often erroneously attributed a variety of views, including that Blacks are 'inherently or innately inferior' to Whites, that their views have adverse implication for education policy or adverse political implications, or that they are racist. Snyderman and Rothman speculated that the misattribution of views to these individuals is fueled by the attacks made on them by public intellectuals, such as psychologist Leon Kamin. The study also found that the media regularly presented the views of Kamin and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould as representative of mainstream opinion among experts, whereas those who publicly state that individual and group differences are partly genetic, in particular psychologist Arthur Jensen, were characterized as a small minority. According to Synderman and Rothman, their survey of expert opinion found that the opposite is actually true. In particular, the surveyed experts reported that they hold the scientific views of Kamin to be of only marginal importance. The survey confirmed that IQ tests had been misused but that nevertheless most respondents strongly supported their continued use: Snyderman and Rothman suggested that the personal views and preferences of journalists and editors influenced their reporting, especially their selection of which views to present and how to present them. They suggested that the desire of the journalists and editors to advance liberal political goals, which are seen by many as incompatible with a substantial genetic contribution to individual and group differences in IQ, caused them to preferentially report the views of experts who reject the heritability of IQ.
9382206	/m/0286mr1	Break No Bones	Kathy Reichs	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The plot centers around her students working on a site of prehistoric graves on Dewees, a barrier island, when a decomposing body is uncovered in a shallow grave off a lonely beach. Brennan (nicknamed Tempe) is then called upon to discover what is happening when other bodies begin showing up all around the Charleston area. The story also features a romantic subplot, where Brennan must choose between two men, Andrew Ryan and Pete Peterson, deciding where her heart lies. She also deals with Emma Rousseau, friend and local coroner, who has terminal cancer.
9382690	/m/0286ncp	The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie	Jaclyn Moriarty	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bindy Mackenzie is a Year 11 student at Ashbury High, a prestigious private school in Sydney. She is a perfectionist and a high-achiever, focussing obsessively on her studies. When Bindy begins Year 11, she is horrified to discover that she must take part in FAD -Friendship And Development- a mandatory course aimed at helping teenagers deal with the issues that face them. Her teacher, Try Montaine, an American English teacher, takes a strong interest in each of the members of Bindy's FAD group. The FAD course presents Bindy with a rather shocking scenario- she discovers that she is widely disliked by most of her peers, due to her arrogant and precocious attitude. Bindy begins a mission to seek revenge on her classmates, resulting in her becoming even more disliked. For Bindy, everything goes downhill from here. Her school life becomes miserable, her jobs become a struggle and her all-important grades suffer. Bindy also falls ill from a strange illness that only contributes to these problems. Bindy slowly realises the error of her ways and tries to make amends with her FAD group, her new attitude helping her peers to gradually learn to enjoy Bindy's company as she changes as a person. In the meantime, Finnegan Blonde, Bindy's partner from her FAD group, presents a possible love interest for Bindy as one of the first people to recognise her friendly and likable characteristics. However, as Bindy's personality grows and adapts to make her a better person, her illness becomes increasingly worse, until she falls unconscious one night in an office at her school. Bindy is suffering from arsenic poisoning from a central character in the novel, and a complex mystery unfolds as to the character's motives.
9383142	/m/02pgn7x	Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army	Jeremy Scahill	2007-02-15		 The book details the rise of Blackwater USA, a private military company, and the growth of security contracting in the Iraq War and the War on Terrorism. In the book, Scahill contends that Blackwater exists as a mercenary force, and argues that Blackwater's rise is a consequence of the demobilisation of the US military following the Cold War and its overextension in Iraq and Afghanistan. He describes further how Blackwater (at the time of writing) serves in Iraq and Afghanistan like, in his judgement, a Praetorian Guard, protecting top authority figures and enjoying immunity from the usual constraints and regulations on traditional armies. Scahill argues that Blackwater's leadership was motivated by a right-wing Republican ideology, and that its founder, Erik Prince, has provided significant assistance in that venue. Blackwater is also present in some parts of Pakistan.
9388810	/m/0286xd3	Lola Rose	Jacqueline Wilson	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the beginning, Jayni's mum, Nikki Fenton, wins £10,000 on a scratchcard. They decide to not tell Jayni's father, Jay, who she fears will spend it on his friends on drinks at the pub or losing it by going to a betting shop. However, Nikki decides to tell Jay anyway because he reveals he has left his job and is joining a mini-cab firm but needs to provide the car. Jay, Nikki, Jayni and her brother, Kenny, go out to T.G.I Fridays spending around £50 on the meal. Jayni fears for herself because as Nikki and Jay 'drank lots' it would almost always 'end in a fight'. Jay gets angry at Nikki for becoming drunk and when they return home, he starts shouting at her. As Jay goes to hit Nikki, she tells Jay to let her put the kids to bed first. However Jayni refuses to go to bed and as a result, Jay gets angry and hit both Jayni and Nikki, he then leaves the house. This was the last straw for Nikki. She had previously put up with the violent nature from her husband, but now he had turned to violence against Jayni, Nikki felt they had to leave. One night, Nikki goes to the pub to buy a packet of cigarettes from the machine, and does not return home until after midnight, but consolingly she has found a new job (bar work), which means working set afternoons, and evenings if she is needed. The next thing to do is to get the children into school. Once achieved,Nikki starts to fall in love with an art student named Jake. Lola Rose doesn't like him. She is also jealous because Kendall prefers Jake to her.One day, Jake reveals "Mum's got a lump," which had been growing in her breast for several months while she hoped it would clear up on its own. Meanwhile, Jake moves out because Nikki has run out of money. She has to go to hospital, but believing she will be back the next day, she leaves only a day's food and a little money. The children soon run out of money and food. Jayni finds out where her mother's obese sister Barbara lives, and telephones her. She comes to stay and provides the children with food. Meanwhile Nikki is becoming worse because of an infection following the surgery. Nikki has stupidly telephoned Jay, thinking he will be shocked to discover she has been so ill and never touch her again. Jay comes to their flat and is nice at first though he doesn't want Lola Rose anymore because she is too old to be his little girl . He finds a pair of Jake's boxer shorts, then, calling Nikki a slag, balls up a fist to punch her. Barbara raises her fists as if to punch him, then slyly kicks him in the crotch. He proceeds to attack her with a broken mug, so she smacks him on the shoulder taking out the tendon, so that he drops the mug. She then shoos him out, threatening to kill him if he comes back again (though she later admits she didn't mean it). Jayni, Nikki and Kenny feel safe with the protection of Barbara and the book ends on a positive note. Barbara asks the children and finally Nikki whether they would like to come to her pub to live, while they redecorated it (as Barbara likes the job they have done on the house) and did a karaoke act by her and Nikki. Jayni remembers children's stories in which the hero has to perform a terrifying but menial task. She envisions that to get her mother better she has to stand by the shark tank and count sixty seconds, sixty times. This she does. An aquarium worker sees this and says she must be a shark enthusiast. They chat about sharks for a few minutes and he gives her a shark's tooth, which is meant to bring good luck. She goes to the hospital and presses it into her mother's hand. Eventually she gets better and returns home. Jayni knows it has nothing to do with the tooth but it is comforting.
9388823	/m/0286xf4	The Last September	Elizabeth Bowen	1929	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Preface Although The Last September was first published in 1929, a preface was written for this text decades later to be included in the second American edition of this novel. Concerned that readers unfamiliar with this particular chapter of Anglo-Irish history would not fully comprehend the anxieties of these times, Bowen takes great pains to explain the particulars of both her writing process and the political reasons for the unsettled atmosphere felt throughout the text, palpable even in its most seemingly serene moments. Of all her books, Bowen notes, The Last September is “nearest to my heart, [and it] had a deep, unclouded, spontaneous source. Though not poetic, it brims up with what could be the stuff of poetry, the sensations of youth. It is a work of instinct rather than knowledge—to a degree, a ‘recall’ book, but there had been no such recall before.” While Bowen’s own beloved family home, Bowen’s Court, remained untouched throughout “The Troubled Times” this preface explores the ramifications for witnesses of “Ambushes, arrests, captures and burning, reprisals and counter-reprisals” as “The British patrolled and hunted; the Irish planned, lay in wait, and struck.” “I was the child of the house from which Danielstown derives” Bowen concludes, “nevertheless, so often in my mind’s eye did I see it [Bowen’s Court] burning that the terrible last event in The Last September is more real than anything I have lived through.” Part One: The Arrival of Mr. & Mrs. Montmorency The Last September opens in “a moment of happiness, of perfection” as Sir Richard and Lady Naylor welcome their long-awaited guests, Hugo and Francie Montmorency, to their country estate, Danielstown, in Cork, Ireland. Despite—or, in some characters’ cases, in spite of—the tensions produced by what Bowen obliquely refers to as “The Troubled Times,” the Montmorencys, the Naylors, as well as the Naylors’ niece, Lois, and nephew, Laurence, attempt to live their lives in the aftermath of The Great War while coping with the occasionally conflicting dictates of their class’s expectations and personal desires. Preoccupied with the concerns of social obligations which must be met even as they are enacted against a backdrop of uncertainty and national unrest, the residents of Danielstown occupy themselves with tennis parties, visits, and dances, often including the wives and officers of the British Army who have been assigned to this region. The people of Danielstown all share a particular interest in the shifting relationship between Lois and a young British officer, Gerald Lesworth, as Lois struggles to determine precisely who she is and what it is she wants out of life. Part Two: The Visit of Miss Norton Lois’s confusion regarding her future and the state of the bond she shares with Gerald is temporarily sidelined by the arrival of yet another visitor to Danielstown, a Miss Marda Norton whose connection to the Naylor family remains strong even in the face of perpetual inconvenience and Lady Naylor’s long-standing polite aversion to the younger woman. Marda’s presence is, however, as much of a blessing for Lois and Laurence as it is an annoyance for Lady Naylor and Hugo Montmorency—the latter having developed a one-sided fixation on the soon-to-be-married Marda. While Lois and Marda’s friendship deepens, readers are also made aware of escalating violence as the fragile status quo established between the British Army, the Black and Tans, and local Irish resistance is threatened by Gerald’s capture of Peter Connor, the son of an Irish family friendly with the Naylors. Unbeknownst to the residents of Danielstown (with the single exception of Hugo), Lois and Marda’s acquaintance with Ireland’s national turmoil is expanded firsthand as they are confronted by an unknown individual while on an afternoon stroll through the countryside of County Cork. Although permitted to depart with only a trifling wound to Marda’s hand and Lois’s promise that they will never speak of this encounter in the ruins of the old mill, this meeting and Marda’s subsequent return to England signal a shift as the novel’s characters’ attention return to the various topics occupying their thoughts before her arrival. Part Three: The Departure of Gerald After Marda Norton’s departure, Lois’s attention is once again firmly fixed upon both Gerald and the activities organized by the British officers’ wives. But despite Lois’s determination to finally come to a firm conclusion regarding her future, her relationship with Gerald is first delayed by Lady Naylor’s machinations and then left forever unresolved by Gerald’s death—which may have been at the hands of Peter Connor’s friends. Not long after Gerald’s death Laurence, Lois, and the Montmorencys leave Sir Richard and Lady Naylor, but the Naylors have little time to enjoy their solitude at Danielstown. The Naylor family estate and the other great houses are put to the torch the following February—likely by the same men who organized the attack on Gerald—their destruction reinforcing the fact the lifestyle once enjoyed by the landed Anglo-Irish gentry has been brought to an end.
9388843	/m/0286xfv	Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes	Beatrix Potter	1917-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book opens with a three-stanza rhyme about Appley Dapply, a mouse who raids cupboards for treats, and is accompanied with three illustrations, one which depicts a little mouse running away from a cupboard with a tray of pies: : Appley Dapply :: has little sharp eyes, : And Appley Dapply :: is so fond of pies! The following rhyme tells of Peter Rabbit's sister, Cotton-tail, and her implied courtship by a little black rabbit who leaves a gift of carrots at her door. In The Tale of Mr. Tod, Cottontail is married to the black rabbit. Like the first rhyme, the little black rabbit rhyme is of three stanzas accompanied by three illustrations. The third rhyme tells of Old Mr. Pricklepin, a hedgehog, who, elsewhere in Potter is identified as Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's uncle. His shining eyes, his wrinkled paws, and his human shoes emphasize their relationship. The single stanza is accompanied by an illustration Potter believed to be the finest she ever produced. As early as 1893 Potter illustrated and made a booklet of "There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe". There, the Old Woman's children are depicted as scampering mice, and their mother as a mouse whipping her children in a shoe in the background. In Appley Dapply however, the author speculates upon the identity of the old woman in two stanzas, believing she was a mouse. In the first illustration, the mouse and her children tumble from an elaborately beaded turquoise-blue shoe, and, in the illustration accompanying the second stanza, the mouse knits peacefully &ndash; presumably while the children are in bed. The fifth rhyme tells of Diggory Delvet, the first mole in Potter's work. He may have been inspired by the mole in Hans Christian Andersen's Thumbelina or possibly Moley in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. "Diggory Delvet" and the last rhyme in the book about a guinea pig are two of the few limericks written for children by someone other than Edward Lear. The sixth rhyme is a single stanza and accompanied by an illustration depicting a pig in a dress sitting in a high-backed chair and peeling potatoes: : Gravy and potatoes :: In a good brown pot &mdash; : Put them in the oven, :: And serve them very hot! The seventh and last rhyme is a limerick about an "amiable guinea-pig" (the first guinea pig in Potter's work) who brushes his hair back like a periwig and dons a blue tie. The verse is accompanied by three illustrations depicting the guinea pig in various stages of coiffing and dressing. Guinea pigs would have their own story told in the tale of Tupenny in Potter's The Fairy Caravan of 1929. Ruth K. MacDonald of the New Mexico State University observes in Beatrix Potter (1986) that Potter recommended to Warne that Appley Dapply be printed in a format similar to Miss Moppet, which had originally been printed in a panorama style but, in 1916, had been reprinted in a format slightly smaller than the other books in the Peter Rabbit collection. Miss Moppet was intended for babies and very young children, and MacDonald believes Potter's suggestion indicated she also intended Appley Dapply for the very young who are satisfied with vignettes and the sorts of simple, isolated incidents nursery rhymes present, rather than longer, more complex plots.
9388867	/m/0286xgj	Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes	Beatrix Potter	1922	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 == Merchandise
9388876	/m/0286xgw	The Suitcase Kid	Jacqueline Wilson		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Andrea, known as Andy in the story, is a tall, awkward ten-year-old whose parents have recently divorced, much to her dismay. Her mother remarries Bill, who Andy takes a very strong dislike to, as well as his other three children (especially Katie,a girl her own age but is five days older). Her father remarries Carrie, who has twins Zen and Crystal and is pregnant with her dad's new baby. Andy doesn't mind Carrie and her kids as much as Bill and his, but she still wishes she could have her dad to herself. Throughout the book, Andy wishes that her parents would get back together and move back into their little house called Mulberry Cottage. Andy loses focus at school, getting poorer results, and loses touch with her previous best friend. As she becomes more and more isolated, she draws support from her spotted Sylvanian Families rabbit, Radish, often playing imaginary games with her. One day she finds a secret garden with mulberries growing in it, and she begins to go there after school. She accidentally drops Radish down a tree and can't get her out. Andy runs away in the middle of the night to get Radish. Her parents are distraught but soon find her. Andy insists that she must go and retrieve Radish, and they meet the owners of the garden, Mr and Mrs Peters, who soon befriend Andy, acting as honorary grandparents,She makes new friends and they are friendly giving kind gifts, By the end of the book, Andy has befriended her step-siblings, (including Zoe, her father and Carrie's new baby daughter) and accepted that her parents are not getting back together.
9388942	/m/0286xk8	The Bed And Breakfast Star	Jacqueline Wilson	1994	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Elsa is a bright and lively young girl who has dreams to become a comedienne. When her stepfather loses his job, her family, including her baby half-brother Hank and half-sister Pippa, are forced to move into a rundown bed and breakfast hotel that is used as accommodation for poor families. She doesn't get along with her stepfather, as he often loses his temper with her and hits her, so takes to spending time with her friend Naomi, with her little sister usually tagging along. Eventually her mother makes her attend the nearby school. Elsa has a hard time adjusting to the new circumstances and doesn't enjoy her new school, as she is behind in lessons so has to take extra classes. She frequently plays truant from school with boys from the hotel. One night Elsa awakes to the smell of smoke, and upon investigating she discovers the hotel kitchen is on fire. Using her loud voice, she runs from to door to door, yelling to wake up all the residents. Everyone in the hotel makes it out safely, and Elsa has a chance to appear on television when a news reporter asks her how she woke up everyone up. As much of the hotel is damaged, Elsa's family and many others are given temporary accommodation in a much nicer hotel. Elsa finally has a chance to star on television when she is invited on a programme about courageous children.
9389237	/m/0286xwy	Double Act	Jacqueline Wilson	1995	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book takes the form of the twins alternately narrating the story of their life in an Accounts book. Ruby and Garnet are ten-year-old identical twins living with their father and grandmother since their mother, Opal, died. The two have always been close despite their differences- Ruby is social, and keen to let her opinions be heard, while introverted Garnet is content to let Ruby dominate their relationship. When their father gets a new girlfriend [Rose] and a new job, their once stable relationship is thrown into turmoil, as the relationship leads to feelings of betrayal from their father to their late mother, and it comes with a big price- leaving their grandmother behind for a house in the country. As Ruby is very dominating, she insists that the girls shouldn't stand for their new lifestyle. She and Garnet start off well in school, but once Garnet makes a new friend, Ruby sulks and Garnet quickly changes to stop her feeling upset. After this, they do not behave properly in school and do not talk to anyone else. The twins find an article about auditions for a TV adaptation of The Twins at St. Clare's, and Ruby is keen to go ahead and audition, even though Garnet and their father do not agree. Surprisingly, Rose is supportive, although her efforts are for nothing, as Garnet and Ruby have to run away to London to audition. Although Garnet isn't keen on the idea, she is about to deliver a good audition but the twins father appears just as she is about to begin, making her feel terrible for messing up the audition. Near summer, Ruby, realizing that the school where the TV movie is being filmed at is a prestigious boarding school for girls, Marnock Heights, decides that the pair ought to sign up for scholarships- of which there is only one. Despite their father's early hesitation to the idea, he encourages Garnet to go ahead with the school after it is revealed that she won the scholarship. (Ruby was confident that she would win it if they both couldn't 'wangle one' together). Garnet is torn between pleasing her sister and doing something different, for once. Meanwhile, Ruby refuses to talk to her, and often wanders off on her own. She is determined to be different from Garnet, and ends up cutting off her hair. She does not let herself be around Garnet for the whole summer, and even though they both feel as though they are missing something, Ruby is too proud to apologize while Garnet wishes she was able to. After making friends with someone she previously considered rather a bully, Ruby starts to realize that she and Garnet don't need to be the same, and don't have to do the same things, to be happy. She also realizes, alternately, that being together would have helped Garnet feel better about leaving. Ruby finds a friend in Rose, also, who encourages her to say sorry to Garnet. In the book, Ruby writes in a notepad she calls a MEMORANDUM. In the end, Ruby apologizes to Garnet, and they both realize that they can still be together while apart, as long as they remember each other. Garnet leaves for school, and writes a letter about how much she is enjoying it.
9389298	/m/0286x_0	The Diamond Girls				 The Diamond Girls is about 4 girls (later 5) called Martine, Jude, Rochelle and Dixie. Their mother, Sue, is heavily pregnant with her 5th child and believes it is a boy since she reads tarot cards and peers into a crystal ball. They live in a 3-bedroom apartment in the North Block in Bletchworth which was their best flat ever. Sue decides to move to a proper house on the Planet Estate. Judging the pictures, Sue and the kids think it's a great house but when they arrive, it's the opposite. As they move, they hire Dixie's dad's friend Bruce to help move the furniture. However, the day they move in, Sue goes into labour. Bruce and Martine go with Sue to the hospital and the others are left alone. Dixie then explores the garden and meets a shy girl called Mary who has been abused by her mother. When the girls need candles, they go to Mary's house and Dixie hears Mary's mother slapping her. Sue comes home a day later with Sundance, a baby boy. However, when Dixie changes Sundance's nappy, she sees that Sundance is a girl. She keeps this secret to herself and confronts Sue about him. Sue begs Dixie to keep it a secret so she does. Meanwhile, Rochelle gets a boyfriend who is quite a few years older than her. Jude then learns kung fu from Bruce and Martine, unable to cope with the house and moving, runs back to her boyfriend after Sue finding out that Martine's pregnant.When Dixie is playing with Mary, Mary tells Dixie that her mother threw her teddy out. Dixie offers to lend her toy budgie for the night but then regrets it. Dixie later goes to Mary's house to get him back and ends up getting badly injured when Mary jumps out of the window, after Dixie told her to jump off the garden wall. Martine comes back after breaking up with her boyfriend because his mother and him kept badmouthing the Diamonds, despite her pregnancy. After Dixie woke up in hospital with both legs broken, she saw lots of people with a sickly scent, and is informed that Mary's mother is getting help and Mary is staying with other relatives. Sue then tells everyone that Sundance is a girl, not a boy.
9389380	/m/0286y1f	Vicky Angel	Jacqueline Wilson	2000-11-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Vicky and Jade are best friends. Vicky is a flamboyant and outgoing girl while Jade is shy and timid and usually follows Vicky's lead. After fighting about which extra-curricular activity to take together and arguing as Jade finally sticks up for herself, Vicky dashes out on to the road without looking and is struck by a car. Jade travels to the hospital in the ambulance with Vicky, however Vicky dies from her internal injuries in hospital. Distraught and in shock, Jade runs from the hospital. However, just an hour after her death Vicky appears to Jade as a ghost, although she is the only one who can see or hear her. Jade attends Vicky's funeral, and afterwards is revisited by Vicky's ghost. When Jade returns to school, she is encouraged to attend the fun-running activity Vicky had signed them up for. There, she makes an unlikely friend in Fatboy Sam, who Jade originally assumed had a crush on Vicky; he later reveals it was Jade he had a crush on. However, Vicky is snide about her friendship with Sam, influencing Jade into saying cruel things to him, although he forgives her. As Jade tries to get used to life without Vicky, or at least without a Vicky that other people can see, Vicky's spectre becomes more and more controlling. Jade is forced to do as Vicky wishes, and can't get on with her life and make new friends. Jade finally goes to a bereavement counsellor and discovers how to control Vicky. Eventually she must attend the inquest into Vicky's death. During it, she is overcome with guilt and emotion when trying to recall Vicky's death and she flees the court building, running down the street and into the road where she is nearly hit by a car. Vicky appears and pulls her back. Vicky tells Jade that the accident was not her fault, freeing her from her guilt. After saving Jade's life, Vicky grows angel wings and can finally move on, floating into the sky and leaving Jade to move on with her life.
9389496	/m/0286y67	Clean Break	Jacqueline Wilson	2005-03-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The main character is a young girl called Emily, or Princess Emerald to her imaginative Dad, who lives with her mum Julie, her half sister Vita and her half brother Maxie in their grandmother Ellen's house. Although her dad is technically only her Step-dad, Em and her siblings all love him completely. Emily is highly sensitive (as a lot of characters are), and is very insecure about her weight. On Christmas Day Emily and her sister Vita receive their presents and get a special reindeer hand-puppet which they name dancer. Emily overhears a conversation her dad is having and realizes that he is having a secret affair. Emily confronts her father, and he owns up to his cheating, and by the next morning he has left. After Emily's step-dad walks out, the rest of the family struggle to get along without him. Emily takes up swimming, where she becomes more fit, loses weight and gains confidence within herself. The children go and visit Frankie at the home of his new partner Sarah, but she is rude, selfish and obnoxious. On a visit they take to a park, Em, Vita and Maxie are astounded to find their Dad passionately kissing Sarah, in a way that he would never do to their mum.Sarah is an aspiring actress and both she and Frankie move to Scotland quite soon into their relationship. When they arrive home, they all reject their Dad's goodbyes. The children all tell their mother that Sarah and their Dad don't get on very well, and will be home soon. Their Mum is quite depressed, and dependent on Frankie for emotional support. Their grandmother does not understand how much the family all love him and would take him back if he ever returned. Em's Gran decides to take them on a holiday and gets a boyfriend herself. Emily runs into her real dad at a fair, and was scared because he had always abused her mother when she was young. When Emily travels to London to meet her favorite author, the family runs into Frankie again, as he has apparently broken up with Sarah and found a new girlfriend, Hannah, before moving back to London. Emily runs after Frankie, falls and breaks her arm and Dancer(her reindeer puppet), but her dad stops and takes her to the hospital. The story ends on Christmas Eve just under one year after Frankie left, with Frankie sending dancer back to them as a Christmas present. It is implied that he doesn't return to the family but does visit them often.
9389829	/m/0286yq1	Death of a Monk	Alon Hilu			 The plot occurs in Damascus, 1840. Aslan is a 15 years old religious, Jewish teen, one of the outwardly pampered sons of the Farhi family. Additionally, he is gay. Behind closed doors, he is abused and beaten by his siblings, mother and father; at school the other kids make fun of him, especially when he and Moussa, another delicate lad, are caught holding hands. The outcome of this tender incident speaks volumes about the power of Aslan's father in the community: when this news gets out, Moussa simply vanishes. But there's even more going on behind the Farhi household doors. When his father is away, Aslan's mother dresses her son in her clothes, shoes and make-up - and these are their most (and maybe the only) intimate moments together. At any other time, she sides against him with the rest of the family. Miserable, Aslan grasps at anything he can to put himself out of his misery, including trying to become fatally infected when there's an outbreak of the plague. When his father marries him off at the age of 15 to a rabbi's daughter, things go from bad to worse as Aslan is unable to consummate the marriage. His solution involved succumbing to passions of his own, a tremulous step that takes him down a secretive road of pleasure mixed with fear. As he becomes bolder in his forays to explore and enjoy the forbidden nightlife of the city, Aslan becomes enamoured with a young woman singer, Umm-Jihan, and catches the eye of Father Tommaso, an Italian monk. Aslan's meeting and further interaction with the monk spur on the plot, when the monk has a heart attack and dies, while Aslan's secret makes him hide the body. That leads to a blood libel against the Jews, blaming them, with no evidence, for the murder of the monk, in a vicious trial with grim results. Aslan observes his family's long-standing feud with a rival merchant family, and the blaming of all the community because of his secret and of his being in the closet. One of the memorable things he says is: "why is it that men cannot love one another more, instead of beating and striking, oppressing and debasing, despoiling and destroying?" Ultimately, his attempts to assert himself to his father prove terrible and tragic.
9390830	/m/0286_22	The Magic School Bus In the Time of the Dinosaurs	Joanna Cole	1994-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The kids are turning their classroom into Dinosaur Land for Parents Night, as they are studying dinosaurs. Ms Frizzle then gets a letter from an old high school friend who is now a paleontologist and she decides to take the class on a trip to the dig. When she discovers that they are missing the bones of some Maiasaurs, she turns the bus into a time machine to travel back to the age of dinosaurs to find the bones. The class sees dinosaurs and learns the name of the different periods of the era and other information.
9394079	/m/028738l	Tryst				 After Hilary Shenstone died in the war, his spirit had a hard time with the thought of leaving England behind forever. Through some twist of fate, he finds his way back to his home of Nuns Farthing, only to find that the old house has some new tenants. Sabrina Archer, a lonely girl of 17, moved with her father and aunt away from their city flat to the lavish summerhome of Nuns Farthing for her father's work. Finding a locked room at the top floor of the house, Sabrina picks the lock one afternoon and subsequently spends many days trying to find the identity of the man who used to enjoy the personal study.
9394422	/m/02873mm	Extras	Scott Westerfeld	2007-10-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Three years after the events of Specials freed the world from the pretty lesions which forced them to be obedient, society is beginning to settle into a new form. Each city has been forced to find a way of dealing with the new pressure on its resources, caused by the freed creativity of the inhabitants. In Japan, one city has chosen a "reputation economy", rewarding citizens either with merits for productive tasks which help the city, or with face rank, a measure of popularity. Every inhabitant has their own feed and obsessively tracks their face rank, hoping to gain fame and lose their status as an "extra". Aya Fuse tries to win fame as a "kicker", or amateur journalist, filming stories with her modified hovercam Moggle and posting them for the city to see.
9395277	/m/02874dr	Summer of Aviya	Gila Almagor			 Aviya's Summer is set in the summer of 1951, in the newly established state of Israel. The film chronicles the life of ten-year-old Aviya, whose warm, loving, and fiercely independent mother, Henya (played by Almagor herself), is tortured by periodic mental breakdowns. Henya's psychological and emotional scares stem from her horrid experience during the Holocaust, and from the loss of her husband during the war. Henya was once considered to be a beautiful and courageous partisan fighter, yet now she is constantly mocked by native Israelis for her erratic behavior. She walks the thin line between sanity and madness, attempting to forge a life for herself and her daughter in the new realities of Israel. Aviya is a bright girl with a vivid imagination, yet she is mocked by her peers. Her relationship with her mother is complex, at times affectionate, but also fragile. Aviya fantasizes that if she could only find her father, all her/her mother's problems would cease and her family would be whole again. Aviya's wild imagination regarding her quest to find her father leads to the climax of the film. The film ends with Aviya coming to terms with the realities of her life and reaching a maturity beyond her years.
9396273	/m/02875cq	Cathy's book			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In a framing device, young and artistic Cathy left the book for Emma, her best friend, so that the latter can use the clues provided and figure out where Cathy went. The story begins when Cathy is dumped by her boyfriend, Victor. The next morning she notices a strange mark on her arm, but sets it aside as a spider bite. She and Emma later determine that the mark on her arm is in fact a needle mark from a blood test Victor performed on Cathy. While trying to confront Victor about the blood test, she encounters various members of the mythical, immortal, Chinese Eight Ancestors, as well as adventure and mystery. It also includes phone numbers which readers can call in order to leave a message for Bianca, Cathy, Victor, Emma, and even Tsao's business, Airwell Organisation.
9396346	/m/02875f2	Sail South till the Butter Melts	Geoffrey Stewart			 The main theme relates his adventures while crossing the Atlantic ocean alone in an open boat. The voyage took place in 1973 but the book wasn't published until 2005. In addition, the book covers earlier experiences voyaging along the French canals and down the Mediterranean coast to Gibraltar as well as a 21-day voyage to the Canary Islands. He finishes by describing his life after sailing and the continuing desire to set out again. The author is also a bit of a poet and dedicated the following poem to Kerstin, his Swedish muse. "Through this life I wander, Watching all the time, Checking with my inmost self, Should this one be mine. I don’t want the make up, Or silly pouting games, Or giggling insignificance, These birds are all the same. My search is for my woman, A person whole and real, A living loving adult, Not merely sex appeal. Perhaps you are the one my love, I would that it was so, If we can find that this be true, I’ll never let you go."
9401410	/m/0287bn6	Elsewhere	Gabrielle Zevin	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Elsewhere tells the story of a fifteen year old girl, Elizabeth 'Liz' Hall, who dies in a bicycle accident and wakes up to find herself traveling on a boat called the SS Nile. There, she meets a girl who had been shot and a famous musician who had died of a drug overdose. After watching her own funeral through Binoculars on the Observation decks, Liz realizes that she is truly dead. Soon afterward, she and the other passengers arrive in what is known as "Elsewhere". She meets her grandmother, Betty, who had died before Liz was born, and Liz begins to live with her. In Elsewhere, Liz learns everyone ages backwards from the day they die until they turn 7 days old, and then they are placed in the river and return to Earth as babies to begin a new life. Liz misses life on Earth, and becomes obsessed with watching her family and friends through binoculars situated on the Observation Decks. She tried to make contact with her family a few times, but gets caught by Owen with whom she falls in love. She is depressed, but in time she makes new friends in Elsewhere who help her come to terms with the fact that she has died. She gets a job working with dogs arriving from earth and realizes she can speak canine. Gradually, she learns that a life lived backwards is not much different to a life lived forwards.
9401956	/m/0287cg1	Gabriel's Gift				 Rex Bunch, Gabriel's father, is a musician who, for a short time back in the 1970s, played in pop icon Lester Jones's band. However, while (the fictitious) Lester Jones is still going strong almost thirty years later, Rex has been leading a quiet and modest life without a regular income together with his live-in partner, Christine, Gabriel's mother, who back in the good old days designed trendy clothes for various rock stars. Gabriel's twin brother Archie died while still little, and in many ways the family of three still live and think according to the unwritten laws of the late 1960s and 1970s, despising anything remotely connected with middle class mentality, advocating universal freedom, and smoking the occasional joint. When Christine has had enough of Rex and his lazy, good-for-nothing ways, she throws him out of the house, and for the first time in decades Rex has to fend for himself. While Christine herself gets a job as a waitress in a bar and hires an au pair from some Eastern European country to look after Gabriel, Rex, left to his own devices, ends up in a shabby bedsit a few blocks away from his former home but even there has difficulty paying the rent. A meeting with Lester Jones renews Rex's hopes of becoming a sought-after musician again, but when Rex and Gabriel visit him at his hotel it soon turns out that all he wants is listen to Rex's reminiscences of their days together for his intended memoir. To Rex's dismay, he does not even pay him for it; however, on parting he presents Gabriel with one of his drawings. A talented creative artist himself, Gabriel is impressed by this gift, but it soon becomes clear to him that both his parents are after the picture: Christine because, for the time being, she wants to keep it in a safe place; and Rex because he wants to sell it immediately. In order to prevent yet another argument between his mum and dad, Gabriel secretly makes two copies of the drawing&mdash;in doing so he has to forge Lester Jones's signature twice&mdash; and hands one copy to each of his parents while keeping the original for himself. Unfortunately, each parent independently has the same idea of presenting the drawing to Speedy, an old friend of theirs who runs a hamburger restaurant full of 1970s memorabilia&mdash;a place occasionally even visited by Lester Jones himself&mdash;so that the picture can be exhibited there: '[...] It's me, me, me, with you lot. People don't know, or won't say, how much they hate their children.' He was hardly listening. She [Christine] wanted him to be a lawyer. He was, he reckoned, already sufficiently engaged with the Law. In the next few days his mother would have her forged copy of Lester's picture framed and presented to Speedy, who would have been presented with two forged copies of the same picture by two members of the same family. Gabriel's prison sentence, already long enough, would surely be increased. [...] (Chapter 10) At Speedy&#39;s hamburger joint, a chance meeting with film producer Jake Ambler (also fictitious) sets off Rex&#39;s teaching career. Looking for someone to give his spoiled teenage son private guitar lessons, Jake offers the job to Rex who, encouraged by Gabriel to do something useful and earn some money at the same time, reluctantly agrees (&#34;We&#39;re not so desperate that we&#39;re going to start working for a living&#34;) and eventually, after word of mouth has spread and he is teaching not just one but several kids, quite enjoys being seen as an authority on music by his pupils. Before the truth about Lester Jones&#39;s drawing is found out, Gabriel strikes a deal with Speedy, regains possession of the picture in exchange for a painting of Speedy he has to paint himself, and destroys the two copies. Seeing her ex-partner&#39;s reformation, Christine reconsiders her decision to spend the rest of her life without him and does not mind the end of her affair with George, a young artist and a regular at the bar where she is waitressing. At the end of the novel Rex and Christine get married, and in the following summer, under Jake Ambler&#39;s supervision, Gabriel starts shooting his first film. As opposed to other protagonists created by Kureishi, Rex, Christine and Gabriel are white.
9402799	/m/0287dj3	The Six Sacred Stones	Matthew Reilly		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 This novel is a sequel to Matthew Reilly's previous novel, Seven Ancient Wonders, which ended with the Golden Capstone reassembled atop the Great Pyramid at Giza, and the ritual of power performed to grant one nation a thousand years of unchallenged power - invincibility, as shown by the end of the book, which is won, unknowingly, by Australia. The Six Sacred Stones picks up eighteen months later - 20 August 2007 - on Easter Island, the geographical opposite of the Great Pyramid, when seven men use a second Capstone to nullify the power of the Tartatus sunspot and remove Australia's invincibility. In China, Professor Max Epper (known as Wizard) is investigating the tomb of Chinese Philosopher Laozi, owner of the Philosopher's Stone. With his research partner, Yobu 'Tank' Tanaka, Wizard discovers the cryptic message referring to the Tartarus Sunspot and the use of the Sa-Benben, or Firestone, the top piece of the Capstone from the previous book. They find another message, saying that the first pillar must be laid 100 days before the Return. Wizard sends a coded message to Jack West in Australia, just before a contingent of Chinese military arrive to capture them, intended to use Wizard's knowledge to find the Six Sacred Stones. Jack West receives Wizard's message, just before the farm is attacked by the Chinese army, participating in the Talisman Sabre military exercises. West escapes to the Halicarnassus, his private plane, with Lily, whom he adopted at the end of the previous book; Alby Calvin, Lily's friend; Zoe and Sky Monster, who are visiting the farm. As they leave, Jack grabs the Firestone from its hiding place, along with Wizard's research journal, and reads it whilst travelling to Dubai. In the city the group travels to the Burj al Arab tower and call a meeting of nations. The surviving team members from Seven Ancient Wonders return, with the exception of Fuzzy from Jamaica. At the meeting, Jack informs them that the end of the world is nigh, due to a zero-point field (the 'Dark Sun') entering our solar system, which could destroy the entire world. However, in order to save the world, the 'Machine' must be rebuilt by placing six oblong diamond pillars in their respective locations around the globe. However, almost nothing is known about the Machine, but the knowledge can be found using the Six Sacred Stones - the Philosopher's Stone, the Altar Stone at Stonehenge, The Twin Tablets of Thutmosis, The Seeing Stone of Delphi, the Killing Stone of the Maya, and the Basin of Ramses II. Then Fuzzy's severed head arrives in a hatbox, and an aeroplane is sighted heading to crash into the tower. Everyone escapes the crash one way or another and the team splits at the airfield. Jack, Pooh Bear, Stretch, Astro (a US Marine), Scimitar (Pooh's brother) and Vulture (Scimitar's companion) head into China to rescue Wizard, whilst Zoe takes Lily and Alby to England. They meet up with twin Scottish Maths geniuses Lachlan and Julius Adamson, and use the Firestone in conjunction with the altar stone at Stonehenge to reveal the locations of the Six Vertices where the Pillars must be placed. However, the locations are slightly inaccurate as the continents have changed in the ages since the maps were drawn. Meanwhile, West's group rescue Wizard and Tank successfully, and retrieve the Philosopher's Stone from Laozi's trap system. Arriving in Britain, the location of the second meeting, the Americans have brought the Killing Stone of the Maya, recovered from Mexico; Vulture brings one of the pillars, from the treasury of his family, the Royal House of Saud; and a representative of the British Royal Family, Iolanthe Compton-Jones, brings the pillar kept by her family. The pillars are cloudy diamond bricks with a liquid-filled void in the centre. After being 'cleansed' by the Philosopher's Stone, the pillars become clear and the liquid silver. It is also discovered that the pillars' markings reveal Iolanthe's as the fourth, and Vulture's as the first. The Killing Stone of the Maya is united with the Firestone, and it reveals the dates by which the pillars must be laid - the first on the next day, and the second some seven days later. The Adamson twins have correlated the data from Stonehenge, and found that the first Vertex is underneath Lake Nasser in Egypt, close to Abu Simbel. The team starts out, accompanied by Astro and Iolanthe, leaving the Adamson twins with Tank to continue their calculations and find the other Vertices. At the Vertex, the first pillar is inlaid and the reward mentioned in Wizard's notes - 'Knowledge' - is revealed in the Word of Thoth on its sides (in the form of a batch of complex equations relating to the laws of physics and the universe, much of which modern scientists hadn't figured out yet). However, Iolanthe betrays them and a large number of Egyptian and American military vehicles arrive. Iolanthe, Jack, Pooh, Vulture, Scimitar, Astro and Stretch are captured by American forces, whilst the others escape in the damaged Halicarnassus. West recovers to find himself immobilized in a pit in a large underground mine somewhere in Ethiopia. The leader of the American forces is revealed to be his father, Jack West Sr - known as 'Wolf' - who leads a rogue CIEF force. He informs Jack that the ritual to counter Tartarus was the work of the Japanese Blood Brotherhood (as was the plane attack in Dubai), a group determined to avenge Japan's humiliation at the end of World War II by destroying the world. He then drops an enormous stone slab into the pit on top of Jack. Wolf's co-conspirators Vulture and Scimitar are allowed to send Stretch to the Mossad, who have put an enormous price on his head in revenge for his disobeying their orders at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (see Seven Ancient Wonders). Scimitar leaves Pooh Bear locked in a cage to be sacrificed by the Ethiopian Christians who guard the mine. It is also revealed that Iolanthe is cooperating with Wolf. Meanwhile, on the Halicarnassus Lily mentions she overheard Iolanthe telling Jack that the second pillar was guarded by the Neetha tribe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, the damaged plane will not be able to reach the DRC, so Sky Monster (the New Zealand pilot) puts it down in Rwanda, and Zoe, Wizard, Lily and Alby head out to meet with an old friend, Solomon Kol, who will take them into the Congo. After a few days, they locate the place where explorer Henry Morton Stanley claimed he located the Neetha, and are promptly captured by the lost tribe. Imprisoned in the Neetha village, a city built by the same civilisation that built the Machine, they discover that the tribe possesses the Second Pillar and the Seeing Stone of Delphi. The first pillar (which had been returned to the Halicarnassus before Jack's capture), the philsosopher's stone and Firestone are confiscated by the tribe's warlock. He uses them to cleanse the second pillar, and to use the Delphic orb to see the Dark Sun. They also encounter Dr Diane Cassidy, a long-missing anthropologist who had been enslaved by the Neetha for years, and Ono, Cassidy's student, a young but kind man who is oppressed in the tribe. Following the transponder signature of Zoe's group's helicopter, Wolf follows behind them into the valley with a large force of Congolese mercenaries and launches an attack on the Neetha tribe. Solomon is killed shortly before the attack, in which Zoe, Wizard and Lily escape with the First Pillar and the Delphic orb. However, Alby is captured by Wolf, as are the Second Pillar, the Firestone and the Philosopher's Stone. In the aftermath of the battle, the Neetha warlock reveals to Wolf that he can lead the American force to the Second Vertex. Around this time the Adamson twins locate the second Vertex as well, close to Table Mountain, South Africa, and send the message to the Halicarnassus shortly before the Japanese Blood Brotherhood arrives to take them captive. Tank is revealed to be their leader. Upon realizing that their captors' mission is to sabotage the mission and thus destroy the world, the twins manage to fool their electronic surveillance and escape the complex. Zoe, Wizard and Lily are picked up by Sky Monster in his repaired plane, but despite knowing the location of the Second Vertex, they cannot reach it due to aerial patrols sealing off South Africa (organized and funded by Wolf and his Saudi allies in order to seal off the area for their mission). It's revealed that four days earlier, Jack West escaped from the Pit in the Ethiopian mine, rescued Pooh Bear from sacrifice and freed the Jewish slave-miners. In gratitude, the miners give him the sacred stones that Wolf had been using them to dig for - the Twin Tablets of Thutmosis, which contain the final incantation to activate the Machine when all the pillars are placed. Jack and Pooh travel to their old farm in Kenya, finding Horus (Jack's falcon) and the Adamson twins waiting; they'd come to the farm because it seemed like the best isolated safe place. They share with Jack the news that the Brotherhood has a mole in Wolf's unit, a marine code-named Switchblade, who plans to sabotage Wolf's effort to place the Second Pillar. Jack and the Adamsons head to Zanzibar, where an old friend of Jack's is hiding out, making a career after deserting the US army to attack gun-runners in Africa. Pooh leaves them at the airport to go north and rescue Stretch from the Mossad's torture chambers. Before he leaves, Jack gives him a GPS locator with which to signal Jack if he needs help. Jack's old friend is J.J. Wickham, known as the 'Sea Ranger' due to his use of an old Russian submarine. After a lengthy explanation he takes Jack to the Second Vertex, arriving just as Wolf does. Switchblade attempts to sabotage the mission by dropping the Second pillar into the bottomless abyss beneath the Vertex before it is inlaid, dooming the world and depriving the Americans of its reward, 'Heat' (believed to be a limitless power-source). However, Jack swings across the pit at the last moment, catches the pillar, and manages to place it in the Vertex just before Switchblade drops himself and Jack into the abyss. Wickham and the Adamsons escape, with Horus diving into the abyss after Jack. Wolf leaves with the Second Pillar, leaving Alby, who was brought with them, alone at the Vertex. Zoe, Sky Monster, Lily and Wizard, on board the Halicarnassus on an airfield in Botswana, had been in phone contact with Jack to help him avoid the traps at the Vertex and see the whole thing happen on the videophone. The surviving team members realize they must face the placing of the last four pillars and the arrival of the Dark Sun, three months away, without Jack.
9406248	/m/0287k81	The Fifth Horseman				 The bomb and Kamal Dajani arrive in New York City by freighter. The bomb was built by his brother Whalid, a nuclear scientist, in Libya. Although Whalid and Kamal made a Muslim vow on pain of death to avenge their father's loss of their West Bank home, Whalid had originally dedicated his life to peaceful nuclear energy at Cadarache. That was until Kamal was ready to enforce the vow. French police subsequently arrested Kamal, Whalid, and their sister Laila and deported them to Beirut so as not to jeopardize politics of nuclear energy. When the police questioned Whalid's French wife, she committed suicide. Kamal and their mother exploited the event for Whalid and she bid them to help Gaddafi in Libya. Laila, in disguise, personally delivers the written threat by Gaddafi to the White House, with instructions on how to retrieve technical designs as proof from an airport locker. The President (resembling Jimmy Carter in age, religiosity, Navy service, etc.) and his team agonize over the bomb design and the threat to the final assessment by the Department of Energy that it is a three megaton H-bomb. The nuclear search team NEST is activated, travelling on Starlifter cargo plane from Nevada to McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey. Meanwhile, combined teams of New York City police and FBI, including New York police detective Angelo Rocchia and FBI agent Mike Rand, conduct shoe-leather field research on the incoming shipment, the false and stolen documents, and the three terrorists, moving ever closer to the truth in a logical progression, to look for "a barrel of chlorine gas." It looks bleak for NEST. Its equipment can only look so far down from the air and only so far up from the street. Even a water bed could neutralize the radioactive emissions of the bomb. Also, other terrorists help to confuse NEST, by attaching plutonium pellets to the legs of pigeons and setting them loose. It also looks bleak for New York City, whose mayor, Abe Stern, was summoned to the White House under false pretenses and told face-to-face by the President of the nuclear threat. Not only is evacuation ruled out by Gaddafi, but some fallout shelters are loaded with junk, susceptible to flooding, or badly stocked with no supplies or rotten supplies. New York City's air raid sirens were literally falling down. New York City did have a good radio-TV public address system for the mayor, but it was unmistakably clear that up to eight million people in and around the city would die of burns, blast, flying debris, or radiation, and New England would get the fallout immediately after. New York City officials contemplate evacuation plans but scrap them because few people have cars and train operators cannot be counted on to work in a crisis. Israel's military leaders do not trust the President during this crisis. Israel almost successfully launches its own nuclear strike against Libya, using F4 Phantoms and their plutonium atom bombs, and an electronic countermeasures plane, until the French ambassador warns Israel that the Soviets will launch a nuclear strike against Israel unless they desist. Begin horrifically deduces that the President asked the Soviets to keep Israel in line, and backs down. Begin will not vacate the West Bank settlements as demanded by Gaddafi: in fact, the Israeli Army could mutiny if ordered to vacate the settlements. Rand and Rocchia make progress: first, checking bills of lading from the harbor, and questioning longshoremen about unusual activity. Further checking determines a discrepancy between what was listed on the manifest and what actually made it to the destination. Rand and Rocchia check the rental vehicle involved and discover it was rented with a stolen driver's license. The pickpocketing victim, Mr. Gerald Putman, reviewing photographs, identifies Carmen, a Colombian whose large breasts help distract her victims. Rocchia makes up a criminal incident to get an Italian woman to tell her where Carmen lives. Capturing her and her associate Pedro Torres leads them to a Jewish document forger, Benny Muscowitz. Rocchia's aggressive manner makes Benny finally invoke his right against self-incrimination, but Rand is able, without giving too many details about the Israeli crisis, to encourage Benny to talk. A French nuclear scientist who worked in Libya, Paul-Henri de Serre, turned out to be an art thief whom the Libyans set up. Paul-Henri identifies Whalid and Kamal and the French fax the records of Whalid, Kamal, and Laila to the CIA. A short time later, Rand and Rocchia arrest Nabil Suleiman, who was wanted by Israel for a terrorist attack, and threaten to deport him, for lack of a U.S. visa, directly into the custody of a Mossad agent waiting outside, unless he becomes a witness in the case. Nabil is able to identify Laila and Kamal based on the French photos. Further questioning of New York citizens establishes that the same rental truck was in the location in question at the time in question. The President has briefed the Rapid Deployment Force, in transit to Lebanon, with options to invade the West Bank. Rocchia is very upset when he asks a nuclear technician what he is carrying and the technician honestly indicates, "Geiger counter". He feels betrayed that the FBI would be told, but not the New York City police like himself. Rocchia's superior manages to calm him down. Rocchia had delivered good leads, he wants to take his daughter with Down's syndrome far north from the city. Rocchia is free to go, on the condition that he remain silent. He tries to ask the Catholic school for children with disabilities for permission to take her "to see relatives". The nun accedes, but in the meantime, Rocchia has to look at dozens of other children, all with disabilities, who will be incinerated if the bomb goes off. She does not see Rocchia any more when she returns with the daughter and his car is gone. The President consults his advisors again. One finally says that during the oil embargo and the Iranian hostage crisis, when the Europeans wavered, it was Israel that had stood by the United States. Also simultaneously, a crucial deadline passes and the nuclear bomb does not explode. Now some distance safely away from the bomb, Whalid finally tells his brother Kamal, he did not build the bomb to incinerate New York City residents, he did it to make Libya parallel with Israel, the Soviets, France, China, Britain, and America. Whalid had fed the wrong tape deliberately to the computer while his brother and sister had been working on the antenna on the roof. Whalid, in self defense, tries to shoot his brother and misses, Kamal breaks Whalid's trachea with an expert martial arts maneuver, causing Whalid to slowly suffocate to death. Kamal grabs the detonation checklist and Laila and drives back to the bomb to detonate it manually by himself. The President makes a decision. He is not merely the President of people in New York City: he is the President of all Americans, and America is being bullied to invade an ally. This is an act of war, not just a crime. Finally, he orders two nuclear submarines to position their SLBMs on Libya, and orders his admiral to launch them unless the bomb is found and defused, or unless Gaddafi extends his latest ultimatum. Gaddafi reports that the President's acceptance of the original terms is not acceptable. One of Gaddafi's own ministers protests, America has capitulated. Gaddafi replies that the Americans are stalling for time. The President finally levies his nuclear threat. Gaddafi is the only cool head as the minister panics. Meanwhile, a suspicious neighbor hears the gunshot and calls police, who identify Whalid based on a tattoo. The New York City police and FBI absolutely know who they are looking for. Kamal gets out of the car and tells Laila to drive to Montreal. He then steals an ambulance to finish his drive to the bomb. Rand and Rocchia hear about the ambulance on the radio, see it, and chase it. Rocchia cautiously enters the building where Kamal is with the bomb. "Police! Don't move!" Kamal expertly fires a succession of shots from an automatic pistol. Rocchia drops to the floor, safe, but silently. Rand tries to enter the building, thinking Rocchia is wounded. Rocchia can't warn Rand because he'd betray his position. Rand ultimately becomes Kamal's target, fatally wounded, but Rocchia is able to kill Kamal with two shots. The nuclear scientists review their options. After determining that the case is safe to open, they choose ultraviolet radiation to burn out the microprocessor, and New York is safe. That leaves Laila. Not surprisingly, she is eager to get to Canada, she is speeding ever so slightly. A police car gives chase, Laila manages to almost lose the police car, but she hits a stretch of black ice, she loses control, crashes in the opposite lane, and the car's gas tank explodes, burning her alive. "What ever got into her?" the officer asks. "All I had her for was seven miles over the limit." By the end of the story, Libya's east coast has nuclear-armed SCUDs facing Israel, both countries facing "the prospect of mutual suicide."
9406652	/m/0287kyc	Indulekha	Oyyarathu Chandumenon	1889	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Indulekha is a graceful Nair girl with good intelligence, artistic talent. She is a young and educated, knowledgeable woman with education in English and sanskrit, who is in love with another young man, Madhavan, the hero of the novel, who was also presented in ideal colours, a member of newly educated class of nayar class graduated from University of Madras.He dressed in western clothes,but,at the same time,he kept along turf of hair,according to the nayar cusyom. The story details how the matrilineal society of those times, encourages Namboothiris to start a relationship with Indulekha. Indulekha promptly snubs the old Nambudiri man, but Madhavan in haste runs away from the household, to Bengal. There he makes a lot of good friends. In the end, he arrives back and is united with Indulekha. They then leave to Madras, present day Chennai.The story emphasizes inter caste marriage. The old Namboothiri represents the decadence of feudalism and its polygamous practices. Indulekha, the novel's educated heroine, dramatises the resistance of a progressive Nair woman. She refuses to succumb to the oppression of the Namboothiri and marries Madhavan, who stands up to the social evils of the period. * Madhavan * Soori Namboothiri * Indulekha's Mother Lakshmikkutti Amma * Panju Menon
9407999	/m/0287ncr	1824: The Arkansas War	Eric Flint	2006-11-28	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story, takes place in 1824–25, ten years after 1812: The Rivers of War. The United States, under the influence of Sam Houston, a Special Commissioner for Indian Affairs, has signed a treaty with the southern Indian tribes, establishing a Confederacy of chiefdoms in the territory that in our time line is composed of the State of Arkansas west of the Red River, and the State of Oklahoma without the Panhandle, roughly the boundaries of the historical Arkansas Territory. As a result, the tribes of the southern US, particularly the Cherokee, have willingly left the southeastern U.S. with their wealth and power intact (as opposed to their eventual and devastating forced removal in 1838 in actual history). Shortly thereafter, in Louisiana, Henry Crowell, a free black man and one of the officers of the Iron Battalion who won the Battle of the Mississippi (which in this time line was the battle that saved New Orleans from the British in January 1815), offended the local Creole leadership by courting a Creole woman. Slave-catchers waylaid Crowell and castrated him. In revenge, the Iron Battalion mobilized and destroyed the homes of the Creole leadership, then smashed the Louisiana militia who came after them to suppress "servile rebellion". (This is referred to later as the "Algiers incident".) Shortly afterwards, Crowell and the Iron Battalion moved to Arkansas. The easternmost chiefdom, Arkansas, is ruled by Patrick Driscol, nicknamed the "Laird of Arkansas" who was formerly the brigade master sergeant under Winfield Scott during the Niagara Campaign. Arkansas banned slavery and quickly became a magnet for freedmen throughout the United States, who are forced to leave their home states when, under the influence of men like Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, the states pass Freedmen Exclusion Acts. As the book begins, one such family, the Parker family, leaves Baltimore, Maryland, after the head of the household is killed by a mob of whites. They are stopped on the Ohio River by slave-catchers, who plan to take them before a partial judge, have them declared runaway slaves, and sold into bondage. However, before the slave-catchers can haul the Parkers away, a party of abolitionists led by John Brown and his brother Solomon Brown intervenes and the family is able to continue their journey. When the Parkers arrive in New Antrim, the capital of Arkansas, they learn that Crowell's bank will loan the family money to start again if the men join the Arkansas Army. Sheffield Parker and his uncle Jem enlist and undergo a rigorous training regimen. Meanwhile, Henry Clay secretly finances an expedition led by Robert Crittenden to attack Arkansas. The expedition fails, but Clay uses this failure as a lever to become the new president of the USA following James Monroe. Shortly thereafter, Sam Houston's wife Maria gets accidentally shot by an assassin from Georgia who was aiming for Houston himself in retaliation for his liberal views on race, and he and his son Andrew Jackson Houston leave for Arkansas to aid Driscol and Ross in coming war with the USA. The novel ends in 1825, with the USA going to war with Arkansas (as an AU of the real history American Civil War). At the same time, a varied group of politicians led by the losers in the election of 1824, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, meet to create a new political party that will both oppose and defeat Henry Clay and work for an eventual end to slavery in all states when Clay's presidential term is finished.
9408549	/m/0287p8z	Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy	K. W. Jeter	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The novel takes place primarily in Victorian London. The story begins as a mysterious Brown Leather Man enters George's watch shop with a strange device in need of repair, claiming it was made by George's father, a brilliant watchmaker skilled in all forms of clockwork devices. George, who has inherited his father's shop, but not his father's talent, agrees to look at the device, although he knows his chances of repairing it are slim at best. George is quickly dragged into an ongoing conflict involving the Royal Anti-Society, the Godly Army and the Ladies Union for the Suppression of Carnal Vice. His investigation leads him to a strange neighborhood in London, Wetwick, which is inhabited by denizens who are a hybrid of humans and fish. Another of George's customers is an impatient man who wears blue-glass spectacles and uses a slang which is strange to George as a Victorian Englishman but which modern readers will recognize as twentieth-century American vernacular. (The stranger is not a time traveler but a Victorian Englishman who possesses a device which enables him to view what is, for him, the future; he has learned late twentieth-century slang through lip-reading.) As the story develops, George realizes that his father was more skilled than even he knew; his father had begun experimenting with building clockwork humans, finishing with an automaton who is an exact double of George himself, but which possesses superior sexual abilities and a skill with the violin comparable to Paganini. Inevitably, a woman abducts George in the mistaken belief that she has captured his clockwork twin.
9411837	/m/0287tt2	The Pirates of Pompeii	Caroline Lawrence	2002-04-01	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Flavia and Nubia look over the devastation of Mount Vesuvius. Their friend Jonathan ben Mordecai is in a coma, and Nubia and Flavia search for a flower that his father who is a doctor needs for medicine. Scuto, Flavia's dog finds the precious flower, as well as a little girl, Julia who says that her big brother Rufus was kidnapped by some “scary men” and told her to hide in the cave while he drew them off. Returning to the refugee camp, Flavia and Nubia help to medicine Jonathan, who awakes from his coma. While he is recovering, Nubia meets a runaway slave named Kuanto, from the same region of Africa as she. He asks her to run away and be free with him, but she hesitates. The four friends learn that children are disappearing everywhere, and Flavia guesses that some kind of organized kidnapping racket is going on. Hearing one of the refugees mutter “Felix just got luckier” with news of another disappearance, Flavia suspects the powerful local landlord Publius Pollius Felix, who happens to be her uncle Gaius’s patron. Felix is in the refugee camp, ostensibly helping the Emperor organize supplies for the refugees. By playing up Jonathan’s infirmity, Flavia contrives to have herself and the three friends invited to Felix’s villa to recover while the refugees are being sorted out. There they meet his beautiful but spoiled daughter Pulchra, his wife Polla, and his two younger daughters. Pulchra takes an instant liking to Jonathan. The four friends live at Felix’s house for a while, slowly being taken in by its luxuries and Felix’s charisma. Flavia is initially appalled at seeing how Pulchra treats her own slave girl, Leda (including flogging her with a birch stick and making her stay huddled in a locked chest as punishment), but before long, she begins treating Nubia almost as poorly – Flavia does not abuse Nubia, but, in an effort to fit in with the way things are done at the house, begins ordering her around like a servant and then ignoring her like a piece of furniture. Spying on various parts of the house, they notice suspicious signs; shortly after one of Felix’s clients comes begging the patron to help find his missing daughter, Lupus sees two men near the villa conferring on how to return her. On the night of a sumptuous dinner party, Flavia tries to be a good guest by ordering Nubia to play her flute. The next day, she sees that Nubia has run away, after Pulchra beat her, stole her puppy, and broke her lotuswood flute. Flavia goes running to Felix to ask for his help, but Felix refuses, saying that, if Nubia were caught, the law would require her to be crucified as a runaway. Sickened at how she and the others have been taken in by the house and its seductive ways, Flavia is determined to find Nubia herself. She, Jonathan, and Lupus retrace her steps to a small shrine on a hilltop where they had a picnic, and find signs that Nubia has run away with Kuanto, who has followed her to the villa. Flavia then catches Pulchra and Leda, who have followed them, and the two girls begin fighting. Just then, all the children are seized by the kidnapping gang, who call themselves “The Pirates of Pompeii.” Lupus manages to get away without being seen. Flavia, Jonathan, Pulchra, and Leda are taken to a seaside grotto, where they join a band of almost fifty kidnapped children. All of them receive a severe beating to keep them subdued, but Jonathan and Flavia tell the children jokes to keep their spirits up. Lupus runs back to the house, but Felix is nowhere to be found. His wife, Polla, does not seem to comprehend Lupus’s urgent appeals for help. Polla tells Lupus that Felix is away at Rome, and Lupus runs back to the grotto to free the children himself. When he communicates this, Pulchra confides shamefully that her mother has spells of mental illness, and her father rarely leaves the house for that reason. Lupus cuts the children free, but just as they are about to escape, the pirates find them and seize Flavia, threatening to kill her if they don’t stand still. Lupus manages to get away again, and runs back to the villa, praying that Felix is there. The pirates pour cold sea water all over Flavia as punishment for trying to escape. Flavia and Jonathan are then forced to lye on their backs on the floor of the grotto, and are tied up so that they cannot sit up. Meanwhile, Nubia has joined Kuanto and several other runaway slaves, all of whom are fleeing abusive masters. Kuanto says he has hired a ship to take them to Alexandria. But as soon as they board the ship, the crew are revealed to be the kidnappers, in league with Kuanto. The runaway slaves are taken prisoner and put with the children, except for Nubia, whom Kuanto says is with him. Acting as though she does not recognize Flavia - she and Jonathan have been untied so that they would be able to walk to the ship and are now bound upright to the mast - and the others, she talks with Kuanto, who explains that he is a freedman of Felix’s whose job for the patron was leading posses to track down runaway slaves. Kuanto had the idea of selling the slaves instead of turning them into the law, and one of the other “pirates” suggested expanding into kidnapping after the volcano erupted, since there would be so many runaway slaves and lost children in the chaos. Felix doesn’t know anything about it; the pirates just use his name to intimidate the locals into doing what they want. Playing along, Nubia serves the pirates cups of wine, drugged with a packet of sleeping powder that Jonathan brought with him. The next morning, when the ship is at sea, on its way to meet a buyer for the slaves, the pirates begin sorting the children, picking out those with families who can pay a ransom for them. But then Kuanto recognizes Pulchra, and panics, knowing that Felix will hunt every last one of them down. Torn between selling the entire group of children as slaves, or throwing them overboard, the pirates suddenly begin to hallucinate. Seeing terrible visions, they lose control of the boat and the children manage to overpower them. Jonathan ruefully realizes that he took the wrong powder from his father’s stores. Two of the pirates are badly injured by their hallucinations – one of them jumps from the crow’s nest to the deck, believing he has wings – and two jump overboard and drown. As the children try to gain control of the boat, they spot the pirate ship Vespa coming, and on it the children's hated enemy, the slave-dealer Venalicius. The children and runaway slaves hatch a plan, and the slaves pretend to be the pirates trading the children. When the slave traders board the ship, the children spill chickpeas onto the deck, causing them to slip and fall, while Jonathan and Nubia use gold coins as sling stones to knock them unconscious. When Venalicius tries to seize Nubia, Pulchra saves her by plowing her head into his stomach. A short time later, Felix arrives in his racing yacht, accompanied by Lucius and a gang of his bodyguards. They take the pirates and slave traders into custody, but Lupus shocks them all by trying to stab Venalicius to death with a knife. Felix stops him, and Lupus bursts into tears. At the villa, Felix thanks Flavia and her friends for rescuing his daughter. He has arranged to return all the stolen children to their families, and has given the runaway slaves a place on his estate. To Nubia, Pulchra gives back her dog and a brand-new flute. Flavia decides to free Nubia. At first Nubia is afraid that being free means she will have to leave her friends; when she is assured otherwise, she accepts. Just then, the first rainstorm since the volcanic eruption begins, and the rain washes away the layer of ash covering everything.
9420578	/m/028847n	Garden of the Purple Dragon	Carole Wilkinson	2005-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Chapter 1: Black Dragon Pool Ping is living on the top of Tai Shan mountain trying to raise Kai, the stinking baby dragon. Chapter 2: A Bowl, A Bucket and A Ladle Ping learns that Kai can learn to shape-change and turns into firstly a soup ladle. They are living happily until one day, their goat is found with its throat slit. Hua is also found to be back on a red phoenix's back. Ping and Kai flee but they run into the necromancer. After Hua uses his newfound powers to hold off the necromancer while Ping and Kai escape. Ping, Kai and Hua are later captured by guards and taken to Liu Che, Emperor of China, and Ping's 'friend' who drops all charges against them. Ping stays in the palace and meets Princess Yangxin and the two become friends, and the Princess begins to teach Ping how to read and write, since she is unable to do so already. Ping eventually convinces the Emperor to search for any other Dragon Keepers, she hopes to find her family. She, Kai and Dong Fang Suo (Fatso as Kai had begun to call him) go to a village in search of the next Dragon Keeper. But they do not find Ping's family, instead Jun is taken to be instructed as a Dragonkeeper, Ping becomes jealous when Kai seems to prefer Jun over her. Dong Fang Suo attempts to kill by Liu Che's orders Ping but she survives and returns to the palace for Kai. However the Necromancer is there, bleeding Kai. They duel and Ping, without Kai, escapes to warn the Emperor who reveals he is in league with the Necromancer. She is stripped of her position as Imperial Dragonkeeper and taken off to be sacrificed. During the sacrifice, Dong Fang Suo (who later says it was the Emperor who told him to kill Ping), Jun, Hua and Kai come to her aid and they defeat the necromancer though Dong Fang Suo is sadly killed. While Jun takes his body away, Ping and Kai (Ping had let Hua go free with other rats) escape with Princess Yangxin, with the final destination of the Kunlun Mountains in sight. But Princess Yangxin asks them to come to the Duke's with her, and the two agree. Kai is nearly two by now. Ping is actually the dragon keeper and Jun is a fake.
9421156	/m/0288536	Ọba kò so	Duro Ladipo			 The play tries to revisit history by portraying a stout and space consuming Sango, as a leader mindful of the wishes of the people; in his desire to please them, he set two of his most powerful chiefs against each other. The chiefs, Gbonka and Timi had grown too powerful and were becoming a nuisance to the kingdom. However, the plot ended up dividing his cabinet and many of his advisers, friends and a wife, Oya left him. Shango's friend Mogba, rather than joining the traitors, desired to redeem the battered image of the king. Mogba invoked incantations causing thunder and lightning to damage the homes of Sango's enemies.
9424803	/m/0288d43	A Breed of Heroes	Alan Judd		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first month of the tour is spent in the countryside of Armagh, where Charles’ battalion make their presence felt by ending all British Army contact with the locals and pursuing a deliberately more aggressive stance than the previous garrison unit. The month is mainly boring, with most days spent carrying out menial tasks in barracks or conducting patrols. However, towards the end of the period an anti-vehicle mine meant for Charles’ regular Land Rover patrol to an electricity sub-station destroys an electricity board van minutes before Charles arrives. Seeing his first explosion, as well as finding the scattered body parts of a man who should have been him and his soldiers, brings the realities of his situation home to him and increases his thoughts that he should never have joined the army: something which he must tackle throughout the book. In moving to Belfast for the remaining three months of the tour, things take a turn for the worse – something Charles thought couldn’t happen after the endless boredom and sporadic fear of Armagh. Billeted in a working factory which produces bottles 24 hours a day, his company’s quarters are ridiculed by the entire Belfast garrison as the worst in the city. The floor given over to officers for accommodation, dining and radio watch-keeping consists of ‘rooms’ created only by cardboard separations. As well as the deprivations of the location, Charles finds the customs of army life difficult to understand and get used to, especially as they seem to have no logic behind them. The officers and men of his battalion learn to deal with the pressures and squalor of urban guerrilla warfare by drinking, making mischief and engaging in sexual orgies. Charles, always aloof from his brother officers and institutionally separated from his men, finds it hard not to constantly question his own competency and worth, both as an officer and a human being. Having been involved in two riots, he is moved to Battalion Headquarters after the Press Relations Officer (PRO) has a negligent discharge and shoots himself in the foot. Charles shares his room with the Adjutant, and sets about ensuring that the battalion is seen in a good light by the press. This task is complicated somewhat by his Commanding Officer’s hatred of the press and idiosyncratic way of doing things, but Charles finds living in the police station which houses HQ much more bearable than the grim surrounds of the factory. More escapades follow, with Charles being involved in heart racing riots and close scrapes with members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, as well as comic activities with his brother officers. During this time, Charles begins writing indirectly for The Times. His job as PRO leads him into contact with The Times cowardly and drunkard Northern Ireland correspondent Beazley, who pays Charles and his Lance Corporal photographer to write and send his dispatches, thus allowing himself to avoid danger and sit in his hotel bar. Charles’ slightly more pleasant life at HQ ends abruptly, however, with the bombing of the police station. The adjutant is killed and their room destroyed, leading Charles to be sent back to the Factory but still in his role as PRO. More brilliantly described riots and arms finds occur, while Charles realises that he both enjoys and excels at journalism through his arrangement with Beazley. Charles resolves to leave the army, and eventually amasses enough money to buy himself out of his contract which runs for another few years. His resignation is accepted, and he gains permission to leave on his battalion’s return to England. The climactic scene of the book involves Charles and his CO in a gun battle with some young IRA gunmen. Fighting through an alley, Charles fires at point blank range and misses his target several times, before hitting his mark and killing the teenage boy. Charles’ reaction to his first kill is necessarily short, the battalion is preparing to leave Ireland and return home. The novel ends with Charles, for the first time in the novel, being completely at ease, enjoying a parachute drop into England and revelling in the fact that all he has to worry about is the drop itself.
9432860	/m/076yzp8	City on Fire	Walter Jon Williams	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story begins shortly after the point where Metropolitan left off, with Aiah, the previous novel's protagonist, arriving in "Free Caraqui" to assist Constantine in his ambitions. In Caraqui, Constantine is confronted with intrigues among the other power players from the revolution, counter-coups, and war with the surrounding metropolises. He must also deal with the consequences of enlisting one his more disturbing allies, Taikoen. Centuries previous, Taikoen was a powerful mage whose name passed into legend; he eventually transformed into a "hanged man," an entity of pure plasm whose only remaining drive is to possess other human beings and use their bodies to experience sensual pleasures until his victims die extremely gruesome deaths as a side effect of the possession. Constantine had made a pact with Taikoen to provide him bodies to feed on in exchange for destroying certain of his enemies, but is now wracked with guilt for doing this and is conflicted between his need to use Taikoen to further his ambitions and his worry that he has unleashed a monster he cannot control. Aiah eventually grows to become a minor power in her own right in Caraqui, serving as a government liaison to some Barkazi mercenary units Constantine has hired to defend Caraqui (among many others). Aiah befriends a military mage from one of those units who helps her eventually destroy Taikoen. Despite the conflict still raging, Constantine works to pursue his ultimate plan for the New City - nothing less than the destruction of the Shield that imprisons humanity in the world and the confrontation of whatever powers placed it there. Seeing plasm as the key to humanity's liberation, he enlists the help of Rohder, one of Aiah's old colleagues from the Plasm Authority in Jaspeer (and a minor character in Metropolitan). A centuries-old researcher-mage, Rohder had discovered new geometric properties that could boost the production of plasm in cities, with the unfortunate need to completely reorder their infrastructure at prohibitive cost. Fortunately, Caraqui is a metropolis built on pontoons in the shallows of one of the world's seas, so Constantine enables him to experiment by physically moving parts of the city in concordance with his theory, which proves valid. Aiah also stumbles onto the knowledge that at periodic intervals, a small hole opens up in the Shield through which plasm-based constructs can be sent. At the same time, she has been having dreams in which she sees entities named the Sun and Moon outside the Shield; these celestial bodies are mostly legend in the world, but there is a belief that the tides seen in the world's seas are caused by the effects of their gravity, which is able to pass through the Shield. Aiah learns that her dreams have similarities with the teachings of a mysterious monastic order in Caraqui, the Dreaming Sisters. At the novel's conclusion, Aiah seems to join the Dreaming Sisters in their curious form of meditation as a way of discovering what her dreams mean in the context of freeing the world from the Shield.
9437976	/m/0288xp4	Tarzan: the Lost Adventure	Joe R. Lansdale	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In Burroughs' last Tarzan story, left unfinished at the time of his death, the ape man plays guardian to an expedition seeking the lost city of Ur. In addition to Tarzan himself, his animal companions Jad-bal-ja, the golden lion, and Nkima, the little monkey, are also brought back for one last swan song. Burrough's manuscript ends before Ur is reached, but in the novel as completed by Lansdale, Ur turns out to be a society revering a giant and supposedly immortal praying mantis, which is used to slay condemned prisoners in the arena. Tarzan speculates that the creature is originally from the underground world of Pellucidar, to which Ur is connected by a system of caverns and passages. Trapped underground at the end of the story, he seeks escape by seeking out the route to Pellucidar himself.
9438156	/m/0288xt8	Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1963	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Two schoolboys, Dick and Doc, are cousins who resemble each other because their mothers are twins. As Dick is also related to Tarzan through his father, they become known as the Tarzan Twins. Invited to visit Tarzan's African estate, they become lost in the jungle and are imprisoned by cannibals, from whom they escape. They are then reunited with their host, who introduces them to his pet lion, Jad-bal-ja. Subsequently, they become involved in an adventure involving exiles from the lost city of Opar, who have kidnapped Gretchen von Harben, the daughter of a missionary.
9438181	/m/0288xtm	World of Warcraft: Tides of Darkness	Aaron S. Rosenberg	2007-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel explores the events of the Second War (which took place during Warcraft II) when the Orcish Horde, led by Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer, returns to Azeroth to destroy the Human nations. The book writer Aaron S. Rosenberg commented at a public Q&A that among the main characters are Khadgar, Turalyon, Lothar, the sisters Windrunner (Alleria, Sylvanas and Vereesa), Orgrim Doomhammer, Zul'jin and Gul'dan. Places featured are Hillsbrad, Stromgarde, Blackrock Spire, Caer Darrow, Stratholme and Quel'Thalas among others.
9447731	/m/02896_v	Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush?	Jerry Spinelli	1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story alternates chapters between 12-year-old Megin and her 15-year-old brother Greg. The book follows their various arguments and misadventures while exploring the thorny issue of sibling rivalry, giving both sibling's perspective on their disagreements. Megin is a much better hockey player than her older brother which annoys him to no end. Greg is obsessed with body building in an attempt to attract a girl named Jennifer. Between their obsessions the two somehow manage to make time to drive each other nuts. However, their differences are set aside when a crisis erupts showing that even though they might argue and bicker about the smallest matters, they will still come to each others aid when truly needed at certain times.
9454227	/m/0289hvs	River of Gods	Ian McDonald	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The sprawling novel follows a number of different characters' viewpoints around the date of August 15, 2047, the centenary of India's partition and independence from the colonial British Raj. This future India has become balkanized into a number of smaller competing states, such as Awadh, Bharat, and Bangla. The global information network is now inhabited by artificial intelligences, called aeais in the novel, of varying levels of intelligence. Aeais higher than level 2.5 (able to pass the Turing test and imitate humans) are banned, and their destruction ("excommunication") is the responsibility of "Krishna Cops", like Mr. Nandha. While some pockets of the subcontinent are still steeped in ancient tradition and values, mainstream culture is replete with aeais in TV entertainment and robotic swarms in defense. During such a time, Ranjit Ray steps down from his control of Ray Power, a key energy company, and the responsibility falls on his son Vishram Ray. The playboy Vishram is struggling to make it on his own as a stand-up comedian in Scotland when he is flown back to Varanasi to assume this role, for which he finds himself terribly ill-equipped but eventually surprisingly effective. He learns that his company is working on harvesting zero-point energy from other universes, and sees the particle collider built by his father with the help of Odeco, a clandestine investment firm. After a prolonged drought, a severe water shortage threatens to jeopardize the peace between the subcontinental states. To avert this crisis, governments are melting glaciers and modifying natural systems. To take advantage of the unrest, a Hindu fundamentalist leader named N.K Jeevanji organises a "rath yatra" on a spectacular juggernaut. He starts releasing key information to the press via Najia Askarzadah, an ambitious Swedish-Afghan reporter with a desire to be part of history as it is being made. Lisa Durnau notices an apocalyptic crisis brewing in Alterre, a simulated evolution of earth created by AI scientist Thomas Lull, who is currently hiding in a South Indian coastal village. While Lisa is sent into space to investigate an asteroid, Thomas Lull runs into Aj, a girl with mysterious powers that allow her to see into people's lives, pasts and futures. He decides to follow her and protect her during her quest to find her own true identity, but it is soon revealed that Aj's powers extend beyond mere mortals, when she brings a robot army to a halt with the raise of a hand. Tal is a beautiful nute (of neutral gender) involved in the designing team of India's greatest 'soapi', Town & Country, some of the main stars of which are not human actors, but aeais. Tal falls prey to a conspiracy that compromises the career of Shaheen Badoor Khan, Private Secretary to the Prime Minister Sajida Rana, leading to her assassination and the fall of the government. All this leads to riots and popular fury against Muslims and transsexuals across Varanasi. Lisa Durnau discovers that at the center of the mysterious asteroid is an 8 billion year old grey sphere, possibly a black hole remnant, or an alien artifact from another civilization. This "Tabernacle" communicates a message to the scientists, and this leads Lisa to India to find Thomas Lull, who alone can explain this phenomenon.
9455599	/m/0289k8v	The Double	José Saramago			 Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a divorced high school history teacher who spends his nights reading about Mesopotamian civilizations. One day, at a colleague's suggestion, Tertuliano rents a movie in which he sees a man that looks exactly like him. Tertuliano becomes obsessed with meeting the man and spends weeks discovering the actor's name. He then sends a letter to the production company, from his girlfriend's address, posing as a film student in order to be put in contact with the actor. His relationship with his girlfriend, Maria da Paz, suffers because he refuses to disclose to her his motives. After receiving his phone number and address, Tertuliano stalks his twin, António Claro, eventually calling him. Claro's wife thinks Tertuliano is her husband. When finally the two men talk, they discover their voices are exactly the same and they share identical scars and moles. Initially, António Claro dismisses Tertuliano and refuses to meet, but he later contacts him and agrees. They decide to meet at Claro's country home in a week. Tertuliano buys a fake beard and drives out of town to meet Claro. Upon arrival, the men strip down and find that they are indeed identical, and they discover they were born on the same month, day, and year. Before Tertuliano leaves, Claro asks him to clarify one more thing: the exact time he was born. He wants to know which one of them is the original, and which is the double. Tertuliano tells him that he was born at two in the afternoon. Smugly, Claro informs Tertuliano that he was born a half hour earlier, making him the original. Tertuliano gets up to leave, telling Claro he still has one small compensation in that Claro will be the first to die, thereby making himself, the duplicate, into the original. To this, Claro responds, "Well, I hope you enjoy those thirty-one minutes of personal, absolute, and exclusive identity, because that is all you will enjoy from now on." The men agree that they have no reason to ever meet again, and Tertuliano leaves. Tertuliano sends the fake beard to António Claro, who has not been able to stop thinking about the meeting. Meanwhile, Tertuliano and Maria get engaged to be married. Claro wonders about the circumstances under which Tertuliano was able to obtain his phone number and address. After visiting the production company offices, Claro comes to possess the letter, written by Tertuliano but signed by his girlfriend, Maria da Paz, and bearing her address. Donning the fake beard, Claro stakes out Maria's apartment and, finding her very attractive, he follows her to work. Claro realizes that Tertuliano has not told Maria da Paz about their situation. Soon after, Claro pays Tertuliano a visit at his home. He presents Tertuliano with the letter that he obtained from the production company, with Maria da Paz's signature. Tertuliano tells him to leave and threatens to call the police. Claro responds that he, in turn, will call Maria da Paz and inform her of the whole situation. Tertuliano is stunned and asks Claro what he wants. Claro tells him he intends to spend the night with Maria. In fact, Claro has already contacted her and persuaded her to spend the night with him at his country home of which, posing as Tertuliano, he explains he is a potential buyer. Claro views his actions as revenge for Tertuliano's disruption into his married, stable life. Furious and ashamed, Tertuliano gives Claro his clothes, identification, and the keys to his car in order for Claro to fully sell his appearance to Maria da Paz. After Claro leaves, Tertuliano dresses in the clothes the other man has left behind, gets in Claro's car and drives to his house where he proceeds to make love to Claro's wife, Helena. In the morning, she makes him breakfast while he reads the paper; she never suspects that it is not her husband. Meanwhile, Maria da Paz and António Claro have spent the night together as well. In the morning, Maria wakes first and notices the indentation on Claro's finger from years of wearing a wedding ring. She deduces that the man is not Tertuliano. Hysterical, she demands to be taken home. At first, Tertuliano hopes that Claro will return to find him in bed with his wife, but as time passes, his anxiety concerning Maria da Paz causes him to leave and he rushes to a pay phone to call her house. A colleague of Maria's answers the phone and informs Tertuliano that Maria da Paz died earlier that morning in a car accident. Tertuliano, realizing that his life as he knows it is now over, checks into a hotel and calls his mother to tell her he is alive. She meets him at the hotel and he tells her everything. The next day, he buys a newspaper to learn the details of the accident: a head on collision with a truck. The truck driver, when questioned by police, revealed that the passengers in the car appeared to be quarreling before their automobile crossed the center lane and crashed into the truck. Tertuliano drives back to António Claro's house and reveals himself to Helena, telling her that the man who died was not Tertuliano, but her husband. He presents to her António's identification and asks for her forgiveness, to which she responds, "Forgive is just a word." Helena asks Tertuliano to stay with her and take the place of her husband and he accepts. Three days later, as Tertuliano is reading on Mesopotamian civilization, the phone rings. Tertuliano answers and the voice on the other end exlaims, "At last!" in a voice identical to his own. The man has been trying to reach him for months, and claims to be his double; Tertuliano agrees to meet him in a park nearby that night. Tertuliano changes clothes, loads the pistol he keeps in the house and puts it through his belt; he writes Helena a note, "I'll be back" and goes to meet the man. de:Der Doppelgänger (Saramago) es:El hombre duplicado eu:O Homem Duplicado it:L'uomo duplicato he:האדם המשוכפל pt:O Homem Duplicado sv:Dubbelgångaren (José Saramago)
9455937	/m/0289ksb	Empty Cities of the Full Moon	Howard V. Hendrix	2001-08-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel opens in 1999 with a car accident occurring in parallel universes. In Universe A, the universe in which Hendrix's previous novel Better Angels occurs, the accident is avoided allowing 3 of the major characters in that novel to be born. However in Universe A Prime the accident does occur and the resulting deaths prevent those characters from being born. The 3 characters are brothers Jiro and Seiji Ansel Yamaguchi, and their cousin John Drinan. Years later in 2032 the process of Jiro's transcendence, which occurs at the end of Better Angels, results in John being thrown from Universe A to Universe A Prime. Empty Cities of the Full Moon takes place in Universe A Prime after this. When John is thrown between universes he quickly discovers that there is no record of his existence. The trauma of this event causes John to lose himself in depression. After meeting Mark Fornash, John en-rolls himself in a clinical trial of an experimental artificial prion based cure for mental illness, created by Tomoko Fukuda. Soon a drumming and dancing mania begins to sweep the globe, causing a large and increasing portion of the population to drop out of their societies. Due to his interest in shamanism Mark Fornash is the first person to recognize the manias as a single phenomenon patterned after shamanistic practises, and to predict it progression from drumming and dancing to visions, shape-shifting, soul-flying and death. The story follows the progress of the disease through the view points of these characters, as well as: Simon Lingham, ex-husband of Tokomo, and World Health Organization investigator; Sister Vena, a nun in Calcuta who observes extreme stigmata in patients in last stages of the pandemic; Leira Losaba, a police lieutenant in Johannesburg who investigates a series of murders involving shape-shifted people; Cameron Spires, one of the survivors of the car accident at the beginning of the novel, an eccentric billionaire with interests in human longevity and long-term survival. As the pandemic progresses Cameron eventually organizes a conference to pool research, which brings all of the major character together. The pandemic appears to be related to the Tokomo's prion's, but the extreme effects can not be explained. As madness and death consume the world, Cameron uses his enormous wealth to create a bolt-hole in the Bahamas and to bring all of the major characters to safety. However, before Cameron departs to his island he holds a final tele-conference with some powerful allies, who have died but been recorded in a powerful computer system. This system is the "Gödelian Non-standard Optimized Market Evolution Systems" or GNOMES. This organization Tetragammaton and these characters (Dr. Vang, Michael Dalke, and Martin Kong) have appeared in previous Hendrix novels involved in the long-term survival of humanity through the creation of mind-machine interfaces. This conversation reveals that Tetragammaton, was involved in the creation of the pandemic but that it has gone out of control. Dalke and Kong claim that the GNOMES were ultimately responsible for creating the pandemic as a complete defence against extinction and by orders of mysterious entity the Allesseh. The Allesseh is a massive consciousness at the centre of the galaxy, described in Hendrix's novel Better Angels. The pandemic has resulted in the near-extinction of humanity. Some of the survivors where fully resistant to the pandemic and have remained human, called Oldfolk or Urfolk, and some were partially resistant have become Werfolk having some of the madness, drumming, dancing, and shape shifting of the pandemic. Over the past 30 years Cameron Spires has perfected a longevity treatment, created a dolphin-human hybrid species called the Merfolk, kept the islands strictly isolated from the Werfolk, prevented further research into the pandemic and maintained himself as the unquestioned 'founder-ruler'. This has driven all of the major characters, except Simon Lingham, back to the mainland in search of answers. Simon Lingham, leaves for the same reasons soon after the story begins. Cameron's granddaughter Trillia Spires and her lover Ricardo, soon follow him when Ricardo is found to have signs of the plague, and exiled per Cameron's rules. They hope to catch up with Simon in New York City and to discover a cure for Ricardo. Their journey takes them up the American east coast, encountering all of the major characters of the novel who are each dealing with the post-pandemic world in their owns ways. Each character, except Leire who has become a Werfolk-hating warlord, either joins the group or offers some aid. By the time the group reaches New York, Ricardo's symptoms are entering the final stages of the pandemic. Ricardo's plague induced vision lead them to where Simon has connected himself to GNOMES. Simon is learning from and changing the GNOMES. He reveals Cameron's involvement in not preventing the plague, and Cameron arrives with a security team, claiming that he engineered the plague so that he could re-make humanity in his image. However, Ricardo dies and transcends during this conflict preparing the way for John to return to his universe and transmitting full knowledge of the works of the pandemic to every human on the planet. This final knowledge will allow the three types of human, Urfolk, Werfolk, and Merfolk, to choose their own destinies and control the effects of the pandemic. The group exiles Cameron and returns to the Bahamas to begin the process of re-building their world.
9456746	/m/0289m1z	Op-Center	Steve Pieczenik		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Renegade South Korean soldiers set off a bomb in Seoul during a festival and make it look like it was done by North Korea. Op-Center must prove that North Korea had nothing to do with it before the situation gets hostile. To make matters worse, a rogue general plans to launch some nuclear missiles at Tokyo, Japan intending to start a war against North Korea.
9461165	/m/0289sb4	Duty and Desire	Pamela Aidan	2004	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In relation to Pride and Prejudice, on which the novel is based, Duty and Desire takes place between Darcy's initial leaving of Hertfordshire and his reappearance in Prides narrative at Rosings Park. Following on from the events of An Assembly Such as This, the novel opens with Fitzwilliam Darcy preparing for the Christmas season with his extended family. Several events have conspired to trouble him, however; as well as his ongoing self-examination of his romantic feelings towards Elizabeth Bennet (who does not appear in the novel, but remains a significant background presence throughout), his sister Georgiana is swiftly recovering from her ill-treatment at the hands of George Wickham by embracing an interest in religion, something encouraged by her new governess Mrs. Annesley but which bemuses and troubles Darcy. Furthermore, Darcy's well-meaning attempts to dissuade his friend Charles Bingley from what Darcy sees as his ill-fated and unrequited romance with Elizabeth's sister Jane are forcing Darcy to resort to underhanded and deceitful tactics that Darcy considers unworthy of himself. Darcy finally decides that he needs a wife, and resolves to find a woman like Elizabeth Bennet from within his own social sphere, thus banishing any lingering feelings he has for her. To that end, he accepts the invitation of Lord Sayre, an old university friend for a week's stay at Sayre's family estate, Norwycke Castle, hoping to find a suitable wife amongst the party gathered there. Accompanied by his loyal valet Fletcher, he soon discovers that the members of the party he is joining are scheming, unscrupulous and not entirely what they seem, and that Sayre himself is a gambling addict who has almost gambled away his entire family estate. Despite this, he finds himself almost drawn with unusual passion to Sayre's disliked half-sister, Lady Sylvanie, who appears to share many of Elizabeth Bennet's charms and characteristics. During Darcy's stay at Norwycke, however, numerous unusual and increasingly sinister events begin to occur; many of Darcy's possessions are stolen or interfered with within his room, the ritualistically slain body of a baby pig is found at a nearby collection of stones imbued with great supernatural and superstitious importance by the locals, and a local child is kidnapped. Darcy and Fletcher, investigating the unusual circumstances, discover that Sayre (who is almost bankrupt) is desperate to have Lady Sylvanie married to Darcy to inherit the estate of his hated and now-deceased stepmother, and Sylvanie herself - who believes herself able to use charms and spells to direct men to follow her will - is herself eager to gain revenge on Sayre, who ruined her and her mother. Darcy manages to untangle himself from their various schemes and uncovers the culprit behind the recent goings-on - Sayre's stepmother, the former Lady Sayre, who was alive all the time and has been manipulating her daughter in an attempt to destroy her stepson. Revealed, Lady Sayre kills herself, but not before forcing Darcy to face his own darker nature and his deeply-hidden desires for revenge on George Wickham. Even more unsettled than when he started, Darcy swears off trying to find a wife within his own sphere, leaving him once more alone with his complicated feelings for Elizabeth.
9462580	/m/0289vnv	Sharpe's Honour	Bernard Cornwell	1985-01	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This book tells the story of Major Richard Sharpe, during the Vitoria Campaign of the Peninsula War in 1813. Framed for murder, Sharpe must find a way to clear his name to preserve the fragile alliance between Britain and Spain.
9468199	/m/028b2z4	Floodland	Marcus Sedgwick	2000-03-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Floodland is set in the near future where most of the United Kingdom is covered by water. The storyline concerns a girl named Zoe who is left behind after her family flees the floods. She is left alone in the ruins of Norwich but escapes to Eels Island (Ely Cathedral) where she discovers a sinister society run by a strange boy.
9469728	/m/028b4ry	The Wolf Leader	Alexandre Dumas	1904	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Le Meneur de Loups is set around 1780 in Dumas' native town of Villers-Cotterêts, and is supposedly based on a local folk-tale Dumas heard as a child. The story concerns Thibault, a shoe-maker, who is beaten by the gamekeeper of the Lord of Vez for interfering with the lord's hunting. Afterwards he encounters a huge wolf, walking on its hind legs like a man, who offers him vengeance; Thibault may wish harm on any person in return for one of his own hairs for each wish. To seal the agreement, the two exchange rings. As a result of this bargain he also finds himself able to command the local wolves, and hence gradually gains the reputation of being a werewolf. Thibault's first two wishes kill the gamekeeper and injure the Lord of Vez. The wishes turn two hairs on his head long and red, as do his subsequent ones, which, though equally successful, also backfire against him in unexpected ways, leaving him scorned and hated by others in his community. Finally one of his wishes causes him to trade bodies with Lord Raoul of Vauparfond, who is having an affair with the wife of the Count de Mont-Gobert. Caught with the lady by the count as the result of an earlier wish against Lord Raoul, he is mortally wounded. He manages to keep himself alive until transferred back into his own body, only to find himself trapped in his own home, to which the townsfolk have set fire. Escaping, Thibault takes to the forest, where he subsists on animals caught for him by his wolves and hunts and is hunted by the Lord of Vez. He has but one human hair left on his head. The conclusion of the book, however, brings him an unusual redemption.
9471253	/m/028b6b4	Enemy Coast Ahead	Guy Gibson	1946	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Gibson joined the RAF prior to the war, and he recounts the early stages of combat and the daily struggle with old and decrepit aeroplanes on long and arduous missions into enemy airspace. He also clearly recounts the issues facing the early pilots taking the war to Germany from within what seemed an almost amateurish Bomber Command. He quickly learned how to stay alive and rapidly grew in experience and maturity, rising from Pilot Officer to a highly decorated Wing Commander.
9471256	/m/057xlf_	The Story about Ping				 Ping is the name of a domesticated duck who lives on a riverboat on the Yangtze River in China. He gets sent out every morning to forage along the river with his relatives, and is expected back every evening. The last duck on the boat would get a swat with a stick and one day he is the last duck. He is afraid to return and spends the night on shore. When he awakens his boat is gone and he is soon caught by a boy on another boat where he worries about becoming their dinner. After some time the boy lets Ping go just as all his duck relatives are getting back on Ping's boat nearby. Ping rejoins his family and happily receives the last duck swat.
9471915	/m/028b715	Hothouse	Brian Aldiss	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lily-yo, leader of a small, matriarchal human tribe, decides that the group should break up, as the adults are too old, and should go to the Tips, the dangerous top levels of the forest in order to go "Up". Burnurns&nbsp;&ndash; transparent seed-casings&nbsp;&ndash; are collected, and the adults seal themselves inside after which the young attach them to the webs of the giant spider-like plants, Traversers, which travel into space to receive more intense sunlight and escape the parasitic tigerflies; as planned a traverser brushes against the sticky pods and carries them to the moon (which now has a breatheable atmosphere). The unconscious adults reach their destination, where they discover they have transformed into Flymen, mutated by space radiation into flight-capable forms. They meet others and they are impounded into an expedition back to Earth to kidnap human children to increase the Flymen's population. They hide inside a Traverser to make the return journey to Earth. Back in the jungle, Toy is the new leader. While attempting to kill a large, seed-shaped suckerbird, the tribe accidentally become passengers on the suckerbird. After a long flight, they crash on the coast at the base of a "termight" castle on a peninsula. Walking back to the forest through "Nomansland"&nbsp;&ndash; the lethal interface-area between land and sea, Gren is waylaid by a "morel", a sentient fungus which attaches itself to his head and talks to, and controls him. After a power-struggle, Gren leaves the tribe with his girlfriend Poyly, also taken-over by the morel. On their travels, they meet Yattmur of the "Herder" tribe, who live in caves in a congealed lava bed. At the "Skirt of the black mouth", an unknown creature with Siren-like capabilities almost leads them to their deaths. Escaping, they meet the Tummy-belly men, some of whom they free by cutting the umbilical cords with which they are attached to a parasitic tree. All board a boat belonging to the tummy-bellies, but during the escape Poyly is killed. The boat, uncontrolled, floats downriver into the sea. After several adventures, the crew find themselves on an iceberg, the boat destroyed, after which the berg abuts a small islet. They leave by hitching a ride on a plant which propagates by using self-propelled, stilt-walking seeds, which instinctively walk to the mainland. They find themselves at the terminator, the boundary between the day and night sides. To their horror, they realize they are being carried over it. After a long journey, the seed stops near the top of a mountain, which is tall enough to still be lit by the low sun. There, Yattmur gives birth to Gren's child and they meet the Sharp-furs. They meet the Sodal Ye and his three helpers. Gren, increasingly taken over by the morel, wants the baby to host it as well. In return for food, the Sodal Ye thinks of a way to remove the morel from Gren's head by coaxing it into a bowl. They decide to accompany the Sodal Ye back to Bountiful Basin, an arm of the sea close to the terminator. On the way they witness a solar flare, the creature explains to them that the world is about to end as the Sun brightens, and the strange, green columns they begin to see beaming into space is life itself, transferring to new stars. Followed by Sharp-furs and others, they notice a traverser has landed and blocked the passage to their destination. This is the traverser that was carrying Lily-yo and companions. The morel manages to take over the Sodal Ye and when they reach the giant spider, Gren meets Lily-yo again. They board a traverser which is going to lift off to the stars (after being taken over by the morel which has now divided)&nbsp;&ndash; all except Gren, Yattmur, and the baby, who decide to return to the familiar forest.
9472197	/m/028b7f7	Divided Kingdom	Rupert Thomson	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 The story begins with Parry's younger self being whisked away from his bed and his family in the dead of night and loaded into a van occupied with others in the same situation. From there the story continues in Thorpe Hall, a place best described as a hostel for those yet to be arranged into their defining humor. Whilst staying at the Hall, the protagonist and his young companions begin to learn of their fate and of the 'Rearrangement'. Following a short time in the hall, the four humors are explained to the children, Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric and Melancholic. Shortly after, the protagonist is taken to see Mr. Reek, one of the teachers at Thorpe Hall. He is told that he will be moved to a new location where he will be integrated into a new family suited to a person of his type. He is also given his name, Thomas Parry, which is used for the majority of the remaining story. After a time, Thomas is transported via train to his new home where he meets his new father and sister, Victor and Marie Parry. During the remainder of his childhood, Thomas settles into his new environment easily, adopting the Sanguine attitude and persona. With his childhood drawing to a close, Thomas goes to attend University witnessing the slow deterioration of his adopted family as life after the rearrangement which took their mother/wife away from them wears them down. Towards the end of his time at university, Thomas is approached by Diana Bilal, an employee of the ministry of health and social security. She informs Thomas that he had been watched for some time and were interested in employing him as a trainee assessment officer. Thomas is initially reluctant to take her up on the offer, knowing that his adopted family would be disappointed as it was the ministry who they blamed for the loss of their mother and wife. Thomas is won over and accepts the job when Diana tells him that his family need not know of his true occupation and that they would be granted immunity from ever being rearranged again. Shortly after joining the Ministry, Thomas gets his first experience of participating in a rearrangement when a young girl is to be moved from sanguine territory (the red quarter) to choleric (the yellow quarter). During his time as an observer to the rearrangement, he gets his first view of a border gate, a complex of high concrete walls, barbed wire and minefields patrolled by border guards. After gaining his first view of the 'nuts and bolts' of the job, Thomas is visited by the head of the ministry of relocation Mr. Vishram. Upon being asked if he was available for lunch, Thomas agrees to meet the man the following day when Vishram would reveal Thomas's next job. The next day, Vishram takes Thomas to a small restaurant in the heart of the red light district to discuss an upcoming conference that Thomas would be attending. It is revealed that the conference was to be held in the Blue quarter. Realizing the chance to discover something entirely new and exciting, Thomas duly accepts. A few days later, Thomas finds himself stepping off of a train and into the Blue quarter, typified by its many canal systems that weave their way through the metropolis. As he walks through the city to get to his hotel, he is stopped by a man who forces a small leaflet into his hand saying you may find this interesting. Thomas then goes to the Sheraton and later meets Walter Ming, a mysterious character who asks Thomas if he's going to the "Bathysphere", which appears at first to be a club. Thomas then goes to the Bathysphere and a very confusing scene occurs. Thomas opens a pale gold door and suddenly he has a flashback of his entire life. After these flashbacks, his view of the Divided Kingdom has changed. The guests attending the conference at the Blue Quarter are moved into the Yellow Quarter for reasons that are not quite clear, possibly because it is Rearrangement Day. During the night a bomb goes off in the hotel and Thomas escapes determined to go back to the Bathysphere.
9472556	/m/028b7xc	Assignment: Israel				 Gunther Gerhardt, called the German T. E. Lawrence, and the third most sought-after Nazi war criminal after Adolf Eichmann and Martin Bormann, plots with the Red Chinese to destabilize the Middle East by raids into Israel disguised as Syrians, and vice versa. His plot is revealed by a defector who, although killed, leaves behind a bullet with a micro-engraved message. AXE teams up with Shin-Bet to track down Gerhardt. A beautiful Israeli agent is paired with Nick Carter, and the two negotiate with a Bedouin tribe to scout around. Gerhardt finds out about this from an informer, and bombs the encampment. Carter rallies the survivors, and together they ambush the party sent to make sure everyone was dead. With the radio they recover, they call in jets and paratroopers to destroy the raiders. Gerhardt is killed, but not before he kills the Israeli agent.
9472694	/m/028b82k	The Chinese Paymaster				 The Chinese have ruined several American intelligence operations in recent months. David Hawk, head of AXE, believes that the Chinese have recruited a new paymaster, able to reach top people in various governments and get them to pass along sensitive information. The only lead is that the paymaster seems to be moving around on charter flights. Nick Carter is sent on the next flight and, although his cover is almost immediately broken, he escapes several attempts on his life before uncovering the airline public relations man as the head spy.
9472828	/m/028b881	Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind	Suzanne Fisher Staples	1989	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Shabanu lives in Cholistan Desert in the Pakistan where they play games near the border of India. She is the second daughter of a peaceful, loving family of camel breeders. Shabanu is on the brink of womanhood; her older sister Phulan is already marriageable, and soon will be married to Hamir, a cousin of their family's. Shabanu is also betrothed to Hamir's brother, Murad. At twelve years old, Shabanu is not interested in marriage; she enjoys tending to the animals and especially teaching tricks to her beloved camels, Mithoo and Xhush Dil and Gulaband, a camel her dadi had recently sold against her will. Before Phulan's wedding, however, disaster strikes: Shabanu and Phulan accidentally stumble upon several strange men in the desert, among them an old, wicked landowner named Nazir, who was known to have murdered Shabanu's cousin, Lal Khan, in the past. Nazir notices Phulan while hunting quail with his brother and nephew. He decides that Phulan will be the prize for whomever bags the most quail. When Shabanu tells her father, he is enraged and goes to tell Nazir that Phulan is betrothed and that Nazir does not have legal ownership of her. Out of anger, Nazir later murders Hamir, whom Phulan was to marry. Phulan has no choice but to marry Hamir's brother, Murad, instead. When Shabanu learns that she must marry Nazir's brother, Rahim-sahib, an old man who already has three wives, to save her family and her sister's new marriage, she must make a choice between running away and obeying the wishes of her family.
9473285	/m/028b8t7	Dubin's Lives				 William Dubin of Vermont is living the comfortable life of an accomplished writer. Though his marriage to Kitty is slightly timeworn, it is stable and loving. While researching the biography of D. H. Lawrence, he meets twenty-three year old Fanny and begins an affair with her. Predictably, the consequences of this act rock Dubin's life and invite the reader to draw parallels with similar events in the lives of the writers Dubin is researching.
9478237	/m/028bgdw	The Constant Maid	John O'Keefe			 Hartwell is a gentleman who is suffering financial reverses; he is forced to dismiss his servants and shut up his house. Hartwell loves Frances; Frances's mother Bellamy, in order to test her prospective son-in-law's fidelity, pretends to be in love with him herself. Hartwell's friend Playfair advises him to accept the mother's advances &mdash; but their conversation is overheard by Frances's Nurse. The Nurse, who wishes Frances to marry a clownish suitor called Startup, arranges for Frances and Startup to eavesdrop on the conversation between Hartwell and Bellamy. The Nurse conspires with Close, a dismissed servant of Hartwell's who now works for Startup, to smuggle Startup into Frances's bedroom that night; but Close, loyal to his former employer, divulges the plan to Hartwell. Hartwell disguises himself as Startup, and the Nurse unknowingly leads him to Frances's room. Frances recognizes him, but pretends to believe that Hartwell is Startup, and pretends likewise to be receptive to his suit. Bellamy interrupts their conversation and Hartwell leaves, with the mistaken impression that Frances loves Startup. Bellamy, testing her daughter's affections, tells Frances to surrender Hartwell to her. While Hartwell has taken Startup's place, Close has scared away the real Startup by claiming that Hartwell is pursuing him. Close and Startup and Hartwell are all apprehended by the constables of the watch; Hartwell is suspected of doing away with Startup, until Startup appears. The muddle is eventually straightened out, as is Hartwell's understanding with Frances. In the subplot, Playfair is in love with the niece of Hornet the usurer. She feigns madness and is treated by a doctor who is Playfair's cousin. Hornet is tricked into going to Court, where he is granted an audience with a pretended King; meanwhile the niece is spirited away from her uncle's custody and is married to Playfair. Like many plays of its era (including several of Shirley's), the final act of The Constant Maid features a masque &mdash; in this case a representation of the Judgement of Paris. (Shirley would write an entire independent masque on the same subject, in his The Triumph of Beauty.)
9478377	/m/028bgmr	The Counterlife	Philip Roth	1986	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with what appears to be an entry in Zuckerman's journal about his younger brother Henry. Henry is a forty year old dentist with a wife and kids. He has opted for the safety of a traditional profession and family life in contrast to Nathan, the famous writer with whom Henry clashes throughout the Zuckerman novels. Henry has been diagnosed with advanced obstructive arterial disease. His medical prognosis leaves him with two options. He can either go on medication that will halt the progress of the blockage and save his life but leave him sexually impotent or he can opt for radical bypass surgery in a bid to preserve sexual function. His doctors urge Henry to accept the medication and to try to face life without sex. His decision is complicated by the prospect of ending an extramarital affair with an assistant named Wendy. Though the Zuckerman brothers have been feuding in the years since their parents died, Henry seeks reconciliation with Nathan and asks his advice.
9478524	/m/02y_995	A Cold Case	Philip Gourevitch	2002-07-10	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Cold Case follows real-life chief investigator Andy Rosenzweig from the Manhattan District Attorney's office as he investigates the 1970 murders of Richie Glennon and Pete McGinn, a case which was seemingly closed too soon.
9479911	/m/028bjb9	Murder in the Cassava Patch	Bai T. Moore	1968	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Gortokai's real father was a slave who had originally been a contract laborer on Fernando Po. The laborer returns to Liberia disillusioned with his work, and finds himself bartered as a slave between various owners. Until the very end of the book, it remains unclear quite how or why this slave's child (Gortokai) came to be fostered by a family from Bendabli. Gortokai is accordingly raised by old man Joma and his wife Sombo Karn, alongside their daughters Tene and Kema. According to Gortokai, he is unaware that he is not his parents' "real" son until Tene herself tells him during a game of "Mama and Papa": "...suddenly Tene came up to me and asked me to hold her tight in the waist. I shivered and recoiled. Gortokai, can't you see that we are not brother and sister? It's a secret Mama told me." Gortokai describes himself as his foster family's main source of support: farming rice, making oil from palm nuts, setting traps for crayfish, hunting meat, and so on. He also takes short-term bush-cutting contracts to earn money for the family's tobacco, salt and annual hut tax. When he decides to marry, Gortokai sets his hopes on Tene, and asks her older sister Kema to intercede on his behalf. She agrees, but this also introduces the tricky question of the dowry - which in Liberia's case, the prospective groom is required to pay the bride's parents. In addition to the question of potential incest, the acceptable size of the dowry is the subject of further speculation for the village gossips. On being assured (by Kema) that Tene really loves him, Gortokai agrees to pay "the full forty dollars that is required for all virgins". To earn the money, Gortokai takes a job clearing a rubber farm faraway in Suehn. Having spent most of his first pay check on presents which he sends to the two girls, he hears nothing from them by way of thanks. Despondent, he injures his toe with his machete, and uses his convalescence as an opportunity to invite Tene to visit him. Tene and her sister belatedly arrive in Suehn, blaming others for not delivering messages to them, and bringing Gortokai gifts of country bread and fried chicken. Gortokai's employer, whose wife calls Gortokai their "stranger son" (a Liberian term referring to the informal "adoption" of a non-blood relative) throws a party for the two girls at which they drink fifteen dollars' worth of rum. The following morning, Tene both invites, and coyly rejects, Gortokai's advances. Nevertheless, Gortokai presents her with a pair of gold earrings, and she repays him with a "rare" compliment: "Kai, I love you. You are so thoughtful." Before the two girls leave Suehn, Gortokai gives Kema $23 towards the dowry - a dowry which has now risen to forty dollars, plus three dollars for various ritual niceties, plus two sets of clothes for Tene's parents. Joining Suehn's palm wine circle, Gortokai is dismayed to hear their gossip about Kema. He is told that she is a well-known drunkard with creative ways at inventing strong cocktails. He suspects, but is afraid to ask, that there must also be some unsavoury information about Tene also. His fellow palm wine drinkers convince him that he must buy some powerful love medicine in order to ensure that Tene stays faithful to him. Gortokai accordingly visits a country doctor by the name of Bleng. Bleng uses magic to tell Gortokai that Tene's affections are divided, and explains that the remedy will be strong love medicine. Naturally, this will cost a lot of money, but Bleng has further peculiar requirements: "For instance, I need right away, a braid of Tene's hair, a piece of her garment, three of her toe nails, a piece of otter skin, particularly from the breast section, some gun powder and other odds and ends. But some of these I believe I can get locally. The immediate needs are the hair, nails and garment." Although he has some misgivings (having heard rumors that Bleng too is a drunkard, whose powers are on the wane), Gortokai is keen to produce both the money and the necessary snippets of Tene's hair, nails, and clothes. At the same time, he receives a message that his stepfather is seriously ill, and decides to return to Bendabli. Arriving early at the village, he decides to conceal himself in order to spy on Tene and perhaps steal a lock of her hair. However, he also overhears a conversation between Tene and her family in which it is clear that Tene believes that "a girl should be given a chance to look around before she decides on one man". She also describes her recent visit to Bomi Hills, where it is clear that she has had several amorous adventures, and is no longer "the same beautiful little girl" she used to be. That night, Gortokai steals into Tene and Kema's shared room, with a view to taking some of Tene's hair, nails, and clothes. With great difficulty, he achieves this (pretending to be a rat as he cuts her toenails in the dark) but not before the girls have raised the alarm at the intruder in their room. Miraculously, he manages to escape without being identified. Forgetting about his dying stepfather, he returns swiftly to Suehn, where he gives the ingredients to Bleng, along with ten silver dollars for the powerful love medicine. Bleng tells him to put this powder in Tene's food - and so he returns to Bendabli to carry this out. He is received without enthusiasm, and is told that the girls were recently attacked by a "heart man" who crept into their room one night. He carries out Bleng's medicinal instructions, but Tene nevertheless elopes with a lover to Bomi Hills, two months pregnant. Although he feels like setting the village on fire, he decides instead to travel first to Monrovia, then to Tapeta, and on to Sanniquellie. On his travels, he learns more about the complicated relationships that people have in modern-day Liberia. After several months, he returns to Monrovia, and is surprised to hear that Tene herself is now in the capital, where she is selling gari or farina on the street. It's a year since Gortokai has seen her, and she looks different - both darker and poorer. She has a young baby now, but has left her husband and has returned to her parents' house in Bendabli. For the first time, they sleep together, and Tene no longer resists his advances. They return to Bendabli to find their family house in a state of disrepair and Joma and his wife too old and sick to do much about it. Gortokai sets to putting things right. He is promised Tene as his wife, and lives with her and accepts her child as his own. He repairs the house and plants a large vegetable garden. However, after four months in Bendabli, Gortokai again receives bad news over a glass of cane juice. This time he hears that Kema is planning to move Tene and her parents to Firestone. The old couple deny this. Tene is receiving expensive gifts from a man in Firestone whom Kema wants her to marry, but she denies receiving these gifts, claiming she made the money by selling gari. The tragedy comes to a head when Kema returns from Firestone, demanding strong liquor and smelling of expensive perfume. Gortokai eavesdrops on her conversation with Tene, in which it is clear that they have little respect for "this deformed-nose Kai of ours", whose father was once sold as a slave into Lofa County. Kema invites Tene to come and join her with the moneyed workers of the Firestone plantation. The following morning, Gortokai takes a knife and cuts up a parcel of expensive clothes which he has intercepted, and scatters the pieces around town. He also asks Tene to prepare for him some domboy (mashed cassava), telling her ominously: "I like to plan everything I do ahead of time." When Tene goes to the cassava patch to prepare the domboy, she finds Gortokai waiting for her.
9480226	/m/028bjv4	Tomorrow Men				 The novel deals with the confrontation between Nick Fury and the Ultimates, and the self-styled "Tomorrow Men", who claim to have travelled two centuries back in time to seek the help of the Ultimates in combating Tiber, a criminal organization which, in their future, has ruined the entire planet; the Tomorrow Men prove their claim using various future knowledge, such as revealing the presence of a small device in Steve Rogers' brain that was planted in case the Super-Soldier Serum drove him insane. However, during a mission Iron Man is accidentally transferred into the Tomorrow Men's future, where he learns that not only is it merely an alternate future—it actually diverged from their own reality at some point prior to the Tomorrow Men's arrival in the Ultimates' world—but that the Tomorrow Men are actually working for Tiber, seeking to expand into other worlds. Taking advantage of the differences between the technology developed by him and that developed by his counterpart at this point in his life, Iron Man is able to take the Tibers by surprise when they attempt to boil him out of his armour- diverting the heat into his armour's power cells- and return home, warning the team about the Tomorrow Men and forcing them to retreat before Thor destroys the portal they used to gain access.
9483748	/m/028bq33	What Men Live By	Leo Tolstoy	1882		 A kind and humble shoemaker called Simon goes out one day to purchase sheep-skins in order to sew a winter coat for his wife and himself to share. Usually the little money, which Simon earned would be spent to feed his wife and children. Simon decided that in order to afford the skins he must go on a collection to receive the five roubles and twenty kopeks owed to him by his customers. As he heads out to collect the money he also borrows a three-rouble note from his wife's money box. While going on his collection he only manages to receive twenty kopeks rather than the full amount. Feeling disheartened by this Simon rashly spends the twenty kopeks on vodka and starts to head back home. On his way home he rants to himself about the little he can do with twenty kopeks besides spend it on alcohol and that the winter cold is bearable without a sheep-skin coat. While approaching a holy shrine, Simon stops and notices something pale looking leaning against it. He peers harder and distinguishes that it is a naked man who appears poor of health. At first he is suspicious and fears that the man has no good intentions if he is left in such a state. He proceeds to pass the man until he feels that for a second the man lifted his head and looked toward him. Simon debates what to do in his mind and feels shameful for his disregard and heads back to help the man. Simon gives the articles of clothing he can and wraps around the stranger. He aids him as they both walk toward Simon's home. Though they walk together side by side, the stranger barely speaks and when Simon asks how he was left in that situation the only answers the man would give was: "I may not tell" and "God has punished me." Meanwhile Simon's wife Matrena debates whether or not to bake more bread for the night's meal so that there is enough for the following morning's breakfast. She decides that the loaf of bread that they have left would be ample enough to last till the following morning. As she sees Simon approaching the door she is angered to see him with a strange man who is wrapped in Simon's clothing. Matrena immediately expresses her displeasure with Simon, accusing him and his strange companion to be drunkards and harassing Simon for not returning with the sheep-skin needed to make a new coat. Once the tension settles down she bids that the stranger sits down and have dinner with them. After seeing the stranger take bites at the bread she placed for him on his plate, she began to felt pity and showed so in her face. When the stranger noticed this his grim expression lit up immediately and he smiled for one brief moment. After hearing the story from the stranger how Simon had kindly robed the stranger after seeing him in his naked state Matrena grabbed more of their old clothing and gave it to Simon. The following morning Simon addresses the stranger and asks his name. The stranger answers that his name is simply Michael. Simon explains to Michael that he can stay in his household as long as he can earn his keep by acting as an assistant for Simon in his shoemaking business. Michael agrees to these terms and for a long period of time remains a very faithful assistant. One day a customer who was a nobleman came in their shop. The nobleman outlined strict conditions for the construction of a pair of thick leather boots will not lose its shapes or become loose at the seams for a year or else he would have Simon arrested. When Simon gave the leather that the nobleman had given them to use to Michael, Michael appears to stare beyond the nobleman's shoulder and smiled for the second time since he had been there. As Michael sews the leather to construct the boots he does so in a fashion that makes them soft leather slippers rather than thick leather boats. Simon is too late when he notices this and cries to Michael asking why he would do such a foolish thing. Before Michael can answer, a messenger arrives at their door and gives the news that the nobleman has died and if they could change the order to slippers for him to wear on his death bed. Simon is astounded by this and watches as Michael gives the messenger the pre-made leather slippers. Time continues to go by and Simon is very grateful for Michael's faithful assistance. One day another customer comes in who happens to be a woman with two girls, one of which was crippled. The woman requested if she could order a pair of leather shoes for each of the girls but to only three shoes since they both share the same shoe size with the exception of the crippled girl's lame foot. As they are preparing to fill the order Michael stares intently at the girls and Simon wonders why he is doing so. As Simon takes the girls' measurements he asks the woman if they are her own children and how was the girl with the lame foot crippled. The woman explains that she has no relation to them and that the mother on her deathbed accidentally crushed the leg of the crippled girl. She expresses that she could not find it in her heart to leave them in a safehome or orphanage and took them as her own. When Michael heard this he smiled for the third time since he had been there. After the woman and two children finally left Michael approached Simon and bid him farewell explaining that God has finally forgiven him. As Michael did this he began to be surrounded by a heavenly glow and Simon acknowledged that he was not an ordinary man. Simon asked him why light emits from him and why did he smile only those three times. Michael explained that he is an angel who was given the task to take away a woman's life so she can pass on to the next life. He allowed the woman to live because she begged that she must take care of her children for no one other than their mother could care for them so. When he did this God punished him for his disobedience and commanded that he must find the answers to the following questions in order to be an angel again: What dwells in man?, What is not given to man?, and What do men live by? When Michael returned to earth to take the woman's soul, he realized that the woman's lifeless body rolled over and crushed the leg of the now crippled girl. Michael's wings had left him and he no longer was an angel but naked and mortal. When Simon rescued him he knew that he must begin finding the answers to those questions. He learned the answer to the first question when Matrena felt pity for him, thus smiling and realizing what dwells in man is "love". The answer to the second question came to him when he realized that the angel of death was looming over the nobleman, thus smiling and realizing what is not given to man is "to know his own needs." Lastly, he comprehended the answer to the final question when he saw the woman with the two girls from the mother he previously did not take the soul of, thus smiling and realizing that regardless of being strange or relation to each other what men live by is that "love exists in man." When Michael finished he sang praise to God as wings appeared on his back and he raised to return to heaven.
9486244	/m/028btyk	Dragon Flame				 The novel is set in December 1965. Carter is vacationing in a borrowed yacht in Hong Kong disguised as playboy, Clark Harrington. He is contacted by friend and CIA agent, Bob Ludwell. Ludwell confides in Carter that he is leaving Hong Kong that night to cross into China on an undisclosed mission and that he does not expect to survive. Ludwell has clearly lost his nerve and hands Carter an envelope with instructions to give it to his wife and children if he does not return in a week. Carter is followed indicating that he has been connected with Ludwell. Carter murders the tail and returns to his yacht anchored in Victoria Harbour where he finds that his cabin boy has been murdered in retaliation. A note pinned to the boy’s body warns Carter to leave Hong Kong immediately or face the consequences from the Society of the Red Tiger. A Marine Police cutter arrives and Carter is informed that Ludwell was murdered before he had the chance to leave Hong Kong. It is apparent to the police that Ludwell was killed and dismembered on the orders of James (Jim) Pok – leader of the Red Tiger tong. Carter arranges to undertake Ludwell's mission. Carter's yacht is being watched by the Tiger tong. Carter swims ashore helped by Fan Su – Ludwell's contact in China who has come to Hong Kong to discover what has happened to him. Fan Su is an anti-communist guerilla fighter based in Hong Kong. She was working with Ludwell to foment an anti-communist revolution in China. She has made contact with a Chinese army general wishing to defect. Ludwell's secret mission was to go to China and escort the general into Hong Kong and thence to the US. The general has been severely wounded and is holed up in a Buddhist temple 5-10 miles from the Hong Kong-China border. Fan Su helps Carter enter China in a coffin disguised as the repatriated corpse of her dead relative. Carter and Fan Su reach the temple as a company of Chinese soldiers begin to search the nearby countryside for the missing general. Under the cover of night, Carter, Fan Su and the general elude the search parties, steal a tank and crash through the border into Hong Kong. The general survives and is sent to the US to recover. Jim Pok meets Carter and tries to bargain with him to hand over Fan Su to save face with his Chinese paymasters. Carter refuses and threatens to spread rumours among the underworld crime network that Pok has double-crossed the Chinese government – damaging Pok's reputation and putting his life at risk. Carter throws Pok over the side of his yacht and returns to the cabin to make love to Fan Su.
9486430	/m/028bv6h	Op Center: Mirror Image	Jeff Rovin		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The Cold War is over. And chaos is setting in. The new president of Russia is trying to create a democratic regime. But there are strong elements within the country that are trying to stop him: the ruthless Russian mafia, the right-wing nationalists, and those nefarious forces that will do whatever it takes to return Russia to the days of the Czar. Op-Center, the newly-founded but highly successful crisis management team, begins a race against the clock and against the hardliners. Their task is made even more difficult by the discovery of a Russian counterpart... but this one's controlled by those same repressive hardliners and represents everything Op-Center stands for. Two rival Op-Centers, virtual mirror images of each other.
9486610	/m/028bvjt	Lost City Radio	Daniel Alarcón	2007-01-30	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After a ten-year insurrection set in a nameless South American country in which the totalitarian government defeated a rebel group, the government has eliminated all indigenous languages and renamed all places as numbers; radio is the only remaining convenience. The protagonist, Norma, is the voice of a popular radio show that attempts to reconnect war refugees with their families. Yet Norma too has lost during the war: her husband disappeared on a trip to a jungle village called 1797. One day a boy arrives from 1797 along with a list of missing for Norma to read over the radio, jarring Norma to recall the details of her life with her husband and his possible fate. Though the novel is set in South America it does not contain a single word of Spanish. It has been remarked for the ability to describe the people's sense of displacement
9490321	/m/028c074	Errors and Expectations				 Errors and Expectations devotes a chapter to eight of the (at the time) most salient considerations in basic writing. Each chapter follows a three-pronged format: first, a range of examples; second, an explanation of causes of the problems; third, suggestions with which to approach the problems. Although more than thirty years have passed since the book’s original publication date, the majority of the information remains pertinent and insightful today. Chapter 1: Introduction. Shaughnessy discusses the background of the open admissions movement, detailing her own experience when she begins to grade the essays produced by her first group of open admissions students and finds herself unprepared to proceed in spite of previous years of experience in teaching composition. She also provides a rationale for her focus on error, explaining the realities of academia, the ways in which errors are viewed, and the relationship between reader and writer. Chapter 2: Handwriting and punctuation. After briefly discussing handwriting, the bulk of the chapter (27 of 29 pages) focuses on the myriad ways in which basic writers use and misuse punctuation. In order to understand the logic behind the errors, Shaughnessy explores the concept of the sentence and the differences between spoken and written English. Commas, periods, and capitalization are the primary elements examined. Chapter 3: Syntax. Four general categories of error are examined (accidental errors, blurred patterns, consolidation errors, and inversions) in the context of the academic tone which college students are expected to adopt and with which basic writers often struggle as they expand their writing ability. Chapter 4: Common errors. Shaughnessy provides examples in the primary problem areas of verbs, nouns, pronouns, and subject-verb agreement before discussing the discouragement felt by teachers and students alike as they approach the recurring common errors present in student writing. She offers simple suggestions for reducing error and provides a thorough diagnostic test. Chapter 5: Spelling. Shaughnessy first makes a distinction between misspelling and incorrectly inflecting various parts of speech before classifying spelling mistakes under four heads: problems with the spelling system, incongruities between spoken and written English, ignorance of spelling rules, and the inexperienced eye. She suggests nine steps in addressing spelling problems and warns against two general assumptions—that adult students can’t be taught how to spell correctly and that spelling can only be taught one way. Chapter 6: Vocabulary. Basic writing students enter college without having developed the vocabulary of academia, a slow-growing task that generally takes years to accomplish. Shaughnessy compares the writing of basic, intermediate, and advanced freshman writers to discuss their vocabulary skills and the depth of ideas investigated through vocabulary. She also indicates basic writing students’ needs as they approach vocabulary-rich courses (such as biology or anatomy). Chapter 7: Beyond the sentence. Although many teachers complain that basic writing students lack ideas, Shaughnessy claims that their ideas are hidden by their novice skills and attempts at elaboration. She suggests three needs specific to BW students: how to arrive at a main idea, how to see and create structure in writing, and how to recognize specific patterns that link together sentences and paragraphs. Chapter 8: Expectations. Shaughnessy discusses the powerful link between expectations and achievement, showing sample essays from the beginning and end of a semester course and citing statistics that demonstrate the effectiveness of basic writing courses.
9498901	/m/028cfss	The Looking-Glass	William March		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the mythical town of Reedyville, Alabama, The Looking-Glass is a mosaic of multiple character stories and histories, interwoven in a non-linear fashion. It has been described as akin to the Spoon River style of storytelling with its multiple character studies.
9500970	/m/02pgwwf	Summer Crossing	Truman Capote	2005	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The story takes place in New York City over the course of the hot summer of 1945. Grady McNeil, a 17-year-old upper class Protestant débutante, steadfastly refuses to accompany her parents on their usual summer ritual of travel, in this case to France. Left in the city for the summer by herself, she persues a covert romance with Clyde Manzer, a Jewish parking lot attendant, whom she had noticed several months earlier. Grady spends time with Clyde and meets some of his friends, and in turn the couple visits the Central Park Zoo together. There, Clyde invites Grady to his younger brother's bar mitzvah. As the summer heats up, so does Grady's and Clyde's romance. The couple is soon wed in Red Bank, New Jersey. Once married, Grady meets Clyde's middle class family in Brooklyn, and only then is the couple truly faced with the stark reality of the cultural divide between her family and his. Grady then realizes at her sister Apple's home that she is six weeks pregnant. Grady has passed over a couple of opportunities to spend time with the handsome young Peter Bell, a man of her social stature who is romantically interested in her. Eventually Grady's sister, Apple, confronts her about her relationship with Clyde. In an abrubt ending, Grady aims her speeding Buick with passengers Peter, Clyde and Gump so it will crash off the Queensboro Bridge, killing everyone.
9507319	/m/02ph2mg	A Good Clean Fight	Derek Robinson	1993	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 A Good Clean Fight is set in North Africa in the spring of 1942. The British 8th Army is fighting against Axis forces advancing across Libya towards Egypt. Captain Lampard of the British SAS has led a motorised patrol across the inland ‘sand seas’ to penetrate deep behind German lines. Lampard is a brave officer but he has a serious flaw, a tendency to be overly reckless and to bite off more than he can chew. Infiltrating a German Luftwaffe base at Barce, Lampard's patrol destroy dozens of aircraft without a single casualty. They also capture a Luftwaffe intelligence officer, Major Paul Schramm. Whilst the patrol are hiding from a German plane, Schramm escapes on foot. Lampard sends Corporal Harris out after him but by sheer fluke, Schramm manages to kill his pursuer. The Major makes it back to Barce and he takes off as a passenger in a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch to search for the SAS patrol. They find Lampard's force but the SAS soldiers damage the plane with gunfire, forcing it to crash-land, leaving Schramm injured. Lampard, disregarding warnings from his men, brings his patrol close to a known enemy base. They are fired upon by Italian troops, killing one of Lampard's men. The patrol enjoys a break in Cairo. Lampard indulges in a favourite pastime of seducing the wives of officers who have recently been killed. Whilst bedding one widow, an Australian officer who is another of her lovers enters the apartment and in the ensuing confrontation, Lampard kills him. Anxious to avoid the repercussions for this act and for the errors he made on the previous patrol, Lampard eagerly volunteers to lead his men out on another sortie into the desert. Meanwhile, RAF Hornet Squadron arrives in Egypt under the command of New Zealander 'Fanny' Barton, a veteran of the Battles of France and Britain. Since 1940, Barton has become ruthlessly ambitious. Amongst his pilots are 'Pip' Patterson, another veteran, but who, unlike Barton, is war-weary. Adjutant Kellaway and Intelligence Officer 'Skull' Skelton are also present. Barton, eager to make a name for himself, proposes to take Hornet Squadron, equipped with US-built P-40B Tomahawks, out to a forward airstrip LG-181 and commence a campaign of low-level strafing attacks on enemy targets designed to provoke and draw the Luftwaffe into battle. The plan is approved. In Cairo, two war correspondents, Lester and Malpacket, ill-equipped to cope with the desert, are desperate for a news story that will give them a big scoop and entertain the readers back home. In Libya, Schramm is treated for his injuries by an Italian doctor Maria Grandinetti, an attractive woman who is a fugitive from Mussolini's regime. Schramm's humour and courage are shown to be a thin disguise for his fear and uncertainty and, despite his awkwardness, he is attracted to the cheerfully cynical doctor. Major Jakowski of the Afrika Korps is determined to tackle the SAS raiders head on by taking a large motorised column out into the desert. Days of fruitless searching prompts him to divide his force into two and the section that he leads, whilst driving at night, speeds over the rim of a crescent-shaped dune and most of it is wiped out in the fiery pile-up. The other section, under Captain Lessing, heads for home. Hornet Squadron begin to carry out low-level strafing attacks on a variety of enemy targets in Libya. Despite some initial success, heavy anti-aircraft fire and wear-and-tear soon take their toll of the squadron’s aircraft and Skelton tries to warn Barton that if he maintains the current pace of operations, Hornet squadron will soon be in no shape to take on the Luftwaffe if and when it rises to the bait. In desperation, Barton orders repeat-attacks on the same targets with the result that the enemy prepare heavier AA defences, culminating in the loss of five pilots in a single day. Adjutant Kellaway suffers a nervous breakdown. The remains of Hornet squadron are ordered to a new airstrip -- LG 250 -- and converted to carry bombs. Lampard’s SAS patrol drives across the inland sand sea in a wide circle behind Axis lines, heading for Benghazi, with Lester and Malplacket. Meanwhile Major Schramm comes up with a plan to match the boldness of the SAS by taking a single, long-range Heinkel He-111 bomber southwards to bomb the isolated but vital British supply bases along the Takoradi Trail. The trail is a long supply route stretching from the coast of Nigeria across central Africa to Cairo. Hornet Squadron, now re-equipped with newer P-40E Kittyhawks, begin to attack German airfields and, as Barton had hoped from the start, the enemy Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters finally rise to do battle. However, Barton has a mere four pilots left with which to achieve his aims. And within days, two of the pilots are dead and a third, Pip Patterson, is wounded. Captain Lessing’s force encounters Lampard’s patrol and is virtually wiped out in a nighttime ambush. Leaving a detachment at a base camp, Lampard takes the rest of his men deeper into enemy territory with plans to attack the Luftwaffe base at Beda Fomm but just as they arrive, Barton and his last remaining pilot, American Hick Hooper, make a dive-bombing attack which puts the defences on full alert. Angered, the SAS patrol heads for an alternative target, the airfield at Barce where Major Schramm is based. Despite the Germans now being aware of their presence, Lampard recklessly presses on to reach the airfield and they wipe out two squadrons of Me-109s. But it is now nearly dawn and the Germans are in hot pursuit. Confrontations with Italian CR-42 fighters and a convoy of German infantry sees the patrol lose nine men and all their vehicles, leaving only Lampard and two others alive. They manage to reach their base camp and rejoin the detachment that had been left there. Flown by an Italian pilot named Di Marco, Schramm’s Heinkel flies the long route to the British transit base at Fort Lamy in Chad. Due to its isolation, the base is undefended and caught by surprise, the lone Heinkel destroying months' worth of precious fuel and supplies along with nearly two dozen Hawker Hurricane fighters. Both Lampard and Barton receive instructions to seek and destroy the Heinkel. Lampard takes his remaining men and vehicles deeper into the desert to locate it. The Heinkel runs out of fuel short of the nearest Axis base at Defa and lands in the desert to await rescue. Lampard finds them first, resulting in a surprise meeting between him and Schramm. The SAS take the Heinkel crew as prisoners and head for home. But the P-40s flown by Barton and Hooper arrive. Mistaking the vehicles to be German, the two pilots strafe them, killing everyone. The two journalists Lester and Malpacket drive a Fiat truck into enemy-held Benghazi, bluffing their way past sentries to wander throughout the place without being challenged. En route home, the truck breaks down and the novel ends with the two men walking east through the desert with the little water they have left.
9508586	/m/02ph3xq	The Fencing Master				 A minister, later revealed to be Joaquin Vallespin Andreu, uncle of Luis de Ayala, meets with an apparently wealthy blackmailer. Shortly, money and an envelope full of "names and addresses" changes hands, and the scene ends with a reference to the historical time frame, 1866 during the reign of Queen Isabel. Luis de Ayala is a friend of Don Jaime Astarloa, a fencing master, who fences with him every morning. One day after fencing, they talk over glasses of sherry from Andalusia. The subsequent discussion reveals that Luis de Ayala has apparently resolved to abstain from politics despite invitations to resume his post. Luis de Ayala's weakness for love is revealed, as is his propensity for gambling. Later, Luis mentions a Holy Grail, which turns out to be the "Treatise on the Art of Fencing," that Don Jaime is working on. The depth of Don Jaime's passion for fencing is revealed by a description of the lengths to which he has gone in search of an "unstoppable thrust" that is impossible to parry, which he is not sure even exists. Don Jaime spends his time teaching fencing to the sons of the nobility. Since firearms are becoming more prevalent over swords, the fencing master has only a few students left. He repeatedly praises the pupils in front of their parents, often making gross exaggerations about their talent in order to retain his clients. He is serious about teaching his students, reprimanding them when they treat fencing as a sport instead of a combat art. Tired, he takes a break and heads to the Café Progreso to meet with his discussion group. The microcosm of Don Jaime's discussion group, which meets at the Café Progreso, serves as a foil to Don Jaime. Cárceles the liberal and Don Lucas the conservative quarrel perpetually over politics, which Don Jaime does not care about. Romero, a music teacher, is similar to Don Jaime in that they are both teachers, and both harbour memories of love. However, Don Jaime teaches only males while Romero teaches at a school for girls. Also, Romero lacks the courage to make his love known. Finally, Carreño shares none of Don Jaime's honor, flaunting wild political theories as fact in order to gain attention. The first chapter ends with a fencing lesson in which Don Jaime tries to convince his students that swordplay is useful. Rejecting the claim that fencing is just a sport, and denouncing firearms as a weapon of "vile highwaymen," he muses about the ethics and mysticism of fencing. When faced with the claim that fencing masters will one day cease to exist, he laments that with them will die "all that is noble and honorable about [battle]." Don Jaime receives a note to meet a certain Adela de Otero in her home. Upon his arrival, he finds that Adela is not what he expected. He is fascinated with her, paying attention to certain characteristics that he finds odd, such as short fingernails and a small scar near her mouth. She asks him to teach her a secret "two hundred Escudo" thrust, and he declines with finality, becoming angry when she offers additional money. Later, Adela visits Don Jaime in his own home. At first, he receives her with stiff politeness but she proves herself to be knowledgeable about fencing. After a verbal test, which she passes, Astarloa agrees to teach her the secret thrust. At night, Don Jaime resumes his quest to find the unstoppable thrust. After working on paper, he eventually goes into the fencing gallery to test his theories. As the clock strikes three, Don Jaime begins to doubt the possibility of an unstoppable thrust, hearkening back to the words of his old master. This daydream takes him back to the beginning of his fencing career, in the army. He recalls killing a fellow soldier over a girl, as well as other duels he fought as he learned fencing. In the end of his reflections, he concludes that Adela has come into his life too late. Adela de Otero arrives at Don Jaime's home for her fencing lesson. She impresses him by requesting that their first bout be fenced without masks. During their bout, he makes a few comments about her excellent technique, though she soon becomes angry when she realizes that he is not fencing to win. After an aggressive barrage of attacks from Adela, Don Jaime disarms her. In their subsequent bouts, Don Jaime is forced to use all his skill to avoid being hit, and is forced to hit his opponent or receive a touch himself. This leads to a rising respect for his opponent, evidenced by his compliments after the bout and the extended exchange they share about his history. De Otero, on the other hand, refuses to divulge anything about her own past. Don Jaime is with his group of friends at Café Progreso. Don Lucas and Cárceles, monarchist and republican respectively, argue heatedly while Carreño and Romero step in occasionally. Don Jaime remains detached from the conversation, until commotion outside forces him to investigate. He returns with the information that several generals have been arrested and taken to a military prison. Later, back in his home, Astarloa teaches Adela de Otero his secret thrust. She learns it quickly, astutely remarking about its simplicity. After asking whether the fencing master had taught it to anyone else, she inquires whether he has ever killed anyone with this thrust. He refuses to answer, silently recalling the image of a man he had killed when he was still a soldier. During his next session with Luis de Ayala, he tells the marquis about Adela. De Ayala takes immediate interest, and seeks to arrange a meeting. Don Jaime glazes over this request, though he denies any interest other than a professional relationship between him and Adela. The conversation takes a turn into politics for a moment, but the focus quickly turns onto Don Jaime himself, when Don Jaime reveals his own personal values with an emphasis on honor. After a few ordinary lessons, Don Jaime finds himself in intimate conversation with Adela. He lets the conversation continue until he feels that he is no longer thinking clearly, at which point he ends the talk and escorts Adela home. While they ride in the carriage together, Adela requests that he let her meet with Luis de Ayala. Reluctantly, he agrees. At the next lesson, the marquis meets with Adela and arranges to meet her, excluding Don Jaime. Soon after, Adela sends a letter thanking him for the lessons and dismissing him from his service. Several evenings later, Don Jaime sees Adela with a mysterious stranger. They leave as soon as Adela sees him. That night, Don Jaime dreams of a doll missing its eyes. One morning, Luis de Ayala uncharacteristically refuses to fence Don Jaime, citing an unsteady hand. He tells Don Jaime that the fencing master is the only man he can trust, and gives him a sealed envelope for safekeeping. General Prim has begun the revolution and the navy has rebelled. The political atmosphere is in turmoil, evidenced by the newfound vigor with which the group at Café Progreso argues. Don Jaime remains impassive, teaching fencing as usual. Even when there is a small riot outside, he chastises his students for being distracted, lecturing them once again on the importance of tradition. One morning, Luis de Ayala is found dead in his home. When Don Jaime goes to visit for their daily fencing, he is brought in and interrogated. At the crime scene, he noticed with dismay the cause of death: a foil wound in the throat, characteristic of the secret thrust that he had taught Adela. He volunteers little information during the session, eventually suggesting that the police visit Adela de Otero. Campillo, the investigator, informs him that Adela has disappeared. Feeling betrayed that his own thrust would be put to murderous use, Don Jaime tries to analyze the crime. He concludes that de Ayala must have been killed for the papers that he had given earlier in a sealed envelope to Don Jaime. He goes home and begins reading the letters, finding nothing but lists of names and a strange reference to silver mines. Unable to deduce a motive for killing de Ayala, Don Jaime decides to obtain the help of someone well versed in Spanish politics. He finds Cárceles at Café Progreso and persuades him to help. While Cárceles is in the middle of a discovery, Campillo knocks on the door. Informed that he must go with the police, Astarloa leaves Cárceles temporarily with the documents. He is taken to the morgue, where he is shown the mutilated body of what seems to be Adela de Otero. The corpse is wearing Adela's ring, and looks similar to Adela, leading Don Jaime to believe that it is the body of his former student. Again, Don Jaime is interrogated, but volunteers little information. He learns that he is under surveillance, due to his having a link to two murders, and that Adela's maid, Lucia, has been dismissed. He leaves, resolving to avenge Adela. Don Jaime returns to his home to find that Cárceles is missing. He forces entry into Cárceles' home, only to find his friend strapped into his bed, tortured out of his mind with a mass of razor cuts. In the darkness, he is ambushed by two assassins. Armed with his cane-sword, he deals two stab wounds to one and breaks the nose of the other. The assassins escape the watchmen, leaving Don Jaime again to answer Campillo's questions. Seeing that he has made a mistake in keeping information from the police, Don Jaime tells Campillo everything that he knows. While the policeman is disappointed in Don Jaime's naivety, he is impressed with his courage. Cárceles dies in the hospital from his wounds, and Don Jaime is allowed to go. Campillo warns him to keep his weapon close, since he is now the last link in the crimes. Though certain now that his life is in danger, Don Jaime decides not to flee the country. He sits by the door to his home with his gun and cane-sword, waiting for his inevitable assailant. After several false starts, someone finally arrives. It is Adela de Otero. He discovers the secret letter, which was dropped when he initially opened the envelope. The secret of a man named Cazorla Longo, who presumably engineered the murders, is revealed. Adela tries to no avail to get the letter, eventually attempting to seduce Don Jaime and then stab him with a hairpin. After the attempt fails, Adela de Otero picks up the cane sword and attacks. Pursued into the gallery, Don Jaime searches futilely for a weapon. Eventually, he settles for a blunted practice foil. The ensuing duel leaves Don Jaime wounded in his side. Finally, Don Jaime employs a redoublement, cutting over Adela's arm for a lethal thrust through her eye into her brain. The end of the novel finds Don Jaime standing before his mirror, still searching for the perfect, unstoppable thrust.
9510379	/m/02ph6h1	The Cronnex			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The first volume of The Cronnex is titled Jessan in homage to Jessex, the protagonist of Jim Grimsley’s Kirith Kirin. The second volume, Niccas, is told from the point of view of Jessan’s twin. The heart of the tale is a bildungsroman in fantasy robes, a coming of age story told in stereo. The protagonists’ progress to maturity and sexual quickening provide a microcosm for a richly imagined world and skillfully rendered plot. The stories have as a starting point the fantasy archetype of a youth of humble origins whose coming of age is complicated by the revelation of a weighty destiny. Jessan and Niccas are marked as avatars of a benevolent goddess in a kingdom where her purpose has been perverted by a monomaniacal rogue Avatar and which is governed autocratically by its human apologists and collaborators. Jessan is revealed as the Nithaial Galgaliel, master of air and water; Niccas is the Nithaial Elimiel, liege of earth and fire, moon to Jessan’s sun. As soon as the mysterious mark of the Cronnex appears upon their maturing bodies, both are wrenched from childhood homes where they were barely tolerated and thrust upon quests only the staunchest Pollyanna could expect them to survive, let alone complete. As protagonists, Jessan and Niccas, are cut from the same cloth but dyed in different vats. Jessan’s story, though fraught with loss and danger, is a sunnier tale, thematically true to its fantasy roots and enlivened by a progressive sexual awakening enviable in its variety and joyfulness. Frank and earthy, Jessan’s sexual experiences are more than erotic interludes; they move the plot, develop character, and introduce one of the more innovative elements of The Cronnex: the concept of twerë. The state of twerën is widely recognized within the world of The Cronnex as a committed friendship that may or may not have a sexual component. An individual may consecrate alliances with multiple twerë of either sex. A darker and more complex tale than Jessan, Niccas extends the cosmological elements hinted at in Jessan and builds narrative tension as Niccas’s story unfolds parallel to Jessan’s. Captured and exploited by multifarious enemies, Niccas is unluckier in love and more deeply challenged as he pursues his quest. Whereas Jessan finds champions and boosters among soldiers and mages, Niccas forges uneasier, more dangerous alliances with demons and dragons and assassins, even the dead. While Jessan ends with its protagonist succeeding in his initial quest to restore the holy sites associated with his powers over water and air and evade the rogue avatar, Niccas closes with the job half done, and the silkily sinister antagonist fully engaged. The third volume of The Cronnex, Wisferon, is told in five-chapter fascicles alternately in Niccas’s and Jessan’s voices. While Niccas strives to complete his quest and vanquish the rogue avatar, Jessan struggles to locate Niccas and bring about the convergence of their powers. The unusual narrative structure throws the contrasts between the two Nithaial into sharper relief, develops secondary characters as agents of the plot, and intensifies the cosmological and cultural characteristics of Greenaway’s expressively inventive world. The author’s impressionistic style and psychological depth are stronger and stronger elements of his writing as the series progresses. Many of the set pieces of fantasy are present in The Cronnex, though readers come to expect wry treatment and sly fillips of humor. When Wisferon concludes on a dark but paradoxically satisfying note with part of the twins’ quest achieved but their own union missed by a hair’s breadth, we understand that a simple solution is impossible, and a unitary approach unsuitable. Dionis, the fourth volume of The Cronnex, unfolds in a near future in which the role of the Nithaial is ambiguous and contested. So, too, is the destiny of a child, purportedly Niccas’s son conceived without his consent. The boy, Dionis, is raised as a girl and expected to become a girl by arcane intervention at puberty. Questionable motivations abound, both among the priestesses who raised Dionis and among the strangers who proclaim their allegiance to the Nithaial and who whisk Dionis away on the eve of his transformation.
9514183	/m/02phcvl	The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler	Gene Kemp	1977-02-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book tells the story of its main characters' final term at Cricklepit Combined School. It is principally narrated by 'Tyke' Tiler, a bold and athletic twelve-year-old with the reputation of being a troublemaker. Tyke's best friend Danny Price has a speech defect, which means Tyke often has to translate for him. Danny has a helpless air which leads him to depend on his often exasperated friend. When Tyke overhears some teachers discussing the possibility of Danny going to a special school next year, the only option seems to be to help Danny to cheat in the assessment test – a plan which naturally backfires. When Tyke is off sick, Danny is accused of stealing a gold watch and runs away. It is up to Tyke to persuade the headmaster that Martin and Kevin are the guilty ones, and to find Danny. On the last day of school, Tyke decides to emulate Thomas Tiler, a relative, in climbing up the outside of the school and ringing the school bell, which has been silent for thirty years. When this ends in disaster the headmaster says: "That child has always appeared to me to be on the brink of wrecking this school, and as far as I can see, has, at last, succeeded." Up to the end of the penultimate chapter the narrative is written without revealing the protagonist's gender, and the daring nature of Tyke's exploits often leads readers to assume Tyke is a boy. The story ends with the revelation that Tyke is a girl, her full name being Theodora Tiler.
9514213	/m/02phcxn	Gowie Corby Plays Chicken				 Gowie hates school. He bullies Heather and makes an enemy of the football team. What is Gowie hiding? Who will save Gowie from himself? His life changes forever when Rosie Lee comes to live next door. He starts to take interest in school.
9514440	/m/02phdfv	Math Curse	Jon Scieszka	1995	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics"}	 The nameless student, begins with a seemingly innocent statement by her math teacher- "you know, almost everything in life can be considered a math problem." The next morning, the heroine finds herself thinking of the time she needs to get up along the lines of algebra. Next comes the mathematical school of probability, followed by charts and statistics. As the narrator slowly turns into a "math zombie", everything in her life is transformed into a problem. A class treat of cupcakes becomes a study in fractions, while a trip to the store turns into a problem of money. Finally, she is left painstakingly calculating how many minutes of "math madness" will be in her life now that she is a "mathematical lunatic." Her sister asks her what her problem is, and she responds, "365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes." Finally, she collapses on her bed, and dreams that she is trapped in a blackboard-room covered in math problems. Armed with only a piece of chalk, she must escape-and she manages to do just that by breaking the chalk in half, because "two halves make a whole." She escapes through this "whole", and awakens the next morning with the ability to solve any problem. Her curse is broken...until the next day, when her science teacher mentions that in life, everything can be viewed as a science experiment.
9515398	/m/02phfvj	The Red Guard	Hans Granqvist			 Chinese rebel Fan Su turns up in San Francisco, asking for Nick Carter. She wants his help in setting up her Undertong, a rebel group seeking to overthrow the Chinese government. She reveals that her brother has reached a high post in the Red Guard. The CIA and AXE are not interested – they don’t see the Chinese government falling any time soon – but they do have a use for the organization. The Chinese are preparing to detonate an H-bomb near the Indian border – a bomb bigger than any built by the U.S. or Russia. The Chinese will then claim that they have an arsenal of such weapons, hoping to intimidate many third world nations. In exchange for a few million dollars worth of gold and equipment, Carter is to be transported to the bomb’s test site so that he can destroy it. Few things go right, but in the end, they reach the Valley of the Yeti. They destroy the bomb, but not before something kills Fan Su - possibly a yeti.
9515633	/m/02phg5j	1634: The Bavarian Crisis	Virginia DeMarce	2007-10-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Early revelations detail machinations by the Habsburg heiress Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria to gather information as aided and abetted by a dowager aunt and her younger sister behind the backs of her father Emperor Ferdinand II and his Jesuit watchdogs. Duke Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria becomes a widower in need of a suitable Catholic bride, while the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand whose armies have reconquered 80–85% of the Low Countries by the summer of 1634 is contemplating a dynastic move of his own which his brother King Philip IV of Spain will find a bit disconcerting. Veronica Dreeson and Mary Simpson meanwhile plan a trip to tend to personal matters to the Upper Palatinate border region conquered by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and administered for him from Amberg by ally Duke Ernest of Saxe-Gotha, one of the four Wettin dukes that were supplanted by Grantville's (formation of the NUS) actions in 1631 and 1632. Events in the other 1634 novels (1634: The Galileo Affair, 1634: The Ram Rebellion, 1634: The Baltic War) are integrated into the action and political events behind the scenes, and this book ties a host of little oddities into a coherent canvas capturing a snapshot of the state of Europe in early summer of 1634. Concurrent with their pet projects, the formidable Dreeson and Simpson women are accompanied by a trade delegation with the strategic goal of restoring the iron production of the Upper Palatinate to feed the war needs of the USE.
9516993	/m/02phhl9	The Black Corsair	Emilio Salgari		{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Two pirates, Carmaux and Wan Stiller, are rescued by the Lightning, a pirate ship under the command of Emilio of Roccabrunna, Lord of Valpenta and of Ventimiglia, and feared throughout the Caribbean as the Black Corsair. Once aboard, the two inform the captain that his younger brother the "Red Corsair" has been hanged by the Governor of Maracaibo. The Black Corsair decides to sneak into the city to retrieve his brother's body and give him an honourable burial at sea. Carmaux and Wan Stiller accompany the Corsair to the city, and aided by their friend Moko, manage to steal the body. After a series of adventures the Corsair and his men return to the Lightning with the body. On the night the Corsair buries his brother he vows to slay Van Guld and all those that bear his name. En route to Tortuga, the pirates attack and capture a Spanish ship. They find a young noblewoman aboard, Honorata Willerman, the Duchess of Weltrendrem. She is taken captive to Tortuga where she is to await payment of her ransom. Struck by her beauty and spirit, the Corsair frees her and the two quickly fall in love. The hunt for Governor Wan Guld resumes and the Black Corsair and L'Ollonais lead an attack on Maracaibo. Unfortunately the governor escapes and the Black Corsair and his companions must track him through the jungles of Venezuela. There they encounter savage beasts, quick sand, and cannibals. Wan Guld proves ellusive and to capture him the pirates must make an assault on the city of Gibraltar, Venezuela.
9520492	/m/02phn08	Fortune's Rocks: A Novel	Anita Shreve	1999-12-02	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In the summer of 1899, Olympia Biddeford, a privileged, intelligent and confident 15 year old who is vacationing with her family at Fortune's Rocks, falls in love with a married 41-year-old doctor and journalist, John Haskell. Their passionate affair, and subsequent discovery, produces a son and leads to far-reaching consequences that span several decades. The novel is loosely based on the seaside neighborhood of Fortunes Rocks, located in Biddeford, Maine.
9521551	/m/02php5r	Wyvernhail	Amelia Atwater-Rhodes	2007-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Wyvernhail is the story of Hai - the mongrel daughter of the Falcon Darien and Zane's older brother, Anjay - putting her in line for the Cobriana throne (though crippled and powerless). Hai is a creature out of place - not Avian, but a falcon poisoned with cobra blood . As she searches for her identity, she finds the Obsidian Guild - outcasts like herself. And when the political intrigues of Wyvern's Court finally come to a crest, there are those who would prefer the mongrel child of a falcon and a cobra on the throne than Salem Cobriana. She must fight for her home, her place in the world, and the one being who truly understands her - another outcast and a royal falcon, if she ever hopes to find happiness. When Hai's cousin, Oliza Shardae Cobriana, abdicates the throne of Wyvern's Court, Hai has visions only of destruction: the serpiente king Salem, dying in her arms; the dutiful falcon guard, Nicias, unable to save a generation of children; and Wyvern's Court engulfed in flames. The cause of this future is Keyi, the daughter of Oliza and Vere, who, after accidentally killing her mother, seems to enjoy chaos and death and brings it upon Wyvern's Court. Now Hai will do anything to protect her new home - even if it means betraying the very people who need her most. In order to protect the people and the world she loves from the future she sees in increasingly horrific visions, Hai is forced to throw away her own happiness and ascend the serpiente throne. When Salem was poisoned, she uses her falcon magic and forces his heart to keep beating. In the meantime, she had to stop Oliza from being Diente and ascended the throne herself. Having done that, she went back to Salem, only to be refused by Nicias. She begged him to let her try to revive him again. Using all the power she had at her disposal, she split her soul and pushed into him her serpiente magic. Nicias kept hold of her to keep her from diving too deep into Ecl, and they were unconscious for a few days. Rosalind, who didn't trust Hai, wasn't sure what to do about her, and apologizes and admits she had been confused for a long time. Darien, Hai's falcon mother, comes to Wyvern's Court and says that the Empress Cjarsa felt a new falcon being born. When Hai reaches for her cobra scales, she couldn't have it ripple across her skin, and when she tried to return to her broken falcon form, she let out a painful scream and Nicias held onto her. However, when she reached for the falcon magic of Ahnmik, she felt her magic rub upon Nicias's magic, and found that she was now truly falcon. Nicias and Oliza (grudgingly) fixed Hai's wings after they found out she was pure falcon. She and Nicias are together. Then she agrees to dance with Vere Obsidian.
9524894	/m/02phv08	Ashes to Ashes	Harold Pinter			 The one-act play opens with Devlin and Rebecca, described as "Both in their forties", talking in what appears to be a home living room on an early summer evening. As the play develops, it becomes clear that Devlin and Rebecca are probably married, although their relationship to each other is not defined explicitly; it must be inferred. Initially, Devlin seems Rebecca's husband or lover, her therapist, and potentially her murderer. Some critics have described their discussion as more between a therapist and his patient than between two lovers or between a husband and a wife. Devlin questions Rebecca in forceful ways, and she reveals personal information and dream-like sequences to him. In their first exchange, Rebecca tells of a man who appears to be sexually abusing her and threatening to strangle her (1–27). Rebecca tells Devlin that she told the killer, "Put your hand round my throat" (3)—an act which Devlin acts out directly towards the end of the play (73–75), asking Rebecca to "Speak. Say it. Say 'Put your hand round my throat.'&nbsp;" (75). The first exchange is followed immediately by Devlin asking "Do you feel you're being hypnotized?" "Who by?" asks Rebecca. "By me," answers Devlin, adding "What do you think?", to which Rebecca retorts, "I think you're a fuckpig" (7–9). In response to Devlin's further inquiries about her "lover", Rebecca relates several dream-like sequences involving the man who she has quoted initially (7–27). She tells Devlin that this "lover" worked as a "guide" for a "travel agency" (19). She goes on to ask, "Did I ever tell you about that place . . . about the time he took me to that place?" This place turns out to be "a kind of factory" peopled by his "workpeople" who "respected his . . . purity, his . . . conviction" (23–25). But then she tells Devlin, "He used to go to the local railway station and walk down the platform and tear all the babies from the arms of their screaming mothers" (27). After a "Silence", Rebecca changes the subject abruptly with: "By the way, I'm terribly upset" (27). She complains that a police siren which she had just heard has disappeared into the distance. Devlin replies that the police are always busy, and thus another siren will start up at any time and "you can take comfort in that at least. Can't you? You'll never be lonely again. You'll never be without a police siren. I promise you" (29–30). Rebecca says that while the sound of the siren is "fading away," she "knew it was becoming louder and louder for somebody else" (29) and while its doing so made her "feel insecure! Terribly insecure" (31), she hates the siren's "fading away; I hate it echoing away" (31). (At the end of the play, an "Echo" of her words occurs.) Rebecca tells Devlin that she had been writing a note, and that when she put the pen she was using down, it rolled off the table: REBECCA: It rolled right off, onto the carpet. In front of my eyes. DEVLIN: Good God. REBECCA: This pen, this perfectly innocent pen. DEVLIN: You can't know it was innocent. REBECCA: Why not? DEVLIN: Because you don't know where it had been. You don't know how many other hands have held it, how many other hands have written with it, what other people have been doing with it. You know nothing of its history. You know nothing of its parents' history. REBECCA: A pen has no parents. (33–39) In another monologue Rebecca describes herself looking out the window of a summer house and seeing a crowd of people being led by &#34;guides&#34; toward the ocean, which they disappear into like lemmings (47–49). That leads to her description of a condition that she calls &#34;mental elephantiasis&#34; (49), in which &#34;when you spill an ounce of gravy, for example, it immediately expands and becomes a vast sea of gravy,&#34; Rebecca says that &#34;You are not the victim [of such an event], you are the cause of it&#34; (51). Referring both to the &#34;pen&#34; and anticipating the references to &#34;the bundle&#34; later in the play, she explains, &#34;Because it was you who spilt the gravy in the first place, it was you who handed over the bundle&#34; (51). After an exchange about family matters relating to &#34;Kim and the kids&#34;—Rebecca&#39;s sister, Kim, Kim&#39;s children, and Kim&#39;s estranged husband (55–63), in which Rebecca may be conveying her own attitude toward Devlin in commenting on Kim&#39;s attitude toward her own husband—&#34;She&#39;ll never have him back. Never. She says she&#39;ll never share a bed with him again. Never. Ever.&#34; (61)—there is another &#34;Silence&#34; (65). Devlin says, &#34;Now look, let&#39;s start again&#34; (65). Rebecca tells Devlin, &#34;I don&#39;t think we can start again. We started...a long time ago. We started. We can&#39;t start again. We can end again&#34; (67). &#34;But we&#39;ve never ended,&#34; Devlin protests (67). Rebecca responds, &#34;Oh, we have. Again and again and again. And we can end again. And again and again. And again&#34; (67). That exchange and Rebecca&#39;s reference to him earlier as a &#34;fuckpig&#34; demonstrate Rebecca&#39;s strong hostility toward Devlin. After another &#34;Silence&#34; and Rebecca&#39;s and Devlin&#39;s singing the refrain from song alluded to in the play&#39;s title &#34; &#39;Ashes to ashes&#39; — &#39;And dust to dust&#39; — &#39;If the women don&#39;t get you&#39; — &#39;The liquor must&#39; &#34; (69). After a &#34;pause&#34;, Devlin says &#34;I always knew you loved me. […] Because we like the same tunes&#34;, followed by another &#34;Silence&#34; (69). After it, Devlin asks Rebecca why she has never told him about &#34;this lover of yours&#34; and says how he has &#34;a right to be very angry indeed&#34; that she did not, &#34;Do you understand that?&#34; (69–70). After another &#34;Silence&#34; (71), instead of responding, Rebecca describes another sequence, where she is standing at the top of a building and sees a man, a boy, and a woman with a child in her arms in a snowy street below (71–73). In her monologue, she shifts suddenly from the third-person &#34;she&#34; to the first-person &#34;I&#34;, and Rebecca (not the woman) is &#34;held&#34; in Rebecca&#39;s own &#34;arms&#34;: &#34;I held her to me,&#34; and she listens to its &#34;heart […] beating&#34; (73). At that point (73), Devlin approaches Rebecca and begins to enact the scene described by Rebecca at the beginning of the play, directing her to &#34;Ask me to put my hand round your throat&#34; as she has earlier described her &#34;lover&#34; as doing (73–75). The last scene of the play recalls cultural representations of Nazi soldiers selecting women and children at train stations en route to concentration camps (73–85). She begins by narrating the events in the third person: &#34;She stood still. She kissed her baby. The baby was a girl&#34; (73), but she switches from the third person to the first person in continuing her narrative. As this narration develops, an &#34;Echo&#34; repeats some of Rebecca&#39;s words as she recounts the experience of a woman who has walked onto a train platform with a &#34;baby&#34; wrapped up &#34;in a bundle,&#34; beginning with: &#34;They took us to the trains&#34; (&#34;ECHO: the trains&#34;), and &#34;They were taking the babies away&#34; (&#34;ECHO: the babies away&#34;), and then Rebecca shifts from using the third person &#34;she&#34; to using the first-person &#34;I&#34; (77): &#34;I took my baby and wrapped it in my shawl&#34; (77). Finally, Rebecca (or the woman or women with whom she has identified from such past historical events) is forced to give her baby wrapped in &#34;the bundle&#34; (&#34;the bundle&#34; being a synecdoche for the baby wrapped up in a shawl) to one of the men. As if Rebecca were such a woman, she recalls getting on the train, describing how &#34;we arrived at this place&#34;—thus recalling the other &#34;place&#34; about which she asks Devlin early in the play, the &#34;factory&#34;: &#34;Did I ever tell you about that place . . . about the time he [her purported lover] took me to that place?&#34; (21). In the final lines of the play, as if the woman&#39;s experience were her own, Rebecca shifts again significantly from the third-person &#34;she&#34; used earlier relating to the woman to the first-person &#34;I&#34;, while denying that she ever had or ever knew of &#34;any baby&#34;: REBECCA: And I said what baby ECHO: what baby REBECCA: I don't have a baby ECHO: a baby REBECCA: I don't know of any baby ECHO: of any baby Pause. REBECCA: I don't know of any baby Long silence. BLACKOUT. (83–84)
9525354	/m/02phvjs	Sea Glass	Anita Shreve	2002-04-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In 1929 New England, the newly married Sexton and Honora Beecher arrange to buy the old beach house they are renting, but when the Depression strikes their small town, their hopes are dashed. Sexton goes to work at the nearby mill and becomes involved with a plan to form a union, which eventually leads to disaster; events conspire to undermine the Beechers' marriage as well as their financial hopes and dreams.
9530396	/m/02ph_m2	Sleeping in Flame	Jonathan Carroll	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The narrator, Walker Easterling, is a film actor and screenwriter. His director friend Nicholas Sylvian introduces him to Maris York, a sculptress who makes model cities and who is freeing herself from Luc, her abusive partner. On the day Maris and Walker meet, Luc has just threatened to kill her, so Walker and Nicholas take her away to Vienna, where Maris and Walker commence a relationship. Walker, who knows nothing about his parents or family background, discovers that he can perform magical acts and has dreams of inhabiting another identity, that of an Austrian named Moritz Benedikt who fought in the First World War and was subsequently murdered. After Maris' brother Ingram loses his lover in an earthquake, Walker is able to foretell, or induce, Ingram's meeting with a certain Michael Billa, who will be a significant person in Ingram's life. (The consequences of Ingram's and Billa's friendship are recounted in Black Cocktail.) Through an acquaintance, screenwriter Philip Strayhorn, Walker meets Venasque, a mystic and teacher who appears in several other Carroll books. With Venasque's help, Walker learns to control his talent, but inadvertently causes Venasque's death because of the strength of his powers. He is contacted by his real father, a little man with no genitals whose name he does not know. The little man is an immortal (and the real-life source of the Rumpelstiltskin legend) who has murdered all Walker's previous incarnations, the last of whom was Moritz Benedikt, because they kept falling in love with women and repudiating the little man's sterile immortality. His father tries to persuade Walker to leave Maris by telling him that she'll mourn him forever and never love anyone else; this above all persuades Walker that his father is selfish and evil. Thanks to his and Maris' complete understanding of each other, Walker is able to discover his father's name in a city which Maris is building him as a birthday present. Walker uses his magic powers to call up the two sisters who originally told the Rumpelstiltskin story to the Grimm brothers. The sisters retell the story, changing it to end with the little man's death. Soon after Maris' and Walker's son is born, a little girl (apparently the original source of the Little Red Riding Hood story) appears on the doorstep and tells Walker: "You're dangerous." As Walker observes that "nothing in life is done without regret", it seems that his and Maris' son has been affected in some way by the vengeful immortals.
9532662	/m/02pj1z9	Those Who Hunt the Night				 The 20th century is just under way, and somebody is killing the vampires of London. Against the wishes of his fellow undead, Simon Ysidro, oldest of the London vampires, seeks the assistance of Oxford professor James Asher, former spy for the British government. Ysidro gains Asher's cooperation by threatening the life of his beautiful young wife, Lydia. Unbeknownst to Ysidro, Asher enlists the help of his wife, a physician with a keenly analytical mind. Asher prowls the streets and crypts of London with Ysidro, entering the dark underworld of the undead, as Lydia combs property records and medical journals for clues as to who might have the means and the motive to carry out the slaughter. Asher's theory is that the killer must be a vampire himself, one able to remain awake and active in the daytime. Lydia develops a theory as to how such a vampire might come to be. Together Asher and Ysidro travel to Paris to seek out the mythical eldest of all vampires, who might be either the killer himself, or the key to the killer's undoing. But what they discover shocks them all—a horrifying threat to the living as well as the undead. es:Cazadores nocturnos fr:Le Sang d'immortalité
9533209	/m/02pj2cf	Traveling with the Dead				 In this sequel to Those Who Hunt the Night, professor James Asher and his young wife, Lydia, are again swept up in the dangerous world of the undead. It is 1908, and a weary Asher, traveling home from his tiresome duties as executor of a relative's estate, spots Charles Farren, vampire Earl of Ernchester, clearly involved in some intrigue with mercenary and enemy spy Ignace Karolyi. Asher, who had left the secret service years ago to wed Lydia, reluctantly trails the pair to Paris, wiring Lydia to alert her to the danger. But Lydia is aware of something Asher does not know: an obscure footnote in one of her medical journals clues her into the fact that the safe house Asher is planning to use is in the hands of a double agent, actually in league with Karolyi. To save her husband, Lydia seeks the assistance of the oldest of the London vampires: the enigmatic and haughty Simon Ysidro. Ysidro agrees to help, to keep Farren from forming an alliance with humans, but on one condition: over Lydia's strenuous objections, he recruits a drab but romantic-minded governess, Margaret Potton, to travel with them as Lydia's chaperon. The three of them trail Asher across Europe to Constantinople, as he joins forces with Farren's strong-willed and alluring vampire-wife, Anthea. In Constantinople, the trail dies, as Asher has been kidnapped by the vampire lord of the city, who is struggling to keep control as a rival seeks to destroy him. Asher tries to uncover his own role in the power struggle, for this may hold the key to his survival. Meanwhile, Lydia and Ysidro explore the city, Lydia through Asher's diplomatic connections, Ysidro through his nocturnal prowlings, seeking any clue as to where Asher and Charles have disappeared to, even as Margaret's obsession with Ysidro and jealousy of Lydia endanger them all. Only by unwinding the threads of money trails, strange business transactions, and a series of increasingly gruesome murders can Ysidro and Lydia find Charles and Asher, and escape the city alive.
9533588	/m/02pj2tw	The Doubtful Heir				 Olivia, the Queen of Murcia, is engaged to marry Leonario, the prince of Aragon. The wedding plans are disrupted by an invasion: Ferdinand claims to be the Queen's cousin and the rightful heir to the throne. Leonario leads an army against the pretender and brings him back a captive. Ferdinand is accompanied by his page, Tiberio &mdash; who is actually Ferdinand's fiancee Rosania in disguise. On trial for treason, Ferdinand courageously maintains his claim to the throne. Olivia is impressed with him, falls in love with him, and commands a recess in the trial as she leaves the courtroom. Leonario and the nobles are prepared to sentence the apparent usurper, but the Queen prevents and reproves them. She states that investigation may yet validate Ferdinand's claim, and has him escort her from the court, to the general consternation of her supporters. Olivia soon marries Ferdinand &mdash; but finds him neglectful, and becomes irate and jealous. She questions "Tiberio" about potential mistresses; when Ferdinand arrives, Olivia tries to provoke his jealousy by flirting with Tiberio/Rosania, and then leaves them together. Ferdinand confesses that he agreed to the wedding only to allow a chance for them to escape, and has avoided consummation of the marriage. Rosania is willing to leave Ferdinand to Olivia, but Fredinand will not accept this; he prevails on "Tiberio" to obey the Queen's summons to her chamber, and to leave the resolution of the problem in his hands. While Olivia is courting "Tiberio," Fredinand barges into her suite with courtiers in an effort to expose her. Olivia, however, brazens out her predicament, while her maid is in the next room disguising "Tiberio" as a woman. As the confrontation between Olivia and Ferdinand is coming to a head, one of Leonario's spies drops a bombshell: the page is in fact a woman, and Ferdinand's fiancee. Back in jail, Ferdinand awaits execution. Suddenly, though, he is acknowledged and acclaimed as the rightful king by the chancellor and other nobles. It was the chancellor who rescued Fredinand from a ruthless uncle during infancy and enabled his escape. Ferdinand becomes king in his own right, and publicly recognizes Rosania as his future queen; Olivia's unsullied honor leaves her a fit mate for Leonario. But Leonario has a plan of his own: in a surprise attack he and his forces take the palace and capture the new King and his court. Ferdinand is condemned to death yet again, and Leonario leads Olivia to the altar; yet the victorious army's general rips off his false beard to reveal himself as Ferdinand's old guardian and Rosania's father. The army that appeared to back Leonario is in fact a force from Valencia sent to reinforce Ferdinand. The rightful King Ferdinand and his new Queen Rosania triumph in the end.
9538091	/m/02pj7s3	Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms				 Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms comprises two stories, "Town of Evening Calm" and "Country of Cherry Blossoms". Set in Hiroshima in 1955, ten years after the atomic bomb was dropped, "Town of Evening Calm" is the story of a young woman, Minami Hirano, who survived the bomb when she was in her early teens. She lives with her mother, Fujimi, in a shanty-town near downtown, having lost her father and two sisters to the bomb; her younger brother, Asahi, was evacuated to Mito, Ibaraki, where he was adopted by his aunt. Fujimi is a seamstress while Minami, who is "all thumbs" as her mother puts it, works as a clerk in an office, and together they are saving money for the trip to Mito to visit Asahi. One of her co-workers, Yutaka Uchikoshi, cares for Minami and visits her shanty when she misses work because her mother is sick. He later gives her a pair of sandals made by his mother and a handkerchief, but when he tries to kiss her, she has a flashback where she sees the victims of the bombing where they now stand and pushes him away. She runs off, still reliving the horrors of the attack, including finding her little sister's blackened body and watching her older sister die of radiation poisoning two months later. The next day at the office, she apologizes to Uchikoshi, saying she wants to somehow put the past behind her. She spends the day exhausted, however, and the next day becomes bedridden from the long-term effects of radiation poisoning. As Minami's condition worsens, she is visited by Uchikoshi and other co-workers, and dies just as her brother and aunt arrive. "Country of Cherry Blossoms" is a story in two parts. Part one is set in 1987 in Tokyo. At the start of fifth grade, Nanami Ishikawa, the daughter of Minami's brother Asahi (and thus second-generation atomic bomb victim), is a tomboy nicknamed "Goemon" by her classmates, to her disgust. At baseball practice, she gets a bloody nose after being hit by a ball, after which she skips practice to visit her brother Nagio in the hospital, where he is being treated for asthma. On the way, she meets her best friend and next-door neighbor, a feminine girl named Toko Tone, who loans her subway fare and accompanies her. In Nagio's hospital room, they toss cherry blossom petals that Nanami collected into the air, to give him the experience of spring that he's missing. Nanami is scolded by her grandmother for visiting Nagio when she's not supposed to. That summer, her grandmother, Asahi's adoptive mother in Mito, dies, and that fall Nanami loses touch with Toko after her family moves closer to Nagio's hospital. Part two takes place 17 years later, in 2004. Nanami, now working as an office lady, lives with her recently retired father. One day Nagio, who recently graduated from medical school, tells Nanami he ran into Toko as a nurse at the hospital where he is interning. Nanami tells him she's worried their father's going senile because he has started wandering off for a couple days at time without explanation. One evening, Nanami follows Asahi as he leaves the apartment, and while she tails him runs into Toko and together they follow him onto an overnight bus to Hiroshima. In the morning, they follow as he visits several people before Toko leaves to visit the Peace Park. Asahi visits his family grave, then sits by the riverside, and while waiting Nanami discovers in the jacket of Toko's borrowed jacket a letter from Nagio to Toko, saying that her family asked him to stop seeing her as they believe his asthma is a result of the atomic bomb. In a flashback, Asahi recalls the riverbank as a shantytown, then remembers meeting Kyoka Ota, a neighborhood girl his mother hired to help her after Minami died, when he returns to Hiroshima to start college. Asahi begins tutoring Kyoka because her teachers believe she is stupid due to the atomic bomb. When Toko finds Nanami by the river, Toko is upset to the point of illness by what she saw at the Peace Memorial Museum, and Nanami finds them a hotel room and cares for her, even though she has flashbacks to seeing her mother's last illness when she was a young child. In another flashback, Asahi proposes to a grown Kyoka, against his mother's wishes, as Kyoka was exposed to the bomb. On the ride back to Tokyo, Nanami arranges for Nagio to meet her and Toko, then leaves them alone together. Asahi tells Nanami he visited Hiroshima for the 49th anniversary of Minami's death, and that Nanami resembles her.
9538646	/m/02pj8dt	An Unsuitable Attachment	Barbara Pym		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The plot concerns librarian Ianthe Broome, a well-bred young woman left in comfortable circumstances by her late parents. There is no shortage of "suitable" candidates for Ianthe's hand, notably Rupert Stonebird. It surprises no one more than Ianthe herself when she falls for the new library assistant, a young man of doubtful antecedents with no money to spare. Some of the action takes place against the backdrop of Rome, where Ianthe and a group of other churchgoers are taking a sightseeing holiday. Being apart from John makes Ianthe realise how much she really cares for him, and on her return she agrees to his proposal, scandalizing her friends and family. As they settle down to their new life together, Rupert begins to recognise the charms of Penelope, another member of the community who has long been attracted to him.
9545706	/m/02pjhxx	Swords of Mars	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1936	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Carter relates an adventure commencing with a private war he and his picked followers have been waging against the resurgent Guild of Assassins, led by Ur Jan. Hoping to cut off the threat at the root, he travels undercover to the Assassins' base, the restive city of Zodanga, still smarting from its defeat and sack by the Empire of Helium and the horde of Tharks in A Princess of Mars. There Carter passes himself off in the underworld as Vandor, a freelance bravo, cultivating small-time criminal Rapas the Ulsio and attempting to penetrate the ranks of the Guild. Simultaneously, Carter becomes embroiled in the affairs of two rival scientists, Fal Sivas and Gar Nal, who are competing against each other to create a viable "synthetic brain"-controlled spacecraft. Complications ensue as the two threads of the plot become entangled, and the Guild, in its own attempt at a preemptive strike against Carter, kidnaps his wife, the princess Dejah Thoris of Helium. For the first time the action of the series goes off-planet, as Ur Jan and Gar Nal flee with Dejah to the Martian moon Thuria (Phobos) in one of the spacecraft, pursued by Carter and his allies Jat Or and Zanda in the other. The passage shrinks the travelers down through some bizarre quirk of pseudo-scientific relativistic hocus pocus until to them the tiny moon is the size of a planet. There, all are captured by the sun-worshipping Tarids, white-skinned and blue-haired natives of Thuria (which they call Ladan) whose mental powers render them invisible to the spacefarers. To win freedom from their jeweled prison, the antagonists must join forces with each other, aided by another captive, the one-eyed and two-mouthed chameleon-like "cat-man" Umka. Amid betrayal and heroic sacrifice, the parties from Mars eventually return to their home planet with Carter and Dejah still separated and the latter believed still captive on Thuria. In a final twist, she is revealed as still in the hands of Gar Nal, whom Ur Jan, honoring his earlier pledge of fealty to Carter, redeems himself by dispatching.
9546013	/m/02pjjcp	HellBent			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Sixteen-year-old Connor is on his way home from school when he is run down by an ice-cream truck. He is sent to hell with his dog, Scrote, who choked on an ice cream cone which rolled off the truck. There he is sentenced to spending all eternity reading intellectual books and listening to classical music with his personal devil tormentor, Clarence, and a transvestite Viking, Olaf. Eventually he meets a beautiful naked angel called Francessa who tells him that one person's hell could be his heaven. He sets out to swap hells with an elderly, classical music loving, homosexual gentlemen whose hell is to constantly play the PlayStation and have his penis fondled by nude women. He, Clarence, Scrote and Olaf set out on a long journey, of which if they are caught means they will be annihilated and be gone forever. On their travels, Olaf is captured and annihilated. Eventually they reach Connor's heaven, but he finds that Clarence has betrayed him. Olaf also betrayed him and is not dead, but then tries to help Connor and is this time killed for good. Connor and Scrote are sentenced to their ideal heaven, which has now became their worst nightmare as their tastes have changed. Connor notices a lever on the annihilator which has a plus and a minus. Figuring that it will reincarnate him if he changes it to plus and jumps in, he does so. It is left to the reader to decide whether Connor and Scrote were reincarnated or were fully annihilated.
9551304	/m/02pjp32	The Hunter's Moon			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Gwen, a Canadian, is visiting her cousin, Findabhair (finn-ah-veer), in Ireland. The two, who keep regular correspondence, share a deep love of Irish mythology. Since their youth, they have tried to find a doorway to another world called Faerieland. Now sixteen, they travel to Tara, without telling their parents, the ancient seat of the High Kings in Ireland in search of adventure. While they are there, the cousins challenge an ancient law by sleeping in a fairy mound. That night the King of Faeries, Finvara, comes to take them away. Since he is King of Dreams, he comes to them in their sleep and asks them to come with him. Findabhair says yes, but Gwen refuses. Therefore, since he is bound by an ancient law, the King only takes Findabhair, leaving Gwen to wake up wondering about her cousin's safety. Gwen decides to rescue her cousin from her fate, only to find she is happy. Gwen does not want her to stay with the faeries because they are immortal, partying teenagers. As Gwen tries to continuously find the Faeries, which is hard for the King is hindering her, she meets many good friends, including a middle-aged businessman, a farm girl, a king (who becomes her boyfriend) of an island, called Island Island, and even befriends the second in command of the Faeries, Midir. When she finally catches up with the faeries fast pace, she learns that either her cousin or her must be the sacrifice to an evil ancient creature known as Crom Cruac, the Great Worm, supposedly the serpent from Eden. Her cousin voluntarily chooses to be the sacrifice, upsetting Gwen and the King of Faeries, who has fallen in love with her. In the end, with the help of many friends, Findabhair decides not to be sacrificed, but to be the first person ever to fight the serpent. With their friends by their sides, Findabhair and Gwen attack the serpent after being equipped for battle by the Land of Light, but after a while Findabhair gets blasted with poison from the serpent and falls unconscious with her life on the edge. The King of Faeries, in a desperate act of love, gives himself up as the sacrifice. He is greatly mourned, and Midir becomes king. The friends decide to meet in a year. After a year, they meet again at Island Island and reminisce. Then they suddenly hear music. As they search for the source of the music, they find the king, alive. The worm had only taken his immortality instead of killing him, and now the faerie was mortal and without memory. They understand that it´s going to be hard for the king, because of his loss. But overjoyed as they are, they promise to explain everything to him.
9553753	/m/02pjrlv	The Kachina Doll Mystery	Carolyn Keene	1981	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Nancy, Bess, And George arrive at the McGuire's Fitness ranch in Arizona, they Discover that the future of the ranch is being threatened by unexplained accidents. Teaming up with a ghost, Nancy begins her search for a precious collection of ancient kachina dolls and hunts for her elusive adversary who is determined to prevent the ranch from operating.
9554696	/m/02pjsg1	The Case of the Rising Stars	Carolyn Keene	1988	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Nancy, Bess and George arrive in Chicago for the 'Mystery Lovers Convention'. The two stars scheduled to appear are kidnapped, and some think it is a ratings ploy, but Nancy uncovers the truth and only she can save them.
9559344	/m/02pjzmz	Lean Mean Thirteen	Janet Evanovich	2007-06-19	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Stephanie Plum is reunited yet again with her lawyer ex-husband, Dickie Orr, while doing a favour for Ranger. When Dickie is later discovered missing from his apartment under some rather violent circumstances, Stephanie becomes the prime suspect in his apparent murder. While trying to prove her innocence she and Ranger uncover Dickie's ties to the partners in his law firm, who appear to be involved in everything from money laundering to drug running. Dickie's business partner believes that Stephanie holds the 'key' to the 40 million dollars missing from the law firm. Stephanie meets some interesting characters, from a taxidermist who is living at home waiting for the cable company with a penchant for bombs to a grave-robber who also does taxes in the back of his truck.
9562825	/m/02pk34c	The Digging Leviathan	James Blaylock	1984-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in 1964 in and around Los Angeles, California. Jim Hastings is a young boy who lives with his uncle, Edward St. Ives; Jim's father suffered a nervous breakdown upon his wife's death and has been institutionalized ever since. Jim is increasingly puzzled by a series of strange events that seem to happen around his friend Giles "Gill" Peach who, like his father and forefathers before him, has gills. The boys are fascinated by pulp science fiction, and Gill begins building a device inspired by the "subterranean prospector" described in Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel "At the Earth's Core." Jim's father William, who periodically escapes the psychiatric facility run by Hilario Frosticos, is convinced that Gill is being manipulated by unscrupulous adventurers allied with Frosticos: a hollow earth conspiracy. This is discounted as paranoia by St. Ives, Russell Latzarel, Roycroft Squires, and William Ashbless, all members of the Newtonian Society, an alternative science-oriented social club. However as events unfold it appears that William's worst fears have a bizarre truth behind them, and the ideas described in Gill's diaries are more than weird tales. Clues found by William lead St. Ives and Latzarel to sewers connected to an underground river, mermen, bizarre technology, and a longevity serum based on carp. Together with Jim, the four men try to outmaneuver Frosticos in the race to reach a not-quite unimaginable goal.
9563516	/m/02pk3z4	Hazed	Franklin W. Dixon	2007-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ATAC send Frank and Joe Hardy to Eagle River Academy to investigate possible hazing at the academy, and find the truth behind a student's death.
9567671	/m/02pk8z6	A Long Fatal Love Chase	Louisa May Alcott		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alcott patiently drudged away at Little Women but found emotional release in scribbling her blood-and-thunder tales. The difference shows: in pacing, tone, and content, Love Chase is startlingly unlike its famous successor. The ostentatiously Faustian plot centers on Rosamond Vivian, a discontented maiden who lives on an English island with only her bitter old grandfather for company and who begins the novel by rashly declaring: "I often feel as if I'd gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom." Right on cue, a man named Phillip Tempest — a man who bears a more than trivial resemblance to Mephistopheles — walks in the door. Within a month, Rosamond is in love, and although she realizes that this man is “no saint”, she marries him, believing with the fatuousness of youth that her love will save him. She sails away from her lonely island in Tempest's yacht, the Circe, and begins her married life at a luxurious villa in Nice. Much to his own surprise, Tempest, a heartless libertine, finds that he, too, has fallen in love. He tries to make Rosamond happy, and succeeds for a while; however, after a year in his company, she begins to realize how conscienceless and cruel he is. She then discovers that Tempest has a wife and son already, making their marriage a sham and Rosamond the unwitting mistress of a man who has grossly deceived her. That same night, she packs a few items, stealthily climbs down from her second-floor balcony, and catches the next train to Paris. Tempest pursues her, beginning the obsessive “chase” of the title. Tempest hunts Rosamond for two years, telling her he enjoys the sport. To throw him off the track, she assumes a variety of disguises: in Paris, she's a seamstress named “Ruth”; next, she escapes to a convent, where she's known as “Sister Agatha”; after that, under the name “Rosalie Varian”, she travels to Germany as companion to a wealthy little girl. Each time, as she begins to settle comfortably into a new life, Tempest makes a sudden, funhouse-type entrance and ruins everything. Under this treatment, Rosamond learns to hate and fear her former lover. At the same time, a hopeless passion develops between Rosamond and Father Ignatius, a handsome, virtuous, high-born man who happens — unfortunately — to be a Roman Catholic priest. The chase finally ends one night when Ignatius tries to help Rosamond return to her grandfather's island. Tempest follows them in his yacht and sails over what he thinks is the priest's boat, leaving everyone aboard to drown. It turns out that Rosamond was on the wrecked boat, while Ignatius followed in a different vessel. The next day, Tempest discovers his mistake when he goes to the grandfather's house and sees Rosamond dead and Ignatius still alive. The priest speaks of his own future union with Rosamond in the hereafter. At this, Tempest gathers the drowned woman in his arms, then stabs himself, declaring defiantly “Mine first — mine last — mine even in the grave!”
9571820	/m/02pkfjh	A Marriage Contract	Honoré de Balzac	1835	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Paul de Manerville is a gentleman born of wealth and nobility who decides, over the objections of his worldly friend de Marsay, to give up his elegant bachelor’s life and get married at the age of twenty-seven. He falls in love with a beautiful girl named Natalie Evangelista, the daughter of a proud Spanish matriarch whose financial assets have been diminishing since the death of her husband. Too naïve and full of illusions to see the hidden motives of Natalie Evangelista’s mother, who wants Paul’s wealth in order to procure for her daughter the lavish lifestyle she believes to be her birthright, or to recognize that his bride’s loyalty is entirely with her mother and not with him, Paul gets himself stuck in a frigid and childless marriage. So strong are his illusions, that even at the end of the novel he remains unaware of his wife’s infidelities.
9572818	/m/02pkgf4	The Freedom Writers Diary	Erin Gruwell	1999	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Straight from the front line of urban America, the inspiring story of one fiercely determined teacher and her remarkable students. As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of “unteachable, at-risk” students. One day she intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust—only to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the “Freedom Writers” in homage to the civil rights activists “The Freedom Riders.” With funds raised by a “Read-a-thon for Tolerance,” they arranged for Miep Gies, the courageous Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California, where she declared that Erin Gruwell’s students were “the real heroes.” Their efforts have paid off spectacularly, both in terms of recognition—appearances on “Prime Time Live” and “All Things Considered,” coverage in People magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley—and educationally. All 150 Freedom Writers have graduated from high school and are now attending college. With powerful entries from the students’ own diaries and a narrative text by Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary is an uplifting, unforgettable example of how hard work, courage, and the spirit of determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students.
9572915	/m/02pkghx	Vito la Déveine		1991		 After the intervention of Spirou and Fantasio in New York, the former mafia boss Don Vito Cortizone (from Spirou à New York) is deposed and is now called "Unlucky Vito". Cortizone's only hope of returning to power resides in the mysterious cargo of a seaplane which flies him over the Pacific. As the plane's pilot, Von Schnabbel, tries to extort money from him, the two men argue and Von Schnabbel is ejected from the cockpit. Cortizone is left alone with the plane's controls. After crashing the aircraft on the bottom of a lagoon in an atoll, he is helped by Spirou and Fantasio, on holiday nearby, who initially do not recognize him. Taking advantage of Fantasio's feelings of depression, Cortizone neutralizes Spirou thanks to a homemade drug, and persuades Fantasio to retrieve his cargo. This cargo later proves to be a large quantity of bad luck charms, stolen from Chinese Triads. However, the Chinese arrive, guided by Von Schnabbel. Cortizone, Spirou and Fantasio are taken captive but the two heroes manage to flee by leaving Cortizone and Von Schnabbel on the atoll, while the Chinese become victims of an explosion. <!--
9572984	/m/02pkgl_	A Melon for Ecstasy	John Wells	1971	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Written in an epistolary style, consisting of newspaper cuttings, letters, and extensive excerpts from the diary of its protagonist, the novel tells the story of Humphrey Mackevoy, a young man who achieves sexual satisfaction by boring holes in trees and penetrating with them with his penis. Intercut with the story of how his passion leads him into confusion, shame and prison, but eventually into acceptance of, and almost pride in his peculiarity, are a series of comic sub-plots involving the local naturalists' society (are the holes appearing in trees around town really the work of the sabre-toothed dormouse?); a feud between local councillors that leads to mass poisoning; Mackevoy's unwitting involvements in the sexual fantasies of teenager Rose Hopkins; and the increasingly outrageous behaviour of "mummy".
9573665	/m/02pkhl_	No place like home	Mary Higgins Clark	2005-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story starts with 10 year old Liza Barton accidentally shooting and killing her mother and shooting and injuring her stepfather Ted. She is acquitted of the crime and is later adopted by some distant relatives. Twenty-four years later, the story picks up with Liza determined to bury her past. She has changed her name to Celia Foster and married Alex Nolan after her first husband Larry's death. Alex, not aware of Celia's past, gifts her with a surprise birthday present—the keys to her own parents' home in a neighboring town Mendham. Alex, Celia and her 4 year old son, Jack, move into the home to find that it has been vandalized. Unsure of how Alex would react to her past, Celia decides to hide it from him for some more time. Flashes of the night her mom died come back to Celia as she sets out to find out more about what really happened that night. She discreetly tries to find information about her father's accident that led to his death a year before her mother's death. One by one, a few of the older residents of the town are murdered and some of the evidence leads to Celia being suspected. Celia finds her own life in danger, as the pursuit of the murderer's identity picks up pace.
9575173	/m/02pkkjn	One Virgin Too Many	Lindsey Davis	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 When a frightened child approaches Marcus Didius Falco with a plea for help, he does not believe her. One quarrel with the family does not mean that a relation is trying to kill her. Beset by his own family troubles, his new responsibilities as Procurator of the Sacred Poultry, and the continuing search for a new partner, he decides to send her home. However, he almost immediately regrets it. Gaia Laelia comes from a pre-eminent Roman family with a long history of key religious positions. Gaia, herself, is considered the most likely candidate for election to the office of Vestal Virgin. When she disappears, Falco is officially asked to investigate. Meanwhile, Helena's brother Aelianus has problems of his own. In an attempt to restart his political career - stalled by his younger brother's elopement with his wealthy fiancee - he tries to gain election to the Arval Brethren. During the night-time ceremonies, however, Aelianus stumbles across the body of one of the Brethren with his throat cut as if he had been sacrificed. Unable to bring in the Vigiles, Falco is forced to search the house of Gaia Laelia alone, aware that time is running out for finding her before the lottery takes place, or even alive.
9575453	/m/02pkkvq	Ode to a Banker	Lindsey Davis	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 When Marcus Didius Falco gives a poetry reading for family and friends, things get a little out of hand. The event is taken over by Aurelius Chrysippus, a wealthy Greek banker and patron to a group of struggling writers, who subsequently offers to publish Falco's work. A visit to the Chrysippus scriptorium implicates Falco in the murder of Chrysippus, found beaten to death with a scroll in his library. So Petronius Longus, in his role of enquiry chief of the vigiles, commissions him to investigate. The result is a trawl through the literary and financial worlds of Ancient Rome.
9575789	/m/02pkl8g	The Accusers	Lindsey Davis	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Fresh from his trip to Britannia, Marcus Didius Falco needs to re-establish himself back in Rome. A minor role in the trial of a senator entangles him in the machinations of two lawyers: Silus Italicus and Paccius Africanus, both ex-consuls with notorious reputations. The senator is convicted, but then dies, apparently by suicide. Silius hires Falco and his young associates - Aelianus and Justinus - to prove that it was murder, not an attempt to protect his heirs from further legal action. However, probing this tangle of upper-class secrets leads to fresh prosecutions. Falco finds himself in the role of advocate, exposing himself to powerful elements in Roman law. If he offends the wrong people, it might lead to charges he has not bargained for and ruin his family financially.
9576019	/m/02pklnh	Scandal Takes a Holiday	Lindsey Davis	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Marcus Didius Falco and Helena Justina travel to Ostia Antica, ostensibly on holiday. However, Falco is forced to confess to Petronius - present there on secondment - that he is in fact investigating the disappearance of Infamia, the pen name of the scribe who writes the gossip column for the Daily Gazette. He is at first believed to be merely a drunken truant, however investigations uncover some murky secrets. Piracy and other criminal traditions, long believed stamped out, are apparently alive and well in the region.
9576380	/m/02pkm0k	The World in the Evening	Christopher Isherwood	1954	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Marital problems cause Stephen Monk to return to his birthplace in Philadelphia. While there Monk undergoes a cathartic period of introspection. Though a member of the American jeunesse doree, Monk is an emotional and observant man. 'The World in the Evening' chronicles his bric-a-brac search for love.
9578187	/m/02pknw6	Dark Carnival	Laurence James	1992-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction"}	 Following immediately from the events at the end of Seedling, Ryan Cawdor completes his rescue of his ten-year-old son Dean, with the assistance of his friends Krysty Wroth, Dr. Theophilus Tanner, J. B. Dix, and Mildred Wyeth. They make their escape in the recce wag "borrowed" from Newyork "King of the Underworld" Harry Stanton, narrowly escaping the well organized group of scalie slavers seeking to recapture Dean. Eventually they make their way to the hidden redoubt in the heart of the ville, and make a MAT-TRANS jump after fending off an attack by members of the late Dred's Hawks gang. The jump is especially rough, leaving only Ryan conscious and functional once the companions make their arrival. He soon discovers that the redoubt beyond the door is occupied by members of a highly organized sec force, who immediately order the group's unconditional surrender via intercom. Ryan closes the door barely in time to prevent their death by gunfire, sending them on another jump. Afterward, Ryan reflects that the strange lightness he felt could have been due to lower-than-Earth gravity, fitting with at least one other possibly extraterran jump the companions have made recently; he keeps this reflection to himself. The next jump takes the group to a small but well-stocked redoubt, allowing them to replenish on ammo and supplies as well as replace clothing and weapons. Ryan also discovers a pre-nuke scrap of paper with handwritten numbers and abbreviations that he pockets, intending to examine it later. Two days later they exit the redoubt, finding themselves in a swampy jungle that Mildred guesses may be Florida. They make their way to the well-kept remains of a large theme park and are met (and disarmed at gunpoint) by the local ville's sec-boss, Kelly, who confirms their location. He takes the companions to see the ville's baron, Boss Larry, who J. B. and Ryan recognize as a very obese Larry Zapp; years prior, while riding with the Trader, J. B. and Ryan severely beat and crippled Larry following his attempt to bribe a member of the Trader's group into betraying him. During this explanation Zapp says that he knows the Trader to still be alive, which Ryan and J. B. refuse to believe. Though Larry was crippled for life, he ultimately agrees with Ryan that his beating was not unprovoked, and assures Ryan he will not have anyone in the group killed or otherwise harmed. The companions' apparent safety is short lived; a man named Adam Traven interrupts the meeting, and is immediately recognized by most of the group as a dangerous sociopath. Kelly later explains that Traven controls Zapp by supplying him with dreem, a highly addictive narcotic, as well as the services of Traven's harem of dreem-addicted followers. During the meeting Adam takes an obvious and sinister interest in Dean. The next day Ryan is called to meet with Boss Larry again, whereupon Traven demands Cawdor give him his son in exchange for the remaining companions' guaranteed safe exodus from the ville. Ryan stalls, telling Adam he will give him his answer the following day. Around the same time Ryan is able to decipher the pre-nuke note from the redoubt, and concludes it contains address codes for specific redoubts, in particular including the New Mexico redoubt near where Jak Lauren settled with his wife. Thus the companions decide to take Dean to stay with Jak for a few days, ensuring his safety while they take care of Traven who, as Ryan says, "needs chilling". He departs that night with his son for the redoubt. Ryan's theory proves correct, and the jump takes him and Dean to the still intact MAT-TRANS below the obliterated New Mexico redoubt. After a tense, long chase with some mutated coyotes, the two Cawdors reach Jak's farm. Jak readily agrees to watch over Dean, claiming he has a "blood debt" to Ryan. During the visit Ryan discovers Jak has a working two-way shortwave radio, and agrees to try to keep in touch using his own handheld unit (given to him my a heavily drugged Larry Zapp). Once Ryan returns to the ville things begin to go downhill quickly. Kelly makes a move against Adam and his followers, but his plan fails and he is brutally executed by being thrown off the top of a freefall-themed ride to his death. Traven is furious at Dean's supposed abduction by swamp dwellers, clearly not believing the story but not acting against Ryan. Instead he takes Doc Tanner hostage under the guise of "questioning", specifically over the disappearance of one of Traven's followers. Unbeknownst to Traven, the missing woman, Sky, was killed by Tanner after he discovered (mid-coitus) that the "dark snaking" she had mentioned participating in was actually the brutal murder of a wrinklie. Ryan learns this before he meets with Adam; he negotiates safe passage for everyone in exchange for his participation in another "dark snaking" that evening. Ryan is brought along armed only with his knife and panga. During the evening's kill, the slaughter of a family of four, Ryan is able to destroy the house's electrical box, plunging the house into near-pitch darkness. In the confusion he kills seven of Traven's eight followers; Adam and the other survivor retreat to the ville's center. Now accompanied by the rest of his friends, Ryan follows Traven, carrying out an assault that ends with all of Traven's supporters either fleeing or dead and Traven using Doc as a human shield. Distracted by facing off with the companions, Adam fails to see Larry Zapp rise to his feet (with considerable difficulty) behind him, and is forced to release Doc Tanner when Zapp simply falls forward onto Traven, trapping him under his enormous weight. Zapp soon after dies, shot multiple times at point blank range by the panicking Traven. Ryan and J. B. roll Larry's corpse off of Adam, then ensure his slow demise by shooting him in the knees, elbows, and stomach and then leaving him to his fate. The group makes the jump to the New Mexico redoubt, spurned on by mostly unintelligible but urgent messages from Jak received on the portable two-way. When they arrive Jak is waiting to meet them, and tells Ryan that while he was gone Dean was captured by a band of slavers, who departed through the MAT-TRANS. He also is able to tell Ryan who is leading the slavers, someone Ryan has crossed paths with two times prior: Zimyanin.
9578551	/m/02pkpdr	A Talent for War	Jack McDevitt	1989-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins as Alex Benedict receives word from a cousin that his uncle Gabriel was among the passengers on an interstellar that disappeared in Armstrong space. A package arrives from his uncle’s lawyers informing Alex that he is his uncle’s heir and giving Alex a sealed message from his uncle. Alex learns that his uncle had been working on a special archeological project that Alex is to pursue now that his uncle cannot. Alex must return to his uncle's home on Rimway and look in the “Leisha Tanner” file to recover relevant research and notes. The message does not discuss the nature of the project, other than to mention Hugh Scott, an old acquaintance. However, en route to Rimway, Alex learns that his uncle’s house has been burgled and, when he arrives, that the Tanner file is missing and all of his uncle's computerized records have been destroyed. From this point onward, the story follows two increasingly intertwined threads, a mystery in the present and a history narrated in the backstory. The mystery is the nature of Uncle Gabe’s project, which Alex works to discover. As Alex does so, he becomes increasingly immersed in the history of the Resistance and its principal leader and hero, Christopher Sim. The story switches back and forth between the developing mystery and the historical narrative. Alex visits the local police inspector and learns that the burglars apparently wanted only the Tanner file. The inspector, a social friend of Alex's uncle, can shed little light on Gabe’s project other than to note that Alex's uncle seemed distracted for the three months before his death and that he had become a “nut” on the subject of Christopher Sim and the Resistance. Chase Kolpath visits Alex at his uncle's house. Before disappearing, Gabriel Benedict had hired Ms. Kolpath to investigate the last flight of the Tenandrome, Hugh Scott's Planetary Survey ship, and then meet Gabe at a world near the Veiled Lady star cluster and pilot them to an unspecified destination. Alex's uncle disappeared before reaching his destination, and owed Ms. Kolpath a considerable sum. Alex agrees to pay what his uncle owed her and asks her to assist him in his investigations. From the planned logistics of the trip, Ms. Kolpath estimates that they were to travel from 800 to 1,500 light years distance. Chase doesn’t know Gabe’s objective, only that it had something to do with the Tenandrome. That ship had explored the Veiled Lady about three years before Gabe’s death and returned unexpectedly early. “Apparently, they saw something. . . Gabe wanted to know what, but I could never find out.” Alex researches the Tenandrome flight but finds no indication of anything unusual besides a mechanical breakdown. He then attempts to visit Hugh Scott, but finds that Scott has been away from home for months. One of his neighbors notes that Scott’s personality has changed since the Tenandrome flight. Like Alex's uncle, Scott has become obsessed by the Resistance and Christopher Sim. Alex gradually learns more of the history of the Resistance and is puzzled by the fact that during the war Sim’s forces, and especially Sim himself, appear to have been present and in action at widely separated locations virtually simultaneously. He contacts the local Ashiyyur representative office to review Ashiyyur records of the war, which might shed some light on the problem. Alex meets S’Kalian and experiences mind-to-mind contact for the first time. He learns that the Ashiyyur are aware of the “problem” of Sim’s nearly simultaneous appearances in distant places and account for it as human scholars have done, by assuming that Sim’s fleet included as many as three other Dellacondan vessels disguised as the Corsarius, Sim's ship, as a form of psychological warfare. Dellaconda itself is the next destination, as Chase and Alex continue their hunt for Hugh Scott. Alex visits Christopher Sim’s home and the school where he taught before the war; both are maintained as shrines to his memory. He locates and meets with Hugh Scott, in spite of Scott’s obvious reluctance. Scott will not say anything about theTenandrome mission, except to confirm that the survey ship found something and that there was a good reason to keep it secret. Alex startles Scott by guessing that the Tenadrome had found a Dellacondan warship, but Scott will say no more. The mystery begins to unravel. Alex and Chase decide that whatever the Tenandrome found, Lesha Tanner had found it first, 200 years before. Alex has an inspiration – the location of the missing something is obliquely described in a poem by Walford Candles, to whom Tanner must have confided the secret. A collection of Candles' poems, Rumors of Earth, had been in Uncle Gabe’s bedroom when Alex returned, and was open to that poem. Gabriel Benedict must have had the same insight. Alex is able to find the university researcher who helped his uncle work with the clues in Candles’ poem and who identifies a location about 1,300 light years into the Veiled Lady as the primary locus of search. Alex and Chase rent a ship and begin a two month journey through Armstrong space. At their destination, they find a red dwarf star with two planets in its habitable zone. One appears to be a terrestrial world and they move toward it. From a distance, they are able to see something artificial orbiting this world. Moving closer, they can see first that it is a ship, then that it is a warship, and then that it is a Dellacondan warship. Finally, they can make out clearly the ship’s insignia – the famous markings of Corsarius, Christoper Sim’s own. They board the ship and find that the Corsarius has power and appears functional. Indeed, the ship appears virtually normal, aside from a few mechanical malfunctions due to age. They play back the captain’s log, and unexpectedly find that it ends before the battle at Rigel at which Sim died. They listen to the whole record and hear a Sim’s-eye view of the history of the Resistance. It becomes clear that as time had passed, Sim became increasingly angry at the shortsightedness of the major human worlds and increasingly disturbed by the casualties among “our finest and bravest.” Toward the end, “his anger flared: there will be a Confederacy one day, . . . but they will not construct it on the bodies of my men.” Gradually, Alex works out the answer. Christopher Sim became disillusioned with the war and wanted to sue for peace. His brother Tarien and other Resistance leaders seized him and marooned him on this planet to keep him from surrendering. Alex confirms this by searching the planet in a lander and finding Sim’s camp. There is no indication there what happened to Sim. Chase reports from orbit that an Ashiyyur warship is inbound at high speed. Then another appears, slowing to make orbit around Sim's world of exile. Alex warns Chase to abandon their rented ship for the Corsarius; she does so just before the first Ashiyyur warship destroys their rented ship. Alex joins her and learns that the Armstrong drive on the Corsarius won’t be fully charged for about a day. Their problem is to stay alive until the Armstrong drive is ready. They borrow a classic maneuver from one of Sim’s battles and leave orbit at high speed headed directly toward the incoming Ashiyyur warship, which cannot slow its speed quickly enough to meet them. It uses lasers to disable Corsarius magnetic drives; Chase realizes too late that she has forgotten to raise the ship’s shields. The Ashiyyur warship reverses its trajectory and reaches them about ten hours before they can jump. It demands their surrender. Through a strategem, Alex and Chase are able to fire Corsarius’ major weapons at it, damaging it badly and forcing it to flee. Ten hours later, the interstellar drive activates. It is not an Armstrong drive but something else, product of Rashim Machesney’s genius. In an eye blink, Corsarius is in orbit around Rimway, and safe. The huge (if temporary) technological advantage conferred on humanity by the new drive ends the human-Ashiyyur rivalry; the Perimeter stabilizes and more peaceful relations develop between the two civilizations. In an epilogue to the novel, the reader learns, with Hugh Scott, that Christopher Sim did not die on the planet where he was marooned. Sim was rescued by Leisha Tanner and lived afterward under the assumed identity of Jerome Courtney, spending considerable time as a respected lay brother at a Catholic monastery on an isolated planet. There, he continued to write on various historical and philosophical subjects.
9584209	/m/02pkwzn	Pride of Carthage	David Anthony Durham	2005	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is a retelling of Hannibal Barca's, the Carthaginian military leader, assault on the Roman Republic. The novel begins in Ancient Spain, where Hannibal Barca sets out with tens of thousands of soldiers and 30 elephants. After conquering the Roman-allied city of Saguntum, Hannibal accepts Rome's declaration of war. He befriends peoples disillusioned by Rome and outwits the opponents who believe the land route he has chosen is impossible. Hannibal’s armies suffers brutal losses as they pass through the Pyrenees Mountains, ford the Rhone River, and make a winter crossing of the Alps before descending to fight battles at the Trebia River, Lake Trasimene, Cannae and Zama. The novel ends roughly where the war ends, although Hannibal lived on for some years as both a political figure and a mercenary soldier. The novel features a wide cast of characters of many nationalities, from famous generals down to infantrymen and campfollowers, from Numidians to Macedonians. Durham draws a complex portrait of Hannibal, both as a warrior and as a husband and father.
9584613	/m/02pkx99	Gabriel's Story	David Anthony Durham	2001	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 David Anthony Durham made his literary debut with a haunting novel which, in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, views the American West through an original lens. Set in the 1870s, the novel tells the tale of Gabriel Lynch, an African American youth who settles with his family in the plains of Kansas. Dissatisfied with the drudgery of homesteading and growing increasingly disconnected from his family, Gabriel forsakes the farm for a life of higher adventure. Thus begins a forbidding trek into a terrain of austere beauty, a journey begun in hope, but soon laced with danger and propelled by a cast of brutal characters. By writing about African American characters, Durham gave voice to a population seldom included in our Western lore.
9584814	/m/02pkxhv	Walk Through Darkness	David Anthony Durham	2002	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 When he learns that his pregnant wife has been spirited off to a distant city, William responds as any man might—he drops everything to pursue her. But as a fugitive slave in antebellum America, he must run a terrifying gauntlet, eluding the many who would re-enslave him while learning to trust the few who dare to aid him on his quest. Among those hunting William is Morrison, a Scot who as a young man fled the miseries of his homeland only to discover more brutal realities in the New World. Bearing many scars, including the loss of his beloved brother, Morrison tracks William for reasons of his own, a personal agenda rooted in tragic events that have haunted him for decades. Walk Through Darkness is a provocative meditation on racial identity, freedom and equality. It followed Durham's award-winning Gabriel's Story and preceded his bestselling Pride of Carthage.
9585677	/m/02pky98	Sarah	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sarah follows the story of Abraham through the eyes and perspective of Sarah. The Biblical account of the life of Sarah is contained in Genesis 12 - 22 (about 16 pages) most of which is centered around Abraham. Card expands the story into a novel of over 300 pages, so many of the details and characters are fictional. The core story-line does not deviate from the story told in Genesis, although some of the details are reinterpreted. Sarah begins life as a princess of Ur in Mesopotamia. She is hard-working and humble especially compared to her older sister Qira. Sarai is promised to become a priestess for the goddess Asherah, while Qira is to marry a desert prince named Lot. Sarai's thoughts on a life as a priestess change when Lot arrives with his uncle Abram who promises Sarai that he'll come back and marry her.
9590436	/m/02pl27x	Triage	Scott Anderson	1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mark Walsh, a young war photographer, returns to New York in 1989 after being injured in Kurdistan whilst on assignment. He had spent a few frightening days in the recovery ward of a dilapidated, overcrowded hospital inside a cave, but can this explain his sleeplessness, distraction, his wounds' inability to heal? Elena, Mark's Spanish girlfriend, grows more and more alarmed by his strange behavior, while she also tries to calm her pregnant friend Diane, whose photographer husband has gone missing in the same war zone. As Mark continues to deteriorate, Elena's grandfather sweeps onto the scene. Joaquin is the last person from whom Elena wants to accept help; once very close to him, she ended all contact after learning of his role in "purifying" conscience-stricken officers after the Spanish Civil War. In treating Mark, Joaquin sees a way back into his granddaughter's life, and, despite Elena's disapproval, the two men begin to forge an extraordinary relationship. Eventually, all three travel to Joaquin's manor home in Granada, Spain so that Mark can find a safe haven in which to heal. It is in this romantic and haunted Spanish valley where both men's secrets surface with life-altering force and where Mark and Elena attempt to know and love each other again, with the discovery of her grandfather's secrets of the incurrables and of Mark's knowing that Colin is dead and that he could not save him.
9594387	/m/02pl6z3	Acacia: The War With The Mein	David Anthony Durham	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Leodan Akaran, ruler of the Known World, has inherited generations of apparent peace and prosperity, won ages ago by his ancestors. A widower of high intelligence, he presides over an empire called Acacia, after the idyllic island from which he rules. He dotes on his four children and hides from them the dark realities of traffic in drugs and human lives on which their prosperity depends. He hopes that he might change this, but powerful forces stand in his way. A deadly assassin sent from a race called the Mein, exiled long ago to an ice-locked stronghold in the frozen north, strikes at Leodan in the heart of Acacia while other enemies unleash surprise attacks across the empire. On his deathbed, Leodan puts into play a plan to allow his children to escape, each to their separate destiny. His children begin a quest to avenge their father's death and restore the Acacian empire–this time on the basis of universal freedom. The novel is notable for the complexity of Durham's imagined world, one in which political, economic, mythological and morally ambiguous forces all influence the fates of the ethnically and culturally diverse population. In some ways the novel uses familiar fantasy frameworks, but over the course of the novel many fantasy tropes are overturned or skewed in surprising ways. It is a fairly self-contained tale, but the author is at work on more volumes set in this world.
9595773	/m/02pl8ll	The School Story	Andrew Clements	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 As the novel begins, twelve-year-old Natalie Nelson is almost done writing a novel called The Cheater. It is uncommon for someone her age to get published, but Natalie's best friend, Zoe Reisman, thinks The Cheater is good enough. Natalie wants her mother, who works as an editor at Shipley Junior Books, to edit her manuscript, but she doesn't want her mother to find out that she wrote it. To accomplish this, Natalie uses the pseudonym Cassandra Day, and Zoe acts as her literary agent, fabricating the "Sherry Clutch Literary Agency" and renting a cheap office. The girls realize that they could use some adult help, and enlist Ms. Clayton, a teacher at their school. Later, when they are offered a publishing contract, they show it to Zoe's father, who is a lawyer. At the end of the story, Natalie's mom and Zoe arrange a publication party for The Cheater. At the party, Natalie finally tells her mom that she is Cassandra Day. It is hinted that Natalie will write more.
9596383	/m/02pl96w	The Rats	James Herbert	1974	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel opens introducing the reader to an alcoholic vagrant, resting in an abandoned and forgotten lock-keeper's house by a canal. As he is ruminating over the injustices inflicted upon him in his life, he is suddenly set upon by a pack of dog-sized rats and is devoured alive. Harris, a young, east London art teacher notices that one of his students has a bloodied bandage around his hand. When he enquires as to what caused the damage, the student answers that he was attacked by a rat. Meanwhile, a baby girl and her dog are killed by the giant rats, now aided by packs of smaller black rats. The girl's mother rescues her daughter's mutilated body, but not before sustaining bites as well. Harris takes the student to the hospital and sees the grieving mother with her dead child. According to the doctor, the number of seemingly unprovoked rat attacks have strangely increased. The next rat attack occurs at the remains of a bombsite, where a group of squabbling vagrants are slaughtered. Harris is visited at work by the Minister of Health, Mr Foskins, who reveals that the bitten student, and all the other surviving victims of rat attacks, died of a mysterious disease 24 hours after being bitten. Foskins asks Harris to keep the existence of the disease a secret and lead an exterminator to the area where the student had been bitten. Accompanied by the exterminator, Harris goes to the canal described by the student and sights a group of giant rats. Harris attempts to contact the police while the exterminator follows the rats who then attack and kill the exterminator. The rat attacks become increasingly more daring, as more and more public places are attacked. A tube station is assaulted, leaving few survivors. Next, Harris’ own school is attacked, resulting in the death of the headmaster. With the existence of the rats' disease now becoming public knowledge, a meeting is held, in which a young researcher by the name of Stephen Howard comes up with the idea of using a virus to infect the rats. The virus is injected into several puppies which are left in areas of the attacks. This results in the deaths of thousands of rats, which crawl to the surface to die. A few weeks later however, the rats adapt to the virus, yet at the same time, losing the toxicity of their bites. The rats brutally attack a cinema and overrun the London Zoo. Based on the fact that rats communicate with each other using ultrasound, a plan is formulated to use ultrasonic machines to lure the rats into gas chambers. Foskins is dismissed as Health Minister and reveals to Harris that he’s been investigating possible clues as to the rats origins and comes to the conclusion that they were smuggled from the tropics by a Zoologist living near a canal. Pursuing the disgraced health minister past waves of entranced rats; Harris finds the abandoned house and enters it. He goes into the cellar and finds Foskins' corpse being devoured by rats of unusually great size. He kills them after a bloody battle and discovers the rats' leader hidden in the shadows; a white, hairless and obese rat with two heads. Harris kills the creature and leaves. The epilogue indicates that one rat survived the purge by being trapped in the basement of a grocery shop. There, it gives birth to a new litter, including a new white rat.
9596748	/m/02pl9lx	The Fire Within	Chris D'Lacey	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is about a man named David Rain who goes to college and needs a place to stay. He finds a house on Wayward Crescent and moves in as a tenant, but little does he know that one step into the house would change his life forever. The owner of the house, Elizabeth Penykettle (also called Liz for short), gladly lets David stay with her and Lucy, her daughter. Liz earns her living by making clay dragons. The dragons are revealed to be more than meets the eye when Liz crafts David his own dragon, Gadzooks. David immediately takes a liking to his story-writing dragon, but is surprised when he begins to receive visions, almost telepathic, in his head, depicting the dragon writing words on his notebook. One day, David overhears Liz telling Lucy the story of Gawain's Fire Tear (the story of the last dragon on Earth) which gives David and the reader a greater understanding of the dragons. After hearing this story, David ties many clues together and comes up with a theory that Liz and Lucy are descendants of Guinevere, a woman in the story who comforted Gawain as he died. As time passes, David finds his relationship with his dragon slowly declining. David must give his dragon love in order to save Zookie(Gadzooks) and prevent his fire within from diminishing forever. Lucy, an eleven year-old girl, loves squirrels. For Lucy's birthday, David writes a book about the squirrels that has been named, and creates a made-up story about them. Some parts of the story that David writes have a funny coincidence with what happens in real life. Lucy brings it on David to help her catch a half-blind grey squirrel she named Conker. The two eventually catch Conker along with another squirrel named Snigger, and bring them to an animal shelter for help. Conker's eye eventually heals, but it is revealed that Conker has kidney failure and could very well die soon. David and Lucy, along with a girl from the animal shelter named Sophie, let Conker free in the library gardens. Later, Conker dies a happy death, and David finishes the story, earning him Sophie's heart.
9597831	/m/02plbwz	Halting State	Charles Stross	2007-10-02	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot opens with a faux email addressed to Nigel MacDonald, listing a job offer. It is later learned that this email is for a work-at-home programmer position at Hayek Associates PLC. It is then learned that a cybercrime has been committed in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Avalon Four. A robbery of several thousand euros worth of "prestige items" occurs in the game's central bank, led by a band of orcs and a "dragon for fire support." It is later noticed that this seemingly simple incident has deep implications - both financial (Hayek stock price) and logistical (compromised cryptographic keys), which sets the stage for the latter half of the novel. The main story is then divided between police chapters as Sue, investigation sections as Elaine, and programmer and gamer geek sections as Jack. Initially separate storylines, the three inevitably join forces to combat a much larger conspiracy that hinges on international espionage and counterterrorism. These initial segments track the bank robbery and mystery man, Nigel MacDonald, who is revealed as a shadow identity created from Jack Reed's credentials as a programmer and gamer. Eventually, it is discovered that the entirety of the European network backbone—including its root keyservers -- has been compromised by Chinese hackers. It is more or less at this point that the wool is removed from the reader's eyes that "it's no longer a game," while Jack and Elaine develop a romance between action segments. Using the game Spooks as a sock puppet for real espionage missions, Jack and Elaine are sent to uncover the identity of a mole inside Hayek Associates, which is subsequently revealed to be a front for the government. The mole is said to have leaked cryptographic keys to "Team Red", or Chinese interests, through a blacknet. For contrast, the European protagonists are called simply, "Team Blue". It is at this point that the stage is set for the final confrontation. Using Nigel's shadow identity as bait for Team Red's mole, Elaine and Jack successfully expose and capture Marcus Hackman, who is revealed to be the mole and main antagonist. It is then revealed that Hackman had staged the whole thing in order to use strategic put options to earn €26 million when his own company, Hayek Associates, took the fall for the initial robbery sequence. Jack is shot twice in the chest during this exchange, but is seen recovering in a hospital bed by the end of the book. The novel closes with an email addressed to Hackman that resembles a 419 scam from a Nigerian banker, implying that is where he hid the money.
9601299	/m/02plg2d	The House of Pendragon I: The Firebrand	Debra A. Kemp	2003-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 King Arthur, the Pendragon, lies dead after the Battle of Camlann. Lin, his only child by his queen, Gwenhwyfar, is one of five remaining members of the Round Table. Civil strife has laid waste to the unified Britain forged during Arthur's reign. In Lin's warrior persona she suppresses her gender. Through years of habit, she presents an outward calm for the soldiers who have come to accept a woman's presence and command in the army. To be an effective fighting unit, they cannot be distracted by her gender either. Lin tells the men of her half-brother, Modred's defeat and that her father has been taken to a place of healing. Beneath her stoic facade, she is torn by grief and self-doubt. She knows a mere handful of men still live who would support her claim as Arthur's heir. In her mind, it is not enough. In her mind, she is unworthy to follow in her father's wake. She denies her birthright and does not return to Camelot. Twelve years pass in restless wandering. Nightmares of Camlann and of a past that she has kept hidden continue to plague her thoughts and dreams. She is now married to GAHERIS (RIS), her father's nephew, by whom she has borne three children; BEAR (ARTHUR), MELORA, and GERNIE, with a fourth child expected. Her children are unaware of their mother's true identity as the Pendragon's daughter. The family at last camps in the shadow of Camelot. The homecoming is at once difficult and joyous. Lin's secret gnaws at her mind constantly. The children are excited and curious, having heard countless tales of Camelot from their uncle, DAFYDD. While exploring the deserted fortress of Camelot, Bear questions his mother and forces her to realize he is ready for the truth. Yet she does not reveal this immediately. Instead, Lin relates her childhood as a slave in QUEEN MORGAUSE's holding of DUNN NA CARRAICE in the distant kingdom of Orkney, before she learned the truth of her birth and her own royalty. Once begun, the catharsis must run its course. Lin's earliest memories are of sorrow and hardship. At five years old, the only mother she knows dies, leaving Lin alone with Dafydd, the boy she believes is her true elder brother. She hides the pain of abandonment from others and establishes her lifelong pattern of self-denial and internalization. While at work, Lin often watches the royal family. She especially enjoys Orkney's princes sparring in the practice yard. Prince Modred, the youngest, gains her sympathy when she sees the cruel jokes his older brothers play on him. She even comes to the prince's aid. Modred resents anyone knowing of his weak moments. That a mere slave witnesses two of those moments is not to be tolerated or forgiven. Dafydd is proud his sister displays such compassion. He feels duty-bound to take care of Lin after his mother's death. During the next few years, he hones his skills as a story-teller. His tales of Camelot's honor ease many of the horrors of slavery which surround him and his sister. Then he receives his leather slave's collar, a coming of age "gift" from Queen Morgause, their mistress. Their owner. The event shatters Lin's fragile peace with her lot in life. Questions of the established order form in Lin's mind. She rejects her brother's slavery to the point of a futile attack on the overseer. She is given a small taste of the lash as a lesson. Dafydd is far more accepting of their situation than Lin. He finds it better to survive with as few scars as possible. Lin's beating breaks his heart. He tries to dissuade her rebellion while tending her wounds later that night. For two years, he seems successful. At best, Lin's calm is temporary. On Lin's twelfth birthday, she is collared like so many slave before had been. She also gains Prince Modred as her master. The prince is now seventeen. He has recently been told by his mother that his father is the celebrated Arthur Pendragon and that Lin is his half-sister, his father's legitimate child. She stands in his way to the throne. She is the same slave who helped him escape the outhouse his brothers had locked him inside of a few years ago. She heard his screams, she must know his fears. Years of competition with his older brothers and warrior training have set the pattern of violence in Modred. He has never held any sort of power in Dunn na Carraice. He has ultimate power over Lin. Lin only knows and reacts according to her instincts. The blood of kings flows through her veins. Far from subduing Lin—as Morgause hopes—slavery brings out Lin's strengths. She resists her collar, refusing to use the word "master" or bend her knees in subservience. For her open rebellion against the collar, Modred has Lin flogged, enjoying the sight of her pain. Afterwards, he rapes her to further prove his mastery over his possession. Again, Dafydd cares for his sister. He does not understand her defiance. He wants her to accept reality. They are slaves and can do nothing to change that fact. One thing he does know about Lin is her need for his stories about Camelot. He redoubles his efforts. To Lin, Camelot is a beacon of hope and of equality—things Dunn na Carraice and her life lack. Prince Modred treats her like a beast, branding her as his property. He embodies the inequality she despises. Each fuels the passions of the other. While outwardly continuing her resistance, the intensity of the punishments she endures take their toll on her body and her mind. Lin begins to believe in her unworthiness to be loved and to love in return. She sees herself as damaged goods no husband will ever want to touch while at the same time having no desire to ever be touched by a man again. Her sleep becomes tortured by nightmares and she does not eat, except when Dafydd presses the issue. Easily provoked by Modred, she invites the beatings in the hope the next one will bring release from her suffering through death. Lin's self-neglect grieves Dafydd, yet he admires his sister's strength of will and the courage she displays in defying Prince Modred. He has come to understand that resistance is as important to Lin as story-telling is to himself. He cannot dream of not weaving his tales. Lin's struggle reminds Dafydd, and all of Orkney's slaves, of their humanity. Dafydd becomes determined to keep his hero, his sister, alive. Obsessed with quelling his slave's spirit, Prince Modred's abuses intensify. He soon includes Dafydd in his tortures, since he knows Lin feels Dafydd's pain as her own. Lin realizes there is only one cruelty Prince Modred has left with which to break her. It is but a matter of time before he uses it. The time is brief. But through a misunderstanding in the actual order given, Lin is sent to the auction block along with her brother. She watches Dafydd displayed on the block, filled with horror and utterly defeated. Meanwhile, Modred is unaware of his moment of triumph. Lin's sale is not part of his plan. Lin loses all hope when she watches Dafydd disappear after being sold. In his memory, she goes to the block as defiant as ever and brings but a few coins for those who would profit from human flesh. She is taken to Britain's mainland in the cargo-hold of a ship laden with other souls sharing her fate. Not long after disembarking, Lin discovers that Dafydd had been on the ship also, as a cabin-boy. But the shadow of yet another auction looming in their future taints their joy of reunion. Now on foot, the slavers' destination is the northern British city of Ebrauc. Unbeknownst to the slave traders, the Pendragon is in residence in Ebrauc when they arrive on market day. King Arthur has tried to outlaw slavery in his realm, yet has been unable to stop it. Performing errands, CAI, seneschal and foster-brother to the Pendragon, passes a pavilion with an auction in progress. Curiosity leads him inside to investigate. Appalled to see children for sale, he uses his authority to halt the activity and cuts away the collars from those who have not been sold. Lin is among them. Cai notices the lean, auburn-haired girl with the bruised face and aloof stance in the midst of the others. Something about the girl draws his attention to study her more closely. Recognition sparks. She bears an uncanny resemblance to the Queen. Cai takes Lin to Arthur. Arthur also sees his wife's features in the child standing before him. After a long interview he has no doubt, the girl who says she came from Orkney is his long-missing daughter, long-believed dead. He welcomes Lin to his residence and tells her the truth of her identity.. He explains how her mother, Gwenhwyfar, did not know of the serious rift between him and his half-sister, Morgause. Gwenhwyfar only thought to send their daughter to fosterage among kin. Lin is sickened by the news that Modred is her half-brother. She tells her father of the rapes and of the child she miscarried not many days before. Furious with his half-sister and the boy he sired, Arthur wants to avenge his innocent daughter for the abuse she endured as a slave. He is willing to leave immediately for Orkney. Lin has selfish reasons for stopping her father. She views slavery as a stigma and wants it to remain secret. Public vengeance means exposure. She also realizes she cannot let her father fight her battles. When the time comes for her to confront Modred, she knows she cannot be hiding behind her father. She must face Modred alone as she has always done.
9602243	/m/02plgvv	Planeswalker	Lynn Abbey	1998-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with Urza becoming a Planeswalker. After the cataclysm at the end of The Brothers' War, the 'walker spark within Urza, giving him the ability to traverse between worlds, as well as immortality. He swears to avenge his brother by destroying the plane of Phyrexia. From within Phyrexia, he saves a newt by the name of Xantcha, and brings her to live with him on Dominaria. Together, they plan attacks and moves against the Phyrexian hordes. Xantcha is sent on a mission to Efuan Pincar, where she buys a slave boy by the name of Ratepe. When she brings him home to Urza, he believes that Ratepe is his brother Mishra reincarnate. Ratepes family and village had been destroyed by the Red Stripes, and they soon find out that the Red Stripes are under the control of Phyrexian sleepers. Urza invades Phyrexia with several Dragon Engines, but is defeated without being able to cause severe damage to the core of the world. He manages to Planeswalk away, and slinks back to Dominaria to recover his losses. During a visit to Efuan Pincar, Xantcha and Ratepe see a group of men who they believe to be sleepers leaving for the forest, and follow them to stop them from opening a portal to their home plane. They engage in battle, and Xantcha slays the sleepers, but not before a Phyrexian priest comes through the portal. She defeats the priest, but has much more trouble destroying the portal. Using an incendiary artifact that Urza constructed, she blows the portal apart, and severely injures herself. As a newt however, she does not have nerves, and is able to stay alive. While Xantcha is unconscious, Urza takes her to Serra's Realm, a haven of Angels and White mana, where the air sustains your hunger. Urza is injured from his endeavours with the Phyrexians, and is given use of Serra's cocoon, a healing device. Xantcha, however, is labelled as evil due to her Black Mana source, and is sentenced to be killed by exile. She survives her ordeal, and is returned to Serra's palace by a group of Archangels by Urza's command. She too is healed in Serra's cocoon, and the two soon return to Dominaria. As the Phyrexian occupation in Efuan Pincar is getting out of hand, Urza constructs devices (called spiders) which cause the destruction of glistening oil (a Phyrexians Lifeblood) by emitting a high frequency sound. He begins to build thousands of them, to spread all throughout Dominaria. They are created to be set off at the peak of the Glimmer Moon. Ratepe also helps to create the devices, as well as creating a few variations. One of which is made to destroy stone. Urza and Xantcha begin to deposit these devices throughout the land, and Ratepe begs Xantcha to deliver his stone destruction spiders to the church and Red Stripes Barracks. While inside the church, Xantcha is led down to a lower chamber. Here, she encounters Gix, the supposedly destroyed Demon Lord of Phyrexia. She escapes, but is not able to distribute spider through the rest of the building or the barracks. Afterwords, Urza and Xantcha seek out a world called Equilor, near the edge of the universe. It is said that all the knowledge of the universe can be found here, and Urza wants to find out the origins of the Phyrexians. When they arrive, they find out that the Phyrexians were descendants of the Thran, an ancient artifact race, not a rebel Planeswalker. Urza tries to take control of the plane, saying the knowledge they have could make them ultimately powerful, but the people refuse, and Urza is forced to go back to Dominaria. Urza and Xantcha finish distributing the spiders, and the night of the Glimmer Moon draws near. Ratepe and Xantcha, who have fallen in love, stay within Pincar City to watch the destruction of the Phyrexians. When the Moon begins to rise, sleepers begin to scream as their glistening oil boils within them. When the Moon strikes its Zenith, the oil explodes, killing all the Phyrexians within the town, except one. Gix emerges from the temple, and begins to exact his revenge upon the citizens. Urza comes to destroy him, and engages in a battle of Sorcery. Losing, Gix flees and hides within the confines of the Temple. Urza follows, along with Xantcha and Ratepe. Urza begins strongly, but Gix focuses all his power into a beam, which sucks Urza's eyes (Mightstone and Weakstone) from his head and begins dragging them towards a Phyrexian portal. If the eyes were to go through the portal, Urza would lose his power, and become defenseless. Ratepe and Xanctha, who have just reached the bottom chamber, recognize the peril. Together, they step into the beam, breaking the link between Gix and the stones. Urza regains his power, and quickly vanquishes Gix. Ratepe and Xantcha, are stuck within Phyrexia, sacrificing themselves to save the entire plane of Dominaria. pl:Wędrowiec (powieść Lynn Abbey)
9602972	/m/02plhml	Exile to Hell	Isaac Asimov	1968-05		 A man named Jenkins is put on trial after accidentally damaging a computer system that potentially could have a disastrous effect on the totally computerized underground society in which he lives. The trial, which is carried out by computers programmed with prosecution and defence arguments, finds Jenkins guilty of equipment damage, a major crime by the society's laws. He is sentenced to permanent exile. Only at the end of the story is it revealed that the society is built beneath the surface of the Moon, with a totally conditioned and computer-controlled environment, and that the place of exile is on the surface of the Earth.
9604409	/m/02pljx6	The Humorous Courtier				 The Duke of Parma, Foscari, has been plying his marriage suit to the Duchess of Mantua &mdash; but he suddenly disappears from her court. The Duchess announces that she intends to select a husband from her own courtiers. Egged on by her new favorite Giotto and her lady in waiting Laura, each lord flatters himself that he is the favored candidate. Depazzi practices his eloquence with rehearsed speeches, while Volterre prides himself on his command of foreign languages. Contarini, a married man, actually tries to convince his wife to kill herself to leave him single again; when she naturally declines, he attempts to bribe Giotto into committing adultery with her so that a divorce can result. The misogynistic Orseolo portrays himself as a great lover; the elderly Comachio joins his compatriots in making a fool of himself. In the end, the Duchess gently mocks and reproves her eccentric courtiers, and announces that she will marry Giotto &mdash; who turns out to be the Duke of Parma in disguise.
9608612	/m/02plpjc	Chapayev and Void	Victor Pelevin			 The novel is written as a first-person narrative of Peotr Pustota () and in the introduction to this book it is claimed that unlike Dmitri Furmanov's book "Chapayev", this book is the truth. The book is set in two different times - after the October revolution and in modern Russia. In the post-revolutionary period Pyotr Pustota is a poet who has fled from St.Petersurg to Moscow and who takes up the identity of a Soviet political commissar and meets a strange man named Vasily Chapayev who is some sort of an army commander. He spends his days drinking samogon, taking drugs and talking about the meaning of life with Chapayev. Every night (according to his post-revolutionary life) Pustota has nightmares about him being locked up in a psychiatric hospital because of his beliefs of being a poet from the beginning of the century. He shares the room in the hospital with three other men, each with his very individual form of fake identity. Until the end of the book it isn't perfectly clear, which of Petr's identities is the real one and whether there is such a thing as a real identity at all.
9610331	/m/02plrnf	e	Matt Beaumont		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The setting of e is the very beginning of the new millennium inside the London office of Miller Shanks, a prominent (fictitious) international advertising agency. When the novel opens two major projects are under way: the shooting, on location in Mauritius, of a commercial for a porn channel; and preparations for a sales pitch, with Coca-Cola as the company's prospective client. While the Coca-Cola advertising campaign is supposed to be kept confidential, David Crutton, the Chief Executive Officer, is astonishingly computer illiterate and inadvertently sends carbon copies of every single one of his e-mails to the Helsinki office of Miller Shanks. Simon Horne, the Creative Director, has stolen the "original" idea on which the Coca-Cola campaign is based from two recent college graduates who are looking for work and does not believe that the past will ever catch up with him. In the end it does, but although the campaign can be patched up in the last minute with the help of the Helsinki office, Coca-Cola finally decide not to award their advertising account to Miller Shanks after one of their female top level managers has watched a secretly filmed video on the Internet showing Horne in his office having sex with a ladyboy. The shooting in Mauritius goes terribly wrong already during the flight to the island when the breast implants of one of the four models hired to appear in the video explode. Shortly afterwards, yet another model drops out due to hyperthermia, facts which force the creative team to continually rewrite the script. Bad weather makes filming impossible for a couple of days, but the last straw is an alleged sexual attack by the company's male client ("a fat lech") on television presenter Gloria Hunniford, who happens to be staying at the same hotel together with a BBC crew to film a holiday show. Miller Shanks encounter further complications when loose talk at the hotel bar by Topowlski and Douglas, two art directors, triggers a headline in The Sun about the "Hunniford Affair". Subplots revolve around the frantic attempts of Ken Perry, the Office Administrator, at upholding order in the building; the ongoing love affair between O'Keefe and Lorraine Pallister; a not even half-hearted suicide attempt by Susi Judge-Davis, devoted PA to Simon Horne and Simon Horne alone; and Nigel Godley's failed endeavours to be recognized as both a good chum and a loyal workaholic.
9611866	/m/02plt24	Troubles	James Gordon Farrell	1970	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns the arrival of Englishman Major Brendan Archer, recently discharged from the British Army, at the Majestic Hotel on the Wexford coast in south-east Ireland in 1919. Archer is convinced he is engaged, though sure he had never actually proposed, to Angela Spencer, the daughter of Edward Spencer, the elderly owner of the Majestic Hotel. She has written to him since they met in 1916 while on leave from the trench warfare of the Western Front. The Spencers are an Anglo-Irish Protestant family, strongly Unionist in their attitudes towards Ireland's ties to the UK. Archer functions as a confused observer of the dysfunctional Spencer family, representing the Anglo-Irish, and the local Catholic population. As the novel progresses, social and economic relationships break down, mirrored by the gentle decay of the hotel.
9613344	/m/02plw0d	Ugly Americans : The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions	Ben Mezrich			 In 1992 twenty Ivy League football players visit Japan, to play an exhibition match against Japanese college kids. On this trip, Princeton University's contribution to that all-star-Ivy team, John Malcolm, encountered a Princeton alum, Dean Carney (also a pseudonym). Carney was an executive in Kidder Peabody's Tokyo office, and he suggested Malcolm contact him about a job if his pro football career did not pan out. When it did not, and following a job search on Wall Street, Malcolm contacted Carney in 1993. Malcolm then became one of KP's two Osaka-based traders. This lasted until April 1994, when KP discovered a $350 million "accounting glitch," and assigned responsibility for the glitch to one of its managing directors, Joseph Jett. KP (and its corporate parent, General Electric) made sweeping cutbacks in their trading operations as a result. Both Carney and Malcolm—neither of whom had anything to do with Jett's accounting trickery—were out of jobs, and they went their separate ways. Malcolm took a position with a venerable English bank, Barings. He was again to work out of Osaka, but this time his orders were coming from Singapore, where Barings' star trader, Nick Leeson, held court. Leeson, though, was making huge unauthorized trades during this period. In January 1995 he made an enormous bet on a rise in the key Japanese stock exchange index, known as the Nikkei (large enough so that if he won, he would recover all his losses). However, the huge bet went against him, due to the Kobe earthquake (January 17) and its devastating effects on Japan's economy. After a brief period as a fugitive, Leeson was captured and did prison time. This did not save Barings, which went into receivership. For the second time in eight months, a superior's malfeasance had cost Malcolm a job. He called Carney for help. Carney, meanwhile, had founded a hedge fund, and Malcolm was soon trading for it, primarily index arbitrage. In 1994, the Hong Kong government created a tracker fund for the Hang Seng (the Hong Kong equivalent of the Dow Jones or the Nikkei; see Tracker Fund of Hong Kong). In 1995, after Malcolm was settled into his Tokyo job, a company named Pacific Century Cyberworks (PCC) merged with Hong Kong Telecom, and under the terms of the tracker funds' charter, its managers had to buy $225 million worth of PCC stock. This was widely known, and so several traders were "front running" this deal, i.e. buying PCC stock ahead of the fund's expected purchases. Malcolm, though, discovered that the tracker fund was not going to buy the PCC stock through the exchanges at all. It made a private off-exchange deal with PCC's founder Richard Li. This meant that, when the day of the expected fund purchases arrived and no purchases took place, there'd be a strong downward pressure on the stock price. Accordingly, on Malcolm's suggestion, Carney's hedge fund took a "short" position on $100 million of PCC stock. In the event, the tracking fund did not make the expected purchases, and the price dropped dramatically - Malcolm covered the short position, winning his firm more than twenty million dollars. This one deal made Malcolm a star, known to expat western traders throughout east Asia as their "hot young gunslinger." The ending of the book turns on another, quite similar, but even larger deal involving the addition to the Nikkei index of several high-tech firms. This is the deal that justifies the book—Malcolm made Carney's firm five hundred million dollars in cash out of the restructuring of the Nikkei. Disillusioned, Malcolm then leaves Carney's employ and heads for semi-retirement in Bermuda, where he still does light trading. Other elements which Mezrich "masterfully intertwines... into the narrative with the main characters" include the sex industry in Japan and the role of the Yakuza in Japanese society and finance.
9613544	/m/02plw8n	The Tokaido Road	Lucia St. Clair Robson	1991	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 :So lonely am I :My soul is a floating weed :Severed at the roots This is how Lady Asano has felt since the forced suicide of her father. Adrift in a dangerous world, she vows to avenge her father’s death and restore his name to honor. To do so, she will have to travel the Tokaido Road. As the novel opens, Lady Asano has transformed herself into Cat, a high-ranking courtesan, to support her widowed mother. Yet Cat’s career is temporary; the powerful Lord Kira’s campaign against her family is continuing and she must find Oishi, leader of the samurai of the Asano clan, weapons master, philosopher, and Cat’s teacher. Cat believes he is three hundred miles to the southwest in the imperial city of Kyoto. Disguising her loveliness in the humble garments of a traveling priest, Cat begins her quest. All she has is her samurai training—in Haiku and Tanka poetry, in the use of the deadly six-foot weapon, the naginata, and in Japanese Zen thought. And she will need them all, for a ronin, a lordless samurai—Tosa no Hanshiro, has been hired to trail her.
9627038	/m/02pm9pc	Jane of Lantern Hill	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1937	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Jane Victoria Stuart, called Victoria by her family, lives in Toronto, Ontario, with her mother, grandmother, and aunt. Her grandmother is very strict and is jealous of anything that her daughter Robin (Jane's mother) loves. Jane does not like having to live with her grandmother and wishes she and her mother could escape, though she knows her mother will never have enough backbone to stand up to her grandmother and leave. Jane believes her father to be dead, but is eventually told he is alive and living far away on Prince Edward Island, her birthplace. Jane's only friend is Josephine Turner, Jody for short, an orphan who lives and works as a servant at the boardinghouse next door. Jane also likes to cook, but her grandmother will not allow her to practice. One day, a letter from her estranged father arrives, asking that Jane stay with him for the summer on the Island. Jane is very reluctant about going, but one of her uncles says that it would be best if she went. Upon arriving at the island, Jane meets her Aunt Irene (her father's sister) and takes an instant dislike to her. The next morning, she meets her father for the first time and loves him from the start. The two buy a little house on Lantern Hill and Jane takes on the role of housekeeper. Jane soon becomes friends with all the neighbors, such as the Snowbeam family and the Jimmy Johns (so named to distinguish them from a James Garland and a John Garland who also live on the Island). Jane also gains self-possession and, upon her return to Toronto, is much less affected by her sour, disapproving grandmother. Jane eagerly counts down the months until she can return to the Island the following summer and be reunited with her father and friends. Upon returning, she has many adventures, including finding a lion that had escaped from a circus and fearlessly locking it up in a barn. When Jody writes to say that she is about to be sent to an orphanage, Jane talks to the Titus ladies, a pair of sisters who want to adopt a child. Initially they say no, but after some consideration, they decide to adopt Jody. Upon her return to Toronto, Jane tells her the good news and Jody soon leaves for the Island, promising to see Jane in the summer. In the meantime, Jane finds out why her parents have separated. She discovers that her grandmother was against her parents' relationship from the start; when her mother returned home for a visit during a rough time in her parents' marriage, her grandmother convinced her to stay, then burned the letter Jane's father sent asking her to return home. One day, Jane receives a letter from Aunt Irene saying that Jane's father is going to Boston, probably to get a divorce from her mother, and it is likely he will remarry. Jane is shocked by the news and sets out alone to see her father on the Island, over a thousand miles away. She uses her pocket-money to buy a train ticket, endures a sleepless journey of two days, then walks three miles from the station in the cold and wet to the house on Lantern Hill. Her father, astonished, assures her that he is not going to get a divorce or remarry; he is going to Boston to meet with publishers about a book of his that has been accepted. Jane then catches pneumonia and her father sends a telegram to her mother. Robin, ignoring her mother's command of staying in Toronto, goes to the island to be with Jane. Jane's father falls in love with her mother all over again on first sight, and when Jane awakens, her parents have reconciled. As the book ends, Jane is happily making plans for her reunited family who will spend half the year in Toronto and half on Lantern Hill.
9633523	/m/02pml0v	Killing Floor	Lee Child	1997-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jack Reacher gets off a Greyhound bus in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, because he remembers his brother mentioning that a musician named "Blind Blake" died there. Much to his surprise, he's arrested in a local diner for murder. He meets an honest detective called Finlay, and tries to prove he was not there when the murder happened. After finding what seems to be a phone number in the dead man's shoe, Finlay rings and tricks a man into telling him his name, Mr. Hubble, They bring Hubble (as he likes to be called) into the police station for questioning and he soon cracks and confesses to the murder, but Reacher doesn't buy it. Both Reacher and Hubble are sent to the state prison and run into more than a little trouble. After a hellraising two days in jail, Roscoe (a female police officer for whom Reacher has begun to have feelings) proves he is innocent and that his claim to have been nowhere near the scene of the murder is true. Roscoe collects Reacher and they return to Margrave to find that all hell has broken loose. Reacher discovers the murder victim's identity and realises that he indeed knows him, as he has all his life. Hubble has disappeared and his wife is in hysterics wanting Reacher to find him. It then transpires that Chief Morrison and his wife have been found horribly murdered in their own home. It is revealed later in the story that Margrave is home to a multi-billion dollar counterfeiting operation, which Reacher and his newly formed acquaintances try to destroy.
9633705	/m/02pml6b	In His Image	James BeauSeigneur	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On a trip to Turin to analyse the Shroud of Turin, journalist Decker Hawthorne and Professor Harry Goodman discover human dermal cells remaining. After the trip, Goodman takes some samples back to his laboratory, in the United States, and discovers that they are still alive. He then invites Decker to show him his discoveries. Once Decker arrives, Goodman explains several of his theories about the cells, and has engineered a strain of "C Cells" which are incredibly resiliant to damage and disease. Goodman is actively searching for ways these C Cells could be implemented to insert into ones body to cure disease, due to their strange properties and signs of immortality. Then the professor proposes to Decker the idea of cloning the cells, but Decker does not support this idea. Some years pass and Decker visits professor Goodman with one of his two daughters. While Hawthorne and Goodman talk for some time, Decker's daughter meets and interacts with the Goodman's adopted son, Christopher. On the way back home, Decker deduces Christopher's origin. He immediately returns to Goodman's home and confronts him about Christopher being the Clone of Jesus Christ. Goodman explains that Christopther is like any usual boy, but that he shows a high degree of intelligence and has never suffered from disease of any kind. He convinces Decker not to do a story or Christopher's life will be ruined. Before leaving, Decker assumes out loud that Goodman named the child "Christopher" because of Jesus Christ, of whom he was cloned; but the professor rapidly corrects him, claiming that he named him in name of Christopher Colombus, since he believed that the child would usher the world into a new era. Several years later, Decker visits Israel on business and stays with old friends, Joshua and Ilyana Rosen. There he learns lots of things about the historical place and its notable culture. During his visit, Decker receives an anonymous phone call saying that "Dogs will cry, but their tears will find no place to land" following the shootings of several Palestinians by Israeli troops in a riot. He immediately calls the police and they tell him that the call must have come from Muslim terrorists, making a threat of some kind of massacre or attack against the Jews (to which the callers referred to as "the dogs"), but they remain uncertain about where they plan to attack. Decker realizes that the terrorists who called him were referring to The Wailing Wall when they said that the Jews tears would have "no place to land". He rushes to the historical site, just in time to watch it blow up entirely. He saves a young boy from being killed by the blast. In retaliation for the destruction of The Western Wall, Israel destroys the Dome of the Rock and retake the Temple Mount. Decker later goes to check on the boy, but he is kidnapped by terrorists, along with his companion journalist and long time friend and confidant, Tom Donafin. They are held captive in an unknown building in Lebanon. He and Tom remain imprisoned for three years. Decker and Tome escape, after one day Decker had a dream of Christopher Goodman, who leads him to the exit. In the dream his captors are dispatched and lie throughout the building. Decker reminds the Dream Christopher that Tom was also held prisoner, and Christopher absent-mindedly shows Decker where he is. Upon waking Decker discovers that his door is unlocked and his captures were dispatched in the same fashion as in his dream, and Tom was right where Christopher had shown him. Decker and Tom then make their escape into the countryside where they are rescued by United Nations troops under none other than the Secretary General, Jon Hansen, with whom Decker forms an instant friendship and bond. They are housed temporarily in Israel, which is under attack by Russians, until it is safe for them to fly home. Transport is arranged for them to get out of the besieged city, however a dog-fight in progress causes Tom and Decker to exit the car to document the duel and Tom tries to get pictures. The car, the driver and Tom are hit by a blast from one of the fighter planes. Decker survives, and Tom is assumed dead. It is revealed the Tom, however does not die. He is stricken blind, however, from the explosion and from flying glass. Decker is informed that Tom's body was never found and he is presumed dead. Decker is finally reunited with his family, and they return to the United States while Decker recovers from captivity. During his recovery period, there is a worldwide catastrophe that seemingly has no explanation. Millions of people wake up next to dead loved ones, and often whole families have died. This event is called "The Disaster" by most people, however sudden converts to Christianity begin to call it The Rapture. Decker's entire family, along with his friends abroad, The Rosens, perish in the tragedy. Some collateral damage was also suffered, as people driving cars suddenly die and continue out of control, as well as some commercial airline pilots and others. Decker buries his family, and then falls into a catatonic stupor as the weight of his loss consumes him. Later Christopher Goodman arrives at Decker's house explaining that his adoptive parents died in a plane crash piloted by a casualty of the Disaster. Decker shakes off his catatonia and invites Christopher to stay with him, and Christopher becomes his new family. Jon Hansen offers Decker a position as his assistant at the United Nations, where Christopher encounters Robert Milner, a retired Secretary General who is heavily involved in occult practices, and recognizes Christopher as one who has been prophesied in New Age Councils to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity and enhanced consciousness for mankind. Alice Bernley (a thinly veiled reference to Alice Bailey - an actual noted Theosophist), a confidant of Milner's also sees and recognizes Christopher and they befriend him, and Milner assumes the role of Mentor to Christopher, not only in politics, but in a worldwide New Age movement. Meanwhile, Jon Hansen has been working on an ambitious project to reorganize the United Nations to better handle operations, and in light of the recent Disaster (The Rapture), he has almost open reign to do what he sees necessary. The UN is restructured with a central government led by the Secretary General, and ten Regional Divisions which include Oceania and Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, etc. Each of these regions is led by a Primary Regent who is backed up by an Alternate who serves as proxy when the Primary is absent. Israel is the only nation on earth that refuses to join the UN. They refuse to join because their regional partners are all Arab nations that will force them into a position that is extremely unfavorable and lacking represenation within the UN. Meanwhile, Christian Fundamentalists, citing various prophecies in the Biblical Book of Revelation, identify Hansen as the Antichrist or "The Beast". This, however, quickly ends as Jon Hansen tragically dies when his helicopter crashes in Pakistan during a fact finding mission. The Office of Secretary General falls vacant, and remains vacant. None of the Ten Regents believe there was anyone to be a suitable replacement for the extremely charismatic, popular and altruistic Hansen. A rotation schedule is established where each Primary Regent serves as Acting Secretary General for a month. It is deemed that this cycle will continue until a unanimous agreement can be made for Hansen's replacement. Unanimous consent is proven to be almost impossible. Years pass, and Christopher has been elected as the European Alternate Regent. Under the tutelage of Milner and Bailey Christopher has embraced his spiritual nature, as well as Decker who has provided him with pragmatic and political guidance. Under machinations of Milner and with the cooperation of various groups such as Freemasons and the Knights Templar with the funding from an occult clearinghouse known as The Lucius Trust (a thinly veiled reference to The Lucis Trust), Christopher comes into possession of The Ark of the Covenant. He gives the Ark to Israel as a gift. and in exchange he wants Israel to sign a treaty with the UN. A seven year treaty is signed promising Israel that they will not be impeded by their neighbors, and UN recognizes their right to exist. When it is proven that the Ark is authentic - proven as Alice Bernley dies from looking inside - Israel agrees, joins the United Nations, and The Ark is placed in the New Temple that was built on the Temple Mount (previously retaken by Israel after the destruction of The Wailing Wall). Albert Faure (renamed to Albert Moore in later printings), an extremely aggressive and deft manipulator - as well as the Primary Regent of Europe - sets in motion a plan that he hopes will gain him the position of Secretary General. Meanwhile, Christopher, following a Spirit guide sets off into the desert for guidance after a series of extremely unsettling dreams about God and an impending feeling of global doom. When Christophers journey into the desert nears its completion (after 40 days and 40 nights), Milner leads Decker to the desert where he says they will encounter Christopher who will need their assistance. Christopher's "vision quest" has revealed Faure's plan to him, and he intends to stop it. However they learn that Christopher is too late, because Faure's plan has already culminated in several strategic assassinations, as well as the declaration and execution of the China-India-Pakistan war, a nuclear conflict that lasts a single day, yet ends with hundreds of millions of casualties. No clear winner was declared or recognized in this war, however Moore uses incident to catapult himself into a position of power, at which time he forces a vote for Secretary General. He expects unanimous consent due to bribery, force, blackmail and threats against the other Regents, and he is widely expected to win. Just as the vote for Secretary General is under way, Christopher shows up at the United Nations and announces that Faure was responsible for the assassinations and is the single man who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions in the China-India-Pakistan war. Faure denies this, but Christopher insists, and commands Faure to confess. Seemingly under the power of Christopher Goodman, Faure does confess, and then immediately drops dead in front of every one at the United Nations. It is concluded that Faure died under the weight of his own guilt, but Decker and Robert Milner realize that Christopher has extraordinary powers and he was beginning to exercise them.
9633806	/m/02pmldj	Die Trying	Lee Child	1998-07	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Having run short on cash, Reacher has paused in his travels and is working in Chicago when he stumbles into the kidnapping of FBI agent Holly Johnson and he is also held. The pair are whisked across the United States in the back of a stolen Ford Econoline van, while back in Chicago Holly's colleagues frantically piece together the puzzle of her sudden disappearance. Initially they are detained in a barn in North Dakota but Reacher kills one of their captors and hides the body (this is discovered later). They are moved on again in the van. Arriving in Yorke County (fictional), a remote area of Montana, Reacher and Holly find themselves up against the Montana Militia, a band approximately 100 strong led by Beau Borken, a majestic yet ruthless megalomaniac intent on more than simple secession from the union. Holly is the daughter of a general - the head of the joint chiefs of staff. She's defensive about her family connections, having had to work hard to dispel notions of nepotism, so it's a while before she reveals to Reacher that she's also the President's god-daughter. To add to the complications, there's Brogan, a mole infiltrated into the Chicago FBI team, and an undercover federal agent, Jackson, in the militia group. Before long, one betrays the other and Jackson dies a horrible death by being crucified in the woods. Even as they close in on the Montana camp, the FBI believe that Reacher was part of the kidnap team. Reacher's old commanding officer, General Leon Garber, arrives to convince them otherwise and ends up playing a critical role.
9633812	/m/02pmldw	Birth of an Age	James BeauSeigneur	2004-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Birth of an Age starts after In His Image. The world is still grieving the loss caused by the China-India-Pakistan War. Christopher Goodman, the Alternate member of the United Nations Security Council for the European States assumes the Primary membership from Albert Moore who was responsible for the war. The United Nations sets out to provide aid to the survivors of the war. Two men, Saul Cohen and John the Apostle, leaders of a radical cult called the Koum Damar Patar (KDP), give prophecies of plagues. Only Christopher Goodman and his close advisors, Decker Hawthorne and Robert Milner acknowledge the prophecies. Plagues arrive and John and Cohen speaking prophecies about the plagues, quickly gain the world's attention. They become despised, being recognized as the harbingers of destruction, and they are blamed for the plagues. Three asteroids are discovered, one of which is on a collision course with earth. The UN launches a series of nuclear missiles at the asteroid in order to deflect or destroy the asteroid. The other two asteroids shift trajectories to a collision course with earth. The first asteroid passes through earth's atmosphere almost parallel to the ground, but close enough to cause incredible amounts of damage due to the force of the shock wave it makes, creating damage from Northern Alaska, in a southeastern curve through Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, Columbia and Brazil. Its entrance and exit to and from the atmosphere siphons off a huge amount of ozone, which allows the ultraviolet rays from the sun to destroy crops and causes worldwide famine. The second asteroid directly collides with earth, striking in the Philippine Basin of the Pacific Ocean and causing seizmic upheaval. The asteroid's explosion on the sea floor sent iron dust throughout the pacific ocean, which quickly turned red with rust. The third asteroid is obliterated by the nuclear missiles launched by the UN. When the asteroid's dust reached earth, it contains a large amount of arsenic, which poisoned Earth's water supply creating a global outbreak of arsenic poisoning. Soon, locust-like creatures appear in massive swarms injecting people with a painful neurotoxin. After five months they die en masse. Christopher Goodman, the clone of Christ, discovers that he had the power of healing and soothes people who had been stung by the locust. He healed hundreds of people, including several members of the UN Security Council, and their families, as well as Decker Hawthorne. Christopher's supernatural powers make him popular, and he is nominated as a vacant seat of the Secretary General. During his acceptance speech, Christopher Goodman is assassinated by Decker's old friend Tom Donafin. After Goodman dies, a homicidal madness began spreads amongst the people near the mouth of the Euphrates River. Entire families, villages, cities, and nations are filled with rampaging citizens bent on killing each other. The madness destroys the middle East, southern Russia, much of Asia, eastern Africa, and south eastern Europe. Three days after Christopher's assassination, at his funeral, Robert Milner approached the coffin and laid his hands on it. Christopher Goodman is resurrected, the reincarnation of Christ. Christopher explained that as his body was dead, he gained the entire memory of Jesus Christ all the way up to the time of his death, and gained other knowledge as well. He explained that rather than being a god, Yahweh was the member of a species called Theatans. Four billion years ago, these Theatans were at the same evolutionary level as humans are now. Their evolutionary process had stagnated, until it was discovered that the next evolutionary step - the final step - was a voluntary step taken by the species as a whole. The people of Theata took this evolutionary step, and evolved into spiritual beings capable of wonders only dreamed of previously. Eventually, one Theatan discovered that there was one further evolutionary step, although it was a state that only a single being may achieve. This Theatan, named Yahweh, took this step, and became a Godhead. Christopher continues to explain that humans are now on the brink of the evolutionary step into the spirit as the Theatans, however, Yahweh does not wish to relinquish his hold on humanity, believing that if they evolve into spirits, they will be on equal footing with him, and will no longer serve him. In order to stave off this evolutionary cooperation by humankind, Yahweh has stricken the earth with the plagues of asteroids, locust and madness, and he plans more and worse plagues as time goes on. Decker and Milner resolve to do anything they can to help Christopher rally humanity against Yahweh and issue in the New Age of Humankind. Christopher, Milner and Decker travel to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, Israel Cohen and John are located. With a swipe of his hand Christopher sends them both flying toward the Temple at great speed, killing them on impact with the temple wall. Decker remains outside to talk to the press as Christopher and Milner enter the Temple with the intention of desecrating the alter inside, to put a stop to the animal sacrifices that take place there. Also Christopher takes the contents of the Ark of the Covenant and throws them from the roof of the Temple as he proclaims that he is the Second Coming of Christ, the Jewish Messiah, and Muhammad al-Mahdi among other prophesied figures throughout most other religions, saying they're all one and the same. As Christopher nears the conclusion of his address, light beings, presumably Theatans, surround the temple and flood the Temple Mount. Christopher leaps from the roof of the Temple, and is suspended in mid-air by the light beings and he proclaims that everyone should "Behold the Hosts of Heaven".
9633843	/m/02pmlgy	Acts of God	James BeauSeigneur		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book starts before the conclusion of Birth of an Age. Christopher's address from the top of the Temple in Jerusalem is revisited, concluding with Christopher leaping from the top of the temple, and caught by the visible Spirit beings, whom Christopher identified as Theatans on the flight to Jerusalem with Decker Hawthorne and Robert Milner. Christopher is an extremely popular Secretary General of the United Nations, who was nominated following his supernatural healing of various members of the Security Council, and elected unanimously prior to his assassination, and subsequent resurrection. Christopher reveals to the world that humanity is on the brink of its greatest evolutionary step, which people are now heralding as the New Age. However, given the nature of this evolutionary step - that of evolving into nearly omnipotent Spirit Beings - this step must be taken collectively by the entire species, rather than though natural selection of individual members of the human race. If any significant portion of the human population balks at taking this evolutionary step, the evolutionary process will be a failure, and humankind will lose the opportunity to evolve, and remain a stagnant species doomed for extinction. The greatest threat to humankind in taking this evolutionary step is represented by Fundamentalist Christians and various Jewish sects, including a group of 144,000 Jews which call themselves the Koum Damar Patar or KDP for short. These groups remained loyal to Yahweh, whom Christopher has identified as a power hungry Theatan, intent on keeping humankind as they are, in order to prevent them from becoming his equal. Christopher vows not to let this happen, and declares the New Age, starting with year 1. March 11, the day of Christopher's resurrection, is declared New Year's Day. Three days after Christopher's address at the Temple, the bodies of John and Saul Cohen are called into Heaven. This is captured on tape by the media, but is dismissed by Christopher as dramatics by Yahweh to frighten people away from their destinies. A life-size statue of Christopher is erected at the top of the Temple, and speakers are set to broadcast Christopher's Address to Humankind in a repeating loop. Here, Christopher also begins a revitalization plan for healing the Middle East, which was decimated in a recent plague of mass psychosis that affected every man woman and child in the region, which now sits bereft of humanity. The first priority in fixing this region is to rebuild the city of Babylon in Iraq. This site is chosen as a symbol of defiance toward Yahweh, since that was where humankind was first attacked by Yahweh when he afflicted them with tongues when they were erecting the Tower of Babel. He also indicated that he planned to move the United Nations main headquarters there, relocating from the Secretariat Building in New York City. Throughout the world, people start experiencing brief moments of supernatural power. These powers include the ability to control others' behavior, telepathy, precognition, rapid healing of fatal injuries, and very detailed memories of past lives. Most people's experiences are very brief, mostly linked to a single incident, but these episodes happen all over the world and begin to happen more frequently. Christopher attributes this phenomenon to the fact that people are inching ever closer to that evolutionary step which will bring humanity into its New Age. Christopher then reveals that he will help accelerate this process, by instituting a Communion. This Communion remains a closely guarded secret, only to be revealed when the time is right. The communion is said to give people immortality along with great power. Decker meets with Christopher to discuss this communion, and points out that giving immortality and power to the Christian Fundamentalists, KDP and the other Jews set against Christopher will be counter-productive. He suggests that the best way to keep Christopher's enemies away from the communion is use their own prophecies against them. If a mark is required to receive communion, as well as a pledge by individuals to aid Christopher and all of humankind by working toward the New Age, then Christians, Jews and the KDP will avoid taking the mark, and lack the powers, and immortality to continue their subversive behavior against Humankind. Christopher decides to show Decker the Communion. As they walk, Christopher reminds Decker that Christopher's foster father, Harry Goodman, had developed so-called C-Cells after the discovery of Jesus's blood on the Shroud of Turin. He also reminds Decker of Robert Milner's advanced age, yet remarkable health, due to a blood transfusion with Christopher years before. Decker correctly concludes that the Communion must consist of the distribution of Christopher's blood among the population. Christopher confirms this, and indicates that for the last two years, scientists and technicians have been frantically cloning Christopher's blood, and putting it in medicinal capsules. They enter a huge warehouse that was stocked floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall with Christopher's blood. The mark of communion was a depiction of the numerals 666, since Christopher's name added up to that value in the Hebrew alphabet, and the intent was to keep Christians and other religious fundamentalists away. As the day drew closer to opening up the clinics to the public, these clinics became the targets for Christian protesters. These protests grew more violent and when the doors were finally opened, the clinics became the targets of terrorist attacks, apparently by Fundamentalists trying to prevent people from taking the communion. Public clamor for the capture and punishment of these terrorists grew until Christopher was forced to take stronger actions. Capital punishment was extended to Christian terrorists, and their fundamentalist leaders. Other than zealots and terrorists, Christians mostly avoided the clinics. Decker also avoided taking the mark. When confronted by Christopher, in his office in Babylon, Decker, now 72 years old, indicated that he didn't want to live forever. He still missed his family who died in The Disaster years before, and although he was in no hurry to die, he would welcome the rest when it came. Christopher pointed out that Decker, who had been writing speeches for Christopher, and had been promoting New Age principals and philosophies, must have forgotten that all that applied to him as well! His wife and daughters had reincarnated immediately after their deaths, and Decker would not be old and tired after the Communion, and he could go to them and reunite his family. Decker, very excited by this prospect, immediately headed out, and was on his way to the nearest clinic when he was abducted by the KDP. The KDP took Decker to Petra, Jordan where he stayed in a one room building. He was confronted by Scott Rosen, the son of Decker's late close friends Joshua and Ilana Rosen. Scott was revealed to be a member of the KDP and was instructed by God to attempt to convert him. After a violent outburst by Decker, which resulted in a shining black eye for Scott, Decker grew calm and attempted to not listen to Scott. Scott presented very convincing arguments about the existence of God, the accuracy of the bible, and the messages it contained, and how Christopher was a huge liar and the personification of evil. Decker, unimpressed, said nothing and refused to react to anything Rosen said. Rosen presented Decker with a bible, that turned out to be Decker's late wife, Elizabeth's bible, complete with her handwriting and notes. After another session with Rosen, Decker continuing to refuse to give Rosen the satisfication of knowing that some of what he said got through, Rosen released Decker from captivity, promising him a ride to Israel after their observance of Shabbat. That evening, walking around Petra, Decker met Rhoda Donafin, the widow of Decker's closest friend Tom Donafin, as well as his sons, Tom, Jr., and Decker Donafin (this was the first Decker knew that Tom named one of his children after him, and it affected him greatly). Decker met several people around Petra, and realized that none of the people he met were anything like the overzealous, wild-eyed fundamentalists that he saw on TV, or read about in the papers. These people were caring, friendly and scared. When Rhoda indicated to Decker that they were to be attacked by Christopher and the armies of the world, even offering Decker a timeframe for when this was to occur. Decker promised that was not the case, and if it were, he would talk sense to Christopher, and maybe they could all become friends - or at the least allies - in the evolution of Humankind. Rhoda reacted with an amused dismissal of Decker's promise, but the two remained friendly even if they disagreed on this. Decker ate with the Donafins, and treated them to stories of their father when he and Decker used to share adventures and misadventures when they were younger. After Shabbat, Decker was provided a ride, as promised, to Israel, where he caught a plane back to his home in Maryland where he planned to rest for a few days. On his way home, he noticed that everyone bearing Christopher's mark was also bearing bandages that covered up painful sores and blisters. Decker decided to hold off on the Communion for a bit. This first plague of sores caused outrage among Humankind who demanded that Christopher retaliate against Yahweh. The United Nations instituted penalties for sedition and collusion with Yahweh. Leaders of Fundamentalists groups were subject to capital punishment. The rationale was that although capital punishment was distasteful for many, removal of the opposing force was necessary to Humankind's evolutionary journey, and furthermore, individuals would be reincarnated free of their past prejudices and philosophies, and will join everyone else in the procession into the New Age. During Decker's vacation, the next plague began with the transformation of all the oceans of the earth to blood. The world watched horrified as all aquatic life, and anyone in boats during the transition from water to blood were killed. After a couple of days people in coastal areas grew sick from the decay and stench of the rotting blood, and the surface of the oceans were scabbing over. People were outraged and grew extremely angry toward Yahweh whom Christopher pointed out was responsible for this plague. A week after the plague began, Robert Milner walked out to a bloody coastline and threw a charged quartz crystal that landed on the scab, liquefying it, and turning the liquid back into water. The water began to replace blood in a spreading radius, and after a day, all the oceans were once again water, although, they remained void of life. The United Nations increased the penalties for sedition and collusion with Yahweh again, this time banning followers of Yahweh from engaging in commerce or owning property. It was made illegal to buy anything from or sell anything to anyone not bearing the mark of Communion. Properties owned by those not bearing the mark were confiscated by the government, and residents not bearing the mark, evicted. Capital punishment was extended toward anyone showing an active role in the subversive behavior against Humankind and the New Age. Decker, by virtue of his position within the United Nations, and by virtue of very few people knowing where he was, remained undisturbed in his home in Maryland. Policemen issuing eviction notices bypassed Decker's home believing that there's no way that Decker Hawthorne - THE Decker Hawthorne - would not have received the Communion, especially when record-keeping errors were not uncommon. The week following Milner's cleansing of the oceans, all the bodies of fresh water turned to blood. Decker, who realized what was happening before he flushed his toilet or ran the water in his sink. He took stock of all the drinkable liquid in his house, and horded as much as possible. Decker watched on TV the various horrors that came from this plague. People dying of dehydration, people killing each other for groceries that had liquid (even cans of corn and peas were precious for the water inside), riots and looting. He almost felt guilty that he had so much when others were killing each other for water. A week after the plague started, Robert Milner walked into a bloody river, and cut his own arm, mingling his own running blood with the blood of the water. The water turned clear and pure. Nearby observers made their exhausted way to the water to quench their thirst. Within a day all the fresh water of the world was cleansed. In reaction to the anger to this plague, the United Nations again increased the penalties for sedition and collusion with Yahweh, this time extending capital punishment toward anyone refusing to take the mark. Rewards were offered for turning in those not bearing the mark. Decker, who knew what was going on, read his wife's bible to determine what would happen next. Decker called his property manager, Bert Tollinson, and had him reinforce a room in his house with insulation and air-conditioning units, and got lots of ice. He warned Bert that extreme heat was coming, and he should do the same for his home so his family wouldn't suffer. Bert took Decker's advice. By midweek the extreme heat was taking its toll. People were dying in the heat. In Antarctica bases were falling under the ice, and avalanches were pending in many mountainous regions. The power stations around Decker's area went down, and by the end of the week, Decker was lying on the floor sweating in extreme heat, although since his room had been so cold before, he managed to survive. After a week of that, Milner arrived in Machu Picchu and made a plea to the sun-god to relent. From where Milner stood, a cool breeze issued forth, and within a day, the heat was back to normal. The executions were stepped up in retaliation to this plague. As many as 20,000 people a day were being executed in some execution centers. The frequency of these executions were slowly being revealed on TV. At first only leaders and famous people were televised during their executions. As the anger among humanity grew, so did their demand for televised executions, until executions were being shown 24 hours a day on some stations. A week after the heat subsided, a dark murky substance engulfed the entire planet, with the exception of Petra and Christopher's office in Babylon. Everywhere else was consumed by the darkness. Anyone in contact with the darkness (which was almost everyone on the planet) experienced terrifying hallucinations and horrifying visions. Sufferers were incapacitated with fear, often falling unconscious and having nightmares, only to wake up and continue their hallucinations. This plague only lasted 3 days. (Everyone on earth probably would have died if it lasted the week). When Decker woke up, he had to clean himself up (he was covered in fecal matter and urine) and moved to a cleaner room. Decker watched various news shows on television, and discovered that Christopher was in serious trouble. His polls showed that he had an approval rating of 11% - when his approval was over 95% before the onslaught of plagues. Decker felt guilty because it was his job to deal with the news pundits and the media, but he had been home the whole time. He learned that Christopher would be addressing Humanity later that week. Decker watched, and Christopher promised that there would be no more plagues, and that humankind would receive three signs that their step toward the New Age was almost complete. Everyone's sores would disappear, everyone's overall health and well-being would improve dramatically, and everyone would gain telepathic and telekinetic powers, and these powers would be permanent. He also promised that the last remaining vestige of Yahweh's followers were trapped in Petra, and they would all be destroyed. Decker, horrified, decided to return to Babylon and talk to Christopher out of this. Since Decker did not bear the mark, he had to get Bert Tollinson arrange his passage to the United Nations building in Babylon. Decker arrived at Christopher's office and immediately began campaigning for sparing the people of Petra. When Christopher refused to talk about the issue, Decker realized that everything the Jews, Fundamentalists and the KDP had been saying about Christopher was true. Christopher finally showed his true self to Decker, admitting that he was, of course, the Antichrist and his only desire was to steal every follower of Yahweh that he could, and kill any he could not. He claimed that there is an exhilarating rush when you make the Creator of the Universe weep. He told Decker a little bit about hell, and what they had to look forward to among the flames. Decker, defeated, realized his participation and responsibility for all the death and mayhem happening around the world. He accepted that responsibility and told Christopher that when he and Decker were both in hell, Decker would be the one on his knees thanking God for giving him what he deserved. At that point Christopher went into an insane fury and murdered Decker - but not before Decker apologized to Jesus for what he had done, and was forgiven, denying Christopher Decker's soul. Finally the plague of sores that afflicted anyone being Christopher's mark vanished as Christopher promised in his post-plague address. They also gained the strength, health and vitality of youth. Overweight people woke up to find themselves suddenly fit and trim. Soon afterward, the gifts of telepathy, telekinesis were also realized. All that Christopher had promised came true, and his popularity again surged. He planned for a march on Petra inviting every human on earth to join him on this march, and they would use their newfound powers to bring the walls of Petra down upon them, which would give humanity free rein to achieve their spiritual destiny. The Jews within Petra finally joined with the Christians in Petra as one people, when they had been reluctant allies previously. Several rescue missions were sent into Babylon and Jerusalem to remove any remaining Christians and transport them to Petra. As this was going on, many of those bearing the Mark of the Beast tried to gain forgiveness from God by chopping off their right hands, where the mark was located - citing , "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off". As the people of the world gathered in Tel Megiddo in the northern Jezreel Valley, Babylon was destroyed in an immense earthquake and vehicle-sized hail. The city was a smoking ruin. This caused a hit to morale for many around Christopher, prompting Christopher to attempt to calm them by promising to rebuild Babylon - along with everyone and everything in it - within three days. This promise was met with skepticism from some and awe from others. Christopher finally issued the call to battle ready to incite the world on the destruction of Petra, when Jesus Christ appeared on the top of a mountain over Petra. Christopher met him there, and offered to allow Jesus to join mankind against the forces of Yahweh. For a moment all of Christopher's followers thought they may be watching an historic alliance being formed. Christopher's offer was met with silence. After this rejection Christopher began to brag to Jesus about how all these hundreds of millions of people rejected Jesus in favor of Christopher, boasting that "those you wanted as your bride have become my whores and sluts". Suddenly everyone realized they'd been deceived by Christopher and panicked. Jesus forced Christopher and Robert Milner through a dimensional rift into a fiery chasm, and his followers collapsed upon themselves, and quickly decomposed as they tried to escape. In the epilogue, we are treated to Decker's reunion with his wife and his children, his brother Nate, and the Donafin's, including Tom, and various ancestors as well as many people he had met throughout his life, ranging from chance meetings to close friends. Decker also met Jesus Christ who told Decker that all was forgiven, and he was glad Decker had finally accepted Him, even if it was during Decker's final moments of life. Tom and Elizabeth explained to Decker what happened between his death and his resurrection. Decker mourned those who had not been able to join them in this Kingdom, but mostly rejoiced that he had his wife and daughter's back.
9633999	/m/02pmlpg	Caesar's Women	Colleen McCullough	1996	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The novel is set during a ten-year interval, from 68-58 BC, which Julius Caesar spent mainly in Rome, climbing the political ladder and outmaneuvering his many enemies. It opens with Caesar returning early from his quaestorship in Spain, and closes with his epochal departure for the Gallic campaigns. Some of the pivotal moments include Caesar's marriage to Pompeia; his curule aedileship; his narrow election as Pontifex Maximus in 63 BC; his praetorship in 62 BC; his divorce from Pompeia; his governorship of Further Spain; the first time he was hailed imperator on the field by his troops, the blocking of his triumphal parade by Marcus Porcius Cato; the creation of the First Triumvirate, which Caesar formed with Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in 60 BC; his betrothal of his daughter Julia to Pompey; his marriage to Calpurnia; and his first consulship, in 59 BC. Reflecting the title, Caesar's divorce and re-marriage come into play, as does his daughter's marriage, his lengthy affair with Servilia and his close relationship with his mother, Aurelia. However, most of the plot is concerned with the political struggles of Caesar's rise to power, his conflict with the conservative 'boni' faction, and his election to each post on the Roman ladder of government.
9636830	/m/02pmpkg	Dexter in the Dark	Jeff Lindsay	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dexter Morgan is a serial killer trained by his adopted father, a police detective, to channel his murderous urges through vigilantism, only killing other killers. The source of Dexter's blood lust and investigative prowess is a voice in his mind that he calls the "Dark Passenger". At the start of the novel, Dexter, a forensic blood spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, investigates a double homicide at the University of Miami campus. Two female students are found burned and beheaded. Their heads are replaced by the ceramic heads of bulls. Something about this murder uncharacteristically frightens the Dark Passenger into silence, leaving Dexter to solve the crime on his own. As a series of similar murders takes place, members of a mysterious cult begin stalking Dexter, believing his Dark Passenger to be a threat to them. Dexter soon begins to question the dark voice that has been with him all his life, as he slowly realizes that his Dark Passenger is a true entity unto itself, possibly an offspring of the ancient god Moloch. While attempting to dispatch a killer who had been stalking him, Dexter becomes frightened and is unable to go through with the deed. He soon realizes that the Dark Passenger had given him an unusual amount of confidence and an almost supernatural awareness of the world around him; now that it is gone, he feels vulnerable for the first time in his life. As the novel progresses, Dexter begins to develop emotions that were once suppressed by the Dark Passenger, mainly those of sadness and anger. While missing the helpful clues and hints of the Dark Passenger, Dexter feeds off of his newfound emotions to find some balance in his life and to solve the mystery unfolding around him. The story also concerns the training of Cody and Astor Bennett, Dexter's soon-to-be stepchildren. Traumatized by their abusive father, they have developed homicidal tendencies similar to Dexter's. Dexter intends to teach them the "Code of Harry", which his own adoptive father used to help him hide his dark nature and blend in with normal people. Cody and Astor are eager to learn, but Dexter informs them that they are not ready yet, and still have years of training left before they are able to inflict any real human suffering. The novel concludes as the Cult of Moloch kidnaps Astor and Cody, thereby forcing Dexter to engage them head-on. However, the cult soon captures Dexter through a supernatural captivation of music. Though confined in a small concrete storage closet, Dexter escapes and encounters an old man who is the current avatar of Moloch. Though Dexter is instantly humbled and frightened of Moloch, he continuously mocks the malignant spirit, which in turn entrances him and the children and orders them to be sacrificed in a flaming pit. Dexter remains in a trance until his pant leg catches on fire; the pain of the burns snaps him out of it, and he opens fire on the cult members. A final showdown pits an armed Dexter against Moloch, who is clutching Astor and threatening to kill her. In a stalemate, Dexter is hesitant to act until Moloch reaches for his ceremonial knife only to find it missing; and then shudders to a halt and falls over with the knife lodged squarely in his back. Cody stands behind him holding Moloch's knife, saying, "I told you I was ready." Dexter laments that having killed at such an early age, Cody's journey will now be more difficult. Weeks pass, and Dexter is left alone to accept life without his Dark Passenger. At his wedding, Dexter falls into a fit of despair as he thinks about how painful his life is going to be in its banality. Just then, the Passenger comes back to him, brought on by Dexter's immense suffering, and he is made whole again in the final paragraphs of the novel. This is the first of Jeff Lindsay's "Dexter" series not narrated exclusively in the first-person point of view. Along with Dexter's first-person narration, the novel also includes third person narration from two other points of view. One is a person called the Watcher, a member of the cult that follows and observes Dexter. The other is a mythical, godlike entity called "IT" (revealed to be Moloch) which has existed since the beginning of time and is similar in various ways to the Dark Passenger. IT takes great pleasure in entering creatures as a "passenger" and making them kill other creatures, and works to create other murderous entities similar to itself, but soon turns against many of them, causing them to flee. IT and its offspring go to war, with IT being victorious. Some of IT's remaining children stay in hiding, fearing IT's power.
9640428	/m/02pmswz	Bambi's Children	Felix Salten	1940	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Twin fawns (from the ending of the first novel), Geno and Gurri learn the pleasures as well as downsides of nature and their forest home, as their mother Faline raises them to adulthood. Their father, Bambi, watches over them and, at times, takes care of them while their mother is busy. During their lives, they interact with Lana and Boso, twin fawns of their Aunt Rolla. One day, Gurri gets attacked by a fox, but survives. She's then taken away by a gamekeeper (but is mostly known as the, "brown He" by some of the animals, because of the brown coat he wears). When she's brought to the "brown He's" place. She meets his dog, Hector, and an owl, that He found awhile ago. The owl is chained to a post, and he tells Gurri about the times when the small birds (that the owl preys on) came to attack him. Then Bambi comes, and he tells Gurri that he'll come at anytime to teach her how to jump over the gate. When the "brown He" comes, Bambi runs back into the forest, and when he does that, the "brown He" opens the gate and leaves. Gurri then takes the opportunity to leave. When she comes back, tension's between her family and Rolla's family start to rise. First, Rolla asks Gurri to tell her what had happened, but she is too tired to talk about it. The next day, Rolla again demands Gurri to tell her, but she just wants to play with Lana and Boso. Then one day, Rolla gets attacked by a wolf-dog. And while trying to escape him, she accidentally lures the wolf-dog to where Faline and the others are hiding. The wolf-dog immediately turns his attention to Geno, and chases him instead. When Faline gets word of Geno's disappearance, she blames Rolla for "sacrificing" her son. After Bambi saves Geno from the wolf dog, Geno finds Rolla, and he is then reunited with his sister and mother. When they go to see Rolla, Lana gives them a warm welcome, while Boso, starts developing a hate for them. He starts antagonizing Geno a bit, then scolds Faline for not sending them a messenger about their mother being injured. When Faline and her children leave, a feud between the two families is then started. When Geno starts to grow his antlers, he and Gurri discover two orphaned male fawns named Nello and Membo. Faline decides to adopt them as new friends for her children, so they can forget about their new enemies. When Geno gets older, he meets Lana again, and starts developing feelings for her. But then Boso comes out and challenges Geno to a fight, but Geno refuses. Boso starts to spread rumors across the forest about Geno being a coward. When Geno has had enough, he fights Boso and defeats him, he offers a truce, but Boso instead turns away. Geno tries to apologise to Lana, but she refuses to talk to him after that. Then one day, Boso is shot by a boy hunter, but before the boy could kill him he escapes. He then runs into Bambi, and Bambi has him do the same techniques that his father, the Great Prince, told him to do when he got shot. The boy then returns and tries to kill Geno, but right when he is about to kill him, Bambi jumps out and kills him. In the end, Lana forgives Geno for what he did to Boso, and the two families end their feud and become friends again. When they have all left, Faline notices a "well-beloved shadow" in the bushes (obviously Bambi), and she goes towards it.
9642190	/m/02pmvl4	Dark Congress	Christopher Golden	2007-08-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Golden has revealed some things about the plotline in an interview with Slayerlit: :"Once upon a time, all of the demonic and monstrous races, and the old gods, would choose ambassadors to send to the Dark Congress, which would take place under a general truce once every hundred years. The world is populated by demons from dark dimensions and many other supernatural beings and breeds, and they all have different attitudes toward humanity and the world. Some want to leave to return to their home dimensions, some to conquer this one; some want to live in peace with human beings, and others want to eat them." The story takes place after the seventh season of Buffy. The Congress has not met for 500 years, having failed to come to an agreement. The story starts as Micaela, a Watcher, unknowingly releases the demon, Kandida, one of the leaders of the Dark Congress. Then, we find Buffy, and Xander in Providence, Rhode Island, trekking to the location of the city's own Hellmouth. There, they meet Trabajo the Sand demon, from whom they nearly escape. Meanwhile, in Greece, Willow is living happily with Kennedy, until she returns to their apartment to find Kennedy has cheated on her with a newbie Slayer. Completely broken-hearted, Willow immediately leaves and heads to Athens to clear her mind, there she meets a very ancient witch named Catherine, who promises Willow her heart's desire if she will be her apprentice. She gives Willow a very powerful scroll and her witch's familiar, a ginger cat. With a very ancient spell Willow is able to resurrect her former lover Tara Maclay, with whom the familiar shares a body. Willow and Tara have an emotional reunion. Elsewhere, former Scooby, Oz, is approached by an elder werewolf, who tells him that he is needed in Providence. Faith, who is now in San Francisco, finishes off vamps in the city, gets a message from a vamp who is a minion of an ancient vampiress named Harmann and decides to head back to New England, to Rhode Island, to meet up with Buffy. She arrives there and is attacked by The Gentlemen (of the Buffy Season 4 episode, "Hush"). She defeats them and remeets Xander, and has a sisterly reunion with "B". Giles, in England, has heard of all of the supernatural activity centered around Providence and he and Micaela travel to Rhode Island. Willow decides to bring Tara to meet Buffy and Xander, and Oz also heeds the older wolf's orders and goes to Providence. The Scoobies have a very happy reunion, especially with the resurrection of Tara (of which both Buffy and Giles are highly skeptical). They learn of the Dark Congress which is in session above the once active hellmouth in Providence, and the court of Demons want Buffy to be their arbiter. The Sand demon Trabajo is reunited with his lover, Kandida, but the two have a short reunion when Kandida's heart is ripped out. Trabajo is about to accuse a few of the members of the Congress and attack them, which would send the Congress in chaos and start an inevitable apocalypse. Buffy must keep that from happening by finding Kandida's killers and bringing them before the Council before Trabajo has a chance at them. The suspects are; Haarmann, the ancient vampiress; Willow's new suspicious and very intimidating teacher, Catherine; and Malik a rogue "Champion" for The Powers that Be, and his group of warriors who will kill anything connected to demons, including demons who aren't harmful, and even Slayers. Buffy is horrified and disgusted to be included. After all she is not a demon...is she? She knows so little about her powers that she can't say for certain where they truly spring from. How can she spend so much time wallowing in the darkness without becoming part of it? Can she possibly agree to a truce with all the horrors of the world, and allow them to come to Providence without any attempt to stop them? Does she have a choice? Meanwhile, can Willow and Tara come to terms with their denial that Tara's resurrection is anything but unnatural?
9646922	/m/02pm__8	Havana Bay	Martin Cruz Smith	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Renko is depressed because his beloved wife Irina is dead due to a misunderstanding through carelessness on the part of a Russian doctor and his nurse. He is in a suicidal state of mind when anonymously summoned to Havana to help an old acquaintance out of some unspecified trouble. By the time he arrives, however, the good Colonel Pribluda, late of the SVR, has apparently died under very mysterious circumstances. The novel begins with Arkady at the tip of Havana Bay as the sun begins to rise on what promises to be a hot one in Cuba. The Cuban militia has what they believe is a dead Russian. Renko being a Senior Investigator from Moscow who knew Pribluda, the Cubans are hoping he can expedite matters by both confirming the liquefying corpse's identity and affirming it as a natural or accidental death. In a decaying Cuba filled with cars and houses that were built in the 1950s and are now falling to pieces, Renko stumbles upon a plot to defraud Russia of $250 million in an underhanded sugar purchase scam. Along the way, of course, there are the inevitable gruesome killings, abakua ceremonies and attacks upon his person as well. <gallery> File:Bahia Habana Entrada.jpg|Havana Bay entrance File:Old Havana Cuba.jpg|Street scene at the Old Havana </gallery>
9648004	/m/02pn130	Fool Moon	Jim Butcher	2001-01-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the events in Storm Front. Kim Delaney, who Dresden helped to control her magical talents, asks Dresden how to create a set of three magical circles, which could be used to contain powerful entities. Dresden withholds the information, because such circles are generally used to contain demigods and archangels. Lt. Karrin Murphy asks Dresden to consult on a homicide. A henchman of Johnnie Marcone's was found near a group of wolfish paw prints. Dresden follows a lead that takes him into a confrontation with a gang of teenage werewolves and their pack leader, Tera West. At the police station, he gets a tip from FBI Agent Harris that the Streetwolves biker gang might know something about the murder, learning The Streetwolves and their packleader Parker are lycanthropes. They do not change shape, but become bestial in their minds. Dresden escapes unscathed, but now the Streetwolves want him dead. Marcone shows up in Dresden's office. He offers to hire Dresden as his security adviser, for protection. Dresden refuses. On his way out the door, Marcone says that these killings are connected to Harley MacFinn and his Northwest Passage Project. Dresden summons the demon Chaunzaggoroth in order to get information, exchanging one more part of his name for information about Harley MacFinn. Before Dresden can check on Harley MacFinn, Lt. Murphy arrests him. Kim Delaney's shredded body is found in MacFinn's apartment next to a summoning circle. Tera West sneaks in and frees Dresden. Tera tells Dresden that he must draw the containment circle around her fiancé Harley MacFinn before the moon rises, or innocent people will die. MacFinn is a loup-garou, an incredibly powerful werewolf that can only be killed with inherited silver. Dresden is shot during his escape from police custody, and is rescued by Tera. Desperate, he calls Susan and bums a ride in exchange for an exclusive on the wolf murders. Ignoring Dresden's warnings, Murphy arrests and jails MacFinn in his human form. Dresden races to the station to get to MacFinn, but the moon rises, and MacFinn changes, slaughtering the suspects in the holding cells, the desk sergeant, and Murphy's staff. Dresden drives off MacFinn and goes in search of Marcone. While searching for MacFinn, Dresden is attacked by the Streetwolves, and learns the FBI agents are hexenwolves behind the murders after capturing one of them. At moonrise, they pile into a rented van and head to Marcone's estate to save him from MacFinn. Dresden and his allies are captured by the FBI hexenwolves and are thrown into a pit Marcone had prepared to capture the transformed MacFinn, but Marcone frees them. Dresden and Murphy kill the FBI hexenwolves and MacFinn. Dresden and Murphy burn the hexenwolves' belts before Chicago PD arrives—so they can never be used again. Susan evacuates the Alphas, and Chicago PD arrests Marcone on general principle. Tera West, revealed to be a wolf that can change into a human, returns to her family in the Northwest. One major question is left unsolved, though-where did the FBI agents get their belts?
9648490	/m/02pn1rp	Running Blind	Lee Child	2000-07-13	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The prologue opens with a mystery person's point of view on knowledge, power and killing, "People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lottery? You would run to the store. And you would win. Same for the stock market. You're not talking about a trend or a percentage game or a whisper or a tip. You're talking about knowledge. Real, hard knowledge. You would buy. Then later you'd sell, and you'd be rich. Any kind of sports at all, if you could predict the future, you'd be home and dry. Same for anything. Same for killing people." The story begins in New York City, with Reacher confronting and beating up two thugs sent to collect protection racket money from the new restaurant he was eating in, during which he deliberately implies that he is a member of a rival crime organization. Reacher is picked up by the FBI and questioned on who he is working for, but explains he is a loner and has been since he mustered out of the army. He is then questioned about two women whose cases of sexual harassment he dealt with when he was an MP and it is revealed they have both been killed in the last few months and a criminal profiling team have come to the conclusion that the person responsible was someone exactly like Reacher. Reacher's girlfriend arrives, Jodie Garber-Jacob, and after further questioning, Reacher is let go. Jodie returns to work, and Reacher drives to his house in upstate New York that he inherited from Leon Garber. He is soon called upon by two members of the FBI team that previously questioned him. They reveal a third women has been killed, also an ex-soldier who filed for sexual harassment—albeit in a different timeframe than the first two. The FBI asks him to help out the investigation, and Reacher refuses—up until they blackmail him, saying that the thugs Reacher beat up at the start of the story may gain access to Jodie's address if he doesn't cooperate. Reacher and Special Agent Lamarr, the lead profiler on the team, drive from New York to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, while discussing information on the case, which reveals that Lamarr's stepsister is a woman with the same particulars as the three already killed. Lamarr also reveals the killer's M.O., which is killing the victims in an unknown way, with no bruises or injuries, leaving them naked in their bathtub, filled with army-issue camouflage paint. The team hold several meetings at Quantico, and Reacher meets Lisa Harper, the woman who has to accompany Reacher wherever he goes. Reacher suggests contacting Colonel John Trent, who owes Reacher a big favour, at Fort Dix to try and get a trace on the paint. Reacher and Harper head up to New Jersey, but while Harper remains outside the colonel's office due to security clearance reasons, the colonel helps Reacher sneak out the window and arranges a four hour trip to New York. Back in NYC he targets a random pair of criminals collecting protection money in an ethnic area, beating them up and telling them he's from Petrosian's gang, from which he beat up two members at the beginning of the story. Reacher completes his objective in time, removing the leverage that the FBI is threatening him and Jodi with, effectively turning the two crime mobs on each other. He then returns with Harper oblivious to this. The team continue their search, and the next victim is Agent Lamarr's stepsister. Local policemen are then put on duty of the remaining women on the list. Eventually Reacher and Harper catch the killer: Lamarr. She is in the process of killing her fifth victim when the two interrupt her and Reacher punches her, breaking her neck and killing her. Reacher and Harper come to the conclusion that Lamarr was utilising her hypnotising techniques in order to make the victims comply with her orders, before making them stick their tongue down their own throat to suffocate themselves. Her motive was to get the inheritance from her stepsister, the other victims were only a smoke screen. The FBI is unhappy that Reacher has killed one of their agents and threatens to prosecute him, but an agreement is made. Reacher then meets up with Jodie, and she reveals she is leaving for London in a month's time. Reacher knows he will not want to go with her, and the two agree to spend one last month together.
9648871	/m/02pn263	Echo Burning	Lee Child	2001-06-21	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In a Texas bar, Jack Reacher breaks a local police officer's nose and finger after being provoked, so when the officer and three of his colleagues turn up the following day to arrest him, Reacher decides it's time to move on. He manages to hitch a lift with a Californian of Mexican heritage named Carmen Greer, but she reveals to him that the only reason she picked him up is because she has a problem—her tax-evading husband Sloop is coming out of prison soon, and he will beat her up. Carmen needs somebody to kill him, and she thinks Reacher's military background may help her get rid of him. Reacher initially refuses and even gets out of the car into the 110 degree heat, but he eventually agrees to go back to the ranch where Carmen, her husband Sloop and the rest of Sloop's family live, to keep an eye on her. Reacher and Carmen then proceed to pick up the daughter of Carmen and Sloop: Ellie, who gets on well with Reacher. During this time, we also see the introduction of two hired teams: the first team, named "The Watching Team" or "The Watchers", is composed of two men and a boy and have been watching the ranch where the Greers live. This team is later killed by a second, called "The Killing Team", who have also killed Sloop's lawyer Al Eugene. Carmen and Reacher arrive back at the ranch, but Reacher does not receive a warm welcome from Sloop's mother, brother or the two ranchers that work there. Nonetheless, Reacher begins works there. In the days leading up to Sloop's release, Reacher helps teach Carmen how to fire a gun and also beats up both ranchers in a bar fight. Sloop comes home and takes a dislike to Reacher, and eventually gets the State Police to take Reacher away. The State Police do take Reacher away, but the troopers are called back to the Greer Ranch, or the "Red House", whilst Reacher is still in the car. Sloop has been shot and killed, and the authorities think it was Carmen. Whilst she is incarcerated, she confesses to the murder and denies legal help from Alice Amanda Aaron, the attorney Reacher hires for her. Reacher and Alice work on trying to prove Carmen's innocence, despite being thrown off the track by the claims of Hack Walker - Pecos County's district attorney and Sloop's oldest friend—that Carmen is a well-known liar, and by the kidnapping of Ellie by "The Killing Team". Eventually, however, Reacher draws out and kills two members of "The Killing Team". He proves it was Walker who hired the team to kill Al Eugene and Sloop after Sloop threatened to make public information about what the threesome used to do in their youth—kill illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border between America and Mexico. After tracking down the third "Killing Team" member and finding Ellie, the kidnapper gives a confession, leaving Carmen to be set free.
9648897	/m/02pn274	Without Fail	Lee Child	2002-05-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Reacher arrives in Atlantic City, New Jersey, after hitching a ride with a couple of aging musicians. He is accosted there by Mary Ellen Froelich, a beautiful secret service agent who managed to track him down. She has a special request for him: she consults him on how he could kill the Vice-President; countering those methods would help her considerably in her job: protecting the Vice-President. He accepts the challenge, and enlists old colleague Frances Neagley to help carry out the mission. Froelich asked Reacher's assistance on this matter because of suspicious and threatening letters which had been sent to the Vice-President but instead intercepted by his protective team. Together, they attempt to find the ones responsible.
9648947	/m/02pn2bl	Persuader	Lee Child	2003-05-13	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book is written in the first person, only the second Jack Reacher novel to be treated in this fashion. It becomes apparent that the book is written this way to conceal from the reader the fact that the original 'kidnap' of a teenage boy is merely a setup. Jack Reacher is actually working with the DEA in order to bring down the boy's father; this is eventually accomplished after the obligatory gunfire and mayhem have taken place. Lee Child presents these well, with Reacher initially on the back foot, but gaining the upper hand due to planning, foresight and not a little luck. The penultimate climactic battle between Reacher and a steroid-enhanced giant is a masterpiece in tension, as Reacher encounters a foe who is capable of treating him as he treats most ordinary opponents.
9648948	/m/02pn2by	The Bug Wars	Robert Asprin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Bug Wars takes place an unspecified length of time before the present, in an unspecified part of the galaxy. The song "Reminder," would suggest that it is at least one million years. Opening with the main character, Rahm, waking from stasis, the book covers his campaigns as part of the Tzen Warrior cast against a coalition of large Insect species; the Wasps, Leapers, and Ants, in that order. After a mission to destroy the Wasp nests and queens on a planet, the Tzen intend to colonize. However, because of Tzen military practices, that a task force leaves after a predicted proportion of units return, assuming that all others are casualties, Rahm's flight group was stranded on the planet. The Tzen would return in a year to eliminate the Leapers, insects not unlike a praying mantis. While stranded, the team made a number of discoveries, chief among which was the fact that the Tzen needed to find a natural predator of the Leapers to defeat them. The standard practice for the Tzen is to kill the next generation of insects before it is born, then return later to kill any remaining adults. The Leapers are immune to this, however, because they are all capable of reproduction, and bury their eggs, making them impossible to eradicate without levying resources unavailable to the Tzen Empire. After the Empire returns as planned to eradicate the leapers, they retreat and begin looking for a creature that eats insect eggs. Rahm is selected to lead a team of Tzen from each caste to find such a creature. When they set up a pre-fabricated building as their base, they soon discover a number of hostile flora and fauna, including a plant with toxic thorns, Spiders, and a colony of Ants near their base. Several of the team are captured by the Ants, and learn that they are intelligent and capable of telepathic communication. When the team discovers a suitable creature, they round up as many as they can, but are hounded by the insects. The mission culminates in a battle between the Tzen and Insects at the base. After the leapers have been defeated, Rahm is selected to lead a campaign against the Ants as a Planetary Commander. The mission is considered almost suicidal, with a casualty estimate of at least seventy percent. In the middle of the battle, Rahm discovers that, while they have eliminated the Ants primary power source, they had a reserve strong enough for one use of a power-consuming device. One colony used theirs for cold-beam lasers, another used it to launch an escape shuttle, which was promptly destroyed. After defeating the Ants, Rahm returned to stasis, to be reawakened whenever the empire needed him.
9648953	/m/02pn2c8	Adolphe 1920	John Rodker			 The novella is split into eight sections - each spanning roughly an hour. The narrative is fragmented, often making it difficult to tell who is talking or thinking, or whether events are occurring in the present or being recalled. Dick awakes to find a fair being set up in the street outside. He recalls a visit he took to Bordeaux with his ex-lover Angela. They visited a crypt. He watches a film of a Victorian woman undressing in a mutoscope. He returns to the crowd in the street and becomes nauseous as he is swept up by the mass of people. He meets the Snake-lady and propositions her - she accepts. He becomes lost in the crowd again, then is found by Monica, who is possibly his current girlfriend. They enter a tent with waxwork displays of body parts, and disfigured people with what appear to be war-wounds. Dick picks up a dwarf. He and Monica kiss. He flees and watches another mutoscope film of a head biting a neck. He expresses a desire to rest. He returns to his bedroom and dreams of Angela. He wakes as Monica enters. He gazes at her, they kiss, then he takes her outside back into the crowd and slips away from her. He leaves the crowd. He becomes confused and begins to daydream about Angela and his regret for love. He re-enters the fair and sees five wrestlers: a bear, a fat wrestler, a thin wrestler, a large woman, and a "flour-white-faced boy". They fight and the woman wins. Dick is disgusted by this. He then sees the ghost of Angela in the crowd, and has another daydream in a tent. He watches a projected film in which a face gets larger and larger on the screen. He collects Monica from his room and they go to a restaurant and then an aquarium. He has a vision of Angela as Undine. Angela returns and Monica is forced to leave. Monica returns with an unnamed escort. They pick up the Snake-lady from the fair and all five go to a club. In the club Dick specifically notes the jazz musicians, black waiters, dancers, and a singer. An unidentified black man sits with them and plays with the snake. Dick talks with Angela in an anteroom. He starts to stack glasses on one another: they topple over after Angela tells him to stop. Dick becomes delirious and returns home in a taxi. He goes to sleep.
9648999	/m/02pn2fb	The Enemy	Lee Child	2004-05-11	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Reacher and a female assistant named Lieutenant Summer travel to inform Mrs. Kramer of her husband's death. However, when they arrive, it turns out the house has been broken into and Mrs. Kramer has been murdered with a crowbar. Reacher goes to a bar across the street from the motel to find out who the hooker was, and creates some trouble when he gets into a fight with the owner, shattering his knee. Afterwards, the motel receptionist informs Reacher that he heard a military vehicle leaving after Kramer's death, and Reacher concludes that the woman Kramer was with is a female officer. The book introduces General Vassell and Colonel Coomer, and later their errand boy, Major Marshall. It becomes clear that they are hiding something, related to an agenda for a meeting that was in Kramer's briefcase. Two soldiers named Carbone and Brubaker are murdered soon afterward. It turns out that Carbone filed a complaint against Reacher, his first in a sixteen-year career, for assaulting the bar owner. This puts Reacher under a cloud of suspicion. Reacher, in a talk with the Chief of Staff, finds out that with the collapse of Soviet communism that the military at large is worried about its inevitable downsizing, and in particular the different branches are having a power struggle. Reacher realises that Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall killed Carbone, by sneaking Marshall into the base in the car trunk. This is proven when investigation of the car finds Marshall's fingerprints as well as large quantities of blood in the trunk. Reacher arrests Vassell and Coomer for conspiracy to commit homicide. He makes the mistake of traveling alone to a firing range in the Mojave Desert to arrest Marshall. Marshall is hiding out in a bunker, also armed. A firefight ensues, during which Marshall calls his tank squadron, practicing nearby, to fire rounds on their position. Under cover of the incoming tank shells, and realizing that time is short, Reacher sneaks into the bunker and shoots and wounds Marshall. Escaping in his Humvee, he drives the wounded Marshall to a military hospital. Reacher finds the missing agenda. It turns out that it was a plan to ensure that Armored Branch, the military the conspirators worked for, avoided being reduced. The agenda was a plan to assassinate eighteen prominent individuals in the army, one already killed. Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall plead guilty as charged in exchange for life imprisonment, avoiding the death penalty which was threatened. Reacher pleads guilty to the brutality charge that had been brought by Carbone, and is demoted to Captain, but has cleared his conscience.
9649063	/m/02pn2jt	One Shot	Lee Child	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In a small Indiana city a lone gunman in a parking garage calmly fires into a rush hour crowd in a public plaza, committing a massacre of five random victims with six shots. The shooter leaves a perfect trail behind him for the police to quickly track him down. Evidence from the scene, of a shell case and a quarter bearing the same fingerprints, points clearly to James Barr, a former Army Infantry sniper. He's arrested but will only say two things to the police: "'They got the wrong guy," and "'Get Jack Reacher for me.'" Reacher, the former Army Military Police officer is 1500 miles away but he sees the news on CNN and gets on a bus to Indiana. Reacher has no job, no home, no car, and a shrinking savings account from his past military pay. Although Reacher has a nomadic existence, what he does have is a sharp moral clarity in a modern climate of moral ambiguity. Instead of clearing Barr, Reacher wants to assist the prosecution in convicting him. There are good reasons why Reacher is the last person Barr would want to see. When Reacher was an investigating MP years past, Barr had committed a killing spree similar to the Indiana shootout, murdering four people during the Gulf War in Kuwait City, but twisted military politics and a technicality let Barr walk free. Reacher swore he would track the sniper down if he ever tried it again. Reacher believes Barr is guilty but Barr's sister Rosemary is convinced of her brother's innocence and entreats lawyer Helen Rodin to defend her brother. Helen's father is the district attorney that will prosecute the case. When Reacher arrives in Indiana, Barr has been beaten so badly he can't remember anything about the day of the murders, leaving Reacher to form his own conclusions with the available evidence. The local NBC news reporter, Ann Yanni, is also looking for more information and Reacher is more than willing to include her in his investigation, in exchange for a guaranteed public expose on the Barr case. Ann also lets Reacher drive her Mustang convertible car while he is in Indiana. Reacher knows thirty yards, the parking garage distance, is point-blank range for a trained military sniper like Barr. Reacher also knows the shooter missed one shot on purpose, giving Reacher one shot at the truth. Reacher drives to Kentucky to the shooting range where the sniper practiced and learns some interesting facts from Gunny Samuel Cash, the former U.S. Marine who owns the shooting range, which make him doubt the guilty airtight case against Barr. During a long range shooting scene, with a target of 300 yards, Reacher uses his enhanced intelligence with advanced technical and military knowledge, slowing and counting his heartbeat while calculating wind, humidity, trajectory, speed, energy and force. Cash is unwilling to reveal information or his records to Reacher, but grudgingly agrees to talk if Reacher is able to hit the target with one shot. Reacher is a skilled marksman and beside winning the US Army Pistol Championship, served as a pistol instructor. and is the only non-Marine to win the Marine Corps 1000 Yard Invitational rifle competition, 10 years after Cash scraped third place, which Reacher refrains from mentioning. Reacher makes the shot and tactfully says it was due to Cash's weaponry. Cash responds to Reacher's spoken compliment and unspoken respect and shows Reacher 32 sheets of target paper from three years' worth of Barr's practice shootings at his range, every single sheet with dead-on maximum scores. After the visit to the shooting range, Reacher adds Cash's information to the case evidence and his weaponry knowledge. Helen and Rosemary sift through the clues in a riveting analysis and finally get Reacher to conclude that Barr is innocent, which means someone set up Barr as the sniper. Someone is also trying to get Reacher off the case, which seemed a slam-dunk but is falling apart. Reacher is teamed with Helen, the young defense lawyer working against her D.A. father with a prosecution team that has an explosive secret of its own. Like most of Reacher's life, the case is a complex battlefield, but Reacher is at his best during battles. Reacher gets closer to the unseen enemy pulling the strings, leading him to the real perpetrators, a Russian gang, masquerading as legitimate businessmen. The gang's eighty-year-old capo spent most of his life in the infamous Soviet Gulag and is known only as The Zec. Reacher outwits the mob guards in the Russian gang's fortress, efficiently and brutally dispatching five hoods before confronting the boss and forcing him to come clean on the whole scam and set-up.
9649186	/m/02pn2q9	Bad Luck and Trouble	Lee Child	2007	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Reacher is roaming alone with no objectives, no phone, no address, just the clothes he's wearing and his ATM card, when an anonymous deposit is made to his bank account. Reacher automatically analyzes the amount, using his math obsession and investigative skills. Also obsessed with math, Frances Neagley (previously seen in Without Fail) is the sender of $1030.00, which Reacher recognises as their old army code, 10-30, for urgent help needed. He meets up with Neagley in California and they discover the death of Calvin Franz, one of nine members of their elite team of ex–army investigators, who are being hunted down one by one. After getting no reply from anyone else, their suspicions rise and Neagley convinces him to put the old unit back together. Reacher and Neagley find that three of the other five members are missing, while Stan Lowery had a fatal car accident years earlier. They conclude that Franz called the others for help with a major problem but left out the remaining four that resided too far away to get to him quickly, apart from Reacher, who is famously untraceable. Reacher and Neagley discover Franz's office gutted and trashed but decide the perpetrators didn't find what they were looking for. After further investigation they visit Franz's widow and child, Angela and Charlie. Angela notes that when Franz told her all about the team, she had felt like Franz had been married before, to them. Reacher says if people were lucky like the team, they became family, but Franz got even luckier with her and Charlie, with Angela replying, "...but his luck ran out, didn't it?", a reference to the book title. More information on the other team members makes Reacher and Neagley realise Franz was unlikely to be the person who called for help. They meet David O'Donnell at their hotel, making three of the team alive. Reacher goes to Tony Swan's workplace, defense contractor New Age, in search of information, but is sent away with basically nothing by the HR manager, Margaret Berenson. Following Reacher and his team is an unmarked car, which they trap to discourage the driver. After roughing him up they find out the driver is an LA County Deputy named Thomas Brant, but outside of his jurisdiction in Orange County, CA. The team decides to ditch their rental car for a new one and run into Karla Dixon. With four of the team now alive, they proceed to source money, cars and weapons. Except for Reacher, all the team members have "moved onward and upward" from the military, making Reacher reconsider his drifting. He is happy for the others' successes but feels as if he is "treading water while the rest are swimming". Putting aside onflicting reactions at seeing his team again, Reacher focuses on the three missing members, Manuel Orozco, Jorge Sanchez and Tony Swan, and which one was in a situation so bad they couldn't handle it on their own and called for help. The team realizes Franz kept his home life completely separate from his business, leading Franz to mail any dangerous computer data to himself, with triple backup of refreshed computer USB flash drives on rotating days. They find his flash memory sticks in his business post-office box, crack the password, then review a set of bizarre numbers which they conclude to be scores, and an unfamiliar name "Adrian Mount" with four aliases. Unsurprised, Reacher is visited by Brant and his boss, Curtis Mauney, an LA County Sheriff. But Reacher is surprised when Mauney tells him that Reacher and his team are bait, for whoever killed Franz and caused Swan, Sanchez and Orozco to be reported missing. Mauney's LA sheriffs and Las Vegas police frequently work together and recent information had linked the dead and the missing with Reacher's team. Neagley gets a response regarding Swan's company New Age from Diana Bond, a staffer for a guy on the House Defense Committee, that Reacher and his team distrust, but they pressure Diana for confidential information on New Age and its military contracts. Mauney later contacts the team with information on Jorge Sanchez's death and Vegas police evidence on Adrian Mount with five aliases, one more than Franz had. Sanchez and Orozco were partners in a Las Vegas casino security firm and the team drives to Las Vegas for clues and answers on Sanchez and the still missing Orozco. Reacher and his team seek out the major casino security directors about the possibility of Sanchez and Orozco being involved in a large scale internal multi-casino thief network and are told about Sanchez's girlfriend, who leads them to Orozco's wife and children. An assassination attempt is made on Reacher and his team but they kill the assassin and take his car, which Reacher recalls from their LA hotel. Reacher uses the cell phone in the car to return-dial the last number on the call list, telling the man who answers that his assassin failed, the team knows he is behind their unit's dead members and they are coming for him. From Las Vegas they are told to meet Mauney at the hospital, leading Reacher to conclude that Sanchez is not dead, just severely injured. O'Donnell and Dixon go to the hospital and Reacher and Neagley go to find Margaret Berenson, after they realise that she has been lying to them. They find that New Age has been producing state of the art air missiles and pretending to destroy the prototypes, whilst sending them to foreign terrorists. Neagley and Reacher leave Berenson's house after finding out Berenson is being blackmailed with harm to her son, and arranging a safe hiding place for them. O'Donnell and Dixon are captured by Mauney's men in the hospital and taken to New Age's Director, Allen Lamaison. Reacher and Neagley track Mauney down, take his suitcase containing the terrorists' payment of $65 million, and kill him. At the second New Age complex, Reacher stows away on the same helicopter as Lamaison, where he finds O'Donnell and Dixon tied up and about to be thrown off and killed the same way that Franz, Orozco, Sanchez and Swan were. Reacher confronts Lamaison just in time, kills his assistant and pushes Lamaison out of the helicopter once it is fully one mile above ground level. After the helicopter lands Reacher asks the pilot if he flew for each of the murders and after confirmation, Reacher kills the pilot also. The one part left is the terrorist weapons buyer, who Reacher concludes does not know how to use them. The team finds the one New Age staff engineer capable of teaching the terrorist how to use the weapons, and who is being threatened with his daughter's torture. Reacher poses as the engineer briefly as the terrorist arrives, then he and Neagley tie the terrorist up, leaving him for the special military police to find him. Later, the four team members agree to split the money obtained from the bad guys after setting up trust funds for the murdered team members' loved ones, with a donation to PETA for Tony Swan's only family, his dog Maisi. Reacher eventually receives a deposit for over $100,000 in his account, automatically analyzes it, and thinks the amount is just a boring plain number. He feels disappointed and let down by Dixon, the money manager of the group. But the detailed report shows multiple deposits, "101810.18. 10012 ... Military police radio code for mission accomplished, twice over. 10-18, 10-18 ... second deposit was her zip code: 10012. Greenwich Village. Where she lived."
9649205	/m/02pn2rp	Tripwire	Lee Child	1999-06-28	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins with a prologue explaining how a man named Hook Hobie had a secret to hide and had planned a careful escape route in case anyone ever got close to finding it out. Two stages, the threat and the reaction. Stage one, the threat, was the early-warning system of two particular locations, of concentric tripwires. The early warning tripwire was eleven thousand miles from home. The closer second tripwire was six thousand miles from home. Stage two, the response, was to run, to tie up loose ends, cash in, transfer assets. Over 30 years had made him feel almost safe, but sometimes he thought about the first tripwire call and sweated and planned. Then the two tripwire calls came on the same day. The second nearer tripwire came before the early warning one. Hobie abandoned his stage two response, to run, and 30 years of careful planning. The main story then begins with Jack Reacher being visited by a private detective called Costello. Costello is looking for Reacher, but Reacher lies and tells him he knows nothing of a Jack Reacher living or working in Key West—the Floridian setting for the book. Reacher manages to get out of Costello that he is looking for Reacher under orders from a client named Mrs. Jacob, although Reacher knows nobody who goes by that name. After Reacher manages to keep up the charade that he is not who he really is, Costello leaves. Later on Reacher is working his night job as a bouncer in a strip club when two men come looking for him. Once again, Reacher lies about his name and denies knowing anyone called Reacher, and after a short confrontation, the two men leave. Reacher goes to follow them but can’t find them among the winding side roads. He does, however, find a dead Costello with his fingertips cut off. Reacher gets a ride from a female co-worker with a Porsche that expertly and quickly drives him to Miami for a flight to New York to find out who this Costello was and why he was looking for Reacher. Reacher arrives in New York and begins his search for Mrs. Jacob and for more information on Costello. He manages to find the dead Costello's office, which has already been searched. Reacher gets the contact number and address from Mrs. Jacob’s office and arrives at a house on the Hudson River in upstate New York to a funeral for his old mentor and friend, Leon Garber. His daughter, Jodie Garber-Jacob is revealed to be the mysterious divorced Mrs. Jacob, a wealthy successful financial attorney, and the house where the funeral is held was Leon's, which he willed to Reacher. Together, Reacher and Jodie begin trying to uncover information on her father's last project, an investigation for the elderly Hobie parents on their missing-in-action military son, Hook Hobie. This leads to them getting attacked on several occasions by men sent out by Hobie. Reacher realizes he has to protect Jodie from these men, who also killed her investigator Costello. After one encounter, Reacher is able to take the hitmen's new SUV and everything in it. Reacher and Jodie then realize their long buried feelings for each other are romantic. The investigation takes them to the military Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, a special facility that handles forensic remains of soldiers. They discover that Hobie was drafted in the Vietnam War and was a skilled pilot who lost his hand when his helicopter went down. However, the truth that Hook Hobie is not who he says he is then found out, and it turns out that Hobie was actually a soldier named Carl Allen who stole Victor Hobie’s identity when the helicopter that Hobie was piloting was shot down; the helicopter having been sent with a crew to arrest Allen for fragging his commanding officer in the forest. Since the war, Allen has gathered a fortune as a moneylender, first as a street lender, then as a corporate "last-resort" lender for companies that are financially rejected by banks, a "high-end loan shark". His business method is the same though, whether a dark alley or corporate boardroom, terrorizing the clients with torture and killing of family if they default. The reason Allen didn't liquidate and run when his tripwires were triggered is because he has been plotting a takeover of a billion dollar company. Allen then kidnaps the owner of the company and his wife, Chester and Marilyn Stone, to speed up the process, blackmailing and torturing them to sign over all the shares. In the climax of the story, Reacher and Jodie end up in Allen's office with Chester and Marilyn. Reacher confronts Allen, leading to a gun fight between the two. Allen is killed, and Reacher sustains a bullet wound to the chest that should have killed him. A doctor explains that, due to how much exercise and physical labour he has done through his life, his pectoral muscle was so thick the bullet could only get to Reacher’s ribcage before stopping. The story ends with Reacher and Jodie visiting the real Victor Hobie’s parents and telling them how much of a good soldier he was.
9651089	/m/02pn4r8	Side Man	Warren Leight			 The play's narrator is Clifford Glimmer, the only son of Gene, a talented but self-absorbed jazz trumpeter, and his alcoholic wife Terry, who describes the tumultuous relationship his parents shared and the haphazard career journey Gene followed over the course of three decades. Dedicated more to his music than his family, he refuses to accept a regular job to support them, and their home life gradually unravels, with Clifford eventually assuming the role of breadwinner his father has forsaken and offering his mother the emotional support Gene cannot. Scenes alternate between the family's Spartan New York City apartment and the smoke-filled nightclubs and cabarets of another era.
9659983	/m/02pnf6j	Patience and Sarah	Alma Routsong		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is told in switching first-person narratives between Patience and Sarah. The first part is told by Patience White, a woman of considerable means compared to others in her town. Her father died and left her enough money that she would not have to marry to be cared for. She lives with her brother and his wife and children, in a room she has to herself, something her sister-in-law Martha considers an unnatural privilege. Patience paints Biblical scenes as a pastime, and helps Martha with the children sometimes. They do not get along well. Patience has known of Sarah Dowling for a while since Sarah is a scandalous character to some, wearing pants and doing men's work. Sarah has a family of sisters and her father trained her to do men's work since he had no sons. Intrigued one day when Sarah delivers firewood to the White household, and to flout Martha, Patience invites Sarah into her part of the house and socializes with her. Sarah divulges that she plans to set out by herself and go west and buy her own farm. Not having the heart to tell her that she will not have the opportunity to do it, Patience indulges Sarah and tells her she wants to come along. In the midst of planning the trip west, Sarah admits she feels for Patience, and although too aware of the danger, Patience also admits her attraction for Sarah. Sarah returns to her much poorer home, where she lives with her large family in a one-room cabin. She tells her sister Rachel that she's going west with Patience as her mate, and Rachel, upset by being replaced to go west by Patience, tells their father who beats Sarah, then drags her to Patience's home to demand to know the nature of their relationship. Faced with having to admit their acts in front of witnesses, Patience denies she feels anything for Sarah and that it was all a game. The narrative switches to Sarah's perspective as she cuts off all her hair, renames herself "Sam", takes an axe and walks west alone, healing from the beatings her father gave her (no harm meant, he says). After a few experiences that demonstrate the risks of freedom, Sam takes up with a traveling Parson who goes town to town selling books in a horse-drawn rig he sleeps in. He teaches Sam to defend himself against boys in towns, to cook, teaches him about the Bible and other cultures, but most importantly, teaches him to read. In time, Parson admits he's attracted to Sam and when he tries to seduce Sam, Sarah admits her true identity. Away about six months, Sarah heads home again as Parson heads towards New York, his home. Patience arrives the next day to casually invite her to Sunday dinner. Sarah accepts, and their relationship starts again after Patience admits she lost her courage. They carry on their relationship, Sarah visiting Patience on Sundays, sometimes bringing a sister or her mother, but when they are caught embracing with their bodices open by Martha, Patience's brother tells them it's time for them to go. They head to New York City with brother Edward's blessing. Thinking Sarah is lower-class, a man on the ship assaults her, but Patience rescues her and teaches her the necessary points of being a lady. They lodge with the captain and in their first locked room alone, consummate their relationship. They meet up with the Parson again and decide that upstate New York in Greene County will be their destination, where land is cheap and they can live in peace. They arrive in Greene County and they negotiate the purchase of a small farm, plant their crop and begin their life together.
9670009	/m/02pnnvg	Egri csillagok				 The novel consists of five parts that tell the life of Gergely Bornemissza from the age of eight until the year 1552, when he is in his early thirties. I. Gergely is a half-orphan and son of a poor woman, while Éva Cecey is the daughter of a landowner. They are nevertheless playmates. While playing in the woods, the two children are captured by a Turk named Jumurdzsák and have to join a trek of prisoners. Due to the cunning of little Gergely, the two children are able to escape and later also to free the other prisoners. Gergely's mother dies in a raid by the Turks, but the little boy is adopted as a foster son by the rich aristocrat Bálint Török, where he gets a good education. II. Several years later, Gergely has to experience that Buda is captured by the Turks through deceit and his foster father Bálint Török is led away prisoner. Gergely meets Éva again, who has become a pretty young girl. III. Gergely learns that Éva who is an excellent rider and fighter is to be married to the cowardly Adam Fürjes at the request of the queen. They flee together and get married. Together with some friends they plan to free Bálint Török from his prison in Istanbul. They go to the Ottoman city, but despite many adventures, they finally fail in freeing the Hungarian aristocrat. IV. It is 1552, a force about 200,000 Turks is approaching the little town of Eger, the citadel of which is only defended by 2000 soldiers. István Dobó, captain of the citadel, calls on the troops of the emperor for aid, but no-one arrives. Gergely joins the forces who are preparing to fight in Eger, while leaving Éva home with their little son. Shortly after he has left, a stranger arrives and kidnaps the little boy. Éva realizes that the stranger must have been the Turk Jumurdzsák. She understands that there must be a connection with the siege of Eger, so she masquerades as a man and tries to enter the besieged castle. V. Even though the forces of the Turks are overwhelming, the Hungarians in Eger are able to defend themselves. Éva finally arrives at Eger. Though the Ottomans attack again and again, the citadel stands firm, with also the women of Eger joining the battle. Finally, the Ottoman forces withdraw. Gergely's and Éva's little son is exchanged for a Turkish boy who has been captured, and the family is finally reunited.
9670468	/m/02pnp5g	The Man with the Golden Touch	Mór Jókai	1872		 Mihály Timár is a young man working on the transport ship St. Barbara on the River Danube. The ship is owned by Athanáz Brazovics, a rich Serbian merchant living in Komárom, a town in Hungary, and is on its way back to Komárom carrying sacks of wheat. The owner of the goods, Euthym Trikalisz, and his thirteen-year-old daughter Timéa are also aboard. On the way to Komárom, they stop at an island, the "no man's island", which lies in the Danube between the Ottoman Empire and the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire, undiscovered and unclaimed by both. This island is the home of Teréza, a widow and her young daughter Noémi, who lead a calm and idyllic life here. Another man, Tódor Krisztyán, arrives soon. He knows Teréza and Noémi, but is apparently disliked by both. The travellers spend a night here, but Timár can't sleep and overhears a conversation in which Krisztyán blackmails Teréza. He tells her that if she doesn't give him money he will reveal the existence of the island to the authorities. Teréza says they have no money since they don't need it, as everything they need grows on the island. Krisztyán takes away the golden bracelet Timéa gave to Noémi, then leaves the island. Timár tells Teréza that he overheard the conversation; in turn, Teréza tells him that her husband was ruined and driven to suicide by Krisztyán's father and Athanáz Brazovics and so she fled to the island with her baby daughter who was raised there, unspoiled by civilization. She also tells him that Krisztyán always demands money from her and wants to marry Noémi even though the girl hates him. Timár feels frustrated that he cannot help Teréza. The next day the ship continues its journey. Mr. Trikalisz wantes to speak to Timár in private. He reveals that he is in fact not a Greek merchant but Ali Csorbadzsi, a former high-ranking official of the Ottoman Empire, who is fleeing the Empire because the Sultan wants him dead, his wealth was confiscated, and his daughter was added to the harem. He wanted to go to Brazovics, who is his brother-in-law, but the previous day he recognized Krisztyán as a spy of the Ottoman Empire (Krisztyán is, in fact, a scoundrel, adventurer and a spy of both empires). He knows Krisztyán will betray him and Austria will extradite him to the Ottoman Empire, so he has taken poison, and makes Timár swear that he will make sure Timéa arrives in Komárom safe. He gives a small box with 1000 gold coins to Timár and makes him promise he will keep it for Timéa; he also mentions that the rest of his wealth is the wheat in the sacks (which is worth ten thousand gold coins). Finally, he asks Timár to wake up Timéa when he has died – he gave her a potion so that she will sleep and they could speak in private, but if she was not given the antidote soon, the potion would kill her. Csorbadzsi then dies. Timár is tempted by the amount of money – if he let Timéa die and reported that Csorbadzsi traveled on the ship, one third of the confiscated wealth would be his by law. Because of his honesty and his awakening love for Timéa, he shrinks back from the evil thoughts. He wakes Timéa, gives her the antidote and tells her about her father's death. Later, when they arrive at the next city and the police catch up with their ship, he tells them he knows nothing about the escaped Turkish pasha and his treasure and that they only carried a Greek merchant on the ship, but he died. Thus he saved Timéa's wealth for her. Later he begins to wonder that if Csorbadzsi's remaining wealth was ten thousand gold coins, that could have been carried in a bag, why did he buy wheat with it, which fills a whole ship? And if this is the whole wealth, why does the Sultan pursue them? As they continue their journey, the ship runs on a cliff and sinks, with Timéa and Timár barely escaping. Timár takes Timéa to the Brazovics mansion in Komárom. Brazovics himself is not at home, so they are greeted by his wife Zófia, their daughter Athalie and Athalie's suitor Lieutenant Kacsuka who was Timár's friend since childhood. Brazovics arrives home just when Timéa is introduced to her new family. He has just read in the newspapers that Csorbadzsi fled the Ottoman Empire with his daughter, so he hurried home to meet them. He warmly welcomes Timéa, but when he receives the small box full of gold and learns that the ship went under with the rest of the pasha's possessions, he becomes angry and accuses Timár of stealing the rest of the money. Timár coldly refuses the accusation, and asks what should be done with the sunken ship. Brazovics charges him to auction off the wheat, which is worth almost nothing, lying soaked in the sunken ship. Timár leaves. Brazovics and his wife agree that Timéa's inheritance is not enough to raise her as a noble lady, but since she is their niece, they have to look after her, so she will be a companion to Athalie – not exactly a servant, but neither their adopted daughter. Timár meets Lieutenant Imre Kacsuka, who is in charge of supplying the army with bread. Kacsuka advises Timár to buy the shipload of worthless wheat and sell it cheap to the army. He assures him that the army will buy from him, not from others, since he can sell the cheapest wheat, and he will gain a great profit. Timár is hesitating, for he knows what poor quality the bread made of that wheat will be, but when Kacsuka tells him that this way he could make some money to compensate Timéa for the loss of her inheritance, he agrees. He buys the shipload and inspects the workers bringing it out from the river. He notices a red crescent painted on one of the sacks and recalls Csorbadzsi's last words, when he said something about the red crescent but couldn't finish the sentence before he died. Timár takes away that sack when nobody notices, and opening it he finds it to be full of treasure – gold, gems, jewelry. He fights a battle with his conscience. He bought the whole shipload, not knowing what this sack is hiding, so the treasure is his. He feels that it rightfully belongs to Timéa, but he also knows that if he gave it to her now, all of it would be taken by Brazovics. Finally, he decides he will keep the money, invest it, increase his wealth and later he will ask Timéa to marry him, sharing his wealth with her. Still, a voice deep in his mind says "you are a thief". Timár becomes rich, buys a house in the town and is invited to the social events of the elite. Only Brazovics suspects that there's something amiss. One night Timár, to fend off all danger, pretends to be drunk and tells Brazovics about making bread from the drenched wheat and selling it to the army. Brazovics swears he will keep that information secret, but of course he immediately reports Timár to the Ministry of Finance, which was in charge of funding the supply of the army. There is, however, no one to bear witness against Timár; all the soldiers say they never ate better bread than what Timár sold them. Timár is thus acquitted of all charges, and everyone expects him to demand compensation from the minister who ordered the investigation. But Timár is still looking for a way to explain to the world how he became rich, in order to be able to use the rest of his wealth too. He travels to Vienna, asks for an audience with the minister, and asks him to lease out a land on the countryside, in Levetinc to him. The minister, pleased that Timár is not demanding an apology for the false accusations, and knowing that the previous tenant of that land went into debt, agrees. He also makes Timár a nobleman, with the title "of Levetinc" added to his name. Timár, as the new landlord of Levetinc, is supervising the agricultural work on the fields. He gains more and more money and becomes the richest wheat merchant in Komárom. He gives a lot to charity, founds a hospital, gives money to schools, churches, and beggars. He is like King Midas, everything he touches becomes gold, each of his investments is successful, and the people in the town nickname him “the man with the golden touch”. However, he still feels deep in his heart that all this wealth does not belong to him. Meanwhile, Athalie Brazovics is preparing for her wedding with Kacsuka. Her father, Athanáz Brazovics hates and envies Timár for his success, but always greets him with a warm welcome in his house, thinking that he is courting Athalie, and not knowing that he visits them because of Timéa. Athalie is playing a cruel game – she knows that Timéa is in love with Kacsuka, and told her that Kacsuka will marry her. Timéa is sewing and embroidering her bridal gown, not knowing that it is Athalie's, not her own, and it will be Athalie marrying Kacsuka, not her. She even converts to Christianity for the marriage's sake. Timár knows about this cruel game and dislikes Athalie and her family more and more. Brazovics asks Timár if he is planning to ask for Athalie's hand. Timár refuses this, and tells Brazovics he finds his treatment of Timéa disgusting. He tells him that he had better fear the day when they'll meet again. He says goodbye to Timéa, promising her he will return, and then leaves. The whole town follows Timár's actions in the financial world and when he starts buying land near Komárom, Brazovics thinks Timár knows something he doesn't. He guesses that it must be that the State plans fortifications to be extended around the town; therefore, the lands will be expropriated and the owners will get a large compensation, much more than the lands were originally worth. The only question is where will this work begin, since construction will last for at least thirty years, and in order to gain much, one has to buy the lands where the constructions will be started first. With false information, Timár tricks Brazovics into investing all his money into lands where the construction will not start in the following decades. The day of Athalie's wedding has come. When Timéa wakes up, she sees Athalie in the bridal dress she made for herself, and realizes that it will be Athalie's wedding, not hers. The news comes that Brazovics is ruined, and that the lands he invested in are worthless. He dies. Kacsuka breaks his engagement with Athalie, for he only wanted her for her money. Brazovics's creditors are demanding their money, and all of his property is auctioned off. Timár buys everything and gives it to Timéa, then asks her to marry him. Timéa, although she loves Kacsuka, agrees to marry him, out of gratitude. She asks Timár to allow Athalie and her mother to stay with them. Timár agrees and offers to give a rich dowry to Athalie so that she can marry the Kacsuka, but Athalie says she doesn't want Kacsuka any more. She says she will stay with them as Timéa's servant girl. After the wedding, Timár realizes that though Timéa respects him enormously, she is not in love with him. He provides Timéa with gifts, jewels, and travels to foreign countries, in the hope of making her falling in love with him, but without any success. They move into the luxurious Brazovics mansion in Komárom. Athalie is intent on making them miserable. Timár begins to suspect that Timéa loves someone else. He decides to test her. He tells her he will travel to Levetinc and spend a month there. He leaves, but returns the same night to see if Timéa is with someone else. He finds the sleeping Timéa alone in her bedroom. He runs into Athalie who knows what's on his mind. Athalie, who is watching Timéa's every move, tells Timár that Timéa does not love him, and confirms Timár's suspicions about who Timéa loves; but she also tells him that Timéa is faithful to him and will always remain faithful. Timár feels he cannot stay, and leaves his home as if pursued. In his travels he finds himself near the No Man's Island, and decides to visit its dwellers. He feels at home with Teréza and Noémi, who is now sixteen years old. Noémi carefully asks him if he has anybody waiting for him to return home, and Timár lies and tells her that no one is waiting for him.
9673308	/m/02pnrnx	Subspace Encounter			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book describes two "spaces" that exist simultaneously in the universe, each of three spatial dimensions, and each occupied by human beings of roughly equal technological standing. The people in the two "spaces" have no awareness of each other, but each has developed faster-than-light transportation that relies on navigation through a fourth dimension that the two spaces share. Through their joint use of the fourth dimension, psychics (called "psiontists") in the two spaces become aware of each other, and meet to exchange technologies. The residents of one of the spaces use their superior weaponry and psychic abilities to help the residents of the other defeat a Hitler-like leader who plans to kill or enslave all those who do not belong to his "Garshan" race. The book was published almost twenty years after Smith's death, and edited by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach.
9676004	/m/02pnvfm	Starry Nights	Judith Clarke	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The protagonist of the book is Aasha Rani, a dark, chubby girl from Madras who has striven for seven years to become a famous Bollywood starlet. Her mother, Amma, has pushed her to attain this status by selling herself into the world of blue films before she was twelve years old, and when she was fifteen to Kishenbhai, a once-famous producer who was encouraged by Amma to take her as a lover in exchange for a film role. Kishenbhai, unable to secure a role for her any other way, finances a film with his own money after promoting her as the newest Bollywood starlet and having her sleep with the appropriate people to secure her attention and renaming her from Viji to Aasha Rani. He then proceeds to fall madly in love with her, who abandons him as she strives to get ahead in the filmi world, fully aware that she was just being used by him at first and is thus unable to return the affection of the older man. She falls in love with Akshay Arora, a famous Bollywood sex symbol who stars in a string of hits with her. Amma, who had been living with her in Mumbai, was sent away to Madras by Aasha for objecting to Akshay beating her one day. Eventually Akshay gets bored with her and after his wife confronts her unsuccessfully about her affair with her husband, he reveals to Showbiz magazine that she was a former pornographic actress, and effectively has her blackballed from making further films. When she accosts him at a society party about this, he beats her. Sheth Amirchand, a Member of Parliament and the gangster that controls most of the Mumbai underworld, then takes an interest in Aasha Rani and she becomes his lover and restarts her career under his protection. She then has an affair with Linda, a gossip columnist for Showbiz magazine and Abhijit Mehra, the son of an industrialist, who is about to be married. Linda advises her to go to the south and do an art film, which she does, where she tries to seduce the director only to find that he is impotent. Her interest in her work declines as she continue to obsess over Akshay Arora. She confronts him at a traffic light as their cars are next to each other and their affair is rekindled for a short time. She attempts to get Akshay to marry her, but when it becomes apparent that his interest in her is only due to his flagging stardom and not out of affection for her, she attempts suicide. Her lesbian lover, Linda, meanwhile, writes a juicy scoop on her suicide attempt. After she recovers she rekindles her affair with Abhijit Mehra, but Malini, Akshay's wife, reports this to his father and he has his weak-willed son Abhijit cut the affair off and sends Aasha to New Zealand with instructions to keep out of Abhijit's life. Aasha then retires to New Zealand and decided to leave the film business. She marries a New Zealander named Jamie Phillips (Jay) and has a child with him. Since Jay is not Indian and not in the film business, it occurs to her that she does not have to retire once she is married as is the custom in India. It is then revealed that Akshay has succumbed to AIDS as a result of his promiscuous lifestyle. Sudha Rani claims that Jay tried to seduce her and in revenge, Aasha Rani initiates an affair with Jojo, the producer of her next film. Aasha Rani is forced out of the film industry by Jojo's wife, who sends goondahs to threaten her. She flies back to New Zealand and meets a man called Gopalakrishnan who she has sex with in the bathroom of the plane. She discovers that her husband is having an affair with her babysitter and they decide that their marriage is over. Her daughter, Sasha rejects her and begins to have her own identity crisis as a multiracial child. Aasha then meets a young lady named Shonali who she begins to spend a lot of time with. She is a London socialite and call girl and introduces Aasha to London High Society. At a party, Aasha notices Gopalakrishnan, the man she had sex with on the flight to London. He turns out to be an arms dealer. She accosts him and later he has an assassin quartered at her house and threatens to have her daughter murdered if she tells. Shonali murders the assassin and ushers Aasha Rani out of the country. Sudha Rani has meanwhile had a film financed by the mob and she begins to doctor the books instead of repaying her debts. The gangsters have her assaulted by some thugs and they set her on fire. Sudha Rani is badly burned and is forced out of the film industry, and Aasha reconciles with her. As Appa weakens, he reveals that he has kept position of a studio that Aasha can use to support herself by preparing her daughter, Sasha, to take her place as Bollywood's next starlet.
9680394	/m/02pnznq	The Village Schoolmaster	Franz Kafka	1931	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The narrator discusses the phenomenon of a giant mole in a far village, and the attempt of the village schoolmaster to bring its existence to the public attention, only to become an object of derision to the scientific community. Without knowing the schoolmaster, the narrator tries to defend him and his honesty in a paper about the giant mole. The narrator's attempt is even more unsuccessful, and in a dialog during Christmas he and the village schoolmaster discuss the motivations of each one and the different outcome each one was expecting, without being able to finish the conversation.
9681631	/m/02pn_np	The Prefect	Alastair Reynolds	2007-04-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with Dreyfus being sent out on a routine assignment to lock down a glitter-band habitat for polling violations. His superiors send one of his deputies, Thalia Ng, to distribute software upgrades around the Glitter Band to prevent anyone from attempting a similar violation. In the meantime, Dreyfus is sent to investigate the recent destruction of a habitat named Ruskin-Sartorious. Analysis indicates that the habitat has been destroyed by the flame of a Conjoiner Drive, and Dreyfus's team believe the lighthugger Accompaniment of Shadows, the only one to have been near the habitat in recent weeks, is responsible. Before they can conclude their investigation, however, the Ultranauts take justice into their own hands and destroy the ship, but not before Dreyfus is able to converse with the captain, who convinces him that his crew were not responsible. Believing him to be true, Dreyfus and his deputy, the hyperpig Sparver, decide to investigate the matter further. Dreyfus and Sparver interview digital backups of the inhabitants of Ruskin-Sartorious. Dreyfus speaks with one of them about the Clockmaker, an alien machine which formerly lived in a Glitter Band research centre, creating, as its name suggests, clocks, before it began a violent killing spree and was destroyed with nuclear weapons nine years prior to the novel. He and Sparver then analyse communication records from the Ruskin-Sartorious habitat, and discover links with an orbiting asteroid owned by the Nerval-Lermontov family (a member of which is called Aurora). They defeat its defence systems and penetrate inside, discovering a Conjoiner starship trapped inside. One of them, Clepsydra, has escaped and is hiding. She meets with Dreyfus and tells him that she and the other Conjoiners had been enslaved by Aurora (now an extremely powerful software entity) to use the Exordium to predict the future. The Conjoiners predict a future devastated by what is implied to be the Melding Plague, and Aurora has been planning to respond to stop it (use of the Exordium creates a new timeline which can be changed to avoid the future the Exordium describes). She and Dreyfus escape as a ship under Aurora's control arrives and destroys the habitat. At the same time, Thalia has distributed the software upgrade to the required four habitats across the glitter band, but it appears to be malfunctioning; information access is shut down in the habitats she has visited, and servitors (service robots used across the glitter bands) are rounding up and exterminating civilians. She and some of the survivors of the last habitat take refuge in its polling core tower, barricading the entrance. Outside, the servitors begin to construct "weevil" war machines using plans stolen by Gaffney, a Senior Prefect secretly in alliance with Aurora. Back at Panoply, Clepsydra is taken into isolation, whilst Dreyfus explains the situation to Jane Aumonier, the Supreme Prefect. Unbeknownst to him, however, Gaffney kills Clepsydra and hides the corpse in Dreyfus' quarters, which he uses to frame Dreyfus. With Dreyfus in custody, he manipulates the Senior Prefects into voting Aumonier out of office. The Prefects debate what to do about the emergence of the weevils, which have now left the four original habitats and are moving towards others. Before very long, however, Gaffney is exposed as the murderer of Clepsydra when attempting to interrogate Dreyfus. He admits to his role in the weevil outbreak and informs the Prefects that Aurora is responsible. Aurora herself contacts Panoply and demands that they stand down, claiming to be taking over the Glitter Band for its own good. Aumonier, now back in power, refuses and orders Panoply to ready for war. Although Thalia escapes from Aurora's forces during a disastrous attack by Panoply, simulations run by the Prefects indicate that they have virtually no chance of success; the weevils are destroying habitats and converting them into even more weevils, grossly outnumbering the Prefects. Aumonier speaks to Dreyfus and tells him that the aforementioned Clockmaker was not actually destroyed nine years previously; part of it survived and was recovered by Panoply. The ultra-secret Panoply unit, Firebrand, was established to research it. Although Aumonier ordered it shut down, she now believes its members relocated the Clockmaker to Ruskin-Sartorious. As the Clockmaker was the only intelligence in the Glitter Band capable of defeating Aurora, she attempted to destroy it. Dreyfus confronts members of Firebrand, who confirm Aumonier's theory, but reveal that the Clockmaker was not in fact destroyed; Firebrand became aware of the attack in advance and moved the Clockmaker. Following them to the surface of Yellowstone, he and Sparver fight their way into an abandoned American colony, where the Clockmaker is being hidden. Sparver leaves to fight Gaffney, who is approaching the colony with bombs to destroy the Clockmaker. Dreyfus meets with the Clockmaker, who reveals that he is actually Philip Lascaille, a character in Revelation Space who was believed to have committed suicide after meeting with the Shrouders, but was in fact scanned to produce a simulation, which was sent back to the Shrouders, who turned it into the Clockmaker. Dreyfus tells the Clockmaker what is happening. It incapacitates him and leaves. Regaining consciousness, Dreyfus meets with Sparver. They return to Panoply to find that the weevil attack has collapsed; the Clockmaker has uploaded itself into the Glitter Band's data network and is fighting a digital war with Aurora. As such, she is unable to control the weevils effectively, and the Prefects are destroying them in alliance with the Ultras. Dreyfus begins preparing to investigate the death of Philip Lascaille, having promised to the Clockmaker to bring those responsible to justice.
9682847	/m/02pp0mt	World without End	Ken Follett	2007-10-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel begins in the fictional city of Kingsbridge, England in the year 1327. Four children — Merthin, Caris, Gwenda, and Merthin's brother Ralph — head into the woods on All Hallows Day. Together the children witness two men-at-arms killed in self-defence by Sir Thomas Langley, aided by Ralph. The children then flee, with the exception of Merthin, who helps the wounded Sir Thomas bury a letter with instructions to dig up and deliver it if and when Sir Thomas should die. After this Sir Thomas flees to Kingsbridge and seeks refuge in the monastery and becomes a Benedictine monk, while the four children swear never to speak of what they saw. Ten years later Caris and Merthin are in love. When a section of the vault of the Kingsbridge Cathedral collapses Merthin, now an apprentice carpenter, shows his genius by developing a cheaper means of repair than his master. Ralph, now a squire to Earl Roland of Shiring, provokes a fight and has his nose broken by a handsome peasant from Gwenda's village named Wulfric, for whom Gwenda has a hopeless infatuation. Gwenda is sold for a cow by her father to be prostituted at an outlaws' camp. She kills one of the outlaws while he is raping her, and escapes. She is followed by her buyer, but is able to drown him when the Kingsbridge bridge collapses, a tragedy that kills many, including all of Wulfric's immediate family and Prior Anthony of Kingsbridge. In the midst of the disaster Ralph saves Earl Roland's life and is rewarded with the lordship of Gwenda's village of Wigleigh. Gwenda and Wulfric return to Wigleigh and attempt to gain Wulfric the inheritance of his father's land. The inheritance is eventually denied by Ralph because of the grudge he bears against Wulfric. Due to his poor prospects, Wulfric's beautiful wife-to-be, Annet, leaves him allowing Gwenda to marry him instead. Gwenda then tries to win Wulfric back his lands by having sex with Ralph, but Ralph does not uphold his end of the deal. Gwenda's first son, Sam, is conceived through this liaison. Meanwhile, the monastery's Sacrist, Godwyn, a nephew of Prior Anthony, outwits his opponents and wins the priory election in an overwhelming victory. Godwyn claims to be a reformer, but turns out to be even more conservative and quickly begins to clash with the townsmen on a number of issues, including the funding and building of a fabulous new bridge designed by Merthin and allowing the townspeople to full wool for a growing fabric industry. Caris, who becomes the de facto alderman, is a particular problem. Despite being her cousin, Godwyn charges Caris with witchcraft hoping to have her executed to get her out of the way. To escape execution, Caris agrees to join the Kingsbridge nunnery. With his impending marriage to Caris made impossible, Merthin leaves Kingsbridge for Florence to pursue his building career. Eight years later, when Godwyn steals money from the substantially more profitable nuns, Caris travels to France to petition the bishop, who is fighting with King Edward III in France. Along the way she witnesses the ravages of the war and acts as a field nurse during the Battle of Crecy, during which Ralph, having fled charges of rape and murder in England, saves the life of the Prince of Wales and is rewarded with his lifelong dream of knighthood. Caris's errand is fruitless, however, as the bishop of Kingsbridge as well as Earl Roland have been killed in the battle. In Florence, the city is ravaged by the Black Death. After recovering from the plague, a newly-widowed Merthin experiences an epiphany of his love for Caris and returns to Kingsbridge with his daughter Laura (Lolla). There he finds Caris unwilling to renounce her vows and the two go through a sporadic liaison. At the same time, Merthin re-establishes himself in the community by solving flaws left in the new bridge during its completion after his departure. Thousands of residents of Kingsbridge die in the outbreak of plague, and the city quickly descends into anarchy. After the prioress of the nunnery dies Caris takes control and institutes the use of masks and cleanliness which help to protect the nuns from the plague. Godwyn loses his nerve and flees with the monks to an isolated chapel where he and all the monks die except for Gwenda's brother Philemon, who fled, and Thomas Langley. After William, the new Earl of Shiring, dies from the plague along with all his male heirs, Ralph sees a chance to become Earl. After murdering his young wife Matilda (Tilly) he arranges his marriage to William's widow Lady Phillipa, whom he has long desired, and makes himself Earl. However Philippa spurns him and leaves for the Kingsbridge nunnery, where she has a relationship with Merthin and conceives his child. Afraid of Ralph's wrath, Philippa seduces Ralph to make him believe the child is his. As a result Merthin and Phillipa cannot continue their liaison. After two years, the plague dissipates and Caris renounces her vows, after finally being able to run her own independent hospital, and marries Merthin. After ten years of hardship, the people of Kingsbridge are granted a borough charter, freeing them from the lordship of the priory, and Merthin becomes alderman. Merthin also solves the long troublesome problem of why the vault of the cathedral collapsed by dismantling and rebuilding one of the towers which he redesigns to be the tallest building in England. Labour shortages resulting from the plague allow Wulfric to regain his father's land. When Sam, the secret son of Ralph, kills the local bailiff's son, Gwenda reveals his true parentage to Ralph to gain Sam's release. Armed with this knowledge, Ralph blackmails Gwenda into having sex with him again. When Sam walks in on this, there is struggle in which Sam and Gwenda kill Ralph. Davey, Gwenda's second son, negotiates a free tenancy and marries Amabel, the daughter of Wulfric's former wife-to-be, proving to Gwenda that her life has had some worth. Gwenda's conniving brother Philemon becomes Prior of Kingsbridge and even tries to become Bishop, but his ambition is ruined after Sir Thomas Langley dies of old age. Merthin keeps his promise and digs up the letter which reveals that the deposed King Edward II had secretly survived and had gone overseas. Merthin trades the letter to a member of the king's court in exchange for Philemon's departure from Kingsbridge forever. After working together with Caris and the townspeople to subdue a second, milder outbreak of the plague, Merthin completes his spire and succeeds in making Kingsbridge cathedral the tallest building in England.
9684975	/m/02pp25n	Biko	Donald Woods	1978		 Biko covers the life of South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko from the view of his friend Donald Woods. The book is also critical of the white government of South Africa and the Apartheid system. It attacks the mistreatment of blacks and the brutality commonly used by the police.
9687542	/m/02pp4lp	Pot-Bouille	Émile Zola	1882	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Pot-Bouille recounts the activities of the residents of a block of flats in the Rue de Choiseul over the course of two years (1861–1863). The characters include: *The Campardons. Madame Campardon has a mysterious medical condition that keeps them from having sex. The husband is having an affair with her distant cousin, who eventually moves in and manages the household while continuing the affair. Despite their best efforts, they cannot conceal this arrangement from their daughter Angèle, who learns all the secrets in the building from the family servant. *The Duveyriers. Monsieur Duveyrier detests the bourgeois respectability of his wife's household, particularly her piano playing and takes refuge with a bohemian mistress Clarisse, an arrangement that suits his frigid wife perfectly. When Clarisse aspires to domesticity and respectability, Monsieur Duveyrier attempts suicide and later begins an affair with one of the maids. *The Josserands. Madame Josserand is relentless in her hunt to find husbands for her daughters. Zola compares the business of husband-hunting to prostitution and indeed Madame Josserand trots her daughters out in society to snare any man who will have them, under the cover of respectability and decorum. Madame Josserand instills her contempt for men (including her husband) in her younger daughter Berthe, who is able to compromise Auguste Vabre and force a marriage. *The Vabres (Théophile and Valérie). The wife, described as neurotic and somewhat hysterical, is involved in multiple, loveless affairs (it is common knowledge that her son is not her husband’s) and the husband is a hypochondriac living in perpetual suspicion of his wife's behavior. *The Pichons. Going through the motions of marriage, they have subjugated all passion in every aspect of their lives, including rearing their daughter, subduing any romance (Madame Pichon has an affinity for the novels of George Sand) beneath cold, hollow propriety. Condoning the behavior of these characters are the local priest and doctor, who use their positions to cover up everyone's moral and physical failings. The characters' habits and secrets are also guarded by the concierge, who turns a blind eye to everything going on. The sham respectability of the residents is contrasted with the candor of their servants, who secretly abuse their employers over the open sewer of the building's inner courtyard. The novel follows the adventures of 22-year-old Octave Mouret, who moves into the building and takes a salesman's job at a nearby shop. Though handsome and charming, Octave is rebuffed by Valérie Vabre and his boss's wife Madame Hédouin before beginning a passionless affair with Madame Pichon. His failure with Madame Hédouin prompts him to quit his job, and he goes to work for Auguste Vabre in the silk shop on the building's ground floor. Soon, he begins an affair with Berthe, who by now is Auguste's wife. Octave and Berthe are eventually caught but over the course of several months, the community tacitly agrees to forget the affair and live as if nothing had happened, thereby restoring the veneer of respectability. Octave marries widowed Madame Hédouin and life goes on in the Rue de Choiseul the way it has always done, with outward complacency, morality and quiet.
9687711	/m/02pp4vy	Between Two Worlds	Upton Sinclair, Jr.	1941	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This volume deals with the aftermath of World War I in Europe during the 1920s (with the Beer Hall Putsch, the Italian fascist regime and some of the important conferences) and later the Roaring Twenties. After two disastrous affairs with married women Lanny marries in the end a rich heiress from New York, Irma. In the climax Lanny covers his father's stock market margin call on Black Thursday, Oct 24th 1929, then insists that his father sell all his stocks the next market day, thus escaping the carnage of Black Tuesday. His efforts to save his wife's wealth were not quite as successful, and her uncle was wiped out.
9694201	/m/02ppcpf	Lady Knight	Tamora Pierce	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 War with the neighboring country of Scanra is declared at last, and Kel finds herself in charge of a refugee camp. Her district commander, Lord Wyldon, has chosen not to place her in control of a border post or a portion of the army like the other knights, so she's certain that he wishes to keep her—who, as a woman, he views as inferior in combat to males—out of fighting. However, it is revealed that she was chosen for her post because she is the only knight Wyldon knows who wouldn't discriminate against those not of noble blood. Kel soon comes to realize that these refugees, torn from their homes, robbed of their wealth and self-respect, are her responsibility. She must feed them, house them, and keep them safe from harm, on a piece of ground that is far too close to the Scanran border. She is able to be a hero, even outside of the battlefield. In her work at the camp Kel names Haven, she receives help in the shape of her old friends Neal and Merric, the horses Peachblossom and Hoshi, the dog Jump, and her personal sparrow flock, as well as from mixed a myriad group of others: the Wildmage Daine; Daine's lover, the great mage Numair Salmalin; Neal's own father, Duke Baird of Queenscove; Kel's former knight-master Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak; men of the King's Own (including Kel's friend and Neal's cousin Sergeant Domitan of Masbolle); convict soldiers who have been given the choice to fight in the army or to die at hard labor; several hundred disillusioned refugees who have received too many empty promises from nobles; smugglers, and a young, orphaned boy with wild magic for horses named Tobe. While Kel struggles with her responsibilities and the urge simply to abandon the camp and find a real fight, another obligation hangs over her. Before the war began, she was given a task by the Chamber of the Ordeal: to find and destroy the mage whose necromancy creates the giant, swift-moving, deadly metallic machines from the souls of children, known to the Tortallans as "killing devices." But, tied to the camp, she cannot pursue it. However, as the summer wears on and the war intensifies, events move to put that perverted mage and his conscienceless war-leader in Kel's path, and at last her resolve is tested, and she and all of Tortall find out if she is truly worthy of her shield. After months of hard work with the refugees, Kel feels that they can sufficiently take care of the camp while she is gone for several days to deliver a requested oral report to Lord Wyldon. However, when Tobe is brought into the fort, tired from a long trek from Kel's refugee camp, she knows that something is wrong. The Scanrans have captured her people, and Kel believes that the children will be used to create the horrible metal killing devices terrorizing Tortall. Worse, Lord Wyldon forbids her to go after them. She is left with a choice: obey Wyldon's orders and leave her people for the killing devices, or go after them and presumably be declared a traitor. After burying the few dead at Haven, Kel tricks her guards into returning to Lord Wyldon without her, and begins what she believes will be a long and harrowing journey into enemy territory. Much to her surprise and dismay, she is soon joined by Neal, several of her other year-mates, Owen, Tobe and members of the King's Own. They follow the path of the kidnapped refugees across the deadly Vassa river and into Scanra. A series of altercations result in the Scanran guards being depleted, and the rescue of the adult refugees and convict guards of Haven. Continuing to track the kidnapped children, they are led to Fief Rathhausak, and a final battle between the Tortallans and the Scanrans leaves Blayce dead, and the people of Rathhausak free from his tyranny. The Tortallans and villagers of Rathhausak return across the border to Tortall. In recompense for disobeying orders, she is ordered to build and command a new refugee camp, known as New Hope.
9694250	/m/02ppctk	Dingo	Octave Mirbeau	1913	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Completed by Mirbeau’s long-time friend Léon Werth, when the author’s ill health prevented him from writing the concluding chapters, Dingo, Mirbeau’s final novel, appeared in completed form with Fasquelle in 1913. An autobiographical fiction, Mirbeau’s tale chronicles the author’s adventures with his pet dog Dingo while simultaneously offering a jaundiced view of country life, in Ponteilles-en-Barcis, a squalid town modeled on the village of Cormeilles-en-Vexin, where Mirbeau had the misfortune to reside.
9694565	/m/02ppd46	Already Dead	Charlie Huston	2005-12-27	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 Already Dead follows the adventures of a vampyre named Joe Pitt as he tries to figure out a mysterious zombie epidemic stemming around New York. He has connections in Manhattan Underworld which makes him a valuable item for clans. Joe is then asked to find the gothic daughter of a rich man, and is pressured to do the work. Meanwhile, a disease is spreading zombie like symptoms around the town, causing whoever is bitten (or infected) by this disease into "Shamblers", and it's up to Joe to find the mysterious carrier of this sickness. Aside from his line of work, Joe has a girlfriend named Evie, a human that is HIV positive, is currently terrified of any sexual contact since she's afraid of infecting him with the sickness. Joe knows how to cure her HIV, but fears the side effects; so he tries his best to keep his vampyrism a secret from her.
9695489	/m/02ppdzb	The Tokyo Zodiac Murders	Soji Shimada		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The mass of the novel is divided up into several sections. A foreword from the author challenges the readers to try to solve the gruesome mysteries themselves; it claims that every clue necessary will be included in the text, and that the characters will have no unfair advantage over the reader. The first item is a fictional short story or will which lays out the setting: it is 1936 in the Shōwa period of pre-World War II Japan. A painter and womanizer named Heikichi Umezawa, who has long been obsessed with astrology and alchemy; he is a wealthy but fairly old man from a respectable family who stills lives in a traditionally run sprawling household. He is finishing up his great cycle of paintings: 12 large paintings, each on one member of the Zodiac. As he works in his private studio on the last one, a portrait of Aries, his head is smashed in with a blunt object. The murder is curious: it took place on a heavily snowing day, and many of the suspects have solid alibis. Further, when discovered, the room is locked and apparently had been locked from inside - leading to a locked room mystery. When the studio, which is a building to itself, is investigated, a notebook is discovered containing a bizarre lengthy piece of prose, the same will or short story which starts the novel. In it, the narrator, who identifies himself as the same Heikichi who was murdered, describes a long-running battle with mental disease, his diabolism, and his murderous urge to create the perfect woman called "Azoth", which he will do by cutting his 2 daughters, 2 of his 3 stepdaughters and his 2 nieces up and taking a single astrologically significant and aligned piece of her body and combining it with the others (the reason listed for excluding his remaining daughter, Kazue Kanemoto, is that she is not a virgin); each one will be killed with an alchemically-significant metal and buried in a place which produces those metals. He writes that he will carry out his insane plan as soon as he finishes the Aries portrait. Shortly after the murder of Heikichi, Kazue Kanemoto is discovered with her head bashed in as well. After that murder, the 6 future victims (Heikichi's remaining daughter, stepdaughters and nieces) and Heikichi's widow travel to Mt. Yahiko to placate Heikichi's spirit. They split up there, and the 6 young women disappear, until their bodies are discovered, buried all over Japan near mines producing the metals listed in the note and mutilated in the listed ways. The murders become a national sensation, but each one remains unsolved for the next 40 years. The novel is brought up to the present, where a freelance illustrator and avid fan of mysteries, Kazumi Ishioka, is teaching his friend, the brilliant astrologer Kiyoshi Mitarai (who plays the Holmes to Ishioka's Watson) about the Zodiac Murders; Ishioka had been approached by a client who claimed to have new evidence about the murders. The first act (5 chapters and the new evidence) lay out all the needed information about the various suspects and relations, and also includes the text of a secret confession by a policeman involved in the investigation of the murder of Kazue: around the time she had been murdered, he had in fact gone with her to her house and had sex with her. Afterwards, an anonymous letter arrived, which claimed to be from one of the many secret agencies and organizations in pre-war Japan like the Nakano School, and which blackmailed him: for having sex with Kazue, he would become the prime suspect if the police ever heard of it. He would probably be convicted for it; even if he was not imprisoned for her murder, his reputation and family's life would be utterly ruined. In exchange for the letter sender's silence, he would carry out a task for them: take the dead mutilated bodies of six young women to specified places in Japan and bury them as specified. In Act 2, Ishioka and Mitarai travel to Kyoto to interview surviving people related to the case. Mitarai makes a bet with the boorish son of the blackmailed policeman that he can solve the Zodiac Murders in one week's time. Act 3 sees a more comprehensive investigation of the environs of Kyoto and the people. In the last page, Mitarai is musing about an old scam in which one used tape to counterfeit paper bills. Abruptly, he is struck by insight and he solves all three cases. The author follows with a note to the reader, warning that in the subsequent pages the answers would be revealed, and that the reader has the needed information and a valuable hint as to the answer. In Act 4, Mitarai remains coy as to the solution, but takes Ishioka to a polite meeting with the culprit: an old woman who would've been about 23 at the time of the murders. Ishioka concludes that that means the culprit behind all the murders was in fact one of the daughters, but is unable to deduce which one. The final act see Mitarai gathering together the policeman he made the bet with and a number of other folks. He explains the locked room murder, Kazue's murder, and the Azoth murders: it is possible, if one cuts apart paper money appropriately and then tapes the pieces back together appropriately, to wind up with one more bill than you started with. In the same way, the culprit, Heikichi's daughter from his first marriage, Tokiko (now living under the name of Taeko Sudo), had cut apart the bodies of the other five young women and arranged them in such a way that it only seemed as if there were 6 bodies, when in fact there were 5 - the extra pieces which everyone had assumed would go to building Azoth were in fact all hers. The note too was a forgery intended to mislead and focus attention on Azoth. Taeko was motivated to her elaborate revenge by the extremely poor treatment she received at the hands of her stepmother, stepsisters, and cousins and particularly by the treatment her mother (Heikichi's first wife, Tae) had received: divorced by Heikichi and impoverished, she had to waste her life selling cigarettes on the street. After Mitarai explains everything, the police take the credit and news soon arrives that Taeko had, after her meeting with Mitarai and Ishioka, committed suicide, after sending a letter to Mitarai detailing her exact role in the story.
9695498	/m/02ppdzp	The Swarm	Frank Schätzing	2004	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book follows an ensemble of protagonists who are investigating what first appear to be freak events related to the world's oceans. The book has several sub-plots and will occasionally follow minor unrelated characters to illustrate how events unfold around the globe. Sigur Johanson, a Norwegian maritime biologist working at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim is asked to analyze a new species of marine worms. After several expeditions it becomes clear that the worms, together with bacteria, are destabilizing the methane clathrate in the continental shelf. When the continental slope collapses the subterranean landslide causes a tsunami that hits most of the North Sea's coasts, killing millions and severely damaging the infrastructure in the coastal regions. At the same time Leon Anawak, a maritime scientist who investigates the behavior of whales and works for a whale watching company, makes startling observations in the whales' behavior. In addition, he is called to investigate an incident where whales and sea-borne mussels seemed to have attacked and incapacitated a commercial freighter. When he returns to his whale watching job, he witnesses how humpback whales and orcas attack the watcher's boats. The whales work together to capsize the boats and then kill the people drifting in the water. A large number of tourists and close colleagues of Anawak are killed. The events that are witnessed by the protagonists are only part of a worldwide phenomenon. Several other attacks are briefly described in the plot: Swimmers are driven from the coast by sharks and venomous jellyfish. Commercial ships are attacked and sometimes destroyed in a variety of ways. France sees an outbreak of an epidemic that is caused by lobsters contaminated with a highly lethal type of Pfiesteria. When it becomes clear that all those events are related, an international scientific task force is created under the lead of the United States. The task force is led by Lieutenant General Judith Li, a close friend and adviser to the President; the protagonists become part of it. While the task force is in session, the attacks on humanity continue: The North American east coast is overrun by Pfiesteria-infested crabs that attack New York City, Washington D.C. and later Boston. The epidemic causes millions of deaths and renders the affected cities uninhabitable. The Gulf Stream has also ceased to exist, an event that may initiate a global climate change that would threaten human civilization. During a task force meeting, Sigur Johanson finally announces his hypothesis: The phenomena are intentional attacks by an unknown sentient species from the depths of the oceans; he states that this is the only logical conclusion, since the attacks are outside the power of any human agency and cannot be a natural phenomenon. Johanson calls them "yrr", after three letters he typed randomly on his computer. The goal of the yrr is to eliminate the human race, which is devastating the Earth's oceans. General Li and a small group of scientists take to the sea on the helicopter carrier USS Independence in an attempt to find the yrr and make contact with them. They discover that the yrr are single-cell organisms that operate in groups (or swarms, hence the novel's title), controlled by a single hive-mind that may have existed for hundreds of millions of years. The yrr form a collective intelligence and have inheritable memories that are passed on by manipulating parts of their DNA. Individual yrr recognize each other by using a specific pheromone. The scientists have some success in investigating the yrr and make limited contact. The attacks do not cease, however. Sigur Johanson also finds out that General Li has not been honest with them. One of the scientists has been working on a modified pheromone to eradicate the yrr completely. Johanson disagrees with this approach because the elimination of the yrr may completely destroy the maritime ecosystem and thus the human race. Li, however, is unwilling to accept that dominance over the Earth may not be a God-given birthright of mankind, and the United States in particular. She will rather take the risk than allow the US power to wane. While she gives orders to have Johanson killed, the ship is attacked and crippled by the yrr and a final showdown ensues on the sinking Independence. Li races for the ship's midget submarines with two torpedoes containing the modified pheromone. The scientists are trying to stop her and at the same time implement their own plan to save humanity. She is stopped at the last moment by Johanson who gives his own life to detonate the torpedoes and kill Li. Karen Weaver, a scientific journalist, then manages to get hold of the last surviving submarine and dives into the depth of the oceans. There she releases a dead human pumped full of the yrr's natural pheromone, hoping to trigger an "emotional" response. This works and the yrr cease their attacks on humanity. The epilogue reveals that a year later, mankind is still recovering from the conflict with the swarm. The knowledge that humans are not the only intelligent lifeform on Earth has plunged most religious groups into chaos, while parts of the world still suffer from the epidemic the yrr sent to destroy the threat to their marine homeland. Humanity now faces the difficult task of rebuilding their society and industry without coming into conflict with the ever-watching superpower under the sea again.
9702899	/m/02ppms9	End time			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set in the year 2007, the former Soviet Union is engaged in a civil war; an island penal colony in Indonesia has become a major hub for the world's black market; the United States is engaged in a high-tech war against a guerrilla army in southern Mexico, and a draft has been reinstated. Amid the turmoil of the new century, a young man, Greg Kovinski, and his anti-war activist friends come into control of enough riemanium to build a bomb. As he struggles to "do the right thing," the city of Oakland rises in revolt akin to the Paris Commune and a revolution begins.
9704239	/m/02ppp9h	A Contention for Honor and Riches				 At the start of the play, Ingenuity, a scholar, pays court to the Lady Riches, but the two quarrel. The Lady's other suitors, Gettings and Clod (Clod represents country gentlemen, while Gettings represents the London merchant class), also quarrel &mdash; not with their Lady but with each other. The outcome of their dispute is that Clod challenges Gettings to a duel. Lady Honor also has her suitors &mdash; in her case, the Courtier and Soldier ply their suits to her while Ingenuity watches. After Honor and Ingenuity have left them alone, the Courtier and Soldier also argue, and are about to fight, when their nemeses Honesty and No-Pay enter and scare them off. Next, Gettings and Clod are shown on the "field of honor," about to start their duel. But they too are interrupted: Long Vacation and Foul-Weather-in-Harvest enter, and the two suitor/duellists reconcile because of their fear of these figures. (Long Vacation refers to the period at the end of the legal year in August and September, when business in the City of London is slack.) Lady Riches shows up, and accepts Gettings as her intended husband &mdash; but grants a reversion of the office of husband to Clod. The Soldier and Courtier also turn up, searching for Honor &mdash; but they are distracted by the presence of Riches. Finally Honor and Inegnuity arrive to complete the cast: everyone else is surprised to learn that Inegnuity and Honor are now married &mdash; though the news prompts a general reconciliation among all the members of the group.
9705395	/m/02ppq73	Honoria and Mammon				 The Lady Honoria has three suitors for her hand in marriage: Alamode, a courtier; Alworth, a scholar; and Conquest, a colonel. Lady Aurelia Mammon &mdash; "widow / To the late high treasurer, Sir Omnipotent Mammon" &mdash; has two suitors of her own, a wealthy Londoner named Fulbank and a countryman called Maslin. Honoria introduces Alworth to Mammon, but she dismisses him as beneath her consideration. Alamode and Conquest fight a duel over Honoria; Conquest wins, disarming Alamode and knocking him down. Maslin and Fulbank similarly quarrel over Mammon, though mutual cowardice saves them from serious fighting. Lady Mammon's gentleman usher, a demon called Phantasm (the Vice in the earlier version), helps Fulbank to win his Lady's hand; Phantasm then tempts a lawyer named Traverse to steal Mammon from Fulbank. Traverse succeeds in this &mdash; but then Alamode wins her from Traverse and takes Mammon to his country house. Once in the country, though, Alamode is supplanted by Maslin, who in turn is displaced by Conquest. Meanwhile, Honoria has chosen Alworth over his competitors. She tests him, pretending she has changed her mind; and from his response, she judges him worthy of her. After the strain of the trial, however, Alworth faints, and a physician is called. The lawyer Traverse, who is tempted by Honoria's availability as well as Mammon's, masquerades as a doctor treating Alworth; he tells Honoria that Alworth is dead, and when she faints, he carries her away to his own country house. Conquest then rescues Honoria from Traverse with a band of his soldiers. Alworth shows up, in disguise; yet when he reveals himself to Honoria, Conquest recognizes him and takes him prisoner. Phantasm reveals his demon nature to Lady Mammon, and deserts her; sobered, she accepts Conquest as her husband, and he gives up Honoria to Alworth. The suitors who have lost out console themselves as best they can.
9705722	/m/02ppqf9	Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi	R. K. Narayan	1949	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mr.Sampath, The Printer of Malgudi keeping with R.Ks novels has a very simple storyline. And as ever, R.K elevates the novel with his captivating characterization and scintillating story telling, not to forget his deft diction. There are a few business relations that demand two persons to work very closely that it may easily turn into an intimate bonding of hearts. A doctor and nurse, director and actor, opening batsmen in a cricket team, and so is that between an editor and a printer. To bring out the journal of Malgudi “The Banner”, Mr.Shrinivas, The Editor and Mr. Sampath, the Printer have to work together. The two entirely contrasting good hearted characters forge a great partnership that makes “The Banner” the cynosure of all eyes in Malgudi. However a situation arises that they have to temporarily discontinue the journal. Not two persons to lay idle, both of them join hands with a film making company where they have to trace varying paths, with their special bond still very deep. A love affair with the actress of the movie makes life difficult for the daring and over ambitious Sampath, while the ethnic and ethical Shrinivas has his problems of over responsibility too. Some sour incidents in the studio force Shrinivas to quit the studio and revive his banner with another printer, a thing that doesn't seem to bother Sampath caught entirely in the charm of the heroine. But Sampath comes back after the loss of the lady, loss of his family, loss of his wealth, loss of fame and loss of peace. The story ends in a gripping manner when he confides with his good old friend Shrinivas. And as you expect from R.K novel, you are only let out with a very heavy heart. hi:मिस्टर संपथ
9710550	/m/02ppt37	My Son the Fanatic	Hanif Kureishi	1999	{"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The narrative deals with the problems of Parvez, who has migrated from Pakistan to Britain with his son Ali. Parvez worries because Ali’s behavior has changed significantly. Early in the story, Parvez is afraid of discussing his worries with his friends because his son has always been a kind of showpiece son. Eventually, Parvez breaks his silence and tells them how his son has changed, hoping to receive some advice. After having a short conversation, they come to the conclusion that his son might be addicted to drugs and that he sells his things to earn money to buy drugs. After this meeting, Parvez goes to his taxi to drive home. But in his car he finds Bettina, a prostitute, who drives with Parvez very often and has become a confidante. Since Parvez has defended Bettina from a client who had attacked her, they take care of each other. Parvez tells Bettina what he has observed and that he and his friends assume that his son does all these strange things because he is drug addicted. Bettina instructs Parvez on how he has to observe his son to find out if there is anything physically wrong with him. However, after a few days of observations Parvez decides that his son appears totally healthy. The only physical change Parvez observes is that Ali is growing a beard. And it turns out that his son does not sell his things. He just gives them away. Parvez notices that Ali prays five times a day, although he had not been brought up to be religious. Parvez decides to invite his son to dinner to talk to him about his recent behavior. Initially, Ali refuses this invitation, but later he accepts it. Parvez drinks a lot during this meeting and they start to argue. Ali criticizes his father’s way of life because in his opinion his father is "too implicated in Western civilization" (Kureishi 2001: 157) and breaks the Koran’s rules by drinking alcohol and eating pork. Ali tells his father that he is going to give up his studies because from his point of view, “Western Education cultivates an anti-religious attitude.” (Kureishi 2001: ) Parvez feels he has lost his son and wants to tell him to leave the house. But Bettina changes his mind and Parvez resolves to try to understand what is going on in his son’s mind. During the next days Parvez tries to explain cautiously to his son what his ideas and attitudes towards life are. He even grows a beard to please Ali. But Ali still holds his father in contempt for not following the rules of the Koran. A few days later while Parvez is driving in his taxi with Bettina he sees his son walking down the sidewalk. Parvez asks Ali to come in and drive with them. In the car, Bettina starts to have a conversation with Ali, but as she tries to explain to Ali that his father loves him very much, Ali becomes angry and offends Bettina. Afterwards he wants to escape from the car, but Bettina preempts him. She leaves the car when it is still moving and runs away. Back at home Parvez drinks a lot of alcohol because he is furious at his son. He walks into Ali’s room and attacks his son who does not show any kind of reaction to protect or defend himself. When Parvez stops hitting him, Ali asks his father: "Who is the fanatic now?"
9712364	/m/02ppwzp	Answer to Job	C. G. Jung			 Jung considers the Book of Job a landmark development in the "divine drama", for the first time contemplating criticism of God (Gotteskritik). Jung described the book as "pure poison", referring to the controversial nature of the book (Storr, 1973). He did, however, feel an urge to write the book. The basic thesis of the book is that as well as having a good side, God also has a fourth side - the evil face of God. This view is inevitably controversial, but Jung claimed it is backed up by references to the Hebrew Bible. The book, has however, been criticised. For example, it assumes that the John who wrote the fourth Gospel was the same John who wrote The Book of Revelation - which most Bible scholars today dispute. Jung saw this evil side of God as the missing fourth element of the Trinity, which he believed should be supplanted by a Quaternity. However, he also discusses in the book whether the true missing fourth element is the feminine side of God. Indeed, he saw the dogmatic definition of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary by Pope Pius XII in 1950 as being the most significant religious event since the Reformation.
9713078	/m/02ppxtv	The League of Frightened Men	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 An author, Paul Chapin, is on trial for alleged obscenity in his popular novel, and Archie is telling Wolfe the scurrilous details as found in the newspaper. Wolfe and Archie have an argument about obscenity law, and its upshot is that Wolfe tells Archie to have the book sent over in the morning. Wolfe reads the book, then tells Archie that Andrew Hibbard, a potential client, had visited while Archie was away on another case, and that Hibbard had asked Wolfe to arrange to protect him from a man whose name he would not disclose. However, Hibbard did include other particulars, # many years earlier, a "boyish prank" upon his friend (now nemesis) had had a lasting and tragic outcome # in Hibbard's opinion the man was a psychopath # following the deaths of two their mutual friends at gatherings (reunions), they had received lengthy typewritten unsigned masterfully word poems/threats each saying, among other things that "he had embarked on a ship of vengeance" # the man had had recent commercial success At the time, Wolfe sent Hibbard away with two recommendations # Get some life insurance # Find another agency specializing in personal protection Now, after reading the Chapin cited in the court case, Wolfe has found the curious phrase "embark on a ship of vengeance" twice in that novel, and from that and other considerations forms the surmise that Paul Chapin was the man Andrew Hibbard feared but would not name. Wolfe considers his surmise to have been validated by confirmation that Chapin had been crippled in a hazing accident at a Harvard dorm many years before, and also by knowledge that Chapin has a new successful play on Broadway. Hibbard has been missing for a week or two -- but Wolfe locates some the other members of the "League of Atonement" through Hibbard's niece -- and as already told by Hibbard in the first attempt to engage Wolfe, some of the League have begun dying, though from the actions of Paul Chapin, other menaces, or simply the ordinary course of life is not yet known. Therefore surviving members of the League enter into an agreement with Wolfe that he should provide the League removal of threats and apprehensions from the following sources * Paul Chapin * Person, possibly Chapin, who has sent typewritten poetic taunts/threats members of the League have recently received (and caused the League of Atonement set up after the hazing accident to be recently dubbed The League of Frightened Men) * Person or persons responsible for the recent deaths of two of their number (and possibly Hibbard as well, as noted earlier) The effectiveness of Wolfe's work is to be decided by a majority vote of the League members.
9714405	/m/02ppzdc	The Rubber Band	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Archie books two new clients on the same day, and before the day is over Wolfe has to choose which to keep and there are more than two crimes to untangle. The client he keeps in the end is a beautiful young woman, but it's Wolfe who reads her Hungarian poetry, not Archie. The novel introduces Lieutenant Rowcliff, not one of the NYPD's finest (in the opinion not only of Wolfe but Inspector Cramer). Rowcliff's search for Clara Fox in the brownstone earns Wolfe's enmity, which lasts until the final Wolfe novel in 1975.
9714736	/m/02ppzpn	The Red Box	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the midst of a murder investigation, one of the suspects visits Wolfe and begs Wolfe to handle his estate and especially the contents of a certain red box. Wolfe is at first concerned about a possible conflict of interest, but feels unable to refuse when the man dies in his office before telling Wolfe where to find the red box. The police naturally think that he told Wolfe somewhat more before dying.
9717146	/m/02pq0n6	Where There's a Will	Rex Stout		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The famous Hawthorne sisters — April, May and June — visit Nero Wolfe in a body to ask his help in averting a scandal. After the shock of their brother Noel's death in a hunting accident three days before, they have been dealt another shock at learning the terms of his will, which are sure to cause a sensation once they are made public. Even if the three sisters agree to honor the will (which leaves nothing to each of them but a piece of fruit), they are certain their sister-in-law, Daisy Hawthorne, will contest it and bring the matter into open court. They suggest that Wolfe come at the problem from the other end, and persuade Noel Hawthorne's primary beneficiary — a young woman named Naomi Karn — to relinquish the bulk of the inheritance. Their conference is interrupted by the arrival of their brother's widow. Once a most beautiful woman, Daisy Hawthorne was horribly disfigured by her husband in an accident. She is now famous as a tragic and quite unsettling figure — "the lady who wears a veil." "I sat and stared at it," Archie wrote, "trying to ignore an inclination to offer somebody a ten-spot to pull the veil up, knowing that if it was done I'd probably offer another ten-spot to get it pulled down again." After a somewhat menacing confrontation, Daisy is assured by Wolfe that he will consider her as well as the Hawthorne sisters as his clients, and will negotiate with Miss Karn on their behalf. Later that day, another conference in Wolfe's office is interrupted. Inspector Cramer of Homicide arrives at the brownstone to inform the Hawthorne sisters that the shooting accident that killed their brother was no accident at all.
9717911	/m/02pq1dm	Black Orchids	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Millionaire orchid fancier Lewis Hewitt has hybridized three black orchid plants in his Long Island greenhouse. Wolfe is wild to have one, so he and Archie visit New York's annual flower show, where Hewitt's orchids are on exhibit. One of the other exhibits features a daily performance by a young couple miming a summer picnic. The woman, Anne Tracy, attracts the attentions of Archie, Lewis Hewitt, Billy Rose and a young exhibitor named Fred Updegraff. During Wolfe's visit to the show, Anne's picnic partner Harry Gould is killed, shot in the head by a gun concealed in the foliage. The gun's trigger is attached to a long string that reaches to a hallway well behind the exhibit. After a little inquiry, Wolfe shows Hewitt how his expensive Malacca cane was used to pull the string, thus the gun's trigger, and thus to kill Gould. Hewitt is horrified by the prospect of the publicity that would ensue should his part in the shooting, however indirect and unwitting, become known. Wolfe offers Hewitt this arrangement: in exchange for all three black orchid plants, the only ones in existence, Wolfe will solve the murder and deliver the criminal to the police, without publicly disclosing Hewitt's connection to the crime. Hewitt terms it blackmail, but submits. Earlier, Archie had noticed a woman waiting in the hallway behind the exhibit, at around the time that the murderer would have been deploying the string. He now finds her in the crowd that's gawking at the murder scene. In an act of detection that would strain the credulity of someone who was striving to maintain a neutral point of view, Archie steals her handbag, removes it to the men's room, searches it for identification, and learns her name (Rose Lasher) and address. He returns the handbag to her – all without Miss Lasher or anyone else noticing. The police want to know more about her and, finishing their questions, they let her go — but surreptitiously follow her. The police lose her trail but Archie knows her home address, where she has been living with Harry Gould. He arrives at Miss Lasher's apartment just as she is about to flee the city, and takes her to Wolfe's house. There Archie searches her suitcase and finds some printed matter that Rose cannot or will not explain: a clipping of an article by Lewis Hewitt on Kurume yellows, a plant disease that is fatal to broadleaf evergreens; a postcard to Rose from Harry, postmarked Salamanca, New York (in the western part of the state); and a work order from a garage, also in Salamanca. Wolfe gets Miss Lasher to discuss some of Gould's unsavory qualities. Wolfe learns that although Gould was employed as a gardener, he suddenly acquired a bank account containing several thousand dollars and what Miss Lasher terms "a big roll of bills." From his general awareness of horticultural events, Wolfe knows that an attack of Kurume yellows devastated a plantation of a new hybrid of broadleaf evergreens, about eighty miles west of Salamanca and owned by Updegraff Nurseries. Weighing all this information, Wolfe concludes that Gould had known the Updegraff plantation had been deliberately infected, and was blackmailing the miscreant – who then killed Gould. Wolfe gathers the main players in an appropriate location – his plant rooms, specifically the fumigating room – and exposes the murderer's identity. Wolfe therefore keeps the black orchids, which subsequently have a cameo role in the second novella in this collection, "Cordially Invited to Meet Death."
9719280	/m/02pq2xg	The Late Mattia Pascal	Luigi Pirandello		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist, Mattia Pascal, finds that his promising youth has, through misfortune or misdeed, dissolved into a dreary dead-end job and a miserable marriage. His inheritance and the woman he loved are stolen from him by the same man, his eventual wife and mother-in-law badger him constantly, and his twin daughters, neglected by their mother, can provide him with joy only until an untimely death takes them. Death robs him even of his beloved mother. To escape, he decides one day to sneak off to Monte Carlo, where he encounters an amazing string of luck, acquiring a small fortune. While reading a newspaper on his return home, he discovers, to his immense shock and delight, that his wife and mother-in-law declared an unknown corpse to be his own. Faced with this sudden opportunity to start afresh, he first wanders about Europe, and finally settles down in Rome with an assumed identity. His character develops in unexpected, even admirable, ways. Yet one admirable act brings the protagonist a crisis, followed by additional crises that lead him to conclude that continuing with his plans will entail only misery for those he loves, precisely because his entire life, including the precious liberty he thought he had gained from his past, is now a lie. He ultimately decides to fake his own death and return to his original life. But even that proves difficult; his family and town have long since adjusted to his "death," and his own adjustment of character prompts him to have mercy on his now remarried wife. So the twice-dead Late Mattia Pascal reduces himself to a figure outside the mainstream of society, a walk-on part in his own life.
9722386	/m/02pq642	Too Many Women	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A malcontent at the Naylor-Kerr corporation charges that one of its employees, thought to have been killed in a hit-and-run accident, was actually murdered. The president of the colossal company hires Archie to look into the matter in the guise of a personnel consultant working in Naylor-Kerr's executive offices &mdash; where 500 beautiful women have been gathered under one roof.
9723198	/m/02pq70n	Trouble in Triplicate	Rex Stout		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The meat shortage of 1946 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=12516 has put Wolfe in a temper. He is pacing back and forth in misery. He wants beef, or pork, or lamb, or veal. And he can't get any. A notorious gangster, Dazy Perrit, arrives at the brownstone to enlist Wolfe's help and, over Archie's protests, Wolfe invites him inside. Archie fears that Perrit will tell Wolfe something that Wolfe would prefer not to know. But Wolfe wants meat and thinks that Perrit's black market connections might enable him to get it, so he makes, as Archie puts it, " . . . a frantic snatch at a pork chop." Once inside, Perrit gives Archie a phone number and tells him to ask for Tom, who might have meat, and then tells Wolfe his problem. He has a daughter, but he has kept her existence and identity a secret to protect her from his enemies. One of them, Thumbs Meeker, has recently let Perrit know that his daughter's existence is no longer a secret. Meeker apparently doesn't know the daughter's identity or location, just that Perrit has a daughter somewhere. So Perrit has found a grifter named Angelina Murphy who's on the run from authorities in Utah, and has installed her as his daughter in his Fifth Avenue penthouse. This, Perrit thinks, will keep his enemies from seeking out and harming his real daughter. But Miss Murphy has figured out that she can blackmail Perrit. She demands money from him and threatens to disclose Perrit's secret if he doesn't pay up. She starts out by asking for a few thousand each month (in 1946 dollars), but the night before Perrit calls on Wolfe she demands $50,000. Now Perrit wants Wolfe to make her stop. Wolfe needs to meet Perrit's real daughter, whose name is Beulah Page, and he sends Archie for her. When he arrives at her apartment, Archie learns that she has just become engaged to marry a young law student, Morton Schane. On the pretext of making it an engagement celebration, Archie persuades them to come to Wolfe's house for dinner. Wolfe uses the occasion to acquaint himself with Miss Page's plans and concerns, as well as Mr. Schane's. It has been arranged that Perrit will send the ersatz daughter, Miss Murphy, to Wolfe's office later that night. When she arrives, after the other guests have left, Wolfe delivers this threat: She must give 90% of any money she extorts from Perrit to Wolfe – otherwise, he will tell the Utah authorities where they can find her. Her threats to disclose that she's not really Perrit's daughter may worry Perrit, but they're of no concern to Wolfe. It's past midnight by the time that Wolfe has delivered his ultimatum, and Archie offers to escort Miss Murphy home. As they arrive at her residence, a car drives by, and from it a man is firing a gun at them. Several bullets hit Miss Murphy. She is dead, but Archie is unhurt. The police arrive at the scene and Archie is taken to the local precinct, where he is questioned by Lt. Rowcliff. Archie perturbs Rowcliff enough to be released, and as he arrives back at the brownstone, around 4:00 a.m., he is stopped outside by Perrit and one of his thugs. As they are questioning Archie, a taxi comes driving by, and again bullets are fired. This time it's Perrit and the thug who are killed, and again Archie is unscathed. Later that day, a lawyer named L. A. Schwartz arrives at the brownstone. He had represented Perrit, and has some information for Wolfe. After his meeting with Wolfe, Perrit met with Schwartz and arranged to have his will altered, naming Wolfe as executor. Wolfe is to use his best judgment in the administration of the estate, including the disbursement of its assets to Beulah, in return for a $50,000 fee. Wolfe accepts the commission and arranges for Beulah and Schane to come to the brownstone for another meeting. A gangster known simply as Fabian also appears, not only invited and expected but armed. Saul Panzer, who has been checking backgrounds for Wolfe, is present, along with lawyer Schwartz. The meeting has barely begun when Thumbs Meeker – who originally gave Perrit a problem by learning of his daughter – shows up, not expected but also armed. Wolfe outlines the reasons that the murderer killed three people, the hint that pointed him at the murderer, and the motive. In a violent climax, the murderer of Angelina Murphy and Dazy Perrit is shot to death, right there in Wolfe's office – by Saul Panzer.
9725694	/m/02pq9cm	Midnight at the Well of Souls	Jack L. Chalker	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Elkinos Skander is an archaeologist stationed on the planet of Dalgonia. The planet was formerly occupied by the long-dead Markovian race, who are known only for the planet-sized computers they built into the crust of the planets they inhabited. A new team arrives to provide help just as Skander unlocks the mystery of the apparently dead computer. One of the new students, patterned (and named) after a brilliant mathematician named Varnett, sees Skander interacting with the computer and confronts him. The two conclude that the computer runs on a form of energy unknown to human physics, forming the basic unified field that governs the existence of the universe. The computer runs on, and controls, that energy. The rest of the new team discovers a surface anomaly near the north pole of the planet, where a hexagonal "hole" appears for a brief interval every day. Skander and Varnett both believe that they will be able to use this anomaly to access the planetary computer, and both set off to attempt to take control. Trying to protect the discovery, Skander stops at the team's camp and murders them. By the time he arrives at the anomaly, Varnett has already prepared for his arrival and the two struggle on the surface. They are swallowed up by the anomaly when it reopens. Meanwhile, the interstellar freighter Stehekin is transporting three passengers and grain intended for famine relief. The passengers are a businessman named Datham Hain, his "niece" Wu Julee, and a diplomatic courier identified as Vardia Diplo 1261. During the trip, the ship's captain, Nathan Brazil, discovers that Hain is a "sponge merchant", a trafficker in a drug that causes an incurable, degenerative brain disease. Using the threat of withholding the antidote, the drug can be used to gain power over those it infects. Hain keeps Wu Julee as an example of what happens in this case; she has regressed to a mental age of five and will eventually be turned into a vegetable and allowed to die. Brazil diverts the Stehekin from its course, in an attempt to reach the planet where the sponge sickness originated to obtain the antidote. Before they arrive, Brazil receives a distress call from Dalgonia and detours to investigate. There, they find the seven students murdered by Skander. Subsequently, the entire party travels to the polar gate, and while they are investigating there, the anomaly reopens and they are transported to the Well World. The Well World is a Markovian construct that exists outside our universe. Like Dalgonia, the planet consists largely of an enormous computer that can interact and control the forces of nature. The surface has been patterned into a series of hexagonal patches where Markovians were allowed to experiment in creating their own new forms of intelligent life, and if they were successful they would be sent off into the universe to evolve on their own. Another Markovian was then allowed to try their hand at species design in the now empty hex. The planet still contains many of the approximately 1,500 races that were still on the Well World when the Markovians disappeared. At the Well World, Brazil and his companions are charged with tracking down Skander and Varnett, as the inhabitants of the planet are concerned that either of them could gain access to the central computer there and do untold mischief to the universe. The complication is that travelling through the polar gate on Dalgonia has transformed all of the humans, with the exception of Nathan Brazil, into members of the various species which inhabit the planet. As the book continues, in the fashion of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Nathan comes to realize that his existence is not as it appeared, and memories of his former time on the Well World start to surface.
9726725	/m/02pqb8v	Dark Prince	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Dark Prince introduces the Carpathians, a powerful and ancient race. They have many gifts, including the ability to shape-shift, and extended life spans, living well over many years. Though they feed on human blood, they don't kill their human prey, and for the most part live among them without detection. Despite their gifts, the Carpathians are on the edge of extinction. There have been few children born to them in the past few centuries, those that have been born are all male and often die in the first year. It has been more than 500 years since a female has been born. Without females, many of the males are turning, becoming vampires, the monsters of human legend. After 200 years, a male Carpathian loses the ability to feel emotions and see in color. These will only return to him when he finds his lifemate, the other half of his soul. Mikhail Dubrinsky, Prince of the Carpathians, has worked tirelessly for centuries to discover why so many of their children die in the first years. However, his efforts have come to no avail. It is at this time, when he is on the brink of despair and self-destruction that he meets a beautiful human psychic, Raven Whitney. Raven is a strong telepath, and has worked with the police to capture four serial killers. But her gift has come with a price: a life of isolation, and pain whenever she uses her gift. When he meets her, he is shocked and amazed when he suddenly is able to see colors in her presence; he realizes that she is his lifemate. Despite his joy, there is doubt in his mind. No human woman has ever been a lifemate to a Carpathian. All human females who were converted had become deranged creatures, feeding on children and had to be destroyed. But he knows she is the only woman for him, the other half of his soul. He is determined to live as a human with her and to die when she does. However, this is not to be. Raven is attacked by fanatics, and he is forced to convert her to save her life. Her survival brings new hope to him and his people, for if one psychic human female can be a lifemate, surely there are others.
9728040	/m/02pqcck	And Both Were Young	Madeleine L'Engle	1949	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Flip doesn't think she'll ever fit in at the Swiss boarding school. Besides being homesick for her father and Connecticut, she isn't sophisticated like the other girls, and discussions about boys leave her tongue-tied. Her happiest times are spent apart from the others, sketching or wandering in the mountains. But the day she's out walking alone and meets a French boy, Paul, things change for Flip. As their relationship grows, so does her self-confidence. Despite her newfound happiness, there are times when Paul seems a stranger to her. And since dating is forbidden except to seniors, their romance must remain a secret. With so many new feelings and obstacles to overcome in her present, can Flip help Paul to confront his troubled past and find a future? (Source: Madeline L'Engle Online) And Both Were Young is distinctive among L'Engle's works because she restored some of the original story decades after its original publication. Her first editor softened the relationship between Flip's father and Eunice Jackman. The introduction to the later edition details the changes both at the time and why the author felt it worthwhile to restore her original intent. Philippa Hunter also makes an offstage appearance in A Severed Wasp when one of her paintings becomes a plot point.
9728050	/m/02pqccx	Camilla Dickinson	Madeleine L'Engle		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Camilla is facing significant problems at home. Her mother, Rose, has begun an affair with a man named Jacques. Her mother begs Camilla to keep it a secret, while Camilla's father, Rafferty, asks her to be honest and tell him the truth. Camilla is torn between her loyalty to both parents and begins to realize they are very imperfect people. To cope with the struggle, Camilla befriends Frank, her best friend's older brother. He is understanding of her problems and assists her in accepting her parents flaws. Frank encourages Camilla to define herself not by her family but to define herself as who she truly is. The pair share ideas on life, religion and philosophy and begin to form a romantic attachment. Their happiness is cut short when their families problems get worse. Frank's parents break up and he is forced to suddenly move away with his father. Camilla's parents decide to work on their marriage and go on a European Vacation together. Unfortunately, while her parents are traveling, Camilla is going to be sent to a Swiss boarding school. While Camilla is heartbroken by the loss of Frank, she uses the inner strength she has gained in the past weeks to deal with the changes in her life.
9729176	/m/02pqdtz	Confessor	Terry Goodkind	2007-11-13	{"/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Richard Rahl, leader of the D'Haran Empire, has been captured by an Imperial Order commander, who lets Richard (under the guise of Ruben Rybnik) live if he will be the point man for the commander's Ja'La dh Jin team. During Richard’s imprisonment, he is warned by a cloaked specter that he is now a player of the Boxes of Orden. Sister Ulicia is also visited by this figure, and is told that the time to open the Boxes has been reset to one year from the first day of winter-the day that Nicci put the Boxes into play under Richard's name. The witch woman Six steals the third box of Orden from Nicci and Zedd. Zedd discovers that The Wizard's Keep is being affected by the contamination of the chimes, and places a spell to protect it from future damage. Jagang's excavations in the Azrith Plains reveal catacombs under the People's Palace, which provide a secret entryway. Three Sisters of the Dark enter, killing Ann and capturing Nicci, while soldiers are sent into the catacombs to prepare an attack. The Sisters of the Dark discover what they believe to be the original Book of Counted Shadows. Upon a surprise visit from Jagang, who is sizing up the members of rival Ja'La teams, Richard disguises himself by covering the faces and bodies of his teammates and himself with intimidating symbols and parts of spell-forms. His team defeats Jagang's team in the tournament final; but Jagang, refusing to accept his team's loss, announces the win is invalid. This unfair decision causes a riot in the camp, during which Richard and Nicci escape and Kahlan is 'rescued' by Samuel. Richard and Nicci (helped by Adie) enter to the Palace through the catacombs, where Nathan and Cara help them wipe out the Order forces hiding there. Rachel is lured into Tamarang by Violet, who has drawn a spell around her that sets 'ghostie gobblies' to destroy her. On her way, she is given a piece of chalk by Shota in disguise as Rachel's mother, and with this transfers the spell to Violet. Rachel then restores Richard's gift. She is again visited by the disguised Shota, who sends her to deliver a message with Gratch. Zedd is captured by Six, and discovers that the witch woman is in league with Jagang and has helped attack D'Haran forces in the Old World. Richard is warned by Nicci that he must not reveal his love for Kahlan to her, lest Kahlan's lost memories alone fail to be restored, much like Richard, in the first book of the series, could not be told before finding himself the way to love a Confessor untouched by her power. Richard then helps priestess Jillian give the Order's army terrible nightmares. Jagang is given particularly nasty dreams, mostly involving Nicci. Richard is taught many spells and spell-forms by Nicci, and then sends himself to the Underworld, using Denna as a spirit guide, and retrieves everyone's memories of Kahlan, but is attacked by the pursuing beast earlier sent against him, and attempts to escape by releasing Additive Magic into the Underworld, whence he is projected into a gathering of the Mud People. He is greeted by Rachel, who, with Gratch's help, had told the Mud People to hold a gathering to summon him. At the Palace, Nathan assumes Richard is dead and accepts Jagang's terms of surrender, which include surrendering Nicci to Jagang and giving the Order's magicians access to the Garden of Life in order to open the boxes. Samuel attempts to rape Kahlan; and during the struggle, she touches the Sword of Truth, which restores her memory of being a Confessor (though none of her other memories), and releases her power to take control of him. Samuel reveals he is an agent for Six, and that Richard and Kahlan were once married; then dies when she refuses to forgive his attempt against her. Richard meets Kahlan on the way to Tamarang; but refuses to answer her questions of their marriage, for fear of contaminating the spell upon her, and gives her Spirit in compensation. Six has imprisoned Zedd, Tom, and Rikka, and appears as Richard and Kahlan arrive in Tamarang to rescue them. Shota arrives as Six is about to recapture them, in disguise as Six's mother. Shota kills Six and then Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd fly back to the People's Palace on the red dragon Six had enslaved; now revealed to be Scarlet's son Gregory, whom Richard saved as an egg. At the Palace, Richard allows Jagang and his Sisters of the Dark to open the boxes of Orden. During the ritual, Jagang goes unguarded to Nicci, who locks a Rada'Han around his neck, rendering him powerless, and eventually kills him unceremoniously to prevent his martyrdom. In the Garden of Life, the Sisters of the Dark discover the correct box and open it; but find a flaw in their success. Richard explains that all of the Books of Counted Shadows were false keys to the boxes; whereas if they had the true key, they would still fail by reason of malicious intent. Immediately, the Sisters are drawn into the Underworld. Richard explains that the true key to the Magic of Orden is the Sword of Truth. Kahlan tells Richard she loves him, revealing that her emotions have contaminated her chances of regaining memory. Richard uses the Sword to reveal the correct box and then to capture its magic. Now in command of life and death, he uses the magic to send the followers of the Order to a new world, devoid of magic; then sends his half-sister Jennsen, her compatriots the Bandakar, and her suitor Tom after them. Richard also uses Orden to repair the damage caused by the chimes, and to send Chainfire to the new world he has created, ensuring the complete removal of magic from that world, and removing all its inhabitants' memories of their previous world. As Richard goes to close the opening between worlds, he fears Kahlan is lost to him; but she replies that she was protected from this loss because she had fallen in love with him on her own, much as he had with her at the beginning of the series. An epilogue shows Tom and Jennsen expecting a child, who will carry the Rahl name, and shows the emigrants gradually forgetting Richard and everything from their previous world. The book ends with the marriage of Cara and General Meiffert. It is revealed that the Sisters of the Light have moved into the Wizard's Keep, where along with Zedd, they can continue to teach young wizards. Chase (now a Warden of the Keep) and his family have also moved into the Keep, as have Adie and Friedrich, who are now a mated pair. Under Zedd's questions, Richard admits taking Panis Rahl's spell from red fruit, so that it is no longer poison, and to bringing back the Temple of the Winds to the world of the living. After Cara and Benjamin's wedding, the devotion bells begin to ring; but Richard prevents the people kneeling, arguing that they are no longer his subjects.
9740221	/m/02pqrk6	The Ghosts	Antonia Barber		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mr Blunden, an elderly solicitor, visits Mrs Allen, a widow who lives with her three children Jamie, Lucy and the baby, in Camden Town, London, England. He tells her that his firm are looking for a suitable person to act as a caretaker to an old, abandoned house in the country until such time as the descendants of the original owners can be traced. When Mrs Allen leaves the room to tend to her baby, Mr Blunden mentions to Jamie and Lucy that there are rumours that the old house is haunted but that ghosts can often appear as ordinary people, perhaps children like themselves, and that ghosts are often people in need of help... Jamie and Lucy confirm that they wouldn't be scared of ghosts that appeared in that form and would help, if they could. Before Mrs Allen returns, Mr Blunden leaves, giving Jamie an old, faded card for the firm Blunden, Blunden and Claverton, where Mrs Allen should call the next day to inquire about the post. The Allens visit the firm, which, surprisingly, is called Blunden, Claverton and Smith. The solicitors are puzzled at Mrs Allen's visit, since the job has not been advertised, but are nonetheless delighted to have found someone to take the job in spite of the rumours of ghosts, and soon the family find themselves living in the caretaker's cottage at Langley Park. Lucy explores the house alone. In the attic she thinks she hears voices in the distance - but can't understand what they're saying. The woman who comes in from the village to clean confirms that they're the ghostly voices of children, just children, and nothing to worry about. One morning soon after, Lucy is walking in the garden, gathering flowers. She suddenly becomes aware of a heavy, oppressive feeling and the warning song of a blackbird. Her eyes can't seem to focus, but she thinks she sees two transparent figures walking towards her through the mist that hovers over the lawn. She panics, screams and runs to Jamie who returns with her to investigate. Everything appears normal until, suddenly, they both become aware of the oppressive feeling and the repeating, hypnotic blackbird song again. And, again, the two figures are walking towards them through the mist. As they draw nearer the figures solidify into a young girl, about their age, and a younger boy. Jamie and Lucy are relieved to meet what appear to be two ordinary children, albeit that their clothes seem a little old-fashioned. Only after talking for some minutes do they notice that the newcomers cast no shadows on the sunny path... The new arrivals - Sara and Georgie Latimer - explain that they are not ghosts in the ordinary sense. They have come from a hundred years in the past when they lived at Langley Park. Their guardian, their uncle Bertie (a sensual, dissolute and penniless man), has fallen in love with a music-hall performer, Bella Wickens, and moved her mother and father in as housekeeper and caretaker to the house. However, the mother - Mrs Wickens - has determined to murder Sara and Georgie so that Bertie will inherit the family wealth - currently held in trust until Georgie comes of age. The children learn of Mrs Wickens' scheme and attempt to convince the family Solicitor - a certain Mr Blunden - of their danger. Blunden reacts violently and negatively to the news and the children are locked up, out of sight and out of mind. One night, by the intervention of some supernatural agency that the children do not understand, they are led to the library of the house. There they find a book containing the recipe for a charm - 'A Charm To Move The Wheel Of Time'. By brewing the infusion and drinking it the children will be able to move through time to find the help they need. Sara and Georgie ask Jamie and Lucy to come back to their time and help them escape the fate that awaits them. Jamie and Lucy agree -although Lucy is less sure than Jamie. Sara gives them the recipe for the charm and arranges to meet them the next day. She and Georgie disappear back to the past... The next day, in the local cemetery, Lucy and Jamie find the grave of Sara and Georgie and are disheartened. The sexton tells them that the children died in the fire that razed the house to the ground. However, they have brewed the potion and go to meet Sara and Georgie as arranged. Only Sara is waiting for them. Georgie has upset Mrs Wickens and been locked in the cellar. Sara is keen to get back to him. At that moment, Mr Blunden arrives. This is the spirit of the Mr Blunden who ignored the pleas of Sara and Georgie and who is suffering, now, because of their deaths all those years ago. He has the opportunity to put things right and he promises Jamie and Lucy that he will keep them safe in the past; that any pain that must be suffered will be suffered by him. Sara confirms that she has forgiven Blunden. She is also aware of the grave in the churchyard. Jamie and Lucy drink the potion. The world around them swirls and goes black... ...and they find themselves back in Sara and Georgie's time - a hundred years before. Mr Blunden tells them that, for a while, things must go on as they did before, but that when the time was right he would appear and help Jamie and Lucy save Sara and Georgie. Indeed, for a while, things do progress as they did, but eventually Mrs Wickens drugs the children and they sleep as Mr Wickens starts a fire in the library beneath the nursery. Tom, the gardener's boy, attempts to rescue them and manages to climb up the outside of the house to the nursery window. By now the fire has taken a firm hold and Jamie cannot get into the house to effect a rescue from below. Just as he's losing heart, Mr Blunden appears, takes him by the hand and leads him through the flames. Jamie feels nothing, while Blunden is clearly suffering both his pain and Jamie's and the guilt of a hundred years. Tom, Sara and Georgie escape the house, but as Jamie attempts to leave he becomes trapped. As Lucy stands outside crying for Mr Blunden to help him the world around her swirls and blackens - and she finds herself back in her own time. Searching the ruins of the house she finds Jamie, unconscious. Some time later, with Jamie still ill, Lucy attends church and wanders through the cemetery afterwards. There, instead of the small stone marking Sara and Georgie's grave, she finds a tall granite memorial to Mr Frederick Percival Blunden who died to save the children in his care - a hundred years ago. They did it! They saved Sara and Georgie! She returns home. Her mother tells her that Jamie is awake. She runs to his room and the two talk about their journey to the past. When Jamie is well, the family receive a visit from one of the Solicitors at Blunden, Claverton and Smith. It seems they have traced the true owners of the house. Jamie and Lucy are sad, knowing this means they will have to leave, until the Solicitor explains that Sara Latimer married Tom the gardener's boy, emigrating to America, whilst Georgie inherited the house. It seems that Sara's daughter married a man named Allen and that - in fact - the true owner of the house is Jamie. Sara was their great-great grandmother. Jamie runs off to explore the grounds anew, now as their owner. Lucy goes upstairs to the attic where she hopes, now she belongs to the house, that she will understand what the voices of the ghosts are saying...
9740710	/m/02pqs21	Exiles at the Well of Souls	Jack L. Chalker	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Scientist Gilgram Zinder has finally decoded the ancient Markovian physics that controls our universe. Corrupt politician and drug dealer Antor Trelig is aware of Zinder's work through the efforts of Zinder's assistant, Ben Yulin. Trelig takes Zinder's daughter hostage and forces Zinder and Yulin to build a computer that can control the Markovian forces, like the dead Markovian computers that have been found on some planets. Zinder and Yulin construct "Obie", a sentient supercomputer, building it in Markovian fashion directly into Trelig's resort planetoid, New Pompeii. Mavra Chang, freighter pilot and agent, is hired to rescue Zinder and halt Trelig's plans of universal conquest. In the process Obie is activated and accidentally makes contact with the Well World. The Well World automatically transports everyone in contact with Obie down to the planet's surface. Mavra and Zinder are aboard a spacecraft when this occurs, and find themselves above the Well World. Flying over a "non-tech" hex, the Well World disables all of the technology on the ship and it crashes in the Southern Hemisphere. A war erupts on the Well World as the races of the nearby hexes race to collect all of the scattered pieces of the ship in order to escape the planet.
9741122	/m/02pqsj4	Quest for the Well of Souls	Jack L. Chalker	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Exiles at the Well of Souls, Mavra Chang was captured by the Olborn, who use magical stones to convert beings into beasts of burden. The Olborn were interrupted partway through transforming Chang, leaving her partially transformed. Eleven years later, Chang remains an involuntary guest in the native hex of the human equivalents on the Well, Glathriel. After multiple attempts to escape, she has been reconditioned to accept her existence, and a maimed Glathrielite, Joshi, has undergone a similar partial transformation in Olborn to serve as a companion for Mavra. Inspired by the Diviner and the Rel, the Northern being that crossed from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere in Midnight at the Well of Souls, several competing factions have discovered that the Northern beings inhabiting the hex of Yugash can "possess" a Southerner and allow him to pass into Yugash. In Exiles at the Well of Souls, two ships were crash-landed on the Well World. The first landed in the South, and was destroyed at the end of the war in Exiles. The second landed in the north, and now the factions that fought the war in Exiles are girding for a race to the second ship. Several other players who participated in the drama in Exiles are also introduced. Antor Trelig was a politician as well as the head of the sponge syndicate, in control of a significant fraction of the council governing human space. He was transformed at the Well World into a Makiem, a giant frog-like creature. Renard was the librarian on Trelig's resort planetoid of New Pompeii, which was subsequently transformed into the home of Obie, the supercomputer capable of using Markovian physics to manipulate the universe. Renard was transformed into an Agitar, a blue-colored satyr who rides winged horses. Ben Yulin was the assistant to Dr. Gilgram Zinder, Obie's designer, as well as an agent for Trellig. Yulin was transformed into a Dasheen, a minotaur. After a showdown between Mavra's party and Yulin's party, the remnants agree to a truce with Yulin and return in the ship to Obie. In addition to Mavra and Yulin, the other members of the party are Renard, a Yugash, a Bozog (another northern species, they moved the ship from the non-tech hex it landed in to their own high-tech hex), a Lata (a southern species resembling a pixie) named Vistaru (previously Vardia Diplo), and a Yaxa (a southern species resembling a giant butterfly) named Wooley (previously Wu Julee and Kally Tonge). Once they arrive, Ben Yulin attempts to take over Obie, but the computer assists Mavra and the others in destroying the circuit that forces Obie to obey Yulin. Obie returns to human space, and when a Council fleet arrives to destroy him, he fakes his own destruction and departs with Mavra to explore the rest of the universe as partners.
9745642	/m/02pqx9j	Spring Fire	M. E. Kerr	1952		 Susan Mitchell ("Mitch") is pledging to the Tri Epsilon sorority at the fictional Cranston University. She is seen as a boon to the sorority due to her father's significant wealth, and the sorority is promised a new silverware set from the alumni if she is accepted. Large, ungainly, and shy, she is drawn to older sorority member Leda Taylor who is direct and independent; they become roommates and double date&nbsp;— Mitch with the president of the "Sig Eps" who turns out to be sullen, boorish, and humiliates her during a fraternity party one evening. Mitch flees the party after striking the fraternity president on the head and the sorority is blackballed. Much more experienced Leda trades her exasperation with Mitch's innocence with overt affection for her in rapid mood changes. To avoid further exclusion, Mitch is persuaded by her sorority to invite the fraternity president to a dance at the sorority house, where he rapes her after getting her drunk. Afterwards Leda finds her stunned and calms her down by telling her how much she loves her. They begin an affair in secret, both of them continuing to date, Leda with her boyfriend whom she confesses to despise, and Mitch with relatively harmless "independents" (non-fraternity boys) to the chagrin of the sorority leaders. Mitch's only friend in the pledge class is kicked out of the sorority after getting home at one in the morning because her date had a flat tire. Leda tries to teach Mitch how they must put men first in order not to be disrespected, but they may love each other in private. Leda's promiscuous and alcoholic young mother visits, and Leda tries to test Mitch to get her to be able to answer her mother's questions about men, despite Mitch's reservations and her unwillingness to lie about her feelings. But after her mother leaves, Leda is once again affectionate to Mitch in private, apologizing for ignoring her while her mother visited, and trying to reassure them both that neither is a lesbian. Mitch tries to sleep with her date to see if he makes her feel the way Leda does, but he is unable to perform. Convinced that she is abnormal, infectious, and Leda is a temptation, Mitch writes to Leda telling her she's leaving the sorority. Leda tries to stop her by seducing her once more, but their sorority sisters enter the room and see what is happening. In an emergency meeting, Leda reads the sisters Mitch's heartfelt letter and explains that Mitch has had a crush on her and the sisters who saw it saw Mitch attacking Leda. Mitch is interrogated by the Dean of Women while Leda gets drunk and wallows in her guilt for selling Mitch out to the sorority. When the dean asks to see Leda, the sorority finds her sobering up, but she is forced to drive to the dean's apartment when she crashes the car, then calling out for Mitch deliriously. Leda is injured seriously enough to put her in the hospital for three days during which time Mitch moves to the dormitory. They meet one last time as Mitch visits Leda in the hospital, driven there by the dean. After a tenuous final conversation, Mitch leaves Leda laughing and sobbing at once in the hospital. The sorority house learns that Leda has had complete nervous breakdown and is to be institutionalized, as they are unpacking their new set of silverware. Mitch begins new friendships as she realizes she never really loved Leda after all.
9752584	/m/02pr35s	Down Under	Ellen Titlebaum	2000	{"/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bill Bryson describes his travels by railway and car throughout Australia, his conversations with people in all walks of life about the history, geography, unusual plants and animals of the country, and his wry impressions of the life, culture and amenities (or lack thereof) in each locality. In a style similar to his book A Walk in the Woods, or William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, Bryson's research enabled him to include many stories about Australia's 19th-century explorers and settlers who suffered extreme deprivations, as well as details about its natural resources, culture, and economy. His writings are intertwined with recurring humorous themes, notably, in the chapter Crossing Australia he makes constant reference to drinking of urine to survive, as was done by many 19th century explorers. He jokingly adds, about a certain explorer "...I daresay he drank some of his own urine" and "They drank their own and their horse's urine"
9757897	/m/02pr8dz	The Raw Shark Texts	Steven Hall	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Eric Sanderson, a British man in his late twenties, was working with the Un-Space Exploration Committee after the death of his girlfriend, Clio Aames. His hope was to preserve his memories of her within the body of a conceptual creature. This leads to his intentional release of a Ludovician—the most dangerous of the conceptual fish—on himself. He loses memories of his life as they are devoured by the Ludovician, but still the Ludovician pursues him until all is lost and he awakes as the Second Eric Sanderson. Eric is told by a psychologist that he has a dissociative condition known as fugue. However, the First Eric Sanderson, even as he was losing his memory, has left him with a large number of letters explaining Conceptual Fish, the death of his girlfriend, the Un-Space Exploration Committee, and other such things. When Eric Sanderson is attacked once more by the Ludovician, he decides to go in search of a doctor named Trey Fidorous, who is a member of the Un-Space Exploration Committee who may be able to explain what is happening to him. Eric travels through Britain in search of clues, and ultimately finds one in a hotel he is staying in during a rainstorm. He is contacted by a mysterious figure known as Mr. Nobody, who is actually a part of a larger, internet-based intelligence called Mycroft Ward. Mr. Nobody attempts to subdue and control Eric with a smaller Conceptual Fish, but Eric manages to escape. Eric soon meets with a member of the Un-Space Exploration Committee named Scout. Scout and Eric have a close encounter with the Ludovician before venturing into Un-Space in search of Trey Fidorous. It turns out that Scout has a small bit of Mycroft Ward in her, but is not truly a part of the intelligence. Eric and Scout develop a romantic relationship throughout their un-space journey. However, the relationship becomes turbulent after it is revealed that from the beginning, Scout sought out Eric and his Ludovician in order to destroy Ward. When they find Fidorous, they help him rig up a conceptual boat with which to hunt the Ludovician. The climax of the book takes place on a conceptual ocean, aboard the Orpheus, the shark-hunting boat. In a climactic encounter, a laptop hooked up to the Mycroft Ward database is thrown into the mouth of the Ludovician, destroying both. Trey Fidorous is killed in the sinking of the boat, and Scout is lost at sea. Eric is then seemingly given a chance to return to the 'real' world through a postcard showing his house; he declines, choosing to remain in the conceptual world. Scout returns to the boat unharmed, and together with Ian the cat. She and Eric, now reconciled, swim to a "conceptual island" which resembles the Greek island on which Clio and the first Eric holidayed before she died. At this point, it is strongly suggested that Scout is in fact Clio, and that the first Eric Sanderson's plan to preserve his memories of and life with Clio via the Ludovician has succeeded. The book ends with a newspaper cutting reporting that the body of Eric Sanderson was found not far from his home. The newspaper clipping mentions that a postcard from Eric was sent to Dr. Randle, but from Greece, just prior to the discovery of his body. The postcard is shown on the next page, and claims to be from Eric, stating that he is unhurt and happy, but will never return.
9758281	/m/026yx7g	Second Chance	Danielle Steel	2004-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Editor-in-chief of a successful fashion magazine, Fiona Monaghan lives a high flying life, flitting between cities following her passion for fashion. Fiona is content to live her life with only her dog, Sir Winston shares her bed until she met John Anderson. After a world wind romance over several continents, Fiona opens up her heart for John, a widowed father of two young adult daughters. As the two plan their life together, it all begins to unravel disastrously from being hated by John's two daughters to ruining a business dinner with John's biggest client. Just as their love seems to be down and out, a surprise event gives them a second chance.
9759866	/m/02prbmp	Pimpernel and Rosemary	Baroness Emma Orczy	1924	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It’s 1922 and Rosemary Fowkes is the darling of London post-war society. One of those women on whom Nature seems to have showered every one of her most precious gifts. As well as being tall, graceful and beautiful, Rosemary is also highly intelligent and a talented political writer. She is the author of a series of articles on the evils of bureaucracy in the near East, which have been published in the International Review under the pseudonym “Uno”. Peter Blakeney is the great, great grandson of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and the very image of his famous ancestor. A gifted sportsman educated at Eton and Oxford, Blakeney has rowed in the varsity eights, been awarded a VC in the war and is widely regarded as one of the finest cricketers England has ever produced. Blakeney is deeply in love with Rosemary, and she with him, but owing to his foolish pride and ambition he has lost his chance to marry her. Reluctant to simply be known as the husband of a world-famous wife, he has put his career and determination to win fame and fortune in his own right, ahead of love—and has driven her into the arms of his best friend, Lord Jasper Tarkington. Tarkington, who was the correspondent for the Daily Post in Hungary in 1919, is still a young man, but rather conservative in his tastes. He worships Rosemary but whilst she sees him as gentle, impassive and wonderfully kind, he fails to arouse the same level of passion in her heart as Peter. The day their engagement is announced, Peter meets Rosemary at the Five Arts’ Ball at the Albert Hall, after dancing with her he takes her to a secluded box and reveals his true feelings for her, yet she cannot bring herself to forgive him for the snub of the previous summer and insists that in six months time she will be Jasper Tarkington’s wife. Watching the couple dance at the Ball, is the Roumanian diplomat, General Naniescu, the guest of Lady Orange. On hearing that the beautiful young woman is the author of the articles which have caused his government so much harm, he asks Lady Orange to arrange a meeting at which he proposes that Miss Fowkes should visit Translyvania and study the conditions now prevailing in the territory now occupied by Roumania at first hand. She will then publish her studies in the English and American press, without fear of censorship. Rosemary is soon taken with the idea, but although Lord Tarkington has vowed not to get in the way of her journalistic efforts, he insists that she marries him immediately, so he can go with her and protect her as only as husband can. She agrees, and they are soon on their way to Translyvania, to stay with relations of Peter’s who she knows from earlier visits she took with Peter’s Hungarian mother. On arriving in Cluj, she meets with Peter’s cousin Anna Hever, and discovers that Anna has been helping her cousin Philip Imrey to smuggle anti-government articles which he has written, out of the country and into the British press, where they have caused an outburst of sympathy for the Hungarians of Translyvania. Rosemary realises that Anna and Philip are playing a dangerous game and promises to tell no-one of their secret, yet only days after she has arrived to stay at the Imrey’s house, Philip and Anna are arrested as traitors. Rosemary meets with Naniescu to plead for the pair, but he tells her that the only way she can secure their freedom is to write articles for the British press, which put the Roumanian regime in Translyvania in a positive light, and which will undo some of the harm done by Philip’s reports. The duo will be temporarily freed for the month she has to write the articles. When they are published the duo will be allowed to leave the country but if she refuses they will be re-arrested and sentenced to death as traitors. Meanwhile, Rosemary gets news that Peter Blakeney is in the country, allegedly to organise a cricket match between the Hungarians and Roumanians in Budapest. Jasper resolves to go to meet the Roumanian King and plead for leniency for Anna and Philip, but before he goes he tells Rosemary not to reveal anything of what has happened to Peter. Rosemary is shocked that Jasper appears not to trust Blakeney, whom she has always considered the perfect English gentleman, yet when she speaks to Anna about how their activities could have been discovered, her suspicions are aroused when she finds out that the only other person Anna had told about the scheme was Peter. Eventually Rosemary writes the arictles on the behest of her husband, but having consulted with Elza Imrey, who is not willing to pay such a price for the freedom of her son and niece, has agreed to destroy them. However, before she can do so, they are stolen by Blakeney who uses them to barter with Naniescu for the title deeds to the Imrey's chateaux. Who is the mysterious "Number 10"? Can Peter really be a spy in the employ of the Romanian government? Why is Jasper suddenly acting so strange? How can Rosemary stop the stolen articles from being published in the Times?
9759918	/m/02prbpd	Boy Gets Girl	Rebecca Gilman			 A friend sets Theresa up on a blind date with a nice guy named Tony who works in the computer industry. It is awkward, but not too awkward as Theresa accepts a second date. (They even find a couple things in common such as both being from the Midwest.) By the end of this date, she realizes that he is not right for her and politely excuses herself from the date. Tony continues to intrude further into Theresa’s life, with unexpected visits to Theresa’s office and unsettling phone messages at her home. Theresa starts to worry as she realizes that Tony knows where she lives. At her co-worker's urging, she calls the police, but when Officer Beck investigates, Theresa realizes there is not much that the police can do. Beck suggests moving out of her apartment and changing her name. Despite all her efforts to avoid him by hiding in her work and opening up to her colleagues, she eventually realizes that he has and will always have control over her life. She eventually loses everything, including her identity, humanity, and will, as she changes her name and moves out of New York City to Denver, a shadow of the woman she once was.
9760090	/m/02prbtw	The House on the Strand	Daphne du Maurier		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The narrator, Dick Young, has been offered the use of Kilmarth, the house of his biophysicist friend Magnus Lane, in Cornwall. He also agrees to act as a guinea-pig for a drug Magnus has developed. On taking it for the first time, he finds that it enables him to enter into the landscape around him as it was during the early 14th century. He becomes drawn into the lives of the people he sees there, particularly Lady Isolda Carminowe, and he is soon addicted to the experience. Within the landscape Dick is compelled to follow Roger, steward to Sir Henry Champernoune, Lord of the Manor. Roger hides his enduring love for Isolda until the day he dies, and Dick comes to share this love. Each visit corresponds to a key moment in the story of Isolda and Roger. Each time Dick returns to real time he is more confused; throughout the experience he is unable to interact with Roger or Isolda. Any attempt to do so brings Dick crashing back to the present in a state of nauseous exhaustion. (The drug has other dangers in that following Roger means that Dick walks unaware through the modern landscape with all the danger that entails.) His wife, Vita, and stepsons join him in Cornwall and are worried by his bizarre behaviour. It is made clear that Dick does not truly love his wife, and certainly does not want to act as father to her sons—which makes plausible his increasing desire to escape into the past. His friend Magnus intends to join Dick but before he does so is killed in what seems like a bizarre accident or suicide—struck by a train whilst straying onto the local railway track. Dick knows the truth, that Magnus was under the influence of the drug; this makes the inquest difficult. Dick's second to last trip ends with him attempting to attack a woman named Lady Joanna in the 14th century, but in reality attacking Vita. She and her children hide from him and he contacts a doctor who helps to wean him from his addiction to the drug. Dick explains the power of the drug and the doctor has the drug analysed and reveals its extremely dangerous nature to Dick. However his addiction is such that he takes the last remaining dose soon after. Dick's last visit to the 14th century culminates in Roger confessing his love and the fact that he ensured that Isolda died pleasantly rather than succumb to a worse fate. Roger dies and Dick wakes. Since both Roger (his doppelganger/receptor) and Isolda are dead, Dick has little incentive to return to the other world, but in any case there is no drug left to ease his passage there. As the book closes Dick attempts to pick up the phone but suddenly finds he is unable to grip it. The ending is ambiguous: is Dick dead, paralysed or simply collapsing? Daphne du Maurier said of it: "What about the hero of The House on the Strand? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don’t really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don’t you?"
9760327	/m/02prc23	The Well of Stars			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Well of Stars features the same universe and the same characters as the earlier novel Marrow. In The Well of Stars, the ship is entering a dark nebula, dubbed the Ink Well, which turns out to be inhabited by an intelligent and hostile entity which calls itself "polyponds". The ship fights for its existence, while at the same time it is suggested that the enemies of the ship's creators are in pursuit.
9764872	/m/02prhkj	The Ugly Swans	Arkady Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The action takes place in an uncertain mildly-authoritarian country, in an unnamed town. Famous writer Victor Banev, a middle-aged heavy drinker, comes from the capital city to the town of his childhood where the rain never stops. Banev finds himself in the middle of strange events linked to slimies or four-eyes - strange leper people suffering from disfiguring "yellow leprosy" manifesting itself as yellow circles around the eyes. These slimies live in a former leper colony. The town's adult population is terrified by their existence, considering them to be the cause of all the bad and odd things in the town. Nevertheless, the town's teenagers simply adore slimies, that including Banev's daughter Irma. A boy named Bol-Kunats, Irma's friend, invites the writer to a meeting with the town school's students. Banev is deeply shocked by teenagers' high intelligence and disullusioned point of view. They appear as superhuman geniuses despising the dirty and corrupt human world and having no pity for the adults. Banev makes acquaintance with Diana, and discusses slimies in dinner conversations with the chief doctor of the leprosarium Yul Golem, a drunken artist Ram Quadriga and sanitary inspector Favor Summan. Banev dislikes the mayor, a patron of local fascist thugs, and also the military who guard the slimies. Golem mentions that the genetic disease of slimies represents the future of humanity, a new genetic type of people, intellectually and morally superior to ordinary people. Events begin to unfold dramatically. Banev discovers that Favor Summan works for counterintelligence, and, learning he's guilty of kidnapping and killing of a slimy, notifies the military out of spite. The town's children leave their parents' homes and move into the leper colony. Adults of the town are gripped with a sudden overpowering feeling of terror, and exodus begins. As soon as all the residents have left town, the rain stops. Golem leaves the last. Banev and Diana enter the city, now disappearing under the rays of Sun. They see Irma and Bol-Kunats all grown up in a day and happy, and Banev's saying to himself: "All this is nice and fine, but I mustn't forget to return."
9777536	/m/02prx2h	Middle Age: A Romance	Joyce Carol Oates	2001-09-04	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In Salthill-on-Hudson, a New York City suburb for the wealthy and middle-aged, Adam Berendt, a charismatic sculptor, drowns in a river as he tries to rescue children on a Fourth of July cookout. Before his cremation, we learn that Marina Troy, owner of a small book store, was infatuated with him. Over the years he had bought many books from her shop to support her financially, and lately he had bequeathed to her a house of his in the mountains. Roger Cavanagh, Adam's lawyer, forges his will and Marina agrees to sign it, hence making it legal. Camille Hoffmann, married to Lionel, had an affair with Adam. She is described as an innocent girl, rescued by Lionel from a frat rape years back. At Adam's cremation, she breaks down, and back at their house it is clear that their marriage is rocky. After eerily dreaming of Adam, his dog Apollo crops up in their kitchen. At the same time, Abigail Des Pres, another suburban, stalks her teenaged son Jared Tierney, then invites him for dinner in her hotel room. Jared, an angry teenager, appears to be worried about Apollo. It is learnt that her ex-husband, Harry Tierney, is a fiercely mean man. Abigail and her son get into a car accident as she drives him back to his campus. Simultaneously, Roger Cavanagh attends his teenaged daughter Robin's hockey match after running late. Abigail then summons him because of the accident; Jared is spiteful. Roger and Abigail flirt, only to be interrupted by Apollo. Then Roger has dinner with his aggressive daughter; they spend the night at a motel. The next day she taunts him, pretending to be pregnant and confessing that was in jest. A few days later, Roger calls Abigail and finds out that she is away for the summer. A little later, Augusta Cutler, another suburban, goes to the rescued child's house and makes a fuss as she, too, was in love with Adam. She decides to leave her husband Owen, since he never seems to pay attention to her. During this time, Marina Troy leaves for Demascus County, to live in her inherited house - she lives there on her own, without even a telephone line. She has arranged for her house to be let, and for Molly Ivers, a dynamic librarian, to take charge of the book shop while she is away. Marina, however, isn't totally alone as Beverly Hogan, a pushy estate agent, starts to pester her with impromptu visits. Marina is also acquainted with Rick Pryde, a petrol station owner, maimed in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, who does snow-ploughing in winter as well. Next Marina goes to a mall and rescues a girl from an abusive boyfriend in the carpark. The girl concisely says her name is Lorene; they stop at a diner and the girl eventually leaves with her boyfriend. That night Marina dreams of Adam's unfinished sculptures that she has been tampering with, and realizes she is deluded. Then there is a shift to the Hoffmanns, and we learn of Lionel's mistress, Siri Joio, an Asian massage artist. Meanwhile Camille rescues a maimed stray dog and gets him operated, although that would seem like a folly. Then Lionel leaves Camille to live with Siri, and Camille sinks into depression; their grown children are angry with their father. A little later, Beatrice Archer, a neighbour, visits Camille. At the same time, Roger Cavanagh tells Lionel Hoffmann he will soon be a father for the second time. Camille somehow ends up with three more dogs (one of which belongs to a rich neighbour, Mrs Ferris, and another to a relative of Beatrice Archer's). Lionel then calls to say he is coming home. Meanwhile, Abigail Des Pres finds herself stalking an Asian-American girl with a 'red beret'. After a girlish meal, Abigail attends a dinner party for the Historic Society, and there an architect, Gerhardt Ault, hits on her, then calls her again the next day. Abigail prefers to call her ex-husband and ask about her son, who has refused to talk to her since the accident. She then has dinner with Gerhardt, but ends up walking out in sobs and eventually ignoring his calls. A little later she gets her book signed by Pulitzer-winner poet Donegal Croom. After a brief visit to Marina's bookshop, she attends a social event when Donegal reads aloud some of his poetry. After breaking down, he and Abigail spend the night together, talking - she talks about Adam, he confesses to having had prostate cancer and thereby being impotent. Back home, Abigail hears a message from Gerhardt on her answerphone, asking her to marry him. She promptly dismisses it, but then sees him with the girl in a 'red beret'... At the same time, Roger Cavanagh is in a car with feminist paralegal Noami Volpe. They visit lawyer Reginald "Boomer" Spires over Death Row client Elroy Jackson Jr, and upbraid him for his lack of professionalism, as they believe his client to be only a victim of the court system. Later, Noami Volpe admits she is pregnant, needs a holiday, and Roger pays for it. When she is back, over dinner she agrees to let him have the child if he will pay good money. Simultaneously, Abigail is said to be soon to marry Gerhardt Ault, and Owen Cutler goes to Florida to identify his wife's corpse - coming to the conclusion it is not hers. As it is, Augusta Cutler has left to delve into Adam's past, after finding out that he was formerly named Francis Xavier Brady. While on her quest, she spots the private detective that her husband has hired to find her, Elias West; after becoming intimate, they scheme her supposed death while she leaves for the north. Under the self-styled name of Elizabeth Eastman, she learns that young Adam had nearly killed his foster father; that he'd been a dyslexic; that he'd lived on a campsite with his family, that his father had left home, and that one night drunk Adam had mistakenly set the mobile home on fire, leaving his mother and sister to die inside the house. A little later, Marina Troy is back in Salthill-on-Hudson to sell her art pieces; she meets Roger Cavanagh with his baby and they quickly have an affair... At the same time in the Hoffmanns household, Lionel finds out he has AIDS, Camille has now seven dogs, and Lionel, due to his allergy, has to sleep in the guesthouse, until he gets bitten to death by them. Ironically enough, Camille has inherited $3 million from her rich neighbour for taking care of her dog. Meanwhile, Abigail goes to a ballet in New York City with Tamar, Gerhardt's Asian-American adopted daughter, and they get mugged. Finally, Augusta Cutler comes home, and Owen finds himself to be very considerate after all.
9778036	/m/02prxfh	The Tower of Zanid	L. Sprague de Camp		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Anthony Fallon, the Terran deposed as king of the Krishnan island of Zamba in the earlier novel The Queen of Zamba, has fallen on hard times, having failed to regain his throne and lost his second wife Julnar as well. Currently he resides in Zanid, capital of the kingdom of Balhib, where he makes a precarious living as a city guardsman and spy for the nomad realm of Qaath. Fallon's life is made more complicated when Terran consul Percy Mjipa enlists him to help archaeologist Julian Fredro study the Safq, an ancient snail-shaped tower forbidden to all but members of the native Yeshite cult. Fallon is also to look into recent disappearances of Terran scientists in the region. Mjipa, introduced in this novel as a secondary character, would go on to appear in three other Krishna novels; the chronologically earlier The Hostage of Zir and The Prisoner of Zhamanak (the latter as the protagonist), and the chronologically later The Swords of Zinjaban. Balancing Fallon's mutually exclusive allegiances while continuing to work toward recovering his kingdom is a difficult undertaking, which he realizes could prove fatal–particularly when the Safq turns out to be hosting a secret project to reproduce Terran weaponry as an ace in the hole for the war with Qaath. Then in the climactic battle the Qaathians unleash their own secret weapon, designed and built by the captive scientists. In the ensuing chaos Fallon figures the best thing to do is cut and run with the proceeds of his espionage, only to be undone by the fallout of a rare good deed, his earlier rescue of missionary Welcome Wagner. Anthony Fallon would reappear, reformed, in the later Krishna novel The Swords of Zinjaban as a Terran official.
9782938	/m/02ps1kf	Secrets of a Hollywood Super Madam		2007-02-14		 For 13 years, Jody Gibson owned and operated an exclusive global escort service under the name "Super Madam Sasha", while also leading a double life on radio and television as a recording artist known as "Babydol". The book describes Gibson's life as a "Super Madam" in Hollywood, as well as the challenges of simultaneously pursuing a career as a madam and a recording artist. Gibson evades law enforcement, but then is tried and convicted in a high profile trial and sent to prison. Gibson claims that celebrities such as Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Tommy Lasorda, CEOs and politicians used her service. She includes actual court data from her "Black Book", which was introduced as evidence at trial by law enforcement and used to convict her, and to date has never been sued over her use of that data. Gibson has appeared on television shows many times, including on The Howard Stern Show, Larry King Live, John Gibson's "The Big Story", Geraldo Rivera, Access Hollywood, Showbiz Tonight, The Tyra Banks Show, Court TV's "Hollywood Heat", and Glenn Beck. The book is now in development as a feature film about her life.
9785435	/m/02ps43_	Seventeenth Summer			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Seventeenth Summer is a book about a 17-year-old girl named Angeline "Angie" Morrow. It takes place in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Angie gets asked out on her first date by the local high school's basketball star, Jack Duluth, 18. They fall in love but soon the summer will end, for Angie has to go to college in Chicago, and Jack is going back to his home in Oklahoma to help his uncle with the bakery business. Jack falls in love with Angie, but Angie never says that she loves him back, so the question is, does she? The novel ends with Angie leaving for college and the two have a heartfelt goodbye.
9787553	/m/02ps5vh	To the Devil — a Diva!	Paul Magrs	2004-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Karla Sorensen is the fading one-time star of a glut of low-budget Hammer-style horror movies from the 1960s and 1970s, who finds herself in the new millennium short on cash and willing to work anywhere - even on Menswear, the most cutting-edge soap opera on television. Fortunately, as she sold her soul to the Devil during the World war II, Karla has hidden reserves to fall back on...
9787919	/m/02ps65h	Cults of Unreason	Christopher Riche Evans	1973	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book examines the background, founders and followers of a number of contemporary belief systems. Much of the book discusses the history of Scientology, including the early period and development of Dianetics. The book also describes the E-meter, various front groups, operating thetan, and the lifestyles of members whilst living at Scientology's then headquarters at Saint Hill Manor. Evans also reviews UFO cults, the Aetherians, the Atlanteans, biofeedback, yoga, theosophy, and The Fourth Way. He identifies a common theme of incorporating technological advances within a theological framework and contends that the allure of such cults is that they offer a sense of community and comfort in the face of a world dominated by science.
9790305	/m/02ps8q0	Good-bye, My Lady	James H. Street	1954-06		 Skeeter is a 14-year-old orphan who lives with his uncle Jesse in a one-room shack in the swamps of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. He has heard the sound of a strange animal in the swamp near their shack, and one summer evening he convinces his uncle to help him go out and find it. When they do, they see it is a small animal with short red and white fur that makes a chuckling yodel sound and cleans itself like a cat. Jesse is unsure what the animal is, but Skeeter is convinced it is a dog. The next day, Jesse's friend Alpheus "Cash" Evans, owner of the general store in the nearby village of Lystra, comes to help Skeeter and Jesse track down the animal. With Evans is his tracking dog Gabe and two vicious hog dogs named Bark and Bellow whom he keeps leashed. Evans releases Gabe at the spot where Skeeter and Jesse saw the animal, and Gabe eventually picks up its scent and starts tracking it. As they listen to Gabe tracking the animal it becomes clear that it is outrunning Gabe. It bursts into the clearing, and Evans releases Bark and Bellow. When the animal stands its ground and fights back against the hog dogs, Evans calls them off and allows it to escape. He acknowledges that Skeeter was right - the animal is a dog. The following day, Skeeter sets out to tame the dog. He is able to locate it, and it proves to be a friendly female who allows him to leash her and bring her with him to the shack. Jesse convinces Skeeter to let her off her leash, and she remains with them. Skeeter decides to name the dog Lady. Skeeter and Jesse take Lady out with them, and when Lady flushes a covey of quail Skeeter becomes determined to train her as a bird dog. However, Lady's behavior makes it clear that she is someone else's dog, and Skeeter fears that Evans will discover who her real owner is. Skeeter is horrified when Lady chases and kills a water rat, something no true bird dog will stoop to. He ties the half-eaten rat around her neck, and brings her back to the shack. There, he find Evans visiting with an English Setter he has just purchased. Evans had planned to give his new dog to Jesse and Skeeter to train (for which he intended to pay them three dollars a week), but seeing Lady with her rat causes him to change his mind. When Skeeter apologizes afterwards, Jesse shrugs it off and tells him to concentrate on training Lady. Within a few months, Skeeter has trained Lady to cast and point like a proper bird dog. A visiting Evans sees Lady pointing at a clump of sage fifty yards away and refuses to believe she has detected birds from so far away. Jesse wagers the cost of a sawblade Evans had given him on credit that Lady is indeed pointing birds. Skeeter is privately dubious, but Jesse wins his bet when a covey of quail break from the sage. Evans is impressed, and he spreads the word about Skeeter's remarkable dog. In time, Evans hears from a traveling salesman out of Mobile, Alabama that a kennel in Connecticut lost a Basenji near Pascagoula. The description of the lost dog, named Isis of the Blue Nile, matches Lady. A sorrowful Evans tells Jesse, who passes the word on to Skeeter. When Lady responds to the name Isis, Skeeter knows he has the lost Basenji, and decides to return her to her rightful owner. A wire is sent to the kennel, and a man named Walden Grover flies down from Connecticut to take possession of Lady. Skeeter himself must put Lady in the crate in Grover's pickup truck, then watch as Grover drives off with her. Evans then asks Skeeter to finish training his English Setter, and the boy accepts. With the $100 reward Grover gave him, the boy buys his toothless uncle a set of false teeth, and puts a down payment on a 20 gauge shotgun for himself.
9793729	/m/02pscw5	The Emperor's Candlesticks	Baroness Emma Orczy	1899	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 When a group of Russian anarchists kidnap a Russian prince in Vienna there are repercussions. On learning that the Cardinal d'Orsay has agreed to convey some hollow candlesticks from the Emperor to the Princess Marionoff in St Petersburg, two spies both see the possibility of using them to convey messages safely into Russia. One is an eager young idealist involved in the plot against the prince, the other is Madame Demidoff, a beautiful agent of the Tsar. When the candlesticks go missing at the border, the two engage in a race to get them back, both realizing that their very lives could depend on the retrieval.
9794878	/m/02psdx6	The Nest of the Sparrowhawk	Baroness Emma Orczy	1909	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in puritan Kent in 1657, the story focuses on the intrigues of Sir Marmaduke de Chevasse "as stiff a roundhead as ever upheld my Lord Protector and his Puritantic government" who is determined to secure the vast fortunes of his lovely ward, Lady Sue, for himself. Sue presents a girlish figure; she is young, alert and vigorous. The charm of her own youth and freshness even means she looks dainty and graceful in clothes that disfigure her elders. She enjoys the adulation which her appearance guarantees, laughing and chattering with the women and teasing the men. She does of course have plenty of admirers, including young Richard Lambert who worships her with protective reverence. Sir Marmaduke who has plans to woo and win Lady Sue disguised as the exiled French Prince of Orléans, resents this faithful espionage and lays a plot to lure young Lambert to a gaming-house in London. Richard knows that gambling is an illicit pastime and that he is breaking the law, but is compelled to take his seat at the table by his employer. Richard is then duped into taking part in a brawl and is summarily arrested leaving the way open for Marmaduke to carry out his cowardly deception and he soon tricks Sue into marrying him. Sir Marmaduke persuades his widowed sister-in-law to abet him in this plot, in which she unwittingly disgraces one of her long lost sons and finds the other murdered by the villain. Though set in a completely different kind of background, the plot has some resemblance with the Sherlock Holmes story "A Case of Identity".
9795291	/m/02psf7x	The Bronze Eagle	Baroness Emma Orczy	1915	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Crystal, the only daughter of the old, long-exiled haughty royalist, the Comte de Cambray, is on the eve of betrothal to de Marmont, (secretly an ardent Bonapartist). Bobby Clyffurde, the Englishman, who is in love with Crystal, confronts Victor de Marmont about why he is pretending to be a royalist. De Marmont replies that he has never led the Comte to suppose anything, the Comte has merely taken de Marmont’s political convictions for granted. As if two potential suitors weren’t enough, Crystal has yet another admirer, Maurice de St. Genis, whose impecunious state (her father sees him as a penniless, out-at-elbows, good for nothing) has precluded him from obtaining her hand in marriage. Howeve at the moment of Crystal’s betrothal to de Marmont, Maurice finally gets his revenge upon his rival. Once the guests have assembled for the ceremony, there is a disturbance from the end of the corridor and St. Genis enters the room, his rough clothes and muddy boots providing a contrast to the immaculate get-up of the Comte’s guests. Looking flushed and clutching his cane he announces that he has only come to avert the awful catastrophe that is about to fall on the Comte and his family. At the young man’s ominous words, M. le Comte goes pale and demands to know what catastrophe could be worse than twenty years of exile? "An alliance with a traitor, M. le Comte" he replies. St. Genis goes on to accuse his rival of pinning Napoleon’s proclamation on the walls of Grenoble. Yet, rather than deny the accusation de Marmont defends his actions with fervor, pulling a copy of the declaration from his pocket and waving it at the assembled group while shouting “Vive l’Empereur”. Despite the sudden rupture of her engagement, Crystal‘s heart is by no means broken, but it is not St. Genis who in the end wins her love, for we are left with the understanding that it is Clyffurde, the English merchant who eventually overrides the prejudices of the old French count. Clyffurde laughingly asks Crystal’s aunt, Mme. la Duchesse “Do you think that if I promise never to buy or sell gloves again, but in future to try and live like a gentleman-he will consent?”
9795689	/m/02psflx	The Broken Sword	Poul Anderson	1954	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book tells the story of Skafloc, elven-fosterling and originally son of Orm the Strong. The story begins with the marriage of Orm the Strong and Aelfrida of the English. Orm kills a witch's family on the land and later half-converts to a Christian, but quarrels with the local priest and sends him off the land. Meanwhile, an elf named Imric, with the help of the witch, seeks to capture the newly born son of Orm. In his place, Imric leaves a changeling called Valgard. The real son of Orm is taken away to elven lands and named Skafloc by the elves who raise him. As the story continues, both Skafloc and Valgard have significant roles in the war between the trolls and the elves.
9797238	/m/02pshbz	Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq	Thomas E. Ricks	2006-07	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book alleges that the planning of the Iraq war was mismanaged by both the Bush administration as well as the U.S. Army. Ricks then goes on to outline the infighting between the senior policy advisers such as Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and the Army. Ricks includes quotes from former generals of the Iraq war, former Army generals, and several top level officials, both working for the Bush administration and Douglas Feith's planning contingent. Moving into the war, Ricks alleges various miscommunication and mismanagement of the Army's combat tactics as well as criticizing the overall strategy. Ricks also heavily criticizes the actions of L. Paul Bremer and explores his impact as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
9800816	/m/02pslsm	Scarlet Sister Mary	Julia Peterkin			 Scarlet Sister Mary is set among the Gullah people of the Low Country in South Carolina. The date is never clearly established, but appears to be around the beginning of the twentieth century. The title character, Mary, was an orphan on an abandoned plantation who was raised by Auntie Maum Hannah and her crippled son Budda Ben. The description of Mary as "Scarlet Sister" reflects the basic conflict in the novel as Mary is torn between her desire to be a member in good standing in the church and a desire to live a life of sin and pleasure.
9801107	/m/02psm1x	Laughing Boy	Oliver La Farge			 The novel concerns a boy named Laughing Boy who is in search for wealth and popularity among his Navajo tribe, located in T'o Tlakai. He comes upon a woman whom he really likes, Slim Girl. They later marry without the full approval of his family. They move to Slim Girl's residence where they live for about four years. She secretly makes money from another man just for being around him. She tells Laughing Boy that she works for a woman in town. While he makes his money from designing and producing jewelry of his own and selling horses. They live a happy life together for many years bringing things from each other's culture into their relationship. When Laughing Boy chases a stallion for many days in order to make a good sell he runs into an American man at whom he shoots. While doing so he accidentally catches Slim Girl with an arrow unknowing of her presence, as this is where she made her money. He soon heals her while she tells him everything that has been going on and all of her past life. They become even closer. They decide to move up North where they can settle and have kids. On their long journey an ungrateful friend of Slim Girl shoots at the couple three times, as they flee from the gunfire Slim Girl reveals that she has been shot. She slowly dies in Laughing Boy's arms. He mourns her death for a total of four days before moving on. He comes across a small tribe and decides to rest and settle there for a while. He knows he will always be lonely but never alone.
9801626	/m/02psms7	The Store	Thomas Sigismund Stribling			 Colonel Miltiades Vaiden, a decorated Civil War Confederate officer, former overseer of Crownshield plantation and head of local KKK chapter, personal and economic trials and tribulations during the Reconstruction period. The title, "The Store", is symbolic of Col. Milt's ethical and economic transition from post war poverty to economic independence, set against the "old plantation" culture. The novel describes in blunt language, the cultural stress the old plantation society and former slaves have in adjusting to the post war reconstruction.
9801800	/m/02psmzf	Religion Inc.	Stewart Lamont	1986-06	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The work includes twenty-seven photographs, taken by the author in the course of research for the book. Lamont describes the difficulty authors often encounter in writing and publishing critical books on the Church of Scientology: "Books about Scientology have a greater permanency than newspaper articles and therefore it should not come as a surprise that vigorous smear-campaigns have been conducted against the authors of such investigations." Lamont later goes on to chronicle some of the harassment suffered by author Paulette Cooper after the publication of The Scandal of Scientology, including recounting parts of Operation Freakout. Lamont also goes into the inherent motivation for profit within the organization. The book also details L. Ron Hubbard's actions later in life: his retreat to sea, isolated lifestyle in California, and death.
9802318	/m/02psnl0	Honey in the Horn	H. L. Davis			 In the he killed the mansection of the story, Clay Calvert is a hand on the sheep ranch of Preston Shivley, his stepfather's father. Without really intending to, Clay helps his stepfather, Wade Shivley, escape from jail, and becomes a fugitive himself. He and a Tunne Indian boy flee into the wilderness where Clay joins up with a horse-trader who has a beautiful young daughter, Luce. In the second section of the story, Clay and Luce are married and living in the sparseley populated coastal regions. There they meet with a group of settlers who are planning a trip to eastern Oregon where they can put down stakes. On the trip east, they meet again with Wade Shively, who is accusing Clay of stealing his horse. Wade Shively is eventually hung for a crime he did not commit, and Clay is free to move on. Shortly after, Luce falls ill and Clay goes for help. When he returns Luce is gone, apparently with her father. In the final section of the story, Clay decides not to pursue Luce, but follows the wheat harvest, and eventually ends up as a hand on a scow on the Columbia River. Clay goes back to the Eastern plains to harvest grass for hay where he once again meets the Tunne Indian boy. He later discovers the Indian boy dead and suspects that he was killed by Luce's father. He decides then to rejoin the settlers who had moved from the Coast and stays with them until a harsh winter drives them off of their homesteads. On the way back west Clay once again unites with Luce.
9802783	/m/02psp14	Cupid and Death				 In the tale and in Shirley's retelling, Death and Cupid accidentally exchange their arrows and cause chaos as a result. Cupid shoots potential lovers and inadvertently kills them. Death shoots at elderly people whose time of passing has come, and strikes them ardent instead; he shoots duellists about to fight, and they drop their swords to embrace and dance and sing. The "serious" portion of the masque features the kind of personifications standard in the masque form: Nature, Folly, Madness, and Despair. As usual in masques of Shirley's era, the work contains a comic anti-masque, with a tavern Host and a Chamberlain, and a dance of "Satyrs and Apes." (The poor Chamberlain is struck by Death with Cupid's arrow, and falls in love with an ape.) The god Mercury eventually intervenes to set things right; Cupid is banished from the courts of princes to common people's cottages (a suitably sober moral for the Puritan regime then in power). The slain lovers are shown rejoicing in Elysium. "Cupid and Death resembles Caroline masque in its use of staging, music, dance, singing and dialogue. Yet it differs in that the masquers take part in the action and they do not dance with the audience at the end...The balance between spoken prose dialogue, recitative and song carries the performance away from masque and towards opera, a form Davenant planned to introduce to the London stage as early as 1639." Cupid and Death was performed at Rutland Boughton's Glastonbury Festival in 1919, by the Consorte of Musicke (notably Anthony Rooley and Emma Kirkby) in 1985, and by the Halastó Kórus (directed by Göttinger Pál) in Budapest in 2008.
9804474	/m/02psqsv	Omon Ra	Victor Pelevin	1992	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is narrated in the first person, in the manner of a coming-of-age story, or Bildungsroman. The protagonist, tracing his life from early childhood, is Omon Krivomazov, born in Moscow in the post-World War II years. In his teenage years, the realization strikes him that he must break free of Earth's gravity to free himself of the demands of the Soviet society and the rigid ideological confines of the state. After finishing high school, he immediately enrolls in a military academy. Omon soon finds that the academy does not, in fact, create future pilots, but instead exposes cadets to a series of treacherous trials, beginning with the amputation of both of their feet, so they can manifest Soviet heroism. This military school pecularities are coming as a reference to a famous Soviet ace-pilot Alexey Maresyev, who despite being badly injured in a plane crash after a dogfight, managed to return to the Soviet-controlled territory on his own. During his 18-day long journey, his injuries deteriorated so badly that both of his legs had to be amputated below the knee. Desperate to return to his fighter pilot career, he subjected himself to nearly a year of exercise to master the control of his prosthetic devices, and succeeded at that, returning to flying in June 1943. In the book, before such intentional "amputation" happens, though, Omon and his friend are whisked out of the academy into a top-secret installation under KGB headquarters in Moscow, where they start preparing for an "unmanned" mission to the Moon - he is told that to substitute for researching, building and launching an automated probe, the Party prefers people, trained for "heroism", to fulfill the tasks nominally performed by machines, such as rocket stage separation, space vehicle course correction and so on. Soon Omon indeed seems to be launched to the Moon, strapped into a seat inside a Lunokhod, which he is meant to drive like a bicycle on the lunar surface, as the last piece in the space mission puzzle, in order to deliver a radio beacon to a specific point and activate it. This he does, even though his protection against the vacuum and the interstellar cold, once he leaves the confines of the hermetically sealed Lunokhod, consists of a cotton-filled overcoat and "special hydrocompensatory tampons" stuffed up his nose. However, when it comes the time for him to shoot himself after placing the beacon, as ordered, the gun he was given for that purpose misfires, and he finds himself not on the Moon at all, but in an abandoned subway tunnel, where he had been driving his Lunokhod all along, carefully ignoring all signs which might have given him a clue as to his real whereabouts. He tries to escape, is given chase, but manages to find his way into the "normal" world again, coming up into one of the stations of the Moscow Metro. One of Omon's "teachers" explains the idea behind the charade. The idea is that even if the fact that the Soviet Union is a champion of peaceful space exploration holds true only inside a person's head (namely, the hero's; no one knows of him or his mission apart from its organizers), this is not much different from it being the reality. The reality, when it concerns subjects not capable of being experienced, is in fact only a perception formed in people's consciousness, and can be manipulated to the extent that the question of "true" version of events becomes meaningless (this idea juxtaposes with the conspiracy theories concerning the moon landing by the United States astronauts, even though the latter is never mentioned in the novel). The book met with a significant success in the early post-Soviet cultural landscape and continues to be reprinted with the later works by Pelevin.
9807293	/m/02pstdf	These Three Remain	Pamela Aidan	2005	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Following his experiences at Norwycke Castle, Fitzwilliam Darcy accompanies his cousin, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, to Rosings Park, the home of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, their aunt. The prospect of spending time with his pompous, self-impressed aunt (and her unsubtle desire for him to marry her daughter, Anne de Bourgh, a shy and sickly girl who, unknown to her mother, secretly writes poetry) is not the only thing troubling Darcy's mind; driven to distraction with his unwilling desire for Elizabeth Bennet, Darcy has finally decided to forget her once and for all. Unfortunately for him, Elizabeth is also in the area visiting her cousin, the pompous clergyman Mr Collins and his new wife (and her close friend) Charlotte, who are frequent visitors to Lady Catherine. Darcy is therefore thrown daily into Elizabeth's company, and finds himself unable to further resist her charms. Driven to distraction by his feelings for Elizabeth - and his jealousy over the developing friendship between Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam - Darcy finally accepts the strength of his love for her and, after weighing the consideration of her lowly social standing and its possible effect on his future status, determines to propose marriage to her. Much to Darcy's shock and anger, however, his proposal is rejected; not only is Elizabeth greatly insulted by Darcy's pompous, high-handed manner of proposal, but she has also heard from Colonel Fitzwilliam of Darcy's role in persuading his friend Charles Bingley to break his ties with Jane Bennet, Elizabeth's sister, who is in love with Bingley. Furthermore, she has been poisoned towards him by slanderous lies spread by Darcy's nemesis, George Wickham, and is convinced that Darcy is "the last man in the world whom [she] could ever be prevailed upon to marry". Heartbroken by Elizabeth's refusal and stunned by the depth of her dislike towards him, Darcy resolves to put the matter behind him and leaves Rosings, but not before writing Elizabeth a letter explaining the true history between himself, Wickham, and his sister Georgiana, and attempting to justify his actions regarding Bingley and Jane Bennet. Darcy has been shattered by her rejection of him, however, and upon his return to London begins acting in an increasingly uncharacteristic and erratic fashion towards his friends and Georgiana, culminating in his acceptance of an invitation to a party held by Lady Sylvanie Monmouth, who attempted to seduce him at Norwycke Castle and holds Darcy responsible for the death of her mother during those events. He is rescued from calamity by his good friend Lord Dyfed Brougham, a seemingly foppish aristocrat who in actually is a government agent investigating Sylvanie, who has links to Irish revolutionaries and intends to drug Darcy and then blackmail him into funding their operations. No longer trusting his own judgement, Darcy proceeds to get drunk in a nearby tavern before confessing the entire matter and his relationship with Elizabeth to Brougham, who sympathizes with him whilst still criticising his arrogant manner towards her. The next morning, a hungover moment of clarity leads to Darcy realizing the truth of Brougham's criticisms, and he is mortified to realize his own arrogant conduct towards both Elizabeth and Bingley's relationship with Jane Bennet. He realizes that his previous ideas of what makes a good gentleman have been misguided and have merely led him into a cold, disdainful state of mind and being towards others; despite being resigned to having lost her, Darcy nonetheless resolves to change his ways and to make himself into the type of gentleman that Elizabeth would have regard for. Confessing the matter to Georgiana, he resolves to follow her example and improve his faults. His belief that he has lost Elizabeth forever is soon upturned, however. Riding ahead of the rest of his party (including Bingley and his sister) on a return to his estate of Pemberley, he is astonished to find himself once more in Elizabeth's company, who is on a tour of Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, and has visited the property under the belief that he was away from the grounds. His behaviour towards her is much warmer than their last meeting, but still guarded; eager to show that he has taken her criticisms of his character on board and is mending his ways, Darcy makes a sincere effort to make her and her relatives feel comfortable and welcome. He soon finds that he genuinely likes Mr and Mrs Gardiner, and is delighted when, upon introducing Georgiana to Elizabeth, the two women take an instant liking to each other. Just as Darcy believes their relationship is thawing, however, Elizabeth receives news from home that her younger sister, Lydia, has eloped with none other than George Wickham, who is fleeing gambling debts accumulated with the other officers in his militia unit. Grieved at Elizabeth's pain at this potentially ruinous turn of events, and determined to help in any possible way, Darcy returns to London and, unknown to either the Bennets or the Gardiners, uses his contacts in the London demimonde to quickly find Wickham and Lydia. After failing to persuade Lydia to leave Wickham, Darcy proceeds to blackmail and bribe Wickham into marrying her, assuring Wickham's future good conduct by buying his many debts and purchasing for him a commission in an obscure army regiment. Wickham is forced to agree, and after Darcy has approached the Gardiners with this plan (on the condition that his own role in the affair be kept secret), Wickham and Lydia are married. Soon after, Bingley decides to return to his estate at Netherfield, to which he invites Darcy; upon seeing Jane Bennet and Bingley reunited, Darcy guiltily confesses his role in keeping the two separate. Bingley is angry, but quickly forgives Darcy; after straightening out the misunderstanding, Bingley and Jane are soon engaged. After hearing a false report that Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy are also to be married, an outraged Lady Catherine arrives at Darcy's London home having attempted to bully Elizabeth into promising to never enter into an engagement with Darcy, which Elizabeth refused. Darcy is elated when he realizes that Elizabeth's feelings towards him might have changed, and he returns to Netherfield. Once again, Darcy proposes to Elizabeth; this time she happily accepts, and the two are married.
9811882	/m/02pszll	Pollyanna Grows Up	Eleanor H. Porter	1915-03-27	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Pollyanna, now cured of her crippling spinal injury, spends her time teaching the "glad game" to new town, and a very bitter woman, Mrs. Carew. Along the way she makes new friends, such as Sadie and Jamie: Jamie is a delicate literary genius whose withered legs compel him to rely on a wheelchair and crutches. Six years later, Pollyanna and her aunt fall upon hard times. Following the death of Dr. Chilton, as a means of making money, Pollyanna and her aunt are forced to take in the friends Pollyanna made six years earlier as boarders. However, there are many skeletons lurking in people's closets, causing numerous misunderstandings and many revelations, including how old childhood friend Jimmy 'Bean' Pendleton ended up alone.
9816569	/m/03hfxwc	I Am the Messenger	Markus Zusak	2002-01-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with an introduction to the character of Ed Kennedy, a down-and-out underage taxi driver who is hopelessly in love with his best friend Audrey, who, to his dismay, feels that she cares about him too much to date him. Ed is standing in a bank queue when a robbery takes place. He accidentally foils the robbers' escape, and is proclaimed a hero. Shortly after, he receives an Ace of Diamonds in the mail. The ace is from an unknown source. On the ace is written a list of addresses and times. These represent a series of tasks that Ed must complete. His tasks are as follows: # He must save a woman who is raped by her husband almost every night. # He must comfort a lonely old lady. # He must show a teenage girl how to take control of her life and become more confident. Throughout the book, Ed receives different playing cards in the mail. Each card is a different ace, and each ace contains a series of tasks, often in the form of cryptic clues. On the second to last card, he receives a list with movie titles on it and deciphers the names of his three best friends. From these cards he learns the greatest message of all: That he isn't the messenger, but instead the message. The last card is a Joker and has his own address written on it. But as it is made clear in the last lines of the novel it's all about the realisation of chances and potential because as Ed finally says:"I'm not the messenger at all. I'm the message."
9817005	/m/02pt2n5	Hayy ibn Yaqdhan				 The plot of Avicenna's Persian allegorical tale was very different from Ibn Tufail's later novel. Avicenna's story was essentially a thought experiment about the active intellect, personified by an elderly sage, instructing the narrator, who represents the human rational soul, about the nature of the universe. The plot of Ibn Tufail's more famous Arabic novel was inspired by Avicennism, Kalam, and Sufism, and was also intended as a thought experiment. Ibn Tufail's novel tells the story of an autodidactic feral child, raised by a gazelle and living alone on a desert island in the Indian Ocean. After his gazelle mother passes away when he is still a child, he dissects her body and performs an autopsy in order to find out what happened to her. The discovery that her death was due to a loss of innate heat sets him "on a road of scientific inquiry" and self-discovery. Without contact with other human beings, Hayy discovers ultimate truth through a systematic process of reasoned inquiry. Hayy ultimately comes into contact with civilization and religion when he meets a castaway named Absal. He determines that certain trappings of religion and civilization, namely imagery and dependence on material goods, are necessary for the multitude in order that they might have decent lives. However, he believes that imagery and material goods are distractions from the truth and ought to be abandoned by those whose reason recognizes that they are distractions. Ibn Tufail drew the name of the tale and most of its characters from an earlier work by Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Ibn Tufail's book was neither a commentary on nor a mere retelling of Ibn Sina's work, however, but a new and innovative work in its own right. It reflects one of the main concerns of Muslim philosophers (later also of Christian thinkers), that of reconciling philosophy with revelation. At the same time, the narrative anticipates in some ways both Robinson Crusoe and Emile: or, On Education. It tells of a child who is nurtured by a gazelle and grows up in total isolation from humans. In seven phases of seven years each, solely by the exercise of his faculties, Hayy goes through all the gradations of knowledge. The story of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is also similar to the later story of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.
9817347	/m/02pt2yg	Calling You novel	Otsu-ichi	2001-05-31		 ; Ryo is a high school freshman who tends to take people's words literally. After being hurt several times because she misunderstood someone, she avoids people. She creates an imaginary cell phone, feeling it would be pointless to buy one when no one would call. One day while she is on the bus, however, her imaginary cell phone begins to ring. At the other end is a boy named Shinya who is also calling with an imaginary cell phone. Ryo is shocked and after they disconnect, she tries calling people and connects with a college student named Yumi, who instructs her in the ways of imaginary phones. Though Shinya lives an hour in the past from Ryo, they talk regularly through their imaginary phones, staying constantly connected. Through their friendship, Ryo is able to find her voice and begin talking in the real world. They eventually talk on the real phone, and decide to meet. Ryo takes a bus to the airport, but a car nearly runs her over. Shinya pushes her out of the way and is struck instead. In the ambulance, Shinya dies. Ryo calls Shinya in the past. She tries to save him by saying she hated him on sight, but he sees through her and gets her to admit what happened. He is determined to save her, so they frantically say their good-byes. Ryo goes to his funeral and afterwards finds his locker where he left a cassette radio he'd promised her. Ryo also realizes that Yumi is really her future self. ; An unnamed Boy is put in the special class at school after he attacks a classmate who teased him about the burn mark on his back. The Boy's father regularly abused him, including leaving the burn on his back by throwing an iron at him. His mother abandoned him, and he now lives with an aunt and uncle he feels don't care anything about him. In the class, he meets Asato, a quiet boy who rarely talks. Asato's mother murdered his father and then tried to kill Asato as well. While alone with Asato after school, the Boy hurts himself carving. Asato comes over and touches him, and half the wound leaves the boy's arm and moves to Asato's so that they are equally sharing the pain. They become friends that day, and begin exploring the depths of Asato's powers. After Asato removes a scrape from a little boy's knee, the child's mother treats them to ice cream. At the parlor, they meet Shiho, a young woman with a burned face who hides her scars behind a mask. When a kid the Boy had pushed out of a window breaks his arm with a baseball bat, Asato takes that wound as well, but then moves it to the kid with the bat. The Boy decides Asato should move all of his wounds to his father, who is lying unconscious and dying in the hospital. Whenever gets new injuries, the Boy would take Asato there to use his father's dying body as a "dumping ground." Eventually, they share the secret of Asato's powers with Shiho and she asks Asato to remove the burn for just three days so she can remember what its like to live without it. She leaves town afterward, however, and Asato sinks into a depression. No one can stand looking at him with the scar on his face, even the Boy, so they go to the hospital to give it to the Boy's father. However, when the arrive, they find he had just died. The Boy cries for him, and asks Asato to move all the scars back from his father's body to him instead. Asato says he can't and runs, and the Boy realizes Asato had never given any of the wounds to his father after all. Asato runs from through the hospital, curing everyone he touches and taking on their wounds. The Boy realizes Asato wants to die because he thinks no one wants him. Outside, he takes on the fatal wounds of an accident victim, but the Boy convinces him to give him half, just like the day they became friends, so that they could share the pain equally. The wounds are serious and both spend a long time in the hospital, but during the stay the Boy comes to the conclusion that Asato was given the power because he had a pure heart, and that he wants Asato to always know someone is there willing to share his pain. ; A patient at a hospital finds a flower with the face of a girl, that hums a beautiful melody.
9817917	/m/02pt3jc	Woodsong	Gary Paulsen	1990	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Paulsen opens his book with a vivid retelling of a story in which he watched brush wolves kill and devour a live doe in the woods. This event revealed the raw, unfabricated realities of nature to him. He then recounts how he was once a beaver trapper in Minnesota, earning barely enough money from the job to support his wife and son, and that there was no method of transportation to aid him. His neighbors assisted him by giving him a few older sled dogs, which he gradually learns to properly run, and begins running the trapline with them. Paulsen recounts many incidents he has undergone with his dogs on their runs, including times he has been carried to safety by his sled dogs after breaking his knee on the trail, became violently ill in the midst of extreme cold conditions, and a variety of mysterious happenings in the Alaskan wilderness. In all of their adventures, he bonds closely with his dogs, particularly one named "Storm". Storm was an ideal dog that taught Paulsen many life values, including that of death. His experience running his sled dogs taught him much about nature and life. Part One closes, and Part Two begins with Paulsen entering a team of fifteen of his dogs in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, an approximately 1,153 mile-long sled dog race from Anchorage, Alaska to Nome, Alaska. The race proves to be long and arduous. Extreme cold conditions and difficult terrain put both he and his team to the test. He is repeatedly afflicted by lifelike hallucinations caused by extreme sleep deprivation, such as a man with a trench coat talking about educational grants, and hallucinating about a man hallucinating. But Gary is spurned onward by the beauty of the race and his devotion to the team. During the race, Gary experiences a unique feeling when he is running with his dogs. After nearly seventeen days, he at last crosses the finish line in Nome. He places last in the race, but the accomplishment and adventure is all that matters to him.
9819194	/m/02pt4yr	The Song of Kahunsha	Anosh Irani		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Abandoned as an infant, ten-year-old Chamdi has spent his entire life in a Bombay orphanage. There he has learned to find solace in his everyday surroundings: the smell of the first rains, the vibrant pinks and reds of the bougainvilleas that blossom in the courtyard, the life-size statue of Jesus, the "beautiful giant," to whom he confides his hopes and fears in the prayer room. Though he rarely ventures outside the orphanage, he entertains an idyllic fantasy of what the city is like – a paradise he calls Kahunsha, "the city of no sadness," where children play cricket in the streets and where people will become one with all the colours known to man. Chamdi’s quiet life takes a sudden turn, however, when he learns that the orphanage will be shut down by land developers. He decides that he must run away in search of his long-lost father, taking nothing with him but the blood-stained white cloth he was left in as a baby. Outside the walls of the orphanage, Chamdi quickly discovers that Bombay is nothing like Kahunsha. The streets are filthy and devoid of colour, and no one shows him an ounce of kindness. Just as he’s about to faint from hunasoned street children offer help: the lovely, sarcastic Guddi and her brother, the charming, scarred, and crippled Sumdi. After their father was crushed by a car before their eyes, the children were left to care for their insane mother and their infant brother. They soon initiate Chamdi into the brutal life of the city’s homeless, begging all day and handing over most of his earnings to Anand Bhai, a vicious underworld don who will happily mutilate or kill whoever dares to defy him. Determined to escape the desperation, filth, and violence of their lives, Guddi and Sumdi recruit Chamdi into their plot to steal from a temple. But when the robbery goes terribly awry, Chamdi finds himself in an even worse situation. The city has erupted in Hindu-Muslim violence and, held in Anand Bhai’s fierce grip, Chamdi is presented with a choice that threatens to rob him of his innocence forever.
9825623	/m/02pt9pj	Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds	Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle	1686		 The book itself is presented as a series of conversations between a gallant philosopher and a marquise, who walk in the latter's garden at night and gaze at stars. The philosopher explains the heliocentric model and also muses on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Fontenelle's work was not cast polemically against the world views of either the Catholic Church or the protestant churches, nor did it attract the attention, positive or negative, of theologians or prelates.
9835888	/m/02pthxm	Made of Steel	Terrance Dicks		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Returning from the Cretaceous period, The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones journey to the present day, where Cybermen have been teleporting into labs and stealing technology. The Doctor takes Martha back to the Royal Hope hospital, where they have a confrontation with a pair of Cybermen in the car park. After nearly being captured, the Cybermen suddenly disappear, due to faults with their unfamiliar teleportation technology. The Army also want to get their hands on the Doctor, and ask for his help, so the Army capture him and his TARDIS from the Royal Hope Hospital, and he is separated from Martha. At the Army Base, the Doctor realises that the Cybermen who were made on Earth, not the parallel universe (and were therefore not sucked into the void) having been using teleportion devices stolen from the Torchwood building, to help them gather enough technology to create a portal capable of reopening The Void and release the Cybermen trapped inside. But the Cybermen do not know how to open the Void, and so they need the Doctor to open it for them. That's why they're trying to capture him alive. While Martha is separated from the Doctor, the Cybermen reappear, and capture her. They take her to their secret base where they discuss whether or not to kill her. Soon, the Doctor phones her on her mobile, and lets slip where he is. Just as Martha is about to tell him where she is, the Cyberleader snatches her phone and destroys it, then plans an attack on the Army Base where the Doctor is being held. The Doctor manages to figure out that the Cybermen are at the Millennium Dome. But a team of 6 Cybermen (who were being kept frozen since the battle of Canary Wharf) attacks the base. The Army manages to destroy all but the Cyberleader with special weapons they had prepared in case Cybermen should invade again. The Cyberleader tells the Doctor that they'll kill Martha unless he helps them, then vanishes. The Doctor and the Army plan to attack the Millennium Dome. Having retrieved his TARDIS from the base, the Doctor manages to materialize right inside the Dome but the Army cannot enter due to a force-field set up by the Cybermen. The Doctor cooperates with the remaining two Cybermen & the Cyberleader, and opens their portal by linking up their equipment to the TARDIS. But the Cybermen realize that the Doctor's methods do not work, and the force-field does not lead to the Void. Instead, it leads to Prehistoric Earth. A Tyrannosaurus rex appears and kills two Cybermen. Martha damages the force-field generator, and the Doctor uses an electrical cord from it to fry the Cyberleader. The portal then closes. With the Army entering too late, the Doctor and Martha say good-bye, then leave in the TARDIS to go somewhere 'peaceful'.
9837010	/m/02ptjky	Cry Of The Newborn	James Barclay	2005-10-20	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Cry of the Newborn centers around four newborn babies, in the town of Westfallen, in Caraduk, in the Conquord empire. The entire town is unique in all of the Conquord, as magic not only exists, but is a part of everyday life, which differs greatly from the rest of the Conquord, where the Omniscient(also referred to as the God and variants) is worshipped and there is no awareness of magic. In fact, the Order of the Omniscient persecuted early magic practitioners and thought they had destroyed all evidence of its existence. However, writing existed from the original Gorian, who was recorded all his knowledge of magic and postulated the future existence of the The Ascendants, and the knowledge was kept alive in the town of Westfallen. Due to the persecution of magic by the Order, the town of Westfallen shrouded itself in secrecy, taking the country's representative to the Conquord (the Marshal Defender Vasselis) into confidence four generations before the time of the story, and all the successors (all Marshal Defender Vasselis). The Marshal Defender during the story's time is Arvan Vasselis. Every town member is aware of the existence of magic and all play their part to continue its existence in secret, as does the Vasselis family. Up until the time of the Ascendants, many people in the town of Westfallen were able to manipulate nature in some form, for a while in their lives, being able to breathe underwater or being impervious to heat, for example. However, these abilities appeared to be limited in time, and eventually would disappear from a person. The notable exception is Ardol Kessian, who, during the time of the Ascendants, was around about 140 years old and still able to predict the weather. What made the Ascendants unique was their ability to project their manipulations of nature, making their abilities active instead of passive, as the normal townspeople's abilities seem to be, and the Ascendants are able to manipulate nature outside of their original scope, for example, Mirron, who was originally a Firewalker (able to withstand heat), later developed the ability to breathe underwater. The Ascendants, whilst having been predicted by the original Gorian, were completely new to the world and unprecedented. As such, their tutorage was largely experimental. The four Ascendants are: *Gorian *Mirron *Arducious *Ossacer The Ascendants grow up, and develop their powers to phenomenal levels. Throughout their childhood and adolescence, certain relationships and character traits begin to develop which will greatly affect the future of the Ascendants. For example, Gorian begins to show signs of megalomania and eventually, this develops into an inflated sense of self-importance, because he is an Ascendant and therefore above normal people. Eventually, this causes him to rape Mirron, because he believes they must breed together to create a line of new, more powerful Ascendants. This action causes Gorian to be expelled by the others, which has the unfortunate and unforeseen consequence of causing Gorian to ally with the enemies of the Conquord, whom the Ascendants (minus Gorian) are using their abilities to save. The Conquord has expanded and expanded and resources are a bit thin in the time of the Ascendants, however, the Advocate, Herine Del Aglios, who is considered by the Conquord religion to be the living embodiment of the Omniscient, is convinced to continue expanding her empire into the kingdom of Tsard. This causes unrest in some of the newly acquired border states, most notably in Atreska, where rebellion breaks out and Atreska allies itself with Tsard, turning away from the Conquord. The Conquord underestimated the Tsard people and its armies, and far from being conquered by the Conquord, the Tsard not only resisted but retaliated, essentially annexing Atreska and moving into place for an assault on Estorr, the capital of Estorea and centre of the Conquord. It is because of this that the abilities of the Ascendants have been employed by Paul Jhered, Exchequer of the Conqourd, manipulating weather and nature to halt and, at times, destroy, the Tsard armies and navy. The main problem facing the Ascendants is the fact that, outside of Westfallen, almost nobody is aware of their existence and most citizens of the Conquord would be afraid of them and their abilities, and would view them as an affront to God (the Omniscient) as they can change and manipulate what he created at will. This also places them in danger from the Order, for the same reasons.
9837350	/m/02ptjvk	The Black Tattoo	Sam Enthoven	2006-09-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins with Charlie, whose parents are recently divorced, meeting his father in a restaurant with his best friend Jack Farrell. They leave the restaurant, however, soon after entering. Soon afterward, Charlie is unknowingly possessed by a demon known as the Scourge. He also joins the society known as The Brotherhood Of Sleep, who imprisoned the Scourge in the roots of a tree until one of their own released him. With Charlie's help, the Scourge manages to first kill all the members of the Brotherhood, save for the girl Esme, who has trained all her life to kill the demon. Soon after the death of their members, a possessed Charlie gets into a gateway to Hell, which is essentially a Roman Empire of sorts composed of demonesque species and even gladiator pits. Soon after reaching Hell, The Scourge's true goal is revealed: He wishes to awaken "the dragon" who created the universe, and upon awakening he will destroy it again. Suddenly, it is up to Jack, Esme, and a team of soldiers to stop Charlie and the Scourge from destroying the universe.
9839076	/m/02ptkxl	Limit of Vision	Linda Nagata	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07g8l": "Transhumanism"}	 Virgil Copeland and Randall Panwar are forced to give a project review to the senior staff of Equatorial Systems alone when their fellow scientist Gabrielle Villanti fails to show up. Panwar stumbles through the presentation, showcasing their life work: asterids (artificial neurons) known as LOVs. Although LOVs showed promise in initial experiments, the enhanced intelligence of the test animals was offset by the uncontrolled growth of the LOVs, which eventually killed their hosts. LOVs were therefore made dependent on two amino acids: nopaline for metabolism and octopine for reproduction. In the second phase of the experiment, the LOVs were encased in silicate shells. These LOVs were able to safely interact with the test animals. Unfortunately, an unrelated incident at a rival biotechnology company prompted a government crackdown, and the LOVs were exported to the Hammer, a space station in low Earth orbit. Panwar's presentation is cut short when security interrupt with news of an incident at the lab. Gabrielle, Panwar, and Virgil had illegally implanted LOV clusters on their foreheads in order to communicate with the LOV colonies in their care, and Gabrielle had apparently entered a fugue state and died of exhaustion while in communion with their latest experimental subject. Their administrators learn of this shortly when they discover Virgil attempting to surreptitiously remove the LOVs from Gabrielle's corpse, and the two surviving scientists are put into quarantine. Unfortunately, the LOV colony is quite a bit more intelligent and resourceful than anyone had anticipated; it has overcome several obstacles and colonized key areas of the Hammer. When it learns what has happened, it takes control of several drones and severs the lab module from the space station. Ela Suvanatat is a freelance journalist doing a story on the plight of fishing villages in Vietnam when the Equasys lab module crashes offshore. Although it is quickly declared off limits by the government, Ela hires a boat and makes her way out to the crash site. She is barely able to scoop up a few stray LOVs which have survived atmospheric reentry and get back to shore before the military arrives and cordons off the site. Racing through the marsh ahead of military patrols, Ela comes into contact with the Roi Nuoc, a group of children under the care of a nearly sentient computer program named Mother Tiger. The Roi Nuoc take her to one of their benefactors, a businessman named Ky Xuan Nguyen. While cleaning up at his house, Ela discovers that the packet of LOVs has torn and most of her find is missing, but there are a few LOVs lodged in her forehead. Meanwhile, Virgil and Panwar attempt escape from quarantine, but Panwar is gunned down and Virgil barely makes it to Panwar's one-man automated submarine. Virgil shortly receives from a message from Ela, who is worried that her LOVs seem to be dying. He tells her that crown galls on some plants might contain nopaline, and orders her a supply of both nopaline and octopine tablets from a chemical supply company. Ela is forced to flee her safe house when the military begins a house-to-house search, but she stops along the way to gather crown galls and then asks one of the Roi Nuoc to lead her back to the pool in which she took shelter after swimming ashore. At the pool, Ela plunges half of her crown galls into the mud, hoping to save any LOVs which had made their way into the water.
9839293	/m/02ptl3g	The Falling Woman	Pat Murphy	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Elizabeth Butler is an archaeologist, and the author of several popular books that challenge her colleagues' ideas about Mayan civilization. Elizabeth has a strange gift, connected to a suicide attempt as a young woman, which allows her to see the spirits of ancient people while she walks at dusk and dawn. The story opens with Elizabeth in the middle of an eight-week field study at Dzibilchaltún. Her team hopes to find dramatic artifacts that will spark interest and increased funding for future field studies at the site. In the middle of the field study, Elizabeth's estranged adult daughter Diane arrives unannounced. After the death of her father, Elizabeth's ex-husband, Diane suddenly abandoned her life in the United States, and flew to Mexico to see her mother. It's revealed that Diane has seen Elizabeth for only a few brief visits since Elizabeth left her as a young child to be raised by her father. Neither is sure what Diane wants from Elizabeth. As the two struggle to connect, Elizabeth has a new experience: one of her spirit visions, a Mayan priestess named Zuhuy-kak, can see and speak with Elizabeth. Zuhuy-kak provides unprecedented knowledge about the Mayans' departure from Dzibilchaltún, and leads Elizabeth to the major archaeological find her team needs, but demands a sacrifice to the goddess Ix Chebel Yax. As the dig progresses, haunted by bad luck and tragedy, Zuhuy-kak makes it clear that Elizabeth must sacrifice her daughter.
9842226	/m/02ptn64	Murder by the Book	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Because the New York police have written the case off as an accident, a Peoria businessman asks Wolfe to investigate the hit-and-run death of his daughter, a reader for a book publishing company, in Van Cortlandt Park. Wolfe connects her death to a list of names he was recently shown by Inspector Cramer, related to a stalled homicide investigation &mdash; and concludes there is a second murder. A third murder validates Wolfe's conclusion, and Archie follows the trail of an unpublished novel to California and back. Much of the plot - and the eventual solution to the mystery - turns on the daily life of a big law office, the frictions and rivalries between the partners (as well as between their respective secretaries and clerks).
9843759	/m/02ptph1	The Continent Makers	L. Sprague de Camp	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Geophysicist Gordon Graham is a participant in the Gamanovia Project, whose mission is to increase the land area of the overpopulated twenty-second century Earth by creating new continents through the manipulation of geological forces. The project's initial goal is to raise a new land mass to be called Gamanovia around the existing Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. The name of the proposed new continent was chosen to honor fifteenth century Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama, the first European to navigate the region's waters, and for João da Nova, who discovered Ascension Island a few years later. A sinister group concealing itself under the mask of the bogus Churchillian Society, supposedly dedicated to proving that the works of twentieth-century dramatist George Bernard Shaw were actually written by Winston Churchill, is attempting to discover the secrets of the project. The Churchillian Society's "cover" purpose is a spoof on the present-day body of thought similarly dismissing William Shakespeare's authorship of the Shakespeare plays on the grounds that he, as a commoner, could not possibly have written great literature. When Graham becomes involved with Jeru-Bhetiru, an alien woman from the country of Katai-Jhogorai on the planet Krishna, the society attempts to blackmail him into serving them by kidnapping and threatening to kill her. Instead, Graham allies himself with World Federation constable Reinhold Sklar and Jeru's fiance Varnipaz bad-Savarun, a diplomat from the Krishnan kingdom of Sotaspe, to thwart the plotters. The enemy is gradually revealed as a rogue band of Thothians from the Procyonic star system, hoping to seize the new continent by claiming Ascension, which currently lacks any sovereign government. Graham and his cohorts find themselves in a tight race against time, in which the labyrinthine bureaucracies of the future Earth prove almost as much an impediment as the enemy, and the hypnotic powers of the reptilian alien Osirians bring about treachery within their own ranks. An added problem for Graham is that the rescue of Jeru will gain nothing for him personally, but rather benefit only his rival Varnipaz; though Graham and Jeru love each other, people in her country wed on the basis of interest and advantage, considering love to have nothing to do with marriage.
9845714	/m/02ptqh0	The Scorpion God	William Golding	1971	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The Scorpion God is set in Ancient Egypt in pre-Pharaonic times and involves three main characters: "Great House", his son, and "The Liar". It is set in the court of a failing ruler "Great House" (i.e. Pharaoh), who is treated as a living god, responsible for ensuring that the sky is held up and that the River Nile floods every year to bring water for the crops. Great House's young son is going blind and does not want to succeed his father, nor does he want to marry his older sister as he is expected to do. "The Liar" &ndash; the ruler's favourite &ndash; is a kind of court jester employed to tell Great House incredible (but in fact largely true) stories about the world outside the small piece of the Nile valley that they call home, and regard as the whole world. "The Liar" is a renegade of foreign origin who has knowledge of the world far beyond any of the Nile valley dwellers. He is threatened with being made a human sacrifice to accompany his master in death, but with his fighting skills he eventually overthrows the old king and makes himself ruler in his place. The end of the story hints that it is he who will become the semi-legendary first Pharaoh of a united Egypt.
9845983	/m/02ptqqy	Free Fall	William Golding	1959	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Samuel ('Sammy') Mountjoy, a talented painter but a directionless and unhappy man, is a prisoner of war in Germany during WWII. Recently some inmates escaped from his camp. A Gestapo officer, Dr. Halde, interviews Sammy in an attempt to find out about the escape organization; when Sammy denies knowing anything, Halde has him locked in a small store-room, awaiting possible torture. Under the pressure of the darkness, isolation and horrified anticipation he gradually breaks down; in a series of long flashbacks, he wonders what brought him to his current state, and in particular, how he lost his freedom. As a very young child he was happy, despite living in a slum and never knowing his father. He was adopted by the local priest and attended day school and grammar school, where he was torn between two diametrically opposed parent-figures - the kindly science master Nick Shales and the sadistic Rowena Pringle, who taught religious studies. He also fell desperately in love with a girl in his class, Beatrice Ifor. Whilst a student at art college he managed to become Beatrice's fiancé, and eventually her lover, but when she was unable to return his violent passion he grew bored with her and married another woman. After some years he found that Beatrice had gone incurably insane. The novel alternates these flashbacks with Sammy's increasing terror and despair. Then, just as he loses all self-control and cries for help, he is abruptly released by the camp commandant, who apologises, outraged that an officer should have been humiliated like this.
9846147	/m/02ptqt0	A City In Winter	Mark Helprin	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 All three books in this trilogy, Swan Lake, A City in Winter, and the final novel in the series, The Veil of Snows abound in winter season atmosphere and fairy tale magic. This imaginative novel continues the story of Swan Lake in which an unnamed country girl hears from her beloved tutor the story of a prince and his beautiful lover Odette who are usurped from their kingdom by evil forces. By the book's end, the child has realized that she is the couple's daughter, and therefore, the rightful heir to the throne. As A City in Winter begins, the youthful heir to the frosty kingdom is an adult, restored to the throne as queen. The story is told in flashback to her unborn child; she recalls her return to the city at age ten, and tells how the restoration came about. The events center on the period when the heroine slipped into the enormous city of the usurper, and took a job as a yam curler in the palace. Interestingly, as the unnamed girl's foe, the usurper is also never given a proper name: "His face was scarred and twisted, his towering form draped in black robes that flew in his wake like the wings of a crow that dies in midair and cartwheels to the ground. He wore a mask that made him look like death itself.” The girl finds in the capital city a million loyalists and former soldiers, all united by an oath of rebellion, waiting for a leader whose prophetic return will be heralded by a dimmed sun and a burning angel. In her quest to remove the usurper, the main character befriends a number of these outwardly obedient, inwardly rebellious people, including the baker-slave Notorincus and his slave-of-a-slave, Astrahn, a former general of the Damavand and renowned tactician, who brave terrifying odds with humor and selflessness to protect the protagonist, while unaware that she is their queen. For example, Notorincus reveals his cry of battle to be “I’ll never bake another waffle-torte for a single imperial soldier as long as I live!" While the young girl does eventually regain the palace, her victory does not come without sacrifice. Near the novel's end, the child's tutor arrives in the city to aid her, and knowing that the citizens will not accept her as queen without the prophetic appearance of a burning angel. In a sequence of events that forces the audience to question whether or not A City in Winter should be considered a children's novel, the tutor douses himself with kerosene, lights a match, and as the people of the city watch, throws himself from an enormous tower to the city square below. “They say that as he fell, he flew, tumbling and wheeling in the air in slow motion, his arms outspread with all his strength, the fire trailing like the tail of a comet.” It is not until this final act that the 10-year old girl is able to open the doors of the palace to find the city bowing before her.
9851778	/m/02ptvt9	Wren's War	Sherwood Smith		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Andreus finally begins the military maneuvers against Meldrith which had been feared in Wren to the Rescue. Lirwani agents launch a covert strike to abduct Tess and assassinate the King and Queen. These events take place while Wren is on vacation in Alat Los. As part of the plot, Tess is drugged via a drink presented to her by one of the agents posing as a stable worker, but the effect does not take full hold until she is in a hidden staircase in the palace, and is rescued by her most loyal servant after reviving in time to witness her parents' murder. After being evacuated to a building in the hills, Tess raises the alarm to Wren, Tyron, and Conor using the summons rings which they began using after the events of Wren's Quest. Capitalizing on the disarray inflicted by the toppling of royal order, Andreus moves the full force of his army into Meldrith, over 1 million troops in all. Tess organizes all support she can in order to mount raids against the Lirwani occupation forces, which were not yet evenly spread throughout Meldrith's lands. Wren and Tyron, having been successfully recalled earlier, are sent to seek the aid of Hawk Rhiscarlan, who is known to have now set himself up in some form of power at the ruins of his ancestral home, directly south of Senna Lirwan.
9851784	/m/02ptvt_	Wren's Quest	Sherwood Smith	1993-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Hawk Rhiscarlan attempts to gain favor with Andreus of Senna Lirwan by succeeding where Andreus was foiled in Wren to the Rescue. Tyron is deployed in the guise of a dog in order to gain reconnaissance among the nobles of Cantirmoor which might reveal who is behind the trouble, but is captured by Hawk. During this time, unaware of the new plot afoot, Wren ventures to the records center for the Siradi border guards who found her in a brigand-devastated trade caravan as a very young child. Wren is accompanied by Connor Shaltar for protection in case of any trouble, though that idea was hatched by Leila and Queen Astren of Meldrith to allow Connor to avoid confinement by his uncle Fortian Rhismordith to a particular vacation house as punishment for his tendency to socialize with stage performers. Excursion into such remote territory fails to spare the pair form the interesting times, however, as they are forthwith pursued incessantly yet intermittently by mysterious and vaguely menacing couriers clothed in blue, culminating in an entire forest fire being levied as an attack against the protagonists, which Connor manages to dispel though an exertion of his own manner of magic, which leaves him prostrate and asleep for two full days. Upon regaining consciousness, Connor discovers his location to have changed to that of a stone fortification of considerable vintage, whereupon Wren briefs him regarding the elapsed time and the fact that this is indeed the Siradi border-guard records center, as well as one of their command posts.
9854090	/m/02ptxqw	Fly by Night	Frances Hardinge	2005-10-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Set in an alternate 18th-century realm, twelve-year-old Mosca Mye hasn't got much. Her cruel uncle keeps her locked up in his mill, and her only friend is her pet goose, Saracen, who'll bite anything that crosses his path. But she does have one small, rare thing: the ability to read. She doesn't know it yet, but in a world where books are dangerous things, this gift will change her life. Enter Eponymous Clent, a smooth-talking con man who seems to love words nearly as much as Mosca herself. Soon Mosca and Clent are living a life of deceit and danger -- discovering secret societies, following shady characters onto floating coffeehouses, and entangling themselves with crazed dukes and double-crossing racketeers. It would be exactly the kind of tale Mosca has always longed to take part in, until she learns that her one true love -- words -- may be the death of her.
9856041	/m/02pt_35	The Trick is to Keep Breathing	Janice Galloway		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Drama teacher Joy Stone is losing her grip. In an intriguing story of the onset and evolution of depression, her problems accumulate, denial activates, and food becomes a major player. All the while, she is trying to cope with the loss of her married lover and her own mother. Through the wit and irony that is gaining international applause, Galloway crafts the chicken-or-egg dilemma of life in our times and being depressed. Yet even through her growing obsessions and the metamorphoses of family and friends into suspicious characters, Galloway's main character and the reader find that the trick in living rests with the simplest things.
9857303	/m/02pv0dt	Proud Helios	Melissa Scott	1995-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Free trade through the Bajoran wormhole is vital for the Bajoran economy. Unfortunately, a cloaked ship is attacking other ships, killing the crew and taking all the cargo. The attacking is going after Cardassian ships as well, causing the powerful Gul Dukat to show up. The two sides reach a cautious agreement to hunt down the ship. Unfortunately two Deep Space Nine crew-people are captured by the cloaked enemy. Dukat doesn't care that these people are in harm's way and now the rest of Deep Space Nine's forces must rescue their trapped comrades, neutralize the ship and keep war at bay.
9857991	/m/02pv16q	Beyond the Deepwoods	Chris Riddell	1998-10-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Raised by Woodtroll families all his life, Twig believes at heart he is a woodtroll, yet he strongly suspects there is something different about him, as he does not fit in with the rest of the woodtroll villagers. Twig has been raised in the Deepwoods, far from human civilization, yet he sets off to find his true kind when he learns from his adoptive mother that he is not a woodtroll. His adoptive woodtroll mother tells him to travel to their cousin's house to mull things over, but during Twig's journey through the Deepwoods, he is seduced by the beauty of the woods themselves and ends up straying from the path. This is an act no woodtroll ever commits, for the woodtrolls' greatest fear is getting lost, and this fear is not without reason. The forest is populated with both fierce natural predators and evil demons, the most dangerous demon being the Gloamglozer. The Gloamglozer can shapeshift in order to attract victims, and it can also mimick the voices of any animal in distress. Twig does indeed hear such a voice, and follows it, but stumbles upon a Slaughterer, who is being attacked by a Hoverworm. Twig kills the Hoverworm and the grateful Slaughterer invites him to spend the night in his village. However, the Slaughterer has been poisoned by the Hoverworm and is swelling up. Nonetheless, Twig gets to the Slaughterer village and the Slaughterers find an antidote for their ill brother. The next morning, Twig is awoken by a Slaughterer who tells him that he has outstayed his welcome, and is expected to leave immediately. Outraged and disappointed, Twig leaves, with the Slaughterer telling him to "watch out for the Gloamglozer" in a mocking tone. Twig has a run-in with a Skullpelt which attempts to kill him, but Twig is saved by a Caterbird which has just hatched from his cocoon. As all Caterbirds share telepathic dreams whilst in the womb, this Caterbird knows all about Twig and his destiny. The Caterbird tells Twig his destiny lies "beyond the Deepwoods" and flies off, telling Twig he will always protect him. That night, Twig is almost eaten by a Bloodoak, but falls into a Gyle-Goblin colony, where he is almost caught by their colony mother, an obese Grossmother. Then Twig finds himself almost at the edge of the Deepwoods and at the Mire, a vast, dangerous bog which stretches for thousands of miles outside the Deepwoods. At the edge of the Deepwoods, Twig meets an injured Banderbear, one of the forest's dominant predators. The Banderbear is sick because of a rotten tooth, which Twig heals by wrenching it out. Soon, Twig and the Banderbear become great friends, but one day the Banderbear is killed by a swarm of Wig-Wigs, ferocious predators which act like piranhas. Twig then follows a young girl, and he discovers she is a Termagant Trog who has not yet matured. Twig spends a few months with the Trog girl, who grows to become fond of him as a "pet" and eventually the girl's maturing ceremony takes place. Twig watches as the girl he has come to love grows enormously gigantic by drinking Bloodoak sap. Now fully formed as a Trog female, the girl attempts to have Twig killed, as she sees all other species as vermin. However, a lone Trog male saves Twig, much to his surprise, and directs him to the exit. Outside, Twig almost drowns in the Mire, but is rescued by a goblin at the edge, who mysteriously vanishes just as Twig is about to thank him. Soon, Twig meets some sky pirates, whose ship has crashed due to the flight-rock which powers the ship falling out of the sky when it was struck by lightning. Twig finds out that the sky pirate captain, Quintinius Verginix, is his true father, and learns at long last who he, Twig, really is. To Twig's horror, though, the next morning he awakes in a deserted forest clearing. The sky pirates have jumped ship and abandoned him... again. Momentarily distraught, Twig sees the pirate's fire float upwards and catch onto a tree, which sets half the forest alight. Twig runs for it, right down to the Edgelands, where he meets the Gloamglozer face to face. In a cruel twist, the Gloamglozer reveals that the entire set of misadventures was a cruel game devised by himself. He tells Twig that he, the Gloamglozer, was all the various creatures which had saved him throughout the journey. The Slaughterer who had mocked Twig was the Gloamglozer in disguise, as was the Trog male, and the goblin at the edge of the Mire was also the Gloamglozer in goblin form. The demon tells Twig that he only wanted to lure Twig to him so he could throw him over the Edge. The Gloamglozer does just this, although the Caterbird rescues Twig from oblivion and throws him onto the deck of Quintinius Verginix's ship. Finally reunited with his true father, who apologizes for leaving him and promises to always protect his son, Twig, the sky pirates set sail for Undertown, the central city of the Edge.
9858628	/m/02pv205	Mallory's Oracle	Carol O'Connell	1994-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The series stars Kathleen Mallory, a policewoman who is 5'10", blond, beautiful, and stunningly green-eyed. She also has immense street and computer smarts. Her physical beauty masks a cold, amoral interior, however; O'Connell describes Mallory as a sociopath. New York City police detective Louis Markowitz picks up a 11-year-old homeless street urchin for stealing. Instead of arresting her, he takes Kathleen Mallory home and raises her as his own. Mallory (as she likes to be called) still deals with issues from her traumatic childhood, but she has an undying love (or at least the closest thing she can manage to it) for her adopted parents. She follows Louis to the police academy and ends up in the special crimes unit, specializing in computer research. Louis begins investigating the brutal murders of several older, wealthy women from Grammercy Park. While working alone and hot on the trail of this serial killer, he is murdered alongside another victim. Mallory takes it upon herself to take on this investigation (without police sanction, of course) and tries to piece together all the bits of information Louis had gathered. Louis trained Mallory well, but there is still the possibility that following his trail will cause Mallory to make the same mistakes he did, and lead to her becoming another victim. Along the line, Mallory uncovers a complicated plot that deals with magic, séances, and insider trading.
9867455	/m/02pvb31	The Heart of the Warrior	John Gregory Betancourt	1996-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A crucial peace conference fills Deep Space Nine with intrigue. At the same time, Kira and Worf take a mission into enemy territory to discover the secrets of the chemical that controls the highly dangerous Jem'Hadar warriors. Odo may be their only hope of survival but he'll have to fight against his own people.
9872426	/m/02pvgzf	Mercenary From Tomorrow	Mack Reynolds		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Western society is split up into nine castes, from Lower-Lower to Mid-Lower all the way up to the privileged Upper-Upper. Mauser himself was born a Mid-Lower. Ambitious, he had chosen one of the few professions, Category Military, where upward mobility was still a reasonable possibility. To prevent any chance of a ruinous war between the West and the Sov-world, the Universal Disarmament Pact had restricted the military to pre-1900 technology. Gradually, powerful corporations began settling business disputes by hiring troops to fight real battles or fracases on one of many military reservations. This served a dual purpose: to maintain a military well-honed by actual combat and to provide the decadent general population with a diversion. The life-and-death struggles are so popular that they are televised. Mauser had worked his way up to captain and Middle-Middle status after many years of effort. When upstart Vacuum Tube Transport finds itself forced into an expensive, division-sized fracas with Continental Hovercraft, he sees his opportunity. He signs up with the underdog, even though the much wealthier Continental is able to hire the best soldiers available, including Marshal "Stonewall" Cogswell, the finest commander in the business. Mauser tells Baron Haer, the head of Vacuum Tube, that he can engineer an improbable victory with a gimmick he has been working on for a long time; in return, he expects the baron's support which, in conjunction with his anticipated popularity with fracas fans, should be enough to get him promoted into the Upper caste. The baron's son, Bart, scoffs at the undisclosed idea, but the baron is desperate for experienced officers and hires him. When the conflict starts, Mauser takes off in a glider, something no one else had thought of before. Powered aircraft weren't invented before 1900, but gliders had been. From his vantage point, Mauser can see where all of the enemy forces are positioned. This information makes Cogswell's situation hopeless and he recommends to his employer that he settle quickly. When Mauser returns in triumph to Vacuum Tube headquarters, he learns that Baron Haer has died of natural causes. His son does not have the deceased man's political influence, so Mauser is out of luck. However, his unusual interest in the state of western civilization attracts the interest of Dr. Nadine Haer, the late baron's attractive, reform-minded daughter.
9876181	/m/02pvmj8	In the Country of Men	Hisham Matar	2006-07-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book follows the plight of Suleiman, a nine-year-old boy living in Tripoli in Libya, stuck between a father whose clandestine anti-Gaddafi activities bring about searches, stalkings and telephone eavesdroppings by Gaddafi's state police, and a vulnerable young mother who resorts to various drugs to bury her anxiety and anger. The only people he has to turn to are his neighbour Kareem, and his father's best friend Moosa. The book provides a gripping description of Libya under Gaddafi's terror regime, and a beautiful narration of ordinary people's lives as they try to survive the political oppression.
9876557	/m/02pvmw8	The Metal Monster	A. Merritt	1920	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dr. Goodwin is on a botanical expedition in the Himalayas. There he meets Dick Drake, the son of one of his old science acquaintances. They are witnesses of a strange aurora-like effect, but seemingly a deliberate one. As they go out to investigate, they meet Goodwin's old friends Martin and Ruth Ventnor, brother and sister scientists. The two are besieged by Persians as Darius III led when Alexander of Macedon conquered them more than two thousand years ago. The group is saved by a magnificent woman they get to know as Norhala. She commands the power of lightning and controls strange metal animate Things, living, metallic, geometric forms; an entire city of sentient cubes, globes and tetrahedrons, capable of joining together and forming colossal shapes, and wielding death rays and other armaments of destruction. They are led to a hidden valley occupied by what they name "The Metal Monster", a strange metal city occupied by the metal animate Things Norhala commands. This city is governed by what they call the Metal Emperor, assisted by the Keeper of the Cones. Ruth is slowly being converted by Norhala to become like her; her little sister. Martin, her brother, tries shooting the Metal Emperor, who retaliates with a ray blast, putting Martin in a comatose state. Closed in between the Metal Monster and the Persians, it falls to Goodwin and Drake to find a way to escape their predicament.
9876762	/m/02pvn24	CHERUB: Divine Madness	Robert Muchamore	2006-04-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 James and Lauren Adams and Dana Smith are sent on a mission to Australia, posing as the children of an ASIS agent. They have been sent to determine whether a cult, The Survivors, is associated with Help Earth, and as such are sent to a "recruitment hotbed" area. The "family" starts going to cult meetings, and are eventually accepted into the commune. Lauren and James are accepted into an elite cult school in the Ark, the cult's headquarters. There, James befriends Rathbone "Rat" Regan, son of the cult's founder. After a while, Lauren develops a crush on Rat, and he uses his influence with one of his father's many wives to get her and James jobs in the offices, rather than in the stifling warehouse or laundry rooms. Dana, meanwhile, extremely depressed about her unspectacular role in the mission, is summoned to the head of the commune's office. There, she and another cult member are told that they are to participate in a Help Earth mission to blow up an oil tanker. Her attempts to warn the mission controllers fail, and she ends up having to stop the attack herself. However, ASIS now knows of the links between Help Earth and the Survivors. Having been waiting for an excuse to attack the Ark, elite troops are sent in to destroy it, despite the CHERUB agents' warnings that the cult is well-prepared for such an event. A helicopter is shot down and dozens of troops are killed in the first attack. In the lull that follows, James, Rat and Lauren attempt an escape. However, they are captured and locked in a room full of toddlers by a sadistic overseer. When they manage to overpower her, Lauren points out that they need to take the kids with them or risk them dying. James reluctantly agrees, and they drag the half-asleep toddlers with them. Rat says that the most likely way out is through the sewage system, so they go there. James is making his way through the tank when an engineer appears. A brief moment of panic is proved unfounded as Rat persuades the man that he is on a divine mission. The man then offers to help them. The now nine-strong group get out, but later hear that in another ASIS attack, several dozen children were killed when a wall collapsed on them. Rat is reported dead, but is revealed to be alive and going out with Lauren, who receives a black shirt. Dana is given her navy shirt, while all James gets is a stomach bug caught in the sewage system. Rat is recruited as a CHERUB agent and the four return to campus.
9877638	/m/02pvpds	No Dominion	Charlie Huston	2006-12-26	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 No Dominion Is the second book in the Joe Pitt Casebooks series written by Charlie Huston. Vampyre Joe Pitt is down on his luck, behind on rent and low on blood. With nowhere else to turn he finds himself asking his former boss Terry Bird head of the vampyre clan the Society. Bird tosses Joe a job, tracking down the source of a new drug on the streets, a drug powerful enough to cause those infected with the Vampyre Vyrus to freak out. For this one Joe has to cross Coalition turf and head down to Harlem, home of the vampyre clan known as the Hood.
9879361	/m/02pvr21	Sector 7	David Wiesner	1999	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is set at the observatory of the Empire State Building where a class of school children are on a field trip. The primary character is a boy befriended by a cloud and whisked away to Sector 7, the depot for clouds. There the boy proceeds to produce new blueprints of fantastic shapes for the disgruntled group of young clouds. As the young clouds experiment, they delight in their new forms as ocean creatures. The adults running the cloud depot are furious when they discover of the young clouds' misbehavior, so escort the boy back to the observatory with his cloud friend. Once the drawings are examined further by the adults they begin to admire the possibilities. As the children return on the school bus, the New York skyline is filled with a profusion of clouds in the shapes of aquarium fish and ocean creatures.
9884977	/m/02pvwxx	The Mysterious Benedict Society	Trenton Lee Stewart	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After seeing a newspaper advertisement addressed to children with special abilities, the eleven-year-old orphan Reynie Muldoon goes to a building where he and many other children take a written test with many strange questions relating to logic and bravery. Before that, in front of the building, he helps a queer girl named Rhonda Kazembe, who then offers to give him the test answers. He refuses twice. Only four gifted children pass the tests: George "Sticky" Washington, a boy with a photographic memory who ran away from his family because he believed they only wanted him so he could keep winning awards for fame and wealth; Kate Wetherall, a strong and agile girl with strong physical abilities and an abandoning father; Constance Contraire, a very stubborn small girl; and Reynie. On the third test, they meet and discover that Rhonda was a grown up and not a child. After much introducing, all of them are surprised that all of them had met Rhonda Kazembe and find out that her offer to help them to cheat was part of the test. They are introduced to Mr. Benedict, a genius and the man behind the tests. Mr. Benedict answers their questions and explains to them why he had advertised the tests. The children discover that Mr. Benedict needs a team of children to act as 'spies' for him in a well-known school named Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened (L.I.V.E.). Inside the Institute the children see a multitude of people besides students: the Helpers, who refuse to answer questions about themselves and always seem depressed; the Messengers, talented students with 'special privileges', which Mr. Benedict believes includes sending telepathic messages to brainwash the world's people;the Recruiters, who kidnap and recruit seemingly gifted children for the Institute; the Executives, who are especially talented Messengers who were promoted as assistants of Mr. Curtain; and the Institute's founder, Ledroptha Curtain, who turns out to be Mr. Benedict's twin brother, and a victim of narcolepsy. At the Institute, the lessons are repetitive, seeming to echo the messages that Mr. Benedict and his assistants pick up through a special receiver (the above mentioned telepathic messages). Communicating with Mr. Benedict via Morse Code with a flashlight or sometimes a light switch, the children slowly uncover Curtain's plan: to control the world and imprison his enemies with The Whisperer, the brain-sweeping machine invented by Curtain, was supposed to be turned on full blast by Curtain in order to start his plan. However, it was not fully ready at that point. The children manage to stall Mr. Curtain's plan and use his narcolepsy to knock him out, allowing Mr. Benedict to shut down the Whisperer. Though Mr. Curtain escapes, the children share a party together with Constance, who, it is revealed, is turning three years old. Reynie is adopted by his former tutor; Sticky goes back to his parents, who were searching for him; Kate finds out that her long-lost father was Milligan, Mr. Benedict's bodyguard, and an early victim of the Whisperer; and Constance is adopted by Mr. Benedict and his assistants, Rhonda Kazembe and Number Two.
9887728	/m/02pvyts	The Fatal Eggs	Mikhail Bulgakov	1925	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Fatal Eggs can be described as a science fiction novel. Its main protagonist is an aging zoologist, Vladimir Ipat'evich Persikov, a specialist in amphibians. The narration begins in Moscow of 1928, which seems to have overcome the destructive effects of the Russian Civil War and is quite prosperous. After a long period of degradation, research at the Zoological Institute has revived. After leaving his microscope for several hours, Persikov suddenly noticed that the out-of-focus microscope produced a ray of red light; amoeba left under that light showed an impossibly increased rate of binary fission, reproducing at enormous speeds and demonstrating unusual aggression. Later experiments with large cameras — to produce a larger ray — confirmed that the same increased speed of reproduction applied to other organisms, such as frogs, which evolved and produced a next generation within two days. Persikov's invention quickly becomes known to journalists, and eventually to foreign spies and to the GPU, the Soviet secret service. At the same time, the country is affected by an unknown disease in domesticated poultry, which results in a complete extinction of all chickens in the Soviet Russia, with the plague stopping at the borders of the country. An entrepreneur Aleksandr Semenovich Rokk (whose name is also a pun on the novel's title, Rok meaning fate) receives an official permission to use Persikov's invention to attempt to restore the chicken populace to the pre-plague level. However, the chicken eggs which are imported from outside the country are, by a mistake, sent to Persikov's laboratory while the reptile eggs destined for the professor end up in the hands of the farmers. As a result, Rokk breeds an enormous quantity of large and overly aggressive snakes, ostriches, and crocodiles which start attacking people. In the panic that follows, Persikov is killed by a mob — which blames him for the appearance of the snakes — and his cameras are smashed. The Red Army attempts to hold the snakes back, but only the coming of sub-zero weather in August—described as a deus ex machina—puts a stop to the snake invasion. In an earlier draft the novel ends with the scene of Moscow's complete destruction by the snakes.
9887790	/m/02pvywh	The Painter of Signs	R. K. Narayan	1976	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This bittersweet novel is as fresh and charming today as it was when originally published. Telling the story of Raman, a conscientious sign-painter, who is trying to lead a rational life, the novel is filled with busy neighborhood life and gossip, the alternating rhythms and sounds of the city from morning till night, and the pungent smells and tantalizing flavors of home cooking, as Narayan portrays everyday life in Malgudi. The city is growing and changing, as its inhabitants try to carve out some individual successes within the juggernaut of “progress.” Raman, a college graduate, brings a sense of professionalism to his sign-painting, taking pride in his calligraphy and trying to create exactly the right sign, artistically, for each client. Living with his aged aunt, a devout, traditional woman whose days are spent running the house and tending to her nephew’s needs and whose evenings are spent at the temple listening to the old stories and praying, Raman prefers a rational approach to life, avoiding the explanations of life’s mysteries which religion provides. As he begins to write his aunt’s biography, which she is dictating, with all its portents and interventions by deities, Raman asks, “How could the Age of Reason be established if people were like this?” For his own life, he believes that “ultimately he can evolve a scheme for doing without money,” and that he can “get away from sex thoughts,” which he believes are “too much everywhere.” Then he meets Daisy. A young woman devoted to improving the lives of women and the standard of living of the country through strict family planning, Daisy becomes his biggest customer, commissioning signs for all the family planning clinics she helps establish through the city and outlying rural areas. Accompanying her so he can select exactly the right location and style for the signs that are needed in the countryside, he finds himself totally bewitched by this liberated and high-minded young woman. Inevitably, his attraction to Daisy proves more powerful than this desire to avoid the entanglements of marriage. Narayan is a master of the domestic scene, as he presents the major and minor conflicts of family life through the different points of view of the participants. Respect for his characters and a good-humored (and often humorous) presentation of their issues give warmth to his scenes and allow the reader to feel real empathy with the characters. Raman’s belief in his own rational enlightenment and his simultaneous vulnerability to Daisy’s manipulations provide the author with unlimited opportunities for dramatic irony—Ram’s extreme naivete sets him up for major crises and “learning experiences.” Scenes between Ram and his devout, elderly aunt provide a glimpse of the conflicts between old and new India, in addition to the generational conflicts every family faces between its young and its old. Scenes between Ram and Daisy reflect the changes in the role of women in society, as women become more assertive and liberated. These reflect the idea that Painter of Signs contains the preoccupation with human character and human relationships. As Raman finds himself being torn between his Aunt and Daisy, the traditional way and the modern way, we see the protagonist as being "in-between" in the town of Malgudi. At the end of the novel, Raman's aunt left for Benares on a pilgrimage and Daisy left the town of Malgudi to pursue her career which means that Raman is left alone in Malgudi. This depicts the fact that it seems as though Raman cannot facilitate either women or what they represent (traditionality and modernity respectively), thus presenting the problematic themes of human character and their relationships with one another. hi:द पेंटर ऑफ़ साइन्स
9888343	/m/02pvzhf	Radiant	James Alan Gardner	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the start of the story, Youn Suu is a rookie Explorer on her first assignment in interstellar space. Like most Explorers, she suffers from a significant physical deformity&mdash;in her case, a facial blemish that has been left untreated to "qualify" her for the Explorer Corps. Her first assignment, with her partner Tut, is to investigate a sudden infestation of the Balrog in a domed city on the home world of the Cashlings. While there, she is herself infested by the red moss. At the same time, Youn Suu and Tut encounter Admiral Festina Ramos, present on a mission of her own. Aboard an Outward fleet starship, Youn Suu is monitored medically, though there is no cure for her condition and no real treatment. The Balrog, far more than a parasite, is a hive mind well above the human level of development, so that killing it would violate the central precept of the League of Peoples. As its symbiotic relationship with its human host develops, the Balrog comes to share the mental functioning of its host, and prolongs the host's life while consuming her body&mdash;"her" because the only prior human host was also female (and also a Buddhist). Youn Suu is also exposed to potential exploitation, by people who want to use the Balrog's special abilities for their own purposes. Meanwhile, Ramos and the other explorers are called to an emergency rescue on a planet called Muta, where Unity survey teams have suddenly disappeared, with barely a peep of a distress signal. The planet Muta, temperate and Earth-like, is to outward appearances almost ideal for colonization; yet colonizing efforts by the Unity, and the Greenstriders, and perhaps others, have mysteriously failed. The three Explorers land on the planet; even with the most elaborate precautions they fall prey to its peculiar circumstances, and find themselves stranded and contaminated with a microbe that threatens to destroy their bodies. Investigating their predicament, they learn that the entire planet was once a global research station for the Fuentes, a species that discovered a way to transcend the physical body and transform itself into energy-based or consciousness-based entities. The research done by the Fuentes on Muta 6500 years earlier had been in pursuit of that goal&mdash;but had gone horribly wrong, dooming Fuentes and Greenstrider and Unity individuals to a disembodied but tortuous existence. While being hunted by raptor-like reptiles, the three Explorers must find a way to repair alien technology to reverse the damage, before their own bodies collapse.
9888993	/m/02777q4	Leven Thumps and the Whispered Secret	Obert Skye	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After escaping a deranged dream-master and destroying the hidden gateway, Leven Thumps and his band of travelers must now journey across Foo and restore Geth from his shape as a toothpick to the rightful king he once was. But Foo is still in chaos, and Leven must overcome several adversaries and survive the Swollen Forest in order to save his friends and keep hope alive. As fate would have it, nothing goes as planned, and even Geth begins to wonder if they will succeed. Bad goes to worse as Leven digs up a long buried secret- one that stalks him, determined to whisper a truth that could be deadly in the wrong hands. Through it all, Leven finds the courage to do what is right and continues to discover an inner strength and a power he never thought possible.
9889018	/m/02pv_57	Leven Thumps and the Eyes of The Want	Obert Skye	2007-09-25	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Foo—the place between the possible and the impossible—is a realm inside the minds of each of us that allows mankind the power to hope and imagine and fly. The powerfully gifted Leven Thumps, once an ordinary fourteen-year-old boy from Oklahoma, has been retrieved from Reality and sent to stop those in Foo who are nurturing dark dreams and plan to invade and rule Reality. Hold on to your popcorn! In book three, the war to unite Foo and Reality has begun. Not only must Leven race across Foo to stop the Secret about how sycophants die. He must stop it before the deadly truth is revealed, he must travel to the island of Lith, the home of the Want—the manic dreammaster who can give Leven the gifts he needs against a foreboding army of rants and other Foo being. Our hero, Leven, starts his journey in a hotel with Geth, Clover, and Winter. Later in the night, The Whispered Secret speaks to Leven. The secret it holds is the Secret of the Sycophants, explaining how Sycophants die. The secret blackmails Leven with the life of Clover (the secret will kill Clover if Leven refuses to unlock it). Leven unlocks it, but then sees the secret sell himself to a man, who buries it. Soon, the sycophant population on Sycophant Run hears through the Lore Coil that the sycophant secret has been revealed. Meanwhile, Tim Tuttle meets Dennis and Ezra. Dennis is already being controlled by Sabine, and gives Tim a wristband which poisons Tim with the influence of Sabine. At this point in time, Dennis is leading the gang (instead of Ezra). The trio carjacks a van and then starts driving across the U.S. to get to the Atlantic Ocean. Dennis, Tim, and Ezra start building the gateway. When Dennis is gone, Tim remembers a secret: he hates Dennis. With this knowledge, he believes that he has the power to fight off the influence of Sabine. When Leven and Clover get separated from Winter and Geth, their onick takes them to Lith, the island where The Want resides. Once the duo gets to Lith, they meet The Want. He looks like a human with a long, red beard. Leven starts feeling powerful emotions, because The Want sees every dream that comes in and out of Foo. The Want takes Leven to a room known as The Den of the Dead, where Antsel comes alive and gets the scoop on how things are in Foo. Leven then learns more about his past and sees his mother. Leven is then taken up to a high tower where The Want wants to have a chat him. The Want says that tonight he’ll ask Leven to do a great task for him. Leven will have to listen to his voice, and do what it instructs. Winter and Geth’s onick flies them to a random place, where they are captured by an old defendant of Foo, named Azure, who has turned to Sabine’s side. Azure takes them the Hall of the Council of Wonder, the meeting place of the defendants of Foo where he tortures Geth by reading the names of the previous defendants who have died. Azure also says that he has tricked The Want into releasing The Dearth, the evil soil under Foo that has been controlling Sabine, into coming to Foo where it will mesh Foo and reality if it gets above ground. Azure then takes all of them to Lith, where he imprisons Geth, Winter, and two of his other servants in one cell. On the way, Azure tells Geth and Winter that he is destroying them and Leven in exchange for the location and instructions to open the second gateway to Foo. Once Winter and Geth are in the cell, Lith starts sinking, but, with the assistance of Clover, they find a way out. Meanwhile, Tim Tuttle falls off a tree and becomes unconscious. Dennis and Ezra leave him because Ezra gets a sense that there’s another gateway, so Dennis follows him. Tim has a sudden revelation and remembers the gateway. He dives in the Konigsee and gets to Foo. Leven is alone in a building on The Want’s instructions. Leven listens to The Want’s voice saying “come.” What The Want is doing is transferring his powers to Leven. Leven then hears the instructions telling him to thrust a sword into the darkness. Leven does, and realizes he killed The Want. While The Want is dying, he reveals that he is really the third Want, and Leven’s grandfather, Hector Thumps. He also tells him that he was sick of being the Want, and had planned for a long time to have Leven "accidentally" kill him. The Want also reveals that Leven is now The Want because he transferred the powers to him. Before Hector dies, he wishes Leven luck in saving Foo. Soon, Leven reunites with Geth, Winter, and Clover, and Geth says that Leven being The Want will give them an advantage in saving Foo. They then continue on their journey to save Foo.
9901688	/m/02pwg7c	In the Ceiling the Stars Are Shining				 The film starts off with a girl, Jenna, who is seen doing househould activities such as cleaning and shopping, and gradually it is revealed that her mother is sick and dying of cancer. Her daughter Jenna, who is in her mid-teens and has problems herself, gradually parts ways with her mother and grandmother, and makes friends with a girl she used to dislike. After a while, she starts to smoke, drink and even has sex as a way to forget about her mother's disease. Eventually, Jenna and her mom reunite, shortly before the latter's death, when Jenna realizes how much she has missed her. At the end of the film, Jenna and her grandmother go to Thailand together, a thing Jenna has always dreamed of but originally involving her mother.
9903238	/m/02pwh_r	Faith, Science and Understanding				 In 1. Theology in the University Polkinghorne suggests that "the essential purpose of a University is the discovery and propagation of knowledge"(p4) and that universities are institutionalised expressions of the beliefs in the value of knowledge for knowledge's sake and the essential unity of all knowledge. He says that quantum theory illustrates the principle "Do not make common sense the measure of everything but be prepared to recognise aspects of reality in those modes that are intrinsic to their natures, however strange these modes may at first sight be."(p7). He argues that personal experience is a fundamental aspect of reality and that the human intuition of an infinite Reality is another fact about humanity and that one of the roles of theology is the intellectual study of the religious dimension of personal experience (p19), whilst theological metaphysics can offer a more profound understanding of reality (p22) In 2. Motivations for Belief he rejects simplistic accounts of science, commending instead the approach of Michael Polanyi. He points out that the laws of nature operate all the time, but that understanding is only possible if we have access to regimes that are particularly transparent to our enquiry (p36) and suggests that God is always there, but there have been particular moments in history that have been unusually open to the divine presence, and that Scripture is evidence, the record of foundational spiritual experience (p37). He expounds the doctrine of the Trinity and commends John Zizioulas's Being as Communion. In 3. The Role of Revelation he suggests that "revelation bears an analogy with the role played by observations and experiment in science" and that the pursuit of simplicity through studying extreme conditions (such as Deep inelastic scattering) is an important part of science. He also suggests that the fact that the Bible is still read with attention and spiritual profit by so many people so long after it was written is a fact that should be taken into account. (p56) In 4. Design in Biology? he discusses the Anthropic Principle and in addition to the well-explored physicist perspective he commends the explorations of Michael Denton of properties of the physical world that seem to be tuned to life's necessities and the Nobel-prizewinner Christian de Duve's assertion "to Monod's famous sentence 'The universe was not pregnant with life, nor the biosphere with man,' I reply: 'You are wrong. they were.'" and also discusses with caution Michael Behe's claims about irreducible complexity. In 5. Second Thoughts he modifies some of his earlier positions somewhat, especially in relation to multiverse theory. In 6. Kenotic Creation and Divine Action he discusses Arthur Peacocke and the nature of causality In 7. Natural Science Temporality and Divine Action he identifies "four different metascientific accounts of the nature of time, each claiming to derive from contemporary physics" In 8. Contemporaries he discusses the ideas of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Thomas Torrance and Paul Davies In 9. Science and Theology in England he sketches "the long English history of interaction between theology and science" from Robert Grosseteste via Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne and Robert Boyle, citing Charles Kingsley, Aubrey Moore and Frederick Temple who "all played an important part in welcoming the insights of Charles Darwin" and noting that the great British physicists of the 19th Century "Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin and Stokes were all men of deep religious faith" (p198). He "feels that every German theologian writes with Kant looking over one shoulder and Hegel looking over another" whereas the English "tend to enjoy a more relaxed relationship with philosophy"(p202)
9903293	/m/02pwj24	The Moon Moth	Jack Vance	1961-08		 Edwer Thissell, the new consul from Earth to the planet Sirene, has trouble adjusting to the local culture. The Sirenese cover their faces with exquisitely crafted masks that indicate their social status or strakh. They also communicate by singing, accompanying themselves with one of a dozen musical instruments, selected based on the social situation. Furthermore, errors of etiquette may prove fatal. Thissell is a maladroit musician and lacks confidence in the alien society, so he is forced to wear a lowly Moon Moth mask. One day, he receives an alert to arrest a notorious assassin named Haxo Angmark, who is due on the next starship. Thissell, however, gets the message too late. He races to the spaceport, but Angmark, thoroughly comfortable with Sirenese customs, has already landed and disappeared. Thissell commits a number of serious social blunders in his haste to reach the spaceport and in enquiring after Angmark. The next morning, Thissell is shown the body of an outlander. He concludes that, since the fugitive would be unable to pass himself off as a native, Angmark must have killed and taken the place of one of the handful of expatriates on the planet. But since even they wear masks, how is Thissell to know which one? Eventually, Thissell solves the mystery by borrowing a slave from each of the suspects and determining their masters' mask preferences before and after Angmark's arrival. He succeeds in identifying his quarry, but is captured and forced to walk unmasked in public (the ultimate impropriety to the natives), while Angmark masquerades as Thissell, even to wearing his Moon Moth mask. However, the Sirenese turn on Angmark and kill him for the perversion of unmasking another man and, ironically, for Thissell's previous gaffes. Thinking quickly, Thissell cleverly represents his humiliation as an act of unsurpassed bravery, asking if any present would be willing to be so shamed in order to destroy his enemy. With his new-found confidence, Thissell receives offers of gifts (the acceptance of which would enhance the prestige of both the giver and the recipient). He first goes with a mask maker to procure a covering more befitting his lofty new strakh.
9907305	/m/02pwml9	Talkative Man	R. K. Narayan	1986	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character is an ordinary man who is wealthy and works as a journalist. He has a regular routine in his life: post articles in the post box, have a talk with people in a tea shop, go to library and house. One day, he meets a man from an unknown land called "Timbuctoo", another of Narayan's creations, the land being similar to the US. The man seems to have come for an official duty for UN and, seeing the calmness of the place, decides to stay here for his work. There comes a twist of what is exactly the man up to and how the main character of the novel solves the problem. The story is simple, and the author honestly admits to being a short story writer, rather than a novelist as he tells; most of the people skip the intrinsic details given about the places and only catch the content (at the end of the book, his words about the story). It is a good read book and can be read for the calmness with which Narayan writes his story, as a critic rightly points out .
9910803	/m/02pws6d	Wooden Heart	Martin Day		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Martha and the Doctor discover an apparently deserted starship, and soon, a village appears in the middle of the craft. As they try to work out the mystery of the village, and its connection to the ship, they find out that the village has other problems - fog and monsters surround them at every turn, and their children have been going missing.
9912628	/m/02pwv27	Pearl in the Mist	V. C. Andrews	1994-10-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Ruby's school life immediately gets off to a bad start when the school's headmistress, Mrs. Ironwood, informs her that Daphne has made her aware of her Cajun background (implying that she is badly brought up and a troublemaker) and that she will be keeping an eye on her. Giselle quickly ingratiates herself to the small clique of girls she and Ruby first meet when arriving at Greenwood, using them to amuse herself. Despite her problems with her sister, Ruby manages to make friends with the blind piano player Louis Turnbull, who is the school founder's only grandson; the art teacher, Miss Stevens; and a fellow student, Abby, who shares Ruby's intellectual ambitions. She even rekindles her relationship with Beau Andreas. As time goes on however, Giselle becomes jealous of Ruby's friendship with Abby. She exposes Abby as a quadroon at the school's Halloween dance, a secret Abby had been keeping in order to study at Greenwood. Abby leaves the dance in the middle of a violent storm, but returns the next morning to formally withdraw, as Mrs Ironwood will not permit her to stay with her ethnic background. Disgusted by Giselle's behavior, Ruby is poised to leave as well, but Abby urges her to stay and continue in her artistic endeavors. Miss Stevens comforts Ruby later, telling her that she will always have her help and guidance if she needs it. Days later, Ruby discovers to her horror that Pierre has died of a heart attack. After the funeral, Mrs Ironwood threatens to expel Ruby, saying she has eyewitness accounts of her having sexual liaisons with the school caretaker. Fortunately, Louis and Miss Stevens come to her aid, testifying that Ruby could not have been in those places at that time, as she was with Louis. Miss Stevens vouches for Ruby's character and Ruby is exonerated, though the mystery remains. During the Christmas vacation, Ruby walks in on Giselle standing up without the aid of a stick. She forces her sister to confess that she was the one who met the school caretaker, but Giselle dismisses what happened, since Ruby was not expelled. Although walking is still difficult, she says her legs are getting stronger. Ruby threatens to tell Daphne that Giselle is using her paralysis to make people run and fetch for her, but Giselle merely retorts that she will tell Daphne about Ruby resuming her relationship with Beau. After this less than merry Christmas, Ruby and Giselle return to Greenwood, where Ruby discovers that Miss Stevens has resigned over a scandal where she was accused of seducing a female student. Ruby knows this to be a lie, but is powerless to do anything to help Miss Stevens. Her troubles are further compounded when she learns that she has become pregnant with Beau's child after they had unprotected sex during a visit to the campus. Ruby leaves Greenwood and returns to New Orleans, where Daphne informs her that Beau's parents have sent him away to attend school in France after learning about the pregnancy. She then arranges for Ruby to have an illegal abortion. Ruby feels so depressed and alone that she does not object, but after seeing the dilapidated state of the clinic Daphne sends her to, she runs back to her home town of Houma. On her way there, she tries to get in touch with Beau, but discovers that he has already left for France. Despondent, Ruby contacts her half-brother, Paul Tate, instead. He is glad to hear from her, but warns her that Grandperè Jack is in a terrible state, having gone semi-mad after she left. They find him near the old shack she shared with Grandmere Catherine, but after a brief altercation with Paul, Jack runs off and drowns in the swamps. Later Paul offers her a home for her and her baby in a newly built mansion named Cypress Woods, but Ruby is very reluctant to accept the offer, as she knows people will assume that the child is Paul's if she accepts his help. She also suspects that he is still in love with her and does not want to encourage his feelings. At the climax, Ruby gives birth to her daughter, Pearl, in a hurricane which blows away many (if not most) of the surrounding homes. This is later described as one of the worst storms in decades. At the end of the story, Ruby is uplifted by the birth of her baby and believes her future is bright and hopeful.
9913207	/m/02pwvq6	Spring Fever	P. G. Wodehouse	1948-05-20	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wealthy New York businessman G. Ellery Cobbold has sent his son Stanwood, a blundering ex-American football player, to London, to separate him from Hollywood starlet Eileen Stoker with whom he is in love. When Cobbold discovers that Stoker is also in London, making pictures, he insists that Stanwood goes to stay with a distant relation, curmudgeonly widower Lord Shortlands. But Stanwood stays put. Instead, good-looking movie agent Mike Cardinal goes to Shortlands' castle (Beevor, in Kent), posing as Stanwood. He is pursuing Shortland's beautiful daughter Terry. But Terry is wary of him because he is too handsome. Lord Shortlands himself is in love with his cook, Mrs Punter, and would like to marry her. Unfortunately she insists on £200 to buy a pub, which Shortlands doesn't have, the purse-strings at Beevor Castle being firmly in the control of his domineering elder daughter Adela. Also, he has a rival in suave butler Mervyn Spink. Things look up for "Shorty" when he discovers that a stamp in his collection is worth £1000. But Spink fools Adela into believing that the stamp is his, and it gets locked up in a safe. It so happens that Stanwood's butler, Augustus Robb is an ex-safe breaker, and Mike masterminds a burglary. This goes disastrously wrong, and Mike gets hit in the face with a bag of safe breaking tools. The up-side is that his battered face makes him suddenly attractive to Terry. So, after a final misunderstanding, things end happily for Mike and Terry. Stanwood and Eileen also get together. But Mrs Punter runs off with Augustus Robb, leaving Shorty and Spink ruing their loss.
9917470	/m/02pwzyt	Children of Tomorrow	A. E. van Vogt	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Commander John Lane returns from a ten year mission in space to find that the teenagers of Spaceport City have organized themselves into "outfits", well disciplined, non-violent little gangs with their own customs and argot, and that the parent's role in teen upbringing has become minimal. His 16 year old daughter Susan belongs to the Red Cat Outfit, whose newest member Bud is actually a spy for the alien fleet that has secretly followed John Lane as he returned to Earth.
9917681	/m/02pw_7f	David Golder	Irène Némirovsky	1929	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with Golder refusing to help his colleague of many years, Marcus. As a result of this, Marcus, bankrupt, commits suicide. Following the funeral, Golder travels to Biarritz where he has a huge, opulent house. His wife and daughter reside there in luxury, spending Golder's cash like water. On the train, he suffers a heart attack. Seriously ill, he is forced to re-evaluate his life.
9918426	/m/02pw_z5	The Game	Diana Wynne Jones		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Hayley’s parents disappeared when she was a baby. Since then, she has been raised and homeschooled by her grandparents. Grandad is overworked and travels a lot; Grandma is much too strict and never lets her meet any children her own age. When Hayley does something wrong—she is not quite sure what—they pack her off to her aunts in Ireland. To Hayley’s shock, her family is much bigger than she thought; to her delight, the children all play what they call “the game,” where they visit a place called “the mythosphere.” And while she plays the game, Hayley learns more about her own place in the world than she had ever expected.
9920130	/m/02px1dy	Ttyl	Lauren Myracle		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Three friends, Angela Silver (SnowAngel), Zoe Barrett (zoegirl), and Madigan "Maddie" Kinnick (mad maddie) are just starting tenth grade of high school. At the beginning of the book, the trio (also known as the winsome threesome) believe that they will stick together forever. Zoe wants something meaningful and big to happen in her life, Angela knows it is going to be a fabulous year and that she is going to meet the boy of her dreams, and Maddie can't help but feel low and down on herself. When Angela discovers that Rob Tyler is in her French class, she develops a crush on him. Maddie notices how mean Jana Whitaker, the school's queen bee, is to her and to other students. Zoe talks to Maddie about her meeting with the english teacher that she calls Norman (in which she says they talked about Christianity and the meaning of life) and Maddie quickly concludes that he is "hitting" on Zoe. Rob finally asks Angela out and the two have a fun time together, which is how Angela describes it. Later, she reveals to her friends that Rob is "the one", as in the one she goes all the way with. The next day, Angela is unable to go on a planned date with Rob since her mother grounded her for going to a bar without permission. Angela then learns that Rob went out with Tonnie Wyndham while she had to stay home. Rob apologizes and states that Tonnie refused to let him call Angela. Days later, Rob goes on another date (while he was supposed to be on a date with Angela and left her waiting) with Tonnie and says that she asked him out and he didn't know how to say no. Angela breaks up with him after this. Maddie gives Jana a ride home (when she was supposed to give Angela a ride) and Angela gets mad at her. While they are instant messaging (IM), Angela reveals to Zoe that she now has a crush on Ben Schlanker, a boy in the Drama club. Four days later, Zoe tells Angela that there was feces on the side of her jeans after driving her home from church (presumably Norman's). Maddie reveals the idea that she and Jana came up with: to cause a traffic jam by slowing down to the speed limit. After Maddie and Jana (with several other students) try this out, Angela gets mad at Maddie for bragging about it via IM. Zoe tells Angela that Norman spilt urine in her hair while she was in his car. For Halloween, the trio plan to go trick or treating as mold, fungus and dust. When Halloween arrives, though, Maddie ditches her friends and doesn't show up. She messages Angela later in the night and explains everything. Apparently, Jana had taken Maddie to a party where Maddie got drunk, took her shirt and bra off, and defecated everywhere and did a table dance in front of everyone. To Zoe, Maddie tells her the reason she suspects Jana took her to the party and got her drunk. Once when Maddie was driving Jana home, she made fun of Jana by recalling the time when one of Jana's friends called Jana a lesbian. Later, Angela accidentally tells Zoe about Maddie's table dance and Maddie gets angry at Angela because she didn't want Zoe to know. Maddie stops talking/instant messaging her friends because of this. Meanwhile, Zoe realizes Norman really is hitting on her after he invites her to go hot tubbing with him and tells her that she "would look good in a bikini". Zoe also informs Angela that Jana started a chain letter with a picture of Maddie half naked and covered in feces, and that the title of the letter was "Lesbian slut". Angela sends Maddie a message saying that there was an emergency and Maddie starts to IM again. The trio decide to go hot tubbing with Norman together, since that way Zoe won't be alone with him. At the end of the book (after they have gone hot tubbing with Norman), the winsome threesome patch up and decide to go to a breakfast bar to celebrate.
9921321	/m/02px2k5	On the Eve	Ivan Turgenev	1860	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story revolves around Elena, a girl with a very affected mother and a father who is a retired guards lieutenant and keeps a mistress. On the eve of the Crimean War, Elena is pursued by a free-spirited sculptor (Shubin) and an uptight student (Berzeniev). But when Berzeniev's dashing Bulgarian friend Insarov meets Elena, they soon fall in love. Secretly marrying the Bulgarian revolutionary, Elena invites the ire of her parents, who had hoped to marry her to a more respectable suitor. Insarov falls ill, but partly recovers. On the outbreak of the war, Insarov's call home only complicates matters further. Insarov returns with Elena to Bulgaria, but dies on the way in Venice. Elena is never heard of again.
9926491	/m/02px6mx	The Rules of Survival	Nancy Werlin	2006	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book starts out with an introduction when Matthew Walsh is writing a letter to his younger sister Emmy to tell her the story of their mother's vicious abuse. The True story sister, Callie. Callie is eleven, Matthew is thirteen, and Emmy is a toddler. Callie and Matthew go to the Cumberland Farms store to get Popsicles, because there is a heat wave. They see Murdoch, who protects a kid from being openly abused. Matthew and Callie like Murdoch, and both of them want to track him down so that they can be his friend. Meanwhile, the first act of abuse that is shown in the book comes when Nikki hits Matthew with a bag of clams after Nikki finds the address of Murdoch that Callie found on the Internet. Nikki begins to date Murdoch, but eventually they break stalking him. Nikki is angry and sends a man called Rob to brutalize Murdoch. Nikki and Rob eventually end up in jail. After she gets out of jail, she recklessly drives in search of Murdoch. Instead, she finds pleasure in tormenting Julie, a friend of Murdoch. Julie loses the use of her legs, and Nikki ends up in jail again. Ben, Matthew's father (who is scared of Nikki), and Bobbie, Nikki's sister, use this . Things are fine for a while until Nikki kidnaps Emmy and gets her drunk, although she is from Emmy and she tells him where she is. Matthew rescues Emmy, only to run into Nikki who greets Matt with a joke involving which alcohol Emmy Nikki unconscious and contemplates killing her when Murdoch appears. After coming to Murdoch advises Nikki to run away and never come back. But this and the fact no one has seen her in not the end of Nikki. Letters continue to come. Some of them are normal, but some contain threatening messages like "I will kill you" or "It was Murdoch's fault." The book ends with Murdoch telling Matt that he was also abused when he was younger leading to him killing his father. Mathew thanks Murdoch for stopping him. In the end, Matt never gives the letter to Emmy stating that it wasn't really for her it was for him.
9927009	/m/02px6yj	The Mezzanine: A Novel	Nicholson Baker		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On the surface it deals with a man's lunch-time trip up an escalator in the mezzanine of the office building where he is employed, a building based on Baker's recollections of Rochester's Midtown Plaza. In reality, it deals with all the thoughts that run through a person's minds in any given few moments if he or she were given the time to think them through to their conclusions. The Mezzanine does that through extensive use of footnotes, some making up the bulk of the page, travelling inside a human mind, through the thinker's past. The footnotes occasionally are detailed and rambling to the point of Baker consciously digressing within the footnote; and towards the end of the book there is a multi-page footnote on the subject of footnotes themselves.
9927245	/m/02px73q	The Grateful Servant				 The Duke of Savoy was betrothed to Princess Leonora of Milan &mdash; but the current Milanese ruler has reneged on the commitment. The indignant Duke decides to court a local gentlewoman named Cleona instead. Foscari, Cleona's former betrothed, is believed dead; but he suddenly shows up in the Savoyard capital quite alive, and accompanied by a handsome young page called Dulcino, whom Foscari rescued from bandits. Foscari, unaware of the Duke's interest in Cleona, sends Dulcino to her to announce his arrival; the Duke meets Dulcino there, and is powerfully struck by the page's resemblance to Leonora. Cleona, for her part, is faithful to Foscari and pleased to learn he's alive and well. Foscari, however, through an exaggerated sense of loyalty, resolves to resign his interest in Cleona to the Duke and decides to become a Benedictine monk. He informs the surprised Duke of his decision, and sends Dulcino to tell Cleona that the news that Foscari is alive is actually false. Foscari even convinces a hesitant Dulcino to join the Benedictine order along with him. A monk named Valentio arrives to arrange their admission &mdash; but Valentio instantly greets Dulcino as "dear Leonora." Valentio reveals that Leonora had fled the Milanese court when her father died, for she feared being forced to marry her uncle. She disguised herself as a page and came to Savoy, with Valentio as her companion and chaperon, to see if the Duke would honor their previous commitment. Two weddings, of the Duke and Leonora and of Foscari and Cleona, determine the happy ending. As usual in Shirley's drama, this main plot is supported by secondary material. The Duke has a libertine brother, Lodwick; at the start of the play his wife Astella has left him and is staying with Cleona. Lodwick commands his follower Piero to commit adultery with Astella, so that Lodwick can divorce her. Lodwick's old tutor, Lord Grimuldo, tries to persuade his former student to repent; failing this, Grimuldo pretends to have been testing Lodwick and to be, in reality, a fellow libertine. Grimuldo offers to introduce Lodwick to a superior mistress, and brings him to a lush garden filled with strange music, where they watch a masque of nymphs and satyrs. The woman Lodwick meets there is enticing but disturbing; she hints that she has unusual powers, and offers him unlimited dominion &mdash; and finally concedes that she is a devil, a succubus. A deeply upset Lodwick flees homeward, only to find Piero with Astella. Piero tells his master that he has fulfilled his command, and expects reward; Lodwick tries to kill him, forcing Piero to admit that Astella has not submitted to him. The chastened and reformed Lodwick decides to renew his vows with Astella, making them a third matrimonial couple at the play's end. Lodwick also demands punishment for the "libertine" Grimuldo &mdash; but the devil-woman turns out to have been Grimuldo's wife Belinda; the ruse is exposed. Comic relief is provided by Jacomo, Cleona's steward; ambitious but foolish, he resembles Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The plot device of a courtier trying to get another man to sleep with his wife so he can divorce her is re-used by Shirley in his next play, The Humorous Courtier.
9931538	/m/02pxcbf	Mistress Masham's Repose	T. H. White			 Maria, a ten-year-old orphaned girl, lives on a derelict family estate, her only companions being a loving family Cook and a retired Professor of Ancient Latin. These two try to protect Maria from her tall, fat, strict Governess, Miss Brown. The Governess makes the child's life miserable, taking her cue from Maria's guardian, a Vicar named Mr. Hater. Miss Brown and Mr Hater are conspiring to keep Maria poor and abandoned. The little girl does not go to school. In church, she has to walk all the way to her seat in over-sized football boots which make a great deal of noise. She is shy, lonely and starved of affection. Meeting the Lilliputians and being tempted to love, to fear and to bully, she must save her friends and herself.
9933524	/m/02pxfln	Here Lies Arthur	Philip Reeve	2007-04-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel starts with an attack by Arthur and his war-band, and the escape of Gwyna, a servant girl. She is found by Myrddin, a bard who hopes to build Arthur's reputation as a great hero so that he can unite the native British against the Saxons who have occupied the east of the country. Myrddin tells Gwyna to give Arthur Caliburn while pretending to be the Lady of the Lake. When she does that successfully, Myrddin disguises her in boy's clothes so that she can travel with the war-band as his servant. Throughout her travels, she meets a boy who was brought up as a girl, tricks a holy man, swims in the Roman baths of Aquae Sulis, takes part in a battle, and witnesses Arthur's brutality, piety and immorality, all the while observing her master create the fantastic stories that have made 'King Arthur' one of the most famous men in legend. After Arthur's death she creates some stories herself, conceding that the legend is more important than the mere facts.
9936225	/m/02pxjby	Drunkard's Walk	Frederik Pohl		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of a professor who discovers a monstrous plot.
9936413	/m/02pxjm5	Beau Brocade	Henry Austin Dobson	1907	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After their recent defeat, the hamlets and villages of Derbyshire are no longer ringing with the wild shouts of Bonny Prince Charlie's Highland Brigade; instead troops loyal to King George are looking for those accused of high treason and are offering a reward of twenty guineas for the death of any traitor or rebel. Philip James Gascoyne, eleventh Earl of Stretton, is in hiding, in fear for his life after being wrongly accused by Sir Humphrey Challoner of being a traitor to the King. For months Philip has been a fugitive, disguised in rough clothes and hiding in odd places, trusting no-one, but now he has been given shelter and a cover by honest John Stitch, the local blacksmith, and is pretending to be his nephew while trying to get a note to his sister, the beautiful Lady Patience Gascoyne. John Stich is also friends with the notorious Beau Brocade, a masked highway man who roams the moors holding up coaches so he can steal from the rich and give to the poor. Beau Brocade is actually Captain Jack Bathurst of His Majesty's White Dragoons, a handsome but tragic figure on whose head the Government has put the price of a hundred guineas. The blacksmith gets Beau Brocade to deliver a letter from Philip to his sister and a couple of days later she turns up at his forge in her coach. Reunited with his beloved sister, Philip gives Patience a packet of letters which prove his innocence and asks her to take them to London and clear his name. Just as they are discussing when she can leave, they spot Sir Humphrey's coach in the distance, Philip goes back into hiding while Patience heads towards the inn in Aldwark village to get a couple of hours rest for herself and the horses before starting the journey to London.
9937785	/m/02pxkxg	Room 13	Robert Swindells	1989	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Fliss Morgan has a nightmare on the night before her school trip to Whitby, and upon arriving in the seaside town a series of strange events begin to occur. At midnight each night, a Room 13 appears in the Crow's Nest Hotel. And one of Fliss's classmates, Ellie-May, starts acting very strangely. Fliss, Lisa, Gary and David decide to join forces to stop a nightmare thats come true.
9938204	/m/02pxl73	La 628-E8	Octave Mirbeau	1907-11	{"/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Titled after the number of Mirbeau's licence plate, La 628-E8 begins by recounting Mirbeau’s travels to Belgium, whose colonial exploitation of Belgian Congo rubber and abuse of the indigenous people Mirbeau excoriates. The book then proceeds to the Netherlands, where he finds remembrances of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and also Claude Monet. It is during his sojourn in this country that Mirbeau encounters his old friend, the deranged speculator Weil-See, whose reflections on mathematics and metaphysics are among Mirbeau’s most colorful pages. Mirbeau's fictional car trip then takes him to Germany, whose industry, cleanliness, and order stand in contrast to what Mirbeau regarded as the slovenliness and laxity of his own countrymen.
9944817	/m/02pxqxz	Totem and Ore	B Wongar	2006		 The Australian Aborigines are the only people who have lived through a duel nuclear tragedy, the mining of uranium and the subsequent British nuclear testing, both of which took place on tribal land. The photographs of Totem and Ore collection tell what it was like to be at the forefront of the tragedy.
9946050	/m/02pxr_1	American Born Chinese	Gene Yang	2006-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 American Born Chinese consists of three interwoven, yet, parallel stories that ultimately merge into one narrative by the climax of the novel. The first tale is based upon the legendary folk tale of Sun Wukong, or The Monkey King, a character from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. The second tale is the story of a second-generation child of immigrants named Jin Wang, who has moved from San Francisco's Chinatown to a mostly white suburb. Jin Wang struggles to fit in within his new school, and within white American culture. His story links the other two narratives, and fits the form of an ethnic bildungsroman. The third tale tells the story of a white American boy named Danny, whose Chinese cousin Chin-Kee (as in "Chinky") comes and visits every year. Chin-Kee displays many American racial stereotypes of the Chinese in terms of accent, dress, hairstyle, physical appearance, eating habits, academic performance, and hobbies. Danny is troubled by Chin-Kee's visits.
9947083	/m/02pxt2w	The Court Secret				 A Spanish nobleman named Piraquo was banished from Spain in his youth; after a very profitable career as a pirate and a stay at the royal court of Portugal, his banishment has been lifted by Don Carlo, the heir to the Spanish throne. Piraquo's son Don Manuel is a close friend to Don Carlo, and returns to Spain with his father. Don Manuel quickly falls in love with Clara, the daughter of Duke Mendoza. Clara loves him in return and agrees to marry him &mdash; but the Spanish princess, Maria, also falls for Manuel, even though she is betrothed to marry Prince Antonio of Portugal. Don Carlo is also engaged to a Portuguese princess, Isabella &mdash; though Carlo too is in love with Clara. Carlo's and Maria's father, the King of Spain, is unhappy about all of this. The King's brother, Roderigo, informs Prince Antonio that Carlo courts Clara instead of Maria; he provokes Carlo's anger at the idea that Manuel is courting Maria. The fact that this is not strictly true does not bother Roderigo; the play's Machiavellian stage villain, he creates as much trouble as he can. Yet another complication arises: Pedro, who is both a kinsman to Piraquo and Manuel and a servant to Duke Mendoza, knows a secret &mdash; the "court secret" of the title, which somehow involves Duke Mendoza and a mysterious treasure, and Carlo and Manuel too. The jealous Prince Antonio meanwhile provokes a duel with Manuel, which leads to Manuel's imprisonment. A meeting between Clara and Princess Maria shows them that they are rivals for Manuel's love; similarly Carlo and Manuel learn that they are rivals for Clara. Don Carlo gains Manuel's release and reconciles him with Prince Antonio; Manuel responds by releasing Clara from their marriage contract and letting her choose for herself &mdash; though Clara once again chooses Manuel. Carlo, stung by her rejection, challenges Manuel to a duel; Clara suspects, but Manuel pacifies her fears. Arriving at the place appointed for the duel, Manuel hears cries of alarm; a page runs to him and says that a Moor has killed Don Carlo. Manuel rushes to Carlo's rescue, meets, fights with, and defeats the Moor...who turns out to be Carlo is disguise. At the same time, Princess Isabella arrives from Portugal, and the court is thrown into disorder when Don Carlo cannot be found. Manuel reveals what has happened; and Duke Mendoza is prominent among the voices that call for Manuel's punishment. But Prince Antonio reveals that the dying Carlo confessed his ruse, and that Manuel though he was rescuing Carlo rather than killing him. More crucially, Piraquo and Pedro reveal the "court secret" &mdash; a baby switch: the dead man is actually Mendoza's son Julio, whom Mendoza and his wife, the baby's nurse, had put in Carlo's place when the royal infant was stolen by pirates. (Which means that the false Don Carlo, in pursuing Clara, was courting his own sister.) Clara and Princess Maria meet in Manuel's prison cell. Manuel, who does not yet know the truth about Carlo/Julio, tries to persuade Maria that she must renounce him, since he killed her brother &mdash; but Maria still will not yield. Manuel asks Clara to play Maria's part, to show how impossible the situation is; but Clara, knowing the court secret, also says that she can still love him despite the death. The exasperated Manuel tells Clara-playing-Maria that their love can never be &mdash; and Clara faints. Watching Manuel trying to revive Clara and seeing the strength of their mutual bond, Maria yields her interest in Manuel, and informs him of Carlo's true identity. Maria ultimately accepts her original intended spouse, Prince Antonio. Yet since this is a tragicomedy, Julio the false prince is not really dead; he recovers from his wound. While recovering, he sends messages to Isabella begging her forgiveness for his duplicity; and Isabella, taken with his contrition, decides she wants to marry Julio, phony prince or not. So, two happy couples are united...though the King of Spain does not share their joy, since he is effectively down one heir to the throne. He swears to punish Duke Mendoza &mdash; which prompts Piraquo and Pedro to reveal the rest of the court secret: that they were the pirates who kidnapped the infant Carlo...who is actually Don Manuel. Happy ending. The play's "extraordinary complexity of plot" has been noted by critics; Arthur Nason maintained that "Rarely among the complicated plots of Shirley is the complication at once more elaborate and more finely knit...Shirley, in The Court Secret, shows his greatest mastery."
9947572	/m/02pxtps	What Would Joey Do?	Jack Gantos	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book deals with Joey as he tries to take charge of correcting the wrongs in his life and the lives of the people he knows, before finally learning that his priority should be doing what's best for himself and leaving the others to their own ways. The story starts out with his father, Carter Pigza, who also has ADHD, riding his motorcycle noisily around the neighborhood. Joey's mother, Fran, came out screaming at him, resulting in him crashing his motorcycle into an old apple tree, where a branch stabbed him. Carter was admitted into hospital, but he later ran off. Throughout the story, Frances had Joey home schooled by her old friend Mrs. Lapp, along with Olivia, Mrs. Lapp's sullen, bratty, blind daughter. Carter kept on bugging their family so Frances had to put out a restraining order to keep him away. Frances was also dating a new boyfriend, Booth Duprey, who was a photographer at her working place and whom Joey disliked. Joey's grandmother was concerned of Joey having no friends, and persuaded Joey to make friends with Olivia, which Joey found very depressing and tiring, for Olivia's main goal is to either make Joey so miserable he would ran off or establishing in her mother's point of view that Joey is up to no good, so as for her to be sent off to a boarding school, where she preferred to be. Olivia stated that many kids like Joey had come to be her homeschooling partner and had gone off, Joey would be the last one her mother would try. Some time later, Joey's grandmother declared that she would die if Joey could not bring Olivia to meet her and prove that she is Joey's friend. Meanwhile, a performance of the musical Godspell was in town, which happened to be Olivia's favorite show. However, Mrs. Lapp disliked the show due to its novelty portayl of religion and forbade Olivia from seeing it. Joey and Olivia later struck a deal: Joey finds a way for Olivia to see the show, and she will go to see his grandmother. Olivia then went to meet his grandmother. During the talk, Olivia revealed that her mother was bitten by a snake while she was pregnant, resulting in her blindness. As her mother is a dedicated Christian, the snake is like an evil being, like Satan. Because of that, Olivia believed she was hopeless and up to no good and behaved like she did. However, after hearing grandma's view on life and her past life, Olivia later confided to Joey that she felt they had a lot in common and it can be implied that she felt better about herself also. One day, Carter, who wanted a chance to talk with Joey and make it up to Frances, came and stole Pablo, Joey's pet dog. As Carter is unsure exactly which Chihuahua is Joey's, he took all Chihuahuas in town also. Joey ended up returning the dogs to their rightful owners before finally going out to meet his father. One owner, however, had another dog in their depression of their previous one, and the two dogs do not cope. Joey took the extra dog and renamed her Pablita. Joey advised Carter to be nice to Frances, so that maybe things could get better. But at Thanksgiving, Frances was enraged by the gifts Carter sent and the two had a violent row in front of the house, ruining the party they held and sending a visiting Mrs.Lapp into horror. Joey sprinted after her departing back. When he caught up with her at her home, Mrs.Lapp announced coldly that his family already had enough problems to deal with and for that she would not prefer him to help her in solving Olivia's problems anymore. Joey's Grandmother died the next day, and Booth broke up with Frances. Seeing that his plans for the others has all gone awry, Joey decided to do as his grandmother told him to; to care more about himself and leave everyone else to care about themselves. Joey arranged the remaining settings for his grandmother's funeral and used some of her savings on buying nice clothes and tickets for him and Olivia to watch her favorite show she had mentioned earlier. Late at the funeral, Frances and Carter had a row again, concerning the disdainful wooden coffin Joey's grandmother was laid in. Joey lashed out, telling them that it was because his grandmother would be cremated. Joey then ran away and in the evening asked Mrs. Lapp for permission to take Olivia to the show. She allowed him to and apologized for her anger in the Thanksgiving night, but maintained her decision of no more home-schooling, though she was happy for a visit occasionally. She told him that Olivia would be sent to a boarding school instead. Olivia was delighted after the show and by now was nicer and friendlier to Joey after all the help he had given her. Joe experienced his first kiss with Olivia before they departed and they promised to keep in touch. Later, Joey went back to study normally in his old school, and he stated that he 'was in where I belong'.
9948157	/m/02pxv0f	The World of Nagaraj	R. K. Narayan	1990	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nagaraj's world is quiet and comfortable. Living in his family's spacious house with only his wife, Sita, and his widowed mother for company, he fills his day writing letters, drinking coffee, doing some leisurely book-keeping for his friend Coomar's Boeing Sari Company, and sitting on his verandah watching the world and planning the book he intends to write about the life of the great sage Narada. But everything is disturbed when Tim, the son of his ambitious land-owning brother Gopu, decides to leave home and come to live with Nagaraj. Forced to take responsibility for the boy, puzzled by his secret late-night activities and by the strong smell of spirits which lingers behind him, Nagaraj finds his days suddenly filled with unwelcome complication and turbulence, which threaten to forever alter the contented tranquility of his world.
9952744	/m/02pxyyb	The Poet	Michael Connelly	1996	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book starts with Jack McEvoy, a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News ("Death is my beat"), relating how the news of his brother Sean's suicide was broken to him. Sean was a homicide detective with the Denver Police, who was found dead in his car in a remote parking lot. A one-sentence suicide note was found in the car with him, and it seemed impossible that someone else could have killed him. McEvoy, though, is reluctant to accept that his brother had succumbed to depression resulting from his investigations, even though the last one was particularly brutal: Theresa Lofton, a young college student, who was found in a park in two pieces. After much investigation on his own, including retracing his brother's investigation into the Lofton case, Jack concludes that his brother's death was simply made to look like a suicide by a serial killer. By focusing on homicide detectives who committed suicide in a similar fashion and left a one-sentence note quoting the works of Edgar Allan Poe (as Sean's did), Jack finds three clear matches to his brother's death. When the FBI finally realizes that he is on to something and attempts to block him from further access, he is able to trade his knowledge of the other deaths (one of which the FBI had not uncovered) for a role with the FBI investigative team headed by Robert Backus, the son of a famous agent within the bureau who has been overshadowed by his father's legend. Assigned the duty of handling him is agent Rachel Walling, one of Backus' main proteges, and the two of them become personally involved. The FBI nicknames the serial killer "The Poet" due to his use of Poe's lines with the victims. As the case focuses on an Internet network of pedophiles and one in particular (William Gladden), McEvoy is taken along on the operation to arrest Gladden, who is suspicious of the set-up and kills the FBI agent trying to arrest him, Gordon Thorson (Walling's ex-husband). McEvoy ends up killing Gladden himself while being held hostage. However, Gladden's comments about his brother's death lead McEvoy to believe that Gladden was not the killer, even though the case has been officially closed. He then finds evidence that the killings had a connection to the FBI and identifies a phone call to the FBI from Thorson's room that he links to a "boasting" fax sent to the bureau by The Poet. Since McEvoy knew that Walling had sent Thorson on a fake errand to buy condoms during the time the fax was sent, he suspects Walling of being The Poet and of posting to the pedophile network under the name "Eidolon", another Poe reference. He then learns that Walling's father, a cop, had committed suicide when she was a teenager ... and had been suspected by the investigating officers of molesting Rachel over a period of time. Since pedophiles tend to have been abused as children, McEvoy becomes worried enough to tell Backus of his suspicions. Backus tells McEvoy that they'll set a trap for Walling and then takes him to a remote location—where Backus drugs McEvoy into nonresistance. He admits that he himself is both Eidolon and The Poet, because the room mistakenly billed to Thorson was actually the one in which he stayed. He admits to all of the deaths and to his setup of Gladden as the "fall guy" for the murders. As Backus prepares to sodomize and then kill McEvoy, Walling (who was suspicious because of messages that she had received from both men) shows up and eventually saves McEvoy's life by knocking Backus out the window and down a long hill. Later the police find a body, however it is left open if this is Backus. Meanwhile, as the facts of the case become known, Walling's judgment is called into question due to her personal relationship with McEvoy and her professional relationship with Backus. A tabloid publishes a photo of McEvoy and Walling together. However, because McEvoy suspected her, Walling ends their relationship and takes a leave to Italy. McEvoy then takes a leave from his paper to write a book about the events, although Walling explains to him that the book will forever taint the FBI because of Backus.
9954158	/m/02px_2t	Akihabara@DEEP	Ira Ishida			 A group of outcasts who meet each other through an online website decide to form an IT company. They seek to create a search engine that will become more popular than Google. They call their creation CROOK (クルーク). This new search engine uses Artificial Intelligence to understand the user's intentions and help them narrow their search. This attracts the attention of Nakagomi Takeshi, the president of Digital Capital (DigiCap), who after a failed attempt to take over Akihabara@Deep, steals the technology for himself. The group must then find a way to get their technology back from DigiCap. The novel is narrated from the point of view of CROOK's Artificial Intelligence. The Drama takes a much more lighthearted approach to the story. It all begins when a mysterious online personality named Yui decides to assemble these outcasts to try to form a group dedicated to solving the problems that plague Akiba by forming the "troubleshooting" company, Akihabara@DEEP, often shortened to just @DEEP. One example of this troubleshooting would be that the otaku of Akiba have come under a surge of bullying. @DEEP's first task was to eliminate this bullying. After getting rid of this problem, @DEEP began taking up other tasks as well. Some of these include clearing the name of a cosplayer in a case that involved the distribution of underground videos depicting other cosplayers getting undressed in dressing rooms, protecting a news anchor from attacks by otaku who were enraged at a story that she had previously worked on that bashed the youth of Akiba, and helping out a maid cafe that the people of Akiba frequent from an opposing maid cafe that was acting extremely hostile to this maid cafe and even provided various prostitution services to the visitors of the opposing maid cafe. While @DEEP solves these cases, the group unintentionally attracts the attention of a seedy character named Nakagomi Takeshi. The reason behind this is because of a secret past relationship between Nakagomi and Yui. What adds to this is a fully self-reliant AI program that Nakagomi would greatly benefit from if he got his hands on it. This is because he is the president of a very influential electronics company called Digital Capital, often shortened to DigiCap. He will eventually raid @DEEP's headquarters and steal Yui's AI.
9954727	/m/02px_k8	Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man	Fannie Flagg	1981	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man is told in diary writings starting in 1952 when the protagonist, Daisy Fay Harper, is 11 years old. She lives with her mother and her father in Jackson, Mississippi. Daisy Fay received her name from a vase of flowers that her mother had in her hospital room. Her father involves her in many of his ill-working schemes to make money or build inventions. He alienates his family members but makes great friends when he drinks. Her mother lives in a constant state of embarrassment, and tries to do what she can to make Daisy Fay into a lady, which consists of making her fetch endless cups of coffee in the cafeteria, and buying matching mother-daughter outfits. Her mother, Daisy's Grandma Pettibone, believes she married beneath her. (Despite both sets of Grandparents not speaking to Daisy's father, they absolutely dote on Daisy) The diary reveals Daisy Fay has an expansive imagination and a detailed memory as a long list of endearing and strange characters are described and the story is told in humorous vignettes. Soon after the beginning of the diary, Daisy Fay and her parents move to Shell Beach, Mississippi, after her father buys half a share of a malt shop on the beach with $500 her mother won at a Bingo game. Her father's plan is to become a taxidermist during the off season, and to use the malt shop's freezer to store the dead animals before stuffing them. The biggest town nearby Shell Beach is Magnolia Springs, where the school and a movie theater is. Her parents' relationship becomes more tempestuous as her father drinks too much and hangs around a vindinctive crop duster named Jimmy Snow, and they manage to get into impossible situations. When the fall starts, Daisy Fay starts the 6th grade and meets her classmates, which include the very snobby and spoiled Kay Bob Benson, who serves as a nemesis for Daisy Fay throughout the rest of the book. Daisy's other friend is Michael Romeo, a Catholic, and the only other child, aside from Daisy and Kay Bob, who lives in Shell Beach full-time. She also makes friends with classmates, Patsy Ruth Coggins and Amy Jo Snipes, among others, and is good friends with an African-American mortician/bar owner named Peachy Wigham and her co-hort, an albino named Ula Sour. Peachy, the owner of the Elite Nightspot bar, had a secret on the white Sheriff's daughter, (she had had an abortion) which was why she wasn't ever arrested. Also, she meets Mrs. Dudley Dot, a journalist (she writes the Dashes from Dot column for the local paper) and the leader of the Junior Debutantes, a pre-teen group which meets in the bait shop over the summer. Mrs. Dot is idolized by Daisy, and is eventually institutionalized after trying to kill her hateful husband. The taxidermy doesn't seem to work out well, as the bobcat had a smile on its face and the flamingo's neck was crooked. Added to that is the fact that Daisy Fay's father didn't add bread to the hamburgers, and his drinking increased. After the malt shop burns down in a suspicious fire (the insurance money wasn't enough anyway), Daisy Fay's mother, finally having had enough of Daisy Fay's father, leaves him to go live with her sister in Virginia. With her mother gone, her father devises a three-day scheme with a scheming local preacher named Billy Bundy to use Daisy Fay as a "glory getter" to bring her back from the dead and bilk the faithful religious out of their donations. The plan falls apart of course, when Daisy is asked to heal a handicapped girl named Betty Caldwell, the girl walked, and the crowd went berserk. Her father and she had to escape quickly in Jimmy Snow's cropduster to Florida, and the diary takes a hiatus for four years. Her mother finds out about what happened, and she is furious (allegedly Daisy's mother hears the news from Kay Bob Benson's equally snobby mother). She pulls Daisy Fay from her father and puts her in a Catholic Boarding School in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. When the diary resumes, the year is 1956, Daisy is 16, and she has returned to Shell Beach from living in the Catholic boarding school. Her father still drinks - maybe even more - and her mother has died from cancer. Daisy Fay enters Magnolia Springs high school to find Kay Bob snobbier than ever, but now has a best friend, Pickle Watkins, to endure the trials of high school. She meets Pickle after she comes to Daisy's aid by helping her beat up another local girl, Dixie Nash, who had insulted her because of her living in a Catholic school, while Daisy called Dixie, a Baptist baboon. Along with Pickle, Daisy Fay meets her friend's siblings, older brother Lemuel and younger sister, Judy (aka Baby Sister), who also become her friends. Pickle is obsessed with being accepted by the popular seniors and gets them into situations where they must better themselves socially. Daisy Fay lives in various apartments, hotels, and porches with her father and Jimmy Snow. Pickle gets pregnant by her father, a member of the White Citizens Council, and drops out of school. So does Daisy Fay soon after and becomes involved in a community theater in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she and her father and Jimmy Snow had moved to. She manages the spotlight, then becomes an actor in the various plays and musicals they put on. Her closest friend at this point in her life, is a gay man named Mr. Cecil, a well known hat designer who owns a millinery shop in Hattiesburg. Mr. Cecil is the costume designer for the theater and he is often seen with his ten male cohorts called the "Cecilettes". Other friends at this point in her life included Professor Teasley, the head director of the theater; his wealthy and often eccentric mother Nanny Teasley; Tootie, Helen, and Dolores, three secretaries at the theater, J.R. Phillips, the theater's stage manager, who was supposedly also gay; Hubert Jamison, a fellow (and somewhat vain) actor; and a woman named Paris Knights, an artist who is a friend of Mr. Cecil's. At this point, she is engaged and almost married, but was jilted by her fiance, Ray Layne, when he returns to his former fiancee, named of Ann, and eventually marries her. Seeing her only break to be a professional actress, Daisy Fay, with Mr. Cecil's help, enters the Miss Mississippi pageant in Tupelo, Mississippi, once more meeting up with her perennial antagonist, Kay Bob Benson, who is also a competitor. However, she makes friends with four other girls, Darcy Lewis, Mary Cudsworth, Jo Ellen Feely and Penny Raymond (Darcy met Daisy Fay after overhearing her insult Kay Bob); and has to contend with how the Pageant was rigged by the Pageant's head, a Mrs. Lulie Harde McClay, who had promised the title to a Margaret Poole, who was supposedly sweet and kind, but was very much a hypocrite. Margaret drank, smoked and had many boyfriends. During one of her smoke breaks, while the pageant hopefuls were at the Tupelo Country Club, she tried to get Daisy Fay framed for smoking, and in trouble with Mrs. McClay. Mrs. McClay, spitefully, left Daisy Fay out of the Country Club talent show. However, Darcy and the others, possibly to get revenge on Mrs. McClay for what she and Margaret tried to do to Daisy, and having waited three years to do so, sang an extremely objectionable song which stuns the well-heeled audience, and gets them left backstage at the State Theater, during the final judging of the pageant. After that song, however, Daisy was again set to perform at the theater, with Mrs. McClay thinking that what Darcy and her friends did by singing such an objectionable song was far worse than Daisy smoking a cigarette, which she was innocent of. The talent portion of the show at the theater degenerated into a comedy of errors, as every other contestant's talent entries, excepting Daisy Fay's and a few others, were sabotaged in one way or another by the stagehands union, of which her paternal grandfather was president of (the theater's microphones malfunctioning; the house organ was unplugged; a dummy's mouth which was glued shut, Kay Bob Benson throwing her batons all over because her hands were covered with axle grease, etc.). They carried on like troupers, but afterwards, the sabotaged contestants would either react in abject rage or out of fear. Either way, they whose talent had been sabotaged ended up making fools out of themselves. It was shown that during the final vote, the judges got into a knock down drag out fight over the results. Only the snobbish Mrs. McClay and her ally, Mrs. Peggy Buchanan, the head of the Mississippi Junior League, were on Margaret Poole's side, while the other judges were rooting for Daisy Fay. However Margaret Poole herself had not wanted the title because she was secretly married to an African-American and was pregnant. Whether this was truth, or another scheme, wasn't revealed. This angered Mrs. McClay all the more, and she screamed that she was being sabotaged. She thought of Daisy Fay as white trash, and wasn't refined enough or enough of a Southern lady to be Miss Mississippi. The other judges, though, had their good names and reputations in the community to consider, and they didn't want to run the risk of the news about Margaret Poole being true, hence how they voted. With a lot of help from a lot of people (some of it not quite legitimate), she unexpectedly wins the pageant, to Mrs. McClay's disgust and outrage (because of this, she quits running the Miss Mississippi pageant for good because she felt betrayed) and is off to Atlantic City. After she won, she also discovers, to her shock and joy, that her maternal grandfather, who everyone had thought had died, was in fact alive and well and working as a cab driver in Tupelo. In fact, it was he who had driven his granddaughter to the pageant events. He had kept in touch with her Daddy over the years, despite their not speaking. Before she leaves for the Miss America pageant, however, she gets word that Jimmy Snow, who had been kind of a surrogate uncle to her, had been in a plane crash, and had died of a broken neck. She mourned him, as did her father, and her loyal friend, Mr. Cecil. Her father revealed to her that she was the only person that Jimmy really loved, which surprised Daisy. After that, she achieves her ends and gets out of Mississippi. At the book's end, she states that "I promise that I won't come back until I'm somebody. And I won't."
9956264	/m/02py1hf	The History of the Siege of Lisbon	José Saramago			 Raimundo Silva, assigned to correct a book entitled The History of Siege of Lisbon by his publishing house, decides to alter the meaning of a crucial sentence by inserting the word "not" in the text, so that the book now claims that the Crusaders did not come to the aid of the Portuguese king in taking Lisbon from the Moors. This has repercussions both for himself and for the historical profession. The second plot is Saramago's simultaneous recounting of the siege in the style of a historical romance.
9957313	/m/02py2fb	Sting of the Zygons	Stephen Cole		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The TARDIS lands the Doctor and Martha in the Lake District in 1909, where a small village has been terrorised by a giant, scaly monster. The search is on for the elusive 'Beast of Westmorland', and explorers, naturalists and hunters from across the country are descending on the fells. King Edward VII himself is on his way to join the search, with a knighthood for whoever finds the Beast. But there is a more sinister presence at work in the Lakes than a monster on the rampage, and the Doctor is soon embroiled in the plans of an old and terrifying enemy. As the hunters become the hunted, a desperate battle of wits begin - with the future of the entire world at stake.
9957314	/m/02py2fp	Tam Lin	Pamela Dean		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0134b1": "Contemporary fantasy", "/m/057pyk": "Fantasy of manners", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist of Tam Lin is Janet Carter. Written in the indirect third person, from Carter's point of view, the novel is set during her years as a student in the early 1970s at the fictional Blackstock College in Minnesota. The characters include her fellow students, professors at the college, her family, and a childhood friend. The plot combines the story of a young woman's life at college with a retelling of the traditional Scottish fairy ballad "Tam Lin".
9957370	/m/02py2j2	The Last Dodo	Jacqueline Rayner		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor and Martha Jones go searching for the last dodo. They end up in a museum featuing the last examples of extinct species, all in suspended animation. Many of the exhibits are going missing. The Doctor himself is in danger because he is the last of his race.
9957859	/m/02py2vr	Armadale	Wilkie Collins	1864	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel has a convoluted plot about two distant cousins both named Allan Armadale. The father of one had murdered the father of the other (the two fathers are also named Allan Armadale). The story starts with a deathbed confession by the murderer in the form of a letter to be given to his baby son when he grows up. Many years pass. The son, mistreated at home, runs away from his mother and stepfather, and takes up a wandering life under the assumed name of Ozias Midwinter. He becomes a companion to his distant cousin, the other Allan Armadale, who throughout the novel never discovers the relationship. But Ozias is constantly haunted by feeling that he might harm Allan, first after he reads the letter left for him, and then again after they spend the night on a shipwreck off the Isle of Man — the ship turning out to be the same on which the murder took place (the murderer locked his victim in a cabin as the boat filled with water). On the boat, Allan has a mysterious dream involving three characters. This dream fills Ozias with foreboding, justifiably so as its three scenes become fulfilled in the course of the novel. Allan inherits estates at Thorpe Ambrose in Norfolk after the mysterious death of three of the family. He is unused to wealth, and falls in love with the sixteen-year-old daughter of Major Milroy, to whom he has rented a cottage. This love affair is for a period thwarted by the machinations of Miss Milroy's governess, Lydia Gwilt. Lydia, who is thirty-five but looks twenty-something, is the villain of the novel and her colourful portrayal takes up much of the rest of the story. Originally Allan’s mother's maid, and a contributor to the conflict between Allan's and Ozias's fathers, she is a fortune-hunter and, it turns out, a murderess. Unable to alienate Allan's affections from Miss Milroy, she settles for marrying Midwinter, having discovered his name is the same. She plots to murder Allan — or to have him killed by her ex-husband, a Spanish desperado — and, since she is now "Mrs. Armadale," to impersonate his widow. Allan escapes the desperado's attempt on his life — he is supposed to have drowned in a shipwreck — and returns to England. Lydia's plans are thus foiled. Her last shot is to murder Allan herself — the weapon being poison gas, the scene being a sanatorium run by a quack called Doctor Downward — but she is thwarted by her own conscience. Midwinter and Allan have switched rooms, and she can't bring herself to murder her true husband, for whom she does have genuine feelings of love. After rescuing Midwinter and writing him a farewell note, she goes into the air-poisoned room and kills herself. Allan marries Miss Milroy; Midwinter, still his best friend, becomes a writer. Some linking passages consist of letters between the various characters, or of extracts from Lydia's journal, but the great majority of the text narrates the events as they occur. The novel is enlivened by many minor characters including Mr Bashwood, an old failure of a clerk who is infatuated with the beautiful Lydia; his son, James Bashwood, a private detective; Mrs Oldershaw, an unscrupulous associate of Lydia’s; the Pedgifts (father and son), Allan's sometime lawyers; and the Rev Decimus Brock, a shrewd (but not quite shrewd enough) clergymen who brings Allan up but who is kept out of the way for much of the book. Is the dream to be interpreted rationally or superstitiously, as Midwinter does? The question is never resolved. “The distortions of the plot, the violent and irrational reactions of the characters, reflect and dramatize the ways in which his readers’ perceptions were distorted by the assumptions and hypocrisies of the society in which they lived," writes Catherine Peters. In the end, the novel is a story of redemption that teaches that the sins of the fathers are not necessarily visited on the children, and the son of a murderer can turn out good. Collins was to take this up again later in The Legacy of Cain.
9958705	/m/02py3bx	Saturnalia	Joel Spector	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is the Season of Misrule in Rome, sheer misery for Falco. Uppity slaves give orders to their cringing masters, masters try to hide in their studies, women are goosed, statues wobble, a prince has a broken heart, Helena’s brother will not decide if his heart is broken or not, children are sick and even the dog can’t stand it any more. As the festival meant for healing grudges riotously proceeds, a young man who has everything to live for dies a horrific death while the security of the Empire is compromised by the usual mixture of top brass incompetence, bureaucratic in-fighting and popular indifference. The barbarians are not just at the gates, they are right inside - and that’s just the bombasts in the Praetorian Guard, encouraged by the pernicious Chief Spy. Doctors are making a killing. Alternative therapists are ecstatic. Members of the Didius family are about to receive some extremely unusual seasonal gifts. But for the non-persons on the fringes of society life is not so jolly, and dark spirits walk abroad (available for hire through the usual agents). Falco has a race against time to find a dangerous missing person, aided and hindered by faces from the past, while running the gauntlet of the best and worst Roman society can offer as Saturnalia entertainment. Unfortunately for him. This is the one with the giant vegetables. This novel makes numerous references to the events in Lindsay Davis' earlier novel in the Falco series, The Iron Hand of Mars (1992).
9963075	/m/02py7ck	The Harlequin	Laurell K. Hamilton	2007-06-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The events of The Harlequin take place one week after the events of Danse Macabre The Harlequin shows Anita and Jean Claude coping with a threat from Vampire Council enforcers. Desperate, Anita calls Edward for assistance. Edward arrives the same day, bringing Olaf and Peter (now 16), who we last saw in Obsidian Butterfly. The Harlequin exists to police and punish vampire leaders who violate various rules, such as Malcolm's resistance to the blood oath. It was formed by the Mother of All Darkness, modeled in style on the Commedia dell'arte and by action on the wild hunt. It is composed of very old and powerful vampires who are capable of not just manipulating the behaviors and emotions of humans or younger vampires and lycanthropes, but of Jean-Claude, Anita, and Richard. Under this influence, Richard and Jean-Claude nearly kill each other, and Anita must also be repeatedly resuscitated. Anita keeps them alive by feeding on first Rafael (and through him, all the wererats in the city); Belle Morte; and later, all the swanmanes in the United States via the swan king, Donovan Reece. Anita's second triumvirate also comes through, with Nathaniel and Damien "eating for five" so as to provide healing energy to Anita — and the others through her. However, the Harlequin appears not to be following its own rules, so by vampire law Jean Claude's people can strike back. Edward doesn't actually kill a Harlequin, Anita does through a psychic link that she accidentally creates while trying to remove a sort of vampire spell that one of the Harlequin has put on her in order to keep track of her and Jean Claude's etc. movements. They subsequently end up killing the human servant of that vampire after Anita has fed on Donovan the king of the swan manes. They recover in time to face off with the remaining members in Malcolm's Church of Eternal Life. They not only succeed, but determine that the Harlequin members were planning to take over Jean-Claude's territory and not operating on official Council orders. Anita almost allows the Mother of Darkness to become a full flesh being by allowing her anger to fester. Anita also leaves her former allies, the werelions, to potential death. At a point where Anita and many of her other allies are injured, sex is demanded from the werelion Rex Joseph so that Anita could gain the power to heal. The rex refuses because he is married and values being faithful to his wife. In a scene reminiscent of The Godfather series, Anita decides that this is a betrayal of their alliance and decides to abandon Joseph.
9964435	/m/02py8hc	Three Witnesses	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Wolfe and Archie are in court, under subpoena to testify as witnesses for the prosecution in a murder trial. The State contends that Leonard Ashe hired Bagby Answers, Inc., an answering service, and that he did so to get information about his wife's phone calls. The State also contends that when one of the operators refused to cooperate with Ashe, and threatened to tell his wife, Ashe strangled her with a phone cord. Wolfe and Archie are in court to testify that Ashe had tried to hire Wolfe to spy on his wife. Ashe had been circumspect about it, but that's what Wolfe inferred, and he turned Ashe down. Now Clyde Bagby, owner of the answering service, is on the witness stand and ADA Mandelbaum is questioning him. Bagby testifies that one of his operators, Marie Willis, came to him to complain that Ashe had asked her to listen in on his wife's telephone conversations. Miss Willis had refused, and was going to tell Ashe's wife, the actress Robina Keane, what her husband was doing. Bagby tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Miss Willis. That evening, the police phoned to tell Bagby that Miss Willis had been found, strangled, at her switchboard. At this point in Bagby's testimony, Wolfe leaves the courtroom, with Archie in tow. Wolfe wants to see some people, but Archie objects that they are both under subpoena and Wolfe's testimony is scheduled to follow Bagby's. Wolfe doesn't care: he has now concluded that Ashe did not kill Marie Willis, he does not want to testify in corroboration of Bagby, and the woman sitting next to him in the courtroom was wearing too much perfume. He's not returning until he has more information. Wolfe and Archie head for the answering service's office, where they find Bella Velardi and Alice Hart, two of Miss Willis' co-workers. Due to arcane employment regulations, the offices are in an apartment, where each of the employees has a bedroom. Wolfe and Archie invade one of the bedrooms, and Wolfe is determined to be as obnoxious as possible, so as to see how much incivility the service's employees will stand for. As they are questioning Miss Velardi and Miss Hart, they note the presence of an original Van Gogh painting on the wall, and a stack of racing forms on a table. The interrogations yield little information, except that the women are scared enough to submit to Wolfe's boorish behavior in their own rooms. Wolfe does learn that another employee, Helen Weltz, is in Westchester that afternoon, at a cottage that she has leased for the summer. That's Wolfe and Archie's next stop. When they arrive, Archie has to avoid hitting a new Jaguar parked in front of the cottage. Miss Weltz is not alone, but accompanied by Guy Unger, an acquaintance of several of the women who work at the answering service. To Archie, Unger has the look of an underworld character – mean little eyes and mouth in a big round face. He describes himself as a broker, but when Wolfe presses him, Unger is vague about the sort of business he transacts. Unger wants to talk with Wolfe alone. When Archie takes Miss Weltz for a stroll he learns that she wants out from under something, but is too frightened of Unger to tell Archie what it is. Archie gets her to agree to phone Wolfe's office that evening; Fritz will relay her call to Archie. Back in the car, Wolfe tells Archie that Unger tried to pay him to drop his investigation. Wolfe and Archie head back to the city. They can't go to the brownstone because the judge has issued a warrant for their arrest – they have not complied with their subpoenas. Archie phones Saul and arranges for them to spend the night at his apartment. First, though, Wolfe has another errand: he wants to meet with Ashe's wife. She agrees to see them, and Wolfe convinces her to set up a meeting with Ashe the following morning. By meeting with Ashe, Wolfe contrives to trap ADA Mandelbaum into asking a particular question – one with an answer that Mandelbaum doesn't want to hear.
9965002	/m/02py8zh	My Summer Of Love	Helen Cross	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the beginning of the novel, Mona's sister, Lindy, is getting married for the second time. The date is given as 23 May 1984. Mona is self-conscious of her appearance; she is a bridesmaid. She plays on the fruit machines in the pub in which her family live, and drinks alcohol to help her cope with the day. After the festivities of the day, she goes to a large house in a nearby village. She occasionally tends to the residents' pony, Willow, though the Fakenhams don't pay her much attention, or any money. This evening, however, Mr. Fakenham speaks to her and asks her, in rather an awkward manner, to befriend his youngest daughter, Tamsin - she has been sent home from boarding school and seems to be lonely. Mona herself is feeling quite friendless - she refers to 'poor lost Anne-Marie' as someone who had once been a school-friend. However, they have drifted apart - Mona had lost her mother to cancer a year previously, and she reflects that Anne-Marie was probably emotionally drained by having to support her through her bereavement. However, she thinks it's a very pitiful state of affairs that Tamsin's father is actually begging people to be her friend. Despite this, in the days after the wedding, Mona feels lonely and bored. She is off school - it appears to be exam leave - and she decides to visit the Fakenham's house. She finds Mr. and Mrs. Fakenham in a blazing row. The girls are then left to their own devices. Mona finds herself instantly drawn to - and fascinated by - Tamsin.
9968616	/m/02pyd9w	Death Sentence	Brian Garfield	1975	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Continuing six months after Death Wish left off, Paul Benjamin has moved from New York to Chicago after his catatonic daughter died in an institution, a result of the brutal attack that changed Paul Benjamin into a vigilante. Paul resumes his private violent war as he stalks criminals in the streets of Chicago. The only thing that may distract him from his crusade is a beautiful woman he starts cordially dating in his new life. And as Paul ends up having a double life, an imitating vigilante is out in the streets violently killing off criminals just like Paul. What's worse is that vigilantism soon begins to become a cry of publicity as the police have to look for their man before innocent people start dying out of injustice. Paul is not only after criminals or justice anymore, but he's also looking for a man who is as equally as dangerous as the vigilante he has become.
9968731	/m/02pydc7	The Rose of Tibet	Lionel Davidson	1962	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Charles Houston makes a perilous and illegal journey from India into the forbidden land of Tibet during the unsettled time 1950/51, in the hope of rescuing his vanished brother. What he does not know is that his coming was prophesied a century earlier, and he is awaited by an impossible love, an enormous treasure, and the invading Red Chinese army.
9968918	/m/02pydf_	A Long Way to Shiloh	Lionel Davidson	1966	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Caspar Laing is a Professor of Semitic Languages who is asked to translate an ancient parchment found in Israel. Fragmentary as the message is, it appears to give directions to the hiding place of a holy candelabrum rescued from the Jerusalem Temple before its destruction by the Romans in 70 AD. But the Jordanians have a copy of the parchment as well, and the search for the priceless menorah becomes a deadly cat and mouse hunt in the burning Negev desert. The story draws from the Copper Scroll found at Qumran in 1952, which lists buried treasure.
9969109	/m/02pydmh	Kolymsky Heights	Lionel Davidson	1994	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A coded message is smuggled out of Russia, a plea for help from a supersecret laboratory deep in the frozen wastes of Siberia. The note is addressed to Johnny Porter, a Canadian Indian of the Gitxsan tribe with a genius for languages and disguises, and reluctantly he is forced to slip across the border on a rescue mission, the consequences of which he little imagines. The detailed picture of life in the Kolyma region and of the native peoples of the Russian Far East (such as the Evenks) and British Columbia (such as the Tsimshian) is impressive.
9970613	/m/02pyfs9	Master of the Five Magics	Lyndon Hardy	1980-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book focuses on the adventures of its main character and hero, Alodar, in the fictional land of Procolon. Alodar's self-imposed quest for much of the book is to distinguish himself sufficiently to wed the queen, Vendora. The book is divided into six parts, each of the first five of which corresponds to a discipline of magic learned by Alodar in that portion of the narrative. The final part is entitled "The Archimage" and corresponds to Alodar's mastery of all other forms of magic. In the first three parts, Alodar learns enough of a particular type of magic to make a notable achievement, but the antagonist of that part usurps Alodar's credit and becomes a recognized suitor to the queen. Alodar is then left with an artifact of some type that allows him to begin learning a new discipline of magic. The first part also introduces Aeriel, a female character important in the second half of the book. The fourth part does not feature an artifact; instead, Alodar discovers an ancient wizard placed in suspended animation, who reveals the basics of his craft to Alodar at the start of the fifth part. The fifth part of the book reveals that Alodar's journey was planned by the ancient wizards, who predicted the now-imminent demonic invasion. In the sixth and final part, Alodar uses his knowledge of all five magical disciplines in combination to defeat the leader of the demon army. However, Alodar spurns both marriage to the queen and an offer by his previous antagonists to support a coup placing Alodar on the throne; instead, he chooses to marry Aeriel and continue his apprenticeship.
9972790	/m/02pyhrl	The Interpretation of Murder	Jed Rubenfeld	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on his first - and only - visit to the United States in 1909, a stunning débutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment, high above Broadway. The following night, another beautiful heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents' home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her ordeal. Soon Freud and his American disciple, Stratham Younger, are enlisted to help Miss Acton recover her memory, and to piece together the killer's identity. It is a riddle that will test their skills to the limit and lead them on a journey into the darkest places of the city, and of the human mind.
9973354	/m/02pyjm2	Aggressor Six	Wil McCarthy		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In this novel humanity is under assault by an overwhelming technologically superior alien race called "Waisters" who are threatening to exterminate the human race. Unlike his later books which focus on humanity's technological evolution and how it affects the definition of humanity, Aggressor Six is a piece of military science fiction. However this novel is set apart from other military science fiction novels in that it maintains Wil McCarthy's adherence to technical scientific realism, particularly during the combat scenes. One major point of the story is that the aliens are technologically far more advanced than the humans, meaning the standard naval models of combat used in many science fiction works would be impractical, requiring a re-examination of how space combat will occur. It also examines the idea that aliens, if encountered, will be truly 'alien'- driven by desires and motives which will not be immediately obvious to humans.
9973485	/m/02pyjt8	The Sun Chemist	Lionel Davidson	1976	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Letters in the archive correspondence of Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, hint that, in his profession as a distinguished organic chemist, Weizmann had stumbled on a method for the cheap synthesis of petroleum. Now, decades later, a world buffeted by oil shocks and perpetually rising prices would welcome such a chemical miracle. But Weizmann's laboratory notebooks must be found first, and an unseen and powerful enemy will stop at nothing to keep them hidden.
9973592	/m/02pyj_3	The Chelsea Murders	Lionel Davidson	1978	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Someone is killing residents of the hip bohemian London neighborhood of Chelsea, home to literary giants of the past like Virginia Woolf. What thread connects them in someone's mad mind? The only clue is a fragment of film, which accidentally caught images of the murderer, dressed in an outlandish costume and mask.
9975877	/m/02pymzd	Labour	Laura Albert		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 A young boy lives with his mother and her good-for-nothing boyfriend in a small trailer. When a new baby comes along, he must take care of it the best he can, drawing inspiration from a book about the labours of Hercules.
9976510	/m/02pyp02	The Dice Spelled Murder	Ralph Salaway		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Danny Hogan, a truck driver disaffected with his job at Torgus Trucking, meets beautiful Velma Reed in a seedy Los Angeles bar where she has been working as the bartender's shill, enticing lonely men to buy drinks. Danny doesn't recognize Velma, but the two of them attended the same high school in a distant city, where they were only casually acquainted. Danny was expelled from high school after being caught using loaded dice in an after-school craps game. A short time later, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma became pregnant and also left school and their home town. Now, a dozen years later, Velma recognizes Danny and renews their acquaintance. Appealing to his greed and his masculinity, she convinces him to use his skills with crooked dice in a confidence game to help her separate convention-goers from their money. At first reluctant because of a beating he received in the Army after being caught using altered dice, Danny eventually agrees, hoping to amass enough money to start his own trucking company. He soon comes to realize that Velma, too, has a loftier purpose in mind—buying a motel in Las Vegas that she can operate, in order to become "legit" and no longer feel ashamed of the way she earns money to support her young son, whom she has placed in a boarding school. The bulk of the novel's action surrounds Velma's artful pickup of likely suckers at conventions, mostly in California cities, and Danny's subsequent fleecing of them in craps games. Their adventures bring them into contact with a number of ordinary and extraordinary characters, including a gay con artist toward whom Danny displays a disdain that was probably more politically correct in 1957 than it seems now. Various close calls ensue, and Danny loses some of his enthusiasm for the con. He tells Velma he wants to quit, but she convinces him to run the con with her one last time. Along the way, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma and another male friend, Joe Lovelli, have committed blackmail. Velma has twice enticed men to her hotel room, where Joe waited in a closet with a camera. Using infrared film, Joe snapped photographs of the men in compromising positions with Velma. The blackmailers then extorted—or attempted to extort—hush-up money from their victims. Danny remains unaware of Velma and Joe's sideline until near the end of the book, when Velma's second blackmail victim, a mob-related big shot, propels the novel to its climax in a fatal car chase. After struggling with a conflict between conscience and ambition, Danny mails the bulk of his dishonest gambling earnings to Velma's young son, keeping only enough to buy a good used truck so that he and Jill Conner—the pretty, young, former office manager at Torgus Trucking—can start their own trucking firm.
9978480	/m/02pyrcc	Revelation	Karen Traviss	2008-02-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As Ben Skywalker seeks to find proof that Jacen Solo had killed Ben's mother, Mara, Darth Caedus seeks the Imperial Remnant's help in combating the Galactic Alliance's enemies in the galactic Confederation. While the Moff Council is attracted to Caedus's bid for added power and territory, the Imperial Remnant's leader, Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, is reluctant, as Caedus's actions throughout the war against the Confederation have been horrendous. So Pellaeon contacts fellow Admiral Natasi Daala to help him counter Caedus should he do anything stupid. In response, Daala hires out Boba Fett and his Mandalorians to be on standby should Caedus make a stupid decision, as expected, when the Galactic Alliance and Imperial Remnant ally to defeat the rebels on Fondor. With Fett and his ilk is Jaina Solo, who is training with the Mandos in order to understand how to fight in an unorthodox, which can help her defeat her brother. Meanwhile, Caedus's fellow Chief of State, Admiral Cha Niathal, is a traitor to Caedus, and is secretly allied to Luke Skywalker's Jedi Coalition, for even she knows that Caedus's actions have been too drastic in the war. When the Second Battle of Fondor commences, Caedus's forces easily overwhelm the rebels to the point that the latter group surrenders. Nevertheless, Caedus makes his stupid move by pressing on the attack in order to make sure that the Fondorian rebels will never pose a threat to the Galactic Alliance ever again. As Pellaeon proceeds to turn on Caedus with Daala and her Mandalorian allies for backup, Caedus's envoy to the Imperial Remnant, Tahiri Veila, threatens Pellaeon at blasterpoint to commit the Imperial forces to Caedus's cause. Pellaeon refuses, and is shot to death for his betrayal. As a result, Daala's forces attack Caedus's fleet just as Niathal reveals her true colors and goes against Caedus. Despite this, a large majority of the Alliance fleet still somehow supports Caedus despite his actions, which leaves Niathal and her supporters to go into exile from the Sith Lord's rule. Tahiri is rescued from the invading Mandalorians by Caedus himself, and both of them barely escape death as they return to Caedus's remaining Alliance fleet. In the end, Caedus's forces win as they get the Imperial forces on their side, now that they are ruled solely by the Moff Council in the aftermath of Grand Admiral Pellaeon's death. Ben manages to corroborate enough evidence that points to Jacen being Mara's killer. This becomes especially apparent when Ben's ally in the Galactic Alliance Guard, Lon Shevu, gets Jacen to confess not only that he eliminated Mara, but also that he is the Sith Lord Darth Caedus. The revelation of the story had come to pass in the end.
9982926	/m/02pyw3b	If Death Ever Slept	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Millionaire Otis Jarrell retains Nero Wolfe to get a snake out of his house &ndash; the snake being his daughter-in-law, whom he believes is ruining his business deals by leaking information to his competitors. Since Archie and Wolfe are in the midst of one of their periodic squabbles, it is decided that Archie will move into Jarrell's Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment, posing as his new secretary. While he's away, Orrie tests out Archie's desk.
9983157	/m/02pyw95	And Four to Go	Rex Stout	1958-02-14	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Wolfe occasionally riles Archie when he takes Archie's services too much for granted. On Wednesday he tells Archie to change his personal plans of two weeks standing so that he can drive Wolfe to Long Island for a meeting on Friday with an orchid hybridizer. After counting ten, Archie explains that he cannot and will not chauffeur Wolfe on Friday. He has promised his fiancee that he will attend her office Christmas party, at a furniture design studio. To substantiate his claim, Archie shows Wolfe a marriage license, duly signed and executed: the State is willing for Archie Goodwin and Margot Dickey to wed. Wolfe is incredulous, but hires a limousine to take him to Long Island as Archie attends the party. There, a conversation between Archie and Margot reveals that Margot has been trying to get her employer and paramour, Kurt Bottweill, to quit procrastinating and marry her. She has suggested to Archie, who is no more to her than a friend and dancing partner, that a marriage license might motivate Bottweill to propose and follow through. Archie gave her the license on Thursday, and now Margot tells him that the plan worked perfectly, that she and Bottweill are to marry. Also attending the party are Bottweill; his business manager Alfred Kiernan; an artisan named Emil Hatch who turns Bottweill's designs into marketable merchandise; Cherry Quon, an East Asian who is the office receptionist; and Mrs. Perry Jerome and her son – Mrs. Jerome is a wealthy widow who is the source of Bottweill's business capital. The Bottweill-Jerome business relationship is apparently based on intimacy, which her son Leo is bent on disrupting. Santa Claus is also present, tending bar. Bottweill starts to toast the season but before he can do so Kiernan interrupts. Everyone has champagne, but Bottweill's drink is Pernod – he keeps an entire case of it in his office. Kiernan brings Bottweill a glass of Pernod. Bottweill finishes his toast, tosses back the Pernod, and promptly dies of cyanide poisoning. As Archie is issuing instructions – call the police, don't touch anything, nobody leave – he notices that Santa has already left. Hatch says no one has left via the elevator, and the only other exit is to Bottweill's office. There's nothing unusual there, and Archie pushes a button that calls Bottweill's private elevator. When it arrives, Archie finds Santa's wig, mask, jacket and breeches on its floor. The police arrive, led by Sergeant Purley Stebbins, and after several hours of questioning he dismisses the partygoers. Purley's first task is to try to find Santa, and if that approach leads nowhere then he'll start after the others. Archie heads back to the brownstone, where Wolfe, having returned from his errand, is eating dinner. Wolfe has heard on the radio a report of Bottweill's death, and after discussing it briefly, Wolfe sends Archie to his room to bring him a book. Archie finds the book, and also finds, draped over it, a pair of white gloves that appear to be identical to the gloves that Santa was wearing while tending bar. Stunned at first, Archie works it out that Wolfe was the bartender in a Santa costume. He must have arranged the charade in order to judge for himself whether Archie and Margot were genuinely involved or the marriage license was flummery. For Wolfe to have gone to such an extreme must mean that Wolfe regarded the situation as potentially desperate. Finally, Wolfe left the gloves for Archie to find so that he would reason it all out for himself, thus sparing Wolfe the necessity of admitting how much he depends on Archie. Archie returns to the office and, skipping the issue of Wolfe's motives, reports on the events that followed Wolfe's escape. Stebbins has established that all the partygoers knew that Bottweill drank Pernod and kept a supply in his office. All knew that a supply of cyanide was kept in the workshop one floor down from the studio: Hatch uses it in his gold-plating work. Any of them could have found an opportunity to get some cyanide from the workshop and, unobserved, put it in Bottweill's current bottle of Pernod. But none of them ran when Bottweill died. Only Santa ran, and the police are concentrating for the moment on finding whoever played Santa. When Archie finishes reporting the doorbell rings. It's Cherry Quon, without appointment, wanting to speak with Wolfe. It comes out that Miss Quon recently became engaged to marry Bottweill. She is convinced that Margot murdered Bottweill in a rage at being thrown over for Miss Quon. And she delivers a bombshell: she knows it was Wolfe who played Santa at the party. Bottweill had told her that morning at breakfast. Miss Quon has a demand. She wants one of Wolfe's men to confess to having played Santa. As he was putting on the costume, in the bathroom attached to Bottweill's office, Wolfe's man heard something, peeked out, and saw Margot putting something in the Pernod bottle. Miss Quon is not blatant about it, but she implies strongly that if Wolfe does not comply with her demand she will tell the police that Wolfe himself was Santa. That's the last thing Wolfe wants – Cramer would lock him up as a material witness and possibly for withholding evidence, and the publicity would be humiliating. But Wolfe refuses to go along with Miss Quon's script. Instead, he sends notes to all the partygoers, inviting the murderer to identify himself.
9987955	/m/02py_0g	The Gentleman of Venice	James Shirley			 Giovanni is the son of the gardener to the Duke of Venice; though a commoner of the humblest station, he is a serious young man of admirable character &mdash; which attracts the attention of Bellaura, the Duke's niece. Giovanni decides to serve as a soldier in Genice's war with Genoa; Bellaura equips him with armor and with a letter of introduction to the military commander, who is her relative. Giovanni distinguishes himself notably in the campaign &mdash; so much so that the Duke tells him to name his own reward. With great hesitation, the courageous Giovanni asks for the hand of Bellaura in marriage. But the proud young lady refuses him, and Giovanni returns to his gardening. At the same time, the Duke's son Thomazo has been convicted of high treason. The court is astonished when his old nurse Ursula, Giovanni's mother, pleads for a pardon for him, announcing that Thomazo is really her son, while Giovanni is the rightful heir of Venice. Ursula had switched the two as infants. Giovanni is recognized and accepted as the Duke's son; he and Bellaura are married. In the subplot, Cornari is a wealthy gentleman of Venice (the play's title derives from this subplot) who laments the childlessness of his marriage with his wife Claudiana. He is determined that his debauched nephew Malipiero shall not inherit the Cornari estate. So Cornari abducts an English gentleman called Florelli, a man of virtue and valor, and imprisons the kidnapped man in his palace. Cornari's goal is that Florelli will impregnate Claudiana. When Cornari thinks this has been accomplished, he plans to have Florelli killed; before doing so, Cornari masquerades as a priest and hears Florelli's confession &mdash; which convinces him that his wife has kept her virtue and no impregnation has taken place. In fact, Florelli and Claudiana spent their time together praying for Cornari. Ashamed and repentant, Cornari abandons his scheme and releases Florelli. (Florelli is tossed into the street with a bag ove his head; the experience leaves him distracted. He determines, firstly, to get drunk, and secondly, to leave Venice.) Cornari's nephew Malipiero, however, is arrested for participating in Thomzo's treasonous plot, and eventually comes to a sincere reformation of his ways, making him suitable as his uncle's heir. Critic Arthur Nason called the play's comic scenes "worthy of Restoration comedy at its best."
9990494	/m/02pz145	Emphyrio	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ghyl Tarvoke grows up on the planet Halma with his father Amiante. Their people are ruled by two hundred lords whose forefathers arrived 1500 years earlier and rebuilt a world devastated by many wars. In return, they were granted a 1% tax. Later, all mass manufacturing was outlawed and the people became artisans, selling their handmade work to a single company controlled by the lords. Amiante is a master woodcarver and his son follows in his trade. When he is eight, Ghyl attends a puppet show; part of the entertainment is the traditional drama of Emphyrio, a legendary hero. The proprietor points out a young girl in the audience and informs the boy that she is the daughter of a lord. Some time later, he and a friend sneak aboard a space yacht out of curiosity and are caught by the same girl. She has them beaten and thrown out. As time passes, Ghyl comes to realize that his father is dissatisfied with the constraints of their society. Twice, Amiante is caught by the authorities illegally duplicating ancient documents; the second time, he is taken away for four days. Soon after his release, he passes away. A few years later, Ghyl goes to a ball and encounters the girl, now an appealingly attractive woman, for the third time and finally learns her name, Shanne. That night, they become lovers. But she tells him that she is leaving soon to travel to the stars. An acquaintance persuades Ghyl and three other friends to hijack a space yacht and hold the passengers for ransom. The scheme is only made possible because Ghyl knows the departure date and the particular ship (the same one he sneaked aboard years before) that Shanne is leaving on. However, no ransom is forthcoming. When Ghyl wants to release their captives, there is violent opposition from his fellow kidnappers, resulting in several deaths. In the end, they reach an uneasy compromise: Ghyl is left on a planet with the lords, while the rest take the ship. Ghyl guides his charges to civilization, but notices their odd behavior along the way. He then slips away before they have him arrested. By chance, he sees one of his father's works in a shop. He discovers that it is a reproduction and that the priceless original is in a museum. He talks the shop owner into financing a venture to buy artwork on Halma for more than the pittance the lords pay. However, for some reason, no one is willing to sell to him. Then, though disguised, he is recognized and sentenced to death for his earlier crimes. Escaping a horrible execution undetected, he steals the best works from a warehouse, takes his cargo to Earth, and sells it for a fortune. While there, he visits the Historical Institute and learns the true history of his homeworld. The alien Damarans were forced to abandon Halma by spacefaring invaders. They found refuge on its moon and eventually struck back with warriors they had bred, but by then, their enemy had departed and humans had arrived, only to be attacked. Emphyrio attempted to negotiate peace, but was killed by the Damarans. However, the warriors listened to his message and stopped fighting, forcing the Damarans to resort to other means. Ghyl visits the Damaran moon and finds Emphyrio's place of execution. Seeing the Damarans firsthand, he deduces something of monumental importance. He goes to see the head of the lords on Halma and threatens to broadcast the truth about their relationship with the Damarans. With this leverage, he forces them to leave Halma. Soon afterwards, a human fleet lands on the Damaran moon and extracts payment for centuries of unwitting slavery.
9993483	/m/02pz455	Second Thoughts	Shobha De	1996	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Second Thoughts is a love story about Maya, a pretty girl who is eager to escape her dull, middle-class home in Calcutta for the glamour of Mumbai, where she moves after marriage to Ranjan, a handsome, ambitious man who has an American university degree and a wealthy family background. Maya is determined to be the ideal wife, but finds herself trapped and stifled by the confines of her arranged marriage to a man who, she discovers, is rigidly conservative and completely indifferent to her desires. She begins to experience great loneliness in suburban Mumbai. She strikes up a friendship with Nikhil, her charming, college-going neighbor, leading to love and betrayal.
10000450	/m/02pzf6g	Midaq Alley	Naguib Mahfouz	1947	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mahfouz plays on the cultural setting. The novel is introduced with description of the Arabic culture. It centers around the list of characters described below. The novel takes place in the 1940s and represents standing on the threshold of a modern era in Cairo and the rest of the nation as a whole.
10001629	/m/02pzg1_	The Moneychangers	Arthur Hailey	1975-02		 As the novel begins, the position of CEO of one of America's largest banks, First Mercantile American (very loosely based on the Bank of America, although it is located in an unnamed Midwestern city) is about to become vacant due to the terminal illness of Ben Roselli, the incumbent chief, whose grandfather founded the bank. Two high-ranking executives groomed for the succession begin their personal combat for the position. One, Alex Vandervoort, is honest, hard-charging, and focused on growing FMA through retail banking and embracing emerging technology; the other, Roscoe Heyward, is suave, hypocritical, and skilled in boardroom politics, and favors catering more to business than to consumers. Many characters and plot lines interweave. Senior bank teller Miles Eastin is discovered to be defrauding the bank whilst casting guilt on another teller, a young single mother. He is dismissed, arrested, and convicted. In prison, his knowledge of counterfeiting brings him to the attention of a gang of credit card forgers, who give him a job on his release. As an affiliate of the forgers, he secretly reports back to the bank's Head of Security; he is discovered and tortured, to be rescued in the nick of time. As readers increasingly appreciate Vandervoort, the protagonist, they learn of his troubled personal life. His advancement in banking circles has come as his marriage is failing; his wife is confined to an inpatient psychiatric facility. Vandervoort is shown as having developed a relationship with Margot Bracken, who is depicted as a radical attorney and political activist many years his junior; her attitudes sometime conflicts with Vandervoort's role at FMA. Meanwhile, Vandervoort's antagonist, Hayward, is depicted as a devout Episcopalian who strives to maintain an air of personal integrity and morality, only to slowly sacrifice them both in his pursuit of the presidency of FMA. As these men pursue their battle for the soon-to-be-vacant position of CEO, various issues involving the banking industry, such as credit card fraud, embezzlement, inflation, subprime lending, and insider trading are discussed. First Mercantile American is eventually revealed to have a doppelganger in the form of an organized crime family. The fight for control of the bank continues under the darkening clouds of an approaching economic recession. One of the two CEO contenders is brought down for his role in making a large loan to a dishonest multinational conglomerate (loosely based on International Telephone and Telegraph) that goes into default. The ensuing scandal causes a bank run and panic among depositors, shareholders, and employees, with the perpetrator committing suicide rather than face the consequences of his actions. The other candidate assumes the position of CEO of the half-ruined bank.
10002897	/m/02pzh9w	Moonlight	Harold Pinter			 Andy, who is on his deathbed, rehashes his youth, loves, lusts, and betrayals with his wife, [Bel], while simultaneously his two sons [Fred and Jake] — clinical, conspiratorial, the bloodless, intellectual offspring of a hearty anti-intellectual — sit in the shadows, speaking enigmatically and cyclically, stepping around and around the fact of their estrangement from their father, rationalizing their love-hate relations with him and the distance that they are unable to close even when their mother attempts to call them home. In counterpoint to their uncomprehending isolation between the extremes of the death before life and the death after is their younger sister, Bridget, who lightly bridges the gaps between youth and age, death and life. (Back cover of the Grove Press ed.)
10003526	/m/02pzhz4	Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant: The Final Victory	William R. Forstchen	2005-06-18	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 {| style="clear:right; float:right; background:transparent;" |- | |} The book picks up where the second volume, Grant Comes East left off, after the Confederate victory over the Army of the Potomac. Lee's army meets Grant's army in the bloody "Battle of Frederick". This book has Lee's army, fresh after defeating the Army of the Potomac at Gunpowder River, dealing with Grant's army of the Susquehanna as it marches through the Cumberland Valley and towards Virginia. Lee's army consists of three corps, two of Veteran Troops under James Longstreet and John Bell Hood. Longstreet's corps numbers around 15,000, with divisions under Allegheney Johnson, 4,000, Lafayette McLaws, 6,000, and Robert Rodes old division (Now under Pierce Doles), 5,000. His largest division under George Pickett is now much reduced since Gunpowder River, and it's now the garrison of Baltimore. Longstreet's corps largely bore the brunt of the fighting there, so it's mainly kept in reserve at Fredrick. Hood commands the II corps, he's been recently promoted. His performance is aggressive and at times sloppy, but always remains as dependable and brilliant. Commanding the largest corps, it numbered 21,000 men, with veteran divisions under Jubal Early 7,000 men, Jerome B. Robertson, 6,000, R.H. Anderson's small command, 3,000 and Alfred Scales's survivors from Fort Stevens, 5,000. Lastly there was Beauregard's new third corps who were mainly troops who used to garrison the Carolinas and Virginia. Divided into three divisions, the officers names are not mentioned. Most likely though, they would've been Robert Ransom, Samuel French and Roswell Ripley, the department commanders underneath Beauregard at the time. His corps numbered close to 20,000 men, but were mainly green troops. Beauregard was often at odds with Lee through this campaign, and jealous. This would take its toll during the battle. On the Union side, Grant commanded all Union forces, and was directly in command of his troops sent from the west, The Army of The Susquehanna. This army consisted of the XIII corps, under Edward Ord. This was Grant's second largest corps, somewhere around 16,000 men full of veteran troops from Shiloh and before, these were the original core sector of Grant's army and its commander was legendary. His next Corps was only temporarily attached under Ambrose Burnside, the IX Corps taken from east Tennessee. It numbered around 16,000 men as well, including one division that is made up of colored troops who had never fired a shot. His third corps was the XVII Corps, his best unit of hardened veterans. His second in command, James Mcpherson, was in charge of those troops. This Corps also had Division commanders such as Blair or Logan. At 13,000 men though, it was the smallest corps in the army. His final Formation was the XIX corps, under Nathaniel P Banks. Made up of crack troops, this formation was the heaviest, numbering over 20,000. Grant also had available to him three other commands, his cavalry, under Ben Gierson and George Custer numbered close to 6,000 sabers. George Sykes commanded the fragment of the once proud Army of the Potomac which numbered close to 15,000-20,000. Lastly, Winfield Scott Hancock commanded the garrison of Washington, close to 43,000 green troops and colored from Washington. The Campaign begins after Lee has smashed the Army of the Potomac at Gunpowder River and Grant has finally completed transporting his army from the west and refitting it in Harrisburg, PA. Grant makes the first move, and begins to march his newly minted Army of the Susquehanna southward down the Cumberland Valley toward Virginia. He also sends a large force of untrained Pennsylvania militia whose enlistments are about to expire under General Darius Couch with a strong cavalry screen directly toward Baltimore as a feint. Lee, in Baltimore with the Army of Northern Virginia, intuits that Grant may be moving his main body south toward Virginia, but he cannot be certain and, thus, cannot fully commit his army until his own cavalry can break through the Union cavalry screen and obtain more information about their order of battle. However, purely as a precautionary measure, Lee does agree to send a pontoon train that was captured from the Union army during the Gettysburg Campaign westward to the vicinity of Frederick, MD, where it would be in better position to assist in any rapid Confederate movements in that direction. General George Armstrong Custer in command of a Union cavalry brigade screening Couch's force learns of Lee's movement of the pontoon train from a loyal Union railroad man, and decides it is an important enough prize that he must abandon his current mission, leaving Couch without proper screening forces. As a result, Lee quickly learns that, as suspected, Couch's force is a feint and of no military concern, and, also, that Custer is moving on Frederick. While the pontoons are not of critical importance, Lee realizes that the town of Frederick itself is extremely critical. Not only does it have critical railroad facilities and equipment that would expedite rapid movement of Confederate forces by rail, but it also sits at the base of the Catoctin Mountains and the passes through which he could launch a rapid attack on Grant's flank as his army marches down the Cumberland Valley. He immediately orders Stuart's three brigades of cavalry to Frederick to support the slim Confederate forces already holding the town, while his infantry follows close behind by rail and on foot (except for Pickett's division, which was decimated in the fight at the Gunpowder River, and is left behind as a rear guard in Baltimore). While this plays out, though, Custer's brigade of cavalry is able to reach Frederick and drive out the two regiments Confederate cavalry holding Frederick and retake the town as well as the critical rail facilities just minutes ahead of Stuart. Custer quickly makes plans both for defense and for destroying critical bridges and rail facilities on the banks of the Monocacy River just east of Frederick, but, before he can complete either, Stuart arrives and immediately begins to attack. His troopers greatly outnumber Custer's, and those numbers soon begin to show. However, Custer leads a brilliant "last stand" and, although he is mortally wounded in the process, he is able to hold out long enough to destroy the critical railroad bridge east of Frederick in spectacular fashion (by exploding several trains' boilers in an intentional collision), and, thus deny the critical rail facilities to the Confederates, which would, in turn, greatly slow efforts to bring infantry forward by rail for the remainder of the campaign. As Custer's last stand reaches its climax, Lee himself feels the result of the destruction of part of the railroad as he nearly dies in a train derailment. Lee along with Alfred Scales's Division arrive at the town shortly after Stuart retakes it and push beyond to seize the passes through the Catoctins with the intention of holding there until the remainder of the Confederate army can come up. James McPherson brings his Union Corps up, driving them relentlessly. When they arrive, his first brigade immediately engages Scales' strong defensive line and suffers heavily. After a half hour, his entire first division was engaged. Fifteen minutes later, his second division arrives and begins to forces Scales' now outnumbered command back. Not wanting to be a hollow wreck, Scales slowly pulled back. By the time McPherson's third and fourth divisions arrive, Scales was in full retreat. McPherson occupies the heights but needs reinforcements. However, Ambrose Burnside stops his corps to rest, which angers Grant. Burnside is relieved and Phillip Sheridan takes his place and tries to drive his men to the front. McPherson advances down from the crest of the Catoctins toward the town of Frederick where Lee decides to set a trap, intending to lure McPherson into the town where he can engage his isolated corps in front while sending additional forces around both flanks before Union reinforcements can arrive. Scales builds defensive positions in the town while Jerome Robertson brings his men to the south of town to flank McPherson in that direction and Stuart brings his troopers to the north to come down on McPherson's northern flank. McPherson's corps enters the town and confused, bloody house-to-house fighting ensues between his forces and Scales'. McPherson's men are taken piecemeal by groups of Confederates, and casualties quickly rise. Then, Robertson smashes through McPherson's flank and bags most of his Corps, killing McPherson in the process. The remainder of his corps flees the town and the day's actions are mainly over, except for a small fight with the IX corps. The first day's battle is a great tactical victory for the Confederates with over 7,000 casualties on the Union side versus only 2,000 on the Confederate side. The next day begins with various skirmishes. Lee is dug in on a ridge to the east of the town. By now the rest of the army has arrived and is dug in, Longstreet on the right\reserve, Hood in the center, and Beauregard on the left. After Grant probes his line, (Banks on the left, Ord on the right, Sheridan in the center and McPherson in reserve in Frederick itself. Grant is on a long ridge, with the town in the center. A road goes up his entire line, which is on the banks of the Monacacy. Throughout the day, the Union make small attacks but to little effect and the fighting on that day is over. The third day begins with Ord assaulting a Confederate salient on the river. After a fierce artillery barrage and duel, Ord attacks and suffers heavily. His first division is nearly destroyed at the ends of Hood's muskets. The second and third divisions redouble their efforts and temporarily push the confederates back to the ridge. Ord follows up on a frontal charge where he is defeated, until Jubal Early's men smash into Ord's line at the ford and after losing heavy casualties pushes Ord across the river for good. At the end of the day, Lee has lost 6,000 men, many of them coming from Early's division, and the past three days add up to 10,000. Ord on the other hand lost all but three thousand of his Corps, which makes the total loss in the army the past three days 23,000 with two full Corps, Ord's and McPherson's, essentially destroyed. Lee now feels his advantage and wants to use it. His plan is to send two of Beauregard's divisions as well as Robertson and Mclaws to assault the union right by going down south, cross the river, and roll up the road that longs along the Union line. Grant on the other hand decides to wait, because he has a trap on a wider scale that is now being sprung. First, he has placed all the forces in the fortifications around Washington under the command of General Winfield Scott Hancock with orders to advance westward along the south bank of the Potomac to seize and fortify all of the crossings that Lee might use if he must retreat back to Virginia. Moreover, the surviving remnants of the Army of the Potomac, now under Sykes, are being transported to Baltimore by sea with the intent of retaking the city and eventually advancing on Lee's rear. Consequently, Grant need only keep Lee's army engaged at Frederick, while these other forces complete their maneuvers. Lee, on the other hand, with his communications to the south soon to be severed will soon have little choice but to attack and defeat Grant here at Frederick. After skirmishing throughout the morning hours, Grant shifts Sheridan's reserves to reinforce Ord. By twelve, Beauregard assaults union pickets at the ford with Stuart's cavalry. After defeating them, he continues up the road on a two division front. But instead of waiting for Mclaws and Robertson's veterans, he goes in without them. The battle drags out and becomes very costly. Beauregard eventually pushes Sheridan's and Ord's men back. The section where the colored and Ord's men are form in a rail road cut. Beauregard tries to rush the position but suffers heavily. He then tries to surround it and mass his attack that way, the same tactic he used at Shiloh in a similar position. This sector called the hornets nest, holds for hour after hour. Casualties mount as he fails to take the position. The colored troops in particular do well, by blunting Beauregard's attack. Eventually Robertson arrives and bayonet charges the position with the Texas Brigade in the thick of it. Robertson is killed and his division is torn to shreds. After hours of fighting, Ord surrenders, but not without inflicting over 10,000 casualties. Lee is furious with Beauregard and thinks of relieving him, for now Grant has bled Lee dry. Lee orders a frontal assault along the entire line and Early, Richard Anderson, Johnson, Doles and Scales to assault Sheridan and Banks. Sheridan and his men put up a fierce fight but are routed after tearing Early's division to shreds and wounding the commander. Banks pulls back as well, the onrushing confederates see victory in sight as they rush up Braddock's heights. Scores of Union are captured as Longstreet and Hood bring their forces upon the fleeing federals. Finally it seemed the road was over and there was a clear road all the way to Washington. Hunt forms a massive battery along two roads in Frederick, with McPherson's old command behind him. After the hornet's nest, Lee directs personally McLaws and two of Beauregard's divisions along with Robertson's old command to assault the town. Going up the two roads, Stuart leads the advance against 160 guns. The assault is torn to shreds as scores fall on the road. Mclaws is killed but his division along with Robertson's old division and Johnson seize the guns. The victory was nearly theirs until Banks arrived and made short work of the attack. Stuart is wounded and Hood was hit near the breakthrough in Sheridan's line earlier. The attack in Frederick was torn apart, divisions torn to shreds. Lee led the assault until taken custody of and sent to the rear. Lee nearly saw them break another time, only to meet failure. The rest of Lee's forces withdrew across the river, ending the battle since they withdrew the next day. Grant won, barely. He lost over 30,000 men killed, wounded and captured. Two of his corps commanders were lost, another wounded. McPherson, Sheridan and Ord's corps were hollow wrecks, he lost two thirds of his force. Lee lost 25,000 men, half his infantry. Mclaws, Robertson, Anderson, Johnson and all three of Beauregard's divisional commanders were dead. Early, Hood, Fitz Lee, Stuart, Jenkins, Beauregard and Jones were wounded. This was the turning point of the war, and it cost the south's last hope: The army of Northern Virginia. At the same time as Lee was making his final desperate attacks at Frederick, the other parts of Grant's plan were coming together. Hancock's army seized all crossings of the Potomac to Lee's south and, with the assistance of volunteer work brigades composed of Washington D.C.'s African American population, constructed an impregnable line fortifications literally overnight. Meanwhile, General Sykes with the remainder of the Army of the Potomac landed at Baltimore, routed Pickett's rear guard, and, after seizing the remainder of the Confederate Army's supplies, began to advance westward on Lee's rear. With his army fought out and short of supplies and, now, facing threats to his flanks and rear, Lee was left with no choice but to retreat back to Virginia. He first tried to retake the Potomac crossings now held by Hancock, but he was driven back. Marching westward, while attempting to hold off Grant to his north and the now rapidly advancing Sykes to the west, Lee searched for and, eventually, found an undefended crossing. He began to build the pontoon bridge, but, as the bridge neared completion, Lee again found himself pressed on all sides. First, Hancock advanced artillery to a point close enough to begin a bombardment of the bridge, which greatly slowed progress and threatened to destroy the bridge before it could even be used. Then, Sykes attacked and was able to drive right to the bridge and seize it along with a number of prisoners. Lee attempted to march the remainder of his army away, but his army was now greatly outnumbered, low on supplies and physically exhausted. By the following day, Grant's army caught up with Lee as well, leaving him surrounded on all sides. After briefly considering one final, desperate attack to push Grant aside and breakout to Virginia, Lee sees the futility of it and agrees to surrender. Lee was only responsible for the Army of Northern Virginia, but its surrender became the death blow to the Confederacy. After the surrender, Grant paroled Lee and his army, and allowed them to "go home". Then, he declared a 30-day, unilateral truce, ostensibly to give the paroled Confederates time to return home, but more so to give Confederate President Jefferson Davis time to "come to his senses" and realize the war was lost. However, Davis tried desperately to build a new army to defend Virginia and continue the fight, but his plan consisted mostly of redrafting the now-paroled Lee and his troops back into service. Lee's honor would not permit him to fight again when it was strictly forbidden by the terms of his parole, so he resigned from the army and, due to the great respect his generals and soldiers had for him, they all followed suit. Without an army, Davis was left with no choice but to surrender, ending the war.
10003654	/m/02pzj1l	A Stitch in Time				 Presented as a letter from DS9's resident Cardassian spy and tailor Elim Garak (writer Andrew Robinson's character from the series) to Dr Julian Bashir, Garak recounts his life story, and also notes developments on Cardassia after the end of the Dominion War. According to the text, Garak has since assisted in the rebuilding and recovery of Cardassia, while also supporting democratic reforms for its government. He believes that the Dominion War and destruction of Cardassia were partially caused by Cardassia's military-led government. Robinson has stated that one of the reasons he wrote the novel was to get "total closure" of the character.
10007424	/m/02pzmw_	Idylls of the Rat King	Jeff Quinn		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 In Idylls of the Rat King, goblin bandits have taken up residence in an abandoned mine northwest of Silverton. Someone must get rid of them. But this is no ordinary abandoned mine. It was deliberately barricaded generations ago when the Gannu family, founders of Silverton, discovered an unspeakable evil on its lowest levels. And these are no ordinary goblins, for the curse of the Gannu family courses through their veins.
10014913	/m/02pzvl6	The Last Defender of Camelot	Roger Zelazny	1979		 The story concerns Lancelot who has survived to the present day by means of magic. He must help Morgana le Fay confront Merlin, who is half-mad and attempting to meddle in the affairs of the world. Lancelot has remained alive since the fall of Camelot, having the appearance of an elderly man but retaining his strength and fighting skills. He has spent his long life seeking the Holy Grail, believing that his immortality is punishment for his sins, and that finding the Grail will end his curse. Lancelot instead learns from Morgana le Fay that Merlin is responsible for his condition. Merlin has slept for centuries, but is about to awaken, and intends for Lancelot to be his champion and protector. Morgana warns Lancelot that Merlin will cause great harm in his misguided attempts to right the wrongs of the modern world, and that he must be stopped. Lancelot finds Merlin and rejuvenates him from his centuries-long sleep with a magic elixir. Lancelot tries to persuade Merlin to desist from his plans, and Merlin removes the spell of immortality. Anticipating Merlin, Lancelot drinks the remainder of the elixir to restore his own youth. Merlin summons a "hollow knight" (a suit of armor animated by a spirit) to kill Lancelot. Morgana defeats Merlin, and Lancelot vanquishes the spirit, but is mortally wounded. As Lancelot dies, he finally sees a vision of the Holy Grail.
10016776	/m/02pzxrp	Here Be Monsters!			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Arthur lives with his adoptive grandfather, William, in the complex network of tunnels beneath Ratbridge. William went underground after being unjustly accused of attempted murder. Arthur emerges at sundown in search of food, aided by a pair of hand-cranked mechanical wings. He also carries a doll—an effigy of his grandfather with his wings—which serves as a walkie-talkie, allowing him to communicate with his grandfather. On one such expedition Arthur witnesses an illegal cheese hunt. He follows the hunters and the captured cheeses back to the Cheese Hall. Arthur's wings are stolen, and he is almost captured, by Archibald Snatcher, the leader of the once-powerful Cheese Guild. Arthur is rescued by Fish, a boxtroll, who takes Arthur to meet his friend, Willbury Nibble. Willbury is the proprietor of a former pet shop called Here Be Monsters. He shares his home with several boxtrolls (Shoe, Egg, and Fish) and a cabbagehead (Titus). Such creatures usually live underground and are collectively termed Underlings. Arthur's new friends intend to use their knowledge of the Underground to help him return to his grandfather, but they quickly discover that all of the entrances to the tunnels have been sealed. Back at the shop, a mysterious individual sells Willbury a number of miniaturized creatures and attempts (unsuccessfully) to buy their full-sized counterparts. Later, during a shopping trip, Willbury and Arthur are surprised to find that miniaturized Underlings are being marketed to Ratbridge's women as the latest fashion trend. They also seek out Willbury's friend, Marjorie. An inventor, Marjorie is camped out at the patent office, waiting for the return of the clerk who left with the prototype of her latest invention. When they return to the shop, the place is a shambles and the Underlings are missing. While assessing the wreckage they are visited by Kipper and Tom, members of the crew of the Ratbridge Nautical Laundry, soliciting customers. The Laundry is headquartered on a ship that became stuck in a canal and is staffed by a combination of men, rats, and crows. (Playing against stereotype, the rats are portrayed as intelligent, congenial characters who share leadership duties with the men. It is alluded to that the crew were pirates before going into business as a laundry.) Several of their crew have also gone missing and they are happy to join the search for the Underlings. The group begins surveillance of the Cheese Hall. After seeing the Guild members leave on another illegal hunt, Arthur slips inside. He retrieves his wings and helps a number of Underlings (including his friends) escape from the dungeon. They return to the Nautical Laundry. However, corrupt police officers arrest Arthur and hand him over the Guild; he is imprisoned in the dungeon. The prisoner in the adjoining cell—Herbert, the Man in the Iron Socks—tells Arthur that the Guild is creating miniature creatures, although he doesn't know why. He helps Arthur retrieve the keys to their cells from the sleeping guard. Meanwhile, Willbury, Marjorie, and several members of the Laundry disguise themselves as boxtrolls and enter the Underground via an open tunnel outside the city walls. They locate Arthur's grandfather, but soon the party is caught in the traps used by the Guild to capture Underlings and taken to the laboratory. Marjorie recognizes an enlarged version of her stolen invention—now revealed to be a size transference device. A gigantic rat emerges from a pit in the middle of the floor. The Laundry members recognize it as one of their missing comrades, although greatly enlarged. Snatcher reveals that the Guild has been transferring the size of captured Underlings to "the Great One", and feeding him with the captured cheeses, so that they can wreak vengeance on Ratbridge. Still believing her to be a boxtroll, the Guild transfers Marjorie's size to the rat, leaving her only seven inches tall. Arthur is then brought into the lab and is to be the next shrunk. However his guard is actually Herbert, disguised as a Guild member. Herbert is able to free the captives using his "walloper"—a large mallet—and knocks a hole in the wall to allow their escape. Arthur again retrieves his wings—and Marjorie's prototype—and the group quickly returns to the ship. The Guild proceeds to dress the Great One in battle armor, and the hole in the wall only allows him an easier exit. Seeing the danger the town is in, the heroes return to the Cheese Hall hoping to stop the Great One. They activate a large electromagnet, which draws the iron armor back toward the hall. However, the pressure within the armor is so great that the Great One explodes, covering the town in a layer of cheese. The shock wave triggers a collapse of the underground tunnels below the hall. Using the prototype size transference device, the miniaturized creatures are returned to their normal size. William is able to clear his name, and he, Arthur, and Herbert take up residence in comfortable rooms above the old pet shop.
10021083	/m/02p_1bj	Sometimes a Great Notion	Ken Kesey	1964-07-27	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story centers on the Stamper family, a hard-headed logging clan in the fictional town of Wakonda, Oregon. The union loggers in the town of Wakonda go on strike in demand of the same pay for shorter hours in response to the decreasing need for labor due to the introduction of the chainsaw. The Stamper family, however, owns and operates a company without unions and decides to not only continue work, but to supply the regionally owned mill with all the lumber the laborers would have supplied had the strike not occurred. This decision, and the surrounding details of the decision, are deeply explored in this multilayered historical background and relationship study—especially in its examination of the following characters: Henry Stamper, the old and half-crazed patriarch whose motto "Never Give A Inch!" has defined the nature of the family and its dynamic with the town; Hank, the oldest son of Henry whose strong will and personality make him a leader but his subtle insecurities and desires threaten the stability of his family; Leland, the younger son of Henry and half brother of Hank, whose constant weaknesses and the nature of his intellect led him away from the family to the East Coast, but whose eccentric behavior and desire for revenge against Hank lead him back to Oregon; and Viv, whose love for her husband Hank fades quickly when she begins to realize her true place in the Stamper household. The family house itself manifests the physical stubbornness of the Stamper family; as the nearby river widens slowly and causes erosion, all the other houses on the river have either been consumed or wrecked by the waters or moved away from the current, except the Stamper house, which stands on a precarious peninsula struggling to maintain every inch of land with the help of an arsenal of boards, sand bags, cables, and other miscellaneous items brandished by Henry Stamper in his fight against the encroaching river.
10023478	/m/02p_480	The King's Last Song	Geoff Ryman	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in Cambodia, it tells the story of Map, a policeman and former Khmer Rouge, and young motoboy William as they search for the gold leaf memoirs of the 12th Century king Jayavarman VII, which have been stolen by a former lieutenant of Pol Pot. The memoir is fictional, but Jayavarman is not, and an account of his life and reign is told in a parallel thread. In addition there is a lengthy flashback to Map's violent activities in the last years of the Cambodian war. The novel makes explicit the contrast between ancient Cambodia's opulence and the poverty and corruption of its modern counterpart.
10023921	/m/02p_4qt	An Abundance of Katherines	John Green	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics"}	 Colin Singleton is an anagram-loving seventeen year old boy who has become depressed because though he has maintained his status of a child prodigy, he has not yet become a “genius.” He wishes to accomplish this goal by having a Eureka moment. As well as not being the genius he hopes to be, his girlfriend, Katherine 19 (over the span of his life, Colin has dated nineteen girls named Katherine, all spelled in that manner), recently dumped him. In these relationships, Colin remembers only the Katherine dumping him. After graduating from high school, and before college, Colin's best and only friend convinces him to go on a road trip with him to take his mind off the breakup. The friend is Hassan Harbish, a funny, lazy, Judge Judy-obsessed Muslim. After driving for a while, they come across the alleged resting place of the body of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. There, they meet Lindsey Lee Wells, a “paramedic in training.” She is the tour guide for those seeing the tomb of the Archduke. After a short time, Colin and Hassan find themselves employed by Hollis, Lindsey’s mother and the woman running a local factory that currently produces tampon strings. They live with their employer and her daughter in a rural town called Gutshot, Tennessee. As time passes, Colin finds himself becoming attracted to Lindsey, though matters are somewhat complicated by her on-again, off-again boyfriend Colin (he and Hassan call him TOC, "the other Colin"). Our Colin, the prodigy, attempts to become a genius by having his Eureka moment. He chases this goal through his theorem, which is meant to determine the curve of any relationship based on several factors of the personalities of the two people in a relationship. It would predict the future of any two people. His theorem eventually works for all but one of his past relationships with a Katherine. But it is later discovered by Colin that he had dumped this Katherine (Katherine the Third), rather than the other way around. The graphs all make perfect sense at this juncture. As Colin’s story is revealed to the reader, we find that K-19 was also the first of the Katherines, “Katherine the Great.” While the backstories of Colin’s life play out, Hassan gets a girlfriend, Katrina, a friend of Lindsey’s. The relationship is cut short when Colin and Hassan find her having sex with TOC in the graveyard where the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s corpse is. A fight between TOC and all of the surrounding acquaintances begins when Lindsey finds out that he’s been cheating on her. While recovering from a kick to the groin, Colin anagrams the Archduke's name to dull the pain, and discovers that it is actually Lindsey's great-grandfather, named Fred N. Dinzanafar, that is buried in the tomb. Colin finds Lindsey at her secret hideout in a cave that she had shown him previously, where he tells her the story of every Katherine he ever loved. Lindsey tells him that she feels so self-centered, claiming that she does not feel sad but instead slightly relieved by TOC's affair. They then confess their love for each other. But when Colin applies the Theorem to him and Lindsey, it calculates that she will dump him in four days. Lindsey then slips a note under his door, four days later, stating that she cannot be his girlfriend because she is in love with Hassan. But she leaves a P.S. stating that she is joking. Colin realizes that his theorem cannot predict the future of a relationship. It can only shed light on why a relationship failed. Despite this, Colin is content not “mattering”. Hassan also states that he is applying for two college classes, which Colin has been trying to convince him to do throughout the book. The story ends with the trio driving to a nearby Wendy's, with Lindsey saying they could just "keep going and not stop." Colin takes her advice, as a transcendental and ecstatic feeling of "connection" with Lindsey, Hassan, and everyone not in the car surges through him. He has finally found peace and happiness via connection with other people, rather than from the pursuit of distinguishing himself from everyone, feeling "non-unique in the very best way possible."
10023951	/m/02p_4rh	Restless	William Boyd	2006-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the novel, Boyd tells the story of Eva, a young Russian woman, who is recruited after her brother's death to work for the British secret service. During this time she falls for her mentor and boss, Lucas Romer. But all is not as it seems as Romer is working as a double agent which ultimately leads to the attempted murder of Eva, alongside the deaths of other agents. The tale is interlinked with the present day story of Eva's daughter and how she comes to terms with the discovery of her mother's secret life. The setting of the novel is in London, Oxford, Scotland, Europe, and the United States.
10025054	/m/02p_5wy	The Key				 The entire story is written in diary form, alternating between the entries of an elderly man who decides to spice up his ailing marriage with a series of intrigues and that of his much younger wife, who complies with her husband's desires without letting him know she is aware of his schemes.
10032938	/m/02p_f8x	The Serpent Mage	Greg Bear	1986	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Michael Perrin has completed his magical training and is now back home, living with his parents and continuing his training. Perrin has inherited Arno Waltiri's home and estate. Perrin moves in and begins to go through Waltiri's papers, where he finds a strange news story about bodies that were discovered in a nearby hotel. Perrin is contacted by a musical faculty member from UCLA, Kristine Pendeers. Pendeers is searching for Infinity Concerto - Opus 45 with hopes that is has been left in Waltiri's estate, with the goal of completing Mahler's unfinished Symphony and performing the two pieces together. Perrin trains an apprentice Sidhe, and tries to arbitrate a peace between Sidhe and humans.
10033408	/m/02p_fx4	Marianela				 The novel takes place in the fictional town of Socartes, Spain. The town's name refers to the philosopher Socrates and his ideas about internal and external beauty. It tells the story of Marianela (sometimes referred to as "La Nela"), a poor orphan girl with an ugly face, and her love for Pablo, a blind boy, who has feelings for La Nela as well. Marianela frequently sings to Pablo, and he believes she is beautiful because of her voice. Pablo's father asks a famous doctor, named Teodoro Golfin, to come and examine Pablo to see if his sight can be restored. Pablo, full of hope at the prospect, promises La Nela that he will marry her after the operation if it is successful. He is convinced that La Nela is beautiful, even when she tells him otherwise. In the meantime, Pablo's father plans for Pablo to marry his beautiful cousin, Florentina, but tells neither of them about it. Florentina comes to Socartes and when Marianela first sees her, she mistakes her for the Virgin Mary because of her beauty. When Florentina is out walking with Pablo and Marianela, she expresses her pity for La Nela because she is poor, abandoned and nobody loves her. She vows to take charge of Nela and clothe and educate her. Pablo eventually gets the operation that gives him his sight. Before seeing Nela, he sees Florentina and proposes to her instead. Because of this, Nela attempts suicide but is saved by Teodoro Golfín, the eye doctor who cured Pablo. He and Florentina take Nela to Pablo's villa and take care of her while she is hiding away from Pablo because of her looks. Then, due to Pablo's desire to see her, Pablo finds his way to La Nela's room and serenades Florentina. He then sees La Nela in bed and confuses her for "just a poor girl who Don Teodoro took in from the street." La Nela then admits it is she and kisses his hand three times. Upon the third kiss, she dies of a broken heart and leaves Pablo distraught.
10035958	/m/02p_l16	Needle	Hal Clement	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Hunter, an alien lifeform (when not inside another being, resembling a four-pound green jellyfish) with the ability to live in symbiosis with and within another creature, is in hot pursuit of another of his kind. Both crash their ships into Earth, in the Pacific Ocean, and both survive the crashes. The Hunter makes its way to shore (its erstwhile host having been killed in the crash) and takes up residence in the nearest human being it can find (as it turns out, fifteen-year-old Robert Kinnaird) without letting the human being know. By the time it has figured out enough of what goes on inside a human being to look through Bob's eyes, it is shocked to find itself within an air vessel, being carried further away from its quarry every second. As it happens, Bob is simply returning to a New England boarding school from his home on an industrial island in the Western Pacific. Once Bob arrives at school, the Hunter sees no alternative to communicating with his host. After initial attempts produce panic in the boy, the Hunter eventually finds a way to convince Bob of his presence. Bob is very accepting of his guest, perhaps beyond what would be expected of a teenage boy who learns another entity is inside him, observing his every move. The two plot a way to return home. The puzzle distracts Bob from his studies, leading to a decline in grades that the school authorities ascribe to homesickness, and he is sent home for the remainder of the term. Upon arrival, the two begin to seek out their quarry. Bob is injured by an accident. The Hunter is able to hold the wound together, but he can't stop Bob from limping, and Bob is sent to the island doctor. They see no alternative to confiding in the doctor (the Hunter is forced to show his own form to convince the man) and the doctor becomes an ally in their search. Which of the many humans on the island is the host to their quarry? It is worse than a needle in a haystack (thus the title) because a needle at least looks like a needle, not a piece of straw. The Hunter is able to solve the riddle by observing the behavior of the island people. Bob's father, known for his attention to detail and safety, has been taking amazing risks. He is at least unconsciously aware that an accident will have no ill consequences. The quarry resides within him. The Hunter confirms this, and Bob and the alien have a new puzzle—how to get the alien out of Mr. Kinnaird's body without harming the man? This time, Bob comes up with the solution. He places himself in the middle of a large number of (empty) oil cans, uses a little actual oil to start a small fire, making it look like there will be a huge explosion shortly, and calls his father for help. The fugitive alien, fearful of being killed in the explosion, knocks out his host and removes himself from Mr. Kinnaird's unconscious body. As soon as the alien is a few feet away from Bob's father, the boy grabs the one full oil can, races over to the alien, pours oil over it, and lights it on fire. He then tends to his father. Mr. Kinnaird is fine, but Bob is worried. He and the Hunter had better come up with a good story for the man, or the Hunter will have to find some way to assuage the pain of a spanking.
10036598	/m/02p_mgy	ESPY				 The film deals with the recruitment of racecar driver Jiro Miki (Kusakari) and his dog, Cheetah, to a group of people who use ESP, psychokinesis, and other special mental abilities to fight crime. The major villain is Wolf (Wakayama), whose behavior stems as a result of the prejudicial murder of his father over his father's psychic abilities.
10038099	/m/02p_q69	The Strategy Paradox	Michael E. Raynor	2007	{"/m/09s1f": "Business"}	 The Strategy Paradox, the title and focus of the book sets up a ubiquitous but little-understood tradeoff. The tradeoff is that most strategies are built on specific beliefs about an unpredictable future, but current strategic approaches force leaders to commit to an inflexible strategy regardless of how the future might unfold. It is this commitment to uncertainty that is the cause of "the strategy paradox."
10040902	/m/02p_tl8	The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp	Rick Yancey	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A teenager named Alfred Kropp lives in a small apartment with his Uncle Farrel, who is a security guard. He stays mostly secluded, both at home and at school. A man named Arthur Myers calls Alfred's uncle at work, and offers one million dollars for the return of an object stolen from him by Uncle Farrell's boss. Basically, Alfred has to break into the main office, find the safe, and steal the object himself, accidentally cutting himself on the blade of the sword. Then when he is about to leave, he is attacked by three monks. A battle ensues, but Alfred manages to defeat them with Excalibur. Alfred and Uncle Farrell manage to escape, where they are attacked by Arthur Myers. He steals the sword, and kills Uncle Farrell, sparing Alfred. Alfred meets Bernard Samson ( Bernard is Alfred´s dad), who explains to him that Arthur Myers was an alias of an international terrorist, who wanted control of Bernard's sword, which was Excalibur. Bernard Samson, the heir of Lancelot, goes off to Jativa, in Spain, to try to reclaim the Sword from Myers, whom he knows as Mogart. A member of an international organization called OIPEP interjects that their codename for Mogart is 'The Dragon'. When Alfred asks Samson if there is anything he can do to help, Samson replies, "Pray." Alfred returns to his normal life unwillingly, and is taken into a foster home owned by a family called the Tuttles. Alfred, unsatisfied with his normal life, takes to hanging around the nearby town, particularly the cafes. There, Alfred meets Bennacio, a knight protector of the sword (and the lead monk who attacked him); he reveals that all the defenders, including Samson, were killed, and the sword was lost. After relating this, Bennacio leaves the coffee shop they were in and Alfred follows him. Alfred sees Bennacio get attacked and attempts to save him. They go to Bennacio's room at the Marriott, where Bennacio uses Alfred's blood (where he cut himself) to heal the wound. Bennacio explains to Alfred that Excalibur has the power to heal, and that having been cut by it, Alfred has been granted the power to heal. The next day, Bennacio is ready to leave without Alfred, but he pleads to the knight to help in any way he can. Bennacio offers Alfred a chance to drive him. They drive to Canada (In a Koenigsegg CCX) and steal a Ferrari Enzo, but are attacked by more of Mogart's henchmen. Bennacio kills them when he has the chance and then continues on their journey. They stop at a deceased knight's house, where Windimar's mother lets them stay. They leave the next day, and get attacked once again. This time there are six of them on Suzuki Hayabusas. Alfred and Bennacio continue through Nova Scotia, and hijack a Jaguar because their Ferrari was critically damaged. They then fly to France. In France, Bennacio tells Alfred that he is a descendant of Lancelot, making him the heir to his father's title. Then OIPEP offers to trade 10.5 billion dollars for the sword; however, Mogart double crosses them and kills Bennacio in the process, leaving Alfred as the last man standing. Mike Arnold, a member of OIPEP who set up the exchange, is also revealed as a traitor at this time. Bennacio's daughter, Natalia, is taken by Mogart, and held for a ransom. Alfred personally travels to Merlin's cave in England in order to save Bennacio's daughter. Here, in Merlin's Cave in Tintagel, Kropp finds his true destiny as the master of the Sword. Mogart is unable to kill him with it even though Kropp is impaled upon the sword and pinned to the wall of Merlin's Caves underneath Tintagel. As in the original King Arthur stories, Mogart is unable to pull the sword out of the stone as only the Master of the Sword can claim it. Kropp, having healed himself with the sword, pulls the sword out of the stone, finishes off Mogart, and returns home as a hero. At the end of the story, Alfred finds that he yearns for more excitement and calls OIPEP, wanting a job fighting "agents of darkness."
10044024	/m/02p_ymm	The Ghost Brigades	John Scalzi	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character in this narrative is Jared Dirac. He is instilled with the consciousness of a traitor, Charles Boutin, and has to deal with memories of a life he hasn't lived, while trying to find out who he really is himself. Jared is a member of the Special Forces, also known as The Ghost Brigades. Jane Sagan and Harry Wilson are the only primary characters returning from Old Man's War.
10044526	/m/02p_yx6	The Prairie: A Tale	James Fenimore Cooper	1827	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story opens with Ishmael, his family, Ellen and Abiram slowly making their way across the virgin prairies of the Midwest looking for a homestead, just two years after the Louisiana Purchase, and during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They meet the trapper (Natty Bumppo), who has left his home in New York state to find a place where he cannot hear the sound of people cutting down the forests. In the years between his other adventures and this novel, he tells us only that he has walked all the way to the Pacific Ocean and seen all the land between the coasts (a heroic feat, considering Lewis and Clark hadn’t yet completed the same trek). That night, a band of Teton warriors steal all of Ishmael’s animals, stranding the immigrants. The doctor returns the next morning along with his donkey. The trapper helps the family relocate their wagons, including one with mysterious contents, to a nearby butte where they will be safer when the Tetons return. Middleton joins the group when he stumbles upon the trapper and Paul. Before they return to the butte, Ishmael and his family go looking for his eldest son, Asa, whom they find murdered. The trapper, Paul, and Middleton return to camp, find Inez whom Abiram and Ishmael had been keeping captive, and flee with her and Ellen. Ishmael chases them until the Tetons capture the Trapper and his crew. They escape the Tetons, and then Ishmael forms an alliance with the Indians. The Indians attempt to recapture the trapper by surrounding them with a prairie fire, but the trapper lights a backfire and saves everyone. They meet up with Hard-heart, a Pawnee Indian who survived the fire wrapped in a buffalo skin, and attempt to escape to his village. The Tetons capture them. Ishmael demands the trapper, Inez, and Ellen for helping the Tetons but is denied and turned away. Mahtoree intends to take Inez and Ellen for his new wives. Le Balafre attempts to spare Hard-heart’s life by making Hard-heart his son. Hard-heart refuses, kills Weucha, and flees the village. When Hard-heart’s Pawnee warriors attack the Teton village, the trapper and his friends escape, only to be captured by Ishmael. The trapper is accused of Asa’s death until Abiram’s guilt is discovered. Abiram is executed, and Ishmael’s family returns east without Inez, Ellen, or the doctor. Middleton, Inez, Paul and Ellen travel back to Louisiana and Kentucky, respectively, while the trapper joins a Pawnee village located on a tributary of the Missouri River. Middleton and Paul return just in time to witness the trapper's noble death and bury him.
10044910	/m/02p_z9m	Unburnable			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Covering the African Diaspora, and offering a reinterpretation of Black history, the narrative of family, betrayal, vengeance, and murder, follows the fictional character Lillian Baptiste as she is willed back to her island home of Dominica from Washington, D.C. to finally settle her past. Haunted by scandal and secrets, Lillian Baptiste fled Dominica when she was fourteen after discovering she was the daughter of Iris, the half-crazy woman whose life was told of in chanté mas songs sung during Carnival: songs about a village on a mountaintop littered with secrets, masks that supposedly fly and wreak havoc, and a man who suddenly and mysteriously dropped dead. After twenty years away, Lillian returns to her island of birth to face the demons of her past.
10052331	/m/02q088_	The Journal of Julius Rodman	Edgar Allan Poe	1840	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Journal of Julius Rodman is a fictionalised account of the first expedition across the Western Wilderness, crossing the Rocky Mountains. The journal chronicled a 1792 expedition led by Julius Rodman up the Missouri River to the Northwest. This 1792 expedition would have made Rodman the first European to cross the Rocky Mountains. The detailed journal chronicles events of the most surprising nature, and recounts "the unparalleled vicissitudes and adventures experienced by a handful of men in a country which, until then, had never been explored by 'civilised man'." Julius Rodman was an English emigrant who first settled in New York, then moved to Kentucky and Mississippi. His expedition which departed from Mills' Point up the Missouri River with several companions was described in a diary. The MS. of the diary was submitted by his heir, James E. Rodman. Rodman is accompanied on his expedition by Pierre, Alexander Wormley, Toby, a Virginian, Andrew Thornton, and the Greely brothers, John, Robert, Meredith, Frank, and Poindexter. The party is described as "mere travellers for pleasure", abandoning commercial or pecuniary motives. They traveled by canoe and by a thirty foot long keelboat which was bulletproof. The travelers described the White Cliffs of the Missouri: "The face of these remarkable cliffs, as might be supposed, is chequered with a variety of lines formed by the trickling of the rains upon the soft material, so that a fertile fancy might easily imagine them to be gigantic monuments reared by human art, and carved over with hieroglyphical devices." In the final chapter, a ferocious attack by two grizzly bears on the expedition party is described: "We had scarcely time to say a word to each other before two enormous brown bears (the first we had yet encountered during the voyage) came rushing at us open-mouthed from a clump of rose-bushes." Their fiercenss was detailed: "These animals are much dreaded by the Indians, and with reason, for they are indeed formidable creatures, possessing prodigious strength, with untamable ferocity, and the most wonderful tenacity of life." A member of the party, Greely, is attacked and mauled by one of the bears. Rodman and another member, the Prophet, assist him. They shoot the bear but cannot stop the attack. Subsequently, Rodman and the Prophet are attacked. Cornered on the cliff, they are saved from death by Greely, who shoots the bear at point-blank range: "Our deliverer, who had fought many a bear in his life-time, had put his pistol deliberately to the eye of the monster, and the contents had entered his brain."
10053519	/m/02q09g3	Requiem for the Conqueror	W. Michael Gear	1991-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Humanity is trapped in a "gravity well", the so-called Forbidden Borders and there is increasing conflict because of ever-decreasing space resources. Staffa Kar Therma a.k.a. the Lord Commander is a mercenary who leads an elite group of soldiers (the Companions) and aligns himself to the group that pays him the most. He is separated from his soldiers and falls in to the hands of a slave trader but escapes, and comes into contact with a quasi-religious group led by the magister (who in turn is advised by the MagComm). The magister (under the guidance of the MagComm) believes that the Lord Commander is the root of all evil and attempts to assassinate him. Meanwhile Staffa discovers that his son is alive and is the leader of a battalion of the emperor's forces. Staffa finally escapes from the magister and the MagComm, killing the former and partially destroying the latter. The partially destroyed MagComm's automated repair mechanisms kick in and the computer becomes self-aware.
10063442	/m/02q0lhc	The Imposture				 Flaviano is the courtly favorite of the Duke of Mantua; he desires to marry the Duke's daughter Fioretta. She, however, has been promised to Prince Leonato of Ferrara, who has brought his army to the aid of Mantua in its current war. Honorio, the Duke's son and Fioretta's brother, favors Leonato; while he lies wounded, Flaviano schemes to persuade the Duke that Leonato is a wild young man who is morally unfit to be Fioretta's husband. Flaviano manipulates the situation so that Fioretta is moved to a convent, from where he spirits her secretly to his mother's country house. He also puts out word that Fioretta has decided to remain at the convent for a year, effectively postponing the marriage. Prince Leonato is outraged, and blames the Duke for bad faith; he demands a face-to-face meeting with Fioretta. The Duke feels that he cannot deny this demand &mdash; but he and Flaviano plan to substitute another woman in the meeting. One of the novices at the content is Flaviano's former mistress Juliana; Flaviano prevails upon her to take Fioretta's part. He even wants Juliana to marry Leonato &mdash; but the Duke will not go that far; Juliana is merely to insist upon the one-year delay. Prince Leonato arrives at the convent, and has his meeting with the false Fioretta. Juliana, superficially, plays her part as instructed; yet Leonato correctly interprets her replies to indicate that she would not object if he forced the issue. Taking the hint, Leonato leads a troop of his men to break into the convent and carry off "Fioretta." He takes her home to Ferrara...where the true Fioretta has also arrived. Suspicious of Flaviano, Fioretta has escped from his mother's country house and reached Ferrara in disguise, where she has taken an assumed name and is staying with Leonato's sister Donabella. Honorio has also come to Ferrara, to seek justice and vengeance for what he thinks is the rape of his sister. As he and Leonato are prepared to duel, Juliana and Donabella rush between them. Honorio confronts his pretended sister, but Juliana manages to persuade him to remain silent for the time being. The real Fioretta locates and welcomes her brother, while Juliana confronts Prince Leonato. She tells the prince that she is a noble virgin forced to impersonate Fioretta by the Duke of Mantua. Honorio breaks in with a captive Flaviano; Flaviano has followed Honorio to Ferrara to kill him, but has gotten caught instead. Honorio tries to explain Flaviano's villainous manipulations &mdash; but Leonato refuses to listen; he believes Juliana, and has resolved both to marry her and to go to war with Mantua. For a moment, Flaviano's plotting appears to have worked; but he is betrayed by a co-conspirator named Claudio. Juliana's falsehood is exposed; she begs for mercy, but Leonato casts her aside. The Duke of Mantua himself arrives in Ferrara, and the Fioretta/Juliana tangle is exposed and unraveled. Leonato is matched with Fioretta, and Honorio with Donabella; Juliana is sent back to the convent, and Flaviano is exiled. The play's subplot involves the courting of the widow Florelia by the soldiers Hortensio and Volterino. Florelia says that she will marry the man who cures her son Bertoldi of his cowardice. The soldiers, with a share of soldierly drinking and brawling, try to make Bertoldi brave, and failing that, to make him appear brave; but that fails too. Eventually making the best of a bad job, Florelia marries Hortensio.
10065416	/m/02q0njc	The Door in the Lake	Nancy Butts		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Twelve-year old Joey vanished while gone camping with his family, and can't remember what happened during the two years he was missing - or why he has not grown. Then he starts to have seizures and starts to remember what happened - he believes that he was abducted by aliens.
10066438	/m/02q0pr7	Lost Property				 The book is about Josh Tambling who is well loved and cared for by his parents. Josh and his mates have formed a grunge metal band and dream of being rock stars. But when he lands a holiday job in the Lost Property Office at Sydney’s Central station, Josh starts to sense the loss of some important things in his life. One is that his brother Michael has drifted off and will not let anyone know where he is. The stress this is putting on his family grows, so when Josh discovers a clue to Michael’s whereabouts while handling lost items in his work, he sets out on his own to bring him back. Josh Tambling is the son of a famous footballer and a very well known radio station personality. He is in a band with his mates. He has a girlfriend named Alicia. During the holidays he works at the Lost Property office. On his first day a lady requests a cardigan and Josh gives it to her but she doesn't find what she wanted, a brooch. Josh's supervisor, Clive, explains that sometimes they separate jewellery and other valuable items from bags and clothing. He finds a brooch in the safe where jewellery is kept and it belongs to the woman. She is overcome with emotion and explains that even though it is of little monetary value,it is a family heirloom and very important to her. Here, Josh realises how important small things can be to people. He goes for a band practice with his friends and they meet his friend Steve's sister, Gemma. The next night Josh goes to Alicia's house and goes into the pool. They play around and look at the stars and Josh confesses that he believes that the universe is big for no reason. His trust in God slowly decreases. He goes to work again and in the afternoon goes for another band practice. He talks to Gemma about the same conversation he had with Alicia and she responds that there is more out there than just a big waste of space. The band decide to go to The Domain for New Year's Eve. When they go Josh sits next to Alicia and his friend Neven sits next to Gemma and their relationship is revealed. That evening Josh finds himself dwelling on the last thing Clive said to him, which was “Don’t forget, if you find any lost property, even the small things can be valuable”. Josh is in the train home when he answers to a calling, he starts picking up all the lost property in his carriage then follows on to do all the carriages. He continues to do this on another train, then another until he reaches Cronulla Station. His life begins to go downhill.
10070413	/m/02q0tjy	Rules	Cynthia Lord	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Catherine is a 12-year-old girl. Her eight-year-old brother, David, has autism and Catherine explains how this makes her life complicated and causes her to wish that her life was a bit more "normal". She is compiling a list of rules for David so that he can understand how the world works. Despite her search for a normal life, she finds herself drawn into a friendship with wheelchair-bound Jason. His physical disability and her brother's mental disability combine to make her ashamed, especially of what her new neighbor Krista might think. Despite her fear, she struggles to do the right thing for everyone involved. She learns not to be scared to be afraid of what others think of her. All in all, she learns to deal with her brother and life.
10072879	/m/02q0wwk	CHERUB: The Fall	Robert Muchamore	2007-03-15	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 An MI5 operation goes disastrously wrong when two agents working with James murder their prime suspect, Denis Obidin, and he is trapped within Aero City, Russia. He is not able to contact campus and when he attempts to he is beaten up badly by a group of Russian thugs. They have heard of a reward offered for James' capture, and as such they call the hotline. A short while later, a man appears, hands them their reward and bundles James into a car. Once they are driving, he reveals himself to be a CIA agent working undercover, and takes James back to his flat where he treats the boy to the best of his ability before challenging him as to why he was there, and why the suspect was killed. When James protests that their intentions were peaceful, he is shown CCTV footage of the murder. The agent lets James call CHERUB campus before he leaves, telling him not to go to sleep at any cost. Ewart appears a while later and takes James to an airfield where two British service people are to help with their escape. The Russian authorities appear, though, and they are forced to take the couple with them. On the flight, James passes out when air trapped in his broken nose expands due to air pressure changes and the pilot ends up making an emergency landing in Helsinki, Finland. Half a week later, James wakes up in hospital on CHERUB campus to the relief of Lauren and Kerry. Once he is up and about, James is made to choose between helping junior CHERUBs preparing for Basic Training or a course in socioeconomics. James chooses the PE training, and is asked to "help" a redshirt, Kevin Summer, who is scared of heights. Bruce Norris helps, but breaks his ankle falling from the height course. However, while this freaks James out, Kevin gains confidence and soon decides to try the height course alone. He succeeds, and James is rewarded for his work by having his history GCSE pass guaranteed. Meryl Spencer and some of James' best friends get together and organize a day out and they think he deserves it after all he went through. James has no idea what is happening until he gets a message from Meryl.He heads down to her office terrified as he doesn't know why she wants him. When he arrives he learns that all his friends have put together enough money and vouchers to go to a fancy hotel. Firstly they go motor carting and later they go a Spa Hotel where they get drunk and James pressures his girlfriend Kerry to have sex with him. She refuses and leaves in a crying state, but forgives him the next morning. After the Russia disaster, James has been suspended from all missions and after a talk with Mr. Pike, he suspects Ewart, the mission controller, of betraying him. James needs to have his history homework finished and spills coffee over Kerry's work while he was copying off it, landing in a fight. James is later heartbroken when Kerry shouts at him and accidentally mentions him screwing his mission. James later asks Kerry to help him investigate, but refuses, so James goes alone. While looking through Ewart's office, James is caught by Dana, another CHERUB agent, who decides to help. From investigating some papers they found in the office, they find out that Ewart has been lying about how much evidence he had. After, Dana admits that she fancies James and they end up kissing. Then it leads to stripping and Dana allows James to see her breasts. However, as things develop Lauren walks in and sees James with Dana's bra in his hand. James tries to wiggle out of trouble by saying it was an accident. Lauren is upset and as James tries to comfort her she says to James that he thinks humping is like eating chips. The next morning Dana and James take one of the CHERUB's pool cars and follow Ewart who meets an old reporter who used to write stories about Lord Hilton, a rival of Denis Obidin (James' mark from the Russia mission) and uncovered links that suggested that Lord Hilton was having people who endangered his son's political career and his own aeroplane business assassinated. He had arranged for Ewart to be killed but James and Dana saved his life for which Zara is very grateful. She apologises for keeping James in the dark and awards him and Dana the black shirt. By now, James had decided that he wants to date Dana. When the new couple go to dinner, Kerry (who found out about their kiss from Lauren) starts a fight with Dana. A food fight breaks out as James stands there, grinning as all hell breaks loose around him and that Dana and Kerry are fighting over him.
10073372	/m/02q0xbp	Golden Buddha	Craig Dirgo	2003	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Golden Buddha, Juan Cabrillo embarks on his first mission in The Oregon Files (although it is made clear that this is not the first mission for the team through references to other missions and its part in the book Flood Tide). The team is hired to find and recover a stolen statue, the Golden Buddha, stolen in 1959 from the Dalai Lama. The success of the team will determine the future of Tibet. Whilst playing the Russians off against the Chinese, the team must put their lives at risk in order to complete the mission. In their state-of-the-art vessel, disguised as a rusting heap of junk, they sail from Cuba to Macau, and there the team use their cunning and wit to outsmart a billionaire&mdash;Stanley Ho&mdash;and the Macau police. They also swindle a 100 million dollars worth of bonds from billionaire Marcus Friday and convince the UN to ratify the military coup in Tibet.
10075187	/m/02q0zr6	The Golden Goblet	Eloise McGraw	1961	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ranofer is an orphaned 12-year-old porter at a goldsmith's shop who has learned much about gold working. Gebu, his evil half brother, beats Ranofer. When the tallies of gold sweepings do not add up, Ranofer tries to figure out why. He determines that Ibni is smuggling gold to Gebu through wineskins that Ranofer unknowingly carries home. Ranofer tries to stop this, but Gebu forces him to continue, threatening to beat again and sell him into slavery. Ranofer makes two new friends, the Ancient and Heqet, but things take a turn for the worse when Gebu moves him to his stone cutting shop to be an apprentice after Ibni is caught. With the help of his new friends, Ranofer discovers that someone else is stealing gold at night after getting suspicious again. After Heqet suggests they work together to spy on Gebu and his evil helpers, they meet in a thicket near the river, share food, and talk about what they have heard during midday when Ranofer gets a break from his awful job at the stonecutters. Ranofer breaks into Gebu's room and discovers a golden goblet which could not come from the area. Ranofer realizes that Gebu has been tomb robbing by the markings at the bottom which say the name of a pharaoh. Also with that evidence he realizes that no one can get as rich as Gebu was getting in one day which supports his theory. He asks the Ancient how tomb robbers are caught, and the Ancient replies, "They may be followed". Ranofer knows from Heqet's eavesdropping that Gebu will be going on another tomb robbing session during the upcoming feast, but keeps his findings to himself. Ranofer follows Gebu to the burial chamber. Meanwhile, Heqet and the Ancient have also gone to the Valley of the Kings looking for Ranofer, putting puzzle pieces together where he has gone and why. Ranofer runs out of the tomb after extinguishing the robbers' torch and one of the giant steps crumbles, trapping Gebu and his companion Wenamon. Ranofer puts a boulder on top of the entrance, and then finds Heqet and the Ancient, who seal the tomb and sit on the boulder while Ranofer returns to town. He manages to get into the palace, and tries to get an audience with the queen but is delayed by Qa-nefer, the queen’s assistant, who doesn't believe his story and thinks he is crazy. After lots of persistence Ranofer finally gets an audience with the queen, and by telling her about the golden goblet with the pharaoh's name on it, she decides to test him by asking him, "What the object is leaning against the tomb's north wall of the tomb?" Ranofer answers, "Your father's oaken staff," and the queen immediately sent out soldiers, who catch Gebu. Finally, the queen asks what Ranofer wants most in the world. "A donkey," Ranofer said, "so that I may earn a living for myself like the Ancient." At the end, it shows him riding on his donkey with the goods earned from the queen with praise ringing from his ears to Heqet and the Ancient. While he is riding he is thinking about how the next day he will go see Zau, the master goldsmith, and become his apprentice.
10078799	/m/02q13ft	Sleeping with the Fishes	MaryJanice Davidson	2006-11-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Fred, 29, is a marine biologist working at the aquarium in Boston. She is a mermaid in the water, although she has legs on land. Her mother is human, but her biological father is a merman. Jonas, her thought-to-be-gay best friend, is the only one outside the family who knows the secret, until she is seen swimming in the fish tank by Thomas, a new employee at the aquarium. Prince Artur, a merman from the Black Sea, arrives to investigate the increased pollution in Boston Harbour and enlists the help of Fred and Thomas. They discover it to be a sewage waste problem caused by careless developers. Thomas and Prince Artur are rivals for Fred's affection, despite her abrasive manners and dismissive attitude to romance.
10080717	/m/02q14y9	Empire of Ivory	Naomi Novik	2007-09-25	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Laurence and Temeraire arrive back in Britain, following their evacuation of Danzig in Black Powder War. Their relief at arriving safely is short-lived as Napoleon continues his preparations for an invasion of the British Isles. When questioned about the lack of British air support for the Prussians, Laurence discovers that Britain had no dragons to spare: a flu-like epidemic has infected the greater part of them, and British science has yet to devise a cure. To combat it, Temeraire, Iskierka and the ferals are forced to fly frantic patrols, both as a show of force and to prevent Napoleon from getting reconnaissance in over the contaminated coverts; at one point Temeraire is forced to knock a French courier-dragon, Sauvignon, out of the sky and down into one of the coverts, risking infection himself. Temeraire and Laurence continue to develop their notions of draconic equality in British society and find common cause with William Wilberforce and the abolitionist movement in exchange for assistance from prominent political leaders. Before they can continue their plans, they are enlisted to return to Africa to seek a cure for the draconic flu, which Temeraire caught and was cured of in Throne of Jade; his immunity is proven when he fails to contract the illness from Sauvignon and the other dragons. The entire formation is shipped to the Cape Colony aboard the Allegiance, along with a black missionary, Father Erasmus, and his wife and daughters. The missionaries are manumitted slaves, causing tension between Laurence and Allegiance captain Tom Riley, a staunch supporter of the trade and sometimes-friend to Laurence. Riley is also further thrown off-balance by the discovery that some of the Aerial Corps' officers, including Lily's captain Harcourt, are women (the acid-spitting Longwing breed refuses to accept male handlers). After several weeks of searching, the formation makes land at the Cape of Good Hope; Maximus, the Regal Copper, is so weary that his handler Berkley does not believe he will ever return home. However, enough fungi is found to cure the formation, and with the help of two African boys, Demane and Sipho, and their small dog, they set out to find more. In the end they discover the fungus in a cave, being fertilized by dragon dung: it has been deliberately cultivated. Scarcely has this realization set in that the Aerial Corps are beset by Tswana humans and dragons; the British beasts, who have been sent back to the Cape with their precious cargo, are unable to prevent their aircrews from being captured. The Tswana, in addition to being fiercely offended by the depredations of the slave trade on their people, practice an odd form of ancestor worship in which dragons are brought up to believe they are the reincarnations of former (human) tribe leaders. The captivity is particularly challenging to Catherine Harcourt, who had become intimates with Riley during the voyage and is now bearing his child, but Mrs. Erasmus, a former member of the Tswana people, is able to provide some intercession on behalf of the British. Temeraire and the other dragons are able to organize an escape for their crews, but the Tswana overrun the Cape Colony, and indeed all European ports on the African coast, in vengeance against slavers specifically and all white men in general. Lily's formation retreat to Great Britain aboard the Allegiance; whilst at sea, Riley marries Harcourt, more at his insistence than hers. Upon returning to Great Britain, they discover that the latest abolitionist bill in Parliament was defeated by strong opposition from Admiral Horatio Nelson, and that Sauvignon, now infected with the plague, has "escaped" back to France. Laurence and Temeraire are horrified to realize that Government and Admiralty alike have countenanced the wholesale slaughter of, not only every French dragon, but quite probably every dragon in Eurasia. Acting on their consciences, they steal a tub of cultivated mushrooms and fly the English Channel to deliver the cure to the French. For this they earn the personal respect of Napoleon Bonaparte, but Laurence turns down the Emperor's offer of asylum, preferring to return to his beloved Commonwealth and answer for his treason. Naomi Novik went to Africa to do research for Empire of Ivory.
10081179	/m/02q15cd	The Country Captain	William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle			 Sir Richard Huntlove is an elderly aristocrat who is jealous of his beautiful and vivacious young wife. His jealousy is more valid than he realizes, for Lady Huntlove is planning an affair with a gentleman named Sir Francis Courtwell. To distance his wife from the temptations of London, Sir Richard moves his household to his country estate &mdash; along with a gaggle of followers and hangers-on, including: Lady Huntlove's otherwise-unnamed Sister; Sir Francis Courtwell and his nephew, the younger Courtwell being in love with the Sister; Captain Underwit, Sir Richard's stepson by his first wife; Engine, a "projector" or speculator; Device, a "fantastical gallant;" and Captain Sacksbury, a drunken old soldier. Captain Underwit has just received a commission in the local militia, and Captain Sacksbury is his mentor. Lady Huntlove's maid Dorothy is also present; she intends to become Mrs. Capt. Underwit. Sir Francis arranges a meeting with Lady Huntlove; he fakes indisposition when Sir Richard goes hunting. Sir Richard returns unexpectedly and catches the two together &mdash; but Lady Huntlove manages to convince her husband that she is sleepwalking. The would-be lovers try for a second assignation: the Lady pretends to be pacing the floor with a toothache, and when her husband is asleep Dorothy slips into bed in her place and Lady Huntlove goes to Sir Francis. But the gentleman, tired of waiting, has fallen asleep. For their third attempt, Sir Francis intends to fake a riding accident while he and Sir Richard are going to London, and so return to the estate without the husband. He falls off his horse in reality, though, and injures himself seriously; and he takes this as a bad omen and turns penitent. The younger Courtwell has better luck in courting Lady Huntlove's Sister &mdash; though at first she mocks and ridicules him, and he responds in kind. Paradoxically, the Sister is provoked by Courtwell's subsequent coolness; the two end up married. Dorothy sends a false letter to Sir Richard, indicating that she, Dorothy, is a runaway, and the daughter of a rich knight. Captain Underwit marries her in the belief that she's a good catch...and later finds out the truth. A supply of more blatant comedy is provided by Engine, who has to feign lunacy to escape the consequences of his previous financial manipulations and swindles. In addition to a wide range of commonalities with Shirley's plays, The Country Captain shows debts to the drama of Ben Jonson. This is unsurprising, since Newcastle was a patron and friend of Jonson, and on the basis of his plays is often included in the so-called Sons of Ben, the group of self-styled imitators of the master.
10092893	/m/02q1kvs	The Astronauts	Stanisław Lem	1951	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The introduction describes the fall of Tunguska meteorite (1908) and subsequent expedition of Leonid Kulik. The hypothesis about the crash of a spaceship is mentioned. Fast-forward to the year 2003. Communism has won worldwide and humankind, freed from oppression and chaos, is engaged in gigantic engineering projects - irrigation of Sahara, construction of a hydro-energetic plant over the Strait of Gibraltar, and the ability to control the climate. The latest project is to thaw the Antarctic and Arctic regions by artificial nuclear-powered "suns" circling above. During the preparation of earthworks in the Tunguska area a strange object is found and later identified as an extraterrestrial data record. The record contains details about the travel of the spaceship from Venus (which crashed in Tunguska) and the data ends with an ominous message: "After two rotations the Earth will be radiated. When the radiation intensity drops to half, the Great Movement will commence." Scared, the government of the Earth (consisting of scientists) decides to send the newly built spaceship Kosmokrator (equipped with vacuum tube-based computer Marax) to Venus. After a few weeks the international crew of Kosmokrator arrives on Venus but finds no traces of life, only strange, half-destroyed technological structures like the White Globe, a giant anti-gravity device. It turns out that Venus was inhabited by a warlike civilization planning to occupy the Earth. Before they managed to destroy the life on Earth they themselves perished in nuclear civil war, leaving only ruins of the cities and scattered electronic records.
10093063	/m/02q1k_y	The Moneypenny Diaries: Final Fling	Samantha Weinberg	2008-05-01	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 From saving spies to private passions, this book covers the secret adventures of James Bond's right-hand woman. Jane Moneypenny may project a cool, calm and collected image but her secret diaries reveal a rather different story. Kate Westbrook is trying to publish Miss Moneypenny's diaries, but everyone she speaks to about them is trying to stop her. Whilst in consultation with Tanner it is hinted to Westbrook that her aunt was murdered because she was searching too hard for the MI6 mole. Locations for this final adventure include Jamaica, the Outer Hebrides, Cambridge, and London. The storyline is almost evenly divided between the adventures of Miss Moneypenny and the modern adventures of author “Kate Westbrook.”
10093480	/m/02q1l9x	The Eye of the Heron	Ursula K. Le Guin	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02_w8": "Feminist science fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06m9m8": "Social science fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The planet of Victoria received two waves of colonists from Earth: first two prison ships founding a penal colony and then one ship of political exiles. The descendants of the prisoners mostly inhabit the City. The descendants of the political exiles, the "People of Peace", inhabit Shantih Town, which is known to the City dwellers as Shanty Town. The Shantih Towners, whose primary occupation is farming, want to settle another valley further away from the City. The City "Bosses" do not want to lose the control they believe they have over the Shanty Towners and so they take action to try to prevent any settlement beyond their sphere of influence.
10094894	/m/02q1mjr	Under the Hawthorn Tree	Marita Conlon-McKenna		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of three siblings, Eily, Michael and Peggy O'Driscoll, who live in a small cottage in rural Ireland. At the opening of the book, in 1845, blight strikes the family potato plot. Their baby sister Bridget dies and is buried under the hawthorn tree in the garden: in Irish mythology, the hawthorn is linked with the otherworld. Their father goes to find work, and when he does not return for several days, their mother leaves to find him. After some time, the children accept that both are dead and take an arduous journey to their great-aunts' home hundreds of miles away.
10097776	/m/02q1qq8	Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel	Joe Hill	2007-02-13	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Aging rock star Judas Coyne spends his retirement collecting morbid memorabillia such as a witch's confession, a real snuff film and, after being sent an e-mail directly about the item online, a dead man's suit. He is told, by the daughter(whom he does not know at the time), that the old man's spirit is attached to this funeral suit. The ghost will go wherever it does and so buying this suit would effectively be buying a poltergeist; Judas cannot pass up this opportunity. The suit soon arrives in a heart-shaped box. Various odd occurrences alert Judas to the fact that the ghost is dangerous and is out to kill him and those around him. His assistant, Danny Wooten realizes that the ghost of the suit will try to kill everyone round Jude. He leaves Jude's service, but not before contacting the woman who sent the suit. Jude finds out that the ghost was the father of a groupie, Florida (it is later revealed that her real name is Anna), whom he dated for a few months and who had later committed suicide. The ghost wanted revenge on Jude for causing Anna's death, as he saw it. His current girlfriend, Georgia (whose name is actually Marybeth), refuses to leave and together they run from the house with the ghost chasing them. The ghost's intention is to keep Jude away from his two dogs, Angus and Bon, as it turns out that dogs, as familiars, can protect their owners from the dead. But Georgia insists on taking the dogs with them. The animals save the couple several times, but the ghost eventually manages to kill both dogs. Jude and Georgia investigate and find out the true story about Florida. She did not commit suicide because of the breakup between her and Jude. Florida had many emotional problems and Jude had tried to help her but, in the end, he gave up. The reason she was so unstable was that she was being hypnotized and molested by her stepfather, the now dead and ghostly, Craddock McDermott. When Florida left Jude she had nowhere to go but back to her twisted family, but eventually she threatened to contact Jude to have him help her escape the incestuous relationship and file charges against Craddock and her elder sister, Jessica. They drove her to suicide to prevent her from doing so. At a later point, Craddock, a man knowledgeable in the dark arts, realized he was dying and planned with Jessica to get revenge on Judas. They believed that Judas had "ruined" Florida by making her reject her family and their incest. Craddock hexed the suit; once he was dead, Jessica set the plan in motion. After a series of gory battles between Judas Coyne and Craddock McDermott, Georgia finds the way to bring Florida back from the grave and help Jude fight her stepfather. In the end, the evil Craddock is vanquished, freeing Jude and Georgia from his cruel curse. The two make it through the horrendous event and happily marry.
10098492	/m/02q1r84	And Kill Once More	Ralph Salaway		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Kate Weston is worried about her friend Sandy Engle. Since her marriage to George Engle, the vivacious Sandy has practically become a recluse. Kate's suspicion that something is wrong leads her to hire what she thinks is a detective to pose as her boyfriend during a weekend house party at the Engle's estate high in the central California mountains. Instead of a detective, though—because of a manpower shortage at the Gregory Agency—Kate gets a stand-in: Marty Bowman, an L.A. lifeguard with vague ambitions of following in his brother's private-eye footsteps. The guests at the party seem to have little in common until George Engle turns up dead at the bottom of his swimming pool with Marty Bowman's lucky silver dollar clenched in his fist. The murder investigation by slow-moving local sheriff Frank Toland finds the thread that connects most of the guests: they were being blackmailed by George. Marty becomes the prime suspect in the murder and to save his own neck has to stay one step ahead of Toland. As he subtly conducts an independent investigation under Toland's nose, Marty discovers that in addition to blackmailing his house party guests—and many others—George has conned his wife into believing she has tuberculosis. Slipping past the guard of sheriff Toland's rookie assistant, Marty and Sandy pay an after-hours visit to a clinic in the valley, where Marty, with the help of an X-ray technician, proves to Sandy that her ill health is an illusion. After bar-hopping with a jubilant Sandy for the rest of the evening, Marty resists her drunken advances (and beds Kate instead). The next morning, however, Marty finds that Sandy too has been murdered. Unbeknownst to the sheriff, Sandy had retained possession of some of the evidence her husband had used to blackmail their guests, a fact that led George's murderer to kill once more. The murderer, sensing that Marty is closing in on the truth, sets for him the same underwater death trap used on George. Fortunately, Marty's familiarity with swimming pool hydraulics enables him to anticipate the trap, foil it, and turn the tables on the killer. A struggle ensues, followed by the climactic denouement.
10100068	/m/02q1t05	Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit	Nahoko Uehashi		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Balsa, spearwoman and bodyguard, is a wandering warrior who has vowed to atone for eight deaths in her past by saving an equivalent number of lives. On her journey, she saves Prince Chagum, and is tasked with becoming his bodyguard. His own father, the emperor, has ordered his assassination. The two begin a perilous journey to ensure the survival of the prince. Balsa's complicated past begins to come to light and they uncover Chagum's mysterious connection to a legendary water spirit with the power to destroy the kingdom. At a time when nature still holds the civilizations of mankind in thrall, a single drought can spell the end of a society and doom its inhabitants to piteous deaths. Chagum has the power to stave off drought and bring new life to his empire. However, he is accused of being possessed by an evil spirit, and must be put to death by his own father's hand.
10106380	/m/02q20d2	The Master Butchers Singing Club	Louise Erdrich	2003-02-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins at the end of World War I with Fidelis Waldvogel, a German sniper, returning to his hometown in defeated Germany from the battle lines. Fidelis seeks out Eva Kalb, the pregnant fiancée of his dear friend, Johannes, and informs her that her fiancé has died in the war. He tells Eva of his promise to Johannes, which is that he would marry and take care of her. She agrees, and soon the two are wed. Fidelis, a butcher by trade, leaves Germany by himself to emigrate to the United States in order to escape the immense poverty brought on by the war. He plans to travel to Seattle to set up a new life for his family, paying his way by selling German sausages. However his funds and sausages run out in Argus, North Dakota. Fidelis first works for the local butcher and then sets up his own butcher shop in Argus. He works hard until he can finally send for his wife, Eva, and her child, Franz. Delphine Watzka is the daughter of Roy Watzka, the town drunk, who grew up in Argus, North Dakota. Delphine never met her mother and leaves the town to become a vaudeville performer. Delphine meets and becomes attached to Cyprian, a World War I veteran. The two make money from an act where Delphine performs as a table upon which Cyprian balances. One day, after a performance, Delphine discovers Cyprian engaging in a sexual act with a man. This discovery changes their relationship, but the two remain together, posing as a married couple. The two return to Argus, where they stop to see Delphine's severely alcoholic father. There is an overpowering stench in Roy’s house, and in the process of cleaning the dwelling, Delphine and Cyprian discover the corpses of three people – two adults and one child – rotting in her father’s cellar. The three corpses are later revealed as the remains of the Chavers family. While attempting to unravel the mystery of the bodies in the cellar, as well as to eradicate the odor from the house, Delphine meets Eva. The two quickly become friends; Eva takes Delphine under her wing, allowing Delphine to work in the butcher shop, and mentoring her in many of the domestic skills Delphine had never learned. Eva learns that she has cancer, and despite medical treatments and Delphine’s nursing, her health deteriorates. Eva’s sister-in-law Tante ("aunt” in German) Maria Theresa arrives to assist the family with the various means of daily life. Tante and Delphine take an instant dislike to each other. During Eva’s painful final days, Tante destroys the morphine prescribed to assist her out of shame towards Eva’s dependency on the drug. In one of the most gripping sections of the novel, Delphine tries to find a doctor and pharmacist while Eva's pain becomes uncontrollable. Finally, Roy breaks into the pharmacy and obtains the morphine that Eva desperately needs. Soon after, Eva dies. Her death leads to the sobering of Roy, as she was one of the few people that was actually nice to him. Additionally, Delphine vows to raise Eva’s four boys and to assist Fidelis. Meanwhile, Albert Hock, town sheriff, has been investigating the Chavers case. Beads from Clarisse's dress that were embedded in the floor over the cellar becomes the means by which Hock attempts to blackmail Clarisse into becoming involved with him. She stabs the sheriff to death and flees to the Twin Cities. Tante and Cyprian both leave Argus. Tante returns to Germany with Erich and Emil. Cyprian returns to the life of the traveling performer. Both departures pave the way for a romance between Delphine and Fidelis, which eventually results in marriage. Roy Watzka dies, but not before revealing the truth behind the deaths of the Chavers family. They were left in the cellar as retribution towards Porky Chavers, the father, singing over Roy in Fidelis' singing club. Roy did not intend for them to die, but due to the after-effect of an alcohol-induced binge, he forgot they were in the basement. At the outbreak of World War II, Fidelis finds his family once again ravaged by war. His sons Franz and Markus both enlist in the United States Army, whereas his twin sons, Erich and Emil, enlist in the German military. Emil is quickly killed in the war, and his twin Erich is eventually captured by U.S. soldiers. He is transferred to a POW camp in the U.S. After Markus finds this out, he takes Fidelis there but Erich refuses to speak to either of them. Franz as well, on the American side, is gravely injured in an airplane accident, which eventually results in his death. On a post-war trip to Germany, at which Delphine and Fidelis attend an unveiling of a memorial to the bombing of Fidelis' home town, Fidelis falls ill. He dies on their return trip to Argus. The novel concludes with the revelation of Delphine’s true heritage, as told by the town scrap collector, Step-and-a-Half. Delphine was the biological daughter of Mrs. Shimek (Mazarine's mother). She had been abandoned when she was born and found in an outhouse by Step-and-a-Half. Step-and-a-Half gave her to Roy to raise.
10113441	/m/02q27jd	Plot It Yourself	Rex Stout		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Someone has been getting away with a different spin on plagiarism. It's the old scam – an unsuccessful author stealing ideas from an established source – but it's being worked differently. Now, the plagiarists are claiming that the well-known authors are stealing from them (as Wolfe puts it, "plagiarism upside down."). And they are making their claims stick: three successful claims in four years, one awaiting trial, and one that's just been made. These claims have damaged both the publishers and the authors. The Book Publishers of America (BPA) and the National Association of Authors and Dramatists (NAAD) form a joint committee to explore ways to stop the fraud, and the committee comes to Wolfe for help. The first four claims have shared certain characteristics: in the first, for example, the best selling author Ellen Sturdevant is accused by the virtually unknown Alice Porter of stealing a recent book's plot from a story that Porter sent her, asking her suggestions for improvement. Sturdevant ignores the accusation until Porter's manuscript is found in Sturdevant's house. The writing and publishing industry is convinced that the manuscript was planted, but the case was settled out of court. That scenario, with minor variations, is repeated four times, with other authors and by other plagiarists. The latest complaint has been made only recently, and the target of the complaint wonders when a manuscript will show up somewhere that it wasn't the day before. Wolfe's first step is to acquire and read the manuscripts that form the basis for the complaints. Wolfe's love of literature turns out to be useful in his investigation: from the internal evidence in the manuscripts, Wolfe concludes that they were all written by the same person. Aspects such as diction, punctuation and syntax – and, most convincingly, paragraphing – point Wolfe directly to the conclusion that one person wrote all the manuscripts. At first, this seems like progress, but then it becomes clear that it's the opposite. The task initially seemed to be to show that the first fraud inspired a sequence of copycats, and the universe of suspects was limited to the complainants. But now that Wolfe has determined that one person wrote all the fraudulent manuscripts, that one person could be anyone. Wolfe meets with the joint committee to discuss the situation. A committee member suggests that one of the plagiarists be offered money, along with a guarantee of immunity, to identify the manuscripts' actual author. The committee concurs, and asks Wolfe to arrange for the offer to be made to Simon Jacobs. The next day, Archie goes to make the offer to Jacobs, but finds Sergeant Purley Stebbins at the Jacobs apartment: Mr. Jacobs has been murdered, stabbed to death the night before. In short order, Archie discovers two more dead plagiarists. Wolfe blames himself for not taking steps to protect Jacobs and the others, who had been made targets by the plan to pay for information. The only one left is Alice Porter, who first worked the fraud successfully, and who is now repeating it with Amy Wynn and her publisher. Wolfe, concentrating on Porter, catches her in a contradiction that identifies the murderer for him.
10113468	/m/02q27l3	Halloween		1979	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 "The horror started on the eve of Samhain, in a foggy vale in northern Ireland, at the dawn of the Celtic race. And once started, it trod the earth forevermore, wreaking its savagery suddenly, swiftly, and with incredible ferocity". The prologue of the novel takes place at the dawn of the Celtic race in Ireland and tells the story of a young 15-year-old disfigured boy named Enda who is passionately in love with the King Gwynwyll&#39;s daughter, Deirdre. After being severely humiliated for attempting to win her love Enda attacks and brutally slays Deirdre and her fiancé at a community ritual event on Halloween. Enda is immediately killed by the other members of the village and his soul cursed to wander the Earth forever, re-creating the events of that night. In Chapter 1 we flash forward to 1963 and witness several eerie interactions between little Michael Myers and his grandmother. The grandmother is concerned as her daughter, Edith, tells her that Michael has been admitting to hearing voices and having visions and nightmares (which are about the events that happened in the prologue with Enda and Deirdre). When Edith tells the grandmother that she had asked Michael about the voices, he replied, &#34; They tell me to say I hate people&#34;. There is also discussion between the grandmother and Michael&#39;s mother about Michael&#39;s great-grandfather who apparently committed some sort of undescribed violent act. &#34;I think there are enough similarities,&#34; says the concerned grandmother. Chapter 2 details Michael&#39;s experiences further. It is Halloween night 1963 and Michael, dressed in the infamous clown costume, is trick-or-treating with some neighborhood children. At some point during his trick-or-treating, he and the other children knock on the Myers home door hoping to receive some goodies. His sister Judy, opens the door and asks &#34;what are you going to do if I don&#39;t give you anything?&#34; to which Michael replies &#34;we&#39;re going to kill you&#34;. Shocked, Judy responds &#34;who said that? Michael Myers--was that you?&#34;. Michael replies &#34;I&#39;m not Michael Myers. I&#39;m a clown&#34;, already hinting at the transformation that has taken place. In Chapter 3, we get a look inside Michael&#39;s head. "It was the voice. the voice stirred up the hatred. It had done so in his dreams and now it was doing it in real life. It had begun with the strange pictures in his head at night, pictures of people he had never seen--oh, maybe in comic books or on television, but never in real life. People in strange costumes, animal skins, armor, leather, drinking and dancing wildly around a fire. One couple in particular. They looked like Judy and Danny, madly in love with each other, dancing in a circle around a huge bonfire while he, Michael, stood in the crowd hating them, burning up with jealousy". Chapter 4 details Michael&#39;s trial and sentencing. Details of Michael&#39;s experiences at the Smith&#39;s Grove &#34;Sanitarium&#34; are given. A conversation between Michael and Loomis gives further insight into Michael&#39;s personality. Additionally, strange &#34;occurrences&#34; take place which intrigue Dr. Loomis who gradually becomes aware of what he is dealing with: "Every time Michael was slighted, or fancied he was, by a staff member or other inmate, some awful vengeance was visited upon the offending person. It might be a day, a week, a month later, but Michael got even. The problem for Loomis was that no one ever observed the boy doing it directly...a nurse who quarreled with Michael fell down the stairs two days later, fracturing her pelvis. A boy who borrowed a game from Michael and forgot to return it suffered a vicious rash that hospitalized him for a month". Michael eventually commands the ward as neither the staff nor the other inmates dare to challenge or defy Michael for fear of retribution. Fifteen years later on Halloween 1978, Laurie Strode&#39;s realestate father asks her to place a key under the mat at the old Myers house so that he can show it to some prospective buyers. When Laurie places the key under the mat, unbeknownst to her, Michael is looking through a door window and sees Laurie for the first time. At that point, the reader learns that Michael targets Laurie because she reminds him of Judith. "And as she turned her back on the house, a figure inside it, dark, shadowy, sidled up to the front door and pushed the tattered curtain aside with a knuckle. He watched the slim blonde toss her head and laugh as she raised her hands like a bogeyman to frighten her young companion. He breathed heavily, raspingly, as he watched the girl, and a memory entered his mind, the memory of another girl, another blonde, willowy and pretty. He remembered the trapped and frightened look in her eyes, and the futile, pathetic way she had raised her hands to protect herself. He followed the girl and boy with his gaze until they disappeared from view. Then he walked up the creaky stairs to the second floor and peered into the room where it had all happened...
10115129	/m/02q28ws	Too Many Clients	Rex Stout	1960-10-28	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A man who identifies himself as Thomas Yeager, head of Continental Plastics, asks Archie to ascertain whether he is being followed when he visits a certain address in one of New York's worst neighborhoods. When the real Yeager's body is found at an excavation site in the vicinity of that address, Archie crosses the threshold and finds a fantastically appointed love nest where Yeager secretly entertained many women. The case becomes more complicated when the daughter of the building superintendent is later killed; her novice attempts at blackmail provide Wolfe with critical evidence needed to solve both murders and earn a large fee, shoring up his low bank account balance. In short order, Wolfe and Archie find themselves beset by prospective clients: * the building superintendent and his wife, who want Archie to keep the police from harassing them (and, later, to catch their daughter's killer) * an actress, who offers to pay Archie to get her cigarette case out of the love nest * the directors of Continental Plastics, who want to keep the existence of that room from becoming public knowledge and causing a scandal * Yeager's widow, who expects Wolfe to solve her husband's murder even if it embarrasses the company
10116452	/m/02q2b3b	Better Angels	Howard V. Hendrix	1999-10-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Better Angels is a prequel to Hendrix's earlier novels Lightpath and Standing Wave, filling in history about how the characters in those novels came to be who they are. "Better angels" is a phrase used by agents of organization Tetragrammatron to describe what they hope to make humanity into. Tetragrammatron is concerned with ensuring humanity's survival by creating a machine/human transcendences, turning humans into "better angels".
10117056	/m/02q2bh0	The Labyrinth Key	Howard V. Hendrix	2004-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The backdrop for this story is an informational arms races between a future United States of America and China. Both countries are attempting to build a quantum computer, which they believe will be the ultimate information weapon, creating and breaking encryption schemes. One of the American investigators, Dr. Jaron L. Kwok, is mysteriously killed while in Hong Kong, and his mathematical understudy Ben Cho is ordered to pick up Kwok's investigation in an attempt to find out why and how he died. Running parallel to this storyline are the lives of Don Markham (known as Don Strum in Cybernesia)and Lu Mei-lin (also known as Marilyn Lu). Don is computer programmer whose work specializes in the virtual reality world Cybernesia. Lu is a forensic detective who works in Hong Kong. After Kwok's death in she is the leading detective on the case, called to Sha Tin by the Guoanbo, China's version of the CIA and its leader in the race for the quantum computer. At the time of Kwok's death a holocaust is disseminated throughout the world, showing the circumstances of the virtual reality world that he had died in. However, his death prompts not only the US and China, but multiple other organizations (from terrorists to secret societies) to go to any lengths for the chance to get binotech, the newest technology that reduplicates itself and stores a huge amount of information in tiny quantities.
10125728	/m/02q2mlm	Neverwhere	Neil Gaiman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew and his trials and tribulations in London. At the start of the story, he is a young businessman, with a normal life. All this changes, however, when he stops to help a mysterious young girl who appears before him, bleeding and weakened, as he walks with his fiancée to dinner to meet her influential boss. The morning after Richard rescued the girl, Door, from the streets, she is greatly recovered, and sends him to find the Marquis de Carabas, a man who will be able to help Door escape two infamous and seemingly inhuman assassins, the Messrs; Croup and Vandemar. Richard brings the Marquis back to his apartment to meet Door, only to see both of them vanish immediately. Soon after, Richard begins to realize the consequences of his actions. He appears to have become invisible; he loses his job, where no one seems to recognize him, and his apartment is rented out to other people. Determined to set things right, Richard sets out for the world of London Below in search of Door. Richard’s journey takes him to the realm of the Rat-Speakers, who worship and perform tasks for rats, across the mysterious Night's Bridge, whose darkness kills one of Richard’s Rat-Speaker friends, Anesthesia, and eventually to the Floating Market, where he meets again with Door, who is holding an audition for bodyguards. Going to the floating market, a giant bazaar where people barter for all manner of junk and magical items, Richard realizes that London Below is not such a bad place. The legendary bodyguard and fighter "Hunter" joins their party, and the group, consisting of Door, the Marquis and Hunter, with Richard tagging along, sets out for the Earl's Court. Door and the Marquis have traveled to Door's home, and discovered a diary entry made by Door's father, which advises her to seek aid from the angel Islington. When the four reach the Earl's Court, on a mysterious underground train which follows its own bizarre schedule, the Marquis is forced to leave. This is due to an old grudge between himself and the Earl. The rest discover that they need to travel through the Angelus in order to reach Islington, and that the Angelus resides in the British Museum. Door and Richard travel to the Museum, while Hunter, due to a curse which prevents her from entering London Above, remains in the abandoned British Museum underground station. After some searching they find the Angelus, which Door "opens" using her family's Talent, and travel through it to the underground home of the angel. Islington explains that his position as protector of London Below is a punishment for the submersion of Atlantis, which was also under his care, and tells Door that he will help her learn the identity of those who killed her family, for a price. She and her company must retrieve a unique key from the Black Friars and bring it to the angel. The two return to the Museum and go below to reunite with Hunter. In the meantime, the Marquis seeks out Croup and Vandemar, exchanging a priceless Tang dynasty figurine for information regarding who ordered the murder of Door's family. The true price for this information, however, is his life; Croup and Vandemar capture, torture, and kill him, breaking the one-hour "head start" agreement that was part of their deal with the Marquis. Door, Richard, and Hunter proceed onward to the dwelling of the Black Friars. There, they are faced with a series of three ordeals; Hunter wins a test of strength, Door wins a test of intellect, and Richard, alone in history, wins a test of character. He was falsely convinced his adventures Below had all been a hallucination, but a trinket from his now-dead friend Anesthesia re-orients him. As a result, the three succeed in gaining the key. Richard’s ordeal greatly changes him, causing him to lose most of his self-doubts; he is now confident enough to interact with other beings of London Below. The three then travel to the Floating Market, where they are unable to find the Marquis, but where Hammersmith, a blacksmith friend of Door's is able to secretly forge a copy of the key won by Richard. Richard enlists the mysterious Lamia, one of the vampire-like Velvets as a guide. They travel on London Below’s Down Street, toward Islington. Door, Richard, Lamia, and Hunter make their way down the long path of Down Street. Old Bailey revives the Marquis. Weakened, the Marquis sets out himself, following Door and company. On Down Street, it is discovered that Lamia was a dangerous choice for a guide, because the price she demands of Richard for her services is higher than he can pay and yet live, but he is rescued by the Marquis. It is also discovered that Hunter long ago turned traitor to Door’s cause. She gives Door to Croup and Vandemar, in exchange for the magical spear she needs to hunt and slay the great Beast of London. Croup and Vandemar, with Door captive, travel downward, while Richard, the Marquis, and Hunter travel at a slower pace, all toward the great labyrinth through which they need to pass to reach Islington. In this labyrinth the Beast of London dwells. Hunter and Richard battle it, with Richard being the only survivor. Richard and the Marquis rush ahead, to the final confrontation between the parties, in which Islington’s true nature is revealed. Islington wishes to use Door and the key to force open the door to Heaven, where he seeks dominion over all the other angels as revenge for his banishment. After Richard is tortured by Croup and Vandemar, Door agrees to open the door, but she uses the copy of the key Richard won. The key does not open the door to Heaven, but instead to somewhere else, as far away as she could imagine. Islington, Croup and Vandemar are all sucked through the gateway before Door closes it. Door then uses the Black Friars' real key to allow Richard to travel back to London Above, where he finds himself restored to his normal life as it was before he first met Door. After returning home, Richard is happy for a time, but he realizes that his experiences have changed him, and that his old life and friends mean little or nothing to him now. He realizes that he is not satisfied with the regular world, and wants to return to London Below but does not know how to do it. He despairs of returning, feeling that he has ruined his life about as completely as possible, but in the end the Marquis provides a way back.
10126136	/m/02q2mz_	Paula	Isabel Allende	1995	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Isabel Allende wrote Paula while tending to her daughter Paula Frías Allende who was in a coma arising from complications of the disease porphyria. Allende started the book as a letter to Paula, explaining what she was missing so she would not be confused when she recovered. The novel includes both an account of Paula's treatment and Allende's life, sometimes overlapping the content of first novel The House of the Spirits. Paula died on December 6, 1992, survived by her husband Ernesto and other family members.
10127166	/m/02q2p54	The Janitor's Boy	Andrew Clements	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story, set in the small town of Huntington near Minneapolis, Minnesota, centers around a fifth grader named Jack Rankin Jr. who, while the new middle school is being built for the town, finds himself going to school in the old high school, where his father works as a janitor. After being ridiculed for wanting to be a janitor "like his dad" several years ago, he has tried to separate himself from his father as much as he can, but now finds these attempts futile since they are now in the same building. In order to let out his frustration, he concocts a plan to stick a large wad of gum to the bottom of a desk for his father to later clean up. Unfortunately, his plan backfires, and he is sentenced to three weeks of cleaning gum off of the bottom of desks and chairs in different parts of the school, for one hour every day. Jack is enraged by this punishment, since he will now be working for his father, but still manages to make some interesting discoveries: he finds a picture of his dad, another janitor, and two other men during their time in the army, and finds the key box for the building. Intrigued, he takes a key to the school bell tower, and another for the steam tunnel beneath the school. After his exploration of the bell tower, he realizes that he must, to his disappointment, drive home with his father. During the ride home, Jack's dad reveals that before his days as a janitor, he worked for his father at an old car dealership, and absolutely loathed it. He tells Jack that his grandfather would never let John have his own car, and that in anger he stole his father's corvette, only to completely destroy it in a crash with a light pole. In the hospital, John's father told him that he could forget about college until he paid off the price of the car in work, and so John joined the army the next day. John finishes his story by saying that at his father's funeral; several people approached John and mentioned how his father would always give away a couple of cars every year, free of charge, to help people. He tells Jack that the reason John never got a car was because his father loved him and didn't want him to be spoiled. Astounded by this revelation, Jack must nevertheless continue cleaning gum off different parts of the school, and while cleaning the auditorium he discovers the access door to the steam tunnel. Feeling courageous at first, Jack still ends up locking himself in the tunnel, and must follow his keen sense of smell to get out. As he reaches the final crossroads, he finds that a tiny "apartment" has been set up. Jack also finds that a boy named Eddie is currently staying there while his father tries to recover from his days in the Vietnam War, which he spent with Jack's father. Emerging from the tunnels in the town's fire station, Jack manages to catch a ride home with his dad, who explains to him that the little living area beneath the town was set up to give people a place to go, like Eddie. After the Vietnam War, John was completely out of it until a janitor at the high school offered him a job in order to get back on his feet. In turn, John put together the living area under the crossroads to help others. The first "resident" happened one of John's fellow janitors, Lou, who John met during his second tour during the war. Eventually, Lou moved out of the tunnels, but the furniture was left in the tunnels in case somebody else ever needed them. Touched by his father's kindness, and the kindness of those his father knew, Jack receives a newer, kinder image of his father, and the bond between them begins to grow closer.
10127495	/m/02q2pjv	Room One	Andrew Clements	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Room One is a story about sixth grader Ted Hammond. He is an avid mystery fan and detective. But on one of his normal newspaper routes, he looks into the Andersons' house. He sees a mysterious face through the attic window. He passes by but soon remembers that the Andersons moved out years ago. That's when Ted became determined to find out whose, or what's, face that is. It turns out to be April (who he thought was Alexa), a girl with a deep past regarding her family and their problems.
10128239	/m/02q2qh3	Things Hoped For	Andrew Clements	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is about 17-year-old Gwendolyn/Gwennie (Gwen) who lives in New York City with her grandfather. One day her grandfather disappears leaving only a phone message telling Gwen not to worry about him. Gwen continues her life as normal as possible while trying to practice for her violin auditions. She then meets Robert (Bobby) from Things Not Seen in a cafe. Robert is in town also preparing for trumpet auditions.Gwen invites Robert to stay in her empty house with her to help get him out of the hotel he was staying in. While shopping in Niketown Store in New York City, Gwen and Robert spot a faint shadow apparently coming from an invisible person. Robert then tells her that two years ago he turned invisible. In the following days Robert discovers Gwen's grandfather dead in the freezer. The other invisible man is found in Gwen's house after the discovery of her grandfather. The man named William started to seek out Robert to find out how to undo the invisibility. William also is revealed to be a womanizing thief. The mystery of Gwen's grandfather's death is closed when the grandfather's lawyer reads out a letter written the last day the grandfather was alive. The letter contains the will of the grandfather. Detectives decide that the grandfather knew he would die so he hid in the freezer. The detectives also say that the grandfather went in with an oxygen bottle, thick clothes, and left the refrigerator slightly open so he could have left if he wanted to. Gwen was distraught and did not feel like playing the violin the whole day.The next day she gets a phone call from Alicia, Robert's girlfriend asking her to play. Alicia ended up thanking Gwen for the beautiful song and hung up. On the day of Gwen's audition she opens an envelope with dog tags with a code leading to the title of a Bible passage. The passage says,"There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends". Gwen finally understood why her grandfather did what he did, and she walks confidently into her audition.
10128732	/m/02q2r20	Lucas		2003		 The story opens as fifteen year old Cait recounts events occurring a year before on her small island home, Hale, which is roughly four miles long and two miles across at its greatest extent. She begins her story by explaining when she first met Lucas, a mysterious teenager who has traveled to the island to explore and live for a short time period. On the same day that she first sees Lucas, her brother returns home and she is nearly assaulted by another islander, Jamie Tait. However, Lucas is not accepted into the island community easily, due to the discrimination he receives at the hands of the town folk. He works a few odd jobs, but is the victim of attempted assault, forcing him to defend himself and earn a negative reputation. Primarily this comes from Jamie Tait, a university student and popular islander from a wealthy family. The negative behavior escalates when Lucas rescues a young girl from drowning during a town festival, but is met with accusations of molestation. Lucas is forced into hiding. However, he feels an urge to visit Cait one last time. Unfortunately, Jamie has decided to frame Lucas for the rape, assault and attempted murder of a promiscuous islander named Angel, who had befriended Bill, Cait's old best friend. The novel climaxes as the islanders attempt to capture Lucas, who is innocent of the crime.
10130013	/m/02q2s5f	Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale	Mo Willems	2004	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Trixie steps lively as she goes with her father to the laundromat, down the block, through the park, past the school, to the Laundromat. For the toddler, loading and putting money into the machine invoke wide-eyed pleasure. But, on the return home, she realizes that her stuffed bunny has been left behind. Because she cannot talk, Trixie cannot explain why she is upset to her daddy. Despite his plea of "please don't get fussy," she gives it her all, bawling and going "boneless." They both arrive home unhappy. Mom immediately sees that "Knuffle Bunny" is missing. After several tries, dad finds the toy among the wet laundry and reclaims hero status. The toddler exuberantly exclaims, "Knuffle Bunny!!!" Those were the first words Trixie ever said. This book was also made into a musical (Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale) by Mo Williams, Michael Silversher, and Deborah Wicks La Puma. It toured with the Kennedy Center to cities all across the United States. http://www.kennedy-center.org/events/?event=KKTBD
10130255	/m/02q2s96	Leonardo, the Terrible Monster	Mo Willems	2005	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Leonardo is truly a terrible monster-terrible at being a monster that is. No matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to frighten anyone. Determined to succeed, Leonardo sets himself to training and research. Finally, he finds a nervous little boy, and scares the tuna salad out of him! But scaring people isn't quite as satisfying as he thought it would be. Leonardo realizes that he might be a terrible, awful monster-but he could be a really good friend. * By the way this is part of Barnes & Nobles's plot.
10132513	/m/02q2vxg	A Week in the Woods	Andrew Clements	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Fifth-grader Mark Robert Chelmsley is moving from his home in Scarsdale, New York, to New Hampshire in the middle of February. At the local school (Hardy Elementary School), Mark initially decides to ignore everyone. However, after camping out in the old barn in his yard, he decides to become more friendly and tries to be nice to the teachers. The fifth grade's annual camping trip in the woods tests Mark's survival skills and his ability to relate to a teacher who seems out to get him.
10135456	/m/02q2yyd	Men Against the Sea	Charles Nordhoff	1934	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Men Against the Sea follows the journey of Lieutenant William Bligh and the eighteen men set adrift in an open boat by the mutineers of the Bounty. The story is told from the perspective of Thomas Ledward, the Bounty's acting surgeon, who went into the ship's launch with Bligh. It begins after the main events described in the novel and then moves into a flashback, finishing at the starting point. This true story is considered the greatest open-boat voyage of all time.
10136660	/m/02q2_5_	The Renegado				 The play is set in Tunis, in what is modern-day Tunisia; the title character, the "renegado" or renegade, is Antonio Grimaldi, who has converted to Islam and become a pirate. The true protagonist of the play, however, is Vitelli, a Venetian gentleman; he has come to Tunis disguised as a merchant, in order to search for his sister Paulina, who has been captured by Grimaldi's pirates and sold into the harem of the city's Viceroy, Asambeg. Even in the harem, however, Paulina's virtue is protected by an amulet she wears around her neck; Asambeg is infatuated with her and treats her with respect. A Turkish princess named Donusa falls in love with Vitelli; when this is discovered, they are both imprisoned in the Black Tower. Donusa tries to convince Vitelli to convert to Islam and marry her, and so gain freedom for them both; Vitelli refuses, and in their ensuing conversation converts Donusa to Christianity. The renegade Grimaldi falls afoul of Asambeg's bad temper, and his career as a pirate is finished. He experiences remorse for his past, and engineers the escape of Vitelli, Donusa, Paulina, and himself from Tunis back to Italy.
10148422	/m/02q3d9p	The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa	Yasunari Kawabata	1930	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the 1920s, Asakusa was to Tokyo what Montmartre had been to 1890s Paris, Alexanderplatz was to 1920s Berlin and Times Square was to be to 1940s New York. The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa describes the decadent allure of this entertainment district, where beggars and teenage prostitutes mixed with revue dancers and famous authors. Originally serialized in a Tokyo daily newspaper Tokyo Asahi between 20 December 1929 and February 16, 1930, this vibrant novel uses unorthodox, kinetic literary techniques to reflect the raw energy of Asakusa, seen through the eyes of a wandering narrator and the cast of mostly female juvenile delinquents who show him their way of life. The original newspaper serialization was incomplete. The remaining sections was published concurrently in two literary journals, Reconstruction (Kaizō, volume 12, number 9) and New Currents (Shinchō, volume 27, number 9). Markedly different from Kawabata's later work, The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa was influenced much by Western modernism. The annotated edition of this novel, translated by Alisa Freedman, includes the original illustrations by Ota Saburo and a foreword and an afterword by Donald Richie.
10151140	/m/02q3gsx	Earth Made of Glass	John Barnes	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Giraut and Margaret, now married, are sent on a diplomatic mission to the politically turbulent planet Briand, a distant Outer Sphere colony cut off from the rest of humanity for centuries until instantaneous travel became possible with the springer. Not only is Briand a very hot, high gravity planet, but the oppressive environment is matched by the increasing hatred between the two proud local cultures which have been forced to live in close proximity as a result of a volcano disaster&mdash;the Tamil Mandalam culture of New Tanjavur (based on an interpretation of Sangam literature) and the Maya culture that has been forced to live in the slum of Mayatown and the newly-grown city of Yaxkintulum after the destruction of their native Kintulum (based on an interpretation of pre-Columbian Maya civilization), have strained relations to the point that the Council of Humanity fears that full-scale war or ethnic cleansing may envelop Briand. Giraut and Margaret are given orders by Shan, their Office of Special Projects supervisor, to find the real power brokers of each culture in order to defuse the headline-grabbing daily ethnic attacks and steer the planet clear of all-out war. They must do this under the nose of Ambassador Kiel, a high ranking ambassador from Earth on Briand, who believes strengthening elected government officials is the only way to address a crisis. Giraut and Margaret arrive as their marriage is falling apart, but focus on their work and establish contact with key Tamil people. They are assigned a Tamil assistant, Kapilar, with whom they both spend a lot of time. They are at first unable speak directly to the reclusive Mayans, except for Tz'iquin, the Mayan contact in New Tanjavur. After a small mob attacks Paxa Prytanis, another secret agent sent by the Office of Special Projects, an invitation by the Maya comes unexpectedly. Giraut, Kapilar and Tz'iquin travel to Yaxkintulum in the latter's flying yacht, as the Mayans have officially refused to adopt the springer as well as other technological conveniences, and rely on simple subsistence farming in order to preserve their cultural heritage. Giraut meets Tz'iquin's grandfather, Pusiictsom, the most powerful and influential priest in Yaxkintulum, who, despite being in charge of the traditionally conservative Center Temple, is a reformer working on reconciliation with the Tamils behind the scenes. A plan is put into motion where Pusiictsom's nephew is raised to the position of prophet under the name "Ix," with a plan to move to Yaxkintulum and start a cult movement of tolerance, modernization and truth about the founding of the two cultures. The plan calls for the new cult to be brutally oppressed by Mayan authorities, and Giraut, Kapilar, Ix and Tz'iquin stage an escape to New Tanjavur. Through a series of public appearances, Ix begins to recruit Mayans and some Tamils to his cult. He starts dating Auvaiyar, a notable and famously attractive Tamil critic several years his junior who had previously been involved with Tz'quin, Kapilar and Kannan, a deeply bigoted Tamil critic and poet who heads the avant-garde movement and hopes to create a Fourth Cankam. The rumor that Ix has an affair with a Tamil causes mass riots, which Ix unexpectedly ends by confessing in public, despite Pusiictsom's protests, that his prophecy began as a ploy by his family, the Peccaries. Tz'iquin breaks into tears during his uncle's speech, revealing to Giraut his jealousy at his uncle's upcoming marriage to his former girlfriend. Just prior to Ix's next speech, however, Auvaiyar is found dead, her heart and lungs missing. Ix reacts calmly to the discovery, and decides to show the corpse to the crowd during his speech. Giraut and Kannan bring her body to the central plaza, before the temple of Murukan where Ix was going to wed Auvaiyar. As the prophet speaks to the mixed Tamil/Mayan crowd, he uses his pain, her murder and his forgiveness to whoever did it as a starting point for reconciliation between the two cultures. Tz'iquin comes forth, confesses Auvaiyar's murder (saying that he ate her heart, as Tohil is known to do), and shoots his uncle in the head with a maser. Kannan goes on a murderous rampage against the Mayans as a full-scale race war erupts. Giraut and Kapilar run back to the Embassy, where the former is ordered to evacuate it immediately. Almost everyone in the embassy is evacuated through springers to Earth, but Ambassador Kiel is captured by Tamils, and Kapilar refuses to go, choosing instead to join the fighting to honor his Vellala heritage. Giraut, Margaret and Shan watch the civil war unfold from a space station in the Inner Sphere. Mayan forces invade New Tanjavur through Pusiictsom's secret springer, an attack that the Peccaries had been planning for at least a year. Illegal anti-matter weapons are used by both sides, completely destroying both Yaxkintulum and New Tanjavur. The habitable areas of Briand are devastated, and with no springers left intact, the planet becomes isolated from the rest of humanity until a springer ship can arrive in several decades' time. Giraut finds out from Margaret that she had been having an affair with Kapilar since the mission began, and was ordered to not break it off by his friend and boss Shan, who hoped he could acquire valuable intelligence through Kapilar. The failure of the Office of Special Projects on Briand forces the secretive agency into the limelight, and they brace for public scrutiny and oversight. Giraut opts to take his one-year-long leave on the Hedon culture of Söderblom to try to salvage his marriage and to get away from Shan, but after that one year, he wants back into the Office of Special Projects to continue the important mission of integrating humanity to provide a united front for possible alien contact.
10153633	/m/02q3jm8	Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen	Dyan Sheldon	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen follows the character of Mary Elizabeth "Lola" Cep as she moves to New Jersey with her family and attempts to become the Queen Bee at Dellwood High. In order to become so she must contend with Carla Santini, who has no intention of vacating her place in school society. Both end up vying for the lead in the school play, with the feud only getting worse after the breakup of Lola's favorite band. When Carla gets VIP passes to the band's last concert and the after party, Lola says she and her best friend Ella Gerard are going also. They sneak away to New York, get kicked out of the concert, then find the lead singer drunk and on the side of the road, which eventually leads to them getting to the after party. Lola and Ella return to school the next day, eager to boast to Carla about their antics at the afterparty, but are humiliated when Carla succeeds in convincing everyone else they never attended. Lola goes home, upset, and decides not to perform in the school play. But she changes her mind the night of the play after Ella tells her off, and Lola rushes to school to take on her role as the lead. The book ends with the play as a success and with Lola and Carla in the bathroom fixing up their make up for the after party while they acknowledge each other.
10154133	/m/02q3k5v	Reckless	Cecily von Ziegesar	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 As punishment for being off-campus (and having a party), the girls are split up into separate rooms: Callie and Jenny are kept in their original room while Tinsley and Brett move to another. They spend most of their time and energy avoiding each other. Callie tries to deal with her breakup with Easy Walsh by getting a new haircut and a new wardrobe but is surprised when Easy asks her to go to dinner with him and his father during Trustee's Weekend because his father adores Callie and is unaware that they have broken up. Easy, who does not get along with his father, hopes to protect Jenny from his overly critical nature and believes that taking Callie would be much simpler. Callie accepts his invitation but wonders if it means that Easy is having second thoughts about their breakup. Jenny, on the other hand, is blissfully unaware of Easy's action and continues to spend time with Brett, who decides to finally have sex (and lose her virginity) with her on again-off again boyfriend Jeremiah Mortimer during Trustee's Weekend, after a big football game for St. Lucius. However, Tinsley helps Heath Ferro and the hot new freshman, Julian hide kegs of beer on the roof of the Dumbarton dorm and under the bed of a quiet girl who lives in a single known as The Girl In Black. After the boys leave, Tinsley throws and all girls party on the roof for all of the Dumbarton residents (excluding Brett and Jenny). Unfortunately, a staff member passing by hears the girls on the roof and attempts to a stop to it. All the girls quickly hide in their respective rooms so no one can be blamed but the administration insists that the keg left on the roof is more than enough to hold against the dorm as a whole. Due to the Trustee Weekend event, the administration does not want to draw too much attention to the incident so the punishment is light- all Dumbarton residents are under lockdown for the weekend. No one can enter or leave the dorm, thus ruining Brett's plans with Jeremiah. Upon hearing this, the guys of Waverly decide to make history by sneaking into Dumbarton while it is still on lock-down through secret tunnels built during the Cold War. Led by Heath Ferro, Easy Walsh, Brandon Buchanan, Alan St. Girard, Jeremiah Mortimer, and Julian McCafferty make it to Dumbarton unseen by the administration. Upon arrival, they break out the kegs stored under The Girl In Black's room, who turns out to be Kara Whalen, a previously chubby girl who was teased mercilessly by Heath Ferro her freshman year. In the spirit of generosity, Tinsley suggests that the girls of Dumbarton open their closets to the other residents so everyone can borrow each other's clothes. Tinsley, on a hunt for the hottest threads, checks on the kegs in Kara's room and discovers Kara has a fantastic wardrobe, thanks to her designer mother. She offers to help Kara with her make up but quickly forgets as the party begins. Jenny and Easy are reunited at the party but he still doesn't mention his dinner with his father and Callie the previous night before. Jenny leaves him in her room to grab drinks but a rumor quickly spreads that a teacher is roaming the hallways. He hides in the closet but is found by Callie who joins him. After she does so, the two begin to kiss but Easy realizes he has strong feelings for Jenny but is confused as to why he is still so attracted to Callie. Jenny, in the meanwhile, gets pulled into Kara's room after the rumors of a teacher in Dumbarton reach her. Kara and Jenny become fast friends and begin to chat when they are interrupted by Heath Ferro, who is looking for a place to hide as well. Heath is immediately attracted to Kara and does not recognize her as 'The Whale', the nickname he gave her freshman year and attempts to pick her up. Kara, however, is unimpressed and throws her mug of beer into Heath's face, making her one of the coolest chicks at the party. Brandon, unaware of the rumors about a teacher, bumps into Elizabeth Jacobs, a girl from St. Lucius. It quickly becomes apparent that the rumors about a teacher are actually about Elizabeth who has followed Jeremiah from St. Lucius. Brandon and Elizabeth quickly bond as they go around the rooms and coax the residents to continue partying as there is no threat of a teacher. Brett and Jeremiah quickly find each other at the beginning of the party and are about to have sex when they are interrupted by Tinsley who announces a game of 'I Never' is starting in the common room. Deciding to forgo sex for a more romantic occasion, Jeremiah and Brett agree to join the game. During the game, Yvonne Stidder starts with saying that she has never has sex before. The people who have done it, quickly do a shot, led by Heath Ferro. Surprisingly, Jeremiah and Elizabeth each do a shot which causes Brett and Jeremiah to break up. Shockingly, Tinsley, who has implied that she has had sex multiple times, does not take a shot (thus, revealing she is a virgin) which prompts accusations from her friends that she is a liar. Unwilling to be thrown into the spotlight for the wrong reasons, Tinsley announces in front of everybody that Easy took Callie to the Trustee Dinner instead of Jenny. Which prompts Jenny to flee the room. Callie becomes angry at Tinsley for revealing such a big secret in front of everyone, even though she hoped it would cause Easy and Jenny to break up, and reconciles with Brett who is with Kara, comforting Jenny. Jenny, to Callie's surprise, forgives her and both girls await Easy's next move. After the game of I Never, the party slows down considerably as the party-goers gossip about the recent events. During so, Elizabeth and Brandon sneak off to the tunnels and make out which makes Brandon believe that he is finally over Callie.
10154170	/m/02q3k7k	Unforgettable	Cecily von Ziegesar	2007-06	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After being torn between Callie Vernon and Jenny Humphrey, Easy Walsh makes his decision and chooses Callie. Although Jenny and Callie made a pact to put their friendship before relationships with Easy in front of the whole school, Callie will certainly not give him up for her sophomore roommate. Meanwhile, Brett Messerschmidt is still upset about the breakup with Jeremiah. After Jeremiah lost his virginity to Elizabeth, Brett had enough with guys. Surprisingly, Brett finds love in the most unexpected place: Kara Whalen, and confides in the most unexpected person: Heath Ferro, an inveterate gossip. Not ready to declare her sexuality to the student body, Brett keeps the relationship a secret by bribing Heath with sexy pictures of her and Kara. As a result of this, the three become surprisingly close. Tinsley Carmichael does the unexpected and hooks up with a freshman: Julian McCafferty. However, Tinsley finds Julian growing increasingly more distant, and she cannot accept he might be bored with her. Brandon Buchanan is completely over Callie and Jenny and is completely in love with Elizabeth, a unique and spunky girl who goes to Jeremiah's school. However, Elizabeth is afraid of being tied down to commitment and wants to be free to see other people, much to Brandon's discontent. Then at a party hosted by Tinsley he sees her flirting with another guy and decides he is not able to have an open relationship with her. At a special off-campus party hosted by Tinsley, Easy proclaims his love for Callie, and they sleep together in a barn while the party rages on. Jenny walks in on them, runs out of the barn before they see her and finds Julian behind it. They talk and realize their feelings for each other, finally kissing. A fire in the barn interrupts them: a fire started by Tinsley throwing Julian's lighter away after seeing them. Suddenly, when the group returns to Waverly, rumors are flying about who actually started the fire. When Jenny confronts Callie about what she saw, they both accuse each other of starting the fire. Brett and Kara's secret is exposed when an intoxicated Callie lets the secret slip at the party, Kara having told Callie the secret after a meeting of Women of Waverly, the club started by Brett for girls to talk about their problems. Soon the entire student body knows that their prefect is in a lesbian relationship. Fueled by anger, Brett is hungry for revenge. Dean Marymount finds out about the fire in the barn and is planning to expel whoever was responsible. Tinsley and Callie seize this chance to frame Jenny and get rid of her once and for all.
10164950	/m/02q3yd3	Candy				 The story opens when Joe from a single parent family, a music lover and with a knack for curiosity - meets 16-year-old Candy on the streets of London. He soon learns that Candy is not only a runaway from her home town, but also a teenage prostitute and heroin addict. He immediately becomes infatuated with her. The pair begins dating cautiously, visiting London Zoo once, and Candy comes to see a gig that Joe and his band, The Katies, are playing. However, Candy's pimp, Iggy, feels that Joe Beck is a threat, worrying that Joe will reduce the business Candy takes in and thus reducing Iggy's income. When Joe finds Candy beaten, the pair attack Iggy and leave the city to hide and ease Candy off heroin. Iggy subsequently kidnaps Joe's older sister Gina, and uses her as a bargaining chip, claiming to plan to return her if Candy is returned to him. The novel climaxes when Iggy, Candy, Joe, his sister and his sister's boyfriend encounter one another at the family's remote country house. Candy stabs Iggy in the neck and the main story concludes. Candy is sent off to a rehab center for adolescents and Joe has a final meeting with her. Candy apologizes for everything and gets taken away. Joe is left wondering over her whereabouts and if he will ever see her again. The last chapter briefly explains that Joe's band received a record deal and had recorded Joe's song that he had written for Candy. They called several times for his permission to record it, but he never returned the calls. Although Joe was not at all upset by this, Candy very much was. This led to the last scene having Candy cry in Joe's arms, asking why their song was recorded. Did he have something to do with it? Left hanging on the streets all alone when Candy leaves, Joe is baffled, heartbroken, and still deeply in love.
10164963	/m/02q3yf4	Keeping Faith	Jodi Picoult	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Mariah White catches her husband, Colin White, with another woman for the second time in their marriage, he files for divorce and gives her full custody of their child, Faith. After the divorce, Mariah falls into a deep depression, while Faith develops an imaginary friend called her "Guard". When she starts quoting the Bible, which she has never read as she is a Jew, her mother takes her to see a therapist, fearing for her sanity. The therapist finds that Faith may in fact be seeing God. News of this reaches Ian Fletcher, a "teleatheist" who is traveling around the country debunking "miracles" that feature God. Ian shows up at the Whites' house, where he has a confrontation with Millie Epstein, Faith's grandmother. This leads to the latter having a heart attack and being taken to hospital, where she is declared dead. About an hour later Faith kisses her good-bye and thus apparently raises her back to life. This increases the attention of the general public focused on her, with pilgrims and media representative surrounding the house, making it impossible for the Whites to continue with their normal lives. She performs a few other miracles, including healing an AIDS baby and showing what appear to be stigmata. Colin, hearing of the commotion surrounding his daughter, sues Mariah for custody of Faith. Mariah and Faith flee to Kansas City, where they are confronted with Ian, who is visiting his autistic brother, Michael. They end up staying together after Ian cheats Mariah into believing he will not betray them and give them accommodation. After a confrontation with Faith trying to "heal" Michael, Ian blows up. However, Mariah and Ian appear to have fallen in love. After hearing from her mother that Colin is suing her, they fly back. Meanwhile, Faith is admitted to the hospital again and her mother is prevented from seeing her by the court, at which point Faith's symptoms begin to worsen, eventually leaving her near death. Upon being reunited with her mother her health increases drastically, and in the end, Mariah is awarded custody, the holes in Faith's hands disappear, and her "guard" goes away. Mariah and Ian begin a romantic relationship during the novel and they and Faith eventually live together as a family. But at the very end of the story, it remains unclear whether the guard is really forever gone or is still with Faith.
10165796	/m/02q3zd2	The Road of the Dead				 The Road of the Dead opens as 14 year old Ruben and 17 year old Cole, half gypsy half English brothers, learn about their older sister's rape and murder. Determined to bring closure to their family, they travel to Lychcombe to collect her body. What begins as a simple task to bring her body home branches out into a quest for revenge when they learn that the murderer must be caught before they can bury Rachel. Slowly the brothers begin to uncover a plot in Lychcombe, involving the planned installation of a new hotel and vacation resort and several landowners who don't want to sell. Tragically, they discover that Rachel's murder was the result of an accident/miscommunication. However, the brothers are still determined to catch her killer. When the brothers discover that the killer has already been murdered himself for his mistake, they set out to find his body, the only way they can link him to Rachel. They soon find themselves involved with local gypsies, small town politics and the town's unofficial leader who's not going to give in without a fight.
10169466	/m/02q41t8	Mindgame	Anthony Horowitz			 Mark Styler, a writer of "true crime" stories arrives at the Fairfields experimental hospital for the criminally insane, with the hope of interviewing serial killer Easterman for a new book. He meets Dr. Farquhar, the hospital director, however things don't seem quite right. The doctor is reluctant to let Styler see Easterman, and encourages Styler to leave. Styler, however refuses with the excuse of a long car journey. In the end, he stays and Farquhar offers him dinner. His assistant Nurse Plimpton seems frightened of something, and is anxious. She tries to give a note to Styler, but Farquhar burns it in the bin. She reluctantly makes a pot of tea and liver sandwiches for Styler. After she leaves, the two discuss the book further, but Styler's real feelings about Easterman are revealed. He is desperate to see Easterman, and suggests that he wore a strait-jacket to keep him from damaging anything. Farquhar, seemingly annoyed at this, retrieves a strait jacket from a closet and offers to put it on Styler to show what it is like, and he reluctantly agrees. Once Styler is strapped in, Farquhar taunts him about being mad, and threatens him with a scalpel, then Nurse Plimpton returns, and she knocks Farquhar unconscious with a wine bottle. She explains that Farquhar is in fact Easterman, who killed most of the staff during a "psychiatric drama" session. Nurse Plimpton is in fact Doctor Carol Ennis. She cannot undo the strait jacket straps, and as she bends down to get the scalpel from Easterman, he awakens and grabs her, then stabs her behind a curtain. When Easterman and Styler begin to talk, it turns out the two men used to be neighbours, and Styler admired Easterman, perhaps even loved him. It appears Styler's motives for visiting are not as they appeared to be. Doctor Ennis suddenly awakens, and cries out for help; Easterman straps her to a chair and after removing the jacket, asks Styler to kill her. Styler is tricked into thinking he is Easterman, and they think up various methods, but in the end Styler suffocates her with a carrier bag. Once it is done, he feels guilt but Ennis awakes and now assumes the role of Doctor Farquhar. She and Easterman, who is now Carol completely change, and Styler is told he is Easterman and Styler was just his assumed name. He tries to prove them wrong, however his BMW is gone, and the letter he sent to Farquhar is blank. In the end, Styler is forced to believe he is Easterman, however it is never explicitly revealed to the audience who is actually who.
10170289	/m/02q429s	Oakleaf Bearers	John Flanagan	2006-05-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book continues from where the previous book left off. In The Icebound Land, Evanlyn and Will have been captured and sold as slaves. As the time went on, Halt and Horace travelled across Gallica, defeating false knights, and ridding Gallica of the evil warlord Deparnieux. They are now in Gallica ready to board a ship and save Will. Meanwhile, Will has overcome his addiction to warmweed and finally regains his senses. Evanlyn, revealed to be Princess Cassandra, is out checking traps for food when she is taken hostage by the Temujai. Halt and Horace, still on their rescue mission, find a gate of which a dozen Skandians lay dead, shot. Halt manages to recognise an arrow, shot by the Temujai and becomes instantly worried. Two decades ago, the Temujai had nearly conquered the world, but with politics and a dish of bad clams, the invasion was stopped. Halt and Horace, after managing to track the Temujai down, came to Will's aid and they try to get Evanlyn back. Halt and the group, after being reunited, were then captured by Erak, the Skandian Jarl who had set Evanlyn and Will free. Erak had been trying to track down the people who shot the Skandians at the other gate, and hastily came to a conclusion that Halt was the one who did it. Halt gave a list of reasons, which convinced the senior Jarl to listen to him. The Skandians have no chance, as they are greatly outnumbered and the Temujai have long-range archers, versus the Skandians one-on-one close combat. Halt, Evanlyn, Will, and Horace are now forced to stay in Skandia because the Temujai have blocked their only exit to their homeland. Erak came to a decision into trying to get Ragnak, the Oberjarl, to let Halt become their strategist as he had lived and fought with and against the Temujai before, thus knowing their battle plans and style of fighting. Halt and Erak also manage to find the main army of the Temujai, followed with a very narrow escape because of Erak's clumsiness. Halt and Will also manage to convince the Oberjarl into getting the slaves to become archers with their reward being freedom, of which Ragnak had to very reluctanctly accept. 20 Skandians were also supposed to raid the army's food supplies, wagons, and release their horses as the army, who had not expected the Skandians to be strategic. Further on in the story, the Temujai begins their first attack and, as Halt had said, made a fake retreat of which the Skandians purposelly followed their "ambush". Halt, however, had placed a group of Skandians to ambush the Temujai. This made them driven back and the General of the army, along with the Colonel, were very surprised because the Skandians were not behaving anything at all from what they've heard. In the battle, Will manages to keep his archers concealed for a while, but soon, they are spotted. Will kept his archers firing their arrows, but they were defeated. Meanwhile, the Skandians, made an impact on the opposing army, and the General had to retreat back to his homeland because he lost too many warriors. The Skandians had won. Erak takes the group back to their home. After a long happy union, Will and Evanlyn then find out that Halt has been banished; Erak saves the awkward moment by trying to include it in their treaty to pardon him, of which King Duncan agrees. In the end, Halt was rewarded with his reunion back with the Rangers, Horace with his knighthood and position as the Royal Guards, and Will was offered to become one of the Royal Scouts, a high position of the King's army that trains archers and that only nobles could probably have; this would give him fame and reputation, but Will, in his heart, turns the offer down. Will wants to continue his training to became a full-fledged Ranger. Evanlyn, near the end as well, is sad because her friendship with Will is breaking up and Alyss is a little glad about that in later books.
10178524	/m/02q497j	The Princess Diaries	Meg Cabot	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mia Thermopolis an average urban ninth grader. She lives in Greenwich Village with a single, liberal mom who is a semi-famous painter, but Mia puts on her Doc Martens one at a time, and the most exciting things she ever dreams about are kissing senior Josh Richter ("six feet of hotness") and passing Algebra. Mia's dad comes to town and drops a major bomb: he's not just a European politician as he's always led her to believe, but actually the prince of a small country. And Mia, his only heir, is now considered the crown princess of Genovia. She doesn't even know how to begin to cope: "I am so NOT a princess.... You never saw anyone who looked less like a princess than I do. I mean, I have really bad hair... and... a really big mouth and no breasts and feet that look like skis." Mia's troubles are worsened: her mom has started dating her algebra teacher, the paparazzi are showing up at school, and she has a fight with her best friend Lilly after this they don't talk for a while so they become distant from each other. Mia goes to her Grandmère's Plaza Hotel room in order to train to be a princess and she starts to develop into a great princess. Throughout story Mia also makes another friend named Tina, who is shunned because of her overprotective father, who makes her have a body guard.
10181071	/m/02q4csb	Exile's Honor	Mercedes Lackey		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Alberich is a Captain of the army in Karse, the youngest person to receive this promotion. He has flashes of Foresight and one day gets a vision of bandits invading a village while grooming his horse, a gift from the priesthood upon his promotion. He musters his men and is able to save the village. After, a Red-robe priest of the god Vkandis proclaims that Alberich has a "witch-power" and therefore is condemned to death. He is locked in a barn and the barn is set afire. However, the horse given to him after his promotion rescues him and turns out to be a Companion named Kantor who Chooses Alberich. Alberich is unwillingly taken to Valdemar, where he recovers from his injuries. When he recovers, he is informed by King's Own Talamir that he is now a Herald Trainee. Alberich had been taught that Heralds were demons along with their "Hellhorses" - the Companions. Alberich now has to deal with this fact, as well as the realization that he no longer can return to Karse. A priest of Vkandis and his acolyte are able to help Alberich accept matters in Valdemar as they had fled from Karse as well. Alberich settles into life at the Collegium as the Weaponmaster's Second. Alberich is later made the bodyguard of Princess Selenay and accompanies her when she does her circuit training at the courts in the city. Karse and Valdemar have been at war for generations, and Karse hired a nation of mercenaries not tied to the Mercenary Guild to fight on their behalf. Alberich helps Valdemar fight what are later known as the Tedrel Wars. Alberich uses his connections in the Karsite military to acquire intelligence on the Tedrel Mercenaries as the battles go on season after season. In a dramatic final battle, Valdemaran forces fight the entire nation of Tedrel mercenaries. When all seems lost, King Sendar, Selenay's father, rushes into battle and is killed. King's Own Talamar loses his Companion, Taver, as well and another King's Own Companion named Rolan arrives to pull him out of his grief. Selenay becomes queen, and a funeral procession is arranged for Sendar to return to the captiol city of Haven. Upon his return, Alberich is made full Weaponmaster, the old one deciding to retire, and he finally settles into his new life in Valdemar.
10191858	/m/02q4qp4	Come Back for More	Ralph Salaway		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 After testifying against the murderer of bank guard Pop Walters, "Swede" Anderson finds himself number one on the River City, California crime syndicate's hit list. He barely escapes fiery death after the mob wires a bomb into the door of his car. Captain Domms of the city police is unable to protect him or, worse, has his own hand in the mob's pocket. Seeing no refuge for himself in River City, Anderson rides the rails out of town and fades from local memory. Anderson realizes that after four years of hobo living has melted away his flab, the sun has turned his formerly pale skin to leather, and a run-in with a railyard bull has left his nose broken and his cheek scarred, he is scarcely recognizable as his old self. With a bottle of henna he completes the transformation by coloring his blond hair red. Under the name of his late hobo pal, Mac McCarthy, Anderson returns to River city with revenge on his mind. There, he signs on as a driver with Tyler Trucking. The firm is being run by Gail Tyler, following her father's death—under suspicious circumstances—in a high-speed truck wreck. Anderson soon learns that between the union and the crime syndicate it fronts, the lifespan of a trucker in River City is not entirely in the trucker's hands. Using a mix of guts, muscle, and brains, Anderson builds a reputation as a cool-headed tough whose only interest is in a quick dollar. He manages to infiltrate the mob, but soon finds himself in over his head. In what he thinks will be simple heist, he becomes an unwilling accessory to the murder of the head of a rival trucking firm. In this he implicates not just himself but also Tyler Trucking and Gail, with whom he has developed a romantic attachment. Investigating the crime, Captain Domms fails to see through Anderson's Mac McCarthy disguise and proves himself no more able to enforce the law than he'd been four years ago. Never losing his nerve, Anderson ultimately wins the mob bosses' full confidence and is taken into a plot to rob the same bank he worked in when Pop Walters was killed. While rehearsing for the robbery, Anderson sees through the mob's plan to murder him after he plays his part—to avoid making the generous payoff it's promised him. Anderson develops a counter-strategy, but realizes the mob has turned the tables on him when the next rehearsal suddenly becomes the real thing. As the story reaches its climax, Anderson has only moments to adapt his half-formed plan to the new scenario, save his life, and find the revenge he has sought.
10192978	/m/02q4rms	Jeffrey and Sloth	Kari-Lynn Winters	2007	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Jeffrey can't think of how to start his writing assignment so he doodles instead, only to have his doodle of a sloth come to life and order him about. Jeffrey struggles against the strong-willed Sloth, in the process telling a tale and completing his homework.
10197451	/m/02q4x8n	The Alexandria Link	Steve Berry	2007	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Library of Alexandria was the most important collection of ancient knowledge ever assembled. The building stood for six hundred years and contained more than half a million manuscripts. Then suddenly it vanished. No trace of this literary treasure has ever been unearthed. The book starts in Palestine in 1948, just as the state of Israel was being established. During Israel's War of Independence, a man is captured by Arab soldiers and taken to George Haddad who is surprised to find that this man is actually looking for his father and has some hidden truth to share. He mentions that Arabs are fighting a war that is unnecessary, against an enemy that is misinformed. Unable to learn more, the leader decides to shoot the mysterious man. In present day Copenhagen, Denmark, Cotton Malone is in trouble. His son Gary is being held hostage by unknown enemies who want to trade him for the secret of the Alexandria Link. Malone is the only living person who's aware of it. He receives an anonymous email saying that he has only 72 hours to get it and trade with them. He and his ex-wife Pam visit Malone's influential friend Henrik Thorvaldsen's mansion to get some answers. A mysterious man, Dominick Sabre, is following them all the time. Stephanie and her boss, US Attorney General Brent Green, contacts Larry Daley, the main contact in the White House who knows more than them about the Link. Green says that the Link is in fact a person named George Haddad, a Palestinian biblical soldier. Malone uses Thorvaldsen's computer to log in to his "Magellan Billet" secure server, which was accessible to him when he used to work for the justice department. He contacts his former boss, Stephanie Nelle, for more information. She mentions that there was some security breach and some secured files may have been exposed. Malone meets agent Durant, who works for Stephanie, but he gets killed before he learns more. Malone follows the killer and eventually rescues Gary after killing his captors. What he apparently does not realize is that that was the plan by Sabre, who had anticipated this from the start. He delivers this message to his employer, the mysterious Blue Chair, the head of "The Chairs", according to whom they have different interests in the Alexandria Link; while Sabre wants the link, the Chairs want it to be obliterated. Later Thorvaldsen reveals to Stephanie the whereabouts of "The Chairs" and that it is a recreation of the Order of the Golden Fleece) - a European economic cartel. The head of this circle is called the Blue Chair, currently Alfred Hermann, an Austrian industrialist. This circle has many controls over Europe and their highest priority is the Middle East. Malone is on his way with Pam to meet Haddad. He keeps Gary at Thorvaldsen's mansion, hoping that will keep him safe. He goes to London with Pam and meets Haddad to learn more about the Library of Alexandria and the mystery. Haddad tells them about the probable translation inaccuracies of the Old Testament and how he is working to show how it has been translated from Old Hebrew. But before he finishes explaining everything to Malone, Israeli agents arrive and kill Haddad. Stephanie meets Heather Dixon, an Israeli citizen attached to the Washington mission, who tries to kill her. Cassiopeia Vitt, Thorvaldsen's associate, appears and tranquilizes her with a dart. Brent Green helps her to learn a lot about the current situation and reveals that Pam Malone might be the conduit of Israel. Sabre meets Malone and Pam and tries to buy some information from them in exchange for decoding a word-play of Haddad. Henrik flies to Austria with Gary to attend the Order of Golden fleece's meeting, thus playing a psychological game with Hermann.
10207282	/m/02q56vs	Terrarium	Scott Sanders	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the late 21st century, humans have been forcibly moved into an enclosed network of domed cities connected by travel tubes known as 'The Human System'. The outside world was left because of extreme pollution, and the cities rely on harvesting the seas. Inside these cities, (called the "Enclosure") taboos extend so far as to make uncovered legs and unpainted faces a horrific sin. Due to likely ongoing large scale social engineering there are 12 stages for mating but most women have their reproductive organs removed or are used as breeders starting at the age of 13. Fear of the outside is extreme, another aspect of the social engineering that was incorporated into The Human System. Hence it is called the "wilder" and people who enter these lands legally on maintenance work are called wildergoers. Exiting The Human System without permission is illegal and might result in execution. The book focuses on a man named Phoenix and a Wildergoer called Teeg Passio, daughter of a renowned deconstructer of the original Earth cities whose pieces and materials were used to create the Enclosure. The book details how they and a group of others escape out into the wilds and find an outside world they didn't expect.
10214293	/m/02q5d_l	All That Fall	Samuel Beckett	1956		 This is the first work by Beckett where a woman is the central character. In this case it is a gritty, “overwhelmingly capacious”, outspoken, Irish septuagenarian, Maddy Rooney, plagued by “rheumatism and childlessness”. “Beckett emphasized to Billie Whitelaw that Maddy had an Irish accent: : ‘I said, “Like yours,” and he said, “No, no, no, an Irish accent.” I realized he didn't know he had an Irish accent, and that was the music he heard in his head.’” The opening scene finds Maddy trudging down a country road towards the station, renamed “Boghill” in the play. It’s her husband’s birthday. She’s already given him a tie but decides to surprise him by meeting him off the 12:30 train. It is a fine June morning, a Saturday since her husband is leaving his office at noon rather than five. In the distance the sounds of rural animals are heard. She moves with difficulty. She hears chamber music coming from an old house, Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden”. She stops, listens to the recording and even murmurs along with it before proceeding. Her first of three encounters with men is with the dung carrier, Christy, who tries to sell her a “small load of … stydung”. She tells him she will consult her husband. The man’s cart is being pulled by a “cleg-tormented” hinny who shows some reluctance to move on and needs to be whipped. As she heads off Maddy’s thoughts return to “Minnie! Little Minnie!” The smell of laburnum distracts her. Suddenly old Mr Tyler is upon her ringing his cycle bell. Whilst relating how his daughter’s operation has rendered her unable to bear children, they are almost knocked down by Connolly’s van, which covers them “white with dust from head to foot”. Maddy again bemoans the loss of Minnie but refuses to be comforted by Tyler who rides off despite realising that his rear tyre is flat. Lastly an “old admirer”, Mr Slocum, a racecourse clerk, pulls up in his “limousine” to offer her a ride. She is too fat and awkward to climb in alone so Slocum pushes her in from behind and in doing so her frock gets caught in the door. He tries to start the car but it has died. After applying the choke he does manage to get going and, no sooner having done so, runs over and kills a hen, which Maddy feels the need to eulogise. At each stage of the journey the technology she encounters advances, but despite this each means of locomotion is beset by problems, foreshadowing the problem with the train: she finds walking difficult and is forced to sit down, Christy needs to whip his hinny to make her go, Tyler’s tire goes flat, and Slocum’s engine dies. All the relatives mentioned in this section are female and all the modes of transport are also referred to as females. At the station Slocum calls on the porter, Tommy, for assistance to extricate his passenger, after which he drives away, “crucifying his gearbox.” Beckett told Billie Whitelaw that Maddy “is in a state of abortive explosiveness”. This becomes apparent when she considers herself ignored. To the boy Tommy she says abrasively: “Don’t mind me. Don’t take any notice of me. I do not exist. The fact is well known.” As Ruby Cohn quips, “she endures volubly.” The stationmaster, Mr Barrell, asks after Mrs Rooney’s health. She confesses that she should really still be in bed. We hear of the demise of Mr Barrell’s father, who died shortly after retiring, a tale that reminds Maddy again of her own woes. She notes that the weather has taken a change the worse; the wind is picking up and rain is due. Miss Fitt approaches so immersed in humming a hymn she doesn’t see Maddy at first. Miss Fitt, as her name indicates, is a self-righteous misfit. After some discussion she condescends to help the old woman up the stairs to the platform, primarily because “it is the Protestant thing to do.” Unusually the train is late. The noise of the station builds to a crescendo but it is an anticlimax; it is the oft-mentioned up mail. Dan’s train comes in moments afterwards. Maddy panics. She can’t find her husband because he has been led to the gents by Jerry, the boy who normally helps him to the taxi. Tightfisted Dan chides her for not cancelling Jerry but still pays his penny fee. He refuses however to discuss the reason for the train’s lateness. Not without some difficulty – her husband is also not a well man – they descend the stairs and begin the trek home. On her journey to the station Maddy only had to compete with one person at a time, each an old man. Now she is faced with a crowd. Rather than the flat open countryside she has to contend with a mountainous climb; she refers to the stairs as a “cliff”, her husband calls them a “precipice” and Miss Fitt compares them to the “Matterhorn”, a mountain that for years inspired fear in climbers. Also, the means of transport that are mentioned here, the Titanic, the Lusitania and the train due are modes of mass transport and the level of danger shifts from the inconvenient to the potentially lethal. All the relatives mentioned in this section are now male. The weather is worsening. The thought of getting home spurs them on. Dan imagines sitting by the fire in his dressing gown with his wife reading aloud from Effi Briest. The Lynch twins jeer at them from a distance. Dan shakes his stick and chases them off. Previously they have pelted the old couple with mud. “Did you ever wish to kill a child?” Dan asks her then admits to having to resist the impulse within himself. This makes his comment shortly after about being alone in his compartment – “I made no attempt to restrain myself.” – all the more suspicious. This also focuses attention on his remarks about the pros and cons of retirement: one of the negatives he brings up has to do with enduring their neighbour’s children. Dan is as laconic as Maddy is loquacious. His refusal to explain why the train was delayed forces her to pester him with questions which he does his best to avoid answering. He prevaricates and digresses, anything to throw her off track. Eventually he maintains that he honestly has no clue what the cause was. Being blind and on his own he had simply assumed the train had stopped at a station. Something Dan says reminds Maddy of a visit she once made to hear “a lecture by one of these new mind doctors. What she heard there was the story of a patient the doctor had failed to cure, a young girl who was dying, and “did in fact die, shortly after he had washed his hands of her.” The reason the doctor gave for the girl’s death, as if the revelation had just come to him there and then, was: “The trouble with her was that she had never really been born!” As they near the house Maddy passed earlier, Schubert’s music is still playing. Dan starts to cry. To stop her asking questions he asks about the text of Sunday’s sermon. “The Lord upholdeth all that fall and raiseth up all those that be bowed down,” she tells him, and then they both burst out laughing. Mr Slocum and Miss Fitt had both passed comment on Maddy’s bent posture. Perhaps, this is partly why they laugh: it is the best reaction to a life of unending misery in a world devoid of any God. In Happy Days, Winnie asks “How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones”. It is worthy of mention too that “it is Mr Tyler, rather than the Lord, who saved the preacher’s life when they were climbing together”. It would be fair to assume that Maddy doesn’t really believe in a god anymore. When she says, “We are alone. There is no one to ask.” She is certainly not talking about there being no one to ask about her husband’s age. Jerry catches them up to return something Mr Rooney has dropped. Learning that it is some kind of ball he demands the boy hand it to him. When pressed by his wife all he will say is that: “It is a thing I carry about with me,” and becomes angry when pressed on the subject. They have no small change so promise to give Jerry a penny on Monday to compensate him for his trouble. Just as the boy starts back Maddy calls him to see if he has learned what delayed the train. He has. Dan doesn’t want to know – “Leave the boy alone, he knows nothing! Come on!” – but his wife insists. Jerry tells her that it was a child at which point her husband groans. When pushed for details the boy goes on: “It was a little child fell out of the carriage, Ma’am … Onto the line, Ma’am … Under the wheels, Ma’am.” We assume the child is a girl – all the foreshadowing in the play has been pointing to that – but, crucially, Beckett never actually says. (See his comment to Kay Boyle below however). With that Jerry exits. We hear his steps die away and the couple head off in silence. Maddy must realise the death happened while she was making her way to the station but she is – for once – speechless. All we are left with is the wind and the rain and to wonder what, if anything, Mr Rooney actually had to do with the death of the child. The third section of the play returns Maddy to the relative calm of the walk home. They encounter a further three people only this time they are all children. The laburnum also serves as an important benchmark. In the opening scene Maddy admires it, now its condition has deteriorated. The weather has also continued to worsen until, at the end, they are in the middle of a “[t]empest of wind and rain”. In 1961 Kay Boyle asked Beckett if, at the end of Happy Days, Willie is reaching for the gun, or for his wife. Beckett replied: : “The question as to which Willie is ‘after’ – Winnie or the revolver – is like the question in All That Fall as to whether Mr Rooney threw the little girl out of the railway-carriage or not. And the answer is the same in both cases – we don’t know, at least I don’t … I know creatures are supposed to have no secrets for their authors, but I’m afraid mine for me have little else.”
10216432	/m/02q5hdy	The Fur Country	Jules Verne	1872	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1859 Lt. Jasper Hobson and other members of the Hudson's Bay Company travel through the Northwest Territories of Canada to Cape Bathurst on the Arctic Ocean on the mission to create a fort at 70 degrees, north of the Arctic Circle. The area they come to is very rich with wildlife and natural resources. Jasper Hobson and his party establish a fort here. At some point, an earthquake occurs, and from then on, laws of physics seem altered (a total eclipse happens to be only partial; tides are not perceived anymore). They eventually realise that they are on an iceberg separated from the sea ice that is drifting south. Hobson does a daily measurement to know the iceberg's location. The iceberg passes the Bering Strait and the iceberg (which is now much smaller, since the warmer waters has melted some parts) finally reaches a small island. A Danish whaling ship finds them. Every member in Hobson's party is rescued and they all survive.
10220451	/m/02q5n2b	Goat Song	Frank Yerby			 Ariston, a Spartiate, is the hero cursed and blessed by a matchless beauty that was the Hellenic ideal. This was a time of burgeoning culture and festering decadence, of excessive cruelty and sexuality. Here are found the battlefield and the helot slave market, the temple and the brothel, the discourse of Socrates and the Dionysian revel of Alcibiades, the brutal code of Sparta and the brilliant sophistication of Athens. Ariston is enslaved and brought to Athens where he earns his freedom and fortune only to face Sparta as an Athenian.
10221531	/m/02q5pch	Veracity		2007-03-01	{"/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 What Joshua knows, without a doubt, is that this is the last day of his life. Let alone is he severely injured and unable to walk, he has been tied to a tree by a group of people who will most likely return before the end of the day and kill him – and in the most painful way that they can. He decides that in the time that he has left, the most fitting and constructive thing to do would be to recall the story of who these people are, and why their actions are, he concedes, completely justifiable. Joshua is one of several young men and women who were raised on an island, under the strictest of control, by a group of people who are referred to as the Elders. While growing up, it was clear that a mass of information was being carefully kept from them, but they had also been assured that the reasons for this secrecy would be revealed in early adulthood, during a rite of passage known as Coming of Age. But when this rite finally begins to take place, it doesn’t exactly appear to be an uplifting experience for those who are put through it; like Mikkel, who, after finally returning to the community, attempts to meet with Joshua to give him some kind of urgent warning about it. However, Mikkel falls short, and before Joshua can make any sense of it, he himself is removed from the community to Come of Age. He is taken to an isolated shelter and put through a philosophically taxing ordeal, where he is forced to admit to some of his own callous tendencies and cruelty. He is then told of The Goal, which has all but been completed, and which is a meticulously thought out, three-phase plan designed to rid the world of our ‘vile race’, cleansing the planet of our destructiveness, and allowing nature the chance to heal from the wounds we’ve inflicted. However, as much as he tries to question the sanity of this reasoning, he soon realizes that he is completely outmatched, that they have thought of every angle and argument possible, and have formulated a set of seamless counterarguments to dispel any contention he can come up with. He then learns that he has been chosen as one of the few people who are given the ‘real truth’, and this, only because he is being considered as a candidate to lead an expedition that will set out from the island for the third and final phase of The Goal. This expedition will be a last sweep for a designated portion of a continent, making certain that the land is uninhabited, and, if anyone is found, to inconspicuously sterilize that person or group of people. Joshua realizes he has two choices: he can allow himself to adopt this obscure set of beliefs (the Elders are clearly too clever for him to fake it) and be given the chance for adventure and freedom away from the island, or he can refuse and live the rest of his days under even more severe and tyrannical control. Understandably, he chooses the former. Once his slow-building conviction begins to pass the test, Joshua is released back into the community. There, Mikkel finds another opportunity to meet with him in secret. He discloses the fact that he has some uncertainties about The Goal, and tells him of a text that he had once stumbled across during his education that talked about brainwashing. Joshua, being much more bought in, rationalizes how ‘programming people’ would be physically impossible, and Mikkel, realizing that he might have put himself in danger by opening up, quickly retracts his statements. Then another young man, named Peik, who is also a potential leader for the expedition, Comes of Age. But when he is released, he immediately calls a meeting (something strictly forbidden on the island) for every young man to attend. In this meeting he reveals, in addition to the fact that he is no longer mentally sound, exactly what the Elders are involved in. But the group that has gathered only take this as proof of his sudden spiral into madness, and Peik struggles to redeem himself by presenting a few sheets of encyclopaedia text that describe mind control. Seeing these pages, Joshua realizes what Mikkel has done: believing the Elders to be in the wrong, he has managed to smuggle pieces of ‘misleading information’ to Peik before he was taken into the shelter to Come of Age, in hopes that he might resist their indoctrination. And resist he did. The meeting, however, is cut short when an Elder discovers it, and Peik turns and runs for his life. Everyone else is ordered to go into a community hall to wait in silence while searches are conducted to find him. They finally return with bad news. Peik, in a clear act of insanity, tried to swim away from the Elders who were looking for him, and has drowned. They dismiss everyone to go outside and support each other in their state of shock and grief, except those who know about The Goal. Incredibly frustrated, the Elders try and root out the conspirator among them, concentrating their efforts on some of the women. Joshua chooses to keep quiet about what he knows, saving Mikkel’s life. The Elders are afraid. Only three young men have been given the ‘real truth’, and already someone on the island has managed to slip disclosed material to one of them, which, at worst, might have sparked a revolt, and, at best, has already left one of the three dead. Knowing that this rogue ‘paper smuggler’ could strike again at any time, the Elders decide that they have no choice but to shuffle the remaining two young men who have been given the truth, off on the expedition prematurely, as they would be the most vulnerable targets for the conspirator. They quickly train Joshua – who might not be the best leader, but seems to be the more convinced of the two – to head the expedition. They supply him with the last seaworthy sailboat on the island, a crew of six, and a first mate, Mikkel, who will act as second in command. Soon after setting sail, Joshua begins to illustrate his poor leadership skills, and the crew are increasingly allowed to get away with actions that would never have been allowed on the island. Then, just as his authority begins to be genuinely tested, a severe storm rolls in, damaging the masts and rigging beyond repair. During the ordeal, Mikkel saves Joshua’s life, and then quietly insinuates that he is no longer in his debt, that he considers the two of them to be even. Under the extreme stress of trying to deal with their predicament, the crew inadvertently uncover one of the lies that had been told to them, and begin to question the true intentions of the expedition (they had been told that it was a scientific study, which hoped to probe into the mystery of what had decimated the human population). While they find ways to repair the ship, they recall what Peik had said before evidently ‘committing suicide’, which soon escalates into paranoia, and eventually into a mutiny. Mikkel steps in before things get too ugly, and takes over command of the ship. He decides to inform the ignorant crew of the true reason for the expedition, and Joshua, imprisoned in his quarters, quickly becomes convinced that it is only a matter of time before his infuriated shipmates put him to death. Enlisting the help of the only person on board who believes in his innocence, Joshua escapes in the middle of the night while the ship is passing a steep peninsula (on which it would be impossible for the sailboat to disembark). However, before he can get into the water with the life raft, and amid the confusion of different people moving around in the dark, he accidentally slashes open the stomach of the young man who is trying to save him. Once he reaches the peninsula he travels further inland, until he comes to the remnants of a garden plot where fruit and vegetables are growing. He sets up a home there, and, as the restless weeks pass, he soon finds himself inside of a thorny philosophical struggle. He realizes that the only way to rid himself of the guilt that he feels for most likely killing the young man who helped to save his life, he must become more like the person that that young man thought he was saving. And the only way to do this, he concludes, is to abandon some of the Elder’s philosophies. Gradually, Joshua’s outlook begins to change. Until, one day, he finds a bird entangled in a spool of frayed rope that has lost most of its feathers and is on the brink of starvation. He decides to slowly nurse it back to health, a process that leads him to a strange conclusion. Through various experiences that revolve around the bird, he comes to understand that the longer we hold onto a certain piece of truth, the further from that truth we get. It turns out, he suddenly recognizes, that no one holds the truth of what humanity is – not the Elders, not Mikkel, not himself – and he grows to feel strangely enlightened by this fact. He eventually frees the bird, and settles into a quiet and simple existence on his garden plot. Then the day arrives that he wakes to the sound of Mikkel’s voice. In an instant, he realizes that the crew of the ship have been determinedly tracking him for months, hunting him down. After barely managing to escape, he continues to run for his life. The bird that he has saved follows, hovering above him, indicating exactly where he is. Recognizing that this one and only companionship in his life might also be his downfall, he lures the bird close enough to throw rocks at it, violating the trust he had painstakingly gained. But before the bird can fly far enough away, the crew manage to spot him, and quickly close in. Desperate, Joshua drops into a valley where he finds a recent fire pit, along with other, more disturbing signs of human destruction and cruelty. His old beliefs come flooding back, and he finds himself in a dilemma. If he continues, the crew will come across the same evidence, and almost certainly set out to protect this unknown group of people from other third phase expeditions, saving humanity, and prolonging the ruin and suffering that we cause. But if he retraces his steps and tries to lead them away from the evidence, he will be caught and die a painful and degrading death. After weighing things out, and in an extreme act of conviction and self-sacrifice, he turns around and retraces his steps, but only manages to lead them into the next valley before he loses his footing on a steep slope, tumbling downhill until he is knocked unconscious. Joshua wakes tied to a tree at the bottom of the slope. With no one in sight, he decides to spend the day recounting the story of how he got there. Finally, as the day is coming to an end, Mikkel approaches him, alone. He tells Joshua the crew’s side of the same story, how they all had to take care of the young man that Joshua had cut, and how the infection slowly, painfully, claimed his life. Mikkel explains that the crew were consumed with frustration, and that, upon disembarking, and despite his reluctance, they became determined to find Joshua in an attempt to impose some kind of justice. Then, Mikkel informs him that they have found the evidence of people in the previous valley, and that he and the crew intend on finding those people and educating them "to live in the most conscientious way possible," and to avoid making the same mistakes humanity has repeatedly made. Joshua shares his newfound philosophy, arguing that, as long as we are alive, it is our lot to make those same mistakes, endlessly; because we are perfectly wired to deceive ourselves, because while we are making those mistakes, we fool ourselves into thinking that they are the only true option, that they are right. But Mikkel disagrees, and, with the sounds of the crew approaching, he draws a knife. In order to prevent them from torturing Joshua, he stabs him, ending his life in a peculiar act of friendship, mercy, and hope.
10222898	/m/02q5qng	Seeker	William Nicholson	2005	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The main characters in the book are Seeker, Morning Star and The Wildman. Seeker and Morning Star are devout believers in the All and Only, however it is not obvious as to how far the Wildman worships the God. The Wildman used to be a ruthless pirate that killed without mercy. He was called the Wildman because his mood was often unpredictable. The Wildman wishes to join the Nom because he desires power, but moreover he wants inner peace. Morning Star wants to find her mother, whom she believes entered the Nom many years ago, but also wishes to serve her God. She also has an ability to tell peoples' feelings merely by looking at the colour of their aura, which she can see. Seeker wants above everything else to serve his God, and to prove himself worthy, as he has always felt that he lived in the shadow of his older brother, Blaze of Justice, who himself is a Noble Warrior. Seeker's father is the headmaster of the school on Anacrea, and wants Seeker to follow in his footsteps, forbidding him from applying to the Nom. However, when praying Seeker hears a voice telling him the 'door is always open' and that he would be the one to save the Lost Child. This confirms Seeker's belief that he will join the Nom. However, Seeker ventures a little further into the monastery and sees Blaze seemingly being cast out of the Nomana, undergoing a process of his memories being cleansed. He speaks to several monks, and they inform him that Blaze is a traitor! Seeker cannot accept this, and feels that this is why he is later rejected by the Nom. Seeker, Morning Star, and the Wildman all make their way to the Nom to apply to join, and inevitably all three are turned away. But not relenting, Seeker decides to find another way to enter the Nom; he will perform an act of notable good, and hopefully be invited to join. The trio go to the City of Radiance, where a weapon is being constructed, with the purpose of destroying the Nom. Seeker has the intention of destroying the weapon by pretending to want to be its bearer. The nature of the weapon is explosive. Basically, the power of the Sun is stored in water, leading to the name Charged water. The energy in the water is released when it comes into contact with air. It is planned that the bearer will have the normal water in his blood replaced with charged water, and will sacrifice himself to destroy the Nom. However, Soren Similin, who is in charge of building the weapon (but none of the scientists working on the project realise this), and who is also the secretary of the leader of Radiance, has found another candidate to be the weapon bearer; Seeker's brother Blaze. Along the way Similin encounters Morning Star's mother, (who was in fact rejected by the Nomana, and fled in disgrace) and she tags along with him and Blaze on their way back to the City of Radiance. Both Blaze and Seeker come to the place where the weapon is, and both help to destroy it; Blaze having not really been cleansed. Morning star is re-united with her mother, and the trio are accepted into the Nom.
10225520	/m/02q5ttp	Birth of Fire	Jerry Pournelle		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book starts out in a year sometime between 2000 and 2050. It begins with Garret Pittson, a respected gang member who hasn't found his path in life, caught in the middle of a gang war and then caught by the police. He is sentenced to prison for twenty years but takes up his lawyer's offer of being shipped out to a colony on Mars where the conditions are rough and the pay unfair. Once arriving the events stir up and he ends up playing a prominent role in a revolution led by a group of farmers out on the 'rim' of a large crater in Mars southern hemisphere. Garrett is noticed as an excellent student by Commander Farr, who tells him to go to the city, and wait for someone to find him. Someone comes up to him and gets him suited to a P-Suit, he learns to farm and the two travel to a friend's farm where they meet Erica. Garrett has private time with her and they kiss, before she says they should wait, after multiple more trips, the two spend more time together and fall in love. References *Pournelle, Jerry. "Birth of Fire". 1976 Baen, Wake Forest. (ISBN-10: 067165649X)
10229264	/m/02q5ybt	Under the Mat: Inside Wrestling's Greatest Family		2001	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The book focuses mainly on the realities of professional wrestling. Under the Mat recounts Diana's life growing up in the Hart home, being sister to Owen and Bret, witnessing their rise to fame and the terrible tragedy which claimed Owen's life. She remembers her father training some of the WWF's and WCW's biggest names in her family's basement gym, the famous Dungeon, and recounts their tales to stardom.
10233169	/m/02q5_y3	The Comfort of Strangers	Ian McEwan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Mary and Colin are an English couple on holiday abroad in an unnamed city. Mary is divorced with two children; Colin is her angelically handsome lover who has been with her for seven years. Although they do not usually live together, their relationship is deep, passionate and intimate. One evening, the couple gets lost amongst the canals and are befriended by a forceful native named Robert, who takes them to a bar. Later, he insists on bringing them to his house where they meet his wife Caroline. Although the guests are at first shown great hospitality, it becomes clear that the hosts have a peculiar relationship with each other – Robert is the product of a sadistic upbringing and Caroline, who is disabled, has an uncomfortable masochistic view of men as being masters to whom women should yield. The liberal English couple withdraw from the house, but the events of the evening have set in chain a series of increasingly disturbing occurrences which neither foresaw.
10240199	/m/02q679t	The Last Precinct	Patricia Cornwell	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Following the death of Diane Bray and an apparent attack on Kay Scarpetta by Jean-Baptiste Chandonne in her own house at the end of Black Notice, The Last Precinct concentrates on discovering the full story behind Chandonne's killings. Kay Scarpetta is also under suspicion for the killing of Bray, due to their known rivalry and public confrontations. Torn between a desire to clear her name and the instinct of a wounded animal to turn against even its would-be rescuers, Kay sifts through the forensic evidence that seems to link Chandonne to past events in her life, up to and including the murder of her lover, Benton Wesley. A major new character is Jaime Berger, from the District Attorney's Office in New York, who believes Chandonne killed a woman in New York two years' before his arrival in Virginia. Kay must examine her own fears, misconceptions, and anything-but-altruistic motives to accept working with another competent woman.
10243761	/m/02q6bbp	Enduring Love	Ian McEwan	1997	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On a beautiful and cloudless day, a middle-aged couple celebrate their union with a picnic. Joe Rose and his long-term partner Clarissa Mellon are about to open a bottle of wine when a cry interrupts them. A hot air balloon, with a 10-year-old boy in the basket and his grandfather being dragged behind it, has been ripped from its moorings. Joe immediately joins several other men in an effort to bring the balloon to safety. In the rescue attempt, one man, John Logan, dies. Another of the would-be-rescuers is Jed Parry. Joe and Jed exchange a passing glance, a glance that has devastating consequences and that indelibly burns an obsession into Jed's soul, for Jed suffers from de Clerambault's syndrome, a disorder that causes the sufferer to believe that someone else is in love with him or her. Delusional and dangerous, Jed gradually wreaks havoc in Joe's life, testing the limits of his beloved rationalism, threatening Clarissa's love for him, and driving him to the brink of murder and madness. During a lunch with Clarissa and her godfather, Joe witnesses the attempted murder of another man, resulting in the man being shot in the shoulder. However, he realises that the bullet was meant for him and that the similar character of the people at the other table had misled the killers into thinking the other man was their target. Before the hitman can deliver the fatal shot, Jed, orchestrator of the event, intervenes to save the innocent man's life before fleeing from the scene. In the subsequent interrogation, Joe insists that it was Jed who was behind this, but the detective does not believe him, possibly because he appears to get many of the facts of the incident incorrect. Joe leaves dissatisfied, knowing that Jed is still out there and looking for him. Like the detective, however, Clarissa becomes skeptical that Jed is stalking Joe and that Joe is in any danger. This, plus the stress Joe suffers at Jed's hands, strains their relationship. Fearing for his safety, Joe purchases a gun through an acquaintance. On the journey home, he receives a call from Jed, who is at Joe's home with Clarissa. Upon arriving at his apartment, Joe sees Jed sitting on the sofa with Clarissa. Jed then asks for Joe's forgiveness, before taking out a knife and pointing it at his own neck. To prevent Jed from killing himself, Joe shoots him in the arm. He escapes without charges. In the first of the novel's appendices (a medical report on Jed's condition) we learn that Joe and Clarissa are eventually reconciled and that they adopt a child. In the second (a letter from Jed to Joe), we learn that after three years, Jed remains uncured, and is now living in a psychiatric hospital.
10245169	/m/02q6c7y	The Assassins of Rome	Caroline Lawrence	2002-10-17	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins on Jonathan ben Mordecai 11th birthday. He is gloomy, saying that something bad always happens on his birthday. He opens the presents and is not satisfied with any except a jar of lemon oil. He breaks the jar of lemon oil, and the scent reminds him of his mother, who died in the Siege of Jerusalem. Officials turns up to warn Jonathan's father that an assassin, ben Jonah, has been asking for him. Jonathan wonders why his mother did not escape with them, which leads him to hear his father talking with a stranger. The stranger mentions that his mother didn't escape with them 'because of Jonathan'. The stranger turns out to be ben Jonah. Jonathan head butts him and tells his father to knock him cold before he gets up. Jonathan's Father, ben Ezra, tells him ben Jonah is the brother of Jonathan's mother, Susannah. Jonathan thinks about the conversation before, and thinks that ben Ezra must hate him for making Susannah not leave. That night, he dreams that his mother is sat at her loom in the Cyclops cave and tells him that she is still alive. The next day, he and ben Jonah have disappeared, with a message: Gone to Rome. The official returns and arrests ben Ezra for hiding ben Jonah. His friends Flavia and Nubia set of after Jonathan. This chapter is mainly about the trip that Flavia and Nubia (her real name is Shepenwepet) took to Rome with their bodyguard, Caudex and cart driver, Feles. Meanwhile, ben Jonah decides to take Jonathan with him to Rome, where he admits to his nephew that he a messenger to the Emperor Titus Flavius Vespanius. Flavia's mother Myrtilla has a sister who is the wife of the great senator Aulus Caecilius Cornix, so they go to his house to find it empty except for his secretary Sisyphus. In the rental room of ben Jonah, he shows Jonathan that he is a very talented musician by playing the bass lyre to him. Meanwhile, Flavia tells Sisyphus why they had come. ben Ezra's other friends go to ask the official, Bato, why ben Ezra has been arrested. Bato tells them that ben Jonah had been involved in a plot to kill the emperor. If ben Ezra helped him, it was treason. They visit ben Ezra in the prison. ben Ezra tells them that ben Jonah really was an assassin, but had changed his ways years before. In Rome, Flavia is surprised when Sisyphus tells her he will help them. Jonathan's friends Miriam, Aristo and Lykos (Lupus) find a message from Jonathan: Susannah is alive and at the Golden House. Meanwhile, ben Jonah tells Jonathan that he has been the first in 3 hired to kill the Emperor. ben Jonah asks Jonathan if he wants to go with him to the palace disguised as musicians, and help him kill the Emperor. Jonathan agrees, since it would provide a chance to see his mother. Aristo and Lupus go to Rome to tell Flavia and Nubia the news and help them. At the palace, ben Jonah is allowed in to perform because of his exceptional musical talent. While he is playing he is recognized. In Rome, Flavia meets up with Aristo and Lupus. In the palace, ben Jonah and Jonathan are arrested. Jonathan is branded as a slave and sent to work at the Golden House. Jonathan meets the eight year old Ripzah, who knows all the passages, or 'cryptoporticuses', of the Golden House. Sisyphus went to see the races and sees Celer, designer of the Golden House. Ripzah tells Jonathan that there is a woman called Susannah here. Susannah turns out to be Jonathan's mother. Discovering that she is visited by the Emperor he at first thinks she is his mistress. Ripzah tells Jonathan that it was woman called Berenice had hired ben Jonah and other assassins, but the target was Susannah, not the emperor Titus Flavius Vespanius. Jonathan tells Ripzah abut his mother in the Golden house. At the same time, Flavia tricks the Golden House's guard into telling them that the second assassin (after ben Jonah) has been arrested and crucified. The group of Sisyphus and Aristo are hired to perform music for Titus at the Golden House's Octagonal Room because they are 'talented musicians'. Jonathan hides behind a bush and sees Susannah visited by the Emperor again. Susannah finds Jonathan and realizes that he is a slave here. She tells him that ben Jonah is okay and that the emperor is sorry that he sieged Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the 'Musicians' start performing. Lupus spots the assassin Porcius and chases him. Susannah tells Jonathan that she stayed because her lover was in the city. His name was Jonathan. Jonathan realizes that that Jonathan was what ben Jonah was speaking of. Porcius escapes and climbs up to the roof, and Flavia throws a tambourine at him. He goes through the glass roof, falls and dies. Meanwhile, Susannah says she could not go back because Titus needs him. Titus gives all the slaves and women of the Golden House an option. They could stay or leave. Susannah, Ripzah and her mother Rachel stays, the others leave. Susannah explains why she stays: She could persuade Titus to rethink evil ideas because he is not so bad that he could not repent. ben Jonah becomes the steward to the Golden House. Titus apologizes for the brand and frees him as a reward for saving his life from the assassins. He also gave him a ring with Titus' seal imprinted on it. He also thanked Sisyphus. All the characters (except Titus) are invited to a feast. At the feast, Clio shows up. Everyone is surprised that Clio survived the volcano. Felix shows up too, and Jonathan invites them to dinner as well. All is well. The End
10254163	/m/02q6lbv	Five Go Adventuring Again	Enid Blyton	1943	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy return to Kirrin Cottage for the Christmas holidays. As a result of being off school due to illnesses, the four children have a tutor, Mr. Roland, during the holidays in order to catch up with the work they missed. One day during the holidays, the children visit Kirrin Farmhouse, and the owners allow George to show her cousins all around the farmhouse, and show them some of the old secret cubby-holes in the farmhouse. George asks Mrs Sanders if she can show her cousins the cupboard with the false back on it upstairs, but Mrs Sanders tells her she is cleaning the room as she has some guests staying with her. When searching in a hole in the wall, Dick finds a piece of paper, with instructions on it written in Latin. The four take it back to Kirrin Cottage and ask Mr. Roland what the instructions on the paper say, as he reads Latin. He tells them that it is something about a room facing east with 8 wooden panels in it, and the panel must lead to somewhere! That night, George goes downstairs to see Timmy, as he was made to sleep outside because Mr. Roland didn't like dogs. George goes into Uncle Quentin's study to get the front door key, and finds Mr. Roland standing in the study. He tells George he heard a noise and came to investigate, but George finds it very suspicious. The four children then realise that the study is a room facing east with eight stone panels on the floor, and the panel which leads to a secret place is hidden under a rug covering the floor. The children follow the tunnel and come to a cupboard, and when they open it, they find themselves in Kirrin farmhouse, in the cupboard with the false back. The two guests staying at Kirrin Farmhouse are friends with Mr. Roland, and are planning on stealing Uncle Quentin's notes on his experiments.
10254174	/m/02q6lc5	Five Run Away Together	Enid Blyton	1944	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Julian, Dick and Anne arrive in Cornwall to stay with George for the holidays. They plan to spend time exploring Kirrin Island but their happiness is spoilt when Aunt Fanny falls ill and has to leave with Uncle Quentin to be treated in a far-off hospital. They are cared for by Aunt Fanny's temporary cook, Mrs Stick, who is accompanied by her husband and their ghastly son Edgar. The Sticks and the children come to hate each other. When Mrs Stick tries to poison George's dog Timmy, George can take it no more. She hatches a secret plan to run away to Kirrin island and look after herself but when Julian catches her leaving she decides to allow the other children to go with her. While on the island, they find evidence of smugglers on an old wreck. A scream in the night and the discovery of a young girl's clothes alert the Five that there could be something very sinister going on. They discover that the Sticks have kidnapped and imprisoned a little girl on the island, the daughter of a very rich man. Having tormented the Sticks into a retreat they rescue the girl, taking her to the police who are amazed to see the child "the whole country is looking for!!" The police accompany them back to the island in time to trap and arrest the Sticks. The kidnapped girl's father allows her to spend a week with her new friends on Kirrin Island.
10254189	/m/02q6lcj	Five Go To Smuggler's Top	Enid Blyton	1945	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Five are happily staying at Kirrin Cottage for the holidays until the big ash tree in the garden falls down and destroys the top floor where the bedrooms are. Uncle Quentin's scientist friend,Mr Lenoir, was coming to stay over but now as he can't, he invites the five to his house. Mr Lenoir's stepson Sooty is a friend of Julian and Dick. George finds out that she can't take Timmy her dog and at first refuses to go, but then decides to go and take Timmy, but hide him in secret! So they go to Sooty Lenoir's house, Smugglers Top while Kirrin Cottage is being repaired. Smugglers Top is situated on a hill named Castaway Hill. The children come to know that there is a network of secret passages inside the hill and that there are secret doors in the house which open into these passages. One night, the boys wake up and find someone flashing lights as some sort of signal from one of the towers at Smuggler's Top. The children are puzzled at this mysterious discovery. After a few days, Uncle Quentin also visits Smugglers Top to stay for a few days. But one night, quite unexpectedly, Uncle Quentin and Sooty disappear. The children are sure that they have been kidnapped. There are many suspects. It might be the butler Block who appears to be stone deaf or Mr Barling,who is a rich man and a suspected smuggler. The five even suspect Sooty's father, Mr Lenior! They hunt underground in the honeycomb of passages for Uncle Quentin and Sooty, with the help of Timmy the dog. Can they solve the mystery and find Uncle Quentin and Sooty before they get lost in the passages?
10254205	/m/02q6ldk	Five Go Off In A Caravan	Enid Blyton	1946	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 A caravan holiday for the Famous Five! It is bound to be another adventure for the intrepid gang. And sure enough, pretty soon they've caught up with a circus-where some of the circus folk have more sinister plans than just clowning around...
10254486	/m/02q6lph	The Just and the Unjust	James Gould Cozzens	1942	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel has a prologue of several court docket entries in the case of Commonwealth v. Stanley Howell and Robert Basso. The first entry, dated May 31, 1939, indicates that the three defendants in a case of capital murder—Robert Basso, Stanley Howell, and Roy Leming—have all been declared indigent and had attorneys appointed for them. A second, dated June 12, indicates that the trial of Basso and Howell has been severed from that of Leming, now defended by an attorney of questionable character. The defendants and their victim are all "foreigners—the people from somewhere else." They have been charged with the cold-blooded murder of a drug dealer and addict, Frederick Zollicoffer, whom they had kidnapped for ransom on April 6, and killed afterwards on or about April 17, possibly at the direction of a fourth criminal who died in a fall trying to escape from police in New York City. The F.B.I. had also entered the case and arrested Howell, from whom they had extracted a confession.
10261026	/m/02q6t32	The Town	William Faulkner	1957	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Each chapter is narrated from the point of view of one of three characters: Chick Mallison, Gavin Stevens, or V.K. Ratliff. ;Chapter One: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Flem moves into Jefferson; is cuckolded by de Spain. De Spain's election. Flem is made power-plant supervisor. Flem steals brass from the plant. Flem plays Tom Tom and Turl off against each other; Tom Tom cuckolds Turl. The firemen hide the brass in the water tower. ;Chapter Two: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Eck Snopes saves a Varner Negro, breaking his neck in the process; he is "never in the world a Snopes." He changes jobs several times. Discussion of Snopes family structure, economy. I.O. Snopes comes to town and moves up (e.g., becomes schoolmaster). Children of Eck and I.O. The Snopes Hotel opens. ;Chapter Three: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Jefferson gossips about Eula. The Cotillion Ball is planned; de Spain invited after some debate. De Spain squeals his tires; under Gavin's instigation, Chick and Gowan finally manage to pop one of his tires. De Spain sends Gowan a special corsage; the town experiences a corsage panic leading up to the ball. At the ball, Gavin challenges, fights, and is beaten by de Spain. ;Chapter Four: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Recap: trial of Mink Snopes for killing Jack Houston. Gavin prepares an indictment against de Spain, as mayor, for Flem's theft of the brass at the power plant, largely motivated by his desire to stand up for "the principle that chastity and virtue in women shall be defended whether they exist or not." Gavin receives an anonymous note ... ;Chapter Five: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin meets with Eula in his office at night. She offers to sleep with him, out of a desire to keep him from being unhappy. (93) Gavin deduces that Flem is impotent. Gavin analyzes his own personality and Eula's motives, and declines her offer. ;Chapter Six: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) De Spain outmaneuvers Gavin on the brass-stealing indictment, rendering the investigation moot. Ratliff speculates about why de Spain appeals to Eula, while Gavin does not. Gavin leaves for Heidelberg. ;Chapter Seven: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Gavin joins the French service in WWI; catches pneumonia while carrying a stretcher for them. Eck Snopes blows up a gas tank and himself, too, while looking for a missing child, Cedric Nunnery; his neck brace is all that can be found to bury. Montgomery Ward Snopes, in France, goes into the "canteen business," then opens the Atelier Monty when he gets home. Chick and Ratliff form their ice-cream/Snopes-watching association. Bayard Sartoris accidentally kills his grandfather, the Colonel, with that damned newfangled car. Byron Snopes steals money from Sartoris's bank. Wall Snopes begins to set up his trade empire. Brother (?) of Ab Snopes and the watermelon patch. Gavin is home from Europe. ;Chapter Eight: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin speculates on the principles of Snopesism (hermaphroditic but vested always in the male); on the relationships between himself, Eula, and de Spain. Flem rises in the bank hierarchy, trading again on Eula; also trading on the fact that he makes good Byron's theft; acquires methodological knowledge of banking. He withdraws his money and deposits it in a competing bank. Wall Snopes graduates, marries a woman who hates the Snopes clan and all they stand for, and goes into business for himself. Flem blocks Wall from getting a loan to expand; Wall expands anyway and opens a wholesale. ;Chapter Nine: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Chapter consists entirely of these sentences: "Because he missed it. He missed it completely." ;Chapter Ten: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Uncle Willy Christian's drugstore robbed of money and narcotics; night marshal Grover Winbush is nowhere to be found during the event. This starts a chain of events leading to the uncovering of the Atelier Monty as a "dirty picture" "magic lantern," which is why Grover Winbush was not available to catch the perpetrators of the robbery. Flem tries to influence Gavin in the handling of the Montgomery Ward case, then plants whiskey in the Atelier Monty. ;Chapter Eleven: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Chapter consists entirely of this paragraph: "And still he missed it even set--sitting right there in his own office and actively watching Flem rid Jefferson of Montgomery Ward. And still I couldn't tell him." Here, Ratliff is aware that Flem is ensuring that Montgomery Ward will be sent to Parchman (for the whiskey) rather than an out-of-state prison (for the porn, a federal charge) so that he will have a chance to trick Mink into attempting to escape. ;Chapter Twelve: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Linda is meeting Gavin; Gavin's motive is to "develop her mind." Linda comes to dinner with the Stevens/Mallison family; her boyfriend Matt objects, driving up and down in his racing car. Matt attacks Gavin in his office leaves after giving him a good beating. ;Chapter Thirteen: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) In which Linda cries a great deal and it becomes apparent that she is willing to marry Gavin, although she doesn't really want to get married at all, despite the fact that she loves Gavin. ;Chapter Fourteen: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Matt follows Linda around town, gets in a fight with a McCallum boy, and is forced out of town. Gavin buys Linda a traveling case. ;Chapter Fifteen: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin speculates on Linda's good name and on the nature of the quality of innocence. He attempts to manage carefully the town's perception of his relationship with Linda by making their encounters seem coincidental. Gavin and Linda avoid each other, then try to meet. Eula reveals her plans to attend the Jefferson Academy for Women (or whatever it's called); Gavin is horrified. He goes to call on Linda, who explains how Flem bought his furniture. Eula asks Gavin to marry Linda. The details of Eula's dowry are clarified. ;Chapter Sixteen: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) (Cf. the short story "Mule in the Yard.") The story of Old Het. Mr. Hait's death; Mrs. Hait snopeses I.O. Snopes over the matter of the killed mules. Mrs. Hait invaded by mules. Her house burns down, but she saves her money. Mrs. Hait buys the mule that burned the house down from I.O. at a reduced price, and shoots it; then she sells it back to I.O. before he discovers that it's dead. Flem forces I.O. back to Frenchman's Bend permanently. Ratliff hypothesizes on Flem's plans and motives, esp re: Linda. Flem, he argues, must now have respectability. ;Chapter Seventeen: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin speculates on Flem's "untimely" interest in money. Flem's method/motivation in withdrawing money from his own bank; the effects this had. Gavin speculates on Eula's sexual motives, plus those of Varner & de Spain. Speculation about how Eula disrupts the economy of Snopesism. Flem gives Linda permission to go away to school because he has extracted something more valuable than he gives her. Flem tells Mrs. Varner that Eula is cheating on him. ;Chapter Eighteen: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Ratliff gives Flem a ride out to Frenchman's Bend. Uncle Billy drives in early. ;Chapter Nineteen: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Polio comes to Jefferson; Chick and schoolmates get an extended holiday while the town officials try to figure out what to do. No one will explain the de Spain-Eula affair to Chick. Ethnography/history of Jefferson. The affair is finally actually public instead of just semi-publicly gossiped about. Eula gives Chick an envelope to give to Gavin. ;Chapter Twenty: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Eula's note asks Gavin to meet her in his office at 10pm. Mr. Garraway disapproves of adultery. Geographical description of Yoknapatawpha County. The town waits for the affair to blow up. Eula visits Gavin; reveals how Linda was sent to the Academy, that Flem is impotent, and what Ratliff's first and middle names actually are. Asks Gavin again (several times) to marry Linda. ;Chapter Twenty-one: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Eula has killed herself. The town is outraged at de Spain; he has to leave. Eula's funeral arrangements are made. ;Chapter Twenty-two: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin insists to Linda that Flem is her father; Linda is doubtful. ;Chapter Twenty-three: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Flem's social/financial position is apparently solidified. Eula's monument is delegated to Gavin; he arranges for it. Ratliff suggests that Gavin marry Linda. Linda makes travel plans and departs after she and Flem see her mother's grave. ;Chapter Twenty-four: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Ratliff/Gavin's theory about Eula's motive for suicide: Eula was bored. The half-Apache children of Byron Snopes come to visit, then are sent back. fr:La Ville (roman) ru:Город (роман Уильяма Фолкнера)
10262817	/m/02q6vz6	Transformers: Ghosts of Yesterday	Alan Dean Foster		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set in 1969 and details the account of a top secret space ship called Ghost-1, built by the American organization known as Sector 7. The ship was built by examining and reverse engineering the frozen remains of the Transformer Megatron. Sent into space at the same time as Apollo 11 to hide its trail, the ship is sent to orbit the far side of Jupiter to look for any more alien activity. However, the ship falls into a wormhole that was apparently accidentally created by them due to a slingshot around the sun and emerges in an unknown part of the galaxy - where it is not alone. The Ark and the Nemesis arrive, intrigued by the ship's Cybertronian design. Starscream leads the Decepticons on an attack as the humans flee. Bumblebee pursues them, as does Starscream, who hopes to annihilate the ship - and any traces of Megatron with it. Putting Bumblebee to flight, Starscream communicates with Ghost-1, pretending to be benevolent. Scanning their computers, he learns of the existence of the Allspark and Megatron and decides to string them along by telling them of the war. He hopes to provoke them into firing on the "evil" Autobots, who will destroy them. Optimus Prime arrives, having fought off Blackout's attack in orbit, saving Bumblebee from giant rock-chewing worms. They encounter Starscream and Ghost-1, who fire on them, burying them in the cave with more worms. The humans, meanwhile, have become suspicious of Starscream's intentions, noting differences in the behaviors of his and Prime's. When their ship sinks into a sinkhole, Starscream betrays them and leaves them for dead. When Prime and Bumblebee cross paths with the ship underground, the Autobots communicate with the humans, who tell them of the in-stasis Megatron. Knowing that Megatron would decimate their people if he reactivated, Prime vowed to see the humans return to Earth to warn it. They eventually free themselves and head back into orbit, where a full-scale assault by the Decepticons is under way. Despite the Autobots' courage, they are outnumbered. Captain Walker of Ghost-1 makes the decision that they cannot flee, since doing so would lead the Decepticons straight to Earth. The wormhole eventually collapses as they prepare their attack on Starscream, which leaves them stranded. They fire on Starscream as he and Bonecrusher prepare to finish off Prime. Starscream annihilates them in retaliation and retreats, severely wounded. Prime laments their sacrifice, but had already begun to suspect that the Allspark was the reason Megatron went to Earth. Knowing that Starscream would seek Earth merely for revenge on the humans injuring him, Prime resolves to locate Earth before the Decepticons do. On Earth, a different crisis unfolds. An order has come through to transport the frozen "Ice Man" from the Arctic to a place of safe keeping somewhere near the West Coast of the United States, to be studied more concretely. The convoy carrying him is sabotaged and derailed by a Soviet spy, who indicates a KGB assault will take place to recover Megatron. A more immediate problem presents itself when it is revealed that Megatron is thawing out. As the weather worsens and the Russian attack begins, Megatron reanimates. Lieutenant Colonel Nolan and Colonel Thomas Kinnear, both of them seasoned and fine commanders from Sector 7, managed to stop the disorientated Decepticon leader by first driving a snow truck into him, then freezing him once more with liquid Nitrogen even as he killed them both. The soldiers, under the command of the tenacious and resilient officer Lieutenant Jenson, fought off the Russian attack with the aid of a squad of Army Rangers, then resolve to complete Megatron's transportation.
10263456	/m/02q6wkt	Stalin's Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel	Martin Cruz Smith	2007-06-19	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The ghost of Joseph Stalin has been seen stalking the stations of the Moscow Metro. Renko, perpetually in hot water with his superiors, is assigned to the case with heavy hints to quash it. Instead, he discovers a peculiar connection to a string of murders and a group of Chechen War veterans.
10263991	/m/02q6x4r	A Man	Oriana Fallaci	1979	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is a pseudo-biography about Alexandros Panagoulis written in the form of a novel. Fallaci had an intense romantic relationship with Panagoulis. She uses the novel to put forth her view that Panagoulis was assassinated by a vast conspiracy, a view widely shared by many Greeks. The work has had mixed reviews. Some will find the harsh polemic repetitive and disturbing. Fallaci is said to have been angry at Ms Magazine for not reviewing the work and this enhanced her reputation as an anti-feminist.
10274046	/m/02q73n3	The Shepherd's Paradise	Walter Montagu			 The Shepherd's Paradise deals with a mythical pastoral community dedicated to Platonic love, a refuge for unrequited lovers of both genders &mdash; "a peaceful receptacle of distressed minds." The Shepherd's Paradise is ruled by Bellesa, "beauty," who was certainly played by Henrietta Maria. The heroine of the piece is Fidamira. Much of Montagu's plot, such as it is, centers upon a prince named Basilino and his bosom friend Agenor, who have a shared tendency to fall in love with the same women. (The work is complicated by the fact that characters take on pseudonyms when entering the Paradise: Basilino becomes Moramente, while Agenor calls himself Genorio.) By the close of the play, Agenor/Genorio is revealed to be Prince Palante, long-lost son of the king of Navarre. The masque also features an extended debate on the nature of love, between Martiro, who speaks for the Platonic ideal, and Moramente and Melidoro, who argue for marriage. Since the play ends in the marriages typical of comedy &mdash; Basilino/Moramente marries Bellesa who is actually Sapphira, Princess of Navarre, his original betrothed, while Agenor/Genorio/Palante marries Basilino's sister &mdash; the text can be interpreted as suggesting a triumph of marital union over Platonic love. Fidamira is revealed as sister to both Bellesa/Sapphira and Agenor/Genorio/Palante, the lost princess Miranda; she remains chaste, but she gets to be queen of the Shepherd's Paradise at the end.
10276765	/m/02q75_f	Winter in the Blood				 The novel, set in contemporary times, features a self-destructive narrator undergoing an identity crisis. He lives in a Native American reservation in Montana. His tribe and his culture are clashing with a nearby white settlement and misguided legislation. He moves through his days in a mental haze and tries to console himself with sexual encounters. He attempts to deal with the memories of his father found dead in a snowdrift and blames himself for his elder brother's fatal accident at the age of fourteen.
10279021	/m/02q77jm	Stone	Adam Roberts	2002-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ae has been imprisoned for a crime rarely committed in the society he lives in: murder (mainly due to the difficulty of killing a body protected by nano-tech). He is placed in a high-tech prison (a stone with an artificial environment inside held in the plasma of a sun). He is "executed" by having his Dot-tech purged from his body, which, while not immediately lethal, will eventually cause him to die of natural causes. He is broken out and picked up by a sub-light ship, where he recuperates before traveling onward, employed by a mysterious agency. During the escape, he is implanted with an artificial intelligence who relays his instructions. The AI reveals that Ae is to kill an entire planet, but does not explain who has ordered the murder, nor their motive for doing so. All Ae is told is that the nature of his mission will be revealed upon its completion. Ae travels to a planet where he learns the secret of creating black holes. Meanwhile, he meets and travels with a woman named Klabier, and forms something of a romantic connection to her (something uncommon in the t'T), until she reveals herself to be a policewoman. However, Ae escapes before she can detain him. Ae uses the stolen black hole technology to destroy the atmosphere of his target planet, wiping out its 60 million inhabitants. Upon completing the murder, his directors reveal themselves to be a distributed intelligence that is distributed throughout Dot-tech. The connection involves distributed quantum waveforms, which humans collapse every time they use the Dot-tech, inhibiting its processing power. The Dot-tech cleared the planet of its human inhabitants to create space where they can operate unimpeded (it was necessary to use an unaugmented human for this task, as the Dot-tech's inherent programming apparently prevents them from carrying out the operation themselves). Unable to cope with the enormity of his crimes, Ae makes no attempt to escape despite being given ample opportunity to do so. Eventually, the police locate him and return him to his prison. Some large-scale effects of the application of quantum theory are also explored in this novel.
10288002	/m/02q7hbb	The Venom Business	Michael Crichton	1969		 Charles Raymond is a smuggler and he is very content and mildly successful with what he does for a living. Based in Mexico, Charles uses his exceptional skill as a snake handler to his advantage by "exporting" snakes out of Mexico under the guise of medical research—their venom is used by drug companies and universities for research. But the snakes are simply a ruse to hide the identity of the real cargo—rare Mexican artifacts. Charles is good at what he does and his skills don't stop at smuggling. Upon a suspicious chance reunion with Richard Pierce—a long-lost acquaintance of Charles' from his school days—Raymond is enlisted to use his other talents as a bodyguard to help Richard stay alive until such time as he can acquire the rest of his deceased father's fortune, which has been held in trust by Richard's promiscuous widowed stepmother. Charles isn't a fan of Richard's brash womanizing ways, but agrees to help because the money is good. Only he finds out that Richards isn't the easiest guy to protect, and often he is his own enemy when it comes to self-preservation. After a series of thwarted sketchy attempts at Richard's life, Charles begins to smell a rat. The further he probes into the situation, the more confused he gets. Things aren't what they seem. The bad guys aren't really the bad guys, or so it seems and the good guys are no better. Who wants whom killed? Who is protecting whom? In the end it may be Charles who is the target.
10288669	/m/02q7h__	The Third Secret			{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The story takes us behind the Vatican walls during the reign of a dying pope. Clement XV, a gentle, poetic German, keeps visiting the archives where the Third Secret of Fatima is kept. He is clearly troubled by something, but won't fully confide in his secretary, Father Colin Michener. He sends Michener to Romania with a message for a priest who runs an orphanage under appalling conditions, and gives him other strange errands. Michener is an Irish-American who fell in love and broke his vows of celibacy with reporter Katerina Lew, now involved with another priest who has gone public with his sexual affairs and demanding that the Church allow priests to marry. All that Michener knows about Clement's problem is that it has to do with the third secret, which was (actually) written in Portuguese by Marian visionary Lucia Santos in the 1940s and (in the novel) translated into Italian for Pope John XXIII by the Romanian priest who now runs the orphanage. It was supposedly revealed to the world in 2000, but (as many suspect in real life) rumor exists that what was revealed was only the first part of a longer message. As Michener gathers information for Clement, it is confirmed that there is a second part, and also that the Romanian priest kept a copy (a "facsimile") of both parts, which he later sent to Clement with a letter saying "Why is the Church lying?" Michener learns that John XXIII started Vatican II partly as a response to what he read in the third secret, but without revealing it in 1960 (as Lucia actually said Mary had asked). Ambitious Cardinal Valendrea and his secretary/lover Paolo Ambrosi carry on Machiavellian conspiracies behind the scenes, including having Katerina spy on Michener during his mysterious travels. Valendrea is determined to be Pope and bring back pre-Vatican II traditions. Equally determined to keep him from ever assuming the chair is the tough but decent Cardinal Ngovi. Clement dies without revealing what is really bothering him, and we get an intimate look at the kind of political jostling that takes place as an impending conclave looms. Amid all the dirty campaigning a secret exists that will either usher the church into a new era, or bring down the entire establishment. The actual contents of the third secret are revealed and confirmed in a startling climax. The book is solidly based on the visitations of Our Lady of Fatima and other important Marian apparitions and also the Prophecy of the Popes. Clement's obsession with the Fatima messages is based partly on that of Pope John Paul I, who as Patriarch of Venice met Lucia Santos and spoke with her for several hours. Deeply moved by the experience, he vowed to comply with Mary's reported request, not the release of the third secret, but the Consecration of Russia. John Paul's attitudes toward birth control and homosexuality may also be reflected in certain aspects of the novel.
10290289	/m/02q7kfk	The Cat Who Went Underground	Lilian Jackson Braun	1989	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 With Polly Duncan in England, Qwilleran realizes that Pickax is a bore in summer. So he decides to go to his cabin on the lakeshore in Mooseville. Shortly before Qwill arrives, Buddy Yarrow, a carpenter, drowns while fishing, but the police report it as an accident. When he arrives, Qwill discovers his heater is broken, so calls a nearby resident and friend, Mildred Hanstable. She suggests subscribing to "Glinko," a family "network" that "dispatches" people like plumbers, electricians and others for emergencies. The plumber "dispatched" is Joanna Trump, known to many as Little Joe, who is the daughter of Big Joe, a carpenter who was recently killed in an accident. She makes many visits to fix broken plumbing equipment. Qwill is annoyed at the constant breakdowns and sometimes even suspects her of breaking things on purpose, but is never really sure. He decides to build an addition to his cabin, but is advised against it, because during the summer, all the good contractors are busy with big jobs, so the people are forced to hire itinerant carpenters, or Underground Builders as they are referred to by the locals, who are unreliable. But Qwilleran was lucky and found out that Clem Cottle, a reliable and experienced carpenter, needed money and so could work for Qwill. He builds steps to the beach and begins on Qwill's addition, but goes missing shortly after. Despite the assurances by Clem's father that he is on a last fling before he marries, Qwill, Clem's mother, and Clem's soon-to-be wife do not believe that. One day while biking on an abandoned road used only by hunters (and Clem was not a hunter), Qwill finds Clem's truck abandoned in a ditch. So he reports Clem's disappearance and begins to look for a replacement. When Clem went missing, Koko began tapping his tail three times, similar to the way Clem hammered nails. Eventually, Qwilleran resorts to an underground builder by the name of Iggy. He is lazy, has a nicotine addiction, and very large teeth. After doing a few days of work, in which little progress was made, he goes missing, only to reappear a few days later. That day Qwilleran and two friends go on a trip to Three Tree Island, a small island in the middle of the lake with a small shack, a dock, and three trees. John Bushland and Roger MacGillivray are looking for the scorched sand a helicopter pilot said he saw. They believe it was left by UFOs, or visitors as they are referred by the locals, but Qwill is skeptical of such things and does not expect to find anything. After a squall hits, the men become stranded on the island and are later rescued after a harrowing experience and taken to the Pickax hospital. He is released the next day and arrives home to find Iggy's truck is parked in the drive, but the carpenter is nowhere to be found. Koko then begins to paw excitedly at the trap door to the crawlspace under the cabin, which is where all the pipes and electrical wires enter the house, and lets Koko in. Koko had recently shown a great interest in the trap door, and to try to convince Koko there's no reason to go down, he closes the door behind him, and goes to lunch. When he returns, Yum Yum shows she is worried about Koko and so he goes down to get Koko. But Qwilleran finds Koko digging, and helps him uncover Iggy's dead body. The discovery of this death begins to convince Qwilleran that something is happening to carpenters that is causing their demise. He reads some papers of Emma Whimsy, an old woman who was interviewed by Qwilleran for the Qwill Pen and was so delighted she gave him some of her old papers, and discovered that Little Joe was Emma's granddaughter and had had a troubled life. Her mother married Big Joe and lived a terrible life. She and her children were poor, didn't have proper clothes, and were abused by their father. This was so terrible that Joanna’s younger sister shot herself. Qwilleran rides out to her house to give her the papers, but finds it flooded by the rain that came with the storm that marooned Qwill on the island. But her truck is not there so he assumes she got away safely. But while he is there, he finds Clem Cottle’s jacket. Qwill learns that local riff raff believe he is responsible for Iggy's death. Also, a policeman overheard him discussing how frustrating it was to have an underground builder, and even his statement, "I could clobber him with a two-by-four..." The police mentioned this during a second questioning, but then the phone rang and the cats acted as though it scared them (though the telephone had never scared them before) and police left without getting an answer to that particular question. Nick Bamba, a friend of Qwilleran's who is an engineer at the state prison, says he heard about some nasty rumors about Qwilleran, and says he will stay with Qwill that night, with his camper blocking the entrance, a shotgun, a rifle, and the sheriff alerted. Early in the morning, Koko begins acting the way he did when he uncovered Iggy's body. Qwilleran lets the cat down and he leads them to a list of names of carpenters who had died recently, written in the lipstick used by Little Joe. Qwill calls Glinko and fakes an emergency so that Little Joe comes. He then confronts her with the murder of her father, she rigged it so appeared to be an accident, Buddy Yarrow, he was fishing on her property, Murt, another underground builder who went missing and was never seen again, Clem Cottle, and Iggy, whose real name is Ignatius K. Small. She says simply that Louise did the killings and then ran off. Qwill calls the police and Little Joe is arrested. Qwilleran suspects that she has mulitple personalities and “Louise” is the other personality Joanna uses when she kills carpenters.
10291215	/m/02q7l2w	Dragons of Despair	Tracy Hickman		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As with most D&D adventures, the exact storyline varies based on the actions that the game's players choose for their player characters (PCs), although a general course of action is assumed by the adventure. The story begins with the PCs meeting up in the elven settlement of Solace after five years of unsuccessful individual quests to find any sign of "true clerics". A series of wilderness encounters are used to direct the PCs to find the Blue Crystal Staff and take it to the ancient ruined city of Xak Tsaroth. In the jungle-covered subterranean ruins of Xak Tsaroth the player characters search for knowledge of the ancient gods of good, and first encounter the invading draconians. They also find baby dragons and encounter Khisanth, an ancient black dragon. The PCs follow the fleeing dragon down a well, where they must negotiate the first level of a dungeon typical of Dungeons & Dragons adventures, filled with draconians, gully dwarf slaves, and other monsters. On the second level of the dungeon the PCs must confront and defeat Khisanth. This is an extremely challenging task for the party. but if they have her Blue Crystal Staff, they will be aided by the goddess Mishakal. The adventure ends with the PCs recovering the Disks of Mishakal, allowing for the return of true clerics to Krynn for the first time in over 300 years.
10292875	/m/02q7mdx	Dry	Augusten Burroughs	2003-06	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first part of the memoir centers on Burroughs' intervention by his co-workers and boss as well as his time spent at a rehab facility that caters specifically to gay and lesbian patients. The second part of the novel deals with Burroughs' first bout with sobriety since leaving the rehab program. He meets a love interest at his group therapy sessions and takes in a fellow addict in recovery. Part II also shows the decline in health in Burroughs' ex-boyfriend and current friend, only named Pighead in the memoir. Pighead is living with HIV, and although healthy in the beginning of the book, he eventually succumbs to the effects of HIV. The death of his friend sends Burroughs into a relapse, including drinking, cocaine and crack. The memoir ends with Burroughs getting clean and helping another alcoholic friend of his through his recovery.
10295438	/m/02q7pct	A Boy at War	Harry Mazer	2001-04-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the beginning, Adam has to move to Honolulu because his father is relocated to Pearl Harbor as a military officer. It is really hard just like any kid moving and having to go to a different high school, but it is especially hard for Adam because in the book it mentions how people at Honolulu High School hate military kids. The book never really explained why. But Adam did manage to make two friends. Their names are Davi Mori and Martin Kahahawai. Davi is a Japanese American, while Martin is a Hawaiian. One day the boys decide to go fishing early in the morning. As they are fishing on the land at Pearl Harbor, they find a rowboat and decide to take it out into the water. As they are fishing, they hear airplanes flying overhead. Davi cheers because he thinks these are American planes, but Adam realizes that they are Japanese planes and thinks that Davi is a spy signaling the airplanes. They then see the Japanese bomber planes bomb the naval ships at Pearl Harbor. When the first bombs are dropped, part of their rowboat explodes, and a piece of wood flies into Martin’s chest. He is wounded, but doesn’t die. Adam watches as his father's ship, the Arizona, goes down. Once the Japanese leave the harbor in the morning, Adam runs home with a rifle and makes sure his Mom and sister, Bea, are okay. They let Adam in the house, and he tells them what happened and that he doesn’t know if his Dad, Lt. Emory Pelko, is dead or alive. About a week after Adam arrives back home, the family gets a telegram saying the Lt. Emory Pelko is missing. So the family then moves back to the mainland of America.
10298379	/m/02q7r6b	The Gravedigger's Daughter	Joyce Carol Oates	2007-06-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rebecca Tignor is mistaken for another woman named Hazel Jones one afternoon in the woods nearby Chatauqua Falls, New York in the fall of 1959. Over 20 years later, Rebecca finds out that the man who approached her is a serial killer. In a secondary plot, Rebecca's parents escape from the Nazis in 1936, foreseeing the oncoming Holocaust; Rebecca is born in the boat crossing over. When Rebecca is 13, her father, Jacob Schwart, who has lost his intellectual dreams and has become a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker in Milburn, abruptly kills her mother, Anna, and nearly kills Rebecca, before committing suicide. At the time of the footpath crossing, Rebecca is just weeks away from being beaten and almost killed by her own husband, the brutal Niles Tignor. She and her only son, Niles Jr., flee, and she becomes the woman for whom she has been recently mistaken, purposefully adopting the identity of Hazel Jones. Niles Jr. assumes the alias of Zacharias. As Hazel, Rebecca seeks many livelihoods, as alternately a waitress, clerk and finally, the mistress of the overwhelmingly wealthy heir of the Gallagher media fortune, a man in whom she never felt the need to confide her past.
10300274	/m/02q7t9v	The Crow	Alison Croggon		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While his sister, Maerad, was in the north in search of the Treesong, as told in The Riddle, Hem and his mentor Saliman arrive in Turbansk, the centre of the light in the Suderain, which is Saliman's School. There Hem becomes a Minor Bard, and has lessons with other Bards of Turbansk. Because he does not know the Suderain language, Hem finds it very hard to make friends. After a quarrel with one of his teachers, Hem escapes to a garden, where he rescues a white crow from the attack of several black crows. Hem names the crow Irc, (the Pilani name for "bird"), and keeps him. A few days later, Turbansk receives news that the army of Sharma, the Nameless One, have destroyed cities and towns to the South, and are expected to attack Turbansk soon. The children are mostly evacuated from Turbansk. Under the request of Saliman, Hem stays at the School and works to heal those wounded in battle. One day while wandering around the nearly empty Turbansk, Hem meets an orphaned girl called Zelika, whose parents were killed by the dark army of the Nameless One. As Hem, Saliman, Zelika and Irc travel South to remain safe from the Black Army, they pass through an ancient underground city. There they stay and Hem and Zelika are trained as child spies. One day, when they are left alone, Hem finds a room with a mural of a tree-man. The tree-man is an Elidhu. After Hem and Zelika are trained as spies, their mentor sends them out. At the nearest hideout yet to be discovered by Sharma's army, the Pit, they stop. While spying Zelika spots her brother and gives herself away. Hem then spends months tailing Zelika, waiting to save her. When the chance came, he was already in the city where the Iron Tower was, and he found out that he had been tracking Zelika's brother all that time. As he ran away alone, Irc came back carrying a shiny thing. Irc helps him escape the city and tells him the story of how Irc came by the shiny thing. They met up with Saliman later and Hem is told that Zelika never even set foot in the camp—they had found her body mauled in the woods and did the best they could to honor her death. Later, Hem goes to find the tree-man and asks him what the thing was, and the tree-man tells him it was part of the Treesong, and that he couldn't touch it. He says that Hem was part of the Treesong, and that he was the player. Then Saliman, Hem and Irc set off to find Maerad.
10306442	/m/02q7_cn	The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing	Marilyn Durham	1972	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the American West in the 1880s, but is not written in a genre style. It is the story of Jay, a man of the West, and his offbeat relationship with Catherine, a woman from the East who is fleeing an unhappy marriage. Jay kidnaps Catherine on his way to rob a train and together they travel through the Wyoming Territory. Catherine eventually discovers that Jay is haunted by the murder of his wife, a Shoshone Indian named Cat Dancing, and his actions after the murder. Pursued by Catherine's husband and a railroad agent, Catherine and Jay fall in love.
10306456	/m/02q7_db	The Cat Who Saw Red	Lilian Jackson Braun	1986	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jim Qwilleran, news reporter for The Daily Fluxion and former crime reporter, is assigned to review restaurants. For his first story, he decides to review Maus Haus, owned by Robert Maus. In addition to a restaurant, the architecturally peculiar historic building is also a boarding house. When Qwill discovers there is an open apartment, he promptly moves in with his two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum. Also in residence at Maus Haus is Joy Wheatley, Qwill's old girlfriend from Chicago. She had found out she had a knack for pottery, and married a potter named Dan Graham. It soon becomes obvious that the relationship between Joy and Dan is strained, especially when they discuss how Joy’s cat went missing one day. Joy is deeply troubled by this, but Dan jokes about it. Joy is a far more successful potter than Dan; he is missing one thumb and so can only make roll pots, not as appealing as those spun on a wheel. One night she privately tells Qwill that she would divorce Dan if she could afford the court case. Qwilleran decides to lend her $750, the last of the prize money he won for a series of news articles. Later that same night Qwilleran hears a scream, and then a car pull out of the garage and drive away. The next day, Dan claimed that Joy has left him. He also brushes the scream off, as he claims Joy was working on an electric wheel and got her hair caught in a pot. She was saved by Dan when he threw the switch, shutting the wheel off and preventing her from being scalped. A few days later, one of the other residents of Maus Haus mentions how well Joy threw pots on her manual, not electric, wheel. Qwilleran begins to suspect Joy is dead. Shortly thereafter another mystery comes to Qwill's attention: Max Sorrel, a resident of Maus House, owns a restaurant called the Golden Lamb Chop which is suffering a spate of anonymous rumors about how the meat is cat, the chef has a terrible disease and other equally damaging tales. This has scared off the customers, leaving the restaurant near bankruptcy. Qwilleran decides to review the Golden Lamp Chop, but before he writes it, he gets a threatening phone call advising him not to write anything about the Golden Lamb Chop. He does so anyway. Dan gets a passport, claiming he will be going to Europe to display his pots. Qwilleran also learns that the car that drove off after the scream in the night was Max Sorrel’s speeding off after learning his restaurant was on fire. The houseboy says Joy always used the kick wheel, and that “Mr. Graham was going to blow a whole load of pots” because he was heating the kiln too quickly. The houseboy spied on Graham by using a peephole cut in the wall of Qwill’s room. The next morning, the houseboy is nowhere to be found. Dan claims he received a postcard from Joy in Florida, who asks to have her summer clothes. Hixie Rice, a resident of Maus House, breaks off her engagement with Graham as she does not want to be with a man cheating on his wife. When Qwill peers through the same peephole the houseboy had used, he sees Dan copying things out of a ledger. To get a better look, Qwilleran claims Fluxion wants a photo shoot of Dan's pottery, and brings Koko along to pose in some pictures (though he really wants the cat to sniff around for clues). Koko does show great interest in the trap door to the basement, but Dan says that they shouldn’t go down there because there are rats. But Qwill later learns that Maus is very particular about sanitation, and has an exterminator in regularly. Also, Qwilleran finds the ledger Dan was copying out of, and discovers it was a recipe of glazes used by Joy. Koko types "pb" on Qwill's typewriter &mdash; the chemical symbol for lead. Qwilleran looks through the peephole, and witnesses Dan burning Joy’s clothing. At the pottery opening, Dan surprises everyone with his “living glaze,” which compensates for the poor quality of his pots. Many people said that if his glaze was put on Joy’s pots, than they would be very popular. Qwilleran asks a diver friend to look below the boardwalk behind Maus House, after the housekeeper tells him she saw someone dumping a bag into the river. The diver reports the bag contains Joy’s pots with the living glaze. That night, Qwilleran reads a book on pottery, which provides the missing clue: * Dan, already envious of his wife’s success, became very jealous of her living glazes * He (and Qwilleran) read that in ancient China, potters burned human bodies to create a powerful red glaze * Dan uses Joy’s cat, whom he dislikes, as a test, and finds that it works * Dan prevents any of Joy’s pots from being displayed before the show, so no one will know she invented the living glaze * Dan murders Joy, and uses her ashes to create more red glazes. He then forges the post card saying that she was in Florida, and burns her clothing * So no one will know the living glaze was her idea, he throws her pots with the glaze into the river * When he learns that the houseboy was becoming suspicious, he invited him over for a drink and put lead oxide, used in glazes, into the houseboy’s drink, poisoning him. But because pots in the kiln were cooling, he had to put the body in the basement. The entrance was located in the clay room, so the smell of ripening clay would disguise any other odors * Dan got a passport and tickets to France so he could flee the country That evening, Dan breaks into Qwill’s apartment to kill him, but Koko and Yum-Yum had spun a spider web of yarn from a yarn ball throughout the apartment, causing Dan to trip and fall. Qwilleran is alerted, and Dan is arrested. As for the Golden Lamb Chop slander, Charlotte Roop overhears two Heavenly Hash House managers discussing how their attempts to put the restaurant out of business had failed. They had wanted to buy the property where the Golden Lamb Chop was located.
10307534	/m/02q8085	The First Four Years	Laura Ingalls Wilder	1971	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The First Four Years derives its title from a promise Laura made to Almanzo when they became engaged. Laura did not want to be a farmer's wife, but consented to try farming for three years. Laura and Almanzo, whom Laura calls Manly, begin married life on his tree claim in the snug house Manly built. Laura keeps house and Manly tends the land and the stock, and they go on frequent pony rides together. At the end of the first year, just as the wheat is ready to harvest, a freak hailstorm destroys the entire crop, which would have brought them three thousand dollars and paid off their debts on farm equipment and the building of the house. Faced with mounting debt, Manly decides to mortgage the homestead claim. He and Laura will have to live on it as a condition of the mortgage, so they rent out the house on the tree claim and Manly builds a small home on the homestead claim. Their daughter Rose is born there in December. At the end of the second year, they share the harvest of the wheat crop with the tree claim's renter, and make enough money to pay some of their smaller debts. During the third year, both Laura and Manly contract diphtheria, and Manly suffers a complication which leaves him permanently physically impaired. The renter decides to move away, and as Manly can no longer work both pieces of land, they sell the homestead claim and move back to their first house. Laura receives an opportunity to invest money in a flock of sheep. The wool from the sheep repays Laura's initial investment with enough left over only for the interest on their debts. Meanwhile, the wheat and oats grow well, but are ruined just before harvest when several days of hot wind dry them irreparably prior to harvest. At the end of the third year, though farming has not yet been a success, Laura and Manly agree to continue for one more year, a "year of grace", in Laura's words, since they have no other prospects and Manly believes they just need one good year to turn things around. Unfortunately, hot winds again ruin the next planting of wheat and oats. Their unnamed son is born in August but dies a few weeks later. Finally, their house is destroyed by fire. Despite this, the book ends at the close of the fourth year on an optimistic note, with Laura feeling hopeful that their luck will turn. In reality, debt and the hot, dry Dakota summers drove Laura and Manly from their land; they managed a very successful fruit and dairy farm in Missouri, where they lived comfortably until their respective deaths.
10308940	/m/02q81lv	Acts of Faith,1985	Rajiva Wijesinha	1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Using the 1983 race riots in Sri Lanka as a background, Acts of Faith explores social and political issues which characterize Sri Lanka and other Asian nations. The book provides a satirical critique of observed state-incited violence, manipulation of the media, caste and class rivalries. At the same time, underneath the racy humor there is a close attention to personal motivations, particularly in terms of the family structures that dominate such societies.
10309074	/m/02q81qz	The Tale of Pigling Bland	Beatrix Potter	1913	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Aunt Pettitoes, an old sow, can no longer cope with her eight troublemaking offspring and thus makes them leave home, with the exception of a well-behaved sow named Spot. Two of them, boars named Pigling Bland and Alexander, go to market. Pigling Bland is very sensible but the more frivolous Alexander loses his pig license and, when he fails to produce them to a passing policeman, is made to return to the farm. Reluctantly going on alone, Pigling Bland later finds the missing papers, which ended up in his pocket as a result of an earlier scuffle with Alexander. He tries to find his brother but ends up getting lost in the woods and has to spend the night in a stranger's chicken coop. He is found in the morning by a gruff farmer, Peter Thomas Piperson, who allows him to stay in his house, but Pigling is not sure the farmer is trustworthy. His fears are quickly confirmed when he discovers that Piperson has a second pig in his house who was stolen from her owner and whom he intends to turn into bacon and ham. The second pig, a beautiful black Berkshire sow named Pig-wig, suggests they run away so that they won't be sold, or worse, eaten. Pigling Bland has in any case decided to avoid the market and become a potato farmer instead. At dawn the pair sneak off but in the course of their escape they come across a grocer in a cart who recognises Pig-wig as the recently stolen pig for whom a reward has been issued. By being co-operative, and with Pigling Bland faking a limp, the two pigs manage to gain time and, once the grocer is at a safe distance, flee to the county boundary and finally, over the hills and far away, where they dance to celebrate their new found freedom.
10310839	/m/02q83v1	Démolir Nisard	Eric Chevillard	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is about the struggle of the narrator (who seems very much like the author himself) to annihilate Désiré Nisard, a French author and critic (1806–1888). One of the characteristics of Nisard that so infuriates Chevillard's narrator is the fact that the critic so loathed the burgeoning modern French literature of his times. As Nisard considered that only classicism had a value, Chevillard's book can also be considered a form of meta-criticism upon contemporary trends in Literary criticism.
10311041	/m/02q83_k	Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time	Lisa Yee	2005-10-01		 A slack-off, fun-loving, basketball prodigy, Stanford Wong is ready for summer. He's going to spend every day at the park with his best friends (Stretch, Gus, Tico and Digger) and he's going to basketball camp where he'll learn from the pros. But his English teacher, the horrible Mr. Glick, presents him with some bad news: he got an F on his last book report on Holes and failed English class. Now Stanford must trade basketball camp for summer school - and as if this weren't bad enough, his mom hired a tutor for him: his arch-enemy Millicent Min. A child genius, Millicent Min is a senior in high school at age eleven, not to mention a world-class jerk. She hates Stanford as much as he hates her. Stanford's situation deteriorates as his father continues to distance himself from home, his grandmother becomes senile and moves to a dead retirement home, Millicent tortures him in their study sessions, and his lie to his friends becomes harder and harder to cover up - because he's told them that he passed English with flying colors. Life improves slightly when the beautiful new girl, Emily Ebers, takes an immediate liking to Stanford (the feeling is mutual) but Emily is Millicent Min's one and only friend. Apparently, though, Millicent doesn't want Emily to know of her sky-high IQ, because Emily is under the impression that Millicent is not only home schooled, but tutored by Stanford. Stanford goes along with this lie because he believes that Emily will never like him if she knows he is stupid. In a strange way, Millicent and Stanford form a tentative friendship; they are bound by their affection for Emily, and in the process, the two become closer as well. Soon, everything falls apart: Emily inadvertently discovers Stanford and Millicent's secret. She shuns them both, not because of their varying intelligence levels, but because they lied to her. A classmate and basketball player, Digger Ronster, knows what Stanford really got on his book report, and blackmails Stanford into purposely losing whenever they play basketball with the other guys. Stanford descends into depression because all of his lies have fallen through. He is saved, though, when Emily forgives him. Also, Stanford doesn't have any more trouble with his friends because even though they know that Stanford lied about his English grade, they forgive him, too. Digger leaves Stanford alone after realizing that his blackmail no longer works. Millicent and Stanford make up after getting in a fight over Emily. Emily kisses Stanford on the cheek and the two start dating. At the end of the story, Stanford's father reveals that he has been working so incredibly hard all the time because he was hoping for a promotion - which his boss granted him. However, the promotion required a relocation to New York. Stanford protests angrily, but his father tells him that he didn't take the job. He says that he just recently realized how distant he became from his family, and that wants to reconnect with them. Now that he had rejected the promotion, he says, he would probably have a lot more free time on his hands to spend with Stanford. The book ends with Stanford thinking, "I have so much to tell my dad." Later that night, he falls asleep wearing Alan Scott BK620s, what he always wanted the whole summer.
10311192	/m/02q844q	Shadow Game	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Dr. Peter has succeeded in enhancing the psychic abilities of a group of men in the Special Forces. These men, called Ghostwalkers, have the ability to move objects, control animals, even walk in dreams. Despite the resounding success, there are problems. Some of the men suffer great pain due to psychic overload, unable to block or filter the thoughts and feelings of others, and need to have anchors (someone to draw the overwhelming emotions away) in order to function. A year into the experiment, some of the men began to die, supposedly from side effects of the process. To help find the answers, Dr. Whitney brings in his daughter, Lily, who is psychic. Lily is at first reluctant to join, but her father is insistent. She is stunned by her immediate and powerful attraction to Captain Ryland Miller, the leader of the Ghostwalker team. He thinks that Peter has betrayed him and his men, separating them from their anchors. He is sure that the men have been murdered and suspects that he’s next. She is also jarred by the evident animosity between her father and Colonel Frank Higgens, Miller’s immediate commanding officer. He and Whitney argue over Whitney’s denying Higgens access to his notes about the enhancing process. Higgens even admits to breaking into Whitney’s computer. Peter Whitney asks Lily to meet him for dinner after leaving the lab, but he doesn’t show. Despite his lack of psychic ability, he somehow telepathically contacts his daughter. He’s dying; someone at Donovan’s is responsible for his murder. He tells her that believes that someone is trying to sabotage the experiment and that that person is within the project itself. He also tells her that there’s a secret laboratory with all his notes on the project. The then begs her forgiveness, and that she has to help the remaining men and find “the others”. Before he can say anything more, she feels him being dumped into the ocean. Stunningly, someone forces her to break contact with her father, Ryland Miller. Several days after her father’s murder, she meets with Ryland Miller again and confronts him. She asks him if he was involved Peter’s death. He denies it; he felt that Dr. Whitney was the only man who could help his men. Realizing that the men cannot stay at Donovans, Lily agrees to help Captain Ryland Miller and the others escape. In her large home, the men can hide while she teaches them the techniques and exercises to help them rebuild their mental barriers. She also finds her father’s hidden lab. Once she does, she’s hit with several brutal shocks. She is not Peter Whitney’s biological daughter. She, along with eleven other psychic girls, all under the age of three, were taken from European orphanages by him and experimented on, just like Ryland and his men. He chose girls because there was an abundance of female children abandoned by their families. Even more alarming, he experienced the same complications with the girls as he had with the men: painful headaches, brain bleeds, seizures. Just like the men, they had lost their natural barriers and Whitney couldn’t undo what he had done. So, he stopped the experiment; he had the other girls adopted and kept Lily. He tried the experiment again because he thought that he had gone wrong by choosing such young subjects. He felt that adult, well-trained subjects wouldn’t have the same problems, but he was wrong. Once the men escape to Lily's home, she discovers that one of the men had electrodes planted in his head. This could only be done for one reason, to induce brain bleeds and kill him. Now it all become clear to Lily; someone is trying to steal the process and sell it on the open market. When they were unable to break into Whitney's computer and get his notes, they resorted to killing the men to dissect them in order to discover how process worked. When Dr. Whitney became suspecious of the deaths, he too was murdered. The situation is even more complicated by Ryland and Lily's powerful attraction to one another. Lily fears that it's the result of her father's manipulation, and doesn't trust it. Ryland knows he's in love with Lily and doesn't care it is because of what Whitney has done. Lily thinks that Higgins and Philip Thornton, CEO of Donovans are responsible but she has no real proof. Luckily she finds a recording of Higgins (secretly made by her father) plotting not only Ryland's death, but also of General Ranier, Higgins' commanding officer. With the tape, they stop Higgins and restore the reputations of the Ghostwalkers. Now Lily and Ryland begin to search for the young women Peter put up for adoption.
10312547	/m/02q854r	Peter Pan	J. M. Barrie			 The Darling Nursery As Mr. and Mrs. Darling prepare for an evening out, two of their children, Wendy and John, play their parents. When Mrs. Darling comes in and sees Michael is left out, she gets him in the game and joins in with all of them ("1, 2, 3") while their nursemaid, the dog Nana, watches. Mr. Darling comes in to have his tie tied, and he questions using a dog as a nursemaid, but Mrs. Darling defends her. The previous week, while the children slept, Nana was surprised to see a boy in the room. Before she could catch him, he flew out the window. She did manage to catch his shadow, however, which Mrs. Darling has tucked away in a drawer. Nevertheless, Mr. Darling insists that Nana spend the night downstairs. Mrs. Darling and the children sing a lullaby ("Tender Shepherd"). The children fall asleep. A fairy, Tinker Bell, and Peter Pan fly in through the window. Tinker Bell shows Peter where his shadow is hidden. He tries to reattach it and starts to cry when he can not get it to stick. Wendy wakes up and asks, "Boy, why are you crying?" When he explains, she offers to sew his shadow to his foot. Peter is thrilled when his shadow is reattached ("I've Gotta Crow"). Peter tells Wendy about how he has lived a long time among the fairies, and how one of them dies every time a child says he or she does not believe in fairies. Peter tries to introduce Wendy to Tinkerbell (who accidentally got shut in the drawer when Peter found his shadow), but Tink is jealous and will not be polite. Wendy asks where he comes from, and Peter tells her of his island, called Neverland ("Never Never Land"). Peter says he sometimes came to Wendy's window to listen to her mother's stories and tells them to the Lost Boys, forgotten children who end up living in Neverland; Wendy says she will tell him and the Lost Boys all the stories she knows, if Peter will let her bring Michael and John along, to which Peter agrees. Wendy wakes her brothers up, and Peter invites them all to Neverland, and promises to teach them to fly. They happily agree and ask Peter to show them. Peter happily launches himself into the air ("I'm Flying"). Peter covers the kids in fairy dust and tells them to "think lovely thoughts." Soon the children are flying just like Peter. ("I'm Flying – Reprise") Grabbing some belongings, the children follow Peter, but Michael doubles back when Liza comes into the room, giving her some of his fairy dust and telling her to come to Neverland with them. Peter and children fly through the night to Neverland. Never Land Peter's "Lost Boys" are standing outside their underground lair, wondering when he will return, when they hear Captain Hook and his pirates ("Pirate Song"). The boys hide. Hook tells Smee, his right-hand man, that he wants to kill Peter most of all, because Peter is the one who cut off his hand and threw it to a crocodile, which has developed a taste for Hook and follows him around, hoping to eat more of him, but luckily ate a clock that ticks and will alert Hook to its presence. Hook accidentally stumbles upon the entrance to the hideout, and summons Smee and his men to provide background music while he plans the Boys' demise ("Hook's Tango"), a rich cake with poisonous icing. Hook suddenly hears a loud tick-tock; the crocodile appears but Hook escapes. The pirates flee, and the Boys reappear, thinking they are safe. Suddenly, a group of "Indians" appears, led by Tiger Lily ("Indians"). They leave the Boys alone, and go on hunting the pirates. The boys suddenly see Wendy, whom they confuse for a bird, in the sky, and one of the Boys fires an arrow (the Indians run away in fear). Peter, Michael and John land to find the arrow lodged in her heart. She is not dead, but she can not be moved into the hideout, so the Lost Boys build a house around her, hoping that she will agree to be their mother ("Wendy"), to which, when she wakes up, she agrees. Hook plants the cake, but Wendy thinks it too rich; instead, she will tell the Boys stories. Hook is infuriated that the Boys have found a mother. He plots to kidnap Wendy and the Boys, while Smee and the pirates play a "Tarantella". After the pirates leave for their ship, Liza arrives and does a ballet with the animals of Never Land while Peter sleeps outside the house. A few days pass with everyone having adventures. One day in the forest, after Peter leads the Boys in their anthem ("I Won't Grow Up"), they almost run into the pirates, who arrive with a pirate carrying Tiger Lily over his shoulder. They tie her to a tree for the wolves to eat. Peter hides and, feeling sorry for Tiger Lily, throws his voice in mimicry of the Captain and convinces the men to let her go. Hook arrives and becomes enraged at the news of her release. He demands that the "spirit of the forest" speak to him, so Peter tricks them all to think he is Hook, and the real Hook is a codfish. The pirates abandon Hook, but Hook convinces the "spirit" to reveal its true identity. Peter obliges, disguising himself as a "beautiful lady" ("Oh, My Mysterious Lady"). Hook catches on and tries to ambush Peter (and the pirates rejoin), but the pirates are chased away by Tiger Lily and her Indians. Back at the hideout, Tiger Lily and the Indians rush in, and are almost shot by the Boys, until Peter reveals the truce between them. They smoke a peace pipe and vow eternal friendship ("Ugg-a-Wugg"). Tiger Lily and her Indians leave to stand guard around the house above. Wendy asks Peter to sing the Boys a lullaby ("Distant Melody"). Michael and John want to return home, and Wendy admits to being homesick, too. The Boys wish they had parents, and Wendy offers hers to all of them. Everyone is excited about being adopted, except Peter, who says he will not go because he knows he will grow up if he does. Wendy tells him she will come back once a year to do his spring cleaning. The pirates attack and subdue the Indians. They give Peter a fake all-clear signal, so Peter sadly sends Wendy, her brothers, and the Lost Boys on their way. Before she leaves, Wendy sets out Peter's "medicine" for him to take before bed. After she tearfully leaves, Peter, who pretended not to care, throws himself on a bed and cries himself to sleep. As the they leave the underground house, Wendy and the boys are captured by the pirates. Once the boys and Wendy are carried off to the pirate ship, Hook sneaks into the lair and poisons Peter's medicine. Tinker Bell awakens Peter, tells him of the ambush, and warns him about the poison, but he waves her off as he prepares for a rescue. Desperate, she drinks the poison herself. Dying, she tells Peter that if every boy and girl who believes in fairies would clap their hands, she would live. Peter asks the audience to believe and clap their hands. They do, and Tinker Bell is saved. Peter grabs his sword and heads off to rescue Wendy and the Boys. The Jolly Roger Hook revels in his success ("Hook's Waltz"). As the plank is prepared, Hook hears the tick-tock of the crocodile and panics. It is actually Peter with a clock, and while Hook cowers, Peter and the Boys help the Indians, the animals and Liza onto the ship and hide. Peter hides in a closet and kills two pirates Hook sends in. The pirates then carry the Boys in, and the Boys pretend to be afraid as they are carried in. Peter disguises himself as a pirate, and the pirates think the "doodle-doo" (named so as Peter still crows after killing the pirates) killed all the Boys. Hook believes the ship is now cursed, and everyone thinks Wendy is the source. The pirates push Wendy to the plank. Peter ditches his disguise, and the Indians and animals attack, as well as the Boys who are alive and armed. The pirates are all defeated, and Peter challenges Hook to a duel and defeats him. Hook threatens to blow up the ship with a bomb, but runs into the real crocodile (whom Peter also brought on the ship). Peter catches the dropped bomb and tosses it in the sea after Hook slides down the plank (which is shaped like a slide) with the crocodile chasing behind him. Hook is presumably blown to smithereens. Everyone sings Peter's praises ("I've Gotta Crow" (reprise)). Before the Darling children and everyone goes to London, Liza asks Peter to teach her to crow ("I Gotta Crow – 2nd reprise"). Back home, the Darlings sit by the nursery window night after night, hoping for their children to return. The children silently reappear and sing to their mother ("Tender Shepherd" reprise). Joyous over their return, the Darlings happily agree to adopt the Lost Boys ("We Will Grow Up"). Wendy prays to the window that Peter will return to her. Years pass, and Peter comes to the nursery, surprising a much older Wendy, who no longer expected him. He wants her to come to Never Land for spring cleaning, but she tells him that she cannot – she has grown up; she is married and has a daughter of her own now, Jane. Peter begins to cry, and Wendy leaves the room at the sound of her husband's offstage voice. Jane awakes, and like her mother before her, asks, "Boy, why are you crying?" Peter introduces himself, but Jane knows all about him from her mother's stories. She has been waiting for him to come take her to Never Land and to learn to fly. Peter, now happy again, throws fairy dust on her, but as they are about to leave, Wendy tries to stop them, saying, "Oh, if only I could go with you!" In the most poignant moment of the show, Peter answers with a sad but understanding smile, "You can't. You see, Wendy, you're too grown up". And so, Wendy reluctantly lets Jane go, "just for spring cleaning." Her daughter and the "boy who refuses to grow up" fly off into the night. ("Finale: Never Never Land – Reprise")
10313824	/m/02q85__	The Treasure in the Royal Tower	Carolyn Keene	1995-12	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nancy takes a vacation in Wisconsin when the library of the place she is vacationing at is vandalized. Nancy, along with her friends George Fayne and Bess Marvin, must survive an unknown assailant while discovering the secret passageway's inside of an old castle. Later, Treasure in the Royal Tower was made into a Computer (PC) Game where you can play as Nancy and find Marie Antoinette's tower.
10321595	/m/02q8dfw	Leaving Poppy	Kate Cann	2006-07-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Leaving Poppy is split into three parts. The story starts with a girl, the main protagonist 'Amber' arriving at a house on Merral Road. She's unsure that it's the right house, as many others she tried weren't right. After entering the house that she begins to think back about her mother and half-sister Poppy, she thinks back to various previous events such as Amber's birthday which Poppy ruined. Amber had told her mother that she was going on holiday, but she found the house (17 Merral Road) on a flat sharing website, intending to stay there, telling her mother later by phone. Poppy is obviously a disturbed and emotionally unstable child from the beginning, she "crys all the time...refusing to eat". Amber saw her moving as abandoning them. She meets Rory, who helps her with her case, which she promptly unpacks. Later she meets the rest of her housemates: Ben, Chrissie and Kaz. After eating the meal Ben had prepared that night, she asks about finding a job, determined she'll find one tomorrow. Amber had lied to them all, she wasn't ever on a gap year and never had a broken relationship. Upstairs Amber sees 'dust shapes', but thinks nothing of it. Amber has recounts more of Poppy's previous actions and her bizarre relationship with her mother. Poppy acts violently hurting another girl, then runs into her mother's bed bot Poppy and their mother crying. Their mother refuses that anything is Poppy's fault. The next day Amber looks for a job in many cafes and bars but can't find one. She eventually finds a cafe she loves and keeps asking for a job. She makes an apple crumble as a trial and eventually gets the job. The owner of the cafe (The Albatross) is Bert and the other cook is Marty. That night Amber wakes many times, because of the window rattling. After a day at work, Amber decides to get fit. On the way to number 17 she bumps into an old woman from 11 Merral Road, talking to her about whereabouts in the house she lives mentioning the attic. She leaves Amber asking her why the last person left the house. Amber, thinking she's crazy quickly goes into the house. When heading up the stairs Amber thinks she sees the dust shadow again in the large ornate Edwardian mirror on the landing. She heads up to the attics, to find 2/3 of them full of junk. As she enters the last attic, Amber begins to notice things such as the iron bed and the wooden rocking chair,seem to falter and fade, so she eaves the attic quickly. Amber asks about the previous housemate left and got the answer that she just wanted a change. She asks Ben if old things can have an 'atmosphere' but doesn't tell him what happened in the attic. That night when she goes to bed she keeps telling herself not to go crazy. She dreams one of her 'guilt dreams' where she leaves Poppy. The next day Amber leaves work and tells her housemates that she'll cook the next meal. Amber forgot to phone her mother once again like she promised, upon doing so it appeared that her mother had called the police and they'd laughed at her. The conversation ends with Amber saying sorry. "...she'd said she felt sorry so many times that the word had lost all meaning." Amber had 2 days off work, she spent the first drunk and slept happily, and the second hanging around with Kaz talking. Sunday night she is awoken by the 'fixed' window rattling again. She scavenges a rug, radio and other items from the first 2 attics, not going near the 3rd. Her room "didn't feel quite right..." Amber gets into the routine of going to the phone box every day after work to call her mother. Her mother kept her updated about Poppy, she'd only managed 2 days of college since Amber left and is deeply depressed. Amber scavenges some raw fish from Bert and cooks a meal that goes down well with everyone. Amber phones her mother finally telling her she's not coming back, her mother sees this as abandoning her saying she cares for no-one but themselves. She notices her throat becoming sore, she reveals her mother doesn't trust doctors and she gets tonsillitis twice a year. Kaz says she'll make the next meal, obviously attracted to Rory playfully flirting. Amber goes to bed the darkness upstairs doesn't seem right and she keeps telling herself not to get ill. The next day at work, Bert reveals that Marty is involved with a girl he met in the summer, Amber's heart sinks. On the way home she meets the old women again, who seems to warn her not to go into the house, not to sleep in her room. She enters no. 17 asks Ben to fix her window then sleeps on her bed. Amber woke up sure Poppy was in the room with her, sitting on the bed, like she does, she could feel the pressure on the bed. The shape disappears and Amber tries to get back to sleep. She hears a high pitch complaining like Poppy but different, then she hears an eerie noise, wood on wood. The old rocking chair in the attic. Next morning Amber tries to convince herself it was a dream. Looking in the mirror again she sees the dust shape, only thinner this time, also her reflection seems to waver and move. After Kaz's meal, Kaz and Rory have a playfight with one of the old cushions. In the scuffle it's torn apart and everyone recoils in horror. Fingers of hair poked out the pillow, melted together with pins. Inside are 3 small teeth, from a child. Amber hears that Kaz had seen and heard exactly what she had seen and heard but she says nothing. Kaz wedged the rocking chair with books, haunted by the noises at night. Part 1 ends with "everything going dark" leaving the reader uncertain of what happens next.
10330246	/m/02q8pfl	The Woven Path	Robin Jarvis	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Neil Chapman, son of the new caretaker of the Wyrd Museum (a strange building owned by the three mysterious Webster sisters) enters the secret room that holds the 'Separate Collection,' he is unwittingly whisked back in time to World War II London with a teddy bear possessed by the spirit of an American airman who wants to change the past and save the lives of those dear to him.
10332190	/m/02q8r7p	Cue for Treason	Geoffrey Trease	1940	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Peter Brownrigg, a 14-year-old boy who lives in Cumberland in the north of England, is involved in a secret night protest against the theft of his village's farmland by Sir Philip Morton. He leaves his village to escape prosecution for throwing a rock at Sir Philip Morton. He first goes to Penrith, but unexpectedly encounters Sir Philip at a performance of Richard III by a touring playing company. He hides from him in a prop coffin (supposed to contain the body of King Henry VI) which is later carried on to the company's cart. The players discover Peter hiding and the kindly Desmonds, who run the playing company, take him on as a boy actor. Another boy, Kit Kirkstone, also joins the company. Kit proves excellent at playing female roles while Peter acts as an understudy. After Peter's jealousy leads to a fight, he discovers Kit's secret. Kit is actually a girl in disguise, really called Katharine Russell, who is running away to avoid a forced marriage to Sir Philip, who is only interested in her inheritance. The company breaks up and the Desmonds promise to take Peter and Kit to a London theatre company. When Mr. Desmond breaks his leg in a river accident, the youngsters go on ahead. After being initially turned away by Richard Burbage of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, they are accepted as apprentices by the playwright William Shakespeare, who recognises Kit's acting ability and Peter's gift of mimicry. They perform in various plays and see Sir Philip in the audience during Romeo and Juliet. Peter's copy of Shakespeare's new play Henry V is stolen by the "Yellow Gentleman", and Kit and Peter worry that he plans to profit from the unpublished play. While stealing back the script, Peter overhears a plot by Sir Philip and his associates to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. He also notices an odd poem written on the script. He realizes that some of the underlined words found in this poem must be part of a code but has no idea how to decipher it. After meeting the head of the Queen's Secret Service, Kit and Peter travel back to Peter's village in disguise with one of the Queen's spies, Tom Boyd, to follow a clue which leads to Sir Philip's peel tower. Tom is killed by the conspirators. Peter is captured but not before learning that John Somers, an actor in their company, is to shoot the Queen during the first performance of Henry V. This is part of a wider conspiracy to install a new regime in England, the rest of it is vague but they are evidently in league with Spain. He is taken for questioning to a deserted Ullswater islet but manages to knock out the guard. He swims to the mainland and narrowly escapes across the fells. Kit and Peter go to a local magistrate, but discover he is a part of the treasonous plan. They steal his horses, which are of exceptional quality, intending to ride to London to warn the Queen. Sir Philip and his associates give chase. On the road they meet Desmond and the rest of the company who are rehearsing Edward II. On hearing of the conspiracy, Desmond vows to stop Sir Philip. The actors dress up in their soldier costumes and rig the horses to sound like an army ready to attack, with trumpets and drums behind. Kit and Peter pretend to be captives so Sir Philip will dismount, and he and his followers are then taken into custody by Desmond's men. Kit and Peter make a desperate dash back to London, and John Somers is captured by guards moments before he can shoot. Kit and Peter meet the Queen and tell her their adventures. In the last paragraph, Peter finishes writing the story and we learn that he and Kit are now married with 2 boys and living in a lakeside house in Cumberland.
10333930	/m/02q8snq	The Singapore Grip	James Gordon Farrell	1978	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Broadly satirical in nature, The Singapore Grip details events during the beginning of the Second World War and the Japanese invasion and occupation of Singapore. The action centers around a British family who controls one of the territory's leading trading companies. The title derives from a slang phrase describing a sexual technique sometimes used by prostitutes.
10333991	/m/02q8sqs	Mr. Norris Changes Trains	Christopher Isherwood	1935	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows the movements of William Bradshaw, its narrator, who meets a nervous-looking man named Arthur Norris on a train going from Holland to Germany. As they approach the frontier William strikes up a conversation with Mr Norris, who wears an ill-fitting wig and carries a suspect passport. William and Mr Norris succeed in crossing the frontier. Afterward, Mr Norris invites William to dinner and the two become friends. In Berlin they see each other frequently (including eating ham and eggs at the first class restaurant of Berlin Friedrichstraße railway station). Several oddities of Mr Norris's personal life are revealed, one of which is that he is a masochist. Another is that he is a Communist, which is dangerous in Hitler-era Germany. Other aspects of Mr Norris's personal life remain mysterious. He seems to run a business with an assistant Schmidt, who tyrannizes him. Norris gets into more and more straitened circumstances and has to leave Berlin. Norris subsequently returns with his fortunes restored and apparently conducting communication with an unknown Frenchwoman called Margot. Schmidt reappears and tries to blackmail Norris. Norris uses Bradshaw as a decoy to get an aristocratic friend of his, Baron Pregnitz, to take a holiday in Switzerland and meet "Margot" under the guise of a Dutchman. Bradshaw is urgently recalled by Ludwig Bayer (based on Willi Münzenberg) one of the leaders of the Communist groups, who explains that Norris was spying for the French and both his group and the police know about it. Bradshaw observes they are being followed by the police and persuades Norris to leave Germany. After the Reichstag fire, the Nazis eliminate Bayer and most of Norris's comrades. Bradshaw returns to England where he receives intermittent notes and postcards from Norris, who has fled Berlin, pursued by Schmidt. The novel's last words are drawn from a postcard that Mr Norris sends to William from Rio de Janeiro: "What have I done to deserve all this?"
10334144	/m/047vl8s	Chéri	Colette	1920	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel is about the separation of Chéri and his lover of six years, the much older Léa de Lonval (as the novel opens he is 25 and she is 49). The two believe their relationship is casual until they are separated by Chéri's marriage at which point they realize they are in love. They spend a miserable six months apart, at which point Chéri appears at Léa's home. They spend the night together and Léa begins to plan their new life together. However, when she learns that Chéri had returned for the moral strength to be a husband, she gives him courage then releases him to return home.
10334810	/m/02q8td3	The Fighting Ground	Edward Irving Wortis	1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story takes place in New Jersey on April 3 and 4 in 1778. The Revolutionary War has begun, and the American colonists are fighting for their independence from Britain. As he works the fields with his father on a warm April day in 1778, thirteen-year-old Jonathan daydreams of being a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Against his parents' wishes, he rushes to the village when the warning bell tolls, to meet the British forces. Jonathan expects to find excitement and glory on the battlefield. Instead, Jonathan and the other local patriots battle and retreat from a group of Hessians, feared German mercenaries that have been hired by the British. Due to a lack of understanding of the German language, Jonathan, in hiding, believes he has been discovered by the Hessians and rather than wait for death, surrenders himself to them (although, ironically, they would never have noticed him if he hadn't revealed himself). Three Hessians capture Jonathan and hold him hostage in an abandoned house. Jonathan now experiences fear, exhaustion, confusion, and eventually, Stockholm syndrome, forming an unusual and almost warm relationship with his enemies. Hardly more than twenty-four long hours later, however, the house is suddenly raided by some of Jonathan's fellow patriots from the previous day. Abruptly, the Hessians are all three killed, something Jonathan is not sure whether to be thankful or upset about. In the end, Jonathan returns home, his understanding of war and life forever changed.
10335932	/m/02q8v6z	REM World			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Arthur Woodbury is very tired of being overweight and being called "Biscuit Butt". The reason he is overweight is that his father died and he is very sad, even though he lives with his mom and grandma. So he orders the REM sleep device which will help him lose weight. After reading the first side of the instructions, he falls asleep and enters REM World. Feeling ripped off, he throws the device off, but after meeting his guide Morf, a small furry creature that can change form, he realizes that he need to find the device, or else the whole world will be swallowed by an evil darkness. On his quest, he meets frog people, giants, cloud people, killer birds, and an evil demon. After finding the device and learning his life should not end because of a lost loved one and that imagination is important, he comes home and has lost a lot of weight. From now on, he is now called "Courage" rather than "Biscuit Butt".
10352021	/m/02q9663	Bye-Bye	Jane Ransom	1997	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The bisexual, nameless narrator decides to abandon her life with her husband, changing her name and her appearance. The story follows her obsession with Andorgenie, a mysterious performance artist, and her relationships with different men and women, none of whom she really likes.
10352792	/m/02q96xh	The Time Trap	Edgar Pierre Jacobs	1962		 When Mortimer discovers a time machine built by his old adversary Dr. Miloch, he can't resist to try it out and travels through time to a prehistoric swamp, the Middle Ages, and a desolate wasteland in the 51st century.
10353030	/m/02q971n	The Yellow "M"	Edgar Pierre Jacobs	1956		 For some time now London has been terrorized by an enigmatic villain who informs the press in advance of his crimes. He commits daring robberies and leaves behind an "M" in a yellow circle as a signature. When the Imperial State Crown is stolen from the Tower of London, the Home Office assigns Captain Francis Blake to assist Chief Inspector Glenn Kendall of Scotland Yard. Blake in turn calls in his old friend and housemate, Professor Philip Mortimer, who has been on holiday to Scotland but agrees to return to London to help in the enquiry. Meeting Blake at the Centaur Club, Mortimer is also introduced to some of its regulars: Leslie Macomber, editor of the Daily Mail; Sir Hugh Calvin, judge at the Central Criminal Court; Professor Robert Vernay of the British Medical Association; and Dr Jonathan Septimus of the Psychiatric Institute. Following dinner the group breaks up with Vernay and Septimus electing to walk home. On the way Septimus feels uneasy and calls a taxi, leaving Vernay alone. Shortly afterwards, Vernay is abducted by the Yellow "M". The following night Macomber is kidnapped from his office at the Daily Mail. In spite of the judge's objections, Kendall insists on staying the night at the Calvin residence as a precaution. This is to no avail: Calvin disappears and Kendall is later found unconscious and with no recollection of what happened &mdash; a common occurrence with those who have confronted the Yellow "M" head-on. Blake and Mortimer meanwhile receive several messages telling them to stay away from the case and the symbol of the Yellow "M" even appears on the back of Blake's overcoat. The Yellow "M" announces that there will be yet another kidnap and the terrified Septimus is convinced that he is next. He agrees with Blake's suggestion that he leave London. Taking a train from King's Cross with two police detectives, their journey is unexpectedly stopped. Blake goes to investigate but, returning to their compartment, discovers Septimus has disappeared. As he and the policemen search the area, their train suddenly collides with the Harwich Express and is derailed. Meanwhile, Mortimer is at the archives of the Daily Mail where, with the help of Mr Stone the archivist, he is conducting his own research into the affair. He comes across the case of The Mega Wave, a book written many years ago by a certain Doctor J. Wade about aspects of the human brain. Wade theorised that a part of the brain, which he called the Mega Wave, could be used to turn people into docile and powerful beings and even be manipulated by others. James Thornley, the publisher, instigated libel action against scathing press articles attacking the book and its conclusions. Macomber, Calvin, Vernay and Septimus were all involved in the court proceedings and Thornley suddenly died of apoplexy when he lost the case. Mortimer goes to the British Museum to find a copy of The Mega Wave only to discover that it has been stolen by the Yellow "M". He returns home to inform Blake of his discoveries and they agree to look into it further. That night a mysterious masked figure breaks into Blake and Mortimer's house. Awoken, the occupants confront the intruder but he is resistant to bullets and Nasir the manservant is knocked unconscious when he attempts to seize him. The intruder escapes into the night. Blake and Mortimer then discover a listening device hidden in their living room. Later that day Blake receives a letter from Septimus begging him to go to Limehouse Dock where someone will give him vital information regarding the case. It's clearly a trap, but Blake elects to go anyway with Kendall and the police providing discreet support. After Blake has left, Mortimer is visited by Stone from the Daily Mail who has found a copy of The Mega Wave which was sent to the paper for review when first published. Mortimer reads through the complex book and something in it makes him realise that Blake is in terrible danger! At the docks, the Yellow "M" makes an unsuccessful attempt to kill Blake. The police give chase but, despite being shot at, falling into the river, crashing his car and catching fire, the Yellow "M" still manages to escape, apparently unharmed. Arriving at the scene by taxi, Mortimer stays on the Yellow "M"'s trail, following him into the sewers where he finds the mystery man's secret lair. There he comes across an impressive laboratory where he sees none other than Septimus questioning the Yellow "M" over his recent failures regarding Blake and Mortimer &mdash; which he is unable to explain. When the Yellow "M"'s cumbersome headgear is removed, Mortimer is astonished to recognise his old enemy Olrik, but the man who was once a ruthless adventurer, gang leader and master criminal now appears to be nothing more than a pathetic slave in a state of hypnosis under Septimus' control. Once Olrik has been sent to get some rest, Mortimer confronts Septimus at gunpoint only for the latter to use a spinning disk on his head that hypnotises Mortimer and makes him unconscious. Now prisoner, Mortimer listens as Septimus explains how he was the writer of The Mega Wave (using the pseudonym Wade) and how the theories it put forward were the subject of ridicule by Macomber and Vernay in the press, who saw it as both nonsense and harmful to the public. When his publisher Thornley instigated libel proceedings, Judge Calvin was equally critical, describing it as "scientific heresy". This resulted in Thornley's death while Septimus, who had defended the book in court without revealing himself as the author, left, gutted, for Sudan. In Africa he met a white madman found wandering the desert and decided to use him as a guinea-pig in order to try out his theories on the Mega Wave and get his revenge. In time he invented a machine called the Telecephaloscope which enables him to gain control over a subject's Mega Wave and thus manipulate them from a distance. He can even see what the subject sees through a TV screen &mdash; the subject's eyes acting as cameras relating to the brain which passes the images on to the Telecephaloscope. Septimus is still unaware that Pig, the name he gave to his subject, is Olrik, the infamous adventurer, driven almost completely amnesiac due to the events surrounding the mystery of the Great Pyramid. Septimus concedes that he cannot control the subject's subconscious and Mortimer privately theorises that this would explain the Yellow "M"'s failures regarding him and Blake &mdash; since events in their confrontations subconsciously reminded Olrik of his past battles with them even if he was not actually aware of it. Using the technology in his lair, Septimus jams the BBC Television signal, announcing that the Yellow "M" will execute Mortimer in the morning. The officers at Scotland Yard are able to triangulate the source of the signal and begin to search the area. Septimus then proceeds to kidnap a number of prominent Harley Street doctors who are taken prisoner to his hide-out. There he puts on a show of Macomber, Vernay and Calvin, their minds under his control, falling on their knees and "begging" forgiveness for their attacks on him and his theories. Blake learns about Stone taking to Mortimer a copy of The Mega Wave and guesses that this is what led his friend to Limehouse. A reward is issued for the return of the book and the taxi driver who took Mortimer to the docks finds it in his cab. He gives it to Blake and Kendall. The book includes a dedication and they recognise Septimus' handwriting. Realising that he is the mastermind behind the Yellow "M", they lead a raid on his house. Septimus is about to kill Mortimer when the latter breaks the doctor's hold over Olrik by repeating the spell cast on him that caused him to lose his memories (Meanwhile, Mortimer remembering the magic phrase of Razek launched Olrik face and destabilized, a "For Horus remains" ). Suddenly going mad, Olrik turns against Septimus, chases him into the laboratory and uses a machine that casts a lightning bolt to kill the scientist. Olrik recovers his memories and his personality. He recognises Mortimer and is about to take on his enemy when Blake and the police arrive and he is forced to flee. Septimus' death has also restored Calvin, Vernay and Macomber to normal and the Harley Street doctors are freed. Mortimer hands over to Kendall the stolen Imperial Crown. Blake concludes that although Septimus and his exceptional skills could have led him to be seen as one of the greatest scientists of the age, ego and the desire for revenge diverted him from his original goals and led to his downfall. Thus his death should be seen as a warning to others that science is there to help mankind in general and not serve the tyrannical ambitions of a single individual.
10353305	/m/02q9774	The Mystery of the Great Pyramid, Volume 1: Manetho's Papyrus				 Professor Philip Mortimer is going to Cairo, Egypt for a holiday. He soon gets mixed up in a weird business with ancient papyrus, heretic kings, lost treasures, an old nemesis, and the murder of his friend; Captain Blake.
10357570	/m/02q9bvr	Candle	John Barnes	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the year 2087, on a nearly crime-free Earth in which humans are under the telepathic control of the artificial intelligence One True, the story is narrated in the first person by its main character, forty-nine-year-old Currie Curtis Curran, a retired mercenary soldier and “cowboy hunter” who is recalled from retirement to capture “Lobo” Dave Singleton, the last of the cowboys, people who have remained beyond of the control of One True by retreating into the Colorado wilderness. Currie’s contact with One True is through a copy of the Resuna “meme”, a “neurocode” program uploaded into the brain, and an implanted “cellular jack” radio device. In addition to communicating with One True, Resuna monitors its host’s thoughts and emotions, provides everyday information and communication, downloads requested memories or skills, adjusts their physiology, and, when offered the spoken code phrase “let overwrite, let override”, can assume control of its host’s body, and erase memories. Resuna learns its host’s preferences and habits, is friendly and communicative, and can even play chess with its host or engage in other pastimes. Ten years before, Currie was the leader of a team of cowboy hunters who captured Lobo’s cowboy gang after a long pursuit in which several of the team were killed and several, including Currie, badly injured. During their final confrontation, Currie sees Lobo fall from a high cliff, apparently to his death. In his briefing by One True, Currie is shown the recorded memories of a mother and daughter beaten, raped, and robbed by Lobo days earlier. Although such emotions are normally kept in check by Resuna, Currie is allowed to feel revulsion and hatred of Lobo, to improve his performance as a hunter. One True explains to Currie that, to decrease his chance of being detected and evaded, he has been assigned to hunt Lobo alone. After goodbyes to his wife of 23 years, Mary, Currie is dropped of by diskster (a futuristic, automatically piloted hovercraft) with various high-tech equipment, including an advanced cold weather suit, shape-adjusting ski/snowshoes, and a shelter that self-assembles from collected carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen matter. Within days, Currie is captured by Lobo, awakening after many days unconscious from the severe blow to his head that incapacitated him in a comfortable, geothermally-heated underground lair, to discover his copy of Resuna no longer responding to his mental or spoken requests. Nursed back to health by Lobo/Dave, the two men exchange life stories, which are so similar they joke that they could be brothers. No longer controlled by Resuna and One True, Currie agrees to join Dave in an effort to hide from One True. About half of the book consists of Currie and Dave’s telling of their personal and the Earth’s general history. Among the details revealed are that the beatings and rapes shown to Currie were fabrications, and that the mother and child are actually Dave’s wife and child, who were captured and “turned” by One True during the “Meme Wars”, giving them false memories of their history, from which, during Dave’s actual visit to them to obtain medicine and supplies, he was able to temporarily free them. Currie’s search for Dave resulted in enough information being uploaded that they must abandon his lair and attempt to build another, while remaining undetected by One True’s network of surveillance satellites. While caching supplies, Currie has a skiing fall, and, shaken up and angry, reflexively says “let overwrite, let override”, to find himself immediately calm. A little later, he realizes that after saying the trigger phrase, he was unconscious and under the control of his Resuna for several minutes, during which time it/he carelessly left a trail visible to satellites, and, he assumes, Resuna uploaded information to One True, though he is still unable to make the usual mental contact with Resuna. Hurrying to their old lair to warn Dave, he discovers in a previously unexplored room there a suspended animation device, unmentioned in Dave’s story, and beyond anything he could have constructed himself. Dave informs him that, while he was unconscious, Dave used various means to burn out his cellular jack, assuring that even if his Resuna reactivated, it would be unable to contact One True, and promising to tell him the omitted parts of his story after they have fled to safety. After abandoning the first lair, while the two work to excavate their new one, Dave tells more of his life story. As Dave reaches its conclusion, Currie realizes that his disabled Resuna is not due to his head injury, but due to Dave uploading an additional meme, “Freecyber”. Although designed during the Meme Wars to disable other memes, principally One True, Dave’s story explained that every version of Freecyber had “mutated” into as controlling a meme as the ones it was intended to fight. Enraged, Currie attacks Dave, and is on the verge of killing him when Dave shouts “let overwrite, let override”, disabling Currie, and flees. Upon regaining consciousness, Currie finds his Resuna fully functional, though still unable to contact with One True. He pursues Dave, arriving at the original lair to discover him already captured by a large team of hunters. Making no effort to fight or hide, Curry joins them, and returns to his home and civilization. Back in civilization, a cellular jack is installed in Dave’s head, but One True is unable to load a functioning Resuna in his brain. Currie’s Resuna is behaving atypically, indicating to he and it that it has become a true, human-like person. He neither requests nor is compelled to have his burnt-out jack repaired, and demands to be allowed to speak with One True via eyes and ears. One True speaks with him, explaining that his Resuna is an experimental version designed to interact with Freecyber, and that his mission was planned to result in his capture in order for One True to obtain a “wild copy” of the last generation of Freecyber for its research. As a learning AI, One True explains, it is dissatisfied with its lack of true human empathy and the lack of freedom accorded humans under the present scheme, and seeks to change it, without allowing human society to return to its previous warring, suffering state. The story closes a few years later, with Dave, his wife Nancy, Currie, and Mary listening to Dave’s daughter Kelly give a philosophical speech at her high school graduation, while Currie, his cellular jack repaired, converses with One True about Kelly’s speech, the reluctance of many people to replace their old, more controlling version of Resuna with new ones, and the nature of the human experience.
10361574	/m/02q9fvp	The Last Day of Creation	Wolfgang Jeschke	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book is structured into three different parts. The first part describes several ancient artifacts that turn out to be remnants of modern era items: a part of a pilot's breathing apparatus worshipped for centuries as a Catholic saintly relic, a clearly recognizable trace of a Jeep discovered during archaeological works on Gibraltar, found in the same layer as an early hominid skeleton and an equally old grenade launcher of a model just introduced in the US Army. William W. Francis, an ambitious officer of the US Navy, becomes convinced that time travel is possible and manages to launch a secret project to develop a technological device able to transfer people and materiel through time. The second part describes the project "Chronotron", the successful implementation of a time machine, which is at first able only to move things into the past. It is believed that time transfer into the future will be solved soon. The American administration decides to move oil pumping machinery 5 million years into the past, set it up on oil deposits in the Near East, and transport the oil through the then dried-up Mediterranean Basin to the shores of the North Sea, where reverse time machines will push it to the modern era. The massively expensive project is kept strictly secret. Objections of scientists that time transfer into the future may be just a dream, that the project could exhaust the country in a new arm race, and that the history of humankind may be irreversibly changed, are ignored. The third part introduces Steve Stanley, a military pilot picked up to participate in the project. His task is to protect the installations and specialists transferred into the past. Stanley successfully descends into the prehistoric Mediterranean. He is surprised to arrive in the middle of an all-out war, where newcomers are chased by nuclear artillery. He learns that the plan went completely wrong: isolated groups of Americans were scattered through time more widely than calculated, the reverse time transfer is impossible, and worst of all, Arabs had discovered the plan and decided to strike back by sending their own soldiers into the same period to destroy the American expedition. Stanley meets people who arrived from various different futures, including one where the United States is limited to the east of the Mississippi and Mexico is the superpower. Most of the time travellers, unable to adjust to life without modern amenities and having no practical skills, have been evacuated to a base on the Bermudas, and the rest try to fend off attackers and to rescue unsuspecting newcomers. Overall, the situation seems hopeless and the handful of modern humans have no chance to set up a new civilization.
10362761	/m/02q9gv9	The Coldest Winter Ever	Sister Souljah		{"/m/084s13": "Urban fiction", "/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the projects of Brooklyn, New York, The Coldest Winter Ever is the story of Winter Santiaga (aptly named because she was born during one of New York's worst snowstorms), the rebellious, pampered teenage daughter of a notorious drug dealer. Ricky Santiaga, Winter's father, has attained substantial wealth through his illegal drug empire and lavishes his wife, Winter, and Winter's three younger sisters, Porsche, Lexus, and Mercedes, with the best things money can (and cannot) buy. Unknown to her father, Winter uses her hustling tricks to get whatever she wants. Winter's world is turned upside down on her 16th birthday, when her father suddenly decides to relocate his family and his growing business to Long Island, but she is determined not to sever ties with the old neighborhood. Her life spirals downward when her mother is shot in the face by foes of her father. Shortly afterward, the FBI arrives at the Santiaga mansion while Winter is at a party, seizes the family's possessions, and sends the drug lord to prison. At this juncture, Winter's sisters are placed in child custody, rather than in their unemployed mother's custody. Winter escapes by pretending to not be her parents’ daughter. Winter stays with a man just for his money for a while, but when his girlfriend comes back, Winter goes to live with an aunt. While with the Aunt, Winter's location is revealed, and she is turned over to the Bureau of Child Welfare. Winter's location was probably divulged by Natalie, a former friend of Winter's, who suspected that Winter was trying to date her boyfriend. While visiting her father in jail, she finds out that he had an infant son and was cheating on her mother, which tears her apart. Also, her father murdered someone while in jail. After being taken out of her aunt’s home, Winter starts living at the House of Success, a group home for teenage girls. Her new surroundings do not stop her from hustling: she makes money by selling clothes and cigarettes to her housemates, and she does their hair. Winter obtains the goods she sells from her friend Simone, who is a booster who steals designer clothes for her. Winter continues making money this way until Simone is arrested. Winter does not bail out now-pregnant Simone, but Simone gets out another way. Upon her release, Simone gathers some friends to wait so that they can beat up Winter. Winter escapes the beating by running and never returns. Then Simone falls and has a miscarriage. Rashida, one of Winter's House of Success housemates, thinks that Winter needs help and persuades her to go to a friend's house. Winter doesn't know that the friend is Sister Souljah, whom Winter boldly stated she never liked in the book's introduction. Under Souljah's tutelage, Winter volunteers at a benefit for people with HIV/AIDS, but Winter still does whatever she can to get money. Winter steals money from the AIDS benefit and rushes home to pack. Suspicious of Winter leaving, Lauren, Souljah's sister, switches the bag into which Winter has put her prized belongings. Winter takes a cab to a New Jersey hotel, and realizes that she has no money, no jewels, and no protection. Winter hooks up with an old boyfriend named Bullet, who has money. She finds out that she is pregnant with the baby of a man who tricked her into believing he was hip-hop MC GS. Months later, Winter's world crashes again when she is attacked in a car by Simone. A crowd gathers to watch the fight, and Winter loses focus when she sees Bullet cause the crowd to disperse by waving a gun in the air. Once Winter looks away, Simone slashes her across the face with a broken bottle. Winter is led back to the car by Bullet and, shortly afterward, the police arrive. Bullet leaves Winter, who gets a mandatory 15-year prison sentence for transporting drugs in his rental car. Soon, her old friends Natalie and Simone join her in prison, and her younger sister eventually becomes just like her. The ending surprises: after her father was jailed, Winter talked about being let out of prison to attend her mother’s funeral.
10365053	/m/02q9j3k	The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers	Sarnath Banerjee	2007-01	{"/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 The novel reinvents the legend of The Wandering Jew as a Jewish merchant called Abravanel Ben Obadiah Ben Aharon Kabariti who once lived in 18th century Kolkata (Calcutta) and who recorded the scandalous affairs of its British administrators in a book called "The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers". Although it has several subplots, the novel is basically about the narrator's quest to find the "Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers" which his grandfather Pablo Chatterjee found at an old Jewish trinket shop in Montmartre, Paris, in the 1950s. Pablo's wife gave away the book, as well as her husband's other belongings, upon his death; the narrator tries to recover the book, which was one of his childhood favorites.
10372180	/m/02q9qlx	White Death	Clive Cussler	2003	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Novel from the NUMA files, A Kurt Austin Adventure. In this novel, the main character Kurt Austin has to destroy an overpowered fish farm that makes mutant fish before the entire eco-system is changed. it:Morte bianca (romanzo) fi:Kurt Austin
10373615	/m/02q9rq3	Love Lessons	Jacqueline Wilson	2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story revolves around a girl called Prue who lives with her bossy, often scary dad who loses his temper very easily, a sweet yet pressured mum and an immature but kind hearted young sister, Grace. Her dad is very temperamental and he gets mad on silly things like art classes for Prue and he thinks going to school is an absurd idea. He insists on educating Prue and Grace himself while running a not-so-successful book shop. One day a man from the education system comes and tells Prue’s dad that Prue will have to go to school so she can get her GCSE’s. After much grumbling her father decides to send her to Maths tuition but not school. After the class, Prue gives up and bunks her classes, while spending £60 in the process on chocolate which she later shares with Grace and some lacy undies. Prue’s father finds out and gets so worked up about it that he has a stroke and has to leave for the hospital immediately. After much thinking over, the girls’ mother decides to send them to the nearest public school, Wentworth High, while still keeping it a secret from their sick father. Prue and Grace go to their new school and find it a slightly scary place. Prue meets the school art teacher, Mr Raxberry(Rax as everyone calls him) and develops a crush on him. Prue tries to be confident but Grace shows that she is scared. The girls give admission exams but while Grace finds most questions easy, Prue panics as she thinks the easy questions are trick questions and can't do the hard ones. She writes an essay in hope that it will be counted as good intelligence. Grace passes with flying colors while Prue does not get a good score and is sent in the class where dense kids are put. She finds it a struggle and is very unhappy. Grace on the other hand is very happy and makes new friends who nicknamed themselves as Iggy and Figgy. The next day is also difficult for Prue as there are PE lessons and she has to change with the other girls where they see Prue's lacy under-garments and starts calling her a slag but she has Rax’s art lessons to look forward to. She enjoys immensely and Rax even tells her that “You’re going to be the girl that makes my teaching worthwhile, I love you'. A boy named Toby likes Prue though the feeling is not mutual and Toby’s girlfriend is very jealous of them. Prue helps Toby with his reading as he is dyslexic and continues to visit her father, who is being extremely uncooperative in trying to recover his speaking skills, on regular bases. Prue finds out while talking to Rax that he is married to a blonde woman who had been his childhood sweetheart and has a son and daughter. Soon Prue and Rax’s relationship starts to develop and they share the 10 minutes of peace they have without anyone in the way, to talk and laugh, as Prue starts to baby-sit for Rax’s children. After having an argument with Rax, Prue confronts him and asks if he loves her, he then confesses that he does and cannot stop fantasising about her but says that he cannot risk his marriage and his job. She then kisses Rax, who at first pulls away but Prue is persistent and kisses him again and soon Rax begins to kiss Prue back. Afraid they will be spotted Rax drive off to a place he used to go to with his wife when they were young, they talk and continue making out. However when she arrives back home Prue’s dad has come home, he finds out about their going to school but cannot do much because of his still stiff position. Afraid that he will ban her and Grace from going back to school and therefore not seeing Rax anymore, she confides her troubles to Rax, who is really agitated about them being seen together and asks her to calm down. Finally he hugs her trying to calm her but then another student named Sarah spots Prue hugging Rax and telling him that she loves him. Sarah then proceeds to tell everyone else about the incident. The end consists of the head teacher of the school expelling Prue, Rax comes and says goodbye to Prue for the last time, where they briefly consider running off together. Later with the help of Tony Prue's family discovering a set of antique books and selling them to pay off their heavy debts. Prue is sent to Kingtown High School while Rax gets to keep his job.
10375116	/m/02q9t01	Downsiders	Neal Shusterman	2001-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Downsiders which is located underneath New York City, is a secret community of over 5,000 people (either native-born or "fallers" from the surface) that are never allowed to travel to the Topside (the surface). Talon, a fourteen-year-old Downsider, is curious about the Topside; he travels to the Topside and meets a fourteen-year-old girl named Lindsay Matthias, who just moved to her father's NYC townhouse after her mother went to Africa with her professor for three years to study the white rhino. Things get off to a rocky beginning, but they become friends. However, when Talon brings Lindsay to the Downside, the Wise Advisors (the Downside's government) find out and sentence Talon to death by executing him in the pipe system. Talon survives; he winds up on Coney Island "under the boardwalk," and has the time of his life, experiencing the "strange Topside rituals" for the first time. Meanwhile, Mark Matthias, Lindsay's father, is working on an Aqueduct Shaft downtown. He has been noticing strange behavior from his daughter lately, most notably not coming home until the early morning hours, and his stress from home spills over into his work life. He comes down hard on his workers, causing an extreme speedup in progress. However, one dump truck that lurches forward too quickly to receive its load collapses through the ground into the Downside's Brass Junction. While the Downsiders panic about the Topsiders discovering them, Talon sees what is happening on Lindsay's TV screen and, after seeing more than he could bear, rushes back to the Downside with Lindsay in hot pursuit. After Lindsay meets up with Talon (after almost being killed in a Null Tunnel), Talon tells Lindsay that they should stop seeing each other, for all that they do only brings trouble. Lindsay, who feels that if she finds out the Downside's origins she could save the Downside, rushes to the library while Talon heads to the Downside. As Talon heads for the Downside, the Downsiders meet at the city hall ("Hall of Action") to try to stop the Topsiders. Railborn Skinner, Talon's former friend and the person who ratted Talon out, suggests knocking out the Topside's utilities to punish them for their "ungratefulness." Talon comes back and tells the Downsiders, who thought he was dead, that he saw the Topside; after the Wise Advisors ask Railborn what to do, Railborn orders for Talon to be sent to the Chamber of Soft Walls (the Downside mental ward). In the midst of the events, the Topside's utilities are knocked out (which include electricity,gas,and water). However, rather than panicking, the New Yorkers decide to party instead, and the mayor passes an order that the utilities be shut down once per year in a celebration known as "The Festival of Outages". Meanwhile, Lindsay, who has gathered info about the Downside's origin, sneaks into the Downside and gives the information to Talon, hoping that it helps. At first, Talon is angry at this information; he soon, however, realizes what to do. He demands to the guard to be released and travels to the Chamber of First Runes, where only a Most-Beloved (the Downside's leader, who there is none at this point in time) is allowed in. The guards let him in after Talon demands to be let in (several times, actually; the guards did not cave easily). Talon sees the grave of Alfred Ely Beach, a forgotten inventor who created the Downside over one-hundred years ago, and after having a "conversation" with him, he leaves, knowing what to do. At the same time, a large piece of rock impales Gutta, and leaves her unconsicious. Railborn carries Gutta to a hospital on the Topside, and they are both labled wards of the state. At the hospital, Railborn does a ritual swearing he would never seek the Downside again. Meanwhile on the surface, Mark is being blamed for the outages. The city orders his resignation, and he signs the resignation papers after talking to Lindsay, who tries to comfort and console him. As the two share the moment, an explosion is heard and felt. The explosion is actually half of the Downside, which was destroyed, and sealed up as a result, in a plan by Talon to keep the Topsiders out. The plan works, and Talon, who is now Most-Beloved, later returns to the Chamber of First Runes and leaves Lindsay's information at Beach's grave; he sees a journal there, though as tempting as it is to read it, Talon leaves it. Upon exiting the chamber, Talon tells the guards to never let anyone (himself included) in until a new Most-Beloved arises. Talon and Lindsay meet up again months later. Talon takes Lindsay to the top of an abandoned skyscraper; Downsiders are now living atop them, and this area is called the Highside. Talon tells Lindsay that once the Downsiders know what all the Topsiders know, they will reveal themselves. But until then, they will remain left alone. On a orphanage on Long Island, a boy and a girl name Raymond and Grettel are the most beloved kids there. Following this book will be a sequel called "Downside Up" Disney Channel Also owns the rights to the movie script adapted version by Neal Shusterman and has not been released yet.
10377713	/m/02q9wp4	The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn	John Bellairs		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Anthony Monday and his family live in Hoosac, Minnesota, and, while not poor, are having money problems. Anthony is desperate to help with expenses and accepts a part-time job from Myra Eells, the elderly librarian of Hoosac Public Library. Working at the library allows Anthony to earn a little money, as well learn more about the man who built the library, the wealthy and eccentric Alpheus Winterborn. Rumor has it that Winterborn found something on an archeological dig many years before and hid it for safekeeping somewhere in the library, but no one believes the tale to be true. During his chores around the building, Anthony ultimately finds a clue that hints that the Winterborn treasure does exist and if clues, written by Winterborn himself, are followed correctly they will lead the lucky treasure hunter to the prize. Anthony knows that finding the treasure will result in money that can help with family finances and treatment during his father's heart-attack recovery. But soon Anthony runs afoul of the greedy bank vice-president, Hugo Philpotts, who seems to know a little something about the Winterborn treasure, too. They both fight for the treasure and look for it. Anthony finds the treasure in the weathervane, a gold statue that was worth a lot of money; after which he sells it. He gave half of the money to Ms. Eells and kept half for himself.
10378036	/m/02q9wym	The Dark Secret of Weatherend	John Bellairs		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Anthony and Myra Eells are touring the countryside near their hometown in Minnesota when they pass the old Weatherend estate, a dilapidated mansion where the eccentric J.K. Borkman once lived. He was obsessed with the weather and spent his years monitoring the skies. Despite posted signs enforcing No Trespassing, Anthony and Ms. Eells explore the grounds and find grotesque statues symbolizing wind, hail, snow, and lightning and a small diary hidden in the floorboards of the garage. The two would-be treasure hunters take the book home as a souvenir. Soon thereafter, Anthony and Ms. Eells are visited by Anders Borkman, the son of the man who built Weatherend, who has come reclaim his father's book. Terrifying weather that can only be created by magic begins sweeping through Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Anthony and Ms. Eells realize all too quickly the connection between the weather and what's happening out at the justly named Weatherend estate.
10379089	/m/02q9xv4	Ratha’s Creature	Clare Bell	1983	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ratha and her people (the Named) are a clan of a strong self-aware cheetah-like prehistoric big cats. They have laws, languages, and traditions and live by herding the creatures, dapple backs (horses) and three horns (deer), they once hunted. Surrounding the Named are the more numerous non-sentient UnNamed, who prey on the clan’s herds. Mating between Named and UnNamed is forbidden, since the clan believes that the resulting young will be UnNamed animals. Ratha, a young female, bucks the clan tradition of male dominance by training with the herding teacher, Thakur, to become a herder. All the herders are male except for Fessran, a strong-willed female who became a herder before Meoran took over leadership. Attacks by the UnNamed are driving Ratha's clan close to the edge of survival. Only her discovery and use of fire (“The Red Tongue” and the “Creature” of the title) offers the clan a chance to survive. Meoran, the tyrannical male clan leader, opposes Ratha and drives her out of the clan. In exile among the UnNamed, Ratha meets a lone male and discovers that the clan is wrong about some of the UnNamed - he speaks very well and is as bright as any clan member. She dubs him "Bonechewer". He teaches her to hunt, the two mate and she has his young. When the cubs don’t develop according to her expectations, she realizes that they are probably non-sentient. She flies into a rage, attacking Bonechewer, biting and crippling the female cub, Thistle-chaser and abandoning her mate and the litter. Returning to the clan at Thakur‘s bidding, Ratha re-acquires “her creature”, the Red Tongue. With it, she overthrows and kills Meoran. When the UnNamed attack again, she, Thakur and Fessran lead the clan in striking back with a new weapon, fire. The enemy flees in terror. After the battle, Ratha emerges as clan leader. She makes Fessran chief of the Firekeepers, those who build and tend fire for the clan. The Firekeepers also wield torches in battle. Ratha gives The People of The Red Tongue each a torch, and they fight the UnNamed. Ratha’s victory is bittersweet, however. Her mate, Bonechewer, was fatally injured in the fight and Ratha finds him dying. Despite everything, she still loves him and is wounded by his death. She is also troubled by the changes Red Tongue has made in her people. However, she knows that with the Red Tongue, the Named will survive.
10379894	/m/02q9yjj	Running on Empty	Franklin W. Dixon	1990-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Thieves hot wire and steal Chet Morton's prize Corvette. But when he tries to catch those responsible, he gets kidnapped himself. In response the brothers Frank and Joe go in chase of Chet's kidnappers. The two brothers attempt to join the gangs to get leads on Chet and uncover a chopshop ring. With the Camaros, Caddys and Corvettes, the Hardys are putting themselves on the line.
10382661	/m/02qb0l2	Dark Desire	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book begins with Jacques Dubrinsky, younger brother to Mikhail, being tortured and buried alive by members of the same fanatical group that attacked Raven and killed his sister some 25 years earlier in Dark Prince. As time goes on he loses much of his memory (perhaps even his sanity), the only thing he has a clear memory of is of the faces of his human tormentors, the vampire who betrayed him to the society, and of the woman who will save him. Shea O’Halloran is a brilliant American surgeon and researcher trying to find the cure for a rare blood disorder. Her pursuit of a cure is personal; she also suffers from the disease, and she fears that one day it will kill her. She occasionally has to have blood transfusions in order to survive. It is only after her mother Maggie commits suicide that she learns that she has inherited this disorder from her father. In her diary, her mother writes of having an affair with a man named Rand. She writes that he takes her blood when they make love. Unfortunately he’s a married man whose wife recently gave birth to a son and disappears before Maggie can tell him of her pregnancy. She believes that his wife Noelle discovered his infidelity and murdered him. The loss of Shea's father devastates Maggie, and she retreats from the world, even her own child. Shea suffers a stark and painful childhood. Maggie commits suicide when Shea turns 18. This disorder is not her only difference. No human medicine works on her; she can hear and feel the thoughts of others. When she touches a patient, she instantly knows what is wrong with him/her. Because of this, she’s tracked by the same vampire hunting society that has imprisoned Jacques, believing she too is a vampire. They even show her pictures of seven others that they have caught and murdered. No matter where she goes, they always track her down. One day Shea is racked by horrendous pain and visions of a man being tortured. For years she dreams of this man. After the society finds her again, she goes to the Carpathian Mountains to do further research on her disorder. She feels that since there are many legends of vampires in the region that this may be the epicenter of the disease. When she goes for a walk, she’s compelled to go to a spot deep in the forest. She finds a cellar where a man has been tortured and buried alive with a stake driven through his body. Suddenly he awakens and attacks her, twice feeding on her blood. She has a compulsion to help him, despite his violent assault. She takes him to her home and treats his wounds. After he takes her blood for the third time, she becomes violently ill. The next day, when she asks who he is, Jacques is stunned. He always knew she was his lifemate then recites the ritual words, binding them for all time. He tells her that she doesn’t have a disease, but that they are a different race of people who need blood to survive. Shea refuses to believe this at first. Then she realizes that she doesn’t have normal human bodily functions. She soon realizes that this is the truth and that her father was a being just like Jacques. After a few days, Shea has to leave Jacques to get more blood from the blood bank. She is spotted by another Carpathian, Byron, who realizes by her smell that she’s been in contact with Jacques. He immediately informs Mikhail. When they arrive, they see Shea apparently torturing Jacques; Mikhail attacks her thinking she is deranged. This triggers Jacques’ protective instincts and he tries to kill them. Mikhail calls Gregori, their race’s most powerful healer, who convinces Jacques to allow them to heal him. The next evening, Shea and Jacques tell her life story. Shea was (before being converted by Jacques) half-human, half-Carpathian, something that was considered impossible. They also think that her birth confirms that a psychic human woman who is a lifemate to a Carpathian is capable of giving birth to female children. This is vitally important because their people are on the verge of extinction; no female has been born in more than 500 years. They inform her that her father is not dead, and it was Noelle who was murdered. They also tell her that her half-brother was also killed by the society. Jacques also relates what happened to him, how a vampire delivered him to the human killers. Before they can discover who the vampire might be, Byron is taken. Raven is able to connect with him and determine that he is in a dark and dank room. Shea realizes that he is being housed in the same place the humans buried Jacques seven years earlier. While the men go to the cellar to rescue him, women stay behind. Shea is almost immediately uneasy, but Raven senses no threat. Suddenly, the humans attack the women, shooting the pregnant Raven. Luckily Shea and Gregori are able to save Raven and her child. The attack is puzzling because no one but Shea felt any threat. There is only one explanation for this; her father Rand is the vampire. This means that it was Rand who delivered his own son and Jacques to the men to be tortured. Gregori is selected to hunt Rand, but Rand attacks Jacques, who is forced to destroy him.
10383314	/m/02qb182	Spider-Man: Down These Mean Streets				 The story centers around a mysterious drug known as Triple X that has been giving its users superpowers as well as rendering them mentally and physically unstable. Spider-Man is forced to team with the police to not only protect people from the enhanced users but find the origin of the drug itself. They soon learn that one of Spider-Man's most prominent enemies might be behind the drug but for a grander scheme.
10386594	/m/02qb4g5	The Naughtiest Girl is a Monitor	Enid Blyton	1945	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is the story of Elizabeth Allen, who is made a monitor and then risks her position by accusing Julian, a fellow student, of being a thief who tricks her and making her lose her place as a monitor, by playing tricks on her such as making irritating water drops fall on her head, making her books fall thrice, making the teacher to send her out and putting sneezing powder in her book which enters her nose on opening the book and tickles her nostrils, causing her to sneeze. Elizabeth also quarrels with another fellow student, Arabella Buckley, who is vain and selfish and disobeyed the school rules about pocket money. She also makes a midnight feast for her birthday. Elizabeth then sees Julian taking biscuits from the old games locker and thinks he is stealing. She is made to resign her position as a school monitor but ultimately gets it back when she saves a small child from drowning. The real thief- Martin- is discovered at last and admits to having deliberately framed Julian. But unfortunately, in the process he had got Elizabeth into trouble.But at last there was a happy ending.
10388000	/m/02qb6pq	Gallows View	Peter Robinson	1987	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A Peeping Tom is frightening the women of Eastvale; two glue-sniffing young thugs are breaking into homes and robbing people; an old woman may or may not have been murdered. Investigating these cases is Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, a perceptive, curious and compassionate policeman recently moved to the Yorkshire Dales from London to escape the stress of city life. In addition to all this, Banks has to deal with the local feminists and his attraction to a young psychologist, Jenny Fuller. As the tension mounts, both Jenny and Banks’s wife, Sandra, are drawn deeper into the events. The cases weave together as the story reaches a tense and surprising climax.
10388796	/m/02qb84g	The Lamp From the Warlock's Tomb				 Anthony Monday and Myra Eells live in Minnesota, where odd things begin to occur after the purchase of an antique oil lamp. Late one night at his high school, Anthony burns the lamp as part of his science project and, later, when leaving the school, sees a strange-looking cobweb-covered apparition. Anthony flees in terror but trips over the dead body of the school's watchman. Later, while walking home from the library, Anthony sees the withered corpse of the watchman in an antique shop. Ms. Eells confides in her brother Emerson, an expert in the occult, about the strange lamp and the even stranger sights and sounds seemingly ignited by the lamp. Emerson soon discovers the oil lamp is one of three items (à la bell, book, and candle) that are keeping a sinister spirit at bay.
10392345	/m/02qbdsw	Water for Elephants	Sara Gruen		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is told as a series of memories by Jacob Jankowski, a ninety (or is it ninety-three) year-old man who lives in a nursing home. Jacob is told what to eat and what to do. As the memories begin, Jacob Jankowski is a twenty-three year old Polish American preparing for his final exams as a Cornell University veterinary student when he receives the devastating news that his parents were killed in a car accident. Jacob’s father was a veterinarian and Jacob had planned to join his practice. When Jacob learns that his father was deeply in debt because he had been treating animals in exchange for just beans and eggs and had mortgaged the family home to provide Jacob an Ivy League education, he has a breakdown and leaves school just short of graduation. In the dark of night, he jumps on a train only to learn it is a circus train belonging to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. When the owner of the circus, Uncle Al, learns of his training as a vet, he is hired to care for the circus animals. This consequently leads Jacob to share quarters with a dwarf named Walter (who is known as Kinko to the circus) and his dog Queenie. A few weeks later Jacob is summoned to take a look at Camel, an old man who, after drinking Jamaican ginger extract for many years, can't move his arms or legs. Fearing Camel will be "red-lighted" (referring to the practice of throwing circus workers off a moving train as either punishment or as severance from the circus to avoid paying wages), Jacob hides him in his room. The head trainer, August, is a brutal man who abuses the animals in his care (such as the new elephant Rosie) and the people around him. Alternately, he can be utterly charming. Jacob develops a guarded relationship with August and his wife, Marlena, with whom Jacob falls in love. August is suspicious of their relationship and beats Marlena and Jacob. Marlena subsequently leaves August and stays at a hotel while she's not performing. Uncle Al then informs Jacob that August is a paranoid schizophrenic and then utters a threat: reunite August and Marlena as a happily married couple or Walter and Camel get red-lighted. A few days later after discovering that August has tried to see Marlena, Jacob visits her in her hotel room. Soon after he comforts her however, the couple sleeps together and the two soon declare their love for each other. Marlena soon returns to the circus to perform (and also to have secret meetings with Jacob), but refuses to have August near her, which makes Uncle Al furious. She also discovers that she is pregnant. One night Jacob climbs up and jumps each car, while the train is moving, to August's room, carrying a knife between his teeth intending to kill August. However, Jacob backs out (leaving the knife on August's pillow) and returns to his car, only to find no one there but Queenie. He then realizes that Walter and Camel were red-lighted and Jacob himself was also supposed to have been. As the story climaxes, several circus workers who were red-lighted (thrown) off of the train come back and release the animals, causing a stampede during the performance. In the ensuing panic, Rosie the elephant takes a stake and drives it into August's head. His body is then trampled in the stampede. Jacob was the only one who saw what truly happened to August. As a result of this incident, which occurred during a circus performance, the circus is shut down. Soon after, Uncle Al's body is found with a makeshift garrote around his neck. Marlena and Jacob leave, taking with them several circus animals (Rosie, Queenie and Marlena's horses), and begin their life together. Back in the nursing home ninety-three year old Jacob is waiting for his son to take him to the circus. It is revealed that Jacob and Marlena married and had 5 children spending the first seven years at the Ringling Bros. circus before Jacob got a job as a vet for a Chicago zoo. Marlena is revealed to have died a few years before Jacob was put into a nursing home. After finding out no one is coming for him, elderly Jacob makes his way to the circus next to a nursing home on his own. He soon meets the manager Charlie and after the show begs to be allowed to stay with the circus selling tickets. Charlie agrees and Jacob believes he has finally come home.
10405324	/m/02qbx6h	Chart Throb	Ben Elton	2006	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story revolves around the occurrences during the latest series of the hit 'reality' star search programme, Chart Throb. The show was the brainchild of Calvin Simms, who assumed a Simon Cowell style role as the mean, English judge. He is accompanied by the extravagant but bitchy former rockstar-turned-transsexual reality TV star, Beryl Blenheim, and the ageing pop manager Rodney Root. Calvin's wife wants to divorce him, but as part of a bet she agrees that if he can rig the results of the new series of Chart Throb, she will leave him without taking any of his cash. Beryl Blenheim is trying to manage the scripted reality show she helms, The Blenheims, whilst coping with her drug-addled wife, Serenity, and the flagging pop career of one of her daughters, Priscilla. Meanwhile, Rodney is facing the challenge of judging his old flame, the beautiful Iona, whilst trying to revive some public interest in his life and work. All of these stories clash and reach a climax at the final of the TV series. At the end of the book, it is said that by the year 2050 everybody will be either a pop star or star of their own reality TV programme. Chart Throb was the 11th novel by Ben Elton, and was released both in hardback and paperback.
10406312	/m/02qbyds	Built for Trouble	Ralph Salaway		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Shapely starlet Nola Norton finds a gimmick to get the attention of a major Hollywood studio. At a beautiful Southern California beach she pretends to be drowning and lures lifeguard Eddie Baker into deep water. In circumstances that completely disorient Eddie, Nola uses a concealed underwater breathing device, constructed for her by Eddie's supervisor, to hold Eddie underwater until he passes out. She then contrives to rescue him, which gains her the press she's been seeking, but effectively costs Eddie his career. When Eddie learns that his rescuer has landed a $150,000 studio contract on the strength of the publicity he unwittingly helped her gain, he determines to claim a share of the money for himself. He uncovers the connection between Nola and his supervisor, Hank Sawyer, now dead under mysterious circumstances. He determines that Nola and her sleazy theatrical agent, Joe Lamb, murdered Hank not only because of his complicity in the lucrative publicity stunt, but also because of what he knew about Nola's past as a teen-age prostitute in San Diego—the kiss of death for an aspiring Hollywood star. Armed with this information— and enough material evidence to hang Nola in both the criminal justice system and the court of public opinion—Hank offers Nola a "business proposition" which falls little short of blackmail. Varied games of cat-and-mouse ensue, in which Nola unsuccessfully uses her charms to neutralize Eddie's assault on her income. Meanwhile, Joe Lamb convinces his vivacious, red-headed associate Carol Taylor to become involved in tracking Eddie to his desert hiding place. There Eddie and Carol become more than just friends. When Joe accompanies Carol to her next rendezvous with Eddie, he pulls a gun and takes steps to put Eddie out of the way, as he and Nola did with Hank Sawyer. Surprised and horrified, Carol steps in on Eddie's behalf and accidentally shoots and kills Joe. Eddie takes extraordinary risks to dispose of Joe's body in a way that will not implicate himself or the distraught Carol. While this seems to put the police off the scent, back in Los Angeles Nola puts the pieces together and threatens to expose Eddie as Joe's murderer. With the stakes this high, a showdown is inevitable. Eddie tracks Nola and her movie-star beau to a yacht off the shores of Catalina Island, where once more murder hangs in the night air. Eddie finds Nola a formidable adversary to the end, as the novel comes to its explosive conclusion.
10406700	/m/02qbyzf	La Tumba				 Situated in Mexico City in the 1960s, its main character, Gabriel Guía, is a teenager holding a somewhat cynical and disenchanted view of life and himself. He has the usual adventures of a Mexican rebellious teen in the 1960s, told in slang and a direct tone. He knows French, loves the good music (clearly references from Wagner's Lohengrin but also Stravinsky, jazz and rock and roll) writes tales and poetry, and makes many references and citations of authors like Arthur Rimbaud and Chekhov, some of his more intellectual friends sharing his interest.
10407216	/m/02qbzlq	Molly Moon, Micky Minus and the Mind Machine	Georgia Byng	2007-10-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The heroine, Molly Moon, is on a mission to bring her long-lost twin brother, Micky, home. In order to do this, she travels back in time to the day of her birth with her best friend Rocky, and her small black pug Petula. When they realize the kidnapper is a time traveler, they follow him far into the future, to Mont Blancia (present day Mount Blanc). However, Molly then discovers that Micky has been made to think he is useless by Princess Fang, an evil 6-year-old genius, so he can hypnotize people of the village for her, into doing her orders. Once Molly is about to try to save Micky, she gets caught by Princess Fang. The evil princess, using her high-tech mind machine, takes away all of Molly's knowledge of hypnotism, leaving her helpless. However, in spite of losing her powers, Molly gains a new power; mind reading. Using her new skill, Molly is able to gather information from Princess Fang. However, Molly's best friend, Rocky, gets hypnotized, in the beginning, by Micky. Rocky then starts helping Princess Fang, so Molly promised herself to rescue him. Nurse Meekles (a worker) helps her escape with Micky by taking Micky's hypnotic powers into the mind machine too. They escape into a zoo, where Molly attempts to persuade Micky that Princess Fang is just using him. She mentions the fact that they've been pretending he was sick and needed their help, and the fact that he's named "Minus". After much persuasion, Molly gets Mickey on her side, and Micky tells her about the horrible plan the Princess Fang had concocted. In the end, Molly uses her mind reading powers to ask the mind machine if she can get her hypnotizing skills back. The mind machine gives back her, and Micky's, knowledge. She then hypnotizes all of Princess Fang's guards and asks to get her crystals back. Once she has her crystals, she stops time and gets in position to hypnotize people. Finally, all of the people, including Princess Fang, are hypnotized and Molly gets the situation under control. Molly also gets the true rulers of Mont Blancia back on the throne. After that she takes King Klaucus and his brother who were injected with a genetic fluid by princess Fang and are made mutants to Mont Blanc five hundred years ago when it was still covered in snow. There Klaucus' brother, Wildgust, tries to kill Klaucus to try to take over the throne. Molly freezes time, and the group leaves Wildgust in the past. In the end Molly, Micky, Rocky, Petula, and Silver and Mercury (two mind-reading birds given to Molly and Rocky as presents) leave to Molly's home at Briersville five hundred years in the past.
10407551	/m/02qbzz1	De Perfil				 The novel opens with the phrase "Behind the rock is the world I live in" and the reader finds him smoking cigarettes in his home's garden, hiding from his parents behind a big rock. (In Mexico it is common but not compulsory to live with one's parents until marriage, even if one has the means to support oneself). The son of a psychiatrist and a housewife, he has a younger brother he can't stand because he is acting like his psychiatrist father all the time. Also, he assume that his parents could divorce and have doubts about his birth (X jokes that he's adopted). His friend Ricardo is timid and naive, having bold ideas he never dares put to practice, and when he does, he usually makes a joke of himself. Ricardo is very attached to X, the closest thing to a name the main character gets in the novel (given by Ricardo in one of his "confidential" plans in his diary), but X thinks Ricardo is too childish. No one can think that Ricardo has a crush on X, but it's a fact that he has an absence in the father figure pattern, substituting in X even if he tortures him all the time. X meets many kinds of people: a fledging music group about to make their first record (Los suásticos) and their homosexual manager, a young and rich female singer (Queta) with which he have an affair, his flamboyant and cynical neighbor(Octavio)who don't have any aspirations but only to be a rockstar (the fact is that he doesn't belong to any band), his intellectual cousin (Esteban) who fights X for his conventional lifestyle and more characters, most with some artistic or intellectual aspiration, including student leaders, highly politicized (a future vision of events that will happen in the next five years in Mexico).
10411443	/m/02qc3jx	Mind Transfer	Janet Asimov		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/070l2": "Soft science fiction"}	 The novel journeys through the birth, life, death, and second life of a man whose family pioneers human-to-android mind transfer. It also explores the ethical and moral issues of transferring consciousness into an android at the moment of death, and examines the idea of prematurely activating an android which has not yet accepted a human brain scan.
10423431	/m/02qcl30	Ciudades Desiertas				 Ciudades Desiertas is the story of Susana, a female Mexican writer fleeing her home to attend an international workshop in the USA, leaving her husband Eligio behind and completely unaware of her whereabouts. A hot-tempered intellectual with a somewhat cynical and misanthropic sense of humor, he works his way to catch up with his wife, arguing to have only done so to find out why exactly Susana left. The book's title seems likely derived from the couple's separate observations in regards to the apparent lack of movement around Arcadia, where the workshop takes place. They almost immediately suffer a cultural shock upon their arrival, although they are already well acquainted with the typical American lifestyle. The American residents, with a small town mentality, are depicted as largely more ignorant of the visitors' culture and society; whereas the latter, especially Latin Americans, show a contemptuous reluctancy to try and fit in, perhaps Susana being the most remarkable exception. Throughout their journey, both try to pinpoint their relationship's setbacks, as well as their own flaws. The two attempt to show a sense of individuality and emotional disattachment from their spouse, each according to their respective point of view. While Eligio tries to make sense out of things, halfway acknowledging the extent of his feelings for his wife, still paradoxically giving in to outbursts of rage on occasions; Susana strains to convey an ideal of utter independence, as she feels the routine of her marriage holds her back. Motivated at first to prove her own self-worth, which she does find, she eventually experiences the certainty of her love for Eligio, in spite of all her efforts to stay away from him.
10424883	/m/02qcn24	Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America				 Bloom describes the arrival of the Hasidim in Postville. In 1987, Aaron Rubashkin, a Lubavitcher Hasidic butcher from Brooklyn, purchased an unused meat-rendering plant and turned it into a state-of-the-art facility for producing Glatt kosher meat. A group of a few hundred Hasidim joined him to help manage and operate the facility, which grew to employ 900. The town's population of around 1,300 had a mixed relationship with the Hasidim. Throughout the book, Bloom describes the power struggles between the two groups, culminating in a ballot referendum held by the town calling for annexation of the land where the plant was located, which permitted the town to gain the ability to tax and regulate the plant. According to the jacket, the book tries to the answer whether "the Iowans [were] prejudiced, or were the Lubavitchers simply unbearable?" Bloom chooses sides in the culture clash. In the book, Bloom voices his opinions on the vote (he supports annexation) and his condemnation of the Hasidic community (whose behavior towards the local native Iowans he frequently describes as "despicable", and whose beliefs he characterizes as "racist"). At one point in the book, Bloom compares Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Rebbe (religious leader) of the sect who died in 1994, to Louis Farrakhan, asserting that their messages of separatism are nearly identical. In the Afterword of the updated edition of the book, Bloom describes the receiving in the aftermath of the book's publication frequent accusations of airing the Jews' "dirty laundry", and betraying his brethren.
10426975	/m/02qcqs3	Shadows on the Rock	Willa Cather	1931	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Book I: The Apothecary The story opens in 1697 in Quebec. Euclide Auclair stands on Cap Diamant overlooking the river, watching as the last ship of the season returns to France. He comes down to dinner with his daughter, Cécile. After dinner, Cécile feeds Blinker, a partially disabled hired man who does some of the heavy chores. Euclide Auclair came to the Quebec colony eight years prior, in the service of Count de Frontenac, as physician and apothecary. His wife has died after an illness, and the duties of housekeeping have devolved upon his daughter Cécile. The following day, Cécile and Euclide attend to Reverend Mother Juschereau, who has sprained her ankle. Her father replenishes the hospital supplies while Mother Juschereau tells Cécile a story. Book II: Cécile and Jacques On market day, in late October, Euclide goes to buy vegetables to store in his root cellar. A description is given of citizens growing lettuce and root vegetables in cold frames in their cellars during the long winter. He goes to the church to say a prayer and notices Jacques, the son of a dissolute woman, also saying his prayers. Cécile goes to Governor Frontenac to ask for a pair of shoes for Jacques. He praises her for her charity and industry, and asks if she would like anything for herself. She asks to look at his bowl of glass fruit, and he reminisces about his experiences in Turkey, where the glass was made. Euclide sends Cécile with medicine to the convent. Cécile runs into Jacques and sitting in the chapel, she tells him a story. They light a candle. As they leave, they meet Bishop Laval. We learn, in a flashback, that Bishop Laval saved Jacques from freezing in a snowstorm, though Jacques does not entirely remember this. Cécile takes Jacques to the cobbler to be measured for shoes. She reviews the collection of wooden feet that the cobbler has made to represent the measure of the feet of his wealthy customers. On Christmas Eve day, Cécile opens a gift that has been sent by her Aunt Clotilde in France – a crèche (nativity scene). Cécile and Jacques assemble the figures in a stable of pine branches. Jacques contributes a figure of a beaver to the scene. Book III: The Long Winter The young Bishop Saint-Vallier calls at Auclair's shop for sugared fruit. We learn that Bishop Saint-Vallier has undone the system of education and parish management instituted over twenty years by Bishop Laval. Euclide does not like the young bishop because of his extravagant way of life, his snubbing of the older bishop, and because he believes Saint-Vallier makes poor decisions. Euclide derides him a “less like a churchman than a courtier”. We learn that Blinker was a torturer in the king's service in France, and that he did not wish this trade – it was forced upon him. He had come to Quebec to get away from this employment, but is haunted by the deaths of his victims. Book IV: Pierre Charron In June, a fur-trader named Pierre Charron calls on Euclide. He tells many stories to Euclide and Cécile, and accompanies Cécile on a visit to friends on the Île d'Orléans. Book V: The ships from France With many of their fellow townsfolk, Cécile and Jacques go down to the harbor to watch as five ships arrive from France. There is a general celebration. Cécile receives packages from her two French aunts containing clothing and jewelry. Cécile is scheduled to return to France when the ships leave at the end of summer, but is having reservations. She tells her father that she is concerned about who will look after her friend Jacques. Her father takes no notice, and she is quite upset. She goes to the church to pray, and runs into Bishop Laval, to whom she relates her troubles. Book VI: The Dying Count The Count learns that, despite his expectations, he is not being recalled to France. He tells Euclide that he is released from his service and may return to France, but Euclide chooses to remain. The Count tells Euclide that he is dying, and directs him to take the bowl of glass fruit to Cécile as a gift. Some time later, the Count passes away. The two bishops resolve their differences. Cécile does not go to France. Epilogue The epilogue takes place fifteen years later, in 1713. Bishop Saint-Vallier returns to New France after thirteen years of absence, including several years of captivity in England, which has left him humbled and changed. Cécile has married Pierre Charron, and they are raising four boys.
10430619	/m/02qcv72	Nimitz Class	Patrick Robinson		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The plot revolves around a nuclear torpedo attack on the fictitious Nimitz class aircraft carrier Thomas Jefferson. Two separate storylines follow. The first concerns the search for the attacking submarine, a cold war era Kilo. The second concerns how the villain both planned and performed the attack while evading the US military. The hunt for the Kilo results in the sinking of the Ayatollah of Iran's submarines, an underwater transit through the Bosporus, and an underwater battle near the Falklands. Commander Ben Adnam is a slick commander who eludes capture. He skillfully evades Bill Baldrige and the U.S. navy. it:Classe Nimitz (romanzo)
10431081	/m/02qcv_h	H.M.S. Unseen				 As hinted at the end of Nimitz Class, Ben Adnam is alive and well. Having returned to Iraq, he is awarded a medal, but also suffers a betrayal. He flees Iraq and offers his services to Iran. He devises a plan to cripple Transatlantic air travel. The plan first requires capturing HMS Unseen—the last of the "quietest subs in the world"—the Upholder Class. He combines this with a defunct missile system, and creates a weapon capable of knocking any aircraft out of the sky without detection. The plan works perfectly and several aircraft, including "Air Force Three" carrying the Vice President, are destroyed. However, Ben is abandoned by the Iranians and so left to fend for himself. He comes up with a scheme to meet the man who has hunted him for so long, Admiral Morgan, in order to offer his services to the US. During their confrontation, Adnam informs Morgan that Iraq was behind the terrorist attacks and suggests that the destruction of some dams in the country is sufficient retribution. The US destroy these dams and Baghdad ends up beneath four feet of water. In the Epilogue, Ben Adnam, having been given a permanent job and a US passport, decides to come clean and inform Morgan that it was actually under the flag of Iran that he had destroyed the airlines. A furious Morgan terminates Adnam's employment but gives him the option of taking his own life, rather than have a SWAT team do it for him. With nowhere left to run, Adnam positions himself in the traditional east-facing position of Muslim prayer before shooting himself in the head. Ben Adnam is somewhat unique among techno thriller villains in that he is neither captured nor are any of his attacks thwarted by the "good guys"; even his death is at his own hands. This has led to claims that the books are actually a satire of the genre which often feature perfect heroes and despicable but one dimensional villains.
10433866	/m/02qczd6	A Thousand Splendid Suns	Khaled Hosseini	2007-05-22	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is split into four parts. The first part focuses exclusively on Mariam, the second and fourth parts focus on Laila, and the third part switches focus between Mariam and Laila with each chapter. Mariam lives in a kolba on the outskirts of Herat with her mother. Jalil, her father, is a wealthy man who lives in town with three wives and nine children. Because Mariam is his illegitimate daughter, she cannot live with them, but Jalil visits her every Thursday. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam wants her father to take her to see Pinocchio at his movie theater. When he does not show up, she hikes into town and goes to his house. He refuses to see her, and she ends up sleeping on the porch. In the morning, Mariam returns home to find that her mother has committed suicide out of fear that her daughter has deserted her. Mariam is then taken to live in her father's house. Jalil arranges for her to be married to Rasheed, a shoemaker from Kabul who is thirty years her senior. In Kabul, Mariam becomes pregnant seven successive times, but is never able to carry a child to term, and Rasheed gradually becomes more abusive. A girl named Laila and a boy named Tariq, who are close friends and aware of social boundaries, live in the same neighborhood. War comes to Afghanistan, and Kabul is bombarded by rocket attacks. Tariq's family decides to leave the city, and the emotional farewell between Laila and Tariq ends with them making love. Laila's family also decides to leave Kabul, but as they are packing a rocket destroys the house, kills her parents, and severely injures Laila. Laila is taken in by Rasheed and Mariam. After recovering from her injuries, Laila discovers that she is pregnant with Tariq's child. After being told that Tariq is dead, she agrees to marry Rasheed, who is eager to have a young and attractive second wife, and hopes to have a child with her. When Laila gives birth to a daughter, Aziza, Rasheed is displeased and suspicious, and he soon becomes abusive toward Laila. Mariam and Laila eventually become confidantes and best friends. They plan to run away from Rasheed and leave Kabul, but they are caught at the bus station. Rasheed beats them and deprives them of water for several days, almost killing Aziza. A few years later, Laila gives birth to Zalmai, Rasheed's son. The Taliban has risen to power, and there is a drought, and living conditions in Kabul become poor. Rasheed's workshop burns down, and he is forced to take jobs for which he is ill-suited. Rasheed sends Aziza to an orphanage. Then one day, Tariq appears outside the house. He and Laila are reunited, and their passions flare anew. When Rasheed returns home from work, Zalmai tells his father about the visitor. Rasheed starts to savagely beat Laila. He nearly strangles her, but Mariam intervenes and kills Rasheed with a shovel. Afterwards, Mariam confesses to killing Rasheed, in order to draw attention away from Laila and Tariq, and is executed, while Laila and Tariq leave for Pakistan with Aziza and Zalmai. After the fall of the Taliban, Laila and Tariq return to Afghanistan. They stop in the village where Mariam was raised, and discover a package that Mariam's father left behind for her: a videotape of Pinocchio, a small pile of money and a letter. Laila reads the letter and discovers that Jalil regretted sending Mariam away. Laila and Tariq return to Kabul and fix up the orphanage, where Laila starts working as a teacher. Laila is pregnant with her third child, and if it is a girl, it is suggested she will be named Mariam.
10434435	/m/02qcz_3	Dans le ciel	Octave Mirbeau			 Inspired by the art of the Impressionists – using Claude Monet and, mainly, Vincent Van Gogh as models for its central characters –, Dans le ciel conveys the author’s growing conviction that the only worthwhile art communicated its striving for the incommunicable and that the finished work could express no more than the frustration of its goals. A series of interlocking narratives, the novel begins by relating the creative failures of the self-styled novelist Georges, who produces nothing but an unfinished autobiography, then chronicles the poignant struggles of the painter Lucien, whose inability to complete his masterpiece culminates with his suicide when he severs his own hand. It is with the discovery of the terrible fate of the self-mutilating artist that Mirbeau’s truncated narrative is itself left in suspension.
10435694	/m/02qd0f5	Mahashweta				 Mahashweta is a very famous Marathi novel written by Dr. Sumati Kshetramade and deals with the issue of leukoderma. It was also adapted into a Television soap with Aishwarya Narkar playing the protagonist. Later Mrs. Sudha Murthy also wrote a novel by the same name and theme. Mrs. Murthy says she came to know about the Marathi novel only after finishing writing her Kannada novel. In Mrs. Murthy's novel the female protagonist Anupama ; who has met her match a handsome Dr. Anand, just like the story of Cinderella and gets a life dream come true. This all is shattered when she discovers that she has leukoderma which is still treated in India as a curse. The name Mahashweta is taken from the female protagonist Mahashweta in Banabhatta's play Kadambari This book has affected life of many people. One of such personal experience is mentioned by Sudha Murthy at the end of book where she is invited to an unknown marriage of a girl with leukoderma which was almost broken and then the bridegroom changed his opinion after reading her book Mahashweta.This book has been translated in many languages like English, Marathi, Hindi, Gujrati, and Oriya.
10439152	/m/02qd521	Daemon	Daniel Suarez	2006-12-01	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Soon after the death of Matthew A. Sobol from brain cancer, a computer daemon is activated. Its first mission: to kill anyone and anything that stands in its way. Detective Peter Sebeck is called in to investigate the death of two programmers who worked for a computer game manufacturer, CyberStorm Entertainment. During his investigation, Peter meets and befriends Jon Ross who is a technology consultant. Unfortunately, their traditional investigation methods are useless against Sobol's Daemon program. The Daemon anticipates every move, seemingly one step ahead of anyone who tries to interfere with its operation. The program takes over thousands of companies and provides financial and computing resources for creating AutoM8s (computer controlled driverless cars, used as transport and occasionally as weapons), Razorbacks (sword-wielding robotic riderless motorcycles, specifically designed as weapons) and other devices. The sequel picks up shortly after the end of Daemon. Sobol's distributed AI has already infiltrated the computer systems of companies and many governments. While the Daemon is a technological creation, much of the work is carried out by human beings - eagerly doing their part to change the world according to the vision of Matthew Sobol. Connected by the "Darknet", these human followers create their own ranking system and economy. Meanwhile, the American political and economic system is collapsing, with the price of fuel and the unemployment rates both skyrocketing, and steady reports of violent drug gangs crossing the border from Mexico. In battling the Daemon, the government is forced into a difficult alliance with private corporations, giving rise to many private armies, some of whom are actually responsible for the attacks. The government is unaware that some corporate interests actually want the Daemon to survive - at least to use it selectively as a weapon against their rivals. Detective Sebeck, meanwhile, is sent on a "quest" by the avatar of the late Matthew Sobol, one in which he will have to determine the role of freedom to the human race.
10440118	/m/02qd63r	John Dough and the Cherub	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins in the bakery of Jules and Leontine Grogrande, French immigrants to the United States. Their mysterious local customer, Ali Dubh, comes to the bakery one day with an urgent request. He is being pursued by three of his countrymen, because he possesses the Great Elixir &mdash; "the Essence of Vitality, the Water of Life." A mere drop of this liquid can endow a person with pronounced health, strength, and longevity. Ali Dubh pleads with Madame Grogrande to hide the golden vial of the Elixir for him; she is reluctant, but relents when the Arab also provides her with a silver vial that contains a cure for her rheumatism. In addition to being rheumatic, however, Leontine is also colorblind; she confuses the gold and silver bottles. She pours the Great Elixir into a bowl of water and bathes her sore limbs in it. Instantly the pain is gone, and she feels "as light and airy as a fairy...It occurred to her that she would like to dance; to run and shout, to caper about as she used to do as a girl." Since she is a sensible older woman, she goes to bed instead. Her husband Jules comes into the bakery at 3:00 AM; it is the Fourth of July, and he decides to bake a large gingerbread man to display in his store window. He mixes his dough &mdash; and uses the water in the bowl at hand. He forms a gingerbread figure the size of a "fourteen-year-old boy," but in the shape and appearance of a "typical French gentleman." Jules gives the figure glass eyes, white candies for teeth, and lozenges for his suitcoat buttons. He bakes the gingerbread man in his oven &mdash; and is astonished to find that the figure comes to life when done. The full dose of the Great Elixir has endowed John Dough the gingerbread man not only with life, but with intelligence and multilingual speech. Jules flees in panic; John Dough equips himself with the baker's top hat and a candy-cane cane, and sets out to see the world. Ali Dubh is outraged when he learns what has happened; but he also sees a solution for his problem. He simply needs to eat the gingerbread man to gain the benefits of the Elixir. With that realization, the Arab sets out in pursuit of John Dough. On the evening of the Fourth, John Dough accidentally hitches a ride on a large rocket launched during the festivities. The rocket carries him all the way to the Isle of Phreex; John falls from the sky onto a Fresh-Air Fiend, who was, naturally, sleeping outdoors. On Phreex, John encounters a cavalcade of odd beings; most importantly, he meets the cryptic figure of Chick the Cherub, "the first and only Original Incubator Baby." Though only six years old (or eight, depending on who is counting), Chick is a slang-talker, and psychopathically brave and even-tempered, an androgyne Button-Bright. Chick becomes John's friend, companion, and protector in a strange new world. The inhabitants of Phreex &mdash; "the Freaks of Phreex," as they are called &mdash; are a wildly diverse lot. Among the more memorable are: an animated Wooden Indian; a girl executioner who never gets to kill anybody and weeps over the fact; and a two-legged talking horse that bullies its rider. The Isle is also the home of crank inventors. One of them, the least cranky of the lot, has created a workable flying machine. Once Ali Dubh shows up on Phreex (he purchased a magic spell from a witch to track his quarry), John and Chick depart in the flying machine for parts unknown. Their first stop is a small island that contains the Palace of Romance. There, the heroes fall into a Sheherazade predicament: they need to keep telling stories to avoid being killed. They soon make their escape in the flying machine, which crashes onto another island of strange creatures. They meet Pittypat, a talking white rabbit, and Para Bruin, a big and bouncing rubber bear. The mifkets, who also inhabit the island, are malicious gnome-like beings who cause the protagonists major problems, even eating the fingers from John's left hand. Things look dire when Ali Dubh arrives and conspires with the mifkets. John sacrifices the rest of his hand to save the life of a pretty young girl trapped on the island, who is wasting away; his Elixir-rich gingerbread flesh saves her life. Pittypat the rabbit introduces the heroes to the King of the Fairy Beavers, who accepts them into his subterranean domain and resolves their difficulties with his magic. The girl is restored to her parents; John and Chick, joined by Para Bruin, are borne into the sky by friendly flamingoes. After a brief and unpleasant stop on Pirate Island, the flamingoes carry the three adventurers to their final destination. (Ali Dubh is left stranded on the mifket island; his witch-bought spell was good for two uses only.) The twin countries of Hiland and Loland occupy opposite halves of an island, separated by a high wall and a large and richly-furnished castle. The people of Hiland are tall and thin, and live in tall thin houses; those of Loland are short and stout, with dwellings to match. The king who ruled the two lands has died, and both peoples await the arrival of a prophesied, non-human replacement. John Dough fits the bill, and becomes the new King of Hiland and Loland. A local baker repairs the damage John has endured in his travels. Para Bruin becomes Chief Counselor, while Chick promotes himself (or herself) to Head Booleywag &mdash; "the one that rules the ruler." Together, the three manage very well for many years to come—but the annals of Hiland and Loland never state whether Chick, the Head Booleywag, is male or female.
10441335	/m/02qd763	The Spook's Battle	Joseph Delaney	2007-07-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Mam has returned to her own land, Greece, to try to silence the evil rising there. In a special room in the family farmhouse, she has left behind trunks and boxes only to be opened by her youngest son Tom. Meanwhile, in Pendle, the covens are rising and the three most powerful witch clans are rumoured to be uniting in order to conjure an unimaginable evil. Together, they will be capable of raising the dark made flesh - the Devil himself. Tom and the Spook will need to set off for Pendle quickly to avert the unthinkable but first Tom must journey home. Could it be that the boxes will reveal more about his mother's past? And will these powerful secrets place Tom's family in ever greater danger? But when Tom and Alice travel home they find a great horror, Tom's family had been kidnapped, and the kidnapper also took the trunks.
10444225	/m/02qdbfd	The Night Buffalo	Guillermo Arriaga	1999		 After Gregorio commits suicide, his friend Manuel finds himself unraveling his late friend’s world, and what led him to suicide. Gregorio’s tortuous relationship with his girlfriend is now inherited by Manuel; he becomes involved with his late friend’s girlfriend. Gregorio has missed appointments, left strange messages, and has been harassed by a vengeful policeman.
10445355	/m/02qdcml	The Street of Crocodiles	Bruno Schulz			 The collection tells the story of a merchant family from a small Galician town which resembles the writer's home town, Drohobycz, in many respects. The story abounds in mythical elements, introduced by means of the visionary and dreamlike literary depiction (e.g. frequently occurring motif of labyrinth), characteristic of the writer. It is thus mythologized reality, processed by the imagination, artistically distorted and enriched by all possible references and allusions to other literary works, to great myths, to other, more exotic domains of reality. One of the most significant characters in the work is the Father, who is not only the head of the family, a merchant running a textile shop in the marketplace, but also a mad experimenter endowed with superhuman abilities, a demiurge living between life and death, between the world of the real and the imaginary. Despite the literary fascination with the character of the Father displayed by Schulz, it is Józef who he renders the protagonist, as well as the narrator of the work. In the character of this young boy, eagerly discovering the world that surrounds him, many of Schulz's own traits are clearly visible.
10448894	/m/02qdgck	So Totally Emily Ebers	Lisa Yee	2007-04-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01j1n2": "Coming of age"}	 Moving is not a pleasant experience- especially moving to the other side of the country with a moody mother who insists on stopping at every museum along the way. The road from Allendale, New Jersey, to Rancho Rosetta, California, is not a smooth one for fun-loving Emily Ebers. The only reason she had to move was because her parents divorced, and it was all because of Alice, her boring journalist mother. It was she who wanted to divorce, to tear the family apart, and to sell the house that Emily loved. Alice definitely cares about Emily. Emily only chose to live with Alice because if she lived with her father, she would get in his way- and the way of his band, Talky Boys, which is touring the East Coast. Just when her summer looked like it couldn't get any worse, Emily is signed up for volleyball by Alice. During these torture sessions, Emily must learn to hit the ball over the net, live with the awful Coach Gowin, and endure and reflect insults from popular girl, Julie and her "back-up singers." However, in a twist of fate, she meets Millicent Min, a home-schooled Chinese girl who was forced to play volleyball because there wasn't a gym at home. Surprisingly, Millie and Emily become friends instantly, and Millie even goes to Emily's for a sleepover. But here's where the problem arises- is it possible for Alice to dematerialize so that her ugly hippie clothing and boring talk about journalism doesn't embarrass Emily? Luckily, Millie fakes interest in Alice and is safely whisked off to Emily's room before Alice can drone on about her newest articles. After this sleepover, everything gets even better for Emily. First, she meets the other Mins- Mr. and Mrs. Min and Grandma Maddie- who are actually normal humans, unlike Alice. Then, she meets the boy of her dreams- Stanford Wong, who is athletic, smart, and handsome. He's the only seventh grader on the A-team for basketball, Millie's tutor, and someone that would "never do anything to hurt anyone." Emily's life is now back to normal, and even volleyball isn't so excruciating as it first was now that she has Millie. However, everything she didn't give a second thought about now comes back to her- why Millie used large words and carried a briefcase, why she was so uncomfortable talking about school, and why another girl on the volleyball team calls her a "genius". During the morning of a sleepover at Millie's, Emily uncovers everything she needs to know to fit the pieces of the puzzle together- trophies, plaques, certificates, diplomas, and newspaper articles labeled 'Millicent Min'. She realizes that Millicent isn't stupid, homeschooled, or tutored by Stanford Wong. She is a genius, whereas Stanford Wong is failing language arts. "Best friends don't lie to each other," she thinks. How could they have lied to her the entire time? Disgusted with her "friends," Emily decides to start anew and find real buddies who won't lie to her. First, she decides to become closer to Wendy, the other nice girl in volleyball. Through Wendy, she learns about Julie and her back up singers- how they could either "make or break" Emily when she started school. Though she isn't the type to join the popular clique, Wendy encourages her to start school with a good reputation. Plus, being popular can't harm her, can it? Thus, the two of them attend Julie's pedicure party (popular girls only) where Emily is encouraged to look at herself in a different way- that is, comparing themselves to ultra-thin models. Emily starts dieting (though she isn't fat) and plucking her eyebrows (though they aren't ugly). In this quest to find out who she really is, Emily is pressured to buy six identical purses, $112 each, for each of the six popular girls (Julie and her Triple A backup singers Alyssa, Ariel, and Ariana, plus Emily and Wendy) with her dad's credit card. That day, Emily not only spent $672 (plus tax), but also one of her final tokens of tolerance for the so-called popular clique. Though Wendy is a nice girl, no one beats Millie's "deadpan sense of humor" and the way she always had something to talk about. The timing was always perfect for Millie and Emily. Luckily, it still is. In an awkward telephone conversation, the two former best friends decide to meet at the mall. Though it takes some time for Millie to figure out that she had not "sorely misjudged the dynamics" of their relationship, but rather misjudged Emily's ability to look beyond IQ, she does figure out that Emily was and will always be her friend despite the intellectual barrier that had caused Millie to be friendless in the first place. With Millie back, Emily is able to face the fact that her dad is no father of the year. When he finally calls for the second time the entire summer, it's about the credit card, to "confirm the purchase of six [expensive] purses" and to tell Emily to stop using the credit card. Emily is heartbroken; she had believed that her father had been extremely busy with his band and that he still loved her very much. Fortunately, when the truth hits her, Millie is right next to her, handing her tissues. But that's not all that Millie does- she even asks for the makeover that Emily's always wanted to do to cheer Millie up. Emily also finds out that Alice had turned down a prestigious assignment to Paris, just to be with her for the summer! After realizing her serious error, Emily apologizes to her mother, saying, "I'm so sorry,...about this summer and life and everything. I've been so mean to you." Finally, after an entire summer, Emily is able to engage in an intimate relationship with her mother who she doesn't call "Alice" anymore, but "mom"- short, sweet, and daughterly. After Millie's perfect definition of "true friend" in that noble act, Emily is able to break her bonds with Julie and the Triple A's. "I may have been slow, but I finally figured out what a true friend is, and Julie never was one," she declares. When Julie attempts to persuade Emily that what she has been doing for Emily is all for Emily's own good (e.g. the dieting), even meek Wendy sticks up for Emily. With one more true friend, Julie can't break her in school. That's another problem solved and just one more to go. Although Stanford called almost everyday, he never said anything or left a message. He never apologized, and Emily thinks it's because he never liked her. However, several days before summer vacation ends, the two make it up to each other. In an ice cream shop, Emily kisses Stanford on the cheek and they become boyfriend and girlfriend. And finally, with a sweet letter to her father, Emily completes her diary. She is finally "home", as wise old Maddie says.
10452650	/m/02qdkgk	A Song for Summer	Eva Ibbotson	1997	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Set in early 1940s Austria, the novel centers around a young English woman called Ellen Carr. Raised in a family of prominent suffragettes, Ellen, to the surprise of all friends and family, grows up with a great love of all things domestic. Inspired by Henny, the servant/partner of her grandfather, she enjoys cooking, cleaning and the various other chores that her mother and aunts have abandoned in their academic and feminist pursuits. While Ellen attends University to please her family, she leaves school before her final exams when Henny contracts cancer in order to be at her side. After Henny's death, Ellen travels to Henny's homeland of Austria to become housemother at Hallendorf School, a progressive school for children stocked with characters of all sorts. Ellen soon finds that everything is not as it should be - the school is based on the Arts and is an institution for wealthy children; however, the parents of many of these children have used the school simply as a place out of sight and mind, in which to dump children that they see as nuisances. Ellen takes on the role of mother to these children, giving them the love and encouragement that they deserve. In the beautiful Austrian countryside Ellen discovers an eccentric world occupied by wild children and even wilder teachers, experimental dancers and a tortoise on wheels. And then there is the particularly intriguing, enigmatic, and very handsome Marek: part-time gardener, fencing teacher, and the most romantic, compelling, swoon-worthy hero figure since Mr Darcy. Ellen is instantly attracted to the mysterious gardener, but Hitler’s Reich is already threatening their peaceful world. But when she discovers that Marek is actually a famous musician working with various Reistances to smuggle Jews to safety, Ellen begins to realize the depth of her feelings for him—and the danger their newfound love faces in the shadow of war.
10454339	/m/02qdmg4	Conspiracy Game				 Jack Norton, one of a group of Navy SEALs that were psychically and physically enhanced by Dr. Peter Whitney, called Ghostwalkers, is on a mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to rescue his twin brother, Ken from rebel forces. Ken had led a team sent to save an American senator whose plane had gone down. Unfortunately, Ken himself was then captured and tortured before he was retrieved. When he rescued his brother, Jack too was captured; however he was able to escape. Briony Jenkins takes a walk in the jungle, despite the danger of encountering rebel forces. She is a member of a circus family, called the Flying Five. But she has always been different; she cannot be around people without feeling constant pain. She is also stronger and faster than either of her four brothers. Jack encounters Briony while hiding in the jungle, and is immediately aware that she is a Ghostwalker like hemself. He is also stunned by his powerful attraction to her. Briony in turn is amazed that even with his numerous injuries, she cannot feel his pain nor hear his thoughts; it's the first time that has ever happened. She is also surprised to learn that Jack knows her older brother Jedediah, having served with him when Jeb was a SEAL. Briony is able to get Jack to her hotel and treat his wounds. The next day, Jeb arrives and is at first stunned then alarmed to see Jack with his sister. Jack has always had a formidable reputation, and he’s surprised that his sister seems comfortable in his presence. Jeb agrees to help Jack, and suggest he hides in the arena where they have been permitted to practice. Throughout the next few days as Jack waits to be picked up by his people, the attraction and intimacy between him and Briony grows. When it is time to leave, Jack coolly informs her that he doesn’t want to continue their relationship. Almost three months later, Briony discovers that she’s pregnant. Before she can get over that shock, her doctor tries to drug her and kidnap her. She and her brother escape and go on the run. Twice more enhanced soldiers find her and try to “return her to the lab”. Then a man calling himself Kaden Montague appears and shows her a file of her life. The story told to her adoptive family is a lie; she is not the daughter of a man whose wife died in childbirth. She is one of several orphaned girls who have been psychically and physically enhanced by a man named Peter Whitney. She was given to her family because he wanted to see if she was tough enough to survive the constant bombardment of human emotion without an anchor (a psychic who can filter strong emotion). Not only was that, but the overwhelming attraction between Jack and Briony is no accident. Whitney designed pheromones that would insure strong physical compatibility. All he needed to do was get them both at the same place at the time and nature would take care of the rest. All of this was done so that Briony and Jack would be the parents of the second generation of Whitney’s supersoldiers. Briony knows that she can’t remain with her family; as her pregnancy advances, she’ll be less able to defend herself. So she turns to the one person who might be able to protect her and her unborn child, Jack Norton. When Briony and Jeb appear on Jack and his twin brother’s remote cabin, he is stunned by her revelation that she’s pregnant. He’s even more surprised by the information that not only is Whitney still alive, but he’s also plotting to kidnap Briony. Somewhat to even Briony’s surprise, he agrees to protect her and the baby. It’s not all good news however; the attraction manufactured by Whitney is as intense as ever, if anything, it’s even stronger than before. As they spend time together, Briony realizes that Jack is not the “badass” he purports to be, but a man shattered by an abusive and painful childhood. His own father killed his mother and tried to kill him and his brother because of his intense jealousy. Jack has always feared that he too would by like that if he were ever to fall in love. Just as Jack and Briony reach this new understanding, the house comes under attack. Whitney’s men have found her again. Briony realizes that the only way they could be tailing her is with a tracking devise. She finds and removes it. She also makes another revelation; she remembers that she has a sister, a twin sister. A fact that Luther, one of the men sent to reacquire her conforms. Luckily Jack and Ken are able to fight off the soldiers until they can be rescued by their comrades. Both Jack and Ken pledge to help find Briony find her sister, Mari.
10454700	/m/02qdmz_	Without Seeing the Dawn	Stevan Javellana		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Without Seeing the Dawn was set in a small farming village called Manhayang in Santa Barbara, Iloilo. The residents of the barangay were living their simple life when the violence of war reached their place and brought death and suffering. Ricardo "Carding" Suerte, the young son of Juan Suerte wanted to marry Lucia (nicknamed "Lucing"), the daughter of the teniente del barrio. Although Ricardo's father wished to send him to school first, the blessing to marry was given and the traditional asking the hand custom known as the pamamanhikan was done. Ricardo built a house for him and his wife on the land that was entrusted to Ricardo's father by Don Diego (a landlord) despite the advice of the elderly that building one's house in May will bring misfortune. Soon after, misfortune struck: their first child was stillborn, Lucia had an affair with Luis, the son of Don Diego, and the land the Suerte's had been tilling was given to another tenant. The couple went to Iloilo City where Ricardo met fellow stevedore and union member Nestong and Rosing, a prostitute. Lucia left Ricardo because of Rosing. Ricardo followed Lucia who was then in Badlan after receiving news that Lucia was pregnant and that the representante (representative) entrusted them with a land to till. They named their son Crisostomo. Misfortune came again because their landlord sold the land they were tilling, and a flood destroyed their harvest and killed their carabao. They went to Mindanao to find a land to own. However, Ricardo was drafted for military service. Upon his return, Lucia was pregnant but his father and their son died. At first he was not told the truth, the real reason why his father and son died was because they were killed by Japanese soldiers, not by illness. His wife was also raped by the Japanese occupiers. He was angered after knowing the truth and became an enemy executioner. Because of Ricardo's behavior, Lucia sent him away. When the Japanese invaders ordered the people to go to a designated barrio to be identified as non-guerrillas, the Manhayang villagers evacuated the area, except for Lucia who wanted to wait for Ricardo who would be leading the "suicide attack" at the enemies' garrison. When they met, Ricardo asked for Lucia's forgiveness but said farewell after giving Lucia some money. Lucia refused and stayed even if she had to welcome back Ricardo as a corpse.
10458884	/m/02qdsj7	Lee and the Consul Mutants			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It is not every day that a part of your body explodes. But ten-year-old Lee's appendix does just that, landing him in hospital. After his operation, Lee discovers that being in hospital has its bright side. But his world turns dark again when he uncovers a fiendish plot by the white-coated Consul Mutants to take over the world. Other kids might quake in their boots at this news, but not Lee. He is determined to save the planet and formulates a cunning plan to stop the alien invasion. Lee and the Consul Mutants is the story of a fearless boy battling against intergalactic odds for the sake of mankind. Lee’s only weapon is his intelligence . . . which is a pity.
10458974	/m/02qdsmb	Lee Goes For Gold			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Meeting his father's multizillionaire boss inspires ten-year-old Lee to come up with a brilliant get-rich-quick scheme of his own. But not everyone is keen for Lee to succeed. Local shopkeeper Panface certainly is not, and it seems that he has sneaky spies out there, trying to ruin Lee's plans Will Lee overcome those out to stop him making his fortune? Or will he spend the whole time daydreaming about how many houses he will own and how many butlers he will have? Lee will need to rely on his common sense and financial genius if he is to succeed . . . so it could be a struggle.
10459043	/m/02qdsqs	Lee's Holiday Showdown			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nothing is ever straightforward when Lee is around. Not even a summer holiday in Spain. It ought to be a case of lazing by the pool, but Lee is soon spying on dodgy men in shiny suits and sunglasses, battling with a family that seems determined to ruin everyone's holiday and haranguing horrendous holiday reps. With so much going on, how will Lee ever get a tan?
10462111	/m/02qdwgt	In the Sargasso Sea			{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The protagonist, Roger Stetworth, unwillingly joins a slave ship called the "Golden Hind" captained by Luke Chilton. (When Chilton demanded that Roger "sign aboard" he refused and was clubbed on the head and thrown overboard.) He is rescued by the "Hurst Castle" and doctored by a painfully stereotyped Irishman. The "Hurst Castle" is abandoned but does not founder in a gale and the crew accidentally leave Stetworth marooned aboard. The ship drifts into the center of the Sargasso Sea where Stetworth finds himself in a ships' graveyard in which survivors of previous shipwrecks still inhabit the forgotten ships. Stetworth must rely on his own ingenuity to get free from the choking sargasso weeds.
10470026	/m/02qf1mn	God's Spy	Juan Gómez-Jurado	2007	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 From the book cover: In the days following the Pope's death, a cardinal is found brutally murdered in a chapel in Rome, his eyes gouged and his hands cut off. Called in for the grisly case, police inspector Paola Dicanti learns that another cardinal was recently found dead; he had also been tortured. Desperate to find the killer before another victim dies, Paola's investigation is soon joined by Father Anthony Fowler &mdash; an American priest and former Army intelligence officer examining sexual abuse in the Church, who knows far more about the killer than Paola could possibly imagine.
10473325	/m/02qf56f	Muddle Earth	Paul Stewart	2003	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Joe, a boy from ordinary Earth, has been summoned to Muddle Earth -a world full of monsters and mayhem and more- by the wizard Randalf. He is then exhorted as a 'warrior-hero'. In other words, he must fight evil on behalf of Randalf, who has in turn been contracted by the ruler of Muddle Earth, the Horned Baron. The Horned Baron, however, has problems that even Randalf cannot attend to: his wife Ingrid is a very demanding woman. This is a trait that the evil villain Doctor Cuddles pays heed to, and uses to his advantage in all three sections of the novel.
10481847	/m/02qffny	The House of the Sleeping Beauties	Yasunari Kawabata	1961	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The titular house is an establishment where old men pay to sleep besides young girls that had been narcotized and happen to be naked, the sleeping beauties. The old men are expected to take sleeping pills and share the bed for a whole night with a girl without attempting anything of "bad taste" like "putting a finger inside their mouths". Eguchi is presented with a different girl each time he visits the house because of the short notice of his visits. He discovers that all girls are virgins which somehow compels him to comply with the house rules. Each girl is different and the descriptions of his actions are mixed with the dreams that he has sleeping besides the girls.
10483306	/m/02qfh8f	Niagara Falls, or Does it?	Henry Winkler	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Hank starts a new year at his school and meets his new teacher who has her students write an essay about their summer vacations. Hank has a hard time with homework and with staying on task which makes writing an essay a difficult assignment. Meanwhile, his grandpa, Papa Pete, asks Hank and his friends Ashley Wong and Frankie Townsend to put on a magic show at his bowling league game. However, his teacher made a statement to Hank saying she can't wait to see his creative report, so he has to do his report and perform for Papa Pete. Hank decides to make a model of Niagara Falls, where he spent his vacation, rather than write about it but when he presents the project in class he accidentally floods the classroom. Hank is given two weeks of punishment at school and at home. His punishment includes not being able to participate in the magic show for Papa Pete's bowling league. Finally, after a lot of convincing, his parents allow him to do the magic show. It was a relief to all the people at the bowling lanes because class bully and overall idiot Nick McKelty was performing in Magik 3's (Hank, Frankie, and Ashley's magic group) place. The magic show happens, and McKelty gets laughed at and thrown off stage. In the end, things go well for Hank, as he also meets the new music teacher, Mr. Rock, during detention, and they instantly like each other. Mr. Rock helps Hank with his essay and talks to his parents about his learning disabilities, which no one knew Hank had.He lives in New York City.
10495616	/m/02qft_x	Dragon Moon	Carole Wilkinson	2007-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When the story starts out Liu Che,(Ping's former friend and the emperor of China),has his troops attacking the Duke of Yan's palace where Ping has been living for a year, because he believes that they kidnapped his former imperial dragon Kai. Meanwhile, Ping decides to wake Kai up from his winter hibernation for his safety, and finds that he has not only matured greatly in size, but knowledge as well. Ping leaves the palace with Kai to search for the Dragon Haven to further insure his safety. On the way, they find the emperor, Liu Che, wounded with a shard of Kai's dragon stone in his hand. He repents his crimes and decides to abandon his quest for immortality. At the morning, Ping refuses his offer of love and continues on her journey. On the way, she meets Jun, and together they find an old man, "Lao Long Zi", one of Danzi's former dragon keepers, at Tinkling Village. He brings them most of the way to Long Gao Yuan before dying. After getting there, however, Ping discovers only a heap of dragon bones from a massacre by dragon hunters. Ping and Kai are discouraged, and Kai refuses to leave. One day, a yellow dragon swoops down from the sky and carries Kai away. Ping stumbles towards the mountain in a half-dead state, until she too is picked up by the dragon(not too gently) and brought to the real, current dragon haven. There, she learns that many years ago, Hei Lei's dragon keeper had abandoned him for a woman, and that his girlfriend, in her old age, had then betrayed the location of the dragon haven to a band of dragon hunters for three pieces of gold. They had killed many of the dragons in hibernation. Only Hei Lei, the black dragon, was awake, and attacked the hunters just in time. Still, they managed to get away with many dead dragons in their greedy hands, with only a handful escaping. Ping is distraught as she watches Kai pick up many of the wild dragons' habits and feels him slowly drawing away from her. During a moon gathering, Kai and Hei Lei end up in a fight, and Kai, who wins, is revealed to be a "dragon of five colors"(green, yellow, black, white, and red). A "dragon of five colors" will automatically assume the position of leader(and no one can challenge him, as the dragons formerly had none). Ping eventually wins the trust and friendship of all the dragons, but realizes that she must end the dragons' reliance on humans and leaves. The book ends with Ping beginning a new life with Jun, as she saw in one of her visions of her future.
10504199	/m/02qg2pj	The Spell	Ed Kelleher	1998	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Robin is doing research in the United States. He goes into a bar where he meets Sylvan, and calls Jane; she tells him she is pregnant with his baby. The novel flashes forward to 1995 where the main protagonist, Alex, is visiting an ex-boyfriend Justin and his partner. He drives to their house in the country. Robin's son, Danny, is also there. After a flashback to Simon's (Robin's lover prior to Justin) AIDS related death, the plot goes back to Justin and Robin's cottage where the men are drinking and play with their young attractive neighbor Terry. Whilst driving Alex to see the local picturesque cliffs, Robin scares everyone by accelerating quickly and only stopping right before the cliff's edge. Later, Danny and Alex meet-up in Soho where they walk into Aubrey and Hector. It is clear that Danny knows many attractive gay men and slept with most of them. The two men go on to have dinner in a nice restaurant, followed by dancing at a club, where Alex is given his first pill of ecstasy by Danny. His desire quickly blurs as he is unsure if it is the drug or his attraction to Danny that allows him to kiss the younger man. Justin is bored alone in his house. He calls Terry for casual sex. Later, Danny and his older friend George are driving to a party - Danny confesses to being bored with Alex. Alex and Hugh talk about Danny's lack of cultural knowledge and Alex's drug use. Later, Danny is organizing a party and Alex wonders if he didn't perhaps waste his youth by not going to raves. Robin and George pick up their friends at the station. Danny's birthday party looks like a gay nightclub, as it is filled with attractive gay men doing drugs. Robin has a sexual encounter with Lars. Danny gets a new job as a nocturnal security guard, to Alex's annoyance. He takes cocaine from a man he meets in the toilet and is caught with it. He then goes clubbing after he is fired. Later he returns home and Alex comes over; he tells him he wants to quit his job. Robin suggests Danny and Alex stay in Robin and Justin's cottage whilst they are separated. There, they make love in Robin and Justin's bed and take to going for walks. Alex explains how Justin's father died when they were away on holiday together, how this was the end of their relationship. Later, they take ecstasy. Robin tells Tony he has had to let parts of his house for financial security. Later, he walks round the house looking back towards the past, and Terry pops in - they make love. Justin is house-hunting with the aid of an attractive estate agent, Charles. Later in his hotel he has sex with Carlo, an escort. After seeing another house, he goes into a bar in Soho. Eventually he returns home and Robin is there; they play Scrabble together. Danny then goes to Dorset to see his father and his lover. They are hanging by the beach. Later at a party, whilst playing cricket, Danny says he is going to visit his mother in San Diego, to Alex's surprise. He then proceeds to break up with him. A little later, Alex, Nick, and Danny are off to visit a castle. Alex craves the pleasures that Danny has introduced him to. He attempts to call a drug dealer to no avail but later walks into Lars on the street, who says he can get him anything he wants. The novel ends with Alex and his new, more stable boyfriend Nick standing at the cliff's edge, admiring the beauty of stopping before going over.
10504636	/m/02qg3b4	No Thoroughfare	Charles Dickens			 Two boys from the Foundling Hospital are given the same name (Walter Wilding), with disastrous consequences in adulthood. After the death of one – now a proprietor of a wine merchant’s company - the executors, to right the wrong, are commissioned to find a missing heir. Their quest takes them from wine cellars in the City of London to the sunshine of the Mediterranean—across the Alps in winter. Danger and treachery would prevail were it not for the courage of the heroine, Marguerite, and a faithful company servant.
10506133	/m/02qg4v8	An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals	David Hume			 Hume's approach in the second Enquiry is largely an empirical one. Instead of beginning his moral inquiry with questions of how morality ought to operate, he purports to investigate primarily how we actually do make moral judgments. As Hume puts it: As this is a question of fact, not of abstract science, we can only expect success, by following the experimental method, and deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular instances. (EPM, §1, ¶10) Furthermore, Hume purports to provide a naturalistic account of morality, at least to the extent that it is something that is common among the human species. He writes: The final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praise-worthy or blameable... depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species. (EPM, §1, ¶8) But, whether in the end Hume purports to provide a normative ethical theory, rather than a merely descriptive theory of moral psychology, is a contentious issue among Hume scholars. Hume defends his sympathy-based moral sentimentalism by claiming that, contrary to moral rationalism, we can never make moral judgments based on reason alone. Reason deals with facts and draws conclusions from them, but, all else being equal, it could not lead us to choose one option over the other; only our sentiments can do this, according to Hume. Hume writes that: ...morality is determined by sentiment. It defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary. (EPM, Appendix 1, ¶10) Hume puts forward sentimentalism as a foundation for ethics primarily as a meta-ethical theory about the epistemology of morality. Hume&#39;s sentimentalism is akin to the moral epistemology of intuitionism (although, of course, different in many respects). According to such a theory, one&#39;s epistemological access to moral truths is not primarily via an evidentially mediated faculty, such as reason. Rather, one&#39;s epistemological access is more direct. According to Hume, we know moral truths via our sentiments--our feelings of approval and disapproval. Hume&#39;s arguments against founding morality on reason are often now included in the category of moral anti-realist arguments. As Humean-inspired philosopher John Mackie suggests, for there to exist moral facts about the world, recognizable by reason and intrinsically motivating, they would have to be very queer facts. However, there is considerable debate among scholars as to Hume&#39;s status as a realist versus anti-realist. According to Hume, our sympathy-based sentiments can motivate us towards the pursuit of non-selfish ends, like the utility of others. For Hume, and for fellow sympathy-theorist Adam Smith, the term &#34;sympathy&#34; is meant to capture much more than concern for the suffering of others. Sympathy, for Hume, is a principle for the communication and sharing of sentiments, both positive and negative. In this sense, it is akin to what contemporary psychologists and philosophers call empathy. In developing this sympathy-based moral sentimentalism, Hume surpasses the divinely-implanted moral sense theory of his predecessor, Francis Hutcheson, by elaborating a naturalistic, moral psychological basis for the moral sense, in terms of the operation of sympathy. After providing various examples, Hume comes to the conclusion that most, though not all, of the behaviors we approve of increase public utility. Does this then mean that we make moral judgments on self-interest alone? Unlike his fellow empiricist Thomas Hobbes, Hume argues that this is not in fact the case, rejecting psychological egoism--the view that all intentional actions are ultimately self-interested. In addition to considerations of self-interest, Hume maintains that we can be moved by our sympathy for others, which can provide a person with thoroughly non-selfish concerns and motivations, indeed, what contemporary theorists would call, altruistic concern. The first-order moral theory that emerges from the second Enquiry is a form of virtue ethics. According to Hume, the kinds of things that our moral sentiments apply to--the things of which we approve and disapprove--are not particular actions or events. Rather, we ultimately judge the character of a person--whether they are a virtuous or vicious person. Hume ultimately defends a theory according to which the fundamental feature of virtues is &#34;...the possession of mental qualities, &#39;useful&#39; or &#39;agreeable&#39; to the &#39;person himself&#39; or to &#39;others&#39;&#34; (EPM, §10, ¶1). As a result, certain character traits commonly deemed virtues by the major religions of the time are deemed vices on Hume&#39;s theory. Hume calls these so-called &#34;virtues&#34;, such as self-denial and humility, monkish virtues. Rather vehemently, he writes: Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man's fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices.... (EPM, §9, ¶3) Clearly, Hume thought that there were grave misunderstandings at the time as to what counts as virtue versus vice. For example, Hume attempts to defend, contrary to many religious teachings, that a certain amount of luxury, even pride, is virtuous.
10509642	/m/02qg7r3	The Armies of Memory	John Barnes	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Several attempts are made on Giraut's life as he works on his new Ix cycle of music. He is sent back to Wilson, his home planet and culture of Occitan, to complete the new music along with his Office of Special Projects team as protection. Paxa retires from the OSP and leaves Giraut after finding out she cannot be successfully backed up on a psypyx, which would make her death permanent. Giraut begins to fall in love with a fellow musician Azalais who introduces him to Ebles, a contact for rogue colonies outside of Council space which call themselves the Union. Soon after, Azalais is killed and Giraut is severely injured in another assassination attempt. After Giraut is healed he is contacted again by Union. Margaret sends him, along with Raimbaut and Laprada, to the rogue Union colony of Noucatharia to get to the bottom of several coincidences, including the whereabouts of a possible psypyx of Shan, and to find out who keeps trying to kill him. Once there Giraut begins to fall in love with Rielis, a talented musician and singer, as he tries to uncover what Union wants from him and the Council. It is revealed to Giraut and his team that everyone on Noucatharia is either an aintellect in human form or a chimera human/aintellect, both of which are forbidden horrors in Council space. They are also told there are multiple aintellect conspiracies unknown to the OSP, and that Noucatharia was the site of the first invasion by an unknown Alien army, in which humans were beheaded and aintellects/robots fought as best they could. After another amateurish assassination attempt he is kidnapped, separated from his team, and implanted with Shan's psypyx. As Rielis questions Shan, Giraut and Rielis rapidly come to know what happened on Addams to cause it to lose contact with Earth. An aggressive alien aintellect-run invasion overwhelmed their defenses and killed everyone not in hiding—their goal being to destructively holograph brains, deconstruct aintellects and send back those memories and experiences to their home planet to be consumed as entertainment for their dependent organic creators who had isolated themselves in virtual reality. Only by advanced planning by Shan's father and help from his personal aintellect was a very young Shan able to escape via springer to Earth. The OSP invades Noucatharia with help from Raimbaut just as Giraut/Shan and Rielis are beginning to agree on the cooperation that is needed between the Council and the Union to face the alien threat. Giraut/Shan are held prisoner by Margaret until the OSP can sort out friend from foe, but Paxa comes through a springer to free Giraut. He quickly recognizes that Paxa is joined to Azalais as a chimera in exchange for being able to be psypyxed in the future, and to help the progressive and dynamic Union face an alien threat. Giraut/Shan and Paxa/Azalais mount a rescue mission and free the aintellect humans and chimeras from OSP control and get Raimbaut to join them. Raimbaut and Giraut/Shan then choose to stay behind in an attempt to rescue or destroy a Rielis psypyx from an OSP building before it can be tortured for its knowledge and secrets. They destroy the psypyx and Margaret captures them before they can make it to a springer. Raimbaut is quickly cleared of charges and Shan is eventually implanted in Margaret's brain—but Giraut is found guilty of assisting the aintellect conspiracies in escaping from Noucatharia. His trial is a rallying cry for human supremacists, but over time and as the facts come out they are increasingly marginalized by society who see Giraut as a martyr. The only thing left is for him to be executed to permit his public beheading to serve as a unifying story for future generations, as contact is made with the aintellect-run Union colonies.
10512045	/m/02qgb5k	Svanurinn				 The story is about a nine-year-old girl sent to a country farm in Iceland to serve her probation for shoplifting (which is a characteristic Icelandic sentence). In the novel, the girl finds a kind of freedom by submitting to the inevitable restraints and suffering of remote rural life.
10520753	/m/02qgkyd	The Dame's the Game	Ralph Salaway		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Shelly Tanner's husband Joe is a wealthy industrialist conducting military-sponsored research on Cold War armaments and intelligence gear. To relax, Joe has taken to shooting craps in a high-stakes floating game situated in various Los Angeles locations. He consistently loses serious sums of money, but out of obsession with the idea that his luck has to change, he returns to the game night after night. His beautiful, sexually frustrated wife, Shelly sees through the crooked game, but can't convince Joe to stop throwing his money away. In desperation she drives to Las Vegas to enlist the aid of casino detective Barney Conroy. At first, Barney wants nothing to do with free-lance work. He prefers the predictable security of his casino job. But when he is roughed up in the casino parking lot by thugs obviously tied to the Tanner affair, his injured pride compels him to find Shelly and promise his assistance. Shelly brings Barney and Joe together in Los Angeles and they all visit the craps game. Barney quietly confirms that the game is rigged. He thinks he recognizes the stickman as a dishonest but cowardly neighbor from his boyhood home in Kansas City, but doesn't know if he himself has been recognized. After discussing the crooked nature of the game with a still-unreceptive Joe, Barney and Shelly form an amorous association. Shelly decides to leave Joe. As she and Barney spend a blissful first night together in a nearby motel, Joe returns to the craps game and uses the information Barney uncovered to confront the gang running it. Their response is to overpower him, take him to his own home and kill him using Shelly's gun. The gang's operatives have followed Barney and Shelly to the motel, know what they're up to, and anonymously tip the police that the pair are Joe's murderers. Barney and Shelly are arrested and both spend some time in jail, but because no evidence directly implicates him, Barney is released. He uses his freedom to discover the real motives and the subrosa political affiliations of the gang members and, with the help of Shelly's high-priced Hollywood lawyer, successfully leads the FBI into a night-time, seaside gun battle where the gang is defeated.
10524205	/m/02qgpgs	Hawke				 A coup d'état involving rogue military leaders in Cuba leads to Alexander Hawke to investigate and stop the threat of a nuclear submarine.
10524354	/m/02qgpn8	Pennterra	Judith Moffett	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Quaker colonists founded a colony on a planet they dubbed Pennterra. They soon discovered the planet was already inhabited, by a species they dub the "hrossa". They put forward a number of conditions to the colonists, saying that they must not leave the valley they landed in, must not use machinery, and should keep their population about the same as the time they landed, approximately 600. The Quakers agree with these restrictions, and set up a camp called Swarthmore, in the valley they call the Delaware. The hrossa, being capable of transferring their emotions onto others, often tapped into the Quakers as they held meeting for worship. This leaves a number of them much more tolerant of the hrossa conditions. Several, including George Quinlan and his son Danny, become more closely acquainted with the hrossa. At times they visit a nearby village called Lake-Between-Falls and develop a friendship with one of its elders, KliUrrh. However, as the story begins a second colony ship arrives from Earth. These colonists, called the Sixers, are more skeptical of the hrossa request, and enter talks with the Quakers. For the most part, the Sixers are adamant about colonizing the planet with machinery, putting their own survival above the hrossa. However, two members of the crew, Maggie and Byron, along with Quakers Katy and George visit Lake-Between-Falls hoping for permission for a coastal town of their own. However, KliUrrh denies the request, saying that they must follow the same conditions given to the Quaker colonists. He explains that their god TuwukhKawan will never allow this, and they would be destroyed if they violate the request. Many of the Quakers take this as representing a legitimate threat, but the Sixers do not see it as serious and believe the Quakers have simply been compromised by their contact with the hrossa. With permission from the hrossa, a team of Quakers come to Lake-Between-Falls to learn more about the hrossa and the planet in general, in order to get an idea of the threat to the Sixers. The team consists of George, Swarthmore's de facto leader; his son, Danny, who is capable with the hross language; Katy, a psychologist; Alice, an exobiologist; and Bob, an amateur anthropologist. Initially, they make little progress, as the sexuality of the hross is transmitted to the team, making it difficult to do any work. This is especially problematic for Danny, who at age 12 has begun puberty. In separate encounters, Alice has sex with George, and Katy with Bob. It soon becomes apparent that free-for-all sex might be necessary to keep them at work, but George initially resists due to his son's presence. Another day, Katy allows Danny to dry hump her, to George's unease. However, he gives in and soon the five have regular intercourse with one another, including, after some time, Danny with his father. This makes it easier for the team to work. Among their discoveries, they find out that the hermaphroditic hrossa typically give birth to only one child in a lifetime, and few die early. The occasional second birth makes up for those that do, and the population thus tends to remain stable. Going on a hunt with the hrossa, they learn that they hunt by transmitting a message of "hunger", which brings animals sacrificially to them. The hrossa have sexual intercourse with the animals, and then beat them with a club. The Quakers also tell many stories to the hrossa, hoping to trigger a response and learn more about the planet's natives. Finally, at Thanksgiving, the team leaves back to Swarthmore, and explain their findings to the town. The team goes back for another month, but have little more success. Returning to camp, Danny has difficulty readjusting. Missing the hrossa form of sexuality, he finds himself having sex with sheep, and on a couple of occasions, the sympathetic Katy. Danny, being the only person his age in the town besides a kid named Jack, finds life back home insufferable. When Jack is offered to stay for some time in the new Sixer village, Danny is adamant about going there as well. There Danny stays with Maggie, and goes to school in a town that allows him many more peers. He has trouble adjusting at first. He finds himself enjoying the skills behind basketball, but put off by the competition. Initially, his best friend in the colony is Maggie, who finds he acts much more mature than his age. Eventually, however, he meets a kid named Joel, who is highly interested in the hross. The two grow close, to the point he is comfortable discussing his sexual quirks. Joel describes him as a "human hross", which puts off Danny at first. However, he soon realizes the term fits his sexuality, but relabels himself a "Quaker hross". One morning Danny leaves for a walk and notices footprints. Following them, he eventually comes to find Caddie, a classmate of his, alone and naked. She seems scared, which Danny does not understand, and when he turns to let her change, she knocks him out with a rock. Danny later learns that her father was abusing her, and reports him to a psychiatrist. Soon afterwards, she is adopted by another family in the settlement, and appears to show improvement. Meanwhile, problems start to impact Sixertown. Many of the pregnant women who arrived on the planet had miscarriages or sudden abortions. A hross came to visit Danny, and told him he must leave the town soon, as the "destruction" was coming soon to Sixertown. The captain of the town allowed anyone who felt the threat was credible could relocate to Swarthmore. However, only Danny, Joel, Jack, Caddie and Byron took the threat seriously, and were joined by Maggie in the trip to the Quaker town. However, the lander crashed and the five became stranded. They soon found water near the crash site, but their food reserves were limited, and it soon became clear that hoping for help to come to the lander might not be their best option. Maggie stayed with the lander to take care of Joel, as the others head out hoping to make it back on foot, or be found otherwise by someone. After some point, food reserves became scarce, and Caddie grew weak. Danny found that some animals would approach him, which he could have sex with and kill as the hrossa did. Byron decided that he should remain to take care of Caddie, and that Jack and Danny should continue on as before. Exhausted, they became famished at times only to have more animals offering themselves for sacrifice. After some time, they found their way back to the Delaware River, some 50 miles from camp, and were discovered. While Caddie died, the other five survived back to camp. In the meantime, the problem at the Sixer camp became more serious, with none of their food sources able to reproduce. Eventually they gave in to the original hross conditions, and moved into the southern portion of the Delaware River. However, the population there was left permanently infertile due to their exposure to the compound that caused all their problems. It is also realized that those going through physical development on the planet could more easily integrate the planet's ecosystem than those who did not. This leaves the future situation of the human settlement unclear, as it suggests that those born on Pennterra could survive outside a human colony.
10532438	/m/02qgzj3	Lair of the Lion	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Isabella Vernaducci is a young aristocratic woman desperate to save her imprisoned brother. He has been falsely accused of treason and is slated to be executed within the month. She feels she has one chance to save him, the powerful Don DeMarco. The Don is respected and feared throughout the land. Many say he is gifted with strange powers, that all, even the beasts obey him. So she makes the arduous journey to his isolated palazzo. Once she is granted an audience with the Don and explains her plight, he agrees to help her on one condition: she must become his wife. Stunned but relieved she agrees and the plans are set into motion. For all her joy at saving her brother, there are powerful undercurrents of unease. It is said that there is a curse on the DeMarcos, that all marriages are doomed to fail, end in betrayal and murder.
10535507	/m/02qh28f	Demons of Chitrakut	Ashok Banker	2004	{"/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 The story picks off where it left in Siege of Mithila. Rama and Lakshmana have collectively annihilated Ravana's massive invasion force with the most powerful divine weapon in history, the Brahmastra. The entire army, reduced to dust, is washed away with the waters of the holy Ganga, replaced by a beautiful flowering forest, with no trace of the invasion left for human history. Rama and Sita are married, as are Lakshmana and Urmila. Their brothers, Bharat and Shatrughna, are married to Sita's cousins Mandavi and Shrutakirti respectively. Following the ceremony, Vishwamitra takes his leave of the two boys and leaves Rama with an important piece of advice: to follow his dharma at all costs, as it will help him prepare for the trials ahead that he has foreseen. While the wedding party of Ayodhya travels home with the princes and their new brides, they are interrupted by Parashurama, the warrior known as Rama of the Axe, who, upon hearing the destruction of Shiva's bow by Rama, has erupted in a rage from his meditation to slaughter him. However, upon realizing that Rama is the one responsible, he becomes skeptical, and believes Rama is lying to him about having destroyed Ravana's army. He gives Rama the Bow of Vishnu, the exact brother to the Bow of Shiva which Rama split in two and challenges him to single combat. Rama single-handedly defeats Parashurama and, upon his request, destroys the fruit of all of Parashurama's penances with a single celestial arrow. Parashurama comes to a conclusion about Rama which remains largely unrevealed, and he gifts Rama with the Bow, claiming that it "always belonged to him". The wedding party arrives back in Ayodhya amidst great pomp and celebration, aided by a light show orchestrated by Vashishta. Manthara, who had previously been put under house arrest, kills the guard confining her and escapes with the help of Ravana's mayavic power. It is revealed here that Ravana is alive, although incapacitated, and can still bestow his followers with evil powers. During the grand welcome back to Ayodhya, a woman identified as Kaikeyi attempts to run into the paths of the elephants, crying out to Rama in order to warn him about something. She is taken away by royal guards, but not before Kausalya sees her. They are subsequently very surprised when Kaikeyi turns up, fully groomed, to greet the new bride upon her arrival, despite the fact that they saw her bloodied and dirty upon the streets only seconds earlier. Sumitra accuses Kaikeyi of employing witchcraft, to which Kaikeyi angrily replies that she is innocent of any crime, and stalks off to her chambers. Dasaratha once again begins to fall ill. The princes celebrate their suhaag raats (nuptials) upon returning home, after performing the necessary rituals. Dasharatha announces that Rama's coronation as Crown Prince will occur the following morning. Dasaratha, feeling ill once more, lies in his bed and tells Kaikeyi that he is ashamed of the wrong things he has done or indirectly caused, and is more than proud of his eldest son. Manthara then enters and tells Dasaratha that Kaikeyi has taken a vow to fast unto death in the palace kosaghar. Dasaratha, upset by this news, agrees to go to the kosaghar to see what she needs. Meanwhile, Kausalya, Sumitra and a number of handmaidens discover that the woman seen upon the streets with Kaikeyi's voice was in fact one of Manthara's handmaidens, who has been witness to the fact that Manthara is a devil-worshipper and has performed human sacrifices to the Dark Lord, Ravana. Kaikeyi projected her consciousness through the girl's body when it was forced out of her own body at one point. In the presence of Vashishta and Kausalya, she reveals that an act of great evil is soon to occur but it is not of her doing, and asks Kausalya to "save Rama". Kausalya and Vashishta confront Kaikeyi in the kosaghar, where Dasaratha lies motionless in a coma-like state. They discover to their horror that Kaikeyi is in fact Dasaratha's first wife, and that they married at a small shrine off the battle plains of the Asura Wars following Dasaratha being near-mortally wounded. Along with their marriage, Dasaratha promised Kaikeyi two boons which she was allowed to call back later on, and using that to her advantage, she has called for Rama to go south into exile for fourteen years and for Bharata to be crowned King. Due to the events which transpired in the kosaghar while granting the boons, Dasaratha is now dying and there is no way to save him this time. Vashishta then reveals that Manthara, the "green witch" as she is now called, has used sorcery to possess and drug Kaikeyi. Manthara reveals her true colors and threatens to kill Dasaratha, but Vashishta reveals to her that the Dark Lord's promises to her are entirely false, and that she was shaped while in her mother's womb into the deformed crone that she is. Manthara refuses to believe this revelation and flees. Rama, after receiving instructions to leave Ayodhya and its borders by the following dusk, returns to his chambers only to find Sita tearfully pleading to let her go with him. He relents, and while attempting to leave with her, is stopped by a crowd at the gates of Ayodhya led by General Dheeraj Kumar. He tells Rama that Kaikeyi was being manipulated and that he should not honor the boons, but Rama refuses, saying that regardless of the circumstances, he is dharma-bound to honor his father. Realizing that Rama will not change his decision, Lakshmana makes the decision to come with him. In the palace, Kausalya confronts Kaikeyi, who has assumed regentship of Kosala. She utters a mantra to release Kaikeyi of her curse, and she realizes with horror what she has done. Manthara appears again and threatens to kill Kausalya. She injures her but before she can deliver a killing blow, she is distracted by Bharata, who has returned. With the help of Vashishta, he overheard the entire conversation and decides to execute Manthara. Kausalya asks him to show mercy, and she flees, having lost her powers. Dasaratha, in his final moments, is visited by Kaikeyi. However, before she is able to explain her actions, Dasaratha divorces her by royal decree. In his final moments, Kausalya states that she will return Rama home, and he passes away quietly. Following the Battle of Mithila, Ravana's brother Vibhishana had rescued him and the only survivor of the battle - Jatayu with the aid of the Pushpak Vimana, the royal divine chariot and taken him back to Lanka. The entire city was in shambles, with the few remaining rakshasas catapulted to leaders overnight, belligerently rebellious. Jatayu believes that Ravana is now dead, but Vibhishana knows better... Ravana is briefly revived when Vibhishana is forced to call him and deal with the squabbling chiefs, who all appear to believe that he is dead. He is able to speak to Vibhishana but is unable to do anything because of the energy prison he is trapped in. Vibhishana promises to release him if he swears to forgo any further invasion of the mortal world. Reluctantly, Ravana agrees, but begins to lose his power once again. Vibhishana decides to use the energy of the Narak-portal to destroy the cage around Ravana, but the act closes up the portal for good. Meanwhile, Jatayu, somewhat elated that Ravana is dead, begins to think about performing penance for his misdeeds. He sees a black flag declaring Ravana's death, and follows it, intrigued. He wanders by accident into Kumbhakarna's chambers, and....
10539531	/m/02qh6_p	The Hosts of Rebecca	Alexander Cordell		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot concerns the Rebecca Riots in the 19th century. The action is seen through the eyes of young Jethro Mortymer.It is based on the true events of the Rebecca Riots in which the people of West Wales protested against the toll gate charges of the business men and land owners of the time. The Rebecca name refers to the leader of the campaign, which was a man dressing in women's attire to protect his identity. On reading the book you understand the reasons for such protests and its manner. The book is a worthy sequel to The Rape of the Fair Country.
10540283	/m/02qh7ss	Twelve Years a Slave	Solomon Noethup			 The book tells how Solomon Northrup, a free carpenter and fiddler, was deceived by two men who originally offered him work as a musician in New York state and Washington, DC; then drugged him, and kidnapped and sold him into slavery while in the nation's capital. Two men presenting themselves as circus promoters offered Northup work as a fiddler, first in New York City and then in Washington, DC. They offered a generous amount of money to work for their circus in the capital and offered to pay for his transportation and a hotel. After they arrived and watched some of President Harrison's funeral procession, Northup was drugged at the hotel room. He was bound and moved to a slave pen owned by James Burch, a slave trader. It was located in the Yellow House, one of several slave markets on the National Mall. This and Robey’s Tavern were located in the area between the present-day buildings housing the Department of Education and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, within view of the Capitol. Burch coerced Northup into accepting a new name and past as having been born a slave in Georgia. Burch told Northup that if he were to tell his true story to another person, he would be killed. When he asserted his status as a free man, Burch beat him violently; Northup finally stopped protesting. Northup was transported with other slaves to New Orleans, Louisiana by ship, where he and others contracted smallpox and some slaves died. He asked a sympathetic sailor to get a message to his family, which the man did, but they did not know how to find him in Louisiana. Northup was sold by Burch's partner in New Orleans to a planter on a bayou of the Red River, and had several different owners during his 12 years as a slave in Louisiana. In some places his carpentry and other skills earned him good treatment. The contrast with his previous life made the deprivations and sufferings of slavery worse: the meager slave diet, a cabin with a dirt floor, poor clothing; restrictions on his freedom, and numerous beatings and physical punishment. At one time, he was leased to a man named Tibbets, who lost his temper and attacked him with an axe. Northup fought back and ran back to his old master, who finally took him in. Northup eventually regained his freedom. He met Samuel Bass, a white carpenter from Canada, who was hired by Northup’s owner. Northup learned that Bass did not share the racial prejudice of white men in America, and ultimately confided his story to him, with a letter describing where he was located. Bass delivered the letters to Northup’s wife, who called on Henry Northup, an attorney who was a family friend and son of the man who had held and freed Northup's father. Henry Northup contacted New York state officials and the governor appointed him as an agent, under current state law, to go to Louisiana to free Solomon Northup. Bass and Northup took a great risk in starting this process; when forced to free Northup, his master said he would have killed the man who took his account to the north.
10541995	/m/02qh9jy	Behind Enemy Lines	John Vornholt		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with Ro Laren, former Enterprise crew member turned Maquis officer taking command of a ship in the hopes of heading to Federation lines to safety. But they soon run into trouble when they are attacked by Jem'Hadar attack craft. Another Starfleet ship, the Aurora comes to assist, but it is no use. Both ships send distress calls, and one ship comes to their aid: the Enterprise. As this is happening, in a distant galaxy, another former Enterprise crewman witnesses the destruction of a Cardassian mining craft as he is herded onto a Dominion space station. The space station not only houses prisoners of war, but also serves as a base of operations as the Dominion attempts to construct an artificial wormhole. Sam Lavelle finds Taurik, yet another former crewman also being herded into the station up to the male prisoners compound. Upon entering, Sam is berated for agreeing to be the Liaison Officer of their pod, but he is "rescued" by the call of the Vorta in command of the station, and upon entering a ball, is confronted by a Founder, with the message that he is to be given command of a ship. On his crew are Taurik, and the mastermind of the whole wormhole operation, Enrak Grof, a Trill who values his work over alliances. The Enterprise enters the battle, and rescues the Bajoran transport, but unfortunately the Aurora is destroyed in the battle. Captain Jean-Luc Picard learns of the wormhole's construction, and prepares to take Laren, Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge, and a small crew in an attempt to destroy it. The crew disembarks, and after some run ins with Cardassians, Jem'Hadar, Ferengi and Romulans, they reach the wormhole, and using a tractor beam, they attempt to send thousands of small asteroids careening into it, but decide to instead destroy the mining craft and apparently halt any chance of completing the wormhole. They prepare to fire, but learn that the craft is actually full of Federation prisoners. They save the prisoners and destroy the craft. But returning home, they learn from Grof that their ship wasn't the only one sent to mine the metal, meaning that the wormhole still could be completed.
10547094	/m/02qhfpm	Philaster	Francis Beaumont			 The play is set in a fictionalized version of the Kingdom of Sicily, ruled by an otherwise-unnamed king. This king's father and predecessor, the ruler of Southern Italy (the Kingdom of Naples), had conquered the island of Sicily and displaced the native royal house; but the heir of that house, and rightful king of Sicily, is Philaster, who lives as a nobleman in the royal court. The king fears him, but cannot kill him, because of the passionate loyalty of the people. The king has a plan, however: with no son of his own, he will marry his daughter Arethusa to a Spanish prince named Pharamond, and make the Spaniard his heir. Arethusa, however, is in love with Philaster, and disdains the Spaniard. Philaster reciprocates the princess's affections, and sends his page Bellario to serve her and to be their intermediary. Arethusa is able to frustrate her father's plan by exposing Pharamond's affair with Megra, a loose gentlewoman of the court; but the Spaniard seeks revenge, by spreading reports that Arethusa is having an affair with Bellario. The passionate Philaster is deceived by the slander, and accepts it as true. During a hunt, Philaster confronts Arethusa; the overwrought protagonist stabs the princess (the incident that gives the play its subtitle). Philaster is interrupted by a passing countryman; they fight, and both men are wounded. Philaster crawls off, and Arethusa is discovered by nobles of the court. Arethusa's and Philaster's wounds are not fatal; both recover. Philaster is found, arrested, and sentenced to death. The king places Philaster in Arethusa's custody; she quickly marries him, which causes the king to decree her death as well. The executions are frustrated when the rebellious citizens capture Pharamond and hold him hostage. The falsehood of Pharamond's accusation against Arethusa is exposed when Bellario is revealed to be a disguised female (she is Eufrasia, a courtier's daughter, infatuated with Philaster). Pharamond retreats to Spain. Since the rightful ruler of Sicily is now the king's son and no alternative presents itself, Philaster is restored to his crown. In creating the play, Beaumont and Fletcher were influenced by the works of Sir Philip Sidney, especially the Arcadia. The play bears relationships with a range of contemporaneous works, including The Faithful Shepherdess and Cymbeline.
10550517	/m/02qhk2n	Flint the King	Mary Kirchoff	1990-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Flint The King is set in the five years before Dragons of Autumn Twilight where the Heroes of the Lance split up and look for signs of gods returning and a new evil stirring in the world. Flint Fireforge returns to his sleepy boyhood village in the foothills near Solace to discover that everything has changed. The village is now prosperous and producing weapons for an unknown buyer. When Flint starts poking around he is discovered and pushed into the "Beast Pit" and expected to die. He is rescued by a group of Gully Dwarves who make him their king. Flint struggles to bring the gully dwarves together and form a fighting force so that he can escape and use them to foil the enemies' plans.
10550530	/m/02qhk3b	The Day of the Djinn Warrior	Philip Kerr	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Djinn twins, John and Philippa Gaunt, are off on another trip around the world in book four of the bestselling Children of the Lamp series. It's a race against time as the twins attempt to save their mother, Layla Gaunt from her destiny of being Blue Djinn of Babylon, save their father, Edward Gaunt, from an aging curse brought from a binding their mother Layla put on their father to make sure the twins were home with him, and museums worldwide from unexplained robberies and bizarre hauntings. As John and Philippa and their friends travel across the globe on their rescue mission, they notice that something very strange is happening: An evil force has woken the terracotta warriors created by an ancient Chinese emperor, and a spell has been cast possessing the soldiers with wicked spirits. Now, the very fate of the world hangs in the balance. It's up to the twins to solve the mysterious robberies, stop the terracotta warriors, rescue their parents, and save the world before it's too late.
10550854	/m/02qhkfn	Tanis, the Shadow Years	Barbara Siegel	1990-11	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tanis, the Shadow Years is set in the five years before Dragons of Autumn Twilight where the Heroes of the Lance split up and look for signs of gods returning and a new evil stirring in the world. Tanis leaves Solace with Clotnik after the promise that the dwarven juggler can lead him to his long-lost human father. On the way they are trapped in a grass fire but manage to save themselves and a mage, Kispha. Kispha is injured and dying and offers to help Tanis find his father in the mage's own memory as long as he saves Brandella and bring her back.
10555115	/m/02qhpkt	Schrödinger's Kitten	George Alec Effinger			 The story follows a Middle-Eastern woman, Jehan Fatima Ashûfi, through various realities, ranging from one in which she is raped when still a girl, subsequently abandoned by her family and dies alone, to one in which she is sentenced to death for killing her would-be rapist and being unable to pay the "blood price" to his family, and another in which she becomes a physicist and companion to well-known German scientists ranging from Heisenberg to Schrödinger, and subsequently prevents the Nazis from developing nuclear weapons during World War II by simply forwarding "unintelligible scientific papers" to key politicians looking into the idea. She is, unusually, aware of the existence of these realities, which she perceives as "visions" and assumes might come to her from Allah. Throughout different points in the story, the adult Jehan of some realities struggles to reconcile her religious upbringing and "visions" with her scientific profession; in the end, however, an aged Jehan finds satisfaction in the explanation of Hugh Everett's theory regarding the possibility of alternate realities, which fits with her personal experiences.
10555897	/m/02qhq4c	100,000,000 Guinea Pigs	Arthur Kallet			 The book's key proposition is that a great deal of products sold to the public - particularly pharmaceuticals and food products - are released with little regard or knowledge of how these products adversely impact the consumer. Corporations, often knowingly, release products which either do not do what they purport to, or have dangerous side effects or defects. Furthermore, many officials and government departments, namely the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, have fallen victim to regulatory capture. The book goes on to state that the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 is not effective in arresting these trends, and real reform or consumer protection is obstructed by the powerful connections that offending corporations have with the government. "If the poison is such that it acts slowly and insidiously, perhaps over a long period of years (and several such will be considered in later chapters), then we poor consumers must be test animals all our lives; and when, in the end, the experiment kills us a year or ten years sooner than otherwise we would have died, no conclusions can be drawn and a hundred million others are available for further tests". The authors develop ideas such as synergy effects, and the precautionary and substitution principles. They claim that many toxic substances, even in low concentrations, can act together to cause much more harmful effects than each substance would individually. Prolonged exposure to low amounts of toxic substances, even at very mild concentrations, can potentially have serious negative health impacts that consumers are not made aware of. These impacts are felt by all consumers because harmful substances are being ingested by consumers due to the use of dangerous pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals in food production. Preservatives are particularly criticized, and the increase in canned or packaged foods in cited as evidence of an increasing risk of such synergy effects due to the high amount of chemical byproducts these products include. The book argues that many products would not be sold if properly labeled, and this has been a key failing of the Food and Drug Administration. Extensive reform and overhaul in government regulation and inspection of the food and drug industry is needed in order to adequately protect consumers from corporations and manufacturers who do not place the health of the consumer before profit. Examples cited include beauty products, which in the first quarter of the 20th century were found to contain arsenic, lead and even radium - the health effects of which were not understood or known to consumers at the time. The true label for a pineapple pie, they argue, would be closer to this: "corn starch-filled, glucose-sweetened pie with made with sub-standard canned pineapple, artificial (citric acid) lemon flavor and artificial coal tar color". The book takes particular aim at the pharmaceutical market in the United States during the period, citing extensive lists of drugs which are often the subject of very strong and widespread campaigns of media promotion as &#39;wonder-drugs&#39;, yet which do not have any effect on the conditions they purport to cure, and often carry with them serious side effects that are not revealed to consumers. The authors claim that advertising for these drugs is deliberately misleading and use a variety of dishonest techniques from false testimonials to fake experts. The authors also questioned the value of statements made by scientists who vouched for the safety of products, citing the example of a dean of the College of Pharmacy of Columbia University who had vouched for the safety of a drug that later proved fatal to many. In the final analysis, the authors encourage consumers to be more active and questioning in their purchasing habits. Consumers should be vigilant in finding out more information about products and ingredients, and boycotting products with dangerous ingredients and their producers. They also call for stronger laws, tougher penalties for offending companies, and a much more concerted effort from authorities to implement consumer protection laws. The book concludes with the statement that &#34;Above all, let your voice be heard loudly and often, in protest against indifference, ignorance, and avarice responsible for the uncontrolled adulteration and misrepresentation of foods, drugs, and cosmetics&#34;.
10557163	/m/02qhr7s	I Got a "D" in Salami	Henry Winkler	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Hank gets his first report card from 4th grade. He goes to his mom's deli to show her. While this is going on, his mom is making a special salami to give to a leader of a supermarket chain. Hank decides to get rid of his report card before his parents see it. He gives it to Robert to destroy. Robert puts it in a batch of salami. Once his mom is done making many batches of the salami, she picks the one with the report card in it. Hank and his friends try to put a stop to the delivery but they don't stop the deliveryman in time. While this is going on Hank figures out he has learning problems. In the end Hank begins eating his sandwich while visiting the Press for the large Supermarket chain and gets a business deal for his mom's deli. pt:I Got a "D" in Salami
10561145	/m/02qhvfy	Lucy	Jamaica Kincaid	1990-09	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Eager to leave the West Indies, Lucy longs to leave her past behind. She does not feel nostalgic for her childhood and her homeland, where she felt oppressed by toxic British and family influences. This becomes evident when Lucy describes an event that happened in her former school. While attending Queen Victoria Girl's school, she was forced to memorize a poem about daffodils. (This poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" was written by William Wordsworth roughly two centuries ago.) The poem recalls the beauty of daffodils that the speaker has seen years ago. Lucy cannot appreciate this beauty, because daffodils do not grow on her island. After reciting the poem, Lucy is applauded and she explains that at this moment she feels fake. She feels like people see her as English on the outside but on the inside she hates the English. The daffodils represent Lucy's alienation from both her education, and from her new home. Lucy also claims that she is trying to escape her mother. The relationship between Lucy and her mother is a central theme. Lucy thought that she has to leave behind her relationship with her mother in order to become an adult. Many things in the United States remind Lucy of her mother. At one point in her relationship with Mariah, Lucy sees Mariah (her boss) and her mother as the same, because they both try to control Lucy. (At other times, Lucy feels like Mariah's friend.) Lucy also sees a resemblance when she sees Lewis cheating on Mariah. Lucy's own father cheated on her mother. Lucy though begins to love Mariah towards the end of the novel. As the novel draws near the end, one is able to discover how Lucy really feels about her mother. The novel also encompasses Lucy actions in her new home. Lucy makes new friends. She meets a guy named Hugh with whom she has sex. In the park with the children one day, she meets a girl named Peggy. Mariah, the mother of the children, does not like Peggy because she smokes and curses but realizes that Lucy needs friends. Lucy also meets a guy named Paul with whom she becomes close. This novel explores Lucy's complicated sexuality, especially illustrated in Lucy's homoerotic relationship with Peggy. The novel ends with Lucy wishing she "could love someone so much that she would die from it." Lucy's dream of escaping her past leaves her feeling alone. ;Lucy: the narrator and protagonist ;Annie Potter: Lucy's mother ;Mariah: the wife whom Lucy works for as an au pair ;Lewis: the husband whom Lucy works for as an au pair ;Tanner: the boy with whom Lucy has her first sexual encounter ;Miriam: the youngest daughter of Lewis and Mariah, with whom Lucy develops a special bond ;Dinah: Mariah's best friend and the woman with whom Lewis has an affair ;Peggy: Lucy's best friend, whom she meets while in the United States ;Hugh: Lucy's first boyfriend in America; he is also the brother of Dinah ;Paul: Lucy's lover, who feels more for her than she does for him
10561486	/m/02qhvpv	All About Love: New Visions	Bell Hooks	2001	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the first chapter she proposes that if we came to an agreement on the definition of love and acknowledge it as a verb rather than a noun we would all be happier. In the second chapter she proposes that children be treated with respect and justice so that they may learn to love. In the third chapter she proposes that complete honesty is necessary for a healthy relationship. She believes males learn to lie as a means of obtaining power, while females do the same but also lie to pretend powerlessness. In the fourth chapter she proposes that self-acceptance and self-love are necessary to have a happy relationship. In the fifth chapter she proposes that a relationship with God is necessary to provide love to others. In the sixth chapter she proposes that in order to love we must let go of obsessions with power and domination as a culture. In the seventh chapter she proposes that we must place love above materialism. In the eighth chapter she proposes that a sense of community and belonging is essential to feel loved and desire to give love. In the ninth chapter she proposes that both partners have to be giving.
10566862	/m/02qhzgk	Dinosaur Summer	Greg Bear		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Peter Belzoni and his father Anthony Belzoni join an expedition to return the dinosaurs belonging to the last dinosaur circus to the plateau. To reach the plateau, the expedition must deal with the vagaries of politics. One dinosaur dies en route, but the remainder are released on the plateau. However, the expedition members are trapped on the plateau and must face, and escape from, dinosaurs both real and fictional.
10567791	/m/02qh_15	Sofia Petrovna	Lydia Chukovskaya			 Sofia Petrovna, a typist in the Soviet Union in 1937 is proud of the achievements of her son Nikolai (Kolya). Kolya, an engineering student and strong Communist, is at the beginning of a promising career, with his picture featured on the cover of Pravda. Before long, however, the Great Purge begins and Sofia's coworkers begin vanishing, amid accusations of treachery. Soon, Kolya's best friend Alik reports that Kolya has been arrested. Sofia and her friend and fellow typist Natasha try to find out more but are drowned in a sea of bureaucrats and long lines. More people vanish, and Sofia spends ever more time in lines at government buildings. Natasha makes a typographical error that is mistaken for a criticism of the Red Army and she is fired. When Sofia defends her, she is criticized and soon forced out as well. Alik is questioned, and when he does not renounce Kolya, he, too, is arrested and vanishes. Natasha and Sofia both lose their will to live. Natasha commits suicide via poison, and Sofia immerses herself in a fantasy of Kolya's return. When she finally gets a letter from Kolya, in which he reaffirms his innocence and tells more of his own story, Sofia tries to fight for his freedom again, but realizes that, in this bizarre, chaotic place, she will likely only place more suspicion on herself and Kolya. Out of desperation, she burns the letter.
10567994	/m/02qh_70	King Coal	Upton Sinclair, Jr.		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Hal Warner, a rich young fellow determined to find the truth for himself about conditions in the mines, runs away from home and adopts the alias "Joe Smith." After being turned away by one coal mine for fear of Hal being a union organizer, he gets a job in another coal mine operated by the General Fuel Company, or GFC. In the mines he befriends many of the workers, and realizes their misery and exploitation at the hands of the bosses. He befriends Mary Burke, who is a passionate a fighter for the workers' rights. Her father is a mine worker who spends his days drinking and leaving her to take care of her siblings. She and Hal grow close, which tears at Hal's loyalty to his fiancée back home. After dedicating himself to the workers' cause, he tells them that he will appeal to the bosses to become a check weigh man who measures the amount of coal, but the GFC, wanting to cheat the workers out of their pay, appoints a company check weigh man. Hal is eventually put into the jail by the marshal, who is teased by Hal over conditions of the mines and accused by Hal of being corrupted and unfair to the workers. After an explosion in the mines, Hal seeks out Peter Harrigan, an old friend whose father owns the General Fuel Company. The workers organize a strike and union to demand their rights from the bosses, but the rescue effort goes longer than expected. The bosses are more intent on the tools and equipment than the miners. "Damn the man! save the Mules!" says a boss. Hal appeals to the United Mine Workers to back the strike, but they refuse, telling him that the strike is primitive and unexpected and that to support it when its just started to participate in action would waste the union's resources. Hal is told to wait a few more years for the other unions to strike, and only with a massive course of action could the unions win. Hal is left to tell the workers the grievous news but the workers nevertheless cheer out his name (some calling out Joe Smith and others Hal) for standing up for them. After a confrontation with his brother Edward, Hal resolves to return home and dedicate his life to the workers' cause. Hal leaves and concludes that he is in love with Mary Burke.
10572495	/m/02qj3ln	Grave Peril	Jim Butcher	2001-09-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set a year after the events of Fool Moon, the story begins with Harry Dresden hunting a ghost with Michael Carpenter, a Knight of the Cross and wielder of the holy sword called Amoracchius. They drive the spirit into the Nevernever before destroying her, and Harry discovers the ghost was under a spell of torment that caused the ghost to go on a rampage. At that moment, the faerie Leanansidhe and her Hellhounds encircle them. She greets Dresden as her godson and reminds him of a long-ago pact he made to serve her. Dresden lies his way out of the situation and returns to the real world, only to be arrested by the Chicago police. Michael's pregnant wife Charity bails Michael out of jail, and Susan appears to bail out Dresden. Back at his apartment, a pair of vampires deliver an invitation to a party celebrating the promotion of Madame Bianca, the head of the Red Court vampires in Chicago. Dresden is required to attend as the representative of the White Council of Wizards; to turn down the invitation could provoke war. Susan, not understanding the danger, can hardly wait to go to a vampire party, but Dresden insists that she not attend. The next morning, Michael and Dresden visit Father Forthill at St. Mary of the Angels Church. Lydia had hidden there, but panicked and fled when attacked by another spirit. Dresden consults a local ectomancer, Mortimer Lindquist, who explains that the barrier between the real world and the spirit realm is getting thinner, which makes it easier for things to cross over, and which also makes new ghosts much more powerful. . Later, Murphy calls Dresden for a personal favor, to try to help one of Murphy's fellow officers, who is trapped in the same icy torment spell that had affected the ghost in the hospital. Finally having time to track down Lydia, he finds her and is attacked by vampires who abduct with Lydia. Affected by the narcotic vampire venom, Harry falls asleep and dreams that he is attacked by the demon which he battled during a previous case involving the aforementioned sorcerer, Leonid Kravos. He is wakened by his assistant, a spirit of knowledge called Bob, who helps him to discover that he really was attacked and that this Nightmare-demon drained a significant portion of his magical power. Dresden realizes that the Nightmare's targets are those who foiled Kravos' schemes, and that sleep makes the victims susceptible in spite of other protective measures. He rushes to help Murphy, the next likely target, but the Nightmare has gotten there before him, disguised as Dresden himself, and Dresden is only able to chase him away and try to minimize the damage. Now only he and Michael are left from the group who had defeated Kravos, and it seems the demon knows that the best way to hurt Michael is to threaten his family. Still disguised as Dresden, the Nightmare kidnaps Charity. Dresden tracks the Nightmare a cemetery and attacks, when Leanansidhe appears as Dresden is beaten down. In exchange for a pledge of service, his godmother points out the water streams around the cemetery, and Dresden tackles the Nightmare into one, causing it to melt into ectoplasm. Dresden picks up Amoracchius, intending to use it against his faerie godmother, but the sword wrenches out of his hands and lands at the faerie's feet. Since Dresden defiled the holy blade by attempting to use it in an act of treachery, Leanansidhe is able to pick it up and steal it. Dresden calls on assistance from a friend in Chicago PD to get Kravos's journal from the evidence lockers in order to learn the name of the demon. Since Dresden cannot determine which of his enemies is controlling the Nightmare, he casts a spell that binds the Nightmare to focus its attention only on him. When Dresden bound the Nightmare to him, he felt the presence of the sorcerer that was controlling it. He and Michael go to Bianca's party reasoning that it's unlikely to be a coincidence, and that they may be able to identify the person there. At the entrance, they meet Thomas Raith, the representative of the White Court vampires, and his human date Justine. Thomas facilitates Dresden's introduction to the vampires, who poison him with narcotic vampire venom. Michael keeps Dresden on his feet so they can find the sorcerer. Then, Susan arrives with a forged invitation; due to this breach of hospitality, the vampires are free to kill her. To make matters worse, Leanansidhe is present and her proximity further weakens Dresden due to his broken promise to her. Susan bargains with her to cure Dresden in return for a year of Susan's memory, but not specifying what form that would take. The faerie seals the bargain and leaves Susan with no memory at all of Dresden - the year taken was not contiguous, but rather consisted of every moment Susan had spent in Harry's presence. As Harry and Michael attempt to get Susan out of the party, they encounter an old foe of Michael's, Mavra of the Black Court vampires. Dresden senses that she is the sorcerer manipulating the Nightmare. Leanansidhe reappears to gift Amoracchius to Madame Bianca. As part of the evening's entertainment, Mavra intends to unmake the sword with the blood of an innocent person, Lydia. It's an obvious trap; Dresden and Michael will have to violate the rules of hospitality and the Unseelie Accords -- potentially triggering war between wizards and vampires -- in order to save Lydia and the sword. As the Red Court vampires surround them, Thomas explains that he and Justine are also marked for death and offers to help Harry in return for protection. Bianca captures Justine and holds her ransom with the price of Thomas betraying Dresden. Thomas agrees and pushes Susan into the mob of vampires. Bianca double-crosses him and keeps Justine, ordering Thomas' death. He flees while Susan is dragged away screaming. Burning with rage, Dresden incinerates everything in the immediate vicinity and collapses, exhausted. Michael carries Lydia and Dresden out of the inferno. Dresden regains consciousness a day later. He's slightly burned but Lydia is safe and asleep. Michael has been guarding them in spite of his own wounds and the poor health of his wife and newborn child. Thomas arrives to propose that they work together to rescue Susan and Justine. As an offer of good faith, Thomas returns Amoracchius. Lydia awakens, possessed by the Nightmare, and attacks them. Thomas subdues her using his vampiric powers and Dresden exorcises the spirit. His attempts to control it using the demon's name fail, and he realizes the culprit is not the demon at all; it's actually the ghost of Leonid Kravos himself, using the demon's shape to distract Harry. Mavra used the torment spell to stir up the spirits, which in turn weakened the barrier between the real world and the Nevernever, thus allowing Kravos to become a more powerful ghost when he committed ritual suicide in his jail cell. Mavra had also been teaching Bianca sorcery, making her a more powerful adversary. The group decide to journey through the Nevernever to sneak into Bianca's house, but en route, Leanansidhe attacks and captures Dresden. He strikes yet another bargain with her, extracting a promise that she will not bother him for a year and a day. Bound by it, she releases him. However, as Michael and Thomas made no such bargain, she attacks them instead. They urge Dresden to go ahead without them and rescue Susan and Justine while they hold off the faerie and her Hellhounds. Dresden returns to the real world inside Bianca's house, which turns out to be a trap. Dresden is captured by Bianca and locked in a room with Justine and Susan. Susan has been partially turned into a vampire, a process that will be completed if she kills a human through vampiric feeding. Dresden manages to restore her memory with magic, and he reinforces Susan's self-control and defuses her thirst by finally admitting his love for her. Together, they seduce Kravos to kill Harry. But due to the weakened barrier, Harry's ghost forms and together they defeat Kravos. Dresden consumes the Nightmare, taking back his and Kravos' power as well. They try to escape, but are stopped by Bianca, who offers a compromise: Dresden gets Justine, his magical items, and safe passage; in exchange, Bianca gets Susan. If Dresden refuses and tries to rescue Susan, there will be war between the vampires of the Red Court and the White Council. Dresden fights back with a powerful spell that exploits the thinned barrier with the Nevernever to rouse the spirits of all the vampires' victims against them. The wrath of the empowered spirits destroys the mansion and the vampires, while Dresden, Susan, and the others escape. After the battle, Susan disappears; her apartment is up for rent and she's not at her job. Dresden tracks her down to a secluded cottage and proposes marriage, but Susan refuses, leaving him a love note as she flees the country. The final note of the book is the White Council will be visiting Chicago as a war has broken out between vampires and the Council.
10574344	/m/02qj5v8	The Magic of Krynn	Margaret Weis		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book is a compilation of 10 short stories from various authors taking place in the fictional world of Krynn: #"Riverwind and the Crystal Staff" by Michael Williams. The tale is a narrative poem that describes the search for the Blue Crystal Staff by Riverwind. #"The Blood Sea Monster" by Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel. This is a tale written in first person perspective by an elf named Duder, who lives in a small fishing village off the coast of the Blood Sea of Istar. While running from a baker after stealing some bread, Duder meets an old human fisherman, Six-Finger Fiske, who recruits the elf to catch the legendary Blood Sea Monster. #"A Stone's Throw Away" by Roger E. Moore. This tale is about the adventure of the kender, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, using a teleporting ring that he had found during a murder committed in Solace. The story takes place in a citadel of an evil human magus. #"Dreams of Darkness, Dreams of Light" by Warren B. Smith. #"Love and Ale" by Nick O'Donohoe. #"Wayward Children" by Richard A. Knaak. This tale involves a group of Draconian soldiers who stumble into a mysterious village inhabited by older elves. #"The Test of the Twins" by Margaret Weis. This is the tale of Raistlin Majere taking the infamous "Test" at Tower of High Sorcery in Waywreth. #"Harvests" by Nancy Varian Berberick. This is the tale of a young Tanis Half-Elven and Flint Fireforge, who befriend a young girl named Riana in a forest. They decide to aid her in her quest to find her lover and brother who have been kidnapped by phantoms. #"Finding the Faith" by Mary Kirchoff. #"The Legacy" by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. This is the tale of Palin Majere, the mage son of Caramon, who takes the Test in the Tower of High Sorcery while the conclave believe that the mage's uncle, Raistlin, is still alive and is trying to steal Palin's body to return to the world. This tale is also retold in the novel, "The Second Generation."
10574955	/m/02qj6gk	Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes	Margaret Weis		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is a compilation of 10 short stories from various authors taking place in the fictional world of Krynn: # "Snowsong" by Nancy Varian Berberick. This tale tells the story of an early adventure of the Companions. Tanis Half-Elven and Sturm Brightblade are caught in a blizzard and their only hope of being rescued lies in the kender, Tasslehoff Burrfoot. # "The Wizard's Spectacles" by Morris Simon. # "The Storyteller" by Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel. # "A Shaggy Dog's Tail" by Danny Peary. This story tells the tale of an abusive soldier's hunt for escaped prisoners, and his encounter along the way with a solicitous witch. # "Lord Toede's Disastrous Hunt" by Harold Bakst. This is the story of the (first) demise and death of the Dragon Highlord, Fewmaster Toede. # "Definitions of Honor" by Richard A. Knaak. This is a tale of a young Knight of Solamnia, Torbin, who rides to the rescue of a village against a minotaur. # "Hearth Cat and Winter Wren" by Nancy Varian Berberick. This is another tale of an early adventure of the Companions. A young Raistlin Majere uses his magic to help his friends against an evil wizard. # "'Wanna Bet?'" by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. This is the tale of Caramon Majere's three sons: Palin, Tanin, and Sturm Majere who accidentally find themselves in an adventure to recover the Graygem of Gargath after losing a bet with a mysterious dwarf named Dougan Redhammer. This tale is also reprinted in the novel, The Second Generation. # "Into the Heart of the Story" by Michael Williams. A gnome, Virum, tells his version of authorship of the songs involved about the heroes of the War of the Lance. # "Dagger-Flight" by Nick O'Donohoe. A tale told from the viewpoint of a dagger involved in the novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
10574988	/m/02qj6hl	The Tooth of Crime	Sam Shepard			 The play is set in a vaguely described science fiction future dominated by "The Game," a conflation of rock music and violence played by "Markers" under the direction of "The Keepers." Hoss has struggled to become the top Marker, only to find himself doubting his own abilities in the face of opposition from "Gypsies" who operate outside of the official rules. Act 1: Eager to make an outing, Hoss is frustrated when the Star-Man advises him against it on the basis of his astrology. Hoss learns that his rival, Mojo Root Force, has encroached upon his territory in Las Vegas in a move of questionable legality. After getting word that a Gypsy from Vegas is on his way to attack him, Hoss calls an old friend, Little Willard, for backup, only to find that Willard has committed suicide due to his inability to cope with his status. These successive revelations exacerbate Hoss's self-doubt and his belief that the old way is dying, and he attempts to perk up his confidence by challenging the Gypsy to a shiv fight. Act II: Before the duel (which has been changed from a shiv fight to battle of words under the guidance of an official referee) Hoss and Crow attempt to psych each other out. While Crow learns to imitate Hoss's walk and style, Hoss intimidates Crow by taking on the voice of an old Western gunslinger. Despite an ostensibly effective second round in which he takes on the voice of a Delta bluesman, Hoss loses the battle when Crow exposes Hoss's "Fear that he's crackin' busted in two." After killing the Ref, a desperate Hoss begs Crow to teach him the new style. Ultimately, however, he decides to commit his last authentic act by killing himself, for which Crow commends him. The play ends with Crow assuming his place on Hoss' throne, with Becky quickly shifting her loyalty.
10577703	/m/02qj99b	The Grotesque	Patrick McGrath	1989-05	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Wheelchair-using Sir Hugo Coal narrates this tale of vice and murder at stately Crook Manor. Unable to communicate with those around him, the quirky Sir Hugo watches and listens, recounting recent events that began with his daughter's engagement, followed by the disappearance of her fiancé and the subsequent investigation. Of particular note is new butler Fledge, whom Sir Hugo believes is not only the cause of the troubles at the estate, but seeking to replace him as lord of the manor and in Lady Harriet's bed.
10583798	/m/02qjg_7	Boxy an Star	Daren King	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Boxy an Star tells the story of the relationship between two young lovers, 'Bole' (Thomas Boler) and 'Star' (Stacey Brain), Bole being the narrator of the story. The 'Boxy' in the title is the couple's friend and drug dealer. After a party at Boxy's flat, at which Bole and Star consume a large number of Boxy's spangles and Es and confuse a duvet with a bag of drugs, they go to visit Star's friend Prim and have afternoon tea. Invited to stay the night, the pair later awake and, forgetting where they are, become frightened and decide to escape, encountering Prim's boyfriend Gary on the way who they think is a 'Mephisto Conjurer' due to his 'smoking stick'.
10585118	/m/02qjhws	A Woman in Amber	Agate Nesaule	1995	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Woman in Amber begins with Agate Nesaule as an adult. She is a successful professor of Women’s Studies and 20th century American Literature at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. Despite her outward professional success, Agate lives with an inner turmoil caused by her memories of war and perpetuated by her husband Joe. Nesaule finds herself in therapy, depressed and unable to come to terms with the root cause of her depression. On the advice of her therapist Ingeborg, Agate learns she can not begin to heal until she is able to tell her story; the story of what happened to her and her family during World War II in Latvia and Germany at the hands of the invading Russian soldiers. So she begins her story by admitting that she was in Germany during the last year of the war and that she was starving. From this first admittance, Agate begins to tell many stories related to her hunger. She tells how she was prompted by her mother to beg the Russian soldiers, in Russian, not Latvian, for food. Later in life, she mistakenly tells this same story to her husband Joe. He mocks her time and again for the way in which she was forced to beg for food; suggesting she enjoyed it. Agate remembers how the Russians looked at her as if she were a goose singing. Agate relates the shame of going hungry and living with the belief she was not worth feeding. As the war progresses, things do not get much better for Agate and her family. When the Mongolian (perhaps Mongoloid) Russian soldiers arrive, her father is forced to leave with the rest of the men. The women and young girls are taken to a basement where the women are repeatedly raped. Agate is young enough to escape this, but careful provisions must be made for her fifteen year old cousin Astrida. Agate’s mother Valda is understandably destroyed by the Russian occupation and the horrors that occur in the basement. When they are finally let out of the basement, the soldiers lead the women and girls into the woods. Everyone believes they are to be executed. Valda makes preparations to drag Agate with her to the front of the lines. Valda reasons if she and Agate are first, they will not need to see the others die. Agate does not wish to die, what ensues is a physical tug of war with her mother for her life. The struggle Agate has with her mother that day remains a constant tension between the two. Agate is unable to see Valda’s love for her and desire to save her from pain. Later, the reader comes to see that Valda did care deeply for Agate and loved her very much; particularly in Valda’s description of her desire to prepare Agate for her wedding day, a preparation Valda was never able to follow through on. Unfortunately for Valda and Agate, the trauma of war and the distance their shared experiences placed between them left no time to reconcile before Valda’s death. Later, Agate and her family journey to Berlin where they are admitted to a Displaced Persons camp. Here they are given food and shelter. The family would move many times during the next several years, going from camp to camp and beginning life again. Agate attends Latvian school while in the camps. At age twelve, Agate and her family leave the camps and immigrate to the United States. We learn of Agate's life in the United States and her parents' financial struggle. Agate must adapt to life quickly in the United States. A quick learner, Agates teaches herself English in one summer. The first book she learns to read in English is Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. An excellent student, Agate receives a scholarship to attend Indiana University. While there, she meets her future husband Joe. Agate’s family does not agree with the marriage, and it finalizes the distance between Agate and her mother. During the next twenty years Agate receives her doctorate degree, has a son named Boris, and becomes a successful professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Constantly living with Joe’s put downs, harassments, and minimization of the trauma she endured in the war, Agate represses her feelings of depression and tries to carry on with her life. Though they are separated for much of their adult life, Agate and Beate rejoin each other when Beate’s husband Uldis dies alone and penniless from alcohol poisoning. Despite being distanced from the Latvian community in Indianapolis where her father remained very active, Agate retains a close tie to her Latvian heritage. When a friend asks what he may bring Agate from Latvia, she asks for some Latvian soil. It is party due to her connection with Latvia that her new husband John is able to find a way into Agate’s heart. Throughout her life, Agate admires an amber pendant that her mother wore and then passed down to Agate. John gives Agagte a similar piece of amber. Through his respectful and receptive listening Agate is fully able to heal when she tells John her story and finally finds acceptance.
10586117	/m/02qjjm5	The Swish of the Curtain			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It tells the story of seven young people in three different families who form an amateur theatrical group, the Blue Door Theatre Company. The children write, produce, direct and act in their own plays, each of them harnessing a particular talent. Nigel designs scenery, for example; Jeremy composes music; while Sandra makes costumes. During the course of the book, each of the young people realises a particular ambition. It is "Bulldog", who shines in comic roles, who realises his ambition to create the elusive "swish of the curtain". At the book's climax, the "Blue Doors" enter a drama contest which they have to win in order to be allowed to attend dramatic school to realise their dream of a career in the professional theatre.
10586147	/m/02qjjnk	She and Allan	H. Rider Haggard	1920	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wanting to learn if he can communicate with deceased loved ones, adventurer and trader Allan Quartermain seeks a meeting with the feared Zulu witch-doctor Zikali. He tells Allan he must seek out a great white sorceress who rules a hidden kingdom far to the north, and he charges Allan to take a message to her. He also gives Allan a necklace with a strange amulet, carved in Zikali's own likeness. Zikali claims it has great magical powers that will protect Allan on his journey, but he must on no account take it off. Allan is initially scornful of Zikali's claims, and sets off for the coast, but a series of odd events force him to go north in spite of his own wishes. On the journey he encounters Umslopogaas, a fearsome Zulu warrior chieftain. Umslopogaas tells Allan that he has discovered that he is about to be deposed and murdered, so he decides to leave his village and accompany Allan on his quest. Allan is again skeptical, but a few days later Umslopogaas and his band of warriors meet up with Allan's party, and Umslopogaas cements their friendship when he saves Allan from being killed by a lion. Journeying into unknown country, they come to a remote settlement called "Strathmuir" run by a Scot, Robertson, a drunkard and former sea captain, who lives there with his beautiful daughter Inez. Her Portuguese mother had died years earlier and her father has now taken native wives and sired several children with them. A few days later, Robertson takes Allan on an expedition to hunt hippopotamus, but as they return they are intercepted by Allan's servant, Hans, who had stayed behind. He reports that, in their absence, Strathmuir has been attacked by a band of cannibal warriors from the north, who have killed and eaten many of the villagers (including Robertson's wives and children) and kidnapped Inez. Allan, Robertson and Umsoplogaas set off in pursuit. At one point they catch up to the cannibals, and Allan and Hans almost succeed in freeing Inez, but her servant panics and alerts their captors, who escape. They track the cannibals through the treacherous swampland that surrounds the lost kingdom of Kôr, and as they approach the great mountain the cannibals turn and attack Allan's group, but they are driven off by the arrival of Bilali, the servant of Ayesha, who tells that that She has been expecting them, and that he is to bring them into her presence. Allan is summoned to meet Ayesha, who is camped among the ruins of the ancient city of Kôr. Ayesha remains veiled, although she briefly reveals herself to him, but in spite of her allure, he manages to resist her power, and throughout the story he remains skeptical of her claims that she is immortal and has supernatural powers. Some days later Robertson disappears from the camp to seek out the rebel Armahagger who are holding Inez captive, hoping to rescue his daughter and, if possible, to kill their chief, the dreaded Rezu, who is also rumoured to be immortal. Allan and Hans learn that this rebel group are the descendants of an ancient sun-worshipping cult who perform human sacrifice, and that Inez will be married to Rezu and installed as Queen of all the Armahagger if they defeat Ayesha. Knowing that Rezu is preparing to attack and try to overthrow her, Ayesha seeks help from Allan and Umslopogaas in the coming battle, asking Allan to lead the army of Kôr. He reluctantly agrees, but when Ayesha brings him before her generals, they at first refuse to accept him, until he displays the "Great Medicine", the amulet given to him by Zikali. Though outnumbered three-to-one, Allan draws up plans that he hopes will give Ayesha's army a tactical advantage, but he has little confidence in her Armahagger soldiers. As they advance, Hans scouts ahead; he discovers that Inez's unfortunate servant has already been eaten, and that the rebels have captured Robertson and intend to sacrifice him and eat him before his daughter's eyes. Soon after, a Zulu scout returns to warn that some of Ayehsa's soldiers are spies for Rezu, and that the enemy know their plans have set an ambush just ahead. Allan quickly draws his men into a defensive square just before Rezu's forces attack; they hold their ground against the first two waves, but the square breaks under a third onslaught. Allan fears all is lost, but at that moment a glowing apparition of Ayesha appears in their midst, bearing a wand, and she moves forward towards Rezu's soldiers, who become paralysed as she advances. Heartened, the Kôr soldiers surge forward, slaughtering most of Rezu's army. As they reach the enemy camp, they see Rezu kill the helpless Robertson with an axe. They now confront the fearsome Rezu himself, a huge, bearded giant seven feet tall; Allan fires two heavy-gauge bullets, which hit Rezu, but they have no effect, and they realise he is heavily armoured. Now Umslopogaas steps forward and challenges Rezu to single combat. A desperate struggle ensues, and although Umslopogaas carries an ancient axe rumoured to be the only weapon that can kill Rezu, he makes no impression against Rezu's heavy armour. Finally Umslopogaas employs a ruse - he appears to flee, enabling him to reach higher ground, from which he makes a rapid run-up to Rezu. Leaping into the air, he strikes Rezu down from behind with a mighty blow as he vaults over the giant's head. Ayesha's soldiers then surge forward and, before Allan can examine him, they hack Rezu's body to pieces. Allan and Hans now race to the tent where Inez is being held; she seems drugged or cataonic, and as they enter the handmaidens who guard her all commit suicide, and Inez is freed. The day after the battle, Allan and Hans watch from a distance as Ayesha addresses her surviving troops and punishes the captured traitors. As she speaks, a fierce storm blows up, and lightning flashes around Ayesha and the captives, but it leaves the faithful soldiers unharmed. When the storm clears, Ayesha has vanished, and when they move forward to examine the captives, they find them dead, although their bodies are quite unmarked. The next night Ayesha summons Allan to receive his reward. He balks at fulfilling his wish to see if his loved ones survive beyond the grave, but Ayesha takes control and her power paralyses him; he feels himself dying and his spirit moving into another realm. He sees visions of his family, but their spirits seem unaware of his presence; only the spirits of a faithful dog and an African woman whom he had loved seem aware of him and able to communicate with him. When he revives, Ayesha questions him but, despite his experience, he remains profoundly skeptical and he argues with Ayesha over what has transpired. Later that night Allan meets up with Umslopogaas, who tells him of his own experiences. By now Inez has fully recovered from her ordeal although, as Ayesha had predicted, she remembers nothing of her traumatic experience or her father's death. Allan and Umslopogaas have no desire to remain, so Ayesha arranges for the surviving members of the party to be escorted back to Strathmuir. We learn that Inez never recovers her memory of what had transpired, and she is never told the truth; she eventually she retires to a convent. Umslopogaas returns to his people to face his destiny, and Allan returns to Zululand to deliver Ayesha's message to Zikali.
10587561	/m/02qjkpk	The A-List	Zoey Dean	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The A-List follows the character of Anna Percy, who has been raised on New York City's Upper East Side. Anna has grown up living a life of privilege and many rules, which she somewhat jokingly refers to as "This is How We Do Things Big Book, East Coast WASP Edition". Anna moves out to Los Angeles with her father in the hopes of getting an internship in the entertainment industry as well as to reinvent herself in a new environment. While traveling to LA, Anna meets the handsome Ben Birnbaum, with whom she has an immediate connection. Ben invites Anna to the wedding of A-lister Jackson Sharpe, which she accepts. Once Anna arrives in LA she discovers that her father has stood her up at both the airport and lunch in order to indulge in marijuana, leading Anna to believe that her father doesn't want her with him. Later that same day at the wedding Anna meets Samantha "Sam Sharpe, Camilla "Cammie" Sheppard, and Delia "Dee" Young. Because the trio all have large crushes on Ben, they are upset at Anna's appearance as his date and spend much of the evening trying to get his attention. This results in Anna's designer dress getting ruined and Sam getting rejected, which causes the two to bond. Sam invites Anna to attend a Warner Brothers New Year's Eve bash. A jealous Cammie attempts to break up Anna and Ben by convincing a big producer that Anna is a hooker, but fails. After the party Cammie goes to her mother's grave, Sam and a group of partiers goes to her father's house to get drunk, and Ben and Anna go to his father's boat to have sex. Anna tells Ben that she is ready for sex. Ben appears to accept, only to desert Anna while she is asleep under the pretext of getting his car. During a charity project, Anna discovers that she has gotten food poisoning from an expired yogurt she'd eaten earlier in the day. While caring for Anna, Dee confesses that people look down on her because of her short stature and spirituality. Dee also confesses that she believes that she's pregnant with Ben's baby, which unbeknownst to Dee is not true. At the end of the book Anna is enrolled at the same high school as the other girls, has broken up with Ben, and had her internship fail to work out. Sam and Dee show an interest in becoming friends with Anna, which causes Cammie to feel threatened.
10588432	/m/02qjlc8	Every Inch a King	Harry Turtledove	2005-11-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book centers around Otto of Schlepsig, a circus performer and tightrope walker, who is surprised to learn that he's an almost dead-ringer for Prince Halim Eddin, recently invited to become king the newly independent country of Shqiperi. Fed up with his life in the circus, Otto, and his friend, the sword swallower Max of Witte, get some uniforms and set out to take the Prince's place as King of Shqiperi.
10590353	/m/02qjmvc	Music on the Bamboo Radio	Martin Booth	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story begins with the Japanese army’s defeat of the China forces occupying Hong Kong on 25 December, 1941. Nicholas is an eleven-year old boy whose parents have both suddenly disappeared in the chaos of war breaking out. As the Chinese come to do a home to home search, three loyal family servants, Tang, his wife Ah Mee, and the gardener Ah Kwan take Nicholas and they escape to Kowloon as Hong Kong Island is no longer safe. Upon reaching the shore of Kowloon, Tang and Ah Mee disguise Nicholas as a Chinese boy and the trip continues to Tang's home village, the village of Sek Wan. Nicholas passes the years of the war here with Tang and his family. He is given the Chinese name Wing Ming. During this time, many events happen. Nicholas makes a dangerous journey back to Kowloon to get quinine cure to the malaria Tang has contracted. He also helps the Communist partiasn army – The East River Column Fighters- to translate instructions for using heavy explosives. Nicholas joins the partisan army on a mission to Kowloon where they blow up a railway bridge and weaken the position of the Japanese army. Yet his most dangerous job would have been to deliver a medicine into the prison of war camps (POW camps). Taking news or items to prison camps is nicknamed "playing music on the bamboo radio". Nicholas does more than expected by entering the camp itself because the person who he was supposed to pass the medicine to had the fever. Exhausted and worried, Nicholas narrowly escapes the clutches of the Japanese with the help of the prisoners and finally reaches the safety of Sek Wan village. As the war comes to an end, Nicholas returns to his home on Hong Kong Island, and when he returned, everything is ruined, his home is badly damaged. As he walks through the house he finds his mother. Nicholas does not recognise her, she seems much older and exhausted, but he knows it is his mother. It is nearly four years since he was last at home. At first he introduces himself as Wing Ming, then he remembers that he is Nicholas Holford.
10591258	/m/02qjnnh	The Gray Prince	Jack Vance	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Schaine returns to Koryphon from school off-world, met by Kelse. They and Jerd are to meet their father, Uther, who has said he just learned something that is a splendid joke. Glissam agrees to visit Uaia with them. However, Uther is ambushed and killed by Retent Uldras. Schaine, Kelse, Jerd, and Glissam survive a similar ambush and reach the Madducs' domain Morningswake. Uther Madduc was exploring the Palga before he was killed. Jerd, Glissam, and Kurgech go into the Palga to discover what he found. After various encounters with the Wind-runners, they find the secret: an ancient temple built by Erjins, who are in fact fully sentient. They return to Morningswake, to learn that the Mull has ordered the land barons to give up their domain. The land barons defy this decree, and form their own Order of Uaia. Jorjol incites several hundred Retent Uldras to invade Morningswake. This attack is defeated by the Order's militia. A committee of the Mull arrives at Morningswake. Gerd escorts them to the Erjin temple, where he explains the first part of Uther Madduc's joke. The Mull has demanded that the land barons yield to the claim of the Uldras, who were there first. But the temple shows that the Erjins are sentient, which makes the Szintarrese slaveowners. Near the temple is the depot from which tamed Erjins are shipped. There they discover that the Erjin mounts and servitors exported by the Wind-runners are actually warriors, who at that very same moment are uprising and destroying their supposed masters. Erjin "servitors" seize control of Szintarre from its effete inhabitants. Erjin "mounts" turn on their Retent Uldra riders, but the combative Uldras defeat them. The Order of Uaia's militia (including Submission Uldras) fly south and defeat the Erjins in Szintarre. Returning to Uaia, they defeat a second and larger Uldra attack incited by Jorjol. This experience chastens some of the Szintarrese reformers, but the others persist in their campaign. Now Gerd Jemasze reveals the rest of Uther Madduc's joke. The temple shows that the Erjins were there before the Uldras, so they have an even better claim to the land. Furthermore, the temple's decorations depict Erjins arriving in spaceships and in combat with Morphotes: Morphotes are in fact the oldest inhabitants and "rightful" claimants to the land. Gerd, speaking for the land barons, tells the Szintarrese that to be consistent they should either revoke their decree against the land barons, or else give their own country to the Morphotes as well.
10596211	/m/02qjsyl	Election	Tom Perrotta	1998-03-09	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The novel centers on a high school in suburban New Jersey, where students are preparing to vote for their school president. The story takes place in 1992, amidst the U.S. Presidential Elections that year. Tracy Flick is an unpopular girl but very ambitious, intelligent and manipulative; however, she is not quite as perfect as her classmates assume. She had a heated sexual affair with her former teacher, and after Tracy told her mother of their relationship, his career and marriage were ruined. Mr. M, one of Tracy's current teachers, learns that Tracy is taking part in the election, and feeling that Tracy needs to be taken down a notch, prompts Paul Warren (a student of whom he approves) to run against her. In turn, Paul's outcast lesbian sister, Tammy, begins a reckless campaign to be school president in retaliation to her ex-girlfriend who is now dating Paul. The novel ends with Mr. M ultimately losing his job as a teacher when it is found that he has sabotaged the election by pocketing Tracy's winning votes- making Paul the winner of the presidency. Mr. M then ends up working in a car dealership.
10601195	/m/02qjx52	Hrolf Kraki's Saga	Poul Anderson	1973	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is presented as if related by a female story-teller in an Anglo-Saxon court, the author feeling it would have been about that time that the legend would have reached its fullest development, and such a teller would have been least likely to abbreviate it. The Danish king Halfdan is murdered and his position usurped by his brother Frodhi. Halfdan's young sons Helgi and Hroar go into hiding to escape his fate, successfully eluding Frodhi until they reach adulthood and can take vengeance on their father's killer. On attaining the kingship themselves they rule together. Helgi, a warrior and sea-rover, visits the equally warlike queen of the Saxons, whom he woos overbearingly. Sent packing, he later returns and rapes her, a union resulting in a daughter, Yrsa, who years later becomes an instrument of vengeance when Helgi encounters and marries her. Only after they are wed does her mother reveal Yrsa's parentage. Haunted, Yrsa leaves Denmark to wed Adhils, King of the Swedes, and Helgi is ultimately killed in battle attempting to win her back. Hrolf, the son of Helgi and Yrsa, is raised in the household of Hroar, becoming his adherent and supporter. After Hroar's death Hrolf eventually becomes his successor. He builds up the realm and assembles a band of famous warriors, most notably Hjalti and Bodvar Bjarki, a were-bear and one of a trio remarkable brothers, the others being Elk-Frodhi and Thorir Houndsfoot. The story goes on to relate the personal tales of these champions. After a reign notable for prosperity at home and successful war abroad, Hrolf visits the court of Adhils to see his mother and attain recompense for his father's death. Feigning hospitality, Adhils does his best to destroy his unwanted visitors through rigged tests of their prowess, while Yrsa warns Hrolf of his treachery. At length the animosity is brought into the open and the Danes fight their way out of Adhil's stronghold, taking his treasure with them. Pursued by the Swedes, they scatter the treasure along the ground to delay them and successfully escape. This "sowing" of the field of Fyrisvellir later becomes a famous incident in Norse legend. But during this adventure Hrolf has managed to offend the treacherous god Odin, giver of victory. He returns to Denmark knowing he must henceforth avoid war, as his luck in battle has left him. The end comes through treachery from Hrolf's half-elven half-sister Skuld, a witch married to Hjorvard, one of his sub-kings. Inciting her husband to revolt, they secretly raise an army and rise suddenly, besieging Hrolf in his hall. Hrolf's champions are roused from sleep and rallied by the chanting the Bjarkamál, a famous Old Norse poem whose origins supposedly lie in this event; it has been largely lost, but Anderson presents a partial reconstruction as part of his story. Hrolf's warriors fight valiantly, but the witchcraft of Skuld prevails, and after a long, terrible battle the defenders fall. Hjorvard does not last long as king, being killed by Vogg, a weakling Hrolf had befriended who in consequence had sworn to avenge him. Skuld herself is soon overthrown by an army led by Elk-Frodhi and Thorir Houndsfoot, come to avenge their brother Bodvar Bjarki. The realm goes to pieces, to be eventually pulled back together in part by a remote kinsman of Hrolf's.
10602330	/m/02qjy7t	To Sir, with Love	E. R. Braithwaite	1959	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Ricky Braithwaite is a British Guiana-born engineer who has worked in an oil refinery in Aruba. Coming to Britain on the verge of World War Two, he joins the RAF as aircrew. Demobbed in 1945, he is unable to find work, despite his qualifications and experience, meeting overt anti-black attitudes. But after discussing his situation with a stranger whose name he never learns, he applies for a teaching position and is assigned to Greenslade School, a secondary school in London's East End. Most of the pupils in his class are totally unmotivated to learn and largely semi-literate and semi-articulate. But he persists, despite finding that they are unresponsive to his approach. Braithwaite decides to try a new approach, and sets some ground rules. The students will be leaving school soon, and will enter an adult society, so he will treat them as adults, and allow them to decide what topics they wish to study. In return, he demands their respect as their teacher. This novel approach is initially rejected, but within a few weeks, the class is largely won over. He suggests out-of-school activities, including visits to museums, which the kids have never thought about before. A young teacher, Gillian Blanchard, volunteers to assist him on these trips. Some of the girls start to speculate whether a personal relationship is budding between Braithwaite and Gillian. The trip is a success and more are approved by the initially sceptical Head. The teachers and the Student Council openly discuss all matters affecting the school and what is being taught. The general feeling is that Braithwaite's approach is working, although some teachers still advocate a tougher approach to the kids. The mother of one of the girls comes to speak to Braithwaite, feeling that he has more influence than she has with her impressionable daughter, who is staying out late and might be getting into trouble. In the meantime, Braithwaite and Gillian are deeply in love and are discussing marriage. Her parents are openly disapproving of a 'mixed-race' marriage, but realise that they're serious and both intelligent people who know what they are doing. de:To Sir, With Love tr:Öğretmenimize Sevgilerimizle
10605939	/m/02qk071	The Ascent of Rum Doodle	William Ernest Bowman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The narrator, "Binder" (his radio codename), is asked by the "Rum Doodle Committee" and its chairman, "Sir Hugeley Havering," to lead an expedition to climb "Rum Doodle", the highest mountain in the world (with an elevation of 40,000 and 1/2 feet), in the remote (fictional) country of "Yogistan". He assembles a team of climbers to play all the roles seen in the parodied literature: * Burley, the "strong man"; * Constant, the "linguist"; * Jungle, the "route finder"; * Prone, the "physician"; * Shute, the "photographer"; * Wish, the "scientist." It rapidly develops that each of the climbers is utterly inept in his nominal field of competence, as they demonstrate in a series of chaotic adventures en route to Yogistan; for example, Prone endures a never-ending series of illnesses, while Constant mispronounces a Yogistani word (the language hinges on variously "pronounced" belches and gastrointestinal rumbles) and offends a "short but powerful" Yogistani wielding a knife, having informed him that he lusted for the man's wife — not his intention at all. Binder handles these mishaps with typically British aplomb, having been reassured by the expedition's sponsor that "to climb Mont Blanc by the Grépon route is one thing; to climb Rum Doodle is, as Totter once said, quite another." Somehow the group does make it to Yogistan, where they hire Yogistani porters, parodies of the Sherpas who were the indispensable indigenous porters and mountain guides (and sometimes climbing partners) to many of the great mountaineering expeditions. However, the Yogistanis do not share the invariable positive attributes of the Sherpa — quite the contrary. Hijinks ensue, as the expedition cook, "Pong", produces food so inedible that the expedition tries (unsuccessfully) to continue on up the mountain without him; the inevitable fall into a crevasse leads to the consumption of the party's champagne (brought along to celebrate reaching the summit and for "medicinal purposes") during the rescue attempt; and scientist Wish embarks on a never-ending quest for "Wharton's warple", an endangered species indigenous to the mountains. Eventually, Binder and a colleague manage to stumble to the top of the lofty spire the group has been approaching ... only to find that they have climbed the wrong mountain (and to see the porters, with Prone in tow, climbing the right one).
10608174	/m/0g9wfdx	Curious George Flies a Kite	H. A. Rey	1958	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 One day, George is left alone at his house, and of course he is curious. As he is looking out the window he sees a tiny house he wants to explore. Curious George jumps out the window, crawls over a fence and makes his way to the small house he sees. Inside the house are many bunny rabbits, and George accidentally lets one out. He struggles for a bit but finally is able to get the bunny back into the house. As he is walking back, he sees a man fishing and wants to join. As George is trying to fish, he falls in and a neighbor boy named Bill comes to help him as he gets out of the water. Bill is very friendly and wants to show George his new kite. George loves the kite and Bill trusts George to watch the kite while he leaves to get his bicycle. Of course, George is curious so he begins to fly the kite. At first he thinks it will be OK but soon the kite takes off, along with George. Curious George flies high up in the sky, and has to be rescued by the Man in the Yellow Hat in a helicopter. He returns the kite to Bill who then rewards George with his very own pet bunny from the bunny house he explored in the beginning of the book.
10609869	/m/02qk30v	The Queen of Air and Darkness	T. H. White	1939	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Queen of Air and Darkness is the second book in the four-part work The Once and Future King which chronicles White's own version of the legend of King Arthur. Although it is the shortest book in the series, it is a vital point in the story for several reasons: *Arthur invents the idea of the Round Table, which was central to the plot of the third and fourth books. *Arthur also defeats barons those rebelling against him, thereby securing his role as king. *Arthur's understanding of "might vs. right" is explored more deeply in this book. *The Orkney faction is introduced. These four children (Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth) become major characters for the rest of White's work. *King Pellinore gets married and has several children who will become important in The Ill-Made Knight. The novel begins with the four Orkney children, Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth, telling each other stories late at night. As they speak, it becomes clear that they have great respect and love for their mother, the beautiful Queen Morgause, although she does not devote herself entirely to motherhood, but has a desire to understand and unlock her magical powers whilst her husband, King Lot, is off to war against King Arthur. We also learn that Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, had raped Morgause's mother, Igraine, making Morgause Arthur's half-sister (although no one is yet aware of this fact except for Merlyn, who had forgotten to tell it to Arthur). Arthur is still being tutored by Merlyn, although the relationship between the two has changed. Instead of seeing Merlyn as an almighty sage, Arthur treats him as more of a friend throughout the novel. Despite this, Merlyn still attempts to teach Arthur how he can create a perfect society out of his newly-formed kingdom. Arthur is unimpressed, and would rather be off fighting wars than taking care of peasants. Meanwhile, back in the Orkney Isles, the four Orkney children are bored and seek a story from their own tutor, St. Toirdelbach, a very different teacher from Merlyn. He tells them a story, but quickly becomes annoyed with the boys, and threatens to hit them with his shelleleigh if they refuse to leave him alone. This is one of White's best examples of how different the loveless childhoods of the Orkney children were from the happy childhood of Arthur. As the children are walking on the beach after visiting St. Toirdelbach, Sir Grummor Grummursum and King Pellinore arrive on the shore in a magic barge. Along with them is a Saracen knight named Sir Palomides who has apparently befriended them between the previous book and their arrival on the Orkney islands. The trio had previously been in Flanders where Pellinore fell in love with the Queen of Flander's daughter. The knights entered the boat and had been unable to turn it around, causing Pellinore to become so lovesick, he no longer wishes to hunt the Questing Beast, his lifelong passion. Arthur, meanwhile, is preparing for the battle against Lot's Gaelic warriors which lies ahead. He has begun to buy into the idea of chivalry, and of "might vs. right." He announces to Merlyn that he plans to first put down Lot's rebellion and then use that power to enforce justice throughout his kingdom. Morgause is pleased that the three bumbling knights have landed because they have no idea that England is at war with Orkney. She takes advantage of their ignorance and attempts to make them fall in love with her. She attempts an unsuccessful unicorn hunt with the knights. The boys consult St. Toirdelbach and then attempt to catch a live unicorn to present to their mother. They almost succeed but Agravaine kills the unicorn in a fit of rage (the boys were pretending the virgin who lured the unicorn was their mother and Agravaine hated the unicorn for touching their "mother"). The other three brothers are angry, as they believe Agravaine has ruined their chances of getting a reward from their mother. Only Gareth feels sorry for the unicorn. Morgause is not pleased at all that they succeeded where she failed; on the contrary, she has them whipped. Meanwhile, on the plains of Bedegraine, Arthur is making final preparations for his battle. Arthur announces his idea of the round table, and Merlyn informs Arthur that another king has such a table. Ironically, this king is the father of Arthur's future wife, Guenever (sic). Sir Kay, Arthur's foster-brother, says that he believes that if war will help the conquered race to live a better life, they should be conquered. Merlyn angrily informs him that there is a certain Austrian who shared Kay's views, and "plunged the world into bloody chaos." This is an allusion to Adolf Hitler. Sir Palomides and Sir Grummore, concerned about King Pellinore's lovesickness, plan to impersonate the Questing Beast and lure him back to chasing it. Their plan backfires when the real Questing Beast appears and chases them; they spend the night caught half-way up a cliff. Morgause, frustrated that the knights have not fallen for her, decides that her children matter more to her. Gareth rushes to the stables to tell his brothers that she loves them, and he arrives to find that Gawaine and Agravaine are in a heated argument. Agravaine wants to send a letter to Lot, informing him of the three knights and telling Lot that Morgause is cheating on him. Gawaine is infuriated by the idea, and he considers it betrayal to their mother. The argument ends when Agravaine threatens Gawaine with a hidden knife, and Gawaine nearly kills him. White explains that Gawaine was never able to get over these kind of sudden passions he underwent, and that they would plague him for life. Merlyn knows that his time with Arthur is nearly up, as he will soon be locked up for a thousand years. Arthur is distressed, and asks why Merlyn can't avoid the imprisonment that awaits him. Merlyn tells Arthur a parable which explains that no-one can escape fate (the famous story of a man who learns of his death, then rides to escape death, but ends up running into Death while escaping.) He also warns Arthur about Guinvere and Lancelot, but Arthur is too saddened by Merlyn's departure to take the warning to heart. Early the next morning, King Pellinore is walking alone on the beach when he spots Palomides and Grummore stuck on the cliff, with the Questing Beast waiting for them below. He explains that the beast has fallen in love with them (as she thinks that they are her mate when they were in disguise), and refuses to slay the creature. He simply holds it down while Grummore and Palomides escape to Morgause's castle. Pellinore is reunited with Piggy, the daughter of the Queen of Flanders. He returns to the castle to find that the Questing Beast is waiting outside the castle. Around this same time, Merlyn has begun his journey to find Nimue and passes by them. He advises the pair of knights to psychoanalyse the Questing Beast. They do so, but it backfires and the Questing Beast falls in love with Sir Palomides instead. Pellinore gives up chasing the beast then and Sir Palomides takes up the job. Arthur has engaged Lot in a fateful battle which would determine who would rule Britain. Arthur overcomes Lot with a sneaky ambush in the night, despite Lot's larger number of soldiers. Contrary to the code of "chivalric" battle (or White's version, at any rate) he also attacks the enemy knights first rather than the foot soldiers. Arthur seemingly finally realizes the wrong behind slaughtering the peasants for the fun of the rich knights, as Merlyn had insisted in his lessons. Assisted by the French noblemen, Ban and Bors, Arthur wins the battle. The defeated Lot returns home, and the three English knights are shocked to learn that Orkney has been at war with England. Morgause heads south to England in order to reconcile with the English, and brings with her children and the three knights. Arthur holds Pellinore's wedding to Piggy, as he remembers Pellinore fondly as being the first knight he ever met. At the same time, St. Toirdelbach also has a marriage. After the ceremony, Morgause seduces Arthur and becomes pregnant. It is then that Merlyn, far away in North Humberland, remembers that he had forgotten to tell Arthur that Morgause was Arthur's half-sister. Therefore, Arthur's adultery is also incest, a very grave sin. Morgause becomes pregnant with Mordred, who will one day come to ruin his father's kingdom.
10610261	/m/0b6lqmw	Dragons of Glory				 Dragons of Glory is both a sourcebook and a strategic-level board wargame which depicts the overall war between the draconians and the defenders of Krynn. The set describes the war and the opposing armies, using Battlesystem statistics for both sides. Dragons of Glory is a simulation game, designed to allow players to produce their own historical timeline of the events in the world of Krynn for an ongoing Dragonlance campaign. By keeping a record of forces' positions over time, news can be related to the player characters, who can encounter various armies, creatures, or leaders at appropriate points.
10610909	/m/02qk3qh	Dreamside	Graham Joyce	2001-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel opens in February 1986 with Lee Peterson waking up and going about his daily routine before heading to work. But something is off. Lee takes an egg from the refrigerator and tries to break it into a frying pan. It doesn't break. He tries again; it wobbles. Lee then wakes up. He begins his routine again only to wake up again. This happens a number of times, like the peeling of one layer of onion off another. Lee calls these occurrences repeaters. The phone rings and he wakes up again to hear a voice that he hadn't heard since his college days: Ella Innes. The first thing they say to each other is that it's happening again. They thought they could escape Dreamside only to find that over ten years later, it is once again worming its tendrils back into their lives. Lee and Ella meet to discuss why this was happening to them now and what to do about it. Believing that either Brad or Honora is traveling to Dreamside and causing the effects to manifest in the others, Ella convinces Lee that they must find their other two classmates. Lee reluctantly agrees to go find Brad while Ella searches for a reclusive Honora. The novel flashes back twelve years earlier to April 1974 when Lee, wanting desperately to start a conversation with Ella, joins a lucid dreaming study that she shows interest in. The group consists of a variety of students, some pretending that they lucid dream and those that legitimately can. Over the semester, the group dwindles to a few students. At the end, Professor L.P. Burns picks Ella and Lee along with Brad and Honora. Burns' decision to select two pairs of the opposite sex may have been deliberate: over the course of the study, Lee and Ella become intimate. Brad, an obnoxious yet skilled lucid dreamer, wishes the same scenario between him and the shy Honora. The professor is conducting a double-blind study. The lucid dreaming serves as a distraction to study group dynamics. However, Burns' interest in the dream data increases as the four began showing promising results with the exercises. Brad and Ella are the first to contact one another in a shared lucid dream. The dreamscape mirrored a park setting that the couple had copulated in near the beginning of their relationship. Brad and Honora have less luck. The Professor, wishing to set the foundation for a share dream space between the four, takes the students for a weekend vacation to a rural cabin owned by a colleague of his. A few miles down the road is a scenic lake with a single ancient tree leaning over it. After the trip, the four finally meet in Dreamside. This world vaguely mimics the lake area. As Lee and Ella perform sexual experiments in Dreamside, Brad aggressively pursues Honora in hopes of being able to experience what the other couple is. Honora rejects him, saying that she wishes to remain a virgin. Brad argues that it wouldn't count in Dreamside. Around this same time, the group discovers certain frightening aspects of Dreamside. If they stop paying attention to themselves, the dreams begin to meld and sink into the ground, water, or tree. Also, the occurrence of repeaters have increased. The students feel as if the waking world and the dreaming world are beginning to interweave. Concerned, Professor Burns decides to bring the experiment to a conclusion. Before the matter can be discussed further, the students find out the next day that Burns has died. Against Professor Burns' wishes, Brad, Lee, and Honora decide to continue the experiments. During one particular session, Brad finally forces himself upon Honora in Dreamside and rapes her. Honora wakes up in her own bed to find that her sheets are stained with blood. At this point Honora goes into seclusion and withdraws from any more experiments. The novel flashes back into the present where Ella finds Honora who is now a grade school teacher. Honora confides with Ella that she had a miscarriage in the real world, but gave birth to a daughter in Dreamside. This girl, who is now approximately twelve years of age, is now making appearances in the waking world. The four dreamers meet together in the real once again and try to figure out how to rectify the problem they left behind. Then one night they are all pulled in back to Dreamside. The world is now ice-covered and barren. A hurricane-strength storm whips through the dream and in the middle of it, they find Honora and Brad's daughter. They try to escape, but the storm rages on. Honora lets go of the others, saying that the girl wants her to join her in the raging waters. Brad chases after her and pulls her from the water before either falling or jumping in. He's never found, in either world.
10613695	/m/02qk6_0	Knitting Under the Influence				 Sometimes it feels like their weekly knitting circle is the only thing that keeps Kathleen, Sari, and Lucy from falling apart. Their fine-gauge scarves may look fabulous, but their lives are starting to unravel... For years, beautiful, flighty Kathleen has been living off of her famous actress sisters. When she moves out, she misses her life of luxury and begins to think that marrying rich might be an easy way to get it back. Lucy is dating the man of her dreams-gorgeous, a brilliant scientist, going places-but when an animal rights group targets him, she wonders whose side she's really on. And Sari finds herself suddenly face-to-face again with the "it" boy from high school who still has "it"- he's gorgeous, sensitive, and kind, and he has a son who needs Sari's help. But can she ever forgive him for what he did to her brother a decade ago? Caught between life, love, and pursuit of the perfect cast-on, these three friends learn that there are never any easy answers, except maybe one-that when the going gets tough, the tough gets knitting.
10614091	/m/02qk7d2	The Armageddon Rag	George R. R. Martin	1983	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Frustrated former hippie novelist Sandy Blair becomes involved in the investigation of the brutal murder of rock promoter Jamie Lynch: the heart had been torn from Lynch's body. Lynch had managed several bands, including the legendary rock and roll group, the Nazgûl (named for the demonic creatures in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings). He was found dead on the tenth anniversary of the Nazgûl's break up, his bloody body placed on top of the band's West Mesa concert poster; during that concert at West Mesa, New Mexico, the Nazgûl's lead singer Patrick Henry "Hobbit" Hobbins had been mysteriously murdered. Lynch's high-profile death soon opens the door for a Nazgûl reunion tour, which slowly begins to eerily mirror the events of their original West Mesa tour. Interviewing the surviving members of the band while tracking down his old friends from the 1960s, Blair meditates on the meaning of the flower power generation as he cris-crosses the U. S. He eventually becomes the Nazgûl's press agent and is soon swept up in the frenzy of their successful reunion tour and an oncoming supernatural convergence, whose nature he must uncover in order to solve the murders of Lynch and Hobbins. The novel is notable for the detailed account of the history and repertoire of its imaginary rock band, including concert set lists and album track timings. Each of the novel's chapter headings open with actual famous rock lyrics, whose meanings resonate throughout that chapter.
10614529	/m/02qk7x7	Nineteen Minutes	Jodi Picoult	2007-03-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins on March 6, 2007 in the small town of Sterling, New Hampshire, tracking the lives of a number of characters on an "ordinary day." The characters include Alex Cormier, a superior court judge; her daughter Josie, a junior in high school; Lacy, Lewis, and Peter Houghton; Detective Patrick Ducharme; and several victims-to-be. At the local high school, Sterling High, the story follows a routine day of students in classes, at the gym, and in the cafeteria. Suddenly, a loud bang is heard from the parking lot, which turns out to be a bomb set off in Matt Royston's car. As the students are distracted by the noise, gun shots are fired. When Patrick, the only detective on the Sterling police force, arrives at Sterling High, he searches the school to seek out the gunman, who is alleged to be a student. After passing several dead and wounded victims, Patrick traps and arrests the shooter, Peter Houghton, in the locker room, where he finds two students, Josie Cormier and Matt Royston, lying on the floor surrounded in blood. While Matt is dead, having been the only victim shot twice, Josie is not seriously injured, but only shocked: she cannot remember what happened. The shooting kills ten people (nine students and one teacher) and wounds many other people. Throughout the book, time flashes back and forth between events before and after the shooting. In the past, the reader learns that Peter and Josie were once close friends. Peter was frequently the target of severe bullying at school, and Josie often stuck up for him. The friends slowly drifted apart as they got older: Josie joined the popular crowd in order to protect her own interests, seeing her relationship to Peter as embarrassing. The story pictures Peter as an outcast at home as well; Peter believes his older brother Joey is favored by their parents. Joey is a popular straight-A student and athlete, but feels it necessary to ridicule Peter to protect his reputation, even fabricating a story that Peter was adopted. When Joey is killed in a car accident in 2006, Lacy and Lewis Houghton are too upset to pay attention to their remaining son, causing a bigger rift between Peter and his parents. In their sophomore year, Josie begins dating Matt, a popular jock who leads his friends Drew Girard and John Eberhard in bullying Peter. Matt often calls Peter "homo" and "fag," leading Peter to question his sexual orientation. The bullying intensifies once Matt begins dating Josie, in his possessive efforts to keep her away from other boys. On one occasion, Peter approaches Josie after school to try talking to her. Matt beats him up, leaving Peter humiliated in front of the school. The flashbacks also reveal several subplots: the difficult relationship between Josie and her single mother Alex, Alex's dilemma of being a judge and a mother, Peter's escape from bullying into to the world of video games, Josie's fear of falling out of the popular crowd and her suicide back-up plan when she does, Matt's abusive behavior toward Josie, Josie's pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage, as well as Lewis Houghton's hunting lessons with his son Peter. One month before the shooting, Peter realizes that he has feelings for Josie, and sends her an email expressing his love. Courtney Ignatio reads this email before Josie and has Drew forward it to the entire school. Courtney then convinces Peter that Josie likes him. Peter asks Josie to join him later during lunch, only to suffer public humiliation as Matt pulls down Peter's pants and exposes his genitals to a cafeteria full of students. Peter's psychotic break is triggered on the morning of the shooting when he turns on his computer and accidentally opens the email he wrote to Josie. After the shooting, Peter is sent to jail while the trial proceeds. The probable cause hearing is waived as Peter admits to killing ten people and wounding nineteen others. Jordan, Peter's defense attorney, uses battered person syndrome caused by severe bullying and abuse as a basis to convince the jury that Peter’s actions were justified as a result of his suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Jordan argues that he was in a dissociative state at the time of the shooting. In the final stage of the trial, Josie reveals that she was the one who shot Matt the first time after grabbing a gun that fell out of Peter's bag. Peter later fired the fatal second shot. Peter promised her he wouldn't tell anyone what she had done, and he kept this promise, happy to have Josie as his friend again. Josie shot Matt because she hated herself for loving him. Peter is convicted of eight counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder (manslaughter) and is sentenced to life in prison. A month afterward, Peter commits suicide by stuffing a sock into his throat. At the end of the book, one year from the date of the massacre, Josie has received a five-year sentence for accessory of manslaughter and is regularly visited in jail by her mother. Throughout the book, Josie never told the whole story, instead repeating, "I can't remember." When Josie admits to shooting Matt, Peter's sentence is reduced. Alex and Patrick, who are expecting their first child, walk the halls of the high school. Sterling High has been extensively remodeled after the shooting. The cafeteria, the gym and locker room where the massacre took place have been replaced by a large glass atrium with a memorial to the dead in the center, a row of ten white chairs bolted to the floor. A plaque declares the building "A Safe Harbor."
10619242	/m/02qkdpr	The Cat Who Played Brahms	Lilian Jackson Braun	1987	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jim Qwilleran decides to get out of the city for a while and go on vacation to Moose County, Pickax, in the countryside. He stays at a lakeside cabin, owned by his old friend, Aunt Fanny. He has plans to write a book, however his plans get delayed when a peaceful fishing trip catches a body. Or is it simply an old tire, like the locals claim?
10621004	/m/02qkg2s	Wolf Moon	Charles de Lint	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A werewolf is hunted by a harper; trying to escape, Kern finds himself at an inn and decides to stay. His past has a tale of trying to find acceptance as a man and a werewolf and being nearly killed for revealing what he truly is. He decides at this inn to love the woman there and never reveal his animal nature. However, the harper has found him and threatens everything Kern now holds dear.
10626070	/m/02qkl1c	No Name	Wilkie Collins	1862	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in 1846, at Combe-Raven in West Somerset, the country residence of the happy Vanstone family. The first scene is a wonderfully dramatic legal thriller. The reader is introduced to Mr Andrew Vanstone, Mrs Vanstone and their two daughters Norah, age 26, happy and quiet, and the irrepressible Magdalen, just 18, beautiful but with a steely jaw. They live in peace and contentment, looked after by their governess, Miss Garth. Magdalen likes nothing better than to read at her window while her personal maid combs through and through her long hair. “Private theatricals!” is the cry as she signs up for a performance of Sheridan’s “The Rivals”. She finds herself a talented actress and falls in love with Frank Clare, the good for nothing but handsome son of a neighbour, whom she entices into the play. They are to be married, their fathers agree, and then the bottom drops out of their world. Mr Vanstone is killed in a local train crash, and Mrs Vanstone dies in childbirth. The girls discover from the lawyer Mr Pendril that their parents have only been married a few months and the wedding invalidated their will (which left everything to the daughters). The daughters have no name, no rights, no property and the entire family fortune is inherited by an older brother Michael Vanstone who has been estranged from the family for many years. With the help only of their loyal governess Miss Garth, the two girls set out to make their own way in the world. From the second scene onwards, the character of the novel completely changes. It becomes comic as the confidence tricksters try to outdo each other. This scene is in York, where Magdalen enlists the help of Captain Wragge, a distant relative of her mother’s and a professional swindler. He helps get Magdalen started on the stage in return for a share of the proceeds. His wife Matilda, a huge clown of a lady, has to be kept in check. Her head is full of recipes and dressmaking. Scene three is in Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth. Magdalen, having earned some money, forsakes the stage and plots to get her inheritance back. Michael Vanstone has died and his only son, Noel Vanstone is sickly and looked after by his housekeeper, Virginie Lecount, a shrewd woman who hopes to inherit his money. Magdalen goes to Lambeth disguised as Miss Garth to see how the land lies, but Mrs Lecount sees through her disguise and cuts a bit of cloth from the hem of her brown alpaca dress as a keepsake. Scene four is in Aldborough, Suffolk, where Magdalen tries to carry out her plot to regain her inheritance by marrying Noel Vanstone under an assumed name, with Captain and Mrs Wragge posing as her uncle and aunt. Wragge and Lecount plot and plot in their attempts to outdo each other. In the end, Lecount is sent on a false errand to Zurich, and Magdalen and Noel are married. Captain Wragge arranges the marriage on condition that he will never have to see Magdalen again once it has happened. Scene five is in Balliol Cottage, Dumfries. Noel is alone, as his wife has left to visit her sister Norah in London. Mrs Lecount is back from Zurich and explains who his wife really is, with the help of the cut bit of cloth from the brown placa dress. Noel at her direction rewrites his will, cutting off his wife and leaving a legacy to Lecount and everything else to Admiral Bartram his cousin. He encloses a secret letter, asking Admiral Bartram that the money be passed to young George Bartram, but only on the condition that he marry someone not a widow within six months, thus ensuring that Magdalen cannot marry George for the money. The strain of this scheming is all too much and he dies from a weak heart. Scene six is St John's Wood where Magdalen has lodgings. Estranged from Norah and from Miss Garth, who she thinks betrayed her husband’s whereabouts to Lecount, she hatches a crazy plot to disguise herself as a maid and infiltrate herself into Admiral Bartram’s house to look for the Secret Trust document. Her own maid Louisa helps to train her in return for Magdalen giving her the money to marry her fiance, the father of her illegitimate child, and move to Australia. The Seventh scene is at St Crux on the Marsh Essex and is very gothic, as Magdalen (working under Louisa's name as a parlour maid for Admiral Bartram) stalks through moonlit decaying halls and looks for rusty keys to help her find the all important Secret Trust. Eventually she manages it by following Admiral Bartram as he sleepwalks, but is discovered by his sidekick Mazey and thrown out of the house. The last scene is set in a poor lodging house, Aaron’s Building. Magdalen is ill and destitute, about to be carried off to hospital or the workhouse, when a handsome man appears and rescues her. It is Captain Kirke, a sailor who had seen and become enamored of her at Aldborough. Meanwhile Norah has married George Bartram, thus placing the inheritance back into the Vanstone family. Magdalen, in her illness and recovery, vows to be a better person and never again undertake any malice. Kirke and Magdalen profess their love for one another.
10632015	/m/02qkqn2	Marazan	Nevil Shute	1926	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Philip Stenning is a commercial pilot, trained during the First World War. After his engine fails, he crashes and is rescued by an escaped convict, Denis Compton, who turns out to have been framed for embezzlement by his Italian half-brother, Baron Rodrigo Mattani, who is smuggling drugs into England. The story tells how Stenning plays a key role in breaking that drug ring. It involves episodes characteristic of Shute: flying, small boat sailing, and a love story. Stenning was a major character in Shute's first (unpublished) novel Stephen Morris. Stenning also crops up as a comparatively minor character in Shute's next two novels So Disdained (1928) and Lonely Road (1932).
10632073	/m/02qkqp3	Orlovi Rano Lete		1959	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The book involves several young boys and girls and their role in assisting the Partisans in fighting the Germans invading Yugoslavia during World War II. There are allusions throughout to mythology such as the children's fear of the drekavac (monster) which they are told lives in the forest. The children are forced to conquer their supposed fear in order to assist the Partisans.
10633020	/m/02qkrbf	So Disdained	Nevil Shute	1928	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Peter L. Moran, the narrator, is agent to Lord Arner. Driving home after a dinner in Winchester, he picks up Maurice Lenden, who in 1917 had been a fellow pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. The story tells how Lenden had been flying a photographic espionage mission for the Russians, how he came to be doing that, and discusses the morality of acting as a traitor to his country. As in Marazan the book expresses respect for the Italian Fascist movement of the time. The validity, or otherwise, of that political position requires considerable historical perspective. Philip Stenning (the first person narrator of Marazan) appears again in this novel, once again portrayed as a 'rough diamond' with a debatable sense of moral justice.
10639019	/m/02qky5r	The Throwback	Michael Carroll		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot is based around the ancient Flawse family, landed gentry based at the falling-down Flawse Hall, (near "Flawse Fell") in the wilds of Northumberland, just south of the Anglo-Scottish border. The single remaining family member is a cantankerous octenegarian named Edwin Tyndale Flawse. His illegitimate grandson Lockhart (aka "the Bastard") combines sexual and educational innocence with an alarming propensity for violence when he or his wife is threatened. The old man was born in the late 19th century, and his main aim in the very autumn years of his life is to find the father of his bastard grandchild and flog him within an inch of his life. The plot involves the pair making a double marriage while on a cruise, Edwin to the grasping middle-aged Mrs. Sandicott (who desires to marry a very rich old man with as short a lifespan remaining as possible) and Lockhart to her innocent and beautiful daughter Jessica (who knows as little of real life as he does and wants nothing more than a stereotypical male hero). One plot strand has the older couple moving to Flawse Hall; the pair immediately begin fighting as she realises that the old man has no immediate intention of dying and that Flawse Hall is not the aristocractic seat she imagined. The house has no electricity or modern appliances, and is located miles from the nearest town of Black Pockrington and the nearest railway station of Hexham, and thanks to a clause in her new husband's will although she will inherit everything after he dies, she can never leave or else she'll forfeit the entire estate. The other strand has Lockhart and Jessica moving to Sandicott Crescent in the south London suburb of Purley and fighting an innocents' battle together against the modern world. Lockhart is not at home in his new suburban environment and subsequently loses his job in his mother-in-law's accountancy firm (courtesy of and in retaliation by his mother-in-law when Edwin's will includes another clause stating that if Lockhart ever finds his natural father the entire Flawse estate and inheritance immediately reverts to him) and longs for home. Unable to get another job since he doesn't statistically exist (thanks to his grandfather's refusal to register him with a birth certificate or with the National Health Service), Lockhart embarks on a prolonged, complicated, merciless and ultimately successful campaign to evict the tenants of the houses owned by Jessica so that they can be sold. The finale has the two strands reunited back in Northumberland and involves the inevitable discovery that the spirit of the Flawse family lives on in "the Bastard" but is spiced up by several deaths, the inclusion of a human taxidermist, extensive use of sound equipment and a vicious battle with the taxmen and "the excise men" (Her Majesty's Customs and Excise Department)).
10639949	/m/02qkz8g	The Great Pursuit	Tom Sharpe	1977	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Frensic and Futtle is a small and successful literary agency. But following a successful court case by a woman who claimed to have been libeled by one of their authors, the agency rapidly loses business. One day, a manuscript for a book called Pause O Men for the Virgin arrives at the agency, together with a note from the author's solicitor, saying that the author wishes to remain anonymous and that the agency has carte blanche on how it deals with the book. The book turns out to deal with the love affair between an 80-year old woman and a 17-year old youth. The populist American publisher Hutchmeyer agrees to sign a deal to publish the book in the United States for $2 million, providing the author carries out a promotional tour of the country. Sonia and Frensic decide to use aspiring but unpublished author Peter Piper to stand in for the anonymous author. But when Piper receives a proof copy of Pause from the publisher by mistake, it takes a certain amount of persuasion and arm-twisting from Sonia Futtle to convince Piper to travel to America.
10642116	/m/02ql0v_	Nappily Ever After		2000-12-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of a young woman, Venus Johnston, who has grown weary of her four-year releationship with her boyfriend, and having to maintain her long, dark hair. Resolving to create a new, independent life for herself, she leaves her boyfriend and cuts her hair to an almost-bald stubby look. Her ex-boyfriend shortly begins dating another woman, sparking feelings of doubt and jealousy in Venus.
10643053	/m/02ql1f6	The Island of the Mighty	Evangeline Walton	1970	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Gwynedd in north Wales is ruled by Math, son of Mathonwy, whose feet must be held by a virgin at all times except while he is at war. Math's nephew Gilfaethwy is in love with Goewin, the current footholder, and Gilfaethwy's brother Gwydion tricks Math into going to war against Pryderi so Gilfaethwy can have access to her. Gwydion kills Pryderi, Prince of Dyfed, in single combat, and Gilfaethwy rapes Goewin. Math marries Goewin in compensation for her rape, and banishes Gwydion and Gilfaethwy, transforming them into a breeding pair of deer, then pigs, then wolves. After three years they are restored to human form and return. Math needs a new footholder, and Gwydion suggests his sister, Arianrhod, but when Math magically tests her virginity, she gives birth to two sons. One, Dylan, immediately takes to the sea. The other is raised by Gwydion, but Arianrhod swears that he will never have a name or arms unless she gives them to him, and refuses to do so. Gwydion tricks her into naming him Llew Llaw Gyffes (Llew Skilful Hand) and giving him arms. She then swears he will never have a wife of any race living on earth, so Gwydion and Math make him a beautiful wife from flowers, and name her Blodeuwedd ("Flowers"). Blodeuwedd falls in love with a passing hunter called Goronwy, and they plot to kill Llew. Blodewedd tricks Llew into revealing the means by which he can be killed, but when Goronwy attempts to do the deed, Llew escapes, though wounded, transformed into an eagle. Gwydion finds Llew and transforms him back into human form, and turns Blodeuwedd into an owl (Blodeuwedd, literally "Flower Face," means "Owl"). Goronwy offers to compensate Llew, but Llew insists on returning the blow that was struck against him. He kills Goronwy with his spear, which is thrown so hard it pierces him through the stone he is hiding behind.
10643068	/m/02ql1fx	Rab and his Friends	John Brown			 "Rab and His Friends" is a simple story of how John Brown's teacher and employer, Doctor James Syme, taught and operated. The other main characters are Rab, a ferocious dog, his owner the Howgate Carter Jamie, and the Carter's ailing wife. The story begins with a fight between Rab and a bull-terrier and ends with the faithful sheep dog's funeral. Ailie had a lump in her breast. “One fine October afternoon I ( the student ) was leaving the Hospital and saw the large gates open and in walked Rab with that great and easy saunter of his. After him came Jess, now white from age, with her cart and in it a woman carefully wrapped up, the Carrier leading the horse anxiously and looking back. When he saw me, James, (for his name was James Noble), he made a curt and grotesque bow, and said, Maister John, this is the mistress; she has got a trouble in her breest some kind of income we are thinking. By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled with straw with her husband's plaid round her and had his big coat with its large white metal buttons over her feet. Had Solomon in all his glory been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate, he would not have done it more daintily that did James the Howgate Carrier when he had lifted down Ailie, his wife. Rab led the way into the consulting room, grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential, Ailie sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck and without a word showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it carefully. What could I say? There it was, hard as stone, a centre of horrid pain. Next day my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. It could be removed; it would give her speedy relief. She curtsied. "Tomorrow” said the kind surgeon - a man of few words. The following day, at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the stair, eager to secure good places. The theatre is crowded; much talk and fun, and all the cordiality and stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of assistants is there. In comes Ailie: one look at her quiets and abates the eager students. That beautiful old woman is too much for them; they sit down, and are dumb. These rough boys feel the power of her presence. She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, black bombazeen petticoat, showing her white worsted stockings and her carpet shoes. Ailie stepped up, and laid herself on the table, as her friend the surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at James, shut her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The operation was at once begun; it was necessarily slow; chloroform was then unknown. The pale face showed its pain, but was still and silent. Rab's soul was working within him; he growled and gave now and then a sharp impatient yelp; but James had him firm. It is over; she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the table, looks for James; then turning to the surgeons and the students, she curtsies, - and in a low, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has behaved ill. All of us wept like children; the surgeon happed her up carefully, - and, resting on James and me, Ailie went to her room. We put her to bed. James said, 'Maister John, I'll be her nurse”, and as swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, peremptory little man. As before, they spoke little. For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed 'by the first intention'; for as James said, 'Oor Ailie's skin's ower clean to beil'. The students came in quiet and anxious. She said she liked to see their young, honest faces. Four days after the operation, my patient had a sudden and long shivering, a 'groosin', as she called it. Her eyes were too bright, her cheek coloured; she was restless, and ashamed of being so; mischief had begun. On looking at the wound, a blush of red told the secret; her pulse was rapid, her breathing anxious and quick, she wasn’t herself, as she said, and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we could, but she died in three to four days. No asepsis, a dog in theatre and no anaesthesia. Speed, trust and hope.
10643911	/m/02ql21v	The Book of Sorrows				 The Book of Sorrows begins almost exactly where the last book ended. The great war is over and Chauntecleer and his animals are all mending the damage that it left. Chauntecleer leads them on a journey to find a new resting place, while the climate slowly changes from summer to autumn. Early in their journey the animals are obligated to care for Russell, the fox, one of the main characters from the last novel, who suffered poisoning from biting into too many basilisks during the conflict. Russel's injury has caused his lips and nose to crack and ooze. It seems that it will never heal because the fox has trouble keeping quiet. Pertelote, Chauntecleer's wife, is reduced to drugging the fox with a narcotic in hopes that it will keep him from using his mouth long enough for it to heal. Freitag, the mouse brother who is closest to Russel, tries continually to get him to stop talking, but- of course- the fox doesn’t listen. He instead brings Freitag to a nearby stream where he emphatically tells him how to catch minnows with his tail until his lips and nose begin to crack and bubble. The fox eventually breaks down during his lesson to the mouse and cries out, "I only want to talk!" The animals hear him and come to calm him down. He is near death and his injuries have retrogressed. The fox seems to have lost his will to live, for he is no longer speaking. Chauntecleer begins to help Russell eat, by first placing the food in the foxes mouth, and mechanically grinds the fox's teeth with his own wings. But the poison has rotted the roots of Russels' teeth, which loosen during Chauntecleer's feedings. Chauntecleer then begins chewing the food with his own mouth, and spitting it into the foxes, but it soon becomes apparent to him that he is feeding a lifeless corpse. Devastated by his death, Chauntecleer and his company move farther away from the land where the war took place. Along the way they contact a beetle named Black Lazarus, a grave digger. Chauntecleer requests a special grave for the fox, one by the great ocean, Wyrsmere, which requires that the beetle first line the grave with stone, lest the body be washed up. The animals have a service for their fallen comrade and then continue on, looking for a new resting place. Eventually they come to a pleasant hemlock tree rooted near a river. Here the animals make their new home. In a canyon nearby, two coyotes are making a new home for their growing family. They find a crippled bird who can only say two things: “Jug Jug” and “Tereu.” What is unknown to the coyotes is that the bird is guarding a hole that is somewhere in the canyon- one that, when the bird descended, led her to the center of the earth where she found Wyrm who managed to trick her into drinking some of his putrid essence, causing her tongue to rot and crippling her form and speech. At the hemlock tree it is discovered that Chauntecleer is on a downward spiral into a deep depression brought on by the loss of Russell and Mundo Cani. At one point the rooster walks down to the river, stands over it and sees his reflection. After a few moments he simply decides to let himself fall into it, and be swept away into the more violent currents. As he is drowning the rooster actually begins to think his end would be for the better, considering his horrible guilt. Just as he is about to die he is rescued; pulled ashore by the Dun Cow, who begins to clean him. Chauntecleer questions why she decided to save him, and feels that he cannot stand her cleaning him, for he is completely undeserving of compassion. The Dun Cow leaves him, and the rooster resolves to simply lie there, and sleep, for as long as he could stand. The animals manage to get by without Chauntecleers attention. Instead the rooster simply walks about in a fog of delirium and self pity. Even when he is sleeping, he suffers, for in his dreams he hears horrible singing that taunts him in his sorrow. Chauntecleer only becomes more conscious when he comes upon the sight of Chalcedony, one of his hens, feasting on nothing but locust shells. The fatter hens have left her nothing in the way of seed or grass, and thus she is emaciated. The rooster seeks to console her. He promises to set things right, and to care for her until she is well, for he feels that this may be the only thing he can actually do to earn any sort of redemption; is to try to help others in the present. Unfortunately, though, the rooster is quickly pulled away from the animals again, for the remains of Russell the fox have re-animated due to the dark influence of Wyrm on his body. Pertelote, upon hearing this report from Chauntecleer’s general, John Wesley, rushes to the ocean side, where Russell’s grave is. She gets there in time to see Chauntecleer, bruised and cut, committing the twice killed body to the ocean Wyrmsmere. Pertelote comforts him by holding him and stroking her husband, but he admits that he cannot stand it, for the love of his subjects is more than he thinks he deserves. Ultimately Chauntecleer decides that he can at least do his best to restore some order to his people, and thus keep Chalcedony from starving. The rooster returns with his wife to the hemlock tree where he instates upon his kind a new law. Chauntecleer intends for them now to live in socialism; each animal scouring as much food as they can, and then laying it down in food bins, where it will be distributed evenly among them all. This new form of order comes as a great revival to the animals, which causes their quality of life to improve, and their feeling of leadership returning. Soon, animals from all over begin to come to the hemlock tree, for the cold winter months have made them desperate and hungry, and they all seem willing to file themselves under this new law in exchange for enough to feed their families. The forest comes alive with brotherhood and order, yet the rooster still holds on to a deeply seated depression. This becomes increasingly hard on his wife, as any affection is rejected by Chauntecleer in his guilt. The rooster’s dreams also become worse, as the evil songs begin to sing of Russell and Mundo Cani. Chauntecleer begins to think that these dreams may actually be the product of Wyrm. In the background he can always hear a woman’s wretched sobbing and two completely indistinguishable sounds. Chauntecleer spends his nights stalking around his territory, still shrouded in a mist of sorrow. Chauntecleer’s redemption finally comes to him in the form of a coyote named Ferric, who has come to find food for his newborn children. Upon finding Chauntecleer’s kingdom, he integrates himself and begins taking sufficient provisions for his family. Ferric does this a few more times before he and Chauntecleer actually communicate. He learns about the coyote’s home, his children and wife, and the bird with no tongue. When he inquires the name of that bird, Ferric only knows to repeat the only things that the bird can say: “Jug Jug” and “Tereu.” These are the words that Chauntecleer hears in his nightmares, which lead him to believe that the bird would know how to travel into the earth. Chauntecleer’s mood improves. He begins crowing in triumph and rallying the animals together to his cause. He promises them all that he has the ability to go and rescue their savior, Mundo Cani, and thus bring back to their society the greatness of the times before the war. At first, Pertelote is overwhelmed with excitement and enthusiasm over her husband's newfound passion for life, but that is soon replaced with dread when she comes to understand her husband’s plan. Her fears that Chauntecleer's mission is nothing short of suicide are confirmed when he confides to her of his attempt to rescue Mundo Cani and defeat Wyrm and he knows that his chances of survival are slim. The next morning Pertelote sees him standing by the hemlock with a band of animals that have agreed to go with him to where the coyote lives. Chauntecleer mounts a black stags antlers and rides off as the herd of animals set out on a journey to redeem their leader. Eventually, the animals are led to the crippled bird by Ferric the coyote. Chaunteleceer asks the bird to reveal the location of Wyrm. The bird complies by leading him behind two bushes where he finds the opening. Chauntecleer enters the darkness followed by his general, John Wesley. John Wesley traverses the cave to the bowels of the planet, where he finds the skeletal remains of Wyrm, covered in small glowing worm-like parasites that act as a light source. The weasel finds Chauntecleer sitting inside the Wyrm’s skull, clutching a smaller skull in his wing. John asks if he has defeated Wyrm, to which Chauntecleer replies that Wyrm had been dead when he found him, and that his essence had been consumed by the parasites all around them. He then reveals that the skull he is holding is the head of Mudo Cani, who died after three days in the earth. Chauntecleer feels that he is robbed of his only chance to redeem himself, and therefore feels that he should simply lie in the earth until he expires. John Wesley refuses to give up on his master, however, and to coaxes him back to the surface. The Weasel eventually steals the precious skull from Chauntecleer’s grasp and runs all the way to the entrance with it, taunting Chauntecleer to keep him following. The two animals emerge from the hole in the earth; the weasel first, and then Chantecleer. Chauntecleer attacks the weasel with his spur, cutting at John Wesley’s haunch, which he just brushes off and continues running through the canyon. The rooster in all of his rage, leaps onto the black stag that had carried him there, and commands him to take after the weasel, reinforcing it with a sharp jab of his other spur, deep into the stag’s side. The animal reacts to the pain by starting a stampede of all the confused animals that had come along with Chauntecleer. The weasel manages to stay ahead of them just long enough to reach the coyote’s den where one of the young coyotes comes to John Wesley's rescue. The Weasel tries to warn the young coyote of the incoming danger, but not before his mother, Ferric’s wife Rachel comes out to see him as well. In the end, the stampede of animals comes rushing after John Wesley, and though he manages to escape with his life, the coyotes are crushed under the stampeding herd. The animals scatter, and the rooster reclaims the skull from where John Wesley left it and begins his long walk home, leaving the two dead coyotes and a hidden general alone. Meanwhile, the animals at the hemlock tree are facing an oncoming snow storm, and with Chauntecleer away, the full force of leadership begins to bear down on Pertelote’s head. The weather continues to grow harsher, and although Pertelote crushes any rebellion with the memory of Chauntecleer, the unity of the paradise begins to fade. Eventually the rooster returns home in very poor shape, for the long stormy path that he’s taken has left him dirty and cold. The animals are indifferent when they see him, as they were expecting to see the glorious party return with him alongside Mudo Cani yet find only a tattered rooster with a skull. Pertelote confronts Chauntecleer about his journey, and is solemn when she hears bout Mundo Cani and Wyrm’s death. Chauntecleer says that now the only thing left for him to do is give Mudo Cani a proper burial, and with that he leans in to embrace his wife, who is taken back as one of the glowing string-like parasites comes climbing out of his nasal passages. Chauntecleer feels shunned by his wife and decides to rest in the hemlock tree. By now the bird can hear the voices of the worms inside his head, even when he is not asleep. As he sits on a branch of the hemlock tree, they tell him that the animals are plotting a revolt for his unfulfilled promises. In fact, the wolves in the area are actually trying to turn the animals against their ruler, threatening to kill anyone who is loyal to him, but the paranoia that the parasites instill in Chauntecleer only makes the situation worse. It is when he is sitting in the tree that he begins to notice the scared accusing look in all the animals faces, and combined with the voices’ subliminal suggestions, their staring causes him to leap up in a bit of rage and crow, “What have I ever done to you?” After this outburst the animals begin to disperse to unknown fates, and soon, all but the original hens have left. In a bout of insanity the rooster leaves the hemlock and goes with the skull of Mudo Cani to bury it. Pertelote goes after him, following him all the way to the ruins of the fortress that was built during the summer’s war, knowing that the wolves would surely find him there and kill him. She tries to confess her love to him, and explain her revulsion earlier, but he disregards it all, saying that she must have been a liar from the beginning who never loved him. Eventually the wolves arrive to kill Chauntecleer, but he manages to defeat them in a glorious battle, using only his wits and war-spurs. He is left quite ravaged by the fight, though, both mentally and physically. The rooster can see that all of the animals that had forsaken him before have returned to see his great battle- even Ferric, whose wife and children were killed by Chauntecleer’s actions. The rooster’s pain climaxes when he discovers that Ferric is so quick to forgive him, and begins to lick him where he has been wounded. Chauntecleer cannot stand to accept the love of the Coyote and recoils from him. In the end, Chauntecleer is in so much pain from the suffering he has caused, confusion he feels over his people and his wife, and sick influence of the parasites inside of him, that he can only resolve to take his war-spur and cut himself open, and let all of the evil worms within him drain out with his blood. Pertelote comes over to him and holds him gently, singing to him, and trying to comfort him in his last moments of life. Chauntecleer appears to have some sort of relief in death, and the last thing he says before passing on is that he could not manage to bury the skull of Mudo Cani, because his nose was far to big to fit in any of the holes he dug.
10661586	/m/02qlklb	Aquamarine	Alice Hoffman	2001	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is based upon two schoolgirls, Hailey and Claire, who have lived as neighbors and best friends for many years. Their favorite place for amusement has been the Capri Beach Club for as long as they can remember. However, the Capri Beach Club has become ruinous via neglect by its staff. When Claire's grandparents, with whom she lives, decide to leave the area and move to Florida, the girls are dismayed. They spend hours trying to make their last days together as long as possible, both frightened by the future. When a violent thunderstorm occurs, a large quantity of trash is deposited in the Capri Beach Club. In the swimming pool, Hailey and Claire discover the spoiled yet beautiful creature that will change their lives: a mermaid named Aquamarine. The next morning, Aquamarine surfaces after some hesitation, being stimulated to do so by the presence of the handsome Raymond. During the night, Aquamarine has undergone mild hardships; she has eaten very little, has been separated from her six sisters, and is suffering from the chlorine in the pool. Hailey and Claire advise Aquamarine to return to the ocean, however she refuses, because of her new attachment to Raymond. Claire and Hailey read books that contain information pertaining to marine life-forms, trying to find an answer to Aquamarine's troubling conditions. They learn that mermaids cannot survive on land for more than a week. The necessity of returning Aquamarine to the ocean is thus made more urgent. In order to persuade Aquamarine to return to her home, Hailey and Claire arrange that she will spend one evening with Raymond, after which she must leave. To compensate for her nudity and lack of legs, they plan to dress her in a long blue gown and place her in a wheelchair. Before the meeting, the two girls confide their story in Claire's grandfather, Maury. He believes their story because of his own encounter with a mermaid once. He takes them to the Capri Beach Club, where they organize the table and food for Aquamarine and Raymond. They then lift Aquamarine out of the pool – an operation wherein Claire must overcome a hesitation to enter water – and introduce her to Raymond. To explain her acquaintance with them, they present her as a distant cousin. Raymond is awestruck by Aquamarine, with whom he spends the evening happily. Meanwhile, Claire and Hailey begin to embrace their future and rekindle their hope. At 9 o'clock, they take Aquamarine back to the swimming pool. As she leaves, Aquamarine gives Raymond a seashell, by which to contact her by speaking her name into it; she will hear this call regardless of their relative positions. Hailey and Claire sleep together in Claire's soon-to-be-vacant house, which has been made empty of furniture. They have by now grown very fond of Aquamarine, and she of them. Hailey and Claire arrive to take Aquamarine back to the ocean. They meet Raymond, who regrets that he cannot bid Aquamarine farewell before he leaves for Florida. Just then, a boy named Arthur falls into the swimming pool. Aquamarine rescues him, with the help of Raymond. Raymond, seeing her tail and thus realizing she is a mermaid, is utterly shocked, however, this discovery does nothing to impair his adoration of her. Hailey and Claire carry Aquamarine to the ocean and cast her into the water, where she is restored to full health and strength. They promise never to forget her and return to the Capri Beach Club, thanking its owner for the best summer of their lives. Claire and her grandparents later move away to Florida. After her departure, the Capri Beach Club is dismembered. Hailey does not send news of this, wishing that Claire retain her memory of the Capri Beach Club as it had formerly been. In Florida, Claire learns to swim and encounters Raymond, who has come to live nearby. From him, she learns that Aquamarine is in the vicinity. Claire thinks to take a photograph of the mermaid, but defers on the grounds that Hailey will soon visit. In 2006 a movie was made of the popular novel with some differences.
10663585	/m/02qlmr3	The Hope	Herman Wouk		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 These crucial events are mainly seen through the eyes of two fictional characters, who meet near the beginning of the novel: Zev Barak and Joseph Blumenthal (nicknamed "Don Kishote"). Wouk portrays several real-life Israeli leaders: David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Mickey Marcus, Yigael Yadin, Ariel Sharon, Motta Gur, and others. Both the real and fictional characters are portrayed as brave and decent human beings with character flaws, who manage to lead Israel through three major wars in spite of the nation being surrounded, outgunned, and torn by internal conflicts as well as external threats. Zev is a junior officer in the unsuccessful attacks on Latrun. Joseph Blumenthal, newly arrived in Israel, joins a new Israeli unit of troops who bravely attack. He acquires the nickname "Don Kishote" when teased about riding a mule wearing an old helmet ("Don Kishote" is Don Quixote in Hebrew). Both Zev and Kishote choose to stay in the Israeli army when the War of Independence ends. The two accompany reporters with the first convoy taking supplies to Jerusalem up the Burma Road bypassing Latrun. Zev visits the US as part of the Israeli delegation to Mickey Marcus's funeral at West Point, there he meets Christian Cunningham, a CIA analyst sympathetic to Israel throughout the story, and his daughter Emily, who eventually becomes Zev's mistress. Don Kishote is in love with Shayna Matisdorf, but has a brief sexual encounter with Yael Luria on a trip to Paris just before the 1956 Suez war. He returns to Israel and is part of the paratroop force invading Egypt in Operation Kadesh. Zev commands an effort to transport landing craft overland from Haifa to Eilat to supply Israeli units advancing on Sharm el-Sheik. When Yael tells Kishote she became pregnant during their encounter in Paris, he marries her because he feels the child needs a father, even though he is still in love with Shayna Matisdorf. Kishote supervises the paratroop training of several African officers, including Idi Amin. Idi Amin is portrayed as lacking the courage to jump out of an airplane, and Kishote arranges a fake jump so Amin qualifies for paratroop wings. Zev is sent on several diplomatic trips to the United States, and he and Emily Cunningham become lovers the day of President Kennedy's assassination. In 1967, he is the Israeli military attache in Washington, and during the Six-Day War conveys to the Israeli government a message from Christian Cunningham that the U.S. government would not oppose Israel conquering the Golan Heights, even though it will not publicly say so. Zev's wife Nakhama tells Emily Cunningham she knows of their affair and accepts it, but Emily is unable to continue the affair knowing that Nakhama knows about it. In the Six-Day War, Kishote is wounded in the Sinai campaign, then leaves his hospital near Jerusalem to take part in the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem.
10669724	/m/02qls55	South of the Pumphouse	Les Claypool			 The basic novel plot line is when two brothers get together for a fishing trip in memory of their recently deceased father. But while one, Ed, has left the small town of El Sobrante (the actual town where Claypool grew up) to go live in the town of Berkeley, California, the other, Earl, has stayed in the town and has become a regular meth addict. When Earl invites his best friend, Donny, along on a fishing trip things get heated between the left wing Ed and right wing racist Donny. When Earl mistakenly concludes that Donny has slept with his wife, he beats him to death with a boat pole. The rest of the novel is concerned with the brothers' efforts to dispose of Donny's body, a twist in the tale which explains Earl's mistake and a brief epilogue concerning the sturgeon which the three men were trying to catch during their day's fishing. Claypool fleetingly addresses the themes of racism and urban decay in his novel.
10680512	/m/02qm27n	Prime Directive	Judith Reeves-Stevens		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On a local moon of Talin IV a Federation first contact observation post is monitoring the events on the planet below with growing confusion and concern. Talin IV, a world inhabited by a reptilian society with a culture equivalent to late-20th century Earth, and possible first contact prospect for the Federation in the near future, is now a world divided. The two principal nation states of the planet have become increasingly paranoid and in danger of instigating a nuclear war. Provocations seem to be coming from each side, although both sides deny any intrusions into enemy space. Each nation's heightened security has made the first contact office work much harder, as detection has become more likely. Further complicating matters, Talin scientists have been researching naturally occurring dilithium crystals that may be capable of sensing the advanced subspace signals used by the galactic community. While the discovery of an interplanetary culture would allow for contact with the Federation, it is also possible the Talin will destroy themselves before they make that historic leap. To avoid accidentally revealing their presence and possibly affecting the delicate political situation, the Talin system is locked down by the first contact office so no use of subspace or warp drive are permitted near the planet. While preparing for their mission, James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy discuss the similar situation that faced Earth. To determine whether or not the first contact office has been discovered, Kirk and a joint Enterprise/first contact office team beam down to the planet at one point, narrowly escaping detection. Soon after, Kirk prevents an accidental nuclear detonation from erupting into full-scale nuclear war. Afterward, Kirk convenes a board of inquiry on his own actions, and it is determined that he acted to prevent what was most likely a computer error from destroying a world. However, shortly after the inquiry, all the planet's nuclear arsenals are fired at their targets at once. The Enterprise is crippled when an intercontinental ballistic missile warhead explodes nearby. The fact that the missile targets the Enterprise is seemingly conclusive proof that Kirk's actions have not only revealed the existence of his ship, but that his prior intervention has also prevented the Talin culture from learning the lessons needed to prevent nuclear self-destruction. Kirk and the other senior officers (with the exception of Scotty, who was not on the bridge at the time) are blamed for the destruction of Talin civilization, attributed to their supposed violation of Starfleet's Prime Directive (hence the title of the book), and either resign from Starfleet, are demoted to ensign, or in Uhura's case, court-martialed and dishonorably discharged. Although they are separated, Kirk's crew do not give up individual efforts to return and establish what went wrong at Talin. Kirk, under assumed aliases, works his way across space as laborer and cargo chief. Sulu and Chekov join up with an Orion smuggler and slave trader in order to steal his ship. Uhura and McCoy join forces and purchase a space craft and create a fictitious identity for McCoy, the dread pirate "Black Ire". On Earth, Spock joins forces with a radical student group that advocates the elimination of the Prime Directive. Through manipulation of the student group, the Vulcan embassy and the by-laws of the Federation, Spock arranges for two Talin astronauts (one from each of the two Talin superpowers) who escaped before the planet's destruction, to speak before the Federation Council as ambassadors for their planet and request the Federation's help. Through various means, Spock, Kirk and the other senior Enterprise officers rendezvous with Scotty (who has been working feverishly to refurbish the nearly-destroyed Enterprise) at the now-closed observation post on Talin's moon. It is revealed that the nations of Talin IV were manipulated into attacking each other by insect-like drones of a planet-sized creature called the "One" slowly approaching Talin IV. The drones (called the "Many") were sent to prepare Talin IV for consumption by the One. The drones inadvertently fomented the nuclear exchange by their efforts to create conditions on the planets' surface conducive to the growth of the algae that is the One's food. Ultimately, a gas giant planet in the Talin system is substituted for Talin IV as the One's new food source, sparing Talin IV without destroying the One. Restored to command of the Enterprise, Kirk lands on the surface of the planet with an away team which begins reviving billions of Talin who have survived by going into hibernation.
10686293	/m/02qm7_c	The Boy Who Grew Flowers			{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Boy Who Grew Flowers follows the character of Rink Bowagon, a little boy disliked among his peers that has the ability to sprout flowers on his body on full moons. This changes one day when a new girl named Angelina starts attending his class, causing Rink to become enamored of her. Rink has no way of knowing that like him, Angelina also has something special about her that he will eventually discover during the school's full moon dance.
10688668	/m/02qmbvt	The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell	Lilian Jackson Braun	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This story occurs during Pickax’s 150th anniversary celebration, called Pickax Now, and which takes place over the course of one year. Qwilleran’s barn is going to be sketched by an architectural student as part of his entry portfolio for architectural college. The young architect is Harvey Ledfield, nephew of Nathan and Doris Ledfield. The Ledfields are one of the rich old families who live in the community of Purple Point. Harvey brings along his fiancée Clarissa Moore, who is in Journalism School. When they arrive, Harvey begins sketching but then Koko drops on his head, something he had never done before. Clarissa breaks up with Harvey after they return Down Below, but she returns to Pickax looking for a job at The Moose County Something. She confesses to Qwilleran she never was really engaged to Harvey; he just wants Nathan and Doris to think he is going to get married and continue the Ledfield bloodline. As they are childless, he hopes they will support his plans and leave him a substantial inheritance. During the Pickax Now celebrations, Qwilleran attends the Ogilvie-Fugtree reunion, because he knows the hosts and plans to write about it for his column. Two cousins go out rabbit hunting, and only one returns. Both were set to receive a large sum of money from a rich uncle, so it would seem one killed the other for the money. The other rabbit hunter is indeed found dead, so the first is arrested. However, he is later released because of a lack of evidence. It is never said whether the shooting was murder or accidental death. In the meantime, the Ledfields have come down with allergies, but this seems unimportant until Clarissa brings something to Qwill’s attention. Harvey had never got Clarissa a ring so Doris gave her one before she knew the engagement was a ruse. Clarissa wanted to give it back, but she could not get the Ledfields on the phone nor was she allowed to go in their house. Qwilleran calls the Ledfields’ doctor, who says she too was considering calling in an allergy specialist. Before any more can be done however, both the Ledfields die from respiratory complications. Clarissa brings her friend Vicky to Pickax to participate in a kitten auction for charity and to watch the Labor Day Pickax Now parade. She leaves before she has a chance to speak to Qwilleran, but she leaves a letter for him. Apparently Harvey had come up to Moose County not too long ago, looking for money to finance a ski lodge. But the Ledfields are unwilling to give money to such a venture; they are only willing to pay for his college tuition. Clarissa informs Harvey, Vicky and Vicky’s boyfriend about deadly mold, which she wrote a report on for journalism school, and Vicky’s boyfriend, a construction specialists, said that it could be found in the closets of old houses. Clarissa tells Vicky how Harvey became furious when the Ledfields would not fund the ski lodge even though it seemed he would be entering college and he had a fiancée. He even refused to go to church that morning, and Vicky suspected he had used the time to put mold in the ventilation shafts of the Ledfields' bedroom. Qwilleran shared this with the police, and Harvey is arrested. In the meantime, the Ledfields' wills is opened, revealing that the Ledfields left their collection of mounted animals to the city and funded the creation of a music center in Pickax and a museum in their old home. They also gave funds for a massive music foundation that would make the Ledfield name famous worldwide, to be set up in a city with a population of one million or more. Shortly after the mystery is solved, a tragic accident at the ill-fated Black Creek bridge takes the life of Qwill's long-time eccentric friend, Elizabeth Hart, the owner of the Grist Mill fine restaurant. In honor of her, the Black Creek Bridge is set to be repaired so that no more deaths occur.
10691647	/m/02qmfl3	Phantom Lady	Cornell Woolrich	1942	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A man is first accused, and then convicted, of murdering his wife. As his execution date approaches, his friends frantically search for another woman who would be his alibi witness—but they cannot even find proof that she exists.
10693442	/m/02qmgdm	Diary of a Bad Year	John Maxwell Coetzee	2007-09-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist, called Señor C. by the other characters, is an aging South African writer living in Sydney. The novel consists of his essays and musings alongside diary entries by both Señor C. and Anya, a neighbor whom he has hired as a typist. The essays, which take up the larger part of each page, are on wide-ranging topics, including the politics of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Guantanamo Bay, and terrorism. The diary entries appear beneath the essays and describe the relationship that develops between the two characters, a relationship that ultimately leads to subtle evolutions in both their worldviews.
10697187	/m/02qmjsv	Betrayal	Fiona McIntosh		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Torkyn Gynt, or Tor, is a sixteen-year-old boy who lives in a small village in the rural areas of Tallinor, a monarchy in which anyone with magical powers, called sentients, are bridled, branded, and ultimately sentenced to death, in following with ancient fear by royally-employed Inquistors, led by the fearsome and cruel Inquistor Goth. Tor and local beauty Alyssa, teenagers in love, are both sentient, however, to the surprise of those who are aware of their powers, their skills go undetected. At a bridling in their local village, in which a young maiden is brutally maimed by Goth, Torkyn uses his powers and is detected by mysterious royal Physic Merkhud. Following a festival and an interrupted proposal, Alyssa and Torkyn are separated, and Merkhud convinces Torkyn to learn medicine and be his apprentice at the Palace in Tal. Merkhud's wife, Sorrel, meanwhile manipulates Alyssa to travel Tal with her. Alyssa becomes bitter and believes Tor no longer loves her; Torkyn believes Alyssa will not let him psychically link with her because she is angry over the interrupted proposal. It is revealed to Tor that he was an orphan of a fire which burnt down his house and killed his parents. Tor travels to Tal alone and distraught over his lover's disappearance. On the way, he encounters a cripple named Cloot of the Rork'yel, being beaten in another village. He rescues Cloot and becomes close friends, at the same time befriending a young prostitute named Eryn, and Eryn and Torkyn have sexual intercourse. He also meets the Prime, the King's second-in-command, also in charge of the nation's security, whose name is Cyrus. Cyrus is suspicious of Tor, and learns of Tor's powers when Tor saves Cyrus from a band of ruffians, sworn to secrecy because of his gratitude. Tor on the way visits Tallinor's Great Forest, believed to be enchanted, and finds his way to the haven in the middle, the Heartwood. It is here Lys, a woman who has spoken to Cloot in dreams, transforms Cloot into a peregrine falcon. Cloot accompanies Torkyn through the rest of the journey to Tal, where he becomes popular quickly with King Lorys, Queen Nyria, and the royal court as a talented physic. Alyssa and Sorrel make their way to Caremboche, a place where sentient women may flee the punishment of Inquisitors and spend their time archiving, among other passive crafts, for the good of Tallinor. A Caremboche woman, called Untouchable, must be a virgin and may not engage in any sexual or romantic relations. The punishment is execution for the woman and her lover. They pause at a town where a circus is being held. While at an inn, Alyssa is encountered alone by Goth, who makes unwanted advances towards Alyssa. Sorrel's appearance in the nick of time saves Alyssa, and Sorrel and Alyssa attend the circus. A performer, Saxon Fox, reveals himself to Alyssa as her protector, also having entertained Lys's presence in his dreams. Goth hates gypsies though, and razes the circus. In the chaos, she is misled to Goth, who proceeds to rape her. Saxon Fox emerges, and cuts off Goth's manhood, taking Alyssa back to Sorrel, who agrees to travel with the Foxes for a while. Alyssa begins a romantic relationship with Saxon, however her romantic feelings are rejected by a man who would rather be her father figure, and they continue their journey towards Caremboche. As they arrive, Goth appears and Saxon's nephews, in love with Alyssa, die to defend her. In the process, Saxon is crippled badly. His eyes are ripped out, his tongue is fed to a dog, and his limbs are badly broken. In despair, Alyssa stays at Caremboche and has archalyt, a type of stone, placed on her forehead to stop a flow of magic from either direction. Saxon and Sorrel stay on, and Alyssa begins to heal. Years later, Merkhud deliberately sends Torkyn to attend the Caremboche festival, held periodically, instead of himself, after a falling out between Torkyn and Merkhud. The festival is steeped in centuries of superstition, and is celebrated by parades, dances, and feasting. Torkyn is not aware Alyssa is at Caremboche, having pushed her to the past as Alyssa has done him, yet Tor decides it is time to find his lover. He arrives at Caremboche and meets an arrestingly beautiful, if malicious, witch named Xantia, who is smitten with him. Xantia and Alyssa are enemies, starting over the position for Elder, and now over the affections of Torkyn Gynt. Alyssa at first is angry and distressed at Tor's arrival, however the two sort out their misunderstandings and reunite. Goth lurks nearby, however, and makes several attempts to attack Torkyn and Alyssa, both of whom he despises passionately. At the culmination of the festival, Tor and Alyssa narrowly escape Goth and teleport with Tor's power to the Heartwood, where they couple and are married by a priestess, Arabella. They live in peace with a wolf, Solyana, and Arabella, for nine months after Alyssa becomes pregnant, and has two children. Alyssa believes her son died, and her daughter is unknown to her, as close to dying, she became unconscious as Goth attacked the forest and took the two to Tal for punishment. Tor is sentenced and executed; Alyssa escapes it by Tor and Merkhud plotting to disguise it as seduction and not as an affair. It is revealed through Alyssa's study that Caremboche was once razed by an angry god named Orlac, who was stolen when inadvertently let into the world of Tallinor, and in despair at his loss of birthright, avenged himself and was Quelled by the gods and a group of Paladin, ten magical beings, must guard his spirit and body in the spirit realms. Saxon and Cloot are Paladin; Merkhud and Sorrel are the earthly parents of Orlac, as they had adopted Orlac from the thieves. Tor is duly executed, but Merkhud teaches him to Spirit his soul into Merkhud's body, and Merkhud takes Tor's death for him.
10697525	/m/02qmk4j	Babylon 5: Clark's Law	Jim Mortimore	1995-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is divided into 3 major sections—Prologue, the main story, and then the epilogue. The prologues follow the story behind the EAS Amundsen which fired the opening shots of the Earth-Minbari war by attacking the Grey Council ships which resulted in the death of Dukhat (and his later debriefing before then Vice President Luis Santiago and his claim that the Minbari fired first), the Narn occupation of the Tuchanq (led by none other than G'kar), the serial killing of Narns by the Tuchanq that became known as D'arc, and President Morgan Eugene Clark's thoughts on using the capital punishment against aliens who commit crimes against humans as a means of gaining for political power. The main story then follows ru:Вавилон-5: Закон Кларка
10700816	/m/02qmmsv	The Star of Kazan	Eva Ibbotson	2004-07-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Two servants, Ellie and Sigrid, are taking a walk when they discover a baby abandoned in a church. A note with the infant says she is to be taken to a nunnery in Vienna. When Ellie and Sigrid find that the nunnery is in quarantine for typhus, they decide to take the baby home and raise her as their own. They name her Annika after Ellie's mother. Annika grows up as a servant in the house where Ellie and Sigrid work. For Annika, life in Vienna is perfect. She has friends, Pauline and Stefan, and she loves her adopted family (Ellie and Sigrid, and the three professors) very much. Annika is asked by Loremarie Egghart, a snobby rich girl whom Annika despises, to read to her great-aunt. Annika does so and the two become friends, telling each other about their lives. Loremarie's great aunt was a famous theatre personality who went by the stage name La Rondine. They become so close that the great-aunt leaves Annika her jewels when she dies, unaware that they are real; she dies thinking that the jewels are pastings of the real ones which she thought she had sold. Annika is happy but sometimes wonders about the missing piece of the puzzle: the mystery of her real mother and why she was abandoned. When a beautiful, rich lady announces she is Annika’s long lost mother, Annika is delighted. Her mother takes her to Spittal, the family's estate in Germany, and she meets her brother Hermann, her uncle Oswald, and her cousin Gudrun, but she doesn’t enjoy it. The mansion is derelict and gloomy, the walls are crumbling, and the paint peeling. She meets a friendly Romany/gypsy boy called Zed who works on the farm and cares for Hermann's horse Rocco. Annika's mother asks her to sign some important documents without really explaining them, and then goes to Zurich. Annika has actually signed over La Rondine's jewels, including her famous Star of Kazan, but is unaware of what she has done. When her mother comes back, she says a relative died and left them lots of money, but in fact she sold all of Annika's jewels so Hermann can go to the army school that he wants to attend, and Annika can have galoshes, which her mother buys a size too small. Annika is then sent away to a very harsh boarding school for young ladies called Grossenfluss, but the professors and Ellie and Stefan manage to rescue her after discovering that a pupil died there. (The pupil died by committing suicide but the police were not allowed to investigate and were told that it was an accident.) Annika then discovers that her mother is a liar and a fraud when Annika finds a picture of La Rondine and her lover at the bottom of the trunk which had contained the jewels, revealing that the trunk has been opened. Her mother blames the theft on Zed. Zed flees to Vienna with Rocco, to tell the professors his suspicions about Annika's mother. Annika manages to escape back home to Vienna, to those she loves.
10701042	/m/02qmmzb	Beyond Capricorn		2007		 The title of the book refers to the sixteenth century Dieppe maps of France which in part show land in a continent extending south of the Tropic of Capricorn, that is in the area of Australia. Trickett claims that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover Australia, between 1519 – 23, well before the first recognised landfall of Europeans in Australia in 1606 by Willem Janszoon. According to Trickett, the first European to sight Australia may have been Diogo Pacheco, a relative of Duarte Pacheco, at Napier Broome Bay in the Kimberleys in north-western Australia in 1520. Using an account from the history of the Portuguese empire in Asia by João de Barros, Décadas da Ásia, Trickett argues Pacheco was killed there in a battle with Aborigines while searching for gold. Trickett claims the Carronade Island cannons, originate from this voyage. Most of the book, however, focuses on the claimed voyage of a fleet of four ships commanded by Cristóvão de Mendonça, along the eastern and southern coasts of Australia then to New Zealand shortly afterwards, and another Portuguese voyage along the west coast. Trickett uses one of the Dieppe maps in the highly decorated "Vallard" atlas of 1547 to demonstrate this. Trickett claims that Mendonça sailed down the east coast of Australia, sailing into Botany Bay, and then around Wilsons Promontory to Kangaroo Island, before returning to Portuguese controlled Malacca via the North Island of New Zealand. He also claims the Portuguese charted the Western Australian coast, as far south as the south west tip of Australia. Trickett claims that the French Vallard maps were composed of several portolan charts that were incorrectly assembled from now lost Portuguese charts. Trickett adjusts parts of the Vallard maps by rotating them 90 degrees, giving what he claims is a remarkably accurate depiction of Australia's eastern, southern and western coasts Trickett goes through almost every written location on the Vallard maps, giving an English translation and explaining where he believes the place is located. He also mentions the mythical Mahogany Ship, the ruins at Bittangabee Bay on the south coast of New South Wales, various Aboriginal legends and alleged linguistic similarities, and various artefacts found in Queensland and New Zealand which he claims pre-date known European exploration, as further evidence of a Portuguese discovery of Australia and New Zealand.
10703352	/m/02qmpsf	Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever	James Patterson	2006-05-23	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After the events of Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment, the prior book, the Flock is headed toward Washington, D.C., where they hope to find the answers to their origins. However, after Fang is gravely injured by a flying Eraser and taken to a hospital, the Flock is housed by an FBI agent named Anne on the agreement that she is allowed to examine them "at a distance." The Flock enjoys a rare period of peace, even attending a private school, which is later discovered to have been an insane asylum. Life is good to them for now, as Max sees it, but they happen to be seeing Erasers often and their relationships in the Flock with each other are starting emotions that sometimes spill over and cause fights. Suddenly, though Iggy finds his long lost parents (he later said, "they were the real thing and the real thing wanted to make money off me"). An ordeal at their school in which teachers pull out tasers and chase Max causes the Flock to leave. Angel then suggests that they go to Florida, and for lack of a better plan, Max agrees. Later on, while in Florida, the Flock learns that a multi-national corporation named Itex is plotting to destroy the world, based on what Angel overheard when she was kidnapped back at the School, and is also tracking the Flock's movements. Earlier, Anne had revealed herself as a member of the lab that created the Flock, and seeks to recapture them. Afterward, Max faces a clone of herself created by Itex, and she is destined to either destroy it or have it kill her. However, when she discovers that Itex created the clone to test how powerful Max is, she decides not to destroy the clone. The clone is referred to simply as "fake Max" or "the other Max".
10703495	/m/02qmpw5	Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports	James Patterson	2007-05-29	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the third book of the Maximum Ride series, Max and her flock are faced with the task of saving the world from a massive company called Itex, and it's leader known as the Director or Morgan Janssen. They plan on cutting the world's population in half, and have already terminated a majority of their recombinant life forms. In this book, they replace Erasers (wolf/human hybrids that are sent to hunt the flock) with robotic ones called Flyboys. While Max really wants to stop Itex, Fang is trying to convince her to stop and go live life somewhere isolated where they wouldn't have to fight. She lets him take him to go look for a place to stay, in which they spend the night in a cave and Fang gently kisses Max. But, while all of this is happening, the rest of the flock gets captured by Flyboys and put in a truck. They notice that Angel is no longer with them. When Max and Fang return from their trip, they see the tire tracks leading away from the hide out and attempt to find the flock. When they find the truck, though, they are captured too. Gazzy tells them that she is no longer a part of the flock and is helping Itex now. When they get back to the School, Jeb tries to convince them that everything they've ever experienced is just a dream and that it's now time for them to be "retired" (lab-coat term for killed). Fang refuses to believe her. Ari, Jeb's son and the flock's worst enemy, suddenly becomes very nice to Max. He shows her that his expiration date has come up; this is a tattoo like patch that appears on the back of their necks to tell them that they are going to die soon. Right before the flock is retired, they find a way to escape. Angel was just pretending to be on Itex's side, and uses this to her advantage. Max brings Ari with them, although most of the flock is very against it, and get really angry. They end up spending the night in a cabin, and Max and Fang get into a big feud about Ari being there. Fang decides to split up the flock. Max, Nudge, Ari, and Angel go their way while Fang, Iggy, and Gazzy go another way. Max's flock heads to Europe to take down Itex from its roots, while Fang is trying to get her blog readers to help fight back in the US. Max and her gang get captured, though, so she emails Fang to get help for them in Germany. It's revealed that Jeb is Max's father,and Dr. Martinez is her mother. Fang's blog readers take down Itex branches all over the world. This causes the Itex to fall apart. Meanwhile, Max and the gang are still trapped at the Itex Headquarters in Germany, where he is pitted against Omega.Omega is Itex's most-successful experiment; She looks human, but she is really superhuman. During this battle, Ari's expiration date kicks in, and he dies on the field. With Jeb's help, Max eventually beats Omega. Thanks to a hand from kids around Germany coming to Fang's aid, good overpowers evil. After the battle and a short trip to France, Fang and his part of the gang contact Max and the rest of the Flock and they reunite, swearing to always stick together.
10703502	/m/0g58khs	The Twelfth Imam	Joel C. Rosenberg			 The plot revolves around David Shirazi, who is assigned to stop Iran from developing nuclear power. The story starts in Iran in 1979 during the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran. Charlie Harper, an American Foreign Service Officer who was outside the embassy during the takeover, and his wife Claire, seek the help of their neighbors, cardiologist Mohammad Shirazi and his wife Nasreen, a translator at the Canadian embassy to escape capture. Through the help of the Canadian embassy and the CIA, the two couples succeed in escaping and making their way to the United States. Dr Shirazi and his wife later become the parents of David, the main character in the book. The story then jumps to 2001, with teenager David going on a camping trip with his father and brothers, his father's medical colleagues, and Charlie and his daughter Marseille, a teenager to whom David is attracted. At first, David and Marseille do not get along well, but soon become good friends. This friendship turns into a relationship when Marseille kisses David in an A-frame the two discovered a few days earlier. The next day, David and Marseille are in the A-frame again, talking about important subjects such as God, politics and parents. However, when David is not looking, Marseille falls asleep on a bed. David lies beside her and falls asleep as well. A few hours later, the two wake up next to each other. Marseille looks at David with a fiery passion and asks him about what her parents did in Iran in 1979, as she has never heard the story. Still lying down, David explains the ordeal of how the couple escaped illegally from the country. Marseille is fascinated. In the moment, Davids watch goes off, signalling it is time for dinner. But Marseille does not want him to leave. She convinces him to stay. In the course of time, the two begin to make-out with each other. They enjoy the experience and wake up the next day ready to leave the camping grounds. As the planes come in to pick the group up. The pilot steps out and explains that just a few days earlier, the September 11 attacks had occurred. When Marseille hears this she bursts into tears, as her mother, Claire, was a banker at the World Trade Center. A few weeks later, a memorial service is held for Claire. This is the last time David sees Marseille. He sends her letters that go unanswered. After a few months, David gives up. His grades plummet, he gets into fights often, and even gets sent to Juvenile Delinquency. Meanwhile, in Tehran, Iran, a Muslim named Hosseini is taking his children to a military camp. He gives them each a red plastic key and sends them out over a mine field. All the children step on mines and perish. Hosseini has done this so that his children could be martyrs. He is proud of his act when suddenly, he wakes up to realize it was all a dream. He at first thinks it never happened. Then he realizes it was all too real as it occurred 18 years ago. His wife is crying on the floor remembering the loss. Hosseini comforts her when she cries blasphemy to all Muslims. Hosseini steps back a moment, shocked. His wife had just made herself no longer a Muslim. Hosseini goes to his drawer and pulls and a triple-action revolver. He fires at his wife who dies instantly. Hosseini's servants come into the room to find a dead woman on the floor. The body is buried, and Hosseini goes back to sleep. Back with David, on his last day in juvenile delinquency, a man comes to speak to him. His name is Jack. He is from the CIA and offers David a job to "bring Osama bin Laden's head in a box." David wants revenge as he figures that Marseille's life was ruined by her mother's death. He wants to kill the man who did it so he accepts the offer. After David finishes his last semester at boarding school in Alabama, Jack comes to pick him up to give him his first assignment to hunt down bin Laden. He does not enjoy the work as much as he had expected. Nor does he like the next assignment, or the next, or the one after that. In the end, seven years of boring jobs come and go. It is now the present year. David learns of a big assignment coming up. He is briefed for nearly eight hours in a conference room with Eva, a fellow CIA agent, who will be accompanying him. After the briefing is finished, Jack tells the two to "get lost" for the weekend. Eva leaves to go see her family and David goes to visit his parents. They talk, visit and catch up on each other's news and the weekend is soon over. Just as he is about to leave, his mother gives him a bag of mail addressed to him. One letter particularly stands out as it is from Marseille. It has now been nine years since 9/11 when he last saw her. He is about to open it but stops and puts it in the bag because he is worried that she may be mad at him in the letter. He goes through security and gets onto his flight to Dubai the next day. With some smooth talking, he gets the stewardess to give him the last seat in business class. About halfway through the flight, he goes back to the bag of letters. He finds the letter from Marseille. He is worried about opening it but goes ahead anyway. To his surprise, Marseille is actually coming to Syracuse in a month, and would like to talk with him over coffee. David is thrilled and realizes he still might have a chance. When David arrives in Dubai, Eva greets him and tells him they need to go to Tehran. He would like to call Marseille, but there is no time. They rush to the flight and are soon in Iran. The next day in Tehran, David and Eva meet with the CEO of a major Iranian telecoms company. The man is not very happy and is rather angry with them. He storms off while shouting profanity at his secretary. She is left in shambles but David comforts her and gives her his business card. Time passes and David takes part in a number of different missions. He saves the world from nuclear destruction and links up with Marseille once again, and this is where the book ends.
10707281	/m/02qmtyw	CHERUB: Mad Dogs	Robert Muchamore	2007-10-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot revolves around two major drug dealing gangs in the turf war surrounding the collapse of KMG (Keith Moore's Gang) (See CHERUB: Class A). Gabrielle O'Brien and Michael Hendry are sent to infiltrate the infamous 'Slasher Boys', led by a man who calls himself Major Dee. Later on Gabrielle is stabbed badly in the stomach and back and is sent back to campus. Michael Hendry still stays. In the first part of the book it describes how James Adams15 years old, and his new girlfriend Dana 16 years old, are helping on the last few days of Basic Training as instructors. While there Mr Kazkov is accidentally knocked out when a kid Kevin throws a smoke canister at him. The seven trainees, realising it will be ages before Mr Pike and Dana get to the tents, attack James, his arms and legs are tied together, and the Kids get food and drink. Dana finds James tied up and gagged with a rag crammed into his mouth much later. Although Mr Pike says he would get in trouble if all the trainees were failed, he agrees they should be punished. James says the two ringleaders were Kevin and Ronan, they are dragged out of their tents and forced to stand to attention holding rifles until dawn, which will be in hours. James feels upset about punishing them, but Kazkov says 'A soldier is only as tough as the person who trains them.' After Gabrielle O'Brien's serious injury the Ethics Committee was thinking of calling off the mission but they decided that they would wait and see. Norman Large tries to blackmail Lauren so he can be a teacher at CHERUB again. Kyle, James, Kerry, Lauren and Bruce play a trick on Mr Large's adopted daughter, Hayley Large-Brooks, by getting James to go on a date with her. During the date, Hayley and James play footsie and Hayley get up and signals James to go with her. They cut through a play area and go out the emergancy exit, where Hayley throws herself at him, and they start to kiss, with James' hand on her breasts and Hayley's hands down his trousers. They counter-blackmail Mr. Large with these but they get caught and punished, especially Lauren. Before James leaves for his next mission they have a leaving party for Kyle who is going on a gap year and later going to study Law at Cambridge. James Adams and his friend Bruce Norris are sent to infiltrate the group known as the Mad Dogs. James uses his past relationship with Junior Moore to make infiltrating the gang easier. He is soon accepted into the gang and given a major role. An older gang member, Wheels, takes him on a hotel robbery, where they bind and gag the two room occupants, take several grand out of their bank account, and steal their car. However, James being given a high role annoys Junior, who Sasha Thompson, the Mad Dogs leader, is trying to protect. Junior then gets busted for an armed robbery and is sentenced for 6 years. He contemplated suicide when he was caught, but a policeman calmed him. Meanwhile, Sasha plans a great drug robbery on Major Dee. They get into an apartment where some gangmembers are by pretending the people need to fill in a form. They then taser the Woman who opens the door, before capturing nearly all the people inside with the use of handcuffs and rubber gags. James decides to help a young boy found inside who is not treated well, and one of the cocaine dealers is freed so he can continue dealing and avoid suspicion. However the gang have to leave not long after. James, though reluctant, loses his virginity to Sasha's daughter Lois, who suddenly meets him when he is having a bath. James tells his girlfriend Dana and Dana, although hurt, forgives him. Afterwards, James, Bruce and Michael successfully complete their mission and Bruce earns a black shirt. Mid- way in the book all the fellow members of CHERUB visit a memorial place for all the cherubs that lost their lives, there were only 4 members so far.
10709316	/m/02qmx5q	The Extremes	Christopher Priest	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Teresa Simons is drawn to a quiet English seaside town in the aftermath of a motiveless massacre by a gunman. Her husband, an FBI agent, had died in a similar outburst of violence in a small Texas town, on the same day. Similarities between the two incidents of spree violence, apparently taking place at random, are shocking and inexplicable. Teresa finds she can come to terms with the senseless nature of the murders only by immersing herself in the world of virtual reality.
10714267	/m/02qn1qt	The Affirmation	Christopher Priest	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Peter Sinclair endures professional unemployment and the breakup of a long-term relationship, and tries to escape his self-perceived newfound social marginality through creating an intricate fantasy fiction. In this world, he depicts himself as the winner of a lottery in the (fictional) Dream Archipelago, where the jackpot prize is a complex medical and neural operation (“athanasia”) that will ensure immortality. As he writes, working ever deeper into his psyche, Sinclair finds that his two identities are starting to merge, although it may also be the case that Peter is experiencing visual and auditory hallucination symptoms attributable to the onset of schizophrenia. The novel's climax leaves the fact ambiguous as to which world is real and which is fantasy, with the novel ending in the same unfinished sentence as Sinclair's manuscript.
10715431	/m/02qn2n0	A Dream of Wessex	Christopher Priest	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A Dream of Wessex can be read as a straightforward story about a group of twentieth-century dreamers who create a consensus virtual-reality future. Once they enter their imaginary world they are unable to remember who they are, or where they are from. On another level, the novel is itself an extended metaphor for the way in which extrapolated futures are created. The year is 1985. The Wessex Project, a privately funded project based beneath Maiden Castle, discovers a method to transport the collective unconscious of some of England's most brilliant minds into an illusory and ideal society. The object: to gather information vital to our survival on earth. But in the process, power, deception and love join to jeopardize the philanthropic program.
10715565	/m/02qn2tj	Breadwinner				 An 11 year old girl named Parvanna, living in a one-room apartment with her family that consists of her father, her mother Fatana, older sister Nooria, younger sister Maryam, and baby brother Ali in Kabul, Afghanistan. She had an older brother named Hossain but he was killed stepping on a land mine during the bombing. Her father is the only one who has the right to work in the family as a teacher but he has a very hard time doing so because of a leg that was injured in a bombing. He also suffers from a severe cough, which developed after the school he was teaching in was bombed. Parvana accompanies her father to the Marketplace where he works each day, reading and writing letters in Pashtu and Dari--due to the war and Taliban control, many people are illiterate, and need assistance reading and writing. One day Talibs come to Parvana's home and take her father away because he attended university in England. When Parvana tries to bring home food, a Talib sees her and chases her. Parvana is forced to cut her hair and dress as a boy and act like her cousin, Kaseem, because women were not allowed to work. She becomes the family's breadwinner, wearing her dead brother, Hossain's, clothes. When her mother sees her in his clothes, she calls her Hossain. Parvana was not pleased with this idea,but she was needed to help her family. Parvana runs into a girl that she used to go to school with named Shauzia who has been put through the same experience. They start to work together and soon become close friends. They were never that close in school but they are now trying to figure out ways to earn more money. She also meets a family friend named Mrs. Weera, a former physical education teacher who comes to stay with Parvana's family with her granddaughter and takes charge of the household because Parvana's mother has become severely depressed over the loss of her husband. With the help of her friend, Parvana's mother begins to feel better and eventually teams up with her and a group of other women to write the Afghanistan National Magazine, smuggling it to and from Pakistan to be published. Throughout the book Parvana grows closer to her older sister Nooria, and becomes more responsible and stronger emotionally as a person. She also becomes very close with a woman who appears in the window of a building behind where Parvana works. This woman throws small gifts onto her blanket while she is there. The climax of the story comes when Parvana's seventeen year old sister Nooria announces that she is leaving for Mazar-e-Sharif to get married to a boy, because there is no war and she will be going to college. She leaves along with her mother and younger siblings, but Parvana stays since she looks like a boy and her appearance will be difficult to explain and be kept secret. Despite being against it at first, Parvana grows to accept her sister's decision. Parvana remains in Kabul with Mrs. Weera. One day after work, she meets a runaway girl from Mazar-e-Sharif who is deeply upset. Parvana leads her home at night, and soon the girl, named Homa, tells them that Mazar-e-Sharif has been captured by the Taliban. Homa's family had been killed by the Taliban, and she had been extremely lucky to run away. Mrs. Weera gladly takes her in. Parvana is very worried since the rest of her family is going there. One day, Parvana's father returns home, being led by two kind men who found him released from jail, but unable to get home due to the loss of his leg. The women and Parvana nurse him back to health, and the novel ends with Parvana and her father leaving to Mazar, hidden in the back of a truck. They will search for their family in refugee camps. Shauzia, who had been planning to run away from her difficult family so that she would not have to marry and could start a new life, tells Parvana that she will be leaving with some nomads. They plan to meet in France twenty years later, at the top of the Eiffel Tower.[breadwinner]
10720038	/m/02qn6pd	Dark Gold	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Dark Gold follows the story of Aidan Savage (twin brother to Julian) and his lifemate Alexandria Houton. After saving her and her brother, Joshua, from a vampire, he inadvertently converts her. Luckily, she is psychic and his lifemate, and this action does not drive her to insanity. However, she is brought unwillingly into a very frightening world. The story chronicles her struggle to accept the loss of her old life and her embrace of a new one.
10721367	/m/02qn7z9	Dark Magic	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The five year period has passed; Gregori has come to San Francisco, where Savannah has ended her tour to claim her. The bombardment of new emotions prevents him from detecting the presence of a vampire. Before he can stop it, the vampire kills Savannah’s friend Peter and attempts to claim her for himself. Gregori is forced to kill him in front of her. Savannah still refuses to bond with him; however Gregori informs her that there is no choice for either of them. Knowing that she’s in shock and grief because of her friend, he takes her to his property to heal, intending to complete the mating ritual the next day. However, their closeness is too powerful to ignore and they begin to mate. Unfortunately, Gregori has waited to long and loses control and nearly kills Savannah. It is only her acceptance of him that pulls him back from the abyss. Now Savannah and Gregori must learn how to live with and love one another while staying one step ahead of the vampires and the human vampire hunting society who have targeted them.
10722610	/m/02qn8zm	How the Dead Live	Will Self	2001-06-07	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story follows Lily Bloom's encounter with the afterlife after dying from cancer. After being transported to new lodgings near Dalston accompanied by her Aboriginal spirit guide Phar Lap Jones, Rude Boy her dead 9 year old son and a lithopedion foetus she soon starts to adapt and learn the ways of the dead.
10725417	/m/02qncmk	Fame is the Spur	Howard Spring		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The central character, Hamer Shawcross, starts as a studious boy in an aspirational working-class family in Ancoats, Manchester; he becomes a socialist activist and soon a career politician, who eventually is absorbed by the upper classes he had begun by combating. In fact the story is rather subtler than this summary sounds, despite the fact that the author's sympathies obviously lie with Shawcross's friends and associates who remain faithful to the cause; however, many of the middle class and aristocratic characters are portrayed fairly sympathetically, and one character whose career parallels that of Shawcross in his rise from poverty to eminence is a market-boy who becomes a major capitalist. The book also gives a fair impression of the growth particularly of the Labour Party in Britain; historical characters, such as Keir Hardie, occasionally appear, and part of the book is taken up with the hardships of life for coal mining communities in South Wales at the turn of the 20th century. The treatment of the militant women's suffrage movement is especially detailed—there are graphic descriptions of imprisonment and forcible feeding of hunger strikers. Hamer Shawcross is often taken to be based on Ramsay MacDonald; though there are similarities in their careers, there are as many differences in their personalities. A 1947 film Fame is the Spur starring Michael Redgrave ignores the subtleties to give a straightforward tale of a revolutionary losing his fire. Because there was a politician called Hartley Shawcross active at the time, the name of the central character was changed. A 1982 TV series starring Tim Pigott-Smith as Hamer Shawcross more accurately portrayed the subtleties of the book. cy:Fame is the Spur
10726291	/m/02qnd86	Flashforward	Robert J. Sawyer	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist is Lloyd Simcoe, a 45-year-old Canadian particle physicist. He works with his fiancée Michiko, who has a daughter, Tamiko. Another researcher and friend is Theo Procopides. The fallout from the flashforward occupies much of the first part of the book. The consequences include the death of Michiko's daughter as an out-of-control vehicle plows into her school. Oddly, no recording devices anywhere in the world functioned in the present during the event. Security camera tapes show noise and even recording devices in television studios show nothing until the event is over. One character interprets this as evidence in support of the observer effect in quantum theory. With the awareness of the entire human race absent, "reality" went into a state of indeterminacy. When the awareness returned, reality collapsed into its most likely configuration, which was one in which moving objects had careened out of control in the direction they were already headed. The deaths of several characters are forecast by the flashforward. Anyone who did not experience it is assumed to be dead in the future. This includes Theo Procopides. Some people report reading about his murder in the future. However as time goes by it seems that the events of the future are not predestined. Some people, depressed by their visions of their own dismal futures, commit suicide, thereby changing those futures. The story begins to take on the features of a murder mystery, as Theo attempts to prevent his own murder. His brother Dimitrios, who aspired to be a writer but saw himself just working in a restaurant in the future, is one of the suicides. At CERN, less than two months after the original flashforward, the scientists plan a repeat of the run, but this time warning the world of the exact time, so that preparations can be made. However, no flashforward occurs, and the LHC instead finds the Higgs boson; what the experiment was originally designed to produce. Soon after this discovery, the riddle of the flashforward is solved. At the same time as the LHC was running, a pulse of neutrinos arrived from the remnant of supernova 1987A. The remnant is not a neutron star, but a quark star, a superdense body of strange matter. Starquakes cause it to emit a neutrino pulse at unpredictable intervals. As the date of everyone's visions approaches, a satellite is launched into an orbit close to that of Pluto, from where it can give several days warning of another neutrino pulse arriving. The neutrinos travel slower than light, since they have mass, and thus a radio message (though the book uses the notion of "faster-than-light communication" involving tachyons) from the satellite will arrive at Earth before the neutrinos do. The intent is to run the LHC again and create another flashforward. Twenty-one years after the original flashforward, the satellite sends an alert to Earth; another neutrino burst is approaching. CERN was mostly abandoned several years earlier, and there is a mad rush to prepare the near-defunct LHC on time. Many of the original builders and operators have since deceased, and Theo is one of the few staff still at CERN. Informed of a fault with some equipment in the collider tunnel, he heads down to repair it, and discovers a fanatic attempting to sabotage the experiment, blaming the LHC staff for his wife's death in the first flashforward. In a chase sequence through the tunnels containing the LHC equipment, Theo is able to stop this, preventing his own murder in the process. It turns out that the neutrino pulse arrives on the exact day which everyone flashed forward to, at the exact time. The world stops and rests at the appointed hour, and exactly as predicted, everyone blacks out. However, this time around the blackout is for approximately one hour, and it is reported that no one experienced any vision at all. Simcoe — now retired, divorced and re-married — is confused, as he experienced a vision of himself moving through time for billions of years via a succession of neutrino bursts. He observes his consciousness persisting in different artificial bodies. He is aware of another person being with him in some of these situations. When the event is over, there is general puzzlement over why nothing happened. Simcoe comes to realize that the effect connects two periods of quantum disturbance occurring within the lifetimes of the individuals involved. Since there will be no more neutrino bursts in the lifetimes of any living people, nobody experiences a flashforward, except for those who are secretly associated with an immortality project controlled by the person Lloyd sees in his second flashforward. In particular, living Nobel laureates are being offered the chance to participate. However, it is unclear whether or not Lloyd accepts the treatment, depending upon the interpretation of "forgetfulness" he describes to his wife. It is implied that Theo will be offered the treatment as well. The novel ends with Theo contacting Michiko, Simcoe's ex-wife at this point, in the hopes of kindling a romance he has considered for over twenty years.
10732697	/m/02qnl05	Prince of Annwn	Evangeline Walton	1974	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Pwyll, the prince of Dyved, offends Arawn, ruler of Annwn (the underworld), by baiting his hunting hounds on a stag that Arawn's dogs had brought down. In recompense he agrees to exchanges places with Arawn for a year. Arawn is pledged to fight his enemy Havgan, whom Walton represents as a member of a conquering eastern pantheon, by whom he is detined to be defeated unless the mortal takes his place. Pwyll must overcome a number of foes to reach the Land of the Dead, and additional perils on his way to face Havgan, the worst threat of all, a deity whose evil is masked by an attractive beauty. Nonetheless, Pwyll manages to overcome his foe. For the remainder of the year he enjoys the luxury and prerogatives of the lord of Annwn in Arawn's guise, until the time comes to trade places again. He does not, however, sleep with Arawn's wife, thus earning the lord of Annwn's gratitude. On his return to the mortal realm Pwyll encounters Rhiannon of the Birds, a beautiful maiden whose ambling horse cannot be overtaken. To win her hand he must overcome Gwawl, a rival suitor to whom she is betrothed. He ultimately succeeds by trapping Gwawl in a magic bag that can never be filled and having him beaten to death in the bag. Pwyll and Rhiannon have a son, but the baby disappears the night after his birth, and the mother, suspected of murdering him, is sentenced to a humiliating punishment. In fact the child was taken by a monster who preys on newborns. The beast has also been raiding the stables of Teyrnon; returning to carry off the latest foal, it is surprised by the now watchful owner, who manages to rescue both foal and child. Teyrnon and his wife name the boy Gwri Golden Hair and raise him as their own. As Gwri grows up he increasingly resembles his real father; realizing who he is, Teyrnon returns him to his true parents. Rhiannon is released from her ordeal, and the boy is renamed Pryderi ("worry").
10736690	/m/02qnp6m	The Children of Llyr	Evangeline Walton	1971	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Britain is ruled by the children of Llyr and Penarddun, the giant King Bran and his siblings Branwen and Manawyddan, together with their younger half-brothers Nissyen and Evnissyen, the offspring of Penarddun and Euroswydd. Branwen is given in marriage to Matholuch, king of Ireland. Angry that he was not consulted, Evnissyen, a tragic and haunted figure, insults Matholuch by mutilating his horses. Bran placates the Irish king by compensating him with new horses and treasure, including a magical cauldron which can restore the dead to life. Back in Ireland, Matholuch and Branwen have a son, Gwern, but Evnissyen's insult continues to rankle the Irish and Branwen is banished to the kitchen and beaten every day. Finally she gets a message to Bran, who responds by making war on Matholuch. His army sails across the Irish Sea, but Bran is so huge he wades across. The fearful Matholuch offers peace and agrees to step aside as king of Ireland in favor of Gwern. Matholwch builds a house big enough to entertain Bran. His followers, unrepentant, conceal themselves in the house inside a hanging hundred bags, supposedly containing flour. Evnissyen, suspecting treachery, reconnoitres the hall and kills the hidden warriors by crushing their heads inside the bags. Later, at the feast, the angry Evnissyen throws Gwern into the fire, precipitating a battle. The fighting goes against Bran's forces, as the Irish use the magic cauldron to revive their dead. Evnissyen hides among the corpses to have himself thrown in the cauldron, which destroys it, although the effort costs him his life and comes too late for the combatants, almost all of whom are now dead. Only Branwen and seven of Bran's followers survive, notably Manawyddan and Pryderi, prince of Dyved. Bran himself is mortally wounded. Bran instructs his mourning companions to cut off his head and take it back to Britain. Branwen dies on their return, grief-struck from the ruin caused on her account. Bran's head, magically preserved, continues to live for a time, comforting and entertaining his adherents in a series of enchanted feasts before burial. Of all the children of Llyr only Manawyddan remains.
10737082	/m/02qnpj7	El juguete rabioso	Roberto Arlt		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is narrated in first person and is cleanly constructed. The apprenticeship of the protagonist, Silvio Astier, develops in four separate episodes. In the first, “The Band Of Thieves,” Silvio, influenced by reading melodramas, and, perhaps more, by his deplorable position in society, founds the “Club of the Gentlemen of Midnight” with two other adolescents, which is dedicated to petty theft in the neighborhood. After a failure, the club stops its activities. In the second, “Work and days,” Silvio, after moving neighborhoods, finds work at a bookstore and moves to the house of don Gaetano, the owner of the store. There he sees terrible scenes of meanness and suffers several humiliations. At the end he tries to burn the bookstore that he works in, but fails and then leaves his post. In the third, “Mad Toy,” Silvio tries to attend the School of Aviation as a mechanic’s apprentice. At first he is accepted, and the school directors are surprised at his brilliance, but later, suddenly, they expel him, because they say they do not need intelligent people, but brutes for work. Following this, Silvio lives through a strange adventure with a homosexual in a miserable hotel room. After leaving, he buys a revolver and tries to commit suicide, but he fails at this too. In the fourth part, “Judas Iscariote,” the protagonist, a little older, has become a door-to-door paper salesman, a job that seems as vile and humiliating as all of his previous employments. He meets one of his partners in the “Club of the Gentlemen of Midnight” who has become a detective and “regenerated” in the fight for life. Silvio becomes friends with Rengo, a marginal character, who works as a caretaker for cars in the fair of Flores. Certain intimacy seems to flourish between Silvio and Rengo. Rengo tells Silvio about his plan to steal from Vitri, the engineer’s, house, who is the boss of Rengo’s lover. Silvio accepts the job. Later, almost mechanically, Silvio asks himself, “But what if I betray him?” Later, Silvio goes to see Vitri, betrays Rengo, who is arrested. Silvio has one final conversation with Vitri, in which he communicates his desire to move to the south of the country. This dark tradition does not have precedents in Argentinean literature. Arlt follows, perhaps unknowingly, the steps of the Marquis de Sade, and of the Count Lautréamont. The structure of the first three episodes are homologous: Silvio’s attempt to affirm himself as an individual (through antisocial acts in the first two cases and through a suicide in the third), and then he fails miserably. In the fourth episode, this game of opposites and interrelations complicates itself- Silvio seems to find the possibility of a human relationship with Rengo, and then he betrays him- this is the only time when he doesn’t fail, when he commits an act that is socially good but individually evil. Bitterly, the book closes and the reader suspects that there is salvation neither for Silvio nor for the society in which he lives. The book doesn’t explain the social situation, nor the thoughts of its characters; all explanation is given through action, and through the telling of the facts. In the first episode, fiction penetrates reality; the adventure novels are, at the same time, material and motive of the occurrences; life of the characters mimics the life of other characters, those of fiction inside of fiction.
10738535	/m/02qnqp0	Fiesta al noroeste				 Dingo is a puppeteer who is travelling when he runs over a small child with his cart. He then goes to Artamila in order to find Juan Medinao, a prominent land-owner and childhood companion, and find the child's family. Juan is really rich, and when Dingo arrives a servant comes to get Juan. Then, there is a flashback of the childhood of Juan, when his father, aka Juan Padre, was abusive to him and had an affair with Salome, a woman in the town. Salome had Juan Padre's second child, Pablo Zacaro. Juan's mother died as a result of Juan Padre's actions towards her, and after her death, Juan Padre sent Juan away to boarding school because Juan reminds him of his mother. However, Juan wants to know his brother, so he returns home to Artamila. Then, the story returns to the present, where a priest and doctor have joined Juan and Dingo at the dead child's house. The doctor is always drunk (emborrachado). Then, Juan confesses to the priest that his whole life, he has been prideful. The rest of the book is his confession (as a flashback). Although Juan was an awkward child with a large head, he and Dingo were friends. They became friends when they realized that both of their dads beat them. Pablo, on the other hand, was a stone-fox. Juan Padre was really rich, and when he died, he gave all his money and land to Juan. At one point, Dingo brings Juan to a puppet show in the town, and it scares Juan, but Dingo runs away with the puppet cart. Pablo feels every man should construct his own house, but Juan owns all the land and refuses to let Pablo build there. The servants unite around Pablo against Juan, and Pablo runs away. After Pablo runs away, Juan realizes that he wants everyone to know that they are brothers, so he asks Salome where Pablo went. Unfortunately, Salome doesn't know, but Pablo returns to the town with a girlfriend Delia, a peasant woman. Juan goes to Delia's family and asks for her hand in marriage, but she doesn't want to marry him. However, her family forces her to marry Juan so that she won't have to work anymore. After this, Pablo hates Juan and never wants to be with him. He also rejects Delia. The flashback ends here and Juan's confession is over. The last chapter of the book is the dead child's funeral.
10742130	/m/02qnt7w	.hack//CELL			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 .hack//CELL takes place at the same time as .hack//Roots. The main premise of the story covers the happenings that Midori and Adamas witness and experience in The World R:2, an extremely popular MMORPG that is a new version of the original game, The World. Midori meets numerous characters from .hack//Roots (most notably Haseo,) and .hack//G.U. (such as Silabus and Gaspard.) The main plot centers around Midori selling herself out to would-be PKers, and some real-world events that center around the girl who also bears the name Midori (Midori Shimomura) who is in a coma. It is later revealed that Midori is a sentient PC, a result of the "virtual cell" that was taken from Midori Shimomura's blood. After Midori Shimomura awakens from her coma, she enters The World R:2 with a PC identical to Midori.
10742758	/m/02qntq9	A Very Woman				 The play is set in Palermo in Sicily, in Massinger's era &mdash; during the Spanish Habsburg rule of southern Italy. The plot involves the intertwined marital fortunes of the younger generation of two prominent families &mdash; those of the (otherwise unnamed) Viceroy of Sicily and Duke of Messina. The Viceroy has a son, Don Pedro, and a daughter, Almira; the Duke has a son, Don Martino Cardenes, and a niece, Leonora. The two couples, Pedro and Leonora and Cardenes and Almira, are in love and hope to be married. One source of contention clouds their matchmaking: another wealthy and prominent nobleman and a close friend of Pedro's, Don John Antonio, the Prince of Tarent (or Taranto, in southern Italy), had come to the Viceroy's court in Palermo with great display and expense, hoping to win the hand of Almira. She, however, has refused his suit in favor of Cardenes, and none too subtly or gently. As the play opens, Antonio has asked permission to pay his farewell respects to Almira; but in her arrogance she refuses this last courtesy. Pedro protests her rudeness, but Cardenes, an insecure and touchy young man, supports her decision. He goes a step further, confronting the departing Antonio, picking a quarrel with him, and striking him. The two draw their swords, and Antonio inflicts a severe and almost fatal wound upon Cardenes. Antonio is arrested and confined to prison &mdash; but his friend Pedro helps him escape. Cardenes survives his wound but endures a long convalescence and a bout of deep depression; Almira, burdened with grief and guilt, is sometimes hysterical, and those around her fear that she is losing her sanity. The Duke of Messina is incensed that Antonio has escaped the Viceroy's authority, and suspects collusion, though Pedro denies it. The Duke has Leonora accompany Almira in her convalescent seclusion, to keep her away from Pedro; both women are put under the watch of a court functionary named Cuculo and his wife Borachia. Antonio returns to Palermo, but appears in the slave market in the guise of a Turk; he is purchased by Cuculo and becomes a household servant, where he impresses everyone with his manners and breeding. Borachia thinks he must be the son of the Turkish sultan. In his slave guise, Antonio acts as the go-between for Pedro and Leonora. Both Cardenes and Almira are enduring their own versions of recovery from mental stress; Cardenes is under the cure of a prominent physician, while Leonora helps Almira regain her emotional balance. Almira loses some of her arrogance and acquires a measure of humility and sense; she also develops an infatuation with the Turkish slave who is really Antonio, her spurned suitor. When pirates break into Cuculo's house and attempt to abduct Almira and Leonora, Antonio plays a crucial role in fighting off the would-be kidnappers and rescue the two women. But while their fathers are expressing their gratitude, Almira provokes her father by announcing that she is in love with the Turkish slave. The irate Viceroy sends the man to prison, but Almira refuses to back down, saying that she will inflict upon herself whatever torture he suffers. The matter is resolved once Antonio reveals his true identity. Cardenes is now fully cured, restored to physical and mental health &mdash; but the court is astonished when Cardenes rejects the idea of marrying Almira. His near-fatal wound, his long convalescence, and his depression have given the young man a more mature and austere view of life, and he has turned away from egotism and sensuality. With Antonio substituted for Cardenes, the two couples who began the play can proceed to the altar. The comic relief in the play involves subjects &mdash; alcoholism and slavery &mdash; that are now generally considered questionable sources of humor. Borachia is an alcoholic, who turns aggressive and caustic when drunk; one of the slaves is an Englishman who has lived in France and absorbed French manners, a source of amusement for the play's original audience. On the more serious side, the drama displays Massinger's strong interest in medical and psychiatric matters and especially in the subject of clinical depression and its treatment. Samuel Taylor Coleridge reportedly once called the piece "one of the most perfect plays we have" &mdash; an extreme of enthusiasm that no other commentator has matched.
10743236	/m/02qntz6	Divisadero	Michael Ondaatje	2007-04-17	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel centres on a single father and his children: Anna, his natural daughter; Claire, who was adopted as a baby when Anna was born; and Cooper (Coop), who was taken in "to stay and work on the farm" at the age of four when orphaned. The family lives on a farm in Northern California where Anna and Claire are treated almost as twins, while Cooper is treated more as "a hired hand". After Anna begins a sexual relationship with Coop, an incident of violence tears the family apart. The book then details each of the characters' separate journeys through life post-incident and how they are all interconnected. Later in her life, Anna moves to France to live in a farmhouse once owned by the French poet Lucien Segura whom she is researching. Meanwhile, Claire works for a law firm in San Francisco while visiting her father on the weekends, and Coop becomes a professional gambler working his way up and down the West Coast of the United States. The second part of the story explores the story of the French poet, which has a number of close parallels to the first part of the story.
10743893	/m/02qnvj2	To Live Forever	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The city of Clarges in the future is a near-utopia, surrounded by barbarism throughout the rest of the world. Abundant resources and the absence of political conflict lead to a pleasant life that should be stress-free. However, nearly everyone is obsessed with a perpetual scramble for life, as measured by slope. Medical technology has led to a great lengthening of the human lifespan, but, in order to prevent the Malthusian horrors of over-population, it is awarded only to those citizens who have made notable contributions. Five categories have been created for those playing the life-extension game, the first four each offering an additional twenty years of life. The ultimate prize is the top category, called Amaranth, which offers (to the fortunate few) true immortality. The Grayven Warlock was one of those accomplished few, but he has become a fugitive after a feud with another Amaranth resulted in the latter's death. Masquerading as his own "relict" (clone) using the name Gavin Waylock, he lives in obscurity, looking for the accomplishment that will reinstate him among the immortals. However, Waylock's dramatic stratagems result in changes to society far beyond anything he had intended.
10746640	/m/02qnxm4	Far-Seer	Robert J. Sawyer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with the main character, Afsan, looking at the stars and reflecting upon his arrival at Capital city, where he is working as an apprentice under the Court Astrologer, Tak-Saleed. Afsan is but one of many apprentice astrologers Saleed has gone through, each one sent away for reasons unknown. Later on, Afsan, in a hurry to rendezvous with his mentor, unwittingly stumbles across a confrontation between Saleed and his old creche-mate, the master mariner Var-Keenir. Keenir has brought with him a new invention called a "Far-Seer". He offers it to Saleed in hopes that it would be useful in his work, but the old astrologer, set in his ways, haughtily refuses the offer. Afsan, however, is eager to use the Far Seer to look at The Face of God, (a mysterious object which hangs in the sky that the Quintaglios worship). Outraged and offended by the suggestion, Saleed berates Afsan and sends him to the palace Hall of Worship to pay penance for his blasphemy. After arriving at the hall of worship, Afsan runs into Det-Yenalb, Master of the Faith. The high priest notices Afsan's height and notes that he's old enough that he should have gone on his coming-of-age pilgrimage to see The Face of God. Yenalb recommends that Afsan go on a hunt first, as many are lost during the Pilgrimage and he has yet to earn his hunting tattoo; any Quintaglio who hasn't yet earned one will not be allowed into heaven. Afsan heeds Yenalb's advice and meets with his friend, Prince Dybo, who also has yet to go on his pilgrimage or earn a hunting tattoo. After sharing a cut of Hornface meat with Afsan and some words of encouragement from Pal-Cadool, the palace butcher, Dybo agrees to accompany Afsan on his pilgrimage and earn a hunting tattoo as well. Before leaving with Dybo, Afsan is summoned by Dybo's mother, Empress Len-Lends. Plainly exposing her claws in Afsan's view, she tells him that he is responsible for Dybo's safe return, or he will face punishment. Visibly shaken by the Empress's threat, Afsan leaves to go on his hunt with Dybo. Afsan and Dybo arrive at the Hunter's Shrine and join the pack of Jal-Tetex, the imperial hunt leader. During the hunt, they target a massive Thunderbeast, the biggest one ever seen. The pack fights a long and grueling battle against the monstrous sauropod, and Asfan kills it by climbing up its neck and ripping out its throat, jumping away at the last second to avoid getting crushed. Afsan is declared a hero, revered for showing such innate skill on his very first hunt. After returning from the hunt, Afsan and Dybo board the Dasheter, a sailing vessel which is commanded by none other than Var-Keenir. Keenir's tail is nothing but a stump, having been torn off in an encounter prior to the story with a sea monster he calls Kal-Ta-Goot. Keenir allows Afsan to borrow his Far-Seer, and Afsan uses it to study the heavens and The Face of God. The Dasheter sails across the ocean, and Afsan's careful observations of the stars have caused him to come to a shocking conclusion- the planets, which once appeared as distant points of light, looked the same as The Face of God, meaning it is merely a natural object, not the face of a deity. Furthermore, moons orbited these planets, and Afsan hypothesis that the Quintaglio's world, which has traditionally been thought of by the Quintaglios as a giant "boat" of land floating down a massive river, is actually a moon, covered by water and orbiting The Face of God. Afsan relays his discovery to captain Var-Keenir, and tries to convince him to keep sailing east in order to test his hypothesis. Keenir refuses to, stating that it's too much of a risk to sail into uncharted waters. However, Kal-Ta-Goot is spotted heading east, and Keenir, eager for vengeance, orders its pursuit. After following Kal-Ta-Goot for several weeks, the creature attacks the Dasheter. Several sailors are eaten in the resulting battle, but eventually, Afsan proves his hunting prowess once more, killing the serpent by strangling it with the ship's anchor. Grateful to Afsan for saving his life, Keenir allows Afsan to make a request. Afsan requests that the Dasheter stay on course, and Keenir obliges, much to the chagrin of priest Det-Bleen, and sailor Nor-Gampar. When Det-Bleen confronts Keenir, it is revealed that Keenir is a Lubalite- a member of a cult which was once the dominant religion prior to the prophet Larsk sailing across the ocean and discovering The Face of God. Not long after, while Afsan is explaining to Dybo why they are continuing to sail east despite having killed Kal-Ta-Goot, the two are approached by Nor-Gampar, who is in full dagamant, the animalistic rage which overtakes Quintaglios when forced into extended contact with each other. Gampar attacks Dybo, and Afsan tries to protect him, and all three are drawn into a dagamant-fueled fight to the death. Afsan manages to kill Gampar, and almost attacks Dybo before the dagamant wears off. The Dasheter continues to sail onward, eventually landing on the western edge of Land, just as Afsan had predicted it would. While the Dasheter has stopped for maintenance, Afsan and Dybo learn that Len-Lends, the Empress, was killed when an earthquake caused the ceiling of the palace to collapse on her. By inheritance, Prince Dybo is now Emperor Dy-Dybo, ruler of all the land. In view of this, Dybo must return to capital city immediately. Afsan bids him adieu, deciding to take a more leisurely route back to the capital. During his travels, Afsan decides to meet with Wab-Novato, the inventor of the Far-Seer. Afsan learns that she has also been observing the planets and the moons, and exchange knowledge. Together, they come to the conclusion that the rings surrounding certain planets are made up out of moons which orbit too close to large planets and break apart. This leads to an even more shocking conclusion: their world, which is a moon, is orbiting dangerously close to The Face of God, and will one day crumble into a ring as well. The mental stimulation of sharing their knowledge ignites their passion and culminates with an impulsive act of sexual intercourse between the two. The following morning, Novato gives Afsan one of her Far-Seers, and he leaves to continue his journey back to Capital City to share this knowledge with Emperor Dybo. Later, Afsan stops at his home-town of Pack Carno. Whilst there, he peeks in the Pack's nursery, and witnesses a shocking event: a male Quintaglio, garbed in a purple robe, chasing and devouring all but one of the hatchlings from an entire clutch of eggs. Afsan learns that this Quintaglio is what is known as a Hal-Pataars; a Bloodpriest. It has been their job since ancient times to control the Quintaglio population by culling all but the single strongest hatchlings from each clutch of eggs. Shaken by the event, he later wonders if the governors of the province- who all bear a resemblance to Len-Lends, the former Empress- were exempted from the culling of the Bloodpriests. Afsan continues his journey back to Capital city, accompanying a convoy from Pack Carno, and with them, kills a Fangjaw, (a large, quadrupedal, saber-toothed theropod) from Runningbeast-back along the way. Eventually, he arrives back in Capital city, only to learn that Tak-Saleed had fallen ill while he was away. Afsan goes to visit his mentor at his sickbed, and tells him what he learned. Saleed confesses that he has known what Afsan knew all along, but kept it secret- he didn't want to risk losing his position, and was just too old to carry on the fight that would inevitably rise from this challenge to the Quintaglio's religion. Saleed knew that it would require an intelligent, youthful Quintaglio to fight this new fight. With his final breath, Saleed tells Afsan that the Quintaglios need to get off their world, and dies. Meanwhile, word has spread of Afsan's pilgrimage. Afsan is confronted by Gerth-Palsab, a belligerent, illiterate blacksmith, who accuses him of sacrilege. Afsan and Palsab engage in a debate, which draws a large crowd, many of whom are offended by Afsan's assertions, and others who are curious about them. Present in the crowd is a Junior Priest, who tells Det-Yenalb about Afsan's theory. Det-Yenalb, having heard rumours about Keenir, believes that the mariner has poisoned Afsan's mind with Lubalite blasphemy. When Afsan finally reunites with Dybo, he finds himself surrounded by Yenalb and the palace council. Yenalb tries to convince Afsan that he is mistaken. When he asserts that he isn't, Yenalb whips the council into a frenzy and persuades them into believing that Afsan is a Demon. Dybo, who has remained tactfully silent, saves Afsan from being killed on the spot by the council and orders him to be locked away in the palace basement. While Afsan is incarcerated, Pal-Cadool arrives to bring him meat. Cadool tells Afsan that Dybo is Emperor by divine right, being the descendant of the prophet Larsk- his theory cannot be made common knowledge or Dybo will have no right to rule. Afsan tells Cadool that the world is doomed, and he pledges himself to his cause. Cadool tells Afsan to trust nobody except those who can make a certain hand gesture; one Afsan has seen performed before by Keenir. Pal-Cadool meets with Jal-Tetex in secret at the hunter's shrine, where it is revealed that both are Lubalites, like Keenir. Cadool and Tetex both agree that Afsan is The One, a messiah foretold by the prophecy of Lubal. They believe Yenalb will have Afsan executed, and Tetex informs Cadool that Keenir has gone to recruit fellow Lubalites to rescue him. Meanwhile, Afsan is approached by Yenalb, who tries to coerce Afsan into recanting his claims. As an alternative to execution, he offers Afsan a contract, in which he declares to disavow his theories and acknowledge Larsk as a true prophet, and that he would live safely; in exile, cut off from the rest of the Quintaglios. Afsan is tempted by Yenalb's offer but ultimately refuses. He unsheathes his claws and tears up the document, and Yenalb storms off in a rage. As punishment for his heresy, Afsan has been brought to a podium in central square for a public discipline. At the request of Dybo, Afsan is not killed. Instead, Yenalb gouges out Afsan's eyes with a ceremonial obsidian dagger, so that he can no longer claim to see the things which blaspheme God. After this, Afsan is released, allowed to live out the rest of his life, but in shame and blindness. After his blinding, Afsan becomes good friends with Jal-Tetex and Pal-Cadool, who remain by his side and aide him in his blindness. Eventually, the Lubalites arrive, who march into the central square. Afsan, from atop the back of a Shovelmouth, speaks to the Lubalites, telling them of his theories and that the world is doomed. He pleads with them to cast aside their superstition and give themselves over to knowledge, to science and reason. It is only action- not prayer -which will get them off their world and save the Quintaglios. Afsan's plea is interrupted by Yenalb, atop the back of a Spikefrill and accompanied by the palace guard, who commands the Lubalites to clear out of the square. They refuse, and a fierce battle between the two factions ensues. Afsan is kept safe by the Lubalites during the conflict, and Cadool confronts Yenalb in combat atop the Spikefrill. Yenalb is no match for the butcher and Cadool emerges triumphant by biting off his head, killing him in Afsan's honor. The battle between the Lubalites and the palace guard is interrupted when an earthquake, triggered by the eruption of the nearby Ch'Mar volcanoes, destroys Capital City. Though many are killed in the eruption, many more manage to escape by boarding the Dasheter: among them, Afsan, Cadool, Tetex, Keenir, and Emperor Dybo. Afsan learns that Novato is on the Dasheter as well- with their eight children, who were spared the culling of the Bloodpriests, since no Bloodpriest would dare kill the offspring of The One. While he is resting on the Dasheter, Dybo confronts Afsan, and apologises for all the terrible things he went through, and for blinding him. Dybo acknowledges the truth of Afsan's theory, tells him that all charges will be lifted and that he will be appointed the Court Astrologer and live in peace in capital city. Afsan asks Dybo to pledge himself to what would come to be known as the Quintaglio Exodus. The story ends with Dybo announcing that the Quintaglios will be going to the stars.
10754695	/m/02qp3d2	Labyrinth of Struggle				 The book is divided into four stages of the main character's life. Mauricio is the son of Marysol, the last woman in line, and he is trying to make sense of all the women in the story he is related to: Maria, the matriarch; Magdalena, the daughter; Marysol, the granddaughter. It starts when his mother is dying in the hospital bed, which begins his recollections of his mother's life and his upbringing: the death of his grandmother when he is a small boy which leads to his mother's decision to tell of her upbringing in Civil War torn Spain; early teens when he begins to search for his "traveler" father which leads him through a maze like path of his mother's deceit; late teens, where he discovers his progeny and his mother's real reason for hating men and wanting him to respect women above all else; ending back in the hospital bed as his mother expires and what it all means to be her son. The ending ends the discussion of Heritage, originally started in the opening scene by him. The book itself is anachronistically written to make the stories and their transition feel like a labyrinth of these women's struggles. Placing the reader in the same level as the Mauricio character, who learns and discovers as he grows up.
10759187	/m/02qp6mk	Mystery of Banshee Towers			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 During a holiday from school, the children are told by their parents to spend their time visiting sites in the adjacent countryside, rather than spend their time in the village (searching for a mystery to solve). Together, they visit an old stately home which is hosting some famous sea paintings, which Ern and Little Bets love and the others can take or leave. The plot hinges on the fact that Ern spots that on subsequent visits a little boat he particularly admired in the piece de resistance of the collection is missing, and that on pointing this out to the crusty curator and volatile owner the children unknowingly place themselves in great danger . Ern find the first clue a clue that nobody would have noticed.
10762406	/m/02qp8yt	Never Mind the Goldbergs				 Living in Los Angeles is Hava's first experience living outside the Orthodox Jewish world, however, and she finds herself questioning her relationship to Judaism, to Orthodoxy, and to God. These are illustrated through quirky, often humorous episodes, including one where Hava is unwittingly kept working until Shabbos, and another where she stumbles into a man who may or may not be Orson Welles. The book's unconventional tone and unpredictable nature have elicited comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and Francesca Lia Block.http://www.ajlmagazine.com/theyadablog/archives/2005_02_01_theyadablog_archives.html The book's centerpiece, a scene where Hava and her friend Moish flee the sitcom set and road-trip to Berkeley, California. Some of the personalities are based on real people, including an Orthodox film director and a Hasidic rebbitzin who is also a hip-hop M.C.http://www.jbooks.com/interviews/index/IP_Slutsky_Roth.htm
10762779	/m/02qp983	Peace Like a River	Leif Enger	2001	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel, set largely in 1962 is narrated by Reuben Land, the asthmatic eleven-year-old protagonist, and includes his older brother Davy and younger sister Swede. His father, Jeremiah, a school janitor, is a deeply-spiritual Protestant but occasionally performs miracles, of whom Reuben is the sole witness. The Lands' lifestyle is disrupted when troublemakers Israel Finch and Tommy Basca attempt to molest Davy's girlfriend and are prevented by Jeremiah; whereafter they attempt revenge by kidnapping Swede before returning her unharmed. Having provoked them to enter his own house, Davy kills them and is tried for murder. At the trial, Reuben is the only eyewitness of the killing; and though determined not to betray his brother, he gives a compromising testimony, ensuring the probability of a conviction. Before the conclusion of the trial, Davy escapes the jail and flees. Search for him is personified by a federal agent, Martin Andreeson, who vainly asks the family for information on Davy's whereabouts (of which they know no more than he). Jeremiah becomes ill with pneumonia, leaving Reuben and Swede to operate the household until his recovery. After Jeremiah is recovered, they learn that traveling salesman Tin Lurvy has died and left them his Airstream trailer, which they take in search of Davy; at first to their friend August Schultz's farm, having received suggestion that Davy might be there. When they arrive, they find Davy has come and gone, and pursue him, seeking continually to avoid Martin Andreeson. Later in the journey, the family visit a service station and remain at length as guests of its widowed owner Roxanna, who assumes a maternal role toward the children and (toward the end of the novel) later marries Jeremiah. Reuben discovers Davy by accident, and finds him accompanied by the eccentric Jape Waltzer and his ward Sara. Thereafter Reuben visits them several times, being forbidden by Davy to tell the family. Waltzer claims to have "bought" Sara from her father in Utah and raises her with the intention of later marrying her. Eventually, Andreeson reaches the family again, having suspected that Davy is nearby; and Jeremiah, after much prayer, co-operates with him. Having suspected that Waltzer will kill Andreeson if discovered, Reuben leads a search party to the hideout; but deliberately misleads the searchers, causing one to be injured. Despite this, the posse discover the hideout, but find it abandoned. They find Andreeson's discarded fedora, leading them to believe he has been killed. (He was actually bludgeoned to death by Jape Waltzer and dumped into a vein of burning lignite). The family returns to their home in Minnesota, where Jeremiah marries Roxanna. Three months thereafter Davy appears at their home with Sara, claiming that Jape had decided to marry Sara and, the latter objecting, that Davy fled with her. Having pursued them, Waltzer fires on Jeremiah and Reuben. In the next chapter, Reuben undergoes a near-death experience displaying himself in an afterlife wherein his breathing is normal and he can run freely. There, he and his father approach a city, apparently of the dead, to which Jeremiah is admitted and Reuben forbidden. Reuben then awakes to find his father dead and himself still breathing, and his asthma cured. In the epilogue, Swede becomes a novelist, whereas Reuben sometimes visits Davy (who lives in a small Canadian town on the plains); but concludes his narrative by reference to his sight of his father's miracles and the afterlife glimpsed by himself. Reuben also marries Sara. Jape escapes crime and his whereabouts remain unknown.
10767680	/m/02qpdcg	The Bashful Lover				 The play is set in an ahistorical version of northern Italy during the High Renaissance. The Duchy of Mantua, ruled by a Gonzaga, is threatened militarily by the ruler of Florence, Duke Lorenzo (suggesting one of the Medicis). The opening scene, however, deals with love rather than war: a love-sick gentleman who calls himself Hortensio is hanging around the Mantuan court, wherever he can catch sight of the princess Matilda. He is the "bashful lover" of the title. Hortensio has bribed Ascanio, the princess's page, to inform him of her movements &mdash; and Ascanio is open about this to his mistress, recognizing that Hortensio's infatuation is harmless. Matilda courteously meets with Hortensio, and allows his distant attentions. But the Mantuan court is preoccupied with the military situation. The Duke receives the Florentine ambassador, Alonzo, but rejects Lorenzo's demands for the city's surrender and Matilda's hand in marriage. (When Ascanio see Alonzo at court, he faints and is carried out.) The play's action swiftly moves to the Mantuan countryside; Hortensio has joined the Mantuan forces to prove his worth to Matilda, and Ascanio has accompanied him. When the two armies engage in combat, the Florentine forces are victorious. In the process, the Florentine officer Alonzo is seriously wounded, and falls into the care of Octavio, a former Mantuan general and courtier who lives retired in the country after losing the Duke's favor. It turns out that the page Ascanio is Octavio's daughter Maria in disguise; she was previously seduced and abandoned by Alonzo. Octavio nurses Alonzo back to health; after his near death, Alonzo is reflective, and repentant over his treatment of Maria. (Octavio at one point manquerades as a monk to help Alonzo "cure the ulcers of his mind," to overcome his depression and mental distress &mdash; a feature typical of Massinger's dramaturgy.) Hortensio, after fighting bravely and rescuing Gonzaga from capture, is himself captured by Lorenzo's forces &mdash; as is Matilda; the two are re-united in captivity. Duke Lorenzo, talking among his officers, admits that his prior demand for Matilda's hand was a feint of ambition, and that he has no real interest in her, or in a marriage of state. He changes his mind, however, when he actually meets her. The princess's beauty and her noble character work a change of heart upon Lorenzo: he renounces his military conquest and returns Mantua to Gonzaga's control. In his new magnanimity, Lorenzo allows Matilda a free choice among her three suitors &mdash; himself, Hortensio, and a prince of Parma named Uberti; but in eavesdropping on a conversation between Hortensio and Matilda, Lorenzo and Gonzaga come to recognize Hortensio as her worthiest choice. Uberti is less willing to concede&mdash;until it is revealed that Hortensio is actually Galeazzo, a prince of Milan and the new ruler of that city. Alonzo, recovered from his wounds, marries Maria, and Octavio is restored to favor.
10768484	/m/02qpdz0	Matriarch	Karen Traviss	2006-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mohan Rayat and Lindsay Neville have been sent to the bottom of the ocean, after having been infected with c'naatat in the World Before, to spend forever living with the bezeri to help them rebuild and recover. But first they must undergo cellular reconstruction in order to survive in the depths, which happens at an astounding rate. Ade Bennett and Aras have the unpleasant duty to tell Shan Frankland, their isan, what they did. Since Shan threw herself into deep space to keep c'naatat from Rayat and Earth's government, she was not pleased that the symbiont was just given to them. She tells Esganikan of the Eqbas Vorhi about the development and she agrees to take precautions against it being spread. Neville and Rayat are changed people, literally. They have developed gills and can sense their surroundings using sonar. The bezeri have put them to work extracting maps from a contaminated zone that the bezeri cannot enter. Rayat wants to acquire the bioluminescence ability that Shan has so he can try to communicate with the bezeri without the aid of the translation lamp. Shan had acquired bioluminescence in a previous encounter and passed that on to Ade. He in turn would have passed that on to Rayat and Neville when he infected them but this has not manifested itself. In an effort to make it manifest, Rayat asks for cells from the bezeri. The matriarch of the group brings the body of a youth that has recently died and Rayat and Lindsay put some of its tissue and blood into their own bloodstream. Ade, Shan and Eddie have gone with the Eqbas to visit Umeh. While there, Shan and Ade finally consummate their relationship. The Eqbas are attacked by the Maritime Fringe, a neighboring state of Jejeno, but the attack causes no damage to the Eqbas and the Eqbas retaliate swiftly by destroying most of the far city of Buyg. They all take a trip in the Eqbas ship to visit that city and determine if they are now willing to cooperate. The Maritime Fringe responds with ineffective violence which is met with return fire from the Eqbas. Ade has noticed that his bioluminescence and Shan's seem to respond to each other and to other lights. He thinks the possibility exists that c'naatat is sentient and is communicating. Others don't want to think of that as possible so they are avoiding the issue. Shan calls Aras to let him know they are coming back to Wess'ej and discover that Vijissi, who was thrown into space with Shan because he refused to abandon her, has been found and is alive—infected with c'naatat. pt:Matriarch
10770519	/m/02qpgc1	The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled	Conrad D. Carnes	1972	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Events depicted in the book took place over four-days at the Hyatt House motel in Palo Alto, California, and included management executives from Holiday Magic. The book revealed details of the events that went on during the coursework at Mind Dynamics and Leadership Dynamics. The book stated that Holiday Magic participants in the Leadership Dynamics sessions were required to register in the coursework, at a cost of USD$1,000, "..in order to get ahead in the company." Golembiewski stated that the book described "illustrative chapter and verse" of the coursework, including such training aids as a cross, a coffin, oxygen bottles, and piano wire. Participants that instructors deemed as "dead" to their lives, were told to stay in the coffin until they realized "..how much it means to be alive."
10775866	/m/02qpmy8	Pellucidar	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1915	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 David Innes and his captive, a member of the reptilian Mahar master race of the interior world of Pellucidar, return from the surface world in the Iron Mole invented by his friend and companion in adventure Abner Perry. Emerging in Pellucidar at an unknown location, David frees his captive. He names the place Greenwich and uses the technology he has brought to begin the systematic exploration and mapping of the unknown land while searching for his lost companions, Abner, Ghak, and Dian the Beautiful. He soon encounters and befriends a new ally, Ja the Mezop of the island country of Anoroc; later he finds Abner, from whom he learns that in his absence the human revolt against the Mahars has not been going well. In a parlay with the Mahars David bargains for information of his love Dian and his enemy Hooja the Sly One, which his foes agree to supply in return for the book containing the Great Secret of Mahar reproduction that David stole and hid in the previous novel. David undertakes to recover it, only to find that Hooja has been there before him and claimed Dian as his own reward of the Mahars! Now he has to track down and defeat the sly one before resuming the human war of independence. Ultimately this is accomplished, and with the aid of the resources David has brought from the surface world he and Abner succeed in building a confederacy of human tribes into an "Empire of Pellucidar" that wipes out the Mahar cities and establishes a new human civilization in their place.
10781599	/m/02qptkp	Other Voices, Other Rooms	Truman Capote		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The story focuses on the lonely and slightly effeminate 13-year-old boy Joel Harrison Knox following the death of his mother. Joel is sent from New Orleans, Louisiana to live with his father who abandoned him at the time of his birth. Arriving at Skully's Landing, a vast, decaying mansion on an isolated plantation in rural Alabama, Joel meets his sullen stepmother Amy, debauched transvestite Randolph, and the defiant tomboy Idabel, a girl who becomes his friend. He also sees a spectral "queer lady" with "fat dribbling curls" watching him from a top window. Despite Joel's queries, the whereabouts of his father remain a mystery. When he finally is allowed to see his father, Joel is stunned to find he is a mute quadriplegic, having tumbled down a flight of stairs after being inadvertently shot by Randolph and nearly dying. Joel runs away with Idabel but catches pneumonia and eventually returns to the Landing where he is nursed back to health by Randolph. The implication in the final paragraph is that the "queer lady" beckoning from the window is Randolph in his old Mardi Gras costume.
10786568	/m/0bq2lv	Babylon 5: Legions of Fire - The Long Night of Centauri Prime	Peter David	1998-08-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bombed to the brink of oblivion, Centauri Prime is starting the slow and painful process of rebuilding, under the watchful eye of Emperor Londo Mollari. But Londo is in turn being watched – and manipulated – by the conquest-hungry Drakh. The malevolent beings are reshaping the Centauri Republic into a secret seat of power from which to strike out at their enemies – especially the Interstellar Alliance. All but helpless to resist, Londo watches as his beloved Homeworld is transformed into a ruthless police state. And the Drakh have willing allies, including one of Londo’s own countrymen – Minister Durla, a powerful official with his own agenda. As the abuses of the repressive new Republic escalate, the double-edged Drakh master plan begins to unfold. Their goal is to smash the Interstellar Alliance by assassinating its president, John Sheridan. ru:Легионы огня: Длинная ночь Примы Центавра
10786669	/m/0bq2nx	Babylon 5: Legions of Fire - Armies of Light and Dark	Peter David	1998-08-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Vir, with the help of G'Kar and Galen, takes over where Londo left off.
10787251	/m/02qpz5c	Babylon 5: The Passing of the Techno-Mages - Casting Shadows	Jeanne Cavelos	1998-08-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book is set in November 2258, the same year as the first season of Babylon 5. It revolves around Galen, a member of the Technomage order. It details the internal structure of the technomage order and shows, from the technomages' point of view, the run-up to the Shadow War. ru:Вавилон-5: Путь техно-магов: Отбрасывая тени
10787364	/m/02qpzb5	Babylon 5: The Passing of the Techno-Mages - Invoking Darkness	Jeanne Cavelos	1998-08-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story begins where the second book, Summoning Light, left off. The technomages have reached their "hiding place", an asteroid in an apparently remote and uncharted region of our galaxy, and have sealed themselves in by means of an advanced stealth- and defense system, the only remaining link being an observation room linked to the remaining probes left behind by the technomages throughout the galaxy. Galen is in charge of observing the outside (meaning mainly the ongoing Shadow war), the only technomage save the Circle (the ruling body of the mages) with access to any information about the developments in the outside world. The rest of the mages are descending rapidly toward chaos, being hemmed in and cramped together weighing heavily on the solitary-natured technomages. Fights and disputes are omnipresent, old friends and rivals turning on each other all the same. The mage elders continue to die a slow, withering death, a result of their severing of connection, and destruction of, their places of power. Of the original Circle, only Herazade, Galen's teacher Elric, and Blaylock remain. Elric is deteriorating rapidly and Blaylock's condition is not much better. Galen himself, the main character of the trilogy, is torn. In the previous book he barely escaped death, and worse, at the price of unleashing all the destructive potential of what he was intended to be. He knows the creators of the tech to be the feared and hated Shadows, the only mage outside the Circle, except Alwyn (who stayed out in the galaxy fighting the Shadows openly with the Narn G´Leel at his side) privy to this knowledge. On the Shadow stronghold of Thenothk, he has faced his nemesis Elizar, as well as a considerable portion of the Shadows´ war machine, and survived only through the use of his "Spell of Destruction", actually one of the basic "functions" of the "tech" (the biotechnological implants that define a technomage), a weapon of immense power. This has left him scarred, as the destructive impulses also instigated in the tech, impulses he has freed by his overuse of this basic function, are nigh irresistible. Thus, he spends his days in seclusion from everyone, struggling with great effort to suppress this deadly programming. Even though it is the very same programming that, unbeknownst to them, is pushing the rest of his order over the edge, Galen's terrifying power would only need to be unleashed once to destroy them all in the confined space of the hiding place. For this reason, as well as because of feelings of betrayal at not telling him of the nature of the tech, he avoids all contact with Elric, despite his failing health and the pain separation causes both of them. Thus, two years pass in the hiding place. Then, Elric is killed by Circe, another mage who her Shadow side has gotten the better of. Circe attempts a power grab from the Circle and the weakened Elric dies protecting the solidarity of the mages that he has so long fought and sacrificed for. This is the last drop for the already much-strained Galen, who only now realizes how much he cared for the old technomage. Since it turns out that Circe and her accomplices were put up to their nefarious plans by Morden, the ubiquitous extended hand of the Shadows, Galen convinces what remains of the seclusionist Circle to let him go kill Morden, who has proven to be a threat to the mages even in their exile, as well as his old nemeses Elizar and his deranged sister Razeel, who had previously forced Galen to watch through the probes the destruction of his and Elric's onetime home, the planet Soom, as well as the brutal execution of Fa, a Soom native child who was once a friend of Galen´. And so Galen goes to the heart of the darkness, Z´ha´dum, the homeworld of the Shadows. A second, parallel storyline begins here, which is mostly the lead-up to and the onscreen part of the season 3 Babylon 5 finale, "Z´ha´dum". It is revealed that Galen's and Sheridan's presence and actions on Z´ha´dum actually coincide, where neither would have been successful without the other. Before continuing on to his final destination, where he is certain he will perish, Galen stops over on Babylon 5 to attempt the assassination of Morden. He briefly meets his and Elric's old friend Alwyn, who is still griefstricken from the death of his apprentice, the ever-cheerful young Centauri Carvin, then fails in killing Morden, having squandered the opportunity on an attempt to persuade Morden to free himself from Shadow influence. This he achieves through killing his invisible but omnipresent Shadow cohorts, who, it turns out, are directly controlling Morden, more or less forcing the otherwise relatively decent man into the atrocities he daily commits in their service. Although it becomes apparent Morden is beyond help, the knowledge is still a useful piece of the puzzle that is Galen's very own reason for being. In a brief encounter with Sheridan, the fragment of Kosh still alive within the captain warns Galen of the rather malevolent intentions of the rest of the Vorlons and, sure enough, en route to Z´ha´dum Galen is confronted by Ulkesh, Kosh's replacement, but is allowed to proceed upon proving to the Vorlon that he is willing and able to destroy Elizar and Razeel, now powerful "allies" of the Shadows, and only them. Reaching Z´ha´dum, Galen engages Elizar in a fierce hide-and-seek, culminating in a true technomage battle, in the underground labyrinth of the Shadows´ capital, even as the dramatic events of the TV episode unfold just a short distance away. Galen is able to help John Sheridan reach the balcony in the city of the Shadows and then to allow the White Star to successfully complete its kamikaze dive on the city. He manages this by merging with the Eye, the control mechanism of Z´ha´dum's defenses as well as the directing entity for the deadly Shadow ships, as a last recourse in the fight against the now more powerful Elizar and his sister. Galen realizes, just in time, this possibility, based on the fact that most shadowtech is interlinkable (which he learned in his encounter with Anna, formerly Sheridan, at the time the displaced central processor of a Shadow vessel) and that the Eye is arguably the most sophisticated and powerful piece of shadow technology in existence. There, he mades a staggering discovery, as well as learns the reason for his being drawn to Z´ha´dum constantly over the course of the previous books and for the Shadows´ apparent interest in himself: the Eye also has a living central processor, and none other than Wierden, the first technomage and author of the mages´ revered Code. She has also been enslaved by the Shadows, and, in punishment for her secession from their ways, forced to be the "heart of the darkness" for a thousand years. Now, she is finally dying, and Galen is to be her replacement. Just before his identity is lost in the immensely powerful semisentient presence of the Eye, Galen realizes a fundamental connection, based on his past and recent experiences: the tech is not inherently evil, it is being forced by Shadow programming to do their bidding like any other creature in the Shadows´ control. He then achieves what Blaylock and those like him had striven for their entire lives - a perfect unity with the tech - by casting an empty spell, an equation with no terms, bypassing the Shadow programming altogether. The tech is in itself sentient, to a degree, and, being thus freed from the dark impulses, both it and Galen refuse to spread chaos further. First, Galen dispatches Elizar and Razeel with his newfound power, then he, being now the core of the Eye, allows the White Star past Z´ha´dum's defenses. The rest of the great machine, free at last, sacrifices itself to at least save Galen from the massive thermonuclear blast, burying him and Morden, who Galen attempts to save once more, deep under the obliterated Shadow city. Still, the blast nearly kills them both, and between attempting to heal himself and Morden, Galen soon finds himself near death. Being now in a deep, ancient and forgotten part of Z´ha´dum, Galen finally realizes the truth of the war, of the Shadows´ and Vorlons´ ancestral and petty dispute, as well as that the Shadows were once a wise and evolved race, not the chaos incarnate they are in his time. Suddenly, he is approached by Lorien, The First, the oldest being in this galaxy, who has made his home in the abyss of Z´ha´dum aeons ago, the real reason for the Shadows´ invariable returning there after each defeat. Lorien commends Galen on his achievements (particularly the spiritual ones, as the timeless being really doesn't care much for deeds of battle) and urges him to escape with his life, taking Morden into custody (and subsequently relinquishing him back to the Shadows, no doubt of Morden's own peculiar choice). This interestingly takes place at the same time Lorien is keeping Sheridan alive in a place not far away. On the surface, Galen finds a Shadow ship, merges with it, "frees" it from its servitude and leaves for the hiding place, much to the mages´ confoundment as to his means of transportation. There, he arrives just in time to fulfill Blaylock's lifelong dream of perfect unity with the tech and the universe by teaching him to free himself, moments before Blaylock dies of the deterioration caused by his severing the link with his place of power two years ago. In his absence, the mages were told of the origin of the "tech" and their order, causing a fresh wave of violence and death. Now, with a new, substantially younger Circle of five, deliverance finally comes with Galen's promise of hope for every mage to be free of their dark impulses. Still, the mages refuse to leave the hiding place just yet, for achieving what Galen has is no easy task and will require time for most of them, and also out of some persistent fear induced by the horrid conditions of their exile. Galen agrees to stay with them to help them and guide them on this new quest, optimistic for once about what the future holds for him and his order.
10787794	/m/05c5xtx	Toki o Kakeru Shōjo	Yasutaka Tsutsui	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 Kazuko Yoshiyama, a third-year middle school student, is cleaning the school science lab with her classmates, Kazuo Fukamachi and Gorō Asakura, when she smells a lavender-like scent and faints. After three days, strange events transpire around Kazuko, including the burning of Gorō's house after an earthquake. The next morning, at the exact moment of a car accident, Kazuko is transported 24 hours into the past. She relives the day and relates her strange experience to Kazuo and Gorō. They don't believe her at first, but they are convinced when she accurately predicts the earthquake and ensuing fire. Fukushima, their science teacher, explains Kazuko's new ability as "teleportation" and "time-leap". To solve the riddle of her power she must leap back four days. Finally, Kazuko's determination enables her to make the leap. Back in the science room she meets a mysterious man who has assumed her friend Kazuo's identity. He is really "Ken Sogoru", a time-traveler from AD 2660. His intersection with the girl's life is the accidental effect of a "time-leaping" drug. Ken remains for a month and Kazuko falls in love with him. When he leaves, he erases all memories of himself from everyone he has met, including Kazuko. As the book ends Kazuko has the faint memory of somebody promising to meet her again every time she smells lavender.
10795434	/m/02qq791	Borgel	Daniel Pinkwater	1990-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This book is told from the point of view of a young boy named Melvin. Borgel shows up one day at the house where Melvin and his family live, claiming to be somehow related to the family, although no one (apparently not even Borgel himself) is entirely sure how. Borgel is eccentric, to say the least, but in time he befriends Melvin. Melvin often goes to a local cafe with Borgel where Borgel often talks in a strange language with other patrons. One night Borgel invites Melvin to go for a walk with him and the family dog, Fafner. Borgel ends up using a wire hanger to break into his car, a Dorbzeldge. As they are traveling along the highway Borgel tells Melvin about traveling though time-space and the other. He explains that he is a time tourist, that time is like a map of New Jersey, and that space is like an elliptical bagel with poppy seeds. Melvin thinks Borgel has gone crazy but soon they are traveling on an invisible highway in space. In space Fafner can speak, and he repeatedly criticizes Melvin and everything Melvin does. The trio end up meeting multiple interesting people such as a bloboform, a man who sleeps upside down in trees, and Hapless Toad (the weak son of the genius Evil Toad, who has met the Great Popsicle), among others. They eventually pick up a strange person called Freddie Nfbnm*. Freddie Nfbnm* persuades the group to search for the Great Popsicle, one of the 26 most powerful living beings in the universe. They go to an island in space with a Glugo, an ape they meet in the suburbs of Hell who agrees to help them find the Great Popsicle. Glubgo warns the group that Freddie is a Grivnizoid—a large and viscous species capable of disguising itself, in this case as a normal person. The popsicle is seen frolicking peacefully in the fields and he is surrounded by a feeling of love that rubs off on all others who see the popsicle. In an attempt to gain the power of the popsicle, Freddie eats it (confirming that he is, in fact, a Grivnizoid). Instead of gaining fearsome powers he becomes like the popsicle and begins skipping around the island. The original trio leaves and returns to Earth. They arrive at the same time they left as they had traveled through time.
10796764	/m/02qq9cd	Hombres de maíz	Miguel Ángel Asturias	1949	{"/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 The novel deals with the conflict between two types of men: the ones who consider maize to be a sacred food (the indigenous people of Guatemala); and those who view it simply as a commercial product. It exposes the devastating effects capitalism and international companies had on the lives of Guatemalan maize growers, having a profound effect on their customs, ancestral beliefs and cultural identity. The novel is generally considered to be part of the literary genre known as Magic Realism. As such, it delves into the richness of native culture and oral tradition and touches themes such as: myths and legends, songs, native wisdom and lore, nahualism, magic and animal spirits.
10799664	/m/02qqdrx	Aura	Carlos Fuentes		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Felipe Montero, a young historian, accepts a live-in position editing the memoirs of General Llorente, which the elderly widow (Consuelo) wants published before her own death. Intoxicated by the airless atmosphere of the house, Felipe begins dreaming of having sex and escaping with Consuelo's young beautiful niece, Aura. As he reads the General's writings, he makes some discoveries surrounding Consuelo's infertility, her fantasy of having a child, and her obsession with youth only to realize that Aura is actually a projection of the 109-year-old widow. One night, while he embraces her, Aura turns into the old woman. Felipe then takes on the role of the General, coupled with Consuelo, to give birth to 'Aura', who epitomizes youth and the illusion of life.
10800600	/m/02qqfr5	The Carpathians	Janet Frame	1989	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 In The Carpathians we are presented with a topsy-turvy world. The protagonist, Mattina Brecon, is a wealthy New Yorker whose husband, Jake, is a novelist struggling to follow-up the success of his smash-hit debut. Mattina, upon hearing the legend of the Memory Flower, decides to fly to New Zealand to visit a rural town, Puamahara, where the magical flower, said to release the memories of the land, linking them with the future, is rumoured to grow. Once there, Mattina rents a house on Kowhai Street, where, posing as a novelist, she sets out to record the lives of her new antipodean neighbours. As she discovers, however, the locals are also ‘impostors’, brought into existence by the memory of another time and place. Eventually, the town slowly begins to resemble a cemetery, silent and dead still. As Mattina begins to unravel the secrets of Kowhai Street she discovers, in her own bedroom a mysterious presence. The novel is hijacked by one of Mattina's new neighbours who describes herself as an imposter novelist, as the New Yorker gradually loses her grip on time and place. A dense, complex novel, The Carpathians combines elements of Magical Realism, postmodernism and metafiction.
10802071	/m/02qqh0p	Little House in the Big Woods	Laura Ingalls Wilder	1932	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Little House in the Big Woods describes the homesteading skills Laura observed and began to practice during her fifth year (see comment on Laura’s age, above). This first volume does not contain the more mature (yet real) themes addressed in later books of the series (danger from Indians and wild animals, serious illness, death, drought, crop destruction). Hard work is the rule, though fun is often made in the midst of it. Laura gathers woodchips, and helps Ma and Pa when they butcher animals. Laura also helps Ma preserve the meat. This is all in preparation for the upcoming winter. Fall is a very busy time, because the harvest from the garden and fields must be brought in as well. The cousins come for Christmas that year, and Laura receives a doll, which she names Charlotte. Later that winter, the family goes to Grandma Ingalls’ and has a “sugaring off,” when they harvest sap and make maple syrup. They return home with buckets of syrup, enough to last the year. Laura remembered that sugaring off, and the dance that followed, for the rest of her life. Each season has its work, which the author makes attractive by the good things that result. In the spring, the cow has a calf, so there are milk, butter and cheese. Everyday housework is also described in detail. That summer and fall, the Ingalls again plant a garden and fields, and store food for the winter. Laura’s Pa trades labor with other farmers so that his own crops will be harvested faster when it is time. Not all work was farming. Hunting and gathering were important parts of providing for the family as well. When Pa went into the woods to hunt, he usually came home with a deer then smoked the meat for the coming winter. One day he noticed a bee tree and returned from hunting early to get the wash tub and milk pail to collect the honey. When Pa returned in the winter evenings, Laura and Mary always begged him to play his fiddle; he was too tired from farm work to play during the summertime. In the winter, they enjoyed the comforts of their home and danced to Pa’s fiddle playing.
10811134	/m/02qqqwg	The Spanish Gardener	A. J. Cronin	1950	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A restrained, precise man, Brande has an elevated sense of his own importance, believing his qualities have been overlooked in a series of postings around Europe which have failed to result in promotion. His other abiding resentment is the failure of his marriage to his wife Marion, who left him when his dispassionate and obsessively controlling nature overwhelmed her. Brande’s paranoid need to be loved and respected are focused on his hobby, a manuscript on Malbranche, a French philosopher, and on his nine year old son Nicholas. Nicholas is a delicate child who has been reduced to a state of invalidism by his father’s overprotective and restrictive regime. At San Jorge, the Brandes take a villa for which a couple, Garcia and his wife Magdalena have been engaged to act as butler/chauffeur and cook/housekeeper. Nicholas takes an instinctive dislike to Garcia, fearing his dead fish eyes and his tendency to appear unannounced, but Brande sees the man’s obsequious servility as recognition of his own superior qualities. At Nicholas’s suggestion, a gardener, the 19 year old José, is hired to tend the neglected garden. José’s amiable and ingenuous nature, despite his poverty and the responsibility of providing for his family members, soon attract Nicholas’s curiosity and the pair strike up a friendship. Nicholas helps José in the garden and his health improves. However, Garcia informs Brande of their friendship and, intensely jealous of Nicholas’s affection, Brande forbids the boy to speak to the gardener again. He has no justifiable cause to dismiss José, so he sets out to punish him and break his spirit by ordering him to build a rockery from boulders. Nicholas, however, realises that he only promised not to speak to José, and this does not preclude writing and exchanging secret notes with each other. Brande then receives a letter summoning him to Madrid and informing him that his predecessor at San Jorge who was promoted to First Consul, has suffered a stroke. Elated and assuming that he will be appointed to the vacant post, Brande hurries to Madrid. José takes advantage of Brande’s absence to take Nicholas by train into the mountains on a fishing trip. Their enforced silence is broken and the day is the idyllic highlight of Nicholas’s life so far. Yet when Nicholas returns it is to find a drunken Garcia wielding a knife and abusing Magdalena. He spends a terrified night in his room and, when José learns of it the following day, rather than leave the defenceless boy alone for another night, takes him home with him. A distraught Brande returns early from Madrid. He had merely been summoned to Madrid to temporarily fill the vacancy until a permanent appointment could be made and, upon telling his superior that he expected to be appointed permanently, is effectively laughed at and told he has no hope. He refused the temporary posting and writes to summon his friend and psychiatrist Eugene Halevy. On returning to his villa, he finds Nicholas missing and Garcia informs him Nicholas has spent the night with José. He further shows Brande a scrap of Nicholas’s correspondence to José saying how much he loves to spend time with José. When Nicholas returns, Garcia and Magdalena deny his version of events and he is confined to his room where Professor Halevy ‘examines’ him, intent upon reading something sinister into his relationship with José. Garcia then informs Brande that he is missing sums of money and suggests Brande checks his jewellery, all of which has gone. A pair of Brande’s cufflinks are found in the lining of José’s jacket and he is arrested. José is to be sent for trial in Barcelona and Nicholas learns from his grandfather that he will attempt to escape from the train and hide in the old mill where they went fishing. Nicholas sets off to meet him, while his father accompanies José and the police to act as witness in the trial. He has received a letter from the employment agency stating that Garcia is very likely to be a criminal the police are looking for, but he decides to do nothing about it until after José’s trial. On the train, José makes his escape attempt, but Brande, anticipating his action, catches his sleeve, spoiling his jump so that José falls onto the track and is killed. In a violent storm, Brande then has to find the missing Nicholas. Seven months later, Brande is posted to Stockholm but his relationship with Nicholas is irretrievably broken. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Nicholas told Brande that he hated him. He asked for his mother’s photo and her address and has been writing to her. In Stockholm, Nicholas informs his father that he wishes to go and live with her in America. fr:Le Jardinier espagnol pt:The Spanish Gardener
10812507	/m/02qqt4g	In Other Worlds	A. A. Attanasio	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Carl Schirmer's life is transformed when he is turned into energy by an eighth-dimensional being and transported to a faraway world at the edge of a black hole. What follows is a thrilling ride similar to Flash Gordon involving a woman from the end of time, a man who can live off sunlight, and an alternate, paradisaical Earth in which World War II never happened.
10812887	/m/02qqtq_	Race Against Time	Carolyn Keene		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In A Race Against Time, Nancy Drew is a movie star? Ned's college film club is making a spooky vampire movie set in an old deserted mansion - and Nancy is the star! The popular detective has also been asked to model in a series of TV commercials for a new beauty product. As if that weren't enough to keep Nancy busy, she has a couple of cases to solve. A valuable racehorse has been stolen from a nearby farm. It is up to Nancy to figure out which of its owner's many enemies may have taken the prize thoroughbred. There's also another mystery around. Someone keeps disturbing the film club as they are shooting their film. When a building goes up in flames, it is time to take the disruption seriously! Nancy has two deadlines to beat - to return the missing horse before its big race and to help Ned and his friends finish their horror film - before some mysterious force ruins everything!
10815027	/m/02qqx88	The Song of Rhiannon	Evangeline Walton	1972	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the wake of the tragedy that befell the Children of Llyr, Prince Pryderi of Dyved returns to his realm with Manawyddan, the last survivor of the family. There Pryderi is reunited with his wife Cigfa and Manawyddan marries Pryderi's mother Rhiannon. An enchantment descends on the land, leaving it a wasteland empty of all domesticated animals and humans apart from the four protagonists. They support themselves by hunting at first, then move to the larger realm of Llogres where they make a living making saddles, shields and shoes. Their work is of such quality that the local craftsmen cannot compete, and drive them from town to town. Finally they return to Dyved and become hunters again. Pryderi and Manawyddan follow a white boar to a mysterious castle. Against Manawyddan's advice Pryderi goes inside, and does not return. Rhiannon goes to investigate and finds Pryderi clinging to a bowl, unable to speak. The same fate befalls her, and the castle disappears. Manawyddan and Cigfa return to Llogres as shoemakers, but are once again forced to leave so they return to Dyved. They sow three fields of wheat, but the first is destroyed before it can be harvested. The next night the second field is destroyed. Manawyddan watches over the third field, sees it destroyed by mice, and catches one of them. He decides to hang it for theft the next day. Three strangers turn up in succession to offer him gifts if he will spare the mouse. Manawyddan refuses. Asked by the third stranger what he wishes in return for the mouse's life, he demands the release of Pryderi and Rhiannon and the lifting of the curse from Dyved. The stranger agrees to these terms, and his captives are freed and the land restored. He reveals himself as Llwyd, an ally of Gwawl, whom Pryderi’s father Pwyll had once killed. The mice who destroyed Manawyddan’s crops were his attendants, magically transformed, and the one Manawyddan captured is Llwyd’s own pregnant wife. He had placed the enchantment on Dyved in vengeance for Gwawl’s death.
10818215	/m/02qq_qc	Mr. Bass's Planetoid	Eleanor Cameron	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Prewytt Brumblydge, inventor of the Brumblitron, must be found in order to disable the device before it destroys the Earth. This is a job for Mr. Bass, but he has disappeared... so the boys pore over his notebook for clues and go spacefaring to find Brumblydge. This time, instead of journeying to Basidium, they fly to an airless rock named Lepton that orbits 1,000 miles above the Earth's surface. This third Mushroom Planet adventure is illustrated by Louis Darling, illustrator of the Henry and Ramona series. This novel also introduced the fictional metal Brumblium, a greenish metal, that shows as infragreen on a spectroscope, and is twice the density of uranium.
10818331	/m/02qq_s2	A Mystery for Mr. Bass	Eleanor Cameron	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After a record-breaking storm, David and Chuck discover half-million-year-old fossils on the cliffs where no such bones should be, prompting Tyco Bass to reveal some of the history and customs of the Mycetians, the Mushroom People of Earth. After Tyco's departure, the boys' discovery of the ailing Prewytt Brumblydge's unexpected Mycetian connections leads them to attempt a new, unscheduled trip to Basidium.
10818460	/m/02qq_z8	Time and Mr. Bass	Eleanor Cameron	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tyco Bass has been a close friend to Chuck Masterson and David Topman ever since they built their space ship for a journey to the Mushroom Planet. Now Mr. Bass needs their help in a battle against time and the forces of evil that threaten the Mycetians, Mr. Bass and, finally, David. Upon their arrival in the mountains of Wales for a meeting of the secret Mycetian League, Mr. Bass and the boys discover that the ancient Necklace of Ta has been stolen. Also missing is the Thirteenth Scroll, believed to relate the history of the Mycetians. These must be found, for without the necklace, whose strange stones are carved in an unknown language, Mr. Bass cannot continue his effort to translate the Scroll. And without the secret of the Scroll, the evil power that has hounded the Mycetians for centuries cannot be defeated. Chuck and David must use their wits as never before in a search which takes them from a joyous celebration to a terrifying test of endurance involving Time itself.
10819244	/m/02qr0v_	The Princess Diaries, Volume V: Princess in Pink	Meg Cabot	2004-04	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Mia Thermopolis is in a royal puddle. Her one and only boyfriend won't take her to the prom and her 15th birthday is coming up. Her friends try to convince her that he'll ask her on her birthday and she believes that fantasy. On the day of her birthday, Michael and his band sing a song for her and turn up their amps so that everyone in the school can hear. He earns detention and makes it in time for Mia's birthday dinner. She receives gifts from her family and Michael that she wouldn't expect, along with the fact that Michael got her a snowflake necklace which symbolises when they fell in love at the winter dance. At the dinner, disaster strikes. Grandmere's poodle jumps out of her purse and runs around the restaurant causing a busboy to spill a meal on Grandmere's suit and getting the busboy (whose name is Jangbu) fired. Then comes the birthday party. Mia and her friends play a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven when her parents are out getting more birthday supplies. In the game she asks Michael to prom but he declines, saying he'd rather go bowling. When it's Lilly's turn, she enters the closet with the handsome Jangbu (whom she met while protesting for him), and apparently reaches second base too, Instead of taking her boyfriend Boris into the closet with her, making Boris break down before Mia's parents arrive and catch them, sending all the guests home. At school, Boris tells Lilly that he loves her so much, he'll drop a globe on his head if she doesn't take him back, and on her refusal he accidentally does so, injuring his skull, luckily Mia and Michael stop him from severely bleeding. After school, Tina meets up with Boris to comfort him and they become a couple. Later on, all the busboys in town go on strike after the incident at the restaurant. This ruins the venue for the senior prom, but Grandmere steps in and gives them a place: The Empire State Building. Mia blackmails Lana into letting Michael's band play at the prom. Michael and his band play at the prom and Michael and Mia reach second base. During the prom Mia's mother also gives birth to Rocky Thermopolis-Gianini. Jangbu the busboy returns to his home country and leaves Lilly thinking about her decisions in leaving Boris who is now in love with Tina.
10819480	/m/02qr16b	Black Money	Ross Macdonald		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The plot is typically convoluted: the jilted boyfriend of wealthy Virginia Fablon hires Lew Archer to investigate the background of her inamorata, one Felix Cervantes, presently her husband. The resulting inquiries take the reader through levels of society from the homeless to the wealthy, a canvassing seen in other Macdonald novels. Except for brief forays into Las Vegas—the title refers to cash skimmed by casino operators to avoid taxes—and the environs of Los Angeles, the action takes place around Montevista, in private clubs, homes, clinics, the academy, and seedy and luxurious hotels; the implications, however, reach beyond California, as the edges of the story extend to Central America and Europe, whose cultures and economies the book sees as inextricably tied to American life.
10829132	/m/02qrb6d	The IHOP Papers	Ali Liebegott	2006-12-13	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The IHOP Papers follows the life of Francesca, a disgruntled twenty year-old lesbian virgin, originally from Southern California who falls in love with her female junior college professor, Irene. After spending some time together, Francesca is informed by Irene of the professor's plan to undertake a sabbatical in San Francisco, a move that will involve residing with two of Irene's former students —a woman named Jenny and a man named Gustavo— who are both Irene's "lovers". Not wishing to be apart from Irene, Francesca decides to also move to San Francisco, following a confession in which she reveals her amorous feelings to Irene in a letter. Once in San Francisco, Francesca moves in with Irene, Jenny, and Gustavo who reside in an apartment they have nicknamed "Simplicity House". The dwelling represents simple living and nonviolence. Without employment, Francesca proceeds to search for a job and eventually undertakes the role of hostess at the IHOP restaurant; however, she is quickly promoted to a waitressing position. Following a month in San Francisco, Francesca leaves Simplicity House in order to set up her own apartment. The remainder of the story follows Francesca during her intense love for Irene. Along the way, and while still in love with Irene, Francesca falls in love with other women, including Jenny, Maria, Francesca's Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, and at least two other women. A significant portion of the book is devoted to Francesca's loathing for her IHOP work, including the uniform she dislikes wearing. The novel is written using a first-person narrative and Francesca is portrayed as writing the story in her apartment after her relocation to San Francisco.
10830523	/m/02qrchb	Duluth	Gore Vidal		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 One of the experimental texts Vidal refers to as his "inventions", Duluth describes both a novel written about Duluth (that, bordered on one side by Minneapolis and on the other by Michigan, bears scant resemblance to the real city) and a television series of the same name; when residents of the city die, they end up as characters in the TV show, who can in some cases continue interacting with the living through the TV screen. When members of the cast of Duluth, the TV show, die, they become characters in Rogue Duke, a romance novel serialized in the pages of Redbook, the popular women's magazine. The author of all three, Rosemary Klein Kantor, is herself a character in the book, making cameo appearances throughout. She generates texts with the aid of a computer, adding to its numerous geographical and historical errors her mangled clichés ("Bellamy Craig II plays hardball...in the fast lane!") and unusual grammatical constructions ("Her handcuffs now handcuffed her hands"). However, there is in the city of Duluth a mysterious cerise flying saucer whose insectoid alien inhabitants, after meddling in the spectacularly corrupt politics of the city, use an accidental tense shift to seize control of the computer, erasing the human race from the face of the earth and bringing the book to an end.
10830651	/m/02qrcmt	Blow Fly	Patricia Cornwell	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After her resignation as Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner and the horrifying events which threatened her life in The Last Precinct, Kay Scarpetta has abandoned her elegant home in Richmond, Virginia, and is quietly living in Florida, beginning to get some balance back in her life and slowly establishing herself as a private forensic consultant. (Her first class involves the blow fly, which sometimes lays eggs on corpses.) But her past will not let her rest, and her grief for Benton Wesley continues to grow, not diminish, as does the rage within Lucy, her niece. Then the architect of her changed fortunes contacts her from his cell on death row: deformed, blinded by Scarpetta's own actions, incarcerated in Texas' strongest prison, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne still has the ability to terrify. But, unknown to Scarpetta, there are other forces behind the wolfman's apparent actions, invisibly shepherding her and those closest to her towards eliminating those who threaten them all. And it is all orchestrated by the one man in her life who knows every nuance of her soul. Bizarre incidents: in Szczecin, Poland, Lucy and a colleague apparently commit a premeditated murder, using blow-fly larvae to dispose of the evidence. The novel then ends with the killing of four further people by Scarpetta's associates.
10830967	/m/02qrcy2	Homecoming	Cynthia Voigt	1981	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Homecoming, set in the very early 1980s, tells the story of four siblings aged between six and thirteen, whose mother abandons them one summer afternoon in their car next to a Connecticut shopping mall during an aborted road trip to a family member in Bridgeport. Realizing that their mother is not coming back, and that they cannot go home (their father walked out before the youngest child was born), the children travel together, mostly on foot, trying to reach Bridgeport. There, they hope to find their missing mother at the home of a relative they have never met. The children find themselves on a journey that is emotional as well as literal - during their weeks on the road their adventures and the people they meet along the way help them to find out more about who they are and what is important to them, as well as to cope with the loss of their mother and to understand society's reaction to her poverty, isolation, mental illness and the fact that she was an unmarried mother of four. 13 year old Dicey Marie Tillerman, and her brothers James (10), Sammy (6), and sister Maybeth (9), lived in a wooden house out in the dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The family is poor, their father walked out just before Sammy was born, and only Dicey retains any memory of him. Their mother worked herself too hard, physically and emotionally, to take care of her four children and make ends meet. The novel begins when the Tillerman children find themselves alone in their car, some miles from their home, in a shopping mall parking lot in Peewauket, Connecticut. Momma had driven them away from home, saying that they were going to visit her Aunt Cilla in Bridgeport, Connecticut. At the mall, she parked the car and walked away, instructing the children to do what Dicey told them. After waiting a few hours, Dicey begins to understand that Momma is not coming back. Worried that going to the authorities might mean foster homes for herself and her siblings, Dicey decides that the four children must try to continue on to Aunt Cilla themselves, and that hopefully they will find their mother there. The children set off on foot, as they do not have enough money for a bus. Dicey realizes that the journey is longer than she had initially understood. She takes charge of their meager finances, she earns money, whenever necessary. Dicey comes to understand more fully how difficult things must have been for Momma, and how she must have slowly lost hope and, eventually, her sanity. The children's journey is a long. They often go hungry and sad and have some frightening brushes with danger. When their money runs out in the center of New Haven, Dicey makes James, Maybeth and Sammy sleep under a bush in a park, while she watches over them. They are rescued by a college student, Windy, who feeds them and offers them shelter. The next day, Stewart, Windy's roommate, gives the children a ride to Bridgeport, dropping them off outside Aunt Cilla's house. At Aunt Cilla's, Dicey and her family learn some uncomfortable truths: firstly, that their mother is not there, and that Aunt Cilla herself is recently deceased. Her middle-aged, unmarried daughter Eunice, a devout Catholic, is reluctant to be burdened with the Tillerman children. She had plans to enter a convent and taking in the homeless children will put an end to her dreams of becoming a nun. The children are not Catholic, and their parents were unmarried, which Eunice does not like. Reluctantly, with the advice of a Catholic priest, she takes them in. The police try to trace the children's mother. The younger children are put into a Catholic summer camp, while Dicey is made to stay home and help Eunice keep house. Sammy gets into fights and is unruly and difficult when at home. Maybeth is extremely shy and has learning difficulties. Cousin Eunice believes she is "retarded", and that Sammy is unmanageable. James becomes distant from his family. The children are informed that their mother is completely catatonic in a state psychiatric hospital, without much chance of recovery. Any dream they harbored of being reunited with Momma and starting a new life with her is shattered. Dicey plans to leave Eunice's house alone, in search of a better home for her family with her grandmother, who lives in Crisfield, Maryland. Although she had only planned to visit her, the other Tillerman children sneak away from school to join her.The Tillerman family finds themselves on the road again in search of a home; this ends the first part of the novel. The second journey, like the first, is hard and fraught with danger. Attempting to earn money picking tomatoes, the children find themselves nearly captured by their employer who has apparently taken an interest in Maybeth. In an attempt to escape, the children are helped by a traveling circus who drive the children to Crisfield. Abigail Tillerman, the children's grandmother, lives alone on a run-down farm. She tells Dicey that the children cannot live there and that she can shelter them for one night only. However, Dicey realizes that the farm would be good for her family, and that they have nowhere else to go. She and her family try to win their grandmother over by doing work around the farm. Dicey learns that her grandmother is frightened of becoming emotionally attached to the Tillerman children, in case she were to lose them as she lost her own children. Mrs Tillerman confesses to Dicey that she bears the pain of this, and fears repeating the same failures. Eventually, the grandmother realizes that not only does she care deeply for the four children, she can and will offer them a permanent home, despite the emotional and financial fears she has. The novel ends with Dicey feeling that she and her family have, at last, come home.
10837416	/m/02qrkwx	Russian Amerika		2007-04-03	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 History suggests that the year is Summer of 1987 as the book begins. Most of the plot follows a mixed-raced man named Gregori Grogorievich. A decorated, but disgraced Imperial Russian Army Major who has left the military for a maritime life in Southeastern Alaska, who has a sport fishing boat which he uses for charters and occasional smuggling. He is hired one day by a Tsarist government official to make a rendezvous with a mysterious woman named Valari Kominskiya, but things go badly as the official gets drunk and tries to rape Valari and kill Gregori, but the official is killed in self-defense and thrown overboard. As Gregori tries to find out how to get out of Russian Amerika with Valari for political asylum, he is betrayed by Valari (who is actually a spy and a high-ranking officer in the Russian Army) for he is captured by the government and falsely charged with the murder of the official (Valari's superior) and with the attempted rape of Valari, and is sentenced to life of hard labor on the Russian-Canadian Highway. After long winter months of being subjected to brutal slavery, he and a group of other prisoners are rescued by a band of native Alaskans and are taken into the wilderness to evade the Russian manhunters called promyshlennik sent to capture or kill the prisoners, especially Gregori. It turns out that Gregori's native Alaskan rescuers are revolutionaries called the Den• Republik that seek to liberate their Yukon lands and Alaska itself from Imperial Russia that has driven them away from their home for hundreds of years, and they offer him a place in their ranks to fight the Russians. Without much choice to go back to his old life, and to have a chance to get revenge for being betrayed by the tyranny and corruption of the Tsarist government, Gregori joins the Alaskan forces. Throughout the winter of 1987 and early 1988, he and the other group of prisoners who also agree to join and fight their common enemy, are trained under the Den• to fight a guerrilla war against the Russian military scattered throughout Alaska while the Den• begin establishing the foundations of their would-be democracy of the new Alaska. At first the rebels are outnumbered in the face of the Imperial forces, but after successful attacks against fortified colonial towns, capturing weapons, recruiting more people of Alaska against Imperialist rule, and military assistance from the US and California, it appears victory for independence is plausible. Although the war to liberate Alaska will go far beyond what Gregori expected of a revolution, from surviving and losing friends to the relentless pursuit from Valari partnered with a vengeful promyshlennik, traitors within the separatist Den• itself, and the unforgiving frontier, to rallying internaional support for the cause to fight an all-out war against the wrath of the Russian Empire that would surely decide the future of all the nations of North America.
10838021	/m/02qrldg	The Snow	Adam Roberts	2004-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The heroine of the story, Tira, is a Londoner who initially survives the snowfall by staying on the surface of the snow. Once the snow begins to bury all the highest buildings, she meets a worker in the London underground and they both survive by sheltering in a high-rise office building and living off supplies that they have cached. The worker later dies after falling off a chair. Tira is then rescued by 'Food Miners' of the New United States of America (now called NUSA). The food miners take her to a new city called 'Liberty'. There she chooses an arranged marriage with a military man and has an affair with a former terrorist. Eventually she is captured by the 'police' of the city and taken to a camp in the middle of the snow. There she has several encounters with an alien race who, it is suggested, caused the snow and move through it as their natural medium.
10846066	/m/02qrtb_	The Statement	Brian Moore	1995	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Now 70 years old, Brossard has spent the better part of his life in hiding, traveling among the monasteries and abbeys that offer him asylum. Though he has evaded capture for decades with the help of the French government and the Catholic Church, now a new breed of government officials is determined to break decades of silence and expose and expiate the crimes of Vichy.
10848775	/m/02qrx30	The Stone Key	Isobelle Carmody	2008-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07lw0y": "Post-holocaust", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When Elspeth sets out from Obernewtyn to Sutrium to testify at the trial of a rebel traitor, she quickly learns not everyone has welcomed the changes caused by the rebellion. Pitted against an invasion, Elsepth finds herself on her strangest and most dangerous journey yet. Drawn into the heart of the Herder Faction, she learns of the terrible plot to destroy the west coast. To stop it, Elspeth risks everything, for if she dies, she will never be able to complete her quest to destroy the weaponmachines which wiped out the Beforetime; but if she succeeds, it might just bring her to the final clue needed to find them...
10851304	/m/02qr_0r	The Moon Pool	A. Merritt	1918	{"/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The plot concerns an advanced race which has developed within the Earth's core. Eventually their most intelligent members create an offspring. This created entity encompasses both great good and great evil, but it slowly turns away from its creators and towards evil. The entity is called either the Dweller or the Shining One. Eventually of the race which created it only three are left; these are called the Silent Ones, and they have been 'purged of dross' and can be described as higher, nobler, more angelic beings than are humankind. They have also been sentenced by the good among their race to remain in the world, and not to die, as punishment for their pride which was the source of the calamity called the Dweller, until such time as they destroy their creation—if they still can. And the reason they do not do so is simply that they continue to love it. The Dweller is in the habit of rising to the surface of the earth and capturing men and women which it holds in an unholy stasis and which in some wise feed it. It increases its knowledge and power constantly, but has a weakness, since it knows nothing of love. The scientist Dr. Goodwin and the half-Irish, half-American pilot Larry O'Keefe, and others, follow it down. Eventually they meet a woman, beautiful and evil, named Yolara, who in essence serves the Shining One, and the 'handmaiden' of the Silent Ones, beautiful and good, named Lakla. Both want O'Keefe and eventually battle over him. There is also a race of very powerful and handsome 'dwarves' and a race of humanoids whom the Silent Ones developed from a semi-sentient froglike species. There develops a battle between the forces of good and evil with not only the entire world, but perhaps even the existence of good itself is at stake. But can the forces of good prevail using fear as a weapon? Or will they have to rely upon love expressed by willing sacrifice?
10855592	/m/02qs3wg	Freeglader	Chris Riddell	2004-09-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Freeglader starts in the capital of the Edge, Undertown. The city is slowly being destroyed by a dark maelstrom, triggered by Vox Verlix. The Undertowners begin a mass exodus, fleeing to a new life in a vast, beautiful area of justice and equality, the Free Glades. The exodus is led by Rook Barkwater, the hero of the story, and the others in a breakaway group of academics known as the librarian knights. On the journey to the Free Glades Rook gets caught up in a storm near the Twilight Woods, causing him to lose his memory. Upon reaching the Deepwoods the exodus is attacked by the recently hatched battle flocks of Shrykes. Only through the timely arrival of the Freeglade Lancers are the Librarians and Undertowners saved (combined with Xanth killing the Roost mother). Meanwhile Amberfuce has reached the Foundry Glade. There he presents his partner with plans for Glade Eaters, special weapons designed by Vox Verlix. The two along with the Goblin Nations begin plans for an attack on the Free Glades. Rook, meanwhile having regained his memory, joins the Free Lancers. Xanth, his name cleared, joins the Librarian Knights. Everything is peaceful for several months until the attack comes. The massive Glade Eaters, backed by the armies of the Goblin Nations, destroy most of the Free Glades before being destroyed. The Sky Pirates, the Librarian Knights, the Freeglade Lancers and the Ghosts of Screetown fight determinedly but are outnumbered. Even the arrival of the banderbears fails to turn the tide. However, at the last minute large numbers of peaceful goblins revolt, killing the Goblin Chieftains. The war ends, and everyone sets about rebuilding the Free Glades.
10857266	/m/02qs5q_	The Vanished Diamond	Jules Verne	1884	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist is a French mining engineer, Victor Cyprien. He moves to the Griquland district to study the formation of diamonds. While he is there he falls in love with wealthy landowner Mr. John Watkins' daughter, Alice. He asks him for her hand in marriage but is denied on his lack of money and stature in the community. He decides that he could amass a fortune by mining with a partner, Thomas Steel. They buy a mining claim and proceed to dig. Victor hires a team of Africans to mine the claim. The claim collapses when Victor's team of hired help is digging. He manages to rescue one of them, Mataki. Achieving no great finds, Victor is disheartened for there are many more eligible suitors than he. Alice begs Cyprien to returns to his studies. So Victor decides to attempt to artificially make a diamond. His experiment seems to work as a 243 carat (48.6 g) diamond is produced. He gives it to Mr. Watkins for Alice. Mr. Watkins holds a banquet in honor of Cyprien and his accomplishment. The diamond, christened as The Star of the South by Alice, is on display during this banquet. Midway through the banquet, the diamond vanishes as well as Victor's African hired help, Mataki. Mataki appears to flee with the diamond and Mr. Watkins, enraged, offers Alice's hand to whoever brings the diamond back. Victor and three other suitors set off to hunt Mataki down. They prepare to travel across the Veld. Victor brings along two companions his laundry man, Li and a member of his digging team, Bardik. Along the way, the other three of his companions perish at the hands of animals or disease. Victor captures Mataki and Mataki states he does not have the diamond. The only reason he ran was because he was afraid he would be hung unjustly for the diamond's disappearance. Victor returns to Griqualand and finds the diamond in the stomach of Alice's ostrich, Dada. Cyprien is almost hung because his discovery of making artificial diamonds threatened the livelihood of the miners. He is only saved by Mataki's confession. Mataki found the diamond when he was covered by the landslide and stuck it in Victor's experiment in gratitude. Victor is shocked. Not caring about the diamond's origin, Mr. Watkins is glad for the recovery and holds another banquet. Mr. Vandergaart, the original owner of the land bursts in with a certificate saying that the land is once again his. John Watkins is devastated and is even more devastated when the Star of the South disintegrates. Shocked he dies the next day. Victor and Alice marry and live happily ever after.
10857898	/m/02qs6c8	Into the Wild	Victoria Holmes	2003-01-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Into the Wild begins with a battle between ThunderClan and RiverClan over Sunningrocks, a strip of land. ThunderClan is outnumbered and their deputy, Redtail, calls a retreat. In ThunderClan territory, the medicine cat, Spottedleaf receives a prophecy from the spirits of their ancestors, StarClan: "Fire alone can save our Clan." The leader, Bluestar says that it is impossible, because fire is feared by all the cats Rusty, a house cat, runs into a ThunderClan apprentice, Graypaw, in his backyard. Rusty, however, does not run away, but fights back. Soon Bluestar and Lionheart, Graypaw's mentor, having watched the whole thing, invite Rusty to join ThunderClan. Rusty accepts the next day, but is unwelcomed by most of the Clan. Rusty loses his collar after a fight with Longtail, and Bluestar gives Rusty a new name: Firepaw. He forms a strong bond with Graypaw and Ravenpaw, but Firepaw finds out that Tigerclaw, an ambitious member of the Clan, murdered Redtail, and will stop at nothing to attain his goal of becoming Clan leader. Tigerclaw realizes that Ravenpaw might spill his secret, having watched Tigerclaw kill Redtail, so he plans to kill Ravenpaw. To prevent this from happening, Firepaw and Graypaw lead Ravenpaw to a barn where he would be safe and have company, living with a loner named Barley. Tigerclaw realizes Firepaw knows his secret, but is still trusted by the Clan. ThunderClan gets in a battle with ShadowClan, and ThunderClan is victorious. Having won because of Firepaw, Bluestar gives him his warrior name, Fireheart, along with making Graypaw a warrior, giving him the name Graystripe.
10857938	/m/02qs6g0	Fire and Ice	Victoria Holmes	2003-06-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Fire and Ice begins with Fireheart and Graystripe performing a traditional silent vigil after their promotion to warrior status in Into the Wild. As their first task as warriors, Fireheart and Graystripe are assigned to find and bring back WindClan, which had been driven out by ShadowClan, and bring them home. They succeed, finding WindClan under a tangle of Thunderpaths (probably a highway interchange), and bring them home. Soon after, Bluestar apprentices Cinderpaw to Fireheart, and Brackenpaw to Graystripe. During a hunting patrol, Graystripe almost drowns after chasing a vole onto thin ice, falling in the river separating RiverClan and ThunderClan, but is rescued by Silverstream, a RiverClan warrior. Graystripe and Silverstream fall in love; however, this is against the warrior code, a code of honor that all warriors must follow. Fireheart discovers their relationship, and unsuccessfully attempts to discourage them from seeing each other. Graystripe finally agrees to meet Silverstream only at the full moon at the Gathering, when the four Clans meet to share news. Fireheart, later realizes that Graystripe has not been keeping his promise. Because Graystripe is often gone to see Silverstream, Fireheart takes over training of Brackenpaw, as well as training his own apprentice. Tigerclaw, in his ambition to become leader, sets a trap for Bluestar by the Thunderpath (road), intending to kill her, thus bringing him closer to becoming leader. Instead, Cinderpaw is crippled by the trap. Her leg is broken, and when it heals, she has a permanent limp, preventing her from becoming a warrior. She then trains under Yellowfang to become a medicine cat. Fireheart is reunited with his sister, Princess, a kittypet living in a Twolegplace (a human town). Princess gives Fireheart her oldest kit, Cloudkit, to take into the Clan as a new apprentice. Although Fireheart agrees to accept the kit, his Clanmates, with the exception of Frostfur and Graystripe, are reluctant to accept him because of his kittypet blood. Bluestar allows him to stay, and Brindleface becomes his foster mother. Brokenstar, the former ShadowClan leader, eventually attacks ThunderClan, along with several other exiled ShadowClan warriors. After the battle, the rogues are driven off, with the exception of Brokenstar himself, who is blinded by Yellowfang and is kept as a prisoner. Later, ThunderClan becomes involved in a fight against RiverClan and ShadowClan when RiverClan and ShadowClan unites and tries to drive WindClan out again, and WindClan allies themselves with ThunderClan. When Fireheart is attacked by Leopardfur, the RiverClan deputy, Tigerclaw watches as Leopardfur and Fireheart fight, and does not attempt to help Fireheart. Silverstream attacks Fireheart but releases him; he attacks her but sees Graystripe's look of dismay, and releases her. Darkstripe witnesses the event and reports it to Tigerclaw. Consequently, Fireheart becomes certain that Tigerclaw is not to be trusted.
10857994	/m/02qs6h1	Forest of Secrets	Victoria Holmes	2003-10-14	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Fireheart is determined to uncover the truth about the Clan deputy, Tigerclaw, whom he believes is untrustworthy, whilst risking the trust of his leader, Bluestar, and even the possibility that she might suspect Fireheart himself as a traitor. ShadowClan and WindClan eventually lead an invasion of the ThunderClan camp in an attempt to kill Brokentail whom ThunderClan is sheltering but are driven off. Meanwhile, Fireheart's best friend, Graystripe, risks the trust of his entire Clan as he continues having a forbidden love affair with Silverstream, who is from RiverClan. Fireheart and Graystripe face danger from Tigerclaw, who has noticed Graystripe missing from camp many times. Silverstream eventually dies while giving birth to Graystripe's kits when they come early. Graystripe is left heartbroken. ThunderClan then learns about his forbidden love with Silverstream and feel that they cannot trust Graystripe anymore. Later, Tigerclaw leads a band of rogues into ThunderClan camp, pretending to defend the Clan. During the battle, Tigerclaw corners Bluestar, the leader, in her den and tries to kill her. Fireheart arrives just in time to save her and drove Tigerclaw away. Bluestar is shaken and shocked by Tigerclaw's mutiny, though she manages to announce Tigerclaw's exile from the Clan. Tigerclaw then asks Darkstripe, Longtail, and even Dustpelt if they want to join him in exile, but each cat refuses. With Bluestar having regained her trust over the cat that had exposed Tigerclaw's treachery, Fireheart is made deputy, although the announcement of the position is made after moonhigh, which is against Clan tradition. As a deputy, life is harder for Fireheart and things change rapidly. Fireheart is unsure whether he would be a good deputy, but he is sure that he has not seen the last of Tigerclaw. At the end of the book, Graystripe, feeling torn between loyalties, heavy-heartedly decides to join RiverClan in order to raise Silverstream's kits. Fireheart attempts to have him reconsider, but this later proves to be unsuccessful. Fireheart is left heartbroken with the thought of losing his friend with whom he shared many adventures, and was the first Clan cat he had ever met since his days as a kittypet. He believes he will be lonely without his best friend.
10858055	/m/02qs6l4	Rising Storm	Victoria Holmes	2005-02-15	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Fireheart is now ThunderClan's new deputy, but the previous deputy, Tigerclaw, still haunts Fireheart's dreams. Fireheart wonders if ThunderClan would be ready if Tigerclaw attacked as many of the cats are still shocked about Tigerclaw's disloyalty, and many warriors are badly injured. Bluestar also begins to become distrusful of the Clan after Tigerclaw's betrayal. One day, Bluestar, accompanied by Fireheart, go to speak with StarClan at Mothermouth, a quarry mine. On the way there, a patrol of WindClan warriors, led by Mudclaw, stop them before Bluestar is able to talk with them. The ThunderClan leader later fears that StarClan sent WindClan to stop them from going to Mothermouth and speaking with StarClan, which causes her to slip into further paranoia. In the summer months, Fireheart struggles with his disrespectful nephew and apprentice, Cloudpaw, who goes to a Twoleg (human) for food and is one day abducted by them. Fireheart and Sandstorm rescue Cloudpaw, who is found near the barn where Ravenpaw and Barley live. He is accepted back into the Clan, since Fireheart keeps it a secret that Cloudpaw went to humans for food. Fireheart must also deal with the fact that his best friend, Graystripe, is still in love with the dead RiverClan she-cat Silverstream. Meanwhile, the forest gets hotter and hotter, and a fire sweeps through the forest, destroying ThunderClan's camp and taking the lives of two elders, Patchpelt and Halftail, as well as Yellowfang, ThunderClan's medicine cat. At the end of the book, it was revealed at a Gathering that both Nightstar and Cinderfur have died from a sickness, and that Tigerstar is the new leader of ShadowClan.
10858097	/m/02qs6nk	A Dangerous Path	Victoria Holmes	2004-06-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When a pack of dogs begins to run wild in the forest, Fireheart, deputy of ThunderClan suspects that Tigerstar, ShadowClan's new leader, is behind it. When Bluestar names Cloudpaw a warrior even though all the apprentices had worked hard, two apprentices, Swiftpaw and Brightpaw, try to fight the dog pack themselves in an attempt to prove themselves. However, Swiftpaw is killed and Brightpaw disfigured by the pack of dogs, losing part of her face. While Brightpaw is recovering from the mauling, she repeats words she heard the dogs say: "pack, pack" and "kill, kill". Normal Clan life resumes, but Fireheart begins to have a strong sense of curiosity of how this happens. To find out, he asks Brightpaw if she remembers what happens, but she can only remember the words "Pack, pack, kill, kill". Whitestorm reports to Fireheart that they smell dog near Snakerocks, so they head there. When they arrive, they find a trail of dead rabbits is found leading to the camp, ending with Brindleface in front of the camp, who had been killed by Tigerstar. Fireheart orders a patrol to get rid of the rabbits. Brindleface's death shocks everyone, and after her burial, the camp is evacuated to Sunningrocks to protect ThunderClan. With Bluestar still insane, it is up to Fireheart to destroy the pack. He and the senior warriors decide that a patrol of cats will lead the dogs to and over the nearby gorge, drowning the dogs. But, before he leaves he apologises to Sandstorm for not obeying Bluestar and they, end up falling in love, really just realising the love they had for each other. The plan works: each cat successfully leads the pack closer to the gorge. Fireheart, the last in line, keeps a good distance between him and the pack leader, until Tigerstar appears and pins Fireheart down. As the dog leader gets dangerously close, Tigerstar leaps away, leaving Fireheart to be killed by the pack. As Fireheart struggles against the dog, Bluestar, sane once more, slams into the dog, releasing its grip on Fireheart and throwing the dog—and herself—over the side of the gorge. Fireheart leaps down the cliff to the river and dives in to save Bluestar. Fireheart manages to get a hold on her, but is barely able to keep their heads above the water. Soon, however, Bluestar's RiverClan children, Stonefur and Mistyfoot, discover Fireheart struggling in the river and help drag Bluestar to the bank. There, Bluestar pleads with her kits to forgive her for lying to them about their parents. They forgive her. Bluestar then tells Fireheart that she realised that they were not all traitors to the Clan, like Tigerstar was. She also tells him that he is now the leader of ThunderClan, and that "you are the fire that saved my Clan". With that, she loses her final life. Fireheart, now Firestar, is filled with grief, and Mistyfoot asks if she and Stonefur can help carry her back to camp and sit vigil for her.
10858133	/m/02qs6p7	The Darkest Hour	Victoria Holmes	2004-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Firestar is now the leader of ThunderClan and receives his nine lives where Bluestar tells him the prophecy "Four will become two, Lion and Tiger will meet in battle and blood will rule the forest." He chooses his deputy to be Whitestorm, an experienced warrior who is quite old. Then Tigerstar attempts to unify all four Clans claiming that it would help the Clans survive. While Leopardstar agrees, Tallstar and Firestar both refuse to join this alliance, which Tigerstar has called "TigerClan". Accompanied by Ravenpaw, who is on a visit to ThunderClan, Graystripe and Firestar go to RiverClan and find that Graystripe's kits, Stormpaw and Featherpaw, and Bluestar's kits, Mistyfoot and Stonefur, being held prisoner. Since they are all half-ThunderClan and half-RiverClan, Tigerstar accuses them of being half-Clan cats and therefore, in his opinion, traitors. Firestar, Graystripe, and Ravenpaw manage to rescue Mistyfoot, Stormpaw, and Featherpaw, but Stonefur is killed protecting Featherpaw and Stormpaw. In an attempt to convince Tallstar and Firestar to join his alliance, Tigerstar reveals to them BloodClan, a vicious group of rogues in the nearby town. When both leaders still refuse, Tigerstar then orders BloodClan to fight for him, but they do not do so. Scourge tells Tigerstar that he is the only cat in charge of BloodClan, and that after Firestar tells everyone Tigerstar's bloodthirsty history and that he cannot be trusted to divide power, he has decided that there will be no battle. Tigerstar attacks Scourge, who kills Tigerstar easily, ending all nine of Tigerstar's lives with one blow, by cutting him open, from throat to tail. Scourge then gives all of the forest Clans three days to leave; otherwise, they will have to fight BloodClan for the forest. To face this danger, the four Clans unite, forming an alliance which is known as "LionClan". The battle is won when Firestar kills Scourge, though he loses one of his own nine lives in the process. Without its leader, BloodClan scatters. With the forest returned to normal, the four Clans become independent once more.
10858178	/m/02qs6qz	Midnight	Erin Hunter	2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Six months have passed since the previous book, The Darkest Hour. Bramblepaw, Tigerstar's son, has received his warrior name, Brambleclaw. Firestar has had two kits with Sandstorm, named Squirrelpaw and Leafpaw. Squirrelpaw is apprenticed to Dustpelt, and Leafpaw is apprenticed to Cinderpelt, to train to become the next medicine cat of ThunderClan. While Leafpaw and Cinderpelt search for herbs, StarClan, the cats' ancestors, sends Cinderpelt an ominous warning in some burning bracken, a picture of a tiger running through fire, which she interprets to mean that fire and tiger will destroy the forest. Cinderpelt concludes that the warning must be about Squirrelpaw and Brambleclaw, the daughter of Firestar and the son of Tigerstar, respectively. They share the warning with Firestar, who later decides to keep Brambleclaw and Squirrelpaw separated. In a dream, StarClan tells Brambleclaw, Feathertail (Graystripe's daughter), Crowpaw, and Tawnypelt (formerly Tawnypaw, Brambleclaw's sister) to listen to what "midnight" has to say. Eventually, they begin a journey in the direction of the setting sun. Squirrelpaw tags along and Stormfur insists on accompanying them to protect his sister, Feathertail, as the six cats trek into the unknown world. On their journey, they meet an old loner named Purdy who helps the Clan cats get to the sun-drown place (ocean). Eventually, they reach the sun-drown-place and enter a cavern inhabited by a highly intelligent badger known as Midnight, who reveals to them that humans will destroy the forest and that the cats must either leave the forest or die. She also tells them that a dying warrior will lead the Clans to their new home. The book ends with a short epilogue back in the forest, where the humans begin to destroy ThunderClan's territory. The book that comes after Midnight is Moonrise.
10858229	/m/02qs6r_	Moonrise	Erin Hunter	2005-08-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the previous book in the series, Midnight, StarClan, the warrior cats' ancestors, sent four cats (one from each Clan—Brambleclaw, Crowpaw, Feathertail, and Tawnypelt) on a quest. Squirrelpaw and Stormfur went with them. At the end of their journey, they arrived at the ocean and found an unusually intelligent badger named Midnight. Midnight told the cats that the Clans would have to leave their forest home and find a new place to live, as humans were going to cut down the forest and build a new "Thunderpath" (the cats' word for a road). On the return journey, the Clan cats decide, after consultation with Midnight, to go through a mountain range which they had avoided in their initial travels. There, they meet a Clan-like group of cats called the Tribe of Rushing Water, who have their own set of ancestors: the Tribe of Endless Hunting. The Tribe takes the traveling cats in and gives them food and shelter. The Clan cats discover that the Tribe cats have a prophecy: a silver cat will save them from Sharptooth, a savage lion-like creature that has been killing many members of the Tribe. The Tribe thinks that Stormfur is the silver cat from the prophecy, and he is therefore expected to protect the Tribe from Sharptooth. Although reluctant at first, Stormfur eventually agrees to help the Tribe. Together, the Clan cats succeed in leading Sharptooth into a trap in a cave. However, their plan to poison Sharptooth goes awry, and Feathertail jumps up to the roof of the cave onto a stalactite, causing it to fall. Both Feathertail and Sharptooth are killed by the impact. The Tribe then realizes that Feathertail was the silver cat in their prophecy, not her brother Stormfur, as they had previously thought. The five remaining cats then continue their journey. The book ends with Squirrelpaw noticing Highstones, which is at the edge of WindClan territory; they are almost home. Meanwhile, back in the forest, the Clans begin to experience the effects of the humans' intrusion into their territories, including lost and poisoned prey, destruction of the forest and cats being abducted. Moonrise is followed by Dawn, which details the events following the questing cats' return to the forest, and their subsequent journey to find a new home.
10858273	/m/02qs6v1	Dawn	Kate Cary	2005-12-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Brambleclaw, Squirrelpaw, Crowpaw, Stormfur and Tawnypelt have returned to the Clans from a quest with a message: the Clans must move to a new home, or risk death. The destruction of the forest has already begun, with the Clans starving as the food supply has been cut off and their habitat destroyed by the humans building a new road. At the same time, cats are being taken away by humans, including a ThunderClan apprentice, Leafpaw. A patrol is sent to rescue the captured cats, but Graystripe is captured after he succeeds in rescuing Leafpaw and other cats from RiverClan and WindClan, as well as many non-Clan cats. It is difficult for Firestar, ThunderClan's leader, to convince ShadowClan and RiverClan to leave. Finally, RiverClan decides to leave when their river becomes poisoned by humans. ShadowClan also agrees to leave when a tree cut down by humans falls in their camp. While trying help ShadowClan, Firestar loses his fourth life when a tree falls on him. Midnight, an intelligent badger from the pervious book, had told the questing cats that a "dying warrior" will show the Clans the way to their new home. The dying warrior turns out to be the spirit of Mudfur, the RiverClan medicine cat who died earlier. As the Clans' spiritual ancestors are represented by the star, Mudfur "runs" though the night sky as a shooting star and drops behind the mountains, showing the new territory will be beyond the mountains. The Clans travel together through the mountains, guided by Brambleclaw, Squirrelpaw, Crowpaw, Tawnypelt, and Stormfur. While in the mountains, the Clans meet the Tribe of Rushing Water and Stormfur chooses to stay with the Tribe with Brook Where Small Fish Swim, whom he has fallen in love with, and his sister, Feathertail's, spirit. Near the end of the book, Squirrelpaw confesses her love to Brambleclaw and he confesses that he loves her back. At the end of the book, the Clans discover a forest around a lake that reflects all of the stars.
10858302	/m/02qs6vr	Starlight	Erin Hunter	2006-04-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The four Clans of warrior cats, ThunderClan, ShadowClan, RiverClan and WindClan, discover a lake which serves as their new home, replacing their old home which is destroyed by humans. The Clans temporarily set up camp by the lakeshore and decide that, the next day, they sort out their respective territories and look for a Gathering place to hold their monthly meetings under a truce. During a meeting, Firestar, leader of ThunderClan, calls up Squirrelpaw, his daughter who is an apprentice, and promotes her to the status of warrior, giving her the warrior name Squirrelflight. The next day, the leaders call upon the four remaining cats that go on the journey to the sun-drown-place in Midnight, Brambleclaw, Squirrelflight, Crowfeather, and Tawnypelt, as well as Mistyfoot of RiverClan to explore around the lake and find camps for each Clan. The cats come across a location that seems ideal for RiverClan's fishing lifestyle. Continuing on, they find a coniferous forest which seems to suit ShadowClan. Desperate to prove herself by finding ThunderClan a camp, Squirrelflight runs ahead and accidentally falls down a large circular stone hollow. She recovers and realizes that it is a perfect place for a well-sheltered ThunderClan camp. The cats later cross a moorland which Crowfeather thinks suits WindClan's lifestyle of chasing rabbits. The five cats return and announce their findings to all of the other cats. The Clans decide to leave for their new camps the next day. After the Clans move into their new camps, Barkface, the WindClan medicine cat, goes to Firestar and tells him that Tallstar, leader of WindClan, is dying. Firestar asks Brambleclaw to follow him as well as Onewhisker of WindClan, at Tallstar's request. Tallstar tells them that he does not wish for Mudclaw, the WindClan deputy, to lead WindClan, and wishes to switch to Onewhisker as deputy. He dies soon after telling the cats. The next morning, Firestar and Onewhisker announce this to the other Clans, much to Mudclaw's anger. Onewhisker appoints Ashfoot as his deputy, although he has not yet received his nine lives and leader name from StarClan, the cats' ancestors. The medicine cats worry about whether there is another Moonstone (a sacred stone in the old territory) for Onewhisker to visit for his leadership ceremony. During Gatherings and times when the Clans are together, Brambleclaw spends more time with his half-brother Hawkfrost, which does not sit well with Squirrelflight. Brambleclaw has a dream in which he sees Tigerstar, his evil dead father, and Hawkfrost. Tigerstar praises Brambleclaw and Hawkfrost for their courage during the change in territory and tells them that he has great plans for them. There is also tension erupting in WindClan, which seems to be divided in two groups consisting of Mudclaw's supporters and Onewhisker's supporters. One night, Spottedleaf, a former ThunderClan medicine cat, now deceased, goes to Leafpaw, a ThunderClan medicine cat apprentice, and tells her to follow her. Leafpaw's friend Sorreltail accompanies Leafpaw, and the two of them go far up on ThunderClan's territory near the border with WindClan. Spottedleaf takes Leafpaw to her destination: a pool of water which reflects the stars and moonlight. Leafpaw sees all of the cats of StarClan and realizes this could be the replacement for the Moonstone. Bluestar, former leader of ThunderClan tells her that this place, the Moonpool, is where medicine cats come to share tongues with StarClan. She goes back to tell Cinderpelt, ThunderClan's medicine cat, and the two of them tell all of the other medicine cats. Later, during the half-moon, Leafpaw receives her full medicine cat name, Leafpool. The next day, Mistyfoot rushes into ThunderClan camp and says that Mudclaw and Hawkfrost have been meeting at night. She then says that Hawkfrost and a patrol went out at dawn that day and had not returned, and she suspects that they have gone to attack Onewhisker's followers in WindClan. Firestar assembles a patrol to accompany him to fight, and sure enough, a battle starts on WindClan territory. Leafpool is left behind with a couple of other ThunderClan warriors in the camp. Two ShadowClan warriors invade and almost kill Leafpool when Crowfeather comes to her rescue. Crowfeather confesses he loves her, and she realizes she loves him too. During the battle, Brambleclaw fights Mudclaw. Although Mudclaw has the advantage over Brambleclaw, Hawkfrost saves Bramblelcaw. Mudclaw claims that he and Hawkfrost had an agreement: Mudclaw would take over and make Hawkfrost the deputy, despite the fact that Hawkfrost is from RiverClan. Hawkfrost denies this when lightning suddenly strikes a tree, crushing Mudclaw and making a bridge to an island, making it the new Gathering place.
10858345	/m/02qs6xt	Twilight	Erin Hunter	2006-07-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 ThunderClan is still suffering from Mudclaw's attack on WindClan, as ThunderClan supports them in battle but they pays the price with wounds. The chances that Brambleclaw stops supporting Hawkfrost is unlikely at this point. At the same time, Squirrelflight and Ashfur grow much closer. Later in the book, Daisy, one of the farm cats, takes her three kits, Berry, Hazel, and Mouse, to join ThunderClan after Daisy witnesses the humans taking Floss' kits away. Leafpool deals with her forbidden love with Crowfeather, and struggles with her feelings; she must choose between her heart and her Clan. Throughout the book, Leafpool and Crowfeather secretly meet each other. Cinderpelt finally confronts Leafpool when she is with Crowfeather. The two medicine cats fight, and Leafpool decides to run away from the Clans with Crowfeather after Spottedleaf tells her to follow her heart. After a long night alone in the hills, Leafpool and Crowfeather return to the Clans after hearing of a badger attack on the Clans from Midnight. During the fight, Sorreltail suddenly starts to have her kits and Cinderpelt stays to help Sorreltail. Although Sorreltail gives birth to four healthy kits, Cinderpelt is killed by a badger. ThunderClan begins to lose the battle, but WindClan joins in to help, summoned by Midnight. Together, the two Clans manage to drive the badgers away. Crowfeather and Leafpool decide to never meet again.
10858387	/m/02qs6z5	Sunset	Erin Hunter	2006-12-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After a badger attack destroys much of ThunderClan's camp, Brook Where Small Fish Swim (Brook) and Stormfur, old friends of ThunderClan, help to rebuild the camp. The battle is not without its consequences, as both the medicine cat Cinderpelt and the warrior Sootfur die. The battle rekindles Squirrelflight's love for Brambleclaw (following a conflict between the two during the previous book), leading her to have an argument a few days after with Ashfur, whom she had moved to following her separation from Brambleclaw. All of the Clans are grieving for the death of Cinderpelt. Leafpool finds herself struggling between grief and betrayal, for she has not seen Cinderpelt in the ranks of StarClan. During a visit to the Moonpool, where medicine cats share dreams with StarClan each month, former medicine cat Spottedleaf goes to Leafpool in a dream and shows her that Cinderpelt is reborn in the form of Cinderkit, one of Sorreltail's four kits whom Cinderpelt died protecting. After months of waiting and with persuasion from Brambleclaw, Stormfur, the new medicine cat Leafpool and his own mate Sandstorm, Firestar, leader of ThunderClan, finally declares that his friend and deputy Graystripe is not going to return after being abducted by humans in Dawn. When a dream from StarClan, the spirits of the cats' ancestors, tells Leafpool that Brambleclaw should be the new deputy, Firestar agrees and appoints Brambleclaw as the new deputy. The decision is met with objection, because Brambleclaw had never mentored an apprentice, a requirement for becoming deputy. The matter is cleared when Firestar declares that Brambleclaw will mentor Berrykit when the kit turns six months of age and mentions Leafpool's dream from StarClan to his warriors. Tigerstar, an evil cat who is dead, continues to visit his sons (through different mothers) Hawkfrost and Brambleclaw in their dreams and when Brambleclaw becomes deputy, Tigerstar reveals his plan for Brambleclaw to take over ThunderClan and WindClan and for Hawkfrost to take over RiverClan and ShadowClan. Brambleclaw firmly rejects this idea, but agrees to make up a plan with Hawkfrost when they awake. During the meeting, Brambleclaw hears a cat struggling in pain. He finds Firestar caught in a fox trap (wire snare) and Hawkfrost urges Brambleclaw to kill the ThunderClan leader so that Brambleclaw can become the new leader. After struggling with his desires, Brambleclaw refuses to kill Firestar and frees him from the trap. Since Brambleclaw betrays their father's plans, Hawkfrost attacks Brambleclaw, but Brambleclaw kills Hawkfrost with the trap's sharp stick by stabbing his neck. Before he dies, Hawkfrost claims to Brambleclaw that a ThunderClan warrior helps him with his plan and that their fight is not over. The prophecy "Before there is peace, blood will spill blood, and the lake will run red", given to Leafpool in an earlier book, is fulfilled; since Brambleclaw and Hawkfrost are half-brothers, they share the same blood and are kin, and as he stumbles down to the lake, blood pours from Hawkfrost's neck, making the lake run red.
10858440	/m/02qs70l	The Sight	Erin Hunter	2007-04-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the prologue, it is revealed that after the conclusion of Firestar's Quest, a prophecy was sent to Firestar. After a report of a fox and her cubs loose in ThunderClan territory, the three secretly leave camp and try to track down the foxes and help their Clan. They end up in trouble, but are saved. As time goes by, Hollypaw decides she wants to become a medicine cat apprentice to help injured cats and heal sicknesses. A few moons later, Hollypaw becomes Leafpool's (the medicine cat) apprentice; Lionpaw becomes Ashfur's apprentice and Jaypaw becomes Brightheart's apprentice. Jaypaw gets frustrated that he is apprenticed to the warrior with one eye, and he feels the other cats pity him. Jaypaw is commonly frustrated that many cats see his blindness as a weakness, even though he has never known life with sight and therefore uncaring of his blindness. Hollypaw, on the other hand, begins to realize that being a medicine cat might not be the right path for her as she does not like seeing other cats in pain or biting up herbs. At a gathering, all Clans have little to report. Lionpaw quickly befriends WindClan apprentice Heatherpaw. In the middle of the gathering, two unknown cats appear. The Clans realize they are Graystripe, with a new friend, Millie. Graystripe was thought to have died when twolegs took him away in The New Prophecy series. Instead, he managed to escape with the help of Millie and found the new home with the help of Barley and Ravenpaw. It turns out all the forest was destroyed. The Clans leave and Graystripe and Millie return to ThunderClan. The return of Graystripe causes another problem. Firestar appointed Brambleclaw as the new deputy assuming Graystripe had died, yet Graystripe was still alive. To help make the decision on who should be deputy, Firestar sends Leafpool to the Moonpool to talk with StarClan. StarClan only tells Leafpool that Firestar must make his own choice. In the end, Brambleclaw stays as deputy since he knows the Clan better. When a battle with ShadowClan breaks out, Jaypaw can only defeat an enemy apprentice with the help of his sibling telling him where the enemy is. Hollypaw finds the thrill of battling better than chewing up bitter herbs. Jaypaw likewise receives a dream from StarClan telling him he must become a medicine cat because he has a gift to walk in other cat's dreams. Although Jaypaw does not accept this at first, he realizes his blindness would prove as a setback during battle and agrees to become a medicine cat apprentice. Hollypaw and Jaypaw decide to trade roles with Jaypaw becoming Leafpool's apprentice and Hollypaw, Brackenfur's apprentice. At the next Gathering, a dispute breaks out between the Clans. To solve the argument, Squirrelflight shares an idea: to have a special Gathering, just once. All four Clans would meet in ThunderClan territory at sunhigh. Each Clan would have their apprentices compete in different contests; tree climbing, hunting, and fighting. Whichever Clans' apprentice won would pick the prey from the fresh-kill pile first. Jaypaw is upset that he can't compete, and while staying behind at the camp, he has a vision. He is choking on earth, and he smells badger and fox. He is scrabbling desperately with his paws, until realizes that he is seeing through Lionpaw's eyes. It turns out that, while competing, Lionpaw and Breezepaw fell into a collapsing fox den. Luckily, Jaypaw got there in time to save them along with Crowfeather. The leaders decide that since every Clan won at something, there would be a tie and no Clan would win. In the end, Jaypaw walks in Firestar's dream and hears the prophecy There will be three, kin of your kin, who hold the power of the stars in their paws. Realizing that he and his sibling are the cats described in the prophecy, Jaypaw suddenly thinks "One day we will be so powerful that we shall command even StarClan!"
10862571	/m/02qsbv3	The Princess Diaries, Volume IV: Princess in Waiting	Meg Cabot	2003	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Never before has the world seen such a princess. Nor have her own subjects, for that matter. Mia's royal introduction to Genovia has mixed results: while her fashion sense is widely applauded, her position on the installation of public parking meters is met with resistance. But the politics of bureaucracy are nothing next to Mia's real troubles. Between canceled dates with her long—sought—after royal consort, a second semester of the dreaded Algebra, more princess lessons from Grandmère as a result of the Genovian parking—meter thing, and the inability to stop gnawing on her fingernails, isn't there anything Mia is good at besides inheriting an unwanted royal title?
10862659	/m/02qsbx5	The Princess Diaries, Volume VI: Princess in Training	Meg Cabot	2005-04	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This story begins the day before Mia goes back to school to begin her sophomore year, which she feels is completely pointless, because Michael is now a freshman in college. The only thing that seems good about school this year is the arrival of a new English teacher, who both Mia and Lilly feel they will love. The first day of school begins, and Lilly does not make an effort to look nice because she has lost her boyfriend, Boris Pelkowski, to one of her and Mia's closest friends, Tina . Once Mia and Lilly arrive in school, they are shocked to discover that Boris has gotten 'hot' over the summer, making dramatic changes to his appearance so he can play violin better. The first English lesson of the year begins, and Mia, Lilly and Tina pass notes saying how great they think their new English teacher, Ms Martinez, is. Everything is going well until lunchtime, when, in the Jet Line, Lana, Mia's arch-enemy, tells Mia that college boys expect their girlfriends to Do It with them. This freaks Mia out because she is positive that she is not ready to sleep with anyone. Mia, thinking she has suffered enough for one day, receives another blow as Lilly nominates her for student-council president and Lana Weinberger, hearing this, immediately puts herself into the race, and Principal Gupta schedules the votes for president to be cast on the following Monday. Grandmere is delighted that Mia is running for president, because it will distract the media from Mia dumping snails into the bay back at Genovia to eat the killer algae that Monaco have dumped in, destroying the natural balance of the seas. Unfortunately, the snails don't seem to be doing anything, and some countries want Genovia to be kicked out of the EU. Lilly and Grandmere team up and organize Mia's campaign for student council president, putting posters up in the school, organizing televised interviews and handing out pens to promote Mia. Lilly confesses to Mia that she just wants Mia to run for president so that Mia can name her as her vice-president, and, after a few days, step down because of her hectic schedule and name Lilly as her successor, as Lilly is not popular enough to become president herself. A stressful school week ends and Mia visits Michael's dorm on Saturday (after a big sleepover at the Plaza with her friends, Lily Moscovitz, Tina Hakim Baba, Ling-Su Wong and Shameeka Taylor, where Mia stayed up until three o clock and was woken early because Lilly forced her to go to a soccer game to promote her campaign) and meets his roommate, Doo Pak, where she discovers condoms in Michael's bathroom. Shocked by this discovery, Mia has The Talk with Michael, who says he knows Mia isn't ready because she invited her friends for a sleepover once she found out she had a hotel room to herself, and not him. Michael tells her he understands, but is not going to wait forever and Mia begins to think that Michael is going to break up with her, a theme that is repeated in almost every book where Mia and Michael are in a relationship. On Monday, Mia debates against Lana (a debate which is also televised), and provides a much more convincing argument than Lana and gets the majority of the vote. Mia realizes that she wants to be president herself, when Michael shows up at school and Mia leaves with him. They go out to a restaurant and talk, and they agree to see if Mia is ready to do it every 3 months. Their relationship is strong once again, and the story ends. This book is a successful hit being one of Meg Cabot's most mature books.
10862867	/m/02qsc2c	The Princess Diaries, Volume VII: Party Princess	Meg Cabot	2006-04	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When Mia bankrupts the student government buying high-tech recycling bins, she needs to raise $5000 soon, so that she can pay for the seniors' commencement ceremony. All her friends (including Michael, her long-time boyfriend and so-called love of her life) mention selling candles, but Mia absolutely refuses, so Grandmere comes up with a solution: a musical, written and directed by Grandmere, starring Mia and her friends, portraying the achievements of Mia's famous Genovian ancestor, Rosagunde. Mia is thrilled, yet quite worried to be cast as the lead. She attempts to drop out, but Grandmere threatens to tell the seniors that Mia had bankrupted the student government (making them angry that she had not saved money for the commencement ceremony). 'Braid!' also results in a new-found friendship, between Mia and 'The Guy Who Hates It When They Put Corn In The Chili', aka J.P. - Mia's on-stage love interest, who turns out to be an aspiring screenwriter. Another drama in her life enters the story when Michael mentions his parents are going away for the weekend and he plans on having a party. Mia starts to worry she isn't enough of a party girl. She even (as a last resort, of course) asks her archenemy, Lana Weinberger, how to act like a "Party Girl". Mia does what Lana says and it all ends in tragedy. After she drinks and 'sexy dances' with J.P., her relationship with Michael seems to be on rocky ground, especially as Michael's parents are splitting up and he is being an absent boyfriend. Her friendship with J.P. seems to be going the same way thanks to Lilly's new literary magazine, 'Fat Louie's Pink Butthole', which includes 'No More Corn!' a story Mia wrote (before meeting him) about J.P. killing himself. However, Principal Gupta immediately bans the magazine and confiscates all the copies, as Lilly has submitted five explicit stories to it, meaning that J.P. never sees Mia's story. The play is performed at the Aide de Ferme, a benefit for Genovian olive oil farmers that Grandmere puts on. Everyone who is anyone attends, but, before the last scene, Mia is worried about her on-stage kiss with J.P. But then Michael shows up in J.P.'s costume and gives her a perfect kiss and they talk about their problems, and, once again, their relationship appears to be strong. Grandmere also raises enough money to help the Genovian farmers and Mia, solving her problems.
10862921	/m/02qsc4s	The Princess Diaries, Volume VII and 3/4: Valentine Princess	Meg Cabot	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Mia and Michael share Valentine's Day together, having fun.
10862983	/m/02qsc6h	The Princess Diaries, Volume VIII: Princess on the Brink	Meg Cabot	2007-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Mia is now a junior. She is no longer student president (with Lilly taking her place) but more problems come along as she passes through the school year. First, Michael tells Mia that he needs to spend a year (or more) in Japan. She is extremely upset about this and starts trying to find a way to get him to stay. Grandmere plants this idea in her head that if Mia sleeps with Michael, he won't want to leave. Mia and Michael get into an argument before they can sleep together, and he says nothing about not leaving to Japan. Then to make matters worse, she learns that Michael had a friends with benefits relationship with Judith Gershner that he had never mentioned (he mentioned the friendship, but did not mention the benefits), which she believes constitutes him having lied to or misled her. This leads Mia to break up with Michael. Michael catches Mia (in a rather upset and confused state) kissing J.P. when he later comes to apologize to her. J.P. has just broken up with Lilly, and Kenny tells Lilly about the kiss. Now, her former best friend and her former boyfriend no longer are speaking to her. When Mia goes to explain what happened to Michael, his plane to Japan has already taken off. J.P. asks if Mia would like to see Beauty and the Beast with him, and she says yes. But before she goes, she emails Michael and writes "Michael, I'm sorry," the only thing she can think of to say.
10863015	/m/02qsc75	The Princess Diaries, Volume IX: Princess Mia	Meg Cabot	2008	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Mia Thermopolis is having a bad time. She's failing Chemistry and Pre-Calculus, Michael has moved to Japan thinking she hates him, Lilly isn't speaking to her, someone has set up a hate site about her at www.ihatemiathermopolis.com, and Grandmere expects her to give a speech to the Domina Rei, the world's most exclusive women's society. Even when she goes to the theatre with J.P. as friends, it ends up all over the gossip magazines. When Michael finally calls, he decides it is best that they stay "just friends". Unable to cope, Mia retreats to her room, begins binge-eating, and refuses to go to school for four days. Eventually, Mia's family steps in. Her father takes her to see a cowboy psychologist, Dr. Knutz, who convinces Mia to return to school and try to move on with her life. Mia realizes she has depression, and returns to school, where Lilly still refuses to have anything to do with her. However, friendship comes from an unexpected direction: Lana Weinberger, Mia's enemy, offers her the olive branch, explaining that the main reason she disliked Mia was because of Lilly. Soon, the two have become friends. Kenny (who begins dating Lilly) causes the chemistry lab to explode during a class but right before that, J.P. tells Mia that he loves her; Mia is glad, but she explains that she is not yet ready for a new relationship. Meanwhile, as Mia is preparing for her speech to the Domina Rei, she discovers an old ancestress; Princess Amelie, who ruled Genovia for twelve days while she was only sixteen, before dying of the bubonic plague. By reading Amelie's diary, Mia discovers something shocking; over four hundred years ago, the princess legally changed Genovia from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, led by a Prime Minister. However, her father refuses to accept the document's legality, and when Mia asks Lilly for help, she publicly humiliates her and reveals that she is the one behind www.ihatemiathermopolis.com. This effectively ends the girls' friendship, with Mia turning back to Tina and Lana instead. Dr. Knutz helps Mia decide to reveal Princess Amelie's story to the Domina Rei in her speech; this brave act earns her an invitation to join, and an e-mail from Michael, on her way home she finds J.P. waiting for her and she kisses him and Mia finally replies to Michael's e-mail with a little happiness.
10863031	/m/02qsc7w	The Princess Diaries, Volume X: Forever Princess	Meg Cabot	2008-12	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Mia leaves us with an unhappy ending in the ninth book and we join her again in the tenth, which is set two years later, in her last few weeks of school before graduation. In this final book of the series, we see that while still a teenager, Mia has shown major improvements in her progression to becoming an adult. She has been dating J.P, keeping in touch with Michael, and building up a friendship with Lana, but she has not yet made up with Lilly. Mia is getting ready for her eighteenth birthday in a week, not to mention PROM and graduation, and still all she does is lie. She has been accepted in every college she applied to, but she fears it's because of her royal condition, and she told everyone she hadn't. She wrote a romance novel, under an alias, and told everyone it was a paper on Genovian olive oil, and is trying to get it published, with no success. She doesn't feel like going to her prom at all, and Michael is back in town after his CardioArm became a huge hit success and he has become a rich young man. All of a sudden, everything she was (sort of) sure of goes down the drain. She isn't so sure about her relationship with J.P, whose motives are unclear. She also has to deal with turning eighteen and the extravagant party that Grandmere is throwing for her, and helping her father win an election against her cousin, René. It all sounds very complicated - not forgetting Mia wants to lose her virginity before graduation. In the end she goes to prom with J.P, planning to have sex afterwards. After she learns from Lilly that J.P didn't really love anything about her, apart from her fame, Mia breaks up with him and she and Lilly become friends again. She also learns that JP lied to her saying he was a virgin while he and Lilly did have sex. Then, Michael appears and takes her back, telling Mia about his undying love for her. She then loses her virginity to Michael near the end of the book. Mia also decides to go to Sarah Lawrence and plans to never again leave Michael.
10863928	/m/02qsd08	The Vanished Man	Jeffery Deaver	2003-03-11	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story centers around a serial killer loose in New York City whose slayings are patterned after illusionist tricks. When the killer illusionist uses his tricks to baffle and evade police, forensic expert Lincoln Rhyme and his longtime partner Amelia Sachs are brought in to investigate, setting off a tense cat-and-mouse chase where nothing is as it seems. The novel's title is a specific reference to an illusionist trick where a person is made to disappear and then reappear. It also alludes to the killer in the novel, who is quite talented at disappearing soon after his crimes are committed.
10870835	/m/02qsm2m	Son of Rosemary	Ira Levin		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins in November 1999 with Rosemary Woodhouse waking up in a long term care facility after the last member of the coven from the first novel is killed in a car accident. She learns that she has been in a coma since 1973, the result of a spell cast on her by the coven when they discovered that she planned to remove her son Andy from their influence. Rosemary immediately becomes a national sensation after waking up from such a long coma. In her absence, Andy was raised by Minnie and Roman Castevet, the leaders of the coven. Andy is now 33, the same age as Jesus is said to have been when he died -- he also has twelve assistants and a girlfriend called Judith S. Kharyat who threatens to reveal his parentage and is spectacularly murdered with 30 silver knives. He is the leader of a charitable foundation with a worldwide influence. Rosemary immediately suspects that Andy's foundation has a demonic purpose, but he reassures her that he has fought his evil side, and is trying to do good work. Supporters wear pins that say "I (heart) Andy" -- in fact, this is the first thing Rosemary sees when she wakes -- and after Rosemary's story becomes known, they begin wearing "I (heart) Rosemary" pins as well. Andy consorts with Republican Party members and members of the Religious Right, who want him to endorse a slightly retarded millionaire for President. Throughout the book, various characters playfully mention the riddle "roast mules",often out of context or à propos of nothing. The foundation has distributed candles worldwide with the intention that they be lit at midnight on New Year's Eve to help usher in the year 2000. Rosemary gradually comes to suspect that all is not right with the candles, but her concerns fall on deaf ears. In the climax of the book, the candles release a deadly virus which causes people to disintegrate into dust particles. Andy's real father returns for a visit, and takes Rosemary with him to Hell. After being taken to Hell, Rosemary wakes up in bed with her husband Guy and finds that it is 1965 again. The events of the entire first book and nearly all of the sequel are revealed to have been a vivid dream of Rosemary's. Even the Bramford, the apartment building where Guy and Rosemary lived in the first book, was revealed to be a creation of Rosemary's mind after reading Bram Stoker's book, Dracula. Rosemary then receives a call from her friend Edward Hutchins (who in the first book was killed to prevent his revealing the coven's existence). He offers her and Guy a rent-free apartment in the Dakota Apartments (the model for the Bramford) for a year. Hutch then makes a comment about "roast mules", and about the candle lighting, causing Rosemary to sense danger. Guy questions why she would want to turn down a chance to live at the Dakota, but Rosemary takes Hutch's remarks seriously as a warning.
10872698	/m/02qsntm	Dies the Fire	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Mike Havel is a former United States Marine and veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War who works as a bush pilot. On March 17, 1998, Havel is flying over the Bitterroot Mountain Range in Idaho when a mysterious event known as "The Change" occurs. His passengers are wealthy industrialist Kenneth Larsson, Larsson's wife Mary, and their three teenage children, twins Eric and Signe, and Astrid. When the plane's engine and electronics are disabled and rendered inoperable, Mike makes an emergency crash landing. Everyone survives, though Mary is seriously injured. The party makes its way through rough terrain to a ranger cabin in the woods. Mike and Eric hike out to the highway, and encounter a trio of racist survivalists on horseback who have taken prisoner a black man named Will Hutton and his family. Mike and Eric rescue the family, but the survivalists escape. Mike and Eric pursue them to the cabin where the rest of the Larssons are waiting. By the time Mike and Eric catch up, they have murdered Mary, and are attempting to rape Signe and Astrid. All three survivalists are killed. The Huttons, who breed and train horses, join Mike's band. The group elects Mike as their leader and decide to head for Larsdalen, the Larsson family estate in the western Willamette Valley in Oregon. Along the way, Astrid shoots a black bear with her bow, which only provokes it into attacking. It seriously wounds Mike before they manage to kill it. The event gives the group its name: the Bearkillers. On the journey, the Bearkillers begin recruiting other survivors. The Bearkillers are hired by a group near a Nez Perce Indian Reservation to find and wipe out a nest of cannibals; in accomplishing their mission, they rescue a number of captives. Mike and Signe become attracted to each other, though she keeps him at arm's length, still horrified by the memory of her near-rape. Later, when the group has grown larger, Mike takes two companions to scout the way ahead. In Portland, Mike meets Norman Arminger, leader of the Portland Protective Association. Arminger, a former professor of medieval history and member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), is reinstating feudalism by recruiting gang members and former SCA members, and driving those he does not want or need out of the city. Arminger offers the Bearkillers positions as Protectorate nobles, but Mike declines. On the way back, Mike and his men save Juniper Mackenzie and her friends, who are on their own reconnaissance mission. Mike and Juniper are attracted to each other and have sex before the two groups go their separate ways. The encounter leaves Juniper pregnant. The Bearkillers hire themselves out to a local sheriff to fight "Duke Iron Rod", who is raiding the Camas Prairie region. The Bearkillers trap and wipe out a raiding party, but while they are away, a traitor helps a second group enter and attack the Bearkillers' camp. In the fighting, Ken Larsson loses his left hand and eye, but Mike and his men return in time to rout the attackers and capture Iron Rod for later hanging. The Bearkillers also take part in a raid on a Protectorate castle, which Arminger had constructed to control an important route (I20) over the Cascades. After the Bearkillers reach Larsdalen, Mike and Signe become engaged. The parallel story of the formation of Clan Mackenzie begins with Juniper Mackenzie, a folksinger and Wiccan priestess. Juniper is performing in a restaurant in Corvallis when The Change occurs. She, along with her deaf teenage daughter Eilir, and their friend Dennis Martin, try to aid victims of an airliner crash in the city. When a bunch of looters realize that guns no longer work, they attack a policeman. Dennis and Juniper go to help him. Juniper kills one of the attackers and his companions flee, but one of them, Eddie Liu vows to avenge his dead friend. Liu later becomes one of Arminger's barons. Juniper, Dennis and Eilir gather supplies, collect Juniper's horses and wagon from a friend's farm, and head for Juniper's cabin in central Oregon. On the way, refugees attack them for their food. Eilir is forced to shoot a woman with her bow; the woman's companions flee, but Juniper and Dennis take pity on the wounded woman and her young son, allowing them to join the group. Some of Juniper's coven members also make their way separately to Juniper's cabin, after rescuing a dozen school children abandoned on a school bus. The nascent Clan starts to farm the land. To supplement their food reserves, Juniper and Dennis go hunting. They stumble upon and rescue Sam Aylward, a former member of the elite British Special Air Service and a superb archer and bowyer as well. He had been injured after falling into a steep ravine and had become trapped. Later, Juniper takes a few companions to scout the surrounding area. They arrive in Corvallis, Oregon, where they discover that the faculty of Oregon State University has taken over the governing of the town. On their way home, they are ambushed by a group of cannibals, but are saved by Mike and his Bearkillers. A night or two later, she and Mike have sex, conceiving a child. The Clan has a successful first harvest, but problems elsewhere dampen this happy occasion. The nearby town of Sutterdown is attacked and occupied by Protectorate troops. Juniper agrees to lead the Clan against the occupiers and drives them out of the town. Later in the year Sam Aylward is sent to lead a group of Mackenzie archers to aid the Bearkillers' raid against a Protectorate castle. They are successful and even manage to force the surrender of a second castle. Juniper gives birth to a son, whom she names Rudi in memory of her dead husband. During Rudi's wiccaning, Juniper is overcome by inspiration which causes her to give him the craft name of Artos and to pronounce a prophecy declaring him "the Sword of the Lady."
10872861	/m/02qsnzs	Slaves of Speigel	Daniel Pinkwater	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Sargon the Great is the leader of planet Spiegel. Fat space pirates inhabit the planet Spiegel and they travel around the galaxy collecting fattening and unhealthy food. To discover new types of food they search for the greatest cooks in the galaxy. They bring cooks from two distant planets and one cook from Earth. The cook's name is Steve. He and his assistant Norman are brought to Spiegel along with their restaurant, The Magic Moscow. The Earth cooks are pitted against the cooks from other planets. Steve and Norman cook a dish which consists of melons from Venus, ham, radishes, pears, kosher salami, maple syrup, raw oats and olives. The competition to cook the greatest dish is fierce, but in the end Steve and Norman come in second. They are allowed to take 600 pounds of Spiegelian blue garlic, a prize Steve is quite satisfied with. He later uses it to create a new "bright blue" pizza.
10872934	/m/02qsp1w	The Money-Order with White Genesis	Ousmane Sembène			 A teenager's pregnancy is beginning to show. This causes her mother much grief, as the girl will not name the father. Suspicion in the village rests on a navetanekat, or migrant laborer. He denies any involvement. Nevertheless, one of the brothers of Khar Madaiagua Diob (the expectant mother) tramples the laborer's crops. An angry mob searches for the navetanekat for a few days. Eventually, the girl tells her mother the truth: her own father is also the father of her child. The Money-Order centers on an illiterate, middle-aged Senegalese man named Dieng. Dieng has been unemployed for some time, and he has two wives and several children. Dieng receives word that a money-order is waiting for him at the post office. Dieng wants the money, but he faces much difficulty in obtaining it. He doesn't have proper identification, and he even must pay a translator to read him the message with the order. Compounding Dieng's troubles is the fact that Dieng's neighbors are learning of his recent windfall. Enter Mbaye, a so-called "New African". Effective in his business dealings, Mbaye owns a villa on the other side of town. With a flourish of generosity, Mbaye promises to help Dieng cash the money-order.
10875845	/m/02qssp6	The Diamond of Drury Lane	Julia Golding	2006-01-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 An orphaned 13-year-old girl named Catherine ‘Cat’ Royal lives in the Theatre Royal, after the owner, Mr. Sheridan, who named her after the theatre, found her as a baby. She knows well the Theatre and its surroundings, later 18th century England. Cat befriends an African boy violinist, Pedro, who arrives to be the musician’s apprentice. Cat also meets the aristocratic Avon family, and the children, Lord Francis and Lady Elizabeth, who are not as arrogant as other wealthy people. She meets Johnny, the new prompt with a rather unmistakable talent for art, specifically controversial political cartoons, and a mysterious past. She learns that Johnny is the “Captain Sparkler” accused of treason for the cartoons against the king. Johnny had had a romantic past with Lady Elizabeth. One night Cat overhears Mr. Sheridan and his colleague Marchmont, discussing a valuable diamond hidden in the theatre. Cat is intrigued, but she promises to protect it for Mr. Sheridan. Cat learns that the diamond is not a real diamond, but it is actually Johnny, the prompter. He is of value, because of the reward for his capture. However, a street gang led by Cat’s enemy Billy “Boil” Shepherd, learns about the diamond, and assumes it is a real diamond. He breaks into the Theatre to steal it. Cat and Pedro manage to evade him, but Cat is arrested for having money that was supposed to be for smuggling Johnny out of England where he will be safe. Boil is also arrested for stealing the money, although 2 of his gang member actually stole the money. Johnny eventually gets out of England, and Cat is reunited with her Theatre and everyone in it. In the end, Mr. Sheridan tells her that there was no real diamond, nor Johnny, as a metaphorical diamond. Cat is the true diamond of the Theatre Royal, and the Theatre would be nothing without its "Cat."
10876585	/m/02qstfv	The Graveyard Book	Neil Gaiman	2008-09-30	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins as Jack (usually referred to in the novel as 'the man Jack') has murdered all the members of a family except for the toddler upstairs. Unknown to him, the toddler has climbed out of his crib to explore. The toddler crawls out of the house and up a hill to a graveyard where the ghosts find him. They discuss whether to keep him until the Lady on the Grey (implied to be the Angel of Death) appears and suggests that the baby should be kept ("The dead should have charity"). The ghosts accept and Mrs. Owens (the ghost who first discovered the baby) and her husband, Mr. Owens, become the foster parents. The baby is named Nobody Owens (as Mrs. Owens declares "He looks like nobody except himself") and is granted the Freedom of the Graveyard. The caretaker Silas accepts the duty of providing for Nobody. The man Jack is persuaded that the toddler has crawled down the hill, and he eventually loses the trail. The bulk of the book is about Nobody's (often called Bod) adventures in and out of the graveyard as he grows up. As a boy, he befriends a girl called Scarlett Perkins and she is eventually convinced by her mother that he is her imaginary friend. It is with her that Bod discovers a creature called the Sleer, who has been waiting for thousands of years for his "Master" to come and reclaim him. Scarlett's parents believe she has gone missing during this adventure, and when she returns consequently decide to move the family to Scotland. Nobody is once captured by the Ghouls and then rescued by his tutor Miss Lupescu, discovering she is a Hound of God (i.e. a werewolf). Bod befriends Elizabeth Hempstock, the ghost of an unjustly-executed witch, and, through a short adventure that includes being kidnapped by a greedy pawnshop owner, finds a gravestone for her. Once, he tries to attend regular primary school with other human children but it ends in a disaster as two bullies make it impossible for him to maintain a low profile. Throughout his adventures, Bod learns supernatural abilities such as Fading, Haunting, and Dream Walking, taught by his loving graveyard parents, his ghost teacher Mr Pennyworth, and Silas. Years pass by, and it is revealed that Jack has still been searching for the toddler that he had failed to kill. He must complete his assignment or his secret society, the Jacks of All Trades, will be destroyed by the surviving boy. On Bod's 14th year at the graveyard, Silas and Miss Lupescu both leave to attend some business. Meanwhile, Scarlett and her mother come back to the town as her parents have divorced and she and Bod reunite. Scarlett has also made friends with a historian called Mr. Jay Frost who is living in a house not too far from the graveyard. Researching the murder of Bod's family, Scarlett learns that the historian lives in the house that Bod once lived in. Bod visits the house, in an effort to learn more about his family. When showing Bod the room he lived in as a baby, Mr Frost reveals that he actually is the man Jack; Jack Frost is his full, true name. Bod is attacked by the man Jack and four other members of the Order. Bod and Scarlett escape to the graveyard where Bod is able to defeat each Jack separately, except for Jack Frost. Jack Frost takes Scarlett captive in the chamber of the Sleer but is then tricked by Bod into claiming himself as the Sleer's master. The Sleer engulfs Jack Frost in an "embrace" and they disappear into the wall. Silas returns and it is revealed that he and Miss Lupescu are members of the Honor Guard, devoted to protecting "the borders between things". With two other supernatural beings (the ifrit Haroun and the winged mummy Kandar), they have fought the Jacks of All Trades throughout the novel (explaining earlier references made by the Jacks to setbacks in various cities around the world). Though they succeed in destroying the society, Miss Lupescu is killed in battle, to Silas and Bod's great sorrow. Scarlett is shocked and appalled by the events of the night and Bod's questionable actions in the course of killing Jack Frost. Silas suggests the best course is to remove most of her memories of Bod and what happened that night. Bod disagrees with Silas, but Scarlett ends up with her memories taken anyway. Silas uses his power of suggestion to convince Scarlett and her mother to return to Glasgow. In the final chapter of the book, a now-grown Bod is losing the Freedom of the Graveyard and even his ability to see ghosts. At the end of the book, Silas gives Bod money and a passport with the name, says his good-byes to his family and friends, and leaves the graveyard to embark on a new life.
10883628	/m/02qs_47	The Eternal Flame	T. A. Barron	2005-10-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Avalon is at the edge of destruction. It seems as if the wicked spirit warlord Rhita Gawr has already gained his victory. The ancient tree has but tiniest hope in the young wizard Tamwyn, the apprentice priestess Elli, the fierce eagleman Scree, the graceful elf maiden Brionna, and the allies of Avalon who hope to prevail over Rhita Gawr's forces. The fate of Avalon lies in three key battles: one involves defeating an immortal serpent (Rhita Gawr himself) and relighting stars; one destroying a powerful crystal, the crystal of vengeláno created by Rhita Gawr; and one on the Plains of Isenwy that will result in the death of many innocent lives.
10887139	/m/02qt1s3	One Arm	Yasunari Kawabata	1964	{"/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 A young woman removes her right arm and gives it to the a man (the protagonist) to keep for the night. The story follows his thoughts and actions as he takes it home to keep for the night. He talks and caresses it, and then decides to replace his own arm with it. The "relationship" the man has with the detached arm serves as a portal into the landscape of memory and emotions.
10890358	/m/02qt4y9	Kiss the Dust	Elizabeth Laird		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When Tara Hawrami is returning from school one day, she witnesses Iraqi troops shoot a mullah and an innocent boy reading a newspaper in broad daylight. This sight changes her thinking forever. However, when she returns home she is stunned when her mother, Teriska Khan shows a very muted reaction; Teriska Khan reveals that she and Tara's father have been concealing the horrors of the ongoing war between Iraq and Iran from Tara, including shootings like the one Tara had witnessed. That night, an injured intruder enters Tara's house, who turns out to be her Uncle Rostam, a resistance fighter. The following morning, Tara's father, Kak Soran, suddenly returns with Tara's brother, Ashti, and her grandmother from Baghdad. Tara's life changes quickly and drastically from that moment on. When Rostam and Ashti leave to join the resistance fighters, the pesh murgas, Kak Soran is soon forced to go into hiding as well when the authorities suspect he has been indirectly supporting the pesh murgas. Tara's apprehension only grows when the rest of her family must escape into a village in the mountains soon afterward. Life in the mountains is peaceful, but boring for Tara until the area ends up being bombed repeatedly, injuring Tara. When Ashti arrives in the village after being injured, Kak Soran and Teriska Khan plan a risky escape to Iran through the mountains all the way to Iran where they wind up in a refugee camp for several months. Ashti, fearing conscription into the Iranian army, runs back to Iraq while Teriska Khan becomes very ill and sad as her son does not return for many months. Gradually Teriska Khan does recover after Tara finds a friendly neighbour willing to help. Tara has to care of her mother and younger sister Hero, until Teriska Khan recovers. Kak Soran's connections eventually come through and Tara's family manages to find help in the form of Kak Soran's cousin. However, with no available jobs in Iran, the family realizes that they must escape the country to become refugees in another country. Using the last of their savings, the family manages to arrive in London, where they apply for refugee status. In London, Kak Soran manages to get in contact with a family friend, who offers them a place to stay. In every place that Tara has been displaced to, she has experienced culture shock and needed to adjust quickly; At first the family has a hard time getting used to the new language and the new lifestyle. Tara's English gradually improves and despite the traumatic experiences she has endured, she manages to make some friends at her new school. Her family is overjoyed they hear that Ashti will soon arrive in London after several years apart. Though their new life is difficult and less comfortable than their old home in Iraq, Tara learns not to take anything for granted. The family gets back together and begins to live a better, new life.
10896242	/m/02qtcc2	The People of the Mist	H. Rider Haggard	1894	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Penniless Leonard Outram attempts to redress the undeserved loss of his family estates and fiancee by seeking his fortune in Africa. In the course of his adventures he and his Zulu companion Otter save a young Portuguese woman, Juanna Rodd, together with her nursemaid Soa, from slavery. Leonard and Juanna are plainly attracted to each other, but prone to bickering, and their romance is impeded by the watchful and jealous Soa. The protagonists seek the legendary People of the Mist, said to possess a fabulous hoard of jewels. Finding them, they immediately become embroiled in the turbulent political affairs of the lost race, which is riven by a power-struggle between the monarch and the priesthood of its giant crocodile god. The heroic Leonard can do little more than react to events. The action climaxes in a hair-raising escape by toboggan (it was a flat stone) down a steep glacier.
10896677	/m/02qtcsv	Skeleton Coast	Jack Du Brul	2006-10-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with a brief chapter detailing the traversing of a section of the Kalahari Desert by a group of four Europeans, led by the experienced guide H. A. Ryder. The text tells of how they survive the desert thanks to Ryder's skills, but are being pursued by more than one hundred of the Herero King's best men, due to the Europeans stealing their hard-won diamonds. The chapter ends with the Europeans meeting with their escape ship, the HMS Rove only to find it stranded. Simultaneously, the Herero attack the ship, killing the Europeans (presumably) while a massive sandstorm rages around them, reshaping the coastline and burying the Rove under hundreds of feet of sand, lost for eternity. The story continues with the Oregon (a high-tech modernized ship carrying heavy weaponry but usually masquerading as a dilapidated freighter) meeting with the leader of the Congolese Army of Revolution, Makombo. They 'agree' to trade 500 AK-47's, 200 RPGs, fifty RPG launchers and 50,000 rounds of Warsaw Pact 7.62mm ammunition in return for a quarter pound of rough (blood) diamonds. These weapons are then stolen by the rebels after double-crossing Cabrillo before the Oregon's crew had the chance to do the same to them. After narrowly escaping from those individuals, the Oregon begins to track the location of the weapons in the hope that they can seize them once again. In addition to this they also hear that a billionaire with a controversial product has been kidnapped. They take up the quest to free him. During this operation Juan is nearly stranded in the desert, but manages to travel by parasurfing his way back to civilization. After rescuing the billionaire, they find out that his former partner is planning to dump millions of litres of toxic crude oil into the ocean in order to enlighten the world about the environmental effects that our continued ignorance is causing. Luckily, the Oregon and crew do battle (oddly enough it's the Congo revolutionaries) with the bad guys and save the planet. Their curtain comes by giving the rightful owners billions of dollars worth of diamonds that will allow them to free Zimbabwe from the evil regime that is currently in place.
10896873	/m/02qtc_q	The Terror	Dan Simmons	2007	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins in the present tense at a point approximately midway into the novel's subsequent narrative. From the point of view of Captain Francis Crozier, the opening chapter deals with the Captain's attempts to force a seaman, who is too scared to venture into the lower decks, to follow orders. Crozier muses on the fate of the expedition and how HMS Terror and HMS Erebus have been trapped in sea ice, about 28 miles North-northwest of King William Island, for over a year. The weather has been much colder than normal, the tinned provisions are dwindling and often putrid and the sea ice and landmasses are mysteriously devoid of any wildlife that can be hunted. In addition to the natural dangers of the intense cold, disease and impending starvation, the crews face the horror of being randomly attacked by a monster on the ice. Resembling a huge Polar Bear, the creature is later revealed as a mythological Eskimo demon called the ‘Tuunbaq’. The writer, perhaps on purpose, only hints at the supernatural qualities of the beast. Simmons’ narrative frequently switches between past and present tense, to points in the story ranging from several years before the expedition to several years after, and the alternating point of view of different characters in each chapter. The fictional diary of Dr Harry Goodsir is a literary device that is also used by the writer. For instance, a diary entry describes how Sir John Franklin orders a number of exploration parties to set out in various directions across the ice. These are all doomed to failure. However, Goodsir’s party finds a mysterious Eskimo girl (they accidentally shoot and kill her aged companion). On their return to the ships, Crozier names the girl ‘Lady Silence’ as her tongue has been ripped out in the past. Following the death of Sir John Franklin at the hands of the monster on the ice, Captain Francis Crozier becomes the expedition commander with Captain James Fitzjames as his 2nd in command. The two men attempt to deal with the threats of the monster, disease and starvation. The friendship of the two officers, from very different social backgrounds, is touchingly described by the writer. Simmons goes into great detail describing an ill-fated ‘morale boosting’ New Year's Eve carnivale masque, during which a large number of the expedition, including three of the four Surgeons, are killed by the Tuunbaq and Royal Marine friendly fire. Crozier lays the blame for this disaster on Caulker’s Mate Cornelius Hickey and two other men. They are punished with 50 lashes of the cat each. The narrative makes it clear that their existing mutinous feelings are exacerbated by this treatment, setting the scene for the later troubles that the expedition leadership have with Hickey and his compatriots. The novel changes from a ship bound tale when HMS Erebus is eventually crushed by the ice and its crew decamp to HMS Terror for a short time until all of the expedition survivors are forced to move to what is named ‘Terror Camp’—a tented refuge that they create on King William Island. It is here that Crozier and Fitzjames decide that they will attempt to escape by hauling the small boats of both ships south to the Canadian mainland and then down Back's River to an outpost on Great Slave Lake, an arduous journey of many hundreds of miles. Sealing the doom of the crew by removing any possibility of help from the native population, Simmons describes the brutal murder of Lt Irving by Cornelius Hickey. The murder is blamed on a band of Eskimo hunters that Irving had, in fact, befriended. The Eskimo are massacred in a later revenge attack by men of the expedition. From this point on in the novel the native population is feared and avoided by the crew rather than sought. The narrative now goes into highly descriptive detail of the men’s painful efforts to haul the boats across the sea ice and frozen gravel of King William Island. Many men die from disease, including Captain Fitzjames whose demise is described by Simmons in horrifying detail. There are rumblings of mutiny from Cornelius Hickey and his growing entourage and the Tuunbaq appears with deadly frequency. The survivors eventually reach a position on the southern shore of King William Island that they name ‘Rescue Camp’. The novel concludes with mutiny, double cross, cannibalism, and the splitting of the survivors into several groups—all of which meet grisly ends. Captain Francis Crozier is the only survivor of the expedition and the last chapters of the novel describe how he becomes the lover of Lady Silence and joins her in her mystical role connected to the Tuunbaq.
10901695	/m/02qtjmy	Love Story			{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel tells of "Love Story" is romantic and funny, yet a tragic story. It is the story of two young college grads, whose love was stronger than any of the tests life threw at them. Oliver Barrett IV, a Harvard jock and (very) rich heir to the Barrett fortune and legacy, and Jennifer Cavilleri, the quick-witted daughter of a Rhode Island baker. Oliver (Ollie) was expected to follow in his father's huge footsteps, while Jennifer (Jenny), a music major studying at Radcliffe College planned to study in Paris. From very different worlds, Oliver and Jenny immediately attracted and their love deepened. The story of Jenny and Ollie is a realistic story of two young people who come from two separate worlds and are joined together in the most unlikely of ways. Upon graduation from college, the two decide to marry against the wishes of Oliver's father, who thereupon severs all ties with his son. Without his father's financial support, the couple struggles to pay Oliver's way through Harvard Law School... with Jenny working as a private school teacher. Graduating third in his class, Oliver gets several job offers and takes up a position at a respectable New York law firm. Jenny promises to follow Oliver anywhere on the East Coast. The couple moves to New York City, excited to spend more time together... rather than in working and studying... as it was previously. With Oliver's new income, the pair of 24-year-olds decide to have a child. It is from then onwards, that there are several unexpected twists and turns. After Jenny fails to conceive, they consult a medical specialist, who after repeated tests, informs Oliver that Jenny is ill and will soon die as she is suffering from leukaemia. As instructed by his doctor, Oliver attempts to live a "normal life" without telling Jenny of her condition. Jenny nevertheless discovers her ailment after confronting her doctor about her recent illness. With their days together numbered, Jenny begins a costly cancer therapy, and Oliver soon becomes unable to afford the multiplying hospital expenses. Desperate, he seeks financial relief from his father. Instead of telling his father what the money is truly for, Oliver misleads him. From her hospital bed, Jenny speaks with her father about funeral arrangements, and then asks for Oliver. She tells him to avoid blaming himself, and asks him to embrace her tightly before she dies. When Mr. Barrett realizes that Jenny is ill and that his son borrowed the money for her, he immediately sets out for New York. By the time he reaches the hospital, Jenny is dead. Mr. Barrett apologizes to his son, who replies with something Jenny had once told him: "Love means never having to say you're sorry"... and breaks down in his arms.
10902339	/m/02qtk10	The Dead Zone	Stephen King		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The prologue introduces the two main characters. In 1953, a young boy named Johnny Smith is knocked unconscious while ice-skating; while recovering he mumbles a strange message — "Don't jump it no more" — to an adult on the scene. The knot on Johnny's head fades after a few days, and he thinks no more of it. A few months later, the adult is seriously injured while jump starting a car battery. Two years later, in an unconnected incident in Iowa, a young door to door Bible salesman named Greg Stillson, suffering emotional issues and dreaming of greatness, vindictively kicks an aggressive dog to death. By 1970, Johnny is now a high school teacher in eastern Maine. After visiting a county fair with his girlfriend Sarah, and eerily winning repeatedly at the wheel of fortune, Johnny is involved in a car accident on his way home that lands him in a coma for five years. On waking, Johnny finds that he has suffered neural injury, but on touching people and objects he is able to tell them things they did not know - in this way he knows a nurse's son would have successful surgery, states that his doctor's mother, long believed dead, is living in Carmel, California, tells his Sarah that her lost wedding ring was in her suitcase pocket, and later recounts the story behind a St. Christopher medallion owned by a skeptical reporter. Johnny shrugs off local media reports of his supposed psychic talents and accepts an offer to resume teaching, but begins to suffer from severe headaches. A reporter for a national tabloid maliciously prints a story denouncing his clairvoyance as phony, but this brings Johnny relief and the hope he can resume a normal life - a hope broken when he is contacted by a local sheriff desperate to solve a series of murders, including that of a child. Johnny's extra sense provides enough detail to identify the killer, who commits suicide and leaves a confession. Stillson, now a successful businessman and elected mayor of Ridgeway, N.H., still suffers from his emotional problems. Asked to "straighten out" a friend's teenaged nephew for wearing an obscene t-shirt, he sets the shirt on fire and terrorizes the youth with a broken bottle, threatening to kill him if he tells anyone. In 1976 he decides to run an independent campaign for a seat in the House of Representatives, blackmailing a local businessman into raising funds for him. Johnny's offer to return to his teaching job is rescinded due to his being "too controversial to be effective as a teacher". He moves to New Hampshire and takes a job as tutor for a wealthy young man named Chuck. He also takes up an interest in politics, and becomes concerned when he watches a rally for Stillson. Later on, Johnny meets presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and shakes his hand. Having another clairvoyant incident, he tells Carter that he is going to be president. Johnny then makes a hobby out of meeting politicians to see their futures. Johnny attends a rally for Stillson and on touching his hand has a horrific vision of an older Stillson as President causing a massive, worldwide nuclear conflict. Johnny's health starts to worsen. He contemplates how he might prevent Stillson's presidency and compares the matter to the question whether one would kill Hitler in 1932 if time travel were possible. Eventually, he concludes that the only certain way to avoid the terrible future he has seen is to assassinate Stillson, but procrastinates, rationalizing his inaction because of doubt in the vision he has seen, abhorrence of murder, and belief there is no urgent need to act at the moment. As Johnny continues to contemplate the matter, he has another vision and warns Chuck not to go to his high school graduation party because the facility is going to be struck by lightning and burn down. Chuck's father agrees to host an alternative party for Chuck and other students, but their party at home is interrupted by news of a lighting strike and many deaths at the original venue. Johnny also learns that the FBI agent investigating Stillson has been murdered with a car bomb. Johnny moves to Phoenix, where he takes a job as a road maintenance technician for the local Public Works Department. He learns that his headaches and blackouts are due to a brain tumor and that without treatment he only has a few months left to live (although we do not learn this until the epilogue). Johnny takes the fire at the party as a warning, that he knew the fire would happen but had not taken it seriously enough and as a result people had died. Realizing that he won't live much longer whatever he decides, Johnny refuses surgery and buys a rifle to shoot Stillson at the next rally. At the rally, Stillson begins his speech and Johnny attempts to shoot Stillson, but misses and is wounded by Stillson's bodyguards. Before he can fire again Stillson grabs a young child and holds him up as a human shield. Johnny pauses, unable to shoot, and is shot twice by the bodyguards, falling off the balcony and fatally injuring himself. A bystander photographs Stillson in the act of using the child as a shield, a picture that it is implied destroys Stillson's political future when published. Dying, Johnny touches Stillson a final time but feels only dwindling impressions and knows that the terrible future Stillson would bring around as President has been prevented. An epilogue, "Notes from the Dead Zone", intersperses excerpts from letters from Johnny to his loves ones, a "Q & A" transcript of a purported Senate committee (chaired by real-life Maine Senator William Cohen) investigation of Johnny's attempt to assassinate Stillson, and a narrative of Sarah's visit to Johnny's grave. Sarah feels a brief moment of psychic contact with Johnny's spirit and drives away comforted.
10903257	/m/02qtkth	Robbery Under Arms	Thomas Alexander Browne	1888	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book begins with Dick sitting in gaol, with just under one month before his scheduled execution for his crimes. He is given writing material, and begins documenting his life's story. He starts with his childhood, with a father (Ben) who is prone to violence, particularly when he has been drinking; his mother, his sister (Aileen) and brother, Jim. He documents his first exposure to his father's crimes, the theft of a red calf, and the disapproval of this crime by his mother, who says she thought he had given up stealing since the theft which lead to his transportation as a convict from England. Dick's first active involvement in crime, comes where the brothers choose to go cattle duffing (stealing), even though an offer of solid, honest work had been made with neighbour and friend, George Storefield. The divergent lives of the brothers to that of George is a recurring theme of the book from this point forward, as they continue to meet up at different points throughout the story's course. This first theft includes their introduction to Captain Starlight, his Aboriginal assistant, Warrigal, and their hideaway, Terrible Hollow. Further thefts follow, leading up to the brazen theft of 1000 head, driven overland to Adelaide with Starlight. After the success of this adventure, the brothers "lie low" in Melbourne, where they meet the sisters, Kate and Jeanie Morrison. The brothers return to home for Christmas, leading to incarceration and trial of Dick and Starlight. (The magistrate chooses to refer to Starlight only by this nickname, at the Captain's request). Warrigal helps Dick and Starlight escape to Terrible Hollow. The gang later has its first stage holdup. The brothers then move to the Turon goldfields. Their prosperity through honest, hard work gives them the chance for escape from the country to start a new life overseas. Jim is re-united with Jeanie Morrison and marries her. Dick meets Kate Morrison again, but her tumultuous nature leads her, in an angry mood, to alert the police to their presence, and they narrowly escape capture and return to the safety of Terrible Hollow. Seeing no alternative to crime, the gang joins forces with a soon- to- be rival Dan Moran and his friends to stage a major hold up of the armed, escorted stagecoach leaving the goldfields. The robbery is a success, with the members splitting up after sharing the gold takings. Starlight's crew hears word of Moran's planned home invasion of a police informant named Mr Whitman, at a time when Mr Whitman was known to be absent. Marsten and Starlight intervene, forcing Moran and his men to leave, thus preventing further harm to the women present and the home being burnt down at the end of the night. Chivalrous as ever, Starlight vows to dance with one of the women, Miss Falkland, at her upcoming wedding. This increases the existing animosity between Starlight and his rival, and highlights Starlight's code of honour. At the height of their infamy, the gang attend the Turon horse race, where Starlight's horse, Rainbow, wins. The same weekend, they attend the wedding of a publican's daughter, Bella Barnes, where Starlight fulfils his earlier promise to dance, unrecognised, with her at her wedding, despite the presence of the entire town, including the goldfields commissioner and other dignatories. Ben Marston is later ambushed and wounded by bounty hunters. Moran, nearby, releases him, and shoots all four bounty hunters in cold blood, again highlighting the different honour codes between the two gangs. Ben returns to Terrible Hollow, and is nursed by his daughter, Aileen. Aileen and Starlight begin a relationship, and arrange to marry. Despite the animosity between the rivals, they team up again to rob the home of the Goldfield Commissioner, Mr Knightley, but are met with more resistance than they expected. One of Moran's associates is shot in the skirmish, and Moran is keen to kill Knightley when they later have him face to face. Starlight turns the tables by giving Mr Knightley one of his own pistols. He them proceeds to arrange for Knightley's wife to go to Bathurst and withdraw some cash, and meet Moran's men by "the Black Stump", outside of Bathurst town. Starlight passes the time gambling with Mr Knightley, sharing his food, drink and company. Starlight loses money in the gambling, and arranges to repay by direct payment into his account, as well as paying for the horse he is offered when leaving. Throughout the book, there have been chance meetings with Dick's childhood friend and neighbour, George Storefield who, in contrast with the Marston boys, works hard, keeps within the law and thrives financially. Dick starts to hold up George, now a successful grazier, businessman, magistrate and landholder, before realising who it was. George offers the brothers safe haven and cattle mustering work, which would allow Dick, Starlight and Jim safer travel to Townsville in Queensland, from where they plan to leave to San Francisco. They accept the offer, but are caught, partially due to betrayal by Warrigal and Kate Morrison along the way, and Starlight and Jim are shot dead. Dick is wounded and brought to trial, bringing the story to where it began, with Dick expecting to be hanged shortly. In a surprise ending, Dick's sentence is reduced to fifteen years imprisonment due to petitions from Storefield, Knightley and other prominent people. He serves twelve years, is visited occasionally by Gracey Storefield, whom he marries shortly after his release, before moving to a remote area of Queensland to manage a station for her brother, George Storefield.
10904999	/m/02qtmf2	Shadowland	Meg Cabot	2000-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Susannah 'Suze' Simon is a mediator, which means she can see and talk to ghosts and, when necessary, kick some ghost butt. Suze spends a lot of time directing the usually unhappy dead to the afterlife. However, her job is not easy, as not all ghosts want to be guided. Every day, she is haunted by the fact that they will not leave her alone until she helps them resolve their unfinished business with the living. At the beginning of the story Suze moves from New York to Carmel, California, because her mom remarries to Andy Ackerman after Suze's father dies ten years prior. She gets three stepbrothers in the deal, whom she nicknames Sleepy (a senior), Dopey (a sophomore like Suze), and Doc (12, and, according to Suze, going on 40, as he knows more than an encyclopedia), but to the rest of the world they're Jake, Brad, and David. When Suze gets to California and tries to get settled into her new room, she finds Jesse de Silva sitting on her window seat. She describes him as an exceedingly hot ghost who happens to be already living in their house, and he doesn't seem to need her help. Suze at first is annoyed with the living arrangements and tells Jesse to move on or find some other house to haunt, because now she is living there. Suze feels that now that she is in California and she can start fresh, with trips to the mall instead of the cemetery and surfing instead of tending to lost souls. But she has hardly settled in when her skills are put to the test. There is a ghost with revenge on her mind in Suze's new school (the Junipero Serra Mission Academy) and Suze plans to stop her. The ghost, Heather, died because she shot herself over Bryce Martinson when he broke up with her due to a scare of possible marriage. When Bryce and Heather's old friends begin to show interest in Suze, Heather claims Susannah is taking over the life she had. Father Dominic (the Priest of the church and principal of the school, who happens to be another mediator) tries helping Suze with Heather. Father Dominic insists that Susannah should try a more friendly way to deal with the ghosts she meets. She argues with him, saying she has done this job all her life and is not going to change. He often calls her into his office to talk about how to get rid of Heather, and many other ghost related things throughout the series. One night, after Heather had put Bryce Martinson in the hospital, Suze decides to go down to the Mission and put an end to it all. The idea was to talk Heather into moving on, but Suze slips up in her wording and Heather misconstrues her meaning, giving Heather the false hope that she might get her life back. Suze tries to carefully explain this isn't so, but Heather throws a fit, going into such a rage that she attempts to kill Susannah. She uses her abilities to boil water and to snap off of and levitate the bronze head of a statue of Junipero Serra, the man of whom the mission was named after. Just as the statue's head is about to collide with Suze, Jesse appears and knocks her aside. Having followed her from the house to watch over her, he helps her flee the building, the head pursuing them the whole way. Once outside he says that they are safe, not because Heather can't reach them there, but because she is too young a ghost to know she can. The next day, Father Dominic is very unhappy with Susannah. She tries to explain that it was going to work - she just didn't expect Heather's strength. Days later, Heather puts Bryce in hospital again in her attempts to kill him. By now Susannah is furious and despite Father Dominic telling Susannah not to handle it alone, she does a special Voodoo exorcism. It works and Heather is sent on to the afterlife. Father Dominic is pretty mad but very pleased that Heather is gone and that all the suffering will go away. Unfortunately for Susannah, Bryce got sent to another school since Father Dominic thought this would be best for him, therefore deleting their very small love life that didn't even consist of one date due to Heather and her envy.
10912276	/m/02qttr9	Moo	Jane Smiley	1995-03-21	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Moo contains over a dozen overlapping plot lines and multiple protagonists and is therefore very difficult to summarize traditionally. The following summary includes the plot lines that are clearly resolved in the end of the novel. Chapter one of Moo introduces Old Meats, a building at the center of the campus of Moo University no longer in use. However, Old Meats is home to a huge hog named Earl Butz whose only purpose in life is to eat as much as he would like in order to grow as large as possible as part of an experiment conducted by Dr. Bo Jones. Bob Carlson, a sophomore at Moo U, cares for Earl. Chapter two introduces the Dubuque House, a large residence hall on campus and four of its newest residents Mary, Keri, Sherri and Diane. It is move-in day, and each of the four girls briefly reflects on what has brought them to Moo University and their hopes for their college careers. Timothy Monahan, a professor of English, is returning to the campus for the beginning of the school year. He meets one of the new faculty members, Spanish professor Cecilia Sanchez, when their classes end up being in neighboring rooms. Marly Hellmich is an adult woman who works in the university cafeteria and lives at home caring for her elderly father. Marly also volunteers at her church, where she meets Nils Harstad, the dean of the agricultural extension. Later in Part One, Nils decides that what he needs to complete his life is a wife and a large family of small children. He decides that Marly would be the perfect mate and proposes to her. Marly contemplates the engagement and decides to accept on the basis that a life with Nils, a successful and economically stable older man, would offer her all of the things that she would not be able to have on her own; she literally believes she will become a kind of Cinderella. Book One continues with a lecture given by economics professor Dr.Gift on Costa Rica and the economic gains to be found there. The lecture is well attended by students and faculty but during the lecture Chairman X, the chairman of the Horticulture department, becomes outraged and attempts to point out how detrimental Gift’s pursuits will be to Costa Rica’s environment. Later, Ivar Harstad, provost of the university, meets with Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek, the associate vice-president, and Arlen Martin, CEO of the Trans National corporation. Arlen, a wealthy but not so virtuous businessman whose emphasis is on agricultural projects, is aware of the university’s budget constraints and attempts to make a deal with them. He offers to give them money if they would devote some of their research facilities and faculty to help him on a project. Another important aspect of Book One is the introduction of Loren Stroop, a local farmer and a paranoid old man who is so suspicious of the big agricultural companies and the CIA that he wears a bulletproof vest every day. This fear is promoted by the fact that Stroop is building a machine that he believes will revolutionize agriculture. Stroop meets with Nils to speak about the machine and the two men set up a future meeting for Nils to come to the farm and see the machine. At the close of Part One, though, Stroop suffers a stroke. Joy Pfistener oversees the university’s fleet of horses and is also the girlfriend of Dean Jellinek. Joy is introduced while teaching a class in which Bob Carlson is a student. After class, Joy reflects on her relationship with Dean, one that is strained because of Dean’s constant obsession over his calf-free lactation project and his failure to tend to Joy and their relationship. Smiley closes Book One with a chapter entitled “Who’s in Bed With Whom” in which she lays out some of the intimate details of relationships occurring between various students and faculty including Mary and Hassan, a graduate student, Nils and Marly, Bob and Diane, Tim and Cecilia, Chairman X and Lady X, and Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Lake. Book Two, the shortest section of the book, opens with a news article detailing Governor Early’s budget cuts, which include severe reductions for the university. The chapter also contains a series of memorandums within the university detailing the likely impact of the proposed cuts. One of the most significant developments is the relationship between Cecilia and Chairman X. The two meet one day in the library where Cecilia is reminiscing about her former life in Los Angeles. She recognizes Chairman X from Dr. Gift’s lecture. They strike up a conversation and surprisingly have sex on the library floor. Meanwhile, Keri is failing Dr. Gift’s economics class. She reflects on her family’s experiences on their farm. When one of her uncles buys out the other, it causes a deep family division that ruins the family dynamic, and Keri blames her uncle’s selfish drive for fortune and prosperity and his disregard for the family. Chairman X and Cecilia continue their relationship. Cecilia fabricates a story about her uncle Carlos and his farm in Costa Rica and her childhood that she spent there. By telling the story she manages to convince X to stay longer and spend more time with her rather than returning home to have dinner with his family and take his children to a movie. Book Two closes with a visit to Loren Stroop in the hospital after his stroke. His neighbors, the Millers, come to visit him and reassure him that they have taken care of everything around the farm except for visiting the shed where he keeps the machine locked up. He nods to try to tell them that they should look in the shed and tell someone about the machine but they fail to understand this since he cannot talk. The section opens with Dr. Gift reflecting on a report he wrote supporting the gold mine under a virgin cloud forest in Costa Rica. Mary, Keri, Sherri, and Diane are spending more time together. Mary is sick with a virus. Gary Olsen revises a short story, but is disappointed with the end result. After a night at the library, Diane decides to follow Bob in hopes of learning the mystery of his work-study job and she meets Earl Butz. Tim and Cecelia have an unhappy date. Multiple characters discuss the fall of and importance of Eastern European communism. Helen hosts a Thanksgiving feast with Ivar, Nils, Marly, and Marly’s father. Marly’s father and Nils debate Marly and Nils future, after Nils announces to everyone that “God’s plan” is that he and Marly have six children and live in Poland. Joy sets goals for her future, including marriage and a child. Tim Monahan’s third novel is accepted for publication. Helen, Dr. Garcia, Dr. Gift, and Dr. Cates consider Monahan’s promotion to full professor. Dr. Gift says Monahan's writing is salacious, and Helen disagrees. Monahan’s promotion is only given lukewarm approval. At the meeting, Helen distributes copies of Dr. Gift’s paper to everyone at the meeting, revealing the virgin cloud forest mining project much to Gift's chagrin. Gary Olson and Lydia go out. Lydia suggests Gary should kick Lyle, his roommate out, so she could come over more often. Margaret gets Tim to call Cecilia by giving him a copy of Dr. Gift's memo which she had secretly kept. A grant saves Old Meats, but it would have to be a chicken museum, which was not what Dr. Bo Jones requested. The book concludes with Mary being the victim of bigotry and feeling unable to discuss her experience with Keri, Sherri, and Diane. Gary continues to struggle with his writing. The main connection between characters in this section is the holidays. It is Christmas time, and Cecilia decides not to return to Los Angeles for the holiday because of Chairman X. However, she changes her mind the following day and goes to LA. A friend of Bob’s comes to care for Earl Butz, and Earl notices and is shaken up by the change. Drama unfolds in the X’s household. Chairman X spends the holiday at home with his family. He admits to Lady X that he is having an affair with Cecilia. As they fight, they both make accusations and blame the other for their unhappiness. Mary spends Christmas with her family. She is worried about her grades and somewhat disappointed she did not stay back at school. Joy is talking to Dean and becomes upset with their conversation. She goes outside, runs, and remains outside until she is nearly frozen to death. When she returns home Dean has to take care of her until an ambulance arrives. It is time to ring in the New Year. Chairman X writes a flyer opposing the destruction of the virgin cloud rain forest and revealing Gift’s role in the scheme. The media reports on the issue and tries to unravel the controversy. As word spreads of the mining plan, chaos occurs. Dean Nils Harstead is attacked by Chairman X. Tensions run high between Mary, Keri, Sherri, and Diane in Dubuque House until they hear about the riot at Lafayette Hall and leave to go there. Book five opens with Dr. Margaret Bell arriving at a conference in Florida where she is to present a paper. Her senses seem to awaken through this mini get-away, and she indulges in the experience. When the conference is abruptly cancelled, Margaret ends her vacation and receives a large bill. Back on campus, Dr. Gift reflects on Arlen Martin and the collapse of Seven Stones Mining. A memo is sent out announcing more proposed cuts in the budget, resulting in threats of layoffs. Another setback for the university occurs when Elaine Jellinek breaks the news to Dr. Bo Jones that there is no longer a grant for the chicken museum. Dr. Jones does not seem very disappointed and decides to take a trip to Kirghizia to research wild boars. Loren Stroop has moved home and maneuvers around on his own to the best of his ability. Although his physical stamina has diminished, his quirky personality still remains. Feeling the need to check up on his invention, Loren attempts to travel out to his barn during a snowstorm. He struggles against the winter wind and falls into the heavy snow, never reaching his destination. He perishes in the storm. The announcement of a future McDonald's takes the campus by surprise and forces Marly to contemplate her existence on campus. She decides to leave her job as well as abandon her relationship with Nils. In the end, Marly chooses to run off with her truck driver boyfriend. Another major event at the university occurs during the destruction of Old Meats. This pivotal scene showcases Earl Butz as he is trapped inside the building during the demolition. Bob realizes that Earl is in danger but is unable to stop the destruction process. Earl is aware of his dire situation. Instinct takes over, and Earl takes off running, making his way across campus. As Bob tries to catch Earl, Mrs. Walker, Chairman X, and Keri all witness Earl’s rampage through the university. Earl eventually stops from exhaustion and falls dead at the feet of Keri. His death makes front page news. Dean and Joy work on their couple’s therapy. Dean immerses himself in helping Joy out of her depression, which she finds exhausting. Cecelia continues to struggle with finding her place in the Midwest and Moo University, and considers returning to California. As the cutbacks continue to stress the faculty, Mrs. Walker realizes that her job is on the line as a result of leaking Gift’s memo as well as the discovery that she has transferred funds from the athletic budget to the library. Mary, Keri, Sherri, and Diane seem to be heading their separate ways as the school year closes out. For the following year, Sherri makes plans to room with friends from high school, and Mary decides to return to Chicago. When some of the future plans fall through, Mary and Keri decide to reside together again. As the university’s future appears bleak, Ivar reflects on how he originally viewed the university and how things have changed since he and Nils were first students at Moo. Just when the university seems doomed, Joe Miller arrives with a sense of hope by carrying out Stroop’s wishes to donate his invention to the university. Ivar, Nils, Bob Brown, and the president all assemble to begin a frantic search for the blue prints for Stroop’s machine. Coincidentally, Dr. Cates acquired these blue prints from a student, and thinking they were a work of art, Cates calls Mrs. Walker in effort to discover who the artist might be. At the same time, the committee contacts Mrs. Walker to discuss Stroop’s donation. Gaining power with this information, Mrs. Walker not only connects the missing prints to the hands in need, but saves her own position. The discovery of the machine uplifts everyone’s spirits and causes the governor to reverse the budget cuts. The campus atmosphere starts to lighten. Marriage comes into play towards the end of the novel when several characters contemplate their relationships and their plans for the future. Dr. Gift and Elaine Jellinek dine together and day-dream about the possibility of a life with each other, but in the end, they each discard the thought. Marriage is not in the cards for Nils and Marly, but Nils and Marly’s father reach an understanding and decide to reside with one another due to Marly’s absence. The biggest turn-around occurs between Chairman X and Lady X as they resolve their disputes and reunite their family. Chairman and Lady X have a small wedding which attracts the curiosity of the neighbors and close friends. The marriage upsets Cecelia, who has decided to stay, but Tim convinces her that this is for the best. The book then closes as Chairman X and Lady X embrace in a “legendary” kiss.
10912681	/m/02qtv3p	Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars	Keith R. A. DeCandido	2007-05-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story is set simultaneously during the events of Tiberium Wars. Many game characters are either featured or mentioned such as Kane, Lieutenant Sandra Telfair, Gen. Jack Granger, and W3N reporter Cassandra Blair. The first chapter of the story involves a summit at the Philadelphia space station, with almost all of the top GDI directors and officials aboard, as well as Dr. Mobius, GDI's top scientist from the first Command & Conquer game. Nod annihilates the station, killing all of those on board, by firing a nuclear missile after disabling their defenses at Goddard Space Center. Part of the dialogue when Kane transmissions is broadcast to the world is also the end of the chapter. "Rejoice, children of Nod, the blood of your oppressors will flow..." The novel describes the actions of GDI's 22nd Infantry Division, led by Michael McNeil, who are decorated as heroes for their adventures, as well as describing the effects of Tiberium on the world with a trip to Atlanta by W3N reporter Annabella Wu. Atlanta is a "Yellow Zone" partially infested with Tiberium but still under GDI control. The story alternates between the experiences of Ricardo Vega and Annabella Wu during the conflict.
10914498	/m/02qtwsz	The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina	Caroline Lawrence	2003-06-19	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is set three months after The Dolphins of Laurentum and six months after the children solved their first mystery. The Geminus household is still suffering financially from the loss of the Myrtilla. It is winter AD 79 during the five-day festival of the Saturnalia, a time when the status quo is upset. Ostia is further excited by the escape of some exotic wild animals, possible man-eaters. The children narrowly escape an alarming-looking bird. Flavia is disturbed when her father Marcus starts talking about her betrothal and insisting that she should stop running around Ostia playing detective with her unconventional friends. She blames her father's change of attitude on his new ladylove, Cartilia Poplicola, and is determined to prove that the widow is a fortune-hunter, a witch, or even a murderess. Several signs, including a dream, make Flavia believe that following a trail guided by the twelve labours of Hercules will lead her to the truth. These are generally places in Ostia, such as the Hydra fountain and the Atlas tavern, but also events like the capture of the escaped lion or people such as the gladiator nicknamed the Cretan Bull. Flavia and the others pick up scraps of news and gossip about Cartilia and her family which they try to piece together. The detectives meet Cartilia's sister Diana and eventually discover her secret love for Aristo, which explains some strange events and clears Cartilia of wrongdoing. However, uncovering another secret destroys Marcus's trust in Cartilia, and Flavia is unexpectedly unhappy about it. A fever sweeps through Ostia and many fall sick, including Flavia and Marcus. The first wave of sickness, however, is just the precursor of a more deadly plague which will be important in the seventh book, The Enemies of Jupiter.
10916222	/m/02qty9w	Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley	Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany	1971	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 A coming of age story set in the mythical "golden age" of Spain. The titular character is excluded from the inheritance of the family castle on the grounds that given his expertise with sword and mandolin he should be able to win his own estate and bride. Setting out to achieve his place in the world, Rodriguez quickly acquires a Sancho Panza-like servant, Morano, and goes on to experience a series of adventures en route to his goal.
10917506	/m/02qtznh	The History of Love	Nicole Krauss	2005-05-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Approximately 70 years before the present, the 10-year-old Polish-Jewish Leopold (Leo) Gursky falls in love with his neighbor Alma Mereminski. The two begin a relationship that develops over the course of 10 years. In this time, Leo writes three books that he gives to Alma since she is the only person whom he deeply cares about. The first book is too realistic and boring, the second one is entirely fiction and unconvincing, and the last book is dedicated to his love: "The History of Love." Leo promises he will never love anyone but Alma. Alma, now 20, is sent to the United States by her father, who feared the alarming news concerning fascist Germany. Leo does not know that Alma is pregnant and dreams of going to America to meet her. A short time after, the Germans invade Poland and Leo takes cover in the woods, living on roots, small animals, bugs and what he can steal from farmers' cellars. After two years of hiding he goes to America and finds Alma but is shocked to hear she thought he had died in the war and had married the son of the manager of the factory she works at. He is devastated when he finds she has had another child with her husband. He asks her to come with him, but she refuses. She tells him, however, about his son Isaac who is now five years old. Heartbroken, Leo leaves and becomes a locksmith. Leo regularly watches Isaac from a distance, wishing to be part of the boy’s life but scared to come in contact with him. In the present day, Leo is a lonely old man who waits for his death, along with his recently found (most probably in his imagination) childhood friend, Bruno, especially since Alma has been dead for five years. Leo still keeps track of his son, who has become a famous writer, much to Leo’s enjoyment since he believes Isaac inherited the talent from his father. Leo's depression deepens when he reads in a newspaper that his son has died at the age of 60, and Leo develops an obsession with finding his place in his son's world, to the extent that he breaks into Isaac’s house to see if he had read "Words for Everything". Leo wants to reread "The History of Love", so he tries to obtain a copy of the book that he gave to his friend Zvi Litvinoff, who had immigrated to Chile. Their friendship dates from when Leo fell gravely ill in Poland and wrote his own obituary, after which Lev stole it in the hope that it would keep his friend alive. Leo writes a letter to Zvi, but his wife informs him that the book was destroyed in a flood, conspiring to hide that her husband did not write "The History of Love". Unknown to Leo is that the book had been published in a small printing of two thousand copies (and re-published upon the supposed author's death) in Spanish, but under the name of Zvi Litvinoff, who copied the book thinking Leo was killed in Poland. Zvi felt so guilty for copying his book that he added his friend’s stolen obituary as the last chapter, telling the publisher that including the obituary was conditional to printing the book, although doing so did not make sense with the plot. When Leo called to recover the book, Zvi's wife, Rosa, fearing her husband would lose his fame if the world found out his well-regarded book was plagiarized, lied by saying the manuscript had been destroyed in a flood, and then manufactured a flood in her house to realize the lie. Zvi died later without telling the world about the real author of "The History of Love". In a parallel story, a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Alma Singer, named after the Alma in "The History of Love", her parents’ favorite book, is struggling to cope with the loss of her father due to cancer. Her mother becomes distant and lonely, escaping into her work of book translation. Her younger brother Bird, so called for jumping from the second story of a building hoping he could fly, seeks refuge in religion and believes himself to be one of God’s chosen people, thus distancing himself from reality. Alma finds refuge in one of her father’s hobbies: surviving in the wild. Alma also bears a crush on her Russian pen friend Misha, who has moved to New York. The two become a couple but they break up because of Alma’s incertitude. One day, her mother receives a letter from a mysterious man named Jacob Marcus who requests that she translate "The History of Love" from Spanish to English for $100,000 dollars, to be paid in increments of $25,000 as the work progresses. Alma’s mother finds the sum suspicious, but the stranger confesses that his mother used to read the book to him when he was a child, so it has a great sentimental value. Alma sees this as an opportunity to help her mother recover from her depression and changes her mother’s straightforward letters to Jacob Marcus into more romantic versions. When the letters stop before her mother completes the translation of the book, Alma decides to find the mysterious client. She starts by noting down what she knows about Jacob Marcus in her diary, and concludes that the Alma in the book was real and proceeds to find her. She struggles in her search for Alma Mereminski, but succeeds when she realizes that Alma could have married and finds her under the name of Moritz. She is disappointed to hear that Alma has been dead for five years. However, she finds out that Isaac Moritz is the first of Alma's sons and a famous writer. When she starts reading his bestselling book, she finds that the main character's name is Jacob Marcus and realizes that Isaac Moritz had hired her mother to translate the book. Isaac is dead, however, which explains why his letters had stopped coming to their home. To be sure about her suspicions, Alma leaves a note on Isaac’s door asking who the writer of the novel is. In the meanwhile, Bird finds Alma’s diary and misinterprets the names Alma Mereminski and Alma Moritz as being his sister’s real names, and believes they had different fathers. Isaac’s brother calls Alma, after reading the note and the original manuscript of the book, to tell her that Gursky is the real author, but Bird answers the telephone and it confuses him even further. He now suspects that Leopold Gursky is Alma's real father. To cleanse his sin of bragging and to regain the status as one of the chosen ones, he decides to set up a meeting with Alma and Gursky, thus doing a good deed without anybody knowing except God. When the two receive the letter regarding their meeting, both are confused: Alma tries to discover which of the people she met during her searches could have sent her the note, while Leo comes to believe it was Alma who sent him the note, despite her being dead. Leo settles himself on a park bench, waiting a long while for Alma to appear. He ponders his life, key moments from his past, the loss of his love, and what it means to be human. He imagines that he will die while he is waiting there, his own death and mortality being one of his preoccupations in the novel. When Alma finally appears, he and she are both confused, although at first Leo believes that she is his Alma from the past and that she is really just in his imagination. After he realizes that she doesn't look like his Alma, and he gets confirmation from a man walking by that the Alma who is there is actually real, Leo talks to her briefly about Bruno and Isaac, while Alma starts piecing together the puzzle of who Leo is. When Alma asks him if he ever loved a girl named Alma Mereminski, the old man finally feels a sense of transcendence in being recognized at long last, and instead of being able to respond to Alma's questions with words, he keeps tapping his fingers twice against her. She puts her head on his shoulder and hugs him, and he is finally able to speak again, saying her name three times and giving her her own feeling of transcendence at finally being recognized, too. (Some readers believe that Leo has a heart attack and dies at this point, possibly because of Leo's earlier assumption that he is about to die, and also because he says during this meeting with Alma, "I felt my heart surge. I thought: I've lived this long. Please. A little longer won't kill me." A more compelling case can be made that the novel, for all its poignancy, simply ends with this mutually transcendent moment for these two characters.) The last chapter is entitled "The Death of Leopold Gursky" and is identical with the last chapter of the book inside a book "The History of Love", both being the self-written obituary of Leopold Gursky. By ending the novel this way, Krauss is richly alluding to earlier parts of the novel and to her theme of how words keep people alive for us, indeed, make people in danger of becoming invisible, visible. Zvi Litvinoff carried Leo's self-written obit in his pocket for years, as a talisman guarding against Leo's death. Litvinoff, when preparing "History of Love" for publication, insists that his editor include the Leo Gursky obit at the end, his way of ensuring that Leo will continue to "live" in the hearts of all readers of the book. And finally, Nicole Krauss includes the same obit at the end of her novel, as a way of urging all readers to keep this Leo, and all Leos, alive.
10922939	/m/02qv2ms	Hemlock and After	Angus Wilson		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bernard Sands, a prominent writer who has been given financial aid to start a writer's colony at Vardon Hall, faces a failing marriage, attempts to come to grips with his homosexuality and lives next door to a procuress for pedophiles.
10923771	/m/02qv35h	Rameau's Nephew	Denis Diderot			 The narrator has made his way to his usual haunt on a rainy day, the Café de la Régence, France's chess mecca, where he enjoys watching such masters as Philidor or Legall. He is accosted by an eccentric figure : I do not esteem such originals. Others make them their familiars, even their friends. Such a man will draw my attention perhaps once a year when I meet him because his character offers a sharp contrast with the usual run of men, and a break from the dull routine imposed by one's education, social conventions and manners. When in company, he works as a pinch of leaven, causing fermentation and restoring each to his natural bend. One feels shaken and moved; prompted to approve or blame; he causes truth to shine forth, good men to stand out, villains to unmask. Then will the wise man listen and get to know those about him. The dialogue form allows Diderot to examine issues from widely different perspectives. The character of Rameau is presented as extremely unreliable, ironical and self-contradicting, so that the reader may never know whether he is being sincere or provocative. The impression is that of nuggets of truth artfully embedded in trivia. A parasite in a well-to-do family, Rameau has recently been kicked out because he refused to compromise with the truth. Now he will not humble himself by apologizing. And yet, rather than starve, shouldn't one live at the expense of rich fools and knaves as he once did, pimping for a lord? Society does not allow the talented to support themselves because it does not value them, leaving them to beg while the rich, the powerful and stupid poke fun at men like Buffon, Duclos, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot. The poor genius is left with but two options : to crawl and flatter or to dupe and cheat, either being repugnant to the sensitive mind. If virtue had led the way to fortune, I would either have been virtuous or pretended to be so like others; I was expected to play the fool, and a fool I turned myself into.
10924517	/m/02qv3t2	Close to Critical	Hal Clement	1964-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Tenebrans are intelligent, but primitive by human standards. Yet scientists from Earth have found ways to train and educate some of the Tenebrans. This training becomes crucial when two beings—a young girl from Earth and the son of an alien diplomat—are marooned in a bathyscape that is headed toward the surface of the planet, where neither can hope to survive.
10924737	/m/02qv3zy	Heyday	Kurt Andersen	2007-03	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist, Ben Knowles, is from a London manufacturing family. In 1848 he experiences the disorders in Paris and then resolves to move to the United States, the 'New World,' "craving vulgarity and strangeness" (page 6). In New York he encounters Timothy Skaggs, a journalist, novelist and pioneering photographer, Duff Lucking, a fire-fighter and Mexican–American War veteran, and Duff's sister Polly, an actress and prostitute. The novel charts the characters as they journey west and participate in the California Gold Rush.
10926041	/m/02qv5jt	Sick Building	Paul Magrs			 The TARDIS arrives on Tiermann's World. Professor Tiermann and his family live alone here in a futuristic, fully automated Dreamhome, protected by a supposedly impenetrable force shield. An enormous alien creature called the Voracious Craw is heading towards their home with the intent to devour everything. But the Craw is not the only enemy - outside sabre-toothed tigers roam a frozen landscape, and the Dreamhouse itself turns against its occupants.
10930907	/m/02qvbjd	Making Good Again	Lionel Davidson	1968	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 In Germany to settle World War II reparations, James Raison is plunged into the old conflict between Jew and Nazi.
10931092	/m/02qvbrn	Smith's Gazelle	Lionel Davidson	1971	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 An old Bedouin and two boys, one Jewish and the other Arab, have a miraculous adventure in the Israeli desert during the Six-Day War.
10931274	/m/02qvbwf	Under Plum Lake	Lionel Davidson	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young boy, Barry, explores a cave on the Cornwall coast and discovers a highly advanced subterranean civilization called Egon.
10932950	/m/02qvdhp	Tales of the City	Armistead Maupin	1978	{"/m/0cgx58": "Gay novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Seeking a change in her life, Mary Ann Singleton moves to San Francisco in 1976, soon finding herself living at 28 Barbary Lane. Her life becomes intertwined with those of her varied neighbors and myriad colorful characters. The novel is a look at San Francisco in the 1970s, exploring "alternative lifestyles" and "underground" culture.
10933069	/m/02qvdnv	A Plague of Frogs		2000-03-15		 The book begins with the discovery of a large number of deformed frogs by schoolteacher Cindy Reinitz and her students in August 1995. They were on a field trip to a farm owned by Donald Ney near the town of Henderson, Minnesota. As the students approached the rain-fed pond, they noticed that a large number of the northern leopard frogs (rana pipiens) had deformities, such as missing legs, extra legs, and other disfigurements. Concerned about the possibility that the deformities occurred because of a contaminant in the water, Ms. Reinitz contacted the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). As the MPCA did not have an amphibian specialist at the time, Reinitz was referred to the MPCA's invertebrate researcher, Dr. Judy Helgen. At the time Ms. Helgen was studying frogs as part of an effort to develop a bio-index for measuring the overall health of a pond or wetland. As Helgen was busy at the time, she sent an intern, Joel Chirhart, to investigate the pond. Chirhart is alarmed by the widespread nature of the deformities - present in over 1/3 of frogs collected. Later that year, Ms. Helgen called Robert McKinnell, a biologist at the University of Minnesota. Mr. McKinnell is considered the authority on frogs in Minnesota, having specialized in herpetology for over 50 years. While initially the two thought that the deformities were an isolated occurrence that would disappear like an earlier outbreak at Granite Falls, the persistence of leg deformities into late summer and the discovery of other outbreaks, elsewhere around Henderson and elsewhere around the state, such as at Litchfield, quickly disabused of that notion. In that same month (August 1995), Dennis and Rhonda Bock found many deformed frogs near their lake in Brainerd, Minnesota. At first they were unconcerned, thinking the appearance of these frogs was a freak, but natural occurrence. However, as more reports of frog deformities came from the rest of the state, they grew concerned and called the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR). While the DNR could not do anything about the frogs, they sent the information on to David Hoppe, a herpetologist at the University of Minnesota Morris campus. Hoppe was unable to come to the Bock's lake until October, because of previous commitments. When he did manage to go to the Bock property, Hoppe was very surprised, as the Bocks lived on a relatively large natural lake, rather than on the small farm ponds where others had reported deformed frogs. The presence of these deformities in both natural and man-made bodies of water cast doubt on the theory of chemical contamination, as the larger, natural lakes should not have been as susceptible to harboring high concentration of pollutants as smaller, man-made agricultural ponds. The next year Hoppe, Helgen and McKinnell obtained a $150,000 grant from the state to study the frog deformities. Even more sightings of deformed frogs were reported that year. Short on funds, the MPCA managed to successfully confirm 21 sites with deformed animals. Of the 3000 deformed frogs collected, just under 12 percent had deformities. However, there was a considerable variance in the incidence of deformities between sites and between collection intervals at the same site. As deformed frogs were more systematically collected and dissected, there was considerable evidence of internal abnormality. Digestive systems and reproductive systems were especially hard hit, with some frogs "starving to death, despite being stuffed to bursting with food". As the summer of 1996 progressed, Hoppe paid more attention to the Bock lake. Although the frogs at the lake seemed normal at the beginning of the summer, the number and variety of deformities rose dramatically as the season progressed. As alarming as the findings at the various sites were, there was very little published material on the subject of frog deformities. Therefore, the researchers could not conclude that there was anything out of the ordinary, simply because they didn't know what the baseline rate of these deformities were. A review of existing literature on the subject showed that although deformities were a known phenomenon, there was no precedent for the variety or the rate of deformity that was being observed. As the mystery deepened, internal tensions within the investigative team mounted. David Hoppe became increasing concerned with protecting the integrity of sites from outside interference. He was especially concerned about the Bock's lake, labeled CWB ("Crow Wing county - Bock"), as it was one of the few natural bodies of water that had been affected by the deformities. While Helgen was also concerned about the integrity of sites, Hoppe felt that the MPCA, as a public agency was not well equipped to ensure site integrity. The story then takes a detour and discusses the findings of Martin Ouellet, a French-Canadian biologist who was studying the effect of agricultural chemicals on frogs in the St. Lawrence river valley. Ouellet found that the frogs in agricultural ponds developed deformities at a significantly higher rate than frogs in natural control environments. He had seen and noted the same abnormalities that were being discovered in Minnesota. He became convinced that the deformities were being caused by agricultural chemicals. After introducing Ouellet, the book moves on to a discussion of possible causes of frog deformities. There are two main theories: parasites, and agricultural chemicals. The parasite theory, advocated by Stan Sessions stated that parasitic cysts from flatworms blocked limb buds, forcing the tadpoles to try to adjust their limb development around the invaders. The pollutant theory, pushed by McKinnell, stated that there were pollutants that were having teratogenic effects on the frogs. The unknown pollutant or pollutants were theorized to be mimics of retinoic acid. Retinoic acid is a hormone that signals limb development in metamorphosing frogs. The pollutant theory stated that these pollutants were disrupting retinoic acid levels in tadpoles, leading to missing or misplaced limbs, in addition to internal developmental abnormalities. The rest of the book revolves around the interplay between advocates of these two theories. As both sides move to gather evidence to support their theory (retinoic acid disruption vs. parasites) conflicts inevitably develop. The book covers the emergence and development of those conflicts, especially between Sessions and Ouellet. The book equivocates on the actual cause of the deformities. It states that both parasites and deformities can be traced back to environmental changes caused by humans. Parasite ranges are altered by global warming. Modern farming techniques rely on a large variety of chemicals, whose breakdown and interaction in the environment is still virtually unknown. These changes create, as McKinnell puts it, a "quality of life" issue for ambphibians. The deformities in the frog population are a result of the extraordinary stresses thrust upon them by the modern world.
10933095	/m/02qvdr4	More Tales of the City	Armistead Maupin	1980	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins about a couple months from where Tales of the City ended. Michael ("Mouse") Tolliver and Mary Ann Singleton go on a cruise, thanks to money given to her by her former boss, Edgar Halcyon. While on the cruise, Maryann begins a relationship with a handsome amnesiac, while Mouse rekindles his relationship with Jon who has now long distanced himself from the "A Gays" because he got fed up with their elitist and shallow ways. Maryann then begins to devote her time to helping her boyfriend figure out why he lost his memory. Signs point to a traumatic event he had while reporting on a story for his newspaper. What they find out is explosive and risks shaking the foundations of San Francisco elite society. Meanwhile, Mouse becomes extremely ill and is hospitalized, profoundly affecting his relationship with Jon.
10933127	/m/02qvdsj	Significant Others	Armistead Maupin	1987	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is now 1985 and much of the action is set in the Russian River area north of San Francisco. Here, successful businessmen from around the globe gather at Bohemian Grove for a three-week encampment of male bonding, while downriver from them events at Wimminwood, a lesbian music and arts festival, threaten the relationship of DeDe Halcyon-Day and D'orothea Wilson. Returning characters include Mary Ann Singleton, who is having difficulty balancing her commitment to her career as a local talk show hostess with her obligations as a wife to Brian and mother to Shawna, the child of her friend Connie, who entrusted the girl's care to Mary Ann on her deathbed; Michael Tolliver, the romantic gay man who has tested HIV-positive and is taking AZT to combat the threat to his immune system; and Anna Madrigal, the transgendered landlady who mothers her tenants at 28 Barbary Lane on Russian Hill and is fighting to preserve the historic wooden steps of the lane. New characters include Thack Sweeney, who meets Michael during a tour of Alcatraz and Wren Douglas, a plus-size model whose best-selling self-help book offers hope to overweight women. There is also a focus on a previously minor character, Roger "Booter" Manigault, DeDe's stepfather and a member of the Bohemian Club, who accidentally stumbles into Wimminwood and is held captive by one of its more militant organizers. Brian's college-aged nephew Jed also makes an appearance as a young Reaganite more interested in getting into Harvard Law and making money than having fun.
10933137	/m/02qvdsw	Sure of You	Armistead Maupin	1989	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Anna Madrigal's "logical" children have fledged from 28 Barbary Lane and she rattles around with her new brood until a Greek holiday and a romance whisk her away. Her daughter Mona Ramsey, now a Lady, wanders back in from the cold and briefly warms her toes in the sands of Lesbos. Michael (not often referred to as Mouse any more) Tolliver is settled with his lover Thack in their own house in Noe Valley. Having tested positive for HIV, he is coming to terms with his anticipated short time left. Brian Hawkins has given up his tomcat ways to settle down as 'house husband' and chief caretaker of adopted daughter, Shawna (aka Puppy). With Michael, he is co-owner of Plant Parenthood, a gardening nursery. Then there's Mary Ann Singleton. Ambitious and even more beautiful, she is now a TV talk show host famous in the San Francisco area. She is offered a once-in-a-lifetime job as the host of a nationally syndicated show - in New York! Mary Ann, who started the whole series and introduced us to the beauty and excitement of the Tales world, tears the band apart. The ingenue, naif, every person who wriggled into our affections by also mispronouncing Beauchamp, "BoShomp", and noticing the sprinklers on the ceiling, calls the party over and breaks our hearts.
10933147	/m/02qvdtx	Michael Tolliver Lives	Armistead Maupin	2007-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel represents Maupin's return to the Tales of the City characters some eighteen years after the sixth book in the series was published. As well as further developing familiar characters, it explores the differences between the San Francisco of the 1980s, bearing the brunt of the developing AIDS crisis, and the city in the first decade of the new millennium. The realities of aging, both distressing and graceful, is a major theme of the book – as well as the generation gap between gays from the 1970s and 80s and gays from the 2000s. In a departure from the third-person style of the original Tales sequence, Michael Tolliver Lives is narrated in the first person by the title character. In the book's opening pages, Michael encounters a half-remembered old flame, prompting him to reflect on his status as a survivor of both the HIV epidemic (which killed many of his peers in the 1980s and 1990s but is now a more treatable chronic illness thanks in part to better medication) and of a San Francisco that has transformed due in large part to the dot com boom. Characters from the original series include Anna Madrigal, the one-time landlady of 28 Barbary Lane; Brian Hawkins and his now-adult daughter Shawna, a pansexual aspiring writer; and Brian's ex-wife Mary Ann Singleton. New characters include Michael's much younger partner Ben and his transgendered co-worker Jake Greenleaf. Much of the plot's tension derives from the impending death of Michael's elderly mother in Florida, a test case of changes in attitude since she refused to accept Michael's homosexuality in the second Tales book. Several chapters involve a secondary plot thread concerning Michael's relationship with his brother Irwin. Eventually Michael finds himself forced to choose between being present for his mother's last days and attending to an aging Anna, described in the book as part of his "logical" (as opposed to "biological") family.
10933407	/m/02qvf2v	The Sorcerer's Ship	Hannes Bok	1969	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A man named Gene finds himself cast into a new world by a powerful godlike being. Gene has been changed in such a way that he has every talent needed to survive this new world, including the ability to understand the language of its inhabitants. Gene is rescued from the seemingly endless oceans of this new world by a passing ship that is similar to the looks of a Viking galley. Aboard the ship he makes himself useful as best he can while meeting new friends and enemies. Eventually they come to an island where a mysterious creature who some see as a friend, and some see as an enemy, joins them aboard their ship to help deal with the threat of war from their neighboring kingdom known as Koph. The creature, utilizing his sorcerer-like abilities is employed by the other country known as Nanich to help aid them in the war, but will the sorcerer, and his magic be enough to save the land of Nanich from being overrun by Koph?
10934094	/m/02qvfwl	Beyond the Golden Stair	Hannes Bok	1970	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Hibbert, an imprisoned innocent, is caught up in the jailbreak of his cellmate Scarlatti, engineered with the assistance of another man, Burks. Forcing Hibbert to accompany them, Scarlatti and Burks make for the Florida Everglades, picking up Scarlatti's girlfriend Carlotta on the way. In the Everglades the four encounter a miraculous golden stairway extending into the sky. Ascending, they find a pool defended by a blue flamingo, which is killed by Burks. Another stairway leads them to the land of Khoire, a strange and mysterious paradise. There a man named Patur exposes the true nature of each by means of a crystal mask. He warns them that they will be transformed in accordance with those natures within a day, and must leave Khoire. Scarlatti and Carlotta's alteration is horrible, and they are consumed by a huge beast; Burks agrees to become a blue flamingo, taking the place of the guardian of the pool, in the hope of some day being readmitted to Khoire. Hibbert is little changed. Returning to the mundane world, he undertakes to find certain persons who can help him gain his own readmittance to Khoire, having fallen in love with one of its denizens, Mareth of the Watchers.
10935845	/m/02qvhxk	The Shaving of Shagpat	George Meredith	1856	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Shibli Bagarag, a Persian barber, and Noorna, an enchantress, are given the quest of shaving the tyrant Shagpat, who by the power of his magical hair holds his city in thrall. Along the way Shibli acquires a magic sword and meets a series of exotic creatures, including a talking hawk and several genies. The second paragraph of the book provides a capsule summary of the story: "Now the story of Shibli Bagarag, and of the ball he followed, and of the subterranean kingdom he came to, and of the enchanted palace he entered, and of the sleeping king he shaved, and of the two princesses he released, and of the Afrite held in subjection by the arts of one and bottled by her, is it not known as 'twere written on the finger-nails of men and traced in their corner robes?"
10943416	/m/02qvqdm	Star Light	Hal Clement	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Star Light is set several decades after the events of Mission of Gravity. It takes place mostly on the supergiant planet Dhrawn, which some suspect of being a failed star. The planet has an ammonia/water atmosphere with some oxygen, at temperatures ranging from 70 kelvins to almost the freezing point of water. The planet rotates extremely slowly, taking around two months for one revolution. It also has a long eccentric orbit around its star, which is a red dwarf, Lalande 21185. Much of the planet's heat seems to come from within. The gravity at the surface is 40 times the Earth's. Almost everything about the planet defies scientific theory, including its size, lack of hydrogen, its temperature, and the presence of free oxygen in its atmosphere. A consortium of spacefaring races, including humans, recruits Mesklinites, the centipede-like natives of the high-gravity planet Mesklin, to explore Dhrawn. The recruits include Barlennan and Dondragmer, respectively the Captain and First Mate of the Bree, a merchant vessel of Mesklin, which sailed to Mesklin's south pole to rescue a probe sent by humans. Now, thanks to institutes of learning set up on Mesklin, the natives have produced capable explorers who can go where other races cannot. Barlennan is in command of the main base on Dhrawn while Dondragmer commands a "land cruiser", the Kwembly. This is a tracked vehicle about 30 meters long, 6 meters high and the same wide. It is designed to move like a large worm on independently steerable trucks. The power is supplied by self-contained fusion generators but the controls are simple pulley-and-rope systems using Mesklinite materials which the crew can repair themselves. There are several more cruisers, and each has audio/video links for communication with satellites. The humans and others are on a satellite in synchronous orbit above the explorers on the ground. Unfortunately the planet's slow rotation means that they are about 10 million kilometers above the surface, and signals take over 30 seconds to travel to the satellite. Real time conversations are therefore impossible. On the satellite are linguist "Easy" Hoffman and her son Benj, who is both an engineer and a linguist. Both speak fluent Stennish, the Mesklinite language, and have formed close personal relationships with the explorers on the surface. They are later joined on the satellite by Ib Hoffman, Easy's husband and Benj's father. One of the cruisers, the Esket has apparently suffered a catastrophe and all the crew have vanished, much to Easy's dismay. The cruisers communicators still function, but all they show are views of a deserted ship. In reality, Barlennan is executing a complicated deception. A wily negotiator who successfully blackmailed the humans into giving him technology in Mission of Gravity, he is apparently plotting to gain yet another advantage from the situation he created. The exact nature of his objectives is unclear. Soon, however, the Kwembly is in very real trouble. As the planet warms, the complicated phase transitions of water and ammonia mixtures at these low temperatures mean that a frozen lake can melt in seconds, carry the ship off in a flood, and equally suddenly leave it hung up on large rocks, unable to move as the liquid around it freezes again, trapping some of the crew below the surface in their protective suits. These events, along with some bad timing, lead to the discovery of Barlennan's trickery when Easy recognizes a friend of hers from the Esket as he appears, as if from nowhere, but actually from one of the dirigibles that Barlennan is clandestinely using to move his men and materiel around. The Hoffmans would prefer to deal honestly with the Mesklinites, but they have to deal with the prejudices, not only of fellow humans with political motives, but with the more paranoid of the non-human supervisors of the mission. Having an inkling of what Barlennan is really after, Ib Hoffman finally breaks the deadlock with an idea that will save the crew of the Kwembly and make the mission successful beyond the dreams of its planners.
10947714	/m/02qvw69	Mind Game	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 After being targeted by an assassin, A Dahlia Le Blanc; a Telekinetic who shirks the company of others, is forced to rely on the mysterious warrior Nicolas Trevane to protect her. A man whom she finds herself falling in love with despite not wholly trusting.
10947789	/m/02qvwbs	Night Game	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Gator Fontenot of the Special Forces paranormal squad can't refuse an urgent response to save the elusive Iris "Flame" Johnson, a victim of the same horrific experiments that warped Gator. Now unleashed, she's a flame-haired weapon of unimaginable destructive powers, a walking time bomb bent on revenge in the sultry bayous of New Orleans, and hunted by a shadowy assassin. It's Gator's job to reel Iris in. But can two people haunted by violent betrayals trust the passion that soon ignites between them? Or is one of them just playing another seductive and deadly night game?
10950362	/m/02qvzqd	The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon		1971	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The main story centers around Mrs. Caroline Fish Carillon's search for her missing husband, Leon. They were married as children to solidify a business arrangement between their parents who had started a soup company. After several years apart, they plan to meet again as adults. During a sailing trip, Leon (who has changed his name to Noel), falls overboard. He shouts a message to his wife which is partially obscured by his going underwater: "Noel(glub) see (blub) all... I (glub) new..." When she recovers in the hospital and learns that her husband has checked out with no further news, Mrs. Carillon is convinced the answer to his whereabouts are contained in the mysterious message. She spends years trying to interpret the "glub-blubs", eventually enlisting her adopted twin children, Tony and Tina, and childhood friend, Augie Kunkel. When they finally figure out the truth, they are quite surprised.
10952036	/m/02qw09f	Modoc	Ralph Helfer	1998-08-26	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Modoc tells the story of Bram, a German boy, and his elephant, Modoc. Bram and Modoc are born on the same day and the same hour. Brams' father wished for a boy and girl. He felt his dream was fulfilled. Brams' father is a third generation elephant trainer and from an early age Bram followed in his father's footsteps. Brams' family is unique in the way they trained the elephants. Instead of threat and intimidation the elephants are treated with praise and respect. Once old enough Modoc begins to perform in the circus. The circus owner fell ill and the circus is sold to an American, Mr. North. Bram is unwilling to be parted from his elephant and acts as a stow away across the Indian Ocean. The ship is wrecked, leaving Modoc, Mr. Pitt, Bram and others adrift in the ocean. The survivors stay afloat on Modoc’s back until help comes for them at the last possible second. Modoc and Bram recuperate in India where Bram [learns much about elephant training and care at the Elephantarium as well as Indian life becoming a favorite 'son' of the maharaja]. Afraid the circus owner will find them, boy and elephant flee into the teak forests and [is able to] join the ranks of the mahouts and marry a village daughter because of his 'son of the maharaja' status. Rebels eventually take the town, killing Bram’s wife along with many of the population. The circus owner is unexplainably able to find them through the rebellion and transports Modoc and Bram to America where they become stars of the big top. Modoc survives a poisoning attempt, a fire and a hook-wielding drunk before the circus owner decides she is too scarred to appear in the ring any longer and sells her without Bram's knowledge. Ten years pass in which Modoc’s life deteriorates into abuse until she is purchased by Ralph Helfer, a Hollywood animal trainer. Helfer nurses her back to health and is surprised to find the variety of acts she already knows. Drawn by their supernatural connection, Bram locates her some years after. They spend the rest of their lives in constant contact [at Helfer's ranch], nursing one another through old age. Bram is first of the pair to die, saying he is going to show Modoc the way.
10953765	/m/02qw2mr	Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry	B.S. Johnson	1973	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Christie Malry, being a "simple man", above all longs for sex and money. In order to understand how money works, he takes a job in a London bank. This leads him to enrol in a bookkeeping course, where he learns the double-entry system. Bored by his bank job, he quits and starts work at Tapper's, a sweet factory. One day, he has the idea to apply the double-entry system to his life. Every aggravation Malry suffers from society—such as being forced to walk along a particular stretch of pavement due to a building's placement—is revenged by a recompense—in this case, "[scratching] an unsightly line about a yard long into the blackened portland stone facing of the office block" (23–4). Having established this system, and growing progressively angry at society, Malry graduates from minor acts of personal revenge (mostly vandalism) to large-scale terrorism: bombing hoaxes, an actual bombing, and poisoning West London's drinking water. Shortly before he manages to bomb the House of Commons, he dies of cancer. Christie compares himself to "Guy Fawkes, with the difference that he was caught" and strictly follows a code of twelve principles. The first principle, "I am a cell of one" (89), forbids him from discussing his actions with anyone else, not even with his few friends or with the Shrike, his beloved girlfriend.
10953909	/m/02qw2v8	Dying While Black	Vernellia Randall			 The book begins with statistics of short life expectancy, high death rates, high infant mortality, low birth weight rates, and high disease rates as compared to European Americans. Randall states that they are a direct result of slavery and the lack of health care that was provided from the time of slavery to the Jim Crow laws, the Affirmation Action time, and to the Racial Entrenchment time of the present. She points out the racial barriers to the access of health care, nursing homes, hospitals, physicians, and other professionals. In addition, she acknowledges a lack of minority health professionals and thus a shortage of minority input into the health care system. She insists that the health care system rid itself of intentional and inadvertent racism. The managed care organizations entice providers and facilitators to engage in discrimination. This has also led to a mistrust of the health care system by blacks. Randall insists that this is not simply paranoia but is based on a history of experimentation, Sickle Cell Screening Initiative, planning/involuntary sterilization, and the excuses that the medical system gave to justify its discriminations. These abuses contribute to her accusation of the human rights violations by institutional racism in the health care system, the large inequality in health status, and the lack of legal protection. She concludes her book with the authenticity of her call for reparations from the American government. The slave health deficit will continue to negatively impact African Americans unless a well planned legal program is enacted.
10954039	/m/0817j4	Loop	Koji Suzuki		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story revolves around a medical student named Kaoru Futami whose father has contracted a deadly disease called Metastatic Human Cancer(MHC), a cancer involving both animals and plants. Kaoru knew that his father was involved with a massive supercomputer project named LOOP. The LOOP was a computer simulation of the emergence of life but still unable to simulate such a thing. It is known that everyone who was involved in the LOOP has died of the same cancer. In the course of events, he meets a woman named Reiko and falls in love with her. Reiko becomes pregnant with Kaoru's child, which makes Reiko vulnerable to MHC. Kaoru continues his investigations which lead him to a man (and the last surviving person involved in the LOOP) named Amano. Amano revealed to him that LOOP was a project involving a hundred supercomputers strung together with the aim to recreate life. Amano tells Kaoru of a lab in New Mexico where another scientist might be alive. Kaoru venturs there only to find the scientist dead. He enters the lab and finds a pair of virtual reality goggles and gloves. He tries them and minutes later, he is in the LOOP. In the loop, he sees everything but one event intrigued him, the emergence of the Ring Virus. There in the LOOP, he sees complete details of the events in the previous novels from different angles. After some discussion with Amano, he knows that the LOOP's creator wanted to recreate Ryuji's death and by doing that, he could clone him and insert him into a woman's womb. But what they made was a cloned Ryuji with the Ring Virus in him. When Ryuji was born, the virus escaped and mutated. Desperate to find a cure for MHC, he ventures only to encounter a storm leaving him on the verge of death. Then, he was saved by an old man. After telling the old man the truth, it turned out that Kaoru was Ryuji's clone. Because of that, Kaoru has an exceptional gift, immunity to MHC. In order to know what made Kaoru immune, he had to be analyzed. An analysis machine was created. The bad side though is that the analyzed object must be molecularized, meaning that Kaoru could die. As a hero, he agreed. After that, the old man transferred Kaoru's analyzed molecules in the LOOP. He promised that his wife could see him through the VR Goggles and Reiko won't be alone. In the LOOP, Kaoru is sitting watching the stars, thinking that Reiko is watching over him.
10954192	/m/02qw347	The Festival of San Joaquin		1997	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Upon her release from prison at the start of the novel, Luz Marina must figure out how to approach her mother-in-law to release her children. The novel takes place during the festival of the patron saint of the village and other villagers are themselves in turmoil. Edgell explores issues of women's rights.
10954704	/m/02qw3pt	Time and the River	Zee Edgell	2007-03-31	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Main character Leah Lawson, 18, is a slave in mid to late 19th century Belize (the colony of British Honduras not having been formed until 1862). The story traces her rise in stature to slaveowner, continuing the tradition of female protagonists in Edgell works.
10956121	/m/02qw4wm	Past Perfect	Yaakov Shabtai	1984		 The novel focuses on Meir, a 42 years old architect from Tel Aviv, who at the beginning of the novel is suddenly stricken with the fear of dying. The novel's plot surrounds the changes in his life following this realization of his mortality, including an affair with his doctor, the death of his mother, and a trip to Europe. The novel ends with a birth following Meir's death, which could be seen as Meir's reincarnation as a baby, or else as a return to his own birth, following Nietzsche's concept of the eternal return.
10956305	/m/02qw51t	Leviathan	Scott Westerfeld	2009	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 It is the cusp of World War I, and all the European powers are arming up. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition. The British Darwinists employ fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet. Aleksandar Ferdinand, prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battle-torn Stormwalker and a loyal crew of men. Deryn Sharp is a commoner, a girl disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered. With the Great War brewing, Alek's and Deryn's paths cross when the airship carrying Deryn is forced to crash-land onto a glacier near Alek's mountain hideout. German perusal forces them to make hasty repairs and takes them both aboard the Leviathan on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure. Meanwhile, a young girl, Deryn Sharp, is staying with her brother Jaspert in London. Her father died in a ballooning accident and her mother and aunts want her to grow up as a proper lady. Deryn dreams of joining the British Air Service and to serve on one of the great airbeasts. In order to do so, she must pretend to be a boy ("Dylan Sharp"). To pass the starting exam, she goes aloft with a Huxley (a combination of jellyfish and hot-air-balloon) to prove her air-worthiness. However, a storm hits while she is aloft, severely tossing Deryn and the Huxley about, and they narrowly survive--she is forced to cut the Huxley loose from its mooring in order to avoid crashing into a nearby building. This results in Deryn and the Huxly being blown out over the North Sea; she is thrilled when she and the Huxley are rescued by the Leviathan, the most famous of the air-beasts, a massive ecosystem comprising many different animals but based largely on a whale. She is inducted into the crew of the Leviathan, and makes friends with the Monkey Luddite Newkirk. The Leviathan's mission is to transport a top British scientist (“boffin”) and a secret package to Constantinople. Deryn is surprised to learn the boffin is a woman, Dr. Nora Barlow, and is afraid Barlow will discover her secret. In the air over Europe, the Leviathan comes under attack from German airplanes. The crew fights back and manages to defeat the planes, but not before the great whale’s hydrogen bladder is severely punctured. The airship crash-lands in Switzerland on the very glacier where Alek’s group is hiding. Alek and Volger witness the crash, but Volger insists they do nothing to interfere, as they will risk giving away their position to the Germans or being captured by the British. Alek is unable to stomach letting the crew of the Leviathan suffer out on the ice, and secretly leaves the fortress to bring medicine to the crew of the fallen ship. The first person he finds is an unconscious Deryn, who had fallen from the rigging during the crash. Alek revives her and claims unconvincingly to be a Swiss villager. Deryn is suspicious of him and sounds the alarm, resulting in Alek’s capture. Alek continues to insist he is just a bystander trying help, but the captain refuses to release him and instead leaves him under Deryn’s charge. The secret cargo brought by Dr. Barlow is revealed to be eggs of some kind, though most were destroyed in the crash. Alek's "family" comes to his rescue, and battle would have erupted between the two if Deryn's quick thinking in bringing Alek to the front and holding him as a hostage hadn't brought everyone to the table to talk under a flag of truce. Realizing their differences are outweighed by their similarities, Alek offers a sizable chunk from their food storage so the ship can replenish its hydrogen supply and take off again. However, as they travel back to the Leviathan, two German zeppelins appear and send out commandos to capture them. Unfortunately, one of the zeppelins escapes, and the Stormwalker is severely damaged by an aerial bomb, making it impossible to stand up and repair. Thanks to the diplomacy of Dr. Barlow and a bright idea from Alek, the two groups decide to combine their technologies and leave together as one group. Alek also admits his true origins to Deryn/Dylan and Dr. Barlow when he realizes he let a few too many things slip. The Austrians dismantle the Stormwalker and use its engines to replace those lost by the Leviathan. The Austrian engines prove to be much more powerful than its previous ones, propelling them quickly away from danger and the deadly Herkules (Clanker Ship). In the aftermath, Dr. Barlow reveals information about a fabricated ship in England that was sold to the Ottoman Empire but then taken back (even though it was paid in full) by Winston Churchill, thus creating rivalry among the British and the Ottomans. The novel closes with the Leviathan continuing its flight towards Constantinople with Alek watching the mysterious eggs that will hatch into some unknown fabricated species.
10959260	/m/02qw915	Le Docteur Pascal	Émile Zola	1893	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Pascal, a physician in Plassans for 30 years, has spent his life cataloging and chronicling the lives of his family based on his theories of heredity. Pascal believes that everyone's physical and mental health and development can be classified based on the interplay between innateness (reproduction of characteristics based in difference) and heredity (reproduction based in similarity). Using his own family as a case study, Pascal classifies the 30 descendants of his grandmother Adelaïde Fouque (Tante Dide) based on this model. Pascal has developed a serum he hopes will cure hereditary and nervous diseases (including consumption) and improve if not prolong life. His niece Clotilde sees Pascal's work as denying the omnipotence of God and as a prideful attempt to comprehend the unknowable. She encourages him to destroy his work, but he refuses. (Like other members of the family, Pascal is somewhat obsessive in the pursuit of his passion.) Pascal's explains his goal as a scientist as laying the groundwork for happiness and peace by seeking and uncovering the truth, which he believes lies in the science of heredity. After he shows her the Rougon-Macquart family tree and demonstrates his refusal to sugarcoat the family's acts, Clotilde begins to agree with him. Her love for him solidifies her faith in his theories and his lifelong work. Clotilde and Pascal eventually begin a romance, much to the chagrin of his mother Félicité. (She is less concerned about the incestuous nature of the relationship than by the fact that the two are living together out of wedlock.) Félicité wants to keep the family secrets buried at any cost, including several family skeletons living nearby: her alcoholic brother-in-law Antoine Macquart and her centenarian mother-in-law Tante Dide. When Clotilde's brother Maxime asks Clotilde to come to Paris, Félicité sees this as an opportunity to control Pascal and access his papers in order to destroy them. Pascal suffers a series of heart attacks, and Clotilde is not able to return from Paris before he dies. Félicité immediately burns all of Pascal's scholarly work and the documents she considers incriminating. The novel, and the entire 20-novel series, concludes with the birth of Pascal and Clotilde's son and the hope placed on him for the future of the family.
10962364	/m/02qwdzv	Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America	Jonathan Raban			 In Hunting Mister Heartbreak, Raban sets off from the Port of Liverpool on board the 56,000 ton container ship Atlantic Conveyor, following in the footsteps of the first emigrants to America ("Having arrived in Liverpool, I took ship for the New World.") His meandering journey takes him to New York City, whose inhabitants he divides into the Street People - poor New Yorkers who have to face the daily threat of poverty and mugging - and the Air People - rich New Yorkers who rely on elevators to keep them off street level. He leaves New York in distaste and proceeds in his hired car down to the Deep South, choosing to lie up for a time as a temporary resident of Guntersville, Alabama, a town which he immediately takes a liking to on one of his stopovers. He decides to devote some time to meeting the residents and absorbing the local lifestyle in his rented lakeside cabin in the company of Gypsy, an old black lab bitch on loan to scare off the anonymous caller who keeps on making threatening calls in the middle of the night. He then makes his way up to Seattle and rents a room in the Josephinum Residence. From here, he makes forays into the city and comes across some of the Korean immigrants who have struggled to carve out a new life for themselves in America. The books ends with Raban's search for the end of America in the Florida Keys, "the Land of Cockaigne". To fully explore and familiarise himself with the character of the Keys, he hires Sea Mist, a 32-foot sloop:
10964751	/m/02qwhlx	Love and War in the Apennines	Eric Newby	1983	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Newby takes part in a Special Boat Service operation on the east coast of Sicily. He and his colleagues fail to make their rendezvous with a British submarine and are picked up by a fishing boat. Newby is imprisoned in an orphanage at Fontanellato in the Po valley. With the Armistizio, the Italians let the English prisoners escape. Because Newby has a broken ankle he is abandoned and is hidden in a farmer's hay loft until an Italian doctor takes him to the hospital. Here he is visited by Wanda, the daughter of a Slovene teacher, who gives him Italian lessons in exchange for English lessons and they fall in love. The Germans discover he is there but Newby escapes and hides, moving from one house to another. Newby is nearly captured and moves into the mountains to stay with a shepherd; villagers build him a camouflaged cave. Further exciting adventures follow, and a meeting with Wanda.
10966415	/m/02qwkm5	The Heaven Shop	Deborah Ellis	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot of "The Heaven Shop" centers around 13 year old Binti, a girl from Malawi with above-average socio-economic status for the country.Binti's mother had died from AIDS about 6 years ago. Binti's father owns a coffin shop called The Heaven Shop, hence the title of the book. Binti is a star on a radio show called "Gogo's Family" and helps support the family with the money she earns through her work on the show. Binti's father, Bambo, is infected with AIDS and contracts pneumonia due to his suppressed auto-immune system. After Bambo dies, Binti and her siblings are placed in the care of her less wealthy relatives, who take all of their belongings and force them to move to their homes. The rest of the novel focuses on the hardships the siblings have to go through, and the effect one AIDS-related death can have on a family. In the end, their Gogo died. The family of children will have to survive together, but it's a new start for all of them.
10969482	/m/02qwp64	Operation Typhoon Shore			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It continues the journey of Becca and Doug MacKenzie. In this second adventure, Becca and her brother, Doug, have escaped Wenzi Island and Sheng-Fat, but find themselves right back in the action. Their ship is struck by a powerful typhoon and is driven ashore on Sulphur Island. There the two teens, Doug and Becca; their uncle, Captain MacKenzie; his brave crew and the Sujing Quantou warriors find themselves once again facing their nemesis, Julius Pembleton-Crozier, his hired army of Kalaxx warriors, and several other people such as his wife Lucrieta, Alfonso Borelli, a Treasurer of the HGS who has betrayed the HGS and joined Julius Pembleton-Crozier in the resurrected Coterie Of St. Petersburg. Alfonso Borelli also gives Julius the Eastern gyrolabe, which he took from the HGS after he betrayed it. It takes all of their ingenuity, bravery, and wit to figure out his intent and why the islands are so very important to these enemies of the Honourable Guild of Specialists (HGS). The captain's Northern gyrolabe is stolen by the Kalaxx and Becca and Doug discover clues that lead to the finding of the Southern chapter of The 99 Elements and the Southern gyrolabe. Xu and Xi manage to save the southern part of The 99 Elements but the southern gyrolabe is taken by Julius Pembleton-Crozier. Also the Expedient, the captain's ship, is broken beyond repair and has to be scuttled. They also say goodbye to Liberty Da Vine who, failing to regain her plane Lola, is given the plane that was aboard the Expedient, called the Fighting Dragon, and flies off to find her father. The captain plans to send Doug and Becca back to school, but they decide to take a ship to the harsh desert of Sianking to search for their parents. This book rolls along with plenty of action and fun and includes sketches, photographs, newspaper clippings, and foldout information on technology.
10977397	/m/02qwz8b	The Maid of Honour	John Philip Kemble			 The play is set in Palermo and Siena in Italy. The court of King Roberto of Sicily receives an ambassador from Roberto's ally Ferdinand, the duke of Urbino. Frederick has launched a military assault on the duchy of Siena, because the duchess, Aurelia, has refused his proposal of marriage. Frederick and his forces have taken Siena, but now face a vigorous counterattack, led by the general Gonzaga, a member of the Knights of Malta. Ferdinand has sent an appeal to his ally Roberto for help. Roberto, however, responds that the alliance between Sicily and Urbino is purely defensive in nature&mdash;the two have promised to come to each other's aid if attacked. The alliance does not cover aggressive warfare; and on that basis Roberto refuses to send any troops. The King's sensible decision is protested by his "natural" (illegitimate) half-brother Bertoldo, another Knight of Malta. Bertoldo is a fiery character who has his own following among the kingdom's younger nobility and gentry, and he criticizes his brother's caution and passivity. Roberto allows Bertoldo to lead a contingent of volunteers to Ferdinand's assistance&mdash;as long as it is understood by all concerned that their mission is unofficial and will receive no direct support from the Sicilian monarch. This is Roberto's way of ridding his kingdom of troublesome malcontents, especially Bertoldo. The play's second scene introduces Camiola, the title character. Her "beauty, youth, and fortune" make her the target of several suitors, including: Signior Sylli, a ridiculously vain "self-lover;" Fulgentio, the corrupt and egomaniacal favorite of the king; Adorni, a retainer of Camiola's late father; and Bertoldo himself. Bertoldo is the man Camiola loves; but her high principles lead her to reject his suit. (They could only marry if Bertoldo obtained a dispensation from his vows as a member of a knightly monastic order&mdash;a course of action Camiola cannot approve.) After a touching farewell, Bertoldo leads his followers off to war. The situation in Siena has gone badly for Ferdinand. Gonzaga's army is starving out the forces of Urbino, and can take the city at any time. His captains are eager for plunder, but the capable Gonzaga delays the final assault, since he expects a counter-attack. His expectation is fulfilled when Bertoldo and his forces arrive; but Gonzaga's troops have no trouble in defeating the new arrivals. (Many of Bertoldo's followers are effete courtiers inexperienced in combat&mdash;their antics provide some of the play's comedy.) The courtiers are ransomed from prison for two thousand crowns apiece; but Gonzaga is incensed that a member of his order has led the opposition, and sets Bertoldo's ransom at fifty thousand crowns. Roberto not only refuses to pay the ransom, but forbids any of his subjects to pay it either. At home in Palermo, Camiola is oppressed by the arrogant attentions of Fulgentio. She refuses him, and when he slanders her in revenge, she protests to the King, leading to the favorite's disgrace. Bertoldo languishes in chains in a dungeon&mdash;but he is redeemed when Camiola pays his ransom. Roberto has decreed that no man among his subjects pay for Bertoldo's freedom; but Camiola is not a man. Bertoldo's difficulties have worked a change on Camiola's resolution. Her ransom comes with a price: Bertoldo signs a marriage contract to attain his freedom. The ransom becomes moot, however, once Aurelia, the duchess of Siena, catches sight of Bertoldo. She falls in love with him instantly, and orders the ransom returned, much to Gonzaga's displeasure. The pair travel to Palermo, where the story comes to its climax. Camiola challenges the intended marriage of Bertoldo and Aurelia. But then she surprises everyone by rejecting Bertoldo and entering a nunnery; she distributes her fortune to worthy causes and asks Roberto to forgive Fulgentio and restore him to his place. The play's overt comedy comes from several directions&mdash;Signior Sylli most notably, but also Fulgentio, the effete courtiers Antonio and Gasparo, and the soldiers of Gonzaga's army. ---- The Maid of Honour, based on one of the tales of Boccaccio, has been called "an improbable and escapist drama" comparable to Beaumont and Fletcher's A King and No King and other plays of its period. Other critics, though, have seen in the play the "un-Fletcherian moral earnestness" typical of Massinger. It has been argued that a passage in The Maid of Honour served as a source for "The Definition of Love," one of Andrew Marvell's most famous poems.
10978753	/m/02qx0f3	My Idea of Fun	Will Self	1994-06-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A lonely boy grows up just outside Brighton in a caravan park with his over-sexual mother and the tenant Mr Broadhurst who takes the boy on a disturbing and often violent journey. The novel works as a strange Bildungsroman, in which the main character - Ian Wharton learns the art of black magic from his benafactor Mr. Broadhurst who is also known as The Fat Controller. At The Fat Controller's behest Ian engages in a series of strange acts including time travel and trips to an alternate reality - the Land of Children's jokes: a grotesque alternate universe inhabited by the menacing and deformed characters from jokes. The protagonist's education culminates in bizarre rites of bestiality and necrophilia. However he finds that in exchange for knowledge of the black arts Mr. Broadhurst begins to take over more and more aspects of the protagonist's life. The novel could also be seen as an example of an unreliable narrator as it is unclear whether the strange events in the novel are meant to be real or hallucinatory.
10979053	/m/02qx1jp	Rise the Euphrates	Carol Edgarian	1994	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rise the Euphrates begins with Casard’s story. At the time of the genocide, Casard is ten and still goes by her original Armenian name Garod. In Armenian, “Garod” means yearning which is what Casard does the rest of her life: yearn for an Armenia which no longer exists. Casard’s mother’s name is Seta, the same name given to Casard’s granddaughter. The Turks invaded Garod’s town of Harput, murdering the men and raping many women and girls. Among those to escape rape and death, Garod and her mother Seta are driven out of town into the desert. After walking for two weeks without water or food, the caravan reaches the Euphrates River. The river lies in front of the caravan, and a band of murdering Turks emerges from behind, forcing a choice; death by drowning or death by Turkish sword. Seta takes Garod’s hand and prepares to jump into the Euphrates. At the last second, Garod remains on the bank and watches her mother drown. Turning around, Garod sees the band of Turks departing. Garod then wanders in the desert for several days, forgetting her name in the process. Later, under the care of nuns, Garod is given the name Cafard, which is a French word meaning melancholy of the soul. She eventually emigrates to the United States. At Ellis Island, immigration officials hear her name as Casard. While at Ellis Island, Casard meets, and after an afternoon of courtship, marries her husband Vrej; another exiled Armenian. Casard and Vrej had one daughter, Araxie. Araxie grows up and marries an odar, a non Armenian husband, named George Loon. George and Araxie have three children, Van, Seta, and Melanie. When Seta is born, Casard takes Seta into her arms and whispers her story of the genocide. Casard then tells Seta that her task is to recover Casard’s forgotten name. Araxie was also given the task to find Casard’s name. However, one generation removed from the genocide has left Araxie near Casard’s pain to achieve the type of reconciliation Seta is capable of. Seta’s younger years are marked with the tensions occurring between her mother and grandmother. Casard dies unexpectedly when Seta is twelve from a fatal car crash. Similar to the Armenian genocide, the Loon family life after Casard’s death is never the same once Casard is gone. The remainder of the book highlights Seta’s growing up years. However, with Casard’s passing, Seta’s life becomes more American and less Armenian-American. Araxie finds herself without a final opportunity to reconcile with her mother and becomes depressed. Later she divorces George Loon. Without Casard, the family structure and its place in the Armenian- American community disintegrates. Despite this, Seta remembers Casard’s hidden story and the desire that her lost name be recovered. This recovery is achieved through another Armenian-American girl, Theresa Van. Several years later, Seta betrays Theresa with a lie in order to secure her own popularity. After this betrayal, the girls do not interact for several years. Shortly after Seta and Theresa turn 15, Theresa’s mother dies. A few weeks after her mother’s death, Theresa is abducted and severely beaten by a well known member of the town. While Theresa is recuperating, Seta brings offerings of sorts to Theresa’s house. Her interaction with Theresa and the offerings she brings draw Seta back into the Armenian community. At the end of the book, Seta and Theresa play the duduk together. That night after playing the duduk with Theresa, and wholly embracing her Armenian heritage, Seta dreams of the women who were at the Euphrates River the day Casard forgot her name. The women tell the story of what Casard was only able to verbalize as “the indignities”. When she wakes up from her dream, Seta has recovered Casard’s name, Garod, which she then relays to Araxie.
10979548	/m/02qx1ys	Coasting	Jonathan Raban		{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Written as a travelogue, Coasting describes Jonathan Raban's single-handed 4,000 mile voyage around Britain which he made in 1982 (at the age of 40) in an old restored 32-foot sea-going ketch, the Gosfield Maid. An important point is that Raban sailed with a chart and a hand-bearing compass; he sailed by the look of the coastline. His story takes various digressions, just as his journey does, as he mulls over his childhood as the son of a vicar in the Church of England, and the current state of Britain under Margaret Thatcher during the time of the Falklands War. Chapter Two is a description of the dogged insularity of the Manx, who he compares to the Falkland Islanders, whilst the Isle of Man becomes a metaphor for the insularity of the larger island on which he himself had been brought up and lived up till this point. Raban himself has commented on his own attitude to England and the influence of Margaret Thatcher on Britain at the time of writing his book. The British he sees as being famous for their insular arrogance and condescension. As he describes them: 'They love fine social distinctions and divisions and are snobbishly wedded to an antique system of caste and class ... They are aggressively practical and philistine, with a loud contempt for anything that smells abstract or theoretical. They are a nation of moneygrubbers and bargain-hunters, treasuring peenies for treasuring's sake...When it comes to sex, they are furtive and hypocritical - and their erotic tastes are known to be extremely peculiar. Many Englishmen will pay a woman to take their trousers down and spank them...For the most part, though, the English, both men and women, are afflicted by such a morbid decay of thei libido that it has always puzzled the rest of the world how the English manage to reproduce themselves at all.' The author is equally bitter about the dominant, hectoring Mrs Thatcher. Whilst comfortably moored up in the Gosfield Maid on a beautiful stretch of the River Yealm, he tunes in to the House of Commons debate on the Falkland's invasion. The Prime Minister talks about sovereign territory being invaded by a foreign power, but to Raban '...her cross, nanny's voice made it sound as if there had been ructions in the nursery and the children were going to be sent to bed without any tea.' Equally absurd are the majority of MPs who are baying for Argentian blood. Raban turns his radio off in disgust, '...sick of the sound of growning men baying like a wolf pack. It wasn't a debate, it was a verbal bloodletting, with words standing for the guns and bayonets that would come later when the fleet reached the islands.' and adds, 'Listening to it, I felt that I'd been eavesdropping on the nastier workings of the national subconscious; I'd overheard Britain talking in a dream, and what is was saying scared me stiff.' And it is his negative feelings towards an increasingly alien Britain under the dominance of Thatcher that finally persuade him to make the decision to leave his homeland, although the paradox is that they share a ike-minded attitude towards its rigid social hierarchy: The book is remarkable for its penetrating and highly perceptive insights into the character and state of the British nation at the time of writing. One also has to greatly admire him for taking on the challenge of a single-handed voyage around the British Isles, a feat that requires great personal courage on the part of the sailor. For most of the book, Raban, rather like Joyce, is able to form an objectively detached view of his country whilst out at sea on board his boat. However, rather than taking the battering ram approach of his eccentric predecessors (men like Middleton, McMullen, and Hilaire Belloc), he uses beautifully crafted language to describe the life of a single-handed sailor in great awe of the sea, with detailed almost lyrical descriptions of the characters he encounters along the way. Two passages that particularly stand out are of Raban's rather hostile meeting with Paul Theroux at Brighton Marina, himself in the midst of researching a similar book about Britain, and a much friendlier one with Philip Larkin at Hull, a city Raban knows well from his student days while working as a part-time minicab driver.
10983835	/m/02qx6r3	The Afghan Campaign	Steven Pressfield		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Young Matthias from Macedonia follows his two older brothers’ example and enrolls in Alexander’s cavalry together with his close friend Lygaios/Lucas (Λυγαίος in Greek). This special convoy departs from Tripoli, Lebanon and after 125 days of marching meets the rear of Alexander's army. The hero takes part into his first battle and gets shocked by the atrocities of his adversaries and his own people as well. Noteworthy is the fact that the enemy, apart from its guerilla methods, recruits women and children to fight for their freedom. While marching, Matthias meets Shinar, an Afghan woman who, having abandoned her own people, offers her services as carrier of the Greek army’s supplies. Nanguali is the barbarian warrior’s code; its three elements are: honour, revenge and hospitality. Their women’s honour, if blackened, could be redeemed (turn back into white) only by death. Matthias stands up to Baz, Shinar’s brother, but fails to reach a compromise and is deceived by Baz, who in the end kills his sister and her baby. At the end of the story, Matthias is left with nothing – he has lost his family, friends, health and hope. Instead of returning home (his wife and son having been killed) as initially planned and having nothing to lose, he decides to follow the Greek army in its way to India. The absurdity of the war is revealed in all its grandeur.
10985751	/m/02qx8nq	Five Are Together Again	Enid Blyton	1963	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The children are supposed to be staying at Kirrin Cottage but as soon as George's mother and father's maid Joanna catches scarlet fever, the Five are sent to live with an old friend, called Tinker, and his famous scientist father. When Tinker's (who appeared in 'Five Go To Demon's Rocks' (1961)) father's top secret papers go missing, it is left up to the children to find the thief, whoever he is. There are some circus folk camping in Tinker's field.
10988767	/m/02qxd5t	No Telephone to Heaven	Michelle Cliff	1987-07	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with a small group of guerilla soldiers, a much older Clare Savage among them, traveling through Jamaica’s remote cockpit country. The soldiers have set up on piece of land once owned by Clare’s grandmother Miss Mattie, where they train and grow food as well as ganja. The second chapter tells the story of Paul H. who is initially at a party with Harry/Harriet—a transsexual half-brother/half-sister to one of Paul’s friends. Paul returns home after a late night to find a horrific scene: his family and all of their servants have been murdered with a machete. He stumbles upon Christopher, another servant employed by Paul’s parents, and enlists his help in dealing with the bodies and the burials. But we learn in flashback that Christopher, an orphan whose family including his grandfather has worked for Paul’s parents for a long time, committed the murders when he went to ask a favor from the Paul’s father—to help Christopher find where his grandmother is buried so that he can help her spirit rest—that was denied. In fact, Christopher has been waiting for Paul and kills him before Paul figures out what has happened. The story then shifts time periods to 1960 when Boy Savage, Clare’s father, is taking immigrating with his family to the United States. Kitty Savage, Clare’s mother, is not happy about moving away from all she has ever known but she resolves herself to a quiet depression upon departure from Jamaica and arrival in Miami. Boy purchases a used car and the family travels north towards New York City. While traveling through Georgia Boy attempts to get a room in a segregated motel, the innkeeper suspects that he is black but Boy is able to convince the innkeeper that he is white by telling him that his ancestors owned plantations. When the family arrives in New York they go to stay with Winston and Grace, relatives from Kitty’s mother’s side of the family. Boy eventually takes a job driving a laundry truck and Kitty goes to work in the office of his employer. Fed up with the constant racism she encounters, Kitty decides to slip messages into the linens before they are delivered—messages such as “Marcus Garvey was right” and “America is cruel. Consider kindness for a change” aimed at the white customers. Kitty then takes Clare’s younger sister Jennie and returns to Jamaica. After her mother and sister leave, Clare becomes increasingly lonely since she has not yet started school and is not allowed to leave the house by herself. She stays home and watches movies and remembers the first American she met—a white teacher at her catholic school in Jamaica that taught about the American Civil War, took the girls to see the “documentary” Gone With the Wind, and extolled the benefits of racial hierarchies. When Clare begins school she is told that, despite her intelligence, she will be held back for one year because children from Third World countries develop differently than American children. Boy tries to convince the school that Clare is white, but the school does not believe him and nor do they have a category for “bi-racial” students—a student is either black or white. We learn that after five years Kitty is still living with Clare’s younger sister in Jamaica. Clare, who is now a sophomore in college, comes home one evening to find her father crying. He tells her that her mother has died and later that her sister Jennie will be coming to live with them. After Jennie moves in Clare borrows some money from her uncle Fredrick and leaves home for England. Upon arriving in London Clare finds a room to rent and spends some time visiting various museums, browsing bookshops and generally getting to know England. She eventually becomes a legal resident of England and enrolls at the University of London to study art history. After some time at the university Clare decides to take her uncle up on his invitation to come back to Jamaica where she attends the same party as Paul H., before he was killed by Christopher, and meets Harry/Harriet. Clare and Harry/Harriet become good friends while Clare is in Kingston, Jamaica, spending time together first in a Spanish Galleon-themed bar and then on a beach discussing the history and current social conditions of Jamaica. The two keep in touch, via letters, after Clare returns to England. Upon her return, Clare witnesses a National Front march and is deeply disturbed by the aggression and racism on display on her college campus. She tries to explain why she is so disturbed to her friend Liz, but gets nowhere and ends up feeling isolated and alone. In the next chapter Clare meets up with Bobby, a Vietnam War veteran who has a wound on his ankle that, despite Clare’s best efforts, will not heal. The two of them leave London together and travel around Europe. While traveling she receives a letter from Harry/Harriet telling her that her aunt and uncle in Kingston are moving to Miami and leaving her grandmother’s old place in the country to her alone. Clare continues to travel around Europe with Bobby, who is still struggling mentally and physically with the after-effects of the war until one day he disappears without warning. Clare waits for Bobby but eventually decides it is time for her to return to Jamaica. Clare becomes increasingly ill upon her return and discovers that she has an infection in her womb that will most likely leave her sterile. After she recovers, Harry/Harriet suggests that the two of them travel to Clare’s grandmother’s farm. Once there, Clare finds the river where she used to bathe and with Harry/Harriet takes a bath there for the first time in twenty years. In chapter nine we learn that Christopher was never arrested for his crime, and so has been left to wander the back alleys of Kingston’s ghettos. He becomes known throughout the city as the watchman of Kingston—a sort of mad prophet or mendicant, and becomes the subject of a reggae song. On the night of a terrible fire where many old women are burned alive, alluded to earlier in the book by a letter from Harry/Harriet, Christopher shows up at the scene shouting prophecies at the top of his lungs. After visiting the countryside Clare learns of the difficult economic conditions in Jamaica. Then, Harry/Harriet takes her to a small tenement room in Kingston so that she can join a clandestine revolutionary group. She is interrogated as to her motives and convinces them that she is genuine in her desire to make revolution on behalf of the poor and oppressed in Jamaica. In her answers Clare connects the experiences of her life and travels to the oppressed condition of Jamaica—a former colony, part of the Third World. Finally, Clare recalls that in one of her final letters before her death her mother told her to help her people in whatever way that she could, this in the end becomes the ultimate justification for her desire to join the revolutionaries. In the final chapter of the book a film crew has come to make Jamaica to make a movie about the Maroons, and they have hired Christopher, “de Watchman”, to play a small role. Clare and the revolutionaries decide to attack the crew but when they begin their assault it is apparent that someone has sold them out, and tragedy ensues.
10989964	/m/02qxf9x	Loving Che				 Loving Che centers on the lives of an unnamed female protagonist who is searching for her mother, and Teresa de la Landre, who claims to be her mother. Broken into three distinct parts, the novel begins with the female protagonist, moves into a commentary by Teresa de la Landre, and closes with the female protagonist. Not long after Fidel Castro’s successful Cuban Revolution in 1959, the protagonist’s grandfather takes his infant granddaughter to America, at the request of his daughter (the protagonist’s mother). Growing up in Miami, the protagonist knows little about her parentage or about Cuba. After years of silence and numerous unanswered questions, the protagonist confronts her grandfather about her heritage, particularly pressing him for details about her mother. Talking about his daughter (the protagonist’s mother) for the first time, he reveals she wanted her daughter out of Cuba and promised she would reunite with them six months later. Although the grandfather claims he did not want to separate his daughter from her only child, he obliged. The grandfather recalls that it was only after he had safely arrived in Miami with his granddaughter that he found his daughter’s farewell note pinned to his granddaughter’s sweater. Unable to return to his homeland because of the political unrest between America and Cuba, the grandfather revealed he tried to contact his daughter, but all his attempts failed. Although the protagonist now has some idea about her heritage, she still feels somewhat lost, drops out of the university, and starts traveling the world. While traveling the world, the protagonist learns of her grandfather’s death and returns to America. Realizing the passing of time is reducing her chances of locating her mother, the protagonist travels to Cuba with her mother’s farewell note. Unable to locate her mother, the protagonist returns to Miami, starts a career as a travel writer and tries to forget her past. When a mysterious package arrives from Spain, the protagonist’s interest in her heritage resurges. The package, filled with photographs and letters, is from a woman named Teresa de la Landre, who claims to be her mother. The contents of the package are the subject of the second section of Loving Che in which the protagonist sifts through the contents seeking to uncover details of her heritage. Somewhat skeptical of the letters at first, the protagonist reads about Teresa’s life, her career as a painter, and her marriage to Calixto de la Landre. Within her letters, Teresa also states she had an affair with the revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara and claims the protagonist is the result of their affair. The possible connection between the protagonist and Guevara is important to the novel because of his mythical status throughout the world, especially Cuban culture. Guevara played a significant part in helping Castro seize control of Cuba, and his desire to help the poor and oppressed throughout the world work together to overthrow imperialist governments in order to live free of capitalistic ideals, further built his legendary status. Realizing that being an illegitimate daughter of such an idealized person could have wide-ranging implications for the protagonist prompts her to uncover more details about her past. In the third section of the book the protagonist seeks authentication of Teresa’s story, particularly Teresa’s claim that she had an affair with Guevara and the likelihood that she is the product of their affair. The protagonist contacts Dr. Caraballo, a professor of history, and Jacinto Alcazar, a photographer who knew Fidel Castro and Che Guevara briefly. With neither believing the likelihood of Guevara and Teresa’s affair, the protagonist travels to Cuba once again. This time, however, the protagonist seeks to verify Teresa’s story along with trying to locate her mother. During this later trip to Cuba, the protagonist gains a better understanding of herself by connecting with her country of birth. Although she does not find her mother – a Cuban local claims that her mother is dead – nor does she find out if Teresa and Guevara were her parents, the protagonist no longer appears to feel displaced from her heritage. Previously, when she had visited Cuba the protagonist felt detached, like a tourist. On this latest trip, however, she sees the city with fresh, more favorable eyes and refers to herself as Cuban. Having this connection with all things Cuban, the protagonist also sees Guevara in a new light. Having little knowledge of Guevara prior to receiving Teresa’s letters, the protagonist reads many books about him and now feels like he is less foreign to her. Seeing a picture of Guevara in a Manhattan store, the protagonist reflects on what might have been: “a beautiful stranger, who in a different dream, might have been the father of my heart” (226).
10990197	/m/02qxfjf	Havana Heat			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1911, Taylor, a former big-league pitcher, has been sent down to the minor leagues at age 37 due to problems with his pitching arm. He longs for a second chance and approaches his former manager, John McGraw, about re-joining the New York Giants. Short of players, McGraw eventually agrees to take him on a post-season exhibition trip to play baseball in Cuba, where the political atmosphere is tense in the aftermath of the Spanish American War. During the games in Cuba, Taylor is introduced to a promising Cuban prospect who is also deaf also. Taylor encounters moral dilemmas as he balances his desire to return to the big leagues against difficult issues involving racism, discrimination, disability, fading dreams, and the sports philosophy of winning at any cost.
10991561	/m/02qxgzh	Guess How Much I Love You		1994	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This is the story of two Nutbrown Hares, Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare. The two are never stated to be father and son in the original storybooks, though are referred to as such in the narration for the animated television series. Little Nutbrown Hare asks Big Nutbrown Hare the titular question, "Guess how much I love you?", and the book continues as the two use larger and larger measures to quantify how much they love each other in answer to the question. The story is simple, but effectively shows the love the two share for each other.
10994136	/m/02qxk27	More Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School	Louis Sachar	1994	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics"}	 The first 18 problems in More Sideways Arithmetic, encompassing the first six chapters, contain verbal arithmetic problems involving only addition. Among the plot developments driving the first 6 chapters include: * Allison inviting all of the girls in Mrs. Jewls' class to her birthday party, but only two boys (Jason and Stephen), believing that the presence of more than two boys would cause all of them to act silly. While the boys complain about Allison's claim, Mrs. Jewls uses a cryptarithm to show that this is the case, but also uses another cryptarithm to show that the presence of more than two girls would cause all of them to act silly, which causes the girls to complain similarly. * Mrs. Jewls teaches the class about arcs and bras. Dana and Rondi both complain, believing that teachers should not talk about bras because it is crass. * Sue, the new student introduced in Sideways Arithmetic, acquires a new pet dog named Fangs. Although mean-sounding, Sue asserts that Fangs is a good dog, to which Mrs. Jewls agrees using a cryptarithm. * Myron, Dameon, DJ, and Joy complain about the hot weather, to which Mrs. Jewls concurs using another cryptarithm. * Miss Worm, the teacher of the 29th-floor class, complains to Mrs. Jewls about the loud noises that were frequently disturbing her class. As Mrs. Jewls asserts to her colleague that the class gets excited when they are taught arithmetic, Miss Worm becomes confused by Mrs. Jewls' teaching style (that is, using cryptarithms instead of ordinary arithmetic), attempting to teach "one plus one" to no success (as Miss Worm asserted the solution to the arithmetic equation is 2 while the class asserted that the solution to the cryptarithm is "zero"). Miss Worm's attempts to correct the unusual behaviour of the students (namely, Sharie's habit of sleeping in class) also fails. In the end, Miss Worm leaves without her concerns being addressed, while Mrs. Jewls, clueless to Miss Worm's concerns, compliments on her ability to inadvertently solve cryptarithms in her head. The nineteenth problem, taking up the seventh chapter, is a reference to the nonexistent nineteenth floor of Wayside. In the narrative leading up to the problem, Mrs. Jewls proposes a pop quiz to be held at some point during the following week, and that the 19th problem to the book would be the hardest problem from that quiz. Although the students complain, Todd realizes that if the pop quiz had not been held by the end of the following Thursday, then the students would expect the quiz the very next day. Convinced by this counterfactual conditional statement and treating it as a material conditional statement (i.e. without taking into account that the premise in Todd's argument may be false), Mrs. Jewls' declares that the quiz would not be held on the following Friday. Bebe and Maurecia then, using the same (faulty) logic, conclude that the pop quiz could not have been held on the following Thursday or the following Wednesday (again, without considering that the premises of their arguments may be false). Mrs. Jewls' convinced by the faulty arguments, declares that the pop quiz could be held on one of the two remaining days, to which Benjamin, Leslie, and Stephen conclude that it could not have been held on the following Tuesday, causing Mrs. Jewls' to cancel the pop quiz (as the students are now aware when the pop quiz will occur). Hence, there is no 19th problem. The next 10 problems, taking up the next three chapters, are cryptarithms involving multiplication as well as addition. Unlike the first part of the novel, very little backstory is provided beyond a throwaway line by Benjamin involving him moving again (but still attending Wayside) and cryptarithms introduced during a lesson on foreign languages. The eleventh chapter of the book contains eight logical problems, all revolving Mrs. Jewls' marking students' report cards. To avoid the debacle from marking student report cards by hand, Mrs. Jewls' had purchased a home computer, which would keep track of her students' records for her and print out 29 report cards (Sammy the dead rat from Sideways Stories From Wayside School being the 30th student) at the press of a button. However, while using the computer, her cat Monkey Face had pounced on and chased after the computer mouse, scrambling her data and rendering her data unrecoverable (partially due to her cat also having pounced on the keyboard, but mainly due to Mrs. Jewls not knowing the password to an undocumented software feature that would automatically recover her data). Resigned to marking whatever papers she can find by hand, Mrs. Jewls proceeds to endure a marathon grading session. Like Sideways Arithmetic, each report card problem consists of answers given by four of five students on a test with five problems, as well as data regarding how well the students performed recalled from Mrs. Jewls' memory (such as a student's performance relative to other students or knowledge that one of the students received a given grade), the reader is tasked to find both the answers on the test as well as assessing each student's performance. In More Sideways Arithmetic, however, variations on the theme are introduced: in one, three marked tests were given (although whether a student's specific answer to a question was right or wrong is not given) and readers are asked to determine the grade of a fourth student, while in another, readers are given the questions in random order and a few marked papers (again, which answers were right or wrong on which paper were hidden), and were asked to determine the order in which the questions were asked. {| class="wikitable" style="float:left" |+ Nominated Heights for Wayside's flagpole ! Height !! Nominator |- | 6'0" || Stephen |- | 10'0" || Dana |- | 25'0" || Allison, Benjamin, Eric Fry, Rondi, Sue, Todd |- | 30'0" || Dameon |- | 50'0" || Bebe, Calvin |- | 60'0" || Joe, John |- | 65'0" || Kathy |- | 75'0" || Joy, Mac, Sharie |- | 80'6" || DJ |- | 85'0" || Eric Ovens, Leslie, Paul, Terrence |- | 91'0" || Eric Bacon |- | 100'0" || Deedee, Jason, Jenny, Maurecia, Ron |} The twelfth chapter, involving the next six problems, are problems based on voting revolving around Wayside's flagpole, which had been destroyed by lightning. Mrs. Jewls' class was commissioned to determine the height of the replacement flagpole, which generated a lot of debate: several students debated that, as the old flagpole was dwarfed by the school, that a taller flagpole was to be built, while others (Stephen in particular, as he was responsible for raising and lowering the flags) wanted the new flagpole to be shorter. To settle this issue, Mrs. Jewls asks the students to write down what their ideal flagpole height would be. The answers (which formed the data set needed for these 6 problems) shown that the range of flagpole heights varied, from six feet (Stephen) to 100 feet (five students), with the mode at 25 feet. Because the "winning decision" of 25 feet was not decided by the majority of the class, the students demanded a series of runoff votes between two candidate heights (in which each student would vote for the closest height to their nominated one). Ultimately, the reader is asked to determine the height that would win against any other candidate height (which would be the height of the new flagpole), and the student that had nominated it, as well as the student that had voted for the winner in every series of runoff votes. In the end, the nomination of the generally-detestible Kathy (who is also the student to vote for the winner in every series of runoff votes) wins out, and the height of the new flagpole was determined to be at 65 feet. The remainder of the 58 problems, covering the last three chapters, are all logical problems, where the reader is tasked to make logical conclusions based on a series of assumptions. The first five problems in this set, covering chapter 13, as well as the final problem, covering the whole of chapter 15, asks the reader to determine the truth or falsity of given statements given the assertions (some statements, however, can be true in some contexts and false in others). The nine problems of chapter 14 revolve around more complicated logics (such as those that impose some form of ordering), but are problems in a similar manner. The last two chapters of the book all revolve around "game day" at Wayside, where students and staff at Wayside compete together in a series of activities. Events included: * a relay race involving eight of the students (Benjamin, Deedee, Joy, Leslie, Maurecia, Paul, Sue, and Todd) in two teams of four, where the reader had to identify the members of both teams * a sack race also involving eight students (Allison, Jenny, Rondi, Sharie, Terrence, and the three Erics) in four teams of two, where the reader had to determine the members in all four teams * a race up and down the 30 stories of stairs (involving Allison, Dameon, Deedee, Kathy, and Ron), where the reader had to identify the finishing order in both races * "The Great Watermelon Drop", where five students (Dameon, Dana, DJ, Jenny, and Myron) were paired with five faculty members (Louis the Yard Teacher, Mrs. Jewls, Mr. Kidswatter, Miss Mush, and Miss Worm) in a unique event that saw the faculty members catch watermelons pushed by the students off of the windows from each floor of Wayside. If the faculty member fails to catch a watermelon, their team is eliminated. The reader is tasked to find each pairing as well as the order of finish, including the floors in which the four losing teams were eliminated. * an egg toss, where Jenny, Joy, and Todd are entered. * a somersault race, where Todd is unbeatable - except if Jenny also enters. * a pie-eating contest, where Joy is unbeatable - except if Jenny also enters.
10994973	/m/02qxkv2	They Went Thataway	James Horwitz	1976		 Serving as the title of the book's first section, the Front Row Kid is a phrase that Horwitz uses to describe the children of his youth, and how they would congregate at the local movie theaters and watch the latest movie serials and westerns, and re-enact them in their play throughout the week. It also becomes a metaphor for his lost youth, as well as for the fans of the old movie westerns who grew up and moved on. As the section advances, Horwitz muses on a stay in the legendary Hotel Chelsea in New York City, as well as on his brief life in Paris. He decides to escape New York, and to hunt down the surviving western heroes of his youth. For his pilgrimage, he takes along some relics of his "Front Row Kid" past—his Hopalong Cassidy boots and spurs; his favorite Gene Autry records, and his Lone Ranger comic books. As he drives across the country, he stops off at a variety of places that he had known only through western movie legends: Dodge City and Tombstone, only to find them too modernized. The second section of the book is a thorough analysis of the advent of the western movie, and focuses on the early, deceased cowboy film legends. Horwitz notes that the first true American movie, The Great Train Robbery, was a western, despite being filmed in New Jersey. A bit-player in that movie, Bronco Billy Anderson, ultimately formed his own production company, Essanay Studios, and brought the western to the West, namely California. Other early screen legends that followed in Anderson's path included William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Fred Thomson and Ken Maynard, whose funeral Horwitz attended after failing to reach him in time for an interview. Horwitz analyzes their careers, especially their successes and failures out of the saddle. Early on, Horwitz intended not to interview John Wayne, despite the fact that he was a fan of his (even admitting that his friends would question his sanity if he admitted that to them). He decided that Wayne's conservative politics and adamant support of the Vietnam War ruined the image of his hero, and Wayne was still a popular performer who had not 'disappeared' like many of the other film legends. Horwitz covers Hopalong Cassidy's career with detail, in particular the seminal image of William Boyd as the original "man in black". Other performers Horwitz recalls with nostalgia includes Tex Ritter, Audie Murphy, and the role that television played in the death of the old-time Hollywood cowboys. This section of the book documents Horwitz's journey to Hollywood, where he gamely tries to locate the surviving Western film stars. Almost immediately he confronts barriers, as the Screen Actors Guild refusing to release the mailing addresses of the now-retired stars, nor even tell him who is alive or dead. So, he is forced to leave his contact letters at the Guild office, of which several return unanswered (and one informs him that Allen "Rocky" Lane was deceased). He then places an ad in the Hollywood Reporter, asking for any of the actors willing to participate in the writing project to contact him. While in Hollywood, Horwitz attended the funeral of western hero Ken Maynard, partially out of respect, but also as a way to meet screen legend Gene Autry, Horwitz's childhood idol. He described the service as depressing, with only about seventy-five mourners—many of them dressed in full-Western costume (Autry, who allegedly had supported Maynard though his last years, did not appear at the funeral). The funeral motivated Horwitz to track down as many of the surviving actors as he could before they died before their stories could be told. Horwitz's first interview wound up being Autry, after an article documenting a brief encounter with him was published in Rolling Stone. Autry proved to be a friendly man, though unwilling to give out much information as he was planning his own autobiography at the time. What distressed Horwitz the most was that Autry had not aged gracefully, and that his once-melodious voice was now rough and harsh. Other interviews went poorly. Producers William Witney and Sol Siegel refused to discuss their western past, and Jay Silverheels' agent flatly rejected Horwitz's request. An attempt to interview Clayton Moore, aka The Lone Ranger was a tremendous disappointment, as Moore was unwilling to discuss anything except the Lone Ranger, and even then he suggested Horwitz use information from old interviews, as Moore would not offer anything that hadn't been said before. An attempt to interview Lash LaRue ended when he found that LaRue had just been arrested for drunkenness and drug possession. Horwitz also makes a stop at the Roy Rogers Museum (after repeatedly being refused an interview), where he is overwhelmed by the collection of kitsch and memorabilia (he even considers stealing a Hopalong Cassidy drinking glass just like one he had as a child) until he sees Rogers' horse Trigger, stuffed and mounted, a sight that disgusted him. The interviews that went well for Horwitz included: * Sunset Carson, who Horwitz meets at a country western movie festival in Siler City, North Carolina, and prove to be a witty, giving man (even though he was robbed at a similar festival after a car accident) * Charles Starrett, "The Durango Kid", who actually contacted Horwitz himself because he was happy to still be remembered after twenty-two years in retirement * Russell Hayden, "Lucky" in the Hopalong Cassidy movies, who was a movie fan that actually became a movie hero himself, and who was trying to make a success out of an old movie set that he wanted to offer as a tourist attraction * Joel McCrea, who actually made a name for himself as an actor outside of westerns, but who retunerd to the medium he loved, and who starred in the last "true" old western, Ride the High Country with Randolph Scott (who refused to be interviewed by Horwitz, as a matter of protecting his privacy) * Jimmy Wakely, the "last" of the singing cowboys * Duncan Renaldo, The Cisco Kid, who took Horwitz to see Diablo, his horse from the Cisco Kid television shows * Tim McCoy, who was the last of the 'original' movie cowboys, who proved to be the most open and emotional about his career and life, and whom Horwitz devotes the most time in the text Horwitz ends the book at the site where Tom Mix died in a car accident. He takes out his childhood cowboy boots, tries to polish them, and leaves them at the monument marking the location. He felt that such a sacred place was a good place to leave a memento of his childhood, and of memories that "went thataway".
10996473	/m/02qxmcj	Steel Beach	John Varley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Golden Globe and Steel Beach take place in a universe similar to, but different from, Varley’s "Eight Worlds" universe; in both universes, the solar system has been colonized by human refugees fleeing aliens (known simply as "the Invaders") invading the Earth. Earth and Jupiter are off-limits to humanity, but Earth's moon (known as Luna) and the other planets and moons of the solar system have all become heavily populated. There are also minor colonies set in the Oort cloud beyond the solar system itself. The Steel Beach in question is Luna, Earth's moon and the most heavily-inhabited world in the solar system since the Invaders obliterated human civilization on Earth. The allusion being that humans were thrown onto the inhospitable moon, just as fish made their way onto land as they evolved. The protagonist, Hildy Johnson, is a newspaper reporter who finds trouble beneath the near-utopian society run by the Central Computer. The Central Computer runs every aspect of every person's life: it is the government, court, information source, and friend to every citizen. Hildy Johnson starts off as a male reporter in the beginning of the book. He, like many people in the moon, has become dissatisfied with life. As a result, society, as well as Hildy, take part in destructive activities such as "slash boxing" (a blend of knife fighting and boxing), and in Hildy's case, attempting suicide multiple times. The first half of the story deals with the bizarre occurrences of life on the moon, such as the indoctrinations of celebrity heads-in-jars, negotiating with brontosaurus herds to figure out who they will sacrifice to make burger patties, and Earth-themed Disneylands which come complete with snakes, sand and sunburns. In the second half, Hildy makes contact with a group of people who have figured out how to travel through space without spacesuits. These people then reveal that they are hiding from the Central Computer, partially to keep their technology secret, and to keep free of secret experiments the Central Computer has been performing on people. Hildy then learns that the Central Computer has been attempting to clone the deceased in order to keep the population up. Hildy then becomes suspect, as she (he has had a sex change by now) has attempted to commit suicide several times, and it is unclear if she has been rescued or cloned. The Central Computer eventually resorts to launching a military raid on the people, which eventually causes the machine itself to crash. This leaves the moon city in chaos, and in its death throes, the Central Computer sends a projection of itself to Hildy, explaining that the schizoid nature of having multiple versions of itself was conflicting and strenuous, and that the city's doom was inevitable.
10999161	/m/02qxq3p	And The Big Men Fly	Alan Hopgood		{"/m/01z02hx": "Sports"}	 The coach of the Crows football team, J.J Forbes, sends Wally (his assistant) out to find a new player for the big season championship which was to start in 2 weeks. J.J thought that they would never have a chance, as Wally couldn't seem to find anyone with some decent talent. J.J was getting very upset at Wally and told him on the phone to do anything to get someone, as he says, “I don't care if you have to rewrite the law books. That's what we put you through university for!” A little while later, Wally bursts into the room yelling and screaming. “J.J… I've got him! I've got him! Oh, you've never seen anything like him, he's beautiful, he's a Greek god.” At this point J.J starts to think that Wally has gone mad and needs to see a psychiatrist. Wally is trying to convince J.J that this guy can kick a wheat bag 10 yards. Wally doesn't believe J.J at first, but thinks that he has nothing to lose so they decide to go and meet this man, so they drive all the way out to Manangatang, where this “Greek God” lives, and J.J finally gets to meet Achilles Jones. At first, things are a bit stressful as Achilles gets the shot gun out and threatens to kill them when they arrive. They try convincing Achilles to come and play football for the Crows but Achilles is just too happy where he is and won’t go anywhere. J.J & Wally aren't happy, so they decide that they are going to get Achilles to play through bribing his partner Lil with nice things and getting her to convince Achilles to try it out and play a few games. To start with convincing Lil, they tell her that she will get all sorts of nice things and they even give her a fur coat. They end up telling Achilles that the Williamses (Achilles' neighbors and worst enemies) think that he would never be able to play football in his life, so he decides that he will go and play for the Crows, only so he can show the Williamses that he can play and that he is better than them. Once Achilles arrived in Melbourne, he was taught the rules of the game and did private training. He was kept private from the public as Wally and J.J wanted to make a big showcase on the first day of the football championship. At the first game of the championship, Achilles got onto the field and did nothing. J.J and Wally started to get very stressed out and worried that he wouldn't do anything, until J.J sent Wally out onto the field to see what was wrong with him and found out that it was partly because he was wearing football boots (which he much disliked) and partly because Achilles can't play or kick when he's not angry. J.J then told Wally to send Lil out onto the field and make up a story about the Williamses so that he would get all angry and start to run and kick the ball around. This kept going on every week of the championship. Lil would have to keep making up stories, and telling Achilles that the Williamses said bad stuff about him when they actually didn't. This is the only way that they could get Achilles to actually get out there on the football field to run around and play the actual game. Just before the season had begun, Wobbly Coates and J.J made a public bet on the radio over their yearly wages that the Crows wouldn't get into the championship grand final and win, as they haven't done for the past 30 years. Near the end of the season, Wobbly knew that he was going to lose this bet if he didn't do something to stop Achilles playing the grand final, so he rang up the Williamses and told them that Achilles had been saying lots of bad stuff about them and their farm. This then set the Williamses off, and they went to fight him. This plan by Wobbly had already been working excellently as he wanted to tire Achilles out before the big game so that he couldn't play. The fight between the Williamses and Achilles went on for three days straight, but Achilles was still pushing on strong for the grand final match. On the night before the big game, Les Williams gave up and decided that he didn't want to fight anymore - this is when Achilles found out that his best mate, Milly the horse, had died back at home on the farm. Les and Achilles decide to come together inside and have a cup of tea and decide that they are going to stop all of this nonsense between the two of them. Achilles doesn't want to play the game when he gets to the field on the big day, but luckily enough, Les Williams heard on the radio who rang him up and told him all the lies – it was Wobbly Coates. This report got Achilles playing the game for a while and both the commentators and the crowd were going wild by this time because of his performance in the game. The game came to a near end and Achilles has to make a decision whether he is going to win the game or make them lose. He thinks about it and suddenly decides that he is going to get the score even, and then kick the ball straight up into the commentary box where Wobbly Coates is sitting, and hopefully it hits him and injures him. This decision was going to be his payback for all of the lies that he had told to Les Williams. The grand final game ends in a draw and is rescheduled to next week without the participation of the new team recruit, Achilles. He then decides that he is going to live back on the farm with Lil and spend a lot more time with her..
10999705	/m/02qxqxf	Good King Harry	Denise Giardina	1984	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 An imagined autobiography of Henry V, King of England, from his neglected but happy youth in Wales, his tumultuous relationship with his father, who usurped the throne, through his storied victory at the Battle of Agincourt, and his troubled later years.
11000822	/m/02qxrzb	Each Man's Son	Hugh MacLennan			 Mollie MacNeil and her son Alan, miss Archie (Mollie's husband) who is away in the United States trying to make a living as a professional boxer. Archie has been away for four years and it is not clear whether he will return at all. He is adamant that he will never go and work in the coal mines. Meanwhile, Louis Camire, a French expatriate, is trying to convince Mollie to come with him to France where people are more equal than those in the company-owned mining town. The company doctor, Daniel Ainslie, takes a liking to young Alan, since his own wife Margaret is unable to bear children herself. Margaret was made barren by her own husband, who had to perform a procedure on her. Ainslie tries to exert his influence on Mollie and Alan. Daniel believes that Alan has the intelligence to escape the mining town. Mollie and Margaret share their fears about Daniel's influence and contrive to blunt it. After much soul-searching, Daniel realizes that he cannot both have Alan like a son and his wife Margaret at the same time. This contradiction is violently resolved in the book's conclusion where Archie kills Mollie.
11000985	/m/02qxs1f	Monkey Bridge	Lan Cao	1997		 Lan Cao’s debut novel Monkey Bridge traverses several opposing worlds. The novel consists of two narrators: Mai, a teenage Vietnamese immigrant, who flees to America on the day Saigon falls in 1975, and her mother, Thanh, who manages to join Mai a few months after Mai is settled in United States Of America. Three years after their arrival in the United States, Thanh is in the hospital with a blood clot in her brain, suffering paralysis of half side. She has been calling out for Baba Quan, her father, in her sleep. Thanh and Baba Quan are supposed to meet in Saigon and leave for America together back in 1975, but this plan fails because Baba Quan, due to some unknown reason, does not show up. Since then, Thanh has “never truly recovered from the mishap that left him without the means to leave Saigon” (4). Mai, who worries about her mother’s health condition and understands how desperately her mother wants to see Baba Quan, decides to make a dangerous trip to Canada with her best friend Bobbie, where they plan to make a phone call to Baba Quan once they cross the border and hopefully take a wild chance to bring her grandfather to the United States. The plan, however, does not succeed. Mai retreats at the last minute because she not only fears for being deported by the U.S government but also recalls what her father says all the time: “One wrong move…the entire course of a country changed” (25), in which he refers to America’s decision to make the crucial commitment in the Vietnam War. Thanh gets discharged by the hospital and decides to temporarily leave her Vietnam past behind so she can move on. She becomes socially active again in the Vietnamese American community, Little Saigon. Meanwhile, Mai, idling around at home in the summer before attending college, gets very curious about her mysterious grandfather and starts to pry into things about Baba Quan from her mother and different acquaintances, such as Mrs. Bay, Thanh’s best friend, and Uncle Michael, a Vietnam veteran who befriends with her father and brings her to the United States when Saigon falls. After several attempts, Mai still fails to learn anything specific about Baba Quan, all they would tell her are some basic facts and superficial comments. She also fails to convince Uncle Michael to help her grandfather relocate in the United States. Wanting to know more about her mother’s and Baba Quan’s Vietnam past—“the vivid details that accompanied every fault and fracture, every movement and shift that had forced her apart and at the same time kept her stitched together" (168), Mai sneaks in her mother’s room and steals the letters that her mother has kept writing her, but has not let her read them yet. From her mother’s secret letters, Mai finally learns the unspoken family history that Thanh has been avoiding telling her and the reason why Baba Quan did not show up at their escapade: Unable to maintain his rental payments, Baba Quan, who Thanh once believed to be her father, prostitutes his wife to his rich landlord, Uncle Khan, whose wife is sterile. Tuyet, Baba Quan’s wife, later on has Khan’s child, Thanh. From this act, Baba Quan secures his land and gets endless benefits from the rich landlord. The Khan’s soon adopt Thanh and send her to a catholic boarding school. Living with shame and rage, Baba Quan has been planning to get revenge on his landlord by committing a murderous act but never succeeds. Later on when the war begins, Baba Quan becomes a Vietcong. His village is declared a free-fire zone, and his family is moved away from their ancestral land to a nearby strategic hamlet, while he stays there to keep working with the Vietcong. Thanh’s mother dies during the transition. In accordance with Vietnamese ritual, Thanh has to escort her mother’s body back to their home village for burial. By a riverbank on her way back home, Thanh witnesses Baba Quan murder his landlord. Struck with panic, Thanh runs away and incautiously leaves her mother’s body behind. Because Thanh loses her mother's body and fails to perform the proper burial rituals, she is left with a permanent scar and never adjusts her to new life in America.
11001027	/m/02qxs23	Expedition to the Demonweb Pits			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Expedition to the Demonweb Pits revolves around the reading of the Dark Pact. The demon lord Graz'zt seeks to form an alliance with Lolth against Orcus. Lolth spurns his offer, and Graz'zt, not taking rejection lightly, now schemes to undermine Lolth. With the aid of his cambion son, Rule-of-Three, Graz'zt plans a Demon Council within the Abyss. While he is doing this, Rule-of-Three spreads word among the drow that their goddess is coming to the Prime Material Plane to wage the eternity war against their hated cousins, the surface elves and their god, Corellon Larethian. After the Demonic Council is arranged, Rule-of-Three and Graz'zt involve a group of mortals (the PCs) about Lolth's coming. Their goal is to bring attention to Lolth in her own Demonweb and then use the mortals to embarrass her in the eyes of the other demon lords, while at the same time, sealing the Dark Pact of planar binding using the divine spark Lolth gives it. It is the PC's goal to prevent the reading of that pact. Expedition to the Demonweb Pits offers the characters many items, including two new legend items: Thaas and Spidersilk. Thaas is an ancient magical elven bow dedicated to slaying demons. Spidersilk is a suit of fine armor for arcane spell casters that grants many spider-oriented benefits.
11008024	/m/02qxy_1	The Sleepwalker	Robert Muchamore	2008	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A plane crashes over the Atlantic and all 345 passengers are killed. Among the dead are the wife, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren of Dr. Terrence McAfferty (Mac), former CHERUB chairman. A troubled boy named Fahim Bin Hassam calls the aircrash investigation hotline and attempts to blame his father, Hassam Bin Hassam, but gives into his fear before he can relay any of the information. While James is sleeping, the instructor Kazkov pulls him out of bed, gags him with a rubber gag, handcuffs him, and takes him outside. It is revealed all the black shirts are being taken on a training exercise. They have to leave the area, with red and white shirts after them using quad bikes and night-vision goggles. Lauren hides in a ditch, and is able to steal night-vision goggles. She gets James' motorcylcled engined golf buggie which was raced at the beginning of the book and decides to rescue James, Kerry and Dana. Later she tells Zara quad bikes made it uneven, and is told next time bicycles will probably be used, it would make things more even, and prevent damage, as one of the quad bikes was sent to the bottom of a lake. CHERUB agents Lauren and Jake are sent on a mission to befriend Fahim and discover the truth. Mac becomes the acting mission controller, trying to find out if the deaths of his family were accidental or acts of terrorism. Lauren plants audio devices all over the house, but when Hassam discovers one, he thinks it was the cleaning lady and he tortures her in painful ways, before shooting her in the kneecap. Fahim feels guilty about this and admits to his father about how it was Lauren and Jake. He throws some stinging antiseptic in his father's eyes in an attempt to flee. Hassam chases him across a golf course, but when an armed tactical response team threaten to shoot him, Hassam takes his own son hostage with a knife to his throat. Jake bravely attacks Hassam from behind and saves Fahim, after which Hassam is shot dead. After all of the trouble is cleared, it is discovered that the plane crashed due to faulty parts which Hassam and his brother Asif Bin Hassam sold to the people constructing the plane. As the brothers were aware of their faults, Asif was sent to prison. Fahim was taken in to start life as a CHERUB, but when a camcorder showed that he sleepwalks every night and talks out loud about all of the things he has done, Zara Asker states that it is too dangerous to send him on missions because he might blow his cover. Instead, Fahim will live with Dr Terence McAfferty, CHERUB's former chairman. Meanwhile, James has been assigned his work experience with his former girlfriend, Kerry, at the Deluxe Chicken restaurant. They are invited to a club by a co-worker called Gemma and her boyfriend Danny. James, Dana, and Kerry go and have a good time, but James discovers Danny pushing Gemma about and fights with him. On the last day of their work experience Gemma shows up with a black eye. Outside, James meets Danny but James is not eager to have another row with him. Danny calls Gemma and pulls her hair to taunt James, but it is Kerry who attacks him, and James rushes to aid her. The police are called and James is arrested. Zara, the CHERUB chairwoman, uses her status to free James from prison. She then sentences Kerry and James punishment laps and hours of decorating service. James realises he is still attracted to Kerry, but he wants to be faithful to Dana. and suddenly rejects Kerry after they start making out.
11008696	/m/02qxzkz	Dreaming in Cuban	Cristina García	1992	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As a young woman living in Havana, Celia Almeida meets and falls in love with a married Spaniard named Gustavo. The two become lovers until Gustavo returns to Spain. After Gustavo leaves, Celia loses the will to live. Though she has no known medical condition, she wastes away (due to depression). While she is housebound Jorge del Pino courts her and persuades her to marry him. After their honeymoon, he leaves her at home with his mother and sister while he goes on long business trips, punishing her out of his jealousy for her past with Gustavo. His mother and sister are cruel to Celia, even more so after she becomes pregnant. By the time she gives birth to her daughter Lourdes, her mind has snapped. Thus, for the first months of Lourdes’ life, Celia is in a mental institution and Jorge is the one who cares for Lourdes. When Celia is released, Jorge brings her to a new home on the edge of the ocean in Santa Teresa del Mar. Lourdes is distant from her mother and closely bonded to her father. A couple years later, a second daughter named Felicia is born. Finally, they have a son named Javier, who is born eight years after Felicia. Ideologically, Jorge and Celia are very different. Jorge prefers the American-friendly government, while Celia supports attempts at revolution. Over the years, the three children grow up, and their lives take different paths. Lourdes attends the university and falls in love with a man named Rufino Puente, the son of a wealthy family. They are married in spite of his mother’s disapproval. After Rufino and Lourdes are married, they live at the Puente family ranch. Eleven days after the Cuban revolution takes place, Lourdes gives birth to a daughter named Pilar. Two years later, Lourdes is pregnant with a second child. One day, she is thrown from her horse while riding frantically to return to the house, and it causes her to lose the child. Lourdes reaches the house just in time to find two soldiers holding Rufino at gunpoint. She scares the soldiers off, but the soldiers return later. They claim the Puente estate as property of the revolutionary government. Lourdes tries to resist, but one of the soldiers rapes her at knifepoint. Soon after, the Puente family flees to Miami. Lourdes finds life in Miami intolerable, and soon they drive north until they reach New York City, where they make their new life. Rufino does not fit in well, and he spends his time working on his inventions. It is Lourdes who supports the family, saving up enough money to purchase a bakery. She runs the bakery herself. Pilar grows up rebelling against her mother and feeling much closer to her father. She becomes a sort of stereotypical "teenage punk artist". Felicia, the second oldest daughter, becomes the best friend of the daughter of a santería high priest at age six. From that time forward, santería has a presence in Felicia’s life. She drops out of high school and drifts from job to job until she meets Hugo Villaverde. Felicia is enamored with him immediately, and they soon consummate their relationship. Felicia becomes pregnant as a result. Hugo vanishes for seven months before returning and marrying Felicia in a City Hall wedding. He becomes physically abusive almost immediately and then departs to sea the next day. Thus, Felicia is without her husband when she gives birth to her twin daughters, Luz and Milagro. Hugo continues to be a sporadic presence in their lives after that. He manages to impregnate Felicia again and give her syphilis. It is during Felicia’s pregnancy that her lack of mental stability becomes apparent. She attempts to kill Hugo by dropping a burning rag onto his face while he is sleeping; Hugo wakes up just as she drops the rag on him and he flees, never to be seen again. She later gives birth to a son, who she names Ivanito. While the twins resent their mother, Ivanito is extremely close to her. The youngest child of Jorge and Celia, Javier, has a talent for science and shares his mother’s support of the revolution and El Líder. As a result of his rebellion against his father, Javier eventually leaves for Czechoslovakia without telling his parents. He goes on to become a professor of biochemistry and marries a Czech girl, having a daughter with her named Irinita. When Jorge develops stomach cancer, he travels to New York for treatment, where he spends the last four years of his life. His health gradually fails and he is hospitalized. Over the course of her father’s illness, Lourdes has a constant desire for food and sex. When Jorge dies, his spirit leaves his body and appears to bid farewell to his wife. She glimpses him briefly, but she cannot understand his words. Felicia turns to santería to make peace with her father, but she becomes mentally unwell again. When Celia discovers Felicia’s illness, she takes Luz and Milagro to her home, but Ivanito will not leave his mother. Eventually, Felicia’s mental state deteriorates to the point where she tries to kill Ivanito and herself with drugged ice cream. The attempt fails. As a result, Felicia is sent to join a Cuban military brigade and Ivanito is sent to boarding school. Celia becomes a full devotee of the revolution and El Líder, performing a wide variety of tasks and becoming a local judge of the People’s Court. Meanwhile, in New York, Pilar discovers that her father is cheating on her mother. She tries to run away to Cuba, but she only makes it as far as Miami. She gets caught while seeking out one of her cousins for help. Her mother is called, and Pilar is made to return home to New York. Lourdes becomes an auxiliary policewoman. Her father’s spirit begins speaking to her regularly. Eventually, Lourdes’ business becomes so successful that she buys a second bakery. She has Pilar paint a mural for the opening. Pilar, unbeknownst to her mother, paints a punk Statue of Liberty for the unveiling, but when the crowd disapproves, Lourdes defends her daughter’s work. In Cuba, Felicia meets and marries a man named Ernesto Brito, but he dies in a fire soon afterwards. Felicia blames El Líder for his death, though there is no evidence to support this belief. She descends into madness again, and then vanishes, losing her memory and identity for months. When she recovers herself, Felicia discovers that she has married a man named Otto. Whether or not his death was Felicia's fault is debatable. While on a ride, he stands up while Felicia performs oral sex. When the ride begins again, he falls over and lands on electrical wires and is electrocuted, but it is unclear as to exactly how he falls, and later in the story, Felicia says that she pushed him. Meanwhile, the day after Felicia’s disappearance, Javier returns home to his mother. Celia learns that his wife has left him and taken their daughter. In his heartbreak, Javier wastes away, just as Celia once did, until he vanishes to die. Felicia returns to Havana and fully embraces santería, becoming a priestess. She is still distanced from her mother and children, who do not come to see her. Gradually, Felicia’s health fades for reasons unknown and she too dies. In the U.S., Jorge’s presence begins to fade from the world, and he goes to Lourdes to ask her to go to Cuba and apologize on his behalf and make amends with her mother. One day while Pilar is out in the city, she encounters a botánica (a store that sells the paraphernalia of santería). The proprietor instructs her in a ritual she must perform and gives her the items she needs. On her way home, Pilar is attacked by boys in the park. Pilar recovers herself and returns home to carry out her ritual, which reveals that she and her mother should go to Cuba. Celia wanders out into the ocean at night after Felicia’s burial, and she is found in the aftermath by a newly arrived Lourdes and Pilar. They care for her. Lourdes views Cuba with great dislike, but she becomes fond of her nephew Ivanito. Pilar listens to Celia’s stories and paints her portrait many times. Lourdes finds herself unable to forgive her mother. She resolves to help Ivanito leave Cuba, taking him to join the defectors at the Peruvian embassy. Celia sends Pilar to find him, and though Pilar manages to do so, she tells her grandmother that she did not. After Pilar and Lourdes are gone, Celia walks into the ocean a final time.
11009601	/m/02qx_8n	No Humans Involved	Kelley Armstrong	2007-05-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Necromancer Jaime Vegas is hired by a television show, along with other celebrity spiritualists (i.e. frauds) to raise Marilyn Monroe's spirit for a little chat on the anniversary of her death. Filming begins with Jaime and the other celebrity necromancers raising the spirits of other dead celebrities as stock footage for the show. In addition, she's asked Pack Alpha Jeremy Danvers to join her as a guest/escort... and Jaime hopes a little more. During filming, Jaime experiences something that should never happen, a ghost that she can not see but can feel touching her. Frightened that she, like other necromancers before her, is going crazy, she reaches out to other supernaturals on the Interracial Council for help. Going to Portland to visit the head of the Council, Paige Winterbourne, her husband/business partner Lucas Cortez and their teenage ward Savannah Levine, Jamie is nearly killed by a woman whom Savannah believes can help. Rescued by the teenager, Savannah leaves Jamie in the care of Jeremey who accompanies back to LA. Together Jaime and Jeremey along with the Angel Eve (Savannah's mother) and Ghost Kristof (Savannah's father and once head of the Nast Cabal), discover the ghosts are those of children killed by humans trying to learn the art of witchcraft! this requires additional information
11011526	/m/02qy0zc	The Two Tigers	Emilio Salgari		{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 India, 1857. Just when Tremal-Naik's life was getting back to normal, the Thugs of the Kali cult return to exact their revenge by kidnapping his daughter Darma. Summoned by Kammamuri, Sandokan and Yanez immediately set sail for India to help their loyal friend. But the evil sect knows of their arrival and thwarts them at every turn. Have our heroes finally met their match? It's the Tiger of Malaysia versus the Tiger of India in a fight to the death!
11011533	/m/02qy0_1	Sharpe's Enemy	Bernard Cornwell	1984-01	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the winter of 1812 a group of deserters from all the armies of the Peninsular War - French, British, Spanish and Portuguese - descends on the isolated hamlet of Adrados, on the Spanish-Portuguese border, led by Obadiah Hakeswill, the antagonist of Sharpe's Company, and Pot-au-Feu aka Sergeant Deron, who appears in Sharpe's Havoc as Marshal Soult's cook. The seize a number of women on pilgrimage to a convent in the village, including Josefina Lacosta who is travelling as "Lady Farthingdale", and an Madame Dubreton, the English-born wife of a French colonel of cavalry. Sharpe, recently promoted to the rank of Major is sent, with Patrick Harper, to deliver the ransom demanded for the release of Lady Farthingdale. Upon reaching Adrados they meet Colonel Dubreton and his Sergeant on a similar mission. They see both ladies are safe and deliver the ransom but Hakeswill then demands more by the New Year. Colonel and Madame Dubreton are careful not to let the fact that they know each other be picked up by the deserters. Sharpe and Harper note that Adrados is extremely defensible with a castle, a watchtower and a convent all defensible buildings against attack. Madame Dubreton gives Sharpe a clue that she is in the convent. Nairn believes that the deserters will not agree to a release at all regardless of ransom and thinks a rescue is the best option. It is proposed that Sharpe and the Light Company, with two companies of the 60th American Rifles, will attack the watchtower and the convent to free the ladies and then wait for Colonel Kinney to come with his 113th Fusilier Regiment and Sir Augustus to supervise the surrender of the deserters. They propose to capture the convent on Christmas Eve when the deserters will be almost certainly inebriated. They capture the convent and free the women. Unfortunately, Sharpe discovers that multiple French battalions are on their way to capture the village in order to occupy South Portugal. Sharpe decides to make a stand and blackmails Lord Farthingdale into leaving the village, thus making Sharpe the commanding officer. He ingeniously defends the village by setting a trap for the French, using the rockets to destroy a battalion, mining a building, and generally anticipating his enemies' moves. His wife, a Spanish partisan commander Teresa Moreno, rides to fetch reinforcements who arrive just in time to assist the tiring men. Hakeswill, who was kept as a prisoner, escapes during the last hours of the fight and kills Teresa. Hakeswill tries to desert to the French, but falls in the hands of Dubreton who returns him to Sharpe as a thank you for rescuing the Colonel's wife. Hakeswill is executed by a firing squad and the last shot at the man is taken by Sharpe himself.
11012072	/m/02qy1p1	Valmouth				 Two wealthy elderly Valmouth-area ladies, Mrs Hurstpierpoint and Mrs Thoroughfare, are concerned with the marriage prospects of the latter's son, Captain Dick Thoroughfare. Captain Thoroughfare, away at sea, is rather scandalously engaged to a black girl, Niri-Esther, but he also favours his 'chum', Jack Whorwood. Thetis Tooke, a local farmer's daughter, is obsessed with Captain Thoroughfare. Meanwhile the exotic Mrs Yajnavalkya, a black masseuse and chiropodist, attempts to procure a sexual dalliance with Thetis's virile brother David for the centenarian Lady Parvula de Panzoust. Eventually, Captain Thoroughfare returns to England. It comes to light that he has virtually married Niri-Esther, that they have a baby, and that she is also pregnant with his second child.
11013569	/m/02qy2p6	Exodus	Julie Bertagna	2002-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the year 2100, 15-year-old Mara lives on the island of Wing, with fellow villagers. The melting ice cap has caused the shoreline to rise and they are now almost out of land. Through her cyberwizz, a laptop-like gadget, she navigates through information to find where they can go. She meets a mysterious creature called Fox, who demands to know where she is. Mara is excited because beyond him she can see a new world, but she loses connection before she can learn more. Mara tells the villagers about New Mungo, a place where they can go which is a new land raised high above sea level. They eventually leave in fishing boats, but are forced to leave behind the elder generation who couldn't part from their home. Once they reach New Mungo, they realize it is actually not a welcoming place; a huge outer wall surrounds the whole sky-city. They then are forced to join a refugee boat camp and some of them die there, including Mara's best friend Gail. The Sky Police, from New Mungo, occasionally take the strong up to the city in a procedure called Pickings, but Mara has a bad feeling about this. Mara learns all her family drowned in the perilous journey to New Mungo, and attempts to commit suicide. When she realizes her will to live is too strong, Mara manages, with the help of an urchin she names Wing (after her drowned island), to enter the city gates. There she meets the people of the Netherworld (a strange twilight place in the shadow of the sky city, with the roofs of the drowned city of Glasgow jutting above the sea), who are known as the treenesters. They immediately recognise her as their messiah, the Face in the Stone, from an old prophecy called the Stone Telling. She lives with them for some time, exploring and helping them to survive. One day, while she is with her friend Gorbals (a treenester) in the forbidden university, Gorbals and Wing are taken by the Sky Police, along with many sea urchins (a wild breed of children without language, but hairy bodies and webbed hands) are slaughtered. Determined to save her friends, she takes the uniform of a police woman that the police accidentally killed in the massacre and sneaks up to the city. She is overwhelmed by its superficial beauty and shallow entertainments. At first, she needed some help with searching. Doll, a computer worker, helps her with the computers. While searching through the Noos, a virtual, evoluted version of the world wide web, she meets Fox. She discovers it is David, the quiet, hard-working grandson of Caledon, creator of the Sky City and the one who allowed many people to drown if they couldn't pass an intelligence test to allow them entrance to the new world. Together, they organize an escape plan that involves David crashing the Noos with a 20th century virus, allowing Mara to free the slaves and then leave the city unnoticed. The only catch is that David would not be able to leave with Mara, with whom he has fallen in love, because he must stay to begin a rebellion against the unfair New World. While executing her plan, Mara fatally stabs Tony Rex, a man she believes is a spy, with an ancient bone dagger, and then rescues Gorbals, Wing and all the people chosen in the Pickings, who have become slaves. They slide down air vents into the Netherworld and board a supply ship. They break free of the city walls, also saving the people in the refugee boat camp and the Netherworld. The boats are programmed to Greenland, a place that is thought to have risen high above the water like a cork. Fox also slides down the air vents, to begin his rebellion outside the reach of his grandfather. The book finishes with Mara wondering how far people will go to save themselves, and if Caledon was right to save a special few. The book ends with the hope that the refugees will reach safety in Greenland. A screenplay for this book is currently under way. The movie adaptation of Exodus is not yet scheduled for release.
11015857	/m/02qy4j3	Khaled: A Tale of Arabia	Francis Marion Crawford	1891	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 From the cover blurb of the Ballantine edition: "Khaled is a hardworking, conscientious djinn, a true believer working industriously in the service of Allah. So industriously in fact that he rather oversteps the mark and causes the demise of a certain non-believer, and as a result, is condemned to being human for a while. In the company of a superlatively gorgeous princess, of course. "She, However, in her own gentle, obedient and docile way (she is after all a true Arabian wife) is as stubborn as a mule..." Khaled has no soul - but he is offered one chance: if his wife comes to love him, despite his lack of a soul, he will become fully human.
11017293	/m/02qy5t1	A Bad Spell in Yurt	C. Dale Brittain	1991-08-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This story takes place in the tiny kingdom of Yurt. It reads like a charming, light-hearted story at first, but darker forces soon reveal themselves. Amongst themselves, the characters refer to the "three that rule the world", the aristocracy, the church, and wizardry. Though the aristocracy do the actual ruling, organized wizardry generally considers itself to be the superior of the three, in part because they put an end to the "Black Wars," wars between kingdoms so violent and bloody that individual wizards were forced to band together to stop them. Churchmen considers themselves superior to wizards, and they are traditional rivals in this semi-medieval world. The first-person narrator is Daimbert, who has just barely graduated from the wizard's school. He takes up his first post as Royal Wizard of Yurt. Daimbert barely graduated, owing to all that embarrassment with the frogs, yet he has amazing improvisational skills that manage to get him by. Daimbert soon befriends Joachim, the castle chaplain, attempts to make magical telephones from scratch, learns old herbal magic from his predecessor, fights a dragon from the northern land of wild magic, searches for the source of an evil spell on the king, and is forced to bargain with a demon. Here, magic is a wild force of four dimensions that is shaped by a wizard's spells or potions, and (usually) is spoken aloud using the Hidden Language, needed to channel magic for the means of a spell. However, wizards can also choose to sell their soul to a demon in return for supernatural powers. The book reads somewhat like a mystery, where Daimbert follows up on many clues throughout the story, eventually suspecting everyone in the castle. The caster of the evil spell is not revealed until the end of the book.
11019466	/m/02qy7_k	Son of the Red Corsair	Emilio Salgari		{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Son of the Red Corsair, one of the most captivating stories written by Emilio Salgari, is a mixture of adventure, humor, and romance that has delighted readers of all ages for many years. Part of the series usually referred to as Pirati delle Antille, it is the story of Enrico di Ventimiglia, the Son of the Red Corsair, as he travels through the Spanish conquests of Central America in search of the stepsister he has never met. In his adventure, the Count is helped by a cast of colorful characters, the faithful Mendoza, the incomparable Don Barrejo, Buttafuoco, a nobleman-turned-buccaneer, and bands of pirates of the Caribbean.
11021110	/m/027_xsn	The Chameleon's Shadow	Minette Walters	2007-09-07	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When Lieutenant Charles Acland is flown home from Iraq with serious head injuries, he faces not only permanent disfigurement but also an apparent change to his previously outgoing personality. Crippled by migraines, and suspicious of his psychiatrist, he begins to display sporadic bouts of aggression, particularly against women, and especially his ex-fiancee, who seems unable to accept that the relationship is over. After his injuries prevent his return to the army, he cuts all ties with his former life and moves to London. Alone and unmonitored, he sinks into a private world of guilt and paranoid distrust; until a customer annoys him in a Bermondsey pub. Out of control and only prevented from killing the man by the intervention of a 250-pound female weightlifter called Jackson, he attracts the attention of police who are investigating three 'gay' murders in the Bermondsey area which appear to have been motivated by extreme rage. Under suspicion, Acland is forced to confront the real issues behind his isolation. How much control does he have over the dark side of his personality? Do his migraines contribute to his rages? Has he always been the duplicitous chameleon that his ex-fiancee claims? And why, if he hates women, does he look to a woman for help?
11027263	/m/02qyjtd	The Dreamwalker's Child			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Sam Palmer has always been fascinated with insects, but now he has become obsessed. Suddenly insects also appear to be fascinated with Sam. Wherever he goes, a few wasps follow him. One day he finds a horse-fly in his room. He gently corrals it in a glass and sets it free, informing it that it is not very smart. But that fly knows more than Sam could ever imagine. Meanwhile, an army in the state of Vermia in another world called Aurobon prepares for war against humans on earth. Their weapon: a virus to be spread by mosquitoes. As they refine their technique, word comes that "the Dreamwalker" has been found—and that she has a son. Odoursin, Vermia's evil emperor, demands the boy be brought to him. Sam takes a bike ride and notices a peculiar cloud of wasps. He cannot resist following them. Pain stabs his neck, and then everything goes black. He awakens to nighttime in a strange landscape, marshlands lit with blue-green light. Confused and frightened, he walks toward distant city lights. But his travels are disrupted by a horrendous encounter with a slavering pack of creatures like no one has seen on Earth. The crazed beasts are intent on killing him. Sam realizes he will surely die, but then a group of soldiers appears. His relief is short-lived, however, when the soldiers act like he is a criminal, violently hauling him off to prison. What is going on? Vermia's enemy state is called Vahlzi, and the army is led by Commander Firebrand. Realizing the Dreamwalker's son has been kidnapped by Vermia, Firebrand decides to send a rescuer, Skipper, who is his best pilot despite her young age. In prison, Sam meets Skipper who gives him hope of escape. Looking through the window of his cell, he sees three moons and realizes he is in a whole new world. When Sam learns the truth behind his plight, he is shocked. He must fight the evil that seeks to destroy Earth's humans. Meanwhile, his damaged body on Earth remains in a coma. In the midst of an urgent plot fueled by a dangerous mission, we find humor, a gutsy female role model, friendship, family relationships, questions about the guardianship of Earth and the balance of nature—plus a subtle, thrilling celebration of life itself.
11030596	/m/02qyn7w	Dorian, an Imitation	Will Self	2003-06-26	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is the summer of 1981 and 'the royal broodmare' - as Henry Wotton has dubbed her - is about to be married to the Prince of Wales, while Brixton is in flames. Wotton, uneasily gay, egregiously drug-addicted and queasily snobbish, is at the centre of a Chelsea clique dedicated to a timeless dissolution. His friend Baz Hallward, a sometime Warhol acolyte and video installation artist, has discovered a most remarkable young man, the very epitome of male beauty, Dorian Gray. Hallward's installation Cathode Narcissus captures all of Dorian's allure, but perhaps it's captured another more integral part of him as well? Certainly, after a night of debauchery that climaxes in a veritable conga line of buggery, Wotton and Hallward have been snared by a sinister retrovirus which becomes synonymous with the decade. Sixteen years later the broodmare's shattered body lies dying in a Parisian underpass. But what of Wotton and Hallward? How did they fare as the stock-market soared and their T-cell counts plummeted? And what of Dorian, a sultan of style in an era of mass superficiality? How is it that he remains so healthy and youthful while all around him sicken and age and die?
11032757	/m/02qypqz	The Lost Continent: The Story of Atlantis	C J Cutcliffe Hyne	1900	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel uses the common nineteenth-century device of a "framing story" to set its narrative in context and augment its believability. The story proper was written supposedly by Deucalion, a warrior-priest of ancient Atlantis; the text having been partly destroyed inadvertently by one of its discoverers at the time of its finding, it is not entirely complete. Deucalion's account describes his heroic but ultimately doomed battle to save Atlantis from destruction by its avaricious and selfish queen, Phorenice.
11034831	/m/02qyrw1	Est: The Steersman Handbook	Leslie Stevens		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The "est" in the book's title refers to what Stevens described as "Electronic Social Transformation". The book described a future society and the rise of what Stevens described as the "est people". The "est people" were a new generation of postliterate humans who were to bring about a "transformation" of society. The "est people" were to be technically-minded, eclectic, and computer literate. They would possess qualities necessary for social transformation, integral to Earth's survival. Individuals named as examples of "est people" in the book included R. Buckminster Fuller, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ralph Nader, Marshall McLuhan, Malcolm X, Albert Einstein, Lewis Mumford, and Eric Hoffer.
11038947	/m/02qyxh7	Gentlemen of the Road	Michael Chabon	2007-10-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story centers on two world-traveling Jewish bandits who style themselves with the euphemism "gentlemen of the road." Amram is a hulking Abyssinian (African) who is equally proficient with an axe as a game of shatranj; he is haunted by the disappearance of his daughter many years ago. His companion is Zelikman, a Frankish (German) physician who uses an over-sized bloodletting lance as a rapier. Zelikman has a morbid personality due to the trauma of watching his family slaughtered in an anti-Jewish pogrom. The two bandits begin in the Kingdom of Arran, where they con the customers of an inn with a staged duel. Before they can collect their winnings, a mahout attempts to hire them to safeguard his charge, Filaq, a fugitive Khazar prince. Filaq's family was murdered by the usurping bek, Buljan. Before the pair can give their answer, Buljan's assassins kill the mahout, and the two gentlemen escape with Filaq, intent on collecting a reward from his wealthy relatives. Filaq, on the other hand, is committed to escaping and taking vengeance on Buljan. The group arrives at the hometown of Filaq's relatives and discovers that everyone has been slaughtered by Kievan Rus'. An army of Arsiyah arrives too late to save the town. Filaq attempts to rally the troops to rescue his kidnapped brother Alp, but the army decides to place Filaq on the bek's throne instead. The army travels to the bek's palace, but a ruse by Buljan leaves the Arsiyah army obliterated. Filaq is captured and exposed to all as a girl. Amram is also captured while trying to rescue her. In disguise as a Radanite, Zelikman meets with Buljan and manages to rescue Amram. Beaten and raped, Filaq is sold to a brothel where Zelikman and Amram take refuge. They treat her injuries and then plan to see the kagan, the spiritual ruler of Khazaria. Zelikman uses his physician's skills to anesthetize the kagan's guards and gain an audience. The kagan agrees to help, as long as Zelikman helps him fake his own death to escape from his life of comfortable imprisonment. Filaq meets with tarkhan of the Khazar army in disguise as her brother Alp, who died in captivity. The tarkhan supports her claim to the bek throne. While paying off a band of Kievan Rus' for their pillaging services, Buljan is overthrown by the Khazar army and killed by a war elephant. After the battle, Filaq and Zelikman make love for the first, and probably last, time in each of their lives. Filaq begins her life as Alp, both bek and kagan of Khazaria, while Zelikman and Amram leave to pursue their fortunes elsewhere.
11041684	/m/02qy__w	Measle and the Wrathmonk			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A 10-year-old boy named Measle is living with his horrid guardian, Basil Tramplebone. Measle's life is horrible and boring. Basil builds a detailed train set out using money that was left for Measle by his parents and plays with it, while all Measle can do is watch him. Desperate to play with it, Measle tricks Basil into leaving the house by telling him that there is extra money in the bank. His plan backfires, and Basil catches him playing with the train set when he gets home. Basil magically shrinks Measle and placed him in the train set. Measle meets Frank, the electrician who wired the train set, who is all plastic except for his mouth. Measle then feeds him some carrot, which restores Frank to his previous human-form.Frank reveals that the glazed-donut crumbs and lemonade left by Basil turn you to plastic if eaten. Together they continue Prudence, a wrathmonkologist; William, an encyclopedia salesman; Kitty, a Brownie scout; Lady Grant, a town official; and Kip, the carpenter who built the table and most of the train sets detail work.
11046321	/m/02qz51f	Idylls of the Queen	Phyllis Ann Karr	1982-12-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Idylls of the Queen is set in the Great Britain of King Arthur, as portrayed by Sir Thomas Malory's classic Le Morte D'Arthur; as specifically stated by the author, no attempt is made at depicting with historical accuracy the time of the actual King Arthur. It expands an incident in Malory, in which the Queen is accused of murder, into a complex mystery novel mingling the genres of historical mysteries, Arthurian legend and fantasy. Although set in a magical world, the puzzle is unraveled through straight investigation with no sorcerous shortcuts. The obscure knight Sir Patrise is poisoned at a dinner party given by Queen Guenevere in Camelot, and Sir Mador, the dead knight's cousin, accuses the Queen of the murder. Her fate is to be determined through trial by combat. If the champion fighting on her behalf wins she will be declared innocent; if not, she will be burned at the stake. Unfortunately for her, the best Knights of the Round Table were all present at the dinner, which disqualifies them from championing her, and the mightiest of all, her secret lover Sir Lancelot, has gone missing. Guenevere's only hope is her admirer, King Arthur's sarcastic Seneschal Sir Kay, the first-person narrator of the tale. Kay suspects that Sir Patrise's true killer had a more prominent target in mind, probably Sir Gawaine, and will likely try again; he is also cynical as to the efficacy of trial by combat in establishing anything other than which fighter is the better combatant. Therefore, playing the role of detective, he unites with Gawaine, Gareth and Morded in a two-pronged quest to locate the vanished Lancelot and unmask the real culprit. Kay investigates the recent actions and motivations of a number of the characters in the Arthurian stories, examining many of the suspects in techniques familiar to modern psychology, such as motivation, the background of the personality, etc. Various familiar names come under suspicion, and the author illuminates their characters in a fashion both insightful and true to their portrayals in medieval literature, if not always in Malory. For instance, Sir Kay's characterization harkens back as much to the heroic version of the early Welsh legends as it does to Malory's irascible boor, and Gawaine's more to the high-minded champion of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight than the narrow and clannish bully of the Morte. Lancelot, meanwhile, is taken down more than a few pegs, while Morded, far from the stock villain so often seen, is gloomy, misunderstood, and surprisingly sympathetic. Others, such as Morgan le Fay and Sir Bors, are also presented in unique and insightful ways that provide arch sidelights on the standard legend. In the end, Guenevere is cleared, and justice of a sort prevails. The book ends with Sir Kay - who is himself deeply in love with the Queen, and bitterly jealous of Lancelot - sitting down to play chess with her, and contenting himself with at least having a deep though platonic relationship.
11047504	/m/02qz64v	Anne Frank: The Biography	Melissa Müller	1998	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Anne Frank born on 12 June 1929 to a middle class Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, Germany feels the early threats of Nazism as Hitler rises to power in 1933. Soon her family emigrates to the Netherlands where Anne enjoys an idyllic life centered arounds school, boys and sleepovers. However, the situation changes quickly once Germany invades the Netherlands in May 1940. The family is soon forced to go into hiding with another family at the back building of the family business. While there Anne faithfully keeps a diary describing everyday situations and her thoughts and beliefs. After two years and one month they are betrayed and sent to concentration camps where they all perish with the exception of Anne's father, Otto Frank. The book ends with an afterword by one of the women who hid them, Miep Gies.
11047866	/m/02qz6gv	L.A. Confidential	James Ellroy	1990-06	{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story revolves around a group of LAPD officers in the early 1950s who become embroiled in a mix of sex, corruption, and murder following a mass murder at the Nite Owl coffee shop. The story eventually encompasses organized crime, political corruption, heroin trafficking, pornography, prostitution, institutional racism, and Hollywood. The title refers to the scandal magazine Confidential, which is fictionalized as Hush-Hush. It also deals with the real-life "Bloody Christmas" scandal. The three protagonists are LAPD officers. Edmund Exley, the son of legendary detective Preston Exley, is a "straight arrow" who informs on other officers in a police brutality scandal. This earns the enmity of Wendell "Bud" White, an intimidating enforcer with a personal fixation on men who abuse women. Between the two of them is Jack Vincennes, a flashy cop who is a technical advisor on a police television show called Badge of Honor (similar to the real life show Dragnet) and provides tips to a scandal magazine. The three of them must set their differences aside to unravel the conspiracy linking the novel's events.
11052347	/m/02qzbz6	Let the Right One In	John Ajvide Lindqvist		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 In 1982 Blackberg, Stockholm, Oskar is a 12-year old boy who resides with his mother and occasionally visits his father in the countryside. He lives with his mother, who is loving and with whom he initially seems to have a close connection. His father is an alcoholic who lives out in the countryside. Because he is the victim of merciless bullying, Oskar has gained morbid interests, which include crime and forensics, and keeps a scrapbook filled with newspaper articles about murders. One day, he befriends Eli, a child of about the same age, who just moved in next door. Eli lives with an older man named Håkan, a former teacher who was fired when caught with possession of child pornography and has since become a vagrant. Eli is revealed to be a vampire who was turned as a child and therefore stuck forever in a young body. Oskar and Eli develop a close relationship, and Eli helps Oskar fight back against his tormentors. Throughout the book their relationship gradually becomes closer, and they reveal more of themselves and in particular fragments of Eli's human life. Among the details revealed is that Eli is a boy who was castrated when he was turned into a vampire over 200 years ago. However, Eli dresses in female clothing and is perceived by outsiders as a young girl. Håkan serves Eli, whom he loves, by procuring blood from the living, fighting against his conscience and choosing victims whom he can physically trap, but who are not too young. Eli gives him money for doing this, though Håkan makes it clear he would do it for nothing if Eli allowed them to be physically intimate. Håkan offers to go out one last time under the condition that he spend a night with Eli after he gets the blood, but with the caveat that he may only touch Eli. Håkan's last attempt to get blood fails and he is caught. Just before capture, however, he intentionally disfigures himself with acid so that the police will not be able to trace Eli through him. When Eli finds him in the hospital, Håkan offers his blood and is drunk dry while sitting on the window ledge, but a guard interrupts them and Eli fails to kill him. So that he will not end up becoming a vampire also, Håkan throws himself out of the window to the ground below. Despite this, he soon reanimates as a mindless vampire driven only by his desire for Eli. Then relentlessly pursuing him, Håkan manages to trap Eli in a basement, but Eli fights him off and escapes. Later, the wounded Håkan is destroyed by a youth from the neighborhood who accidentally gets locked in the basement with him. Meanwhile, the Blackeberg local Lacke suspects a child is responsible for the murder of his best friend, Jocke (whom Eli has killed for blood). Later, Lacke witnesses Eli attack his sometime-girlfriend, Virginia. He attempts to drink her blood, but is fought off by Lacke. Virginia survives, but starts turning into a vampire. She does not realize her "infection" until she tries to prolong her life by drinking her own blood, and finds that exposure to the sun causes boils on her skin. Upon being hospitalized, Virgina realizes what she has turned into and kills herself in her bed by deliberately exposing herself to daylight. Oskar eventually fights back and injures his tormentor, Jonny, for which the boy's older brother Jimmy hunts down and attempts to hurt Oskar in retaliation. Oskar further incurs their wrath when he sets fire to their desks, destroying a treasured photo album belonging to their father. They corner Oskar at night at the local swimming pool and attempt to drown him, however Eli rescues Oskar and kills two of the other boys, and together they flee the city with Eli's money and possessions.
11060291	/m/02qznj2	The Day the Leader was Killed	Naguib Mahfouz	1983	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows multiple narratives written in the stream of consciousness format. The novel is set during the early 1980s whilst Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was introducing the infitah or open door free-market economic policies which led to widespread unrest. The plot revolves around a young Egyptian man who is in love with a co-worker, but her father will not permit their marriage because the young man cannot earn enough money to purchase and furnish an apartment. Eventually their engagement is called off, and the woman is engaged to their boss. In a fit of rage and despair, the protagonist murders his boss on the same day that Sadat is assassinated by terrorists, and the two narratives are intertwined. Hearing the news of the President's death is the catalyst for the protagonist's decision to kill his employer. The grandfather of the protagonist reflects on the generational gap in Egypt throughout the novel. Like many of Mahfouz's novels, the book uses Egyptian history and society to analyze universal themes such as the relationship between love and economics, familiar relationships, death, and the irrationality of human emotion.
11060604	/m/02qznxg	The Necklace Affair		1967		 The necklace of Queen Marie-Antoinette that was believed to have been destroyed centuries ago has been found by Sir Henry Williamson, a wealthy British collector based in France. Blake and Mortimer arrive in Paris in order to testify at the trial of their sworn enemy Colonel Olrik only to learn that he has managed to slip away under the very noses of the police during a transfer to the court house from the main jail. Williamson then invites them to a reception where he intends to show off the necklace for the first time in public. The party is held at the residence of Duranton-Claret, the jeweller who restored the necklace, but as he is on his way to fetch it a large explosion shakes the house. Going to the cellar, Blake and Mortimer find it in a state of collapse with water pouring in from the burst water main. They barely manage to save the jewel case from the strongroom, but when they open it the necklace is gone and they find a note in which Olrik claims responsibility. The explosion was caused by an actual bomb and Olrik and his men escaped using the Paris Catacombs over which the house rests. Blake summons his contact Commissaire Pradier of the DST, the French security service (similar to the FBI or MI5) who is in charge of the Olrik case. Olrik himself leaks the news to the press and before long Duranton is harassed by phone calls from reporters and becomes a bundle of nerves. In the morning, Blake and Mortimer are visiting Duranton when they witness an attempt by Olrik's men, led by his henchman Sharkey, to kidnap him. The two Britons manage to rescue Duranton but the crooks escape. A couple of nights later, Duranton is again the subject of an attempt, this time led by Olrik himself. With the help of Vincent, Duranton's loyal valet, Blake and Mortimer manage to rescue the terrified jeweller, but, in spite of the sudden arrival of the police, Olrik and his men escape, again via the catacombs. Pradier has arranged a wire-tapping of the phones in the Duranton residence. They thus intercept a call from Olrik to the jeweller in which it emerges that Duranton, facing financial ruin, arranged for the theft of the necklace with Sharkey in return for help in springing Olrik from prison. However, Duranton also double-crossed Olrik by placing a fake necklace in the strongroom &mdash; the real item is still somewhere in his house. Olrik tells him that to end the nightmare Duranton is to deliver the real necklace to him at night at Montsouris Park. That night Duranton recovers the necklace and discreetly leaves his house, his real intention being to flee abroad. Following him from a distance are Blake, Mortimer and Pradier, but Duranton's car is hijacked by Sharkey who was hidden inside. Driving erratically, the terrified Duranton crashes into the park fence. With the police surrounding the area he hides the necklace in a merry-go-round. He then hails a cab only to find it driven by Olrik who promptly drives through a police roadblock. Blake, Mortimer and Pradier find Sharkey who was knocked unconscious in the crash. He agrees to co-operate and leads them to an entrance to the catacombs. While walking through the tunnels, Sharkey gives the police the slip. Blake and Mortimer go after him but then get hopelessly lost in the underground maze. Sharkey himself manages to make his way to an old underground bunker which was used by the resistance during World War II and is now Olrik's HQ. Duranton is placed in a deep, dry well which is filled bit by bit with water. As it reaches his throat he finally confesses to Olrik where he left the necklace. Olrik leaves him with the fake and sets off to recover the genuine article. Just as he is leaving, Blake and Mortimer manage to find their way through the maze and reach the bunker. As they take on the guards they are on the verge of being killed when the police led by Pradier arrives. In the battle that follows, the police manage to capture Olrik's gang, including Sharkey, and recover Duranton and the fake necklace. Olrik himself evades the police by making his way through the sewers. He reaches Montsouris Park and recovers the necklace from the merry-go-round. At that moment he is surrounded by police but manages to escape, again via the sewers. Driving to a safe-house, Olrik learns on the radio that there will be a special TV broadcast about the recent events. Arriving at his hide-out he switches on the TV: during the programme Mortimer announces that the necklace Olrik obtained from the park is in fact the fake! The police had recovered the genuine article just moments before the crook's arrival! Enraged, Olrik smashes up the fake necklace. Sir Henry Williamson then announces that he is donating the necklace to the French nation.
11066254	/m/02qzv_b	Dark Challenge	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Julian Savage, the twin brother of Aidan (Dark Gold), is sent to warn a young singer, Desari, that she and her band have come under suspicion by a fanatical vampire hunting society. Believing this to be his last task to his Prince, Mikhail, Julian was prepared to greet the dawn and his own destruction. However, upon hearing the singer's hauntingly beautiful voice, he was mesmerized. The colours he hadn't seen in over eight hundred years were now vivid and bright. Julian instantly knew he had found his lifemate because of his ability to see in colour, accompanied by the return of emotions. While he revels in his discovery, gunfire rings out on stage. Julian rushes in to find three of the band members, including Desari, lying amongst blood-spattered instruments. To save her life, Julian heals her wounds and provides her with a large volume of his blood, while performing the ritual to bind Desari to him. Weak from blood loss, he is surprised by a huge panther. To counter the attack, he in turn shape-shifts into a large, golden leopard. The two cats seemed evenly matched until the arrival of two more leopards. With these unfavourable odds, Julian makes good on his escape, deciding to hunt down the assassins. To his puzzlement, he finds all six of the humans slaughtered in a Carpathian fashion. Julian gathers the bodies, reduces them to ashes and scatters them into the ocean in an effort to throw off the vampire hunting society. As Julian courts Desari, he and Desari's older brother, Darius, test each other's strengths. Meanwhile, Julian's lifelong enemy hunts his lifemate. In light of a common goal, the two Carpathian men strike an uneasy truce to destroy the vampire.
11067097	/m/02qzwzz	The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories	Mark Twain	1893	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 "The £1,000,000 Bank-Note" charts the magical rags-to-riches ascent of a virtuous and resourceful mining broker's clerk from San Francisco who arrives in London with a single dollar in his pocket, and proceeds to ultimate and splendid financial success and fame in London society—a paean to ingenuity and a celebration of its cunning confidence-man narrator. The other pieces range from "Mental Telegraphy," a serious essay reflecting Twain's continuing interest in the occult—he and his wife would later try several seances, poignantly and unsuccessfully, to contact their daughter Suzy—to a tongue-in-cheek "Petition to the Queen of England" for relief from taxes.
11067599	/m/02qzxjh	What Mad Universe	Fredric Brown		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Keith Winton is a journalist for a science-fiction review. With his glamorous co-worker girlfriend, Betty, he visits his friends one day in their elegant estate in the Catskills, unfortunately on the same day as an experimental rocket is to be launched. Betty has to go back to New York. Keith is alone in his friends' garden, deep in thought, when, suddenly, the engine of the rocket (whose launch has been a failure) crashes and explodes on his friends' residence, taking him to a strange but deceptively similar parallel universe. Wild-eyed, Keith is astonished to see how credits have replaced dollars; is amazed when he encounters some scantily-clad pin-up girls who are, at the same time, astronauts; is driven to stupor when he encounters his first Arcturian. But it is when he tries to get back to his usual world when he finally understands his problem, if not the solution.
11068321	/m/02qzyfc	Martians, Go Home	Fredric Brown		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins on 26 March 1964. Luke Deveraux, the protagonist, is a 37-year-old sci-fi writer who is being divorced by his wife. Deveraux holes himself up in a desert cabin with the intention of writing a new novel (and forgetting the painful failure of his marriage). Drunk, he considers writing a story about Martians, when, all of a sudden, someone knocks on the door. Deveraux opens it to find a little green man, a Martian. The Martian turns out to be very uncourteous; he insists on calling Luke 'Mack,' and has little in mind other than the desire to insult and humiliate Luke. The Martian, who is intangible, proves to be able to disappear at will and to see through opaque materials. Luke leaves his cabin by car, thinking to himself that the alien was but a drunken hallucination. He realises that he is wrong when he sees that a billion Martians have come to Earth.
11069221	/m/02qz_6b	Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein				 At the beginning of the novel, Lol Stein (her middle initial is omitted in the English translation) is a woman in her thirties. She was born and raised in South Tahla in a bourgeois family and is engaged to Michael Richardson at 19. However, at a ball in the seaside resort of Town Beach, Michael Richardson leaves Lol for Anne-Marie Stretter, an older woman. After a difficult recovery from this shock, Lol marries Jean Bedford, a musician she meets on one of her daily walks. Lol leaves South Tahla with her husband. Ten years later, with three children, Lol is an established woman with no time for fantasy. She returns with her family to South Tahla and moves into the house she grew up in. Lol goes on her daily walks as she did ten years before. She thinks she recognises Tatiana Karl one day, the friend who consoled her after her breakup with Michael Richardson. The man who accompanies Tatiana makes a deep impression on Lol. Lol reestablishes her contact with Tatiana and gets to know both her husband and her lover, Jacques Hold. Lol is able to get information from Jacques about events at the ball at T Beach 10 years before. Lol reveals to Jacques her interest in him but forbids him to stay with her instead of Tatiana. Lol spies on Tatiana and her lover but Jacques notices her. One day Lol tells Jacques that she has been to T Beach alone and plans to return with him. While doing this, Lol shows Jacques the room where she and Michael Richardson had split up. Lol and Jacques spend the night together. The next day, Jacques has one last meeting with Tatiana Karl. The novel is seen through the obsessive eyes of Jacques Hold. The primary character in novel shifts from Lol to himself as you delve further into his pursuit of Lol.
11069566	/m/02qz_nw	Come Rack! Come Rope!	Robert Hugh Benson	1912	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Robin Audrey and Marjorie Manners, both aged seventeen, are secretly engaged. They both come from recusant Catholic families in Derbyshire, but she is the more devout of the two. Robin's mother died when he was about seven, and his father has continued to practise the Catholic faith, despite having to pay heavy fines for refusing to attend services in the established Church of England. The two families meet several times a year, when Mass is being secretly offered by a priest. The story begins when Robin visits his fiancée and tells her that his father has announced that he can no longer tolerate the persecution and fines, that he will take the bread and wine in the Anglican church at Easter, and that Robin must do the same. Marjorie advises her lover to leave the area for Easter, so that his father will have time to accept that his son will not follow him. She gives him a rosary which belonged to the recently-executed priest Cuthbert Mayne, kisses him for the first time, and urges him to trust in God. When he arrives home, Robin finds his friend Anthony Babington waiting for him. Anthony is also a Catholic, fanatically devoted to the imprisoned, Catholic Queen of Scots. Robin tells Anthony of his troubles. Later, the two men are out riding, and pass three other men. One of them, Mr. Garlick, recognises Anthony, having heard Mass in his house, and on being assured that Robin is also a Catholic, introduces the newly-ordained Mr. Simpson and his travelling companion Mr. Ludlam to the two friends, telling them that Mr. Simpson will say Mass the following Sunday. Robin realises, as he goes home, that he must not mention this to his father. Robin's troubles at home increase, as he has to cope with his father's anger and sneers. Meanwhile, Marjorie is tormented by unexpected but persistent ideas that perhaps God is calling Robin to the priesthood, to atone for his father's sin. She feels that if a love higher than hers is calling, she must not stand in the way, but is unsure whether such thoughts come from God or from her own imagination. She talks to Mr. Simpson, but he is unable to advise her. She is afraid to mention it to Robin, in case she has merely imagined this to be God's will, yet feels she should at least sow a seed in his mind. She prays for guidance, thinking that "a broken heart and God's will done would be better than that God's will should be avoided and her own satisfied." On Easter Sunday, after the two lovers have met secretly for Mass with other Catholics at Padley, home to the FitzHerbert family, Marjorie tells Robin her thoughts, promising that she will marry him if he wishes, but saying that if it is God's will that Robin should be a priest, she will not hold him for a day. Horrified, Robin accuses Marjorie of wanting to be rid of him. On seeing how hurt she is, he kisses her and begs her forgiveness, but tells her that he cannot make that sacrifice. Later that day, Mr. Simpson, looking pale and speaking with a trembling voice, reads out to the group of Catholics a letter he has received, telling of the execution of a priest Mr. Nelson, and of a layman Mr. Sherwood, and how bravely they both faced martyrdom. Both were hanged, drawn and quartered for their faith; Mr. Sherwood had also been racked several times. The host, Mr. FitzHerbert, announces that the letter is from Mr. Ludlam, who has decided to go to Douai and study for the priesthood. There have also been rumours that Mr. Garlick will go too. The following week, Robin returns home, full of doubts and fears, and worried about his financial situation, as he has no money of his own, and his father has made it clear that he will not pay fines for Robin's refusal to attend church. On his way home, he meets Anthony, who hints at some enterprise to restore the Catholic Faith to England, and urges Robin to join him and his friends. Robin's doubts increase: unsure of what Anthony's secret enterprise involves, hopeful that it may offer him a way out of his dilemma and enable him to marry Marjorie, yet unclear as to the morality of the enterprise, he tells Anthony he cannot decide immediately. When he goes back into the house, he faces his father, who angrily demands to know his intentions. Robin begs his father not to pressurise him, but to give him time; and his father gives him until Pentecost. That night, after several failed attempts to sleep, Robin hears the noise of horses, is seized with curiosity, and goes out to see who is riding at that hour. Hiding behind a wall, he sees Mr. Simpson setting out on one of his perilous journeys with two other men. The sight of the priest risking his life to serve God and bring consolation to souls inspires Robin to make the decision against which he has been fighting. He goes to his father's room, wakes the old man, and says he is ready to give his answer: "It is that I must go to Rheims and be a priest." A few days later, Robin comes to Marjorie, to say goodbye before setting out for Rheims. They agree that he must always remember that he is to be a priest, and that if he comes to her house, it must just be as to any Catholic neighbour. More than two years have passed. Robin is studying for the priesthood at Rheims, and Marjorie is living with her mother, her father having died. Marjorie's home is sometimes used to harbour priests. Anthony Babington visits her and tells her of some business he is involved with in London. He has to go there to meet a priest called Ballard, but there will be many priests travelling together. He urges Marjorie to come to London with him and his sister Alice to meet these priests, so that she may be in a better position to recognise and assist them if every they come to Derbyshire. He mentions also that Robin will be coming. Although Robin will not be a priest for another five years, such students are sometimes sent back to England temporarily as servants, to learn how to avoid the Queen's men. Some of Anthony's business he does not mention to Marjorie. He has become increasingly impatient with the thought of using prayer alone to combat the persecution of Catholics, and is involved in some conspiracy with Ballard and others; but most of his friends whom he has attempted to influence have drawn back and a priest has even told him he is on dangerous ground. Marjorie agrees to come. In London, Marjorie meets Father Campion, one of the most hunted priests in the kingdom, famous for his preaching. Campion explains his position of mixing boldly with the crowd to avoid suspicion, rather than hiding behind locked doors. He arranges to go with the others to see the sights of London the next day, and they see the Tower of London, and the notorious priest-hunter and torturer Richard Topcliffe. They also catch a glimpse of Queen Elizabeth, of whom Campion speaks with gentleness and loyalty. Marjorie overhears some disagreement between Campion and Ballard, which seems to be on political matters. When Robin arrives, Marjorie is careful to address him as "Mr. Audrey". She asks him for prayers and advice, saying that she thinks of him as a priest already, and that although her duty is clearly to remain with her mother at present, she has wondered if she should leave the country to serve God as a nun, in the event of her mother's death. Robin promises to pray for her, but reminds her that he is not yet a priest, and gives her no advice. A year later, Marjorie is in her home with her sick mother, thinking of Father Campion and of the numerous escapes that he is reported to have had. Anthony Babington arrives, and furiously tells Marjorie that Campion, Sherwine and Brian were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn three days previously, that they had been racked continuously, and that they all died praying for the Queen. The next day, Marjorie realises that her mother is dying, and sends some men to find a priest. In the evening, her mother's condition worsens. Marjorie tells her mother that there is no priest, says that God will accept her sorrow, and urges her to make an Act of Contrition. Her mother cries out for a priest, and Marjorie reminds her that priests are forbidden in the kingdom. She says that three priests have just been executed for being priests, and tells her mother to say, "Edmund Campion, pray for me." Marjorie has a sudden, strong sensation that Campion is in the room; her mother smiles, looks around with no fear, and dies. Mr. Simpson arrives two hours later. Marjorie, calm and controlled, tells him that it is all over. She tells him of the martyrdom of Father Campion and his two companions. Mr. Simpson is seized with a fear that shames and disgusts him, but is unable to overcome it. Marjorie tells him that she will invite Alice Babington to come and live with her, and hints that she will now be able to do more to assist fugitive priests. The following summer, Marjorie meets a young Catholic carpenter called Hugh Owen. He is building a special hiding place for priests at Padley, and comes to Marjorie's house to do the same. He tells her of how much he was inspired by Campion, and that he thinks he will die for his faith some day. Some time later, Marjorie falls from a horse near Robin's old home, twisting her foot. Robin's father takes her into the house, and insists that she must dine there. In a private conversation, he asks when Robin will be ordained, and she tells him that if Robin has not told him that, she cannot. He understands, but tells her that he is now a magistrate, and that Robin will have no mercy from him. He warns her that the authorities are aware of some of the movements of Catholics such as the FitzHerberts. When she asks why he is telling her this, he says that he was friend to the FitzHerberts before he was a magistrate. He becomes angry when she mentions Robin, telling the old man that it is not too late, and that his duty to God is higher than his duty as a magistrate. Robin is now a priest, and has returned to England, under the name Mr. Alban. He meets Anthony Babington again; the latter confides to him, as to a priest, the details of the enterprise at which he had only hinted some years before. Anthony and a number of others, including Ballard, intend to kill the Queen and to set the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne. He tells how they have been helped by Gilbert Gifford, and how they send messages to Queen Mary, in code. Robin begs him to give up the plot, saying that it is against God's law. He is uneasy at the plan for practical reasons, too, saying that too much hangs on Mr. Gifford, who may not be as trustworthy as Anthony thinks. Robin tells Anthony that he cannot give him absolution as long as Anthony intends to kill Queen Elizabeth. He says that as Anthony was speaking to him as a priest, he will regard the conversation as under the seal of confession, but warns Anthony not to come to him the next day as if he knows it as a man, as it would be his duty to inform the authorities. A few days later, Robin receives a letter from Anthony, saying that he has been betrayed and is being watched at every point, and that Mr. Gifford has been a traitor all along. A letter to Queen Mary is enclosed, and Anthony begs Robin to deliver it to her, or if that proves impossible, to memorise the contents and deliver it orally. Robin destroys the letter. Anthony and his companions are arrested soon after. Robin makes his way to Chartley Hall, where Queen Mary is held captive. He speaks to her apothecary, a Catholic called Mr. Bourgoign, and tells him that he is a priest, and has a message for the Queen. Suspicious at first, Mr. Bourgoign is finally convinced when Robin offers to confide the message to him and ride away again. He urges Robin to stay and to find some way to have a private interview with the Queen, who longs to make her confession, knowing that she will soon be executed. They decide that Robin, who has some skill as a herbalist, will be presented to Sir Amyas Paulet, the Queen's jailer, as one who may be able to help the Queen's health. Sir Amyas reluctantly allows Robin to see the Queen alone for a few minutes, and Robin hears her confession and gives her Holy Communion. The Queen declares herself to be completely innocent of the plot against Elizabeth. Some months have passed. Anthony Babington and his companions have been executed. Robin returns to Derbyshire, and is received by Marjorie. He hears confessions and says Mass at her house. Marjorie knows that Mr. Bourgoign is likely to send for Robin again to hear Queen Mary's confession before her execution, and that the message will be sent through her. Knowing that there can hardly be a greater danger for a priest than to risk arrest near the Queen of Scots, she realises that she will face temptation to suppress the message if and when it comes. The months pass by, and finally the message comes. Marjorie plans to send the messenger away and say nothing to Robin. However, the messenger tells her of the Queen's distress, and she suddenly remembers how her own mother, when dying, cried out for a priest. Though her religion has taught her that God will save and forgive without a priest, she thinks of the guilt and heartlessness of one who would keep the priest away from a person near death. She calls Robin, tells him that she nearly destroyed the letter, and prays that God will keep him safe. Robin goes to Fotheringay, where the Queen is to be executed. Sir Amyas refuses to allow him to see her, but he hopes to be present at the execution, and to be in close enough proximity to give her absolution. When he arrives at the hall of execution, he sees that this will be impossible. He is present as she is beheaded. A year later, Robin and a group of Catholics gather in Marjorie's parlour to discuss the latest news. Mr. Simpson has been captured and is awaiting trial. To the dismay of Catholics, he is beginning to falter, and there is real fear that he will agree to go to an Anglican service to avoid execution. Marjorie hopes to visit him to encourage him to remain firm, but her friends urge her not to, as her work in harbouring priests is so valuable, and could be compromised if she draws attention on herself. A month later, Robin is at Padley with Mr. Ludlam and Mr. Garlick, who have also been ordained. They each say Mass, and when the third Mass is over, they hear men coming to surround the house. They hide in the priest holes previously built by Hugh Owen. Mr. Ludlam and Mr. Garlick are discovered and arrested. Robin is in a different priest hole, and is not found. When he feels it is safe to do so, he leaves the house and makes his way to Marjorie's home. She arranges that he will ride away at one in the morning, to a place she has marked on a map. There he will find a shepherd's hut, and will hide there for at least two weeks. Food and drink will be brought to him, and Marjorie will also send him news about the priests who were taken at Padley. Robin, in his hiding place, receives an unsigned letter from Marjorie, telling him that the authorities had put Mr. Ludlam and Mr. Garlick in gaol with Mr. Simpson, perhaps hoping that Mr. Simpson, having agreed to go to church so that his life might be spared, would convince them to do the same; but that the two other priests had managed to persuade Mr. Simpson to confess himself openly a Catholic again. The three men had been tried, condemned, and executed. At the trial, and at the gallows, Mr. Simpson had shown as much courage as his two companions. Nearly a week later, Robin becomes aware that he is being watched. He leaves the shepherd's hut, and makes his way back to Marjorie's house. As he tells her how he felt he was being followed, they hear horses. He plans to escape to the hills, but she urges him to hide in the place that Hugh Owen built some years before. He slips into the hiding place, just as the magistrate, old Mr. Audrey arrives with his men. Mr. Audrey is extremely uncomfortable with his commission, especially as he was once friendly with the Manners family. The thought that the priest, if there is a priest hiding there, might be his own son does not occur to him, but he hopes to do as little damage to the house as possible. Marjorie whispers to him urgently that he must leave at once, but faints before she can say more. Embarrassed, Mr. Audrey tries to end the search as soon as possible, and is secretly relieved that nothing has been found. His men, however, mention one more wall they want to test. To his dismay, the men find a young bearded man behind the wall. The old man turns sick and rushes forward, screaming, as he realises that he has just arrested his own son. Robin is in prison, and it is reported that Lord Shrewsbury has given orders that the prisoner must be dealt with sternly. It is believed that Mr. Alban has a great deal more against him than the mere fact of being a priest. It is thought that he was involved in the Babington plot, and that he had on at least one occasion had access to the Queen of Scots. It is soon reported that Mr. Topcliffe, the torturer, has arrived in Derby on a special mission. Marjorie has the task of reporting this to her former lover, and breaks down, crying under the strain. He gently tells her that God's grace is strong enough, reminds her that it was she who turned him to the priesthood, and says that she had surely known what this meant. He thanks her, tells her he is at peace, and asks her to pray for him. Robin is severely tortured for three days, spending several hours in the rack-house each day, while being interrogated by Topcliffe. He prays throughout the ordeal, and betrays nothing. He is then tried and is sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He is offered his life if he will conform and go to church, but refuses. He has one final interview with Marjorie, in which he urges her not to leave the country to become a nun, but rather to serve God by remaining in England and continuing her work at assisting priests. A large crowd gathers for the execution, as the exciting story of the young priest, taken by his own father in the house of his former fiancée, draws far more interest than an ordinary hanging. Old Mr. Audrey is believed to be still ill, not having fully recovered from his fit, and there are rumours that Marjorie will be present at the execution. Robin is drawn on a cart to the gallows, and a rope is passed around his neck, causing a moment of terror. He makes a final speech, proclaiming his innocence of treason, and praying for Queen Elizabeth. He then looks down from the ladder and sees a man in bare feet, writhing and embracing the rungs. He looks beyond for some explanation, and sees a girl in a hooded cloak, who raises her eyes to his. Looking down at the man again, he sees a face "distorted with speechless entreaty", and recognises his father. He smiles, leans forward, and speaks the words of absolution: :"Te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Fillii et Spiritus Sancti . . ."
11069949	/m/02q_03n	The Problem of the Covered Bridge	Edward D. Hoch	1974	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The story, which is set in March 1922, begins with old Dr. Sam Hawthorn telling a story to an unnamed listener. He tells about how he came to the small town of Northmont, in his new yellow Pierce-Arrow. He focuses on the Bringlow family, Jacon and Sarah, their daughters Susan and Sally, their son Hank, and his fiancee Millie. Dr. Sam is treating Sarah, and has come to really know the Bringlows. He even notices that Hank is reading copies of Hearst's International magazine that include the two-part Sherlock Holmes story, The Problem of Thor Bridge. Hank has to take a jar of apple sauce to Millie's house in a horse and buggy. Sam and Millie ride behind Hank, also in a horse and buggy. Along the way, Walt Rumsey stops Sam and Millie's buggy by taking his cattle across the road to drink. Sam and Millie follow Hank's tracks to a covered bridge. The tracks enter the bridge, but don't come out the other side, and there is a smashed jar of applesauce in the middle of the bridge. The horse and buggy, and Hank, have disappeared. The Bringlows decide to call Sheriff Lens, who believed that Hank would turn up because he was in the habit of playing tricks. Eventually, they do find Hank, sitting on the side of the road in his buggy, shot in the back of the head. The reins have been tied to the horse, and the horse was sent off on its own, meaning that Hank was already dead when the horse was set loose. Dr. Sam investigates Walt Rumsey, and tries to apply the solution of the Problem of Thor Bridge to this problem. When he works out what has happened, he gathers all of the suspects at the Bringlow house to reveal the solution. What tipped off Dr. Sam was that Walt had been taking his cows to drink at a pond with ice on the top. Dr. Sam reveals that the disappearance started out as a joke by Hank, who had enlisted the assistance of Walt Ramsey. Walt Ramsey used an old pair of carriage wheels, linked by an axle, to create a fake horse and buggy track. When the cows blocked Sam and Millie, Hank and Walt created the fake set of tracks, and then Hank hid in Walt's barn. Walt had been in love with Millie and saw his opportunity to kill his romantic rival and escape punishment.
11071741	/m/027txk0	On Chesil Beach	Ian McEwan	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In July 1962, Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting, have just been married and are spending their honeymoon in a small hotel on the Dorset seashore, at Chesil Beach. The couple are very much in love despite being from drastically different backgrounds, with Mayhew the son of a schoolmaster and Ponting the musically gifted daughter of a wealthy industrialist and an Oxford philosophy lecturer. During the course of an evening, both reflect upon their upbringing and the prospect of their futures. Edward is sexually motivated and though intelligent has a taste for rash behaviour, while Florence, bound by the social code of another era is terrified of sexual intimacy: eventually this leads to an experience that will change their relationship irrevocably. The novel focuses upon the couple's different personalities and attitudes and the development of their love in the dawning of a sexual awakening in 1960s Britain. 1962 was the year when the contraceptive pill became available in the United Kingdom. Before this, sex before marriage ran the risk of unwanted pregnancy and possibly unwanted marriage. Edward and Florence represent the last generation who would never have sex before marriage; in their case with disastrous results.
11072612	/m/02q_350	The Problem of the Old Gristmill	Edward D. Hoch	1975	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Old Dr. Sam tells the story of how everyone in town is sad to see Henry Cordwainer leave. Cordwainer, who lived in the old gristmill owned by Seth Hawkins and his mother, is a full-bearded naturalist, who has been writing a book, A Year in Snake Creek. Now that year is up and he is leaving. When he first came, he was cold and uncaring, but when winter began his whole personality changed, and he became helpful, evan helping at the ice house. Sam and Seth help Cordwainer pack up his stuff, including his lock boxes with three dozen journals in them, and Seth reveals that his mother wants him to start up the gristmill (and also that Seth does not want to start it up). Sam does not think much about this, even when he sees Seth at the local cockfights that night. The next morning everyone learns that the gristmill has burned down, and Cordwainer has had his head bashed in. Sheriff Lens is brought in and suspicion falls on Seth -- but Seth was at the cockfight the night before. To complicate matters, Cordwainer's journals that were mailed to Boston in locked strong boxes, have disappeared. The strong boxes arrived, with a very small hole in the bottom, completely empty except for some sawdust. Sam attempts to prove Seth's innocence by injecting him with an experimental truth drug, "scopolamine". Sam proves that Seth could not have committed the murder, and begins to wonder about the sawdust that was found on the bottom of the strong boxes. When Sam works out the solution, Sam and Lens than drive to Albernathy, on Sam's urging. Here, they find the man they thought was Cordwainer, alive and well -- who is actually an escaped convict named Delos. Delos killed Cordwainer before winter, which explains the change in personality. He then pretended to be him. The journals in the strong boxes were revealed to be blocks of ice, which explains the small holes and the traces of sawdust. The gristmill was set on fire in order to thaw Cordwainer's body, which had been frozen since winter.
11072724	/m/02q_39h	Queen Bee			{"/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 Haley Madison is a young and unpopular teenager that discovers that she has psychokinetic powers which tend to manifest themselves whenever she becomes excited or angry. After discovering that her family will have to move in order for her foster mother to take a new job, Haley decides to reinvent herself at her new school as one of the cool kids. On her first day in school Haley meets and befriends Trini Turner, but quickly shows more interest in befriending the clique of popular girls in the school that call themselves the "Hive". Haley gains the attention of the Hive once she intervenes with a bully using her powers, but loses her friendship with Trini as a result. Haley's popular status is threatened when Alexa Harmon comes to school. Alexa also has psychokinetic powers and recognizes that Haley has them as well. She joins the Hive and quickly begins to usurp Haley's popularity. As a result the pair begin to fight one another using their powers, resulting in Haley being accused of cheating on a test and being forced to work on a project with the quietest boy in the class, Jasper Reines. Jasper and Haley initially do not get along, but eventually become friends. Jasper remarks on a locket that Haley wears, to which Haley replies that it was a family heirloom. Haley later tries to regain her popularity during a talent contest, which almost backfires due to Alexa's constant interference and spying. Jasper helps Haley win the performance, discovering that both Alexa and Haley have powers in the process. Haley wins by one point and thanks Jasper. She shows him the locket, which contains a picture of two infant girls, one of which is Haley and the other she assumes is her sister. Haley later manages to restart her friendship with Trini, but is confronted by Alexa who informs them that she has been scouted to be a makeup model.
11083394	/m/02q_fzx	Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord	Louis de Bernières	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 When the philosophy lecturer Dionisio Vivo confronts drug lords and the government through letters and a series of newspaper articles in La Prensa, he becomes the enemy of the ruthless coca lord El Jerarca, the character of which is probably based on the notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. His implausible escapes from the assassins sent by El Jerarca compel the people of the country to regard him as a magical 'brujo' and the saviour to their conflict and poverty. Indeed, hundreds of women follow him in a pilgrimage across the country, each carrying the hope of bearing his child. His excellency President Veracruz attempts to put an end to the country's soaring inflation through a series of foolishly unrealistic measures, and searches for spiritual enlightenment with his ex-prostitute wife through magical potions and alchemy. An array of prostitutes, guerrillas and townspeople from the first book re-appear throughout.
11084310	/m/02q_g_x	The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman	Louis de Bernières	1992	{"/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 Cardinal Guzman lives extravagantly in the capital, and immorally, due to the discoveries of his having had a young son and his loathing of the poor shanty-dwellers who live below his palace. Despite the downfall of El Jerarca in Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord, the drug trade continues and the economy of the country spirals ever downward. Cardinal Guzman's clergy and the corrupt military of the country set out to destroy the heresy of the countryside, and, more specifically, Cochadebajo de los Gatos, home of Dionisio and many of the other characters. In so doing the hypocrisy of the Cardinal's faith with his own promiscuity is revealed.
11084602	/m/02q_hgp	The Glory	Herman Wouk	1994-11	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Interweaving the lives and fates of fictional characters and real-life notables, the sequel to The Hope continues the story of Israeli history to the climactic events of the Yom Kippur War and the promise of peace. Historical events in the book include: * The sinking of the Israeli ship Eilat by Soviet rockets fired by the Egyptian Navy. * The War of Attrition. * The Yom Kippur War. * Operation Entebbe. * The visit of Anwar Sadat to Israel. Families whose history is chronicled in The Glory: * Barak-Berkowe-Berkowitz * Nitzan-Bloom-Blumenthal * Luria * Pasternak Real historical personages in the novel include Yonatan Netanyahu, Golda Meir, Ariel Sharon, Anwar Sadat, Moshe Dayan, and David Elazar.
11086011	/m/02q_k6q	Chance and Necessity	Jacques Monod			 Preface *1. Of strange objects *2. Vitalisms and animisms The scientific condemnation of the predeterminism *1. The demon of Maxwell *2. Microscopic cybernetics *3. Molecular ontogeny *4. Invariance and pertubation *5. Evolution *6. The boundary *7. The Kingdom and darkness Appendix Monod starts the preface of the book by saying that biology is both marginal and central. He goes on to explain that it is marginal because the living world is only a fraction of the universe. Monod believes the ultimate aim of science is to "clarify man's relationship to the universe"(Monod, xi) and from that reasoning he accords biology a central role. He goes on to state that he does not intend to make a thorough survey of modern biology but rather to "bring out the form of its key concepts and to point out their logical relationships with other areas of thought…it is an avowed attempt to extract the quintessence of the molecular theory of the code" (Monod, xiii). Monod stresses the importance of the molecular theory of the genetic code as a physical theory of heredity and brands it as the "secret of life". He continues to explain how this important discovery has made it the duty of scientists to share with and enhance other disciplines of thought such as philosophy. Toward the end of the preface Monod offers apology for any overly tedious or technical sections. He also warns that some ethical and political ideas he presents may seem naïve or ambitious but then states "Modesty benefits the scientist, but not the ideas that inhabit him and which he is under the obligation of upholding"(Monod, xiv). In the last paragraph of the preface Monod explains that his essay developed from the Robins Lectures that he gave in 1969 at Pomona College. Monod starts off chapter I entitled "Of Strange Objects" with a consideration of the difference between natural and artificial objects and states that "the basic premise of the scientific method... [is] that nature is objective and not projective"(Monod, 3). Through a series of thought experiments and rhetorical questions he leads the reader on a difficult path to three characteristics of living beings. One is teleonomy which Monod defines as the characteristic of being "endowed with a purpose or project"(Monod, 9). Another is autonomous morphogenesis which points out that a living being’s structure results from interactions within the being as opposed to the external forces that shape artificial artifacts. Monod offers a single exception to this last criterium in the form of a crystal and at this point he states that the internal forces that determine structure within living beings are "of the same nature as the microscopic interactions responsible for crystalline morphologies"(Monod, 11), a theme that he promises to develop in later chapters. The last general property Monod offers up as distinguishing living organisms is reproductive invariance which is the ability of a living being to reproduce and transmit the information corresponding to their own highly ordered structure. The author defines the primary telonomic project "as consisting in the transmission from generation to generation of the invariance content characteristic of the species"(Monod, 14) (the preservation and multiplication of the species). Monod later retracts autonomous morphogenesis (spontaneous structuration) as a property of living beings and says instead that it should be thought of as "mechanism" leaving two essential properties of living beings: reproductive invariance and structural teleonomy. He then brings up and defends against a possible thermodynamic objection to reproductive invariance and points out the extreme efficiency of the teleonomic apparatus in accomplishing the preservation and reproduction of the structure. Here the author restates that nature is objective and does not pursue an end or have a purpose and he points out an apparent "epistemological [the study of the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge] contradiction" between the teleonomic character of living organisms and the principle of objectivity. With that cliffhanger of internal intellectual struggle Monod ends chapter one. In chapter two "Vitalisms and Animisms" Monod states that invariance must have preceded teleonomy, a conclusion reached by the Darwinian idea that teleonomic structures are due to variations in structures that already had the property of invariance and could therefore preserve the effects of chance mutations. He offers the selective theory as being consistent with the postulate of objectivity and allowing for epistemological coherence. The author then says that in the rest of the chapter he will address religious ideologies and philosophical systems that assume the reverse hypothesis: that invariance developed out of an initial teleonomic principle (this defies the principle of objectivity). He divides these theories into vitalist, in which the teleonomic principle operates only in living matter (there is a purpose/direction in which living things alone develop), and animist, in which there is a universal teleonomic principle (that is expressed more intensely in the biosphere and therefore living beings are seen as products of universally oriented evolution which has culminated in mankind). Monod admits he is more interested in animism and will therefore devote more analysis to it. He briefly discuses the murky metaphysical vitalism of Henri Bergson and then discusses the scientific vitalism of Elsasser and Polanyi which contend that physical forces and chemical interactions that have been studied in non-living matter do not fully account for invariance and teleonomy and therefore other "biotonic laws" are at work in living matter. The author points out that the scientific vitalist argument lack support and that it draws its justification not from knowledge or observations but from our present day lack of knowledge. He goes on to point out that today the mechanism of invariance is sufficiently understood to the point that no non-physical principle ("biotonic law") is needed for its interpretation. Monod next points out that our ancestors had a history of animating objects by giving spirits to them so as to bridge the apparent gap between the living and non-living. To them a being made sense and was understandable only through the purpose animating the being and so if mysterious objects, such as rocks, rivers, rain, and stars, exist it must also be for a purpose (essentially there are no inanimate objects to them). The author says that this animist belief is due to a projection of man's awareness of his own teleonomic functioning onto inanimate nature. Nature is explained with the same conscious and purposive manner as human activity. Monod points out that this animist line of thought is still present in philosophy that makes no essential distinction between matter and life and frames biological evolution as a component of cosmic evolution (evolutive force operating throughout the entire universe). He contends that these lines of thought abandon the postulate of objectivity and also contain the anthropocentric illusion. At the end of this chapter Monod states that the thesis he "shall present in this book is that the biosphere does not contain a predictable class of objects or of events but constitutes a particular occurrence, compatible indeed with first principles, but not deducible from those principles and therefore essentially unpredictable" (Monod, 43). In his view the biosphere is unpredictable for the same reason that the particular configuration of atoms in a pebble are unpredictable. By this Monod does not mean to imply that the biosphere is not explicable from initial conditions/first principles but that it is not deducible (at best predictions could be no more than statistical probabilities of existence). He then points out that society is willing to accept a universal theory that is compatible with but does not foresee the particular configuration of atoms in a pebble but it is a different story when it comes to humans; "We would like to think ourselves necessary, inevitable, ordained from all eternity. All religions, nearly all philosophies, and even a part of science testify to the unwearying, heroic effort of mankind desperately denying its own contingency" (Monod, 44). It is this contingency of human existence that is the central message of Chance and Necessity; that life arose by chance and all beings of life, including humans, are the products of natural selection. The third chapter is named "Maxwell's Demons". It starts off by stating that proteins are the molecular agents of teleonomic performance in living beings. Monod continues by writing that living beings are chemical machines, every organism constitutes a coherent and functional unit, and that the organism is a self-constructing machine whose macroscopic structure is not determined by outside forces but by autonomous internal interactions. The author spends much of the chapter reviewing general facts of biochemistry. He explains that proteins are composed of 100-10,000 amino acids and he distinguishes between elongated fibrous proteins that play a mechanical role and the more numerous globular proteins that are folded upon themselves. He talks about the extraordinary specificity of action that enzymes display as exemplified by their ability to not only recognize a specific geometric isomer but an optical isomer as well. He points out that enzymes are optically active themselves, L isomers are the "natural" isomers, and that the specificity of action and the sterospecificity of the reaction conducted by an enzyme are the result of the positioning of the molecules with respect to each other. Monod writes that an enzymatic reaction can be seen in two steps: The formation of a sterospecific complex between protein and substrate and the catalytic activation of a reaction within the complex (he stresses again that the reaction is oriented and specified by the structure of the complex). He next considers the energetic differences between covalent and non-covalent bonds and how the speed of a reaction is affected by activation energy. Since the activation energy of a covalent bond is high the reaction will have a slower speed than that of a non-covalent bond (which occurs spontaneously and rapidly). The author points out that non-covalent interactions attain stability only through numerous interactions and when applied over short distances. To attain stable non-covalent interaction there is a need for complementary sites between two interacting molecules so as to permit several atoms of the one to enter into contact with several atoms of the other. In this complex the molecule of substrate is strictly positioned by the multiple non-covalent interactions with the enzyme. Enzymatic catalysis is believed to result from the inductive and polarizing action of certain chemical groupings of the specific receptor. By virtue of an enzymes capacity to form sterospecific and non-covalent complexes with specific substrate the substrate is correctly presented in the precise orientation that specifies the catalytic effect of the enzyme. Monod reminds us that this reaction comes at the expense of chemical potential energy. In chapter four ("Microscopic Cybernetics") the author starts out by repeating the characteristic of extreme specificity of enzymes and the extreme efficiency of the chemical machinery in living organisms. The large scale coordination among cells provided by the nervous and endocrine system is brought to the readers’ attention. The rest of the chapter is a discussion of the principles that cell metabolism works by. Monod first brings up allosteric enzymes that are capable of recognizing compounds other than a substrate whose association with the enzyme protein has a modifying effect of heightening or inhibiting the enzyme activity with respect to the substrate. Monod lists and defines four regulatory patterns. The first is feedback inhibition. Feedback activation is when the enzyme is activated by a product of degradation of the terminal metabolite. Parallel activation takes place when the first enzyme of a metabolic sequence is activated by a metabolite synthesized by an independent parallel sequence. Activation through a precursor is defined as when an enzyme is activated by a precursor of its substrate and a particularly frequent case of this is activation of the enzyme by the substrate itself. Allosteric enzymes are usually under the simultaneous control of several allosteric effectors. Next Monod makes reference to his own research and talks about the S shaped non-linear curve that is characteristic of allosteric enzymes when activity is plotted against concentration of an effector (including the substrate). Allosteric interactions are mediated by discrete shifts in the proteins structure and this allows certain proteins to assume different conformational states. Cooperative and antagonistic interactions of ligands are indirect: ligands interact with the protein not with other ligands. Allosteric proteins are oligomeric (made up of identical protomer subunits) and each protomer has a receptor for each of the ligands. As a consequence of protomer assembly each subunit is constrained by its neighbor. Upon dissociation each protomer can assume a relaxed state and this concerted response of each protomer accounts for the nonlinearity of enzyme activity: a ligand molecule that stabilizes the relaxed state of one of the monomers prevents the others from returning to the associated state. These simple molecular mechanisms account for the integrative properties of allosteric enzymes. Monod again references his own work as he talks about the lactose system (consisting of three proteins) in Escherica coli. He explains that galactoside permease (one of the proteins in the lactose system) enables the galactoside sugars to penetrate and accumulate within the cell. When Escherica coli are grown in a medium with no galactosides the three proteins are synthesized very slowly (about one molecule every five generations). About two minutes after adding a galactoside inducer the rate of synthesis of the three proteins increases a thousand fold. Monod explains that the rate of mRNA synthesis from the lactose operon determines the rate of the proteins synthesis. He lists the components of the regulatory system as i, the regulator gene that directs constant synthesis of the repressor protein (R), o, the operator segment of DNA that the repressor specifically recognizes and forms a stable complex with, and p, the DNA promoter where RNA polymerase binds. Synthesis of mRNA is blocked when the repressor is bound to the operator. When the repressor is in the free state it is able to recognize and bind beta galactosides thus dissociating the operator repressor complex and permitting synthesis of the mRNA and protein. Monod spends some time stressing that there need be no chemical relationship between a substrate and an allosteric ligand and it is this "gratuity" that has allowed molecular evolution to make a huge network of interconnections and make each organism an autonomous functional unit. In the last part of the chapter Monod criticizes "holists" who challenge the value to analytically complex systems such as living organisms and that complex systems cannot be reduced to the sum of their parts. Monod first gives an example of dissecting a computer and then points out how teleonomic performances can be seen on a molecular level. He also states that the complexity of the cybernetic network in living beings is far too complex to study by the overall behavior of whole organisms. At the start of chapter five "Moleculat Ontogenesis" Monod states he will show that the process of spontaneous autonomous morphogenesis depends upon "the sterospecific recognition properties of proteins; that it is primarily a microscopic process before manifesting itself in macroscopic structures. Finally, it is the primary structure of proteins that we shall consult for the "secret" to those cognitive properties thanks to which, like Maxwell's demons, they animate and build living systems" (Monod 81). Monod mentions oligomeric globular proteins again and how they appear in aggregates containing geometrically equivalent protomer subunits associated into a non-covalent steric complex. With mild treatment protomers are separated and the oligomer protein loses function but if the initial "normal" conditions are restored the subunits will usually reassemble spontaneously. This spontaneity is due to the fact that the chemical potential needed to form the oligomer is present in the solution of monomers and because the bonds formed are non-covalent. The author continues to mention the sterospecific, spontaneous assembly of ribosomes and T4 bacteriophage from their protein constituents in vitro. Monod points out that the overall scheme/architectural plan of the multi-molecular complex is contained in the structure of its constituent parts and it is therefore able to spontaneously self assemble. Next Monod reviews the primary and tertiary structure of proteins. In reviewing the tertiary structure, what he calls the native shape, he talks about the non-covalent interactions which bind the amino acids and the folding that determines the molecules three dimensional shape including the sterospecific binding site. The author then writes that a primary structure exists in a single (or a small number of related states, as is the case with allosteric proteins) precisely defined conformational native state under normal physiological conditions. Prior to folding there is no biological activity. The sequence of the amino acid residues and the initial conditions determine the protein folding and therefore dictate the function. Monod splits up organism development into four broad stages: First the folding of the polypeptide sequence into globular proteins, then the association between proteins into organelles, thirdly the interactions between cells that make up tissue and organs, and lastly "coordination and differentiation of chemical activities via allosteric-type interactions" (Monod,95). Each stage is more highly ordered and results from spontaneous interactions between products of the previous stage and the initial source is the genetic information represented by the polypeptide sequences. The author then spends some time developing the fact that the preceding sequence of amino acids had no bearing on what the next amino acid will be. He says this "random" message seems to be composed haphazardly from a random origin and he ends the chapter poetically when he writes "Randomness caught on the wing, preserved, reproduced by the machinery of invariance and thus converted into order, rule, and necessity. A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself" (Monod 98). Chapter six is entitled "Invariance and Perturbations”. The similarity throughout all organisms of chemical machinery in both structure and function is set out. In regards to structure, all living beings are made up of proteins and nucleic acids and these are the same residues (twenty amino acids and four nucleotides). Similar functions are carried out by the same sequence of reactions that appear in all organisms for essential chemical operations (some variations exist that consist of new utilizations of universal metabolic sequences). On page 104 Monod states "The fundamental biological invariant is DNA. That is why Mendel's definition of the gene as the unvarying bearer of hereditary traits, its chemical identification by Avery (confirmed by Hershey), and the elucidation by Watson and Crick of the structural basis of its replicative invariance, without any doubt constitute the most important discoveries ever made in biology." He adds that the full significance of the theory of natural selection was established by these discoveries. There is a brief review of DNA whose structure is a helix with translational and rotational symmetry and if artificially separated the complementary strands will spontaneously reform. A very brief review of DNA synthesis by DNA polymerase is given. The sequence of nucleotides in DNA defines the sequence of amino acids which in turn defines the folding of proteins which in turn defines an organism; "One must regard the total organism as the ultimate epigenetic expression of the genetic message itself" (Monod, 109). The author makes the point that translation is irreversible and never takes place from protein to DNA. In the last part of the chapter the author brings up the important subject of mutations. Various mutations such as substitutions, deletions, and inversions are listed. The accidental random chance of these mutations and that these unpredictable mutations alone that are the source of evolution is pointed out and exemplified. The "error" in the genetic message will be replicated with a high degree of fidelity. In the words of Monod "the same source of fortuitous perturbations, of ‘noise’...is the progenitor of evolution in the biosphere and accounts for its unrestricted liberty of creation, thanks to the replicative structure of DNA: that registry of chance, that tone-deaf conservatory where the noise is preserved along with the music" (Monod, 117). That mutations are unpredictable, faithfully replicated, and that natural selection operates only upon the products of chance is repeated at the start of chapter seven entitled "Evolution". Monod states that the decisive factor in natural selection is not the "struggle for life" but is the differential rate of reproduction and the only mutations "acceptable" to an organism are those that "do not lessen the coherence of the teleonomic apparatus, but rather, further strengthen it in its already assumed orientation" (Monod, 119). Monod explains that the teleonomic performance is judged through natural selection and this system retains only a very small fraction of mutations that will perfect and enrich the teleonomic apparatus. Monod gives the example of antibody development to show how chance combinations can give a well defined solution. He states that the source of information for the antibodies associative structure is not the antigen itself but is instead the result of many random recombinations of part of the antibody gene. The antibody that is able to bind to the antigen is multiplied. This remarkable example shows chance as the basis for one of the most precise adaptation phenomena. Monod makes the point that selection of a mutation is due to the environmental surroundings of the organism and the teleonomic performances. He then gives some examples to show the interconnection of specific performances/behaviors and anatomical adaptations. The author spends the rest of the chapter discussing linguistic and physical human evolutionary development. Language is an utterly different from the various auditory, tactile, and visual forms of communication in that it allows the communication of an original personal association to another individual. Monod hypothesizes that language was not merely the product but one of the driving forces for the evolution of our central nervous system. He believes that rudimentary symbolic communication appeared early on and created a new selective pressure that favored development of linguistic ability and hence the brain. He then talks about the evolution of our ancestors including the development of upright posture which allowed them to become hunters. Monod lastly points out the evidence to suggest the development of the cognitive function of language in children depends upon postnatal growth of the cortex. In chapter eight "The Frontiers" Monod captures the sense of wonderment one feels when considering the extraordinary diversity and complexity of organisms that has been brought about through billions of years of evolution when he says " The miracle stands "explained"; it does not strike us as any less miraculous" (Monod, 138). Three stages which led to the emergence of the first organism are proposed. First there must have been the formation of nucleotides and amino acids from simple carbon compounds and non-biological catalysts. Next would have been the formation of the first macromolecules capable of replication probably through spontaneous base pairing. And lastly the evolution of a teleonomic apparatus around the "replicative structures" would lead to the primitive cell. The author next turns his attention to the central nervous system. He lists the prime functions of the brain in mammals as control and coordination of neuromuscular activity, to set into action innate programs of action in response to stimuli, to integrate sensory inputs, to register, group, and associate significant events, and to represent and simulate. Monod makes the point that behavior cannot be strictly separated as learned or innate since elements are acquired through experience according to an innate program and "the programs structure initiates and guides early learning, which will follow a certain pre-established pattern defined by the species' genetic patrimony" (Monod, 153). The author now concentrates on what he views as one of the unique properties of higher level organisms, namely that of simulating experience subjectively so as to anticipate results and prepare action. Monod describes as "the frontier" the work that is to be done that will enable us to understand how this instrument of intuitive preconception works. He believes this understanding will enable mankind to eliminate the dualism of differentiating between the brain and the mind. He ends the chapter stating "To give up the illusion that sees in it an immaterial "substance" is not to deny the existence of the soul, but on the contrary to begin to recognize the complexity, the richness, the unfathomable profoundity of the genetic and cultural heritage and of the personal experience, conscious or otherwise, which together constitute this being of ours” (Monod, 159). The last chapter in the book is “The Kingdom and the Darkness”. Once man extended his domain over the subhuman sphere and dominated his environment the main threat became other men and tribal warfare came to be an important evolutionary selection factor and this would favor group cohesion. Cultural evolution affected physical evolution; “it is behavior that orients selective pressure” (Monod, 162). The author then says that due to the accelerating pace of cultural evolution, it no longer affects the genome and that selection does not favor the genetic survival of the fittest through a more numerous progeny. He brings up statistics that show a negative correlation between intelligence and the average number of children per couple and a positive correlation of intelligence between spouses which concentrates them among a shrinking elite. He also points to scientific and ethical advances that have allowed “genetic cripples” to live and reproduce (the author regards this as suspending natural selection). Monod says this suspension of natural selection is a peril to the species but that it will take quite a while for any serious effects and that there are more urgent dangers in modern society. He advances the idea “that nature is objective, that the systematic confronting of logic and experience is the sole source of true knowledge” (Monod, 165). He talks briefly about how ideas are selected based on the performance value and the spreading power (he states that ideas that explain man by assigning him a destiny spread the most). The author believes that we contain an inborn genetic need to search out the meaning of existence and that is responsible for the creation of myths, religion, and philosophy. He implies that this genetic component accounts for religion being the base of social structure and the reoccurrence of the same essential form in myths, religion, and philosophy. He admits that the idea of objective knowledge as the only source of truth may seem austere and unattractive in that it does not provide an explanation that will calm the anxiety of man; “It wrote an end to the ancient animist covenant between man and nature, leaving nothing in place of that precious bond but an anxious quest in a frozen universe of solitude” (Monod, 170). The author points to what he sees as the acceptance of objective science in practice but not in spirit. He says that the important message of science is that in the defining of a new source of truth which demands revision of ethical premises and a total break with the animist tradition. Our values are rooted in animism and are at odds with objective knowledge and truth. This jarring and isolating revelation places value judgments within the hands of man himself. Monod believes that objective truth and the theory of values cannot be separated “because the very definition of “true” knowledge reposes in the final analysis upon an ethical postulate” (Monod, 173). It is at this point that author’s argument turns upon itself by admitting that making objectivity the condition for true knowledge, which helps to separate value judgments from true knowledge and define science, is itself an axiomatic ethical choice. By asserting the principle of objectivity, which is accepted in modern science, one is choosing to adhere to what Monod calls the ethic of knowledge. The author proposes that man should rise above his need for explanation and fear of solitude to accept the ethic of knowledge and frames this ethic as accepting both the animal and ideal in man. Jacques Monod ends the book with his fundamental conclusion that “The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below; it is for him to choose” (Monod, 180).
11088412	/m/02q_n0g	In Limbo			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the first chapter Michael Carpenter awakes in a windowless institution. Although the regime in Limbo is quite liberal, Carpenter is not permitted to leave nor to know its purpose. Carpenter's fellow inmates are introduced: leftist intellectual Wright, corpulent joker Riley, fitness fanatic Treadwell and the nervous Sinnott. The highlights of Carpenter's time are his meetings with the glamorous Dr Dempster. The long second chapter details the inmates' increasing conflicts with their guards but is interspersed with flashbacks to Carpenter's earlier life. After leaving university, Carpenter has drifted from one dead-end job to another, and also moved between various unsatisfactory sexual relationships, with the strident feminist Veronica, the kleptomaniac Karen, married colleague Eleanor and the unstable Penny. The chaper ends with an escape attempt by all the inmates. The book concludes with a short third chapter describing Carpenter's first steps back in the outside world.
11094464	/m/02q_v44	Dougy			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story details the events surrounding an aboriginal family living in southwest Queensland, Australia. The story centers around Dougy and his sister Gracey, who has been selected for the State 100m running championships. The story opens with a flashback to a picture in Dougy's past of him and his family sitting by the riverbank in their town drinking. Dougy spends most of this time monologuing about his family and when a flood comes they have to try to escape.
11095942	/m/02q_wpn	Skulduggery Pleasant	Derek Landy	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Stephanie Edgley's novelist uncle dies, leaving her his vast mansion and the royalties from his best-selling books. At the reading of the will, a strange man in a tan overcoat, a hat, sunglasses and a scarf is present, who is left a piece of advice, along with Fergus and Beryl, Stephanie's none-too-liked aunt and uncle. Stephanie's aunt and uncle are given something as well: a seemingly useless brooch, a boat, and a car, which they both do not want. Spending a night alone in the mansion, Stephanie is attacked by a strange man, demanding she gives him a "key". As the man attacks Stephanie, the mysterious man in the tan overcoat from Gordon's funeral, known as Skulduggery Pleasant, arrives and saves her, throwing a fireball and then shooting the attacker. Skulduggery's disguise of a hat, wig and sunglasses fall off to reveal that he is an undead wizard, made up of only a skeleton held together by magic. He takes Stephanie as his partner and races to save the world from the Scepter of the Ancients, a mysterious staff located only in folklore. However, one of his old rivals has already retrieved it and Skulduggery may be too late to save the world, with or without Stephanie. There are many similarities to H. P. Lovecraft in the story. The Faceless Ones are likely inspired by the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and Lovecraft actually gets a mention by Skulduggery saying that his stories were inspired by myths about the Faceless Ones. Serpine also uses Lovecraft's name as an alias.
11096681	/m/02q_xgr	The Hundred Year Lie				 The book covers a wide range of topics to do with the issue. It starts by describing the myths that the public believes, that toxicity health issues are 'someone else's problem', and then goes on to talk about what is known to the scientific and chemical communities, and charts the history of the cover-up of chemicals in relation to human health, and the level of business made from this by the chemical companies. The book then goes on in detail about the dangers of food additives, the toxic threats of the processed food humans and animals currently eat, and how this chemical contamination has now affected the water that people drink, and how this has brought on increased biological changes, genetic mutations and newly discovered and increasing illnesses and diseases, in both human and animals. The book ends with a discussion on Western and Eastern medical approaches and philosophies, a focus on alternative medicine and eating healthily, avoiding synthetic foods, and a practical guide on how to detoxify one's body.
11097620	/m/02q_y7v	The Mystery of the Great Pyramid Volume 2: The Chamber of Horus				 Captain Blake having been assassinated at Athens Airport, Olrik seems to have won the first round. A furious Mortimer swears that he’ll never stop trying to avenge his friend. He goes on the hunt, but information is scarce. Sheik Abdel Razek, an old man with mysterious powers, protects him against Doctor Grossgrabenstein’s crew. The doctor is a devoted Egyptologist who has undertaken excavations not far from the Great Pyramid. Strange happenings occur and Mortimer may sometimes feel like he’s losing his way in this investigation that will lead him into the darkest depths of the Great Pyramid.
11097723	/m/02q_yc8	Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle				 Blocher begins by outlining the doctrine of Original Sin in its four parts. Universal sinfulness, the shared culpability of all humanity. Natural sinfulness, the innate or natural tendency to sin in people. Inherited sinfulness, the transmission of the Adam's original sin. Adamic sinfulness the idea that sin had its origin in the Garden of Eden with an act of rebellion by Adam, also known as "The Fall". Blocher then analyses the status of "The Fall" in the context of Genesis, modern science and a wider theological context. Blocher favours the 'framework' interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis, which means he understands "The Fall" as a complex type of 'myth' containg historical elements such as Adam, Eve, the Garden itself and an actual act of original rebellion. The core of the book is centred around Blocher's discussion of Romans 5. In this chapter Blocher compares two common theological views of understanding the "The Fall" with some of his own ideas about the topic. Blocher concludes the book with two chapters about the significance of "The Fall" for humanity and the solution provided by the atonement of Jesus Christ.
11097865	/m/02q_ykg	Venture to the Moon	Arthur C. Clarke	1956-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 *"The Starting Line" tells of the launch of the first lunar expedition jointly by British, American and Russian rockets which have been assembled in Earth orbit. The plan is for all three ships to leave Earth orbit and land simultaneously, but the narrator has secretly been ordered to depart ahead of the other two ships. *"Robin Hood FRS" tells of the efforts by the joint expedition members to recover an automatic supply rocket that has landed just out of reach, through the unorthodox method of utilising one team member's archery skills. *"Green Fingers" describes how a Russian team member - a botanist - secretly engineers plant life that could survive on the Moon's surface, and the accident that causes his death. *"All that Glitters" deals with a geophysicist who discovers diamonds on the moon - only to learn that back on Earth, synthetic diamonds have just been successfully created at negligible cost. *"Watch this Space" tells how a scientific experiment conducted on the moon - creating a giant sodium cloud that is made luminescent by the sun's rays and visible from Earth - is sabotaged by "the greatest advertising coup" in history. *"A Question of Residence" tells of how at the end of the mission one of the ships would have to stay behind to clean up their equipment while the others return and get the early glory, and how the British team end up volunteering... in order to take advantage of a legal loophole so they can sell their stories tax-free.
11098939	/m/02q_zv0	The Golden Rendezvous	Alistair MacLean		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Aboard the cargo vessel converted into a luxury cruise ship SS Campari somewhere in the Caribbean, all is not well. For Johnny Carter, the Chief Officer, the voyage has already begun badly; but it's only when the Campari sails that evening, after a succession of delays attributable to sabotage that he realizes something is seriously wrong. A member of the crew is suddenly missing and the unsuccessful stem-to-stern search only increases tension. Then violence erupts and suddenly the whole ship is endangered by a master criminal whose intention is not a simple hijacking and ransoming of the wealthy hostages on board. Exactly what his goal is forms part of the mystery
11099422	/m/02q__kd	An Ice-Cream War	William Boyd		{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The story focuses on the battle fought in East Africa between British and German forces during World War I, and how it affects several individual people whose paths will eventually converge. The first character introduced is Walter Smith, an American expatriate farm owner/mechanic/engineer who runs a successful sisal plantation in British East Africa near Mount Kilimanjaro. Before war breaks out in August 1914, Smith is on cordial terms with his German half-English neighbour, Erich von Bishop. Smith even shops for coffee plant seedlings at the botanical garden in the capital of German East Africa, Dar es Salaam. Major von Bishop burns Smith's sisal and linseed plantation in the opening campaign of the Great War, and then dismantles the massive Decorticator, the industrial centrepiece of Smith's sisal farm operations. Now made a penniless refugee, and unable to secure any war reparations from the colonial British bureaucracy, Smith parks his wife and children with his missionary father-in-law and joins the British military forces in Nairobi, pursuing personal vengeance against von Bishop over the next four years of war in East Africa. The second narrative strand involves Felix Cobb, the studious youngest son of an aristocratic and traditional British military family, everyone of whom he despises apart from his older brother Gabriel, a captain. The latter soon marries his sweetheart Charis (inspiring a certain jealousy in Felix), but World War I breaks out while Gabriel is on his honeymoon in Normandy, and he makes haste back to his regiment. Gabriel is posted to Africa, where he befriends psychotic fellow soldier Bilderbeck and is quickly wounded by German soldiers. Whilst recovering in a POW hospital, he develops an infatuation for Erich von Bishop's plump, stubborn wife Liesl, who works there as a nurse... The novel could be considered a satire on the ineptitude of authority in wartime. A recurring character, English District Officer Wheech-Browning, spreads chaos wherever he goes, such that Smith observes that every time he goes somewhere with Wheech-Browning, someone in their company meets an unfortunate death.
11106289	/m/02r06yw	Armadillo	William Boyd			 The story concerns Lorimer Black a successful loss adjuster, His original name is Milomre Blocj and he comes from a family of Transnistrian gypsies who arrived in London in 1957 and set up an import-export business to Eastern Europe. They now run a taxi cab firm and are always borrowing money off Milo (as they still call him). Lorimer suffers from insomnia and spends many nights at the "Institute for Lucid Dreaming" in search for a cure. He collects antique helmets, listens to African music and is having an affair with Stella Bull, the owner of a scaffolding company. The book includes extracts taken from Lorimers journal The Book of Transfiguration in which he philosophizes on his situation and quotes from Gerard de Nerval. Hogg, his overbearing boss describes his profession thus: "people turn to insurance to remove uncertainty from areas of their lives. Insurance companies turn to loss adjusters to put uncertainty into insurance, and thus reintroduce uncertainty to insured people". The narrative itself begins when he turns up at a routine business appointment only to find the man he was to meet has hanged himself. From then on his already complicated life begins to unravel as he falls in love with Flavia Malinervo an unhappily married actress, is assigned to investigate a case of suspected insurance fraud in which a colleague Torquil Helvoir-Jayne is implicated, and suffers the death of his father...
11106963	/m/02r07j2	Midnighters 2: Touching Darkness	Scott Westerfeld	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Touching Darkness begins shortly after The Secret Hour ends. It starts with Jessica's meeting Jonathan in the secret hour. As they return home, Jonathan discovers a "stiff" - non-midnighter - outside Jessica's house, taking multiple exposures of her window across midnight. Meanwhile, Dess has been having strange dreams, which have led to some theories about co-ordinates affecting the secret hour. She discovers a GPS co-ordinate finder in her father's map drawer, and begins to use it to map the secret hour. Investigating Jessica's stalker, Melissa overhears someone thinking about Jessica. She and Rex visit his house in the secret hour and discover people there are using dominoes with lore symbols on them to communicate with the darklings at midnight, with the help of a 'halfling' -Anathea- a girl who has been merged with a darkling. Melissa discovers that the halfling is sick, and that the darklings will soon try to take Rex, another Seer, to replace her. They steal some of the dominoes so that the darklings will not be able to communicate about the Midnighters to their human allies. They also find that the house belongs to Ernesto Grayfoot - a cousin of Jessica's friend Constanza Grayfoot, who says that even though her grandfather used to live there, he left nearly fifty years ago - around the time the Midnighters seem to have disappeared from Bixby - and now the rest of her family avoid the town at all costs - her father was even cut off for moving there. Meanwhile, Dess discovers a house in which another Midnighter - Madeline - has lived hidden for nearly fifty years. Madeline explains that fifty years ago, when the town's population boomed suddenly, someone let out the secret of the Midnighters to an outsider - Constanza's grandfather - who learned how to communicate with the darklings, and got rich doing their bidding. The darklings used him to kill off the Midnighters, leaving only the new, younger generation, who were seen as harmless with no one older to teach them. They also made the halfling using a young girl called Anathea, to communicate with the darklings better. She also explains that her house is in a contortion in the secret hour which hides her, and that Dess must keep the knowledge of it hidden from the others so that the darklings do not find it. After ransacking Constanza's house, the Midnighters learn that the darklings are trying to prevent a new runway being built outside Bixby. From Madeline, Dess learns that she needs to get Jessica's help in scouring the site of the runway with light: it is the only place halflings can be made, and light will destroy it. However, before she manages it, Rex is kidnapped. Dess draws a map to where they will find him, then suppresses the memories using a trick Madeline taught her so that Melissa will not learn about Madeline from her mind. However, Melissa suspects Dess is hiding something, and touches her, giving herself full access to Dess's memories. She learns about Madeline, and Dess begins to resent her for the intrusion on her privacy. When the secret hour begins, Jonathan, Melissa, Jessica and Dess are only a mile from the spot Rex has been taken, but Melissa is injured when she continues through the windshield when the car stops abruptly at the start of the secret hour. Jessica and Jonathan go ahead and find Anathea, freed from the darkling, who tells them that Rex is already a halfling. Luckily, they catch up with him, and Jessica uses her torch to burn away the darkling flesh, making him (mostly) human again. They return to Anathea, who dies from the darkness after Jonathan grants her last wish to fly again. They leave her in front of the Grayfoots, along with a message spelled out in English: 'You're next'. Finally, Madeline introduces herself to all of the Midnighters - as soon as Melissa knew about her, the darklings could read it from her mind. She begins to teach Melissa how to mindcast properly. Meanwhile, Rex is struggling to come to terms with his enhanced abilities; his time as a halfling has left him with the darkling's ability to sense human thoughts and emotions, as well as a desire to hunt.
11108448	/m/02r08yt	The Troika	Stepan Chapman	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel introduces three beings - a jeep, a dinosaur, and an old Mexican woman - travelling across a desert under the glare of three suns. They have been travelling for centuries though they do not know why they are crossing the desert or if they will ever reach the other side. The characters have each changed bodies several times. Their travels are interspersed with dream-sequence-like flashbacks describing various transformed versions of the 20th Century.
11108504	/m/02r08_w	The Survivors of the 'Jonathan'	Jules Verne			 The novel tells the story of a mysterious man named Kaw-djer. Kaw-djer lives in the land of Magellania, that is, the region around the Straits of Magellan. Kaw-djer, whose motto is "Neither God nor master", helps himself survive and also provides assistance to the indigenous peoples of Magellania. However, when a group of settlers is shipwrecked on a nearby island (Hoste Island), Kaw-djer assists them establish their colony, though he refuses to rule over them or control them in any way. However, when the colony falls victim to fight for power, Kaw-djer is forced to temporarily abandon his own anarchistic principles. After he restores order, he abdicates and becomes a lighthouse-keeper, thereby retaining his individualism.
11123616	/m/02r0s03	The Blue Afternoon	William Boyd		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Los Angeles, 1936 Kay Fischer is an architect who has recently been defrauded by her ex-partner, Eric Meyerson. As such, she is trying to start her architectural practice again on her own. She still keeps in contact with Philip, her ex-husband and an unsuccessful Hollywood script writer, from whom she got divorced after the death of their baby son who had a hole in his heart. Kay learns that an old man has been enquiring about her and she is confronted by a Dr Salvador Carriscant who tells her that he is her father. Thinking him a crank, she asks her mother, Annaliese Leys, more questions about her real father, Hugh Paget, an Englishman, missionary and teacher who died in a fire in German New Guinea in 1903. Carriscant tells his daughter than he wants her to find a man called Paton Bobby in connection with a murder that happened in the distant past. Through a contact of Philip's, they track him down at his ranch south of Sante Fe. They take a journey together to visit him and Kay is astounded by the reaction of both men when they are re-united but Carriscant tells her very little about what is discussed. However, he does show her an old photograph taken at the Aishlie Tennis Cup, and says that he needs to find the woman in it – the wife of an embassy official - who is now living in Lisbon, Portugal and states that he would like her to go with him to try to locate her. Kay, in the meantime, is distracted by the sale of the house she has finished building; it was to be hers but she has to sell it to help keep her company afloat. She shows a Mrs Luard Turner around it and the sale is completed. She also takes her mother to Carriscant's boarding house, telling her she believes him to be a private detective hired by Meynard, and her mother states she has never seen him before although Kay can tell she is lying by her apparent lack of interest in who he is. She then visits a new site she is planning to develop with her foreman, Larry Rugola, and on the way back they drop in on 2265 Micheltorreno, only to find it being knocked down by Eric Meyerson, who tells Kay that they are going to build a very similar house there but with a different architect. Feeling down in the dumps, Kay decides to take up her 'father's' offer of the trip to Lisbon - vital for him as he does not have the finances to pay for the trip. However, in return her father has to tell her all about his family and the next part of the book is about his life in Manila in the Philippines. Carriscant is the son of Archibald Carriscant, a Scotsman and railway engineer, who married Juliana, the daughter of a local 'mestizo' landowner. After studying medicine at Glasgow University, during which time Archibald died, their son Salvador returned to Manila to set up his practice in 1897. Manila, 1902 Dr Salvador Carriscant becomes the most celebrated surgeon in the Philippines, working at the San Jeronimo Hospital in Manila. However, he is in a strong rivalry with the hospital's director, Dr Cruz, who is totally against the new surgical methods of Listerism introduced by Salvador, preferring to work in Salvador's eyes as 'an antediluvian sawbones cum sinister circus performer'. Salvador's work is made easier because of his highly trained Filipino anethetist, Pantaleon Quiroga, who assists him in every operation at San Jeronimo. Quiroga is also an aeroplane enthusiast; he has built and housed one in his newly built 'nipa' barn and shows it one day to Carriscant. The surgeon is paid a surprise visit by Paton Bobby, Chief of Constabulary and asked to accompany him to examine the dead body of a young American marine called Ephraim Ward. The corpse is taken by them to the hospital mortuary and put on ice. In the meantime, Salvador returns home to his wife, Annaliese, with whom he has fallen out of love and not slept with for a whole year. The next day, he discovers that the 'peninsularo' Dr Isidro Cruz has removed the body and so he and Bobby visit the Dr's house near the small village of Flores to recover. He tells them he has it owing to lack of room in the hospital morgue and both men are disgusted by the unhygienic conditions of the Spaniard's domestic operating theatre. Carriscant decides to take a whore in one of the brothels in Gardenia Street in the Sampaloc district. However, he meets the drunk American military doctor, Wieland, in the Ice-Cream Parlor and has to tell a lie about visiting his cook’s mother for her hernia. He tries to leave but is trapped in the backyard of the whorehouse. Eventually, he scrambles over the wall and on his way back home in the early hours of the morning is nearly killed by a stray arrow. He remonstrates with the American woman doing target practice and finds he is bowled over by her looks. He asks Bobby who she might be, saying his wife met her at a church function, and the policeman thinks it is the Headmistress of the Gerlinger School. Carriscant goes to the school and is told by the nuns she is walking at the Luneta where the islanders parade in the evening. He spots her and finds an opportunity to speak to her but she rebuffs him, stating that her name is not Rudolfa as he presumes – one of the men calls her Delphine and, seeing that there might be some trouble, Carriscant is obliged to leave. Paton Bobby comes to see Carriscant as another body has been found – this time a soldier called Corporal Maximilian Braun, and Carriscant also meets a young American Colonel called Sieverance. Salvador examines the body and notes that the heart has been removed. They then visit Governor Taft’s office in the Malacanan Palace to update him on the situation and Carriscant gives him his negative opinion about Dr Wieland’s abilities. Carriscant is hauled before Cruz and Wieland for a dressing down and a fight ensues between the three men whose enmity has now spilled over. The doctor is then summoned by a note to Jepson Sieverance’s house and here he re-encounters Delphine, the Colonel’s wife who is suffering from acute appendicitis. Cruz and Wieland appear to examine her but Carriscant persuades her to ignore their misinformed medical opinions and she is taken to San Jeronimo where he successfully performs and operation on her, also thrilled to be able to see and touch her naked body whilst she is under an anaesthetic. Delphine Sieverance makes a slow but sure recovery and Salvador visits her at her house as a patient. She appears very glad to see him and also gives him a novel to read in order that he may return it to her at a later date. Sieverance’s regiment is called away to fight the insurgents and Salvador visits Calle Lagarda once more – as he is putting the book back in the library he trips and falls and falls into Delphine and they now recognise their attraction to each other. One day at his hospital, he is visited by Mrs Sieverance who is complaining of a pain in her abdomen. She is undressed by Salvador in private on his examination couch and they make love to each other. A third body is now discovered, that of a poor female slum dweller who is four months pregnant. A scalpel is found by her body and Bobby asks Carriscant if one is missing from his hospital. Carriscant does an inventory check and discovers there is. He informs Bobby and also tells him that he believes it was planted next to the body by Cruz and Wieland to implicate him in the murder. Bobby dismisses this as fanciful but tells him that he believes the murderer could be Cruz as his family came from Batangas in southern Luzon where the rebellion was fiercest. Back at the hospital he is summoned to Cruz’s side of the hospital and Cruz shows him a man with an exposed beating heart that has six sutures in it, believing this to be a great scientific experiment until Carriscant informs him it was already performed seven years earlier in Germany. Carriscant and his wife attend an official reception given by Governor Taft and his wife and here he meets Delphine once again and they arrange another meeting. They meet and he tries to make love to her again but she is concerned about the servants and pushes him away. However, Delphine comes to Carriscant’s surgery once more and they make love again, and she tells him about her life and marriage to Sieverance to whom she now only feels apathy. As they are leaving, they are interrupted by Pantaleon and Carriscant reveals his love. Panteleon understands the situation and lends the couple his ‘nipa’ barn in the afternoons for their assignments. One day, the doctor receives a note from Delphine asking to meet her on the Luneta and she reveals to him that she is pregnant. He later encounters Sieverance and learns that they are to return to the USA, so he dashes round to see Delphine and is forced to set fire to a shed in her friend’s garden to interrupt the bridge party she is attending and tells her he has a plan that will resolve their situation. Annaliese is remorseful over her coldness towards her husband and effects a reconciliation by sleeping with him again. In the meantime, Carriscant goes to see Nicanor Axel, who has smuggled in an engine for Pantaleon’s plane to avoid the duty, and arranges for two passengers to leave on his boat. He is interrupted in his consulting rooms by Pantaleon who tells him that the Amberway-Richault flying prize is taking place in Paris on 30 May 1903 and that they must complete their flight first. Carriscant refuses to be his passenger, stating that he would be terrified but Pantaleon is by now totally obsessive and threatens to reveal his affair. The test flight of Drs Pantaleon Quiroga, accompanied by Dr Salvador Carriscant, finally takes place from the ‘nipa’ barn attended by a sizeable crowd. The machines launches itself into the air and flies over the mark and much higher than they expected before finally crashing by the San Roque creek – Salvador is severely winded and Pantaleon dead. Now, in his grief, the doctor puts his plan into effect. One evening he is visited by Sieverance and Delphine, to whom he has given cordite to make her appear ill. He takes her into the operating theatre and gives the Colonel a glass of rum laced with chloral. He then puts the woman into an ice chest to make her look dead white and covers himself and his theatre with blood, before telling Sieverance that his wife has died and showing him her body. He also shows him the dead body of a five month old foetus and Sieverance breaks down. After taking the Colonel home, he returns to Delphine and warms her up before sending her in a carriage to Axel’s boat. However, just as he is readying himself to leave – pretending that he is going to his mother’s house for two weeks – he is arrested by Paton Bobby and his constables for the murder of Sieverance, whose body has been found with two bullet holes in its head. Lisbon, 1936 The ending consists of Carriscant and Kay arriving in Lisbon and the reader will have to read the story to find out if their search for the mystery woman is successful and why Carriscant is looking for her.
11126646	/m/02r0w80	His Name is... Savage				 That sole story, "The Return of the Half-Man", is a science-fiction spy thriller concerning a cyborg renegade military general named Mace who kidnaps the U.S. president and impersonates him at a United Nations assembly in an attempt to ignite a world war. The story and art were more graphically violent than comic books and movies of the day, is with one panel showing a pulped and bloody crushed hand and another showing a metal gun-barrel smashing through a man's teeth and sending teeth flying. "Savage depends on only two things: guys and his .357 magnum, which he has no compunction about using," one critic wrote of the 1982 reissue."Broken noses, splintering teeth, and splattering brains are all depicted in lurid detail They are part and parcel of Savage's obdurate attempts to stop a madman from instigating World War III. Although this is an old theme, Kane and Goodwin present a tale that is riveting and upsettingly believable."
11127087	/m/02r0wyq	The Summoner		2007-01-30	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Martris "Tris" Drayke, second son of the royal family of Margolan, has always been tormented by his older half-brother, Jared Drayke. When Jared murders their father and seizes the throne with the help of his vampire (vayash moru) mage, Foor Arontala, Martris flees the city with his two friends: the bard Carroway and the soldier Soterius. Also, a gruff captain of the guard joins them. As the friends journey on the road to a nearby country to the north, Tris begins to experience powers he didn't know he had, magic left to him by his extremely powerful grandmother, Bava K'aa. As the story progresses, Tris learns that he is the mage heir of Bava K'aa, inheriting all of her former powers of summoning spirits, and perhaps more. As his brother's soldiers close in, Tris hires on the ex-soldier Vahanian, who now lives on the wrong side of the law. Vahanian is haunted by a horrific past, and has sworn not to involve himself in the conflicts of government again. However, through the course of the novel, Vahanian begins to see the urgency of mission's success, after witnessing the horrors King Jared and Arontala inflict upon their own country. He, reluctantly, at first, agrees to train Tris and his friends in the art of streetfighting, breaking them of their rehearsed, almost ceremonial ways of swashbuckling. He teaches them how to kill, not put on a show. Princess Kiara, leader of the small country of Isencroft, for all intents and purposes, finds herself in a bind as she struggles to worm her way out of an arranged marriage with Jared, and worries about her father's failing health, which is almost certainly waning because of evil magic. In a last bid for her country's freedom, she rides upon a Journey given to her by the Eight-Faced Goddess. She ends up joining Tris's band, and rides with him to an almost-forgotten library to discover how she might save her father, and her nigh-doomed country. While there, Kiara is attacked by Arantola, and Tris continues his training under Roysten the Librarian and other Sisters, eventually gaining MageSlayer, a powerful sword guarded by the dead. It is the only blade capable of killing the dead. During this time, Kiara and Tris begin to fall for each other, and Kiara is bidden by the Goddess to assist in their quest. Vahanian and Carina also show signs of romantic feelings, though Carina is desperate to deny them because of something in her past. They then set off for Principality, but they are detained by King Staden of Principality's soldiers, and it is revealed the general of the troops is the brother of the man Carina fell in love with and failed to save when she and her brother were forced out their home for being twins, and mages to boot. Once at the royal court though, the King reveals he escorted them for safety as they saved his daughter Berwyn (Berry), and Vahanian is made Lord of Dark Haven, the vayash moru stronghold as a reward. The king pledges his full support, and Kiara and Tris admit their feelings before Tris goes to continues his training.
11130936	/m/02r11bg	Midnighters 3: Blue Noon	Scott Westerfeld	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 When time freezes in the middle of the day during a school pep rally, the Midnighters have a problem. The secret hour is slowly making its way into the real world. The last book in the Midnighters trilogy is all about the adventure of trying to keep the secret hour in the secret hour. The Midnighters begin to experience the secret hour more and more frequently during daylight hours. To make matters worse, Rex's darkling side cannot always control itself, and may be becoming stronger. By using Madeline and other resources, the Midnighters find out that on the night of Samhain (Halloween), the Secret Hour will expand, and more of the Earth will be sucked up. This is because there is a "rip" in true midnight, which allows non-midnighters to slip into the blue time, that is expanding like a seam in fabric. While trying to keep people out of these dangerous zones, Jessica has some trouble with her curious little sister Beth. True midnight (usually confined to the secret hour) will last for the whole day, and all humans and creatures within it will be awake, no longer 'stiff'. This will allow the darklings to feast once again upon the creatures of day-unless the five teens find a way to stop it from happening. When Jessica and her boyfriend Jonathan manage to stop the "blue time" from spreading to the whole world, Jessica unfortunately gets sucked into the "blue time". To Jonathan and the whole Midnighter's teams dismay, she will forever be trapped in the blue time, only able to live for an hour of every day. Jessica's parents become very sad about their daughter's "disappearance" and are still grieving her loss when Beth comes to visit Jess for the last time. Both sisters share an emotional time with each other before Jonathan has his moment to say goodbye. Finally, with a half-hour to spare, Jonathan takes Jessica and Beth on their last flight through the blue time.
11131253	/m/02r11vm	The Bookshop	Penelope Fitzgerald	1978	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel, set mainly in 1959, centres around Florence Green, a middle-aged widow, who decides to open a bookshop in the small fictional town of Hardborough, Suffolk. The location chosen is the Old House, an abandoned, damp house said to be infested by ghosts. With many sacrifices, the business starts and grows for about a year, after which sales slump. Florence Green has a contention with the influential Mrs Gamart, who wanted to set up an arts centre in the Old House. Mrs Gamart's nephew, a member of Parliament, manages to pass a bill that empowered local councils to buy any historical building that had been left uninhabited for five years. Eventually also the Old House is purchased and Florence Green evicted.
11131455	/m/02r124l	The Beast House	Richard Laymon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Teenager Janice Crogan finds a diary belonging to a previous owner of Beast House, a local tourist attraction in the girl's hometown of Malcasa Point, where numerous gruesome murders have allegedly taken place. The journal features lurid sex scenes between the beast and its author, the house's prior owner. Janice sends an excerpt from the book to famed (fictitious) author Gorman Hardy, who decides to travel to Malcasa Point, along with an accomplice named Brian Blake, in order to steal the book and publish it himself. Meanwhile, Tyler and Nora, two young women on vacation together, decide to track down an old flame of Tyler's, Dan Jenson, who is now a patrolman living in Malcasa Point. On the way there, they run into Jack and Abe, two ex-Marines who save them from a crazed driver with a serious case of road rage. Back in town, Gorman agrees to Janice's proposal that she get half the profits from Gorman's proposed book based on the journal, then sends her off with Blake to take photos of Beast House so that he can break into Janice's room at the local inn (run by her parents) and steal the contract entitling her to half the money. While Gorman commits his act of attempted burglary, Blake and Janice are in the woods behind Beast House having sex, but then the beast attacks, kills Blake, and kidnaps Janice. A bit later, Janice's parents confront Gorman and demand to know their daughter's whereabouts. The three set out for Beast House, eventually discovering Blake's mutilated body, and Janice's father attacks Gorman, who murders both him and Janice's mother, hoping their deaths will also be attributed to the beast. Meanwhile, Tyler and Nora are told by a neighbor that Dan Jenson can be found at Beast House. They encounter Gorman Hardy while on the Beast House tour, where Tyler is horrified to discover that Dan is one of the beast's previous victims. No longer hindered, she starts a relationship with Abe. Back at the inn, Gorman offers Jack and Abe a thousand dollars to explore Beast House and get photographs. Breaking into the house, Abe and Jack eventually discover a tunnel connecting Beast House to the home of Maggie Kutch, the tourist trap's current owner, the woman who runs the tours of Beast House. Janice awakens and realizes she's been raped by the beast, and encounters Sandy and Donna, the mother and daughter survivors from The Cellar, who've been subjected to similar treatment. Jack and Abe kill one of the beasts, and another one kills Gorman, who came to the house with Tyler and Nora. Maggie Kutch is killed and Janice and Donna are rescued, but Sandy disappears. Some time later, Tyler and Abe are apparently married, with a child, and living at a hotel owned by Abe's father. Janice Crogan has written a bestselling book about her experiences at Beast House. Sandy's whereabouts are still unknown.
11133683	/m/02r14dz	No Way to Treat a First Lady	Christopher Buckley	2002	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The President of the United States and Hollywood bombshell Babette Van Anka, are carrying on an extramarital affair in the White House. After a night of cheating, the president is confronted by his wife, Beth MacMann. The two get into a fight, during which she throws a historic Paul Revere spittoon at the president. The spittoon strikes the President in the head and it is alleged he later dies from the injuries. The case is instantly declared the "Trial of the Millennium". The first lady decides that to win the case, she must hire the most expensive and unscrupulous attorney in Washington. The attorney who fits the bill, Boyce Baylor, happens to be her former lover from law school. Baylor accepts her case and the trial becomes a media circus, with most of the media instantly concluding the First Lady is guilty. Baylor's courtroom theatrics are planned to impress the court of public opinion as much as the jury. Incessant media coverage of the trial smothers attempts of the new President to accomplish anything serious. Baylor and MacMann rekindle their long-lost love affair, but Baylor's shenanigans soon find him barred from the courtroom. The trial appears lost until Van Anka confesses under oath that she had secretly administered a large dose of Viagra to the president. An autopsy confirmed that the Viagra caused the death. MacMann is declared not guilty. She and Baylor have a baby which, coincidentally, weighs the same amount as the spittoon. The media is quick to declare that they believed the first lady was innocent all along.
11142441	/m/02r1fhp	S.O.S. Meteors: Mortimer in Paris	Edgar Pierre Jacobs			 The world’s weather has gone mad, Professor Mortimer responds on an invitation of his friend Professor Labrousse, while travelling to his friend, Mortimer's cab crashes and he finds himself a new adventure right on his friends doorstep.
11145385	/m/02r1jyr	The Islamist	Ed Husain	2007	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Husain fondly describes his early years at William Burrough primary school in the 1980s, where he plays with 'Jane, Lisa, Andrew, Mark, Alia, Zak' and learns about Islam from his family and his family's Bengali spiritual guide Shaikh Abd al-Latif (Fultholy Saheb) (p.&nbsp;9) he called 'Grandpa'. In the early 1990s Husain goes to Stepney Green, a boys school that was virtually all-Muslim and dominated by immigrants and gangs, and dubbed the "worst school in Britain" by the tabloid press (p.&nbsp;7). He has few friends and feels himself a "boffin" misfit, but finds some satisfaction in studying Islam along with a new friend Brother Falik. Their text, Islam: Beliefs and Teachings, by Ghulam Sarwar, is "the first book I read about Islam in English." He had been taught by his father that Islam and politics didn't mix, but Sarwar preached that 'Religion and politics are one and the same in Islam', and this became the "one part of the book has stayed with me." Later, Husain felt misled by Sarwar. As he explained: "What I did not know at school was that Sarwar was a business management lecturer, not a scholar of religion. And he was an activist in the organisations that he mentioned [ Muslim Brotherhood and Jamat-e-Islami]. Sarwar's book was not the dispassionate educational treatise it purported to be." He added: "he was also the brains behind the separation of Muslim children from school assemblies into what we called 'Muslim assembly', managed by the Muslim Educational Trust (MET) [of which Sarwar is the Director]. What seemed like an innocuous body was, in fact, an organisation with an agenda. In my school, a Jamat-e-Islamic activist named Abdul Rabb represented the MET and awarded us trophies and medals for our performance in MET exams. Ostensibly it all seemed harmless, but the personnel all belonged to Jamat-e-Islami front organisations in Britain. Their key message was that Islam was not merely a religion but also an ideology that sought political power and was beginning to make headway." At the invitation of Brother Falik he becomes active in the Young Muslims Organisation which had a large following at East London Mosque and was associated with Jamaat-e-Islami and Islamist leader Abul Ala Maududi. His family strongly opposes the political Islam of Jamaat-e-Islami. When his father makes him choose between Islam and the family, Husain runs away, finally coming back when his father backs down and allows him to continue visiting the East London Mosque. Later he moves on to Hizb ut-Tahrir, another Islamist group with a more intellectual and international outlook that emphasizes the need to reestablish an Islamic Caliphate unifying the Muslim world, or ummah, in one unified state. After two years in HT he drops out and attends meetings of the Islamic Society of Britain, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.. Husain writes that in the mid-1990s, he became disillusioned with Islamic groups in the UK and more interested in the relatively nonpolitical Islamic scholars Hamza Yusuf and Nuh Ha Mim Keller. After a period working for HSBC, Husain moves with his wife to Damascus to study Arabic and teach English at the British Council. Still teaching for the British Council they move to Jeddah Saudi Arabia to be close to Mecca and Medina. There he becomes disillusioned by &#34;the naked poverty&#34; and inequality which he feels makes a mockery of his early belief in the solidarity of the ummah. All my talk of ummah seemed so juvenile now. .... Racism was an integral part of Saudi society. My students often used the word “nigger” to describe black people. Even dark-skinned Arabs were considered inferior to their lighter-skinned cousins. I was living in the world’s most avowedly Muslim country, yet I found it anything but. I was appalled by the imposition of Wahhabism in the public realm, something I had implicitly sought as an Islamist. Also disillusioning was the lack of chaste behavior and respect for women In supermarkets I only had to be away from Faye [his wife] for five minutes and Saudi men would hiss or whisper obscenities as they walked past. .... We had heard stories of the abduction of women from taxis by sex-deprived Saudi youths. At a Saudi friend’s wedding at a luxurious hotel in Jeddah, women dared not step out of their hotel rooms and walk to the banqueting hall for fear of abduction by the bodyguards of a Saudi prince who also happened to be staying there. .... Why had the veil and segregation not prevented such behaviour? Husain returns to London after the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Husain criticises Islamism and argues that the desire for the re-establishment of an Islamic caliphate is borne out of an alien, Wahhabi or extremist interpretation of Islam. The idea of a pure Islamic state, is &#39;not the continuation of a political entity set up by the Prophet, maintained by the caliphs down the ages (however debatable)&#39;. The ideas of HT founder Nabhani &#34;were not innovatory Muslim thinking but wholly derived from European political thought,&#34; including the anti-liberal democrat Rousseau. Husain writes in The Islamist of his former association with Inayat Bunglawala, Dhiren Barot and Omar Bakri Muhammad. Husain finally severs his links with Islamism by &#34;rediscovering what he describes as &#39;classical, traditional Islam&#39;, which includes Sufi mysticism.&#34; According to observers, The Islamist highlights the &#34;paradoxes of political Islam: a movement that is avowedly anti-secular, anti-modern and anti-Western, it has been profoundly shaped by modern Western secular ideologies.&#34;
11145432	/m/02r1j_g	Crispin: At the Edge of the World	Edward Irving Wortis	2006-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 At the conclusion of the Newbery Award–winning Crispin: The Cross of Lead, Bear and Crispin are free to follow new lives. Though Crispin’s endurance, courage, faith, and honor have been continually tested, he has learned many lessons from his mentor, Bear. But Bear has been both wounded and weakened by his ordeals, and is tended to by an elderly wise woman, Aude, and her apprentice, Troth. Crispin learns to trust these strangers in spite of their allegiance to unfamiliar gods. When Aude is killed by a fearful, ignorant mob, Crispin rescues Troth, and the three set off for a safer land. They come upon the coastal town of Rye just one week after a brutal attack by the French and Castilians. While working in Rye, Bear continues to regain a measure of his former strength, until he is again hunted by his former friends, members of Ball’s brotherhood. Bear’s makeshift family consisting of Crispin and Troth—set sail for Flanders, only to be shipwrecked on the French coast. A “free” company of English soldiers, whose loyalty is only to their own gain, usurps the bedraggled threesome. Their leader, Richard Dudley, has his eye on treasure and inflicts the same atrocities on a French town that his countrymen are still reeling from in Rye. In order to loot the treasures of the local church, Dudley enlists the diminutive Troth to gain entrance through a drain, and Bear is held hostage. They rescue bear and set off for iceland.
11146567	/m/02r1kzw	No Love For Johnnie	Wilfred Fienburgh			 Stylistically the novel belongs to the genre associated with John Osborne, John Braine, Shelagh Delaney and other realist writers who were to find their voices in the new wave of British "verismo" art forms. The narrative allows the reader to examine the internal conflicts that Johnnie Byrne negotiates as he attempts to find some merit in his desultory existence. Under scrutiny are his relationships with his cold, politically driven wife, Alice, whose own politics are a point of contention for Johnnie. His neighbour, Mary and the young woman, Pauline illuminate Byrne's darker aspects. As a piece of literature it may be considered light weight but re-readings will reveal a tight structure and a credible analysis of the way powerful individuals, the makers of social change, are paradoxically vulnerable cyphers in a world where they too may be ill-served by cupidity. Even though the weak ending of his relationship with a much younger woman may seem cliched and trite by twenty-first century standards, it is handled with a certain amount of legerdemain and irony so that it escapes being trite. There is a sense that Byrne lands on his feet by his very own inaction in political matters. By the novels' end, it is clear that Byrne himself has failed to influence his own life. and appears to be a pawn at the mercy of events around him.
11146606	/m/02r1k_k	Venusberg	Anthony Powell			 Dissatisfied with life and love in London, Lushington, a journalist, secures a posting in the Baltic and sets sail. Before he even reaches the new country, onboard ship he has met and become thoroughly entangled with many of the characters who will affect his immediate future, including Ortrud Mavrin, the Russian counts, Scherbatcheff and Bobel, and Baroness Puckler. Once in the Baltic, Lushington finds himself sharing accommodations with the other party involved in the love triangle that first provoked him into leaving England, one Da Costa. Lushington is soon thoroughly involved in personal and political intrigues, meeting various diplomats, representatives of the State Police, the intrusive valet, Pope (whose name ironically recalls the role played by the Pope in the Tannhäuser legend), the American diplomat Curtis Cortney–even Frau Mavrin's little child who "looks like his father, curiously enough." Melancholy, shyness and embarrassment dominate the novel, suffusing even those scenes involving sudden violence with a sense of bemused, slightly detached sadness. Lushington's eventual return to England is set against a continued background of misunderstanding and social ineptitude which make clear that Powell has not simply been satirizing how things happen "on the Continent."
11147304	/m/02r1lkf	The Brick Moon	Edward Everett Hale	1869		 "The Brick Moon" is written as if it were a journal. It describes the construction and launch into orbit of a sphere, 200 ft. in diameter, built of bricks. It is intended as a navigational aid, but is accidentally launched with people aboard. They survive, and so the story also provides the first known fictional description of a space station.
11147653	/m/02r1lyg	The Program		2004-08-31	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The work is part of a series following the character Tim Rackley, a member of the United States Marshals Service, and opens with a suicide in the La Brea Tar Pits. Rackley must rescue the daughter of a Hollywood producer from a dangerous mind control cult, by infiltrating the group. Charismatic leader TD Betters had created his own society based on self-help tenets, and Rackley must navigate through it without getting pulled in himself. The novel describes a fictional large group awareness training called "The Program", In the novel, the seminar leader had "married two cult models", which one of the protagonists describes as a blend of the "psychotherapeutic cult", and the "self-improvement cult". The character then tells his friend that "The Program", is similar to a combination of the Sullivanians and Lifespring. Werner Erhard is quoted, prior to the opening of the prologue.
11147696	/m/02r1lzv	A Hope in the Unseen	Ron Suskind	1998-06	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 At Ballou Senior High, a school besieged by violence in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Like most inner-city kids, they know that any special attention in a place this dangerous can make you a target of violence. But Cedric Jennings will not swallow his pride, and with unwavering support from his mother, he studies and strives as if his life depends on it—and it does. The summer after his junior year, at a program for minorities at MIT, he gets a fleeting glimpse of life outside, a glimpse that turns into a face-on challenge one year later: acceptance into Brown University, an Ivy League school. At Brown, finding himself far behind most of the other freshmen, Cedric must manage a bewildering array of intellectual and social challenges. Cedric had hoped that at college he would finally find a place to fit in, but he discovers he has little in common with either the white students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds, or the middle-class blacks. Having traveled too far to turn back, Cedric is left to rely on his faith, his intelligence, and his determination to keep alive his hope in the unseen—a future of acceptance and reward that he struggles, each day, to envision.
11151851	/m/04t3qlz	Somewhere in Time	Richard Matheson	1975-02-24	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Richard Collier is a 36-year-old screenwriter who has been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and has decided, after a coin flip, to spend his last days hanging around the Hotel del Coronado. Most of the novel represents a private journal he is continually updating throughout the story. He becomes obsessed with the photograph of a famous stage actress, Elise McKenna, who performed at the hotel in the 1890s. Through research, he learns that she never married, that she had an overprotective manager named William Fawcett Robinson, and that she seemed to have had a brief affair with a mysterious man while staying at this hotel in 1896. The more Richard learns, the more he becomes convinced that it is his destiny to travel back in time and become that mysterious man. Through research (see below), he develops a method of time travel that involves using his mind to transport himself into the past. After much struggle, he succeeds. At first, he experiences feelings of disorientation and constantly worries that he'll be drawn back to the present, but soon the feelings dissipate. He is unsure what to say to Elise when he finally does meet her, but to his surprise she immediately asks, "Is it you?" (She later explains that two psychics told her she would meet a mysterious man at that exact time and place.) Without telling her where (or, rather, when) he comes from, he pursues a relationship with her, while struggling to adapt himself to the conventions of the time. Inexplicably, his daily headaches are gone, and he believes that his memory of having come from the future will ultimately disappear. But Robinson, who assumes that Richard is simply after Elise's wealth, hires two men to abduct Richard and leave him in a shed while Elise departs on a train. Richard manages to escape and make his way back to the hotel, where he finds that Elise never left. They go to a hotel room and passionately make love. In the middle of the night, Richard leaves the room and bumps into Robinson. After a brief physical struggle, Richard quickly runs back into the room, and he casually picks a coin out of his pocket. Realizing too late that it is a 1970s coin, the sight of it pushes him back to the present. At the end of the book, we find out that Richard died soon after. A doctor claims that the time-traveling experience occurred only in Richard's mind, the desperate fantasy of a dying man, but Richard's brother, who has chosen to publish the journal, is not completely convinced.
11152989	/m/02r1th5	Mister B. Gone	Clive Barker	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story begins by immediately breaking the fourth wall, telling the reader to "Burn this book!" It is revealed that the narrator is some sort of presence trapped within the novel. The presence understands that the reader isn't going to burn the book without hearing some sort of story, and so it begins to tell its tale. The narrator reveals himself as a lesser demon named Jakabok Botch, who lived a traumatized childhood in Hell, especially due to his brutish, physically abusive demon of a father. To prevent himself from losing his mind, Jakabok decides to write violent, hate-filled papers in which he commits torture and patricide. Eventually, his mother comes across these papers, and confronts Jakabok, telling him that she wishes he was never born. She commands that he burn the papers immediately, and Jakabok reluctantly obeys. While watching the papers burn, Jakabok passes out and lands face down in the fire. His father either fails to notice or simply ignores his son's anguish, choosing to beat his mother instead. Jakabok is later dragged from the flames by his father, severely burnt and disfigured. Fearing further abuse, Jakabok seizes a knife and flees, eventually coming across a peculiar sight: raw steak and beer, hanging as though it is on a fishing wire. The sight causes Jakabok's pursuing father to forget about inflicting pain on his son, approaching the free meal. It is revealed that the steak and beer is hanging from fishing wire, and Jakabok and his father are caught in the trap. They are "reeled" out of Hell. While ascending, Jakabok's father threatens and curses his son as Jakabok starts cutting away at his father's net, attempting to make it so his father, Pappy Gatmuss, will fall to his death (for if Gatmuss and Jakabok is brought to wherever it is they are being dragged, Gatmuss will kill Jakabok for sure.) Seeing Jakabok attempt to kill him, Gatmuss tries to play for sympathy, lying about his love for his son in order to gain pity. As they breach the first circle of hell, they see the crack they are being dragged into, which causes Gatmuss to panic and become hysteric (he seems to fear the light.) He struggles in his nets, which causes the already weakened ropes to snap, and Jakabok's father fatally falls back into Hell while Jakabok is dragged into the realm of the living. Emerging, Jakabok finds himself in the 14th century, under the captivity of a corrupt priest and his partners. They begin to "judge Jakabok's worth", when he decides to run off into the forest. He approaches a young girl - one of the partners' daughters - in the midst of unholy ground, which is covered in demonic gore. He instantly falls in love, and asks if she would like to run off with him. She defies him, and so he smacks her face into the burning cauldron which she is working by. The priests' partners, who had been chasing him, see the girl and are distracted as Jakabok runs off. Jakabok then encounters a couple in the grass. Jakabok is forced to kill the hostile male counterpart, taking his clothes. He wanders into a crowd trying to blend in as a peasant, but his inhuman feet give his disguise away. As the crowd approaches to massacre him, a pair of soldiers decide to take him away to be judged by an Archbishop. While being escorted away, one of the men kills the other. After horrendously slaughtering the crowd, the man reveals himself to Jakabok - now referred to as "Mister B." - as a powerful demon known as Quitoon. Quitoon and Mister B. head off, and for the next one hundred years cause a great deal of calamity in the countryside. Eventually, the two find themselves in disagreement of each other, and separate after Quitoon threatens Jakabok. Jakabok takes refuge in the German town of Mainz, where he believes Quitoon has headed to, in order to reconcile his differences. He stumbles across Johannes Gutenberg and his company - including the Archbishop and Quitoon - who claims to possess a secret so powerful that it could rock the foundations of even Heaven and Hell. The secret turns out to be the first printing press, over which a large battle soon erupts between the celestial and the infernal. Gutenberg's wife is revealed to be an angel. Jakabok is wounded and passes out. When he comes to, he discovers the conflict has ended. Jakabok enters a room in which he sees the angels and demons conversing over the secret, where the Archbishop reveals himself to be a demon. They spot Jakabok, and argue over how to keep him silent about the secret. Instead of destroying him, they turn his very essence into words, and embed him onto paper. At this point, Jakabok - after several persuading attempts throughout the story - threatens the reader one final time to burn the book and set him free. After realizing that the reader is heartless and cold, he gives up on asking. He decides to stop telling the story, and instead chooses to wait for another person to open the book and obey his demands to set the book ablaze. After all, he concludes, "words know how to wait."
11157599	/m/02r1_08	My Perfect Life	Dyan Sheldon		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story centers on Lola's best friend, Ella. School elections for student body president are being held at Dellwood. Lola wants to run against Carla Santini but can't because she hasn't been class representative for one term. So instead Lola enters Ella and Sam to be candidates and run against Carla.
11159547	/m/02r21cc	Halo: Contact Harvest			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Humanity has spread across the galaxy, and the outer colony "Harvest" is one of the most remote. Although Harvest itself is only one-third the size of Earth, its fertile surface serves as the breadbasket for the other colonies. The United Nations Space Command Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) notices strange disappearances of human ships around Harvest, and assumes that Insurrectionists are attacking the vessels. The ONI pulls Staff Sergeants Avery Johnson and Nolan Byrne from the frontlines of the civil war to raise a militia to protect Harvest. Meanwhile, it is revealed that the disappearances are due to an alien Kig-Yar vessel intercepting the ships in their search for relics left by the Forerunners, an ancient race sacred to the Kig-Yar and other members of the Covenant. Members of the vessel are shocked to discover that their instruments indicates hundreds of thousands of Forerunner relics on the planet of Harvest. A Covenant Unggoy Deacon named Dadab is alarmed when he realizes the Kig-Yar shipmistress intends to steal a portion of the relics for herself, starting with relics leaving the planet on a human cargo ship. The ship is actually a trap set by the humans, with Johnson and Byrne onboard. Johnson and Byrne kill several of the Covenant boarding party when they enter the cargo ship, which is later destroyed by a methane explosion. Dadab and his Huragok friend, Lighter than Some, escape the blast and are picked up by a Covenant ship crewed by Jiralhanae. These agents, led by their chieftain Maccabeus, have been ordered to confirm the presence of the relics; despite the reservations of his nephew, Tartarus, Maccabeus agrees to parley with the humans on Harvest. In the midst of the meeting in Harvest's gardens, the Covenant begin a firefight and the peace talks are shattered. On the Covenant holy city of High Charity, two San 'Shyuum, the Minister of Fortitude and the Vice-Minister of Tranquility, plot to take the place of the three Prophet Hierarchs currently leading the Covenant. They visit the old, supposedly senile Philologist for blessings and advice, seeking a third San 'Shyuum to help them usurp the throne. As Tranquility and Fortitude are meeting with the Philologist, the "Oracle", a Forerunner A.I. named Mendicant Bias, suddenly awakens from eons of dormancy. Mendicant Bias informs the San 'Shyuum that the "Forerunner artifacts" found at Harvest are actually the A.I.'s "makers", living Forerunners—meaning that the humans themselves are the descendants of the Covenant's gods, and that all the Covenant's writings are false. The Minister of Fortitude realizes that the truth must never be revealed, as this revelation would tear the Covenant apart. Instead, Fortitude, Tranquility, and the Philologist plot to quickly take the throne so they can exterminate the "reclaimers". Back on Harvest, Johnson and his squad of militia are heavily out-manned and out-gunned. Maccabeus is ordered to "glass" the planet from space, but disobeys and launches a ground assault in an effort to recover the "relics". The human militia tries to keep the aliens busy while evacuating the civilians from the planet; this requires Johnson and his team to board an orbital platform controlled by Dadab and his troops. Tartarus challenges Maccabeus for control of the Jiralhanae pack, killing his uncle and becoming the next leader. Lighter than Some is killed by Tartarus' troops, and Dadab goes off to kill those he believes are responsible. As his weapon only has one more shot left, Dadab searches for Tartarus, who is fighting Johnson. Dadab destroys Tartarus' shield, and the enraged Brute kills the deacon. Wallace Jenkins, a young militia member that had lost his family in the battle, attempts to finish Tartarus off, but the alien escapes. The human civilians and survivors of Harvest successfully evacuate the planet on hundreds of freighters, while on High Charity, the Minister of Fortitude, Tranquility, and The Philologist become the new Prophet Hierarchs. They take the names Truth, Regret, and Mercy, declaring a new age for the Covenant has begun, and that the humans must be annihilated for their crimes.
11165436	/m/02r2728	Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith	James H. Billington	1980		 The book takes its name from Dostoevsky's The Possessed, and it attempts to investigate the passion for revolutionary change which developed strongly in Central Europe and Russia starting with the French Revolution of 1789. Unlike many other histories of revolutions and revolutionaries Billington does not focus on events and social causes leading to popular uprisings. Instead he follows a sometimes almost invisible thread of incendiary ideas sometimes transferred via occult societies, but all having the common genesis in the motto of the French Revolution: "Liberté, égalité, fraternité". In Billington's historiography he presents the second and third terms as reactions to and expansions of the more rudimentary and susceptible to egoism liberty. He describes how the idea of brotherhood was inherited from secret and occult societies such as the freemasons and became an inflammatory idea which led to the Paris Commune but then was extinguished as far as popular revolutions went (until it resurfaced as national socialism in 1920s' Germany). Instead the idea of egality would become the fuel for socialism and communism. Billington equates the two schools of thought, that both while working toward establishing these mutual goals together, are socially opposed in outside appearance. Both working toward this goal of a secular humanist society that is both egalitarian and utilitarian in their own respective way (one promoting individualism, the other collectivism). These two social power factions being founded by the two thinkers Proudhon and Marx. Proudhon being the social and secularist republican (anti-monarchist) individualist and Marx the socialist anarchist (communism) collectivist.
11166324	/m/02r27mt	Little Green Men: A Novel	Christopher Buckley	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 John O. Banion is a well-known pundit, who hosts a popular Sunday-morning television show (similar to Meet the Press). One morning, Banion grills the president of the United States on issues surrounding NASA. Shortly after, while enjoying a game of golf, Banion is abducted by what he believes are aliens and taken to their lab and probed. When he is returned, Banion is a changed man. He sets about trying to convince his friends in the Washington elite that the alien threat is real, but he is met with skepticism and derision. His marriage begins to fall apart and his friends abandon him. Banion starts to doubt himself, but is soon abducted a second time. When he returns from this abduction he completely abandons his old life and redevotes all his energy to pressuring Congress and the White House to investigate the alien threat. In fact, Banion was not abducted by aliens at all. Rather, he was abducted by Majestic, a government agency so secret that not even the president knew it existed. The purpose of Majestic was to occasionally make U.S. citizens believe they had been abducted by aliens. The abductees helped spread paranoia that was crucial to sustain public support for NASA's funding levels. When Majestic saw that Banion was critical of these funding levels, a Majestic agent authorized the abduction. However, the abduction of a well-known public figure caused problems within Majestic. Normally, they abducted slightly crazy people because, while helping "spread the word", nobody would take them too seriously. In an attempt to cover up the error, the leader of Majestic attempts to have Banion sentenced to death. As the truth about Majestic is discovered, the agency is ultimately forced to disband and the charges against Banion are dropped, although his life as a "Beltway insider" is ruined.
11175304	/m/02r2lph	Winter of Fire		1993	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Elsha is a teenager living in a bleak, cold future where world-wide cloud cover has permanently blocked out the sun. Humans have split into two classes - the Chosen and the Quelled, of which Elsha is the latter. The Quelled are doomed to spend their lives in servitude to the Chosen, mining "firestones" - the only means of warmth on the planet. The Firelord is the leader of the Chosen, said to be a great and powerful man. A rebellious girl, Elsha causes trouble for herself - even going so far as being considered for execution - until she is met by a Chosen man named Amasai, Steward of the Firelord, and given the highest position available to a woman - Handmaiden to the Firelord. On her journeys with the Firelord, Elsha meets Teraj, later revealed to be the Firelord's son, with whom Elsha forms a romantic relationship. Elsha uses her unlikely position to fight the stigma and oppression of her people, eventually inheriting the title for herself after the Firelord's unexpected death and changing the course of the planet's history for the better. It is implied Elsha marries Teraj. *Out of Print*
11177251	/m/02r2ngm	The White Lioness	Henning Mankell	1993	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Apart from a prologue following the formation of the Boer nationalist group Broederbond in 1918, the story takes place in 1992. The plot follows two parallel patterns, one during late apartheid South Africa where incumbent president F.W. de Klerk, leader of the Afrikaner minority which is on the brink of losing power to the African majority under the leadership of the ANC, about to end 44 years of suppression by the Broederbond rule. Simultaneously, detective chief inspector Kurt Wallander is investigating a case of a missing female Methodist real-estate agent outside Ystad. Upon the eventual recovery of her body, as well as the discovery of a black cut-off finger at the crime scene, detective Wallander realizes the case has deep roots in the history and current development in South Africa, where an extremist cell of the Broederbond is about to orchestrate the assassination of Nelson Mandela, wishing to plunge the country into a long and devastating civil war. Mankell, who himself is deeply interested in questions concerning South Africa and its history and who resides in the country part-time, released the book in 1993 during the reign of the National Party and the Afrikaner rule.
11177296	/m/02r2nk3	The Man Who Smiled	Henning Mankell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After killing a man in the line of duty (in The White Lioness), Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself spiralling into an alcohol-fuelled depression. He has just decided to leave the police when an old friend, Sten Torstensson, approaches him to secretly investigate the recent death of his father in a car accident. At first Kurt dismisses his friend's suspicions as unlikely, when Sten is found dead, murdered with no doubt, in exactly the same manner as a Norwegian businessman shortly before. Against his previous judgement, Kurt returns to work to investigate what he is convinced is a case of double murder.
11177331	/m/02r2nmj	The Fifth Woman	Henning Mankell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A sadistic serial killer has been preying on men, beginning with a retired car salesman whose interests appear to be limited to bird watching and poetry and whose body was discovered in a punji stick pit and a flower shop manager, found starved and garrotted in the woods. Wallander soon realises both men have a past record of violence towards women, and after another man is drowned in a lake, he goes on the hunt for an avenging angel...
11177345	/m/02r2nn6	One Step Behind	Henning Mankell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Two young women and one young man, inexplicably dressed as the nobility of Sweden did during the reign of Gustavus III, are found dead, all slain with a single bullet, their bodies half consumed by animals in the wilderness. Wallander is horrified when he makes a connection between the crime and his close friend Svedberg, and after the latter is found savagely murdered in his own apartment, the tormented detective finds himself up against a deranged, merciless killer who remains just one step ahead of him.
11177584	/m/02r2nzl	End Games	Michael Dibdin	2007-07-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Aurelio Zen is posted to remote Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot. And beneath the surface of a tight-knit, traditional community he discovers that violent forces are at work. There has been a brutal murder and Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence, to uncover the truth, but his assignment is complicated by another secret which has drawn strangers from the other side of the world - a hunt for ancient buried treasure, launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing his bizarre and deadly obsession.
11178265	/m/02r2pzs	Black Man	Richard Morgan	2007-05-17	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Carl Marsalis is a genetic variant known as a 'Thirteen', characterized by high aggression and low sociability. Bred to serve in a military capacity, Thirteens were later confined on reservations or exiled to Mars. Carl, having won by lottery the right to return from Mars, works covertly, tracking down renegade Thirteens. The novel follows Carl's attempts to apprehend a Mars escapee and uncover the forces shielding his quarry.
11178422	/m/02r2q48	Not in the Flesh	Ruth Rendell	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury - a human hand. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton shroud. The post mortem can not reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue is a crack in one of the dead man's ribs. Although it covers a relatively short period of time, the police computer stores a long list of missing persons. Men, women and children disappear at an alarming rate, something like 500 every day nationwide. So Wexford knows he is going to have a job on his hands to identify the corpse. And then, only about twenty yards away from the woodland burial site, in the cellar of a disused cottage, another body is found. The detection skills of Wexford, Burden and the other investigating officers of the Kingsmarkham Police Force are tested to the utmost to discover whether the murders are connected and to track down whoever is responsible.
11180524	/m/02r2rrk	Dark Fire	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 When Darius, the leader of a group of Carpathian musicians, first sees the new mechanic hired to work on the band's touring vehicles, he is astonished to see the red color of her hair. It has been centuries since he last saw colors or even felt emotions. Although the mechanic Tempest Trine needs the job, she quickly realizes that in touring with Darius, she's bitten off more than she can chew. Tempest has always felt different, apart from others. But from the moment his arms close around her, enveloping her in a sorcerer's spell, Darius seems to understand her unique gifts. But does his kiss offer the love and belonging she seeks, or a danger more potent than anything she has ever known?
11182556	/m/02r2tg6	The Starship Trap		1993-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 While traveling to an important diplomatic meeting, the USS Enterprise is attacked by a Klingon warship. Managing to secure a truce, Kirk discovers the Klingon captain thought he was gaining revenge for vanishing Klingon ships. Kirk and his crew soon learn that ships from all over known space are vanishing. They race to stop the phenomenon before interstellar war breaks out.
11185657	/m/02r2xyn	The Baker's Boy				 The Baker's Boy begins with the rape of Queen Arinalda, the queen of Castle Harvell, by a man called Baralis. During the night, Baralis tastes three bloods (his own, the queen's and his dead servant's, Lusk). At the same time, a wiseman by the name of Bevlin watches a meteorite split into two pieces, one red and one white. The story moves forward twelve years and many important characters are introduced, as well as the prophecy which presides within the whole story. Firstly, King Lesketh is shot by a poisonous arrow, planned by both Maybor and Baralis in order to go to war. Secondly, Jack, a mere baker's boy, is hired as a "blind scribe" for Baralis. Also, Morad's prophecy is first mentioned by Bevlin. Bevlin sends a knight, Tawl on a quest to "Find a needle in a haystack." Tawl's quest is to find a boy who is "twelve-summers old" and "unusual," though Bevlin has nothing else for Tawl to go on. The story moves forward five years. At Castle Harvell, there is a stalemate, caused by Baralis, that has been for the past five years. The king's health has deteriorated, and Jack has begun to learn to read what he has written. He goes to the kitchens to bake loaves but falls asleep. The loaves are burnt and Jack, finding out, passes out, but is later woken up by another assistant and finds that the loaves are just right. He runs away from the castle in fear of Baralis. Melliandra, a daughter of Maybor, is due to marry Prince Kylock for her father's own ambition. She also runs away from the castle thinking that she could get away from the prince. Eventually she and Jack meet up and begin to journey together. Tawl has been caught in Rorn and tortured by the archbishop for one year. He is released and followed as he finds out about a place called Larn. There he receives information on where to find the boy he seeks, yet he must pay a high price for this.
11186819	/m/02r2zww	The Liars	Henry Arthur Jones	1897		 Lady Jessica Nepean is fond of flirtation, not so much because she is dissatisfied with her husband, Gilbert, as because it flatters her vanity to keep other men dangling just on the edge of proposal. At the houseparty of her sister, Lady Rosamund Tatton, her flirtation with Edward Falkner, a recently returned South African hero, is the theme of conversation. Everyone insists that Sir Christopher Deering (who had socially stood sponsor for Falkner) must reason him out of his infatuation for Lady Jessica before her husband realizes what she does. The women of the party also attempt to reason with Lady Jessica. Both attempts, however, are foredoomed. Falkner is desperately in love with Lady Jessica, as only a lonely and serious man can be. Lady Jessica is enjoying his ardor immensely, and still believes she can end it with a word. Business calls Gilbert Nepean away, so when the houseparty breaks up Lady Jessica keeps an appointment to have dinner with Falkner at the inn where he is staying. Her husband's brother, George accidentally comes upon her there and, putting the worst possible construction on it, feels himself bound to wire Gilbert to return at once. Lady Jessica happens to see Rosamund and Freddie rowing down the river, and manages to get her sister into the inn. In hopes to forestall George they write Gilbert a letter asking him to call at Lady Rosamund's town house the next morning for an explanation. About the time Gilbert is due, most of the other members of the houseparty turn up at Lady Rosamund's on some pretext or other. When Gilbert arrives, he is met with a most amazing barrage of lies. To complicate the situation, he has already seen a member of the houseparty on his way from the station, and by a chance remark of hers recognizes these subsequent explanations as lies. Finally when Lady Jessica sees that they are hopelessly involved, she bids Falkner tell the truth. By this time she imagines herself as much in love with him as he with her and is ready to run away with him. Sir Christopher, however, is determined that his friend shall not sacrifice his brilliant career for a shallow woman. He manages to reconcile Lady Jessica and her husband by the simple process of blaming Gilbert for the whole affair. "In future," Sir Christopher advises, "flirt with your wife yourself if you don't want some other man to do it."
11197114	/m/02r3bnh	Shenzhen	Guy Delisle		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 Delisle had already been to China in Nanjing. He is deployed to Shenzhen as part of an outsourcing project, where he will spend three months in the Great Wall Hotel. Unlike in Hong Kong, there are not many bilingual Chinese so he has language problems during his stay, including with the interpreters at work. Often he has to recourse to drawing or pointing to communicate. Among his experiences of life in Shenzhen include a visit to a Chinese dentist to cure a toothache, but after seeing the unhygienic conditions of the clinic, he is relieved to find out it is just a case of mesialization. Since the main leisure activity in Shenzhen is shopping, Delisle tries to read books, works for L'Association's Lapin magazine, and buys Chinese artbooks (drawings by children, Wang Chi Yun, Hu Buo Zhong). He realizes that the Spirou that he liked as a child is no longer funny. An allegory he applies to the Chinese rural exodus is the Divine Comedy with the Chinese countryside as the Inferno, the USA as the Paradiso and the big Chinese cities, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong as intermediate rings. He finds a copy of Théodore Poussin. His Chinese-speaking acquaintances bring him to try Chinese food. He finds Canton and Hong Kong more interesting than Shenzhen. The only tourist attraction he visits in the new city is the World Windows, since his Chinese friends are not interested in Splendid China. He spends a Christmas dinner with a Chinese animator who, while a fan of Rembrandt has only a black-and-white photo of Bathsheba at Her Bath. There is less political commentary than in his later Pyongyang comic.
11197817	/m/02r3c7d	Blood Secret	Kathryn Lasky	2004-08-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Fourteen-year-old Jerry Luna refuses to speak after her mother's disappearance. Living at her great-great-aunt Constanza's house, she discovers a trunk and is transported into the lives of her Jewish ancestors living in Spain in the years before the Spanish Inquisition and in Spanish America.
11197888	/m/02r3c9t	The House of the Arrow	A. E. W. Mason	1924	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 When Boris Waberski, brother-in-law of the wealthy widow Mrs. Harlowe, attempts to talk her English solicitors into advancing him money on his expectations as her heir, he is ignored. Unknown to Waberski, he has been disinherited in favour of Betty Harlowe, the niece of Mrs. Harlowe's late husband. But when Mrs. Harlowe dies suddenly and Waberski accuses Betty of murder, junior partner Jim Frobisher is sent to the estate to find out what's really going on.
11200223	/m/02r3fhz	Little Brother	Allan Baillie		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It follows a young boy, separated from his elder brother whilst attempting to flee the terror of the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It provides an insight into the general plight of refugees using the specific instance of this horrible experience as a backdrop. Muong Vithy is the main character of Little Brother. Vithy has worked for a year in the Big Paddy, with his big brother Mang. Their sister, Sorei, and their mother and father are gone. They run away, trying to escape from the soldiers, the Khmer Rouge. They manage to get away, but not for long. Mang has advice for getting away: "Follow the lines... to the border." Vithy is puzzled about the advice. What lines? Which border? Suddenly they are separated as they run for their life and Vithy is left alone in the forest. The soldiers leave him, no doubt pursuing Mang. Vithy forages for food that night and starts traveling to Cambodia's border. As he is traveling beside the road he sees soldiers - not the Khmer Rouge. He finds himself on the outskirts of the now deserted Phnom Penh, finds a little gold leaf and meets a boy (real name Ang), the King. Vithy stays in the King's City and fixes a motor for him. When they are working for their meals the King hides Vithy in a truck, and gives him the gold leaf as payment for the motor and some water. The truck travels very near Angkor. Vithy jumps off and walks for a few hours. Then, he finds himself face to face with a young boy, though much older than himself, on a bicycle and bribes the boy with the gold leaf The King gives him. The boy says it is too little but lets him build a bicycle in his graveyard of bicycles. Will Vithy make it to the border on his struggle to find his older brother?
11208362	/m/02r3qn5	But'n'Ben A-Go-Go	Matthew Fitt		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set in the year 2090, the book depicts a future world where global warming has caused sea level to rise considerably. The Highlands of Scotland are the only unsubmerged part of Britain - the Highlands now being known as the Drylands. Damage to the ozone layer has resulted in much higher levels of UV light and so sunburn and skin cancer are serious issues - most people do not venture outside unless entirely necessary, and carry high factor suncream and anti-cancer kits. Most of the world's population were wiped out in "God's flood"; the survivors live in collections of floating oil-platform-like city structures, known as parishes. The story takes place around the seas and drylands that were once Scotland - initially Port, a collection of parishes (named after towns around Scotland) attached to what was once Greenock by underwater cables. The Population of Port are watched constantly by a totalitarian government; there are class divides in the parishes (there is an underclass of Danish refugees living in many of the lower levels); the climate of Earth is now inhospitable. In addition to these problems, Senga, a new strain of HIV infects much of the population. There is no cure, and the entire population is infected with the Mowdy virus (similar to HIV) and are dependent on government issued medication to suppress Senga. Senga also becomes active if individuals engage in sex - reproduction is performed using laboratory techniques, and only virtual sex is possible. Anyone who develops Senga is put into isolation for the virus to run its course - these people are kistit - entombed in capsules in huge hospitals. Victim's thoughts are visualised by thoctscreens on each kist.
11209757	/m/02r3rvb	Florence of Arabia	Christopher Buckley	2004	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The wife of the ambassador of the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Wasabia gets drunk, steals her husband's car and drives out of the compound. When pulled over by police, she desperately phones her friend Florence Farfaletti, the "Deputy to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs," begging for asylum to avoid a harsh punishment. Florence is unable to arrange asylum. The wife is taken back to Wasabia and beheaded for her crime. In anger over her friend's loss, Florence drafts a proposal to introduce a women's television network in the relatively liberal Matar. The state department rejects the proposal, and reassigns Florence to an obscure posting outside the country. To Florence's surprise, a mysterious government employee, identified only as "Uncle Sam," representing an unknown agency, notifies Florence that her proposal has been accepted and agrees to fund the mission. Florence arrives in Matar and creates a women's television network that is broadcast into neighboring Wasabia. The network airs shows like "One Thousand and One Mornings," which feature empowered female characters who nettle their oppressors and make fun of men. The programming is effective, eventually causing the women of Matar to stage an uprising. Florence is thrown in jail, but ultimately is rescued and returns to the United States. Back in the United States, Florence discovers that her operation was not funded by the U.S. government at all, but rather by the Waldorf Group, a private equity firm which wanted to prevent extremism in Wasabia to help secure the flow of profits. Florence is exasperated to have been working for bankers all along, but glad that her work improved the status of women's rights in Wasabia. An ex-president, who is on the board of the Waldorf Group, tells her, "One way or the other, Florence, we're all working for investment bankers."
11217561	/m/02r3znr	A Cure for a Cuckold	John Webster			 The house of Woodroff, and English merchant and justice of the peace, is celebrating the wedding of Woodroff's daughter Annabel with her suitor Bonvile. Two of the wedding guests, Lessingham and Clare, open the play in conversation about the wedding. Lessingham, who is in love with Clare, tries to use the occasion to further his own suit; but Clare is withdrawn and taciturn. She leaves him alone, then sends him a curt and cryptic message that reads: ::Prove all thy friends, find out the best and nearest; ::Kill for my sake the friend that loves thee dearest. Lessingham is appalled at this; but his passion for Clare is so intense that he feels compelled to obey Clare's dictates to win her love. When other wedding guests and friends reproach Lessingham for his preoccupation, he confesses that he needs a friend to second him in a duel &mdash; a friend who will not only support him morally, but fight and perhaps die with him. Lessingham's professed friends quickly drop away with a variety of excuses, till only one is left: it is Bonvile, the groom. Without hesitation, Bonvile delays his wedding night to accompany Lessingham to the "field of honor" &mdash; so proving himself to be the "best and nearest" friend that Lessingham must kill. Since duelling is illegal in England, Lessingham and Bonvile leave immediately for Calais, as was customary at the time. Annabel is distressed to find that her groom has left without a word; she sends a servant after him, and then follows herself. In the nearby woods, Rochfield, a younger son left destitute by the strictures of primogeniture, has decided to turn thief; he encounters Annabel, his first intended victim, and tries to rob her of her wedding necklace and bracelets. These, however, are locked onto her; as he fumbles with them in trying to remove them, Annabel grabs his sword. Yet because he is a gentlemanly thief who does not threaten her virtue, she returns his sword and promises to give him the monetary value of her jewelry, if he returns with her to her house. Since his career as a thief is not promising well, Rochfield agrees. True to her word, Annabel gives Rochfield twenty gold pieces, and introduces him as a friend of the groom. Justice Woodroff is gathering investors for a trading voyage he's planning, and Annabel maneuvers Rochfield into investing his twenty gold pieces in the venture. Broke again and having nothing to lose, Rochfield enlists in the venture personally. The voyage turns out to be brief but eventful: when not long out of port, the ship is attacked by "three Spanish men-of-war." The captain and master are killed &mdash; but Rochfield takes command and leads the crew in an effective resistance; they even capture one of the Spanish ships, and return to England with a lucrative prize. From a desperate would-be thief, Rochfield has suddenly become a hero flush with new wealth. On the beach at Calais, Lessingham reveals that Bonvile is his intended opponent. First surprised, then angered, Bonvile dismisses Lessingham's friendship; he suggests that Lessingham may want Annabel for himself, this being his true motive for the duel. This break in their friendship paradoxically negates the premise of the duel. Rather than fighting to the death as friends, the two men return to England separately, as enemies. When Lessingham confronts Clare again, she tells him that he has completely misunderstood her meaning. Clare confesses that she was madly and hopelessly in love with Bonvile; with his marriage, she was deeply despondent. Clare had thought that Lessingham would recognize her, Clare, and his dearest friend, and therefore his correct victim. Once the five passionate young people, Annabel, Bonvile, Clare, Lessingham, and Rochfield, are all under the same roof, they involve themselves in a tangle of misunderstandings and jealousies &mdash; until wise old Woodroff manages to get them altogether and straighten them out at the end of the play. In the subplot, a sailor named Compass returns home after four years at sea &mdash; to find that his wife Urse, believing him dead, has borne an illegitimate child, a son now a year old. Compass not only forgives her, but wants to be acknowledged as the child's father. In Compass's laissez-faire attitude, the true father has actually done the sailor a service in begetting him a child. This brings Compass into conflict with the boy's biological father, a merchant named Franckford. (Franckford is Woodroff's brother-in-law, and the link between the two plots.) Since Franckford's marriage (with Woodroff's sister Luce) is barren, Urse's baby is his only heir. Franckford has been paying the costs of the child's upkeep, and insists on his parental rights. The two men almost go to law over the issue (allowing for some satire on lawyers in the process), before Justice Woodroff, in a sort of mock-trial in a tavern, rules that the baby does not belong to either of the men, but to Urse, his mother. Compass and Urse renew their vows in the final scene, to make a new start as a family. The easy amorality of the subplot distressed Victorian critics like Swinburne and Gosse. Modern readers may tend to take the opposite approach, and judge the main plot's ethic of chastity, honor, and duelling far less humane and palatable than Compass's live-and-let-live ethos.
11220762	/m/02r421d	Dark Demon	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Natalya first meets Vikirnoff in a forest while hunting a different vampire, who has help with him. They attempt to kill the vampire, and meet each other, Vikirnoff knowing that Natalya is his life mate. While hunting the "Troll King", the two battle enemies, each other, and make love repeatedly. Between the beautiful sessions of lovemaking, Natalya strives to find out about the compulsion that has brought her to the mountains. With some help from Vikirnoff, they make it to the icy caves where it was rumored Xavier had resided. They try to find a knife to get a book of spells that Soren, Natalya's father, has hidden away.
11223463	/m/02r45ws	Dark Reflections	Samuel R. Delany	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dark Reflections tells the story of Arnold Hawley, a gay, African-American poet who lives most of his life in New York City. The novel is divided into three sections, each illustrating a period in Arnold's life. Where most novels would start in youth and move towards old age, Dark Reflections begins, instead, with Arnold between the ages of 52 and 68, then moves backwards to his middle 30's, and finally recounts his early college days.
11223832	/m/02r46cl	Dark Secret	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Rafael De La Cruz has spent centuries hunting vampires with his brothers, and with each passing year his capacity to feel emotions has grown weaker and weaker until finally there's barely been a memory left-until only sheer willpower keeps him from turning into the very abomination he hunts. But it'll take more than will to keep him away from the woman who is meant to be his and his alone… For five years, rancher Colby Jansen has been the sole protector of her younger half-siblings, and with fierce determination and work she has kept her family together and the ranch operational. Now, the De La Cruz brothers are threatening that stability. They claim that her siblings belong with their father's family, not with her. Colby vows to fight them-especially the cold and arrogant Rafael De La Cruz. But Rafael is after more than her family-he wants Colby and will not let anything stand between them. After ages of loneliness, the raw desire to possess her overwhelms his very soul, driving him to claim her as his life mate,though she has nothing to do with him. When Colby first meets Nicolas De La Cruz, he frightens her but his brother, Rafael De La Cruz, disturbs her. She feels an unknown connection with him.
11229997	/m/02r4dtj	Fools Crow	James Welch	1986	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in 1870 in the lives of the southern Blackfeet people. The main character, White Man's Dog, joins his friend Fast Horse in a night-time raid against the Crows. In the first few chapters, White Man's Dog is portrayed as weak and powerless compared to the others. Because of that, he visits the medicine man, Mik-Api to get rid of the bad spirits, to become more powerful, and to obtain good medicine to further better himself. Yellow Kidney appoints White Man's Dog to lead the other young warriors in stealing a herd of horses. White Man's Dog is at first a little scared that he has been chosen, but he sings his warrior songs to gain courage. As they drive the horses away from the village, a scout appears. White Man's Dog rushes in and kills the scout before the alarm can be raised. Fast Horse foolishly shouts out and awakens the village and the Crows begin searching for the intruders. As Yellow Kidney attempts to steal the buffalo runners (biggest and fastest horses) he is seen. He does whatever he has to, to stay hidden. Yellow Kidney hides in a lodge where he finds a number of apparently sleeping figures. When he hears his pursuers outside, he hides beneath the robes (sleeping bag) of a young girl. Pressed against her naked and feverish body, he becomes aroused and has strokes her breasts and vagina before having sex with the girl before he realizes that she and her companions are dead of a disease called White Scab. As he tries to escape, Yellow Kidney is shot in the thigh and captured. As punishment for his crime, the Crows cut off his fingers before tying him to a horse and sending him out of the camp into a driving snowstorm. White Man's dog returns to his tribe where he gains respect for his success in the raid. Feeling responsible for Yellow Kidney’s loss because he did not reveal the full contents of a recurrent prophetic dream, he begins to provide Yellow Kidney's family with food and supplies. After some time, Yellow Kidney returns to the camp and tells the story of Fast Horse's foolishness. Shamed by his actions, Fast Horse leaves the tribe and joins Owl Child and his band of renegades in killing the encroaching Napikwans (white people). During the time he was missing, Yellow Kidney's wife, Heavy Shield Woman, makes a vow that should Yellow Kidney return, she will be the Medicine Woman at the Sun Dance. This is an unusual request as "...most bands did not like to have a woman declare herself for this role; if she failed, it would bring dishonor on them and disfavor from Sun Chief himself..." (p 44), and upon Yellow Kidney's return, White Man's Dog is sent to obtain consent from the other bands of Pikunis. After his return, he marries Red Paint, the daughter of Heavy Shield Woman and Yellow Kidney. While at the Sun Dance, White Man's Dog gains his first spirit animal, by releasing Wolverine from a trap. He also partakes in a ceremony in which he cuts his breasts open and implants pegs attached to a medicine pole. He dances around the pole until the ropes snap and he passes out. He does this to purify himself from feeling sexual desire for his father's third wife, Kills Close to the Lake. He has a dream where he finds her along a stream, naked, and they confront each other about their sexual tension. She leaves with him a white stone the size of the finger. He wakes up to find this rock beside him. Towards the end of the ceremony, Kills Close to the Lake tells him she sacrificed her finger to pure herself of the same sexual desires. Red Paint becomes pregnant and they decide to name the child "Sleep Bringer". The name Sleep Bringer derives from a Butterfly which Red Paint saw at the exact moment she was starting to think she was pregnant. White Man's Dog earns his name, Fools Crow, after he goes back to the Crow tribe and is able to scalp their chief, Bull Shield. Rumors spread that he had used his good medicine to confuse the Crows, hence the name Fools Crow. In his second dream, Fools Crow is ordered by the raven to kill a mountain man who has been hunting animals for fun and leaving their bodies to rot. In the culture of Pikunis, this is seen as a heinous act. Fools Crow uses Red Paint as bait, but then Hunter realizes this. Fools Crow knows this, and rushes in trying to kill him, but the Napikwan puts up a tough fight. In the end, Fools Crow is able to kill the foe, but he is injured by a spear wound. However, the scalp that he gets is of a wolf. Fools Crow is slated to take over Dry Bones and learn the Beaver medicine. Yellow Kidney decides to leave the tribe, seeing how distant the whole world seems to him after his injury. While out alone, he decides to go back and name Red Paint's offspring, Yellow Calf. He accepts the facts of what has happened to him and realizes that he is able to do things fast without the use of his fingers. However, before he can go back, he is shot by a Napikwan who had vowed to avenge the farmer, whose family was terrorized by Owl Child's gang. Running Fisher is caught having an affair with his father's third wife, Kills Close to the Lake. Rides-at-the-Door's second wife alerts him of this, and he banishes Running Fisher to another tribe and sends Kills Close to the Lake back to her family. However, he is not strict nor very vengeful. Red Paint's younger brother contracts rabies after being bitten by a rabid wolf. Fools Crow has to cure him, because Mik-Api is away, healing another tribe. Fools Crow has transferred roles from a warrior to a healer. This shows that he has learned to fill whatever role society needs of him. Fast Horse comes upon Yellow Kidney's body and decides to bring it back to the tribe. However, he does not return to Owl Child's gang and decides to go north and live alone. The book ends with Fools Crow visiting the Feather Woman, the wife of Morning Star and mother of Star Boy. Fools Crow watches a "yellow hide" and notices that images are forming within the hide. The yellow hide reveals four different visions to Fools Crow. One is the vision of the destruction of Heavy Runner's camp from the seizers (white soldiers), the second is a vision of Indian children attending a boarding school with their hair cut off, the third is a vision of the spreading of smallpox within his camp and the number of dead bodies stacked on a platform, and the last is a vision of lifeless land all around the region, not one animal can be found in the vision. Feather Woman tells Fools Crow to prepare the Pikunis for what is to come and to pass on the traditions of the Pikunis. She tells him that he would do much good for the Pikunis and that he will pass on the stories. Fools Crow returns to his tribe, and is unable to prevent the disaster he foresaw. Fools Crow meets Native Americans being forced to migrate north and accepts the fact that the Napikwans are swarming over the land. They must change their way of living, including changing their diet to fish. The book concludes with Welch detailing the culture of the Pikunis represented by the animals, showing that although their lifestyles were changed, their culture still lives on.
11233691	/m/02r4jfd	The Bomb				 Sorry Rinamu is a 16-year old boy who lives on Bikini Atoll. In the first section of the book, Sorry and the natives live through World War II under constant threat by the Japanese soldiers occupying the island. However, one day, American forces attack the island, defeating the Japanese soldiers, and freeing the island. Later, World War II ends. However, an American battleship lands in the lagoon, and a few days later, an American commander, one of which represents Operation Crossroads, delivers the news to the natives that Bikini has been chosen as a site for nuclear tests due to "ideal" conditions, and asks the villagers to move. Most agree, but Abram, Sorry's uncle, insists that the villagers should not submit so easily to white men, yet they still do. The villagers vote to move away from the island. The American tells the natives that the atoll will be returned in a few years, but Abram and Sorry believe that he is lying. As scientists arrive on the atoll, it is being converted to a temporary military base. Abram comes up with a plan to stop the nuclear tests by sailing into the test area with a red canoe, but he dies of a heart attack before he could carry out the plan. When Sorry decides that he should do it, the natives believe that he is insane, yet he is accompanied by Tara Malolo, a local teacher, and his maternal grandfather, Jonjen. They carry out their plan, but the bombers fail to notice the canoe, and/or the light glinting of the tin they brought with them and they are killed by the blast. The natives return in 1969 and stay for ten years, but doctors notice a radioactive element left over by the blast, Cesium 137, and the natives leave the island again. pt:A Bomba (livro)
11238494	/m/02r4qkd	Forest of the Pygmies	Isabel Allende	2004	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story opens with the main characters Nadia Santos and Alexander Cold being on safari in Kenya and accompanying Alex's grandmother Kate, who works as a reporter for the magazine International Geographic. At a certain point in their stopover, they visit a market where a seer tells them to stay close to each other if they want to avoid danger. Soon afterwards, the team is joined by a Roman Catholic missionary who introduces himself as Brother Fernando. The clergyman asks the crew to fly him to Ngoubé, a village situated deep inside the African jungle. Two of his friars, who had previously moved into the village to look after the heavily disadvantaged population, have recently sent him a letter telling him about the villagers' disastrous conditions and their constantly worsening situation. Their deteriorating state is due to the two rulers of the village, who, alongside the mysterious and powerful sorcerer Sombe, cruelly torment the villagers and are not fond at all of the friars' presence. Despite some arguments arising between Brother Fernando and the seductive African pilot Angie Ninderera, Kate and the others agree to come along with the priest and help him find the friars. Angie reluctantly agrees to fly the crew to the village's whereabouts. Upon landing, Angie's plane gets broken by crashing onto a small beach, therefore isolating them from the outside world. Several days later, the crew is found by some fishermen who grudgingly guide them to the entrance of a forest which, according to them, belongs to a very dangerous and tyrannical king called Kosongo. He brutally usurped the command of Ngoubé some time earlier - causing the former queen Nana-Asanta to disappear - and terrorizes its population, availing himself of his two assistants, a mysterious sorcerer called Sombe and the commandant Maurice Mbembelé, with both of them being notorious for their cruelty and cold-bloodedness. Once the crew has arrived in the village and been taken to Kosonge, they masquerade as reporters who want to interview Kosongo about his allegedly world-renowned wisdom and supernatural skills. Kosongo finally orders the crew to spend the rest of the day in an unfurnished hut surrounded by soldiers watching them. Over the course of the following nights, Nadia explorates the village on her own and discovers that the villagers' wives are forced to spend the nights imprisoned in a couple of barracks. After some difficulties in terms of communication and understanding, she manages to gain the women's support, who too suffer from the horrible tyranny, having been separated from their husbands and sons. The commandant Mbembelé actually forces those ones to become brainwashed soldiers and obliges them to spy on their own families. Alex and Nadia eventually escape into the forest to search for the pygmies and convince them of rebelling against Kosongo and Mbembelé. They furthermore come across the village's former queen Nana-Asante, who agrees to support them as well. The pygmies eventually leave the wood and turn up in the village. One of their leaders challenges Mbembelé to a duel. Thanks to his agility and rapidity he finally exhausts the commandant, who is subsequently chased away by Alexander himself in the shape of a giant black jaguar. Shortly after Mbembelé's getaway, the terrifying sorcerer Sombe shows up in the village, his terrifying appearance smashing the villagers' resistance at once. Nadia, who has meanwhile stayed in the forest, arrives in the village in the shape of a white eagle, accompanied by Nana-Asante and many other people equipped with magical powers whom Nadia and Alex had met during their former journeys, each of them being narrated in the two previous volumes of Allende's trilogy. At the end of the battle, when Sombe has to face his imminent failure, Angie rips his mask off, and Mbembelé, Sombe and Kosongo turn out to be the same person. The man is thrown into a waterhole full of crocodiles. Brother Fernando decides to stay in the village and help the population restore their existence. Angie Ninderera succeeds in contacting a friend of hers, who promises to pick up the crew by means of a helicopter. The epilogue is set two years after Alex's and Nadia's adventure in the African jungle. Alex has graduated from school and begun to study medicine at Berkeley. He has finally managed to persuade Nadia into attending university in the United States. Alex has just flown to New York City, where Kate and Nadia share an apartment. Alex wants to take Nadia to a graduation ceremony. Kate has written three books about their adventures which she now shows to her grandson.
11239846	/m/02r4rzs	Blast Off at Woomera	Hugh Walters	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Strange objects have been sighted on the moon near Mons Pico and suspecting a communist plot the British Government hurriedly plans a mission to photograph the domes from above closer range. The rocket is not large enough to send a man - enter Chris Godfrey, a 17-year old science whizz with an interest in rocketry and crucially less than 5 feet tall ! The launch site is Woomera Rocket Research Station in South Australia but there may be a Soviet traitor amongst the ground crew... The book pre-dates the first actual usage of satellite imagery by two years, and manned spaceflight by four years.
11243908	/m/02r4x6x	Death Star	Michael Reaves		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Death Star is an enormous space station capable of destroying an entire planet, constructed under the orders of the ruler of the then new Empire, Emperor Palpatine. Aware of the possibility of rebellion, Palpatine knew that the Death Star would instill fear throughout the galaxy, as well as give him an invaluable weapon in destroying his enemies. The architect of the project was Wilhuff Tarkin. The novel depicts the many politics and hidden agendas behind the massive project, from its construction up until its final destruction.
11244251	/m/02r4xn9	The Domes of Pico	Hugh Walters	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 To the lunar domes previously photographed in Blast Off at Woomera and situated near Mons Pico has been added a cone emitting powerful neutron radiation which is causing havoc to the Earth's nuclear power stations. The diminutive Chris Godfrey has the job of piloting a British rocket to plant a homing beacon next to the cone to enable a strike by American rockets carrying Soviet nuclear warheads...
11244666	/m/02r4y7l	The Diamond as Big as the Ritz	F. Scott Fitzgerald		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 John T. Unger, a teenager from the Mississippi River town of Hades, is sent to a private boarding school near Boston. During the summer he visits the homes of his classmates, the majority of whom are from wealthy families. In the middle of his sophomore year, a young man named Percy Washington is placed in Unger's dorm. He rarely speaks, and when he does, it is only to Unger. Percy invites Unger to his home for the summer, the location of which he only states as being "in the West". Unger accepts. During the train ride Percy boasts that his father is "by far the richest man in the world", and, when challenged by Unger, boasts that his father "has a diamond bigger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel." Unger later learns that he is in Montana, in the "only five square miles of land in the country that's never been surveyed," and Percy's boasts turn out to be true. Percy's ancestry traces back to both George Washington and Lord Baltimore. His grandfather, Fitz-Norman Culpepper Washington, decided to leave Virginia and head west with his slaves to enter the sheep and cattle ranching business. However, on his claim he discovered not only a diamond mine, but a mountain consisting of one solid diamond. Washington immediately finds himself in a quandary; the value of diamonds multiplied by the sheer number available for him to mine would make him the richest man ever to live, but, based on the economic law of supply, the sheer number of diamonds, if ever discovered by outsiders, would drive their value to near zero, thus making him a pauper. He immediately hatches a plan, whereby his brother reads to the African-American slaves a fabricated proclamation by General Nathan Bedford Forrest that the South had defeated the North in the American Civil War, thus keeping them in perpetual slavery. Washington travels the world selling only a few diamonds at a time, in order to avoid flooding the market, but enough to give him enormous wealth. The Washington family goes to appalling lengths in order to keep their diamond a secret. Airmen who stray into the area are shot down, captured, and kept in a dungeon. People who visit are killed and their parents told that they have succumbed to an illness while staying there. John falls in love with Percy's sister, Kismine, who accidentally lets slip that he too will be killed before he's allowed to leave. That night, aeroplanes launch an attack on the property, being told by an escaped Italian language teacher. Percy's father offers a bribe to God, "the greatest diamond in the world", but God refuses. John, Kismine, and Jasmine, another sister, escape while Percy and his mother and father choose to blow up the mountain rather than leave it in the hands of others. Penniless, the three survivors are left to ponder their fate.
11247103	/m/02r4_g2	Baby Is Three	Theodore Sturgeon	1950	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story describes the creation and "bleshing" of a new life form, Homo Gestalt, on Earth. It is formed by the symbiosis of four or more humans with paranormal abilities. One person, the "head" of the organism, assembles and directs the various parts through telepathy, another is the "hands" of the organism, able to move and change physical objects by telekinesis, the third and fourth persons are twins able to teleport at will, and the fifth person of the organism is a silent Down Syndrome baby with a brain like a computer and who acts as the "brain". "Bleshing" is how the organism describes its own completeness and functionality. The plot follows the psychiatric evaluation of a fifteen-year-old boy named Gerry, who believes he has murdered his caregiver Miss Kew for endangering the "bleshing" of his new organism. fr:Cristal qui songe
11250291	/m/02r5251	The Free Lunch	Spider Robinson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Twelve-year-old Mike is looking for a safe place to escape from the real world. Like Peter Pan, he seeks a fantastic sanctuary where he can stay without worry. Tomas Immega's amusement park, Dreamland, provides a completely immersive theme park experience, and seems to be just what Mike is looking for. Soon after escaping the guest tracking system, Mike meets Annie, a midget known as the Mother Elf, who has eked out a living in Dreamland for thirteen years caring for the park. Annie takes Mike in, but all is not well in Dreamland... The story is full of references to other works: * "Strawberry Fields Forever" * Callahan's Crosstime Saloon * Have Space Suit—Will Travel
11255306	/m/02r57vy	Operation Columbus	Hugh Walters	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Both America and Russia plan manned missions to the Moon to examine the wreckage of the structures destroyed in The Domes of Pico. The American astronaut, Morrison Kant, breaks his leg shortly before takeoff, so Chris Godfrey steps in. Both spacecraft arrive at the same time. Unlike Chris Godfrey, the Russian pilot, Serge Smyslov, is unable to leave his Lunar Rover vehicle and both head for the wrecked domes, leading to a tense standoff... The book predates the first use of a Lunar Rover by 11 years.
11257737	/m/02r5b8b	The Monkey's Raincoat	Robert Crais	1987	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Cole is hired by Ellen Lang to find her missing husband and son and in the end, with Cole and Pike's help, she kills former matador and crime boss Domingo Garcia Duran, the man responsible for her husband's death and her son's kidnapping. The facts behind the events leading to Ellen's husband's involvement with Duran and his death are revealed and her son Perry is restored to her.
11257745	/m/02r5b90	Moon Base One	Hugh Walters	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Thousands of young people are terminally ill as a result of the radiation produced by the lunar structures destroyed in The Domes of Pico. In an attempt to determine whether the fall-out from the domes can have a curative effect on the disease a joint East-West mission is planned under the auspices of the newly formed United Nations EXploration Agency (UNEXA). The mission is commanded by Chris Godfrey, accompanied by American, Morrison 'Morrey' Kant and Russian Serge Smyslov. The 'patient' will be Tony Hale, from Aston near Birmingham (who goes on to feature in the rest of the series). The mission starts well, but is soon in trouble when a supply rocket crashes...
11257813	/m/02r5bd3	Scales of the Serpent	Richard A. Knaak	2007-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This book begins with the attack on the Temple of the Triune by Uldyssian and his followers in the city of Toraja. After destroying the Temple and converting much of the cities populace to his cause, Lilith makes her presence known to Uldyssian, who leaves to confront her. He defeats the demon Gulag at this point by tearing him in two. Astroga (the spider demon) also seeks to attack Uldyssian here, but Lilith sends him away and seals her confrontation with Uldyssian from his sight. A brief fight occurs, during which Lilith reveals that she wants Uldyssian to destroy the Triune and the Temple. While this is happening, the rest of Uldyssian's followers including Mendeln and Serenthia continue to attack the temple, slowed by the statues of Mefis (Mephisto: Lord of Hatred), Dialon (Diablo: Lord of Terror) and Bala (Baal: Lord of destruction) coming to life and attacking them. Rathma communicates with the dragon Trag’oul, revealing he is the Son of Lilith and Inarius, and decides to take a more active role in things despite the fact that it would mean revealing his survival to both his parents. When Uldyssian returns to his followers, he displays astonishing power by keeping the entire temple from collapsing until his followers can escape. He warns the Council Senior of Toraja that he will attack again should the Temple of the Triune grow again in the city. Inarius decides that his power is such that he can now fly again without fear of the Angiris Council discovering Sanctuary, and does so. While he is contemplating Sanctuary's future, he is struck by a familiar sense and realises that his son Rathma is still alive. He doesn't care though, knowing he wouldn't hesitate to treat him any differently than Lilith. While Uldyssian is camping outside Toraja, some of its people come to see him, hoping to learn of the gift. During this time, some Peace Warder's under the disguise of common folk attack Uldyssian. One of the attackers was outside, and is found slain by an arrow shortly afterwards. This is later revealed to be a reanimated Achilios, brought back by Rathma. After speaking to the cities new converts to ensure they understand, they come up with a new name for Uldyssian's followers, "Edyrem", meaning "those who have seen". Serenthia goes to a stream alone to obtain more water for her flask, and unknown to Uldyssian encounters Lilith, who takes possession of her. Astroga has begun to suspect that Lucion is not who he seems to be, and after speaking to his master, Diablo, decides to put his own plan into action. On the journey to Hashir, a malevolent force begins to target Serenthia, but Uldyssian and Mendeln manage to draw its attention away from her by using their power to attack the structure they sense it emanates from. Mendeln meets with Achilios, and decides to tell Uldyssian that he is back. Rathma appears at this point and takes him to Trag’oul, preventing Uldyssian and Serenthia (Lilith) from detecting him, even though they combine their powers in a way they haven’t previously. When they continue their journey they are interrupted by heavy storms, which Serenthia disperses. Astroga takes on the form of the Primus, and has his high priest Arihan attack Uldyssian’s group when they reach Hashir, believing that taking Serenthia as a hostage will allow him to capture Uldyssian. Trag’oul and Rathma explain to Mendeln the history of Sanctuary, that mankind is the offspring of Lilith and Inarius (Rathma being their son). Trag’oul says that when Demons and Angels discover a potential advantage, such as the Nephalem, they fight over it relentlessly, usually resulting in its total destruction. They ask Mendeln to stand with them. Two morlu abduct Serenthia while Uldyssian is talking to the citizens of Hashir, but she quickly reappears and reveals their presence to everyone. When Uldyssian is telepathically attacked by Arihan from the temple, Mendeln appears and takes him to Trag’oul. Arihan, frustrated with the plans failure leaves the morlu and the peace wardens to their fate, returning to the Primus. Needing a scapegoat, Astroga murders Arihan and brings his head to Diablo. Uldyssian grows angry with Rathma and Trag’oul, believing they are corrupting Mendeln, and uses his power to escape. He ends up on mount Arreat, where Rathma appears and takes him to the World Stone. There, Uldyssian tries to use it to give his followers more power, but ends up altering its structure, something Rathma believed was impossible. Upon returning to Trag’oul, they discover that Inarius is active, heading for the world stone. The return Uldyssian to the Jungle to confront Lilith, and they go to mount Arreat to confront Inarius. Inarius overcomes them both easily, and inspects the world stone. Upon discovering the change in its structure, he states that Uldyssian may have condemned them all, hinting that he will decide to destroy Sanctuary and start over. Lilith has seduced Romus, and corrupts him into blindly following her and betraying Uldyssian to her. She kills Romus and attempts to sacrifice Uldyssian and her other corrupted followers to take control of the Edyrem. She fails thanks to Achilios intervening with the spell and freeing Serenthia from her. When Lilith retreats to the temple she finds traces of Astroga in the Primus’s chamber, and realises he had been masquerading as the Primus as well. Astroga confronts her, and they briefly fight. Astroga being the less powerful retreats and decides to form his own followers (this story is described in Moon of the Spider). Lilith decides enough is enough and gathers a huge army, intending to attack the Edyrem from behind and from the main temple. Uldyssian tries to remove Lilith’s taint from her corrupted followers, but is forced to kill them all when the evil within them starts to grow, he vows to make Lilith pay for what she’s done. Achilios decides to speak to Serenthia, but is abducted by an Angel. Rathma and Trag’oul can see no reason for Inarius to do this, and believe another Angel has taken him. They teach Mendeln how to summon spirits, and he summons the dead high priest Malic, offering him revenge against Lilith for information on the main temple. Lilith’s army attacks and she reveals the Thonos, a tentacle creature that attacks from the ground. They are almost overcome until Achilios is sent back to them with arrows that explode on impact. Lilith casts a spell that has the dead from both sides rise and attack the Edyrem, but Mendeln returns and destroys them. Uldyssian accidentally summons Lilith to him, who teleports him into the main temple. Uldyssian defeats Lilith and brings down the temple, leaving her for dead. Rathma enters the temple and finds Lilith dead, not realising it is an illusion Inarius has cast. After he leaves, Inarius enters and confronts a badly injured Lilith, revealing that he has been boosting the power of the Edyrem so they could defeat her. He traps Lilith in a glowing ball and shrinks it down to nothing. He states that her fate is fortunate, compared to what awaits Uldyssian and his followers who in their arrogance, believe themselves to be more than they are. The story continues in third and final installment of the trilogy, The Veiled Prophet.
11258391	/m/02r5c6n	Expedition Venus	Hugh Walters	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 An unmanned probe returning from Venus crashes in the African desert; a Venusian spore on board thrives in its new environment; a grey mould quickly spreading and killing all it touches. An urgent manned mission to Venus is launched from Lunaville, the now permanent Moon base. Chris Godfrey, Morrey Kant, Serge Smyslov, Tony Hale and Pierre a scientist are sent to try and discover what limits the mould's growth in its natural environment. The plan is to collect samples from the Venusian atmosphere but in the end a forced landing is required...
11259604	/m/02r5djz	Love and War	Margaret Weis		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book is a compilation of 10 short stories from various authors taking place in the fictional world of Krynn: 1. "A Good Knight's Tale" by Harold Bakst. Told by a Knight of Solamnia, this is a tale that of a selfish father, Aron, who is overprotective over his daughter, Petal, which ultimately leads to a broken heart. 2. "A Painter's Vision" by Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel. When a passionate artist Seron dies in an accidental fire, his widow Kyra, finds the strength to carry on his memory through a painting. Kyra carries on a strange relationship with a dragon named Tosch, who had befriended her husband before he died. 3. "Hunting Destiny" by Nick O'Donohoe. This is the tale of the undead who haunt Darken Wood, in another of Donohoe's interpretation of an event that took place in the novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. 4. "Hide and Go Seek" by Nancy Varian Berberick. Starts with a captive boy named Keli who is captured by a man named Tigo and a goblin named Staag. No sooner is Tasslehoff Burrfoot captured. They are later rescued by The Companions. 5. "By the Measure" by Richard A. Knaak. 6. "The Exiles" by Paul B. Thompson and Tonya C. Cook. It is the story of Sturm Brightblade's childhood as he and his mother are captured by a ship with guards from an island called Kernaffi. 7. "Heart of Goldmoon" by Laura Hickman and Kate Novak. 8. "Raistlin's Daughter" by Margaret Weis and Dezra Despain. The mysterious tale of the legend of a daughter fathered by the mage, Raistlin Majere. This tale is also reprinted in the novel, The Second Generation. 9. "Silver and Steel" by Kevin Randle. 10. "From the Yearning for War and the War's Ending" by Michael Williams.
11260253	/m/02r5f5l	Mararía				 The novel talks about a traveller - we don’t know much about him - who goes to the village of Femés in Lanzarote; there he’s interested about an old woman, who walks in the shadows at night. She is María, who everybody calls Mararía. Woman, lover or witch, but a myth over all. His interest is fed by the stories that he can listen to the people who live in the village, in which everyone fell in her net in the past.Whenever she loved someone, their relationship ended badly, and everybody in the village thinks she is guilty for their suffering. Now she is an old woman who walks in the dark and endures barking dogs and people’s comments. She is a symbol of purification and self-destruction.
11260902	/m/02r5ft5	Exit Ghost	Philip Roth	2007-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot centers on Zuckerman's return home to New York after eleven years in New England. The purpose of Zuckerman's journey, which he takes the week before the 2004 U.S. presidential election, is for him to undergo a medical procedure that might cure or reduce his incontinence. While in New York, Zuckerman meets Amy Bellette, whom he had last encountered during a visit to the writer E.I. Lonoff's house in December, 1956, as depicted in Roth's novel The Ghost Writer. Zuckerman also agrees to a housing swap with a young writing couple, Billy Davidoff and Jamie Logan, and quickly becomes attracted to Logan. In his hotel room at night, Zuckerman writes a play, He and She, composed of imagined conversations between him and Logan. Through Davidoff and Logan, Zuckerman meets Richard Kliman, a young, brash Harvard graduate who is working on a biography of Lonoff. Kliman was Logan's boyfriend in college. Because of Kliman's zealous interest in a potentially scandalous secret from Lonoff's adolescence, neither Zuckerman nor Bellette wants to help him complete his project. Zuckerman may also be motivated by his own confused feelings about Logan and Kliman. Although critics once considered that Lonoff, deceased and neglected, was modelled partly on the writer Bernard Malamud, he now seems to be based on a number of writers. Henry Roth is a major influence, as becomes clear in Exit Ghost. Roth's biographer is Steven G. Kellman. It is known that Philip Roth has read the later novels of Henry Roth, though some of these remain unpublished. The rationale for Henry Roth is that in his novels published after his death he reveals that he had an incestuous affair with his sister when he was young; it also known that Henry Roth suffered from writer's block for much of his career after publishing Call It Sleep, his only major novel. In Exit Ghost it is revealed that Lonoff also had an incestuous affair with his sister — which led to his writer's block — and the fact that while content to teach in oblivion, he never published again. American politics forms a backdrop to the novel. Zuckerman, Davidoff and Logan watch the results of the 2004 presidential election together. Logan, whose father always voted Republican, was enraged and devastated by the results. The older Zuckerman, though not pleased, was more philosophical and was able to place the results into a more historical context.
11263766	/m/02r5k3f	Diary of a Wimpy Kid	Jeff Kinney	2007-04-01	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 As Greg Heffley is getting ready for middle school, he is teased by his older brother Rodrick Heffley because his mom, Susan Heffley, bought him supplies for school, including a blank red diary,instead of his mom buying him a journal like he asked her to. He has a little brother, Manny who is "spoiled rotten" because he gets everything he wants and also gets away with everything he does wrong, unlike Greg, who gets in trouble for everything he does wrong. His father Frank Heffley does not encourage Greg's way of life - playing video games all day - rather than going outside and playing sports. Greg, during the first day of school, is immediately rejected and is forced to sit with another outcast who lives near Greg, Fregley, from whom Greg tries to keep "a safe distance". He is initially unsure of Rowley Jefferson being able to fit in, and tries to change Rowley, who Greg considers immature. Greg and Rowley decide to participate in wrestling at school, although Greg quits after losing a match against Fregley. On Halloween, Greg and Rowley go trick-or-treating, but are challenged by there of teens who they irritate and enrage and spray them with a fire extinger. The two friends barely escape to safety so they decide to go and stay in Gregs grandmother's house until the teens leave them alone. After getting few presents for Christmas, Greg decides to play a game with Rowley in which Rowley must ride a Big Wheel while Greg tries to knock him off. On one of Greg's tries, the ball gets under the front wheel, which causes Rowley to fall off and break his arm. The next day, a bunch of girls crowd around Rowley so they could feed him. Greg and Rowley decide to enroll in the Safety program in which they walk younger kids to their homes. One day, as Greg is walking the kids by himself,he chases the young children, only after scaring them with a stick with worms on it. A neighbor contacts the school and tells them about Greg's unusual behavior. The principal suspects Rowley, as Greg was wearing Rowley's coat. Rowley is quickly fired. Greg initially wants to tell him it is his fault that he was fired, but doesn't, only to let the truth slip later. This leads to Rowley breaking off his friendship with Greg. Greg tries to befriend Fregley to make Rowley jealous, although he is uncomfortable around Fregley. Resorting to auditioning for the school play (based on The Wizard of Oz) Greg lands the role as a tree, while Patty is cast as Dorothy, the protagonist of the novel. During the show's opening performance, Rodrick unexpectedly brings a camera to film the play. Greg becomes too nervous to sing, confusing the other "trees" who also fail to sing. Patty gets frustrated and angers Greg, who then throws props at Patty, and then everyone gets in the fight, ending the play in chaos. Rowley confronts Greg, which leads to a non-physical fight. The teens return and the younger kids scatter. The teens force Greg and Rowley to eat the "Cheese Touch," a moldy piece of cheese that had been left on the grounds of the school. Greg refuses, dishonestly claiming that he is allergic to cheese and will die if he eats it, thus leaving Rowley to eat it. The other students notice that the Cheese is gone, assuming that someone has destroyed it; however, Greg takes the blame instead of Rowley as he feels pity on him. He and Rowley again become friends and Greg begins to anticipate a relaxing summer of playing video games.
11264071	/m/02r5kk5	Destination Mars	Hugh Walters	1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The first man to pass close to Mars is driven insane by strange 'voices' he hears on his radio. He is unable to record the voices as the Van Allen radiation belts wipe the magnetic tapes clean, so doubt is cast on his account. U.N.E.X.A. (United Nations Exploration Agency) send their crack team (Chris Godfrey, Serge Smyslov, Morrey Kant and Tony Hale) to investigate. After landing on the planet's surface they find traces of an ancient civilisation, but then a disembodied Martian appears and demands its people be transported to Earth, where they will enslave the human race. One-by-one the crew are taken over. This novel introduces the concept of the Ion drive, allowing continuous acceleration of one-fifth g.
11266255	/m/02r5mhd	The Excalibur Alternative	David Weber	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story begins when a 14th-century English army is abducted by aliens of the Galactic Federation to serve as mercenaries on planets where only low-tech weaponry is legal. The aliens are bound by a Galactic Federation law that states that advanced weapons can not be used on primitive worlds. Another Guild had previously abducted a legion from the Roman Empire and used it to obtain victory in many confrontations and therefore increase its commercial empire. Therefore other aliens were inspired to try the same tactics and came to Earth to find their own army to fight for them. As the plot progresses, the English army continues to fight for the aliens, until the Baron in charge of the English is approached by a dragon-like alien under the heel of the Guild Aliens. The dragon-like creature tells the Baron the story of the Federation. The Galactic Federation was originally started over one hundred fifty thousand years ago by 3 races, with membership of the council requiring development of a form of faster-than-light (FTL) drive. Over the course of their long history, the Federation strayed from its values. It now has 22 races on the council (of which only 1 is an original founder) and when it discovers new races it invades them so it can freeze their technological development and force them to become a protectorate. The dragon-like creature is from one of these worlds, saying that the Federation came during his world's nuclear age. The creature says that all the other races are different than humanity because of the rate at which it develops. This is shown when the Guild Alien makes a comment about how humanity would have developed gunpowder in 1000 years from the time he took the English from the 14th century, instead of the 200 years it actually took. The dragon-creature and the Baron eventually succeed in a mutiny and take over the ship, but they decide that they can not go back to Earth because the Federation would find them too fast. The story then moves forward to the 22nd century, on Earth, now under the single Solar government, where humanity has become capable of building vast ships in space and has developed an FTL drive. However the Federation considers their fast development a threat to its stability and has dispatched a fleet to wipe humanity from the universe. As the massive Federation battleships are about to destroy the comparably tiny human ships, even bigger spaceships appear and destroy the Federation ships easily. The rescuers of Earth are the Avalon Empire, the civilisation founded by the English who have grown in numbers and, using the technology found on the captured Guild ship, have advanced far beyond the Federation. For centuries they have prepared and lay in hiding so could return at the moment of Earth's greatest need (just like the sword Excalibur in the legend of King Arthur, which gives rise to the title of the book). The English reveal themselves to Earth and offer an alliance to take on the Federation, but the fight will be far from easy. The Federation has over fifteen hundred worlds, with an average population of 11 billion on each world, while humanity only has the Avalon empire, who has grown to live across 20 some worlds, and Earth. But with the technical superiority of the Avalon empire and a carefully planned series of rebellions on 'protected' worlds in the Federation humanity at least stands a chance.
11266736	/m/02r5myv	Cirie	Mildred Savage	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In this sweeping historical novel of the Russian Revolution, Cirie, clever and beautiful, uses her cool wits and sensuous charm first to make her way among the high nobility of the Romanov world, and then to survive and escape the Revolution that utterly destroys her world. Later in New York during the Great Depression, she is sustained by the survival skills she forged as imperial Russia fell apart. A huge novel of love and deception, chaos and perseverance, in the most shattering upheaval the world has ever known, Cirie is the story of a true 20th century heroine and the times that produced her.
11268029	/m/02r5nzh	Birthright	Richard A. Knaak	2006-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Birthright takes place before the games Diablo and Diablo II take place. It tells the story of Uldyssian ul-Diomed, a farmer whose only remaining family is his brother, Mendeln. Initially the story starts out with some background information. Uldyssian's family falls victims to a plague, which only he and his brother survive. Not too far into the novel, a terrible murder is unearthed in the woods near his home village, Seram. In this time he has already become infatuated with a stranger to the town named Lylia, and he has started to possess eerie powers, like a thunderstorm that left many dead, including the men of the Cathedral of Light who accused him of the murder and were there to arrest him. Uldyssian and Lylia, along with Uldyssian's brother Mendeln, a woman from their village named Serenthia, and a skilled hunter named Achilios, escape under cover of the storm for the nearby forests. Once there, Lylia explains to Uldyssian that his power is a gift and he accepts this, and comes to awaken the same power in Serenthia and Achilios. Not long after their escape, they are set upon by Peace Warders and a priest from the Temple of the Triune, which stands in opposition to the Cathedral of Light, but Uldyssian easily routs them with the help of Lylia and they continue on to her desired destination. Meanwhile, the priest of the Triune who led the attack against Uldyssian--Malic--returns to the Primus of the Triune, Lucion, who tortures him for his failure. The torture ends with Lucion's gifting Malic with a demonic arm and several vicious morlu to aid his second chance at capturing Uldyssian and bringing him back to the main Temple.
11268324	/m/02r5p7f	Doctor Dolittle's Circus	Hugh Lofting	1924	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The doctor needs money to pay off a voyage to Africa, so he joins the circus with the pushmi-pullyu as his attraction. He enlightens a circus owner who cares little for animals, fights against the practice of fox hunting and helps other creatures such as a circus seal and cart horses too old to work.
11268531	/m/02r5pdy	Doctor Dolittle's Caravan	Hugh Lofting	1924	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Pippinella is special in that she possesses what is generally assumed to be an exclusive trait of male canaries: birdsong. Ultimately, Doctor Dolittle creates a "Canary Opera" (using canaries and other bird species as well), based on Pippinella's life story. This opera, jointly composed by both the Doctor and Pippinella, becomes an overwhelming success in London. The novel disrupts the chronological order of the series, with events occurring between Doctor Dolittle's Circus and The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle despite the book's publication between Doctor Dolittle's Zoo and Doctor Dolittle's Garden. This book is the follow-up to Doctor Dolittle's Circus, for the Doctor (at this point in time) is still operating the circus he inherited from the runaway former owner, Albert Blossom. Pippinella's eventual fate, and Doctor Dolittle's final adventures with her, are ultimately revealed in the much later book, Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary.
11269453	/m/02r5qp4	Story for a Black Night				 A 40-year-old man tells a story of his childhood, when he was ten, living with his sister, mother and grandmother. When strangers left a baby with smallpox at the house, the family is affected by the disease.
11270364	/m/02r5ryd	Superstars	Ann Scott	2000-11-19	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This novel, set in Paris, portrays the economically bleak and emotionally taut lives of three roommates craving for artistic recognition and fame. Evolving in the trends of glamorous parties, borderline sex and designer drugs, Louise, the main character, just turned thirty, is facing an identity crisis. Now working as a techno deejay and a producer, she used to be a bass player for rock bands. Entering the world of electronic music and raves, she also became bisexual. Now she's wondering where this is all leading her.
11271578	/m/02r5t_r	Terror by Satellite	Hugh Walters	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Tony Hale, skilled engineer and amateur radio ham, smuggles a home-made transceiver on board an Earth-orbiting satellite during his tour of duty. This proves invaluable as the commander of the satellite, Hendriks, is a megalomaniac and demands to be made 'Dictator of the World'. To back up this demand, he begins destroying swathes of the Earth's surface using a radiation beam. The only secure link between the Earth and the satellite is Tony's radio.
11271800	/m/02r5vcs	Journey to Jupiter	Hugh Walters	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The first manned expedition to Jupiter reaches speeds never experienced before; despite this it takes several months to reach its objective, leading to tensions among the crew, as well as serious vision problems caused by "light slip" A miscalculation in the gravity of Jupiter means that they will not be able to stop in time and will crash into the giant planet. A diversion to the jagged Io offers their only chance of survival.
11272431	/m/02r5w34	A Christian Turn'd Turk	Robert Daborne			 In the play, that Ward converts to Islam in order to marry Voada, a beautiful Turkish woman with whom he has fallen in love. Ward's conversion to Islam (portrayed in dumbshow) is contrasted with the repentance and pardon of Simon Dansiker, the other pirate captain in the play (also shown in dumbshow). Dansiker's reform is complicated by the reluctance of the French merchants he's robbed to accept him&mdash;until he returns to Tunis to apprehend the renegade Jew, Benwash. The unrepentant Ward dies at the end of the play&mdash;though he delivers an anti-Muslim rant that conforms to the prejudices of the play's original audience. (This was a large leap of dramatic license on Daborne's part, since the real Ward would die eleven years after the play was written.)
11273253	/m/02r5x3h	1 Litre of Tears			{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0277ppz": "Non-fiction novel"}	 Aya Kitō was diagnosed with a disease called spinocerebellar degeneration when she was 15 years old. The disease causes the person to lose control over their body, but because the person can retain all mental ability the disease acts as a prison. So in the end she cannot eat, walk or talk. Through family, medical examinations and rehabilitations, and finally succumbing to the disease, Aya must cope with the disease and live on with life until her death at the age of 25. A Litre of Tears is the film version of the drama. A Japanese TV drama, with the same title 1 Litre no Namida, was aired by Fuji TV in 2005 based on the life of Aya. The main character Aya Ikeuchi, played by Erika Sawajiri, depicts a girl with the same disease as Aya Kitō who goes through many of the same problems.
11273341	/m/02r5xbq	The Debt Collector		2007	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 An immortal beauty makes a bargain with a dying hard edged despot. He enters her service and learns of worlds he never knew existed. She guides him through many journeys, where he encounters strange and powerful creatures. He is never sure of her motives and she is never certain he can be trusted. Together they face perils and intrigues and learn each other’s deepest secrets. This emotionally powerful story grabs your attention and never lets go. The story is written in first person as a retrospective. The setting is a mythological world. The novel is 454 pages divided into two volumes.
11273986	/m/02r5yjj	Attack of the Killer Potatoes				 The story tells of several potatoes exposed to chemicals. The chemicals cause the potatoes to rapidly grow in size, become clever and sapient, and begin an attack on humanity. In essence, the book is a parody of the creature-feature films of the 1950s, combined with the oddball satire of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
11275144	/m/027_djx	The Three Robbers	Tomi Ungerer	1962	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The three robbers are very successful in their exploits, but one day there is a different treasure in the carriage they have stopped. There is only a lonely girl named Tiffany on her way to live with a wicked aunt, so the robbers carry Tiffany off to their hideout. When Tiffany sees all of the treasure the robbers have collected, she asks what it is for, and the robbers have no answer. Later the robbers decide to open an orphanage with their wealth and all uncared children go to live there. In October 2008 Phaidon Press Inc. will release an English language edition of the book.
11278597	/m/02r62sg	The Last Summer	Ann Brashares	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set on Fire Island, and also partly in nearby New York City. Alice, age 21, and Riley, 24, are two sisters. Nearly every summer of their lives, they have shared the same childhood friend, Paul, 24, whose widowed mother owns a Fire Island beach mansion next door to the smaller beach house of the girls and their parents. Paul has been absent for three summers, having been studying and volunteering in California. Alice is smart, graceful and elegant, planning on applying to law school at NYU. Riley is the athletic and adventurous one, having life-guarded on the island since she was fifteen. She is dyslexic and has attended outdoor leadership school in Colorado. Paul is something of a hippie, following in his father's footsteps. He can be moody and is wary of trusting people. During the summer, Alice and Paul start to have feelings outside of friendship for each other. Paul goes to great lengths to hide his feelings about Alice. They both realize they have always loved one another, but now in a different way. Alice even goes as far to give Paul her virginity one night on the beach. They continue sneaking around, hiding their relationship from their families. One night when Alice has gone over to Paul's house to make love, the emergency alarm goes off during the middle of the night. Alice dismisses the alarm as an elderly person needing attention, but it is not so; the person being helicoptered out is her own sister, Riley. It seems Riley is suffering from rheumatic heart disease. Alice is overwhelmed with guilt and a rush of feelings. She suddenly leaves the island without explanation to be with her hospitalized sister and parents, leaving Paul puzzled and hurt. Riley refuses to face the urgency of the situation and insists that her medical condition be kept secret from Paul until she can tell him herself. The following summer, Alice postpones graduate school to work as a groundskeeper and store cashier near the family's Manhattan home, while Riley awaits a donor heart transplant. Alice buys Riley an indoor pool membership, which Riley is grateful for, trying to carry on normally and ignore her medical condition. During a swim, Riley misses an important opportunity to receive a heart transplant. While the rest of her family is upset over this, Riley insists that they stay out of her business, saying that she can take care of herself. Meanwhile Paul, studying philosophy at NYU, is constantly thinking about Alice and his feelings towards her. Still unaware of Riley's condition, he is bitter and angry towards Alice. He even attends an old island acquaintance's wedding with a beautiful date to spite her. Riley finally tells Paul of her medical problems, admitting that she isn't entirely sure she wants a heart transplant. Paul's mother gives him the beach mansion, which he clears out and sells for $3 million. He donates the money to Bellevue Hospital, where his wealthy but wild-living father died long ago. One night back in the city, Alice returns from work to find Riley has died. The funeral is held and Alice and her parents go to Fire Island to spread her ashes. Alice volunteers to tend to the beach house, as the family has decided to sell it. Paul turns up one day, discovering his house has been sold to a new family whose children Alice babysits each morning. The story ends with Alice and Paul having sex and leaving the Island for the first time together; she has decided to apply to NYU school of social work and be with Paul.
11279608	/m/02r640s	Mission to Mercury	Hugh Walters	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The manned expedition to Mercury is complicated by the fact that strong solar radiation makes communication with Earth impossible. U.N.E.X.A. decide that telepathy may be the answer. Telepathic twins Gill and Gail volunteer; one accompanying Chris Godfrey and the crew on the mission; the other remaining on Earth. As they near their objective, Gail notices increasingly disruptive personality changes in the crew caused by the radiation, their only chance of survival is to land on the 'dark' side of the planet; however the near absolute zero conditions lead to massive heat-loss. Can they be rescued before freezing to death... In the same year this book was published, radar observations of Mercury showed that it did not have a synchronous orbit and that the same face was not always in darkness.
11280016	/m/02r64hx	Buddy	Nigel Hinton		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Buddy is a young boy who is often picked on for being poor. He lives with his mum and dad. It all starts when Buddy wants some money for a school trip, he was unable to go on previous school trips because he didn't have the money. When his mum tells him she doesn't have any money to give him, Buddy ends up taking the money from his mum's purse. At the end of the day, his mum finds the money missing and asks Buddy where he put the money, after revealing that he did take the money, his mum said "Like father, like son", as his dad was previously sent to prison for breaking and entering. Before leaving she adds "thief", and leaves Buddy crying. The next day Buddy finds out his mum has left. Four months later, with his mum still missing, he is often called dustman at school often by his teacher and his classmates due to the state of his clothes and his amount of money in his family. In fact, 'The Beast' is just a man with learning difficulties named Ralph James Campbell. Meanwhile, Buddy finds out that his dad has a job and works a night shift, but he refuses to tell Buddy what it is. Buddy feels suspicious. After Buddy has a parents consultation evening with his dad coming in a 'teddy boy' outfit and Buddy feeling embarrassed, his dad goes to work and Buddy is left in the house on his own. When he looks out the window, he thinks the Beast is standing outside the house. He later hears the door bell ring and he finds it is his mum. She takes him for a snack at the snack bar at the Bus station and later gives him the address to the flat she shared with a friend from work and says that he can see her anytime he wants. His dad`s motorbike gets towed. After his dad gets his motorbike back, agio Harley Davidson also known as the 'arley, he takes Buddy for a ride out, he then has a tournament with Buddy on the pinball machine before going to work. Later on in the night, Buddy wakes to find his dad in the bathroom with his hands bleeding. He claims he fell of his Harley however Buddy doesn't believe him. Buddy finds a briefcase behind the door containing jewellery and believes that his dad has stolen it. The next day he convinces his dad to admit that he had been stealing and Buddy starts crying, he asks his dad to stop and his dad tells him he'll try. He also asks him to ring a man about the jewellery who he says is called Mr King. When Mr King comes over to Buddy's house to discuss something with his dad, he hears his dad telling Mr King that he doesn't want a job of stealing anymore however Mr King takes no notice and tells him he will give him till Friday for his hands to get better before they have a meeting at 56 Croxley Street. Buddy decides enough is enough and forms a plan to get Mr King arrested, it involves keeping his dad away from 56 Croxley Street long enough for Mr King to enter 56 (he does this by convincing his mum to go and see his dad). Then, Charmian has to telephone the police and tell them someone is breaking in to 56 and wait for Mr King to get arrested. However, Buddy finds Mr King leaves Croxley Street before the police arrive. Later, his dad arrives on his bike leaving Buddy to find out him and his mum didn't work out. Buddy tells his dad he called the police however Buddy's dad enters 56 to check on the owner of the House (the Beast) who Buddy forgot about, shortly after that the police arrive and go in the house and later come out with Buddy's dad, the briefcase of jewels, and the Beast (known as Ralph). They both enter the car calmly and Ralph has his head in his hands, Buddy isn't sure as he sees his dad put his arm round Ralph. After spending two nights at Julius and Charmian's house Buddy decides to escape to the country to avoid being put in care, he gets supplies from his house including a sleeping bag, and then goes to the bus station and gets on a bus (although originally planning to go to West Axle he then gets off the bus early before it gets dark). By the time he gets off the bus it's dark, he tries to head to a barn but gets stopped by two aggressive dogs. In the end he shelters in the wooden bus stop in his sleeping bag. The next morning, which happens to be his fourteenth birthday, he heads to shelter in 56 Croxley Street and succeeds until the Beast returns after Buddy's dad told the police the truth that he hadn't been in on it. Later, he goes to his mum's friend's house to find he is the main headline in the paper and that he is said to be missing. His mum's friend tells Buddy that his mum and dad are looking for him at his house, he goes there to find them both (his dad was bailed out by his mum). Six months later, Buddy's dad is due on trial, he decides to plead guilty and gets 18 months (a year and a half). He also asks Buddy and his mum to play a Buddy Holly song everyday (The song turns out to be Everyday by Buddy Holly). The lyrics indicate that his dad won't be long and that he still loves them in the end. Buddy's death-klaraerbest Buddy was killed in a plane crash,along with two other members of the group, and the plane driver. Buddy was only at the early age of 22. The plane crashed within minutes of takeoff from the Mason city IA Airport, at around 1 AM CST. The plane had crashed into Iowa. countryside. That was the day Buddy Holly's music died along side with him!
11280558	/m/02r652g	Spaceship to Saturn	Hugh Walters	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The length of the trip to Saturn means that the crew will undergo 'hypothermia' for the duration of the flight, however a massive increase in meteor activity around Saturn threatens to cancel the mission as the computer on Earth will be unable to manoeuvre the craft at such long distances to avoid collisions. The solution - instantaneous telepathy; twins Gill and Gail maintain a telepathic carrier-wave even under hypothermia which can be modulated to carry telemetry. A landing is attempted on Titan but problems arise requiring the ship to be flown through the Cassini division, a narrow gap in the rings of Saturn...
11280590	/m/02r654w	Phoenix And Ashes	Mercedes Lackey	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Phoenix and Ashes is about a girl named Eleanor Robinson and a pilot named Reginald Fenyx. Eleanor's mother died and her father remarried a woman named Alison, who already had two daughters. When her father was killed in the Great War, Alison showed her true nature as an Elemental Master of Earth who practiced the dark blood-fueled arts. Eleanor was bound to the hearth by a fearsome ritual and people forgot all about her. Reginald Fenyx, an aristocrat and an Elemental Master of Air, loved to fly. During the Great War, he enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps, and became known as an air ace. However, he met another Elemental in combat and crashed; he was trapped under rubble for days while dark Earth creatures tormented him. This was particularly torturous because Air (Reginald's Element) is the opposite of Earth. When he was rescued, he was a traumatized and broken man who had abandoned magic. The main plot of the book involves Alison's attempts to marry one of her daughters to Reginald and become nobility. Meanwhile, Eleanor's ability to use Fire magic awakens, with the tutelage of her godmother Sarah and strange beings who visit her in dreams. Reginald appears briefly in another novel in the series, The Serpent's Shadow, which is set a few years before he becomes a pilot in World War I/The Great War. At this time he is an Oxford student and Dr. Maya Witherspoon's future fiancee, Peter Scott, remarks that while Reginald is studying to be a lawyer, the boldness of his personality marked him as a future military man instead.
11280646	/m/02r656y	Bread Givers	Anzia Yezierska		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bread Givers, a Jewish-American female coming-of-age story written by Anzia Yezierska, begins with a 10-year old Sara Smolinsky. Sara lives with her mother, Shenah, her father, Reb, and her three sisters, Bessie, Fania, and Mashah in the Lower East Side tenement of New York City. As the story opens, the Smolinskys are destitute, with the five women struggling for money to simply survive and Reb concerned only with the study of the Jewish sacred texts. The opening chapter depicts the family's financial struggles and the Smolinsky family dynamics. Additionally, this chapter hints at the struggle between Sara, who yearns for American ideals independence, and her father, who clings obsessively to traditional Jewish culture. The following three chapters center on Reb's complete domination of Sara's three sisters as they each fall in love, have their suitors rejected by their father, and end in arranged marriages. These marriages, arranged by Reb for his financial comfort, bring the three daughters great misery. Bessie marries Zalmon the fish-peddler seemingly because she pities his children. Mashah is wedded to Moe Mirsky, a man pretending to be a diamond dealer, but is actually just a middle man. He spends all of his money on showy clothes and lets his family go hungry. Fania ends up marrying a gambler, Abe Schmukler, who buys her affection and shows her off to appear rich. Sara witnesses the devastation her father causes her sisters and vows that she will not follow in their footsteps; she will marry only a man she loves. The next chapters detail the family's further financial misfortune as Reb struggles to understand American business practices and is continually hoodwinked. The tension between Reb and Sara escalates quickly when she is forced to move to a new town and work in her father's store, where he constantly displays his inaptitude for business yet refuses to take advice from his wife and Sara. Eventually, Sara moves back to New York City and decides she wants to become a teacher. While living with her parents, Sara primarily experienced Jewish-American culture. However, her college experience is where she first interacts solely with the predominantly American culture. In order to pay for school and get good grades, Sara must ignore everything else, including her family, to work and study. Slowly and painfully, Sara learns to talk, dress and act like her American peers. She leaves college with her teaching degree and $1,000 which she won in an essay contest. Feeling successful, Sara returns home (only a short distance physically, but light-years apart otherwise) to find her mother fatally ill. After her mother's death, her father remarries only to find his new wife, Mrs. Feinstein, is a gold-digger after his late wife's lodge money. Sara and her sisters, still furious over their father's treatment of them, become enraged at his quick marriage after their mother's death and refuse to help him when his new wife spends all his money and refuses to work. Sara goes back to New York and finds a teaching job. Mrs. Feinstein is not satisfied with Reb's money and wants more from his daughters. She is angry that Sara is avoiding her father, so she writes a nasty letter to the principal of the school where Sara is teaching, Hugo Seelig, in an effort to give her a bad reputation. Instead, the principal sympathizes with Sara and feels Mrs. Feinstein is desperate and pathetic. Sara is relieved and eventually she and Hugo, who is also a Polish-American, start dating. Sara feels she has left her old life completely behind and wants to find a way to give back to the community. While pondering this, she finds her father practically on his deathbed, literally lying in the gutter selling chewing gum. Sara asks her father to come live with her and Hugo. Moses is concerned whether he can share the same roof with Sara. He says he will come if they "promise to keep sacred all that is sacred to [him]." In the end, Sara is still haunted by her father and his old-fashioned culture.
11281629	/m/02r66l7	Nightwood	Djuna Barnes	1936	{"/m/04y41": "Modernism", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nightwood focuses on Robin Vote, a woman in constant search of "secure torment." Robin's story begins in Europe, where she meets, and marries the false Baron Felix Volkbein, who wants nothing more than an heir to carry on his family name and uphold the traditions of old European nobility. The birth of their son, Guido, causes Robin to realize that she does not wish to carry on this life. She moves to America, where she begins a romantic relationship with Nora Flood. The two move to Paris together. But Robin is unable to remain peacefully with Nora. She feels driven by the conflicts of "love and anonymity," and spends her nights away from home, having flings with strangers while Nora waits nervously for her lover's return. During one such night Robin meets Jenny Petherbridge, a widow four times over, who "gains happiness by stealing the joy of others." Jenny turns her attention to stealing Robin away from Nora, and succeeds. In her despair, Nora (like Felix before her) turns to the counsel of Dr. Matthew O'Connor to recover from the loss of Robin. Some time later, Nora has returned to America, and is camping in a forest with her dog when she discovers Robin kneeling before an altar in an abandoned church. Attempting to enter, Nora hits the door jamb, and is knocked unconscious. Robin and the dog frolic on the floor before finally succumbing to sleep.
11286306	/m/02r6bwx	The Mohole Mystery	Hugh Walters	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A drilling project in Dudley in the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom hits a cavern 20 miles beneath the surface of the Earth and detects strange microbes. UNEXA send Russian Serge Smylov down to search for other forms of life in a rocket-propelled capsule but it is damaged when it hits the bottom of the cavern. Then strange creatures start attacking him... The book, under its US title The Mohole Menace, is mentioned in A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
11288579	/m/02r6fgh	Nearly Neptune	Hugh Walters	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book begins by announcing the death of Chris Godfrey and his three fellow astronauts after a fire and apparent break-up of their spacecraft as it approaches the orbit of Neptune as observed from Earth. The crew have however survived but are stranded as their hypothermia equipment is irreparably damaged.
11290580	/m/02r6jc0	The Garden Party	Václav Havel			 The protagonist is Hugo Pludek, who is an average person from a middle-class Czech family. His parents are worried about his future so they arrange an appointment for him with the influential Mr. Kalabis at the garden party of the Liquidation Office. Hugo does not find Kalabis but instead a sequence of absurd encounters starts. All of the functionaries of the Liquidation Office speak in a degenerated, ideological, content-free language, as is expected from their role in the bureaucratic system. Hugo is intelligent and adaptive, therefore is able to adjust his behaviour. He learns to speak platitudinally, using clichés that do not mean anything real and finally becomes the head of the newly created Central Inauguration and Liquidation Committee. As the result, he completely loses his identity. The play ends when Hugo comes home changed so much that his own parents don't recognise him. Parallels may be drawn between Hugo's new behaviour and the behaviour of many among the Czechoslovak population during the Communist era, who chose to conform to the attitudes of the regime that promoted material gain over culture, individuality, and creativity. One may also argue that the protagonist of this play, in pursuit of his career, has become a cliché himself.
11306826	/m/02r72_l	The Tenth City	Patrick Carman	2006-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Alexa goes back to Bridewell to rescue her friend Yipes with Warvold, Armon,Odessa, Murphy, and many others. After the death of Thomas Warvold, Alexa learns that Catherine and Thomas were her parents and her foster parents are Catherine's sister Laura and her husband James Daley. Along this sad, adventurous but still amusing book,Alexa learns to trust in herself and in Elyon.
11307222	/m/02r73mx	Dayworld	Philip José Farmer	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Dayworld is the first in the Dayworld trilogy of science fiction novels by Philip José Farmer. The story is set in a dystopian future in which an overpopulated world solves the problem by allocating people only one day per week. For the rest of the six days they are 'stoned,' a kind of suspended animation. The novels focus on a man, Jeff Caird, who is a daybreaker, someone who lives more than one day a week. He is not like most daybreakers; he belongs to a government defying group called the “Immers”. The Immers are a very large and powerful group that works to create a better government. Not all Immers are daybreakers, so to get messages and information from one day to the next, they have daybreakers, like Jeff, to work in every day. The daybreakers of the Immers assume seven different personalities and seven different jobs. They slip from culture to culture, in seven different worlds. As Jeff goes day to day, he runs into problems while working as an Immer and as a daybreaker, and must cover his tracks, all while trying to keep up with his seven different lives, families, friends, and jobs. Eventually the stress makes Jeff unstable, and the Immers must dispose of him to keep the rest of the Immers safe. Jeff, wanting to live, tries to escape the Immers, but there are undercover Immers in every job, area, and government level. Jeff is caught and put in a sort of insane asylum, classified with “multiple personality disorder”, for the legal time before he can be considered “incurable” and killed. But Jeff has an escape plan…
11307531	/m/02r7408	The Cry Of The Icemark	Stuart Hill	2005	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Polypontian Empire has conquered much of the known world in recent years, much thanks to its fearsome general, Scipio Bellorum. Bellorum has finally decided to invade his small neighbor to the north, the Icemark. After King Redrought sacrifices his entire army to stop the invasion, Thirrin, his daughter, is left alone to save the nation. Thirrin, having just made an alliance with the werewolves by saving their king, must now seek out more allies, as the Icemark and the werewolves alone cannot defeat the Empire. Although they have the support of their vassal, the Hypolitan, more are needed. Thirrin, with the aid of a young warlock, Oskan Witch's Son, must attempt to win over the Vampire King and Queen. They know this will be difficult because of the centuries of distrust and hatred between the two races. Because the Empire hates all that is unscientific and irrational, the Vampires know that if the Icemark falls, the Empire will wipe out the Vampires next. With this in mind, the Vampires reluctantly agree to send aid. On the advice of King Grishmak of the werewolves, Thirrin and Oskan travel to the Hub of the World, to try to ally themselves with the Snow Leopards, led by Tharaman-Thar, who live there. The leopards are as tall as warhorses at the shoulder, Tharaman-Thar even bigger, and are fearsome fighters. With the threat of the Empire again winning the argument, the Snow Leopards choose to fight with Thirrin. The combined forces of the Icemark, the Snow Leopards and the Hypolitan clash with Bellorum's forces. The werewolves have not yet arrived, as a muster of their nation takes several months. The Vampires have also not arrived, as they are stubborn, and are not reliable. While the allies fight brilliantly, the Empire's sheer numbers begin to turn the tide. As the final battle is being waged, which the allies believe will surely end in their destruction, the Werewolves, the Vampires, and many of the creatures from the Land-of-the-Ghosts finally arrive. When they arrive, Thirin is overjoyed. They find a new strength within them to fight the Polypontion Army and defeat them. They use everything in their power to defeat them, and they succeed. In addition, the forces of the Holly King and the Oak King of the nearby forest join the war, as they have made themselves allies with Thirrin. With their numbers, and the sheer terror they inflict, the battle turns into a rout. The vampires, And werewolves pursuit the enemy and kills most of the enemy's army.
11308546	/m/02r74yv	First Contact?	Hugh Walters	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Radio signals begin flooding Earth from the vicinity of Uranus and two ships, each with a crew of four are sent to investigate. The signals are traced to an alien spaceship on one of the moons of Uranus. The ships land and all but two enter the alien vessel to converse with the apparently friendly humanoid alien, Vari. One of the two remaining crewmen believe the alien to be malevolent and determines to destroy it...
11309398	/m/02r7651	Passage to Pluto	Hugh Walters	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Chris Godfrey is now deputy-director of UNEXA; he sends his former crew-mates to investigate unexplained perturbations in the orbit of Pluto. They discover that not only are their fuel tanks holed, but a super-dense wandering planet is on course to decimate the Solar system... This was the last of Hugh Walter's 'exploration' novels as his realistic approach could not envisage travel further afield.
11311051	/m/02r78cx	Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake	Jennifer Allison	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When Gilda Joyce earns a scholarship to attend Our Ladies of the Sorrows, a private high school for Catholic girls, she discovers that a girl named Dolores Lambert had drowned in the lake near the school a few years ago. In this novel, self-proclaimed psychic investigator Gilda Joyce investigates the mysterious happenings that seems to connect with the drowning of Dolores. Some people say that Dolores walked blindfolded onto a sheet of cracked ice that was overlapping the lake on the eve of Thanksgiving, while trying to get to her house. However, Gilda suspects that someone might have intentionally pushed Dolores into the depths of the lake or made her walk on it. Gilda investigates the drowning of Dolores, and approaches to the truth after eavesdropping, and sneaking into places she was not supposed to be. Eventually, she discovers that Danielle Menory, Priscilla Barkley, and Nikki Grimaldi were members of The Ladies of the Lake, a secret society. In her initiation ceremony, Dolores to find her way to the ruins (where they had the secret club) and she went on the lake and drowned. The girls are eventually punished and Gilda's mother breaks up with her boyfriend Brad. The only downfall is that Gilda'S scholarship was taken away from Our Lady of Sorrows for having failing grades, although it is implied that she was kicked out for revealing that three of the school's most prized citizens were involved in murder, even if it was an accident.
11312498	/m/02r7bdy	Darker Than You Think	Jack Williamson	1948	{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins with the announcement from an ethnological expedition to Mongolia that among humanity exist people who can turn themselves into animals. However, the expedition's dies of sudden mysterious seizure in the midst of a press conference, just as he was about to provide detailed proof of his assertions. His friend, journalist Will Barbee, suspects his alleged colleague, the fascinating April Bell. Determined to discover the truth, but also attracted by Bell, Barbee finds out that in a past era a war took place in which Homo sapiens defeated werewolves (Homo lycanthropus) - who can, in fact, also turn themselves into various other animals other than wolves. The surviving werewolves continued to live hidden among humans and await the coming of the Child of the Night who will lead them to recover the supremacy. In the secret history depicted in the book, Medieval witch hunting was not a manifestation of blind fanaticism but a means of protecting Homo Sapiens against the resurgence of this very real threat; conversely, modern skepticism and rational disbelief in the very existence of witches were deliberately fostered by these hidden werewolves, as a way of gaining a breathing spell and preparing for their counter-attack. While becoming aware of all this, Barbee is faced with the issue of discovering precisely who and what he is himself, and on which side should he range himself in the coming titanic struggle.
11316598	/m/02r7gwz	The Gum Thief	Douglas Coupland	2007-09-25	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Roger and Bethany The primary plot of this novel involves two characters, Roger and Bethany, employees of a Staples in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The two characters come from very different walks of life. Roger, a middle-aged alcoholic, is coping with an ugly divorce from his wife and the loss of access to his child. Bethany, a goth girl, is dealing with coming of age and working in what Coupland referred to in his 1991 novel Generation X as a McJob. What brings the characters together is a journal that Roger has decided to keep. In the journal, Roger begins to discuss his issues and his pressing thoughts, including a novel he would like to write called “Glove Pond." Bethany finds this journal, and writes a letter to Roger. In the letter, Bethany says they should continue to write to each other, but to pretend that they know nothing about each other outside of the letters themselves at work. After writing letters back and forth, Roger and Bethany strike up a friendship in the letters. Soon, more letters are included in the book from other characters, for instance, from Bethany’s mother, DeeDee, who went out on a date with Roger, and also went to high school with him. Other letters include a letter from Roger’s wife, emails from employees within the store, and more. Interspersed within the main text is the novel within the novel: Glove Pond. As Roger begins to write Glove Pond, different characters in the novel respond to his writing in their letters. The Glove Pond sections are interspersed within the other letters. Glove Pond Excerpts of Glove Pond are scattered throughout the book, presumably appearing as Roger writes them. Glove Pond is a corruption of Edward Albee’s 1962 play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It concerns the two main characters, a couple named Steve and Gloria, and their dinner guests, Steve's younger colleague, Kyle Falconcrest, and his wife Brittany, a surgeon. Roger writes in his diary that Glove Pond was supposed to contain characters such as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton—drunk movie stars who engage in witty repartee. This is a fairly accurate description of Steve and Gloria, who are, in fact, a pair of broke alcoholics living in a dusty, neglected home. The plot of Glove Pond follows the dinner interactions between these characters. A reference to Glove Pond is seen in a short scene in the final episode of the TV adaptation of Coupland's jPod. The character of Jim Jarlewski (Alan Thicke) is seen reading a hardcover copy of Glove Pond by Roger Thorpe.
11320385	/m/02r7lbq	The Veiled Prophet	Richard A. Knaak	2007-09-25	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Veiled Prophet continues Uldyssian's journey toward Kehjan City where his goal is to seek the Mage Clans as allies against Inarius and his Cathedral of Light. The book lays the ground for upcoming Diablo games and novels. Uldyssian plans to reach Kehjan City to convince the Mage Clans to ally against the Prophet (Inarius) and his Cathedral of Light servants. However, things get complicated. Uldyssian renamed his followers as The Edyrem, the descendents of the firstborn: the Nephalem. Serenthia and Uldyssian's brother, Mendeln, helped him control the masses of nearly a thousand Edyrem marching toward Kehjan City, still days ahead. Meldeln had learned from Rathma the ways of the Necromancer and communed with Ghosts who would tell him things as spies at his service. The Edyrem found a few merchant wagons and decided to talk to the influential merchant to seek an audience with the Mage Clans. Only Uldyssian continues the journey to Kehjan City alongside the merchant. Otherwise, Kehjan City would see the approach of a thousand Edyrem as an impending invasion. On their way to the city, a mage and a servant attack the merchant wagons. Everyone is killed, but Uldyssian who fought in vain against a binding spell. Shortly, the mage brought Uldyssian to his sanctum beneath Kehjan City. The mage planned to frame Uldyssian to look like the murderer of the influential merchant so that the Edyrem would be blamed. His monstruous servant kept watch over Uldyssian, while his master left to meet the Mage Clans. The servant was more than what he seemed to be ... it was possessed by Malic, the loyal servant of the Primus. Uldyssian had thought Malic had died at the Church of the Triune all this time, and painfully found out how he had survived. In his hand, the monster held a crystal ... a fragment of the World Stone. He would use it to transfer his soul into a new host. Each host burning away within days or hours. All this time seeking the opportunity to find Uldyssian as his final host. Malic had taken possession of a disfigured man to serve and fuel the powers of one of the Mage Clans members, to put in motion a plan to reach Uldyssian. The monster was nearly possessing Uldyssian. The mage was interrogated by the council of the Mage Clans concerning the dead of the merchant and his guards, as their magic probes made them suspect the mage had something to do with the massacre. When suddenly, the building shook after an explosion. The mage arrived to the scene. Uldyssian was gone. His servant dead. Or nearly dead, for it possessed the mage claiming him as a new host. Uldyssian ran still disoriented through the streets of Kehjan city, and found the Prince Ehmad on his way. The Prince trusted Uldyssian's words and promised an audience with the Mage Clans and nobles. However, Angel Inarius, as the Prophet, had sent many to spread lies across the land, blaming Uldyssian and the Edyrem for the deads of innocents all the way from Toraja to Seram. Inarius invaded Uldyssian's mind using his power to weaken him. They fought, and Uldyssian broke. To Uldyssian, he had failed to defeat Inarius and felt weak before such an opponent. However, the truth was that Inarius was deeply hurt. Uldyssian was much, much more than any mortal. Inarius now feared Uldyssian. He would condemn all of Sanctuary just to destroy him. Even ... accept a pact with the Lord of Terror. More and more events are set in motion to pit and clash the Mage Clans against the Edyrem portraying Uldyssian as a killer of innocent people. And amidst all this conspiracy, lurked the menace of Malic's spirit who could be anyone, within any new host. Trag'Oul and Rathma assist Uldyssian and his brother Mendeln, guiding them. But this is no longer a fight between Inarius and the erydem. The fate of Sanctuary and of many worlds is in peril. Trag'Oul the cosmic dragon can no longer keep Sanctuary cloaked from the High Heavens. The erydem march toward the Cathedral of Light, far to the north and are welcomed by the servants of the Prophet empowered by their master. The erydem are a worthy enemy, but when Inarius himself confronts Uldyssian the whole world of Sanctuary literally trembles as both titans collide as equals. Just as the battle is nearly over, a more dangerous threat looms over Sanctuary ... the Heavenly Hosts arrive by the thousands from a vortex in the sky. Erydem fought Angels bravely, but if that was straining, things get spicy when the Burning Hells open its gate wide open into Sanctuary .... clashing Demon, Edyrem, Nephalem and Angels in utter carnage against each other. Only one may stop the madness.It ends in a breathtaking and unexpected way. When calm settles upon Sanctuary, the five members that compose the Angiris Council arrive to Sanctuary to rule judgement over Inarius and his creations. Imperius, Auriel (female), Malthael, Itherael, and Tyrael. As the five reach a final verdict, Mephisto comes forth to settle a pact with the Angiris Council. Tyrael requests an act from the Demon Lord as proof he will fulfill his end of the pact. Mephisto agrees, with the condition that he and his brothers would be given a prize to take with them to the Burning Hells, Inarius.
11320975	/m/02r7m03	The Rainbow and the Rose	Nevil Shute		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns the life of Johnnie Pascoe, a retired commercial and military pilot, who has engaged in a dangerous rescue in a mountainous region of Tasmania. He has crashed his plane and lies injured and unconscious in the house of the child he had been sent to help. Hearing of his plight, Ronnie Clarke, a younger pilot who was taught to fly by Pascoe, offers to try and land a doctor to assist. His efforts do not succeed. Whilst resting at Pascoe's house that night, Clarke dreams of aspects of the life of his former mentor. Pascoe had been a fighter pilot during The Great War and had married an up and coming actress. At war's end, they had become separated and his wife accepted a role in Hollywood—and filed for divorce from there with sole custody of their daughter. A few years later, Pascoe opens a small flying school and is embroiled in an adulterous affair with a local upper-class woman, Brenda Marshall, whose husband is in a mental asylum. Things go awry after the birth of a daughter between her and Pascoe and the woman commits suicide, by deliberately crashing her light aircraft, when she learns that her divorce request from her husband has been refused. In the final part of the story, we learn of Pascoe's later life as a civil pilot—shortly before the story's opening. It seems that he has become enamoured of one of the flight attendants. In a touching scene, Pascoe proposes marriage to this young woman only to learn that she is his daughter by Brenda Marshall. The framing story closes with Ronnie Clarke making a successful attempt at Pascoe's rescue only to learn that Pascoe had died during the night. Like Conrad, Shute often uses a narrator to tell the story; in The Rainbow and the Rose, the narrator periodically shifts from Clarke to Pascoe.
11321168	/m/02r7mdv	Beautiful Stranger	Zoey Dean	2007-09-30	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Beautiful Stranger follows Anna as she goes to New York City in an attempt to get away from the drama in Los Angeles. As she and Sam explore the city, Sam is spying on Eduardo in an attempt to discover why he's been acting so strange lately. Meanwhile a beautiful stranger appears on Anna's doorstep and she cannot escape the drama as Anna discovers that Ben has appeared to move on with another girl.
11323763	/m/02r7r9b	Bad Girls	Jacqueline Wilson	1996-05-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 10-year-old Mandy White is mercilessly tormented at school by three classmates: Kim, Melanie and Sarah. After an incident where she is nearly hit by a bus while crossing a road to avoid the bullies, she is kept at home from school and meets Tanya, a lively older girl being fostered by Mandy's next door neighbour. Despite disapproval from Mandy's elderly mother, who is very overprotective of her and treats her as if she were much younger, the girls become fast friends. They dream of a future where they will be older and independent, free from families and foster homes, and can live together and have fantastic adventures. Mandy becomes afraid when she discovers that Tanya is a frequent shoplifter, but decides not to say anything in case they are forbidden from visiting each other. At the end of the book, Tanya and Mandy are caught by police when Tanya steals from an upmarket clothing shop in town. Mandy's mother is initially angry, but realises she has been too strict with her and allows her to get new glasses and restyle her hair so she won't look quite as childish. Mandy also gains a new friend in Arthur, a shy boy in her class who is obsessed with fantasy stories. She greatly misses Tanya, who was taken to a new foster home when her previous criminal convictions were discovered, but the novel ends on a happy note as Tanya (who has dyslexia and hates writing) has with great difficulty written a letter to Mandy, assuring her that they are best friends forever and will one day be free to see each other again as they had dreamed about. Melanie, who in the past was Mandy's friend but had become friends with Kim and Sarah, becomes friends with her again. Tanya makes a brief appearance in another of Jacqueline Wilson's novels, Dustbin Baby.
11328074	/m/02r7x0c	Inshallah	Oriana Fallaci	1992	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The books switches from character to character, following Italian soldiers in Beirut, flashbacks of their lives before they came to the city, their Lebanese sweethearts, Lebanese Christian and Shi'ite militants, and a group of French nuns. If anyone could be called the protagonist of the story, it would be Angelo, a confused Italian soldier who abandoned his studies of mathematics in order to enlist as a conscript in the Italian army and see war firsthand. Angelo's interest in Mathematics is reflective of Fallaci's lover, the Greek politician and rebel Alexandros Panagoulis, who also studied mathematics at the Athens Polytechnion and attempted to prove mathematical theorems in his own blood whilst in jail. But the real inspirer and leading actor of the novel is "Charlie", to which the author devotes many pages and between the lines attributed the success of the Italian contingent which left Lebanon unscathed. Charlie, a character of course inspired by Captain Corrado Cantatore (multi decorated just for his Lebanese exploits). Cantatore arrived in Lebanon many years before the Italian contingent, as a volunteer in the UN and was probably recruited from the famous Colonel Stefano Giovannone of Italian intelligence. Cantatore grew with Giovannone and when Giovannone left Lebanon, Cantatore had already woven his network that so impressed Oriana Fallaci and assured the safety to the Italians. The commanding Officer of the Italian Contingent, General Franco Angioni, before taking command of the expeditionary unit had served as Chief of Operations of the Army Staff, in charge of the Italian Military personnel serving in United Nations organizations (UNIFIL and UNTSO) in Middle East. Angioni was therefore aware of the peculiar capacity of the Captain Cantatore, and just landed off the ship in the Beirut harbor had given him the task of liaising with all Lebanese factions, under the cover of the press information officer. Cantatore received and accompanied all the journalists who visited the contingent and was the officer who spent more' time overall with Oriana Fallaci who, struck by the extraordinary quality of the Captain, decided to spend with Captain Cantatore in his office (so called "Arab Bureau") the last night in Lebanon of the Italian Contingent. One last curiosity: the code name "Charlie - Charlie" was born from the extraction of aeronautics of Cantatore (he was a pilot of fix wings and attack helicopters). At the arrival of the Italian Contingent, when Angioni asked to choose a Radio call sign distinct from those used in his headquarters (Condor, Eagle, Ruby, etc.). was natural for Cantatore take his initials, just CC, and pronounced phonetically in the alphabet in use among the pilots and control towers. Cantatore, when returned from Lebanon disappeared from the scene, he was great friend of Oriana Fallaci, it seems, he has continued to work for the' Italian intelligence. Angelo finds war not as he expected, and he is shocked at the irrationality and barbarity of the civil war engulfing Beirut. Whilst on guard duty, he meets Ninette, a beautiful Christian Lebanese woman with whom he cannot communicate as she pretends not to speak French for reasons unknown to Angelo. Still, they are attracted to each other and they begin a relationship. Angelo is tormented by the fact that their relationship is primarily physical, and also on his growing reliance on Ninette. While expecting a visit from Ninette, Hizbollah bombs the American marine barracks as well as French paratroopers barracks. Angelo is ordered to photograph the rescue efforts of Italian soldiers, but he is too horrified by the carnage to accomplish the task. On the way back to purchases Ninette an anchor shaped cross with the Virgin Mary inscribed on it to apologize for missing their rendez-vous. Subplots are developed between a group of Italian soldiers billeted in a Catholic monastery and the French nuns, as well as the negotiations between Italian officers and Shi'ite militia leaders. Angelo's friend Gino, a gentle poet, is severely wounded by Khalid Passepartout, a vicious child soldier in the service of the Shi'ite militia "the Sons of God." Gino loses his fingers, and can no longer write poetry. Angelo vows revenge, and during an encounter with Ninette he leaves early to visit Gino in the hospital and tells her that he cannot spend Christmas with her due to Gino's condition. He admits to her that friendship is more important than love to him, and this hurts Ninette who expresses to him in a letter, written in perfect French, that she can no longer see him. Angleo realizes how much he loves Ninette and vainly searches for her throughout the city. French paratroopers vacating a tower in the center of Beirut causes fighting to break out between Amal, a Shi'ite militia and mainly Christian government forces. In the turmoil Passpartout sees Ninette, who he sees in the street after she goes to the Italian post to see if Angelo is all right, and gives her his Kalashnikov, as he wants to run away. After being chastised by his officer and pedophilic lover, Rashid, he returns to Ninette demanding that his gun be returned and accusing her of theft. Despite warnings from passers-by that she will be killed if she returns the gun as she is a Christian, she returns the gun and Passepartout shoots her shouting "Christian! Whore! Spy!" Ninette is buried in a mass grave. Angelo's officer finds out the news, and tells Angelo who is shattered. Angelo again vows revenge, and whilst on guard duty he encounters Passepartout who is wearing Gino's bersaglieri helmet. Through a discussion, Angelo forgives Passepartout for killing his friend as he is only a child, but then rather than running away Passepartout attempts to sell Angelo an anchor shaped cross with the Virgin Mary on it. Angelo recognizes that this was the cross that he had given Ninette. In a fit of rage Angelo realizes that Passepartout killed not only his friend, but his lover, and Angelo kills Passepartout. Rashid finds out that an Italian killed his lover, Passepartout, and vows vengeance. He plans a suicided bombing against the Italian's boats as they plan to leave. The Italian commanders struggle to strike a deal with the Shi'ite militia to avert catastrophe. Angelo discovers by chance in a magazine that Ninette was really an elegant Lebanese woman named Natalia Narakat who had been married to an assassinated political leader, who looked quite a bit like Angelo which is what attracted her to him in the first place. In the interview she states that the meaning of life is contained in the word "inshallah"-- "as God wills"-- there is no rationality, no way to predict the future, just a series of events that are all interlocking but completely incomprehensible when viewed above from human eyes. Angelo is deeply moved and abandons his quest to formulate life in mathematical terms. The French nuns who quartered the Italian troops are raped and murdered by Shi'ite militiamen, who desecrate their church. The novel ends with the Italians departing after striking a deal with a Shi'ite cleric for their safety in exchange for supplies. The Shi'ite promise to give the alcohol and pork to Christian Lebanese, but instead they destroy it. In the final scene Angelo looks across the prow of the boat and sees Rashid's motorboat speeding towards the Italian convoy.
11333345	/m/02r80wh	The Roman Hat Mystery	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel deals with the poisoning of a disreputable lawyer named Monte Field in the Roman Theater in New York City during a performance of a play called "Gunplay!". Although the play is a sold-out hit, the corpse is discovered seated surrounded by empty seats. A number of suspects whose pasts had made them potentially susceptible to blackmail are in the theater at the time, some connected with the Roman Theater and some audience members. The case is investigated by Inspector Richard Queen of the Homicide Squad with the assistance of his son Ellery, a bibliophile and author. The principal clue in the mystery is the disappearance of the victim's top hat, and it is suspected that the hat may have contained papers with which the victim was blackmailing the murderer. A number of suspects are considered, but nothing can be proved until Ellery performs an extended piece of logical deduction based on the missing hat and thus identifies the murderer.
11333768	/m/02r811q	The French Powder Mystery	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with a model in the ground-floor store window of French's Department Store in New York City who is demonstrating the features of a suite of ultra-modern furniture. When she pushes a button to reveal the folding bed, the bludgeoned corpse of the wife of the owner of the store tumbles to the floor. The murder case falls into the hands of Inspector Richard Queen of the Homicide Squad and his mystery-writing son Ellery. A set of onyx bookends in the private apartments on the top of the store reveal not only bloodstains but grains of fingerprint powder and an unusual assortment of books. Also, an ashtray full of half-smoked cigarettes is an important clue. The suspects include the wealthy victim's family and friends, some employees of the store, and possible members of a drug ring. At the finale of the novel, Ellery Queen performs an extended piece of deduction by creating a list of conditions that the murderer must meet (involving, among other things, the possession of keys). He clears all suspects except one, whose identity is revealed in the last line of the novel.
11339745	/m/02r87k1	Lion of Macedon	David Gemmell	1990	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the story opens, Tamis, a sorceress, is seeing the future. She discovers that only a mixed-blood Spartan called Parmenion can help her. Parmenion is a half-blood Spartan whose mother is from Macedon. He is an accomplished runner and a strategic genius, yet he is despised by the young Spartan nobles. He is forced to kill a love rival in duel, subsequently forcing him to flee to Thebes. There, Parmenion starts a new life as a professional runner, but also gets involved with Thebian rebels attempting to overthrow the Spartan garrison now residing in the city center. This ultimately leads to an extended war between to the two city states, ending with Parmenion crushing the Spartan army, destroying the Spartan legend in the process. Some years later Parmenion is a famous mercenary general, winning battles all around Asia. He is then offered a chance to rebuild the Macedonian army by Philip II of Macedon. Later on the story describes the rise of Macedon under Philip II of Macedon and the birth of Alexander the Great. fr:Le Lion de Macédoine pl:Lew Macedonii
11343524	/m/02r8cgn	Tony Hale, Space Detective	Hugh Walters	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A series of unexplained disappearances from Lunar City leads to the assignment of Morrey Kant, Serge Smyslov and Tony Hale to investigate. Without any leads, Tony Hale devises a bold solo plan and is himself kidnapped.
11343777	/m/02r8cs8	Murder on Mars	Hugh Walters	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 On a crater on Mars an engineer from Mars Base has been found dead, his spacesuit slashed. Despite having a large number of suspects to interview, Morrey Kant, Serge Smyslov and Tony Hale's questioning flushes out a prime suspect. But Tony doesn't believe they have the right man and hatches a dangerous plan to find the real killer.
11344122	/m/02r8d38	The Caves of Drach			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A multi-billionaire's grandson gets lost in the Caves of Drach in Majorca. The grandfather employs the team of astronauts (who are on holiday) to investigate. The expedition finds him in a huge and airy underground civilization peopled by practically immortal age-old humanoid beings who hail from the stars and took refuge underground when a Terran Ice-age threatened. The 'Cenobians' have a utopian civilization and avoid contact with the surface to keep it that way, and yet their advanced technology could bring an end to famine and disease.
11344413	/m/02r8dbv	The Last Disaster			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Moon's orbit suddenly starts to decay for reasons unknown; discovered when a solar eclipse arrives a few minutes early. The only hope of averting imminent disaster is an experimental anti-gravity device devised by an eccentric, elderly Welsh professor, who disillusioned with mankind, refuses to help...
11347203	/m/02r8g_4	The Dark Triangle			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A plane carrying both the UK Prime Minister and US President goes missing over the Bermuda Triangle. Chris Godfrey and company investigate and are captured by strange creatures...
11350641	/m/02r8kr5	The Dutch Shoe Mystery	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An eccentric millionairess is lying in a diabetic coma on a hospital bed in an anteroom of the surgical suite of the Dutch Memorial Hospital, which she founded, awaiting the removal of her gall bladder. When the surgery is about to begin, the patient is found to have been strangled with picture wire. Although the hospital is crowded, it is well guarded, and only a limited number of people had the opportunity to have murdered her, including members of her family and a small number of the medical personnel. The apparent murderer is a member of the surgical staff who was actually seen in the victim's vicinity, but his limp makes him easy to impersonate. Ellery Queen examines a pair of hospital shoes, one of which has a broken lace that has been mended with surgical tape. He performs an extended piece of logical deduction based on the shoe, plus such slight clues as the position of a filing cabinet, and creates a list of necessary characteristics of the murderer that narrows the field of suspects down to a single surprising possibility.
11350877	/m/02r8l14	The Greek Coffin Mystery	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the death of an elderly Greek man who is an internationally famous art dealer and collector, his attorney discovers that his will is missing and notifies the district attorney. When Inspector Richard Queen of the New York Police Force's Homicide Squad and his amateur detective son Ellery are called in, Ellery narrows down the possible location of the will to a single location: the dead man's coffin. When it is exhumed, however, it contains no will but the surprising addition of a strangled ex-convict. Ellery performs an extended piece of deduction in public early on in the novel that concerns a number of used teacups, and is proved wrong. Stung by this embarrassing error, he keeps his deductions to himself for the remainder of the case. Subsequent clues involve color-blindness, a shred of the burned will, two copies of a Leonardo da Vinci painting differing only in skin tone, a thousand-dollar bill, a dead art dealer whose office door was either open or closed and, most importantly, an infinitesimal typing error. Ellery and his father lay a trap, unmasking the murderer— whose guilt will probably have been entirely unsuspected by most readers.
11351291	/m/02r8lnr	The Egyptian Cross Mystery	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 A schoolmaster in a tiny town in West Virginia is found on Christmas morning beheaded and crucified to a signpost in such a way that his body seems to form the letter "T". The letter "T" is scrawled in blood on the dead man's door. Ellery Queen is on the scene and notes that the letter "T" is also the shape of a "tau cross", or Egyptian cross; this seems to lead to a nearby bearded prophet whose invented religion mixes nudism and Egyptology. The prophet's business manager is missing and suspected of the murder. Ellery cannot solve the crime with the little information he has, but six months later in Long Island, New York, a neighbour of one of his university professors is found headless and crucified to a totem pole in the same way, in the new neighbourhood of the Egyptian prophet and his followers. This corpse is clutching a red piece from a game of checkers. The third victim is a millionaire yachtsman, similarly crucified. Many events turn on the families of the victims and their interaction with the Egyptian nudists, the game of checkers and the smoking of unusually-carved pipes, but the key clue that leads Ellery to the solution is a bottle of iodine that enables him to go on a cross-country chase and hunt down the murderer.
11351771	/m/02r8m4k	The American Gun Mystery	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Buck Horne and his faithful horse Injun were once the heroes of many a Western movie in the early days of Hollywood, but when tastes changed, Buck found his talents no longer required. Down on his luck, he went to work in a rodeo exhibition that was appearing in a New York coliseum, giving exhibitions of roping, fancy shooting, and the riding tricks that made him famous. With twenty thousand people in the stands, a group of celebrities including detective Ellery Queen in the boxes, and a full cohort of newsreel movie photographers recording the event for posterity, Buck and forty-one cowboys and cowgirls gallop around the track, whooping and firing their six-guns — until the former movie star is shot in the heart and trampled under the galloping hooves. Suspicion falls on many of the rodeo's performers and staff, and even on some of the celebrities, but one crucial and baffling point must be explained before anyone can be arrested. Even though all 20,000-odd people and the entire arena are searched, and the entire event can be reviewed on film, the specific murder gun cannot be found. Ellery Queen works his way through the details of the murderer's clever plot to set a trap and reveal two astounding surprises — the identity of the murderer and the hiding place of the gun.
11352050	/m/02r8mgj	The Siamese Twin Mystery	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ellery Queen and his father are driving through a mountainous area of the United States on vacation when they are forced by a forest fire to seek shelter in a private home on the top of a mountain. The home soon becomes impossible to escape due to the fire. Dr. Xavier's aerie is host to an unusual assortment of characters, including his family and guests, a pair of teenage boys who are "Siamese" or conjoined xiphopagous twins, the doctor's assistant "Bones", who keeps burying mysterious parcels in the grounds, and another refugee who insists that his name is "Mr. Smith". As the fire creeps towards the top of the mountain, first the doctor and then his brother are murdered. Each victim is found clutching half a playing card, and half of a jack of diamonds seems to indicate that one - but only one - of the Siamese twins is the murderer. The limited circle of suspects includes a kleptomaniac who steals only rings, and a blackmailer. Ellery and his father investigate the murders and battle the fire at the same time. He performs an extended feat of deduction about the handedness of the murderer based upon the torn playing cards. The solution to the crimes is revealed in a dramatic finish when the flames reach the top of the mountain.
11352637	/m/02r8mzb	Promised Land	Robert B. Parker	1976	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Promised Land, Inc. is a real estate development company with which one of the characters is involved. Spenser also metaphorically refers to Cape Cod as the Promised Land. Spenser is hired by Harvey Shepard to find his missing wife, Pam. He soon locates her, but along the way begins to suspect that Harvey Shepard has been beaten and threatened but will not reveal why or by whom. Spenser suspects he is in danger with a loan shark. After getting fired from Harvey, Spenser is contacted by his wife. She unwittingly becomes entangled in a murder and needs Spenser's help. Spenser manages to get both Harvey and his wife in the clear, and land a dangerous criminal behind bars in the process.
11355774	/m/02r8stq	Requiem for a Wren	Nevil Shute			 Alan Duncan is a lawyer, recently called to the Bar in England, returning home to his wealthy parents' prosperous sheep ranch in Australia. He studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and fought as a pilot in World War II before being injured in action and losing both feet in an air crash. His arrival home is marred by the apparent suicide of his parents' housekeeper, a young Englishwoman called Jessie Proctor. Alan realises that this troubled woman must have left her personal papers hidden somewhere in the event that her suicide attempt was not successful. He searches the house and happens upon a small suitcase of letters, diaries and the woman's passport. He is appalled to learn that the woman was, in fact, Janet Prentice - a former Royal Navy Wren and the former girlfriend of his dead brother Bill, and someone for whom Alan had spent considerable time searching immediately after the war. Janet had a "lovely war" in Southern England, until the events around D day, when she lost Bill, her father and her dog in quick succession. Her mother also dies shortly after the war. She believes herself responsible for the deaths of what may have been allies escaping in a German aeroplane. Reading through Janet's diaries, Alan learns that she had come to Australia partly because of him but partly because of a terrible event during the war for which she believed she had to atone. Her revelations help Alan think of ways to face his own future.
11357012	/m/02r8vgn	Agaton Sax And the Diamond Thieves				 The Koh-Mi-Nor diamond is stolen and a very clever thief is putting messages about it, in a secret code, in the personal column of the newspaper published by the Swedish detective Agaton Sax. sv:Agaton Sax och de slipade diamanttjuvarna
11360278	/m/02r8ysx	Inez	Carlos Fuentes		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Maestro Gabriel Atlan-Ferrara, on the eve of his possibly last performance, reflects upon his relationship with Inez Prada. Though the maestro and the diva had only met thrice in their relationship of nearly three decades, the intensity never fades. Their relationship is characterized by mutual admiration, a sense of independence and ego. Parallel to this, a fable of primeval human male and female union (re-union) is also portrayed, and the two streams blend into one at the climax, which is on the border of realism and fantasy. The maestro's favorite work, The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz often comes up as a backdrop as well as a metaphor.
11364514	/m/02r9202	The Lord of the Rings	Shaun McKenna			 The half-Elven maiden Arwen sings the prologue, urging those to whom she sings to trust their instincts ("Prologue" ('Lasto i lamath')). In the region of Middle-earth known as the Shire, Bilbo Baggins, an eccentric and wealthy Hobbit, celebrates his one hundred and eleventh birthday by vanishing from his birthday party, leaving his greatest treasure, a mysterious magic Ring, to his young relative Frodo Baggins ("Springle Ring") . The Ring is greatly desired by the Dark Lord Sauron, who could use it to conquer the world, and must be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom in Sauron's country of Mordor. Frodo and his friends Samwise Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took set out along the road that leads out of the Shire ("The Road Goes On"). Meanwhile, the corrupt wizard Saruman also desires the Ring ("Saruman"). At the Inn of the Prancing Pony in the village of Bree, Frodo and his friends sing and dance for their fellow guests ("The Cat and the Moon"). With the assistance of the Ranger Strider, the four Hobbits escape pursuit by the Black Riders, servants of Sauron, and safely reach the Ford of Bruinen ("Flight to the Ford"). Awaiting them at the Elven settlement of Rivendell is Arwen, the beloved of Strider, whose true name is Aragorn, heir to the kingship of the Lands of Men ("The Song of Hope"). Arwen's father, Lord Elrond, calls a Council of Elves, Men and Dwarves at which it is decided that Frodo will carry the Ring to Mordor. The Fellowship of the Ring sets out from Rivendell: Frodo and his three fellow Hobbits, Aragorn, the human warrior Boromir, the Elf Legolas, the Dwarf Gimli, and the great wizard Gandalf the Grey. Arwen and the people of Rivendell invoke the holy power of the star Eärendil to protect and guide the Fellowship on its journey ("Star of Eärendil"). In the ancient, ruined Dwarf-mines of Moria, Gandalf confronts a Balrog, a monstrous creature of evil, and falls into the darkness. The Fellowship takes refuge in Lothlórien, the mystical realm of Galadriel, an Elven lady of great power and wisdom ("The Golden Wood", "Lothlórien"). As their journey south continues, Boromir attempts to take the Ring from Frodo; Frodo and Sam flee from the rest of the Fellowship, and Boromir falls in battle. Gandalf returns in time to intervene at the Siege of the City of Kings, where the Lands of Men are under attack by the forces of Saruman and the Orcs of Mordor ("The Siege of the City of Kings"). Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam are joined on their journey by Gollum, a twisted creature who long possessed the Ring and desires to have it for his own again. As they approach Mordor, Frodo and Sam sing to each other about the power of stories ("Now and for Always"). Gollum is moved by their song, but the evil side of his personality asserts itself and he plans to betray the Hobbits ("Gollum/Sméagol"). If Aragorn can defeat the forces of evil and reclaim the kingship of Men, he will receive Arwen's hand in marriage ("The Song of Hope" (Duet)). Galadriel casts spells to protect the forces of good in the final battle ("Wonder", "The Final Battle"). Frodo, Sam and Gollum reach Mount Doom, where the Ring is destroyed when Gollum takes it from Frodo and falls into the fire with it. Aragorn becomes King and marries Arwen ("City of Kings"), but Frodo, wearied by his quest, and the great Elves must leave Middle-earth forever and sail to the lands of the West ("Epilogue (Farewells)"). Bidding farewell to their friend, Sam, Merry and Pippin resume their lives in the Shire ("Finale").
11366890	/m/02r94bf	The Judas Window	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 James Caplon Answell arranges to visit his future father-in-law, Avory Hume, at his house in London. Hume invites the prospective bridegroom into his strong room that is fitted with sturdy metal shutters and a thick wooden door. The room contains trophies and arrows that relate to Hume's hobby of archery, and they chat about archery while Hume pours drinks from a cut-glass decanter. As Answell collapses, he realizes that the drink has been drugged. When he comes to, he's alone in the locked and bolted room with Hume, who has been fatally skewered with an arrow. The remainder of the novel takes place at Answell's trial for the murder of Hume, and he is being defended by barrister and amateur detective Sir Henry Merrivale. We learn that Hume has set the actions of the plot in motion because he believes that he is having an interview not with the wealthy and blameless man who wants to marry his daughter, but a similarly named relative, Captain Answell, who is blackmailing her (and in a plot development that is extremely frank for the mores of 1938, she is being blackmailed because she posed for "obscene" photographs for her lover). Hume's household has participated to some extent in the activities that have conspired to make Answell look guilty. The decanter with the drugged drink has been replaced with an innocuous duplicate, and some mysteriously disappearing items include a suitcase full of clothing and an ink-pad. But it is the location of a tiny piece of blue feather from the fatal arrow that proves to be the decisive clue that reveals the murderer—it's revealed in the climactic courtroom scene to be hidden in the "Judas window". In the British prison system, a "Judas window" is in the door of a cell and enables the guards to observe prisoners without being seen themselves. But Sir Henry Merrivale points out another Judas window that is in every room, but that no one notices.
11367873	/m/02r9535	Cloud Boy		2006-04-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A lonely cloud boy lives up high in the sky. One day, a butterfly passes by and its beauty gives him a great idea. He soon fashions a butterfly from a fluffy cloud nearby and sends it adrift in the air so that others may see his beautiful creation. Soon Cloud Boy looks down at the earth, seeing even more beautiful and wonderful things. He begins to fashion more clouds in the shapes of what he sees, things like boats, rabbits, and snowmen. Soon, many of the children on the earth see his designs and take great delight in them. It is then that Cloud Boy learns he will never be lonely again as long as there are children below the sky who enjoy his artistic creations.
11370309	/m/02r974w	The Wood Beyond the World	William Morris	1894	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When the wife of Golden Walter betrays him for another man, he leaves home on a trading voyage to avoid the necessity of a feud with her family. His efforts are fruitless, as word comes to him en route that his wife's clan has killed his father. As a storm then carries him to a faraway country, the effect of this news is merely to sunder his last ties to his homeland. Walter comes to the castle of an enchantress, from which he rescues a captive maiden in a harrowing adventure (or rather, she rescues him). They flee through a region inhabited by mini-giants, eventually reaching a city whose custom is to take as ruler when the throne is vacant the next foreigner to arrive. The late king having died, Walter and his new love are hailed as the new monarchs, and presumably live happily ever after.
11370334	/m/02r975k	The Water of the Wondrous Isles	William Morris	1897	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Stolen as a child and raised in the wood of Evilshaw as servant to a witch, Birdalone ultimately escapes in her captress's magical boat, in which she travels to a succession of strange and wonderful islands. During much of the first quarter of the novel, Birdalone is naked, a highly unusual detail in Victorian fiction. She is occasionally assisted out of jams by Habundia, her lookalike fairy godmother. She encounters three maidens who are held prisoner by another witch. They await deliverance by their lovers, the three paladins of the Castle of the Quest. Birdalone is clad by the maidens and seeks out their heroes, and the story goes into high gear as they set out to rescue the women. Ultimately, one lady is reunited with her knight, another finds a new love when her knight is killed, and the last is left to mourn as her champion throws her over for Birdalone.
11370345	/m/02r9767	The Sundering Flood	William Morris	1897	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Osberne Wulfgrimsson and Elfhild are lovers who live on opposite sides of the Sundering Flood, an immense river. When Elfhild disappears during an invasion by the Red Skinners, the heartbroken Osberne takes up his magical sword Boardcleaver and joins the army of Sir Godrick of Longshaw, in whose service he helps dethrone the tyrannical king and plutocracy of merchants ruling the city at the mouth of the river. Afterwards he locates Elfhild, who had fled with a relation, a wise woman skilled in the magical arts, and taken refuge in the Wood Masterless. Elfhild tells Osberne of their adventures en route to safety. Afterwards they return together to Wethrmel, Osberne's home, and all ends happily.
11373666	/m/02r9bp8	IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation	Edwin Black	2001	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Author Edwin Black describes the thesis of his book IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation in the following way: "[The book] tells the story of IBM's conscious involvement — directly and through its subsidiaries — in the Holocaust, as well as its involvement in the Nazi war machine that murdered millions of others throughout Europe. "Mankind barely noticed when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group destruction.... Hitler and his hatred of the Jews was the ironic driving force behind this intellectual turning point. But his quest was greatly enhanced and energized by the ingenuity and craving for profit of a single American company and its legendary, autocratic chairman. That company was International Business Machines, and its chairman was Thomas J. Watson." Black begins his study with the origins of IBM. In the early 1880s, Herman Hollerith (1860-1929), a young employee at the U.S. Census Bureau, conceived of the idea of creating readable cards with standardized perforations, each representing specific individual traits such as gender, nationality, and occupation. The millions of cards created for each individual counted in the national census could then be sorted and resorted on the basis of specific bits of information they contained — thereby providing a quantified portrait of the nation. Hollerith built a prototype of his counting machine in 1884 and later won a contest for the best automated counting device conducted by the Census Bureau in conjunction with its 1890 census. The Census Bureau saved $5 million through use of Hollerith counting machines — about one-third of its annual budget — and Hollerith and his patented invention gained international renown and customers around the world. By the turn of the 20th Century, Hollerith and his Tabulating Machine Company had achieved near-monopoly status. A rival arose in the next decade, however, and the U.S. Census Bureau abandoned its use of the more costly and slower Hollerith machines for its 1910 census. A disconsolate Hollerith licensed out his patents abroad. In 1910, the German licensee Willy Heidinger established the Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (German Hollerith Machine Corporation), commonly known by the acronym &#34;Dehomag.&#34; The next year, Hollerith sold his American business to industrialist Charles Flint (1850-1934) for $1.41 million. The counting machine operation was made part of a new conglomerate called the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). To head this massive new enterprise, Flint chose Thomas J. Watson (1874-1956), the star salesman of the National Cash Register Corporation. Watson was initially paid $25,000 per year — a substantial salary in the day — plus 1200 shares of stock and a commission of 5% of CTR&#39;s after-tax, after-dividends profits. The German hyperinflation of 1922-1923 made it impossible for Dehomag, the German licensee of CTR&#39;s technology, to make its scheduled royalty payments to America, with its balance in arrears topping the $100,000 mark. Threatened with bankruptcy and complete loss of his investment, Dehomag chief Willy Heidinger agreed to transfer 90% of the stock in his company to Watson&#39;s CTR as a means of settling his debt. The German licensee Dehomag thus became a direct subsidiary of the American corporation CTR. In 1924, following the death or departure of several key figures in the company, Watson assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of CTR and renamed the now-focused company International Business Machines (IBM). The bulk of Black&#39;s book details the ongoing business relationship between Watson&#39;s IBM and the emerging German regime headed by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Hitler came to power in January 1933; on March 20 of that same year he established a concentration camp for political prisoners in the Bavarian town of Dachau, just outside the city of Munich. Repression against political opponents and the country&#39;s substantial ethnic Jewish population began at once. By April 1933, some 60,000 had been imprisoned. Despite the violent and repressive climate emerging in the new ultra-nationalist Germany, business relations between IBM and the Hitler regime continued uninterrupted in the face of broad international calls for an economic boycott. Indeed, Willy Heidinger, who remained in control of Dehomag, the 90%-owned German subsidiary of IBM, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Hitler regime. On April 12, 1933, the German government announced the plans to immediately conduct a long-delayed national census. The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Gypsies, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime. Dehomag offered to actively assist the German government in its task of ethnic identification, concentrating first upon the 41 million residents of Prussia. This activity was not only countenanced by Thomas Watson and IBM in America, Black argues, but was actively encouraged and financially supported, with Watson himself traveling to Germany in October 1933 and the company ramping up its investment in its German subsidiary from 400,000 to 7,000,000 reichsmarks — about $1 million. This injection of American capital allowed Dehomag to purchase land in Berlin and to construct IBM&#39;s first factory in Germany, Black charges, thereby &#34;tooling up for what it correctly saw as a massive financial relationship with the Hitler regime.&#34; Black also asserts that a &#34;secret deal&#34; was made between Heidinger and Watson during the latter&#39;s visit to Germany which allowed Dehomag commercial powers outside of Germany, enabling the &#34;now Nazified&#34; company to &#34;circumvent and supplant&#34; various national subsidiaries and licensees by &#34;soliciting and delivering punch card solution technology directly to IBM customers in those territories.&#34; As a result, Nazi Germany soon became the second most important customer of IBM after the lucrative US market, Black notes. The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country&#39;s Jewish minority. Black describes the situation faced by German Jews: "Since the advent of the Third Reich, thousands of Jews nervously assumed they could hide from the Aryan clause. "But Jews could not hide from millions of punch cards thudding through Hollerith machines, comparing names across generations, address changes across regions, families trees and personal data across unending registries. It did not matter that the required forms or questionnaires were filled in by leaking pens or barely sharpened pencils, only that they were later tabulated and sorted by IBM's precision technology." On September 13, 1935, Hitler demanded the immediate implementation of a &#34;Law for the Protection of German Blood&#34; which deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited them from having sexual relations with or from marrying Aryans. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million. Another German census was conducted on May 17, 1939, when 750,000 census takers conducted interviews with the country&#39;s 22 million households, and also millions of factories. The purpose of the census was to identify the number of Jews in Germany and its newly expanded territories and to precisely locate each individual so that the Jewish population could be effectively ghettoized. Ancestral lines had to be documented by each head of household as part of the national census, which dwarfed in size and detail the 1933 Prussian census. As the Nazi war machine spread occupied the nations of Europe, capitulation was followed by a census of the population of the subjugated nations, with an eye to the identification and isolation of Jews and Gypsies. For example, the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland was followed by an October 14 order of the Special Operations unit of the German Secret Police for a full census of the Jewish population, information which supplemented published information from the 1931 general Polish census. These census operations were intimately intertwined with technology and cards supplied by IBM&#39;s German and new Polish subsidiaries, which were awarded specific sales territories in Poland by decision of the New York office following Germany&#39;s successful Blitzkrieg invasion. In the case of Poland, the ordered census took place over several days, from December 17 to December 23, 1939. The census was both meticulous and cold-blooded, as Black notes: "Each person over the age of twelve was required to fill out census and registration in duplicate, and then was fingerprinted. Part of the form was stamped and returned as the person's new identification form. Without it, they would be shot. With it, they would be deported." Data generated by means of counting and alphabetization equipment supplied by IBM through its German and other national subsidiaries was instrumental in the efforts of the German government to concentrate and ultimately destroy ethnic Jewish populations across Europe, Black demonstrates. He also notes, in an understated aside, that fully half of IBM&#39;s German subsidiary&#39;s annual profit — RM 1.8 million — was suddenly generated in December 1939. Black also reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM&#39;s punchcard technology. In his book, Black charges that &#34;without IBM&#39;s machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler&#39;s camps could have never managed the numbers they did. Each of the major concentration camps was assigned a Hollerith code number for paperwork purposes: Auschwitz — 001; Buchenwald — 002; Dachau — 003; Flossenbürg — 004; Gross-Rosen — 005; Herzogenbusch — 006; Mauthausen — 007; Natzweiler — 008; Neuengamme — 009; Ravensbrück — 010; Sachsenhausen — 011; and Stutthoff — 012. Upon arrival at the camps in 1943, incoming prisoners would be examined for fitness to work, physical information would be recorded on a medical record, names would be cross-checked with data from the Political Section to determine whether the prisoner was additionally wanted for political offenses.
11376909	/m/02r9g3n	Bloodline	Kate Cary		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Bloodline takes place during World War I. John Shaw, a nineteen-year-old, joins the British Army and is sent to the front lines, in the trenches. He works as a communications officer who listens to German radio feeds and translates what he hears. His regiment commander is a man named Quincey Harker, who is the son of Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray from the original Dracula novel. Harker is famous for going on raids in the enemy trenches alone at night, and shows several feats of superhuman strength that seem impossible. He is also shown to be cruel to his men. One night a soldier named Private Smith falls asleep on his watch, and Germans invade the trench. As punishment, Harker orders him to be tied to a wagon wheel on no man's land. Private Smith does not die from being shot or shelled, but appears to die of fear. One night Harker takes John on a night raid to destroy a nest of snipers. However, John gets stabbed in the shoulder with a bayonet. As he passes out, he thinks he sees Harker closely inspecting a large gash in an enemy soldier's throat. Harker carries him back to the trench, which saves his life. John soon becomes very sick with trench fever and believes he is having hallucinations of horrible things involving a hound and beheaded enemy soldiers in no man's land. He is rushed back to England for care. John is cared for by Mary Seward, the daughter of Dr. John Seward, in the old sanitorium owned by Dr. Seward, which was being used as a hospital during the war. Mary remembers seeing John at a garden party several years before, and wants to help him. She reads his journal that he brought with him to the hospital, and learns about the strange and seemingly impossible feats Harker had done. Meanwhile, John is still delirious from the fever, thinking he is still in the trenches instead of back in England. Soon, however, his fever breaks and he becomes lucid. Quincey Harker comes to England, and Lily Shaw, John's sister, invites him to stay at Carfax Hall, John and Lily's house, as thanks for saving John's life. However, Harker begins to seduce Lily, which worries John, as he's seen Harker's cruelty in the trenches. At the same time, Mary and John begin to fall in love, as Mary is John's main nurse at the hospital and they see each other for most of the day. Soon, John is recovered and discharged from the hospital. Harker leaves for London to do some work, and when he returns he tells John that his services are needed there for a few days. While he's gone, he proposes to Mary in a letter. When John returns, he goes to Mary's house with a note left for him saying that Lily and Harker have eloped and gone to Transylvania. Dr. Seward learns of Harker's mysterious nature, and realizes that he is a vampire. With Van Helsing's bag of vampire slaying tools, John and Mary follow Harker to Transylvania. They also read the collection of journals that is the original ' 'Dracula' ' book. John and Mary reach Castle Dracula several days after Harker and Lily. Once there, they learn that Mina, Quincey Harker's mother, is married to Count Tepes, son of Dracula, and that Quincey is Dracula's grandson. It is also revealed that John Shaw is Quincey's half-brother and Lily is John's half-sister, not his full sister as he always thought, who from birth was chosen to marry Quincey. John and Lily's mother, Rosemary Shaw, who was believed to be dead, is also found living at the castle as a vampire. It is all part of a master plan thought up by Tepes to raise the House of Dracul back to power with John and Quincey both united by Lily. Lily is shocked to learn that Quincey is a vampire, but is still determined to marry him, as she still loves him. The day before their marriage, however, she kills herself by jumping out the castle window onto sharp rocks below because she was afraid of becoming a vampire, which was part of the master plan, and knew she would never stop loving Quincey, which would make it impossible to leave him. Meanwhile, Mina turns John into a vampire after convincing him that it is his destiny. A baby is also taken to the castle for Tepes to feed on so he will be strong enough to go to Quincey and Lily's wedding. Once Mary learns of John's transformation, she asks Rosemary Shaw for help escaping, as Rosemary never liked living as a vampire. Rosemary tells Mary where the baby is being kept and about a secret exit from the castle. Then, Rosemary asks to be destroyed because she doesn't want to live with her daughter dead and her son as a vampire. Mary kills her by pounding a stake through her heart. She takes the baby and runs to the courtyard, where the secret exit is. However, she doesn't have the strength to lift the stone lid of the trap door. Surprisingly, Quincey helps her escape by lifting it for her. After Mary's escapes, Quincey goes back to his room. He hears John shouting his name from outside, and looks out the window to see his mother Mina tied to a tree, as Private Smith was once tied to a wagon wheel. The sun comes up and Mina burns to death. John does this because he thinks Quincey killed his mother, Rosemary, when in fact Mary was the one who did it. Quincey then goes to tell his father that he is leaving Castle Dracula forever, but Tepes tries to stop him by attempting to kill him with the sharp end of a wooden chair leg. However, Quincey grabs if out of his hand and stabs it through his father's heart. The book ends with John remaining at Castle Dracula, Quincey going off to live somewhere else, and Mary and the baby, who she names Grace, escaping back to England.
11379326	/m/02r9j_g	Men of Bronze	Scott Oden	2005		 It is 526 B.C. and the empire of the Pharaohs is dying, crushed by the weight of its own antiquity. Decay riddles its cities, infects its aristocracy, and weakens its armies. While across the expanse of Sinai, like jackals drawn to carrion, the forces of the King of Persia watch . . . and wait. Leading the fight to preserve the soul of Egypt is Hasdrabal Barca, Pharaoh’s deadliest killer. Possessed of a rage few men can fathom and fewer can withstand, Barca struggles each day to preserve the last sliver of his humanity. But, when one of Egypt’s most celebrated generals, a Greek mercenary called Phanes, defects to the Persians, it triggers a savage war that will tax Barca's skills, and his humanity, to the limit. From the political wasteland of Palestine, to the searing deserts east of the Nile, to the streets of ancient Memphis, Barca and Phanes play a desperate game of cat-and-mouse — a game culminating in the bloodiest battle of Egypt’s history. Caught in the midst of this violence is Jauharah, a slave in the House of Life. She is Arabian, dark-haired and proud — a healer with gifts her blood, her station, and her gender overshadow. Though her hands tend to Barca's countless wounds, it is her spirit that heals and changes him. Once a fearsome demigod of war, Hasdrabal Barca becomes human again. A man now motivated as much by love as anger. Nevertheless honor and duty have bound Barca to the fate of Egypt. A final conflict remains, a reckoning set to unfold in the dusty hills east of Pelusium. There, over the dead of two nations, Hasdrabal Barca will face the same choice as the heroes of old: Death and eternal fame . . . Or obscurity and long life . . .
11388737	/m/02r9v9w	The Chinese Orange Mystery	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A wealthy publisher and collector of precious stones and Chinese postage stamps has a luxurious suite in a hotel that serves to handle his non-publishing business and the comings and goings of his staff, his relatives, and his female friends. When an odd and anonymous little man arrives and refuses to state his business, no one is surprised; he is locked (from outside only) in an anteroom with a bowl of fruit (including tangerines, also known as Chinese oranges) and left to await the publisher's arrival. When the door is unlocked, though, a truly bizarre scene is displayed. The little man's skull is crushed, his clothing is reversed, back to front, all the furnishings of the room have been turned backwards — and two African spears have been inserted between the body and its clothing, stiffening it into immobility. The circumstances are such that someone has been observing every entrance to the room, and no one has apparently entered or left. The situation is further complicated by some valuable jewelry and stamps, the publisher's business affairs and romantic affaires, and a connection with "backwardness" for seemingly every character. It takes the considerable talents of Ellery Queen to sort through the motives and lies and arrive at the twisted logic that underlies every aspect of this very unusual crime.
11389004	/m/02r9vkf	The Spanish Cape Mystery	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with a pretty young heiress and her uncle seated outside their summer home on Spanish Cape, escaping the guests at her parents' house party. Suddenly a one-eyed giant bursts onto the scene and kidnaps them, misidentifying the uncle as John Marco, a house guest. The giant removes them both, ties the heiress to a chair in an empty neighbouring home, and disappears with the uncle. Ellery Queen and a friend arrive at the neighbouring home in the morning and release the heiress, but by the time they can return her to her home, Marco has been found on the terrace, strangled, and nude except for an enveloping opera cape. The house party and the household contain many people who had good reason to want the victim out of the way, some because he was blackmailing them. As Ellery is investigating the crime, another household member commits suicide out of sheer desperation at the potential revelation of a dread secret. By the time the uncle escapes his captor and swims to shore, Ellery is ready to reveal the identity of the murderer and the reason for the victim's nudity in a dramatic final scene.
11389275	/m/02r9vv0	The Lamp Of God	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Ellery Queen is asked by a lawyer friend to help protect the interests of a pretty young heiress. They meet her, along with an unpleasant physician who is a friend of her family, as she disembarks in New York from an ocean liner arriving from England. She learns that her father, from whom she has been separated since her toddler years, has died just as she is to be reunited with her eccentric family and inherit her father's fabled hoard of gold. The group drives for hours to reach an ugly and sinister Victorian house called the Black House at nightfall. The Black House, where her father died, is uninhabitable—the group meets the family and beds down in a small stone house next door. When they awake, the Black House has vanished as though it never existed. Ellery must shake off the Gothic trappings and the suggestions of black magic in order to figure out what has happened to the Black House and the gold.
11389995	/m/02r9wb5	Dawn	Dean McLaughlin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Isak has attempted to explain his foretelling to the priests of the Temple of Center, so that people might be told what to expect, and not to panic when it does. They are unwilling to accept such a bizarre idea. Furthermore, while Isak is innocent of the political implications of the event he describes, the priest are not. If the gods all turn their sight from the world, they must be angry with their representatives.
11390905	/m/02r9wys	The King's Damosel	Vera Chapman	1976	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel begins with the day of Lynette and her sister Lyonesse's dual wedding to the brothers Gaheris and Gareth, respectively. After the festivities are over, the two sisters are dragged to their bedrooms and prepared by giggling bridesmaids for the first night of their honeymoons. Lynette is miserable, as she is in fact in love with Gareth, her sister's groom, and thinks with envy of them in the next room. She is also terrified of what is about to happen, as it is revealed in a flashback that she was raped by a friend of her father's who was like a mentor to her. She is convinced that Gaheris will know that she is not a virgin, and she will be publicly shamed. However, when Gaheris finally enters the honeymoon suite, he merely comments that he does not want this, either. He sleeps next to her, without touching, and leaves before she wakes. In another flashback, Chapman summarizes the events leading up to the wedding, essentially retelling the corresponding Arthurian legend. In short, the Red Knight, a knight who claims to owe no loyalty to Arthur, attacks Lynette's home in the absence of any male figureheads, essentially holding the household hostage until her older sister, Lyonesse, consents to marry him and make him Lord. Lynette disguises herself as a servant boy and escapes, going all the way to Camelot and pleading with Arthur himself to help her rescue her sister. With the help of Merlin (who had appeared to her once before, after she was raped), she receives the king's blessing, but he only sends one man with her - Gareth, who she presumes to be a kitchen boy. She is quite rude to him, feeling very resentful towards Arthur for his choice. However, Gareth soon proves himself and in the course of rescuing Lyonesse, Lynette realises that she has fallen in love with him. Unfortunately, upon the group's return to Camelot, it is arranged that Gareth shall marry Lyonesse as his reward, and Lynette shall wed Gareth's older brother, Gaheris. After Gaheris' departure, Lynette is worried about what will happen to her - abandoned by her husband, and forced to watch the man she loves in the company of her own sister. Again Merlin intervenes, and Lynette manages to convince Arthur to make her his messenger. She is to go alone ahead of the knights to persuade unruly Lords to swear their allegiance to Arthur; it is dangerous, but she has no fear. Lynette acts so bravely and gracefully in the course of this work that she earns the respect of all those who travel with her (including Guinevere's unlucky admirer, Lancelot). Over the course of the novel, she meets up again with the man who raped her as a teenager and beheads him; she is later haunted by his ghost, but eventually manages to forgive him, thus finally freeing herself from the terrifying black creatures which were released each time she laid a curse upon him. She is also separated from her party in strange lands and kidnapped; she eventually finds her way out through a network of caves with the help of a very peculiar young man named Lucius. Lucius has lived in the dark so long that he is completely blind and very pale, with light blue hair. He was imprisoned along with his mother, who subsequently died, but he met a sort of witch just outside the caves who befriended him, and he is happy with his simple life. Lynette spends a considerable amount of time with the pair, and eventually falls in love with Lucius. She feels simultaneously pleased that he can not see how plain she is, and guilty because she is convinced that he would not want her if he could only see her. Eventually, the witch sadly informs Lynette that Lucius is dying. Lynette is completely horrified, and decides that she will seek out the Holy Grail, so that Lucius can use it to save himself. She sets out with her traveling companions from before, and after a very long and decidedly strange journey, she actually manages to retrieve the Grail. She hurries back with it to Lucius, resolving that she will let him do with it as he pleases. Upon receiving the Grail, Lucius wishes for sight rather than life, so that he can finally see Lynette. Upon opening his eyes, he cries out with delight, telling the startled (and heartbroken) Lynette that she's beautiful over and over. The pair have a little more time together, which Lynette tries very hard to make the best of. Lucius dies, and she and the witch bury him before she sets out once again, to resume her post as the King's Damosel.
11391083	/m/02r9x2y	Mandragora	David McRobbie		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 These dolls have been around since 1886. According to the novel, a ship called the Dunarling was carrying 85 passengers wanting to migrate from Scotland to South Australia, but also four dolls, each named and cursed: 'Swith' was cursed with fire (bleeze), 'Agley' with mischance, 'Smeddum' with foulness, and 'Snell' with the final destruction (otherwise referred to as All fa' doon!). These mandrake dolls were set upon the Dunarling by Marie Catherine de Lairgo because she is jealous and wants to get revenge, which she bids the mandrake dolls to do: she was the former 'wife' of one of the passengers, Adam Colquhoun. 100 years after the shipwreck of the Dunarling, two youngsters, Adam Hardy and Catriona Chisholm, discovered the dolls. Along with them were the school bullies, Richard Vernon and Mike Carter, but they did not seem to care much about the finding of Jamie Ramsay's cave, where the dolls were secretly hidden. Richard Vernon and Mike Carter then took two of the dolls. Adam and Catriona form a bond with each other as time unfolds and Adam starts having visions of the past and realised that Catriona looks just like Margaret Colquhoun, the fiancée of Adam Colquhoun. Adam tracks down two of these dolls that were held by Mike Carter and Richard Vernon. These dolls made Mike and Richard insane, saying that they had failed their masters in destroying the town. The dolls possess Mike and Richard into setting fire to the hardware store, crashing a bus and also poisoning a water system with white ant killer. Tam Dubh, the fifth mandrake doll, warns Adam what is going to happen, so he manages to stop the last two events from completely unfolding. Adam then destroys all of the dolls by throwing them over a cliff into the ocean.
11394179	/m/02rb089	The Last Sin Eater	Francine Rivers	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Last Sin Eater revolves around Cadi Forbes, ten-year old girl who lives in a settlement community of Welsh Americans in the mid-1850s. Cadi carries a heavy burden of guilt and grief because of something that happened the year before. At the beginning of the novel, Cadi's grandmother Gorawen has just died. At her funeral, the village's Sin Eater comes and Cadi does the "forbidden" and makes eye contact with him. The next day, Cadi goes to the river, thinking about how to get rid of the sins that she carries. At that time, a little girl named Lilybet appears, and after talking with her, Cadi decides to visit the Sin Eater in the hopes that he can take her sins from her. Cadi is the only one who can see or hear Lilybet, and her parents and others begin to believe that she is "keeping company with taints" and that the girl is a demon. Cadi seeks out the Sin Eater by talking first to Elda Kendric who is the oldest person in the village. During all of this, a man of God comes to share the word of God, but camps outside the village. Brogan Kai, the self proclaimed village leader tells all of the villagers not to go near the man because of what the man speaks of. Brogan's son Fagan and Cadi go anyway. They are intrigued by the word of God, do not approach the man out of fear. Cadi becomes even more determined to find the Sin Eater, believing she cannot go before the man of God with her sins. Cadi eventually finds the Sin Eater and convinces him to try to take away her sins if she promises to see the man of God and tell the Sin Eater what he says. The Sin Eater performs the ceremony, but nothing happens and no sins are removed. Eventually, it is revealed that the year before, Cadi's little sister drowned after following Cadi to the river and slipping on the log bridge. Cadi is overwhelmed with guilt because of this, and it is tearing her family apart. Cadi thinks that everyone blames her, and sees her mother's distant and withdrawn behavior as proof that her mother hates her. In one scene, Cadi overhears her parents talking and her mother says "it shouldn't have been Elen", implying that she wishes it was Cadi who had drowned. Despite the danger of being caught, Cadi goes back to talk to the man of God because of her promise to the Sin Eater. After listening to him for a time, she opens up to him, pouring out her guilt, and through his guidance comes to accept Christ and is baptized. Cadi shares her newfound faith with Miz Elda, Fagan notices the difference in her and, driven by his own motives to somehow unburden himself from the sins of his father, Fagan visits the man of God with Cadi the next night. Through the man's moving testimony, Fagan, as well, comes to accept Christ. The two children return night after night to learn more from the man, and begin to share what they know with the people around them. Tragedy strikes in the form of Brogan Kai, who kills the man of God, then turns his fury onto his son, Fagan, seriously injuring him. Cadi and Fagan escape, eventually, to Dead Man's Mountain, where the Sin Eater Lives. There, in the safety of his cave, Fagan and Cadi reveal the word of God to the Sin Eater, who is finally relieved of his burden of carrying the sins of so many others. While there, Cadi discovers cave paintings that, once explained by Miz Elda, finally bring to light the dark past of the mountain community and explain the origins of the Sin Eater. In the end, Brogan, Fagan, and the Sin Eater have a showdown in front of the entire village at Elda Kendric's house. Cadi and Fagan, with help from Miz Elda and Iona Kai, reveal the truth to the villagers, and the Sin Eater, named Sim, is free to live as a normal man. During the confrontation, the Kai is injured, and the villagers come to realize he has no power over them other than what they give him. Several come to accept Chirst that day, with others following later. Cadi's mother forgives her, saying she never blamed Cadi for Elen's death, but rather herself. She reveals that it was in fact herself she wishes had died in Elen's place, as she had sent Elen after Cadi on the day she drowned. She calls Cadi by the nickname she used when Cadi was small: "li'l bit of heaven."
11394696	/m/02rb155	The Atonement Child	Francine Rivers	1997-09-14	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dynah is a young Christian college girl at a bible college when rape shatters her life, and then the resulting pregnancy may shatter her faith. As her pro-life fiance suddenly finds abortion acceptable, and her pro-life school informs her that she will be expelled unless her pregnancy disappears, she is forced to wonder about their views of the World and what God has said in the Bible and of her own former pro-life views. At home she finds her family torn apart as her mother admits to an abortion before she had Dynah that made her incapable of having children for several years, and her grandmother admits to an abortion that was forced on her for "health reasons". Dynah is eventually driven to isolate herself so that she can make the decision on her own. As her mother's "Atonement Child", Dynah must come to the decision on whether or not to have her own "Atonement Child".
11397322	/m/02rb49y	Halfway House	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Joe Wilson was a poor, itinerant salesman with a pretty young wife in Philadelphia. Joseph Kent Gimball was a wealthy, socially prominent New Yorker with an elegant and aristocratic wife. These two very different men were actually the same man, a bigamist leading a bizarre double life. His deception was revealed to the world after he was murdered in his "halfway house," a riverfront shack outside Trenton, New Jersey, that he used as a hideout to switch identities. But who killed him? Ellery Queen, who is drawn into the case to help old friends, puts his finger on the central question: "Who was murdered -- Joe or Joseph?" Queen performs an extended feat of logical deduction from seemingly insignificant clues, such as a number of burnt matches, and finally develops a profile of the killer that can fit only one person in the case.
11400295	/m/02rb7g_	The Prince	Francine Rivers	2005-09-30	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jonathan. His zeal carried him into battle. His faithfulness won him honor among his people. His humility led him into friendship with the man who would become king in his place. David was a man after God's own heart. But it was the courage and selflessness of his best friend that opened the door to David's rule. A man of honor and deep faith. Jonathan.
11401666	/m/02rb94z	Moonshine	Rob Thurman	2007-03-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Moonshine is the sequel to Nightlife. The plot revolves around Caliban Leandros (Cal), and his older brother, Niko, as they and their friends try to rescue the psychic Georgina from a mysterious gangster. The gangster being Caleb, who incites the brothers to attempt to steal one of a pair of mysterious crowns called the Calabassa. Caleb informs the brothers that the current owner of the crown is an under boss in the Kin, the werewolf mafia, called Cerberus. After the initial meeting with Caleb, a werewolf called Flay is used to contact the brothers with information regarding George. Cal ends up having to work for Cerberus in order to find the crown, and finds that Flay also works for Cerberus under Caleb's orders. Caliban finds the crown, but is attacked by Cerberus. To his surprise, Flay ends up assisting him in killing the Kin boss. After killing Cerberus, the crown is stolen by one of the Auphe, who were thought to have all been killed by the brothers the previous year. The brothers then visit Abbagor, the troll under the Brooklyn bridge, in order to possibly find out about the whereabouts of the other crown. While there, Abbagor tells the brothers that the crown is used to steal from others, and is among gypsies, but then once again shows his tendency towards violence when he attacks Cal and Niko. Caliban discovers he has the ability to tear a wormhole in space, a trait handed down from his Auphe father, and escapes the disaster. Niko also escapes. They then find out that Flay is forced to work for Caleb, who is holding Flay's son Slay as a hostage. They allow Flay to help them in retrieving the crown for that reason. The task to discover the crown's location is then passed to Goodfellow because of his numerous friends and connections, and he discovers the whereabouts of the crown in a gypsy clan in the Everglades. They then go to acquire it. Once back in New York, Caleb contacts them to make the exchange at the werewolf bar Moonshine. Cal, Niko, Goodfellow, Promise, and Flay lead an all out assault on the bar only to realize that Georgina isn't being held there, but they do find Slay. In a twist, they also find Caleb, dead. After Caleb's employer, the most powerful and oldest puck named Hobgoblin or Hob, takes Niko and the crown, the remaining use Flay's wolf sense of smell to track Hob down. They find out that Hob wants the Calabassa and George in order to steal her psychic ability, and Niko's blood is going to be used to steal George's ability. Caliban has an idea from his earlier escape from Abbagor, and, after separating Hob from the others, he opens a portal to Tumulus, the Auphe realm, and throws the evil puck through before sealing it. Once home, Cal and George are talking about their relationship together. George is trying to get Cal to realize that she loves him and wants to be with him, but Cal is reluctant because he feels that he is a danger to her, especially after everything that has happened. The book ends with Cal closing the door on Georgina after telling her to use her ability to look into the future to assure her own safety.
11403820	/m/02rbcrw	The Final Deduction	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mrs. Althea Vail tells Wolfe she intends to pay the half-a-million-dollar ransom to the kidnappers, but she wants him to be certain she gets her husband Jimmy back alive and in one piece.
11414384	/m/02rbnch	May Bird and the Ever After		2005	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 May Bird lives alone with her mother and her cat, Somber Kitty (a hairless Rex) on the edge of a wooded swamp in West Virginia. She loves to draw and make believe, and desperately wants to fit in at school but can not seem to figure out how. Most people aren't very comfortable in the woods, but the woods of Briery Swamp fit May Bird like a fuzzy mitten. There, she is safe from school and the taunts and teases of kids who don't understand her. Hidden in the trees, May is a warrior princess, and her cat is her brave guardian. Then May falls into the lake. When she crawls out, May finds herself in a world that is inhabited by things she thought were just in her imagination. She sees many, many ghosts and other amazing creatures. A ghost named Pumpkin, (with a pumpkin head) has pulled her into the Ever After. It is a place few living people have ever seen. Here, towns glow blue beneath zipping stars and the people walk through walls. Here the Book of the Dead holds the answers to everything in the universe. And here, if May is discovered, the horrifyingly evil Bo Cleevil will destroy her. May Bird must get out. This is the beginning of May Bird's daring journey into the Ever After, a haunting place where true friends—and many terrible foes—await her on every corner. She meets Pumpkin, her house ghost/guardian who lives with the Beekeeper Arista in a giant house shaped like a beehive. She is told that she needs to go see the Lady of North Farm, a place no ghost is willing to go. Along the journey May meets new friends and sees new cites full of unimaginable sights. She faces many adventures with characters that you will discover when you read this book. The second book is May Bird Among the Stars and there is a third called "May Bird Warrior Princess"
11418381	/m/02rbst3	Death in Silver	Lester Dent	1934-10	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Silver Death's-Heads, a gang of criminals who wear silver overalls and masks, have been committing seemingly random crimes for months. They become involved when they attack Paine L. Winthrop, a shipyard owner who has offices in the same building as Monk. When his office explodes, Monk and Ham investigate but are captured while reporting back to Doc Savage. With his other aides abroad, Doc Savage attempts to rescue them and solve the case alone. One of the first things he accomplishes is to deduce the nature of the explosion, which has eluded his aides and the police &mdash; it was caused by a three-inch shell. Investigating the deaths of other witnesses to the attack (a fisherman on the river and an aviator flying that day) leads Doc to Winthrop's Shipyards. The Silver Death's-Heads steal some blueprints to hide their secrets while Doc runs into Winthrop's Secretary, Lorna Zane, and efficiency expert, Harry "Rapid" Pace (who has the annoying habit of repeating almost everything twice). Doc leaves Lorna with his cousin Pat at her new beauty salon/gymnasium. Harry leads the Doc to the home of Bedford Burgess Gardner (owner of Transatlantic Lines and Winthorp's chief rival) based on a comment from the gang overheard at the shipyard. Again they run into the gang, and pick up Hugh McCoy, Gardner's Financial Relations Consultant (advising on the merger with Paine L. Winthrop's company) and Pace's rival for Lorna Zane's affections. By questioning an injured gang member, who had been poisoned by his own gang, they find that Monk and Ham are held at the "Indian's Head". Doc browses a telephone directory at an all-night drug store and picks out the "Indian Head Club". When asked he explains that its address is on the waterfront and the Silver Death's-Heads always seem to escape by the river. His deduction is correct and, through stealth and violence, he rescues his aides. They all only narrowly miss being killed when the gang demolish the club with a bomb to destroy evidence. Meanwhile, the Silver Death's-Heads kidnap Pat and Lorna from Pat's salon. Based on a map of New York Harbour found at the club before it exploded and burned down, Doc and Monk go out onto the foggy river to investigate. Diving from the boat, Doc discovers a submerged radio-buoy at a point marked on the map. Further investigation is cut short by a shell apparently fired by an unseen submarine. Ull, the leader of the Death's-Heads (but not the "big brain" behind their plans) sets a trap for Doc with Pat and Lorna as bait. A fake snitch calls Doc with some information but is cut off by a mock attack in another all-night drug store. They make sure to leave clues, especially a trail of footprints in vaseline (from a jar "accidentally" broken in the store), to lead Doc to their hideout. Doc follows the trail using ultraviolet light (because Petroleum jelly glows under ultraviolet light) but approaches the hideout itself in disguise. He is able to penetrate the hideout and successfully avoid the traps set for him but does not manage to rescue Pat or Lorna (as they are not really there). Moving back to the radio-buoys in the river, Doc and aides (along with Rapid Pace and Hugh McCoy) set out in the Helldiver (Doc's submarine). They follow a trail of hidden buoys out into the Atlantic where they are attacked by another submarine (the buoys are intended to guide the villains' submarine down the river to an abandoned sewer that connects to the Indian's Head Club). They are eventually boarded and Doc Savage is apparently killed (this is a common event in Doc Savage stories). The rest are taken in the villains' submarine to their base in an almost derelict rum row ship. Doc, hanging on to the side of the submarine, sneaks aboard the ship, rescues everyone, recovers a lot of stolen goods and escapes in a lifeboat. A fire he started as a diversion causes an explosion (speculated to be either from the fuel tanks or a stockpile of explosives) and the ship sinks as they leave. The big brain behind the plot turns out to be Hugh McCoy, who was also Bedford Burgess Gardner (by using a fake beard). Ham's research showed that "Gardner" had made over $1 Billion in the past year by using the gang to kill off opponents and rivals under cover of random crimes. He would then buy out their companies and make his money through stock manipulation. Rapid Pace, who becomes less cowardly throughout the story, ends up with Lorna Zane.
11418879	/m/02rbt9z	Valperga; or The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca	Mary Shelley		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Valperga is a historical novel which relates the adventures of the early fourteenth-century despot Castruccio Castracani, a real historical figure who became the lord of Lucca and conquered Florence. In the novel, his armies threaten the fictional fortress of Valperga, governed by Countess Euthanasia, the woman he loves. He forces her to choose between her feelings for him and political liberty. She chooses the latter and sails off to her death.
11421085	/m/02rbyrt	Twice Brightly		1974	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 For young servicemen who had spent six years fighting fascism, postwar Britain was a drab, oppressive place. For a young and untried army comic keen on the Marx brothers and Jimmy Cagney, a Yorkshire Variety theatre in February was a vision of Hell itself.
11421712	/m/02rc0lx	Second Glance	Jodi Picoult	2003-04-08	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Second Glance follows several characters throughout the book, in Jodi Picoult's typical fashion, flashing back and forth many decades to piece together the story. It is set in Comtosook, VT. The main plot is that an Abenaki land space is planned to be turned into a shopping mall. However, if the Abenaki can prove that an ancestor was buried on the land, it cannot be built on. Ross Wakeman comes to town to stay with his sister. He is the survivor of many varied suicide attempts, which began after his fiancee Aimee was killed in a car accident years ago. He became a ghost hunter hoping to someday encounter her spirit. Comtosook begins to experience many strange phenomena as the result of the threat of development on the sacred land, including water that refuses to boil. With the help of a local detective, Ross uncovers a decades-old murder mystery that helps to prove that the land in question truly is a Native American-burial ground, and in turn is able to save the land from development. But the Native American that was buried there surprises everyone and makes Ross think with parts of his brain that he has not paid attention to in years.
11422948	/m/02rc45d	The John Riddell Murder Case	Corey Ford	1930	{"/m/0gf28": "Parody"}	 Acting in response to an incomprehensibly phrased note in Walter Winchell's gossip column predicting that John Riddell will be murdered at 9:00 that morning, Philo Vance alerts the police and travels with the narrator to Riddell's home, only to find that they are too late. As might be expected from a work of parody, much of the book's humor comes from absurdities and from the ridiculous portrayals of the writings and authors caricatured. Repetition is frequently employed for comedic effect. The fourth wall is broken on several occasions, as when Philo Vance responds to Heath's suggestion that Vance believes that all of the recent best-selling authors are going to be murdered: "'Already there have been thirteen murders, and we're only at'--he glanced down swiftly--'at page 124.'" Philo Vance himself is portrayed as affecting an inconsistently cultured vocabulary and a lazy style of speaking. For example: "I've been evolvin' a rather fantastic theory, and I want to test it a trifle further."
11423191	/m/02rc4k2	It's Kind of a Funny Story	Ned Vizzini		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Craig, the protagonist and narrator, is a 15 year old teenager who lives with his family in an upper-middle class Manhattan neighborhood in New York City. He attends the prestigious Executive Pre-Professional High School, having studied arduously to win admission. Once admitted, however, he becomes overwhelmed by the school's intense academic pressure, as well as his unrequited love for Nia, his best friend Aaron's girlfriend. His stress eventually manifests itself in an eating disorder, depression, use of marijuana, affected sleep habits, and suicidal thoughts. After he stops taking medication prescribed by his psychiatrist, his depression builds up until, unable to fend off his suicidal ideation, he calls 1-800-SUICIDE and is admitted to a nearby psychiatric hospital. He meets many other patients, some friendly, others reclusive or delusional, and is supported and encouraged by his family and school principal once they learn of his hospitalization. Craig meets Noelle, a female patient who coped with a history of sexual abuse by cutting her face with scissors. In isolation from the outside world, and with help from Noelle, Craig confronts the sources of his anxiety and regains his health. During his recovery, Craig experiments with art, specifically stylized maps, and discovers he has a great deal of natural talent and ability. Once Craig has recovered, his counselor suggests he transfer to an art school, a thought that excites Craig. At the end of the novel, having undergone a mental "shift", he returns home. He narrates that his brain now tells him that he wants to "live", and he says he now wants to "do". He then begins to list the things he wants to do, such as eat, sleep, run, walk, kiss, and read, among others.
11431117	/m/02rc9f5	The Moral Animal	Robert Wright	1994		 To be filled in To be filled in To be filled in To be filled in To be filled in -->
11436372	/m/02rcgm8	The Scarlet Thread	Francine Rivers	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sierra Clanton Madrid can't believe her husband Alex would take a new job and uproot the family to Los Angeles without consulting her. Armed with righteous anger, Sierra turns their home into a battleground, even after they make the move. Alex chases success, both business and social, to compensate for his insecurities about his Hispanic immigrant roots. Both Alex and Sierra are so caught up in themselves that neither tries to understand the other or seeks God's will. Soon their perfect marriage lies in shambles. Seeing the need for God, Sierra's mother gives her the journal of a female ancestor and a handcrafted quilt made with a scarlet thread.
11437637	/m/02rck8m	Invincible	Troy Denning	2008-05-13	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 With Darth Caedus ruling both the Galactic Alliance and the Imperial Remnant, the Jedi Coalition is now desperate to overthrow the Sith Lord by any means necessary. As the events of the novel proceed, with the heroes of the story attempting to find a way to kill Caedus whenever they get the chance, the entire Second Galactic Civil War culminates to a confrontation over the Coalition's base, prompting the Battle of Shedu Maad. Caedus is distracted by the fact that the Imperial Moffs had manufactured a nanovirus programmed to kill Hapan Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo and her daughter Allana since they are Hapan royalty, which would be bad for the Hapes Consortium, one of the Galactic Alliance's enemies. Jaina Solo, now prepared to face and kill her hated brother, confronts him in one final lightsaber duel aboard his capital ship of the Anakin Solo. Caedus tries to warn her about the nanovirus, going so far as to sheathe his lightsaber in the face of an armed opponent. Jaina however believes that he is attempting to trick her and refuses to believe him, slamming the door shut when Caedus tries to leave and forcing him to fight. The duel continues, with both of them managing to inflict heavy injuries on each other until Jaina manages to cripple Caedus by severing his Achilles tendon, following which she attacks with a final strike which could not possibly be blocked by Caedus in his current condition, but which also leaves her open to a retaliatory strike. However, instead of taking advantage of the opening to drag Jaina into death along with him Caedus chooses to use the last instant of his life to reach out to Tenel Ka and warn her of the danger posed to her and Allana. Jaina realises what he is trying to do an instant before her lightsaber cuts into him, too late for her to stop the killing strike. The guilt associated with Jacen's death continues to haunt Jaina, as a part of her had believed, right until the end, that he could be redeemed. In the aftermath, Ben Skywalker redeems Tahiri Veila of Darth Caedus's darkness, and the Galactic Alliance Guard is disbanded. Luke Skywalker installs Jagged Fel as the Head of State of the Imperial Remnant, and Tenel Ka Djo announces that though she survived the Moffs' nanovirus attack, her daughter didn't. However, in reality, Allana did survive, and Tenel Ka lied about her status so that she wouldn't be targeted for assassination by anyone until she becomes Hapan Queen Mother herself. In the end, with the power vacuum left in Caedus's death, former Imperial Admiral Natasi Daala takes over the Sith Lord's place as the Galactic Alliance's new Chief of State. The novel, and the series, ends with Jaina welcoming Han and Leia's adopted daughter, "Amelia Solo" (Allana in disguise), into the family.
11439875	/m/02rcpbn	Little Children	Tom Perrotta	2004-03-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Sarah, who once considered herself a radical feminist, wonders how she allowed herself to be reduced to a common housewife, constantly at the playground with three other highly-judgmental women. Her husband, Richard, is much older than Sarah and a sort of last alternative for her love life; it is even hinted that she married him only because she feared that she would be stuck in her dead-end job and life otherwise. Sarah describes Richard as "under" her expectations. When she discovers his addiction to internet pornography, she is more apathetic than disgusted. Todd is a handsome young father the neighborhood women have nicknamed the "Prom King." One of the other mothers offers a challenge to Sarah: "Five bucks if you get his phone number." While jokingly discussing the bet, Todd and Sarah engage in a kiss that becomes more passionate than the ruse called for. This leads to a convenient affair between the two who "happen" to cross each other at the local pool and "happen" to bring their children to nap together while they have sex on the living room floor. Larry is a retired policeman. He left the force after shooting a black student brandishing a toy gun at a local shopping mall; the guilt became so unbearable that he collected his pension early. Larry, who loved his job and refuses to let go of it, is angry that Ronald McGorvey, a sex offender convicted of exposing himself to children, is allowed to live in his neighborhood, and starts a fanatical one-man vendetta to drive him out. He harasses Ronald and his mother, May, going as far as to light dog feces on fire in the yard of May's home. Ronnie, for his part, finds himself ostracized by the community because of this, and the few dates his mother forces him to go on are ruined when he gives in to temptation and masturbates while watching children. Larry eventually gets into a shoving match with May, who has a stroke that leads to her death. Bertha, a school crossing guard and May's best friend, takes Ronnie to the hospital, where May has written him a note that reads only "Please, please be a good boy." Todd enters into the affair with Sarah primarily because he shares her dissatisfaction with life, particularly concerning his wife Kathy, a gorgeous, long-legged brunette who works as a documentary filmmaker. She resents being the primary breadwinner of their home and continually pressures Todd to follow up on his law school education; Todd, having failed the bar exam twice already, has never had any real enthusiasm for the law, but studies out of deference to her wishes. Kathy later finds out about Todd's illicit affair with the rather plain Sarah, and finds herself more insulted than angry that Todd would go for someone less attractive. The novel ends with Todd and Sarah planning to leave their spouses. But Sarah finds, via a phone call, that Richard has left her for an internet porn star called "Slutty Kay", who goes by her real name, Carla, around her gentlemen callers. Sarah takes her daughter Lucy to the local playground late at night while waiting for Todd, who injures himself while hanging out with some local skaters he's been watching for months. Just when she starts to lose hope, Ronald appears. Much to her own surprise, she finds sympathy for him &mdash; until he admits that he has given in to his compulsions and killed a girl. Larry suddenly approaches, ready to kill Ronald, but finds it in his heart to offer his condolence for May's death. Sarah just sits, baffled, wondering how she will raise her daughter, whom she feels she has greatly let down.
11445284	/m/047gq7d	City of Crime				 In City of Crime, Batman investigates the disappearance of a young girl and unravels a labyrinthine conspiracy that stretches from Gotham City's powerful elites to its forgotten poor. In order to save the city he has sworn to protect, Batman will have to face old foes and a new nemesis spawned from its very depths. Noted villains appear in this novel such as Black Mask, Mr. Freeze, and Killer Croc. The universe that this story takes place in is the New Earth Universe
11447018	/m/02rcz97	The Landscape of Love	Sally Beauman	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the summer of 1967, the family friends Dan, Nick and Lucas arrive for a visit. Dan is Finn's boyfriend; Nick is a young doctor; and Lucas is a non-conformist fame-hungry artist and disregards others. Lucas is painting the girls' portraits. When he works on Maisie, she entertains him with tales of the family's past. However, when Maisie tells of having her fortune told years ago, he scoffs and so she doesn't tell him what she saw in the fortune teller's crystal ball. As the family begins to prepare to travel to Gramps's childhood home for their annual visit, their place is enveloped in a brooding sense of impending doom. Maisie (who wanders at night) spies Finn returning home very early in the morning, naked under her dress. Maisie worries that Dan's heart will be broken if Finn has been with Lucas, as she suspects. Before the family leaves on their trip, Stella and her father work on their plan to ask Gramps's wealthy twin brother for a loan to repair the crumbling Abbey. Maisie slips away, spying Lucas furtively leaving for Cambridge on Julia's bike. She wonders if he has stolen it. Maisie then overhears a passionate argument between Dan and Finn, followed by an equally passionate embrace. The house is filled with fear, distrust and despair. Maisie doesn't know what is wrong with her family but decides she must take action to help them. As usual Gramps's brother rebuffs the family's request for a loan, spurred on by his wife Violet ‘the Viper’. However, Maisie acquires money through surprising means. During this transaction she learns that her family fears she will turn out like her deceased father. She does not understand, what does it mean? The story skips more than twenty years later to 1989, and, rather than being a continuation of Maisie’s tale, it is Dan who is narrating. The sense of impending doom turns to suspenseful mystery as Dan reflects back on a tragedy that occurred during the summer of 1967 involving the Mortland family. Lucas is now a celebrated artist planning to show his 1967 portrait, The Sisters Mortland, at a retrospective. Dan is horrified at the thought of stirring up the family tragedy and sorrow. At this, it is learnt that Maisie was the cause of the tragedy, as she had jumped out of a window. It is also learnt by the reader, that Maisie was not a normal girl, but was possibly autistic, though it is not explained clearly in the book. Dan's life is also something of a tragedy. His job as a producer of commercials ends, his father dies, and he lives in a drug-blurred depression. His the current focus of his life is the tragic puzzle of the Mortland event that occurred during that long past summer. Where did it all go wrong? Why did it happen? And how did he lose the love of his life?
11454490	/m/02rd920	The House That Berry Built	Dornford Yates	1945	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 This novel is from Yates' series of 'Berry Books', featuring Berry Pleydell, his relatives and close friends. It is the seventh in the series, all of which are period comedy-thrillers. The House That Berry Built charts the Pleydell family's decision to sell White Ladies, their ancestral home in Hampshire, England, and move to Pau, in the South of France. Unable to afford their aristocratic lifestyle in England, and unhappy at social upheavals following the end of World War I, they take refuge in the South of France where they believe traditional values have not yet disappeared. Nostalgic for a vanished world of social events and elegant idleness, Berry and his friends spend their time driving their Rolls and picnicking on the slopes of the Valley of Ossau. Wearied by the daily return journey from their residence at Pau, they decide to acquire some land on the green mountainside, halfway between the thermal spa of Lally and the village of Besse. Much of the novel is a thinly-veiled account of the building of 'Cockade', the writer's own residence between Eaux-Bonnes and Aas in 1934. In the novel, the house is called 'Gracedieu', and like its real-life equivalent it is constructed on a monumental built terrace anchored in the rock and is called "Le Château" by the people of the country. Although it also contains a relatively minor sub-plot regarding the family's investigation of the murder of Sir Steuart Rowley, the novel's principal focus is upon an exceptionally precise description of the building of 'Gracedieu'. The cost of the work, the risks of the construction techniques employed, the whims of the mountain weather, the relations with the local contractor are all carefully detailed. The House That Berry Built comes to an end with the completion of the house and the first signs of the Second World War. It becomes clear, soon after the family move into the house, that the impending war means they cannot remain there. Dornford Yates himself left France for southern Africa for the duration of the war.
11456331	/m/02rdd09	Promise Not to Tell	Jennifer McMahon	2007-04	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In 2002, Kate Cypher, a 41-year-old school nurse, returns home to her Vermont hippie commune where she grew up to care for her aging mother, who is afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. Her first night home, a murder takes place behind her mother's cabin -- the killing is identical to that of Kate's childhood friend, Del Griswold, who was murdered in 1971. Del was a scrappy outcast in life, shunned and taunted as "Potato Girl." Since her unsolved murder, Del had become something of a local legend, supposedly tormenting the townsfolk from beyond the grave. Kate never revealed her close relationship to Del, before or after her death, unable to stand up to those who pitied or reviled Del. Kate is drawn into the investigation of the modern-day crime, and must revisit Del's original murder, and her culpability in it. Along the way, she realizes that someone is playing games with her: leaving cryptic messages that tell her where to go. By following these clues, Kate re-meets many members of the hippie town she grew up in and relives some of the horryifying times during Del's murder
11457187	/m/02rdd_y	A Dedicated Man	Peter Robinson	1988	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The body of a well-liked local historian is found half-buried under a drystone wall near the village of Helmthorpe, Swainsdale. Who on earth would want to kill such a thoughtful, dedicated man? Penny Cartwright, a beautiful folk singer with a mysterious past, a shady land-developer, Harry’s editor and a local thriller writer are all suspects–and all are figures from Harry’s previous, idyllic summers in the dale. A young girl, Sally Lumb, knows more than she lets on, and her knowledge could lead to danger. Inspector Banks’s second case unearths disturbing secrets behind a bucolic facade.
11457191	/m/02rdf08	Seeker	Jack McDevitt	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is set approximately 10,000 years in the future, after civilization has expanded to inhabit countless worlds. Alex Benedict and his partner Chase Kolpath specialize in a new active type of space-archeology, involving the examination of abandoned bases and deserted space-craft in search of valuable items. Alex is approached by a mysterious woman who asks him to ascertain the value of a strange cup riddled with archaic symbols. They discover that the cup is a 9,000 year old relic from one of the first Faster-than-light vehicles built, the Seeker. This was a colony ship manned by a faction known as the "Margolians" who were fleeing the then-oppressive society of Earth in hopes of establishing a free world. Records indicate that they succeeded, as the Seeker made several voyages, but they kept the location of their colony world a secret and it remains unknown to the present day. With insight and some luck, Alex and Chase discover who brought this cup back. By retracing the route of these long-forgotten space explorers, they begin to get an idea of where the Seeker was found. With excitement high, they set off in hopes of finding the biggest discovery of the century, the colony of "Margolia". Thus begins an adventure which will take them to the brink of death and the ends of the universe.
11471216	/m/02rf0d3	The Dot	Peter H. Reynolds		{"/m/016475": "Picture book"}	 Vashti is a girl who says she cannot draw. When she tells her teacher, she says to "make a mark and see where it takes you." Vashti draws a dot on her paper, and her teacher then says "now sign it." The next week she is surprised to see her dot framed on display in the teacher's office. Seeing her dot, she says "I can make a better dot than that." She then starts drawing elaborate, colorful dots and realizes she is indeed an artist. Later in life she sees a boy who can't draw a straight line. this results in a whole new adventure. Published by Candlewick Press, The Dot is also a film produced by Weston Woods Studios and FableVision. It was awarded the Carnegie Medal in 2006.
11475024	/m/02rf512	Snuff	Chuck Palahniuk	2008-05-20	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Snuff follows three men who are waiting to immortalize themselves into pornography history as they wait to bed Cassie Wright, a former porn queen who has fallen into harder times. Each chapter follows a different guy (Mr. 600, Mr. 72, and Mr. 137), as well as Sheila, the female wrangler who dictates who is the next to be filmed with Cassie Wright. As the three men wait, each starts to divulge their true reasons for wanting to be filmed, as well as discuss the sordid history of Cassie Wright and her reason for suddenly dropping out of the pornography industry for a year. As backgrounds, secrets, and would-be children start to appear, the tensions in the room start to rise and in the end the true secrets of her comeback, and who really is Cassie Wright's porn child, are the last things any of them suspect.
11477170	/m/02rf6g7	Is Shakespeare Dead?	Mark Twain	1909-04	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the book, Twain expounds the view that Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of the canon, and lends tentative support to the Baconian theory. The book opens with a scene from his early adulthood, where he was trained to be a steamboat pilot by an elder who often argued with him over the controversy. Twain's arguments include the following points: * That little was known about Shakespeare's life, and the bulk of his biographies were based on conjecture. * That a number of eminent British barristers and judges found Shakespeare's plays permeated with precise legal thought, and that the author could only have been a veteran legal professional. * That in contrast, Shakespeare of Stratford had never held a legal position or office, and had only been in court over petty lawsuits late in life. * That small towns lionize and celebrate their famous authors for generations, but this had not happened in Shakespeare's case. He described his own fame in Hannibal as a case in point. Twain draws parallels and analogies from the pretensions of modern religious figures and commentators on the nature of Satan. He compares the believers in Shakespeare to adherents of Arthur Orton and Mary Baker Eddy.
11491800	/m/02rfps7	Sitt Marie Rose	Etel Adnan	1978		 The novel is divided into two “Times”: “Time I” and “Time II.” Time I offers a description of prewar Beirut with Mounir wanting the female narrator of this section to write the script for his film. As Time I progress the violence that is mentioned as happening in Beirut escalates into what becomes the Lebanese Civil War. At the end of Time I the narrator tells Mounir that she cannot write a film for him given that Mounir repudiates the narrator’s suggestions for film on the grounds that they are too violent and political. Time II is divided into three sections with seven chapters each. One chapter in each section is devoted to relating the events surrounding the death of Sitt Marie Rose from the perspective of one of the narrators. The narrators always follow the following order in each of the three sections: the deaf-mute school children that Sitt Marie Rose teaches, Sitt Marie Rose herself, Mounir, Tony, Fouad, Friar Bouna Lias, and the unnamed narrator from Time I.
11494990	/m/02rftn2	Starcross	Philip Reeve	2007-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 Protagonist Arthur ("Art") Mumby and his older sister Myrtle are invited to the Starcross hotel on a small and periodically barren asteroid. There, Arthur’s mother Emily suspects that Starcross is built on a piece of Mars which routinely slips through a hole in the fabric of time, and Myrtle then discovers that Sir Richard Burton and his Martian wife Ulla have been changed into trees. Jack Havock, now a British secret agent, appears on the scene disguised as an Indian prince. In the following night they are attacked by the Moobs, a species resembling animated black top hats, which take control of Jack’s crew and other guests, including Emily. Myrtle and Jack escape, but become lost in the deserts of prehistoric Mars. There, they encounter Delphine, one of the guests, a French secret agent determined to find her grandfather’s wrecked ship and create an American-style republic in his name. At the wreck, they discover that Delphine’s grandfather was killed by Moobs, and later learn that the Moobs are native to a time period near the end of the universe, and that they live chiefly by feeding on other species' thoughts. A well-intentioned Moob helps Jack win Delphine’s soldiers to his side, and they return to Starcross. There, the Moobs load Jack's ship with their comrades and plan to take control of the local societies. Art frees Jack’s crew from their influence, and they return to Starcross to discover that Arthur’s mother, having sufficient memory to sate them, has subdued the Moobs. Starcross' owner Sir Launcelot Sprigg and Delphine attempt to overpower the others; but Arthur’s mother changes them into babies. The protagonists enter the future and inspire the Moobs with new thoughts, whereby they are stimulated to greater activity. Thereafter Myrtle, challenged by Jack, determines to study the cold fusion used in space travel; whereas Professor Ferny, a plant-like creature, promises to find a cure for Sir Richard and Ulla's transformation.
11497665	/m/02rfwsv	Oath of Swords	David Weber	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This novel begins when Bazhell Bahanakson is an exchange hostage in Navahk. While taking the back way out of the palace to meet his friend Brandark, he hears screaming. When he investigates he finds a hradani woman named Farmah being raped by the crown prince Harnak. He attacks Harnak and frees Farmah, smuggling her out of the city with the help of another servant woman, Tala. He sends the women towards Hurgrum, then strikes off in another direction, hoping to draw pursuit away from them. Brandark joins him and together they set off east to try to find work. Unfortunately hradani are not popular in other lands, and they are unwelcome most places they go. The wealthy dwarven merchant Kilthandaknarthas (Kilthan for short) hires them as caravan guards and they travel with him for some time, beating back several attacks by a group of assassins called the Dog Brothers, who are connected to Sharna's church. Harnak, who has been secretly worshiping Sharna (a practice that would be punished by death if he were ever discovered), is the one who arranged for the dog brothers to be sent after Bahzell, though Bahzell and Brandark do not yet realize this, because as long as Bahzell is alive he is a threat to Harnak's position. Eventually Bahzell and Brandark leave Kilthan in a city called Riverside. They stay there for a while, trying to find jobs. Bahzell finds a job as a bar bouncer but was fired after another assassination attempt failed. While walking to the inn where he and Brandark were staying, he again hears screaming, and follows it into an alley where he rescues a noblewoman from the Empire of the Spear named Zarantha. She tells the city guard that she is his employer, saving him from jail. He and Brandark agree to help her, her servant Rekah and her armsman Tothas, who is unwell, to get home. Brandark, with Zarantha's help, begins writing a song in honor of Bahzell, called the Lay of Bahzell Bloody Hand. As they travel there are more attacks by the Dog Brothers. They also encounter more divine intervention in their trip, which Bahzell resents, culminating in a personal appearance by Chesmirsa, the Singer of Light, in an effort to recruit Bahzell for her brother Tomanak. Bahzell, like most hradani, wants nothing to do with any gods, none of whom have done anything for his people in living memory, though Tothas, a follower of the war god tries to convince him otherwise. Shortly after that divine visit Rekah is badly hurt and Zarantha is kidnapped. Tothas explains the background that they had not shared with the hradani before: Zaarantha is a powerful mage, who was sent to be educated in the Empire of the Axe because without proper training Spearman mages generally died before they came into their talents. She plans to set up a mage academy in her native land to give her countrymen the training they need. Someone doesn't want her to make it. She has been kidnapped by dark wizards, who plan to kill her, allowing them to harness her life energy for a magical working. They would prefer to take her home first, as they will get more out of the working if they do it on her own soil. The hradani leave Tothas and Rekah behind, and set off after Zarantha. They meet up with Wencit of Rum, who aids them in the successful attack on the camp. Zarantha was badly hurt in the mind and Wencit needed someone to draw off the army that would chase them. So Bahzell volunteered, and Brandark followed, unwilling to leave his friend. Meanwile, Harnak and the church of Sharna in Navahk have decided this has gone on long enough. They use a human sacifice to raise a demon, which they send after Bahzell, and to enchant a sword to allow Sharna himself to reach through the bearer and strike directly. The demon catches up with Bahzell and Brandark as they flee. Bahzell wins, with Tomanak's help, and finally agrees to take sword-oath as a champion of Tomanak. He and Brandark once again run, eventually entering the lands of the half-elven Purple Lords. Bahzell's compulsion for rescuing people leads him to interfere with a Purple Lord who is in the middle of throwing an entire village out into the wilderness for being short of rent. He kills the Purple Lord, and instructs the townspeople to blame everything on a band of invading hradani to draw the pursuit. Harnak, who is carrying the cursed sword, is also following them, and the Purple Lords end up tracking him, believing him to be the one who killed the lord of the village. Harnak eventually catches up with Bahzell and the two of them do battle. The battle however, is not only between them, but also between Sharna—who has opened a portal to his realm, through the sword, in order to strike out at Bahzell—and Tomanak who fights against him through his champion. Bahzell eventually defeats Harnak. Brandark fought the prince's entire guard, all of whom had been in the grip of the Rage, and was mortally wounded. Calling out to Tomanak, he demands to know why his friend must die. Tomanak tells Bahzell that he can heal Brandark through Bahzell, if he can see Brandark as fully healed. Bahzell is successful and Brandark's fatal wounds heal, leaving him alive and recovering, though missing an ear and two fingers. The two companions then travel to Bortalik Bay, where they receive a message from Zarantha that she is safe and well and that her father has adopted the two hradani, offering them any assistance that her house can provide. Bahzell gets them passage on a ship manned by Marfang Island halflings, and they set off for Belhadan.
11513635	/m/02rggft	Silence	Shusaku Endo	1966	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Young Portuguese Jesuit, Sebastião Rodrigues (based on the historical figure Giuseppe Chiara) is sent to Japan to succor the local Church and investigate reports that his mentor, Fr. Cristóvão Ferreira, has committed apostasy. (Ferreira is a historical figure, who apostatized after torture and later married a Japanese woman and wrote a treatise against Christianity.) Fr. Rodrigues and his companion Fr. Francisco Garrpe arrive in Japan in 1638. There they find the local Christian population driven underground. Security officials force suspected Christians to trample on fumie, which are crudely carved images of Christ. Those who refuse are imprisoned and killed by anazuri (穴吊り), being hung upside down over a pit and slowly bled. Those Christians who do step on the image to stay hidden are deeply shamed by their act of apostasy. The novel relates the trials of the Christians and increasing hardship suffered by Rodrigues, as more is learnt about the circumstances of Ferreira's apostasy. Finally, Rodrigues is betrayed by the Judas-like Kichijiro. In the climax, as Rodrigues looks upon a fumie, Christ breaks his silence: Yet the face was different from that on which the priest had gazed so often in Portugal, in Rome, in Goa and in Macau. It was not Christ whose face was filled with majesty and glory; neither was it a face made beautiful by endurance to pain; nor was it a face with strength of a will that has repelled temptation. The face of the man who then lay at his feet [in the fumie] was sunken and utterly exhausted…The sorrow it had gazed up at him [Rodrigues] as the eyes spoke appealingly: 'Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here.'
11513985	/m/02rggqd	In the Belly of the Bloodhound		2006-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This novel follows Jacky Faber upon her return to Boston. In her small sailboat, the Morning Star, she sneaks into port past two British ships. When she is out of sight, she finds a young boy, Jim Tanner, to watch her boat for her. She goes into town to talk with her lawyer, Ezra Pickering. They decide it is best for Jacky to return to the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls. The school is being rebuilt with bricks after a fire caused when she knocked over a lamp while fighting for her life. The next day, Ezra, Jim, and Jacky take the Morning Star to Dovecote to see Amy, who is in a deep depression. Jacky surprises her by bringing her lunch to her. She tells Amy her story and then the two of them join Ezra and Randall for lunch. The months pass after that. When school starts again, Jacky greets her old friends. Her old enemy, Clarissa, has brought a slave back with her, and Jacky is outraged. After about a month, Higgins comes to the school and becomes head of the serving staff. Months go by, and classes too. One day, all the girls except Amy go on a planned field trip to the shore. Jacky is surprised that Mistress Pimm does not come, and is even more surprised when she realizes that Higgins is not there either. Only Mr. Harrison, the man leading their trip, and his slave Jerome are there. When they are taken to the docks, Jacky refuses to get in the lifeboat to take them to their picnic spot without Mistress Pimm or Higgins. Mr. Harrison then points a gun at her and forces her to get in the boat. The girls are then taken onto a ship and learn Mr Harrison is a man named Colonel Bartholomew Simon, where Clarissa angrily calls him by his more popular name, "Blackman Bart". Clarissa recognizes him as a slave dealer, who often handles transactions with her father's plantation. Blackman Bart informs the girls that they will be sold into slavery in North Africa. While the girls are hysterical, Jacky quickly shoves her seabag full of supplies down into the hold. Jacky organizes the group. She divides the girls into three groups and assigns a leader to each group. The three leaders are Jacky, Dolley, and Clarissa. They find a rat hole into a storage room, and make plans to widen it with Jacky's shiv to escape through. There is a guard at the door to the girls' prison that the crew calls Dummy. Jacky soon finds out that he is actually Hugh the Grand, or Hughie, from the Rooster Charlie Gang on the streets of London. Jacky reveals herself as "Little Mary", now Jacky, and he recognizes her. The next day, a man named Sin-Kay enters the hold. He had posed as Blackman Bart's slave, when they were really business partners. He organizes the girls into an alphabetical line, and is quickly introduced to the wrath of Clarissa. He quickly singles out Clarissa and Jacky as the two "troublemakers". The girls begin to listen to their leaders of their groups, Jacky, Clarissa, and Dolley. Only one girl, Elspeth Goodwin, cannot cope. She becomes hysterical and emotional, begging to be sent home. After a week, Elspeth rats Jacky out as the leader of the girls in a last-ditch attempt to be sent home. Jacky then gets a lashing with the cat-o-nine tails for organizing a hunger strike among the girls. The hunger strike was in response to the requests of the girls (better food and cleaner conditions). As the girls work on widening the rat hole and sneaking supplies through, Jacky bargains with two of the less aggressive sailors, Mick and Keefe. They help get the girls clean water for washing in exchange for Jacky revealing parts of herself. While one girl, Constance Howell, expresses outrage and indignation, Jacky continues to do so, in exchange for every girl getting water to wash with. Jacky also works on spreading superstitious stories through the crew. She has the youngest girl, Rebecca, wake up screaming about seeing a ghost, to scare the extremely superstitious crew. She also tells the sailors that the Captain is planning on killing them. Two riots are also caused during the girls captivity. Clarissa continues to harass Sin-Kay and call him offensive names. The girls run out and cause trouble when he attempts to throw Clarissa overboard. Jacky also sneaks out of the Hold as the "black ghost", and is seen by two sailors. When the sailors become terrified and create pandemonium, Jacky sneaks back in, with the help of Clarissa. Soon, the hole is big enough to escape through. The girls create a 100-second fuse to ignite the powder magazine and aid their escape. They all make it out the hole and make their escape in one of the lifeboats, with the help of Jacky's old friend, Hughie. Shortly after their escape onto the life boat, Hughie dies from an injury he received while protecting Jacky on the ship and Jacky falls ill from a wound on her leg. Jacky wakes up on a Royal Navy Ship, HMS Juno, which is taking the girls back to Boston. Before they get to Boston, the Juno has to make a quick stop in New York, where they meet up with Henry Hoffman, the school's stable boy and fiancé of one of the girls. That girl rides back to Boston with Henry ahead of the others. When word of the girls' rescue and survival comes, everyone is excited and prepares for their return. When the Juno gets there, parents and loved ones, including Jaimy, are waiting. The Juno docks and the girls step off. The last three to get off are Dolley, Clarissa, and Jacky. The book ends with two marines stopping her before she can get off the ship and telling her she is under arrest for piracy.
11515110	/m/02rghhh	Appius and Virginia	John Webster			 The play is set in ancient Rome in the time of the Decemvirate, from 451 to 449 BCE. In the opening scene, Appius Claudius is offered membership among the Decemviri; he feigns humility and claims unworthiness for the high office, and accepts only when faced with the penalty for refusal, which is banishment. Yet in private conversation with his closest follower, Marcus Claudius, Appius shows that he actually covets the office and its power, and cynically masks his ambition with an outward show of modesty. The play's second scene introduces Virginia, her uncle Numitorius, and her betrother, Icilius. Virginia's father Virginius is away commanding the army of Rome; but Icilius brings word that Virginius has suddenly returned to Rome from the field, spurring his horse bloody as he races directly to the Senate. Appius confesses to Marcus Claudius that he lusts after Virginia, and Marcus encourages Appius to exploit his power to obtain the girl; Appius, he says, can easily exert control over Virginius through his position in the state. Before the Senate, Virginius pleads for money for the hungry troops, warning the Senate that the army is close to mutiny. Appius puts him off, promising help "Hereafter." The Senate breaks up, and Virginius pauses only briefly to see his family before returning to the camp, where he manages to stifle the mutiny by the force of his commanding personality. Virginia is serenaded by musicians she thinks are sent by Icilius; when she learns that they were actually sent by Appius, she rejects his advance. Appius courts her and pursues her with letters and gifts; at first Virginia conceals this from Icilius, but later she reveals all. Icilius meets Appius in private and threatens to kill him if he continues. Appius is outraged by this, and unhappy at the poor results of his pursuit of Virginia. Marcus reveals a bold plan to win the girl: he will use false evidence and perjured testimony to claim that Virginia is not really her father's daughter, but in fact a "bond-slave" belonging to himself. Virginia is apprehended by Appius's lictors while she is shopping in the market. Marcus brings the legal action before Appius, who makes a pretense of impartiality and even of suspicion and hostility toward Marcus &mdash; which does not fool Icilius or Numitorius. Appius tries to stage the trial before Virginius has time to return to Rome, but the general shows up for the hearing dressed like a slave. Before the trial starts, Virginia tells her father that she would rather die than be prostituted to Appius's lust. The rigged hearing goes as Appius and Marcus plan: their unctious Advocate presents false documents, and Appius rules in Marcus's favor. Icilius protests, and is taken into custody. Virginius bows to the demands of honor and to his daughter's words, and stabs Virginia to death in the courtroom. There is outrage, and an attempt to apprehend Virginius, but he escapes back to his troops. He confronts the soldiers with the fact of his deed, and once again wins their backing; he leads the army back to Rome. The authorities imprison Appius and Marcus and release Icilius from prison to confront Virginius when the general arrives. Icilius is appalled that Virginius has killed his daughter ("thou hast turn'd / My bridal to a funeral"), and the two have a debate on the intertwined considerations of law and justice and honor. The two men join forces to go to the Senate to confront Appius. Appius and Marcus are produced in chains. Virginius is emotionally drained after the ordeal of his daughter's death at his own hand, and seems ready to pardon Appius. This provokes Icilius. He brings Virginia's body through the streets; the Roman populace, confronted by the sight, becomes passionate for Appius's downfall, and Virginius's resolve is strengthened again. Appius and Marcus are offered swords; Appius uses his to commit suicide, but Marcus lacks the nerve to do the same, and pleads for mercy. He is sent to be executed by the common hangman. The play's comic relief is supplied by soldiers and servants, led by Virginia's servant Corbulo.
11515935	/m/02rgj65	Maske: Thaery	Jack Vance	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Long ago, the isolated planet Maske was settled by a religious group. They seized a section of the planet from earlier colonists (the Djan), and named it Thaery. The ship carrying a dissident faction was attacked and crashed across the Long Ocean which encircles the planet. The survivors eventually reemerged as the Waels of Wellas. The members of another faction were exiled to the stony peninsula of Glentlin, where they became the Glints. The Glints became notorious bandits, but were eventually subjugated. However, they are still looked down upon as coarse and belligerent. Some Glints took to sailing, and as "Sea Nationals", claimed sovereignty over the ocean. The orthodox settlers divided Thaery into twelve prosperous cantons. Seeking to maintain their religious purity, the Thariots prohibited all travel to other worlds. Jubal Droad, a young Glint man, goes on Yallow, a rite of passage into adulthood, traditionally spent wandering the land and tending the countryside. He recruits three Djan and spends several weeks repairing a trail. One day, an arrogant Thariot ignores Jubal's urgent warning; he and his Djan escort use the path, causing it to collapse and seriously injure Jubal. When he recovers, his uncle Vaidro gives him a letter of introduction to Nai the Hever, one of the most powerful men of Thaery. He arrives in the city of Wysrod and encounters Nai's daughter Mieltrude and her friend Sune Mircea. He accompanies them to the examination of Ramus Ymph for a vacancy for the high office of Servant. Jubal recognizes his nemesis. During a recess, he informs Nai the Hever, the senior Servant, of certain facts that result in Ramus being rejected. Ramus, as Jubal has deduced, has been off-world, breaking the laws of Thaery. On the strength of Vaidro's letter, Nai the Hever offers Jubal a seemingly lowly position as Sanitary Inspector. Jubal reluctantly accepts and learns, during his training, that he has unwittingly become a secret agent. Nai the Hever is in fact the head of Thaery's intelligence service, and Jubal's uncle Vaidro worked with him before he retired. Ramus Ymph seeks revenge by inducing Mieltrude, his fiancée, into signing a warrant to subject Jubal to severe physical punishment. Jubal escapes from the punishers with the assistance of Shrack, a Sea National acquaintance, and procures a warrant against Mieltrude. After a confrontation with Nai the Hever, Mieltrude's warrant is canceled. Jubal's first assignment is to discover what Ramus is plotting. He follows Ramus to the tourist world Eiselbar and learns that he is trying to raise enough money to purchase a space yacht. Back on Maske, Jubal is called away by a family crisis. Cadmus off-Droad, Jubal's illegitimate brother, has murdered Trewe, their brother and head of the clan, asserting that he had been robbed of his rightful place. The clan gathers and brings Cadmus down in fierce fighting. However, Cadmus's masked chief accomplice escapes, and Jubal is certain that it is Ramus. Without proof though, Nai the Hever is unwilling to antagonize the powerful Ymphs. In fact, Jubal infers that he has become an embarrassment to his superior. Nonetheless, Jubal investigates on his own and finds that Ramus is sailing across the ocean to meet with the Waels. Nai is uninterested, so Jubal is forced to use his own initiative. He pursues Ramus in Shrack's ship. Jubal takes Mieltrude into custody, using his warrant, and brings her along. As the voyage progresses, their mutual disdain for each other begins to weaken. Mieltrude informs Jubal that her engagement to Ramus was purely in order to aid her father's investigation of Ramus. Ramus's mistress, Sune, had forged Mieltrude's signature to the warrant against Jubal. Jubal finds Ramus negotiating with the tree-worshipping Waels for the use of their land in exchange for much-needed food. The Minie, leader of the Waels, allows a disguised Jubal to question Ramus. Jubal gets his evasive enemy to finally admit that he wants to construct large tourist resorts, run by his Eiselbar associates. (Ramus had also wanted to lease Droad land for the same purpose, hence his support for Cadmus.) The Waels are greatly disturbed by the revelation and reject his proposal. They do something to Ramus which leaves him mute and strangely subdued, and insist that Shrack and Jubal take him back with them. During the return voyage, Ramus sprouts bark and leaves, to the awestruck horror of the others. When they reach Wysrod, Ramus runs off the ship, plants his feet in the soil, raises his arms, and to all intents and purposes, becomes a tree. Afterwards, Nai the Hever asks his daughter her opinion of Jubal. She admits that he is not unpleasant, for a Glint.
11516432	/m/02rgjlk	The Mystery of the Invisible Thief				 The six Find-Outers are having a chance tea at a local gymkhana with Inspector Jenks and his goddaughter Hilary when a robbery occurs in a nearby large house. The mysterious robber disappears from the scene of the crime without a trace - as if he were invisible and cannot be found. The robbed house turns out to be that of Hilary, so the children have the perfect excuse to investigate as they take the upset girl home. The mysterious thief leaves only a few clues behind - enormous footprints, enormous glove prints, a strange criss-cross mark on the ground, and two torn pieces of paper. The clues do not seem to make any sense. Of all the Peterswood villagers, only policeman Mr Goon and Colonel Cross have feet big enough to fit the footprints, and the thief cannot be either of them. The Five Find-Outers and dog decide that they will find the culprit before Mr. Goon does. Fatty uses his disguises to gather important information, and in doing so outwits Mr Goon, especially when both go at the same time to see Colonel Cross to ask him about his large shoes. Mr Goon disguises himself three times but on each occasion the Find-Outers see through the disguise straight away. The thief strikes again several times, once in Fatty's own shed,and on each occasion the same clues are found - but apparently nobody sees the thief. Finally, Fatty discovers the identity of the thief, and the reason for the enormous footprints. The thief is actually the baker, a small man, who used the boots to give the impression that he was larger than he was, thus planting a false trail and allowing him to use escape options such as climbing out a window and down a drainpipe that would have been impossible for a man of the apparent size of the thief.
11520277	/m/02rgnbw	The Garden Party	Katherine Mansfield			 The Sheridan family is preparing to host a garden party. Laura is supposed to be in charge, but has trouble with the workers who appear to know better, and her mother (Mrs. Sheridan) has ordered lilies to be delivered for the party without Laura's approval. Her sister Jose tests the piano, and then sings a song in case she is asked to do so again later. After the furniture is rearranged, they learn that their working-class neighbor Mr. Scott has died. While Laura believes the party should be called off, neither Jose nor their mother agrees. The party is a success, and later Mrs. Sheridan decides it would be good to bring a basket full of leftovers to the Scotts' house. She summons Laura to do so. Laura is shown into the poor neighbors' house by Mrs. Scott's sister, then sees the widow and her late husband's corpse. She is enamored of the young man, finding him beautiful and compelling, and when she leaves to find her brother waiting for her she is unable to complete the sentence, "Isn't life..."
11525470	/m/02rgvp0	Kindred Spirits		1991	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book narrates the first meeting between dwarven metalsmith, Flint Fireforge and a young Tanis Half-Elven. While working and living in his hometown of Solace creating jewelry, Flint receives a wondrous summons from the Speaker of the Sun, Solostran who admires Flint's work. Flint journeys to the fabled elven city of Qualinost, where he spends every Spring working on jewelry and projects for the Speaker of the Sun. Foreigners are not allowed in Qualenesti, therefore Flint finds himself an outcast. There he meets Tanis, a thoughtful youth born of a tragic union between elf and man. Flint and Tanis, each being a misfit in their own ways, Flint for being a dwarf and Tanis for being of mixed race, find themselves unlikely friends.
11534459	/m/02rh29h	The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot				 In only their second outing, the Three Investigators are hired by a friend of their patron, Alfred Hitchcock, to find his missing parrot. The boys soon discover that the man's parrot was one of a group of seven, trained by their former owner to each repeat a specific message. The focus of the investigation shifts from finding the single lost parrot to discovering the secret behind these cryptic messages. The boys aren't the only ones who want to hear the dead man's secret. Others, including an infamous French art thief, Huganay, have also concluded that the messages are the key to locating a particularly valuable hidden item. The coded message is as follows, by parrots, in order: :Little Bo Peep: Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find it. Call on Sherlock Holmes. :Shakespeare (Billy): To-to-to-be or not to-to-to-be. That is the question. :Blackbeard: I'm Blackbeard the pirate and I've buried my treasure where dead men guard it ever. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle o' rum! :Robin Hood: I shot an arrow as a test, a hundred paces shot it west. :Sherlock Holmes: You know my methods, Watson. Three Severns (sic) lead to thirteen. :Captain Kidd: Look under the stones beyond the bones for the box that has no locks. :Scarface: I never give a sucker an even break, and that's a lead pipe cinch. Ha-ha-ha! The messages each stand for something. Little Bo Peep's message talks about calling on Sherlock Holmes, and where would you call on him except for Baker Street? So the parrots give an address on Baker Street. Next is Billy, whose stutter actually is the number of the address, to-to-to-be, or rather, 222-B. So the address is a 222-B Baker Street in California. Next is Blackbeard, who states that dead men guard the treasure. Where else but a graveyard could dead men be? So the final address is a graveyard in California at 222-B Baker Street. Once you get to the entrance, follow Robin Hood's instructions for his arrow and go exactly 100 paces west. After this, see if you are at the Severn family's grave, and if it leads to the graves of thirteen unknown men. Past the graves, follow Captain Kidd's instructions to the letter and search under the huge stones for a box with no locks. Pete picks up a piece of pipe with the edges sealed as a weapon from the pile of stones. Later, he thinks of Scarface's message and how they never solved it or used it, and believes that the lead pipe he picked up at the graveyard is the pipe talked about in the "lead pipe cinch" joke. His hunch is correct, and the picture is inside the pipe. fi:Kolme etsivää ja änkyttävä papukaija sv:Tre Deckare löser Papegojans gåta
11536580	/m/02rh4n2	The Six Messiahs	Mark Frost		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The year is 1894, and Arthur Conan Doyle is visiting America on a book tour with his brother, Innes. He is also secretly investigating the disappearance of a number of holy books, on the orders of Lord Gladstone. En route to New York City, there is a mysterious murder of a rare book dealer aboard their steamer. Even more shocking, an elderly priest traveling with them reveals himself as a disguised Jack Sparks, who survived his fall over the Reichenbach Falls but has become a broken man (physically and spiritually). Jack has been experiencing a series of dreams about a "black tower" in the middle of a desert, which has drawn him to America. Identical dreams have also been experienced by four other diverse individuals, some of whom are also investigating the recent thefts of holy books. These include: * Kanazuchi: a Buddhist monk from Japan and a deadly warrior, who travels to San Francisco from Japan and learns that a holy text stolen from his monastery was taken east from California; * Walks Alone, aka Mary Williams: a Native American woman following her dreams west, toward Utah; * Rabbi Jacob Stern: an elderly Talmudic scholar from Chicago and expert on Kabbalah; * Peregrine "Presto" Raipur: an Indian prince and amateur magician; Also included in the mix are: Eileen Temple, English actress and Doyle's former lover, traveling west with her second-rate theatre troupe; and Dante Scruggs, a serial killer recruited by the book thieves. Various characters meet each other along the way, all of them converging inexorably on the mysteriously named "New City" in Utah, a religious community founded by the Reverend A. Glorious Day. The center of the town is a cathedral-sized black stone tower built by the town's residents Jack reveals to Doyle that his criminal brother, Alexander, also survived the fall over the Reichenbach Falls; after the collapse of his earlier plans to bring about the Apocalypse, he has come up with a new one. Working with a team of professional mercenaries from the now underground Hanseatic League, Alexander (now Reverend Day) has commissioned the theft of the holy books from every major religion, hoping to perform a ceremony that will "destroy" God, and allow "the Beast" to enter their world. The City's inhabitants, acting through a mix of religious fanaticism and mind control from Alexander, are unknowningly all meant to be slaughtered inside the tower as part of the ceremony. The action ends with a bloody confrontation in the desert, as Jack, Doyle, and their allies fight their way into the tower to reach Alexander before the "Beast" is summoned, and to stop the massacre of as many townspeople as possible. When the two Sparks brothers come face-to-face again, something unexpected happens: Jack forgives his brother. Alexander collapses, relieved of the burden of his madness and his terrible crimes. Together, the "Six Messiahs," including Alexander, join together and their combined power helps drive the Beast back down. Alexander dies thereafter, and Jacob pronounces a melancholy epitaph for him: "He thought he wanted to destroy God. But in reality, all he wanted to destroy was himself." The world is saved, and Jack is hoisted "back into the light" by his friend, Doyle.
11538353	/m/02rh6tw	Empress Orchid	Anchee Min	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel follows the life of a young Manchu girl named Orchid Yehonala. The story begins with the death of her father who was once a governor of Wuhu. His death left Orchid, her two siblings and her mother in poverty. His family travel to his birthplace Peking with his coffin for burial. Once in Peking, they move in with a distant uncle and his mentally retarded and opium addicted son Ping (also known as 'Bottle'). Orchid gets a chance to better her life when Emperor Hsien Feng issues a decree stating that he is looking for "future mates". Orchid is eligible because she is Manchu and that her father was the rank of "Blue Bannerman". She is chosen as the Imperial consort of the fourth rank. Her official title is Lady of the Greatest Virtue. There are a total of 7 Imperial consorts, and over 3000 concubines within the Forbidden City. Nuharoo is pronounced Empress, ranking her first out of the 7 Imperial consorts. Once in the Forbidden City, Orchid befriends a eunuch called An-te-hai, who is assigned as her servant along with numerous other eunuchs and maids. A friendship begins to form between the two, and she appoints him as her first attendant. As the months pass, Orchid becomes more desperate. The official duty of an Imperial consort is to sleep with the Emperor and produce male heirs, but Orchid has yet to be summoned. Without completing that duty, an Imperial consort risks being unaknowledged for the remainder of her life. Knowing this, Orchid decides to bribe Chief Eunuch Shim in order to gain Emperor Hsien Feng's attention. Her tactic works and she soon becomes the Emperor's favourite consort. During her time as the favourite, Orchid learns more about the current history of China, and the inner workings of the Forbidden City. Later on within the story, Orchid becomes pregnant. She gives birth to the Emperor's first male heir Tung Chih amidst nationwide celebration. However, after the birth of his son Emperor Hsien Feng begins to lose interest in Orchid. Part of this is due to Nuharoo's plot to disrupt Orchid's life. The emperor becomes ill as political situations in China worsen. Foreign powers are beginning to invade China, demanding that the emperor grants them the right to establish trade and port. The weak emperor is unable to defend his empire from the combined strength of the intruding forces and the royal family flees the capital when the enemies approach Peking. Emperor Hsien Feng dies whilst in exile. Nonetheless, Orchid's life is still in danger from Su Shun (a corrupt official) as the Emperor has not yet named an heir. Later on in the novel Orchid persuades Hsien Feng to name Tung Chih as the new Emperor, with herself and Nuharoo as co-regents. Su Shun is named as the head of the Board of Regents. As Su Shun had previously expected to gain more power from the death of Hsien Feng without Orchid's interference, tensions between the two increase. Orchid is now granted the title Empress of Holy Kindness Tzu Hsi. Nuharoo becomes the Empress of Great Benevolence Tzu An. Orchid knows that her new position does not guarantee her safety as she is still restricted by the actions of Su Shun. With the assistance of An-te-hai and Prince Kung Orchid manages to successfully arrest and punish Su Shun and his associates, on the grounds that they had tried to organise a coup d'état. The novel ends with the official burial of Emperor Hsien Feng and the hint of a new relationship between Orchid and General Yung Lu.
11538709	/m/02rh78_	True Grit	Charles Portis	1968	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Portis’ novel is narrated by Mattie Ross, a thrifty, churchgoing older spinster distinguished by intelligence, independence and strength of mind. Speaking in 1903, she recounts the story of her adventures many years earlier, when, at the age of fourteen, she undertook a quest to avenge her father’s death at the hands of a drifter named Tom Chaney. She is joined on her quest by Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn and a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (pronounced "La-beef"). As Mattie's tale begins, Chaney is employed on the Ross’ family farm in west central Arkansas, near the town of Dardanelle in Yell County. Chaney is not adept as a farmhand, and Mattie has only scorn for him, referring to him as "trash", and noting that her kind-hearted father, Frank, only hired him out of pity. One day, Frank Ross and Chaney go to Fort Smith to buy some horses. Ross takes $250 with him to pay for the horses, along with two gold pieces he always carried. He ends up spending only $100 on the horses. When Ross tries to intervene in a barroom confrontation involving Chaney, Chaney kills him, robs the body of the remaining $150 and two gold pieces, and flees into Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) on his horse. Hearing that Chaney has joined an outlaw gang led by the infamous "Lucky" Ned Pepper, Mattie wishes to track down the killer, and upon arriving at Fort Smith she looks for the toughest deputy U.S. Marshal in the district. That man turns out to be Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn, and although he is an aging, one-eyed, overweight, trigger-happy, hard-drinking man, Mattie is convinced that he has "grit", and that he is best suited for the job due to his reputation for violence. Playing on Cogburn's need for money, Mattie persuades him to take on the job, insisting that, as part of the bargain, she accompany him. During their preparation, a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf appears. He too is tracking Chaney, and has been for four months, for killing a senator and his dog in Texas, with the hopes of bringing him back to Texas dead or alive for a cash reward. Cogburn and LaBoeuf take a dislike to each other, but after some haggling, they agree to join forces in the hunt realizing that they can both benefit from each other's respective talents and knowledge. Once they reach a deal the two men attempt to leave Mattie behind, but she proves more tenacious than they had expected. They repeatedly try to lose her, but she persists in following them and seeing her transaction with Marshal Cogburn through to the end. Eventually she is jumped by Cogburn and LaBoeuf, who had hid themselves from view and LaBoeuf begins to spank Mattie. Mattie appeals to Cogburn and he orders LaBoeuf to stop. At this point Mattie is allowed to join their posse. Together, but with very different motivations, the three ride into the wilderness to confront Ned Pepper's gang. Along the way, they develop an appreciation for one another.
11541287	/m/02rhblm	Ciske de Rat	Piet Bakker		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ciske de Rat ("Ciske the Rat") is the story of eleven year old lonely street child Ciske (Franciskus) Vrijmoeth, who has no friends and is only called "the rat". The setting is in Amsterdam in the 1930s. Ciske has to change school, because he poured ink over his teacher's head. After school, he helps out in a pub, where his mother Marie also works. His beloved father Cor is a fisherman and therefore not at home. The story is told by his new teacher Bruis, who gives him a chance. Ciske groeit op ("Ciske Grows Up") is the second part. Ciske starts a fire at home as he accidentally knocks over a lantern. He meets his father, who wants to get divorced. At school he makes friends with a sick boy called Dorus. One night, Ciske surprises his mother with another man, who beats him. As his mother tears out pages from a book which was a gift from Dorus, who later dies, Ciske gets angry and kills his mother with a knife. He is then arrested and put into jail. His teacher helps him out, and after Ciske saves a drowning boy's life, he is declared a hero and lives together with his father and aunt Jans. In the third part, Cis de man ("Cis the Man"), Ciske is now an adult soldier and fights against the German soldiers in World War II. This part of the book was published in 1946 after the Dutch liberation and is not included in the films.
11541759	/m/02rhc3t	Snowball's Chance	John Reed		{"/m/0gf28": "Parody"}	 The story begins with the death of Napoleon, the original antagonist of Animal Farm. The animals of the farm, fearing what will become of them, learn that Snowball is alive and well, and Snowball returns to the farm to encourage capitalism. A second windmill is soon built alongside the first, and the two are thenceforth known as the Twin Mills (allegorical of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center), and the animals all learn to walk on their hind legs, something hitherto forbidden by Old Major shortly before the expulsion of Mr. Jones from the farm. Also, in place of the original Seven Commandments, Snowball adopts a single slogan for the animals to live by: All animals are born equal - what they become is their own affair. As time passes, the animals, under the leadership of Snowball, realise the properties of monetary gain, and begin to file lawsuits against neighbouring farms, allowing Animal Farm to gain land and wealth. The revitalised farm also attracts animals from elsewhere in England, who are segregated from the farm animals (a possible allegory for American racial segregation). In an effort to increase their wealth, Snowball proposes to transform the farm into a large fairground named Animal Fair (similar to the development of Coney Island in the 19th Century), and in order to provide power for the fair, the animals drive off a group of beavers and other woodland creatures living by a nearby river, and the beaver-dams are destroyed in order for the farm to exploit the water-supply of the river. Despite the success of Animal Fair, the excessive littering and pollution leaves the farm in a deplorable state, and matters worsen when the Twin Mills are destroyed by the woodland creatures in retaliation for their expulsion from the riverbank (in a manner similar to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center). Snowball counteracts this by declaring war on the now-fanatical woodland creatures, even though Animal Farm is in no position to win the war.
11545444	/m/02vksyv	Dark River	Erin Hunter	2007-12-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In Dark River's prologue, it is revealed that there are hidden caves beneath the moorland. Fallen Leaves, a mysterious cat not seen before in any of the books, enters this cave, meeting a misshapen, old cat by the name of Rock, who explains to him that to be a sharpclaw (an equivalent to the Clans' warriors), he must find a way out of the tunnels and onto the moor. Unfortunately, when Rock asked if it would rain, Fallen Leaves said no, because he was afraid that Rock would make him wait until another day if he said yes. Fallen Leaves enters the tunnels and is trapped in the tunnels then when it does rain he is trapped and drowns and never comes back out ever again. He later helps Jaypaw get out in the end of the book. Also ThunderClan medicine cat apprentice Jaypaw finds a washed-up stick when he is out gathering herbs with his mentor, Leafpool. It has odd scratches on it; some that are crossed out and some that aren't. He doesn't know why, but the stick feels very important to him, to the point that he half drowns himself to save it from the depths of the lake. As he struggles to figure out what it means, he has a dream in which he experiences what Fallen Leaves experienced. Jaypaw then understands what the scratches mean and that the last uncrossed one was Fallen Leaves' mark. Cinderpaw then falls from the Sky Oak, breaking her back leg. He soon discovers that his mentor, Leafpool, is determined to save the apprentice's leg. As the medicine cat's determination begins to border on an obsession, he begins to wonder why. One night, he falls asleep by Cinderpaw and he wakes up in a strange forest. There he meets Cinderpaw, unhurt, who leads him to a camp filled with familiar smells; ThunderClan's previous home in the forest. Cinderpaw describes how she once lived there before the Great Journey and asks Jaypaw to tell Leafpool that she is proud of her, and that she has learned far more than she could have ever taught her. By then Jaypaw is officially confused, but when looking into Cinderpaw's eyes, he sees a series of flashbacks from her previous life. Jaypaw realizes that when Cinderpelt, the former ThunderClan medicine cat, died in Twilight she was reincarnated as Cinderpaw, without Cinderpaw herself knowing it. Jaypaw tells Leafpool what he has discovered and his mentor agrees with him. However, when Cinderpaw wakes she doesn't remember the dream (only that Jaypaw had been able to see in it). Lionpaw becomes best friends with Heatherpaw, a beautiful WindClan apprentice, and begins meeting her at night. Hollypaw discovers their secret and Lionpaw begins to be wary of his "nosy" sister. Afterwards, Heatherpaw and Lionpaw begin meeting in hidden tunnels that no Clan cat has ever seen before (the same tunnels that Fallen Leaves drowned in). They name their play Clan DarkClan, of which 'Heatherstar' is leader and 'Lionclaw' is deputy. They meet together every night they can. Tigerstar, who meets Lionpaw in ghostly apparitions, like he did to Hawkfrost and Brambleclaw, starts teaching him additional battle moves that even his mentor, Ashfur, doesn't know, though Brambleclaw seems to recognize them. When Lionpaw starts to teach the moves to Heatherpaw, Hawkfrost scolds him for showing battle moves to the enemy, and under pressure, Lionpaw must choose between his love of Heatherpaw, and loyalty to the warrior code and ThunderClan. He chooses to remain loyal to his Clan and leaves Heatherpaw, who is extremely hurt and betrayed, though she understands his decision in the end. During a Gathering, RiverClan reveals that their Clan is facing a "small problem" and that they are being forced to live on the island for a short while. Though Leopardstar is fiercely protective of her Clan and refuses to elaborate, Hollypaw knows something is not right, because her friend Willowpaw and the rest of RiverClan are acting extremely nervous. She informs Firestar about her concerns. However, he does not believe this is ThunderClan's problem and refuses to take action. He and the rest of the Clan continue preparing for a battle against WindClan even though it is not certain that a battle will ever occur. Hollypaw heads out to RiverClan on her own. When she arrives, Willowpaw shows her how Twoleg kits (children) are attacking their camp. Hollypaw is kept with RiverClan so she cannot tell anyone about their secret because they think she is a spy. However, her brother Jaypaw has a dream that reveals her location, and Squirrelflight comes to retrieve her. Near the end of the book, all three stories combine: Jaypaw and Leafpool must go to WindClan to take Onestar a message from Firestar about not shedding unnecessary blood in a battle over something that may never happen, while Hollypaw convinces Mousefur and Firestar to do something. When they arrive, Gorsetail's (a WindClan queen) kits (Sedgekit, Thistlekit and Swallowkit) are missing and WindClan blames RiverClan, saying that there will be a battle if RiverClan does not return the kits. Jaypaw and Leafpool return to camp and Lionpaw tells his brother and sister about the tunnels, where he thinks the kits may have gone. They enter the caves, meeting up with the WindClan apprentices Breezepaw and Heatherpaw, who share their motive for being there. Jaypaw is guided by the spirit of Fallen Leaves and the group find the kits behind a boulder that blocked the tunnel. It starts raining and the tunnel floods, but Jaypaw figures a way out just in time and they return the kits, saving the Clans from an unnecessary battle. The tunnel is blocked during the flood, and Lionpaw states that it ended the most important friendship he ever had.
11546435	/m/02rhnbl	Capitalist Nigger	Chika Onyeani	2000		 Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success: A Spider Web Doctrine (Timbuktu Publishers, September 17, 2000) asserts that the Black Race, is a consumer race and not a productive race. Says the author, Chika Onyeani, "We are a conquered race and it is utterly foolish for us to believe that we are independent. The Black Race depends on other communities for its culture, its language, its feeding, and its clothing." "Despite enormous natural resources," according to the author, "Blacks are economic slaves because they lack the "killer-instinct" and "devil-may-care" attitude of the Caucasian, as well as the "spider web economic mentality" of the Asian." The author is not afraid to use the word 'nigger' in both pejorative or stereotypic senses. He says, "It is not what you call me, but what I answer to, that matters most."
11546841	/m/02rhnsb	Day of the Dinosaur				 When the Hardy Boys sign on to help prepare for opening day of the new Bayport museum's dinosaur park, the teenage sleuths discover that a deadly, high-tech saboteur is out to put the museum out of business, forever.
11553774	/m/02rhy1x	Copper Canyon Conspiracy	Carolyn Keene		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Nancy Drew is in Tucson to watch her friend George run in the Cactus Marathon. Among the entrants is Tasio Humada, a Tarahumara Indian from Mexico, who is also running for his life. He has received several death threats, possibly tied to his people's dispute with the lumber mills in his country, and Nancy decides to see him safely back to Mexico. But her help may have come too late. Soon after crossing the border, Tasio is arrested for murder of a powerful logging baron. Meanwhile, Joe Hardy, who also ran in the marathon, and his brother, Frank, head to the sprawling ranch belonging to the family of Cory Weston. For while the threats were directed at Tasio, it was Cory, running at his side, who paid the price, nearly killed by a boulder thrown in his path. As the truth behind the attacks gradually unfolds, Nancy and the Hardys expose a tangle of greed, bribery, and corruption stretching from southern Arizona to the Sierra Madre.
11558104	/m/02rj2gx	The Solarians	Norman Spinrad	1966-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes places centuries in the future when humanity has colonized many star systems. Another race, the Duglaari or "Doogs" is slowly conquering human systems, herding the inhabitants into barren areas where they simply starve to death. The two races have approximately equal technologies, and space battles are decided by superior numbers, with the Doogs always having the advantage. The colonists are awaiting the emergence of saviors from "Fortress Sol", the Solar System, which has been closed off to all ships since the early days of the war. Before sealing themselves off with billions of space mines and robot ships, the Solarians, as they are known to the colonists, promised to re-emerge with an answer to the numeric superiority of the Duglaari. Returning from yet another lost system, a fleet commander called Palmer finds that a group of Solarians has contacted his superiors and wishes him to accompany them on a mission. The mission is to journey to the Duglaari home world and end the war. Along the way, he discovers that they are different from any people he has ever known. He was raised in a hierarchical military society, where computers make all important decisions, including the conduct of battles. He is amazed that the Solarians use computers very little, relying on their innate skills to pilot spaceships, navigate, and decide on tactics. They rely on the "Organic Group", the idea that humans have individual talents allowing them naturally to adopt roles in small cohesive groups. One man, stereotypically handsome and charismatic, is Leader. Another takes the role of Gamesmaster, intuitively understanding probability and psychology. The group includes a pair of telepaths, and a mysterious woman who has no specific role, except that the Group is better with her than without. Her role is described as "Glue". Part of her job is to relax their guest and prepare him for his role, which involves offering sexual as well as spiritual comforts. The Duglaari planets have to be approached with care, as the star-drive used to move faster than light has one deadly side effect. Used too close to a star, it will cause the star to explode. For this reason, star systems are defended by ships which tend to shoot first and ask questions later. In addition, star-ships have to be small as the FTL field cannot be more than a hundred meters in diameter, putting them at a disadvantage against defensive ships in a system. Skilfully manipulating the Duglaari psychology, the Solarians gain access to the home world and are taken to see the ruler, who seems to be no more than the mouthpiece for a huge computer system. In appearance the Duglaari are roughly humanoid except for large eyes, fur, and bat-wing ears which move to express emotion. It seems that long ago a Duglaari leader imposed his vision of a uniform, computer-controlled society on the rest of his race, with the effect of breeding Duglaari who most resemble the long-dead dictator in their psychology. Palmer is struck by how much his people have come to resemble the Duglaari because of the war, and how different the Solarians are. For the conference, the Solarians insisted that Palmer dress in a costume they supplied. This is a comic-opera military uniform festooned with gold braid, ribbons and medals. Palmer feels ridiculous, especially compared to the Solarians, who have dressed in costumes of uniform black with only a sunburst emblem on the left breast. He compares them to priests of some dark cult. To Palmer's horror, at the conference the Solarians seem to betray the colonists, boasting that Sol can never be conquered, that weapons capable of destroying the Duglaari will soon be created, but that the Solarians wish to be left alone. They offer to sacrifice the colonies as tribute. The Duglaari ruler responds that they must surrender and cease developing weapons. The Solarians arrogantly refuse. Then the Duglaari ruler announces that by gathering most of Duglaar's fleet together they can overwhelm even Sol's defences, neutralizing the threat. It only remains to liquidate the humans who have brought the matter to the attention of the Duglaari empire. The Solarians announce that unless they are allowed to leave, a nuclear device on their ship will destroy the city. The Duglaari do not believe them, since they had thoroughly scanned and searched the ship. However their instruments now show that the threat is real. In fact it is an illusion projected by the telepaths. The ship is allowed to lift off with a Duglaari escort, positioned so that if the Solarians tried to activate their star drive, they would have a 50% chance of being destroyed, and likewise if the Duglaari chose to attack, they would have a 50% chance of failing to stop the Solarians causing the sun to explode. Thus neither side has an incentive to break the truce. However Palmer spots a weakness in the scheme: once their ship reaches the point where they can safely use the FTL drive, the Duglaari can also safely launch an attack on them, and if they fail they do not risk their homeworld. Despite his disgust with the Solarians he is able to use a trick employed to disengage from fleet actions to allow them to escape. He then retreats to his cabin, hating the Solarians and all they stand for. The Solarians take Palmer to Fortress Sol, behind all its defenses, and tour the system so he can see Earth for the last time. The Duglaari fleet arrives and penetrates the defences, unleashing massive bombardments that destroy all the habitable planets. When all seems lost, a stardrive in a ship on Mercury is activated, and Sol explodes, annihilating the Doog fleet. Suddenly the Solarian scheme becomes clear to Palmer. By goading the Doogs into risking a large part of the fleet, they have destroyed so many ships that from now on, the colonists will always have the advantage. Palmer's humiliation was a necessary part of the deception. He believes that Earth sacrificed itself to save the colonies. He is wrong in one detail, however. In the final chapter, it is revealed that humanity had evacuated the Solar System and is traveling between the stars in massive Space Arks. Faster than light ships cannot be larger than a certain size, but the Arks, proceeding slower than light, can be as big as necessary. In a matter of a few decades, they will reach Alpha Centauri and humanity will reunite to defeat the Duglaari. In addition, with Earth destroyed they will cease looking back to the home world and will conquer the galaxy.
11560755	/m/02rj5wj	The Lost Warrior	Erin Hunter	2007-04-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Lost Warrior opens with narration from Graystripe, a warrior who was separated from his Clan, ThunderClan, after being kidnapped by humans trying to deforest his home. He is then taken in as a house cat by a Twoleg (human) family. He somewhat likes the Twolegs and their kits but he cannot stand to be away from his Clan and his fellow warriors. He makes an attempt to flee but gets lost in Twolegplace and battles with a kittypet named Duke. After being forced to flee the fight, Graystripe is led back to the nest he has been staying in by a female kittypet named Millie he meets, who assures him that losing to Duke is nothing to be ashamed of. The two cats get to know each other better and Millie finds a small forest in the middle of the Twolegplace. She then shows it to Graystripe and asks him to teach her how to hunt and fight after learning of his previous life. After a dream in which he is visited by his deceased mate, Silverstream, and his daughter Feathertail, and another fight with Duke and his allies, Graystripe finally makes the decision to try to return to ThunderClan. In another dream about Silverstream, after Graystripe tells Silverstream that he wishes he could be with her, Silverstream reminds him that his place is with ThunderClan. She also tells him that he already has a traveling companion. Later, Graystripe asks Millie to come with him to ThunderClan, and is taken aback at her refusal. He then leaves for ThunderClan alone. Graystripe ends up getting lost in Twolegplace for days before collapsing from exhaustion. Millie changes her mind and goes out to catch up to Graystripe. Upon meeting him, she discovers him feverish and weak; he even calls her by Silverstream's name. Millie nurses him back to health and asks him about Silverstream. Then the two set off to try to find ThunderClan. What they don't realize is that ThunderClan, along with the rest of the Clans, no longer resides in the forest.
11560951	/m/02rj654	A Necessary End	Peter Robinson	1989	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Violence erupts at an anti-nuclear demonstration in Eastvale, leaving one policeman stabbed to death. At first there are over a hundred suspects, but then things narrow down to the people who live on “Maggie’s Farm”, an isolated house high on the daleside: Seth Cotton, the quiet, strong owner; Mara Delacey, his girlfriend; Paul Boyd, a young drifter with a violent background; Zoe Hardacre, an astrologer; and Rick Trelawney, an artist with strong Marxist leanings. Also among the suspects is Dennis Osmond, a social worker involved with Jenny Fuller, Inspector Banks’s friend. As if this isn’t enough to cope with, Banks finds his freedom hampered by the politically-motivated appointment of an old enemy, Detective Superintendent Richard “Dirty Dick” Burgess, to head the investigation. Finally, warned off the case, the only way Banks can salvage his career is by beating Burgess to the killer. As the two head for a final confrontation, Banks pieces together the full story behind his most tragic case so far.
11560986	/m/02rj66j	The Hanging Valley	Peter Robinson	1989	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 A faceless, maggot-ridden corpse is discovered in a tranquil, hidden valley above the village of Swainshead. When the identity of the body is discovered, so is a possible connection with an unsolved murder in the same area five years ago. Among the annoyingly silent suspects are the Collier brothers, the wealthiest and most powerful family in Swainsdale; John Fletcher, a taciturn farmer; Sam Greenock, cocky owner of a Local guest house; and his troubled wife, Katie, who knows more than she realizes. When the Colliers use their influence to slow down the investigation, Inspector Alan Banks heads to Toronto to track down the killer. He soon finds himself in a race against time as events rush towards the shocking and haunting conclusion of his fourth case.
11561074	/m/02rj69z	Past Reason Hated	Peter Robinson	1991	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The body of Caroline Hartley is found one evening before Christmas by her lover, Veronica Shildon. It is a cosy scene–log fire, sheepskin rug, Vivaldi on the stereo, Christmas lights and tree–but Caroline is naked and covered in blood. Detective Constable Susan Gay is the first detective at the scene. She has recently been promoted to C.I.D. and the case soon takes on overwhelming professional and personal importance for her. DC Gay and Chief Inspector Alan Banks soon find plenty of suspects as they begin to delve into Caroline’s past and the women’s present life: Veronica’s ex-husband, who is a well-known composer; a feminist poet; the cast and crew of a play Caroline was rehearing; and Caroline’s eccentric, reclusive brother, Gary Hartley. Inspector Banks’s fifth case is an ironic, suspenseful tale of family secrets, hidden passions and desperate violence.
11561126	/m/02rj6cp	Wednesday's Child	Peter Robinson	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When a well-dressed couple, claiming to be social workers, appear at Brenda Scupham’s door, saying they must take her seven-year-old daughter, Gemma, into care after allegations of abuse, Brenda is confused and intimidated enough to hand the child over. But when the couple, Mr Brown and Miss Peterson, fail to bring Gemma home, Brenda realizes she has made a terrible mistake. As the days go by, Detective Chief Inspector Banks begins to lose hope of finding Gemma alive. Then a rambler finds a body in the ruins of an old lead mine, and the two cases begin to converge in a terrifying way, leading Banks to a showdown with one of the most chillingly evil criminals he has ever come up against.
11569507	/m/02rjhqr	Dry Bones that Dream	Peter Robinson	1994	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 One May evening, two masked gunmen tie up Alison Rothwell and her mother, take Keith Rothwell, a local accountant, to the garage of his isolated Yorkshire Dales farmhouse, and blow his head off with a shotgun. Why? This is the question Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has to ask as he sifts through Rothwell’s life. Rothwell was generally known in the area as a mild-mannered, dull sort of person, but even a cursory investigation raises more questions than answers. When Banks’s old sparring partner, DS Richard “Dirty Dick” Burgess, turns up from the Yard, the case takes yet another unexpected twist, and Banks finds himself racing against time as the killers seem to be dogging his footsteps. Only after he pits his job against his sense of justice does he discover the truth. And the truth leads him to one of the most difficult decisions of his career.
11569546	/m/02rjht4	Innocent Graves	Peter Robinson	1996	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When last seen alive, sixteen-year-old Deborah Harrison was on her way home from school. Her friend Megan thinks she saw the shadowy figure of a man behind Deborah as they waved goodbye on the bridge, but the fog was so thick that evening she can’t be sure. Not long after, Deborah’s body is found in the local cemetery. The murder terrorises the wealthy enclave of St Mary’s, Eastvale, and because Deborah was the daughter of a prominent industrialist, high-flying new Chief Constable Jeremiah “Jimmy” Riddle puts pressure on Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his team to catch the killer without delay. And soon, partly thanks to the work of new boy Detective Inspector Barry Stott, it looks as if they have done. But Banks is not convinced. While the community breathes a collective sigh of relief and turns into a lynch-mob, Banks examines the loose ends: a vicar, accused of sexually harassing a refugee worker, who lies about his whereabouts at the time of the murder; his straying wife; a schoolteacher with a dark secret; the accused’s vindictive ex-girlfriend; a teenage thug who has threatened Deborah and her family with violence. And then there are Deborah’s own family secrets. With each new piece of information, a different pattern is formed, until Banks is forced to incur the wrath of Jimmy Riddle if he hopes to solve the case.
11569590	/m/02rjhxl	Dead Right	Peter Robinson	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 On a rainy night in Eastvale, a teenager is found in an alley, smashed over the head with a bottle and then kicked to death. At first it looks like a typical after-hours pub fight gone terribly wrong, but Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and Detective Constable Susan Gay quickly learn that the victim, Jason Fox, was a member of a white power organization known as the Albion League. Football-mad Jason, it seems, was very good at his office job–bright, energetic, quick to learn–but was let go because of his racist views. As Banks follows the leads, he comes up with a number of possible suspects: the Pakistani youths Jason had insulted earlier in an Eastvale pub; Jason’s business partner, Mark Wood, and his shady friends; someone in the Albion League itself, someone who resented Jason’s growing power and influence. Or are things even more sinister than they appear? The investigation takes a surprising twist when Banks is mysteriously summoned to Amsterdam, where he is introduced to the bizarre world of cyber-Nazis on the Internet. As the detectives struggle to solve the mystery of Jason’s death, they also battle their own problems. Susan finds herself in a puzzling relationship with a fellow DC, and tensions that have been brewing for some time between Banks and his wife Sandra finally come to a head. Banks also has to face the challenge of working with Chief Constable Jeremiah “Jimmy” Riddle, a high-flyer who favours a hands-on approach to the job, and who is more concerned with appearances than he is with truth. Just when everything seems cut-and-dried, Banks discovers something that turns the case on its head. Something that might cost him his job.
11569657	/m/02rjj00	In a Dry Season	Peter Robinson	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When a boy finds a skeleton buried in a dried-up reservoir built on the site of a ruined village, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is brought in by his arch-enemy Chief Constable Jeremiah “Jimmy” Riddle to head what looks like being a dull, routine investigation. It turns into anything but. With the help of Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot, Banks uncovers long-kept secrets in a community that has resolutely concealed its past. One former resident, now a writer, reveals her memories of Hobb’s End, the village that died before the reservoir was built. Her first person narrative, touched with both innocence and irony, takes us from 1941 to 1945, recreating another age, an era of rationing, of Land Girls, of American airmen, of jitterbugging and movies. And of murder. As Banks and Annie unravel the deceptive and disparate relationships of half a century ago, suspense heightens and the past finally bursts into the present with terrifying consequences.
11569757	/m/02rjj44	The Blind Man Of Seville	Robert Wilson	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a series of vicious murders in Seville, and in turn these murders lead protagonist Falcon to look into the shady life of his deceased father, an acclaimed artist who fought in the Second World War. Falcon's investigations cause him to unearth shocking revelations about his father's past, and bring him to an emotional brink. The novel's structure is unusual, being told from the present perspective and also through a series of diary entries penned by Falcon's father during his war-time experiences.
11572793	/m/02rjnvc	The Silent and the Damned	Robert Wilson	2004	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Falcon, Sevillian Chief Inspector, works in the grinding July heat, with his reliable team, to investigate a series of local suicides. Suspecting that the first death could in fact be a murder, the team follow the links from deaths to political corruption, and abuse on an horrific scale. Hampered by the inevitable difficulties arising from international twists to his investigation, and the constraints of a restrictive hierarchy, Falcon and his fellow detectives nevertheless manage to follow his hunches and insights to ultimate success, showing that some criminals pay some debts, and saving the cousins from their self-destruction.
11572980	/m/02rjp39	The Hidden Assassins	Robert Wilson	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tackles themes of terrorism.
11574119	/m/02rjqgz	Grimble	Clement Freud	1968		 Grimble is a boy of "about 10" who has parents that can be described as eccentric. Returning from school one day, he discovers that they have gone to Peru for a week leaving him with a fridge filled with bottles of tea, an oven filled with sandwiches, a tin full of sixpence pieces and a list of five names and addresses of people he can visit to get help with dinner. Each day he visits a new address, though on each occasion his host is out. The book is a humorous account of his life alone for five days.
11574603	/m/02rjqzf	The Generals	Simon Scarrow	2007-05-31	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the turbulent aftermath of the French Revolution Napoleon Bonaparte is accused of treachery and corruption. His reputation is saved by his skill in leading his men to victory in Italy and Egypt. But then he must rush home to France to restore order amidst political unrest, and to find peace or victory over the country's enemies, foremost of which is England-and Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington). Wellesley is on the other side of the world in India where British interests are under threat. Wellesley leads vast armies against a series of powerful warlords in campaigns that will result in the creation of the Raj-the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. He returns to England a hardened veteran a more determined than ever to end France's dominion of Europe.
11577884	/m/02rjvmc	Stone fox	John Reynolds Gardiner	1980	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Little Willy and his dog Searchlight find Willy's grandfather lying in bed. Doc Smith, the only doctor in town, tells Willy that his grandfather no longer wants to live. Clifford Snyder, a tax collector, sneaks into Little Willy's house and, with a derringer in his hand, demands to know how much his grandfather owes the state. After seeing some papers he tells Willy that they owe the state of Wyoming 500 dollars. The next day Willy enters a dog sled race that has a reward of 500 dollars. Willy sees a sled being pulled by five Samoyeds (fast dogs used for sled racing). The man on the sled signs up for the race, and Willy learns it is Stone Fox, a Native American who doesn't talk to white people and has never lost a race. During the race, Willy's light one-dog sled shows unexpected advantages in managing tight curves and enabling a perilous short-cut over a frozen lake. However, Searchlight becomes so tired that her heart bursts and she dies instantly about 10 feet from the finish line. Stone Fox makes a line on the ground with his boot, takes out his rifle, and warns that if any other racers cross the line, he'll shoot. He then concedes the match to Willy by letting Willy carry Searchlight across the finish line to everyone's amazement.
11578417	/m/02rjwbr	Survival Of The Fittest	Constance M. Burge		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The plot centers around the murder of the daughter of an Israeli diplomat. The murder seems exceptionally cruel, since the girl was developmentally disabled. From the positioning of the body and location, motive for the killing is not clear, until other people with other disabilities--being blind, having a very low IQ, etc.--and strange symbols are showing up at the scenes. It is only when they learn of a very cruel, self-righteous conspiracy to practice eugenics that Milo and Alex start unravelling this very dark case.
11590159	/m/02rklmb	Cold is the Grave	Peter Robinson	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In recent years, the career of Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has been stalled-and, in fact, very nearly destroyed-by the petty animosities of his politically ambitious senior officer Chief Constable Riddle. But when nude pictures of Riddle’s runaway teenage daughter show up on a pornographic Web site, he turns to Banks for help. The trail leads Banks first to London’s Soho, an area of strip clubs and sex shops, then to the upmarket Little Venice, where Emily Riddle is living with a dangerous gangster with ties to world of rock music. At first she refuses to come home, but later Emily turns up at Banks’s hotel, bruised and frightened and asking for his help. Soon she is back with her family in Yorkshire, and Banks’s work appears to be done. Other concerns occupy Banks’s time. A major reorganization and expansion of Eastvale Regional Headquarters has brought Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot back into his life, and she soon finds demons of her own to face. As they begin an investigation into the slaying of Charlie Courage, a low-level petty crook, a murder occurs at an Eastvale nightclub, filling the tabloids with headlines that scream of scandal, sex and high-level corruption. It is a cold and savage homicide that shakes Banks to his core, and it soon leads to shocking revelations that suggest it is somehow linked to the Charlie Courage affair. The grim discoveries of the unfolding investigation lead Banks in a direction he does not wish to go: the past and private world of his most powerful enemy, Chief Constable Riddle.
11590225	/m/02rklv6	Aftermath	Peter Robinson	2002-01-11	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 One early morning in May, Banks is called to a steep, overgrown street in Leeds, where two police officers answering a domestic call have stumbled on a scene of unbelievable horror. In the cellar of 35 The Hill, two people are dead, a third is dying, and behind a door more bodies lay buried. This seems to be the end of a grisly case Banks has been working on for some time, but ironically it turns out to be only the beginning. It is apparent who the murderer is, but Banks quickly finds out that nothing in this case is quite as straightforward as it seems. Many people are entangled in this crime–some whose lives are shattered by it, and some with unspeakable secrets in their pasts. The dead, Banks learns, are not the only victims, and the murderer may not be the only person to blame.
11590294	/m/02rkm2g	The Summer That Never Was	Peter Robinson	2003-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 A skeleton has been unearthed. Soon the body is identified, and the horrific discovery hits the headlines . . . Fourteen-year-old Graham Marshall went missing during his paper round in 1965. The police found no trace of him. His disappearance left his family shattered, and his best friend, Alan Banks, full of guilt. That friend has now become Chief Inspector Alan Banks, and he is determined to bring justice for Graham. But he soon realises that in this case, the boundary between victim and perpetrator, between law-guardian and law-breaker, is becoming more and more blurred...
11590361	/m/02rkm9p	Playing with Fire	Peter Robinson	2004-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Smarting from the break-up with his girlfriend, DI Annie Cabot, and still in shock from his ex-wife's recent pregnancy, DCI Alan Banks welcomes the diversion of a fire on two houseboats on the old Eastvale canal.. even though two bodies are then found on board. But was it arson or accident? And why was the boyfriend of one of the victims found lurking in the woods watching the fire-fighters in action? The case soon widens with another fire, another death, the discovery of art fraud, paedophilia and incest. And to add to it all DI Cabot has a new man - one that Banks doesn't like or trust an inch. As the case unravels and becomes ever more complicated, so Banks' personal life becomes entangled, occasionally blurring both his and Cabot's vision of the real villain in their midst. Crossing the York moors from city to village, Robinson draws a vivid picture of life in the North. This time, Banks may have bitten off more than even he can chew....
11590414	/m/02rkmg4	Strange Affair	Peter Robinson	2005-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When Alan Banks receives a disturbing message from his brother, Roy, he abandons the peaceful Yorkshire Dales for the bright lights of London, to seek him out. But Roy seems to have vanished into thin air. Meanwhile, DI Annie Cabbot is called to a quiet stretch of road just outside Eastvale, where a young woman has been found dead in her car. In the victim’s pocket, scribbled on a slip of paper, police discover Banks’ name and address. Living in Roy's empty South Kensington house, Banks finds himself digging into the life of the brother he never really knew, nor even liked. And as he begins to uncover a few troubling surprises, the two cases become sinisterly entwined...
11590463	/m/02rkmlz	Piece of My Heart: A Novel of Suspense	Peter Robinson	2006-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 As volunteers clean up after a huge outdoor rock concert in Yorkshire in 1969, they discover the body of a young woman wrapped in a sleeping bag. She has been brutally murdered. The detective assigned to the case, Stanley Chadwick, is a hard-headed, strait-laced veteran of the Second World War. He could not have less in common with - or less regard for - young, disrespectful, long-haired hippies, smoking marijuana and listening to the pulsing sounds of rock and roll. But he has a murder to solve, and it looks as if the victim was somehow associated with the up-and-coming psychedelic pastoral band the Mad Hatters. In the present, Inspector Alan Banks is investigating the murder of a freelance music journalist who was working on a feature about the Mad Hatters for MOJO magazine. This is not the first time that the Mad Hatters, now aging rock superstars, have been brushed by tragedy. Banks finds he has to delve into the past to find out exactly what hornets' nest the journalist inadvertently stirred up.
11590516	/m/02rkmt4	Friend of the Devil	Peter Robinson	2007-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When Karen Drew is found sitting in her wheelchair staring out to sea with her throat cut one chilly morning, DI Annie Cabbot, on loan to Eastern Area, gets lumbered with the case. Back in Eastvale, that same Sunday morning, 19-year-old Hayley Daniels is found raped and strangled in the Maze, a tangle of narrow alleys behind Eastvale's market square, after a drunken night on the town with a group of friends, and DCI Alan Banks is called in. Banks finds suspects galore, while Annie seems to hit a brick wall--until she reaches a breakthrough that spins her case in a shocking and surprising new direction, one that also involves Banks. Then another incident occurs in the Maze which seems to link the two cases in a bizarre and mysterious way. As Banks and Annie dig into the past to uncover the deeper connections, they find themselves also dealing with the emotional baggage and personal demons of their own relationship. And it soon becomes clear that there are two killers in their midst, and that at any moment either one might strike again.
11595124	/m/02rkyz2	The Almost Moon	Alice Sebold	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Artist's model and divorcee, Helen Knightly spontaneously murders her mother, an agoraphobic now suffering from severe dementia, by suffocating her with a towel. But while her act is almost unconscious, it also seems like the fulfilment of a long-cherished, buried desire, since she spent a lifetime trying to win the love of a mother who had none to spare. Over the next twenty-four hours, Helen recalls her childhood, youth, marriage, and motherhood. Her life and the omnipresent relationship with her mother rush in at her as she confronts the choices that have brought her to that crossroads. Partly absent-mindedly, partly desperately she tries to conceal her crime, and in doing so ropes her ex-husband into the conspiracy.
11596027	/m/02rk_xn	Playing for Pizza	John Grisham	2007-09-25	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rick Dockery is a third string NFL quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, who throws three interceptions in 11 minutes in the AFC championship game, blowing a 17 point lead and resulting in the Browns missing their chance at their first-ever Super Bowl appearance. He is cut from the team, vilified in the press, and is facing legal troubles due to a questionable paternity lawsuit. His agent Arnie tries to find him work in the NFL, but no team will take him. Arnie manages to find him a starting position for the Parma Panthers of the Italian Football league for meager compensation. Rick accepts the job, glad to get away from the negative press and his legal troubles in the United States, but wary of living in Italy, where he doesn't know the language and where American football draws little attention or respect. The Parma Panthers have only two other Americans on the team -- halfback Slidell "Sly" Turner, who ends up leaving early in the season, and Safety Trey Colby. The Panthers win their first game with Rick, then lose a couple for various reasons, including the loss of his American teammates to homesickness and injury. Despite these problems, Italy and the team are growing on Rick, and he begins to feel some loyalty to them despite the fact that Arnie has found him a more lucrative job offer with a more respected CFL team. Rick decides to honor his contract with the Parma Panthers. With renewed resolve, a talented Italian wide receiver and a new strategy, they win each of their remaining regular-season games, then advance to the playoffs and the Italian Super Bowl, a very close and hard-fought game against their rivals, the Bergamo Lions.
11598381	/m/02rl25x	The Bondwoman's Narrative		2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Crafts's novel focuses on the experience of Hannah, a house slave, beginning with her explanation of being taught to read and write as a child by a kind old couple, who were subsequently discovered and reprimanded. Years later, Hannah's master hosts a large wedding. During the party, Hannah notices an unattractive old man subtly following her new mistress. Hannah concludes that “each one was conscious of some great and important secret on the part of the other.” Indeed, in the coming weeks, after observing her new mistress lock herself away most of the day, Hannah comes to learn that the old man is Mr. Trappe, a crooked lawyer who has discovered that the mistress is a fair-skinned mulatto who is passing for white. Hannah and the mistress flee the plantation in the middle of the night, become lost, and stay the night in a gloomy shack in the forest. The shack was recently the scene of a murder, and strewn with bloodstained weapons and clothes. Under these conditions, Hannah's mistress starts to go insane. Months later, the women are found by a group of hunters who escort them to prison. One of them, Horace, informs Hannah that her master slit his throat after their escape. The women are taken to prison, where they meet Mrs. Wright, a senile woman imprisoned for trying to help a slave girl escape. The mistress’ insanity worsens. After several months, the women are moved to a house, where conditions are much better, but they are unable to leave or know the identity of their captor. After a lengthy imprisonment, it is revealed that their captor is Mr. Trappe. The mistress, upon learning this, suffers a brain aneurysm and dies. Hannah is sold to a slave trader. As she is being transported, the cart horse bolts and runs the cart off a ledge. The slave trader is killed instantly. Hannah wakes up in the home of Mrs. Henry, a kindly woman who treats her well. As Hannah recuperates, Mrs. Henry is told that Hannah’s previous owner wishes to claim her. Despite Hannah’s pleas, the young woman is returned to the status of house slave, this time for Mrs. Wheeler, a vain, self-centered woman. When sent to town for facial powder, Hannah hears news of Mr. Trappe’s death. After she returns with the powder, Mrs. Wheeler discovers that it reacts with her perfume, causing a blackening effect on her skin. Mrs. Wheeler has temporary blackface, causing her much discomfort. After the family moves to North Carolina and another house slave replaces Hannah, Mrs. Wheeler suspects her of telling others about the blackface incident. As punishment, Hannah is ordered to the fields to be raped. Before being forced to join the field slaves, she flees again. Hannah comes under the care of Mrs. Hetty, the kind woman who originally taught her to read and write. Mrs. Hetty facilitates Hannah’s escape to the North, where the young woman rejoins her mother.
11600783	/m/02rl4ly	The Devil's Law Case	John Webster			 Romelio is a prominent merchant of Naples. He is fortunate, never having lost a vessel to shipwreck. He is rich; he mocks another merchant who has reached the age of 60 and amassed a fortune of only 50 thousand ducats. And he is arrogant: another character condemns his "insolent vainglory." Romelio directs some of his arrogance toward Contarino, the young nobleman, indebted to the merchant, who hopes to marry Romelio's sister Jolenta. For Romelio, Contarino is just another wastrel aristocrat who hopes to repair his decayed fortunes by marrying into the wealthy merchant class. Romelio instead is trying to arrange a marriage between Jolenta and Ercole, a Spanish noble who commands a fleet against the Ottoman Turks. (Spain ruled Naples and southern Italy during the Renaissance.) Jolenta, however, loves Contarino, and resists having her fate bartered away. Contarino tries to advance his cause by appealing to Leonora, the mother of Romelio and Jolenta, flattering her by requesting her portrait. Leonora remains a supporter of Ercole's suit &mdash; but she becomes interested in Contarino herself. When Jolenta remains resistant, Romelio sets the servant Winifred to watch over her and keep her from contacting Contarino. Winifred, however, is sympathetic to the girl, and does just the opposite; in conversation with his intended bride, Contarino learns of Ercole's pursuit of her. The play's subplot introduces Crispiano, a Spanish judge who has assumed a disguise to spy upon his scapegrace son Julio (a plot device that occurs in a number of English Renaissance plays). Julio is overspending his allowance on riotous living, wasting "A hundred ducats a month in breaking Venice glasses." Julio is a friend of Romelio, which blends the two plots. Ariosto, a stern local lawyer, accuses Romelio of exploiting foolish young men like Julio by encouraging them to go into debt and mortgage their inheritances. Contarino confronts Ercole about Jolenta. In their duel, both are seriously and almost fatally wounded, before they are discovered and brought to medical attention. Romelio is informed that the law of averages has caught up with his trading ventures, and that three of his carracks have been lost at sea. Ariosto, who brings the news, tries to counsel patience and fortitude to Romelio, but the arrogant merchant has no time for him. A false report reaches Romelio and Leonora that both Ercole and Contarino are dead; Leonora is devastated by the news of Contarino's loss. Contarino's last will and testament, delivered to Romelio, names Jolenta as his heir. Both learn, however, that each of the duellists is still alive; Leonora rejoices. Because of the will, Romelio has another reason to wish Contarino dead. Masquerading as a Jew, Romelio goes to see Contarino, and talks his way past the two surgeons who treat the wounded man; but they are suspicious, and surreptitiously keep watch. Romelio stabs Contarino along the track of his existing wound; the two surgeons catch him in the act, forcing Romelio to reveal himself and buy their silence. The surgeons had despaired of their patient's recovery &mdash; but Romelio's intervention has allowed the "congeal'd blood" and "putrefaction" to flow from the infected wound, and Contarino begins to recover. Romelio thinks he has killed the man, however, and tells his sister so. He has a plot that needs Jolenta's co-operation. She is Contarino's heiress via his will; Romelio can make Jolenta Ercole's heiress too, if he can claim that she bears his child. The child would be legitimate under their precontract of marriage. Romelio has seduced and impregnated a "beauteuous nun," a member of the Order of Saint Clare; Romelio wants to pass off his coming bastard as Jolenta's. Jolenta, testing how far her brother will go, tells him that she is pregnant with Contarino's child; Romelio accepts this, and suggests that when the time comes they can claim she's had twins. Jolenta informs her brother that she is not really pregnant; she vents her Websterian contempt of him and all mankind. Romelio is unfazed; he plots ahead to pack her off to a nunnery after the baby's birth, and to send the two surgeons to the Indies to keep them from blackmailing him. In a long soliloquy, Leonora expresses her disgust at her son, and reveals her scheme to punish and ruin him. With the loss of his ships, Romelio is now dependent upon his family estates for income; Leonora challenges his right to them, by claiming in a court of law that he is a bastard and not her husband's son. (This is the law case of the title, based on an actual case that occurred in Spain in 1610.) In front of the judge Crispiano, she claims that she had an affair with a family friend while her husband was away. Winifred supports her mistress's story &mdash; which has a fatal flaw: the family friend who is the alleged father of the bastard Romelio is Crispiano. The judge steps down from the bench, hands the case over to Ariosto, and reveals his disguise. Her falsehood exposed, Leonora expresses the intention of retiring to the religious life. Both Ercole and Contarino, recovered from their wounds, are present in the courtroom in disguise. Ercole reveals himself, and is arrested for killing Contarino; but he challenges Romelio, and a trial by combat is arranged. Julio is Romelio's second, while Ercole is seconded by the still-disguised Contarino. (This part of the plot makes little sense, the biggest of the plotting and structure problems condemned by critics. Contarino senselessly neglects the obvious recourse of showing everyone that he's not dead.) A Capuchin friar comes to see and counsel Romelio, who grows tired of his preachiness and locks him away &mdash; preventing the friar from revealing that Contarino is still alive. The duel is held, and the fight goes on for a time without conclusion. Romelio, under a sudden attack of conscience, orders the friar released so that the man can pray for him. The friar arrives in time to reveal Contarino's survival, negating the grounds of the duel. Jolenta, the pregnant nun Angiolella, and the two surgeons arrive; Jolenta is made up like a Moor and one of the surgeons is in Romelio's Jewish disguise, for no good reason. All the skeins of the plot are exposed, and Judge Ariosto resolves them with a set of rulings. Romelio must restore Contarino's fortune, and marry the pregnant nun Angiolella; she, Leonora, and Jolenta must build a monastery to express their penitence. Julio goes off to fight the Turks. The perfunctory conclusion neglects the most obvious feature of the happy ending appropriate to tragicomedy, Jolenta's marriage. The Devil's Law Case is unusual in that it has no specific clown figure; its comic relief is supplied by various minor characters. The play delivers doses of Websterian bitterness, against men, women, lawyers, and doctors.
11601217	/m/02rl4w5	Between Mom and Jo	Julie Anne Peters	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The main character deals with the struggles of having two mothers, and later, their divorce.
11603742	/m/02rl6pc	1945	Robert Conroy	2007-05-29	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 1945 depicts what could have happened if Japan's surrender in World War II had been successfully hijacked by extremists, forcing U.S. President Harry S. Truman to order more atomic bombings and an invasion of the Japanese home islands, continuing the war into early 1946. Featured throughout the book includes the viewpoints of infighting among the Japanese officers responsible for the military coup of the Japanese government, the imprisonment and breakout of Hirohito, the vicious combat between Japanese and American soldiers on Kyushu and between the respective navies in the Pacific, the efforts behind enemy lines by intelligence officers and POWs, the death of Douglas MacArthur, the Soviet Union's involvement in the war, and the mass protesting in the US to end the war.
11603811	/m/02rl6q1	The Savage Detectives	Roberto Bolaño	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is narrated in first person by numerous narrators and divided into three parts. The first section, "Mexicans Lost in Mexico", is told by 17-year-old aspiring poet, Juan García Madero. It centers on his admittance to a roving gang of poets who refer to themselves as the Visceral Realists. He drops out of university and travels around Mexico City, becoming increasingly involved with the adherents of Visceral Realism, although he remains uncertain about Visceral Realism. The book's second section, "The Savage Detectives," comprises nearly two-thirds of the novel's total length. The section is a polyphonic narrative which features more than forty narrators and spans twenty years, from 1976 to 1996. It consists of interviews with a variety of characters from locations around North America, Europe, and the Middle East, all of whom have come into contact with the founding leaders of the Visceral Realists, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano. Each narrator has his or her own opinion of the two, although the consensus is that they are drifters and literary elitists whose behavior often leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of those they meet. We learn that the two spent some years in Europe, frequenting bars and camp sites, and generally living a bohemian lifestyle. Lima, the more introverted of the two, serves a short sentence in an Israeli prison, while Belano challenges a literary critic to an absurd sword fight on a Spanish beach. The third section of the book, "The Deserts of Sonora", is again narrated by Juan García Madero, now in the Sonora Desert with Lima, Belano and a prostitute named Lupe. The section involves the "Savage Detectives" closing in on the elusive poet and the movement's founder Cesárea Tinajero, while being chased by a pimp named Alberto and a corrupt Mexican police officer.
11605196	/m/02rl7s2	City Of The Dead	Brian Keene	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jim finds Danny alive as the book opens but the living dead soon converge on their location. Frankie and Martin join Jim in the house and they are soon trapped in the attic. As they see Danny's neighbor in his panic room across the way the zombies set fire to the house. They rig a ladder between the two houses and everyone but Frankie makes it across, Frankie however has a two story fall into a swimming pool below. Meanwhile: Don, Martin, Jim, and Danny regroup and make a run for Don's Ford explorer. Upon escaping the garage they find Frankie fighting zombies in the front yard badly hurt from the fall and shot several times. They rescue her as she goes into shock. Back in Hellertown Ob has taken Baker's body and is instructing his minions to make a motor pool from all the abandoned vehicles. Ob is distressed that Jim is alive and escaping him, he begins to fantasize killing Martin and Jim. Here he divulges that the Sissquim can see the life auras coming from the living. Ob is then killed by some hiding guardsmen who he discovers. Their escape is short lived as Frankie left the keys in the Humvee and the zombies are in hot pursuit. They use the Humvee to force the car into an accident. Jim regains consciousness as zombies are trying to pull Danny from the wreckage and biting his arm. Jim loses it and violently kills the zombie, punctuating each blow with the words "I told you to leave my son alone." Martin has been thrown from the car and his head had turned a full 180 degrees around. Jim smashes his head in with a rock as he reanimates proclaiming "There is no God". Jim leads the zombies away distracting them from his party including a very badly injured Frankie making plans to meet them in what looks like an abandoned parking structure. There is a legless zombie hiding in a car who alerts more zombies to the groups presence. Jim races back to the structure as the group races for the roof. Almost simultaneously a helicopter shows up using a powerful sonic device that kills all the zombie birds and almost kills Jim. They rescue Jim and take him to Ramsey towers. Ob Reanimates in a new body that is in great shape. His host died of a heart attack while masturbating. His old host had knowledge of secret armories for the NYPD as well as the National Guard. He uses this knowledge to help arm his army as he sends for his forces in Hellertown as well as across the country. He also learns that all human life in Europe and Asia has been eliminated. Ob then lays siege to last remaining humans holed up in Ramsey towers, using heavy artillery he is able to breach the supposedly impenetrable building. With the approaching forces the remaining humans are falling apart as the zombies storm the towers and eradicate them. Jim, Frankie, and a few others escape into the sewers only to be followed by Ob and his forces. Three of the company is killed by Zombie rats, one of a gunshot wound, one eaten by a zombie crocodile, and one having his throat slit by another zombie. Ob personally confronts Jim telling him he is glad to be the one ending his incredible journey; Jim then uses a flame thrower on a gas line killing Ob and the surrounding zombies. Frankie and Danny are eventually killed by zombie rats in their sleep. Sometime before the final act however, Frankie has a dream in which the spirit of Martin talks to her, laying out the complex plan set up by Ob and his minions. The plan shows her that surviving the zombies would have been just the first ordeal. The undead were merely the first wave,, with the purpose of eliminating all human and animal life. Once that task is accomplished, other obots would begin the assimilation of the plants and insects. It is also revealed that Jim, Danny and the rest of the characters from the books are reunited in some sort of afterlife and are happy.
11605370	/m/02rl7__	City of the Rats	Jennifer Rowe	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Lief, Barda, and Jasmine leave the Lake of Tears, after they have retrieved the Ruby. They are now searching for the opal, which is located in Hira, or the City of the Rats. While travelling, they find signs which all have the word "Tom" written on it. They then find themselves in a trap that Thaegan's remaining eleven children had prepared. With the help of Filli, the three managed to kill all the children except for one, Ichabod, and continue on their quest. They find and enter Tom's shop and buy useful provisions such as Fire Beads, Water Eaters, Glowing Bubbles, and Instant Bread. They also bought three animals called Muddlets. Muddlets had three legs and can be ridden much like a horse. Despite Tom's directions, Lief didn't listen to him and went the wrong way. The three lost control of the Muddlets as they ran on their own. Lief, Barda and Jasmine followed the Muddlets home, the city of Noradz and become trapped. Noradz has customs that keeps the city vigorously clean. When Filli comes out of hiding from Jasmine's shirt, a Ra-Kacharz mistakes it for a rat and gives the trio two choices, to live or to die. Lief was commanded to pick a card labeled either Life or Death out of a cup. Realizing that both cards say Death, Lief tricks the Ra-Kacharz and the trio is thrown into prison. A girl named Tira managed to free them and shows them the secret way out, by passing through the kitchen trash tube. They survive the dangers of the tube by wearing the Ra-Kacharz clothes that they stole and finally reached the Broad River. Using the Water Eaters, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine crossed the river, only to find that there were rats waiting for them. They managed to escape the deadly rats using the explosive Fire Beads and enter the city's center. The Glowing Bubbles come into use and lights their way as they move through the dark. There, Lief starts to hear voices, which was revealed to be of Reeah's, a huge snake called the King of Rats. The crown atop of Reeah's head housed the opal. Lief realized that the past inhabitants of the City of the Rats were the people of Noradz. He also realized that "Noradz" was a homophone of "No Rats" and "Ra-Kacharz" was a homophone of "Rat-Catchers". The overrun of rats in their city had caused them to move and take up vigorously clean customs. Also, "Noradzeer", which is repeated very often by the people of Noradz, appears to be a homophone of "No Rats Here". Lief realizes that Reeah had set a trap for them. After a fight, Lief and Jasmine defeats the snake. Lief touches the opal to take it, and gets a vision of him sinking into the Shifting Sands. Lief remembers that the opal's vision of the future is not always true, they continue their quest to seek their fourth gem at the Shifting Sands.
11608770	/m/02rlf5t	Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman	Mary Wollstonecraft			 The Wrongs of Woman begins in medias res with the upper-class Maria's unjust imprisonment by her husband, George Venables. Not only has he condemned Maria to live in an insane asylum, but he has also taken their child away from her. She manages to befriend one of her attendants in the asylum, an impoverished, lower-class woman named Jemima, who, after realizing that Maria is not mad, agrees to bring her a few books. Some of these have notes scribbled in them by Henry Darnford, another inmate, and Maria falls in love with him via his marginalia. The two begin to communicate and eventually meet. Darnford reveals that he has had a debauched life; waking up in the asylum after a night of heavy drinking, he has been unable to convince the doctors to release him. Jemima tells her life story to Maria and Darnford, explaining that she was born a bastard. Jemima's mother died while she was still an infant, making her already precarious social position worse. She was therefore forced to become a servant in her father's house and later bound out as an apprentice to a master who beat her, starved her, and raped her. When the man's wife discovers that Jemima is pregnant with his child, she is thrown out of the house. Unable to support herself, she aborts her child and becomes a prostitute. After the death of the gentleman keeping her, she becomes an attendant at the asylum where Maria is imprisoned. In chapters seven through fourteen (about half of the completed manuscript), Maria relates her own life story in a narrative she has written for her daughter. She explains how her mother and father loved their eldest son, Robert, more than their other children and how he ruled "despotically" over his siblings. To escape her unhappy home, Maria visited that of a neighbour and fell in love with his son, George Venables. Venables presented himself to everyone as a respectable and honourable young man; in actuality, he was a libertine. Maria's family life became untenable when her mother died and her father took the housekeeper as his mistress. A rich uncle who was fond of Maria, unaware of Venables' true character, arranged a marriage for her and gave her a dowry of £5,000. Maria quickly learned of her husband's true character. She tried to ignore him by cultivating a greater appreciation for literature and the arts, but he became increasingly dissolute: he whored, gambled, and bankrupted the couple. Maria soon became pregnant after unwanted sexual encounters with her husband. As Maria's uncle is leaving for the continent, he tells her that women have the right to separate from their husbands. After Venables attempts to sell Maria to one of his friends, a Mr. S—, Maria tries to leave him, but she fails. She initially escapes and manages to live in several different locations, often with other women who have also been wronged by their husbands, but he always finds her. When she tries to leave England with her newborn child and the fortune her now deceased uncle has left them, her husband seizes the child and imprisons Maria in the asylum. At this point the completed manuscript breaks off.
11611401	/m/0403qsk	The Leopard				 The novel begins when the main character Nebu, a Kikuyu tribe member, leaves his Mau Mau people to hunt down a white man who is traveling in the African bush. After catching up to the white man who has also brought his son along, Nebu throws a spear at the white man and kills him while simultaneously, the white man shoots at Nebu, injuring his side. After killing the white man, Nebu realizes that it was his old boss, an English planter. As a result of committing this crime, Nebu feels especially obligated to repay the boss, for having previously slept with his white wife. For this reason, he decides to safeguard the boss’ child, who is in truth, biologically his own, and return him to a white community. The decision to bring the child to a white community is a tough one for him, however, for he is himself very injured from the bullet, and also the child is incapable of walking alone, making the journey twice as difficult. As Nebu carries his son through the bush, the boy, who was raised with mixed emotions towards blacks and whites, continually taunts him. While they travel, they together become closely watched by the leopard, which plots to kill the two concurrently. Nebu’s wound from the bullet continuously weakens him, making him more susceptible to attack from the leopard. At this point, the leopard attacks and brings a tragic ending to the “twisted little cripple’s” life. Before Nebu could spear the leopard, an English army lieutenant shoots at the leopard, killing it instantly.
11611575	/m/04091sh	Homo faber	Max Frisch		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During the 1930s, Walter Faber, who works at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, meets an art student Hanna. The two become lovers, and one day Hanna reveals that she is pregnant. Faber asks her to marry him, but she hesitates. Faber receives an offer by UNESCO to work in Baghdad and he accepts it; he and Hanna split up. Before his departure, Faber asks his friend Joachim to take care of Hanna, and Hanna agrees to abort their child. In spring 1957, Faber recounts the events of Faber's travels in America. On a flight from New York to Mexico, his plane makes a forced landing in the desert. During the following stay he meets the German Herbert, who turns out to be the brother of Joachim, Faber's friend. Faber had not heard from his friend since 1936. Faber decides to accompany Herbert, who is on his way to visiting his brother. After an oddysey through the wilderness, they reach Joachim's plantation. But Joachim has hanged himself. Herbert decides to stay behind and manage the plantation. Faber returns to New York City, but meets up with his married mistress, Ivy. Looking to escape their relationship, Faber takes an unplanned cruise to Europe. On this journey, he meets the young woman Sabeth, with whom he falls in love. He proposes to Sabeth at the end of the journey, but she is traveling with a male friend. Faber and Sabeth meet again in Paris and Faber decides to go on vacation and accompany Sabeth on a road trip through Europe. Because of a foreboding, he asks Sabeth for the name of her mother: Hanna. Faber still hopes that Hanna has aborted their child, but it turnes out soon that Sabeth is his daughter. In Greece, where Hanna now lives, a poisonous snake bites Sabeth, who falls down a cliff and dies. Stricken by grief and stomach cancer, Faber realizes the beauty he has missed and finds redemption in Hanna. He dies knowing she will never leave Athens and their daughter's grave.
11620412	/m/02rls02	The Bourne Ultimatum	Robert Ludlum	1990-02-25	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows David Webb, alias Jason Bourne, as he works to find his old enemy, Carlos the Jackal, who is trying to kill him. As the Jackal enters old age and his infamy fades, he decides that he will do two things before he dies: kill Webb/Bourne, and destroy the KGB facility of Novgorod, where the Jackal was trained and was turned away for being a maniac. Carlos the Jackal uses a diverse collective of aged men devoted to his handiwork known as "The Old Men of Paris." The old men, who are mostly criminals, work for the Jackal in return for their family's comfort. Webb sends his wife and children to live with his wife's brother, John St. Jacques, in the Caribbean for protection while Webb himself works with old friend and CIA agent Alexander Conklin, and to a limited degree, the CIA, to hunt down and kill the Jackal first. While in the Caribbean, the St. Jacques Family faces a number of complications. A "War Hero" arrives, who is actually an "Old Man of Paris" is supposed to assassinate the St. Jacques and spray paint "JASON BOURNE" on the wall. At the same time, a former judge, Brendan P. Prefontaine, arrives. The Jackal thinks that Prefontaine was going to foil his murder plan, and bribes a nurse on the island to kill him. However, his plans are foiled when the "war hero" finds out that when he is done with the murder, he is to be assassinated as well. He turns sides and shoots the nurse with his Luger P08 and saves Brendan P. Prefontaine. Upon the close murder, Webb returns to the Caribbean. At the time of his visit, the Jackal himself comes to try to kill Webb, at the same time killing three security guards, the Crown Governor of the island, the "Old Man of Paris" that changed side (strapped explosives on him,) severely beats a kid waiter, and wounds Jason Bourne in the neck by a bullet (ironically, this is the Jackal's trademark and no one has survived it until now). Webb poses as an important member of Medusa (a newer version than the original he was associated with during the Vietnam era) (see Jason Bourne), now a nearly omnipotent economic force that controls the head of NATO, leading figures in the Defense Department, portions of the American and Sicilian mafia, and large NYSE firms. After several assassinations of key Medusa figures he was interrogating, he realizes that Medusa had nothing to do with the Jackal. The people who wanted to kill him were hired by Medusa and not the Jackal. After that, he goes back undercover and finds Jacqueline Lavier, who pretends to help him. She is part of the Jackal's group. She phones the Jackal of the location of Bourne's hotel, but is caught by Bourne. However, Bourne sets a trap for the Jackal, but is foiled by his wife when she sees him. The Jackal realizes it's a trap and runs. Also, John St. Jacques and Bourne's children are relocated to a CIA safe house. However, Mr. Pritchard, a clerk, overhears John St. Jacques and Bourne's phone and tells his uncle, who was bribed by the Jackal for 300 pounds. Then, Alex Conklin, Marie St. Jacques, Jason Bourne, and Mo Panov (Jason's doctor) go to Russia to meet one of Alex's long-time friends. The friend helps them several times. When they first meet, Jackal invades the restaurant they meet at and spray paints on the wall the exact location of Jason's son. Jason immediately calls the CIA and they relocate the children. At the same time, Alex and Jason realize that the Russian contact for the Jackal was high up in the KGB. Their Russian contact searches up a list of 13 people, who he keeps traces on . They catch the traitor when he goes to a church to meet the Jackal, along with Ogilive, an American Medusa traitor. However, Ogilive is set up by the KGB officials and is photographed with the Jackal. Later, the Jackal tells the Russian traitor that he is followed by his own government and shows him proof by killing 2 KGB agents that were following the Russian. The Jackal then kills him. Later, the Jackal meets with a board of Russian traitors. They disavow him and refuse to help him. He goes crazy and kills them all with his Type 56 assault rifle, but leaves a woman barely alive, who identifies the Jackal to the police, who in turn notify Alex Conklin. The Jackal comes to the hotel Webb is at and a furious chase happens, but the Jackal manages to escape to an armory, get weapons, go to Novgorod, and bomb the place. However, Bourne meets him there and they fight. The Jackal runs away, and Bourne throws a grenade, wounding him. One of the officials then closes the gates to the river, and the river rises, drowning the Jackal. Bourne then returns to the Caribbean, where their Russian friend meets them, and the former accepts that Jason Bourne is dead.
11633049	/m/02rm6d2	Vous revoir			{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 When Arthur returns to San Francisco after a self-imposed exile in Paris, he rediscovers his best friend, his job, and the city he loves. The one thing missing is Lauren: the woman he had sacrificed everything to save, only to lose her minutes later. Arthur is resigned to never see Lauren again. But when fate intervenes, it is Lauren’s turn to save Arthur, if she can find him in time. es:Volver a verte (novela) fr:Vous revoir
11633251	/m/02rm6qr	The Execution Channel	Ken MacLeod		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel follows the lives of software developer James Travis and his daughter Roisín. Roisín, a pacifist living at a peace camp outside RAF Leuchars, has witnessed and recorded the unloading of a strange device from an aircraft. She then receives a text-message from her brother Alec — who serves in the British army in Central Asia — apparently warning her of impending trouble. As she and her fellow protestors leave the area, an enormous explosion devastates both the air-base and the neighbouring town. She also witnesses an attack on Grangemouth Refinery. Unknown to her, her father has been working as a spy. He witnesses the ethnic cleansing of Britain's Muslims and their migration to France. He also witnesses an attack on Spaghetti Junction. Other characters include a blogger who specialises in conspiracy theories, Mark Dark; and his mother, Sandra Hope, who works at a camp for eco-refugees in the United States. Some other bloggers work for an intelligence agency, writing under various pseudonyms to spread disinformation. In the novel's fictional universe, Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election, to be succeeded by Hillary Clinton, and the September 11, 2001 attacks targeted Boston and Philadelphia rather than New York and Washington. MacLeod explains, "the point made...is that these matters are affected by more powerful forces than the personality of a particular president. In practice the Democratic Party leadership in Congress is just as committed to the war's continuation and possible extension as the Republicans. I didn't want the book to be read as just a fictional form of partisan 'Bush-bashing'."
11641451	/m/02rmg5l	Tomorrow	Graham Swift	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mike Hook is a wartime child. His father, "Grandpa Pete," and his mother, "Grandma Helen," both hardly turned 20, hastily get married in 1944 just before Pete rejoins the RAF to fight in the Second World War. He is shot down over Germany, survives, and spends several months in a prisoner-of-war camp. In January 1945, while he is still away from home, his son Mike is born. After the war and his safe return to England, Pete becomes a successful entrepreneur. Mike, who remains an only child, develops an interest in nature quite early in life and eventually, in the 1960s, decides to read Biology at the recently opened University of Sussex. There, in 1966, he meets Paula Campbell, who has come from London to study English Literature and Art, and their relationship soon turns out to be much more than just a fling. Paula is the only child of a divorced High Court judge with Scottish roots. That man, "Grandpa Dougie," born shortly after the turn of the century, contributes to the war effort by deciphering code somewhere in the English countryside. There, already in his mid-forties, he falls for Fiona McKay, a young secretary with pretty legs who is twenty years his junior, and marries her. Paula, also born in 1945, is sent to a girls' boarding school. Already during her years at school Paula feels his father's growing estrangement from his wife, a development which culminates in divorce and "Grandma Fiona" running off with a man her own age "dripping with some kind of oil-derived, Texan-Aberdonian wealth". After that, Paula hardly ever sees or talks to her own mother again. Just as Mike, she remains an only child. After finishing school, she decides to go on to Sussex University. In tune with the spirit of the age, both Mike and Paula adopt a promiscuous lifestyle during their student days. However, they realise immediately after their first meeting that they are meant for each other and, deeply in love, decide to become monogamous and to spend the rest of their lives together. They get married in 1970 at the age of 25 and gradually start pursuing their respective careers&mdash;Mike as the editor of a struggling science journal, Paula as an art dealer. In 1972, Paula eventually goes off the pill as they both wish to have children. When Paula does not become pregnant, the couple decide to have themselves tested: [...] We looked sadly and sympathetically at each other, as if one of us might have to choose, heads or tails, and one of us might have to lose. At this stage we still hoped. But I have to say&mdash;and you must both be starting to muster an intense interest&mdash;that this was, in all we'd known so far, the worst moment of our lives. Little war babies to whom nothing especially dreadful, let alone warlike, had happened. The divorce of your parents, the death of an uncle&mdash;these things, for God's sake, aren't the end of the world. But this little crisis, even before we knew it was insuperable, was like a not so small end of the world. In one, strictly procreative sense, it might be exactly that. [...] It was a blow, my darlings, a true blow. And where it truly hurts. It turned out there was a problem and that the problem was your dad's, not mine. [...] Mike&#39;s diagnosed infertility prompts them to remain childless (rather than try to adopt children) and to stay together, Paula suppressing the biological urge to procreate and look for a different partner. However, they decide not to inform anybody of the new situation, not even their own parents, who in turn never broach so delicate a subject with their children and just wait passively for the big announcement. In the meantime, when a neighbour offers them a cat they take her up on it and call him Otis, after recently deceased Otis Redding. Otis becomes the focal point of their married life, so much so that when Paula takes him to the vet she is bluntly told that Otis is their &#34;child substitute&#34;. The vet becomes Paula&#39;s confidant (and lover, but just for one night), and he advises her to reconsider her abandoned wish to have a child while pointing her to the options available to her through the fledgling field of reproductive medicine. In the end Mike and Paula make up their minds to give it a try, Paula is artificially inseminated, and in 1979, after her own father&#39;s and Otis&#39;s death, gives birth to twins whom they christen Nick and Kate. Again, they do not tell anybody about how their children were conceived, especially not that their natural father is &#34;Mr S&#34;, an anonymous sperm donor. As the new day is dawning, sleepless Paula is aware of the fact that the biggest revelation yet in the lives of her two children is imminent. She also makes a mental note to explain to them that they should decide wisely whether to tell anybody the news or not as the implications would be far-reaching: Grandma Helen, for one, might feel cheated out of her grandchildren. On the other hand, Paula can well imagine that her mother-in-law, by sheer maternal instinct, has known about their secret all along.
11642902	/m/02rmhb1	The Third Part of the Pilgrim's Progress		1693		 Tender-Conscience, a native of the town of Vain Delights goes on the pilgrimage of Christian and Christiana to the Celestial City. He stops at some of the same places as they, but he encounters new places not visited by either Christian or Christiana and her party. All of the lands that are outside of the Wicket Gate and the area encompassed by the "walls and borders of that region, wherein lay the way to the heavenly country" are known as the "Valley of Destruction." The time that Tender-Conscience begins his pilgrimage is a time of drought and heat, which is emblematic of a time of the persecution. Some of them are deterred in their progress, and return to their old homes in the Valley of Destruction during the night. Tender-Conscience has a difficult time crossing the Slough of Despond, and he does not get by it without being covered in mud from it. This mud has the effect of weakening the body and blinding his eyes, and Tender-Conscience grope along until he is overshadowed by a bright cloud from which a hand appears that washes away the mud enabling Tender-Conscience to continue his journey with vigor. At the Wicket Gate Tender-Conscience does not escape the arrows shot against callers from the Beelzebub's castle. These sick to his flesh and cause him to bleed profusely. Good-Will lets him in, and registers his name as a pilgrim. He gives Tender-Conscience a crutch that is made of wood from the Tree of Life (Lingnum Vitæ). This crutch stanches the bleeding and strengthens Tender-Conscience, who must bear with the arrows of Beelzebub until he reaches the House of the Interpreter. The Interpreter removes the arrows of Beelzebub from Tender-Conscience's body and lodges him for the night, showing him the same emblems and scenes enjoyed by Christian, Christiana, and their children and companions. The next day the Interpreter goes a little way with Tender-Conscience to where the King's Highway is walled on either side by the Wall of Salvation. Before they reach this wall they come to two farms on either side of the way. The farm on the right is well-cared for and the one on the left is not. The Interpreter tells Tender-Conscience that this provides an example to pilgrim's that they should be like the caretaker of the farm on the right, who gradually improved his farm until it was in its present good condition. Tender-Conscience when parted from the Interpreter comes to the place where Christian found the cross and the sepulchre. On either side of the cross were now erected two houses as competing lodging places for pilgrims. On the right was the House of Mourning, and on the left was the House of Mirth. The House of Mirth is like an ale house with carousing men, but the House of Mourning is tended by pious women called "matrons." Tender-Conscience decides to go to the House of Mourning despite the agitation induced in the men of the House of Mirth, who form a mob surrounding the House of Mourning demanding that Tender-Conscience be handed over to them. Three shining ones appear to Tender-Conscience promising to rescue him. The first shining one breathes on Tender-Conscience making him a new creature, the second clothes him in a white robe in place of his crimson clothes, and the third one gives him a sealed roll. With this change Tender-Conscience is able to get by unrecognized by the men from the House of Mirth and, so, go on his way. At the Hill Difficulty Tender-Conscience had the choice of the three ways: the one going up the hill also called "Difficulty," the one going around the right hand of the hill called "Danger," and the one going around the left side of the hill called "Destruction." The broadness and pleasantness of the two byways induced Tender-Conscience to take the right-hand byway Danger. He thought that this way would also lead him to the top of the hill, but the growing denseness of the forest surrounding the way and the howlings of wild beasts that he heard induced him to go back to the foot of the hill. He then remembered the Bible passages that characterized the right way as narrow, so he chose to go up the hill by way of the steep and narrow path.
11644369	/m/02rmjs1	The Proteus Operation	James P. Hogan	1985	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Originally the First World War was a complete wake-up call for the human race, leading to greater internationalism and a "Never Again" spirit towards war that would eventually wear away the differences between the various power-blocs. By the 2020s, a global League of Nations oversees a planet totally at peace. The fledgling Nazi Party, in this 'original' timeline, simply faded out after the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Many in the modern aristocracy, corporate dynasties, and others feel they have lost out because of the social transformations enabled by decades of peace and co-operation. This group come up with a plan to build a functional "time machine" and change history for their benefit. Their scheme is to go back as far as they can (roughly a century, to the very early 1920s) and mentor the fledgling Nazi Party. They regard the Nazis as the perfect tool for destroying the Soviet Union and establishing an elitist tyranny with which they can live the lives of luxury and entitlement they believe have been stolen from them. This 'Uptime' initiative sends 21st century advisors, armament and nuclear weapons to support Adolf Hitler. The Hitler that they seek to advise soon develops other plans. After learning about the original history from his time traveling advisors, Hitler uses these lessons to ensure that Western Europe falls swiftly, followed by droping a few of the Uptime nuclear weapons to wipe out the Soviet Union. He then destroys his end of the "time conduit" and declares independence from his former sponsors. By the 1970s, Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan have conquered everything other than North America, Australasia, and parts of South America. Africa has suffered an enormous genocide every bit as complete as the one inflicted upon the Jews, and the Axis powers stand poised in 1975 to start a final war that the United States is bound to lose, given the military power of Nazi Germany. An organization in this altered 1975 discovers the secret behind the Nazi successes of the previous decades. The group decides that it will build its own time machine to go back and stop the present nightmare of Nazi world domination. This 1975 time machine is not as advanced or powerful as the original 2020s machine, so they can only open a gate to 1939. The plan is to establish a military alliance between the 1975 America of President John F. Kennedy of the 1939 America of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Things go wrong, and it is up to the 1975 Uptime agents, cut off in 1939, to keep the western Allies, including the United Kingdom and the United States in the fight, while working to close off Hitler's gateway to the alternate 2020s before he gets his atomic bomb and missile advantage. In the end, they succeed, and this second "alternate timeline" they create turns out to be our own world. Historical figures in the book include Isaac Asimov, Wilhelm Canaris, Winston Churchill, Duff Cooper, Anthony Eden, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, John F. Kennedy, Frederick Lindemann, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Leo Szilard, and Edward Teller. Of these, only Asimov and Teller were still alive when the novel was published in 1985.
11648812	/m/02rmp8p	Mélusine	Sarah Monette	2005-08-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story revolves around two characters: magician Felix Harrowgate and thief Mildmay the Fox, who live in vastly different parts of the city of Mélusine. They are tossed together by fate when Felix is accused of destroying the crystal Virtu, an orb which channels the magical energy of the magicians in Mélusine.
11648848	/m/02rmpb1	The Virtu	Sarah Monette	2006-06-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Felix Harrogate, having recovered from the abuse he suffered in Mélusine, is ready to regain the power and status that he lost. With his half-bother Mildmay and Mehitabel Parr, a young governess, he decides to return to Mélusine to repair the Virtu.
11651402	/m/02rms6w	Just Listen	Sarah Dessen	2006-04-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Annabel Greene is a girl who has it all - at least, that's how it seems on TV commercials. Annabel's life is far from perfect. Her friendship with her best friend Sophie ended bitterly, leaving her alone and friendless at the beginning of a new school year. Her sister Whitney's eating disorder is weighing down the entire family, and Annabel fears speaking out about her past and her lack of enthusiasm for modeling. In the midst of her isolation, she meets Owen - a music obsessed, intense classmate who, after taking an Anger Management class, is determined to tell the truth. With his help, Annabel may start facing her fears - and more importantly, speaking the truth herself.
11653298	/m/02rmv5c	Evening Class	Maeve Binchy	1998-08-28	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A story of many Irish men and women from various backgrounds and how a teacher, Nora O'Donoghue (known as "Signora"), and an Italian evening class changes their lives over the course of a year. Each chapter deals with the life story of one or more students in the class. In a Dickensian way, they bump into each other and are affected by the decisions of those around them.
11654140	/m/02rmw3m	Quentins	Maeve Binchy	2002	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ella Brady, a young science teacher, falls in love with a successful businessman (Don Richardson) who is married but tells her that his marriage was "dead". For some time she is happy with the torrid affair, and manages to overlook some inconsistencies in what he tells her. Until the moment when he is exposed as a corrupt swindler and runs away out of the country and out of her life - leaving Ella, her family, and many people in Dublin without their savings. Ella is disgraced and quits her teaching job to work more than 60 hours a week at Quentins restaurant, with the Scarlet Feather catering company, and with a film crew, to help out her family. The book mostly concentrates on Ella's attempt to get funding for her friends' film company for a documentary about the restaurant Quentins. She struggles to get over a man who was deceitful, whom she still loves, and with whether or not to give the fraud squad access to a laptop he left in her possession. Eventually, her efforts to get funding get her to meet a new man, Derry King, an American businessman with an Irish heritage which he hates because of the way his drunken Irish father treated him and his mother. Smaller plot points revolve around the background of Patrick and Brenda Brennan (the owners of Quentins), Ella's girlfriends Deirdre and Nuala, and many of the regulars at the restaurant; the main plot is interspersed with various vignettes in the life of people who had been in contact with the restaurant in one way or another, these inteweaving with each other and with Ella Brady's life in a various unpredicatable ways.
11658642	/m/02rm_hd	Love and Other Impossible Pursuits	Ayelet Waldman	2006-01-24		 Emilia Greenleaf is an attorney living in New York city with her husband, Jack Woolf. Emilia is stepmother to Jack's remarkably intelligent four-year-old son, William. William lives primarily with his mother, the medical doctor Carolyn Soule. It is Emilia's job, however, to pick up William from his nursery school every Wednesday afternoon. When she picks him up, Emilia is often subjected to snide glances and whispers from the other mothers because, it transpires, her relationship with her husband began when he was still with his wife. They had an office affair, and eventually the marriage dissolved. The reader also learns early on that Emilia and Jack recently lost their own child together, a girl they named Isabel. They had the baby home for only one day, as she died overnight of SIDS in Emilia's arms after being fed. The bulk of the story deals with the results of Isabel's death, including the strain this puts on Emilia and Jack's marriage, as well as Emilia's feelings towards William. Emilia does not particularly like William (in fact, she describes him as "insufferable" early on in the story), but tries to be a good parent to him. This is hindered by the fact that William serves as his mother's mouthpiece, and sometimes speaks in a very matter-of-fact way about Isabel's death.
11660900	/m/02rn1mt	The Wide, Wide World	Susan Warner	1850	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Wide, Wide World is a work of sentimentalism based on the life of young Ellen Montgomery. The story begins with Ellen’s happy life being disrupted by the fact that her mother is very ill and her father must take her to Europe, requiring Ellen to leave home to live with an almost-unknown aunt. Though Ellen tries to act strong for her mother’s sake, she is devastated and can find solace in nothing. Eventually the day comes when Ellen must say goodbye to her mother and travel in the company of strangers to her aunt’s home. Unfortunately these strangers are unkind to Ellen and she tries to leave the boat on which they are traveling. An old man sees Ellen crying and tells her to trust in God. He teaches her about being a Christian, as her mother had done, and asks her if she is ready to give her heart to Jesus. After talking with the man, Ellen becomes determined to become a true Christian, which gives her strength for the rest of the journey to her aunt’s place in Thirwall. On Ellen’s first night in Thirwall, she learns that her father forgot to inform her aunt that she was coming, so a "Mr. Van Brunt" escorts her to her aunt's home. This aunt, Fortune Emerson, proves to be quite different from Ellen's loving mother: she treats Ellen unkindly and refuses to let her attend school. Ellen hates living with Fortune and comes to find comfort in the society of Mr. Van Brunt and other neighbors as she becomes more familiar with her new surroundings. One day, discovering that her aunt withheld a letter from Mrs. Montgomery, Ellen runs crying into the woods. There she meets Alice Humphreys, the daughter of a local minister. Alice is kind of Ellen and invites her to tea the next day, to give Ellen a chance to tell her troubles; maybe Alice would be able to help. The girls become fast friends and Alice adopts Ellen as a sister, offering to educate her and guide her spiritually, teaching her to forgive others and trust in the Lord. Alice and her brother John, who is away at school much of the time, treat Ellen like family, even inviting her to spend Christmas in the nearby town of Ventnor with them and their friends, the Marshmans. While there, Ellen meets another Ellen, Ellen Chauncey. She also gets better acquainted with John Humphreys, who comforts her many times after the other children tease her. Ellen comes to realize that if she hadn't needed to be separated from her mother, she might never have met Alice and John. About a year later, one day when Ellen visits town, she overhears from some ladies' conversation that her mother has died. Devastated, she turns to Alice and her Bible for comfort. She stays with Alice and John until Aunt Fortune becomes ill and Ellen must look after her. Eventually Aunt Fortune recovers and Ellen returns to Alice and her other friends. After Mr. Van Brunt’s mother dies, he decides to marry Aunt Fortune; soon after, Alice tells Ellen that she is very ill and will soon be "going home" to Heaven; Ellen is not to grieve for her but to trust in God. She also invites Ellen to take her place in the Humphreys household. Ellen immediately moves in and begins by nursing Alice through her final weeks. After Alice dies, Ellen turns to John for guidance. He takes over as her tutor, spiritual advisor, and guiding light. By the time a Humphreys relative dies in England and John must travel overseas to handle the family's business, Ellen (though sad to see him go) is a stronger person. One day Nancy visits Ellen, bringing letters she has found while cleaning Fortune's house. They are for Ellen from her mother and express the wish that Ellen go live with relatives in Scotland; after sharing the letters with Mr. Humphreys, Ellen decides she must honor her parents' wishes so the Humphreys send her to Scotland to live with the Lindsays: her grandmother and uncle Lindsay and Lady Keith. They welcome her into their home and find her delightful, but they become very possessive of her and force her to denounce her identity as an American and as a Montgomery. Mr. Lindsay even makes Ellen call him “father” and refers to her as his “own little daughter.” The Lindsays also discourage Ellen’s faith, as they don’t see religion as being important to someone Ellen’s age. Ellen finds it hard to live without her daily hours set aside for studying religion, but still tries hard to live by her faith and everything that John and Alice taught her. Ellen misses John more than anything, and during a New Year’s Eve party at the Lindsays', he shows up asking for her. The Lindsays try to keep them apart, but they are unsuccessful. During their emotional reunion John reminds Ellen to keep her faith; in a few years, when she will be able to choose where she lives, she can return to America and live with him. When Ellen introduces John to the Lindsays, they actually become fond of him. John must soon return to America, but not without promising Ellen that they will be together forever soon. In an unpublished chapter at the end of the book, Ellen returns to America as Mrs. John Humphreys.
11664985	/m/02rn6mm	Fear			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Miles Kendrick suffers from Post-traumatic stress disorder and is in a witness protection program. When his psychiatrist is targeted and killed he feels somehow responsible and sets about trying to find out why she was killed and avenge her death. A constant companion is his best friend who he killed some time in the past.
11665163	/m/02rn6vh	Children of God	Mary Doria Russell	1998-03-24	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Emilio Sandoz is in the process of healing from his experiences on Rakhat, detailed in The Sparrow. He is exposed to Father Vincenzo Giuliani's organized crime "family," the Camorra. At a christening celebration, he meets Celestina, aged four, and her mother Gina, a divorcee with whom Emilio begins to fall in love. Emilio is released from the priesthood. He trains the second Jesuit expedition to Rakhat, composed of Sean Fein, Danny Iron Horse, and John Candotti, in the K'San (Jana'ata) and Ruanja (Runa) languages. He himself refuses to go. Gina is about to go on vacation, after which Emilio plans to marry her. Unfortunately, while Gina is on vacation, Emilio is beaten and kidnapped by Carlo, Gina's ex-husband and Celestina's father. Emilio is kept in a constantly drugged state on the Giordano Bruno, Carlo's ship. They are actually working for the Jesuits and the Vatican, who want Sandoz to return to Rakhat. It is extremely important that the Jesuits put right (as much as possible) what they destroyed on Rakhat; the massacre of the first landing party, and the violent revolution of the Runa serving class that followed, have caused a rift between the Society of Jesus and the rest of the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Jesuit order has all but vanished completely. Meanwhile, back on Rakhat, there is an unexpected survivor of the massacre; Sofia Mendes Quinn, grievously injured but her pregnancy intact, has been hidden from the Jana'ata patrols. She commands Runa troops in the revolution and is their Joan of Arc figure. She's been sending packets of information back to the asteroid ship Stella Maris, still in orbit around Rakhat, as was the normal practice of the original landing party. She has her baby with help from the locals. Soon, it is apparent that her son, Isaac, is autistic. Sometime later, the signal from the Stella Maris goes dead, but Sofia does not guess that it's because other Earthmen -- the United Nations Contact Consortium -- came to Rakhat and sent the ship home, let alone that Emilio Sandoz had been rescued and was aboard, headed back for the lengthy inquisition covered in The Sparrow. Meanwhile, up in Inbrokar's ornate capital city Galatna, Hlavin Kitheri, the Jana'ata Reshtar (third-born prince), has fulfilled his promise to ambitious tradesman Supaari. When Supaari gave Emilio to Hlavin as a gift, Hlavin arranged a marriage between Supaari and his sister, Jholaa. Having lived all her life in strict purdah and enforced ignorance, she is not even told of their plans until the wedding is actually taking place. The ceremony includes consummation in front of everyone — actually rape, because Jholaa was unprepared for marriage and did not desire Supaari. She detests him, and when she has a daughter, Supaari is told that the infant is deformed, and by tradition he must kill it. But on first glance he can see it is a lie, and a set-up — a practical joke by Hlavin, to wipe out Supaari's new family line before it can begin. Remembering Anne, the doctor of the earth landing party who became his friend, he names his little girl Ha'anala, "like Anne". Taking her, he leaves behind everything and goes to his family. There, he recognizes that he has no place among the Jana'ata. Now the Runa of Kashan village, where the revolution began, offer to keep him safe as a hasta'akala (total dependent) He has worked with them for decades, selling their merchandise in the city of Gayjur. By law, a hasta'akala's patron must provide all his food. The Runa have been bred for many centuries as not only servants but food for the Jana'ata; but the vaKashani love Supaari to the point of volunteering to die for him and the child to eat (reflecting Jesus Christ's Eucharistic sacrifice, the most important sacrament in Catholicism). Supaari refuses their kind offer. Instead he takes Ha'anala to where Sofia is and becomes a spy, aiding in the extermination of his own species. One day, Isaac leaves. Ha'anala finds him, but recognizes that he will not go back. They stumble upon a group of Jana'ata people in the N'Jarr Valley in the mountains, and stay with them. Ha'anala later marries Shetri Laaks, one of these people, and has many children, although several of them die due to malnutrition; Ha'anala refuses to eat Runa. Hlavin Kitheri, inspired partly by his encounter with Sandoz, begins to revolutionize Jana'ata society by abolishing the stultifying hierarchies, even establishing a sort of democracy. He now seizes the Paramountcy, the highest office in Inbrokar, by killing his entire family and framing Supaari for the murders. One of his first steps is to educate all the women. He hears of an extraordinary Jana'ata female, Suukmel. She advises him; he wants her, but she refuses to give him more than the chance to foster a child with her. In the terrible war that follows, Hlavin fights Supaari, in hand-to-hand combat, without armor, and both die. Suukmel departs with Rukuei and finds the N'Jarr Valley. There Jana'ata and Runa work together, trying to build a new culture based on individual choice. The Jana'ata there believe they must find food other than Runa, but many are starving. There are game animals they could hunt, but they run the risk of being captured and killed by the Runa. Emilio returns to Rakhat with the Giordano Bruno to find that the Runa have killed nearly all the Jana'ata and taken control of the planet for themselves. The Jesuits expected they would have to assist the Runa in their war for independence, but the Runa have won independently. Sofia talks to Emilio. The N'Jarr Valley is found and Sofia sends Runa troops there, convinced that Ha'anala is keeping Isaac, now 40, captive. Ha'anala dies in childbirth, but Emilio saves the baby. One of the Jesuits, a Lakhota named Danny Iron Horse, works with Suukmel to arrange a reservation-like setup for the remaining Jana'ata on Rakhat. In the end, Emilio and the Mafiosi return to earth on the Giordano Bruno, bringing with them Rukuei Kitheri, a poet in his own right. Sofia dies, and Suukmel stays in the N'Jarr valley with Ha'anala's children and Isaac, who thinks he has found proof of the existence of God in patterns of music created by overlapping the genomes of all three sentient species (this has been the mysterious project he has spent his life working on). Emilio comes home. Time has passed — Gina is dead. At her grave, he is greeted by a lady who reveals herself as Gina's second daughter — Emilio's daughter.
11668127	/m/02rnb9s	Swordbird	Nancy Yi Fan	2007-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins with Turnatt, an evil tyrant hawk and lord of Fortress Glooming, watching the construction of his fortress. Farther in the forest of Stone-Run are two tribes: the Bluewingle tribe of the blue jays and the Sunrise tribe of the cardinals, which are at war with each other, each accusing the other of stealing their eggs and food, not knowing that this is actually the work of Turnatt. A member of the Bluewingle tribe, a female blue jay named Aska, meets a robin named Miltin, a slave at Fortress Glooming , who warns her of Turnatt. Aska leaves and tells the two tribes of Turnatt. The groups make amends in time for the Bright Moon Festival, during which the Flying Willowleaf Theater arrive and help celebrate by telling the legend of Swordbird, a giant dove-like bird of peace with magical powers. The celebration is cut short when a group of Turnatt's soldiers attack, attempting to capture and enslave the two tribes and the members of the Flying Willowleaf Theater. The tribes manage to defeat the soldiers and decide to summon Swordbird, thinking that he is the only one with the power to defeat Turnatt, using his Leasorn Sword. The only problem is that Swordbird can only be summoned by a song and one of the Leasorn Gems, which are said to be crystallized tears of the Great Spirit. There are only seven Leasorn Gems in the world, with an eighth one in Swordbird's blade. All hope seems lost until a recently-escaped Miltin tells them that his tribe has one of the Leasorn Gems. The tribes decide to send Aska and Miltin over the White Cap Mountains to reach Miltin's home, the Waterthorn tribe. While Miltin and Aska are away, Turnatt sends his raven spy, Shadow, to destroy the two villages. Shadow and his group manage to set the Bluewingle tribe's home ablaze. The Bluewingle tribe take refuge with the Sunrise tribe. Shadow and his group attempt to light the Sunrise village on fire too, but are attacked by the tribe members and scattered. At the White Cap Mountains Aska and Miltin are attacked by a group of Slarkills and Miltin is mortally wounded and slowly dying. The two make it to the Waterthorn tribe where Miltin dies and Aska convinces the tribe to aid her tribes against Turnatt. The Winterhorn tribe arrives in time to help the Sunrise and Bluewingle tribes and the members of the Flying Willowleaf Theater in their battle against Turnatt and his attacking army. Aska manages to summon Swordbird, who quickly kills Turnatt. With their leader dead, Turnatt's army leave and the birds of Stone-Run release all those enslaved in Fortress Glooming. Two years later, Aska is married to Cody, an old friend of hers, the Sunrise and Bluewingle tribe have formed together as the Stone-Run Forest tribe, and Fortress Glooming has been made into the Stone-Run Library. The story ends with Cody and Aska visiting the grave of Miltin and leaving one of Swordbird's feathers.
11670882	/m/02rnfcq	Rahasia	Laura Hickman	1984		 In RPGA1 Rahasia, the heroes seek to save a kidnapped elven maid, and to do so they must enter the Temple of the Sacred Black Rock, break a curse, and capture the evil Rahib. In the revised module B7 Rahasia, the adventures must save a group of kidnapped elven women held in the dungeons beneath a good elven temple taken over by an evil cleric. An elven village is threatened by a dark Priest only known as the Rahib. He has kidnapped two of the village's fairest maidens and now demands that Rahasia, the most beautiful elf, is to surrender herself to free the others. The player characters are drawn into this adventure when they find a plea for help from Rahasia. The only way to free the captured maidens is to enter an old temple, built upon the ruins of a wizard's tower buried under a mountain.
11673196	/m/02rnhg2	House of Suns	Alastair Reynolds	2008-04-17	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is divided into eight parts, with the first chapter of each part taking the form of a narrative flashback to Abigail Gentian’s early life (six million years earlier, in the 31st century), before the cloning and the creation of the Gentian Line. Each subsequent chapter is narrated from the first-person perspective of two shatterlings named Campion and Purslane, alternating between them each chapter. Campion and Purslane are in a relationship, which is frowned upon, even punishable, by the Line. The primary storyline begins as Campion and Purslane are roughly fifty years late to the 32nd Gentian reunion. They take a detour to contact a posthuman known as ‘Ateshga’ in hopes of getting a replacement ship for Campion because his is getting old (several million years old). After being tricked by Ateshga, Campion and Purslane manage to turn the tables on him and leave his planet with a being he had been keeping captive, a golden robot called Hesperus. Hesperus is a member of the "Machine People", an advanced civilization of robots, and supposedly the only non-human sentient society in existence. The two shatterlings hope that the rescue of Hesperus will let them off the hook for their lateness, as returning him to his people (who will be at the reunion as guests of other shatterlings) will put the Gentian Line on good terms with the Machine People. However, before reaching the reunion world, Campion and Purslane encounter an emergency distress signal from Fescue, another Gentian shatterling. There was a vicious attack on the reunion world; an ambush in which the majority of the Gentian Line was wiped out. The identity of the responsible party is unknown, but the attackers used the supposedly long-vanished 'Homunculus' weapons—monstrous spacetime-bending weapons that were created ages ago, but were ordered to be destroyed by another Line. Despite Fescue's warning, Campion and Purslane approach the reunion system to look for survivors. They manage to find the remains of a ship with several Gentian members still alive, and rescue them and the four enemy prisoners they had captured. Hesperus, however, is gravely injured in the process by remaining ambushers. The group escapes and make their way to the Gentian backup meeting planet, Neume, in the hope of re-grouping with any other Gentians who may have survived the ambush. Upon reaching Neume, Campion, Purslane and the other shatterlings they rescued are greeted by the few Gentian survivors of the ambush (numbering only in the forties, compared to the hundreds that existed prior to the ambush). They also meet two members of the Machine People: Cadence and Cascade, guests of another shatterling. During the next few days, the interrogation of the prisoners commences. Another Gentian, Cyphel, is mysteriously murdered, which fuels the Line’s concerns that there is a traitor amongst them. As a way of punishing Campion for transgressions against the Line, Purslane is made to give up her ship, the Silver Wings of Morning (one of the fastest and most powerful in the Line) to Cadence and Cascade, ostensibly so they can return to the Machine People with news of the ambush, in a bid to gain the Line some assistance. Hesperus, still critically wounded following the rescue of the survivors, is taken to the Neumean "Spirit of the Air", an ancient posthuman machine-intelligence, in the hopes that it will fix him. The Spirit takes Hesperus away and returns him some time later, though apparently still not functioning. The robots Cadence and Cascade make preparations to leave on Purslane's ship. They agree to take him aboard and return him to their people, who they promise may be able to help Hesperus. Purslane accompanies them to her ship, where she must be physically present to give the ship order to transfer control over to the robots. On their way to the bridge, Hesperus suddenly springs to life, grabbing Purslane and hiding her while Cadence and Cascade are whisked along to the bridge. Hersperus quickly explains that Cadence and Cascade are actually planning on hijacking the ship. Bewildered by this sudden change of events, Purslane delays in taking action, not sure if she should trust Hesperus, before deciding to ask the ship to detain and eject the robots in the bridge. By then, though, it is too late. Cadence and Cascade hack into the ship's computer, taking it over, and take off from Neume with Hesperus and Purslane still aboard. Campion and several other shatterlings immediately launch a pursuit. Together Hesperus and Purslane find a hideout in a smaller ship in the hold of the Silver Wings of Morning. Using information gained from the other two robots and his own memories, Hesperus (who is now an amalgamation of both Hesperus and the Spirit of the Air) has pieced together what is going on: Cadence and Cascade have discovered that the Line was involved in the accidental extermination of a forgotten earlier race of machine people, dubbed the "First Machines". The Commonality (a confederation of the various Lines), horrified and ashamed of this pointless genocide, erased all knowledge of the event from historical records and their own memories. Unfortunately, Campion, in a previous circuit, unwittingly uncovered information pertaining to the extermination. Hesperus believes that the ambush at the reunion was seeking to destroy this evidence before it could spread, carried out by a shadow Line known as the "House of Suns", tasked with maintaining the conspiracy. Cadence and Cascade, on the other hand, are racing for a wormhole which leads to the Andromeda Galaxy, to where the few survivors of the First Machines are revealed to have retreated. They plan to release the First Machines back into the Milky Way, thus effecting a revenge against the Commonality for the genocide. As Campion and the shatterlings are pursuing Purslane's hijacked ship, transmissions from Neume confirm that a shatterling within their midst, Galingale, is the traitor and a secret member of the House of Suns. The shatterlings open fire on both Galingale's and Purslane's ships, and while they manage to capture Galingale, they are unable to stop Purslane's ship. Unable to get within weapons range, Campion pursues Purslane’s ship for sixty thousand light years, during which time he and Purslane, on their separate ships, are suspended in "abeyance", a form of temporal slowdown or stasis. Despite efforts to stop the hijacked ship from reaching the concealed wormhole by local civilisations, the robot Cascade succeeds in opening the "stardam" enclosing the wormhole and travelling through it to the Andromeda Galaxy. On board Silver Wings of Morning, Hesperus reveals to Campion that while he managed to destroy Cadence before they could leave the Neume star system, Cascade survived and he and Cascade had engaged in a marathon battle, lasting the several thousand years the trip took. Campion, now the only shatterling still in pursuit, enters the wormhole after them and emerges in the Andromeda galaxy, a place apparently devoid of all sentient life. In his search for Purslane and her ship he travels to a star encased in a huge representation of the Platonic solids, lands on a planet orbiting inside the structure and is greeted by a single, mechanical being, which announces itself to be the last of the First Machines in the Andromeda galaxy; the others having left (via wormholes) in pursuit of more advanced technology and knowledge. It states that the First Machines have no hostile intent towards the humans, despite what was done to them. Before preparing to depart Andromeda to follow its kin, the First Machine tells Campion that Purslane and Hersperus barely survived the passage into Andromeda, and Hesperus sacrificed himself to protect Purslane during their landing on the planet. Campion is then shown the sarcophagus that contains the still-living Purslane, and the First Machine offers to help him free her before departing.
11684683	/m/04gg760	Paul of Dune	Kevin J. Anderson	2008-09-16	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is divided into seven sections, which alternate between Paul Atreides's youth before the events portrayed in Dune, and the early period of his Fremen jihad between Dune and Dune Messiah. Twelve-year-old Paul resides on the planet Caladan with his parents, Duke Leto Atreides and his Bene Gesserit concubine Lady Jessica. House Ecaz of Ecaz and House Moritani of Grumman are embroiled in a generations-long feud, and an Atreides-Ecazi alliance is set to be formalized by Leto's marriage to the Archduke Armand Ecaz's daughter Illesa. At the wedding, Leto and his family escape an assassination attempt, but Armand is injured and Illesa is killed. Leto and Armand lead a retaliatory attack on Grumman, not realizing that the Moritani forces have been supplemented by troops from House Harkonnen, sworn enemies of the Atreides. The Padishah Emperor's Sardaukar warriors also arrive to prevent full-scale war. Viscount Hundro Moritani has planned this entire offensive as a means to assemble the Ecazi, Atreides, and Imperial forces and annihilate them with a doomsday device; the plot fails as Moritani's Swordmaster Hiih Resser disables the weapon. After the fall of Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV and Paul's ascension to the Imperial throne, Paul's Fremen forces are engaged on multiple fronts, fighting the Houses that refuse to recognize Atreides rule. The Fremen finally capture Kaitain, the former Imperial capital and homeplanet of House Corrino. Paul levels Shaddam's fortress, which he hopes will send a message to the other dissident Houses. He invites Whitmore Bludd, a former Swordmaster of House Ecaz and a friend to Paul's former mentor Duncan Idaho, to help him construct on Arrakis the grandest citadel the universe has ever seen. Meanwhile, Earl Thorvald, the nobleman heading the rebel forces, is being chased across the galaxy by Fremen naib Stilgar and Paul's Fedaykin commandos. Elsewhere, Shaddam's former minion the exiled Count Fenring and his Bene Gesserit wife Margot are raising their daughter Marie on Tleilax, training her as a weapon against the Atreides. The savage brutality of the Fremen pushes more noble Houses into alliances with Thorvald. Bludd is executed after trying to assassinate Paul and make his mark in history. Growing more callous and savage as the years pass, Paul ultimately orders the complete annihilation of Thorvald's home planet after he learns that the rebel is planning an attack against Caladan. Marie attempts to assassinate Paul but is killed by Paul's young sister Alia; a distraught Fenring manages to stab Paul mortally. Saved by an overdose of the drug melange, Paul arises and banishes the Fenrings to live out their days with Shaddam, whom they now loathe.
11684894	/m/02rnxk3	Death Masks	Jim Butcher	2003-08-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It’s late February in Chicago – about eight months after the events in Summer Knight. Harry Dresden is taping The Larry Fowler Show. This is his second time on the show as Chicago’s only consulting wizard. Dresden is broke and the producer is paying double his usual fee. Strangely, each of Larry’s guests is on the show to meet Dresden. Mortimer Lindquist, a local spiritualist tells Harry his former lover Susan is alive and in Peru. Father Vincent, a Vatican priest, hires Dresden to recover the stolen Shroud of Turin. And, São Paulo University Professor Ortega, a Red Vampire Duke, wants to kill him to end the war between the White Council and the Red Court. Susan contacts Dresden, but is sidelined by Murphy who shows Dresden a corpse who apparently died of every disease known to man, and is hired to investigate. Outside, Dresden is attacked by the Denarian Ursiel, a fallen angel attached to a mortal host. Michael Carpenter and two other Knights of the Cross, Shiro and Sanya, rescue him and ask him to drop his case, but Dresden refuses. In his Lab, Dresden consults an oracle spirit. He learns the knights received an angelic prophecy: if Dresden is involved, he will die. However, they did not receive the whole prophecy, which states that if Dresden is not involved, all the Knights will die, as will everyone in the city of Chicago. The Archive, a little girl containing the sum of humanity's written knowledge, and her bodyguard Kincaid, arrive to make the arrangements for Ortega’s duel. A neutral mediator selected by the White Council, she is the guarantor that the duel is conducted by the Accords. Dresden decides that she needs a normal name, so he shortens her name to Ivy. Later, Dresden tracks the Shroud to a boat and is captured and handcuffed by the thieves while trying to recover it. Deirdre, another Denarian, attacks the boat and kills one of the thieves. Dresden fools the Denarian into taking a decoy safe that does not contain the Shroud and leaving. To save her life, the surviving thief, Anna Valmont, steals Dresden’s black leather duster and flees with the Shroud. Valmont returns a short time later to un-cuff Dresden and he is able to escape. Since Michael is out of town, Shiro volunteers to be Dresden’s second in the duel with Ortega, whose second is Thomas Raith. They meet at McAnnally’s Tavern to settle the details of the duel: the weapon is "willpower", at sundown the next day, at Wrigley Field. Susan is waiting outside McAnnally’s with a tux and a limo. She has tickets to a high society art sales charity event run by Johnny Marcone, where the Shroud will likely be sold, and which Susan is covering as a last favor. Marcone attempts to evict them, but they evade capture and locate Anna. The sale is interrupted by the Denarians, who seize the Shroud and kidnap Dresden. Nicodemus, leader of the Denarians, father of the other Denarian Deirdre, asks if Harry will become the Denarian Lasciel. Dresden refuses. Before Nicodemus can kill him, Shiro arrives and trades himself for Dresden for 24 hours. Dresden is almost re-captured, but Susan fights Deirdre to a standstill and this allows him to escape. Susan and Dresden are pursued back to Dresden's apartment, where he activates the powerful defenses. However, this means Susan cannot leave until dawn. She is nearly driven mad by the scent of the blood, dripping from his wounds. To save his life, Dresden magically binds Susan and has sex with her in order to quell her hunger. Apparently this works because of the strong emotional bond between. He asks her about this Fellowship. The Fellowship of St. Giles is an organization of half-turned humans. They helped Susan understand and control her new, semi-vampiric nature; and now, she’s helping them exterminate Red Court vampires in South America. Martin is her Fellowship mentor, not her boyfriend. Her commitment to The Fellowship is the reason she is abandoning her old life in Chicago. In the morning, Susan and Harry leave the boarding house and seek out the Knights. They discover that Father Forthill has an Eye of Horus tattoo similar to the one on the unidentified corpse in the morgue, which he and Vincent received. Harry and the knights defeat Saluriel and Harry forces him to reveal that Nicodemus’ plan is to create a deadly plague curse, powered by the Shroud. The spell will be cast that evening at the airport. As an international travel hub, O'Hare Airport is an excellent place to disseminate their plague. With Susan as his new second, Dresden heads to Wrigley Field to fight his duel with Ortega. The Archive brings out a piece of mordite, a stone of anti-life. It is enchanted to move by willpower, the chosen duelling weapon. If it touches either duellist, or either camp cheats, they die. Being overpowered, Ortega draws a weapon but is shot. A swarm of Red Court vampires surge onto the ball field, attacking everyone. The Archive wills the mordite through the remaining vampires, instantly incinerating them. The Archive asks Kincaid who cheated first. Kincaid said he didn’t see it, but that Dresden was winning when the shots were fired. Dresden wins the duel by default. Dresden races to the airport with the Knights to save Shiro and stop the plague curse, finding him severely tortured. Shiro tells Dresden to take Fidelacchius and trust his heart to know who to give it to. Still talking and dying, Shiro says Nicodemus is going to St. Louis by train. But the plague can be stopped, if he loses the Shroud, before expiring. Dresden enlists the aid of Marcone to catch up to the St. Louis train. Dresden, Marcone, and the Knights battle the Denarians to retrieve the Shroud. Dresden strangles Nicodemus with a noose worn as a necktie, which was the same one used to hang Judas and protects the wearer from all harm, save itself. Dresden and Michael almost die while escaping from the train, but Marcone rescues them. Dresden recuperates in Michael’s home. He receives a two-week old letter from Shiro. He had been diagnosed with cancer and came to Chicago knowing he would sacrifice himself to save Dresden. This news comforts Michael and Sanya, making Shiro’s actions into the deliberate acts of a courageous man. The next day, Ebenezar calls and tells Dresden to watch the news. In a freak accident, an old Soviet satellite, Kosmos 5, crashed into Casaverde, Honduras -- Ortega’s secret fortress. There are no survivors. Dresden realizes that McCoy killed Ortega and his warriors in a sneak attack. Dresden trails Marcone to a secluded, rural hospital. He discovers that Marcone had the Shroud stolen to cure a comatose girl. Dresden tells Marcone it will take three days to see if the Shroud will heal the girl. Then, the Shroud must be returned to the Church. Marcone agrees. After the Shroud is anonymously returned to Father Forthill at St Mary’s, Dresden goes to Michael’s house for Sanya’s bon voyage barbecue. Nicodemius drives by, tossing a coin into the yard. Michael’s youngest son Harry is about to pick it up, when Dresden snatches it just in time to prevent the child from becoming a Denarian. Harry rushes home to bury the coin in his basement lab.
11685617	/m/02rnyfn	Lost Tomb of Martek	Tracy Hickman		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Pharaoh is an Egyptian-styled adventure that includes a pyramid map and a trap-filled maze. In Pharaoh, the player characters (PCs) are driven into the desert for a crime they did not commit. The characters journey to the sunken city of Pazar, and from there they travel to the haunted tomb of an ancient pharaoh. While in the desert, the characters encounter the spirit of Amun-Re, a pharaoh, cursed to wander the desert until his tomb is robbed. Amun-Re begs the PCs to remove his staff of ruling and Star Gem from his tomb to break his curse. The tomb was built to be thief-proof, and has so far lived up to its reputation. While in Amun-Re's pyramid, the characters can use an item called the dome of flight to control or reverse gravity; carelessness can cause them to fall upwards, and the palm trees in this room bear exploding fruit. The characters also encounter a maze within which are many traps. The module contains wilderness maps, and includes a number of smaller adventures which complement the main one. In Oasis of the White Palm, the PCs arrive at the Oasis of the White Palm, which is on the brink of turmoil. Shadalah, who is to be the bride of the sheikh's eldest son, has been kidnapped. The sheikh believes her to be held by his enemies somewhere in the oasis. The Oasis of the White Palm module contains wilderness maps, and includes a number of smaller adventures which complement the main one. The goal of the PCs is the tomb of the millennium-dead wizard Martek.
11693362	/m/02rp5t6	The Legend of Red Horse Cavern	Gary Paulsen	1994-09-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Apache Will Little Bear Tucker and his friend Sarah Thompson spot a treasure chest, get held captive by the villains and later escape. After Sarah is recaptured, Will rescues her, they solve the legend of Red Horse and Will disposes of a villain.
11693510	/m/02rp60s	Rodomonte's Revenge	Gary Paulsen	1994-11-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It features Brett and Tom who are playing the new virtual reality game, Rodomonte's Revenge, but when the computer infiltrates their minds the game transforms into something dangerously real. It was published on November 1, 1994 by Yearling.
11693761	/m/02rp6br	Escape from Fire Mountain	Gary Paulsen	1995-01-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story features thirteen-year-old Nikki Roberts who hears a cry for help over her CB radio and sets out to rescue two children trapped in a forest fire.
11695003	/m/02rp87y	The Shape of Water	Andrea Camilleri		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Warning this gives away the plot right at the beginning: Silvio Luparello, an engineer, developer and aspiring politician from an aristocratic construction family dies of a heart attack while having sex with his nephew and lover Giorgio at his beach house. The nephew panics and, wanting to protect his uncle from the embarrassing circumstance of his death and not trusting himself to be able to move his uncle's body due to his epilepsy, calls his uncle's friend and political crony, Attorney Rizzo, for help. Rizzo assures the nephew he will take care of it and then, instead of trying to help, attempts to take advantage of the situation and betrays his friendship with Luparello by attempting to use his death to gain leverage over his political opponent, Secretary Cusumano. This he does by attempting to cast Cusumano's Swedish daughter-in-law Ingrid as Luparello's lover and implicating her in his death - at the scene of a seamy outdoor brothel. The film version starts off the morning after the death at the outdoor brothel, with two surveyors working as garbage collectors. They discover the body and contact Attorney Rizzo in an attempt to curry favor with him and maybe get proper surveyor's jobs by giving him the chance to move Luparello's body in order to avoid the embarrassment of Luparello being found at the outdoor brothel, dead with his pants down. Rizzo rebuffs the garbage men, much to their surprise as he is known to be Luparello's friend and ally. Meanwhile, one of the garbage men finds Ingrid's very valuable solid gold jewel-encrusted necklace, planted by Rizzo's Ingrid look-alike as part of the frame-up. The handbag with her initials in which she normally kept the necklace was also planted at the brothel in case somebody walked off with the necklace. Montalbano, with the help of his boyhood friend and outdoor brothel pimp, Gege, and also with the help of Luparello's wife (who tips Montalbano to the fact that somebody must have dressed Luparello because his underwear was on inside out) figures out that the garbage men have the necklace and also that Attorney Rizzo is the bad guy. Montalbano initially suspects Ingrid's involvement because of her relationship with Luparello which he formerly thought sexual, but later thought not, but she convinces Montalbano that she wasn't involved. Montalbano then destroys the planted evidence against her and makes sure that Rizzo pays a reward for the necklace (so that the garbage man and his wife can send their sick child out of the country for proper medical treatment). The story wraps up with Montalbano "playing God" by ignoring a gun that he finds in the beach house, thus giving Giorgio the opportunity to revenge his uncle's betrayal by beating up and killing Rizzo. In the end though Giorgio, too, dies - in a car accident - after previously having had one due to an epileptic seizure that required him to wear a neck brace (which we assume is the same one that Montalbano found at the outdoor brothel, and which we also assume was there because of being used by Rizzo and the Ingrid look-alike to make Luparello appear to be alive during the "sex" act at the outdoor brothel). de:Die Form des Wassers it:La forma dell'acqua sv:Vattnets form
11701961	/m/02rph9w	Magic Lessons	Justine Larbalestier	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When a golem pulls Reason into New York, she calls Danny Galeano, Jay-Tee's eighteen year old brother, for help. Danny allows Reason to say with him while she tries to trace the golem, although her feelings for him grow until she eventually sleeps with him, despite Danny continually says that it is not right. Meanwhile, Jay-Tee nearly dies while running, and Tom is forced to give her some of his magic. Reason, who is 15 finds out that she's pregnant with Danny's baby and the whole concept is greatly welcomed. Reason's mother was pregnant with Reason at 15.
11704334	/m/02rpk4n	The Land	Mildred Taylor	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "The Land" follows the life of Paul-Edward Logan. Paul is the child of a white man and a black woman. Paul has three entries from Paul's journal, after the main story ends. The dialogue uses the Southern dialect from the 1870s, and the ‘80s. The novel begins with Paul,when he is nine years old. It describes how his life has been different from that of most freed slaves. The book is narrated from Paul's perspective, and quickly introduces his three brothers, his sister, and Mitchell Thomas, a black boy whose father works for Paul's father and who becomes a vital member of the storyline. In the beginning, Mitchell continually bullies Paul for being bi-racial. Paul's father and brothers' only advice for Paul is to "use his head", and come up with a solution by himself. In "Childhood", Paul's parents are constant reminders of the trials and tribulations of being born biracial. After several months, Paul is able to strike a deal with Mitchell. If Paul teaches Mitchell to "read English, write English, and figure," then Mitchell will teach Paul how to fight and to fend for himself, but, as he reminded Paul, he "can't teach him how to win." Eventually Paul and Mitchell become sick of dealing with Paul's father. When Paul is fourteen, Paul and Mitchell find an opportunity to run away during a horse show in eastern Texas. Having gone against his father's word at the show by riding a man's horse and winning "four times a rider's pay," Paul has trouble collecting his pay. Mitchell uses violent force to ensure that the white man keeps his word and pays Paul the money he has earned. After this incident, the two flee. The novel later tells what happens during the eleven year gap between part one and two. egacy=== In the epilogue, Paul is older and has more children. Cassie sends him a letter saying that their father is very ill. When Paul goes to his father, he brings his children with him so his father can see the grandchildren. His father looks sick but happy and soon after dies in his sleep. *Daddy (Edward Logan): The father of Paul, Cassie, George, Hammond, and Robert. Paul and Cassie are half black because Edward had an affair with a slave he owned. *Cassie: Paul's older sister. Cassie moves and gets married to a man named Howard Millhouse. She helps Paul to cope with being multiracial. *Robert: One of Paul's brothers. Since they are about the same age, they spend their whole childhood playing together and learning from each other. Once Robert goes against Paul their relationship falls apart. *George: Paul's second oldest white brother. He doesn't have any racial bias towards Paul. He seems passionate and quick-tempered. *Hammond: Paul's eldest white brother. He doesn't have any racial bias towards Paul. He seems to be smart and gentle. He also stands up for his brother and appears at the end of the book to meet Paul. *Luke Sawyer: A shop owner. Paul builds furniture for him and, in return, learns many things. *Caroline: An attractive black woman that both Paul and Mitchell are attracted to. *J.T. Hollenbeck: A white landowner who is willing to sell land to Paul for a reasonable price. He is a yankee. *Ray Sutcliffe: A racist man who tries to take financial advantage of Paul. *Sam Perry: The father of Caroline. He is a father type figure to Paul. * Filmore Granger: A racist landowner who makes a written agreement with Paul to give him . * Harlan Granger: The racist son of Filmore Granger. * Wade Jamison: The son of Charles Jamison who is white and a friend of Nathans. Wade is willing to help Paul get the from Filmore Granger. *Rachel Perry: Caroline's mom and Sam's wife. She is an excellent cook, and does not like Paul at first because he looks white. *Nathan: Caroline's brother. Sam Perry sent him to help Paul clear out the of land, but without pay. Instead Paul is to teach him woodworking.
11709313	/m/02rppk_	The Torment of Others	Val McDermid	2004	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Several years after Derek Tyler was incarcerated for slaughtering several prostitutes, another lady of the night is found dead under similar modus operandi. Could police be on the trail of a copycat killer, or are there even darker motives at work here? As Dr. Tony Hill investigates, accompanied by the jaded DCI Carol Jordan, he's drawn into a tangled web of degeneracy, psychosis and mind manipulation...
11709876	/m/02rpq90	Scarlet Feather	Maeve Binchy	2000	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 One of the novel's main characters is Cathy Scarlet, who has married Neil Mitchell, son of the wealthy household where her mother Lizzie used to scrub floors. Neil's mother Hannah was totally against the marriage and makes life hard for Cathy. Cathy and her college friend, Tom Feather, set up a catering business called Scarlet Feather, the fortunes of which are traced throughout the book. Tom is in a relationship with beautiful Marcella, who dreams of being a model, but Marcella's ambitions come between the couple and there is growing distance too between Cathy and Neil. Younger characters are Neil's twin nephew and niece Simon and Maud who are in need of care, as their mother is an alcoholic and their father has disappeared. Their older brother Walter is not willing to take responsibility for them, and they end up spending a lot of time with Cathy's parents, Lizzie and Muttie, in a far less affluent part of town. The novel traces the growth of the catering company which gives it its name and the relationships of the main characters, as well as those of more minor characters such as Shona and James. Scarlet Feather explores familiar themes of family strife and responsibility, relationships and fledgling business ventures.
11710946	/m/02rprvk	Verdigris Deep	Frances Hardinge	2007-05-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story starts when Ryan, Chelle and Josh stranded without their bus fare home. Josh climbs into an old wishing well and retrieves some blackened coins. The next day, odd things begin to happen. Ryan sees a watery face in the mirror, and finds white lumps on his hands. Light bulbs explode in Josh's house, and Chelle's babbling becomes shockingly strange. Ryan has a vision of the well witch, and understands from her gargled words that, because they took the coins, they are now in her service. She has given each of them powers so that they can find other wishers, discover their wishes and help grant them. She also gives him the name of a nearby village. In the village, they realize that Chelle is speaking aloud the thoughts of a tea-shop man, Will Wurthers. They guess that he wished for a Harley-Davidson and persuade him to enter a competition to win ohe fete where the winner of the motorcycle is to be announced, they hear the thoughts of an unhappy mime who wishes (they think) for fame. In their attempt to grant his wish they inadvertently cause a riot at the fete. Then they learn that Will has been badly injured in an accident. When Chelle overhears the thoughts of someone wishing for bloody revenge she gets frightened, and she and Ryan decide they should not grant any more wishes. Josh, however, is determined to hang on to his increasing power over all machines, metals and electronic devices. When he goes berserk and tries to kill Ryan's mother, Ryan thinks of a way to diminish the witch's power. But Josh also has a plan, and it nearly results in the death of them all.
11715022	/m/02rpwkw	Horror on the Hill	Douglas Niles	1983		 In this scenario, the player characters must penetrate a cave labyrinth, which turns out to be a three-level dungeon where an army of goblins and hobgoblins is gathering. The scene of the action is Guido's Fort, located at the end of a road, with only the River Shrill, a mile wide, separating it from "The Hill". At the Fort, hardy bands of adventurers gather to plan their conquests of The Hill, the hulking mass that looms over this tiny settlement. They say the Hill is filled with monsters, and that an evil witch makes her home there. No visitor to The Hill has ever returned to prove the rumors true or false. Only the mighty river Shrill separates the player characters from the mysterious mountain. A series of caves awaits, full of goblins and hobgoblins. At the lowest layer lies a young red dragon. Set on a volcanic island in the midst of a river.
11715375	/m/02rpwyx	The Veiled Society	David "Zeb" Cook		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The Veiled Society is set in the city of Specularum, where the players must determine which of three rival factions is responsible for a murder. In the violent city of Specularum, the Veiled Society has spies everywhere. Specularum is the capitol of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, and the adventure involves the party in a struggle between the city's three major families (the Vorloi, Radu, and Torenescu).
11716793	/m/02rpyr_	Night's Dark Terror	Graeme Morris			 Night's Dark Terror is a wilderness scenario in which the player characters travel by river and over mountains, from the Grand Duchy of Karameikos to the chaotic lands. The characters encounter a town under siege by goblins, a ruined city, and a lost valley. The module teaches the Dungeon Master (DM) how to handle wilderness conditions, and includes new rules for weather. The module also includes statistics for eleven new monsters, and comes with a battle map and counters for use in staging a battle in one of the towns. The wilderness module is set in the area of Eastern Karameikos. According to White Dwarf reviewer Graeme Davis, much of the action in the module has to do with the secret society known as the Iron Ring. The module begins in a beleaguered farmstead. The PCs then explore more than of wilderness, with eighteen locations, including a number of mini-dungeons, a ruined city, a riverside village, a frontier town, and a lost valley, with the minions of the Iron Ring waiting for the PCs at every step.
11717085	/m/02rpz29	The Lost City	Tom Moldvay	1982	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The adventure follows a city buried in the desert; the city is torn between two warring factions. Much of the adventure takes place within a huge step pyramid. Other areas of the city are merely outlined, with suggestions provided for the DM to provide detail. At the beginning of the adventure the characters become lost in a desert sandstorm and stumble upon the entrance to a pyramid. The pyramid and the underground city beneath it are located on the site of the ancient ruined city of Cynidicea and inhabited by the descendants of the city's people. These Cynidiceans, now regressed to a subterranean species, are addicted to narcotics and spend most of their time in drug-induced reveries, wandering around in costumes and masks. As the adventure progresses, the characters discover that a monster known as Zargon was responsible for the downfall of Cynidicea. The monster still lives, and a cult of evil human priests and various other monsters has grown up around it. Besides the priests of Zargon, there also exist three other factions of relatively normal Cynidiceans. They worship the city's ancient Gods and are dedicated to the overthrow of the priests of Zargon and the restoration of Cynidicea's lost glory, but their diverging faiths have disallowed them from working together against their common enemy. Although only the upper half of the pyramid is detailed, enough information on the lower half and the underground city is provided for the DM to expand the adventure. After clearing the upper pyramid the players can become involved in the struggle for Cynidicea and, if they grow powerful enough, confront Zargon in his lair and destroy him.
11717427	/m/02rpzfn	Queen's Harvest	Carl Sargent			 In Queen's Harvest, the player characters must enter a dead wizard's lair to obtain the perilous objects he left behind. The characters become embroiled in royal politics as adventure progresses. The first half of the adventure presents a basic dungeon, while the second half offers an extended siege of an enemy stronghold where the player characters are greatly outnumbered and outgunned; they must patiently whittle away at the opponents, then withdraw to regroup and heal. The wizard Kavorquian is dead, but certain items belonging to his adopted son were in the wizard's keeping at the time of his demise. The player characters must venture into the silent vaults of Kavorquian's stronghold and recover the missing property. The story ultimately leads the player characters into the nether reaches of Penhaligon's politics to confront Ilyana Penhaligon, the mad pretender to the throne.
11718348	/m/02rp_fp	Cugel's Saga	Jack Vance	1983	{"/m/06qk2l": "Dying Earth subgenre", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story picks up where the protagonist, Cugel the Clever, had been left at the end of The Eyes of the Overworld: sitting disconsolately on a barren beach far to the north of his homeland of Almery. As in The Eyes, Cugel's goal is to return home and avenge himself upon Iucounu, the Laughing Magician, whom Cugel regards as indirectly responsible for his second banishment. Taking a different route this time, Cugel obtains a deadly relic of an Overworld being, Sadlark; takes service as worminger (a crewmember responsible for the maintenance of huge marine worms) aboard a worm-propelled merchant ship, which he steals along with its owner's wife and his three comely daughters. Cugel is outwitted by the owner's wife and forced to abandon ship and females; and has various other adventures and setbacks, until with the aid of some new friends, he encompasses the defeat of Iucounu. Like its predecessor, the structure of the story is picaresque, and Cugel remains as ambiguously appealing a character as before. The book is currently out of print in its original form, but is included (with The Eyes of the Overworld) in the omnibus collection, Tales of the Dying Earth. In the Vance Integral Edition, it is volume 35, retitled by its editor as Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight. An earlier sequel, A Quest for Simbilis by author Michael Shea, was published in 1974.
11721606	/m/02rq29g	A Logic Named Joe	Murray Leinster	1946-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 *A Logic Named Joe This story was also published in The Great Science Fiction Stories, Volume 8, 1946 Edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenburg, DAW Books, November 1982 ISBN 0-87997-780-9
11726744	/m/02rq75l	Soul Rush		1978	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 In the book, Collier describes her experiences with recreational drug use, including marijuana and LSD, and then her introduction to Eastern spirituality through life on an ashram. At age sixteen, Collier had become friends with Abbie Hoffman, then moved to live first on a commune and later a Divine Light Mission ashram. The book describes her initiation to the Techniques of Knowledge of Guru Maharaj ji (also known as Prem Rawat) and her experiences in the organization. Years later, in an interview published in 2001 in Fast Company magazine, Collier stated that "At the ashram, we did things like staying up all night and meditating, things that taught us how to focus our minds". Skills that she still applies in stressful business situations, and that "drawing on those experiences has definitely helped me maintain perspective."
11728158	/m/02rq8jy	The Caribbean Cruise Caper				 The Hardy boys go on a cruise to sail in the Caribbean. This cruise was being sponsord by a magazine called Teenway. The cruise was the location of a contest of teen detectives trying to solve fake crimes. Joe and Frank were called in as judges.But things don't go right when a suspicious character goes off and creates havoc in the cruise. Now, the Hardy Boys must get to the bottom of the case, and find out who is causing the havoc. Will Fank, Joe and the five teen detective find who the culprit is before Colombe d'Or sinks?
11728195	/m/02rq8l_	The Hunt for the Four Brothers				 The Hardy Boys try to help a friend of theirs find four precious gems. If they don't find them in time, it will be too late.
11728373	/m/02rq8xm	Training For Trouble				 The Hardy Boys decide to go to a sports facility in Bayport. They see many competing, but they find out about a mysterious figure creating 'accidents'. Now they must find him before more accidents happen.
11728472	/m/02rq934	The End Of The Trail				 Biff Hooper, Phil Cohen, and Chet Morton go with the Hardy Boys on a hike up the Appalachian Trail, but things take a turn for the worse when Biff is hurt. The boys go to Morgan's Quarry, the nearest town, for help, and find a bag of cash in the middle of the road. Now, the Hardy Boys must find the owner, or face death.
11728507	/m/02rq93v	Skin & Bones	Franklin W. Dixon	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Cody Chang, an animal collector, calls on the Hardy Boys to investigate the ransacking of the store he owns. Now, the Hardy Boys must find out who is trying to break his business down, before it does.
11729694	/m/02rqbs2	The Shifting Sands	Jennifer Rowe	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The three go on their way towards the Shifting Sands from the City of the Rats when they spot an Ak-Baba in the sky. In order to hide from it, they dive under the River Broad and hide under their cloak. Surprisingly, they are aided by the fish of the river as well, which are rather intelligent. Later, once the threat has passed, they pass by an apple farm owned by an eccentric old woman known as Queen Bee. Hungry and tired, they decide to steal and eat from the apple orchard. Queen Bee reveals that she is not actually a fragile old woman, but a dangerous threat because of the bees that she hides under her shawl. The trio are promptly chased off by her deadly bees for stealing. After some time on the road, they reach the town of Rithmere and started hearing about a competition called the Rithmere Games. Thinking they can win some money from it, they attempt to enter. But there is an entrance fee of one silver coin, and they have no money whatsoever. Lief, Jasmine, and Barda decide to let the operator of a game called Beat the Bird borrow Kree to spin the wheel thirty times, for a coin. In Beat the Bird, a bird would spin a wheel after a silver coin was paid. If the wheel lands on a number, the better is paid that number of silver coins. But if the wheel lands on a bird, the better only receives a worthless wooden bird figurine. After thirty turns, Kree senses something is amiss and pulls the table sheet, which reveals that the operator is controlling the wheel through the use of a pedal. The cheating operator then flees, leaving the coins that have fallen off the table sheet to the crowd. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine attempt to take some of the coins, but all that is left is a wooden bird. The three decided to enter the Rithmere Games when they meet a scar-faced man named Doom, who they last saw at Tom's shop. They enter the games, and discover that the "games" are in fact fighting matches. Despite this fact, they enter anyway. Lief, Jasmine, and Barda are locked in their room in the night, but Mother Brightly, the host arrives and saves them. After the fights, Jasmine manages to win the one thousand gold prize for first place. Mother Brightly tells the trio about the secret passageway that they can use to leave. However, upon trying to use it, the trio is ambushed by Grey Guards. It is revealed that there was a scandal that the prize money would be returned to Mother Brightly for the next competition while benefitting from the audience. Lief, Jasmine, and Barda attempt to make off with the coins when Doom comes to them and helps them escape. On foot, they finally reach the walls of the Shifting Sands. Lief starts to hear voices. The three hide from the Grey Guards, who are then eaten by a terrible insectile monster called a Sand Beast. Lief sees the Guards' belongings sinking into the sand and travelling to the center, in a place called the Hive. They arrive at the Hive, and Lief enters the hole full of treasures and replaces the lapis lazuli with the wooden bird to keep the structure of the piling treasures stable. He then climbs out of the Hive just before they are eaten by it. Lief fits the gem into the Belt of Deltora and their quest continues to the Dread Mountain.
11730411	/m/02rqcyy	Den mörka sanningen	Margit Sandemo	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Scene of the novel is Norway in year 1911. Nineteen-year-old shopkeepersdaughter Cornelia Weding has lived with a terrifying and inexplicable memory since the age of five. She has tried to deny it, but it comes back recurrently into her mind in the shape of feelings, words and nightmares. In the memory fragments she wambers as a child alone in the hard of night-time and dark forest and searching for something or the enormous and frightening figures in the black capes stays round her baby bed and threaten to kill her if she would remember. As her missfortune her loved childhood friend will get married to her beautiful and evil cousin. When she takes a trip to their weddings her stepmother's childhood home, she realizes that she has returned to the place where the dark mystery happened fourteen years ago... :Characters: * Cornelia Weding, the principal character. Nineteen-year-old shopkeepersdaughter, who lives with her traumatic memory. Has light strawberry red hair, childish face and surprise of the all world in her wise eyes. * Anna Weding, 24 years old, Cornelia's elder sister. Has the darker hair and skin than Cornelia. Brave, straightforward and outspoken. Her and a lieutenant Sofus Hallgren are seeing each other. * Pontus Weding, 26 years old, Cornelia's and Anna's elder brother. Pontus has grew up the lamppost, very long and inflexible man. He studies. * Jon, 29 years old, a neighbour boy from childhood of Cornelia and her secret love, who will get married to Cornelia's cousin Missy. Studies farming far away from home. * Lars, 26 years old, Jon's younger brother. Silent, interested in cars and has one. * Mari-Lise, called "Missy", 26 years old, a cat woman, the Cornelia's and Anna's and Pontus' cousin. However, she's not a relative of theirs, because she is the niece of brother's and sister's stepmother. Beautiful and evil seduceress; has thick and copper red hair. She hates Cornelia. * Sofus Hallgren, lieutenant, Anna's dearly loved. Visits often in the shore owned by Cornelia's father. * Christoffer Weding, shopkeeper and Cornelia's, Anna's, Pontus' and two little children's father. The sensible and understanding man. * Matilda Weding is his wife, but three eldest siblings of the committee of five children flock isn't her, because their mother died when Cornelia was born. Matilda is a nagging, silly and vain woman, who favours just her own relatives (especially her niece Missy). She thinks that her family is the better people complete to Wedings because of their noble birth (her grandmother was a noblewoman). * Hans and Grethe, Matilda's and Christoffer's two little children. Don't play great role in the novel; they are only sweet and laborious, final turns in the family. * Agnes, Matilda's sister and Missy's mother who has cold, ice blue eyes. She is married with the rich and imposing Knut Jörgen. Agnes' personality is quite similar to her sister's. * Knut Jörgen, the rich and imposing, authority figure in the family, who get married with Agnes after that her former husband went missing. Even though he looks externally a firm and decisive man, he yields without difficulty to his wife's complaining and spoils too much his vain half daughter. * Grandmother, who hasn't a proper noun in the novel. She wears an old-fashioned black dress, haughty and dignifieldly behaving old lady who doesn't consider her daughter's husband candidates by fair means if they don't come from enough noble estate. However, she has a heart under her hard exterior and has more sense than her silly daughters has altogether. * Alfred Pettersen, the Agnes' former husband and Missy's father. The grandmother didn't like him. A pretty rascal, and no-one has ever heard about him since he escaped with circus ballerina many years ago. sv:Den mörka sanningen
11732210	/m/02rqh09	The Fox in The Attic	Richard Hughes	1961	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens in 1923. The protagonist, a young Welsh aristocrat named Augustine Penry-Herbert, is incorrectly suspected of having something to do with the accidental death of a young girl whose body he discovers, and so decides to leave England and visit distant relations in Germany. While there he falls in love with his cousin Mitzi, while in the background the rise of Nazism occurs, including the Munich Putsch. At the end of the novel, Mitzi, who has lost her sight, enters a convent, and Augustine returns to England. The second novel in the trilogy, The Wooden Shepherdess, was published in 1973; it carries on the story to 1934 and the Night of the Long Knives. The third and final novel was left unfinished, Hughes realizing that he was unlikely to see it published.
11739292	/m/02wvkyl	Sons of Destiny	Darren Shan	2006-09-05	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After Darren was told by Steve that Darius is also Darren's nephew, Darren couldn't bear to kill him. He was later shown taking Darius back to his house and there he also revealed his true identity to Annie, his sister. Darren also told Annie that Darius was blooded by Steve as a Vampaneze and he would kill everyone he feeds from. Annie was told about the life and history of Darren. Darren blooded Darius so he wouldn't have to kill as a Vampaneze and becomes a vampire instead. Darren, Alice Burgess, and Vancha would have to prepare for a break in at the stadium to save their friends and the Cirque performers. Darren and Vancha, as the prophecy goes, tailed Gannen Harst and Steve from the stadium and were ready for a final battle. The battle is brief. Vancha first fights both Gannen and Steve using only his hands. He then is wounded by Gannen, making him incapable to fight. Gannen was knocked out cold by R.V., who at the same time was killed by Steve after that moment (because Steve stabbed him in the neck), leaving Darren and Steve to worry about each other only. As Darren predicted, he must face Steve alone. As Darren and Steve are fighting next to a riverbank, Darren eventually almost kills Steve. Mr. Tiny then approaches Steve and Darren, telling them that Darren and Steve are actually half-brothers and that Mr. Tiny is their real, biological father. He planned this whole thing as to see which son was worthy enough to become the ruler of the shadows with him. Darren feels as though he would rather destroy himself than wipe out all of humanity, so Darren taunts Steve before he dies, saying, "You were right. I did plot with Mr Crepsley to take your place as his assistant. We made a fool of you, and I'm glad. You're a nobody. A nothing. This is what you deserve. If Mr Crepsley was alive, he'd be laughing at you now, just like the rest of us are." Steve, full of rage, stabs Darren several times in the gut. Darren pulls Steve into the river while getting himself caught in the current, drowning both and avoiding the prophecy. Darren's soul then goes to the Lake of Souls, where his soul is caught by Evanna, his half-sister. Evanna had made a deal with her father, Mr. Tiny, agreeing to make Darren a little person so he could go to Paradise. The only exception was that Darren could be spared if Evanna became pregnant by either Vancha or Gannen, hoping that the child will destroy the human race themselves. However, Evanna had taken the DNA of both Vancha and Gannen, and let the child become twins. She says that the twins will be part Vampire,part Vampaneze and part Evanna, so the twins will know both sides very well and convince the two clans to become equal. Annoyed by seeing Darren again, Mr. Tiny is at first reluctant to help Darren. But, Evanna reminds him of their deal, so, he agrees, much to his dislike. Mr. Tiny changes Darren into a Little Person, but avoids adding a tongue so that he can't speak. Mr. Tiny sends Darren into the past not knowing that Evanna has given Darren his diaries. He is sent back to the first day that he set eyes on the Cirque Du Freak. Darren then sees himself and Steve when they went to go visit the show. Darren then scares himself away so he wouldn't become a vampire in the future, knowing from a conversation with Evanna that someone else will take his place in history and hoping that whoever it is will be able to pass on peacefully after fulfilling his destiny. He also gives his diaries to Mr. Tall to be given to Darren when he's older so everyone will know the truth of what happened, intending to release them after the time of his 'death' in future so that the present cannot be altered. Darren then dies on top of the theater where he goes to wherever the judgement of the vampire gods will bring him. It is implied, though not directly confirmed, that he passes on to paradise, a book that ends in epic tragedy. fa:پسران سرنوشت
11739460	/m/02rqrb6	The Candle in the Wind	T. H. White	1958	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with Mordred and Agravaine, both discontent. Mordred hates his father, King Arthur, and Agravaine hates Sir Lancelot. Their views are not shared by Gawaine, Gareth, or Gaheris. The relationship of Lancelot and Guinevere has gone on for some time and everyone in the court knows of it. No one, however, publicly speaks of it as law would require Lancelot to be killed and Guinevere to be burned at the stake. In order to wreak their revenge, Mordred and Agravaine decide to go to the king and officially charge the Queen with adultery. Troubled by this, King Arthur agrees to leave on a hunting trip to give the knights a chance to catch the Queen with Lancelot, although he does say that if they are caught, he hopes that Lancelot will be able to kill all witnesses and adds that if the two fail in backing their claims, he will see to it that they are pursued by the law themselves. At the same time, he confesses to Guinevere and Lancelot a terrible secret: When Mordred was born, Arthur had been told by many people that the child would be evil, as a result of the incest. Pressured, the king commanded all babies born in the approximate month Mordred would be born to be placed on a boat which was then sunk. Mordred managed to survive this, however, and Arthur lived with the guilt of causing the death of the other babies. When the king leaves for his hunting party, Lancelot prepares to sneak over to Guinevere's room. Before he can leave, Gareth visits him and warns him of Mordred and Agravaine's plot. Lancelot receives him warmly, but does not take the threat seriously as he does not believe that Arthur would entertain such an idea. He leaves for the Queen's room without weapons or armor, assuring Gareth that they would all laugh together about this when the king returned. In Guinevere's room, Lancelot laughingly tells her of Gareth's warning. Unlike him, however, the queen takes the threat seriously and tries to convince the knight to leave before they are caught. Too late, however - they find a group of knights attempting to break into Guinevere's room. Lancelot manages to kill one of them (later revealed to be Agravaine) and takes his weapon and armor to defeat the rest. Mordred, however, escapes to tell Arthur of the Queen's faithlessness. Lancelot is forced to flee Camelot, however promises to return to rescue Guinevere. Though unwilling to kill his wife, Arthur is obliged to obey his own laws and prepares for her execution. Mordred faces scorn and anger from his brothers, who are furious with him for turning in the queen and accuse him of being a coward for running away from his fight with Lancelot. Arthur later explains to them that Mordred survived because Lancelot was unwilling to kill Arthur's son. When Mordred learns that Lancelot will return to prevent Guinevere's execution, he demands that Arthur put more guards in the town. While Gawaine refuses to take part in the events, Gareth and Gaheris are stationed as additional guards. Just as Guinevere is about to be burned, Lancelot rides in and rescues her. Much to Gawaine's horror however, it is discovered that in his haste to reach the queen, Lancelot killed Gareth and Gaheris before he could recognize them. Guinevere and Lancelot flee to France, and request forgiveness from the Pope. It is granted and Guinevere is permitted to return to Camelot. Lancelot remains in France, where Arthur is forced to fight him for honor. During the siege, Gawaine receives a blow to the head that gravely injures him. In Camelot, Mordred is left to rule in Arthur's stead. He corners Guinevere and tells her that he intends to overthrow Arthur's rule and take her as his wife (as revenge for Arthur sleeping with Mordred's mother). Guinevere manages to send a message to Arthur and upon hearing the news, Gawaine dies. Arthur then returns to England to stop Mordred. On the eve of battle, in a state of semi-consciousness, he remembers Merlin's lessons. To make sure that his legacy lives on even if he dies in the battle, he explains his ideas to a young serving boy, Tom of Warwick (implied to be Thomas Malory of Warwickshire). He tells the boy how his idea of peace was like a candle in the wind, which he had kept alight with an effort. The book ends with Arthur sending Tom away to safety, and then he is ready to face the coming battle "with a peaceful heart." Arthur acknowledges that he shall perhaps come again to try to create another perfect Round Table. He remembers before death, the times he spent with Merlyn doing missions. At the thought, Merlyn 'might' have appeared, but he dismissed it for though he is locked up, though in The Book of Merlyn this moment is when Merlyn appears to him and takes Arthur away for a debate on war, humanity etc... We are meant to know already how the battle goes, (see Battle of Camlann). We end on a note of hope as Arthur accepts his fate with a clear mind, as if he is refreshed. Although the details of the battle are not recounted, according to legend all of the knights are killed, and Arthur kills Mordred, and Mordred mortally wounds Arthur. White puts forth both that Arthur died, or the other story where he is set adrift to Avalon where his wounds may be healed that he might rule again.
11745352	/m/02rqxzb	The Scent of the Night	Andrea Camilleri		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Inspector Montalbano must track down a lost financial manager who seems to have absconded with all of his clients money. Along the way, he encounters a lovelorn secretary who believes her boss could do no wrong.
11750124	/m/02rr1vf	The Last Boleyn Book	Karen Harper		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 In 1512, it is decided that Mary will be sent first to the court of Archduchess Margaret of Austria and then to the French court as maid-in-waiting to Louis XII's English wife, Mary Tudor. Although this decision leaves her mother, Elizabeth devastated, Mary is keen in working towards pleasing her father and advancing the Boleyns in society. Mary grows to love her mistress, the Queen, and the two form a special companionship when the ailing Louis XII dismisses the other English ladies-in-waiting from court. Mary Tudor confesses that her brother, King Henry VIII, has promised that she will be free to marry whomever she chooses upon the death of Louis. Describing women as pawns to the desires of men, she gives Mary a chesspiece as a constant reminder of this; green and white, it symbolizes that they are both mere Tudor pawns. With the death of Louis XII, his nephew, Francois, (with whom the young Mary is besotted), inherits the throne, and Mary Tudor is married to Charles Brandon in secret. With the marriage discovered by an angry King Henry, Thomas Boleyn decides to withdraw his daughter from the dowager queen's service, and have her instead in the household of the pious Queen Claude. Mary's younger sister, Anne arrives at the French court two years later, in 1517. Avoiding the flirtations of Rene de Brosse, Mary is eventually cornered by the youth as he physically expresses his desires. The Italian Leonardo da Vinci, a favorite of the King, rescues Mary, and advises her to forever keep her eyes open if she desires to survive court. William Stafford, a servant to Henry Tudor, makes Mary's acquaintance, but she is altogether unimpressed and annoyed by his mannerisms. As Francois's feelings towards his royal mistress, Francoise de Foix wane, he begins an affair with Mary. Although she is frightened of the possible backlashes, her father encourages the liaisons. Mary is seen as a possession by the King, and is traded amongst his friends as a whore; she quickly realizes that she was foolish to think that he could ever love her. When the English court visits France again in 1520, William Stafford warns Mary against allowing King Henry Tudor to take her as his mistress, while Catherine of Aragon and Thomas Boleyn discuss Mary's future in England. When Mary returns to England, she is quickly married to William Carey, a gentleman of the royal privy chamber, who agrees to allow his newlywed wife to be mistress to the King of England. Unlike her predecessor, Bessie Blount, Mary is able to hold the King for five years. When Mary gives birth to a baby boy (Henry Carey) in 1522, the identity of his father is unknown. Her sister, Anne, is a flirtatious, pretty girl at court, and catches the king's eye. Mary finds herself falling in love with William Stafford, the handsome man who sees and loves Mary for who she truly is. She has a love affair with him even though she still has a husband, but he loves her not. When her husband is killed in the summer sweat plague, her secret love affair with Stafford continues. They are eventually married in secret and it remains a secret until she becomes pregnant and has to tell Anne-who had been Queen for quite some time, and the King. They are sent away to live at Stafford's Manor house. They live a very happy and peaceful life there as their love child is born. For well I might a' had a greater man of birth, but I assure you I could never a' had one that loved me so well. I had rather beg my bread with him than be the greatest queen christened.
11750405	/m/02rr241	Pity is Not Enough	Josephine Herbst		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Pity is Not Enough follows the Trexler's history after the American Civil War and before World War I. While the main narrative focuses on the Trexler family, the chronology is often disrupted by inter-chapters focusing on Victoria's childhood. Victoria recalls her mother, Catherine, telling the story of her unfortunate brother Joe Trexler, a man who had left his family's home in Philadelphia to work as a carpetbagger in Reconstruction-era Georgia. When trouble began to hound him, he escaped first to Canada, where he made acquaintances with the Governor of Georgia, and then returned home for a short while. He manages to escape from the local law by moving again, this time to the west where he joined the gold rush in the Black Hills in Dakota Territory. Future promises of financial success do not become fruitful for Joe or for the majority of his family. His favorite sister Catherine dies relatively young, his two other sisters marry failures who are unable to support them properly, and his younger brother, Aaron, becomes a moderate success but is relatively unhappy. His youngest brother, David, does have some success. Over time Joe slowly falls into dementia. Victoria eventually comes to the conclusion that her Uncle Joe's failure, like her father's failure in business, is not due to personal shortcomings, but to capitalist economic forces beyond their control.
11754104	/m/02rr56v	The Story of Holly and Ivy			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The orphanage outside Mill Valley has closed for Christmas, and the children have been dispatched to various homes for the holiday. Only one child, Ivy, is overlooked. The head of the home cannot take Ivy home with her, so she decides to send her to an infants' orphanage some distance away. Ivy suggests that she could instead go to her "grandma's house"&nbsp;&ndash; but she has no grandmother. Ivy is put on a train, which passes through the town of Mill Valley. While it is stopped, Ivy looks out of the window and notices that, due to a malfunction, the illuminated welcome sign no longer reads MILL VALLEY but instead reads I V Y. She takes this to indicate that she really does have a grandma, and that she lives in that town. She leaves the train, and it departs without her. Meanwhile, a beautiful new Christmas doll named Holly is standing in the display window of Mr. Blossom's toy store, wishing for a little girl to come and take her home. The toy owl next to her, Abracadabra, treats her with undisguised contempt, and suggests that, since no one will want Holly after the holiday, she will wind up spending the year in the back room with him. Elsewhere in Mill Valley, Mrs. Jones suggests to her husband that they have a Christmas tree that year, but her husband refuses, saying that it would be a waste of money since they have no children to enjoy it. Despite his words, Mrs. Jones buys a Christmas tree and decorates it. After a very hectic afternoon, Mr. Blossom's toy store finally closes. Neither Holly nor Abracadabra has been sold. Mr. Blossom is tired from a long day's work, so he asks Peter to lock up the store for him, telling him that he can pick a toy for himself as a bonus. Peter locks up the store, but the key slips out of a hole in his pocket without him noticing, landing in the snow outside the shop. Meanwhile, Ivy's search for her grandma has not gone well. Feeling very discouraged, she is walking past the toy store when Holly catches her eye. The doll is exactly what she wanted, but she is outside, and the store is locked. She finds the key that Peter dropped, and decides to keep it. Night falls, and she takes shelter in a nearby alley. The next morning, she returns to the toy store to look at Holly, and overhears a conversation between Peter and Officer Jones, who has been on patrol all night. Peter is distraught about losing the key to the shop. Ivy realizes that was the key that she found, and returns it. Peter goes in to check the store. Officer Jones quickly realizes that Ivy is on her own, and decides to take her home for breakfast. Peter ensures that the store has not been robbed. Since little Ivy saved his job, he decides to use his bonus to select a present for her, and chooses Holly. Abracadabra, furious that Holly's wish is about to come true, hurls himself at Peter and winds up in the trash. When Mr. Blossom goes to retrieve him later, he has mysteriously vanished. At the Jones's house, Ivy realizes that they have a beautiful Christmas tree and no children, which means that she has found her grandma. Shortly after, Peter delivers a beautifully wrapped box, which contains Holly. Everyone's wishes have come true: Ivy has a family and a Christmas doll. Holly has a little girl love her. And when they adopt Ivy, the Joneses have the child they always wanted.
11756880	/m/02rr88h	The Overlook	Michael Connelly		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Overlook reunites Bosch with his most recent former flame, FBI agent Rachel Walling. Bosch must break in a new and much younger partner, Ignacio "Iggy" Ferras, when they're called to take over the investigation of the execution-style murder of medical physicist Stanley Kent on a Mulholland Drive overlook. When a special FBI unit, headed by Walling, arrives and tries to usurp his case, claiming it's a matter of national security, Bosch refuses to back down. Walling's focus on the theft of radioactive cesium from a hospital where Kent assisted in cancer treatments, and her unwillingness to share information only makes Bosch more determined to solve the case. Evidence mounts that the murder is part of a terrorist plot to build and deploy a dirty bomb, justifying the FBI's moves to push the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and Bosch to the sidelines. Refusing to be sidelined, Bosch aggressively works around the FBI in order to track down Stanley Kent's killers, much to the chagrin of his young, inexperienced partner, who sees his career at the LAPD jeopardized by Bosch's actions. The FBI agents, including Rachel Walling, view Bosch as endangering their attempts to retrieve the missing cesium and to track down known terrorists. Relying on instinct and experience, Bosch relentlessly pursues his line of inquiry, ultimately revealing secrets that were darker than anyone could imagine. The principal players in the story are: Harry Bosch, the lead detective on the case, who is the principal protagonist on this and thirteen previous Harry Bosch novels. Rachel Walling, who was romantically involved with Harry in a number of previous Harry Bosch novels. In this story, while Harry has hopes of re-connecting with Rachel, their relationship is strained, owing to conflicting views on how the investigation should be carried out. Ignacio "Iggy" Ferras, Bosch's young partner. Iggy wants to play by the book and is seriously disturbed by Bosch's let's-break-the-rules attitude. At one point, he tells Bosch that he can't work with him and will be requesting a new partner. Stanley Kent, the murder victim who has stolen 32 sources of cesium from a Los Angeles hospital in response to demands from unknown parties who have taken his wife hostage. If used in a dirty bomb, tens of thousands of people could die from radiation exposure. Alicia Kent, the beautiful wife of the murder victim, who was taken hostage in her home by two intruders. She was used by the intruders to pressure Stanley Kent to steal the cesium from the hospital. Jack Brenner, Rachel Walling's FBI partner and superior and the lead FBI agent on the case. His primary concern is dealing with the terror threat associated with the stolen cesium. To him, Bosch's homicide investigation is a secondary concern. Cliff Maxwell, an FBI agent working on the case, with whom Bosch has two violent encounters. it:La città buia sv:Hotet (2007)
11757023	/m/02rr8h0	Ragged Dick	Horatio Alger, Jr.	1868-05-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The text of Ragged Dick is based on the 1868 first book edition, annotated for student readers. "Contexts" begins by looking at Ragged Dick through the lenses of 1860s New York and Alger's own life there. Ragged Dick is a fourteen-year-old bootblack – he smokes, drinks occasionally, and sleeps on the streets – but he is anxious "to turn over a new leaf, and try to grow up "'spectable". He won't steal under any circumstances, and gentlemen impressed with this virtue (and his determination to succeed) offer their aid. Mr. Greyson, for example, invites him to church and Mr. Whitney gives him five dollars for performing a service. Dick uses the money to open a bank account and to rent his first apartment. He fattens his bank account by practicing frugality and is tutored by his roommate Fosdick in the three R's. When Dick rescues a drowning child, the grateful father rewards him with a new suit and a job in his mercantile firm. With this final event, Richard is "cut off from the old vagabond life which he hoped never to resume", and henceforth will call himself Richard Hunter, Esq.
11762867	/m/02rrf_g	Sword Song	Bernard Cornwell	2007-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Uhtred is serving Alfred, King of Wessex, by building one of the fortified towns that will make up Alfred's system of defense against attacks by the Danes when he learns that two powerful Norse leaders have occupied nearby London, giving them the ability to interfere with traffic on the Thames to and from Wessex. He is contacted by his former friend, Danish chieftain Haesten, who invites him to a meeting across the Thames in Mercia. Haesten takes Uhtred to a graveyard, where a corpse appears to rise from the earth to tell Uhtred that the Fates have decreed he is to be King of Mercia. Torn between his oath to Alfred, whom he dislikes, and the temptation to become a king in his own right, he follows Haesten to London, where he meets the Norse leaders Sigefrid and his brother Erik. Haesten and the Norse brothers have a proposition for Uhtred: if Uhtred convinces his foster-brother Lord Ragnar of Northumbria to bring Ragnar's men to join them in attacking East Anglia, Mercia and Wessex, then Uhtred will be given the throne of Mercia while the others rule East Anglia and Wessex. Uhtred ponders this offer while Sigefrid invites him to watch the crucifixion of some Christian prisoners. Among the prisoners Uhtred recognizes his old comrade at arms, the Welshman Father Pyrlig. Uhtred decides to save Pyrlig (and lose his chance to join Sigefrid's plot). Knowing Pyrlig to be an experienced fighter, Uhtred tricks Sigefrid into promising the prisoners can go free if Pyrlig beats him in single combat - which he promptly does. Uhtred, Pyrlig and the prisoners leave London. Returning to Wessex with Pyrlig, Uhtred is summoned by Alfred and ordered to plan an attack on London to dislodge the Norse brothers and turn the city over to Alfred's son-in-law and ally Earl Aethelred of Mercia. By stealth Uhtred's seaborne assault works and the defenders of London are caught out in the open as they sally forth to confront Aethelred larger attacking army. Wedged between what was their safe London refuge and the Saxons in front of them and Uhtred force behind, the Norse are defeated. A particularly cruel blow is struck by Osferth (King Alfred's illegitimate son) who leaps from the walls onto Sigefrid and injures him, leaving him crippled. Sigefrid, Erik, and Haesten retire to East Anglia and fortune smiles on them again when Aethelred mounts a seaborne raid on their hurt forces. However they stay too long amongst their enemies after initial success and in the process, Aethelred manages to lose his wife, Aethelflaed. Alfred is distraught at the threat to his daughter and is willing the ransom her from his foes. Uhtred is sent to negotiate the price and terms with Sigefrid. Whilst in their camp he learns that Erik and Aethelflaed have fallen in love, whereupon Erik and he plot to spirit her away from her captors; all without either of their leaders knowing what they plan. The battle in the mouth for the inlet where the Vikings have holed up is as desperate as they come, with it often being none too clear who is fighting for whom. This climax to the narrative is fought over marshland, waterside, on ship and across ships. Erik is killed by Sigefrid, but Uhtred and his crew quickly gain victory over Sigefrid's own warriors, and Sigefrid himself is killed by Osferth. Aethelflaed is rescued and the story ends with Uhtred taking her back to her father.
11765578	/m/02rrjtl	Claudine at St.Clare's		1943		 When Pat and Isabel arrive at school, they are surprised to meet a new matron. Then French teacher Mam'zelle introduces Claudine, her niece, who will be joining them for this term. Alison O'Sullivan, the twins' rather silly cousin, meets and befriends Angela, who is rich, beautiful and well dressed. Soon, Alison is completely under the spoilt, snobbish Angela's thumb. The new Matron's daughter Eileen is a reserved girl who is later identified as a sneak. Pauline is soon discovered to be a snobbish and conceited girl who continuously brags about her family's 'wealth'. During the inevitable midnight feast the girls find themselves in trouble when Matron is spitefully locked for hours in a broom cupboard by Claudine while they were having the feast. She is furious to find that she is released by her daughter, Eileen, and thinks that she was with the other girls, while actually she was speaking with her brother Eddie, who lost his job but doesn't dare to tell his mother. Eileen is in trouble. Pauline suffers a worse fate than Eileen when her mother visits unexpectedly and is happened upon by Alison and Angela, who mistake the poor, worn-out woman for one of the cooks. Pauline, like Eileen, is exposed as working class. Angela is scornful to discover that all Pauline's boasts of wealth are lies, and that she is ashamed of her lower-class background. The more compassionate Alison, however, takes pity on Pauline's mother, and to her credit, stands up to Angela's snobbish and domineering attitude, vowing to be less in her thrall in future. Alison also makes this action because of the awful behavior of Angela's mother at half-term. Even she felt that though beautiful, Angela's mother was horrible and was also secretly pleased when the brave and mischievous Claudine fell into the water from a balcony so that Angela's mother gets wet even though Claudine hates the water. Near the end of the book Matron reveals that someone is stealing food, money and even stamps from her. It is written that Eileen stole the things in order to feed Eddie and apply for a new job. When Eddie does get employed, Eileen and Eddie go to Miss Theobald to confess about the stealing, for they heard that Pauline had been accused of this even though she had been taking money from her mother's bank account (In a short section also Claudine is suspected for stealing, for she suddenly has a lot of money and buys expensive birthday presents, but it turns out that she sold her lovely cushion cover that Mam'zelle showed to everyone at half term to Alison's mother.) Miss Theobald sends Eileen and Eddie into her other room next door, and calls for Matron. She tells her that she knows who stole from her, and asks Matron whether the girl should be expelled or not, since it was Matron who had been stolen from. The unkind Matron insists that the girl should be expelled, and is then lead to Eileen and Eddie. Matron cannot believe her eyes, and then sees the trap she fell into. She leaves St. Claire's at the end of the year with her children, but Eileen sends a last letter to Alison thanking her for inviting her to eat together at half-term.
11769445	/m/02rrmyn	Pop. 1280	Jim Thompson		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Pop. 1280 is the first-person narrative of Nick Corey, the listless sheriff of Potts County, the "47th largest county in the state" (probably Texas). He lives in Pottsville which has a population of "1280 souls" (a number much reduced by the story's end). The narrative suggests that Sheriff Nick's tale dates to the Russian Revolution in 1917. Sheriff Nick Corey presents himself as a genial fool, simplistic, over-accommodating, and harmless to a fault (given he is Pottsville's sole lawman). Early chapters are related in comic style representative of farce rather than hard-boiled crime fiction. From the outset Nick's problems appear to be those of a harmless fool, managing his shrew wife and idiot brother-in-law while simultaneously having affairs in town; a difficult election campaign against a more worthy candidate; negotiations with criminals and undesirables in Pottsville; and the evasion of work and physical exertion. Throughout a narrative that plumbs psychological depths particular to the novels of Jim Thompson, the farcical tone of Pop. 1280 is undermined by the emergence of a man far more cunning, ruthless, and psychotic than he presents himself.
11769978	/m/02rrndf	The Witch of Portobello	Paulo Coelho		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As the book begins, Athena is dead. How she ended up that way creates the intrigue sustaining the book. The child, Sherine Khalil renames herself Athena. As a child, she shows a strong religious vocation and reports seeing angels and saints, which both impresses and worries her parents. She grows into a woman in search of answers to many questions that arise within a person. She has a contented life but her mind is not at ease. So she sets out to find answers to the classical question of "Who am I?" through many experiences. In her quest, she opens her heart to intoxicating powers and becomes a controversial spiritual leader in London.
11777380	/m/02rry7j	The Gingerbread Girl	Stephen King		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After her only daughter Amy suffers a crib death, Emily takes up running as a way to deal with her pain. She believes that "only fast running will do"—she pushes her body to its limits, often vomiting and sweating profusely. Her husband, Henry, finds out about this habit, and treats it as a psychological reaction to grief. Emily is hurt and runs out of the house, down to a local Holiday Inn. She contacts her father and explains her situation; after their conversation, Emily decides to stay in her father's summer home, near Naples, FL. (In the story, she takes Southwest Air to the Naples Airport, even though, as is noted later, Naples Airport is a private airport, without commercial service.) She also speaks with Henry, and the two agree that a trial separation is a good idea. Emily's life becomes quite simple—she eats plain meals and runs for miles every day. As her body shrinks, she gets to know the few people that hover around the island; Vermillion Key is mostly devoid of tourists. The only person Emily regularly contacts is Deke Hollis, an old friend of her father who runs the drawbridge on the island. During a chance meeting, Hollis tells Emily that Jim Pickering, one of the men who owns a home on the island, is back. He has brought along a "niece"—Hollis's polite name for the young women Pickering lures to his home. Emily prepares to continue, but Hollis warns her that Pickering is "not a very nice man." As Emily continues her daily run, she notices a shiny red car outside one of the "McMansions" along the beach. She deduces that it must be Pickering's car, and must satisfy her curiosity—which turns to concern as she hears a low moan coming from around the vehicle. Emily cautiously approaches...and notices a trail of blood running toward the trunk. She sees a young woman lying in the car with her throat slashed, meaning that she could not have made the groaning noise she heard. The moment she reaches this conclusion, though, someone cracks her on the back of the head. When Emily awakens, she finds herself imprisoned on a kitchen chair with duct tape. Pickering stands before her, licking his lips and acting excited. He is particularly aroused by Emily's powerful legs, which have become lean and muscular due to her continued runs. Emily realizes that Pickering is insane, and hints that she let someone know where she was going. When Pickering presses her for details, Emily blurts out Deke Hollis's name; Pickering leaves, presumably to kill the old man. Emily knows that she does not have much time, and hears her father's voice in her head, giving her advice. She uses her strong legs to splinter the tape that binds her; the pain is excruciating, but she manages to free her lower body. She looks for a knife to release her arms, but settles on the corner of the island in the middle of the kitchen. She undoes all of her restraints just as Pickering returns. Emily fights Pickering in the kitchen, using the broken legs of the chair to attack. After temporarily knocking him out, she runs through the house, eventually stumbling into the bedroom. She hears Pickering chasing her, and realizes the only way out is to jump out of the window. Emily again recalls her father's advice from her youth—"Gravity is everyone's mother"—and leaps. She runs to the beach and hears Pickering behind her, and realizes, in a rather odd coincidence, that she has been "training" for this moment. Though exhausted from her imprisonment, Emily's months of running serve her well. She keeps well ahead of Pickering, who now carries a pair of scissors as a weapon. She eventually meets a young Latino man on the beach, and begs for help, but he does not understand her cries. Pickering appears and tries to use Spanish to convince the man that Emily is with him, but Emily's fearful expression convinces the young man otherwise. He pushes Emily behind him; incensed, Pickering brutally slaughters the man with the scissors. Emily, tiring quickly, runs into the ocean. Pickering follows her, but begins to flounder. Emily gasps as she figures out what is happening—Pickering cannot swim. Emily manages to escape him, and sits on the shoreline watching as Pickering drowns. When he finally goes under, Emily tells herself that a shark or some other creature attacked him. She wonders why, and guesses that it is a part of the human condition. Her long ordeal over, Emily stands and shouts at the birds flying about, and prepares to go home.
11778750	/m/02rrzsp	Tonto Basin	Zane Grey	1921	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with 24 year old Jean Isbel in the last stages of a multi-week trip from Oregon to the frontier in Arizona where his family had moved four years earlier to start a cattle ranch. As he nears his destination he meets a woman in the woods, and falls in love at first sight. As they part they learn that they are mortal enemies. She is, Ellen Jorth, and her family is locked in a deadly feud with his. Jean dreads the part his father, Gaston, wants him to play in the feud. He can’t get Ellen out of his mind. They meet again and his words awake in her doubt and fear that her father, Lee Jorth, is not an honorable man but in fact a horse thief and cattle rustler. As events unfold her fears are proved true. Through thick and thin Jean Isbel defends Ellen’s honor and believes the best of her. The feud erupts into fatal gun battles, first at the Isbel ranch house, and then at the general store in the nearby town. Most of the Isbel and Jorth clans are killed, with several of their allies. The remnant of the Jorths flee with Ellen in tow to a hide-out hidden in a deep box cañon. Jean and his allies track them and there is a deadly gun battle in the woods nearby. Ellen is forced by one of the three remaining Jorth allies to flee once again. During their flight their horse is shot out from under them. Ellen now on foot meets one of the dying Isbels and finally learns the certain truth that her father, family, and their allies were horse thieves and cattle rustlers as she feared. When she finally makes her way back to the hide-out, she arrives just after Jean has been forced to take refuge in the loft, unknown to her. One of the two remaining rustlers attacks her with rape in mind but is interrupted by the arrival of the other rustler. Ellen discovers Jean during this interruption. When the rustler returns a few minutes later, Ellen is forced to kill him to protect herself and Jean. A minute later Jean kills the last rustler. The story ends with Jean and Ellen declaring their love for each other.
11779639	/m/02rr_wr	The Epicurean				 The narrative begins with Alciphron's election to the leadership of the "school" or "sect" of Epicurus. He has a flash of insight indicating to him that "eternal life" awaits him in Egypt. Unsure of its meaning, he decides to pursue this premonition. He travels there and undergoes various adventures including initiation into the mysteries of the state religion, in pursuit of the beautiful priestess Altethe. She, a crypto-Christian, escapes the mystery rites with Alciphron, and they journey together along the Nile into Upper Egypt, heading for a Christian monastery, which is run by a follower of Origen. Alciphron endures initiation into the Christian religion in hopes of remaining with Alethe. Imperial edict soon establishes the persecution of all Christians who will not renounce their faith, and Alciphron's companions, including Alethe, are captured and killed.
11783675	/m/02rs4qk	Echo Park	Michael Connelly	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In 1993, Harry Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar caught the Marie Gesto case. Marie was a young equestrian who went missing. Her car and clothing turned up in a garage but her body was never found. Bosch and Edgar had pegged a likely culprit &mdash; the son of a wealthy and powerful industrialist, but the detectives never found enough evidence to charge the suspect and the case went cold. Between then and the start of this novel, Bosch had retired from the LAPD and worked as a private investigator for three years but returned to the force because things didn't work out the way he thought they would in retirement. Now, nearing 60, Bosch is working in the prestigious Open-Unsolved Unit at Parker Center, going over cold cases with his most recent partner, Kizmin "Kiz" Rider. A serendipitous traffic stop in L.A.'s Echo Park neighborhood nabs Reynard Waits, a man with body parts in his van on the floorboard in front of the front seat. Detective Freddy Olivas is working the case and Richard O'Shea is the prosecutor assigned. Soon Waits has confessed to a string of slayings involving prostitutes and runaways, as well as to two earlier murders: one of a pawnshop owner during the 1992 riots, the other of Marie Gesto. When the Gesto case files are reexamined, it seems that Waits had called the police shortly after the murder, pretending to be a tipster, but Bosch and Edgar never followed up on the tip. Without this costly error, Waits could have been implicated within a week of Gesto's disappearance. it:Il cerchio del lupo sv:Räven (roman)
11786015	/m/02rs7t_	Skinner's Rules	Quintin Jardine	1993	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel, like all in the Skinner series, is set in Edinburgh. It features, Head of CID, Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Skinner and his assistant Detective Inspector Andrew Martin. It begins when they are called to a close in the Royal Mile where an advocate by the name of Michael Mortimer has been savagely murdered and mutilated. It isn't long before another murder takes place in a similar location and the police think that it is likely to be the work of a psychopathic serial killer. However, the case takes a dramatic twist when Mortimer's fiancee is also found dead and it appears to Bob Skinner that there is a definite connection despite three seemingly random murders in between, leading to what could be a deep-rooted international conspiracy. The book also introduces us to Skinner's future wife, Dr Sarah Grace, an American physician who works with the police force.
11787614	/m/02rsb70	The Daughters of the Late Colonel	Katherine Mansfield		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In bed, Constantia suggests giving her late father's top hat to the porter, but her sister Josephine disagrees. After thinking about letters to be sent to Ceylon, they hear a noise coming from a mouse. Constantia thinks how sad it must be for the mouse with no crumbs around. The last time the sisters saw their father, Nurse Andrews was stationed by the bedside; the Colonel opened only one eye, glaring at his daughters before dying. Nurse Andrews, whom they invited to stay for a week after the Colonel died, is annoying them by overeating. Mr. Farolles, a clergyman who offers to arrange the funeral, visits and suggests they take Holy Communion, to feel better, but the sisters demur. Two mornings later, the daughters go to sort out their father's belongings. Josephine feels he would have been angry at the cost of the funeral. They consider sending their father's watch to their brother, Benny, but are concerned that there is no postal service there. They think of giving the watch to their nephew, Cyril. As they talk about the watch, they recall Cyril coming over for tea, and their conversation. Kate the maid asks boldly how the sisters want their fish cooked for dinner, for which she is fired. They wonder whether she snoops inside their dresser drawers. They hear a barrel organ and realize they need not stop it, because it no longer disturbs their father. They wonder how things would be, if their mother, who died in Ceylon, were still alive. They've never met men, except perhaps in Eastbourne. Finally, the sisters talk about their future, but cannot remember what they wanted to say.
11788104	/m/02rsc47	Prelude	Katherine Mansfield		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 I There isn't enough room left on the buggy for Lottie and Kezia to get in because of all the stuff from the removal. A neighbour, Mrs Samuel Josephs, will look after them until another van comes in the evening to pick up other stuff. The children are told to mingle with the neighbours's children, and they are given tea. II Then Kezia goes back into her old house, looks about a few remaining items, then gets scared of something behind her. Lottie draws by and says the storeman is there to pick them up. They leave. III On the road the storeman refers to a lighthouse on Quarantine Island, thus suggesting that the story is set in Wellington. When they arrive, they are greeted by the grandmother; Linda has a headache; she and Aunt Beryl are having tea. Aunt Beryl and Stanley have argued over the fact that he was at work while she was left alone to deal with the removal. IV The grandmother tucks the children in: Lottie and Isabel in the same bed, Kezia with her. Lottie says a prayer. Aunt Beryl dreams of being independent from Stanley. Stanley brags about buying the new house so cheap, then goes to bed with Linda. Pat and the servant girl turn in too. The grandmother goes to bed the last. V The next day, Linda wakes up to a sunny weather and a husband boasting about his physique - she ridicules him slightly. Bored, she thinks of how she dreamt of birds. VI The grandmother is doing the dishes in the kitchen and remembers how, when they lived in Tasmania, Beryl was once stung by a red ant...Then Aunt Beryl wonders where she can put up some paintings she doesn't like. Linda comes up and is sent to the blooming garden to look after her children; Kezia and she look at an aloe. VII Stanley comes back delighted from work with cherries, oysters and a pineapple, willing to see his wife; Linda seems less happy; Aunt Beryl is 'restless'. VIII The girls play to be grown-ups, until Pip and Rags, their cousins arrive IX Pat chops off a duck's head to show the children that the duck still walks on for some instants after being killed; Kezia is shocked by the episode and demands Pat to "Put head back" X In the kitchen, Alice is reading a book on dreams; Aunt Beryl comes in and bosses her round, then feels better and walks out. XI They eat the duck for tea. Stanley and Aunt Beryl play a game of cribbage, and he wins. Linda and her mother take a turn in the garden to look at the aloe. To Linda, the tree gets her thinking that she loathes Stanley, and dreams about leaving the house; Mrs Fairfield thinks it would be good to make jam out of the berries in the vegetable garden. XII Aunt Beryl writes a letter to her 'nan', saying she is bored with living in the countryside, then thinks to herself how despicably false and unhappy with herself she is, until Kezia calls for her to come to dinner.
11788470	/m/02rscvz	At The Bay	Katherine Mansfield			 I The shepherd is with his dog on Crescent Bay. II Stanley Burnell goes for a swim early morning, and Jonathan Trout is there; the two men wanted to be the first in the water, and Jonathan expresses sympathy for Stanley. III Aunt Beryl tells Kezia not to play with her food. Stanley leaves for work, to the women's relief. IV Out in the countryside, Kezia helps Lottie with the stile to Isabel's disapproval. The Samuel Josephs children are said to be rowdy and they don't play with them any more. Then they come upon Rags and Pip, and the latter shows them a 'nemeral' he has found in the sand. V At the beach, Aunt Beryl joins Mrs Kember, of whom Mrs Fairfield disapproves. Beryl gets changed in front of her friend. VI Linda is alone in the bungalow. She thinks back of when she was living in Tasmania with her parents, of how her father said they would go down a river in China, of how her father agreed on her marrying Stanley whom she loves for being soft underneath the veneer. Her baby boy comes along and she says she feels no motherly love for him; he keeps on smiling, then plays with his toes. VII After a description of the seashore, Mrs Fairfield and Kezia are taking an afternoon nap in the bungalow. The grandmother is thinking of Uncle William, one of her sons who died of sunstroke while working as a miner; Kezia asks her if she is sad, then attempts to make the grandmother promise never to die. VIII Alice visits Mrs Stubbs in town; the latter shows her photographs, then talks about how her husband died of dropsy, and adds that 'freedom is best'. IX Kezia, Lottie and Isabel are playing a card game similar to 'snap' with Pips and Rag in the washhouse. Uncle Jonathan turns up to take the boys home. X Before picking up the boys, Uncle Jonathan meets Linda in the garden. She is charmed by him. He confesses to loathing his job but believes he lacks the willpower to change his life. XI Stanley comes back and apologises profusely for not saying goodbye to Linda in the morning. He has bought gloves for himself. XII Aunt Beryl is worried about being single and growing old alone; Harry Kember turns up and asks her for a walk; at first she goes along with him, but repudiates his advances when his intentions become clear. XIII A brief description of the bay.
11788660	/m/02rsd3x	Something Childish But Very Natural	Katherine Mansfield	2007	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 At a train station, Henry looks at books and comes upon Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem. Then he jumps onto the train as he is late, and has left his portfolio behind. On the train, he starts talking to a girl, until she tells him she will be there again every evening. On the following Saturday, he goes to the station and sees her; they get on the train and start talking like old friends. Later, they go to a concert, and she appears somewhat distant. They walk down the streets of London and come upon a pretty village nearby. There, they visit a house and decide to rent it. Then Henry receives a telegram, and things fall apart.
11793789	/m/02rsmm8	Englishmen for My Money	William Haughton			 The play is set among the contemporary merchant class of London in its own era, the men who dealt on the Royal Exchange founded by Sir Thomas Gresham. The merchant and moneylender Pisaro has three half-English daughters, Laurentia, Marina, and Mathea. The daughters face two trios of suitors, one foreign and one domestic. The foreigners are Delion, a Frenchman, Alvaro, and Italian, and Vandal, a Dutchman. Pisaro, himself from Portugal, favours these candidates because of their wealth; but his daughters prefer their English suitors, Harvey, Heigham, and Walgrave. The play is rich in courtship, dialect humour, and disguises and gender cross-dressing, with abundant comic material from the clown character Frisco. In the end, as the title indicates, the Englishmen win their brides (which helps to cancel out the debts they owe to Pisaro).
11796992	/m/02rssmk	South By South East	Anthony Horowitz	1991-03-14	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Diamond brothers are horney as usual. They have just moved into a cheap apartment when suddenly a mysterious man (Jake McGuffin), bursts into their office, tells Tim someone is trying to kill him, an assassin who is trying to murder a Russian diplomat, offers Tim a wad of cash for his coat and disappears as quickly as he came, leaving his own coat behind. When Nick bends down to pick up the coat, something falls out of one of the pockets: a key. There is a plastic tag attached to it and in bright red letters: Room 605, London International Hotel. When Tim and Nick go outside, they find the man lying in a telephone box, dying from a gunshot wound. His last words, drowned out by a train, sounded like "suff bee suff iss", or was it "south by southeast"? Suddenly, the Diamond Brothers are thrown into an extremely hazardous and risky adventure involving MI6 and their chase for Charon. Charon is the code name of an assassin, the head of a gigantic murder organization. Nobody knows who Charon is as he can disguise himself extremely rapidly. There is only one way of recognizing Charon - he has lost a finger, therefore he only has nine. Charon's men are responsible for the murder of Jake McGuffin, who was aware of Charon's plan to murder a Russian diplomat, Boris Kusenov. The Diamond brothers become wanted by the Police after Charon gives Tim a suitcase containing a bomb when he is going for an interview at the bank and it goes off. The boys' later find out what Jake McGuffin said was 'Sotheby's, Tsar's Feast.' They race over to Sotheby's (a famous art auction house in London), where they know that TNT is under the seat. They get into a wrestle which gets the two police officers involved, and the painting gets destroyed. The police officers get credited, and they refer to Nick as 'an unknown boy.' Charlotte Van Dam, a woman they meet in Holland, invites Tim to the tunnel of love at a fair, where she plans to kill him. Nick finds out that Charlotte is Charon, and goes to stop her. Nick's clever thinking makes Charon fall into the river, and she gets electrocuted.
11800740	/m/02rszq4	Eva Luna	Isabel Allende		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story is told from Eva's first-person point of view, with some sections narrated from Rolf Carlé's point of view. The story opens as Eva describes her mother's life, and how her mother (Consuelo) ended up working for a Professor. One day, the Indian gardener is bitten by a snakebite and whilst on his deathbed, Consuelo makes love to him, thus conceiving Eva. Miraculously, Eva's father recovers. Eva's mother then dies after choking on a chicken bone and leaves Eva to fend for herself. After the Professor dies, Eva moves on and eventually stumbles upon Huberto Naranjo, who places her in the care of La Señora, the owner of a brothel. After living in harmony for a few years, a new police chief moves in and immediately storms the brothel. Eva is forced to flee and eventually stumbles upon Riad Halabi, a man with a cleft palate. Eva moves to Agua Santa with Halabi and settles into her new life, living with Riad and his wife, Zulema. After a few years, Riad's cousin Kamal moves in to live with them. Zulema is instantly infatuated with Kamal and when Riad goes on a trip, she seduces him, after which Kamal immediately leaves. Then Zulema loses interest in life, eventually committing suicide by shooting herself in the mouth. After Eva is detained on suspicion of murdering Zulema, Riad bribes the police to release Eva. Eva and Riad realize that she must leave to escape the rumors, but before she leaves they share one night of passion. When Eva returns to the city, she reunites with the beautiful and engaging transsexual Melisio, now known as "Mimi". Eva then reunites with Huberto Naranjo for infrequent sexual encounters, which Eva treasures as the only time she can see her loved one. Huberto is leader of a guerrilla unit fighting a revolution. As time goes on, Eva realizes that Huberto, although a dear friend, is not the man for her. Throughout the novel a parallel narative is told—the life of Rolf Carlé, traced from childhood to adulthood. The book's narrator tells us at the beginning that he is the man Eva will fall in love with and marry. Rolf grows up in Eastern Europe with a sadistic father who returns from the war and regularly torments and humiliates his wife. After his father is killed by some local boys, Rolf's mother resolves to send him to South America to be raised by his Aunt and Uncle. As Rolf grows up, he becomes interested in reporting news and becomes a leading journalist, shooting film footage from the front line. Rolf films the guerrillas, meeting Huberto, and later Eva. As the two slowly fall in love, they help the guerrillas in releasing nine prisoners from jail as an act of rebellion. When the rescue is complete, the two retreat to his cousins' home. There they profess their love for each other, consummating their relationship and agreeing to marry.
11801646	/m/02rs_sj	The Pirate Loop	Simon Guerrier		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After escaping from over-eager serving robots in Milky-Pink City, Martha asks the Doctor about the Starship Brilliant, which mysteriously disappeared. He agrees to investigate, but the TARDIS crashes on arrival and Martha is knocked out. She wakes in the ship's engine room, where she and the Doctor are led to the starship's experimental drive by the slave-like mechanics, who have small holes instead of mouths. The Doctor realises that the starship's experimental drive works by skipping out of space-time. However, it has become stalled, putting it at risk of exploding. They attempt to contact the captain, but find that the door out of the engine rooms is blocked with a membrane like scrambled egg. The Doctor notes that it separates regions where time flows at different rates, and uses his sonic screwdriver to allow them to pass through. Martha emerges by herself and meets the robot Gabriel, the ship's steward. He escorts her to the cocktail lounge, where she is befriended by Mrs Wingsworth, an egg-shaped alien. Martha learns that the ship has been invaded and asks Gabriel to warn the Doctor, but three badger-faced space pirates enter and disintegrate him. Two of the badgers, Dashiel and Jocelyn, leave to scout out the ship, leaving the third badger, Archibald, to guard the prisoners. He is amazed at the canapés which Martha offers to him, as he was raised on recycled food, and she convinces him to share the food with the passengers. Dashiel and Jocelyn return, having been unable to find either the ship's drive or their comrades. They try some of the food and are similarly impressed, with Martha noting that the canapés are mysteriously replenished. Dashiel disintegrates Mrs Wingsworth after she expresses her scorn at their lack of culture. Martha grabs Jocelyn's gun after she shoots another passenger, but she is startled when Mrs Wingsworth enters the room, allowing Archibald to take the gun. Dashiel shoots at Martha, but she shields herself with the canapé tray, which reflects the shot at Jocelyn and kills her. Martha runs back to the engine room door, pursued by Archibald. She hits him with the tray, but she dies when he stabs her. On emerging from the scrambled egg membrane, the Doctor is met by Gabriel, who tells him that Martha has gone to the cocktail lounge. The Doctor learns that three hours have passed since Martha's arrival, as time passes more slowly in the engine rooms. He meets Jocelyn and Archibald, who disintegrate Gabriel again. The Doctor leads them to the engine room door, deducing that they intend to steal the ship's drive. However, they cannot pass through the scrambled egg membrane, as it is impossible to move from a region of faster time to one of slower time. Jocelyn blocks off the corridor by activating the fire doors, then escorts the Doctor to Dashiel in the cocktail lounge. Mrs Wingsworth antagonises the badgers and is once again disintegrated. While the Doctor attempts to negotiate, Archibald offers him some of the canapés, which continue to be replenished. Mrs Wingsworth enters the cocktail lounge again, explaining that the passengers are brought back to life after they die. However, Archibald mentions that Martha did not come back to life after she was killed. The Doctor resolves to find Martha's body and return it to her family once he has resolved the issues on the starship. Dashiel attacks the Doctor after he is tricked into disabling the guns using the sonic screwdriver, but runs into the window and is knocked unconscious. The Doctor takes his dagger and heads to the bridge with Mrs Wingsworth and Archibald, leaving Jocelyn to tend to Dashiel. They reach the capsule in which the badgers arrived, where Archibald mentions that Jocelyn died and woke up again there. The Doctor realises that everyone is resurrected where they first appeared and goes to open the fire doors in the engine room corridor, where he finds that both Martha and Gabriel have been resurrected. He explains that they are in a time loop, and the ship is attempting to protect the passengers by resurrecting them and replenishing the food, using its drive to alter reality. However, this is draining the ship's energy, as the loop is incomplete. Gabriel leads them to the bridge, where the door is blocked by another scrambled egg membrane. The Doctor and Martha pass through it, and are immediately killed by an electrical barrier. They are promptly resurrected and the Doctor convinces the captain, Georgina Wet-Eleven, to let them pass. Observing the pirate vessel on the wall screens, the Doctor realises that it has been frozen in time by the starship's drive, preventing the other pirate capsules from reaching them. The three badgers then invade the bridge and attack the crew, with everyone other than the Doctor and Martha being killed. The Doctor alters the electrical barrier so that it separates the resurrected crew and badgers. He lets the badgers out after they promise to behave, but the crew initially refuse to co-operate. Archibald offers Captain Georgina some canapés, and she reluctantly agrees to a truce. The Doctor uses the transmat booth to travel back to the engine room so that they can escape from the time loop, connecting the ship's drive to the TARDIS and using it to warp space-time. Meanwhile, the pirate ship has unfrozen and the scrambled egg membrane has disappeared. The badgers attempt to negotiate with their comrades, but they are unsuccessful. The other badger pirates board the ship, capture Martha, and shoot Dashiel and Captain Georgina. Archibald, Jocelyn and Martha are taken to Captain Florence on the pirate ship. On emerging from the TARDIS, the Doctor finds that the pirates have attacked and stolen the ship's drive. He leaves a note for Gabriel and is found by Mrs Wingsworth, who tells him that people have stopped coming back to life. They travel to the pirate ship in the TARDIS and take the lift to the bridge. The pirate ship destroys the Brilliant on Captain Florence's orders as they arrive, and she shoots Mrs Wingsworth and Archibald. The Doctor duels with her using the dagger he had taken from Dashiel, and she accidentally stabs herself. She refuses the Doctor's offer of help and shoots him. The badgers try to shoot Martha and Jocelyn, but find that their guns have been disabled. The Brilliant reforms and everyone who died is brought back to life. The Doctor explains that the ship drained the power from their guns because the note he left for Gabriel told him that the guns were a danger to the passengers. Instead of breaking them out of the time loop, he completed it and extended it to include the pirate ship. Reality is now only adjusted once every cycle and the loop has become self-sustaining, so the ship no longer needs to expend energy. The Doctor invites the badgers to a party on the Brilliant, and Martha, Jocelyn and the resurrected Captain Florence join the other badgers as they head for the capsules. The crew, passengers, mechanics, robots and badgers all party together on the starship. The Doctor announces that he will leave in the TARDIS, and that going with him will be their last chance to leave the never-ending party and return to the real world. The party-goers make their decisions as they dance to Mika's song Grace Kelly.
11802192	/m/02rt0hl	Orphan at My Door	Jean Little			 The book tells the story of Victoria Cope, following her experience of hosting a home child - an orphan from England sent to Canada by Barnardo's, essentially as a servant, receiving care and education in exchange. The Copes end up with a girl one year older than Victoria, named Marianna Wilson. She tells Victoria about her life in England, and as they become friends Victoria becomes more aware of some of the discrimination that Marianna faces from the local children, as well as from members of Victoria's own family, notably her oldest brother, David. Something seems to be distracting Marianna and one night Victoria wakes up and finds Marianna in the barn with her younger brother, Jasper, who had escaped from the home where he was placed after his guardian whipped him and broke his arm. The family must decide what to do with Jasper, which is made difficult by David's attitude towards the home children. The book ends with an epilogue detailing where Marianna and Victoria went in their lives, and explaining how the home child program worked. The orphan becomes rich and famous.
11803048	/m/02rt17_	It's Superman	Tom De Haven		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Smallville, Kansas in 1935; Clark Kent is interviewed by the local Sheriff over the death of a wanted man who Clark confronted at a movie theatre. He died from, what everyone agrees to be, his handgun firing backwards. Clark and his father, Jonathan Kent, know the real story: he shot Clark, and the bullet bounced off Clark's forehead, and killed the wanted man instead. Clark is scared over what he is becoming. Matters worsen when Clark's beloved mother, Martha Kent, dies of a terminal illness. In Manhattan; Willi Berg storms out from Lois Lane's, his girlfriend's, apartment because she could not help him buy back his camera, so he intends to steal it. Arriving at the pawn shop, he discovers several men dead, and gets wounded trying to escape when he sees the ringleader of the gang: Lex Luthor. Because he is an alderman, Lex frames Willi for the murders and a henchwoman attempts to murder him at the hospital days later until she is stopped by federal agents, led by Meyer Lansky. With their help, and Lois', Willi goes on the run, finding himself in Smallville as a member of the WPA. There, he meets Clark, who is now a reporter for the Smallville Herald Progress, and befriends him after he shows off his superspeed. After solving the crime of a kidnapped child that ends unhappily; Clark quits the paper and Willi discusses with him the idea of leaving Smallville to travel. Because he wants to see what else is out there, Clark agrees. Hollywood of 1937; Clark has a job as a stuntman and has a girlfriend named Diana Dewey, a costume designer. Willi meets with a former roommate of Lois', a voluptuous nurse who goes by the nickname Skinny, where he is found by police and gets arrested. Clark tries out a costume that was made for a science fiction film that is now cancelled: a blue leotard with a red cape and a red "S". Upon trying it on, he is taken by it. After he discovers his ability of flight; Clark puts on the costume to free Willi from the police. Clark and Willi then head back to New York where they meet back up with Lois, now a reporter for the Daily Planet. Clark falls instantly in love with Lois. There at Clark and Willi's new apartment, they describe to an unbelieving Lois the person who freed Willi who is a "friend" of him and Clark's: Superman. The conversation turns from good to bad when Lois reports the sad news: the case that had been building against Lex Luthor has been dropped over the death of the head agent of the case and the missing, presumed destroyed, evidence. In a shocking turn of events, Lex announces his resignation from his position as an alderman. Inside the offices of his company, LUTHOR Corp., he initiates the construction of robots - seemingly benign, but equipped with surveillance and weapons capabilities - dubbed "Lexbots". On Halloween Night; Clark tries to cheer up a depressed Willi as they walk throughout the city. At the same time, Lois tries to help her former boyfriend, an ex-cop who believes Lex murdered his partner. When Ceil Stickowski, widow of one of Lex' old henchman, calls to reveal secret information on what Luthor is planning, the two head out only to get into a gun fight with Paulie Scaffa, another henchman who just now murdered Ceil and Mrs. O'Shea, Luthor's partner. Paulie takes off - not before shooting Ben, Lois' police officer boyfriend - and takes off only to be stopped by Clark, wearing his Superman costume, as he damages the car to get Paulie out. However, inside the trunk is one of the Lexbots and it soon activates and attacks Superman. After a horrifying attack that leaves a few sections of the city street on fire, a bruised and exhausted Superman finally destroys the Lexbot and escapes before police can arrest him. The next morning, thanks to his article and the revelation that the evidence against Lex was not destroyed, as well as new evidence found by Lois of the LUTHOR Corp. logo on the robot; Lex Luthor is called to be arrested and Clark gets a job at the Daily Planet. Before he is arrested, Superman meets with Lex at his home; as Lex talks about how similar the two are, making them "perfect rivals"; Lex forces his assistant to jump from the window to which Superman saves. Returning, he learns that not only is the assistant dead of a heart attack, but that Lex used that time to escape. In the closing chapter; our central characters watch the play Our Town in February 1938. During the play, Clark thinks at what has happen to him and Superman since: he has saved countless lives from accidents and disasters, Lex (still on the run) had given Superman (through Clark) a new more powerful costume with a red on yellow "S" crest, FDR has called for Superman to have a "chat" (to which Clark is reluctant to attend), and sometimes Clark hates his Superman persona because of the pressures put upon him and also because Lois dislikes Clark but loves Superman. Finally, as the play ends, he thinks of what his father said to him on his deathbed, to use his powers for good. Lois notices Clark sobbing in his theater box and, surprised by her own concern, calls out to him. She finally gains his attention by throwing a shoe at him. When Clark takes off his glasses to wipe his eyes, a thrill goes through Lois as, immediately spotting his resemblance to the Man of Steel, she first develops the classic suspicion that Clark is Superman. At the same time, Clark looks into Lois' eyes and realizes that he will love her for the rest of his life and that this love will fuel him to do his best to do good in the world. He has struggled through the entire book to feel "like everyone else;" and now, he is, "like everyone else."
11804171	/m/02rt2ky	Skallagrigg	William Horwood	1987	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story concerns Arthur, a young boy suffering from cerebral palsy, abandoned in a grim hospital in the north of England and subject to extreme cruelty and neglect; Esther, a keenly intelligent teenager who also suffers from CP but whose talents are recognised in these enlightened days; and Daniel, an American computer-gaming genius. They are linked by the Skallagrigg; whatever or whoever it is will transform their lives. Esther sets out on a quest to find the truth of the Skallagrigg, founded in the life and experiences of Arthur. She encapsulates what she finds in a tortuously complex computer game, knowing that the truth is never likely to be uncovered. A man named Martin has heard the word Skallagrigg from his senile grandmother and when he hears of Skallagrigg the game, he is determined to solve it and discover what it means...
11804870	/m/02rt3rf	Wideacre	Philippa Gregory	1987		 The novel is set in the second part of the eighteenth century, during the time of the enclosure acts. Beatrice Lacey is the daughter of the Squire of Wideacre, an estate situated on the South Downs, centred around Wideacre Hall. Most of the novel is narrated in her voice. She is five years-old when her father takes her around the estate for the first time, and she falls in love with the estate. Wideacre is Beatrice's first and most enduring love. For the rest of her life, Beatrice makes one attempt after another to claim it, directly or indirectly, for herself. She spends her childhood accompanying her father around the estate, becoming an excellent horsewoman, learning the land and becoming a favourite of the villagers who live in Acre, the estate village. She is uninterested in her mother's attempts to make her more ladylike and is completely devoted to her father. Her brother, Harry, is away at a private school and Beatrice rarely sees him. But at the age of eleven, her dreams are shattered when her father tells her that Harry will inherit the estate and she will make a good marriage and leave, and this is just the way of the world. Beatrice is stunned by this pronouncement, as she believed she would live on Wideacre forever; she is also shocked that the estate will go to Harry, who has no idea how to run it and no interest in rural pursuits. She immediately decides "if that was the way of the world, the world would have to change; I would never change". Now rapidly blossoming into a beautiful young woman, Beatrice is attracted to Ralph, the gamekeeper's lad, who lives with his mother, Meg, a village witch, in a cottage on the estate. They become lovers, but their private world is shattered by the return of Harry, who discovers them together. Harry tries to punish Ralph for 'spoiling' his sister but Ralph easily disarms him. Seeing the whip in his hand, Harry suddenly becomes craven and submissive, begging Ralph to beat him. Beatrice realises that the private school has somehow warped her brother's mind, turning him into a masochist. Beatrice and Ralph are estranged for a short time, until Beatrice sees that her father is taking Harry out on the estate, teaching him the ways of the land. Threatened by this, Beatrice starts scheming everyway she possibly can to keep 'her' land, so when Ralph reveals a scheme of his to take the estate for their own, with him taking the squire's place, Beatrice agrees without really thinking about it. The next day, Beatrice realizes what she has agreed to and rushes to stop the plan from happening, but finds she is too late. Ralph murders the Squire, Beatrice's father, and sets it up to look as if the man's horse reared and threw him, convincingly enough that everyone on Wideacre regards it as a horrible accident. Enraged by the sight of her father's corpse, filled with guilt and fear that if Ralph were ever caught he would tell others she was involved, Beatrice decides she cannot allow him to continue living on Wideacre. She had never intended to marry him or let him take her father's place, secretly thinking Ralph too lowly to take her beloved father's position, and indulged his dreams of being the master of Wideacre because she never thought they'd come true. After planning her revenge, Beatrice meets up with Ralph one evening, lays with him one last time, and then deliberately takes a path home that leads over a man trap. She then crouches in the undergrowth and screams for Ralph's help. Running after her, Ralph's legs are crushed by the man trap. Beatrice listens as his screams die away and then hurries back to the Hall. To her everlasting horror, she discovers that Ralph cheated death, escaping maimed with his mother's help, to slip away into the outer darkness, recover and someday return for revenge on Beatrice. With the loss of first her beloved Papa, and then her lover, Ralph, something inside Beatrice dies. She becomes more callous, manipulative and ruthless. All is peaceful for a time on the estate, but as Beatrice teaches Harry how to run Wideacre, her position is threatened by Harry's attraction to their neighbour's stepdaugher, Lady Celia Havering. Beatrice quickly convinces Harry that she and Ralph did not have sex, that Harry saved her from rape. She then sets about seducing him to make her position more secure. It is not hard for her to overcome Harry's doubts about their sexual relationship, as she is well practiced in the art of seduction and confident of her allure. Meanwhile, Beatrice befriends Celia, casting herself as the understanding sister-in-law who can protect her from the "brutish" Harry. Celia, who is sweet and innocent, quickly warms to Beatrice and confides in her. Harry marries Celia with Beatrice's blessing and Beatrice accompanies them on their honeymoon to France, where Harry spends his days with Celia and his nights with Beatrice. Celia is so scared and ignorant that she is actually grateful for this arrangement. Then Beatrice discovers she is pregnant with Harry's child. She lies to Celia, saying the child is the product of a rape, and Celia decides that she will pass the child off as her own. She sends Harry back to England, then writes to him with the 'good news'. Beatrice gives birth to a girl. Celia names the baby Julia, and the two women return to Wideacre as proud mother and aunt. Beatrice suppresses her maternal instincts with ease while Celia develops a mental strength and determination that she did not formerly possess. She takes a very firm stand in everything concerning Julia, especially taking the baby out on the estate. Beatrice is slightly disconcerted by this new Celia, but does nothing until she discovers that Harry and Celia have started sleeping together and that Celia is moving into Harry's room and symbolically taking her place as the Lady of Wideacre. Desperate, Beatrice tricks Harry into meeting her alone and physically abuses him until he is completely under her thumb. They resume sexual relations, with Beatrice completely dominant and secure. Now at the peak of her power, Beatrice's life is complicated by the new doctor, a young Scotsman called John MacAndrew, who has been prescribing her laudanum for her nightmares (which usually involve Ralph coming to kill her in revenge). He is intelligent and provocative, challenging Beatrice to a horse race around the estate, which he wins. After this, Beatrice begins to seriously respect and admire John, but she is not sure how to proceed, as this is the first time she has been properly courted by someone of her own class. Determined to stay on Wideacre, she refuses his marriage proposal. Then she discovers she is pregnant by Harry once more. She tries to induce a miscarriage but fails. Alone and afraid, knowing she cannot give this baby to Celia, she breaks down. John finds her crying in the library and comforts her, though she will not tell him why she is so upset. After they make love, Beatrice agrees to marry him, knowing she can pass the baby off as John's. The marriage satisfies everyone: Beatrice's mother is happy that her daughter is finally married to a respectable man; Harry and Celia are happy that Beatrice will know their 'happiness'; Beatrice is happy because John has no problem with living on Wideacre. Beatrice goes into labour while John is away, and gives birth to a healthy boy. Beatrice names him Richard, and almost pulls off her deception, but John arrives back early from his journey. As a doctor, he can see immediately that the baby is not premature. Disillusioned, he asks Beatrice why she lied to him. Devastated by this turn of events, Beatrice lies again, telling him that she was raped but that her love for him is not a lie. John does not believe her. He begins to drink in order to forget her betrayal. Meanwhile, Beatrice and Harry grow more and more careless. One night, Harry persuades Beatrice to lie with him in the parlour, despite her initial reservations, and their mother comes upon them. She faints from the shock and falls unconscious. In her catatonic state, she mutters over and over "I only came to get my book... Harry, Beatrice, no!" John McAndrew attends her despite his distress and prescribes laudanum, four drops, four hourly. Beatrice knows her mother will tell people about the incestuous coupling between her children, which she has now witnessed. When Celia says that she will stay up to watch over the patient, Beatrice calculatingly tells Celia that John prescribed the whole bottle be taken at once. Her mother dies from the overdose without regaining consciousness or revealing what she saw, though John MacAndrew suspects the truth from what she kept repeating. He also knows he would not have prescribed the whole bottle to be taken at once and thus recognizes the murderess in Beatrice. Unwisely, John confronts Beatrice, telling her that he could ruin her, but she pre-empts him, setting the scene to ruin his reputation and succeeds. He drowns his despair in drinking, unwittingly giving Beatrice the weapon with which she totally destroys his name. Within a very short time he is despised and nobody will believe anything he says. Beatrice finishes him off with a coup de grace of horrifying ruthlessness: she has him committed to a lunatic asylum in a violent scene which ends with John MacAndrew being taken away in a strait-jacket, screaming the truth about Beatrice - that she is an incestuous whore and a murderess. Not only does nobody believe him, but his screams only convince the witnesses he is indeed mad. With her husband out of the way and his £200,000 fortune transferred under power of attorney, Beatrice decides to make her incestuous offspring, Julia and Richard joint heirs to the Wideacre estate and convinces Harry, through seduction and emotional manipulation, to agree to this outrageous crime. As a girl, Julia cannot inherit on her own but Richard is part Lacey and a marriage between cousins is a suitable way to keep the estate in the family. However, the estate is entailed, meaning that only male heirs can inherit, and changing the entail requires a lot of money. The MacAndrew fortune is not quite enough to seal the deal, and in order to raise the rest of the necessary monies, Beatrice and Harry mortgage the estate and begin to enclose the common land, so the villagers have nowhere to graze their pigs or raise their own vegetables. This creates a lot of anger and resentment on the estate but Beatrice no longer cares, so focused is she on her children inheriting Wideacre. Celia realizes what is happening and rescues John MacAndrew, freeing him from the lunatic asylum and telling him his fortune has been stolen by Beatrice in order to make her son and daughter the heirs to Wideacre. She brings him back to Wideacre a pauper but a free man, and manages to restore his medical reputation by calling on him when baby Richard chokes on a stone from his rattle. John performs an emergency tracheotomy, cutting Richard's throat open in order to allow air into his windpipe. The two of them do their best to help alleviate the villagers' poverty and depravation, in contrast to the increasingly corrupt and ruthless Beatrice and Harry. Beatrice is by this time completely annexed from any human feeling. She has destroyed herself in her determination to win at all costs. She has lost her soul and is no longer in harmony with Wideacre. The estate is suffering under her "maximum profit" mentality; every spare piece of land is devoted to crops in order to produce more money and both the people and the land are dying of starvation, of lack of love. Then they hear that The Culler, a shadowy outlaw who is against enclosure and the aristocracy, is heading for Wideacre. Beatrice knows the Culler is her first love, Ralph, and is both afraid and desirous of his vengeance. By this time, the villagers have turned against her and Wideacre is vulnerable to attack. In a dramatic scene, Celia and John discover that the estate itself is now mortgaged, and Harry discovers that Julia is Beatrice's daughter (though not that he is Julia's father, or Richard's). Finally recognizing the enormity of Beatrice's crimes, Celia quite rightly calls her a "wrecker", telling her that she destroys everything she touches, including her beloved Wideacre. She then leaves, taking a blubbering Harry with her, although he dies en route of a heart attack. John also leaves with them, as his only remaining desire is to save Celia and the children from the shadow and corruptive influence of Beatrice's wickedness. Beatrice is left alone in the Hall, a scene exactly like the nightmare that haunted her throughout the book, hinting that she has some sort of sixth sense. (This is a nod to Gone With The Wind, where the protagonist's nightmare comes true at the end of the novel.) She dreams of Ralph and of an end to the horror of her life. When she wakes, she can sense that he has been in the room with her, as the window is open. She sees the torches of the villagers glowing outside. She knows they have to come to burn down the Hall and kill her, but she does not care, she only longs to see Ralph. She runs outside and sees him astride his horse, his legs severed at the knee. Overjoyed, Beatrice goes to him and holds up her arms. He bends down as if to embrace her. The last thing Beatrice sees is the knife in his hand. She welcomes her death at his hands, understanding that it is justice and her only hope of redemption. In the epilogue, which is the only part written in the third person, Wideacre Hall is a burnt out shell. The estate is ruined and bankrupt; Beatrice has become a demonic figure for the children of the village, an evil but beautiful witch who destroys those she loves. Julia Lacey and Richard MacAndrew play as children in the overgrown garden. Despite this image of innocence in paradise, the novel ends on an ambiguous note, stating that sometimes Julia looks at the ruined Hall and smiles "as if it were very lovely to her".
11807842	/m/02rt6gs	The Iron Ring	Lloyd Alexander		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The narrative is 36 chapters in four parts. Tamar, the king of the fictional realm of Sundari, is rudely awoken by the procession of a passing maharajah named Jaya. Jaya, disobeying the unwritten rules of courtesy, intrudes upon Tamar's house demanding an audience with Tamar for Jaya's own amusement. They play a fictional dice game called aksha, increasing the wagers placed on each successive roll. Finally Jaya calls the wager "life against life." Tamar loses the roll; therefore, his life is Jaya's to do with as Jaya sees fit. Jaya places a black iron ring on Tamar's finger as a sign of his bondage. Jaya says that he has pressing matters to which to attend, so Tamar should come to Jaya's palace in Mahapura. Furious and screaming, Tamar lunges for the king, but because of the ring, he falls to the ground. Tamar is woken by his sage mentor Rajaswami, a brahmana, and quickly discovers that none of his courtiers remember Jaya's ever having been there at all. He has no proof, save the iron ring on his finger, that the encounter was any more than a dream. As a kshatriya, Tamar is honor-bound to make good on the debt he owes to Jaya because to him, dharma is the most important thing in the world. He sets out with Rajaswami, leaving his kingdom in the hands of his military commander, Darshan. The pair ride north through the Danda-Vana forest. They happen upon an enormous talking monkey being attacked by a large river-snake. The monkey, Hashkat, king of the monkeys, has attempted to steal the sapphire atop the head of the snake prince Shesha. Tamar wrestles Shesha in the water and is dragged under then saves Shesha from the weeds in which the serpent is entangled. Shesha pulls Tamar to the realm of the Naga Raja (snake king), where Tamar is given his choice of any of the thousands of precious jewels within the king's hall. He chooses a tiny ruby called the Fire Flower. When Tamar surfaces, he is no longer in the part of the river whence he had left Rajaswami. Instead he is standing naked before a group of beautiful cowgirls called gopis. The most beautiful, Mirri, brings Tamar clothing out of pity, and Tamar is told eventually of the village's traditional "Choosing," where young men compete in games of strength and skill for maidens' affections. Mirri has until this point elected not to take part in the Choosing, but when Tamar arrives, she announces she will choose a man. Rajaswami, after finding Tamar, reminds him that he should never challenge a lesser opponent; therefore, they leave at first light without Tamar being part of the Choosing. On the road through the forest, they reunite with Hashkat and are saved by Mirri when she discovers them stuck in thornbushes' cement-like sap. Mirri joins the party and travels north. Another companion is found in Garuda, a pessimistic eagle whose nests Tamar has accidentally destroyed twice. Garuda was once the messenger of a King Jaya whose job it was to retrieve a ruby with a lotus carved on it. This is the same jewel Tamar carries! Garuda agrees to come with the group to look after the ruby because he is in no shape to fly well (he is referred to as a buzzard before his true species is known). They continue north to a clearing where they meet Kana, a ruthless general of the kingdom of Ranapura who obeys no code of conduct. He and his men set upon Tamar in an unfair matchup, but the group is saved by Ashwara, exiled king of Ranapura. Ashwara tells how his cousin Nahusha has usurped the throne and exiled Ashwara and his brothers. Suddenly a suta (royal crier) named Adi-Kavi emerges from an anthill and joins the party. They decide to travel north to Muktara to plead with the king, Bala, for intervention. Tamar declares that this mission is more important than his mission to Mahapura because treachery is a matter of supreme dishonor. The party arrives in Muktara to engage in durbar with King Bala, only to find that Nahusha is already there. There is nearly a violent confrontation between Ashwara and Nahusha before Bala restores order to the durbar. Nahusha is a hateful man with no respect for anyone save himself, not even for the revered brahmana. He reveals that one of Hashkat's faithful subjects, Akka, has been captured and cruelly enslaved for Nahusha's amusement. Finally Bala reaches the decision that he will take neither side in the struggle, giving neither military support to Nahusha nor protection to Ashwara. They leave the city cautiously, as Bala has warned Ashwara that Nahusha will only be unable to harm him inside Muktara, and are charged by a large talking elephant named Arvati, who ran into them while fleeing from her captors. Adi-Kavi has a plan for dealing with the approaching soldiers who are trying to recapture Arvati. He ties up Hashkat and paints him with mud. When the hunters arrive, Adi-Kavi claims that the elephant was actually a demonic rakshasa. He gets them to fall into a net trap to avoid being killed by the false demon. === Part IV: Jaya ===
11808770	/m/02rt70n	People of the Wolf	Kathleen O'Neal Gear		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The plot concerns a man and woman consummating to have a child. Then a band of Siberian hunters pursues game across Beringia during the last Ice Age. Spurred by a vision he had while on a hunt, a young tribesman named Runs in Light, later called Wolf Dreamer, leads a handful of tribespeople, in rebellion against the tribal shaman, south down the Yukon River valley into what is now Canada and the Pacific Northwest.
11808895	/m/02rt73r	South Park and Philosophy: Bigger, Longer, and More Penetrating		2007-03-08	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book includes an article about the character Kenny, by Southern Illinois University philosophy professor Dr. Randall Auxier, entitled: "Killing Kenny: Our Daily Dose of Death." Professor Auxier also gave a talk on his contribution to the work, at Green Mountain College. South Park and Philosophy: Bigger, Longer, and More Penetrating also addresses issues of applied ethics, such as stem-cell research, euthanasia, drugs in sports, religion, blasphemy, human evolution, environment, and gay marriage. The book is organized into five sections by topic, which include "Religion and Other Disabilities," "Politics and Other Sacred Cows," "Morality and Other Urges," "Science, Logic and Other Really, Really Clever Stuff" and "Humor and Other Insertable Devices."
11817415	/m/02rtgl2	Lucky	Cecily von Ziegesar	2007-10	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jenny Humphrey has attended some crazy parties at Waverly Academy, but none as hot as the bash at Miller farm, where the antique red barn went up in flames. Literally. So when Dean Marymount announces that someone is going to be held responsible and expelled from Waverly, it's every owl for him and herself. Tensions are rising, rumors are flying, and pretty soon everyone is a suspect. Jenny is worried about her adorable, shaggy-haired new crush, Julian, whose silver engraved Zippo was found at the scene of the crime. Callie is petrified she and Easy both will get kicked out, because they were in the barn together when the blaze began. And Tinsley knows she’ll take the heat for organizing the wild soirée in the first place. Luckily she’s come up with a crafty way to keep from getting in trouble: by blaming Jenny. Julian and Jenny get "closer than ever" and just when "things can't get any better," Jenny finds out the only reason Julian even met her is because he was hooking up with Tinsley Carmichael which causes Jenny to not trust him. Easy becomes very suspicious of Callie because of her comments towards Jenny starting the fire. Kara and Brett's relationship goes public and Brett figures out she still loves Jeremiah and Kara and Heath hook up and become a couple. Shockingly, Tinsley's plan works but it also backfires. Easy finds out that Callie had something to do with the plan to kick Jenny out, and tries to rescue Jenny. Callie and Easy's relationship is over—Easy was put off by Callie's plot to get Jenny out, which he discovered when Tinsley texted Callie-and Jenny still hasn't forgiven Julian for lying to her. Easy supposedly paid off Old Lady Miller, whose barn got burned down, and Jenny is rescued and returned to Waverly. Old Lady Miller said that her cows caused it and not Jenny. Jenny admits into setting the barn on fire(and gets expelled) just because she can't take everyone's accusations, dirty looks, and rumors. However, Jenny is admitted back into Waverly.
11819121	/m/02rtjn5	Secret of The Sirens	Julia Golding	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 'The Secret of the Sirens takes place in the southern regions of a fictional Great Britain in the seaside town of Hescombe. Here we meet (presumed) 11-year-old Connie Lionheart, who is left in care by her parents to her Aunt, Evelyn. The story is about how Connie discovers that she has a special power, to communicate with animals. Not conversationally, but able to get to know who they really are, and sense their actual being. She feels comfortable, and has a sense of belonging with them. But the story is also about mythical creatures, as she discovers that her aunt is part of a hidden society that protects them from discovery. Now the society is in danger. Kullervo, a powerful and evil force, is gathering an army of creatures who want to reclaim their place on earth, and not be hampered by humans. They want to eradicate humans and create a new world they can live in. Connie discovers that she has an amazing power, and she, together with her friends and the Society for the Protection of Mythical Creatures, have to try to save the creatures from the threat of exposure.
11821430	/m/02rtmj0	Girl, Missing		2006-10-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The main character is 14-year-old Lauren Matthews, who lives in London with her adoptive parents and their son, Rory. Lauren is doing an essay for homework entitled Who Am I?, in which she has to write about her personality and her life. Eager to find out about her past, Lauren goes on Missing-Children.com, and finds an American girl of her age named Martha Lauren Purditt, who went missing less than two months before Lauren was adopted. After comparing the photograph of Martha with a photograph of Lauren as a toddler, Lauren finds that she and Martha look alike. Lauren's friend James 'Jam' Caldwell comes round, and compares Lauren's face to the age-progressed photograph of Martha. They find that the two girls look alike. Lauren thinks she may be Martha, and finds out information about her adoption is in her adoptive mother's diaries. Whilst Lauren's mother is visiting Jam's mother Carla, Lauren finds her mother's diaries in the attic, and discovers she was adopted from Marchfield Adoption Agency in Vermont, USA. After persuading her family to go on a holiday to a theme park in America, the family go to America (albeit leaving Lauren's adoptive father behind, and taking Jam in his place). While Lauren's mother and Rory are waiting to change planes, Lauren and Jam sneak off and get a plane to Burlington. Once the plane lands, Lauren and Jam get a bus to Marchfield, where Lauren has a meeting with Taylor Tarsen, the owner of the agency. He refuses to show Lauren her adoption file, but when Lauren mentions Sonia Holtwood, a woman from her mother's diaries, Taylor tells Lauren she was looked after by Sonia before her adoption, and gives her $150 so she and Jam can stay in a motel. Jam informs Lauren that he found out where Lauren's adoption file is, and the two stay in a motel for the night. That night, Lauren and Jam break into Marchfield and find Lauren's adoption file, but all that is in it is an address on a scrap of paper. Unfazed, Lauren and Jam go to an 24-hour taxi firm and get a taxi to the address. When they arrive at what they believe to be Sonia Holtwood's flat, they find that a young Spanish woman now lives there. However, they meet an old woman named Bettina, who used to babysit Lauren when she lived in the flat with Sonia. Bettina tells Lauren that, as a toddler, Lauren rarely smiled, but looked pretty when she did. On one of these occasions, Bettina attempted to photograph Lauren but Sonia came bursting in, furious. Sonia and Lauren left the day after. Lauren and Jam set out to find Sonia but end up cold and worried so when a "Police officer" comes up to Lauren and offers to take them to their destination Lauren accepts. After a brief discussion with Jam he accepts and he goes with her. The officer tells them who she really is and they find out she is Sonia Holtwood and she is trying to kidnap them. She gives them drugged orange juice so they both fall into a deep sleep and wake up hours later to find they are still in the car. Lauren pleads with Sonia to let them out and she does: in the middle of nowhere, twenty miles from the nearest place with a name. So Lauren and Jam start walking through the woods where they have an argument. Jam storms off so Lauren just lies down in the snow. She hears voices then goes back to sleep. The next day she wakes up in a log cabin. She sees Jam and asks him what has happened. He says they were rescued by a man called Glane who took them to his log cabin. He then takes them to a motel for them to stay at because he was going home to Boston. Lauren goes on the internet to find out more about Martha Lauren Purditt. Her parents were Annie and Sam Purditt who lived in Evanport. Lauren decides she will hitch hike to get there but Glane offers to take them there himself. On the way Lauren is worrying about how she looks but Jam says she looks beautiful and he wants to ask her something. At the house, Lauren is met by a girl aged thirteen, called Shelby who does not believe Lauren. Then a lady comes out and asks who Lauren is. Lauren replies she is Martha. Lauren meets the other relatives, her real father Sam and a sister who is six. She stays with them for a while but starts missing her own family. Lauren finds out that her adoptive parents have been arrested and are in prison. After a phone call from her parents' lawyer, she has a row with Annie and storms off, prompting Annie to run after her. Lauren slams her bedroom door and when Annie storms in, the two have a furious confrontation. However, Annie apologises and angrily vows that she will never stop loving Lauren and fiercely hugs her, later showing her some baby photos and delights Lauren by showing her some affection. After Lauren moves in with Shelby and Madison, her two sisters, she realises that Annie is a bit extreme in her emotion with Lauren. Lauren likes Sam much better than Annie, but the person she likes best is her grandmother, who understands her much better than either Sam or Annie. One day, Lauren finds Shelby grabbing and twisting a knot in Madi's skin. Lauren sees many painful, big, brown bruises there and is shocked. Lauren stops Shelby and comforts Madison. When she goes back to her room, she finds her phone with a bullying text message supposedly from Shelby, saying to keep quiet or die. She receives another of these later. One night while Lauren is downstairs making hot chocolate, she sees someone at the door. She recognises him as Jam, and lets him in. He proposes that they run away together but Lauren hesitates and says that she needs time to think about it. She, Jam and Madi all go down to the marine so they can talk. Jam gets mad when Lauren says that she does not want to leave her real family, and storms off. Then she gets another text. She thinks its from Shelby, but it is from Sonia Holtwood saying that her sister will die unless she goes to Sam's boat, the Josephine May. There she finds Madi gagged and Sonia and a paid criminal called Frank. Lauren kicks Frank in an attempt to escape, and he tries to slap her. He is stopped by Sonia, who says that they have to be found unharmed so that it looks like an accident. Later, Madi annoys Sonia by pretending to have an aching stomach. She gets hit by Sonia, sending her flying across the room and causing her to crack her head on a hard shelf. Sonia and Frank then leave the boat, after Lauren lies to Frank saying that she hasn't got her cellphone. Madi and Lauren have been wedged into the room by the Sonia and Frank, but then Jam appears and rescues them. The next chapter is in the hospital, where Madi has still not awoken after smacking her head. Annie and Lauren are with her when she awakes, and the two share a true mother - daughter moment. Back at Sam and Annie's house, Lauren meets her adoptive parents at the door; they say that they have been released from jail and have been invited there by Sam and Annie. All of them have a conversation and Lauren is asked who she wants to live with: Sam and Annie or her adoptive parents. She replies that she chooses both. Lauren says that she now partly lives with Sam and Annie, and that she spends the school term in England with her adoptive parents. Jam is now her boyfriend and often comes with her to Sam and Annie's, and Shelby has stopped being horrible to her and Madi. Lauren adds that she never spends more than a few weeks away from either family, and she ends by saying that she was asked to write another 'Who Am I?' essay. She then says that it was easy because she finally knows who she is. In the essay she writes "girl, found" and writes about both families.
11829608	/m/02rtwmj	Briar Rose	Jane Yolen	1992	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is divided into two parts, the "home", and the "castle". The ending is part of the "home" section, returning after the castle. The story is based around the German fairy tale of Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) which is told by "Gemma", an elderly woman, to her three granddaughters. She tells this to the children almost all the time and it is the only bedtime story she ever tells. The times when "Gemma" tells the story are flashbacks and alternate between the present-day story. In the present day, Gemma's Jewish family is living somewhere outside a city in Massachusetts. After her grandmother's death, Rebecca Berlin, the youngest of her three granddaughters (referred to as Becca in the novel) begins to believe that there is some meaning behind the bedtime story that her grandmother told to them hundreds of times. She consults Stan, a good friend and journalist who works for an "alternative" newspaper and uncovers historical facts. She discovers that her grandmother was actually a survivor of the Holocaust who was persecuted for her Polish ethnicity and Jewish belief, and sent to Chełmno extermination camp to be executed. She decides to visit Chełmno and discovers a link with a man by the name of Josef Potocki in Poland. Becca sets off for Poland to find the identity and the life of her grandmother. In Poland, Josef tells his life story and his meeting with Gemma. In the book, his story is told in the "castle" section. He was a target of the Holocaust due to his homosexuality, and became a fugitive, during which time he met many different people, mainly partisans, mainly in Germany. He had heard stories of torture and extermination camps and joined an underground group set out to rescue victims. This leads him to Chełmno (called Kulmhof by the Germans), where he witnesses the gassing to death of numerous people. The people are brought to the camp and then packed into trucks. The trucks drive away, with their exhaust funnelled into the passenger hold. By the time the trucks arrive at their destination, a mass grave, all of the people it was carrying have been gassed to death by the truck exhaust. The people are then dumped into the grave. When Josef sees the bodies of the people dumped, he notices that a woman with red hair (Gemma) is still alive and faintly breathing. He revives her through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which the woman, (who is later called KSIĘŻNICZKA, which means 'princess' in Polish) refers to in her fairy tale as "the kiss of life". In reality, during this period of time, 320,000 were killed in Chelmno via the method of gassing them in trucks. Later, she hid in the forest with Polish partisans, fighting the Nazis, and married another Jew among them. She became pregnant by him shortly after their marriage. Then he, along with almost all of the other partisans, were killed by the Nazis. She escaped and was brought safely to the United States. She never told a soul about these experiences, rather dealing with the trauma by refashioning them in her mind into the form of a familiar fairytale about an evil witch, a princess rendered unconscious who is then revived by a handsome prince, and a happy ending. The final part of the book is simply a conclusion where Becca returns to the U.S. to tell Stewart and her family about what she discovered. At the airport, Stan is there to pick her up. He kisses her, and says "We'll get to our happily ever after eventually".
11838908	/m/02rv4pf	Kensuke's Kingdom	Michael Morpurgo	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/06gtzk": "Robinsonade"}	 A young boy called Michael,travels with his parents around the world on the yacht Peggy Sue after his parents lose their jobs at the brickworks and decide to sail the seven seas. Michael's parents teach him what he would have normally learnt at school and he has a secret log that he writes in. They travel from England to Africa, South America and Australia. He is on lookout one night when Michael and his dog Stella Artois are washed overboard, near Papua New Guinea. They awake to discover that they are stranded on a desert island that is shaped like an elongated peanut in the Pacific Ocean. While Michael is struggling to survive on the island, food is regularly left for him. To his surprise, he learns that an elderly Japanese man called Kensuke is also living on the island. Kensuke helps Michael to survive. He sets guidelines that Michael thinks are just annoyances, until Kensuke saves him from a jellyfish after warning him never to go in the water. Michael teaches Kensuke English, and Kensuke teaches Michael how to paint, how to fish and where to find the best food and water. He is eventually revealed to be a doctor and survivor of World War II, and he believes that his family died in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped there on August 9, 1945. Over time Kensuke begins to understand how Michael feels and how he misses his family. Together they build a beacon that can be lit to signal to ships, but for a long time they see no sign of any ships. Later, however, Michael witnesses a Chinese junk and he consults Kensuke as to whether or not he should light the beacon. Kensuke recognizes the ship as that of poachers, and he and Michael rush to gather all the orangutans into the cave to protect them from the threat that lies in the ship. They nearly succeed but cannot find one particular orangutan, the one Kensuke calls Kikanbo his. The ship arrives and they hear gunshots. When the ship leaves, they discover that some gibbon monkeys have been killed but that Kikanbo is still alive. The next time they see a ship it is not the poachers, and they both light the fire. The crew on the ship see the fire and change direction, heading towards the island. When the boat is closer, Michael sees that the boat is the Peggy Sue, with his parents on board. Kensuke decides at that point, despite thinking otherwise earlier, that he will not be sailing home with Michael; he says "This is my place. This Kensuke's Kingdom. Emperor must stay in his Kingdom, look after his people. Emperor does not run away. Not honourable thing to do." Kensuke tells him to keep everything a secret until ten years have passed, when Kensuke will be dead. Michael runs out to the beach where the ship had landed and is reunited with his parents. Four years after Michael's secret log is published, he receives a letter from Kensuke's son (who is still alive). Michael goes to Japan to visit him a month later.
11839489	/m/02rv5k8	Death at La Fenice	Donna Leon	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Commissario (Detective) Guido Brunetti pursues what appears to be a murder investigation without leads. de:Venezianisches Finale es:Muerte en la Fenice eu:Death at La Fenice fr:Mort à La Fenice sv:Ond bråd död i Venedig
11841102	/m/02rv71s	Up n Under	John Godber			 It followed the story of an inept pub team from the Wheatsheaf Arms pub in a rugby league sevens competition in Kingston upon Hull in England. Ex-pro Arthur's only passions in life are his wife and rugby league. When he hears about the 'Cobblers Arms' pub team and their corrupt manager, Arthur bets his life savings with Reg Welch that he can train any team to beat them. However, the 'Wheatsheaf Arms' can only muster a side of four whose pride lies in their unbroken record of defeat. The pitifully unfit set of men have to accept the help of a coach, who just happens to be a woman. They have to struggle through adversity, come up triumphant and become a team. They are given a bye to the final of the competition where they have to play The Cobblers.
11842692	/m/02rv8n1	Return to the Tomb of Horrors			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 This module expanded significantly upon the plot of the original Tomb of Horrors, revealing that the tomb of the first adventure was merely an antechamber to the lich Acererak's true resting place, and the demilich "slain" in the first adventure was both decoy and key to proceeding further. The dust from the destroyed skull opened a way to the cursed city of Moil in a pocket universe of eternal darkness and ice, and beyond that to Acererak's fortress hovering at the edge of the Negative Energy Plane itself. Acererak is revealed in this publication to be near the completion of a multi-thousand-year project to achieve godhood, powered by souls consumed over the years. He now needs only three additional souls to complete the process, but they must be of exceptional purity and strength; to this end he constructed his tomb to serve as an ultimate challenge for heroes, hoping to winnow out all but the very best. He would then consume them when they reached the center of his fortress, where his own undead essence resides in his phylactery. If the player characters fail to defeat Acererak in the course of the adventure they themselves could wind up serving in this role.
11843106	/m/02rv94x	Beggars' Bush	John Fletcher			 The play is one of several works of English Renaissance drama that present a lighthearted, romanticized, Robin-Hood-like view of the world of beggars, thieves, and gypsies; in this respect it can be classed with plays of its own era like The Spanish Gypsy, Massinger's The Guardian, Suckling's The Goblins, and Brome's A Jovial Crew, as well as a group of earlier works, like the Robin Hood plays of Anthony Munday. Although the timeframe is inconsistent, Beggars' Bush is set seven years after a fictional war between Flanders and Brabant. The victorious Flemish general Woolfort has usurped the throne of Flanders. The rightful royal family, including Gerrard and his daughter Jaculin, have fled, their current whereabouts unknown. Gerrard has adopted a masquerade as Claus, who is elected king of the beggars. Other characters also maintain disguises and have hidden identities, including the missing daughter of the Duke of Brabant. The play's plot shows the working-out of these complexities and the restoration of the rightful rulers; true lovers are also re-united. Yet the play also contains serious aspects that have caused it to be classified as a tragicomedy by some commentators; "Through mixed modes Beggars Bush exhibits serious sociopolitical concerns to earn a classification that at first seems incongruous &mdash; a political tragicomedy." (The character of Clause, the King of the Beggars, also appears as a character in later works, such as the memoirs of Bampfylde Moore Carew, the self-proclaimed King of the Beggars.)
11850869	/m/02rvlnh	The Testament	Eric Van Lustbader	2006-09-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The book is about Braverman Shaw, whose father, Dexter Shaw, is killed by an explosion. After his death Braverman, for friends Bravo, finds out that his father was a member of the Gnostic Observant, a group of people who possess a very old secret of Jesus Christ. Bravo has to find the secret and keep it hidden from their sworn enemies, the Knights of Saint-Clemens. His father left behind a maze, which Bravo has to solve in order to find the secret. During his journey he's attacked by the Knights multiple times, and they're closer than he thinks.
11850937	/m/02rvlt9	Birth of a Salesman	P. G. Wodehouse	1950-03-26	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Lord Emsworth is visiting America for the wedding of his niece Veronica to millionaire Tipton Plimsoll. With currency restrictions forcing him to stay at Freddie's house in Long Island, Emsworth finds himself ill at ease, chafed by his son's new-found self-confidence, the result of his successes as a salesman. Left alone in the house one day, Emsworth finds the cold lunch left for him unappealing, and resolves to fix himself some scrambled eggs. This task proves more difficult than he recalled from his more active youth, and when a young girl calls at the door selling richly bound encyclopaedias of Sport, he invites her in to make them for him and join him at his lunch. The girl, who is only known as "Mrs Ed", reveals she is trying to earn money, as she has a baby on the way. Emsworth's sense of chivalry is aroused, and he offers to sell her encyclopaedias for her, while she has a lie down on the couch. He heads at once for the house of a near neighbour, who Freddie had earlier warned him had a conspicuous habit of throwing wild parties and filling his house with blondes while his wife was away. This behaviour, striking Emsworth as indicative of a sporting nature, persuades the elderly peer that the man must also be in need of his encyclopaedias. Nervously approaching the house, Emsworth is embarrassed by a carful of blondes, but carries on manfully. After a failed attempt to knock at the door, a Pekinese named Eisenhower, property of one of the blondes, chases him up a tree. The homeowner, lumber king George Spenlow, already unnerved having seen Emsworth mooning over his flower beds earlier in the day, mistakes him for a private eye in the hire of his wife. He approaches Emsworth and offers him a bribe, which Emsworth innocently confuses with an offer to buy his encyclopaedias. He takes the man's $500, and quietly slips it into Mrs Ed's handbag while she sleeps, resolving to put a stop to his son's arrogance right away.
11853840	/m/02rvq2x	Sons from Afar	Cynthia Voigt		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 With Dicey and her friends Mina and Jeff away at college, Sons From Afar turns its attention to younger brothers James and Sammy. James is now 15 and wondering about his missing father. He and Sammy begin an investigation across Maryland leading to adventures in Easton, Annapolis, and Baltimore to find clues about the life and character of their father. Sammy at first is uninterested in the man who abandoned their mother and his four children, thinking it has no real bearing on him, but he goes along with James for brotherly support. Their roles eventually become reversed after James has an epiphany about accepting himself for what he is and Sammy realises he needs to start asking questions about himself and where he is heading. Along the way, they find "missing men" affecting the lives of more and more people, and renew their understanding of their place in their family. Abigail "Gram" Tillerman: The Tillerman children's grandmother, Gram took them in at the end of Homecoming, the first book in the cycle. She is 64 years old and lives on her family farm with her grandchildren. She is an older version of Dicey, her eldest grandchild and sees the good in all the Tillermans. James Tillerman: Now almost 16 years old, James has grown into a quiet, insecure teenager who is described as having dark hair, a thin, narrow face, and hazel eyes who looks younger than his age. He is embarrassed by himself, afraid of being labeled a "dork" or "brain". He does not share these feelings with his grandmother because he is afraid of worrying her, although Sammy and Maybeth see through James's facade but do not tell him. He has a hard time asking for things from his grandmother or others (for fear that they will say no) and gives up easily. He is highly intelligent, taking all A-track - advanced - courses at the local high school; however, he lacks athletic ability and physical confidence. He fears the pain of injury. Despite this, he has joined the baseball team because he wants to look well-rounded on his college applications. Even though he hates it and wants to quit, he does not because he does not want people to think he is a quitter. During the story James changes his post-high school goal from becoming a lawyer and building up a business to becoming a medical doctor. His part-time job at a doctor's office and his helping diagnose a patient with a bladder problem is a main factor in his change of heart. Throughout most of the book, he is frustrated with Sammy because of his brother's lack of intellectual curiosity and ambition and his stubborn attitude. At the same time, he is envious of his brother's natural athletic ability and self-confidence and self-acceptance. James's respect for Sammy grows when James sees Sammy's bravery and courage when he stands up to a violent grown man at a bar on their search for their father. Even though he never finds his father, James's experiences teach him that he needs to accept himself for who he is so that he does not "get lost from himself", the way he believes his father had done. It also teaches him to accept his brother. Sammy Tillerman: Now 12 years old, Sammy is described as blond, hazel-eyed, and tall for his age with a stocky athletic build. He looks older than he is. Sammy is his own person and says and does whatever he wants regardless of what others will think of him. Other children at school look up to and admire him, including girls who Sammy ignores as he thinks they are a pain. He likes playing sports and being outside. He prefers physical labor rather than intellectual work. Sammy respects James's "book smarts" but is often frustrated with James's lack of confidence and constant questioning and thinking. Sammy believes James is not smart about life or people or even himself, and Sammy thinks these are more important. This attitude changes when Sammy sees James remain calm throughout the bar fight, talking the men down until the boys are able to leave. Sammy proposes at the very end, that they team up their strengths to protect Maybeth from men who might ruin her life, the way their father did to their mother. Maybeth Tillerman: Now 14 years old, Maybeth resembles the Tillerman's mother, Liza, in looks and personality. She is described by James as pretty, strong looking, with a good figure. She has a great talent for music and singing; even her voice sounds like her mother's. While having this talent and skills in cooking and sewing, Maybeth struggles to maintain decent grades in all school courses other than home economics. James helps her with homework and studying and he is awed that she does not mind having to work so hard to earn only Cs and Ds. Maybeth is gentle and kind so is popular despite being slow at school. Dicey Tillerman: The oldest of the Tillerman children, Dicey only appears briefly when she comes home from college for spring break. Although she is clever and finds college easy, she thinks it is not worthwhile when she is needed at home and really wants to learn boat building. However, Gram is insistent that Dicey finish college. Dicey is a lot like Sammy: direct and stubborn and impatient with James. She has a take-charge attitude and feels she should be at home to take care of her family.
11855963	/m/02rvsfw	The Finishing Stroke	Frederic Dannay	1958	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Immediately after the publication of his first novel, detailing his investigation and solution of The Roman Hat Mystery, fledgling author Ellery Queen is invited to a house party to be held over the Christmas holiday period (late 1929 and early 1930) by his publisher. The party is large and contains a number of people connected for business or social reasons with a wealthy young man who is about to come into a large inheritance on his imminent birthday. In the days leading up to his birthday, a number of strange little gifts are left anonymously for him, one, two or three daily, together with some cryptic notes describing them. The gifts are sized as for a doll's house and are things like a tiny house, a post, a camel, a fish, an eye, a fence—seemingly without any rhyme or reason behind them. The cryptic notes become more and more threatening and ominous, and some of them have little doodles on the back that seem to represent the gift associated with them. Ellery continues to investigate, with little success, as the mysterious gifts accumulate and the wealthy young man's behaviour becomes more and more unusual. Upon the eve of his birthday, his body is discovered stabbed with an ornate dagger, and a note beside it suggests that the dagger is the final entry in the series of gifts: "the finishing stroke to end your life". Although a number of things are discovered that explain parts of the mystery, Ellery is unable to explain the meaning of the series of gifts, or conclusively identify the murderer. Decades later, he comes across his diary of that time and begins thinking about the murder again—this time, he realizes the significance of the gifts and can thus finally solve the case.
11857241	/m/02rvv58	Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star	Brandon Mull	2007-05-31	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the end of the school year Kendra finds a kobold, that has infiltrated her eighth grade. She can see without a magical milk that can make her see things she cant see without it because the year before the fairies kissed her and gave her power to see mythical creatures. To her he seems ugly but to everyone else he seems like every girl's dream. She knows this has problems written all over it. At the end of the day a man named Errol is just outside their school door saying he can get rid of the problem for them. Seth ( Kendra's brother) must get a magical item from a mortuary that is age protected from 13 and older. Seth is the only one that can enter. When he gets the item, it bites him and teeth marks are left in his skin. Later, Errol asks Kendra and Seth to help them retrieve another object that can help save their grandparent's preserve. Kendra is not so sure and calls her Grandpa Sorenson but doesn't respond. After many failed attempts her grandpa finally calls back and tells them to not go with him and that it is possible a trap. He says that a ride is coming for them and to not get out of the house till then. So Seth and Kendra wait until a red sports car shows up. A lady named Vanessa picks them up but Errol pursues them until they reach the preserve. They get away and get to the preserve safely in a short two hours. The Society of the Evening Star, an ancient organization determined to overthrow magical preserves and use them for their own intents and purposes, it is determined to infiltrate Fablehaven. Worst yet, word is abroad that the Society of the Evening Star is rising and working its mischief faster than ever. Preserves are falling at an alarming rate. Grandpa Sorenson, the caretaker, invites three specialists approved by the mysterious Sphinx to help around the property: "Tanu" the Potion Master, Coulter, a magical relics collector and old friend, and Vanessa, a mystical creature trapper. In addition, these three specialists have a more perilous assignment— to find an artifact of great power hidden on the property that is a piece of a key to the great demon prison, Zzyzx. Zzyzx houses hundreds of thousands of the worst demons. Should Zzyzx open, the world as they know would end. Later,The Sphinx meets with Kendra and Seth to discuss the situation. After giving Kendra an uncharged magical object, he determines her fairykind, and not "very kind." Being fairykind is a completely unusual thing that hadn't happened for centuries. Then, the Sphinx speaks to Seth and explains that Olloch the Glutton will prove perilous to Seth as long as it exists. Olloch's only goal is to consume Seth. After being fed by him in the beginning of the book. Olloch will continue to consume creatures until he is big enough and strong enough to destroy everything preventing him from Seth. When Olloch the Glutton pervades the gates of Fablehaven, all evidence points towards the fact that someone inside the preserve is a traitor. Which of the three visitors is it? If the artifact falls into the wrong hands, it could mean the downfall of other preserves and possibly the world. With good intent, Kendra and Seth become both a help and hindrance to their grandfather’s cry to protect Fablehaven. Coulter woke Seth and persuaded him to come to an extremely dangerous portion of Fablehaven, where Warren lost his mind. In the morning at the house, Kendra is thoroughly depressed about the supposed death of her brother. Grandpa finally resolves that Coulter was not acting of his own agency because his plan was so clumsy. That night, Dale was caught in the Thief's Net guarding an artificial key. Dale had gone to sleep and woke up there. Suddenly, all the evidence matched up and the traitor seized control of the house. In order to save their family, friends, the preserve, and ultimately the world, Kendra and Seth must take huge risks they would never have dreamed of doing had the situation been less perilous. The fate of the world rested on their shoulders.
11859619	/m/02rvxt7	Disappearance	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Gracie Kenzie has never known her father - he disappeared when she was three and was never heard from again. Now, two years after her mother's death, he's back... with some dark secrets in tow. His and Gracie's histories are mysteriously tied to the disappearance of a student many years ago... and may also be linked to a much more recent death. This would be enough for any girl to deal with, but Gracie is not just any girl. She has premonitions - about the past, the present, and the future. With the help of her cousin, Diego, she solves the murders and reveals the secrets of a few dark pasts! This is the second in the series. The first one is called Premonitions.
11860490	/m/02rvysy	Merry Christmas Mr. Baxter				 George Barton Baxter, the successful CEO of a New York textile house is returning to his Park Avenue apartment from work one mid-October evening. His thoughts turn to the onset of cooler weather, which will bring Christmas around once again. He considers the economic impact on his personal finances grimly, and upon arriving home, he takes a short rest before dinner, fantasizing about the type of gifts he would really like, but which he knows are impossible pipe dreams. He also reflects briefly on the gifts he will likely receive - none of which he really needs or will use. At dinner that evening, he discusses a "Christmas Budget" with his wife, who considers the idea ridiculous - but Mr. Baxter persists. They do mutually decide that their Christmas card list can be cut severely, saving some money there. After deletions and then "necessary" additions, it has expanded by more than 30 names. Purchasing their Christmas cards also turns out to be a much more expensive proposition than planned. This pattern continues throughout the approaching weeks to the Christmas season, and the general circumstances of the impending holiday seem to dog Mr. Baxter's thrifty soul at every turn. Complicating the situation is the heart's desire of his own wife: A mink stole, an idea he rejects outright, though he knows even then, subconsciously, that is exactly what he will eventually buy for her. A disastrous attempted lunchtime shopping trip for a minor gift, the exhausting round of pre-Christmas office parties, and the "invisible hands" of the many service people in his everyday world being extended for a Christmas gratuity all combine to increase his feeling of helplessness in the face of the Christmas juggernaut. But the "season-proof" common sense of his secretary Miss Gillyard, and especially his impulsive gesture in inviting a lower-ranking office member out for a drink on Christmas Eve afternoon begin to kindle a faint glow of Christmas spirit within him, culminating in a hilarious attempt at buying a final gift for his wife in Saks Fifth Avenue later that day. Arriving home at last, Mr. Baxter relaxes after dinner in the living room, admiring the tree and the pile of gifts beneath, which he fully realizes is largely his wife's work. As they prepare to leave the living room for bed, they enter a poignant dialog about the impact and meaning of Christmas, culminating with his wife telling him affectionately: "You love it - you love every bit of it!" to which Mr. Baxter does not disagree, as his wife bids him goodnight with "Merry Christmas, Mr. Baxter".
11864192	/m/02rw15q	The House at Riverton	Kate Morton	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The House at Riverton tells the story of Grace Bradley, 98, who was a maid at Riverton Manor during the 1920s. For years Grace has hidden a terrible secret. Now a film is being made about a famous incident at Riverton when a well-known poet, Robbie Hunter, shot himself. Grace is contacted by the director, Ursula, as the only surviving person from that night. Grace's memories are stirred up and she decides to make a tape for her grandson, Marcus, sharing her secret with him. As a young girl, Grace is sent to work at Riverton. She first meets the grandchildren of Riverton, David, Hannah and Emmeline, when they come to stay at Riverton. She immediately feels a connection with them, Hannah in particular. It is later revealed that Grace is a half-sibling to the children. Grace suspects Hannah knows this, but even after Grace deduces her parentage, she does not say anything to Hannah. It is one of many secrets in the novel. One Christmas, David brings home a school friend, Robbie Hunter. Eleven year-old Emmeline is infatuated, but 15 year-old Hannah is less impressed. Nearly ten years later, after David has been killed in WWI, Robbie finds Hannah to return a book she had given her brother. Hannah is living in London and unhappily married to an older businessman; Robbie provides a glimpse of the life she wanted to have. They fall in love and begin an affair. Emmeline, who has grown into a beautiful woman and one of the Bright Young People, prefers London society and often stays with Hannah. She provides Robbie and Hannah the excuse they need to see each other, as Robbie ostensibly calls on Emmeline but is really slipping notes to Hannah with the locations and times for them to meet. Robbie is suffering shell-shock from the War and is deeply in love with Hannah. He wants them to run away and begin new lives together. She assists in planning their escape to appease him, but does not believe they can elope, and is further convinced when her husband announces his plans to relocate them back to Riverton. To celebrate the revival of Riverton, Hannah and her husband plan an extravagant midsummer gala. During the party Grace goes to her room and finds two letters from Hannah. The one addressed to her is in shorthand, which Hannah mistakenly believes Grace can read. It is another of the unspoken secrets of the novel. Grace opens the second letter addressed to Emmeline; it is a suicide note saying that Hannah will have drowned herself in the lake by the time the letter is read. Grace rushes to find Emmeline, and takes her down to the lake to see if they can stop Hannah. Emmeline has been drinking a lot and is wearing a friend's dinner jacket. At the lake they see Hannah who passes it off as a game when questioned. As Grace and Emmeline are about to head back to the house, Robbie emerges from the newly built summerhouse, carrying a suitcase. For a moment Emmeline thinks he has come to see her until Hannah explains that they are in love and are going to run away together. Emmeline becomes very jealous, pulls a handgun from the jacket pocket and threatens to shoot herself. Hannah wrestles the gun from her. Fireworks are going off all around them and each loud bang affects Robbie further, taking him back to his time in the trenches. He shouts at Hannah to shoot Emmeline before she ruins their plans. As both Emmeline and Robbie are rushing to her, at the last minute Hannah shoots Robbie to save her sister. Hearing people coming, Emmeline takes control, tells Grace to take Hannah's bags up to the house quickly and announces that Robbie has shot himself. The police find no suspicious circumstances and Emmeline returns to London where she continues to enjoy the high life until she is killed in a car accident. Hannah is depressed and distant. One day she asks Grace if she can really read shorthand, knowing the answer before Grace confirms that she can't. Hannah realises she is pregnant, despite previous failures to conceive with her husband. There are complications during the birth and she dies. The baby, Florence, has Robbie's eyes, confirming her parentage to Hannah's husband and his family. Baby Florence is sent to live with Hannah's aunt in America. Some years later Grace learns what was in the shorthand letter from Hannah. It explained that she and Robbie were planning to run away together, but in order to do this she must fake her death hence the suicide note left for Emmeline. Grace was to give the letter to Emmeline after the party to give them chance to get away. Hannah was planning to send for Emmeline once they got themselves settled somewhere. Grace has carried this guilt throughout her life. Having finally told the truth via the tapes to her grandson, she is able to die in peace.
11867196	/m/02rw4nb	Sticky Wicket at Blandings	P. G. Wodehouse	1966-10	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Freddie Threepwood is back at Blandings on Dog-Joy business, and his wife Aggie, finding country life a little dull, has headed to the French Riviera. Freddie has befriended Valerie Fanshawe, in hopes of persuading her father, local hunting bigwig Colonel Fanshawe, to invest in Freddie's dog biscuits for his sizeable pack of hounds. Gally warns his nephew Freddie of the dangers of consorting with attractive young girls while his wife is away, but Freddie, hungry for the sale, opts to give Valerie an Alsatian she covets, although the dog belongs to Aggie - he believes he can replace it without her noticing. As Freddie leaves with his gift, Gally hears worrying news - his sister Connie is thinking about sacking venerable butler Beach, who has become a little wheezy in his old age. Freddie gets a telegram from his wife, informing him of her plan to return to Blandings the following day, and in his shock on reading it tumbles down the stairs, taking Gally with him. They are both laid up with sprained ankles, so Gally insists his unwilling brother Clarence must go to Marling Hall to retrieve the dog by stealth. Gally is visited in his sickbed by Valerie, who reveals that the dog has upset her father by attacking his beloved spaniel, and that she has thus returned it. Beach then informs him that Colonel Fanshawe has telephoned, requesting Lord Emsworth's judicial services as he has caught a prowler lurking outside his house. Realising Emsworth has been captured, Gally sends Beach to the rescue, armed with a Mickey Finn to knock out the Fanshawes' butler. Beach returns, somewhat shaken but successful, and when Connie brings up the idea of replacing him, Gally easily silences her by telling the tale of Emsworth's imprisonment in Fanshawe's coal-cellar, and Beach's full knowledge of this potential embarrassment to the family name.
11874129	/m/02rwdfr	The Easter Parade	Richard Yates	1976	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The famous opening line of the novel warns of the bleak narrative to follow, "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce." Emily and Sarah Grimes are sisters who share little in terms of character but much in terms of disappointment with their lives. Emily, the more intellectual and cosmopolitan of the two, seeks love in numerous disappointing affairs and short-term relationships while Sarah, the prettier and more conventional sister, marries young and bears children to an uncouth and abusive husband. Their troubled, rootless mother, Pookie, like many Yatesian matriarchs, is likely modeled on his own mother, who was nicknamed "Dookie". The novel, beginning in the 1930s when the sisters are children and ending in the 1970s with Sarah's death, primarily revolves around Emily as the book's central character, though the book employs Yates' characteristic shifts of consciousness throughout.
11877422	/m/02rwhlg	Spider Kiss	Harlan Ellison	1961	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A seemingly shy and humble country boy named Luther Sellers is discovered to have a magnificent voice and mesmerizing stage presence. He is given the stage name Stag Preston and after a short time on the "Chittlin' Circuit" becomes a major rockabilly music star under the tutelage of a manager who seems to be patterned after Elvis Presley's manager, "Colonel" Tom Parker. Over time Luther's success goes to his head and his "Aw, shucks..." demeanor simply becomes a gimmick used to keep his fans, who he secretly despises, believing that he hasn't really left his country roots and humble upbringing. In reality Stag lives up to his stage name, using his fame and seductive powers to lure any woman he can into his bed, leaving broken hearts and scandals everywhere he goes. The latter are all tidied up by his money-grubbing manager, who doesn't want anything to taint his cash cow. Meanwhile, Stag's growing megalomania eventually has him treating everyone around him like dirt and becoming harder and harder to work with. Eventually he is entangled in a scandal that takes all their power to cover up, and sets into motion the events leading to Stag's downfall.
11878006	/m/02rwj28	Ophelia's Revenge		2003-02	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel retells the story of Hamlet from Ophelia's point of view. When Ophelia is taken to Elsinore Castle to rejoin her unknown father, she becomes torn between her love for Prince Hamlet and for the pirate Ragnor. She cannot understand why she is the only one who can see the many ghosts who haunt the castle, and soon finds herself involved in a plot to kill the queen and take her place. Eventually, it seems that only madness is the way to save those she loves in the dangerous world of the Danish royal court.
11879921	/m/02rwkn3	The Days of his Grace	Eyvind Johnson			 Duke Rodgaud—cousin of Bertold, castle in Forojuli (contemporary name, Cividale, Italy), starts a rebellion against King Carolus, that is quickly put down. He is executed by the Franks in Papia, summer, 776. Angilperta (“Angila”), the daughter of Rodgaud and Giseverga, is loved by the three Lupigi boys. She cannot be found during the rebellion, but becomes post-rebellion the wife of the Lord of East Burgundy, Gunderic, her name becoming Landoalda. She has Radbert as a lover, has two children, Landoald and Gisertruda, who die young, and a third child, Radaberta is given away. Gunderic imprisons her in the castle tower for seven years, after which Perto comes with an order from King Carolus to let her return to Forojuli. She dies on that trip back to her childhood home. Bertold Lupigi, cousin of Duke Rodgaud. The family name, Lupigi comes from wolf, loup. He disappears in the rebellion and is found in a dungeon. He is freed from prison, post-rebellion, in 793, but is killed by an avalanche. Perto, son of Liuta and Bertold, is 16 years old at the novel’s beginning, the youngest of three brothers. He loves Angila. He is also named Johannes Lupigis, more so as the novel progresses. During the rebellion, he manages to escape the Franks who kill his friend Sinauld. He visits Angilperta with Agibert in the autumn of 783, and sleeps with Angilperta. Late autumn 783 he arrives in Aquisgranum, where there is a royal college. He meets King Carolus and decides he is “indeed great.” Perto goes to Totonisvilla where his brother Warnefrit is in prison, but is seized by guards as he leaves the prison. In prison for three and a half years, in total darkess of the prison cell, he creates a vision of a flowering bush. Then he dines with the Devil, who tempts him. He is released from jail at the age of 31 and goes to Aquisgranum where his Uncle Anselm explains the reasons for his imprisonment. He becomes part of King Carolus’s Court again, and eventually gets an order allowing Angilperta to return to her childhood home. Warnefrit, the son of Liuta and Bertold, the oldest of three brothers, likes relations with slave women. He becomes engaged to Angila. All of chapter 16 is his angry and frustrated monologue as heir to his father. He disappears in the rebellion and is found in a dungeon, where he remains for over ten years post-rebellion. His brother Perto comes to get him from prison, though he does not recognize Perto. Eranbald brings Warnefrit to Gudneric, where Angilperta is, and they all dine together though Warnefrit does not seem to recognize Angilperta. Healthy again, he defends the kingdom against Huns.
11881016	/m/02rwlp3	Artemis Fowl: The Graphic Novel	Eoin Colfer	2007-10-02		 The plot is the same as that of the book, though there were some modifications to minor facts. Some character's appearances were not exactly the same as noted in the book, most notably the fact that Captain Holly Short's hair is longer than described in the book, and a darker brown, as opposed to the reddish brown described in the book. The graphic novel also does not contain many word balloons, showing each character's story in first-person. A graphic novel for the second book in the series, The Arctic Incident, was created and released in 2009. Again the plot was the same as that of the book with the same amount of modifications. A graphic novel for the third book, The Eternity Code, is set for release in 2012.
11883687	/m/02rwq5m	Vecna Lives!	David "Zeb" Cook	1990	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The adventure concerns the lich Vecna and his disembodied hand and eye—both powerful magical artifacts. The arch-lich Vecna and his cult are plotting to change Oerth forever. The adventure starts with a scene in which the players play the City of Greyhawk's great Circle of Eight wizards. Vecna has ascended to demigod status, and serves as the ultimate foe for the adventurers in the module. Assuming the players are successful in defeating Vecna, he is transported to and imprisoned within the Ravenloft campaign setting.
11890395	/m/02rwzt3	Holmes on the Range	Steve Hockensmith	2006	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 1892, cowboy Old Red is read a Sherlock Holmes story "The Red-Headed League" by his brother Big Red while on a cattle drive and decides to follow in his new hero's footsteps, by using logic and observation to solve mysteries. Unfortunately for him, cowboys do not often stumble on to mysteries and he practices his craft until the pair are hired by a ranch to perform maintenance. When the general manager of the ranch shows up dead after a stampede and everyone believes it an accident despite some suspicious circumstances, Old Red uses his new skills to see that there is more to it then what appears. As the mystery gets deeper and the bodies start to mount, the brothers learn that there is more to solving crimes then simply following the clues - there are also bullets to dodge.
11891810	/m/02rx0hs	Dogland	Will Shetterly	1997-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is told from the perspective of an adult called Christopher Nix who recounts the story of his family's move to Florida from New Orleans when he was four. The purpose of their move is so that his father can open a tourist attraction that exhibits every breed of dog recognised by the American Kennel Club. The story focuses on his father's 'colourblind' approach to racial segregation and various controversies that occur in his life because of it.
11893108	/m/02rx1wf	The Sinister Pig				 An unidentified corpse discovered at the edge of the Jicarilla Apache natural gas field in the San Juan Basin involves Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee in a mystery involving diverted oil and gas revenues, abandoned pipelines, Washington D.C. insiders, and illegal drugs. Assigned to patrol the basin and range topography of the rugged Animas Mountains of Hidalgo County in the extreme southwestern corner of New Mexico, U.S. Border Patrol Officer Bernadette Manuelito photographs a suspicious construction crew on the Tuttle exotic game ranch. After a complaint about her activities by ranch personnel, Manuelito's supervisor advises her that the Border Patrol has a special arrangement with the ranch whereby ranch personnel monitor the border and provide tips to the Border Patrol. In return, the Border Patrol does not patrol the ranch. New to the Border Patrol service, Officer Manuelito accepts this explanation until she learns that a photograph of her, taken by her supervisor, has been distributed to the criminal element across the border in Mexico. Officer Manuelito shares her concerns with her former Navajo Tribal Police supervisor Jim Chee and retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn who are then able to make a connection between the unidentified corpse and the activities Manuelito has observed in Hidalgo County.
11897460	/m/02rx6xd	The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man	Lloyd Alexander		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lionel, a housecat given the power of speech by the magician Stephanus, begs his master to turn him into a man. After many objections concerning the depravity of humans, Stephanus relents; and the transformed Lionel begins his adventures to town of Brightford. The mayor and his officers are plaguing Brightford with capricious rule and economic hardship. The mayor is especially covetous of the inn belonging to Gillian, with whom Lionel begins a rocky friendship. Lionel becomes entangled in the struggles of Brightford, and escalates the conflicts between the mayor and the people, while falling in love with Gillian as he becomes more and more human. ja:人間になりたがった猫
11902569	/m/02rxd37	The Late Lancashire Witches	Thomas Heywood			 In the main plot of the Heywood/Brome play, an upright and hospitable gentleman named Generous discovers that his wife has a secret nocturnal life, as the leader of a coven of witches; his miller wounds her with his sword while she is in the shape of a cat. When one of her servants refuses to get her horse, Mistress Generous bridles him instead and rides him to her coven. The conventional male-dominated relationship between husband and wife is subverted as Mistress Generous seeks greater freedom &mdash; until she is arrested and brought to trial. In the Seely family depicted in the subplot, the upset of social norms is even more extreme: the father is cowed by his son, the mother by her daughter, and the children by the servants. The family's butler and maid, Lawrence and Parnell (the only characters in the play who speak in Lancashire dialect), marry, determined to lord it over their employers; but Lawrence is rendered impotent on his wedding night by a bewitched codpiece, and once again the woman inverts the usual social order. It is with the discovery and prosecution of the witches that society's norms are restored.
11903245	/m/02rxds2	Anthills of the Savannah	Chinua Achebe		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place in the imaginary West African country of Kangan, where a Sandhurst-trained officer, identified only as Sam and known as His Excellency, has taken power following a military coup. Achebe describes the political situation through the experiences of three friends: Chris Oriko, the government's Commissioner for Information; Beatrice Okoh, an official in the Ministry of Finance and girlfriend of Chris; and Ikem Osodi, a newspaper editor critical of the regime. Other characters include Elewa, Ikem's girlfriend and Major "Samsonite" Ossai, a military official known for stapling hands with a Samsonite stapler. Tensions escalate through the novel, culminating in the assassination of Ikem by the regime, the toppling and death of Sam and finally the murder of Chris. The novel ends with a non-traditional naming ceremony for Elewa and Ikem's month old daughter, organized by Beatrice.
11911874	/m/02rxp3w	The Gift	Alison Croggon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Gift (also published as The Naming) begins with Maerad, in "Gilman's Cot" as a slave, where she has been for many years, with few memories of her former life, her mother having died several years before. She is discovered by Cadvan, one of the great mystics known as 'Bards', who reveals to her that she, like him, possesses "the Gift" shared by all of these, by which she is able to command nature to do her will. Cadvan soon discovers that her mother was the leader of the First Circle of the destroyed School of Pellinor, of whom it was previously assumed that there were no survivors. Knowing this, Cadvan decides to help her escape, believing that it might not be by means of random chance that he came upon the only known survivor of Pellinor. When Cadvan finds that Maerad's Gift is unusually powerful for one never formally taught, he begins to suspect of her more significance than he had before. He takes her to the School of Innail, to make the presence of a survivor from Pellinor known and to make Maerad a Minor Bard of Pellinor. During their time there, Maerad obtains knowledge of a long-forgotten prophecy concerning the 'Foretold One' who will defeat the Nameless One. This Nameless One is a corrupt political leader, formerly called Sharma, who discarded his own true name in order to become immortal. Twice has he attempted to conquer the land of Edil-Amarandh, and he has twice been vanquished. His last bid for power is the one in which the Foretold One, Elednor, will defeat him, leaving him dead or helpless forever. Maerad's own history, being coincident with that of the Foretold One, implies that she is Elednor, although Maerad does not immediately embrace the idea. After their brief but enjoyed stay at Innail, Cadvan takes Maerad across the country of Annar to the school] of Norloch, intending to have her instated as a full Bard and given her Name, and also to see his old teacher Nelac. En route, they discover that the Nameless One's corrupt Bards, the Hulls, are roaming freely, so that non-users of magic are terrified and terrorized; that Maerad is descended on her mother Milana's side from Lady Ardina, a faerie creature, in the book called an Elidhu, who still lives in the forest as monarch of a Lothlórien-like settlement; and that Maerad has a younger brother, called Hem or Cai, who like her is an inheritor of the Gift. When Maerad and Cadvan, who has become her tutor, reach Norloch, they discover that corruption has penetrated even here, in that the First Bard Enkir has fallen under Sharma's influence. He is revealed as the one who had Pellinor destroyed and who sold Maerad into slavery. Largely as a result of this, and partly on account of his own misogyny, Enkir refuses to admit that Maerad is the Foretold One, or even to let her be instated as a Bard. Therefore, Cadvan and Nelac invoke an archaic ritual called the Way of the White Flame, by which Maerad is anointed a full Bard. Her Name, at this point, is revealed to be that of the Foretold One; Elednor, which means "Fire Lily". Driven out by their enemy's hostility, Cadvan and Maerad flee to the island of Thorold, while Hem is sent southward for safety with Saliman, one of Cadvan's childhood friend who was also taught by Nelac.
11914042	/m/02rxs4n	Travels in the Scriptorium	Paul Auster	2007-01-23	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An old man is disoriented in an unknown chamber and has no memory about who he is or how he has arrived there. He tries to understand something from the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching for reasons and a method to exit. Determining that he is locked in, the man — identified only as Mr. Blank — begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an alternate world the man doesn't recognize. Nevertheless, the pages seem to have been left for him, along with a haunting set of photographs. As the day passes, various characters call on the man in his cell — vaguely familiar people, some who seem to resent him for crimes he can't remember — and each brings frustrating hints of his identity and his past. All the while an overhead camera clicks and clicks, recording his movements, and a microphone records every sound in the room. Someone is watching.
11914319	/m/02rxspv	Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism	Vladimir Lenin	1917		 In the Preface to the post-war French and German editions of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1920), Lenin informs the reader that First World War (1914–1918) occurred as “an annexationist, predatory, plunderous” war among monarchic empires, the historical and economic background must be perceived. In order for capitalism to generate greater profits than the home market can yield, the merging of banks and industrial cartels produces finance capitalism — the exportation and investment of capital to countries with underdeveloped economies. In turn, such financial behaviour leads to the division of the world among monopolist business companies and the great powers. Moreover, in the course of colonizing undeveloped countries, Business and Government eventually will engage in geopolitical conflict over the economic exploitation of large portions of the geographic world and its populaces. Therefore, imperialism is the highest (advanced) stage of capitalism, requiring monopolies (of labour and natural-resource exploitation) and the exportation of finance capital (rather than goods) to sustain colonialism, which is an integral function of said economic model. Furthermore, in the capitalist homeland, the super-profits yielded by the colonial exploitation of a people and their economy, permit businessmen to bribe native politicians — labour leaders and the labour aristocracy (upper stratum of the working class) — to politically thwart worker revolt (labour strike); hence, the new proletariat, the exploited workers in the Third World colonies of the European powers, would become the revolutionary vanguard for deposing the global capitalist system. ; I. Concentration of Production and Monopolies ; II. The banks and their New Role ; III. Finance Capital and the Financial Oligarchy ; IV. The Export of Capital ; V. The Division of the World among Capitalist Combines ; VI. The Division of the World among the Great Powers ; VII. Imperialism, as a Special Stage of Capitalism ; VIII. The Parasitism and Decay of Capitalism ; IX. The Critique of Imperialism ; X. The Place of Imperialism
11915160	/m/02rxvd4	The Secret Battle	A. P. Herbert	1919	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 :"I am going to write down some of the history of Harry Penrose, because I do not think full justice has been done to him..." The novel follows the career of a young officer, Harry Penrose, written from the viewpoint of a close friend who acts as narrator. A sensitive, educated young man, Penrose had enlisted in the ranks in 1914, immediately after completing his second year at Oxford. After six months in training he had been prevailed upon by his relatives - like most educated volunteers - to take a commission as an officer. Penrose slowly asserts himself; the war takes a toll on his personality, but he begins to live up to his early dreams of heroism. However, his creeping self-doubt grows by degrees; he is reassigned from his post as scouting officer once on the Somme, knowing he cannot face another night patrol, and earns the wrath of his commanding officer - an irascible Regular colonel - over a trivial incident. The colonel piles difficult, risky work on him - remarking to the narrator that "Master Penrose can go on with [leading ration parties] until he learns to do them properly" - and Penrose submits, working doggedly to try and keep from cracking. After a long period of this treatment, by the winter of 1916, Penrose's spirit is worn down; when the narrator is invalided home with an injury in February 1917, his last support is gone. He is wounded in May at Arras - a friend remarking in a letter that "you'd have said he wanted to be killed" - and they meet again in London in November. Penrose has been offered a safe job in military intelligence; he comes within a moment of taking it, but at the last minute resolves to return to France. Returning to his battalion, he is detailed for a party to the front line by the colonel within an hour; when the narrator arrives six weeks later, he discovers Penrose is under arrest for cowardice in the face of the enemy. It transpired that each time the party advanced, it had to break for the ditches to avoid shellfire, then regroup and move further; after some time, Penrose decided to fall back and wait under cover for the shelling to halt. Seeing a dugout down the road, they make a run for it under shellfire - to find it occupied by a senior officer, himself sheltering from the shelling, who promptly reports that "he had seen the officer in charge and some of the party running down the road — demoralized" and is ordered to arrest him and return. Penrose is court-martialled on these charges, and convicted; the court's recommendation for mercy is ignored, and he is shot one morning, a week later, by a party of men from his own company. Penrose is presented in a glowing light throughout - "never anything but modest and dutiful; he always tries his best to do his bit" - but, ultimately, is failed by the system. He faces his trial honestly, without pleading circumstances ("The real charge was that I'd lost my nerve — and I had. And I didn't want to wangle out of it like that") but it is clear that whilst he is strictly guilty of the charge ("on the only facts they had succeeded in discovering it could hardly have been anything else") justice, by any sense of the word, had not been done to him. :"...[and] that is all I have tried to do. This book is not an attack on any person, on the death penalty, or on anything else, though if it makes people think about these things, so much the better. I think I believe in the death penalty — I do not know. But I did not believe in Harry being shot. :That is the gist of it; that my friend Harry was shot for cowardice — and he was one of the bravest men I ever knew."
11916826	/m/02rxxxq	A Majority of One	Leonard Spigelgass			 The play is a drama concerning racial prejudice involving Mrs. Jacoby, a Jewish widow from Brooklyn, New York, and Koichi Asano, a millionaire widower from Tokyo. Mrs. Jacoby is sailing to Japan with her daughter and foreign service officer son-in-law who is being posted to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. She still considers the country the enemy responsible for the death of her son during World War II, but her feelings change when she meets Mr. Asano on board the ship. When she advises her family of Mr. Asano's desire to court her, Mrs. Jacoby's daughter, whose loyalty is to her mother rather than her husband, objects to the possibility of an interracial marriage. The 1959-60 Broadway production was directed by Dore Schary and ran for 3 previews and 556 performances, with Gertrude Berg, Cedric Hardwicke, and Ina Balin.
11916978	/m/02rxyd6	Frisk	Dennis Cooper	1991	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Frisk is narrated by Dennis, who had a troubled childhood. In 1969, aged 13, he was regularly allowed to read pornographic magazines and was particularly affected by snuff pornography, even though he later learns that the pictures were faked. He recognises that Henry, now aged 17, was the 13/14-year-old boy portrayed in the pictures. Dennis is gay and a drug-taker and is devastated when his boyfriend Julian leaves him to go off to France. Dennis takes up with Julian’s younger brother Kevin. The boy is psychologically troubled, yet 18-year-old Dennis involves him in drugs and starts a sexual relationship. In 1989, Julian receives a letter from Dennis describing how he embarked on a sadistic killing spree in Amsterdam. The descriptions in the letter are explicit and the torture and sadism are described in graphic terms. Dennis then meets up with two Germans, tells them what he has done, and they join forces to commit a series of random, motiveless murders. One of the serial killer’s most recent victims was an 11-year-old boy, whom they tortured before mutilating and murdering in Dennis’ home, a converted windmill, two weeks before the letter was written. Julian travels to Amsterdam with Kevin to find out if the murders in the letters are true or just a cruel fantasy.
11920078	/m/02ry2yw	Professor Sató's Three Formulae, Volume 1: Mortimer in Tokyo				 A dragon has been seen in Japan and Mortimer visits his old friend Professor Sato to find out what's going on. fr:Les 3 Formules du professeur Satō
11920308	/m/02ry38x	The Francis Blake Affair		1996		 Scandal breaks in the London press: There is a mole in the Intelligence Service! And it appears without a doubt, on a photograph taken by agents of MI 5, that the mole wears the face of Francis Blake! Mortimer is determined to believe that his friend has been forced to act against his will. But the initial investigations sweep away this hypothesis: Blake has opened, under an assumed name, an account fed by payments coming from the Bahamas. In a few months, he has withdrawn ₤30,000—more than 10 times his annual pay! With MI 5 agents planning to try Blake for high treason, or to kill him if needed, Mortimer decides to find his friend before they do. A long hunt begins …
11920420	/m/02ry3c_	The Voronov Plot		2000		 An experimental Soviet satellite crash lands in Siberia carrying with it an incredibly lethal virus. KGB scientist Dr. Voronov, a Stalin admirer, along with Olrik (posing as Soviet Colonel Ilkor) plans to use the virus as a biological weapon to overthrow the Soviet government and conquer the West. After the plot is discovered by a British spy, Blake and Mortimer travel to the Soviet Union to stop Voronov.
11920628	/m/02ry3pm	The Strange Encounter		2001		 Late one night in 1954, a Colorado farmer sees three strange coloured beams of light appearing from the sky. When he goes to investigate the lights have disappeared and left behind the body of a man dressed in the uniform of a British Redcoat. The body is taken to SUFOS (Section of UFO Studies) run by Dr Walt Kaufman which investigates such strange phenomena. Kaufman's research indicates that it is the body of Scottish Major Lachlan Macquarrie who disappeared under strange circumstances after the British defeat at the Battles of Saratoga in 1777! Following the battle, Macquarrie and his men were cut off from the rest of the British forces. According to drummer boy Dermot Pitt, Macquarrie vanished late at night while investigating the sudden appearance of beams of light coming from out of the sky. Pitt's story was rejected and Macquarrie was found guilty in absentia of desertion and dishonourably discharged from the army. Kaufmann contacts Professor Philip Mortimer who happens to be a descendant of Lachlan Macquarrie, the family's black sheep. Mortimer goes to America accompanied by his old friend Captain Francis Blake, the head of Britain's MI5, who is on his way for a "routine meeting" with some American colleagues. On his way to Washington by coach, Blake is attacked by some strange men but gets away. In Kansas, Mortimer meets Kaufman at the offices of SUFOS. He brought with him some family papers which note certain physical injuries that his ancestor endured in his lifetime. These injuries are present on the body and there is no doubt that it is Lachlan Macquarrie, born in 1743 and found dead in 1954 still aged 34! According to a pathologist, Macquarrie died of asphyxiation, meaning that he was deprived of oxygen for a long period. His shoulder strap was inscribed with the words "Yellow King, 8061, Danger, Light, Plutonian, H, Poplar Trees, Temple 1954". He also had in his possession some strange items including some glasses which enable the wearer to see clearly in the dark and a weapon which, when aimed at the head, causes the victim to fall asleep. Wanting to examine the weapon more closely, Mortimer takes it with him before leaving the SUFOS offices, but, overcome with natural fatigue, returns it to Kaufman before booking into a hotel. During the night he is attacked by an intruder who is wearing the same glasses and using the same weapon as Macquarrie had. Mortimer fights back and the man falls out of the hotel room and is killed on hitting the ground. Mortimer then finds that his face is a mask covering a green, highly deformed, alien-like head. Warned by Mortimer, Kaufman has the body taken to SUFOS. One of the words on Macquarrie's shoulder strap was "Plutonian" and the two scientists wonder if this stands for Pluto. The body of the alien suggests that it is not suitable for Pluto's harsh environment, but the planet may be a staging post for an alien invasion. Back at SUFOS Mortimer examines the alien weapon only for it to be stolen by Kaufman's assistant Jimmy Tcheng. Mortimer pursues Tcheng by car into the plains but they are caught in a storm and Tcheng is killed in an accident. It turns out that he is also an alien. Mortimer tries to hitch-hike back to town only to come across two men wearing the same dark glasses as the first alien and knocking him out with the ray from a similar weapon. He wakes up to find himself in a disused and isolated pumping station somewhere in the hills and facing him is none other than his old enemy Olrik! Escorted through the station Mortimer faces more surprises: Asian soldiers dressed in uniforms similar to Olrik's, more aliens including a dwarf-like scientist called Doctor Z'ong, and all of them led by none other than Basam Damdu, the tyrant whom Mortimer helped to overthrow and destroy at the conclusion of the saga of the Swordfish! After confronting Mortimer and announcing that he will pay for the "great wrong" he did to him, Basam Damdu gets into a bulky spacesuit and disappears via three beams of light. Doctor Z'ong explains to Mortimer that he and his fellow "aliens" are in fact from the year 8061 (which was noted on Macquarrie's shoulder strap), a time when the earth is just one dry desert with mankind on the verge of extinction. This, and their alien-like deformities, are due to years of nuclear war which ravaged the planet in the 21st century. Z'ong has mastered the concept of time travel. As part of the process his beams of light rebound on the nucleus of passing comets which determine where and when the time traveller will end up. In his early tests he "picked up" a number of people from the past including Major Macquarrie who, being of good build, survived the journey into the future but died when he returned to warn the present world of a major threat. Indeed, the actual aim of Z'ong and his people is to escape the terrible world they inhabit in the 81st century and take over the current one. Basam Damdu seemed the ideal choice to lead them and was picked up by the beams of light just before his capital was destroyed by the Swordfish aircraft designed by Mortimer. Olrik then interrupts Z'ong and takes Mortimer outside the pumping station to a lake where his hands and legs are tied to a heavy weight and he is thrown into the water by the Asian soldiers. His lungs set to burst, Mortimer has given up when he is suddenly rescued by a pair of scuba divers. They take him to a nearby underwater cave and turn out to be FBI agents led by John Calloway, head of its "Action" service, and Jessie Wingo, a Native American woman who knows the area well. Also present is Blake. Blake tells Mortimer that Olrik's presence was reported on American soil and that he came to assist the FBI since he knows the renegade best. Discretion meant that he had to keep this from Mortimer, a common occurrence in their relationship. Mortimer tells the Feds of his adventure and Calloway decides to use the element of surprise and attack the pumping station before the invasion plan can get underway. An attack is launched but the station is found empty. Evidence left behind shows signs of a sudden departure which means that Olrik and Z'ong are about to carry out their plan, which was dubbed Operation Poplar Trees, a word included on Macquarrie's shoulder strap. Blake, Mortimer, Calloway and Wingo go to see Kaufman at his office at SUFOS. Together they try to figure out what the invasion plan is by using the words found on Macquarrie's shoulder strap. They are joined by Dr Jeronimo Martinez who works at Los Alamos and who is keen to compare theories on nuclear physics with Mortimer. He reveals in passing that Los Alamos is Spanish for poplar tree. This leads the others to believe that Olrik's plan is to steal H-bombs and send them into the future from where they will be used to threaten the present time period. The shoulder strap had the words: "Yellow King, 8061, Danger, Light, Plutonian, H, Poplar Trees, Temple 1954" which translate into: Basam Damdu, the year of origin of the invaders, the threat, the lights used for time travel, the plutonium that is part of the H-bombs, Operation Poplar Trees and a comet discovered by Wilhelm Tempel which is due to appear on the 17 October 1954 in just a few days time and will be used to get the bombs into the future. The appearance of the comet coincides with the transfer of four bombs from Los Alamos to a secret military base in Nevada. Calloway is unable to convince the military of the threat or to delay the convoy so he decides to intervene without official cover. He and Wingo set off with their men, accompanied by Blake, Mortimer, Martinez and Kaufman. They discreetly take over the hills surrounding a plain in the desert from where they can see Olrik, his Asian troops and the men from the future preparing to ambush the convoy. The Feds attack and Z'ong attempts to escape using his time machine. Blake however throws in a few stick of dynamite as the lights appear from the sky. The sticks accompany Z'ong back to the future where they destroy him and his machine. Basam Damdu is now trapped in the 81st century, the machine in the current time period is also destroyed and the threat is no more. In the confusion, Olrik manages to escape with one of the trucks containing an H-bomb. Blake and his group are warned of this and Wingo, who knows the area well, drives them to the Hoover Dam where they block Olrik's passage. Facing yet another failure and the fact that Mortimer is still alive, Olrik loses his mind and arms the bomb! Wingo manages to shoot and wound him and Mortimer disarms the weapon before it can go off. A few weeks later, back in Scotland, a low-key funeral is held. Major Lachlan Macquarrie, re-instated into the British army, is posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for exceptional bravery and buried with honour. Present at the funeral are Blake and Mortimer who are then approached by the Cabinet Secretary who informs them that a secret report on their adventure has been passed on to all the world's heads of government, regardless of political ideology. The consequences of the future as the result of nuclear war must serve as a warning. The plan is to set up an agreement for all sides to stop the creation of weapon of mass destruction in order to preserve a clean earth for their children and their children's children: a planet worthy of all that is best in mankind, the hope of a sincere bonding between all the peoples of the world. A difficult task &mdash; but nothing is insurmountable.
11924600	/m/02ry95f	Miss Temptation	Kurt Vonnegut			 Miss Temptation's real name is Susanna, and she lives in a small room above a fire house, in a little town with a theater, in which she hopes to make her acting debut. Susanna is beautiful, exciting, and every man's dream. To those who gather in the country store to see her make her daily "entrance", she brings a rainbow to a dreary world. However, to Norman Fuller, a shy and lonely young man, her beauty is too much to bear. In an angry outburst at her, precipitated by years of rejection and hurt feelings from the female sex, he takes out his frustration against all pretty young women. However, neither Fuller nor anyone else had realized just how fragile and vulnerable Susanna really is. She is alone in a new town, and no man her age will even go out of their way to be nice to her. Emotionally shattered by Fuller's outburst, Susanna decides to move out of her apartment, but on the day she is to leave, Fuller arrives at her door. After an emotionally draining conversation, Susanna forgives Fuller for his hurtful words, and the two end the night on friendlier terms.
11925563	/m/02ry9x3	The Singing	Alison Croggon			 Maerad and Cadvan have returned to Innail. Maerad has realised that she has been carrying the runes of the Treesong (the magical, ancient song through which it is believed the Speech came into being) with her the whole time - on her lyre. Maerad believes it is imperative that she find her brother soon, as she senses he has a part to play in the Treesong as well. After spending time resting and catching up with old friends they attempt to leave, only to be forced back to discover themselves in a besieged Innail It is supposed to be the doing of the Landrost, a minor elidhu who is collaborating with Sharma/the Nameless One. None of the occupants are able to leave because of an unnatural snowstorm that brings extreme and fatal cold. Maerad is able to locate the Landrost's attacks, and the bards of Innail are able to hold it back. After witnessing much destruction and facing near-death, Maerad merges into her Elidhu being to destroy the Landrost She is able to strip the Landrost to almost nothing. She is saved by a combination of Arkan, the Winterking, taunting her, and Cadvan calling her her Truename, Elednor. Maerad is now also known as 'the Maid of Innail' and is bedridden for many days. Meanwhile, Hem, Maerad's 13-year-old brother is traveling with his caretaker, Saliman of Turbansk and Soron of Til Amon. Hem too feels the need to get to Maerad. He now knows the significance of the tuning fork Irc (Hem's pet white crow, with whom he can converse in the Speech) stolen from Sharma's tower - the runes it is decorated with are the second half of the Treesong, to match Maerad's lyre. Hem is still mourning the death of Zelika, a friend of his. All party members are anxious to get to Til Amon, Soron's home school. Along the way they meet up with a trio of traveling players named Karim, Marich, and Hekibel, who are unaware of the advancing Black (Sharma's) Army and to warn them about the same. Upon arriving at Til Amon, Hem falls seriously ill, but recovers very quickly. Til Amon prepares to defend themselves against the Black Army, which they believe will arrive shortly. Later, the traveling players show up, hoping to make a quick profit before moving on. Saliman decides that it would not serve Hem and his purposes to be trapped in Til Amon during a siege, so they decide to accompany the players when they leave. When traveling with the players, after a performance, Hem sees Karim speaking to a black-clad figure he believes to be a Hull. Hem has dreams of Maerad, which assure him she is still alive, and that he is meant to find her. Shortly, the group encounters flash floods and must take shelter in a seemingly abandoned inn. Saliman is attacked by a quite mad victim of the White Sickness (a disease brewed by the Dark). Saliman manages to subdue the man, but gets infected as well. Marich, Karim and a slightly reluctant Hekibel decide to abandon Saliman and continue on in fear of falling ill. Hem refuses to leave, despite Saliman's pleas and stays with him. Hem is devastated as only the greatest healer-bards know how to cure the White Sickness. Hem refuses to let Saliman die and tries to heal him himself, with the help of Saliman's Truename. He succeeds, proving he has considerable healing skill. On her own path, Maerad and Cadvan finally manage to leave Innail and are caught by the floods themselves. Maerad ponders the meaning of a song the elidhu Ardina sang her the first time they met. Cadvan shares fear that if the Treesong is made whole, the Bard's Speech may lose its power. Maerad expresses a wish to open all of her abilities, including the ones she fears are Dark. She succeeds and learns Hem's Truename and summons him to her. Hekibel returns to where she left Hem and Saliman, bringing news that Marich and Karim are both dead, and Karim was indeed dealing with Hulls. They allow her to travel with them, after she expresses remorse for leaving them behind. They follow Maerad's summoning which is felt by Hem and eventually they meet up with Maerad and Cadvan. The united group is attacked by Hulls, which Maerad uses her power to destroy. Due to her new powers, Maerad becomes prey to the sights of the dead, as they near the site of an ancient but now destroyed citadel of the Light, Afinil. There is the sight of the Black Army marching up to Lirigon. A desperate Cadvan bids Irc to go and warn the people of the Army. As they finally reach the site of Afinil, Maerad has a brief mental encounter with Sharma. Then she and Hem join their musical objects and Maerad begins to sing the Treesong finally, destroying Sharma once and for all. After the Singing, it is shown that Maerad and Cadvan along with the rest of their friends return to the haven of Innail. Maerad is set to have lost her elemental self in the Singing, and it is shown that Maerad and Cadvan are a couple now, besides Saliman and Hekibel. Also, Lirigon was alerted and saved well in time, thanks to Irc and Hem is invited upon by Nelac (Cadvan and Saliman's teacher) to learn the art of Healing from him. The book ends with Maerad contemplating what to do next with her life, with Cadvan offering to take her to Lirigon and with the usual of Alison's historical appendices.
11929992	/m/02ryhq4	A Wrinkle In The Skin	Samuel Youd		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A massive series of powerful earthquakes on a worldwide scale reduce towns and cities to rubble and plunge the survivors into barbarism. Most of western Europe is dramatically uplifted, transforming the English Channel into a muddy desert, while elsewhere lands are plunged below sealevel and flooded. The protagonist is Matthew Cotter, a Guernsey horticulturalist who finds himself one of only a handful of survivors on the former island. Cotter decides to trek across the empty seabed to England, in the faint hope that his daughter has somehow survived. He finds the situation on the former mainland has descended to barbarism, with competing bands of scavengers preying on survivors. He and his companion, a young boy, meet a captain who has lost his mind, in his ship on the bottom of the Channel. They are welcomed heartily, provided with food, clothes, and lodging, and even shown movies, but forbidden to take any provisions with them, when they leave. They finally make their way to the borders of Sussex, where his daughter was staying, only to discover that the land has slipped beneath the sea. Cotter, along with some survivors from the mainland, eventually returns to Guernsey.
11934932	/m/02rypn2	The Adventures of Mao on the Long March	Frederic Tuten		{"/m/01bsxb": "Collage", "/m/0gf28": "Parody"}	 The novel has no linear plot, and is mostly composed of an elaborate arrangement of disparate elements. The novel presents a seemingly straightforward history of the Long March, as well as a fictionalized interview with Mao and several more conventional "novelistic" scenes with Mao as the main character. The novel also includes a large selection of unattributed quotes from various sources and parodies of certain writers, including Faulkner, Hemingway, and Kerouac.
11954705	/m/02rzhm6	Carter Beats the Devil	Glen David Gold	2001-08-16	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This novel is a fictionalised biography of Charles Joseph Carter. The main character, Carter, is followed through his career, from his first encounter with magic to his last performance. Along the way he encounters many historical figures, including fellow magicians Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston, United States President Warren G. Harding, BMW founder Max Friz, the Marx Brothers, business magnate Francis Marion "Borax" Smith, the inventor of electronic television Philo Farnsworth, and San Franciscan madams Tessie Wall and Jessie Hayman. Most of the novel centres on the mysterious death of President Harding, who dies shortly after taking part in Carter's stage show. President Harding apparently knew of many serious scandals that seemed likely to bring down the establishment and it seems certain that he was assassinated by persons and methods unknown. Much of Carter's past is shown in the form of flashbacks as U.S. Secret Service Agent Griffin investigates the magician as a suspect. The flashbacks chart Carter's early career including his first encounter with a magic trick, shown to him by "the tallest man alive", Joe Sullivan (also an actual, if obscure, historical figure) in a fairground sideshow, his first paid performance for Borax Smith, his rivalry with the magician "Mysterioso", his first meeting with Harry Houdini who bestows the title "Carter the Great" on him, and Carter's marriage to Sarah Anabelle. Unbeknownst to Agent Griffin, President Harding passed a great secret to Carter: a young inventor named Philo Farnsworth has a new invention called television. Television is wanted by both the radio industry and the military and they are hunting Carter to get it. Carter must draw on all his magic to escape kidnapping and death as he seeks out the inventor. Along the way Carter meets a young blind woman with a mysterious past and encounters a deadly rival. Finally, in a magic show to end all magic shows, Carter must truly beat the devil if he is to save Farnsworth and his magical invention.
11958641	/m/02rzn3c	House of Meetings	Martin Amis	2006	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centers around the modern-day (2004) recollections of the unnamed narrator/protagonist of his time spent in an Arctic gulag and the years that followed. The recollections are presented in the form of a memoir sent to the narrator's American stepdaughter, Venus. One of the primary plot elements is the complex relationship between the protagonist and his younger half-brother, Lev, who later joins him in the camp. Through many difficult revelations and trials, they eventually survive the harsh conditions of the camp and then must face a further challenge: re–acclimatizing to everyday life.
11962817	/m/02rzv0v	Emperor	Stephen Baxter	2007-01-02	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A mysterious prophecy from the future shapes the destiny of a family through four centuries of the Roman occupation of Britain. Begins in 4 BC and incorporates such later events as the building of Hadrian's Wall and an attempted assassination of Constantine I. Ends in AD 418.
11971706	/m/02r_4xd	Savage Messiah				 The story begins with the revelation that Wulfgar, half brother to both Tristan and Shailiha, lives but it horribly scarred. He returns to the Citadel, where his wife and unborn child await, and he can plan his revenge. Meanwhile the Orb of the Vigors is damaged and is literally burning a path across Eutracia. ristan and his Conclave set out to stop the Orb and Wulfgar.
11974407	/m/02r_8ms	When The Road Ends	Jean Thesman		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mary Jack is in the foster home of a conscientious but clueless Episcopal priest, Father Matt, and his selfish troubled wife Jill. Also in their care is the silent Jane, a young girl who had been abused. The house becomes further troubled by the introduction of an older boy, Adam; but when Matt's injured sister comes to live with them, Jill threatens to leave. In order to save his marriage, Matt sends the children and his sister to live in a cabin in the mountains, supposedly with the help of a mean housekeeper who abandons them. They must learn to be self-sufficient or risk being taken away to unknown fates. Along the way, they discover just how much it takes to make a family.
11977017	/m/02r_dpf	Mirror Image	Michael G. Coney		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 When Victoria's reputation is seriously at risk the only way to retrieve it is by marrying the handsome lawyer Charles Dawson, who also works with the girls' father, Edward Henderson. Olivia is inclined to stay and help their father, who is ill, but Victoria needs her the most when her marriage seems to be failing. It is not helped by Charles's 10-year-old son, Geoffrey, who is still distraught after losing his mother Susan, Charles' first wife, on the Titanic. When Victoria proposes an unthinkable plan, Olivia is forced to accept, leaving her with a marriage she never thought she could have and her sister going off to help in France, when World War I is in full throttle. fi:Peilikuva
11978341	/m/02r_gw7	Yksisarvinen	Kaari Utrio	2000	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The general pattern follows one of Utrio's usual arrangements: a young woman and a young man encounter one another several different times, even if they come from very remote origins, like fate draws them together, and in the end they get each other. The teenage twins Geir and Ivar, sons of a Viking chieftain Inge Ragvaldson jarl and his wife Ulvhild Svendsdatter in Newfoundland, America, in a Norse colony started by Leif the Lucky, find the carcass of a whale, narwhal, and they take its big horn-like tooth, tusk, to their luggage. The colony fares badly, and the family decides to emigrate to Scandinavia. After seeing the martyr death of their maternal uncle king Canute IV of Denmark, they end up to Germany with their travel companions, a missionary bishop and his family. Their whale tooth -protected in a big sack- becomes a magic item, the unicorn, whose material is believed to have some magical powers. They get paid for both touches of the tusk, and for amulets made of it. Geir, who becomes count Gero, marries Sigberta, the heiress of the bishop's family's German county of Berga, but is restless and decides to embark to the first crusade, after his young wife died leaving an only heiress, baby named Beatrix. Meanwhile, in Italy, Juvalos Gerakis, the Finnish- or Greek-born Count of Sinetra in Calabria and his current wife, countess Aurelia, another Finno-Byzantine noble, rescue Aurelia's daughter Constanzia -heiress of Montecaldo- from a bad marriage in Rome, acquire a Roman fortified tower in the process, and marry her to her stepbrother Roger, son of count Juvalos and his first wife the late countess Adela, who is heir to the county of Sinetra. Then the count sends his son and heir to the crusade. Constanzia and her first husband, the knight Ferro Furni from Rome, had already some years earlier met Geir and Ivar in Hamburg and Berga when they were as envoys in Germany. The count Geir, his brother Ivar and their retinue travel and adventure with the crusade, meeting the troop from the Calabrian county of Sinetra. Also Constanzia de Montecaldo is with the troop. A love affair develops between Geir and Constanzia. A portion of the retinue get abducted by Armenian mountain robbers, but after winter spent in Armeno-Cilician fortress, they flee. After Jerusalem is conquered by the crusader army, Roger dies in the warfaring. The paramours now have one another, and they marry, embarking towards southern Italy with Constanzia's young daughter Maria, who is an heiress of the old Count of Sinetra (although Maria's uncle, Arnulf, son of the old count's second marriage, will be a rival heir). And Constanzia has also inherited Montecaldo. The young girl, Maria, is great-granddaughter of Terhen of "Vaskilintu" from Finland, and granddaughter of Aure from Finland. On the other hand, she is granddaughter of the Italian Norman Fulberto and granddaughter of the French Norman Adela. Her great-grandfather had been the Swedish Varangian Eirik. People think that she has two ancestresses (Terhen 'Theodora' and Aure 'Aurelia') who were Byzantine noblewomen, so in this series of plots, Byzantine is the codeword masking Finnish. Her great-grandfather spatharokandidatos Eirik and great-uncle droungarios Leo were officers in service of Constantinople, in Varangian guard. Her both parents were born in Italy.
11979481	/m/02r_kb_	The Wolves of Willoughby Chase	Joan Aiken		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is set at Willoughby Chase, the grand but remote home of Sir Willoughby and Lady Green and their daughter Bonnie. Due to Lady Green's ill health, Bonnie's parents are taking a holiday in warmer climates touring the Mediterranean by ship, leaving her in the care of a newly arrived distant fourth cousin, Letitia Slighcarp. Also due to arrive is Bonnie's orphan cousin Sylvia, who lived in London with Sir Willoughby's impoverished but genteel older sister Jane, coming to keep her cousin company in her parents' absence. Sylvia is nervous about the long train ride into the snowy countryside, especially when wolves menace the stopped train, but once she arrives, the cousins become instant friends. The robust and adventurous Bonnie is eager to show Sylvia the delights of country life, and they embark on an ice-skating expedition almost immediately. Although the adventure ends on a scary note – the girls are chased by the ever-present wolves – all is well thanks to Simon, a resourceful boy who lives on his own in a cave, raising geese and bees. The girls soon learn that the blissful existence they anticipate together is not to last. With the help of Mr. Grimshaw, a mysterious man from the train, Miss Slighcarp takes over the household, dismissing all but the most untrustworthy household servants, threatening to arrest those who defy her, wearing Lady Green's gowns and tampering with Sir Willoughby's legal papers. Bonnie and Sylvia also overhear ominous hints about their parents' ship, which has sunk, perhaps intentionally. Bonnie and Sylvia are not without allies: James, the clever footman, who spies on Miss Slighcarp for the girls; Pattern, Bonnie's loving and beloved maid; and the woodcrafty Simon. With their friends, the girls plan to alert the kindly and sensible local doctor to the crimes of Miss Slighcarp and Mr. Grimshaw, but Miss Slighcarp foils the scheme and sends them to a nearby industrial town, to a dismal and horrid orphanage run by the even more horrid Mrs. Brisket and her pretentious and spoiled daughter, Diana. Sylvia quickly weakens and grows ill due to the backbreaking work, frigid rooms, and scant meals, and the stronger Bonnie realizes they must escape soon. She encounters the faithful Simon, in town to sell his geese and they plot an escape, thanks to some ragged clothes provided in secret by Pattern and a key that Simon copies. Even though it is the dead of winter, the girls are warmer and better fed in Simon's goose-cart than in the dreadful orphanage/workhouse, and the trio embark on a two-month journey to London. On their arrival, they discover that Aunt Jane is near death from poverty-induced starvation, but with the help of a kind and idiosyncratic doctor downstairs, they nurse her back to health. They also catch Mr. Grimshaw sneaking into the lodging house that night. Confronted by the police and the family's lawyer, Mr. Grimshaw confesses the entire plot, and the girls return to Willoughby Chase, with the police in tow, where they trick Miss Slighcarp and Mrs. Brisket into revealing their villainy. At this moment, Bonnie's parents return, having survived the sinking ship; months in the sunny climate of the Canary Islands have restored Lady Green to health, and Sir Willoughby immediately begins setting Miss Slighcarp's depredations to rights. Bonnie's parents adopt Sylvia and agree to set up a school for Mrs. Brisket's charges and the now-humbled Diana, with a post for Aunt Jane, who is too proud to accept charity.
11979490	/m/02r_kcp	Twisted	Laurie Halse Anderson	2007-03-20	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tyler Miller goes from a nobody to a popular high school senior after he gets arrested for doing graffiti on the school. Tyler ends up with one of the most popular girls at school named Bethany Milbury, who is also Tyler's dad's boss's daughter. After attending a wild high school party with her, Tyler Miller finds himself as the prime suspect in a scandal involving Bethany and her nude pictures on a website and almost having sex with her while she was wasted. Everyone thinks Tyler is the culprit, and his life instantly takes a turn for the worse. Facing a serious charge, Tyler sets out not only to fix his reputation, but his entire life as well. During this novel, Tyler continues to play a video game called Tophet, which he happens to get stuck on whenever there is a problem in his life. When he finally solves his problems, he completes the game.
11983348	/m/02vkx73	Up Above the World				 In the middle of their journey Dr Slade and his wife have a chance encounter with an important looking lady who tells them that she is going to visit her son. Arriving by ship at a provincial town in an unnamed Latin American country, they find that accommodation is sparse, and so Mrs Slade agrees to share a room with her at some seedy hotel for just one night. During that night, the lady is murdered with an injection of curare, but when the Slades leave very early the next morning to catch a connection, Mrs Slade erroneously believes the woman lying next to her is still fast asleep. A few days later, in another town, they read in the paper that the hotel burned down immediately after they had left and that the woman died in the fire. No one suspects the real reason, arson, which was committed to cover up the murder. This is when Mr and Mrs Slade make the acquaintance of Grove Soto, a charming and seemingly rich young man who offers them his hospitality. When it turns out that the recently deceased woman was his mother and Soto feigns shock at her premature death, the Americans have no idea that it was actually him who had her killed out of greed. As Soto cannot be certain about Mrs Slade's complete ignorance of the crime, he extends his hospitality, invites them to his farm in the country and eggs them on to stay there longer than they have planned. At the same time, with the help of both his local household staff and his seventeen year old Cuban lover Luchita, he feeds them a cocktail of drugs whose effects, including partial amnesia, the innocent Americans mistake for the symptoms of a heavy virus infection, recovery from which is supposedly slow. In the end Dr Slade, who has been barely conscious for days, disappears, while his young wife suspects more and more sinister forces to be at work. She escapes to the nearest town, where a fiesta is being held, only to realize that Soto has also planned her very escape. Without seeing her husband again, she has to face both her adversary and her own destiny amid the cheering townspeople.
11986133	/m/02vkzpw	Begums Thugs And White Mughals	Fanny Parkes	2002	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/014dsx": "Travel"}	 This is an edited edition of the travel journals of the traveller, Fanny Parkes who was in India from 1822 to 1846. Dalrymple edited Parkes's book, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque. He wrote the introduction in which he challenged some of the preconceptions of academic studies of travel writing, which attempt to fit all English views on India into the 'Orientalist' template laid down by Edward Said. "Fanny was a passionate lover of India and though a woman of her time, in her writing and her travels did her best to understand and build bridges across the colonial divide," he writes "[A]s Colin Thubron has pointed out, ‘To define the genre [of travel writing] as an act of domination – rather than of understanding, respect or even catharsis – is simplistic. If even the attempt to understand is seen as aggression or appropriation, then all human contact declines into paranoia.’ The attacks made on Fanny highlight the problem with so much that has been written about 18th- and early 19th-century India: the temptation felt by so many critics to project back onto it the stereotypes of Victorian and Edwardian behaviour and attitudes with which we are so familiar."
11986445	/m/02vkzx1	The Last Mughal	William Dalrymple	2002	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The book, Dalrymple's sixth, and his second to reflect his long love affair with the city of Delhi, won praise for its use of "The Mutiny Papers", which included previously ignored Indian accounts of the events of 1857. He worked on these documents in association with the Urdu scholar Mahmood Farooqui. It won the 2006 Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for History and Biography, and the 2007 Vodafone Crossword Book Award.
11987073	/m/02vk_l2	Calling The Swan	Jean Thesman			 Skylar Deacon is struggling with many things in her life: a toddler brother, a summer school class in another part of town, riding the bus to get there, new friendships at the school, and conflicting advice from her sister. Most of all, she's struggling with a secret tragedy that has been damaging her family for three years. Her mother is even worse, amplifying Skylar's fears and guilt. But Skylar finds help in her strong grandmother, kind priest-counselor, and later her new friends Tasha, Naomi, Margaret, D.J., and Shawn. And with that help, she begins to find the courage to heal her life.
11993928	/m/02vl7t6	On the Banks of Plum Creek	Laura Ingalls Wilder	1937	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Having left their little house on the Kansas prairie, the Ingalls family travels by covered wagon to Minnesota and settles in a dugout on the banks of Plum Creek. Pa trades his horses Pet and Patty to the property owner (a man named Hanson, who wants to go west) for the land and crops. He later gets two new horses as Christmas presents for the family, which Laura and her sister Mary name "Sam" and "David". Pa soon builds a new, above-ground, wooden house for the family, trusting that their first crop of wheat will pay for the lumber and materials. Now that they live near a town, Laura and Mary go to school for the first time. There they make friends, but also meet the town storekeeper's daughter, Nellie Oleson, who makes fun of Laura and Mary for being "country girls." Laura and Mary attend a party at the Olesons' home, and Ma has Laura and Mary invite all the girls (including Nellie) to a party at their house to reciprocate. The family goes through hard times when grasshoppers (actually Rocky Mountain Locusts) decimate the much-anticipated wheat crop, and lay so many eggs that there is no hope of a crop next year. For two harvest seasons, Pa is forced to walk three hundred miles east to find work on farms that escaped the grasshopper plague. The book ends with Laura's Pa returning safely to the house after becoming lost near their home during a severe four-day blizzard. Laura is portrayed in this book as being seven to nine years old. Although the Ingalls family lived near Walnut Grove, Minnesota during the events described in this book, the name of the town is not mentioned in the book.
11996030	/m/02vlbfg	Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague	Brandon Mull	2008-04-21	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Strange things are happening at Fablehaven. The book begins where the second book left off, during the same summer of their second year at Fablehaven. Kendra and Seth helped save Fablehaven from the Society of the Evening Star, but new troubles present themselves almost immediately. Seth discovers that someone, or something, has released a plague throughout Fablehaven. As the disease spreads throughout the preserve, it is clear they can no longer protect the preserve. Creatures of light are transformed into creatures of darkness. As light creatures can enter most places throughout the preserve, the same rules apply to the darkened form of them. The exception is the shrine of the Fairy Queen, where only Creatures of Light can enter. Sometime throughout the summer, Kendra is requested by the captain of 'The Knights of Dawn' that she should be recruited. For the first time, Kendra and Warren must visit another magical preserve, called Lost Mesa, located in the central state of Arizona. With Lieutenant Dougan Fisk, and dragon tamer Gavin Rose, another hidden artifact must be recovered from Lost Mesa before The Society unveils it. However, the artifact, as told in the secret fairy language Silvian, had a new residence at Fablehaven. Meanwhile, back at Fablehaven, Seth discovers that he has gained new abilities with destroying Fablehaven's revenant and pulling out the nail. With the help of Graulas the dying demon, he is made a shadow-charmer, a person who is able to shadow-walk, hear the voices of prisoners from the dungeon that dwell underneath the main house, and speak the language of many creatures such as giants, goblins, trolls, and demons. Graulas explains how three dark creatures created the plague with the nail. The prisoner from the Quiet Box was never seen to leave the preserve, so this helps prove Vanessa's accusation correct. New friends are introduced and trusted as new magical creatures of light and darkness are confronted. Coulter and Tanu get changed by the plague first, followed by Grandpa and Grandma Sorenson. Then Dale, and finally Warren. Humans are changed to 3D shadows. Will the plague go so far that Kendra and Seth will be contaminated? Seth recovers the Chronometer and brings Patton Burgess forward in time. Patton made artifacts more difficult to recover and also was a famous caretaker of Fablehaven. The Fairy Queen destroys her shrine to make a pebble filled with light energy to help save the plague. Someone must touch the pebble to the nail and the plague will be reversed. One problem though — whoever touches the pebble to the nail dies. When pebble and nail are united by Lena, Lena dies. The plague stops.
11997960	/m/02vldt2	Rainforest	Jenny Diski	1987		 Mo Singleton grows up in rural Sussex as the only child of John Singleton, a scientist and university lecturer, and Marjorie, a housewife. When Mo is still quite young, her father confides in her by telling her that he is betraying his incompetent and simplistic wife with a colleague at the university. Up to her father's premature death at 45 and beyond, Mo is able to keep their secret without once meeting her father's lover. Following in his footsteps, Mo studies biology and moves to London, where she gets a job at a university. She enjoys teaching first-year students, especially challenging their faulty assumptions about nature and explaining to them what man's role in the big cycle of things really is. She visits her widowed mother in the country every once in a while and spends pleasant weekends with her, has a satisfactory relationship with her boyfriend Luke, a biochemist, and has started making plans for, and is very much looking forward to, her research project which will take her to an isolated spot in the tropical rainforest that covers large parts of the island of Borneo. When, shortly before her departure, she meets Joe Yates, who has been hired as her replacement for the six month period she will be gone, Mo is both appalled and attracted by his directness but rejects his overt sexual advances as well as his fatalistic philosophy of life. In Borneo, she behaves very professionally, fervently believing that through her academic work she will increase the sum total of human knowledge about the tropical rainforest. Her mental breakdown is already looming but Mo is not yet aware of it. Her mind starts deteriorating rapidly when in the middle of her stay in Borneo, Joe Yates pays her a surprise visit. Questioning the validity and relevance of her findings, he eventually succeeds in seducing her&mdash;they have wild, unbridled sex in the wilderness&mdash;only to tell her afterwards that he is only passing through and his current girlfriend, one of his students, is actually waiting for him in the nearest town. Mo has to be flown back to England and is institutionalized. News of her beloved colleague Liam deserting his wife and young children for a first-year student only makes matters worse. After her recovery, Mo gives up her academic career and becomes a cleaning lady, working to a fixed schedule and enjoying "the detail and planning involved." She sees a psychiatrist once a week and still has the occasional nightmare about the rainforest.
11998575	/m/02vlfbz	Swimming Without a Net	MaryJanice Davidson	2007-11-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 A year has passed since Artur and Thomas declared their love for Fred and then left. Since then, Fred has been passing her days by working at the aquarium and being annoyed by Jonas (her best friend) and Dr. Barb's (her boss) relationship. They have been setting Fred up on various blind dates as well, which have all ended badly. Fred is surprised to discover two Undersea Folk requesting her presence at the Pelagic. At the Pelagic, she discovers the identity of her biological father as well as makes a decision between Artur and Thomas.
11999513	/m/02vlghd	The Plague Court Murders	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Ken Blake is approached by an old friend, Dean Halliday, who tells the story of his family estate, Plague Court. Halliday explains that the house is haunted by the ghost of the original owner, Louis Playge, a hangman by profession. Halliday invites Blake and Chief-Inspector Humphrey Masters to Plague Court to take part in a seance, run by psychic Roger Darworth and his medium Joseph. However, Darworth is a fake, being monitored by the police. The night of the seance, Darworth locks himself in a small stone house, behind Plague Court, while the seance proceeds. When Masters and Blake go to get him, he has been stabbed to death, with the dagger of Louis Playge. But all the doors and windows are bolted and locked, and thirty feet of mud surrounds the house, unbroken—and all the suspects have been holding hands in the seance. The only one who can solve the crime is locked room expert Sir Henry Merrivale.
12000397	/m/02vlhkt	A King and No King	John Fletcher	1619		 Arbaces, King of Iberia, has been abroad, fighting in the wars, for many years; he returns home in triumph, bringing with him Tigranes, the defeated king of Armenia. He intends to marry his sister Panthea to Tigranes. Meanwhile he learns that his mother, Arane, who hates him, has plotted his assassination. The regent Gobrius has foiled the plot. Tigranes' fiancee Spaconia accompanies him into exile, hoping to avert Arbaces' plans for the marriage alliance. Tigranes promises her he will remain faithful. On his return Arbaces finds that he now has a powerful sexual attraction to his beautiful sister, the princess Panthea, whom he hasn't seen since childhood. Much of the play depicts his increasingly desperate struggle against his incestuous passion. Arbaces blames the protector Gobrius for his predicament; the minister had written Arbaces many letters during the king's years abroad, praising Panthea's beauty and her love for him. Panthea is also attracted to Arbaces, but her virtue restains them both. The king becomes so desperate that he decides to murder Gobrius, rape Panthea, and then commit suicide. Meanwhile, Tigranes too falls in love with Panthea, even though this means he breaks his faith with Spaconia. Tigranes exercises the self-discipline and rationality that Arbaces struggles to achieve, and rededicates himself to Spaconia. Arbaces' dilemma is resolved when it is revealed that the situation is a complex hoax, staged by Arane and Gobrius to give an heir to the childless old king who was Arbaces' predecessor. Arane's plots against her supposed son were intended to restore the rightful succession. Arbaces is in fact Gobrius's son, and so Panthea is not actually his sister. Gobrius had plotted that his son would become the legitimate king, by marriage with Panthea; Arbaces does marry the princess, but steps down from the kingship. Arbaces is presented as a mixed character, brave and formidable in battle, but boastful and somewhat vulgar. His character is explained by the trick of his birth: he cannot behave with the nobility of a king, because he isn't one by "blood." The comic relief in the play is provided by the cowardly Bessus and his cronies; their subplot turns on the customs of honorable duelling &mdash; and their comical violation. (Bessus was a well-known comic creation; Queen Henrietta Maria refers to Bessus in a 25 February 1643 letter to her husband, Charles I.) A King and No King has a strong degree of commonality with the same authors' Thierry and Theodoret. The former might be regarded as the tragicomic version, and the latter the tragic, of the same story.
12001922	/m/02vlk3p	A Bridge to Wiseman's Cove	James Moloney	1996	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When Carl's mother, Kerry, disappears, he and his brother, Harley, are sent to Wattle Beach to live with their aunt Beryl. During his stay at Wattle Beach, Carl works in a barge, an old colleague of Carl's grandfather. Carl does not know that his grandfather was involved in an accident that killed Skips 8-year-old son, Graham. Carl is initially withdrawn; he does not convey his worries about his missing mother, nor the anxiety that he feels over his rebellious younger brother, who is constantly in centrelink. However, during the course of the novel he learns to "open up" and share his feelings with those who care about him. In the end, it is discovered that Kerry Matt died in a bus accident when she was trying to get home to her children, Sarah, Harley and Carl. Once this is unearthed,Carl returns home to find that Aunt Beryl has run off in true Matt spirit to join her boyfriend, Bruce. Because Carl has nowhere else to stay, Joy Duncan invites him to come and live with them at Wiseman's Cove with his brother, Harley, who has already claimed the Duncans as his surrogate family. Their sister Sarah left them and flew to another country to get a chance at her own life.
12006518	/m/02vlqm1	The Dare Game	Jacqueline Wilson	2000-03-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tracy and Cam often argue about anything, including Tracy's new school, where she has a ghastly class teacher, whom she has christened Mrs "Emesis" Bagley. She hates her. Most of her classmates spread rumors about her mum leaving her on purpose. Tracy says that her mum has to leave because she is a movie star in Hollywood. Tracy decides to exclude herself and go to her own secret house. After a few days she discovers she's not the only one who excluded herself from school as she meet two new friends, Alexander and Football. Alexander is a feeble little boy, whereas Football is the complete opposite, very burly, strong and large. Like Tracy, both boys have family problems: Alexander's dad hates him, and Football has a mother who is always going on at him; his dad has left, and keeps promising to take him to a football match, but he never does. They all stay at a secret house and play dares day after day, including one where Tracy hangs her underwear on a tree. Suddenly, Tracy's mum, Carly, appears out of the blue, saying she wants her back. Tracy is allowed to stay with her for a weekend, where her mum showers her with expensive gifts. Cam is upset about losing Tracy, but Tracy is hell-bent on going to live with her mother forever. However, when she goes to her mother's for a second time, her mother leaves her on her own for hours and hours while she attends a karaoke night at her local pub. Tracy feels frightened and anxious, remembering that this is what her Mum used to do when she was younger. When Carly eventually comes home she is accompanied by a man. They were obviously planning to get passionate, but Carly has to cancel their plans when she remembers Tracy is there. However, before he leaves, she arranges to spend the following weekend with him instead of Tracy. Tracy runs away, eventually choosing to live with Cam, who has always taken care of her.
12006642	/m/03m3vkn	The Day of the Owl	Leonardo Sciascia	1961		 In a small town, early on a Saturday morning, a bus is about to leave the small square to go market in the next town nearby. A gunshot is heard and the figure running for the bus is shot twice in the back, with what is discovered as a (a sawn-off shotgun that the mafia use for their killings.) The passengers and bus driver deny having seen the murderer. A Carabinieri captain from Parma, Bellodi, gets on the case, ruffling feathers in his contemporaries and colleagues alike. Soon he discovers a link that doesn't stop in Sicily, but goes onwards towards Rome and the Minister Mancuso and Senator Livigno. It seems that the man shot, Salvatore Colasberna, was the owner of a small construction company. He had been warned that he should take "protection" from mafia members, but he refused. Although his company was only a very small one, the local mafia decides to make an example of him and has him killed. Using faintly corrupt methods, Bellodi traps one man and uses the names given by a dead informer to trap another, who has money stashed away in many bank accounts that add up to more than his fallow fields would ever bring. He is attempting to take down an organization with many members involved in the police and government, and whose mere existence many Sicilians deny. He has ignored the crime passionel lead, which is often a handy excuse for mafia killings. The death of an eyewitness leads to the collapse of the case against all three, which sees Bellodi taken off the case. The novel ends with Bellodi recounting his time in Sicily to his friends in Parma—who think that it all sounds very romantic—and thinking that he would return to Sicily even if it killed him.
12007193	/m/02vlr4y	The Third Life of Grange Copeland	Alice Walker	1970		 As a poor sharecropper, Grange is virtually a slave; in cotton-era Baker County, Georgia, the more he works, the more money he ends up owing to the man who owns the fields he works and the house he lives in. Eventually life becomes too much for him and he runs away from his debts to start a new life up North, leaving his family. After declining a loan from a white landowner which he knows he can't pay back, Brownfield begins to head North on foot to follow in his father's footsteps. Brownfield is led to a woman named Josie who owns and operates a lounge/brothel called the Dew Drop Inn (in some printings, the Dewey Inn). Brownfield winds up sharing a bed with Josie, her daughter Lorene, and Josie's deceased sister's daughter Mem. Brownfield takes a liking to Mem and eventually marries her under the disapproving Josie's nose. Brownfield beats and eventually kills Meme (sometimes printed as "Mem") and is jailed for an arbitrary seven years. Grange finds the North unfulfilling and returns to Baker County, which is the only place he knows of as home.
12008961	/m/02vlt57	Jurassic Adventures: Survivor	Scott Ciencin	2001-06-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book reveals that Amanda Kirby (Eric's mother) and her new boyfriend Ben Hildebrand, had planned to travel to Costa Rica and take Eric to Isla Sorna, the legendary site B of Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, Ben and Eric have a parasailing accident and end up stranded on the island. Ben dies after being injured in the crash, and Eric is forced to leave when dinosaurs start roaming the area. From that moment on he has to survive by himself, matching wits with the fearsome predators (and some aggressive herbivores) in the island. After being injured by an Ankylosaurus and driven off by a pack of compys, Eric finds InGen's old buildings, when he decides to hide. Unfortunately, this place is also being used by raptors as headquarters, and he is almost killed. Later, he decides to find a communications bunker to ask for help. However, he ends up trapped in the middle of a furious battle between a large pack of raptors and a herd of Iguanodons, and eventually he sacrifices his last chance to get help, instead saving a young Iguanodon he had befriended before. After that, he returns to the jungle knowing that perhaps he will spend the rest of his life there. The book reveals some interesting things about InGen, Jurassic Park and its dinosaurs, and also about the main character, for example: * It is revealed that original wildlife on the island has survived despite the introduction of dinosaurs, including sloths, quetzals and snakes. * It seems that the dinosaur population is not as balanced as previously thought, and raptors are actually keeping herds of herbivores prisoners in a valley, so that they can hunt them more easily. * It is revealed how Eric got the Tyrannosaurus pee and also the raptor claw he shows to Alan Grant in the movie. * Iguanodons are introduced in this book; Eric befriends one of them, and names him "Iggy". * A Pteranodon is described as flying around the island, although in the movie, all Pteranodons were captive. The Pteranodon is eventually caught by a T-Rex. * It is revealed that Ben most likely died due to internal injury, not eaten. * The dinosaurs that appear in Survivor are Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, Velociraptor, Compsognathus, Tyrannosaurus, Diplodocus, Pteranodon and Iguanodon. The Spinosaurus, although present in the Jurassic Park III movie, did not appear in the book, even though Eric stated in the film that the Tyrannosaurus pee had attracted "a huge dinosaur with a sail on its back". * Scott Ciencin suggests that the reason for the Deinonychus-like appearance on Velociraptors, and the teeth on Pteranodon are most likely the result of InGen's scientists messing up with dinosaur DNA during the creation of Jurassic Park.
12009118	/m/02vltb1	Jurassic Park Adventures: Prey	Scott Ciencin	2001-10-23	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Prey reveals that Alan Grant has become part of a UN project to protect the dinosaurs of Isla Sorna. He is (somewhat unwillingly) forced to stay in the island coordinating a crew of scientists and other experts, and is decided to return balance to the dinosaur ecosystem by relocating some predators to other parts of the island. In this story, Eric Kirby blackmails Alan Grant so that he will let him go to the island. Alan agrees, but tricks Eric taking him during Christmas time where there are no operations going on in the island. Meanwhile, a group of teenagers led by 18 year old Simon Tunney lands in the island and try to film a movie about the island, so that they will become celebrities (just as Eric has, seemingly, after writing "Survivor"). Simon is obsessed with becoming a rich celebrity, even if that means to endanger his peers. Upon realizing this, Grant and his team go to the jungle and try to find them, while Eric escapes the headquarters and finds them himself. The teenagers then provoke a herd of Triceratops, and they attack them, but Eric saves them by imitating a Velociraptor's call. Eric tries to convince them to go to Grant's headquarters but Simon refuses fearing that Grant will confiscate his footage, and continues his trip. Angered, Eric follows, knowing that they are getting in the territory of large predators. Later, both Grant's and Simon's teams are attacked by three Carnotaurus. Grant realizes that the leader of the pack has a personal vendetta against him and runs away from the group to save the others. But the carnotaurs keep chasing the teenagers and almost kill one of them (Simon's little brother, who he sacrifices instead of his valuable footage). Eric saves the boy in the nick of time and the carnotaurs are dominated by Grant's full team. With recorded video evidence of his behavior, Simon is now trapped and is taken to prison while Grant praises Eric's braveness and allows him to become a temporal member of his team.
12009177	/m/02vltf4	Jurassic Park Adventures: Flyers	Scott Ciencin	2002-03-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is unusual in that it is told partially from the animal's point of view. The Pteranodons that escaped Sorna have been spotted all around the world and now they are in Florida. Coincidentally, Alan Grant and Eric Kirby are invited to go to the Universal Studios in Orlando to talk about their adventures on the islands. Unfortunately, the Pteranodons are attracted by the lakes in the park and decide to stay there, wreaking havoc and injuring people by flying off with them and throwing them to the water. With the help of Amanda Kirby and a reporter named Manly Wilks, Alan and Eric try to capture the Pteranodons to get them back to the island before they are culled by Florida's authorities. The Pteranodons manage to destroy some of the park's attractions and kill two helicopter pilots, before they are finally caught. Manly then tries to get one of them to become famous, but Amanda punches him out cold and all reptiles are returned to the island, by means of tricking them to follow an aircraft disguised as a Pteranodon.
12010547	/m/02vlvv5	Critique of Criminal Reason		2006-07-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Years after Immanuel Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason but now rumours say that the philosophers is about to release another book. This book will be different than all others because it will examine the concept of serial killers. Meanwhile the German city of Königsberg, where Kant lives, is gripped by a series of murders. Prosecutor Hanno Stiffeniis is ordered by King Frederick William III himself to investigate the crimes and bring the murderer to justice. Stiffeniis is aided in his quest by Immanuel Kant, as well as a local police sergeant. eo:Kritiko de kriminala racio
12014223	/m/02vlz9z	Fire Star	Chris D'Lacey	2006-09-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Since David and Zanna are in the Arctic, they are unaware of what is happening back at home with Gretel, Zanna's new dragon. After a few hours of Grockle's existence, he was turned to stone. Gretel attempts to revive her lost friend. Liz had locked her up in a wooden cage in the Dragon's Den (her at-home workshop). David writes a novel of the Arctic which he calls White Fire. He thinks what he's writing is fiction, but it's really happening to two bears called Ingavar and Thoran. As Thoran peacefully follows a sign, Ingavar must follow straight orders to steal something very precious from David. Tension is rising at the Pennykettles' as Lucy is suddenly kidnapped by a long forgotten rival. This 'rival' wishes to raise the ancient dragon Gawain from his stone-laden resting place. Over the time Lucy is there, she goes through extreme changes. Gwilanna knew this would happen as Lucy began to look like Guinevere, her ancestor. After a sudden bear attack and the news about Lucy, David returns home to help Liz overcome this rough time. In the middle of a serious conversation with Liz, David receives a heart-breaking phone call. He has just learned Zanna, his girlfriend, has just been kidnapped by bears. Under all this pressure, David breaks down. Liz soothes him in dragonsong, the ancient soothing method Guinevere used on the ancient dragon Gawain. While David is home, Grockle suddenly awakens to find the window opened. Curious as he was, he flew out of the window. Nobody could believe it. Happiness, shock and horror welled up in everyone at the sight of Grockle's sudden move. Lucy is not having a good time at all. She must eat the disgusting stuff Gwilanna enjoys eating everyday. She decides to explore the cave of Gawain when Gwilanna leaves one day. She pushed around and discovers a secret hideaway she thinks her ancestor, Gwendolen, used. Eventually, she falls asleep by the bones of Gwendolen and a bear that guarded her. A female bear that thinks it is her 'last season on earth' ventures into the cave, down into the hideaway, and decides to follow the dead bears example. She guarded Lucy as she slept. Gwilanna returns and finds the hole. She notices Lucy and the female bear. She decides tiredly to leave them be. David gets Liz to tell her who Arthur is after Gadzooks gave him the name out of nowhere. After hearing the cruel things Gwilanna did to break-up Arthur and Liz, he travels to Farlowe Island to find Arthur. Arthur goes by life on a religious island. He chooses the name Brother Vincent. He goes through a lot on the island. In fact, he survives a vicious Fain attack . David arrives at the island and calms down the scared yet vicious Grockle. Grockle flies to the Arctic when David tells him to. After a while of introductions and explanations, Arthur teaches David how to use Dr. Bergstrom's mysterious talisman to teleport from place to place. David teleports to the Arctic and battles the very same Fain to the death. The Fain stabs two spears of ice through David's chest, but David won't die because the ice is really Gawain's fire tear. After revealing the secret of the ice to the Fain, the spirit of Ingavar punches the Fain out of the body of Tootega, the Inuit whose body the Fain had possessed, killing Tootega, and the Fain. Zanna, in tears, comes running over to David. They get locked in a heart-breaking conversation. After assuring her they'd meet once more and giving her a Valentine's Day gift, (a new dragon, G'lant, which you can only see if you really believe in dragons) he parts from Zanna. Some polar bears take David's body on a piece of ice, Ingavars spirit lays down by his head and the polar bears pound the ice and send David and Ingavar into the water. Back at home, after releasing Snigger into the wild after his kidnapping by Gwilanna, Zanna tells Liz, Lucy and Arthur that she is pregnant with David's baby.
12014265	/m/02vlzcp	The Fire Eternal	Chris D'Lacey		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the Arctic: Slowly the ice is changing; bears are starving; dragons are rising; and the souls of the Inuit dead are haunting the skies. The spirit Gaia, goddess of the Earth, is restless, aching to bring her might down upon these changes. But all living things may suffer if she does. As the weather grows wilder and the ice caps melt, all eyes turn from the north to David's daughter, Alexa. She is the key to stopping it . . .But can one girl save the world from the forces of evil or will she disappear like her father? The book opens with a short chapter about how the Earth, Gaia, is beginning to get restless, and then goes to explain Zanna's sadness about David being gone. She gives the invisible and shapeless dragon G'lant, which David gave to at the end of Fire Star, to her daughter Alexa. Since David's apparent death, Zanna has been trying to get back on her feet. She bought a New Age shop called the Healing Touch and is living with the Pennykettles in David's old room. While Zanna is at her shop one night, Lucy sneaks into her room, and steals a letter that Zanna wrote to David. Every year on Valentine's Day, the day that David died, Zanna writes a letter to David telling him all of the events that are going on in the house. When Lucy reads the letter, she feels the need to do something to tell the world that David is not dead. So she writes an E-mail to a man named Tam Farell, whose role is not yet revealed, telling him to go the Healing Touch and ask for Zanna. As the book goes on, every few chapters, the author puts in a chapter telling the reader what is happening in the Arctic. The Ice Bear, Ingavar is with his two followers, a fighting bear called Kailar, and a Teller of ways called Avrel. They go and meet Thoran, who is really Dr. Bergstorm, and he tells Ingavar that his time on the ice is up. So Ingavar consumes Thoran with icefire, and his spirit is passed on to Ingavar. Meanwhile, in Zanna's shop, Tam Farell comes in and tells Zanna that he is having a pain in his neck. Zanna is rather charmed, amused, and annoyed by him, and moodily schedules a consultation for them. As Tam is leaving, he invites her to a poetry reading at a bookshop, and tells her to bring her partner. Later that day, Zanna, Liz, and Lucy go shopping at the garden store, and find a 'fairy door' for Alexa to play with, and Lucy sends a fateful message to Tam telling him what Zanna's scars are. She writes only one word: Oomara. Meanwhile, in the Arctic, Ingavar remembers how Avrel and he first met. Having disguised himself as a fox, he tricked Avrel into following him, and then had filled his head with old knowledge and legends. As Avrel and Ingavar walked on, they saw the souls of countless Inuit men in the sky. Zanna decides to go to the poetry reading, and discovers that Tam is a poet himself. Tam decides to buy David's book, White Fire, and Zanna gets slightly suspicious. So Zanna investigates and soon finds out that Tam Farrell is a journalist. Zanna brands Tam with Oomara and erases the memory of that day including meeting Lucy. Before Tam passes out he mouths one word - Parents - at Lucy and she knows she needs to find David's parents. Later she packs her stuff and goes to the place Tam works. She instructs Gwendolen to give Tam some of her memories (she still has them.) Gwendolen does as she is instructed and Tam's memory comes back. Lucy asks Tam to travel with her to Blackburn. When they get there where David lived there is no house. And the neighbors claim that there was never a house there. Then Zanna comes in her car and phones Liz. Lucy's phone gives out a ray of violet and projects a image of a squirrel. Lucy chases it right through a portal. Zanna tells Liz she is going after her and Liz tells her that she may never see Alexa again. Then Alexa is on the phone and tells Zanna that she saw David being a polar bear in her toy's eye. Just as Zanna walks towards the portal Tam jumps in and the portal closes. Gwilanna comes to the Arctic and a image of a mammoth appears. Ingavar tells that it's his daughter's toy and turns into David, then sends Gwilanna but before he does his eyes turn to scaline eyes. Lucy finds herself on Farlowe and brother Bernard appears he leads her to a room. Tam follows but before she enters she noticed Bernard's eyes are black. At the Crescent Alexa is putting icefire on David's four dragons and they enter the portal in the fairy door. Liz goes in and Gwillanna as a raven (stuck in that form) talks to Alexa. At Farwole Lucy is forced to a Darkling but it has a flaw - it has no heart. The Ix the flip side of the fain they are what killed David there are upset that the Darkling had an extra piece (It looks like a knife and it is the heart.) so they invade Lucy. Lucy goes home and there her mom greets her but she cuts her with the heart and knocks Liz out. Gwillian sees and cries his fire tear. Gwilanna goes to Zanna and tells her that they need her help, Zanna turns into a raven and flies back. As Zanna arrives the Ix exit Lucy and Zanna turns back saying a spell to pull all of the flower petals and onto the Ix. Alexa walks out and sees the Ix. The Ix dies and Gwilanna saves Liz revealing that Liz is pregnant. That night Zanna and Alexa go out to the library gardens and Alexa runs up the path and jumps into a man's arms. The man is David and a violet light bursts in the sky and it is a dragon.
12016971	/m/02vm15s	The Pig Scrolls	Paul Shipton	2004	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After all the Olympian gods go missing, Sibyl has a premonition in which the sun god Apollo tells her to find "the talking pig". Sibyl then sets out looking for the talking pig, Gryllus. She finds him at Big Stavros's Kebab bar where he is forced to entertain customers. Together they set off for the temple at Delphi. Apollo informs Sibyl that she and Gryllus must find a goatherd boy living on top of a mountain. Once Sibyl and Gryllus find the goatherd, (who turns out to be the god Zeus) they set off once more for Apollo's temple at Delphi. It is there that Gryllus, the talking pig, must save the world from utter destruction. Additional: What the author had to say about his work: “I got the idea for The Pig Scrolls when I was rereading Homer's Odyssey and found myself more interested in some of the non-heroic characters in the background. Working on the book gave me a chance to revisit a world I have always loved—that of ancient mythology and history. And, of course, in order to research the character of Gryllus fully, I was forced to eat a huge number of pies.” The Pig Scrolls is set in Ancient Greece, and is about a pig named Gryllus. Gryllus, who was once a member of captain Odesseus’ famous crew, was transformed into a pig by the enchantress Circe. Gryllus, enjoying his quiet life in the woods is soon captured by local hunters when they realize he can talk, and is soon “rescued” by a junior prophetess in training (Sibyl). Sibyl informs Gryllus of a premonition showing her the end of the world. Gryllus believes her to have lost a couple of marbles and escapes, so Sibyl kidnaps him. On their journey to the temple in Delphi, they encounter monsters, gods, a strange goatherd and a scientist who has invented the awesome Atomos Device. Gryllus comes to realize that the entire universe is in the trotters of one talking pig, himself...
12017673	/m/02vm1v1	The Swords of Zinjaban	L. Sprague de Camp	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Fergus Reith, the main Terran tour guide on Krishna, is at the spaceport of Novorecife to meet his latest clients, the advance party for Cosmic Productions. Cosmic is an earthly motion picture company planning to shoot the first movie on the planet, a gaudy swashbuckler to be titled Swords Under Three Moons. Fergus is surprised to find among the party his ex-wife Alicia Dyckman, who left Krishna twenty years before; she in turn is surprised to find him the father of a teenage son, Alister, by a later wife now deceased. Fergus learns Alicia has undergone psychotherapy to correct the personality flaws that had doomed their marriage, and that moreover she is the one who recommended his services to the film company. Alicia introduces Fergus to her colleagues, Cyril Ordway and Jacob White, and soon the two are squiring them around the local realms to scout filming locations and hire locals as extras, including a company of soldiers for the battle scenes. In addition to the usual complications of mediating between egocentric Terrans and temperamental Krisnans, the ex-lovers warily attempt to sort out their feelings for each other, a task rendered all the more difficult because others are also interested in Alicia—and they keep running into Fergus’ old flames at awkward moments! Finally the advance party’s work is done, and the rest of the company arrives, headed by the dour producer Kostis Stavrakos and the flamboyant director Attila Fodor, who fancies himself a reincarnated barbarian. Filming soon begins in the native republic of Mikardand. Meanwhile, Fergus is sent north on an errand to Ruz, where he is unexpectedly imprisoned by the local ruler, the Dasht Gilan bad-Jam, who suspects him (rightly) of having conspired to sabotage Gilan’s intended marriage to Princess Vazni of Dur. The accusation is true; Vazni, one of those old flames of Fergus, had appealed to him to help her escape Gilan. Fortunately he is able to allay his captor’s suspicions, and is even granted a knighthood in return for teaching the Dasht how to play poker! Soon after his return Alicia is kidnapped by another Krishnan ruler, Dour Vizman of Qirib, who is besotted with her. Fergus rides to save her, but is just in time to help her escape, she having already knifed Vizman. Later, back with the film crew, they finally decide to get married again. During the main filming at the border fortress of Zinjaban, Terran diplomat Percy Mjipa arrives bearing warning that Ghuur, the Kamoran of the much-feared nomad horde of Qaath, is about to invade Mikardand, and the Cosmic Productions operation is right in his path. The knights of Mikardand hired as extras for the movie immediately take charge to organize a defense, aided by those Terrans able to handle a sword, such as Reith, Fodor, local consul Anthony Fallon and lead actor Randal Fairweather. Thanks to strategic advice from Fergus and the fortuitous beheading of the Kamoran by the battle-crazed Fodor (also killed), the nomads are defeated. In the wake of the battle the sobered movie-makers hurriedly conclude their filming, only to face a final hurdle—the abduction of Alicia and leading lady Cassie Norris by Enrique Schlegel, a Terran gone native fanatically opposed to what he sees as the alien corruption of Krishnan culture. He threatens to kill them unless all the company’s film footage and filming equipment is destroyed. Once again Fergus finds himself leading a rescue expedition. With good planning coupled with good luck the bandits are defeated and Schlegel killed. Despite all their services to Cosmic Productions, Stavrakos manages to skip planet without paying Fergus and Alicia what is owed them. On a brighter note, they are now married again, and have each other, Alister, and another child on the way, and are looking forward to helping to establish a college in Novorecife for Terrans settled on Krishna.
12022961	/m/02vm6zf	Double Cross	James Patterson	2007-11-13	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Four years ago, Kyle Craig is sent to prison after his crimes in Roses Are Red and Violets Are Blue and swears revenge upon the person who caught him - Detective Alex Cross. Now, four years later, Alex Cross is on a date with police officer, Brianna 'Bree' Stone, when they are interrupted by the news of crime-writer author, Tess Olsen's death. Upon arriving in Washington, Alex decides to help in the investigation, even though he is no longer a detective. They find a Hallmark greeting card, and find a tape featuring the killer, whom threw Olsen from a balcony in her apartment. In the video, he turns toward the camera, and says "In your honor". Alex, Bree, and Alex's bestfriend/co-worker, John Sampson discover the footage of the murder was used twice. After this puzzling news, the murderer goes to a play and kills Matthew Jay Walker, a male actor, later posting videos of his murders on the internet. Alex realizes that the murderer wants an audience, and therefore is nicknamed 'DCAK' (The Washington DC Audience Killer). Alex then goes to work and talks to Sandy Quinlan, a sex-crazed woman seeking therapy from Alex and later meets another patient, Anthony Demao, who is a war-veteran that killed his partner, Matthew under Matthew's orders and pleas, since 'Mat' was dying anyway. As the murders get more serious, Alex decides to once again work with the DC police department while also being a psychologist for therapy. It is then apparent that DCAK is doing a role-play as every time he kills someone, he has a different alter-ego. The killer sets up so many websites featuring footage, pictures, and messages from him or his victims. Meanwhile, in Florence, Italy, Kyle Craig is in prison when he receives a visit from his lawyer, Mason Wainwright, who is a big fan of Kyle. Wainwright puts on a human-like mask of Kyle's face and gives one with his face to Kyle, allowing Kyle to escape and Mason to stay in his place - only to die shortly afterward. Alex learns of Craig's escape and goes to Florence where he reviews footage of Olsen speaking to Kyle during an interview for her latest book; back in DC, FBI agent, Brian Kitzmiller 'Kitz' is assigned to Sampson, Bree, and Alex. An impostor of DCAK, wearing a Richard Nixon mask, kidnaps a teen couple, and kills the boy while the girl is run over. Meanwhile, Kyle visits his mother, who had, according to Craig, let his father bet Kyle when he was a kid, resulting in Kyle stealing money from his mother, then shooting and killing his mother. In Iowa, Kyle murders a woman after pretending to wish to sleep with her, he then flees. Alex goes to the office and witnesses Sandy give Anthony a hand job. He demands to speak with Sandy while Anthony waits outside, though Anthony runs off. Later that day, the two meet at a coffee shop where they kiss and then 'tongue' each other, as Sandy shouts at all in the restaurant "it's ok, he's my brother". Anthony then sits he received a message from Kyle announcing he wishes to see DCAK - implying they are DCAK. Alex, Sampson, and Bree go to a press conference in Baltimore, where Alex finds a message saying he is missing the "show" from DCAK. He learns the person who originally had this message is a female, and he is able to track her, but she escapes in her car. Alex, in pursuit of the woman, eventually looses them and goes to Washington where in National Air and Space Museum, where a married/pregnant woman named Abby Courlevais. Upon returning home, Alex learns from his kids, Alex 'Ali' Jr. and Jannie, and his grandmother, Nana, that his oldest son, Damon, has run away. Sampson is able to find Damon, who is playing basketball. Alex immediately scolds Damon, then apologizing, for missing a Crushing - a prep school in Massachusetts - meeting that would allow Damon to attend the school. Trying to find peace for a moment - Alex and Bree go to a hotel and make love. Eventually, they receive a message from DCAK who announces he has caught the impostor and uses a helicopter to throw the body of the impostor on the roof of a nearby roof. Alex and Bree use a ladder to get to the roof where they find Kitz' dead body; Bree gets back on the street where she is asked for a interview from Neil Stepehns, a 'reporter' who then punches Bree in the face, revealing himself to be DCAK, he leaves. Alex later suspects that Tyler Bell, the brother of Michael Bell - a murderer that Alex had killed - is DCAK. Kyle Craig then kills another girl, a maid, in his hotel in Paris. Kyle arrives in Washington and murders Judge Nina Wolff, who sentenced him to prison. Meanwhile, Sandy says she will be leaving to Michigan and gives Alex a kiss before leaving. Tracking down Bell's former house - a cabin in the woods, where Alex and Bree learn that Bell purchased milk many days before he was last seen, causing Alex to get suspicious. Alex then discovers DCAK has kidnapped Sampson; when returning to Washington, Alex finds a phone attached to his car. He is given directions to DCAK's hideout, where he is chased by a woman. After arriving at the designated destination, Alex and Bree are tied to chairs while DCAK reveals he has also pretended to be Anthony and Stephens; the woman is his sister, who has acted as Sandy. After angering DCAK, who reveals he is not Bell - since he killed Bell himself. Bree manages to escape her bounds, and shoot and kill Sandy. DCAK escapes with Alex in pursuit, this leads to a chase through a Mexican-food restaurant where Alex stabs DCAK, defeating - but not killing - him. However, Kyle Craig appears, revealing he is a so-called fan of DCAK and that Anthony, Sandy, and Mason are fans of Craig. Alex is nearly killed by Kyle when Bree shows up and shoots him, killing him. He then gets up and runs away, after attempting to shoot Bree, but purposely misses. At the hospital, Alex realizes DCAK and his sister are really Aaron and Sarah Dennison, Aaron then curses at Alex, vowing revenge, which Alex dissmisses. The book ends with Alex taking Damon to Massachusetts to go to Crushing, when Alex receives a message stating there has been a murder in Georgetown, setting up the events for Cross Country.
12029869	/m/02vmgbd	Cattail Moon	Jean Thesman		{"/m/04rlf": "Music", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Julia Foster gets a chance to break away from her domineering mother for a while by moving from Seattle to Moon Valley to live with her father and grandmother. While trying to decide on the course of her life, especially whether she can have a career in music despite her mother's denigration of it, she happens on a mysterious figure of an old-fashioned girl at night in the marsh by her house. And she meets Luke, a boy whose fate is tied to the girl in ways he doesn't want to explain to Julia, even though a true affection is blossoming between them. Julia must find the strength to make decisions about herself, her mother, and Luke, and investigating the mystery of the ghost of the marsh may be the way to sort things out.
12030006	/m/02vmgmc	The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters	Gordon Dahlquist	2006-08	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book follows three main characters, Miss Celeste Temple, Cardinal Chang, and Dr. Abelard Svenson, as they attempt to thwart the mysterious plot of a sinister cabal. There are ten chapters in the book, and each is from the point of view of one of the main characters. Chang and Svenson get three chapters each and Miss Temple gets four (the novel both starts and ends from her point of view).
12031649	/m/02vmj68	Pioneer, Go Home!	Richard P. Powell	1959	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The Kwimper family of Cranberry County, New Jersey is on a vacation in Columbiana when their car runs out of gas. Somewhere along the way, the Kwimpers had made a wrong turn and ended up on an unfinished highway. While waiting for assistance to arrive they set up shacks on the side of the road to live out of. The Kwimper clan consists of Pop Kwimper who has lived his entire life off government welfare programs such as unemployment compensation and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, his happy-go-lucky son Toby Kwimper (whose "Strength is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure"), adopted identical twins Eddy and Teddy that nobody can tell apart (and whose parents "tried to beat a train to a crossing and only came out tied"), and the family baby sitter Holly Jones. When confronted by state officials and treated poorly Pop Kwimper decides that the family will settle on the side of the highway permanently. Pop learns of old squatting statutes in the state and determines that he has a legal right to occupy the land. The novel revolves around the family's comical battles with the government, as they establish their lives on the squatted land and are eventually joined by other squatters. The family also contends with social workers, their own poverty, a hurricane, and a group of gangsters that tries to squat on nearby land to run an illegal casino. Of the novel's satire, in the first edition of the novel the publisher writes: "It's possible that some readers may see woven into this comedy the theme of Little Man versus Big Government. They may also find it a study of the classic pioneering spirit and of its chances of survival in America today."
12031716	/m/02vmj8b	A March into Darkness		2007	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story tells of Prince Tristan, as he is summoned by the Heretics to join them beyond the Tolenka Mountains. It is there they promise to help him discover his destiny. To help spur the prince along they send Xanthus, a binary being (half man, half darkling), to torture the citizens of Eutracia until Tristan agrees to go. Meanwhile Serena plots her revenge against those who worship the Vigors. She personally plans to kill Tristan for the death of her husband Wulfgar and their stillborn daughter, Clarice. With the help of the Heretics, to whom she is now able to commune with, Serena sets a plan into motion that will rock the Conclave to its very core.
12032419	/m/02vmjzp	Promise Me	Harlan Coben		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It has been six years since entertainment agent Myron Bolitar last played superhero. In six years he hasn’t thrown a punch. He hasn’t held, much less fired, a gun. He hasn’t called his friend Win, still the scariest man he knows, to back him up or get him out of trouble. All that is about to change... because of a promise. The school year is almost over. Anxious families await word of college acceptances. In these last pressure-cooker months of high school, some kids will make the all-too-common and all-too-dangerous mistake of drinking and driving. But Myron is determined to help keep his friends’ children safe, and so he makes two neighborhood girls promise him: If they are ever in a bind but are afraid to call their parents, they must call him. Several nights later, the call comes at 2:00 am, and true to his word, Myron picks up one of the girls, Aimee Biel, in midtown Manhattan and drives her to a quiet cul-de-sac in New Jersey where she says her friend lives. The next day, the girl’s parents discover that their daughter is missing. And that Myron was the last person to see her. Desperate to fulfill a well-intentioned promise turned nightmarishly wrong, Myron races to find her before she’s gone forever. But his past will not be buried so easily - for trouble has always stalked him, and those he loves are the ones who suffer. Now Myron must decide once and for all who he is and what he will stand up for if he is to have any hope of saving a young girl’s life. Dr Edna Skylar is revealed as the source for the disappearance as Aimee was involved with her estranged son, Drew Van Dyne, a teacher at Aimee's school who gets her pregnant. She was trying to keep her from her strict father, Erik, who would have wanted a termination. The other missing girl, Katie Rochester, runs away from her father to be with her boyfriend Rufus but returns home.
12035449	/m/02vmp2b	Igraine The Brave	Cornelia Funke	2007-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Igraine lives in an old castle with her family, magicians who possess powerful books of magic. Her older brother Albert is following in the family line, but Igraine plans to be a knight one day, even though she feels there is not much adventure to be had at home these days. Her ancestors, though, had warded off many attempts to steal the books of magic. On her 12th birthday, Igraine's parents give her a magical suit of armor, but in the process, they are turned into pigs by mistake. Matters get worse when the next-door Baroness's castle is taken over by Osmond the Greedy, who wants to take the magical books so he can overthrow the king. Igraine and her brother must find a way to defend the castle from Osmond's siege while keeping their parents' condition secret and searching for the missing ingredient for their restoration to human form. Albert handles the castle's magical defenses while Igraine leaves to find the missing ingredient. She finds the ingredient and some assistance, in the form of the Sorrowful Knight of the Mount of Tears, who not only agrees to help her return home but also begins teaching her about the rules of chivalry, and eventually helps Igraine and her family end the siege.
12041751	/m/02vmxc5	Beginning with a Bash	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 It's a cold winter in Boston, and Peters's secondhand bookstore has a sign that says "Come in and browse -- it's warm inside". The sign attracts the attention of Martin Jones, who's not only chilly but being chased by the police because his former boss, Professor North, has accused him of stealing $50,000 from the Anthropology Society. Inside the bookstore, he meets a former teacher from his days at Meredith Academy; Leonidas Witherall, "the man who looks like Shakespeare", who had lost all his money in the stock market crash of 1929, and become the bookstore's janitor. The bookstore's new owner is a pretty young redhead of Jones's acquaintance. After the departure of a book thief and a car accident outside, Professor North's body is discovered in the religion section. Witherall and company -- which soon includes a wealthy Boston dowager, North's sassy maid Gert, and Gert's mobster boyfriend Freddy -- spend the evening tracking down clues to the murderer's identity and trying to stay out of the clutches of Freddy's rival gang. Under Witherall's supervision, the group solves the murder and forces a confession from the murderer just in time to save Jones from the police.
12042034	/m/02vmxsl	The Cut Direct	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 It's a snowy day in Dalton (a New England town near Boston) and someone's trying to run over Leonidas Witherall, "the man who looks like Shakespeare". He's saved by brassy young Margie and her muscular boyfriend Cuff, but he promptly escapes them and is knocked down by another car. When he awakens, he's in the home of Bennington Brett, a former pupil, who is sitting stabbed in front of him. Witherall assembles a crew including the dead man's secretary, the lovely Miss Dallas Tring, two neighbors, Stanton Kaye and dotty housewife Mrs. Price (who owns the fatal carving knife), whose new maid is Margie. Together, the group races around Dalton in pursuit of clues and suspects, comes dangerously close to the second murder, and resolves matters by delivering the criminals to the police complete with confessions.
12042406	/m/02vmy4m	Cold Steal	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 It's a winter day in Dalton (a New England town near Boston) and Leonidas Witherall, "the man who looks like Shakespeare", is returning to his new house, which he's never seen. He's inherited money from an uncle and toured the world, and left plans for his home to be built while on his travels, but now he must return home and produce the next volume of the adventures of Lieutenant Haseltine. On the train to Dalton, he meets a mousy woman named Miss Chard (known to all as Swiss Chard) and a beautiful young woman with a brown paper package and a secret. His new home proves a delight, and it includes a kitchen filled with red appliances, a library with ladders, and a garage complete with the pickaxed corpse of Medora, the crabby next-door neighbor. Leonidas assembles a gang of assistants, including dotty housewife Cassie Price and former car thief Cuff (who has reformed and joined the police force). Together, they defend Witherall's new red refrigerator against thieves, track down the missing envelope of money and bring the murderer to justice.
12042602	/m/02vmycv	The Left Leg	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 It's a winter day in Dalton (a New England town near Boston) and Leonidas Witherall, "the man who looks like Shakespeare", is stepping off a bus after having been accused of bothering a beautiful young woman in a scarlet wimple (who promptly becomes known as the Scarlet Wimpernel). He takes refuge in a hardware store run by a former student, Lincoln Potter. Potter is inclined to be helpful, until the Wimpernel's purse is discovered in Witherall's pocket and Witherall is incautious enough to admit that he saw Potter's cash register being emptied by a man in a green satin suit carrying a small harp. He heads for the home of a former teaching colleague, Marcus Meredith, and finds him murdered -- and missing his artificial left leg. Potter is enlisted by Witherall for help in solving the murder, along with intrepid housewife Topsey Beaton. Together they deceive an entire rummage sale, enlist the Scarlet Wimpernel to play a role, find the man in green satin, locate the left leg, and solve the murder.
12043055	/m/02vmyr5	The Hollow Chest	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 It's Egg Day in Dalton (a New England town near Boston) and Leonidas Witherall, "the man who looks like Shakespeare", returns home from shepherding some students on an Egg Day outing to find his house ransacked, his safe open, and a beautiful blonde bound and gagged on his bed. While he's distracted by the police, she escapes. Then a wealthy neighbor asks him to run an unusual errand, promising his school an endowment if he does so -- in full evening dress, he meets the blonde on a Dalton corner and relieves her of a hollow chest that looks much heavier than it is. Moments later, he discovers a bludgeoned body in a nearby car. He enlists the assistance of plucky Luzzy Jenkins and oafish soldier Goldie to investigate, among other things, the affairs of Goldie's general, a horse named George, a blonde named George, a bank president and a young student named Threewit. Together they explain all the bizarre coincidences and solve the murder.
12044315	/m/02vmzt_	File For Record	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 It's a rainy day in Dalton (a New England town near Boston) and Leonidas Witherall, "the man who looks like Shakespeare", is off to Haymaker's Department Store to retrieve his umbrella at the Lost and Found. When he enters the Lost and Found department, he's knocked unconscious and awakens in a horse-drawn bakery cart filled with French bread. While answering a call for his services as an air raid warden, he decides to call on Mr. Haymaker himself to complain, only to find Haymaker stabbed with a samurai sword. He enlists the assistance of Constance "Pink" Lately, a housewife clutching a Lady Baltimore cake, Jinx the red-headed Haymaker's elevator girl, and many of the participants in a "Victory Swap Meet" to track down an embezzler, a code thief and a murderer.
12044475	/m/02vm_27	Dead Ernest	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Leonidas Witherall, "the man who looks like Shakespeare", is writing the final words of the latest adventure of Lieutenant Hazeltine when his housekeeper Mrs. Mullet interrupts to offer her "candied opinion". The next interruption is two men who deliver an unwanted deep freeze and leave, followed by a blonde in an evening gown and an orchid corsage who mistakenly serenades him with "Happy Birthday". The deep freeze proves to contain the dead body of Ernest Finger, the French teacher at Meredith's Academy, which Witherall has recently inherited. Witherall musters an unlikely gang of associates, including Sonia Mullet, her boyfriend and half the Finger family, to trace the trail of the moving Finger corpse and identify the murderer.
12044624	/m/02vm_7r	The Iron Clew	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Leonidas Witherall, "the man who looks like Shakespeare", is writing the latest adventure of Lieutenant Hazeltine when his housekeeper Mrs. Mullet interrupts to offer her "candied opinion". He then prepares to leave for a dinner to which he's been invited in his persona as a bank director, held at the home of banker Fenwick Balderston, when he notices that a brown-paper parcel of bank papers has disappeared. Upon arrival at Balderston's, he finds the banker has been bashed with a bronze bust of Shakespeare. Assisted by plucky housewife Liz Copley and gang of other assistants, Witherall races around the town of Dalton and tracks down a missing dinosaur footprint, a copy of Tamerlane, the bank documents and the murderer.
12044865	/m/02vm_g8	Murder at the New York World's Fair	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Mrs. Daisy Tower is 67, the widow of a former governor, and for the last year has undergone the untender attentions of her nephew Egleston and his overbearing wife Elfrida during her convalescence from pneumonia and a broken hip. That might explain why she stows away in a laundry truck headed for Boston, but it doesn't really explain how she finds herself confronting a dead body aboard the private train of art collector Conrad Cassell, en route to the New York World's Fair. She and her fellow passengers find themselves in a screwball comedy fix, set against the pageantry of opening day under the shadow of the Fair's spectacular trylon. Daisy must not only identify the corpse and the murderer, but save the Fair from destruction by a maniac—and find a way to get Egleston and Elfrida out of her hair.
12048056	/m/02vn2j_	Small Favor	Jim Butcher	2008-04-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One quiet year after the events in White Night, Dresden is at the Carpenter home. He is teaching Molly, his apprentice, to create shields. While he and Molly's siblings throw snowballs at her, they are attacked by gruffs, goat-like enforcers of the Summer Court Fae. Attacking the children is just a feint. Dresden is their real target. Between Dresden’s fire magic and Charity’s nail gun, the gruffs are driven off. Dresden doesn’t know what he’s done to antagonize the Summer Court. He needs to find out and make amends before it’s the death of him. Just after midnight, Sergeant Karrin Murphy calls Dresden about a case: a building was almost completely destroyed by chaotic magic. Since he’s inches from bouncing a check, Dresden puts the gruffs on hold and accepts the consulting job. Dresden summons Toot-toot and the other fairies in the "Za-Lord's Guard." He directs them to find out who assaulted the building. Toot-toot returns in a panic, urging Dresden to run. Ducking into an alley, Dresden is startled to see Queen Mab of the Winter Court Fae. Queen Mab offers him the mantle of the Winter Knight. Dresden declines. She asks for one of the two favors that Dresden still owes her—just a small favor. She demands that he be her "Emissary." She reveals that the building he is investigating contained a panic room belonging to John Marcone, Chicago's crime lord. Dresden must protect Marcone—or die. Dresden protests that one of the conditions of their agreement is that he can choose to accept or refuse any of the favors. But, she is very persuasive. Queen Mab is the least of his worries. Three gruffs, bigger and meaner than the first ones, appear and pursue him just as Toot-toot had warned. The gruffs are armed with automatic weapons. Eventually, Dresden escapes. He cannot continue alone, so he calls for back-up. Thomas rolls up in a white, pristine Hummer. Dresden tells his half-brother about the gruffs, the wrecked building, the kidnapping, and Queen Mab. As they talk, Fix, the Summer Knight, appears, pointing a shotgun at Dresden's head. Fix warns Dresden not to become the Winter Emissary. Thomas pulls a gun on Fix. Dresden gets them to lower their guns. Then, Dresden points Thomas's gun at Fix. Fix hints that he is compelled, as the Summer Knight, to obey the exact wording of his orders. As a friendly gesture, Fix tells Dresden, "Remember the leaf Lily gave you." The gorgeous, silver leaf trinket represents a boon that the Summer Court owes Dresden. He realizes the gruffs are using it to track him. At home, Dresden magically links the leaf to his "Little Chicago" mock-up of the city. Dresden gets Mister, his cat, to bat it all over the miniature city. By leading the agents of Summer on a merry chase, Dresden hopes to buy himself some time. Dresden and Thomas go to Executive Priority Health, Marcone's exclusive fitness center and brothel. Marcone gave Dresden a VIP membership plus one, in hopes that this business would escape Dresden’s propensity to wreak havoc. Dresden requests to speak to Ms. Demeter, but he is told that she is not in. Thomas displays his remarkable strength. They will wreck the gym, if they do not see her. Dresden meets with Ms. Demeter, who is uncooperative. Torelli, another of Marcone's lieutenants, enters the room with his men to take over Ms. Demeter's business. Dresden and Thomas manhandle them. In gratitude, Ms. Demeter directs them to a safe house, where Hendricks and Ms. Gard are probably hiding. Dresden and Thomas start their search at the safe house. Ms. Demeter's guess had been correct; the safe house was occupied. Hendricks allows Dresden to speak with Miss Gard, who is severely wounded. Before they can come to any agreement, the Denarians return from Death Masks and attack. Dresden parleys with one&mdash;Mantis Girl. She insists that this is a private affair between the Denarians and Marcone. They are both signatories to the Unseelie Accords, so Dresden must stay out of it, or harm will come to him. Dresden counters, by offering to let them leave town in one piece, if they return Marcone. Mantis Girl pretends to leave to consult with her partners, but she boomerangs back to attack. Sensing her return, Dresden fends her off. Then, he, Thomas, Hendricks, and Ms. Gard escape in Thomas' newly battle-scarred Hummer. Suspecting that St. Mary of the Angels church will be watched, Dresden takes Marcone's henchmen to the Carpenter house. On the drive over, Thomas lands a bombshell. During the attack on the safe house, Thomas killed one of the Denarians and took its coin. He was wearing gloves, so he is not corrupted. Sanya, a Knight of the Cross, is stranded in Chicago by the winter storm. He offers his help. Initially, Dresden believes the Denarians want to kill Marcone, because they see him as an upstart mortal. Later, he realizes the Denarians want to recruit Marcone. Dresden sets up a talk with the Denarians. Ms. Gard had already asked him, under the terms of the Unseelie Accords, to request that the White Council file a formal objection to the abduction of one signatory by another. Dresden adopts this as a cover story. He calls Warden Captain Luccio of the White Counsel and bends the truth. He implies that Queen Mab wants the White Council to intervene. Since Mab gave the White Council the right-of-way through the Winter portions of Nevernever, Luccio cannot afford to lose one of the few advantages they've gained against the Red Court vampires. Luccio agrees to facilitate the meeting and to bring in the Archive as a neutral party. Dresden meets Murphy at McAnally's. He updates her on the case of the demolished building. He asks her to let him handle the situation. She insists that Chicago's police should be involved. Dresden gets her to back off, at least temporarily. A larger and stronger gruff enters to speak to Dresden. This older gruff is outraged that Dresden, as the Winter Emissary, burned the younger gruffs with steel. The gruff demands satisfaction. Dresden is saved when Murphy insists that she must become involved, if a gruff threatens a citizen of the city she has sworn to "protect and defend." Her threat to shoot him with steel-jacketed rounds convinces the gruff to back off and leave, at least temporarily. Dresden holds a war council to bring everyone up to speed on the Denarians. Dresden uses magic to make Thomas look like him. He gives Thomas his leather duster and staff to distract the Summer Court agents, so Dresden will be free to do some investigating. Dresden, Murphy, Molly, and Mouse return to the Carpenter’s house, where they are attacked by two of Torelli's men. Murphy is shot. Dresden shoots one in the knee and interrogates the other. Apparently, Torelli has been planning to move against Marcone for quite a while. The first gunman gets up and goes for Dresden. He's saved by Mouse's rapid counterattack. Dresden and company flee the scene as the police arrive. Thanks to her bullet-proof vest, Murphy is alive, but in serious need of medical attention at the Carpenter's. Dresden argues with Michael over his approach to the Denarians. Michael insists the Denarians must have a chance to repent, rather than killing them outright. Dresden confronts Ms. Gard privately. She must have a cache of blood and/or hair samples of Torelli and Marcone for magical security purposes. He needs these samples, so that he can find those men. When he swears by his powers that he will use only those two samples, and will not use either of them for harm, Ms. Gard agrees. The brief case with the samples is in a locker at Union Station. Dresden, Michael, and Mouse&mdash;posing as a service dog—head to Union Station. A magical darkness envelopes the Station. Dresden's magic cannot penetrate it, but Michael's sword does, partially. Under the cover of this magical darkness (myrk), thick, squat creatures called hobs pour into the station. Backed into an office with some civilians, Dresden devises a way to dispel the myrk; thereby, weakening the hobs. Using a heating spell, he activates the fire sprinkler system. The "flowing" water disrupts the magical energy maintaining the darkness. Free from the myrk, Michael's sword blazes to its full brightness. Without the protective darkness, Michael carves through the hobs with relative ease and speed. Dresden follows in his wake, but is separated from him when Big Brother Gruff arrives and attacks Dresden. Using the gruff's own mass and momentum, Dresden knocks it into a swarm of hobs. They mob the gruff, weakening it and buying Dresden some time. Dresden locates Ms. Gard's locker, but it has a powerful ward. The gruff confronts Dresden. In desperation, Dresden opens the locker, which releases the powerful ward with spectacular results. The wounded gruff admits defeat and requests a clean death. Dresden spares his life. The grateful gruff vows to stop attacking him. As the gruff leaves, he warns Dresden that the eldest brother gruff will kill Dresden. After rejoining Michael, they realize the remaining hobs are clustered at a station platform. A train bearing Ivy the Archive, her bodyguard Kincaid, and Warden Captain Luccio just arrived. The hobs' real mission is to attack the Archive. They all escape from the hobs and retreat to the safety of Dresden’s warded apartment. The Archive schedules a meeting between Dresden and Nicodemus at the Shedd Aquarium. During the negotiations, Dresden realizes it's a charade to kidnap the Archive. Dresden and Ivy team up to fight off the Denarians. Ivy’s magical abilities are formidable. Dresden uses a new magical ability, which has devastating effects on the demons. Even though they kill several Denarians, Ivy is captured. Nicodemus plans to coerce Ivy into accepting a blackened denarius. To save her, Dresden makes an offer that's too good to pass up. In exchange for the Archive, Dresden will give Nicodemus all the denarii that the Knights of the Cross have collected (11) and a Sword of the Cross. In response to Michael's outraged protest, Dresden explains they can exterminate the remaining Denarians. Thunderstruck, Michael quietly voices the dream that he could finally be a simple carpenter. Before Dresden's meeting with Nicodemus, Michael asks Dresden about his blasting rod. Dresden realizes he lost his rod after his meeting with Queen Mab, but he is not sure how or why. Dresden meets Nicodemus on a deserted island in Lake Michigan for the exchange. Nicodemus reneges on their deal. The Knights of the Cross attack Nicodemus. The Denarians flee at the sight of the swords. Dresden and Sanya free Marcone and the Archive. Ms. Gard arrives with the rescue copter, but the Denarians return and spray the copter with machine gun fire. Michael is badly injured. The damaged copter escapes as fast as possible. Dresden is abandoned on the island, hunted by the Denarians and their mercenaries. Just as the Denarian Magog is about to kill Dresden, the eldest and most formidable gruff brother appears. The Eldest Gruff claims the right to kill Dresden and obliterates the interloping Denarian. The conflicted gruff reveals that he has been compelled to attack Dresden as long as they are both on the battlefield. Dresden reveals his Summer Court token and claims a boon. Dresden demands a freshly made doughnut with white frosting and sprinkles. The gruff agrees and says the Summer Court's hunt will end, when Dresden re-enters the Chicago city limits. The honorable gruff departs to fulfill the boon. Dresden attempts to escape Rosanna’s boat. Nicodemus is waiting for him. They fight. Dresden strangles Nicodemus with the noose of Judas and makes his escape. Deirdre rescues her father, Nicodemus, and pursues Dresden. Thomas and Murphy appear in the Water Beetle rescue boat. Murphy seizes the hilt of Shiro's sword, Fidelacchius. It blazes with divine light, which blinds and drives off Deirdre. Back on shore, Dresden finds a freshly made doughnut with white frosting, sprinkles—and it's still warm. Thomas has no clue how Dresden's doughnut got in his locked Hummer. Dresden savors each bite as "pure heaven." Thomas drives him to the hospital. Michael is still in surgery. In the hospital chapel, Dresden has a heated discussion with a janitor. He explains that God has a plan for us all—complete with angelic assistance. The janitor vanishes leaving behind a worn copy of The Two Towers with a marked section. Dresden suspects the janitor is really an archangel, who has been aiding him. Queen Mab appears in the chapel. She is pleased that the Watchman has enhanced Dresden's potential. She returns his blasting rod and reveals that he would have been killed, if he had used it to rescue his friends. Dresden visits Ivy and Kincaid at Murphy's house. Later, Sanya gives Amoracchius, Michael's sword, to Dresden with the instructions to pass it on, when the time is right. Michael survived the surgery, but might not make a complete recovery&mdash;bittersweet news at best. Dresden and Anastasia Luccio end the day with a pleasant dinner and a delightful evening.
12048270	/m/02vn2p4	The Hand in the Glove	Rex Stout	1937-09-16	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner is half of the Bonner and Raffray Detective Agency. She claims to have been "inoculated against" men and has no use for them, even her perennial suitor, newspaperman Len Chisholm. Her business partner, Sylvia Raffray, doesn't know much about detection but is the firm's financial backer. As the story begins, Len has just been fired from his job at the instigation of Sylvia's guardian, financier P.L. Storrs, who also controls Sylvia's money for the next six months and thus insists that she withdraw her financial support of the detective agency. Strangely, Storrs asks Dol Bonner to join a house party at his place in the country. Other family members present are Storrs' wife Cleo, who "goes in for cults", and his daughter Janet, who is plain, quiet and writes poetry. Sylvia's fiance Martin, who is a neighbor, and his friend Professor Zimmerman have joined the party, and George Ranth, of the "League of the Occidental Sakti", is Mrs. Storrs' guest and financial parasite. Storrs' problem is that Ranth is pressuring Mrs. Storrs to let him marry Janet and thus become Storrs' heir. He hires Dol to discredit Ranth in Mrs. Storrs' eyes, and proposes that she pretend to be investigating the killing of some pheasants at Martin's estate as a cover story. Dol accepts the task and arrives at the Storrs estate, but before she gets too deeply involved in the task, she comes across the murdered body of her host and employer, who has been brutally strangled with wire and hung from a branch. She soon recognizes that in order to commit the murder, the murderer must have worn heavy gloves to avoid cutting his hands with the wire. She immediately searches the house for the gloves, dodging the police, and finds them -- bizarrely, concealed inside a watermelon in the garden. She continues to investigate Ranth but also learns more about the other guests and family members. Professor Zimmerman proposes marriage to Sylvia, regardless of the feelings of his friend Martin, and promptly becomes the second strangling victim. Dol rapidly collects enough information to identify the murderer of both men and forces a confession at gunpoint, foiling the police.
12050290	/m/02vn48c	The City of Trembling Leaves	Walter Van Tilburg Clark			 The book opens over Reno, Nevada, the principal location for most of the stories. Clark describes the city as a scene, composed of several themes brought about by the physical structures of the city's districts. It is the early Twentieth Century. Reno is a bustling small town on the edge of a mountain range, with fantastic scenery all around. The vast majority of the book's elements are introduced by way of the primary character, Tim Hazard, and it is with him that the human narrative of the story begins. We find Tim in grade school and follow his adventures through childhood and adolescence until he becomes a man. It is composed of so many stories and precious elements contained within, that even if the reader knows everything about the book, its whole storyline, from beginning to end, it is possible to observe countless elements not described in terms of the master narrative. Clark's fondness for the surroundings is not surprising -- he grew up in Reno, son of a University of Nevada president. This familiarity with the underlying subject matter of the setting, leads the book to evoke a sense of place not readily found in other works.
12050827	/m/02vn4rv	The Land of the Silver Apples	Nancy Farmer	2007-08-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this novel, we find Jack back in his village, at the start of the new year. The Bard calls for a "need fire", a ceremony that must be performed by a young girl, to reverse the bad omens of the past year and to help the sun come back out on this day of the year where night is the longest. Lucy, Jack's younger sister, is to be the girl, but she breaks the bard's rules and spoils the ritual by wearing a silver necklace. Pega, a terribly ugly slave, inferior to everyone in the village, is chosen to hold the candle and finish the ceremony. The sun did come out, but there was still danger to the village. Jack is kicked out of his house after freeing Pega, with the silver he received from past adventures (see The Sea of Trolls) but hid from his angry father. He now lives with the Bard. Jack continues his training as a bard; however, just when his bardic skills are growing, his mother calls him back home. Lucy, his beautiful, otherwordly little sister, has become uncontrollable. Because her father always told her that she is a lost princess, Lucy is acting like one and is treating her parents like peasants. Father, under horrible guilt and mental anguish, admits that Lucy isn't his real daughter at all.. His real daughter, Hazel, was stolen by hobgoblins while Father was in the forest, and replaced by Lucy. Lucy was "the most beautiful infant he [Father] had ever seen," and he fell under the sin of "temptation" and brought Lucy home. The Bard suggests that even if the uncontrollable Lucy isn't Jack's real sister, they should cure her. To cure Lucy, the Bard, Jack, Pega, and a monk named Brother Aiden take the girl to Father Swein's (St. Fillians) monastery, near the fortress of Din Guardi. When they arrive, Jack is horrified by the brutal methods of exorcism at the monastery and he tries to rescue Lucy from the monks. Using his magical powers, he accidentally causes an earthquake, in the course of which Lucy is kidnapped by the Lady of the Lake and the holy well at St. Fillians becomes dry. Yffi, the half-monster king of Din Guardi, imprisons Jack's father and orders Jack to go underground and call upon the Lady of the Lake to restore water to the well. A slave named Brutus, whom Jack believes is good at nothing but grovelling, accompanies Jack and Pega as they travel through the tunnels. They travel for several days, and come across a small tunnel that has no air current. Forgetting the Bard's warning of these tunnels, they go in, and encounter a horrific monster called a Knucker. The Knucker takes on the shape of whatever one's greatest fear is--for Jack, the Knucker appeared to be a dragon, and to Pega, it appeared to be a gigantic bedbug. Jack's magic destroyed it, but Brutus is separated from them. Jack and Pega awaken on the outskirts of Elfland, an enchanted, perfect place with loving, trusting animals, delicious fruits from lush trees, and teeming life all around. The two travelers continue around, looking for Brutus, and find that each morning after they wake, food appears nearby. As they journey on, they come across Jack's old friend, Thorgil (met in The Sea of Trolls), a Norse shield maiden who was encased in moss by the Forest Lord, after killing a fawn that trusted her. Jack and Pega free her and learn her story. Thorgil had been raiding with her friends when they came across a beach. On the beach was an entrance to the Elfland, and Thorgil was chosen to explore the tunnel. The nephew of their King was also along; he was a spoiled raider who demanded the highest honors, an undeserved title, and the best plunder. He led the way, heavily armed, and found a tunnel with no air current. Thorgil warned him not to go in, but he ignored her and ventured in. Thorgil heard him screaming and saw a Knucker kill Heinrich "The Heinous", the spoiled raider. At this point, the earthquake that Jack caused struck, and the Knucker was crushed while Thorgil was swept into Elfland. She wandered around, and a fawn lay down in front of her. Oblivious to the rules of the land, Thorgil swiftly slit its throat. However, she was incapable of snapping any branches off trees for a fire, and when the forest started to attack her, she fled, terrified. After she exhausted herself, she was slowly buried under the moss. It wasn't able to completely cover her, since her Rune of Protection saved her, but she was starving to death when Jack and Pega arrived and saved her. At this point, the trio go to sleep, but after a fight between Pega and Thorgil, Thorgil and Jack sleep close to each other while Pega goes off alone. Jack wakes up in the night and finds that Pega is surrounded by ugly creatures. He quietly wakes Thorgil up, and the two go to see what's going on. The creatures reveal that they are hobgoblins and were supplying the group, and that their King, Bugaboo, is in love with Pega. They take the trio underground with them, where they hold them captive. However, some of the hobgoblins, led by Nemesis, Bugaboo's closest friend, release the captives so that Pega doesn't stop Bugaboo from ruling well. The hobgoblins send the three to the heart of Elfland, where the Elves hold them captive. There, they meet Father Severus, a monk who had been captured along with Jack by Thorgil several years before. They also meet the Abbot of the monastery of St. Fillians, and one of his victims. During the feast Jack sees Lucy who when he tries to remind her about his parents, she instantly responds that they were crude and ugly and that she is really the Elf Queen's daughter. Sadly, Jack realizes that there is nothing that he can do. He accepts the fact Lucy is an elf that when and if she dies, she'll go to neither heaven or hell. Brutus is also encountered, as a servant to the elves. The elves soon choose Father Severus as a sacrifice to what Severus calls Satan. While the elves lead the captives to be sacrificed, Brutus passes a single inflammatory mushroom and firemaking tools to Jack. The elves begin cruel games while they wait for Satan to appear. He appears at the zenith of the moon in the sky, and begins to pick a sacrifice - Thorgil runs forward and punches him when he considers her, distracting him, but setting her hand on fire. As she frantically begins attempting to put it out, the victim of the Abbot runs forward and throws the Abbot to Satan. Satan, enraged, consumes the Abbot and slays the victim as well. At this point, Jack lights a the mushroom, and the flames, which are the only real things in Elfland, dispel the elves' illusions and reveal who they truly are. Satan seizes an elf instead of the captives, and withdraws into the earth, while the Elves attempt to recreate their illusions and hide their horribly aged forms.Then the hobgoblins arrive with King Bugaboo and rescue them. The captives escape to the surface, taking Ethne, the Bard's daughter with the Elf Queen, who later strives to earn a soul with the Christians. But when they are in safety they find that Thorgil's right hand has been covered with silver, paralyzing it. At first she is inconsolable, but when Jack compares her brave deed to the Norse god Tyr who sacrificed his right hand to imprison Fenris, the great wolf. He promises he will sing a saga about it, pulling her out of her moping. Brutus has already gone, bringing water with him, to conclude the quest. However, the captives are captured by Yffi; he is half-Kelpie, and loves the taste of hobgoblin. While he is distracted with them, Jack escapes with Thorgil and Pega, to get aid from below the fortress. They come across creatures called Yarthkins, which they free by sacrificing Jack's staff; breaking the bound of Unlife. As the creatures swarm into the castle and break its defenses, first Pega displays her affection for Jack by kissing him, then Jack kisses Thorgil. The hobgoblins, Jack, Thorgil, and Pega then escape as the Forest Lord begins to rip the fortress apart. They go to the village, where Brutus, a descendant of Lancelot, has taken charge. Jack notes Thorgil's beauty as they retrieve Jack's father and begin to return home. Thorgil, who was abandoned by the Northmen, who thought she was dead, accompanies them. The hobgoblins then leave, as Pega rejects Bugaboo, and the book concludes with Jack relaxing alongside Thorgil, his father, the Bard and Pega.
12052390	/m/02vn71s	The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel	Michael Scott		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sophie and Josh Newman are 15&nbsp;year-old twins who are working at their summer jobs in San Francisco when a mysterious man, John Dee, comes into Josh's workplace for a book, the Codex – or Book of Abraham the Mage. Sophie and Josh witness Nick and Perry, the book store's owners, using magic. They discover that Nick is not an ordinary bookseller, but is the medieval alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel, being kept alive by making the elixir of life (a secret from the Codex) for him and his wife, Perry (Perenelle). Dee also uses magic and takes the Codex by force while Josh is holding it – resulting in two pages being left behind. Both Flamels need the Codex to make the elixir of life, or they will age rapidly and die within a month. Also, if they do not retrieve the Codex, Dee will summon the Dark Elders to destroy the world and return to an age in which humans are but slaves and food. Flamel quickly takes them to a hideout to enlist the aid of Scathach, a powerful Next Generation Elder. There they are forced to run, threatened by rats sent by Dee, which are thwarted by Flamel and Scathach. Chased again almost immediately by tens of thousands of birds, Flamel then leads the twins and Scathach to secure the aid of Hekate, an Elder, who can awaken the twins' magical potential. Dee discovers this, and enlists the aid of Bastet and the Morrigan. The trio mount a massive assault on Hekate's shadowrealm, to destroy Yggdrasill – the world tree – that is the heart of Hekate's power. While Yggdrasill is attacked, Hekate awakens Sophie's magic abilities, but does not have time to awaken Josh, as the tree has been set on fire by Dee. While she rushes to defend her home, Scathach, the Flamels, and the twins attempt to escape the shadowrealm. While escaping, they encounter Dee, and witness the power of the ancient Ice Elemental sword, Excalibur. They see Dee transform a wereboar into pure ice, then shatter the statue. Scathach remarks that she thought that Excalibur had been lost when Artorius died. The twins, Scathach, and Flamels escape the shadowrealm, shortly before the destruction of Hekate, Yggdrasill, and the entire shadowrealm. As they escape, Dee uses Excalibur to freeze the tree, and Hekate, whose life and power is linked to it, transforms to ice as well. As this occurs, Dee is informed that the Flamels and Scathach have escaped with the twins. In his rage, he shatters Yggdrasill, which crushes Hekate into dust, killing her. The Flamels, Scathach, and the twins travel to Scathach's grandmother, the Witch of Endor (also called "The Mistress of Air"), who teaches Sophie her magical secrets quickly by giving the girl all the witch's memories and the power to know how to use air magic. While they are there, Dee has found out that a prophecy in the Codex speaks of Sophie and Josh. He tempts Josh to join him, while using necromancy to raise thousands of corpses to assault the Elders, the Flamels and Sophie. Josh almost agrees, but at the last moment he realises he will lose Sophie if he agrees. Dee brings all the dead in a near by cemetery alive and they start to attack them, Josh hits Dee with a Hummer distracting Dee long enough to escape with Scathach, Sophie and Nicholas Flamel by using a leygate (a teleportation device where two or more lines of energy, ley lines, cross the world) to go to Paris which is Nicholas Flamel's old home. Then the book ends.
12055056	/m/02vn9g2	John Goldfarb, Please Come Home			{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The comic spoof of the Cold War was inspired by a May 1960 incident involving American Francis Gary Powers, a CIA operative whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, sparking an international diplomatic incident. Blatty's tale concerns John "Wrong-Way" Goldfarb, a former college football star who once ran 95 yards for a touchdown in the wrong direction. Now a U-2 pilot, his plane malfunctions and crashes in the mythical Arab kingdom of Fawzia. The country's leader threatens to turn him over to the Soviets unless he agrees to coach a football team. Jenny Ericson, the magazine journalist who made Goldfarb famous, is on an undercover assignment as a member of the King's harem, and when she discovers she was wrong in thinking the King is no longer romantically interested in his wives, she seeks help from Goldfarb. The King blackmails the U.S. Department of State into arranging an exhibition football game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and his own team. Jenny becomes a cheerleader and then the quarterback who scores the winning touchdown for Fawz University.
12056363	/m/02vnbvt	Die neuen Leiden des jungen W.				 Edgar Wibeau's father left when Edgar was five. After Edgar's death at the age of 17, his father wants to know who his son was and begins interviewing people who knew him. Raised by his mother during the DDR-era, Edgar is a good son and an excellent student. After an argument with his apprenticeship supervisor, Flemming, however, he rejects authority and leaves his hometown of Mittenberg and, with his friend Willi, moves to Berlin, where he feels he can be free to follow his own desires. Discovered by chance, Goethe's book about Werther (whom Edgar often calls "Old Werther") becomes a verbal weapon Edgar uses to solve inconvenient situations. The young rebel isn't successful as an artist and thinks that he's underestimated by the people a bit. He starts working as a house painter. His co-workers Addi and Zaremba dream of a revolutionary invention, a nebula-free paint duster, but fail to put their plan into practice. Edgar secretly tries to build the machine by himself at his alcove. As soon as he tries out his prototype for the first time, he is killed by the voltage. Whether this death was intentional or not is left for the reader to decide. Originally, Plenzdorf wanted the protagonist to kill himself, but suicide was not an acceptable theme in the DDR.
12056684	/m/02vnc6x	Eggs	Jerry Spinelli	2007-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On April 29, Carolyn Sue Limpert slips on a wet floor without a wet floor sign and falls down the stairs, resulting in her death. The Limpert family, consisting of Margaret, David's grandmother, David, Carolyn's son, and Carolyn's husband, move from Minnesota to Perkiomen Township, Pennsylvania. David becomes quiet and sensitive about his mother's death. His father, a sales manager, only comes home on the weekends, usually ending up with only David and his grandmother, whom he disrespects and ignores completely. In the beginning of the book, David's grandmother is taking him to the Easter Egg hunt, much to his disappointment. While hunting for eggs, he finds a beautiful girl resting underneath the leaves by some trees. When David asks if she's dead, she makes no response. He starts to talk to her about himself. He leaves, thinking that it's a dead body he's seen, and waits for a newspaper to come to express the news. It turns out that the girl he mistook for dead is Primrose, a ruthless thirteen year old who defies all rules. In a short time, the two, a thirteen year old with no father but a fortune-telling mother, and a nine-year-old with no mother, become great friends. Primrose lives in a 1977 van instead of a home, despite her mother's wishes for her to sleep with her. The duo commonly fight and get into loud arguments, but one day, when David makes a verbal slip about Primrose's unknown father being a homeless man on the streets, she becomes angry, shoving the boy's face into the cushions and nearly suffocating him. Refrigerator John, a man Primrose's size with a bad leg and a friend of the two is very kind to them and lets them sleep at his place. On the night of the Mid Summer Night's Scream, Primrose, disguised as David's mother and David go to the event, only to end in a quarrel in which David reveals Primrose's disguise, and his feelings of sadness and anger at his mother's loss. Infuriated, he runs, and ends up sleeping at Refrigerator John's home, much to his grandmother's worry. Time passes, and the two quickly reunite. Primrose sets off on a journey with David, who seemed to have no choice when she said she would go to Philadelphia. Later, she admits that she wants to see the Waving Man, a man who had been seen on TV, and known for waving at people as they passed. She also confessed that she wanted to ask why he waves. Much to David's shock, the two spend the night alone and away from home, since they couldn't make it back in time. David finds a comic book, Veronica, and reads to Primrose until she goes to sleep. In the morning, they are soon found by a police officer who had been looking for them throughout the night, but not before David sees the sunrise for the first time since his mother's death. The book ends with David planning his 10th birthday party. He leaves to go to Primrose, and helps her shove her beanbag back into her home. She wants to move back in with her mother, who had been the first to see her back in town when she came out of the police cruiser. David asks Primrose if they are going to try to go back to Philadelphia. Primrose says no because she knows why the Waving man waves. When asked by David why he waves, she says "because they wave back".
12058048	/m/02vndrc	The Dragon Waiting: A Masque of History	John M. Ford	1983	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is a fantasy alternate history combining vampires, the Medicis, and the convoluted English politics surrounding Edward IV and Richard III. The book also fictionalizes the fate of the Princes in the Tower. Edward IV is on the throne of England, but in this alternate world, medieval Europe is dominated by the threat from the Byzantine Empire. During the third century CE, Julian the Apostate reigned longer than he did in our world, succeeded in displacing Christianity and reintroduced religious pluralism within the Roman Empire, resulting in the subsequent disappearance of Islam as well. Without any cohesive threat from the east, presumably Byzantium was able to survive, consolidate its authority and expand. Sforza, the Vampire Duke, marshals his forces for his long-planned attack on Florence, and Byzantium is on the march. A mercenary, the exiled heir to the Byzantine throne, a young woman physician forced to flee Florence, and a Welsh wizard, the nephew of Owain Gly Dwr, seem to have no common goals but together they wage an intrigue-filled campaign against the might of Byzantium, striving to secure the English throne for Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and make him Richard III. This succeeds, and Richard III goes on to win the Battle of Bosworth in this alternate universe, killing Henry Tudor and insuring that he never becomes Henry VII as he did in our world. At that point, the book ends.
12058134	/m/02vndxj	The Mountain Cat Murders	Rex Stout	1939-07-27	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Delia Brand, the protagonist, is a beautiful young woman living in tiny Cody, Wyoming. Delia is determined to avenge the tragic deaths of her parents; her prospector father's by shooting and her mother's suicide from grief. When she believes she knows the culprit, she buys some cartridges and announces her intention to shoot a man. After discussing her intentions with her uncle Quinby Pellet, the town taxidermist, Delia goes to visit her sister, Clara. Clara Brand is secretary to Dan Jackson, who runs a grubstaking business for local prospectors, and has just lost her job. In the middle of Delia's argument with Dan, she hears noises outside the office and discovers that Quin has been knocked unconscious by someone whom he hasn't seen. After dealing with the doctor and the police, Delia returns to her car to find that her gun and cartridges have been stolen. Dan Jackson's father-in-law Lem Sammis is Delia's godfather, Delia goes to see him and his brassy wife Evelina to get Clara's job back. Lem agrees and gives Delia a note to Dan to say so. When Delia returns to the office to confront Dan once again, she finds him dead and is arrested for his murder, due to her earlier incautious statements. However, very few people know that, although the late Dan Jackson was no favorite of Delia's, her actual suspicions were of the Reverend Rufus Toale. Other characters of interest include Delia's lawyer and suitor, Tyler Dillon; millionaire playgirl Wynne Cowles, known to all as the "Mountain Cat," who has come to Cody for her second divorce in two years; and illiterate prospector Squint Hurley. Squint Hurley comes up with a document found near Delia's father's body that he's never been able to read, which leads Delia to the identity and motivation of the real murderer.
12063081	/m/02vnl87	The Far Shore of Time	Frederik Pohl	1999-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dannerman recovers from his ordeal he learns more about the Horch, the Beloved Leaders, and other species involved in their war. He collects information and technology, while looking for an opportunity to return to Earth and warn humanity about the coming of the Beloved Leaders. When Dannerman is asked to assist in preparing one of the former prisoners to infiltrate the Beloved Leaders he sees an opportunity to return home. He presents the plan to the Horch, and although they do not agree to it he is able to bluff his way through. He ends up back on Earth aboard one of the stealth submarines that the Beloved Leaders have placed on Earth. Dannerman is able to make contact with his government, and discovers that they are already aware of the Beloved Leaders and are taking precautions against them. However, they are not aware of the stealthed submarines. Dannerman and his alien friends are again interrogated by the American government and representatives of the United Nations, although more gently than his previous interrogators. Dannerman must serve as a translator between the humans and the aliens, because he is in possession of a translation implant from the Beloved Leaders. With information from Dannerman and help from Horch technology, the Beloved Leader's submarines are cut off from their masters and captured before they are able to unleash pockets of undersea methane gas. This strategy is the Beloved Leaders standard practice for dealing with planets that will not submit to them. Having survived the initial contact, the President of the United States prepares to release all information about the aliens and the confrontation to the world, so that humanity can prepare to defend themselves in the future.
12063698	/m/02vnlw4	Saraband of Lost Time	Richard Grant	1985-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story takes place in thirty-five chapters. The characters come from a variety of locations, and travel across the land in their adventures. Grant created his own place names, drinks, songs and more for this novel. Unlike many fantasy novels, he did not create a map of the world, which is supposedly a futuristic Earth after the occurrence of an apocalypse of some kind. It may or may not be the same world as used in Rumors of Spring and Through the Heart. The characters are still human and are not a great deal different from modern humans in most cases. In all three books, the humans are mostly dealing with major environmental changes and the resulting changes in humanity, but some people have stood out as different.
12066422	/m/02vnp29	On the Run	Nina Bawden	1964	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Ben's cousins, whom he lives with, are unwell, he is forced to spend the summer with his father and stepmother-to-be. They live in London and have little time to spend with Ben. So Ben decides to explore the gardens of the terrace houses in his street. He walks along the walls connecting all the houses until he comes to one covered in jagged glass. Ben then falls into the garden and meets a young boy from Tiga, Thomas. Thomas is being kept in London, while his father, Chief Okapi, is exiled there. When Ben discovers a plot to kidnap Thomas, he, Thomas and Lil (a friend of Thomas) decide to run away.
12067316	/m/02vnp_3	The Lincoln Lawyer	Michael Connelly	2005	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Moderately successful criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller operates around Los Angeles County out of a Lincoln Town Car (hence the title) driven by a former client working off his legal fees. While most clients are drug dealers and gangsters, the story focuses on an unusually important case of wealthy Los Angeles realtor Louis Roulet accused of assault and attempted murder. At first, he appears to be innocent and set up by the female "victim." However, Roulet's lies and many surprising revelations change Mickey's original case theory, making him reconsider the situation of Jesus Menendez, a former client serving time in San Quentin State Prison after pleading guilty to a similar and mysteriously related crime. In the end, Haller outmaneuvers Roulet (revealed to be a rapist and murderer) without violating ethical obligations, frees the innocent Menendez, and continues in legal practice, though not without much self-examination and emotional baggage.
12074612	/m/02vnz4s	Four Reigns				 The Four Reigns starts out with a young girl named Phloi whose mother leaves her husband of the lower aristocratic status to be free from the restraints of being one of his minor wives. Although being one of a few minor wives to a man was the norm, Phloi's mother was not content in that domestic order. Consequently, this provoked Phloi's mother, Mae Chaem, along with Phloi to move out and make a change which involved a trip to the royal palace to offer Phloi up to a better life as a minor courtier. Mae Chaem is there to assist Phloi on her trip to the palace and often visits her there to be sure of her well-being. Mae Chaem suddenly dies and Phloi is deeply saddened by her loss and spends the rest of her time coping and adapting to the palace life. Phloi's life, however, truly begins in the palace, where she humbly serves and befriends the royalty and their servants. Phloi lives through time periods of four reigns as the title suggests, involving four different kings. The king well-renowned in history, King Chulalongkorn, was the monarch at Phloi's birth and King Ananda Mahidol is the ruler reigning at Phloi's death. During her time at the palace Phloi lives the life of a minor courtier engaging in youthful diversions with her friend Choi and occasionally doing menial tasks as a court attendant. She really doesn't have a worry, except for selecting the correct outfit for the next leisurely excursion. On these trips everyone from the Grand Palace would attend religious ceremonies such as the Kathin festival at the end of the Buddhist Lent. As time goes by, Phloi's life is altered, when she is compelled to marry Khun Prem, a man on a personal level, she knows very little about. This engagement is influenced by her elders' and their traditional values. They believed that it was safest to marry someone of good financial grade rather than solely for love. Although Phloi did not quite know Prem at first, they eventually did grow to love one another. He is of the minor nobility but still all the same could be ranked among the aristocratic people in Thai society with good financial standing. Khun Prem is also of military standing and well respected by his peers. This is evident as he receives promotions and is involved with the highly regarded Wild Tiger Calvory Corps. Khun Prem starts out as a tradionalist but as society changes, Khun Prem inherits military discipline and Western idealism. This is shown forth as he begins to smoke Western cigarettes and drink Western wine. His first son enters military school while his and Phloi's other two sons are sent to study abroad. Their only daughter, Praphai, stays with Phloi and is her mother's companion until she branches out on her own. One of Phloi's sons Ot, who went to Europe to study abroad, comes back with new intellectual ideas and continually ponders with his uncle, Phloi's brother, the new fascination of politics. In the novel he states: "What else have we to talk about? The air is thick with political news. So-and-so is going to be arrested, so-and-so may have to be got out of the way, and there'll be an armed clash between such-and-such factions, and so on." (P. 483 of Four Reigns) Politics became something of more interest in Thai culture as it existed before but was more available to the general public when ideas about how the government should be run was appropriated among the people. This became the new way of life in Thailand that was capturing the minds of the evolving individual. When Ot's brother An returns from France he breaks with tradition by bringing back a French wife. This is much to the dismay of his father and a shock to his mother. An introduces his French wife to the family circle and she displays as expected, her Western influences. These include French clothing styles; make up and personal mannerisms. An's French wife, Lucille, in her short stay, influenced Phloi's youngest daughter, Praphai with her ways as well. This is evident as Praphai unlike her mother decided to marry a man of her choosing. Praphai and her husband Khun Sewi even changed their wedding to follow a more modern format. They didn't have the chanting monks and Khun Sewi even carried Praphai inside the house the way the "farangs" (Westerners) do. "They haven't abandoned the old custom but have adopted it to suit the prevailing conditions, you see"(P. 534 of Four Reigns). An for his part became an intellectual with Westernized influences from France. Once he became stable in the political circuit of Thailand he aligned himself with the rebel group called the People's Party who staged the Palace Revolution of 1932. Phloi experiences World War I, and its economic impact on Thailand. Prices for imported goods begin to make a noticeable rise. This is also the time that Phloi's husband,Prem, dies in a horse riding accident. Phloi is left to fend for herself but her children by then are home and all grown up and able to offer her much needed emotional support. Sometime later, Thailand suffers an economic depression and a rebel group called the People's Party in which An allies himself with, begins to form. They eventually organize a coup that forces the king to agree to relinquish absolute authority and cede full power to a Constitutional Monarchy. World War II succeeds the first and has a stronger impact Thailand. The Japanese invade, and then occupy Bangkok until the Allied bombings force them to give in. All of Phloi's children survive the war except for one of her sons who died of malaria while in southern Thailand on a work assignment. When the war ends Phloi's house is destroyed and she returns to her ancestral home at Khlong Bang Luang where she spends the last of her days. th:สี่แผ่นดิน zh:四朝代
12076330	/m/02vp0sn	Star Wars: Darth Bane: Rule of Two	Drew Karpyshyn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Darth Bane, still on the planet Ruusan, finds his apprentice Zannah, a girl only 10-years-old. Together they decide to see the effects of the thought bomb and journey into the catacombs where it lies. Inside they find a boy, Tomcat, who is Zannah's cousin; she spares him by cutting his hand off. Then Darth Bane attacks the remnants of an old Sith camp, inhabited by former mercenaries. He slays the majority of them, allowing two to survive. At the camp, he finds a scroll telling him the location of the tomb of former Sith Lord, Freedon Nadd. Then he travels to a ship and leaves the planet, charting a course for Dxun, a moon of the planet Onderon, but makes Zannah stay to find her own way to the planet, and meet him on Onderon, saying it is a test and a lesson. Meanwhile, the surviving mercenaries are found by Jedi Johun Othone and his group of soldiers that travel back to Ruusan to find any survivors of the thought bomb. Johun takes the mercenaries back to the main ship to stand trial. The remaining soldiers happen to find Zannah. On the way back to the main ship, she kills the crew, and plots a course to Onderon. Bane then flies to Dxun and enters the tomb. Upon touching the Sith holocron, he is attacked by orbalisks who attach onto his body. He learns that the orbaliks cannot be removed, but will provide an almost impenetrable armor and give his body superhuman healing prowess. Then he controls the mind of a Drexl, a flying beast native to the planet, and flies to Onderon to meet Zannah, thereby rescuing Zannah from an indigenous clan of beast riders. Johun is appointed protector of Chancellor Valorum, a boring job he does not desire, but then his master, Valenthyne Farfalla, makes him a Knight, instead of the former Padawan he was. Ten years later, Zannah is a woman and now a powerful Sith. Strikingly attractive, she tricks a handsome Twilek Kel, into a plan to assassinate former chancellor Valorum, a plan which is doomed to fail. Kel and other members of the rebel group attack, two members flee upon seeing bodyguard Johun Othone, who is a Jedi. After a fearsome battle, the Jedi narrowly defeats the Twilek Kel, and kills the rest of the group. Meanwhile, at base camp, Bane has been trying to construct a Sith holocron; after three failed attempts, he fails on the fourth one and goes into a blinding fury and destroys the camp. Zannah plants the seeds in his head that the orbalisks caused the failure, because she knows that one day she must challenge him and she is afraid that she will be unable to beat him, because of the orbalisks. He starts to wonder whether the orbalisks are causing his mind to degrade, because of the repeated failures to construct the holocron. The two members who had fled find Zannah and accuse her of tricking them into an attack that was doomed to fail. Unable to attack in public, she follows them to their master Hetton. In him, Zannah senses the dark side of the Force. She kills the two members that fled in a dramatic flair of Sith power. Hetton, very impressed, asks Zannah to make him her apprentice. She accepts, knowing that he has a large collection of manuscripts valuable to her master. Together Zannah, Hetton and eight Sith assassins attack Darth Bane. Bane kills the assassins, as well as Hetton, and almost kills Zannah too, until she explains to him what happened. He again thinks that the orbalisks have caused him to miss the subtle plan that Zannah constructed, almost killing her - furthering the thought that the orbalisks are causing him to degrade mentally. Using Hetton's manuscripts, he finds the location of the tomb of Sith Lord Belia Darzu. Hoping that it will contain the secrets of holocron construction, he travels there. Darth Bane instructs Zannah to disguise herself and go to the Jedi archives, to see if she can find a way to remove the orbalisks. There she finds the cure, but meets her cousin Tomcat, now called Darovit, who was found on Ruusan by Johun Othone. Darovit tells the Jedi about Darth Bane. He now finds himself changing alliances and decides to come with Zannah, because of his brotherly love for her. Five Jedi journey to the tomb of Belia Darzu, arriving after Zannah and Darovit. Bane instructs Darovit to hide, and he and Zannah together duel with the five Jedi. After having slain four of them, he attempts to kill the last one with Sith lightning. One of the four supposedly slain Jedi is still alive and casts a Force orb around Bane as he releases the lightning. The lightning is reflected back on Bane, frying him inside the orb. Some of the orbalisks are destroyed by the tremendous force and thereby release a toxin that will kill Bane in days. Zannah takes the group to Ambria, to find healer Caleb, who once saved Bane's life before. Caleb refuses to heal him, no matter what, but then he makes a deal that he will heal Bane if Zannah informs the Jedi of their existence. She accepts, but after Bane is healed, Zannah kills Caleb and makes Darovit go mad. She tricks the Jedi that come. They think that Darovit was the Sith Lord. Meanwhile, Zannah and Bane are hiding in a secret cellar. Bane expected her to let him die, but after the Jedi leaves, she tells him that she saved him because she still has much to learn.
12076423	/m/02vp0vc	Arthur's Teacher Trouble	Marc Brown	1986	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Arthur starts a new year with Mr. Ratburn, and is given heaps of homework because Mr. Ratburn is very strict, D. W is ecstatic because she has not started school yet, and she knows that next year, she won't get any homework because the kindergarten teacher is nice. The principal announces the annual September Spellathon, and not long after Mr. Ratburn announces a spelling test to determine which two students will represent his class at the spellathon. Everybody studies, and Arthur and Brain get all twenty words right, and enter into the spellathon. On the night of the spellathon, Arthur is very nervous. Brain is first, and spells 'fear' "F-E-R-E", Prunella falls out not long after, spelling 'preparation' "P-R-E-P-E-R-A-T-I-O-N". Arthur spells preparation correctly and wins the spellathon. At the end of the spellathon, Mr. Ratburn announces that he has loved teaching third grade, but that he is looking forward to a new challenge next year, teaching kindergarten. At this announcement, D.W. faints.
12076495	/m/02vp0x2	Odd Girl Out	Timothy Zahn		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Laura Landon is a sheltered freshman at a fictional university in a midwestern town. Intensely shy and introverted, she is drawn to the president of the Student Union, Beth Cullison. Beth is outgoing and friendly, experienced socially (with men, particularly) but feels a void in her life. She doesn't understand how the other girls are so fulfilled by the men in their lives, despite having tried. Every time she allows herself to be intimate with one, she breaks it off out of disappointment. Beth shares a room in the sorority house with Emmy, and convinces Laura to pledge the sorority. Feeling a pull to Beth, Laura delights in her presence and experiences jealousy and confusion in her attachment to the older woman. They go on dates together to movies and plays, and Beth considers Laura something of an enigma, unsure of how to reach out to her to get to know her well. Laura finds herself especially jealous of Beth's most recent beau, Charlie, who to Beth's surprise, has awoken some new feelings in her. Laura is often so at odds with her unemotional upbringing conflicting with the intensity of the emotions she experiences for Beth that she practices self-injury. Beth begins to realize what effect she has on Laura and teases her good-naturedly to watch what happens to her, but Beth is taken back by Laura's intense attraction and love for her, and they begin an affair. This is compounded by her escalating relationship with Charlie, who is frustrated with Beth's vacillating between affection for him and her guilt for hurting Laura. Beth loses her faith with her sorority and the university when during a sorority costume party, Emmy gets drunk and her boyfriend, Bud, hoists her scantily clad over his shoulder and the top of her costume falls off. The sorority kicks her out after she is caught in the middle of coitus with Bud, after she was told not to see him. Bud is angered by this, and feels partly to blame. He reassures Emmy and promises to marry her. Whether or not he will fulfill his promise remains ambiguous. Emmy writes to Beth about her frustration when she doesn't hear from Bud, and her feelings of estrangement from her community. Disillusioned and not sure what to do, Beth agrees to leave school to be with Laura and they plan to run away to Greenwich Village. Charlie corners Laura and she tells him about their relationship, triumphant that she can have what Charlie cannot. Charlie corners Beth when she is on her way to meet Laura at the train station and confronts her about her relationship with Charlie. He calls her relationship with Laura childish and Beth admits she is not in love with him, she only loves Laura. Charlie drops her off at the station and says she must make her own decision, but he will wait nearby for half an hour, just in case. Beth finally reveals the truth to Laura when she meets her at the station. Laura stays on the train resolute her love for Beth and even thanks her for teaching her who she is. Beth says her goodbyes to Laura and rushes off to catch Charlie.
12077469	/m/02vp1vq	I Am A Woman	Ann Weldy	1959	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story joins the main character of Odd Girl Out, Laura Landon, a year after she has left college. Exhausted by living with her harsh, judging father for his perception that she failed out of school, Laura leaves home in the middle of the night and goes to New York City. She gets a job as a secretary in a medical office and lands an apartment with a roommate&nbsp;— Marcie. Marcie is young and very impulsive, but vivacious and she puts Laura at ease. Laura moves in to the apartment in Greenwich Village with a vague gnawing excitement in her. Laura and Marcie develop a routine and Laura learns her new job. Marcie is constantly fighting with her ex-husband Burr, who comes around frequently to date Marcie, and in between fights, they sleep together. Finding that Laura tempers Marcie a bit, she insists that she will only date Burr if Laura is with her&nbsp;— which confounds Laura as she recognizes that she is attracted to Marcie and intensely dislikes Burr. Burr brings along a friend, Jack Mann, and they double date one evening. As a joke, he explains, Jack takes them to a gay bar in Greenwich Village and watches their reactions. Jack is clearly an alcoholic and gets drunk frequently, but is good-natured and has a self-deprecating sense of humor. Laura is intrigued by him, and his friends laugh at him. Jack returns the intrigue when he hears Laura argue with Burr's statement that he can make any of the women in the bar straight if he wanted to. Jack asks her out again and shocks her when he tells Laura he knows she's in love with Marcie. Jack admits he's also gay and helps Laura deal with the realization about herself. She also confides to him that her father hates her because her mother and brother drowned and her father could not save them. After going out a couple times, Jack introduces Laura to a mutual friend, Beebo Brinker (born as Betty Jean) - a tall, swaggering, dark-haired butch. They meet later in the gay bar after Laura runs away from Marcie, unable to contain her attraction. After a few drinks, Laura is afraid to return home, so Beebo allows her to sleep on the sofa. From a desperate longing and loneliness, Laura sobers up enough to seduce Beebo and they begin a torrid affair. Laura tells Beebo about Marcie and Beebo warns Laura that Marcie knows Laura is in love with her and is playing with her. Laura refuses to believe it. Laura's father travels to town for a journalists' convention and she attempts to contact him, only to be rebuked. Marcie finally stops speaking to Burr and Burr, frustrated, calls Laura at work and accuses her of being in love with Marcie and keeping her from seeing him. Laura begins to spy on her father and unravel under the strain of her relationship with Marcie. She depends on Jack, who is in a new relationship with a young man, but who expresses his sincere doubt that it will last. After getting drunk and humiliating Beebo in a bar, she's left alone. Exhausted, Laura finally tells Marcie she's in love with her. Marcie, deeply moved by Laura's sincerity and intensity admits that it was a game for her after all, but will try to return Laura's love. Heartbroken and ashamed, Laura leaves the apartment to confront her father at his hotel. They have a violent fight and Laura hits him over the head with an ashtray and runs. After wandering the night in the rain, Laura shows up at Jack's house fearing she killed her father. Jack and his new boyfriend take care of her. Laura shows up to apologize to Beebo and tells her she loves her. In an ending that was completely different from any previous work of lesbian fiction, they walk together to Beebo's apartment arm in arm.
12079866	/m/02vp4bv	Women in the Shadows	Ann Weldy		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Laura Landon has been living with her lover, a tough and strikingly handsome butch named Beebo Brinker for two years. Their relationship has deteriorated and both are frustrated, even after a party for their anniversary where Beebo remarks that hardly any couples make it together for as long as they have. The chapters begin with Laura's diary entries asking herself why they all drink and fall into relationships they know will be ruined. Their mutual friend Jack Mann watches as Beebo descends into alcoholism and Laura becomes interested in another woman. Tris Robischon is exotic to Laura, Eastern Indian, with a fascinating accent and story. She is a dancer and soon Laura is going to her to take lessons. Jack, disheartened once more after Terry, his boyfriend, has left him begins to try to convince Laura to marry him, to which she responds in consternation since both are gay. Laura returns home from visiting Tris to discover Beebo's dog brutally slaughtered and Beebo bruised and battered from being raped, Beebo said, when some hoodlums found out she was a woman. Laura attends to Beebo for weeks after, but knows her heart is not in it. Laura's lessons with Tris turn more intimate as Beebo refuses to go to work and drinks constantly instead. Fueled by boredom and alcohol, Beebo becomes controlling and suspicious of Laura, and when Tris visits unexpectedly, Beebo assaults Tris and later hits Laura in a rampage, after which Laura leaves her. She goes to Jack, not knowing where else to turn. Jack proposes an atypical marriage to her: they would live together and perhaps have children, but they would never sleep together, and both could have their affairs if they wanted, but quietly. Tris finds herself attracted to Laura but is confused, not sure what to do with her emotions. She asks Laura to a beach house for 2 weeks where Tris flirts with men and with Laura simultaneously. Not knowing what to do with her attraction to Laura, Tris relents to her advances, but does not enjoy it, and Laura is ashamed of their encounter. Laura returns to Jack, telling him also that Tris is married and is black and has been hiding both. Hearing about Beebo's further deterioration, Laura finally agrees to marry Jack. They get married at City Hall, and begin a most unusual relationship. Laura has grave misgivings, but through time both of them get used to it, until Terry comes back and Laura feels pulled by the Village once more. When Laura goes looking for Beebo again, she learns how badly Beebo actually descended&nbsp;— Beebo killed her own dog and lied about the rape to Laura&nbsp;— to keep her longer, and when Laura left, Beebo attempted suicide. Terry's return causes Jack to return to alcohol. Laura finds Beebo again, who admits she has changed, unable to live in such a destructive way. They live together briefly, but their passion is no longer there. When Laura returns to Jack, they discover that a previous trip to get her artificially inseminated has worked, and they are pregnant.
12080118	/m/02vp4n3	Girls of Riyadh	Rajāʼ ʻAbd Allāh Ṣāniʻ	2007-07-05		 The novel describes the relationship between men and women in the conservative Saudi-Arabian Islamic culture. Girls of Riyadh tells the story of four college-age high class friends in Saudi Arabia, girls looking for love but stymied by a system that allows them only limited freedoms and has very specific expectations and demands. There's little contact between men and women—especially single teens and adults—but modern technology has changed that a bit (leading to young men trying everything to get women to take down their cellphone numbers). The Internet is also a new medium that can't contain women and their thoughts like the old system could, and the anonymous narrator of the novel takes advantage of that: she presents her stories in the form of e-mails that she sends out weekly to any Saudi address she can find. Sex is described in this novel, and how men ignore women if they give themselves up before marriage.
12085856	/m/02vpcm8	Holy Wood	Marilyn Manson		{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Describing the plot of the novel itself, Manson said: "The whole story, if you take it from the beginning, is parallel to my own, but just told in metaphors and different symbols that I thought other people could draw from. It's about being innocent and naive, much like Adam was in Paradise before they fall from grace. And seeing something like Hollywood, which I used as a metaphor to represent what people think is the perfect world, and it's about wanting&nbsp;— your whole life&nbsp;— to fit into this world that doesn't think you belong, that doesn't like you, that beats you down every step of the way, fighting and fighting and fighting, and finally getting there, everyone around you are the same people who kept you down in the first place. So you automatically hate everyone around you. You resent them for making you become part of this game you don't realize you were buying into. You trade one prison cell for another in some ways. That becomes the revolution, to be idealistic enough that you think you can change the world, and what you find is you can't change anything but yourself." Manson has also stated that there is a character "that's very much a take on Walt Disney," who was a big inspiration in the writing of both the book and its accompanying album. In describing the setting, he compared Holy Wood, the place, to Disney World: "I thought of how interesting it would be if we created an entire city that was an amusement park, and the thing we were being amused by was violence and sex and everything that people really want to see."
12086498	/m/02vpd87	The Patricide				 The novel takes place in 19th century Georgia, when Georgia was occupied by the Russian Empire. It is a love story of Iago, a peasant boy, and Nunu, a beautiful young woman. Nunu's mother died early, and since her father (a member of the coalition army in the Shamil rebellion) is too poor to care for her, she lives with her uncle's family. They disapprove of her match with Iago, as they consider him a mere Plebe. Instead, they are sympathetic towards Grigola, the tyrannical village governor appointed by the Russians. Grigola is married, but in love with the beautiful Nunu. He convinces her family that his brother would like to wed her, though Grigola intends to keep Nunu as his own mistress. To get Nunu, Grigola realizes that he has to get rid of Iago first. Grigola accuses him of stealing state property and gives orders to lock him up in the Ananuri fortress. He then kidnaps and rapes Nunu. Koba, Iago's best friend, witnesses the kidnapping. He fights through Grigola's men to rescue Nunu, but he is too late. Koba swears revenge against Grigola for his shameful behavior. Koba and another friend break Iago out of jail, and they all decide to flee to the Northern Caucasus and hide in Chechnya, since Russian police and Cossacks are looking for them all over Georgia. Despite the fact that many Georgians were fighting on the Russian side, Shamil receives them and offers protection. The author portrays Chechens as free men who fight for their freedom, in contrast to the Georgians, who were kept on a short leash by people like Grigola, unable even to hold town meetings (a tradition since the Middle Ages). Meanwhile, Nunu escapes from Grigola. Koba manages to contact her and tells her to meet them in Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia, along with her father. The night before Iago and Nunu are supposed to see each other again, Iago and Koba's host decides to inform Grigola of their whereabouts, hoping to receive their horses in exchange for the information. After midnight, Grigola shows up and murders Iago, the friend, and Nunu's father, hoping to pin the latter on Nunu and thus have an excuse to send her to Siberia. Koba escapes Grigola's wrath, but upon discovering both her lover and father murdered, Nunu dies from grief. At the end of the story, Koba exacts his revenge for both Iago and Nunu by shooting Grigola and his supervisor in a cab in the forest. Koba is the hero of the story, who respects friendship, defends truth, respects women, and enforces justice.
12087515	/m/02vpfj4	The Empty Chair	Jeffery Deaver	2001-04-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lincoln Rhyme is away from the city with his aide Thom and his companion and partner Amelia Sachs in order to receive experimental spine surgery, which may improve or further worsen his C4 quadriplegic disability. Whilst there they are approached by a local police sheriff- Jim Bell, the cousin of Rhyme's NYPD colleague Ronald Bell- and asked to help in a local case of kidnap and possible rape. They believe the kidnapper to be a local orphaned boy 'Garret', who is believed to be involved in a number of other murders and assaults. One of these involves a hornets nest being thrown at a woman, who suffers a heart attack after 137 stings, and dies. Garret is locally nicknamed 'The insect boy', due to his incredible love of insects. At the start of the novel a nurse, Lydia, is kidnapped by Garret when she visits the place where the first victim- 'Mary-Beth' was kidnapped. A police deputy is killed by a hidden hornets nest whilst searching Garrets hide-out. Lincoln reluctantly agrees to help, and he and Sachs track Garret from the trace evidence found at the scenes. Meanwhile we follow Garret and Lydia as he takes her back to his main hideout. After Rhyme cunningly outwits Garret, he is arrested and Sachs is allowed to question him in order to find out where Mary-Beth is being hidden. Garret tells her it was "The man in the tan overalls" and Sachs believes him, however none of the rest of the police department do. She subsequently breaks him out of jail. The rest of the police, including Rhyme, are trying to track her down, and as they come up close Sachs accidentally shoots one of the deputies dead. She is distraught, and is now being hunted for murder. Eventually they reach Garret's safe house, where he reveals that he was lying about the man in the tan overalls, but he never meant to hurt Mary-Beth. Once a small group of police arrive, along with Thom and Rhyme, they are attacked by a group of local gun-nuts who are attempting to get the reward of $2000 that Mary-Beth's mother has put up. They shoot several deputies dead and are eventually killed by Sachs and one of the deputies, Lucy. Inside the hut it is revealed that Thom has been shot. Back in town, Sachs and Garret are in jail and Thom is in the hospital. Rhyme is curious and thinks things do not fit into place correctly, and eventually confides in Bell that he believes the murders in the town are accountable to a local businessman manufacturing an illegal pesticide. Anyone asking questions about why they were getting ill were killed. It is revealed that numerous deputies in the department are 'in' on the scheme, and have even helped in killing some of the townsfolk. Rhyme also says that he believes that the businessman had Garret's family killed, and a car crash framed, because they refused to sell the land around their house so the businessman could have shipments of the pesticide transported up the river. It is at this point that Bell reveals he is in on it, and attempts to murder Rhyme with a sample of the harmful pesticide they have been analyzing. Lucy, the deputy who helped shoot the gun nuts earlier, is listening and they run in and restrain Bell, who is frustrated to see that Rhyme has tricked him and the sample of the pesticide was merely 'moonshine'. He is arrested. Garret is freed, Mary-Beth has dropped the charges, as Garret was acting to defend her. She unearths the remains of his family, and it earns her a spot on the list of people who are a risk to the business. Sachs is still in jail and is accepting a guilty plea in return for a reduced sentence of 5 years in prison. She is about to be sentenced when Rhyme bursts in with evidence that the deputy she shot was in on the murders, allowing Sachs to be freed on the grounds that her victim was a criminal engaged in pursuit of an officer and thus legitimately making her 'crime' self-defence. Later, Rhyme is in hospital, Thom is going to live and Rhyme is going to undergo the major spine surgery he has postponed while he searched for Mary-Beth. As he is wheeled in, Lydia, the nurse who had been kidnapped earlier, follows him in apparently to thank him and wish him luck. As he is going under anesthesia she reveals to him that she was the sheriff's mistress, and had been reporting who in the town had developed cancer due to pesticide poisoning so that those people could be silenced. As he is trying to fight off the effects of the anesthesia she ominously tells him "accidents happen in spinal surgery". Luckily Sachs notices that Lydia entered a closed surgery ward, and remembers that she is not a neurosurgery nurse, but an oncology nurse, and runs in, realizing what is going to happen. The novel ends with Rhyme, Sachs, Lucy, Thom and Garret in the local cemetery. They are burying the remains of Garret's family. It is hinted that Lucy is to become Garret's foster mother. Rhyme does not have the surgery and is now back on the ventilator, after going into shock as Lydia attempted to stop his oxygen flow, requiring another year to regain his original physical status until he is fit to have the operation again.
12088280	/m/02vpg6h	Irish Gold	Andrew Greeley	1994-11	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12088660	/m/02vpghf	Irish Lace	Andrew Greeley	1996-11	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12088866	/m/02vpgp8	Irish Whiskey	Andrew Greeley	1998-03	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12089171	/m/02vpgw3	Irish Mist	Andrew Greeley	1999-03	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12089343	/m/02vpgzk	Irish Eyes	Andrew Greeley	2000-02-19	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12089444	/m/02vpg_y	Irish Love	Andrew Greeley	2001-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12089587	/m/02vph2p	Irish Stew!	Andrew Greeley	2002-03-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12089711	/m/02vph5f	Irish Cream	Andrew Greeley	2005-01-27	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12089799	/m/02vph7v	Irish Crystal	Andrew Greeley	2006-02-07	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12089856	/m/02vphb7	Irish Linen	Andrew Greeley	2007-02-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12092516	/m/02vpldx	Beggars and Choosers	Nancy Kress	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with the narration of Diana Covington, detailing the beginning of her service with the GSEA. She is commissioned by her superior, Colin Kowalski, to "tail" members of the SuperSleepless community, specifically Miranda Sharifi. Supers have been traveling around the country, incognito, and the GSEA wants to know why. Diana monitors Miranda Sharifi at a hearing of the Science Court, where Huevos Verdes has submitted a new product, the "Cell Cleaner (TM)," a nanobiotic pseudo-virus which can enter the cells of the body, perform repairs, and neutralize any foreign matter. Cancer, diseases, colds and so forth could be a thing of the past... Assuming the Cell Cleaner is passed by the Science Court. In the end, a further-research permit is denied, helped along by Miranda Sharifi's insulting opening statement, in which she accuses jury (some of whom would have been on her side) of shortsightedness, stupidity and elitism. It appears that Miranda wanted to lose the case, but Diana cannot imagine why. After the court is adjourned, Diana follows Miri on a gravrail to New York state. Drew Arlen returns to La Isla, not only to meet with Miranda Sharifi, but to receive statistical feedback on his concerts as gathered by the Supers; the Supers are using him as a form of societal control, attempting to engender specific behavioral tendencies via his concerts. ("I have stopped calling myself an artist.") At the end of his visit he is commissioned to create a concert, "The Warrior," that promotes risk-taking behavior as desirable. It also becomes clear that his love for Miri has dulled over the years; in order to overcome an embarrassing inconvenience, he resorts to thoughts of the woman he truly loves: Leisha Camden, the woman who became a foster mother to him. Billy Washington lives in East Oleanta, a Liver community in New York. Though he is quite old, he has become foster father to an eleven-year-old Liver child, Lizzie Francy, whose intelligence outweighs her Liver conditioning, to the consternation of her mother Annie. East Oleanta is suffering something of a crisis: rabid raccoons have been seen nearby, a dangerous proposition when the only source of medical assistance, the medunit, might break down at any time. Eventually, East Oleanta mayor Jack Sawicki organizes a hunt for the raccoons; Billy's hunting partner Doug Kane suffers a heart attack, while Billy himself is menaced by one of the raccoons. He is saved by a beam of light, projected by a girl with a head too large for her body and black hair in a red ribbon. She provides medical assistance to Kane and takes care of the raccoons. Unfortunately, Lizzie comes down with a sickness shortly thereafter; Billy is informed that nothing can be done, since the gravrail is broken, the medunit is broken, and none of his elected officials are available. This time he is saved by a donkey-gone-native calling herself Victoria Turner. When Lizzie recovers the next morning, she is immediately full of questions for "Vicki" (Diana) to answer. "Dr. Turner" also explains the constant breakdowns: a nanomachine dissembler, tuned to attack an alloy named duragem that is used in just about all modern machinery, is loose across the nation. The donkeys didn't release it&mdash;in fact, no one knows who released it (the Supers have discovered that it had multiple epicenters)&mdash;and they certainly don't know how to stop it. In Seattle, Drew Arlen is taken to a now-seized illegal genetic-engineering lab by members of the GSEA. They show him some of the products of the research, in the hopes that he will act as a messenger to Huevos Verdes and explain the GSEA's stance: that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and the Cell Cleaner's magic, too advanced for the donkeys to comprehend, is too dangerous to allow. He also reveals that holoterminals throughout the Adirondack Mountains have been seeded with subliminal messages regarding "Eden," a technological haven that, supposedly, donkeys don't know about. After his concert (during which he almost dies due to the aircar being struck by the duragem dissembler), he flies to Huevos Verdes to force a showdown with Miri; Leisha manages to blackmail her way on board. On the way, the plane contracts the duragem dissembler and goes down over upcountry Georgia. Though Leisha and Drew survive the crash, they are ambushed by a grass-roots militia, and Leisha killed by its leader, Jimmy Francis Marion Hubbley. Drew is taken captive and finds himself in an illegal genemod lab, now the Francis Marion Freedom Outpost. Hubbley is a leader in a "revolution" that aims to throw off all foreign oppressors&mdash;in this case, anyone genemod&mdash;and, among other things, released the duragem dissembler to do it. Diana is attempting to learn all she can about Eden, which she is sure is a SuperSleepless creation. To that end, she bribes Lizzie access to donkey education software; within a month, Lizzie is hacking into donkey-corporation databases. She also follows Billy on one of his forest sojourns, hoping he will lead her to Eden. When the distribution warehouse fails to open for two weeks in a row, the Livers break in... Only to discover that the age of prosperity is truly over, as the warehouse is empty. Billy hides "Vicki" away from the mob for fear that she, obviously a donkey, will be harmed in reprisal. Mayor Sawicki, under the influence of "The Warrior," proposes a bold plan to travel eight miles through snowy mountains to the nearest town (Cogansville) and bring back food; Billy joins the expedition. Though the expedition is successful, the group is jumped by a group of stomps, several members slain (including Mayor Sawicki), and most of the food stolen. Diana, sickened not only by this tragedy but by Lizzie's analysis that the duragem dissembler was released from Eden, calls in the GSEA. Agents arrive within the hour, seize the illegal genemod lab, and blow it up to prevent anything else from escaping; but Diana discovers that this lab was not, and could not have been, Eden. Drew is in captivity with the Francis Marion underground militia for 67 days. During that time he starts to realize just how little of the master plan Miranda has confided in him. He also discovers a coup attempt brewing against Jimmy Hubbley, and uses it to lure his bodyguard (who is in on the plan) to her death. Simultaneously the coup actually goes off, and in the chaos Drew negotiates to be left behind while the remnants of the cell flees with the help of the United States Army. Drew gets to a terminal and places a call for help... To the GSEA. In East Oleanta, Lizzie is once again ill, with something the medunit cannot diagnose or cure. Billy, moved by "Vicki's" love for Lizzie, decides to take them both, as well as Annie, to Eden to see if the large-headed girl with the red ribbon can do anything. Miranda allows them in, even though Diana's admittance alerts the GSEA, and injects all four with the Cell Cleaner. When the GSEA agents arrive, accompanied by Drew Arlen, the two have a bitter fight over whether Miranda has the right to choose for 175 million Americans, only to be put in their place by Billy Washington. "Don't you see, it don't matter who should control [this technology], them? It only matters who can?" However, Miranda's closing words, spoken to Diana (who is also under arrest) suggest a deeper conspiracy: "More in the syringe." After extensive medical surveillance, Diana reunites with the Francys just in time to catch a time-delay broadcast by Miranda Sharifi, explaining what she meant. The "Change syringe" contains a set of nano-engineered machinery that totally remodels the human body on a cellular level. Anyone injected will be infused with nanotubules leading inward from the skin, which are capable of dissembling organic matter on a molecular level. They are also infused with bacteriorhodopsin, allowing photosynthesis. It is now possible for a human being to lie on the ground, in the sunlight, for thirty minutes, and absorb all the energy and nutrients they need for a 24-hour period. Odds and ends include nitrogen-fixing microorganisms, mechanisms to keep the digestive tract in working order in the absence of "mouth food," and of course the Cell Cleaner itself. "You are now autotrophic," Miranda ends the broadcast. "You now are free." Billy, now spry and jaunty, has joined the Francys and Vicki Turner (who has legally changed her name) as a member of a mass migration to West Virginia, where Miranda Sharifi is imprisoned at the Oak Mountain Maximum-Security Federal Prison. Annie is having trouble with empty-nest syndrome; children, even those as young as thirteen-year-old Lizzie, don't need their parents anymore, having been rendered practically invulnerable to disease, starvation and casual injury. Likewise, the Livers no longer need the donkeys, many of whom are moving to snatch up the Change syringes for themselves. The nation is returning to a network of small, localized governments, with some groups (such as East Oleanta) making the transition far more smoothly, while the federal government simply stays uninvolved. Vicki, for her part, is worried that the underground resistance movement which released the duragem dissembler will use the transitioning period to its advantage by arming the Livers and encouraging violence against donkeys, who are the few people still insisting that America exists. Fortunately, Vicki's dismay is unfounded: when the underground rebellion, now calling itself "Will and Idea," begin to bomb the Liver migration for their adherence to the abomination Miranda, the prison's Y-shield protects everyone from destruction on the order of the President. Vicki is then allowed (on Miranda's request) to enter the prison and speak to Miranda personally. She explains that the Supers have decided to take a hands-off approach, to prevent the people from becoming too dependent on them; Miranda will serve out her sentence, while Vicki returns to her family amongst the Livers. Drew Arlen tries to visit Miranda in jail, only to be told that, though he has judicial clearance to see the prisoner, the prisoner will not see him.
12093436	/m/02vpmc4	One Good Knight	Mercedes Lackey	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is set in Acadia, which is ruled by its queen, Cassiopeia and her adviser and magician, Solon. Princess Andromeda (Andie) is highly intelligent, finds life in the royal palace dull, and seeks the approval of her mother. When she comes up with the idea of writing up what she's learned from her studies into actionable reports for her mother's chief adviser, she finally gets the acceptance she so craves. Her mother and the adviser call on her assistance in identifying problems, researching difficult points of law, and even give her a new staff with instructions to make her look better. When Andie finds reports that relate Acadia's wealth to mysterious shipwrecks, the plot becomes complicated. A dragon shows up on Acadia, even though there hasn't been one in the country's entire previous history. Traditionally, marauding dragons are soothed only by a virgin sacrifice so the frightened people of Acadia devise a lottery system to choose the victims, while they await a Champion. However something is preventing the sent-for Champions from coming to the kingdom. When Andie is chosen as sacrificial victim she plans to escape. When Andie is tied up awaiting the dragon and busy retrieving picklocks from her hair to release herself, Sir George arrives to confront the dragon; who despite being an excellent fighter is unable to finish off the dragon. Perplexed by the events, Andie offers to help Sir George track the dragon to its lair and complete their job. When George and Andie find the dragon, they discover another problem, there are two dragons being guarded by a group of angry virgins. The group are able to resolve any misunderstandings and get to the root of the problem. A wizard cast a spell, calling the dragons, Adamant and his brother Periapt, to Acadia. The dragons weren't too keen on this idea, and decided to try and rectify things. Sir George is able to clear things up by explaining why he was sent over. The wizard cast a barrier around the kingdom; a clause in his spell prevents any man from entering. However, George is no man, instead George is Gina, a female Champion. Andie realizes that the wizard can only be Solon, who secretly has been manipulating Cassiopeia the whole time. The motley group decide they need to stop him. With the Tradition helping them, Gina training the girls and Andie and Periapt on tactical side, they seem unstoppable. Unfortunately Andie is reluctant to face off her mother; she is even more distressed when she realizes she has fallen in love with Periapt. The climactic battle becomes a fight for life and things scale out of control when the Royal Palace starts burning down. Godmother Elena arrives to sort things out, when it seems that Andie can’t let go of Periapt, who declares his love for Andie, and Gina and Adamant reveal they’re in love as well. Using the Tradition, Elena is able to transform Gina into a dragon and Periapt into a man. The two couples have a double wedding, Andie and Periapt watch as the two dragons fly off for a honeymoon.
12099961	/m/02vpvxz	Kai Lung's Golden Hours	Ernest Bramah	1922	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As with other Kai Lung novels, the main plot serves primarily as a vehicle for the presentation of the gem-like, aphorism-laden stories told by the protagonist Kai Lung, an itinerant story-teller of ancient China. In Kai Lung's Golden Hours he is brought before the court of the Mandarin Shan Tien on charges of treason by the Mandarin's confidential agent Ming-shu. In a unique defense, Kai Lung recites his beguiling tales to the Mandarin, successfully postponing his conviction time after time until he is finally set free. In the process he attains the love and hand of the maiden Hwa-Mei.
12101939	/m/02vpxvx	Descent into Hell	Charles Williams	1937	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The action takes place in Battle Hill, outside London, amidst the townspeople's staging of a new play by Peter Stanhope. The hill seems to reside at the crux of time, as characters from the past appear, and perhaps at a doorway to the beyond, as characters are alternately summoned heavenwards or descend into hell. Pauline Anstruther, the heroine of the novel, lives in fear of meeting her own doppelgänger, which has appeared to her throughout her life. But Stanhope, in an action central to the author's own theology, takes the burden of her fears upon himself—Williams called this The Doctrine of Substituted Love—and enables Pauline, at long last, to face her true self. Williams drew this idea from the biblical verse, "Ye shall bear one another's burdens :" And so Stanhope does take the weight, with no surreptitious motive, in the most affecting scene in the novel. And Pauline, liberated, is able to accept truth. On the other hand, Lawrence Wentworth, a local historian, finding his desire for Adela Hunt to be unrequited, falls in love instead with a spirit form of Adela, which seems to represent a kind of extreme self-love on his part. As he isolates himself more and more with this insubstantial figure, and dreams of descending a silver rope into a dark pit, Wentworth begins the descent into Hell.
12105021	/m/02vp_sf	The Last Empress	Anchee Min		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins with the death of Orchid's mother. The hatred between Empress Orchid and her son Tung Chih is also beginning to weaken, much to Orchid's despair. In 2149, the Selection of Imperial begins for him is completed. The chosen Empress is a "cat-eyed, eighteen-year-old beauty" called Alute. Orchid's preferred selection for Empress was the daughter of a provincial governor named Foo-cha. It was only due to Empress Nuharoo's rank as the higher wife that Alute was chosen. The Selection of Imperial is followed by the suspicious death of Orchid's close friend and eunuch An-te-hai. His death had a great emotional impact on Empress Orchid. Around one year later, tension begins to mount between Orchid and Alute. Orchid becomes irritated at Alute's lack of co-operation, and is further annoyed with Alute's rude attitude towards her. Her annoyance soon turns to happiness when Alute claims that she is pregnant with Tung Chih's first child. Tung Chih's illness worsens and in 1875 he dies with his mother beside him. Empress Orchid refuses to give up her power, as she believes that Alute only sees the "glamour and glory" of being an Empress. As well as this, she also believes that Alute has little experience with political and court matters - thus rendering her unsuitable for the role as Empress of China. Orchid also realises that Alute may have been mentally disturbed. Yet these possibilities had no effect on English journals describing Orchid as a violent character who contributed to the death of her son - whilst portraying Alute as the protagonist of the event. Many foreign reports and articles soon begin printing false reports of Orchid's actions as ruler of China, suggesting that she is solely responsible for China's decline due to her cruel regime. However, such stories are seemingly published only to justify further invasions of China. After the death of Tung Chih and Alute, Orchid adopts her sister Rong's son Tsai-t'ien. Orchid then renames her nephew Guang-hsu upon his succession to the Dragon Throne. Initially, Orchid felt no motherly love for her nephew as she only adopted him to prevent his death at Rong's hand. However, a mother-son bond eventually forms between the two. Shortly after the appointment of Guang-hsu as Orchid's successor, her love Yung Lu announces that he is planning to marry and move away to faraway Sinkiang. Soon after Orchid realises that she is no longer at full health, she receives information that Empress Nuharoo has collapsed from illness. Nuharoo dies, and rumours suggest that Orchid i Everyone dies at the ending.
12108249	/m/02vq2kv	Journey to a Woman	Ann Weldy		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Beth Ayers is stifled and bored in her role as wife and mother. Her husband Charlie is a successful businessman, and they live in California. He is frustrated with her lack of affection with their two children, and her unwillingness to tell him why she's unhappy after being married for nine years. Beth becomes intrigued by Vega Purvis, a casual acquaintance. Vega is chic, a modeling instructor, and ravaged by various illnesses, alcohol, and cigarettes. Vega's modeling business in decline after a vaguely detailed scandal Beth learns, Vega and one of her students disagreed. Beth knows Vega is a lesbian and connects her attraction to her with the recurring dreams she has of Laura Landon, an affair she had in college. Vega calls Beth one evening and asks her to come to a hotel where Vega shows Beth the scars that cover her body, and Beth is repulsed by it. Vega, however, becomes emotionally dependent upon Beth over the next several months, as Beth becomes more possessed by the idea of finding Laura once more. Beth writes to an author of several lesbian books she has been reading, Nina Spicer in New York City, who writes her back. Beth and Charlie face their inevitable separation and Beth returns to Chicago to try to find Laura, who she hasn't seen or heard from in nine years. She contacts Laura's formidable father and learns that Laura left for New York City many years before. Mr. Landon, however, wishes Beth to report back to him when she finds Laura. In New York City, Beth starts with Nina to get her bearings on finding Laura in the gay bars and clubs of Greenwich Village. Nina plays with Beth a bit, testing her to see if she's really a lesbian or if it's a curiosity she's looking to satiate. Beth uses Nina to get to Laura, but they sleep together eventually, after which Beth learns that Vega has been committed to a mental hospital. Tired of the games Nina plays, Beth ventures to the bars to find Laura herself and finds Beebo Brinker, who is astounded to see her after considering Beth a rival for Laura's affections when they were together years ago. Beebo points Beth in the direction of Laura and Jack's apartment. She meets Jack first and tells him why she's there, and he introduces Beth to their six-year-old daughter. The next morning she surprises Laura who falls into her arms immediately and they make love. However, after the surprise has worn off, Laura learns that Beth has left her husband and children, and now older (seemingly now older than Beth), hurt and angry still from being left long ago, asks Beth to think about the reasons why she has embarked on this journey to find her. Beth experiments in Greenwich Village and finds herself in Beebo's apartment once more, being carried there after drinking too much. Discussing what she's done with Beebo, Beth realizes what she must face in order to know what she wants from life. Returning to her hotel, Beth encounters a deranged Vega who threatens to shoot her for leaving, but holds her hostage until she eventually turns the gun on herself. After the police interrogation, Charlie picks her up from the police station. Beth asks for a divorce. When Charlie leaves, Beth goes to Laura to tell her what she knows about herself now. Laura greets and loves her as a friend. Another friend of Laura's now, Beebo, calls and meets them for coffee. Beebo invites her back to her apartment to live after confessing she's fallen for Beth after hating her phantom for so many years and they go together hand in hand.
12108462	/m/02vq2td	The Angel of the West Window				 At the beginning of the novel Mueller has been given the possessions of a cousin, John Roger, who has recently died. Among them he finds the personal diaries of Dr John Dee, the Elizabethan Magus, Astrologer and Alchemist who served in the court of Queen Elizabeth I and was an ancestor of both Roger and the Baron. As the Baron reads the diaries, which deal with Dee's discovery of his special destiny as a Magus, his efforts to find the secret of immortality contained in the Philosopher's Stone and guide the future of England and his conversations with the Green Angel through the mediumship of the confidence trickster Edward Kelley, he realises not only that he is a descendent of Dee but may even be the reincarnated spirit of Dee himself. In so doing he begins to suspect and that the various people around him are also the reincarnated spirits of those who had played a crucial part in Dee's adventures - his housekeeper may be Dee's wife, Jane, his Russian acquaintance, Lipotin, may be the mysterious 16th Century Muscovite Mascee etc. Mueller finds himself the guardian of the Spear of Hywel Dda, another of his ancestor and part of the quest to prevent the Succubus-like figure of Black Isaïs from gaining control of it, thus completing the work Dee only part managed to achieve. As the book ends, Mueller vanquishes Isaïs in her form as the Princess Shotokalungin and becomes a Man of the Rose, part of a group of humans who have become immortal through their spiritual strivings whose task is to help mankind to develop and grow (a concept similar to that of Ascended masters or Secret Chiefs).
12119085	/m/02vqdwv	Death of a Doxy	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Orrie is finally going to tie the knot. He's engaged to marry Jill Hardy, a stewardess. But for months, Orrie's also been keeping company with Isabel Kerr, an ex-showgirl. Orrie has some time available because Jill works international flights. Isabel has time available because she no longer performs: rather, she occupies a plush apartment that's paid for by another gentleman friend who visits her just two or three times a week. Isabel objects to Orrie's marriage plans. She has taken some of his personal and professional belongings and stashed them in her apartment. Isabel threatens to show them to Jill and thus quash the marriage. So, Orrie asks Archie to get into Isabel's apartment, find his possessions, and get them back. When Archie does enter the apartment, he finds not Orrie's belongings but Isabel's body. Archie withdraws to meet with Orrie, but otherwise keeps the news to himself. Isabel's sister Stella later discovers the body. The police find Orrie's possessions in the apartment and arrest him on suspicion of murder. In a meeting to consider whether Orrie is guilty, Wolfe, Archie, and Fred are all unsure, but Saul — via some convoluted reasoning — concludes that he is innocent, and Wolfe undertakes to demonstrate it. Wolfe must determine who knew about Isabel's apartment. Orrie has given Archie some names — Avery Ballou, who pays the bills, Stella Fleming and her husband Barry, and a nightclub singer named Julie Jaquette. Archie visits Stella and Barry, and learns that Stella is frantic to keep a lid on the nature of her sister's living arrangements. Stella's concern for Isabel's reputation is such that she tries to claw Archie's face when he refers to Isabel as a "doxy." Archie corrals a reluctant Ballou, and Wolfe coerces his cooperation by threatening disclosure of his relationship with Isabel. It turns out that Ballou has already been subjected to blackmail, by someone named Milton Thales. Ballou thinks that Thales is really Orrie, but Wolfe deduces Thales' true identity and assumes that he is Isabel's murderer. Wolfe sends Saul to bring Julie Jaquette. When she dances into Wolfe's office, Miss Jaquette puts on a performance, first singing and then demanding to see Wolfe's orchids. She displays a cynicism regarding human behavior that Wolfe regards as similar to his own. Julie agrees to act as bait for the murderer and is nearly killed herself. For her protection, she is moved into the brownstone, where she helps Wolfe and Archie force Thales' hand after Wolfe offers $50,000 cash for her assistance.
12121833	/m/02vqhvc	The Stone of Laughter	Hoda Barakat	1990	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The novel opens with Khalil, the protagonist, and Naji, a friend, heading to Khalil's room to talk. They discuss the possibility of Naji moving to Saudi Arabia to live with his sisters. The audience learns that Khalil is romantically attracted to Naji, as he repeatedly secretly admires him. As they progress down the streets of Beirut, the narrative digresses to describe the state of things there. It is revealed that people are fleeing the city in droves and are not coming back. The next chapter begins with Khalil ritualistically cleaning and straightening his room. He always does this after battles in the streets. Some time has passed since the opening conversation, and Naji decided to leave the area. Khalil visits Naji's abandoned apartment, which he was asked to look after. As Khalil cleans up glass, we learn that Naji and his mother claim that they plan to come back. Khalil does not believe them. Naji is supposed to come over for a visit with Khalil, but he doesn't come. After waiting for a long while, Khalil decides to visit another friend, Nayif. Nayif is having a small party with friends that he knows from his job at a newspaper. We learn that Nayif is involved in a political party. Another car bombing takes place near a market that Khalil often shops at. When Khalil goes to the scene days later, he finds that it has seemingly healed and that life there is back to normal. Next, he visits Naji's house, and, while he is there, the phone rings. He picks it up and it is Naji's sister, whom he has met only once before. She tells him that Naji is dead. Khalil is unable to dwell on this, because the city starts getting bombed in the 1982 Israeli-Lebanese conflict. He hides with others in the newspaper offices where Nayif works. The newspapers have immunity from the bombings. There is a frantic party-like atmosphere here as the reporters rapidly write stories on the bombings. Once the bombings are over, Khalil returns to his apartment, going through war-damaged streets. He comes to his room to find that the window has been blown open and feels that his room has been somehow changed. Disturbed by this he goes outside in time to see an anti-Israeli march pass by. Since the bombings are over, Khalil is forced to face Naji's death. He stops sleeping and spends most of his nights lying awake. Nayif comes over in order to tell him that Naji was killed because he was an agent for a group responsible for attacks. Khalil doesn't want to believe this and uses his usual defense of denial. Later, after much thought, he decides to accept what Nayif has said as true. He isolates himself from everybody. He sleeps all day and spends all night listening to other people's problems on FM radio shows. The bombing starts again, and Khalil hides with others in the higher floors away from the fighting on the street. After several days, the fighting stops and the people go out to see the damaged streets. Khalil's uncle's family comes to Beirut, having fled their village, and Khalil sets them up in Naji's apartment. His daughter, Zahrah, has a crush on Khalil, who is pleased to be loved despite the fact that he feels little attraction to her. Khalil has a crush on her brother, Youssef. The narrative goes on to describe Khalil's own struggles to form his political views and gain acceptance with the other young men his age. This struggle is paralleled by Youssef, who comes to Khalil's apartment to ask his advice on whether or not he should join a local militia. Khalil stays neutral and rather asks Youssef questions to help him think it over. He decides to join the group. Youssef's new job keeps him busy during the day and greatly reduces the time he spends with Khalil, which causes Khalil much distress. Khalil decides to take the job that Nayif offered him at the newspaper. He goes in for an interview and embarrasses himself by saying things that make him seem radical despite his lack of involvement in politics. Sporadic street fighting starts again. In one such episode, Youssef is killed. As Khalil is suffering emotionally from Youssef's death, he becomes sick and starts coughing up blood. He isolates himself from the world much as he did after Naji's death. Nayif comes by the apartment, but Khalil doesn't answer the door, hoping that Nayif will break in out of concern. After doing this twice, he finally answers the door and lets Nayif in. Nayif tells him that one of his political friends, called The Gentlemen, wants to clear out an abandoned apartment in Khalil's building in order to house his mother. They agree to clear out the furniture and sell it. Khalil takes a taxi ride to the hospital to have himself examined as he had acute abdominal pain. On the way there the taxi encounters traffic and the driver decides to take side streets. He accidentally drives up to a roadblock and Khalil and the other passengers are interrogated and nearly killed by armed men. Khalil manages to get by and make it to the hospital. It turns out that Khalil had an ulcer, which he needs an operation to remove. Khalil enjoys the hospital, which he views as a sanctuary. Khalil soon acquires a reputation for cowardice among the hospital staff, who, nevertheless, like him. One of Khalil's neighbors, Mustafa (usually called the bride groom), recommends that Khalil should rent out Naji's apartment. He rent it to a woman and her son. As he looks it over he encounters his memories of Naji and Youssef. Khalil likes his new tenants but has a feeling that the woman dislikes him. At a party with friends of Nayif, Khalil becomes acquainted with the Brother, a man who is involved in Nayif's newspaper and is a leader of a military organization. He suspects that Khalil is gay, which he confirms in a conversation, and reveals that he is gay as well. He makes advances, which confuse Khalil, who ends up going home. The Brother begins inviting him on business dealings, which involve the buying and selling of drugs and weapons. On one walk back to apartment after a deal Khalil is accidentally assaulted by the Brother's men, who apologize and offer to take him home. The author describes the city of Beirut. She explains how is corrupting Khalil and sucking away at his soul. Some time passes before the next scene. Khalil, now referred to as "Mr. Khalil" by Mustafa, is talking about storing weapons he has brought in the apartments. The woman who is still his tenant complains that it is dangerous and he tells her to go upstairs and that he will come and talk to her. He goes up and rapes her. The author explains how her Khalil has changed from how he was to "a man who laughs".
12123988	/m/02vqkx1	The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History	Philip Bobbitt	2002	{"/m/06n6p": "Social sciences"}	 A synopsis of The Shield of Achilles was originally hosted on the Global Business Network. * Commentary on the book can be accessed at the University of Texas website.
12124245	/m/02vql4n	Reap the Whirlwind	David Alan Mack	2007-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Taurus Reach is a mysterious section of space watched over by Starbase 47, AKA Vanguard. It is home to the Shedai, an ancient race of aliens that have been in suspended animation. They have awakened, threatening Vanguard, the USS Sagittarius and peace for the Federation.
12124549	/m/02vqlkq	Angel Light	Andrew Greeley	1995-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12125002	/m/02vql_t	Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas	Morgan Llywelyn	1986-04-06	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
12128164	/m/02vqq67	Beebo Brinker	Ann Weldy		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jack Mann finds Beebo Brinker (real name Betty Jean&nbsp;— she was unable to pronounce it as a child) wandering the streets of Greenwich Village. Beebo is 18 years old, tall and handsome, vacillating between overconfidence and vulnerability after leaving her family's farm in Wisconsin for New York City. Beebo is clearly welling up with a terrible secret that forced her to move east, and guilt that comes with leaving her father alone. Jack helps Beebo get a job delivering pizzas (one of the advantages is that she can wear pants) for Pete, who is a little creepy, and his wife who cooks. Jack also allows Beebo to live with him until she gets on her feet, and allows her the time and space to ask the questions he knows she needs to ask. When she admits her frank admiration for a woman she sees, Jack tells her about lesbians, and she reacts with obvious fascination. He escorts her to several gay bars in the Village where she is astonished and touched by what she recognizes in herself. After being treated cruelly by a vindictive woman playing a game with Pete, Beebo happens upon Paula one evening at her apartment, and it is Paula who verifies the suspicion of Beebo's sexuality. She is roused a couple days later to make a delivery to the apartment of a rather outrageous movie star, Venus Bogardus, who lives with her lonely teenaged son whom Beebo befriends. Beebo is infatuated and unnerved by Venus, who proposes that Beebo join them to return to California as company for her son&nbsp;— and to bridge the gap between them. Venus, in turn, divulges her past loves with men and women and seduces Beebo. As Venus rehearses for a television show, Beebo learns her new precarious place at Venus' ranch in California negotiating around Venus' business-minded husband, her public persona, and her vulnerable son. She is essentially, kept in secret. It dissatisfies her and she begins to miss Paula. She is seen briefly with Venus in public and it causes gossip columnists to start asking questions, and Venus' husband warns her to stay away from Venus in public. But on the night of the show, Venus' son has an epileptic seizure and cuts his head open. Beebo must find Venus at a party celebrating the show's end, but is intercepted by her husband, who beats her in a rage before she can tell Venus what has happened. The morning papers unleashed rumors of Venus being a lesbian. Unwilling to live in secret with Venus, Beebo returns to New York to recover while Venus and her husband appear happily in public. After a while, Beebo goes to find Paula again, who is thrilled to see her once more. Paula assures her that love can be better and they decide to see for themselves how.
12128206	/m/02vqq7z	The Pacific Between	Raymond K. Wong	2006-02-15	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 When entrepreneur Greg Lockland arrives in California to attend his parents' funeral, his world begins to unravel. Pictures of a brother he barely remembers and letters discovered hidden in his father's safe deposit box suggest an illicit affair between his late father and Greg's ex-lover Lian Wan. Confused and angry, Greg visits Kate Walken, a young woman with whom his relationship has taken an unexpected, romantic turn. Greg hates secrets and the hurt they cause. Yet, he tells Kate only of the pictures he found. Greg battles with his mixed emotions and can't bring himself to tell her about Lian. Does he still love Lian? Does he love Kate? Can he love Kate? Greg is like a boy who never grew up. He'll stop at nothing to get what he wants. Though he can be affectionate, he can be obnoxious, deceiving and secretive-all the things he loathes. Seething anger, growing suspicion, and inescapable jealousy accompany Greg on a transpacific journey to Hong Kong in search of Lian and the truth about the affair. Greg has no idea he's about to unlock a secret that has been kept closeted for years. One after another, people return from his past, each adding another roadblock to Greg's mysterious puzzle. With each piece of information, Greg is forced to re-examine his beliefs, feelings, and relationships with old friends and family. Among those who help Greg is Agnes, the Director of Nursing at the hospital where his father once worked. She is a bossy, mannish, British nurse whom Greg never liked. During his relentless search to uncover the truth, Greg is surprised to find Agnes with his happy-go-lucky friend Old Chow and realizes Agnes has a passionate side. Agnes and Old Chow prod Greg to explore his feelings and their secret plans push him into another situation of doubt. (Summarized by Joanne D. Kiggins)
12133961	/m/02vqyjs	Fox on the Rhine	Michael Dobson	2002-06	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The book begins on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg successfully bombs the Wolfscchanze during a strategy conference and later executes Operation Valkyrie in Berlin. However, his decision to signal Hitler's death to other conspirators by code buys enough time for SS chief Heinrich Himmler to launch his own countercoup called Operation Reichssturm. While the Allies are working to break out of Normandy through Operation Cobra, Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel recovers from the injuries he suffered during a real-life strafing run three days before the Stauffenberg coup. Himmler appoints him as commander of all German forces in Western Europe, under watch from the SS, after Field Marshal Günther von Kluge dies in an air attack. He also believes that Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel's mention of Rommel as a possible Bomb Plot conspirator holds no weight. Back in Berlin, Himmler takes charge of the German government and sends Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Wehrmacht Colonel Gunther von Reinhardt to negotiate a peace treaty with the Soviet Union. The plan, called Operation Carousel, calls for Germany to shift troops from the Eastern Front to the west, while leaving Eastern Europe and Scandinavia to the Soviets. The Nazis will also share missile technology with Moscow. The sudden implementation of the treaty angers the Allies, who promptly shift naval forces from the Pacific to the European Theater of Operations. At the same time, Rommel organizes a counterattack at Abbeville against the US 19th Armored Division using units recovered from the Normandy front. He also orders the 19th Army to evacuate southern France ahead of Operation Dragoon and regroup at the Westwall. Having identified all of the surviving July 20 conspirators, Himmler orders the SS to kill them, in some instances posing as British Commandos. Luftwaffe general Adolf Galland is assigned to spearhead the development of the Me-262 fighter. Because of his concern for the troops, Rommel disagrees with Himmler about holding Metz as a strongpoint against the Allies. Himmler responds by sending SS troopers disguised as US soldiers to ambush a combat unit Rommel withdraws from the city. Galland's efforts with the fighter program results in the mobilization of all surviving Luftwaffe units in a co-ordinated assault against an Allied bomber raid of almost 2,600 aircraft in November 1944. The attack severely cripples the bomber force, so much that the Allies are forced to suspend the bombing campaign. The postponement buys Rommel more time to boost his forces for a major offensive through the Ardennes. Although the operation is codenamed Wacht Am Rhein, von Reinhardt successfully proposes a change to Fuchs Am Rhein (Fox on the Rhine) to emphasize Rommel's role as the leader of the offensive. Heinz Guderian is also assigned to lead one of the two panzerarmees to be used in the operation, which aims to reach Antwerp. Like the real-life Battle of the Bulge, the operation begins on the night of December 16, 1944. The capture of a major fuel dump at Stavelot allows the German forces to extend their advance much further than in the actual offensive, capturing a bridge in Dinant to keep the momentum going. Field Marshal Montgomery, who successfully reinforced 21st Army Group's side of the Meuse River against a German crossing, dies when German forces bombard his command post at Waterloo. The Germans also conquer Bastogne. Third Army commander General George Patton assigns the 19th Armored Division to counterattack against the Germans at Dinant and to destroy the bridges. The sudden appearance of the US forces prompts Rommel to send one division that has already crossed back to Dinant and hold it with the Panzer Lehr division coming from the east. However, the Allies launch heavy air attacks against the Germans. The 19th Armored Division breaks through and destroys the bridges on December 26. Left without any option to refuel all Wehrmacht units that have crossed the Meuse, Rommel decides to surrender Army Group B to Patton. An SS general tries to kill Rommel as he prepares to meet Patton, but one of the field marshal's assistants stop the assassin in time. Himmler sees the surrender as an opening for the SS to consolidate their grip on all surviving Wehrmacht units while Joseph Stalin is pleased with the opportunity for a new attack now that the Eastern Front is almost clear of German forces. Other subplots in Fox on the Rhine include the adventures of a US B-24 Liberator aircrew (explained through a crewmember's letters to his mother), a German-American US Army officer doing intelligence work, a Panther tank commander who eventually becomes Rommel's personal driver, an Associated Press reporter yearning for a position as field correspondent, and some officers in the US 19th Armored Division's Combat Command A. A more general explanation of the story (and other in-universe events) is written in the novel through excerpts from a fictional history book called War's Final Fury by Professor Jared Gruenwald.
12137017	/m/02vr12m	The Wounded Sky	Diane Duane	1983-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Enterprise, equipped with a radical new "inversion drive" which allows the ship to bend spacetime and transit immense distances instantly, is sent on a mission to the Magellanic Clouds just outside the Milky Way, in order to place navigation beacons for future extra-galactic voyages using the new technology. The inversion drive is a product of the "creative physics" practiced by the natives of the Hamal star system, a race of crystalline spider-like beings. The chief designer of the drive is aboard, advising Captain Kirk, as the Enterprise makes its first "jump", after outmaneuvering a Klingon squadron which was sent to capture the new technology. Unknown to anyone on the starship, however, the use of the drive destabilizes spacetime itself on a fundamental level, creating a rift or tear through which another, external Universe penetrates and begins to mix with the Enterprise's own, with rapidly-spreading, potentially fatal consequences for all life everywhere. The denouement of the novel follows as Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew, experiencing bizarre, dream-like experiences of other times and worlds during the use of the drive, realize that something is dreadfully amiss. Arriving near the rift and observing the destruction it inflicts on nearby star systems, they discover that the price for traveling distances that would take centuries to cover with warp drive may be the loss of their own Universe. Deliberately using the drive one, final time, they cross the "boundary" between external "reality" and their own collective inner consciousness, where they must together draw on mental, emotional and spiritual strengths to heal the wound that they have caused. The novel deals intensively with the question of whether reality is an objective thing in and of itself, or a product of conscious perception by humans and other intelligences. Like Duane's other Star Trek novels, it incorporates both real physics and speculative extensions thereof to support the plot. Like most of Diane Duane's TOS-era novels, this one includes several scenes in the ship's recreation room, one of which quotes a Star Trek filk song based on John Denver's "Calypso".
12141667	/m/02vr5bh	Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism		2005		 The book starts from the premise that in order to achieve a more progressive black political agenda, African Americans need to look critically at the way race, class and gender intersect in their lives to create different responses. Looking at the black community as a monolith may prevent us from seeing that African American women are the targets of specific social welfare policies or that African American men are being disproportionately incarcerated. Both of these results stem from racism, but take on a gendered approach. In Black Sexual Politics, Hill Collins proposes several ideas for black liberation, though the book is focused on getting individuals to find creative ways to challenge racism, sexism and homophobia as it manifests itself in their own communities. One idea that Hill Collins purports is that African Americans need to create and support avenues of self-expression that allow them to tell their own stories about the effects of racism/ sexism/ homophobia, and to share their emotional and sexual experiences as African American persons. This work is being done, but is largely in its infancy. Hill Collins also argues that it is critical for African Americans to define new visions of success that resist traditional Western/ American views. She argues that equating masculinity with wealth and femininity with submissiveness and financial dependence is harmful to all groups, but especially for African Americans, who have been traditionally locked out of the economic opportunity structure. In a society where black men face threats to their economic well being, and disproportionately are incarcerated and lack access to quality education, any vision of masculinity that suggests that to be a man is to be financially successful puts a great number of black males at odds. Collins argues for a new, more holistic version of success, that includes visions of the importance of personal character apart from economic achievement. Hill Collins argues that there needs to be a culture of honesty in the black community, whereby black persons can express their ideas and identities in a whole way. If we do not create the space for black people to express their sexual perspectives freely, then we create a space where the silence and deceptiveness that leads to the spread of HIV/ AIDS to continue. When we can discuss sexuality from multiple perspectives, we allow people the space to talk about sex and sexuality and feel more comfortable engaging their partners in dialogues about their own sexual history, sexual feelings, and lead to STD testing and full appreciation and connection of one another.
12144303	/m/02vr7n5	Perfect Match	Jodi Picoult	2002-05-27	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story opens with a prologue in which an unnamed female character in a courtroom inexplicably shoots the defendant four times as he approaches his defense attorney. The shooter, as revealed, is Assistant District Attorney Nina Frost and the defendant a priest. At the time of the trial (and shooting) she had been led to believe that Father Szyszynski had sexually abused her five-year-old son Nathaniel after lab tests had confirmed that his semen was found in the child's underpants, and Nathaniel had verbally accused Father "Glen" Szyszynski of molesting him. It later turned out that Nina had in fact killed the wrong man, and a visiting priest named Father Gwynne had molested Nathaniel. Fathers Gwynne and Szyszynski shared the same DNA in their blood because Father Szyszynski had a bone marrow transplant from Father Gwynne (being that they were half brothers), leading to the belief that the semen belonged to Szyszynski. Although this fact was made known at Nina's own court trial for murder, after the jury could not reach a verdict, the judge ruled that her reasons were justified and therefore she was found not guilty of murder. However, using a Maine clause she was found guilty of manslaughter because the Judge believed she was under the influence of a reasonable fear or anger brought about by reasonable provocation and sentenced to 20 years in Jail but it is suspended. In a final twist at the end, Nina's best friend and colleague Patrick Ducharme, with whom she'd had a very brief affair during a brief split with husband Caleb, moves away, and Nina discovers that Caleb had poisoned Father Gwynne, despite his earlier protests to her killing Szyszynski.
12149300	/m/02vrd1w	The Contortionist's Handbook	Craig Clevenger	2002-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 John Dolan Vincent is a talented young forger with a proclivity for mathematics and drug addiction. In the face of his impending institutionalization, he continually reinvents himself to escape the legal and mental health authorities and to save himself from a life of incarceration. But running turns out to be costly. Vincent's clients in the L.A. underworld lose patience, the hospital evaluator may not be fooled by his story, and the only person in as much danger as himself is the woman who knows his real name.
12149593	/m/02vrdd5	Dermaphoria	Craig Clevenger	2005-10-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Eric Ashworth awakens in jail, unable to remember how he got there or why. All he does remember is a woman's name: Desiree. Bailed out and holed up in a low rent motel, Eric finds the solution to his amnesia in a strange new hallucinogen. By synthesizing the sense of touch, the drug produces a disjointed series of sensations that slowly allow Eric to remember his former life as a clandestine chemist. With steadily increasing doses, Eric reassembles his past at the expense of his grip on the present, and his distinction between truth and fantasy crumbles as his paranoia grows in tandem with his tolerance.
12149733	/m/02vrdkp	Demon Theory	Stephen Graham Jones	2006-04-27	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The following description of the novel is found on the author's official website: On Halloween night, following an unnerving phone call from his diabetic mother, Hale and six of his med school classmates return to the house where his sister disappeared years ago. While there is no sign of his mother, something is waiting for them there, and has been waiting a long time. Written as a literary film treatment littered with footnotes and experimental nuances, Demon Theory is even parts camp and terror, combining glib dialogue, fascinating pop culture references, and an intricate subtext as it pursues the events of a haunting movie trilogy too real to dismiss. There are books about movies and movies about books, and then there’s Demon Theory – a refreshing and occasionally shocking addition to the increasingly popular “intelligent horror” genre.
12149864	/m/02vrdr5	All The Beautiful Sinners	Stephen Graham Jones	2003-04-08	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Deputy Sheriff Jim Doe plunges into a renegade manhunt after the town’s sheriff is gunned down. But unbeknownst to him, the suspect—an American Indian—holds chilling connections to the disappearance of Doe’s sister years before. And the closer Doe gets to the fugitive’s trail, the more he realizes that his own involvement in the case is hardly coincidental. A descendant of the Blackfeet Nation himself, Doe keeps getting mistaken for the killer he’s chasing. And when the FBI’s finest three profilers descend on the case, Doe suspects the hunt has only just begun. But beneath the novel’s pyrotechnic plotting, the deeper psychic cadences of Stephen Graham Jones’s prose take hold. His specific imagery and telling detail coalesce into the literary equivalent of an Edward Hopper painting. But like the other seminal works in the genre (Fight Club, Red Dragon), All The Beautiful Sinners will unnerve you, and it will then send you back to page one to experience its mysteries all over again.
12150030	/m/02vrdwn	The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong	Stephen Graham Jones	2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Fast Red Road—A Plainsong is a gleeful, two-fisted plundering of the myth and pop- culture surrounding the American Indian. It is a novel fueled on pot fumes and blues, a surreal pseudo-Western, in which imitation is the sincerest form of subversion. Indians, cowboys, and outlaws are as changeable as their outfits; horses are traded for Trans-Ams, and men are as likely to strike poses from Gunsmoke as they are from Custer’s last stand. Pidgin, the half-blood protagonist, inhabits a world of illusion—of aliens, ghosts, telekinesis, and water-pistol violence, where TV and porn offer redemption, and the Indian always gets it in the end. His attempts to reconcile the death of his father with five hundred years of colonial myth-making lead him to criss-cross a wasted New Mexico, returning compulsively to his hometown of Clovis, the site of his father’s burial. Accompanied by car thief Charlie Ward, he evades the cops in a top-down drag race, tearing through barriers “Dukestyle.” The land they travel seems bent with fever—post-apocalyptic —as though the end has arrived and no one noticed. Its occupants hawk bodies and pastel bomb shelters, wandering a bleak hallucination of strip-joints, strip-malls, and all you can eat beef fed beef stalls. They speak a lingo of disposable nicknames, truncated punch lines—slang with an expiration date. Pidgin strays through bar and junkyards, rodeos and carnivals, encountering the remnants of the Goliard tribe. There’s the mysterious Mexican Paiute, Uncle Birdfinger, checkout-girl Stiya 6—the reincarnation of Pidgin’s mother—and media-queen Psychic Sally, who predicts the group’s demise. Each plays a part in the search that will eventually place Pidgin in a position to rewrite history.
12150258	/m/02vrf6n	Kiss Me, Judas	Will Christopher Baer	1998-10-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During his first night out of a mental institution after suffering a nervous breakdown, Phineas Poe is picked up by a prostitute named Jude. She drugs him and removes his kidney and leaves him in a hotel bathtub full of ice with a note on the counter that reads, "If you want to live, call 9-1-1." Phineas, an ex-police officer who had recently been searching for information against the Denver Police Department's Internal Affairs Unit, later finds out that his kidney was actually replaced by a baggie of heroin. While searching for his missing kidney, Phineas actually finds love in his attacker, while he evades the angry police of Denver and tries to unlock the secrets behind his wife's recent death.
12151633	/m/02vrgx_	Penny Dreadful	Will Christopher Baer	2000-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 To play the game of tongues, you must first understand the caste system….Phineas Poe, antihero of Kiss Me, Judas, returns to Denver from harrowing adventures in Mexico to find that reality has been rewritten and the laws of reason redrawn. When Poe is enlisted by his old ally, Detective Moon, to find a missing cop named Jimmy Sky, he finds himself perilously drawn into the game of tongues, a violent fantasy game played out by disaffected college drones, hacker kids, and goth refugees in underground punk clubs, on rooftops, and in sewers. Everyone he meets has multiple personalities, and before long Poe begins to lose track of his own various identities. If he can hang onto his sanity long enough to find Jimmy Sky, he might just beat the game.
12151732	/m/02vrh0s	Hell's Half Acre	Will Christopher Baer	2004-09-30	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kidnapping, snuff films, amputee geeks and a requiem of lost love... Cast adrift after the blood symphony of Penny Dreadful, Poe is looking for answers in the form of a woman. He tracks Jude to San Francisco, where he finds her involved with John Ransom Miller, a wealthy sociopath with a mysterious hold over her. Jude is nursing a revenge fantasy against a U.S. Senator with an amputation fetish who wants her dead, but she needs Miller's help, and in exchange, Miller wants Jude to help him pull off a high-profile kidnapping and make a snuff film on the side. Poe throws himself into the mix, hoping he can save Jude from herself, make sense of his past, and safely navigate a torturous internal landscape he calls hell's half acre.
12154001	/m/02vrkd4	Attack of the Smart Pies				 Emma is an orphaned child who has been treated badly by her stepfather, Darien Drinkwater. She runs away after Darien threatens to do something nasty to her. She ends up in Kokonino County, where the helpful Muses live. Feather, the Muse of Plants, uses intelligent air to watch Darrin Drinkwater, and Emma watches him take the two pieces of paper her parents had left for her. After much work, Emma is able to write down what is written on the two pieces of paper. The text, however, seems to be some sort of secret code, so Emma searches for someone who can help her crack the code. Unfortunately, she arrived in the middle of the great Pie War between Kokopelli and Urania, two Muses who get along very badly. She ends up helping Urania because Urania is proficient in maths. In the end, it is Bo, the Muse of Factoids, who saves the day by recognizing the "code" as the number to a safe deposit box in a bank. Emma then finds a grown-up cousin to live with while Darien Drinkwater is arrested for various crimes performed throughout the book.
12155763	/m/02vrmvw	Mary, called Magdalene	Margaret George	2002	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 As a woman in the Bible, Mary Magdalene's story is not recounted to its full. Margaret George, in the book Mary, called Magdalene presents a new view of Mary Magdalene - a female apostle who was the first of Jesus' followers.
12155810	/m/02vrmz9	Summer Knight	Jim Butcher	2002-09-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It's two years after the events in Storm Front. Dresden, struggling with curing Susan of her vampirism infection, is approached by Mab, the Winter Queen. Mab purchased Dresden’s debt from his fairy godmother, Leanansidhe. Queen Mab tells Dresden he can pay off his debt by doing three favors. The first favor is for him to find the murderer of the Summer Knight Ronald Reuel and recover his stolen mantle, declaring Dresden her chosen Emissary. Dresden refuses her request, but is forced by the White Council to accept as his Trial, else be stripped of his title of wizard and handed over to the Red Court vampires as a peace offering. Dresden finds Elaine, his former fellow apprentice and lover, who is the Emissary of the Summer Court and heavily indebted to Aurora, the Summer Lady. Dresden goes to Reuel’s funeral, looking for a group of teenage half-human/half-Fae changelings who were Reuel's friends, but they flee and attack, believing him to be in service to Winter. Dresden gets information and a guide to the Winter and Summer Ladies. Dresden’s interview with the sadistic Winter Lady, Maeve, convinces him that she did not kill the Summer Knight. Approached by the changelings to find their friend Lily, after Dresden tells Meryl and Fix that he will look for Lily. Dresden discovers Elaine in the back seat of his car, dying of multiple stab wounds. He follows Elaine’s delirious advice to take her to the Summer Lady, Aurora. Aurora heals Elaine, and briefly comforts Dresden. She is not forthcoming with any details on Reuel’s murder or Lily’s disappearance. Instead, she explains that the death of the Summer Knight and the theft of his mantle of power shifted the power balance in favor of Winter. Summer must now attack Winter at Midsummer to maintain control over their remaining power. Dresden heads north to an isolated spot on Lake Michigan and summons his fairy godmother, Leanansidhe. Dresden tells his godmother that he needs to see the Fae Queens and Mothers. Leanansidhe instead takes him transported to an ethereal Chicago-over-Chicago and a great Stone Table. This sacrificial stone that maintains the balance between the Winter and Summer Sidhe. The power of blood spilled upon that table will change the balance of power between the Courts. Leanansidhe says she can do no more for him and disappears. Dresden still needs to speak with the Mothers of both Courts. He tracks Elaine to O'Hare International Airport and persuades her to call in some favors so he can get an invitation to see the Mothers. Rather than provide him with answers, they goad him into answering his own questions, that Aurora is the only Queen capable of stealing the Summer Knight's mantle, and therefore one of his killers. Lily captured the mantle, being the closest Summer fae at the time of his death, and was turned to stone by Aurora, which is why no one could find either Lily or the mantle. As a reward for his correct deductions, they give him a Cloth of Unraveling and their blessings. Victorious at last, Dresden returns to Elaine and is ambushed. When Dresden regains consciousness, he is the prisoner of Aurora, the Winter Knight Lloyd Slate--and Elaine, who has been coerced into helping with the plot. Aurora explains that she plans to sacrifice Lily on the Table to give Winter the power of the Summer Knight, permanently destroying the balance and freeing humanity from the constant collateral damage of the eternal Faerie War. Elaine then binds Dresden and leaves him to drown. Recognizing the spell he and Elaine invented, Dresden easily escapes. Collecting his friends, they fight their way to the Stone Table and the Winter Queen, telling her of Aurora's plan. Dresden confronts Aurora and unleashes an army of pixies armed with steel-bladed box cutters--cold iron, which is deadly to the Fae. After the pixies kill Aurora, Queen Mab congratulates Dresden on his success, and offers Dresden the mantle of the Winter Knight, which he refuses. Queen Mab grants safe passage to the White Council. Having passed his Trial, he retains his wizard accolades, and protection from the Red Court. The new Summer Lady, Lily, and her new Knight, Fix, pay Dresden a visit and grant him a favor of Summer in thanks for his services.
12158252	/m/02vrrl6	The Mother Hunt	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lucy Valdon has recently been widowed by the accidental death of her husband, the novelist Richard Valdon. Lucy has a surprise waiting for her in her vestibule one evening: an abandoned baby, dressed, with a note pinned to a blanket. The note claims that the baby is Richard's son. Lucy wants to learn who the mother is. That information would help determine whether her husband and the mother had been intimate, and therefore the likelihood that the child is in fact Richard's. Wolfe is reluctant as always, but agrees to investigate. Archie examines the clothes that the baby was wearing and spots an unusual item: the baby's overalls have horsehair buttons, apparently handmade. After Archie draws a blank trying to track the buttons down via businesses in the garment trade, Wolfe tries a tactic that he uses to good effect in other cases. He advertises for information. The advertisement succeeds in prompting a call from someone who has seen a similar button, and when Archie follows up he eventually locates Ellen Tenzer in Mahopac, about fifty miles north of New York City. Miss Tenzer is a retired nurse who from time to time cares for babies temporarily. She is unwilling to help Archie, though, and orders him off her property. Archie complies, Miss Tenzer disappears, and the next day she is found, strangled, in her car on a Manhattan street. With that line of investigation closed to them, Wolfe and Archie try another. Lucy arranges for several of Richard's acquaintances to come to the brownstone. Wolfe asks that they each supply him with a list of all the women with whom Richard was in contact during a three month period roughly corresponding to the date of the baby's conception. A list of 148 names results, and it takes nearly four weeks for Archie, Saul, Fred and Orrie to verify that none of the women had an unaccounted for baby following the period in question. Finally, Wolfe decides to go for the swindle. His plan involves the Gazette, Lon Cohen's employer, and it succeeds in flushing the baby's mother from hiding. But then she is found dead, also strangled. When Inspector Cramer learns that there is a connection between the dead woman and Wolfe, he shows up at the front stoop, forcing Wolfe and Archie to flee via the back door. Wolfe is furious about the murders, particularly the second, and desperately wants to expose the killer himself. But if Cramer finds him, he will either have to tell Cramer about the search for the baby's mother or withhold evidence in a capital case. To avoid having to make that choice, Wolfe and Archie hole up in Lucy's house &mdash; she, her baby and her staff are away for a few days. While there, Wolfe has an insight about how the murderer and Ellen Tenzer might have become acquainted. That insight leads to the traditional Wolfe finale, with witnesses and suspects gathered together, but this time it's in someone else's house.
12160421	/m/02vrtg3	A Sea So Far	Jean Thesman	2001-10-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906, two girls' lives become connected. Kate Keely is the orphaned daughter of a newspaper reporter father and an Irish immigrant mother, living close to poverty with an aunt until their home was destroyed by the earthquake. They move to a boardinghouse the aunt purchases with a friend, and there Kate learns of an opportunity to go to work as the companion to Jolie Logan. Jolie's father is a wealthy physician and her mother died in the earthquake. Suffering from a history of scarlet fever and the loss of her mother, Jolie is sickly and depressed and her father thinks a companion would lift her spirits and that together they could travel. Kate sees this position as an easy source of income and, more importantly, a chance to visit her mother's fabled Ireland. Together the girls do travel across country and then to Ireland, and become more than friends, and learn more of life than they expected.
12163538	/m/02vry9y	A Scourge of Screamers	Daniel F. Galouye	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel opens in 1997, two years after the nuclear exchange. The "Screamies" have been afflicting humanity since the 1980s. Arthur Gregson, an American spaceflight engineer, and his close friend Kenneth Wellford, from England, are attacked by an odd flying craft while themselves flying a small plane to a meeting in Rome. The evade their attacker long enough for SecBu military craft to arrive and shoot it down. The experience is too much for Gregson, however, who has to pretend to check out another part of the plane so he can endure yet another of his intermittent Screamie attacks. Finally reaching their destination, they meet the head of SecBu, Weldon Radcliff, and are shown the corpse of an alien. It is definitely not human, having no hair, no fingernails, and most tellingly, an elaborate double heart. Greg's twin brother Manuel had gone out on the first operational starship, the Nina, which was lost after sending messages about "a glowing ship" and "presences". Radcliff informs Greg and Kenneth that they believe the Nina was attacked by aliens, who are now on Earth and are responsible for the Screamies in some way. A human accomplice of the aliens apparently calls them "Valorians". The particular alien they are shown attempted to assassinate a SecBu official. Back in New York City Gregson and Wellford are caught up in yet another assassination attempt on an official, and Gregson recognizes one of the assailants as a Valorian. Giving pursuit, he is halted by a Screamie attack after the Valorian reaches into his pocket to activate a device of some kind. While visiting his fiancee Helen Forsythe and her father in rural Pennsylvania, Gregson follows up on an article in a local newspaper about a farmer who claimed that aliens tried to recruit him to help them. He runs into a group of men and an alien at the farmhouse who interrogate him until SecBu troops arrive. Strangely the men know him and refer to Helen as if she had been working with them. Summoned to London with Wellford for another SecBu briefing, Gregson hears that Wellford was predicted to go Screamie himself, that very day, by a fortune teller. Since she offered him a refund if she was wrong, Wellford looks forward to collecting. The briefing consists of a show where an apparent drugged Valorian confesses to seeking the conquest of Earth, and to bringing the Screamie disease as a biological weapon. Astonishingly, Weldon Radcliff executes the Valorian in front of his agents. To make matters worse, Wellford goes Screamie, as the fortune teller predicted. Returning to Pennsylvania Gregson confronts Helen, who admits to talking with the Valorian and being told that the Screamies were the advent of a new perception. By this time SecBu have begun a campaign to convince people that the Valorians are not only hostile but have powers of persuasion amounting to hypnosis. Helen recants her beliefs. Shortly afterward Gregson himself has his ultimate Screamie attack, and is sedated for removal to one of the many Isolation Institutes reserved for Screamers. He endures months of psychic pain, apparent hallucinations, and terror, narrowly avoiding the typical fate of Screamers, who tend to commit suicide when their sedation wears off enough for them to reach a convenient high window. He recovers and is met by Helen on his release. Now, like many ex-Screamers, Gregson is a valuable commodity to SecBu. Most elected officials are ex-Screamers, as are the top officials in the Bureau. Gregson learns that Wellford also recovered, only to be kidnapped by the Valorians. Radcliff reveals to him the existence of a device which can suppress the Screamies over a small area, by blocking the effects of an unknown form of radiation. Radcliff wants Gregson to help construct a super-suppressor on the space station Vega Jump-off, the departure point of the Nina, to cover the entire planet. First Gregson is sent to Paris for training. He learns that the Screamies really are a new form of perception, called zylphing and the radiation is called rault, created by a body at the galactic center known as Chandeen. Another body known as the Stygum Field blocks the rault, and Earth has been in the shadow for thousands of years. Besides the training, Gregson is introduced to a temptress called Karen Rakar. Gaining proficiency at zylphing he learns that the perception can be used for many purposes, including telepathy, long-distance viewing, and even precognition. He also begins to realize the depth of the SecBu plot to keep and hold power. Discovering the head of the training institute asleep in a field of artificial rault he is able to zylph the man's true purposes from his mind. The man wakes up and Gregson has to kill him. He then escapes in a car, but as he does so he zylphs a re-entry capsule, bearing a Valorian, coming down nearby after having been disabled by SecBu weapons. Rescuing the occupant, a female, he drives to confront Madam Carnot, a conspirator who claims to be the oldest and most powerful zylpher on Earth. As he zylphs her true intentions, a rescue party led by Wellford breaks into the building, intent on rescuing the Valorian woman, but in the process capturing Gregson and killing Carnot. She had previously foretold a violent end for Gregson, but in reality she would be the victim. In the Valorian hideout, a castle in the Rhine valley, Wellford assures Gregson that the Valorians have no powers beyond zylphing, nor any evil intent. Gregson is still doubtful. He sees the necessity to build the super-suppressor as the Screamies are getting worse by the day. His qualms at the intent of the SecBu conspirators are balanced by the urge to carry out the plan for the good of humanity. The Valorian he rescued, who is called Andelia, tells him that his brother Manuel is alive, one of the few on the Nina who survived when the ship emerged into full rault. He cannot return to Earth because he has lost the ability to live without zylphing. Eventually, she promises Gregson, they will be re-united. Gregson, apparently free to leave the hideout, steals a craft and returns to Pennsylvania to find Helen, only to be captured by SecBu. They zylph the location of the castle from him, but by the time they get there only the injured Andelia is left for them to capture. Gregson ships up to the space station for the final phase of construction. Crucial to the process is lowering the station's altitude, which is something only he can be counted on to do. On the station he re-unites with Karen Rakar. He is still ambivalent about which fraction to side with. The station is already in a small suppressor field, but this breaks down long enough for him to detect the presence of Andelia. While he is talking to her a guard arrives and kills her. Gregson kills the guard, but is cut down yet again by Wellford, one of a boarding party intent on a last-ditch gamble. Recovering, Gregson learns Wellford's plan. The super-suppressor can be re-wired to be a super-transmitter. All the top SecBu people are on the station, and activating a super-transmitter would fry the brains of everyone aboard. It is the supreme chance to decapitate the conspiracy, who plan to use their control over the super-suppressor to cement their power, threatening to turn it off if their demands are not met. With them eliminated, the super-suppressor could be activated as planned, and with help from the Valorians humanity would be able to recover the lost perception, ready to deal with high levels of rault which must be coming. Gregson helps Wellford re-wire the suppressor, and they escape to a comparatively safe distance of a few thousand miles aboard Wellford's ship. Even at that distance, the radiance is almost more than they can bear. Returning to the station, they find the people aboard either dead or catatonic. The final chapter takes place a few years later. Helen and Gregson are married with young children. Humanity is learning to live with rault, but already the Valorians have located another civilization about to emerge from the shadow of the Stygum Field. Gregson and Wellford are offered a place on that mission.
12163894	/m/02vryt5	In The House Of The Queen's Beasts	Jean Thesman		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Emily Shepherd, her professor stepfather, physician mother, and stepbrother Grady are moving into an older, larger house and Emily is very happy. An accident that scarred her face the year before had left her shunned by friends and foes alike. Plastic surgery has removed the physical scar but not the psychic one, and the new home is a chance to start over for her. The house comes with a marvelous treehouse and a new neighbour, Rowan Tucker. Rowan's life is full of secrets, most of which surround her antisocial father and their locked-up house. But on the common ground of the treehouse, Emily and Rowan forge a friendship. Rowan is a woodcarver and has fashioned a series of animals for the treehouse which she names after England's Queen's Beasts; but Rowan's beasts are memorials for animals who have suffered in life and are saved by Rowan's art. The stories she crafts for the carvings bring them to life for Emily, too, who also finds healing through them. In the give and take of real friendship, each gains; perhaps Rowan is finding in Emily the strength to stand up to her father.
12168277	/m/02vs409	Laura	Vera Caspary		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Like Wilkie Collins' groundbreaking detective novel The Moonstone (1868), Laura is narrated in the first person by several alternating characters. These individual stories all revolve around the apparent murder of the title character, a successful New York advertiser killed in the doorway of her apartment with a shotgun blast that obliterated her face. Detective Mark MacPherson, assigned to the case, begins investigating the two men who were closest to Laura: her former lover, a narcissistic middle-aged writer named Waldo Lydecker, and her fiance, the philandering Shelby Carpenter. As he learns more about Laura, Mark &ndash; not the most sentimental of men &ndash; begins to fall in love with her memory. When Laura turns out to be very much alive, however, she becomes the prime suspect. The novel has some autobiographical elements; Caspary, like Laura, was an independent woman who earned her living as an advertiser and who struggled to balance career and romance.
12171247	/m/02vs9qm	Burndive	Karin Lowachee	2003-10-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ryan Azarcon lives in a fishbowl. He is the son of the infamous Captain Cairo Azarcon, of the deep space carrier ship Macedon and Songlian Lau, Austro Station's head of publicity. Because of his combination of good looks and influential parents, Ryan is constantly watched by the media. After going to college for three years on earth and witnessing a horrifying terrorist attack related to the war between Earthhub and the striviiric-na in deep space, Ryan develops post traumatic stress disorder, drops out of school and returns to Austro, where he quickly begins doing drugs. However, when Captain Azarcon destroys the pirate ship Genghis Khan and begins to make peace with the striviiric-na, Ryan finds himself in danger. After a failed assassination attempt in a club on New Years Day which leaves many people dead or injured, Ryan finds himself trapped in his home for his own safety- at which point his father comes for him, taking him aboard his ship. Ryan is immediately caught in the middle of the war, the peace, and the effects thereof. The truth about his father's mysterious past, as a protégé of the pirate captain of the Genghis Khan, Vincenzo Falcone emerges. Earthhub factions, particularly the Family of Humanity, are against the peace. This extremist group eventually has Ryan's mother assassinated. The Macedon returns to Austro for her funeral, where another assassination attempt nearly kills Ryan. Captain Azarcon subjects Austro to martial law illegally to save him, and is forced to flee to the striviiric-na section of space. Ryan recovers on his father's ship, where he comes to terms, somewhat, with who he is, who his father is, and his place in the war.
12171290	/m/02vs9t0	Dark Wind Blowing	Jackie French	2001		 A young bullied boy by the name of Lance, who many think of him as a try hard "Loser" (which is what he is commonly referred to in the book), threatens to release an unstoppable virus in class after he has had a prank played on him.
12171663	/m/02vsb7g	Cagebird	Karin Lowachee	2005-04-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with Yuri Terisov, the jaded former protégé of the infamous dead pirate, Captain Vincenzo Falcone, and the Captain of the pirate ship Kublai Khan in prison on earth, where his is approached by Black Ops agent Andreas Lukacs. Lukacs offers to free Yuri from prison in exchange for his help in infiltrating the pirate network, which Yuri agrees to in exchange for the protection of his cellmate Stefano Finch. Yuri fakes his own death and his is smuggled out of prison with Finch to Pax Terra, the station orbiting above the earth, where he is picked up by his ship. He finds, however, that his ship has been taken over by his Lieutenant Taja Roshan and is first forced to kill her taking back his ship. Once that is done, he contacts Falcone's former Lieutenant, Caligtiera, about the Black Op's offer, who proposes that together they destroy the Earthhub Military Carrier Archangel. Yuri finds that he cannot bring himself to do this and informs the Macedon of his plans. He destroys his ship and kills Lukacs, who had intended to use the pirate to gain power, then flees to the Macedon whose crew includes two of Falcone's other protégés. This story alternates with the story Yuri's childhood, which tells how his colony was destroyed by the striviiric-na when he was four. His family was split up and he was sent to live in the bleak refugee camp camp on the partially terraformed planet Grace. When he is nine, Falcone recruits him from the camp and takes him on as his protégé and eventually as a geisha. Yuri falls in love with his geisha mentor, Estienne, and is indoctrinated, but this indoctrination fails when Yuri is forced into geisha duties at fourteen, which is essentially prostitution, with the aid of Falcone's cruelty. Despite this, Yuri is eventually given his own ship. When Falcone's ship, the Genghis Khan is destroyed, Yuri is sent to seek revenge on the Macedon's captain, Cairo Azarcon, by attempting to murder his son, Ryan Azarcon. He fails on his first try intentionally, but almost succeeds on his second, which is what lands him in prison. This portion of the story is told in more detail, through Ryan's perspective in the Universe's second book, Burndive.
12174014	/m/02vsl9c	Platoon Leader		1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The author, James R. McDonough, introduces the book as a story of an "American platoon leader in combat."
12184056	/m/02vthh6	The Goose Girl	Shannon Hale	2003-08-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book centers around the Crown Princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee of Kildenree, a small kingdom with more powerful neighbors. As a child she bonds with her aunt, who becomes her nursemaid and constant companion. She tells Ani, as the Princess is soon nicknamed, stories about three gifts certain people have: people-speaking (the power to manipulate people and persuade them in your favor), animal-speaking (the ability to communicate primarily with animals, using their sounds) and nature-speaking (the ability to communicate with certain elements, which the aunt says is very rare). The aunt goes on to say that Ani’s mother, the Queen, has the gift of people-speaking, as do many monarchs; she also says that she herself has the gift of animal-speaking. Though when Ani asks what gift she might have, her aunt says that it is still to early to tell. The aunt however soon returns to the forest, and Ani's mother, the queen, keeps Ani from using her gift of animal-speaking, for she thinks the people will not trust her if she communicates with beasts. Later, it is revealed that the aunt died that winter. The book then jumps ahead to when Ani is fifteen or so. Her lady-in-waiting and close friend Selia, whose mother is the key-mistress, has the gift of people-speaking but is still kind. However, Ani’s inability to be sociable and perfect like her mother is soon revealed to the reader. She seeks solace in her horse, Falada, whom she can communicate with through mental communication, and goes out riding with her father the King, who is easier to get along with, but he soon dies, assumedly leaving Ani the throne. But after the funeral Ani’s mother proclaims that her eldest son, Ani’s younger brother, is inheriting the throne. She then reveals to Ani that, behind her and her father’s back, she engaged the girl to the Crown Prince of the neighboring powerful kingdom of Bayern, and that Ani is to travel there to marry him. Ani feels betrayed and even more isolated but complies. So Ani sets out through the forests to Bayern, with an entourage of guards and Selia. However, Ani observes odd activity between Selia and a guard Ungolad. Mutiny eventually ensues while Ani is absent from camp, but still watches the exchange. The mutineers, led by Selia and backed by most of the guard, decide to kill the Princess and replace her with Selia herself. Ani is forced to flee and leave behind Falada and her remaining supporters. After days in the woods, Ani collapses in the garden of a Bayern woman named Gilsa. Gilsa says that she doesn't want to know Ani's story, preferring not to get mixed up in it, so Ani assumes the identity of “Isi”, a forest-born who comes, along with others, to the Bayern capital to find work tending to animals in the capital; she adopts a Bayern accent, hides her hair (blonde, as compared to the browns and blacks in Bayern) and tells stories to her fellow animal-workers. She tends to the geese, which she can communicate with, along with a boy named Conrad, and discovers that she also has the gift of nature-speaking, with the wind. Among the many she befriends is a Royal Guard named Geric, who she talks to while out in the fields. However, her secret is discovered by her friend Enna (see "Enna Burning"), and later she is spotted in a festival by her erstwhile guards. Later, after literally being stabbed in the back by Ungolad she flees back to Gilsa, who fixes her up again and sends her back to the capital. In the time she was gone Enna was forced to reveal Ani’s secret, and as the wedding between the Prince and Selia, who had been leading the King of Bayern to believe that Kildenree was about to launch a surprise attack on the much stronger country of Bayern, and so the military is preparing to attack before Kildenree can, is about to take place, they ride to the castle it is to take place in. She confronts Selia and learns that the 'Guard' Geric is actually the Crown Prince, so the Bayern party retires and Selia and Ani talk. However, before Selia’s now-lover Ungolad can kill Ani, Geric and the King, who had been eavesdropping behind a curtain to figure out who was the real princess was, intervene and a fight between Ani and the King’s supporters (her Forest friends and his Guards) and Selia’s supported (Kildenree’s Guard) ends in Geric and Ungolad being stabbed and Selia almost escaping. Days later, after things quiet down and Geric recovers, Ani is called to prove that Kildenree is not planning an attack on Bayern. She quickly dismisses the “proof” they have and, smarting from the accusations, goes on to show them the injustice and segregation that she had witnessed while tending to the King’s geese, and leaves them astounded. Geric later finds her on a balcony; they kiss (having fallen in love while both were lying about their true identities), and the book ends with Ani’s Forest friends rejoicing on being finally recognized as official Bayerners.
12184304	/m/02vthx8	Enna Burning	Shannon Hale	2004-08-26	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story picks up from the first book, shortly after it ends. It is set mainly in Bayern; a kingdom divided into forests and towns, with a Medieval technology. It is on the other side of the mountains from from Kildenree, where the first book began. Enna and Princess Isi (Ani) became fast friends in The Goose Girl. After the end of the first book, Enna returned to the forest to live with her older brother Leifer. Finding a vellum scroll, while in the forest, Leifer learns the secret of 'Fire Speaking'; but, he is unable to control his fire, or his temper, from 'flaring up'. Enna goes to the city, hoping to talk to Isi about Leifer's new power with fire. But, Isi is unable to manage her own ability to communicate with some animals and wind, since the end of the first book. The neighboring country of Tira invades Bayern. Enna and her friends, Razo and Finn, travel to the front, where they meet Leifer. He is anxious to use his power with fire to fight; but, dies in the battle. When Enna finds Leifer's body, she finds the vellum; and, learns its secrets. She makes a series of rules for herself, which she hopes will allow her to fight in the war, without meeting the same fate as her brother. Enna goes on a series of raids, with her old friends. But, finds she is unable to keep the promises she made to herself. When her friends try to stop her, from more sabotage raids, she runs away; and, is captured. Tiran Captain Sileph uses herbs to drug Enna; so, she can't use her power with fire to escape. He tries to brainwash her into teaching him the secret of fire, and fighting for Tira. Razo and Finn try to rescue her, but are captured. Enna gradually gives in to Sileph's persuasive skill with 'people speaking'. She believes he loves her; and, falls victim to Stockholm Syndrome. While Sileph is away, at a battle, the guards forget to drug her. She fights her way out of the camp and escapes, to fight for Bayern, and try to end the war, even if it means her own death, like her brother. Before she succumbs to her wounds, from using too much fire, her friends find her. The last part of the book follows Enna and Isi trying to find a cure, in a neighboring kingdom, to balance the fire and wind, that is killing them. The trip takes months. Along the way, Enna has to face Sileph, and a band of Tiran soldiers. His charisma has worn thin for her and his troops; and they fight. Enna and Isi finally return home, at peace, to their friends and families.
12185146	/m/02vtm1b	Austenland	Shannon Hale	2007-05-29		 Jane Hayes is a seemingly normal young New Yorker, but she has a secret. Her obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, is ruining her love life: no real man can compare. But when a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, Jane’s fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined. Decked out in empire-waist gowns, Jane struggles to master Regency etiquette and flirts with gardeners and gentlemen—or maybe even, she suspects, with the actors who are playing them. It’s all a game, Jane knows. And yet the longer she stays, the more her insecurities seem to fall away, and the more she wonders: Is she about to kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own?
12185650	/m/02vtnmj	Lady Molly of Scotland Yard	Baroness Emma Orczy	1910		 The book contains all twelve Lady Molly adventures and is narrated by Lady Molly's assistant Mary Granard.
12185816	/m/02vtnv1	Princess Academy	Shannon Hale	2005-06-16	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Miri is a fourteen-year-old girl from Mount Eskel, an isolated territory of Danland, who has never been allowed to work with the rest of the villagers in the quarry that keeps the community alive. Because of this, she feels like an outcast in the community and cut off from the culture focused around a shared working life in the quarry. As the quarry can barely cut enough linder to feed the villagers, Miri keeps on trying to help. In spite of her feelings of isolation, Miri is very close to her father and her sister, Marda, and she shares a close friendship with a boy named Peder. Unexpectedly, a messenger from the king arrives along with the usual traders from the lowlands. The messenger announces that the nation's priests have informed the nation that, despite the lack of education provided for the villagers and the prejudice that exists between the mountain villagers and the lowlanders, the crown prince's future bride will come from Mount Eskel. A "princess academy" is established near the village to train the potential princesses, with compulsory attendance for every girl aged between twelve and seventeen. At the end of the year, the prince will visit the academy and choose the girl to be the next princess. Miri and the other girls attend the academy, and although they struggle to appease the strict teacher, Tutor Olana, Miri excels at learning and commerce. All the girls are eager to please the prince and win a comfortable life for themselves and their families, and Miri's new knowledge of commerce helps the village prosper in trading with the lowlanders. After a disagreement, the girls use their knowledge of diplomacy to negotiate a more bearable living arrangement with Tutor Olana, including weekly visits home. Miri also begins to explore the mechanics of quarry-speech, a form of unspoken communication used only in the quarry, and makes friends with some of the other girls, including Britta, a lowlander who had recently moved to Mount Eskel. Miri's excellence in her studies and her willingness to help her peers despite bitter competition eventually earn her the title of academy princess and the privilege of having the first dance with the prince. At the academy ball, the prince dances with every girl except Britta, who is ill, and generally acts very distant. Later in the evening, he takes a walk with Miri and shows a more human side. However, he leaves without choosing a bride. Once the prince has left, promising to return in the spring to announce his choice, bandits attack the academy hoping to hold the new princess hostage. Miri must use her new knowledge of quarry speech to call for help from the village. At first no one seems to hear her, but eventually she is able to contact Peder. The villagers come to the academy through the blizzard, and the girls escape from the bandits and spend the winter at home with their families. In the spring, the prince returns and chooses to marry Britta - whom he has known since childhood - and names Mount Eskel an official province. The book ends with Peder and Miri admitting their feelings toward each other.
12186317	/m/02vtpjd	River Secrets	Shannon Hale	2006-09-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins as the main character, Razo, is watching a meeting. The king and queen of Bayern speak with a Tiran ambassador and agree that they should exchange ambassadors to promote peace between the two countries. After the reception, Razo is chosen to be one of twenty soldiers from Bayern's Own to join the ambassador in Ingridan, the capital of Tira. Razo experiences self-doubt and believes that their captain only chose him because of his participation in the war. As winter creeps into Bayern, the ambassador, Lady Megina, and twenty of Bayern's Own leave for Tira. On the way, Razo finds a burned body hidden in the trees near a river. After talking with his captain, they assume that Enna might be burning again—either that, or the burner might be from Tira, because the body was placed where it could be easily seen by the Tiran escort group, who are led by a soldier named Ledel. When the party arrives at Ingridan, they are taken to Thousand Year's Palace, where they are introduced to Lord Belvan and Lady Dasha, their host and hostess. Razo finds more burned bodies and still doesn't know who the burner is. After being beat up by one of Ledel's soldiers, Tumas, he goes to his captain requesting to be sent home. Talone rejects his plea, and asks him a series of random questions. After answering them all correctly, Razo is told that he has excellent observation skills, and is given the job of spying to find the murderer. Razo proceeds to watch and spy on everyone. A week passes and the Tiran party challenges Bayern's Own to a mock swordfight. Razo is humiliated with defeat and the Tiran soldiers mock him. Then Finn speaks up and tells them to challenge Razo with a long-ranged weapon, his sling to their spears. Razo hits every target and discovers that he's the best sling Bayern had. Summer approaches and the Tiran soldiers and all the nobles leave for the coolness of the country. Razo goes out to buy shoes and meets the prince of Tira. The prince tells him that he has no true power, except the power of the people's opinion. Razo proceeds to spend most of the summer with the prince so that people can get used to seeing Bayerners. They then dye their boring white robes that all Tiran wear rich and deep colors. Next thing they knew, everyone was wearing their Tiran robes.with Bayern dyes; however, this is not nearly enough to turn popular opinion against the warmongers. Soon after Ledel's cohort returns from their summer assignment outside the city, Razo discovers a map and overhears a discussion that leads him to believe that Ledel was behind the burning. Razo and Dasha go to the burner's warehouse but are captured. They fight back and are nearly killed - although Razo ends up killing Tumas with his sling - until Enna and Finn, tipped off by Conrad, arrive. Enna and Dasha, whom Razo discovered had the gift of water-speak, fight the newly-taught Tiran burners while Finn and Ledel duel; the Bayeners and Dasha win, and the whole story - of Ledel attempting to teach fire to soldiers in order to spark another war, only to have them die like Enna's brother Leifer - comes out. Soon before the Bayern cohort is due to return home, Geric and Isi (King and Queen of Bayern) come to see the vote for or against war; they arrive too late, but come just in time for the celebration, escorting Isi's sister Napralina. At the celebratory feast, Finn makes a fool of himself by playing the harp and singing a love song to Enna, and Enna finally accepts his proposal to marry him. After the dinner, Razo and Dasha confess feelings for each other and discuss how they can make their relationship work with such separate identities. The novel ends with Razo and Dasha together in a boat, with Razo telling Dasha Isi's story. (see: Goose Girl)
12186352	/m/02vtplt	The Tangled Skein	Baroness Emma Orczy	1907	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In The Tangled Skein, Baroness Orczy does not paint Queen Mary nearly so black as she is usually portrayed. Indeed Mary is depicted as so passionately loving as to be almost lovable, a woman of strong emotions, invariably swayed by justice. The tangling of the skein results from Mary’s love for (the fictional) Robert d’Esclade, fifth Duke of Wessex, whom the people of England desire to become King Consort. Robert is the embodiment of all chivalry, and every virtue dear to the heart of an Englishman. He is, so far, fancy free, but beyond deep respect for, and loyalty to, his Queen, he has no other feeling, and the idea of marriage with her merely for political reasons is repulsive to him. He is at the same time half betrothed, but not bindingly, to Lady Ursula Glynde, whom he has not seen since her babyhood. Wessex is repelled by the idea of having his wife thrust upon him in any way, and purposely avoids the girl, in which he is, unknown to himself, aided and abetted by the Queen, who tries jealously to guard him against falling a victim to Ursula’s undoubted fascinations. The Lady Ursula is exceedingly beautiful, very, sprightly in manner, and a favourite wherever she goes. As soon as she realises for what purpose Mary is keeping her in the background, Ursula’s spirit is aroused to the point of self-defence. To begin with, she is in love with Wessex, the report of his nobility and goodness and the feeling that in a measure he belongs to her, have influenced her all her life; but she has also a deeper interest at stake in the fact that on her father’s death- bed she bound herself by a promise to go into a convent if she should not marry Wessex. Ursula has no fancy to take the veil, so merry, so utterly independent is she that she takes to breaking bounds in order to frustrate the Queen’s jealousy; and bring herself under the notice of her betrothed, which she achieves, and all would have gone well for the young couple but for the power of Cardinal de Moreno, and his tool Don Mignel, Marquis de Saurez. The Cardinal is in England in order to negotiate the marriage between Philip II of Spain and Mary. His only stumbling block he discovers to be Wessex, and with a view to clearing him out of the way he first tries to bring about the marriage between the Duke and Lady Ursula. But, Mary discovers the ruse, and, in a fit of rage, declares that if this comes about his Eminence may leave England immediately; she will not marry Philip, Then the Cardinal has to set to work to part the lovers, a far more difficult and intricate business than bringing them together. It costs a life, Wessex his freedom, and Lady Ursula her good name before it can be affected. The skein is more hopelessly tangled than before, and still Mary remains obdurate. To straighten the tangle it takes the forfeiting of Mary’s dignity, her love, and her will. The Cardinal’s victory is gained at the expense of his own career. The lovers themselves are left with scars they can never forget.
12186451	/m/02vtprn	Book of a Thousand Days	Shannon Hale	2007-09-18	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Dashti, a mucker from the steppes of Titor's Garden, seeks to find a job after her mother died due to illness, she eventually finds one in one of the 8 Realms. It's to become Lady Saren's maid, she enters into a struggle between Saren and her father. The Lord of Titor's Garden has declared that his daughter will marry Lord Khasar of Thoughts of Under, when Saren reveals that she has betrothed herself to the young Khan Tegus of Song for Evela. To tame his daughter, Saren's father shuts her and Dashti, the only maid willing to accompany Saren, in a tower far away from his city. He claims he will only release them after seven years, or if Saren will relent and marry Khasar.
12187025	/m/02vtq9w	A Bride of the Plains	Baroness Emma Orczy	1915	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is set in Hungary and the scene is laid in a village close to the Maros. The sharp, cracked sound of the Elevation bell breaks the silence of the summer morning. The good Pater Bonifacius is saying Mass: he, at any rate, is astir and busy with his day’s work and obligations. Surely it is strange that at so late an hour in mid-September, with the maize waiting to be gathered in, the population of Marosfalva should be still absent from the fields! Hej ! But, stranger, what would you ? Such a day is-this Fourteenth of September. What ? You did not know it? The Fourteenth of September, the ugliest, blackest, most God forsaken day in the whole year! What kind of a stranger are you if you do not know that On this hideous day all the finest lads in the village are taken away to be made into soldiers by the abominable Government? Three years! Why, the lad is a mere child when he goes-one-and-twenty on his last birthday, bless him! still wanting a mother’s care of his stomach, and a father’s heavy stick across his back from time to time to keep him from too much love-making. Three years ! When he comes brick he is a man and has notions of his own. Three years! What are the chances he comes back at all? Bosnia! Where in the world is that? My God, how they hate it! They must go through with it, though they hate it all-every moment. They hate to be packed into railway carriages like so many dried heads of maize in a barn... and the rude alien sergeant with his 'Vorwarts!' and 'Marsch!' and 'Rechts!' and 'Links!' I ask you in the name of the Holy Virgin what kind of gibberish is that? On this particular fourteenth of September it is Andor&#39;s turn due to go. On the eve preceding it, at the village merrymaking, as the whole population spends its last happy hours trying to forget the hideous evets that will occur in the morning, he tokens himself to Elsa the village beauty. It is Elsa and Andor that everyone is watching. He is tall and broad-shouldered with the supple limbs of a young stag, and the mad irresponsible movements of a young colt. The young couple dread the next day, which comes all too soon. They are at the station now, the last bell has sounded. For each lad only one girl, and there she is at the foot of the carriage steps, a corner of her ribbon, or handkerchief or cotton petticoat stuffed into her mouth to prevent herself from bursting into sobs. The pain and loss of conscription. It is some time since Andor was conscripted but there has been no news of him so Elsa is forced to betroth herself to the wealthy and sinister Béla, after being placed in the terrible alternative of either being faithless to Andor or disobedient to her mother. It is characteristic of Hungarian society at the time that of the two options available the latter seemed by far the more heinous. On the eve of Elsa&#39;s wedding Andor suddenly reappears, and is indirectly concerned in the assassination of Béla which takes place the same night. The story begins and ends with festival mingled with tragedy.
12188588	/m/02vtv91	Trading Up (Candace Bushnell))	Candace Bushnell	2003	{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Janey Wilcox's flagging career was revived when, in the closing pages of Four Blondes, she accepted a contract with Victoria's Secret. Trading Up stars a slightly older and wiser Janey Wilcox, one who is determined to make it to the top. Wilcox begins the novel as an older but still quite popular lingerie and runway model whose aspirations now include breaking into show business. Fortunately, the New York social scene is dominated by powerful media mogul/starlet couples. Spending a summer in the Hamptons, Janey Wilcox befriends Mimi Kilroy, wife of media mogul George Paxton. Kilroy introduces her new model friend to Selden Rose, an up-and-coming CEO of cable television network MovieTime. At first Janey is uninterested in Selden and is instead enamored with Zizi, a young Argentinian polo player with model looks and the countenance of a member of the European elite. Only in an attempt to attract Zizi does she begin dating Selden. Janey and Selden are quickly married, while Zizi begins an affair with Mimi. Janey continually struggles with her torrid past as a consummate seducer of powerful men and is known in many circles as a semi-prostitute. Determined to become a movie producer, Janey attempts to maneuver her way to the top of the New York social scene by any means necessary, including using her younger sister and her brother-in-law, a popular rock star, for her own ends. Eventually it is revealed that Janey's reputation as a prostitute is rather well-deserved and a past indiscretion with a powerful media mogul is publicly revealed. Janey's reputation is ruined and she splits from her husband, fleeing to Los Angeles. In the end Janey has managed to get an old, crudely-written screenplay (written years earlier) into the hands of the right people in Hollywood and is poised to embark on a new path as a Hollywood movie producer. The story ends on an unexpectedly triumphant note, with Janey poised to conquer Hollywood. There is a sense that the ends have justified the means. Janey's shameless ambition, her hard headed cool determination to get whatever she wants - at any cost - wins through. This isn't the expected tale of a grasping, gold digger who gets her comeuppance. It is more the tale of a beautiful woman who uses her looks as a tool to operate in a world where male ruthlessness is admired and feared, and yet her own casual callousness is deplored and scorned by those around her.
12188761	/m/02vtvs5	The Stone Monkey	Jeffery Deaver	2002	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the novel, we follow Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, partners and lovers, as they try to track down a ruthless Chinese human smuggler and hitman, 'Gui', translated as 'The Ghost'. The start of the novel sees the Ghost scuttle a ship full of human smugglers as they are intercepted by the coastguard. He escapes to shore via a liferaft, as do some of the 'Undocumenteds' being smuggled into America. Before Ghost escapes to the shore, he shoots several members of the crew and shoots at the escaping immigrants. Near the shore the immigrants hit rocks and several of them are thrown out of the boat, and are washed up on the shore. The Ghost shoots two of them, and steals a car to escape after his accomplice flees the scene on hearing the rapidly approaching police. Meanwhile the immigrants land on the shore and steal a white van from a church. As Amelia arrives on the scene, she spots a man clinging to the rocks in the sea. Unwilling to wait for search and rescue, she dives in after him and keeps him afloat. Once the S+R crew arrive, they are pulled to shore. They discover the mans name is John Sung, and he has been shot, but insignificantly. He is taken off to hospital, and later placed in detention for illegal entry to USA. Back at Rhymes apartment, they meet Sonny Li, an immigrant on the ship who is actually an undercover police officer from China, intent on killing the Ghost for personal reasons. He predicts that the Ghost will attack the traitorous accomplice that fled the scene, leaving him to get away by himself. Rhyme disagrees and puts all his energy into finding the immigrants, who have gone into hiding. The accomplice is later discovered, apparently tortured with knives, his eyelids cut out. Dead. Sonny gains respect from Rhyme. Rhyme and Sachs track down one of the families in hiding, the 'Wu's', who have gone into hiding in a safehouse provided by a local gang. However the Ghost has also hunted them down, and is heading to kill them. He turns onto the street, and a shot fires out. It is Alan Coe, an INS agent with a personal vendetta against the Ghost. He is not allowed to continue the investigation because of this, as it results in the Ghost escaping. However, the Wu's and John Sung are both in safehouses leaving only the 'Chang' family still in hiding. Here we see the Changs, with the father, Sam Chang, planning to masquerade as a traitor to the family who is selling their hideout to the Ghost, and kill him. He knows this may well end in his death.He confides in his wife and his father, and is preparing to leave. His father asks him for a last drink together and prepares tea. The tea is drugged, and Sam Chang's father takes the gun and leaves to meet the Ghost. He fails to kill the Ghost, and kills himself with an overdose of morphine after running out of ammo. Meanwhile, Sonny Li is following his less conventional methods of police work, and he actually tracks down the Ghost and finds who he is. However he confronts him without the others, and is killed before he has a chance to tell Rhyme. However, he deliberately spreads some trace evidence at the scene to lead Rhyme onto the right person. At this point the reader knows who the Ghost is, but Rhyme doesn't. Using the evidence from Chang's killing, and Sonny's killing, Rhyme deduces where the Changs are hiding out. He sends Sachs, Coe and John Sung (as a translator) to take them into detention and government safehouses. During the journey there, Rhyme phones Sachs and tells her who the Ghost is. She pulls over and pulls the gun on Coe, and arrests him, claiming to have uncovered evidence that he is the Ghost's police contact. He is taken away. She and Sung continue to the Changs flat. They get inside and Sachs spins round and trains her weapon on Sung, a SPECTAC team swoop in and apprehend Sung and he is revealed to be the Ghost. Arresting Coe was a cunning move to trick Sung into thinking they thought they had captured the real Ghost. It is later revealed that the Ghost had shot Sung on the beach, and stolen his personal affects, then shot himself and jumped in the sea. They later hear of the intention to release the Ghost back to China, where he will supposedly be tried. Rhyme and Sachs are horrified and attempt to stop it. They discover something and race to the airport. They confront the Ghost and his two INS guards coming up to the airport gate. They reveal that through their research, they have discovered a high level of corruption in the INS, and this leads to the Ghost being tried in America and several high level security personnel taking 'early retirement'. The novel ends with Rhyme revealing that he will not be undergoing the surgery described in the previous book, which is a huge relief to Sachs, his earlier conversation with Li having inspired him to consider that he is a better detective in his current state due to his ability to focus on purely intellectual matters. Finally Sachs oversees the adoption of the baby whose mother was killed aboard the ship, by the Changs, who have always wanted a daughter. The families are awarded asylum.
12189465	/m/02vtxds	Under the Jolly Roger		2005-08-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After leaving Lawson Peabody, a boarding school in Boston, Jacky joins the whaling ship, the "Pequod", as a companion to the Captain's wife, a teacher for the Captain's son, and as the cook's helper. Jacky leaves the ship when it arrives in London and searches for Jaimy. She goes to Jaimy's house on Nine Brattle Lane, where Jaimy's mother threw Jacky out and told her Jaimy was no longer in love with her. She is confused until the family maid, named Hattie, tells her not to believe her and that Jaimy will be at the races at Epsom Downs. Jacky sets off to find him. In the meantime, Jacky visits her old gangs kip under the Blackfriar's bridge. She doesn't recognize any of the kids and they tell her what happened to the other members of the gang. They tell her a former member, Judy was hired to be a helper to an older woman, and despite her promises, has not come back to help the gang. Thinking that was odd, Jacky goes to visit her and discovers Judy is being forced to work at a wash house for a terrible man. Jacky saves Judy. Jacky takes Judy in as her maid and buys her all new clothes. Jacky dresses as a jock in order to get into a racetrack, where Jaimy is. She sees Jaimy with his cousin Emily and mistakenly thinks that Jaimy has replaced her. She runs away and is captured by a press-gang who mistake her for a boy and take her aboard a ship, HMS Wolverine, where Jacky furiously reveals that she is a girl. Instead of sending her back, the captain keeps her around, wanting to have a night of sport with her. Jacky, knowing what the Captain has in mind, jumps from the ship into the sea, in an attempt to swim to safety. As Jacky is swimming, the Captain of the Wolverine sends out a small boat to retrieve her. As the boat creeps up on her, Jacky tries to stop them by going under water and pulling at an oar, causing a sailor to fall out. She thinks this will cause them to slow down and save the man, but instead they just keep going. Jacky can't let the sailor die, so she dives down and saves him. When she does this the other men grab her and pull her aboard. When back on the ship, Jacky tells the Captain that if she is to be entered into the books then she shall be put it as midshipman, since she was made midshipman while on the Dolphin. After she was put into the books, Jacky settles into the midshipman's berth. There she meets the other midshipman, Georgie Piggott, about eight years old, Ned Barrow and Tom Wheeler, both twelve years old, and Robin Raeburne, about sixteen years old. Meanwhile Jaimy has written a letter to Jacky, explaining the events at the track. Jaimy tells that the girl Jacky saw was actually his cousin Emily, who likes to make other men jealous by going into town with Jaimy. Jaimy says he is still hers. Jacky attempts to begin training the midshipmen. To begin this Jacky puts the midshipmen onto the ship's watch. Jacky also goes to the officers to be assigned a division. She is put with gun crew, Division One on the port bow guns. Jacky goes to the division and learns they have never even fired the guns. She assigns the men their jobs and drills the men on dry runs. The book again turns to a letter from Jaimy to Jacky. Jaimy says how Judy shows up on his doorstep. Jacky had told her if she did not return to go to Jaimy's house, since she thought she and Jaimy would be together. Judy tells Jaimy how his mother had thrown Jacky out of the house and told her Jaimy no longer loved her. Jaimy is outraged and goes to his mother and has Judy tell the story. His mother hears how the maid, Hattie, told Jacky where Jaimy would be and tells her to leave. Hattie is mad that she would throw her out after many years of service and tells Jaimy to look in one of his mother's drawers. In the drawer Jaimy finds letter to and from Jacky. This makes Jaimy very mad, and tells her that he is leaving, which is what he did, along with Judy and Hattie. During an early morning watch, Jacky notices a flashing light from the shore. She is told that they occur about every week. They don't know what they mean but they are supposed to tell the Captain when the lights occur. While on watch Jacky goes about and inspects the ship. She goes up the foremast to check on the lookout. There she meets Joseph Jared, the Captain of the top. He tells her he is a friend of Billy, the sailor she saved on the first day. Jared also tells her that the ship does not stop ships from passing through the blockade. One night, Jacky is on the watch when a storm comes, which she calls a living gale. Jacky looks up and sees the forestaysail chafing. If it breaks the ship will be lost. Jacky runs from the quarterdeck and climbs to the line and fixes it. Jacky decides to climb even higher to make sure not anymore line is chafing, even though that's Jared's job. When she gets there a huge wave comes over the deck. Jacky holds on to the mast, but she knows the wave will tear her away. When she thinks she is lost Jared comes from behind and holds her down, saving her. The Captain sends the officers away in a small boat when the captain decides he wants to sleep with Jacky. She tries to offer herself to a fellow midshipman, Robin, wanting her first time to be willing and happy instead of in fear. However they are interrupted and Jacky is sent to the Captain's cabin. A member of the crew, wanting to protect Jacky, begins dropping cannon balls from the rigging on to the quarter deck. This enrages the Captain, it being a beginning act of mutiny. He orders the person to be captured, and it is revealed to be Robin. When the Captain tries to have his way with Jacky, he has a heart attack and dies. At first, Jacky pretends that the Captain is too sick to leave his cabin. After a few days Jacky tells the crew of the Captain's death. She realizes that she is now Captain of the ship, all the sailors ranking above her having been sent off in a small boat, never to be heard from again in the book. After the Captain's death, Jacky discovers that the Captain has been taking bribes to let ships pass through the blockade. She soon uncovers a smuggling ring, which included smuggling out French spies. Jacky takes control of the ship, which includes releasing Robin and placing Joseph Jared, a sailor that Jacky befriended, as one of her officers. She and her crew take several French ships as prizes and Jacky earns a reputation as La belle jeune fille sans merci, or "the beautiful young girl without mercy". Soon she is removed from her position as captain, but manages to escape on one of the captured ships, the Emerald, which she makes her own. She tries to hide from the Admiralty the fact that she captured the Emerald. Along with Higgins, a steward from the Wolverine, Jacky travels to Ireland and finds her former sea dad, Liam Delaney and offers him the role as Captain of the Emerald, while she would be the owner of the ship. He accepts and together they find a crew and begin privateering. Jacky becomes close friends with Liam's daughter, Mariad. They become very wealthy and prosperous and Jacky's reputation grows. When the Emerald is at a port in England Jacky is relaxing in the countryside and an older man approaches her. The man turns out the be Jacky's grandfather. This is the first family Jacky has had since the dark day when her parents and sister died and she was forced out on the street. Jacky had acquired a letter of marque by revealing the smuggling ring to the admiralty, but then the admiralty revokes her letter of marque and she is branded as a pirate, when they learn she kept the Emerald for her own use.. Later, she is briefly reunited with Jaimy who is a lieutenant aboard the Wolverine which captures and sinks her ship and finds out that the girl she saw Jaimy with was actually his cousin, and they are together again. However, the Wolverine becomes engaged in the Battle of Trafalgar where Jacky escapes the brig and takes part in the battle. When all is over she request to stay and help doctor many of her former shipmates who had been injured, but the Captain sets her free for her bravery in battle. She then signals Jamie to meet her in Boston before sailing away in a small boat.
12194857	/m/02vvf01	Skinnybones	Barbara Park		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alex wrote a letter in a promotional contest for a cat food company that describes the key points in his young life mainly having to do with Little League baseball. Alexwell has played in Little League for six years, his skills in the game are so subpar he refers to himself as "really stinky" when it comes to baseball. He is constantly berated by his nemesis T.J. Stoner, a player widely-known for his incredible skill. After numerous attempts to get T.J. to leave him alone fail, Alex tries beating him in a pitching contest, at which he fails miserably. A few days later, their teams are playing a game against each other and T.J. once again tries to make Alex look foolish. During the game, Alex bunts the ball and runs to first, where T.J. is set to get him out. Desperate to stop him, he jumps up and down, screaming "BOOGA BOOGA!" He makes T.J. miss the ball, allowing him to get a double. Then he is called out by the umpire immediately after for interfering with the play at first base. Though he was thrown out, he accomplished something better than getting a double to him which was making T.J. embarrassed. When he looks like he's going to beat Alex up, he runs home and locks himself in his room. T.J. gets a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for beating Alex's team. Alex, in a twist of good luck, ends up winning the contest from the cat food company that he wrote the letter to at the book's opening. By winning, he will get to appear on a national television commercial. He leaves school that day, nervous about filming it, but eager to be a big star and hoping things will go well.
12196208	/m/02vvgll	Devil May Care	Sebastian Faulks	2008-05-28	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in the 1960s. A ritual execution in the outskirts of Paris starts a chain of events: a narcotics tide threatens to engulf Britain, a British airliner disappears in Iraqi airspace, and the threat of war echoes throughout the Middle East. Bond is instructed by his superior, M, to investigate a man named Dr Julius Gorner, and his bodyguard, Chagrin. Bond is warned that his performance will be monitored and that a new 00 agent is waiting in the wings, if his actions go awry. Bond flies to Imperial Iran (Persia) to investigate. Gorner owns factories and produces legitimate pharmaceuticals, however MI6 suspects he has other motives. During Bond's investigation he identifies Gorner due to a deformity of his hand, and establishes Gorner's complicity in a scheme to not only flood Europe with cheap drugs but also to launch a two-pronged terrorist attack on the Soviet Union, whose retaliation will subsequently devastate the UK. The attack is to be made using both the stolen British airliner and an ekranoplan. Bond is assisted in his investigation by Scarlett Papava (whose twin sister Poppy is under Gorner's emotional spell), Darius Alizadeh (the local head of station), JD Silver (an in-situ agent), and Felix Leiter. Bond is eventually captured by Gorner in the heroin plant, who explains that Bond is to be used as bait during a drugs delivery across the Afghan desert, and should he survive an expected ambush, is to fly the captured airliner into the Russian heartland. Bond would be identified as British upon its destruction, increasing the evidence against the British Government. Bond survives the predicted Afghan attack and plots an escape attempt, which sees Scarlett get away due to Bond surrendering himself as a diversion. Bond is recaptured and returned to his cell. In the morning he is taken aboard the aeroplane. Before the airliner can bomb the Soviets, with the aid of the airliner's pilot and Scarlett (who had been hiding on board), Bond regains control of the aeroplane and crashes it into a mountainside after parachuting to safety. Meanwhile, Felix Leiter and Darius inform agent Silver of the second method of attack. Silver shows himself to be a double agent by failing to call in an airstrike against the Ekranoplan and by attempting to kill Leiter and Darius. In the shoot-out Darius successfully calls in the airstrike at the cost of his own life and Leiter survives only thanks to the timely arrival of Hamid, his taxi driver. The Ekranoplan is destroyed by RAF Vulcan bombers before it reaches its target. Bond and Scarlett escape through Russia but are pursued by Chagrin, who Bond finally kills on a train. Later Gorner meets him on a boat and tries to shoot him, but Bond pushes him off, where he is torn to pieces by a propeller. With the subsequent elimination of both Chagrin and Gorner, Bond considers his mission a success, and on condition that the agent M has waiting in the wings will not take his place Bond is sent to assess the new agent, designated 004. She turns out to be Scarlett Papava. Scarlett discloses that the story of her twin sister was a ploy to convince Bond to enable her to join the mission. Papava feared that if Bond knew she was a potential double-0 agent, he would not have worked with her. With Bond returning to active duty, Scarlett moves off to her own operations as a full 00 agent.
12199883	/m/02vvlhb	Blade of Fire	Stuart Hill	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Blade of Fire takes place 20 years after the first novel. The story follows Thirrin's and Oskan's (now married) new efforts to repel the imposing threat of Imperial invasion, yet again at the hands of Scipio Bellorum and his bloodthirsty sons, Octavius and Sulla. But this time, they have the help of their five children: Cressida, the Crown Princess and military extraordinaire; Eodred and Cerdic, the twin warrior princes; Charlemagne (Sharley), stricken with polio at a young age, and much to his chagrin, cannot be a warrior; and finally Medea, the dark daughter and the only inheritor to her father's gift. A burning hatred for Charlemagne causes Medea to turn against her family. Early on in the book Oskan has a prophecy about Sharley. About a week or two later Sharley is sent off into exile to be Prince Regent to the exiles. Maggie, his tutor, goes with him. He is sent to the Southern Continent where he makes some unexpected allies and friends. This includes the Desert People (he befriends the Sultan's son) and the Lusu people of Arifica. Maggie falls ill on the journey to the Sultan's palace and is sent to stay in oasis where he recovers. On the journey to Lusuland, an unexpected storm comes but the spirits of the desert (the blessed women) save them from harm. On the sea voyage back to Icemark the fleet of Lusu people and the desert people are attacked by the Empire's biggest allies. Then before the final battle against the Polypontians, Medea possesses the Crown Prince of the desert people, Mehkmet, and turns him against Sharley. With the help of the Blessed Women though, Medea is defeated. Later when Oskan is about to call down lightning, Medea steals his lightning and is about to use it against Sharley but Oskan blocks the lightning, sending it back toward Medea. Oskan attacks Medea because he found out that Medea betrayed the Icemark and banishes her to the seventh plain of the magical realms called The Circle Of Dark. Octavius is killed by Sharley and Sulla is killed by Cressida. After the battle Scipio is beheaded by Thirrin and the Vampire Queen rips apart his body. Icemark has defeated the Empire.
12200157	/m/02vvlsm	Fall of a Kingdom	Hilari Bell	2003	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When the Hrum (an evil race) arrive in a country (good guys) Farsala, Some serious stuff goes down. Kavi is a peasant peddler selling bronze goods plated in gold and he holds a grudge against the deghans. When he was a young apprentice to a man in the city of Mazad, a deghan came in looking for a remarkable sword and is willing to pay an astronomical price for it, but does not have the money with him. Kavi grabs for the sword, but the deghan pulls and scars his right hand. A year later, the deghan returns for the swords pay, and throws in a bonus amount "For his troubles". The cut cripples him with an injury that still pains him years later. While Kavi is running from a city where he is found to be selling false gold items, he is caught up in High Commander Merahb's plan. He is to visit the cottage where Soraya is staying to supply her with the goods and news that a deghass is accustomed to, and he is to do it like an obedient peasant should. But while he is on his usual rounds of the northern mining towns selling second rate iron goods to the country folk, he is captured by Hrum scouts who have infiltrated Farsala unknown. To save his own life Kavi agrees to turn traitor to Farsala and spy for the Hrum. He also believes that the Hrum will be better rulers of Farsala than the deghans. When the Hrum arrive in Farsala the deghans and their unstoppable charge is ready to meet them. Seconds before the wall of horses slams into the Hrum's front line, spears five yards long and as thick as saplings appear throughout the Hrum line. The deghans' charge is dissolved and half of their army is killed in their initial charge. Jiaan is thrown from his horse and is knocked unconscious. He also thinks he broke his collar bone. During this time the Farsalan army is being driven back to their camp. When Jiaan wakes up, all he sees is his father attempting to save his army and challenge the Hrum's champion to a life or death duel for victory or defeat. Before Commander Merahb could do anything else, he is shot by four arrows. Then, attempting to get up, he gets shot with another volley of arrows that kills him. With the High Commander dead and the Farsalan army defeated and virtually non-existent, Jiaan has to scrounge up an army of peasants and try to defeat an empire that spans half of the known world.
12200164	/m/02vvlsz	The Last Children of Schewenborn	Gudrun Pausewang	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story starts in a present of a Cold War situation similar to that at the time of writing. It is told in the first person by Roland, at the beginning a 12-year old (in fact, nearly 13) boy from Bonames (a district of Frankfurt), who travels with his parents and sisters to visit his grandparents at Schewenborn. During this journey they are surprised by a nuclear attack. After the explosion, no assistance arrives from the outside. Survivors start to assume that the whole of Germany, or the entire civilized world, may have been destroyed — but this is never clarified until the end of the novel. The family finds refuge in the house of the grandparents, who at the time of the nuclear explosion were in Fulda and were probably killed there. Shortly afterwards, Roland's mother takes in a young brother and sister who have been orphaned in the attack. The later parts of the plot describe the weeks, months and years after this attack, and take place mostly at Schewenborn. The oppressive story does not have a happy ending. Gradually, members of Roland's family, including a new-born sibling without eyes, die of radiation sickness and other illnesses. At the conclusion, only Roland, his father, and a small group of children -- the "last children" of the title -- remain alive, and the final paragraphs suggest that they, too, will perish.
12200712	/m/02vvm7d	Bitter Lemons	Lawrence Durrell		{"/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is alternately comic and serious, charting Durrell's experiences on Cyprus and the people he met and befriended, as well as charting the progress of the Cypriot "Enosis" (union with Greece and freedom from British rule) movement, which plunged the island into chaos and violence. Comic moments include Durrell's successful house-buying adventure, and the visits of his mother and brother, naturalist Gerald Durrell. Durrell settled in the village of Bellapais (purposely spelt "Bellapaix" by Durrell to evoke the old name Paix), which is now part of the Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus. During his stay, Durrell worked first as an English teacher at the Pancyprian Gymnasium, where several of his female students reportedly fell in love with him: Invited to write an essay on her favourite historical character, [Electra] never failed to delight me with something like this: 'I have no historical character but in the real life there is one I love. He is writer. I dote him and he dotes me. How pleasure is the moment when I see him came at the door. My glad is very big.' Eventually, however, &#34;the vagaries of fortune and the demons of ill-luck dragged Cyprus into the stock-market of world affairs&#34; and as armed groups emerged demanding an end to British rule and Cyprus&#39; reunion with Greece, Durrell accepted a job as press adviser to the British governor. Durrell was not enamoured with the Cypriot militants, however, and felt that they were dragging the island to a &#34;feast of unreason&#34; and that &#34;embedded so deeply in the medieval compost of religious hatreds, the villagers floundered in the muddy stream of undifferentiated hate like drowning men.&#34; The account ends with him fleeing the island without saying goodbye to his friends, approaching the &#34;heavily guarded airport&#34; by taxi in conversation with the driver who tells him &#34;Dighenis, though he fights the British, really loves them. But he will have to go on killing them—with regret, even with affection.&#34;
12205302	/m/02vvt48	A Sheaf of Bluebells	Baroness Emma Orczy	1917	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Many French aristocrats exiled during the revolution have been presenting petitions to enable them to return to France under the conditional amnesty granted to them by the newly crowned Emperor. Amongst them are a petition signed by Mme.la Marquise de Mortain and her son, Laurent (aged twenty-one years), and one signed by M. le Comte de Courson for himself and his daughter, Fernande. Fernande is Laurent’s cousin and is promised in marriage to him Napoleon, in a lenient mood, grants their return and allows them to retake possession of their chateaux and any remaining land that had not been sold by the State. Mme la Marquise, however, has an older son from a previous marriage still resident in France, Ronnay de Maurel was only four years old when his father died, but an uncle brought him up. This uncle, Gaston de Maurel is a solid republican patriot, if ever there was one, with nothing of the aristo about him at all. Gaston eats peas with his knife and wears sabots and a blouse... he even voted for the death of the king. Ronnay works in the foundries where he employs five thousand men and as a result he is now one of the richest men in France. Yet despite their fortune, he and his uncle live like peasants using only a couple of rooms in the sumptuous chateau that is now being returned to his mother. The fastidious Mme. la Marquise hates her elder son on every count. He is a follower of the loathed Bonaparte, and a bourgeois in his upbringing, manners and dress. Fernande also starts off by hating and despising Ronnay, but she soon hatches a plan to make him fall for her so she can win him over to the Royalist party. To this end she plans to bump into him in the woods and conveniently sprains her ankle just before the time she knows he will pass. "She had only just time to arrange her gown in its most becoming folds to decide on the exact position of the sheaf of bluebells and of her outstretched arm, and to assure herself that the sunlight was indeed playing with her hair and with her toes in just the manner she desired. Then she closed her eyes and waited." She waits until he is right in front of her before opening her eyes, gazing into his and pleading for his help. Ronnay is, as usual, dressed in blouse and rough breeches. Unused to such ploys, he gazes around in pathetic helplessness, as if expecting the dwellers of the forest to help him in his awful dilemma. But no one the around, and the lovely Fernande, whose tiny bare foot looks like an exquisite flower to him, is appealing, oh, so piteously, for help. Ronnay gives in and carries Fernande home. As per her plan he loses his heart completely on the journey, but rather unexpectedly, Fernande ends up also falling victim to the passion that she sought to arouse in Ronnay, in spite of her hatred of the cause for which he is fighting. The news that the hated Ronnay has become the lover of the woman promised to her adored younger son Laurent, only causes Mme. La Marquise to loathe him more. She plots and schemes for the undoing of her hated elder son but Fernande discovers the plot and saves Ronnay from being treacherously murdered. Laurent goes through tortures of passionate jealousy and deserts from his regiment at a great crisis in order to assure himself of Fernande’s feelings. Following which his mother furiously disowns him, accusing him of dishonour, while his father and kindred are fighting for France. Poor Laurent eventually retrieves his dishonour only to die a hero’s death, conveniently leaving Fernande free to marry Ronnay.
12205810	/m/02vvtvz	Fire in Stubble	Baroness Emma Orczy	1912	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book centres on the love life of Rose Marie, the only daughter of M. Legros tailor-in-chief to His Majesty the King of France. As an infant Rose was espoused to Rupert Keyston, a mere child himself at the time. Over the years Rupert’s position has changed from one of poverty and obscurity to one of wealth, and he now holds the honorable position of the Earl of Stowmaries. Rupert has not seen his child-bride since his espousals, and on reaching manhood conceives a dastardly plot to free himself from the unwanted union by persuading his cousin Michael to impersonate him when he is finally called upon to ratify his engagement, and claim his bride. Once this has happened, he fully intends to get his marriage annulled, on the score of his wife’s unfaithfulness with his cousin. The mock nuptials are concluded with a dance in the workshop of M. Legros “The couples fell back one by one, panting against the wall, while only one pair remained in the centre, now twirling and twirling in a cloud of dust. The man’s head ’was bent, for he was over tall, and towered above every one else in the room. He was a head taller than she was, but he looked straight down at her, as he held her, straight into her eyes-those beautiful blue eyes of hers, which he had thought so cold. How it all happened afterwards she could never say. She had been dancing with her lord, looking up into his face, glowing with ardent love. She was still so dizzy, with the frantic whirl of the dance, that she hardly remembered being lifted into the saddle, and landed safely in the strong arms of her lord. In the forefront were papa and mamma, half laughing, half crying, waving hands and mopping tears…. No other ride had been just like this one, just one slight shifting of her lissome body, to settle more comfortably. One little movement, which seemed to bring her yet a little nearer to him.” The wild and lawless Michael, who agreed to his part in this base deed in return for gold is suddenly caught hopelessly in the charms of the lovely Rose Marie – but he is determined not to lose his prize. Papa Legros, on being informed of the trick that has been practiced on his child, pursues the couple hotly, and brings back his beloved daughter the same evening. So Michael‘s punishment begins. His love for Rose Marie transforms him from a reprobate to a chivalrous gentleman. After a series of exciting episodes they are eventually re-united. His trial as a Papist and traitor is dramatically told, and Rose Marie’s evidence that he was with her on the dates in question saves his head from being exhibited at Tyburn. Michael, frantic at this public smirching of her fair name, with a cry as that of a wild animal wounded to death, bounds forward to where his snowdrop in standing and sinks to his knees, pleading with the judge to stop the desecration of his beloved’s character. And so the splendid blackguard and reckless adventurer is reduced to a humble lover.
12207434	/m/02vvwwz	Seeing	José Saramago	2002-03-22		 Seeing is a story set in the same country featured in Blindness and begins with a parliamentary election in which the majority of the populace casts blank ballots. The story revolves around the struggles of the government and its various members as they try to simultaneously understand and destroy the amorphous non-movement of blank-voters. Characters from Blindness appear in the second half of the novel, including 'the doctor' and 'the doctor's wife'.
12212610	/m/02vw1nx	Now I Can Die in Peace	Bill Simmons	2006	{"/m/01z02hx": "Sports", "/m/01tz3c": "Anthology"}	 Now I Can Die in Peace is a collection of Simmons' articles from 1999 to 2004. It chronicles events such as Pedro Martinez's 1999 Cy Young season, the loss to the New York Yankees in the 2003 ALCS, and the 2004 ALCS, when the Red Sox won the last 4 games after they lost the first three games of the series. It contains frequent pop culture references and comparisons to The Shawshank Redemption.
12213418	/m/02vw2s_	Homicide Trinity	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Bertha Aaron, a secretary at a law firm, comes to the brownstone to hire Wolfe to investigate a possibly serious ethical lapse by a member of the firm. She has no appointment and arrives during Wolfe's afternoon orchid session, so Archie gets the particulars from her. The firm she works for is representing Morton Sorell in a messy, highly publicized divorce. A few evenings ago, Miss Aaron noticed a junior member of the law firm – she won't say which one – in a cheap eatery, tête-à-tête with Mrs. Sorell, the firm's opponent in the divorce action. That sort of ex parte communication is highly improper. Later, Miss Aaron asked the lawyer about it, and he wouldn't discuss the matter. Miss Aaron won't take the problem to the firm's senior member, Lamont Otis, because she fears that the news, coupled with Otis's advanced age and heart condition, will kill him. But it has to be investigated. It's a novel problem, and Archie takes the unusual step of consulting Wolfe in the plant rooms. Because the case concerns a divorce, it's one that Wolfe normally would not touch. But because legal ethics, not the divorce itself, is the central issue, Archie thinks there's a chance Wolfe will take it. Even so, Wolfe tells Archie he won't do it, and Archie returns to the office to give Miss Aaron the bad news. Back in the office, Archie finds he can't give the news to Miss Aaron because she's dead, hit on the head with a heavy paperweight and then strangled with a necktie. It's Wolfe's paperweight. Even worse, it's Wolfe's necktie. He had spilled some sauce on it at lunch, removed it, and left it on his desk where someone could find it and use it to strangle Miss Aaron. Late that night, after Inspector Cramer and other police investigators have left, Mr. Otis arrives, along with one of the law firm's associates, Ann Paige. The death of his valued secretary has upset Otis, and he wants to know what happened. Wolfe allows Otis to read a copy of the statement Archie gave the police, and Otis is clearly shaken by the report of the ex parte communication. Otis asks Miss Paige to leave Wolfe's office – he wants to discuss things privately – and Archie escorts her to the front room. Wolfe and Otis discuss the situation at length, and Wolfe gets Otis's take on the three junior members of the firm, one of whom Miss Aaron saw talking with Mrs. Sorell. During their discussion, Archie checks on Miss Paige, and finds that she has opened the window in the front room and, apparently, jumped down to the sidewalk. She is nowhere to be found. The next morning, Archie calls on Mrs. Sorell, using as entrée a note he's written, informing her that she and the unidentified junior member were seen together in the restaurant. He wants to bring her to talk with Wolfe, but she plays dumb, and the best Archie can get from her is a promise to phone later in the day. On returning to the brownstone, Archie finds the office occupied only by a man he doesn't recognize. He finds Wolfe at the peephole, and learns that the man's name is Gregory Jett, one of the law firm's junior members. Jett is there to complain that Wolfe's behavior caused Mr. Otis undue stress. Brushing aside Jett's complaint, Wolfe learns that Jett is engaged to marry Miss Paige, and also that he had a brief fling with Mrs. Sorell a year earlier. Then the two other junior members, Edey and Heydecker, arrive looking for information and acting like lawyers. Mrs. Sorell's promised phone call comes, and she tells Archie that Miss Aaron must have seen her talking with Mr. Jett. Wolfe and Archie regard this information with skepticism: she seems to them devious. Now Wolfe tells them what Miss Aaron had to say before she was murdered – as yet, that's been disclosed only to the police and to Mr. Otis. Wolfe also states his assumption that the guilty lawyer followed Miss Aaron to Wolfe's office, convinced her to admit him while Archie was in the plant rooms with Wolfe, and then took the opportunity to kill her. The problem is that the three lawyers share a mutual alibi for the date and time that Miss Aaron was murdered: they were in conference together at their office, fully a mile from the brownstone. The lawyers leave, suspicious of one another, and not happy. When Wolfe then learns from Inspector Cramer that the timing apodictically exonerates Edey, Heydecker and Jett, he arranges for all involved to be brought to the brownstone for the traditional climax. This time, though, all but one are in the front room, listening via hidden microphone to Wolfe talk things over with the murderer.
12215084	/m/02vw4dk	Before I Wake	Robert Wiersema	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in Victoria, British Columbia. A car accident leaves three year old Sherry Barrett in a coma. As her parents struggle to deal with the aftermath of the accident, word spreads that anyone who comes into contact with her will be miraculously cured of illnesses. As interest in Sherry intensifies, she becomes the focus of attention not only from pilgrims seeking healing, but of religious figures who accuse the Barretts of exploiting their daughter for gain. There is a fantastical aspect to some of the characters who intrude into the lives of the Barretts, and even Henry Denton, the driver of the vehicle that struck Sherry, trying to deal with his remorse, becomes trapped in limbo, which in this case is found in the Victoria Public Library.
12216144	/m/04y5p_4	The Ministry of Fear	Graham Greene		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In London, during the Blitz, Arthur Rowe wins a cake at a charity fête. He doesn't know the cake was given to him by mistake and contains a secret message. From the very moment he takes his prize, Rowe is caught up in an international spy ring acting on behalf of Nazi Germany. The action plays out as bombs pound the city, and who is friend and who foe becomes increasingly uncertain. The novel title was later used by Irish poet Seamus Heaney as a title about his time in school. fa:وزارت ترس ru:Ведомство страха
12216391	/m/02vw602	Rogue Ship	A. E. van Vogt	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Rogue Ship is a standalone novel in a form of a Fixup, because of its form of 3 short stories re-hashed into one, the reader can tell without difficulty when the story changes from one original short story to the next. Because of this, Rogue Ship can sometimes lose some continuity, as there are 'large gaps' in the plot/story line. Centaurus is the destination of the space ship, The Hope of Man. It has been traveling through space for almost twenty years, and still has nine years of flight remaining before Centaurus will be reached. For many on board the craft, Earth has become a vague memory, while for others it is a mere dot in the vast starry reaches of space. Restlessness is evident everywhere; the people want to return to a place they know is inhabited - not continue to an unknown where life is uncertain. Mutiny seems inevitable. Captain Lesbee (the ship's main officer) knows that mutiny breeds mutiny, but what is more significant is his knowledge of Earth's possible obliteration. The one hope is Centaurus. Now more than ever, there can be no turning back. Order has to be maintained even at the price of human life. After reaching Centaurus and finding it unsuitable to live on, The Hope of Man heads towards the next destination, the Alta system; because the ship at this time is unable to attain light speed it takes decades to travel there. Upon arriving in the system, after mutiny and treachery, The Hope of Man is now captained by Browne, a descendant of the ship's original First Officer. The Hope of Man starts to orbit Alta III in search of a new planet to settle on, but again they find it already inhabited and come under attack from the occupants. During this time we see a struggle for power by various groups. Control changes quickly from one character to another until the arrival of the ship's owner, Avil Hewitt. The novel concludes with Hewitt in charge and the ship finding many planets to inhabit.
12218729	/m/02vw8jx	By the Gods Beloved	Baroness Emma Orczy	1905	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Background Mark Tankerville and Hugh Emmett became firm friends whilst at school at St Pauls, their friendship cemented by many afternoons spent at Hugh's house in Hammersmith in the company of his father, one of the greatest archaeologists and Egyptologists of his generation. Mr Tankerville keeps the boys entertained with stories and theories about the people of Ancient Egypt and teaches them how to speak and understand the language of ancient Kamt. When they finish school, Mark goes to Oxford to study medicine while Hugh stays at home to help his father with his research. During this period Mr Tankerville and Mark's Uncle both die. After college Mark is unemployed but living off a small fortune left to him by a distant relative. He still sees Hugh occasionally but his old friend has become more and more distant as he absorbs himself in some 'important work'. Hugh apologies for his behaviour and asks that Mark gives him two years to finish his project and get back to his old self - Mark, as a qualified Doctor, is concerned that Hugh will have worked himself into the grave within two years if he keeps on as he is and makes Hugh promise that he will ask for help if he needs it. Two years pass with no contact between the friends, until one day Mark receives a telegram from Hugh asking him to come over. His work finally finished, what Hugh reveals to his old friend is a piece of 3000 year old parchment which he and his father have spent forty years piecing together. Hugh explains that the text proves that the ancient civilisation did not simply disappear at the close of the 6th dynasty, rather they were driven off by strangers and formed a new empire somewhere in the Libyan desert. More importantly he believes that their descendants are still living there and that the parchment clearly sets out the way to find the secret city. The Journey Hugh convinces Mark to accompany him on an expedition to find the hidden civilisation and a week later they are heading up the Nile on a dahabijeh towards the mysterious immensities of the Libyan desert. From Wady-Halfa they set out towards the west, alone but for four camels. After days of walking through the monotonous heat and sandstorms, they have exhausted most of their food supplies and two of the camels have died but eventually they spot the rock of Anubis - and suddenly it appears that there might be something tangible in Hugh's conjectures after all. The pair make their way slowly towards the rock, only to realise as they approach that the mass of white specks they have seen glinting in the sun at the base of the rock are human bones, none of which have been there for more than ten years... Nearby is a half dead man, dressed in rags who is speaking the ancient language of Kamt, before he dies he tells them that he has been thrown out of Kamt as a punishment. All ways into the valley appear to be sealed and impassable so, down to their last few days of supplies, Mark and Hugh wait by the main gate in the hope that another criminal will be expelled - giving them a chance to enter. Kamt Some days later the opportunity arises and they sneak into Kamt to find themselves in the middle of a massive temple. Hiding in the background they watch an ornate ceremony take place in the middle of which is a living breathing Pharaoh, his mother, Queen Maat-kha, and the High Priest Ur-tasen. Eavesdropping on the Queen and the Priest, they discover that the Pharaoh is very ill and if he dies his throne will pass to his cousin Princess Neit-akrit, as Maat-kha cannot remain as queen if she has no son or husband to accompany her on the throne. At this point Hugh comes out from his hiding place and tells the shocked witnesses that he has been sent by Ra. The Priest asks him what his will is, to which Hugh replies "To wed that woman and sit upon the throne of Kamt". Hugh's actions stun Mark but probably save them from death as they are quickly accepted by those present, who fall at Hugh's feet. The pair are treated like gods: showered with food, given luxurious clothes and entertained with lavish ceremonies. Before long they have been fully integrated into palace life. The Princess It soon becomes obvious that Princess Neit-akrit has her detractors, for her beauty causes madness in men and jealousy in women. Even the Queen is not immune, and asks Hugh to force the Princess to become a Priestess of Ra, hoping that once she has been blinded and rendered harmless, she will no longer be a threat. Hugh dismisses the idea, but after getting involved in the trial of one of the Princess' servants who murdered her own son rather than watch him be a slave to Neit-akrit's beauty, his curiosity is roused. He is further intrigued when, the night before he is due to visit the Princess for the first time, he is approached by a young girl. It turns out that her lover was the man cast out into the desert before they arrived, for he had fallen for the Princess and been caught trespassing in the temple on her request. The girl then gives Hugh a scarab as a talisman, to protect him from falling under Neit-akrit's spell. Before leaving Hugh manages to upset the High Priest even further when he insists that Mark is appointed as physician to the Pharaoh, there is a bit of a power struggle between the two men but Hugh, who knows he has the support of the people comes off better and Mark takes over nursing the Pharaoh, who appears to be suffering from a form of diabetes. Despite the Queen's concerns, all seems to go well when Hugh first meets the Princess. She is truly regal in her beauty, but Hugh appears to be immune while Mark falls for her at first look. At supper Hugh mentions the man who was expelled from Kamt for doing the Princess's bidding, which unsettles her and she comes to talk to him about it afterwards. It becomes obvious that the Princess is making a play for Hugh but although she claims she is happy to lose her claim on the throne of Kamt, Mark is not convinced. Shortly afterwards the scarab goes missing from Hugh's room and he starts to become fascinated by the Princess - though she is less than impressed to hear he is going through with the wedding to her Aunt and is leaving for Net-amen to make the necessary arrangements. The Pharaoh is clearly passionate about the Princess but she is only pretending to be interested in his advances in an attempt to make Hugh jealous. After a month Mark is missing Hugh so, leaving the Pharaoh in the care of some servants, he makes his excuses to the Princess and travels to Net-amen to check on his friend. Hugh looks dreadful and after some persuasion confides that he is madly in love with the Princess - a confession which makes Mark feel jealous, yet though he admires Neit-akrit, he still does not trust her. Tanis Tanis, where Hugh's wedding to the Queen is due to take place, is a beautiful city, full of love and romance. As per local custom Hugh must spend 24hrs alone in a pavilion in the temple gardens before his wedding. The Queen and the Pharaoh arrive together and Mark is immediately called to look after the Pharaoh, who has deteriorated since Mark left. The Pharaoh has realised that Hugh loves the Princess rather than his mother and, out for revenge for the Queen stealing his throne from him, he tells her as much - insisting that she will pay for stealing Hugh from Neit-akrit, for the Princess loves Hugh as much as he loves her. Shaking with rage, the Queen attacks her son and strangles him to death with her bare hands. After seeing everything, the High Priest Ur-tasen condemns Queen Maat-kha for murder and desecrating the temple. She starts to realise that there will be consequences for her actions and declares she will go willingly into the valley of the dead and leave Ur-tasen all her wealth, if only the Priest will separate Neit-akrit and Hugh once she has gone. The Priest makes the Queen promise to the gods that she will do his bidding, which she agrees for she would rather see Hugh dead than with the Princess. He insists she must go through with the marriage ceremony as if nothing has happened, then when Hugh goes to meet her in the garden after the ceremony, he will find the dead body of the Pharaoh and they will frame him for the murder. Mark has overheard everything and tries to warn Hugh, only to discover he is trapped in the temple and can't get out. Stuck until the wedding, Mark waits and watches, only to see Princess Neit-akrit appear next to the High Priest... who then announces "I did it all for thee Neit-akrit", for he is in love with her too and wants to see her crowned Queen once her 'enemy' has been removed. Neit-akirt, however, has other ideas and defies the Priest to do his worst, for she will not allow Hugh to be blamed for the Pharaoh's murder. The Priest laughs at her and dares her to summon help knowing it will be his fellow priests who come. Outmanoeuvering the Princess, Ur-tasen then tells her that if she mentions any of what has happened to Hugh, the marriage will go ahead and she will have to suffer losing both her crown and the man she loves. Faced with the impossible choice between death of her loved one or seeing him happy in another woman's arms, the Princess leaves the temple. The smell of burning herbs makes Mark think he can escape but the pungent odour starts to affect him and just before he loses consciousness he realises that he is in a room with the body of the dead Pharaoh. The Marriage Mark finally comes round to hear Hugh making his marriage vows. Unable to speak he can only watch as his friend pledges himself to the woman who is plotting his death and shame before sinking into yet another drugged sleep. He comes to again several hours later, it is dark but he can just make out his friend waiting in the gloom, soon to leave and walk into the trap that had been set. Still unable to speak he is helpless to warn Hugh, however, soon Princess Neit-akrit turns up and asks Hugh to help her make a posy from the flowers in the temple. She is able to manipulate Hugh's love for her to prevent him from going to his bride and being framed for the Pharaoh's murder. Mark shakes off the last effects of the drug, overcomes the priests who have come to finish him off, and escapes. Mark finds Hugh and tells him everything he has seen. The two are confronted by Ur-tasen who has captured Neit-akrit as she left the temple at dawn. Ur-tasen threatens to have his priests torture and mutilate Neit-akrit as is the custom in Kamt for women who have committed adultery. Hugh threatens to use his position as Beloved of the Gods to inspire the people of Kamt to revolt and leave nothing but one vast and burning ruin where Kamt now stands if Neit-akrit is not released. Ur-tasen relents but convinces Hugh that he must leave Kamt if Neit-akrit is to retain her honor and take her rightful place as Pharaoh. The Departure Hugh and Mark agree to leave if the priests provide them with supplies and oxen to get them through the Valley of Death and back to their civilization. Ur-tasen must go with them as far as the Rock of Anubis as a guarantee at which point he would be released to return to Kamt. Hugh plans to leave without seeing Neit-akrit again, but as Ur-tasen is announcing that Beloved of the Gods has had to leave Kamt to return to the feet of the Gods, Neit-akrit comes up to the platform and leaves a flower--rosemary for remembrance. Hugh and Mark make their way back to England where, years later, their adventures in Kamt all start to seem like a dream. But in a small gold casket with a glass lid Hugh keeps in front of him a dried sprig of rosemary.
12220270	/m/02vwbn_	The Intruder	John Rowe Townsend		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sixteen-year-old Arnold Haithwaite is a sand pilot guiding parties of tourists over the sands at Skirlston (when the Admiral is not feeling up to it). But Arnold's quiet life is shattered when a stranger turns up claiming to be the real Arnold Haithwaite. Life at Cottontree House changes dramatically for the young lad and his father when the stranger worms his way into their lives. No one seems to have any sympathy for Arnold's predicament, except newcomers Peter and Jane, and even they are not sure he is not simply imagining the whole thing. Things come to a head when Arnold finds himself fighting the sea itself in the midst of a raging storm, with the stranger at his heels and Jane trapped by the rising tide in the ruins of an old church.
12220355	/m/02vwbss	A True Woman	Baroness Emma Orczy	1911	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The main character in the book is Louise Harris, a plain but content young woman who leads a life of prosy luxury. Louise gets up every morning and eats a copious breakfast, she walks the dogs, hunts in the autumn and skates in the winter, just like hundreds of other well-born, well-bred English girls of average means. Loo is an altogether nice person, and so it is that Luke de Mountford, who knows a good thing when he sees it, asks her to be his wife. Luke is heir to his uncle, Lord Radcliffe and therefore deemed a satisfactory match for Louis. However, just when everything seems to be going well, another nephew with a claim to his uncle’s fortune turns up unexpectedly. Luke is forced to reveal to Louise that their financial future may not be as guaranteed as he had hoped. Faced with this seemingly unavoidable situation, Luke is considering setting up an Ostrich farm in Africa as a way of making a living, but he can’t bring himself to inflict such an existence on his darling Loo, who is always so perfectly dressed, so absolutely modern and dainty. When the intruder, Philip de Mountford, is discovered stabbed in a cab, suspicion naturally falls on Luke who certainly has a motive for murder. The head of the Criminal Investigation Department, who happens to be Louisa’s uncle, reveals his evidence before the ensuing trial and allows Colonel Harris to conceal himself in his office while a witness for the prosecution details the points of the evidence he will give at the trial. He also reveals that he intends to allow Luke time to escape should the verdict at the inquest be against him. But Luke is, notwithstanding, tried for his life, and before his arrest he faces Louise once again. "It was a supreme farewell, and she knew it. She felt it in the quiver of agony which went through him as he pressed her so close that her breath nearly left her body, and her heart seemed to stand still. She felt it in the sweet sad pain of the burning kisses with which he covered her face, her eyes, her hair, her mouth. His face was just a mask, marble-like and impassive, jealously guarding the secrets of the soul within.Just a good-looking, well-bred young Englishman, in fact, who looked in his elegant attire ready to start off on some social function."
12223494	/m/02vwggp	Rising Tide	Jean Thesman	2003-10-13	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Kate Keeley has returned from Ireland older and wiser. Her goals are still to move her and her aunt out of the boardinghouse and to open a linens shop. Ellen Flannery hasn't saved her share for the store she planned to be a partner in because she has spent it pursuing the rich, careless Aaron Schuster. But with the help of money from Jolie Logan's father, Kate does find a flat and an empty shop. Finally, Kate and Ellen open their store and pursue the novelty of independent womanhood. At the boardinghouse, Mrs. Flannery is getting sick and the boarders are more demanding than ever, especially the acidic Mrs. Stackhouse and the abandoned Thalia Rutledge. Though they dream of independence, Kate and Ellen realise they will always be tied to family, home, and the lure of romance, such as Kate's finding the travel journal of a mysterious and attractive stranger.
12230556	/m/02vws63	The Sons of Heaven	Kage Baker	2007-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel brings together the various threads begun during previous volumes. It takes place mostly in 24th century, over the final 20 years leading up to the Silence in 2355, the point beyond which the future of the Company is unknown. The Botanist Mendoza, disabled and psychologically scarred by the attempts of the Company to destroy her, is dealing with the three incarnations of her lover, whom she first knew as Nicholas Harpole in the 16th century. Two of them are imprisoned in her cyborg mind, while the third, the Victorian secret agent Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, has taken over the body of the latest incarnation, Alec Checkerfield. Edward is showing signs of megalomania. The four of them, along with Alec's artificial intelligence known as Captain Morgan, are hiding in the deep past, hundreds of thousands of years before the present. This is to allow them to recover from their trials and mount their own campaign against the company, for which they laid the foundations in The Machine's Child. In the 24th century, Facilitator Joseph, having given up his quest for Mendoza after she disappeared, is putting the fix in again. This time it is on behalf of his own foster-father, the Enforcer Budu, who is intent on destroying the Company in his own way. To do this he will revive the army of Enforcers who have slept in Company bunkers for millennia, like heroes out of legend. Strangely, William Randolph Hearst is a necessary part of this plan, even if Hearst would like to be the hero Roland. Preserver Lewis, after being captured by the strange little humanoids known as Homo umbratilis, is slowly recovering from their attempts to kill him as a way of developing a new way to destroy the Company cyborgs. He finds himself in a situation similar to that in the Arabian Nights: as long as he can keep telling stories, a princess of the little people will bring him food and water so he can repair himself. Fortunately Lewis is a Literature Specialist and knows many stories... Bugleg, the mortal Company scientist encountered in Sky Coyote, is now so afraid of his own creations, the cyborgs, that he allows himself to be persuaded to spread a new poison among them, the result of experimentation on Lewis. His accomplice is a Hybrid, a genius born from both humans and Homo umbratilis. Bugleg himself has some umbratilis in him, it seems. Suleyman, Executive Facilitator for North Africa, and his protégé Latif, continue their efforts to seek out the places where the Company has buried its mistakes, and rescue missing cyborgs such as Lewis and Kalugin. The rival power groups headed by Labienus and Aegeus gather their forces for the final showdown. But things must be done correctly. They face off across the table at the sumptuous Banquet At The End of Time. Preserver Victor, who has realized he is a carrier of deadly diseases, designed to be activated when the Company needs them, creates his own appropriate form of retribution for what was done to him. Above all the Silence looms. After 11 a.m. California time on the 9th of July 2355, there are no more transmissions from the Company to its operatives in the past. As the time approaches, the disruption becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The mortal executives of the Company cower in a bunker, while the different cyborg factions schedule their various assaults on the Company for that time.
12231755	/m/02vwt73	The Spiraling Worm	John Sunseri	2007-07-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book is introduced by C. J. Henderson with an After Word by the authors. The plot summaries of the seven stories are: Made of Meat: In the Cambodian jungles, Major Harrison Peel of the Australian Army’s military intelligence and MI6 spy James Figgs, are involved in covert operations fighting a losing war against Tcho-Tcho terrorists. The Tcho-Tcho are able to predict Peel’s and Figgs’ every move, efficiently eliminating the foreigner’s agents under their very noses. Peel seeks the aid of a Vietnam War veteran who provides him with the intelligence he requires to bring the Tcho-Tchos’ reign to an end. To What Green Altar: In Siberia, Middle Eastern cultists slaughter every single employee at a remote Russian mine. In London, James Figgs calls NSA agent Jack Dixon to aid in the investigation of this attack, and together they uncover its connection to the 1908 Tunguska event. A trail leads to the Vatican City, where the summoning of a Cthulhu Mythos deity almost forces a global religious war between Muslims and Christians. Impossible Object: The ancient city of Pnakotus in Australia's Great Sandy Desert, a city that was once home to the Great Race of Yith, has been unearthed by the Australian government. Their secret investigation of its ruins found nothing of value except for a strange artifact, the Impossible Object, which no one can describe or classify. Harrison Peel, now head of security at the city, tries to understand its purpose before more scientific researchers die, or are erased from existence altogether by the Object’s unpredictable properties. False Containment: Harrison Peel travels from Australia to Thailand, to Los Angeles and then into the deserts of Nevada, spurred on by a strange encounter with himself from the future with disturbing news of a wormhole leading to a monstrous god called the Many-Thing that devours worlds. Toxic and nuclear waste is materializing all over the world, and Peel becomes convinced its source is a new waste treatment plant in Nevada, utilizing technology of great interest to the Pentagon, and derived from knowledge offered by the Impossible Object. Resurgence: Shoggoths from Antarctica are waking. Discovering that there is nothing to feed their hunger in the icy wastelands, and freed from their incarceration as slaves to the ancient alien race of the Elder Things, they advance northwards. In Argentina, Jack Dixon’s expertise is called upon to defeat a bold shoggoth, which he destroys with a nuclear weapon. Facing a similar foe in Australia, Harrison Peel is not able to deploy weapons of mass destruction because no one in the Australian or United States government will provide him with one, fearful of the political ramifications if a nuclear bomb is detonated on Australian soil. Weapon Grade: After suffering severe radiation poisoning from his encounter with a shoggoth in Sydney, Peel is dying. He hopes to go quietly, but Dixon calls upon Peel’s expertise, taking him to Utah, Antarctica and finally another universe, to secret US bases where Dixon’s government has long been studying the properties of shoggoths. Meanwhile, an Israeli spy plans to steal a tissue sample of a shoggoth, only to be defeated by Peel as they pass between dimensions. The effects of higher-dimensional time flow, cures Peel of his radiation poisoning. The Spiraling Worm: In the jungle of the Eastern Congo Basin the cult of the Spiraling Worm is building an army, whose primary goal is to restore the powers of the Outer Gods. A team of British and American Special Forces, led by Peel, Dixon and Figgs, are sent into Africa to stop the army.
12232473	/m/02vwt_6	Assemblers of Infinity	Kevin J. Anderson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is the 21st century. Earth's space program is thriving, with a colony in place on the Moon. And then an incredible discovery is made on the lunar farside. A massive structure is being erected by living machines—microscopically small, intelligent, unstoppable, consuming whatever they touch. All who come near them die horribly. Meanwhile, the mysterious structure continues to grow, expand, take shape. And its creators begin to multiply. Is this the first strike in an alien invasion from the stars? Or has human nanotechnology experimentation gone awry, triggering an unexpected infestation? As riots rage across a panicked Earth, scientists scramble to learn the truth before humanity’s home is engulfed by the voracious machines.
12236001	/m/02vw_fk	The Fire Pony	Rodman Philbrick	2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Roy and his big brother, Joe, are on the run from when they fetch up at the Bar None ranch. Their shared passion for horses soon wins them great respect, and Roy is offered the chance of a lifetime, to break in a wild pony that runs like the desert wind. He is even promised that if he can ride Lady Luck, he can keep her- a dream come true. But Roy knows that Joe has a dangerous secret.... a dark obsession that could explode at any time and send Roy's dream, and their whole world, up in smoke.
12249923	/m/02vxksd	48	James Herbert	1996	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story follows an American pilot, Hoke, who lives alone in the streets, constantly hidden and on the run from a gang of diseased and terminal Blackshirts, afflicted with the 'Slow Death', who attempt to capture him to use his blood to save their leader, Lord Hubble, via a blood transfusion. Desperate to capture Hoke as his life draws nearer to its end, Hubble sends his entire force out to capture the American pilot. Hoke escapes thanks to the aid of three fellow 'ABneg' survivors - two women and a German navigator, shot down over Britain long ago. Hoke, being used to three years alone, detests his saviours and, corrupted by propaganda, is almost unable to contain himself in the presence of the German even though the war has long since ended - this forces the reader to question Hoke's sanity, and to sympathise with the 'enemy' and wonder if Hoke will accept his friend, or do something terrible to him.
12254845	/m/02vxt8x	Ecotopia Emerging	Ernest Callenbach	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 EE is mainly a history of the Ecotopian independence movement. The main characters are Vera Allwen, the leader of the Survivalist Party, and Lou Swift, a teenage physicist, along with their families and friends. Other characters are shown briefly as each one decides independently to break with the American status quo and begin living in an Ecotopian (low-tech, sustainable) fashion. Bolinas, California, high school student Lou Swift finds a way to generate electricity cheaply from seawater in a solar cell. However, she doesn’t understand how the cell works. She refuses to publish her results until she understands the science. Because she is determined to make the cell design freely available, she spurns corporate and academic offers to buy the cell design. Meanwhile, spies and burglars try to obtain her notes. Vera Allwen is a California state senator. Angered by an Eastern food corporation’s announcement it would stop selling fresh produce, she and other politicians, artists, and professionals form a new political party. It is decentralized, environmentalist, and populist. They create a platform and name it the Survivalist Party. As the book proceeds, they spread their ideas, coalition with like-minded people, and become a regional political force. Vera’s speeches are reprinted within the text. Some of their ideas come from a short novel called Ecotopia, and the Party publishes a paper called "The Survivalist Way to Ecotopia." The Party creates a think tank for environmentalist policies. When the Pacific Northwest states pass a special tax on cars to reduce car use, the U.S. Supreme Court overturns it; public outrage along the Pacific coast helps tip the people of the region toward supporting the Survivalist Party. When the Quebec government offers to establish diplomatic relations, the Party starts thinking about independence. A nuclear accident gives them the governorship of Washington State, and Northern California's refusal to keep supplying Southern California with water leads to the state splitting into two. An ardent secessionist claims to have planted dirty bombs in New York City and Washington, DC, and threatens they will explode if the U.S. attacks the region. Bolinas declares itself independent of other governments. The Survivalist Party has infiltrated local units of the National Guard, which are now sympathetic to the secessionists. The U.S. is too busy with a war in Brazil to send troops to pacify Bolinas and its supporters. In a lucky coincidence, the U.S. helicopters massing on the Nevada border and preparing to attack the region are suddenly recalled to deal with a crisis in Saudi Arabia, and secession seems likely to proceed. Meanwhile, in the future Ecotopia, individuals move the local economy toward a more sustainable model. A collective sets up a solar remodeling business; a young man uses goats to mow lawns. Berkeley creates car-free zones; other cities adopt them. A suburban tract is replanted as an orchard. Rural residents build a lightweight, cheap horse-drawn buggy, and stills to distill alcohol from farm waste. Eventually, a large part of the public is car-free and ready to take the final steps to a sustainable economy. Lou finally discovers the key chemical that makes her solar cell work. She publishes her paper and people start building their own cells. With this breakthrough, the region will no longer be dependent for energy on the rest of the U.S. for imported fossil fuels or nuclear power. With this energy independence, the future nation of Ecotopia becomes a practical possibility. These events occur against economic and political breakdown in the U.S.: corporate concentration, slashed government budgets, and military adventurism abroad, aided by a compliant corporate media. The automobile habit has essentially bankrupted the U.S. Refusing to develop alternative energy sources, “oil-hungry America lurched toward some unseen economic catastrophe.” At the end, the Saudi oil refineries have been bombed, and the U.S. military is caught up in a war in the Middle East. The Ecotopian storyline ends with the Party making Lou’s solar cell technology available to the public, and a constitutional convention where the region decides to secede from the U.S. following the Quebec-Canada model. The book Ecotopia begins about 20 years after secession, when the new nation is securely established. Neither book describes events in between, such as the political difficulties of secession, the economic dislocations and outmigration from the region, and the Helicopter War with the U.S. (referred to in Ecotopia).
12254915	/m/02vxtdp	La Dentellière	Pascal Lainé	1974		 Apple's story begins in a village in northern France. Her father has left and her mother works both as a barmaid and prostitute and they live in a noisy roadside apartment. We meet her again at age 18, living with her mother in a suburb of Paris and working at a hair salon near St. Lazare train station. At night mother and daughter watch TV or Apple reads romance novels and magazines. Her first friend in Paris is Marilyn, a 30-year-old redhead who is unsuccessfully modeling her life after a romance novel. She tries to make Apple more like herself, gets her to drink whiskey and wear makeup, but she begrudges Apple's simplicity and the friendship doesn't survive the entrance of Marilyn's next boyfriend. Marilyn abandons Apple while the two friends are vacationing in Cabourg. Apple is left eating an ice cream at a tea shop when Aimery de Béligny shows up. Aimery is initially fascinated by Apple's simplicity. An intellectual from a respectable family, he is different from Apple in every way. Her docile sincerity charms him at first; they live together in his studio in Paris where she expresses her devotion through continuous housework. But such humble tenderness only irritates the student in the end.But when he says her "; meaning he got some personal reason problems, he breaks up with her, Apple takes off her rubber gloves, puts away her cleanser and leaves without complaint. She returns to her mother's convinced that she is unworthy and ugly. She loses what interest she had in life, stops eating and ends up in a mental hospital. Apple is surrounded with characters who believe they know how to express themselves, while Apple never succeeds in saying anything. Her silent suffering is the central light of the book, like the candle in Vermeer's painting. (Article based on the original text in French) fr:La Dentellière (roman)
12255324	/m/02vxv0b	Notes of a Dirty Old Man				 Bukowski uses his own life as the plot of his series and leaves nothing out. The different stories range from hooking up with a stranger's wife who invited him over for dinner to admire his work, to debating with other authors of the underground newspaper. Bukowski goes through life and each event without caring about what might be the consequence of his actions. He is almost always alone aside from the occasional prostitute that he invites over. A few times, generous people who admire his writings will allow him to stay with them rent free. He does not understand why people enjoy his writings so much. As soon as he starts to get too close to these families or hosts he will leave without notice and go on to find a new place to stay. Bukowski does whatever he wants when he wants without wondering what people might think of him. However he does mention that he does not want readers to feel sorry for him which is why he includes crude comedy along with each story. Every step of his journey he always has some type of alcohol with him that allows him to be as carefree as he is. Whether he is drinking while writing his stories and poetry, or showing up to work and meetings already drunk, every story incorporates his vigorous drinking habits because it is such a large part of his life.
12256255	/m/02vxw1d	Once	Morris Gleitzman			 A ten-year old Jewish boy named Felix escapes from a Catholic orphanage in the mountains of Poland after being left there by his impoverished parents. He returns to his hometown and sees that the town is empty. A mysterious man tells him that all the Jews have gone to the city. On his way to the city he sees a burning house and finds that two adults and a few chickens are dead. He sees a little girl who is unconscious and rescues her. When she awakes she keeps on crying for her mother and father. Felix sees a large number of Jews being led to the city, so Felix joins the group, carrying the girl, whose name is Zelda. He sees that they are being killed on the way. When he gets to the city Nazis are throwing all the children into a van, but he wants to go into the ghetto to find his parents. After Felix and Zelda refuse to go in the van, a man comes and saves them and speaks to the Nazis in German and persuades them to let them go. Felix and Zelda are taken to an underground cellar in the ghetto by the man, whose name is Barney. Not long after, Barney rescues many more kids who may've lost their families. There, Felix rests and recovers from the fever he has been trying to ignore. Once he is recovered he goes out with Barney and finds out Barney is a dentist. After the next few days the Nazis find their cellar and they are taken to a train, which is going to a Jewish Death Camp. On the train Felix finds that one of the wooden planks that have been nailed shut are fragile and he breaks it open. He and Zelda and Chaya, a girl also rescued by Barney, jump off the train and manage to survive but sadly, Chaya does not; she was shot by one of the Nazi soldiers that caught them trying to escape.
12260709	/m/02vx_cz	Fox's Feud	Colin Dann	1982	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Following the losses of the harsh winter in White Deer Park, the animals face a new danger when they are treated with hostility by many of the Park's residents, including the territorial fox, Scarface.
12263071	/m/02vy26f	Pirata				 Khalid, a repentant pirate, is rescued by the Pugad Baboy residents after he is nearly killed by his erstwhile brothers-in-arms in the Red Marlin Group under the command of Luna, who are under the impression that he is responsible to the death of their leader Hamid Mustafa. Polgas saves his life several times as a Red Marlin hit squad attempts to finish the job. As rogue elements of the Navy and the Red Marlin finally catch up with Khalid and take him, Doc Sebo, Tomas and Dagul captive, Polgas dons his Dobermaxx persona and rescues the group which had been taken on board a ship in North Harbor. Khalid in turn saves Dobermaxx's life as Luna was about to shoot him from behind. It is soon revealed that Luna himself murdered Hamid; the Red Marlin take him with them as Khalid allows them to escape. The rogue Navy elements are taken into custody by the authorities. Khalid is later accepted as the Red Marlin's new leader. He plans to surrender the pirate group to authorities and will soon testify during the court martial of Major Velasquez, the rogue Navy group's commander.
12268746	/m/02vyb89	Kingdom of Shadows	Barbara Erskine	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is set in Europe between April 1938 and July 1939, a time of ever-increasing fear and apprehension throughout the continent. Nicholas Morath is an expatriate Hungarian in his forties and the co-owner of an advertising agency in Paris. His uncle, Count Janos Polanyi, is a high-level functionary at the Hungarian embassy in France. Morath is in fact an amateur spy, sent on one dangerous mission after another at his uncle's behest (laundering money through the Antwerp diamond industry, or spending a week in a Rumanian jail, for example). Polanyi tells his nephew little about the reasons for or the results of these excursions, and friction often rises between the two men. But after Polanyi disappears mysteriously, Morath continues his perilous work alone.
12289748	/m/0df99t	The Indestructible Man	Simon Messingham		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Years after The Indestructible Man defeated the alien Myloki, Earth has become a dystopian state. The Doctor is seemingly killed, Jamie is forced into the army, whilst Zoe becomes a corporate slave. Meanwhile, the Myloki show signs of returning to start and finish the war once and for all...
12293048	/m/02vz7p6	Meadowsweet	Baroness Emma Orczy	1912	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 When their mother died, Olive and Boadicea were sent to live with their mother’s sister, Caroline, and her husband Jasper Hemingford on Old Manor Farm. The farm is remote with few neighbours and while Aunt Caroline would have made a wonderful mother, the girls do exactly as they want and have her twisted completely round their thumb. Jasper is a distant figure, spending most of his time in his museum room with his nose stuck in a book or studying his collection and muttering to himself in Latin. It was hardly surprising then that Olive, the elder of the girls, sought to find herself a rich husband who would whisk her away from the lonely farm to the highs of London society, and this she did three years earlier, marrying Sir Baldwin Jefferys, a middle aged gentleman of wealth and position. The story starts in June 1835. Olive has been the subject of society gossip after spending too much time in the company of Lieutenant Jack Carrington of the HMS Dolphin and her reputation has suffered as a result. Sir Baldwin knows the Lieutenant is incapable of vulgar intrigue but Olive has given him the full charm offensive. Enraged as his wife’s behaviour, Sir Baldwin has insisted that she must leave London mid-way through the season. Olive in turn accuses him of insane jealously and she agrees, only on the condition that she can spend the month at her childhood home in Thanet. After accompanying his wife to the farm for the first time since their wedding, Sir Baldwin is about to leave when he runs into Cousin Barnaby in the hall. Barnaby bemoans the addition of another female to the household and declares that he is spending all his time avoiding women and sailors, for the HMS Dolphin has just put into Ramsgate harbour. Sir Baldwin suspects this might be the reason why his wife was so amenable to leaving London, even though he doesn’t want to believe her capable of such duplicity. He decides to stay until the evening, so he can talk to Olive and flushed with rage he goes to catch up with his friend Mr Culpepper for a couple of hours to calm down. After he has left there is then an almighty commotion from outside as a stranger starts shouting that a young girl is in danger, this followed by Boadicea's entrance - crashing through the loft skylight while clutching some owl eggs. The eggs are smashed by the fall, which is a source of great amusement to the stranger – who soon turns out to be none other than Lieutenant Jack Carrington. Aunt Caroline is delighted to see the son of her old friend Mamie Carrington and invites him to stay for supper. While waiting for Olive to come down, Jack starts to tease Boadicea, holding her hands and kissing her on the cheek and neck while she protests and gets redder and redder. Olive catches them like this and with a disapproving look tells Jack to leave Boadicea alone as she looks like a bedraggled chicken. Jack realises he has made a grave mistake by paying attention to another woman in Olive’s presence, even if that attention was meant purely in brotherly kindness Embarrassed by Olive’s comments about her appearance, and upset by the way Jack acts when her sister is in the room, Boadicea produces a passionate outburst about how she hates mincing ‘ladies’ with their white hands and chicken livers and storms out of the room. When Olive and Jack are left alone it becomes apparent that she is the one pushing the relationship, Jack does not want to get involved with a married woman, even one as beautiful as Lady Jefferys and he spurns her advances. She then demands that he must return her letters later that evening. Olive is looking forward to supper, as Jack's presence will surely teach her husband a lesson. However, Sir Baldwin shows no reaction when he returns to find the Lieutenant in the house, and worse still for Olive, Boadicea comes down to supper dressed and acting like a charming young lady, tomboy manners put to the side. Her complete change in appearance and demeanour means that it is Boadicea rather than Olive who is the centre of attention, and in a fit of pique Olive accuses her of throwing herself at the Lieutenant and suggests she should be sent to boarding school for a year. Sir Baldwin finally leaves for his estate racked with jealousy and not without reason, for at 10pm when all are in bed, Olive tiptoes downstairs to meet Jack, who has promised to return her letters. Jack is bewildered to find the house is in darkness. Having carefully engineered the situation, Olive moves in to kiss him, and asks him to tell her that he loves her - Jack is almost about to relent when he hears a noise - Boadicea is standing outside the door. Olive accuses her of eavesdropping but Boadicea is adamant that she came down because she saw a second man arrive on horseback and the next moment Sir Baldwin is banging on the front door demanding to be let in. Sir Baldwin is furious to find Jack with his wife while everyone else is in bed and forcefully demands an explanation from Olive, waking the whole house. Olive's answer to her predicament is to insist that she was playing gooseberry for Boadicea and the Lieutenant claiming her sister had set up the rendezvous and that she had heard the child leave her room and followed. Boadicea cannot understand why her sister is telling such lies about her but accepts the role she has been forced into, even though it could mean public disgrace. This she does because she loves her sister and she understands that Olive is in grave danger from her husband. Sir Baldwin insists that he does not believe the story and Jack then tells him that he came to ask for Boadicea's hand in marriage. Realising that she might as well go the whole hog, Boadicea confirms the story is true and announces that she has accepted. Over the next month Jack spends most evenings at the farm and before long he has fallen madly in love with Boadicea and she with him, this is obvious to everyone but the self-obsessed Olive, who still thinks the engagement is a farce that will be broken off as soon as the Lieutenant has returned to sea. Her illusions are shattered however after Cousin Baranby starts complaining about young love birds, and having realised that her plans are not working out as expected Olive spins a web of lies, splitting the young couple up and inflicting misery and pain on both of them.
12293991	/m/02vz8t9	Ghosts	John Banville	1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is somewhat unconventional and non-linear in its construction. It begins with a group of travelers disembarking on a small island in the Irish Sea after their ship runs aground. There they stumble upon a house inhabited by Professor Kreutznaer, his assistant Licht, and an unnamed character who figures centrally in the novel and who is referred to only as "Little God." It is later revealed that Little God can be identified with Freddie Montgomery, the narrator of The Book of Evidence, and much of the latter half of the book focuses on his account of his experiences after having been released from prison, his reflections on the crime (the murder of a young woman) he committed that landed him there, and his continuing struggle with the ghosts of his past and the nature of his perceptions. Kreutznaer's relationship to a painting entitled "The Golden World" by a fictional Dutch artist named Vaublin plays a central role in the novel, and it is revealed that he and one of the travellers—a man named Felix—are acquainted with one another, and that Felix had been involved in art forgery. The novel ends with the travelers reembarking and leaving the island and many of the central issues and tensions addressed in the novel are left unresolved.
12294828	/m/02vz9s8	Vengeance in Death			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Lt. Eve Dallas is shocked by the brutal nature of a series of murders. The crimes are clearly related and Eve makes a shocking discovery-- a common link between the victims: her husband, Roarke. Roarke's past has come back to haunt them both.
12298605	/m/05m__lg	Tunnels	Roderick Gordon	2007-07-03	{"/m/07fwvc": "Subterranean fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The main influence in fourteen-year-old Will Burrows' life is his father, Dr. Burrows, and together they share an interest in archaeology and a fascination for the buried past. When Dr. Burrows begins to notice unusual people where they live in Highfield and then promptly goes missing, Will and his friend, Chester, go in search of him. They discover a blocked passageway behind bookshelves in the cellar of the Burrows home and re-excavate it. The passage leads to a door set into the rock, and beyond the door is an old lift that takes them to a cobblestone street underground. Lit by a row of orb-like lamps, they come across houses that appear to be carved out of the walls themselves. They are soon captured by the police of the underground community known as the Colony. In prison, Will is visited by Mr. Jerome and his son Cal. They reveal Will was actually born in the Colony, and they are his real family. Will is eventually released from the prison and taken to the Jerome home. There Uncle Tam is delighted to see him, and informs Will that his stepfather was recently there, and had willingly traveled down into the Deeps&nbsp;— a place even deeper in the Earth than The Colony. Will learns that the Styx, the religious rulers of the Colony, are either going to enslave Chester or banish him to the Deeps to fend for himself. Will refuses to abandon his friend, and Uncle Tam formulates a plan for him to rescue Chester, and to take him back to the surface. Will and his brother Cal try to rescue Chester, but the Styx arrive and they are forced to leave Chester behind. They avoid the Styx soldiers who patrol the city with their vicious stalker attack dogs, and eventually emerge on the bank of the Thames. Will makes for his home in Highfield, but there Will's health deteriorates, so Cal helps him to his Auntie Jean's flat where he recovers. Soon they return underground to find his father and attempt a second rescue of Chester. They encounter another Styx patrol, and Uncle Tam kills the leader of the Styx, whom he calls Crawfly, but is mortally wounded in the fight, then the strong willed Uncle Tam choses to stay behind. With the help of Imago Freebone, a member of Uncle Tam's gang, Will and Cal escape and go on to find Chester. They find Chester in the train going to the Deeps and travel there with him. In the book's final scene, Will's sister Rebecca, who is a Styx implanted in his family to monitor him, kills Imago by poison.
12308208	/m/02vzstl	Mystery of the Spiteful Letters			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Five Find Outers - Fatty, Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bets, and their Scottie dog, Buster, are shocked when someone starts sending anonymous spiteful letters to several people in their village of Peterswood. Pip and Bets are involved when their young maid Gladys receives one of the letters, which reveals a secret - her parents are in prison for theft and she has lived in a girls home. Frightened and distraught, Gladys leaves her job. The children decide that they must discover who is sending the letters. They make a list of suspects - could the letter writer be Mr. Nosey a busybody or Miss Tittle a lover of gossip - or someone else? Their arch-enemy, village policeman Mr Goon is also on the case, and the children must hurry to solve the mystery before he does.
12309458	/m/02vzvdg	Random Acts of Senseless Violence	Jack Womack		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel is told in the form of a fictional diary by the 12-year-old protagonist Lola Hart, and details Lola and her family's experiences in a near-future Manhattan in which violence, rising unemployment, and riots are commonplace in the city, as well as the rest of the United States. As the novel progresses, Lola transforms from a student at one of Manhattan's most privileged private schools to a street-wise gangster as she and her family struggle to survive the despair of a crumbling government and economy.
12310049	/m/02vzw78	Seventeen	Booth Tarkington		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The middle-class Baxter family enjoys a comfortable and placid life until the summer when their neighbors, the Parcher family, play host to an out-of-town visitor, Lola Pratt. An aspiring actress, Lola is a “howling belle of eighteen” who talks baby-talk “even at breakfast” and holds the center of attention wherever she goes. She instantly captivates William with her beauty, her flirtatious manner, and her ever-present prop, a tiny white lap dog, Flopit. William is sure he has found True Love at Last. Like the other youths of his circle, he spends the summer pursuing Lola at picnics, dances and evening parties, inadvertently making himself obnoxious to his family and friends. They, in turn, constantly embarrass and humiliate him as they do not share his exalted opinion of his "babytalk lady." William steals his father’s dress-suit and wears it to court Lola in the evenings at the home of the soon-regretful Parcher family. As his lovestruck condition progresses, he writes a bad love poem to “Milady,” hoards dead flowers Lola has touched, and develops, his family feels, a peculiar interest in beards and child marriages among the ‘Hindoos.’ To William's constant irritation, his ten-year-old sister Jane and the Baxters' Negro handyman, Genesis, persist in treating him as an equal instead of the serious-minded grown-up he now believes himself to be. His parents mostly smile tolerantly at William’s lovelorn condition, and hope he will survive it to become a responsible, mature adult. After a summer that William is sure has changed his life forever, Lola leaves town on the train. The book concludes with a Maeterlinck-inspired flash-forward, showing that William has indeed survived the trials of adolescence.
12315419	/m/03gqfkj	Touching Spirit Bear	Ben Mikaelsen	2001-01-23	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cole Matthews is a troubled kid who gets into fights with everyone. His parents, William and Cindy Matthews, are no better than their son. While Cole's Dad drinks and beats his son to pulp, his Mom drinks and tries to avoid reality. Cole has been letting out his anger and pain in the most terrifying ways. Adults threaten to punish him, but the last straw comes when Cole beats Peter Driscal senseless. Cole is immediately sent to a detention center, where a parole officer, Garvey, tells Cole of an alternative to jail: The Circle Justice System, in which Cole must be stranded on an island for a year. Cole accepts, seeing no other choice. During the first days of his banishment, Cole is mauled by a spirit bear, and Cole begins to learn the process of healing his broken spirit. * Cole Matthews - The fifteen-year-old with many behavior issues and abusive parents. He later learns how to control his anger, how to apologize, and to forgive. * William Matthews - Cole's father who has drinking problem and a bull-headed temper. He usually hurts Cole with a belt and that was the main cause for Cole's social problems. Abused himself as a child, drinking and then hurting Cole is his way of dealing with the problems he never dealt with when he was young. * Peter Driscal - A ninth grader who Cole has bullied and beat. He develops permanent brain damage which caused him to have slurred speech and walk awkwardly. Aside from this, Peter eventually forgives him and the two become friends. * Garvey - A parole officer. He shows Cole to the Circle Justice and helps Cole in every way he can. He and Edwin are the only people who help Cole succeed in what he is doing. Garvey gives Cole a blanket called an at'oow in the beginning, showing his trust in Cole. * Edwin - An elder who wants Cole to improve. Edwin shows Cole to a freezing pond on an island, the ancestor rock, lets Cole take care of his violent anger. He is wise and knows how to heal Cole because he went to the Alaskan Island himself as a youth. He taught Cole the things that helped him. * Cindy Matthews - Cole's mother who is scared of her drunk former husband does not stand up for her for herself and others (they call her in the book a baribe doll). Throughout the book, she learns self-control as well as being able standing up to her ex-husband, and files child abuse charges to him for beating their son, Cole. She later apologize to Cole for not being there during her past husbands ruthless beatings on him. She promises she will make-up for never being involved in his life. While Cole returned to the island for the second time she sent countless letters to him while knowing he was not able to contact the outside world.
12316278	/m/02v_1sp	Dragons of the Highlord Skies	Margaret Weis		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Dragon Emperor Ariakas devises a plan to corrupt the Knights of Solamnia and sends Dragon Highlord Kitiara uth Matar to tempt a power-hungry knight, Derek Crownguard, with the location of a Dragon Orb, which Ariakas believes the Knights will not be able to control. A disguised Kitiara convinces Derek that Dragon Orbs can be used to help the Knights resist the invasion of their homeland, so Derek, along with fellow knights Brian Donner and Aran Tallbow, sets out to the former seaport of Tarsis to find more information about the Dragon Orbs. Kitiara then travels to the city of Haven to investigate the possible involvement of her friends and family in the death of the Dragon Highlord Verminaard. Kitiara quickly confirms that her former lover, Tanis Half-Elven, and her half-brothers Raistlin and Caramon Majere were involved in Verminaard's death. Kitiara also learns that Tanis is traveling with his former girlfriend, the incredibly beautiful elven princess Laurana, and consumed by jealousy, becomes dangerously obsessed with Laurana. Kitiara travels to Icewall Castle and a rivalry is formed between her and the dark elf wizard, Feal-Thas, the Dragon Highlord of the White Army. She insists Feal-Thas allow the Dragon Orb under his care to be taken by the knights when they arrive, and Feal-Thas insists she first defeats the horrible guardian of the Orb. Kitiara does so and then travels to the city of Tarsis to seek out her former companions. Derek and his companions are also in Tarsis. There, Brian falls in love with an Aesthethic named Lilith, who directs them to the kender Tasslehoff Burrfoot who helps the knights decipher a book that confirms that there is a Dragon Orb being kept in Icewall Castle. Before the knights can do anything with this knowledge though the city of Tarsis is attacked by the Red Dragonarmy. The Companions, who are also in Tarsis, are split up when the Dragonarmy attacks the city. Tanis Half-Elven, Caramon, Raistlin, Tika Waylan, Riverwind, and Goldmoon travel with Alhana Starbreeze to the Elvish kingdom of Silvanesti (their journeys being described in detail in Dragons of Winter Night). Kitiara meanwhile has located the remaining Companions consisting of Sturm Brightblade, Flint Fireforge, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, Elistan, Gilthanas,and Laurana. After secretly observing Laurana, Kitiara decides the elven princess is much to beautiful a rival to let live and orders her forces to attack the Companions while she ambushes Laurana. Kitiara attacks Laurana from behind, taking the elfmaid by surprise. Kitiara expects an easy victory over a rival she dismisses as just a pampered princess, but Laurana fights back ferociously, and it is only with the help of the sivak draconian, Slith, that Kitiara is finally able to subdue Laurana. Meanwhile the rest of Kitiara's forces are being defeated by Elistan and Sturm. Kitiara and Slith drag Laurana off into a nearby alley, but before Kitiara can kill Laurana, she is driven off by the arrival of Derek Crownguard's group of knights and Elistan. Derek's knights then join with the rest of the Companions to seek the Dragon Orb from Icewall Castle (the details of which are only briefly discussed or alluded to in Dragons of Winter Night). More is learned about the bitter rivalry between Sturm Brightblade and Derek Crowngaurd, the latter of which is the main reason Sturm was unable to complete his trials to become a knight. Aran and especially Brian begin to sympathize with Sturm. Kitiara is tormented with dreams of the dark Goddess Takhisis and a death knight named Lord Soth. Little does she know, at the time, that Takhisis is attempting to gain the service of Soth in the Dragonwars, and Soth will only serve a Dragon Highlord with the courage to spend one night in his castle. He makes her return to the Dragon Army command in the city of Sanction. Suspicion spreads about Kitiara's possible role in the death of Verminaard and her connection to the Companions. Emperor Ariakas fears she may be attempting a power-grab, and has her investigated. Kitiara is found guilty, due in part to the testimony of Feal-Thas, and imprisoned. For the first time, Kitiara prays to Takhisis and promises to do anything, even confront Lord Soth, if her life were spared. She is overheard, via scrying, by Ariakas's other lover, Iolanthe. Iolanthe frees Kitiara and binds her to her promise regarding Lord Soth, feeling Kitiara would ultimately triumph in the power struggle with Ariakas. Sturm, Derek, and the rest of the company meet the natives of Icewall and ask for their help in defeating Feal-Thas. Laurana devises a plan to use Elistan's magic to help them attack Feal-Thas's stronghold, Icewall Castle, and the Icefolk agree to help. The Icefolk also give Laurana a Frost Reaver, a magic battle axe made of ice, for the upcoming battle. The Companions and their Icefolk allies successfully attack Icewall Castle and confront Feal-Thas. Aran and Brian fall to Feal-Thas's wolves but then Laurana uses the Frost Reaver to slay Feal-Thas. As detailed in Dragons of Winter Night, the Companions find not only the Dragon Orb, but a frozen good dragon and a broken dragonlance. Kitiara makes her way to the castle of Lord Soth, battles many of his guardians, and stands up to him before falling unconscious. Lord Soth is impressed, gives her protection from his guardians as she sleeps, and agrees to join the Takhisis's army under the command of Kitiara.
12317372	/m/02v_2lt	The Late Hector Kipling	David Thewlis			 Hector Kipling is an artist who is famous for his ovarian paintings of big heads. When visiting the Tate Modern in London with one of his best friends and fellow artists, Lenny Snook, he breaks down upon seeing a Munch, which Lenny explains as Stendhal Syndrome. Several days later he visits his parents in his native Blackpool with his Greek girlfriend Eleni. Eleni is four days late, but when she and Hector have sex on the settee that night, she bleeds through, leaving a large stain on it. Another of Hector's closest friends and also an artist, Kirk Church, is found to have a brain tumor. Hector finds himself longing for someone close to him to die, because that would mean that Hector, as one left behind, would receive much sympathy. When Eleni's mother Sofia is in a kitchen accident -- being burned with boiling fat and falling into the resulting fire -- Eleni heads for Crete. Hector and Eleni are in a fight shortly before this, because Hector makes the implication that he would be glad if Sofia dies. He denies this, though, because if Eleni's mother would die, Eleni would be the one to receive all the sympathy. Meanwhile, Hector's own father has ended up in hospital as well: Hector's mother Connie threw away the blood-stained settee and bought a second-hand one out of the paper for 850 pounds. The new settee smells of cigarette smoke and this, combined with the amount of money spent on it, is too much for Hector's father to take. During an open poetry night at a café, Hector's eye falls on an American punk poet named Rosa Flood. The two meet again during the opening of an exhibition of Hector's large head paintings. At that exhibition, an assailant badly damages Hector's paining "God Bolton", which depicts Hector's previous neighbour Godfrey Bolton shortly after his suicide by hanging. Rosa takes Hector home to comfort him and the two end up having sex. The assailant meets up with Hector to apologize and introduces himself as Freddie Monger; Godfrey Bolton was Monger's father who severely abused him. To make up for the damage done he will buy the settee off of Hector's parents' hands without letting them know Hector is behind it, so as to get Hector's father out of hospital. While he does buy the settee with Hector's money, he also robs his parents of 15,000 pounds and kills their pet dog, the remains of which are later found inside the settee. Eleni makes an unexpected return home and announces her mother has died. She leaves again in anger when she finds Rosa in the bathtub. Monger reveals his father's death wasn't a suicide and says he only wants one thing from Hector: blood. Monger ends up killing Lenny and Rosa, however, when he mistakes Lenny for Hector who was staying at his house. Hector ends up shooting Monger with the latter's gun. He does not call the police, as he yelled out "I will kill you both" to Lenny and Rosa when they left together earlier that night while a policeman stood nearby. Instead, he heads for the Tate Britain and paints the words "L'acte Surréaliste le plus simple est de marcher dans une peuplée avec un revolver chargé, et de tirer au hasard" on the wall with blood. He hides inside one of Lenny's artworks (a hole in the floor of the museum) for the rest of the night and jumps out in the morning when Brian Sewell translates the words to mean "The simplest act of surrealism is to walk into a crowded street with a loaded revolver, and open the fire at random." Hector does just that and kills several art critics who had gathered for the opening of Lenny Snook's exhibition. From inside Wandsworth Prison Hector relates the rest of events: not only was he charged with killing the art critics, but with killing Rosa and Lenny as well. Hector has decided to let it go. Reactions to his mass murder are varied, from outright disgust to admiration. Hector's father has died in hospital upon hearing of his son's deeds and his mother has committed suicide by throwing herself in the Irish Sea. He has never heard from Eleni again and hopes she never learned of what he had done, because then there would be still one person in the world who loves him, even a little bit. In the end, Hector wishes for nothing but something to write with, so that he can write down his story.
12320358	/m/02v_541	Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants	Lee Goldberg		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger take Julie to the hospital after she breaks her wrist during a soccer game, though before they leave, Monk gives the other parents the satisfaction of exposing the other team's coach as a murderer. At the hospital, Monk is stunned when he sees his old assistant Sharona Fleming working as a nurse. She explains that after leaving Monk's employ to re-marry her ex-husband, Trevor Howe, and move to New Jersey, a friend of Trevor's from Los Angeles who owned a landscaping business sold his business to Trevor. They moved to Los Angeles and took over the business. However, recently, when one of his clients, a professor named Ellen Cole, was found bludgeoned to death with a lamp in her house. Trevor has been accused of the murder, and Sharona has no trouble believing it, so she and Benjy have moved back up to San Francisco, with Benjy currently staying with Sharona's sister Gail. Sharona doesn't hide the fact that she'd like her old job with Monk back, and before long there is open hostility between her and Natalie. To save her job, she works out a compromise: they will travel to Los Angeles so that Monk can see if Trevor is really guilty. Monk, Natalie and Sharona drive to Los Angeles, arriving by nightfall. They meet Lieutenant Sam Dozier of the Los Angeles Police Department at an antiques store robbery. Here, Monk (wearing a gas mask due to the smog) exposes the owner's wife as the killer. They then travel to Ellen Cole's house. Monk examines the scene and concludes (somewhat to his own regret), that Trevor is innocent. He notices several clues that suggest that Ellen Cole's killer was waiting for her, meaning that the murder was premeditated. However, Dozier informs Monk that jewelry from Trevor's clients was found in his truck, and Sharona dismisses this as not being enough to arrest Trevor - after all, it's not too difficult to commit identity theft and open an account in the name of someone else. They go on to question some of the people closest to the victim, on the chance that one of them might be the real killer (with Monk also busting one of them for shoplifting). Later, Monk, Natalie and Sharona head down to a bookstore to question the person who found the evidence to "convict" Trevor, LAPD consultant Ian Ludlow, who is also a prolific mystery author (he is a household name everywhere, writing his Detective Marshak stories and publishing a new one every 90 days). He mentions the damning evidence, although Monk refuses to believe it. While they are at the bookstore, Natalie buys a few of Ludlow's titles, including his latest, Death Is the Last Word. The saleswoman at the bookstore mentions that Ludlow has a compulsion - he can't pass a store without signing his own books, and today, unsigned Ludlow titles are more valuable than signed books. Sharona remains behind in Los Angeles, intending to do some asking around about Ellen Cole, while Monk and Natalie head back to San Francisco. During the drive, Monk flips through the Ludlow titles and quickly solves the mysteries in the books after only reading the first few pages. Natalie berates him for ruining the plots, but Monk remarks that there's really no point to reading his books: after all, in San Francisco, he solves a lot of cases that are usually a lot more interesting and complicated than what Ludlow can conjure. Not to mention, Ludlow has a certain key aspect present throughout his titles - the killer is always the least likely suspect who is betrayed by a personality quirk. While Monk and Natalie have been away, Julie has been staying with Benjy. She remarks that they seem to have way too many similarities (including having lost a father), and doesn't want to become identical to him at any point soon. The next few days go by with no incidents, as Monk recuperates from the smog in Los Angeles. Natalie briefly has a run in with Joseph Cochran, a firefighter she dated briefly during a different homicide investigation. Cochran informs Natalie that he needs Monk's help again - this time, on a property theft. It seems that someone has stolen his fire company's hydraulic rescue equipment. That Friday, when Natalie is leaving the house, her car starts leaking oil and she is forced to rent a Toyota Corolla while her Jeep Grand Cherokee goes into the shop for repairs. Later that day, Monk and Natalie meet Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher at a crime scene on Baker Beach. Monk has to face his issues with nudists as he is led to the crime scene. They are shown the crime scene, which Stottlemeyer mentions as possibly being a crime scene but at the same time is possibly not one: a 37 year old shoe salesman by the name of Ronald Webster has been found brutally mauled to death, and his midsection has been ripped open. The medical examiner has determined the approximate time of death to be some time the night before, but they can't be more precise, given the body's immersion in the water. Monk learns that this was probably not a robbery, as Webster's wallet is still in his pocket, as are his car and house keys. He also learns that the victim's car is not in the nearby parking lot. Randy theorizes that Webster came out skinny dipping with a special friend, who may have been washed away, however, this turns out to be an unlikely lead. At Monk's request, the medical examiner turns Webster's body over, and he mentions that drowning is the likely cause of death. The wounds on his body, while still extremely painful, are not fatal, and they appear to have been made by a creature of some sort. After Randy makes several wild guesses about what kind of animal could make a bite like the one on the body, (his guesses getting more bizarre until he guessses that a clam is responsible) Monk dismisses him and tells all that the animal that did this was an alligator. He points out that all of the teeth marks are identical, as alligators have teeth that are all perfectly identical. The medical examiner points out to Monk that alligators are not indigenous to San Francisco, but an alligator may have been responsible - after all, alligators kill their prey by grabbing them with their mouths, and then holding them underwater until they drown, and the pattern of injuries is consistent with this theory. Monk, Natalie, Stottlemeyer and Disher are all convinced that this is a rather cleverly committed homicide. With Stottlemeyer unable to mobilize a homicide task force with the San Francisco Police Department until the medical examiner completes his autopsy, Monk and Natalie ask around to see if there might be anything that would explain why Ronald Webster was killed in a rather bizarre fashion. They go to the shoe store where Webster worked, and question some of his fellow employees. Coincidentally, it seems that the store is in Natalie's neighborhood. They talk to one of his fellow employees, who tells them that Webster lived a very dull life, and also mentions that his priest is the only person who'd know more about him. Leaving the store, Monk mentions to Natalie that as Ronald Webster lived a rather quiet life, the theory that the alligator attack was premeditated homicide looks more compelling - for one thing, skinny dipping wasn't something that fit his personality. Also, his car was never found near the crime scene, and Monk figures that they'll find Webster's Buick Lucerne either near his house or near the store. Monk deduces that the crime scene at the beach was entirely staged, and Webster had to have been killed somewhere else. The next day, Monk and Natalie head to Mission Dolores, a few blocks away, and speak to Father Bowen, Webster's priest. In questioning, he tells them that Webster attended mass every day. Monk figures that Webster had done something worth feeling very guilty about that caused him to attend daily mass. Bowen mentions that a few years ago, Webster hit a woman with his car and he fled the scene. He felt so guilty about the incident that he started attending church to pay for what he did. Natalie quickly calls Disher to ask for a check on the victim that Ronald Webster hit. Their next stop is the office of Dr. Paula Dalmas, a dentist in Walnut Creek, and the woman that Webster had hit with his car. Questioning Dr. Dalmas, they learn that Webster has been sending money to her anonymously for a while, and had been following her for years. She mentions that she had to undergo quite a lot of surgery after the hit-and-run, including hip surgery and facial surgery, and has lost the ability to reproduce. Monk quickly figures that Dr. Dalmas is a dead end - she was left with permanent injuries after the hit-and-run, and as such has made it her job to fix other peoples' teeth. Also, she has an alibi for the night of the murder. As Monk and Natalie return to San Francisco, Stottlemeyer calls to inform them that the medical examiner has completed his report and wants them down at the morgue. When they arrive at the morgue, they find Stottlemeyer and Disher waiting for them, as well as Ian Ludlow himself. Ludlow admits that Randy called him in, and that Randy was one of his top students when he was teaching a class on mystery writing at Berkeley, during the 2007 SFPD police strike. Monk, Natalie, Stottlemeyer, Disher, Ludlow and the medical examiner all look at Webster's body. The bite does appear to have been made by an alligator, judging by the amount of force per square inch applied. At the same time though, the medical examiner mentions that there are traces of bath water and bath salts in the body, suggesting he drowned in his bathtub, which only makes things more complicated. Natalie asks if it is easy to fake an alligator bite, and learns that it is actually more difficult than one thinks: you have to get the right amount of force per square inch, and if there are no signs of a struggle, it's a dead giveaway. Ludlow mentions that one of his characters in Death Is the Last Word actually tried faking an alligator bite with a bear trap with no success. For obvious reasons, Monk is unhappy with Ludlow's presence, and dismisses some of the crucial clues Ludlow has found, such as the fact that Webster had his last meal (a few slices of pizza) less than an hour before he was killed. They decide to check out Ronald Webster's loft apartment. As they arrive, Stottlemeyer points out that the building he lived in was recently converted from an old warehouse, and Webster was the only occupant the building - so if he was killed here, no one would have heard anything like the sounds of a struggle. Monk examines the scene and notices streaks on the floor, some hydraulic fluid, and a drop of blood in the bathtub - clues that suggest that this is where Webster was killed. He also notices that their killer apparently was very messy and left behind basically everything except a name and a phone number, and is somewhat confused - why would someone who'd killed a guy in a very clever way suddenly become so messy? Monk also notices that the victim was a fan of Ludlow's books, judging by the fact that he has all but the latest title on his bookshelf. They also find a pizza box from Sorrento's with a receipt dated to Thursday night, and Natalie begins to wonder if she and Julie came very close to encountering Webster or spotted him and never recognized him. While they are investigating the apartment, Natalie gets a call from Joe Cochran. Monk quickly figures out who the caller is, and learning about the theft that happened at Joe's firehouse, he insists on checking it out. Monk and Natalie head down to Joe's firehouse where they meet Joe and Fire Captain Mantooth, who is pleased to meet Monk again. They explain to Monk that on Wednesday night, earlier in the week, at around 9:00 PM, their crew was called away to a car fire in Washington Square. Someone had blown up a painter's van (the arson investigators have ruled it arson, having discovered that someone stuffed rags into the van's fuel tank). Monk quickly figures that the arsonist who did it wanted to get a lot of attention. It took Joe's crew at least two hours to fight the fire and clean up the rubble, and when they got back to their firehouse, they did their standard unloading procedure - cleaning the rig and doing an inventory check - and that's when they found that someone had stolen one of their Jaws of Life kits (the Jaws themselves are designed as a spreader to help extricate people who are trapped in their cars in accidents). Monk learns that the power unit stolen is powered by gasoline, and the Jaws also have a cutting force of 18,000 pounds per square inch. With this, Monk not only has figured out how Ronald Webster was killed, but he's also solved the case - and figured that Webster's killer is the same person as Ellen Cole's killer, even though both crimes have different M.Os (with Ellen being bludgeoned and Webster being mauled). Unfortunately, he doesn't believe he can recover the gear that was stolen, and reluctantly tells Joe and Mantooth that the thief probably dumped the gear in the Bay after he killed Ronald Webster. Ronald Webster's killer started the car fire to lure Joe's fire company out of the firehouse for a long enough period of time that he could steal the Jaws of Life package. The killer then attached a set of alligator jaws to the inside of the spreader to make the alligator bite look authentic and also enable him to replicate the biting force of an alligator. The following night, the killer broke into Webster's house, and knocked Webster out. After stripping him of his clothes, he put the body in the bathtub and filled it up with water (which he then laced with table sea-salts). Then the killer clamped the Jaws down on Webster, who must have regained consciousness and tried to fight back against his attacker, which explains the streaks Monk found on the floor near the bathtub when he investigated the apartment. After Webster was dead, the killer lugged the Jaws of Life and Webster's body down to his car. After dumping Webster's body and neatly folded clothes at Baker Beach, the killer drove somewhere else and threw the Jaws into the water. The next morning, Sharona shows up at Monk's apartment, Monk having called her the night before. Stottlemeyer also shows up, and Monk explains that he believes Ludlow himself killed both Ronald Webster and Ellen Cole. He remembers how Ludlow said to him that he hangs around with Lieutenant Dozier for a few days as he waits for an unusual murder to come along, but Monk doesn't believe Ludlow waits - he believes that Ludlow befriends a random person he meets at a book signing, follows them for a while, kills them, finds out who is in their life, and then frames the least likely person for the crime. Stottlemeyer, however, is not convinced, and believes that Monk is personally jealous at the fact that Ludlow is helping consult on the Webster case. He dismisses what Monk believes happened, apart from the M.O. for the fake alligator attack. However, minutes later Stottlemeyer comes back and informs Natalie and Sharona that there has been some bad news. When they reach the street, they find that Natalie's car has been towed, though Natalie insists that she didn't park the car illegally. Stottlemeyer points out that it wasn't his call, and he has Monk, Natalie and Sharona accompany him to Natalie's house. When they get to Natalie's house, there is a heavy police presence outside. In the house, Ludlow accuses Natalie and Sharona of committing the murders, accusing Sharona of the Ellen Cole murder and Natalie to Ronald Webster. He explains their motive as, on Sharona's part, a desire to rid herself of her husband, and on Natalie's part, a desire to get Sharona out of the way and keep her job as Monk's assistant. He accuses Natalie of ordering an alligator jaw the day before the firehouse theft, though Natalie points out that someone could have stolen her credit card number, ordered the jaws, then swiped them off her porch, and also claims that Natalie snuck out of her house on the night of the theft to steal the Jaws of Life (though Natalie protests this, claiming that she doesn't have a key to the firehouse). Additionally, forensics has found evidence matching Natalie's car to clues found in Webster's apartment, making it clear that Natalie's car was towed because forensics wanted to give it an analysis. As impossible as it sounds, the evidence is arranged in a compelling enough way that Stottlemeyer has no choice but to arrest both women. To their horror, Monk has nothing to add. The two women spend a night together in a holding cell, where they finally bond. Sharona recognizes that Natalie is a good fit for Monk - which is no small validation, when Natalie has been working in Sharona's shadow for years. At the same time, Sharona sadly advises her that Natalie will never have a chance for her own life, or her own happiness, unless she can bring herself to abandon Monk. The next day, the two women are brought in for interrogation. Stottlemeyer asks the prison guards to release Natalie and Sharona from their handcuffs. Sharona asks Stottlemeyer if he's brought them in because he wants to apologize to them, but Stottlemeyer points out that Monk has caught a big break in the investigation and has found evidence that exonerates them. When they see Monk, he is carrying a big grocery bag. He quickly mentions that Ludlow killed Ellen Cole and Ronald Webster for little more reason than to create plot lines for his books, as Ludlow can't create stories in time to meet his deadlines. The way Ludlow works is like this: he befriends someone he meets at a book signing, then kills them, observes how events unfold, and then frames the least likely suspect for the crime. Monk goes back through how Ludlow committed the crimes, and then explains that the murder of Ronald Webster was about framing Natalie and expanding his next book. He explains that the events leading up to Webster's death began when Natalie bought several of Ludlow's titles in Los Angeles. Monk figures that Ludlow must have stolen Natalie's credit card receipt and used the number on the receipt to order the alligator head and ship it to her house in San Francisco with overnight shipping, and then he swiped the jaws off Natalie's porch before Natalie got home so that she never knew about the theft. Ludlow mentions that there isn't any proof, but Monk points out that Ludlow, like most bad mystery writers, has his killers drop clues everywhere so that his detective can wrap everything up nice and tight. He added a few clues too many when he framed Natalie. Monk also reveals that Natalie's relationship with Joe Cochran was one of the little surprises Ludlow likes to discover when he commits these seemingly random killings. Monk is starting to build a case, but Ludlow points out to Monk that all of the events described happened before he arrived in San Francisco on that Friday. At this, Monk asks Randy and confirms that he called Ludlow's cell phone, so he couldn't know where Ludlow actually was when he was contacted. Ludlow claims he was in Los Angeles, but Monk says he can prove Ludlow was actually in San Francisco. He presents a copy of a receipt from a pizza box he found in Ronald Webster's kitchen. It comes from Sorrento's, the pizzeria in Natalie's neighborhood. Ludlow claims that the receipt can prove Webster was in the restaurant at the same time that Natalie was in there with Julie, a few nights before the murder, and that he knows this because he is thorough in his investigation. Monk tries to get Ludlow to explain how he knows this, and Ludlow claims that he knows Webster, Natalie and Julie were all in Sorrento's at the same time because Webster saw the 10% discount advertised on Julie's cast. However, Monk points out that Ludlow isn't explaining how he can know about the discount when he's never met Julie, and reveals that Ludlow actually had been in San Francisco. Additionally, Monk explains that Ludlow, like the killers of his own books, has been betrayed by a very hidden personality quirk. Monk reveals that there is a bookstore across the street from Sorrento's. After admitting that he had to wait until this morning to get the evidence (due to the store being closed on Sundays), he pulls out a copy of Death Is the Last Word that he bought at that bookstore. Ludlow asks if he should sign it, but Monk shows the title page, which shows that he actually signed this copy of the book two days before Webster was killed, several days before he claimed to have arrived in San Francisco. Monk mentions that that is Ludlow's personality quirk: he can't pass a bookstore without signing his own books. He watched Natalie and looked for just the right person to kill. Ronald Webster served to be the perfect victim. Ludlow befriended him, killed him by clamping the stolen Jaws of Life on him, and then dumped his body at the beach. Ludlow is arrested, and Trevor - along with several other "murderers" in Los Angeles that were caught with Ludlow's assistance - are set free. As they leave, Monk admits to Natalie and Sharona that he would have arrested Ludlow earlier if he hadn't been so ashamed of himself for his mistakes. He also apologizes for letting them down the day before, and Monk points out that he was afraid of speaking up because he knew he would have tipped Ludlow off to the fact that he was being considered a suspect, and if Ludlow realized that Monk had caught on to him, he'd go back and buy up his signed books, then destroy them. He reveals that Ludlow also signed his stock at two other bookstores in San Francisco - one in Washington Square and one out at Baker Beach. Exonerated, Sharona and Natalie reunite with their families, and Sharona prepares to return to Los Angeles with Trevor and Benjy, leaving Monk in Natalie's hands, and giving Monk the loving goodbye she never said the last time.
12323347	/m/02v_817	Yellow Dog	Martin Amis			 The main protagonist is Xan (or Alex) Meo, a well-known actor and writer, who is the son of Mick Meo, a violent London gangster who had died in prison years previously. Xan is severely beaten, apparently for mentioning the name of Joseph Andrews, one of his father’s gangland rivals, in a book. The beating affects Xan’s personality, and he becomes increasingly estranged from his wife, Russia (an academic who studies the families of tyrants), and two young daughters. Andrews is also conspiring with Cora Susan, who wants to take revenge on Xan because Mick Meo had crippled her father (who was sexually abusing Cora). Using the pseudonym of Karla White, a porn actress, Cora lures Xan to California and tries to seduce him, with the intention of wrecking his marriage, but fails. Xan confronts Andrews, who is also living in California, and learns that Andrews is his biological father. Xan confesses this to Cora, who reveals her own identity and confesses that Xan’s refusal to have sex with her, coupled with the fact that he is not really Mick Meo’s son, has undermined her plans for revenge against the Meo family. Henry IX (Prince Henry of Wales?) is the reigning monarch in this book, which suggests that it may be set in a hypothetical intermediate future where he has grown to full adulthood and subsequently married, had children and succeeded to the throne. His 15-year old daughter, Victoria, is about to become involved in a scandal when a videotape of her in the nude is released to the press. It transpires that Joseph Andrews has conspired with Henry’s mistress, He Zhizhen, in order to obtain the tape and blackmail the authorities into allowing him to return to Britain without being arrested. Andrews returns, still intending to use his henchman, Simon Finger, to intimidate Xan by assaulting Russia Meo. The king and princess decide to abdicate, effectively abolishing the monarchy. Clint Smoker, a senior reporter with a downmarket tabloid newspaper, is writing a series of articles of Ainsley Car, a maverick footballer with a history of assaults upon women. Despite his macho image, Clint is sexually dysfunctional, and responds hopefully to a series of flirtatious text messages from someone named “k8”. Upon discovering that “k8” is a transsexual, Clint, who has talked with ‘Karla White’ in California, becomes enraged and drives to confront Andrews (whom Clint appears to blame for his ill-fated meeting with “k8”). Clint kills both Simon Finger and Andrews, but is blinded in his struggle with the latter. Throughout the novel, reference is made to the arrival of a comet, which is to pass dangerously close to the earth. An airliner experiences a number of problems on its journey to New York from London, and is obliged to make an emergency landing at the moment the comet arrives.
12323388	/m/02v_82z	Wide Is the Gate	Upton Sinclair, Jr.	1943	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 In this novel Lanny Budd's marriage to Irma breaks down after he imposes on her to help smuggle a revolutionary named Trudy out of Germany. Her husband Rudy had been arrested and vanished into the Gestapo prison system. Months later Lanny, at a séance, hears that Rudy is dead. He persuades Trudy that Rudy is dead and they secretly marry. Meanwhile, Lanny gets interested in Spain, and is in Barcelona for a Socialist Olympics, in competition to the Berlin games, when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. The son of Lanny's English friend Rick enlists in the Republican cause. In the climax at the end of the novel the son has been captured by the Nationalists and Lanny undertakes a dangerous attempt to spring the son from captivity and send him home to England.
12327476	/m/02v_fd3	Compulsion	Shaun Hutson		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A gang of teenage youngsters is running riot on the streets. Responsible for a number of burglaries and car thefts, the police are at their wits' end trying to put a stop to the gang's activities. Terror and hatred have become part of everyday life for local residents and, just when it seems things cannot get any worse, the gang targets Shelby House - an old people's home. Supervisor Veronica Porter, her two staff and the nine elderly residents become the gang's most vulnerable victims yet as the thugs conduct a hate campaign against them, sending abusive mail, daubing graffiti on walls and shattering windows. The intimidation escalates until Veronica's own father is dragged into the scene of terror when, disturbing some of the gang members burgling his house he is put into a coma. But enough is enough. The senior citizens of Shelby House decide to take the law into their own hands and fight back.
12330937	/m/02v_k3f	The Book of Dead Days	Marcus Sedgwick	2003-07-17	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story starts off in a theatre in a city only known as 'Grand Theater'. Valerian is performing a magic trick using Boy's talent to fit into small spaces. Boy is Valerian's slave (Valerian calls him his 'famulus'). He is treated cruelly by Valerian. Boy, after the show, is sent to a pub to collect something from an acquaintance of Valerian's. This something is a music box, which the increasingly distracted Valerian assures Boy that he needs. The acquaintance, an ugly man named Green, walks to the toilet; Boy follows. The man is killed (although it is not clear what killed him, since the killer was shielded by purple smoke) and Boy takes the music box and leaves the pub, running into Willow. Willow had found out the Theatre Director, Korp, is dead, killed by a mysterious beast named the Phantom. Both of them are coated in blood because of the deaths that night. They are both arrested and accused of the murder of the director. Valerian breaks into their prison and gets them out, taking both Boy and Willow to his home. Boy gives him the music box. Valerian plays it but is unable to discern the meaning. Willow gains his trust by working out the music box spells a name because of Willow's perfect pitch. She identifies the notes as 'G-A-D-B-E-E-B-E', the name of a man who had died. They search the largest cemetery in town for his grave; it is not in a single one. Valerian is attacked by people who owed money and buried alive. Boy and Willow manage to dig him out and drag him home, Valerian now increasingly more desperate and with a broken arm. They have to go and see the director of funerals. Valerian Sambourn sends Boy alone while he and Willow visit Kepler, Valerian's old rival and associate. They believe Kepler has gone mad, as he has made bizarre patterns all over his basement, with one phrase written in Latin by it: "The miller sees not all water that goes by his mill". Boy is unable to get a meeting with the Director, but he sees that he is a madman who tries to put together mutilated pieces of dead animals together and bring them back to life by looking through the dome over his workspace. Valerian, Willow Hickobe and Boy return there and manage to get the information they want, by using Kepler's electricity to fool the Director, and leave the city to find the grave, buried in a town called Lindon. Buried with Gad Beebe, is the mysterious Book of Dead Days, that apparently holds the answer to everyone's biggest question. Boy and Willow later find out that Valerian had fallen in love with a woman and he gave up the last 15 years of his life for one night with her, but she rejected him despite the enchantment, the reason Valerian fought with Kepler. The three get arrested (again) for their fruitless efforts digging up Beebe's grave, and are stowed away in dungeons. They escape through the city's underground channels, which were the patterns Kepler had traced in his basement. They find out Kepler had the book, and it is a race against time to find it. Boy pushes Kepler overboard into the channel. Valerian finds the book and opens it, Willow reads over his shoulder and screams for Boy to run that Valerian will kill him in place of himself. Valerian knocks out Willow and after chasing Boy through the underground, takes Boy home. In Valerian's tower a swirling vortex opens up. Valerian is about to sacrifice Boy, when Kepler and Willow arrive. Kepler reveals that Boy is Valerian's son and that Boy was made that night 15 years ago, when Valerian bet on his life. Valerian, shocked, willingly walks into the vortex, and the demon claims him. Boy questions Kepler about his real father, and Kepler says that Valerian is not really Boy's father, that he just said that to save Boy. The book ends with Boy and Willow returning to the City with Kepler.
12331495	/m/02v_kxj	Insatiable		2005	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The book begins with her as a confident and sexually adventurous senior PR worker. On a business trip to Peru she decides to have sex with a fat and unattractive man. After she loses her job and is deceived and robbed of her savings by her Spanish boyfriend Jaime, she decides to become a call-girl to pay off her debts. The book then deals with the internal politics of the brothel, the other girls and the various clients. Tasso finds the experience an interesting one, despite a few scrapes, unpleasantness of some of the other girls and ruthlessness of the manager, Manolo. Having made the sum of money she set out to make, she falls in love with a client, Giovanni, and decides to leave the business. Ultimately her relationship with Giovanni does not last.
12336129	/m/02v_qn3	Terraplane	Jack Womack		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 DryCo has sent two operatives, retired African-American general Luther and his white bodyguard Jake, to post-communist Moscow, where rival multinational corporation Krasnaya dominates Russian society through consumer capitalist mass production of products. However, Luther and Jake discover that Krasnaya has two highly advanced quantum physicists under duress, Oktobriana Osipova and Alekine. The two Dryco mercenaries manage to abduct the physicists, but their escape sends them back to 1939 in a conservative alternate history. In this world, Abraham Lincoln was killed by a Baltimore pro-slavery mob in 1861 CE, so the American Civil War never happened, and Theodore Roosevelt abolished slavery in 1907 due to European pressure on J.P. Morgan, who feared loss of his European financial assets. In 1932, Giuseppe Zangara assassinated Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill died from a car accident. As a result of Roosevelt's premature death, it is noted that John Nance Garner proved to be a fiscal conservative, leading to a situation where much of the western United States had to threaten civil war to obtain economic relief from the ongoing Depression. As the novel progresses, Alekhine, actually a Krasnaya operative, abducts Joseph Stalin from Moscow, to be transferred to Krasnaya custody and kept in a dacha, in a future which has abandoned communism and uses the image of "Big Boy" as nostalgic consumer iconography. When this world eventually does undergo its World War II, it is assumed that there will be no effective opposition to Nazi Germany from its Soviet Union or United Kingdom as a result. However, as is disclosed in its sequel, Elvissey, this is an incorrect assumption. Luther and Jake make the accqaintance of Norman Quarles, an African American doctor and his wife, Wanda, but their presence attracts the suspicions of (unseen) J. Edgar Hoover, who sends FBI agents in pursuit. During the chase, Norman is killed, and Oktobriana contracts Dovlatov's Syndrome, a mutated influenza virus that emerged in Irkutsk, Siberia in 1909, and led to the deaths of Queen Alexandra, US House Speaker William Dean Howells, Charlie Chaplin, Christy Mathewson, French Premier Clemenceau, Claude Debussy, Guillaume Apollinaire and Amedeo Modigliani, amongst others, during the ten year space of this epidemic. Ultimately, Luther and Wanda return to Dryco's future, while Oktobriana and Jake are lost in the interdimensional void. As an aside, Luther notes that there are sects described as the Albigensian Church of Jesus the Light, Reformed and the Valentinian House of God in this world, which implies the survival of gnosticism has occurred in this timeline. Amongst the books cited in the Albigensian Bible are the Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, but this gnostic bible also includes the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Truth, and the Hymn of Light. The latter revelation will play an important role in Womack's next novel, Elvissey.
12336423	/m/02v_qxq	Elvissey	Jack Womack	1993	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 In this novel, DryCo is facing problems from a mass religious movement centered on the premise that Elvis Presley was a semi divine figure, who performed miracles for believers in his sect. It decides to resolve this problem by retrieving a younger alternate history Elvis, and bringing him to present day New New York to discredit the posthumous reputation and mythology that now surrounds Elvis. The retrieval team are a married couple, Iz and John. Iz is actually an African American, although cosmetic surgery has led to an uncomfortable masquerade as a "Caucasian" woman in the chosen alternate history. It turns out to be that of Terraplane, the previous novel in the DryCo quartet, where Abraham Lincoln was prematurely assassinated, the American Civil War never took place, and slavery was only abolished in 1907. Therefore, this world is backward when it comes to African-American civil rights, and racist segregation is still widespread there. In Terraplane (1989), it was hinted that the assassination of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the abduction of Joseph Stalin would lead to a Nazi victory in its World War II. However, this envisaged outcome did not transpire. Instead, Leon Trotsky takes advantage of the power vacuum in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, returns from exile in Mexico, and assumes power in his stead. Therefore, there is still a Nazi-Soviet Pact, but Operation Barbarossa does not occur because the USSR rearms to the same extent as Nazi Germany. Moreover, Trotsky declares war on Nazi Germany before it can launch Barbarossa to its east and betray the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1941. In the Pacific theatre, the United States defeats Japan in 1946, but they do so through dropping fourteen atomic bombs on the Home Islands, which reduces it to an irradiated wasteland. Meanwhile, Hitler is assassinated in 1944, and the new Chancellor Speer signs an armistice with Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, which leads to an unstable multi polar world due to the inconclusive result of World War II in this world. In its 1954, the alternate Elvis turns out to be a sexual predator who has already murdered Gladys Presley when John and Iz encounter him for the first time. He then tries to rape Iz, much to John's anger, and displays symptoms of psychosis and latent schizophrenia. His poor mental health is not assisted by his strong religious beliefs and an unexpectedly early divergence point in this world's past, where Valentinian gnosticism survived and became the dominant belief system in this alternate Southern United States instead of evangelical Christianity. The dualist religious philosophy of this belief framework worsens Elvis' mental illness; as a Valentinian gnostic, his core religious beliefs are not based on messianic criteria as are those of orthodox Christianity, and he is horrified at the demand of DryCo that he become a virtual messiah that they can use to manipulate the Elvisian faith. He comprehends this as prompting that he become an instrument of the demiurge, the evil and flawed creator of the material world in his gnostic world view. Due to this psychological pressure, his psychosis escalates after he is transferred to Dryco's homeworld. However, his masquerade collides with scepticism at a London "ElCon" (Elvis Convention) religious gathering and there is a riot. Iz, John and Elvis use bootleg DryCo time travel technology to travel back to London in the alternate world's forties and Elvis loses himself amidst the debris of St Paul's Cathedral. However, Elvis is relatively psychologically healthy and morally sane compared to the intense anti-human pathology of DryCo's world; in the end he risks everything to escape it. DryCo's plan has failed. Although John and Iz are sacked from DryCo Central, DryCo Europe offers Iz a position within their local hierarchy. John commits suicide in the bath, and is persuaded by Iz (frightened for her own life, and that of her fetus) that she intends to join him moments later; she does not. Dying, John becomes aware that she deceived him and intends to remain behind and continue living during his last cognizant moment. He communicates non-verbally that he understands, although whether he believes in the end that the child is his own is unclear. Iz has survived, but at great personal cost.
12342121	/m/02v_vwz	The Absolute	K. A. Applegate	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The books opens with Marco and Tobias in bird morph, surveying a freight train transporting tanks into the city. They are spotted and attacked by Controllers in bird of prey morph, revealing that the Yeerks now have the ability to morph after obtaining the Escafil device in the previous book. Marco and Tobias escape by stealing a tank, which they use to demolish Chapman's house before fleeing. Back in the Hork-Bajir valley, the Animorphs speculate that the Yeerks are planning to infest the state's National Guard en masse. A personal issue is also presented in the form of Jake's depression, which affects the morale of the group. Jake decides to send Marco, Tobias and Ax to the state capitol to warn the governor of the Yeerk plot, while he, Cassie, Rachel and the Auxiliary Animorphs attempt to slow the Yeerks down with the usual assault tactics. Marco's team infiltrates The Gardens to acquire mallard ducks for the long distance flight to the capitol. Here they are again attacked by Controllers with the morphing ability, but manage to escape. They arrive at the capitol and locate the governor in cockroach morph, eventually demorphing and revealing themselves to her when she is alone (except for her husband and bodyguards). Unfortunately, her husband is a Controller, and alerts the Yeerks. Marco, Tobias, and Ax grab the governor and race through the streets of the capitol while being pursued by the Yeerks. After destroying a helicopter and a yacht, they lose their pursuers and return to the governor's mansion to explain the situation to her. The governor is accepting of the danger, and calls in a group of National Guardsmen who have been doing training missions in the desert for the last few weeks, and can therefore be assumed to be uninfested. Unfortunately an infested company arrives first with the intention of kidnapping the governor. Marco deceives them by morphing the governor, letting himself be captured by the Yeerks, and being rescued by Tobias and Ax (meanwhile, the real governor escapes). Marco, Tobias and Ax return to the Hork-Bajir valley in time to see the governor issue a televised warning about the Yeerk invasion. The Absolute begins the series' final story arc, or the "countdown" books; as such, it is the first to feature the new back cover text. Crucial plot developments include the Controllers - the series' main antagonists - now being able to morph, and the Yeerk invasion's being revealed to the public. Marco uses a Dracon beam to shoot down a Controller's helicopter, which is possibly the first instance of any Animorph deliberately taking a human life (even a Yeerk host body).
12342159	/m/02v_vzq	As For Me and My House	Sinclair Ross	1941	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mrs. Bentley, a Protestant minister’s wife, writes journal (or diary) entries on a regular basis; the time span is just over a year. The couple has just moved to yet another small town, "Horizon." Mrs. Bentley, whose first name we never learn, despairs of Philip (her husband), who is becoming ever more remote. As she records her feelings, it is clear she, as she suspects of her husband, has nothing but contempt for her husband's flock. Mrs. Bentley sees herself and Philip as frustrated artists; she has a passion for music and, in her youth, entertained dreams of success as a pianist, and he spends much of his time sketching and painting. Her journal tells mostly of her efforts to win her husband's affections, yet he appears to withstand her efforts, which are conflicted and subtly evasive. She strikes up a friendship with Paul, a local schoolteacher and philologist, while Philip engages the affections of Judith. They attempt to adopt a Catholic child, Steve, who seems to fulfil Philip's desire for a child that Mrs. Bentley cannot apparently deliver, but this arrangement falls apart. Eventually, putatively under pressure from an increasingly hostile congregation, they prepare to move to a city. However, it is plain that the congregation and town are nothing like as philistine as Mrs. Bentley insists — neighbourhood boys admiringly lurk outside the manse listening to her practise the piano and the audience for her recital in the church hall is vastly appreciative — but Mrs. Bentley is unmoved in her contempt for them and scornful of their applause for her bravura piano performance. Assuming that they are moving to a mid-sized prairie city in the middle of the Great Depression, Mrs. Bentley's dream of establishing a second-hand bookstore there as a means of escape from their unappealing life in a small town is patently absurd. Judith, who mysteriously has become pregnant, dies shortly after giving birth and the Bentleys adopt her child.
12342181	/m/02v_v_r	The Sacrifice	K. A. Applegate	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During a reconnaissance flight taken by Rachel, Ax, and James, the Animorphs learn that the Yeerks are herding people into the subway system. The subways have been redirected to the Yeerk pool complex, where humans are being infested en mass. Back at the Hork-Bajir valley, Rachel makes her report to Jake. Marco comes up with a plan to use the subway system to destroy the Yeerk pool by loading one of the pool-bound trains with explosives and detonating once the train reaches its destination. Despite some resistance from Cassie, the Animorphs agree to carry out the plan. Later that night, Ax sneaks away from the camp with the zero-space transmitter constructed by Marco's father. Ax contacts the Andalite military and tells them of the Animorphs' plan to destroy the Yeerk pool. The Andalites do not support the plan and feel that the war for Earth is lost. Ax is ordered to sabotage to Animorphs' operation to destroy the Yeerk pool so that the Yeerks will continue concentrating the majority of their forces on Earth, allowing the Andalites to wipe them out more easily. The next morning, the Animorphs finalize their plan to destroy the Yeerk pool. During the meeting, Cassie breaks down and confesses that it was she who allowed Tom to escape with the morphing cube. Despite this realization, the other Animorphs forgive Cassie for her actions and continue planning the operation, with the exception of Ax, who feels a cold hatred towards Cassie for letting Tom take the cube. After the meeting, Ax pulls Cassie aside and asks her to justify her actions. She recalls Aftran 942 and the Yeerk Peace Movement, and speculates that the morphing technology could give the Yeerks a means to abandon their policy of infesting sentient beings and instead morph new bodies. Ax concedes that he encountered a Yeerk who planned to do this on the subway mission, though he also speculates that the Yeerk could have been lying. After speaking with Cassie, Ax talks with Tobias, who voices his support of Cassie's reasoning. Ax decides to disobey his orders and not sabotage the plan to destroy the Yeerk pool. The next night, Ax leads the other Animorphs' parents through the woods towards a National Guard base where the Animorphs hope to steal the explosives they need for their operation. Upon reaching the base's perimeter, the parents pose as lost campers in need of medical attention. The National Guardsmen load them into a truck and drive towards the base, with Marco clinging to the back of the truck in gorilla-morph. The other Animorphs follow as either fleas on Marco or in various bird-of-prey-morphs. Upon reaching the National Guard base, the Animorphs begin searching the various warehouses for the explosives. Once they are found, they begin loading the explosives onto the trucks commandeered by Rachel's mother, Naomi, and Cassie's father, Walter. On their way out, the Guardsmen, alerted by an alarm, halt the trucks. Rachel initially tries to run them down, but is stopped by Ax. Jake and Naomi speak with the Guardsmen's commander, Captain Olston, and explain the situation. The Guardsmen agree to assist the Animorphs in their operation. The Animorphs' parents drive the trucks into the city, where the Animorphs themselves, along with several National Guard troops disable the Yeerk forces guarding the subway station. The Animorphs are forced to fight with several morph-capable Controllers, with several using wolf-morphs (the same battle morph as Cassie). The Guardsmen kill several of the wolves, making Ax fear that Cassie has been killed in a friendly fire incident. Fortunately, Cassie survives the battle and Ax silently reconciles with her. Marco, Ax, and Cassie volunteer to accompany the train to the Yeerk pool, now loaded with explosives. Ax keys the detonator so that the explosives will go off five minutes after reaching the Yeerk pool, giving the Controllers and hosts there time to escape. The subway train jackknifes into the Yeerk pool. Ax, Cassie, and Marco survive due to being in various insect-morphs during the collision. They demorph and warn those in the pool of the situation, and then begin freeing caged-hosts. Visser One briefly emerges to do battle, but leaves after Marco tells him of the impending explosion. Ax, Cassie, and Marco leave the doomed Yeerk pool complex just as the bombs detonate. The Animorphs survey the devastation. The destruction of the Yeerk pool destroys a large area of the Animorphs' home town. Jake privately thanks Ax for his participation, and Ax silently pledges his continued support to his prince. * The Yeerks abandon their infiltration strategy for conquering Earth. * The Yeerk Pool is destroyed.
12342231	/m/02v_w1t	Ellimist Chronicles	K. A. Applegate	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As an unnamed Animorph (later revealed to be Rachel) lies on the brink of death, the Ellimist appears and recounts to her his origins as Azure Level, Seven Spar, Extension Two, Down-Messenger, Forty-One (Toomin) the Ketran and his transfiguration into the Ellimist as a final request to the dying Animorph. The Ketran race was virtually extinguished by the Capasins, who had seen transmissions of violent virtual Ketran games that had been broadcast into space and mistook them for a violent species that meddled with other ones. Toomin/Ellimist was one of the few survivors. These survivors became space nomads, seeking a replacement for their home Ket. Toomin became the leader of this group and was the only survivor when it crash-landed on a mostly aquatic moon. His mind was absorbed and kept alive at the bottom of the sea by a moon spanning entity known as Father that absorbed the information in the brain (or equivalent) of every corpse on it. After defeating Father at music, Toomin began to grow too intelligent for Father and defeated him, incorporating all the memories of corpses on the moon, eventually becoming a blending of minds. After he defeated Father he began to wander the universe without purpose until he started to resolve conflicts and crises under the name Ellimist. The Ellimist worked like this for several thousand years until he encountered the Crayak, who existed to destroy all life in galaxies, a strong antithesis to what the Ellimist had come to stand for. Crayak engaged Ellimist in games that had entire planets at stake. Ellimist did not fare well and lost far more often than he won. Losing motivation to continue fighting the Crayak, the Ellimist temporarily retreated to the Andalite home planet, possibly beginning his worship as an Andalite god. (The Ellimist created the Andalite race after taking bits and pieces from himself and all the people he knew and loved.) The Andalites at the time were not the advanced civilization but a primitive collection of tribes. By living on the planet as an Andalite, the Ellimist learned that the key of survival was to create as many offspring as possible; although so many die, with repeated efforts life could multiply faster than the Crayak could wipe them out. With a renewed vigor, the Ellimist fought the Crayak, creating the Pemalites, creators of the Chee, who spread quickly throughout the galaxy (until they were destroyed by Crayak's own creations, the Howlers). Although, the Crayak eventually destroyed the Ellimist physically by luring him into a black hole, the Ellimist found himself fully integrated into the fabric of space-time. Soon, both the Crayak and the Ellimist recognised direct combat to be much too dangerous for themselves and space-time itself. To prevent such catastrophic damage, the Crayak and the Ellimist agree to construct the intricate "game" they are seen to play in the Animorphs series.
12342237	/m/02v_w2h	Hork-Bajir Chronicles	K. A. Applegate	1998-11		 In the Earth year 1968 (Andalite: 8563.5; Yeerk: Generation 686, early-cycle; Hork-Bajir: late-cool), Aldrea and her family come to live on the Hork-Bajir homeworld after her father -formerly Prince- Seerow, is relieved of duty by Alloran and many other Andalites in 1966, who feel he is no longer fit to command them. This is mainly due to his peaceful philosophy towards the Yeerks, which has resulted in the Yeerks' enslavement of many other species. On the Hork-Bajir homeworld, two Hork-Bajir, Dak Hamee and his friend Jagil Hullan make contact with Aldrea's family, and Aldrea makes friends with Dak. Dak is a seer, meaning he possesses intelligence greater than most others of his species. Aldrea's mother, a biologist, is fascinated with the reptilian, tree-dwelling, peaceful Hork-Bajir, as well as with the other life on the planet. Aldrea herself begins to learn more about Hork-Bajir culture from Dak, and he in turn learns about Andalites. But then tragedy strikes in the form of a Yeerk invasion. Aldrea's entire family is killed, but she escapes—barely—along with Dak. Dak is sickened by his first taste of violence when they are forced to fight Yeerks and Gedd-Controllers. The Yeerks arrive at the enormous tree where the other members of Dak's tribe live, and proceed to enslave every single Hork-Bajir they find. Aldrea and Dak, meanwhile, continue to flee the Yeerks, and they journey down into Father Deep, a huge chasm (the Hork-Bajir believe they were born from Father Deep and Mother Sky). There they meet the Arn, a powerful but arrogant race who created the Hork-Bajir, as well as many other creatures that inhabit their planet. Aldrea convinces the Arn that it is in their best interest to fight back against the Yeerks. Aldrea also urges Dak to round up the remaining Hork-Bajir and train them to fight. Eventually, Dak does so, and he and Aldrea then lead their Hork-Bajir army, along with various monsters and terrifying creatures created by the Arn, against the Yeerks on the ground. In the ensuing bloodbath, Aldrea is disgusted by the carnage, and Dak blames Aldrea for turning his people from innocence and peacefulness towards violence. Dak becomes more distant with Aldrea. After many months, an attack force of Andalite ships appears, though not enough to fight off all the Yeerks. The Andalites, including Alloran, now a powerful leader, join Dak and Aldrea on the ground and take part in their campaign of guerilla warfare against the Yeerks. As their numbers began to dwindle, Alloran becomes desperate and finally resorts to using a biological weapon, a virus which will kill all Hork-Bajir, from the Hork-Bajir-Controllers (whose bodies are being controlled by Yeerks) to all the free Hork-Bajir still alive on the planet. When Aldrea realizes what is about to happen, she betrays Alloran and her fellow Andalites in order to help Dak destroy the virus before it can be employed. In the resulting conflict, the virus is accidentally released into the environment. Aldrea, who had morphed into a female Hork-Bajir (who is actually Delf Hajool, the wife of Jagil Hullan) during the struggle, willingly stays too long in that form and is thus trapped as a Hork-Bajir nothlit. She and Dak realize their love for each other, and the two become a mated pair. They go to live in the deep valleys, where the toxin will not reach for some time. At least one of their descendants will eventually become a founding member of the small Hork-Bajir colony on Earth. About 30 Earth years later, Jara Hamee, Dak and Aldrea's grandson, tells the story of the Yeerk invasion of the Hork-Bajir homeworld to Tobias. Sitting around a campfire at night with other Hork-Bajir, Jara reveals at the end of his story that he and his kalashi, Ket Halpak, have named their daughter Toby after Tobias. Responding to Tobias' comment that it is a strange name for a Hork-Bajir, Jara comments that Toby (like her great-grandfather) is different. As Tobias begins to fly away the next morning, he pauses to ask <When you say Toby is different...,> and Toby (still only four feet tall at this point) replies to him "Yes, Tobias, friend of the Hork-Bajir. Yes, I am different." Tobias is happy to know that she is a seer just like Dak Hamee. (Note: Dak and Aldrea's story would later be extended somewhat further in Animorphs #34, The Prophecy.)
12348925	/m/02w06s8	The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child	Francisco Jimenez	1997	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Francisco Jimenez (author) tells the tale of Panchito (protagonist), a young boy who lived at the small place in Mexico called El Rancho Blanco. The family dreams about living in the place they can earn good income to support their family and live in a house that has electricity and running water, "...that someday we would take a long trip north, cross la frontera, enter California, and leave our poverty behind." So begins this honest and powerful account of a family's journey to the fields of California - to a life of constant moving; from strawberry fields to cotton fields; from tent cities to one-room shacks; from picking grapes to topping carrots and thinning lettuce. As the story moves from one labor camp to the next, the little family of four grows into ten. Impermanence and poverty define their lives. Seen through the eyes of a boy who longs for an education and the right to call one place home, these are a series of stories of survival, faith, and hope. When Francisco and Roberto went to school; they encounter a lot of problems because they cannot understand English. They sat in the corner and looked at a book and translate it to Spanish using the pictures they found. Pancho met a friend named, Miguelito, they hung out more often at school and home. Sadly Francisco loses his friend when Miguelito has to move away from the tent city because his family needs to earn money. Francisco drew a beautiful picture of a butterfly. One cold day, his teacher Miss Scalapino, notices that Pancho doesn’t have a coat. The principal Mr. Sims gives Francisco a jacket from the lost and found. However, the jacket belongs to Curtis, the biggest and the most popular kid in school. Suddenly, Curtis wants the jacket back. Francisco doesn’t understand English and he didn’t know what Curtis was saying. The two get into a fight. Francisco was embarrassed after the fight and he stop participating in class. One of his friends told him that he is brave for standing up to Curtis. One day, Miss Scalapino announces that Francisco’s picture of the butterfly won in the exhibit. Francisco noticed that the cocoon was breaking out. Francisco opens the jar and set the butterfly free. After school, Curtis wanted to see the picture and he said that Francisco is a good artist. Francisco gives the picture to Curtis as a sign of peace offering. Soon, the immigration officer arrived at Francisco’s school (a few years later) and Mr. Denevi announces that Francisco and his family are being deported back to Mexico.
12352904	/m/02w0gtd	The Potter of Charles Street				 The story takes place during the Vietnam War and is set on "the island", a nameless island north of Boston. In the first part the reader meets Eve, the narrator. She is a twelve-year-old who tries to believe in God, but finds it very difficult to do so. Her father has been injured in World War II and is unable to display any affection; her mother had a hard home life and eloped with Eve's father at sixteen; her fifteen-year-old sister Chantel has several boyfriends and thinks that Eve is "weird" for having a close but unromantic friendship with Bobby, a boy in her class. Bobby's father is killed in Vietnam and he moves to Florida, which is the final straw for Eve. She loses all faith in God. The second part opens the following year. Eve is now at junior high and thoroughly disliking it. Her mother suggests that she join Chantel in a modelling course in Boston that summer to "do something different" and "make her feel good about herself". Eve reluctantly goes to the first class and is so humiliated by the teacher that she walks out on her own, with the intention of leaving home. While wandering through the streets trying to think what to do next, she encounters the Charles Street Pottery. The owner of the shop, Mike, takes Eve inside and encourages her to tell him her problems. Mike advises Eve to go home and face the difficulties there rather than trying to run away from it all. He then promises Eve that the next time she is in Boston, he will give her pottery lessons. Eve does not tell her parents anything about this, fearing that they will forbid her to see a man that they do not know. As Eve keeps returning to the shop, she and Mike develop a deep and close friendship. Eve realises that Mike is not only teaching her pottery, but a lot about "herself, God, life and love". Rather than handing out advice, he allows Eve to grow and think for herself, and encourages her, without being didactic, to tell the truth to herself and others. Eve's lost faith in God begins to be restored. Meanwhile, Chantel runs away with her drama teacher, causing a great scandal at her school. Her mother is devastated, but realises that that is exactly what she did at Chantel's age and blames herself for making life hard for Chantel. Eve makes a vow not to sneak off to see Mike behind her mother's back, but cannot keep herself from doing so. Some months later Chantel returns to her parents' house, with her lover. Her father is furious and works himself up so much that he has a heart attack. Eve makes up her mind that she will go to Mike's shop for the last time, explain everything and tell him that they cannot see each other again - "Mum needed me. Mike didn't." However, when she arrives, she cannot find the right words, and her secret of two years bursts out - she is in love with Mike. Mike does not feel the same way, although he assures Eve that they have a very good friendship. Eve is distraught, confused and angry at herself. Gradually, Eve begins to understand better all that Mike has taught her, about trusting, believing and accepting changes as necessary and healthy. Her father dies in her arms of another heart attack, and at that moment she finally understands his pain and fear of dying. A few months later, Mike arrives at her house with his fiancée, whom he has only recently met. Eve takes this very hard, but her mother advises her to move on - "Mike has his own life to live, and you have yours." Eventually, Eve's pain lessens, and she remembers instead everything that Mike gave her during their friendship. Near the end she decides: "I will choose to love". On that same day she meets Bobby in the street - after years of hearing nothing from him, he has returned to the island. As Eve "remember[s] what seemed like another lifetime", their friendship is rekindled.
12354773	/m/02w0m2z	Elfsorrow	James Barclay		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Raven travel to a new continent in search of mages to help rebuild the ruined college of Julatsa. However, they find themselves in the midst of a cursed plague that threatens to wipe out the elven race.
12356464	/m/02w0qq3	The Sarcophagi of the Sixth Continent, Volume 1: The Universal Threat		2003		 In 1958, many nations chaff under colonial rule, with several groups looking to throw off the yoke of such rule, sometimes with the aid of the Soviets. In a flash back, we find a young Mortimer, just before going to college, returning to Indian to visit his parents. There he also meets a young Blake, and tries to rekindle a boyhood friendship with a native Indian. He also meets Princess Gita, the daughter of the resurrected "Ashoka the Great" which ends tragically, making a future enemy of him. In 1958, Blake and Mortimer visit the Universal Exposition (World Fair) in Brussels, as Mortimer is involved with the planning of the UK pavilion. But they have to contend with an attack by unknown terrorists using a mysterious force. The terrorists are led by "Ashoka", and using Colonel Olrik.
12356493	/m/02w0qrv	The Sarcophagi of the Sixth Continent, Volume 2: Battle of the Minds		2004		 When the opening of the Brussels World Fair is threatened by the supernatural devastations of various buildings, Blake, Mortimer and Nasir travel to the Antarctic to discover the mysterious origins of the terrible electrical destructions. But they are unaware of the terrible secret hidden beneath the ice of the 6th Continent.
12356526	/m/03by1dn	The Curse of the Thirty Denarii		2009-11-20		 Volume I: In Pennsylvania, Olrik escapes a federal prison by helicopter after a bloody attack. With Blake forced to cut short his holidays at the news, a disappointed Mortimer turns his attention to Greece, where an earthquake has uncovered an ancient chapel. Before long, people are trying to kill Mortimer over a mysterious Roman silver coin. Could the long-lost relic be one of the 30 denarii paid to Judas for his betrayal of Jesus? And who exactly covets it so much? Volume II: Captured and then abandoned by Olrik, Mortimer is now lost at sea with no provisions. Fortunately, he can always count on Blake. Once reunited, and with the help of some old friends, the two British gentlemen continue their dangerous mission to stop Von Stahl from resurrecting the Third Reich using the evil power of the 30 pieces of silver… a mission that will take them throughout Greece and into the very Kingdom of Hades!
12356567	/m/03by1f0	The Gondwana Shrine				 Several months after their adventures in Antarctica, Blake and Mortimer are back in England. Still somewhat shaken after his ordeal, the professor is ordered by his doctor to get some rest. In typical Mortimer fashion, he decides to spend his holidays in Africa… looking for a lost civilisation! Accompanied by Nastasia Wardynska and an old flame of his, he begins tracking down a culture that is older than any ever recorded—but someone is dogging their every step…
12358581	/m/02w0w31	When Heaven and Earth Changed Places	Phung Le Ly Hayslip	1989-04-29	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The story began during Hayslip's childhood in a small village in central Vietnam, named Ky La. Her village was along the fault line between the north and south of Vietnam, with shifting allegiances in the village leading to constant tension. She and her friends worked as lookout for the northern Vietcong. The South Vietnamese learned of her work, arrested and tortured her. After Hayslip was released from prison, however, the Vietcong no longer trusted her and sentenced her to death. At the age of fourteen, two soldiers threatened to kill her in the forest. Once they arrived, both men decided to rape her instead. She fled to Da Nang where she worked as a maid, a black-market vendor, a waitress, a hospital worker and even a prostitute. While working for a wealthy Vietnamese family with her mother in Saigon, Hayslip had a few sexual encounters with the landlord, Anh, and discovered she was pregnant. She gave birth to a baby son at the age of fifteen. Several years later, she married an American contractor named Ed Munro and gave birth to another son. Hayslip left for San Diego, California in 1970, shortly after her 20th birthday. Hayslip's entire family was torn apart by the war: one brother fled to Hanoi, and did not see his family again for 20 years. Another brother was killed by a land mine. The Vietcong pressured her father to force Hayslip to become a saboteur. Rather than give into the pressure, he committed suicide. The memoir alternates between her childhood in Vietnam, and her return in 1986, to visit the friends and family she had not seen for so long. In Vietnam she was reunited with the father of her first child, her sisters, brother, and her mother. Her family were afraid to be seen with her because the tensions from the war was still present. Her memoir concludes with a plea for an end to the enmity between the Vietnamese and Americans.
12361763	/m/02w119d	Critical	Robin Cook	2007	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Angela Dawson, M.D., M.B.A. appears to have it all: at the age of thirty-seven, she owns a fabulous New York City apartment, a stunning seaside house on Nantucket, and enjoys the perks of her prosperous lifestyle. But her climb to the top was rough, marked by a troubled childhood, a failed marriage, and the devastating blow of bankruptcy as a primary-care internist. Painfully aware of the role of economics in modern life, particularly in the health-care field, Angela returned to school to earn an MBA. Armed with a shiny new degree and blessed with determination, intelligence, and impeccable timing, Angela founded a start-up company, Angels Healthcare, then took it public. With her controlling interest in three busy specialty hospitals in New York City and plans for others in Miami and Los Angeles, Angela's future looked very bright. Then a surge of drug-resistant staph infections in all three hospitals devastates Angela's carefully constructed world. Not only do the infections result in patient deaths, but the fatalities also cause stock prices to tumble, leaving market analysts wondering if Angela will be able to hold her empire together. New York City medical examiners Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton are naturally intrigued by the uptick in staph-related post-procedure deaths. Aside from their own professional curiosity, there's a personal stake as well: Laurie and Jack are newly married, and Jack is facing surgery to repair a torn ligament at Angels Orthopedic Hospital. Despite Jack's protests, Laurie can't help investigating-opening a Pandora's box of corporate intrigue that threatens not just her livelihood, but her life with Jack as well.
12362015	/m/02w11nr	Crisis	Robin Cook	2006	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Dr. Craig Bowman is served with a summons for medical malpractice, he's shocked, enraged, and more than a little humiliated. A devoted physician who works continuously in the service of others, he endured grueling years of training and is now a partner in an exclusive concierge medical practice. No longer forced to see more and more patients while spending less and less time with each one just to keep his office door open, he now provides the kind of medical care he is trained to do, lavishing twenty-four-hour availability and personalized attention on his handpicked patients. And at last, he is earning a significant income, no longer burdened by falling reimbursements from insurance companies. But this idyllic practice comes to a grinding halt one sunny afternoon—and gets much, much worse. Enter Dr. Jack Stapleton, a medical examiner in New York City and Bowman's brother-in-law: Jack's sister Alexis—now Craig's estranged wife—tearfully begs for his help as her husband's trial drags on. Jack agrees to travel to Boston to offer his forensic services and expert witness experience to Craig's beleaguered defense attorney. But when Jack's irreverent suggestion to exhume the corpse to disprove the alleged malpractice is taken seriously, he opens a Pandora's box of trouble. As Craig Bowman's life and career are put on the line, Jack is on the verge of making a most unwelcome discovery of tremendous legal and medical significance—and there are people who will do anything to keep him from learning the truth.
12365784	/m/02w18rb	But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes	Anita Loos			 The sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, is also narrated by Lorelei, the bubbly blonde, however she tells the tale of her friend. Dorothy, a bright talented young woman, grew up in a carnival company; she is discovered by Charlie, who helps her find her way to New York City as a young woman. In New York she is introduced to a broker who is to introduce her to Mr. Ziegfeld, so that she might have a chance at becoming one of the Ziegfeld Follies. The broker is thrown off by Dorothy's unique style and personality and does little to refer her to Mr.Ziegfeld. Dorothy takes matters into her own hands and waits outside Mr.Ziegfeld's office and lands the position without any help. Dorothy marries Lester, a saxophone player from the Follies, she soon finds that marriage is not everything she wanted it to be... "It is the bright ideas that keep home fires burning and prevent a divorce from taking the bloom off a romance". -Anita Loos, 1927 *Dorothy- Protagonist, an eccentric young woman with lots of talent, wit and independence. *Charlie- Discovered Dorothy when she was in a reform school after leaving the circus. Dorothy&#39;s second husband. *Mr.Ziegfeld- The founder of the famous Ziegfeld Follies, gives Dorothy a job. *Lester- saxophone player, marries Dorothy *Gloria- Dorothy&#39;s friend *Jerry- violent background, hired to kill Lester *Claude- Dorothy&#39;s new lover
12367026	/m/02w19zw	Beatniks	Toby Litt		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mary (a recent graduate from University) meets Jack, Maggie and Neal at a party and learns that despite it being The UK of 1995, they yearn for the life of a Beatnik in 1960s America. Fascinated by the group (especially the handsome, if difficult Jack) she embarks on an adventure with them, finding both love and tragedy on the way.
12369660	/m/02w1g6c	Land of the Headless	Adam Roberts	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story focuses upon the experiences of Jon Cavala, a poet on the religiously fundamentalist planet of Pluse. He is beheaded for the crime of rape although this is subsequently revealed to be simply consensual sexual intercourse outside of marriage that the authorities have deemed 'rape'. This being a future civilisation, beheading does not kill Cavala. Instead his 'brain' or, it is hinted, his mind state is placed inside a computer-like device called an 'Ordinator.' He sees and hears via robotic prostheses but cannot smell or taste. After his decapitation he is released into a world that regards the headless as the lowest of the low. A headed volunteer charity worker named Siuzan Delage helps Cavala adjust to his new state. She agrees to accompany him on a trek across a desert to a town more accepting of the headless. Cavala and Delage are joined on this trek by two other headless, Mark Pol and Gymnaste. Gymnaste is a timid soul but Mark Pol is immediately annoying and arrogant from the point of view of Cavala. Arriving at their destination, Delage disappears and the three headless are immediately arrested and questioned, as there is evidence that Delage has been raped. All three vehemently deny this, though Cavala suspects Mark Pol of raping Delage. Through a fight and the obvious hatred of the police inspector, Cavala finds himself enlisted in the army. Before he leaves the police station he is told that it is likely Delage herself will be beheaded as she will not name the perpetrator of her rape and thus will be convicted of 'rape' (this being consensual sex outside of marriage). The army possess devices that trigger extreme pain in the headless through their ordinator and Cavala and his contemporaries soon learn discipline. They are sent to a world named Black Athena and go into combat in the Sugar War. Many months later, returning to Pluse from Black Athena, Cavala finds a menial job and searches for Delage to atone for her beheading. He succeeds in tracking her down (she is indeed headless) and they fall in love. They plan to move to a nearby town with many more headless living there. The night before they are due to move, Cavala runs into Mark Pol, who he has long suspected of raping Delage (Delage is still unforthcoming regarding this event). Cavala threatens to kill Mark Pol, who re-iterates that Cavala cannot trust himself as he is a 'rapist' and it is probably Cavala himself who raped Delage. Cavala leaves Mark Pol, thinking that indeed it might be possible. However, he runs into Delage and she has her head. It transpires that his betrothed headless Delage has been pretending to be the real Delage but has genuinely fallen in love with him anyway. After another run-in with the Police Inspector, Cavala and the headless Delage run away to a remote location and, it is hinted, start planning a headless uprising against the uncaring society that has decapitated them.
12374576	/m/02w1snj	Mainspring	Jay Lake		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Mainspring is the story of a young clockmaker's apprentice, who is visited by the Archangel Gabriel. He is told that he must take the Key Perilous and rewind the Mainspring of the Earth. It is running down, and disaster to the planet will ensue if it's not rewound. From innocence and ignorance to power and self-knowledge, the young man will make the long and perilous journey to the South Polar Axis, to fulfill the commandment of his God.
12379558	/m/02w1_4y	Letters From Rifka	Karen Hesse		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 1919, Rifka, and her family must flee Russia to avoid persecution; Rifka tells her story in a series of letters to a cousin she must leave behind, written in the blank spaces of an edition of Pushkin's poetry. Rifka, her parents, and her brothers, Nathan and Saul, escape Russia, hoping to join the three older sons who have been living in America for years. Along the way, they face cruel officials, typhus, hunger, theft, ringworm, and a separation that threatens to keep Rifka from ever rejoining her family. She is constantly reminded she must be clever and brave, but her true salvation can only come when she learns compassion. While she is stranded at Ellis Island, she finds she has a talent for nursing and for literature; she also helps fight injustice. She realizes that the journey itself has turned her into an American and she confidently faces the immigration trial.
12391692	/m/02w2y7j	The Rock Jockeys	Gary Paulsen	1995-03-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about three young boys, the Rock Jockeys, who set out to climb dangerous Devil's Wall hoping to find the remains of a World War II bomber. Once atop the mountain, they find the bomber and his hidden diary.
12392384	/m/02w2yzk	Danger on Midnight River	Gary Paulsen	1995-07-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about Daniel Martin who gets made fun of a lot because he isn't the brightest kid in school. But when he and his classmates get stranded in the wilderness, Daniel saves the day.
12392713	/m/02w2zg2	The Forger	Paul Watkins	2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When David Halifax arrives in Paris in 1939, he finds it a remarkable place, although artists are generally frowned upon and seen as idlers. His classes begin in an atlier, where Halifax is surprised to find only two other students, besides himself, sketching a picture of a nude woman posed on a stool. The teacher, a Russian named Alexander Pankratov, presents himself begrudgingly and carries himself around in an aloof and harshly critical manner yet possesses an unquestioned authority over whomever he meets. The other students introduce themselves, and warn Halifax that Pankratov may be a little deranged because of his eccentricities. The woman on the stool they are sketching is named Valya. She is about the only person who Pankratov seems to allow to do as they please. Later, Halifax learns that Valya is the adopted daughter of Pankratov, who was entrusted with her by his best friend during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Pankratov was an officer in the Tsar Nicholas II's White Army, but did not learn of his defeat until many years later. Valya harbors a deep-rooted dislike for Pankratov, yet displays obedience and praises his artistic genius. Halifax quickly tires of Pankratov's repeated insistence in sketching every day, and seeks time to complete his own works. He is successful in having Fleury sell some of his sketches, but is alarmed when he learns that Fleury has lied to the buyers, selling his reproductions as originals. While the fraud is forgotten, Halifax adapts well to Parisian life. Strangely, Pankratov has taken a liking in Halifax's sketches, and comments well on them. Balard and Marie-Claire reveal that Pankratov has never commended their work before. As Halifax falls into the routine of sketching, painting, and dining at the local cafe, there is much talk of the approaching war. He refuses to leave the city, believing that the Germans will never pass the French defense of the Maginot Line. The enemy, however, has maneuvered into the Ardennes Forest, completely bypassing the French line, and quickly pierces into Paris. Pankratov urges Halifax to leave when he still can, but Halifax refuses. One night, he and Fleury are arrested by a policeman named Tombeau on charges of fraud. Tombeau takes them to meet with Pankratov at the police station. Pankratov reveals that he, and the local cafe owner, are the mysterious Levasseur Committee, and that he has brought Halifax to Paris to teach him to forge art. Pankratov reveals that the Germans have burned hundreds of priceless originals during the war so far, and that he and Halifax, with the assistance of Fleury, are to impeccably forge originals, and to trade these to the Germans in return for their original paintings that otherwise would be destroyed. Halifax is shocked, and has no choice but to comply. The Germans arrive, and have seized control of the government. With them comes Dietrich, a ruthless collector for the Nazi government responsible for stockpiling art. A competitor, the ambassador to Paris named Abetz, is also in the process of acquiring art but for personal use. Halifax and Fluery meet with both men, and for several months trade forgeries for original paintings. Dietrich and Abetz detest each other immensely, and when Dietrich finds that Abetz has acquired a very valuable work, has him killed by Tombeau, who is masquerading as a gangster on the inside working for the Germans. For the next few years until the end of the war, Halifax and Fleury deal with solely with Dietrich, who has a French appraiser with him to look at the works. The appraiser can somehow see through the forgeries, but because of the frequent and acrid insults Dietrich throws at him, remains silent. On one instance, however, where Dietrich was given a real original painting as part of the plan to keep suspicion at bay, his appraiser tells him that it is a fraud. Dietrich has Halifax and Fleury arrested and taken to a torture chamber, but spares them when they agree to return the paintings that he had traded for the 'fraud'. Halifax feels bitter irony at seeing the only original labeled as a fake. The war tables start to turn when the Allied Forces invade Normandy. German officers are not as prevalent around Paris, and Dietrich begins to worry. Adolf Hitler has requested a specific original, a Johannes Vermeer painting named The Astronomer. Dietrich agrees to trade sixty originals, with works from such artists as Picasso, for the Astronomer. Halifax and Pankratov forge what was seen as impossible to copy, and deliver the painting on the day that all chaos has broken loose in Paris. Unknown to Halifax, Dietrich killed Fleury because he thought that Halifax had lied. Dietrich runs off with the painting, which never emerged again. He left the keys to a vault in which the sixty originals were hidden. Pankratov finds the only remaining painting that he had created, which was a portrait of Valya as a little girl. He clutches it, but when Tombeau arrives with his gangsters that he had been working with, and tells Halifax and Pankratov to leave the painting and run. The paintings are stolen by the gangsters, and most are never seen again. The story ends with Halifax returning to the United States after the war, and starting a family when he becomes an art teacher. He stays in touch with Pankratov, who dies some years later. Pankratov's sole surviving masterpiece emerges in an art auction, in which Halifax wins the painting in a bidding war with an unknown party. Halifax assumes that it is Dietrich, who has survived the war.
12392890	/m/02w2zm7	Hook 'Em Snotty!	Gary Paulsen	1995-05-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is about Bobbie Walker whose cousin Alex has come from the city to visit their grandpa's ranch, but they take an immediate dislike to one another. When the cousins cross paths with the wild bull Diablo and the nasty Bledsoe boys, they must find a way to get along or it could be the end of them both.
12393037	/m/02w2zqb	The Gorgon Slayer	Gary Paulsen	1995-09-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is about Warren Trumbull who lives in a world where mythological creatures are a fact and often a nuisance. Warren works for an eight-foot Cyclops, Princey, who runs an agency that specializes in dealing with mythological creature removal. Today Warren and his friend Rick are assigned the task of killing a Gorgon residing in the basement of Helga Thorenson.
12393224	/m/02w2zv3	Captive!	Gary Paulsen	1995-11-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is about Roman Sanchez and his classmates who are kidnapped by masked gunmen and threatened with death unless they are paid ransom money.
12395051	/m/02w311_	The World Without Us	Alan Weisman	2007-07-10	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is divided into 27 chapters, with a prelude, coda, bibliography and index. Each chapter deals with a new topic, such as the potential fates of plastics, petroleum infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and artworks. It is written from the point of view of a science journalist with explanations and testimonies backing his predictions. There is no unifying narrative, cohesive single-chapter overview, or thesis. Weisman's thought experiment pursues two themes: how nature would react to the disappearance of humans and what legacy humans would leave behind. To foresee how other life could continue without humans, Weisman reports from areas where the natural environment exists with little human intervention, like the Białowieża Forest, the Kingman Reef, and the Palmyra Atoll. He interviews biologist E. O. Wilson and visits with members of the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement at the Korean Demilitarized Zone where few humans have penetrated since 1953. He tries to conceive how life may evolve by describing the past evolution of pre-historic plants and animals, but notes Douglas Erwin's warning that "we can't predict what the world will be 5 million years later by looking at the survivors". Several chapters are dedicated to megafauna, which Weisman predicts would proliferate. He profiles soil samples from the past 200 years and extrapolates concentrations of heavy metals and foreign substances into a future without industrial inputs. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and implications for climatic change are likewise examined. With material from previous articles, Weisman uses the fate of the Mayan civilization to illustrate the possibility of an entrenched society vanishing and how the natural environment quickly conceals evidence. To demonstrate how vegetation could compromise human built infrastructure, Weisman interviewed hydrologists and employees at the Panama Canal, where constant maintenance is required to keep the jungle vegetation and silt away from the dams. To illustrate abandoned cities succumbing to nature, Weisman reports from Chernobyl, Ukraine (abandoned in 1986) and Varosha, Cyprus (abandoned in 1974). Weisman finds that their structures crumble as weather does unrepaired damage and other life forms create new habitats. In Turkey, Weisman contrasts the construction practices of the rapidly growing Istanbul, as typical for large cities in less developed countries, with the underground cities in Cappadocia. Due to a large demand for housing in Istanbul much of it was developed quickly with whatever material was available and could collapse in a major earthquake or other natural disaster. Cappadocian underground cities were built thousands of years ago out of volcanic tuff, and are likely to survive for centuries to come. Weisman uses New York City as a model to outline how an unmaintained urban area would deconstruct. He explains that sewers would clog, underground streams would flood subway corridors, and soils under roads would erode and cave in. From interviews with members of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the New York Botanical Gardens Weisman predicts that native vegetation would return, spreading from parks and out-surviving invasive species. Without humans to provide food and warmth, rats and cockroaches would die off. Weisman explains that a common house would begin to fall apart as water eventually leaks into the roof around the flashings, erodes the wood and rusts the nails, leading to sagging walls and eventual collapse. After 500 years all that would be left would be aluminum dishwasher parts, stainless steel cookware, and plastic handles. The longest-lasting evidence on Earth of a human presence would be radioactive materials, ceramics, bronze statues, and Mount Rushmore. In space, the Pioneer plaques, the Voyager Golden Record, and radio waves would outlast the Earth itself. Breaking from the theme of the natural environment after humans, Weisman considers what could lead to the sudden, complete demise of humans without serious damage to the built and natural environment. That scenario, he concludes, is extremely unlikely. He also considers transhumanism, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, the Church of Euthanasia and John A. Leslie's The End of the World: the Science and Ethics of Human Extinction. Weisman concludes the book considering a new version of the one-child policy. While he admits it is a "draconian measure", he states, "The bottom line is that any species that overstretches its resource base suffers a population crash. Limiting our reproduction would be damn hard, but limiting our consumptive instincts may be even harder." He responded to criticism of this saying "I knew in advance that I would touch some people's sensitive spots by bringing up the population issue, but I did so because it's been missing too long from the discussion of how we must deal with the situation our economic and demographic growth have driven us too (sic)".
12403253	/m/02w3p7q	Soon I Will Be Invincible	Austin Grossman	2007-06-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03c6vbs": "Superhero fiction"}	 After CoreFire, the world's greatest superhero, goes missing, the former superteam The Champions re-unite to investigate his disappearance, bringing in two new replacement heroines, Lily and Fatale. They immediately suspect CoreFire's archnemesis, Dr. Impossible, was involved, even though he has been incarcerated in a maximum security prison since his defeat by Damsel during his twelfth world domination attempt. An interrogation by two novice heroes about CoreFire's disappearance gives Dr. Impossible the chance to escape and initiate a new attempt at world domination. The New Champions search for Impossible, convinced he is responsible for CoreFire's demise, while he gathers the materials needed to advance his plan. This is intercut with flashbacks to earlier times and his origin, as well as reflections on other paths he could have taken in life. Fatale observes the actions of the New Champions as its newest member. She feels uncomfortable replacing a popular, deceased member and unworthy of belonging to a superhero group, but she proves herself to be highly competent and earns the respect of her teammates. Fatale's closest friend on the team is another new member, Lily, a reformed supervillain and former girlfriend of Dr. Impossible. Fatale contrasts Dr. Impossible's flashbacks by having no memory of her life before the accident in Brazil that made her a cyborg, with her exposition coming from her new experiences with the other superheroes. During the investigation, she discovers that the corporation that transformed her into a cyborg was a front for Dr. Impossible during one of his previous plans. The climax is reached on Dr. Impossible's island, as he attempts to start a controlled Ice Age, making him Earth's ruler and only source of energy. He almost succeeds, using the hammer formerly belonging to the supervillain The Pharaoh to defeat the New Champions. CoreFire suddenly returns but is also unsuccessful against Dr. Impossible. Lily, who had quit the team earlier, eventually returns and defeats Dr. Impossible. Lily reveals that she is actually Erica Lowenstein, Dr. Impossible's childhood crush before his transformation and frequent kidnapee when she was the girlfriend of CoreFire.
12403640	/m/02w3q5m	Touch Me	James Moloney	2000	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Summary appearing on the 2000 paperback edition: For Xavier McLachlan, Rugby is life. Winning a 1st XV jersey means everything... Until he meets Nuala Magee. Has there ever been a girl like her? She's feisty, she's troubled, she's dangerous. What will his mates think? Does he even care? Everything looks different now. Xavier McLachlan is in love. Copyright James Moloney 2000. Touch Me tells the story of a young Australian named Xavier McLachlan, who is in his final year of high school. A keen sportsman, his aim for the year is to be selected in the school Rugby team and help his friends and team mates win the first premiership in twenty years. All is going according to plan until he meets Nuala Magee, an unusual girl with her own agenda. (She is cross-dressing and acts in a deliberately confrontational manner towards boys.) Xavier is intrigued by her and against the advice of his friends, becomes very close to her, eventually starting a relationship with her. Xavier also befriends a new boy, Alex Murray and this friendship helps Xavier begin to change his ideas about what it means to be a man. The tension between Xavier and his friends begins to isolate him and when he betrays Nuala out of weakness, and a tragedy befalls Alex Murray, he is faced with difficult decisions about who he is and what he holds most dear.
12408972	/m/02w419v	Disturbing the Peace	Richard Yates	1975	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A prototypical Yatesian dreamer, John C. Wilder is a bored but successful salesman of advertising space, living in New York who seeks refuge from the disappointments of his life in alcohol and adultery. He breaks down during a distillers' convention. Lacking sleep and the worse for alcohol upon his return to New York, he threatens his family. His friend, Paul Borg, has him committed to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital in New York. Upon his release he seeks help from his family, psychiatrists, and AA meetings, all of whom he subsequently rejects. With the encouragement of a mistress, Pamela Hendricks, Wilder renews himself through their common love of movies and the prospect of making a film about his institutionalization. After a group of enthusiastic college students embrace his story and partially film his screenplay, Wilder leaves his family and job to move to Hollywood in the hopes of securing a deal that will complete and distribute the film. The loss of his mistress and the rejection he suffers from producers leads him even deeper into an abyss of paranoid alcoholic delusion. The novel ends with Wilder wandering the streets of Los Angeles, declaring himself to be Jesus Christ (mirroring a delusional incident in Yates' own life), and being recommitted to an institution.
12412628	/m/02w48vp	A Right to Die	Rex Stout	1964-10-22	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is set against the background of the Civil Rights Act conflict in the Johnson Administration. At the beginning of the book, Paul Whipple, a black character from the earlier novel Too Many Cooks (1938), whose trust Wolfe had gained against a strong West Virginia atmosphere of prejudice, comes to tell Wolfe that Wolfe has since become his hero, and that he has also achieved the dream, stated in the earlier novel, of becoming an anthropologist. He has come, however, to draw upon the favor he did Wolfe 26 years earlier, by asking Wolfe to prevent his son Dunbar Whipple from marrying a rich white girl, Susan Brooke, with whom he is apparently in love. While denying that he is not opposed, in principle at least, to mixed-race couples, Paul Whipple thinks that sensible rich white girls do not fall in love with poor black men, even if the rich white girl is working for a black civil rights organization in New York, the Rights of Citizens Committee. Wolfe is loath to interfere in the matter, but agrees to at least learn what he can about the true motivations of the socialite girlfriend and why she would be interested in a Negro boyfriend to settle the debt he owes Whipple. Before the real mystery story gets underway, Stout allows some give and take on the concept of racism being a two-way street: blacks preferring their own as much as whites. Archie arranges a meeting with Susan Brooke through his girlfriend Lily Rowan, but is unable to form a conclusion as to her motives. Wolfe has him fly to Racine, Wisconsin, Susan's hometown, to do research on her background. He discovers little except for an incident where a man who wanted to marry her, Richard Ault, shot himself on her front porch after she turned him down. He is doing more research when Wolfe suddenly calls him back to New York: Susan Brooke has been brutally murdered in her Harlem apartment. Dunbar Whipple is the prime suspect for the murder, and Wolfe agrees to work on his behalf. Wolfe focuses his investigation on Dunbar and Susan's co-workers at the Rights of Citizens Committee over the objections of Whipple's lawyer Harold Oster, who is also the ROCC's counsel. Those interviewed include the organization's founder Thomas Henchly, Susan's superior Cass Faison, Rae Kallmann and Maud Jordan, two white volunteers, and Beth Tiger, a black stenographer Archie takes immediate interest in. Susan's family is also interviewed, and it becomes apparent that they are bigots who consider her involvement with Civil Rights a "kink" and do not believe she could have been engaged to Dunbar. Her sister-in-law Dolly is particularly vitriolic and Archie takes an instant dislike to her. The family claims that Susan was actually engaged to a white car dealer named Paul Vaughan. Saul Panzer discovers that Dolly Brooke lied about her alibi the night of the murder by interviewing a garage attendant who saw her take her car out an hour before the murder took place. They cannot prove it because the witness refuses to testify, but stumble upon a lucky break when Paul Vaughn, riddled with guilt, confesses to Archie that he lied to the Police to firm up Dolly's alibi. Mrs. Brooke is confronted and admits that she went to Susan's apartment, but she could not get in because no one answered her knock. This indicates that Susan was already dead at 8:45, long before Dunbar Whipple arrived at the apartment. Her evidence clears him, but Wolfe elects not to use it because that would not only endanger his source, Paul Vaughan, but would complicate matters by destroying the lead he has on the police. Several days later, Vaughan calls Archie, telling him that he may have more information but that he has to do some checking on it first. The next day he is found dead, shot multiple times. When it emerges that Vaughan went to the ROCC the day before for information on Susan and Dunbar, Wolfe brings the key players to his office for another interview to prevent them from being arrested as Material Witnesses. It is during this interview that Wolfe realizes that the key to the case lies in the unusual frequency of a diphthong in the names of those involved. It will take another trip to the Midwest for Archie (this time to Evansville, Indiana) before the case is solved. The use of Paul Whipple as a character in a 1964 Nero Wolfe novel was problematic, since Rex Stout never allowed his recurring characters to age. Whipple was a young man in Too Many Cooks, but had aged 26 years and was a middle-aged academic in A Right to Die. In all this time, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin miraculously remained the same age, but Whipple never noticed or mentioned this oddity.
12412992	/m/02w492m	Windhaven	Lisa Tuttle		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Maris is a young peasant girl who lives with her mother on the remote island Lesser Amberly. Her father, a fisherman, was killed an unspecified number of years before and Maris hardly remembers him. Though Maris and her mother survive mostly as scavenging "clam-diggers," they also collect refuse that washes onto the nearby beaches after violent coastal storms. Early one morning, Maris and her mother rise from bed and scour the beaches near their hovel for valuables after a particularly brutal tempest. Maris's search is largely fruitless and she recovers little. Afterward, however, she has a pivotal encounter with one of Windhaven's resident flyers. Lesser Amberly itself is home to three flyers, one of whom, an adult male named Russ, lands on the shore near where Maris has concluded her search. Maris timidly approaches Russ and, during the chance meeting, he treats her with kindness and she, in turn, reveals to him that her most ardent wish is to become one of Windhaven's flyers. Maris, now a young adult, has been adopted by Russ who, because of serious injury, was forced to give up his life as a flyer. Customarily, flyer-wings always pass to the oldest biological child of an established flyer. At the time of Russ's injury, however, Russ and his wife had no children. So Russ, in response to Maris's enthusiasm, trained her and then granted her the right to wear his own wings. Since then, Maris has been acting as one of Lesser Amberly's three resident flyers by ferrying messages across the oceans and between Windhaven's colonies. But, shortly after Maris was entrusted with the wings, Russ's wife gave birth to a son, Coll. Coll has just turned thirteen and it is traditional that at thirteen young flyers "come of age" and replace their parents as the ceremonial owners of the family wings. In this case, Coll is set to take Russ's wings back from Maris as her claim is universally considered to be inferior to Coll's own. However, Maris strongly desires to keep the wings for a number of reasons, and namely because Coll has failed to prove that he is, or ever will become, a competent flyer. Additionally, unbeknownst to Russ, it is actually Coll's dream to become a traveling singer. Things are further complicated because Maris loves Coll both as a sister and as a mother—the latter being a role she gradually took on after Russ's wife died in childbirth. As a result, Maris, knowing that her desire to keep the wings is unrecognized by the ancient "flyer code," ultimately wants what will be best for Coll. Matters are later put back in Maris's hands, however, when, on the day Coll is to officially take the wings and become Lesser Amberley's newest flyer, he accidentally commits a grievous piloting error in a demonstration flight and suffers from the jarring effects of a botched landing in front of Maris, Russ, and many of the important citizens of Lesser Amberly. Coll then refuses to take over stewardship of the wings, and he reveals to Russ that he will pursue a life as a singer and musician. Russ responds by angrily disowning both Maris and Coll, and the wings are confiscated by one of Lesser Amberley's other flyers, Corm. Corm soon lets it be known that he intends to give the wings to a flyer from a neighboring village, as he maintains that Maris never had a claim on the wings to begin with. Maris decides she must act quickly if she is to have any chance to get the wings back. In the night, she steals the wings from Corm and flies to another island. There she hands the wings over to the flyer Dorrel. Maris intends to have Dorrel call a "flyer's council"—a rare meeting of nearly all of Windhaven's flyers—in order to prove that she deserves the right to wear the wings. However, a flyer arrives and notifies Dorrel that Corm has already called for a council to be held. Soon after, at the council, Corm argues that Maris should be declared an outlaw and thus be forced into exile for the theft of the wings. But Maris responds to Corm's attacks skillfully, and she succeeds in convincing the other flyers that the family-based system of wing-inheritance is unfair and archaic. The council then votes in favor of measures allowing for the creation of flyer academies, where any of Windhaven's citizens may learn to fly, and an annual flying competition, during which aspiring flyers will be allowed to compete for a chance to win their own wings from real flyers. The council also leniently honors Maris's request to keep Russ's wings. The middle chapter of Windhaven resumes some years after part one and documents several of Maris's attempts to help persons without flyer lineage, or "one-wings," as they've become colloquially known in the colonies, train for the chance to compete for their own wings. Maris's loyalties to old friends often make her choices difficult, but she remains determined to force more change on Windhaven's society. As a result, she spends most of her spare time at Woodwings, the first flyer academy built after the historic council. Early on, Maris learns that the only other functional new flyer academy has been closed because of a lack of interest. She is also told that one of its students is journeying to Woodwings in order to continue training. When Maris meets the new flyer, Val, she realizes that he is the original "one-wing," a now-infamous peasant man who won a set of wings away from one of Maris's oldest friends, a female flyer belonging to a venerated flyer family, in one of the first yearly flyer competitions. However, at the time the competition was held, the flyer Val challenged was still mourning the recent death of her brother, who was another flyer. Val's challenge was thereby regarded by the flyer community as being both dishonorable and despicable. Tragically, the defeated flyer even killed herself after losing her wings to Val. Though Val gave up the wings after being beaten by another flyer at the subsequent yearly competition, he quickly proves his competence to Maris and becomes friends with one of her most promising students, a southern born female one-wing named S'Rella. Together, Val and S'Rella make plans to fly in the coming flyer's contest. Shortly before the competition, however, Val is seriously hurt. Maris, who has come to respect Val, is allowed to fly in his place and wins his wings from Corm. S'Rella also wins her own wings for the first time. After nearly dying in a fierce storm, Maris finds that she is unable to fly, or to fully recover from her many injuries. She therefore attempts to distance herself from other flyers and the burgeoning one-wing culture because of her grief. However, when a one-wing imprisoned by a powerful island landowner is hanged for a controversial crime, Maris is urged to return to the center of flyer-related events because a growing circle of one-wing flyers has formed in the sky over the site of the execution in a massive showing of continuous protest, terrifying the island's populace. Maris returns in time to help resolve the potentially catastrophic dispute and, afterward, she decides to accept an offered position as head of a flyer academy. An elderly Maris receives a singer at her bedside. She recites to the singer the words of a song written by her brother, Coll. The song is Coll's last testament to Maris—one of the most important flyers in Windhaven's history.
12416807	/m/02w4frx	Breakheart Pass	Alistair MacLean	1974	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with a perilous winter railroad journey through the Nevada Territory in the 1870s in the midst of a blizzard. Aboard the train are Nevada governor Fairchild and his niece Marica, along with U.S. cavalry Colonel Claremont and two carloads of troops. Joining them are U.S. Marshal Pearce, the governor's aide, and Pearce's old Army buddy Major O'Brien. Pearce, a lawman and Indian agent is transporting dangerous murderer and gunman John Deakin. Their destination is the remote Fort Humboldt deep in the Nevada mountains, whose troops have recently been decimated by a cholera epidemic. Dr. Molyneaux, a tropical disease expert, is also accompanying the group. As the journey continues we slowly learn that all is not what it seems, and that none of the characters is telling the whole truth. Maclean meticulously obliterates the lines defining exactly which characters are the good guys are and which are the bad. As the story winds down, the cunningly devious nature of the plan is finally revealed.
12416854	/m/02w4ftz	Puppet on a Chain	Alistair MacLean	1969	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Paul Sherman is a veteran Interpol Narcotics Bureau agent, used to independent action and blunt force tactics. He is assisted by two attractive female agents, one an experienced operative, the other a rookie. Sherman is in the Netherlands to break up a vicious drug smuggling ring that will kill ruthlessly to protect its operation. Before Sherman can even leave Schiphol Airport he has already witnessed the gunning down of his key contact, been knocked half-unconscious by an assassin, and tangled with local authorities. "Puppet on a Chain" has the standard twisting plot, local atmospherics, and sardonic dialogue that were Maclean's trademarks as a story-teller. Maclean allows his protagonist to have a bantering sarcastic relationship with his assistants that provides a streak of humor as the plot unfolds. Unfortunately, Sherman's relationship with his assistants is used against him. As his investigation is undermined by betrayal, leaving him constantly a half-step behind his adversaries, Sherman must resort to increasingly violent action to turn the tables. The story culminates in a violent struggle above the streets of Amsterdam to save the life of his surviving female operative.
12417035	/m/02w4g1j	The Grand Babylon Hotel	Arnold Bennett		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The main protagonists are an American millionaire, Theodore Racksole, and his daughter Nella (Helen). While staying at the supremely exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel, Nella asks for a steak and Bass beer for dinner, but the order is refused. To get her what she wants Racksole buys the entire hotel, for £400,000 "and a guinea" (so the previous owner can say that he haggled with the multi-millionaire businessman). Strange things are happening in the hotel. First, Racksole notices the headwaiter, Jules, winking at his daughter's friend, Reginald Dimmock, while they consume their expensive steak. He dismisses the headwaiter. The next day Miss Spencer, the pretty, efficient hotel clerk who has been employed there for years, disappears. It appears that she just took her things and left, no one knows when or where. And Prince Eugen, a prince regnant of Posen, who was to come to the hotel and meet his youthful uncle Prince Aribert (he and the nephew are of the same age), never turns up. Then the body of Dimmock, who was an equerry to the princes, come ahead to prepare for their visit, is found. He was obviously poisoned. And soon after, Dimmock's body disappears. The same evening the hotel is having a ball in the Gold Room, hosted by a Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi. There is a special secret window though which one can observe the room and the guests. Racksole looks out of it and sees among the guests the dismissed headwaiter, Jules. Racksole runs out to confront him and throw him out, but can't find him. He comes back to the secret window to find Jules, staring intensely into the ball room. Racksole orders him out of the hotel for the second time. Prince Aribert, who met Nella in Paris while he was travelling incognito under the name of Count Steenbock, confides the whole story to her. He tells her that Prince Eugen never arrived, and no one knows where he is. He was last seen at Ostend. His Majesty the Emperor sent a telegram to Aribert, requesting the whereabouts of Eugen. Aribert, who does not know whether there might be a secret love affair, or an abduction, is facing a dilemma. At last he decides to go to Berlin and state the facts to the Emperor. Nella promises him help and support in London. After the departure of Aribert, an old lady signs into the hotel under the name of 'Baroness Zerlinski'. Some chance remarks about hotel rooms convinced Nella, who was substituting for the hotel clerk, that it was, in fact Miss Spenser in disguise. When she finds out that Miss Spenser suddenly checks out and departs for Ostend, Nella too goes to Ostend, leaving a short message for her father as to her whereabouts. In Ostend, Nella follows Miss Spenser into a house, and tries to find out what's going on, threatening the latter with a revolver. Miss Spenser says that she was under orders of Jules, the headwaiter, whose real name is Tom Jackson and who is, she claims, her husband. She says that Jackson/Jules quarrelled with Dimmock and that he had some "money business" with Prince Eugen. She admits that the Prince was a captive in that same house, and she looked after him. He was abducted to prevent him arriving to London, for it would have "upset the scheme". Then Miss Spenser fakes a faint, and Nella, who comes nearer to see if she can help her, is overpowered. Nella loses consciousness.
12419453	/m/02w4m1j	Wolf of the Plains	Conn Iggulden	2007-01-02	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The narrative follows the early life of Temujin, the second son of Yesugei, the khan of the Mongol "Wolf" is father soon dies from his injuries. Yesugei's first bondsman, Eeluk assumes control of the tribe. Fearing the sons of the former khan may contest his leadership when they reach adulthood, Eeluk banishes Temujin's family from the tribe, leaving them to fend for themselves on the harsh Steppes. The expectation was that Temujin's family would perish in the unforgiving winter, but Temujin, along with his mother Hoelun, his four brothers Behter, Hasar, Hachiun, Temüge, and his baby sister Temulen, survived against all the odds, albeit in poverty. In an argument over food, Temujin kills his older brother Bekter, much to his mother's anguish. After a few years of trading with other wandering families, the family establish a small home. But the Wolf tribe return to the area, and advanced riders, sent by Eeluk to ensure the family had perished, capture Temujin. He is taken back to the tribe where he is tortured, and kept in a pit, in preparation for a ritual murder. He is freed by Arslan and Jelme, father and son wanderers who joined the Wolves after looking for Yesugei, whom Arslan owed a debt. They join Temujin and his family and begin a new tribe, accepting other wandering families into their protection. Temujin assumes the role of khan. Temujin returns to the Olkhunut to claim his wife Borte. Shortly after, Borte is captured by a Tartar raiding party. Temujin and his brothers chase down the captors and murder them, recovering Borte. The small army retailiates with repeated raids on Tartar camps. The Tartars respond by sending armies to crush the new menace. It is then that a Chin emissary approaches Temujin with an offer from Toghrul, Khan of the Kerait. Temujin joins his small fledgling tribe with Toghrul's, and leads a joint army to advance on the Tartars. It is in the following battle that Temujin begins to show outstanding tactical abilities, as the Mongols ease to victory. Upon interrogating a Tartar prisoner, Temujin learns that the leader of the Olkhunut conspired with the Chin to lead the Tartar assassins to his father. He also learns that a massive Tartar army is advancing into Mongol lands. Temujin returns to the Kerait, then travels to the Olkhunut tribe, where he murders the khan in his ger and assumes leadership of the tribe, and takes them back to join the Kerait. The Mongol alliance prepares for battle, when they are joined by the Wolves. Temujin and Eeluk agree to settle their feud upon victory over the Tartars. Under Temujin's faultless leadership and strategy, the Tartar army is crushed. As the battle ends, Temujin and Eeluk fight, with Temujin emerging victorious. He claims leadership of the Wolves and takes the warriors back to the Kerait. Fearing an inevitable challenge to his leadership, Toghrul sends assassins to Temujin's ger. The attempt is unsuccessful, and Toghrul is banished out of the unified tribe. Temujin proclaims himself khan of all Mongol tribes and bestows the name Genghis upon himself.
12422700	/m/02w4v7j	Void Moon	Michael Connelly		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Cassie Black is an ex-convict who works at a Porsche dealership. She had served five years in prison for conspiring with her previous partner-in-crime, Max Freeling, to steal the winnings of casino visitors while they are asleep; The last plan failed when an undercover agent (later revealed as Jack Karch) posed as the victim, forcing Max to take his own life. Unknown to all, Cassie and Max have a daughter named Jodie, who was conceived when Cassie served her time in prison. The daughter was put up for adoption and Cassie has been tracking her development silently. When Cassie learns that her daughter will be moving to Paris with her adopted parents in the near future, she decides to return to the trade for the last big pay day. Once she gets hold of the money, she plans to bring Jodie away with her. She approaches Max's half brother, Leo Renfro, for a heist job. Leo assigns her to go back to the Cleopatra, or "Cleo", the casino which Max's failed attempt took place. The victim ("mark") this time is apparently a high roller and a $500,000 reward awaits. Leo is confident of Cassie's capabilities despite her long hiatus, but warns her to avoid being in the mark's hotel room during the period of the "void moon" on the day of action. Max's death, along with other unpleasant things, have occurred during that period. Cassie successfully breaks into the hotel room of the mark in the wee hours of the morning, but is forced to remain hidden in the room during the period of the void moon due to unforeseen circumstances. Later that morning, it is revealed that the mark has been shot dead and the suitcase containing the money had been taken from the safe. The mark was actually a courier for the Miami Cuban <<Mafia>> and he was carrying $2.5 Million in the suitcase as partial payoff for rights to buy over the Cleo. The owner of the Cleo, Vincent Grimaldi, hires private investigator Jack Karch to recover the money. Jack is briefed by Grimaldi that Leo Renfro is in cahoots with the Chicago Mafia for this crime. He successfully tracks down the supplier of Cassie's equipment for the theft and obtains Cassie's name. Meanwhile, Cassie persuades Leo to split the money and leave after learning of its origin. Leo requests for two days to sort the mess out, but commits suicide when confronted by Jack about Cassie. The next day, Jack poses as a customer at the Porche showroom and Cassie takes him out for a car ride. Cassie successfully crashes the car upon learning about Jack's motive and returns to Leo's house to retrieve the money. Jack planned to ambush Cassie at her house but instead, critically wounds the parole officer once he learns of Cassie's daughter, Jodie. Jack successfully "abducts" Jodie before the police arrive and drives her to the Cleo to set up a meeting with Cassie three hours later. Unknown to Jack, Cassie arrives much earlier and devises a plan to rescue Jodie and frame Jack in the process. Grimaldi captures Jack and reveals to him that the whole plan was a setup because the Miami gangsters would never be approved to buy the Cleo. The Chicago Mafia was never involved. His thugs killed the courier, and Miami will now search for the soon-to-be dead Karch as the thief. Using a concealed weapon, Karch surprises and kills the thugs and Grimaldi in the elevator. He returns to the room to the surprise of Cassie and Jodie, but, momentarily distracted, allows Cassie to attack him and push him out of the window to his death (the same way that Max had died, and that Karch had planned to kill her and Jodie). Cassie throws some money out of the window to cause a commotion, allowing Jodie and her to slip out unnoticed. On the way back to L.A., Cassie realizes she will be unable to provide an enjoyable life for Jodie if the police suspects her (Cassie) of all the crimes that Karch has committed. Instead, Cassie returns Jodie home to her adoptive parents and drives off with the remainder of the money.
12429225	/m/02w59mv	The Venom Trees of Sunga	L. Sprague de Camp	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The lead character Kirk Salazar, a second-generation Terran colonist on the planet Kukulkan, is near the end of his education to become a biologist, lacking only field research to complete his studies. Interested in the evolutionary background of the dominant native species, the intelligent reptilian Kukulkanians, he focuses on a related animal species whose habitat is the poisonous "venom trees" on the remote island of Sunga. To reach his destination he joins a tour group headed for the island, among whom are some family friends worried about their daughter, who has joined a band of Terran cult members there. They discover she has become the cult's leader, and Salazar finds himself caught in the crossfire of a power struggle between the cultists and a Terran logging magnate intent on clear-cutting the venom trees. He is able to save his neck and preserve the habitat of his research subjects by an unorthodox use of his findings, a spectacularly unlikely disguise, and a healthy dose of dumb luck.
12431763	/m/02w5hh_	Travels with Herodotus	Ryszard Kapuściński	2004	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Beginning in Kapuściński's student years, the books shows us how Kapuściński rose to the rare position of global correspondent for a Polish newspaper and follows him through his journeys in the Middle East and Africa (though he sometimes skips from one time another to draw allusions from Herodotus). The book by Herodotus was given to him as a 'present for the road' by his chief editor when he was leaving for his first foreign assignment in India.
12432548	/m/02w5jm1	Sold	Patricia McCormick		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor, but her life is full of simple pleasures, like raising her black-and-white speckled goat, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid working for a wealthy woman in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi undertakes the long journey to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution. An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt – then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave. Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother’s words – “Simply to endure is to triumph” – and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new life. By the way, someone stupid took all of this from another site. http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/1876/sold is the website and, honestly, it's a pretty bad summary of the whole book.
12433154	/m/02w5k47	The Crystal Frontier	Carlos Fuentes	1995	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A series of stories which explores relationships between people of Mexico and the United States. Large parts of the USA were once part of Mexico, all the way from California to Texas, and so the Mexican people feel a special connection with that area. Both countries depend on each other for trade and culture, and many people divide their time and their lives between both sides of the border. In the second story a Mexican student goes to medical school in New York state, where he finds that people there know nothing about the conditions in Mexico, but feel ready to make judgements.
12440195	/m/02w5yl7	The Secret Servant				 In this entry in the series, Gabriel Allon, the master art restorer and sometime officer of Israeli intelligence, had just prevailed in his blood-soaked duel with Saudi terrorist financier Zizi al-Bakari. Now Gabriel is summoned once more by his masters to undertake what appears to be a routine assignment: travel to Amsterdam to purge the archives of a murdered Dutch terrorism analyst who also happened to be an asset of Israeli intelligence. But once in Amsterdam, Gabriel soon discovers a terrorist conspiracy festering in the city’s Islamic underground: a plot that is about to explode on the other side of the English Channel, in the middle of London. The target of this plot is Elizabeth Halton, the daughter of the American ambassador to the Court of St. James's, who is to be brutally kidnapped. Gabriel arrives seconds too late to save her. And by revealing his face to the plot’s masterminds, his fate is sealed as well. Drawn once more into the service of American intelligence, Gabriel hurls himself into a desperate search for the missing woman as the clock ticks steadily toward the hour of her execution.
12440305	/m/02w5yrd	Prince of Fire	Daniel Silva		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 After terrorists bomb the Israeli embassy in Rome, agents at Israel’s intelligence service—better known as the Office—struggle to determine a precise motive for the attack. The investigation uncovers a CD filled with highly sensitive information about Gabriel Allon, a legendary hit man for the Office. No longer safe outside of Israel, Gabriel returns reluctantly to his homeland with Italian girlfriend and fellow Office agent Chiara Zolli. Lev, the current director of the Office, has long resented Gabriel’s close ties to Ari Shamron, former director of the Office, as well as his recent clandestine work for Shamron. Lev demands that Gabriel officially rejoin the Office so he can benefit from the protection of other agents. However, Gabriel and Shamron also recognize that Lev seeks to control and curtail their secret operations. Lev instructs Gabriel to remain in Israel and assigns him a research team to investigate the bombing and its link to Gabriel. Thus, Yossi, Dina, Yaakov, and Rimona come under Gabriel’s direction. Dina connects a series of seemingly random terrorist attacks and attributes them to Khaled al-Khalifa, a mysterious descendant of Palestinian warlords. Indeed, Dina points out, Shamron and Gabriel each led operations against Khaled’s relatives. Though adopted by Yasser Arafat as a child, Khaled grew up abroad and never became a visible force within the PLO. Dina proposes that, hidden behind a carefully constructed European identity, Khaled has masterminded brutal attacks against Israel, including the recent embassy bombing. In fact, all of the attacks seem to commemorate the murders of Palestinians, including Khaled’s father and organizer of Black September, Sabri al-Khalifa. Dina suggests that another attack is imminent: she anticipates an act of terror to commemorate the Israeli raising of Beit Sayeed, the hometown of Khaled’s Palestinian ancestors. Only twenty-eight days remain until the fiftieth anniversary of that event. The reader learns that Khaled lives as a prosperous and renowned French archeologist under the identity of Paul Martineau. He organizes terror attacks through an Arab associate in Marseilles. The reader also discovers that the arrangements for Khaled’s next attack are underway. As Gabriel and Chiara settle into a new life in Israel, Ari recommends that Gabriel dissolve his marriage to Leah and marry Chiara. He also presses Gabriel to meet with Yasser Arafat to learn of Khaled’s whereabouts. Ari’s son Yonatan, a member of the IDF, escorts Gabriel to the Mukataa, Arafat’s compound. Although the Israeli and Palestinian traditionally work for opposing ideologies, Arafat consents to the meeting because Gabriel once saved his life. Gabriel sees through Arafat’s evasive answers and lies and concludes that Khaled did indeed plan the bombing of the Israeli embassy. Gabriel also learns that Tariq al-Hourani worked for Arafat, and the car bomb that killed his son and maimed Leah was also meant to end his own life. Yaakov later introduced Gabriel to Mahmoud Arwish, a reticent Palestinian informant. Arwish confirms that Khaled contacts Arafat regularly and uses a female collaborator to relay important phone messages. Because the most recent of such phone messages came from Cairo, Gabriel travels to Egypt. There, he meets Mimi Ferrere, a polyglot and social butterfly whose voice matches that of Khaled’s collaborator. He bugs her phone, intercepts a message from Khaled, and matches the phone number to Marseilles. Aboard the ship Fidelity, Gabriel meets with his team and Ari Shamron to plan Khaled’s murder. However, Khaled anticipates their attack and leads Gabriel into a trap: he must put himself into Khaled’s hands or Leah will die; Gabriel abandons his team to save his wife. Khaled’s instructions lead Gabriel to the Parisian Gare de Lyon, and Gabriel realizes too late that Khaled plans to bomb the train station and pin the crime on Gabriel and Israeli intelligence. With only seconds to spare, Gabriel kills two of Khaled’s three bombers and rescues Leah. They return safely to Israel, but Khaled and Mimi leak photographs of Gabriel to the press that link him to the bombing at Gare de Lyon. Although she still suffers psychiatric trauma, Leah regains a piece of herself and begins to communicate with Gabriel for the first time in thirteen years. Chiara decides to leave Gabriel and returns to Venice. Ultimately, Gabriel locates and kills Khaled at an archeological excavation in southern France. He then returns to Israel and art restoration.
12441402	/m/02w6008	Project - A Perfect World	Gary Paulsen	1996-01-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is about Jim Stanton who begins to suspect that something is not right with the town and with Folsum National Laboratories, headed by the creepy Jefferson Kincaid.
12442553	/m/02w61q7	Babyhood	Paul Reiser	1997		 Reiser writes a funny account of his experiences with his wife, Paula Revets, as they grapple with their first born child, Ezra. His account is detailed, yet humorous, and provides an animated look at raising a baby through the eyes of a new father. He tells the story from the father's point of view and covers topics like pregnancy, sleepless nights, breast feeding and baby clothes.
12444654	/m/02w653l	Queen of the Spiders	Gary Gygax		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 A new beginning was added to the adventure. Giants have been raiding civilized lands in increasing numbers, and the player characters have been asked to deal with them and also investigate the reasons or forces behind them. The first module (Steading of the Hill GIant Chief) takes place in a gigantic wooden fort populated by hill giants and ogres. Here the players also uncover evidence of an alliance with other types of giants, as well as some mysterious letters from those behind the scenes. The action moves to north to colder lands in the second module (Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl), the setting a system of caves clustered around a deep and narrow chasm in glacial ice. Here, the protagonists encounter frost giants, yeti and winter wolves among other monsters. The third chapter (Hall of the Fire Giant King) takes place in a volcanic region where King Snurre has assembled a horde of fire giants, trolls and hell hounds. A secret passage from this module leads deep into the earth, where the adventurers discover the true nature of the forces behind the raids - the drow in the service of Lolth the demoness. The next module, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, was on a larger scale than the others, and comprised a map covering many kilometres of a deep underground region, later known as the Underdark, with many unique monsters hitherto unknown to surface adventurers, including the drow, which had been considered legendary. Troglodytes, and new monsters jermlaine and svirfneblin (deep gnomes) made their first appearance in D&D literature. This is followed by Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, a subterranean complex populated by the Kuo-toa, a race of fish-frog monsters in the service of the lobster goddess Blibdoolpoolp. Finally, players make their way to the Vault of the Drow, a deep subterranean eldritch land in a huge cyst deep under the earth. The adventure is completed with Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
12446237	/m/02w683w	Penrod Jashber	Booth Tarkington		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Penrod Jashber is more novelistic in form than the preceding books; rather than each chapter standing as a separate story, the bulk of this book has one story arc, of Penrod’s pretending to be detective George B. Jashber. Otherwise it is similar: it is written in the same style and takes place at the same time. Penrod Jashber begins when Penrod’s best friend Sam Williams acquires a new pup. The boys squabble about his name, the pup and Penrod’s dog Duke rampage through Penrod’s house, and as punishment Penrod’s parents force him to wear a smelly asafetida bag. Penrod copes with this humiliation by telling tall tales of his exploits to his future girlfriend, lovely Marjorie Jones. The detective story arc begins when Penrod further immerses himself in fantasy by penning a hilarious bandit epic starring George B. Jashber, the "notted detective." Penrod decides to become a detective; imitating his movie heroes, he squints his eyes and talks out of the side of his mouth. He paints an office sign in the (empty) stable and acquires an official-looking badge from the cook’s nephew. To practice, he shadows his school teacher in the evenings. Now adequately experienced, Penrod enlists Sam and the two Negro boys who live across the alley, Herman and Verman, as assistants. Needing a scoundrel to shadow, Penrod overhears his parents jocularly referring to the polished manners of a suitor of his late-teens sister Margaret, a Mr. Herbert Hamilton Dade, as being appropriate to a horse thief. The rest of the book concerns the increasingly desperate but futile efforts of Penrod and his gang to prove to themselves that Mr. Dade really does steal horses. Their efforts are supported by Sam’s older brother, Robert, a rival for Margaret’s affections; this support proves embarrassing when the boys’ harassment of Mr. Dade finally brings the children’s world of fantasy into fatal collision with the dull reality of the adult world. Distressed by the exposure of his fantasy world, Penrod discards the now alien persona of Jashber and dissolves the agency, and he and the other boys return to their childish occupations.
12448349	/m/02w6cm7	Going to Ground	Ali Sparkes	2007-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Following the events of Running the Risk, Dax and the other Colas are sent to recover. However, during this time off, Lisa experiences a vision which warns her that Gideon is in deadly peril. She and Dax attempt to rescue him, only to find that he is not actually in any sort of danger - at least not yet. But strange and unexplainable electrical faults are taking place all over the country, and the government seem to think that Gideon's powers are responsible. Now they will stop at nothing to find him and contain the threat they believe he poses. Gideon, Dax, Lisa and Mia, set off across the country, attempting to outwit their pursuers, while also trying to find the real cause of these electrical events to clear Gideon's name.
12455236	/m/02w6q3b	Oyster	Janette Turner Hospital	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In a town highly suspicious of the government and of outsiders in general, the arrival of a charismatic figure from the desert—Oyster—occasions an intensification of the town's insularity and repression of dissident voices. The conjunction of conservative forms of Christianity and anti-government landowners is ripe for the messianic presence of Oyster and the cult community he establishes, a community closely integrated into the shadowy capitalism of the area's illegal opal trafficking. The fragmented structure of the novel, in which various moments in the past are interspersed with events in the present, generates heightened suspense and tension as its several sub-plots come together in the apocalyptic destruction of the town and the cult. The paranoia and violence with which the town polices its "lost" status are repeatedly delineated, until events come to a head and the vicious forms of control begin to unravel. Women are crucial to the destabilisation and destruction of the menace represented above all by powerful men. The discourse of proud outsiderness on the part of these men is highlighted as being hypocritical and self-serving, while the real outsiders are revealed to be mostly women, and men who do not wield social power.
12459061	/m/02w6ykb	The Other Ones	Jean Thesman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Bridget Raynes has typical teenage problems—clumsiness, lack of popularity, an unrequited crush, oblivious parents—but they are compounded by her suppressed magical powers, or perhaps her loss of sanity. She sees spirits, especially the quarrelsome "threshold guardian" xiii, reads minds, moves objects by thought, and casts "circles of safety" spells. But her powers inspire more fear than awe in her, and she continues to avoid them just when they are needed most. Her crush Jordan is abandoned in his own home; new girl Althea is being tormented at school while on a secret mission; school bully Woody is growing more dangerous; even the natural world is threatened and threatening. Only her aunt Cait, a rumored witch herself, has any sympathy for Bridget, but she must decide once and for all to accept her powers or not.
12459206	/m/02w6yt7	Children of Magic Moon	Wolfgang Hohlbein	1990	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Two years have passed since Kim's first voyage to the magical dream realm of Magic Moon, but then his old friend and advisor, the wizard Themistocles, appears to him in everyday situations, making him realize that something is wrong and that he must return to Magic Moon. After some trouble trying, Kim succeeds, only to find the dream realm very different from how it used to be: machines and greed have found their way into the simple life of the inhabitants, and an overall bitterness even affects his old friends Rangarig and Gorg. Kim discovers an even more terrifying secret: the children of Magic Moon are mysteriously disappearing; some of them even appear, oblivious to anything around them, in Kim's world! Apparently, the dwarves, who have mysteriously appeared along with the machines, seem to be behind this, but the secret goes much deeper than that.
12459298	/m/02w6yxp	Singer	Jean Thesman		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Gwenore for years has been punished and imprisoned by her evil witch mother Rhiamon, but she finally escapes with the aid of her slave-servant Brennan, her friend Tom, and a mysterious and seemingly apostate priest Caddaric. She first takes sanctuary at an abbey, then at an alternative home of gifted women. Along the way, she learns about her natural and her magical gifts in the arts and in healing, as the women become her teachers; from Father Caddaric she finally learns of the spellbound destiny he created for her to combat her wicked mother. She escapes to the kingdom of Lir, where she is made slave-governess of the four children who are to be transformed to swans before Gwenore's ultimate showdown with her mother.
12467940	/m/02w7g0q	Eifelheim	Michael Flynn	2006-10-17	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In 1349, Eifelheim, a small town in the Black Forest of Germany, vanished: it ceased to appear on any maps or in any documents, having apparently been abandoned and never resettled by its community. The disappearance is no mystery&nbsp;— the Black Death devastated Europe. But why was the area never resettled, unlike most other depopulated areas? The mystery intrigues cliometric historian Tom Schwoerin, who sets out to solve the puzzle with the help of his partner, theoretical physicist Sharon Nagy. They gradually uncover evidence of an alien crash-landing in the area. The village was originally called Oberhochwald, and then afterwards renamed Teufelheim (Devil home in German), which was eventually distorted to Eifelheim. They also learn of the town's priest, Father Dietrich, an educated man who served the town in 1348, as the Black Death was beginning to strengthen its grip on medieval Europe. Dietrich, it appears, acted as humanity's first ambassador, and was the primary liaison between Eifelheim and the aliens who happened to wreck their starship in the woods outside the village. The novel concentrates primarily on the alien encounter in the 14th century, paying special attention to the interplay between Dietrich, a Christian scholar who is fond of Aristotle and metaphor, and technologically advanced, post-Einsteinian band of otherworldly travelers. The interplay includes two theological questions. The first, "can aliens become Christians?" is answered in the affirmative, as some of them become converts. The second, "where is God when things go wrong?" is more difficult to answer, for both the Germans and the alien Krenken. The Germans are stricken by the Black Death, and the Krenken, who are immune to the disease, but cannot return to their home, require an amino acid not found in earthly organisms. The answer is two-fold: there is always hope, and God's love is expressed to us in the unselfish love of fellow creatures. Dietrich's attempts to understand the science of the Krenken (their view of the solar system, and gravity, is quite different from his) and their attempts to explain it to him, are also an important theme. William of Ockham appears as a minor character. Nagy's search for a new physics, which will lead to a new means of space travel, is helped by Schwoerin's research. He discovers a Krenken circuit diagram, drawn in a manuscript by monks.
12467985	/m/02w7g3g	A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich	Alice Childress	1973	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Benjie is a 13 year old who lives in the urban ghetto of the seventies, Benjie succumbs to the allure of heroin. Encouraged by his friends, Benjie gets hooked on the dangerous monster that is slowly dictating his life. Everyone is urging him to stop, but he cannot, as he is addicted to the drug. He disdains his counselors and teachers. After a final confrontation with his stepfather, he decides to quit.
12470485	/m/02w7m2n	The Gentle Falcon				 Isabella Clinton is the daughter and only child of a French noblewoman, from the House of Valois, and an English soldier. With her father dead, she's heir to his estate, but much prefers working in the fields than learning to be a proper noblewoman - and this is made clear from her sharp tongue and blunt way of speaking. After the death of her father, it seems that the Black Prince has forgotten Isabella and her mother. It is quite a long time before Isabella is finally summoned to court by King Richard - and when she finally is, it is to be companion to her young kinswoman, Isabella of the House of Valois, Madame of France and soon to be Queen of England. It is through Isabella Clinton's eyes that we see the love Isabella of France develops for King Richard. Although only seven years old at her first appearance, the Queen shows maturity for her age - but what happens to her throughout the book causes her great sorrow, even though she doesn't show it on the outside.
12478251	/m/02w80rb	A Landing on the Sun	Michael Frayn			 It concerns a Jessel, a British civil servant working in the Cabinet Office who has been asked to investigate the unexplained death of Summerchild, also a civil servant, whose body was found outside the Ministry of Defence some 15 years earlier, in 1974. His investigations reveal that Summerchild was involved in the setting up of a 'Strategy Unit' reporting directly to the Prime Minister Harold Wilson (the book predates by 10 years the establishment by Tony Blair of his Strategy unit in 2001)
12480401	/m/02w84tm	The Hollow Man	Dan Simmons	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After the death of his wife Gail, Jeremy Bremen leaves his previous life by burning his home and possessions and embarking on a journey to find peace from the 'neurobabble' of humanity. Without his wife's presence Bremen cannot shield himself from the unwanted ability to read minds and hear thoughts. Bremen searches for solitude and isolation from people, which he initially finds, however as the novel progresses he is exposed to increasing levels of contact with humanity and horrifying experiences of malicious and violent behaviour. Transposed with Bremen's story is that of another character, 'Robby', who appears to be narrating and commenting upon Bremen and his wife's life. Robby is severely disabled and unable to communicate as he is deaf, mute and blind. How he is able to have such familiarity with Bremen is not disclosed until towards the end of the novel.
12481597	/m/02w86j_	Gorosthaney Sabdhan	Satyajit Ray		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 By accident, more than anything else, the three find themselves beside the grave of Thomas Godwin. The grave was dug up by some miscreants for unknown reasons. The rather colorful history of Mr. Godwin makes Feluda curious to know more about the man.From the diary of Thomas' daughter Charlotte, Feluda finds that a very precious clock went to Thomas' grave with him. To his surprise, Feluda finds that another party knows about this clock and they are trying to get it aided by the letter with them. Thanks to the brilliance of the detective and the help of 'Haripodobabu', the chauffeur of Mr. Ganguli, a new introduction in this book, their plot is foiled. The Old Calcutta: for a long time, Calcutta was the capital of British India. Just as the story of the Nawabs plays a vital part in 'Badshahi Angti' (based on Lucknow), the story of British families who lived in the former capital of the British Raj, plays a prominent part in this story. Feluda goes to a Christian cemetery, to see the graves of the members of the Godwin family. He goes to Ripon Lane to meet a living member of the family. Later on, he finds that there is an Anglo-Indian branch of the family as well.
12487235	/m/02w8kf8	Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood	George MacDonald	1871		 Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood is a story of a young motherless boy growing up with his brothers in a Scottish manse. The list of characters includes: The wicked sneaking, housekeeper, Mrs. Mitchel, Kirsty, an enchanting Highland storyteller, Turkey, the intrepid cowherd, the strange Wandering Willie, the evil Kelpie, the sweet horse Missie, and the lovely Elsie Duff. Throughout the twists and turns of his escapades and adventures, Ranald learns from his father the important lessons of courage and integrity.
12490038	/m/02qpxzp	The Illusion	K. A. Applegate	1999-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Yeerks have finished their anti-morphing ray and want to test it. Tobias comes up with a plan and that plan is to trick the Yeerks into thinking that it doesn't work; if they capture him, they will try to use it on his hawk form, but hawk is his true form now. Tobias acquires Ax—thus allowing him to 'demorph' and reinforce the impression that he is a genuine Andalite—and then gets captured by the Yeerks. Rachel was supposed to be with him in fly morph to be able to rescue him and tell the rest where the lab was. However, sub-visser Taylor gave them an anesthetic so she couldn't grip to Tobias and fell to the floor. Tobias, alone and trapped, tries to get demorphed unsuccessfully since he is already demorphed. He is then tortured by the sadistic Taylor with a machine that controls the parts of the brain that induce pain and pleasure. He almost goes insane and nearly dies after receiving heightened, alternating doses of painful and pleasant sensations and memories. He sees painful memories of childhood neglect or battle, after seeing pleasant peaceful memories. This process nearly kills him. Here, he experienced an Utzum, later explained by Ax to be a vision ancient Andalites believed happened at the moment of death to comfort those crossing over. (Ax mentions that Andalites no longer believe this.) These images are supposed to be passed through DNA. Tobias is spoken to by his father Elfangor who shares with him his own memories of hardship, battle, his moments of questioning himself and his own actions. He reminds Tobias that he is part of a great tradition of warriors in order to comfort him before his death. Tobias is rescued by Ax and the other animorphs. In the battle he persuades Rachel not to kill Taylor, so as not sink to her level. After the battle Tobias continues to question who and what he is. Andalite? Human? Hawk? However he takes comfort in his relationship with Rachel. They kiss.... *Taylor is introduced. *Tobias and Rachel share their first time kissing in the main series. *Tobias hears Elfangor to talk to him in his part as his son
12492095	/m/02w8w0l	Tersias	Graham Taylor	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story starts of after Wormwood was destroyed and was sent to the dark side of the moon. Just as London was starting to recover from the disaster, Malachi, a magician, kept a blind boy named Tersias. Tersias was the one that predicted the coming of the comet for he was an oracle. After some time, people began to know about the helpless child's "abilities". Many people wanted to use Tersias' powers for themselves: Malachi, himself; Jonah, a teenage highwayman and his partner, Tara; Solomon, a zealot, who plans on using his experiments (flesh-eating locusts) and Lord Malphas, a keeper of mysterious powers. sv: Tersias
12492338	/m/02w8wk2	The Shadowmancer Returns: The Curse of Salamander Street	Graham Taylor	2007	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this sequel to Shadowmancer, Thomas, Kate, and Raphah flee from the evil sorcerer Demurral and head to London with Jacob Crane. But once there, their ship is seized and they are lured into the dark heart of the city. Further north, Raphah and Beadle set off on a terrifying journey in search of their friends; a journey haunted by mysterious enemies and a shadowy beast intent on their doom.
12495424	/m/02w8_6p	Hatyapuri				 Disturbed by the heat and humidity of Calcutta in June, (combined with frequent electricity failures) the "Three Musketeers", Prodosh C. Mitter (Feluda), Topshe, and Lalmohon Babu (alias Jatayu) go to Puri for vacation. There they find that not everybody is there for their holidays. The mystery revolves around Mr. DG Sen, an elderly gentleman, who has the hobby of collecting rare 'Puthis' (old hand written books/manuscripts). He is a true collector and denies lucrative offers from prospective buyers. However, a group of people are determined to steal the most valuable manuscripts from his collection. The story takes a big turn when one of the prime suspects is found to be murdered. The climax takes place at the beaches of Puri.
12498967	/m/02w93pp	Children of Zion				 The Children of Zion, published in January 1998, is considered as a documentary that was based on a collection of fragments of records compiled in Palestine in 1943 by the Eastern Center for Information, a Polish government group. The book was a source of the testimonies of Jewish children who were evacuated from the Soviet Union to Palestine. Grynberg arranged the “collection of interviews” to serve as a reminder about the Holocaust experience. The Polish children’s experiences during World War II also provided a recollection of their lives before the war. Memories of when the war broke out were also discussed, apart from the “arrival of the Germans and the Russians”, the children’s journeys and life while in exile, and their condition after the so-called Sikorsky Agreement allowed them to leave the work camps. Many of the children had to cope as orphaned émigrés. The original document that had become the basis for Grynberg’s Children of Zion is at the Hoover Institution of Leland Stanford Junior University.
12499911	/m/02w9553	Sard Harker	John Masefield		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel commences with establishing narrative describing the fictional Santa Barbara as being geographically situated "far to leeward, with a coast facing to the north and east." Masefield moves on to describe the background of the protagonist, Chisholm Harker, called "Sard" Harker because he is "sardonic". He is the son of Chisholm Harker, rector of Windlesham in Berkshire (this suggests that the village is likely to be fictional in that Windlesham village is in reality in Surrey, UK), who died when he was 13 years old. Sard's mother remarried after having been widowed for two years, causing an estrangement that encourages Sard to go to sea. The story opens on 18 March 1897. Sard Harker is mate on a merchant vessel, the Pathfinder, under the command of Captain Carey, and is probably aged around 30. The ship is in the fictional port of Las Palomas. Exactly ten years previous Sard was serving on another ship, the Venturer, in exactly the same harbour when he had a strange dream that he would meet a girl on the second of three visits to a white house called Los Xicales. On the Pathfinder ’s final day in Las Palomas Captain Carey and Sard Harker watch a boxing match. During the match Sard overhears talk between two other spectators that suggests that a Mr Hilary Kingsborough and his sister will come to some harm. After the boxing match Sard goes off to warn the Kingsboroughs. By coincidence they are renting Los Xicales. The Kingsboroughs do not heed the warning and Sard leaves wondering if he has seen the girl his dream warned him about. Unfortunately Sard has little more than minutes to keep his passage on the Pathfinder. The adventure commences proper when Sard takes a wrong turning into a swamp and then sustains a stingray injury. He has by this time missed his passage and resolves to make his way to Santa Barbara. His endeavours result in his being assaulted and mugged, and put onto a freight train that takes him far inland. The majority of the novel is concerned with his ever more arduous journey across Santa Barbara, with minor characters and natural hazards endangering his life. Supernatural or starvation-induced hallucinations also feature on three occasions. Sard is ultimately successful in reaching Santa Barbara, where he learns the fate of the Pathfinder. The novel concludes with a confrontation with Sagrado B, a practitioner of black magic who wants Miss Kingsborough to complete one of his satanic rituals.
12500374	/m/02w9608	Camp X	Eric Walters	2002	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 11-year-old George and his older brother Jack move with their mother to Whitby, Ontario in the summer of 1943. In Whitby they discover a spy training camp called Camp X. They are caught and sign a secrecy oath which means they cannot tell anyone about anything in the camp. The camp’s leader spots them when they are trying to sneak in and gives them a job sneaking around to improve security, in Camp X as well as the nearby munitions factory, Defence Industries Limited. They learn much about the camp and are sent off with tasks. When delivering newspapers one day they are caught by German agents. Jack and George are tortured and almost killed, but they figure out a lot about the Germans. They get away and warn the Camp X of the attacks that are planned. They risk their lives to warn Camp X, and are proud about their success.
12501516	/m/02w97qz	Bedelia	Vera Caspary	1945	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 33 year-old Charlie Horst comes from an old Puritan family which for centuries has been one of the pillars of society in an unnamed small town in Connecticut. Educated at Yale and now working as an architect, he has lived in a grand old house&mdash;his parental home&mdash;all his life. At the beginning of the novel his domineering mother has been dead for less than a year, and since her death Charlie has gone on a summer holiday to Colorado Springs, has met Bedelia Cochran there, a young childless widow of great beauty, has immediately fallen in love with her, brought her back home and married her. Married life becomes Charlie Horst, so much so that on Christmas Day, 1913, he considers himself "the luckiest man in the world." Bedelia has turned out to be the perfect wife: exceedingly capable of running the household, a brilliant hostess, an obedient and submissive companion in need of protection by a strong man, imaginative, attractive, always well-dressed and well made-up, sexy, and good in bed. At their little Christmas party some of the town dignitaries are present, and everyone enjoys her ladylike ways. On top of it all, Bedelia is several months pregnant, turning Charlie into a proud father-to-be. Among the guests at the Christmas party are his cousin Abbie Hoffman, a divorcee from New York; her friend Ellen Walker, a young journalist employed at the local paper who is still in love with Charlie although she has been rejected by him in favour of Bedelia; and Ben Chaney, a young painter who has recently arrived from nowhere and rented a cottage in the woods for the winter and who is increasingly regarded by Charlie as an intruder into his well-established circle of friends and acquaintances. Then Charlie suddenly comes down with stomachache, and old Doctor Meyers, the Horsts' family physician, diagnoses a severe case of food poisoning. Charlie himself attributes his illness to overwork and brushes aside Doctor Meyers's suspicion that he may have been deliberately given poison as the ramblings of a senile quack who should have retired a long time ago. However, Doctor Meyers insists on a professional nurse being installed in the Horsts' home, and before her arrival at the house Chaney is seen meeting her at the railway station and talking agitatedly with her. Charlie is given strict orders not to eat or drink anything unless the nurse is present, and he gradually recovers. At about the same time Ben Chaney discloses his true identity as a private investigator who has been hired to track down a serial widow whose previous husbands have all died ostensibly of natural causes and who is said to be living in this area under an assumed name. When Chaney announces the impending arrival of a relative of one of the deceased men who he claims will be able to recognize and identify Mrs Horst as that woman, Bedelia goes into the offensive and plans her disappearance&mdash;with or without her current husband. The witness's arrival is delayed due to a heavy snowstorm, which gives Bedelia more time to try to convince Charlie of her innocence and to talk him into leaving for Europe with her, a proposal which is met with utter disbelief and refusal on Charlie's part. In their snowbound house, Charlie's suspicion concerning his wife's past is steadily growing with each new life-story she serves him while he realizes that he still knows absolutely no hard facts about her former life. During one of those cold and stormy nights Bedelia sneaks out of the house, leaving behind most of her personal belongings. However, being pregnant, she is too weak to make it to the station and is saved from certain death by freezing by Charlie, who finds her lying in the snow-covered road. As a consequence, she has to stay in bed with a severe cold for several days. Eventually the roads are cleared of snow, and the first vehicle to pull up in front of the Horsts' house is a delivery van with the groceries they have ordered by telephone. The delivery boy also leaves behind a large bag of food ordered by Ben Chaney to be fetched by the latter the moment he is no longer snowed in in his cottage. Shortly afterwards, Charlie chances upon Bedelia sprinkling some white powder on a piece of Gorgonzola taken from Chaney's bag of groceries, and is immediately reminded of a story he was told by Chaney about the death of one of Bedelia's former husbands. But only now that he has caught her in the act is he finally convinced of his wife's guilt and categorically resists all her attempts at making him an accessory after the fact. She tried, courageously, to smile at Charlie. "You wouldn't let them take me away, would you? I'm your wife, you know, and I'm sick. I'm a very sick woman, your wife. I've never told you, dear, how sick I am. My heart, I might die at any moment. I must never be distressed about anything. [...] I didn't ever tell you, Charlie, because I didn't want you to worry." This she said with a sort of determined gallantry, both sweet and bitter. Gently Charlie removed her hands. Bedelia submitted humbly, showing that she considered him superior, her lord and master. He was male and strong, she feminine and frail. His strength made him responsible for her; her life was in his hands. Charlie locks Bedelia in the bedroom and then goes downstairs to greet the first guests to arrive after the snowstorm, among them Ellen Walker. While he is flirting with her, Bedelia is slowly dying upstairs after having obeyed her husband&#39;s order to take her own poison.
12508387	/m/02w9lvg	The Anybodies		2004-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Fern has lived all her life with the Drudgers, extremely dull adults who worked at a firm, Beige & Beige. One day, the Beige family, the owners of the firm, visit the Drudger's house, three other visitors arrive as well. They are the Bone, Howard, and Mary Curtain, the nurse who delivered the Drudger's baby. Mary confesses that she had accidentally swapped their kids. Fern belonged to the Bone family, and Howard actually belonged to the Drudgers. After the Beiges leave, the Bone (Mr. Bone) and the Drudgers discuss and conclude that they will try unswapping for just the summer and see how it goes. While the Bone drives Fern and Mary Curtain back to his house, Mary Curtain is not really Mary Curtain. She is a man named Marty. He and the Bone tell Fern that they are Anybodies, who can be anybody or anything. The Bone and Marty were once great Anybodies, but they are slowly losing the powers. The only thing that can improve their skills is Fern's dead mother Eliza's book, The Art of Being Anybody. But no one knows where the book is, for Eliza (a great Anybody) died before she could tell anyone about it. Now, Fern and the Anybodies are in search of the book. Fern suspects that the book may be hidden in Eliza's mother's house. They head off, the Bone disguised as Mr. Bibb, an encyclopedia seller, and Fern as Ida Bibb, his daughter. At the boarding house, Fern discovers that the Bone's enemy, the Miser, is looking for The Art of Being Anybody as well. Fern and the Bone must find the book before the Miser, who may be plotting something terrible with his Anybody skills. At Mrs. Appleplum's (a name Fern came up with when asked to do so by Mrs. Appleplum) home, Fern finds out that she has magical powers to shake things out of books. Fern's Grandmother(Mrs. Appleplum) is the Great Realdo, a fantastic Anybody. The book has many elements similar to Cornelia Funke's Inkheart.
12508422	/m/02w9lw4	Sam and the Firefly			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Sam, an owl, wakes up one night looking for someone to play with. However, since it is the middle of the night, all the creatures are asleep. Sam then comes across a series of flying lights, one of which hits Sam in the head. It is Gus, the firefly. Gus shows Sam the trick he can do, which is he can make glowing lines in midair using his light. Sam is amazed, and decides to have fun by having Gus follow him directly as he flies. Sam flies in the shape of various words; Gus finds this fun and decides to do more on his own. However, he has mischief on his mind. First, he causes several cars to crash at an intersection by displaying "Go left", "go right", "stop", and "go" above. Sam wants to talk to him about this behavior, that is dangerous and bad; however, Gus abandons Sam as he thinks Sam doesn't know how to have fun. Gus then continues to cause mischief; he causes several airplanes to get crossed up by displaying random directions, he causes people to overflow into a movie theater by displaying "COME IN! FREE SHOW" above it, and changes a sign from "HOT DOGS" to "COLD DOGS", deterring the hot dog maker's customers. The hot dog maker immediately nets Gus and puts him a jar and into his pickup truck. Sam sees this and is determined to save him. Gus regrets not listening to Sam in the first place about having too much fun, when all of a sudden the aforementioned pickup truck stall on a railroad crossing with a train coming. Sam arrives at the scene and breaks the jar containing Gus, freeing him. Gus, now free, displays "STOP" several times in large letters; the engineer aboard the locomotive, seeing this and the truck on the tracks, pulls the brake and stops the train just in time. The hot dog maker and the engineer and brakeman all call Gus a hero, and Gus and Sam fly off into the night, but then dawn arises, so they must go back to their homes to sleep, since they are nocturnal. Gus now comes to Sam's tree home every night to play.
12509918	/m/02w9np8	Die Jungfrau von Orleans	Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller			 The play loosely follows the life of Joan of Arc. It contains a prologue introducing the important characters, followed by five acts. Each dramatizes a significant event in Joan's life. Down into Act IV the play departs from history in only secondary details (e.g. by making Joan kill people in battle, and by shifting the reconciliation between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians from 1435 to 1430). Thereafter, however, the plot is entirely free. Joan is about to kill an English knight when, on removing his helmet, she at once falls in love with him, and spares him. Blaming herself for what she regards as a betrayal of her mission, then, when at Reims she is publicly accused of sorcery, she refuses to defend himself, is assumed to be guilty, and dismissed from the French court and army. Captured by the English, she witnesses from her prison cell a battle in which the French are being decisively defeated, breaks her bonds, and dashes out to save the day. She dies as victory is won, her honour and her reputation both restored. The play reflects the new nationalism and militarism of the budding nineteenth century, and also the Kantian ideal of the need to subject emotion to moral principle. The line (III, 6; Talbot) is the origin of the English expression "Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain." This was the most performed (at least in Germany) of all Schiller's plays down to the Great War. In modern post-war Germany, its militarism is an embarrassment, but the dramatic power of the last two acts keeps the play on the stage.
12512922	/m/02w9t8f	The Sirens of Surrentum	Caroline Lawrence	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 June, AD 80: When Flavia Gemina's father Marcus leaves on another sea voyage, she and her three friends – Nubia, Jonathan, and Lupus – accept an invitation from their friend Polla Pulchra to spend the rest of the month at her father's luxurious villa in Surrentum. Behind the invitation is a plea for help: Pulchra's mother, Polla Argentaria, seems to fall ill whenever they have houseguests, and Pulchra suspects someone is trying to poison her mother. On the pretext of a matchmaking party, Pulchra has convinced her father to invite all of Pulchra's suspects: three young widows and three bachelors. Romance is thick in the air: Flavia still nurses a secret love for Pulchra's father, the charismatic Publius Pollius Felix, despite the difference in their ages. She is flustered to find that the male guests include the young lawyer Gaius Valerius Flaccus, who shared a past adventure with them (in The Colossus of Rhodes). Pulchra also takes a shine to Flaccus, even while growing closer to Jonathan. Flavia also meets, for the first time, the young senator's son she has been betrothed to: Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. The two do not make a favorable impression on each other, but gradually she is won over by his inquisitive nature and willingness to help in their investigation. Flavia assigns each member of her new "team" to watch one of the young bachelors or widows, but no obvious suspect turns up. However, their surveillance does reveal the disquieting fact that Felix regularly cheats on his wife, with the female houseguests, the young slave girls, and several women from the nearby town of Baiae (whilst there are no explicit depictions of sexual activity in the novel, there is certain implicit material which might surprise in a children's novel). They consider whether one of the young widows (or even Felix himself) is trying to poison Polla to make way for a new marriage. Tranquillus has the idea of consulting a poisoning expert in Baiae, Locusta (purportedly the daughter of the famous poisoner employed by Nero). Locusta says Polla's symptoms are consistent with poisoning by hemlock, which shows that the poisoner must be an amateur: hemlock is only lethal if used in the correct dose, and when it is fresh. Locusta draws the conclusion that Polla has built up a resistance to hemlock because of this. Flavia has the idea of laying a trap: she lets the adults overhear her angrily scolding Tranquillus for bringing back a packet of incredibly lethal poison from Locusta for "research purposes," and tells him to hide it in an isolated part of the villa. They lie in wait to see who steals it, and the poisoner turns out to be Polla herself. Driven to despair by her husband's repeated infidelities, she has been trying (somewhat half-heartedly) to commit suicide. Flavia watches her swallow a cup of wine laced with the non-existent poison, then faint from its imagined effects. Flavia then confronts Felix, telling him how much his selfish behavior has wounded his wife. Pulchra, who once idolized her father, is so distraught by her parents' behavior that she makes her own half-hearted attempt at suicide, swimming out to sea to drown herself. Flavia convinces her to come back, telling her that her parents can mend their relationship, and to remember that Flavia and the others are still her friends. Felix calls Flavia into his study to thank her in private for helping his wife and daughter. To her surprise, he moves closer, as though wanting to kiss her. Though she has dreamed about him doing this before, now that it is about to happen, she is suddenly repulsed, and excuses herself in a hurry. She runs out, deciding to forget that she has ever loved him. Tranquillus receives a harsh letter from his father, who has heard about some of the wilder goings-on at the villa, and put a scandalous interpretation on some of his innocent exchanges with Flavia. The letter ends with his father ordering him to end the betrothal and return to Rome. Tranquillus is furious, but has no choice but to obey. Flavia is saddened, as she was honestly getting to like Tranquillus. As the four friends depart the villa, she decides that she is in no hurry to fall in love and get married. Instead, she is determined to enjoy her childhood for as long as possible, and have as many adventures with her friends as she can.
12513254	/m/02w9tyd	A fekete város	Kálmán Mikszáth	1910		 Before Rákóczi's war of liberty, during a hunting expedition, Pál Görgey, the arrogant but noble leader of the Hungarian county of Szepes, shoots Károly Kramler, Saxon magistrate of Lőcse, for having killed Görgey’s favourite dog. When their magistrate is fatally injured, his company, on the advice of one of their members, Nustkorb, takes the still-living body and marks with his blood the boundaries of a large field owned by Görgey. This was because during the conflict between king Róbert Károly and Máté Csák, the ruler gave a special and bizarre privilege for the magistrate of Lőcse for his service in combat - “Let the magistrate of Lőcse have land-claiming-blood.” Thus the field marked out by the magistrate's blood became a possession of the town Thirsting for revenge the city embalms one of the dead magistrate's hands, and orders all citizens to wear black clothes until Kramler's death is revenged. To protect his daughter, Rozália Görgey, her father hides her in Lőcse in secret under the name of “Rozália Otrokócsy”, hoping that she will not be sought for, being so close to home. Rozália falls in love with Antal Fabricius, the youngest senator of Lőcse. The next magistrate is Nustkorb, who tries to catch Görgey but all his plans fail. He dies when the statue of the dead magistrate falls and kills him. The traumatized citizens now believe that Nustkorb was the true murderer, and that the murdered magistrate has made his own revenge. Antal Fabricius then becomes the magistrate. Fabricius makes a trap for Görgey, catches and executes him - but realises too late that he was Rozália’s father. He is shocked by this discovery; but on the streets all the folk of Lőcse are glad, singing, dancing and burning their black clothes now that the revenge has been completed.
12515352	/m/02w9y5k	Island	Richard Laymon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is structured as a series of journal entries made by Rupert, a young man who finds himself stranded on an island in the Bahamas (along with six other people) when their yacht mysteriously explodes. After an ax-wielding maniac claims the lives of two of the castaways, Rupert and the other survivors are forced to try and outwit the mysterious killer in order to save their lives. Since the concept of the novel is that Rupert is making his journal entries as events happen (with no knowledge as to how future developments in the "plot" will unfold), the reader is left uncertain as to whether any of the book's characters, including Rupert himself, will survive (unlike most first-person narratives, where the survival of the narrator, at least, tends to be a foregone conclusion). The novel plays with these expectations at several points, with Rupert's life constantly being in danger right alongside those of his compatriots.
12515422	/m/02w9y9p	Plunder of the Sun	David F. Dodge	1949		 The adventurer Al Colby is persuaded by Anna Luz and her antiquities collector husband, Thomas Berrien, to help them smuggle a parcel back into Mexico where its true value can be ascertained. Warned that a man named Jefferson traveling on the same freighter might try to steal it, Colby ultimately forms a partnership with Jefferson following the fatal heart attack of Berrien aboard ship. Jefferson betrays and shoots him, but Colby saves himself and the rare documents in time. They will be returned to a museum while he and Anna can enjoy a $25,000 reward.
12515508	/m/02w9ygh	Blood Games	Richard Laymon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel centers on a group of young women, best friends since college, who go on an annual vacation together, each year to a different location of one member of the group's choosing. This year's trip takes them to the Totem Pole Lodge, an abandoned resort that was allegedly the site of a gruesome mass murder ten years earlier. When one of the women, Helen, mysteriously disappears, her friends begin a search of the resort and the surrounding wilderness in an effort to discover what happened to her. The novel employs a flashback structure alternating between present-day events at the resort and the group's experiences together in college, beginning when the girls met during their freshman year and proceeding through their graduation and three previous reunions. The story is told from the point of view of one of the women, Abilene, but focuses mainly on her four friends: tough, confrontational Cora, tomboyish Finley (the practical joker), fashion model Vivian, and timid, insecure Helen, whose disappearance and eventual fate are foreshadowed by a frightening experience in a dormitory restroom during her freshman year.
12522688	/m/02wbbgt	The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow	Fuyumi Ono	1992-06-20	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Yoko Nakajima's life had been fairly ordinary until Keiki, a young man with golden hair, tells her that she is his master, and must return to their kingdom. With the help of a magic sword and a magic stone she fights against the demons on her trail. Yoko begins her quest for both survival and self-discovery in her new land.
12524814	/m/026brmp	Off Armageddon Reef	David Weber	2007-01-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Humanity is at war with a genocidal alien race known as the Gbaba, and after a long war, it becomes obvious that humans are losing. In order to preserve the species, several colonization expeditions are sent out to other stars, but all are tracked down by the Gbaba. Finally, a colony fleet manages to sneak away via trickery. The passengers of the colony ships spend a decade in hyperspace in cryogenic sleep, and then arrive at a planet thousands of light years away from and slightly smaller than Earth, which they colonize and name Safehold. The original plan for this society was to wait for the immediate danger to pass, rebuild the technological base from records and artifacts left behind, and prepare a force large enough to defeat the Gbaba. However, the mission command is split into two groups. The first group is led by a Machiavellian administrator named Eric Langhorne. Langhorne believes that unless the humans in hiding on Safehold are permanently restricted to a Medieval level of technology, they will be eventually detected and destroyed by the Gbaba. During the trip to Safehold, the group alters the colonists' memories so they believe upon awakening they are the first humans and that they were created by a god. The radical leaders create a new religious institution called the Church of God Awaiting, which proscribes advanced technology and effectively deifies the members of mission command (they are hereafter called angels and are led by "Archangel Langhorne"). The second group, under the administrator Pei Shan-wei, wishes to preserve advanced technology and concepts, but not to use such knowledge until humanity is ready. In this way, the knowledge would be preserved and available for future generations. Once the human population had recovered, they could gradually ramp up the technology until they were capable of defeating the Gbaba. To this end, the second group establishes a city named Alexandria to house its members and technological information. The two groups break into open warfare, and Langhorne has the city of Alexandria, and all its inhabitants (including Shan-Wei, who is made into the Safeholdian version of Lucifer by the Church), destroyed by orbital bombardment. The city ruins and the surrounding land mass are sunk beneath the ocean, creating what the now-superstitious colonists call Armageddon Reef. In a counter-attack, Shan-wei's supporters manage to eliminate most, but not all of, Langhorne's inner circle, including Langhorne. Shan-wei's group also managed to hide an android, with the personality and memories of Nimue Alban, a dead female starship tactical officer, deep within a secret mountain base, along with technology, an electronic library and a room full of weapons. When Nimue awakes some 800 years later, the situation is explained to her by a recording created by Shan-Wei's now deceased husband, Pei Kau-yung, and she is offered the mission of reversing the plans of the radicals and helping prepare mankind for the inevitable re-encounter with the Gbaba on more favorable terms. Nimue accepts the mission and uses mobile spy technology to examine the world. However, it becomes clear that as an apparent woman, her influence would be less than it should be. She therefore changes into an apparent male and takes the name of Merlin before travelling to the Kingdom of Charis which is a relatively advanced region of Safehold with a somewhat free-thinking approach to religion. Merlin gains the trust of King Haarahld of Charis by interfering in an assassination attempt on Haarahld's son, Crown Prince Cayleb of Charis, saving his life. Merlin is made Cayleb's personal guardian and a de facto adviser to the king. He begins to introduce technology that, while not technically proscribed by the Safeholdian Bible, is advanced. While most of Safehold is at a 14th century level of technology, Merlin introduces better sailing vessels, improved gunpowder, and greatly improved seaborne cannons, very equivalent to the 17th century in Europe. Events come to a head when the Church organizes an attack on Charis by most of its neighbors. Largely due to the technology introduced by Merlin, the combined attacking fleets of galleys are annihilated by the small Charis fleet of heavily-armed galleons, although King Haarahld is killed in battle. The book ends at his funeral, about one month after the end of the battle, with Cayleb being crowned king without the Church's consent and with the beginning of a reformation movement emerging in Charis.
12524889	/m/02wbf9x	By Schism Rent Asunder	David Weber	2008-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Nimue Alban, known to the people of the planet Safehold as "Merlin Athrawes", has been very busy. Over the course of several months, Nimue has continually steered the Kingdom of Charis towards confrontation with Safehold's all-powerful Church of God Awaiting. The combined duties of being the guardian and adviser of Charis' King Cayleb, as well as the source of Charis' rapid advancements in military technology, are tiring for even an android. Her only escape is space, somewhere nobody else on Safehold can follow her. Meanwhile, she is forced to remain concerned about the very same kinetic bombardment platform that killed her mentor Pei Shan-Wei and most of her supporters after the Church's founder Eric Langhorne used it to destroy her Alexandria enclave. Planetside, the Kingdom of Charis has been emboldened by its devastating naval victory over the forces sent to destroy it by the Church. Archbishop Mikael Staynair of Charis, who has become the effective Martin Luther of Safehold, declares a schism between the Church of God Awaiting and his see on Charis, accusing the "Group of Four" which controls the Church of being responsible for the massive sneak attack that was launched on Charis during the events of Off Armageddon Reef. King Cayleb, who has ascended to the throne following his father's death in the attack, is locked in a desperate struggle with the Church. The Charisian Navy, which now essentially rules the seas of Safehold, extensively disrupts international commerce and communication with swift and well armed privateer fleets. Meanwhile, the Group of Four set plans into motion to build a force capable of challenging Charis, and in the meantime to attack the Kingdom in any way possible. They order the brutal public execution of the previous Archbishop of Charis, Erayk Dynnis, although things do not exactly go as planned, and they suffer a setback after Dynnis bravely publicly denounces them before his death. They also declare that Cayleb and Staynair are apostates and enemies of God, which creates domestic problems for Cayleb. Merlin barely manages to prevent the assassination of Archbishop Staynair at the hands of Charisian Church loyalists, who also burn the Royal College. The Group of Four urge all of the nations loyal to the Church to close their ports to Charisian shipping in an attempt to attack Charis via economic means. In the nearby Kingdom of Delferahk, the Church's Office of Inquisition is resisted by Charisian merchants as it attempts to seize docked vessels. The ensuing massacre by the Inquisition pushes Safehold to brink of Holy War. Cayleb, on the advice of Merlin, decides to try to become allies with whomever possible to prepare for the inevitable conflict. This proves to be a very difficult task, as most of the nations of Safehold have aligned with the Church. He sends his Prime Minister Earl Grey Harbor to the Kingdom of Chisholm, which had very reluctantly complied with the Church's demand to attack Charis in the previous book. Originally expecting the Prime Minister to merely seek to restore relations, Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm is shocked when Grey Harbor instead proposes a political marriage between her and Cayleb. Knowing that Chisholm will inevitably be the Church's next target if Charis is defeated, she accepts. Despite her best efforts, Nimue's true nature is eventually uncovered, although in a favorable way. One day, during a private meeting, Staynair reveals himself to be part of a secret Order which has uncovered irrefutable proof of humanity's true history. It is revealed that King Haarahld was a member of this group, as were most of his ancestors, and that he had made it his goal to model Charisian society on the principles of the past, and eventually reveal the truth to the world. The decision is made to inform Cayleb of the truth, as Haarahld had died before he could do so. The members of the Order agree to keep the number of people who are aware of the truth as low as possible. Merlin reluctantly agrees to exclude Cayleb's Head of Government Earl Gray Harbor, and even Queen Sharleyan herself, in order to ensure that the secret of humanity's true history is kept until the people of Safehold are ready. Cayleb decides to exact retribution on the Kingdom of Delferahk. A large Charisian fleet sails to the Kingdom's largest port and site of the massacre, where it quickly reduces all coastal defenses to rubble and lands a large force of Charisian marines. The city's defenders surrender and by Charisian order evacuate before the commander of the invasion burns the entire town to the ground. The precise fate of Delferahk is left unknown. Sharleyan arrives in Charis for the wedding, and by chance, she and Cayleb end up falling in love. They decide to combine their two kingdoms into a new Empire of Charis, with both of them ruling over Charis and Chisholm together. Cayleb also reaches out to his father's archenemy, Prince Nahrmahn of Emerald, offering him very fair terms of surrender and even betrothing Cayleb's younger brother to Nahrmahn's daughter and making Nahrmahn his Master of Espionage. Cayleb and Sharleyan decide that the nearby League of Corisande, a longtime of enemy of Charis, will also need to be subjugated before it can be reinforced with Church support. Unlike Nahrmahn, Corsiande's Prince Hektor will not go down without a fight. Shortly after he and Sharleyan are married, Cayleb assembles an armada and a force of almost 50,000 Charisian Marines. Sharleyan is left to rule Charis in Cayleb's stead as the fleet, led by Cayleb and Merlin, embarks to Chisholm, where it will combine with forces there to stage a massive invasion of the League of Corisande.
12527861	/m/02wbkw9	The Final Passage	Caryl Phillips		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The year is 1958. Leila is a 19 year-old woman who has to care for her very sick mother. She has never known her father, and her mother, who is only 40, has even refrained from telling her about him. As her skin is lighter than that of most of the other islanders she believes that she was the product of an affair her mother must have had with a white man. That, she thinks, would also explain her mother's distrust of white people, an attitude she has always tried to pass on to her daughter. Leila has a very good friend in Millie, who is more down to earth and knows much better what she wants to achieve in life. Leila's boyfriend Michael, who is in his early twenties, is an irresponsible young man whose main interests are sex and drink. He does the odd delivery job on his scooter for his friend Bradeth, but most time of the day the two men can be seen outside one of the small bars getting drunk on beer. Michael has fathered an illegitimate child but has not made any real effort to move in with its mother. Rather, as his own parents are dead, he still lives in his grandmother's house. Rather than wait for Arthur, who has declared his love for her but left the island promising to come back soon, Leila has set her eyes on Michael, who before long agrees to become her husband. However, their marriage gets off to a bad start and cannot even be patched up when their son Calvin is born, whom Michael at first does not even come to visit. One day Leila is shocked to find her mother gone. A letter informs her that on her doctor's advice she has left for England in order to seek medical treatment there. Leila finds life on the small island increasingly unbearable, and her wish to emigrate to England and to reunite with her mother becomes stronger and stronger. It turns out that Michael is not averse to the idea, and so Leila arranges everything for her young family's "final passage." Bradeth and Millie, who are also a couple now expecting their second child, cannot be persuaded to leave with them: [...] But Millie was adamant. "Too many people beginning to act like it's a sinful thing to want to stay on this island but there don't be no law which say you must go to England, you know. People here too much follow fashion." Leila did not have time to answer. "So Michael, why you don't say something? You being too damn quiet for my reasoning." "Well, I think you right some of the way but I don't think it can be anything but good for a young family. I mean there is where all the opportunity is, and it don't mean to say we can't come back here with some profits after we finish working over there if it's so we choose to do. Millie was quick to speak again. "So just tell me how many people you see coming back from England with anything except the clothes they standing up in?" "No, Millie, it's not fair." Michael wanted to get up to make his point but he remained seated. "People only been going out there a few years so why they should be coming back now? It's just starting." People leave in masses, the huge ship is packed with emigrants most of whom are lured away from their home by the prospect of a better life. All they can go on, however, are snippets of pseudo-information, misconceptions, things they picked up when they were at school, exaggerated stories told by returnees, and second- or third-hand advice on how to tackle life in England. Michael, for example, just like other young black men on board their ship, is secretly looking forward to having promiscuous sex with white women, having been told by his friend Bradeth that he heard &#34;about one coloured man out there who writing home saying he be having at least three or four different white girls a week.&#34; After a two-week voyage, Michael, Leila and Calvin finally set foot on English soil, have &#34;nothing to declare except their accents&#34;, and eventually arrive at Victoria on the boat train from Dover with only her mother&#39;s address and some money to start a new life with. They take a taxi to the fictitious Quaxley Street only to be faced with a shabby, overcrowded house divided into several bedsits, and her mother gone again. Leila learns that she has been in hospital for some time, and during the following weeks regularly visits her there. However, the heart-to-heart she has wanted to have with her never takes place as her health rapidly deteriorates. She dies soon afterwards. As newly arrived immigrants belonging to a visible minority who are looking for suitable accommodation and a regular income, Leila and Michael experience the kind of racism, petty and otherwise, prevalent in a city inhabited almost solely by whites which is suddenly being flooded by dark-skinned &#34;foreigners&#34;. They fall prey to unscrupulous estate agents, and Michael soon returns to his habit of coming and going whenever he chooses to, leaving all household chores to Leila. He stops talking to his wife, is frequently drunk again and quits his job after only a few days to &#34;go into business&#34; together with a newly-found friend of his. Also, Leila discovers a blonde hair on the shoulder of his jacket and draws her own conclusions. When she realises that they have run out of money she starts working on the buses, but on her first day she has a breakdown and is informed by the examining doctor that she is pregnant again. At the end of the novel Leila has come to realise that Michael is not going to be part of her future. The novel is divided into five chapters of unequal length entitled &#34;The End,&#34; &#34;Home,&#34; &#34;England,&#34; &#34;The Passage,&#34; and &#34;Winter.&#34; Basically narrated in chronological order, it does contain a series of flashbacks mainly outlining episodes of Leila&#39;s past life in the Caribbean island. The Final Passage won the Malcolm X Prize in 1985.
12528811	/m/02wbmwy	Ingo	Helen Dunmore	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In a flashback, Sapphire (Sapphy) remembers her father, Mathew Trewhella, showing her the carved Zennor mermaid who was slashed with a knife a long time ago by an angry human. She had been in love with a human man who eventually swam away with her and became Mer. By an apparent coincidence the truant man has exactly the same name as Sapphy's father. He is apparently her ancestor. Sapphy is haunted by her father's disappearance because he does not come back from the cove after an argument with her mother. Many people say he ran away with another woman, or has died, but Sapphy and her brother, Conor, who is two years older than she is, refuse to give up hope and secretly promise to never stop looking for him. About a year later Conor also disappears. Fearing that the same thing that happened to her father has happened to Conor, Sapphy sets out to look for him. She finds him speaking to a mysterious girl in the water at the nearby cove, and waits until the girl suddenly disappears. When asked about the girl, Conor behaves as if she were never there, and is shocked (and at first doesn't believe) that hours have passed since he went for a "quick" swim. The next day, Conor leaves again for the cove after their mother has left for work. Searching for him at the cove, Sapphy hears a beautiful voice singing a familiar song that her father had sung to her in the past. She calls out for her father and the singing stops. Suddenly she notices a boy perched on a rock. At first she thinks he is wearing a wetsuit pulled down to the waist but later realises that he actually has a seal's tail instead of legs. She nearly falls into the sea but the Mer boy, named Faro helps her keep her balance. When she calls him a "mermaid", he gets very scornful of humans, saying that him being a mermaid is "anatomically impossible" as he is, firstly, male and secondly, "all that scaly-tails and hair-combing mermaid and merboy and merman stuff comes from humans". He takes her through the Skin (the surface) and into the world of Ingo which is extremely painful at the beginning for a human, and you have to forget about Air to be able to survive. She also finds out that it works the other way for the Mer: it hurts them when they go into the Air, and if they stay to long, they will die. After an amazing time, Sapphy leaves Ingo only to realize that she has been there all day long instead of a few hours. As time goes by, Sapphy is affected more and more by Ingo, craving salt and the call of the sea. Ingo calls to Sapphire more strongly than it does to Conor. Her brother, worried Sapphire will "disappear," takes her to the wise Granny Carne, who imparts her knowledge about Sapphire and Connor's Mer inheritance. Granny Carne has earth power and can communicate with owls and bees, maybe even other animals. Roger, a diver and a new boyfriend of Sapphire's mother, plans to go diving near the Bawns. Sapphire learns that this is where the Mer go to die and Ingo is deeply hostile to anyone who goes there and that all of Ingo is prepared to defend what is held there. She also remembers that her father told her and Conor to never ever go near them and that it was dangerous. Sappy and Conor do their best to save Roger and his diving buddy Gray from the fierce seal guardians that protect that area. Conor is able to hear the seals song that they sing to the dying Mer, so he sings their song and makes them calm down. At first Faro and Elvira do not help, but then realize how brave Sapphire and Conor are so they help them. Sapphire and Conor, with Faro and Elvira's help, they get Roger and Gray back into the boat and cover them with foil blankets. Then when that night, as Roger is sleeping on the couch, he wakes up screaming from a nightmare and tells Sapphires mother that he was being thrown by underwater bulls. At this, Sapphire realizes that the memory of the incident still resides in Roger's mind, just below the surface.
12529832	/m/02wbpy8	Relentless	Simon Kernick	2006	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One Saturday afternoon, Tom Meron, a happily married middle class man, receives a phone call from his old friend Jack Calley, a high-flying city lawyer whom he hasn't seen or heard from in years. While on the phone, Tom hears Jack being murdered on the line; his last words being the first two lines of Tom's address. Tom, terrified and confused, grabs his children and flees the house. While leaving the neighborhood, he passes a suspicious vehicle heading towards his house. He leaves his children with his mother-in-law and goes to find his wife only to be attacked in her office by a balaclava-clad man wielding an already bloody knife. He is then quickly arrested by the police on suspicion of murder. Tom is questioned about the murder of Vanessa Blake (his wife's work partner), telling him that there was evidence that he was at the crime scene. Meanwhile Mike Bolt is working in to a suicide–murder case of the chief justice and he thinks it might have something to do with Jack Calley because he was his solicitor. He finds out that the last call Jack made was to Tom Meron's landline so he goes to Tom's house to question him. Though Tom has just been released on bail, Mike orders Tom's re-arrest in order to question him. Officers attempt to apprehend Tom after he exits the station, but Tom decides to make a break for it. He manages to get a good way away but a car pulls up beside him. Thinking it is the police, he turns around (admitting defeat) when he is violently subdued by a man in a baseball cap, and subsequently forced into the back of the car. Tom quickly learns that the two men who kidnapped him mean to question Tom.
12538506	/m/02wc6zw	The Burning Court	John Dickson Carr	1937	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Edward Stevens, an editor at Herald and Son's publishing house, is on the train home, recounting the story of the death of the uncle of his boss, Mark Despard. Mark's uncle, Miles, had died recently of gastroenteritis, which had caused him to be bedridden for days. Although Miles' death was considered death by natural causes, two strange things were reported surrounding the death. A housemaid reported spying into Despard's room, through the shade of one of the glass doors leading in, and reported that a woman had left, through a door that had been bricked up for years. After Despard died, under his pillow was found a strange piece of string, tied in nine knots. Stevens shrugs both events off as nothing. Instead, he opens the book he is bringing home to edit. The book is a book on true crime, by famous true crime writer Gauden Cross. Cross's book is on murder trials, and the book begins with the trial and execution of Marie D'Aubray, in 1861. There is a picture of Marie D'Aubray attached to the section, which causes Stevens to jump. The picture of Marie D'Aubray, is a picture of his wife, Marie Stevens. Stevens gets home, and confronts his wife, who tries to convince him that the picture means nothing. Stevens goes up to wash his hands, and when he returns, the picture is gone. Before Stevens can figure it out, the doorbell rings. It is Mark Despard and a doctor named Partington. Mark Despard explains he believes his uncle was murdered, and that he, Partington, and Stevens, are going to dig up the body, and do an autopsy. Miles Despard is buried in a crypt, sealed with cement. Mark, Partington, and Stevens begin the long process of breaking up the cement. After they do, they climb down the long steps, to retrieve the body. They find Miles' coffin, open it, and reveal nothing. A quick search confirms that the body has disappeared from the sealed crypt.
12545157	/m/02wchtv	Sten Adventures Book 5: Revenge of the Damned	Allan Cole	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Sten and Alex are now POWs in a Tahn prison camp. They were taken captive during the last story (Fleet of the Damned) when their ship was rendered hors de combat. The first half of the book covers their time in the prison camp (from which they could easily escape if their duty did not prevent them) and their eventual escape from said camp. The second half involves being sent back to the same Tahn world by the Eternal Emperor to help topple the Tahn regime and end the Tahn War. They are successful in all accounts, but afterwards an internal assassination plot succeeds in killing the Eternal Emperor. As the story ends, however, there is evidence that he will be back. (Well, that's why he's called the "Eternal" Emperor- but that's a story for the next book.)
12545383	/m/02wcj1r	Sten Adventures Book 6: The Return of the Emperor	Allan Cole	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Eternal Emperor had been assassinated at the end of the last book. Apparently, he is not so immortal after all. Sten takes his leave of Imperial service, then takes it upon himself to hunt down and kill the members of the Privy Council that took over after the demise of the Emperor. He gathers proof they were responsible for the assassination but can not touch them. Finally, after a failed assassination mission, he organizes a grand tribunal to try them for their crimes, even though they are not present. This book also follows a mysterious character named Raschid that wakes up in a strange spaceship, in a strange portion of space, with no memory. He leaves, finds himself drawn to a dive of a diner and becomes the cook. He is very successful and things look good for him until his internal clock tells him it is time to leave. He can not even explain it to himself, it is just time to go. He signs onto a smuggling ship, organizes a mutiny and takes over the ship, mostly to prevent the bloodshed that would occur if the other members of the crew were to carry through their own mutiny. He lands the ship at its scheduled point, a planet called Dusable. Dusable is the most corrupt planet in the known universe. Everything about the planet revolves around politics; the only thing you can say about Dusable, is that it works. Raschid wades in and in a dazzling display of political cleverness and guile, rigs the election. Again, he does not know why he is doing this, just that he is supposed to. After the election, he borrows a ship and takes off. Something in his heads has clicked and he knows what he is supposed to do. He makes a few stops along the way and shows up to the grand tribunal that Sten is running and stuns everyone by parading out of his ship with his Imperial Gurkha bodyguards. He is the Eternal Emperor reborn. The book ends with the Privy Council captured or killed and the Eternal Emperor in charge once again. It looks like it is smooth sailing for Sten from here on out.
12545424	/m/02wcj3g	Sten Adventures Book 7: Vortex	Chris Bunch	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Sten fulfilled many tasks in service to the Eternal Emperor and his Empire as special forces agent, tacship fleet captain and admiral. Now he is going to add a new one - a diplomat. The Eternal Emperor, who was assassinated 6 years ago, is back from the grave and once again he can lead his merchant Empire. However, domestic situation is desperate. Tahnwar followed by 6-year shortage of Antimatter Two brought many regions of Empire to the brink of economic collapse that can't be prevented with restoring flow of AM2. Even the Eternal Emperor can't manage this whole situation alone, so he asks his friends for help. Friends like certain Karl Sten. Sten, after proving his worth on the field of diplomacy, is sent to Altai Cluster, a very important region of the Empire, which shows a lack of stability. Altai resembles a Middle East-like war zone, where various ET and human factions are trying to kill each other and take control of the Cluster. One of Sten's tasks is the support of dictator Khaquan, whose rule by an iron hand is the only thing that keeps whole Cluster in check. Sten goes to Altai as prepared as never before, with plenty of information (especially one provided by his friend and former boss, admiral Ian Mahoney), his best friend Alex, Cind, Sten's lover and excellent sharpshooter, contingents of Bhor, Gurkha and also Emperor’s personal flagship Victory. Upon arrival to the Cluster central world Jochi Sten discovers that dictator Khaquan is dead and there is a bloody civil war between all major factions. Sten brilliantly stops all fighting, but he receives an unpleasant wake-up call in the form of an extremely well prepared assassination attempt, which he and his friends barely survive. Over Sten's objections, the Emperor (who is showing signs of instability) assigns a banished member of one faction as ruler of the whole cluster. This new ruler proves as big a despot as Khaquan, with storm troopers and mass arrests being daily order. Sten is powerless to stop him, his complains to the Emperor fall on deaf ears. While Sten and Alex are collecting evidence to compel the Emperor to rescind his decision, the Emperor secretly agrees with Sten's conclusion and decides to assassinate his newly appointed ruler, and in the same time make Sten a martyr, to cover suspicion. However, Cind and her sniper team kills the assassin before he can kill Sten. Fortunately, Sten knows about Emperor’s wavering loyalty. He receives many warnings from his friends, that not only the Eternal Emperor is the actual cause of continuing economic downfall, but also he doesn’t trust his former friends anymore and plans to dispose of Sten in case of failure. This is cemented when admiral Ian Mahoney, who was sent to help Sten, is imprisoned and charged with treason against the Empire. The situation on planet continues to spin out of control (thus the title of the book). Sten tries one last attempt at peace solution, which horribly fails (not to his fault), and Sten and his entourage are forced to flee under fire from Altai, against the order of the Emperor. As they are leaving, Sten hears that admiral Mahoney was executed. Few minutes later, Admiral Mason, whom we met in an earlier part of Sten's career, is ordered by the Emperor to use a planet buster to destroy Jochi. We leave Sten and his fleet in shock after Sten and a tacship pilot destroy Mason's ship, making Sten and company mutineers and rebels, declared outlaw by Imperial forces.
12545485	/m/02wcj66	Sten Adventures Book 8: Empire's End	Chris Bunch	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book begins moments after Sten prevents Admiral Mason from destroying a planet to cover up the Emperor's poor handling of its internal politics. Once-Admiral and Ambassador, Sten and his band of black ops semi-outlaws are now full outlaws, wanted dead or alive, preferably dead. In an extended flashback, we discover how the Emperor rose from slums of Hawaii to control AM2, his true source of power (both politically and practically). We learn how he became "immortal", how he discovered the location of AM2, and, that in his current "incarnation", he is not truly the same as before his most recent assassination. The book describes Sten's attempt to remove Emperor from power with the help of many races and planets from across the galaxy. Sten and his partners are finally able to track the Emperor back to his hideout in an alternate universe. Sten tracks the Emperor to his hideout and eventually kills him, using his signature crystal knife. The universe is now free of the Emperor, but the problem of AM2 supply is foremost on everyone's mind. Sten finds himself frustrated that so many races still want someone to lead them as the Emperor once did. He plays with the idea of keeping the secret to AM2 and becoming such a leader, but rejects the idea and chooses instead to broadcast the location of AM2 to everyone and let other beings find their own way.
12556251	/m/02wvrnw	Doomed Queen Anne	Carolyn Meyer	2002-10-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins when Anne is at an event called the "Field of the Cloth of Gold" in the summer of 1520. She has no great beauty (olive skin, dark hair and dark eyes in a time when pale-faced blonds were seen as the coveted image), no wealth and no title. She meets up with her older sister Mary, who is a lady-in-waiting in Queen Catherine's court. Anne's sister is rumoured to be the mistress of King Henry VIII of England. The King is tiring of his wife/queen because she has produced no sons, only a daughter, Mary (later known as Bloody Mary) Anne's somewhat difficult childhood before the event is outlined. Always ill-favored by her parents, constantly antagonized by her older sister Mary, and disgusted by her own "deformities" (a small sixth finger and mole on her neck) she develops an ambition to rise to the top. Anne, jealous of her sister's rumoured affair when Mary flaunts the fact that she has the King's favor, vows to become the second wife of King Henry VIII. Anne, too, is a lady-in-waiting in the Queen's court. When the King tires of Mary, Anne uses her wits to gain the King's heart. While courting the King (and strategically defending her virginity), Anne manages to persuade Henry to defy everyone, including the Queen and the Roman Catholic Church, and to marry Anne. Everybody hates her, claiming that she has magic powers and that she is wicked because of her sixth finger and the mole on her neck. She finally gets her way and becomes the wife of Henry and Queen of England. They have a child together, but it is a daughter, Elizabeth (who will later ascend the throne after the death of her half-sister, Bloody Mary). Anne's vow has come true, but the lack of male heirs causes it all to end badly for Anne Boleyn. Meanwhile, Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister who has now since been discarded by the king and widowed when her husband dies of the sweating sickness, remarries a commoner in secret. On learning that she is pregnant, she reveals this to Anne, who banishes her from court. The two never reconcile. When Anne fails to give Henry a son after three years of marriage, the Seymour family begins plotting. Jane Seymour catches the king's attention. Realizing that the king may toss Anne aside for her, Jane refuses to become the King's mistress and instead drops heavy hints of marriage. After Anne miscarries a second time, she is falsely accused by the King, and by his daughter Mary, and by Lady Rochford, the wife of Anne's brother George, of committing adultery with five other men, her own brother George among them. Anne is executed in the end as a result of her "adultery".
12560147	/m/02wvwlq	Runcible Jones: The Gate to Nowhere	Ian Irvine	2006-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Set in an alternate modern-day Earth where magic is known to exist, and is forbidden to all, The Gate to Nowhere tells the story of twelve-year-old Runcible Jones, a young boy whose father died during an explosion while writing a book about magic, and whose mother is currently imprisoned for attempting to protect said book. Despite his social problems, Runcible inadvertly manages to befriend a girl named Mariam. However, when an unexpected and desperate accident involving Runcible's powers transport the two to the dangerous world of Ilitor, the duo are forced to cooperate to survive in their harsh new surroundings. But when a chance encounter with a mysterious sorceress ends with both of them being cast away into the wilds of Ilitor, it is only through the help of the shady Sleeth and their strange new friends (and enemies), that they will be able to return home to Earth, and see their families again.
12560485	/m/02wvx0g	Runcible Jones: The Buried City	Ian Irvine	2007-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Runcible and Mariam are back and they are in big trouble. Lord Shambles has returned, stronger than ever before and once he finds the lost Citadel of Magic there will be no defence against his evil sorcery. To put a stop Lord Shambles, the children must journey to Iltior and descend to the uttermost pole. But even if they find the Codex of Dreadful Spells, Runcible still has to unravel the mystery of the tainted children, then face his most terrifying nightmare, the sting of the giant scorpion. The Buried City is book two of the Runcible Jones series.
12572127	/m/02wwbpn	Is He Dead?	Mark Twain			 The play takes place in Paris, 1846. Jean-François Millet is a gifted painter, but has trouble selling his paintings. Because of this, he and his three friends/pupils Agamemnon "Chicago" Buckner, Hans "Dutchy" von Bismarck, and Phelim O'Shaughnessy are in debt to the evil picture dealer Bastien Andre. Also in debt to Andre is Papa Leroux, father of Millet's girlfriend Marie and Cecile, who has a love-hate relationship with Chicago. Andre arrives at Millet's apartment to collect both debts. Millet points out that their contract states that Andre can take Millet's paintings for 100 francs each to pay off the debt, but Andre (who is also in love with Marie and wants to ruin Millet) refuses on the grounds that he is free to take the paintings as he likes. Andre proceeds to remind Leroux that his payment is due tomorrow, unless Marie agrees to marry him. When Leroux refuses to force his daughter to marry Andre, Andre angrily leaves. Soon after, Millet's land ladies Mdme. Bathilde and Mdme. Caron arrive and Millet pays them in rent in paintings (they do not mind because they love his work). The two take the Leroux family for dinner while Millet and his friends try to sell his paintings at an auction. Only one person arrives, a ditzy man named Thorpe, who, despite liking Millet's paintings, refuses to buy any because Millet is not dead. When he leaves, Dutchy bemoans that when the world has a master, he is not recognized and rich until long after he's dead. This gives Chicago an idea: Millet can fake his death which will result in the demand and prices for his paintings increasing, thereby giving the group enough money to pay off Andre. In order to prevent Millet from being caught, they'll disguise him as his fictional twin sister "Daisy Tillou", a widow. Millet is against this plan, but the other three proceed with it. The next day, Dutchy and O'Shaughnessy are driving up the prices of Millet's paintings, while Chicago has leaked to the press that Millet has come down with a terminal disease and has gone to the Barbary Coast to live out his remaining days. (This becomes a running gag as whenever a character asks where the Barbary Coast is, no one can answer.) Millet comes out dressed as the Widow and complains about his costume but Chicago assures him the plan will work (even though the Widow has trouble acting like a woman.) Indeed, everyone is overjoyed when Thorpe comes back to buy some paintings and buys three paintings (two of which aren't even Millet's) for 100,000 francs, instantly freeing them of their debt. The Widow is then forced to have tea with Mdme. Bathilde and Mdme. Caron alone, but fortunately they take her strange behavior as signs of grief over her brother's death. The Leroux family arrives to wait for Andre. Cecile becomes suspicious with the way the Widow and Chicago interact with each other while Marie is depressed over Millet. Andre arrives and the Widow hands him two checks to pay off the debts and stands up against his cruel behavior. Unfortunately, Andre declares that since now the paintings are worth far more than the checks, he will take them instead. When the Widow asks if there is anything she can do to stop him, he says he will not do it if the Widow marries him! The Widow faints into Dutchy and O'Shaughnessy's arms as the act ends. Act 2 begins months later in the Widow's new luxurious apartment in downtown Paris. Everyone is now rich because of the value of the paintings and the Widow has a butler named Charlie. Millet has since been declared dead and today is the day of Millet's funeral. Andre has continued attempting to court the Widow and Papa Leroux has even become smitten with "her" and proposes while they are alone. The Widow struggles to keep him at bay, when Inspector Lefoux (actually Cecile in disguise) comes to question the Widow over Millet's death and her relationship with Chicago. To keep the two at bay, the Widow admits Chicago is her lover. When Charlie announces more visitors, the Widow has them wait in separate rooms. Mdme. Bathilde and Mdme. Caron arrive with Marie, grieving over Millet's "death". The Widow talks to Marie alone, while the other two wait with Leroux in another room. Marie tells the Widow that Andre truly loves "her" and "she" should marry him. Andre then arrives and tells the Widow the second she says yes to marriage, the contract is destroyed. Once he is gone, Chicago, Dutchy, and O'Shaughnessy arrive with Millet's casket (which is closed and filled with bricks). The trio are excited by the stir Millet's death has caused: prices are higher than ever and the King of France is even attending the funeral. As they celebrate, Marie comes back and shames them. As Marie and the Widow continue talking, Marie says she will never marry and then the Widow gets an idea. The Widow reveals the disguise and tells an overjoyed Marie to tell Andre to come at 6:00. Suddenly, O'Shaughnessy comes in panicking. The King of France and other royals have come to view the remains. Chicago, for once is out of ideas, and Dutchy invites the royals in to view the body. The coffin is opened and they are all blown back by the terrible smell (Dutchy filled the coffin with limburger cheese in case someone wanted to look). As they leave, the friends celebrate as Lefoux comes back and questions Chicago. He sees through the disguise and tells "Lefoux" that he is in love with Cecile. The two embrace and go off into another room where Chicago explains everything. Just before Andre arrives, the Widow takes Dutchy and O'Shaughnessy into another room and tells them the Widow's plan. Alone, Andre reveals he lied to Marie and only wants to marry the widow for her money. Knowing he is in the room, the trio stage a conversation and actions that make it seem as though the Widow has ceramic body parts and false hair. Andre, disgusted, tears up the contract and runs off as the Widow chases him. Dutchy and O'Shaughnessy are left alone with Charlie who reveals that he is actually Inspector Gaston of the Paris Police. He brings everyone except the Widow and Andre into the room where he exposes Millet's remains as bricks and that Lefoux is actually Cecile (there actually is a real Inspector Lefoux who is on vacation). Leroux reveals that instead of the Widow, he will marry either Bathilde or Caron. Gaston is about to send everyone to prison when Millet comes into the room dressed in his normal clothes. He tells Gaston that he was at the Barbary Coast on a break and came back to find his funeral going on. When Gaston tells him his sister stated he was dead, Millet tells him he has no sister. Everyone is overjoyed at Millet's return and Gaston leaves to find "the Widow". Millet and Marie are reunited and will be wed, along with Leroux and one of the ladies and Cecile and Chicago. Chicago reminds Millet that the entire country thinks he is dead, but Millet assured him that France will not admit she was wrong and that now he is a celebrity. Millet proposes a toast to the groups benefactor: the Widow Daisy Tillou.
12577054	/m/02wwj03	The Book of Lies	James Moloney	2004-05-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A young boy wakes up in an orphanage one night with no memory of who he is. The only thing he remembers is his name, Robert. But Robert isn't his name, and a little girl called Bea knows this. She was there when Lord Alwyn, a once powerful sorcerer, erased all of his memory using the powerful Book of Lies. He meets Bea, who tells of his name. His real name is Marcel. He encounters the mighty Fergus and the haughty Nicola during his stay at the orphanage, both of whom's memories are nothing more than lies. One day a mysterious man called Starkey claims to know the real lives of Nicola, Fergus and Marcel. Upon meeting his mother, imprisoned by the evil usurper King Pelham, he suddenly isn't sure. Is Starkey all that he claims to be? Is his mother his real mother? Is King Pelham really evil, or was that a lie as well? Danger lurks at every corner, and Marcel must stop the most feared Mortregis, beast of war, from rising once again.
12577558	/m/02wwjks	Master of the Books	James Moloney	2007-06-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book mostly deals with Fergus's attempts to kill Damon, who tracks Damon all over the Mortal Kingdoms. When Marcel puts a curse over Elster to prove that Fergus would never kill the king, the curse backfires on Fergus, putting him in mortal danger, and Marcel journeys to Noam to try and undo the curse.
12578463	/m/02wwkhb	Web of the City	Harlan Ellison	1958	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot revolves around the character of Rusty Santoro, a member of a fictional Brooklyn gang. In the novel, Santoro is caught between his meager prospects in the neighborhood, and obligations to his gang The Cougars. Throughout the book he struggles with the prospect of leaving his neighborhood and his life behind. The novel depicts street fights, murders, and other realities of gang life in urban areas. simple:Web of the City
12579875	/m/02wwm3b	The Dreaming Void			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the centre of the Milky Way galaxy an object called the Void resembles a massive black hole. The Void is not a natural system. Inside there is a strange universe where the laws of physics are very different to those we know. It is slowly consuming the other stars of the galactic core - one day it will have devoured the entire galaxy. In AD 3589 a human has started to dream of the wonderful existence inside the Void. He has a following of millions of believers. They now wish to make a pilgrimage to the Void to live the life they have been shown. Other star-faring species fear their migration will cause the Void to expand again. They are prepared to stop the pilgrimage fleet no matter what the cost.
12587008	/m/02wwwky	Spinneret	Timothy Zahn	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set on year 2016 Earth, with several interstellar ships being launched by the US and the EU in the hopes of finding habitable worlds to alleviate the overpopulation of Earth, only to find that while inhabitable worlds exists aplenty, they are all taken by a Commonwealth of alien races. This device allows the author to explain why his colonists are sent to the one world available, devoid of any life form because of its unexplainable lack of metals. Zahn describes briefly the conflicts between the military and civilian parts of the Astra expedition, the latter further divided between scientists and colonists, then introduces the main device of the novel - the planet itself somehow absorbs the metal, leading to equipment literally vanishing into the ground. Soon after the disappearance, what was thought to be a dormant volcano launches into orbit a cable of an unknown material, which turns out to be superconductive, of great tensile strength and with the ability to atomically bond with anything it touches. From this fact the author derives the novel's title: Astra is actually the "Spinneret" of this cable. What once was a resource-less dirtball soon becomes the most popular factory in the galaxy, with several alien races, the UN and the United States all jockeying for rights to the cable, with the colonists stuck in between. Looming over this tableau lies the question of who the Spinners were - or are, why they disappeared, and what they could have used such huge amounts of cable for. In the epilogue, an Astra expedition on a newly recovered Spinner craft discovers the Spinner world - englobed in a Dyson sphere of Cable material, designed to project the same spectrum of a red giant. The scientists conclude that the Spinners, involved in a war with some other than extinct race, had decided to disguise their home star in the unsuccessful attempt not to be found and destroyed. The Spinners' world becomes the new Earth population outlet, with the proceedings of Cable sales bootstrapping its economy. The alien races depicted by Timothy Zahn are the ctencri, shrewd merchants not unlike Star Trek's Ferengi; the rooshrike with their warrior code of honour; the m'zarch, a foolhardy race bent on war for war's sake, reminiscent of Klingons; the pom, a marine race resembling dolphins; the orspham; and the whissst, a race whose whole culture is based upon humour and practical jokes.
12590994	/m/02ww_8m	The Winter Prince	Elizabeth E. Wein	1993	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Medraut, the illegitimate son of Artos the king, returns from his travels in Africa and elsewhere to watch over his younger half-brother, Lleu. Though Medraut, a child of incest, can never be High King, Artos knows that Medraut is a far better statesman and fighter than his younger brother; thus, Artos gives Medraut the task of making Lleu fit to be High King, promising Medraut the position of Regent in return. Medraut doesn't know if he loves or hates his brother; even from the beginning, he is disgusted by Lleu's naïve, careless use of power and jealous of Lleu's easy claim to Artos's affection. Their relationship intensifies when Medraut's lessons begin to stick, and Lleu starts to seem a suitable High King. Matters are further complicated by the entrance of Medraut's mother Morgause, whose disturbing similarities to Medraut are revealed even as she tries to slowly poison Lleu. Expecting Medraut's tacit approval of the poisoning, Morgause is unhappily surprised when Medraut protects Lleu and reveals Morgause's treachery to Artos. Artos banishes Morgause from the castle, and Morgause vows to erode Medraut's loyalty to Lleu. At first, Morgause's vow seems an empty threat. But while Lleu becomes more and more competent, an accident strips Medraut of his power and (he thinks) his father's affections. Resentment simmers between Medraut and Lleu, and by the time Morgause visits again, Medraut barely needs a catalyst. He kidnaps Lleu, intending to turn him over to Morgause, who in turn, plans to trade Lleu's life for the throne. But when Lleu steals Medraut's weapons and attempts to escape, the brothers are put in a unique situation; Medraut is ill and weaponless, Lleu is completely lost, and both are stranded in the middle of the woods. Medraut, struggling with regret as well as with his own envious desire to break Lleu's spirit, proposes a sadistic bargain; if Lleu can stay awake and alert for five days straight, Medraut will betray Morgause and lead him back to Camlan. Lleu agrees to the bargain, but as Lleu begins to hallucinate from lack of sleep, Medraut realizes that nothing his brother has said or done should have pushed him to this extreme. The book ends with Medraut carrying Lleu back to Camlan, where Lleu, in turn, invokes his power as High King to save Medraut from being punished as a traitor.
12594753	/m/02wx3q7	Great Kings' War	Roland J. Green		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Great Kings' War begins near the end of the colder than usual "Winter of Wolves" which has followed the war between Hostigos and its neighbours and the founding of Hos-Hostigos. While Great King Kalvan of Hos-Hostigos (formerly Corporal Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Police) leads wolf and bandit hunts throughout his realm, the archpriests of Styphon's House plot their next move against Kalvan. As spring arrives Kalvan learns through the work of his intelligence officers Klestreus and Skranga that, in addition to the threat from Styphon's House, he must also face the armies of King Kaiphranos of Hos-Harphax, who seeks to regain the princedoms lost to Kalvan the previous year. To meet this two-fronted war Kalvan sends his father-in-law Ptosphes, Prince of Old Hostigos, as well as Princes Balthar of Beshta and Sarrask of Sask to meet the Holy Host of Styphon's House under Grand Master Soton in Beshta while he personally invades Hos-Harphax in the hope of capturing Harphax City and ending the reign of King Kaiphranos. Kalvan's campaign goes very well and he decimates the Harphaxi forces in the Battle of Chothros Heights, killing Crown Prince Philesteus of Hos-Harphax. Kalvan is preparing to press his advantage when he receives news that Ptosphes has been defeated by the Holy Host at Tenabra Town because of the treachery of Balthar of Beshta. Kalvan immediately abandons his plans and rushes to reinforce Ptosphes and defend Hostigos from the Holy Host at the climactic Battle of Phyrax a few miles from Kalvan's artillery foundry and the new University of Hostigos. With both sides taking extreme casualties during the day-long battle the forces of Hostigos manage to repel the Holy Host and send Soton back to Styphon's House disgraced in defeat. In the immediate aftermath Kalvan receives news that his wife Queen Rylla has been safely delivered of a healthy daughter, Princess Demia. Afterward Kalvan sends Ptosphes north to fight Great King Demistophon of Hos-Agrys who has invaded Hos-Hostigos believing it to be defenceless where he defeats them in multiple small battles. Meanwhile Kalvan invades Beshta and besieges Tarr-Beshta using siege tactics from his own timeline and executes Balthar for treason and seizes the miserly prince's massive treasury. The story ends with Kalvan happily reunited with Rylla and his new daughter for a peaceful winter while he prepares for the next year's battles.
12599509	/m/02wxbp3	Prophecy: Child of Earth	Elizabeth Haydon	2000	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Rhapsody travels with Ashe to deliver a dragon's claw, long ago hidden among the treasures of Ylorc, for fear of the dragon's wreaking vengeance upon those who would keep her claw from her. On the journey, Ashe and Rhapsody develop a degree of comfort with one another, punctuated by arguments. Upon their arrival, Rhapsody finds the dragon surprisingly friendly, and she stays for several days before departing. Meanwhile, in the halls of Ylorc, Grunthor and Achmed discover a hidden tunnel, leading to the Loritorium: the unfinished masterpiece of Ylorc's builder, centuries past. To their surprise, Gruthor and Achmed are confronted by a Dhracian as they investigate: one of the last of a near-legendary race, to which Achmed owes half his heritage. The Dhracian, who calls herself the Grandmother, instructs Achmed and Grunthor to return with Rhapsody. Rhapsody, after leaving the dragon's cave, travels to Tyrian, the forest home to the Lirin, so that she can meet and train with the former bearer of her elemental blade, Daystar Clarion. While in training, she sees a horrific vision of the world engulfed in blood after the death of the Patriarch, leader of one of the two major human religions. Rhapsody journeys to Sepulvarta, home of the Patriarch, and successfully defends the Patriarch against an attack by a F'Dor demon and his minion, the Rakshas. She then travels back to Ylorc, where Grunthor and Achmed lead her to the Grandmother. The Grandmother tells them of the Dhracian colony that had lived in the mountains of Ylorc for centuries, destroyed by the same saboteur who murdered the inhabitants of the Loritorium. She also shows them the treasure the Dhracian colony was founded to protect: the sleeping Child of Earth, whose second rib can be used as a key to open the Vault of the Underworld imprisoning most of the F'Dor. The Child of Earth's sleep is restless, rocked with prophetic nightmares, but Rhapsody is unable to help. After finally figuring out Ashe's secret, Rhapsody summons Ashe to her underground home in Ylorc with a carefully crafted song. Once he arrives, Rhapsody explains her realizations: Ashe is Gwydion, long believed dead after he failed in an attack on the F'Dor and had part of his soul torn out in the process. Gwydion was secretly resurrected by the power of the star which once adorned Daystar Clarion's hilt, however, awakening his dragon side in the process, and had wandered the land in secrecy for the decades following the attack. The lost piece of his soul was used to create the Rakshas, which wreaked havoc with Ashe's appearance. Ashe and Rhapsody become lovers, causing Jo (Rhapsody's adopted sister) no end of jealousy. The Rakshas uses this to trick Jo - pretending to be Ashe, he has sex with her, bringing her partially under the control of the F'Dor in the process. In an attempt to reclaim the stolen piece of Ashe's soul, Rhapsody sets out with Grunthor and Achmed to destroy the Rakshas. The demonically-influenced Jo nearly kills Achmed at the end of the battle, forcing Rhapsody to kill her to save Achmed, and subsequently battle to save her soul from the clutching vine of the F'Dor. Some days later, Ashe and Rhapsody meet again for a night of revelations. Ashe locks the memory of the night in a pearl, expecting the only thing said to be of his father, Llauron, concocted to use Rhapsody in a bid for power. In the course of the discussion, Ashe and Rhapsody learn to their surprise that they are (respectively) Sam and Emily, who loved one another one and a half millennia ago (It's complicated.) They get married, but Rhapsody agrees that she will have to forget it all so that Llauron's selfish plot can succeed. Then a tree root that the Rakshas corrupted attacks the Child of Earth, attempting to seize it (and thereby gain the key to the Underworld), but Grunthor, forewarned by a dream, manages to get Rhapsody and Achmed into position soon enough to avert the threat. Then they realize that the Rakshas conceived children with demon-tainted blood, who Rhapsody resolves to rescue.
12607026	/m/02wxp2z	Tessa	Margit Sandemo	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Tessa is the story of Tessa, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who has a vivacious imagination but is, in spite of this, a loner. There is a crime or a riddle to solve in that novel, which is typical of Margit Sandemo. The story begins when a burglar makes a wrong phone number. He inadvertently calls Tessa and tells her about his upcoming crime. Tessa plans to check his intentions.
12610484	/m/02wxth6	The Ten Teacups	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Chief Inspector Masters receives a note that reads "There will be ten teacups at number 4, Berwick Terrace, W. 8, on Wednesday, July 31, at 5 p.m. precisely. The presence of the Metropolitan Police Is respectfully requested." The note troubles Masters because, two years earlier, he received a similar note that was ignored requesting that the police go to a different location. On the previous occasion a man named William Dartley was found shot dead, in a room with ten very expensive teacups (patterned with a peacock feather motif). The house where Dartley was found had no furnishings in any room, except for the room where his body was found. Masters takes the note to Sir Henry Merrivale, who assumes that Dartley was murdered over the teacups but realizes that that doesn't make sense, because the murderer brought the cups. H.M. then focuses on the second note, finding out that 4 Berwick Terrace is also an empty house. Inspector Masters reports that the day before some furniture was delivered to the house, and he responds by having the house guarded and having a police officer posted outside the newly-furnished room at all times. Masters discovers that a room in the house, a strongroom on the top floor, is going to be a meeting place for a man named Vance Keating and an unknown man or organization. Although Keating doesn't want police protection, Detective-Sergant Pollard guards the door. At 5 p.m., two gunshots are heard. Pollard rushes into the room where he finds Keating shot dead, with a gun lying beside him. There is a thick layer of dust on the carpet that reveals only Pollard's and Keating's footprints. Pollard notices the window is open, and runs to it, noting that Sergeant Hollis stands directly under the window. Pollard suggests that the killer jumped out the window, to which Hollis's reply is "No one came out this window."
12615281	/m/02wy1cl	Renovation of the Heart	Dallas Willard	2002		 Renovation of the Heart proposes that the human self is made up of several interrelated components: one's spirit, i.e. one's "heart" or "will"; one's mind, or the collection of one's thoughts and feelings; the body; one's social context; and one's soul. Willard argues that one's identity is largely a function of how those components are subordinated to one another, and whether the whole is subordinated to God. Willard argues that popular rejection of subordination to God and the dominance of the body and feelings has resulted in addictions and futile pursuits of stimulation for the body or feelings. Willard argues that the subordinated alignment of one's being can be corrected through apprenticeship to Jesus Christ, which renovates one's heart.
12619679	/m/02wy9r2	Cop This!	Chris Nyst	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1969, in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley a car bomb explodes. Eleven people are slain. The repercussions threaten the stability of the government. Johnny Arnold, a low-level criminal is charged with the crime. This brings a father and son duo in conflict with the state's leaders.
12620254	/m/02wyc1q	The Ogre Downstairs	Diana Wynne Jones	1974	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When their mother Sally remarries, Caspar and Johnny Brent immediately dislike their new stepfather, Jack McIntyre, though their younger sister, Gwinny, is less judgemental. For one thing, Jack brings with him two sons of his own, Douglas and Malcolm, and the two sets of brothers do not get along. Tensions are increased by the small house the seven must live in to make ends meet. Jack himself proves to be prone to harsh comments, and Johnny soon dubs him "the Ogre". To calm things down, the Ogre buys chemistry sets, one each for Johnny and Malcolm. It is not too long before the children discover that some of the chemicals have magical properties. Douglas and Malcolm discover this after Johnny accidentally makes Gwinny fly, and a race begins between the two groups to find out which chemicals are magic. Caspar, Johnny, and Gwinny go flying, but the effect wears off away from home. Fortunately, Douglas has had to visit the mysterious store the chemistry sets came from to find out the antidote for a chemical which has turned Malcolm small, and they are able to attract his attention. He assists them in getting home, but the effect wears off again as they approach home, leaving Douglas stranded outside the house. Douglas (the oldest of the boys, perhaps fifteen) is caught by the Ogre, who assumes he has been sneaking out, and strikes his son. Later in the book, Johnny and Malcolm will also be struck by the Ogre. The other chemicals can do interesting things too, and the misadventures forge a bond among the children, as well as a common front against the Ogre. One chemical causes Malcolm's mind to enter Caspar's body, and vice versa. They spend a miserable day in each other's place before Douglas detects the substitution and figures out how to switch them back. But the experience has caused them to understand each other a little better. The poor relations between the Ogre and the children cause bitter arguments between him and Sally, which culminates in her departure (we learn later that she intends to send for the children as soon as she has a new place of her own). The Ogre lies about why Sally has left, pretending things are fine between them. This leads the children to assume, thinking the worst of the Ogre, that he has done away with Sally. Fearing that the Ogre has killed her mother, and upset about the Ogre's actions, Gwinny decides to kill the Ogre by baking him a cake filled with poison. She includes chemicals from the set, which, after she leaves it for the Ogre, turn the cake invisible. When Gwinny sees the cake "gone", and hears the Ogre making noises in his sleep, she assumes her scheme succeeded and is filled with remorse. She awakens the snoring Ogre, and confesses that she has poisoned him. However, she realises, the cake has not been eaten, but is simply invisible because of the chemicals. The Ogre assumes that much of this is childish nightmares, and talks to her for a while before sending her to bed, promising the girl that he will work on trying to understand the children better. Johnny's attempt on the Ogre's life is less subtle. He has also discovered invisibility, and uses it to try to kill the Ogre with a falling vacuum cleaner. The children realise Johnny has gone too far, and save the Ogre's life, though he does not fully realise his danger. Johnny also tries to make it look like the Ogre has killed him and disposed of his body, but his attempt is frustrated by Caspar and Douglas. The Ogre does realise Johnny is not to be seen, and Caspar claims he has run away to a distant aunt. The Ogre has Caspar get in the car with the stated intent of driving to the aunt's house where Johnny has supposedly gone. It turns out that the Ogre has taken Caspar in order to question him, since Caspar, as the Ogre puts it, is the worst liar he knows. The Ogre clearly heard Johnny's voice in the house, and knows he could not have run away. Caspar soon tells all, from the magic chemistry sets to the Johnny's attempt on the Ogre's life. The Ogre is convinced by one of Caspar's fingers, which Johnny's experiments have turned partially invisible. At the end of the talk they also understand each other a bit better, and the Ogre realises the effect his behaviour is having. The two drive home to find Johnny slowly being turned visible by being forced outside into the rain by the others, as water is the antidote to that chemical. The Ogre takes Johnny for a long talk behind closed doors, at the end of which the Ogre looks tired and Johnny looks smug. Sally is located at a relative's home, and she is persuaded to return. The Ogre then returns the chemistry sets to the mysterious store from which they came. After the Ogre and the children clean the house, and following one more adventure with at the supermarket with chemicals the children held back, Sally does return. But there is one more chemical, and this turns base metal into gold! There is enough to generate enough gold to allow them to buy a larger house, and the tensions dissipate. The children run wild in the new house as they realise the Ogre's bark is worse than his bite.
12620637	/m/02wycxx	Ball Four	Jim Bouton		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Bouton befriended sportswriter Leonard Shecter during his time with the Yankees. Shecter approached him with the idea of writing and publishing a season-long diary. Bouton, who had taken some notes during the season after having a similar idea, readily agreed. Bouton chronicled the season—the turning point year in which Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the Woodstock Festival was held, and the year of the Miracle Mets. In so doing, Bouton provided a frank, insider's look at professional sports teams. The book's context was the Seattle Pilots' only operating season, though Bouton was traded to Houston late in the year. Ball Four described a side of baseball that was previously unseen by writing about the obscene jokes and the drunken tomcatting of the players and about the routine drug use, including by Bouton himself. Bouton wrote with candor about the anxiety he felt over his pitching and his role on the team. Bouton detailed his unsatisfactory relationships with teammates and management alike, his sparring sessions with Pilots manager Joe Schultz and pitching coach Sal Maglie, and the lies and minor cheating that has gone on in sports seemingly from time immemorial. Ball Four revealed publicly for the first time the degree of womanizing prevalent in the major leagues (including "beaver shooting," the ogling of women anywhere, including rooftops or from under the stands). Bouton also disclosed how rampant amphetamine or "greenies" usage was among players. Also revealed was the heavy drinking of Yankee legend Mickey Mantle, which had previously been kept almost entirely out of the press.
12628868	/m/02wys3w	Simple Genius	David Baldacci	2007-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 From the book (Paperback Edition): Near Washington, D.C., there are two clandestine institutions: a laboratory developing advanced technology, and a secret CIA training camp. Sean King, financially hard-pressed and trying to help his professional—and platonic—partner, does something he had decided to never do: look for a "job" from his ex-girlfriend Joan Dillinger, a fellow ex-Secret Service agent who has gone private running her own PI agency. She gives him a case at a lab. The murder of a scientist by the name of Monk Turing draws Sean King to the lab. While searching for answers, he soon stumbles on Camp Peary, the CIA training facility which leads him to a more complicated puzzle. While working on the case, he soon comes across Turing's autistic daughter, Viggie Turing, who is also an extraordinary genius. She helps Michelle only because she trusts Michelle. She hates Horatio, the psychologist who is there to help both Michelle and Viggie. He works together with his partner, Michelle Maxwell, who has attempted suicide after a psychological breakdown. In the end, Sean and Michelle are able to crack the case, but for that they had to undergo torture at the hands of their enemies. Sean's generosity is evident when instead of taking up the treasures money he gets it divided in three parts for three different people, though his financial condition wasn't very good.
12633939	/m/02wyz5d	Jackie & Me	Dan Gutman	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 Joe Stosh is severely insulted during one of his at-bats in a baseball game by the opposing pitcher, Bobby Fuller, and loses his temper. He charges the mound, determined to teach Fuller a lesson. Mass chaos follows, and Joe ends up getting suspended indefinitely from Little League. He then goes to school the next day to receive an assignment to write a report on an important African American figure in United States history. Being a baseball fan, he chooses Jackie Robinson. He uses his special ability to travel through time with baseball cards to go back and witness Jackie Robinson’s first [[Major League Baseball. Joe realizes he is black. After meeting the Robinsons, they take Joe to see the Opening Day game. He becomes a batboy along with Ant, a prejudiced and mental teenager. Joe also buys valuable baseball cards for his father. Soon, Ant thinks Joe is a Communist and steals his Ken Griffey Jr. card, but Joe takes it back and travels back to the present. Joe goes back in time again, this time he is white. Joe travels to Yankee Stadium for the 1947 World Series with Jackie. There, Ant discovers Joe's Game Boy, but before he can call the cops, Joe leaves. Ant decides to break into Jackie's house. He steals Joe's million-dollar baseball cards. Joe wants to stay for Game 7, but with the cops after him, he knows it is not possible. Joe leaves 1947, this time for good. Back in the present, Joe gives his report and states that Jackie Robinson had to endure all the prejudice going on. It ends up being outstanding, and the teacher proclaims it the best in the class. His suspension from the Little League is lifted for the last game of the season. He again meets Bobby Fuller in the bottom of the last inning with the score tied, but this time ignores his heckling and gets a single. After that, he manages to successfully steal second base, third base, and home plate, getting the ultimate revenge. Historic baseball figures appearing in the book include Pee Wee Reese, Dan Bankhead, Hugh Casey, Dixie Walker, Bobby Bragan, Eddie Stanky, and Babe Ruth.
12634206	/m/02wyzl3	Ballet Shoes	Noel Streatfeild	1936	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrative concern three adopted sisters, Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil. Each of the girls is discovered as a baby by Matthew Brown (Great-Uncle-Matthew, or Gum), an elderly, absent-minded paleontologist and professor, during his world travels, and sent home to his great-niece, Sylvia, and her childhood nanny, whom everybody called 'Nana'. Gum (Great-Uncle-Matthew) embarks upon an expedition of many years, and arranges for money to support the family while he is gone. He then disappears. Despite trying to save money until Gum's return, he does not return in the promised five years, and the money is soon almost gone. As they have no way to contact him, or track him down, Sylvia and Nana decide to take in boarders to help make ends meet, which introduces a variety of people who become important to the children. Boarders include Mr. Simpson, who runs an auto repair garage and is as interested in engines as Petrova, and his wife, Mrs. Simpson; also, Dr. Jakes and Dr. Smith, a pair of tutors who take over the children's schooling after Sylvia can no longer afford their school fees and has tried, but failed, to teach the children herself; last of all, Miss Theo Dane, a dance teacher, who arranges for the children to begin classes at the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training. They all have very different views of dancing and acting. Pauline soon find she has a talent and passion for acting. Petrova loathes all acting and dancing, and, if it wasn't for the money they could earn acting when they reach the minimum age for performing professionally at twelve, she would quit. Posy doesn't think much of anything but dancing, for which she has a real talent. When she is about six, Madame Fidolia, a famous and retired Russian dancer, teaches Posy entirely herself, which has never happened before. As the children mature, they begin to develop their own talents, and take on some of the responsibility of supporting the household. Much of the drama in the plot comes from the friction between the sisters and from balancing their desire to help support the family financially against the laws limiting the amount of time they may spend on stage and the rules set by the London County Council, such as "one-third of a child's earnings must go into the post office (bank)". Pauline's talent for English and drama means she is picked for important parts early on in her career. This early success goes to her head during the production in which she has her first lead role, but after being set down a peg when the producer replaces her with her understudy, she learns enough humility to balance her talent and goes on to play many successful lead parts. Though she is still too young to perform on stage by the end of the book, Posy is developing into a brilliant ballet dancer, though she also clashes with her sisters as she is so focused on dancing that she can be insensitive about anything that gets in her way. Petrova's struggle differs slightly from her sisters' in that she is not interested in the performing arts at all, and has little talent for it, but she must keep attending the classes and performing in order to help support the family, meanwhile trying to hold onto her own dream of flying airplanes. All three sisters are inspired and kept up by their repeated vow: "We three Fossils vow to try and put our name in the history books, because it's our very own, and nobody can say it's because of our grandfathers." The book ends with Pauline going off to Hollywood to make a film, accompanied by Sylvia. Posy is going to a ballet school in Prague, accompanied by Nana. Petrova wonders what will become of her, as she is still too young to live on her own, and she doesn't want to dance or act. At this moment, Gum miraculously walks through the front door. He has been away so long that he doesn't realise who the three girls are at first, but after they convince him they are the babies he left all those years ago and tell him what has happened, he decides he will take Petrova under his wing and help her to achieve her dream. Although the book ends while the girls are still teenagers and their futures unclear, the narrator implies that they will be successful.
12641795	/m/02wz6p_	Le Jour Des Fourmis	Bernard Werber	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Day of the Ants again, just as its predecessor has several connected plotlines, some of which take place in the world of humans, while others - among ants. A year has passed since the time of The ants. 17 people including several relatives of the pioneer of the deceased inter-species communication Edmond Wells are still trapped under an ant nest. Since a new queen has been in charge in the ant nest, the supplies of food given by the ants to human are growing smaller and smaller. Meanwhile strange murders are happening in the city of Paris, when several producers of insecticides are found dead in peculiar circumstances and no explanation of how the murders were committed. A wolf-fearing police detective and a woman afraid of humans, the daughter of Edmond Wells, combine their knowledge in order to find out who or what is behind these murders.
12644709	/m/02wzbqz	The Book of Renfield	Tim Lucas		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The Book of Renfield works mainly as a companion piece to Stoker's original novel. In some cases, excerpts from the actual book are used but are modified and expanded under the pretense that Dracula is nonfiction and that Seward's entries were "edited, and in some instances, rewritten by John L. Seward before he provided them for the use of Mr. Bram Stoker, at the request of Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Harker". As such, whenever the text from Dracula is used, it is bolded to differentiate the changes. The book starts with a man discovered outside the ruins of Carfax Abbey, feasting on a rat, whose only form of identification is a handkerchief that reads "R.M. Renfield". He is taken in to Seward's asylum, where his sessions with the doctor reveal fragments of his tragic past and how he came to be Count Dracula's pawn.
12646012	/m/02wzd6d	Dark Fire	C. J. Sansom	2004-11-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 It is 1540 and the hottest summer of the sixteenth century. Matthew Shardlake, believing himself out of favour with Thomas Cromwell, is busy trying to maintain his legal practice and keep a discreet profile. But his involvement with a murder case, defending a girl accused of brutally murdering her young cousin, brings him once again into contact with the king's chief minister &ndash; and a new assignment ... The secret of Greek Fire, the legendary substance with which the Byzantines destroyed the Arab navies, has been lost for centuries. Now an official of the Court of Augmentations has discovered the formula in the library of a dissolved London monastery. When Shardlake is sent to recover it, he finds the official and his alchemist brother brutally murdered &ndash; the formula has disappeared. Now Shardlake must follow the trail of Greek Fire across Tudor London, while trying at the same time to prove his young client's innocence. But very soon he discovers nothing is as it seems ...
12651046	/m/02wzp6t	Axis	Robert Charles Wilson	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Axis takes place on the new planet introduced at the end of Spin, a world the Hypotheticals engineered to support human life and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world&nbsp;— and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria. Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when showers of cometary dust seed the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world becomes very alien, as the nature of time is once again twisted by entities unknown. A quasi-religious group of "Fourths" from Earth, led by Dr. Avram Dvali, lives in the desert seeded by falling dust. They've created a child they call Isaac with a Martian upgrade (fatal to adults) that connects him with the Hypotheticals. The Fourth-hunting "Department of Genomic Security" is searching for this group or for a visiting Martian Fourth who disapproves of Isaac's creation.
12658313	/m/02w_55h	A Gathering of Heroes				 A Gathering of Heroes is a prequel, taking place approximately twenty years before the events in The Lost Prince and King Chondos' Ride. Istvan Divega, a mercenary and famed swordsman, is approached by a mysterious figure with an urgent request for aid. He joins a band of heroes on a journey to defend the fortress city of Rath Tintallain against a great army that includes sorcerers, goblins, demons and werewolves. Y'GORA IS THREATENED... Goblins, demons and worse spill over the Dark Border, attacking Rath Tintallain and the priceless treasure it holds. The Hasturs fear that the fall of Rath Tintallain will bring utter destruction, and summon a gathering of the greatest heroes-elves, dwarves, and mortal men- for a desperate stand. And Istvan DiVega is called to join the fray, fighting shoulder to shoulder with men of legend. They are the last defense against the Shadow...
12664525	/m/02w_lbn	My Boring Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith	Kevin Smith	2007-09-25	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02gsv": "Personal journal"}	 The title is a reference to Smith's blog My Boring Ass Life. The book's content is from entries Smith has written about on said blog, from mundane daily activities to a series of writings detailing his friend and frequent featured actor Jason Mewes' heroin addiction. Smith also chronicles the making of and release of his seventh film Clerks II and describes the filming of his acting roles in Catch and Release and Live Free or Die Hard. Smith talks about his several encounters with many Hollywood stars, both old and upcoming. Once, during his daughter Harley's elementary school Fairy Tale Breakfast party, he ran into Johnny Depp, still wearing part of his Jack Sparrow makeup, who was in-between filming the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. He also recollects on the time in which he met Burt Reynolds after "stealing" his donuts. An unlikely meeting with Bruce Willis resulted in Smith getting a major supporting part in Willis' film Live Free or Die Hard. In addition, he mentions a humorous encounter Mewes had at a club during the shoot of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, who had recently been cast as Spider-Man. After realizing it has been seven years to the day they "did it", Smith recounts how he first met his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith. During the promotional tour for his 1999 film Dogma, he was interviewed by Schwalbach ("Jen"), then a reporter for USA Today at the Independent Spirit Awards. Having half a day to kill before he had to go home, they dined on pizza breadsticks before he left for his flight back to New Jersey. A few months later, he met her again, had a few drinks, and they went back to her apartment where they made love for the first time. At this point, Smith stops and writes, "The rest can be seen in An Evening With Kevin Smith," in which he recounts how he was injured in the act of love-making. Lasting about nine pages, Smith talks about how he intended to have a much more elaborate opening prologue/credits scene for his sophomore film Mallrats. In this, Jeremy London's character, T.S Quint, goes on a game show and loses after flubbing an answer and inadvertently giving the other team the answer. An altercation with the team ensues, and he accidentally punches the show's host after the team captain ducks his head. According to Smith, the studio felt it was too long, ordered it to be cut, and replaced it with a smaller scene taking place at a party instead. However, that scene was later scrapped during post-production. Due to this setback, as well as some other scenes, including a Silent Bob masturbation joke, he was forced to excise from the script, he feels this hurt the movie's chances for a bigger box office reception. As in Evening With Kevin Smith, he revealed that while he removed the masturbation scene, a similar scene took place in a film released four years later: There's Something About Mary. Of all the entries in the book, this section is the longest and probably most serious subject that Smith deals with: his friendship of Jason Mewes and the latter's massive drug addiction. It starts off with detailing Mewes' troubled childhood and upbringing. His mother was a drug addict, and he never learned the identity of his father, who took off shortly after his birth. Whenever selling drugs to support him and his sister, his mother would send an oblivious nine-year old Jason on his bicycle to deliver the goods to customers with strict instructions not to look in the bag. As a high school freshman, he met the nearly-four years older Smith, who was working at RST Video and the Quick Stop. Despite hearing the many rumors about the supposedly bad-boy Mewes, which were mostly fictional, he inadvertently became Mewes' surrogate older brother. Although unsure about letting the younger Mewes hang out with him and Walt Flanagan, Smith was won over by the kid's love of comics and his offbeat, crazy sense of humor. During his recount of making Clerks, it is revealed that he had to talk the reluctant Jason, working in construction at that time, into playing Jay. Smith says that he only drank during this time period. When they were given the go-ahead to make Mallrats, Mewes had to re-audition for the part against favorites Breckin Meyer and Seth Green to convince studio executives he was right for it, because they were concerned over his new heroin addiction. Eventually, they caved in and allowed Mewes to reprise the role, but Smith was forced to fly him out to the location at his own expense with the threat that Green would replace him should anything bad occur. During Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Mewes goes from drug-addicted to sober for varying lengths of time. Being oblivious to the symptoms of drug use, Smith noticed his drowsy, narcoleptic-like behaviour during the recording of the DVD commentary for Chasing Amy. After much denial, Mewes admitted he used heroin and marijuana during the Mallrats shoot and cocaine during his diner scene. Realizing he needed help, Smith moved him out of his mother's house and into his apartment with the promise of another Jay and Silent Bob film and to get him clean. For nearly two years, he helped Mewes take his mind off drugs while preparing for Dogma. While shooting the film, Smith was amazed when Jason claimed to have memorized the script and was at the top of his game, especially during scenes with Alan Rickman, but he was oblivious that Mewes had begun using Oxycotin with his new girlfriend, Stephanie. With Mewes earning the money, she would be getting him the drugs he needed. It was also during this time that Mewes' mother developed AIDS. Following Smith's marriage, he moved in with them prior to their daughter Harley's birth, because Kevin felt that his mother was the worst influence. Tensions erupted between them after he discovered a drug dealer was wanting Mewes to pay up on a sale, and it did not help matters when he found out his friend caused a car crash involving a police officer. While the officer accepted payment for the damage done, Smith and Mewes were forced to abandon their car to the car market. As for the dealer, Mewes agreed to be involved as a witness in a sting operation to arrest the dealer, but his relationship with Stephanie failed as a result. Another woman named Jamie, whom he was briefly engaged to, soon left him after getting fed up with his drug habits. After another period of rehab, Smith finally learned that Mewes was using again after his friend stole his credit card in an attempt to buy drugs. Then, he caused a panic on an airplane just before landing. The last straw came when he kept disappearing to shoot up while playing with Harley. His wife ordered him to make Mewes leave the house, to which he reluctantly did. After a brief stint in rehab, funded by Ben Affleck, he was almost forced to leave after raising hell. After a tense phone conversation with Smith, Mewes escaped from the clinic before being caught again. Showing the tough love technique, Smith made it clear that he could not come near him or his family anymore until he got clean. As a result, he started living with his girlfriend in Los Angeles. By this point, his mother had also died, and he could not come back to New Jersey due to the bench warrant for possessing heroin and syringes in his girlfriend's car during a routine police search. He had to appear in court as part of the sentencing, but he strangely failed to show up. Originally, Smith had written the Jason Biggs role in Jersey Girl for Mewes, but he could not accept it. Upon getting a scare after a rumor spread about his death, he finally went back to Jersey and surrendered to the police. Given the choice of six months of rehab or jail, Mewes chose to go to rehab, and he has been clean of drugs ever since. Hence the plot point of Jay and Silent Bob's rehabilitation in Clerks II. As in the documentary found on the Clerks II DVD, Smith recounts the process of the film (his "first" true sequel) being made. Several facts are included: the original 1999 script had Dante and Randal working at a Boardwalk Waterfront Pier, how Matt Damon was supposed to appear in Jason Lee's cameo, and convincing original Clerks stars Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson to come back. While O'Halloran was eager to reprise Dante ten years down the road, Anderson was the most difficult to convince to return, but he finally agreed to appear in the film. In addition, Smith details Mewes' embarrassment and reluctance to do a parody of the infamous Buffalo Bill nude-dance scene. Smith writes about the reaction Clerks II got from critics, particularly Joel Siegel. About forty minutes into the film, specifically the scene where Randal orders a donkey show as a going-away present for Dante's bachelor party, Siegel exited the theater rather loudly, allegedly shouting "Time to go! This is the first movie I've walked out on in thirty fucking years!" Despite this incident, Smith felt that "if you can send Joel Siegel screaming from your movie, you've got something good on your hands," because getting a bad review from Siegel (according to Smith, after the review called it "Jerks II") is like "a badge of honor." However, he admits that he was not hurt by the critic's trashing of the film, but rather the manner in which he left it. He states that had Siegel not left the film, the actual donkey show would have been revealed and been funnier. After mentioning his confrontation with the so-called "cum catcher" (in reference to his prominent mustache) on The Opie and Anthony Show, he says he has no animosity towards the critic, but that one should never walk out on a film and ruin it for others. For the next few entries of his diary, he reveals that Clerks II made over thirty million dollars at the domestic box office.
12673973	/m/02x00cj	Bows Against the Barons	Geoffrey Trease	1934	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Bows Against the Barons takes place during the final months of Robin Hood's life, beginning in early June, and ending in the following year during or after February. It is largely told from the viewpoint of Dickon, a sixteen-year-old peasant boy from the village of Oxton. The novel opens by depicting Dickon's hardships as a serf on a baronial manor. It shows the boy being whipped by his bailiff for missing work and harassed by his village priest for the tithe. Despite his youth, Dickon has to serve as his family's breadwinner because his father Dick has been conscripted as an archer for the Crusades. His troubles are compounded when the King's deer from nearby Sherwood Forest ravage his garden's crops. Moved by anger, Dickon kills one of the deer with an arrow. He flees into Sherwood to avoid the penalties of poaching. Eventually, he meets Alan-a-Dale, who leads him to Robin Hood's band. Proving adept at archery, Dickon is welcomed into their company. Disguised as a weaver's apprentice, Dickon embarks on a mission as Robin's messenger to Nottingham's rebels. Led by a bridle-smith, Dickon and the populace assemble in the market-place to protest working conditions and demand the release of imprisoned workers. The Sheriff of Nottingham attempts to disperse them. Robin and his outlaws arrive to help the protesters, who overwhelm the Sheriff in the resulting riot and free the imprisoned workers. However, mounted soldiers from Nottingham Castle arrive to quash the riot. Pursued by a horseman, Dickon escapes through secret passages and reaches Sherwood. There, he is captured by royal foresters and escorted north to be tried for poaching. However, Alan manages to make contact with Dickon, having disguised himself as a blind minstrel and his messages as doggerel. On Alan's instructions, Dickon attempts to delay the foresters' journey. His plans almost go awry when he meets his former master Sir Rolf D'Eyncourt, who has returned from the Crusades and now attempts to reclaim Dickon. Fortunately, the head forester refuses to hand over the boy, insisting on the priority of royal justice. As his journey resumes, Dickon learns that his father has been killed in battle and vows revenge. Dickon and the foresters eventually reach a village. Led by their blacksmith, the villagers protest Dickon's captivity. In the ensuing struggle, a forester almost kills Dickon, but Alan arrives in time and saves him. Together, they join the villagers in defeating the foresters. Later, soldiers are dispatched from Nottingham to punish the villagers. However, Robin and his band ambush and defeat the soldiers before they reach their destination. In the meantime, Sir Rolf exploits and oppresses his tenants in his pursuit of wealth and luxury. The outlaws of Sherwood oppose him, stirring up his serfs to resist and subvert his tyranny. Allied with neighbouring barons, Sir Rolf pens the outlaws in Sherwood and attempts to hunt them down. The outlaws defeat him by hiding in the trees and picking off his men with arrows from their camouflaged positions. As they celebrate their victory, Robin reveals to them his ultimate goal for their actions - the overthrow of all masters and freedom for all people in England. The outlaws now prepare for an attack on D'Eyncourt Castle, gathering money during autumn for their needs. Alan leads Dickon and a group of outlaws to waylay the Abbot of Rufford, disguising themselves as a knight's household and luring him into an ambush. Seeing Dickon's talent in disguise, Robin sends the boy to infiltrate D'Eyncourt Castle and acquire information about its defenses. Disguised as a page with bleached hair, Dickon manages to penetrate D'Eyncourt on Christmas but is betrayed by an undyed curl of hair. Pursued, he hides on the chapel's beams and eventually escapes from the castle, surviving a crossbow shot. With Dickon's information, the outlaws finally attack D'Eyncourt Castle during winter. Alan leads Dickon and a group of outlaws to infiltrate and capture the castle keep. Taking up positions on its battlements, they pick off D'Eyncourt's defenders with their arrows while Robin launches the main assault on the outer walls. His combined force of outlaws and serfs eventually breaks through and razes the castle. Dickon kills his former bailiff, while Little John kills Sir Rolf. Heartened by their success, the outlaws attempt to march on Nottingham. However, the Earl of Wessex traps them in a pincer movement between Nottingham and Newark and defeats them in battle. Alan, Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet are among those killed. Dickon, Robin and Little John survive the battle and flee north with other survivors to Yorkshire, undergoing much hardship on their journey. Dickon almost drowns in a bog. Wounded, Robin takes refuge in Kirklees, whose prioress bleeds him to death in order to claim a reward from the Earl. Alerted by an arrow shot by Robin from his deathbed, the outlaws reclaim his body and burn down the priory in revenge. After burying Robin, the outlaw band breaks up. Dickon and Little John are the only ones who remain dedicated to Robin's cause. They depart for the High Peak in Derbyshire, determined to continue Robin's work and fulfil his visionary ideal.
12682961	/m/02x0c8k	The Beekeeper's Apprentice	Laurie R. King	1994	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 After losing her family in a tragic motor accident, fifteen-year-old Mary Russell goes to live with her aunt. Wandering the Sussex Downs in April 1915, she comes across fifty-four-year-old Sherlock Holmes, who has retired from his London practice and keeps bees. They become friends, and Holmes trains Russell in detecting.
12690765	/m/02x0mg7	Blindsight	Peter Watts	2006-10-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Eighty years in the future, Earth becomes aware of an alien presence when thousands of micro-satellites survey the Earth; through good luck, the incoming alien vessel is detected, and the ship Theseus, with its artificial intelligence captain and crew of five, are sent out to engage in first contact with the huge alien vessel called Rorschach. As they explore the vessel and attempt to analyze it and its inhabitants, the narrator, Siri, considers his life and strives to understand himself and ponders the nature of intelligence and consciousness, their utility, and what an alien mind might be like. Eventually the crew realizes that they are greatly outmatched by the vessel and its unconscious but extremely capable inhabitants. When the level of this threat becomes clear, Theseus runs a kamikaze mission using its antimatter as a payload, while Siri returns to Earth, which he eventually realizes is being overrun by a non-sentient offshoot of humanity, beginning to exterminate what may be the only spark of consciousness in the universe.
12691774	/m/02x0nnr	The Proposal	K. A. Applegate	1999-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Marco's mother, the host to Visser One, is revealed to have survived the events of book 30. Marco's father, still believing her dead from the "boating accident" several years earlier, marries Nora Robbinette, Marco's math teacher. The stress from his father's actions cause Marco's morphs to go haywire, the results from his morphs are (in order of appearance): an osprey crossed with a lobster, a trout with the arms of a gorilla, a wolf spider crossed with a skunk, (A "Skider" or "Spunk" as Marco called it), and finally a poodle and a polar bear (a Poo-Bear as Marco called it). The Yeerks try to use a popular TV Icon named William Roger Tennant to try and persuade people to join The Sharing, but the Animorphs expose him on national TV when he is terrorizing Marco (in poodle/polar bear morph) which ruins Tennant's reputation. The book ends with Marco getting a phone call from Visser One, which is covered in greater detail halfway through Visser. *Marco's father marries Nora.
12692143	/m/02x0p3j	An Antarctic Mystery	Jules Verne	1897	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story is set in 1839, eleven years after the events in Arthur Gordon Pym, one year after the publication of that book. The narrator is a wealthy American Jeorling, who has entertained himself with private studies of the wildlife on the Kerguelen Islands and is now looking for a passage back to the USA. Halbrane is one of the first ships to arrive at Kerguelen, and its captain Len Guy somewhat reluctantly agrees to have Jeorling as a passenger as far as Tristan da Cunha. Underway, they meet a stray iceberg with a dead body on it, which turns out to be a sailor from Jane. A note found with him indicates that he and several others including Jane's captain William Guy had survived the assassination attempt at Tsalal and are still alive. Guy, who had talked to Jeorling earlier about the subject of Pym, reveals himself to be the brother of William Guy. He decides to try to come to the rescue of Janes crew. After taking on provisions on Tristan d'Acunha and the Falklands, they head South with Jeorling still on board. They also take aboard another mysterious sailor named Hunt who is eager to join the search for undisclosed reasons. Extraordinarily mild weather allows the Halbrane to make good progress, and they break the pack ice barrier, which surrounds an ice-free Antarctic ocean, early in summer. They find first Bennet's islet, where Jane had made a stop, and finally Tsalal. But the island is completely devastated, apparently by a recent massive earthquake, and deserted. They find lots of remains of Tsalal's natives, who apparently died long before the earthquake, and the collar of Pym's dog, Tiger, but no trace of Jane. At this point, Hunt is revealed to be Dirk Peters. On their travel south of Tsalal, he and Pym had become separated, and only Peters made it safely back to the States where he, not Pym, instigated the publication of their voyage. Pym's diary, in Peters' possession, had apparently been significantly embellished by Poe. Upon returning home, Peters took on a new identity, because he was too ashamed of having resorted to cannibalism on the wreck of Grampus. Guy and Peters decide to push further south, much to the chagrin of a part of the crew led by one seaman Hearne, who feels they should abandon the rescue attempt and head home before the onset of winter. Not much later, in a freak accident, Halbrane is thrown upon an iceberg and subsequently lost. The crew makes it safely onto the iceberg, but with only one small boat left, it is doomed to drift on. The iceberg drifts even past the South Pole, before the whole party is cast ashore on a hitherto unknown land mass still within the pack ice barrier. Hearne and his fellows steal the last remaining boat, trying to make it to the open sea on their own, and making the situation even bleaker for those behind who now face the prospect of wintering in the Antarctic. They are lucky, however, as shortly thereafter they see a small boat of aboriginal style drifting by. Peters is the first to react as he swims out towards the boat and secures it. But Peters finds more: In the boat, there are captain William Guy and the four surviving seamen of his crew, semiconscious and close to death by starvation. Peters brings them ashore, and the men from Halbrane nurse them back to life. William Guy then recounts their story. Shortly after the explosion of Jane (and presumably the departure of Pym's company), Tiger appeared again. Rabid, he bit and infected the natives who quickly fell victim to the new disease. Those who could fled to the neighboring islands, where they perished later in the course of the earthquake. Up to this point, William Guy and his men had lived fairly comfortably on Tsalal, which was now their own, but after the quake found their position untenable and made a desperate attempt in the boat to escape north. The combined crews of Halbrane and Jane decide to try to make it north in their newly acquired boat. They make good progress, until they notice the appearance of strong magnetic forces. They find the source of it, the Ice Sphinx: A huge mountain magnetically "charged" by the particle streams that get focussed on the poles through Earth's magnetic field. Here, they find the remains of Hearne's team, which came to grief when the Ice Sphinx' immense magnetic forces attracted their iron tools and boat components to it and smashed them on its rocks. The boat of Joerling and the others only escaped destruction because, being built by the natives, it contained no iron parts. At the foot of the Sphinx, they also find the body of Pym, who came to death the same way. Peters dies from grief on the same spot. The others embark again in their boat, and finally reach the open ocean and are rescued. In Arthur Gordon Pym, Tiger isn't mentioned again after Pym and the others take Grampus back from the mutineers; presumably the dog died in the storm. Tiger's appearance on Tsalal means the dog actually survived and was aboard the Jane as it entered the Antarctic waters. This would in turn mean that Pym and the others on the Grampus slew the mutineer Parker and ate him, while Tiger was still alive. Worse than that, the fact that Tiger survived the starvation ordeal implies that he, too, was fed from Parker's body.
12692753	/m/02x0pps	Queste	Angie Sage		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Queste takes Septimus, Jenna and Beetle in search of Nicko and Snorri, to bring them back from the past. They go to Marcellus Pye, who has remembered some information from his 500 year old memory and provides them with some notes from Nicko and Snorri. The notes say that they planned to travel to the House Of Foryx where all times meet, and there they expected to come back to their time. Jenna takes the notes back with her to the Palace. In the meantime, Merrin Meredith travels to the Castle in hope of destroying Septimus. He bumps into Jenna who drops all the notes of Nicko and Snorri, they fall into a puddle and get wet. Jenna goes to the The Manuscriptorium and asks Beetle to help her replace the notes. Beetle then takes her to the restoration specialist Ephaniah Grebe. Ephaniah is a half man-half rat being. He Restores the pages and binds them in to a book, but they still miss one piece, the center of the map to the House of Foryx. Merrin, in the meantime, takes the job of a scribe in the Manuscriptorium. There he meets the ghost of Tertius Fume, the first Chief Hermetic Scribe. Tertius makes him transfer the loyalty of the Thing (a creature he aquired from reciting words from a book written by Tertius Fume) to him and assures that he will send Septimus on the perilous Queste. Tertius Fume arrives at the Wizard Tower along with the ghosts of all the previous ExtraOrdinary Wizards and announces that they are about to draw the Questing stone. Septimus feels a Darkenesse inside the urn where the stone is kept and tells that a Thing is there to sabotage the draw. They escape the Wizard tower as Tertius Fume puts it under Siege. But Septimus takes the Questing stone from Hildegarde thinking it to be a SafeCharm as Hildegarde tells him. Marcia tells Septimus not to take SafeCharms or Charms from strangers, but Septimus doesn't regard Hildegarde as a stranger. Marcia disagrees with that just to contradict and blame him for taking the Questing Stone. We find out that Hildegarde was actually InHabited by Tertius Fume's Thing. Septimus, Jenna and Beetle start their journey to the House of Foryx. Ephaniah Grebe promises to get Morwenna Mould, the Witch Mother of the Wendron Witches to show them the Forest Way. Ephaniah promises Morwenna anything in exchange for showing Septimus, Jenna, and Beetle the Forest Way. Septimus and Beetle overhear the witches talking that the Witch Mother will ask for Jenna and Ullr (who tags along with Jenna while Snorri is 500 years in the past). They escape the Coven and go to Camp Heap. Sam Heap shows them the Forest Way. They eventually reach the House and find Ephaniah near it. He had found the last missing piece of the map but was possessed by the Thing. Septimus, Jenna and Beetle enter the House of Foryx, but accidentally all three of them go inside. There Septimus is taken inside a door by a girl named Talmar Ray Bell and Septimus finds himself face to face with Hotep-Ra, first ExtraOrdinary wizard. In the meantime Jenna and Beetle find Nicko and Snorri and all of them try to escape the House of Foryx. Just as they were about to leave, Marcia and Sarah arrive outside the house on Spit Fyre, so all of them are able to return to their own time.
12694814	/m/02x0sh4	Me and the Pumpkin Queen				 The plot centers around an eleven-year old girl named Mildred whose mother, a former "pumpkin queen", died in Mildred's sixth year of life. Inspired by an image of her mother "wearing her Pumpkin Queen crown," Mildred tries to grow giant pumpkins in order to win a contest at the Circleville Pumpkin Show.
12695198	/m/02x0s_n	Voice of the Whirlwind	Walter Jon Williams	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Etienne Steward is a clone, also known as a beta. When he awakes, his memories are fifteen years old, because the original Steward -- the alpha -- never bothered to have his memories updated. In those fifteen years, the entire world has changed. An alien race known as The Powers has established relations with humanity. The Orbital Policorp which held his allegiance has collapsed. He fought and survived the off-world Artifacts War, but dozens of his friends did not. Both his first and second wives have divorced him. More importantly, someone has murdered him, causing the activation of the beta back-up. Now Steward has to figure out who wanted him dead, if he doesn't want to die again.
12695344	/m/02x0t5h	Hardwired	Walter Jon Williams	1986	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Orbital Corporations now control the world. In the ruins of an America ravaged by the Rock War, ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, who can be "hardwired" via skull sockets directly to his ride, has become a panzerboy, a hi-tech smuggler riding armored hovertanks through the balkanized countryside. He teams up with Sarah, another tough-as-nails gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals. They gather an unlikely gang of misfits for a ride that will take them to the edge of the atmosphere.
12701627	/m/02x151w	The Day After Judgment	James Blish		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the first book, a wealthy arms manufacturer comes to a black magician, Theron Ware, with a strange request: he wishes to release all the demons from hell for one night to see what might happen. The book includes a lengthy description of the summoning ritual, and a detailed description of the grotesque demons as they appear. Tension between Ware and Catholic white magicians arises over the terms and conditions of a covenant that provides for observers and limitations on interference with demonic workings. Black Easter ends with Baphomet announcing to the participants that the demons can not be compelled to return to hell: the War is over, and God is dead. The Day After Judgment develops and extends the characters from the first book. It suggests that God may not be dead, or that demons may not be inherently self-destructive, as something appears to be restraining the actions of the demons upon Earth. In a lengthy Miltonian speech at the end of the novel, Satan Mekratrig explains that, compared to humans, demons are good, and that if perhaps God has withdrawn Himself, then Satan beyond all others was qualified to take His place and, if anything, would be a more just god. It has been suggested that Blish got the name for his black magician from the titular character in Harold Frederic's 1896 novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware.
12709242	/m/02x1j_v	The Prophecy	K. A. Applegate	1999-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cassie comes home in owl morph to find a Hork-Bajir leaving the barn. Cassie realizes that if the Hork-Bajir is a Controller, the Yeerks might suspect that she is one of the "Andalite bandits". She attacks it, and nearly blinds him with her talons when she realizes it is in fact Jara Hamee. When she asks why he is there, he tells her that an Arn has come to the Hork-Bajir valley, and Toby wishes for their advice on what to do. Cassie tells the other Animorphs about the Arn the next day and they all agree to go. The Arn's name is Quafijinivon, the last of the Arns. He tells them that he wishes to create a force of Hork-Bajir to fight the Yeerks on their home world, by taking a sample of each Hork-Bajir's DNA. The Hork-Bajirs accept, but Quafijinivon also wishes to find a stash of weapons hidden by Aldrea - Seerow's Daughter. They ask him how will he do this if she is dead, and he tells them about the ixcila of Aldrea he preserved, an electronic copy of her personality, thoughts, and brainwaves. The Arn says Aldrea must choose a host to enter, and they decide it will be either Rachel, because of her dangerous attitude, or Toby because she is her granddaughter. During the Atafalxical ceremony Cassie is chosen as the host instead, she is asked if she accepts and Jake shouts "No". Cassie feels she has no choice, and says yes. The Chee take their place as humans while they're gone. When they make to the Hork-Bajir solar system, the ship is attacked by another Andalite ship. They cannot contact the ship because the Yeerks will pick up their signal. Ax refuses to fire back at the ship because he says he cannot attack a fellow Andalite for doing his job. Jake asks if Aldrea can do it and she says yes. She fires at the ship and destroys the engines, saving them. More Bug Fighters show up and Marco suggest that they move on, but Ax begs Jake to save the Andalite. Jake says they cannot leave, and they assist in destroying the Bug Fighters. Jake cuts the ensuing celebration short so they can focus on the task at hand. When they make it to the Hork-Bajir home world, Quafijinivon goes to his lab to work on the DNA samples. Aldrea has an idea where the weapons might be stashed and they travel deep into the woods. To their horror, they find that the place has been turned into a giant Yeerk pool. That is when they come up with an insane plan to get into the pool, which Aldrea is totally against. Cassie morphs into an Osprey and the others morph insects, and go into Cassie's mouth. She gets as much altitude as she possibly can, and starts to demorph but keeps her wings and starts to morph into a Humpback Whale as well. She has to let her wings go and go full Humpback Whale at just the right moment or the plan will fail, but the Hork-Bajir Controllers already spot her in the sky, although they cannot make her out as a human because she is partly in whale morph, and start firing at her. This causes Aldrea to panic and try to convince Cassie to go full whale now. When she cannot she tries to take over, but Cassie overpowers her and waits until the time is right to morph fully. When she is in the pool, Jake and Rachel demorph and remorph into Hammerhead Sharks and attack the Taxxon Controllers, while Tobias and Ax go as Andalites and attack Hork-Bajir Controllers. Marco goes as a Hork-Bajir shouting, "Andalites everywhere, thousands of them run" causing them to flee. They break into the weapons stash, take them, and escape in a Yeerk ship, delivering them to the Arn. At the end, Toby Hamee says that she wishes to stay on her homeworld and fight the Yeerks there. Aldrea does not want her great-granddaughter to suffer this fate, and thus comes up with a plan with Cassie and Ax to force her to stay in the Hork-Bajir Earth colony. Cassie successfully convinces Jake that Aldrea is trying to take control of her, leaving Ax to tell Aldrea that she will never take over the Animorphs because her great-granddaughter is with them. Satisfied, Aldrea leaves Cassie's body.
12709674	/m/02x1kys	The Mutation	K. A. Applegate	2002-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While using their aquatic morphs to chase the Yeerks' new Sea Blade, which was after the Pemalite ship, the Animorphs and Ax find themselves beached inside an underwater cavern. The cavern seems to be littered, however, with several different types of air and sea craft, with what appears to be human statues inside. Further inspection by Cassie and Ax reveals that these people were real, and were killed and stuffed for preservation. While attempting to escape and locate Visser Three, whose ship was taken by a strange, humanoid aquatic species, Jake, Cassie, Ax, Rachel, and Marco, all in their natural forms, are captured by these life-forms, who reveal themselves as Nartec. (Tobias was on lookout above, and therefore was not captured.) The Nartec queen explains that they once were humans who lived above water, and when their city sunk, they began to adapt to underwater life. Ax realizes that radioactivity is what aided their ability to evolve so quickly. He also surmises that the Nartec have inbred for years, except for possible breeding with their captives prior to killing them, so their genetic code is breaking down. After the Nartec queen makes it clear that she intends to "preserve" the Animorphs, she permits them to do some sightseeing, but warns them not to try and escape. Of course, the Animorphs have no interest in being killed, stuffed, and added to a collection, so they plan to locate Tobias, figure out where Visser Three is hiding, and capture the Sea Blade to escape. However, their plans are foiled by a Nartec ambush from the water, and the Animorphs are taken to an operating room of sorts to be "preserved." Given a mind-numbing agent, Jake begins to slip away, when he notices a Nartec suddenly attacking the other Nartecs in the room and wiping them out. The rogue Nartec demorphs into a Red-Tailed Hawk, Tobias, and aids the others in escaping. The Animorphs climb on board the Sea Blade, only to be challenged by hordes of Nartec, wielding weapons ranging from spears and clubs, to automatic rifles and machine guns. While the Animorphs, in their standard combat morphs, had no difficulty attacking the Nartec and holding them at bay for a while, they began to be worn down by sheer force of number. Finally they struck a reluctant alliance with Visser Three (who had been hiding on the ship the whole time while his crew were killed and stuffed), who guided them in starting the Sea Blade and escaping. Under Jake's orders, Marco, whose gorilla morph was gutted by a sword, opened the hatch to the Sea Blade, and the Animorphs swam to the surface. Visser Three survived as well, though separated from the Animorphs.
12711205	/m/02x1px2	Gladiator at Law	Cyril M. Kornbluth	1955-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The action takes place in and around a future Monmouth City, New Jersey. The city proper consists of luxurious GML bubble homes which can change shape at the whim of their occupants, and anticipate their every need. At the edge of Monmouth City is the slum of Belly Rave, originally a gimcrack suburb built on a landfill and sold to unsuspecting young couples. Charles Mundin and Norvell Bligh first meet when Bligh is trying to adopt his stepdaughter, mostly at the behest of his upwardly mobile wife, Virginia. Bligh then returns to work on the next gruesomely spectacular Field Day to be organized by his company, while Mundin visits Republican Party headquarters, where he is introduced to the Lavins by his friend, the local Ward Chairman whose brother also knows Bligh. Bligh finds himself tricked out of his job by his assistant, abetted by one of the secretaries who is keen to marry a man with a job whose benefits include a GML home. Bligh is arrested when he tries to drown his sorrows, only to find his company credit card has been cancelled. Mundin uses his political connections to have Bligh freed, but then Bligh and his family are unceremoniously dumped in Belly Rave. Virginia is no stranger to the place, but Bligh needs the help of a local, who calls himself Shep. With Shep's guidance Bligh negotiates the "public assistance" system which ensures that nobody starves, without actually making life worth living. Shep scrapes together materials so he can paint "rainscapes", views of Belly Rave in the rain. Other residents indulge in a kind of barter, or petty theft, extortion, and gang crime, or simply anaesthetize themselves with liquor made from the desserts in their ration packs. Virginia, opportunistic as ever, begins eyeing Shep as a replacement for Norvell. Mundin eventually visits the Lavins, who live in a different part of Belly Rave, and meets Ryan, a broken-down corporate attorney addicted to "yen-pox", an opiate in the form of crude pills. Ryan has a plan for recovering the shares which Donald Lavin hid away before he was brainwashed, but the initial effort at obtaining records from GML result in Norma Lavin being kidnapped. Ryan is strangely elated, as it is evident that GML seems to think their activities are a threat, which could give him some leverage in negotiations. He decides to send Mundin to a shareholder's meeting. This entails buying a GML share on Wall Street, which has become a hybrid stock-market and public casino. Mundin braves the touts and thugs of the market to trick his way to buying a share, normally impossible because of the activities of certain brokers. Hiding out in Belly Rave, he meets Bligh, who has become adept in negotiating with the gangs there. Bligh arranges Mundin's safe passage to the company meeting, in a deliberately obscure building on Long Island. At the meeting Mundin, learning to play off the power brokers against each other, gains access to Norma who was a "guest" of one faction. Mundin also gains an ally in Bliss Hubble, a "Titan of Industry" who sees in the Lavin's shares a way to unseat the faction currently in control of GML. Recruiting a few more Titans to his cause, he takes the entire party to his elaborate GML bubble-house, which is currently configured as a Gothic mansion, thanks to a household servant with a grudge. With Bliss's backing, Ryan and Mundin are suddenly a full-fledged law firm with expensive offices. The plan Bliss hatches is to bankrupt GML rather than indulge in a proxy battle. Mundin is dispatched to sabotage certain GML houses, including the model in the Smithsonian, at the same time spreading rumors through his political connections. Bliss bankrolls some illegal medical treatment for Don Lavin, in order to reverse his brainwashing. After this, they are able to recover the Lavins' stock certificates from a bank in Ohio, where GML was founded. Norvell, meanwhile, is becoming an important man in Belly Rave. His experience catering to crowds in the Field Days allows him to organize the otherwise listless residents to clean the place up and even try some local policing. Shep, meanwhile, has become too close to Virginia, and Bligh has applied corrective action with a piece of lead pipe. At this point the much dreaded firm of "Green, Charlesworth" intervene. They occupy the entire Empire State Building on the otherwise uninhabited island of Manhattan. Rather than send their minions to shut down the plot, they grant Norma Lavin and Mundin an "audience" at their headquarters. Here they are revealed to be a grotesque pair of ancient human beings, a man and a woman, trapped in husks of bodies in glass cases, but able to exert influence with their minds, their devices, and their money. They own GML and have used it to rule their world. They claim to be centuries old, having "fixed Mr. Lincoln's wagon" and they threaten to do the same to Mundin and the Lavin's. Mundin identifies them as the Struldbrugs described by satirist Jonathan Swift. Returning to their offices, Mundin and Norma find that only Bliss Hubble and the increasingly comatose Ryan are still on their side. They resolve to carry on regardless, but then chaos ensues as listening devices planted by Green, Charlesworth explode around them. In the confusion, Donald disappears, responding to a subliminal signal as if he is still brainwashed. They find him at the Field Day, entered in an event where he walks a tightrope across a pool of piranha fish while under a hail of rocks from the crowd. Despite their efforts at bribing the mob not to throw anything, aided by threats from Bligh's teenage gangsters, Donald falls into the pool. Bligh is ready to sacrifice himself to save Donald, but instead the tortured artist Shep throws himself in with the fish. Declaring war on GML and Green, Charlesworth, they return to Wall Street where Mundin starts a run on the market by carefully selling off large chunks of the GML stock. After a while the selling takes on a life of its own, despite the efforts of various people, acting unwittingly on behalf of Green, Charlesworth, to have Mundin arrested on trumped-up charges, or to discourage him from selling. As the market collapses, the plotters are left with large amounts of cash, which they use to buy up GML and other companies at bargain prices. At the end they are counting their riches and savoring their triumph, just as Green, Charlesworth, across the water in Manhattan, destroy themselves in a nuclear explosion.
12715930	/m/02x1zbb	Love, Stargirl	Jerry Spinelli	2007-08-14	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Stargirl, living now in Pennsylvania, tells her own story this time, in "the world's longest letter," which is actually a series of journal entries. New in town, homeschooled, and feeling rejected by Leo, the 16-year-old narrator of the first book who had fallen under her spell, she is lonely and sad -- her "happy wagon," where she keeps stones representing her level of happiness, is almost empty. She befriends Dootsie, a loud but lovable 6-year-old who takes a shine to Stargirl and her pet rat. Dootsie introduces her to Betty Lou, an agoraphobic elder woman. She is quite nice and Stargirl soon becomes friends with her as well. With the arrival of autumn, Stargirl's life is affected when, arriving at her Enchanted Hill to plant another spatula in her solar calendar, a calendar counting down the days to the Winter Solstice, she sees a house on fire, and in her attempt to break in to warn any possible residents, she ends up in the hospital with smoke-damaged lungs and a sprained ankle. She stays in the hospital for five weeks, getting visited by Dootsie (in her Halloween costume), Alvina, a grumpy young girl who delivers donuts to Betty Lou, Perry, a teen boy who she is falling in love with, and his harem: The Honeybees. She is also getting calls from Betty Lou. Once Stargirl recovers, she returns to her Enchanted Hill to plant the next spatula, only to find Perry has been planting them in her absence. Perry and Stargirl share a sunrise kiss, ending Stargirl's confusion over having feelings for both Leo and Perry, but leaving her to deal with the reality of living with uncertainty. As winter sets in, Stargirl turns herself to planning her Winter Solstice party, inviting all of the people she has encountered in her new town to celebrate the beginning of winter by joining her at sunrise on the Enchanted Hill, which she nows calls Calendar Hill. Stargirl also discovers the truth about Perry. He has been very mysterious about his family and personal life. She learns his mother has a new baby, whom Perry has been trying to support by working several jobs last summer and by resorting to "stealing" to avoid burdening her with feeding him. In the end, Stargirl becomes worried that no one will show up for her solstice party, but is reassured by Archie, her former teacher and friend from Arizona, who arrives to attend her celebration and comforts her with his wisdom. On the morning of the Winter Solstice, Stargirl is overwhelmed and surprised when a huge crowd of her friends and acquaintances, and several other people she's unfamiliar with, flock to Calendar Hill, including her friend Betty Lou who hasn't left her house in nine years. The magic moment of sunrise is magnified by a special tent her parents have built, allowing the sunlight to stream in through a hole in the tent, forming a single beam that cuts through the crowd of people and pierces the back wall. Everyone is profoundly affected by the start of this new day, and returns home to the start of cold winter. In the end, Stargirl asks Archie what she should do about missing Leo, and also what is happening with Perry. He tells her to remember who she is and do what her heart tells her.
12721787	/m/02x23vf	Dog Wizard	Barbara Hambly	1992-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens with the exiled wizard Antryg Windrose and his companion Joanna living in California after their escape through the void to Earth, after being condemned to death in the previous book, The Silicon Mage. The story continues as Joanna is kidnapped from her apartment by a mysterious person wearing the robes of a mage. Antryg is forced to respond to the call of the wizards who condemned them in order to track her whereabouts. After he arrives at the Citadel of Wizards, he realizes that he was brought there for a completely different reason, and that the wizards have no idea where Joanna is or who kidnapped her.
12722044	/m/02x2430	The Book of Everything	Guus Kuijer	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book, set in Amsterdam, relates the tale of a nine-year-old boy named Thomas who see things no one else can, such as invisible hail that "ripped all the leaves from the trees", and tropical fish in the canal. Thomas lives in a family of four: his parents and his sister, Margot. They are not, however, a harmonious family, as their father repeatedly hits their mother, and punishes Thomas by beating him with a wooden spoon. He is a very religious man, but he fears embarrassment and is said to "not belong with people". Thomas writes down everything in his "Book of Everything", a diary which holds his thoughts.
12724699	/m/02x26_m	The Arrival	K. A. Applegate	2000-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When the Animorphs see a front-page article about the Sharing in the Chronicle, they attempt to break into the office of the major local newspaper to determine how deeply infiltrated it is by the Yeerks. Mr. King (a Chee android) is captured and is about to be destroyed, and the group bursts out of hiding to rescue him. It is soon evident that the situation is a trap set up by Visser Three, and he joins the battle, engaging directly with Ax and the others in Andalite form. As the Animorphs try to run, a small group of new Andalites appear out of the elevator, and turn the tides of the battle. Tobias informs them that the police are coming, and the groups call an uneasy truce and depart to maintain secrecy. Ax, excited to see his own people after so long, is afraid to leave them without knowing how to make contact them, but a female who fought next to him reveals that they know his identity and will find him. Back at Cassie's barn, Ax is excited that the Andalite fleet has finally arrived, but the others aren't so sure. After a few assertions that Ax is not seeing the situation clearly, in part because of a crush on Estrid (the female Andalite), and a jab from Rachel about where his loyalties lay, Ax leaves the barn in anger after assuring them that he will follow Jake's command. He runs until his anger cools, at which point it is revealed that he is deeply infatuated with Estrid. Having found a $20 bill, Tobias and Ax go to the food court where they discover Estrid in human morph making a scene that attracts mall security. They escape with her because Tobias pretended that Estrid was his sister. They set up a meeting with her superiors. The newcomers are offended that Ax disobeyed their orders by bringing Jake (and the others, they soon find out) to the meeting, and that he is following a human's command. After much in-fighting amongst themselves, the small group of Andalites with an out-of-date ship accidentally reveal that they are the only Andalites in the area, and not fore-runners of the fleet as Ax had assumed. The group has been sent to Earth on a mission to assassinate Visser Three. Ax finds himself (competitively) fighting with the aristh Estrid, whom he beats, but just barely. He admires her skill in tailfighting, but is confused by her lack of military decorum. The letdown of the further delay of the fleet causes the Animorphs to split up in a dramatic scene at Cassie's barn. Each member leaves for reasons typical of their character, with Jake finally releasing Ax to "try to go home, if [he] can". Ax, once the humans are gone, calls out Estrid, who has been hiding in the barn in rabbit morph, but poorly concealed due to a lack of understanding of the animal's typical behavior. He tells her he will teach her about Earth, and she takes him back to the Andalite ship. The other members of the ship are Commander Gonrod-Isfall-Sonilli, Intelligence Advisor Arbat-Elivat-Estoni, and the assassin Aloth-Attamil-Gahar. Ax is shown around the ship by Aloth, who reveals that he was in prison for selling organs off of a battle field prior to the current assignment. Aloth, who is deeply cynical about the whole group, reveals that Gonrod, while an excellent pilot, was also in prison for cowardice during battle, and that Arbat has the Andalite War Council wrapped around his finger. There is some ambiguity as to who the real "leader" of the expedition is. It is revealed to Ax that Arbat is the brother of Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, Visser 3's host. The ship, the Ralek River, is an old laboratory ship, whose lab-level has been sealed off to conserve energy. Ax notes the strangeness of the situation, and is certain that Estrid is not really an aristh, after she audaciously announces that she is going to the Gardens and wants Ax to show her around. The two fly to the Gardens and explore in Andalite form. Estrid asks Ax about jelly beans, and in response he kicks some M&Ms out of a vending machine for her to try in human morph. The two assume human forms, and after eating, they kiss. They agree that it is pleasant (though not as much as chocolate). Ax is clearly smitten, and on the flight back, silently contemplates for a moment the idea of running away with Estrid and leaving behind the difficult shades of gray of his life. He shakes off the reverie and they return to the ship to plan for the morning's attack on the Visser. Ax later suddenly realizes that Estrid had made a joking reference to plintcorhythmic equations, which are employed in an incredibly complex bioengineering field involving clear thought in n-dimensions, but uneasily writes it off as a figure of speech. The Andalites (minus Estrid, whom Arbat forces to stay behind) infiltrate the Community Center and make it all the way to the inner sanctum without raising the alarm. Arbat, who has demanded he have the first shot out of pride after Aloth implies that he might not give the order to kill his brother's body, misses an easy shot, even though he has proved himself a competent fighter earlier in the book. A battle ensues, and Ax fails to kill the Visser out of a morality-induced hesitation. Aloth is injured when he breaks concentration for a moment to look for Gonrod, who has fled back to the ship. Arbat kills Aloth under the pretense that he "was too injured to save", which is a lie. Furious and confused, Ax is certain that something very strange is going on. Ax gets a Chee to help him hack into the ship's computers and gain access to the high-security files concealed by Arbat. All of the members of the Andalite team are officially listed as dead in combat, and Estrid is not on record at all in the military. The ship was listed as destroyed in the same battle. Ax realizes that the ship is on a suicide mission, and that Arbat has something planned that the Andalite War Council does not "officially" know about. Hearing motion on the supposedly empty laboratory level of the ship, Ax confronts Estrid and forces her to talk by threatening to open a vial of some unknown substance of which she is terrified. Estrid reveals that she was never in the military, but learned to tail-fight from her famously-skilled brother. She was a young genius, and after initially being ignored because of her gender, was discovered by Arbat at the university. She took up plintconarhythmic physics under his guidance, and has created a programmable prion virus (the vial that Ax puts down) that will destroy the Yeerks—and very possibly wipe out humans as well. Arbat finds them and traps them, and Ax explains to Estrid that their mission doesn't officially exist and is not sanctioned by general Andalite society, like she was led to believe. Arbat takes the vial of the disease and leaves them. As Estrid apologizes, the Animorphs are revealed to be on board, as their "split-up" was simply a ploy to get Ax in with the Andalites. The Animorphs and a Chee free them, and the group of 7 finds evidence of Arbat and follows him to the Yeerk pool in human form, except for Tobias, who stays as a hawk. Ax spots Arbat's human morph by his Andalite instinct to keep looking around now that he has only 2 eyes, and stops him on the pier over the Yeerk pool, prolonging the chaos by yelling that the Hork Bajir are Andalite Bandits in disguise. In the ensuing confusion, the Animorphs begin to attack, and Ax and Estrid move to a hidden spot to demorph. Estrid, terrified and disgusted by the Yeerk pool, refuses to demorph and fight to protect the humans, who are not part of their species. Ax leaves to protect his friends, telling her that she is beautiful and brilliant but he "doesn't think he likes her very much". The battle is bloody and the group is outnumbered, though their backs are covered by human hosts who have linked together into a living shield. Arbat makes it back to the pier, and Ax cannot reach him in time. He is about to drop the vial into the pool when Estrid vaporizes it (and Arbat's hand) with a Dracon beam. At that moment Gonrod (at Tobias' urging) burns a hole through the roof of the cavernous complex, and rescues the Animorphs with the Andalite ship. Ax leaves Arbat to die at the hands of the Taxxons. Ax gives Estrid a cinnamon bun as a parting gift, but refuses to return home with her. She does not understand his loyalty and dedication to his non-Andalite friends. The fate of Estrid and Gonrod is unknown. The Animorphs and Ax all assume human forms and enjoy their victory. They walk to get food (though not at the McDonald's, as Tobias and Gonrod had destroyed the place to burn into the Yeerk pool). Despite the unawareness of most of the others, Cassie picks up on Ax's pain, and holds his hand as the group walks, as he cries, invisibly, in the dark.
12724741	/m/02x272c	The Hidden	K. A. Applegate	2000-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Yeerks repair a downed Helmacron ship and use its sensors to track the Escafil Device and the Animorphs morphing abilities. Cassie is forced to relocate the Escafil Device. During the process, a Cape buffalo and an ant inadvertently gain the morphing ability. The buffalo morphs Chapman and begins to learn speech, and the ant morphs Cassie. Cassie kills the ant when it demorphs, and near the end of the book the buffalo is killed by a Dracon beam. However, the Animorphs come up with a plan similar to Megamorphs #1, in which Cassie morphs a humpback whale in midair to destroy the helicopter carrying the Helmacron ship.
12727413	/m/02x2c9g	Innocent Traitor	Alison Weir		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This book tells the life of "The Nine Day Queen" through various characters' eyes, from Lady Jane to Queen Mary. This book tells of Jane's childhood and offers explanation to her conversion to the Protestant faith. It tells of her relationship to the future Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I along with her forced and unwanted marriage. It ends with her final days.
12734481	/m/02x2lv4	The Abyss	Marguerite Yourcenar	1968		 Zeno, an illegitimate son is born in the Ligre household, a rich banking family of Bruges. Zeno renounces a comfortable career in the priesthood and leaves home to find truth at the age of twenty. In his youth, after leaving Bruges, he greedily seeks knowledge by roaming the roads of Europe and beyond, leaving in his wake a nearly legendary &mdash; but also dangerous &mdash; reputation of genius due to the works he accomplishes.
12735341	/m/02x2msd	The Treasure of El Patron	Gary Paulsen	1996-03-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is about Tag and Cowboy who spend their free time searching for treasure from sunken ships off the coast of Bermuda. They find themselves involved in drug dealings when asked to locate a bag that fell to the ocean floor.
12735435	/m/02x2mvg	Skydive!	Gary Paulsen	1996-05-02	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is about 13-year-old Jesse Rodriguez who has an exciting job working for his friend Buck at a small flight and skydiving school near Seattle. But he can't wait to turn 16 and finally be able to make his first free-fall jump from a plane.
12735525	/m/02x2m_8	The Seventh Crystal	Gary Paulsen	1996-07-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is about Chris Masters who is having problems with bullies at his school, stealing his lunch money and threatening him. His next biggest problem is a video game called The Seventh Crystal which came in the mail with almost no instructions.
12735603	/m/02x2n1b	The Creature of Black Water Lake	Gary Paulsen	1997-06-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about Ryan Swanner and his mom who have just moved to the mountain resort of Black Water Lake. The locals tell of a giant, ancient creature which lives beneath the lake's seemingly calm surface.
12735672	/m/02x2n2c	Time Benders	Gary Paulsen	1997-08-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is about Zack Griffin and Jeff Brown who both win trips to a famous science laboratory. There they discover that one of the machines in the lab can "bend" time, and they end up in ancient Egypt.
12737756	/m/02x2qnx	Fire Bringer	David Clement-Davies	2000	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This is the story of Rannoch, a red deer born in ancient Scotland. The story begins on the night his father, Brechin, was murdered, and his mother, Eloin, taken by the servant of the Lord of the Herd, Sgorr. But Rannoch is no ordinary deer; he is special, for he bears a white mark on his forehead resembling an oak leaf. To the Herla, as the deer are called among the world of the animals, this white mark holds great meaning and power. It was stated in a prophecy that the deer who was born with the mark would bring freedom to all Herla in the future, and that the bearer of the oak mark would be a healer and have the ability to communicate with all animals. The Lord of the Herds, Drail, wants Rannoch killed out of fear of The Prophecy. Drail is tricked and murdered by Sgorr, who has militarized the herd by making the stags sharpen their antlers, training and drilling the young bucks, having them bore each other in the forehead to make permanent scars, and will take no resistance. He realizes the threat Rannoch poses to his leadership. Rannoch escapes from the herd, accompanied by Bracken, not his real mother, and his companions Thistle, Tain, twins Peppa and Willow, Quiach, Bankfoot and their mothers, and Bhreac, an old doe who promised the herd storyteller to protect Rannoch. Growing up outside of the herd, he struggles to choose between the life of freedom he now has and the future laid out for him by the prophecy. He knows that he must return, in order to unite the deer, and end Sgorr's reign of terror.
12740909	/m/02x2vl2	The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa	Neil Peart	1996		 In November 1988, Peart joined David Mozer's Bicycle Africa for a month-long tour of Cameroon. Along with David, Neil would travel with three other strangers. Leonard; an African-American electrical engineer who is also a Vietnam vet. Elsa; a slender 60-year-old pacifist who would struggle to keep up with everyone and complain about everything. And Annie; a 30-something administrative assistant who was often scatterbrained. Peart, an avid reader, brought two books on the trip with him, Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle and Dear Theo by Vincent van Gogh, to read at rest stops and before bedtime. He would entwine thoughts about these two books throughout The Masked Rider. They all met in Douala, where they would first travel west along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and then turn north to the heart of the former British Cameroon, stopping at many towns in Southern Cameroon along the way, like Tiko, Buea, Limbe, Kumba, Nkongsamba, Bafang, Bafoussam, Mbouda, Bamenda, Bafut, Ndop, Kumbo, Jakiri, and Foumban. As they travel, Elsa starts complaining and is so tired after a few days she contemplates quitting, but it was David who encouraged her to keep going. Neil and the others also experience many things about each town; how nice some are (Bamenda) and how not so nice the others are (Kumba). Peart called Kumba "a real hell hole." They also meet a Peace Corps volunteer named Kim in Jakiri who cooked them all hamburgers. After the Southern tour is over, all five of them are crammed into a bus in Foumban to go to Yaoundé where they spend two days before boarding a train to Ngaoundéré. Once there, they board another bus for Garoua. However, this bus would have problems, starting with the bus driver allowing both of one set of dual tires to blow out, and managing to obtain another tire to fix it all before continuing on (as there was only one spare tire, which was useless when two tires are blown out). Eventually, about 30 miles from Garoua, the bus's engine would give out, and they decide to start cycling again from there. From before Garoua, the gang starts cycling again to towns and villages in the north. After Garoua, it would be Hama Koussou, Dembo, Tchevi, Roumsiki, Guave, Mabas, Tourou, Mozogo, Mora, Waza, Ndiguina, Maltam, Kousséri, and finally, to N'Djamena, Chad. During this time, Neil would get nervous while being accosted by a very, very drunk Cameroon soldier in Dembo, he and Leonard would almost wind up in Nigeria, they would enjoy looking at wildlife in a game park, Campement de Waza, while enjoying a bit of luxury, and finally continuing onto N'Djamena, where they would have further adventures concluding the trip. First, they had to obtain exit visas to leave Cameroon, then they would be told they would need one to leave Chad, which they were afraid they could not get in time for the one flight per week. Peart would get so ill the night before worrying about all this, he could not face dinner, but the next morning was much better, and they all managed to leave the country and conclude the tour. Neil, Leonard, and Elsa would fly UTA to Paris, while David and Annie would fly Air Afrique to Mali. At the end, Neil would spend a week with his then-wife, Jackie, in Paris.
12741186	/m/02x2w2_	Esther Waters				 Esther Waters is born to hard-working parents who are Plymouth Brethren in Barnstaple. Her father's premature death prompts her mother to move to London and marry again, but Esther's stepfather turns out to be a hard-drinking bully and wife-beater who forces Esther, a natural beauty, to leave school and go out to work instead, thus greatly reducing her chances of ever learning how to read and write, and Esther remains illiterate all her life. Her first job ("situation") outside London is that of a kitchen maid with the Barfields, a nouveau riche family of horse breeders, horse racers and horse betters who live at Woodview near Shoreham. There she meets William Latch, a footman, and lets herself be seduced by him. Dreaming of a future with Latch, she is dismayed to find that he is having an affair with the Barfields' niece, who is staying at Woodview. After Latch and his lover have eloped together, Esther stays on at Woodview until she cannot hide her pregnancy any longer. Although she has found a kindred soul in Mrs Barfield, who is also a Plymouth Sister and abhors the betting on horses going on all around her, Esther is dismissed ("I couldn't have kept you on, on account of the bad example to the younger servants") and reluctantly goes back to London. With the little money she has saved, she can stay in a rented room out of her stepfather's sight. Her mother is pregnant with her eighth child and dies giving birth to it at the same time Esther is at Queen Charlotte's Hospital giving birth to a healthy boy she calls Jack. Still in confinement, she is visited by her oldest sister who asks her for money for her passage to Australia, where her whole family have decided to emigrate. Esther never hears of them again. Learning that a young mother in her situation can make good money by becoming a wet nurse, Esther leaves her newborn son in the care of a baby farmer and nurses the weakly child of a wealthy woman ("Rich folk don't suckle their own") who, out of fear of infection, forbids Esther any contact with Jack. When, after two long weeks, she finally sees her son again, realizes that he is anything but prospering and even believes that his life might be in danger, she immediately takes him with her, terminates her employment without notice and then sees no other way than to "accept the shelter of the workhouse" for herself and Jack. But Esther is lucky, and after only a few months can leave the workhouse again. She chances upon Mrs Lewis, a lonely widow living in East Dulwich who is both willing and able to raise her boy in her stead, while she herself goes into service again. However, she is not able to really settle down anywhere: either the work is so hard and the hours so long that, fearing for her health, she quits again; or she is dismissed when her employers find out about the existence of her illegitimate son, concluding that she is a "loose" woman who must not work in a respectable household. Later on, while hiding her son's existence, she is fired when the son of the house, in his youthful fervour, makes passes at her and eventually writes her a love letter she cannot read. Another stroke of luck in her otherwise dreary life is her employment as general servant in West Kensington with Miss Rice, a novelist who is very sympathetic to her problems ("Esther could not but perceive the contrast between her own troublous life and the contented privacy of this slender little spinster's"). While working there, she makes the acquaintance of Fred Parsons, a Plymouth Brother and political agitator, who proposes to Esther at about the same time she bumps into William Latch again while on an errand for her mistress. Latch, who has amassed a small fortune betting on horses and as a bookmaker ("I am worth to-day close on three thousand pounds"), is the proprietor of a licensed public house in Soho and has separated from his adulterous wife, waiting for his marriage to be divorced. He immediately declares his unceasing love for Esther and urges her to live with him and work behind the bar of his pub. Esther realizes that she has arrived at a crossroads and that she must make up her mind between the sheltered, serene and religious life Parsons is offering her&mdash;which she is really longing for&mdash;and sharing the financially secure but turbulent existence of a successful small-time entrepreneur who, as she soon finds out, operates on both sides of the law. Eventually, for the sake of her son's future, she decides to go to Soho with Latch, and after his divorce has come through the couple get married. A number of years of relative happiness follow. Jack, now in his teens, can be sent off to school, and Esther even has her own servant. But Latch is a gambler, and nothing can stop him from risking most of the money he has in the vague hope of gaining even more. Illegal betting is conducted in an upstairs private bar, but more and more also across the counter, until the police clamp down on his activities, his licence is revoked, and he has to pay a heavy fine. This coincides with Latch developing a chronic, sometimes bloody, cough, contracting pneumonia, and finally, in his mid-thirties, being diagnosed with tuberculosis ("consumption"). However, rather than not touching what little money he still has for his wife and son's sake, the dying man puts everything on one horse, loses, and dies a few days later. With Miss Rice also dead, Esther has no place to turn to and again takes on any menial work she can get hold of. Then she remembers Mrs Barfield, contacts her and, when asked to come to Woodview as her servant, gladly accepts while Jack, now old enough to earn his own living, stays behind in London. When she arrives there, Esther finds the once proud estate in a state of absolute disrepair, with Mrs Barfield the only inhabitant. Mistress and maid develop an increasingly intimate relationship with each other and, for the first time in their lives, can practise their religion unhindered. Looking back on her "life of trouble and strife," Esther, now about 40, says she has been able to fulfil her task&mdash;to see her boy "settled in life," and thus does not see any reason whatsoever to want to get married again. In the final scene of the novel, Jack, who has become a soldier, visits the two women at Woodview.
12741335	/m/02x2w8v	The Sweet Dove Died	Barbara Pym		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Leonora Eyre, an attractive and elegant, but essentially selfish, middle-aged woman, becomes friendly with antique dealer Humphrey Boyce and his nephew James. Both men are attracted to Leonora, but Leonora prefers the young, good-looking James to the more "suitable" Humphrey. While James is away on a buying trip, Leonora discovers to her annoyance that he has been seeing Phoebe, a girl of his own age. Leonora makes use of Humphrey to humiliate Phoebe, and turns out a sitting tenant in order that James can take up a flat in her own house. She does this in an apparent attempt to control his life. While abroad, the bisexual James has begun a relationship with an American, the amoral Ned, who later follows him to London. Ned prises James out of Leonora's grasp, only to reject him for another lover. James attempts a reconciliation with Leonora, but she refuses to give him a second opportunity to hurt her, and settles for the admiration of the less attractive Humphrey. As with all Pym's fiction, the novel contains many literary references, notably to works by Keats, John Milton and Henry James.
12743167	/m/02x2yk2	Extremes	Kristine Kathryn Rusch	2003-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During a marathon race that takes place on the Moon in the future, a corpse is discovered lying in the path the runners take. Noelle DeRicci, a detective, is sent to investigate. The corpse is initially identified as Jane Zweig, a famous business person who operates an extraterrestrial "extreme sports" corporation. Miles Flint, the retrieval agent who used to work for DeRicci, is almost simultaneously hired to also look for Frieda Tey, who they think has been living under the name Jane Zweig. Frieda Tey had been hiding from the results of her biological experiments. The most infamous being a virus that killed more than 200 subjects in an experiment that reminds this person of Josef Mengele. By the time that the police determine that the murder scene was staged, the fast-acting virus that Tey had used on Io was starting to affect the runners in the marathon.
12744448	/m/02x2zwp	The Emperor's Children	Claire Messud	2006-08	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel focuses on the stories of three friends in their early thirties, living in Manhattan in the months leading up to September 11, 2001. All three are well-educated and privileged, but struggle with realizing the lofty expectations for their own personal and professional lives.
12746470	/m/02x31ct	The Unquiet Earth	Denise Giardina		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Unquiet Earth is a novel written from the perspective of multiple narrators. The three main narrators are Dillon, Rachel, and Jackie who are all family. Dillon is Rachel's younger cousin, and Jackie is most likely their child. The story begins prior to the birth of Jackie and is narrated by Dillon and Rachel, children living on their family land, the Homeplace. From the beginning, Dillon makes claims that he loves Rachel partially because she is the only one who has memories of his father. They both narrate parts of their childhood and the beginning of the novel mainly depicts how their relationship grows and how their love for one another begins. They are first cousins - therefore, their mothers are sisters. The first instance in which their love is really shown is when Rachel falls into a river and Dillon is forcibly restrained by his mother from diving in to save her because of her fear of losing him as well. He is forced to watch Rachel suffer and nearly be swept away by the current, but luckily she was dragged out by the mule she was riding. They rush her home, and Dillon watches through a window as his mother helps a cold and naked Rachel recover. The story continues as they grow older and continue to fight for love. Rachel ends up leaving the Homeplace to attend a nursing school, where she spends several subsequent years. Dillon then, in what everyone believes is out of anger of Rachel leaving him, enlists in the British army to fight against Hitler. Upon Rachel's graduation from nursing school, she and her friend Tommie Justice enlist as nurses in the war as well. Rachel returns to find out that the Homeplace is no longer their land as Dillon had forewarned her many times. They are reunited at the number thirteen mine in Justice County where the remainder of the story takes place. Rachel continues working there as a county nurse, and Dillon works for the mine while avidly fighting for the union against the American Coal Company and Arthur Lee, who owns it. Arthur Lee is already an acquaintance of Rachel's because he dated her friend Tommie previously and introduced her to his friend Tony. Rachel and Dillon continue to fight and disagree about their love for one another. Rachel is scared that they would be deemed illegitimate by society and tries to deny her love for her cousin. This offends and angers Dillon, who is against the social norms and wishes to love Rachel even if society believes it is the wrong thing to do. He wants to marry Rachel, but it is illegal to marry a first cousin. When the trouble with the coal company gets worse, Dillon asks that Rachel leave her job for the county, and help him in the fight against the coal companies as the other wives were doing. However, Dillon and Rachel were raised differently, and the words of her dying mother echoed in her head. She was raised by her mother to believe that men want a prim and proper lady, certainly not one who has sex before marriage. It would be wrong for kin to sleep with kin, and even more wrong for two first cousins to marry one another. Standing strong in these beliefs, Rachel ends up marrying Tony, an Italian man that Tommie and Arthur Lee set her up with. She has trouble having kids with Tony and continues to stay close to Dillon. Eventually, she gives into the fact that she loves Dillon and they make love in the secluded area of Trace Mountain where they conceive their daughter, Jackie. However, throughout the rest of the novel this escape to the mountain is kept quiet and Jackie believes until the very end that Tony is her father. After Rachel and Tony finally divorce due to an unhappy marriage and his escapes to the bar, Tony gets remarried and has trouble again having babies. Rachel fears that this will cause him suspicion of Jackie being his and that he will try to take her away. Dillon's prior paranoia is justified at the end of the novel. The book closes with the breaking of the dawn above the towns, and eventually shows once again that the mining company's guarantee of safety was untrue. Jackie is left alone after the deaths of Tom and Dillon in the flood and moves away. The story closes with Jackie wanting to forget the place she called home. The book does a good job of creating a scene of mountain utopia that was slowly eroded away by the mining to an area that was undesirable and almost uninhabitable.
12748398	/m/02x33c2	Possessing the Secret of Joy	Alice Walker	1992		 It tells the story of Tashi, an African woman and a minor character in Walker's earlier novel The Color Purple. Now in the US she comes from Olinka, Alice Walker's fictional African nation where female genital mutilation is practiced. Tashi marries an American man named Adam then left Olinka because of the war. Tashi chooses go back to Olinka to undergo circumcison because she is a woman torn between two cultures, Olinkan and Western. Instead of feeling free from not having the procedure done as a child it ends up bothering her. She wants to honor her Olinkan roots and has the operation in her teen years, although it is usually performed on female children. Tashi later sees several psychiatrists because she goes crazy due to the trauma she has suffered before finding the strength to act. The novel is told in many different voices, which are the characters in the novel. The novel explores what it means to have one's gender culturally defined and emphasizes that, according to Walker, "Torture is not culture."
12748460	/m/02x33d3	File Under Popular				 The essays in File Under Popular tackle the subject of "popular music", what it is, its origins and the political and marketing forces behind it. Chris Cutler charts the history of music and how it was changed by written notation and then recording technology. Three of the essays dwell specifically on individual musicians and groups, namely Sun Ra, The Residents, Phil Ochs and Elvis Presley, but their stories are told within the context of the evolution of music. "Necessity and Choice in Musical Forms" is the first sketch of an analytical theory that shows how memory systems underpin the forms that music can take; part III of this essay is a personnel memoir of Cutler's that explains how his former band, Henry Cow functioned outside the music industry and their involvement in the establishment of Rock in Opposition. The last two essays deal with the development of progressive rock in the United Kingdom, its significance and the politics behind it. Cutler continued his analysis on "popular music" in 1986 in two articles, "Skill, Part 1: The Negative Case For Some New Music Technology" and "Skill, Part 2: Heavy Metal, Punk and the New Wave", published in the RēR Quarterly sound-magazine, Volume 1 Number 3 (1986) and Volume 2 Number 2 (1987), respectively. These articles were later reworked by Cutler into a single essay entitled "Skill", which was included in the 1996 expanded Japanese edition of File Under Popular.
12749297	/m/02x34l8	Grizzly	Gary Paulsen	1997-10-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about Justin McCallister who loves life on his aunt and uncle's sheep ranch in Montana. Until a grizzly bear begins terrorizing the livestock, injuring Justin's collie, Radar, and killing his pet lamb, Blue.
12749444	/m/02x34z_	Thunder Valley	Gary Paulsen	1997-12-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is about Jeremy and Jason Parsons who are left to take care of their grandparents Thunder Valley Ski Lodge while their grandma goes to visit their grandfather in hospital with a broken hip. Strange things begin happening once Grandma leaves, though.
12749550	/m/02x357l	Curse of the Ruins	Gary Paulsen	1998-02-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about Sam, his thirteen-year-old twin sister, Katie and their cousin Shala who are trying to find their dad who is lost on a New Mexico ruin while escaping danger from bad guys who want to find a secret map, which their dad left them.
12749639	/m/02x35c0	Flight of the Hawk	Gary Paulsen	1998-04-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about Andy who is sent to live with his mysterious Grandfather Hawkes after his parents' deaths. Andy soon finds out his grandfather isn't what he seems but actually an inventor, for one thing and also discovers that his parents' deaths may not have been an accident. When Grandfather Hawkes's life is threatened, Andy decides he's not going to lose another person he loves. So using his grandfather's inventions, Andy becomes The Hawk.
12750299	/m/02x367y	The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde	Peter Ackroyd	1983-04		 The novel is written in the form of a diary which Oscar Wilde was writing in Paris in 1900, up to his death. The diary itself is completely fictional, as is the detail contained, although the events and most of the characters (such as the characters of Lord Alfred Douglas, Robert Ross and the Earl of Rosebery and his incarceration, at Pentonville, later Reading) are real. In this diary he looks back at his life, writing, and ruin through trial and jail. Included are fairy tales much like those Wilde wrote, although again these are wholly Ackroyd's invention. The last pages are written in the character of Maurice, Wilde's valet.
12754918	/m/02x3f97	The Mystic Masseur	V.S. Naipaul			 The novel is about a frustrated writer of Indian descent who rises from an impoverished background to become a successful politician on the back of his dubious talent as a 'mystic' masseur - a masseur who can cure illnesses.
12756557	/m/02x3hn5	The Bastard	John Jakes	1974	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins in November 1770 in Auvergne, France, near Chavaniac. Philippe Charboneau, a seventeen-year old boy, is living with his mother, Marie, in an inn inherited from her deceased father. The young Philippe never knew his father. Having kept it a secret from him for years, she finally told him his father was James Amberly, the 6th Duke of Kent. The Duke began a love affair with Marie when she was performing on stage in Paris, but he never married her, making Philippe illegitimate. Their affair was brief and when he returned to England, Amberly married and had a legitimate son, Roger; however, he continued to support Marie and intended for Philippe to inherit half of his fortune. When Philippe and Marie received word that the Duke had taken ill they immediately made plans to travel to Kent, England and stake their claim to his inheritance. Once at Kent, the Duke’s wife, Lady Jane Amberly, and Roger, her son, refused to recognize Philippe as the son of the Duke. Marie insisted otherwise and was determined not to leave Kent until her son inherited what she felt was rightly his, half of the Amberlys' wealth. Philippe and his mother stayed months at an inn in hopes that Lady Jane would reconsider, but she never did. The situation became even more tense when Philippe began a sexual relationship with Roger’s fiancée, Alicia Parkhurst. When Philippe and Marie were informed that the Duke had died they returned to his home, but they were not allowed to see the body. Instead Philippe and Roger brawled, and Roger’s hand was badly wounded. Philippe escaped with his life, though he remained in danger. Alicia warned him to leave Kent because Roger was bent on killing him for injuring his hand. Lacking the funds to return to France, they fled to London and hoped to remain hidden there until the situation cooled. Not knowing their way around the city of London, they made for St. Paul’s Church, hoping to find sanctuary there. What they found instead were violent beggars who tried to rob Philippe and his mother. They were saved by Esau and Hosea Sholto, the sons of Solomon Sholto, a deeply religious man who believed in charity and compassion. Philippe and his mother were allowed to stay with the Sholtos and Solomon offered to train Philippe as his apprentice. The Sholto family owned and operated a printing company and a lending library. Convinced that his claim to Kentland would never be validated, Philippe decided to take Solomon’s advice and learn the trade. When Philippe confided his desire to emigrate to America, Solomon introduced him to Benjamin Franklin, who was at that time an American trade representative to England. To convince Philippe that America was the place he should be, Franklin praised his native country for its boundless opportunities, but also warned that trouble between the British and the colonies was brewing. Marie was adamantly opposed to leaving England without settling the claim for her son, but then Philippe was attacked by an agent hired by Roger, who had never given up on trying to eliminate his rival claimant. London was no longer safe for Marie and her son and they fled again, this time to the port city of Bristol, to find passage to America. During that trans-Atlantic journey, Marie, heartbroken over the destruction of her dream, died of dysentery and was buried at sea, and Philippe decided to adopt an Anglicized version of his name, Philip Kent. Philip arrived at Boston, Massachusetts penniless and for several days he was homeless and starving. Having been in Boston not long he angered a British soldier by accidentally splashing mud on him. He was saved from a beating by William Molineux. Through his connection with Molineux, Philip was introduced to Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. More importantly he was introduced to Benjamin Edes, the editor of the Boston Gazette, who gave Philip a job at his publishing firm. It was through this job that Philip met Abraham Ware, who often contributed articles to the paper, and his daughter Anne, whom Philip began courting. Philip participated in the Boston Tea Party, and then joined the Boston Grenadier Company under Henry Knox. A number of measures were enacted after the Tea Party to punish the citizens of Boston. One of these acts, the Quartering Act, particularly angered Abraham Ware, because he was required to house a British soldier in his home. George Lumden, the sergeant who was assigned to the Wares' house, fell in love with Daisy O’Brian, the Wares' cook, and decided to desert the British army. Philip, who wanted Lumden’s musket, encouraged the sergeant to do so and even employed a local boy to assist with that task. But the boy found it more profitable to betray Philip and inform on Lumden to the commander of his unit. That commander was none other than Roger Amberly. Roger went to the Wares' house in search of Lumden, but found only Anne. When Philip arrived, Roger attacked him, but Philip stabbed his half-brother in the belly with a bayonet. Thinking him dead, Philip fled the city with Lumden and went to stay on Daisy’s father’s farm, near Concord, Massachusetts. Anne and Daisy joined them at the farm some time later and they informed him that Roger had not died. He was taken to Philadelphia to be treated privately and that Alicia Parkhurst was with him. Anne gave Philip a letter that Alicia had written to him and he left Concord to see her in Philadelphia. Roger died before Philip reached that city. Philip met with Alicia, who made her intentions known to him; she wanted to marry him. Philip was torn, because, though he continued to have feelings for Alicia, he also had feelings for Anne. In a chance reunion with Benjamin Franklin, Franklin gave Philip some information that Philip used to make his decision. Franklin told him that James Amberly was still alive and Philip realized that Alicia only wanted to marry him now because he remained the Duke’s only heir. Philip confronted Alicia and informed her that he no longer loved her and had decided to give up any claim to his inheritance, believing that the immense wealth would corrupt him as it had corrupted the Kent family. On his return from Philadelphia to Concord to be reunited with Anne, he ran into Paul Revere, with William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, on their famous “midnight ride” to warn the patriots that the British army was coming. Philip tried to see Anne, but her father would not allow him to, telling him Anne was too distraught when he left her. Then Philip returned to O’Brian’s farm to get Lumden’s musket. Once there, he told Daisy to tell Anne that he loved her. Philip participated in the Battle of Concord and after the battle he was finally reunited with Anne. He told her that he planned to marry her, then left her to continue the fight against the British.
12762751	/m/02x3rpw	I Was Dora Suarez	Derek Raymond	1990	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 As the fourth novel in the Factory series opens, young prostitute Dora Suarez is axed into pieces. The killer then smashes the head of her neighbour, an 86-year-old widow. On the same night, a mile away in the West End, a shotgun blows the top off the head of Felix Roatta, part-owner of the seedy Parallel Club. As the detective obsesses with the young woman whose murder he investigates, he discovers that her death is even more bizarre than he had suspected: the murderer ate bits of flesh from Suarez’s corpse and ejaculated against her thigh. Autopsy results accrue the revulsion as they compound the puzzle: Suarez was dying of AIDS, but the pathologist is unable to determine how she had contracted HIV. Then a photo, supplied by a former Parallel hostess, links Suarez to Roatta, and inquiries at the nightclub reveal her vile and inhuman exploitation.
12763213	/m/02x3s6q	The Teahouse Fire	Ellis Avery	2008-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in late nineteenth century Japan, The Teahouse Fire is the story of Aurelia, a young French-American girl who, after the death of her mother and her missionary uncle, finds herself lost and alone and in need of a new family. Knowing only a few words of Japanese she hides in a Japanese tea house and is adopted by the family who own it: gradually falling in love with both the Japanese tea ceremony and with her young mistress, Yukako. As Aurelia grows up she devotes herself to the family and its failing fortunes in the face of civil war and western intervention, and to Yukako's love affairs and subsequent marriage. But her feelings for mistress seem doomed never to be reciprocated and, as tensions mount in the household, Aurelia begins to realise that to the world around her she will never be anything but an outsider.
12766533	/m/02x3z4t	The Dying Days		2006-06-26	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Christopher Prescott, a mathematics graduate student at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, has just been asked by his girlfriend to move out. In a deliberate attempt to "get on with his life", he goes bar hopping. There, he sees a beautiful red-headed woman drop what appears to be a credit-card or driver's license (in fact, a powerful magical artifact known as a fios stone). He goes to fetch it, hoping to use it as a way to introduce himself, but the woman has walked out. Christopher follows, only to see her walk through a wall in the alley behind the bar. This is Christopher's introduction to The Ways and the world of the Five Clans. The Ways allow those who can perceive them to travel through the memories of the City. His act of kindness plunges Christopher into this world, where arcane deeds and strange creatures are still to be found. He encounters Emma Rowlin, a woman who crossed over from his own world some time ago. Familiar with both frames of reference, she offers to help him find the mysterious red-headed woman. She takes him to the Wandering Parliament, a meeting of the people of the Five Clans: the People of the Cat, the People of the Caribou, the People of the Great Auk, the People of the Codfish, and the People of the Serpent. The Parliament is disrupted by the murder of the Cabinet of one of the Clans, and Christopher finds himself in the middle of apocalyptic changes that threaten to destroy both this world and his own. They also encounter Donovan Chase, a mysterious diminutive Englishman who is trying the find the red-headed woman for his own reasons, and who knows far more than he is willing to share. They soon discover that the murder at the Wandering Parliament is part of a campaign by a new Sixth Clan to take over the Ways. They must stop them, if they are to protect both of the worlds from this new threat. Chase leads Christopher and Emma to the Forgotten Cemetery, where they can ask one of the murdered Cabinet members about the attack. They discover that the purpose of the attack was to steal the Clan's eochair. The eochair are the Keys that control the Ways, and each of the Five Clans controls one. On the way back, the three are separated. Christopher is found by talking cats; in fact, high-ranking members of the People of the Cat. Following prophecy, the Cat's leader imbues him with their eochair. Christopher is destined to be the harbinger of a great change, but whether the change will be for good or for ill nobody knows. Later, reunited with Chase, Christopher finally finds the red-headed woman: Aislinn, a member of the People of the Serpent. The fios stone contains her Clan's eochair. Aislinn was performing a dead drop that was disrupted by Christopher's interference. She has also captured Emma and uses her as a hostage to ensure her escape. Aislinn delivers her Clan's eochair to the Sixth Clan, a gestalt swarm of insects who have already obtained three other eochair. Aislinn receives a reward for her treachery to her own Clan and leaves Emma to the Sixth Clan. Chase and Christopher confront the swarm; to prevent the fifth and final eochair to fall into their hands, Christopher asks Emma to stab and kill him, which she does. This places the eochair beyond the reach of the swarm; thwarted, the enraged swarm loses their cohesion and release the energy of the other eochair, which in turn effectively destroys their ability to recreate the gestalt. Though Christopher dies, he is brought back from the brink by the dissipating energy of the eochair he carried. He is taken back to the cats, who succeed against all odds in healing him. The dissipation of the eochair preserved the Ways, and may even help restore the declining world of the Five Clans. Christopher and Emma are not yet in love, but they are certainly fond of each other and willing to explore the possibilities. And Donovan Chase still has his original task to complete: he finds Aislinn, hiding in the Russian Arctic.
12766817	/m/02x3zp9	Scorpion's Gate	Richard A. Clarke	2005		 A coup in Saudi Arabia topples the sheiks and installs an Islamic government in its place. The weaknesses of the new government, combined with the oil riches of the country, attract attention from all over the world as larger, oil-hungry countries attempt to realign the map of the Middle East.
12768727	/m/02x42m6	A White Heron	Sarah Orne Jewett	1886		 Nine-year-old Sylvia has come from the city to live in the Maine woods with her grandmother, Mrs. Tilley. As the story begins, Sylvia has been living with her grandmother for nearly a year, learning to adapt to country ways. She helps the old woman by taking over some of the more physical chores, such as finding Mistress Moolly, the cow, each evening in the fields where she grazes and bringing her home. By means of this and other tasks, along with her explorations in the forest, Sylvia has become a country girl who dearly loves her new home. She has taken to it easily and immerses herself in her new life completely, as evidenced by the description of her journey home each evening with the cow: “..but their feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not.” One evening she is approached by a hunter, who is in the area looking for birds to shoot and preserve for his collection. This young man is searching in particular for the rare white heron and he is sure that it makes its nest in the vicinity. He accompanies Sylvia on her way with hopes of spending the night at her grandmother’s house. Once he has received this invitation, he makes himself at home, and after they eat, he says that he will give a sum of money to anyone who can lead him to the white heron. The next day Sylvia accompanies the hunter into the forest as he searches for the bird’s nest, but he does not find it. Early the following morning, the girl decides to go out and look for the bird by herself so that she can be sure of showing the hunter its exact location when he awakes. She decides to climb the tallest tree in the forest so that she can see the entire countryside, and she finds the heron, just as she had thought she would. But Sylvia is so affected by her tree-top observation of the heron and other wildlife that she cannot bring herself to disclose the heron's location to the hunter after all, despite his entreaties. Sylvia knows that she would be awarded much-needed money for directing him to the heron, but she decides that she can not play any part in bringing about the bird's death. The hunter eventually departs without his prize. As Sylvia grows older she is haunted by the idea of what she gave up that day, and in the last paragraph of the story, the narrator, as an omniscient observer, urges nature to reward her for her selflessness by offering her its secret.
12768920	/m/02x42x7	Crown Duel	Sherwood Smith	1997-04-01	{"/m/057pyk": "Fantasy of manners", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Young Countess Meliara swears to her dying father that she and her brother will defend their people from the growing greed of the king. That promise leads them into a war for which they are ill-prepared, which threatens the very people they are trying to protect. But war is simple compared to what follows, in peacetime. Meliara is summoned to live at the royal palace, where friends and enemies look alike, and intrigue fills the dance halls and the drawing rooms. If she is to survive, Meliara must learn a whole new way of fighting-with wits and words and secret alliances. In war, at least, she knew in whom she could trust. Now she can trust no one
12779335	/m/02x4kr6	Deathstalker Rebellion	Simon Green		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	- --&#62; &#60;!-
12779707	/m/02x4lmd	Deathstalker War	Simon Green		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	- --&#62; &#60;!-
12779913	/m/02x4m36	Deathstalker Honour	Simon Green		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	- --&#62; &#60;!-
12780051	/m/02x4mbs	Deathstalker Destiny	Simon Green		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	- --&#62; &#60;!-
12782889	/m/02x4rg3	Shakespeare's Memory	Jorge Luis Borges	1983	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The main protagonist and narrator is Hermann Sörgel, a self-described devotee of Shakespeare. After giving a short list of works that he has written on Shakespeare, he tells the story of how he came to be in possession of Shakespeare's Memory: He meets a man named Daniel Thorpe at a Shakespeare conference, and after relating a story about a ring that had a price so high it could never be sold. Thorpe then offers Sörgel Shakespeare's memory, and after a short retelling of how he managed to get hold of it, passes it on to him. The memory, Thorpe says, has to be 'discovered': Sörgel whistles melodies he has never heard, and slowly starts seeing unknown faces in his dreams. Later, he gains insights into Shakespeare's works and techniques, and considers but decides against writing a biography. Soon after, Shakespeare's memory almost overwhelms his own: one day he becomes confused as he does not recognise engines and cars. Finally he decides to give away the memory by telephone: he phones random numbers (sparing women and children from the memory), and at last gives the memory to a man on the other end of the phone.
12783059	/m/02x4rl7	Imaginary Friends	Nora Ephron			 The play focuses on writers Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy, who reunite in hell and reflect on their decades-long antagonistic relationship. Dating back to their first meeting at a conference at Sarah Lawrence College in 1948, it came to a head in 1980 when McCarthy, in a television interview with Dick Cavett, asserted every word written by her rival, including "and" and "the," was a lie. Hellman subsequently sued McCarthy for slander. As the play progresses, the two women recall, among other things, Hellman's 1952 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, McCarthy's childhood abuse by an uncle, and their romantic involvements, McCarthy with Philip Rahv and Hellman with Dashiell Hammett. Throughout it all, McCarthy accuses Hellman of repeatedly presenting fiction as fact, while Hellman insists McCarthy always portrays fact as fiction.
12783947	/m/02x4sp9	The World Is Not Enough	Raymond Benson	1999	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The World Is Not Enough was adapted by then-current Bond novelist Raymond Benson from the screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein. It was Benson's fourth James Bond novel and followed the story closely, except in some details. For example, Elektra does not die immediately after Bond shoots her; instead, she begins quietly to sing. The novel also gave the Cigar Girl a name: Giulietta da Vinci, and retained a scene between her and Renard that was cut from theatrical release. Also, Bond is still carrying his Walther PPK instead of the newer P99.
12784305	/m/02x4s_n	The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths	Jorge Luis Borges	1939-06-16	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A Babylonian king orders his subjects to build him a labyrinth "so confused and so subtle that the most prudent men would not venture to enter it, and those who did would lose their way." When an Arab king visited his court, the king of Babylonia told him to enter the labyrinth in order to mock him. The Arab king finally managed to get out and told the Babylonian that in his land he had another labyrinth, and Allah willing, he would see that someday the king of Babylonia made its acquaintance." The Arab king returned to his land, and launched an extremely successful attack on the Babylonians, finally capturing the Babylonian King. The Arab tied him on a camel and led him into the desert. After three days of riding, the Arab reminds the Babylonian that he tried to make him lose his way in his labyrinth, and says that he will now show him his, "which has no stairways to climb, nor door to force, nor wearying galleries to wander through, nor walls to impede thy passage." He then untied the Babylonian king, "and abandoned him in the middle of the desert, where he died of hunger and thirst..." Throughout time, Arabian kings have been known to build tremendous labyrinths.
12784753	/m/02x4tgs	Rome Burning	Sophia McDougall	2007	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 Three years after the events of Romanitas, the Empire is on the brink of war with Nionia (Japan), and plagued by a sequence of mysterious wildfires. Marcus Novius, the young heir to the Roman throne is forced to take charge as Regent when the Emperor Faustus falls suddenly ill. Marcus attempts to recruit Varius as his advisor, but Varius, who is still haunted by the events of the first book (in which he lost his wife and was framed for murder and treason), refuses. While Marcus works to avoid a world war, his lover Una is intent on discovering the truth about his ambitious cousin Drusus's involvement in a conspiracy that almost claimed Marcus's life. Her brother Sulien finds himself caught up along with Varius in a disastrous attack on an arms factory at Veii, just outside Rome. After surviving this and saving Sulien's life, Varius decides to return to political life after all, but Sulien is left with many questions about what happened. Una exposes Drusus's involvement in the murders of Marcus's parents and Varius's wife, although not before he almost kills her. Varius urges Marcus to have Drusus killed but Marcus is reluctant to begin his reign with an ex-judiciary killing, and is content to have Drusus tried for Una's attempted murder as there is no direct evidence for his other crimes. Drusus, however, has formed an alliance with a Roman general, Salvius, who releases Drusus from prison and urges the sickly Emperor Faustus to rethink his decision to allow Marcus so much power. Drusus, who has hitherto never felt much personal resentment of those who have stood in his way, has conceived a passionate hatred of Una, and tries to convince Faustus that she, Sulien, and Varius are a dangerous influence on Marcus. Sulien's attempts to discover more about the explosion at Veii lead him to believe he was somehow targeted. Una accompanies Marcus to peace talks hosted by the Sinoan (Chinese) Empress in the Song capital of Bianjing (Kaifeng). Things go well at first although Una discovers the Nionians are developing a super-weapon. But someone seems intent on sabotaging the negotiations. One of the Nionian party is killed by a Roman assassin and Marcus is abruptly summoned home by Faustus, under effective arrest. This leaves the Nionian Prince Tadahito deeply suspicious about Rome's intentions. Before he is forced to leave, Marcus hands over Una and Varius as hostages to the Nionians, partly as a sign of good faith, but primarily in the hope of keeping them away from Drusus, who would almost certainly have them tortured or killed. From within Nionian custody, and with the help of the Sinoan Empress and the Nionian Princess, Una and Varius attempt to influence the global action to stop Drusus causing a war, but their efforts come at a personal cost, especially for Una.
12791537	/m/02x52w8	With Folded Hands	Jack Williamson	1947	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Underhill, a seller of "Mechanicals" (unthinking robots that perform menial tasks) in the small town of Two Rivers, is startled to find a competitor's store on his way home. The competitors are not humans but are small, black robots who appear more advanced than anything Underhill has encountered before. They describe themselves as "Humanoids." Disturbed at his encounter, Underhill rushes home to discover that his wife has taken in a new lodger, a mysterious old man named Sledge. In the course of the next day, the new mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: 'to serve and obey and guard men from harm". Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the Humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so that they may live happily under the direction of the humanoids. Underhill learns that his lodger Sledge is the creator of the Humanoids and is on the run from them. Sledge explains that 60 years earlier he had discovered the force of "rhodomagnetics" on the planet Wing IV and that his discovery resulted in a war that destroyed his planet. In his grief, Sledge designed the humanoids to help humanity and be invulnerable to human exploitation. However, he eventually realized that they had instead taken control of humanity, in the name of their Prime Directive, to make humans happy. The Humanoids are spreading out from Wing IV to every human occupied planet to implement their Prime Directive. Sledge and Underhill attempt to stop the humanoids by aiming a rhodomagnetic beam at Wing IV but fail. The humanoids take Sledge away for surgery. He returns with no memory of his prior life, stating that he is now happy under the humanoids' care. Underhill is driven home by the humanoids, sitting "with folded hands," as there is nothing left to do.
12799384	/m/02x5fw9	The Familiar	K. A. Applegate	2000-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens in the middle of a particularly violent battle. As the battle becomes more and more hopeless Jake orders a desperate retreat leaving Marco and Rachel to fend for themselves. The Animorphs all escape, but barely. Tensions are high and Cassie begins to break down again questioning the violence and killing that come with battle. Jake responds to her without much sympathy. Exhausted he returns home and Tom seems at last suspicious of him. He falls asleep. When he awakes he realizes that he is a ten years older version of himself living in New York City on an earth that has already been completely taken over by the Yeerks. Everyone assumes him to be a Controller with a Yeerk named Essak in his head. Jake follows the crowd to his work, but skips his stop in order to investigate this strange new world. He doesn't know how he has come to be in this time and place and suspects that it is some kind of alternate or parallel timeline created by the Ellimist or Crayak. He discovers that there is a terrorist organization called the Evolutionist Front (EF) which is composed of Yeerks and their hosts who believe that forms of biological evolution and mutation should be explored instead of the enslavement of sentient species. He encounters Cassie, who is a Controller and one of the leaders of the organization. She is a brutal and calculating terrorist who will use any tactics to sabotage the Yeerk Empire. She persuades Jake to help her foil a Yeerk plot to turn Earth's Moon into a Kandrona sun, and tells him a contact will approach him with details later. It seems that time and space do not always follow logically in this futuristic world. Jake travels to his place of work, and there he is haunted by the image of the many creatures he has killed in battle. He is then taken in to be interrogated about EF activities. His questioner is a Controller Marco who is Visser Two, and the leader of Earth. Marco has also captured Cassie and threatens to kill her if Jake does not work with him against the EF. Jake's EFing contact turns out to be an unrecognizable crippled Rachel, scarred from years of battle. She gives him instructions where to meet the head of the resistance, saying that he will recognize him when he sees him. Jake follows her instructions and encounters a fully grown Andalite whom he believes to be Elfangor. It is in fact a cold and indifferent Tobias. Tobias explains that he stayed in morph as Ax, and explains to Jake that his brother Tom killed Jake while he slept ten years ago. He seeks Jake's help in foiling the Yeerk plan for Kandrona on the Moon. Jake protests that this will mean certain death for Cassie and Tobias responds that sacrifices must be made in war. In a race against time Jake is faced with a choice to either save Cassie or the world. Jake chooses to save "what must be valued above all else". Jake is then instantly back in his bed the next morning. He hears a voice in his head which he has "never heard", saying it is not the Ellimist. He describes the voice as both young and old, male and female, like distant thought speak. The voice simply says "Interesting choice. They have strangely segmented minds: conscious, unconscious, and an ability to reconcile both. They will bear more study, these humans…". Jake then gets out of bed and calls Cassie to ask her if she's alright.
12799487	/m/02x5g0t	The Journey	K. A. Applegate	2000-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A boy takes a picture of the Animorphs while they are demorphing in an alley. They track the boy down and decide to keep watch on him. When they go to Cassie's barn to reconvene, the Helmacrons show up and demand the morphing cube because they need it to charge their ship. In the battle that ensues, the Helmacrons leave the ship and enter Marco's nose. The Animorphs decide to use the Helmacron ship to shrink themselves so they can follow the Helmacrons and stop them from killing Marco from the inside. When they shrink, they realize that they are too small to hear the speech of full-size humans, which didn't happen the last time they were shrunk. When they catch up to the Helmacrons inside Marco's nose, they notice that they have been shrunk to 1/100th the size of the Helmacrons, who tweaked the shrinking device before they left their ship knowing that the Animorphs would shrink themselves so they could go after them. Meanwhile, Marco is bored of just sitting around and decides to go over to the apartment of the boy who took their picture to try to steal his camera. He goes up the fire escape and enters through a window, but before he can even pick up the camera he gets bitten by a dog and flees home. Rachel falls down into Marco's stomach, and the Helmacrons as well as the rest of the Animorphs follow her, where they are shortly burnt by stomach acid before morphing sharks and following the Helmacrons into the bloodstream. In the bloodstream, Rachel notices a pathogen while looking at all of the different types of blood cells around them. They realise that when the Helmacrons reach the heart, they can stop it from beating with their weapons. Marco goes back to the apartment a second time, and while he is there someone comes home. He soon finds himself trapped in the closet and against Jake's orders, morphs a cockroach. The Helmacrons shoot at the cockroach's heart, after which everyone believes Marco to be dead until they remember that cockroaches can withstand severe trauma. In the meantime, the Animorphs get the weapons away from the Helmacrons by biting their legs. Marco is indeed alive, and they manage to get him to morph back to human. Holding the Helmacrons at gunpoint, they all return to the barn, and recharge the Helmacron's ship with the morphing cube. The Helmacrons leave earth again after promising to never come back. Later at home, Rachel researches on the computer and discovers that the pathogen she saw in Marco's bloodstream was rabies, and his near death experience actually saved him from the virus. Rachel considers calling him, but quickly dismisses it.
12800570	/m/02x5h4x	Exit Music	Ian Rankin	2007-09-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Just a week before Rebus’s retirement, Rebus and Clarke are investigating the death of a famous Russian exile poet who was mugged and beaten to death on King's Stables Road. Then a sound recordist with close ties to the dead Russian poet turns up dead. Rebus searches for the killer of both men but is suspended for his over-enthusiastic interrogations and getting on the wrong side of powerful Scottish bankers and politicians. His last three days before retirement are spent working from his apartment trying to solve the case.
12802272	/m/02x5kqf	The Dogs of Babel	Carolyn Parkhurst	2003-06-13	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Paul Iverson called home to find a police officer answering the phone and suggesting that he come home. When he comes home he finds his wife, Alexandra "Lexy" Ransome, dead, fallen from an apple tree. The police declare it an accident, but Paul is bothered by the "anomalies" he finds, such as signs of someone cooking steak, a rearrangement of the book shelf, and the question as to what his wife was doing in the apple tree in the first place. The only witness to her death is their dog Lorelei, and Paul goes on a crusade to teach Lorelei to speak, in order to clear up the mystery. He cites several past attempts as evidence he will be successful, especially the case of Dog J, who was surgically altered by Wendell Hollis, "the Dog Butcher of Brooklyn", so that he could make human sounds. Paul leaves his job at the college, and dedicates his time to this single cause. As he attempts to teach Lorelei, Paul remembers how he and Lexy first met, at a yard sale where he bought a square hard-boiled egg mold from her. He recounts their week long first date to Disney World, and to a wedding where Lexy delivered masks she made. This is the first time Paul learns about the masks she makes for a living, and they are featured prominently throughout the rest of the book. Paul also remembers their wedding, and when he first learned of Lexy's depression, in the story she tells him about her adolescence. Unhappy with his lack of progress, Paul writes a letter to Wendell Hollis (now in prison) in hopes of getting ideas. In a response letter, he is directed to a man named Remo, who lives in Paul's neighborhood and is in charge of the Cerberus Society, a group dedicated to canine communication. At a meeting of the Cerberus Society, Paul is horrified and intrigued by the methods they use, and is especially excited about hearing Dog J, whom the society has kidnapped, speak. He is disappointed, though, when the mutilated dog is presented at the podium and is unable to say a single word; the rest of the society oblivious to this. The meeting is cut short when the police raid it and Paul flees to his house to find Lorelei gone. Finally realizing he will never be able to teach Lorelei to speak, and now left alone by both Lexy and Lorelei, Paul falls into an even greater depression. After hearing Lexy's voice on a commercial for a Psychic Hotline, he has been calling constantly, in hopes of finding the psychic Lexy talked to, Lady Arabelle. He finally reaches her, and is informed that Lexy was pregnant, a fact Paul knew but the reader did not. Lady Arabelle goes through the tarot reading she gave Lexy, and Paul is left to wonder how his wife took it. Paul eventually finds Lorelei in an animal shelter, her larynx removed by the men who kidnapped her. She is now not only unable to speak English, but to even bark. When he idly examines Lorelei's collar, he finds a subtle message from Lexy. He suddenly realizes that Lexy has sent him a message through the rearrangement of books, a quote from the story Tam Lin."Had I known but yesterday what I know today, I’d have taken out your two gray eyes And put in eyes of clay; And had I known but yesterday you’d be no more my own I’d have taken out your heart of flesh And put in one of stone" – Tam Lin It is then Paul realizes what he has suspected is true, that Lexy committed suicide. Although he continues to mourn his wife's death, the closure Paul has gotten by learning of its circumstances allow him to return to the world. He goes back to his job at the college, and stops his reclusive ways. The story ends on a happy note, but it is still clear Paul is grieving for his wife.
12804055	/m/02x5mr1	Shopgirl	Steve Martin	2000-10-11	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Its titular character is young, lonely, depressed, Vermont transplant Mirabelle Buttersfield, who sells expensive evening gloves nobody ever buys at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills and spends her evenings watching television with her two cats. She attempts to forge a relationship with middle-aged, womanizing, Seattle millionaire Ray Porter while being pursued by socially inept and unambitious slacker Jeremy. Also playing roles in her life are her father, a dysfunctional Vietnam War veteran, and Lisa, her promiscuous, image-obsessed co-worker and voracious rival.
12805692	/m/02x5p6v	Trek to Madworld	Stephen Goldin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Starship Enterprise receives orders to proceed at maximum warp to Epsilon Delta IV, where 700 colonists are slowly perishing due to radiation poisoning. The journey is interrupted when Enowil, an eccentric being of incredible power, seizes control of the Enterprise, in addition to a Klingon and Romulan star cruiser. Enowil, requesting aid from all three parties in resolving a purported “private matter,” offers any reward within the scope of his power. Captain Kirk is thus faced with a dilemma: If he opts to decline, both the Romulans and Klingons have the opportunity to acquire a potentially unstoppable weapon, which would disrupt the galactic balance of power. Yet if he chooses to accept, the abandoned 700 colonists on Epsilon Delta IV will most certainly succumb to an agonizing and protracted death.
12806404	/m/02x5pwt	Les Chouans	Honoré de Balzac			 At the start of the novel, the Republican Commander Hulot is assaulted by Chouan forces, who convert dozens of conscripts. An aristocrat, Marie de Verneuil, is sent by Joseph Fouché to subdue and capture the royalist leader, the Marquis de Montauran, also known as "Le Gars". She is aided by a detective named Corentin. Eventually, Marie becomes smitten with her target. In defiance of Corentin and the Chouans whom she detests, she devises a plan to marry the Chouan leader. Fooled by Corentin into believing that Montauran loves her mortal enemy Madame du Gua, Marie orders Hulot to destroy the rebels. She discovers her folly too late and tries, unsuccessfully, to save her husband the day after their marriage.
12814208	/m/02x5__0	The Name of the Wind	Patrick Rothfuss	2007-03-27	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03dw_3": "Heroic fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins in the backwater town of Newarre, introducing the innkeeper Kote and his assistant Bast. The Inn is sparsely used, and widespread troubles from an ongoing war have further reduced travelers passing through the small town. It is revealed that Kote is actually the legendary hero Kvothe in hiding. Kvothe has a reputation as an unequaled swordfighter, magician and musician, who among other things is rumored to have killed a king and is somehow responsible for the war. His assistant and student Bast is a prince from the mystical Fae, magical creatures of great beauty but vulnerable to iron. Kvothe saves Chronicler, a travelling scribe, from spider-like creatures called Scrael. Chronicler recognizes him as Kvothe and asks to record his story. Kvothe initially refuses but eventually gives in, to tell the truth about the events that made him a legend. He tells Chronicler that this will take three days (corresponding to the planned trilogy of novels). Kvothe begins his story with his childhood amongst the Edema Ruh, a troupe of travelling performers. Kvothe is extremely intelligent and a talented musician, particularly with a lute. The troupe picks up an arcanist by the name of Abenthy, a graduate of the University , who begins to train Kvothe in matters of science and "sympathy", a form of magic which allows the user to link two objects together and cause changes in the bound object by manipulating the other (a system drawing equally from modern thermodynamics, quantum entanglement and voodoo dolls). Abenthy also knows true names, thus giving him power over those things he knows the true name of. Kvothe witnesses Abenthy calling the wind to fend off suspicious townspeople and henceforth vows to discover the titular "Name of the Wind." Meanwhile, Kvothe's father Arliden is composing a song about the "Chandrian," a mythical force of evil and corruption. This leads the Chandrian to find and kill the troupe; Kvothe survives by having been out in the woods at the time. Heavily traumatized, he spends three years in the city of Tarbean as a street urchin. After a storyteller named Skarpi tells Kvothe a tale of the Chandrian and their enemies, the Amyr, he makes his way to the University to continue his education and gather further information on the subject. On the road to the University Kvothe meets Denna, a beautiful and talented young woman with whom he immediately is infatuated. Kvothe is accepted at the university despite his lack of tuition funds and performs admirably as a student, but also faces difficulties due to continuous money problems and rivalries with the wealthy student Ambrose and the arrogant Master Hemme. Kvothe's research about the Chandrian is marred by taking a candle inside the University's famous Archives, resulting in a sustained banishment from the Archives by the Master Archivist. Kvothe buys a lute despite his poverty and performs at a famous musical tavern called Eolian in the hopes of earning some much-needed money. At the Eolian, he earns talent pipes that designate him as a master musician, and also meets Denna again, with whom he develops a romantic but unassuming friendship. Kvothe is careful not to chase Denna away, who has many suitors and often disappears for weeks at a time, but seems to return his feelings. When Kvothe hears reports of blue fire and murder at a nearby wedding, he realizes that it could be the work of the Chandrian, and rides to a small town called Trebon in his attempt to find proof that the Chandrian do exist. After an unexpected reunion with Denna, who was meeting with her mysterious patron, the two set out to find out what happened at the wedding. They meet a local farmer who reported strange sightings of blue fire, and later that night they encounter a massive fire-breathing herbivorous draccus. The draccus is later discovered to be addicted to denner trees (the trees have a resin that can be made into highly addictive drugs) and goes on a rampage through the town of Trebon, nearly burning down the whole town before Kvothe manages to kill it with a clever use of sympathy. Upon returning to the University, Ambrose taunts Kvothe, taking and breaking Kvothe's lute. Kvothe subconsciously breaks Ambrose's arm by roaring out the name of the wind. Because of this feat, Master Namer Elodin accepts Kvothe as a advanced student and attempts to teach him the power of naming. In the inn, the first day ends when a mercenary possessed by a demon arrives at the inn and attacks the patrons. Kvothe attempts to use sympathy to light the man on fire, but fails. After the man is killed by a patron, and Chronicler goes to bed, Bast breaks into Chronicler's room and urges him to focus Kvothe on the more heroic aspects of his story. Chronicler refuses, wanting Kvothe's story as true and objective as possible, but Bast threatens him. Bast explains to Chronicler that he lured him to the inn because he wanted to shake Kvothe out of his monotonous life, that Kvothe's simple life is killing him and that Bast hopes that some good will come from the Chronicler helping Kvothe remember his days of glory.
12816144	/m/0403r9t	Nothing to Lose	Lee Child	2008-03-24	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As described by Sherryl Connelly of the New York Daily News,
12816440	/m/02x62y8	The palace of laughter	Jon Berkeley	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Miles Wednesday, an orphan boy who has recently escaped from the cruel Pinchbucket's orphanage, is the only one who witnesses the arrival of the Circus Oscuro in town one night. He is promptly visited by a tiger with the ability to talk; he considers making Miles his next meal, but leaves him alone after he "smells the circus in him". Miles, who has never even been to a circus before in his life, wonders what he could mean. The next evening, Miles sneaks into the circus to find the tiger and watches some of the show from behind the bleachers. He sees a small girl performing acrobatic stunts fall from the top of the tent and tries to catch her. She sprouts wings, however, and flies to safety. Miles' act of bravery results in him being kicked out by the ringmaster's right hand man, Ghengis. Miles stays hidden and sees the acrobat, who calls herself "Little", being tied up and taken back to her wagon when the show ends. Miles introduces himself and tries to steal the keys to rescue her, but is caught by the ringmaster, the Great Cortado. Miles pretends that he is interested in joining the circus and steps outside to prepare a "disappearing act". Angered at being tricked and losing one of his stars, Cortado unleashes a monstrous beast called The Null to chase after Little and Miles. The two children barely escape. Miles takes Little to a friend of his, a widow called Lady Partridge, who lives with her many cats in a treehouse made of her own antiques. Partridge gives them shelter and Little tells her story—she is actually a 400-year old Song Angel who fell from the sky along with her friend Silverpoint, a Storm Angel. After seeing Silverpoint protect Little from a mean clown by shooting lightning bolts at him, the Great Cortado kidnaps and separates the two; he takes Silverpoint to a mysterious place called the Palace of Laughter and forces him to perform there to protect Little. To prove her ability, Little sings Miles' stuffed bear, Tangerine, to life. Miles and Little decide to find the Palace of Laughter and rescue Silverpoint. The two meet many difficulties along the way. Tangerine wanders away from Miles and is taken by Ghengis, leaving Miles heartbroken. Luckily, the tiger appears again, and carries Miles and Little for a good portion of the journey. The tiger, after much pestering from Miles, reveals that the Circus Oscuro did have a tiger once: the tiger, Varippuli, was originally part of the circus of a great man called Barty Fumble, and showed him more loyalty than could ever be fathomed. The circus was always a success, until the year the Circus Oscuro appeared and began stealing the crowds. Barty was expecting his first child and knew he could not afford failure. He made a deal with the Great Cortado to combine the two circuses for the summer and then part ways. All was well until Barty's wife died in labor, leaving him heartbroken. He disappeared with his son, leaving Varippuli to the wrath of the evil Cortado. After attempting to starve Varippuli to make him perform once more, Cortado tried to whip the beast, but it got the better of him. Before Varippuli could deliver the final blow, Cortado found his gun and supposedly killed the tiger. Miles also runs into an old friend of Lady Partridge, an elderly former explorer named Baltinglass of Araby, who eagerly aids them. Just before they can reach the Palace of Laughter, Miles and Little are taken by a violent gang of orphan boys called the Halfheads and caught between the constant rivalry of two other gangs, the Stinkers and Gnats. With the help of Henry, one friendly member of the Halfheads and after the betrayal of String (who holds a grudge against Miles after being replaced by him), Little and Miles reach the Palace of Laughter and find it is nowhere near the pleasant place they expected it to be. The Great Cortado uses a method he has devised with the mysterious Dr. Tau-Tau to make people laugh uncontrollably and steal the laughter and happiness out of their souls. He then sells a drink that can temporarily make them feel themselves again. Cortado plans to spread his influence across the towns and eventually the world. Miles and Little are caught by Silverpoint, who at first pretends to not recognize them to keep them safe. He finally reveals Cortado's plan, and the three are befriended by the clown trio, the Bosillio brothers, who wish to help them. Cortado intends to make Miles and Little sit through the next performance and share the same fate as the other unfortunate spectators, but Miles is able to steal some of the antidote given to the clowns, Cortado and Ghengis before the show. Cortado and Ghengis happen to drink the water Miles replaces it with and now cannot stop laughing senselessly. The police arrive, informed by Lady Partridge and Baltinglass, who were informed by Partridge's cats who in turn were tipped off by the tiger. They lock up Ghengis and Cortado in the local asylum since they can't answer to any accusations after falling victim to their own scheme. String plans to get revenge on Miles by stealing Little and using her ability to fly to make himself the leader of the Stinkers. He finds a room where he believes she is locked up, but instead unleashes the Null. The monster goes on a rampage and Silverpoint is knocked unconscious trying to defeat him. He is about to squeeze Miles to death when Little sings her true name, saving Miles but tying herself to the earth forever. She loses her wings and is rescued from falling by the Bosillio Brothers. The Null is now much more tame and surprisingly affectionate towards Miles, who finds that he cannot let the city council destroy it. The Bosilio Brothers find Tangerine and return him to Miles, revealing that they gave it to him the day he was born. Barty Fumble was Miles' father and they were a part of his circus. Silverpoint returns the Realm of the Angels but is forced to leave Little behind. After one more talk with the enigmatic tiger (who Miles suspects is Varippuli), he promises to find what happened to his father and make Little's life on earth as happy as it was in the heavens.
12816549	/m/02x631r	The Test	K. A. Applegate	2000-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As the book opens, Tobias discovers Bobby McIntyre, a missing child who was hiking through the woods. He leads the boy's father and a search party to his son. Throughout the book Tobias deals with the psychological after-effects of the torture he endured at the hands of the sadistic sub-visser Taylor. He continues to question his own strength and resolve. Taylor, claiming she is now part of the Yeerks' Peace Movement, enlists Tobias to try and sabotage the Yeerk pool. All of the other Animorphs, except for Cassie, who declines on moral grounds, accompany him and Ax as they dig a tunnel to the pool. In order to dig a tunnel to the Yeerk pool, Tobias and Ax alternate turns in Taxxon morph, which has a nearly uncontrollable constant hunger. In fact, Taylor has been working for Visser Three, and sets off a gas explosion. Cassie is able to turn off the gas from its control station, injuring several humans in the process. She is once again distraught by the violence she has had to use to save her friends. Taylor is presumably killed in the gas explosion. The book ends with Rachel and Tobias on the beach. She holds his hand and reassures him that he is not weak and encourages him to let go of the past. *Taylor is believed to be killed. *Taylor mentions to Tobias that the Yeerks' invasion of Anati planet - supervision of which was given to Visser One in Visser - is floundering.
12816606	/m/02x636x	The Unexpected	K. A. Applegate	2000-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Someone found a piece of a Bug Fighter and the government is going to test it at a laboratory. Unsurprisingly, the Yeerks don't want it tested. The Animorphs have a battle at an airport. During the fight Cassie ends up unconscious on the belt with all the luggage. When she wakes up, she is in the cargo bay of a plane flying to Sydney, Australia. The plane is attacked by Yeerks looking for the "Andalite bandit" so she jumps out after unsuccessfully attempting to elude them on board. She hides in the sand as a flea until the Yeerks leave. After the Yeerks leave, she demorphs and meets Yami who lives nearby. He takes her to his family. His grandfather cut himself with a piece of a Bug fighter that he was using as a wood carving tool. Cassie morphs to Hork-Bajir and helps amputate his leg. Later, the Blade ship turns up again and Visser Three demands that she come outside. She does and tries to lead the Yeerks away from Yami's family. A Chee who was aboard the Blade ship turns up and she goes back home.
12816623	/m/02x637y	Standing in the Light, The Captive Diary of Catherine Carey Logan				 Catherine is a thirteen year old Quaker girl who leads a simple life with her mother, father, and younger siblings that are Thomas, Eliza and Baby Will. At first she writes in her journal about school; meetings (church services); her crush, a handsome, spunky boy named Jess Owen; and her family including Baby Will's first tooth. But when the family hears about the Indian raids and massacres on nearby farms and at church, fear grows in her. Catherine is terrified to death of what may happen. Then one day while walking to school, Caty (Catherine) and Thomas are both captured by Lenape Indians. They are taken to the Lenape camp, and Thomas is separated from his sister and taken to another camp. Later, he moves to her camp after a bout with fever. Catherine is adopted by an old woman named Wapa-go-kos (White Owl) and her daughter, Tan-kan-wan (Little Cloud). Catherine is called Chilili (Snow Bird). Catherine hates her new family and their traditions and customs. But when she befriends a handsome young hunter named Wine-lo-wich (Snow Hunter) and a romance develops, she grows to love her new people. Snow hunter is English and was also captured, but he has lived with indians several years. Seasons pass, and then tragically Catherine and Thomas are torn apart from their new family, and her new love by the white men. Snow Hunter and a group who went to trade furs were murdered by white men, and Catherine and Thomas were taken back to their real home. Catherine's mom was shocked by Catherine acting like a "savage" when Catherine was captured and does not know how to treat her daughter. Catherine decides to let her father read her diary. Instead of being ashamed, he tells Catherine that he is proud of her learning to look past differences between people and for "standing in the light". It also includes an epilogue and historical note. Catherine lived in the Quaker land, then in the Lenape land.
12821847	/m/02x6b2c	Sir Harold and the Gnome King	L. Sprague de Camp	1991	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Harold Shea's wife Belphebe of Faerie suggests he undertake a transdimensional expedition to retrieve his colleague Walter Bayard, who is stranded in the world of Irish mythology. Walter’s long absence has put him in danger of losing his tenure at the Garaden Institute that employs both him and Harold as psychologists. A secondary advantage to Belphebe will be to get Harold out of her hair; she is pregnant with their first child, and he is getting on her nerves. Harold prepares for the trip more carefully than on previous occasions, reluctant to risk his life as cavalierly as before now that he has a family. In particular, he replaces the épée he formerly favored with a stronger cavalry saber, and dons a mail shirt for greater protection. To ensure he is able to locate Walter amid the uncertainties of transdimensional travel, he makes the goal of his expedition not Eriu but the Land of Oz, whose rulers are possessed of an artifact "effective as a teletransporter," the Magic Belt of the Gnome King. (De Camp prefers the standard spelling of "gnome" to Baum's idiosyncratic "nome.") As usual, things immediately go wrong. Instead of Oz, Harold ends up in a decidedly more sinister place, the University of the Unholy Names in Dej, a world of vaguely Islamic and Arabic antecedents. There he encounters the student Bilsa at-Tâlib, who enthusiastically suggests a magical contest between them and conjures up a gigantic snake that immediately snaps Harold up. Fortunately, the latter's mail shirt protects him long enough for him to repeat the spell that transports him between worlds, and this time he really does end up in Oz (thankfully sans snake). The Oz he encounters is greatly changed from the land of which Baum had written, the enchantment that had kept its inhabitants ageless having been broken through a misuse of magic by a dabbler in spells named Dranol Drabbo some years prior. Dorothy Gale and Princess Ozma are now grown up, married, and with children of their own. Moreover, Harold finds Ozma's husband, King Evardo of Ev, a much more canny and realistic ruler than Ozma in her youth; the royal pair is willing to help him, but only for a price! Lengthy negotiations ensue, as a result of which Harold finds himself committed to rescuing their son Prince Oznev, who is being held captive by Kaliko, the current king of the Gnomes. To facilitate his foray into the Gnome Kingdom Harold demands and receives the service of former gnome king Ruggedo, an old enemy of Oz, as guide, along with tarncaps to render them invisible. He also commissions the local blacksmith to forge a pair of bolt cutters under his direction with which to free Oznev. Meanwhile, Ozma uses the Magic Belt to summon Walter from Eriu. Much to her embarrassment Walter arrives in bed and with a bedmate, having recently acquired an Irish wife, Boann ni Colum. On the way to the underground Gnome Kingdom Ruggedo, pondering his past failures, consults Harold in his psychological capacity. His problem, it turns out, is that he is an unscrupulous, treacherous, selfish, greedy, lying, thieving scoundrel, and at the same time an irascible, ornery, cantankerous, ill-mannered, bad-tempered old grouch. Harold informs him that he will never be popular while remaining both; to succeed, he must overcome one trait or the other. Afterward the two penetrate the Gnomish Kingdom and manage to liberate Oznev. Ruggedo, determined to apply Harold’s advice, stays to dispute the throne with Kaliko. Meanwhile Harold and the prince duel with and defeat Drabbo, who has become Kaliko’s chancellor. Rescuer and prince return to Oz amid general acclaim. Harold then prepares for his return home, whence Walter and Boann plan to follow in the wake of the banquet celebrating Oznev’s deliverance. As for Ruggedo, when last seen he had expelled Kaliko from the Gnome Kingdom, declared monarchy obsolete, and proclaimed himself Lifetime President and Founding Father of the Gnomic Republic.
12828996	/m/02x6n2r	The House of Bernarda Alba	Federico García Lorca			 Upon her second husband's death, domineering matriarch Bernarda Alba imposes an eight-year mourning period on her household, as per her family tradition. Bernarda has five daughters, aged between 20 and 39, whom she has controlled inexorably and prohibited from any form of relationship. The mourning period further isolates them and tension mounts within the household. After a mourning ritual at the family home, eldest daughter Angustias enters, having been absent while the guests were there. Bernarda fumes, assuming she had been listening to the men's conversation on the patio. Angustias inherited a large sum of money from her father, Bernarda's first husband, but Bernarda's second husband has left only small sums to his four daughters. Angustias' wealth attracts a young, attractive suitor from the village, Pepe el Romano. Her sisters are jealous, believing that it's unfair that Angustias, plain and rather sickly, should receive both the majority of the inheritance and the freedom to marry and escape their suffocating home environment. Youngest sister Adela, stricken with sudden spirit and jubilation after her father's funeral, defies her mother's orders and dons a green dress instead of remaining in mourning black. Her brief taste of youthful joy suddenly shatters when she discovers that Angustias will be marrying Pepe. Poncia, Bernarda's maid, advises Adela to bide her time: Angustias will probably die delivering her first child. Distressed, Adela threatens to run into the streets in her green dress, but her sisters manage to stop her. Suddenly they see Pepe coming down the street. She stays behind while her sisters rush to get a look—until a maid hints that she could get a better look from her bedroom window. As Poncia and Bernarda discuss the daughters' inheritances upstairs, Bernarda sees Angustias wearing makeup—and a green dress, which symbolizes freedom within the Generation 98 culture. Appalled that Angustias would defy her orders to remain in a state of mourning, Bernarda violently scrubs the makeup off her face. The other daughters enter, followed by Bernarda's elderly mother, Maria Josefa, who is usually locked away in her room. Maria Josefa announces that she wants to get married; she also warns Bernarda that she'll turn her daughters' hearts to dust if they cannot be free. Bernarda forces her back into her room. It turns out that Adela and Pepe are having a secret affair. Adela becomes increasingly volatile, defying her mother and quarreling with her sisters, particularly Martirio, who reveals her own feelings for Pepe. Adela shows the most horror when the family hears the latest gossip about how the townspeople recently dealt with a young woman who shamelessly delivered and killed an illegitimate baby. Tension explodes as family members confront one another and Bernarda pursues Pepe with a gun. A gunshot is heard outside, implying that Pepe has been killed. Adela flees into another room while the family awaits the outcome. As Bernarda and Martirio enter, Martirio says Pepe escaped with his life, and Bernarda remarks that as a woman she can't be blamed for poor aim. Immediately she calls for Adela, who has locked herself into a room. When Adela doesn't respond, Bernarda and Poncia force the door open. Soon Poncia's shriek is heard. She returns with her hands clasped around her neck and warns the family not to enter the room. Adela, not knowing that Pepe survived, has hung herself. The closing lines of the play show Bernarda characteristically preoccupied with the family's reputation. She insists that Adela has died a virgin and demands that this be made known to the whole town. (The play alludes that Adela and Pepe had an affair; Bernarda's moral code and pride keep this from registering). No one is to cry.
12831208	/m/02x6r_5	The Revelation	K. A. Applegate	2000-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While having dinner with his family, Marco learns that his father, Peter, is involved in research that has led to the discovery of Zero-Space. When the Yeerks learn of Peter's research, they try to have him infested. The Yeerks plan is thwarted by Marco and Rachel, but at the expense of Marco losing his cover. With no alternative, Marco tells his father about the Yeerk invasion of Earth, the role he has played in the war, and tells him that they can no longer return home, even to save his wife, Nora. Marco also finally reveals the fate of his mother, Eva, telling his father that she is the host of Visser One. After hiding his father with the Chee, Marco speaks with the other Animorphs at Cassie's barn and tells them of what has transpired. Rachel suggests using the Z-Space transmitter created by Peter to intercept Yeerk transmissions, but the device is currently in the custody of the Yeerks. Ax is enlisted to help Peter re-build the transmitter. Meanwhile, Erek King and his "father" are posing as Marco and Peter at Marco's former home. The two are seen packing for a trip to Acapulco when four human-Controllers break into the room and fire their Dracon beams at "Marco" and "Peter", vaporizing the bodies. The Yeerks briefly speak to Nora, who has since been infested, and she follows the Controllers off the property. After verifying that the coast is clear, Marco, who was hiding in the house as a cockroach, demorphs and Erek shuts down the hologram hiding himself and Mr. King. Erek takes minimal damage in the Yeerk assault, but Mr. King needs more extensive repairs. Erek carries Mr. King back to their home disguised as a garbage truck, leaving Marco alone to contemplate what his life will be like until the end of the war. Several days later, the Animorphs and Peter assemble at Ax's scoop. The Z-Space transmitter is nearly complete, and is already picking up several Yeerk transmissions. Ax is having trouble stabilizing the transmitter's translator chip, which is only to translate for brief periods of time. However, Ax is able to interpret enough of the transmissions to learn that Visser One is being sent back to Earth to be executed as a traitor. The Yeerks are only awaiting the arrival of a witness from the Council of Thirteen, at which point the execution will commence and Visser Three will be promoted to Visser One. Ax also suggests that the execution of Visser One and Visser Three's impending promotion is the beginning of a change in how the Yeerks plan to conquer Earth. With this information in mind, the Animorphs decide to attempt to rescue Marco's mother. The Animorphs and Peter begin planning the operation. Later in the forest, Marco calls the local police department, which is known to be infiltrated by the Yeerks, and reports that he has an alien in his custody. After giving them the description of a Hork-Bajir and his location, he hangs up and waits for a Yeerk Bug fighter to arrive. The fighter comes four minutes later, and the two Hork-Bajir-Controllers on-board are quickly disabled by Jake and Rachel. Cassie and Ax take out the Taxxon pilot, allowing the Animorphs to commandeer the Bug fighter. Despite some difficulty piloting the fighter, Ax manages to get them inside the hangar connected to the Yeerk pool complex. The Animorphs disembark and make their way to the Yeerk pool in Hork-Bajir morphs. They find Visser One tied up on the infestation pier, her execution already underway. The Animorphs attempt to make their way back to their stolen Bug fighter, but are forced to fight several suspicious Hork-Bajir-Controller's on-route. Upon reaching the fighter, Ax flies it to the Yeerk pool and Marco and Rachel jump down to retrieve Eva. Unfortunately, a second Bug fighter, along Visser Three himself, engages the one captured by the Animorphs, leaving Marco and Rachel forced to engage several Blue Band Hork-Bajir while they wait for rescue. After several minutes of battle, Visser Three is disabled and the second Bug fighter is destroyed. Visser One leaves Eva and attempts to make her way to the Yeerk pool, only to be stepped on by Marco. Marco, Rachel, and Eva board the Animorphs' stolen Bug fighter and are flown to safety. Once clear of the Yeerk pool complex, the fighter is abandoned in the forest and is destroyed by the Yeerks. Eva's injuries are treated by the Chee, and she and Peter are relocated to the free Hork-Bajir colony. Peter pulls Marco aside and asks if there was anything that could be done to save Nora. Marco tells him that she was likely a Controller all along, assigned to spy on Peter and his research projects. The explanation is a lie, but Peter accepts it and reunites with Eva. Several nights later, the Animorphs assemble at the beach. Ax uses the Z-Space transmitter to call the Andalite homeworld. The Andalites demand to know who is making the transmission, to which Jake responds "this is Earth". *Marco tells his father, Peter, about the Yeerk invasion. *Marco and Peter fake their deaths and are forced into hiding. *The Blue Band Hork-Bajir are introduced. *Visser One (Edriss 562) is killed and Marco's mother, Eva, is liberated by the Animorphs, and she is reunited with Marco and Peter. * This book was sold in a clear cellophane wrapper, also containing a CD featuring a demo of the Animorphs PC game. * The cover morph is never actually completed in the book. In order to give his father proof of his story about the war against the Yeerks, Marco half-morphs into an ant and an osprey in front of him, never fully completing either morph. * This is the fourteenth book to feature a cover morph that was not acquired in the book. Marco acquired his ant morph in the fifth book, The Predator. * The front cover quote is "Sometimes there's no escape. Even for the Animorphs..." * The inside front cover quote is "Sometimes the truth won't set you free...."
12835122	/m/02x6wx9	Vulcan's Glory	D. C. Fontana	1989-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel focuses on a young Spock, a conflicted ensign, serving on the Starship Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike. Spock is having a difficult time dealing with his Vulcan heritage and how it conflicts with his duties as an officer and what he wants personally. Spock soon becomes involved in a mission to retrieve the 'Vulcan's Glory', a priceless gem long thought lost in a spaceship crash. It is soon discovered there is far more to this mission then readily apparent. The novel focuses on the crew of the Enterprise from the period featured in the pilot episode "The Cage". A younger Montgomery Scott also appears.
12835753	/m/02x6xtn	Mistborn: The Well of Ascension	Brandon Sanderson	2007-08-21	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book begins with two armies laying siege to Luthadel - the army of Elend's father, Straff Venture and another one headed by Cett. Elend is now the King of Luthadel, with Vin as his girlfriend and the rest of the team as his close confidants. A short time later, a third army of koloss arrives, led by one of Elend's former friends, who is buying their obedience with counterfeit coins. Vin is starting to become suspicious of the mist, as they no longer make her feel as at home as they used to. At the same time, Sazed on his journeys has come across suspicious deaths which appear to be due to the mist. There is a lot of politicking during the middle part of the book, as Elend becomes a victim of the same laws he wrote as the Assembly has voted to depose him and elect a new king. The Assembly elects Lord Penrod as their new king, rejecting Elend. At the same time, Vin is going through a personal crisis due in large part to Zane, the son of Staff Venture and Elend's half brother, an apparently mentally ill Mistborn who is trying to seduce Vin and get her to go away with him. At the urging of Zane, Vin kills hundreds of Cett's soldiers at the mansion he was staying at in Luthadel, but stops short of killing Cett himself. Cett decides to leave the city and abandon his siege. Sazed and the rest of the crew scheme to get Elend and Vin out of the city, with Sazed creating a fake map to the Well of Ascension, where Vin is convinced she must go. Straff Venture withdraws his army and allows the koloss army to attack Luthadel, planning to rescue the city after the koloss have destroyed most of it and suffered casualties. Vin returns to Luthadel just in time to save Sazed. She also realizes that she is able to control the koloss using her allomancy, which is how the Lord Ruler kept them in check. She stops the slaughtering and pillaging that they were doing, and with the rest of the human army from Luthadel, attacks Straff Venture's army. Vin kills Straff and his generals as Cett decides to ally himself with Luthadel. Vin tells the armies that Elend is their new emperor, and Cett, Penrod and the last general of Straff's army can be kings under him. Vin realizes that the Well of Ascension is in Luthadel, and finds a hitherto unknown doorway in the Lord Ruler's former dwelling, that leads down to a series of caves. She finds the Well of Ascension, but is urged to "release" the power for the good of the world. She decides not to try to use the power to heal the dying Elend or fix anything else, but to release it. The moment she releases it, an entity shouts out that it is now free. Elend consumes a small piece of metal which makes him a Mistborn and he heals himself.
12837452	/m/02pxh0d	Ilium/Olympus			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The series centers on three main character groups: that of the scholic Hockenberry, Helen and Greek and Trojan warriors from the Iliad; Daeman, Harman, Ada and the other humans of Earth; and the moravecs, specifically Mahnmut the Europan and Orphu of Io. The novels are written in first-person, present-tense when centered on Hockenberry's character, but features third-person, past-tense narrative in all other instances. Much like Simmons' Hyperion where the characters' stories are told over the course of the novels and the actual events serve as a frame, the three groups of characters' stories are told over the course of the novels and their stories do not begin to converge until the end.
12837555	/m/02x7003	Precious Bane			{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story is set in rural Shropshire shortly after the Napoleonic Wars. It is narrated by the central character, Prue Sarn, whose life is blighted by having a harelip. Only the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, perceives the beauty of her character, but Prue cannot believe herself worthy of him. Her brother Gideon is overridingly ambitious to attain wealth and power, regardless of who suffers while he does so. Gideon is set to wed his sweetheart Jancis, but he incurs the wrath of her father, the cruel and scheming self-proclaimed wizard Beguildy. An act of vengeance by Beguildy makes Gideon reject Jancis and tragedy overwhelms them both. Prue is wrongly accused of murder and set upon by a mob, but Kester defies them and carries Prue away to the happiness she believed she could never possess because of her harelip. The title of the story is from John Milton's Paradise Lost: :Let none admire :That riches grow in Hell; that Soyle may best :Deserve the precious bane. It refers to the love of money, which, as Prue records, blights love and destroys life.
12838145	/m/02x715y	Sarny	Gary Paulsen	1997-09-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sarny has been released from the shackles of slavery during the American Civil War by United States Army infantry bayonetting her owner, Mr. Waller.Eventually finding them in New Orleans with the help of a new friend named Miss Laura at the end of the war. Miss Laura pays Sarny and her friend Lucy $20 a month to help her around the house. Sarny then opens a school for blacks, only to have it burned down twice by the Ku Klux Klan. Her husband Stanley, enraged, attacks one of them. The Klan lynches him. She lives her life until Miss Laura dies eight months later, leaving her 12 rental properties in New Orleans, and St. Louis; almost $125,000.00; and half interest in two steamships. She dies in Dallas, Texas in the 1930's at age 96.
12847697	/m/02x7f60	Scruples	Judith Krantz		{"/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Born the only child of a distinguished scientist, who is a member of the venerable Winthrop family but must work for a living, Wilhelmina is nicknamed "Honey," a diminutive of her middle name. In her infancy, her mother dies and she is raised by her distant father and a housekeeper. She grows up isolated from her extended family and, with the help of the housekeeper, turns to food for comfort. Around the time she graduates from high school, she is left $10,000 by a maiden aunt, who begs her to spend it foolishly while she is still young. In a last-ditch effort to "find herself," Honey goes to live in Paris with a French family. There, she undergoes a transformation of both body and soul, first changing her name to Billy, then losing weight, and then gaining Parisian style under the guidance of Liliane, the elegant Frenchwoman who is her hostess. She is also introduced to Edouard, Liliane's relative. It is her first sexual affair, but when the aristocratic but impecunious Edouard discovers that Billy has no money, he shows his true colors and ends the relationship. Billy returns to America and to a Boston stunned by her new body and beauty. Feeling "not in her skin," and unwilling, at 19, to start college, she moves to New York to attend the Katharine Gibbs secretarial school and prepare to earn a living. She meets Jessica, her New York roommate, who teaches her about men and sex and becomes her closest friend, and embarks on a whirlwind adventure of sexual discovery. When she graduates from Katie Gibbs, she is hired by Ikehorn Enterprises, and during a business meeting in Barbados, she sleeps with and subsequently marries the CEO, Ellis Ikehorn, who is far older than she. The next several years are happy ones, as Billy and Ellis live a glamorous life filled with parties, homes all over the world, and regular appearances on the Best-Dressed List. Ellis, however, suffers two debilitating strokes, and Billy moves them from Manhattan to Bel Air, California for the better climate. But Billy lives as a recluse in their enormous house and looks aimlessly for some purpose in her life, eventually developing a compulsion to shop in Beverly Hills. Seven years after Ellis' stroke, he dies, leaving Billy an enormous fortune but also an enormous amount of guilt. Billy realizes that she will never find "what she is looking for," so she decides to open a luxury boutique called "Scruples." She hires Valentine O'Neil to design couture clothing for the customers and Valentine's close friend, Spider Elliot, a former fashion photographer who appoints himself the Style Director and arbiter of elegance. The meeting, various romances, and career vicissitudes of Valentine and Spider, along with the development of their relationship, comprise a major subplot in the novel. The story ultimately develops around Billy's second marriage to Vito Orsini, a film producer, a film that he is making, and then around the Oscars. A second subplot concerns Billy's new friend Dolly Moon, a flamboyant supporting actress in Vito's current film project, Mirrors, Dolly's pregnancy, her relationship with an accountant, and a burglary at Price Waterhouse, where the Oscar ballots are tabulated and the results stored. The story ends at the Oscars, where Billy awaits the announcement that Vito's film has won and Dolly dramatically goes into labor. At the same time, Spider and Valentine realize that their friendship has turned into love.
12850207	/m/02x7j0s	The Ungodly Farce	Svend Aage Madsen		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novels protagonist is Jesper Fegge, a young jazz enthusiast and wannabe writer who after meeting an American woman named Mabel and hitting his head several times loses his unconscious mind. This means in the book that Jesper can't make any decisions unconsciously anymore and it also gives him the ability to see various outcomes of every decision he makes or doesn't make. So at the beginning of the book he either can take his violin or his typewriter to America because of the size of his bag and this decision affects all his future life. Over the course of the novel Jesper can get married and settle down, found a new religion, get beaten up repeatedly, commit adultery, search for the meaning of life and do various other things. Some of the people with whom he interacts in various paths of his life can also sense their complicated relations with Jesper. In the end he has to choose a path of his life that would do the least harm.
12851801	/m/02y_gtj	Hindle Wakes	William Stanley Houghton			 The play is set in the fictional mill town of Hindle in Lancashire in England, and concerns two young people who are discovered to have been having what would now be called a "dirty weekend" during their holiday, during the town's wakes week. Their families pressure them to get married, but the young woman refuses. She is disowned by her people but manages to get her job at the mill back. It seemed quite a controversial and subversive piece at the time it was written.
12852878	/m/02x7nt4	The Flames: A Fantasy	Olaf Stapledon	1947	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cass's letter, which forms the bulk of the novel, describes his contact with a bizarre form of alien species. Whilst holidaying in the Lake District, Cass is inexplicably drawn to a lump of rock, which he pockets and takes back with him to his room. There, he is driven to place the rock on the fire, and this action releases a bizarre form of alien life - a living flame, which has been trapped in the rock for millennia. The flame reveals itself to be one of an ancient alien race who originated in the photosphere of the sun. Solar catastrophe has distributed the ancient race throughout the planets of the solar system, and the flame-beings can only be woken by intense heat. The flame and Cass discourse at great length about typically "Stapledonian" topics - the life of the spirit, the role of the individual and the purpose and meaning of the universe. Over the succeeding nights they develop a strange friendship, in which Cass reactivates the flame in his hearth, (which slumbers in the cold rock of the firebrick) with a hot coal fire. Eventually, the flame reveals that it has grand plans for Cass - it wishes him to be an ambassador for his people, and explains that the flame and his race have been manipulating events on Earth in order to better their chances of survival, manipulation that included the unfortunate suicide of Cass's wife. The flame proposes that Cass aid in introducing the flames to humankind. In exchange for a permanent home on earth - a zone of extreme heat - the flames will use their telepathic powers to assist mankind. Cass agonises over this offer for two days, and comes to the decision that humanity must stand or fall on its own merits, without outside help or control. He reactivates the flame and douses it violently with cold water. The rapid change in temperature kills the ancient being at once. Cass, torn with regret and doubt, but set in his course of action, begins finding and killing the little flame creatures wherever he can find them. Posing as a journalist, he visits a foundry where locomotives are made and attempts to shut off the furnace. He is arrested and placed in a mental home. Thos takes up the final part of the narrative, visiting Cass in the asylum. Cass claims to have been in contact with the flames once more, who have re-established contact with their brethren on the sun. Cass tells the story of their race: how they became part of a "cosmical mind" reaching out to the creator of all things, and how this enterprise failed. Thos hears nothing from Cass for a few months, but is later informed of Cass's death - he perished in a fire at the asylum, which he started himself.
12853109	/m/02x7pgg	Dirty Work				 The novel takes place over a period of two days in a VA hospital. Walter James, a white veteran of the Vietnam war, has just been admitted. Walter has a completely reconstructed face and suffers from frequent seizures and blackouts as a result of a fragment of bullet embedded in his brain. Braiden Chaney is a black man who lost both of his arms and legs from gunfire in the Vietnam War. He has been in the VA hospital for 22 years at the start of the novel. The novel is structured in the stream of consciousness style. Much of the novel takes place in the mind of Braiden as Braiden is forced to construct elaborate fantasies, most of which involve his being a king in Africa, to escape the plight of his physical state. Most of the novel consists of dialogue between the two men. They tell each other their respective stories, mostly during the course of one night, while they drink beer and smoke pot that Braiden's sister has smuggled into the hospital for him. The novel is ultimately a theodicy as it attempts to explain the paradox of evil in a world created by an omnipotent God. Braiden has several conversations with Jesus throughout the novel, and while the reader is left to determine whether they are fantasies or real conversations, the novel implies that they are real. The plot of the novel borrows from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which is referenced in the novel. Braiden along with his sister eventually convinces Walter to kill him, effectively ending the miserable existence he has led for the last 22 years. The novel ends with this event, and Walter reflects, "I knew that somewhere Jesus wept."
12858917	/m/02x8321	If You Could See Me Now	Peter Straub		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of Miles Teagarden, a widowed English professor struggling to complete his dissertation in the summer of 1975. Twenty years earlier – on the night of June 21, 1955 – Miles made a vow with his beautiful cousin Alison Greening that they would meet again at the family farm in Arden, Wisconsin in twenty years. Shortly after swearing this vow, Alison drowned under mysterious circumstances while she and Miles were swimming in the quarry not far from the family farm. The main action of the book follows Miles as he returns to Arden ostensibly in search of peace and quiet in which he can complete his dissertation. Very quickly the work on the dissertation falls away as Miles becomes obsessed with memories of his cousin and the circumstances of her death. Several young girls have been murdered in the area and the suspicions of the small town fall on Miles, who soon comes to believe that Alison's vengeful spirit may be responsible for the deaths.
12861011	/m/02x87pj	By the Shores of Silver Lake	Laura Ingalls Wilder	1939	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 By the Shores of Silver Lake is based on Laura's late childhood spent near De Smet, South Dakota, beginning in 1879. Because her sister Mary was recently blinded due to an illness, Pa asks Laura to "be Mary’s eyes" by describing what she sees, and Laura becomes more patient and mature through this service. The book also introduces Laura's youngest sister Grace Pearl. The story begins in Plum Creek, shortly after the family has recovered from the scarlet fever which caused Mary to become blind. Aunt Docia comes to visit, and suggests that Pa works as the bookkeeper in Uncle Henry’s railroad camp for fifty dollars a month. Since Mary is too weak to travel, Pa goes ahead with the wagon and team, and the rest of the family follows later by train. The morning Pa is to leave, their beloved old bulldog Jack dies in his sleep, saddening Laura greatly. (The dog upon whom Jack was based was no longer with the family at that point, but the author inserted his death here to serve as a transition between her childhood and her adolescence.) Several months later, the family travels to Dakota Territory by train. This is the family's first train trip and they are excited by the novelty of this newfangled mode of transportation which can cover in a few hours the distance a horse and wagon would travel in a day. Pa comes for them in town, and the next day they leave for the railroad camp. Laura and her cousin, Lena, play together when they are done with their chores, which range from collecting laundry cleaned by a neighbor to milking cows; Laura rides a horse for the first time when Lena allows her the use of her pony. As winter approaches, the railroad workers take down the buildings in the camp and return East. As the family has nowhere to stay with the demolition of the camp, they plan to return east, but the surveyors, who had planned to stay for the winter, are called back East and ask the Ingalls to stay in their house in exchange for keeping watch over their surveying equipment. Laura is excited to move into a beautiful house well stocked with provisions. The newly married Mr. and Mrs. Boast arrive in the middle of a snowstorm. They stay past Christmas, and at New Year's the Ingalls visit the Boasts' small home for dinner. To pass time, Mrs. Boast shares her collection of newspapers with Laura and shows the Ingalls family how to make a what-not. Later, Reverend Alden unexpectedly visits, and upon realizing Mary is blind, informs Ma that there is a college for the blind in Iowa. Laura resolves that she will eventually teach school and help send Mary to college. During a clear night that winter, Laura and Carrie go for a moonlight walk and encounter a wolf. When Pa goes out the next day to hunt the wolf, he discovers the perfect section of land for their homestead claim. He plans to file a claim at the land office in Brookings as soon as the weather improves. However, his departure is delayed by a rush of men moving west who stop at the surveyors' house on the way to their own claims. The money earned from boarding these men is later used for Mary's college education. After Pa's return from Brookings, he builds a store building in town so the family can move when the surveyors return. The book ends as the Ingalls family settles into the snug claim shanty on their new land.
12861046	/m/02x87s8	Little Town on the Prairie	Laura Ingalls Wilder	1941	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One day at supper, Pa asks Laura whether she will accept a job in town helping to sew shirts; the surge in people newly arrived in town means a need for services such as this. Laura hates the work, but continues because the money will help send her sister Mary to a college for the blind in Iowa. On the Fourth of July, Laura, Carrie and Pa walk to town to attend the celebration. The men organize horse races, and Laura's future husband, Almanzo Wilder, wins the buggy race with his two Morgan horses hitched to his brother's heavy peddler's wagon. On the homestead, the family's crops of corn and oats are doing well, and Pa plans to sell them to pay for Mary to begin college that fall. In the summer, blackbirds descend and destroy both crops. Laura and Mary resign themselves that Mary will have to wait, but Pa sells one of their cows to make up the amount and Mary gets ready to go after all. When Ma and Pa escort Mary to the college, Laura, Carrie, and Grace are left alone for a week. In order to stave off the loneliness stemming from Mary's departure, Laura, Carrie, and Grace do the fall cleaning; they succeed despite a few mishaps, surprising Ma and Pa when they return. In the fall, the Ingalls move to town for the winter; they believe the coming winter will not be as hard as the previous one, but as the claim shanty is not weatherproofed, Pa thinks it is best not to risk staying in it. In town, Laura and Carrie attend school again, and Laura is reunited with her friends Minnie Johnson and Mary Power. She also meets a new girl, Ida Brown, the adopted daughter of the town's new minister, Reverend Brown, who claims to be related to John Brown of Kansas. Nellie Oleson, her nemesis from Plum Creek, has moved to De Smet and is also attending the school. The teacher for the fall term is Eliza Jane Wilder, Almanzo’s older sister, who has a nearby claim of her own. Nellie turns Miss Wilder against Laura and Miss Wilder loses control of the school for a time. A visit by the school board restores order; however, Miss Wilder leaves at the end of the fall term. For the winter term, Miss Wilder is replaced by Mr. Clewett. Laura sets herself to studying, as she only has one year left before she can apply for a teaching certificate, but can relax when the town of De Smet begins having literary meetings at the schoolhouse, where the whole town gathers for fun every Friday night: singing, elocution, a spelling bee, or plays and minstrel shows put on by the townspeople. The winter is very mild, so Laura and Carrie never miss a day of school. Laura and her classmates become friendly after a birthday party for Ben Woodworth, and so Laura begins lagging in her studies, though she remains head of the class. Laura spends the summer studying to make up for lost time. The next school year, there is another new teacher, Mr. Owen. During a week of church revival meetings, Almanzo Wilder asks to escort Laura home from church. Ma is surprised at this because Laura is only fifteen, and Almanzo is a grown man. Near Christmas, Mr. Owen organizes a school exhibition to raise awareness of the school's needs, as the school is becoming overcrowded. Mr. Owen assigns Laura and her friend Ida Brown the duty of reciting the whole of American history up to that point. Despite their nervousness, on the night of the school exhibition Laura and Ida perform perfectly, as does Carrie, who recites a poem. Almanzo once again sees Laura home, and offers to take her on a sleigh ride after he completes the cutter he is building. At home, Laura is met by Mr. Boast and Mr. Brewster, who saw Laura perform at the exhibition and want her to take a teaching position at Brewster's settlement twelve miles (19&nbsp;km) from town. The school superintendent comes and tests Laura; although she is not yet sixteen, he grants her a third-grade teaching certificate. The book ends with Laura preparing to teach school.
12861063	/m/02x87t_	These Happy Golden Years	Laura Ingalls Wilder	1943	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the story begins, Pa is taking Laura 12 miles from home in the dead of winter to her first teaching assignment at Brewster settlement. Laura, only 15 and a schoolgirl herself, is apprehensive as this is both the first time she has left home and the first school she has taught, but is determined to complete her assignment and earn $40 to help her sister Mary, who is attending Vinton College for the Blind in Iowa. This first school proves difficult for her. Laura must board with the Brewsters in their two-room claim shanty, sleeping on a narrow sofa behind a curtain in their bedroom. The Brewsters are an unhappy family and Laura is deeply uncomfortable observing the way husband and wife quarrel. In one particularly unsettling incident, she wakes in the night to see Mrs. Brewster standing over her husband with a knife. Mrs. Brewster seems to resent Laura particularly, and is rarely pleasant to her. Laura does not like teaching school, but feels that at least going to the schoolhouse keeps her away from Mrs. Brewster, and steels herself to spend all of Saturday and Sunday in the Brewster house. To her surprise and delight, homesteader Almanzo Wilder (with whom she became acquainted in Little Town on the Prairie) appears at the end of her first week of school in his new two-person cutter to bring her home for the weekend. Already fond of Laura and wanting to ease her homesickness, Almanzo takes it upon himself to bring her home and return her to the Brewsters each weekend of that term -- once, on a dangerously frigid day when the temperature drops lower than -40° -- even though she at one point tells him she is only going with him because she wants to go home. The winter passes slowly. The weather is bitterly cold, though not so badly as the Hard Winter, and neither the claim shanty or the school house can be heated adequately. Some of the children Laura is teaching are older than Laura herself, and she has difficulty motivating them. With advice from Ma (a former schoolteacher herself), Laura is able to adapt and become more self-assured, and successfully completes the two-month assignment. Pa brings her the $40, and she gives it back to him to use for Mary's college education. Though Laura believed she would not see Almanzo again after school ended, she happily accepts an invitation to go on a sleigh ride with him the next weekend, and so their relationship continues. Sleigh rides give way to buggy rides in the spring, and Laura impresses Almanzo with her willingness to help break his new and often temperamental horses. Laura's old nemesis Nellie Oleson makes a brief appearance during two Sunday buggy rides with Almanzo, who later explains to Laura that he only offered Nellie a ride because he felt sorry for her. Nellie's chatter and flirtatious behavior towards Almanzo annoy Laura, who flatly refuses to ride with Almanzo if he continues seeing Nellie. Shortly thereafter, Nellie moves back to New York after her family loses their homestead. In between, Laura's Uncle Tom (Ma's brother) visits the family and tells of his failed venture with a covered wagon brigade seeking gold in the Black Hills, in which they built a stockade but were driven out of it by U.S. soldiers. Laura moves with seamstress Mrs. McKee to the McKee's claim when Mrs. McKee moves there to fulfill the residency requirements necessary to hold the claim. When Mary returns home for summer vacation, Mrs. McKee tells Laura she can go home. The family finances have improved with the increase in their livestock to the point that Pa can sell a cow to purchase a sewing machine for Ma. Laura receives another teaching certificate and teaches at a nearby school, for which she is paid $75; Pa uses the money to purchase a parlor organ to surprise Mary when she returns home from college. Almanzo invites Laura to attend summer "singing school" with him and her classmates, which they both enjoy. On the last evening of singing school while driving Laura home, Almanzo -- who has by now been courting Laura for three years -- proposes to Laura. She tells him "it would depend on the ring." During their next ride, Almanzo presents Laura with a gold ring set with a garnet and pearls, which she accepts, and they share their first kiss. During their engagement, Laura teaches one final term of school, and she and Ma begin working on the linens and clothing necessary for Laura to begin a household of her own after marriage. Almanzo is nearly finished building their house on his tree claim, when he asks Laura if she would mind getting married within a few days; his sister and mother have their hearts set on a church wedding, which Pa cannot yet afford. Laura agrees, and she and Almanzo are married by the Reverend Brown in a simple ceremony. After a wedding dinner with her family, Laura drives away with Almanzo and the newlyweds settle contentedly into their new home.
12861143	/m/02x880w	Farmer Boy	Laura Ingalls Wilder	1933	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Farmer Boy is based on the childhood of husband, Almanzo Wilder, who grew up in the 1860s near the town of Malone in upstate New York. The book covers one year in Almanzo's life, beginning just before his ninth birthday, and describes in detail the endless chores involved in running the Wilder family farm. Young as he is, Almanzo rises before 5 a.m. every day to milk several cows and feed stock. In the growing season, he plants and tends crops; in winter, he hauls logs, helps fill the ice house, trains a team of young oxen, and sometimes—when his father can spare him—goes to school. The novel includes stories of Almanzo's brother Royal and his sisters Eliza Jane and Alice. While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State, where he and his brother and sisters work at their chores from dawn to dinner most days-no matter what the weather. There is still time for fun, though, especially with the horses, which Almanzo loves more than anything.
12864853	/m/02x8hxx	Dragonhaven	Robin McKinley	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is set in the Smokehill National Park, a wildlife preserve for the preservation and study of dragons. The dragons are elusive; evidence of their existence can be found everywhere, but the dragons themselves remain hidden. Young Jake Mendoza, who lives with his father, the owner and director of the park, goes out for his first overnight solo and comes across a dying dragon. The dragon has been fatally injured by a poacher who has breached the security of the wildlife preserve. The fact that a dragon has killed a human, even a poacher, will make life very complicated for Smokehill National Park, which exists in a tough political climate, due to the controversial nature of keeping dragons alive. But what makes life even more complicated for Jake is that he discovers that the dying dragon had been a mother, and that one of her dragonlets is still alive. It is illegal to save the dragon's life, but Jake, having discovered the baby dragon, cannot leave it to die. He takes the dragon home and raises it. However, this creates a controversy. The family of the dead poacher want the dragons at Dragonhaven killed. Jake and the other rangers are trying their best to convince those against the preservation of dragons that the creatures are really peaceful and friendly. The bulk of the story involves Jake's growing relationship with the young dragon and other dragons, all the responsibilities that come along with caring for an orphaned wild animal, and his own maturation from child to young adult. The novel is written in a childish style at first, but Jake's writing style matures as he matures. In the end, Dragonhaven is saved by Jake and his dragon "friends," as they slowly learn how their two species can communicate with each other by their mind, in the process proving that dragons are as intelligent as humans and wish to be at peace with them.
12868077	/m/02x8m2q	Back Home	Michelle Magorian	1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Virginia 'Rusty' Dickinson is the main protagonist of the novel. The story centres on her return to England in 1945 from Connecticut, where she was sent as a child evacuee in 1939, when the war broke out. Much to her disappointment, Rusty finds England hidebound, run-down, boring and totally devoid of any decent food. Her mother, Peggy, is an awkward woman who, all her life, had been dominated by her parents, husband and mother-in-law. During the war, Peggy came out of her shell and became a skilled car mechanic. She is stiff and hurt when the Americanised Virginia returns home. However, Rusty does initially have one ally - the kindly and eccentric Beattie Langley, in whose Devon home her mother and brother have been staying throughout the war, before they return to the family home (Rusty and Charlie's grandmother's house) in Guildford. Rusty is initially rejected by her brother, Charlie, who was born after she had been sent to America. She is baffled by the range and scale of rationing, rules she is not used to, and the people around her, and longs to return to her host family in Connecticut. Rusty struggles to deal with her peers and teachers at boarding school, her spiteful grandmother, stiff mother, and strict and violent father when he returns from war, but her tough spirit helps her through it and leads to her happiness in the end.
12868713	/m/02x8mzx	Jue Dai Shuang Jiao	Gu Long	1966	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Jiang Feng and Yan Nantian become sworn brothers. Jiang Feng was injured during a misadventure and was rescued by the sisters Yaoyue and Lianxing of Yihua Palace. The sisters fall in love with Jiang Feng, but he spurns them because of their arrogance. Jiang Feng falls in love with the slave girl Hua Yuenu instead, and soon Hua becomes pregnant with his child. Jiang Feng and Hua Yuenu manage to flee, but are tracked down by the sisters when Jiang's servant betrays them. Hua Yuenu gives birth to a pair of twin boys and dies together with Jiang Feng. As the ultimate vengeance for Jiang Feng's scorn, Yaoyue decides to make Jiang's sons kill each other. She raises one of the twins as her own child and names him "Hua Wuque". The other child is saved by Yan Nantian. Yan Nantian pursues Jiang Feng's treacherous servant into Villains' Valley to avenge his sworn brother, where he encounters the notorious Ten Great Villains, a group of the most brutal and malevolent criminals in the world. He is eventually overwhelmed and knocked out. Surprisingly, the villains do not harm the child, and instead intend to raise him as their student and "groom" him to become the greatest villain ever. More than a decade later, the twins grow up into a pair of handsome youths. Yaoyue teaches Hua Wuque her formidable style of martial arts, and sends him to kill his brother without telling him about his origins. Concurrently, the other child Xiaoyu'er is trained by the Ten Great Villains in a variety of fighting styles, as well as many unique "villainous" skills such as poisons, theft, and disguise. Xiaoyu'er ventures into the jianghu (martial artists' community) alone, and his adventures lead him to encounters with many young maidens such as Tie Xinlan, Su Ying and Zhang Jing. He develops complex romantic relationships with most of them. Meanwhile Hua Wuque continues to pursue him, and the two clash on many occasions. Hua Wuque is superior to Xiaoyu'er in martial arts, but the latter usually manages to survive by using his wits and cunning. Initially the twins are hostile towards one another, as their personalities are completely different; Hua Wuque is righteous and somewhat naive, while Xiaoyu'er is expedient and cunning. However the two eventually develop a grudging level of friendship and respect after being forced through a series of trials and adventures together. At the same time, they also become entangled in love triangles with several of the maidens they meet. Yaoyue is determined to make the twins kill each other, and she forces Hua Wuque to challenge Xiaoyu'er to a fight to the death. Xiaoyu'er is seemingly killed by Hua Wuque during the duel. After his apparent death, Yaoyue exposes her true intentions, as well as the history of the twins and her plan to make their father pay for betraying her love. Hua Wuque is shocked to hear the truth, but soon afterwards Xiaoyu'er comes back to life, revealing that he actually feigned death by consuming special drugs. The twins finally recognise and acknowledge each other as brothers.
12873299	/m/02x8zdr	Batman: Dark Knight Dynasty	Mike W. Barr			 Sir Joshua Wainwright, a crusader for the Knights Templar in the year 1222, battles the evil Vandal Savage, who steals a shipment of gold and tries to bring a mysterious meteor crashing to Earth. Savage, an immortal, gained his immortality from the meteor, and is trying to bring it back so he may gain even more power. After stopping Savage in this time period by hurling him into the sphere he was using to draw the meteor to Earth, Joshua swears an oath that he and his family will now and forevermore be sworn enemies of Savage and will prevent his mad schemes to protect the future. Unfortunately, Joshua himself is subsequently tried for heresy and burnt at the stake due to the impossible nature of his story causing the Templar leaders to assume that he stole the gold himself, prompting Savage to wistfully comment that he always wins. Bruce Wayne, the son of Thomas and Martha Wayne in the 20th Century, is shaken as his parents are killed on his wedding day; the gunman who would have killed them beforehand was scared away by 'Valentin Sinclair', Vandal Savage's modern alias. Discovering that they were murdered after analyzing camera footage of the deaths, but unwilling to risk his wife's life by investigating himself, Bruce, influenced by a painting of his ancestor Joshua Wainwright, creates a costume bearing a bat emblem and becomes the Dark Knight, the Batman, in order to avenge his parents' death. However, when Savage takes the Wayne Enterprises space shuttle up to acquire the passing meteor, Batman follows him and manages to keep him from acquiring the power source inside. Unfortunately, in the ensuing struggle, Savage sends himself and Batman hurtling back into Earth's atmosphere, Bruce dying in the descent while Savage regenerates in the desert after a few days. In the year 2500, man now lives side-by-side with intelligent apes, and a vast floating city- New Gotham- floats over the ruins of the original. Vice-President Brenna Wayne, having discovered evidence of an elaborate conspiracy against her family on a disk recorded by Alfred in the last few pages of the last story- thirteen generations of Waynes have all died young in a violent manner after spending their last few days dressed in a bat-like costume - takes up the mantle of Batwoman and faces off against Vandal Savage in one final battle. Discovering that her brother James has betrayed her, Brenna and Savage face off on the meteor as Savage tries to draw it down to Earth, unconcerned about the destruction that this will cause. The battle culminates in Savage being left drifting through space on the meteor, determined to learn the purpose of his life.
12878878	/m/02x9c9n	The Door Between	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Karen Leith is an award-winning novelist whose fictional life and works bear a resemblance to Pearl S. Buck -- she was raised in Japan and writes novels that are set there, but lives in Manhattan surrounded by Japanese customs, art and furnishings. She is engaged to marry world-famous cancer researcher Dr. John MacClure. One day, the doctor's daughter, Eva, finds Karen with her throat cut in the writer's Greenwich Village home. Eva herself has no motive to kill Karen, but the evidence she finds at the scene suggests—even in her own mind—that no one else could have done it. The investigation by Ellery Queen confronts this puzzle and also turns up startling information about a long-vanished relative of Karen Leith. Queen pierces the veil of circumstantial evidence and finds out not only the method of the crime but, most importantly, its motivation.
12882958	/m/02x9nbs	The Last Canadian	William C. Heine		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The President had fled the White House. Now safely concealed in a secret war room - a shelter safe against everything but a direct hit by an atomic bomb, its air thoroughly washed and filtered, its communications systems locally and remotely controlled - the President sat watching his country die. A virulent and deadly disease had spread across the American continent, homo sapiens had become an endangered species. Gene Arnprior had survived the lethal virus, but could he survive the sinister society it had created?
12884137	/m/02x9r66	Three Days Before the Shooting	Ralph Ellison	2008-07		 The plot of Three Days Before the Shooting revolves around a man named Bliss of indeterminate race who is raised by a black Baptist minister named Alonzo Hickman. As an adult he assumes a white identity and eventually becomes a race-baiting United States Senator named Adam Sunraider.
12887342	/m/02x9vt1	Jango	William Nicholson	2006-09-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jango begins with Seeker, Morning Star and Wildman who are all being taught in the Nom and are near the end of their training. Their teacher, Chance, mentions the secret skill of a Noble Warrior, and tells them a new teacher will be assigned to them to help them attain this secret skill. He then hands them over to Miriander, who puts them through training to learn how to control another's will by using lir. Once this training is over, it is discovered that Seeker has power without limits. Unlike the other Noble Warriors, he is able to suck the lir out of any living thing and doesn't get weary doing so. He fights and defeats Chance. Afterwards, he is told to stay in one place while the Elder and the council of the Nomana decide what to do with him, as they feel that they should not loose such power in the world, yet he might be the one the save the Nomana. In the trees of the forest called the Glimmen lives Echo Kittle who is described as being pale, slender and beautiful. She is captured by the Orlan leader, Amroth Jahan, who intends to arrange a marriage between her and one of his sons. She refuses to do so until the Jahan threatens to burn down the Glimmen and kill everyone in it. She decides to go along with them and soon they arrive in Radiance, which is led by Soren Similin. After a series of events taking up more than half the book, Similin manages to form an alliance between the Jahan and Radiance so they can destroy Anacrea with the use of charged water, which has huge explosive power. Neither the Jahan or Radiance intends to share the victory with the other. In his cell, Seeker is told by a Noma, Narrow Path, that the council of the Nom has decided to cleanse Seeker. Narrow Path believes this is the wrong decision and, knowing that he himself will be cleansed for this act, sets Seeker free, and tells him that he must go and fight the true threat; the Savanters, whom live in the land cloud. Seeker heads off to the land cloud, which is on the opposite side of the Glimmen, and on the way there he meets Jango sitting by a strange door in a broken down wall. At first, Jango seems to be a crazy old man, until he begins citing many of Seeker's personal thoughts. He gives Seeker much cryptic advice on how to defeat the Savanters and cites Noman's famous quote. (see Noman's experiment). Seeker continues on his way through the Glimmen but is stopped by Echo Kittle who has escaped from the Orlans in Radiance. She pleads with Seeker to help her defend the Glimmen from the Orlans but Seeker, knowing that he has little time left, refuses and carries on his way into the land cloud. There he kills five out of seven savanters but he is told to go back by a black figure, pretending to be his shadow. Seeker feels that something bad is happening at the Nom so he runs back as fast as he can. When Seeker arrives back at the Nom, the army of Orlans has already attacked and the charged water bomb ready to blow up the city, although Seeker doesn't know this. Seeker drives his power into the ground, causing an earthquake that stopped the battle in an instant, but the charged water bomb had already been launched at Anacrea and destroyed it, along with the Garden and the Lost Child. Seeker gets angry and takes revenge on the Jahan by breaking his pride, forcing him to kneel to Echo Kittle. The army of Orlans breaks up and Soren Similin dies from a charged water explosion. Seeker heads out in search of a purpose and runs across Jango, who is standing before a door. Jango says the door is open and he can enter if he wishes. Before he enters, he is told by Jango that there are many more Noms, and so he realizes the All and Only is not dead. The book is ended when Seeker enters the strange door next to Jango and enters an exact replica of the Nom's Garden that he was used to. He kneels down and asks for forgiveness for disbelieving in him after the destruction of the Nom.
12902858	/m/02xb_01	The Narrows	Michael Connelly	2004-04-30	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 While investigating the death of ex-FBI profiler Terry McCaleb at his wife's request, Bosch begins to suspect that notorious serial killer and ex-FBI supervisor Robert Backus, aka The Poet, presumed dead, may have murdered McCaleb. Digging deeper, Bosch follows a lead to Las Vegas that brings him into contact with the FBI. Meanwhile, FBI agent Rachel Walling, who was at one time Backus's protégé in the FBI (as McCaleb had also been) and who has been exiled by the FBI to South Dakota for four years for her role in The Poet investigation, is the subject of messages sent by Backus to the FBI. As Bosch and Walling are both outsiders to the main FBI investigation, they eventually join forces. The novel shifts points of view, cutting from Bosch's first-person commentary to the third-person perspectives of Walling and Backus. Bosch meets a neighbor whom he later discovers (in the book The Closers) to be Cassie Black, the main character of Void Moon, and he begins a relationship with Walling. He also accepts an offer from his old partner Kiz Rider to rejoin the LAPD under a new chief of police, as a homicide detective in the Open-Unsolved Unit within the department's Robbery-Homicide Division. In the end, Bosch and Walling bring The Poet to justice by chasing him into the concrete channels of the swollen Los Angeles River in L.A., where he drowns while Bosch barely survives. His death is confirmed this time, as opposed to The Poet where he was merely presumed dead. However, the relationship between Bosch and Walling falls apart in the end when Bosch learns that the FBI had discovered that Backus had nothing to do with McCaleb's death but had withheld the information from him. In fact, McCaleb had killed himself in a manner to make his death look accidental, as his heart transplant was failing, and he did not want to burden his wife and children with the crippling expense of additional medical procedures. it:Il poeta è tornato sv:Fällan
12906548	/m/02xc7d6	The Bible with Sources Revealed	Richard Elliott Friedman	2003		 The core of the book, taking up almost 300 of its approximately 380 pages in the paperback edition, is Friedman's own translation of the five Pentateuchal books, in which the four sources plus the contributions of the two Redactors (of the combined JE source and the later redactor of the final document) are indicated typographically. The remaining sections include a short Introduction outlining Friedman's thesis, a "Collection of Evidence," and a bibliography. Friedman's version of the documentary hypothesis can be summarised as follows: The first source to be written down was the Jahwist, or J. This occurred in Judah, the southern of the two Israelite kingdoms, in the period between 922-722 BC. (Friedman's arguments are dealt with below). The Elohist, or E, was composed in roughly the same period, but probably a little later than J, in the northern kingdom of Israel. In 722 BC the Assyrian conquest of Israel brought E to Judah with refugees from the northern kingdom. Shortly after this a redactor combined the two into a standard text, JE, the redactor himself being known as RJE. Then in the reign of Hezekiah, c.715-687 BC, the Jerusalem priesthood produced a text which they saw as a replacement for JE, the theology of which was objectionable to their project of religious reform: this was the Priestly source, or P. Hezekiah's reform program failed, but was revived in the reign of his great-grandson Josiah, c. 640-609 BC, producing the last source, the Deuteronomist, or D. The three sources (JE now counting as a single source) existed independently until the return from the Babylonian exile, when a final redactor, R, combined them. The "Collection of Evidence" section sets out Friedman's arguments for the documentary hypothesis in general and for his own version of it in particular. He notes seven arguments: * Linguistic: each source (treating JE as a single source) reflects the Hebrew of its period. * Terminology: Certain words and phrases appear disproportionately, or exclusively, in certain sources. * Consistent content: Certain concepts, objects, and practices are specific to certain sources. * Continuity of texts: When separated into sources following linguistic, terminological and contextual clues, each source constitutes a coherent, self-contained narrative. * Connections with other parts of the Bible: Each source has direct, non-indiscriminate affinities with other specific parts of the Bible. * Relationships of sources to each other and to history: The sources each have connections to specific circumstances in the history of Israel/Judah, and to each other.
12907806	/m/02xcbm0	Picture Perfect	Jodi Picoult	1995		 Cassie Barrett, a renowned anthropologist, awakes lying atop a grave, suffering from amnesia and unable to recall any details about herself or her situation. She is taken in by Will Flying Horse, a half-Lakota Los Angeles police officer, until she is retrieved by her husband, Alex Rivers, a Hollywood celebrity. As she returns to her Bel Air mansion, it would appear she lives a picture perfect life, until memories gradually return to her. She remembers their whirlwind romance in Tanzania, her deep and unconditional love for Alex and the beatings she received from him. She tells us the story of her and Alex's relationship and unfortunately, it's not even close to the perfect picture she had been led to believe. After finding a positive pregnancy test in her bathroom, she remembers why she left before (to protect her baby) and flees to Will who hides her on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota. She grows to love the Reservation and the people there. Meanwhile, Alex's life is falling apart. He is lost without Cassie, and even after winning three Oscars, he can't live without her. Rumours fly around concerning Cassie's disappearance, tarnishing Alex's reputation. On the night of the Oscars, Cassie calls to tell Alex she is proud of him. A while after giving birth, she calls Alex again and tells him where she is but that she isn't coming home for another month. She makes him promise he won't come for her yet. He breaks his promise and shows up outside the Flying Horses' house two weeks later. They reunite and Cassie tells Alex of their son, Connor. Cassie tells Alex she only left to protect their baby, that she would never have left because of Alex. Cassie agrees to go back to LA with Alex and Connor if he promises he will see a therapist and won't ever beat her again. Alex promises and they return home together with their son, returning Alex's perfect reputation. However, their happiness is short-lived. Alex stops showing up at therapy, and more rumours fly about Cassie's whereabouts and whether Alex is truly Connor's father. After finding out about the rumours, Alex beats Cassie. Later that night, Alex begs Cassie not to leave again. He says he would do anything and she replies that she knows this. After he says he can't let her go and Cassie agrees that he can't. Cassie finally realizes that she can't stay with Alex at all, even though she loves him. She knows she has to do more than try to leave, as he won't let her go. She realises she has to do something to make him hate her, so that they can both be free. Cassie holds a press conference, announcing she is divorcing Alex on grounds of extreme cruelty. She knows this will ruin Alex, and kill her as she is forcing Alex to stop loving her but she can't stop loving him. She sees him in the crowd of reporters and when a reporter asks if she could say anything to Alex right at this moment, what it would be, she says 'I'd say what he always said to me. I never meant to hurt you."
12910620	/m/02xck96	The Wedding Day Mystery				 The plot revolves around the happenings taking place at Heights House,a Victorian mansion on the outskirts of River Heights. It was hired by Happily Ever After, Inc., a wedding consulting service at which Nancy's friend Bess Marvin works. Bess' cousin George and Nancy had agreed to assist Bess in the four weddings which were taking place on that weekend. But then a series of mishaps followed. Someone dressed as a ghost frightened the bride when she saw him/her in her closet. Nancy's car was also tampered with, which nearly killed her. The bride's wedding gifts were also stolen and the wedding dress of the bride of the next wedding was slashed to rags. In the end,the saboteur turned out to be Grace Sayer, the previous owner of the house. She had lost the house due to debts and intended to regain it by frightening all its inhabitants. But after she was caught during the third wedding, the problems did not end. A message was sent to the fourth bride warning her to stop the marriage before it was too late. Nancy discovered that Rafe, the security guard was also an ex-boyfriend of the bride, and he himself had sent the letter. Nancy and her friends prevented him from stopping the marriage.
12910857	/m/02xckz5	The Deception	K. A. Applegate	2000-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins in the exact place where #45 The Revelation had ended. The Animorphs have just begun a Z-space transmission with the Andalite fleet. They inform the Andalite fleet of an impending ambush on the Anati world. The Andalites are skeptical of the genuineness of the information thinking that the earth resistance might lie to them in order to become their top priority. They remain skeptical even when Ax confirms the information, saying that he may have confused his loyalties. Ax, Tobias and Marco (who now lives in hiding with them) intercept a Yeerk transmission that the newly promoted Visser One (Esplin 9466) has a plan to conquer the world by a war between the most populated country (China) and the United States. The humans would exhaust their weapons and would not be able to retaliate. The Animorphs steal an F-16 from an air base and fly out to sea to an aircraft carrier. They crash it into the sea so the Yeerks would not think they were being invaded. They infiltrate the ship and find Visser Two, whose host is a high-ranking officer in the Navy (Admiral Carrington). The Yeerks find out that the Animorphs are on the ship and have reinforcement. Bug fighters began invading the aircraft carrier. The Animorphs attack, and fight alongside the non-controller American military personnel. The yeerks have commandeered an American submarine and plan to use it to launch a nuclear attack against the Chinese and instigate WWIII. In order to stop this, Ax commandeers a Grumman F-14D Tomcat fighter loaded with a nuclear warhead, against Jake's decision, abducts Visser Two, and threatens to use the bomb to destroy the Yeerk pool and the city above it (along with the families of all the Animorphs). Visser Two is unable to call Ax's bluff (although even Ax himself is not sure if he was bluffing) and he calls off the attack that would have instigated the war. Ax is left wondering whether or not he would have been capable of launching the nuke, if the rest of the Animorphs, particularly Jake, will ever be able to forgive him. Ax directly betrayed Jake's explicit order, something he swore he would never do again. *Visser Three is promoted to the position of Visser One.
12911245	/m/02xclqy	Babe & Me	Dan Gutman	2000	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 Joe Stoshack goes back in time to find out whether Babe Ruth called his shot in the 1932 world series. His dad tags along to keep him safe, per his mom's request, and to try to make some money, because he has just gotten laid off. Joe Stoshack ends up meeting Babe Ruth right after almost getting killed by a guy with a knife. Babe Ruth assumes that Joe has just saved him from an assassination attempt, so he invites Joe and his dad to come along with him. Joe's dad gets Babe Ruth to sign a bunch of baseballs, fulfilling what he wanted to do, and then they go to the baseball game, fulfilling what Joe wanted to do. However, Joe's dad sees presidentential hopeful Franklin Roosevelt (Who was elected president a month later) in the stands, and tries to warn him about the Holocaust. But security guards see him as a potential assassin, and take him away. Joe ends up watching the game and discovers that Babe Ruth really did call his shot and then gets re-united with his dad. His dad's sack of baseballs that got signed by Babe Ruth were confiscated, but he doesn't care because he got to spend some quality time with his son, something that almost never happens. Then they return to the present and Joe Stoshack hits a Walk-Off home run in his next Little League game, somewhat mirroring Babe Ruth's home run.
12911709	/m/02xcmx1	Professor Martens' Departure	Jaan Kross	1984	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Friedrich Fromhold Martens, born in Pärnu, Estonia on 27 August 1845, was a renowned expert in international law. He attended the University of St. Petersburg where he later became a professor. He was a polyglot, jurist, arbitrator, and a member of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He represented the Russian Government at many international conferences including the Hague Peace Conference in 1899. He was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1902 and was mistakenly reported by some as the winner. During a train journey from his home town of Pärnu to St. Petersburg he recalls many events of his life. He remembers meeting his wife Kati for the first time at her father's house. He describes the discovery of his "double", Georg Friedrich Martens, a man who lived an almost parallel life to Friedrich eighty-nine years previously. Georg was born in Hamburg, Germany, attended the University of Göttingen and also became a professor of international law. Some of the recollected events, for example the Great Flood of Hamburg in 1770 and a fire in a wooden suburb of Göttingen actually took place during Georg's life and not his own. He describes the arrest of his nephew, Johannes. He remembers his meeting with the Imperial Chancellor, Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov, to discuss the publication of a compendium of treaties between Russia and other nations. He formulates his theory of "comparativist psychology". With some embarrassment he relates the story of his candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize and the mistaken reports that he was the winner. He outlines his "doctrine of respect for human rights". He describes his affair with an art student, Yvette Arlon, a woman that later bore his child, married and fled to the Congo. Friedrich discusses politics with a fellow train passenger, an Estonian lady and socialist, Hella Wuolijoki. He wonders how differently he would have lived his life if given another chance. He recalls the embarrassing episode of the Treaty of Portsmouth; Friedrich was a member of the Russian delegation but his name was mistakenly omitted from the initial list of delegates and so the Japanese did not allow him to participate in most of the talks. He remembers Mr. Saebelmann, the son of the man who was rumored to have ousted Friedrich's father from the parish clerk's cottage. Mr. Saebelmann became a composer of some note but later died in Poltava. He describes the death of his double, Georg, in Frankfurt am Main, just before meeting his own demise at the stop-off at Valga.
12912822	/m/02xcq4_	The Seekers	John Jakes	1975	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins in 1794, just prior to the Battle of Fallen Timbers, in the Northwest Territory. Abraham Kent, the son of Philip Kent and Anne Ware, had enlisted in the Legion of the United States to help neutralize the threat of American Indians against expanding white settlements. He led a cavalry charge in the battle, but let a chance to kill Tecumseh slip away. Philip Kent, his father, had grown affluent as the proprietor of the publishing firm, Kent and Son in Boston, and would have preferred to have Abraham follow him into the family business; however, Abraham was not interested in that trade and was uncertain what he wanted to do in life. Politically, father and son also had diverging views. Philip supported the Federalists, a party more friendly to urban industrialists, but Abraham did not. Abraham fell in love with Elizabeth Fletcher, his stepsister, the daughter of Judson Fletcher and Peggy McLean Kent. Philip had married Peggy after the death of his first wife, but never adopted Elizabeth as his own daughter. Elizabeth resented him for this and did not want to live by his conservative rules. Sharing a common desire to leave Boston and Philip, Abraham and Elizabeth married and planned to start a new life in the Northwest Territory. They purchased a tract of land on the Great Miami River, near Fort Hamilton, though Abraham feared that his young wife was too frail to make the journey. Along the way Elizabeth revealed that she was pregnant, but she lost the baby when their riverboat crashed in the Ohio River. Once reaching their tract of land, Abraham took advice once given him by Thomas Jefferson and began farming corn. There, a son, Jared Adam, was born to Abraham and Elizabeth. Having lived there two years had not made Elizabeth any more content then she was when she was living under Philip’s roof in Boston. Not wanting to see her in such distress, Abraham decided to sell his farm and move to a more populated settlement. This news seemed to raise her spirits, but just before the move, two Shawnee Indians wandered onto Abraham’s farm looking for whiskey. In attempting to expel them, Abraham killed one of the men, but the other one killed Elizabeth. Afterwards, Abraham, distraught, sold the farm, then made his way back to Boston with Jared to learn that Philip had recently died. Gilbert Kent, the son of Philip and his second wife Peggy McLean, inherited control of Kent and Son after his father’s passing. He gave Abraham a job there. Gilbert tried to arrange for Abraham to participate in the Lewis and Clark expedition, but Abraham informed him that he could not participate because he had caught a disease from a prostitute. When Gilbert expelled him from his house, Abraham tried to take his son with him, but Gilbert’s wife, Harriet, would not allow it. Abraham pushed her down the stairs and she went into premature labor. After a violent scuffle, Abraham left without Jared, and Harriet gave birth to a daughter, Amanda. Jared Kent never saw his father after that. He was raised by Gilbert and Harriet, though Harriet detested him and treated him cruelly. After the War of 1812 was declared, Jared enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served aboard the USS Constitution. He participated in the battle with HMS Guerriere that took place on August 19, 1812. During the battle Jared contributed to the maiming of Hamilton Stovall, a superior officer who had earlier demanded sex from Jared, but was denied. Later that year Gilbert Kent, had a seizure and died, and Harriet quickly remarried. Her second husband, Andrew Piggott, appeared to be a suitable mate before they were married; however, this was to prove illusory. He was a compulsive gambler and womaniser and would lose the entire Kent and Son publishing firm to Stovall in a game of craps, which proved a setup as retribution for Jared's having rejected Stovall's advances. In his rage upon hearing this news, Jared set fire to the firm and attempted to kill Stovall, instead shooting an associate of his. Thinking the man he shot was dead, Jared fled the city with his cousin Amanda. Earlier that day, Harriet had been hit by a carriage and died, leaving Amanda an orphan. Having no specific destination in mind, they traveled to Pittsburgh. Once there, Jared made the decision to settle in New Orleans, but he was sidetracked along the way. While in Tennessee, near Nashville, Amanda was raped and abducted by William Blackthorn. Having been beaten by Blackthorn, Jared was required to recover for a time at The Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson. Jackson made inquiries as to Blackthorn’s destination, which he discovered him was St. Louis. Jared followed him there, discovered him in a brothel and shot him dead. With his dying breath, Blackthorn told Jared he had sold Amanda to fur traders going up the Missouri River. Jared was jailed for ninety days for disturbing the peace; while in jail, he was visited by Elijah Weatherby. Weatherby, a fur trader, had witnessed Blackthorn’s murder and he was impressed by young Jared. He told Jared he was going to Indian country to trade and that he needed a partner. Weatherby offered to aid Jared in his search for Amanda along the way. After some consideration, Jared decided to accept the offer. The story ends without Jared and Amanda being reunited, but the reader learns that Amanda is alive and was sold by fur traders to an American Indian.
12914549	/m/02xcvnc	Wanderlust	Steve Winter	1991	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tanis Half-Elven now permanently resides in Solace years after his first meeting with Flint Fireforge in Qualinost. A newcomer, the kender, Tasslehoff Burrfoot arrives in Solace and befriends both Tanis and Flint (much to the dwarf's chagrin), after accidentally 'borrowing' a magical bracelet that the dwarf had just made. As the kender leaves town, he again somehow acquires the bracelet and offers it to a tinker, Gaesil, to return it to the dwarf. However the tinker is shortly thereafter fleeced by a con-artist named Delbridge, who claims the magical bracelet for himself. A Dargonesti elf, named Princess Selana locates Flint, Tanis and Tas (who has returned to Solace) and requests the magical bracelet that she had the dwarf create for her. Flint tells that the bracelet has been lost and the four journey to Tantallon, after hearing a rumour of the prophet Delbridge who can see the future through use of a magical bracelet. They arrive in Tantallon to find that Delbridge is now a zombie and that the local lord's son, Rostrevor Curston, has disappeared. Lord Curston's wizard friend Balcombe, now has the bracelet after executing Delbridge. Balcombe has kidnapped Rostrevor, to sacrifice to the evil God Hiddukel to end their bargain that they had made at the beginning of the novel where Hiddukel agrees to spare Balcombe's life in exchanged for pure souls. As the party attempt to reclaim the bracelet, Selana is kidnapped and placed in a cave with Balcome's pet giant, Blu. The sea elf and giant become friends and plan to escape. Tanis, Flint and Tas encounter a group of phaethons and ally with them to drive out Balcombe from their mountain range. The phaethons and their friends infiltrate Balcombe's lair, and with the aid of the giant Blu, rescue Rostrevor and Selana, and trap Balcombe in a magical gem. Tas unwittingly uses the magical gem and sacrifices Balcombe's soul to Hiddukel.
12916201	/m/02xczn9	Anna Lombard				 Set exclusively in the British Indian Empire (mainly India, but also Burma) in the final years of the 19th century, the story is told by Gerald Ethridge, a young, high-ranking member of the Indian Civil Service. Anna Lombard, the 21-year-old daughter of a general, has just arrived from England to join her father when she is introduced to Ethridge at a ball. Attracted to each other from the very first moment, they are not given a chance to actually express their feelings when Ethridge is suddenly transferred from India to Burma. On his return a year later he is shocked to learn that Anna is having a secret affair with one of her Pathan servants&mdash;although she asserts that they got officially married in some secret Muslim ceremony. Ethridge, however, does not desert her when she declares her inability to leave her lover. Rather, while abstaining from any sexual relations himself, he tries to help Anna overcome her passion, and even nurses the servant in his own house when he becomes one of the many victims of a cholera epidemic. Anna's lover does not survive the illness, but before she and Ethridge can get married Anna finds out that she is pregnant. Again, this does not deter Ethridge from loving her. They get married nevertheless but Ethridge insists on not consummating the marriage until after the birth of her child. When her son is born, Anna's maternal instinct overwhelms her and she is no longer willing to give her son away, as the couple planned during her pregnancy. However, seeing her beloved husband's suffering prolonged ad infinitum, she suffocates her baby, to emerge, after a year of repentance and making her peace with God, as the perfect partner in marriage for Ethridge.
12916365	/m/02xc_3f	InterWorld	Michael Reaves	2007-06-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Joey Harker is an average high school student living in Greenville. He has trouble finding his way around his own house, let alone the town. On a field trip set by his Social Studies teacher, Mr. Dimas, Joey finds himself lost in the city. He then enters a strange fog and when he emerges, everything has changed. All the cars are brightly coloured, the police cars flashing green and yellow, instead of blue and red. He goes back home and discovers that he does not exist anymore, instead a girl named Josephine lives there. He runs outside and bumps into a man wearing a mirrored mask called Jay. Before Jay can explain anything, three men, standing on floating silver disks and wearing grey outfits, are trying to catch Joey using silver nets. Joey runs, unintentionally entering the fog again. Afraid of going back to a home where he doesn't exist, Joey decides to go to Mr. Dimas for help. Mr. Dimas is shocked to see Joey, telling him that he had drowned last year and that Mr. Dimas himself had pulled Joey's body out of the river. Suddenly a woman appears in the room bewitching Joey into following her. She calls herself Lady Indigo and is joined by two other men. One, called Scarabus, has mystical tattoos all over his body. The other, a man with transparent skin, is called Neville. They move Joey to a flying ship, the Lacrimae Mundi. The ship teleports to Nowhere-at-all, a sort of hyperspace. They are heading towards a place called HEX Prime. Before they can reach there Jay arrives and helps Joey escape, getting injured in the process. Joey opens a portal to the In-Between, a multidimensional world, where only Walkers and MDLF (multidimensional life forms, or mudluffs) beings can enter. The in-between is a shortcut for traveling from world to world. Joey and Jay exit in-between and arrive at a desert. There Jay explains to Joey how he is part of an organization called InterWorld and their job is to keep the altiverse balanced by stopping the scientific force (Binary) from making worlds too scientific, while also stopping the magical force (HEX) from making worlds too magical. Jay also says that Joey has the ability to "Walk", or go into the In-Between and other dimensions quickly and effectively. A mudluff which looks like a bubble and communicates using colours appears. It seems to be trapped somewhere, Joey approaches it. As Jay tries to free the mudluff, a giant serpent appears, biting Jay. The mudluff kills the serpent but Jay is already dying. Before he dies he gives Joey the direction to Base Town, where InterWorld HQ is. With his dying breath, he shows Joey a mathematical equation that will lead to Base Town: {IW}:=Ω/∞ (InterWorld is Omega over infinity). The mudluff becomes attached to Joey after he saved it, and Joey names it "Hue". Joey goes to HQ and learns that all Walkers are all copies of himself from different Earths. He begins an intense course of exercise while studying very advanced science and magic to prepare him for his new role as a member of the InterWorld. Many of the other Joeys initially resent Joey for causing Jay's death, but soon come around about him as his skills improve. After a few months, Joey and four other Walkers go on a training mission. They are supposed to retrieve some signal beacons in a more scientific earth. But the earth they go to turns out to be a "shadow realm" and is in fact a trap, set by the same people who captured him earlier. Everyone in the team is captured by HEX, except Joey who is saved by Hue. When Joey escapes back to HQ, the leader, an old man named Joe, decides that Joey is not capable of working in InterWorld, and wipes Joey's mind of his life in InterWorld. Joey is then returned home, where he thinks nothing has happened, but feels like something's missing. After some time, while blowing bubbles with his little brother, Joey remembers Hue, and every memory about the Altiverse comes back to him. With all those memories back, Joey says goodbye to his family, Walks into the Altiverse again, and sets off to save his teammates. With Jay's words in his head and Hue's help, Joey finds the airship where his teammates are being held, and lands safely on it. However, he is captured as well and taken to meet Lord Dogknife, a large hideous goblin who leads the people who captured his teammates. Joey is then taken to the room where his teammates are being held. A large cauldron is in the center of the room, built to capture their souls to power the ship. The HEX boil down Walkers to their raw essence, which is used as power supplies for their transdimensional spacecraft. Joey manages to move over to the cauldron and knock it over, incinerating some of the guards in the room. He then moves over to untie his friends, who all try to find an exit so they can go to the engine room and shut the ship down. They find an exit and escape to the engine room. The engine room is filled with souls from other Walkers, powering the ship. Joey and his teammates break the jars containing them to shut the ship down. The engine explodes, and Joey and his teammates plan an escape from the Nowhere-At-All. They talk of a gate in the Nowhere-At-All from which they can escape, but it is closing quickly. Joey decides he will not leave without Hue, because it has saved his life multiple times. Many soldiers come into the destroyed engine room in an attempt to recapture Joey and his teammates and then Scarabus appears to fight them. J/O, a cyborg Joey, steps up and defeated Scarabus, and everyone goes to find Lord Dogknife. Dogknife is in the room where Joey saw him earlier, captured by the souls and thus rendered harmless. Joey finds Hue and escapes with his teammates. They are about to escape when Lady Indigo appears to face them. Joey distracts her from fighting them with some powder in his pocket, and Joey and his teammates escape through the gate when he remembers the mathematical equation that will take him home: {IW}:=Ω/∞. They return to the Old Man, who does not congratulate them for their heroic work. Instead, he lectures them on all their wrongdoings in the Altiverse. However, he now says Joey is allowed to stay without wiping his memory. The group sets out on their next mission.
12919362	/m/02y_mm5	The Rose of Sharon Blooms Again				 The story was set in the present and revolved around a South Korean scientist who secretly helps North Korea develop nuclear weapons which are then used to ward off Japanese aggression.
12922840	/m/02y_wgz	Endymion	John Lyly			 The opening scene presents a conversation between Endymion and his friend Eumenides, in which Endymion confesses that he has fallen in love with the Moon goddess, Cynthia. Eumenides concludes that his friend is "bewitched" and has lost his senses. Cynthia is predictably cool to Endymion's passion. Tellus, Endymion's former beloved, resents the change in his affections; she hires a sorceress named Dipsas to enchant Endymion into a deep sleep, from which he cannot be awakened. Cynthia learns of this development; the goddess confines Tellus to a castle for speaking harshly of Endymion (she does not yet know that Tellus is the cause of the enchantment). Corsites, the commander of the castle, falls in love with Tellus. Cynthia also sends Eumenides in search of a cure for his friend's magic-induced sleep. Eumenides is in love with Semele, though she scorns his affections. Eumendies reaches a magic fountain that will answer any one question &mdash; but only one question &mdash; an inquirer asks of it; he debates whether he should expend his question on his friend's predicament, or his own. His sense of duty triumphs, and the fountain tells him that Endymion can only be awakened by a kiss from Cynthia. The goddess acquiecses, kisses and wakes Endymion. Tellus's treachery is revealed, and forgiven. The play ends with the marriages usual for comedy, with Eumenides, Tellus, and Dipsas all headed to the altar with appropriate mates. Endymion, however, cannot marry Cynthia; as a goddess, she is too far above his station on the mortal plane. The play also has a comic subplot: Sir Tophas nourishes a foolish passion for the enchantress Dipsas, and he is the butt of the jokes and pranks of the crew of pages that constitute a standard feature of Lyly's drama.
12923302	/m/02y_xh9	What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?				 Dever's book is a response to recent trends in biblical scholarship and biblical archaeology which question whether the bible can be used as a reliable tool for interpreting history. The book begins with Dever's explanation of the "minimalist" position, which holds that the bible is a product of the Persian or even Hellenistic periods, composed at the very earliest after c. 500 BC, and therefore unreliable as a record of earlier periods. The minimalists do not deny that the biblical books are based on genuinely old material, but they view the task of extracting that material from layers of revision and accretion is virtually unachievable. At the other extreme are the "maximalists" who take the bible at, or almost entirely at, face value. In his first two chapters Dever reviews and rejects both minimalism and maximalism. Dever nevertheless evidently regards the minimalist position as more dangerous than the maximalist, because it tends to eliminate altogether any study of ancient Israel prior to the Persian period. Dever then turns to Syrio-Palestinian archaeology, as the former discipline of biblical archaeology is now known, and reviews material discoveries to demonstrate that they can in fact be linked to the biblical narrative. The central chapters therefore offer a detailed discussion of the major archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century and relate them to the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua-2 Kings), "correlat[ing] text and artifact to demonstrate that significant material in the narrative plausibly derives from Iron Age II (ca. 1000-600 BCE) and not from later periods." Dever makes clear that he positions himself in the middle ground between minimalists such as Thomas L. Thompson (with whom Dever has had a long running and acrimonious public dispute) on the one hand, and maximalists on the other. "While the Hebrew Bible in its present, heavily edited form cannot be taken at face value as history in the modern sense, it nevertheless contains much history." For Dever, this historical core is concentrated in the period from David onwards; the Torah and the period of the Conquest he regards as essentially mythical. The final chapter sums up the argument of the book, stating that there was an ancient Israel, that the bible was written from a genuine historical core, and that archaeology can identify this core and prevent Israel from being "written out of history".
12929913	/m/02z085h	Josh	Ivan Southall	1971-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 14-year-old Josh Plowman arrives in a country town for a week's visit with his great-aunt, the Plowman family matriarch. The city boy from Melbourne is immediately at odds with the Ryan Creek youngsters. His writing poetry and his dislike for hunting make him a target for the local boys. Initial misunderstandings eventually explode into violence. A traditional hero might have faced and fought the bullies but Josh shows a different sort of courage and integrity by choosing to walk away with dignity.
12931852	/m/02z0cxz	Night Flight				 Fabien is an airmail pilot of the Patagonia Mail. He has to deliver mail in Argentina during a thunderstorm. Even though the storm is dangerous, Rivière, Fabien's boss, tells him to fly that night, thereby endangering him. Rivière feels responsible for having sent Fabien on this risky flight, and keeps in radio contact with him. Fabien's wife is waiting, too. The situation becomes more and more dangerous—Fabien is bound to die. Then the radio messages cease, and Rivière can't do anything but try to calculate when Fabien's aircraft will crash. This flight disconcerts Rivière—who, up to that point, had believed that no flights should be delayed, in order to make flying more profitable. The plot ends there, but it is almost certain that Fabien has died.
12932456	/m/02z0dp1	Ug	Raymond Briggs	2001-09-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book is about a boy named Ug living in the stone age who is thought by others to "think too much". He wants to have soft trousers (the trousers he and all the other cavemen wear are made of granite) and believes mammoth skin would be good to use, in the end, he and his father Dug do make the trousers, but after realising they cannot sew them together, they call it a day and leave them. Ug then grows up to be a cave painter as his mother Dugs warned him.
12933288	/m/02z0fym	Spangle	Gary Jennings	1987	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Spangle is a historical novel written by Gary Jennings (1928–1999). Published in 1987, it follows a circus troupe known as "Florian's Flourishing Florilegium of Wonders" from the Confederate surrender at Appomattox to Europe, ending in France during the Franco-Prussian War. The book chronicles the rise of the troupe from a small "mud show" with few acts to the glittering toast of Paris, while delving into the evolving personal lives of its performers. The book is also an examination of the social structures of both post-Civil War America and Europe during a period in which the ancient system of monarchy was toppling. The main protagonist, other than the circus itself, is Zachary Edge, a former Confederate colonel embittered by war who accepts a position as the Florilegium's equestrian director. Edge's trials, both professional and personal, form the core of the plot, which details Edge's rise in the ranks of the circus in parallel to the rise of the Florilegium.
12935027	/m/02z0hqb	Miranda	Antoni Lange	1924		 The novel tells about ideal civilisation of powerful mages which have invited paranormal skills like telepathy, levitation and mediumism. The Brahmins value anarchy, freedom, peace, free love and anti-work. Their country is organized by Ministry of Love, Ministry of Power and Ministry of Wisdom, and they use a strange substance classified as Nivridium in order to their self-perfect idea. The main plot is the history of love of Polish emigrant Jan Podobłoczny (Lange's own porte-parole) to the materialization of an ideal woman named Damayanti. A tragic end of their romance comes from clash between physical and spiritual sides of human existence. In the last chapter of the novel, Damayanti sacrifices her body in order to let her spirit fly to higher stage of consciousness. Miranda is a Scottish spiritual medium, who lives in Warsaw. She can contact the soul of Damayanti and materialize the mysterious person of Lenore, who meets Jan Podobłoczny when he is close his death. In the moment when Damayanti dies, Miranda disappears.
12935261	/m/02z0j09	Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say \\"No\\" to Drugs		1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot mainly deals with the title character, Latawnya, the youngest horse in her family. While out playing with her sisters Latoya and Daisy, they come across some other mares: Connie, Chrystal, Jackie and Angie. They ask Latawnya if she wants to engage in "smoking games" and "drinking games". Latawnya realizes that they want to smoke drugs and drink alcohol, and she joins in. Her sisters catch her with the three "bad" horses and proceed to criticize her for "smoking drugs and drinking", something that their parents tell them not to do. Although Latawnya begs Latoya and Daisy not to tell their parents, they tell on her anyway, resulting in an uncomfortable confrontation with them, as they are disappointed in her experimenting with smoking drugs and drinking. After an intense lecture from her parents (including a scene wherein an old friend of the father horse suffers an overdose after engaging in smoking games and drinking games), Latawnya realizes the error of her ways and promises never to engage in "smoking games" and "drinking games" again.
12935931	/m/02z0jwh	Scorpion	Andrew Kaplan	1985		 As the President of Russia dies, his deputy, Fyedorenko makes a mysterious phone call. A beautiful young American woman, Kelly Ormont, is brutally abducted from the streets of Paris into white slavery. In a safe house in Pakistan, a senior CIA director, Bob Harris, recruits a free-lance ex-CIA agent, codenamed “Scorpion” to rescue Kelly, a Congressman’s daughter, last seen on a flight to Bahrain. The Scorpion follows the trail to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where he uncovers a plot to assassinate the King of Arabia, while flashbacks reveal the Scorpion’s past as the orphaned son of an American oilman raised by a Bedouin desert tribe. At the King’s Camel Race, the Scorpion manages to foil the assassination plot. He is captured, but manages to escape with Kelly and kill Prince Sa'ad, author of the assassination plot. In Washington, the Scorpion confronts Harris who reveals the whole thing was a CIA and French SDECE plot to pre-empt the Russians in the Gulf with Kelly in on it, thinking she was working for the Israelis. Fyedorenko is replaced by an accomplice because of the plot’s failure as the Scorpion returns to his shadowy battles in Afghanistan.
12936356	/m/02z0kbn	Term Limits	Vince Flynn		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	- ~Plot outline description~--&#62;
12937367	/m/02z0llj	A Gesture Life: A Novel	Chang-Rae Lee	1999-09-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The whole story, told by the first person narrator Doc Hata, consists of flashbacks. The main story line reaches from the time he gives up his store in Bedley Run until he meets his adopted daughter again. The sub story lines show the reader about his time during the war, and about his time with a teenage daughter and how he dealt with times when raising his daughter was very difficult. At the beginning of the story, Doc Hata describes his current situation and place of living. He lives in a small town called Bedley Run, where he is from the first accepted by the other inhabitants as a decent shopkeeper, although he sold his store to a young couple from New York and is now retired. He has difficulty leaving his old life behind him and visits his old store nearly every day. At this point, i.e. very early, he mentions that he has a daughter who comes from Japan as well. Then he describes his house and the area he lives in. He also introduces Liv Crawford, who is a real estate agent and wants him to move and sell his house. Doc Hata thinks a lot about his past in Bedley Run but also about his past experiences in Japan. He gives many insights into his daily routines, such as going to his old store and going to swim every day in his pool. He thinks a lot about Sunny and how she arrived when she was a little girl. Later on, it becomes clear that Sunny was adopted and that Doc Hata specifically wanted to a girl, and even bribed the relevant person to get what he wanted. He remembers Sunny playing the piano and the initial problems he had with her. In the first flashback we can see how he remembers his time with Mary Burns, one of his neighbors. He remembers meeting her the first time during his gardening. She quickly becomes a kind of girlfriend for him and spends a lot of time with Sunny, who does not accept her at all. Although Mary Burns works a lot on her relationship with Sunny, the young girl does not get along with her. In her first conversation with Doc Hata it becomes clear that he is not a real doctor, but that everybody calls him 'doc' because of his store. Mary Burns is very impressed by him because of the fact that he lives in a house that would fit a real doctor and his salary. At the beginning, the relationship between Doc Hata and Mary Burns is very close but they soon start to argue about Sunny and how Doc Hata treats her. Doc Hata gives one piece of information about his daughter after the other, never giving all the information at the same point. While the story is going on it becomes clear that a big fight between Doc Hata and Sunny took place a while ago and separated them. During a stay in the hospital, where he has to stay for almost burning his own house, Doc Hata remembers what this fight was about. In hospital Officer Como's daughter visits Doc Hata and he begins to remember which problems Sunny had with Officer Como. Sunny was in trouble and she did not accept the authority of the police officer. This is just the beginning of the tragedy which is going on between Sunny and Doc Hata. At this point of the story, in the flashback situation, it becomes clear that Sunny runs away from home and that she meets with dubious persons. Going on in the story, Doc Hata goes back in time a lot; he starts to talk about his time in World War II. He explains that most of the soldiers and also some officers had fun with abducted young women, who were brought there for the pleasures of the soldiers. He talks in particular about one girl he thought of the whole time. Before he comes back to the war situation he tells the reader about how he finds Sunny again and how this situation goes on and he also gives more background information on the conflict with Sunny. Then, he meets Sunny again on a regular basis. She has a son, named Thomas of whom Doc Hata takes care, but he does not tell him that he is his grandfather, because Sunny does not want her son to know that. For Sunny it is quite a comfort that her dad takes care of her child, because she can apply for a new job and does not need to find a new baby sitter or nanny. When he speaks about his war time he talks most of the time about K and about their relationship to each other. K is a girl who was arrested by the Lieutenant Kurohata for special services. She was a kind of prostitute (comfort woman), but without getting any money for it from the soldiers, the young Franklin Hata tried to protect her from the treatment of the others. It seems that Doc Hata fell in love with K and he wanted to protect her from everything. While Captain Ono tried to rape her, she killed him, and she asked Hata to kill her too, but instead, he told the others that Captain Ono killed himself in an accident. In the end, Doc Hata does not say explicitly that K died after she is raped by 30 or more soldiers, but implicitly it is clear that she is dead. At the end of the story, Doc Hata changes a lot. He stops following his rituals, he sells his house and he gets along with Sunny. So, it can be seen that he begins to handle his war experiences and that he is able to change.
12941718	/m/02z0ryp	Illegal Aliens	Nick Pollotta		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A perfectly spherical white spaceship lands in Central Park to great global excitement, from which Leader Idow, an alien covered in blue fur, claims that his crew represent a Type III civilization that will test Earth's worthiness to be a member planet of their federation. Unbeknownst to the United Nations, the aliens are criminals (the equivalent of juvenile delinquents) who seek out planets with levels of technology similar to Earth's so that they can record the global violence and mayhem that will result from Earth's certain failure for their own prurient interests. The aliens scan the Central Park crowd for potential test subjects where they happen upon a minor New York gang who they identify as the most likely to provide the most entertainment during their "test". Meanwhile, the United Nations has sent security into New York and identified two new aliens attempting to transport clandestinely to Earth. These aliens are representatives of the Gees, an extraterrestrial law-enforcement body whose mandates include preventing overt contact between space-travelling civilizations and non-space-travelling civilizations. Unfortunately for the crew of the All That Glitters (a Mikon #4 class ship), the human gang manages to escape the test and infiltrate the ship, where they happen upon the ship's engineer Trell. Threatening Trell, the gang manages to release Omega Gas into the main bridge, killing Idow's crew (except Trell). The gang then holds the ship hostage, asking for pardons and appeasements. The army tricks the gang into accepting a group of beautiful women on board, who are actually army personnel sent to arrest them and take back the ship. The United Nations' Alien Contact Crew manages to trick the Gees into believing that Trell has been dissected and liquefied for experimentation just before the Gees leave and set up a massive quarantine around Earth. The human race, through Trell's assistance, has duplicated many of the Mikon #4's technologies, including molecular softening beams, advanced camouflage, horizontal/vertical elevators, and hyperdrive, with the intent to break the Gees' quarantine. They have also learned that the Gees are not the bosses of the galactic federation, merely a police force whose presence is resented by many planets, including some that have been quarantined specifically to prevent their entry into the federation. Now loose in space, the illegal (human) alien crew of the Earth ship struggles to reach the Galactic League and argue a case for admittance - without getting blown out of existence by the Great Golden Ones (Galactic Police).
12945901	/m/02z0zr4	A Flea in Her Ear	Georges Feydeau			 The play is set in Paris at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. Raymonde Chandebise, after years of wedded bliss, begins to doubt the fidelity of her husband, Victor Emmanuel, who has suddenly become sexually inactive. Raymonde is unaware that his behavior is due to a nervous condition. She confides her doubts to her old friend Lucienne, who suggests a trick to test him. They write him a letter, in Lucienne’s handwriting, from a fictitious and anonymous admirer, requesting a rendezvous at the Hotel Coq d’Or, an establishment with a dubious reputation, but a large and prominent clientele. Raymonde intends to confront her husband there, and she and Lucienne leave to do so. When Victor Emmanuel receives the letter, however, he has no interest in such an affair and believes the invitation from the mysterious woman was meant for his best friend Tournel, a handsome bachelor. Unknown to Victor Emmanuel, Tournel has his eye on Raymonde and eagerly exits to make the appointment. Camille, the young nephew of Victor Emmanuel, is overjoyed to have his speech impediment corrected by a new silver palate from Dr. Finache. In celebration, he and the household cook, Antoinette, also hurry to the Hotel Coq d’Or, followed by Etienne, Antoinette's jealous husband. Dr. Finache decides to go to the hotel in search of his own afternoon rendezvous. Victor Emmanuel shows the letter to Lucienne’s husband, Carlos Homenides de Histangua, a passionate and violent Spaniard. Carlos recognizes Lucienne’s handwriting and assumes that she is trying to start an affair with Victor Emmanuel. He runs off to the hotel, vowing to kill her. Victor Emmanuel, hoping to prevent the threatened murder, hurries off in pursuit. The various characters arrive in search of their goals: Finache for fun; Raymonde for Victor Emmanuel; Tournel for Raymonde; Camille with Antoinette, followed by Etienne; Carlos for Lucienne; and Victor Emmanuel to stop Carlos. Carlos, attempting to kill his wife, shoots at anything that moves. Victor Emmanuel sees Raymonde talking with Tournel and believes she is unfaithful. Victor Emmanuel is believed to be insane when Poche, an alcoholic porter at the hotel who is a dead ringer for Victor Emmanuel, is mistaken for him. Camille loses his palate, and Tournel tries very hard to seduce Raymonde. The confusion persists even after all are reunited again at Victor Emmanuel’s house. Things begin to clear up when Carlos discovers a rough copy of the letter written by Lucienne on Raymonde’s desk, this one in Raymonde’s handwriting. The owner of the hotel comes by to return an article left behind by a member of the household and clears up the confusion between his porter and Victor Emmanuel. Finally, Raymonde tells Victor Emmanuel the cause of her suspicions, and he assures her that he will put an end to her doubts—tonight.
12947177	/m/02z0_y_	The Closers	Michael Connelly	2005-05-16	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 LAPD detective Harry Bosch is back on the force after a three-year retirement. Assigned to the Open-Unsolved (cold cases) unit and teamed with former partner Kizmin "Kiz" Rider, Harry's first case back involves the murder of 16-year-old high school girl Rebecca Verloren in 1988, reopened because of a DNA match to blood found on the murder weapon. The blood on the gun belongs to a local low-life white supremacist, Roland Mackey, a fact that links him to the crime via the victim's biracial family. But the blood indicates only that Mackey had possession of the gun, so how to pin him to the crime? Connelly meticulously leads the reader along with Bosch and Rider as they explore the links to Mackey and along the way connect the initial investigation of the crime to a police conspiracy orchestrated by Bosch's nemesis Irvin Irving to cover up the ties of a ranking officer's son with a neo-Nazi group. Most striking of all, in developments that give this novel astonishing moral force, the pair explore the "ripples" of the long-ago crime, how it has destroyed the young girl's family&mdash;leaving the mother trapped in the past and plunging the father into a nightmare of homelessness and alcoholism&mdash;and how it drives Rider, and especially Bosch, into a deeper understanding of their own purposes in life.
12947669	/m/02z10hw	City of Bones	Michael Connelly	2002-04-16	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 On New Year’s Day, a dog digs up a bone in Laurel Canyon outside of Los Angeles. The dog’s owner, a doctor, recognizes the bone as human and calls it in to the police. Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch takes on the case together with his colleague Jerry Edgar and after investigating the matter further, a shallow grave containing the bones of a child, is discovered. Bosch can’t let go of the case, a case that brings back memories from his own childhood, and starts an investigation. The only clue that he has to go on is the skateboard found during a search at a suspect's house. The body turns out to have been a 12-year old boy that has been buried 20 years earlier. To solve the murder, Bosch has to dig through records of cases involving disappearances and runaways dating far back in time. In order to try to solve the crime, Bosch has to chase down possible witnesses and suspects from near and far. After 20 years time, a lot of the details once remembered about the disappearance of the boy are blurred and leads Bosch fumbling in the dark. At the same time, a female rookie named Julia Brasher joins the department. Even though Bosch has been warned not to fall for a rookie, he does and this leads to further complications, both inside and outside of the investigation.
12947743	/m/02z10mn	A Darkness More Than Night	Michael Connelly	2001-01-23	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Terry McCaleb and Graciela Rivers have married and have an infant daughter named Cielo, and McCaleb's fishing charter business is running full-time on Catalina Island. Nevertheless, sheriff's deputy Jaye Winston brings McCaleb a file involving a murder scene filled with exotic elements and asks McCaleb to take a look at it, as the police have gotten nowhere. As McCaleb analyzes the clues, they seem to point straight toward Harry Bosch, whom McCaleb knows from a previous investigation before his retirement. Bosch is currently a key witness in a separate high-profile murder case involving a movie director, and author/reporter Jack McEvoy, who wrote The Poet, is covering the case. After McCaleb alerts the police to Bosch's probable involvement in the murder, Bosch goes to Catalina himself to challenge McCaleb's work and to ask him to re-examine the evidence. Based on a parking ticket that McCaleb finds, he concludes that Bosch may have been set up by the director in order to discredit his evidence in the court case, but the key evidence in proving that is a post office surveillance tape that was in the process of being erased, and from which nothing usable can be recovered. Nevertheless, Bosch and McCaleb pretend that they have recovered something from the tape, and the real killer in the second case (an ex-cop that handled security for the director) then targets and almost kills McCaleb. Bosch saves McCaleb and captures the ex-cop, while killing his younger brother. In return for not being charged with felony-murder in his brother's death, the ex-cop turns over evidence implicating the director in the frame of Bosch, and the director agrees to plead guilty to murder in a plea bargain seen by only McEvoy (who got a tip from Bosch) among the reporters. However, McCaleb realizes that Bosch was around to save him only because Bosch knew all the details of the potential frame, which Bosch had lied about to McCaleb, and McCaleb breaks off any renewed relationship with Bosch as a result. Bosch then "baptizes" himself in a plan for a fresh start.
12947826	/m/02z10qd	Angels Flight: A Harry Bosch Novel	Michael Connelly	1999-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Detective Bosch finds himself yet again in charge of a case that no one else will touch. This time his job is to nail the killer of hot shot black lawyer Howard Elias. Elias has been found murdered on the eve of going to court on behalf of Michael Harris: a man the LAPD believes guilty of the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. Elias had let it be known that the aim of his civil case was not only to reveal the real killer but to target and bring down the racist cops who beat up his client during a violent interrogation. Bosch is going to have to take a long hard look at some of his colleagues in a post-Rodney King Los Angeles Police Department that is rife with suspicion and racial hatred. fr:L'Envol des anges it:Il ragno (romanzo) sv:Fallen ängel (1999)
12948059	/m/02z10_b	Trunk Music	Michael Connelly	1997-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A body found in the trunk of a car seems to have connections with the mob and leads Bosch and his investigation to Las Vegas. fr:Le Cadavre dans la Rolls it:Musica dura sv:Återkomsten (roman, 1997)
12948112	/m/02z110c	The Last Coyote	Michael Connelly		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Bosch is involved in an incident at work and has been put on involuntary stress leave. He must go through therapy sessions to be able to return to work. This involves talking about the incident and himself with Carmen Hinojos, a police psychologist. Three months ago, Bosch broke up with his girlfriend, Sylvia Moore. Carmen asks Harry to verbalize his mission in life. Harry decides that his mission is to investigate his mother's murder. She had been a prostitute and was strangled when Harry was twelve. He gets the murder book from the police archives and reviews the case. He first goes to visit Meredith Roman, another prostitute who was his mother's best friend at the time. The one real piece of information the Bosch gets from her is something that she did not tell the police: his mother was going to meet Arno Conklin at Hancock Park on the night of the murder. Bosch, with the help of the new cop beat/LA Times reporter, investigates Fox, Conklin, and Conklin's close associate Mittel. He discovers that Fox was killed in a hit and run while distributing campaign literature for Conklin. Conklin had been running for District Attorney. He also learns from an old cop friend that Mittel is now a very successful lawyer and campaign fund raiser. He is currently helping Robert Shepard, a computer tycoon, run for the Senate. On a whim, Harry drives to Shepard's house and ends up attending a fund-raising party. He meets Mittel and, using the name of his boss Pounds, asks a waitress at the party to deliver an envelope to Mittel. In the envelope, Harry puts a copy of a newspaper article about Fox's death and circles the names Conklin, Mittel, and Fox. He writes under the article, "What prior work experience got Johnny his job?" Harry checks with the city offices and finds out that only one of the original investigating officers is still alive and that his retirement checks are mailed to a post office box in Florida. So he takes a plane to Florida to speak with the retired detective, Jack McKittrick. He learns from him that at the beginning of the investigation, his senior partner, Eno, was called into the Assistant DA's office and told that Fox was not involved with the murder and he should not be investigated by the department. The only way they could interview him was in Conklin's office. After that interview, the investigation went nowhere and was left as an unsolved case. In order to gain entrance to the gated community where McKittrick lives, Bosch pretends he is interested in a house for sale in the community and tours the house briefly. He goes back to the house after leaving McKittrick and eventually has a romantic encounter with the woman who owns the house, Jasmine Corian. He spends an extra day in Florida with Jasmine, and they reveal many personal secrets to each other in bed. On his way back to Los Angel, he stops in Las Vegas to visit the widow of the other detective, Eno. He intimidates the widow's sister, who is taking care of the ninety year old invalid, into letting him take some of Eno's old files. From the files, he discovers that Eno had been receiving $1000 a week through a dummy corporation since one year after his mother's murder. He learns that this corporation's officers were Eno, Gordon Mittel, and Arno Conklin. When he returns to Los Angeles, there are four Los Angeles Police Department cops are waiting for him inside his home. While he was in Florida, his boss, Harvey Pounds was found dead in the trunk of his car, tortured. Bosch is brought to the Parker Center for questioning. Harry realizes that when he used Pounds' name when trying to scare Mittel at the Shepard fund-raiser, it led to his death. Harry learns from LA Times reporter Keisha Russell that the writer of the article on Fox was Monte Kim. Russell gives Bosch his address obtained from the phone book. Bosch visits Kim and learns that he wrote the article on Fox's death, ignoring the illegal activities in his past in order to obtain a job with Conklin. Kim had photos of Conklin and Fox with two woman (Meredith Roman and Bosch's mother) and used them to blackmail Conklin to obtain the job. Bosch, believing that he finally has enough information to confront Conklin, visits him in his nursing home and discovers that Conklin was actually in love with Bosch's mother. On the day that she was murdered, they decided to go to Las Vegas and get married. Conklin had called Mittel to ask him to go with them to be his best man. Mittel declined and told him that marrying her would ruin his career. Conklin believes that Mittel murdered Bosch's mother. After leaving Conklin, Bosch is hit with a tire iron when trying to get in his car and awakes at Mittel's house with his head bleeding, locked in a game room. Before Mittel's enforcer can arrive, Bosch pockets a billiard ball that he hopes to use as a weapon. Mittel tells Bosch that Conklin has conveniently jumped out of the window of his room right after Bosch left. So the last loose end for him to clean up is Bosch. After Bosch tells him that he left his briefcase with his evidence in Conklin's room, Mittel nods to Jonathan to finish off Bosch. But Bosch makes Jonathan miss, hits him with the billard ball, and eventually knock him out. Mittel runs off, and Bosch follows. Mittel attempts to ambush Bosch and in the struggle, Mittell fall off a cliff and dies. Bosch returns to the house but cannot locate Jonathan. The police arrive, and Bosch next wakes up in the emergency room. Bosch realizes that he can prove that Mittel killed his mother by checking his fingerprints against the print found on the belt that killed his mother. He obtains the prints from the medical examiner's office but they do not match. Bosch has gone through all of this and still has not found his mother's killer. He returns to talk to Hinojos. During this meeting, she gives Bosch her opinion on the photos from his mother's crime scene. She noticed that his mother was wearing all gold jewelry and the belt that was used to kill her was silver, which is a combination which a woman would not normally wear. Bosch's mother might not have been wearing the belt. The killer may have been wearing the belt and used it to kill his mother. Bosch believes he finally knows who killed his mother and returns to Meredith Roman's house, only to find that several days before she committed suicide. She left Bosch a note trying to explain her actions. He calls 911 and is about to leave when Jonathan confronts him with a gun. He had been waiting for him, letting him find Meredith and the letter. Since Jonathan believes he is going to kill Bosch and escape, he tells him the truth: that in actuality, he is Johnny Fox. His death was faked, and he remained with Mittel as his bodyguard. It was Fox who had killed Pounds and Conklin. The police finally arrive, and Fox is shot while trying to escape.
12948149	/m/02z112f	The Concrete Blonde	Michael Connelly	1994-06-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Detective Harry Bosch is pursuing "the Dollmaker", a serial killer who uses makeup to paint his victims. He gets a tip from a prostitute that a recent customer of hers, Norman Church, had a large amount of women's makeup in his bathroom. Bosch goes to Church's garage, identifies himself as police, breaks in the door. Church is naked and shaved. Bosch tells him to not move, but Church starts to pull something from under his pillow, and Bosch shoots him. Bosch is investigated by internal affairs and cleared in the shooting; but, since he did not follow police procedure, he is transferred from the elite Robbery-Homicide Division (RHD) back to the Hollywood table. The makeup is found to match those of nine of the Dollmaker's victims. Four years later, Bosch is sued by Church's widow. Her attorney portrays Bosch as a cowboy and a vigilante, seeking revenge for the unsolved murder of his mother when he was a child. During the trial, the police receive a note, purportedly from the Dollmaker, which leads to the discovery of a new victim with the same modus operandi. This victim was encased in concrete, unlike the original eleven victims, but all other aspects of the killing are the same, including the signature cross painted on a toenail. The concrete blonde victim, along with two other of the original victims, fit a different pattern: large-breasted blondes in the local adult entertainment industry who also advertise as high-class prostitutes in the local sex rags. Bosch and his task force suspect that "the Follower" is Detective Mora from Ad-Vice. Mora has ties to the adult video industry, had insider knowledge of the Dollmaker case, and was not at work during the killings not attributed to Norman Church. The task force put Mora under surveillance and Bosch breaks into Mora's house looking for evidence that he is the Follower. Instead he finds that Mora has been making pornographic movies with underage children. Mora returns to his house, finds Bosch and threatens to kill him. The rest of the task force arrive; they search Mora's house and determine that he is not the Follower. Mora does have information on who he believes is the Follower, and makes a deal: he provides the name of Professor Locke, agrees to quit the police force, and all of his crimes will be ignored. Mora got information that Locke had been seen on the set of adult movies where the slain women were cast members. When Bosch returns to his office he finds another note from the Follower, saying that he will be taking 'his blonde'. Bosch assumes that he means his girlfriend Sylvia; when she does not answer her phone, he sends the police to her house. He arrives to an empty house, when a real estate agent shows up to show the house. Bosch finds Sylvia at his house and takes her to a hotel to protect her. Sylvia tells Bosch that they must have some time apart for her to decide if she can live with him and his dangerous job. The next day Bosch returns to court as the jury is to restart their deliberations. Honey Chandler, the widow's attorney, does not appear. Bosch sends the police to her house as she is also a blonde. The jury reaches a verdict for the plaintiff and awards compensatory damages of one dollar and punitive damages of one dollar to Church's widow. When Bosch finally arrives at Chandler's house she has been dead 48 hours, killed in the same manner as the other Dollmaker killings, except that she also has burn and bite marks all over her body. Locke, who had been missing for several days, shows up at the crime scene. Bosch and Edgar interrogate him but discover that he has a solid alibi and dismiss him as a suspect. Bosch follows Bremmer from the crime scene to his house. He asks Bremmer if he can come in for a drink to discuss his court case. When Bremmer returns with two beers Bosch confronts him as being the Follower. Bremmer fights Bosch and gets control of his gun. Bosch, playing on Bremmer's pride, gets him to confess. Bosch had found a note that the Follower had mailed to Chandler, which mentioned an article in the Los Angeles Times. Bosch had noticed that it had been mailed before that article was published, which led him to suspect Bremmer. Bremmer had tortured Chandler to find out where she had hidden the note and envelope. Bremmer attempts to shoot Bosch but the gun is empty; Bosch grabs the magazine he had hidden in his sock, hits Bremmer with it and arrests him. Bosch had hidden a recording device in the room while Bremmer was getting the beer. The next day Bosch forces the district attorney's office to charge Bremmer with first degree murder, as the filing attorney is not satisfied with the amount of evidence. The police then obtain a warrant to obtain blood, hair and teeth molds of Bremmer; and they match his bite marks on the body of Chandler, as well as his pubic hair to those found on two of the original Dollmaker victims. A woman who owns a storage locker company recognizes Bremmer as having rented a locker under a false name and the police find video tapes of Bremmer's killings. Bremmer makes a deal for life without parole in exchange for leading police to the bodies of his other victims. Harry takes two weeks off work to make some home improvements. Eventually Sylvia returns and they re-unite and head off for a weekend together.
12948231	/m/02z1155	The Black Echo	Michael Connelly	1992-01-21	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel centres round Harry Bosch, a Vietnam veteran who served as a "tunnel rat" during the war, became an L. A. police detective advancing to the Robbery-Homicide Division. However, after killing the main suspect in the "Dollmaker" serial killings, Bosch is demoted to "Hollywood Division" homicide, where he partners with Jerry Edgar. The death of Billy Meadows, a friend and fellow "tunnel rat" from the war, attracts Bosch's interest, especially when he determines that it may have been connected to a spectacular bank robbery using subterranean tunnels. Bosch suspects that the robbers were after more than money and he then partners with the FBI, in particular agent Eleanor Wish, in an attempt to foil their next attack. Bosch and Wish end up connecting the robberies to a group of Vietnamese living in Orange County, as well as some Americans that may have been involved with them.
12949678	/m/02z12dq	Hour of the Assassins	Andrew Kaplan	1980		 Ex-CIA agent, John Caine, is hired by Wasserman, a Holocaust survivor, who has become a Hollywood porn king, to find and kill Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Angel of Death of Auschwitz, who has eluded pursuers for more than 30 years. After an encounter with Wasserman’s mistress, C.J., Caine begins a hunt for Mengele that will lead him from Europe to an encounter with the Neo-Nazi ODESSA ring in Paraguay to Jerusalem and Vienna, where he learns of a plot called “Starfish” and escapes ODESSA agents with a lead to South America. Deep in the Amazon jungle, he finds a medical clinic for Indians run by a Dr. Mendoza, who turns out to be Mengele. Captured, Caine manages to kill Mengele and escape into the jungle pursued by headhunting Indians. He makes his way to Lima, where he meets C.J., who betrays him to the Peruvian police, who arrest him for Mendoza’s murder. Caine’s CIA case officer, Harris, springs him from jail and reveals an oil strike in the Amazon that was behind the Starfish conspiracy to take over South America. Landing in Los Angeles, Caine finds Wasserman who is revealed as a Nazi, von Schiffen, who had taken the identity of the Jew, Wasserman and who needed Mengele dead as part of the oil conspiracy. Caine kills von Schiffen and he and C.J. escape together.
12949843	/m/02z12my	Dragonfire	Andrew Kaplan	1987	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Parker, an American CIA agent, is captured while on a mission in Bangkok. Sawyer, a lone CIA agent is sent on the same mission, code-named “Dragonfire”, to prevent another Southeast war. Sawyer tracks the missing Parker from the deadly underworld of Bangkok’s waterfront to the forbidden hill country of the Golden Triangle. He joins forces with Suong, a beautiful Eurasian resistance fighter and Toonsang, a treacherous opium trader, who leads them to the lair of Bhun Sa, the most powerful warlord in the opium trade. Sawyer kills Bhun Sa and he and Suong escape to abandoned temple ruins in Cambodia. To convince him she has not betrayed him, Suong tells of her survival of the Khmer Rouge’s Killing Fields. Sawyer is captured by the Khmer Rouge. Suong is revealed as a war criminal, the sister of Pranh, the notorious Brother Number Two of the Killing Fields. Vietnamese forces attack the Khmer Rouge, freeing Sawyer who takes Suong captive. After a fight on the Bangkok waterfront, during which Sawyer kills Vasnasong, the billionaire businessman behind the plot, Sawyer turns Suong over to the Cambodian resistance. In an epilogue, the story of Suong’s brutal death on a ship at the hands of her former victims is revealed.
12949913	/m/02z12qb	War of the Raven	Andrew Kaplan	1990		 Raoul de Almayo, an Argentine society playboy is murdered by German agents in Buenos Aires in the early days of World War II. Charles Stewart, polo-playing American OSS secret agent, is sent to uncover the identity of the “Raven”, a spy in the German embassy in Buenos Aires to whom Raoul was the only link. Stewart’s trail leads him to Argentina’s decadent high society and an affair with the beautiful Julia Vargas. He uncovers a plot that may determine the course of the war, involving a coup against the Argentine government, the planned assassination of President Ortiz and the German battleship, Graf Spee, that is rampaging British shipping in the Atlantic. Stewart and Julia escape German agents, but Stewart is arrested by the notorious Colonel Fuentes, head of the Argentine secret police. Julia arranges Stewart’s release, but the two of them are captured by Gestapo agents who intend to murder them as part of the coup plot. Meanwhile, flashbacks tell the brutal story of John Gideon, Julia’s dead grandfather, who rose from a prison ship to become founder of Argentina’s greatest fortune and whose life is somehow entwined in these events. Julia and Stewart escape the Germans and Stewart manages to get critical information to the British that leads to the Battle of the River Plate and the sinking of the Graf Spee. At a society polo match at Julia’s estancia, Stewart manages to prevent the assassination and coup. Captured by the Germans and about to be shot, Stewart is saved by the Raven only to discover that the real author of the plot and these events was Julia, who takes her grandfather’s final horrific revenge. In an epilogue at the Battle of Stalingrad, Stewart learns in a letter from the Raven of Julia’s final fate.
12951923	/m/02z14hd	Bao Gong An			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The Judge Bao Zheng unveiled the evil doings by reasoning, with the help of his assistant. He has dark brown skin and a moon-shaped scar on his forehead. He has four bodyguards and one personal expert.
12952304	/m/02z14vf	Soldier's Heart	Gary Paulsen	1998-09-08	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 (Conflict, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution) Charley Goddard is a fifteen-year-old boy growing up in the farming community of Winona, Minnesota, in 1861, just prior to what will become the Civil War. He lives with his single mother and little brother, Orren. Charley's father was killed when a swarm of bees landed on a horse, scaring it into kicking Charley's father in the face, killing him. The whole area is talking about what they think will be a "shooting war." The atmosphere at the town meetings discussing the possibility is festive, with flags and drums and patriotic speeches. As a volunteer army is beginning to form, Charley decides he wants to be part of it after a brief argument with his mother. Everyone assumes that it will be an easy, victorious battle, most likely over in a month or two if it happens at all. Charley lies about his age and joins the volunteers in what he thinks will be a fun experience that will make him a man. They pay is eleven dollars a month, much more than he makes working on the farms. Charley trains and learns to be a soldier. In his letters, Charley describes the experience as something much different than he had imagined. Upon leaving the camp, the men are treated as heroes even before they leave town, accompanied by much cheering and flag waving. On the train ride to their new camping location, Charley meets a slave, who quickly blesses him and gives him bread for what he is doing for the southern slaves. However, a slave owner soon finds the woman and drags her back inside her house as the train departs again. Charley feels great, and spirits are high. However, not long after, he finds himself in his first battle. The Union soldiers lose badly. He is caught in the middle of violent suffering and death, and he cannot believe what is happening so suddenly all around him. When the battle is over, hundreds of his comrades have been killed, and Charley and the other survivors are stunned. It was named The Battle of Manassas Junction by some newspapers but was quickly called the battle of Bull Run by some of the men, for the creek that ran nearby. A camp is created near Washington and eventually reaches ninety thousand men. Charley becomes part of the day-to-day routine of the camp. He and the others forage the farms in the area for food and eventually build log houses to live in during the approaching winter. However, many men get diseases such as dysentery and die in the camp. During the time here, Charley participates in one nearby battle against the Rebel soldiers. The Union wins, but not without losing many men. One of them is a man whom Charley befriended only hours before. His name is Nelson, and he is shot in the stomach. Nelson knows the surgeons do not have the skills or time to mend his wound and that he will be left to die. As a result, he kills himself on the battlefield as the other soldiers leave for the return march to the camp. Charley takes part in a battle near Richmond, Virginia where the Confederate Army uses its mounted cavalry to charge Charley and the Union soldiers. Nearly one hundred men on horseback charge the six hundred foot soldiers. Charley and the others are told to shoot the horses in order to defeat the cavalry, and they do so, killing every horse and man. He then fights a large army of confederate soldiers. After all the fighting is over he is told he has been shot in the shoulder, but when he arrives at the temporary hospital he is told that the blood on his uniform is not his and he is not really shot. Next, Charley participates in the Battle of Gettysburg. Here he has the protection of rocks and logs and a large force of artillery behind him. Most of the charging Rebel soldiers are killed in the lines as they attack, but some eventually get close. The Officers realize this danger, and send the only unit still in relative shelter, The First Minnesota Volunteers. They rush at the soldiers, killing them as they go hacking and shooting each other. Charley eventually succumbs to the hits of the Rebels, got spun and then knocked out. He saw a red veil come down his eyes and claims that at last he died. Charley is 21 now. Charley claims he had become so old at heart, and waited death, for it was his only escape. He knows too much and the violent killings numbed him. He says that he should be studying marriage and raising young ones, but it wouldn't be that way for him. He's tired and broken, walking with a cane and passing blood, knowing it would be near over for him. In some ways it made him sad and he was near glad of it. There was so much men that he knew that was there already, and knew it was only a matter of time. He wants to go see them to get rid of this constant pain and sounds he could not stop hearing. He limped to have a picnic near the river, and took out roast beef a jug of cold coffee, that he's used to drinking coffee that made his stomach knot. The army taught him to thrive on coffee. He can still sit to a small meal and not feel starved at all. He then admires a Confederate's pistol. Everybody wanted one, and asked Charley to get them some, he imagines committing suicide with it. He takes out cheese and bread and admires the river, thinking of all the pretty things. Later in the author's note, it is noted that in the Battle of Gettysburg only forty-seven men were left standing of the original thousand soldiers in Minnesota's First Volunteers. Charley was not one of them. He was hit severely, and got patched up as best they can. He fought at later actions, but his wounds did not heal properly, nor his mental anguish. The war finished and he tried to hold jobs, but he couldn't. He went running for county clerk based on his war record. He was elected, but before he could serve, his wounds and the stress took him and he died in December 1868; he was only twenty-three years old. ...
12952797	/m/02z158j	Dawn Wind	Rosemary Sutcliff	1961	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story follows him, and the dog he finds after the battle, into the border country with Wales to the ruins of Viroconium (Wroxeter). There he meets a street urchin named Regina, the only person left in the city. They learn to trust each other and form a bond. When they leave the city and are later separated, Owain becomes a thrall to a Saxon lord in the swamps near the Isle of Wight, where he spends a number of years. In the end, Owain and Regina are finally reunited and return to the Celtic lands beyond the Welsh border. The story takes place at a turning point in the evolution of relations among the Saxons, invaders from the European mainland, and the indigenous Celts. As Owain lives and fights with the Saxons, he sees them beginning to reach accommodation and common cause with the Celts. The Dawn Wind of the title is a reference to the arrival of St Augustine, who brought Christianity to the Saxons. This change also later brought the Saxons and the already-Christian Celts closer together.
12965104	/m/02z1lys	El Príncipe de la Niebla	Carlos Ruiz Zafón	1993	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Max Carver, son of a watchmaker, has moved with his family from the city in order to get away from the war. Max's new house was formerly owned by Richard Fleischman, his wife and son. Max experiences mysterious events which have to do with Jacob Fleischman, the son of Richard Fleishman, who had drowned. Over time, Max discovers a sculpture garden near his house, where strange things happen. Max finally makes a friend, Roland. Roland is older than Max, around the age of his sister, Alicia, who is 15. After diving near the wreck, the Orpheus, Max has more and more questions, which will be answered by Victor Kray, grandfather of Roland. Detailed Summary Chapter 1 The story opens in 1943 in an unnamed city. It is mid-June, the day of our protagonist, Max Carver’s, thirteenth birthday. Maximilian Carver, Max’s father, and an eccentric watchmaker, tells Max and his family that they are leaving their lives in the city, which is suffering a war, to live in a town on the coast. We meet the family: Andrea Carver, Max’s mother, and Max’s sisters: Alicia, the elder, and Irina the younger. They reluctantly accept their fate, although Alicia is especially unhappy about having to leave her friends in the city. Before retiring to bed, Mr. Carver gives Max his birthday present: a watch made by his father, with an engraving on the back that says, Max’s time machine. They arrive at the train station, and Max sees that the station clock is slow. His father jokes that he has work already. Mr. Carver finds, and then employs two men, Robin and Philip, to help the family carry and transport their luggage. Max feels someone watching him, and turns to see a large cat with luminous yellow eyes watching him. The cat befriends Irina, who takes an immediate liking to the creature; she begs her parents to let her bring it with them, and they eventually concede. Before they leave the station, Max notices that the clock is even further behind than he had thought, but as he watches it for a moment, he realizes it is actually turning backwards. Chapter 2 As they drive through the town, the family begins to warm up to the sights, noticeably calmed by tranquil coastal setting. Maximilian Carver is delighted by his family’s reactions, and visibly enthused about their new lives on the coast. Max gazes at the ocean, which is covered by a light mist, and thinks he sees the silhouette of a ship sailing on the horizon. But it quickly disappears. On the way to their new home, Mr. Carver tells them the history of the house. It was built in 1923 by Dr. Richard Fleischmann, and he lived there with his wife, Eva. They had a son, Jacob, on June 23, 1925. The family lived happily until the tragedy of 1932, when Jacob drowned playing on the beach near his home. After that, Dr. Fleischmann’s health deteriorated, and after he had died, his widow, Eva, left the house to her lawyers to sell, and fled elsewhere. When they arrive, the porters leave quickly, and before they have even taken their first steps into the house, the cat leaps from Irina’s arms, letting out a satisfied meow as it is the first to touch down in the foyer. The home is musty and dusty, so the family sets out cleaning it up. The girls are horrified to find huge spiders in their rooms, so Max is charged with disposing of them. Before he can terminate a terrible-looking one, the cat aggressively devours it. Max looks out the window, and beyond the yard, and can vaguely make out a small clearing enclosed by a wall of stone. Inside, there appears to be an overgrown garden, with a circle of stone figures – statues. The wall enclosure is secured with spearhead points along its edge, each embossed with a symbol of a six-pointed star enclosed in a circle. Chapter 3 Max awakes with a start from a bad dream the next morning. Outside, dawn is breaking, and the air is clouded with a hazy mist. No one else is awake, and he decides to go outside and explore the mysterious garden he had observed through the window the night before. He must break a lock to access the garden, and he is overcome with a foreboding feeling as he enters. Inside, he discovers the statues depict ominous-looking circus characters, including a lion tamer, a contortionist, a fakir, a strong man, and some other ghostly characters, all are arranged in a star pattern around one central figure on a pedestal: a terrible clown, with arms outstretched and hands in a fist. At the clown’s feat, Max sees another small paving stone with the same six-pointed star inside of a circle inscribed on its surface. Max looks up again, and sees the hand of the clown is now open to the sky. Afraid, he flees back to the house, not looking back. Finding his family now awake and preparing breakfast, Max decides not to tell them what he has seen because he knows they will be sceptical, and he doesn’t want to crush his father’s excitement about their new home. Maximilian Carver eagerly tells the family about his own discovery in the shed outside: an old projector and a box of old films, as well as two bicycles. Chapter 4 Max helps his father restore the old bicycles and they discover they have barely been used. He asks his father casually about the garden out back, but his father doesn’t give much of a response. Max takes his bike for a ride, and begins to explore the town. Soon, he meets a boy a few years older than he is, named Roland, who is also out riding his bike. Roland offers to show him around, and Max takes him up on the offer. The two pedal around town for hours, and Max is barely able to keep up with the older boy, but enjoys the tour nonetheless. They rest, and Roland tells him about a ship that sunk off the coast in 1918; the wreckage remains underwater. The sole survivor of the shipwreck was an engineer who, as a way of thanking providence for saving his life, settled in the town and built a lighthouse on the cliffs overlooking where the ship had sunk. That man is Roland’s adoptive grandfather, Victor Kray; Roland’s own parents were killed in a car accident when he was a baby, and they had entrusted Roland to Victor’s care in their will. Before the boys part ways, Roland invites Max to go diving with him and explore the shipwreck the next day. Max accepts the offer, and Roland promises to pick him up the next morning. At home, Max finds a note from his mother and a plate of sandwiches awaiting him. His parents have gone into town with Irina, and Alicia is nowhere in sight. Outside, rain begins to fall, and Max retires to his room for a nap. Chapter 5 Max awakes to the sound of his family downstairs, and he goes down to join them for dinner. He tells them about the friend he’d made that day, and even invites his older sister, Alicia, to join he and Roland in their dive the next day. To his surprise, Alicia accepts the invitation. After dinner, Maximilian sets up the old projector he had salvaged that morning, and the family settles in to watch one of the unmarked films from the box. As the movie begins, they see it is a homemade movie, and the scene begins in a forest. The scene takes them through the trees, and a silhouette begins to appear, as the camera approaches an enclosed garden – the very garden Max had visited that morning. The camera operator enters the garden, revealing the mysterious statues, which look new, unlike the weathered state Max had observed them in. When the scene moves to the clown, Max feels something is different from the way he had observed it that morning, but he can’t decide what it is, and the film ends suddenly. Disappointed with their cinematic experience, the family retires to bed. Max decides to stay up and watch another film. Alicia waits for the rest of the family to leave, and she looks distraught. She tells Max she has seen the clown from the movie before – which she dreamed of that exact clown the night before they had moved to their new home. Max assures her she is probably just imagining the similarity and encourages her to forget about it. Alicia agrees he is probably right, and she goes to bed. Feeling unsettled by what Alicia told him, Max suddenly feels a presence behind him. He turns suddenly, and sees Irina’s cat looking at him with its yellow eyes. He shoos it away, but before leaving, it seems to smile at him. Max decides to put the projector and films back into the box and then go to bed. Chapter 6 Alicia wakes before sunrise with two golden feline eyes staring at her. She ignores the animal and thinks about her friends in the city, as she gets dressed. Max knocks on the door to tell her Roland has arrived. She joins the boys outside and there is an instant connection between Roland and Alicia, who are the same age. Knowing there is an extra bike in the garage, Max enjoys the flirtatious scene, and tells Alicia she will have to balance on Roland’s handlebars down to the beach. At the beach, Roland shows them his shack, where he sleeps during the summers. The inside is filled with trinkets and treasures that Roland has recovered from his dives down to the shipwreck just off shore. The boys prepare for their dive and Alicia waits on shore. Max is mesmerized by the experience of the cool water, and the serene silence beneath the surface of the ocean, but he leaves the deep diving to his friend. Roland discovers some new treasures, while Max observes from a distance, noticing the ship’s name inscribed on the bow, the Orpheus. Through the water, he dimly sees an old, tattered flag ebbing with the current. As it unfurls, horror seizes Max as he recognizes the symbol he had seen in the garden of a six-pointed star enclosed in a circle. He immediately swims back to the beach. When Roland joins the Carver children on the beach, Alicia begins collecting seashells, and once she is out of earshot, Max tells Roland about the symbol and the circus figures. Alicia returns to the boys and begins to ask Roland about his grandfather and the ship. Roland invites them into the cabin and promises to tell them the full story there. Meanwhile, back at the Carver home, we learn that Irina has been hearing voices in the house, and now hears them in her room, much like a whisper in the walls. It seems to be coming from her wardrobe, and as she approaches it, she sees there is a key in the lock. She hurriedly turns it to the locked position, and steps back. The sound continues, and hearing her mother calling her, Irina turns to run from the room. An icy breeze sweeps past her and slams the door shut, and she struggles with the handle, looking over her shoulder. She sees the key slowly turning; the voices become louder, and she hears laughter… Back in Roland’s shack, Roland tells Alicia and Max more about the Orpheus, retelling all that his grandfather, Victor Kray, has told him about the accident, and the events leading up to it. The Orpheus began as a cargo ship with a bad reputation, operated by a corrupt Dutchman who rented the ship out to anyone who would pay, including smugglers and criminals. The Dutchman was also a gambler, and he had accumulated a lot of debt, which made him desperate to gamble more. He lost a big card game to a man named Mr. Cain, who owned a travelling circus, known for employing shady criminals. Knowing the police were closing in on he and his group’s criminal activities, Mr. Cain charged The Dutchman with transporting his evil posse across the Channel on his ship, and the man agreed. Roland’s grandfather had the misfortune of knowing Mr. Cain for some time, and had unfinished business of some sort with him. He did not want Mr. Cain to leave the town without settling things with Victor first, so hearing of his plot to escape the town, he boarded the Orpheus as a stowaway, not even sure what he would do when he confronted Mr. Cain. He wouldn’t have to, as it turned out, as the ship crashed, and Mr. Cain and all of the other passengers on the ship were killed, save Victor, who was spared thanks to the hiding place he had chosen – a lifeboat. But they never found any bodies. Max and Alicia point out that something seemed to be missing from Victor Kray’s story, and Roland agrees… Back at the Carver house, Irina feels her hands go numb, and she continues to fumble with the door, and she watches in horror as the key turns in the lock, finally stops moving, and is then pushed out of the keyhole, falling to the floor. The wardrobe begins to creak open, and Irina tries to scream as a shape emerges from the wardrobe – the cat. She kneels to pick it up, but then notices something behind the cat, deeper in the wardrobe. The cat opens its jaws and hisses at her, then retreats back into the wardrobe, and a giant smile filled with light appears in the darkness with two glowing golden eyes, and all of the voices she has been hearing say “Irina” in unison. Irina screams and throws herself against the bedroom door, which gives away, and she stumbles into the hallway, and hurls herself down the stairs. Downstairs, Andrea Carver has heard her daughter’s scream, and runs to the base of the stairs just in time to see her child tumbling down to the bottom, a tear of blood escaping from her forehead. Mrs. Carver feels her pulse, and finding it is weak, calls the doctor. Holding her unconscious child, she looks up the stairs to see the cat watching her coldly. Chapter 7 When they return to the house, Max and Alicia see an unfamiliar car in the driveway, which Roland recognizes as the car of the town Doctor, Dr. Roberts. Their father tells them about Irina’s accident, and explains that he and Mrs. Carver will go with Irina to the hospital. Max and Alicia assure him that they will be fine. The three friends eat a simple dinner on the porch, and then Alicia and Roland decide to go swimming. Max sits on the porch, and thinks about the bond between his sister and new friend. He recalls Roland telling him that he may be sent to the war at the end of the summer, and he fears the effect that will have on his sister. After the swim, Alicia and Roland and Max build a bonfire on the beach, and discuss the strange occurrences and discoveries of the past few days, and Max reveals a final mystery: the Fleischmann film of the statues revealed the figures situated in different positions than Max had seen in the present day. Roland reveals a secret too: he has dreamed about the clown figure every summer since he was five. They all agree they will speak with Victor Kray the next day to learn more about the shipwreck. Chapter 8 The teens stay up until daybreak, and then Roland rides his bike home, while Max and Alicia retire to bed. The scene moves to Victor Kray returning from the lighthouse. He enters his home quietly, and finds his grandson waiting for him in an armchair. They make breakfast together, and Roland begins to tell him about his new friends that live in the Fleischmann’s’ old house, and the strange happenings. His grandfather listens and tells him to find his friends and bring them to the lighthouse. Chapter 9 Back at the Carver’s house, Maximilian has phoned his children to tell them Irina is in a coma, but is expected to wake up. Roland appears on the scene and asks Max and Alicia to come to his grandfather’s home. Victor Kray recounts for them a story very similar to the one Roland told about the shipwreck, but he also reveals some new facts. He explains the “unfinished business” between him and the wickedness Mr. Cain. They had met when they were boys, when the villain went simply by the name Cain. He was a notorious cheat at dice and cards in the town where Victor grew up, and the neighbourhood boys referred to him as the Prince of Mist because, rumour had it, he appeared out of a haze in dark alleyways at night and disappeared again before dawn. He had a reputation for making young boys’ wishes come true in exchange for their undying “loyalty.” Victor never succumbed to the temptation of expressing his wishes to Cain, but Victor’s best friend, Angus, did. Angus’ father had lost his job, and he asked Cain to restore the family’s only source of income. Inexplicably, his father was rehired the next day. Two weeks later, Victor and Angus were walking on the train tracks at night when they ran into Cain. Cain told them Angus would have to burn down the local grocery store. Victor and Angus ran home, but Victor knew Angus would not fulfill the request. But the next morning when Victor went to Angus’ house, he was not there, and no one could find him. Victor searched the city, and then returned to the train tracks where they’d run into Cain. There, he found the frozen corpse of his friend’s body – transforming into smoky blue ice, and melting into the tracks. Around his neck was a chain with a symbol of a six-pointed star in a circle. That same night, the grocery store Cain had demanded that Angus burn down was destroyed by a fire. Victor never told anyone what he knew, and his family moved south a few weeks later. Chapter 10 Victor continues to tell of his knowledge of Cain, recounting another encounter that took place a few months later, when his father took Victor to an amusement park. Waiting for the Ferris Wheel, Victor became aware of a tent being touted as the den of “Dr. Cain – fortune-teller, magician and clairvoyant.” Reluctantly, Victor gave into his curiosity and entered the tent, where Dr. Cain immediately recognized him and called him by name. He asked him his wish, but Victor wouldn’t tell him. He spoke boldly to Cain, and accused him of killing his friend. Cain denied the incident, describing it as an “unfortunate accident.” When Victor left the tent, he resolved never to see the man again. For many years, he didn’t. He went to college, and befriended a man named Richard Fleischmann and a woman named Eva Gray. Both Victor and Richard were in love with Eva, but the three remained friends. One night, Richard and Victor went out drinking and ended up at a fair. They stumbled upon a fortuneteller’s tent, and Richard wanted to go in and ask whether Eva would eventually choose one of the men for her husband. Despite his drunken stupor, Victor refused to go inside, knowing it would be the evil Dr. Cain, but his friend rushed in. Victor fell asleep outside on a bench. When he woke up, it was daylight, the fair was being cleaned up, and Richard was asleep on the bench next to him. The two had a terrible hangover, and barely remembered the night before. Richard told Victor that he dreamt he went into a magician’s tent and was asked what his greatest wish was. He said he wanted to marry Eva Gray. Two months later, Eva Gray and Richard Fleischmann were married. They didn’t invite Victor to the wedding, and Victor didn’t see them for twenty years. Decades later, Victor noticed someone suspicious following him home. It turned out to be Richard, his old friend. Richard looked terrible, and began to cry as he recounted his memories from the night at the fair, finally revealing what he had promised the magician in exchange for his wish for Eva’s love: his first-born son. Richard described to Victor how he’d been trying desperately to keep Eva from becoming pregnant, but that she wanted a child so badly that their lack of one was driving her into depression. Victor agrees to help Richard by tracking down Cain. He finds Cain with a circus troupe, now in a clown façade, just as they are preparing to escape on the Dutchman’s ship. Victor climbed aboard and hid himself in a lifeboat. Fierce winds picked up, and the storm soon took over. As Roland had told his friends the day before, Victor was the only known survivor of the shipwreck, and the other bodies were never found. Hearing that Victor had constructed and moved into a lighthouse on the cliffs, Richard visited him one day, and Victor told him what had happened. Overcome with relief, Richard stopped preventing Eva from having a child, and began building a home for them on the beach. A few years later, their baby boy, Jacob, was born. The couple enjoyed the best years of their lives with their child, until he drowned. When Victor heard, he knew the Prince of Mist had never really left their lives, and he has feared his return ever since. Chapter 11 When Victor finishes his story, a storm is closing in. Max still thinks some facts are missing from Victor’s story, but can’t determine where the holes are. Alicia and Roland seem sceptical of the whole story Victor has told, questioning whether the old man has begun to lose his mind. That night, Max and Alicia have a quiet supper together, their parents still at the hospital. Alicia goes to bed, and Max decides to watch another of the Fleischmann films. The film shows the face of a clock turning backwards, hanging from a chain. The camera zooms out, and we see the pocket watch is being held by a statue in the walled garden. The scene scans the faces of the statues, landing finally on the Prince of Mist – the clown. The camera pans down and reveals the motionless statue of a cat at its feet, its claw poised in the air. Max remembers that cat wasn’t there when he’d visited the garden, and notices the likeness between the statue and Irina’s cat. The camera goes back to the clown’s stone face, and it slowly smiles, revealing wolf-like fangs. Chapter 12 The next morning, Max wakes at noon and Alicia has left a note, saying that she is at the beach with Roland. He rides his bike to town and eats at a bakery, and then rides to where Roland’s Shack sits on the beach. He sees Roland and Alicia kissing, and feels silly approaching them, so he rides his bike back into town. He goes the library, finds a map of the town, and locates the graveyard. He rides his bike there to visit the tomb of Jacob Fleischmann. The cemetery is big and quiet. He finds a dark mausoleum devoted to Jacob Fleischmann, and enters the tomb. Under Jacob’s name, he finds the six-pointed star symbol engraved. He feels eerie in the tomb, and suddenly senses he is not alone in the darkness; he sees a stone angel walking on the ceiling above him, and it points at him slowly and then gives an evil smile, transforming into the face of the evil clown, Dr. Cain. Max saw burning hatred in its eyes, and filled with fear, ran from the tomb. Afterwards, he realized he had dropped the watch his father had given him, but he was too afraid to go back and retrieve it. He rides to Victor’s lighthouse, and tells him what happened. Then he accuses the man of keeping some of the truth from Max and his friends, but Victor Kray denies it, and tells Max to forget the whole thing. Victor looks pained to shut him out, but asks Max to leave. Chapter 13 The next morning, Max gets up before dawn and rides to the town bakery to get breakfast for he and Alicia. Later, they meet Roland at the beach, and he shows them a small rowboat he has restored. They go out in the boat, and Roland and Alicia prepare to dive down. Alicia enjoys being beneath the water with Roland, but then Roland spots a giant black shadow approaching them, and begins rushing Alicia back to the boat. A gigantic eel-like figure rapidly follows them, but Roland gets Alicia to the boat before the figure snatches him with jagged teeth and drags him into the sea. Seeing his sister is safe, Max impulsively dives in after his friend, and is able to rescue him from the frightening creature, even as it transforms into the face of an evil clown. Roland wakes up in the boat, choking, and knows Max has saved his life. Back on shore, the three friends are exhausted and they fall asleep in Roland’s shack. Chapter 14 The scene opens with Victor Kray sneaking through the Carvers’ yard, toward the garden enclosure. He has a rifle with him, and when he enters the garden, the statues are gone. He hears the rumble of a storm, a flash of lightning splits the sky, and Victor suddenly understands what will happen. Max wakes up in Roland’s shack, and realizes he needs to be proactive about predicting Cain’s next move. He rides his bike back home and begins watching another film. This movie begins in the living room where Max sits, but with different furniture, and everything looking new. The camera moves up the stairs, and into the room that Irina had occupied before her accident. The door opens, the camera enters the room, focusing on the wardrobe. Dr. Cain emerges from the wardrobe with an evil smile, and reveals a pocket watch, with its hands spinning backwards. Max recognizes it as the watch his father gave him for his birthday, and the one he had dropped in Jacob’s tomb earlier that day. The hands move faster and faster until they start to smoke and spark, and soon the whole face of the clock is ablaze. The camera moves away from the clock and films a mirror, revealing the camera operator as a small boy. Max looks at the boy’s childish grin, and realizes he looks familiar: it’s Roland as a child. A flash of lightning catches Max’s eye outside and when he looks out the window, he sees a dark figure there: Victor Kray. Chapter 15 Max lets Victor in and makes a cup of tea to warm him. Victor is shaking as he tells Max the statues are gone, and asks where Roland is. Max tells Victor his suspicion that Roland is Jacob Fleischmann, and Victor tells him he doesn’t understand what’s happening, but Max insists Victor tell him the truth. The old man explains that when Richard had thought Cain had drowned and built the house on the beach, things had been fine for a long time, until Jacob went missing one day when he was five. When night fell, Richard searched the forest, remembering an old stone enclosure that had been there when he was building the house. He searched the enclosure, and found Jacob. He was playing amongst the ominous statues that Richard was certain weren’t there when he built the home. Richard never told his wife about this or his encounter with the magician so many years before. One night, Victor was manning the lighthouse, as usual, when he had a sudden premonition that Jacob was in danger. He ran to the Fleischmann house, and to the beach. He saw Jacob wading into the water, as if entranced by a mysterious water monster that was dimly visible in the mist off shore. He looked to the house, and saw some of the circus statues were holding Mr. and Mrs. Fleischmann, who were desperately fighting to save their son. The creature began dragging the boy into the sea, but Victor chased it, and rescued Jacob from its clenches, taking him back to the surface. He tried to revive him, but he was gone. The statues disappeared the moment the Victor realized the boy was dead. Fleischmann was beside himself with grief, and ran into the ocean shouting to Cain, offering his own life in exchange for the life of his son. Then, inexplicably, Jacob sputtered back to life. He was in shock and did not remember his own name. Eva took him inside, and Victor followed, while Richard remained outside. Eva asked Victor to take the boy, hoping that his life would be out of danger if he had a different identity. They let the townspeople think that Jacob had drowned, and the body was never found. A year later, Richard passed away from a deadly infection he caught from being bitten by a wild dog. Victor explains that the tomb at the local cemetery was built by Cain, who is reserving it for the day he recovers Jacob’s body… Meanwhile, Alicia and Roland wake at the beach shack to find a thick mist creeping under the door and filling the shack. It becomes a tentacle and begins pulling on Roland. An evil clown appears in the mist, and says “Hello, Jacob.” The mist grabs Alicia and begins to pull her toward the sea. Both she and Roland try to fight the mist, but to no avail. Roland stands helplessly on the beach, watching as the Orpheus begins to rise from the water, and float upright. Roland hears maniacal laughter, and sees Dr. Cain standing on the ship, grinning as the tentacle of mist drops Alicia at his feet. Chapter 16 Max joins Roland on the beach and begins screaming at Cain; Roland dives into the waves and swims towards the Orpheus. Cain drags Alicia to a cabin and locks her in, where she finds the corpse of the former captain of the ship, The Dutchman. Max makes climbs on some nearby rocks to get closer to the ship, and is able to jump on board, while Roland struggled to grab hold of the helm and steer the vessel away from the rocks. Meanwhile, Victor arrives at Roland’s hut, and something strikes him in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. Max encounters Cain, who brags to him of his exploits, and Max attempts to indulge him, hoping to give Roland time to find Alicia. But they hear Roland calling Alicia’s name, and Cain realizes what Max was trying to do. Cain flings Max into the sea, and he is able to scramble onto some rocks. Chapter 17 Cain and Alicia have another encounter, and he tries to convince her to promise him her first-born child in exchange for Roland’s life. She tells him to go to Hell, and he say, “my dear girl, that’s exactly where I’ve come from,” (200.) The ship is sinking, and Roland is still searching for Alicia when he encounters Cain, who keeps calling him Jacob. Roland still has not made the connection, since he cannot remember his life before his parents died, but he plays along, asking Cain what he has to do to save Alicia’s life. Cain says, “I hope you’ll carry out the part of the agreement your father was unable to fulfill… Nothing more. And nothing less” (203.) Tears in his eyes, Roland agrees. Cain tells Roland where Alicia is, and explains that it’s already underwater and she won’t be able to breathe by the time he reaches her. He finds the room, takes a deep breath, and searches her out in the darkness. He waits for the ship to touch the bottom of the sea so that the pressure will not pull them back down; when the impact came, the ceiling above began collapsing on top of them, and Roland’s leg was pinned beneath the woody debris. Alicia was struggling to hold her breath, so Roland pulled her to him, and though she tried to resist, he breathed the last of his air into her mouth and then pushed her away towards the surface. Max helps Alicia out of the water; Victor wakes up on the beach and helps the two of them ashore, asking, “Where’s my Roland?” (207.) Roland never returned. Chapter 18 The day after the storm, Maximilian and Andrea Carver returned to the beach house with young Irina, who had fully recovered. It was clear to the parents that Max and Alicia had been through a great ordeal, but they didn’t ask, and the teens didn’t tell. Max accompanies Victor Kray to the train station, and Victor tells him he won’t be returning to the town. Before he leaves, he gives Max a small box. Max waits until Victor is gone before he opens it, and inside, he finds the keys to the lighthouse. Epilogue In the last weeks of summer, the war is nearing its end. Maximilian’s watch making business is booming, and Max cycles to the lighthouse every day to ensure the lantern is lit to help guide ships safely to shore. He often sees Alicia alone near Roland’s shack on the beach, gazing into the sea. Max remembers Roland’s words about worrying that this would be his last summer in the town, and comforts himself with the thought that the memories Roland, Max and Alicia shared, will bind them forever.
12970161	/m/02z1s2t	Sapho and Phao	John Lyly			 The play is set in Syracuse and the surrounding countryside. Venus, on her way to Syracuse to humble the pride of Queen Sapho, endows a young ferryman named Phao with great beauty. (In some of the myths, Phaon is an old ferryman of Lesbos who is rewarded by Aphrodite with renewed youth and beauty after he transports her from Mytilene to Chios.) The beautiful waiting women of Sapho's court learn of Phao, flirt with and court him; but he is disdainful of them. When Sapho catches sight of Phao she instantly falls in love with him; and Phao in turn is love-struck with her. Sapho hides her infatuation by pretending to be fever-stricken, and sends for Phao, since he reportedly possesses febrifugic herbs. They share a mutual passion, but the enormous gap between their social positions is an insuperable barrier. Through an accident with Cupid's arrows, Venus herself falls in love with Phao. She has her husband Vulcan (his forge is under Mount Etna) mold new arrows to break love spells; she turns for help to her son Cupid, who in Lyly's hands foreshadows the later Puck in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Cupid performs part of his mother's will, in that he cures Sapho of her love of Phao; but then Cupid succumbs to the queen's charms. The pranksterish god not only fails to make Phao love Venus, but actually inspires him with a revulsion for her. The play concludes with Phao leaving Sicily; Cupid rebels against his mother's will and remains with Sapho, adopting her as his new mother. Variety and comic relief are provided by the talk of Sapho's ladies in waiting, by the "Sybilla" whom Phao consults for advice and guidance, and of course by the witty pages who recur so regularly in Lyly's dramas.
12978507	/m/02z21l2	Midnight's Lair	Richard Laymon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel concerns a group of tourists who become trapped in an underground cavern after a fire destroys the exits. Darcy, one of the tour guides, takes a small group to try to escape by breaking into a portion of the cave that had been walled up years before. But when they attempt to breach the wall they accidentally release a family of cannibalistic savages that has been secretly living in the cave for over half a century.
12980359	/m/02z246v	Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion	Izabella St. James	2006-08-21	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 St. James explains how she met Hefner twice in the same week – on a Wednesday at the Hollywood club Las Palmas and then Friday at another club called Barfly. After approaching him at Barfly, she was invited to meet him at Barfly the following day. After attending various parties, she was invited to live at the mansion. The real substance of the book is in the depiction of what life was truly like at the Playboy Mansion. The author confirms that the girlfriends were recipients of free surgery, clothes, cars, and a weekly allowance. Behind the scenes, the author goes to great lengths to explain that Hugh Hefner had many strict rules including curfews, schedules, and routines. While living with Hefner’s other girlfriends, the author explains the struggles to capture Hefner’s attention while catfights and other internal tensions were highly common.
12983647	/m/02z26xp	Tomcat in Love	Tim O'Brien	1998	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/07z5s9": "Campus novel"}	 As part of his irrational reaction to the end of his marriage, Thomas Chippering returns to his (fictitious) home town, Owago, Minnesota. Emotionally spent, he trespasses on the backyard of the house where he grew up. The current resident, Mrs. Robert (Donna) Kooshof, finds him but is surprisingly attracted to him. Donna rashly agrees to participate in Tom's madcap scheme of revenge against his ex-wife (Lorna Sue), her brother (Herbie), and her new husband (known to the reader only as "the tycoon"). Tom, Lorna Sue and Herbie have been close friends &mdash; or at least companions &mdash; since childhood. The proximate cause of Lorna Sue leaving Tom was that Herbie revealed to her that Tom has been keeping a lifelong record of his infatuations and dalliances. While planning his revenge, Tom also maintains his position as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota. As in years past, Tom eagerly assists his female students with their writing projects, but at this point, one of these students decides to accuse Tom of sexual harassment. Tom loses his job and returns to Owago to live with Donna. Tom finds a job as an instructor at the Owago Community Day Care Center and starts teaching Shakespeare to four-year-olds. Tom's revenge involves trying to break up Lorna Sue's new marriage by innuendo. When this goes awry, Tom plans to burn down the Zylstra's house in Owago. Tom gathers mason jars, gasoline and firecrackers to this end. But the resolution to the plot occurs when Lorna Sue steals Tom's bombs and tries to set the local church on fire. Thus, Tom is able to get over his dependence on Lorna Sue. At the end, Tom and Donna move to a Caribbean island and live comfortably together. Tom's flirtatious nature, while not reformed, is kept in check. There's another mysterious layer in the book. Occasionally the narrator addresses the reader directly, referring to a broken relationship that supposedly unhinges "you" (the reader) because "your" husband ran off to Fiji with a redhead. No explanation about this subplot is forthcoming.
12985742	/m/02z28r1	Chat Room	Barbara Biggs	2006-01-31	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 A young girl aged 13, Samantha, is extremely lonely after moving from Sydney to Melbourne. Both of her parents work long hours and she starts getting interested in chat rooms, where she meets new friends. While in the chat rooms she stumbles across a guy named Robin. He fakes his age as 17, even though he is really 27 and makes Sam feel special. He is charming, smart, romantic and good-looking. He tells her they have to wait for a while before he can tell her his final secret, which she does not realise is his age. Eventually he lets her know hes 27 and she freaks out, after 10 days of stressing and feeling more depressed than ever she goes online and asks to talk to him. He answers her and they confess to liking each other, then they decide to meet. she goes to meet him, hes extremelly gorgeous, and they go for a walk. During the time shes with him Erica, her babysitter, reaises Sam is missing and finds the emails from Robin. She calls the cops and they set out to find her. When they do Robin is caught and Sam is told what happened. Robin has been to court several times on child sexual abuse charges and has been let go on all charges before now because there was a lack of evidence. Now robin is taken in with the police and will be dealt with time in jail.
12987025	/m/02z2b8_	The Time Crocodile	Colin Brake			 The space zoo isn't like any zoo you've ever visited on Earth. For a start, some of the animals can talk! Explore the zoo and work out who can be trusted and who has a hidden agenda...
12987083	/m/02z2bbq	The Corinthian Project				 When the TARDIS lands in an undersea community known as the Corinthian Project, it doesn't take you long to realise there are some very strange things going on. Explore the project and see if you can uncover the truth...
12987210	/m/02z2bl7	War of the Robots	Trevor Baxendale			 On a distant world populated by robots, war has been raging for many years. Can you, the Doctor and Martha discover why the robots are fighting and end the war once and for all?
12989771	/m/02z2gv2	Voyage on the Great Titanic	Ellen Emerson White	1998	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel"}	 13-year-old Margaret Anne Brady is an orphan whose parents died when she was only 8 years old. Subsequently sent to live in an orphanage, she lives a life of penury and dreams that her older brother, William, who lives in America, will someday earn enough money to send for her. One day, however, her fortunes take an unexpected turn for the better when a wealthy, privileged woman named Mrs. Carstairs expresses the desire for a companion for her upcoming trip to the States. The job, which involves simple tasks such as dressing her and walking her dog, is easy, and Margaret Anne accepts readily. Within merely a few days, Margaret Anne and Mrs. Carstairs board the Titanic, the newly-built and highly glamourous liner deemed to be "unsinkable," as first-class passengers. There, Margaret Anne, who has lived most of her life in destitute conditions, is enthralled by her luxurious premises. She quickly befriends a handsome, young steward, Robert, and their relationship gradually turns romantic. All is going well when one night, April 15th, 1912 (2:20), and Margaret Ann are awoken by a frantic Robert who informs that the ship has just struck an iceberg and advises them to put on their lifejackets. The two women obey and hurridly make their way up to the deck where they discover with horror that the ship is sinking rapidly. Though her life is hanging in precariously on the line, Margaret Ann is adverse to leaving Robert, who is part of the crew and must remain on the cruiser, and runs back to him. Finding him sitting dejectedly alone in an vacuous hallway, she attempts to persude him to follow her. Robert, though, replies her that he can't, and the two share a long, passionate kiss before parting. Back on deck, Margaret Anne is rapidly put in a lifeboat and whisked away. Floating for several hours, the small group is finally rescued when a passing ship picks them up. There, everyone, including Margaret Ann, is treated for pneumonia and put to rest. Though she expresses hope for Robert's survival, it is later revealed in the book that he, in fact, did go down with the ship.
12996739	/m/02z2r0g	Deal Breaker	Harlan Coben	1995	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Investigator and sports agent Myron Bolitar is poised on the edge of the big-time. So is Christian Steele, a rookie quarterback and Myron's prized client. But when Christian gets a phone call from a former girlfriend, a woman who everyone, including the police, believes is dead, the deal starts to go sour. Suddenly Myron is plunged into a baffling mystery of sex and blackmail. Trying to unravel the truth about a family's tragedy, a woman's secret and a man's lies, Myron is up against the dark side of his business - where image and talent make you rich, but the truth can get you killed.
12997405	/m/02z2rtn	Pollen	Jeff Noon	1995	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Pollen is the sequel to Vurt and concerns the ongoing struggle between the real world and the virtual world. When concerning the virtual world, some references to Greek mythology are noticeable, including Persephone and Demeter, the river Styx and Charon, and Hades (portrayed by the character John Barleycorn).
13006503	/m/02z32xg	The Devil To Pay	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Solly Spaeth is a financier whose machinations with the "Ohippi Hydro-Electric Project" have left a number of people much less wealthy than once they were, including his business partner, Rhys Jardin. Jardin's beautiful daughter Valerie is involved with Spaeth's son Walter. Rhys is so impoverished, he has to sell up his personal property at auction, much to the dismay of his daughter and his long-time servant/valet/trainer, Pink. Walter asks Ellery Queen to sit in on the auction and buy every lot, which is how Ellery becomes involved when Solly Spaeth is found pierced by an ancient sword whose blade has been coated with molasses and cyanide. Suspicion falls on a number of people, including the Jardin household, Solly's son, lawyer and his mistress, the kooky Winni Moon, but Ellery works through alibis and motives and traces the crime back to the murderer. A sub-plot of the novel is that Ellery has been hired to work on a screenplay and has been completely idle for weeks because he can't get in to see studio head Jacques Butcher; Butcher plays a much more prominent role in the next novel, The Four of Hearts.
13006853	/m/02z33cy	The Four of Hearts	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 At the end of the previous Ellery Queen novel, The Devil to Pay, he's in Hollywood and about to meet studio head Jacques Butcher. At the beginning of this novel, he does so and is asked to work on a movie script about the lives of "the fightin', feudin', first families of Hollywood", actors John Royle and Blythe Stuart. Years ago, these tempestuous thespians had been romantic partners, but quarrelled violently and had become the central figures in a famous feud. The feud extended to Blythe's daughter Bonnie and John's son Ty, both young movie actors—and Jacques Butcher is now engaged to Bonnie. The perpetually broke elder actors are persuaded to accept roles in a biographic picture about their lives which garners great publicity because of their long-standing feud—whereupon they promptly make up and decide to get married. Hollywood's publicity machine kicks into high gear and the pair are married on an airfield in front of huge crowds, then fly away in a private plane for a honeymoon. But a masked person has forced his/her way onto the airplane and left two poisoned flasks of cocktails, and John Royle and Blythe Stuart are dead at the end of the flight. Ty and Bonnie vacillate between feuding and a sudden romantic interest, and Ellery takes a hand to investigate the case. It seems that the murdered pair had been receiving anonymous mailings of playing cards that had a mysterious significance. Ellery's suspicions fall upon the households of John and Blythe, and Ty and Bonnie become suspicious of each other. It's only when Ellery learns the true meanings of the cards that he solves the case. In the process, he has formed a romantic attachment of his own with prominent and lovely gossip columnist Paula Paris, who is agoraphobic—as the final act of the novel, he persuades her to accompany him out to dinner.
13007246	/m/02z33yg	A Blues for Shindig		2006-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Shindig is a young woman who survives the rough streets of London’s Soho neighborhood by working in an illegal bar and selling drugs in the alleys. Shindig’s daily life is populated by abusers, boozers, losers, crooked cops and gangsters. Yet these seemingly deviant characters look out for one another and Shindig navigates through this underworld with a sense of adventure. Yet, she soon finds herself caught in the middle of a much larger power play.
13008551	/m/02z3540	The Angel Makers		2007-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During World War I, the men of a Hungarian village leave to fight. In their absence, the women form powerful bonds. Their village is made into a camp for Italian prisoners of war and some women fall for these soldiers. When their men return and begin to mistreat them, the women become murderous in their fight to keep their freedom.
13008727	/m/02z359x	Baber's Apple		2006-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is the story of Baber Mittough. His employer sells him to a sketchy Kazakhstan businessman. Baber meets up with a woman, two ageing hippies that might be his parents, and has a make a hasty escape out of the country.
13008961	/m/02z35t0	Cry of the Justice Bird	Jon Haylett	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In an Africa ravaged by civil war, two women are pulled from a minibus, and are raped and mutilated. Armstrong MacKay, one of the dead women’s lover, enters the country to bring her body home. During the festivities of her African wake, Mackay finds out the truth behind her violent death from the other woman’s husband. Faced with Africa’s weaken government and the ineffective Boromundi legal system, the two men decide to take justice in their own hands and seek out the murders for themselves. Kisasi, the Justice Bird, cries out as the men set out to execute the killers.
13011106	/m/02z37_v	The Rasp	Philip MacDonald	1924	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Anthony Gethryn, ex-secret service agent, is an occasional "special correspondent" for a weekly newspaper and is assigned to cover the story when a cabinet minister, John Hoode, is found murdered in the library at his country house, battered to death with a wood-rasp. Gethryn recalls his acquaintance with a member of the household and is thus invited to investigate the crime as a kind of "friend of the family". It soon seems as though everyone concerned has a cast-iron alibi for the time of the crime, but Gethryn comes up with an imaginative way for the murderer to have accomplished the deed and established an alibi, and reveals the murderer.
13013378	/m/02z3bg7	Love's Metamorphosis	John Lyly			 Set in Arcadia, the play's plot contains two strains: the main plot features Ceres and three of her nymphs, Nisa, Celia, and Niobe; the three foresters or shepherds who love them, Ramis, Montanus, and Silvestris; and Cupid. Cupid punishes the nymphs for their disdain of the shepherds, by transforming them into a rock, a rose, and a bird. The subplot involves the churlish and brutal peasant Erisichthon, who chops down a sacred tree and thereby takes the life of Fidelia, a transformed nymph. Ceres punishes him with famine, and he responds by selling his daughter Protea to a merchant. Protea escapes her servitude via a prayer to Neptune and a disguise as a fisherman; she returns home, and masquerades as the revenging ghost of Ulysses to rescue Petulius, her beloved, from a Siren. Ceres appeals to Cupid to release her nymphs; Cupid agrees, if Ceres will pardon Erisichthon. (The faithful love of Protea for Petulius has earned her Cupid's protection.) The nymphs are restored to their original forms once they agree to accept the three humans as husbands; the quadruple wedding is held at the house of Erisichthon. Love's Metamorphosis differs from most of Lyly's plays in that it lacks the overtly comical and farcical elements that Lylian dramas normally possess. Strikingly, the play features none of the witty pages that are standard for Lyly. As a result, some critics have speculated that the extant text is a revised version of a more typical Lyly original.
13014524	/m/02z3c9r	Witch World	Andre Norton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 During World War II, Simon Tregarth had risen from a common soldier to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In post-war Europe, he had become involved, almost accidentally, in the black market, only to be caught and discharged in disgrace from the military. He had also managed to anger a powerful criminal organization enough for it to send assassins to dispose of him. After months on the run, he knew his time was running out. Then, Tregarth is contacted by Dr. Jorge Petronius, a man with an amazing reputation for hiding men in dire straits. Petronius recounts a fantastic tale of a stone of power, the Siege Perilous of Arthurian legend, that has the power of opening a gateway to a world attuned to the person who sits on it. Disbelieving, but with little to lose, Tregarth gives up all the money he has left and is transported to a land where magic vies with more mundane swords and bows. He arrives in a nearly empty countryside, just in time to witness a savage hunt: a lone woman being chased down by hounds followed by two horsemen. Tregarth rescues the witch Jaelithe and enters the service of Estcarp, a land ruled by witches and threatened by many enemies. One of these is the land of Gorm, which was bloodily taken over by the far-off, mysterious realm of Kolder. Estcarp's sole trusted ally is Sulcarkeep, a nation of seafaring traders. When Magnis Osberic, leader of Sulcarkeep, requests help against a common enemy, Tregarth and Jaelithe join a party of warriors sent to its aid. On the way, they are ambushed by men of Gorm who appear to be controlled by some unseen entity. The attack is defeated. Afterwards, Koris, Captain of Escarp and refugee from that land, recognizes some of the bodies. The group reaches the island fortress of Sulcarkeep. However, most of the Sulcarmen are away in the season of trading, and an attack overwhelms the few defenders. While a handful of survivors flee in small boats, Osberic remains behind to blow up the island, taking many of the enemy with him. The violence of the explosion causes the tiny vessels to founder; Tregarth and Jaelithe both reach land, but become separated. Jaelithe is captured by Fulk of Verlaine, a coastal lord, but is helped to escape by Loyse, his only daughter. Together, the two women make their way to Kars, the capital of Karston, Estcarp's restive southern neighbor. Tregarth, guided by a mental link with the witch, is reunited with her there. Soon afterwards, Karston erupts in frenzy of killing aimed at those of the Old Race, the principal ethnic group of Estcarp. Tregarth, Jaelithe, Koris and Loyse flee the carnage. Tregarth organizes a guerrilla force using his prior military experience, but is caught and shipped to Gorm to be turned into a mindless slave, like others he has already encountered. Fortunately, he is able to escape. The witches of Estcarp launch an attack on the capital city of Gorm. When Tregarth fights and kills the enemy leader, during the intense struggle, he inadvertently achieves a mental rapport with his opponent and learns that the people of Kolder are like him in some respects; they are a small number of refugees from another universe, though one with a higher level of technology than Earth. Estcarp is victorious, but the threat from Kolder remains.
13024592	/m/0dn6m0	Dear Enemy	Jean Webster		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As Daddy-Long-Legs traced Judy Abbott's growth from a young girl into an adult, Dear Enemy shows how Sallie McBride grows from a frivolous socialite to a mature woman and an able executive. It also follows the development of Sallie's relationships with Gordon Hallock, a wealthy politician, and Dr. Robin McRae, the orphanage's physician. Both relationships are affected by Sallie's initial reluctance to commit herself to her job, and by her gradual realization of how happy the work makes her and how incomplete she'd feel without it. The daily calamities and triumphs of an orphanage superintendent are wittily described, often accompanied by the author's own stick-figure illustrations.
13027973	/m/02z3xz2	All Passion Spent	Vita Sackville-West	1931	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 All Passion Spent is written in three parts, primarily from the view of an intimate observer. The first part introduces Lady Slane at the time of her husband’s death. She has been the dutiful wife of a “great man” in public life, Viceroy of India and a member of the House of Lords. Her children plan to share her care between them much as they divide up the family property but, completely unexpectedly, Lady Slane makes her own choice, proposing to leave fashionable Kensington for a cottage in suburban Hampstead that caught her eye decades earlier, where she will live alone except for her maidservant and please herself — for example allowing her descendants to visit only by appointment. Part 1 concludes with Lady Slane’s developing friendships with her aged landlord Mr Bucktrout and his equally aged handyman Mr Gosheron. Part 2, shorter than the others, is composed of Lady Slane’s thoughts as she muses in the summer sun. She relives youthful events, reviews her life, and considers life’s influences and controls, happiness and relationships. Summer is over. Part 3 takes place after Lady Slane has settled into her cottage, her contemplative life, and approaching end. To her initial annoyance, her past life still connects her to people and events. In particular Mr FitzGeorge, a forgotten acquaintance from India who has ever since been in love with her, introduces himself and they form a quiet but playful and understanding friendship. Mr FitzGeorge bequeaths his fortune and outstanding art collection to Lady Slane, causing great consternation amongst her children. Lady Slane, avoiding the responsibility of vast wealth, gives FitzGeorge’s collection and fortune to the state, much to her children’s disgust and her maid’s amusement. Lady Slane discovers that relinquishing the fortune has permitted Deborah, her great-granddaughter, to break-off her engagement and pursue music, Deborah taking the path the Lady Slane herself could not.
13028369	/m/02z3y8r	The Father Hunt	Rex Stout	1968-05-28	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lily Rowan has employed Amy Denovo, a recent Smith graduate, to assist her in collecting material about her father for a book. After a brief acquaintance with Archie Goodwin, Amy intercepts him one afternoon in the lobby of Lily's building. "It's very personal," Amy tells Archie as she asks for a few minutes of his time. Amy has never known her own father, and she asks Archie to help her find out who he is, or was. She believes her mother took the name Denovo — "de novo," Latin for "anew," "afresh" — because she began a new life after Amy was born. She can't be certain because Elinor Denovo was killed three months before, in a hit-and-run. Amy is curious about her mother, but she must know about her father — and the inquiry must be kept secret. Amy knows Archie is the only person she can trust. Although he is intrigued, Archie turns Amy down. Nero Wolfe charges high fees, and the $2,000 Amy has in the bank would not begin to cover what promises to be a long and expensive job. Archie floats the idea of having Lily supply the funds — she undoubtedly would — but Amy is adamant that no one is to know about the father hunt. Leaving Amy at a loss to know what she should do next, Archie goes to Saul Panzer's place to play poker — but the cards do not cooperate. The next afternoon, Amy arrives at the brownstone with $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills — a retainer. Archie parks Amy in the front room, explains the situation to Nero Wolfe, and introduces her. Wolfe wants reassurance that the money is in Amy's possession legally. Amy says that her mother's death has brought to light the fact that Elinor Denovo had received $1,000 a month since Amy was born — a total of $264,000 — and that this money is from Amy's father. She recites her mother's letter verbatim. Wolfe keeps the money, but only for safekeeping pending Archie's verification of the letter. A visit to Elinor Denovo's apartment tells Archie next to nothing about her. He reviews documents in her handwriting, finds the letter is authentic, and tells Amy she is now a client in good standing. "I doubt if there's another girl anywhere who had a mother for twenty-two years and knows so little about her," Archie tells Wolfe when he returns to the office. Amy has no photographs of her mother. She knows nothing of her mother's friends, her background, her childhood. She doesn't know what her mother did for a living before she was born. She isn't even sure what kind of work she did for Raymond Thorne Productions, a television production company. She doesn't know where she herself was born. At the Gazette, Archie gets what little Lon Cohen can give him about the hit-and-run that killed Mrs. Denovo, and concludes that the police were getting nowhere. On his way out, Archie stops at a phone booth to call Sergeant Purley Stebbins, and casually asks how the case is progressing. "It's hanging," Purley tells him. "But we're not forgetting it." Inspector Cramer visits the brownstone the next morning, indicating the police will also not be forgetting that Archie is asking questions. Archie visits the Madison Avenue office of Raymond Thorne Productions, Elinor Denovo's employer for more than 20 years. He tells Thorne that Amy is convinced that her mother was deliberately killed and has hired Nero Wolfe to find the murderer. Thorne says there is no chance anyone working there killed her. He, too, knows nothing of Mrs. Denovo's life before she began working for him. One day in July 1945 she had walked in, he was short staffed, and after a week he didn't care where she'd come from because she was so good. When she died she was vice-president of the company. Thorne isn't surprised there are no photographs in the apartment, because Mrs. Denovo could never be persuaded to have one taken, not even for professional purposes. But Thorne has one — two, actually, captured by accident and without her knowledge. He will give copies to Archie. Archie traces the checks Elinor Denovo received every month to the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company. Wolfe imposes upon the good will of a director of Seaboard — Avery Ballou, who had paid Wolfe well for rescuing him from a predicament a year and a half before. Ballou soon tells him that the checks were drawn by Cyrus M. Jarrett, who was president of Seaboard and 54 years old when Amy was born. Jarrett has a daughter living in Europe, and a son, Eugene, age 43. Ballou doesn't like Jarrett — a lot of people don't, he says — and when Archie meets the old man, he knows why. Ballou arranges for Archie to have lunch with Bert McCray, a vice president at Seaboard who once had been Jarrett's protégé. McCray recognizes the photographs of Elinor Denovo, whose name was Carlotta Vaughn when they both worked for Cyrus M. Jarrett. Freelance detective Orrie Cather is sent to Washington, D.C., to check on Cyrus M. Jarrett. Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin try to turn up something, anything, about Carlotta Vaughn. Archie follows two promising leads that end in humiliation. Wolfe drafts a display ad to run in all of the New York papers, offering a $500 reward for information about the whereabouts of Carlotta Vaughn, alias Elinor Denovo, between April and October 1944. After placing the ads, Archie leaves to spend the weekend at Lily's place in the country. Some uninvited people drop by, but following custom there is only one other weekend houseguest. This weekend Lily has invited Amy Denovo, who makes the mistake of calling Archie by his first name in Lily's presence, after dinner on the terrace. The weekend is less than perfect, and Archie is annoyed by the presence of Floyd Vance, an obnoxious press agent. By 3 p.m. Thursday, few leads have been turned up by the newspaper ad. When Saul, Fred and Orrie call in, Archie will not be disappointed since he expects nothing. Wolfe has exceeded his quota of beer, and Archie has come back to the office with a slug of Irish whiskey. Sitting with his eyes closed, Wolfe declares that he has decided to assume that Amy's father killed her mother, since a three-month-old murder will be easier to solve than a 22-year-old mystery. They will begin by speaking to Raymond Thorne. During a long, rambling interview that extends into the wee hours, Archie gets something. After hearing that something, Wolfe goes to the kitchen for beer and brings Archie a glass of cognac. The next morning Archie tells Wolfe he'll brief Saul, Fred and Orrie during breakfast. "Only Saul," Wolfe says. "We won't risk it with Fred and Orrie." Archie arranges for Lily to play bodyguard to Amy, since it is now a certainty that Elinor Denovo was murdered and she may be next. Then Archie and Saul go to work.
13031668	/m/02z4136	White Boots	Noel Streatfeild	1951	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harriet Johnson has been ill and her doctor arranges for her to take up ice skating in order to build strength in her legs. When she gets to the rink Harriet meets Lalla Moore, a young skater who has been training since she was three years old; Lalla's parents were killed in a skating accident, and her Aunt Claudia is determined that Lalla will be the greatest figure skater in the world. Harriet and Lalla soon become friends and as Harriet is still not well enough for school, it is arranged that she will share Lalla's governess and her various dance and fencing lessons. Harriet soon shows herself to be a talented skater, and she starts to take, and pass, the same skating tests that Lalla does. Lalla, on the other hand, is much more of a performer than a figure skater and starts to have trouble with various figures she needs to learn for tests. Lalla becomes jealous of Harriet and tells her that if she takes and passes her next skating test, Lalla will tell her aunt that she does not want Harriet to have lessons with her any more. Distraught, Harriet pretends to once again be ill while she decides what to do. But when Lalla hears that Harriet is seriously ill, she faints and later explains how nervous, miserable and guilty she feels. Lalla and Harriet go for a holiday together with their families and they talk about their futures. Lalla's coach tells her that she will never be a good enough figure skater to succeed in competitions, but that she could be a fantastic show skater and performer; whereas Harriet has potential to be a great skater one day, as she is better at the figures required to do well. Both girls are thrilled with their 'plans' and the story closes with them as children, though it is implied that both are successful.
13039654	/m/02z49p9	A Gun for Dinosaur	L. Sprague de Camp			 The story takes the form of a first-person narrative by the protagonist, time-traveling hunter Reginald Rivers, told to Mr. Seligman, a prospective client of his time safari business; Seligman's contributions to the conversation are omitted, and must be inferred from those of Rivers. Rivers informs the client he is not big enough to hunt the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period, illustrating his point with an extended anecdote from a previous expedition, which forms the main portion of the tale. On the occasion in question, Rivers and his partner Chandra Aiyar conducted two other clients to the past. One of them, Courtney James, was a vain, arrogant and spoiled playboy; the other, August Holtzinger, was a small, timid man recently come into wealth (time safaris are not cheap). Before the journey, they test-fire some guns on the firing range to settle on weapons for each of them. Holtzinger's small size makes him incapable of effectively handling a heavy-caliber weapon (the recoil knocks him over) and, against his better judgment, Rivers lets Holtzinger travel on the safari with a lighter caliber weapon. James proves unmanageable, shooting at every creature in sight and spoiling Holtzinger's shots. Ultimately James' foolishness gets him in real trouble, when he inadvertently empties his rifle over a slumbering Tyrannosaurus, which consequently wakes and makes for him. Holtzinger defends James by shooting the dinosaur, but his gun is not of a heavy enough caliber to kill it, and it is only distracted—towards Holtzinger. Despite the best efforts of Rivers and Aiyar to save Holtzinger, the Tyrannosaurus snaps him up and makes off with him. A furious quarrel with James ensues, he and the guides each blaming the other for their companion's death. James tries to kill Rivers, but is knocked out by Aiyar. Afterwards he swears revenge. Later, after the expedition has returned to the present, James bribes Professor Prochaska, the scientist operating the time chamber, to send him back to the Cretaceous again—but at a point just prior to the emergence of the safari's earlier visit. His plan is to shoot Rivers the moment the latter originally came out of the time machine. Since that obviously had not happened, however, the space-time continuum avoids the paradox by spontaneously snapping James back to the present, the forces involved instantly killing him. Rivers then concludes his story, emphasizing Holtzinger's fate to make his point with Seligman.
13045388	/m/02z4gkn	Beyond Einstein				 Beyond Einstein is a book that tries to explain the basics of superstring theory. Michio Kaku analyzes the history of theoretical physics and the struggle to unite a unified field theory. He explained that the superstring theory might be the only theory that can unite quantum mechanics and general relativity in one theory. This book avoids complex mathematics and it is useful for both professional physicists and general readers who have more than a passing curiosity in physics.
13047106	/m/02z4jmg	The Furies	John Jakes	1976	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins in March 1836, during the Battle of the Alamo, twenty-two years after the event depicted at the end of The Seekers, book three of the series. Amanda Kent, daughter of Gilbert Kent and Harriet Lebow, was among the women and children who survived the ensuing massacre. After the massacre, she was taken before Santa Anna, who led the Mexican forces against the Texans, and he was willing to grant her clemency, an offer she declined, putting her life in danger. She was saved by Major Luis Cordoba, one of Santa Anna’s officers, who did not fully support him. Cordoba put Amanda to work as his servant and they eventually fell in love. She remained a camp follower with the Mexican army until April 21, when she witnessed the Battle of San Jacinto, during which Cordoba was killed. Amanda gave birth to his son in January 1837, and named him Louis in his honor. After the Texas rebellion, Amanda left Texas and settled in San Francisco, which at the time was called Yerba Buena. There she founded a small, but profitable tavern. She fell in love with Barton McGill, a sea captain, who made regular trips from California to New York, and through him she discovered that a publishing firm called Kent and Son still operated. The firm was once owned by her father, but had been lost in a game of craps by her stepfather to Hamilton Stovall. McGill told her that Stovall still owned it and from that moment on, Amanda became obsessed with buying it back from him. The California Gold Rush, in part, provided her the means. When the Gold Rush began, Amanda expanded her tavern into a hotel and because so many came seeking gold, the establishment made her a great deal of money. Jared Kent, Amanda’s cousin, was one of many men who came to California in search of gold. With two partners he found a profitable gold claim. Amanda had not seen her cousin in thirty-four years, but they were unexpectedly reunited for a brief time. Men who were opposed to American immigrants attempted to kill her because she employed foreigners to work in her establishment. They missed Amanda and killed Jared instead. Amanda replaced Jared as the third partner to his gold claim and with that financial backing, she returned to Boston to reclaim the Kent and Son publishing firm. On returning, she discovered that, unbeknownst to her mother, her father had invested in a textile company late in his life. This investment made her a millionaire and, with this money, she attempted to buy Kent and Son. Amanda used her married name, de la Gura, because of Stovall’s rivalry with the Kent family, but when she incautiously made it known that she wanted to publish more liberal leaning literature Stovall rescinded the offer. This did not deter her from her goal. She proceeded to buy stocks in Kent and Son in an attempt to become the majority shareholder. Jared had had one son, Jephtha. He would have preferred his son to stay with him in the west, but Jephtha moved to Lexington, Virginia and became a Methodist minister. Though he lived in a southern state, Jephtha became morally opposed to slavery and he became a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He mailed a female slave belonging to his father-in-law in a wooden box to Amanda in New York, where she was now living, and she inadvertently also became a conductor. While she was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act, she had previously believed it should be obeyed simply because it was the law of the land, but she aided her cousin. When Jephtha’s father-in-law came to Amanda’s house in search of his slave, Amanda kept her hidden. Then, after he left, she sneaked the runaway out of her house disguised as another woman, who was visiting Amanda. This event was published in the newspapers and it inadvertently revealed Amanda as Jephtha’s cousin. When Stovall read the article, he blocked Amanda from ever gaining a majority of the stocks in Kent and Son, then called on her and threatened to ruin her life and the life of her son. During their conversation, an Irish gang vandalized Amanda’s home (in retaliation for Louis' raping an Irish maid in Amanda's employ). As Stovall fled, he knocked Louis unconscious with his cane. Thinking her son was dead, she shot Stovall to death, immediately after which one of the gang members shot Amanda. She lived seventeen days afterwards, long enough to discover that Stovall’s heirs were willing to sell Kent and Son to the Kent family.
13048127	/m/02z4kh0	Flinx Transcendent	Alan Dean Foster	2009-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After his realization that civilization, both humanx and otherwise, is worth saving, Flinx sets out to find the ancient weapons platform built by the long extinct Tar-Aiym race to use against the Great Evil approaching the Commonwealth.
13049308	/m/02z4lxf	Tree of Smoke	Denis Johnson	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Johnson's novel revolves around the associations and interactions with Francis X. Sands, a retired air force colonel and war hero, now a CIA official in Southeast Asia. The story is told primarily from the point of view of his nephew, William "Skip" Sands; Infantry Private James Houston and his brother Bill; and Kathy Jones, a Canadian NGO worker. The plot also includes minor but important characters Major Eddie Algonado, a Filipino fighter pilot; Nguyen Hao and his nephew Minh who work for Colonel Sands; Trung Than, Nguyen Hao's Vietcong friend turned double agent; Sargent Jimmy Storm, a henchman of the Colonel; and a German assassin named Dietrich Fest.
13060654	/m/02z4_4g	A Lion Among Men	Gregory Maguire	2008-10-14	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel"}	 The story opens with an impending battle between the Munchkinlanders and the Emerald City (EC) troops. In the middle of the hotbed's Mauntery, the center that's been the epicenter for Elphaba, Yackle, Liir, and Candle. Yackle still lives despite losing her eyesight, and longs for death. At her request, the Maunts bury her in their crypt alive with only a few candles and some wine. She's eventually forgotten, but not by all. Elsewhere, a young woman wanders the Land of Oz until her path crosses "the dwarf", whom she calls Mr. Boss, the caretaker of the Clock of the Time Dragon. The Clock has awakened... Back at the Mauntery, Brrr, the Cowardly Lion, and his pet, a Glass Cat that he has nicknamed Shadowpuppet, arrive looking for Yackle. The maunts claim she's deceased but Yackle rises from the crypt, still alive. Yackle and Brrr begin a game of wits - Brrr demands information on Madame Morrible and in exchange he'll tell Yackle about himself. Brrr doesn't remember his parents or where he's from. He grew up by himself in the Great Gillikin Forest, learning language from the hunters that travel through his forest. One day he meets a soldier, Jemmsy, who's caught in his own hunting trap that was supposed to catch Animals. He implores Brrr to go to Tenniken and get help. Instead, out of fear and the naive belief that since this is the first person he's conversed with, then Jemmsy's a friend and can't be abandoned, Brrr stays with Jemmsy until he dies, claiming the books that lie beside him and taking Jemmsy's medal for courage to give to Jemmsy's relatives. Thus begins the Lion's unhappy personage as a coward. After Jemmsy dies, Brrr goes out to find Tenniken. Not long after he sets out, Brrr finds a terrified Bear Cub. The Bear soon reveals that his name's Cubbins, and takes Brrr to his family. They're the Northern Bears under rule by Queen Ursaless. She tells Brrr that to get to Tenniken, he must travel through the Cloud Swamp, a wet land inhabited by the Ozmists (ghost-like beings). Brrr and Cubbins have an "all but fatal" interview with the Ozmists. Brrr soon leaves Cubbins with the pile of books as he leaves the Great Gillikin Forest for the first time. When Brrr first ventures out of the forest, he finds out he isn't in Tenniken at all, but Traum, a market town east of Tenniken. Brrr soon finds himself involved in a massacre of Glikkun trolls. Not knowing what to do, Brrr tells some trolls to play dead, as he thinks that it's the only way to bypass the slaughter, but they take his advice too late and become captured. The people of Traum celebrate the Lion for refusing to help their enemies, the Glikkuns, and Brrr safely gets out of Traum by train. While on the train, however, Brrr decides that his refusal to help the Glikkuns is really a badge of shame, and knowing that in Tenniken his reputation will precede him, he ultimately can't bring himself to go there, instead arriving in the University town of Shiz. Brrr sets himself up in an apartment, and spends time in and around Shiz. The Lion soon finds a poem dedicated to humiliating him. Feeling embarrassed, Brrr packs up and leaves into the wilderness. Brrr wanders around the woods aimlessly for a while, until he finds a pride of Lions trying to make it in the forest. Brrr lives with the Lions for several years. But some of the Lions mock him, prompting him to leave... again. The next group that Brrr encounters is the Ghullim, a streak of Ivory Tigers in Wend Fallows. He'd happily pass right through their tribe without stopping, but they force him to stay with them for a while, if only to assess his status as a threat. While there, he befriends and ultimately falls in love with Muhlama H'aekeem, princess and heir to the Chieftaincy of the Ghullim. But when they're discovered mating by Ivory Tiger scouts, her father Chief Uyodor H'aekeem announces that he suspects him of attempting to thwart his regime due to Muhlama being seriously wounded from the lovemaking, once again prompting him to leave, before they have his head on a trophy background. Within the following weeks, Brrr meets a strange group of travelers. One a little girl named Dorothy, one a Scarecrow and the other was Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman. Brrr decides to go with them to meet the Wizard of Oz. They soon find themselves on a quest to kill Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. But Dorothy wants to reason with her instead. Once at Kiamo Ko, where Elphaba lives, she locks the Lion in a room with Liir while she and Dorothy have at it. They soon break out in time for Elphaba to be vanquished. The five go back to the Wizard and get their rewards. All but Brrr got what they wanted (Brrr getting a terribly manufactured Badge of Courage, even more so than Jemmsy's. Liir gets nothing for he was left outside.) Brrr promises Dorothy that he'll protect and look after Liir, but Liir vanishes in the streets and crowds of the Emerald City. Brrr then goes off on his own path, like before. The Lion has hit the outback again. With the other members of Dorothy's party laughing it up and having their own affairs, Brrr soon meets two old bachelors; Mister Mikko, an Ape, and Professor Lenx, a Boar of some kind. The three Animals discuss current events and past events. They soon rile Brrr up to retrieve money from the banks of Oz for them. The Lion soon becomes a broker for Animals, retrieving their money that is held in the banks since before they were forced to leave Oz. The forces of Oz soon discover that Brrr is bringing money into the Free State of Munchkinland and try him for being a Collaborationist. He strikes a plea and is assigned to go find the whereabouts of the Grimmerie, which leads him to his interview with Yackle. This recaps the first part of the book.
13062768	/m/02z51kb	Il castello di Eymerich	Valerio Evangelisti	2001	{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot of the book is divided into three threads: Takes place in Montiel in Castile, Spain, in 1369, during the civil war between king Peter of Castile and pretender Henry of Trastamara. Peter of Castile is defending Montiel, besieged by the pretender's forces, which consist mostly of mercenaries commanded by a historical figure Bertrand du Guesclin. Inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich is called in to investigate the use of black magic by the besiegers and the use of cabal by the defenders. This thread takes place prior to the main one. It depicts a group of Dominicans sent by the Pope to the Castle of Montiel in a mission to use demonology against cabalistic magic . Takes place during World War II in a concentration camp Dora, where Sturmbannführer SS Viktor von Ingolstadt is conducting an experiment to revive a dead body to support his quasi-scientific research concerning electricity.
13062977	/m/02z51v8	The Twenty-Second Day	Muhammad Aladdin	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A young man, a pianist who hates piano, goes into a stormy relationship with a divorced woman who's older than he is for ten years. This woman, a painter and artistic trainer for children, was his first choice in 26 years of life as a slave for his father's wishes, or maybe it's the cosmic wishes of fate itself, as he might feel as a crushed young man who wished to be anything but being what he is. He received a total shock when the woman dumped him at last, did an abortion for his baby, and tells him that they can't live up the relation they have, because it goes to be crushed, sooner or later. in the final scene, we see the painter watches the TV, we could understand he's witnessing the US forces entering Baghdad, then he begin to prepare his suitcase, which gives us a hint he's going to leave the country.
13065312	/m/02z55c9	What I Was	Meg Rosoff	2007-08-30	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is framed as the reminiscence of an old man recalling the year he discovered love. It is written as a first-person narrative. The novel opens with the protagonist, Hilary, a sixteen-year-old boy arriving at a grim East Anglian boarding school in 1962 after being twice expelled from previous institutions. He has no interest in study, no aptitude for sports and a great dislike of both pupils and teachers. He compares the school to a prison and finds life there unbearable. While slacking on a school cross-country run, he meets Finn, who lives alone in a beachside shack and sustains himself by fishing and working at the market. Hilary thinks Finn has an ideal life, and admires and envies him. He begins to visit the silent, enigmatic boy, and they are able to spend some afternoons together. He lies to his parents and the school so that he can stay at the shack during the Easter holidays. On one visit to Finn, Hilary realizes his friend is ill, and suspects he may have given the other boy glandular fever, which had spread through the school several weeks before. He tries to look after Finn himself but after a while becomes frightened and calls the emergency services. Finn runs away from the shack but Hilary later finds him in hospital. Both schoolboys and adults misunderstand the innocent nature of their friendship, particularly when it is discovered that Finn is only fourteen, two years younger than Hilary, and is actually a girl. He leaves the school and does not see Finn again for many years. Eventually he returns to the coast, stays in Finn's by then abandoned shack, and realizes his dream of "becoming" Finn.
13066743	/m/02z56w2	Death of a Dude	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Archie Goodwin is part of a house party at Lily Rowan's vacation home in Montana when a murder brings Nero Wolfe from New York to take a hand.
13066794	/m/02z56xt	A Family Affair	Rex Stout		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A waiter at Rusterman's Restaurant turns up at Wolfe's front door late one night, claiming that a man is going to kill him. Shortly after Archie puts him in one of the spare bedrooms, the waiter dies when a bomb planted in his coat pocket explodes. Wolfe, outraged at the thought of such a violent act taking place in his own house, resolves to find the murderer without sharing any information with Inspector Cramer. Soon Wolfe and Archie find themselves investigating two additional murders: the earlier killing of a customer at Rusterman's, and the subsequent death of the waiter's daughter. For much of the story, Stout leads the reader to believe that the central murder mystery is related to the Watergate scandal. Ultimately, Wolfe discovers that the killer is one of his closest associates, a character who had been appearing in Nero Wolfe mysteries for over forty years. A Family Affair is an unusual Nero Wolfe mystery in that Archie reveals his (correct) opinion of the killer's identity well before Wolfe does so in the closing chapters.
13066891	/m/0glrh3x	The Flower Drum Song				 Lee's novel centers on Wang Chi-yang, a 63-year-old man who fled China to avoid the communists. The wealthy refugee lives in a house in Chinatown with his two sons. His sister-in-law, Madam Tang, who takes citizenship classes, is a regular visitor and urges Wang to adopt Western ways. While his sons and sister-in-law are integrating into American culture, Wang stubbornly resists assimilation and speaks only two words of English, "Yes" and "No". Wang also has a severe cough, which he does not wish to have cured, feeling that it gives him authority in his household. Wang's elder son, Wang Ta, woos Linda Tung, but on learning that she has many men in her life, drops her; he later learns she is a nightclub dancer. Linda's friend, seamstress Helen Chao, who has been unable to find a man despite the shortage of eligible women in Chinatown, gets Ta drunk and seduces him. On awakening in her bed, he agrees to an affair, but eventually abandons her, and she commits suicide. Impatient at Ta's inability to find a wife, Wang arranges for a picture bride for his son. However, before the picture bride arrives, Ta meets a young woman, May Li, who with her father has recently come to San Francisco. The two support themselves by singing depressing flower drum songs on the street. Ta invites the two into the Wang household, with his father's approval, and he and May Li fall in love. He vows to marry her after she is falsely accused by the household servants of stealing a clock, though his father forbids it. Wang struggles to understand the conflicts that have torn his household apart; his hostility toward assimilation is isolating him from his family. In the end, taking his son's advice, Wang decides not to go to the herbalist to seek a remedy for his cough, but walks to a Chinese-run Western clinic, symbolizing that he is beginning to accept American culture.
13070311	/m/02z5c0r	Morality Play	Barry Unsworth	1995	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book is set in Medieval England sometime near the end of the 14th century and the events described in the book take place in an unnamed village in Northern England (north of the Humber). A priest fleeing from his diocese joins up with a group of traveling players. The players are traveling toward their liege lord's castle where they are expected to play at Christmas but, short of money, they decide to stage their plays at a village en-route. When a morality play from their usual repertoire fails to earn them enough money, Martin, the leader of the group convinces them to stage 'the play of Thomas Wells', a play based on the story of the murder of a young boy from the village. The murderer has already been found, a young woman from the village, and the play seems simple enough, however they soon find that the facts don't fit. The line between the play and reality blurs and, line-by-line, they arrive at the truth about the murder.
13071925	/m/02z5dnq	Man Crazy	Joyce Carol Oates		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Man Crazy follows the early life of Ingrid Boone, from early childhood to adulthood. But instead of following the usual journey of a coming of age story, where the character and personality of the central character are developed and formed, her character and personality become weaker, almost to the point of annihilation. At the beginning of the novel her father Luke, a hot tempered Vietnam veteran, is already absent and seemingly hiding out after some unspecified trouble with the law. Her beautiful mother, Chloe Boone drifts from place to place with Ingrid, having many affairs with many men. Ingrid seems neglected by her mother who seems unable to provide the love and attention that her daughter so desperately needs. As Ingrid hits adolescence she begins to compulsively scratch her face and body inflicting sores upon herself. This is obviously a sign of her inner anxiety and pain. During her high school years she is known as "Doll Girl" as she sleeps around and openly gives herself to much of the school's male population. She is incredibly lonely and doesn't have any real friends. She does excel at English though and her poetic ability is recognised by her English teacher who gives her an award and she is asked to read one of her poems for the school's closing/graduation ceremony. The prospect of being ridiculed by her peers and her belief that the poem is no good, brought on by her low self esteem, causes her to appear in front of the school, her face bloody from scratching, and reading not her own, but another poets work. After this she leaves home and eventually gets involved with the Enoch Skaggs, a brutal, charismatic leader of the motorcycle gang/cult, Satan's Children. At this point her name has changed to 'Dog Girl', for her blind devotion and awe she feels and displays for her cruel master. She undergoes one brutal act after another, from gang rape, physical mutilation, to being locked in a cellar for days and watching a sacrificial killing. Only through luck is she rescued when her death seemed almost certain, the police burst onto the scene and justice is served. After much needed counselling she puts her life back together and forms a partnership with her psychiatrist.
13072229	/m/026b48l	Blart: The Boy Who Didn't Want to Save the World	Dominic Barker	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Blart is a young and quite unattractive boy, who lives on a small pig farm with his grandfather. All he cares about is himself and pigs. One day, Capablanca, a very proud and powerful wizard, arrives on Blart's grandfather's doorstep. He tells Blart that he is destined to save the world, by destroying the great Zoltab. But, selfishly, Blart refuses. But, by force, Blart is swept up from his home and sent on a perilous quest around the land, fighting the forces of evil. He meets many strange characters, some even stranger than him! And it all leads up to one final confrontation with the evil Zoltab and his most powerful minions...
13074130	/m/02z5hhv	Athabasca	Alistair MacLean	1980	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When the operations manager of an oil company operating in Prudhoe Bay in Alaska receives a mysterious anonymous threat of sabotage, his superiors call in Jim Brady Enterprises, a firm of oilfield specialists. Dermott and Mackenzie, tough ex-field managers and now anti-sabotage specialists, arrive, but initial investigations get them nowhere. Then the operations manager is murdered and one of the pump stations in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline is damaged, with further loss of life. Jim Brady himself arrives to direct operations but to no avail. Then the company's operations at the Athabasca Oil Sands in Canada are disrupted and Dermott is nearly killed. Despite assistance by the Canadian police and FBI, suspicions fall on many employees, but nothing can be proved. As bodies and equipment damage mount up, Brady and his two investigators play a hunch and finally expose the men they believe to be responsible. But even they are not the main instigators of the events, as the final chapter of the novel reveals. de:Die Hölle von Athabasca nl:Athabasca (boek)
13074809	/m/02z5jb_	The Wreck of the Zanzibar	Michael Morpurgo	1995	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Taken from the book's blurb, "Life on the Scilly Isles in 1907 is bleak and full of hardship. Laura's twin brother, Billy, disappears, and then a storm devastates everything. It seems there's little hope... that is until the Zanzibar is wrecked on the island's rocks and everything changes." The book is presented as a diary written by a young girl on a small island off the coast of Cornwall, where the Atlantic meets the English Channel. The area is subjected to severe storms, one of which destroys the island's buildings and kills the livestock; many families are left hungry and plan to leave the island. However, the residents rescue the crew of the ship Zanzibar when it runs aground, and this is the catalyst that brings new life to the island. A major subplot is the sea turtle that the girl (Laura) nurses back to health and returns to the sea.In the end Michael closes the diary and is sad but,he decides to tell everybody about the diary(The Wreck Of The Zanzibar) and in the end the girl says to Zanzibar "Come on Marzipan" and Michael says "His name is Zanzibar" and she says "That is what I said". simple:The Wreck of the Zanzibar
13074825	/m/02z5jcp	The Butterfly Lion	Michael Morpurgo		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A young boy runs away from a boarding school in Wiltshire. He meets an old woman (Millie), who tells him the story of Bertie and the butterfly lion. When living in Africa, Bertie rescued a white lion cub, but was forced to part with it when he went to boarding school and the lion was sold to a circus. Bertie promises to find the lion one day. At boarding school, he sneaks away and befriends the young Millie. Later, when fighting in France in the First World War, Bertie is reunited with the lion. He marries Millie and brings the lion back to England, where they live happily for many years. When the lion died, Bertie and Millie carved a lion out of the chalk in the hillside in memorial, before Bertie died himself. After being told the story, Michael returns to school. He finds a plaque commemorating Bertie's heroic acts in the war, and learns from a teacher that Millie died only a few months after Bertie. Michael goes back to the house, finding it deserted. He hears Millie's voice asking him to look after the chalk lion.
13075026	/m/02z5jj4	War Horse	Michael Morpurgo	1982		 Joey is a young horse who has come to love Ted and Rose Narracott's son Albert and their horse Old Zoey. At the outbreak of World War I, Joey is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. His rider Captain Nicholls is killed while riding Joey. The horse is soon caught up in the war; watching death, disease and fate, taking him on an extraordinary odyssey, serving on both sides before finding himself alone in no man's land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist in the British Army, he embarks on a dangerous mission to find the horse and bring him home to Devon, England.
13075054	/m/02z5jjv	Waiting for Anya	Michael Morpurgo	1990	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the French Lescun during the Second World War, Jo Lalande is a young shepherd who is enjoying his childhood, but when his father goes to fight in the war, Jo has to become the man of the house. After an incident with a bear, Jo meets a mysterious man in the forest. He follows the man to his home and learns his secret - he is a Jew named Benjamin that is responsible for smuggling Jewish children across the border into Spain, and safety, with the help of his mother-in-law (Widow Horcada). Jo starts helping them, and proving that he is one person who can be trusted. When German soldiers move into town, things becomes much more difficult. Although most of the town's inhabitants come to accept the German occupation, the task of getting the Jewish children across the border becomes more dangerous. Jo, his grandfather[Henri], Benjamin and Widow Horcada devise a plan to get the children across. The plan requires the whole town help the children escape, and relies on the German soldiers not noticing what is happening. But if they are caught, their lives will not be worth living... There is only one question left un answered. Where is Anya?
13078240	/m/02z5msw	Misquoting Jesus	Bart D. Ehrman	2005	{"/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 Ehrman recounts his personal experience with the study of the Bible and textual criticism. He summarizes the history of textual criticism, from the works of Desiderius Erasmus to the present. The book describes an early Christian environment in which the books that would later compose the New Testament were copied by hand, mostly by Christian amateurs. Ehrman concludes that various early scribes altered the New Testament texts in order to deemphasize the role of women in the early church, to unify and harmonize the different portrayals of Jesus in the four gospels, and to oppose certain heresies (such as Adoptionism). Ehrman contends that certain widely held Christian beliefs, such about the divinity of Jesus, are associated not with the original words of scripture but with these later alterations.
13082562	/m/02z5w0p	Pool of Twilight	Jim Ward	1993	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The conclusion of the Pool series. Kern, son of Shal and Tarl, and Daile, daughter of Ren search for the missing Warhammer of Tyr, stolen by the god Bane at the end of the previous novel.
13086811	/m/02z5_gv	An History of the Corruptions of Christianity				 Priestley's major argument in the Institutes is that the only revealed religious truths that can be accepted are those that also conform to the truth of the natural world. Because his views of religion were deeply tied to his understanding of nature, the text's theism rests on the argument from design. Many of Priestley's arguments descended from 18th-century deism and comparative religion. The Institutes shocked and appalled many readers, primarily because it challenged basic Christian orthodoxies, such as the divinity of Christ and the miracle of the Virgin Birth. Priestley wanted to return Christianity to its "primitive" or "pure" form by eliminating the "corruptions" which had accumulated over the centuries. The fourth part of the Institutes, An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, became so long that he was forced to issue it separately. Priestley believed that the Corruptions was "the most valuable" work he ever published. Schofield, Priestley's major modern biographer, describes the work as "derivative, disorganized, wordy, and repetitive, detailed, exhaustive, and devastatingly argued." The text addresses issues from the divinity of Christ to the proper form for the Lord's Supper. Thomas Jefferson would later write of the profound effect that Corruptions had on him: "I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and Early Opinions of Jesus, over and over again; and I rest on them . . . as the basis of my own faith. These writings have never been answered." Although a few readers such as Jefferson approved of the work, it was generally harshly reviewed because of its extreme theological positions, particularly its rejection of the Trinity.
13091612	/m/02z647h	The Last of the Jedi: Against the Empire	Judy Blundell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Power grows, rebels face a choice: give in... or fight. Some form pockets of resistance on battleground planets . Some go undercover, trying to fight the Empire from the inside, and others watch and wait. For Ferus Olin, hatred for the Empire is personal. The things that have been closest to him have been destroyed. The order he once belonged to has been decimated. And the future isn't looking much brighter... Unless a true rebellion can be born. Ferus Olin is so decimated by Roan's death that the only thing that keeps him going is the fact that the Emperor has promised to teach him in the ways of the dark side. He believes that this will make him strong enough to kill Darth Vader. He only lives for Revenge. The Emperor has also put him in charge of finding possible Force adepts. During their last mission, in which Roan was killed Amie Antin was captured and this has left Wil, the new leader of the eleven heartbroken. Ferus arranges a plan to have her taken back before she is transferred off planet. He calls his own strike force of Ry-Gaul and Solace formerly known as Fy-Tor-Ana. Clive Flax is also on the team. Ferus goes through lesson one which Palpatine does not attend. He tells him he does not need a lightsaber; only to let his anger flow through him instead of accepting it and releasing it like a Jedi would. He destroys the room much like Vader did after he learned of Padme's fate. Vader meets with the evil scientist Jenna Zan-Arbor because he has learned that she has found a way to erase memory. She can erase certain memories and Vader wants the ones of Padme and Obi-Wan erased. She was always greedy and she accepts Vaders High price. Trevor Flume has enlisted in the Naval academy that Lune was taken to. Lune is a Force adept and naturally landed in his advanced class. Trevor is there to get him out, but during their escape they are caught and Lune is taken to his dad, Bog Divinian. Bog offers Lune to be used as a test subject for Zan-Abor's experiments, because he was to get in good with the Emperor and he also wants Lunes memories of his mother, Astri Oddo, erased. The instructor Maggis, helps Trevor escape because he is sick of the Empire. They ultimately save Ferus and Lune at the medical facility. Ferus was promoted to Head inquisitor and was sent to work over Hydra, the former head after Ferus took Malorum out. He gets a look at the list of possible Force adepts. He finds promising subjects and ignores the report about the little girl on Alderaan. This is probably Leia, but Ferus does not know it. Ferus first had to see Roan's family and tell them of his death. Contrary to his belief they did not blame him, but took him into consideration as well. Overtaken by grief, Ferus leaves the room and is met by Roan's first cousin. He learns that she turned down a job at a large medical facility. He asks her to take the job because he believes he can get information on Vader's identity. He believes this is the key to defeating him. She takes the job and gets him in. This may be the same facility that Vader was created at, because there was said to be a terrible scream at the end of the Clone Wars. Ferus lets his anger get to him and almost turns his back on Lune! He used the Force to distract Zan Arbor and escapes with the boy. He returns him to his mother back on Coruscant. Amie was successfully rescued, but Flame was injured in the process. Clive thinks hes seen her before and does not trust her. He ventures to her homeworld to find some answers but before he can get them, his contact was killed. He asks Astri to help him, and she accepts the distraction. Ferus makes a contact with Obi-Wan by which he is instructed to file a report dismissing the importance of the little girl on Alderaan. He does not want to waste his time because, again, he does not understand and Obi-Wan won't tell him. And in order to file the report he has to go to Alderaan and pretend to investigate. But he feels the pain in Obi-Wan's heart and decides to leave immediately. es:Against the Empire
13092777	/m/02z65n5	Gideon Planish				 Gideon Planish (1943) takes aim at less-than-honorable fundraising organizations. In a similar manner of his other works, the reader follows the self-titled character through his life and numerous (but slightly related) professions dealing with professional "organizationality" which is better known as the for-profit industry of pompous fundraising run by shady "philanthropists" running a wide variety of guilds, committees, foundations, leagues and councils for selfish and greedy purposes. The focus of the book begins with a young Gideon demonstrating a knack for public speaking, and these skills follow him through his self-motivated and selfish undergraduate years at Adelbert College. The book then picks up an older but still vacuous Gideon, now a Professor of Rhetoric at Kinnikinick College, when he finally meets the girl of his dreams; young coed Peony Jackson of Faribault, Minnesota. Motivated by vague dreams of importance, including a dream of becoming a U.S. senator, Gideon begins his campaign for social ascension by moving from one job to another with the hopes of meeting "like-minded thinkers" with vague goals and even more flexible morals when it came to raising money for a wide variety of causes. Over the years, Gideon's path to easy money with no accountability leads him to: * The Dean of Kinnikinick College where he begins to use this role as a springboard of notoriety by banishing books (Garfield County Censorship Board) and join do-nothing boards (including the Sympathizers with the Pacifistic Purposes of the New Democratic Turkey) to get his name out in the marketplace of opportunity. * Editor of Rural Adult Education publication * Itinerant Lecturer (between jobs) reusing his inventory of high style/low content messages. * Managing Secretary of the Heskett Rural School Foundation * Administration of the Association to Promote Eskimo Culture * Ghostwriter of the autobiography of William T. Knife, creator of Okey-Dokey, a beverage juiced with maximum caffeine for the masses * Assistant General Manager of the Citizen's Conference on Constituational Crisises in the Commonwealth (Cizcon) * Director General of "Every Man a Priest Fraternity" office * Directive Secretary of the Dynamos of Democratic Direction At 50 years old, when fatigued with the never-ending demands of generating self-importance combined with his realization that he lacked substance and true gravitas, Gideon has an opportunity to return to Kinnikinick College as its next President and allow him to finally begin to achieve something valid. Through a series of realizations by both himself and Peony, he remains in New York and daily regets their decision.
13093908	/m/02z6718	Memoirs of an Infantry Officer	Siegfried Sassoon		{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 Sassoon's account of his experiences in the trenches during World War I, between the spring of 1916 and the summer of 1917, creates a picture of a physically brave but self-effacing and highly insecure individual. The narrative moves from the trenches to the Fourth Army School, to Morlancourt and a raid, then to and through the Somme. The narrator, George Sherston, is wounded when a bullet passes through his lung after he incautiously sticks his head over the parapet at the battle of Arras in 1917. He is sent home to convalesce, and while there arranges to have lunch with the editor of an anti-war newspaper, the Unconservative Weekly. He determines to speak out against the war, though this contravenes military regulations and could result in his execution. The book finishes as George Sherston prepares to attend 'Slateford War Hospital' (Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh) after a medical board had decided he was suffering from shell-shock.http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0571203183
13094203	/m/02z67cy	Bloodstained Oz	Christopher Golden	2006	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 1930s dust bowl Kansas natives and an alternate version of the Wonderful Land of Oz collide during a huge dust storm. The Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion may or may not help them on this adventure because the other inhabitants of Oz include vampire flying monkeys, emerald eyed demonic creatures, and other horrors beyond imagination. Down home farm girl Gayle Franklin and her family, escaped convict Hank Burnside, and Roma gypsies Elisa and Stefan along with their infant son Jeremiah, all find themselves face to face with the unbelievable terrors from Oz. The creatures have taken over Oz and now they are threatening to take over Earth too.
13094963	/m/02z68kr	The Surgeon	Tess Gerritsen		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A terrifying new serial killer begins stalking the streets of Boston, using his vast medical knowledge to systematically torture and kill vulnerable women, a modus operandi which has earned him the nickname "the Surgeon". As Jane Rizzoli, accompanied by detective Thomas Moore, works the case, she comes across trauma doctor Catherine Cordell, who almost died in the same fashion at the hands of another psychopath several years before, but killed him before he could kill her. Rizzoli soon establishes a connection between the two cases, concluding that she may be on the trail of a deranged copycat. The story opens up with the death of Elena Ortiz at the hands of the Surgeon, and Thomas Moore is sent to investigate. The murder is tied to another murder by the Surgeon, Diana Sterling, a year previous. Rizzoli and Moore note that both had no contact or connection whatsoever, and are perplexed by these two murders. Meanwhile, the Surgeon begins targeting his third victim, Nina Peyton, while Cordell continues to save lives, starting with Herman Gwadowski.
13097186	/m/02z6c4l	King of Ayodhya	Ashok Banker	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 Directly following the events of Bridge of Rama, after Hanuman's destruction of the new Lanka, Ravana is shown overseeing the apparent total destruction of his realm. Fuming, he resolves to be craftier. Sita taunts him, telling him that he will fail against the odds which have been pitted against him. Ravana retorts by claiming that what Hanuman destroyed was little more than the surface level of Lanka, underneath which the ancient, dark realm slumbers, waiting to be awoken. Using an Upanishadic chant, he begins the birth of millions of new rakshasas as part of his great army. To Sita's horror, he is able to command Varuna, Deva of the Ocean, and force him to cause a tidal wave powerful enough to decimate Rama's army. Rama, Lakshman, and the rest of the army anxiously await Hanuman's return. Upon his return, Hanuman expresses his disappointment that he was unable to bring back Sita, but Rama, overjoyed at the his return and awed by his deeds, tells him that he is worth more to him than ever. The bridge-building is renewed with intense vigour and Hanuman joins in the effort, speeding up the process considerably. Hanuman soon spots an oncoming tidal wave heading towards them. In horror, he warns the vanar army to run back, and expands himself to a size in order to block the wave. Unfortunately, it is not enough, and the tidal wave hits Rama, Lakshmana, and the vanar and bear armies with shattering force. Nearly a tenth of the force is destroyed. Rama, in considerable pain and fury, roars at the sea after witnessing the destruction and is once again able to recall the Bow of Vishnu and the Arrow of Shiva using his reawakened, latent Brahman Shakti. He threatens to wipe out the ocean and all life in it, and fires a warning shot into the ocean, tormenting the creatures and causing the world under the water to writhe in agony. Varuna appears out of the ocean in complete submission, pleading for mercy, but Rama is unrelenting through his rage at the unfair loss of so many lives. Varuna promises Rama that he will never again serve Ravana and vows to remake the bridge using long platoons of sperm whales in order for the army to cross over. Rama is slightly pacified and agrees. Lakshmana watches in total horror and confronts Rama about why Rama did not use his acquired Shakti to spare them fourteen years of war. Rama states that his Shakti was returned with a simple caveat - to only use it when dharma is violated. If he used the Shakti at any other time, his power would become illegitimate. Lakshman only reluctantly agrees. Back in Lanka, Vibhishan and Mandodhari are tending to the rakshasas left in distress at the end of Hanuman's path of destruction. When Vibhishan once again pleads with Mandodhari to release Sita, he is banished from the kingdom by royal decree, and he resolves to join Rama in an effort to save Lanka. Ravana is surprisingly unmoved by this, stating that he wishes his brother would "realize his full potential". Rama and his army meanwhile complete the crossing of the bridge, meeting Vibhishan en route. He joins them with Hanuman's support and tells them that Ravana had secretly been building Lanka for the express purpose of a siege after his awakening. Upon their arrival, they are surprised to find a lush environment - but Ravana treacherously uses Brahman Shakti from afar to raise walls capable of blocking any assault and impervious to all siege machines. The army is intentionally walled into a section of Lanka accessible through only one gate. The assault kills scores of bears and vanars. Hurt but not shaken, Rama, Lakshmana and Jambavan begin to formulate their strategy against the vast armies of Ravana. They intentionally feed false information to rakshasa-vanar hybrid spies in order to deceive Ravana's main general, Vajradanta. On the first day of assault, two fields of battle are formed - the "front line" of vanars and hidden regiments of bears and vanars in forests and under the ground. The kumbha-rakshasa elite warriors plow through the front line of Sugreeva's vanar army but to their chagrin find themselves evenly matched against sheer numbers and ingenious vanar tactics. Sugreeva realizes throughout the battle that he is growing stronger and more energetic, not weaker. Meanwhile, the Lady of the Mandara-vanars, Mandara-devi, and her sons Mainda and Dvivida, mount an assault on a kumbha regiment that has attacked them through the forests and trees. In single combat she emasculates and slaughters the kumbha general, although being killed herself in the process. In a rage, both lines charge each other but the rakshasas, demoralized by the loss of their general, are mowed down. On another plain of battle, the Jatarupas, another tribe of vanars, face off against sorcerously bred lizard-rakshasas who have a hive mindset able to calculate strategies within mere seconds. The Jatarupas are unable to hold off the attack and the entire tribe is destroyed. However, in the nick of time, a bear regiment buried under the ground rises up, taking the lizard-rakshasas by surprise, and completely decimating them. Rama's forces are victorious against the hordes, despite sustaining significant losses. However, they soon realize that Ravana has been keeping an ace up his sleeve which he unleashes in the form of incredibly powerful asura shakti. A regiment of flying rakshasas attack them, even severely injuring Hanuman who nevertheless fends them off. But the most evil of his designs comes into play as he reanimates the dead on both sides, creating an unliving army which is indestructible. Lakshmana pleads with Rama to fight this evil power and he finally relents, raising the Bow of Vishnu and unleashing an arrow which dispels the asura shakti that had clouded the battlefield and was responsible for reanimating the corpses. The first day of battle leaves Rama's army victorious. Ravana's kumbha and elite hordes have been eradicated, so he decides to fight using conventional battle tactics which are sanctioned by dharma. This shrewdly prevents Rama from using any more divine shakti during the battle, as he can only use it in self-defense or in fair battle against opposing asura shakti. The two armies line up against each other and Indrajit, the battle commander, calls out champions to fight against the opposing champion, Hanuman. Single-handedly and with practically no effort, Hanuman defeats every single one of them while following the dharmic code of war. Fed up, Indrajit issues the order and both armies collide in a full frontal battle. Rama and Lakshman fight upon the ground bravely, vanquishing hundreds of rakshasas by their own hands. As they cut through the swath of warriors, however, they come to Indrajit, who uses the serpent weapon of Takshak against them. Their body becomes infested with snakes and they are knocked out cold and on the verge of death. Hanuman, refusing to admit defeat, flies off in search of the two holy mountains Chandra and Drona, which contain necessary medical herbs for resurrection, despite the fact that they exist on an alternate plane of existence. Remarkably, however, a flock of birds appears out of literally nowhere and coalesces into a cloud that forms a giant eagle, Garuda in an earthly form. He states that Indra sent him to revive him, as he has a personal vendetta against Indrajit. Rama and Lakshmana, revived, continue the fierce battle, mowing down enemy soldiers and officers alike. Ravana, who had been surveying the battle from the air the entire time with a hostage Sita, decides to pull a desperate card. After making Surpanakha take the form of Sita, he executes her in public with Rama watching, killing Surpanakha and instilling a sense of horror into the vanar and bear troops. Rama, believing that Sita is genuinely dead, grows once again into a divine rage and takes out the celestial weapons, systematically eradicating the inner palaces of Lanka and slowly destroying the city. The vanar and bear armies are finally able to break through the city walls, destroying it and killing all those who oppose them. However, Ravana finally reveals his greatest secret - he has awoken Kumbhakarna, his younger brother, a giant of colossal size who threatens to single-handedly wipe out the entire army. Vibhishan explains that Kumbhakarna cannot be destroyed with the use of celestial weapons, as he was granted the gift of invincibility. As Kumbhakarna is about to crush Rama, Hanuman arrives in the nick of time (along with the two holy mountains) and while carrying the mountains on his shoulders, grows to a huge size, lifts Kumbhakarna into the air by his legs, and drops him in the ocean. He drops the mountains off on the plains of battle outside the gates. Jambavan, who was mortally wounded during battle, explains to Rama that the execution he witnessed was not of the real Sita, and that he must not lose hope. Jambavan dies on the battlefield, but thanks to Hanuman's expedience in bringing the mountains, he is resurrected by vanar physicians and rises to fight once more. The mountain herbs are used to heal numerous wounds and the morale and battle strength of the vanar and bear armies rises considerably. Meanwhile, Hanuman pits his strength against Kumbhakarna and finds that the latter is very powerful but nevertheless has some key weaknesses. Using an ingenious strategy, he manages to lure Kumbhakarna back to the coast of Lanka and forces him into the volcanic center of Lanka, burning him to death. Back in the city, Rama fixes the arrow of Takshak to the Bow of Vishnu and uses it to decapitate Indrajit. Ravana, sensing the death of his son, rides out in a horrified fury to confront Rama. However, with the aid of the divine weapons, Rama calmly disarms Ravana, destroys his chariot and his crown. Refusing to kill an unarmed enemy, he allows Ravana to return back to his palace to refresh himself and come back armed. Uncharacteristically, Ravana agrees. Following his return to his palace, Ravana's wife Mandodhari, heartily sick of the war, asks him whether the war was justified for Sita and whether they have any chance of winning. He states that Sita was only a part of the war and that it represented something much greater and more significant, a development of fate and karma over time that had led to the demise of his kingdom and his powers. In a shocking revelation, he reveals to Mandodhari that by executing Surpanakha, he lost all of his asura shakti and cannot use it as a battle advantage anymore. Mandodhari realizes that if he goes back onto the battlefield, he will die, but Ravana, consigned to having lost the war, his family, all of his greatest warriors, and his most trusted friends, tells Mandodhari that she is now a widow. He goes back to the plain of battle. Ravana confronts Rama in a simple angavastra and wearing the caste-marks of Pulastya on his forehead. He tells Rama that he knew this day was coming, as he knew that his death was inevitable and that it was foretold by his destiny. He reveals indirectly that he is Jaya incarnated, brother of Vijaya, both the gatekeepers of Vaikuntha, cursed by the Four Kumaras to cause destruction upon the Earth for their misdeeds. Rama, not understanding, simply states that he is ready to kill him. Ravana states that he is willing to risk death in the hope of his eventual salvation. He throws a spear at him, prompting Rama to "defend himself" (although the weapon lands short), and Rama systematically slices off each head of Ravana's, and then decapitates his main central head, killing him once and for all. Following the end of the war, Vibhishan is made the king of Lanka, which has been reduced to stragglers and fragments by the invasion, leaving the rakshasa race on the verge of extinction. Nevertheless, they agree to an armistice and that no future conflicts will occur between the two races. Sita, although rescued, is put under doubt and scrutiny by Lakshmana who requests that she undergo the agni-pariksha, an acid test of fidelity. Although Rama flatly refuses to do so, Sita herself agrees out of the reasoning that Ayodhya needs to know that their queen is legitimate. She passes the test without a flaw, and Lakshmana asks her forgiveness. Commandeering the Pushpak, Sita, Rama, Lakshmana, Hanuman and the entire army fly back to Ayodhya, the term of exile complete. They find a grand celebration awaiting them, with old faces tearfully rejoicing in their arrival. The novel ends on a note of happiness.
13097741	/m/02z6d7p	Quite Ugly One Morning	Christopher Brookmyre	1996	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After renting a flat from a friend in Edinburgh (which just happens to be opposite a police station), investigating the unpleasant murder of a gambling medic in the flat below proves too much to resist and Parblane soon finds himself involved with a number of characters including Darren, a hit-man from Essex, the dead doctor's ex-wife, a lesbian detective constable with attitude and crooked hospital trust administrator, Stephen Lime. The book takes its name from a song from Warren Zevon's 1991 album Mr. Bad Example. It was followed by the best seller Country of the Blind in 1997 which again involved Jack Parlabane.
13101427	/m/02z6js1	Parallel Worlds	Michio Kaku	2004-12-28	{"/m/01p4b_": "Popular science"}	 From the back of the book: "In this thrilling journey into the mysteries of our cosmos, bestselling author Michio Kaku takes us on a dizzying ride to explore black holes and time machines, multidimensional space and, most tantalizing of all, the possibility that parallel universes may lie alongside our own. Kaku skillfully guides us through the latest innovations in string theory and its most recent iteration, M-theory, which posits that our universe may be just one in an endless multiverse, a singular bubble floating in a sea of infinite bubble universes. If M-theory is proven correct, we may perhaps finally find an answer to the question, "What happened before the big bang?" This is an exciting and unforgettable introduction to the cutting-edge theories of physics and cosmology from one of the preeminent voices in the field."
13108953	/m/02z6v_m	The Man in Grey	Baroness Emma Orczy	1918	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in Napoleonic France in 1809, the west of the country is being terrorised by a group of reckless criminals known as "Chouans" (Screech Owls) because they inflict terror by night and go to ground during the day, hiding out in the remains of chateaux left in ruins after the revolution. The group, which contains some of France’s most historic names, commit their crimes under the guise of Royalist convictions, but whether they really seek to reinstate the Bourbon royal line, or whether they are just a pack of lawless brigands is open for debate. "Theirs were the hands that struck whilst their leaders planned--they were the screech-owls who for more than twenty years terrorised the western provinces of France and, in the name of God and their King, committed every crime that could besmirch the Cause which they professed to uphold." They are as much an enigma as the one man who has succeeded in bringing some of these fugitives to justice, a mysterious figure known only as “The Man in Grey”, who is a secret agent for the Government.
13116455	/m/02z7570	The Host	Stephenie Meyer	2008-05-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Melanie "Mel" Stryder is one of the surviving rebel humans left after the invasion of the "Souls", parasitic aliens which take over human bodies, erasing the original occupants. Wanderer is a Soul who has lived on eight other planets previously, Mel being her ninth body host. She was inserted under emergency conditions, with the intent of using her to access any information Melanie might have about other free humans like Mel's brother and boyfriend. This investigation is headed by an individual identified only as "The Seeker", who pressures Wanderer to produce information, and views her with implied contempt for her failure to do so. Melanie remains partially conscious despite her infestation, an aberration for which Wanderer feels some shame, and no small amount of concern. She bombards Wanderer with her memories and emotions, and Wanderer develops emotional connections of her own to both Melanie's former lover and her brother. When enough information arises for her to find them, rather than report it to the Seeker, Wanderer sets out on her own to find them, nearly dying in the desert before Melanie's uncle, Jeb, finds her. He brings her into his hideout, a complex of caves containing more than two dozen free humans who survive by scavenging from distant cities. Jeb is unwilling to kill her because her host body is a relative, so she remains in the caves, where she has to deal with the antagonism and distrust of most of the group, including Jared, Mel's boyfriend. She eventually develops feelings for several of the humans, in particular Ian O'Shea who becomes a constant protector and friend. Her help and support with a dying member of the group makes the others view her more sympathetically. Only a few humans maintain their dislike of her, notably Ian's brother Kyle, who makes at least one attempt of her life, for which he is threatened with expulsion from the group. Wanderer's peaceful life with the group is disturbed by the realization that the humans have not given up on reclaiming those the Souls have enslaved; by experimenting with ways of removing Souls from their hosts, both always die in the process. Severely traumatized upon discovering the remains of extracted souls, she enters a period of mourning, withdrawing from the group. She is only roused by news that Jamie is injured and has developed a serious infection. She and Jared sneaking out of the complex together to seek medicine at a Soul-run hospital, using Wanderer's credibility as a Soul to gain access. After this, she becomes a regular participant in scavenging missions. When the Seeker is captured for getting too close to the caves, Wanderer finally reveals the method of detaching a Soul without killing the host. This allows them to rescue several friends and family members taken by the Souls, including Kyle's girlfriend. She reveals the technique to the group's medic, on the condition that he not harm the Souls after they are removed, and that she also be removed from Melanie and be buried. The latter condition proves controversial, especially with Ian, who forcibly takes her to his cave where he confesses his love for her. However Wanderer, undeterred, sneaks away after he falls asleep to complete her plan. She is removed, but awakens in the body of a girl who had not had a chance to develop a personality, since the Soul "Pet" was inserted during her childhood. Kyle's girlfriend turns out to have been utterly destroyed in the insertion, and he develops a relationship with the Soul in her body instead. Wanderer's association with the humans continues. In the final scene this is revealed to not be a unique situation, when they meet another group with a human-sympathizing Soul. The ending is a setup for a second book, although one is not yet in the works (2012).
13127508	/m/02z7r16	The Shock Doctrine	Naomi Klein	2007-09-04	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book has an introduction, a main body and a conclusion, divided into seven parts with a total of 21 chapters. The introduction sketches the history of the last thirty years where economic shock doctrine has been applied throughout the world, from South America in the 1970s to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Klein introduces two of her main themes. #That practitioners of the shock doctrine tend to seek a blank slate on which to create their ideal free market economies, which usually requires a violent destruction of the existing economic order. #The similarities between economic shock doctrine and the original shock therapy – a psychiatric technique where electric shocks were applied to mentally ill patients. Part 1 begins with a chapter on psychiatric shock therapy and the covert experiments conducted by the psychiatrist Ewen Cameron in collusion with the Central Intelligence Agency: how it was partially successful in distorting and regressing patients' original personality, but ineffectual in developing a "better" personality to replace it. Parallels with economic shock therapy are made, including a digression on how government agencies harnessed some of the lessons learned to create more effective torture techniques. Torture, according to Klein, has often been an essential tool for authorities who have implemented aggressive free market reforms – this assertion is stressed throughout the book. She suggests that for historical reasons the human rights movement has often portrayed torture without explaining its context, which has made it frequently appear as pointless cruelty. The second chapter introduces Milton Friedman and his Chicago school of economics, whom Klein describes as leading a movement committed to free markets even less regulated than before the Great Depression. Part 2 discusses the use of shock doctrine to transform South American economies in the 1970s, focusing on the coup in Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet. The apparent necessity for the unpopular policies associated with shock therapy to be supported by torture is explored. Part 3 covers attempts to apply the shock doctrine without the need for extreme violence against sections of the population. The mild shock therapy of Margaret Thatcher is explained as being made possible by the Falklands War, while free market reform in Bolivia was possible due to a combination of pre-existing economic crises and the charisma of Jeffrey Sachs. Part 4 reports on how the shock doctrine was applied in Poland, Russia, South Africa and to the tiger economies during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Part 5 introduces the "Disaster Capitalism Complex", where the author describes how companies have learnt to profit from disasters. She talks about how the same personnel move easily from security-related posts in US government agencies to lucrative positions in corporations. Part 6 discusses the occupation of Iraq, which Klein describes as the most comprehensive and full-scale implementation of the shock doctrine ever attempted. Part 7 is about the winners and losers of economic shock therapy – how narrow groups will often do very well by moving into luxurious gated communities while large sections of the population are left with decaying public infrastructure, declining incomes and increased unemployment. Conclusion is about the backlash against the shock doctrine and economic institutions that propagate it like the World Bank and IMF. South America and Lebanon post-2006 are examined as sources of positive news, where politicians are already rolling back free-market policies, with some mention of the increased campaigning by community-minded activists in South Africa and China.
13130092	/m/02z7vxk	The Reluctant Queen: The Story of Anne of York	Eleanor Hibbert	1990	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel begins in with a prologue, in the year 1485. Anne, the narrator, knows she is dying and has decided to write her memoirs before death slowly takes her. She worries about the fate of her family including that of her husband Richard, the King of England. Richard is severely maligned by his people, and Anne fears that his power and position would be greatly jeopardized after her death. This leads to her reminiscing on happier days. She recalls growing up in the English countryside with her noble family: her father Richard, her mother Anne, and sister Isabel. At the age of five she meets her future husband, eight-year-old Richard Plantagenet who is studying under the tutelage of her father. Richard's brother Edward has recently been proclaimed King by the English people, usurping the throne from mentally unstable King Henry VI and his aloof consort, Margaret of Anjou. Richard enthralls young Anne with tales of his brother and the Wars of the Roses. Anne's father as the Earl of Warwick has played a crucial part in placing Edward on the English Throne, and plans to marry him to French noblewoman, Bona of Savoy, much to his daughter Isabel's chagrin as she secretly wants to be Queen Consort. Soon all of England is shocked to discover that Edward has secretly married a young widowed mother, Elizabeth Woodville Grey who is five years older than he is, and is considered by many to be a "commoner". The Earl is disgusted with Edward's choice of a bride, as is Edward's mother Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, who out of spite informs her son that she had him illegitimately. He does not believe her and refuses to have the marriage annulled, something which will have calamitous results in the future. Isabel, dismayed that the King did not choose her for a bride, sets her sights on his younger brother George, Duke of Clarence. George and Isabel marry just as Warwick severs ties with King Edward and joins the Lancastrian side of the War of the Roses. A pregnant Isabel is so distressed by the sudden move that she gives birth to a stillborn daughter. Warwick proposes that Anne marry Edward, Prince of Wales Henry and Margaret's son. Anne is terrified that Queen Margaret will be her mother-in-law until she gets to know her better. Anne's parents, along with Isabel and George, head back to England, while Anne remains with her future in-laws. Soon Anne marries and travels back to England with her husband and mother-in-law as Princess of Wales. She is horrified to discover that her father has died in the dreaded Battle of Barnet. Prince Edward also dies in battle, much to the grief of Queen Margaret. Soon she and Anne are taken prisoner by the Yorkist soldiers. The King releases Anne, believing her the victim of her father's ambition. Queen Margaret is imprisoned and Anne is sent under the watchful eye of George and Isabel, as her mother in fear of her life is living in sanctuary in a abbey. Anne and Richard meet again after a long years absence and soon fall in love. Richard proposes marriage to her and she accepts, much to George's horror. George, wanting the inheritance of Warwick only for himself, drugs Anne and arranges for her to be spirited away to be taken in by servants and force her to believe that she is a disillusioned scullery maid. Anne manages to see through the facade and asks for one of the deposed servant girls for help. The girl alerts Richard who rescues Anne. The entire court as well as Isabel believed Anne to have run away after her marriage was refused by her guardian's. Despite several setbacks, Anne marries Richard and becomes Duchess of Gloucester. With her relatives restored to favor, Anne's mother is reunited with her children, and is delighted to learn that Isabel is pregnant again. Isabel gives birth to a daughter Margaret Plantagenet. Anne wants to give Richard a child and is dismayed to learn that he had had a mistress before the marriage, and shares two children with her. Anne is shocked and hurt but soon forgives Richard, and they eventually have a son christened Edward after the King. Isabel becomes pregnant again twice, but dies along with her last infant son. Richard's one-time mistress also dies leaving Anne as stepmother to her two young children. George, distraught over his wife's death, confronts the King and dies mysteriously. After several years, King Edward dies suddenly, leaving his young son as heir. It is soon discovered that the late King had betrothed marriage to another, making his marriage to Queen Elizabeth invalid, and barring her children from the throne. Richard, and a reluctant Anne assume rule as King and Queen. Anne worries about the health of her young son, and her own imbalances of illness which leads her to believe that Richard is attracted to his niece Elizabeth of York. When Edward dies, Anne's health takes a turn for the worse. Rumors envelop the countryside after Richard's nephews vanish without a trace. Richard invites his widowed sister-in-law and her daughter's back to court, despite Anne's paranoia about Elizabeth. Anne realizes her mistake too late. With the last ounce of her strength she writes her memoirs, then silently dies on the night of an eclipse. Unmentioned in the novel are Richard's eventual downfall and death at the battle of Bosworth and Elizabeth's rise as consort of the new king, and mother of a new dynasty, and the fate of Isabel's children Edward and Margaret who were executed in 1499 and 1541 respectively.
13133097	/m/02z80gz	The Five Dysfunctions of a Team	Patrick Lencioni		{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/0g4gr": "Marketing"}	 According to the book, the five dysfunctions are: * Absence of trust—unwilling to be vulnerable within the group * Fear of conflict—seeking artificial harmony over constructive passionate debate * Lack of commitment—feigning buy-in for group decisions creates ambiguity throughout the organization * Avoidance of accountability—ducking the responsibility to call peers on counterproductive behaviour which sets low standards * Inattention to results—focusing on personal success, status and ego before team success
13137803	/m/02z85z1	Shroud for a Nightingale	P. D. James		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Student nurses Heather Pearce and Josephine Fallon have died of mysterious circumstances in the hospital nursing school of Nightingale House. As Scotland Yard’s Commander [he is not yet Commander, but Chief Superintendent] Adam Dalgliesh uncovers sexual secrets and blackmail within the closed community of the hospital, he finds himself in mortal danger.
13139490	/m/02z87kz	Let Time Pass	Svend Aage Madsen		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Johanna who is a lector at a Danish university gets involved by her colleague professor Jeyde in a time travel experiment. Jeyde has discovered that he can put the time 23 days back. The background to the invention is that Jeyde perceives the time as split up into small sets, among which time stands calm. Jeyde compares his theory with films, where every second 24 still pictures are shown. If you happen to cut the time "tape" the world gets rewound to the previous secure point (which would be 23 days before the moment of the cut). The problem that Jeyde has encountered is that after the time cut neither he nor anybody else can notice that there was a cut because everything that happened between the safe point and the cut is erased from their memories as it never had happened (and theoretically it hasn't happened indeed). He can't even be sure about any event whether it's the first time it's happening or not. To be able to understand the possibilities of his invention better, Jeyde sends Johanna to a psychiatrist who "opens up her mind" so after a time cut she'd be able to remember the destroyed time. When Johanna gets tired of being repeatedly sent by Jeyde back in time (since Jeyde sends back the entire Universe and not just Johanna he doesn't need Johanna's participation or agreement to send her back) she manages to lock Jeyde up in a psychiatric hospital and wants to leave time travelling behind her, but then she suddenly realises how much freedom it can give her. This way Johanna gets the unique chance to outplay different variations of her relationship with Sverre, one of her students, as she can always correct a mistake that she has made. Another bonus she gets is in no need to spend time tidying up at home because she can always come back to a time when everything was still clean. However she quickly discovers that too much knowledge about upcoming events tends to make things more complicated. Her relationship with Sverre cannot recommence from where they left off and she has trouble remembering which events are real and which are fictional in any given situation. Finally she decides that the only solution to let time flow normally is for her to first kill Jeyde and then herself.
13142417	/m/02z8cx0	Darwin's Angel	John Cornwell	2007		 In this book, Cornwell adopts the persona of the guardian angel of Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel, who is now looking after Richard Dawkins. He pens a letter to Dawkins in 21 chapters. # A Summary of your Argument suggests that Dawkins regards all claims about God's existence as "the exclusive province of science and reason". # Your Sources suggests that the book ignores distinguished scholarship and uses inappropriate sources. # Imagination suggests that Dawkins takes things too literally. # Beauty suggests that Dawkins misunderstands the links between beauty, creativity and faith, and suggests he studies George Steiner, William Blake, T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis. # What is Religion suggests that religion is not science and that Dawkins should study sociologists of religion such as Émile Durkheim. # Is God Supernatural? claims that Dawkins' image of God is not what most theists believe in. # Celestial Teapots suggests that the comparison with Russell's teapot is misplaced because Cornwell claims there are prima facie, albeit inconclusive, grounds for believing in God. # God's Simplicity claims that Dawkins imagines that God is an object but this is not how theologians think about God. # Theories of Everything claims that Stephen Hawking and others now believe a "Theory of Everything" is impossible due to Gödel's incompleteness theorems. # Dawkins versus Dostoyevsky suggests that Dawkins mistakenly attributes the nihilistic views of Ivan Karamazov to Dostoyevsky. Dawkins responded to this chapter specifically by saying that he was either misunderstood or misquoted. # Jesus, the Jews and the "Pigs" suggests that Dawkins relies on a single source when he discusses "the moral consideration for others" in Judaism and Christianity being originally intended to apply only to a narrowly defined in-group. # Dawkins's Utopia claims that Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler all used "science as an ideology combined with militant atheism". He also claims that Stalin's atheism was foundational to his entire ideology, and that as atheism doesn't necessarily lead to violence, nor does religion. Cornwell received some criticism for this section, noting that Hitler not only did not endorse atheism, but carried out measures to stamp it out. # Fundamentalism suggests that it is important to distinguish between tolerant and violent forms of faith. Cornwell also claims it is a category error to confuse creationism and the "doctrine of creation". # Is Religious Education Child Abuse? questions whether being indoctrinated in a faith is tantamount to child abuse. He goes on to claim the Amish are a living testimony to the advantages of frugality and simplicity. # Life After Death suggests that most religious believers hope for an afterlife, In Dawkins' response to the book, he criticised Cornwell for quoting him out of context in this section. # Religious People Less Clever than Atheists? suggests that scientific eminence does not guarantee sound judgement, and that scientists are prejudiced against religious believers. # Does our Moral Sense have a Darwinian Origin? claims that there is more to morality than evolution can explain. # The Darwinian Imperative claims that attempts to explain religion via evolution are simplistic. # Religion as a Bacillus discusses Dr Gerhard Wagner, and states that describing all religious believers as infected with a virus has deplorable overtones. # Does God Exist? suggests that Dawkins does not understand the question "why is there something rather than nothing?", which is why he finds it ridiculous. Cornwell goes on to say "the ludicrous anthropomorphic deity that rightly appals" Dawkins is not the God in whom most Christian theologians believe. # Being Religious suggests that being religious is not a question of factual beliefs but a personal relationship and quest based on prayer and love.
13147295	/m/02z8m05	The Bear Went Over the Mountain	William Kotzwinkle		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Arthur Bramhall is known by his colleagues to be a poorly performing teacher of English with little talent as a writer. But Bramhall isolates himself in a forest cabin and manages to write a great novel; he goes off to buy champagne in celebration. Whilst he is away, a bear digs up his manuscript. The bear travels to New York, where he is accepted as a talented author and desirable party guest, while Bramhall's increasing animal-like desperation leads to him being shunned by his former friends. In its use of humour and a character of very limited abilities&mdash;the bear&mdash;to comment on aspects of modern life, the book resembles stories like Forrest Gump and Being There. It also continues a trend well established in Kotzwinkle's work.
13148323	/m/02z8m_t	Dreamer	Daniel Quinn	1988-12-15	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Awake, Greg Donner falls in love with the beautiful red-headed Ginny Winters, a woman with a mysterious past. Asleep, Greg dreams of pursuing Ginny through a terrifyingly deserted Chicago. Awake, Richard Iles is confined to a sanatorium in Kentucky and trapped in a loveless marriage to Ginny Winters. Asleep, Richard dreams he is Greg Donner. And when he next wakes up, he IS Greg Donner. But Ginny has gone.
13151556	/m/02z8s0q	The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past				 The theme of "The Bible and History" is the need to treat the bible as literature rather than as history: "The Bible's language is not an historical language. It is a language of high literature, of story, of sermon and of song. It is a tool of philosophy and moral instruction." Part 1 deals with general historiogaphical issues, including the importance of understanding the types and purposes of different biblical stories, the dangers of treating myth and poetry as history, and the use of origin-myths as recurring motifs, concluding that the bible was intended to provide an ancient people with a common past, and thus was very different from our own tradition of critical history-writing. Part 2 is a history of ancient Palestine and the surrounding region from the earliest human settlement to the Hellenistic period drawing on the most recent archaeological and historical studies, and Part 3 concludes with a survey of the theological implications of the preceding study.
13158432	/m/02z93b6	The Wool-Pack	Cynthia Harnett	1951	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in the Cotswolds near Burford, Oxfordshire, The Wool-Pack begins in 1493 when Nicholas Fetterlock, the twelve-year-old son of a rich wool merchant, learns from his father that he is betrothed to Cecily Bradshaw, the daughter of a rich cloth merchant. Nicholas learns villainy within the guild that may ruin the trade or his father's business.
13158532	/m/02z93lg	The Load of Unicorn	Cynthia Harnett	1959	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Benedict, known as Bendy, has been apprenticed by his forward-looking father to the printer William Caxton. This infuriates his mean half-brothers who are scriveners and fear that the new-fangled printing press will drive them out of business. They have secretly waylaid the printer's delivery of new paper and are hiding it. Bendy knows about it but is worried about the consequences of telling, especially as his half-brothers may be involved with Lancastrian rebels. Caxton sends Bendy and another apprentice on a quest to find the complete manuscript of Thomas Mallory's stories of King Arthur, but it proves dangerous as others are also on the trail.
13162935	/m/02z9dsr	Lord John and the Succubus	Diana Gabaldon	2004	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Briefly stationed at Gundwitz with a group of English and Hanoverian soldiers, Grey was at first sceptical when he received reports of a local succubus. Joining the search at the town's graveyard for the strange creature only to placate the townspeople, he soon discovered that reality was a lot more complicated than he thought. pl:Lord John i sukub
13162942	/m/02z9dt2	Lord John and the Haunted Soldier	Diana Gabaldon		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 In November 1758, following the events of June in Brotherhood of the Blade, the surviving members of the gun crew manning the cannon "Tom Pilchard" at Krefeld are brought before a board of inquiry, including Lord John Grey. Grey, who commanded the cannon crew upon the abrupt death of Lt. Philip Lister, is both troubled and insulted by the questioning, and stalks out of the inquiry. He does see the remains of the burst cannon, and briefly presents a missing piece; shrapnel from the gun that had been removed from his chest by surgeons, but Grey refuses to surrender it. Eventually, this piece will be the only remaining evidence that the cannons were poorly manufactured. At least one piece of metal remains in Grey's chest, and this along with residual damage leave Grey with severe chest pains and uncontrolled shaking. Harry Quarry warns Grey about Col. Twelvetrees willingness to use the cannon inquiry to goad John into action that will be used to discredit either him, his brother Hal, or both. He suggests Grey be seconded to the 65th or 78th regiments temporarily to stay out of Twelvetrees' way for a while, but Grey instead begins to investigate the cannon failures himself. When Grey returns Lt. Lister's sword to the man's father, the elder Lister begs Grey's assistance in locating the missing fiance and child of his late son. While on these tasks, he discovers political intrigue surrounding his half-brother's government contract for supplying black powder to the military, and meets Captain Fenshaw and the other members of Edgar's consortium. Grey writes on two occasions to his paroled charge, James Fraser; starkly honest confessions of his cares and worries that are never sent, but serve to help ground Grey's thoughts and emotions.
13162962	/m/02z9dts	Lord John and the Hellfire Club	Diana Gabaldon		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 While at the Beefsteak Club, Lord John Grey is introduced to Robert Gerald, a cousin by marriage to Grey's friend and colleague, Harry Quarry. Gerald asks Grey to meet him in secret that night, hinting at intrigue. Before the meeting, however, Gerald is killed in front of Grey and Quarry, and the two men begin to search for clues pertaining to Gerald's murder. A few days later, during a high-society party, Grey is invited to a Hellfire Club meeting by one of its members, George Everett (one of Grey's former lovers). When Grey attends the meeting at the club's hideout, Medmenham Abbey, he soon discovers that his life might be in danger as well!
13178040	/m/03by56m	Maximum Ride: The Final Warning	James Patterson	2008-03-17	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with Jeb, Max, the oldest of the siblings, and the Flock holding a funeral for Ari, Max’s half-brother and Jeb’s son. The next day they go to a private conference with the Danning Administration in Washington who are trying to decide what would be best for the Flock. The meeting does not go smoothly and ends with the Flock flying away to Dr. Martinez’s home where they are currently staying. But soon their short period of bliss is ended when they are forced to leave as an unexpected bomb in the form of a pizza arrives at their doorstep shortly after attending the government meeting. They flee to a safer place and there Max is thrown into a world of longing and confusion as Fang kisses her on a dock when they snuck out of their hotel during the night while everyone was asleep. Since Max runs from him, afraid to display her feelings, the atmosphere between the two grows cold and unfriendly. Then her mom, Dr. Martinez, calls them and tells them she has a surprise for them. The surprise is that they're going to go on a special mission – all the way to Antarctica, the point of the mission is to record data on how the world was changing due to pollution/global warming and how they could help stop it. After agreeing to take part in the mission, the flock meet up with a crew of environmentalists on the polar research vessel, The Wendy K. There, they meet an attractive 21 year old scientist named Brigid Dwyer, who immediately finds a liking in Fang. Max is getting even more jealous as Bridgid talks to Fang more. Certain members of the Flock gain more skills – Iggy can feel colors and see things if surrounded by white, Nudge can attract metal, Gazzy develops the ability to release almost toxic gas at will, Fang gains the ability to blend in with his surroundings and Angel gets yet another skill – she can change her appearance. And much to the group's surprise, Total, the talking dog the Flock rescued in Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment starts to grow wings! While in Antarctica, a member of the research team is attacked by a leopard seal and killed. However she was a mechanical impostor created by an unknown group of enemies attempting to capture the Flock. Meanwhile, Max and Fang’s relationship gets steadily more and more strained. The Flock faces big problems when Angel goes to find a baby penguin in the middle of a blizzard and they are captured by a mutated group of genetically enhanced humans. After being kidnapped, the Flock awakes in an office building located in Miami which has been evacuated due to the threat of a category 4 hurricane. The Flock faces the emotionless Uber-Director (who is described as having many of his internal organs connected via plastic "boxes" which his head sits upon). As they make an attempt to escape, they find themselves trapped by the Uber-Director's mutated body guard. When all hope seems lost, the windows to the skyscraper shatter due to the high speed winds, sucking the Flock, the Uber-Director, and his bodyguard into the eye of the hurricane where the Flock were the only ones that didn't free fall to the ground. After the events, the Flock returns to the home of Dr. Martinez where they are offered the opportunity to attend the Lerner School for Gifted Children (a.k.a. Ye Olde Academy for Mutants and Other Kids). As Max declines the offer, she and the Flock take off amidst the circle of reporters, ushering the fact that their existence and other genetic mutations have gone public.
13178080	/m/02zb85w	Tear of the Gods	Raymond E. Feist	2000-11-20	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story opens with a closer look at the person behind the plots to force the Kingdom of the Isles into war with its neighbors. The sorcerer Sidi is using a pirate named Bear to create chaos in the Kingdom. Squire James of Krondor is sent by Arutha, Prince of Krondor, to escort the newly-appointed court magician, Jazhara, to the palace. In doing so, they discover a silk maker using child labor to make profits. Jazhara discovers that the trader is actually a spy for her great-uncle, Hazara-Kahn, Ambassador of the Empire of Great Kesh. James and Jazhara proceed to kill the spy and his guards, and to free the children. After searching the shop, they discover that the spy was a double agent, working for the crime lord The Crawler. After the new court magician, Jazhara is introduced to the Prince, Arutha, James is tasked with taking Jazhara on a tour of Krondor. Jazhara has, in the past, had a love affair with young William (the son of Duke Pug, the master magician). She is eager to speak to William about their affair. James leads Jazhara to the Rainbow Parrot Inn, where they are greeted with a scene of carnage. Upon entering the scene is a massacre, William is alive and confronted by 3 armed men. Squire James and Jazhara immediately go to William's aid and the men are soon dispatched. William's new sweetheart is lying close to death and they discover that the man "Bear" is behind the attack. Talia soon dies, with William vowing to avenge her death. Soon after, there is a loud rocking explosion and the three investigate and finds the prison in chaos, as apparently Bear broke into the prison to reach a person with a specific knowledge that Bear's master needed. Having tortured the information out of the prisoner, Bear escapes, but not before killing the man. Soon after, a high priest of the Temple of Ishap sheds light on some recent events: that the Temple had been transporting a divine artifact by ship, when it was raided and sunk, the artifact included. The artifact, called the Tear of the Gods, allows the priests of various temples to channel the divine will of the gods, without which, humanity would be cut off from the gods. William, Jazhara, and James are tasked by Prince Arutha to retrieve the artifact. Joined by a representative of the temple, a warrior priest, they recruit a member of a magicians' guild to raise the sunken ship. Having successfully retrieved the artifact, they are beset by Bear, who proves to be immune to nearly any attack. Talia's final gift to William then manifests; as Talia was an acolyte of Kahooli, the God of Retribution, her final gift turns William into an avatar of the deity for a short time, and he defeats Bear. fr:Krondor : La Larme des dieux
13178218	/m/02zb8mn	The Company		1976		 The protagonist is Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William "Bill" Martin, a longtime CIA agent who was appointed DCI by Democratic President Esker Scott Anderson. Anderson, as Vice President, succeeded William Curry, who was killed in a crash of Air Force One in the early 1960s. Martin's friendship with Anderson dates from the 1950s, when he was a lower-level agent and Anderson held a great deal of power as Senate Majority Leader. As Deputy CIA Director, Martin was responsible for planning an undercover invasion of the Dominican Republic by emmigres trained and supported by the U.S. However, President Curry, worried about negative repercussions from the invasion, ordered the murder of a priest who led the rebel movement, in order to ensure the invasion's failure. CIA Inspector General, Major-General Antonio Primula, wrote a report blaming Martin, then-DCI Horace McFall and, in part, President Curry for the invasion's failure, and recommending the firing of McFall and Martin. After Curry's death, Anderson appointed Martin as DCI and promised to keep the Primula report secret, in return for Martin's loyalty. Anderson becomes seriously ill during his elected term and declines to run for a second, leaving his Vice President Ed Gilley as the Democratic nominee. Despite Martin's hard work behind the scenes to help elect Gilley, he is defeated by Republican Richard Monckton. Martin sees Monkton, a longtime political enemy of Curry and Anderson, as a threat to himself and the CIA. But Martin retains his position, due mainly to the support of support of Monckton's National Security Advisor Carl Tessler, a former foreign affairs aide to Governor Thomas J. Forville. Despite his relatively weak position in the new administration, Martin discovers illegal practices of Monkton administration operatives, and uses this knowledge to make a deal with Monkton: he must destroy the Primula Report and assign Martin as ambassador to Jamaica in exchange for Martin's silence on Monkton's illegal activity. Despite Martin's efforts, Monkton's activities are revealed by an investigative reporter, initiating the fall of his administration.
13182962	/m/02zbk5c	Eva Trout	Elizabeth Bowen			 Part I-Genesis The novel opens with Eva's excursion to a lake in the neighborhood of Larkins where she is staying as a paying guest since her father's death. The lady of Larkins, Iseult Arble, is a former teacher of Eva's whom Eva is very fond of during the school days. However, Eva does not presently fancy Arbles' guardianship and often travels to the Danceys' house where she can enjoy the company of Catrina, Henry, Andrew and Louise Dancey. In the first section, readers get to know the two schools Eva went to as a young girl. The first school, owned by her farther Willy Trout and administered by Constantine's lover Kenneth,is one of the rare places where Eva feels at home but it also has a traumatic effect on her insofar as Eva's roommate Elsinore attempts to commit suicide by drowning herself in the lake. It is in the second school that Eva meets Iseult Smith from whom she receives the attention she has craved all her life. As Eva approaches her 25th birthday after which she will be able to access the fortune her father left behind, both the Arbles and her legal guardian Constantine Ormeau question her capacity to take care of herself and her wealth. To escape the confining guardianship of both Iseult and Constantine, Eva rents a house in Kent. In a conversation with Iseult at Cathay, Eva tells her that she is to give birth to her baby and flees to America where she would purchase a child to make up for her lie. By Eva's departure time, Iseult already suspects a sexual relationship between her husband Eric and Eva and she cannot help thinking that the father of Eva's child is Eric. This suspicion leads to the dissolution of the Arbles' household. Part II-Eight Years Later The second part of the novel is infused with Eva's reconsiderations of her past in her quest of becoming who she is. After her return from the USA with her child Jeremy, a boy both "deaf and dumb," Eva falls in love with one of the children she used to hang out with at the Dancey's, Henry Dancey, who is now a student at Cambridge University. Although Henry does not feel the same way about Eva in the first place, on their mock hymeneal departure at Victoria station, Henry declares his sincere love for Eva. This unexpected declaration, which makes Eva shed tears of joy, is immediately spoilt by Jeremy who accidentally shoots Eva killing her instantenously at Victoria Station.
13186550	/m/03by594	Mr. Monk in Outer Space	Lee Goldberg	2007-10-30	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When Conrad Stipe, creator of the popular science fiction TV series Beyond Earth, is gunned down outside a Beyond Earth convention, Monk and Natalie are called in, and Monk soon finds that there is more going on behind the scenes than is visible to the naked eye, and also learns that his brother Ambrose is a big expert on the show.
13191582	/m/03byc5m	Native Tongue	Carl Hiaasen	1991	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Joe Winder is a journalism dropout employed to compose press releases for the Amazing Kingdom, a Florida based theme park that aspires to achieve the greatness of Disney World. The park is owned by a former “wise guy” whose court testimony forced him to seek refuge in the Federal Witness Protection Program. A new identity and a change of venue, however, did nothing to alter the morals of Francis X. Kingsbury. He thinks nothing of faking wildlife exhibits, destroying the fragile environment of the Florida Keys, or using lethal means to protect his nefarious schemes from public exposure. When an equally amoral environmentalist resolves to thwart Kingsbury’s designs. Winder comes out of retirement as an investigative reporter to attempt to rescue the last of a near-extict species. He finds himself in alliance with an ex-governor seeking absolution in the life of a hermit, law enforcement officials with a peculiar sense of justice, two of the most bumbling burglars ever to circumvent an alarm system, and an incredibly bloodthirsty senior citizen. This motley group, with the assistance of a contract killer sent by the mob to eliminate Kingsbury, put paid to those who would damage the environment and subvert the democratic process.
13191783	/m/03bycd4	Iron & Silk	Mark Salzman		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Salzman, a member of the Yale-China expedition crew, is offered a position to teach English at the Changsha Medical University for two years. While he is there, he learns Chinese martial arts of many different kinds. He studies from the martial arts master Pan Qingfu. He encounters political activists, travels, and deals with many different kinds of people, some of them very traditional.
13192072	/m/03bycr5	Yankee in Oz	Ruth Plumly Thompson	1972	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with Thomas P. "Tompy" Terry, an athlete and musician son of a physicist, star drummer in his marching band at Pennwood prep in fictional small town, Pennwood, Pennsylvania, swept away by then-fictitious Hurricane Hannah on his way to the Labor Day parade. He lands on the shore of Winkie Lake, where he meets Yankee, the first American dog in space, a bull terrier delighted at his newfound ability to talk. The nearest town is Wackajammy, in the northeastern part of the Winkie Country, which is the breadbasket of the West. The King, Jackalack, believes that Tompy and Yankee are there to fulfill a prophecy to rescue their princess, his aunt, Doffi, who instructs all of the bakers of the town, who refuse to do any work without her present. Yammer Jammer, the king's advizer, using a book called the Mind Reader determines that the two have no intent to do the search when they leave, and locks them in prison. Yankee is able to dig out during the night and get the key, and when they leave, they steal the Mind Reader. Though determined to get home, Yankee in particular wishes to rescue the princess anyway. They next encounter an anteater, a town of powdered and packaged workaholic people, Tidy Town, whose king wants to force them to be listeners, cross into the Gillikin Country with the aid of Tim Ber the Trav-E-Log, meet a kindly but private woodsman named Axel, and a village of pleasant people with cold light paper lanterns for heads who are active only at night. Climbing Mount Upandup, they meet a flower fairy named Su-Posy who mentions that she delivers flowers to an imprisoned princess nearby to cheer her up. Also resting on this mountain is Jinnicky the Red Jinn, with whom Tompy and Yankee make fast friends. Also living on the mountain is Badmannah, who has kidnapped Princess doffi, and soon after, uses a magic magnifying glass to abduct Princess Ozma and the entire Emerald City palace. Regrouping at the Red Jinn's palace, Yankee procures a net and attaches it to Jinnicky's jinrikisha as a drag net, using it to capture Badmannah and lower him to the bottom of the Nonestic Ocean. He cannot drown here, being immortal like all Ozites, but it will get him out of the way for a while. That leaves the task of restoring the Emerald City palace. Except for Ozma, the residents are all crammed into a magic box that Jinnicky has not allowed to be opened until the palace is restored, except when Yankee is briefly trapped as well. Once opened, Ozma is still missing. Using the Magic Picture, she is seen in Badmannah's cave, Ozma having wished herself via the Magic Belt to the nearest safe place, and with Badmannah gone, it was. Using his red magic, Jinnicky restores the Emerald City. Jinnicky flies Tompy home in his jinrikisha, and gives him a little jar to open when in need of his magic. Yankee is recognizable from newspapers, and Mr. Terry returns him to the Army, requesting that he be given an honorable discharge to be Tompy's pet. The Army representative initially declines, but when Tompy opens the jar, relents. Yankee retains the ability to speak once a week, and together, they decide to read The Purple Prince of Oz a chapter a night to learn about the adventures of their friend, Jinnicky. Tompy is not the first traveler to Oz to be familiar with it from reading the books, which are explicitly referenced as being available in the United States as fairy tales--Peter Brown in The Gnome King of Oz briefly mentions having read an Oz book (Betsy Bobbin and Trot are aware of Oz before they get there, but we are not told how). It is, however the first to mention another Oz book within the text, although John R. Neill had drawn an image of a shelf in Oz full of the Oz books, one being read. The book has no subplot, and moves straightforwardly through its single plot, uncharacteristic of previous Oz books, but typical of the deuterocanonical books of which it is the first.
13193114	/m/03bydpg	The Sterkarm Handshake	Susan Price	1998-10-16	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"}	 The Sterkarm Handshake deals with a British corporation, the FUP, who create a Time Tube back to the 16th Century Scottish-English border, initially to exploit its then untouched mineral resources of gold and oil, though they later plan a tourist resort. They fatally underestimate the natives. A local clan, the Sterkarms, are welcoming at first, regarding the 21st-century travellers as magical Elves because of their medicine and technology, but increasingly refuse to cooperate. The clansmen, who have always lived by plunder, begin robbing the FUPs, which leads to the FUP's power-hungry boss kidnapping the only son of the Sterkarm chieftain. The Sterkarms' retaliation is savage. A young 21st-century anthropologist, Andrea Mitchell, who lives with the Sterkarms as a translator and liaison, finds her loyalties divided when she falls in love with Per Sterkarm.
13193574	/m/03byf69	The Nobodies		2005-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Fern Drudger has the ability to shake things out of books, but lately, only Diet Lime Fizzy Drinks seem to pop out of them. The Fizzy Drinks always have messages from a mysterious group called the Nobodies. As it turns out to be, Nobodies are people or animals that are shaken out of books and haven't been returned yet. The Nobodies seem to have a terrible enemy, and they say that Fern is the only one who can save them. Fern, now reunited with her real parents, is sent off to Camp Happy Sunshine Good Times, a camp for young Anybodies. Anybodies are people who can transform themselves or others into different objects through hypnotism. At the camp, Fern meets Mary Stern, the counselor for girls. However, it turns out that the counselors and director of the camp seem to have deadly secrets. Camp Happy Sunshine Good Times has strict rules, and Fern easily breaks one of them. And when she receives her punishment, Fern discovers that she is destined to help the Nobodies, who are trapped by the evil Mole (animal)|Mole]], or BORT. BORT is a giant mole who had trapped a family of Nobodies in a Diet Lime Fizzy Drinks factory in a basement at the Avenue of Americas. The Mole can only be shrunk down to the size of normal mole when it touches water. Fern must somehow get BORT to touch water and bring peace to the second earth.
13204430	/m/03byth0	A Mango-Shaped Space	Wendy Mass	2003-04-16	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a prologue, Mia first experiences ridicule at the hands of her third-grade classmates when she is called to the front of the room to do a math problem. She uses colored chalk to make the numbers fit into the synesthetic form in which she sees them. Her teacher tells her to stop making up silly stories and that numbers have only shape and value and no colors. Mia is left confused and alone, because she thought everyone saw this way. After that, Mia keeps it secret and everyone soon forgets about that incident. When Mia is twelve, her beloved grandfather is gravely sick, he later passes from a deadly disease known as phishemiasmosis. During her grandfather's funeral, Mia finds a white and grey kitten with eyes the same color as her grandfather's. She believes that part of her grandfather's soul is living in that kitten. She takes him home and names him Mango the Magnificat, but decides to call him Mango for short; not because of his orange eyes, but because his meows and his heavy wheezing are different shades of orange and yellow to her, like a mango in different seasons. The wheezes are actually caused by a deep rip in the lining of one of Mango's lungs, which cannot be repaired, but Mango copes with it by taking pills. One day, when Mia is at the grocery store with her mother, she meets someone who could very well share her condition. A little 5-year old boy named Billy Henkle, who sees her name as orange with purple stripes. Mia is shocked, but his mother quickly retorts that he has an overactive imagination. After failing two math quizzes, she is forced to admit to her parents about her condition. Mia's father sets up an appointment to her pediatrician Dr. Randolph. Her mother takes Mia to Dr. Randolph, who recommends her to a psychotherapist. After her appointment, Mia soon tells her best friend Jenna about her colors. Jenna bursts into tears, and gets angry at her for not telling her before. Mia and Jenna start to get into a fight. At her appointment with the psychotherapist, Miss Finn, she tells Mia that her colors are just her imagination, and she has "middle child syndrome." Mia denies it. Miss Finn suggests that Mia go to a neurologist to see what is wrong with her. The next day, Mia visits Jenna apologizing for not telling her before. Jenna also apologizes for being angry. Jenna explains that she was worried about her and tells her that she had an experience when someone she really cared about was sick, referring to her mother, who died of cancer three years before. Jenna tells Mia that when she was still angry with her she told Kimberly-one of their school friends-about Mia's colors. Mia becomes well-known at school because of her synesthesia. When Mia visits the neurologist she finds out what case she has. She has synesthesia, a condition where two of your senses are connected, such as your hearing and sight (like Mia) or smell and touch, though it could be any two. Then the neurologist invites Mia to a meeting for synesthetes in a few weeks, and access to a website that allows people with synesthesia to interact with each other. After only one day, another synesthete, a boy named Adam, shows interest in interacting with Mia. Adam is a year older than her. Mia becomes obsessed with her email, constantly seeing if there are any emails from Adam. One night she gets a call from Adam, saying he is going to the synesthesia meeting too. During the meeting, Adam appears very gentlemanly, kissing her hand and inviting her outside for a walk. During the "walk", Adam asks if he could kiss her, to which she says yes. She kisses him once, and she almost does again, but then her mom finds her outside with him, and says they need to leave, obviously angry. Mia thinks about Adam for a while, and wonders if he should be her boyfriend. Because she is so preoccupied with her condition and life, Mia forgets to give Mango his medicine the night of the meeting. She wakes up in the middle of the night to find him not breathing. She convinces her dad to fly him to the animal hospital in their helicopter, but it is already too late, and Mango dies. After Mango dies, Mia is traumatized and her colors disappear temporarily. She feels guilty and believes that Mango's death is her fault, although her family constantly tells her that she didn't kill Mango. Her father tells her Mango seemed to have been planning to die, for his food was left uneaten; it was his time. Meanwhile, Adam emails her saying that "even though he's sorry about her cat, she still should have come to the meeting" (the second one, which she missed) and that "kissing her was fun and that it would be fun to do it again sometime". She realizes that he is a jerk, and she wishes she could print out his email and crumple it up. She regretted kissing him and even saying yes when he asked her if she wanted to go for a "walk". The next day at school, Mia realizes a boy named Roger, who has always been nice to her, really likes her and she decides she likes him better than Adam. Soon, Billy Henkle, the boy that she met at the grocery store who shares her condition, visits and Mia is able to offer him the help that she never received when she was young. She then realizes that she has to move on to be able to help other synesthetes. Her colors return and she finally accepts Mango's fate, believing he is with Grandpa now. Later, at a Hanukkah party, Mia finds a kitten who she believes to be Mango's kitten. Mia eventually ends up taking the kitten, who is mustard yellow, according to her synesthesia.
13208919	/m/03byymw	Tomorrow and Tomorrow	Charles Sheffield		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Originally, Drake is a professional musician, with minor celebrity. When his wife Ana is diagnosed with an unspecified incurable brain disorder, Drake exhausts every option attempting to cure her. Only then does he decide to have her body cryogenically stored, in the hopes future generations will discover effective treatment. However, Drake is extremely cautious, and in case the future culture doesn't care about her plight, he has himself frozen as well. Furthermore he devotes all his energies for a decade prior to his freezing, in becoming an expert primary source on the musically notable people of his era. Assuming that if you become the world's foremost expert in any subject, and given infinite time, someone will want to write a book on that exact subject. At that time the hypothetical future writer will want to awaken Drake, and he can in turn awaken his wife, if treatment is available. Drake's thinking is correct and he is awakened in the year 2500. Although society is vastly different, there still exists no cure for Ana. He spends six years apprenticed to a musical historian to pay for his reviving costs and to gain a foothold in this new world. Drake is continuously laid dormant and revived, exponentially further into the future. Human civilization alters radically over the eons, but Ana's mangled brain proves an extremely difficult problem. Despite the incomprehensible changes surrounding in each successive awakening, Drake never loses sight of his mission. Eventually, in the extremely remote post-human future few billions years later, Drake's original biological body has disintegrated, despite the cryogenic treatment, and he has become an uploaded consciousness, though still in stasis. At this point the descendants of humanity have colonized the entire milky way galaxy, yet an inexplicable threat is wiping out their colonies in a widening arc. The leaders of this civilization have exhausted every answer they can conceive of, and have zero information as to the even the cause of the threat. Their last hope is Drake, an ancient holdover, who may have ideas new to them - namely war. The main problem is that the beings have no idea what is happening as the planets that are wiped out seem exactly the same, but do not respond to signals and outside communication is impossible. All probes sent do not return, nor reply once they reach the surface of the planet. Drake becomes the commander of the residents of the galaxy, in designing weapons and defenses, ideas that have long vanished from the minds of these beings. At this time, their technology allows for extremely powerful and deep manipulation of matter at a fundamental scale. An experimental technology called caesura is used as the plot-device to carry the novel. It is a means of instantaneous teleportation using exotic physics, which has by now developed to a stage where it will have no meaning to the causal being. This caesura is not guaranteed teleportation but has a low chance of succeeding. Billions upon billions of copies of Drake are thus sent out to the planets on the border of the invasion, and by means of caesura are teleported back to the base to collect information about the threat. Eventually it is discovered that the threat is an exotic inter-planetary plant-type life with spores that migrate between systems. These plants do not intentionally destroy the living beings on the planet, but as a result of their growth they do so. After the cause of the problem is found, the post-humans decide that the militant Drake is no longer needed or deemed a positive influence - he is seen as too warlike. They tell him to merge with all the returning Drake copies, of which there are billions. This he agrees to, and over billions of years, he collates these copies together - forming a collective-mind of copies of himself. There is a subplot of a version of him that was randomly teleported by the caesura to a distant galaxy, and how he manages to return over a few billion years. Finally, the collective version of Drake resolves to use the Omega Point to gain complete knowledge of everything and to restore Ana. The story ends on an ambiguous note as Ana is potentially revived, and they seek to create a new universe by means of caesura to live in.
13217542	/m/03bz692	SoMa	Kemble Scott	2007-02-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Raphe is a casualty of the dot-com collapse, a former website designer now forced to work as a clerk at a mailbox shop in order to make ends meet. He discovers the shop is actually a front for a scam. His exposure to this seedy underground sparks his curiosity and eventually leads him on a journey into some of the more bizarre subcultures of San Francisco. Through a series of intense personal encounters, he realizes he’s not quite the man he thought he was. Lauren (Lolly) is a take-no-prisoners woman drawn to the city to find the type of man she can’t find in the suburbs. She discovers the hunt for love is far more complicated than she expected, especially when looking in all the wrong places. Mark Hazodo is a rich, successful video game entrepreneur whose love of games extends into a sordid secret sex life filled with extremes. The journeys of these three main characters intersect, overlap and eventually collide with outrageous, provocative and sometimes disturbing consequences.
13219853	/m/03bz8rg	Hitman: Enemy Within	William C. Dietz	2007-08-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story follows Agent 47 as he is sent to destroy a biker gang led by Big Kahuna. He gets in one of their homecomings but his cover is blown by Marla Norton a puissance trieze agent. But 47 is successful in his job and later is dispatched to find a leak in the agency, 47 finishes his job and again runs off to save wrongfully convicted Diana. 47 then proves Diana's innocence and kills the traitor.
13220001	/m/03bz8z0	Scuppers	Margaret Wise Brown	1953	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Scuppers the dog has an irresistible urge to sail the sea. His little gaff-rigged sailing boat hardly looks seaworthy, with colorful patches on its sails. Though not a luxurious boat, Scuppers keeps it neat and "ship-shape." He has a hook for his hat, a hook for his rope, and a hook for his spyglass. Unfortunately, Scuppers gets shipwrecked after a big storm. Being a resourceful dog, he soon makes a house out of driftwood. Eventually, Scuppers repairs his ship and sails away, arriving at a seaport in a foreign land. The street scene is straight from a canine Kasbah. There are lady dogs dressed in full-length robes with everything but their eyes, paws, and tails covered, balancing jars on their heads. Scuppers needs new clothes after all his travels. He tries on various hats and shoes of different shapes and colors. Life at sea soon calls Scuppers back to his boat. After stowing all his gear in its right place, he is back "where he wants to be — a sailor sailing the deep green sea."
13220811	/m/0cs3zh	The Wealth of Networks	Yochai Benkler	2006		 Benkler describes the current epoch as a "moment of opportunity" due to the emergence of what he terms the Networked Information Economy (NIE), a "technological-economic feasiblity space" that is the result of the means of producing media becoming more socially accessible. Benkler states that his methodology in the text is to look at social relations using economics, liberal political theory, and focuses on individual actions in nonmarket relations. Benkler sees communication and information as the most important cultural and economic outputs of advanced economies. He traces the emergence and development of various communications (radio, newspapers, television) through the 19th and 20th centuries as functions of increasingly centralized control due to the high cost factor of production, and believes that media was thus produced on an industrial scale. With the emergence of computers, networks, and increasingly affordable media production outlets, Benkler introduces the concept of the NIE, which sees media access as a form of power, and recognizes decentralized individual actions in said media as a result of the removal of physical and economic constraints to the creation of media. To Benkler, this is due to a new feasibility space: lowered costs of access via digital production and radical decentralization rather than centralized messaging ("coordinate coexistence", 30). This results in emerging productions of information that use non-proprietry strategies (such as GNU licences and collaborative production formats, like Wikipedia). The forms of cultural productions — music is an example Benkler uses frequently — are either rival or nonrival. Rival products decrease as they are used (e.g. pounds of flour), the consumption of nonrival products (e.g. listening to a song) does not decrease their availability for further consumption. Static vs. dynamic efficiency: one premise of exclusive rights has always been that only financial incentives can facilitate participation in information production. Benkler argues that in an age where computers reduce the cost of production, that the equation of innovation-to-rights shifts as well. The declining cost of communication means that in the networked society there are less barriers for individual cultural production that are "meaningful" to other users. Thus, in network economy, "human capacity becomes primary scarce resource". To close this section, Benkler argues that the networked environment makes possible a new modality of organizing production: that of commons-based peer production. He discusses the parameters of the commons and gives the example of FLOSS Free/Libre/Open/Source/Software. He discusses shared acts of communication (utterances, reviews, distribution of information) and goods (like server space). Lastly, he draws a contrast to the regulation and rival resource of radio spectrum bandwidth and the sharability of space in a digital commons. Benkler argues here that the networked society allows for the emergence of non-hierarchical groups that are committed to information production. Open software is one of the ways we can view the emergence of this new form of information production. "Commons-based" peer productions eschews traditional rational choice models offered by economists. Benkler details some of the key components of this new economy based not on financial remuneration but on user-involvement, accreditation, and tools that promote collaboration between individuals. In order to understand why people engage in production aside from financial incentives, Benkler argues that we can distinguish two types of motivation: # Extrinsic motivation: motivation that comes from outside in the form of financial reward, punishment, etc. # Intrinsic motivation: motivation that derives from within ourselves, such as the pleasure involved in completing a task. In this section, Benkler examines the relationship of individual access to participation in the dissemination and creation of information via communication systems, building on his earlier ideas of commons based peer production. He examines the historical emergence of the mass media, looking at the relationship between print and radio and ever-broadening, industrial broadcast models of production which became supported by advertising. The criticisms of mass media which Benkler brings up include: * its commercialism, because he sees that as supporting the development of programs that appeal to large audiences rather than specific interests, in the name of mass broadcasting; * limited intake of information, due to the relatively small amount of people gathering information; * too much power assigned to too few people. Benkler moves from this overview and criticism to exploring what this text describes as the potential for networked communications to do: :"Better access to knowledge and the emergence of less capital-dependent forms of productive social organization offer the possibility that the emergence of the networked information economy will offer up opportunities for improvement in economic justice, on scales both global and local." Unlike the prior period of industrial production, the costs of entry in terms of communication technology are low and no longer is this technology centralized. Benkler argues that this provides additional autonomy, as people can do for themselves what before required access to centralized communication and technology infrastructure. At the same time, because we are more autonomous in our engagement with these communication technologies, we are no longer subject to their domination. Proprietary media forms like television are slowly being replaced with more diffuse forms of engagement and entertainment, which is less mediated by dominant corporate interests. This diffusion is accompanied by a new constellation of sources such that we have access to a more plural public sphere and more alternative voices not controlled by dominant institutions. For Benkler, the accessibility of alternative views provides for more critical thought among users. For Benkler, another key component of the network society is that individuals are more active in producing their education and cultural production. Online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia allow for users to create rather than just consume knowledge and information. Benkler begins chapter 10 stating two early views on the anticipated social impact the internet would have on the users and their community: Firstly, the internet removed the user from society and allowed the individual to lead a life that was no longer molded by the interactions and experiences of a physical tangible civilisation with others. The second view was that using the internet would widen the field of a user’s community by providing a novel system of communication and interaction. He observes that users show enhanced relationships with their close contacts while increasing the numbers of less close contacts with relationships maintained through internet mediated interaction. He believes this latter change stems from the shift from the one-to-many model of media distribution to a many-to-many model where it is more user centered and controlled. Benkler remarks that the early views were made on the premise that internet communication would replace real world forms communication rather than co-exist alongside it. He introduces the idea of the networked-individual who govern their own interactions and microcommunity roles in both real and virtual space and dynamically switch between when needed, eventually concluding that the early views were nostalgic and somewhat fatuous. A definition is offered whereby cultural freedom occupies a position that relates to both political and individual autonomy, but is synonymous with neither. Benkler then goes on to add that culture is significant because that is the context within which we exist – these are our shared understandings, frameworks, meanings and references.
13221747	/m/03bzbdf	Lost Light	Michael Connelly	2003-04-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lost Light is the first novel set after Bosch retires from the LAPD at the end of the prior story. Having received his private investigator's license, Bosch investigates an old case concerning the murder of a production assistant on the set of a film. The case leads him back into contact with his ex-wife Eleanor Wish, who is now a professional poker player in Las Vegas, and Bosch learns at the end that he and Eleanor have a young daughter. The poem referenced in this work is from Ezra Pound's "Exile's Letter:" What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking, There is no end of things in the heart.
13221796	/m/03bzbft	Blood Work	Michael Connelly	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After receiving a heart transplant, retired FBI criminal profiler Terrell "Terry" McCaleb is contacted by Graciela Rivers, the sister of his donor Gloria, and asked to investigate her death, which occurred during an unsolved convenience store robbery. McCaleb had become a minor celebrity as the head of the FBI task force on the "Code Killer", an L.A.-based serial killer (similar to the Zodiac Killer) who always signed his notes with the code "903 472 568", but he is now living on his fishing boat and has been inactive to prevent rejection of his new heart (to the extent that he cannot even drive). He reluctantly agrees to help Graciela but finds the police handling the case to be extremely hostile. However, he is able to match the style of another killing to Gloria's and gets a copy of the files for both cases from Jaye Winston, the sheriff's deputy on that case. He surprisingly discovers that the call reporting Gloria's shooting was placed slightly prior to the actual shooting, leading him to suspect that Gloria was targeted for murder. He interviews the only witness to the second crime, a man called James Noone, but fails to learn much. As he continues to investigate, with Winston's support but against the wishes of his doctor, he finds that the two cases plus a third case are linked through the use of a common gun and a common line said by the killer after the shooting, "Don't forget the cannoli," from The Godfather. He then learns that the first two victims had McCaleb's blood types and were on a list of people who had previously donated blood. If the victims died, McCaleb would benefit from their death as a potential organ recipient. Because of this, the police on Gloria's case focus on him as the possible killer and get a search warrant for his boat. Then, the real killer begins to plant evidence implicating McCaleb on his boat, expecting the police to find it, but McCaleb finds and then conceals the most incriminating evidence. Examining the facts again, McCaleb realizes that the distinctive attribute of the "Code Killer" was that the nine-digit identifying code did not include a one, and that "Noone" ("no one") is actually the Code Killer. By following the contact information on Noone, McCaleb and Jaye Winston find the Code Killer's files, which prove that he had deliberately killed three people to get McCaleb a new heart. Although McCaleb is thus cleared, the fact that Gloria's death was directly due to his illness creates a rift in his increasingly personal relationship with Graciela and her nephew Raymond, Gloria's son. McCaleb, who is still supposed to be inactive, secretly continues to trace the Code Killer from information that he learned during his interview with "Noone" and drives to a location in Baja California that matches one Noone described. He then finds and is overpowered by the Code Killer, who tells him that he has kidnapped Graciela and Raymond and buried them alive. Despite serious medical problems from so much activity, McCaleb is able to kill him and then uses the little information he has to locate and rescue Graciela and Raymond. Upon his return, he apologizes to his doctor and says that he went to Mexico because he needed a vacation. Only Jaye Winston among the law enforcement officials figures out what really happened.
13222960	/m/03bzcf4	Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Fallout	David Michaels	2007-11-06	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The plot begins with Sam Fisher undergoing unfamiliar spy techniques training in the streets of San Francisco in a joint exercise between the Central Intelligence Agency and Third Echelon. Fisher is soon after summoned to Maryland by Colonel Irving Lambert. Turns out, Sam's estranged brother, Peter, has been found barely alive off the coast of Greenland. Sam is told that Peter has developed a strange disease and has few days to live. It is soon revealed that Sam's brother died of poisoning caused by plutonium hydride-19, or PuH-19. This deadly powder is 1,000x finer than flour and is capable of wiping out New York's entire population with just a cup's worth of the chemical. Although driven at first solely by vengeance, Sam soon realizes that Peter's death should be the least of his worries as a network of Kyrgyz Islamic fundamentalists have toppled the moderate government of Kyrgyztan and, with the help of the North Korean government, have devised the ultimate antidote against the pervasive influence of the West and its technology: they will try to mutate a species of petroleum-eating Chytridiomycota fungus into a strain capable of making the whole world's oil supply disappear, a threat Fisher and Lambert continually refer to as Manas, in reference to the Kyrgyz epic poem. In order to do this, the terrorists snatch some of the world's leading scientists and force them to cooperate. Sam gets his final lead by tracking one of the abducted scientists in a search that will lead him to a place such as the streets of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, an isolated Kyrgyz community in Cape Breton Island, the Great Rift Valley, Kenya, Pyongyang, North Korea and a Kyrgyz complex hidden in the Tian Shan mountain range.
13232532	/m/03bzngg	Salem Falls	Jodi Picoult	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jack is a highly educated high school teacher at a private school for girls in New England. When Jack is falsely accused of having an inappropriate relationship with one of his students, he pleads guilty to a lesser charge and is sentenced to eight months in prison. Jack's mother, a crusader for women's rights, running an improvised "halfway house" for prostitutes refuses to believe his claims of innocence and abandons him. After serving his sentence, Jack wants to have a fresh start, which he finds when he wanders into a diner in Salem Falls, New Hampshire. Without revealing the details of his past, he is hired on as a dishwasher, assisting the owner in the kitchen. He begins a romantic relationship with Addie Peabody, the woman who co-owns and operates the diner with her father and is mourning the death of her young daughter, Chloe, from bacterial meningitis at ten years old. Under New Hampshire law, Jack is required to register with the local police department as a convicted sex offender. As this is a matter of public record, soon the entire town becomes aware of his past. Addie Peabody does not change her attitude towards Jack. The novel also revolves around local teenage girls who experiment with Wicca: manipulative, disturbed Gillian, daughter of Amos Duncan the most prominent businessman in Salem Falls; Chelsea (in whom Jordan McAfee's son, Thomas, takes an active interest); Whitney and Meg take an interest in Jack. Although he does his best to stay away from them, one night he accidentally stumbles upon them in the woods while they are celebrating the Wiccan holiday of Beltane. Because of his past and the prevailing attitude in Salem Falls that Jack should not be there, he is quickly accused of sexually assaulting Gillian. Due to his intoxicated state at the time, Jack is unable to recall where he was that night. Jack is defended by Jordan McAfee and assisted by Selena Damascus. Throughout the trial, Jordan manages to cast reasonable doubt on Gillian's testimony. Meg, however, confides in Addie that she remembers Jack touching her in a sexual manner. Addie believes her because she thinks that "no woman would lie about something like that", and takes Meg to report the incident to policeman Charlie, who is Meg's father. Clues begin to unravel that Gillian has been lying about the assault. Sources tell that she and her clique were taking drugs on the night of Beltane that cause hallucinations. The initial blood screening when Gillian was given a rape exam showed no evidence of drugs in her system. Jordan does not believe this and hires a private toxicologist to run tests on the blood samples, which reveal extreme amounts of a hallucinogen. It is also discovered through her previous psychiatric records that Gillian was known for being a compulsive liar as a child after the death of her mother. Chelsea gets an attack of conscience, though, and mails "The Book of Shadows" (a witch's handbook, and proof that they are part of a witch's coven) to Thomas, who takes it to Jordan. Jordan then uses it against Gillian, who claims she "didn't want to be labeled a slut". Jack is pronounced not guilty. After the trial, Meg reveals to Charlie that Gillian convinced them to make it all up, as a game, to see if they could ruin his life because Gillian was attracted to Jack and he turned her down. Her reports of Jack having touched her inappropriately are revealed through flashback to have been accidental contact with her breast while saving her from a fall. Charlie reluctantly agrees to protect her. It is revealed that Addie, too, was gang-raped at sixteen by Charlie and Amos, so therefore Addie never knew the true identity of Chloe's father. Charlie apologises and Addie appears to accept this. Jack offers to move with Addie to New York, to reconcile with his mother. She agrees. Jordan and Selena - who have been battling their mutual attraction - get together. It is revealed that Chelsea and Thomas conspired - via witchcraft - to do so. The final twist is saved for the final paragraph, when it is revealed that Amos has been raping and otherwise sexually abusing his daughter, Gillian, since she was young, and as the novel ends, seems to continue doing so. It then seems likely that the semen found on her thigh is his, not Jack's.
13235101	/m/03bzrbn	The Flame and the Flower	Kathleen E. Woodiwiss	1972-04	{"/m/05nd8c5": "Colonial United States romance", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02w06c6": "Historical romance"}	 The novel is set at the turn of the 19th century. After Heather Simmons, a penniless orphan, kills a man named William Court who was attempting to rape her, she flees the scene. Near the London dockside, she is accosted by two men who mistake her for a prostitute and escorted onto a ship. Heather believes she has been arrested for murder. Unaware of the misconceptions on both sides, the captain of the ship, Brandon Birmingham, has sexual intercourse with her. The following morning he discovers the truth and offers to make Heather his mistress. She declines. The encounter left Heather pregnant, and a magistrate forces Brandon to marry her. Neither is pleased with their new situation. Over the next few months, as they prepare for and undertake a voyage to Brandon's home in Charleston, South Carolina, their feelings for each other begin to soften. Once in the United States, Heather is plagued by Louisa Wells, Brandon's jealous former betrothed, who attempts to drive a wedge between the couple. Other jealous girls, including Sybil Scott, also try to cause problems between Heather and Brandon. Heather and Brandon continue to misunderstand each other's motives, leading to much tension between them. Heather eventually gives birth to a healthy son, Beau. Several months later, Heather and Brandon resolve their differences, profess their love to each other, and share a bed for the first time as husband and wife. The following morning, Sybil Scott is found murdered. Although Brandon is accused of the crime, Heather is able to provide him an alibi. Soon after, Heather is blackmailed by Thomas Hint, the former assistant to William Court. He threatens to tell the authorities that Heather had killed Court. Hint also informs Louisa that Brandon had discovered Heather on the streets. Louisa believes that Heather was a prostitute, and confronts Brandon and promises to forgive him for his dalliance if Brandon will send Heather back to London and allow Louisa to take her place as wife and mother of Beau. Brandon threatens Louisa and sends her away. When she is found dead the following morning, Brandon is arrested. Heather confronts Hint, who confesses to killing both women and then tries to rape her. She is saved by her husband, who had been released from jail. During the ensuing confrontation, Brandon is shot in the arm. Hint escapes, but the skittish horse he chose bucked him to the ground. A tree limb collapsed on him, killing him immediately. The charges against Brandon are dropped, and he and Heather live happily ever after.
13236068	/m/03bzsxx	Illegal Alien	Robert J. Sawyer	1997-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An alien spacecraft arrives on Earth, contact is established, and the two peoples begin to learn about each other. Frank Nobilio, Science Advisor to the American President, and Cletus Calhoun (a Tennessee hillbilly popularizer of science, somewhat like Carl Sagan), are the two main ambassadors to the aliens (who call themselves Tosoks). The Tosoks explain that their ship was damaged in the Kuiper belt (during initial attempted repairs, one of the eight Tosoks died), and they are assured that humans can provide or build the tools necessary to fix it. This will take about two years. Things go well for over a year, with the Tosoks taking a tour of the major civilized countries of Earth, during which they view and are impressed by the August 11, 1999, total solar eclipse. Then Cletus Calhoun is found dead, under circumstances that place one of the aliens, Hask, under suspicion. Calhoun bled to death when his leg was completely severed with a tool unknown to human forensic pathologists; also, his jaw, one eye, and his spleen have been removed and are never found. Hask appears while the police are investigating and, in the Tosok fashion, has shedded his skin; it is speculated that he did so in order to hide any tell-tale blood splatters. Hask is arrested for murder, and the remainder of the novel concerns Hask's trial in a Los Angeles, California court. Hask maintains that he never murdered Calhoun, who was his friend. His attorney, Dale Rice, an African-American who is famous for defending civil and political rights cases, believes that another Tosok murdered Calhoun for deviant reasons; the Tosoks have as strong a taboo about internal anatomy as most humans do about sex: it is a private matter, not to be shared with others, except for extreme cases, such as surgery. Rice speculates that the Tosok surgeon might be the murderer, or the Tosok named Ged, who shows signs of unnatural interest in the courtroom discussions of internal anatomy, or even the eighth Tosok, reported dead, who might be alive and in hiding. When Rice brings this last hypothesis to the courtroom, Hask is alarmed and announces that he wants to change his plea to guilty. Rice tells Hask that his duty is to defend him. Small things that the other Tosoks do (for example, the surgeon, Stant, pleads the Fifth while on the witness stand) lead Frank and Rice to suspect that the Tosoks are hiding more than one truth from them. At last Hask persuades Rice to take a day off court duty, and they and Frank secretly travel to the Arctic, where the eighth Tosok, Seltar, is indeed alive. They explain to Frank and Rice that the other Tosoks are determined, because of a combination of religious beliefs and a desire to protect the Tosok species, to destroy all intelligent life on Earth, including animals that might evolve intelligence. Most Tosoks share this determination, and they have already exterminated life on other planets. Hask admits that he was responsible for Calhoun's death, but had not wanted to kill him, only to restrain him. Calhoun had come across Hask secretly communicating with Seltar, his beloved mate; Seltar was to be responsible for destroying the mothership when the Tosok leader, Kelkad, had received repairs to the ship and could then wipe out the humans, hence the need for the story about her death. Armed with this information, the police confront the six complicit Tosoks. Kelkad realizes that Hask has betrayed them and runs to kill him; Hask kills Kelkad instead. The remaining five Tosoks are imprisoned. In the Epilogue, aliens from yet a different planet arrive on Earth, explain that they were to be victims of the Tosok genocide but succeeding in fighting back, and will take the Tosok prisoners with them to make them pay for their crimes. Dale Rice, always the champion of the underdog, goes with them into space to become defense attorney for the accused Tosoks.
13236541	/m/03bztd1	The Lariat				 The Lariat is a story told through a myriad of voices with frequently shifting verb tenses, ultimately dissolving into a patchwork collection of scenes and impressions. Sometimes, we hear the voice of an unknown historian/narrator attempting to piece together the life of protagonist Fray Luis through family records and Luis's own diary entries. At other times the story is told in the present tense, using the voices of talking animals. Through these voices emerges the story of Fray Luis, a Spanish Franciscan monk with a wild secular past, who comes to Mission Carmel in Northern California with the goal of converting the local Native Americans to Christianity. The reader learns that the Esselen Indians are notoriously difficult to convert. Fray Luis, however, is able to convert a single Esselen girl who voluntarily comes to the Mission, and from her he learns the Esselen language. She was the wife of a medicine man, Hualala, whom she left after their son died. Ruiz, a Mestizo vaquero associated with the Mission, begins a covert relationship with the Esselen girl, sneaking her out of the nunnery at night. Ruiz makes plans with Mission leader Fray Bernardo to marry the girl, but Fray Luis, who envies Ruiz, does not want this to happen. It is ambiguous whether this is because she is Luis's convert and he claims her spiritually, or whether his sense of spiritual ownership has developed into a sexual desire for her. Fray Luis goes to Hualala's funeral, where he is involuntarily involved in a ceremony to relieve the Esselen community of the burdon of the death. A mouse takes pity of Fray Luis and attempts to help him, but he refuses to be led by the mouse. Fray Luis ends up living for a few weeks at the house of Esteban, Ruiz's Spanish father. Ruiz decides that he wants to kill the bear that has been eating their cattle, and asks the Mission Indian Saturnino to make him a lariat. Saturnino, who hates Ruiz, uses a piece of Fray Luis's monk's cord to weave a lariat. The lariat looks and feels perfect but its integrity is compromised by the addition of the cord, so it does not work properly when the time comes. Ruiz hunts down the bear with his cousin, Pawi. When Ruiz throws his lariat around the bear, the lariat becomes entangled in the saddle, and while Pawi's arrows bounce off the bear, the bear kills Ruiz. Fray Luis attempts to leave Mission Carmel on his donkey, but it transforms into a beetle and carries him down a ladder into a ceremonial hut, where a medicine man seems to transform into a bear. As Fray Luis flees back up the ladder that goes out the hole in the center of the hut, he puts his head through the loop of a waiting lariat, and is hung. It is ambiguous whether he was tricked, or has committed suicide. The narrative is open to interpretation. The chapter titles provide clues, though sometimes they do not seem directly connected to their context ("Fray Luis tries to double-cross the Devil," for example). By using information provided in the first chapter to decipher the titles' meanings, the reader can more fully grasp what is taking place in the often confusing final chapters of this text.
13238914	/m/03bzxls	The Last Dog on Earth		2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Logan Moore is a troubled 14-year-old boy living with his mother Marianne and stepfather Robert in Newburg, Oregon. Logan does not get along well with Robert or his mother, and holds a grudge against his biological father for leaving when he was young. After an incident at a barbecue, Robert decides to purchase a Labrador Retriever in order to teach Logan responsibility. Eager to rebel against his stepfather, Logan convinces his mother to adopt a dog from an animal shelter. He plans to choose an ugly dog and teach it destructive behavior. At the shelter, Logan encounters a young female mutt who immediately takes a liking to him. Logan adopts the dog and names her Jack after Robert's former dog. Meanwhile, a new prion disease named Psychotic Outburst Syndrome (or POS) is affecting dogs, causing friendly pets to become violent. Officials struggle to control the disease and immediately terminate any dogs that catch it. Humans soon begin to contract the disease. Logan quickly bonds with Jack and values her as his only friend. After getting into trouble whilst attempting to protect her, Logan is sent to boot camp while Jack remains at home. Both he and Jack manage to escape, find each other, and begin traveling together. During their journey, they encounter another dog called White Paws: Jack's brother who has become infected with POS. White Paws attacks Jack and severely wounds her before dying. Logan worries that Jack may have contracted the disease through contact with White Paws. The pair continue their journey until they reach the town of Dayville. Logan faintly remembers that his biological father lives in the town and decides to find his father and confront him. While Logan is shoplifting food, Jack is found by three men who, fearing that she may be infected, beat her. Logan is arrested and manages to find his father's address at the police station before escaping. He returns to find Jack nearly dead and carries her, attempting to find his father's house, until he faints from exhaustion. He awakens in the house of his biological father, Dr. Craig Westerly, who had found Logan unconscious by his car. Logan learns from Craig that he had not abandoned him and his mother, but that Marianne had divorced him. Logan fears for Jack's life, afraid that she is infected or will be euthanized. Craig runs tests on the dog and learns that Jack, despite having been in contact with POS, isn't infected: she is immune. Craig decides to take Jack to a doctor so that a vaccine can be created. During the meeting, Rudy Stagg, a man infected with POS who had been killing dogs in order to contain the outbreak, stumbles into their room. Rudy ignores pleas to spare Jack and shoots at her, but Logan dives in front of the dog and is shot instead. Logan suffers a collapsed lung and falls into a coma. He awakens weeks later and learns that Jack is on life support. He says a final goodbye to Jack before her life support is turned off. Jack's immunity to POS leads to the creation of a vaccine and cure, and Logan is finally able to reconcile with Robert, Craig, and Devon Wallace&mdash;a childhood enemy whose dog died due to POS. The novel's epilogue, written as a newspaper article, reveals Logan and his family hold a private ceremony to honor Jack.
13239695	/m/03bzylf	The Marvelous Effect			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of 13 year-old Louis Proof, an African-American native to East Orange, NJ who is a CLE. (Celestial Like Entity), and how a race of CEs (Celestial Entities) called the "eNoli" (E-No-Lie) led by Galonius, try to drive the world into chaos. Louis's best friend, Brandon, his younger cousin Lacey, and the iLone (Eye-Low-Nay) Timothy, team together to free the world from Galonius's influence, as Louis masters his CLE abilities. The story is heavily action driven being influenced by on the author's love of video games and action films. Surprisingly, the book rests upon a foundation of classical literature and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and David Hume.
13251064	/m/03b_bff	Vampire of the Mists	Christie Golden	1991	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns Jander Sunstar, an elf vampire who, despite his affliction, attempts to remain as good as possible. On at trip to Waterdeep to drink the blood of patients of a mental hospital there, Jander falls in love with an inmate who introduces herself as Anna. For about one hundred years the immortal vampire visits Anna regularly, and Anna seems to be similarly ageless. Anna begins to become ill, and Jander, afraid of losing her, tries to turn her into a vampire. Anna refuses. In her last moments of life, when Jander asks her what ruined her mind, she answers "Barovia." In a rage, Jander kills every last occupant of the asylum, and is transported to the Demiplane of Dread. There, he has his fortune told by a Vistani gypsy before befriending Count Strahd Von Zarovich. The predictions made by the fortune-teller all prove to be true later in the book, sometimes in multiple ways. After a very long period of time spent in Barovia, Jander discovers that the woman he knew as Anna was in truth Tatyana, wife of Strahd's Brother, Sergei, and the woman who drove Strahd to murder his own family. She escaped the castle as it entered the demiplane, but lost her mind in the process. Shocked, Jander bands together with a local cleric and a young thief, to the end of killing Strahd. They fail, though the severe damage they inflict on him forces him to into an extended healing cycle thereby limiting the speed with which he increased in power as a spell-caster. To that end, Jander somewhat succeeded, at least for the time being, and more so prevented Strahd further access to any more of his own knowledge when he walks into the sunlight for his final death.
13252634	/m/03b_ds0	Yonnondio: From the Thirties	Tillie Olsen	1974	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins in a small Wyoming mining town, where Jim Holbrook works in the coal mine. As the narrative progresses, the reader discovers that Jim drinks heavily and beats Anna and their children. Mazie follows Jim into town one evening and is nearly thrown down a mineshaft by the deranged miner, Sheen McEvoy. Mazie is saved by the night watchman, and instead McEvoy falls down the shaft to his death. Mazie immediately develops a fever, and the Holbrooks make plans to move east in the spring. Anna takes on a variety of short-term employment to financially prepare for the move. Jim is involved in a mine explosion, attributed to the carelessness of the new fire boss, and goes missing for five days. When Jim returns, it is with a firm resolve to remove his family from the town. In the spring, the Holbrooks leave the mining town, traveling across Nebraska and South Dakota, where their wagon is briefly immobilized by a storm. At their South Dakota tenant farm, the scene is pastoral and the Holbrooks are initially optimistic about the farm’s prospects. For the first time, the family is healthy and well-fed, and Mazie and Will begin attending school. Mazie begins to take an interest in education and befriends the learned Old Man Caldwell next door, who passes on some books to Mazie when he dies, though Jim promptly sells them. As the winter approaches, Jim realizes that after a year of working the land, the family remains in debt. With the arrival of winter, the Holbrooks no longer have enough food. Anna becomes pregnant and ill, and after a marital dispute, Jim leaves the family, returning after ten days. After the birth of Bess in the following March, the family leaves the farm and moves to Omaha, Nebraska. They take up residence in a city slum near a slaughterhouse. The smell from the slaughterhouse makes the children ill and Anna is no longer able to control them at home. Mazie becomes dreamy and detached, fantasizing about the farm as an escape from the horrors of the city. Jim gets a job in the sewers, and he and Anna are unable to support their family. Anna suffers a miscarriage and is bedridden for several days. When she regains mobility, Anna begins taking in laundry to supplement Jim’s income, though Jim explicitly disapproves. Jim gets a job at the slaughterhouse, where he earns a little more money, and he buys fireworks for the family on the Fourth of July to celebrate. When she is excluded from the celebration, Mazie becomes acutely conscious of the social and political implications of her gender. During a heat wave, Anna continues to work alone, canning fruits to feed the family through the winter, while the children run the streets and scavenge in the dump. The novel terminates in the Holbrook apartment, with Anna singing to Ben. Bess enthusiastically bangs a jar lid against the floor, and the family listens to the radio together for the first time.
13253892	/m/03b_fv1	Bridge of Rama	Ashok Banker	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hanuman is meditating in a cave, waiting for an emissary of a mysterious race to arrive. As he meditates upon the name of Rama, the emissary arrives. The unknown creature states over Hanuman's requests that they are readily willing to go to war without need of old alliances. Pleased but surprised by this turn of events, Hanuman listens to the creature's instructions to meditate upon his untapped potential... The story takes place approximately two weeks following the end of the events of Armies of Hanuman, beginning in Lanka. Sita wakes up from an apparently groggy sleep to Rama's voice, awakening in a garden with a supernatural feel. As she recalls the events of her kidnapping, Rama appears and tells her that he is ready to rescue her from Ravana's clutches. She realizes something is wrong, however, as she recognizes being drugged with opium. He hides as Ravana himself then appears upon the scene and tells Sita that she is welcome as a guest, and that her every need will be met. After a brief exchange, Rama then returns and says that he will kill Ravana and rescue Sita. As he's about to carry her off, Sita recognizes that "Rama" is actually Surpanakha in disguise. She attempts to kill Sita but is foiled by Ravana, who simply makes sure that Sita is unhurt and walks off. Sita makes an attempt to escape the garden, but to her shock finds out that she's actually in a garden of maya created by the Pushpak in the Tower of Lanka, and that the ground is miles beneath her. Ravana appears at her side and explains to her that so long as she is trapped in the tower garden, she will be unable to escape, and that she should not attempt it. On the other side of the ocean impasse, Lakshman and Rama wait anxiously for Hanuman to return with the heavy reinforcements for the Kishkindha vanar army. Lakshman feels slightly disgusted that they are not approaching their own clansmen for help, but Rama adamantly states that he will not break the terms of his exile and will continue to rely on King Sugreeva's help. Slightly irritated, Lakshman states his feeling that the army of "talking monkeys" is simply not enough. At that point, Hanuman returns, and to the surprise of the collected vanars, appears physically more powerful and divine than he was before he left. To the utter astonishment of the gathered beings, he states that every single living vanar male and female capable of fighting has joined the forces of Rama's army, creating an army unparalleled to that of any other ever collected in living history. He uses the term janaya-sena, or generation army, to describe the gathering. Rama sees with further amazement that Hanuman has also brought a massive force of bears, each one powerful enough to take on ten armed humans. Rama meets Jambavan, king of the bears, who tells him that he is a son of the mother bear he saved earlier and therefore owes a life debt to him. Further discussion ensues regarding how to cross the ocean. Jambavan flatly refuses to create boats, a feat that would have been impossible given the timespan allotted anyway, citing it as an act of murder to chop down trees. They instead decide to use large stones, rolled into the ocean with the help of the vast army, in order to create a huge bridge. The work begins, taking many days and many lives as bears and vanars alike are maimed and crushed by fallen stones. During the backbreaking work of the stonelifting, an extraordinary event occurs. As a large stone rolls awry down the hillside and threatens to crush a huge contingent of vanars and Rama himself, Hanuman steps in front of the stone and grows to a size that allows him to literally lift the stone in the palm of his hand. Amazed, the army asks him to repeat the feat but Hanuman is unable to control whatever occurred to him. Jambavan takes him off for meditation and training, as the bridge-building continues. Upon his return, Jambavan states that he knows exactly what is going on with Hanuman. He reveals that Hanuman's mother, Anjana, was a cursed apsara named Punjikasthala, a celestial dancer in the court of Indra and lover of Vayu, deva of the winds. As a cursed vanar she nevertheless retained her beauty and was married to Kesari, a noble vanar. She loved her husband but wished to return back to her previous state as an apsara. Indra sympathetically found a loophole in the curse which bound her, and she was able to return to her form as an apsara for one night. Vayu appeared before her, but initially although she flatly refused his advances, he stated that she is not committing a sin, and she allowed them to consummate their love. Later, Anjana had absolutely no memory of the incident but nevertheless gave birth to Hanuman. This made Hanuman none other than the son of Vayu, god of the winds. This shocking revelation that Hanuman is part deva - and therefore worthy of worship - brings tears to Sugreeva, who states that if he had known all along, he would have gladly abdicated his kingship. Hanuman reproves him and states that he wishes for no-one to worship him, as he only regards his master as Rama. Sugreeva agrees to allow Hanuman to remain under the mastership of Rama, who is deeply honored. Hanuman reveals that he now has complete control over his power, and with rapid succession the bridge-building continues. Spurred by a new, safer, and more efficient discovery made by Nala and Hanuman's sheer strength, the building of the bridge rapidly begins to speed up, and the completion of the bridge nears. On one fine morning dawn, Rama travels out to the edge of the bridge in order to perform his morning prayers, when Dasharatha descends from Heaven to give him a warning - that Sita will die by the end of the night if Rama does not intervene. Horror-stricken, Rama asks Hanuman for his help, when Jambavan reveals that he is capable of flight. Hanuman makes a gigantic leap which sends him airborne at supersonic speed towards Lanka. On the way he encounters a number of tests, including the Lady of the Serpents, Sarasa, and Mainika, the mountain. Ravana detects Hanuman's presence as he is flying over the sea and seeks to crush him by controlling his shadow, but Hanuman breaks free, uncorrupted. Upon arriving in Lanka, Hanuman is met by a spirit who calls herself the Lady of Lanka, a being formed from what seems like ocean mist. She takes corporeal form and guides Hanuman through the city into the Tower of Lanka. Hanuman initially begins to develop feelings for her (despite having taken a vow of celibacy) but realizes that something is wrong. He attacks her and she is revealed to be none other than Surpanakha, who was under Ravana's orders to take him to Ravana's lair. He forces her to take him to the grove where Sita is being held. Upon arriving, Sita initially refuses to believe Hanuman is a messenger of Rama. However, over a period of time, he recounts Rama's exploits up to that point and she swiftly believes him. However, when he offers to take her back (under Rama's orders), she adamantly refuses, saying that if he does, history will regard Rama as a coward and refuse to accept him as anything but a genocidal fool who didn't have the courage to face up to Ravana. Hanuman finds out that Sita was framed for the murder of a female rakshasi who was sympathetic to her, when in reality the murderer was another rakshasi acting under Mandodhari's orders. Mandodhari, thoroughly brainwashed by Ravana into believing Sita was a threat to their society, had plotted to have her killed. Sita had been tried by a court led by Ravana and through a complete mockery of judicial process, had been condemned to death by being eaten alive, despite Vibhishan's attempts to save her. Hanuman, in his rage, begins to systematically destroy the tower of Lanka. Hanuman begins tearing his way through the domain of the tower, destroying the buildings and killing hordes of rakshasas made to guard areas of the tower. Ravana's generals are sent to battle with him but they and their troops are completely annihilated aside from Prahasta, Ravana's highest commander. Nevertheless, his son Jambumali is slaughtered by Hanuman, who continues his rampage of death. Ravana finally decides to send his sons against Hanuman. He sends Akshay Kumar, who fights skillfully against him but is no match for Hanuman's sheer strength, and is literally mashed into pieces. Furious, Ravana sends Indrajit after him despite reproaches by Mandodhari. Indrajit utters part of the incantation for the Brahmastra - the same weapon used by Rama on the battlefield in Mithila - and threatens to use it against Hanuman unless he surrenders. Hanuman surrenders out of fear that use of the weapon will destroy much more than himself, and he relents. He is captured and tortured by Indrajit, who brings him before Ravana. Incensed by Hanuman's defeat and killing of Akshay Kumar, he immediately orders Hanuman put to death. However, Vibhishan once again intervenes on his behalf, and states that according to the code of conduct, as a messenger, Hanuman cannot be killed. Hanuman begins to recount the reason he came, while simultaneously extolling Ravana's presence. Confused, the court decides to go with Vibhishan's recommendation, and Ravana level-headedly makes a decision to spare Hanuman's life but mutilate him by burning off his tail, the most precious part of a vanar's body. Hanuman does not protest, and agrees with his judgment. Hanuman is paraded through the streets and his tail is set on fire. However, as the flames threaten to consume the rest of his body, he makes the last-second decision to increase the length of his tail size so that the fire will spread in the opposite direction, and his ploy works. Using his burning tail, he destroys most of Lanka and expands to an enormous size. He takes Sita and puts her down in a safe area, then using his sheer strength, mashes the Tower of Lanka to shreds. Triumphant, he douses his tail and with the blessings of Sita, flies back over the sea to the mainland, where Rama waits.
13255553	/m/03b_grz	The Bowstring Murders	John Dickson Carr	1933	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Elderly eccentric Lord Rayle has a priceless collection of medieval arms and armour housed at Bowstring Castle. When he is found strangled by one of his own bowstrings, it is up to John Gaunt to solve the crime.
13255935	/m/03b_h0k	The White Priory Murders	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Marcia Tait is a Hollywood star who has come to England to make a historical film. She's found beaten to death in the Queen's Mirror pavilion, the 17th-century trysting place of King Charles II and Lady Castlemain. The problem is particularly puzzling because the pavilion is surrounded by newfallen snow, with only one set of footprints leading to it and none leading away. The suspects include a man who thought he was marrying her — and her husband, whose marriage was unknown to all. Sir Henry Merrivale lends a hand to Inspector Masters in the investigation, but is too late to stop the second murder before Merrivale solves the case.
13256028	/m/03b_h28	The Red Widow Murders	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An oddly assorted group of people draw cards to see who will spend the night locked into a room said to be haunted by the "Red Widow" -- a legendary figure who was married to the executioner who guillotined French aristocrats. In the morning, the victim is found dead, locked inside a room whose door was continuously under observation. He has been poisoned by curare, which must be absorbed into the body through a break in the skin, but no wounds of any kind are found on the body. Henry Merrivale must solve the mystery.
13256168	/m/03b_h4b	The Unicorn Murders	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kenwood Blake is with the British Secret Service and romantically involved with another agent, Evelyn Cheyne. Together with Sir Henry Merrivale, they become embroiled in a battle between Flamande, the most picturesque criminal in France, and his arch-enemy Gaston Gasquet of the Sûreté. Both Flamande and Gasquet are masters of disguise, and no one knows what either man looks like. Blake, Merrivale and an assorted group of strangers are in an airplane that is forced to land near the Château de l'Ile, where the Comte d'Andrieu is apparently expecting visitors and offers them all his hospitality. One of the plane's passengers falls to the ground with a hole in his forehead, as if he had been gored by a unicorn, and the area where he fell was under observation by impartial witnesses such that it seems impossible for anyone to have committed the murder. Sir Henry must sort out the twin problems of who's really who and whodunnit. ja:一角獣の殺人
13257724	/m/03b_j71	Transparent Things	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov			 This short novel tells the story of Hugh Person, a young American editor, and the memory of his four trips to a small village in Switzerland over the course of nearly two decades. He first visits the village as a young man, along with his father. In his second trip, Person's publisher sends him to interview R., a gifted and eccentric author. His third trip involves tragedy, murder, and madness. Finally, Person's fourth trip provides an opportunity for reflection on his turbulent past. In recounting Person's story, the narrator(s) guide(s) the reader through themes of time, love, authorship, and the metaphysics of memory. fr:La Transparence des choses ru:Прозрачные вещи
13258353	/m/0464v7w	Cosmographia	Bernard Silvestris			 The work is divided into two parts: "Megacosmus", which describes the ordering of the physical universe, and "Microcosmus", which describes the creation of man. 1 (verse): Natura (Nature) complains to Noys (Divine Providence; Greek ) that Hyle (Primordial Matter; Greek ), although held in check by Silva (the Latin equivalent of hyle), is chaotic and unformed and asks that Noys impose order and form on the confused matter. 2 (prose): Noys reveals her status as the daughter of God and asserts that the time is right for Natura's plea to be granted. She then separates out the four elements of fire, earth, water, and air from primordial matter. Seeing that the results are good, she begets the World Soul, or Endelechia, as a bride for Mundus (World). Their marriage is the source of life in the universe. 3 (verse): This long poem in elegiac couplets presents the results of the ordering of the universe. Ether, the stars and sky, the earth, and the sea have become distinguished, and the nine orders of angels attend on the God who exists outside the universe. There follows a catalogue of the stars and constellations, along with the planets and their natures. Then the earth and its creatures are described, with catalogues of mountains, beasts, rivers, plants (which are treated in particularly loving detail), fish, and birds. 4 (prose): The relationships between the powers operating in the universe are analyzed. All things under the heavens form part of a cosmic cycle, controlled by Natura, which will never cease, since its maker and cause are eternal. Hyle is the basis, whom the rational plan of God and Noys has ordered in an everlasting system, although subject to time: "For as Noys is forever pregnant of the divine will, she in turn informs Endelechia with the images she conceives of the eternal patterns, Endelechia impresses them upon Nature, and Nature imparts to Imarmene [Destiny; Greek ] what the well-being of the universe demands." 1 (prose): Noys displays the created universe to Natura and points out its various features. 2 (verse): With the work of Noys, Silva has recovered her true beauty. Noys (still speaking to Natura) declares herself proud of the harmony she has brought to the universe. 3 (prose): Noys says that for the completion of the cosmic design, the creation of man is needed. For this it is necessary that Natura seek out Urania (the celestial principle) and Physis (the material principle). Natura sets forth and searches through various regions of the heavens. When she reaches the outermost limit of the heavens, she encounters the Genius whose responsibility it is to delineate the celestial forms on the individual things of the universe. He greets Natura and points out Urania, whose brightness dazzles Natura. 4 (verse): Urania agrees to descend to Earth and collaborate in the creation of man. She will take with her the human soul, guiding it through all the heavens so that it may become acquainted with the laws of fate and learn the rules that govern its behavior. 5 (prose): To gain the sanction of the divine powers, Natura and Urania travel outside the cosmos, to the sanctuary of the supreme divinity, Tugaton (the Good; Greek ), whose favor they pray for. They then descend, one by one, through the planetary spheres. 6 (verse): Having reached the lower boundary of the sphere of the Moon, where the quintessence meets the terrestrial elements, Natura pauses to look about her. 7 (prose): Natura and Urania see thousands of spirits. Urania tells Natura that, in addition to the angels who dwell beyond the created universe and in the heavenly spheres, there are spirits below the Moon—some good, some evil. 8 (verse): Urania bids Natura to review the totality of the universe and note the principles of divine concord that it manifests. 9 (prose): Natura and Urania descend to Earth and reach a secluded locus amoenus (called Gramision or Granusion—the readings of the manuscripts are disputed). There they meet Physis, accompanied by her daughters Theorica (Contemplative Knowledge) and Practica (Active Knowledge), who is rapt in contemplation of created life in all its aspects. Suddenly, Noys appears. 10 (verse): Noys explains that Natura, Urania, and Physis can collaborate to complete the creation by fashioning a creature who participates in both the divine and earthly realms. 11 (prose): Noys assigns Urania, Physis, and Natura specific tasks in the creation of man, providing a model for each. Urania, using the Mirror of Providence, is to provide him with a soul derived from Endelechia; Physis, using the Book of Memory, is to provide him with a body; and Natura, using the Table of Destiny, is to unite the soul and the body. 12 (verse): Natura summons her two companions to begin the work. Physis, however, is somewhat angry, since she sees that matter is ill suited for the fashioning of a being that requires intellect. Urania assists her by eliminating the evil taint from Silva and containing the matter within definite limits. 13 (prose): Physis—making use of the imperfect aspects of Silva that had (somewhat uncertainly) submitted to the will of God and had been left over from the rest of creation—fashions a body. The four humors are described, along with the tripartite division of the body into the head (seat of the brain and the sensory organs), the breast (seat of the heart) and the loins (seat of the liver). 14 (verse): The powers of the senses and the brain, heart, and liver are detailed. The organs of generation will prevent human life from wholly passing away and the universe from returning to chaos.
13262385	/m/03b_p14	The Mystery of Cloomber	Arthur Conan Doyle		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Near their residence, Branksome, is The Cloomber Hall, for many years untenanted. After a little while it is settled in by John Berthier Heatherstone, late of the Indian Army. General Heatherstone is nervous to the point of being paranoid. As the story unfolds, it becomes evident that his fears are connected with some people in India whom he has offended somehow. People hear a strange sound, like the tolling of a bell, in his presence, which seems to cause the general great discomfort. Every year his paranoia reaches its climax around the fifth of October, after which date his fears subside for a while. After some time there is a shipwreck in the bay and among the survivors are three Buddhist priests who had boarded the ship from Kurrachee. When John Fothergill West tells the general (to whose daughter Gabriel he is engaged) about the priests, he resigns himself to his fate and refuses any help from West. One night the three Buddhist priests summon General Heatherstone and Colonel Rufus Smith (who had been together with the general in India and apparently was under the same threat that was faced by the general) out of The Cloomber Hall. With their psychic powers, they have a complete hold over the two erstwhile soldiers. The priests take them through the marshes to the Hole of Cree, a bottomless pit in the centre of the marsh and either throw the soldiers in or order them to jump in. The General had given his son a parcel and instructed him to hand it over to West in case of his death or disappearance. When West opens the parcel he finds a letter and some old papers. In the letter the general tells West to read the papers, which are pages from a diary that the general had kept in his days in the army of the English East India Company. As West reads the papers he understands the mystery of Cloomber. When he was in the army forty years ago, during the First Afghan War, the general was fighting against the Afridis in the passes of the Hindu-Kush. After defeating the Afridis in a battle, he chases them to a cul de sac to slaughter them. As the general was closing in on the remnants of the enemy forces, an old man emerges from a cave and stops him from killing them. The general, together with Rufus Smith, kills the old man and proceeds with the massacre. As it turns out, the old man was an arch-adept, a buddhist priest who had reached the zenith of buddhist priesthood. His chelas (students) vow to avenge his death. The three chelas let the general live on for forty years to prolong his misery.The sound that appeared to emanate from above the general's head was the tolling of the astral bell by the chelas to remind him that wherever he goes, he will never escape their wrath.
13264667	/m/03b_sbb	Le Bossu			{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Si tu ne viens pas à Lagardère, Lagardère ira à toi! ("If you don't come to Largardère, Lagardère will come to you!") Such is the oath given by the adventurer Lagardère to the wicked Prince de Gonzague, who has plotted to murder the daughter and seize the fortune of the dashing Duc de Nevers. In the first volume, Le Petit Parisien, the Prince de Gonzague murders the Duc de Nevers. Henri Lagardère rescues Nevers' daughter Aurore and raises her in exile, where she makes friends with a gypsy girl named Flor. The second volume, Le Chevalier de Lagardère, describes Lagardère's triumph over the Prince de Gonzague.
13265842	/m/03b_th3	The Armourer's House	Rosemary Sutcliff	1951	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story revolves around a 10-year-old girl named Tamsyn, who has been orphaned and is being raised by her uncle, a shipowner in Bideford. She is brought to live in London by another uncle, who works as a swordsmith, or armourer, being the owner of the house after which the novel is titled. Tamsyn is a dark-complected girl, contrasting with the entirely red headed family which has taken her in; showing Sutcliff's reoccurring themes of outsiders, belonging, red heads, and light vs. dark. She is homesick for her West Country life, but slowly adapts to London city life and being part of a larger family. Through the novel she witnesses Morris dancers on May Day; visits the market in Cheapside, the Billingsgate Fish Market, and the Royal Dockyard in Deptford. She watches King Henry VIII and his current queen Anne Boleyn proceed up the Thames in his royal barge, transiting from his palace in Greenwich to his palace in Westminster. The mother of the house tells them the tale of Tam Lin on Halloween, which parallels the theme of a girl who struggles to pursue her dreams. She watches tall ships at the docks, consistently showing a strong interest in sailing, which she shares with one of the Armourer's sons, Piers. Both Piers and Tamsyn dream of sailing away and exploring the word, adventuring with the backdrop of the Age of Exploration. Piers is restrained by being bound as an apprentice to his father, while Tamsyn is restrained by being a girl. The oldest son, who had been thought drowned, returns to the family on Christmas Eve while they are home singing Christmas Carols. This frees Piers from his obligation, so he is welcomed to sail with the ship-owning uncle in the coming spring. Tamsyn is overjoyed, as he has promised to bring her along when he is older and becomes master of a ship.
13265898	/m/03b_tjv	Under the Lilacs	Louisa May Alcott	1878	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 When Bab and Betty decide to have a tea party with their dolls a mysterious dog comes and steals their prized cake. The girls find a circus run-away, Ben Brown, hiding in their play barn. Ben is a horse master, so when the Mosses take the Ben in they find him work at a neighbor's house driving cows. Eventually Ben finds out his beloved father is dead. Miss Celia, a neighbor, comforts him and finally offers to let Ben stay with her and her fourteen-year-old brother Thornton. Many adventures and summer-happenings go on in Celia's house. Sancho gets lost, Ben is accused of stealing, Miss Celia gets hurt and Ben takes a wild ride on her horse, Lita.
13268819	/m/03b_ywr	The Runaway Skyscraper	Murray Leinster	1919-02-22	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "The Runaway Skyscraper" concerns Arthur Chamberlain, an engineer who works in a midtown Manhattan office building called the Metropolitan Tower. When the sun suddenly begins moving backwards in the sky, setting rapidly in the east, he is the only one to realize what is actually happening: a flaw in the rock beneath the building has caused it to subside, but instead of moving in space, the building is falling backwards into the past. When the subsidence finally ends, the building is located several thousand years in the past, and its 2000-odd inhabitants find themselves stranded in pre-Columbian Manhattan. Chamberlain also realizes that the same seismic forces that caused the building to drop back into the past can also be used to return it to the present, but that doing so will require several weeks of intensive work by the building's inhabitants, and in the meantime they must concentrate on feeding themselves. Chamberlain convinces the president of a bank on the first floor that he can return them to the present, and together they are able to organize the other inhabitants into hunting and fishing parties. Two weeks later, Chamberlain is ready to implement his plan. He forces a jet of soapy water into an artesian well beneath the building, and this allows the pressure that has built up in the rock to be released. The building travels forward in time again, returning to the exact moment when it began to travel into the past.
13270606	/m/03c0016	The Problem of Cell 13	Jacques Futrelle		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Like Futrelle's other short stories, "The Problem of Cell 13" features Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen as the main character, although most of the story is seen through the perspective of a prison warden. While in a scientific debate with two men, Dr. Charles Ransome and Alfred Fielding, Augustus, "The Thinking Machine", insists that nothing is impossible when the human mind is properly applied. To prove this, he agrees that he will take part in an experiment in which he will be incarcerated in a prison for one week and given the challenge of escaping. He achieves the goal with great ingenuity (and aid from his frequent confederate, newspaper reporter Hutchinson Hatch) and explains fully how he did it. Everyone around Augustus is amazed at his explanation, and they wholeheartedly believe his point that nothing is impossible, though the warden asks what would have happened if many of the key elements of Augustus's escape had not been present. Augustus smiles smugly and states that there were also two other ways out, and leaves it at that.
13273086	/m/03c02jm	The Punch and Judy Murders	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kenwood Blake, introduced in the previous Sir Henry Merrivale mystery The Unicorn Murders, is about to marry his fellow British Secret Service operative, Evelyn Cheyne, 24 hours from now. He is sidetracked by an urgent telegram from Sir Henry asking him to come to Torquay to play an undercover role under an alias by which he is already known, "Robert Butler". Paul Hogenauer, a German polymath with many skills and interests, has aroused the suspicion of Sir Henry and Colonel Charters, the Chief Constable of the county by his recent interest in ghosts and spiritualism. Sir Henry and Colonel Charters feel that anti-British espionage may underlie recent events, and they suspect the involvement of a German spy known only as L. A police officer observing Hogenauer's house reports "the room was dark, but that it seemed to be very full of small, moving darts of light flickering round a thing like a flower-pot turned upside down." Blake, as Butler, drives Sir Henry's car to Hogenauer's house and is promptly arrested—to his great surprise, Sir Henry and Colonel Charters disavow any knowledge of his actions. Blake/Butler escapes, breaks into Hogenauer's house and finds Hogenauer, dead in his easy chair, grinning from the rictus of strychnine and wearing a Turkish fez. A colleague of Hogenauer, Dr. Keppel, is soon found to be dead in a hotel halfway across town, apparently killed simultaneously with Hogenauer. Blake/Butler and his fiancee must stay a step ahead of the police and race around investigating espionage, counterfeiting, spiritualism, and multiple impersonations. Finally Sir Henry examines and discards three complex possible solutions, revealing the murderer just in time for the wedding. ja:パンチとジュディ (推理小説)
13273262	/m/03c02nd	Death in Five Boxes	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dr. John Sanders, a serious young forensic scientist, is stopped by a pretty young girl late at night. Marcia Blystone asks him to accompany her to the top floor of a four-story building, to the apartment of Mr. Felix Haye, because she is afraid to go up alone. Before they reach the apartment, he finds an umbrella-swordstick with bloodstains on it, and they are immediately stopped by a clerk from the Anglo-Egyptian Importing Co. Ltd., one floor below Mr. Haye's flat. He mentions grumpily that Haye and his guests have been laughing uproariously and stomping their feet on the floor. When the couple finally enters Haye's flat, they find the host stabbed to death, and his three guests—including Miss Blystone's surgeon father—unconscious due to atropine poisoning. The couple make their way back to the importing company, where the clerk offers them the telephone and promptly disappears. Upon their recovering consciousness, each of the three guests is questioned about the unusual contents of their pockets. The doctor is carrying four wrist watches; a beautiful dealer in art is carrying a bottle of quicklime and another of phosphorus; and the owner of the Anglo-Egyptian Importing Company is carrying the ringing mechanism of an alarm clock and a convex piece of glass. All three swear that their cocktails were prepared from unopened bottles in the presence of all of them, yet someone has managed to poison them. Chief Inspector Masters brings in Sir Henry Merrivale to investigate the bizarre circumstances. At the offices of Charles Drake, Haye's lawyer, they find the evidence of five small boxes, all empty. They are each labeled with a name—the three guests, the clerk, and someone named "Judith Adams", who turns out to be a deceased author who wrote a book on legendary dragons. It takes all Sir Henry's ingenuity to work out the tangle of relationships and motives and reveal not only who stabbed Felix Haye, but also poisoned the cocktails and how—and why Judith Adams is the key to it all.
13278746	/m/03c07gg	Diary of an Oxygen Thief				 Purporting to be an autobiography, Diary of an Oxygen Thief begins with the narrator, an Irish advertising executive living in London, describing the pleasure he used to receive from emotionally abusing women. After the narrator starts attending AA meetings, he sobers up, abstains from sex for several years, and looks back on his past relationships with a measure of remorse. After taking a job in the United States, the narrator is confronted externally by the absurdity of corporate America, culture shock, and the conflict of moving from the lower to upper-middle class. Internally he grapples with paranoia, addiction, and a legacy of pain. Later, he meets a young, aspiring photographer in New York and falls in love with her. The relationship rapidly goes south and culminates in her humiliating him in public, thereby giving him a taste of his own medicine. The titular Oxygen Thief refers to the low self-esteem of the narrator who, because of his sense of self-loathing, seems to go through life unworthy of the very air he breathes.
13279132	/m/03c07ww	Life's Lottery	Kim Newman		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Life's Lottery opens speculating on the question of free will and predestination. The reader is invited to decide for themselves which philosophy to follow in reading the book and then is presented with Keith's birth in England on October 4, 1959. Keith is raised in England by a successful banker and has, as the author points out, "been dealt a better hand than many". The boy is spoiled by his parents and enters primary school shy and timid. The book offers its first choice on the first day, when Keith is confronted and teased by a gang. The consequences of the choice - "Napoleon Solo or Illya Kuryakin?" - set Keith on a path that determines his lifelong friends, enemies, and opportunities. Following this key point, the plot paths diverge wildly, and range from Keith winning the lottery, becoming a distinguished novelist, making a bomb threat, having an incestuous affair, committing a murder, and making a deal with the Devil. Should the reader decide to disregard the novel's interactive nature and read through it as any other book, he is presented with both immediate outcomes of the first decision and perspective then switches to the two doctors who are observing Keith; one confirms that this is Keith Marion, "of Marion syndrome", and the other remarks that although he is in a coma, he looks "quite ordinary", considering his symptoms. The rest of the novel includes every possible scenario that the reader could encounter, all of them playing out in Keith's mind. The stream of thought is occasionally interrupted by another scene with the doctors, each of which slowly leaks information to the reader, who eventually learns that he is not assuming the role of a man named Keith Marion. Rather, the protagonist is a woman named Marion Keith, who, in her coma, spends her time speculating on what her life might be like had she been born a man. Eventually, she settles on an outcome in which she is a man laboring for a living in Tibet.
13279467	/m/03c08ml	Mississippi Jack		2007-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story follows Jacky Faber as she is captured by British forces to be taken back to England for her past crimes. Captain Rutherford is able to keep her aboard his ship, HMS Juno, before a Colonel Swithin (Higgins iin disguise) comes aboard to take custody of Jacky for "interrogation.". He gives Rutherford the reward he was expecting for capturing her (actually money he received from people at the Lawson Peabody school) and takes Jacky away. Higgins and Jacky meet up with Jim Tanner, her coxswain, and they go to hide out in the American Wilderness. They run into Katy Deere, who was a serving girl at the Lawson Peabody School. Katy has a goal; to kill her uncle. However, as soon as they get to the farm where he lives, Katy learns he is dead. Jacky, Higgins, Tanner, and Katy travel for miles exploring the U.S. frontier till they wind up in a small town on the Allegheny River. They meet and trick Mike Fink out of his keelboatboat and set off down the Allegheny River, having turned the boat into a casino showboat. Unknown to her, Jaimy is following her just days behind, but he is not alone. After being robbed, beaten, and left for dead by a pair of bandits, Jaimy is rescued by 14-year-old Clementine Jukes, who believes he is God-sent and becomes his lover. They run away together from Clementine's abusive father in search of Jacky; Clementine is unaware of the fact that Jacky is a female and betrothed to Jaimy. They almost catch up to Jacky in Pittsburgh with the help of Mike Fink, who wishes to kill Jacky for stealing his boat, but Jaimy and Mike land in jail for a few weeks while Clementine finds work aboard Jacky's boat. Clementine does not tell her about how Jaimy and she traveled alone together for several hundred miles, and Jaimy does not know that Clementine is going away with Jacky. They allow several people aboard as guests on the showboat. The first is Yancy Cantrell, a master at cards and widower, and his African-American daughter. Cantrell and his daughter operate a scam by making selling the daughter to a slavemaster, whereafter Chloeuses lockpicks to escape and meet back up with her father. New Orleans is the destination of 'The Belle Of The Golden West', Jacky's showboat/casino. Also aboard are Crow Jane and the Hawkes boys, Nathaniel and Matthew 'Matty'. Crow Jane is hired as the cook and the Hawkes boys are boat crewmen Clementine is Crow Jane's assistant and develops a relationship with Jim Tanner. While stopping at a town for two days on the way down the river, the whole crew goes off to spend their money. The day they leave, the Hawkes brothers return with their new wives, Honeysuckle Rose and Tupelo Honey, whom Jacky reluctantly let on board. The Very Reverend Clawson comes aboard and does an act in Jacky's show, which is a song-and-dance, a revival led by Clawson, and a medicine show that advertises her Elixir. He is also heading to New Orleans. While on their cruise, one of the passengers forewarns them about a group of bloodthirsty bandits that resort at Cave-in-Rock on the outskirts of town. The last person aboard the ship is a runaway slave, Solomon. The crew sail past the Cave-in-Rock, running into a "gentleman" sailor who knows the American rivers like the back of his hand. His name is Frederick Fortescue and he is actually a fraud. The trick is to lure the showboat into Cave-in-Rock so the bandits can kill the crew but Jacky catches onto the scene, having Fortescue imprisoned and later thrown overboard after they kill the bandits. Another group of people taken aboard are the Injuns, Lightfoot and Chee-a-quat. While they are on the way to New Orleans, they help out the crew along the way and Jacky gets to meet up with the two Indians' tribes that live in a massive town of tepees. Unbeknownst to Jacky who goes to meet with the Indians, they are secretly killing people in America for the British. Jacky gets to meet Tecumseh and takes up with some of the Indians. But while venturing with Tepeki, an Indian girl, Jacky Faber runs into Captain Lord Allen, a womanizing British captain of high rank. Lightfoot has Allen taken from Jacky's presence and soon, Jacky meets Flashby and Moseley who know instantly who she is. With the revelation of Jacky's past to the Indians, they soon turn against her and have the British take her away. Flashby and Moseley torture Jacky during an interrogation aboard their ship but Allen detests them intensely and has them go back to the Indians. Jacky charms Allen with wine and the past, convinces Allen to untie her and steals his gun. Soon, Higgins and the crew come to rescue Jacky. Jacky maintains the role as the captain of her 'Belle of the Golden West' and has Moseley and Flashby walk the plank. While she has Allen journey with them to New Orleans, Jaimy soon catches up with them after escaping Mike Fink and their jail term. He meets up with Jacky but catches her cheating so he intends to return back to Britain. Jacky finds out the puzzling connection between Clementine and Jacky; angering her deeply. When all is calm, Jacky and the crew sail into Baton Rouge where Captain Allen and his crew decide to get off at instead of New Orleans. Jacky bids them a personal farewell and as they go looking for some supplies, Jacky and the crew run into another enemy: slave hunters. The feared Beam family of Louisiana imprison Jacky, Solomon and Chloe Cantrell because they claim Jacky is Abolitionist and loves the black race. Yancy tries to fight for her but ends up being wounded in the process. The Beam family takes the three to their farm where they shackle Solomon and Chloe to their barn and plan to hang Jacky. Jacky rants on about being pregnant and at first, the family of strictly men (Ma Beam must have died before this story happened) plan on hanging but then say they plan on keeping Jacky till she has her baby. Pa Beam, being a Bible-thumping yet hypocritical man of God, goes to pray in the nearby woods. When he comes out, he claims the Lord has told him to tar-and-feather Jacky so they do just that. But soon they find out Jacky is lying about being pregnant. Lightfoot, Chee-a-Quat, the Hawkes boys and Katy Deere come to save Jacky. Katy mortally wounds a son of Pa Beam - Ezekiel, and Lightfoot then bluntly kills him. The group are only able to kill three of the Beam family before they can carry Jacky, Solomon and Chloe to the safety of the 'Belle of the Golden West.'Jacky is covered in tar so Crow Jane has to soak her in water, cut her hair very short and peel the tar off with knives and alcohol. Things back at the ship have taken a turn for the worse, Yancy Cantrell's wound from being shot by one of the Beams turns out to be a mortal wound and he soon dies from it. After Lightfoot and Chee-a-Quat come back saying they've killed all of the Beam family and burned their house with the bodies in each bed, they bury Cantrell; the Reverend Clawson preaching the funeral. Katy Deere then soon decides to leave the group, going out on her own. Jacky is saddened by this but allows Katy to leave. Later that night, a horrible storm passes through and knocks Jacky off the showboat into the waters below. Within a day or so, Jacky winds up in the port of New Orleans, at long last. Without a clue on how her crew is or how to navigate New Orleans, she goes looking for the House of the Rising Sun, a brothel and a casino that the ever-so mysterious Mam'selle. Jacky stays with Mam'selle Claudelle de Bourbon, whom she had met in Boston and who practices "the oldest profession", until she finds Jaimy. Jacky is almost murdered simultaneously by Mike Fink because she stole his boat, British Lieutenant Flashby (a minor character from the second book), because he wants the prize money for Jacky's head, and the pirate brothers Lafitte because Jacky stole quite a bit of loot from them during her time as a privateer. She manages to escape them all and buys a small ship so that, with the help of her newly-reunited crew, she can get to Jaimy, who is in Jamaica. She finds him there, all is forgiven, and Jaimy sets off for China for a year or so because he is once again in the Royal Navy. Though some of her crew choose to marry and become pioneers, and others choose to marry and run a floating tavern docked at New Orleans, Jacky and the remainder of her crew leave for Boston after setting Jaimy off in Kingston, Jamaica. =Characters= * Jacky Faber- The main protagonist of the entire series; now sixteen years old and proclaimed a pirate by King George, Jacky takes up the American Wilderness and starts a casino showboat business. * James 'Jaimy' Emerson Fletcher- Jacky's lover for the entire book series; throughout the series, he's always been one step behind Jacky. On grounds of their distant relationship, Jaimy has an affair with country girl, Clementine Jukes. * Master Higgins- Jacky's devoted butler and right-hand man throughout Jacky's adventure through America. * Mike Fink- An American keelboat legend and feared by the Yankee townfolk, Mike Fink knows the rivers like the back of his hand and being victim to Jacky's wit, he loses his keelboat to her and vows to kill her. * Clementine Jukes- The daughter of an alcoholic, murderous farmer; Clementine saves Jaimy from death and sails with Jaimy in pursuit of Jacky before she learns Jacky is another woman and Clementine takes up a position on Jacky's showboat. * Yancy Cantrell- The sharp card-dealing Creole gentleman, Cantrell's widowed and raises a daughter that serves a purpose in an Abolitionist scam of his. Cantrell serves a primary role in the book as he is one of the many guests that take the entire route to New Orleans aboard Jacky's casino-boat. * Captain Lord Richard Allen- A womanizing young captain of King George's fleet who is in charge of a deal with the American Indians to kill for scalps and money. Jacky begins an affair with Allen as soon as they come to terms. * Jim Tanner- Another right-hand man of Jacky's; Tanner is always given secondhand jobs and it's obvious he does not appreciate some of the assignments he is given but after Clementine's split from Jaimy, she takes up perfectly with Tanner. * Lieutenant Flashby- An antagonist of the book, Flashby is part of Allen's partnership with the Indians and secretly knows who Jacky Faber truly is and he has Allen kidnap her and take her aboard their ship but when Higgins and the 'Belle of the Golden West' crew go to save Jacky from going to be executed in Britain, Jacky captures Flashby and his cohort Moseley and have the walk the plank separately. * Crow Jane- Jacky's showboat cook and personal bodyguard. * The Hawkes Boys ('Thaniel and Matty)- Some hoodlums Crow Jane used to run with that hired as Jacky's bodyguards. * Mam'selle Claudelle de Bourbon- A prostitute from New Orleans, Jacky resorts with her once she reaches New Orleans. * Lightfoot, Tepeki, Chee-a-Quat, and the Indian tribe- An Indian tribe Jacky befriends before being exposed by Flashby; even though Lightfoot and Chee-a-Quat are evidently angered and shocked, they come back to rescue her from the British. * Solomon- A negro slave that Jacky and the crew up with and save from slave masters. Solomon is proven to be very intelligent with a guitar and is the reason Jacky is tarred and feathered in New Orleans for by the feared Beam family. * Katy Deere- Another dear friend of Jacky's, in the beginning she is a vital character in helping start Jacky's 'Belle of the Golden West' but since business picked up for everybody, she faded into the position of one of Jacky's many assistants. * Chloe Cantrell- The colored daughter of Yancy Cantrell and a motherless child, Chloe is usually mute but cunning and is found out to be good with a harpsichord. * Reverend Clawson- A Christian preacher that leads a revival as part of Jacky's routine show. He is one of the many guests that go with Jacky the whole route to New Orleans. * Daniel Prescott- A boy who fell victim to the Cave-in-Rock bandits. He travels with Jacky the whole way to New Orleans. * The Beam Family- A Bible-thumping group of hypocritical racists that has Jacky arrested and punished (tar and feather) for helping Solomon escape to freedom. * Mr. McCoy and Mr. Beatty- Two highwaymen that nearly kill Jaimy. * Captain Rutherford- The ruthless captain in charge of arresting Jacky and sending her back to King George in the beginning. * The Lawson Peabody School Girls- Jacky's allies that try to help free her from Captain Rutherford and the British. * Ezra Pickering- A trusted attorney of Jacky's that seldom writes to her to tells her the status of everybody from Mistress Pimm's to the School girls.
13284648	/m/03c0kf5	Drop to His Death	John Dickson Carr	1939	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A businessman dies in an elevator in such a way that it seems as though no one could have committed the murder.
13284716	/m/03c0khl	The Reader is Warned	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sir Henry Merrivale must solve an impossible crime when a man dies in his home in such a way that it seems no one could have been sufficiently close to him to have committed murder, and it is unclear exactly how or why he died. The circumstances are complicated by the presence of the victim's wife, a writer of clever detective stories, the disappearance of a book in which she jots down unusual methods of murder, and a strange house guest who believes that he can kill people at a distance by the use of something he calls "Teleforce".
13284900	/m/03c0knf	And So to Murder	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Monica Stanton, the pretty and rather naive daughter of a British clergyman, is the author of a surprisingly scandalous best-seller. As a result, she has been hired as a script writer for Albion Films, working with William Cartwright, a script writer from the world of detective novels. However, she is not going to be working on her own novel—she is helping Cartwright adapt his latest detective novel, And So to Murder. Tilly Parsons is a dumpy, bustling chain-smoking American woman in her early fifties who is the highest-paid scenario writer in the world, imported from Hollywood at great expense to adapt "punch up" the screenplay of another Albion film. Glamorous movie star Frances Fleur, whose punctilious husband Kurt von Gagern selects all her parts, will be the star. Against the backdrop of Pineham Studios and Fleur's current movie, a series of mysterious attempts on Monica's life begin—they are exceptionally nasty and completely inexplicable, involving sulphuric acid. When someone poisons Tilly Parsons' cigarette and nearly kills her, Sir Henry Merrivale helps Chief Inspector Masters to bring home the crimes to their unlikely perpetrator.
13285117	/m/03c0kty	Murder in the Submarine Zone	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nine oddly-assorted passengers aboard the S.S. Edwardic are crossing the Atlantic during World War II, with the constant threat of attack by German submarines. When one passenger is murdered, apparently for a military secret, Sir Henry Merrivale must solve the mystery. But can he contend with the fact that the killer's fingerprint doesn't match anybody on the ship?
13285912	/m/03c0ljn	Confessions of A Video Vixen		2005-07-01		 Confessions of a Video Vixen recounts Steffans' life from her troubled girlhood living in poverty in St. Thomas, through abuse, drugs, rape and living as a teenage runaway who turns to stripping and hip hop modeling to support herself and, later, her young son. Originally published in 2005 by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, the book was immediately a New York Times bestseller. (The 2006 paperback edition includes bonus material, and also made the NYT bestseller list.) The book created a stir when it went on sale because of Steffans' allegations of abuse at the hands of her then-husband rapper, Kool G Rap and her claims that she had sexual relationships with numerous famous music stars and athletes, including Jay-Z, Ja Rule, Bobby Brown, Dr. Dre, DMX, Xzibit, Diddy, Usher, Shaquille O'Neal and Irv Gotti.
13286237	/m/03c0lv8	Desert of the Heart	Jane Rule	1964	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Evelyn Hall is an English professor from the University of California. She arrives in Reno to establish a six-week residency to attain a divorce. After being married for 15 years, she is overwhelmed with guilt for feeling as if she is ruining her husband's mental health. While in Reno, she stays in the guest home of Frances Packer with other women who are also awaiting their divorces. Frances also lives with Walter, her 18-year-old son and her late lover's 25-year-old daughter, Ann Childs. Evelyn and Ann are startled at how alike they are in appearance, despite their 15-year age difference. Ann works as a change operator at a local casino and a relatively successful cartoonist. Ann is revealed to reject significant relationships in her life and although is romantic with both men and women, refuses to become attached to anyone. She is ending a relationship with her boss named Bill, that was significant enough to make her friends believe they were to be married. Ann's best friend is Silver who works with her at the casino as a dealer, and is also a sometime lover. Evelyn and Ann begin a friendship that evolves into a romantic relationship in which Evelyn must deal with her guilt after being asked by her husband's doctor to divorce him for his own good. Despite the symptoms of his deep and chronic depression, Evelyn takes the responsibility for the failure of the marriage and his depression upon herself, but after divulging how caustic she is to Ann, she is relieved to realize that the responsibility is not hers to take. And Ann must deal with committing to a relationship wholeheartedly. Being employed by the casino, she is rather well-paid, but is stifled within the atmosphere there, though she continues to work despite her abilities. Ann is fired from the casino after a slot machine is stolen on her shift when she is distracted by Evelyn being at the casino. Her previous split with Bill is not amicable, despite Bill beginning to date another of his employees. There is some suspicion that Bill is spying on Ann and Evelyn, and he threatens to contact Evelyn's husband's lawyer to notify him of Ann and Evelyn's lesbian relationship, but the divorce is finalized without his interference. Immediately after the final hearing, Evelyn and Ann decide to live together "for a while."
13293046	/m/03c0v6t	The Cat and the King	Louis Auchincloss	1981	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Mixing fact and fiction, the Duc de Saint-Simon recounts three episodes in which he and his wife involve themselves in the notorious schemings of King Louis XIV's Versailles. Throughout, the famous courtier's attitudes toward the King and court shift. In the first story, the young Duc, appalled at the King's calculating matches of his illegitimate offspring with prominent aristocrats, works to subvert the wedding of one of Louis' nephews, but is thwarted when his adversaries threaten an exposé of the homosexuality of both the King's brother and the narrator's patron, the Prince de Conti. In the second, Saint-Simon is maneuvered into acting as messenger between Conti (who is briefly King of Poland in 1697) and Conti's mistress, Madame la Duchesse. In this the Duc is subverted by his own wife's schemings. Finally, in later years, rumors of incest are deployed by both sides in a struggle to determine which of two ill-pedigreed "princesses" will be matched with one of the King's legitimate grandsons. The high-minded Saint-Simon emerges from these intrigues disillusioned ("We had all...been made part of the Versailles system"), but resolves (after the King's death) to record the monarch's "great style" and quest for glory.
13299811	/m/03gqgnr	L'Ève future	Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam	1886	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Villiers opens the novel with his main character, a fictionalized Thomas Edison, contemplating the effects of his inventions on the world and the tragedy that they were not available until his invention. Interrupted in his reverie, Edison receives a message from his friend Lord Ewald, who saved his life some years before and to whom he feels indebted. When Ewald calls, he reveals that he is close to suicide because of his fiancée, Miss Alicia Clary. Alicia is described as being physically perfect but emotionally and intellectually empty. She will say whatever she believes others want to hear. Far from having any ambition or goals of her own, she lives her life based on what she believes is expected of her. Ewald describes his frustration with the disparity between her appearance and her self and confides that though he can have no other, she is so hopeless that he has resolved to kill himself. Edison replies by offering to construct for Ewald a machine-woman in the form of Alicia but without any of her bothersome personality. He shows Ewald the prototype of the android, named Hadaly, and Ewald is intrigued and accepts Edison’s offer. Edison reveals that he has invited Alicia to his residence at Menlo Park in order to set the process in motion. He then explains to the still somewhat doubtful Ewald how he will interact with the android and how natural it will all feel. Ewald then presses Edison to tell him why he created Hadaly in the first place. Edison relates a long story about Mr. Edward Anderson who was tempted into infidelity by a young woman named Miss Evelyn. His indiscretion, brought about by the guile of Miss Evelyn, ruins his life completely. Edison then says that he tracked down Miss Evelyn only to discover that she was not as she appeared, rather she was horribly ugly and her beauty was entirely the work of cosmetics, wigs, and other accessories. Edison created Hadaly in an effort to overcome the flaws and artificiality of real women and create a perfect and natural woman who could bring a man true happiness. Edison then takes Ewald back to Hadaly and explains to him the exact mechanical details of her functioning: how she moves and talks and breathes and bathes, all the while explaining how natural and normal Hadaly’s robotic needs are, comparing them to similar human actions and functions. After the details of the android's functioning and construction are covered, Alicia arrives and is escorted in. Edison convinces her that she is being considered for an important theater role. Over the course of the next weeks, she poses for Edison and her exact physical likeness is duplicated and recordings of her voice are made. Eventually, Edison sends Alicia away and introduces Ewald to his android-Alicia without revealing that it is not the real thing. Ewald is very taken with her and she secretly reveals to him that she is in fact not simply an android but has been supernaturally endowed with the spirit of Sowana, Edison’s mystical assistant. Ewald does not reveal this fact to Edison but instead leaves with Hadaly-Alicia-Sowana. However, before he can reach home to his new life with his new lover, Ewald’s ship sinks and the android, who was traveling with the cargo, is destroyed.
13302493	/m/03c14l0	Seeing is Believing	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Arthur Fane arranges an unusual entertainment for his uncle, a long-term guest, and a few other witnesses—he hires Dr. Rich to hypnotise his wife Victoria. The guests, but not Victoria, have been shown that a gun in the room is actually harmless; everyone, including Victoria, is aware that a dagger provided is made of rubber. The hypnotised Victoria is invited to shoot her husband, and refuses; when told to stab him, though, she agrees. Unfortunately, someone has substituted a real dagger for the rubber one, even though everyone in the room agrees that it would have been impossible to make the substitution. Although Sir Henry Merrivale is busily engaged in dictating his scandalous and slanderous memoirs to a ghost writer, he takes a hand to solve the murder with his friend Chief Inspector Masters, and brings things to a head just as another death occurs.
13302579	/m/03c14mr	The Gilded Man	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Wealthy art connoisseur Dwight Stanhope, his glamorous wife Christabel and his pretty daughters, sensible Betty and neurotic Eleanor, have invited a couple of guests to their mansion "Waldemere"; Vincent James, the "weekend perennial -- charming and a bit thick" and Nick Wood, an attractive young man about whom little is known. What is odd is that Dwight Stanhope's valuable paintings, including a Rembrandt, have been moved from the burglarproof gallery to the main floor, and their insurance policy has been cancelled. Everyone in the mansion (built by Flavia Jenner, a Victorian actress of easy virtue, and including her own private theatre) has the jitters. No one is really surprised when there's a huge clatter in the middle of the night and a masked burglar is found stabbed in front of the paintings—but everyone is amazed to see that the dead burglar is Dwight Stanhope. Sir Henry Merrivale arrives and suspicious events begin to happen thick and fast; he mixes investigation with an uproarious performance as a stage magician at a children's show and solves the crime.
13302706	/m/03c14r5	She Died a Lady	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Elderly Dr. Luke Croxley narrates a story with a very old theme set against the English village of Lynmouth. Rita Wainwright is 38, "a mature beauty with a weakness for younger men". Her gentle husband, Alec, more than 20 years older, seems more interested in radio broadcasts of World War II news than in his wife's notorious affair with a handsome young American actor, Barry Sullivan. Rita and Barry decide to run away together but a radio performance of Romeo and Juliet apparently turns their minds to a romantic double suicide. After the broadcast, their twin lines of footprints lead up to the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, and none return. When their bodies are found, though, it is found that both of them had been shot through the heart at very close range, "body range, with some small-calibre weapon". Sir Henry Merrivale is in the neighbourhood posing for a portrait by a local artist (in the garb of a Roman Senator), and agrees to investigate this baffling mystery, which he solves just in time to take his place in the House of Lords.
13304822	/m/03c16w8	Lost Luggage	Colin Brake			 When the TARDIS goes missing in a busy spaceport, the Doctor and you must race against time and across space to find it, before the Doctor's incredible spaceship is lost forever.
13306846	/m/03c18c1	Soul Circus	George Pelecanos		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Strange is working on the defence of Granville Oliver. Oliver has been charged with the murder of his uncle and is facing the death penalty. Strange is trying to locate Devra Stokes who can discredit the testimony of the prosecution's witness Phillip Wood. Strange finds that Stokes is working in a beauty salon that is paid for by Wood's successor Horace McKinley. She refuses to testify. Quinn is working on a separate case for his girlfriend. He believes a group of young men have the information he needs but is unable to get them to talk to him. Dewayne Durham and Horace McKinley are considering eliminating one another's organizations to cut down on competition. McKinley's enforcers James and Jeremy Coates perform a drive by shooting on Jerome Long and Alante Jones as they deal drugs for Durham. Durham is forced to respond and instructs Long to kill the Coates brothers. McKinley learns of Stokes taling to Strange and tries to intimidate her by sexually assaulting her. Stokes is enraged by his actions and decides to testify. Strange and Quinn are employed to locate Olivia Elliot by Mario Durham. They find her quickly and pass the information to Durham. Durham rents a gun from Ulysses Foreman and approaches Elliot. They argue and he murders her and conceals her body in the woods. He returns the gun to Foreman and admits to firing it but claims he did not shoot anyone. Foreman rents the gun to Mario's brother Dewayne for Jerome Long. Mario goes into hiding with his friend Donut. Long manages to kill Jeremy Coates but is shot by James immediately afterwards. Jones drives his car at James Coates and kills him but is shot as he does so. The police tie the shooting to the murder of Olivia Elliot by matching the gun. Durham learns of the link between the incidents when the police question him; he puts Mario into hiding and begins to suspect that Foreman is working against him. Strange and Quinn are questioned by the police and give them Durham's identity. They try to track Mario themselves as they feel partly responsible for Elliot's murder but the police beat them to Donut. Donut refuses to give up Mario's whereabouts to either the investigators or the police. Mario begins to follow in Donut's footsteps and sells fake narcotics on the street. One of his customers returns and murders him. Strange finds that his home has been burgaled and his files relating to the Oliver case stolen. He has an answerphone message threatening him with obstruction of justice as one of the witnesses he interviewed gave him information that he should have passed to the police. Strange was unaware of the requirement and seeks advice from Oliver's legal team. Strange meets with Devra and agrees to relocate her for safety. He begins to follow McKinley and tracks him to Foreman's home where he sells weapons. Strange has Quinn meet him there and Quinn tails McKinley back to his home but is noticed. Strange tracks an employee of Foreman's to a gun store and observes him buying a weapon under false pretences. Strange passes the information to a contact in the police. He asks Quinn to watch over Devra. Quinn leaves Devra unwatched to return to question the men about his missing girl but is again unsuccessful. He is increasingly agitated about being intimidated by the men. Strange and Quinn meet at the beauty salon and find that McKinley has abducted Stokes. They ambush him at his home and rescue Stokes. McKinley has had his enforcer Mike Montgomery take her son to a separate location. Quinn takes Stokes home and is relieved to find that Montgomery has had a change of heart and returned the boy. Strange cuts McKinley and McKinley threatens him in a way similar to the answerphone message. Strange leaves McKinley injured but alive. McKinley calls Foreman for help when he is unable to get hold of Montgomery and tries to recruit him into attacking Durham. When they confront Durham Foreman shoots McKinley and rants about not taking orders from drug dealers. Despite their success with Stokes Quinn is unable to let go of his failure with the other case. He again visits the group of men, this time taking his gun, he intimidates them into giving him the information he needs which he writes down. As he drives away the men ambush and murder him at a stop sign. Months later Oliver is convicted and faces the death penalty despite Stokes testimony. Dewayne Durham and Ulysses Foreman have been arrested and are facing trial. Quinn's missing girl is found using the information he wrote down. Angry at his partners violent death Strange returns to the gun store at night and burns it down.
13309598	/m/03c1bsf	Nayanmani	Binod Bihari Verma	1997	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is a social novel which describes the situation of Mithila in the decade after Indian independence. It depicts the superstitious beliefs of the people, folk culture, and human values in the background of a natural calamity.
13316573	/m/03c1kfb	He Wouldn't Kill Patience	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Dell mapback edition of 1950 is subtitled "Murder in the Zoo". Edward Benton, director of the Royal Albert Zoological Gardens, is worried about what the year 1941 will bring to his beloved collection of snakes and reptiles; it seems as if they will be destroyed, at the request of the Department of Home Security, to prevent poisonous snakes from escaping in the case of an air raid. Nevertheless, he is still making arrangements to add to the exhibits, including a recent acquisition, "Patience", a Bornese tree-snake. Accomplished stage magicians Carey Quint and Madge Palliser, whose professional rivalry goes back four generations, are visiting the zoo, each to research certain snakes in connection with an illusion which both claim was invented by an ancestor. They quarrel, and somehow the glass cage breaks that encloses a tropical American lizard. The lizard immediately attacks Sir Henry Merrivale, also a visitor. After the lizard is subdued, all three are led by the security guard to Dr. Benton's home on the grounds, to make their explanations and apologies. He is easily mollified, and his daughter Louise invites all three to dinner that evening. Louise is worried about her father's mental equilibrium. When the three arrive to find what seems to be an empty house, with dinner burning away merrily in the kitchen, they are perplexed—when they discover Dr. Benton has apparently locked all the doors and windows of his study, sealed them with paper strips, and gassed himself, they are aghast. Louise asks Sir Henry to investigate because she is sure that, even in committing suicide, her father would not have killed the innocent tree-snake, Patience. Sir Henry must investigate against the backdrop of England in 1940, with airplanes constantly buzzing overhead. The involvement of two professional magicians, however, points out a path to a solution—to make people think they've experienced something which indeed they have not. Sir Henry corners the murderer and extracts a confession in a dramatic climax that involves a rattlesnake, a mamba and a cobra.
13316765	/m/03c1kkg	Hey Rube				 Most of the columns were written primarily as sports commentary, but tend to branch into other subjects -- commonly politics and social commentary -- either due to a perceived relevance to the sports news, or as a result of Thompson's natural discursive tendencies. Some articles are focused on subjects entirely outside sports. like 'Love Blooms in the Rockies' and 'Fear and Loathing in America', which deal with the 9/11 attacks and Thompson's marriage. Thompson also chimes in on world events at the time of writing the articles. He voices his distaste for the 2000 presidential election, promotes warning as he writes through September 11, and tells of his crusade to free Lisl Auman from a harsh lifetime in prison sentence. Included in Hey Rube is a copy of a personal report written about Thompson during his time in the United States Air Force at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. It requests that he be reassigned duties and advises that Thompson should not do any unauthorized writing or accept outside employment with local media. Thompson also includes a personal political statement and an “Honor Roll” which includes the names of such figures as Johnny Depp, Fidel Castro, Al Gore, and Anita Thompson. The title is taken from the 19th century slogan Hey, Rube!, a slang term of circus folk used to rally other carnies to their aid during a fight with a patron from the local town. Thompson elaborates in the introduction on the meaning of the term and the zeitgeist of old-fashioned circuses from the golden era that spawned the term.
13316820	/m/03c1km5	The Curse of the Bronze Lamp	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lady Helen Loring doesn't believe in the ancient Egyptian curse associated with an ancient artifact, a bronze lamp that is a gift from the Egyptian government. It comes from a tomb that Helen and her father, Lord Severn, helped excavate. In defiance of the dire predictions of an Egyptian soothsayer, she brings the lamp back to Severn Hall, her ancestral home in England. At the door, Helen stepped out of the car, leaving her friends to follow her into the Hall. Less than three minutes later, they did—and Helen had vanished. On the floor, in the middle of the vast entrance hall, were her coat and the bronze lamp. Luckily, Sir Henry Merrivale is nearby and unafraid of any and all spirits and soothsayers; after another murder shocks the inhabitants of Severn Hall, he solves both the disappearance and the murder.
13316952	/m/03c1kpy	My Late Wives	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Roger Bewlay is a murderer; the British police are sure he's a murderer, and so is noted detective and explainer of the impossible, Sir Henry Merrivale. Bewlay has married at least four women who promptly vanish on their honeymoons. Unfortunately, Bewlay himself has also vanished. Years later, a well-known actor receives the script of a play about Roger Bewlay from an anonymous source, which he determines to produce and in which he will star. The script contains information known only to the police, one witness and Roger Bewlay himself. That reopens the old case and involves the actor, his good-looking female director, and a woman named Mildred Lyons who soon turns up dead in the actor's bedroom. Sir Henry Merrivale must identify Roger Bewlay's new identity and work out an extremely ingenious place to hide a corpse.
13320166	/m/03c1nck	Mercury	Ben Bova	2005-04-14	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mance was the chief visionary and engineer behind the skytower, a super space elevator which ran from Ecuador all the way into low Earth orbit. When religious fundamentalists and agents of the scheming Yamagata Corporation sabotage the skytower, however, millions are killed; Mance is faced with his own guilt for the tragedy and sees himself as ostensibly responsible. He is arrested and put on trial. Things turn out even worse for Mance when his friends, bioengineer Victor Molina and Rev. Elliott Danvers, abandon him, and he is exiled to a life of hard work and misery in the Asteroid Belt, far from his beloved wife Lara—upon whom the double-crossing Victor Molina had always harbored designs. For a time, he escapes his fate in the Belt by being inducted into the crew of an ore hauler, where for a while he contemplates his life and comes to the conclusion that he was set up. Ultimately he falls for the captain's beautiful young daughter Addie. When the same forces responsible for the destruction of the skytower destroy the freighter, Mance manages to survive by having been outside, tethered to the ship as punishment from the captain for having been caught with his daughter. Rescued against all odds, Mance is brought to the moon to recuperate, where is able to assume the identity of the ships' late first officer, Dante Alexios, by undergoing extensive nano reconstruction to make him appear outwardly identical to Dante Alexios. With his new persona, Mance/Dante leads up a successful engineering career, which empowers him to plot his revenge against those whom he blames for his downfall: the simple but good-natured New Morality clergyman Elliott Danvers, and Molina (who has since married Lara with whom he has a child) and the Yamagata Corporation. Mance lures the three to Mercury where he manages to infiltrate the Yamagata operations and cause financially ruinous delays to their Mercurian project by planting Martian rock samples containing organic compounds there. These he allows to be discovered by Molina, who believes them to be authentically Mercurian and heralds them as a great discovery. Finally, he frames the Rev. Danvers for the trickery in order to also ruin his career, which succeeds flawlessly—to the extent that Danvers takes his own life. Yet things go awry for Mance when he confesses to Lara that it was he who set up Molina for the fall. However justified it may have been, Lara cannot accept it, nor can she return to Mance/Dante. Crushed, Bracknell turns the focus of his ruined life to consummating his final revenge on the leader of the Yamagata Corporation himself. However, it is in trying to slowly and agonizingly destroy the life of Yamagata, by exposing him to the brutal elements of the planet Mercury for a prolonged period of time, that Mance perhaps finally realizes that revenge has ruined him, and feels regret upon hearing of Danvers' fate. Furthermore, he had caught the wrong Yamagata; it was the son of the billionaire industrialist who'd been culpable in he skytower disaster. In the end, both Yamagata and Bracknell perish in the Mercurian wastes, but the reader is led to believe, through his last will and testament, that Bracknell in his final moments beat his demons and became human again by taping a confession of his schemes while waiting to die. At the same time, Yamagata, who was gladly willing to die if only to protect his son, tapes a message to his son, imploring him to continue his true work in taking humanity to the stars in the near future.
13325398	/m/03c1s03	The Hercules Text	Jack McDevitt	1986-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story emphasizes the various characters' reactions to the event, according to their specific scientific background. For example a priest's speculations on the implications for religion, a psychologist's theorizing about the aliens' psyches, the scientists' consideration of the implications of the new knowledge for their own specialties, and the president's concern for the implications for national defense. The novel is set in an ongoing Cold War scenario. Unlike other First Contact stories, there is no dialogue between the senders of the message and mankind, as the received radio signals have travelled through space for several thousand years. The message is received with a large radio telescope, the fictional Hercules Array, which was built on the far side of the Moon. It is later discovered, that the message was sent with an artificial Pulsar built by the alien race. This pulsar with the name Althea has been known by the scientists for years. It was believed to be a normal pulsar. However, what made it special was its almost perfectly regular interval between the observed pulses. One day some of the pulses suddenly fail to appear. This incident draws more attention to this particular pulsar, as the newly discovered gaps show a remarkable pattern. The first gap consists of one missing pulse, the second of two missing pulses and the third gap consists of four missing pulses. The following gaps also consist of numbers representing powers of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, ...). The transmission of these numbers goes on for a couple of days until the pulsar falls completely silent. The silence lasts for several weeks until it breaks again. This time, not just a simple sequence of numbers is received by the Hercules Array. Now, a very large and complex amount of binary data is sent from somewhere close to Althea. Scientists are able to decipher this data. It consists of several mathematical and physical formulae and simple graphical information. Later, more complex information is found, e.g., parts of the sender's DNA, schematics for very advanced technology, philosophical texts or poems. Jack McDevitt addresses a couple of questions which are likely to arise if mankind should receive a message of extraterrestrial origin someday. The protagonists discuss the possible impacts on mankind following the announcement of the receipt of the message. * How would religious groups react upon coming to know of a second creation? * How would the proven existence of extraterrestrial life affect our daily life and culture? * What would be the reaction of people who do not believe in the authenticity of the message? The deciphered message contains a lot of information about advanced technology. How do people deal with this newly discovered advanced knowledge? * What ideas on using it do scientists, politicians, and the military have? * Would mankind be prepared for the great responsibility that would come together with this powerful technology? * How risky would it be for mankind to play with these totally new and not yet fully understood technologies?
13327389	/m/03c1v5x	The House of the Wolfings	William Morris	1889	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The House of the Wolfings is Morris' romantically reconstructed portrait of the lives of the Germanic Gothic tribes, written in an archaic style and incorporating a large amount of poetry. It combines his own idealistic views with what was actually known at the time of his subjects' folkways and language. He portrays them as simple and hardworking, galvanized into heroic action to defend their families and liberty by the attacks of imperial Rome. Morris' Goths inhabit an area called the Mark on a river in the forest of Mirkwood, divided according into the Upper-mark, the Mid-mark and the Nether-mark. They worship their gods Odin and Tyr by sacrificing horses and rely on seers who foretell the future and serve as psychic news-gatherers. The men of the Mark choose two War Dukes to lead them against their enemies, one each from the House of the Wolfings and the House of the Laxings. The Wolfing war leader is Thiodolf, a man of mysterious and perhaps divine antecedents whose ability to lead is threatened by his possession of a magnificent dwarf-made mail-shirt which, unknown to him, is cursed. He is supported by his lover the Wood Sun and their daughter the Hall Sun, who are related to the gods.
13328000	/m/03c1vqr	Heaven Eyes	David Almond	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is told from the first person, the first sentence being, “My name is Erin Law.” The author then introduces the other characters, and indeed, tells the entire story, through her. Erin lives at Whitegates, a home for "damaged children". Erin's father was a foreign sailor who left her mother after a brief affair. Years later, Errin was grief-stricken when her mother died. Many of the other children at Whitegates. Whitegates is run by a well-meaning but flawed woman named Maureen. Erin and January Carr and some other children frequently reject her superficial, half-hearted attempts at therapy. January Carr is Erin’s “running-away-friend”, and the two often escape from comfortable but suppressive Whitegates to live out of dumpsters in the city. One day, January decides to build a raft and float away down the river. Before leaving, Wilson Cairns tries to show Erin that the clay figures he is constantly molding actually come to life. Erin and January leave with their raft, but Mouse Gullane and his pet mouse Squeak insist on coming with them, Mouse tries to bribe them with money and small plastic toys he has dug out of the ground (one day Mouse hopes to uncover something really important buried in the earth). The others eventually allow him to come, even though they worry for the younger child’s safety. And indeed, they all almost die, as the raft is hurled along the fast-moving, polluted river and carried into the Black Middens, where they are all nearly engulfed by the mud. However, a strange young girl named Heaven Eyes rescues them. She cries, “Is you my sister? Is these mine brothers?” An old man whom Heaven Eyes refers to as Grampa tells her that they are not and that they should be dug back into the Middens. But she insists on bringing Erin, January, Mouse and Squeak into their home; a huge old stone building decorated with stone statues of angels. It is very close to the river. The building contains an old printing press, as well as boxes of corned beef, raisins, and chocolates. Grampa is still distrustful of the new children. Grampa is constantly writing in a book in which he records every thing he sees in and around the middens. Heaven Eyes shows them around the building, and Erin gets lost in a deep cellar, where she becomes spiritually lost and her despair over the death of her mother overcomes her. Heaven Eyes rescues her once more, stating that she must be careful as there are holes where one can slip into another place, a place of darkness. Grampa becomes more tolerant of Erin and her friends and allows them to help him dig in the Middens, which Mouse particularly enjoys. January, whoever, is very distrustful of Grampa and thinks they should leave. He begins to snoop around, despite Grampa’s warning, “No shenanigans”, and discovers evidence that Heaven Eyes was a child aboard a ship with her family. He suspects Grampa of kidnap and murder. When they find a body in the Black Middens, January feels vindicated, to the point that he threatens to leave the others behind and escape on his own if they refuse to come. Grampa becomes enraged and dangerous when he discovers January has been snooping. Heaven Eyes claims the body is a “saint”. That night, Errin and January dig up the body and discover that it is the mummified body of a dock-side worker that has lain in the mud for many, many years. They bring the body (or the”Saint”), back to land, and Heaven Eyes makes a bed for him. Grampa’s affection for all of them strengthens, and then, to their grief (especially Heaven Eyes’), he dies. “Lovely as lovely,” he says when Heaven Eyes tells him that Erin and her friends are her brothers and sisters. Then he becomes “Dead as dead,” according to Heaven Eyes. Then the mummified body of the Saint comes to life and guides Grampa’s spirit over the Black Middens and down into sparkling waters. When construction vehicles come to tear down the old building, and erect modern businesses in its place, Errin and her friends manage to rescue many of the treasures, including Grampa’s huge book. Then they take Heaven Eyes, whom they now call Anna May, back to Whitegates, where the extraordinary child is able to heal Maureen’s “damaged” soul. Maureen is able to finally become a true mother to the abandoned and orphaned children of Whitegates. Miraculously, January’s mother appears to take him home, and she is just as he imagined her. At Whitegates, Wison Cairns’ clay figures really do come to life. Erin and her friends vow to solve the mysteries of bygone decades recorded in Grampa’s book, and to continue his work. Errin explains that this story has no end and is part of all the other stories of the world.
13329507	/m/03c1x88	Assault on the Senses				 Still suffering heartache over his lost love, Jill—the on-again, off-again girlfriend who most recently left for another ex-boyfriend—Kal's world becomes even gloomier when the whole college assumes he is the attempted rapist pictured in a wanted poster displayed throughout campus. After establishing an unlikely alliance with Katie, a vivacious campus newspaper reporter, the pair set out to prove Kal's innocence, find the true culprit, and possibly develop their own relationship in the process. The major theme the novel approaches is the wandering mentality quickly becoming synonymous with college students and recent graduates. Kal represents an extreme of that theme, constantly worrying if he's making the right choices about school, his major, his social life, his drinking problems and so on to the point of neuroticism. In his moments of deep pondering and worry, Kal often floats deep into a trance he coins "The Stare," similar to the "1,000-mile Stare" war veterans are known to have. During The Stare, Kal is oblivious to his surroundings, somehow focusing only on an internal voice in his head, imaginarily personified by a 16-year-old version of himself who is thoroughly disappointed with how the present version of himself has turned out. The book juggles a variety of subplots into one, as opposed to following a singular, linear story line. As the story unfolds, it takes turns between focusing on Kal and Katie's quest to find the real assailant and Kal's attempts to pull himself out of his self-made puddle of misery.
13330318	/m/03c1y0b	The Skeleton in the Clock	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Martin Drake meets Jennifer West in an auction house. Three years ago, he had fallen in love with her during a brief but intense encounter on a railway platform—after which she vanished. Now it seems she is engaged to Richard Fleet, whom she's known since they were children together. And when they were children, Richard's father Sir George died when he fell off the roof of their home, Fleet House. It was generally accepted as an accident, but a series of mysterious happenings cause the case to be re-opened. Sir Henry Merrivale, detective and explainer of the impossible, is also at the auction and revives his old antagonism with Sophia, Dowager Countess of Brale, who is Jenny's grandmother. Arthur Puckston keeps the pub across the road from Fleet House and was an eyewitness to Sir George's death. When his daughter, Enid Puckston, is found murdered in what might be a haunted prison, Sir Henry takes a hand and reveals not only the identity of the murderer but the unusual psychology that underlies the case.
13330555	/m/03c1y6w	A Graveyard to Let	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sir Henry Merrivale, detective and explainer of the impossible, is visiting the United States. He has been invited to visit millionaire Frederick Manning, to "witness a miracle" at his country home. Manning's three children are nervous about a secret which their father has threatened to reveal very soon—although it is probably not his relationship with a lady named Irene Stanley, whom Manning freely admits he is "keeping". The morning after Sir Henry's arrival, and just as the house party hears police sirens drawing closer to the Manning home, Frederick Manning dives into the swimming pool, fully clothed, and vanishes. His clothes and hat float to the surface, but he is nowhere to be found. Sir Henry must untangle Manning's personal and business dealings and follow the trail of clues to find Manning and reveal a criminal.
13330749	/m/03c1ydq	Night at the Mocking Widow	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The English village of Stoke Druid in Somerset has been plagued by a series of vicious anonymous letters written by a poison-pen who becomes known as the "Mocking Widow", after a forty-foot high rocky feature on the outskirts of the village. A middle-aged spinster who has been tormented by the letters' suggestions of sexual immorality commits suicide. Sir Henry Merrivale is offered an incredibly rare volume of memoirs by the village bookseller if he exposes the poison-pen, and accepts. During the investigation, a young woman is frightened nearly to death by the Widow's threats to visit her in her bedroom—she sees the Widow in her bedroom at the time and place previously announced, in circumstances that seem impossible for anyone to have been there. Then a village blackmailer who may have been the Widow's assistant is murdered, and Sir Henry brings the series of crimes home to their perpetrator. ja:魔女が笑う夜
13330903	/m/03c1ylk	Behind the Crimson Blind	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sir Henry Merrivale is on vacation in Tangier, but cannot resist the opportunity to meet the challenge of a world-class criminal known as "Iron Chest", who always carried an ornate iron chest during his thefts. No one knows what Iron Chest really looks like, or how he manages to vanish without a trace after his thefts. After a red-carpet welcome from the local constabulary, Sir Henry becomes friendly with two young English couples resident in Tangier and works closely with them to solve the mystery of Iron Chest's identity.
13331071	/m/03c1yvg	The Cavalier's Cup	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 At Telford Old Hall, the past is a constant reminder in the present. Long-dead Cavalier Sir Byng Rawdon still haunts the house, and lately has been making his ghostly presence known, it seems. During his lifetime, he etched a poem into a leaded-glass window with a diamond that is a showpiece of the historic house, along with the heavily jeweled Cavalier's Cup, a family heirloom. When Sir Henry Merrivale and Chief Inspector Masters arrive to debunk the ghost, Masters agrees to spend the night in the Oak Room with the doors locked and windows latched. Masters falls asleep and, when he wakes up, he finds that the Cavalier's Cup has been moved from the locked safe and left standing on a nearby table. Also, Sir Byng's sword, which was hanging outside the Oak Room, has been placed at Masters' feet. Sir Henry and Masters must cope with Telford Old Hall's present-day inhabitants, a visiting American Congressman and Sir Henry's singing teacher in order to reveal who is behind the ghostly manifestations.
13331730	/m/03c1zkh	Angel Pavement	John Boynton Priestley	1930-08		 The prologue depicts the arrival in London of Mr Golspie, who has come by steamship from an unnamed Baltic country. He discusses his immediate plans with the crew. The first chapter contains a detailed description of a fictional street in the EC postcode area called Angel Pavement, and the employees at Twigg & Dersingham. Business has not been good, and Mr Dersingham is trying to decide whom to sack. Mr Golspie arrives with a dispatch case containing a sample book of veneers and inlays, and asks to see Mr Dersingham. After a short delay, he is admitted to Mr Dersingham's office, and there is a long discussion, after which both men leave mysteriously. Mr Smeeth is baffled, especially when Mr Dersingham rings up and tells him to sack their senior traveller, Mr Goath. The second chapter introduces the tobacconist T. Benenden, and shows Mr Smeeth's family and home life. The next morning, Dersingham still has not returned to the office, and during lunch Mr Smeeth hears an unpleasant story about the failure of an umbrella firm called Claridge & Molton. He wonders if Mr Dersingham's absence indicates that they are all about to lose their jobs. But at five, Mr Dersingham returns and informs Mr Smeeth that the newcomer has offered a cheap supply of veneers from the Baltic, and their immediate future is assured. The next evening, Mr Golspie takes Mr Smeeth out for a drink at the White Horse, and tells him he ought to ask for a rise. A new typist is employed, Poppy Sellers, and Mr Dersingham invites Mr Golspie to a black tie dinner party at his home. The party is not a success, firstly because of the incompetence of the servants and secondly because of the unexpected arrival of the daughter, Lena Golspie, who quarrels with Miss Verever and Mrs Dersingham. The fourth chapter depicts one of the miserable weekends of the lonely young clerk, Mr Turgis, who wanders around London taking in any amusements he can afford. On the Monday after, he sees Lena Golspie for the first time, and is smitten. The fifth chapter depicts the narrow world of the typist, Miss Matfield, and her disastrous date with Norman Birtley, which is enlivened only by an accidental meeting with Mr Golspie, who gives her a box of chocolates on a whim. Later on Mr Golspie seems even more glamorous, when, shortly before leaving for a short trip, he asks her to take down letters on board the moored steamship Lemmala, and pours her some vodka. Mr Smeeth obtains a rise in salary, and after talking to Benenden, he celebrates by going to a concert at Queen's Hall, where he enjoys Brahms's First Symphony. On returning home he finds out that his daughter Edna has been sacked, but he is not terribly dismayed; he admits to his wife that he has been given a rise, something which he had been planning to keep secret. On Saturday night his wife's cousin, Fred Mitty, and his family, arrive for a party, and Mr Smeeth quickly comes to loathe them after they wreck the parlour and damage some of his clothes. Mr. Turgis has become obsessed with Lena Golspie, and jumps on a chance to see her again when he delivers some money from her father. She is bored, and takes him out to the cinema, flirting with him afterwards. They go on a second date, but she does not turn up to a third date, and he is devastated. Mr Golspie returns shortly before Christmas, goes away again on Christmas Eve, and returns again in time for New Year's Eve, on which he contrives to take Miss Matfield out for the night. They begin to go on dates secretly. Mr. Smeeth falls out with his wife, and is later disturbed by the departure of the office boy Stanley and a road accident involving the tobacconist Benenden. His son George seems to be employed by crooks, and Mr Golspie makes an arrangement with Mr Dersingham which strikes Smeeth as suspicious. He goes to visit Benenden at the hospital. Mr Turgis is consumed with jealousy, and one Friday night he turns up unannounced at Lena's home and fights with her. Thinking he has strangled her, he wanders at random through London before arriving at Twigg & Dersingham, where Mr Golspie and Miss Matfield are "working late". He admits everything in despair, and they drive to Carrington Villas, but Lena is not there &mdash; she has run off. Mr Golspie sacks Mr Turgis. He returns to his rented room and considers suicide. The next morning, Poppy Sellers arrives to deliver his last pay packet, and they have a long talk which reconciles him to the idea of spending time with her. In Chapter 11, Mr. Dersingham breaks the news to Mr Smeeth that Mr. Golspie has swindled them all and fled; the firm faces inevitable bankruptcy very soon. Mr. Dersingham returns home, obviously tipsy in front of their friends, and his wife is infuriated, turning panicky when she hears the news of the ruin. Mr. Smeeth returns home, and finding the Mittys there, throws them out. The epilogue depicts the unabashed Golspies on their way to South America.
13332795	/m/03c1__6	Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth	E. L. Konigsburg	1967	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jennifer is narrated by the protagonist, Elizabeth in the title. She has moved into a big apartment building in a town where almost everyone lives in a house.Third Aladdin edition, p. 4. She doesn't yet have any friends when she meets Jennifer on her way back to school after lunch on Halloween day. Although dressed as a Pilgrim, Jennifer claims to be a real witch. After one Saturday meeting, Jennifer takes Elizabeth as an apprentice and sets weekly meetings with assignments. "For the first week ... you must eat a raw egg every day. And you must bring me an egg every day. Make mine hard boiled."Third Aladdin edition, p. 32. They meet only in school, the library, the park, or the woods between home and school. The apprenticeship is difficult for Elizabeth. Sometimes she gets mad at Jennifer, but "before I'd got Jennifer, I'd had no one."Third Aladdin edition, p. 40. After several weeks they choose a long project, to prepare an ointment that conveys the ability to fly. It will also be a test for Elizabeth's promotion from apprentice. The final ingredient will be a live toad, selected in advance. During the intervening months, the toad becomes a pet. Elizabeth stops Jennifer from adding him to the brew, which terminates the ointment and their friendship. Later she realizes that her affection for the toad was part of the test. Finally Elizabeth deduces that Jennifer's father is gardener at "The Estate" across the street, and they live on site. As Elizabeth proudly puts the clues together, Jennifer is walking to her door. Inside, Jennifer soon laughs and admits that she is not a real witch. The two girls become normal friends.
13333742	/m/03c20wf	The Mad King	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1926	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the fictional European kingdom of Lutha, the protagonist is a young American named Barney Custer, of Beatrice, Nebraska, who is the son of an American farmer and a runaway Luthan princess, Victoria Rubinroth. Unaware of his royal blood, much less that he is a dead ringer for his relative Leopold, the current king of Lutha, Barney visits Lutha on the eve of the First World War to see for himself his mother's native land. As he arrives in Lutha, King Leopold has just escaped from his ten years' imprisonment at the hands of his scheming uncle, Prince Peter of Blentz. Much to his own and everyone else's confusion, Barney is naturally mistaken for the king, leading to numerous complications. Barney meets and falls in love with Princess Emma Von Der Tann, Leopold's promised bride and then becomes intimately involved in Luthan affairs, working to help the king and ultimately allowing himself to be proclaimed as king while impersonating Leopold to prevent Prince Peter from seizing the throne. He finally succeeds in foiling Peter's plans to become king himself by rescuing and fighting for the real king. Unfortunately, after his coronation, King Leopold discovers the shared love between Barney and Princess Emma, and Barney is forced to leave Lutha, mimicking the flight of his father years earlier, though his father left with a princess—Barney has only a soldier. Thus ends part one. In the second part of the novel, the European skies are darkening as World War I has begun. In Lutha, King Leopold has proven himself to be a bad ruler and has not yet persuaded Princess Emma to marry him. In Nebraska, Barney's soldier friend leaves the farm to return to Lutha. Barney himself is attacked by one of Prince Peter's henchmen and he decides to return to Lutha as well. After an adventurous trip across war-torn Europe, which includes being mistaken for a spy by the Austrians and barely escaping a firing squad, Barney finally reaches Lutha, where he once again is forced to impersonate the king in order to save Lutha from the advancing Austrians. He makes a diplomatic alliance with Serbia, and defeats the Austrians in person, thereby saving Lutha. The real king Leopold, who has been his antagonist throughout the second part of the novel, is mistaken for Barney and killed by one of Prince Peter's henchmen. Barney then consents to remain as king of Lutha, married at last to Princess Emma.
13335343	/m/03c2283	The Grass-Cutting Sword	Catherynne M. Valente	2006-12-01	{"/m/05wkc": "Postmodernism", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The tale is a postmodern interpretation of the Japanese folk-tale of Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi ("Heaven's Cloud-Gathering Sword"), which is taken from the collection of folk-lore in the Kojiki. The action shifts between the journey of the storm-god Susanoo who has been banished to earth in human form by his sister, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, as he attempts to slay the eight-headed serpent Yamata-no-Orochi. Valente also portrays the serpent's side of the story with a twist; the tale told by Orochi is intercut or added to by the seven maidens who have been sacrificed to the monster.
13336203	/m/03c2361	A Man of the People	Chinua Achebe	1966	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Man of the People is a first-person account of Odili, a school teacher in a fictional country closely resembling post-colonial Nigeria. Odili receives an invitation from a former teacher of his, Chief Nanga, who is now the powerful but corrupt Minister of Culture. As Minister, Nanga's job is to protect the traditions of his country, and though he is known as "A Man of the People," he instead uses his position to increase his personal wealth. The Minister's riches and power prove particularly impressive to Odili's girlfriend, who cheats on him with the minister. Seeking revenge, Odili begins to pursue the minister's fiancee. Odili agrees to lead an opposition party in the face of both bribes and violent threats. Odili triumphs over the Minister, however, when a military coup forces his old teacher from office. The book ends with the line: "you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest -- without asking to be paid."
13337367	/m/03c24l3	In Milton Lumky Territory	Philip K. Dick	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It's 1958 and Bruce Stevens is a buyer for a national warehouse chain who passes through his hometown of Montario, Idaho whilst enroute to Boise on business. His reason involves hormones more than nostalgia, however, as a one-time girlfriend named Peg lives there now. It is at a party at her place where he meets, and quickly falls into a relationship with, a strangely familiar older woman who turns out to be one of his former, and least favorite, elementary school teachers, Susan Faine. She simultaneously hires him on as manager of her typewriter shop. Travelling salesman Milton Lumky informs Bruce of a warehouse full of imported, Japanese-made surplus typewriters, and so Stevens drives to Seattle to see this potential bounty for himself. He belatedly discovers that the typewriters all have Spanish language keyboards, and so he tries to pass these hot potatoes down along the line to his former warehouse employer. He reveals his nefarious intentions to Susan, who passes the information onto the warehouse chain which nevertheless decides to take them off his hands at a fair but unprofitable price for Bruce. He then enters a period of waffling and indecision, ultimately deciding to try altering all of the machines himself and selling them at the shop. Returning to Boise he informs Susan of his decision and sets to work, only to return the next morning to find that Susan has fired him and all of the typewriters are being loaded into a truck by one of his former co-workers at the warehouse chain. Distraught by this turn of events he rents a room and recalls one of his first encounters with Susan as his fifth grade teacher which evolves into a day dream about the pair opening up shop in Montarioand ultimately moving to Denver following the purchase of an expanded facility there and living happily ever after.
13337520	/m/03c24p6	The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike	Philip K. Dick	1984	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sometime between 1958 and 1962, Leo Runcible, a Liberal Jew, is working in the real estate field. On learning that Walt Dombrosio, Leo's neighbor, has had a Black visitor to his house in a "lily-white" suburb of Marin County, California, potential purchasers interrogate Runcible about the matter and ultimately incur his wrath over their narrow-minded bigotry. He thereby fails to close the deal and forfeits their friendship and a precious commission as well. But according to Leo's tortured logic it is Walt who's at fault for this unforeseen little debacle. So in retaliation Runcible opportunistically reports Dombrosio's later episode of drunk driving, leading to the loss of the latter's motor vehicle operator's license for a period of six months. Walt's wife Sherry then drives him to and from work every day, eventually landing a job working alongside her husband. Walt, however, being as he is an insecure, misogynistic, manipulating headcase, quits his own position over this incident and continues to fume over it as the weeks and months roll by. He eventually humiliates and manhandles his wife in front of their neighbors as a prelude to forcefully impregnating her with an unwanted child which she unsuccessfully threatens to abort. At the same time, Runcible has found what he believes to be Neanderthal remains in Carquinez, Marin County, and envisages rising property prices due to incipient archaeological interest and the avalanche of media coverage that naturally follows. As it turns out, however, Dombrosio is the culprit who modified and planted the modern human remains there to begin with. They are a legacy of the local 'chuppers' who developed facial, cranial and spinal deformations as a supposed result of the pollution of the local water supply. The novel ends with Walt Dombrosio, by far the most despicable character of the novel, essentially coming out on top. He discusses his flirtation with bankruptcy, via his purchase of the local substandard water company, with the local grammar school teacher, and he makes himself out as quite the unflinching hero in the process. There is also an extended scene, dovetailing almost imperceptibly into this conversation, in which Dombrosio visualizes his little family several years later after Sherry has presumably given birth to a malformed baby boy due to the possible teratogenic properties of the local water supply.
13337641	/m/03c24t1	Humpty Dumpty in Oakland	Philip K. Dick	1986	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1960, 58-year-old Jim Fergesson decides to sell his Oakland-based auto repair business and retire. This threatens to greatly inconvenience his business tenant, used car salesman Al Miller, who rents a lot from Fergesson to sell his battered but superficially reconditioned old jalopies. Chris Harmon, an entrepreneur, advises Fergesson to invest in a new super-garage located in Marin Country Gardens. Jim takes a fall in the mud and has a minor heart attack during a visit to the property to personally verify its existence. Miller is convinced that Harmon is corrupt and makes an amateurish attempt at blackmailing him over his alleged (then-illegal) sale of salacious audio recordings. At the same time Al enters employment with Harmon as a curiously unqualified salesman of Classical Music. This, as it turns out, was an innocent administrative error. Al's actual assignment now involves the mass marketing of, wait for it now, Barbershop Music. He sees conspiracies, machinations and double-dealings where there are none and strives mightily, but ultimately fails, to disrupt the final contract-signing between Fergesson and Harmon by playing on old Jim's paranoia. The strain of it all takes its toll on a recently injured, weakened, ailing Fergesson and he dies later that night at home. Al then discovers that his used car lot has been ferociously vandalised, although the exact time and date remain uncertain. This plays an unexpectedly important role in the unfoldment of subsequent events. Things are not quite what they seem, and coincidence plays a starring role here. His wife Julie quits her job and they run off together across Nevada, whilst Lydia, Jim's widow, discovers that her late husband's deal with Harmon was, contrary to what Al had sincerely believed, completely legitimate. Al is temporarily detained after Lydia threatens to sue him for fraud. Julie leaves him forever. In a moment of true serendipity Al starts a new relationship with his married real estate vendor, a vivacious, attractive "colored" woman by the name of Mrs. Lane.
13337718	/m/03c24w3	Nick and the Glimmung	Philip K. Dick	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nick, his family, and cat Horace leave Earth in 1992, because pet ownership has been criminalised on that world. Arriving at their new home, Plowman's Planet, the family encounter a series of mishaps at the hands of the planet's varied indigenous inhabitants. A wub carries their luggage, but eats a map, while werjes attack Horace, but their family befriend the aliens, leading to a gift, which turns out to be a history of Plowman's Planet itself. They make the acquaintance of the non-indigenous alien Glimmung, who secures travel for them in return for his lost history of their adopted world. The Graham family encounter duplicates of themselves, and trobes steal Horace. Nick tries to find his pet, but locates their driver, slain in a car accident, and still possessing the book. Nick has it copied, wounding the Glimmung, who rediscovers it. Nick then finds Horace with a Nick duplicate, and the cat chooses his original owner over the simulacrum.
13340278	/m/03c273l	Wintle's Wonders	Noel Streatfeild	1957	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 As the book begins, Rachel and her adopted sister Hilary are living with Rachel's mother. Rachel's father was a budding film star, but died just as his career was taking off, when the children were seven. As a result, the family is not well off; they must take in boarders in order to make ends meet. Hilary's mother was a dancer, and so Rachel and her mother are determined that Hilary will also become a ballet dancer. Hilary does have a talent for ballet, but is not at all interested in it. Their mother dies when the girls are ten, just before Hilary's audition for the Royal Ballet School, and the girls go to live with their Uncle Tom (their father's brother), his wife Cora and their child, Dulcie. Aunt Cora runs a dancing school to teach girls how to perform in troupes for pantomimes, musicals and reviews; the troupes are referred to as "Mrs Wintle's Little Wonders". Dulcie, who is almost a year older than Rachel and Hilary, is very attractive and a talented dancer, but also very spoiled by her mother. Mrs Wintle intended to take only Rachel, as she is a blood relative, but she decides to keep Hilary also, when she realizes how talented a dancer Hilary is. Rachel is horrified by the type of dancing taught at Mrs Wintle's school, which ranges from tap to acrobatics, and remains determined that Hilary will continue with her ballet. Rachel must also train as a Little Wonder, and though she works hard, she has no talent for the dancing required of the "Wonders". She only excels at elocution and acting lessons, which puts her in competition with her cousin Dulcie for theatrical roles. Mrs Storm, their tutor, decides to teach Rachel extra elocution, because it makes her happy. Hilary continues dancing and through the book enjoys acrobatics and musical theatre. Although Rachel tries to bribe her with money to finish ballet, Hilary continues to excel at acrobatics. This makes Rachel upset.
13340622	/m/03c27dy	Once Upon a Time in the North	Philip Pullman		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Lee Scoresby, a 24 year old young Texan aeronaut, and his dæmon, the jackrabbit Hester, make a rough landing in Novy Odense, a harbour town on an island in the White Sea, in Muscovy. After paying for the storage of their balloon, Lee and Hester make their way into town, where Lee notes with surprise the presence of bears: some working, some just loitering about. He enters a bar to get something to eat and drink, and falls into conversation with a local journalist, Oskar Siggurdson, who explains that an election for Mayor of Novy Odense will take place later in the week. Siggurdson tells Lee that the overwhelming favourite — not the incumbent mayor, but a man called Ivan Dimitrovich Poliakov — has as a central policy a campaign to deal with the bears which hang around the town. Oskar mentions that the bears, once a proud race, now rank as "worthless vagrants". Lee learns with amazement that these bears are intelligent, can speak, and make and wear their own armour, though laws make it illegal for the bears to wear their armour in Novy Odense. At this point Lee intervenes in a conflict elsewhere in the bar, preventing the barkeeper from beating a drunk Dutch captain called van Breda, who has a ship tied up in the harbour but does not have permission to load his cargo and leave. Lee and van Breda get thrown out of the bar. Lee finds lodgings at a boarding-house and meets some of the fellow-guests over the evening meal: a young librarian called Miss Lund, a photographer, and an economist called Mikhail Ivanovich Vassiliev. Lee and Vassilev attend a meeting at the town hall organised by the mayoral candidate Poliakov. Armed men in purple uniforms patrol the meeting: Lee takes them for customs officers. Vassilev corrects him, explaining that they are security men from Larsen Manganese, a large mining company that are in league with Poliakov. Vassilew mentions that they have a large gun they are looking to use in a riot situation, but their conversation is interrupted when Lee runs into Siggurdson. Siggurdson introduces him to Olga Poliakova, Poliakov's daughter. While he is initially attracted to her, Lee is put off by her lack of intelligence. Lee falls asleep and therefore misses Poliakov's speech, but once it is over Siggurdson insists on introducing Lee to the politician. Poliakov offers to employ Lee as a mercenary, to help him take care of a situation at the harbour. Lee is about to agree when he spots another of Poliakov's associates, a man Poliakov introduces as Pierre Morton. Lee recognises the man, whom he met using the name Pierre McConville. Lee met McConville while working for a rancher called Lloyd, who got into a boundary dispute with a neighbour. This neighbour hired McConville to kill Lloyd's men one by one, including Lloyd's nephew, Jimmy Partlett, who was shot dead in front of a number of witnesses. Only one of these witnesses was willing to tell the truth in court, and when McConville was acquitted by a corrupt jury he shot the witness dead in the street and rode out of town. He was rearrested and sent to the capital of the province with an armed escort, but vanished en route. Recognising Morton as this enemy from his past, Lee turns down Poliakov's offer of employment, and leaves. In the middle of the night, back at the boarding-house, Lee hears Miss Lund crying and asks the cause. Miss Lund cryptically asks for his advice on a matter of honour. Lee gives his advice as well as he can understand the situation, to Miss Lund's gratitude. Lee returns to his bed baffled about what has just happened, but Hester berates him, saying that Miss Lund has obviously received a proposal of marriage, and Lee advised her to accept. At breakfast the next morning Vassilev explains that Miss Lund has a sweetheart in the Customs Office. During their conversation, Lee realises that the situation that Poliakov wanted him to deal with is most likely connected to Captain van Breda. Lee heads down to the harbour to investigate. He runs into van Breda again, who has still not been allowed to load his cargo. The two men head to a bar for a drink. Lee learns that van Breda's cargo, mining equipment and rock samples, is being held on a legal technicality, and will be impounded and sold at auction unless he loads it by the next day. Unfortunately, van Breda is being prevented from loading his cargo. The captain insists that Poliakov is waiting for his cargo to be impounded and will then buy it at a low price at auction. Lee, disgusted by Poliakov's behaviour, offers to help break into the warehouse and stand guard while van Breda loads his cargo. van Breda gratefully accepts, and the two head for the harbour. On the pavement outside the bar Lee is waylaid by one of the bears, who introduces himself as Iorek Byrnison. Iorek also offers to help van Breda, in order to get back at Poliakov. Iorek puts on the only piece of armour he currently has - a battered helmet - and the group set off, attracting a large crowd of onlookers as they near the harbour. Talking his way past the Harbour Master, Lee stands off against a group of men guarding the warehouse. Lee shoots one of them in the hip, knocking him into the water. The other men pull him out and then scatter. At that point the Larsen Manganese men deploy the riot gun mentioned by Vassilev earlier, but before they can do anything with it Iorek overturns it and pushes it into the harbour. With Iorek's help, Lee breaks into the warehouse. Van Breda gives him the Winchester rifle kept on-board his boat, and Lee heads up the floors to deal with the two gunmen positioned up there. He shoots the first in the shoulder and gets into a firefight with the second. The wounded man tries to strangle Hester, but Lee shoots him dead. The remaining gunman turns out to be Morton, who manages to shoot Lee in the shoulder and ear. Taunting him with the story of how he killed his armed escorts — by tying one of them to the ground, binding his daemon to a horse and forcing the two apart to an unbearable distance, causing the man to die an agonising death — Morton moves in for the kill, his snake daemon advancing ahead of him. Hester pounces on Morton's daemon and drags it towards Lee, forcing Morton to come stumbling out of his hiding place in pain. Lee shoots him in the chest, declares this revenge for what happened to Jimmy Partlett, and then shoots him dead. Outside, Larsen Manganese security men led by Poliakov have surrounded the warehouse. Before they can do anything, a group of Customs officers led by Lieutenant Haugland arrive, disperse the soldiers and crowd, and arrest Lee. Van Breda leaves with his ship and cargo, insisting that Lee keep the rifle as a token of thanks. It emerges that this is the same rifle Lee has when he is killed in his final gunfight, thirty-five years later. Haugland takes Lee back to the depot where his balloon is stored. On the way he explains that there is little the Customs board will be able to do to punish Poliakov, but they are still grateful to Lee for acting as he did. His balloon has been provisioned and made ready for departure, with all his belongings brought from the boarding house. Iorek arrives, and tends to Lee's wounds using bloodmoss. Lee has lost part of his ear. Oskar Siggurdson also arrives, but Lee pushes him into the harbour rather than giving an interview. Lee prepares to leave, thanking Haugland for his help. Haugland says that he should thank Miss Lund, who has just agreed to become his fiancée. Vassilev comes running into the depot, warning them that Larsen Manganese men are on the way with orders to kill Lee and Iorek. Lee suggests the bear should escape with him on his balloon, and the armoured bear agrees, saying that the aeronaut is obviously a man of the Arctic. When Lee asks what he means, Iorek points to his daemon as an Arctic hare, much to Hester and Lee's surprise. The balloon then leaves and Lee, Hester and Iorek fly away together. The book ends with Lee remarking that he was amazed to learn Hester is a hare, to which she replies, "I always knew I had more class than a rabbit."
13342396	/m/03c2917	Torchlight to Valhalla		1938		 Morgen Teutenberg is an introverted 21-year-old woman nursing her dying father Fritz, who is a painter. She is developing a novel with her father's assistance. Out walking one day, she meets a very handsome young man, Royal St. Gabriel, a piainist who is quite taken with her. Royal pursues her romantically despite Morgen's lack of enthusiasm. Fritz dies very soon after Morgen meets Royal, and she is devastated by his loss and nonplussed by Royal's attention, not seeming to welcome it, but flattered by his gentlemanly manners and thoughtfulness. He buys her a radio and has it delivered to her house with a letter telling her when to tune in to a station. When she does, she hears a composition he has written for her that she imagines describes her perfectly. For five months they have a friendship characterized by Royal's unabashed love for Morgen, and her not sure how to tell him that she is grateful for his friendship, but does not want to pursue anything deeper with him. On Christmas Eve, overwhelmed with missing her father again, she turns to Royal and they sleep together. Royal is overcome with gratitude, not believing she has given herself to him at last, but Morgen does not enjoy the experience and realizes she went to him out of loneliness. She tells him this and he is hurt by it. He travels frequently and leaves her again, unsure of how to reach her. In his absence, she meets new neighbors who have moved in to a house nearby. A 16-year-old woman named Toni lives with her aunt. They have known each other before as children and Morgen is thrilled to have Toni back so close by. In sharp contrast to her relationship with Royal, she and Toni find themselves kindred almost immediately. They spend several nights together, and are quite hesitant to leave each other. When Royal returns, he notices something with Morgen is wrong immediately. She tells him, "I am two and the other is Toni." He is stunned, but when he accepts it, for the first time she realizes how much she likes him. Soon before Fritz dies, he comments that he is on will be on his way to Valhalla soon, and he is prepared for it because he is so very happy since Morgen has just finished a very good novel. He tells her that his happiness will serve as his torch in order to arrive there safely. His comment serves as the impetus for her to realize what should make her happy in her life.
13345541	/m/03c2dgp	Land of the Living	Nicci Gerrard	2003-02-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 One day, Abbie Deveraux wakes up in the dark to find she has been kidnapped and tied to a chair. She can't remember how she got there, all she knows is her loved ones may be looking for her and she wants to escape this prison. She manages to escape. Going back to her friends and boyfriend she realises that her last few days with them had been strange. Ending her relationship with her boyfriend and quitting her job, she couldn't remember any of this, not even the fact that she had been seeing someone else. As well as this her friends don't believe her kidnapping and being tied up. In a fear that he knows everything about her, where she lives, where she goes, she wants to trace back her steps of what she had done the days before she had disappeared. In an attempt for him not to find her, she changes her image and style. But the mysterious incident continues to haunt her, she can't think of anything else other than getting the man who had tormented her and to find the other girls that he mentioned he had killed.
13347021	/m/03c2fzg	The Dragon's Teeth	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 An eccentric millionaire, Cadmus Cole, visits the newly-founded offices of Ellery Queen, Confidential Investigations, in a rare incidence of disembarkment from his yacht. The investigation company is actually the brainchild and sole responsibility of his partner, "Beau" Rummell, an established private eye. The eccentric Mr. Cole pays $15,000 as a retainer to hire Ellery Queen for an investigation—the details of which he refuses to divulge, saying only "You'll know when the time comes." Upon his departure, he leaves behind a well-chewed fountain pen with which he's signed the retainer cheque. Almost immediately, Ellery's appendix bursts, and Cadmus Cole is reported dead and buried at sea. Rummell, in the guise of Ellery Queen, begins to investigate both the circumstances of Cole's death and his heirs; he soon meets two beautiful young women and the case becomes complicated by romance and the appearance of a claimant under the will. When the claimant is murdered, and Rummell married to one of the beauties, the real Ellery Queen must take a hand and solve the case, using the vital clue of the chewed fountain pen.
13347731	/m/03c2gn4	The Winter of Frankie Machine	Don Winslow	2006-09-26	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Frank Machianno, a retired San Diego mafia hitman, cut his ties with the mafia many years ago. However, one day, his past catches up with him as the boss of Los Angeles family calls in for a past favor. Frank must oversee a meeting between the Detroit Combination and the Los Angeles crime family. Unfortunately, the meeting is revealed to be a "set-up", a scheme to kill Frankie. Someone from Frank's past wants him dead, and Frank has to find out why, how, and when. The problem is that the list of candidates is about the size of a phone book, and Frankie is rapidly running out of time.
13348878	/m/03c2hnl	Calamity Town	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Ellery Queen moves into the small town of Wrightsville, somewhere in New England, in order to get some peace and quiet so that he can write a book. As a result of renting a furnished house, he becomes peripherally involved in the story of Jim Haight and Nora Wright. Nora's father is president of the Wrightsville National bank, "oldest family in town", and when the head cashier Jim Haight became engaged to his daughter Nora, he built and furnished a house for them as a wedding present. That was three years ago—the day before the wedding, Jim Haight disappeared, the wedding was called off, and the "jinxed" house became known as "Calamity House". Ellery rents it, just before the return of Jim Haight, and the wedding is soon on again. Ellery finds some evidence that Jim is planning to poison Nora and, after the wedding, she does display some symptoms of arsenic poisoning. But it is Jim's sister Rosemary who dies after drinking a poisoned cocktail. Jim is tried for the murder and it is only after some startling and tragic events that Ellery reveals the identity of the murderer.
13349174	/m/03c2hx9	There Was an Old Woman	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mrs. Cornelia Potts is the elderly matriarch of the Potts family, and their large fortune was earned by the manufacture of shoes, so when a murder mystery takes place at their New York estate, it's not surprising that the newspapers refer frequently to "the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe". Cornelia has had two husbands—one deceased, one living in the household—and three children by each. Her children by her first husband are all extremely eccentric. Thurlow Potts engages in dozens of lawsuits to protect the family honor; Louella believes herself to be a great chemist and inventor, a sentiment shared by no one else; and Horatio, an adult, is determined to live the lifestyle of a child of six. By contrast, her other three children by her second husband are relatively sane—the twins Robert and Maclyn, who run the business, and the beautiful Sheila. Thurlow's lawyer Charley Paxton is engaged to Sheila and invites Ellery Queen to dinner at the Potts mansion to meet the family. Thurlow challenges Robert to a duel, using revolvers from which the bullets have been carefully extracted but, when the duel is fought, Robert is shot dead because the bullets have been returned to the gun. Next, his twin Maclyn is shot in his bed, and the body is found with whip marks on his face next to a dish of broth. As Ellery postulates that the murders are somehow tied to the nursery rhyme, the next death is that of the Old Woman herself. She dies of heart failure and leaves behind a confession to the first two murders. It is only at the marriage of Charley and Sheila that Ellery finally realizes the truth of the bizarre events and unmasks the real criminal.
13349393	/m/03c2j2x	The Murderer is a Fox	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Ellery Queen investigates a murder that took place a number of years ago and has blighted the present-day lives of members of the Fox family. "For the twelve years following the death of Davy's mother Jessica, and the trial of his father, Davy Fox has suffered inner torture. Davy knew he loved his wife ... as well as he knew he was going to kill her. He didn't know just when it was going to happen -- but when a man is born to be a murderer, it's only a matter of time before he claims his birthright. Love turns out to be a matter of life and death -- and it's up to Ellery Queen to make the choice!"
13349576	/m/03c2j81	Ten Days' Wonder	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Howard Van Horn, son of millionaire Diedrich Van Horn, comes to Ellery Queen with the request that Ellery investigate what Howard has been doing during a recent bout with amnesia. The trail leads to the small New England town of Wrightsville and what seems to be a love triangle with Howard's stepmother, the beautiful young Sally, from the "wrong side of the tracks" in class-conscious Wrightsville. A series of small and unusual crimes over the next nine days seem to be committed by Howard during amnesiac blackouts, and Ellery Queen suddenly realizes the bizarre pattern that underpins the series of crimes. But it is only after the murder of one Van Horn and the suicide of another that Ellery Queen can reveal the true pattern underlying events and bring a crime home to the criminal.
13349759	/m/03c2jbt	Cat of Many Tails	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A strangler is killing Manhattanites, seemingly at random. The only common thread is the unusual silk cords that are used for the killings; blue for men and pink for women. Other than that, the victims come from all social classes and backgrounds, ethnicities, races, neighbourhoods, etc. The city is in a panic. Ellery Queen forms together a small group of people related to some of the victims, and some consultants, and works to determine the killer's reason for selecting these particular victims. When he finally realizes the thread that connects the victims, the murderer is revealed and peace returns to the city.
13349845	/m/03c2jdw	Double, Double	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Ellery Queen investigates a series of murders that seem to be related by an old rhyme: "Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief". And at least one person in Wrightsville calls Ellery Queen "Chief".
13350091	/m/03c2jp3	The Origin of Evil	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The beautiful young Laurel Hill asks Ellery Queen to investigate a series of unusual anonymous gifts that have been received by her father, Leander Hill, half of Hill and Priam, Wholesale Jewelers. Roger Priam is Leander's partner, who uses a wheelchair. The latest gift, a dead dog with a mysterious note in a silver casket around its neck, has caused Leander to have a heart attack and die. Now Roger Priam (and his sultry wife Delia, who attracts Ellery like a carnivorous plant) has started to receive unusual anonymous gifts as well. Delia's nudist son Crowe, who is Laurel's boyfriend, and a cast of servants, are also on the scene. The mysterious gifts include some poisoned tuna fish salad, a green alligator wallet, a burned book and a bundle of worthless stocks and bonds, all accompanied by cryptic and ominous notes, and it seems as though they date back to a mysterious and possibly violent incident in the past of both Hill and Priam that gets them started in the wholesale jewelry business. Ellery Queen works out the significance of the series of gifts and the link that connects the notes and arranges a dramatic surprise that traps the criminal—although the true criminal is not known until the final moments of the book.
13354073	/m/03c2n3s	Right as Rain	George Pelecanos	2001-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel follows private investigators Derek Strange as he works on several cases in Washington DC. Strange's main case is to investigate the death of Chris Wilson. Strange focuses on ex-cop Terry Quinn who shot Wilson. Both were police officers and the shooting led to Quinn's discharge from the police department. The shooting was high profile and characterised as racially motivated; Quinn is caucasian while Wilson was African American. Quinn becomes involved in the investigation himself as he is desperate to clear his conscience. The internal police investigation of Quinn's shooting of Wilson determined that Quinn was blameless, that the shooting was "right as rain."
13357615	/m/03c2sdd	A Drink Before the War	Dennis Lehane	1994-11	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro receive a job from three state politicians, Sterling Mulkern, Jim Vurnan and Brian Paulson, to recover documents from a former cleaning lady, Jenna Angeline. Tracking Ms. Angeline to her sister's house outside Boston, they learn she has hidden the documents in a safe deposit box in a bank back in the city. Kenzie escorts Angeline to the bank, where she gives him one photo before being gunned down by Curtis Moore, a street enforcer for notorious gangster and pimp Marion Socia. The photo shows Socia with Paulson, who has stripped down to his socks and underwear. Angeline had only hidden one photo in the safe deposit box, and it is up to Kenzie and Gennaro to find the rest. The ensuing investigation takes the detectives from swanky Boston hotels to housing projects in the poorest ghettos of Dorchester. Kenzie wrestles with problems of race, class, urban violence, corruption, abuse, and love. A gang war erupts between Socia and his son Roland, who has taken his own gang independent, culminating in the bloodiest night of gang violence in Boston history. A street terrorism bill that would have curbed the violence is suspiciously stalled before coming to a vote. All these events are connected to the photographs, and as they pursue the evidence, Kenzie and Gennaro find themselves hunted by both sides. Eventually the detectives find the photos, and learn that Socia prostituted his young son with Angeline, Roland, to Paulson years ago, ironically leading the boy to become a stone-cold killer. Roland gains the upper hand in the war, and Socia demands the pictures back, hoping to blackmail Roland and save himself. At a meeting with Socia, Kenzie loses control and kills him. Releasing a photo to the press with Roland's face obscured, Paulson is disgraced, and a victorious Roland agrees not to come after Kenzie and Gennaro.
13357663	/m/03c2sfs	Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair	William Morris	1895	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair, set in the forested land of Oakenrealm, was Morris' reimagining and recasting of the medieval Lay of Havelock the Dane, with his displaced royal heirs Christopher and Goldilind standing in for the original story's Havelock and Goldborough. In contrast to his source, Morris emphasizes the romantic aspect of the story, giving a prominent place to the heroine's misfortunes and bringing to the forefront the love story between her and the hero; the warfare by which the hero regains his heritage is relegated to a secondary role. Also unlike both the source and most of Morris's other fantasies, there is little or no supernatural element in this version of the story. Christopher is portrayed as initially ignorant of his true identity, leading to an emotional conflict between the protagonists to reconcile their mutual love and attraction with what they believe to be the profound disparity in their social status and shame of their forced marriage. This situation is resolved when the two fall in with Jack of the Tofts, who gives refuge to Christopher after his sons rescue the hero from an assassination attempt by a servant of the usurper Earl Rolf. Jack informs Christopher of his true station and gathers together an army to help him challenge the usurper. When the hosts meet, the commander of Rolf's forces, Baron Gandolf of Brimside, challenges Jack to single combat, but Christopher claims the honor from Jack and proves his worth by defeating the opposing champion.
13361196	/m/03c2wjq	The King is Dead	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0174gw": "Locked room mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Munitions maker King Bendigo is the wealthiest man alive, and what the King wants, the King gets. What he wants is the investigative powers of Ellery Queen and his father, New York homicide detective Richard Queen, in order to investigate some threatening letters. Bendigo has an enormous security apparatus in place that is capable of dealing with threats that involve sovereign governments, but these threats are more personal. Ellery and his father are transported to the Bendigo private island and soon determine that the threats originate within the King's family. The King has two brothers, his assistant Abel and drunken sot Judah, and the King's beautiful wife Karla completes the list of suspects. Judah makes little secret of the fact that it is he who has originated the threats; he announces that he will shoot King at exactly midnight on June 21. At that time, King is locked in a hermetically sealed room accompanied only by his wife; Judah is under Ellery's observation and armed only with an empty gun. At midnight, Judah lifts the empty gun and fires—and King falls back, wounded with a bullet. Karla falls under suspicion but no gun is found on her person or anywhere in the room; similarly, Judah cannot have had a bullet in his possession, having been searched repeatedly. When Ellery learns that the Bendigo family is originally from his familiar haunt of Wrightsville, he travels there for an investigation of the King's early life. Upon his return to the private island, he solves the crime and dramatic and deadly effects follow in short order.
13361561	/m/03c2wx1	The Scarlet Letters	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Dirk and Martha Lawrence are apparently not the happiest couple in New York, despite her millions of dollars and his fairly successful mystery-writing career. Martha asks for a secretive meeting to get Ellery Queen's advice because Dirk's violent jealousy is causing problems in her life—but Dirk shows up suspecting the worst and punches Ellery into unconsciousness. Dirk apologizes the next day, telling the story of how his father had killed his mother's lover, thereby causing his over-reaction. Ellery's secretary and inamorata Nikki Porter urges him to stay involved in the situation and Nikki moves in with the Lawrences to keep an eye on things (and act as Dirk's secretary on a stalled book). Nikki soon reports that Martha actually is having a series of clandestine meetings with romantic actor Van Harrison. The meetings are arranged with innocuous envelopes that look like advertising, but with Martha's name and address written in scarlet typewriter ink. Also, the envelopes contain only a day, time and a sequential letter of the alphabet—a code that is soon linked to a New York Guidebook. By the time the meetings have progressed from "A" through to "W", Dirk has found out about the affair and followed Martha to Van's home in the suburb of Darien. He breaks in, confronts the pair and shoots them both, seriously wounding Martha, who nearly dies. Van Harrison has just enough time before he dies to leave a dying clue—using his own blood, he writes an "X", then a "Y" on the wall, and dies. Ellery must consider the significance of this dying message and finally solves it, just as Dirk's murder trial is about to conclude. After Ellery gets a private conversation with the judge, a criminal then receives justice.
13361907	/m/03c2x7h	The Glass Village	Frederic Dannay		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0j5nm": "Whodunit"}	 Aunt Fanny Adams, famed artist, is the most notable citizen of the tiny New England town of Shinn Corners. A noted proponent of the naturalist school ("I paint what I see") who only began painting at age eighty, her income props up the local church, school, and almost everything else in town. When she is found murdered, suspicion immediately falls on a passing tramp named Josef Kowalczyk, and a planned lynching is nearly successful. It takes the combined efforts of the town's second-most-notable citizen, Judge Shinn, and his house guest, Major Johnny Shinn, to insist upon a trial by jury. Empaneling a jury takes every eligible citizen in the village, counsel and witnesses alike, and so the trial would never withstand legal scrutiny. But Judge Shinn and Major Shinn's investigation reveals a trail of circumstantial evidence that leads to another potential killer before the mock trial's conclusion.
13362395	/m/03c2xq6	The Uncommon Reader	Alan Bennett	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The title's "uncommon reader" (Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom) becomes obsessed with books after a chance encounter with a mobile library. The story follows the consequences of this obsession for the Queen, her household and advisers, and her constitutional position. The title is a play on the phrase "common reader". This can mean a person who reads for pleasure, as opposed to a critic or scholar. It can also mean a set text, a book that everyone in a group (for example, all students entering a university) are expected to read, so that they can have something in common. A Common Reader is used by Virginia Woolf as the title work of her 1925 essay collection. Plus a triple play – Virginia Woolf's title came from Dr. Johnson: "I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claims to poetical honours." In British English, "common" holds levels of connotation. A commoner is anyone other than royalty or nobility. Common can also mean vulgar, as common taste; mean, as common thief; or ordinary, as common folk.
13367116	/m/03c31mt	Old Glory: An American Voyage	Jonathan Raban			 Old Glory describes Raban's voyage down the great Mississippi River in a 16-foot aluminium "Mirrocraft" powered by a 15 h.p. Johnson outboard engine. Inspired by his reading of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a seven-year-old boy living in Norfolk, in which his local stream is transformed into the Mississippi Valley in his imagination, Raban sets out on his own personal journey thirty years later. It is in this book that the author develops his own unique writing style (starting to emerge in Arabia Through the Looking Glass), with highly descriptive scenes of the landscape that he passes through, as well as ironic but highly incisive descriptions of the characters he meets along the way. This style is more fully developed in his later travelogues: Coasting (book), Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America and Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings.
13368586	/m/03c32q_	The Arcanum				 The year is 1919 and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must investigate the murder of his mentor (and founder of the The Arcanum), Konstantin Duvall. To do so he must reunite the scattered members of the Arcanum: Harry Houdini, H. P. Lovecraft, and voodoo queen Marie Laveau. Doyle finds himself embroiled in a story of war as old as time itself, for possession of the world’s most powerful—now missing—artifact: the Book of Enoch, the chronicle of God’s mistakes, within whose pages lie the seeds for the end of everything. Peopled with the twentieth century’s most famous—and infamous—figures, the stakes go beyond the realm of humankind—into the divine.
13371455	/m/02rr_cy	Surf na crvenom talasu	Aleksandar Đuričić	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is divided into three parts. The first part "Zeleno" (eng. Green) is allotted 23 chapters, the second "Zuto" (Yellow) 18 chapters, and "Crveno" (Red) 16 chapters in the 57-chapter work. Names of these parts refer to three colors of the traffic light. The story follows a 15-year-old girl Marija from the moment of her moving to Belgrade from a small town where she previously lived with her parents. The young, pretty and quite immodest girl dreams about glory and wealth during the difficult years of political and economy crisis. She starts a relation with recently enriched young man Luka, who is involved in new kind of dangerous, but also profitable, street game called "Serbian Roulette" – suicidal street races against all traffic rules. Everything goes well between Marija and Luka, until he proposes to include his best friend Viktor, beautiful green-eyed playboy, into their sexual relation. She becomes confused and unsure about her feelings for Viktor, and also very jealous on Luka’s and Viktor’s friendship. Things get even worse after sudden return of Marija’s old friend Jovana, who appears to know the secret of Marija’s early sins. Her intentions to have revenge and reveal everything to Luka and Viktor threatens to ruin not only Marija’s love relation, but also her financial interests. Throughout Surf na crvenom talsu, Aleksandar Đuričić explores the influence of transition on the young people in Serbia, at the end of twentieth and the beginning of twenty-first century. The emotional story about love and friendship is told in the shadow of some political historical events, such as 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the fall of Slobodan Milošević in 2000, the Zoran Đinđić assassination in 2003. * Marija - a pretty blond girl determined to achieve success, glory and wellness in the big city of Belgrade using her charms and beauty. * Luka - a young political dissident. After the fall of Milošević's regime his father unexpectedly becomes very rich, and the young Luka gets to be the perfect target for Marija. * Viktor - an attractive playboy who enjoys many vices, sharing them with his best friend Luka. * Jovana - an unattractive and plain girl, Marija's best friend, who used to be her roommate until she moved to London. * Daca Faca - Victor's faithful girlfriend who owns a beauty salon. * Željko - Marija's gay friend who used to be her first boyfriend. * Džezer - a musician who introduces "Serbian Roulette" to Luka. * Tina - Džezer's girlfriend, eccentric directress. * Bisa - Marija's mother, neurotic woman with an exaggerated affection for her daughter.
13372836	/m/03c3698	Two Caravans	Marina Lewycka	2007-03-29		 A crew of migrant workers from three continents are forced to flee their English strawberry field for a journey across all of England in pursuit of their various dreams of a better future. The story centres on a group of migrant workers who hail from Eastern Europe, China, Malaysia and Africa and have come to Kent to harvest strawberries for delivery to the supermarkets, and end up living in two small caravans, a men's caravan and a women's caravan. They are all seeking a better life (and in their different ways they are also, of course, looking for love) and they've come to England, some legally, some illegally, to find it. They are supervised by Farmer Leapish, a red-faced man who treats everyone equally except for the Polish woman named Yola, the boss of the crew, who favors him with her charms in exchange for something a little extra on the side. But the two are discreet, and all is harmonious in this cozy vale – until the evening when Farmer Leaping's wife comes upon him and Yola and in retaliation she runs him down in her red sports car. By the time the police arrive the migrant workers (and a dog called Dog) have piled into one of the trailer homes and quickly leave their arcadia, thus setting off on a journey across the length and breadth of England.
13375977	/m/03c3972	The Firm of Girdlestone	Arthur Conan Doyle	1890	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 John Girdlestone owns the firm of Girdlestone. It is a very lucrative business and John Girdlestone and his son Ezra Girdlestone are respected by everyone. Both father and son are cynics and have no other thought but for their business; after giving a donation of £25 for charity, John Girdlestone remarks to himself that it is not a bad "investment", as it will make a favorable impression on the collector, who is a Member of Parliament, whose influence he hopes to use some day. Ezra, his son, is even more of a cynic, as the elder Girdlestone's cynicism is mitigated by his supposed religiosity. However, he manifests a great acumen for business, sometimes, even surpassing his father's sharpness in business matters. A series of disastrous speculations by the elder Girdlestone financially ruins the firm. After keeping the impending bankruptcy a secret from everyone for a time, he tells his son (whom he has fooled with a dummy ledger) about it, who is disgusted by his father's rashness. They resort to chicanery to save the firm. They plan to send an agent to the Ural mountains who will claim to have found diamond mines. They speculate that the resulting plunge in the prices of diamonds in England and South Africa will force the dealers to get rid of their diamonds quickly at absurdly cheap rates to avoid total financial ruin, which would eventually fall on them if diamonds from the Urals start pouring in the market. They will then step in and buy as many diamonds as their remaining money would allow them. Once their capital is exhausted, their agent will disappear and the discovery that the Ural diamond mines were a hoax would skyrocket the prices of diamonds once again, leaving them rich men. Their plan works perfectly and the prices go down just as they had expected. Ezra Girdlestone travels to South Africa to buy from the dealers there while John Girdlestone starts buying in London. After they spend all their money on diamonds and get ready to call their agent back from the Urals, their plan collapses with the discovery of bona fide diamond mines in South Africa. As a fellow conspirator tells Ezra in South Africa: "Russia or no Russia, the prices will not go up!" He goes back to England and both of them sell their diamonds cheaply, which leaves them in an even more precarious situation than they already were in. A very old friend of John Girdlestone had entrusted his daughter to him before dying. She was heir to £40,000 which she would inherit upon coming of age. John Girdlestone persuades his son to seduce the girl and marry her so that they could get their hands on the money. Ezra fails miserably not only because he is totally inept in romance, but because the girl is already in love with another man. Having exhausted all their means, John Girdlestone decides on a sinister plan. His friend's will provides that if the girl dies before coming of age, John Girdlestone becomes the sole heir. He plans to murder the girl. His son does not favour this plan, but his father persuades him, telling him that it will make the firm rich again.
13377285	/m/03c3cmk	QED	Peter Parnell			 Set in June, 1986, less than two years before Feynman's death, in Feynman's office at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the play follows Feynman through a day of his life. As the real Feynman does in his books What Do You Care What Other People Think? and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, the stage character talks directly to the audience; we learn from this and from phone calls with off-stage characters that Feynman is to appear that night playing his bongo drums in a student production of the musical South Pacific, that he is expecting a delegation from the Russian Republic of Tuva, which Feynman is whimsically determined to visit (as detailed in Ralph Leighton's book, Tuva or Bust!), and that he is eager to make his views known in the final report of the Rogers Commission charged with the Challenger disaster. From phone conversations between Feynman and his doctors, we also learn that Feynman's cancer has returned, and that his doctors are urging him to undergo further surgical procedures, which are not without their own risk. Feynman's conversation with the audience also touches on a number of additional topics well-known to readers of his autobiographical writings: the Manhattan project and safe-cracking, how he learned to draw, his father, as well as musings on physics and, more generally, on the nature of science and knowledge. In the second act, the play returns to Feynman's study later at night on the same day, after the performance is over. We meet the only other character in addition to the main protagonist: a (fictional) young student by the name of Miriam Field, who has attended one of Feynman's lectures and both witnessed his bongo performance and attended the after-play party. Where Feynman had earlier grown dispirited both by his own condition and by memories of his long-dead wife, Miriam manages to pull him out of his depression. Feynman informs his doctors that he will consent to have surgery, after all.
13400455	/m/03c425z	Saints of Big Harbour				 In Saints of Big Harbour, Coady portrays a small community of Cape Breton Island, found off the coast of Nova Scotia. The book focuses on the perspectives of the main character, Guy Boucher, a fatherless Acadian teenager, and of those who surround him: his alcoholic uncle Isadore, a quietly wise girl named Pam, his draft-dodger English teacher and a group of boys stuck in emotional adolescence. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that Guy lives in a community firmly characterized by clichés of gender, beauty, strength, family and love.
13401703	/m/03c43kr	En rade	Joris-Karl Huysmans			 Very little happens in this avowedly anti-Romantic work. Jacques Marles seeks refuge from his Parisian creditors with his wife Louise in a dilapidated château in the village of Lourps. Far from finding contentment in an idyllic summer landscape, the couple discover the countryside is grotesque and diseased. The local peasants are greedy, cunning and obsessed with money. The novel documents the petty irritations and disappointments of the Marleses' day-to-day existence. Interspersed with these realistic descriptions are three dream sequences, recounting Jacques' fantasies in a highly Decadent style influenced by Baudelaire's Les paradis artificiels and (possibly) the poems of Lautréamont.
13405144	/m/03c47z0	China Sky	Pearl S. Buck	1941	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Dr. Gray Thomison grew up the only son of a wealthy American family and chose to build a hospital in Chen-li, where he is the resident doctor in charge. Dr. Sara Durand is a 28-year-old American from rural Kansas in charge of the women's ward. She was brought to the hospital two years before the novel begins. Sara and Gray both speak Chinese and English. They are very committed to helping their patients, and they admire the Chinese people and their culture. Sara and Gray have worked closely together; Sara is in love with Gray but she has not told him. The story opens during an air raid. Sara and Siu-mei, a young Chinese intern, evacuate patients and babies from the women's hospital. Sara is in charge of the hospital while Gray is away fund-raising in America. Sara stays in the women's ward with the terminal patients and those who cannot be moved, while Dr. Chung, a young Chinese doctor just out of American medical school, tends patients in the men's ward. A cable from Gray tells Sara that he is bringing his new wife to Chen-li. Sara fixes up the bungalow near the hospital for the couple. Before they arrive, Chen-ta, the leader of the local guerrillas, brings Yasuda, an injured Japanese prisoner, to the hospital. He does not trust the Chinese to keep him alive. He asks Sara to operate on him and care for him. Dr. Chung assists and gives blood for Yasuda. There is an air raid the night that Gray's wife, Louise, arrives. Gray takes her to safety in the caves, then returns to the hospital to tend the male patients. She is angry and terrified. Dr Chung and Yasuda both speak to her in English. Louise is in love with Gray, but petulant and angry to be living amidst Chinese people and Japanese bombing. She does not speak Chinese and does not like the Chinese people. She wishes to return to America with Gray. Gray's cook-boy, Siao Fah, does not respect Louise and spies on her. Louise makes friends with some English-speaking men from nearby Treaty Port, including Harry Delafield, an English businessman. Dr. Chung believes the Japanese will win the war, so he makes friends with Yasuda. Yasuda promises to make Chung governor of the province after the Japanese victory. Chung enlists his younger brother, Chung Third, to join Chen-ta's guerrillas to gather information for the Japanese. Chung convinces Louise to assist him in helping Yasuda send messages to the Japanese by writing letters in English to a man named Delafield. These messages stop the hospital from being bombed. Chung gives Yasuda a poison to make him appear sick and unable to be released back to Chen-ta. Siu-mei and Dr. Chung begin courting. He is attracted mainly by her wealthy family, but she falls in love. Chung brings letters to Louise for her to sign and mail. Siao Fah intercepts one letter, gives it to Sara, who gives it to Gray. Gray and Sara question whether Louise is being faithful to Gray, but nobody mentions the letter itself to Louise. Chen-ta's guerrillas begin losing battles. The citizens of Chen-li stop coming to the hospital because it is not suffering the same fate as the rest of the town. Sara and Gray are committed to helping the people and do not know what is going wrong. Siu-mei's father and five other elders from Chen-li visit Chen-ta in his hide-out. With the guerrillas losing, the elders are worried for the safety of Chen-li. Chen-ta begins to suspect Chung Third of spying, and he also lets Siu-mei's father know that he is interested in his daughter. One night, Sara discovers Dr. Chung and Yasuda discussing a map. Yasuda appears healthy. That same night, Ya-ching, a nurse in love with Chung, is spurned by him when she becomes pregnant by him. Ya-ching plans her revenge when she discovers that Chung is keeping the Japanese prisoner in the hospital by administering poison pills. She intercepts a message from Chung Third to Dr. Chung, but she does not tell anyone. She makes harmless substitute pills and gives them to Yasuda one night, then tells Siu-mei that Chung was poisoning Yasuda and using Chung Third to gather information about the guerrillas. Ya-ching witnesses Yasuda murder Dr. Chung, then drowns while returning to her own village. Nobody learns that Yasuda murdered Chung; Yasuda threw the body out a window to make it look like suicide. Louise discovers Chung's body. Gray and Siu-mei see a healthy Yasuda. Gray learns from Yasuda that Dr. Chung and Louise are passing information to the enemy. Yasuda promises Gray Japanese support in exchange for safety. Siu-mei and her father travel to tell Chen-ta about Dr. Chung's treachery. Chen-ta has Chung Third killed, then he goes to the hospital to collect his prisoner. Gray sends Louise back to America and goes on working with Sara, whom he now knows he loves. The Japanese resume bombing the hospital.
13408934	/m/03c4ct3	The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star	Nikki Sixx	2007-09-18	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The book is a 413-page collection of diary entries written between Christmas of 1986 and Christmas of 1987. In considerable detail, the diaries chronicle the recording of Mötley Crüe's Girls, Girls, Girls album and the subsequent Girls Girls Girls tour, ending with Sixx's near-death from a heroin overdose in late 1987, which inspires the band to quit heroin altogether. Themes include Sixx's relationships with then-girlfriend Vanity, the other members of Mötley Crüe, and his family, as well as his drug dependency. Sixx's dark struggles with addiction and depression are leavened by humorous anecdotes about his wild lifestyle at the time.
13410482	/m/03c4ftz	Letter from Peking	Pearl S. Buck	1957	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In September 1950, Elizabeth MacLeod is living in her childhood farm home in Raleigh, Vermont, with her 17-year-old son Rennie. The mailman arrives three mornings each week, and each time Elizabeth hopes for a letter from her husband Gerald in China, where she lived with him until Rennie was twelve. They lived in Peking until the war with Japan, then escaped to Chungking. She and her husband are very much in love, but Gerald, a Eurasian, sent her and Rennie to America because the communist uprising in China made it dangerous for white people. He was half Chinese and chose to stay in his own country. Gerald rarely writes because communication with westerners is banned by the communists. Letters must be smuggled out. Today her husband writes, "Whatever I do now, remember that it is you I love." The letter continues. She locks the letter in her desk. This is the first letter from Gerald in three months. It is mailed from Hong Kong. It is the last letter from him. Elizabeth takes care of her son and the farm. Her parents are long dead. Matt Greene helps take care of the farm. Elizabeth is aware of an American prejudice against the Chinese, and her son is one-quarter Chinese. She misses her husband very much. Over the winter she remembers their days together and the Chinese man that she loves. In the spring, after the sugaring is done, Elizabeth and Rennie go to Little Spring, Kansas, to bring Rennie's grandfather MacLeod, Baba, to live with them in Vermont. He left Peking when the Japanese invaded China. He lives in a herder's shack on Sam Blaine's farm. He wears Chinese gowns rather than western suits, reads a few old Chinese books, and he has become forgetful. Rennie is embarrassed by how Chinese his grandfather is. Baba dons western clothes for the train ride to Vermont. The local doctor, Bruce Spauldin, believes he has had strokes. Elizabeth remembers he was witty and bright when she and Gerald lived with him in Peking. "He is sweet and gentle and easy to live with, and he does not complain." Elizabeth asks Baba about Gerald's mother, Ai-lan. Elizabeth never knew her. They were married when Baba was advisor to the Emperor. Baba liked his wife Ai-lan, the sister of his friend Han Yu-Ren - but he did not love her. After Gerald was born, Ai-lan became interested in Sun Yat-sen's ideas for revolution. Baba supported the Emperor. Ai-lan believed the races could never mingle. She moved south, became a violent revolutionist, and was killed in 1930 by the secret police of the Nationalist government. Gerald saw her infrequently but longed for her. His father would not let Ai-lan "contaminate" Gerald. The next day, the postman brought a magazine mailed from a post office box in Peking. There was a picture of Gerald's mother on the cover. The magazine was dedicated to a martyr of the revolution. In this way Elizabeth learns that Gerald knew all about his mother, though he never spoke of her. That summer Rennie falls in love. He and Elizabeth talk about Rennie's Chinese relatives. Rennie wants to be all American and forget his Chinese relatives, including his father. He's worried that being part Chinese will keep a girl from liking him. Elizabeth meets Allegra, Rennie's girlfriend, and does not think her a good match for her son. Allegra's parents leave with her when Elizabeth tells them Rennie is quarter-Chinese. Her husband and Rennie were registered with the American embassy when they were born, so they are legally Americans. But she knows they must know and they would not approve Gerald and Rennie's Chinese ancenstry. Rennie is hurt and angry. She wants her son to find a love as deep as she shares with his father. Rennie leaves home to find Allegra and talk to her. Baba becomes weaker and more childish that summer. He has strokes. Bruce Spauldin comes to check him. Elizabeth notices that the unmarried Bruce "is even-tempered, inclined to silence and meditation, all good qualities in a husband." Elizabeth realizes that she is alone and lonely, closed off from Peking, though her husband is not dead. She begins to pray. Baba has more strokes and loses all care. Rennie returns. He asks, "Mother, why did you let me be born?" He is angry with the Chinese part of him. He goes to Sam Blaine's ranch for the rest of the summer. Before he goes, Elizabeth tells him about Gerald's mother, his grandmother, Ai-lan. Gerald's last letter to Elizabeth included a request that Elizabeth ignored. Now Elizabeth receives a letter from Mei-lan, sent through a silk shop in Singapore. Mei-lan requested that Gerald write the previous letter to Elizabeth. Mei-lan wishes to care for her husband in Elizabeth's absence and requests the support of her "older sister." At this point in the story, Gerald's full last-letter to Elizabeth is printed in the book. He requested her support for his decision to stay in China and protect his wife and child by sending them to America. She sends a letter expressing her love for him and her full support of Mei-lan and their husband, Gerald. Baba becomes weaker, but he remembers that he did not marry Gerald's mother to get a son; he did not want a son. Elizabeth understands how loveless Gerald's childhood was. Elizabeth pulls out Gerald's letters and reads them again. At first he believes in the new government, then his letters become listless. Elizabeth realizes that Gerald is a prisoner. Baba has another stroke. Bruce treats him, then proposes to Elizabeth. She says she is married. Bruce waits. Mei-lan writes that Gerald is sad and she wants to be friends with Elizabeth. The letter was mailed in Hong Kong, for safety. Elizabeth appreciates the letter from her "younger sister" but knows that her neighbors would not understand her love for Gerald living with Mei-lan in China. Rennie writes that he is studying physics at a mid-western college and paying his way. His roommate, George Bowen, has a very intelligent and good-looking sister. Rennie promises to come home for Christmas. Mei-lan sends letters to Ellizabeth through friends in Manila and Bangkok. She tells her how Gerald is doing. Sam Blaine comes with Rennie at Christmas. Baba does not remember Sam or Rennie very well, but the Christmas gathering is happy. Rennie has grown to become a man. Elizabeth asks about George Bowen's sister. They argue about Gerald's choice to stay in China and Baba's choice to marry a Chinese woman. Elizabeth explains that love is what matters. Sam Blaine proposes to Elizabeth. Baba dies soon after. Elizabeth sees a vision of Gerald dying, then learns from Mei-lan that Gerald died and Mei-lan has a son. Rennie marries George Bowen's twin sister Mary, with Elizabeth's blessing. George and Mary are orphans and love Rennie. Bruce and Elizabeth consider marrying. Elizabeth considers Baba's loveless life a poor example for living, something she will not endorse.
13418008	/m/03c4nfv	Sylvia's Lovers	Elizabeth Gaskell			 The novel begins in the 1790s in the coastal town of Monkshaven against the background of the practice of impressment during the early phases of the Napoleonic Wars. Sylvia Robson lives happily with her parents on a farm, and is passionately loved by her rather dull Quaker cousin Philip. She, however, meets and falls in love with Charlie Kinraid, a dashing sailor on a whaling vessel, and they become secretly engaged. When Kinraid goes back to his ship, he is forcibly enlisted in the Royal Navy by a press gang, a scene witnessed by Philip. Philip does not tell Sylvia of the incident nor relay to her Philip's parting message and, believing her lover is dead, Sylvia eventually marries her cousin. This act is primarily prompted out of gratefulness for Philip's assistance during a difficult time following her father's imprisonment and subsequent execution for leading a revengeful raid on press-gang collaborators. They have a daughter. Inevitably, Kinraid returns to claim Sylvia and she discovers that Philip knew all the time that he was still alive. Philip leaves her in despair at her subsequent rage and rejection, but she refuses to leave with Kinraid because of her child. Philip joins the army under a pseudonym, and ends up fighting in the Napoleonic wars, where he saves Kinraid's life. Kinraid returns to Britain, and marries. His wife, who knows nothing of their history together, informs Sylvia that her husband is a great military leader. Kinraid's marriage suggests to Sylvia that he was not as faithful to her as she had remained to him, and she then realizes she is actually in love with Philip. Philip, meanwhile horribly disfigured by a shipboard explosion, returns to the small Northumbrian village to try to secretly get a glimpse of his child. He ends up staying with the sister of a servant of Sylvia's deceased parents, and rescues his child when she nearly drowns. He is fatally injured while saving his daughter, but his identity then becomes known and he is reconciled with his wife on his deathbed.
13420114	/m/03c4qv0	Killer: A Journal of Murder	Thomas E. Gaddis	1970	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 It details American serial killer Carl Panzram's entire life inside the American prison system as well as the many murders he committed. Henry Lesser was a young jail guard at the Washington DC district jail when Panzram arrived for incarceration in 1928. After hearing of Panzram's torture, Lesser befriends him, convincing him to write his life autobiography. After 40 years of searching for publication, Lesser finally achieved his life's effort in 1970 when Killer: A Journal of Murder was published.
13420965	/m/03c4ssb	The Tenth Circle	Jodi Picoult	2006-03-17	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When freshman Trixie Stone accuses her ex-boyfriend Jason Underhill of raping her, everyone is quick to take his side when he claims their intercourse was consensual. Trixie's parents, Daniel, a mild mannered comic book artist from a harsh background, and Laura, a college professor sleeping with one of her students, become involved, and Jason, whose life is supposedly ruined, leaps from a bridge. Although first presumed to be suicide, Trixie is suspected of pushing him, and so she flees to the Yup'ik region of Alaska where her father grew up, and Daniel and Laura follow. At the end of the book, Laura confesses to Daniel that she was there when Jason died. Jason (who was drunk) came lunging at her because he thought she was Trixie. Laura pushed him off the bridge but he held on. Laura reached to his hand but then let go, thus revealing that Trixie is innocent but Laura is not. The book concludes with the final chapter of Daniel's comic showing a father reunited with his daughter after saving her from hell. The main plot and subplots are juxtaposed throughout the book with Daniel's latest comic, The Tenth Circle, which parallels Daniel's life.
13421012	/m/03c4sv1	The Night Gardener	George Pelecanos	2006-08-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Set in the 1980s, a trio of murders are linked to a single suspect. All three victims have palindromic first names and are found shot through the head in community gardens. The media dubs the crimes the "palindrome murders". T.C. Cook was the lead investigator at the time and two young officers, Gus Ramone and Doc Holiday, were with him at the third crime scene,. Then, 20 years later Cook is retired and Holiday has left the police. Ramone is a veteran homicide detective and becomes involved in a case which has all the hallmarks of a palindrome murder. Also realising the similarities, the others are again drawn into the investigation. The perpetrator of the palindrome murders was given the nickname The Night Gardener by detectives.
13422939	/m/03c4v_h	The Coffee Trader	David Liss	2003-03	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Miguel Lienzo is in financial trouble as a result of some trades in sugar that have gone disastrously wrong. He is being pursued by his creditors and is looking for a way out of his current problems. Fortunately for him, one of his friends, a Dutch widow called Geertruid, arranges a meeting, at which her right-hand man Hendrick is present, and tells him about a new commodity that she believes is about to take off – coffee. Miguel knows very little about it so she gives him a cup to drink and, after an initial reaction of distaste, Miguel actually starts to like it. Geertruid gives him some beans for his own personal use and he takes to grinding them and then mixing the powder with wine until he tastes the superior drink of coffee mixed with hot water. He is currently living with his younger brother Daniel and his young wife, Hannah, who is pregnant. There is a rivalry between the two brothers, enhanced by Miguel's current difficulties, and he is living in the cellar of the house made continually damp from the floods. Hannah is a Catholic who was only informed of her Jewish origins on the day of her marriage. She is unhappy with her marital situation and her domestic affairs are made worse by her pretty Dutch maid, Annetje, who has a powerful hold over her as a result of secrets revealed to her by Hannah during the early stages of a friendship that has now soured. Hannah feels sympathy for Miguel's plight but is powerless to do anything as a formal distance has to be maintained with her more attractive and characterful brother-in-law. Miguel tells Geertruid he needs to have time to think over the whole idea of coffee but finally agrees to consider its possibilities. Complicating matters for Miguel is a Dutchman named Joachim Waagenaar. Miguel invested five hundred guilders on his behalf in the same sugar trade and all the money was lost. Joachim is following him around Amsterdam in an attempt to get his money off Miguel, and his mental and physical condition is steadily deteriorating as a result of his financial plight. Miguel does his best to avoid his pursuer and believes his life is in danger when Joachim threatens to murder him. Another complication for Miguel is that the self-same Parido also is antagonistic towards him since he failed to marry his daughter, Antonia (Parido is a close friend of Daniel's and this arrangement was made to strengthen their commercial ties) after being caught in flagrante with the girl's maid. However, one day Parido comes over to Miguel on the trading floor and offers to forget their past animosities by helping Miguel sell some loss making brandy holdings to a Frenchman; Miguel does so only to see the price of brandy rise just before close of trading. He is also helped to regain financial solvency even more by Alonzo Alferonda, another Portuguese Jew, whose family Miguel helped escape the Inquisition when he was a young boy, and who now secretly wants to assist his benefactor. Alferonda is also out to obtain revenge against Parido, a rich merchant and parnass on the Jewish Ma'amad, the local council that controls the affairs of Sephardic Jews living in exile in Amsterdam. Parido was angered by Alferonda's acting against his combination in a salt trade and managed to have him excommunicated from the Jewish faith for helping unwanted and poorer "Tudesco" (the Portuguese word for Ashkenazi) Jews arriving in Amsterdam broker their jewels to Portuguese merchants (any trading with gentiles was an official transgression). One day Alferonda advises him to buy whale oil in anticipation of a price rise based on some market manipulation by Parido's combination. It is whilst making a successful trade with Ricardo, a fat Jewish broker, that he is struck by a brilliantly simple an idea that revolves around creating a monopoly in the market. Currently, only small amounts of coffee bean are dealt in, and this primarily by the East India Company that controls the trade. With Geertruid ardently backing he scheme, he starts to send out letters to various friends and agents in different countries and also arranges with a friend and broker called Isiah Nunes to arrange a shipment of ninety barrels of coffee to Amsterdam. The action switches to Hannah who secretly attends a Catholic service with Annetje. As they are making their way back, she spots Geertruid talking to some Dutchmen and she comes up to Hannah and says that their chance meeting will remain a secret. Back in the house, Miguel has an argument with Daniel and later Hannah comes down to his basement and unintentionally reveals a lock of her hair which he finds incredibly sensual (it was forbidden for a Jewish woman to show this to a man other than her husband). He starts to receive positive letters back from his brokers and chases up Ricardo for his payment which is unforthcoming. He also encounters Joachim threatening Hannah and her maid and manages to lead him away. He returns to comfort Hannah and, over bowls of steaming coffee, she takes up the courage to flirt with him which pleases rather than offends. Things now start to heat up for Miguel – Nunes demands an upfront payment for the coffee delivery, Parido is warning him off the coffee trade and Daniel is asking for a return of his loan. In addition, he is summoned before the Ma'amad but manages to evade the charge of trading with gentiles – all he receives is a one-day excommunication called a cherem. Parido also approaches Alferonda to find out what he has planned with Miguel but his advances are spurned. The head of a pig is left outside Daniel's front door which causes Hannah to faint and threatens the baby. Miguel informs his brother after a huge argument that he will have to choose between himself and Parido, and also learns that Daniel himself is in debt. He also talks intimately to Hannah and learns from her about the meeting with Geertruid Damhuis. Nunes informs him that there will be a delay with the shipment. As Miguel leaves the tavern, he encounters Joachim and pushes him violently to the ground – an offence for a Jew – but the latter does not press charges, recognising their former acquaintance. He also encounters some trickery in a tavern which leads him to conclude that Geertruid is in the service of Solomon Parido. Joachim visits Miguel at his house and a plan is hatched with Alferonda for the day they wish to corner the coffee market. Miguel then asks Geertruid for 1,500 more guilders – having spent much of the first loan to cover his debts – and she is angered but finally acquieces. Joachim also informs Miguel that Nunes is in the pay of Parido and Miguel also learns from Annetje – who is now a whore – that she was paid by Geertruid to keep an eye on Miguel's comings and goings – in fact, she was instructed to say this by Alferonda who is in the next room. On returning home, he meets Hannah and they almost embrace but Miguel backs off, aware of the full consequences if they are discovered. The day for purchasing the 90 barrels that Nunes secretly has delivered to Parido's warehouse finally comes about and Miguel is confident of beating Parido at his own game. There is a crucial moment when the price of coffee is falling and then set to rise but some Dutchmen start weighing in with their own bids and Miguel's puts. Now wealthy, Miguel purchases his own house and also claims the 2,000 guilders Daniel owes him on the whale-oil (he was the purchaser behind Ricardo). He is then able to offload his 90 barrels at a high price before his overseas agents start to sell coffee which lowers the price. Geertruid arrives at the exchange and is staggered to observe his actions and Miguel accuses her of deceiving and betraying him, but promises to return her 3,000 loan to cover the debts she now owes to the Iberian agents. Hannah deceives Daniel by informing him their baby is actually Miguel's and, along with his bankruptcy, he informs her he is leaving the city and will grant her a divorce. She goes to Miguel's house and she is taken in by him as his wife. Miguel also seeks out Geertruid, who he finds drunk one day in a pub, and she tells him she and Hendrick are the real Charming Pieter and his Goodwife Mary, a couple of renowned Dutch thieves, and informs him she is leaving Amsterdam. Hendrick turns up at Miguel's door and confirms he has beaten up Joachim according to Miguel's former instructions – given before their reconciliation – and demands his fifty guilders. Miguel is appalled but hands over the money and finds out that Joachim and his wife have fled Amsterdam fearing more retribution. Miguel and Hannah have a son, Samuel, and another boy whom he favours just as his father favoured him, and his prosperous future now lies securely in the coffee trade.
13428669	/m/03c502n	A Secret Atlas	Michael A. Stackpole	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Qiro Anturasi, Royal Cartographer of Nalenyr, had been instrumental for his family's reputation as the most reliable map-charter in the known world. Merchants and princes all sought his clan's maps, even as the House of Anturasi continued sending out expeditions to expand their wealth of information, surveying unmapped territories, making detail notes of fauna, flora and geography. The Anturasi had been vital to Nalenyr's growing wealth and rise in power. Considered a crucial state treasure that must not fall into the wrong hands, Qiro was confined, on orders and under protection of the Naleni princes, to his estate Anturasikun in Moriande, capital of Nalenyr. There, he continued to oversee his clan's map-making enterprise, training the scions of the clan into the family trade, ruthlessly subjecting them to rigorous training and demands, for more than half a century. Now, the family stood poised on the brink of a historical breakthrough event which could catapult their standing further and beyond the imagination of rival map-makers. Intertwined with their mission were the political ramifications for Nalenyr, the aggressive northern state of Deseiron, and Helosunde which served as buffer between the two former powers. Much of Helosunde had been under Desei occupation, and Nalenyr provided Helosundian refugees sanctuary and support to confound Desei designs on Nalenyr. Qiro's grandsons, Jorim and Keles, were tasked with undertakings that would take them in opposite directions. Jorim was to embark on a specially commissioned ship Stormwolf to make accurate longitudinal charts at sea with a secret new instrument. Keles was to tasked to rediscover the lost segment of the pre-Cataclysmic Spice Route, which would take him into ground zero of the Cataclysm, a region where the ancient wild magic still raged. Nirati, sister to Jorim and Keles, remained behind in Moriande to hold the fort, for stakes were high and there were many hidden players whose intrigues threatened her beloved brothers. Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the devastations caused by the wild magic, the jaecai who had not departed with Empress Cyrsa's expedition, continued the xidantzu tradition in their schools martial arts. Their best students became itinerant warriors who travelled the realms to help fight injustice without regard to political affiliations. Moraven Tolo was one such warrior. When hints to powerful cache of ancient weapons, imbued with magicks from their former wielders, came to his attention, the jaecais became concerned that opportunistic parties would see it as an easy means of raising a strong army without the necessary ability, discipline and experience to control the power, possibly leading to history repeating itself.
13429274	/m/03c50s9	Babar's Museum of Art	Laurent de Brunhoff	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 As the elephants in Celesteville took to motoring, the city's train station lost its original purpose. Queen Celeste decided to convert the station into an Art museum to showcase all the artworks she and Babar had collected over the years. When the museum was opened, the adult elephants patiently explained to the young elephants different perspectives on art appreciation.
13429643	/m/03c5141	The Fall of Doctor Onslow	Frances Vernon	1994-06-16	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins in 1858 at Charton School, a fictional English public school (i.e. secondary boys’ private school in North American usage) where Dr. George Onslow, a clergyman of great note, is headmaster. Onslow is credited with having turned around the previously poor reputation of the school: it is now seen as a very successful institution. But Onslow has a secret: he is sexually attracted to many of the pupils and has had affairs with several of them. There is also much homosexual behaviour amongst the boys themselves, a situation that may be due to Onslow's relatively permissive attitude. The plot of the story begins to unfold when one of Onslow's young lovers—Arthur Bright—reveals his affair with the headmaster to another pupil, Christian Anstey-Ward, an idealistic young man who admires the ancient Greek ideal of Platonic love between males. Christian is shocked and incredulous, but is forced to believe Arthur when the latter gives him a passionate letter indiscreetly written to him by Onslow. Christian leaves Charton that year, still in possession of the letter. The following Summer he has a homosexual experience with a boy a little younger than himself and the guilt and self-doubt precipitated by this event prompts him to consider whether he should break Arthur‘s confidence and reveal Onslow‘s secret. While on holiday in Europe, he describes the whole affair in a letter to his father. The rest of the novel relates how the latter is able to use this information to exert a powerful hold on Onslow, which radically affects not only his career, but also his personal relationships and inner life.
13433492	/m/03c55g8	The Blacker the Berry	Wallace Thurman	1929	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ;Part 1 Emma Lou Born in Boise, Idaho, Emma Lou Morgan is an African-American girl with dark skin, and she suffers from it. Her mother and her family have lighter skin (it shows European ancestry in her family history). Emma Lou learned that her father, who left the mother and daughter soon after she was born, was a dark-skinned black man, and she appears to take after him. Her mother's family members comment on Emma Lou's color, thinking it will reduce her appeal for marriage. Her family help the girl try to lighten her skin with commercially available creams and bleaching, but are unsuccessful. Morgan wishes that she had been born a boy, as her mother said, "a black boy could get along, but that a black girl would never know anything but sorrow and disappointment." The only "Negro pupil in the entire school," she feels conspicuous at graduation in their white robes. Her Uncle Joe encourages her to go to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (UCLA). He says she can find other black students for friends, and encourages her to study education and move to the South to teach. He believes that smaller towns like Boise "encouraged stupid color prejudice such as she encountered among the blue vein circle in her home town." Emma Lou’s maternal grandmother was closely associated with the "blue veins", those blacks who had skin light enough to show veins. Uncle Joe thought that Emma Lou could find a better life in Los Angeles, where people had more to think about. At UCLA, Morgan intends to meet the "right" crowd among other Negro students. On registration day, she happens to meet Hazel Mason, another black girl, but decides when she speaks that she is lower class and the wrong sort. Other girls are pleasant enough, but never invited Emma Lou into their circle or sorority. Hazel drops out of school and Grace Giles becomes Emma Lou’s friend. One day Grace says the sorority only took light-skinned, wealthy girls. By summer, Emma Lou felt more trapped by her skin. She began to notice that black leaders tended to have light skin or were married to women with light skin. At a picnic, she meets Weldon Taylor, a young black man. Although darker than her ideal, he attracts her. By the end of the night, she thought she was in love. Over the next two weeks, she is thrilled to be with Taylor, for "his presence and his love making." He traveled from town to town, finding work and a new girl each time. He was leaving Boise to become a Pullman porter but, Emma Lou took his departure as due to her color, and associated it with any setback. Two years later after graduation, she decides to move to New York City and Harlem. ;Part 2 Harlem Emma Lou goes to Harlem, where she soon meets John, a young man she decides is "too dark." She goes to an employment agency, seeking work as a stenographer. Lacking job experience, she encounters difficulties and pads her account of her skills. Sent to a real estate office for an interview, after she arrives, they tell her they have someone else in mind. After returning to the agency, Emma Lou was invited to lunch by its manager, Mrs. Blake. She was "warmed toward any suggestion of friendliness" and excited to have the chance "to make a welcome contact." Mrs. Blake tells her about work prospects, saying that black business men had certain images for the women they hired; they wanted them pretty and light skinned. She suggests that Emma Lou go to Columbia Teacher's College to complete training for a job in the public school system. After lunch, Emma Lou began to walk along Seventh Avenue. While stopping to check her reflection, she noticed a few young black men walking by. One said to another, "There’s a girl for you ‘Fats.’" Fats replied, "Man, you know I don’t haul no coal." ;Part 3 Alva Determined to stay in New York, Emma Lou finds a job as a maid to Arline Strange, an actress "in an alleged melodrama about Negro life in Harlem." She thinks all the characters are caricatures. Arline and her brother from Chicago take Emma Lou to her first cabaret one night, where he makes her a drink from his hip flask. Emma Lou was entranced by the people dancing, and is invited by Alva, a man from another table. When the lights go up, he returns her to sit with Arline and her brother. The next morning, Alva and his roommate Braxton discuss the previous evening; agreeing that Alva did Emma Lou a favor in dancing with her. Intrigued by the cabaret, Emma Lou talks to the stage director about being in the dance chorus. He tells her plainly the girls are chosen in part for appearance, and notes they all have lighter skin than hers. She decides to look for a new place to live, hoping to meet "the right sort of people." One evening she goes to a casino, where she recognizes Alva. After a while she approaches him and asks if he remembers her. He politely acts as if he does, and talks and dances with her, even giving her his phone number. She calls him a couple of times before they make plans. Braxton is critical of Alva's seeing her, but he thinks, "She’s just as good as the rest, and you know what they say, ‘The Blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.’" ;Part 4 Rent Party Alva generally did not take Emma Lou to parties or dances, as he didn't want his friends to meet her. He finally decides to take her to a "rent party." Usually he would take Geraldine, a woman with lighter skin, to more events where his friends were present. Used to manipulating young women for money, Alva liked Geraldine for herself. Emma Lou was very excited about the party, and worried that she would encounter more discrimination. Once there, they happened on to a conversation revolving around race: the differences between being a mulatto and a Negro, and individuals who are prejudiced or "color struck." Alva's group went on to rent party, where Emma Lou had more to drink than usual. The next morning, her landlady told her she had to leave, as she wasn't meeting her boarding house's respectable standards. Emma Lou had consumed enough alcohol to warrant a visit from her land lady the next morning. Emma Lou thought more about Alva, who seemed kinder than others in her life, but she was aware of his manipulation. Alva was having his own trouble with Braxton, who had no job and didn't pay rent. He finally moved out, but Alva did not want Emma Lou to move in. One night the couple went to a theatre show, which included jokes about skin color. Emma Lou said to Alva, "You’re always taking me some place, or placing me in some position where I’ll be insulted." One night, after an argument with Emma Lou, Alva returned to his room to find Geraldine sleeping in his bed. She told him she was pregnant with his child. ;Part 5 Pyrrhic Victory Two years later, Emma Lou works as a personal maid, more of a companion, to Clere Sloane, a retired actress. Clere is married to Campbell Kitchen, a white writer very interested in Harlem. He encouraged the young woman to seek more education in order to achieve economic independence. She often still feels out of place, with few friends. She decides to try to see Alva, although they had stopped seeing each other. As Geraldine answers the door, Emma Lou leaves without speaking to him. Alva and Geraldine struggled with the problem of their boy, who was born disfigured. Sometimes they wished he was dead, as he seemed to have brought trouble. Alvahad become alcoholic and wasted money. Geraldine worked and saved, planning to escape. Having moved to the Y.W.C.A., Emma Lou had found some new friends. She also was studying teaching. Her friend Gwendolyn Johnson tried to make Emma Lou feel better about her appearance, but she still struggled with it. She continued to work. She had started seeing Benson Brown, a light-skinned man described as a "yaller nigger." His appearance seemed reason enough to see him. Emma Lou learned that Geraldine had abandoned Alva and their son. She went to him, and this time he welcomed her to his place, to care for Alva, Jr. After six months, Emma Lou begins teaching at a Harlem public school. She helped the boy to get along, but her relationship with Alva was uneasy. At the school, Emma Lou wore a lot of make-up to disguise her dark skin, but her colleagues teased her for it. Her economic independence did not totally free her. Deciding to leave Alva and his son, Emma Lou returns to the YWCA, and calls Benson. He announces that he and Gwendolyn had been dating. They are marrying and invite her to the wedding. Emma Lou realizes she has spent her life running. She ran away from Boise to get away from the color prejudice. Then she left Los Angeles for similar reasons. But she decide she is not running away again. She knows there are many people like her, and she has to accept herself.
13434646	/m/03c56qv	Patriot Reign		2004		 The first few chapters of the work set the stage and introduce the main Patriots 'characters' and their resumes. Rather than biographical minutiae, the book focuses on matters which would be most of interest to fans. The book begins by covering the early experiences of Bill Belichick as a young coach including his tutoring under his late father, Steven Belichick, a lifelong scout and coach for the United States Naval Academy football program whom he began to help "breaking down film" and recording (analyzing upcoming opponent) plays as early as age eleven. Belichick was so skilled at film analyis that when he took a position as a graduate intern where this was his job with the Baltimore Colts, his salary was doubled after only a few weeks. The book shifts to focus on the early coaching career of Belichick (from age 23) as he went from graduate intern to jobs as various positions coach under four different coaches in three different football organizations including Ted Marchibroda in Baltimore and Rick Forzano of the Detroit Lions. Holley all but ignores Belichick's ten years or so with the New York Giants as defensive co-ordinator and (eventually) as assistant coach &mdash; where he established himself as an important defensive mind &mdash; only touching on those years in passing. Only cursory mentions are made throughout the book of the achievements of Belichick's defenses, and the dominating Giants' teams he helped construct.. The book goes back to the near-hiring of Belichick as head coach of the Phoenix Cardinals in 1987 before that team moved from St Louis. Patriot Reign addresses the era four years later when Belichick would coach the Cleveland Browns, from 1991–1995. At the time, Belichick was the youngest NFL head coach, and one considered average at the time. The media disliked Belichick's policies of restricting access to the team after they'd enjoyed years of free access. Holley relates the Cleveland press's changing views about Belichick, and that he "may be worthy of respect," as he had taken a 2-14 team to 11-5 and the AFC playoffs in just three years. At the time of Belichick's infamous resignation after one-day as coach of the New York Jets — Belichick wrote "I resign as HC of the NYJ" on a sheet of loose-leaf paper — conventional wisdom was still not that Belichick would be a sure-fire success as a head coach. Holley covers the Browns' departure from Cleveland to Baltimore, that left Browns owner Art Modell the most hated man in Cleveland — so much so that, only a few years prior, Modell wouldn't attend the funeral of a long time friend and associate, for fear of his life. Holley addresses mistakes that Belichick admits he made with the press, Browns' management and the eccentric owner Art Modell in his first position as head coach. This section reveals that Belichick resents the press's perception that he had been a Parcells disciple&mdash;which Belichick states is disrespectful of the other great coaches he worked under prior to working under Parcells. The following chapters highlight the author's opinion of Belichick as a complex man, cerebral coach, teacher and parent. The book highlights Belichick's penchant for levity and storytelling, while being profane as is needed. This part of his history concludes with how Belichick parted ways with owner Art Modell and did not follow the team in the 1996-97 off season to Baltimore where it was reincarnated as today's Baltimore Ravens and enters near-contemporary history when Belichick first joined the New England Patriots. The book continues, focusing on 1996, when Belichick was hired immediately as by his old boss Bill Parcells to be the Patriots' defensive coordinator. (Belichick had worked under Parcells previously with the New York Giants.) The passage exposes the complex interpersonal dynamics governing the management interactions of the 1996 Patriots, the relationships between the Krafts and Parcells, and exposes key points in their characters, philosophies, and history. As the new assistant head coach for the New England Patriots, Belichick soon found he'd become the ombudsman to the novice owners Robert Kraft and his son Jonathan, who had a stormy relationship with Parcells, whom they inherited when Kraft bought the team. It was noted that there was "a history" between the owners and Parcells that was leading to a deterioration in the team's relationship. The book then pauses to give a football background history of Robert Kraft, and then moving tangentially into the Krafts's business history, touches on Kraft's financial evaluation that the Patriots could not be successful economically as a franchise without also owning the stadium and its revenues. Kraft couldn't afford to buy the Patriots in 1988, but when former Patriots owner Billy Sullivan sold the team to Victor Kiam, Kraft prevented Sullivan and Foxboro Stadium from going bankrupt by purchasing the stadium, making him the team's landlord. This positioned Kraft — a lifelong Patriots fan — to purchase the team in 1994. The reader learns how former Patriots owner James Orthwein, unable to move the team as he could not break the long term lease with Foxboro Stadium, put the team up for sale in 1994; this time Kraft was able to outbid all others for the team, even though he had to pay (for the times) an unprecedented large price for the team, $200,000,000. With the purchase, Kraft inherited a strong-minded head coach with whom he had no relationship. Holley next sketches in how the Krafts' business acumen improved the team's revenues, and established an ever-increasing fan base (in no small part by ending the dubious practice of blocking out local television coverage when there were seats available) which has resulted in consecutively increasing sales every years since, and a sold-out stadium since the 1996 season, with a waiting list for season tickets that goes for years. Despite the team's marketing successes in 1996, the relationship between Kraft and Parcells was strained, and got worse with time. The new owners, with their net worth on the line, were unwilling to give a carte blanche to Parcells to spend on football operations. The Krafts believed in giving management plenty of space, but not a blank check without occasional questions and answers. Parcells felt the owner was interfering with his prerogatives and what was needed to run a successful winning football franchise, especially in light of the new NFL salary cap which took effect in 1994. The result was a stalemate that led to Belichick — as newly hired Assistant Head Coach — mediating between the two in the 1996 season. Prior to the Patriots' appearance in Super Bowl XXXI, rumors dominated the sports media that Parcells intended to leave the Patriots after the Super Bowl, despite the fact Parcells was under contract through the 1997 season. These news reports were categorized as distracting and disruptive to the team before the game. President of the Patriots, Jonathan Kraft is quoted in the book as saying "It was a very, very strange time, and when you are not an expert at this business&mdash;you know we were still very new to the business&mdash;it can be educational. Big Bill (ie. Parcells) had kept us in the dark on a lot of things. He probably misled us on some things. And we didn't know how to go about questioning it."
13436708	/m/03c5932	Boston	Upton Sinclair, Jr.	1928	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Chapter 1: The Runaway Grandmother The summer of 1915. The Thornwell estate outside of Boston. Cornelia Thornwell, aged 60, is suddenly widowed after 40 disappointing years of marriage: "she had lived, a prisoner in a cell." (31) The family is patrician and powerful, part of New England's economic and cultural elite. Her 3 daughters, all married to millionaires, squabble over their inheritances during funeral preparations. They continue their disputes as relations and retainers assemble for the reading of the will. Cornelia sees their behavior as "the revelation of hidden natures." "Trembling with excitement," (32) she pens a farewell note declaring herself a "runaway grandmother" (33) and asking the family not to pursue her. She leaves by a back stairway. Chapter 2: Plymouth Rock Calling herself Mrs. Cornell, Cornelia finds work at a cordage plant in Plymouth, a town not far from Boston. She learns how hard factory work is and how hard the life of the poor. She boards with the Brini family and becomes friends with their other boarder, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, an Italian immigrant ditch digger, atheist, anarchist, and pacifist. She first thinks his political beliefs naive, "a dreamer of dreams, so simple of mind as to have no conception of the odds against him," (56) especially his opposition to reformers and all organizations, even unions. Early in 1916, shortly after a public meeting Vanzetti and his anarchist comrades hold to promote their ideas, a spontaneous strike breaks out. Chapter 3: Dago Red Cornelia participates in the strike, learns how the police work for the plant's management and attack picketers. The courts do no more than "give the police a mild rebuke for their conduct." (74) Vanzetti acquires a rusty gun, though only to protect a visiting speaker, the anarchist theoretician Galleani. Cornelia hears echoes in his speech of Thoreau and Emerson. She witnesses Vanzetti getting into violent arguments that contrast with his gentle nature. The strike ends after a month and the workers have won a raise but at the cost of lost wages. "Little by little, Cornelia came to understand the type of idealist-fanatic, which could be gentle as a child in all personal relationships, but fierce and dangerous when roused by social wrong." (82) Chapter 4: Young America One day by chance Cornelia meets her favorite granddaughter, Betty Arvin, who is excited to learn of Cornelia's year. Cornelia confesses her new attachment to pacifism even as her relatives profit from war. Betty visits the Brinis and meets Vanzetti, who explains that he is no pacifist, that he believes there are powerful people to be fought. He condemns the war in Europe and tells his life story. Betty writes Cornelia letters and reports how her enthusiasm for women's rights scares off her suitors. Cornelia attends an anarchist-sponsored picnic and a play attacking militarism in which Nicola Sacco appears. Late in November 1916, Rupert and Deborah Arvin arrive in Plymouth, having learned Cornelia's address from one of Betty's letters. Cornelia defends her views on war even as they accuse her of poisoning Betty's mind. Cornelia agrees to return to Boston to reconcile Betty and her parents. She finds the situation there already calmed and decides to return to Boston but live apart from the family, imagining she and Betty can share their ideas but only with one another. Chapter 5: The Saving Minority Cornelia, now living in a modest apartment, speaks against U.S. involvement in the war despite her family's objections. Vanzetti leaves for Mexico, mistakenly afraid he might be drafted. Cornelia and Betty march in a pacifist demonstration, provoking another family battle. Cornelia visits Jerry Walker and his family. Cornelia understands how his business plans are being frustrated by the banking establishment, members of her own family. Fall 1917. Betty enters Radcliffe and lives with her grandmother. In reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution, "city policemen, federal secret agents, and an army of spies and informers" (149) wage a violent and illegal campaign on behalf of people of property. They seize a letter from Vanzetti to Cornelia. The ensuing family battle engages Cornelia and Betty against her mother Deborah. Vanzetti appears at Cornelia's door. Chapter 6: White Terror Cornelia's sons-in-law, Henry Cabot Winters and Rupert Alvin, lie to her about their manipulations to put Walker out of business. He is ruined. The war ends. Cornelia and Betty are arrested marching with suffragists. Another Thornwell family council ensues. Government authorities terrorize everyone the political left. Vanzetti is now selling fish from a cart. Cornelia is dismayed to hear how Betty is not fazed to imagine Vanzetti in a gunfight with the police: "Where had she acquired that matter-of-fact smile, discussing the mad idea of resisting arrest?" (181) Betty leaves for Europe chaperoned by a distant cousin. Cornelia confounds the family by joining her. They travel to Russia. Chapter 7: Deportation Days The Boston police strike. Betty stays on in Budapest and Cornelia returns. Only Vanzetti and the anarchists want to learn what she has seen. She attends Christmas celebrations with the Thornwells and the Brinis. Both comment on reports of a payroll holdup in Bridgewater. Anarchists are being deported. Hundreds are arrested and Cornelia works on their behalf. Vanzetti is working on propaganda, believes anarchist mail bombs are the work of provocateurs, and describes how torture makes anarchists swear to false confessions. Betty has lost her chaperon, so Cornelia will join her for a vacation on the Italian lakes. As Cornelia is sailing to Europe, Vanzetti is arrested for the Bridgewater holdup. Chapter 8: The Detective Machine The police identify suspects in two robberies and then develop facts to make their case. Arrested, Vanzetti lies to avoid implicating any of his fellow anarchists. He is the only suspect without an acceptable American alibi. News reaches Cornelia in Italy with Betty, her suitor Joe Randall, an American social democrat, and a French communist named Pierre Leon. In a long discussion of political philosophy, Pierre warns that he has known anarchists to be capable of violence, making his point to Cornelia by citing John Brown. The two women and Joe rush to Boston for the trial and visit Vanzetti in jail. They try to help locate evidence and witnesses. Vanzetti cannot testify on his own behalf without alienating the jury as an anarchist, atheist, and draft dodger. Chapter 9: The Web of Fate Vanzetti's trial for the Bridgewater attempted robbery. Judge Thayer seats a jury of Anglo-Saxons. Attorneys on both sides are friends. Prosecution witnesses alter testimony to fit the prosecution's theory. Only Italians provide an alibi for Vanzetti. Counter witnesses describe Vanzetti's mustache. The jurors handle bullets introduced as evidence. The judge's charge to the jury is not fully recorded. After the guilty verdict, Vanzetti writes letters from prison. The Thornwells are concerned about Joe's background. The family weathers the post-war deflation and squeezes the only Jewish banker out. Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant, launches the scheme that will bear his name. Walker distresses Alvin and Winter with a lawsuit even as they plot to defeat radicals in Italy as they have in other European countries. Chapter 10: The Legal System Cornelia finds that an establishment lawyer expects to be paid thousands. Facing the prosecution of Sacco and Vanzetti for the Braintree robbery-murder, the anarchists select Lee Swenson as defense attorney. He is experienced in criminal cases arising from labor disputes. Cornelia briefs Swenson about the defendants, describing Sacco as a man who "does very little thinking." (291) Swenson explains that the government's dishonest prosecution, a "frame-up," (295) needs to be fought with the same methods. He will need to "build a good alibi." (296) Cornelia recognizes that she has been invited to commit perjury and "moral whirlwinds seize her thoughts." (299) She considers how lies prove effective in business and politics. The next day Betty announces she and Joe now consider themselves married without benefit of law or clergy. Cornelia will permit them to use her apartment rather than announce this to the family. Swenson reports that a certain Mrs. De Falco has offered to serve as intermediary for a bribe that will get the government will drop the case. Chapter 11: The Graft Ring The anarchist supporters want to pay the bribe, but Swenson frustrates them by publicly denouncing the scheme. Betty's mother receives an anonymous letter threatening to reveal her daughter's indiscretions. She and Cornelia debate "the ethics of free love versus purchased love." (323) Betty's older sister Priscilla's wedding. Vanzetti is upset that the justice system will condemn Mrs. De Falco, the least guilty party in the bribery scheme. He predicts that Lee's refusal to accept the bribery system will make the prosecution redouble their anti-radical efforts. More poison pen letters reach the Thornwells. When Cornelia's grandson Josiah is blackmailed for sexual misbehavior, the family's history of secret affairs is discussed along with similar behavior on the part of Boston's ruling elite and occasional bribes. Mrs. De Falco is found not guilty, but the prosecution responds as Vanzetti predicted. Chapter 12: Shadows Before Swenson is joined by attorney Fred Moore and they struggle to identify and prepare witnesses. Accounts of unreliable witnesses and others pressured to testify or to withhold information. Too much critical evidence will be discovered too late. Swenson, pessimistic about his case, confronts Cornelia and proposes she perjure herself to provide the defendants with an alibi. Cornelia can not agree to do so, even though "what was supposed to be justice was really class greed." (365) The narrator's voice proposes that by adhering to her principles she hopes to maintain: "your exclusiveness, your idea that you were something special, apart from the harsh, rough world — in short that you were 'Boston'!" (366) Just before the start of the trial, mass displays of patriotism mark Memorial Day. Cornelia attends a ceremony naming a street intersection for her grandnephew who died in France. She weeps for the dead of the wars the nation is now arming to fight. Chapter 13: Trial by Jury The scene as the Dedham trial opens, with the defendants seated in a steel cage. Judge Thayer speaks his mind to reporters, but newspaper owners decide what gets into print. Corrupted witnesses testify, and the judge intervenes with obvious prejudice. He is careful that his recorded words do not reflect the bias he shows by his body language. Walker's case against the bankers is moving forward and will make the lives of Cornelia's relations difficult. In the course of arbitrating a family marital squabble, she learns how her relations are working to punish government officials who have opposed their interests. The trial continues with testimony that proves little but has a cumulative effect. The defense struggles with a dishonest court interpreter. Ballistics testimony is crafted for Thayer to misuse in his eventual summary to the jury, though a key witness will withdraw his statements 2 years later. Chapter 14: Judge Fury Cornelia and the Thornwells attend her grandson's Harvard graduation. Defense witnesses are mostly Italians and all struggle under aggressive cross examination. Vanzetti, his English improved while in prison, testifies and recounts his life story. The judge prevents the jury from hearing about the government's persecution of anarchists, his reason for fearing arrest. The cross examination emphasizes his sojourn in Mexico as a draft dodger. Sacco's testimony is less disciplined and the prosecution mocks him on cross. Thayer invites Cornelia to his chambers and they have an angry confrontation. The judge, alleging he was misquoted, lies to a reporter. The defense is short of funds, so Cornelia sells some of her jewels to her daughter Deborah. Swenson has run out of witnesses and directly proposes perjury to Cornelia, who responds with a distraught "Don't ask me!" (434) Summations are followed by Thayer's charge to the jury, mostly about loyalty and a prejudiced restatement of the evidence. The jury returns its verdict: both guilty on all counts. Chapter 15: The Whispering Gallery Swenson withdraws and Moore takes over motions and appeals. Cornelia's plans to speak in New York rouse her relations. She discusses the affair at length with Henry Cabot Winters. Cornelia admits knowing little of Sacco. She thinks Vanzetti capable of a violent rage if confronting the police, but never of a cold-blooded murder. She insists on the unfairness of the trial, Winters on the violence inherent in the defendants' philosophy. Cornelia describes the violence she has witnessed. Betty joins this "duel of moral forces." (463) When Betty announces that Joe's divorce is final and they plan to wed, Cornelia weeps, pretending she is happy for the couple, but her tears reflect the evening's arguments. "Women, who have been but a short time emancipated, do not defy and insult the mighty males of their clan without terrific inner disturbances." (467) The press reports of the wedding of the press agent for the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense to a Boston blue blood are sensational. The defense uncovers new evidence and witnesses change their testimony, all to no avail. Chapter 16: The Law's Delay Jerry Walker's case against the banking establishment takes place in the same Dedham courtroom and lasts a year. Cornelia watches her son-in-law Rupert Arvin manage the defense's systematic lies and feigned forgetfulness. Vanzetti studies and writes in prison, while Sacco finds it harder to bear. At different times, each attempts a hunger strike, resulting in psychiatric examination and treatment. The Catholic Church campaigns against a constitutional amendment banning child labor. Judge Thayer continues to deny defense motions with tortured logic and misrepresentations of the defense arguments. He alienates friends and colleagues with his anti-anarchist rants. Walker wins a jury verdict and stands to receive more than $10 million. Managing the appeal, Rupert Arvin analyzes social connections to members of the Supreme Judicial Court through club memberships and personal ties, nothing crude. Winters transfers all his property to his sister so he can claim to be bankrupt and avoid any payment to Walker. Cornelia attends a family baptism and ponders the words "vain pomp and glory." (508) Chapter 17: The Mills of the Law Betty has a baby and allows it to be baptized. Moore's efforts are undermined by anarchist supporters and he resigns. William G. Thompson, a patrician lawyer replaces him, but he antagonizes the anarchists because he has no interest in mobilizing public opinion. His appeal to the elderly judges on the Supreme Judicial Court, all "products of the spoils system" (519) in Cornelia's view, fails. The defense develops more exculpatory evidence, including a confession by Constance Madeiros that he and the Morelli gang committed the crime. Thayer again denies a motion for a new trial, this time citing dialogue that is not in the court record. Cornelia at least manages to have Madeiros' execution for a different crime postponed. The Supreme Judicial Court hears the appeal in the Walker case and in March 1927 overturns the jury verdict: "property was safe." (532) The court also backs Thayer on the Madeiros matter. Thayer then moves promptly to sentencing. In final statements, Sacco is hardly articulate, while Vanzetti is eloquent and speaks "as one who is addressing posterity." (535) Thayer places all responsibility on the jury and the Supreme Judicial Court and then sentences the pair to be executed. Chapter 18: The Supersalesman The focus is now on Governor Fuller, a man "cold as marble, utterly selfish," (542) who can issue pardons or commute sentences. The press begins to reconsider its negative view of the accused. The Governor is deluged with letters he ignores. Cornelia, now 72, has her son-in-law Winters sound out the Governor. Winters finds that Fuller only knows what the police tell him and does not want to be contradicted: "stubbornness is his leading quality." (547) Cornelia decides to campaign behind the scenes to get Fuller to appoint a commission to review the case on his behalf, working through her upper class connections to get the Episcopal bishop to make the suggestion. Felix Frankfurter demolishes Thayer in a magazine article. Fuller conducts his own review, but he is only pretending. The bishop asks the governor to create an Advisory Commission and Fuller does. Cornelia continues to raise money from "a small minority of choice spirits." (566) The division of opinion within the Thornwell family mirrors that of the public. Chapter 19: Academic Autocracy The Advisory Commission is headed by Harvard President Lowell, who has "a remarkable talent for ungraciousness." (579) It reviews evidence and hears witnesses in secrecy. Portraits of the 3 commissioners. Cornelia is quickly disabused of any hope for an impartial review. She is near despair. The governor visits Sacco and Vanzetti in prison, but he is still play-acting. New exculpatory evidence is discovered and presented but all for naught. The defenders are in anguish. Finally, Cornelia arranges to meet with the governor. He is perfectly polite and promises to consider her views, but clearly does not grasp the details of the case. Chapter 20: The Decision Worldwide attention is focused on the governor, who releases his decision late at night in order to have the next morning's headlines to himself. The advocates for Sacco and Vanzetti are angry and mock his conclusion that "The proceedings were without flaw." (610) Cornelia is exhausted and imagines she can only leave the battle to the next generation. She is comforted by Vanzetti's words in an interview he gave earlier: "This is our career and our triumph." (613) The narrator hails Vanzetti: "You have spoken the noblest word heard in America in the two generations since Abraham Lincoln died." (616) The governor's account of the case is so poor it needs to be buttressed by that of the Advisory Commission. Details of evidence are reviewed again. Cornelia is crushed by the Commission's report, since Lowell "was her kind of person, the best she had to offer." (620) Lawyers undertake fruitless legal manoeuvres. A demonstration on Boston Common is broken up by the police. Cornelia has some of her relatives host a dinner for the governor where they plead with him to delay the executions out of concern for Cornelia. Picketers at the State House are arrested. Betty quotes Lenin: "The state is a monopoly of violence." (634) Sacco and Vanzetti write farewell letters. Their executions are postponed with only minutes to spare. Chapter 21: Days of Grace Cornelia sees Vanzetti in prison again. The police fear a general strike. Cornelia's college-age grandson joins the cause as do artists like Dos Passos and many unknown who "came as individuals, hesitating and confused." (652) They argue legal strategy vs. propaganda. Police break up demonstrations but avoid creating martyrs with arrests. Joe Randall fails to get himself arrested. The Supreme Judicial Court holds a hearing and fails once more to order a new trial. Winters says the legal community agrees reforms are needed, but first "The courts must be sustained." (661) He accompanies Cornelia to visit the governor again. When a lawyer defends the Supreme Judicial Court, Cornelia mocks him because he is arguing against that Court in the Walker trial appeal. The governor asks Cornelia if the men are innocent and she answers: "Of course I don't know that....I believe that they are innocent and I certainly know this — that they have not been proved guilty." (666-7) The governor retorts: "I know that they are guilty, so I don't care whether they had a fair trial or not." (667) His conclusion is based on evidence he has heard, nothing in the trial record. Vanzetti's sister visits him in prison. Both he and Sacco write letters to Sacco's 12-year-old son Dante. Chapter 22: The City of Fear Police enforce silence in Boston while worldwide voices grow louder. The defense holds a public meeting in a hall but speakers must limit themselves to generalities. Cornelia arranges for Vanzetti's sister to visit Boston's Catholic Cardinal. Boston has a military presence. On Sunday, August 21, thousands gather on Boston Common and there are scenes of disorder, but people of note are not arrested Supreme Court Justices Homes and Brandeis decline to intervene. Cornelia and her daughter Deborah argue loudly. Cornelia says: "I prefer the dynamiter who cares about justice to the most law-abiding person in the world who doesn't!" (690) She lectures her granddaughter Priscilla about privilege and exploitation. On Monday, with executions scheduled for midnight, a protest of the well known and elite produces arrests, including Edna St. Vincent Millay as well as Betty and Joe, who give statements to the press. Cornelia visits the governor's wife, and then the governor again, to whom shes argues the case succinctly. Finally, trembling, she denounces him, leaves him speechless, and leaves "with despair plainly written upon her aged face." (705) Chapter 23: The Last Enemy Final legal activity and meetings. Sacco's relatives visit with the governor. The Thornwell's fear for Cornelia's health. She refuses sleeping powder. Winters tells her that Fuller's decision is based on word that a drunken anarchist revealed that Sacco was in the car used at Braintree and Vanzetti knew about the robbery in advance. Cornelia, "working herself into a cold fury," (714) denounces this evidences based on gossip, unchallenged in court. She gets a pass to visit the prisoners just hours before the executions so she can confront them one last time. She passes through many layers of security and speaks to Vanzetti as Sacco listens. Vanzetti swears innocence and attests to Sacco's. She asks if he has changed his views on violence in the class struggle and he has not. He still belies many will have to die to overthrow the master class. He does not want his death to be avenged. Asked if he forgives his prosecutors and judges, he says he can not say so. He asks Cornelia not to be sad for them because they are just doing their job and dying as anarchists. Chapter 24: The Triumph More legal moves. Cornelia says she is reconciled to the executions but her lips tremble as she speaks. Betty is resolute, believing in the class struggle. They wait past midnight until Joe calls to say Sacco and Vanzetti are dead. A step-by-step account of the executions. The prisoners refuse the attention of a chaplain. At his last moment, Vanzetti says: "I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me." (742) The newsmen wire their reports. Demonstrations occur throughout Europe. The narrator summarizes: "And now Massachusetts had made her martyrs, and stood upon her pedestal of self-righteousness." (746-7) Funeral arrangements are met with police restrictions. Police disrupt the funeral procession through Boston to Forest Hills cemetery. A member of the defense committee delivers a brief, eloquent eulogy. The narrator summarizes how their fame spreads and inspires: "To a hundred million groping, and ten times as many still in slumber, the names of Sacco and Vanzetti would be the eternal symbols of a dream, identical with civilization itself, of a human society in which wealth belongs to the producers of wealth, and the rewards of labor are to the laborers." (754-5)
13438982	/m/03c5cbd	Bless the Beasts and Children				 Six emotionally-disturbed teenage boys are sent from their homes throughout the United States by their affluent parents to Box Canyon Boys Camp near Prescott, Arizona, as the camp's slogan was "Send us a boy - we'll send you a cowboy", and the parents hoped that the camp would mature the boys. Each having originally been assigned to one of the six cabins, they are quickly outcast by the other campers, and find themselves together in one cabin. After a contest between the six cabins sorts out the pecking order, their cabin naturally lands in last place. The boys, in accordance with the camp rules, do manage to raid all of the superior cabins and conquer the trophies of the higher ranking cabins in order to advance in rank, but they use badly-executed subterfuge that is looked down upon by the other campers. Five of the six cabins were named after various Native American tribes and awarded mounted animal heads corresponding to each of the cabins' ranks, which are, from highest to lowest ranks: *Apache - bull buffalo *Sioux - mountain lion *Comanches - black bear *Cheyenne - bobcat *Navajo - pronghorn *Bedwetters - chamberpot All of the Bedwetters refer to each other by last names in the book and movie, including the two Lally brothers, who are referred to as Lally 1 and Lally 2, although their first names are mentioned in the book. An unpleasant confrontation between the boys and their counselor ends with Teft breaking into their counselor's footlocker, and because of the whiskey, beer, cigarettes and pornography found in the footlocker, they blackmail the counselor, who is called "Wheaties", into taking them to a ranch where they witness a canned hunt of surplus bison that had been rounded up from the surrounding area. The hunters (who won their spots at that hunt via lottery) sat or stood along a fence, while shooting at the fenced-in, nearly-tame bison. When the boys return, disgusted at the slaughter, they decide to break out of camp that night to stop the canned hunt. They ride horses into town, where Teft hotwires an old truck. After a ride into Flagstaff, Arizona on U.S. Route 66, they enter an all-night eatery to get food, but are accosted by two redneck "hippie" types, who follow the boys away from the restaurant and force them over, where they discover that the truck is hotwired. Teft pulls a .22 caliber rifle from the back of the truck and shoots out a tire on the car driven by the men harassing the boys, then orders the men to start walking or they can "wear earrings." Cotton and the other boys climb back into the truck and continue their journey to the ranch, but run out of gas just before reaching their destination. They walk the rest of the way and make their way through the fence maze on the ranch until they get the exit gate open so the bison can escape. However, the bison are content and have no intention of escaping, until Teft hotwires a state-owned truck and Cotton drives into the herd of buffalo while blowing the truck's horn, which alerts the hunters that are camped out nearby. Cotton drives the truck through the herd of buffalo and over the edge of the Mogollon Rim to his death, which ends the book as the hunters surround the other boys.
13440403	/m/03c5djl	I was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers	Philip Pullman	1999-04-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 One evening, at the home of the cobbler old Bob and his washerwoman wife Joan, there is a knock at the door. Bob opens the door and sees a little boy in a torn and stained page's uniform. When asked "who are you?", the boy replies "I was a rat". Bob and Joan have no children and they take care of the boy by providing food and a bed. The boy was unable to eat with a spoon, and during his first evening he tore his sheets and blankets into strips. However, Bob and Joan were patient and the boy was a quick learner who, wanting to please them, carefully followed their instructions. When he spots a photograph of Princess Aurelia, the prince's fiancée, in the newspaper, he appears to recognise her as 'Mary Jane'. Joan calls the boy "Roger", the name Bob and Joan would have used for their son. Bob and Joan take Roger to the City Hall to find how to return Roger to his proper home. An official declares that there are no lost children in the city, then notices that Roger has eaten a pencil belonging to the City Council. Bob and Joan take Roger to the orphanage, the police station, and the hospital, but no one can help locate Roger's home. The Philosopher Royal learns about Roger and his belief that he was a rat, and takes Roger to the palace for tests. Roger announces that he has "been here before", and states that the Prince will marry Mary Jane, only to be told that the Prince will marry Aurelia. When confronted by a cat, Roger runs away from the palace and undergoes adventures as people exploit his ability to eat almost anything, and to wriggle through small openings. Roger escapes and lives in the sewers, but is discovered by the local paper, The Daily Scourge, who exploit Roger again by writing about "the monster of the sewers". After a publicity campaign, Roger is captured and declared a menace whose fate is to be determined by a tribunal. Bob and Joan learn that the tribunal may declare Roger to be a non-human monster that must be exterminated. Joan notices a picture of Princess Aurelia who by now has married the Prince. Joan remembers that Roger had mentioned Mary Jane, so in desperation Bob and Joan contact the Princess. When hearing about Roger and the name "Mary Jane" she announces that she will help. Due to her intervention, Roger is saved and is adopted by Bob and Joan. The Princess had been a girl who worked in the kitchen and kept a pet rat. Her wish to attend a ball at the palace was granted, and her rat was turned into a page boy as her attendant – a "Cinderella story".
13441212	/m/03c5f77	The Return of Nathan Brazil	Jack L. Chalker	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A viral species named the Dreel, originating from outside the Milky Way galaxy, invades human territory. The central human government, known as the Com, attempts to fight back, but finds that their resources are inadequate to repel the invaders. In desperation, the records of the work of Gilgram Zinder (who had discovered the superimposed Markovian reality and built the sentient supercomputer Obie to manipulate it) are unsealed and his work is reproduced. Lacking the time to develop the technology fully, the Com builds ships called Zinder Nullifiers, which simply erase the contents of the space that they are pointed at. When they make the final stand against the Dreel invasion fleet, the Nullifiers are switched on and left on, obliterating the Dreel fleet. However, something unexpected then occurs, as the void in space begins to grow, erasing everything in its path from existence. At this point, Mavra Chang and Obie are reintroduced. It has been over 700 years since Obie faked his destruction and ran away with Mavra, and they are currently in another galaxy trying to positively influence the development of an intelligent civilization. Obie senses the malfunction in the Well World when the anomaly forms and begins to expand. He travels to the Well World, determines that it is broken and requires repair. He determines that the only person able to effect such repair is Nathan Brazil, but notes that the Well should have summoned Brazil to fix the malfunction. Obie recalls that Brazil was suffering from memory loss the last time he journeyed to the Well World; worried that this may have recurred, he and Mavra set out to locate Brazil. Once back in the Milky Way, Mavra and Obie have a problem: Brazil doesn't want to be found. The amazonian superwomen that Ben Yulin forced Obie to create, known as Olympians, founded a religious cult based on the godhood of Nathan Brazil. Their population has expanded to fill an entire planet, with the women serving as emissaries for the cult. In the face of their dogged pursuit, Brazil has gone underground. Undeterred, Mavra and Obie join forces with a mysterious human named Gypsy and his miniature dragon companion (and Com agent) Marquoz to recruit a group of Olympians to try to track down Brazil. In the process, Mavra is quite surprised to find that one of the "founding mothers" of the religion, Gilgam Zinder's daughter Nikki, is still "alive" as a computer personality. Convinced that Obie remained in the control of Yulin, and that Mavra had perished seven centuries earlier, Nikki believes that Mavra's approach is a trick, and she sets out to double-cross Mavra and Obie. Eventually, the investigators are able to track Brazil to a freighter operating in the space of the centaur-like Rhone (Dillians on the Well World). Despite the attempted interference of the Olympians, the party is able to meet with Brazil and discuss the situation with him. They find that he is very much in command of his faculties, and had not travelled to fix the Well because he didn't want to. Brazil informs them that in order to fix the malfunction, it would be necessary to temporarily shut down the Well of Souls, which would bring the Universe to the same end as if the rift in space were allowed to expand indefinitely. Although there would be a chance that the Well would short out beyond repair in the next few millennia, Brazil is willing to take the chance to give the races well beyond the reach of the rift the opportunity to achieve greatness. Obie disagrees with this assessment. By his calculation, Brazil is underestimating the odds of failure, and overestimating how much longer the Well can persist. Obie argues that the Universe will end regardless, but if Brazil acts now, he will be able to restart it afterwards, and use the Well to reseed it with intelligent life. Obie proposes to use his own immense capabilities to reprogram the entire planet full of Olympians to travel to the Well World, acting as both as foot soldiers in the inevitable fight against Brazil's return to the Well World, and also as the massive seed population needed when the Universe is restarted. Although Brazil remains reluctant, he is ultimately enfolded within Obie and forced to see the machine's logic. Brazil finally agrees to go along with the plan, but on one condition: he will go into the Well of Souls and perform the necessary repairs, but only on the orders of another person, so that the responsibility for the billions of lives ended is not his alone. With the plan thus laid out, the inner circle of Chang, Gypsy, Marquoz, and an Olympian head priestess named Yua travel to the Well World to put it into effect. Brazil indicates that he will follow sometime later, as he does not expect to receive a warm welcome. Although Obie is no longer able to help the party, he does impart them with a hint to the Well to influence the species that they are transformed into. Upon arrival at the Well World, the party arrives at the South Zone, where they are met by Serge Ortega. Ortega is a former human, transformed by the Well into a Ulik, a six-armed being that is half man, half snake. Although his species has a relatively short lifetime, Ortega has taken advantage of Well "magic" to obtain an unlimited lifespan, but this "spell" lasts only as long as he remains in the Zone. Mavra risks telling Ortega about the crisis in the Well of Souls and the impending arrival of the Olympians and Nathan Brazil. Ortega was present the last time Brazil went into the Well of Souls, and he believes that Brazil was not God, as Brazil claimed, but a megalomaniac who might do real damage if he were allowed to re-enter the Well. As the novel closes, Mavra, Marquoz, and Yua have arrived at their new hexes and are beginning to find their bearings. Marquoz is in Hakazit, a high-tech, volcanic land of massive armored lizards (though not firebreathers, to his disappointment). Yua is in Awbri, a nontechnological land of arboreal mammals in which the society is dominated by males. Mavra is in Dillia, semitechnological land of the centaurs. Gypsy resurfaces in an ocean hex, curiously untransformed. As the first waves of Olympians begin to pass through zone, an alarm sounds, and Serge Ortega is summoned to find that his guards have killed Nathan Brazil. The story is concluded in Twilight at the Well of Souls.
13443029	/m/03c5gyy	The Rachel Papers	Martin Amis	1973		 The Rachel Papers tells the story of Charles Highway, a bright, egotistical teenager (a portrait Amis acknowledges as autobiographical) and his relationship with his girlfriend in the year before going to university. Narrated by Charles on the eve of his twentieth birthday, the novel recounts Charles' last year of adolescence and his first love, Rachel Noyes, whom he meets in London while studying for his entrance exams into Oxford. Charles meets Rachel at a party and vows to win her over with his wit and wisdom. Unfortunately, she is seeing an American visiting student named DeForest, and Charles must employ a variety of meticulously calculated schemes to steal her away. The title is an allusion to one subset of notes that Charles works on diligently throughout the novel – detailed instructions on everything from how to convince his Oxford don of his brilliance, to how to pick up and seduce girls. Instead of studying for his exams, Charles pours most of his time into these narcissistic chronicles, and after he meets Rachel, "The Rachel Papers" become the primary outlet for his neurotic brilliance. Gradually, however, these notes evolve beyond a set of conniving machinations geared toward getting Rachel into bed with him, and into a sincere story of their brief but passionate romance.
13450491	/m/03c5rl_	Defining Dulcie		2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story follows 16-year-old Dulcie Morrigan Jones through journeys and trials. Her mother moves them both from Connecticut to California after Dulcie's father dies an accidental death. However Dulcie is unimpressed by this level of life change and seeks to solve this problem by stealing her father's old pick-up truck, setting out across America heading for her former home.
13454672	/m/03c5wh9	Light a Penny Candle	Maeve Binchy	1982	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 London was a very dangerous place to live during World War II and many children were evacuated to Ireland or the United States. Only child Elizabeth White is sent to live with her mother's childhood friend and her large and bustling family, the O'Connors, in Ireland. Although the mothers were childhood friends, their relationship has become one-sided with Elizabeth's mother, Violet, rarely corresponding and Aisling's mother, Eileen, remembering their closeness with detailed letters. Violet believes even though Ireland is not as refined as her London, it is a safe place for her daughter. Elizabeth quickly becomes fast friends with Aisling, who is the same age. The story follows these two girls, along with the whole O'Connor family, as they grow into young ladies. Aisling is outgoing and bold, while Elizabeth is quiet with all the manners of a well-bred child. Elizabeth is shown a caring, loving family and begins to feel part of a real family, as opposed to a visitor in her own home. After the war ends, Elizabeth goes back home to London, leaving behind a loving family and returns to the quietness of her real family. The two girls have formed a bond that remains, however, for years after the war is over. They remain in close contact through letters, supporting each other through their marriages. Their lives remain intertwined, each facing her own relationships, successes, and failures.
13455232	/m/03c5w_g	A Bell for Adano	John Hersey	1944	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The novel is set during the Allied occupation of the Italian coastal town of Adano in 1943. The main character, Major Victor Joppolo, is the temporary administrator of the town during the occupation, and is often referred to by the people of Adano as Mister Major. Joppolo is an idealistic Italian-American who wants to bring justice and compassion to Adano, which has been hardened by the authoritarian Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. When Major Joppolo arrives at Adano, he immediately asks the people of the town what they need the most. The first spokesman of the town tells Joppolo that they are in great need of food for some people have not eaten in days. The second spokesman of the town argues that the town's immediate necessity is a new bell. Joppolo is touched by the story of a 700 year old bell that was taken away from the town by the Fascists. Mussolini had ordered that the bell be removed from the town and be melted to make weapons for the war. The people were greatly attached to the bell. To them, the bell was a source of pride and unity. Joppolo immediately sees the importance of the bell and makes persistent attempts to locate the bell. In addition to finding the bell, Joppolo spends time trying to supply the town with food and other basic necessities. He soon discovers that the town has no fish because the fishermen have not gone out in months. When he speaks to Tomasino, the leader of the fishermen, Joppolo finds out that this is because the fisherman were forced to pay 'protection' money to the corrupt Fascist government simply to go out fishing. Joppolo tells Tomasino that he will not have to pay any bribes or extra taxes to the Americans for fishing. At first, Tomasino is convinced that Joppolo is lying to him and that it is some sort of cruel trick. Tomasino hates persons of authority because he believes that they are all power-hungry and corrupt. It takes extensive persuading and a visit to the authoritarian Lieutenant Livingston's office to convince Tomasino that Joppolo's intentions are good and that his only want is for the people of Adano to have fish. Joppolo is faced with another problem in which he had to countermand the order of General Marvin in order to do what was best for the town. General Marvin is an army general who happens to pass through Adano. All day his armored car has been slowed down by mule carts that are blocking the road. Finally, on the road to Adano, he loses his temper and orders that his men shoot a mule that refuses move from the center of the road. When General Marvin arrived at Adano, he orders Major Joppolo to keep all mule carts out of the town. Joppolo is disheartened but complies with the order. Immediately, he calls for a meeting with all the officials of the town and tells them of the new order, but also that he is prepared to find a solution. The next day, Joppolo decides that countermanding General Marvin's order is more important than his own position as mayor of the town; therefore he tells the people of Adano that they may bring their carts into the town (among other things, the town has no source of water without the carts). Later in the novel, Joppolo gains the admiration of Lieutenant Livingston and the Lieutenant invites Joppolo to come have a drink with some of his navy buddies. While there, Joppolo tells them of the town's need for a bell. Commander Robertson realizes that they might have exactly the bell that Adano needs, the USS Corelli. The arrival of the bell to the town coincides with a party that the town is hosting for Joppolo to express their gratitude for all of his great doings. Although the bell has arrived at the town, the engineers say that it will take them until the next morning to install it. At the same time Sergeant Borth, one of Major Joppolo's aides, finds a note from General Marvin that says that Joppolo has been relieved of duty as administrator of Adano because he countermanded General Marvin's order. Sergeant Borth tells Joppolo that he has been relieved from duty while they are at the party and hands Joppolo the order. The next morning, Joppolo leaves Adano, but does not say goodbye to anyone because he does not think he could. As the jeep is driving away, he tells the driver to stop for a moment. They hear the clear sound of a loud bell.
13456832	/m/03c5y8w	Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen	Jules Verne	1878-12-15	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Dick Sand is a fifteen year old boy serving on the schooner "Pilgrim" as a sailor. The crew are whale hunters that voyage every year down to New Zealand. After an unsuccessful season of hunting, as they plan to return the wife of the owner of the hunting firm, Mrs Weldon, her five year old son Jack Weldon and her cousin, Bénédict, an entomologist ask for a return passege to San Francisco. Several days into the journey they save five shipwrecked passengers from another ship and a dog who was with them at the time (Tom, Actéon, Austin, Bat, Nan, Hercule and Dingo (the dog)). Towards the end of their passage, they notice a whale and the crew, hoping for some profit after a bad season, decide to hunt it. Captain Hull reluctantly leaves Dick responsible for the ship. But the hunt goes awry and all the crew members are killed. Now Dick is left in charge of the ship with no experienced sailors to help him. He tries to teach the five survivors of the shipwreck and tries to reach the coast of South America, but Negoro, the ship's cook manages to trick them, breaking one of their compasses and their speed measuring device and eventually, after making sure the rest were lost, leads them to equatorial Africa.
13457299	/m/03c5ylj	The Making of the Pentateuch				 "The Making of the Pentateuch" (in fact only Genesis-Numbers, as Whybray excludes Deuteronomy) is in three parts. Part 1 examines the methodology and assumptions of source criticism and the Documentary Hypothesis; Part 2 examines the methodology of form criticism and tradition history as developed by Noth and others; and Part 3 sets out Whybray's own suggestions for the process by which the Pentateuch came to be composed. Whybray's attack on the documentary hypothesis addressed the basic methodology of source criticism, which relies on the existence of inconsistencies, repetitions and stylistic features such as alternative names for God to identify distinctive sources within the biblical text. The assumptions behind this methodology, Whybray says, are illogical and self-contradictory. If the authors of the original documents did not tolerate contradiction and repetition, why did the editors of the final work do so? And if the writers who created the final document did not mind such features, why should we suppose that the earlier sources did not contain contradiction and repetition? "Thus the hypothesis can only be maintained on the assumption that, while consistency was the hallmark of the various documents, inconsistency was the hallmark of the redactors" (p.&nbsp;19). Similarly, the repetition and stylistic variation which the documentary hypothesis explains as the remains of distinct sources, may be understood quite differently. For example, since other religious texts use a variety of names for God, why should the change of divine name in Genesis from Yahweh to Elohim signal a change of source? There could be a theological reason why one name is preferred to another, or the writer may just want a change. Repetition is often done for stylistic reasons, or for emphasis, or for rhetorical effect or in poetic parallelism. The task of form and tradition critics, according to Whybray, is even more difficult than that of source critics. Where the latter are dealing with partially extant texts, the former are dealing with hypothetical reconstructions for which we have no tangible evidence: "Much of Noth's detailed reconstruction of the Pentateuchal traditions was obtained by piling one speculation upon another." (p.&nbsp;20) His critique of scholars such as Rolf Rendtorff and Erhard Blum, who worked after Noth but in the same form and tradition-critical school was even more trenchant: "Rendtorff has merely replaced the comparatively simple Documentary Hypothesis which postulated only a small number of written sources and redactors with a bewildering multiplicity of sources and redactors" (p.&nbsp;21), while Blum's approach was, if anything, more complex and more dogmatic - not to mention less demonstrable - than Rendtorff's. Whybray's own, alternative hypothesis, is based not on the documentary model but on a fragmentary model. He suggests that the Pentateuch was the product of a single author (not the four authors and multiple editors of the documentary hypothesis) working at some time in the 6th century BC "[with] a mass of material, most of which may have been of quite recent origin and had not necessarily formed part of any ancient Israelite tradition" (p.&nbsp;242). Whybray saw this author as a national historian, aware of contemporary Greek history and writing in conscious imitation of Greek models, with the aim of extending the existing Deuteronomic history backwards in time to create a national history of the Israelites from the creation of the world.
13462888	/m/03c63yj	Lives of the Monster Dogs	Kirsten Bakis		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A group of elegant monster dogs in top hats, tails, and bustle skirts become instant celebrities when they come to New York in 2008. Refugees from a town whose residents had been utterly isolated for a hundred years, the dogs retain the nineteenth-century Germanic culture of the humans who created them. They are wealthy and glamorous and seem to lead charmed lives – but they find adjusting to the modern world difficult, and when a young woman, Cleo Pira, befriends them, she discovers that a strange, incurable illness threatens them all with extinction. When the dogs construct their dream home, a fantastic castle on the Lower East Side, and barricade themselves inside, Cleo finds herself one of the few human witnesses to a mad, lavish party that may prove to be the final act in the drama of the lives of the monster dogs.
13464538	/m/03c65s_	The Physician	Noah Gordon	1986	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is the year 1020. Rob Cole is the eldest of many children. His father is a Joiner in the Guild of Carpenters in London. His mother,Agnes Cole, is his father's wife. Robert has a particular Gift: he can sense when someone is going to die.When his mother and father both die, the Cole household is parceled out to various neighbors and friends. The Cole children are parceled out likewise. Rob is taken by the only one who wants him: a traveling barber-surgeon who goes only by the name of Barber. He is a fleshy man with fleshy appetites and a very great zest for life. Over the next years, he takes Rob as his apprentice. He teaches the boy how to juggle, to draw caricatures, to tell stories, to entertain a crowd, to sell the patent nostrum on which they make their living. He also teaches the boy all he knows of medicine - which is little. When Barber dies, Rob takes over his traveling medicine show. But he is restless, desiring to know more about the ways of medicine. He meets a Jewish physician in Malmesbury who tells him of schools in Córdoba, Toledo, even in far-away Persia, where the medical and scientific learning of the Muslim is taught. Unfortunately, besides being worlds away, the schools do not admit Christians - and even if they did, no country in Christendom would allow a person with such heathen learning to return. In a moment of epiphany, Rob decides that he shall take on the guise of a Jewish student, so that he can travel to Persia and study at the feet of Avicenna. Rob travels, as a Christian, from London throughout Europe to Constantinople. Here he becomes Jewish in appearance, and travels eastwards with a group of Jewish merchants, learning their ways as best he can. Rob arrives in Persia and tries to enter into the school of physicians there. He is not allowed access. He struggles to find a place in the city while searching for a way to enter the school. A chance encounter with the Shah of Persia opens for Rob the door to the school of physicians. Here he begins the study of medicine - the first formal study he has ever had in his life. At the same time he immerses himself in the life of a Persian Jew. Comparable to a surgical residency or similar term of practicum, Rob goes to a war-torn (and plague-torn) land to practice his medical knowledge. His journeys with the Shah's armies take him as far as India, where he encounters elephants, spices, and Wootz steel. He makes friends among the Muslim students of the school. Upon his return he encounters a woman he had met on his travels across Europe, a Scottish woman journeying with her father in search of superior Turkish sheep. Though she is Christian, they form a liaison, and are secretly wed. He is passed as a physician and helps to instruct new physicians in the school. Soon afterwards, Avicenna dies, and Isfahan is conquered by a rival king. Rob and his wife flee the rape and pillage and make their laborious way back to England, delivering her of children as they go. Rob struggles to locate his lost brothers and sisters, likewise to make his place amongst the terribly ignorant physicians of London. Despairing, he returns with his wife and family to Scotland, where he acts as physician to his wife's people high in the hills.
13466322	/m/03c68x8	A Fire in the Sun	George Alec Effinger	1989-06	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Taking place some months after the events described in When Gravity Fails, Marîd Audran, once a small-time hustler on the streets of the decadent Budayeen, finds himself as one of the lieutenants of Friedlander Bey or "Papa", the most influential man in the city. With his independence taken from him and being stationed as a liaison between Bey and the local law enforcement under the supervision of Sergeant Hajjar, Audran is forced to pair up with his colleague Jirji Shaknahyi in order to track down yet another serial killer who likes to remove some of the internal organs of their victims. Although Hajjar does not share his theory about the murders being connected, Audran begins to suspect there might be more to the recent killings than meets the eye, and wonders where the so-called Phoenix File fits in.
13469186	/m/03c6c10	Red Midnight	Ben Mikaelsen	2002	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 12-year-old Santiago Cruz, a Kekchi campesinos indigenos, escapes from his destroyed village, Dos Vías, Guatemala, on May 18, 1981 with his four-year-old sister, Angelina, at midnight, after his mother pushes her into his arms and wakes him up. His entire family has been killed by soldiers, and he runs as far away as he can. His Uncle Ramos gives him a map and compass and instructs him to sail away in his cayuco to the United States, to escape the civil war and hopefully find a better life. The boy and his sister (Angelina) find a horse, and ride it into the nearby village of Los Santos, where everyone has also been killed and burned. They continue into a city and sneak a ride in a maíze truck. They then sneak a ride on the back of a manure truck that a drunk rebel soldier is driving. To keep the truck from crashing because of the intoxicated driver, they put horse dung into the gas tank and escape when the truck breaks down. They then walk down to Lake Izabal and sleep at their Uncle Ramos's house. In the morning, Enrique, a friend of Ramos, finds the children. They tell him what has happened, and Enrique and his wife, Silvia, give them food for the journey. Enrique tells them everything he knows about the dangerous journey, and ride in the cayuco with them until they reach the opening to the sea. At the entrance to El Golfete, they sneak beside the shore past a military boat. Enrique leaves and Santiago and his sister sail into the ocean. They have little food, and soon go hungry and thirsty, with itches and blisters all over their bodies. They encounter tourists, pirates, many violent storms, and a shark. They encounter a river of garbage, which Santiago uses to make an amateur windshield among other spare parts to fix his cayuco, and finds Angelina a broken plastic doll. They once nearly sailed into an inland bay on the border of Belize and Mexico, and then sailed into the open Gulf. Santiago makes notches in his cayuco every dawn with his machete, as it should only take twenty to make it. They attempt to catch fish, but often fail or have to steal fish from fishing nets from a ship. They encounter a large storm, which causes the mast to fall directly on Santiago's head, and makes them lose the water pail. They experience diarrhea and sores, and almost lose hope of making the journey. They had expected to arrive in twenty days, but several more pass with no land in sight. One day, a tropical storm's eye passes over them, and they lose everything except the cayuco. As the storm passes, they land in a large city in Florida, and are taken to a hospital. They tell a nurse who can speak Spanish about their journey. They are bandaged, Angelina's doll is fixed, and they are shown on television and are fed food. They are told they will not be deported because they are child refugees and have lost everything.
13470974	/m/03c6c_w	Sundays at Tiffany's	Cate Tiernan	2008-04-29	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book opens with Jane Margaux and her imaginary friend, Michael, spending a Sunday at the St. Regis Plaza in New York City eating ice cream together, which they do every Sunday. Michael is an imaginary friend who is randomly assigned to children who need extra support and guidance. However, he is called away from the children when they are ten, at which point they will forget about the existence of their "friend". Jane needs extra attention because her mother, Vivienne Margaux, a Broadway producer, spends too much time with work and shopping for new husbands. Vivienne spends Sunday at Tiffany's with her daughter every week, though. The next day is Jane's 9th birthday party, which coincides with her mother's production's opening night. The cast and crew sing "happy birthday" to her, but her mother forgets about her and her father leaves quickly with his girlfriend. Jane is comforted by Michael, who tells her he must leave now that she is nine. He promises her that she will forget about him. Twenty years later, Jane lives in New York and works closely with her mother, who is now controlling. Jane has produced a small, low-budget play called "Thank Heaven", based on her childhood with Michael. The play was an overnight hit, and now Jane is in the works of making a movie based on it. Her boyfriend, Hugh McGrath (who played Michael on Broadway), wants the leading role in the movie. She hasn't forgotten about Michael. Jane isn't happy in life, though. She knows she is too dependent on her mother, and she is unwilling to face up to the fact that Hugh is an egomaniacal jerk. One night, he stands her up for a dinner date, and she returns home rejected and hurt. Michael, now on break from being an imaginary friend, catches sight of her walking into her hotel and instantly recognizes her. It's the first time he has ever seen one of his "kids" as an adult. He begins following her to work and home, but she never catches sight of him. Michael himself lives in an apartment complex across from Owen, a self-centered man who only uses women as objects. Through his conversations with Owen, we learn that Michael is caring towards everyone. He spends the night with a woman named Claire, but they just talk, and he learns about her and reassures her. A day later at work, Hugh McGrath comes and apologizes to Jane for missing dinner. We realize he is just using her to get the film role. Vivienne thinks that the role would be good for him, and she pushes Jane to accept his apology. Later, Vivienne infiltrates a "Thank Heaven" meeting and controls all aspects of production, despite the fact it is Jane's project. Jane goes out to dinner with Hugh, who flirts with another woman while Michael watches, unseen. A few days later, Hugh and Jane go to a museum exhibit together, and she learns that he set up the whole date as a way to con her into giving him the part. When she refuses, he blows up at her and leaves. She retreats to a bar where she thinks she catches sight of Michael. Later, Hugh apologizes and proposes to her in Brooklyn, making an ultimatum: a ring for a role. She finally realizes that he's scum and demands he take her home, at which point he leaves her stranded in Brooklyn. She hitches her way back to New York and shops at Tiffany's before going to the St. Regis Plaza for ice cream. Michael is at the St. Regis with Claire when he sees Jane, and she sees him. After they recognize each other and re-introduce each other, Claire leaves and Jane and Michael take a walk. They realize how much they've missed each other and need each other. They spend the rest of the day together. The next day, Vivienne controls Jane at work and Jane blows up at her, finally standing up for herself. She storms out and meets up with Michael. They go rollerblading and become closer and closer. They soon meet every day and go out every night, while Jane's professional life becomes more and more hectic. Vivienne reveals to Jane that her grandmother died of heart failure at age 34. Hugh makes one last attempt to win Jane back, but after he explodes and insults her, she punches him in front of Vivienne. Vivienne takes his side and Jane storms out, vowing never to return. Michael feels an impulse to go and meet Jane, but on his way he stops at a cathedral where he gets his message: Jane is going to die and it's his mission to help her out of life. Michael meets with Jane and they run away to spend a week in Nantucket, where they are happy and carefree mostly. However, Michael becomes increasingly worried about Jane and her health. After she loses much of her appetite, he decides that he is the thing that's keeping her from living out her life. He leaves without notice in an effort to save her. Jane finds him gone and is devastated that he has now left her twice. She goes home to New York where she collapses from stomach pains. The phone rings, and she can barely get up to answer it. Michael is out in New York when he gets a sudden impulse to go to the New York Hospital. He realizes that Jane must be there. He sprints there, but when he arrives, he finds Vivienne in the hospital bed, not Jane. He realizes that it was Vivienne whom he was sent to protect, not Jane. Jane soon arrives and lovingly reconnects with her mother before Vivienne dies peacefully. After Vivienne's funeral, Michael collapses and is taken to the hospital. Since imaginary friends never get sick, he and Jane realize that he must be human now. He soon makes a full recovery and vows to spend the rest of his life with Jane. In an epilogue, Michael and Jane have married and have two children.
13471090	/m/03c6d1l	Sail	Howard Roughan	2008-06-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A tuna is caught in the Bahamas. Inside the tuna is a coca-cola bottle with a note inside stating the Dunnes are alive. The book flashes back to the beginning as the Dunnes are about to set off on a two month boat trip, a trip that hopefully will bring them closer together, despite the fact that the stepfather, Peter, is staying behind on land. Katherine, a heart surgeon from New York City had lost her first husband, Stuart, a stock investor in a boating trip several years ago. But only an hour into the trip they're already falling apart. The teenage daughter Carrie plans to drown herself, and the teenage boy Mark is high on drugs. Ten-year-old Ernie is near catatonic. But their mother Katherine, with the help of her brother-in-law Jake, is insistent on pulling everyone together, once and for all. Just when things start to take a turn for the better, disaster strikes. A storm hits the sailboat. To make matters worse the boat explodes. The boat vanishes without a trace and the family are lost, presumed dead - until now, when a message in a bottle is found. It becomes apparent that there must have been at least one survivor. Who has survived and just what happened to the boat? As it transpires there may be more sinister powers at work, the race is on to rescue the family and discover what happened aboard the luxury yacht. It turns out that Peter has hired a former CIA operative, turned private contract killer, Gerard Devoux, to kill his family. He hopes to inherit the more than 100 million USD that Katherine was worth. Also, Jake dies from wounds with the boat's explosion. Peter knows his plans to gain the Dunne fortune will be ruined if someone else finds the family. He & Devoux set out the Bahamas to find them and kill them before they are found. Peter is a licensed pilot and rents an airplane to find them. He discovers that the family washed ashore an empty island. That night he sneaks into the island, he plans to shoot Katharine first, so she doesn't have to watch her kids die. His plans are interrupted when his stepson hits him over the head, knocking him out. There is a murder trial but is eventually acquitted. He sues Katherine for defamation and she settles out of court for 16 Million USD. Peter though is betrayed by Devoux and killed. In typical Patterson style, not everything is as it appears. Throughout the story we discover that Peter was having an affair with a young law student. It turns out that she was working with Devoux and is the one that shot Peter in the gut. Devoux then kills her to ensure there are no loose ends. We discover that she was a high end prostitute from Las Vegas. Devoux gets his at the end from a rogue DEA agent he had tried to kill earlier in the book. It is also revealed that, because of an affair had by Jake and Kate, Ernie is Jake's son.
13473407	/m/03c6gc9	The Secret of the Third Watch		1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Unlike other books in the series, this one does not take the adventuring duo (Stephen Lane and Richard Duffy) into exotic places faraway from the United States. It is the only time when the events take place wholly in their home city of New York. This is also the only instance when the day of the action can be dated - on Saint Patrick's Day, March 17. Richard received an urgent plea from an old acquaintance for a meeting at the Central Park Zoo on Saint Patrick's Day. The acquaintance was introduced only by his first name, Ralph, was a gentleman con of the old school who was described as having a rich imagination and leave his victims "still feeling good" because of the fortune they almost made. Stephen had gone along with Richard to the zoo, but his presence distressed Ralph who was alarmed at the thought of a kid getting involved as the matter was very serious. Before Ralph could reveal more, he was shot and was incapacitated, and his assaillant disappeared among the crowd. The only clue was a business card where Ralph listed himself as President of a company named Secucomp, Inc.. Ralph carried a lot of business cards listing his first name with different last names, with impressive designations for a variety of companies. But Secucomp stood out because it had a real corporate address. As it was set in their home city, this book had Stephen's mother and father playing greater roles in the story, including aiding them in their investigation. Along the way, they discovered their nemesis was only other possessor of the Kronom K-D2 watch in the world. Known as the Mole, or as the Money Master when he made threat in the New York Stock Exchange, he hacked into the Stock Exchange's computer systems and demanded submission from all world banks around the world. Too late, Richard realised that he is up against the only person in the world who knows how to use the Kronom better than himself, perhaps even better Karl Wolfmann, the Kronom's inventor. The Mole had been Wolfmann's assistant, but his active participation in the final refinements of the Kronom gave him an intimate knowledge of its capabilities and a definite edge over other users of the Kronom.
13474927	/m/06vnyg9	Welcome To Camden Falls	Ann Martin			 The book Welcome to Camden Falls is about two girls Flora Northrop and Ruby Northrop who are ten years and eight years old respectively. Flora is very quiet and loves to sew. She likes to work in her grandmother's tailoring shop called Needle and Thread which she runs with Flora's friend Olivia's grandmother Gigi. Ruby is nothing like her sister. She loves to dance and sing. She even gets the lead role in a play. When orphaned Flora and Ruby move in with their grandmother Min (their legal guardian), which is a nickname given to her by Flora because when Flora was young whenever she asked for something Min always said “in a minute”. Her real name is Mindy Read. Their parents died in a car accident on a frosty January evening. Flora's father had said that they could go out for pizza but Flora wanted to finish her homework. But anyway Flora, Ruby, their mom and dad got into the car. Although, it was January and Christmas had passed, Flora’s and Ruby’s mom had said it was the last chance for singing Christmas carols. So Ruby had shouted “Winter Wonderland”, but before she could say anything more, a truck traveling too fast for a snowy evening crossed over the center line and thundered into their car. Flora, Ruby, and her parents were taken to the hospital and Flora and Ruby found out that their parents had died. So they went to live with their grandmother Min in Camden Falls, Massachusetts after the school year got over. There was a welcoming party when they arrived. Flora had a good friend named Olivia Walter (who is a full year younger than Flora, but skipped a grade so she is in the same grade as Flora) who lived in the same strip of row houses called The Row Houses. They also become very good friends with a girl named Nikki Sherman who lives in the other side of the town. Nikki had troubles of her own. Her family is very poor. She and her sister Mae are often made fun of on the bus because they often wear clothes with holes and they smell bad. Her dad always comes home drunk. Flora and Ruby start to stitch their lives in Camden Falls with fun, frolic and gloom. The novel series Main Street revolves around two sisters named Flora and Ruby Northrop. Flora is a shy and quiet girl with a passion for sewing whilst her sister, Ruby, has different interests. She loves to sing and dance and being in the spotlight. They two are very different sisters but love each other dearly. ( Welcome to Camden Falls ) When Flora and Ruby's parents die in a car crash, they both are sent to live with their grandmother, Mindy Davis Read, whom they nicknamed 'Min'. They both are reluctant to leave their old town to move to Camden Falls but they really have no choice. Flora and Ruby learn to adjust in their new life and they both befriend Olivia Walter, a girl who was a full year younger than Flora. Flora and Ruby go through ups and downs of their lives and they try to be friends with Nikki Sherman, a lonely girl whose family is 'broken'. As Flora and Ruby begin to put their lives back together, they discover something very important. Find out in the book!
13490098	/m/03c70yb	2666	Roberto Bolaño	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The title of 2666 is typical of the book's mysterious qualities. This was the title of the manuscript rescued from Bolaño's desk after his death, the book having been the primary effort of the last five years of his life. There is no reference in the novel to this number, although it makes appearances in more than one of the author's other works. Henry Hitchings has noted, "The novel's cryptic title is one of its many grim jokes; there is no reference to this figure in its 900 pages. However, in another of his novels, Amulet, a road in Mexico City is identified as looking like 'a cemetery in the year 2666'. Furthermore, in the novel, The Savage Detectives, there exists the line: 'And Cesárea said something about days to come... and the teacher, to change the subject, asked her what times she meant and when they would be. And Cesárea named a date, sometime around the year 2600. Two thousand six hundred and something.' Why this particular date? Perhaps it's because the biblical exodus from Egypt, a vital moment of spiritual redemption, was supposed to have taken place 2,666 years after the Creation." The novel's five "parts" are as follows: The Part about the Critics, The Part About Amalfitano, The Part About Fate, The Part About the Crimes, and The Part About Archimboldi - all linked by varying degrees of concern with unsolved murders of upwards of 300 young, poor, mostly uneducated Mexican women in Ciudad Juárez (Santa Teresa in the novel). "The Part about the Critics" describes a group of four European literary critics who have forged their careers around the elusive German novelist Benno von Archimboldi. Their search for Archimboldi ultimately leads them to the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa in Sonora. "The Part about Amalfitano" concentrates on Oscar Amalfitano, a mentally unstable professor of philosophy at the University of Santa Teresa, who fears his daughter will be caught up in the violence of the city. "The Part about Fate" follows Oscar Fate, an American journalist for an African-American interest magazine, who is sent to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match (despite knowing very little about boxing) but becomes interested in the murders. "The Part about the Crimes" chronicles the murders of dozens of women in Santa Teresa from 1993 to 1997. It also depicts the police force in their fruitless attempts to solve the crimes. "The Part about Archimboldi" reveals that the mysterious writer is Hans Reiter, born in 1920 in Prussia. This section explains how a provincial German soldier on the Eastern Front became an author in contention for the Nobel Prize.
13497916	/m/03c796l	Luck in the Shadows	Lynn Flewelling	1996-08-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Alec of Kerry, a young hunter who has recently been orphaned, is taken prisoner under the false charge of spying. He ends up sharing a cell with Seregil, a seemingly youthful spy and noble from the exotic city of Rhiminee, who has the ability to assume various guises and trick his way out of tight situations. The two escape together, and Seregil, motivated by something he does not entirely understand, takes Alec on as his apprentice in thieving, spying and trickery. They head south towards Rhiminee, where Seregil will report on his mission to the wizard Nysander, the head of a covert group of spies known as "Watchers." But along the way, Seregil falls ill under the influence of a mysterious magic. Alec is forced to navigate their way south on his own, testing his limited resources and knowledge of the world outside his rustic homeland. When the cause of Seregil's illness finally becomes known (an ordinary wooden disk imbued with a powerful curse) it is almost too late to save his life. In his unconscious state, Seregil experiences visions of a dark entity known as the "Empty God," foreshadowing the designs of the evil Duke Mardus, who wishes to obtain the god's power for himself. In Rhiminee, the capital of Skala, Nysander heals Seregil and takes possession of the disk. Once recovered, Seregil reassumes his role as mentor to Alec, teaching him how to be a successful thief and spy. Alec meets Beka Cavish, a friend of Seregil's and member of the Queen's elite Horse Guard, and he and Seregil carry out odd jobs for the scandal-ridden nobles and citizens of Rhiminee under the guise of the "Rhiminee Cat." Seregil learns of a prophecy in which he is to become "father, brother, friend and lover" to Alec, and Alec discovers that Seregil is Aurenfaie, a race of long-lived peoples inhabiting the distant and exotic realm of Aurenen, from which magic originates. After Seregil is thrown into jail for supposedly writing treasonous letters against Queen Idrilain of Skala, it becomes clear that a plot is underway to overthrow the queen. Seregil briefly switches bodies with Thero, Nysander's apprentice, in order to assist Alec and Nysander in discovering the perpetrators. Their hunt eventually leads them to Lady Kassarie, a supporter of the "Lerans," a group of anti-Aurenfaie nobles who object to Idrilain's queenship (she is a distant descendant of Lord Corruth, an Aurenfaie consort). Alec manages to seduce a young servant of Kassarie's, allowing him and Seregil to break into her stronghold. Their discovery of Lord Corruth's decomposed skeleton, which Kassarie has set up for display like a trophy, reveals that the Lerans were behind the consort's disappearance, which had so strained the relations between Skala and Aurenen. A fight breaks out between the Skalans and the Lerans, but Nysander is able to transform Seregil and Alec into birds, ensuring their escape from Kassarie's stronghold. Kassarie is killed and Idrilain's place on the throne is preserved, but the novel ends with Nysander experiencing a vision of death and the Empty God, foreboding more dark times to come.
13498404	/m/03c79q1	Falling	Anne Provoost	1994	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Anne Provoost's novels are invariably related from the point of view of a young person caught up in problems of adult making which they have difficulty comprehending. In this case, the teenage Lucas is taken on a long summer visit to his late grandfather’s home in the Ardennes by his mother. He has been has brought up by her in ignorance of the fact that during World War II his grandfather had informed on the nuns in the local convent who were harbouring Jewish children. He is therefore at a loss to understand the conflicting attitudes he encounters in the town. He is particularly targeted by the political activist Benoit, for whom his grandfather was a hero, and persuaded to take reluctant part in a couple of right-wing actions against the Moroccan immigrants who have taken over a run-down quarter of the town. In the meantime he has befriended the young American-born Caitlin, who dreams of becoming a dancer. She is in fact the daughter of one of the children betrayed by his grandfather, all of whom had survived Auschwitz. She also stands for liberal attitudes and as an outsider too is not tainted by the small-town narrow mindedness from which Lucas has to suffer. Just as he is preparing to commit himself to Caitlin and what she stands for, she is involved in a crash and Lucas is only able to rescue her from the burning car by sawing off her trapped foot. At first he is treated as a hero, but Benoit, fearing denunciation by Lucas, uses his position as a journalist to question his actions. The plot of the novel has three times been adapted for theatre: in Brussels (1997), Hamme (2003) and Amsterdam (2006). In addition it was made into an English-language feature film in 2001 by Hans Herbots. Among the liberties taken with the text was the decision to move the scene of action, rather more credibly, to the south of France and the hint of a resolution through forgiveness not present in the novel.
13498987	/m/03c7b7_	The Ice Palace				 The vivacious 11-year-old Siss lives in a rural community in Norway. Her life is changed when the quiet girl Unn moves to the village to live with her aunt after the death of her unmarried mother. Siss and Unn can't wait to meet. They finally do, at Unn's house. They talk for a while, Unn shows Siss a picture from the family album of her father, then Unn persuades Siss that they should undress, just for fun. They do, watching each other, and Unn asks whether Siss can see if she is different. Siss says no, she can't, and Unn says she has a secret and is afraid she will not go to heaven. Soon they dress again, and the situation is rather awkward. Siss leaves Unn and runs home, overwhelmed by fear of the dark. Unn does not want to feel embarrassed when meeting Siss the next day, so she decides to skip school and instead goes to see the ice castle that has been created by a nearby waterfall. Ice castles are normal in cold winters, when the water freezes into huge structures around waterfalls. Unn climbs into this ice castle, exploring the rooms baffled by its beauty. In the 7th room she gets disoriented and cannot find her way out. She dies of hypothermia. Her last word is "Siss". When the search for Unn remains fruitless, people wonder if Siss knows more about the disappearance than she lets on. They wonder what had passed between them the night before. Siss on her part is overwhelmed by loss and loneliness, and makes a promise that she will never forget Unn. Therefore, Siss takes upon herself the role Unn had: standing alone in the school yard refusing to play or speak. Thus, she has to find her way out of her own emotional ice castle, before she can continue on the road towards adolescence and adulthood.
13499470	/m/03c7bsv	The Footprints on the Ceiling	Clayton Rawson	1939	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Ross Harte, publicity writer, is investigating the person behind a classified ad seeking a haunted house for sale. When it turns out to be his old friend The Great Merlini, Harte drops by his store, The Magic Shop, looking for an explanation. Harte and Merlini are soon swept up into a complex and bizarre plot involving the death of Linda Skelton, an agoraphobic heiress, at her home on Skelton Island, a tiny island in the East River of New York City. The plot soon expands to involve a psychic researcher and his favourite medium, a group of treasure hunters seeking a sunken treasure, counterfeit golden guinea coins, a man with blue skin (argyria), a gangster named Charles Lamb, a second murder by "the bends", and a murder scene with a set of neat footprints marching across the ceiling. Merlini survives more than one attempt on his life before he can call in the police and conclusively bring the crimes home to the guilty.
13499591	/m/03c7bx8	The Headless Lady	Clayton Rawson	1940	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Beautiful young Pauline Hannum, daughter of the late Major Hannum and a performer with his circus, enters The Magic Shop run by The Great Merlini and is suspiciously willing to pay much more than the going price for immediate delivery of a "Headless Lady" illusion. Merlini and his writer friend Ross Harte decide to investigate, drawn by Merlini's love of circuses. They soon learn that Major Hannum's death was probably a murder, and that the killer seems to have unfinished, and deadly, business that involves a real headless lady whose head has disappeared. Merlini, Harte and a new associate, detective writer Stuart Towne, soon learn a number of interesting background facts about goings-on at the circus—including why it's bad luck for the circus orchestra to play Suppé's Light Cavalry March, what the mummified body of John Wilkes Booth is composed of, and how to create fingerprints that have no loops or whorls. Merlini must use his magic skills to escape from an "escape-proof" jail, assemble the suspects, and identify the murderer in a surprising final scene.
13499718	/m/03c7b_0	No Coffin for the Corpse	Clayton Rawson	1942	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Ross Harte, newspaperman and friend to The Great Merlini, has finally fallen in love—with Kathryn Wolff, daughter of irascible millionaire Dudley Wolff. Dudley decides to put huge obstacles in the path of Kathryn's romance, including disinheriting her. But most of his life is taken up with his investigations into the nature of death. To that end, he's filled his country estate with his second wife (a former medium), an experimental biologist, and a number of other odd characters. When a private detective decides to blackmail Wolff, he won't stand for it; he strikes the man, who falls to the floor dead. Wolff forces his hangers-on to help him bury the little man—who comes back to haunt Wolff, and forces him to call in The Great Merlini to explain the situation. Merlini has to explain a spirit photograph, a vase broken by ghostly means, Dudley's shooting, the identity of "Zareh Bey, the Man who Could Not Die", a murder by dry ice, why Ross should have been tied hand and foot and thrown into Long Island Sound, and where a professional medium can conceal a gun that no one else can. Finally Merlini works out the causes of the ghostly apparitions, identifies Dudley's murderer, and makes it possible for Harte and Kathryn to get married.
13500226	/m/03c7cf1	Salaam, Paris	Kavita Daswani			 The novel is based on a story of a Muslim girl named Tanaya Shah; a young Indian girl mesmerized by western culture. She was raised by her mother and grandfather, as her father abandoned Tanaya's mother when Tanaya was a young child. Tanaya's grandfather treated Tanaya with the utmost respect. He treated her like his own daughter, but Tanaya still felt that she was neglected. Because Tanaya's mother was abandoned, Tanaya's grandfather (Tanaya's mother's father) would remain extremely cautious of Tanaya's roundabouts. This became difficult for Tanaya, as she wanted to explore the world outside of Mahim; place she Tanaya was born and raised. Adding to this, Tanaya was born in a family where women had the best facial features. This was true for all women in her family, except for her mother. As the story progresses, we learn that Tanaya's mother was thought to have been abandoned because of this lacking feature. Unfortunately, Tanaya's mother was well aware of this fact, and thus hated Tanaya. Over the years, her mother had become sarcastic and cruel towards Tanaya. This was one of the reasons that Tanaya was more attached to her grandfather. Getting back to Tanaya's fantasy of the western culture; like every young girl, Tanaya was also amazed by the glossy magazines that portrayed women in a stylish way. Tanaya with her best friend, Nilu, would read all western magazines, especially, Teen Cosmo. In private conversations with Nilu, she would often confide about leaving Mahim to Paris. She wanted to become like one of the models. However, modeling was not her passion. All she wanted was freedom, and a new change in her life. Her grandfather saw it a bit differently. He attested this new change with her married life. Call it a fortunate event, but Tanaya received a proposal. He happened to be the son of Tanaya's grandfather's friend. His name was Tariq Khan, who happened to live in Paris. Tanaya saw this as an opportunity to see Paris. Fate of luck strikes, and her grandfather allows her to visit Paris, where she became part of the modeling industry. (The book has a detailed account of the difficulties she faces to become a model). In the end, Tanaya finally gets married to Tariq Khan, and realizes that she was pursuing rather a mere image of herself.
13500798	/m/03c7d38	Dragonsdale	Steve Barlow	2007	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel takes place in a fictional location called the Isles of Bresal which are protected by a bank of mist called The Veil. On Bresal there are stables that train dragons. Cara, the protagonist, cleans dragons for the stable Dragonsdale. Many children attend Dragonsdale to learn to train dragons and take them to competitions, but Cara is forbidden to ride any dragon even though her father is the head of Dragonsdale. This is because her mother had died in an accident during a flight with dragons, and her father, Huw, couldn't afford to lose Cara as well. However, Cara is allowed to help clean the dragons, and she has a favorite one called Skydancer. She ends up having to train a young farm boy called Drane to muck out the stables and do all the things she does. But all is not what it seems about him as Cara and Drane slowly become better friends. Now, many children at Dragonsdale are preparing for the dragon riding competitions. Although Cara cannot participate in it, she supports her friends Breena and Wony. Cara is still determined to convince her father to let her ride dragons and one day go to the competitions with Skydancer. Dragonsdale follows Cara as she goes through obstacles, such as an arrogant child called Hortense, who is constantly making Cara mad, and finally achieves her goal when she buys Skydancer, but she loses control and declares he must be destroyed. Cara runs away with Skydancer to the mountains. In the mountains, Cara loses way and follows a path leading in the wrong direction. The path leads Cara off a cliff and she nearly falls off of it, but Skydancer takes the back of Cara's shirt and pulls her to safety, it is after that that Cara and Sky Hear the Firedogs and Howlers for the first time. When they hear the Firedogs and Howlers for a second time Cara finds out that Drane was following her. When they're being circled in by the Firedogs and Howlers Sky dancer runs out of flame and Drane encourages Cara to ride Skydancer. While Drane is trying to make Cara ride Skydancer Cara is encouraging Drane to ride Sky (Skydancer) and be saved from death as well. But Drane refuses. While all this is happening, back in Dragonsdale Huw, Cara's father, is worried. Back in the mountains, Drane finally gets Cara to ride Skydancer... only to be picked up in Sky's talons! Together, Sky, Cara and Drane fly back to Dragonsdale after promising that they won't say that Cara rode Sky. She secretly trains Skydancer to fly through obstacles. Hortense and Huw discover this and Huw banishes Cara from riding Skydancer ever again. A competition comes up and Hortense is to ride Skydancer. Skydancer makes mistakes based on Hortenses confusing signals and they lose the competition. When Cara goes to the ring she sees Hortense yelling at Sky, then Hortense rewards him with a whip on the muzzle. Skydancer gets mad and gets ready to flame Hortense. Just on time, Cara stops Skydancer, and they decide to do the obstacle course together. Cara does an excellent job, but she knows her father is mad. Surprisingly, Huw lets Cara ride again and banishes Hortense from riding Skydancer ever again. The dragon and dragonrider live happily ever after and fly off into the noon sun, at least until the novel's sequel. That is called Riding the Storm.
13502201	/m/03c7g10	Thursday's Child	Sonya Hartnett	2000-08-31	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Harper Flute is an adolescent girl living with her family in Australia during the depression. Harper Flute's little brother Tin was born on Thursday and he has far to go. Harper starts out by saying how she and Tin go out to the creek, and start watching fish. Harper soon catches one out of the creek, and she tries to search for Tin to let him see it. She notices that he's gone and starts crying out to her house. Her dad, whom she calls Da, comes out and starts searching all over for Tin, and they eventually find him in the mud. Harper notices that he dug his way out, but she won't tell anyone about this special event. Back at the house, Audrey, her older sister, scolds Harper for letting him get away like that. Mrs. Murphy, the neighbor, starts worrying about Tin and starts talking about the new baby. Later on in the book, her mother, whom she calls Mam, is pregnant and gives birth to a new baby boy named Caffy. Tin is considered Da's "little pet", and Harper notes how she, her older brother, Devon, and Audrey aren't pets, but they aren't nothing. She remarks how Caffy is nothing to Da though. Harper notices how Tin loves to dig and he spends most of his time under the house. She sees how he's digging tunnels, and spends most of his year there. Mam is worried and distressed about Tin because her neighbors are asking why he doesn't come out, and how he needs to, and Da supports Tin because it reminds him of the war and how they dug tunnels. People at school come to see Tin's tunnels. Mr. Cable, a "friend", comes over and notes how they need a farm. Da fights back, but Mr. Cable asks Devon if he can work for him for a week's wages. Devon agrees, and decides to travel the next day so he can get there sooner. Harper notes how much she misses Devon, and guesses that Caffy misses Tin, but Mam and Da argue that Caffy doesn't know Tin and he can't miss what he never had. Devon comes home a week later, and starts crying. He notes how Mr. Cable sent him home without a penny and an hour's instruction to build the fences. His dream to own a pony named Champion was ruined and he ignores everyone for a whole week. Da tries to talk to Mr. Cable, but he notes how Devon made two of his sows run away with his "lousy" fences. Da apologizes and goes back, saying "Mr. Cable has no heart, you can't talk him out of it." Soon, Da's father dies and in his will, Grandpa gives the money to Devon. Devon wants to buy a pony and he rubs it in Audrey's face. Audrey gets very upset and asks him not to. Devon decides to buy what they need, not what he wants. He is willing to sacrifice his dream pony, but Da suggests not, and decides to buy the pony. Devon is not very optimistic about this, so when they come home, Mam starts arguing how Harper never got new clothes in her life. Devon screams out, "I told you so!" and Mam slams the door and starts crying. Da says she'll get over it. One day, a seventeen year old boy named Izzy moves to their town, and Audrey begins to have a crush on him. Audrey tells Harper she's going to marry Izzy one day, but Harper wonders what it feels like to get married. One day going to school, their house collapses. Da had wanted to start a farm, just like Mr. Cable wanted them to. Harper runs back, and tries to find Tin, while Audrey and Devon try to find their parents. Da screams out in rage how this is all Tin's fault. Mam argues that it's not his fault, they'll just rebuilt it. Da is so upset that he's biting his fingernails and digging them into his skin. Harper is so upset to see Da like this, so she tries to stop him from doing that, but he slaps her. Mam gets very upset and cries out, "Don't you dare slap this child! Get to your feet, you disgust me. How dare you take your misery out on a poor infant." Harper doesn't care, she wants her Da to stop digging in his skin. Mam tells Da to build the house while she finds a place to stay for the while. One day, Caffy falls into a well, and they try to save him, but he sadly dies. Audrey is sent to work for labor and Harper is very upset with the death. Da soon rebuilds the house, but Harper feels that Tin is growing farther away from the family. He keeps on digging and digging, and won't talk to anyone, not even Mam. Harper is worried, but she doesn't talk about it. What's even worse is that their chickens and cows were stolen by some salesmen. Mr. Cable had offered Audrey to work for him as a housekeeper. She said no, then the next morning their chickens and cows were stolen. Audrey asks Harper if she's sick of eating rabbit, and Harper says yes, but she doesn't mind. Audrey doesn't want to see her family suffer so she decides to tell yes to Mr. Cable to be his housekeeper. Harper follows Audrey when she leaves, and Audrey goes to Izzy. She tells Izzy that she has decided to work for Mr. Cable, but Izzy tells her that people have been saying that Mr. Cable paid the salesmen to take the animals away so that Audrey would say yes. Audrey doesn't believe him at first, but then she does, and she decides to tell Mam and everyone that she is leaving. That is the last that Harper sees Audrey this month. Mr. Cable comes back, complaining about how Tin keeps eating all the honey of his beehive. He complains and Da apologizes, and sees Tin wounded. Mam goes and gets clean rags to clean the wounds off. After that, Tin leaves the rags on the dirt and runs away. Mam sighs and wants Tin to talk to her, to be part of her family. When Mam finds the rags outside, she folds them neatly and puts them in a box. She keeps Tin's things in there. She put a lock of hair inside and what she can find from Tin. Audrey comes home one day from Mr. Cable's, and bursts out crying. She tells her mother, that she had been raped by Mr.Cable and had ran back home. Da, who is so upset, takes his rifle and charges to Mr. Cable's house. Mam begs Harper to chase after him and bring him back. Harper tries, but Da argues that she should go home and walks away, looking for Mr. Cable. Harper suddenly falls into one of Tin's tunnels, and she starts thinking of Caffy while crawling. Suddenly, she starts saying "sorry" and Tin helps her out. Harper thanks him, and finds her Da. They go on home. The next few months, Mr. Murphy tells Da that people said that Mr. Cable ran away after hearing that Da was going to defend Audrey, and that he was the most admired man in the town now. It is also strongly hinted that Mr Cable was killed by Tin. The family then parade around the small town to soak in the fame. The next few days, the Flute family is given a chunk of gold that Tin finds in one of his tunnels. They dance around, happy, and Tin was just digging to find something to help his poor family all along but Harper still thinks that Tin dug because he loved to do so. Harper and Audrey move to a new house near the beach, and Mam and Da moved to find more gold. Harper proclaims that Da got bit by the mining bug. She says she misses Devon, who moved to the front, and Izzy, Audrey's sweetheart, who went to war. She misses Caffy, she misses her past, and she misses her Mam and Da. She says she misses Tin. "It was Tin, who was mythical, and he looked just that way. He looked nothing like the boy he was supposed to be, ten going on eleven. He seemed to hover above the earth somehow, the curious glow of his flesh illuminating him. I would not have been surprised if wings had opened up behind him…… he looked into the room at us. He looked first at Mam, then Da, then at Audrey, then me. When his eyes settled on mine I felt something inside me shake free, and go to him. I didn’t give it—he wanted it, and it went to him. Then he smiled, only slightly, but enough so we agreed, afterward, that we had seen it done. With that he turned and vanished…" -Quote from the book, Thursday's Child.
13502212	/m/03c7g1c	Surrender	Sonya Hartnett	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Seven-year-old Anwell lives in a prestigious but coldly distant family with a mother who is always sick and a father who punishes him with physical abuse. Anwell has no friends and is on a very tight leash. He is sitting in the back yard one day when he meets wild boy his age named Finnigan, his alter-ego or second personality. Anwell now named Gabriel is never to be angry and never to fight. Finnigan is to always be angry and to always fight. If Gabriel (Anwell) wants revenge or anything bad done, he asks Finnigan to do it for him. Finnigan becomes Anwell's only friend, and Anwell confides in him what he has never told anyone else, of how he accidentally killed his handicapped older brother Vernon. His brother, though he was three years older than Anwell, "was never the elder of us". His parents, disgraced and humiliated by Vernon, refuse to take care of him, leaving Anwell to do the job at the young age of seven. Enjoying his task, Anwell routinely feeds, washes, and entertains his brother. One Sunday, while his father is out to church and his mother is sleeping due to a migraine, Anwell is again taking care of Vernon. When Anwell is trying to feed Vernon, he refuses, would not stop crying, and scratches Anwell on his cheek, drawing blood. Out of frustration, and anxiety their mother will wake up and be irate, Anwell puts fabric in Vernon's mouth to quiet him and throws his brother in a refrigerator. Finnigan becomes the town arsonist, lighting the town aflame piece by piece in an act of revenge for Gabriel, but Finnigan is soon out of control and the only way for Gabriel to stop Finnigan is for Gabriel to kill himself at the young, "martyr's age" of twenty by condemning himself to a mentally caused illness.
13502613	/m/03c7ggf	Teneke	Yaşar Kemal			 In Teneke, Kemal depicts the tragic conditions, under which the landowners (aghas) in the region Çukurova in southern Anatolia of Turkey live and the way, in which the rice planters exploit them. A young and idealist district governor (), who is newly appointed there, tries to back the landowners struggling against oppression and injustice by a rice planter.
13504713	/m/03c7jmh	The Exile Kiss	George Alec Effinger	1991-04	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Married to Indihar, though from his perspective in name only, Marîd Audran gets invited to a reception at the palace of the amir of the city. Shaykh Mahali, the amir, thus wishes to end the rivalry between Friedlander Bey and Reda Abu Adil, two of the most powerful men in the city. Both Audran and Bey, or "Papa" as he's known in the Budayeen, become suspicious when their sworn enemy Abu Adil designates Audran as an officer of the "Jaish", an unofficial right-wing outfit working for Abu Adil. However, it is not until after the party that Abu Adil's scheme unfolds: Audran and Bey are put under arrest by Lieutenant Hajjar and charged with the murder of a police officer named Khalid Maxwell. They're sentenced on-the-spot into exile, never to return to the city under pain of death. Left to die amongst the burning sands of a vast desert, their luck finally turns as they are rescued by a Bedouin tribe of Bani Salim, allowing them to start planning the vengeance they'd exact upon Abu Adil and prove their innocence— if they ever make it back to the city alive.
13508402	/m/03c7n6d	Darkness, Tell Us	Richard Laymon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 While attending a party thrown by one of their English professors, six college students use a Ouija board to contact a spirit that identifies itself only as 'Butler'. Butler promises the six a treasure if they will go to a remote mountain location called Calamity Peak. The professor, who knows from experience that messing around with the supernatural can be dangerous, attempts to dissuade them, but the kids steal the board and set off for the mountain anyway. Once they arrive they are menaced be a machete-wielding killer, and soon begin to wonder if Butler might be trying to harm them. After discovering that the Ouija board is missing, the professor, along with her lover, sets out to rescue her students. Unlike many of Laymon's novels, the book contains frankly supernatural elements, alongside the more realistic horrors common to Laymon's work (including homicidal maniacs, rape, and childhood sexual abuse).
13508466	/m/03c7n9v	A Romance of the Halifax Disaster	Frank McKelvey Bell	1918	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Vera Warrington and Tom Welsford enter the narrative while floating and flirting on the Saint Lawrence River. Years later, Vera is engaged to the wealthy William Lawson and has not heard from Tom. Shortly before the explosion, Tom returns to Halifax, Nova Scotia for orthopedic surgery for a war wound. Tom is still in hospital when the disaster occurs. As a volunteer with the Voluntary Aid Division, Vera darts to the hospital only in time to witness Will’s death and her liberation from the marriage which was to occur later that day. Now free, Vera finds Tom in a hospital bed and accepts his proposal: the last line of the book belongs to Vera, agreeing to marriage.
13512359	/m/03c7s3v	Brendon Chase			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Both the novel and the TV series were based around the Hensman brothers, Robin (played in the TV series by Craig McFarlane), John (played by Howard Taylor) and Harold (played by Paul Erangey (died 2004), who spend eight months living as outlaws in the forest of Brendon Chase. As in much British children's literature of the era, their parents are absent, and living in India, at the time part of the British Empire, while in the TV series their mother has died and it is only their father who is abroad. They are cared for by their Aunt Ellen, a strict and somewhat cold spinster (played in the TV series by Rosalie Crutchley). At the end of the Easter holidays, Harold falls ill with the measles, so Robin and John are unable to return to boarding school (described as "Banchester" - the name is similar to Winchester College, but it was inspired by Rugby School where the author taught Art). They decide to run away and fend for themselves, taking some food from their aunt's house, and also taking a rifle and ammunition so they can survive in the wild. Despite continued attempts to catch them (usually involving Police Sergeant Bunting, played in the TV series by Michael Robbins, and the Reverend Whiting, played in the series by Christopher Biggins) the three brothers - Robin and John are later joined by Harold when he recovers from his illness - prove sufficiently quick-witted and ingenious to evade capture for eight months, surviving on what they can kill (the acceptance of which is one of the most interesting aspects of both the book and the TV series today) and on supplies occasionally taken from other sources. In the book, though not the TV series, Robin is known as "Robin Hood", John as "Big John" and Harold as "Little John". A recurring subplot only in the TV series involves the brazenly cynical journalist Monica Hurling (played by Liza Goddard) from a fictional newspaper called "The London Planet" (clearly based on the more populist papers of the 1920s, such as the Daily Express), who has written a number of stories stirring up public interest in the Hensman boys, while the paper has offered a £50 reward to whoever can find them. She represents an amoral, sophisticated London, and the conflict between her and the conservative rural community where she is reporting has wider resonance in terms of social history. This character, however, does not appear in the book. In the later part of their time living in the wild, the boys - who by this time have long been wearing rabbit skins, their clothes having worn out - encounter an eccentric elderly charcoal burner called Smokoe Joe (played in the TV series by Paul Curran), who becomes a close friend. When Smokoe Joe is seriously injured, one of the boys saves his life by running for the doctor, thereby risking capture. After a Christmas spent with Smokoe Joe in his hut, the boys are 'run to ground' when the doctor, who has kept their secret until that moment, arrives with their father who has returned, and the story ends there in the forest (Christmas is not specifically referred to in the TV series). The bear that had escaped in the forest near the end of their adventure settles down to hibernate for the winter in the hollow oak tree where they had lived.
13512416	/m/03c7s7m	Lettice and Lovage	Peter Shaffer			 Lettice and Lovage is set in England. The action takes place in three primary locations: the Grand Hall of Fustian House, Wiltshire, England; Miss Schoen's office at the Preservation Trust, Architrave Place, London; and Miss Douffet's basement apartment, Earls Court, London. This synopsis delineates the action of the production seen by American audiences in 1990. Lettice Douffet is showing a group of tourists around Fustian House, an old, dreary, and (as the name suggests) fusty sixteenth-century hall. The rain-drenched tourists are clearly bored and miserable. Lettice is reciting a rehearsed monologue pointing out the not-very-interesting history of the hall. As the tourists leave in a kind of stupor, Lettice feels dejected. The scene shifts to several days later at the same spot. Lettice is again reciting her boring monologue, but suddenly she is filled with inspiration and begins improvising a wildly untrue (yet entertaining) story about the staircase in the hall. The tourists are jolted from their reveries and thoroughly enraptured by her tale. Some days later, Lettice is once again telling the "history" of the hall, only her tale has become even more fanciful and grandiose. She is filled with confidence and the (larger) audience of excited tourists hangs on her every word. Lettice is challenged by a disagreeable fellow who demands to see her references for the story. She successfully averts his questions, much to the enjoyment of the rest of the crowd. The next scene reveals Lettice telling an even larger version of the now completely ridiculous yet salacious story to salivating tourists. She is this time interrupted by Lotte Schoen, who dismisses the rest of the crowd, insisting she must speak to Lettice alone. Lotte reveals she works for Preservation Trust, which owns Fustian House. She tells Lettice she must report to the Trust the next day to have her position reviewed. The next afternoon Lettice is shown in to Lotte's office. She defends her embellishment of the facts by stating that the House's architecture and history is too dull. Lettice says she lives her life by a code her mother taught her: "Enlarge! Enliven! Enlighten!". Lotte chafes at the discovery that Lettice's mother was an actress and sits dumbfounded at Lettice's assertions of her mother's colorful past and its influence on her. Lotte tells Lettice that she has twenty-two letters of complaint about her false recitations at Fustian House. She fires Lettice, who despairs and wonders what a woman of her age can do. She leaves the Trust, but not before telling Lotte a story about Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary had dressed herself in a red dress the day of her execution to defy her accusers. As she tells the story, Lettice drops her cloak to reveal a red nightdress. It is ten weeks later. Lettice is in her basement flat with her cat, Felina. The apartment is adorned with theatrical posters, furniture, props, and relics. Lotte Schoen unexpectedly arrives at the flat and is dismayed by the sight of the cat, saying she has an aversion to them. Lotte then produces a letter of reference she has written for Lettice to obtain a new position giving tours on boats on the Thames. Lettice is very moved by her gesture and apologizes for behaving rudely. She insists they have a celebratory drink together. They spend a long scene drinking and talking, where they begin to find similarities in their very different personalities—notably, a disgust with modern English architecture and all things "mere". Inebriated, Lotte begins telling of a man with whom she was once in love, who aspired to be a terrorist by blowing up modern buildings in London to oppose the destruction of historical architecture. Lotte divulges he and she had a secret alliance called E.N.D.—Eyesore Negation Detachment. She says she ran out on her end of the bargain and did not plant a bomb intended to blow up a wing of the Shell Building. Her betrayal of the agreement ruined the relationship and, consequently, her life. Lettice listens with much sympathy. Lotte invites her to dinner and tells her it is her Mary, Queen of Scots story that really prompted her to come. Lettice tells her the rest of the story—how Queen Mary also wore a wig to her execution, prompting the executioner to grab her wig and not her head after it was detached. Lotte reveals that she is wearing a wig and requests Lettice to take it off, in an act of solidarity. Six months later, Lettice is being interviewed in her home by a lawyer, who says she is accused of a "peculiarly unpleasant crime". We learn through a series of questions and answers that Lotte and Lettice had become fast friends and taken to enacting famous historical trials and executions in Lettice's flat. It becomes clear that, during one of these theatrical displays, Lotte was inadvertently injured and that the lawyer is at Lettice's home to inform her of an indictment against her. Lotte again shows up unexpectedly. The lawyer insists on hearing the whole story, claiming Lettice's defense relies upon it. Lotte insists it cannot be spoken at a trial. As Lettice continues her story (acting it out along the way and embellishing it with stories of Lotte's now rather theatrical behavior), Lotte becomes more and more agitated. We learn Lettice's cat startled Lotte in the midst of their performance, causing her to become injured. The lawyer tells them both that they must testify to this to get the case against Lettice thrown out. Lotte says, if the information gets out, it will ruin her life and career. Lotte claims Lettice tricked her into the acting games and suggests her theatricality is one big act. She cruelly insults Lettice and walks out. Lettice stops her with a heartfelt speech about how the technological modern age is leaving her behind. Lotte storms back in, outraged that Lettice is "giving up". They make up and decide to re-invent E.N.D., only without bombs. They plan to give tours at the "fifty ugliest new buildings in London", using Lotte's architectural knowledge and Lettice's flair for the dramatic (and propensity for lying). The play ends with the two women toasting the audience.
13519605	/m/03c8070	When Santa Fell to Earth	Cornelia Funke		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Gerold Geronimus Goblynch leads the Great Christmas Council and outlaws all of the old magical ways. Snowmobiles are to replace reindeer, elves and angels are banned, and Santas who go against these policies are turned into chocolate. Niklas Goodfellow, a spirited, humorous young Santa, emerges as the last, and thus real Santa. He and two angels named Matilda and Emmanuel, an invisible reindeer, and a bunch of elves go into hiding from the Council. Two children named Ben and Charlotte and Charlotte's dog, Mutt, join forces to save Niklas from being turned into chocolate.
13520560	/m/03c81kl	Noman	William Nicholson	2007-09	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the start of the book, Seeker is hunting down the last two savanters. He chases them through a mountain, through a mysterious valley and through the Glimmen. He finds Echo Kittle, who helps track them to a place called the Haven (which is an expensive refuge for fleeing people). He fights briefly with one of the savanters, who he does not manage to kill, instead becoming possessed by her. The other savanter flees, and manages to escape on a boat to other lands. Meanwhile, the Wildman is head of the spiker army which formed at the end of Jango; Morning Star is there too. There is restlesness in the Spiker camp, and the Wildman is forced to kill Snakey, his childhood friend, in a leadership battle. Morning Star, sickened by the events, leaves and returns to her home village. When she arrives there, she finds it mysteriously empty. Soon she finds where everyone has gone; a huge assembly of people who call themselves 'the Joyous'. The leader of the Joyous is a young man called the Joy Boy. He claims to be leading people to the 'Great Embrace', which is when all his followers will become God. Morning Star is suspicious of the Joy Boy, especially because he has no aura, but he infects her with joy, and she complies to find Seeker for him, under the premise that the Noble Warriors need joy more than anyone else. Soon after Morning Star leaves, the Wildman and the Spiker army join the Joyous. In the middle of a sea of grass, Seeker comes across a strange house, similar to Jango's, containing hardly anything but a blue cornflower. Upon leaving though, Seeker finds he is rather lost, and that the house has disappeared. He then comes across an old looted mansion. He enters the great hall, the walls of which are covered in cracked mirrors. In one of the mirrors an old man appears to him: Noman. He gives Seeker much advice and reveals that the last savanter did not escape but was still in the old kingdom; his name is Manlir and that he was at the centre of a great gathering. He also talks about the 'experiment' (See below). Morning Star finds Seeker and Echo sleeping. When they wake up, she tells them about the Joy Boy and the Great Embrace. Seeker realises that the Joy Boy is actually Manlir- the last savanter. He sets off immediately and soon finds the Joyous. When he gets there, though, he finds that Manlir has sent the Wildman to stall him, whilst himself starting the Great Embrace. Seeker is forced to kill the Wildman in order to get to Manlir. By the time Seeker and Manlir meet, the Great Embrace had already started. They have a battle to suck out one another's lir. Just before Manlir is about to die, he releases his own lir from his body. After the battle, Seeker goes back to Wildman and resurrects him by giving him some of his own lir. Seeker travels to the door in the wall, where he first met Jango. He meets him there again and is told that Manlir didn't die, and that by releasing his living lir, Manlir was now inside everything that has lir. Jango tells Seeker to go to the 'True Nom' and 'call on the strength of the All and Only'. Seeker goes back to the mysterious valley through which he chased the Savanters at the beginning of the book. At sunset, there is a spectacular display, as the sunlight dances all over the valley, and through a hole in one of the mountains. Seeker crawls through this hole, and comes out in the Garden. Seeker moves through the garden, crossing a long bridge, and finds a chair in which he knows his God is sat. Seeker fears his God's nonexistence, but Jango appears, and reveals that he and Seeker are one and the same person. Jango tells Seeker to look with 'the eyes of faith'. Seeker looks at the chair and sees the All and Only. Then Noman, who has now also entered the Garden, tells Seeker to look with his own eyes. Seeker does so reluctantly, and in the chair sees his father, then his brother, then the Elder. Then the chair is emptied and Seeker himself sits in it. When Seeker rises from the chair, Jango asks him what he sees in the chair. When Seeker replies 'nothing', Jango exclaims that Seeker is the assassin. Noman then reveals that he, as well as Jango, is an older Seeker, and explains that when he entered the Garden over 200 years ago, he had found it empty and realised that, in his quest for knowledge, he was the assassin of the All and Only. Seeker also learns that the Savanters are a necessary evil, created to keep the Noble Warriors' faith strong. Seeker leaves the Garden to have his final duel with Manlir. The duel takes place through the valley, the Glimmen and finally the coast where Anacrea once stood. Seeker eventually overpowers Manlir through the help of the former Noble Warriors who come to his aid. Manlir goes back to his body and, with Noman, sets off on his funeral boat out to sea. Seeker meets Echo, who is now inhabited by the last Savanter (having transferred it from Seeker by kissing him). He explains to her that she will be a lord of knowledge (as the Savanters had been), and persuades the last Savanter to let herself die within Echo. Seeker returns to Radiance which is now ruled by the Spikers and Orlans. The Wildman hands over the Spiker army to Shab, and Caressa (who became the next Jahan when Amroth died near the start of the book) gives the silver whip of the Jahan to Sabin (the last living son of Amroth). The next day, Seeker, Morning Star, The Wildman and Caressa set off on Wildman's old ship down the river and to other lands.
13529100	/m/03c8f1w	Master of the Moon	Angela Knight		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Diana Londen, werewolf, works as the city manger of a small South Carolina town, while moonlighting for the Verdaville Police Department as a police dog. While helping investigate a brutal murder, Diana learns she's not the only magical creature in town. A female vampire has decided to make Verdaville her murderous playground. But Diana is not the only one after the vampire. Llyr Galatyn is the king of the Cachamwri Sidhe--an other-worldly warrior with fantastic abilities. He has sworn to take down the murderous vampire and he's willing to give Diana any help she needs. And not just with the case. Diana is in her Burning Moon, a time of sexual heat for werewolves. When needs rides her hard, Llyr is delighted to answer her erotic prayers. As they hunt for the rogue vampire, an even more deadly enemy urges the vampire to turn her sights toward Llyr. Llyr, it turns out, isn't the only king of the Sidhe-and his brother Ansgar wants him dead.
13529505	/m/03c8fl5	Dark Melody	Christine Feehan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The hero Dayan is a lead guitarist renowned for mesmerizing performances. His songs have a strong effect on Corinne Wentworth, bringing back forgotten memories. Being hunted by the fanatics that had killed her husband, she risks her life being involved with Dayan. He realizes she is his life mate. The links between them are strong. Then Dayan discovers she is with child because he perceives two heartbeats.
13531879	/m/03c8j6s	The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective				 The first traditional view that Fretheim seeks to undermine, or perhaps more accurately to bring balance to, is the idea of divine transcendence. He argues that both the monarchical and organismic views are present in scripture, but that the organismic, immanent image is dominant. This “relationship of reciprocity” (p.&nbsp;35) between God and the world is the foundation for all of Fretheim’s conclusions. God affects and is affected by the world He has created, and this relationship is key to understanding what kind of God He is. The second widely-held position that Fretheim challenges is the doctrine of divine omniscience. (chapter 4) Fretheim uses solid biblical exegesis to argue compellingly against a view (at least in the Old Testament) which classifies omniscience as one of God’s fundamental characteristics. Divine foreknowledge, he believes, is limited because of God’s relationship with creation. There is no doubt, he says, that God always knows what He will do in the future, but He does not always know what free moral agents outside of Himself will do. For Fretheim, the widespread use of words like “perhaps” and “if” in divine speech point to a lack of certainty in God’s mind about the future. God’s bargain with Abraham over Sodom is an excellent example of God’s mind being open to change depending on the unforeseen actions of human beings. The issue of foreknowledge is not presented as complex or difficult. Rather, Fretheim quickly lays out his argument and in less than fifteen pages and moves on to the addresses the issue of God’s presence in the world. (chapter 5) While acknowledging that God is everywhere at all times in a structural or general presence, Fretheim describes what he calls, the “intensification of the divine presence.” This intensity of presence can be affected positively or negatively by human beings. Fretheim argues that sin drives away God (as in Ezekiel 8:6) and actually results in the intensification of divine presence in the form of God’s wrath. Conversely, righteousness or “receptiveness” can move God to draw near. The most intense experience of God’s presence occurs in the form of theophany. In what is probably Fretheim’s most controversial chapter (chapter 6), he describes the appearances of God in the Old Testament and the human reaction to them. To Fretheim, the spoken word delivered by God is no more important than the appearance itself, the visible word, as he calls it. He suggests that modern theologians need to broaden their understanding of the Word of God to include the visual aspects of revelation as well as the spoken/written word. Fretheim makes a thorough examination of several different Old Testament theophanies noting their similarities and differences before coming to his surprising conclusion: All theophanies involve God taking on human form (chapter 6). Theologically, this is key for Fretheim. The consistent use of human form shows God’s vulnerability. It proves that there is nothing fundamentally ungodly about the human form, and it shows that “the finite form is capable of the infinite.” (p.&nbsp;102) In wrestling with the theological implications of such a statement, Fretheim questions whether God uses the human form for the sake of appearances or whether there is a fundamental continuity between the two. Not surprisingly, he argues for the latter position, and from the argument establishes that God is fundamentally connected to His creation and that He is fundamentally vulnerable because of this relationship. This leads to his actual discussion of the suffering of God. In three short chapters Fretheim describes God as suffering because of His creation (chapter 7), for His creation (chapter 8), and with His creation (chapter 9) . These chapters flow logically out of the groundwork established in the first one hundred pages of the text. Each chapter is neatly summarized in numbered points making it easy to review and synthesize. The final chapter of Fretheim’s book deals with the special relationship between the suffering God and His suffering servants, the prophets. In men like Jeremiah, the divine word is incarnated to the point that the prophet shares in the divine suffering and God shares in the prophets suffering. The lives of the prophets are tied up in the divine life to the point that they embody the word of God in their lives as well as their words. The suffering servant in Isaiah experiences the same phenomenon as prophets like Moses and Jeremiah, but in him, Fretheim sees another level intensification of presence. Despite his strong claims about the shared suffering of the prophets and God, Fretheim acknowledges that in the Old Testament God Himself did not become completely incarnate in an entire human life. That act is reserved for the incarnation of Jesus Christ, but Fretheim sees it, not as something radically new, but as “the culmination of a long-standing relationship of God with the world that is much more widespread in the OT than is commonly recognized.” Fretheim’s work is incredibly successful at accomplishing its stated purpose of bringing balance to the church’s image of God in the Old Testament. He powerfully synthesizes the work of feminist, liberation, and process theologians while relying firmly on his expertise as a biblical exegete. The real strength of this work is that Fretheim manages to make many of the same critiques common to these movements without sounding like a feminist or a liberation theologian. While he acknowledges their influence on him, the author’s tone and focus remain overtly biblical throughout the book. Fretheim brings an air of authority and experience in the task of exegesis that is missing in the works of systematic theologians addressing the same issues. Influences like Abraham Heschel help him keep Christian bias to a minimum when approaching the Old Testament text. Furthermore, he does not limit himself to one or two proof texts to support his position. On the contrary, I found myself flipping through my Bible constantly while reading his work. He challenges the reader to draw theology from the biblical text rather than to allow our pre-conceived ideas about God to distort our reading of the Old Testament. Fretheim’s book is a marvelous example of inductive logical organization and rational approach to a complex topic. His argument is well-formed and easy to follow. The reader may be confused as to why a book called The Suffering of God takes over one hundred pages to actually discuss any pain endured by the deity, but Fretheim is not rushed into embracing a position before laying the biblical and philosophical groundwork necessary to support that position. Indeed, laying the foundation is the difficult part. After chapter six, the reader already anticipates the conclusion. The author is conversant with a wide range of modern scholarship as evidenced by his excellent endnotes and bibliography. The relative brevity of the book is amazing considering the wide range of topics addressed. Here again, Fretheim’s organizational skills are at work. When a related but unessential issue arises, he usually adds a note to refer the reader to good sources on the topic and continues on without interrupting his argument. One of the nicest things about this work is its energetic and engaging style. Fretheim hopes this book will change the church’s view of God in the Old Testament, and readability is essential to influencing preachers and teachers within churches. The provocative nature of the topic and Fretheim’s willingness to make bold claims leads the reader into dialogue with the text. Ward characterizes it as “bold and challenging, inviting vigorous response,” saying that the margins of his review copy are “filled with comments” While the content is too technical for direct use in most church settings, the ideas that Fretheim lays out can easily be transferred to a sermon or Bible class. Certainly, The Suffering of God is not a popular level book, but it is also not so technical as to exclude ministers or seminary students from its audience.
13540356	/m/03c8tyf	Fatal Revenant	Stephen R. Donaldson	2007-10-18	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Linden Avery is determined to save her adopted son, Jeremiah, from the hands of the Despiser. However, before she begins her search, it appears that Jeremiah and Thomas Covenant have ridden into Revelstone, despite the voice of Thomas Covenant previously telling Linden to 'find me.' The behaviour and demeanour of her two loved ones arouse suspicion and doubt in Linden. The Masters (haruchai) act as hosts whilst the group are in Revelstone. Avery seeks to wash away some of the effects of her adventures and "Kevin's Dirt" by bathing in the Earthpower-rich lake above Revelstone, called Glimmermere. It is there that the ever-conflicted Esmer informs Linden that she must be the "first to drink of the Earthblood". Linden returns to Revelstone and accomplishes her immediate goal of cutting off the Demondim's access to a fragment of the Illearth Stone, but shortly afterward she is transported thousands of years into the Land's past by the forms of Thomas Covenant and Jeremiah. Covenant reveals to Linden that he and Jeremiah plan to partake of the Earthblood in an attempt to thwart the dire plans of both Lord Foul and Kastenessen, the renegade Elohim. However the trio soon encounter a mysterious and knowledgeable character dubbed "the Theomach", a puissant figure who is a member of a learned race known as the Insequent. Linden is informed that she must be careful not to upset the Law of Time whilst journeying through this age. Linden and her companions encounter the Land's ancient hero, Berek Heartthew, the Lord-Fatherer, and his sorely depleted army. The Theomach guides Linden through this meeting, mindful that their presence in this time could have a profound effect on the Law of Time. It is during this meeting that the Theomach reveals the Seven Words of Power to Berek. The Insequent explains Avery's odd appearance and presence by dubbing her the first of the "Unfettered Ones", thus keeping the Law of Time intact. Berek senses Linden's White Gold ring, which turns out to be the Land's first encounter with the powerful alloy. Linden, Covenant and Jeremiah depart Berek's camp, leaving the Theomach behind to fulfill his chosen role as Berek's guide. Whilst Covenant and Jeremiah attempt to teleport the trio to Melenkurion Skyweir, the source of the Earthblood, Linden is separated from them, and finds herself lost amongst the ancient forest of Garroting Deep. Here she encounters an ancient race, the Viles. Avery knows from her time in the Land that the Viles will be corrupted by Lord Foul's Ravers in the centuries to come; eventually they will spawn the Demondim, who in turn will spawn the Ur-Viles and Waynhim. During this encounter Linden risks the Law of Time by attempting to dissuade the Viles from their path of self-loathing, informing the Viles of the Raver's part in their corruption. However in the midst of her revelation, Covenant and Jeremiah contrive to instigate a confrontation between the Viles and Garroting Deep's puissant Forestal, Caerroil Wildwood. During ensuing battle, Linden is reunited with her two companions, who hasten her towards Melenkurion Skyweir. The trio enter the caverns of Melenkurion Skyweir. Linden's doubts and misgivings concerning her companions reach a crescendo, and as the three approach the Earthblood, Linden resolves to partake of the powerful, wish-granting substance before Covenant or Jeremiah. Once she has drunk of the Earthblood, Linden commands that the truth be shown concerning her companions. Instantly their true forms are revealed; Thomas Covenant's son Roger Covenant has been wearing the guise of his father, whilst Jeremiah is shown to be under the malign influence of a croyel. A raging battle takes place in the caverns of Melenkurion Skyweir, during which the ancient mountain is torn asunder. Roger Covenant and the croyel-driven Jeremiah eventually escape, leaving Linden in a state of despair. Half-catatonic, she eventually once again finds herself amongst the trees of Garroting Deep. Here Linden finds the Mahdoubt, another of the Insequent who had previously befriended her in Revelstone during her "proper" time. The Mahdoubt acts as Linden's liaison during a meeting with Caerroil Wildwood, at which point the Forestal bestows Linden with runes for her Staff of Law. After the gift of the runes is given, the Mahdoubt's facility with time-travel allows Linden to return to her proper time, where she is reunited with her friends. When Linden recovers from her ordeal, her friends tell her that they have communicated with the voice of Thomas Covenant via Anele. They also tell her of a mysterious man who has rid Revelstone of the hoarding Demondim. Linden confronts the man, who turns out to be of the Insequent: the Harrow. He attempts to wrest Linden's White Gold ring and her Staff of Law from her, but the Mahdoubt intervenes and forces the Harrow's forbearance, at the cost of her sanity. Linden eventually resolves to seek out Loric's krill, a powerful tool which will allow her to channel the power of her White Gold ring and the Staff of Law. Accompanied by her friends and the Humbled - three self-maimed haruchai - Linden leads a quest to Andelain, the last known resting place of the krill. However the company is besieged when an army of Cavewights and kresh, led by Roger Covenant, attacks them along their way. Esmer materialises, as does the Harrow. The Ur-Viles which had served Linden during her search for the Staff of Law also join the fray. A mighty battle ensues, during which Linden summons the Sandgorgon Nom for aid. An army of Sandgorgons appears and enters the melee, turning the tide of battle in favour of Linden's company; Roger Covenant retreats, and the Harrow and Esmer vanish. The Sandgorgons, communicating telepathically with Stave of the haruchai, inform Linden that they consider their service to her to be over and they will no longer obey her summons. Linden and company continue to the relatively new forest of Salva Gildenbourne, a wild, jungle-like expanse which surrounds Andelain. Here the threat of Kastenessen and his skurj becomes apparent; the company soon encounters one of the fiery serpent-like skurj, during which time Linden finds she is unable to channel sufficient power from the Staff of Law as a consequence of Kevin's Dirt. As the company struggle to give battle to the single skurj, Linden is attacked by a crazed Giant. The Giant is quickly subdued by a group of female Giant-warriors, who agree to join Linden's company on their journey to Andelain. Their leader explains to Linden that the actions of the crazed Giant, Longwrath (who is the grandson of Linden's old friend the First of the Search), has been the focus of her group's activities; they have pledged to discover the focus of Longwrath's madness, which seems to be Linden herself. With Longwrath imprisoned by his fellow Giants, the company encounters Esmer, who warns them that Kastenessen, his grandsire, has sent a pack of skurj to thwart Linden's attempt to gain the krill. Making a desperate stand on the outskirts of Andelain, the company manages to hold off the skurj long enough to enter Andelain, a place into which the skurj seem unable to follow. As Linden and her companions enter Andelain, the Wraiths guide her to the krills resting place. Linden is beseeched by both the Harrow and Infelice of the Elohim to turn aside from her desires for both the powerful blade and her hidden intentions. The Harrow tells Linden that he knows where Lord Foul is keeping Jeremiah, and that he will trade the knowledge for the White Gold ring and the Staff of Law. But Linden will not be turned aside, and as she approaches the krill, her Dead appear to her; Sunder, Hollian, Honninscrave, Cail, the Old Lords - but not Thomas Covenant himself. Yet the Dead refuse to give her counsel. Reaching the apex of her hidden intention, Linden summons the breakers of the Laws of Life and Death; Elena and Caer-Caveral. Through their presence the spirit of Thomas Covenant is invoked. Yet he too refuses to give her counsel; he cannot. The Humbled attempt to intervene too, but Linden's friends win her freedom to choose by thwarting the Humbled's attempts. Finally Linden grasps the krill, and is exalted by a transcendent surge of power; she is now able to wield both wild magic and Earthpower combined; too much power for any one being without the krills facility to channel such forces. With her newly-acquired power, Linden enacts her secret desire and hidden intention; she resurrects Thomas Covenant, the only person she feels can help her in her quest to find Jeremiah and defeat the Despiser. But Thomas Covenant appears distraught at her actions; "Oh Linden, what have you done?" Infelice replies that with her conflagration of extreme power, Linden Avery has roused the Worm of the World's End, endangering the Arch of Time itself and all life in the Land.
13542804	/m/03c8x2c	Just One Look	Harlan Coben	2004-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An ordinary snapshot causes a mother’s world to unravel in an instant. After picking up her two young children from school, Grace Lawson looks through a newly developed set of photographs. She finds an odd one in the pack: a mysterious picture from perhaps twenty years ago, showing four strangers she can’t identify. But there is one face she recognizes—that of her husband, from before she knew him. When her husband sees the photo that night, he leaves their home and drives off without explanation. She doesn’t know where he’s going, or why he’s leaving. Or if he’s ever coming back. Nor does she realize how dangerous the search for him will be. Because there are others interested in both her husband’s past and that photo, including Eric Wu: a fierce, silent killer who will not be stopped from finding his quarry, no matter who or what stands in his way. Her world turned upside down, filled with doubts about her herself and marriage, Grace must confront the dark corners of her own tragic past she struggles to learn the truth, find her husband, and save her family. he:דיו חיוור pl:Tylko jedno spojrzenie zh:死亡印記
13542831	/m/03c8x42	Nightmare Academy	Dean Lorey	2007	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel begins in a small town describing the life of Charlie Benjamin. Charlie doesn't socialize, and unknowingly brings Nethercreatures into his room when he has a nightmare. One night, Charlie brings a Silvertongue into his room. Charlie wakes up before the Silvertoungue kills him, and sees a team of three people, Rex, Tabitha, and Pinch attempting to bring the creature back to where it belongs. After the fight, Charlie's parents meet the team. Pinch explains that Charlie has the Gift, which allows him to open portals into the Nether and bring creatures across them. Charlie's gift is too strong, which can become dangerous. Pinch suggests that Charlie follow them to the Nightmare Division, who will decide what should be done with such a dangerous boy. Charlie's mother reluctantly allows him to go. At the Nightmare Division, the Director instructs Charlie to open a portal. Charlie proceeds to accidentally open a portal to the Named, which are huge powerful beasts. Chaos ensues, and Barakkas, one of the four named creatures of the nether, reaches out his hand and attempts to enter. Charlie quickly closes the portal, which cuts Barakkas's arm off, including his bracer. After a debate about Reducing (a process that removes IQ points in order to lower gifted peoples power) Charlie, the Headmaster brings him to the Nightmare Academy. There, Charlie meets two classmates, Theodore and Violet. The school trains two different groups, the Banishers and the Nethermancers. Banishers, like Rex, fight and hold off Nethercreatures whereas Nethermancers, like Tabitha, open portals to send them back. Students who lose their Gift are trained as Facilitators, who provide help to the other two. After meeting the Trout of Truth (a creature that determines whether you are a Banisher or a Nethermancer), Charlie finds out that he is a Double Threat, a combination of both a Banisher and Nethermancer. Charlie is then taken by the Headmaster to Charlie's old house. Verminion, another of the Named who was portalled to Earth some years ago, kidnaps his parents and tells him to exchange his parents for the bracer. Charlie, Rex, Tabitha, and the Headmaster then go to find the Hags of the Void. The Hags of the Void, in return for Rex's memories of his parents, allow Charlie to go through the Gorgon Maze to find the Shadow(a thing which helps find what you want the most). At the end of the maze, the Shadow fills Charlie, allowing him to find his parents. Charlie's shadow now points to his parents' exact location. The group tries to find his parents, and arrives in a volcano. Verminion tricks Charlie into opening a portal, allowing Barakkas to enter. After the incident, Charlie, Violet, and Theodore steal Barakkas's bracer from the Nightmare Academy to exchange his parents. Brooke, a Facilitator, tags along, and they manage to bring themselves back to the volcano. Charlie tries to trick Barakkas and Verminion by pretending to exchange himself and the bracer for his parents. Verminion doubts Charlie, and exposes his plan. While Violet and Theodore finds his parents and tries to rescue them, Charlie causes the two Named to fight and flees with Brooke. While they are running, Brooke opens a portal, proving that she still has the Gift. The two jump through the portal back to the Academy. Meanwhile, Barakkas has his bracer back. Both of the Named reminded each other that they both have to be alive to summon the fifth, more powerful Named with their Artifacts. The Headmaster hides Charlie's parents from the Named, and Charlie, with his two best friends, Theodore and Violet goes into the beach and reiterate how they will be together all the way.
13542871	/m/03c8x5t	Bretherton:Khaki or Field Grey?				 The novel begins with Gurney, a young British officer, entering a deserted chateau as the British advance in November 1918. Inside he finds three corpses, and is astonished when he recognises one of them as a fellow officer, Gerard Bretherton, the more so since Bretherton is wearing the uniform of a German general. The story of how Bretherton met his fate is built up over a two-year period over the rest of the narrative. The story is told from the points of view of several of Bretherton's friends and acquaintances. Gerard Bretherton, English but brought up partly in Germany and a fluent speaker of the German language, is taken prisoner during an attack on the enemy lines, and loses his memory, taking on the identity of a German officer with whom he was acquainted before the war. Having recovered his memory, he escapes and returns to Britain, where, after telling his story, he is recruited by the security forces who persuade him to masquerade as a German officer in order to infiltrate the German armed forces and supply them with information. While joining an escape attempt from a British P.O.W. camp (set up by the authorities) along with a German officer, Bretherton is trapped in a barrel in which he has hidden during the sea voyage across the Channel. The traumatic experience causes him to lose his memory again, and he reverts to the personality of a German. Recovering his memory on the brink of the end of the war in 1918, he returns to his own side, but heroically volunteers to re-cross the German lines in an effort to minimize the loss of life before the Armistice is officially signed. He succeeds in his task, but is himself killed before the British troops arrive on the scene.
13548104	/m/03c90tv	The Pea-Pickers	Eve Langley	1942	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The novel has a thin plot: two sisters, dressed as men and taking men's names, Steve and Blue, decide to work as agricultural labourers in Gippsland, the place their mother has told them about throughout their childhood and with which they feel they have a "spiritual link". The book is divided into four parts: *Part One: "For the best! For the best!" Steve and Blue leave home in Dandenong and travel to Gippsland, near Bairnsdale, where they work as apple-pickers. Steve meets and falls in love with Kelly. They then go to Rutherglen to look for work pruning vines but aren't successful due to their gender, and return home to Dandenong. This title of this section, Maxwell suggests, "reflects the general mood and optimism of the first section". *Part Two: "The Glitter of Celtic Bronze against the Sea" Steve and Blue return to Gippsland where they work, mostly, as pea-pickers. Kelly had not responded to Steve's letters, and in this part she falls in love with Macca. Maxwell writes that the title of this section "is from Steve's idealisation of Macca, her lifelong love, whom she sees sometimes as Charon, the mythical Greek boatman on whom the goddess Venus bestowed youth and beauty. The Celtic bronze of his reddish hair is set against the colour of the sea". *Part Three: "No Moon Yet" Steve and Blue travel to the Ovens Valley in Northeastern Victoria and obtain work harvesting hops and maize. They spend some of this time out of work, and struggle to feed themselves. They thieve food to survive, most often from the Italian itinerant workers living near them. Steve pines for her love, Macca. The title, Maxwell writes, "expresses Steve's growing impatience and despair as she waits for sings of affection from Macca, her one true love, who has gone up-country". *Part Four: "Ah, Primavera" Steve and Blue return to Gippsland for another season of pea-picking. Macca is not there, and Steve learns that he has gone droving and has another "girl". At the end of picking, Blue returns home to marry, at Steve's encouragement, and Steve remains alone in Gippsland.
13549772	/m/037gvl	The Fortunate Fall	Raphael Carter		{"/m/0c3mj": "Postcyberpunk", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist is Maya Andreyeva, a "camera" for a major news network in a 24th century after the fall of an US world empire, where every nation is a third-rate power except hypertechnological Africa, which requires a blood test of aspiring immigrants. As a "camera", Maya is heavily wired with sensory and telecommunications gear so that she can broadcast her perceptions, combining the functions of an on-location reporter and her camera crew, presenting both audiovisual data and its interpretation. (Related concepts include simstim in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, or the "gargoyles" of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.) Carter uses the protagonist's occupation as a focal point for analyzing the role of the media in packaging, selling, and, thus shaping history and historical truth. The reader is taken through not only the familiar slanted research and writing of a piece, but also the careful cooking of raw sense data for broadcast by a screener, the one person who experiences the camera's full sense experience, precisely so that others do not. The screeners experience high turnover because of their unfortunate tendency to identify too closely, and fall in love, with the cameras who cannot share their unidirectional intimacy. The novel begins with Maya finding herself saddled with a new and problematic screener - one who appears to her only through the net, never in person, and who is a woman, contrary to all custom in her heterocentric dystopia. In the virtual company of this mysterious woman, Maya grapples with conspiracy, totalitarianism, mind control, race, sexuality, as well as the nature of the mind and free will.
13551969	/m/03c9521	Revenge in the Silent Tomb		1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book opened at a Saturday, 2:47pm, with a New York teen Stephen Lane, and his uncle Richard Duffy, in a car chase over the Saharan desert in Al-Karesh, a fictional country in North Africa. They were pursued by gunmen. The chase ended with Richard Duffy about to be knifed by one of their pursuers. This was followed by a flashback to a recent past, specifically, Friday 9:00pm in New York, which showed that the two, despite being closely related, have actually just met just a couple of month before, despite Stephen's stamp collection being filled with stamps his uncle sent from all over the world. Stephen Lane was a typical teenager who liked nothing more than to watch videos of old movies and action movies, in the comfort of his home. His movie-marathon hobby was interrupted when his mother's younger brother, Richard, moved into the family's four-storey brownstone on East 61st Street, New York, one day. Richard was described as retired engineer, despite the fact he was only in his thirties. He was thought to be boring by his nephew. Richard was left in charge of Stephen when the latter's parents had to go away for the weekend. Shortly after their departure, Richard received summons from his past and announced he had to make a long trip ... to the Sahara desert in Africa. Instead of making alternative arrangements that could prove awkward to explain later, Richard decided to bring Stephen along and revealed during the trip that he was no mere engineer. Richard invited Stephen to meet Jack Hartford, the lead actor of The Caves of Gold, an action movie which Stephen was planning to watch on video the whole weekend. Knowing Jack Hartford was in Africa shooting The Deep, Dark Secret, Stephen accepted, thinking it was a joke. It was revealed that Richard had a secret past as an adventurer/mercenary. Jack Hartford was one of his old friends and needed his help. Richard was not one to say no, especially when a beautiful woman like Lorelei Blake was involved. During the journey, Richard passed a Kronom K-D2 watch to Stephen, telling him it was a very special computer-watch. Amidst an action movie set in the Sahara, Jack Hartford was accused of murdering Ian Stone, a stuntman. Richard was brought in to help clear Jack's name. Richard and Jack had previously worked together to capture a notorious bandit chief name Ali Ben Kir. As Richard refused to take credit and disappeared, Jack got the credit and was noticed by Hollywood film makers, who signed him as a star. Ian Stone did not take his fellow stuntman's rise to fame well. There was trouble between the star and the stuntman during the filming, and when Ian was killed, Jack became the prime suspect. To better investigate the case, the uncle-nephew duo agreed to be part of the cast to help complete filming the movie, with Richard replacing Jack in some scenes not involving close-ups. The chase became complicated when Jack was kidnapped and brought to an old tomb which served as Ali Ben Kir's previous headquarters. The eponymous series title was due to the time limit the duo had to solve the case and be back before Stephen's parents discover they had been absent.
13556189	/m/03c992g	The Devil's Heart				 The novel primarily explores the consequences of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's possession of—and near-possession by—a legendary object of power.
13558241	/m/03c9bvj	Daughter of Earth	Agnes Smedley	1929	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins in the 1890s with the Rogers family farming in Missouri. Though they are poor, Marie is unaware and enjoys her childhood for the most part. She does suffer physical abuse at the hands of her mother who believes that Marie lies. Marie’s parents’ marriage is not a happy one; Marie’s father wishes to make more money by leaving the farm and moves the reluctant family in order to obtain work cutting wood. The family bounces back and forth between John Rogers’s temporary jobs and life on the farm. Marie’s Aunt Helen comes to live with the family and works doing laundry for wealthy women. As a working woman, she is respected on the same level as John Rogers. Marie attends school regularly and becomes one of the smartest in her class. When she attends the birthday party of one of the wealthier students, Marie is made aware of class difference. She sees that not everyone lives as she does, and she is humiliated. When John discovers Aunt Helen is working as a prostitute he kicks her out of the house. Elly and Marie are left to support the family when John leaves them again. Marie begins stealing to keep the family fed and clothed. John Rogers returns and the family moves to a mining camp. Annie, Marie’s older sister, marries at the age of sixteen. Her husband is the former beau of Aunt Helen. Annie dies only a few years after this. Jim, one of the men who works for John, proposes marriage to Marie and she accepts. Marie is fifteen. John and Elly explain the implications of marriage to Marie, and she breaks off the engagement. Due to financial troubles, the family continues to move for work. As a teenager, Marie becomes a teacher and moves to New Mexico. A pen pal relationship begins between Marie and Robert Hampton. Marie admires him for his education and the success middle-class status affords him. Marie leaves her second teaching job when she discovers her mother is deathly ill and goes home to be with her as she dies. As a traveling subscription saleswoman, Marie discovers her father and siblings living in squalor. She spends what money she has feeding and clothing the children and leaves. Marie ends up in New Mexico with no money. While starving to death in a hotel, she learns two men have raped a woman they mistook for Marie, believing Marie to be a prostitute. The bartender, one of the rapists, nurses Marie back to health. When he finds out that she is a virgin and not a prostitute, he proposes marriage. Marie is extremely offended and leaves town. She reunites with Big Buck, a man who used to work in the mining camps for her father. He takes care of her while she recuperates and offers to pay for her to go to school for six months. He also proposes marriage, which Marie turns down. While in school in Arizona, Marie meets Karin and Knut Larson. The siblings fascinate Marie because they are well educated. Marie becomes romantically involved with Knut. Knut and Karin decide to move to San Francisco. Marie receives a letter from George stating that their father has sent them to work as farmhands for an abusive man. Marie is torn between helping her family and pursuing her education. She sends George what money she has and leaves for San Francisco. Marie and Knut get married with the understanding that it will be an equal partnership. She is introduced to the socialism through friends of Karin. Marie becomes pregnant and has an abortion. Beatrice, her younger sister, moves to live with her. Marie recognizes how hard life has been for her younger siblings. Marie becomes pregnant and once again has an abortion. While on the ride home, Knut instructs Marie to sit up so as not to cause a scene. Marie cannot accept Knut’s orders as a husband to his wife. This is the final straw, and their marriage ends. While at school, Marie meets an Indian who introduces her to the Indian independence movement. She is asked to leave school because of her liberal activities. On her way to New York, Marie stops to meet her old pen pal, Robert Hampton, and is disappointed by his appearance and strong Christian beliefs. He attempts to convert her to Christianity. Once in New York, Marie lives with Karin and works as a stenographer for The Graphic. Marie becomes increasingly involved in the socialist movement, though she feels little emotional connection to the cause. She receives a letter from George requesting financial help. He is in jail for stealing a horse. Marie responds with a hateful letter and money. Not too long after, she receives a telegram from Dan informing her that George, who was released from jail because of his young age, has died in a ditch cave in. Marie is guilt ridden. Struggling financially, Dan decides to join the military and fight in World War I. Marie worries about him constantly. Marie, still working vigorously as a journalist for The Call and attending school, meets an Indian named Sardar Ranjit Singh. Through him she becomes involved in the Indian independence movement. Talvar Singh, an Indian, asks her to hide a list of addresses for him. Juan Diaz, another member of the movement, breaks into Marie’s apartment. When she arrives home, he interrogates her about Talvar Singh’s whereabouts. Marie claims ignorance. Juan Diaz makes sexual advances and rapes Marie. Marie attempts suicide and is hospitalized. After returning home, she is arrested and interrogated about her involvement with the Indian independence movement. When Marie refuses to cooperate she is imprisoned. After her release, she meets Anand Manvekar. The two fall in love and are soon married. Marie finds happiness in this marriage, but soon Anand’s jealousy about Marie’s sexual past becomes an issue. Marie’s marriage and work with the movement are destroyed when Juan Diaz announces to a comrade that he and Marie engaged in sexual intercourse. At the end of the book Marie has begged Anand to leave her because they will never be happy again, and she will only hold him back from his work. Marie sits alone in their apartment, her marriage and life work destroyed.
13560432	/m/03c9d9z	My Lucky Star	Joe Keenan	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gilbert Selwyn's mother has remarried once more—this time to a successful but aging Hollywood producer. Gilbert, ever the schemer, lifted a few plot points from Casablanca (i.e., plagiarized the entire film and put a new title on it) and convinced his new stepfather to promote the script to actor Stephen Donato's producer. Gilbert convinces his friends, Philip Cavanaugh and Claire Simmons, to move to Hollywood to help him rewrite the script. They quickly uncover his deception. But since Gilbert told the studio executives that the script was mostly Philip and Claire's, they must help rewrite the screenplay or else find any chance of a career ruined. Claire refuses to go along with the stunt, but Gilbert offers her the chance of a lifetime: Gilbert's agent, having heard of their success selling a screenplay, has offered the trio a chance to write actress Diana Malenfant's new film. The movie will be the first time Diana and her son, Stephen Donato, have acted together on screen since Stephen was 10, and it may prove the jump-start to Diana's career which she's been searching for. Gilbert is able to wrangle an appointment with Diana Malenfant, who is not particularly interested. But Lily, her drunken and estranged sister, is writing a tell-all book. Philip convinces Diana and Stephen that he has a job assisting Lily with her memoirs, and that he could find out what Lily intends to say in her book. Shrewdly, Diana agrees to hire Gilbert, Philip and Claire to write her new film while Philip spies on Lily. Stephen, who is gay, soon makes a secret rendezvous with Philip. He's worried that Aunt Lily might attempt to out him in her book. Stephen convinces Philip that he should not only spy on Lily but actually sabotage the book. Philip agrees. Lily's older brother, former child actor Monty Malenfant (and an openly gay man), is suspicious of Philip but goes along to keep Lily happy. As if events were not complicated enough, Moira Finch suddenly shows up at Gilbert, Philip and Claire's home. She has heard about their deal with Diana Malenfant, and threatens to expose them as frauds. But Moira offers the three a deal: Moira has recently opened a ritzy Hollywood spa, but is lacking clients and cachet. Get Stephen Donato to show up for a free weekend at her spa, and Moira will forget all about how "Casablanca" happened to be sold (again) to one of Hollywood's biggest producers. Philip soon finds that Monty is on to him. Monty confirms that Stephen is indeed a homosexual, which thrills Philip and leads to numerous fantasies. But Monty also threatens to expose Philip to Diana. Monty offers him a deal: Philip helps Lily turn her book into a best-seller, and nothing will be said to Diana. Now Claire, Philip and Gilbert are caught in a bind. How do they help Lily while also ruining any chance her book might have? And what of Moira? Claire begins to suspect that her spa isn't quite what it seems, for Moira has far too much money and too many friends. The trio quickly get caught in a downward spiral of sex, closeted movie stars, hustlers, blackmail, secret videotape, a homophobic district attorney, a cute bartender, false fire alarms, car theft, impersonating a police officer, a sleazy public-access television host and a "night with Oscar" that has nothing to do with the Academy Awards.
13561482	/m/03c9d_p	Gringo Viejo	Carlos Fuentes			 An elderly American writer and journalist for the Hearst media empire decides to leave his old life behind and seek a glorious death in the midst of the Mexican revolution. A widower, whose two sons had earlier committed suicide, this unnamed old man eventually comes across part of the army of Pancho Villa. This particular group, led by General Arroyo, has just liberated a massive land holding which had been owned by the Mirandas, a wealthy landowning family. Arroyo is the mestizo product of the rape of his Indian mother by his Miranda father. At that same hacienda, the old man meets Harriet Winslow, a woman from Washington D.C. hired to tutor the young Miranda children. However, by the time she arrived there, they had long since fled with their parents from Arroyo's army. At first, she has a patronizing view about the revolutionary army and the Mexican people, saying "What these people need is education, not rifles. A good scrubbing, followed by a few lessons on how we do things in the United States, and you'd see an end to this chaos." "You're going to civilize them?" the old man asked dryly. "Precisely." As the novel progresses, Winslow begins to learn to accept the truth of her past, as well as to appreciate the Mexican culture she finds all around her. By the close of the novel, she decides that instead of attempting to change Mexico, as she had early wanted, she wants &#34;to learn to live with Mexico&#34;. The novel ends with the deaths of both the old man and General Arroyo. When the &#39;old gringo&#39; burns some historical documents as a means of encouraging Arroyo to leave the Miranda household and continue with the revolution, Arroyo responds by murdering him. Later, when Arroyo finally meets up with Pancho Villa&#39;s army, he is executed for this crime as a means of preventing any American response. Like many of Fuentes&#39; works, The Old Gringo explores the way in which revolutionary ideals become corrupted, as Arroyo chooses to pursue the deed to an estate where he once worked as a servant rather than follow the true goals of the revolution.
13564651	/m/03c9hxv	The Art of Being Right	Arthur Schopenhauer			 The following lists the 38 stratagems described by Schopenhauer, in the order of their appearance in the book: # The Extension # The Homonymy # Generalize Your Opponent's Specific Statements # Conceal Your Game # False Propositions # Postulate What Has to Be Proved # Yield Admissions Through Questions # Make Your Opponent Angry # Questions in Detouring Order # Take Advantage of the Nay-Sayer # Generalize Admissions of Specific Cases # Choose Metaphors Favourable to Your Proposition # Agree to Reject the Counter-Proposition # Claim Victory Despite Defeat # Use Seemingly Absurd Propositions # Arguments Ad Hominem # Defense Through Subtle Distinction # Interrupt, Break, Divert the Dispute # Generalize the Matter, Then Argue Against it # Draw Conclusions Yourself # Meet Him With a Counter-Argument as Bad as His # Petitio principii # Make Him Exaggerate His Statement # State a False Syllogism # Find One Instance to the Contrary # Turn the Tables # Anger Indicates a Weak Point # Persuade the Audience, Not the Opponent # Diversion # Appeal to Authority Rather Than Reason # This Is Beyond Me # Put His Thesis into Some Odious Category # It Applies in Theory, but Not in Practice # Don't Let Him Off the Hook # Will Is More Effective Than Insight # Bewilder Your opponent by Mere Bombast # A Faulty Proof Refutes His Whole Position # Become Personal, Insulting, Rude
13566526	/m/03c9kym	The Sunrise Lands	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ingolf Vogeler, a mercenary from the Republic of Richland arrives in Mackenzie lands in the Willamette River region of Oregon. He is being stalked by soldiers from the Church Universal and Triumphant (known as Cutters), which is located in Paradise Valley, Montana, and controls parts of Montana and Wyoming. Ingolf arrives in a tavern run by Tom Brannigan, and during the night, is attacked by these soldiers. As he is attacked, Rudi Mackenzie, Mathilda Arminger, Odard Liu, and the twins Ritva and Mary Havel join the fray. Odard and Rudi kill several assassins until Rudi shouts to take one alive. The assassins realize they can't escape and commit suicide before the party can react. Odard and Rudi break the door that Ingolf is hidden behind, and take him to a hospital. Ingolf is saved, and he relates his tale to the Mackenzies. It turns out that he had traveled to Nantucket with his mercenary company during an expedition to collect pre-Change relics. Along with two mercenary scouts (Kaur and Singh) and Kuttner, a guard of the bossman of Iowa travelling with the company, Ingolf saw a vision that told him to: Travel from sunrise to the sunset, and seek the Son of the Bear Who Rules. The Sword of the Lady waits for him. The party traveled back to the mainland to hook up with the remainder of the mercenaries, but they were all found dead somewhere in Illinois. Ingolf led the party west, but they are stopped by Cutter forces. The party is then betrayed by the guard, Kuttner, who turns out to be a Cutter officer. While fleeing, Kaur is wounded, and she and her brother dismount and turn to hold off the Cutters while Ingolf flees. Kaur and Singh make Ingolf swear to avenge them. Ingolf is able to escape the Cutter forces due to the sacrifice of the scouts, however he is later captured and taken to the C.U.T capitol, but manages to escape later on. Ingolf then arrived at Mackenzie territory and tells Juniper and Rudi Mackenzie his story. Both interpret the vision to mean that Rudi, who was prophesied to be the Sword of the Lady, has to go east to Nantucket. After a brief debate, Rudi, Ingolf, Mary, Ritva, and Edain Aylward, set off for Nantucket. As they travel, they split up, and meet back up at the house of John Brown, an important member of the Central Oregon Ranchers Association and ally of the Mackenzies. In the meantime Mathilda, Odard, as well as Odard's servant Alex, and the monk Father Ignatius, have joined the party, fleeing Protectorate territory and avoiding being brought back by Regent Arminger's men-at-arms. The party travels further east saving a group of Mormons from Rovers, nomadic brigands of southeastern Oregon. They learn that the Church Universal and Triumphant are at war with the Mormon state of Deseret and are on the verge of defeating them. Later the party runs into a Cutter army in southern Idaho. They warn President Thurston, leader of the United States of "Boise", who defeats the force with his personal soldiers while Rudi and Edain save him from an assassination attempt by his own guards. The party travels to Boise to figure out why the Church wants Thurston dead, while Boise prepares for war against the Church. Taking the army of Boise south, Thurston meets with a demoralized Deseret army and agree to fight together against Cutter forces besieging the Deseret city of Twin Falls. During the combat, President Thurston is assassinated by his son, Martin Thurston, who is allied with the Cutters in an effort to make himself the dictator of Boise. Rudi and Thurston's younger son witness this and flee, warning the rest of the party. The party splits up to avoid being captured by the Cutters, traveling east and planning to meet up at a rally point. Mathilda, Odard, and Alex are cornered in a rocky ravine when Odard's horse is killed and Odard becomes injured. He and Mathilda turn to make a last stand, but Alex, under orders from Odard's mother to protect him at all costs, betrays them to the Cutters, and the trio are captured. Edain, Father Ignatius, Thurston's youngest son, Mary, and Ritva arrive at the rendezvous point but flee because of advancing Cutters. They encounter Boise forces and are taken in a foot-pedaled power airship to save Rudi from pursuing Cutter forces. In the meantime, Ingolf is captured by the Cutters, who are led by Kuttner, who mysteriously forces Ingolf to drop his machete and takes him prisoner. Meanwhile, the forces of the C.U.T. succeed in breaching the walls of Twin Falls, capturing the city and on the orders of their leader the Prophet Sethaz, massacres the entire population.
13571511	/m/03c9qxp	The Woods Are Dark	Richard Laymon	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The plot concerns two groups of people, a family and a pair of college students, who are kidnapped after stopping in a small California town and taken into the forest to be sacrificed to a group of mysterious creatures, called "Krulls," who roam the surrounding wilderness. The identity of the Krulls, and their relationship to the town of Barlow, are revealed gradually over the course of the novel.
13571561	/m/03c9qzd	CHERUB: Dark Sun	Robert Muchamore		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Greg "Rat" Rathbone is on an undercover mission to befriend the son of notorious activist, Kurt Lydon, and change the plan of his nuclear system. Rat is soon invited to a sleepover by Lydon's son George and after defeating a group of bullies in a fight earns further popularity from George and his overweight Chinese friend, Zhang. Back at campus, Lauren Adams, Jake Parker and Andy Lagan are forced to do physical training on the assault course after messing around in front of a guest speaker. Although overseen by volunteers James Adams and Bruce Norris, Andy is severely injured but still takes part in the mission, posing as Rat's Scottish cousin. At the sleepover, Rat and Andy sedate George, Zhang and Lydon's wife and begin hacking into Lydon's laptop but are interrupted by George's older sister, Sophie. She badly injures Rat by breaking a vase over his head. After a vicious struggle, the boys sedate her and finish the job. The book ends with Lydon and several other suspects being imprisoned and a new library being opened at campus on World Book Day.
13572524	/m/03c9s13	San Manuel Bueno, Mártir	Miguel de Unamuno			 The novella tells the story of the local Catholic Priest (Don Manuel) in fictional Valverde de Lucerna, Spain as told through the eyes of Angela, one of the townspeople. Throughout the course of the story Manuel is adored by the people of the town. He is constantly in the service of the townspeople. He refrains from condemning anyone and goes out of his way to help those whom the people have marginalized. Instead of refusing to allow the holy burial of someone who committed suicide, don Manuel explains that he is sure that in the last moment, the person would have repented for their sin. Also, instead of excommunicating a woman who had an illegitimate child, as the Catholic Church would have done, don Manuel arranges a marriage between the woman and her ex-boyfriend, so that order will return to the town, and the child will have a father figure. The people of the town consider him their "Saint" because of all of the good deeds he does. Angela, after a brief stint away for education, returns to the town to live with her mother where she continues to be amazed at Manuel's devotion. Later, Lazarus, Angela's brother returns from the New World, disgusted with the poverty both mental and physical he finds in the town. He too is amazed at Manuel's devotion but believes that "He is too intelligent to believe everything he teaches." It is clear that Lazarus does not have a sense of faith. Angela's and Lazarus's mother passes away. On her death bed she makes Lazarus promise to pray for her- he swears he will. Her dying wish is that Manuel can convert him. Lazarus begins following don Manuel "to the lake" where Manuel is known to walk and think. Time passes and Lazarus takes Communion- to the towns people and he appears to be converted. In reality, Lazarus is only praying for his mother, because it was her wish, not because he has faith. Immediately following the Communion, Lazarus sits down with Angela and tells her that he has something he must tell her: Both Manuel and Lazarus have no faith in God, specifically no belief in an after-life. Angela is upset and incredulous but confronts Manuel about what Lazarus has said. In their conversation it becomes obvious that what Lazarus has said is accurate. Manuel believes that religion and the preaching of religion is the only way for the people to "live content"- Lazarus through their talks had come to admire Manuel's determination to do what he thinks is right despite his lack of belief in the veracity of what he teaches. To that end, Lazarus felt it best to continue that same path by coming back into the fold. Lazarus and don Manuel have a unique connection and understanding at this point in the story, because both are displaying faith when neither truly has faith. Although Angela questions the goodness of such a deed, Lazarus insists that don Manuel is a saint for what he has done all his life for the town. Manuel grows increasingly weak. He is unable to bear the weight of teaching the resurrection when he does not believe it is real. He falls further and further into a depression, the towns people see this as a reflection of Christ in their local priest. When Manuel dies he chooses to do so publicly in the center of the town, and the people see it as their "second Christ." Lazarus takes on Manuel's role until his own death. Angela moves out of town. She finishes her narration by explaining that Manuel was being considered for beatification and that he is being held up as the ideal and exemplar priest.
13574873	/m/03c9v6x	Putting on the Ritz	Joe Keenan	1991	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Philip and Claire's latest efforts at breaking onto Broadway have flopped, but their efforts have not gone unnoticed by Gilbert's employer, Tommy Parker. Tommy is a gofer for billionaire Boyd Larkin, who wants to insert a spy into the household of his arch-rival billionaire, Peter Champion. Peter's wife, Elsa, is seeking to launch a singing career and needs just the right songwriting team. Gilbert, on the other hand, is hoping that helping Parker and Larkin pull off their scheme will advance his own chances at snagging the world's wealthiest sugar daddy. Philip and Claire are soon hired. Unfortunately, Elsa can't carry a tune and her acting abilities are nonexistent. Nonetheless, they have to make her look good: Champion could destroy their careers if they don't. But if they manage to pull it off, they'll be on the fast track to fame. It's not long before Philip and Gilbert are caught spying, which leads them to become double-agents, double-double agents, and triple-agents. And when the man of their dreams turns out to be a homosexual, suddenly Philip and Gilbert are competing for his financial (and sexual) favors and betraying one another as well.
13575671	/m/03c9vtz	Blue Heaven	Joe Keenan	1988	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gilbert Selwyn and Moira Finch usually can't stand each other. They have only two things in common: an aversion to honest work, and wealthy stepfamilies. But they have a plan: they intend to get married. Gilbert recently went to his "fat cousin Steffy's wedding", where he realized that his normally tight-fisted stepfather's family became overwhelmingly generous for a family wedding; Moira's stepfather, the Duke of Dorsetshire, is likewise poised to shower the couple with cash, checks, and gifts worth tens of thousands of dollars. Gilbert estimates that he and Moira might clear $100,000 each by marrying, living together for a decent interval, and then divorcing. But to make the plan work, Gilbert has to have a best man and someone who'll swear that his homosexuality was "just a phase." That someone is Philip Cavanaugh, the narrator of the story: Gilbert's best friend, former lover, and an aspiring songwriter. At first Phillip wants no part of the plan - having suffered the disastrous fallout of Gilbert's previous get-rich-quick schemes - but agrees as soon as Gilbert offers him a cut of the take, enough to afford a computer and some decent Scotch. But there's a snag: Moira's mother, the Duchess, says on the phone that she doesn't have enough ready cash to pay for the wedding, so she asks Moira to pay for it from her trust fund. Only, Moira has already induced her banker, Winslow, to embezzle the funds, and blown her inheritance on several zany investment schemes. She quickly comes up with a new plan: convince Gilbert's stepfather, Tony Cellini, to pay for the wedding, with the "promise" that the Duchess will reimburse Moira for what "she" has spent from her trust fund - in effect, doubling the couple's take from the wedding. Over lunch with Gilbert's perky but extremely naive mother, Maddie, Phillip becomes nervous at hearing about Tony's mysterious comings-and-goings, and the surprisingly high number of "accidental" deaths in his family. Phillip starts to suspect that Gilbert and Moira's future in-laws (and victims) are mafiosos. Both Gilbert and Moira find the notion preposterous, but Phillip cracks and confides all to his songwriting partner, the brainy Claire. At the Cellini family's Christmas party, Claire needs only one quick look to confirm that Gilbert's in-laws are mafiosos, the patriarch of the clan being infamous gangster Freddy "the Pooch" Bombelli. She and Phillip pull Gilbert into a bathroom and acquant him with two hard facts: first, attempting to swindle mafiosos is stupid; and second, attempting to do so partnered with Moira is suicidal - she has already ingratiated herself with Gilbert's family far more successfully than he, and would throw him and Phillip to the wolves in a heartbeat if anything went wrong. Everything seems to be going smoothly. That is, until Gunther Von Stiegel decides to ruin the wedding by revealing that Gilbert is gay, until Vulpina becomes enraged that she cannot design the wedding dress and colludes with Gunther to destroy Moira, until Gilbert suspects Moira of sleeping with Freddy Bombelli, and until the wedding arrives and the Duchess has to make an appearance. Gilbert, Philip, Claire and Moira get caught up in Mafia politics, blackmail, transvestitism, funding a Broadway production, the cologne business, seduction and much more. Events come together at a wedding where bullets are as likely to be tossed as rice.
13576237	/m/03c9w4z	Tomoe Gozen	Jessica Amanda Salmonson	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Tomoe Gozen, a warrior of incredible skill, is the vassal of warlord Shojiro Shigeno. In the process of defeating Shigeno's enemy, the Chinese monk Huan, Tomoe is nearly killed. Huan resurrects her on the condition that she turn against her former master, and after committing a series of evil deeds under Huan's power, Tomoe manages to free herself and goes ronin. The story mostly traces Tomoe's attempts to regain her honour, leading her into conflict with enemies, friends and the samurai culture that created her.
13578867	/m/03c9zcp	An American Dream: The Life of an African American Soldier and POW Who Spent Twelve Years in Communist China	Clarence Adams			 Adams was one of 21 Americans who refused repatriation to the United States in favor of going to China after being a POW during the Korean War. The book follows Adams's youth in Memphis, Tennessee through his time in the Korean War as a POW and his return to Memphis with his Chinese wife and children. It deals heavily with race relations in the South in both the 1930s and 1940s of Adams's youth and following his return to the US in 1966 during the Civil Rights Movement as well as the red scare of the Cold War. Throughout the book, Adams cites racism, lack of opportunity, and curiosity as his main reasons for defecting and maintained his right to do so despite investigations into and questioning of his activities in China by the FBI.
13584777	/m/03cb4y3	Cast of Criminals				 The action in this novel takes place in and around Bayport, New York and New York City. Frank and Joe are called upon to assist the Bayport Players in a production revival of a famous play, Homecoming Nightmare. The lead actress is Frank's girlfriend Callie Shaw. But the production is seriously threatened when someone in the cast decides they want Callie's part- and will do anything to get it. A tiara Callie purchases for the play is missing. She has received threats and pleads with Frank and Joe to stop the prankster before opening night. The Boys take on the case, but little do they know that the troublemaker is right in their midst.
13585745	/m/03cb5qk	A Good Man Is Hard to Find	Flannery O'Connor	1955		 This story initiates with an unnamed grandmother complaining to her son, Bailey, that she does not want to go to Florida but to Tennessee instead, for the family vacation. The family goes to Florida anyway. She spites them by getting up early and waiting in the car, dressed in her Sunday best, so that if she should die in an accident she will be recognized as "a lady." The grandmother talks almost continuously during the trip, recalling her youth in the Old South and commenting on various things they come across. She says children used to be more respectful of their home states and their parents, and that people did right in those days. She then catches sight of a "cute little pickaninny" waving from the door of a shack, and remarks that he probably doesn't own any britches. When the family stops at an old diner for lunch, she engages the owner, Red Sammy, in conversation about an escaped convict, a murderer known as "The Misfit." The grandmother agrees with Sammy's assertion that a good man is very hard to find. After they return on the road again, the grandmother, trying to detour the family away from Florida, begins telling the children stories about a nearby home that she had visited as a child. Upon hearing that it has secret passages, the children become fascinated and want to visit the house, and they pester their father until he agrees to let them go and follow grandmother's directions. When her directions lead them down a dirt road, she realizes that the house is, in fact, in Tennessee and not Georgia. Flustered, she upsets her cat, which panics, causing Bailey to flip the car and end up in a ditch below the road. The children are excited and view the accident as an adventure, and the grandmother fakes an internal injury to evoke sympathy. The family waits for help. A car pulls up and three men get out, the leader a shirtless, bespectacled man. All three have guns. The man in glasses instructs his cohorts to inspect the family's car and engages Bailey in polite conversation until the grandmother identifies him as an escaped convict known as "The Misfit." The Misfit shot his own father, he says, though he says that's only what he's been told—he doesn't believe it. As The Misfit instructs his accomplices to murder the family one by one, the grandmother begins pleading for her own life by flattering The Misfit. When The Misfit ignores her pleas, she becomes speechless. Panicked, she attempts to witness about Jesus. The Misfit becomes visibly angry: he is angry with Christ for having given no physical evidence for His existence, casting doubt about the legitimacy of Christianity. He does not want to waste his life serving a figure who may not exist, nor does he want to displease an almighty God who may exist; he has settled on the idea that "There's no pleasure but meanness." The grandmother suddenly exclaims "Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!", and reaches out and touches The Misfit. He recoils and shoots her three times. When the accomplice finishes murdering the family, The Misfit takes a moment to clean his glasses, concluding that "she [the grandmother] would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." He echoes O'Connor's traditional Christian view that this is properly the role of the conscience informed by the Holy Spirit. When his accomplice comments on the fun that they've had in killing, The Misfit tells him, "It's no real pleasure in life." Again, in O'Connor's view, a phony Christian—that is, the grandmother—through an act of violence finally comes to be genuinely converted. A good man/woman is indeed hard to find. At last the grandmother humbles herself, realizing that she's no better than a murderer and misfit herself--for such are metaphorically her babies, part of the fallen human family. (He is wearing her son's shirt by then--as if to increase symbolically the connection.) She can finally receive saving grace.
13589583	/m/03cb8gm	Chasing the Dime	Michael Connelly	2002-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A hot-shot entrepreneur is on the verge of announcing a historic (and potentially very lucrative) breakthrough in nanotechnology. In an attempt to escape the pressure of his work, he becomes fascinated with a peculiar puzzle: what happened to the woman who had his telephone number before him, and why are so many lonely men calling her. The trail leads him into an entangling jungle of murder and betrayal. fr:Darling Lilly it:Utente sconosciuto
13593686	/m/03cbd03	Broken April	Ismail Kadare	1978		 The story tells of Gjorg Berisha, a 26-year-old Albanian man living on the high plateau. He is forced to commit a murder under the laws of the Kanun. As a result of this killing, his own death is sealed; he is to be killed by a member of the opposing family.
13606241	/m/03cbnr9	Warrior's Refuge		2007-12-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book opens with a short summary of the past events of the previous book, The Lost Warrior. Coming to the current time, Graystripe and his traveling companion, Millie, can see Highstones in the distance. As they are traveling through a corn field, a combine pursues them. Graystripe and Millie are separated as they flee from the monster. Graystripe manages to get to a nearby barn, and asks for help from the cats inhabiting the barn. The barn cats agree to help Graystripe find Millie. They find Millie and learn the hard corn leaves cut and damaged Millie's eyes. Graystripe and Millie are allowed to stay until she recovers. Husker, one of the barn cats explains to the two cats that they used to live in the nearby Twoleg nest (human house). Unfortunately, the Twolegs (humans) died, and a new family moved in. The new residents disliked the cats, so they were chased out. They had lived in the barn ever since. Graystripe and Millie face the pet dogs of the family after they wander into the barn. Millie can speak dog and is able to send the dogs away. The barn cats are amazed by Millie's ability and she teaches them how to speak dog. A few days later, Millie and Graystripe see a Twoleg kit in pursuit of a frog. She approaches dangerously close to the edge of a pond, almost falling into it. Graystripe manages to catch the child's attention and lead her away. The Twoleg's parents are very grateful to the cats. Over time, the Twolegs accept the barn cats as well and even adopt them as their kittypets through a plan of Graystripe's. The two travelers continue their route towards home. However, when they arrive at the forest, they find the territory is destroyed and ThunderClan is gone.
13608852	/m/03cbrdn	The World at Night	Alan Furst	1996	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story takes place in and around Paris between May 1940 and June 1941. Jean Casson is a French motion-picture producer who specializes in gangster films and who possesses no political views to speak of. When the Germans defeat and conquer his country, Casson at first tries to continue his life and career as if nothing had happened. But that proves impossible; when the Germans arrest a few of his friends and associates Casson finds himself helping others to hide or escape. He is seen talking to questionable people, and before long his line is tapped and his movements followed. Eventually Casson must choose between a life of resistance or no life at all.
13609058	/m/03cbrjs	Katharine the Great				 This biography of Katharine Graham, including details of the death of her husband Philip Graham in 1963, advances some theories that have been met with considerable controversy. For example, Davis claimed that the source behind the Watergate scandal, popularly known as Deep Throat, was a CIA officer named Richard Ober (in fact, it was later revealed that Deep Throat had been FBI Associate Director Mark Felt). She also claims that the Washington Post's executive editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee, was part of a CIA propaganda plan to support the convictions of spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
13618792	/m/03cc0fd	Dreamland	Sarah Dessen	2000-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book is split into three parts. Caitlin O'Koren has just realized that on her 16th birthday, her 18 year old sister, Cass, has run away. Everybody completely forgets about Caitlin's birthday. Her parents are broken-hearted, since she was supposed to attend Yale two weeks later. Everyone searches for Cass, but she soon makes a call saying she is with Adam, her boyfriend. Her father is furious, saying he had better expectations for her. Later on, Caitlin's friend, Rina, asks her to join the cheer leading squad, but Caitlin keeps refusing. Caitlin gives in and makes the squad, much to Boo's dismay. Caitlin's mother is very excited. Caitlin says that it's probably best to take her mind off Cass's departure. It turns out that Caitlin hates cheer leading, but she remains on the squad because of her mother, who sees Caitlin as Cass' replacement. On her 1st game at half-time, Caitlin goes to the top of the pyramid. While on top, she hears someone calling Cass's name. So, while thinking of Cassandra, Caitlin reaches up to find the scar from the shovel incident. She feels it, then falls to the ground, and someone from the bottom of the pyramid, runs out from under everyone to catch her. Luckily, the worst injury out of the pile of cheerleaders is a broken nose. Later on, Caitlin meets a boy named Rogerson Biscoe at the car wash, who is a drug dealer. They meet at a party. They make out in the car, and soon become a couple. Caitlin and Rogerson's relationship becomes more physical. Rogerson introduces Caitlin to drugs and a woman in her mid-twenties named Corinna. They become fast friends and begin to smoke pot. Caitlin begins to forget school which causes her to not attend classes and fail every class possible. Rogerson helps her with this, claiming that "he knows everything." Caitlin soon gets abused by Rogerson, because she does not tell Rogerson where she is and she is seen talking to other boys. Caitlin begins writing in the gift that she received from Cass. Caitlin begins to see Cass in a TV show that Cass's boyfriend works on. Caitlin's mom engages in the show, not caring about what's happening but finally seeing her daughter again. On Christmas Eve, Catilin finally agrees to sleep with Rogerson. She says later in the book that whenever they have sex it is the only time she feels safe. One day, Caitlin's friend, Rina, decides to take her out for some fun. They go to Rina's step fathers' lake house, but Caitlin was terrified because she knew that Rogerson was waiting outside of her house. She tried calling him, but he never picked up the phone. Caitlin walks away and heads home. She sees Rogerson parked in front of her house. She gets into his car and Rogerson starts yelling at her and beats her until she is literally out of the car. He pounds on her and Caitlin's mom shoved Rogerson away from Caitlin and calls for help. Then one of the neighbours called the police to arrest Rogerson. Caitlin joins the Evergreen Rest Care Facility after Rogerson is arrested. She comes in because of drug addiction, and after all Rogerson did to her, she still loved Rogerson. She begins counseling and begins a slow improvement. Caitlin gets a letter from her friend, Corinna, saying that she left her longtime boyfriend, Dave, and is in Arizona living her life, trying to forget her past. She says she hopes to see Caitlin again soon. She also gets a letter from her sister, Cass, saying that she did not want to go to Yale. She was having a tough time and wasn't happy with her parents' plans for college, which explains her sudden departure. She also said that she was never perfect and that she envied Caitlin for having always been able to make choices. At the end of the book, Caitlin comes home a better person, and her family throws her a party with Cass as a special guest.
13619646	/m/03cc1l9	Blind Justice	Bruce Cook	1995	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Young Jeremy Proctor, recently orphaned, is taken in as ward by blind Sir John Fielding, Magistrate of the Bow Street court and organizer of London's first police force. When Sir John investigates the apparent suicide of Lord Goodhope, it is Jeremy's eyes which note the crucial clue.
13624331	/m/03cc5m3	The Fairy Gunmother	Daniel Pennac	1987	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel"}	 The novel is set in the modern Parisian quarter of Belleville. It starts with the dramatic death of a policeman, shot by a "grannie" he was trying to help, and witnessed by at least four others who conveniently forget all details of what they see. The inspector Van Thian goes undercover as a Vietnamese old woman to investigate. Three other investigations follow: one into the attempted murder of a young woman, another into the serial killings of small old women in the district, and a third into drug trafficking by old men. Benjamin Malaussènne, professional scapegoat, quickly becomes suspect number one of all four investigations, owing to the numerous children of his prolific mother he lives with, the various old men with obsolete talents that he shelters, and his repeated abortive romantic affairs. Like all novels in the Malaussène saga, the setting is anything but conventional, the streets of Paris brimming with immigrants in open celebration of their diversity, the situations rarely Gallic yet authentically Parisian.
13624371	/m/03cc5p5	My Theodosia	Anya Seton	1941	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins on Theodosia's seventeenth birthday in the year 1800, where her father Aaron Burr introduces Theodosia to her soon to be husband Joseph Alston. Theodosia is not keen on her father's choice for a husband, for she does not realise that her father hopes the marriage will increase his political support in the southern states, as well as lead to financial gain. During Theodosia and Joseph's official courtship, by chance Theodosia meets Meriwether Lewis, and the two are instantly attracted to each other. However Aaron Burr spots the two together, and stops any chance of a romance before it begins. Reluctantly but dutifully, Theodosia capitulates to her father's wishes and marries Joseph Alston in February 1801. The couple then settle in Joseph's home state of South Carolina, and Theodosia soon gives birth to her first and only child. However Theodosia is never happy in the South and constantly longs for the company of her father (and a reunification with Meriwether Lewis). The story moves on through Aaron Burr's time as Vice President: his controversial actions dueling Alexander Hamilton; his working to take over Mexico, naming himself as king; and his subsequent trial. Theodosia is always behind her father, even if it is at the cost of her marriage to Joseph, and her romance with Meriwether.
13629254	/m/03ccb85	Stormy, Misty's Foal			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Misty is close to foaling and the Beebe family is anxious about it. Paul and Maureen check on her every day before and after school at almost every possible time. Unfortunately, a terrible storm system arrives first, setting up over Chincoteague with floods, hurricane winds, ice, and snow. At first reluctant to accept the threat of the storm, then reluctant to leave the island, the inhabitants are, in the end, forced to accept the devastation that lays waste to chicken farms and pony herds. This leaves the Beebes no choice: They keep Misty in their kitchen for the time being, while they evacuate. Paul also insists on getting a nanny goat if Misty didn't accept her foal. When Misty is taken to the vet on the mainland of Virginia (along with the goat), she has her foal there: a brown filly with a white moon on her forehead. She is named "Stormy" after a suggestion sent in by letter. Most of the novel is about the storm and its aftermath; the title character only arrives toward the end of the novel. The Beebes are concerned with restoration of Chincoteague and Assateague, and Misty and Stormy play a key role in this effort, giving shows in order to collect donations for the residents of Chincoteague.
13631173	/m/03ccf1h	The Ghost	Eve Bunting	2007-09-26	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The greater part of the action is on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, where Lang has been holed up in the holiday home of his billionaire American publisher in order to turn out his memoirs on a deadline. Other scenes are set in Notting Hill, New York and Whitehall. Lang's former press aide Mike McAra has been struggling to ghost his master's memoirs but, as the novel opens, McAra drowns when he apparently falls off the Woods Hole ferry. The fictional narrator of The Ghost, whose name is never revealed, is hired to replace him (his girlfriend walks out on him over his willingness to take the job: "She felt personally betrayed by him; she used to be a party member."). He soon suspects foul play and stumbles across evidence of possible motive, buried in Lang's Cambridge past. Having located what may be the lethal secret, the replacement ghostwriter begins to fear for his own safety. Meanwhile Lang, like his real-life counterpart, has been accused by his enemies of war crimes. A leaked memorandum has revealed that he secretly approved the transfer of UK citizens to Guantanamo Bay to face interrogation and possible torture. One Richard Rycart, Lang's disillusioned and renegade former foreign secretary (loosely based on Robin Cook), who before and during his early days in office made much of his wish to adopt an "ethical" foreign policy, is now at the UN, in a position to do his former boss serious damage. Unlike Blair, Lang thus appears in imminent threat of indictment at the International Criminal Court. The narrator tussles to reconcile his obligation to complete the ghosting job with its attendant abundant payment on the one hand and, on the other, the pressing need, as he sees it, to reveal Lang's true allegiances. The action really heats up when he contacts Rycart. The narrator comes under increasing jeopardy: romantically and politically, as well as physically.
13632940	/m/03ccgl7	Murder in Grub Street	Bruce Cook	1995	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A printer and his household are horrifically slaughtered, and a mad poet is caught red-handed at the scene. But Sir John doubts that the real culprit has been found.
13632998	/m/03ccgmz	Watery Grave	Bruce Cook	1996	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 When the captain of a British warship falls overboard and drowns, a Naval court martial is convened to investigate a charge of murder. Sir John is petitioned by an old friend to aid in the investigation.
13635414	/m/03cckzv	The Revealers				 Russell Trainor is the good guy in the story, who seems to get picked on lately. Nobody talks to him, nobody likes him, he's a nobody. Until one day Richie, one of the bullies at his school, starts to follow and threaten him, to the point where he punches Russell and pours root-beer over his head. Russell seeks advice from the school's most-picked-on boy, Elliot Gekowitz. Elliot and Russell soon become friends with a Filipino girl called Catalina, who receives horrible notes from the popular girls especially queen bee Bethany Demere. Using the school's internet service, KidNet, they tell their stories to all the seventh-graders, eventually the whole school, and form The Bully Lab. The site's purpose is to talk about any events of bullying a person may have witnessed or suffered. It turns later into "The Revealers" and soon, dozens of affected kids confess their stories to The Revealers to show how bad this conflict has become in middle schools all over. However, the popular student Bethany sends The Revealers a false report and the principal, who's being threatened with being sued by Bethany's father, ends up shutting down the bully lab and KidNet. But thanks to the help of Richie, Bethany's scam is foiled and they win the science fair. The lesson in this book is that people should not be bullied just because of the way they look or where they come from.
13638002	/m/03ccnzd	Fluffy				 The story begins with Fluffy asleep in the living room in a cardboard box at night. He awakes when he hears a noise to find Miss Owers in the house, leaving Michael's room. Miss Owers is Fluffy's nursery school teacher who has an infatuation with Michael. The next day Michael and Fluffy go to the library where Fluffy gets a book on tractors. Michael is oblivious to Fluffy telling him how he is going to cut the pictures out of the book when they get home. When they get back to Michael's flat, he confesses to Fluffy that he isn't his father. Fluffy gets angry at this, and refuses to believe Michael. We then see Michael opening a letter from Miss Owers, which she has written as Michael hasn't been returning her calls. We also see lots of emails from Miss Owers in his inbox. This shows how needy she is being towards Michael, when he clearly doesn't want anything to do with her. The story then cuts to 'a few days later' and the general chaos of the house is shown as the phone is constantly ringing and Fluffy is making a general nuisance of himself. Michael then thinks about how he wants to get away from everything and decides to go and see his family in Sicily over land because he has a fear of flying. Michael and Fluffy travel to Waterloo to get the train. Fluffy is anxious as he is worried that they won't know what time it is as there won't be a clock with 'English numbers'. At this point in the story a dust particle is brought in to narrate parts of the story that need explaining. The pair arrive in France and Fluffy decides he wants McDonalds. Michael suggests eating frogs legs which upsets Fluffy and he decides he hates France. They finally get on the train to go to Rome where they meet some eccentric characters on the train. One of the people they meet on the train is a young girl called Sylvia who tells Fluffy 'I love you rabbit!' and he gets upset because he doesn't think that he is a rabbit. Michael has some strange dreams on the train, one of which involves Sylvia eating Fluffy. He awakes to a start and finds that Fluffy is not in bed any more. He frantically searches around and goes to Sylvia's cabin where he finds her holding what looks like Fluffy but turns out to be a kipferl. He is reunited with Fluffy when a man who looks like the farmer in Fluffy's tractor book comes and finds Michael and returns Fluffy to him. Some snap shots show Fluffy and Michael on the journey to Sicily and it ends with Michael on the phone to his sister, Rosetta. She tells him that their mother has become a new found Catholic and that his 'girlfriend' (Miss Owers) has been ringing their house. This starts with the Pulcino family eating dinner together. Michael's mother - Alice, father - Joe, sister - Rosetta, and brother-in-law - Fabrizio are all eating steak together. Michael also has a brother - David, who the family doesn't mention much. AT dinner, Michael receives a phone call from Miss Owers gushing that she misses him a lot. The next day Fluffy's grandparents take him to Santa Maria La Scala for a picnic. Fluffy likes his ice cream because of the jam sauce on it, which he mistakes for ketchup. Michael was making the most of being alone, although sometimes being irritated by Miss Owers' persistent calls. Alice takes Fluffy to see Jesus at the cathedral, however Fluffy seems more interested in talking about tractors. Later on Fluffy draws a picture of Jesus and Spider-Man together which causes Alice and Rosetta to have an argument, as Rosetta is getting aggravated by her mother's new found religion. When the family are at dinner Alice noticed that Fluffy wasn't eating his, and Fluffy says that he's not meant to eat steak because he is a bunny which shocks Michael, as he never thought that Fluffy would admit to being a rabbit. He then comforts Fluffy and tells him that it's okay because 'you're my fluffy bunny'. Michael then goes out to meet Fabrizio for drinks, but he does not turn up, and when Michael returns to the flat Rosetta calls him, saying that Fabrizio isn't answering his phone. They decide that she is just worrying about nothing as she had a recent argument with him and leave it at that. A few minutes later Miss Owers calls saying that she is in Sicily. Michael is shocked and looks stunned that Miss Owers would go that far. Part 4 opens with Fluffy playing underneath the table whilst Alice is shouting that she is convinced that the Mafia has got Fabrizio. Michael receives a call from Miss Owers who says that she is outside the flat. He goes to see her and is quite distant towards her. After walking around for a while they sit on a bench and we see inside Michael's mind. He first imagines being completely honest with her and telling her that she is annoying and clingy, at which she literally melts away. He then realises that she's the only one that likes him so he decides to give it a go. It is at this point that Miss Owers realises that she feels horrible when she is with Michael and decides that it is best that she just left anyway. Later on Michael is left with Fluffy, and they go for a walk, where they see a horse which Fluffy dislikes. On the way Fluffy finds a tractor that was left on the floor, and as this is happening Michael is on the phone to his mother who is telling him that Fabrizio was mugged by some youths on mopeds. Michael feels empty and lonely, until he realises that Fluffy was always there for him and he should have been a lot more like Fluffy and just enjoy the simple things. The dust particle then goes on to narrate how perfect everything was in that one moment. The story ends with Michael and Fluffy walking away with the tractor. After the story ends, there is a short sketch between the dust particle and a flake of dandruff. They explain what happens between the other characters after the story is over. Rosetta and Fabrizio become much closer after the accident. Miss Owers discovers a new independence through traveling. Joe and Alice spend quality time together, and they receive a letter from David, telling them that they have a grandson. Finally, Sylvia has found happiness as she broke her leg and the nurse who looked after her was kind to her and looked after her.
13638303	/m/03ccp6n	What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty	John Brockman	2006-02-28		 The essays cover a broad range of topics, including evolution, the workings of the human mind, and science itself. A common focus of responders are the issue of extra-terrestrial life and the question of whether humanity has a supranatural element beyond flesh and blood. Among the more esoteric topics is the question of cockroach consciousness. A pervasive theme, according to Publishers Weekly, is the discomfort responders felt in professing unproven beliefs, which Publishers Weekly declared "an interesting reflection of the state of science". The question inspired implicit or explicit reflection in a number of responders about the scientific method's reliance on observable, empirical and measurable evidence, with a good many of what The Observer points out as largely American responders defending against "a return to an age of uncertainty in which creationism and intelligent design hold sway in the public mind". "What's really at stake here", Wired said in its review, "is the nature of 'proof' itself".
13638920	/m/03ccpqq	Freaks: Alive on the Inside	Annette Curtis Klause	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story is of a young man, Abel Dandy, who is born in a freak show to his "freak" parents. Growing up normally in a world of oddities is hard for Abel, for he wishes for some type of oddness to enable him to fit it. A departing pair of Siamese twins gives Abel a ring from ancient Egypt that seems to have been made for him. Soon he begins to have dreams of a mysterious dancing girl calling for him. Abel leaves the show at the dead of night to find his fortune only to be followed by Apollo, the dog-boy. A chain of events lead off to Abel finding what he most desired, and a lesson that preaches: freak or not, we're all human.
13640640	/m/03ccqy7	Lust, Caution	Eileen Chang		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In China, during the Japanese occupation in World War II, a young student and former actress named Wong Chia Chi has agreed to be the central figure in the assassination of a Japanese collaborator, Yee. Using the alias of Mak Tai Tai (Mrs. Mak) and the fictional Mr. Mak, Chia Chi befriends Mr. Yee's wife, Yee Tai Tai, and eventually seduces her husband in order to kill him. However, she falls in love with him and just before her comrades try to kill him, she warns him. He escapes and has the whole group executed, including Wong Chia Chi.
13646797	/m/03ccysc	Emily Climbs	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1925		 Emily Byrd Starr longs to attend Queen's Academy to earn her teaching license, but her tradition-bound relatives at New Moon refuse. She is instead offered the chance to go to Shrewsbury High School with her friends, on two conditions. The first is that she board with her disliked Aunt Ruth, but it is the second that causes Emily difficulties. Emily must not write a word during her high-school education. At first, Emily refuses the offer, unable to contemplate a life without any writing. Cousin Jimmy changes the condition slightly, saying that she cannot write a word of "fiction". Emily does not think this much of an improvement but it turns out to be an excellent exercise for her budding writing career. Although Emily clashes with Aunt Ruth and Evelyn Blake, the school's would-be writer, she starts to develop her powers of storytelling. Through a series of adventures, Emily is furnished with materials to write stories and poems, and even sees success with the short story "The Woman Who Spanked the King." In the meantime, Emily also begins to see romantic possibilities for her life. She and Teddy Kent draw closer, but due to misunderstandings and interference from Teddy's mother, the romance stalls. Emily also refuses a proposal from Perry Miller, and continues her long-lasting friendship with Dean Priest. At the end of the novel, Emily, now a budding young writer, chooses to remain at her beloved New Moon rather than leaving for New York with famous writer Janet Royal.
13653611	/m/03cd4bj	The Stuff of Thought	Steven Pinker	2007	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Pinker argues that language provides a window into human nature, and that "analyzing language can reveal what people are thinking and feeling." He asserts that language must do two things: # convey a message to an audience, and # negotiate the social relationship between the speaker and the audience. Therefore, language functions at these two levels at all times. For example, a common-place statement such as "If you could pass the salt, that would be great" functions both as a request (though formally not a request) and as a means of being polite or non-offensive (through not directing the audience to overt demands). Pinker says of this example: Through this lens, Pinker asks questions such as "What does the peculiar syntax of swearing tell us about ourselves?" Or put another way, "Just what does the 'fuck' in 'fuck you' actually mean?", - as discussed in the chapter The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television. The arguments contained within ride on the backs of his previous works, which paint human nature as having "distinct and universal properties, some of which are innate – determined at birth by genes rather than shaped primarily by environment."
13656502	/m/04ggf0k	Colonization: Down to Earth	Harry Turtledove	2000-02-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Following the nuclear attack on the colonist ships in Second Contact, the Race continues to try to find the responsible nation, along with the purpose of the Lewis and Clark, a large space station launched by the United States. At the same time, the range animals brought by the Race's colonists begin to spread into the human nations, causing ecological trouble and causing conflicts between them. In Nazi Germany, Heinrich Himmler, the Führer, dies and is replaced by Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Kaltenbrunner, angered by the policy of accommodation Himmler carried out towards the Race, including his refusal to invade Race-occupied Poland, causes him to initiate a nuclear war between Germany and the Race.
13656504	/m/04ggf0y	Colonization: Aftershocks	Harry Turtledove	2001-01-30	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The nuclear war between Nazi Germany and the Race ends with a German surrender after Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Führer, is killed and replaced by Walter Dornberger. Dornberger agrees to disband the Axis Forces, withdraw German troops from occupied France, and disband the German rocket and nuclear forces. The German withdrawal results in instability in the governments of its allies, such as the British Union of Fascists in Britain, as well as clashes between the Free French Forces and the new government of liberated France, and radioactive drift into the Soviet Union. However, Dornberger secretly begins stockpiling weapons and missile parts, allowing Germany the option to rearm itself in the future. Meanwhile, the nuclear attack on the Race's colony fleet from Second Contact is finally revealed: it was an American attack, ordered by Earl Warren. When it is revealed, Fleetlord Atvar gives Warren a choice: dismantle the American space program, or allow the Race to nuke Indianapolis for revenge. To the surprise of all, Warren allows the Race to destroy Indianapolis, and then commits suicide, with Vice President Harold Stassen taking over. It is eventually stated that the reason Warren allowed the city to be destroyed over the space program was that the Americans were working on a starship that would allow them to journey to the Race's homeworld and repay their visit to Earth. During this time, the Race itself undergoes large social unrest, due to the effects of ginger on their females. Drug addiction, the black market, and prostitution all arise from it, along with a reproductive system that is unregulated, much like that of humans.
13656768	/m/03cd6p3	The Conch Bearer	Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Anand is a twelve-year-old boy who lives in modern India. A believer in fairy tales and magic, he used to go to school until his family could no longer afford to pay for his lessons. His father had left two years before the start of the story. His sister, Meera, on the other hand, had been hurt mentally when she witnessed a murder. Thus, Anand and his mother had been forced to work. Anand has been employed by a tea shop owner, Haru, who is frequently displeased with Anand's work and pays very little. One day, the shop was visited by an old man, whom Haru assumes to be a beggar. Ordered to take the beggar out of Haru's shop, Anand gently guides the old man out and, feeling sympathetic, gives the old man his lunch of stale pooris and weak tea. Later that night, Anand find the old man at his door. The man, who introduces himself as Abhaydatta, tells his story of a group of Healers, known as the brotherhood, who wield magic in a place called the Silver Valley, hidden deep within the Himalayas. He also reveals that a powerful magical item, the Conch, has been stolen from the brotherhood by one of its members, Surabhanu. This resulted in the weakening of the Brotherhood, thus, they sent four pairs of Healers to search for the conch. Abhaydatta and his partner have, indeed, retrieved the conch, however, his partner died buying Abhaydatta time to escape from Surabhanu. Abhaydatta asks Anand for help in his journey back to the Silver Valley. He revealed that it is Anand's belief in magic that drew Abhaydatta and the Conch to Kolkata. Sensing Anand's hesitation, Abhaydatta healed Meera. However, Anand's mother arrived and, finding no visible effect on Meera, ordered Abhaydatta out of the house, despite Anand's protests. Abhaydatta left, informing them where he will be and what time he will leave, with or without Anand. The next morning, Anand was awakened by Meera's voice; she was cured during the night and was able to speak normally again. His mother gave her consent and let Anand go. Unfortunately, for Anand, Abhaydatta had already left. Anand meets Nisha, a girl sweeping in front of a soft drinks stall, who tells him she knows where Abhaydatta will be waiting. After Anand reluctantly agrees to let her come, she leads him to the train station. There, they ran into Surabhanu, disguised as a wealthy passenger. He manages to hold the struggling children until a mysterious candy vendor helps them escape. Outside the station, they meet a blind beggar woman who, after receiving alms from Anand, points the two children in the direction of the meeting point where Anand and Nisha finally find Abhaydatta. The Healer was initially disapproving of Nisha but relented, nonetheless. The three started on their journey towards the Silver Valley. Along the way, Abhaydatta told the children of the journey ahead and what to do if they get separated from him. He told of the dangers they will face and the three trials they will have to pass before reaching the Silver Valley. Abhaydatta also secretly entrusted the Conch to Anand; Surabhanu would not expect the Healer to trust the Conch to a boy. Surabhanu, however, caught up to the three. In the duel that ensued, Anand and Nisha escaped but Abhaydatta has mysteriously vanished. As they journeyed, Anand began hearing the conch talk to him and respond to his thoughts. It reveals to Anand that it will allow itself to be used only after all human solutions have been exhausted. A mongoose also joins the two children, saving them from trouble a few times along the way and earning Nisha's appreciation. They finally reach the first trial of the Brotherhood: a raging river none of them can cross. The mongoose, however, steps into the river, which stilled as the animal and the two children made their way across. Upon reaching the second trial, an enchanted rocky pass, Anand was forced to decide between going on alone or staying with Nisha. A bit of ingenious thinking allowed both of them to cross the pass, however, Nisha was injured badly. Unfortunately, Surabhanu caught up to the two children in the form of a red snake. He reveals that Nisha had been under his control since their encounter at the train station. Surabhanu orders her to smash Anand's head with a rock but the mongoose, which had been Abhaydatta all along, fought with Surabhanu. The mongoose was defeated, which pained Nisha and caused her to betray Surabhanu. The conch finally allows Anand to use it, defeating Surabhanu in a wave of fire. Anand arrives at the gate to the Silver Valley. There, in the final trial, he was made to choose between glory in the Silver Valley or his friends. Giving up the conch, he chose to remain with an injured Nisha and a mongoose Abhaydatta. The Brotherhood declares that he has passed the final test, the trial within his mind, and welcomes Anand, Nisha and Abhaydatta into the Silver Valley. With the Conch restored in the Valley, Abhaydatta was restored to his human form and, with some help from Anand and Nisha, his mind was also turned back from that of a mongoose into his old self. Nisha was inducted as a novice, the first female member of the Brotherhood, which made Anand wonder why the Brotherhood did not invite him to join them. Abhaydatta talks to Anand and reveals that, unlike Anand, Nisha has no family. Thus, it was Anand who had to choose between the Brotherhood or his family which had just found Anand's father and he was imprisoned for a crime he did not comit. Anand chose to stay with the Brotherhood so the Healers made his family forget he had ever been a part of their lives. Anand, however, was not allowed to forget them for, as a Healer, he should remember the pain and what he had given up for the Brotherhood. Anand was then inducted not just as a novice but also as the titular Conch Bearer.
13660227	/m/03cd9mf	The Family of Pascual Duarte	Camilo José Cela	1942	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first-person narrator-protagonist Pascual Duarte, while awaiting execution in the condemned cell, tells the story of his family life and his homicidal past, culminating in matricide. He claims, amongst other things, that Fate is controlling his life and whatever he does it will never change. The book could be said to explore a Spanish version of Existentialism (known as tremendismo). Like Albert Camus' L'étranger Pascual is seen by society as an outsider, unable or unwilling to follow its norms. His autobiographical tale shows some of the tremendously harsh peasant reality of rural Spain up to the beginning of the Franco regime.
13661164	/m/03cdc0g	Omertà	Mario Puzo	2000	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The book begins with the death of Don Zeno in Sicily. Don Zeno left his infant son, Astorre, with Don Raymonde Aprile. Don Aprile lives in New York, where he is known as a fair but merciless Mafia head. Aprile is a widower who does not want his children to follow him in illicit business. To save them, he sends them to private boarding schools and only sees them on holidays. Astorre is the favorite of his children, Aprile considering him his nephew, and Astorre is picked as the one who must protect the family after Aprile dies. Aprile decides to take Astorre, a young and bright child, to Sicily one summer. One day while the Don and Astorre are walking the streets of Sicily, a small cosca kidnaps them. The captors treat the Don and Astorre well, but they want a ransom. Aprile warns the kidnappers to let him go. "The rest of your lives will be miserable if you do not." The cosca does not realize how powerful Aprile is. In the middle of the night, Bianco, a friend of the Don, rescues Aprile and Astorre. Aprile wants to kill the kidnappers, but Astorre asks him not to. Aprile gives in, but makes the men his loyal servants. When Astorre turns 16, he has a romantic affair with Nicole, the Don's youngest child and only daughter. Aprile orders the boy to move to London, to attend college and stop the affair. Nicole is upset by this, but Astorre obeys his uncle without argument. Astorre stays in London for a year with Mr. Pryor, a banker friend of the Don, and then returns to Sicily, staying for ten years and serving under Don Bianco, an old friend and protector of Aprile. During his time in London, he meets a young woman named Rosie, with whom he begins a romantic relationship, which he continues during his time in Sicily, until he finds out that she has not been faithful to him. When Astorre comes back, having completed his training, Aprile decides it is time to retire from his dangerous business. He settles all his accounts and pays off all of his associates keeping only his ten international banks, which are completely legitimate. Aprile instructs Astorre that when he dies the banks should not be sold. Aprile writes in his will that Astorre owns 51% of all voting stock in the bank, with the Don's children owning the rest. The interests from the bank will go to Astorre and the children evenly. In the meanwhile, Aprile starts a macaroni importing business for Astorre. Valerius, Aprile's oldest son, invites his family to his son's communion. After the communion commences two men execute Aprile in a drive-by shooting. Without any public authorities securing the area, the killers are able to escape and, in spite of Aprile's power, there is no subsequent investigation into his death. Timmona Portella, controlling the only significant criminal organization remaining in New York, along with his international partners, tries to negotiate with the Don's children and Astorre to purchase the banks from them in order to launder drug money. However, Astorre, holding the majority share, consistently declines their offers, following the Don's instructions and claiming that he has found a love for the banking industry. At first, Aprile's children want to be as removed as possible and want to sell the banks thinking Astorre naive and innocent due to his good-natured and friendly demeanor, and while baffled that their father left him the majority share, want to protect him. As time passes, though, they come to see that their father had meant for his banks to secure their futures in their respective careers, and that they had done so thus far, with Valerius a high-ranking military officer, Marcantonio a prolific TV producer, and Nicole a successful lawyer in a prominent law firm. They also start to see that there is more to their "cousin" than they thought, and begin to suspect the reason why Aprile left him in charge. Drawing upon his years of training, Astorre methodically seeks each of the people responsible for the death of his uncle and had been trying to get control of his banks, consulting old friends of Aprile for advice. At times during these consultations, the friends suggest selling the banks to avoid all the trouble that Astorre is going through even to stay alive, but are impressed when he politely rejects the idea, seeing in him determination and strength that they themselves lacked. Astorre finds each of the people involved in Aprile's murder, from the hitmen to those who ordered the attack, and is able to eliminate them without detection by the authorities. Two years later, Nicole has taken over as general manager of the banks, and her brothers are working on a film for TV recounting the life of their father, with Astorre as a consultant to help them with some of the details. Astorre eventually decides to move to Sicily permanently, and there marries Rosie, They have their first child, whom they name Raymonde Zeno, after Astorre's two fathers, and they consider the day that they will bring their son back to America.
13661954	/m/03cdcyp	The Good Companions	John Boynton Priestley	1929	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is written in picaresque style, and opens with the middle aged, discontented Jess Oakroyd in the fictional Yorkshire town of Bruddersford. He opts to leave his family and seek adventure "on t'road" (throughout the novel Priestley uses dialect for all non-RP speakers of English). He heads south down the Great North Road. Intertwined with the story of Oakroyd's travels are those of Elizabeth Trant and Inigo Jollifant, two similarly malcontented individuals. Miss Trant is an upper-middle class spinster and Jollifant is a teacher at a down-at-heel private school. All three ultimately encounter each other when a failing concert troupe ('The Dinky Doos') are disbanding as a result of their manager running off with the takings. The independently wealthy Miss Trant, against the advice of her relatives, decides to refloat the troupe, now known as 'The Good Companions'. Inigo plays piano, Oakroyd is the odd-job man, and other assorted characters including members of the original troupe: including Jimmy Nunn, Jerry Jerningham and Susie Dean, along with Mr Morton Mitcham (a travelling banjo player whom Inigo met earlier on his own odyssey) have various adventures round the shires of middle England. After a sabotaged performance, the troupe disband: Jerry marries Lady Partlit, a fan; Susie and Inigo become successful and famous in London; Miss Trant gets married to a long lost sweetheart; Jess Oakroyd emigrates to Canada and the other performers carry on with their life on the road.
13669182	/m/03cdn0d	The Disinherited			{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Monkey Nest Camp The Disinherited is heard through the voice of Larry Donovan, a young boy, growing up in the Monkey Nest coal mine camp. It is a difficult life, and after Larry’s brother Dan starts working in the mines, Larry’s father prods Larry to do well in school so he too won’t have to go into the mines. Larry makes many observations about the differences between miner families and other families, especially farmer Ben Haskins and his daughter Bonny Fern. Larry throws a dirt clod at Bonny Fern’s head one day and the next tries to give her a flower. She calls him “camp trash” and Ben chases Larry away. Larry also distinguishes differences between the miners themselves. His father and his father’s friend, “Frenchy” are both educated. So is Lionel Stafford, but Larry’s father doesn’t get along with Mr. Stafford. Lionel flaunts his education whereas Larry’s father does not. One day the mine owner, Edward Stacpoole, comes to the mine with his wife and son. The son pushes Larry’s sister, Madge, into a mud puddle and taunts her. Dan is hurt in a mining accident and dies three days later. Frenchy also dies in a separate mining accident. The camp miner’s go on strike, and Larry’s father meets unsuccessfully with Mr. Stacpoole to negotiate. One night during a storm a scab knocks on the Donovan’s door seeking shelter. Tom punches the scab in the mouth and sends him away. Tom tells his children never to become scabs. Eventually, the miners go back to work. Aunt Jessie comes to take Larry to the house of a dead man; she asks Larry if Rollie Weems ever talks about her. Larry says that he does but plays innocent. At the dead man’s house, Aunt Jessie forces Larry to touch the man’s face. Afterwards, Larry suffers nightmares about the dead man. Larry’s father takes a more dangerous job within the mine in order to make more money to pay for Larry’s schooling. However, there is an accident while Mike Riordan and Tom are in the mine. Larry’s father dies, and without an income Mother begins to take in others’ laundry. One of Mother’s customers is the butcher’s wife, Mrs. Koch, who is very particular about her laundry. Larry stains a load of her clothing and Mother takes the blame. Rollie Weems leaves town after rumors start that he got Mattie Perkins pregnant. Mike Riordan, who had disappeared following Tom’s funeral, reappears and periodically leaves groceries on the Donovan’s porch. When the mine goes on strike again, the superintendent approaches Mother about cooking for the strikebreakers; Mother refuses on principle. Rollie Weems returns to say he has gotten work at a railroad; since Larry is of working age now, Rollie recommends that Larry get a job at the railroad also. Bull Market Larry starts going to night school and also gets a job at the railroad, where he becomes friends with Ed Warren. Ed introduces Larry to Wilma and Larry has his first experience with sex, which he reacts to with disgust. American involvement with World War I begins. Rollie Weems enlists and marries Aunt Jessie before going on tour. A baby is born to the newlyweds while he is France. A man speaks in the town square denouncing war and capitalism. Lionel Stafford joins in and the crowd attacks the two men, beating them very badly. Afterwards the Stafford’s leave town defeated. During this time Madge dies. Ed enlists after making several attempts to join the army. Larry stays away from the war he calls “cruel.” Ed sends Bonny Fern letters, and she approaches Larry to ask about Ed. When the soldiers return from war, the railroad goes on strike. Ed returns and moves to Detroit with the Haskins. Rollie emerges as a leader in the strike. During a conversation between him and Larry, he propounds the advantages of staying single. Larry listens and seems to remember Rollie’s advice throughout the narrative. One evening, Rollie starts a fight with a strikebreaker and is shot. He tells Larry to pretend the fight hadn’t happened. Rollie crashes his car into a streetlight and dies. After Rollie’s death, Larry gets a job at a steel mill which begins a series, throughout the novel, of Larry getting and losing jobs. At the steel mill, Larry meets several people, including an old man the workers call “Bun” Grady. Grady is homeless and unable to get many jobs because of his age. Larry rooms at the home of Nat Moore. Nat’s wife Lena is sickly and often places Larry in uncomfortable situations. Larry finds a job at the rubber plant and meets Hans, a German worker, and Jasper, a prankster of sorts. Larry dates Helen, the lunch girl. Larry receives many letters from Ed in Detroit encouraging him to move to Detroit. Ed finally accepts the offer, along with Jasper and Nat, after Lena dies. Nat has also been remarried to Emma, his former cleaning lady, though he plans to send for her after he gets a job. Larry rooms with the Haskins and gets a job at the auto factory. Bonny Fern now takes college classes and Larry takes note of how the classes and the city have affected her. She influences him in the proletarian movement. Getting word that Helen is in Detroit, Larry follows her to a whorehouse that is disguised as a lunch counter. He requests Helen who has become a prostitute. She shares her feelings about him, and mildly drunk, Larry reacts oddly. There is a scene and Larry is thrown out. Nat has sent for his family and has bought a plot of land to build a house on. However he doesn’t yet have enough money to build. In the meantime, he begins making homebrew which upsets Emma. Bonny Fern also expresses disgust when Larry drinks. The Hard Winter The Stock Market crashes and men from the auto factory are laid off. Ed and Larry bounce from job to job. The Haskins decide to go back to the farm, though the decision distresses Bonny Fern. After being gone for some time, Bonny Fern sends Larry a letter detailing his mother’s poor living conditions. Larry and Ed buy a car and head to Monkey Nest Camp. The car is a clunker, and the boys must get jobs to pay for repairs. When they reach the camp, they find Mother, Aunt Jessie, and the kids nearly starved and living in Liam Ryan’s old barroom. Larry is shocked at the physical degeneration of his once pretty Aunt Jessie and his mother. After fixing a leaky roof and buying the family groceries, Ed and Larry look for work. While lying pipeline they meet a half-wit who they deduce to be Willy Stafford. It seems his once uppity older brother, Paul Stafford, has been buried alive working in the pipeline ditch. Bonny Fern is friendly with Larry but he recalls again the advice of Rollie and keeps his distance. In conversation, Mother tells Larry to be a fighter like his father was. Nat and his family show up, as does Hans. Ben Haskin’s farm is repossessed and is set to be sold piece by piece in an auction. Well-meaning farmers come to the auction and refuse to bid. Hans and a sheriff get involved. Eventually one farmer sells the farm and goods back to Ben Haskins for 99 cents. Larry decides to go West with Hans. Mother and Bonny Fern wave good-bye as the Moore family, Hans, Ed, and Larry drive off.
13675413	/m/03cdt3j	The Tragedy of the Korosko	Arthur Conan Doyle			 A group of European tourists are enjoying their trip to Egypt in the year 1895. They are sailing up the River Nile in a "a turtle-bottomed, round-bowed stern-wheeler", the Korosko. They intend to travel to Abousir at the southern frontier of Egypt, after which the Dervish country starts. They are attacked and abducted by a marauding band of Dervish warriors. The novel contains a strong defence of British Imperialism and in particular the Imperial project in North Africa. It also reveals the very great suspicion of Islam felt by many Europeans at the time.
13679367	/m/03cdy0b	Vampirates: Blood Captain	Justin Somper	2008	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 With a cast of unforgettable characters and a pace that never lets up the third Vampirates adventure is Grace and Connor’s most spectacular voyage so far. For Connor these are testing times aboard the Diablo and he finds himself crossing a line from which there is no return. Grace also faces danger as she travels with Lorcan to Sanctuary, a place of healing presided over by Vampirate guru, Mosh Zu.
13680143	/m/03cdyk4	Vikings of the Gloves	Robert E. Howard	1932-02		 Having docked in Yokohama and looking for a boxing match to raise money, Costigan and the crew of the Sea Girl find that the only fight club in town is booked up with Swedes vs. Danes matches because the whaling fleet is in port as well. Luck seems to come, however, when the Swedish sailor Dirck "The Gotland Giant" Jacobsen breaks his wrist and a replacement is needed quickly for the match against the Danish sailor Hakon Torkilsen that night. The crew try to pass of Costigan as a Swede called Lars Ivarson. The club owner does not believe the ruse but has no other option. The fight goes ahead, although the crowd is unconvinced as well. Further complications soon arise. The first complication is that the match referee turns out to be a man Costigan knocked out earlier in the day for attempting to kick his dog Mike. He knows who Costigan is and tells him he'll reveal everything at the end of the match, at which point the crowd will turn on Costigan for intruding on a Scandinavian matter. The second complication emerges soon after the match starts. A rival captain got the Sea Girl's captain drunk and tricked him into betting the Sea Girl on Hakon Torkilsen to win and signing a contract as proof. Despite the captain's pleas, Costigan refuses to throw the fight, both for himself, for his ship mates who have bet everything on him, and for the Swedes that he is now representing. The fight continues regardless and Hakon turns out to be an equal for Costigan. The complications distract Costigan and render his performance uneven. He is knocked down several times. The problem of the bet is resolved when the rival captain, Gid Jessup, gets too near the ring while Costigan has almost been knocked out of it. Costigan grabs the contract, the only proof of the bet, and begins to eat it. Jessup tries to retrieve it, but Swedes in the audience, thinking he is trying to interfere with their boxer, attack him. Free of that problem, Costigan decides to fight to the finish regardless of the referee's threat. This too is solved quite soon after when, in the confusion of the fight, the referee accidentally starts to count Costigan out in Spanish (having only used Swedish, Danish and Norwegian so far). Costigan realises that he isn't Scandinavian, either, and the referee admits that he is an American vaudeville linguist called John Jones who took the job because he needed the money. Costigan and Hakon fight savagely but Hakon eventually collapses in a corner and cannot get up again. The Swedish captain celebrates with Costigan and, after the match they have seen, does not mind that he clearly is not one of his countrymen.
13683090	/m/03cd_xv	Red Orc's Rage	Philip José Farmer	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Jim Grimson is a troubled youth undergoing therapy in a psychiatric hospital who is encouraged to role-play Red Orc, a character in a science fiction novel. Jim finds himself actually transported to the fictional World of Tiers, entering the mind and body of the character he role-played in the hospital. In the World of Tiers Red Orc/Jim struggles with an abusive father, a situation mirroring his real-world problems The character has Oedipal issues with his father, an unemployed crane operator in the fictional "Belmont City", somewhere near Youngstown, Ohio. The steel mills are closing permanently and the family is facing a bleak economic future. Jim struggles with class-issues at his high-school. In academics, athletics, and student society he is a non-achiever, recapitulating his father's position in the adult world. His only outlets are science fiction, the fantasies invented by his grandfather and some bizarre hallucination which occasionally intrude into his world. After a prank with an outhouse goes awry, Jim is arrested. He appears in court and is ordered to undergo a course of psychiatric evaluation and treatment in Wellington Hospital. While there he comes under the care of Dr. R. Lars Porsena. (This name is a play on "A. James Giannini". In most of Farmer's novels the protagonist's name or initials are a play on his or his collaborator's name). Dr. Porsena is also a science-fiction fan. After a conversation with Jim, he invites him to join a projective therapy group. This group is focusing on the "World of Tiers" series. After joining this group and participating in some sessions, Jim gains an insight. He realizes that hallucinations glimpsed prior to his admission are of the World of Tiers. Shortly afterwords he projects himself into the mind of the fictional lord, Red Orc. Throughout the remainder of the novel, Jim has multiple adventures in this lord's mind. He wanders through a universe filled with Freudian symbols and Jungian archetypes. He learns that Red Orc's father, the appropriately named (qv. William Blake) "Los", fears his son and attempts to prevent him from becoming lord of Los's universe. He imprisons him and attempts to suffocate him with jewels. He exiles him to a world where escape can only be had through narrow tunnels guarded by hairy spiders. During these adventures Red Orc is separately seduced by his mother and aunt. He also has sex with twenty of his sisters. During many of these adventures he is assisted by "Ijim". Ijim, his alter-ego, may or may not exist. During his adventures he is able to ride the totemic "white steed". While he is involved primarily in Red Orc's struggles, he must also deal with his own conflicts on earth. As a result of a frame-up Jim is almost expelled from the hospital and Dr. Porsena's position jeopardized. The conflict is resolved, in part, through insights Jim has gained while occupying the mind of Red Orc. During this time Ijim dies but Red Orc defeats Los and eats his testicles. The novel ends with Jim being discharged from Wellesley Hospital. His family situation has improved. He realizes that Dr. Porsena knows more about the worlds of Red Orc than that which could be obtained through his own sessions or from the books. He also realizes that some things are ultimately unknowable. An Afterword follows the text. This section is written by Dr. Giannini. It traces the origins of projective therapy and explains the technique. The utility of the World of Tiers for this purpose is discussed. This novel follows many Western traditions. Like Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy Jim travels with a companion who is unable to complete the journey. He enters a place of terror and wonder where punishment awaits those who violate a specific code. The novel is also a Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age novel in the German literary tradition. The protagonist must complete a journey of self and undergo loss to achieve adulthood, The Oedipal implications are quite obvious. Finally, this science-fiction novel takes its inspiration from the works of the English poet William Blake. Most of the characters in the alternative universe are found in the poetry and prose of Blake. Indeed Blake does make an appearance as a character in a later "Tiers" novel.
13685257	/m/03cf1z9	The Monster Bed	Jeanne Willis	1986	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The introduction starts the book in the setting of a small picnic of a human and his dog. The human is apparently telling the reader to not venture into the Withering Wood, a forest of trees rumored to have legendary creatures such as "hairy trolls, nasty gnomes, and scary pixies and fairies." The book then changes setting into inside the forest, where we see a small monster named Dennis and his mother, showing that Dennis was very polite for a young monster. It describes Dennis's fear of humans, which leads to the next part of the book. Dennis screams and shouts he will not go to bed. The mother, surprised at this sudden fear of bed, asks why. Dennis explains that he is afraid of humans. He says humans will "creep under my monster bed while I'm asleep." Dennis's mother is not convinced of her son's story and tries to persuade Dennis to fall asleep. She gives Dennis his teddy bear and also says she will not turn off the light. She begins to kiss Dennis, but Dennis reacts and bites her on the nose. Dennis's mother then promises her son that the humans won't get him. She then readies him for bed. However, Dennis concludes he will sleep under his bed so the humans will not be able to find him. As Dennis falls asleep, a young boy skips school and ventures into the Withering Wood to hide (presumably from his parents). He walks deep into the woods so that he comes upon Dennis's and his mother's cave. Not knowing where he is, he walks into the cave for rest. He then decides to sleep. He finds Dennis's bedroom and decides to sleep on the bed. He changes into his night clothes and begins to fall asleep. However, the boy was afraid of monsters. With the absence of his mother, he checks under the bed himself, and to his surprise, he finds Dennis. Both Dennis and the young boy run away. The book then explains not to misbehave and how it would feel if Dennis's mother would tell the reader if humans were not real.
13687105	/m/03cf3b6	Thirty-Three Teeth	Colin Cotterill		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When the Malay Black bear vanishes from its cage in the zoo garden of Vientiane’s Lan Xang Hotel very few people are surprised to see mauled bodies turning up in the morgue. Very few that is, apart from Dr. Siri Phaiboun the only coroner in the Lao People’s Republic. Seventy-two year old Siri and his team are convinced something just doesn’t add up. In Luang Prabang, meanwhile, plans are afoot to finally rid the country of its royal heritage. The new socialist government is about to send the royal family to a re-education camp and exorcise the spirits of the old kings. Siri is sent to the historic capital to solve two mysteries: what killed a man found on a crumpled bicycle, and what caused the deaths of two bodies charred beyond recognition and missing their feet? What is so important that a military helicopter should be provided to whisk him north at a moment’s notice? Once there, Siri calls on his spiritual connections to help solve these cases. But he reawakens the souls of the phibob, the malevolent ghosts still seeking revenge on the doctor for past misdeeds. He enlists the help of the royal shaman and finally learns the true intentions of the phibob and of his own distinguished dynasty. Before he can return to his work he has to survive the phibob attempt on his life, unmask the betrayer of the king and argue his own defense against charges of treachery. With Siri out of town, it is left to Dtui his nursing assistant to investigate the killings in Vientiane. She has her first unpleasant encounter with a Russian circus trainer, gets access to secret Party files, and soon becomes the only person in Laos arguing against the death warrant on the old Malay bear. But whilst searching for who or whatever it is murdering women and draining them of their blood, Dtui disappears. With the moon full, and three victims already on the morgue slab, Dr. Siri has four hours to find his assistant before she becomes the fourth.
13687473	/m/03cf3l5	The Coroner's Lunch	Colin Cotterill	2004-12-15	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Despite a total lack of training, an utter dearth of experience and a complete absence of inclination, Dr. Siri Paiboun has just been appointed state coroner for the Lao People's Democratic Republic. It's 1976, the royal family has been deposed, the professional classes have fled and the communists have taken over. And 72-year-old Siri - a communist for convenience and a wry old reprobate by nature - has got the coroner's job because he's the only doctor left in Laos. But when the wife of a Party leader is wheeled into the morgue and the bodies of tortured Vietnamese soldiers start bobbing to the surface of a Laotian lake, all eyes turn to the new coroner. Faced with official cover-ups and an emerging international crisis, Siri will be forced to enlist old friends, tribal shamans, forensic deduction, spiritual acumen and some good old-fashioned sleuthing before he can discover quite what's going on...
13692571	/m/03cf7wn	Pool and its Role in Asian Communism			{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 1970: Waldo Monk is black, 65, a widower and two months from retirement from Roundly's Pool and Billiard factory in Indiana. Saifon is a Lao-American girl who arrived in the USA under mysterious circumstances when she was a child. She pretty much hates everyone, and for good reason. It's Waldo's unenviable task to train her up to take over his job. He can't stand her and she shows little aptitude for the ball business. But over his final months, they come to an understanding, maybe even a fondness for each other. Two disasters in Waldo's life turn all his plans upside down. Somehow, he and his dead wife, Aretha end up adopting Saifon. Against Saifon's wishes, her new dad follows her to Southeast Asia as a minder. While trying to solve the mystery of Saifon's past, they become entangled in the confusion of the region: the Air America bombing, the Lao Socialist movement, the CIA, the Thai Communists, and a network of smuggling war profiteers. With the help of a CIA agent, they set about breaking down the network of traffickers still smuggling war orphans out of Laos. During this exciting period, Saifon takes a job as a cabaret singer in a whorehouse, and Waldo manages to get himself shot, and kidnapped. By drawing on his factory experience, he's able to steer the kidnappers in a more profitable direction. Saifon traces the traffickers through to Bangkok. Even though it seems they've cornered them, everything comes down to a high profile court case, and Saifon lying her head off to give the bad guys what's coming to them. At the airport before the journey back to the States, both Saifon and Waldo realize they have nothing to go back for. So they return to Laos, and stay there. Saifon makes an effort to regain some semblance of Lao-ness, and Waldo works part time at the Air America Commissary in Udon. Their lives are finally content and they seem to have discovered some purpose. But then, in 1975, the American troops pull out of Vietnam and Socialist forces take over in Laos. Waldo suddenly becomes the enemy. All they've worked for is about to crumble. But they're shocked to discover that contacts they'd made earlier weren't all they seemed. One of them, a quiet guy Waldo used to play pool with, turns out to be Souphanouvong, the Red Prince, and Laos' first communist president. So with the blessing of the party, Waldo and Saifon settle in the south of Laos and run a home for kids. And there they stay until Waldo, now in his nineties, decides it's time to go home and be with Aretha. The story is written from the perspective of an undisclosed person who got to know the pair later in their lives. With a basic grasp of English, this narrator describes their story in colloquial spoken American.
13696086	/m/03cfbc4	The Four-Gated City	Doris Lessing		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The series Children of Violence develops the central character, Martha Quest, from her birth in Southern Africa at the end of the First World War, through an adolescence, youth and marriage shaped by the Second World War. The Four-Gated City is set in Post-War Britain. Martha is in London as the 1950s begin. She is integrally part of the social history of the time - the Cold War, the Aldermaston Marches, Swinging London, the deepening of poverty and social anarchy. The volume ends with the century in the grip of World War Three. In the year 1997, Martha dies on a contaminated island off the northwest coast of Scotland. Most of the people of Britain have died before her, in 1978, of multiple afflictions: bubonic plague, nerve gases, nuclear explosions.
13697513	/m/03cfd03	Hero	Perry Moore	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Thom Creed is a high school basketball star, who has a tendency for getting into trouble. His mother abandoned the family several years ago, and his father Hal, a publicly disgraced ex-superhero, now works as a lowly factory worker. During a basketball game, Thom recognizes one of the players from the opposing team as Goran, a guy who Thom once accidentally made a racist remark to. Goran ends up breaking his own leg, and Thom is able to heal his injuries by touching them with his hands. He explains that he has done this before, but doesn't know why. When he resumes playing, another guy calls him a faggot in front of everyone. After the game, Thom has a seizure, something that is most likely related to absorbing Goran's injuries, and ends up getting his license taken away. During the summer, Thom's coach tells him that it would be better if he no longer plays for the team. He initially says it's because of his health, but Thom knows better. When he get's home, he takes his father's laptop and decides to look at porn. Thom explains that he has always been attracted to guys, but is afraid to come out due to living in a homophobic town. While masturbating to a picture of local superhero Uberman, Hal comes home to get ready for his real estate class. Thom quickly straightens things up, but doesn't have enough time to erase his history on the computer. When his father does leave, Thom decides to run away from home. When he falls asleep on the bus, he becomes mixed up in a battle between some villains and The League. He also encounters a mysterious man known as Dark Hero, who works alone. Thom ends up using his powers yet again, and gets an invitation to try out for one the minor leagues. When he get's home, he discovers that Hal's former colleague Captain Victory has died. He immediately decides never to tell his father about the tryouts. Thom is accepted as a trainee, and assigned to work with a group of other probationary heroes. The group consists of Ruth, an aging psychic, Scarlett, who can control heat, and Larry, who has the ability to morph into any disease. The stress of keeping so many secrets from his father exacts a painful toll. Soon, however, the world's superheroes begin dying under mysterious circumstances. In order to solve the mystery, Thom must reunite with his fellow outcast trainees and deal as well with society's prejudices when his secrets are revealed.
13698635	/m/03cffbb	The Tide Knot	Helen Dunmore	2006-05-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Sapphire, Conor, and their mum have moved to St Pirans with Roger, leaving behind their cottage by the sea, where their dad disappeared two years ago. Conor has adapted to this new life, but Sapphire cannot. She is withdrawn and restless, and her only relief is Ingo. She goes there more frequently, even without Conor, who has given up going, and prefers his life in the air. A new couple are living in their old house. The woman is on crutches has the look of Ingo on her face but does not know of the world beneath the sea. Sapphire rescues her when she finds the lady down by the sea, not sure why she is there. One evening Sapphire takes her beloved dog Sadie for a walk along the sea, but the call of Ingo is too strong, so she leaves Sadie up on the pavement and dives in. Faro is there. She only stays a minute but when she goes back to Sadie her dog seems shaken and ill. Sapphire's mum says not to worry: the dog will be fine. Sapphire skips school and takes her dog to see granny Carne, a magical old lady. She phones home from granny Carne's and tells her mum she's staying over and won't be back till morning. That night, Sapphire goes back to the cove, where she sees her father. He tells her that the tide knot is loose, but he can't stay long and leaves shortly after. The next day her dog is healed but Sapphire is in trouble with her mum. Soon after, Conor and Sapphire go back to Ingo to find out more about her father. They swim in a rogue current. Whilst Faro rescues Conor, Sapphire is carried into the deep. She wakes up in blackness, but a whale helps her back to Ingo. There Sapphire and Conor see in a mirror-like thing a mer woman with a mer baby. The woman smiles at someone in the corner of the mirror – their father smiling lovingly at the woman and the baby. Feeling replaced and sad, they are about to leave when they learn of the tide knot, a stone that controls the tides that is becoming loose. Shortly, after they return, the tide knot loosens and nearly the entire town floods. As the houses are swallowed up by the flood water, Sapphire's mum is ill. Sapphire, her mum and her friend Rainbow go up to the attic. Sapphire jumps out of the window into the sea where she meets Conor and Faro. Sapphire is slammed against a wall and her leg begins to bleed. Conor calls Elvira, a healer. Elvira heals Sapphire and together the four help Saldowr, the wisest of the mer and the keeper of the tide knot, to put the broken pieces back together to restore the tide knot. Saldowr is weak but they manage to do it with Conor's power of reading the stone. The flood slowly recedes. Conor and Sapphire return to the rescue centre where they are re-united with their mother. At the end of the book, Sapphire is delighted that they are going back to their old cottage by the sea.
13698745	/m/03cffgt	Click Click Snap	Sean McGowan	2007-10-08	{"/m/01ng1k": "Creative nonfiction"}	 Click Click Snap is written in first person prose. In the book, Sean McGowan travels through Athens, Ephesus, Bent Jbail, Beirut, Damascus, The West Bank, Petra, and Cairo; completing the eight chapters of the book, respectively. Its diverse (and, arguably, scattered) topics mainly include the neuroscience of art, war, belief, racism. Unusually, each chapter is written as a self-sustaining joke, where more serious topics seemingly arise incidentally. Specific incidences include urinating on the Temple of Artemis to illustrate the benefits of biological satisfaction and stealing a federal election ballot at gunpoint during the 2007 elections in Syria to show "...even though there is such a thing as a ballot with only one name on it, there is no such thing as a clear choice."
13706991	/m/03cfq8h	The Deep	Helen Dunmore	2007-05-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A devastating flood has torn through the worlds of Air and Ingo, and now, deep in the ocean, a monster is stirring. Mer legend says that only those with dual blood&mdash;half Mer, half human&mdash;can overcome the Kraken that stirs in The Deep. Sapphire must return to the Deep, with the help of her friend the whale, and face this terrifying creature - and her brother Conor and Mer friend Faro will not let her go without them. Those with pure Mer blood cannot go to the Deep. Sapphire has moved back into the cottage by the cove, and is visiting Ingo all the time. When she is summoned to an assembly of the Mer she learns that the Kraken, a creature with the power to destroy their world, has awakened. Sapphire makes a deal with the Mer: if she and Conor help put the Kraken back to sleep their father will have the choice to leave Ingo. Ervys, a spokesperson(self-proclaimed leader, which the Mer do not have, as it causes problems) for the Mer, is outraged by this deal but gives his approval so the Mer will be safe. Sapphire, Conor and Faro (Faro should not be able to go to The Deep, but in Saldowr's mirror, he sees that he is not pure Mer, but part Human) go into the Deep with the help of the whale(that saves Sapphire from the Deep in The Tide Knot) to find the Kraken, and put him to sleep. It is not revealed what the Kraken really is, but it is clearly a shapeshifter. After a battle of minds, Sapphire manages to get the Kraken to sleep, and with Conor and Faro she goes back to the Mer to tell them the good news. Ervys is still furious especially when Faro asks Sapphire to make the crossing of Ingo with him. She agrees, but only on the condition that Conor may go too. Faro counters by insisting that his sister will also go. Although Sapphire does not want Elvira and Conor together, she agrees. The final chapter ends with Faro and Sapphire making Deublek, or friendship bracelets out of their hair.
13708017	/m/03cfrtt	Polymorph	Scott Westerfeld	1997-12-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 "Milica Raznakovic" is the principal alias employed by the protagonist, a shape-changer or "polymorph." Living in a recession-hit future New York, she spends her time partying anonymously, each night in a different body, enjoying casual sex and absolutely no personal attachments. She believes herself to be unique. However, one night she meets another polymorph: older, malicious and much more powerful than herself. The brief and ultimately hostile encounter leads her to place herself in danger by attempting to determine the newcomer's objective, which somehow involves a wealthy industrialist. In the process of her investigation, she finds it necessary to seek an ally, reaching out to her last one-night stand, a young man she would normally not have sought out again.
13712673	/m/03cfyd3	The Gladiator	Harry Turtledove	2007-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Gladiator follows the same concept as the other Crosstime Traffic novels. A parallel world similar in most respects to our own has discovered the technology to visit and trade with other parallels, spreading the notions of liberty and capitalism at the same time. The plot of The Gladiator follows the same formula of the other books in the series with an imperiled company operative and local protagonists being used as guides to the parallel. In The Gladiator it is indeed the capitalist West that has been consigned to the "dustbin of history" and the world has been remade in the image of the Soviet Union. The point of divergence from ours was the decision of the United States to allow the Soviet missiles to remain in Cuba during the Cuban Missile crisis and the complete withdrawal from Vietnam in 1968. Thus, communism spread throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia giving the Soviet Union an upper hand in economic and military strength over the United States. Due to the embargo of the many countries that were captured in the Soviet Sphere, the United States went bankrupt and lost its position as a super power, and most of Europe went communist afterward in the 1980s and 1990s. A hundred years later, communism has taken over much of the world and capitalism is very much dead. The protagonists of the novel, Gianfranco and Annarita, are teenagers in an Italian People's Republic, satellite to the interests of the USSR. Amidst the grey Soviet Brutalist tenements they discover a strategy game shop that is disseminating capitalist ideas with the games they sell. The shop is a front for the Crosstime Traffic trading monopoly, as the protagonists discover when the shop is closed by the authorities and one of the clerks, Eduardo, turns to the protagonists for help.
13715319	/m/03cg0p1	The Gryphon's Skull	Harry Turtledove	2002	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book centers around the discovery of an apparent gryphon skull (in reality a skull from a dinosaur), and the efforts of Sostratos to get the skull back to scholars for study.
13716080	/m/0cvczf	Seize the Night	Dean Koontz	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Seize the Night begins a few months after Fear Nothing. It starts with Chris and his dog Orson happening upon Chris's ex-girlfriend, Lilly Wing, whose son Jimmy has just disappeared. Chris swears to Lilly he'll find Jimmy, and departs with Orson to begin the search. The trail leads them to Fort Wyvern, the abandoned military base Chris likes to explore. They search the base, but soon become separated, and Orson goes missing. Fearing for his dog's well-being, along with that of Jimmy, Chris calls his best friend Bobby Halloway to join him in the search and then sends his girlfriend Sasha Goodall to Lilly's house to console her. Soon after calling them, Chris sees about thirty or so of the rhesus monkeys encountered towards the end of Fear Nothing and takes refuge from them in a nearby bungalow. The monkeys follow him in, and he is saved from being found by Bobby's arrival. Bobby and Chris search the base, but find nothing except a few strange devices and rooms. After leaving, they stop by Lilly's house. Sasha and Chris head to their place, while Bobby heads off to Lilly's mother-in-law Jenna, to bring her back to Lilly's. The next day, Chris calls Manuel Ramirez, the acting chief of police, to give him information about Jimmy Wing's kidnapper's vehicle. Getting no answer, he leaves a message for Manuel to call him after noon. Bobby stops by a bit later to say that Jimmy is not the only child missing. Later, Manuel tells Chris in no uncertain terms to back off, while confiscating his and Bobby's guns and trashing his house. After he leaves, Roosevelt Frost arrives with his cat, Mungojerrie. They all leave and head out to an old road a few miles away where Sasha's coworker at the radio station, Doogie, meets up with them. They then head back to Fort Wyvern to continue the search for the children and Orson. Chris and company head into the base, where Bobby is critically wounded in an ambush. He sends everyone else on to find the kids and Orson, and when they return with them in tow, Bobby dies. Chris, refusing to leave Bobby's body behind, demands it be taken with them on the way out. On the elevator ride back up, they actually encounter themselves at the top of the shaft, and Chris is able to stop Bobby's past self from being shot. With the past now altered, Bobby's body disappears from the elevator, and Chris takes the live Bobby with him out of the base to return Jimmy and the other kids to their parents.
13717800	/m/03cg2qt	Never Bet the Devil Your Head	Edgar Allan Poe			 The narrator, presented as the author himself, is dismayed by literary critics saying that he has never written a moral tale. The narrator then begins telling the story of his friend Toby Dammit. Dammit is described as a man of many vices, presumably at least in part due to his left-handed mother flogging him with her left hand, considered improper. Dammit often made rhetorical bets, becoming fond of the expression "I'll bet the devil my head." Though the narrator tries to break Dammit of bad habits, he fails. Nevertheless, the two remain friends. While traveling one day, they come across a covered bridge. It is gloomy and dark, lacking windows. Dammit, however, is unaffected by its gloom and is in an unusually good mood. As they cross the bridge, they are stopped by a turnstile partway across. Dammit bets the devil his head that he can leap over it. Before the narrator can reply, a cough alerts them to the presence of a little old man. The old man is interested in seeing if Dammit is capable of making such a leap and offers him a good running start. The narrator thinks to himself that it is improper for an old man to push Dammit into making the attempt—"I don't care who the devil he is," he adds. The narrator watches as Dammit makes a perfect jump, though directly above the turnstile he falls backwards. The old man quickly grabs something and limps away. The narrator, upon checking on his friend, sees that Dammit's head is gone ("what might be termed a serious injury"). He realizes that just above the turnstile, lying horizontally, was a sharp iron bar that happened to be lying at just the spot where his friend's neck hit when he jumped. The narrator sends for the "homeopathists", who "did not give him little enough physic, and what little they did give him he hesitated to take. So in the end he grew worse, and at length died". After the bill for his funeral expenses is left unpaid, the narrator has Dammit's body dug up and sold for dog meat.
13718713	/m/03cg3g5	The Bully: A Discussion and Activity Story		2003		 Jason is bullied at school by a child who demands his lunch every day. His mother is informed by the school that he is often hungry and realizes he is being bullied. She advises Jason they will have to take the problem to the school for help. Jason resists. His mother reminds Jason that if the bully isn't stopped he will continue to bully.
13721501	/m/03cg66t	Solip:System	Walter Jon Williams	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Solip:System begins shortly before the ending of Hardwired and continues beyond that point. In Solip:System, the main character is the computer personality Reno (a minor character in Hardwired). The author intended that this book would provide a link between Hardwired and Voice of the Whirlwind.http://www.zone-sf.com/walterjonw.html
13722911	/m/03cg7kw	Single & Single	John le Carré	1999	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Like many of Le Carre's novels, the narrative begins in the in media res style, midway through the events which have precipitated the opening scene. In Istanbul, Alfred Winser, a corporate lawyer with the London finance house Single & Single, is executed in cold blood by Alix Hoban, his firm's leading client, for reasons he cannot comprehend. In Devon, England, Oliver Hawthorne is a down-at-heel children's magician lodging in a small hotel owned by a woman named Elsie and her son Sammy. After finishing his latest performance, he receives an urgent call from his banker, who informs him that an anonymous benefactor has deposited the staggering sum of £5,000,030 pounds into the trust Oliver created for his infant daughter, Carmen. Oliver claims ignorance, but tells Elsie he has to go to London for a few days. The narrative shifts to the early 1990s, when Oliver - in reality Oliver Single - joins his father "Tiger" Single's firm just after graduating from law school. After the warming of relations with the Soviet Union, several Western businesses are eager to explore business opportunities in the "new" Russia, and Tiger has secured a meeting with two Russian brothers, the Orlovs, renowned as Moscow's "premier power brokers." Yevgeny Orlov and his right-hand man, Alix Hoban, discuss ventures with Tiger to restructure and exploit Soviet resources in scrap iron, oil, and - most lucrative of all - surplus disaster relief blood. Though he has some misgivings, Oliver is enough in awe of his father to throw himself into facilitating the various deals, including traveling to Moscow, where he meets Yevgeny's daughter Zoya, whom Hoban is married to. Hoban has no regard for his wife, and she and Oliver soon become lovers. All of Single & Single's plans collapse with the Soviet coup attempt of 1991: overnight, the Soviet Union collapses and the Orlovs' power and vaunted connections are reduced to nothing. Tiger is undeterred, and sends Oliver out on various business errands that increase his misgivings. Before long, Single & Single and the Orlovs appear to be prosperous again. After receiving cryptic hints from Zoya, Oliver raids his father's safe during the office Christmas party, and a look through his records is enough to confirm Oliver's worst fears: the Orlovs have rebuilt their power structure as an organized crime syndicate, and his father's finance house is a money laundering service. In turmoil, Oliver informs on his father to Nathaniel Brock, a senior officer of British Customs and Excise, and then disappears. Now, years later, the deposit into his daughter's trust makes Oliver realize that his father is on to him. Tiger once made a promise to deposit £5,000,000 pounds into a trust as soon as Oliver gave him a grandchild; the extra £30 signifies the Thirty pieces of silver given to Judas Iscariot. Oliver meets with Brock, who informs him that the Orlovs had Winser killed after a series of "business" setbacks, the last occurring a few weeks ago when the Russian Coast Guard interdicted and boarded the freighter Free Talinn in the Baltic Sea. Tiger has disappeared, and Brock needs Oliver's help to track him down. As a Customs official, Brock's obsession is corrupt British officials who aid international crime, and his "personal anti-Christ" is Superintendent Bernard Porlock, a "brazenly corrupt" Scotland Yard official who controls a vast network of such corrupt officials all over the United Kingdom, and a long-time cohort of Tiger's. Brock tells Oliver that he is prepared to offer Tiger full immunity, in exchange for enough information to bring down Porlock and his network. Oliver, who still suffers feelings of guilt for betraying his father, agrees to help save him.
13724642	/m/03cg9jl	Homebody	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Homebody is the story of Don Lark who moves into an old house and is forced to deal with the supernatural forces that live in it.
13724723	/m/03cg9mp	Stone Tables	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Stone Tables is a novelization of the life of Moses.
13724892	/m/03cg9vx	Saints	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens up in 1829 with the desertion of the eight-year old Dinah and her family by Dinah's father, John Kirkham. After enduring many of the horrors of Industrial Revolution England, Dinah's family begins to prosper. Dinah, her mother Anna, and her brother Charles, are converted to Mormonism. But Dinah's elder brother, Robert, as well as her husband, Matthew, do not convert, leading to a permanent schism in the family. The Mormon Kirkhams emigrate to Nauvoo, where the Mormons are building a city. In Nauvoo, Dinah—who had to endure an unthinkable sacrifice to come to America—becomes the inspiration for the other women of Nauvoo. She is regarded by many as a Prophetess, and, despite not having the priesthood, bestows blessings on others. She also finds herself drawn to the prophet of the Latter Day Saint Church, Joseph Smith. He teaches her that her husband in England had proven himself unworthy of her by his rejection of the Gospel and by forcing her to choose between God and husband. Joseph introduces Dinah to the still-covert practice of plural marriage, and they are sealed for eternity as husband and wife. Forced to keep secret her eternal union to Joseph causes strains on her relationships with the other women of the town, particularly, Emma Smith, Joseph's first wife. After Joseph's death during his incarceration at Carthage, Dinah uses her influence to help Brigham Young emerge as the new Prophet of the Church, largely because he alone of the potential prophet candidates is determined to uphold the Principle (as plural marriage has come to be known among its adherents). During the Mormon Exodus to Utah, she agrees to become one of Young's wives, with the understanding that their marriage will never be consummated. Dinah lives to the age of 100, not only outliving all her husbands, but also outlasting the practice of plural marriage, which the Church abandoned in 1890.
13725020	/m/03cgb5k	Invasive Procedures	Orson Scott Card	2007	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 George Galen, a brilliant geneticist and Nobel laureate and part of the Human Genome Project, comes to believe that he can guide humanity to a brighter future through genetic enhancement disappears from public view. Galen takes his research underground, eventually devising a virus that can carry specific genes into human cells. This virus, which the government dubs V16, must be tailored to each patient. It can cure that patient of a genetic disorder - but it is quickly lethal to anyone else, inducing a serious rejection reaction as their body responds to its attempt to rewrite its DNA. Galen sends agents called Healers to collect DNA from possible patients. If their disorder is caused by a suitable (repairable) defect, he engineers a version of V16 which the healer administers, explaining to the patient and the patient's family how to avoid the hazards of infection. Galen has larger plans, as well. These involve kidnapping five individuals, four of them homeless and one whom he mistakes for such. These are Byron (a lawyer, not actually homeless), Dolores, Hal (a violent alcoholic), and teenagers Jonathan and Nick. They also involve a talented cardiothoracic surgeon named Monica Ownes and her son Wyatt. Galen's Healers kidnap this pair so that he can use threats against Wyatt to force Monica to do what he wants. Some weeks earlier, Frank Hartman a virologist and soldier, had received samples of a dangerous virus. Using the facilities at Fort Detrick, he devised a cure. This cure is also a virus, that can infiltrate a patient's cells and destroy V16. Upon discovering this cure, Hartman learns that his original samples came to the Defense Department from the BioHazard Agency (BHA) a branch of the government that handles biowarfare attacks. The BHA has been investigating the cult-like Healers and their work for some time. The BHA "borrows" Hartman and transports him to their Los Angeles facility to work on V16. Galen intends to achieve a sort of immortality by creating five copies of himself from the homeless people he kidnapped. To create these people, Monica Owens will transplant organs from Galen into their bodies. These organs have been dosed with V16, engineered to rewrite the genetic codes of the patients into Galen's code. The organs also confer a kind of healing ability that Galen engineered into himself with earlier versions of his virus; this prevents the virus from killing them as it rewrites their genetic codes. The surgeries also involve implanted electronic chips that hold Galen's memories. When the V16 has finished rewriting the genetic code, it will activate the chip which will download Galen's personality over that of the original individual. If successful, this council of five will carry Galen's work worldwide.
13726089	/m/03cgcrk	The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao	Junot Díaz	2007-09-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This novel opens with an introductory section which explains the fukú -- "generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World," and the zafa—a counterspell to the fukú. The narrator of the book, unknown to the reader at this point, explains that the story he is about to tell is his own form of a zafa. Part I of the book contains an introductory section, as well as the first four chapters of the story, and runs for over half the novel's length. This chapter introduces the reader to the titular character Oscar de León. Oscar comes from a Dominican family, and is therefore expected to be successful with girls. However, Oscar is more successful with science fiction, cartoons, reading, and role-playing games. This chapter explains Oscar's history as a child through high school, focusing on his inability to find love. When he was seven, Oscar had a week-long relationship with two girls at the same time, Maritza Chacón and Olga Polanco. When Maritza gives Oscar an ultimatum, he breaks up with Olga, only to be quickly dumped by Maritza. The narrator mentions that this event will cause all three of them to be unlucky in love. In high school, Oscar is an outcast. He is very overweight and his fascination with "the Genres" causes him to be teased. When his two friends Al and Miggs both find girlfriends and do not involve Oscar (or try to help Oscar find a girlfriend), Oscar quickly stops spending time with them. During his senior year of high school, Oscar takes an SAT review course. There, he meets and shortly begins to spend a lot of time with a girl named Ana Obregón. Oscar shortly falls in love with Ana. When her ex-boyfriend Manny returns from the Army, Ana stops spending time with Oscar. It is around this time that Oscar begins to start writing heavily, science fiction or fantasy stories, mostly centered around the end of the world. When Oscar discovers that Manny has been physically abusing Ana, Oscar takes his uncle's gun and stands outside of Manny's apartment, but Manny never returns that night. The chapter ends with Oscar revealing his love to Ana, Ana rejecting him, and Oscar going away to college at Rutgers. The narrative changes to the first person, from the perspective of Lola, Oscar's sister. It explores the distant and often verbally abusive relationship that Lola has with her Old World Dominican mother, and Lola's resulting rebellion. It opens with Lola telling, in the second person (after a few pages changing to first person), the story of how she found out her mother had breast cancer. It then proceeds to explore the negative relationship that Lola had with her mother. This poor relationship causes Lola to run away from home to live with her boyfriend and his father on the Jersey Shore. After a bit of time, Lola finds herself again unhappy and calls home. She talks with Oscar and convinces him to bring money and meet Lola at a coffee shop. When they meet up, Lola discovers that Oscar told their mother about the meeting. In an effort to run away from the coffee shop and from her mother, Lola accidentally knocks her cancer-ridden mother over. When Lola turns around to make sure her mother is okay, her mother grabs Lola by the hand, revealing that she was faking crying in an effort to get Lola to come back. As a result of her running away, Lola is sent to live with her grandmother, La Inca, in the Dominican Republic. This chapter introduces the reader to the history of Oscar and Lola's mother, whose full name is revealed to be Hypatía Belicia Cabral, though she is usually referred to simply as Beli. It is revealed that Beli's family died when she was one, with rumors that Trujillo was responsible. She was raised by a series of abusive foster families until her father's cousin, La Inca, rescues her from such a life. La Inca continually tells Beli that her father was a doctor, and that her mother was a nurse as a way to remind Beli of her heritage. La Inca brings Beli back to her hometown of Baní, where La Inca runs a bakery. At the age of 13, Beli lands a scholarship at El Redentor, one of the best schools in Baní. There, she falls in love with a light-skinned boy named Jack Pujols, and spends a lot of her time trying to earn his affection, to no avail. Because she is poor and dark-skinned, Beli is often made fun of, and is a social outcast. However, during the summer of sophomore year, Beli quickly develops into a full grown and well endowed woman, and the book describes how Beli becomes very popular with men of all ages. With her new body, Beli is finally able to catch the attention of Jack Pujols and loses her virginity to him. However, when they are discovered in a closet together, Beli is kicked out of school. Instead of transferring to a different school, however, she earns a job at a restaurant run by two Chinese immigrants brothers, Juan and José, where she works as a waitress. After a time, Beli goes to a club with another waitress named Constantina. There, she meets a gangster, and the two of them form a relationship. After a while, Beli is fired from her job. Although the Gangster's authority quickly gets her her job back, she feels it is not the same and resigns. Eventually, Beli becomes pregnant with the Gangster's child. It is then revealed that the gangster is in fact married to one of Trujillo's sisters, "known affectionately as La Fea" (The Ugly). When La Fea discovers that Beli is pregnant with her husband's child, she has two large cops resembling Elvis, with pompadour hairstyles, kidnap Beli, with plans to take her to have a forced abortion. As she is being led to the car, she sees a third cop who does not have a face. Before the cops can drive away, Beli spots her former employers, Juan and José, as well as her former coworkers and calls for help. They come to her rescue and Beli manages to get back to her old home. However, she is tricked into thinking the Gangster is outside in his car, and runs out to meet him, only to run into the same cops from before. The two cops physically beat Beli and leave her close to death, and continue to do so in the cane field. Her fetus dies due to the injuries. When she discovers that Beli has been taken, La Inca begins to pray very intensely, and in short order, a small but intense prayer group forms around La Inca. Back in the cane field, after she has been left for dead, a mongoose with golden eyes appears and leads Beli out of the cane, telling her that she will have two children. As Beli returns to the road, she is picked up by a group of traveling musicians. Thanks to La Inca's connections in the medical community, Beli is nursed back to health. After Beli returns to La Inca's care, it quickly becomes apparent that Beli will not be safe in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, and so she is sent to live in New York. This chapter explores Oscar's time at Rutgers, and introduces the narrator, Yunior, who was Oscar's roommate and Lola's boyfriend. Part II of the book contains an introductory section, as well as chapters Five and Six of the story. This chapter is the story of Abelard, Belicia's father (Oscar and Lola's grandfather), and the "Bad Thing he said about Trujillo," which causes his family to be torn apart leaving most family members dead. The dictator, Trujillo, known for his sexual desire for young girls, whose families cannot protect them, learns that Abelard's oldest daughter, Jaquelyn, has become a beautiful young teenager. As a father Abelard does not want to give his daughter to Trujillo, as so many other fathers had been forced to do, and does not bring her to the event it had been demanded she come to. Some four weeks later Abelard is arrested for supposedly making a joke that there were no bodies in the trunk of his car. As Trujillo's henchmen disposed of opponents this way he was accused of slandering the dictator. After his arrest and torture his wife learns she is pregnant with what turns out to be her third daughter, Belicia. Two months after the baby's birth she is killed by an army truck in a probable suicide. Her two older daughters die under suspicious circumstance and the baby is taken to be a criada, a child slave. Mistreated and bearing the scars of the hot oil thrown on her back she is rescued at the age of nine by her father's cousin, La Inca, whom she comes to regard as her mother. This chapter is about the post-college life of Oscar, and the time he spends in the Dominican Republic. He falls in love with an older prostitute named Ybón Pimentel. This results in Oscar being severely beaten, reflecting the same situation of his mother. The golden mongoose, which saved his mother's life, returns to save Oscar's life. Oscar returns to the United States. Part III of the book contains chapters Seven and Eight, an unnamed section, and the novel's epilogue, "The Final Letter." Part III contains an introductory section where Oscar visits and lies to Yunior about his plans for the future. They also discuss Yunior's relationship with Lola. Oscar returns to the Dominican Republic to write and to attempt to be with Ybón. His attempts take place over twenty-seven days in which he writes numerous letters to Ybón and shakes off any attempts from family or friends, including Lola, Yunior, La Inca, and Clives, to forget Ybón. Ybón herself resists Oscar for fear of the Capitan, but Oscar is persistent and waves off his family's fears as misunderstanding of their love. Oscar is captured by the Capitan's friends, whom Yunior calls Gorilla Grod and Solomon Grundy, and they drive Oscar (and Clives) again to the cane field. Oscar reiterates the power of love and indicates that death would turn him into a "hero, an avenger. Because anything you can dream... you can be. " They then shoot Oscar, but his speech suggests that he is fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming something worth writing about. The chapter ends with the word "Oscar" interrupted by a dash. It is unclear if this is interrupted narration for Yunior or a direct address to Oscar. The narrator reveals the eventual fates of the characters. Beli's cancer returns one year after Oscar's death, killing her ten months later. Yunior speculates that she had given up. La Inca moves back to Bani. Lola breaks up with Yunior, asserting herself after having had enough of his cheating. She soon after meets someone in Miami, marries him, and has a baby girl, named Isis. Yunior has dreams of Oscar for ten years while his life deteriorates, until he hits rock bottom, and follows Oscar's request presumably to write this novel. At the time of the novel, Yunior is married in New Jersey (almost faithfully) and teaches composition at Community College. He and Lola still run into each other occasionally. Although he still thinks about her and how he might have saved their relationship, they only ever talk about Oscar. This serves as an epilogue to the novel wherein Yunior describes letters he and Lola received from Oscar before he died. Lola was told to expect Oscar’s novel in the mail, which never arrives. Yunior, on the other hand, finds out that Oscar and Ybón did consummate their relationship.
13727517	/m/03cgd_f	Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours	Jim Butcher	2006-06-27		 The book opens with Peter Parker being forced to be a substitute basketball coach at the high school where he teaches science. He is challenged by Samuel Larkin, a star basketball player, who refuses to work with the other players. Peter soon finds out that Samuel never got the regular and required vaccines, and will be suspended and therefore unable to play for the rest of the season, making it nigh-impossible to get into a good university. After coaching, Peter returns home to find that Mary Jane Watson got a part as Lady Macbeth, but since the show is playing in Atlantic City, she bought a car, despite not knowing how to drive. As they are discussing Peter teaching her, The Rhino attacks Times Square, and Spider-Man is needed. As he swings to the battle, Felicia Hardy, otherwise known as "The Black Cat", tells him that he is in danger and the Rhino's attack is a trap. Spider-Man swings on, and easily defeats the Rhino. After he knocks him unconscious, the three vengeful siblings of Morlun (Thanis, Malos, and Mortia), appear and say that Spider-Man caused the death of their brother. Spider-Man evades them until a SWAT team appears. In the end, it is Mary-Jane who defeats the siblings. Already angry that she can't help Peter like Felicia can, Mary-Jane is enraged by what the siblings are putting her husband through. she defeats them by driving into them with her car. Another Marvel Comics character, Doctor Strange is included in the novel as a figure from whom the wall-crawler seeks assistance.
13730626	/m/03cghw7	The Nightrunner Series and The Tamír Triad				 The series revolves around Seregil, a spy, and Alec, his apprentice and soon-to-be partner. The series takes place in a fictional country, Skala, described similarly to medieval Europe. Seregil stumbles into the rescue of Alec, a poor, orphaned hunter. After hiring Alec to guide him through the Northern Lands, Seregil notes Alec’s quick learning ability and fast hands, and offers him a job as his apprentice. Alec, though wary of Seregil at first due to a distressing amount of secrecy and suspicion that he’s becoming a thief or spy, accepts the offer. They fall into a mystery that involves the fast deterioration of Seregil’s mind and sanity, and Alec must find a way to save his new teacher and friend. Alec manages to deliver Seregil into the hands of Nysander, a wizard of Skala, but the mystery seems to only deepen. At the same time, a traitorous plot against the Queen seems to be unfolding, and Seregil must solve it quickly; before he is found guilty of treason himself. The seemingly harmless wooden disc that nearly caused Seregil’s death and loss of sanity in Luck in the Shadows is revealed to be part of a broken, evil, helm belonging to the ‘Eater of Death’, a forsaken god named Seriamaius. A plan to retrieve all the pieces of the helm is attempted by a Plenimarine, Mardus, who wishes to use it to conquer Skala and Mycena and rule over the three lands. A prophecy long foretold takes place, and Seregil has to kill his mentor, Nysander, in order to destroy the helm. In the last paragraphs of the book, Seregil and Alec admit their feelings for one another. Seregil and Alec are sent to Aurënen, Seregil’s homeland, with Princess Klia, in a Skalan delegation to ask for open ports, warriors and supplies in the deepening war between Skala and Plenimar, but the attempted murder of the Princess means trouble. Seregil and Alec must unravel the mystery before all chance of a treaty is ruined. At the same time, Seregil must readjust himself to the country he was exiled from more than thirty years previously. A collection of short stories including the story of how Seregil, Nysander, and Micum all meet. Seregil and Alec are kidnapped by Zengati slavetraders, and bought by a Plenimarine alchemist. Using Alec’s unique blood as a half-northerner, half-hâzadriëlfaie, the alchemist intends to create a creature called a rhekaro, who appears to be a young child, and yet is most definitely not human at all. Seregil eventually helps Alec and Sebrahn escape, coming to terms with his own past as he reunites with an old lover and enemy. Having escaped death and slavery in Plenimar, Seregil and Alec want nothing more than to go back to their nightrunning life in Rhíminee. Instead they find themselves saddled with Sebrahn, a strange, alchemically created creature - the prophesied "child of no woman." It's moon-white skin and frightening powers make it a danger to all whom Seregil and Alec come into contact with, leaving them no choice but to learn more about Sebrahn's true nature. But what then? With the help of old friends and Seregil's clan, the pair sets out to discover the truth about this living homunculus - a journey that can lead only to danger... or death. For Seregil's old nemesis Ulan í Sathil of Virèsse and Alec's own long-lost kin (Hâzadrielfaie) are after them, intent on possessing both Sebrahn and Alec. On the run and hunted, Alec and his friends must fight against time to accomplish their most personal mission ever. More than the dissolute noblemen they appear to be, Alec and Seregil are skillful spies, dedicated to serving queen and country. But when they stumble across evidence of a plot pitting Queen Phoria against Princess Klia, the two Nightrunners will find their loyalties torn as never before. Even at the best of times, the royal court at Rhíminee is a serpents' nest of intrigue, but with the war against Plenimar going badly, treason simmers just below the surface. And that's not all that poses a threat: A mysterious plague is spreading through the crowded streets of the city, striking young and old alike. Now, as panic mounts and the body count rises, hidden secrets emerge. And as Seregil and Alec are about to learn, conspiracies and plagues have one thing in common: The cure can be as deadly as the disease.
13730727	/m/03cgh_q	Shadows Return	Lynn Flewelling	2008-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After their victory in Aurënen, Alec and Seregil have returned home to Rhíminee. But with most of their allies dead or away, it is difficult for them to settle in. Hoping for diversion, they accept an assignment from queen Phoria to go to Seregil's homeland and call Klia to Skala. En route, however, they are ambushed and separated, and both are sold into slavery to the Plenimarans. There they are bought by the alchemist Yhakobin who hopes to use Alec's Hâzadrielfaie blood to create a rhekaro, a sexless creture that can heal everything and prolong life. The first doesn't meet his expectations and he has it butchered. By the time he makes a second one, Seregil and Alec escape, the first with the help of a servant woman and the second by picking his lock. Knowing that the rhekaro will die without his blood and reminding himself of the Dragon Oracle's prophecy, Alec takes him along, while Seregil brings his betrayer, Ilar í Sontir, to show them a secret tunnel. The atmosphere is initially tense when Alec finds Ilar's identity and Seregil, too, has doubts about the uncommon-looking child, but they fare well for several days, with Alec's hunting skills and the food they had stolen. Later, the rhekaro, whom Alec names Sebrahn, shows extraordinary healing powers, which they use to get rid of their slave brands so that they are not found out by other slavers. Near the port they are found by their former master. Ilar flees in panic, but Alec and Seregil stand firm. The archers target Seregil but Alec jumps in front of him and is killed. Anguished, Seregil kills Yhakobin before Sebrahn starts singing and kills the soldiers. His tears then fall on Alec's wound and create the white blossoms that the alchemist had been trying to create and brings him back to life. During this time Alec's shade quickly finds Thero and directs him and Micum to Seregil. Thero helps them they continue their journey, but they are soon found by a necromancer, presumably sent to retrieve the rekharo. When Thero can't stop him, Sebrahn sings again and kills him. To gether they get aboard and head for Aurënen. On their landing, Magyana lays eyes upon the child and says she sees the a dragon in his aura.
13732933	/m/03cgkl1	A War of Gifts: An Ender Story	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A War of Gifts begins in North Carolina where Zechariah 'Zeck' Morgan, a boy with nearly perfect memory, lives with his family. Though Zeck’s father is the minister of his own church and has raised Zeck to be a pacifist, he beats the boy regularly. When the International Fleet shows up to take Zeck to Battle School, Zeck’s mother sees this as the perfect opportunity to get the boy away from his abusive father. At Battle School, the other students barely tolerate Zeck because of his strong religious beliefs and his refusal to fight in the Battle Room. On December fifth Zeck sees a Dutch boy put a Sinterklaas Day gift in another Dutch boy’s shoe. Because religious activities including prayer and holidays are forbidden at Battle School and Zeck has been taught by his father that Santa Claus is evil, he decides to report the two boys to Colonel Graff. After the Colonel calls the boys in and reprimands them, they decide to rebel by getting everyone to celebrate not Christmas, but Santa Claus, as he is not a religious symbol in the book, but a secular one. When Zeck complains to the authorities, they refuse to do anything. Zeck goes to the Muslim students and points out that the Christians are being allowed to celebrate their holidays. Some of the Muslim students begin daily prayers. When the administration forcibly stops the Muslims from praying, the other students stop giving each other Christmas presents. They also refuse to speak to Zeck. When he begins to have a nervous breakdown because of the isolation, Ender Wiggin decides to have a talk with him. In doing so, Ender discovers that Zeck was desperately trying to get sent back home so that he could protect his mother from his father. After he convinces Zeck that his mother doesn't need to be protected, Ender gives him a small "Santa Claus" present. When the other students learn that Zeck accepted the gift, they stop ignoring him and go back to tolerating him.
13733151	/m/03cgkpf	Rebekah	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rebekah follows the story of Isaac through the eyes and perspective of Rebekah. Card expands the story into a novel of over 400 pages so many of the details and characters are fictional. The story-line does not deviate from the story told in Genesis.
13733205	/m/03cgkr4	Rachel and Leah	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rachel and Leah follows the story of Jacob through the eyes of Rachel and Leah. Card expands the story into a novel of over 300 pages, so many of the details and characters are fictional. However, the storyline does not deviate from the story told in Genesis.
13736656	/m/03cgny2	Rasputin	Kathryn H. Kidd		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 This book has not yet been released.
13737866	/m/03cgq57	Black Foxes				 Section 1-21 year old Lord Tyrone Sully inherits his parent's wealth when his father dies in a bull-related accident, and his mother, wishing to join him, suicides. Deppressed, he decides to leave with Oscar to buy a horse in Black Chest. Everything starts to go wrong when his uninvited cousin, Silke turns up and Oscar invites her to join them. On the long road to the horse auction, Oscar and Silke fall for each other, to Tyrone's annoyance. He says nothing and helps both of them for the sake of his friend. He meets Lord Silverdale, a hated childhood friend who he recovers to be a cheat. Oscar's stable boy, Grundy buys him a horse and they travel back to Tyrone's house, Wylde Hide. On the way back, he finds Silverdale waiting for him in a bar. Silverdale shoots Tyrone below the heart. Oscar, with quick thinking, draws out his gun and shoots Silverdale straight in the heart. Silverdale dies, while Tyrone lives, fighting for his life. He eventually heals and returns home. Section 2-Oscar is married to Silke, with whom Tyrone eventually becomes friends. Tyrone had taken all the blame for shooting Lord Silverdale, and now not welcome anymore. Holly, a servant girl goes looking for work, and Tyrone recruits her. Silke, who is sick of England, decides to run away back to Paris to her original home, leaving Oscar with her baby, Ashley. Meanwhile, Tyrone falls in love with Holly. Oscar and his sister Celia decide that Holly is not good enough for Tyrone. They trick her into believing he betrayed her, and she runs away as well. Oscar quickly regrets what he has done and sends Grundy to look for her secretly. After a long time, he finds her dead, having died in childbirth. Section 3-Oscar is dead for 14 years and Tyrone has never got over it. He is the legal guardian of Ashley, who is now 21. Silke pays another unexpected visit to Wylde Hide with her daughter, Meg. Cal, who, unknown to Tyrone, is son of Holly, travels with his best friend to see Tyrone. Grundy, tries to keep both of them a secret, but Tyrone soon finds out. Tyrone is pleased to find his long lost son and their adventure comes to an end.
13737962	/m/03cgqc2	Redeeming Love	Francine Rivers	1991	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story starts off in New England, 1835. Sarah, a beautiful young girl, meets her father, Alex Stafford, for the first time. Seven-year-old Sarah learns that she is the product of Stafford's adulterous affair with her mother, Mae. Mae was urged to abort the child, but refused to do so. This decision alienated her from Alex, whom she continues to love in hopes that he will leave his family and marry her. Alex refuses. Later on that year Mae's maid Cleo begrudgingly takes Sarah with her on a trip to the shore, so that Mae can have a private visit with Alex. Cleo takes Sarah with her into a popular bar where Cleo is well-known and has a male companion. After getting drunk she agrees to sleep with him while a frightened Sarah waits in the hall. After the man leaves Cleo heartbroken again, Cleo in a half-drunk stupor tells Sarah "the way it is" and insists that no man ever cares for a woman and all they want is sex. Mae and Sarah then move to a shack on the docks, where Mae takes up prostitution to make ends meet. Her reputation is known all over town, and little Sarah is forced to suffer the rejection of the townspeople because of it. Through this experience, Sarah learns to mask her emotions and replace them instead with a hard exterior. About five years later, Mae succumbs to a terrible illness, leaving Sarah alone at the age of eight with a drunken man named Rab. Unsure of what to do with the small child, Rab seeks a home for the child. He finds a man that is looking for a little girl for his wealthy master. Thinking that this is Sarah's lucky break, Rab takes Sarah to the wealthy neighborhood. They are greeted at the door by a woman who urges Rab to take Sarah away and not come back. Not dissuaded, Rab insists that Sarah is perfect for this rich man. The woman admits the pair and sends them to a bedroom upstairs where they are instructed to wait until her master can see them. Duke, the master of the household, welcomes Sarah and Rab; minutes later, Rab is strangled before Sarah's eyes, his body dumped in a nearby alley. Duke, who is a pedophile, had been scouring the town not for a new daughter, but a new mistress. Duke informs Sarah, or Angel, as he renames her, that there are many things he wants to teach her. He gives her first "lesson" that very night. After about 10 years with Duke, Angel finally escapes and boards a ship bound for California. Robbed by the other passengers, she disembarks in San Francisco with nothing more than the clothes she is wearing. Angel is taken in by 'The Duchess', the owner of The Palace, a brothel in Pair-a-Dice and becomes an exclusive, high-priced prostitute. Employed by the Duchess, Angel is guarded constantly, her meager earnings kept from her. Her only solace is Lucky, a fellow prostitute that is often drunk, who befriends her. Michael Hosea first sees Angel on a trip to Pair-A-Dice to sell produce. God tells Michael "she's the one", the woman he is meant to marry; Michael later discovers to his shock that Angel is a prostitute. Still determined to heed God's command and marry Angel, Michael pays the high fee for her time in hopes of convincing her to leave with him. She stubbornly rejects his offer. Discouraged, Michael questions God, but still obeys. He pays Angel's fee for three successive nights, talking and reasoning with her until his time is up. Angel keeps her cold, sarcastic front to dissuade him, wanting to escape the pain his words cause her. Meanwhile, she cannot seem to escape thoughts of Michael and her rising hope of life outside the Palace. After the last night with Angel, Michael grows frustrated and leaves Pair-A-Dice. A few days later, he returns to Pair-A-Dice, unable to ignore God's command any longer. He finds Angel almost dead from a brutal beating given her by Magowan, Duchess' bodyguard. Willing to use any means to preserve Angel's life, Michael asks her to marry him so he can take her to his cabin. Barely conscious, Angel agrees, mumbling "Why not?" Michael nurses Angel back to health at his cabin. Angel remains barely tolerant of the arrangement while it serves her needs. Michael endures Angel's harshness, remaining faithful to his wife and God's plan. Michael's widower brother-in-law, Paul, returns home from fruitless gold panning in the Sierras. Paul recognizes Angel immediately as the high-priced prostitute from the Palace. Believing Angel has deceived Michael, Paul treats her badly. Paul tries to tell Michael about Angel's profession, but only angers him. Paul thinks Michael married Angel out of blind lust, not knowing she was a prostitute, and from then on, Paul thinks there is a rift between him and Michael because of Angel, not knowing that Michael loves Angel in spite of her past and that he is the one causing the rift between them. When she finally heals from her wounds, Angel tries to run away from Michael in hopes of returning to the brothel to get back what is owed to her from The Duchess. When Paul leaves to sell the produce of his land back in Pair-A-Dice, Angel sees this as a way for her to escape. While Michael is out working in the field, she runs after Paul's wagon. He agrees to take her with him if she pays him back with her only means of currency: herself. He's disgusted by her actions even more after they have sex together and hopes that is the last of her he will be seeing ever again. Upon her return to Pair-A-Dice, she sees that the Palace has burned down, along with Magowan, her dearest companion Lucky, and another prostitute by the name of Mai Ling. With nowhere else to go, she begins working in a saloon—once again as a prostitute. Even though she loathes being seen as nothing but a whore, she has no other skills with which to make a living. A livid Michael finds her in a room with a client and fights their way out of the bar filled with drunken men waiting for their turn with Angel. They return to the cabin, where Michael relies on God to work through his anger at her unfaithfulness. Angel begins to develop feelings towards Michael, which she cannot comprehend because she has never allowed herself to love any man, for fear they will take advantage of or desert her, just like her father did her mother. Despite her continued coldness, Michael loves her unconditionally. Upon showing her the sunrise, he says, "That is what I want to give to you." Angel feels herself becoming soft-hearted day by day, but in her uncertainty and fear refuses to share it with Michael. She feels a deep sense of shame at her "uncleanness". She is softened by Michael's love but cannot see herself as worthy of it. Though they have slept together regularly, Angel is very disconnected from the experience of sex, but when one night she experiences the same joy and pleasure that Michael does ("And she flew, Michael with her, into the heavens..."), it frightens her. Upon their arrival back in the valley, they meet the Altman family, who have a broken wheel and are stranded on the side of the road. Michael helps fix their wagon and invites them to stay at their cabin. Angel reveals to Mrs. Altman and the oldest daughter, Miriam, that she met Michael in a brothel, and is amazed to find that they have only compassion for her instead of contempt. They become close, and Angel takes a liking to the oldest daughter, Miriam, who begins to fancy Paul, who is living at the other end of the valley. When Angel sees Miriam talking with Michael, she assumes that they have feelings for one another and jumps to the conclusion that they would make a much better couple than she and Michael. Paul wants to see Michael end up with Miriam as well, but has also begun to develop feelings for the 16-year-old Miriam. He denies his feelings only because he wishes to see Michael with Miriam instead of Angel. She runs away once again, this time to Sacramento; on the way she is offered a ride by an old man that sells pots. Upon reaching Sacramento while looking for work she again meets Joseph Hochschild, who has built his new store, and she stays with him, knowing that he is a good friend of Michael's. She works for him in his store along with his mother and sister. When an order comes in for Michael, she tries to leave but Joseph keeps her busy, making her wait longer. When she finishes her duties and goes to close up the store, Michael is standing at the doorway, having again come back for her. She admits that she is frightened by the idea of being in love with him, but he reassures her and brings her home. Meanwhile, it is revealed in a flashback that during her time as Duke's mistress, Angel got pregnant twice and both times an infuriated Duke had a doctor abort it, taking measures the second time to ensure that she can never get pregnant again. Angel later reveals this to a devastated Michael. She also reveals that she once had sex with her own father, who came to her brothel, in a bid for revenge because he left her mother. She is swamped with guilt at the callous way she treated him. Knowing that has shocked her husband, and feeling guilty for not being able to give Michael any children of his own, as she knows he longs for, Angel runs away once more, leaving her wedding ring behind, in hopes that Michael will marry Miriam and have children with her. Michael is crushed, but says he will not go after Angel again if she does not want to be with him. This time Angel goes to San Francisco. When she arrives, she gets a job with a gentle man called Virgil. He takes her in as a cook at his cafe, and takes care of her. But after months of their hard work, the cafe burns down, and in it all of Angel's savings and possessions. Observing the fire in the street, a bereft Angel hears a familiar voice—it is Duke, greeting her. Fearing that he would hurt Virgil, who seems suspicious of Duke, Angel agrees to go back with him. Once more under Duke's power, Angel is expected to resume her life as a prostitute. However, Duke sexual preference is for young girls, and he asks Angel to manage his prospective "companions," but only after a week's worth of prostitution. Angel is to be presented to a crowd of men. She begins to wrestle in her mind and cries out to God internally. She is prepared to go on stage to entertain the men. When she is finally before them, the voice of God tells her to sing and she starts singing "Rock of Ages" to the awed and confused crowd. A gray-haired man sings along with her and moves up to the front of the stage. She forgets the words of the song, and he finishes it. After the presentation, Duke reprimands Angel. However, he is met by the singing stranger from the crowd. He threatens to have Duke hanged if he lays a single finger on Angel. With that the man escorts Angel out, and on their way out Angel rescues two other young girls Duke was using as lovers. When the men at the brothel see the two young girls with Angel, they become furious and destroy the place. The man takes them to his house, where his wife and daughter take care of them. Jonathan Axle, the man who saved her, is a wealthy and respected banker with a solid Christian family. Angel starts to attend church with the Axle family and grows fond of them. Meanwhile, Miriam reveals that she is in love with Paul, and the two of them marry while Angel is away. Michael still awaits the return of Angel and prays continually for her to come back. Seeing his grief, Miriam insists that Paul should go and find Angel, but Paul, still full of contempt for the woman he believes Angel to be, refuses. Angel eventually recognizes God's love for her and receives Christ in her heart. She begins to work with prostitutes by helping them leave their old ways and learning new abilities that might help them make a living. Susanna Axle, the daughter of Jonathan Axle, helps her run the boarding house. Paul finally gives in to Miriam and goes to San Francisco to look for Angel. He sees her with an old man—Jonathan Axle—and thinks that he is a client, and she still a prostitute. He is furious that he came all this way, and starts making up excuses to give Miriam so that he does not have to hurt her by telling her Angel is a prostitute. However, next day he decides to go up to the house and confronts Angel. At first he acts cold, contemptuous, and sarcastic, but is startled by her humility and the genuine love she harbors for Michael. He is shocked to learn that she left Michael in the hope that he would marry Miriam so that he could have children. When she discovers that Paul is married to Miriam, and that Michael is still waiting for her after three years of absence, her whole world falls apart and she no longer feels justified in staying in San Francisco. She finally makes the decision to leave Susanna in charge of the house, and goes back to Michael. She surprises him in the field where he is working, kneeling at his feet and crying. She is grieved to see how losing her has had a profound effect on Michael. She reveals that her real name is "Sarah". Michael, in tears himself, receives her with kind, pure and forgiving love, and declares that he believes the revelation of her name is a promise from God that they will one day be able to have children (the Sarah in the Bible was a barren woman who, by the grace of God, was eventually able to have a son). At last they start a new life together, the life they have dreamed of. In the epilogue, it is said that Michael and Sarah later had four children.
13738637	/m/03cgq_m	Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium	Suzanne Weyn	2007-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When a young pianist named Molly Mahoney inherits a magical toy store from her eccentric 243-year-old boss, Mr. Magorium, she struggles with self-doubt. But through the friendship of a charismatic little boy named Eric Applebaum and a buttoned-up accountant named Henry Weston, she learns to believe in herself, and finds that she does possess enough magic to run Mr. Magorium's shop by finding herself in places she's never imagined.
13739535	/m/03cgs53	Reincarnation	Kenneth C. Eng	2008-01-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ;Prehistory In the first setting of the story the female character is a Cro-Magnon (more developed caveman), and the male character is a Neanderthal, man a little behind Cro-Magnon in evolution, thus unable to capture the concept of speech. The female, May, is ready to get married soon, and will be linked to Lenar by her deity, the Great Mother. The male, Kye is hunting with his group. They meet each other near the cave that May visits when they spot a green rock. They struggle over the stone. May wanted it so that she could have her own ranking within her tribe, to be able to not marry an insensitive tribesman, Lenar, the first antagonist in the book. Kye wants it so that he may redeem himself within his tribe, for he had run away from a fight. Future incarnations inherit May's singing, struggle with ranking in social groups, and that she is religious, and Kye's incarnations inherit aching head injuries. The incarnations also happen to be different in ethnicity like May and Kye. Egypt, 1280 B.C.E. The second setting is in ancient Egypt, in the setting of a wealthy nobleman. The female's name is Tetisheri, and she is the household singer and dancer, the performer. The male of this setting is Taharaq, a captured Nubian archer, who has been dragged into slavery by Egyptians. Due to an injury during the fight he is mute, unable to speak. He becomes a slave in the same household Tetisheri works and lives in. He was caught and given to the nobleman by Lenar's reincarnation, Ramose. Another antagonist is introduced as Nerfi, a household servant, and the woman who vies for Taharaq's affection, while Ramose vies for Tetisheri's. She is also the reason Tetisheri's incarnations have horrible ankles. The green gem is reincarnated as an Eye of Horus pendant that Ramose gives to Tetisheri, as he wishes to marry her when he returnes from a military voyage. Tetisheri takes the gift from him. While Ramose is away Taharaq and Tetisheri realize their love for each other and Taharaq heals, able to speak again. Seeing them together angered Ramose, so he banished Taharaq. Taharaq visits Tetsheri and Nerfi later on in Nerfi's room and Ramose sees them and kills Taharaq by stabbing him (and causing his reincarnations to have bruises from the stab wound) but it is not clear what happens to Nerfi and Tetisheri. Nerfi could have been reincarnated from Sha, a female briefly mentioned in Prehistory, from Lenar's point of view, as it says Sha has the trademark red curls. Tetisheri inherited her singing from her previous life, while Taharaq inherited his inability to speak, and a birthmark with terrible headaches (from Kye's injury). Further incarnations inherit Tetisheri's bad ankle that was injured when Nerfi dropped a jug of water on her right foot, and a knack for writing and reading and archery from Taharaq. Ramose's incarnations would inherit an aching jaw from when Taharaq punched Ramose. Pakistan, 538 B.C.E. When one of the characters is on the wheel of rebirth, they meet Siddartha, later Buddha. Kye met him, and was the reason for his later interest in Buddhism. He also drinks too much wine and becomes drunk, which is the cause of the drinking problem in later incarnations. ;Athens, Greece, 399 B.C.E. The female is Hyacinth, a nobleman's privileged daughter, and the male is Artem, a "wild boy" orphan whose Egyptian mother passed away, a slave woman found him with two emerald teardrop-shaped earrings. Living and wandering alone in the wilderness, he has a drinking problem. Hyacinth meets Artem in the marketplace and cannot forget him. Hyacinth later catches Artem hunting on her father's land. She follows him to his camp and they meet and talk for a while. Artem has inherited his passion for reading and writing from a previous life, and offers to teach Hyacinth to read, as women were thought to be servers for men in that period. The two keep meeting for their "reading lessons" but really they're falling in love, Hyacinth more so than Artem, at first. Artem, being a skilled archer, is convinced to compete for Hyacinth's hand in marriage against Macar, Lenar and Ramose's incarnation. But Macar catches the two together, and later attacks Artem, making him unable to go and compete for Hyacinth. Hyacinth is heartbroken, and by the time Artem is healed enough to go to her she has become a priestess at the temple of Athena, and having become a priestess, under oath, she is unable to leave or to marry. A Greek myth, an Oracle of Delphi, who foretells the future in riddles that only the learned could decipher, speaks to Hyacinth, and says, "You have been in the cave. I spied on you in the kitchen. I will bring you to fiery ruin. The jewel is not what you think. You must seek its meaning. If you seek me I will help you." Hyacinth tried to understand her words, she had never been in a cave, but she had sometimes been in a kitchen, and when she thought of the jewels, she thought of her earrings. The Oracle continued, "The one who comes for you with the earrings is your destiny." Hyacinth thought about Artem. She still did not understand, "Please, I don't understand." "The unraveling is the journey.' the Oracle answered. And she left. The Oracle of Delphi is an incarnation of Blind Seth, from the Egyptian era, and returns in a few more incarnations. Honouring her oath, Hyacinth refuses to run away with Artem, and when he finally comes to her, even though she wants to, she doesn't leave, but keeps the emerald earrings Artem gave her. Nerfi is now Iphigenia, another young priestess and she inherits her trademark red curls. She is insanely jealous of Hyacinth and Artem's love, and thinks negatively of Hyacinth turning him down, thinking she would run away with him in a heartbeat. She steals Hyacinth's earrings, and one night when Artem is serenading Hyacinth with his flute, as always, and she sees that Hyacinth is finally climbing down to join Artem. Iphigenia then throws the earrings out the window. Artem thinks Hyacinth has thrown the earrings, and bumps into Hyacinth as they both go to retrieve them. But that makes Hyacinth tumble down a rocky hill to her death, leaving Artem to be miserable for the rest of his life. ;Canaan, 28 C.E. One of the characters is now in Canaan, who went to the wedding Jesus gave wine to. It is evidenced it is Artem's incarnation, for he complains he drinks in excess. Gwendolyn, who was Hyacinth, becomes part of an abbey and later is Mother Abbess Maria Regina. She dies and the next person who is speaking is Macar's incarnation, a captain who took slaves, a possibly inheriting that of his treatment to Taharaq as an Egyptian. Artem is then his first mate and later on adventure with Pizarro. There he meets Gwendolyn, now Acana, in an Incan tribe and remarks on her knowledge of the arts and in general. It is revealed she died of the pox. Abby, once Iphigenia, is setting sail for America where next story takes place. ;Salem, Massachusetts, 1691 The female is Elizabeth May, the male is Brian, antagonist #1 is Charles, and antagonist #2 is Abigail O'Brian (Abby). But Abby wants to get rid of Elizabeth May so that she can have Charles, Elizabeth's well-to-do husband. Brian is never actually in the story, but rather a fond memory of Elizabeth May's. As it turns out, she knows the incarnation of old Seth, the man in Egypt who knew her and lived in the same house. His incarnation is a Barbados woman who is blind and the incarnation of The Oracle of Delphi, and she tells Elizabeth her future with tarot cards. The cards say she has lost a true love, Brian, but will see him again. Elizabeth May warns the Barbados woman that a few village ladies have accused her of witchery because of her strange, natural medicines. To get Elizabeth May out of the picture, Abby gets Charles thinking that she's having an affair, and shows him peridot earrings from Brian. When he shows Elizabeth May the earrings and refuses to give them back, she attacks him. Abby brings in a lawman and accuses her of being a witch, pointing out Charles's bloodied face, and just then Elizabeth May's black cat jumps into her arms. Due to May's death by burning at the stake, she now has a phobia of fire. In between Abby is now dead (having married Charles), surpassing her husband as 80 years old. It is discovered that Brian had a daughter back home. His wife writes in a journal that their baby girl dies. It was Elizabeth May's incarnation for she hysterically screams at a peat fire. In between Elizabeth May is reincarnated as Marianna Clark, a woman who goes insane due to constantly saying her skin felt like it was on fire and is eventually locked up in a mental asylum, where Gwendolyn's church used to be. The staff give her a drug called laudanum every waking moment to soothe her, which, in a later life causes her to be addicted to the drug. Brian is reincarnated as the man who helped in the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. The Battle of Honey Springs, Indian Territory, July 17, 1863 Louisa Jones is a fifteen-year-old African American girl who is disguised as a man during the Civil War, she goes by the name of Lou. She was a slave but ran away and was now in the war fighting against the South. The story is told from the third person view of both characters, but the first part is told from John Mays, the incarnation of Marianna Clark and Elizabeth May, they are now a white man. Louisa and John are fighting against the South. It says that when he is first injured, he sees a boy at the river, taking care of a wound. It says that he can't explain his desire for the boy, but walks over and talks to him. John doesn't know that the boy is really a girl, Louisa, the incarnation of Brian, because he/she had a birthmark looking like a Stab Wound. John is the incarnation of Elizabeth May, because he was addicted to the medicine to numb the pain from his Bad Ankle and fear of fire. They have each switched genders. A strange thing happened to Lou while she was fighting that day, it was the reason she was cleaning up a wound. She was surrounded by smoke from the gun shots, when a Cherokee Indian was shot and flew off of his horse and fell on top of Lou, maing her gun out of reach. The same man who shot the Indian, was about to shoot Lou also, but she got the Indian's They talk, feeling a "connection" between each other, but are interrupted when a Native American tries to kill John. Lou then pulls the trigger of her rifle and kills the Native American. Mays then begins to like her/him, but won't say or show anything, thinking that Lou is a guy. Later on, it's told from Lou's third person when she feels the big bruise on the side of her stomach that is actually a birth mark. It's the inheriting of (Taharaq's injury). She ran into John again when she went out for a quick drink and he tries to get her to join the rest of the soldiers by the camp fire, but Lou refuses, saying that her side really hurts. Lou then faints due to the pain of her side and earlier injury to the head and Mays puts her back into the tent she was in. That's when he finds out that she's a girl, but she then dies of her injuries. Paris, France, 1937 The young woman is now Delilah "Del" Jones, a performer, performing at "The Panther Club". The man is Robert "Bert" Brody, a reporter from Princeton. Bert interviews Del after a performance and she begins to flirt with him after a few questions. She admits that she can dance, but most of the time ends up falling due to her bad ankle. Bert then goes out with a dancer at the club, named Yvette, after he interviews Del. After he left the small meeting with Yvette, he's stopped by a cop working for British Intelligence. Back in the dressing room, Lenny Raymond, the club manager, rubs his aching jaw as he thinks about Del and which move he should make on her. He gives up eventually. The next day, Del meets up with Bert again, for the rest of the interview. She'd lied to him about being in the circus, and he, in return, tells her about his great adventures in Greece. There's a candle sitting in the middle of the table and Del asks the waiter to remove it. She then says to Bert that she's skittish about fire. He then asks her if she's interested in Buddhism and she says that it's strange. They then admit that some feeling is so strong between them. The next day, Bert was sure he was in love with Del. For a next performance, Bert went to see it. Del then told Yvette that she wanted to speak to her in private on the roof. Bert followed to find Lenny, Yvette, Del and him all on the roof. Nazis then fired at Del and Bert jumped in front of her, taking the bullets. He fell off the roof and died. In between There is no note of any incarnations of Bert in this chapter. However, the story is then told from the view of the ghost of Bert. He goes a few years forward in time- to the height of World War II- and finds Yvette on a death train bound for a concentration camp. He finds out that Del is still alive, and that she and Yvette were both spies for the French Underground. Yvette was eventually caught. When the train derails, allowing many to escape, Yvette shows her good side and saves a young child- only to be shot by a Gestapo agent who catches her in the act. Yvette, too, becomes a ghost, reunites with Bert, and together, they enter the next stage of reincarnation. Mississippi 1964 The boy is now Mike. He's riding in a car with his friends while his Brother, Ray, rubs his jaw. He went home and noticed an old record player. It reminded him about a collection of albums by some famous singer he'd never heard of; Delilah Jones. He played it and a jazz tune played about a lover who got away. The woman is now an elderly lady named Louisa. It's early in the morning when Mike is going door-to-door asking people if they are registered to vote or not. He then asks her about her rights of an American. He soon admits that it's hot and she invites him inside. She then asks him if she's met him before and says that it's deja vu. She says that she felt it when he admitted that he attended Princeton and that he felt it too. She fainted. As he helped her recover, he noticed books and things on bookshelves. He then saw a book called Their Eyes Were Watching God and it was signed by the author, Zora Neale Hurston. It was to Delilah Jones. He'd heard that name before and asked her who she was. Louisa then admitted that she was Del Jones and that Mike was Bert Brody. He was confused, so she explained to him that she went back to her given name, Louisa, and she said that she married Lenny Raymond. She then explains that Bert Brody was her songwriter and that the songs on her album were written by him. Mike eventually is astonished and quickly leaves. Upon being away he returns that night, bringing her a record of her songs. They spend the next two weeks together. They are unable to show physical affection because of their age difference, but are in love nonetheless. He then ends up in the police station with his friends, upon hearing Ray is in trouble for being with Birdy (An incarnation of Abby). On his way to get help to bail them out of jail he is struck by a speeding car. In between There are no incarnations of Mike in this chapter. New York, present day The female is Samantha Tyler, a typical senior high-schooler. The male is Jake Suarez, the new guy at school, and the guy who just won first place in the archery competition. He also wrote a screenplay that he thinks he made up, but really he's telling the story of him and Samantha in the Salem lifetime. It's very emotional, because even though Samantha doesn't know it she's being told that Brian (Jake) had come looking for Elizabeth May (herself) and was miserable for the rest of his life when he was too late. It's a short one, so all that happens with antagonists #1 and #2, Chris and Zoë, is that Sam breaks up with Chris, and Zoë had a crush on him and fully supported her friend in this decision. The senior class is on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History. Samantha and Jake just happen to be lost and alone, looking for everyone else, and bump into each other. they decide to walk to the Hall of Emeralds exhibit together. Jake tells about his screenplay got him a scholarship, and Sam tells him about she can't decide between singing or dancing for her college studies, and about how it's lucky she wore corrective shoes as a kid for her bad ankle, otherwise she wouldn't be able to dance. Being in the Hall of Emeralds is also mysterious for them, because there they see all of the Green Gems. Tetisheri's Eye of Horus pendant, Baby's (and Del's) emerald studded collar, one of the teardrop earrings, even though it wasn't real emerald, but peridot, and even the gem that May and Kye fought over, which also wasn't real emerald. They finally admit the strong emotions for each other they are miraculously feeling while in the museum theatre. Nobody dies; they're together at last.
13744601	/m/03cgxw7	Crossing California				 In Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood in 1979, California Avenue divides the prosperous west side from the struggling east. Langer's brilliant debut uses that divide as a metaphor for the changes that occur in the lives of three neighborhood families: the Rovners, the Wasserstroms and the Wills. There are two macro-stories-the courtship of Charlie Wasserstrom and Gail Shiffler-Bass, and the alienation of Jill Wasserstrom from her best friend, Muley Wills-but what really counts here is the exuberance of overlapping subplots. One pole of the book is represented by Ellen Rovner, a therapist whose marriage to Michael dissolves over the course of the book (much to Ellen's relief: she's so distrustful of Michael that she fakes not having an orgasm when they have sex). If Ellen embodies cool, intelligent disenchantment, her son, Larry, represents the opposite pole of pure self-centeredness. As Larry sees it, his choice is between becoming a rock star with his band, Rovner!, and getting a lot of sex-or going to Brandeis, becoming successful and getting a lot of sex. The east side Wasserstrom girls exist between these poles: Michelle, the eldest, is rather slutty, flighty and egotistical, but somehow raises her schemes (remaining the high school drama club queen, for instance) to a higher level, while Jill, a seventh-grade contrarian who shocks her Hebrew School teachers with defenses of Ayatollah Khomeini and quotes Nkrumah at her bat mitvah, is still emotionally dazed from her mother's death. Muley, who woos Jill with his little films, wins the heart of the reader, if not of his intended.
13747966	/m/03ch00_	Dangerous Days of Daniel X	Michael Ledwidge	2008-07-21	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Daniel X, who has no other last name, has the best superpower ever: The power to create. He can create real objects, including people, with only his mind. In addition, he has super-speed (he outran a truck travelling at 100 miles per hour) and super-strength (he can flip a car in a somersault). He is also granted an extra long memory. When he was 3 years old, Daniel's parents were brutally murdered by a praying mantis-like alien called the Prayer, who came in search of the List of Alien Outlaws on Earth. When Daniel's parents wouldn't hand it over, the Prayer killed them. Daniel survived only by transforming into a tick and grasping onto the Prayer's dreadlock hair as he fled from the burning house. After he lost his grip on the Prayer and fell off, Daniel vowed to kill the Prayer for the death of his parents, and returned to the site when he was 13 to recover the List. Twelve years after the murder of his parents, fifteen-year-old Daniel X has taken up the task of his parents as Defender of Earth. In the sewers of Portland, Oregon, he faces and defeats number 19 on the List, Orkng Jllfgna, in hopes of working his way up to number 1: The Prayer. Later, Daniel is confronted by the Portland Runaway Juvenile Unit, and he escapes with the help of his "parents" whom he conjured up using his powers. He then leaves to go to Los Angeles in search of number 6 on his List, a shape-shifting alien named Ergent Seth who resides in Malibu. On his way to LA, he confronts an agent of Seth's who has a message for Daniel: Don't go to LA. Daniel ignores his command and continues on toward LA. He spends that night in the woods, camping with the "friends" he created: Joe, a motor-mouth and competitive eater; Willy, a stocky and headstrong fighter; Emma, a compassionate environmentalist; and Dana, the love of Daniel's life.The friends that Daniel creates, are actually a distinct memory of his life on his home planet. They all died in nursery school when their building collapsed. The next day, Daniel arrives in LA. With the help of his parents and "sister" Pork Chop (Brenda), he rents a house. His parents warn him not to go after Seth, because he has never gone after an alien in the Top 10. That night, while he is asleep, Daniel is haunted by one of the many vivid nightmares that he has, in which the Prayer warns him not to go after Seth because the Prayer wants to get him. The next day, Daniel decides to go to school, a first in Daniel's life; because of his power to telepathically access human knowledge, school was never necessary. At the end of the day, he bumps into Phoebe Cook, who is also new to the school. He walks her home and, following ideas from her mind, asks her out on a date. Daniel decides to search the city for clues about the whereabouts of Seth, and stumbles in upon a child-slave and drug-dealing operation. He goes to the one in charge of the operation (who is not Seth, but may be a lackey of his) and wipes his mind and makes him believe he is a Pentecostal preacher. The following day after school, Daniel walks Phoebe to his house, which he finds destroyed by two alien cats. The cats are regents of Seth's, and warn Daniel to leave LA. After attacking him, they flee. Soon after, he is contacted by Seth, who again warns Daniel to leave LA and never come back, or Seth is going to kill him. The next day, Daniel goes back to school and, so as not to seem too smart, purposely flunks a History test. He literally runs into Phoebe after the test. Phoebe has something to tell Daniel. She feels terrible for keeping secret the reason she had changed schools. A few months before, Phoebe's sister, Allison, had been abducted without a trace off of her own driveway. Daniel suspects it to be the work of Seth. On his way out of the school, he is attacked by some of Seth's henchmen. After incapacitating them, Daniel hurries home, where he finds his mom—only he didn't intentionally create her; he speculates he created her from his subconscious. Later that day, Phoebe calls Daniel to a coffee shop and gives him Allison's case file, which has details of other abductions that form a pattern, which Daniel describes as forming "an almost-perfect connect-the-dots circle with Malibu at its center." After his house is compromised (again), Daniel feels it is unsafe to return, so he goes to spend the night with Phoebe. They plot to go to Malibu the following day to investigate Allison's disappearance. Phoebe lets him sleep in the closet to avoid detection from her parents. The next morning, Daniel awakens to find Phoebe missing. He finds Phoebe near the school, but something is wrong. He talks to her, and she transforms, revealing herself to have been Ergent Seth in disguise all along. Seth deactivates Daniel's powers, shoots him in the stomach, and drags him through the desert and into a spaceship. The ship flies away from Earth. Daniel is put into a cell for the duration of the trip. He summons his friends, and they begin reconnaissance. During a poker game with his "family," Daniel figures out that his mother had been pregnant when she was killed, which also killed the unborn Pork Chop. Daniel is taken to the bridge as the ship comes to Alpar Nok, another planet very similar to Earth; it is Daniel's homeworld, only it has been taken over by Seth and his henchmen, killing or impoverishing most of the inhabitants. Daniel escapes from a landing party and flees to under the wreckage, where the few survivors live. He meets his grandmother, Blaleen, who removes the bullet from his stomach and allows him to rest and heal at her house. After regaining his strength, Daniel goes after Seth again and creates a thousand summoned soldiers, but they eventually fight one-on-one. Daniel misquotes Homer's Iliad by comparing this fight to Hector and Achilles rather than Paris and Menelaus. During the fight, Daniel turns into a tick and enters Seth's head via his ear. He transforms into an elephant inside Seth's head, killing him instantly. Daniel leaves Alpar Nok and returns to Earth, as it is his duty to defend it.
13749341	/m/03ch1kk	First Boy		2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dragged into the political turmoil of a presidential election year, fourteen-year-old Cooper Jewett, who has run a New Hampshire dairy farm since his grandfather's death, stands up for himself and makes it clear whose first boy he really is. Cooper never knew his parents and his birth certificate is blacked out. Who is Cooper Jewett really? Nobody Knows.
13751885	/m/03ch40q	The Royal Way				 The locations are, at the beginning of the book, the ship from Marseille to Indochina and a brothel; later it is set in Cambodia, Laos and Siam. The most important characters are young adventuresome Claude Vannec and an old experienced adventurer named Perken, a Dane with German associations. They relate to each other because of their nonconformism, which lets them collaborate to obtain their personal goals: the quest for the reliefs (for which they are motivated both archeologically and financially), as well as the search for a lost adventurer called Grabot. They succeed in stealing the reliefs. But they are abandoned by their guide and in a dangerous jungle. Because they fear the government, they chose a way through the uncontrolled territory of the Moïs. This region is dangerous, too – but on the other hand Grabot is supposed to be there. The adventurers have to defeat hostile vegetation and traps (e.g. swamps, giant insects, fleams). A deal is made with the Stiengs, but disintegrates as the adventurers find Grabot enslaved horribly. Now the adventurers are under siege. Perken, in a moment of lucidity and courage, manages to rescue the beleaguered ones. The price he pays is an injury to his knee, which progresses to ulcerating inflammation of the joint (in a time before the invention of antibiotics, at a place without any opportunity to do a sterile amputation), and he dies slowly in pain.
13754721	/m/03ch7js	Angel of Music, or The Private Life of Giselle				 Erik has not died, though his spirit is dead to the world. The Persian, the daroga (called "Aslan" in this novel), helps Erik out of mere pity, feeling sorry for him. Erik stays in the Opera but he has lost interest in life. But someone in the Opera has not lost interest in him. It is a beautiful and talented young ballerina, Camilla Fonteyn, a brave and charming girl, and a ball of fire. She adores mysteries and wants to solve the secret behind the Phantom of the Opera and that obscure affair of Christine Daae. She is persistent and quite soon encounters Erik - and in time her caring and love will bring him back to life and recover his spirits. But her charms work not only on Erik, but also on the poor daroga, who becomes her admirer, and unfortunately on a rich aristocrat, Anri Nerval, who turns out to be a mysterious "Parisian Vampire" - a maniac and sadist who haunts the night streets of Paris. He kills for the pleasure of seeing young women bleeding to death. He patronizes Camilla in her ballet career, as her greatest dream is to dance the part of Giselle in the ballet of the same name. She is truly bewildered by the fate of Giselle, the girl who died because of a broken heart but remained true to the man she'd loved even after her death. Nerval helps Camilla to receive the part, but later it turns out that he even may kill Camilla, if she won't fit in his plans or desires. He also pursues Erik, the "Phantom of the Opera", along with the Secret Police of France (who wants Erik's inventions and tricks).
13754808	/m/03ch7mj	The Captain of Köpenick	John Mortimer			 The first part of the play deals with the two parallel (and at some points intertwined) stories of Wilhelm Voigt himself and the uniform which plays a central role in the story, which is set in Potsdam, Berlin and Köpenick at around 1900. The uniform is originally made by the Jewish tailor Wormser for the Gardehauptmann (lit. "Captain of the Guard", but better translated as "Captain in the Guard Regiment") von Schlettow. But after a scandal in which von Schlettow is arrested by the police in civilian attire as he attempts to peacefully settle a bar brawl, initiated by a drunk grenadier, von Schlettow is forced to retire and the uniform is returned to Wormser. Eventually, the uniform is refitted for Dr. Obermüller, the mayor of Köpenick, for his promotion to Captain, but during a party afterwards the uniform is indelibly stained in an accidental spilling and ends up in a rag shop. Wilhelm Voigt, a trained shoemaker who has spent most of his life in prison, is released after yet another stint and tries to make an honest living in his advanced age. However, this is doomed to failure even from the outset as the militarized, inflexible society of the late German Empire offers practically nothing to citizens who have not served in the military (a fact which applies to Voigt). This catches him in a vicious circle: Without legal registration (just a simple passport would suffice) he can't get any work, and without any work he can't get a legal registration. In the end, a desperate Voigt resorts into breaking into a post office in order to get the passport, while his friend Kalle goes after the money, but both are caught in the process and Voigt once more goes to jail. During his ten-year stint in Sonneberg Prison, however, he gets formal military training, as the warden is a military enthusiast who enlists his convicts into re-enacting famous battles dating back to the Franco-Prussian War. After his discharge from prison, Voigt moves in with his sister Marie and his brother-in-law, Friedrich Hoprecht, and takes care of their lodger, a sick young girl named Liese. One evening, while reading a fairy tale to the girl, Voigt receives the official denial of his permit of residence application; this and Liese's death finally move him into resisting the cruel system he is caught in. He procures the uniform, whose authority by appearance and his trained military bearing enable him to recruit a group of grenadiers right off the street without any questions asked. Voigt and his team proceed to the Köpenick city hall where he has Obermüller and the whole city council arrested, but fails to procure a passport as he had intended (because the passport office is located elsewhere). The publicity which ensues from this feat label the Hauptmann von Köpenick, as he is nicknamed, a folk hero and prankster, but Voigt himself does not draw any joy from this. At length he surrenders to the authorities in exchange for the promise of a legal registration, providing the uniform to prove his identity as the Hauptmann. The police officers take his confession and surrender with surprisingly good humor, and in the end Voigt asks to see himself in a mirror dressed in the uniform, as he had not had the opportunity to do so yet. The policemen comply, and as he sees himself in the mirror, Voigt begins to laugh in amusement at his own reflection, guffawing the last line in the play: "Impossible!"
13755144	/m/03ch808	Stone Cold	Robert Swindells	1993	{"/m/026llv5": "Literary realism", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A young homeless boy, using the name of Link, recounts how he became homeless after his dad had left him and his mother. Subsequently, Link's mother began seeing Vince, a largely abusive man with a grudge against Link and his sister, Carole. After an argument, Carole moves out to live with her boyfriend. Despite the tension at home, Link performs well at school, successfully getting 5 GCSEs. But he fails to get a job and he sets his mind on leaving home like his sister. Link, however, has nowhere else to go, and is forced onto the streets, facing further hardships due to the close-knit nature of his community. He decides to travel to London instead, with £150 of savings and a sleeping bag on his back. After arriving in London, Link decides on a fresh start, finding a room and a job being top of his priorities. A local newsagent advertises a bedsit with negotiable rent, but due to the landlord's nature, Link is bullied into taking the room at a hefty cost; a fortnight's rent costs him two-thirds of his money. The scruffy, un-ironed clothes work little to Link's favour during job interviews, and Link is left unemployed and depressed after just 2 weeks. With only £9 left, Link is thrown out of the bedsit by the landlord and onto the streets. Facing the dangers of London's streets, Link is mugged for his watch, verbally abused and left without anywhere to sleep on a cold winter's night. Finding a small doorway, Link meets another homeless boy, the streetwise Ginger. Their relationship grows, and Ginger teaches Link how to survive on the streets. Meanwhile, a man nicknamed Shelter starts a spree of murders, targeting the homeless of London. Shelter, a discharged army veteran, served for twenty-nine years, being discharged on mental health grounds. He chooses to "clean up" the streets by luring homeless people into his home before killing them and hiding the bodies under his floorboards. Shelter plans very meticulously. He starts small and tries not to create a pattern in his killings so he cannot be tracked down. By buying a flat and a cat (because "owning a cat is unthreatening") he manages to lure many of the homeless to their deaths with promises of a warm shower and something to eat. While begging on the streets of London, Link and Ginger meet Shelter when they ask him for any spare change. Shelter replies in his usual manner; "Change! I'd change you if I had you in khaki for 6 weeks!". As they walk away he hears them laugh (although this is not mentioned by Link), greatly angering Shelter in the process. Due to these events, the pair become his targets – Laughing Boy One (Ginger) and Laughing Boy Two (Link). Ginger streetwise decides to meet up with some friends, but upon returning, Shelter persuades him to come to his flat, saying that Link is there lying on the floor after an accident. Once there, Shelter kills the hysterical Ginger. After some time, Link believes Ginger has gone off with his "real friends" and that he is on his own again. Shortly after this, Link meets a young girl, Gail, commenting that she is the best-looking "dosser" he has ever seen. He finds himself falling hopelessly in love with her. Link instinctively notices something "off" about Gail, but he does not act upon it, hoping not to lose another friend. After a series of events involving the family of Shelter's victims searching for their missing children, the same story is always given; an old man was seen matching the description of Shelter walking away with the victim. Link believes Ginger has met the same fate, and chooses to spy on Shelter. After an argument with Gail, Link observes Shelter alone, allowing Shelter to lure Link into the flat. In the ensuing struggle, Link manages to smash Shelter's window, which Gail notices, and informs the police; Shelter is caught in the act of attempted murder, and given life imprisonment. Gail tells Link that she does love him but reveals her true identity; she is in fact, an undercover reporter. Gail leaves Link with a handful of banknotes, and Link is left homeless and alone once again with an uncertain future.
13755249	/m/03ch87h	Wolf	Gillian Cross	1990	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cassy, who lives with her grandmother, is awakened by mysterious footsteps one night. The next day, as always when the footsteps are heard, she is sent away to live with her lovely but feckless mother, Goldie, in a squat in London. Goldie, her partner, and his teenage son are producing a play about wolves, and they encourage Cassy to become involved. Cassy does her best to adjust to her new life. However, this time she cannot escape a sense of dread: a feeling that she is being stalked and that something bad is coming. Her fear eventually focuses on the mystery of her missing father, and she learns the secret she has been protected from all her life—that her father is a notorious terrorist.
13755309	/m/03ch8d9	The Haunting	Margaret Mahy	1982-08	{"/m/048945": "Ghost story", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04gtgp": "Low fantasy"}	 Barney Palmer, a shy eight-year-old boy, discovers that one person in each generation of his family has had supernatural gifts – and this generation it seems to be him. He believes he is haunted by the ghost of an uncle he never met, and is oppressed by his fate. However, his sister Tabitha is determined to help him.
13755443	/m/03ch8kv	Tulku	Peter Dickinson	1979	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Thirteen-year-old Theodore lives in a remote region of China at his father's Mission. When the violence of the Boxer Rebellion finally reaches them, Theodore escapes alone from its destruction. He soon becomes one companion of a formidable Englishwoman, "painted, blasphemous, gun-toting Mrs Jones". She is an amateur botanist and a former actress with an entourage. The party flees bandits into Tibet and take refuge at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Theodore is briefly seen to be the Tulku, a great lama reincarnated; then the recently conceived child of Mrs Jones and her Chinese lover is identified as the one. Theodore is exposed to the "magnetic, repugnant rituals of Buddhism" and develops as a "whole, willing Christian". Mrs Jones is recruited to remain on site and the boy finally returns to England with the fruit of her botanical expedition.
13755557	/m/03ch8nl	Sea Change	Richard Armstrong	1947	{"/m/026llv5": "Literary realism", "/m/07m5w1": "Sea story", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Cam Renton has been an apprentice seaman for a year when he arrives at Liverpool to join the crew of the Langdale, a cargo ship heading for Barbados and the Spanish Main. He is working towards becoming an officer and someday captain of his own ship. Because he is dissatisfied with the progress of his training, he asks the Chief Mate for assignment to one of the night watches rather than to routine day-work. The mate gives him short shrift, and during the outward voyage the two are at odds. Rankling under a sense of injustice, Cam devises a scheme to make the mate think he is haunted by a whistling poltergeist. However, he soon realizes this is childish and futile. When they reach the Venezuela, Cam takes a rare opportunity to go ashore at Boca del Sol, a fictional seaport. He and his bunkmate Rusty find themselves in the local prison after a misunderstanding. Cam executes a daring escape, but Captain Carey already has the matter well in hand, and he tells Cam a few home truths showing him that he is getting an excellent training in seamanship, thanks to the mate. Afterward Cam starts to work and study in earnest, and his knowledge of navigation and semaphore are put to use when he becomes part of a skeleton crew aboard a salvaged derelict.
13755638	/m/03ch8rp	Death's Shadow	Darren Shan	2008-05-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book starts about six months after the events of Demon Apocalypse concluded, and is narrated by Bec, who is living staying with Dervish. This novel reveals more information about Beranabus, Kernel, Grubbs, and Bec, as well as the continuing search for information on using the on the great mystical weapon, Kah-Gash of which is sealed inside Grubbs, Kernel and Bec. More information on the mysterious foe known as 'the Shadow' (seen at the climax of Demon Apocalypse) is also discovered.
13755898	/m/03ch90z	Beast	Ally Kennen	2006-06-29	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Stephen is a 17 year old foster child living on the edge of the law. He has moved from family to family, all the time guarding a great secret. He harbors a huge crocodilan beast, ferocious from birth, bequeathed to him by his criminal father when Stephen was a child. Beast tells the story of his murderous intents toward this monster and his growing relationships, as well as frequently reliving his childhood through flashbacks.
13756090	/m/03ch96t	Clay	David Almond	2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Davie befriends Stephen Rose, who has come to live with his crazy aunt. He's a quiet boy with a passion for making clay models and an unusual, rather sinister, cast of mind. David and his friends Geordie and Frances come to believe that Stephen may be able to help them against the local bully Mouldy and his gang.
13756339	/m/03ch9h1	Framed	Frank Cottrell Boyce	2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Framed, set in North Wales, is the story of how paintings moved from the National Gallery in London affect the fictional town of Manod. Dylan is the only boy living in the tiny Welsh town of Manod. His parents run the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel garage—and when he's not trying to persuade his sisters to play football, Dylan is in charge of the petrol log. And, that means he gets to keep track of everyone coming in and out of Manod- what car they drive, what they're called, even their favourite flavour of crisps. But when a mysterious convoy of lorries trundles up the misty mountainside towards an old, disused mine, even Dylan is confounded. Who are these people and what have they got to hide? This is a story inspired by a press cutting describing how, during WWII, the treasured contents of London's National Gallery were stored in Welsh slate mines. Once a month, a morale-boosting masterpiece would be unveiled in the village and then returned to London for viewing. This is a funny and touching exploration of how art — its beauty and its value — touches the life of one little boy and his big family in a very small town.
13756643	/m/03ch9t0	Turbulence			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Turbulence relates the story of Clay, a sixteen year old girl on the verge of taking her GCSEs. She has a brother, called Jamze, who grunts rather than talks, a little sister who always has to be the centre of attention, a dad who she watches Westerns with, a gran who likes horror films, and a mum who invites The Stranger To Dinner. The stranger's name is Sandor, and he is suave, sophisticated, and ingratiating. One by one, Clay's family and friends find themselves sucked into his life and its many dramas, and it is this situation that makes for much of the turbulence that the title refers to.
13756791	/m/03ch9tq	Bloodline	F. Paul Wilson	2007-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel begins a bit after Gia and Vicky recover from the accident brought by the yenceri. Gia, as always persuades Jack to do some fix-its, on the condition that he does not risk too much. The persuasion was followed when a middle-aged woman named Christy Pickering asks for Jack's help. Jack finds that Christy has been having a problem with her daughter Dawn, she is dating a man Jerry Bethlehem, about twice her age (or as Christy puts it: "Old enough to be her father"). The problem is actually with her PI who has just disappeared. Along the way of looking into Bethlehem life, Jack begins to realize a connection between Bethlehem and the leader(Hank Thompson) of a new movement called the Kickers. It seems that both Hank and Jerry went to the same criminal institute known to take extremely violent criminals, the Creighton Institute. Further investigation leads Jack to finding the detective murdered in ways of a water torture. Jack later finds that not only are Hank and Jerry related by Creighton but also by the newfound mysterious oDNA found there. It comes to Jack that the 'o' stands for the wrong side of his life, the Other. He also finds that Jerry is not his real name, it is actually Jeremy Bolton, a sociopath who was captured for a crime far down in Atlanta, GA: the Atlanta Abortion Murders. After getting Dawn pregnant he starts acting differently, showing his true self to her. Upon finding out of her daughters pregnancy, Christy is found dead, presumed suicide by slashing her wrists. Before her death, Jack investigates on the whereabouts of Dawn's father who has never been mentioned by Christy, only to be enlightened with the truth that Dawn is a rape-baby. Further investigation in the oDNA it is realized that Hank, Moonglow(Christy), and Jeremy are all the children of the mysterious oDNA filled Jonah Stevens. As all the pieces come together Jack finds the final piece revealing a dark secret, Jeremy is Dawn's father.
13757070	/m/03chb0l	The Edge	Alan Gibbons	2002-07-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the start of the book, a mother and her son escape from their evil stepfather. The stepfather, named Chris, hears them and chases them to the local tube station, though he is unsuccessful in his efforts to catch them. Unknown to Chris, the mother, Cathy, and the son, Danny, are going to live with Cathy's mother and father, Joan and Harry, in an area of the country known as "the Edge". Chris believes that he owns Cathy, and tries to get her back. At first, Harry refuses to accept Danny because he is both Mixed Race, and the result of an unplanned teenage pregnancy. As the book progresses, Harry accepts Danny as his grandson. Danny has a lot of trouble at school with a racist bully named Steve Parker and his friends. Danny befriends, and later dates a girl called Nikki, who Steve fancies. Nikki warns him not to get on the wrong side of Steve; it is implied in the novel that Steve and his gang were responsible for an arson attack on a black-owned store. Also during this time Danny encounters his real father, a man named Des, who saves him from Steve's gang. Chris, meanwhile, is attempting in vain to find out where Cathy fled to. She covered her tracks well leaving virtually no clues. Eventually, he finds a newspaper article, and is able to deduce where she and Danny have gone. Chris shows up at Danny's new school, and chases him back to the house. Attempting to retake Cathy by force, he overpowers Harry, before being restrained by police officers. At the end of the novel, Chris is in prison, and Danny now has a happy family and a good life.
13757473	/m/03chbb4	Doomwyte	Brian Jacques	2008-10-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The magpie Griv, resting from a storm, listens to the story of the Dibbun Bisky, about how his ancestor Gonff the Mousethief stole four great jewels from the Great Doomwyte Idol. However, the listeners, all fellow Dibbuns, disbelieve the story and lands Bisky in a pillowfight with the squirrel Dwink. Griv leaves for the lair of the Doomwytes, of which she is a member, and tells the Wytes' leader, Korvus Skurr, about the jewels. Bisky and Dwink are caught in their fight by the infirmary keeper Brother Torilis, who reports them to Abbot Glisam. While reporting to Abbot Glisam, Bisky tells him of his story. Samolus Fixa, a relative of Bisky's, overhears them and confirms to Glisam that there is truth in Bisky's story. Samolus, Bisky and Dwink dig through the Abbey records in the gatehouse, coming upon the journal of Lady Columbine (Gonff's wife), Young Dinny (Gonff's friend) and Gonff himself. All three tell a similar account of Gonff stealing the jewels and offering them to Columbine, who refuses to have them because they have seen too much evil. Gonff then composes riddles to the location of the jewels. Korvus Skurr and his smoothsnake adviser Sicariss hear and believe Griv's story. Thinking that the jewels are within Redwall, Korvus sends crows to kidnap a Redwaller to verify the story. However, a crow is killed by the hare Laird Bosie McScutta of Bowlaynee, and the others subsequently retreat. The Redwallers, having seen this, offers Bosie the position of Abbey Warrior, which he accepts. Korvus, not giving up, now sends his best warriors, the Ravenwytes. Led by the crow Veeku, the Ravenwytes are much more skilled (and brave) than their crow counterparts, and finally manage to capture a squirrel Dibbun. Fortunately Bosie comes to the rescue again, killing a Ravenwyte. All the Ravenwytes, except one named Tarul, flee in panic. Korvus then makes a pact with the giant adder Baliss. Although Baliss is blind, his extraordinary sense of smell and touch compensate for this handicap. Korvus offers all his reptiles to Baliss to eat, in exchange for Baliss's services, which the adder agrees. Luck, however, was not on Korvus's side as Sicariss overhears and begins to distrust him. The party searching for the jewels, which included Bisky, Dwink, Samolus, Skipper Rorgus, Foremole Gullub Gurrpaw and Gatekeeper Umfry Spikkle, attempt to solve Gonff's riddle, which leads them to the cellar and, from there, to an underground tunnel. The tunnel eventually splits, and so does the party. Bisky, Rorgus and Umfry go down one, Samolus, Bosie and Dwink go down another, and Foremole Gullub stays behind to guard the rations. Tarul, having been starved and nearly deafened due to his hiding place near the belltower, finally sees his chance when two Dibbuns come and ring the bells. However, just as Tarul goes between the bells, Sister Violet comes to help and the bells squash Tarul, resulting in his death. Bisky, Rorgus and Umfry encounter Painted Ones at the end of their tunnel, while Samolus, Bosie and Dwink encounter the owl Aluco down theirs. Aluco uses a green jewel to scare away the Painted Ones, and upon close inspection the jewel is revealed to be an eye to the Doomwyte Idol. Aluco agrees to help them, and the company eludes the Painted Ones and re-enter Redwall. However, Bisky is captured by the Painted Ones. After Tarul's death, Cellerhog Corksnout Spikkle (Umfry's father) is ordered to dispose of his body. Baliss arrives just as Corksnout is disposing of Tarul. Sensing a quick meal, Baliss attempts to eat Tarul, but instead headbutts Corksnout. With Corksnout's spikes trapped in his head, Baliss becomes insane and goes after Korvus, whom he blames. Bisky, in captivity, is quickly irritated by Jeg, the son of Chief Chigid. He is joined by a Guosim shrew, Dubble, who is escaping from his bully father, Log-a-Log Tugga Bruster. Dubble and Bisky escape but are captured almost immediately by a tribe of bickering mice called the Gonfelins, who are descendents of Gonff and therefore Bisky's distant relatives. The two meet Pikehead Nokko, head of the Gonfelins, and he reveals that they have a Doomwyte jewel. Bisky also meets Nokko's daughter Spingo, and they become great friends. Tugga Bruster and the Guosim arrive at Redwall and are from there guided to the Painted Ones' lair to rescue Bisky and Dubble. Unbeknownst to them, Bisky and Dubble are leading the Gonfelins to the Painted Ones' lair anyway. The Redwallers and the Guosim see Baliss thrashing around in madness due to Corksnout's spikes, and are soon ambushed by the Painted Ones. However, the Gonfelins arrive just then and the Painted Ones are heavily outnumbered. This, coupled with the death of their chief, Chigid, prompts many Painted Ones to surrender. Tala, wife of Chigid, swears revenge to Tugga Bruster, who had killed her husband. Dubble, upon seeing that Jeg was not with the Painted Ones, chases after him in Mossflower. Jeg had tricked Dwink away from the group and is preparing a fire to burn him when Dubble arrives. After freeing Dwink, Dubble chases after Jeg, and they fight. Before Dubble kills him, Jeg is eaten by Baliss. The Redwallers, Guosim and Gonfelins return to Redwall, unbeknownst that Dubble is not with them. Tugga Bruster then gets humiliated by Nokko, and, to get his own, he attempts to steal Aluco's emerald and make it look like Nokko did it. Unfortunately for him he is caught by Dwink, whose footpaw he breaks. However, by that time most of the Abbey had arrived and the Guosim banish Tugga Bruster. After leaving the Abbey, Tugga Bruster is killed by Tala, who was lurking in the ditch by the Abbey. Dubble goes into a less fimiliar part of Mossflower and is attacked by carrion crows. A black otter, Zaran the Black, drives them off and allows Dubble to rest in her home. She tells him that she is plotting revenge against Korvus Skurr and the Doomwytes, because it was Korvus who killed her husband and young one. Zaran is digging above the Doomwytes' lair in order to make it collapse and cave in, suffocating the inhabitants inside. Baliss has arrived at the Doomwytes' lair and has caved in a single entrance, blocking himself and the Wytes' inside. In a panic, the carrion crows and rooks begin frantically eating their reptilian counterparts, with only Sicariss being spared. Baliss is desperately trying to find cool water to stop his pain momentarily. He finds a lake, and is attacked by Welzz, Korvus Skurr's giant pet catfish. Baliss kills him in defense. Bisky and Spingo steal a Guosim logboat to sail down the River Moss and attempt to find Dubble. They find him and Zaran above the Doomwytes' lair, doing their tunneling operation. Bisky and Spingo join but Spingo gets buried alive in a depression. Zaran makes holes for her to breathe while Bisky and Dubble return to Redwall for help. At the abbey, Dwink, Rorgus and Foremole are joined in their search by Perrit, a female squirrel. Gonff's next clue frequently cites "Friar's Grace" which turns out to be a clay pot made by Goody Stickle. To Brother Torilis's dismay, the searchers break the pot, revealing another green emerald and the next clue. Going on, the clue mentions the "wild sweet gatherers home" which turns out to be outside the Abbey. They eventually find loads and loads of bees, and among them, Blodd Apis, a mad, mentally deranged hedgehog. Despite her madness, Apis is very cunning. She manages to get them all drunk on her mead while she is unaffected because she lives on it. She was about to pour wood ants' juice on them to make her bees sting them to death when Foremole, who proved less potent to the drink, smashes the juice on her. the bees then promptly kill Apis. Searching her body, the searchers find another Doomwyte jewel, a ruby this time. Bisky and Dubble arrive just after Dwink, Rorgus, Foremole and Perrit leave. They inform the Redwallers about the situation above the Doomwytes' lair, and Friar Skurpul leads the moles to the rescue as Deputy Foremole. Bisky and Dubble return with loads of Guosim, Gonfelins and Redwall moles. On the way, Dubble is offered the position of Log-a-log. However, he refuses and gives the title to Garul, an older shrew. The moles manage to successfully rescue Spingo, but Skurpul is buried alive in her place. Upon seeing the chaos in the Doomwytes' lair, the woodlanders attempt to finish off the dirty work. Bisky, Nokko, Dubble and Bosie attempt to rescue the moles trapped on the ceiling. Three moles fall to their deaths, but the rest are saved. Korvus then sees that Sicariss was lying to him all along. After killing the smoothsnake, he attempts to escape through a recess in the wall. Zaran was too skilled and had worked too hard to be denied by now, and she promptly kills Korvus. Bosie also suffers a serious wound from Veeku and goes into the Bloodwrath, slaying dozens of Wytes. Eventually, the battle is won and the Wytes defeated. However, Baliss is still in the cave. To trap him there, Gobbo, a member of the Gonfelins, makes a fire at the entrance. Bosie, Zaran, Spingo and the mole Frubb collapse the Doomwytes' lair, crushing Baliss inside. The party then returns to Redwall, where they have a great feast, mainly composing of Dubble's dishes. The Abbey mourns the death of Skurpul, Ruttur, Rooter and Grabul, the moles who died saving Spingo. Nokko then hands over the last Doomwyte jewel and declares the Gonfelins as citizens of Redwall. Abbot Glisam, seeing that the jewels have seen too much evil, buries them in the memory of the moles on top of the crushed Doomwyte rock. Seasons later, Perrit becomes Mother Abbess of Redwall and has a daughter, Mittee, with Dwink. Zaran marries Rorgus and has Rorzan, a son. Bisky and Spingo have another daughter, Andio, and Dubble becomes head Friar of the Kitchen. Glisam, having retired as Abbot, becomes Abbey Teacher, teaching the illiterate Umfry Spikkle how to read and write.
13757963	/m/03chbng	Troy			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It starts ten years into the Trojan War. Xanthe and Marpessa are sisters living in Troy, which is besieged by the Greeks. After Paris swept Helen away from her husband in Greece to his home in Troy, Menelaus started a war to win her back. The Gods have already decided its outcome of the war. The Goddess Aphrodite, who started it all when she promised Paris the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, is tired of the war. Therefore, she turns her attention to the two sisters. When her son Eros, the God of Love, aims his love arrow, neither of the sisters can escape its power. They both fall in love with Alastor, a handsome fallen soldier with power. The story is filled with encounters with Greek gods, which only Marpessa can remember.
13758112	/m/03chbs7	Little Soldier	Bernard Ashley		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kaninda, who escaped when his family was gunned down in their own home in Africa, is now in London. He longs to escape back to his country of Lasai so that he can avenge his family. Meanwhile, on the streets of London another form of tribal warfare - gang warfare - threatens to draw him in.
13758156	/m/03x_lxs	Harlequin	Bernard Cornwell	2000-10-16	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 ;Prologue: The narrative begins in the village of Hookton, where Thomas is growing up under his once mad father, who is also the village priest. Thomas has been training secretly with a bow, despite the fact that his father forbids it. On Easter Morning, 1342, a French party of raiders arrive under the command of Sir Guillaume d'Evecque, a French Knight whose crest is a blue field with three golden hawks on it. Also with Sir Guillaume is a warrior dressed all in silver, known simply as the Harlequin, who has hired Sir Guillaume to carry out the raid to steal Hookton's treasure, the Lance of St. George. The Harlequin kills Thomas' father, and the lance is stolen. Thomas manages to reach his bow and kill four of the raiders, but the Harlequin and Sir Guillaume both escape. ;Brittany: The book then moves forward by four years. Thomas has gone to France to serve in the English army and take vengeance on his father's killers. He is serving under a competent commander, Will Skeat, and the army is besieging the city of La Roche-Derrien. The army assaults the city and is beaten back with many losses. Among the city defenders is the Blackbird, a woman who fights with a crossbow. Her real name is Jeanette, and she is the countess of Amorica. She wounds an English knight, Sir Simon Jekyll, in the arm after the assault, and Jekyll vows revenge. Skeat and Thomas later visit the army commander, the Earl of Northampton. Thomas has discovered a way to assault the city from the rear- a weak wooden palisade is all that prevents the army's entry, and they are weakly placed. The Earl gives Thomas permission to lead an assault, with Jekyll in nominal command (though everyone in the army hates him). Thomas and his men successfully penetrate the city, open the gates and the town is sacked. During the onslaught Jekyll encounters Jeanette and attempts to rape her, but is prevented by the Earl, who walks in on him with his pants down. Jekyll is chastised for his actions, but the war calls the Earl away to another campaign. Skeat and his men, including Thomas, are left to garrison the captured city. Thomas and his men guard Jeanette from Sir Simon, but Jeanette will not let them in her house. As the days go by, Skeat and his men conduct a series of raids on French villages. A small French force from Lannion under the command of Sir Geoffrey de Pont Blanc attempts to destroy Skeat's army, but Skeat refuses to fight him. Jekyll, however, is eager for plunder, so he and his men battle Sir Geoffrey's force. Jekyll loses the battle despite putting up a powerful defense, and Geoffrey then attempts to charge Skeat's archers. His force is mowed down and destroyed by the English longbows, and Thomas captures him, but lets him go, to Jekyll's fury. Thomas' response is to tell Jekyll to "go and boil your arse". Later that night, Thomas is ambushed by Jekyll's men and brutally beaten, but he is saved by Father Hobbe, a friend who constantly reminds him of his vow of revenge. Thomas then befriends Jeanette and the two make a plan to take revenge on Jekyll. Skeat and his men then move to attack Lannion, weakened by the loss of Geoffrey's force. During the attack Geoffrey is killed by Thomas. A French relief force attempts to destroy the English, but they are destroyed by Skeat's archers. That night, Thomas and Jeanette lure Jekyll out of the town. He attempts to rape Jeanette again, and Thomas tries to kill him, he shoots Jekyll's squire, and injures Jekyll but Jekyll escapes. ;Normandy: Thomas and Jeanette can no longer stay at La Roche-Derrien, as Jekyll will kill them both, so they decide to take refuge with the Duke of Brittany who Jeanette is related to through her husband. The Duke, however, is inhospitable; He rapes Jeanette and kidnaps her son, but Jeanette escapes with Thomas. She is traumatized by the event, but Thomas nurses her back to health. The two then rejoin the main English army under Edward III that has invaded the channel. Jeanette becomes attached to the Black Prince as a Lady of Honour. Thomas takes part in the assault on the French city of Caen. During the battle he recognizes the coat of arms of Sir Guillaume d'Evecque, and shoots him in the thigh. He also rescues a young woman named Eleanor from being raped by an English man-at-arms. As he leaves the house, Jekyll sees him and knocks him unconscious, afterwards leaving him to hang. Thomas is rescued by Eleanor, who is revealed to be Sir Guillaume's illegitimate child. Sir Guillaume appears to Thomas with a missing eye, along with the wound Thomas gave him. Sir Guillaume tells Thomas that it was the Harlequin who gave him the wound. Sir Guillaume, like Thomas, wants to kill the Harlequin, and the two become friends. Thomas is nursed back to health by a Jewish doctor named Mordecai. Meanwhile Jeanette confronts Jekyll in front of the Prince, who has Jekyll banished from the army. Thomas learns a great deal about his family from Sir Guillaume and a churchman in Caen. His father was a member of the infamous Vexille family- the former counts of Astarac and descendants of the Cathar heretics. Thomas also learns that the Vexille family may be in possession of the Holy Grail, and the Harlequin had gone to Hookton to find it as well as the Lance of St. George. Despite this new information Thomas decides to return to the English army with Eleanor who becomes his lover and simply be an archer for the time being. Meanwhile Sir Simon Jekyll decides to join the French army for a chance to take revenge on both Jeanette and the Black Prince. He impresses several knights through his battle skills, and even manages to defeat a black knight- the Harlequin, who reveals himself to be Guy Vexille, the Count of Astarac, and Thomas' cousin. ;Crecy: Thomas manages to rejoin Will Skeat's band and helps the English defeat a French force guarding a river ford in the battle of Blanchetaque. The two armies then line up for battle at Crecy. Sir Guillaume, Sir Simon, and Guy Vexille are all on the French side. During the epic battle the French are massacred by the English arrows, but the fighting soon becomes hand to hand. Jekyll encounters Thomas on the battlefield and attempts to kill him, but Sir Guillaume stabs Jekyll in the side and kills him. Sir Guillaume then encounters Vexille and tries to kill him, as do Thomas and Skeat. Vexille severely wounds Skeat in the head, and Sir Guillaume is nearly killed by the English, though Thomas rescues him. Guy manages to escape, though not before he recognizes Thomas. Skeat is sent to Mordecai to recover and Sir Guillaume is set free to help him.
13760435	/m/03chfcr	All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye	Christopher Brookmyre	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jane Fleming, a 46-year-old housewife and grandmother, lives a quiet life in suburban East Kilbride. All that changes when her son, Ross, who works in the arms industry, is forced into hiding when his latest research attracts unwanted attention. Aided by the mysterious Bett, Jane must confront drug dealers, assassins and ruthless arms dealers in order to save her son.
13762484	/m/03chhnh	A Big Boy did it and Ran Away	Christopher Brookmyre	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 Anti-terrorist forces are put on alert when it is learned that the notorious international terrorist the Black Spirit plans to perform an attack on an unknown British target. Meanwhile, 30-something Raymond Ash is struggling to cope with the banality of his new life as an English teacher, having sold his video game shop and decided to settle down with his wife and new baby. While visiting Glasgow airport he sees his old friend Simon Darcourt who supposedly died when terrorists blew up an airliner a few years before. He has no idea that Darcourt is in reality the Black Spirit. Darcourt for his part sees Raymond and decides to settle an old score with him by incorporating him into his terrorist plot. Raymond ends up being abducted by Darcourt's terrorists and escaping, then finds himself aiding policewoman Angelique de Xavia in a valiant attempt to foil their plot, the two being the only people with a chance of reaching the site of the attack in time - the hydroelectric plant at Dubh Ardrain.
13765096	/m/03chl76	Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie	David Lubar	2005	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie follows the character of Scott Hudson as he attempts to survive high school and attract the attention of his crush Julia, a beautiful freshman. If dealing with school activities and growing up isn't stressful enough, Scott's mother has announced that she's going to have a baby. In an attempt to make all of this more manageable, Scott tries to write down tips for getting through daily life and high school for his unborn sibling.
13765864	/m/03chm2h	The Boy and the Darkness	Sergey Lukyanenko	1997	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's protagonist, Danny (), accidentally encounters a Sunny Kitten, a being made of True Light (sunlight appearing only at dusk or dawn) reflected off a True Mirror. The Kitten offers the boy a magical adventure and reveals a Secret Door, explaining that each world is connected to another with three such gateways. The world they find is completely without sunlight. Soon, Danny discovers that, in this world, humans sold their sunlight to otherworldly traders for certain comforts of modern civilization (electricity, hot water, indoor plumbing, etc.) and magical Wings. These Wings allow a child no older than 20 (adults are too heavy) to literally take off and fly as a bird. As such, most male children become Wingers, defending their cities against the creatures of the Dark - Flyings, living in dark towers across the world. The Flyings used to be human, but most turned to Darkness to allow them to eternally feel the winds and fly free. They serve a mysterious Dark Lord and have weapons capable of wiping out cities whole. However, due to an unspoke status quo, the Flyings refrain from using the Black Fire (similar to napalm or Greek fire), and the Wingers stick to defending their cities and do not mount organized attacks against the creatures of Darkness. Danny soon becomes an Elder Winger (Wingers always fly in pairs), taking a young boy-Winger named Lan as his Younger, despite them being roughly the same age. After Danny lets a wounded Flying go, the other Elders blind him with a knife, and only the Kitten is able to use the power of the Light to heal his eyes, unintentionally giving him True Sight (he can see through low-density objects and see to the very core of living things). Soon, a trio of traders arrives to their city, and Danny hires both of them out as escorts until they reach the traders' city. While defending the caravan against a Flying attack, Lan is taken prisoner. Danny manages to rescue him, destroying a tower in the process as well as the second Secret Door home, but Lan is already poisoned with the Darkness. His essence is slowly being stripped away from him, and Danny does all he can to ensure that his friend remains human. After arriving to the traders' city, the Kitten takes the boys to an arms shop, where he demands that the shop owner sell them the True Sword, the only weapon capable of defeating the Dark Lord. The shopkeep, at first, tries to sell them several other powerful swords, acquired on other worlds; however, the Kitten remains adamant. The shopkeep gives in and explains Danny the nature of the Sword - it can only be used once and only against the wielder's True Enemy. In order to get the sword, the boy must pass through several trials, facing his True Fear - the Darkness. After that, Garet, the wife of the trader whom they escorted earlier, offers the boys a boat ride to a sunny world. Garet and her daughter pass their sailing boat through a portal. After a bit of swimming in the nude, Garet pulls Danny into a secret hold and makes love to him. After that, Danny discovers that the Kitten knew about it and, possibly, even set it up. Danny needed to grow up really fast, as, on the inside, he was already a man trapped in a teenager's body. Angry, Danny demands they return to Lan's world, and the two Wingers and the Kitten return to their city, trying to convince the people that they must organize and take the fight to the tower of the Dark Lord. Unwilling to listen to Danny, the Wingers refuse. The Kitten and Lan then tell Danny that they must force the Wingers' hand by dropping a few canisters of the Black Fire onto the city, making it seem as a Flying attack. After raiding a nearby tower, they find a dying Flying who reveals that he was brought to this world the same way as Danny - by a Kitten of his own, but chose Darkness instead of the Light. Taking the canisters, they return home and argue who should drop them. During a distraction, Lan takes the Fire and drops it onto the city from high altitude. While many people die, Shoki, the Wingers' unofficial leader, still refuses to be baited. However, his grandfather then dies in the fire, and Shoki finally decides to fight. Taking all the Wingers and several thousand adults as foot soldiers, they march onto the main tower. In the final battle, the Wingers and the adults distract the main Flying force, while Danny, Lan, and the Kitten sneak into the tower to find the Lord. The Kitten soon abandons the boys, saying that he must go into the tower basement, where the Flyings keep a large cache of Sun Stones, from which he can draw the Light. The Kitten intends to become the new sun, hoping that the love of humans across the world will give him fuel. The boys continue moving through the tower. Eventually, they reach a mirrored room, where they encounter a former Winger, with a score to settle with Danny. He reveals that there is no such thing as a Dark Lord. He is simply the Current One, the most qualified to deal with a specific problem - Danny, in this case. Then appears Lan's former Elder, who joined the Flyings shortly before Danny's arrival. They both begin to cause the Darkness to take over Lan, and he joins their side. Danny must figure out who is his True Enemy and strike him down. He turns around and sees his reflection in a mirror as an adult. Realizing that he is his own True Enemy, Danny uses the True Sword to destroy his adult essence, leaving him a boy again. As the three dark creatures prepare to attack, Lan once again changes sides and kills the Current One, but himself falls from the other Flying's sword. Danny manages to push the Flying to open the third Secret Door to Earth, where the sunlight kills the creature of Darkness, also destroying the door in the process. As the Kitten offers to grant him one last wish - to return home, Danny uses the Kitten's sun's Light to revive Lan, purging him of Darkness. They fly away moments before the tower crumbles to dust. The new sun breaks through the eternal dark, and the Wingers see the sunlight for the first time in their lives. The war is over. Danny and Lan return home. As the sun begins to set, Lan brings out a mirrored box, and Danny realizes that it is a True Mirror. The last rays of sunlight reflect off the mirror, and the Kitten reappears, claiming that he is simply a version of his now much larger self. He reveals to them another Secret Door, leading to a world other than Earth. From there, he hopes to find a doorway to Earth. The novel ends with the three characters stepping across the threshold, apparently into a world filled with werewolves.
13766203	/m/03chmf7	South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today		2006-12-01	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book includes contributions from twenty-two academics in the field of philosophy. Topics include issues of sexuality involved in depicting Saddam Hussein and Satan as gay lovers, existentialism as applied to the death of Kenny, and a debate about whether feminists can enjoy the show due to some of its misogynistic characters. The contributors to the work utilize philosophical concepts derived from Plato, Aristotle, Freud and Sartre and place them in a South Park context. The book's contributors all attempted to analyze the philosophical and cultural aspects of South Park in the work. One of the authors, David Koepsell, wrote about the controversial episode dealing with Scientology, entitled: "Trapped in the Closet". Koepsell cited the fact that the series won a Peabody Award due to its willingness to criticize intolerance in April 2006 as a "special concern for criticizing and countering intolerance", and the notion that "the Church of Scientology suffers from the widely held perceptions that it seeks to silence former members and others who criticize its beliefs and practices" as the motivation behind the episode. Koepsell analyzed Comedy Central's reaction to the episode itself, in a section of his book entitled "2005-2006: Comedy Central Caves". He mentions South Park's usage of the onscreen caption "this is what Scientologists actually believe." in the episode, noting that the same device was used in the episode "All About the Mormons?." In referencing this similar use of the onscreen caption device, Koepsell seemed to point to an inconsistency in the behavior of Comedy Central relative to the episode. He explained "By a long shot, this show was more kind to Scientology than was "All About the Mormons" to Mormonism." He noted Comedy Central had suggested it would not rebroadcast the episode for the second time, though it later announced on July 12, 2006 that it would. The book can thus be summed up in the following sentence: "Perhaps the truth is in the middle."
13771074	/m/03chsyv	Emily's Quest	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1927	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Emily Starr and Teddy Kent have been friends since childhood, and as Teddy is about to leave to further his education as an artist, Emily believes that their friendship is blossoming into something more. On his last night at home, they vow to think of each other when they see the star Vega of the Lyre. As Emily grows as a writer and learns to deal with the loneliness of having her closest friends gone, life at New Moon changes. Mr. Carpenter, Emily's most truthful critic and favorite teacher dies (warning Emily, even as he dies to "Beware --- of --- italics."). She becomes closer to Dean Priest, even as she fears he wants love when she only has friendship to give. Worst of all, Emily and Teddy become distant as he focuses on building his career and she hides her feelings behind pride. Disappointed by her failed romance, Emily throws herself into her work and writes a novel A Seller of Dreams. Several publishers reject it so she submits it to the opinion of Dean Priest, the only person she feels is capable of giving her an honest opinion. Dean lies to Emily and tells her the book is "pretty and flimsy". In her grief, Emily burns the manuscript and then, crazed by what she has done, she rushes out the door, only to trip on the stairs and have her foot pierced terribly by scissors. The injury and subsequent blood poisoning threaten Emily's life. Dean comforts her through her long recovery, and she comes to depend on his companionship. She recovers her health but loses her desire to write. Eventually, she decides to marry Dean. Their engagement is a mixture of happiness and, for Emily, feelings of imprisonment. Emily's happiest moments come while furnishing the Disappointed House, which Emily has always loved. One night after the house was complete, Emily feels drawn to it and has an out-of-body experience where she saves Teddy from sailing on the doomed Flavian. Emily realizes she loves Teddy. She breaks off her engagement but grieves over the loss of Dean's friendship. Before he leaves, Dean tells her that he thought her book was good but he was jealous of her having something apart from him. Although devastated by this revelation, since she can never get her book back, Emily's faith in her talent is restored. After breaking off her engagement, Emily regains her ability to write and has one golden summer where she and Teddy almost share their love. Misunderstanding and Emily's pride keep them apart, and Teddy leaves with no goodbye and nothing more than a newspaper clipping. Emily goes through another series of comic courtships and writes a novel to keep her Aunt Elizabeth amused while she is bedridden. Her novel is eventually published, but the joy of its publication is ruined when she hears that Teddy is engaged to her best friend, Ilse Burnley. The engagement causes a strange friendship to grow between Emily and Mrs. Kent, Teddy's jealous mother, which eventually results in Mrs. Kent revealing that she had replaced a letter in which Teddy confessed his love to Emily with a newspaper clipping. Emily says that Teddy must never be told of this, but triumphs in the knowledge that he did love her once. The day of Ilse and Teddy's wedding comes. Just before the ceremony, Ilse hears of the near death of their old friend Perry Miller. Ilse rushes off, declares her love for Perry, and leaves Teddy angry and ashamed. Ilse, true to form, laughs the matter off and eventually marries Perry. Years pass without Emily hearing of Teddy until she unexpectedly hears his old call. She goes to him, and years of misunderstanding and pride are swept away with a look. Dean, hearing of their engagement, gives the Disappointed House to Emily and Teddy and promises his future friendship.
13775265	/m/03chyl5	Nebula Maker	Olaf Stapledon	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As in Star Maker, the book begins with a single human observer staring at the sky and considering the immensity of the cosmos. From that point, however, the similarities end. The narrator of Nebula Maker immediately sees the face of the creator - an ever-shifting mask of constant change, human then alien, demonic then angelic. The narrator watches in wonder as this vision of God creates our universe. The universe is peopled at first by the immense, bizarre lifeforms whose history takes up the rest of the manuscript - the nebulae. Singularly or in clusters, these vast entities come to consciousness and express their passions through a frenzied cosmic dance. Some, however become perverted and fanatical, and war breaks out in the heavens. It is discovered that nebulae can journey to other nebulae if they feed on the dead "flesh" of their fellows, and this development fuels aeons of conflict. The novel then focuses on two individual nebulae, Bright Heart and Fire Bolt, who embody the human types Stapledon was most fascinated by - the saint and the revolutionary. Bright Heart preaches peace, and is martyred for his troubles; Fire Bolt brings about revolution and changes the social order of the cosmos. With Bright Heart dead, and Fire Bolt crumbling into senescence, the remaining nebulae attempt to bring about universal peace and harmony, but a quarrel over how this is to be done once again results in war. The history of the nebulae is thus one of tragedy, and as they dissolve into the stars and planets of our own cosmical time, the narrator wonders at the creator who could author such a complex dance of hope and futility.
13785119	/m/03cj6j5	Master Alvin	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This book has yet to be published. At this time, the expected release date is unknown.
13785297	/m/03cj6pb	The Wives of Israel	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 This book has yet to be released. It will be a continuation of the previous novel in the Women of Genesis series; Rachel and Leah. The book left off after Rachel had married Jacob, following the marriage of her sister Leah. Card states in the afterword of said novel that he had not intended to have the story be continued in two more books, but that it would have been too much to include the marriage/concubinage of the sister's handmaidens and so decided to put them into consecutive books to cover that subject as well as the children and their raising and adventures (chiefly Joseph and his brothers, and Joseph's further adventures into slavery in Egypt, possibly from the point of his wife). Though Card says that he plans to leave the matter of Judah's daughter-in-law, Tamar, alone.
13787063	/m/03cj7vf	Weep Not, Child	Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o	1964	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book is divided into two parts and eighteen chapters. Part one deals mostly with the education of Njoroge, while part two deals with the rising revolutionary, anti-colonist turmoil in Kenya. Njoroge, a young boy, is urged to attend school by his mother. He is the first one out of his family who is able to go to school. His family lives on the land of Jacobo, an African made rich by his dealings with white settlers, namely Mr. Howlands, the most powerful land owner in the area. Njoroge's brother Kamau works as an apprentice to a carpenter while Boro, the eldest living son, is troubled by his experiences while in forced service during World War II, one of which was witnessing the death of his elder brother. Ngotho, Njoroge's father and a respected man in the surrounding area, tends Mr. Howlands' crops more to preserve and keep an eye on his ancestral land, than for any compensation or loyalty. One day, a strike is called for higher wages for the black workers. Ngotho does not know if he should participate at first, because he would likely lose his job. Finally, however, he decides to go to the gathering, although his two wives do not agree. At the demonstration, there are calls for higher wages. Suddenly Jacobo, the father of Mwihaki, appears with the white police inspector. He tries to put an end to the strike (the police brought him there to pacify the native people). Ngotho attacks Jacobo. The result is a big tumult with two people being killed. Nevertheless, Jacobo survives and swears revenge. Njoroge’s family is forced to move and Ngotho loses his job. Njoroge’s education is thereafter funded by his brothers who seem to lose respect for their father. Mwihaki then goes to a girls' only boarding school, leaving Njoroge relatively alone. He reflects upon her leaving, and realizes that he was embarrassed by his father's actions towards Jacobo. For this reason, Njoroge is not upset by her exit and their separation. Njoroge stays close to home where he switches to another school. For a time, everyone's attention is focused on the upcoming trial of Jomo Kenyatta - a revered leader of the movement. Many blacks think that he is going to bring forth Kenya’s independence. But Jomo loses the trial and is imprisoned. This results in further protests and greater suppression of the black population. Jacobo and a white landowner, Mr. Howlands, fight against the rising activities of the Mau Mau, an organization striving for Kenyan economic, political, and cultural independence. Jacobo accuses Ngotho of being the leader of the Mau Mau and tries to imprison the whole family. Meanwhile, the situation in the country is deteriorating. Six black men are taken out of their houses and executed in the woods. One day Njoroge meets Mwihaki again, who returned from boarding school. Although Njoroge thought he had needed to avoid her, their friendship is not affected by the situation between their fathers. Then Njoroge passes a very important exam that allows him to advance to High School. The whole village is proud of him. They collect enough money so that Njoroge is able to attend High School. After a few months, Jacobo is killed. He is murdered in his office by a member of the Mau Mau. Mr. Howlands has Njoroge removed from school for questioning. Both father and son are brutally beaten before release and Ngotho is left barely alive. Although there doesn't seem to be a connection between Njoroge's family and the murder, it is eventually revealed that Njoroge's brothers are behind the assassination. Boro, the real leader of the Mau Mau. Ngotho soon dies from his injuries and Njoroge finds out that his father was protecting his brothers. Kamau has also been imprisoned for life. Only Njoroge and his two mothers remain free with Njoroge left as the sole provider to his two mothers. With no hope of making ends meet, Njoroge gives up all hope of going further in school and loses faith in God. Njoroge now hopes for Mwihaki's support, but she is angry because of her father’s death. When he finally pledges his love to her, she refuses to leave with him, realizing her obligation to Kenya and her mother. He finally decides to leave town and makes an attempt to take his own life; however, he fails at even this because his mothers find him before he is able to hang himself . The novel closes with Njoroge's utter sense of hopelessness and his own feelings of cowardice.
13789884	/m/03cjbty	Mister Pip	Lloyd Jones	2006	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mister Pip is the story of a girl caught in the throes of war on the island of Bougainville. It is through the guidance of her devoted but strict Christian mother and teacher that Matilda survives but more importantly, through her connection with Pip, a fictional creation from the mind of Charles Dickens in Great Expectations. Pip helps Matilda maintain a desire to live, especially after her mother, the wise Mr. Watts, and her island cease to exist. The novel opens with a colorful description of Mr. Watts, whom the children call Pop-Eye due to his eyes that "stuck out further than anyone else's". We learn of his marriage to Grace, a native of Bougainville, which serves to explain why he remained long after most of the white men had abandoned the island. With military tension rising and the school room growing over with creepers, Mr. Watts decides to take on the task of educating the children. Despite his claim to be limited in intelligence, he introduces the students to one of the greatest English authors, Charles Dickens. Dolores, Matilda's overzealous Christian mother, expresses an extreme distrust of the teacher and his curriculum. She does everything in her power to ensure that her daughter's mind is not polluted by the strange white man, including making weekly visits to the classroom. She even goes as far as stealing and hiding Mr. Watts's Great Expectations book, an action that causes immense trouble when redskin soldiers enter the village and find Mr. Pip's name carved into the sand. Coincidentally, it is Matilda who wrote his name, and it is her guilt that makes her empathize with her mother, who refuses to give up the book as evidence of Pip as not a rebel but a fictional character. Convinced that this Mr. Pip must be a spy who has been hidden from them, the redskins destroy the houses. All they leave behind are smoking fragments of Matilda's former life. As the tension escalates even further, a group of rebel soldiers returns to the village to question the only remaining white man, Mr. Watts. He agrees to explain himself over the course of seven nights, and proceeds to tell a story that entwines Pip's life even further with his own. Matilda develops an idea about why he returned to the island with his wife and stayed after all the other whites left. Now that his wife has died, Mr. Watts considers moving on and offers Matilda a chance to escape from the island. However, she would have to choose between Mr. Watts and her mother but before this can happen the rebels flee and the redskin soldiers return. This time the soldiers kill Mr. Watts, and when Matilda's mother speaks up she is taken away and raped. Matilda herself is almost raped, but her mother gives up her life to spare her. In the wake of surviving the slaughter of her village, her mother and Mr. Watts, Matilda loses her will to live. She nearly drowns, but is revived by the memory of Pip, who also narrowly escaped death. After clinging to a log, Matilda is picked up by the fisherman who had arranged to escape with Mr. Watts, and eventually she reaches Australia. It is there that Matilda is reunited with her father and begins to pick up the pieces of her disrupted life. She comes to terms with the reality of Mr. Watts, who altered both the facts of his life and abridged the contents in Great Expectations in an effort to provide escape from the world, both for himself and for the children. She reveals her success in becoming a scholar and a Dickens expert and concludes her narrative by emphasizing the power of literature to offer escape and solace in the worst of times.
13790409	/m/03cjc76	Person or Persons Unknown	Bruce Cook	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Women of the street are being brutally murdered in Covent Garden, and Sir John is baffled. Worse, one of the Fieldings' acquaintances becomes the prime suspect.
13792160	/m/03cjf4c	Moon of Mutiny	Lester del Rey		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Fred Halpern, a young man (presumably high-school age) training at the Goddard Space Academy is expelled a week before graduation due to his long history of insubordination and arrogance, despite his top-rate piloting skills and uncanny ability to accurately figure trajectories and orbits in his head. Some time prior to the opening of the book and his training at the academy, Fred had been living with his father aboard the space station which his father commands. When it had become clear that the United States was falling behind in the race to the moon, Fred stole one of the taxi rockets from the station and made a successful trip to the moon on his own. On touch-down, however, his rocket tipped over, landing on the air-lock, and trapping Fred inside. The rescue effort was costly and dangerous, and resulted in the death of one of the rescuers. Because of this history, Fred is looked upon by other cadets and space-men as a glory-hog and pariah, but is lauded by the media as a hero. This causes much tension in Fred's relationships as he tries to escape his past, and earn a place in space. Fred's hero status in the popular media has allowed him to earn enough money to pay for school, and donate his surplus earnings to the struggling Moon colony, which he hopes someday to join. Upon his expulsion from the academy, Fred temporarily returns to his father's station before his exile to earth begins. He realizes that he has grown out of life on the station, and that he is unable to contribute there in any meaningful way. During his stay on the station he meets Dr. Sessions, the leader of the imminent expedition to the moon, but can't bring himself to ask for a place on the already overcrowded expedition. At the last minute, one of the expedition's pilots is injured, and in order to embark in the desired launch window, Fred is asked to join despite the reservations of Sessions. During the course of the expedition Fred has several personal epiphanies regarding his past and his current goals. He realizes that his past behavior has been arrogant, self-centered, and reckless, and makes a decision early on to grow up and learn discipline and good judgment. He also learns that underlying his arrogance and recklessness lies real and valuable skills which he can put to good use if his judgment can be honed.
13795098	/m/03cjhjd	Venus	Ben Bova	2001-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Martin Humphries is the head of the giant Humphries Space Systems and at his 100th birthday party announces a prize of ten billion dollars to anyone who can recover any remains of his eldest son Alex. Alex was killed two years previously on a mission to Venus. Van Humphries, Martin's son and younger brother to Alex takes up the challenge despite, and because of, a mutual dislike between son and father. Van assembles a ship and crew and heads off to Venus, shadowed by the mysterious Lars Fuchs. Upon entering the Venusian atmosphere they find the clouds are alive with bacterial life which, unfortunately, takes a liking to the ship. The ship is soon in trouble as it is eaten away by the bacteria. Van's more conservative ship is quickly eaten away by the bacteria, while Lars' bulky ship manages to survive. Van is rescued by Lars Fuch's ship but most of his crew are lost. Van finds Lars a brutal yet intelligent man who rules his ship with a rod of iron. The heat builds as they descend through the Venusian atmosphere. Lars has to deal with mutiny and they find out that Lars Fuchs is Van Humphries' real father. At the end of the novel the intense heat, Lars' and Van's health and volcanic activity conspire to produce a climactic finale, in which a sulfur-based lifeform is revealed to exist on Venus. Alex's remains are recovered and the money claimed.
13798336	/m/03cjk_w	Agaguk	Yves Thériault			 This novel is a story of cultural conflict between the Inuit of Northern Quebec and white men, set in the 1940s. It is told from the perspective of the main character Agaguk, an Inuit man. Agaguk diverges from his tribe with a woman named Iriook. Through their journeys, Yves Thériault explores Agaguk's mastery of nature as well as the general relationship between the Inuit and the tundra. Furthermore, by describing the conflicts with the white men, the themes of alcoholism, assimilation as well as economic and judicial injustice are thoroughly explored. The personal aspect of the novel also allows for an intriguing analysis of Agaguk and his behaviour towards his wife in particular.
13807214	/m/03cjtts	The Wheel of Darkness	Douglas Preston	2007-08-28	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 This novel picks up shortly following the events depicted in The Book of the Dead. Agent Pendergast and his ward, Constance Greene, are studying in Tibet with Buddhist monks; they are recuperating from the events depicted in the novel The Book of the Dead. An artifact is stolen from the monastery, and the monks ask if Pendergast can retrieve it. Pendergast pursues the thief and artifact through China, Rome, and London. He finds that the original thief was killed and the artifact stolen by someone else. He and Constance track the killer to a new luxury ocean liner, the Britannia which is headed to New York City. Aboard the ship, Pendergast quickly eliminates all but a few possible suspects. He coerces the ships' guards to help him in exchange for helping them stop cheaters at the casino on the ship. The killer is murdering random people on the ship and everyone is panicking. There also a mysterious shadow thing being sighted and causing inevitable panic. The captain refuses to go to the nearest port which creates more problems. Fearing the loss of a life over the loss of profit, the crew mutinies and puts a female commander in charge. Pendergast locates the artifact's thief. However, he actually looks at it and undergoes a mental change. It brings out his "evil side"; where he doesn't care about anyone but himself and to think that humans are pathetic and should be cleansed. Meanwhile, the new captain has tricked the crew out of the bridge and locked it down. She aims for 'Carrion Rock', a land mass that will easily sink the ship. It is later revealed she herself had looked at the artifact and had decided to kill everyone on board as revenge for not being promoted to what she believes is her rightful position. The crew plead for mercy from the old captain; he has the codes needed to unlock the ship. He leaves them to their fate. The shadow thing is revealed to be a Tulpa or thought form, established by the mental energy from the passenger that possesses the stolen artifact. It attacks Pendergast as ordered, intended to drain from him all who he is and most of his body mass. Pendergast retreats into the carefully structured order of his own mind. Deep inside, he converses with a simulacrum of his deceased brother, Diogenes. He encourages the agent to fight back. Pendergast does so, sending the being on a course against those who had viewed the artifact. In the course of this, it burns away the evil influence it has on him. It attacks the ship's captain killing her; she manages to open the bridge door before she dies. The crew steers away from Carrion Rock saving the ship's survivors; previous maneuvers had left about two hundred dead due to damage. It is then revealed that this was an elaborate plan of the monks to find the reincarnation of the 'leader' of the temple. They reveal a prophecy that the guardian of the 'leader' will bring the artifact back to them after it has been stolen. The 'leader' turns out to be Constance's child (from when Diogenes seduced her) which she did not abort even though she had planned to.
13807849	/m/03cjvdc	The Careful Use of Compliments	Alexander McCall Smith	2007-08-07	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After her son, Charlie's birth, Isabel feels that her life has hit a happy (or happier) patch. Deciding that she may bid for a painting at auction, she visits the showroom, where she has arranged to meet Jamie (her son's father). Jamie proposes but Isabel says that she thinks they should wait, half-hoping that Jamie will press his case. She is a little disappointed when he agrees with her, but accepts that they have made the correct decision. To her distress, she learns that the editorial board of the Review of Applied Ethics, which she edits, has decided to replace her, an action that she effectively reverses although not without her usual philosophical qualms and musings. Meanwhile, she becomes interested in the life and recent death of Andrew McInnes, an artist most of whose paintings feature the island of Jura and who was lost in a boating accident there some years previously. Travelling with her fiancée, Jamie, and Charlie to the place of his loss she discovers new information about a more recent painter who was painting similar scenes. Her investigations into a possible art fraud unearth something quite unexpected.
13814256	/m/03ck22_	Strange Brother	Blair Niles	1931		 Mark Thornton, the story's protagonist, moves to New York City in hopes of feeling like less of an outsider. At a nightclub in Harlem he meets and befriends June Westbrook. One night they witness a man named Nelly being arrested. June encourages Mark to investigate. This leads Mark to attend Nelly's trial, where he is found guilty and sentenced to six month's imprisonment on Welfare Island for his feminine affections and gestures. Next Mark researches the crimes against nature sections of the penal code. Shaken up by his findings and the events, Mark confesses his own homosexuality to June. Mark and June's friendship continue to grow, and June introduces Mark to a number of friends in her social circle. Various social interactions ensue including a dinner party for a departing professor, a trip to a nightspot featuring the singer Gladys Bentley and attending a drag ball. Despite reading Walt Whitman's poetry collection Leaves of Grass, Edward Carpenter's series of papers Love's Coming of Age, and Countee Cullen's poetry, Mark is afraid to come out. Subsequently Mark is threatened with being outed at work. In response to this threat, Mark commits suicide by shooting himself.
13814563	/m/03ck2c8	Wartime Lies	Louis Begley	1991	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Maciek and his aunt Tania are Polish Jews during World War II. By getting Aryan papers, they elude arrest. In parallel, we follow Maciek, now fifty years old and struck by the tragedy of the consequences of a lying childhood transforming his entire life in a constant fiction.
13817412	/m/03ck4_y	Magic Mirror	Nathan Andrew Pinnock	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Magic Mirror is a story about the problems of a mythical family.
13818486	/m/03ck5zk	Cassandra				 Despite its rather loose chronology, Cassandra's narrative begins by describing her youth, when she was Priam's favorite daughter and loved to sit with him as he discussed politics and matters of state. Her relationship with Hecuba, however, was never as intimate, since Hecuba recognized Cassandra's independence. At times their interactions are tense or even cold, notably when Hecuba does not sympathize with Cassandra's fear of the god Apollo's gift of prophecy or her reluctance to accept his love. When she ultimately refuses him, he curses her so that no one will believe what she prophesies. When Cassandra is presented among the city's virgins for deflowering, she is chosen by Aeneas, who makes love to her only later. Nonetheless, she falls in love with him, and is devoted to him despite her liaisons with others, including Panthous—indeed, she imagines Aeneas whenever she is with anyone else. It is Aeneas' father Anchises who tells Cassandra of the mission to bring Hesione, Priam's sister who was taken as a prize by Telamon during the first Trojan War, back from Sparta. Not only do the Trojans fail to secure Hesione, they also lose the seer Calchas during the voyage, who later aids the Greeks during the war. When Menelaus visits Troy to offer a sacrifice, he rebukes impertinence of Cassandra's brother Paris, who has recently returned to Troy and been reclaimed as Priam and Hecuba's son, though as a child he was abandoned. His words provoke Paris, who insists that he will travel to Sparta, and if Hesione is not returned to him, he will take Helen. The tension increases when Cassandra experiences a sort of fit and collapses, having foreseen the fall of Troy. By the time she recovers, Paris has sailed to Sparta and returned, bringing Helen, who wears a veil. Cassandra soon begins to suspect—but does not want to believe—that Helen is not in Troy, after all. No one is permitted to see her, and Cassandra has seen Paris' former lover Oenone leaving his room. However, she is unable to accept that Troy—that her father—would continue to prepare for a war if its premise were false. When Paris finally tells her explicitly what she already knows, she protests to her father, but he rejects her plea to negotiate peace and orders her to be silent. Thus Cassandra's traditional role—as the seeress who tells the truth but is not believed—is reinterpreted. She knows the truth, but Priam knows it too; she cannot persuade anyone of the truth, but only because she is forbidden to speak of it. Although she feels miserable, she still loves and trusts Priam and cannot betray his secret. Although Priam's political motives ostensibly drive Troy to war, the palace guard Eumelos is the true force behind the conflict. He manipulates Priam and the public until they believe the war is necessary and forget that the stakes are anything but Helen. Eventually he arrests Cassandra, when she threatens to undermine his strict control in Troy. Anchises explains that Eumelos, by convincing the Trojans that the Greeks were enemies and inciting them to fight, made his own military state necessary and was thus able to rise to power. One of Eumelos' guards, Andron, becomes Polyxena's lover, but when Achilles demands her in exchange for Hector's body, Andron does not object—rather, he offers her to Achilles without remorse. Later Eumelos plans to lure Achilles into a trap by stationing Polyxena in the temple, and for Polyxena's sake Cassandra refuses to comply with his scheme, threatening to reveal it. He promptly arrests her and imprisons her in the heroes' graveyard. Eumelos executes his plan after all, and Achilles is killed, requesting as he dies that Odysseus sacrifice Polyxena at his grave for her betrayal. Later when the Greeks come to take her away, Polyxena asks Cassandra to kill her, but Cassandra has discarded her dagger and cannot spare her sister. When the war is lost, Cassandra meets Aeneas for the last time, and he asks her to leave Troy with him. She refuses, and he cannot understand why, since if she stays she will become a slave. However, she knows that he will be forced to become a hero, and she cannot love a hero.
13820024	/m/03ck832	The Early History of God				 Smith begins from the understanding that Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in origin, and that deities such as El, Baal and Asherah, far from being alien to the Israelites, formed part of their heritage. He therefore sees Israelite monolatry (the insistence that Israel should worship one god, Yahweh, but without denying the reality of other gods) as a break with Israel's own past. Yahweh, he argues, originated in Edom/Midian/Teman as a warrior-god and was subsequently assimilated into the highland pantheon headed by El and his consort, Asherah and populated by Baal and other deities. Smith sees this process as marked by two major phases, which he describes as "convergence" and "differentiation." In the period of the Judges and the early monarchy, convergence saw the coalescence of the qualities of other deities, and even the deities themselves, into Yahweh. Thus El became identified as a name of Yaweh, Asherah ceased to be a distinct goddess, and qualities of El, Asherah and Baal (notably, for Baal, his identification as a storm-god) were assimilated into Yahweh. In the period from the 9th century BC through to the Exile certain features of the Israelite religion were differentiated from the Yahweh cult, identified as Canaanite, and rejected: examples include Baal, child sacrifice, the asherah, worship of the sun and moon, and the cults of the "high places".
13823852	/m/03ckct3	Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall	Spike Milligan	1971	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The prologue consists of only two sentences, which in itself represents the word-play humour that was Milligan's hallmark: "After Puckoon I swore I would never write another novel. This is it". Milligan is at home with his family. His mother is digging the air-raid shelter when Neville Chamberlain announces that Britain is at war with Germany. The family response is for Spike, his father and brother to produce boyish drawings of war machines (the drawings are included in the book), which are taken to the War Office. Milligan receives a letter marked O.H.M.S., which his uncle advises him not to open. After some weeks similar letters arrive marked "Urgent". Eventually he opens one containing a "cunningly worded invitation to partake in World War II". About then, in an attempt to impress girls at a gym, he slips a disc, whereupon he's hospitalized to determine whether he's faking. After three months of avoiding call-up, he is given "a train ticket and a picture of Hitler reading "This is your enemy"". He searches the train, but can't find him. Part 2 lasts 13 pages, much of it illustrations by Milligan or photographs. He begins his months in military training at Bexhill-on-Sea. It starts with Milligan joining his regiment (56th Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery) late, and immediately being singled out as a troublemaker. He learns disrespect for certain officers within a few sentences, and commences sniping: :"I suppose," said Suitcase, "you know you are three months late arriving?" :"I'll make up for it sir, I'll fight nights as well!" Milligan talks to soldiers returning from Dunkirk, and sees his first German plane. His regiment is equipped with the obsolete BL 9.2 inch Howitzer. Training included the crews shouting 'bang' in unison as they had no shells to practice with. A shell from World War 1 is eventually found, and they make strenuous attempts to fire it for practice. It's a dud. A year passes, Milligan trains, the summer months are pleasant. Part 3 begins a year previously, and launches into a favorite Milligan literary aside — a long discussion of setting up musical shows, including names of songs, instruments, and players. It is playing jazz that he meets his lifelong friend, Harry Edgington, a man "with moral scruples that would have pleased Jesus". (In the biographies, Milligan variously portrays himself as licentious or unusually chaste.) The group of pick-up military musicians practices for a month, then are asked to give their first gig in Bexhill Old Town Church Hall. (Milligan's military career shifts between his duties as a gunner and musical performances.) Milligan notes that before the winter of 1940 they were entertaining nightly, which he later saw as his first steps into show business. Milligan is left off long enough to go to a BBC musician contest, where, as trumpet player, he wins a recording session with an established artist. He cuts his first records, then returns to barracks. With the introduction of the new C.O. Major Chater Jack, Milligan meets an officer for whom he has great respect ("one who I would have followed anywhere"). 1940 ends and the 19th Battery has the luxury of being billeted in an empty girls' school. The book quotes at length from the regimental war diary, describing an extraordinary day when the War Office (now the Ministry of Defence) was alerted to a sea invasion — in what was intended to be an exercise. The author now confesses that he, in error, left the word "PRACTICE" out of a transmission. Edgington and Milligan write "reams" of scenes that Milligan reckons were the beginnings of The Goon Show. Amid the continued army stories, Milligan mentions a topic he returns to, the (actual) exceptional ability of their artillery battery. By August 1942 they had learned driving skills and how to shoot machine guns. In December 1942 Milligan drinks a toast with his family that will prove to be the last for ten years. On January 8, they head to sea. Their band has been warned by an officer that if they smuggle their instruments on board, the instruments will be thrown overboard. Later in voyage, after a miserable passage, the officer asks if the instruments are actually on board (which they are), and will the band please play to entertain the men. Algeria comes into view. :"We were issued with an air-mail letter, in which we were allowed to say we'd arrived safe and sound....From now, all mail was censored. We were no longer allowed to give the number of troops, measurements of guns and ammo returns to the German Embassy in Spain. This, of course, would cut down our income considerably." The Sanitary Orderly mistakenly cleans the latrine with petrol, an officer lights a cigarette, causing second degree burns on the bum. :"A sort of British loss of face. He was our last casualty before we actually went into action. Next time it would be for real." (p. 146)
13825431	/m/03ckf4w	The Book of Secrets				 In Dar es Salaam in the late 1980s, a retired school teacher named Pius Fernandes is given an English language diary by one of his former students, now a shopkeeper. The diary entries, written between 1913 and 1914, are an account written by Alfred Corbin, Assistant District Commissioner, a low ranking colonial official sent to the small town of Kikono. While there, Corbin becomes intrigued by a young woman named Mariamu whom he saves from an exorcism. Before she is married, Mariamu also briefly nurses Corbin when he is stricken with blackwater fever. After her marriage, Mariamu's husband, believing that Mariamu is not a virgin, accuses Corbin of sleeping with her. The narrative then shifts to Mariamu's husband Pipa. Initially enraged at the thought that Mariamu was not a virgin when they married, he gradually grows to accept and love her. When their son Ali Akber Ali is born and has fair skin and grey eyes, their marriage becomes strained again. Meanwhile, World War I has reached the small town of Kikono and Pipa is enlisted as a messenger, first by Corbin on behalf of the English and later by the Germans. After being arrested by the English as a messenger for the Germans Pipa returns home only to find that Mariamu has been raped and murdered. After her death Pipa discovers that she had stolen Corbin's diary. Pipa believes that the diary holds the secret to Ali's paternity, but since he cannot speak English, and is illiterate, he is unable to read its secrets. After a time, Pipa remarries a woman named Remti. As a consequence of this marriage his son is sent to live with his maternal grandparents in Moshi. While living with them he encounters Alfred Corbin and his wife Anne. After this encounter Corbin visits Khanoum, Ali's grandmother, and offers to pay for Ali's education. Khanoum refuses and contact between Corbin and Ali is dropped. Eventually, Khanoum falls into poverty and Ali goes to live with Pipa, Remti and their two daughters. Living with Ali once more, Pipa begins to obsess over Mariamu. He builds a private shrine to her within his shop where he keeps Corbin's diary. Through his son, Pipa is eventually able to learn to spell and read the word Mariamu, and is able to read this word in Corbin's diary. Though he questions Mariamu's spirit about the true paternity of their son he is never able to obtain a direct answer. The narrative shifts once more, to a young Pius Fernandes. Immigrating from India to Dar es Salaam in the early 1950s, Fernandes teaches at a boy's school. Eventually, he is forced to also teach at the inferior girls school where he becomes infatuated with a teenager named Rita. Ali, now a successful married man in his thirties, also falls in love with teenage Rita. He begins sending her notes and when she eventually responds he convinces her to run away with him to London. Ali eventually becomes successful in London and briefly encounters Corbin. However, letters left to Fernandes by a colleague and friend who corresponded with Corbin's wife, reveal that Corbin and Ali met several times though whether Ali's paternity was revealed is remained hidden. In the present, Rita, now divorced from Ali, returns to Dar to reclaim the diary on behalf of her former husband. Fernandes willingly relinquishes both the diary and his research notes to Rita.
13825672	/m/03ckffc	The Name of this Book is Secret	Pseudonymous Bosch	2007	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story starts when real-estate agent for the dead named Gloria finds a mysterious box in a magician's house called, The Symphony of Smells, and gives it to Cass and her substitute grandfathers. Cass is an outcast misfit in her school until she stumbles across another misfit, Max-Ernest, who talks too much and has divorced parents but who are still living in the same house. Cass and Max-Ernest become collaborators and investigate the dead magician's&nbsp;– Pietro Bergamo&nbsp;– house only to get caught by a young couple; but not before they find a mysterious journal hidden in a secret room. Later the couple comes to their school looking for them but find a synesthete boy named Benjamin Blake after they examine a piece of art painted by him on display in the school. After initially loathing him, Cass decides its her job to save him. The young couple were nothing but the dangerous Ms.Mauvais and her partner Dr. L.They wanted to achieve eternal glory so as to be immortal. Cass and Max-Ernest eventually find out that Ms.Mauvais has an evil group called Midnight Sun and that she was the one one of the founders. Around this time Cass and Max-Ernest stop being collaborators. Ms.Mauvais kidnaps Benjamin and now its now the responsibility of Cass to save Benjamin. After leafing through some spa brochures collected by her mother, Cass decides to pose as one of the Skelton Sisters, a pop band, and calls The Midnight Sun spa to pick her up in a limousine. Cass then meets Owen, a stuttering servant who sets up her room and tries to make her comfortable. Later that night Owen comes into Cass's room, speaking with a strange accent a notable characteristic he had when she last met him. Max-Ernest and Cass reunite as Owen leaves to go about some business and they discover that the goal of the Midnight Sun is to achieve eternal youth. The duo save Benjamin and a fire breaks out, but before it is implied that Ms. Mauvais' conspirator Dr. L is Pietro Bergamo's brother Luciano. Owen meets up with Max-Ernest, Cass and Benjamin and they all speed away from the spa in the limousine as the light from the orb atop the pyramid dims and eventually goes out. Owen sets off on his own in the limo while Benjamin, Cass, and Max-Ernest drive home with Grandpa Larry. Cass and Max-Ernest become collaborators again shortly before the end. It is then known that Pietro is still alive and has a secret society named Terces Society to fight the Midnight sun and protect the secret from them.He tells Cass and Max-Ernest everything and asks them to join Terces Society.
13827502	/m/03ckhjc	Paloma	Kristine Kathryn Rusch	2006-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Miles Flint, a retrieval artist, returns to the Moon to find that the woman he purchased his retrieval agent business from has just been murdered. Bartholomey Nyquist is the lead investigator, as Noelle DeRicci has been promoted to director of security (and takes a small role in this novel). During the investigation, Flint discovers that Paloma was herself a disappeared and the plot revolves around why she was a disappeared, who she was before that happened, as well as who hired the assassins.
13828219	/m/03ckj71	Dragonsbane	Barbara Hambly	1985	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A witch, Jenny Waynest, and lord, John Aversin, who live in the Northlands are approached by a young southern noble, Gareth, who requests they slay a dragon in the capital city of Bel to the south. The pair agree on the condition the king send troops to the north to fend off bandits. On arriving, it is revealed that Gareth is not a mere noble, but the prince of the realm seeking aid against the wishes of his father. The dragon is revealed as Morkeleb the Black, an ancient and powerful dragon, inhabiting the caverns of the gnomes. In addition, the sorceress Zyerne is revealed to hold the king in her power, dominating him with the goal of capturing the power of the Stone in the heart of the gnomish Deep. John is persuaded to kill Morkeleb, with Jenny's assistance, but is himself wounded and Jenny is forced to save the dragon's life in exchange for that of John's. In saving Morkeleb's life, Jenny's weak powers are much augmented, allowing her to confront Zyerne but also tempting her to transform into a dragon and abandon the concerns of humanity. Zyrene enters the Deep, attempting to claim its magic, but is defeated when the Stone is destroyed by John, Jenny and Morkeleb. Jenny accepts Morkeleb's offer to transform into a dragon, but later returns to the North, unable to live without her humanity.
13832428	/m/03cknd_	Blasphemy	Douglas Preston	2008-01-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Isabella, a powerful particle accelerator has been constructed in Red Mesa in the remote Arizona desert, the most expensive machine ever built by science. A team of scientists under the direction of a charismatic Nobel Laureate, Gregory North Hazelius, experience trouble, and the scientists seem to be covering it up. CIA agent Wyman Ford is tapped to go to Arizona in an undercover role and find out what’s really going on. He discovers the scientists have made a discovery that apparently not only demonstrates the existence of God, but communications with it reveal it to be far grander and deeper than anything found in the conventional religions. When part of the discovery becomes known to a local fundamentalist pastor, he interprets it as a sign of the End Times and by way of viral email recruits thousands of people from across the United States into "God's Army". They storm the machine, killing anyone in their way, and destroy the entire facility. They capture the scientists, gunning down two of them, and burn Hazelius at the stake. In the end, it is revealed that Hazelius simulated the communications in an effort to create a new religion, one based on science and particularly the Scientific Method and the search for truth. However, Hazelius himself admits to the simulation performing "beyond its specs." Comparisons are made between Hazelius and Hubbard in regards to Scientology.
13833010	/m/03ckp73	Sex and the Single Ghost	Tawny Taylor	2006	{"/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Claire Weiss was killed in 1995. Although she doesn't remember too much of what happened, she does recall that she was murdered by two thugs while she laid with her soon-to-be husband Matt in bed. After her death, she was stuck in purgatory. While in purgatory, she discovered that every nine years after a person dies, they can returned to earth around Halloween and live as a mortal. Then, if the Spirit American (that is what ghosts preferred to be called) can help someone on Earth, can can have another nine days as a mortal before they were sent back to purgatory. So she waited nine years to come back to earth in order to discover why she was murdered. Before she returned, she was given a case worker named Bonnie and an emergency phone number in case she needed to contact her. The night she returned to Earth, she reconnected with Jake Faron. The two then work together to discover the truth about Claire's death as well as enjoy the heavenly pleasures Earth has to offer. then had sex with him and came hugely!
13833421	/m/03ckpn5	Brat Farrar	Josephine Tey	1949	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story centers around the Ashbys, an English country-squire family. Their centuries-old family estate is Latchetts, in the fictional village of Clare near the south coast of England. It takes place in 1946 or 1947 – the date is not given, but it is after World War II, but no more than eight years after the start of the war. The Ashby family consists of Miss Beatrice Ashby ("Aunt Bee"), a 50-ish spinster, and the four children of her late brother Bill: Simon, 20; Eleanor, 18–19; and twins Jane and Ruth, 9. Bill and his wife Nora died in an airplane crash eight years before. Since then, the Ashbys, like many old families, have been short of money. Bee has kept the estate going by turning the family stable into a profitable business. The Ashbys breed and sell horses, train horses, and give riding lessons. All of them except Ruth ride frequently and work with the horses. The young Ashbys ride in equestrian competitions and win prizes. There is also great-uncle Charles Ashby in the Far East. Charles is coming home for Simon's 21st birthday, which is in a few weeks, though he will be a month or so late. When Simon turns twenty-one, things will change: he comes into a large trust fund left by his mother. He is also the heir to Latchetts. Simon had a twin brother, Patrick, who was 15 minutes older. But soon after Bill and Nora died, Patrick disappeared, leaving what was taken as a suicide note. The title character, Brat Farrar, is a young man recently returned to England from America. He was a foundling. At the age of 13, the orphanage placed him in an office job, but he ran away instead. He ended up in the western U.S., where he worked at ranches and stables for several years, and became an expert horseman. On a street in London, a complete stranger greets Brat as "Simon". He is Alec Loding, a second-rate actor. Alec's real name is Ledingham, and the Ledingham estate (now sold off for debts) was also in Clare. He knows the Ashby family intimately, and even after Brat identifies himself, Alec is certain that Brat is an Ashby. The family resemblance is that strong — including the love of horses. This gives Alec an idea: Brat should impersonate the missing twin, Patrick, and as the elder brother, claim the trust and the estate. Alec remembers a great deal about the Ashbys, Latchetts, and the village, and this, combined with his photographs and other memorabilia will allow him to coach Brat on all the background details, and in return Brat will give him a share of the money. Barring a misstep on Brat's part, there is little to distinguish between himself and Patrick: neither has distinguishing scars or birthmark and the Ashbys' dentist and all his records were destroyed by a German bomb. Conveniently, Brat left the orphanage at nearly the same time that Patrick vanished. Brat is reluctant – but tempted, especially by Alec's insistence that he must be an Ashby, which makes him want to find out about his possible family. He agrees. After two weeks of tutoring, "Patrick" appears at the London office of Mr. Sandal, the Ashby family solicitor. Sandal is astonished, but convinced. "Patrick" says he adopted the name "Brat Farrar" after running away, and gives his own story as the account of "Patrick"'s missing years. Mr. Sandal informs Bee, who meets "Patrick" and is also convinced. Over the next two weeks, Sandal verifies "Patrick"'s story. "Patrick" now comes to Latchetts. Ruth and Eleanor accept him, though Jane is hostile at first. Simon professes to accept him, and shows no apparent resentment at being displaced as heir. But Brat can tell that Simon is not deceived. Brat wonders why Simon seems to be certain that "Patrick" is a fake, and why he keeps silent. "Patrick" settles in at Latchetts, and is accepted by all of the neighbors; he makes a few errors, but these are easily explained by seven years of absence. He has a home and family for the first time in his life. He becomes particularly fond of Bee, and feels guilty about deceiving her. He also wonders how long he can get away with it, though. Simon is clearly though covertly hostile. He invites "Patrick" to ride Timber, an exceptionally fine horse — without warning him that Timber sometimes tries to kill or cripple his rider. He loosens "Patrick"'s saddle-girth just before a race. And once, in a fit of rage, he openly calls "Patrick" an impostor, though he quickly withdraws the statement. Eleanor is confused, because she likes "Patrick" — but not the way a sister should like a brother. Then Simon tells Brat he knows Brat is not Patrick — because he murdered Patrick. Of course, Simon knows Brat cannot repeat this to anyone without destroying his impersonation. Brat recognizes that continuing to impersonate Patrick will make him an accomplice of Simon in the murder of Patrick. While Brat is willing to be a party to impersonating Patrick, he is unwilling to be a party to murder. After a long night of reflection spent wandering the countryside, Brat realizes how Simon killed Patrick while maintaining a solid alibi of spending the day at the blacksmith. He also realizes the trauma the public disclosure of Simon's crime and his own impersonation will have on the Ashby family, and agonizes over whether to expose Simon or let sleeping bodies lie and just "run away" again. To help him decide, Brat pays a late night visit to the family's minister, Alex Loding's brother-in-law, to reveal his own crime and ask the minister's opinion on whether Simon's murder of Patrick should be kept secret. Although the minister is not surprised by Brat's revelation that he is not Patrick, he cannot believe that Simon murdered Patrick. He does, however, state that murder cannot simply be ignored, that to do so invites anarchy. His indecision gone, Brat decides to investigate Patrick's disappearance on his own to find the evidence needed to convince others of Simon's guilt. When he sneaks out the next night to visit the quarry at the bottom of which he has guessed Patrick's remains lie hidden, Simon is waiting and tries to kill him. During a struggle, the two young men fall into the quarry. Simon is killed and Brat seriously injured. Patrick's bones are found, proving Simon's guilt. Great-uncle Charles Ashby arrives. He recognizes Brat as the son of Walter Ashby, a long-dead cousin who drank a bit too much and never married. Brat can now be part of the family, and there is no barrier to his romance with Eleanor (who is only his second cousin).
13834763	/m/03ckqlh	The Abyss	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel The Abyss is similar to the movie The Abyss in terms of story but it gives the main characters greater depth and background. It also gives more attention to the aliens’ point of view. Card wrote the novel based on the screenplay and discussions with Cameron. He wrote back stories for Bud Brigman, Lindsey Brigman and Hiram Coffey as a means not only of helping the actors define their roles, but also to justify some of their behavior and mannerisms in the film. For example, Lindsay's mother was a prissy socialite intent on raising well-mannered, popular, "feminine" daughters, while her father was a civil engineer unable to share his interests with his children. Once Lindsey discovers that she inherited her father's engineering skills, it affects her entire family perspective and life goals. Coffey was written as a child of a poor single mother who joined the SEALs as a way to give himself a purpose after her remarriage. Separating his worldview into "Them" (Outsiders) and "Us" (him and his mother) defined some of his thought processes in the film as he worked to protect his men from the perceived "Soviet" threat. Card also wrote the aliens as a colonizing species which preferentially sought high-pressure deepwater worlds to build their ships as they traveled further into the galaxy. Their knowledge of neuroanatomy and nanoscale manipulation of biochemistry was responsible for many of the deus ex machina aspects of the film; an NTI saved a diver's life after a breathing mixture accident, prevented permanent brain damage during Bud's 2 mile dive, which allowed him to properly disarm the warhead, and a number of NTIs microscopically infiltrated the crew upon their rise to the surface to prevent decompression sickness. The alien reaction to human warfare in the director's cut was explained to be a result of their monitoring of radio communications and copying the memories of the dead submarine crew; their interactions with the crew of Deep Core finally persuaded them to halt their attack on the coastlines and instead attempt peaceful contact.
13843354	/m/03ck_vj	Falling Angel	William Hjortsberg		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 In 1959, a popular crooner before and during the Second World War, entertainer Johnny Favorite, hasn't been seen or heard since he was critically wounded during a 1943 Luftwaffe raid on Allied forces in Tunisia. When private investigator Harry Angel is hired to locate him on behalf of a mysterious client who calls himself Louis Cyphre, he finds himself enmeshed in a disturbing occult milieu.
13846245	/m/03cl2fc	Dave at Night	Gail Carson Levine	1999	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Dave Caros, a teenager troublemaker, lost his mother during his birth. More recently, his father dies after falling off a roof of a house he was helping to build. Always having lived under the shadow of his older brother Gideon, he is abandoned by his stepmother Ida while Gideon goes to live with his uncle. Ida sends Dave to a Hebrew orphanage, the Hebrew Home For Boys. When Dave first arrives at the orphanage, he absolutely hates it. The bedrooms are cold, the food is awful (and is often stolen by bullies) and the superintendent, Mr. Bloom (nicknamed Mr. Doom) is abusive and hits the boys with a yardstick. Mr. Doom takes the only thing Dave has left from his father, a wood carving of his family boarding Noah's Ark. However, Dave enjoys the art lessons and explores his talented, creative side. Sick of the austere lifestyle, Dave sneaks out of the orphanage in the middle of the night and roams the streets of Harlem. He finds a nearby party and bumps into Solly, an old man who 'reads cards' to get money. He enters the party with Solly and discovers a whole new world of jazz music, money and glamour—the Harlem Renaissance. Dave even meets Irma Lee, a girl who he is quickly attracted to. However, Dave needs to return to the orphanage every morning and return to the orphanage, but this new lifestyle isn't always what it seems.
13847749	/m/03cl3xv	Gray Matters			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 World War III has devastated most of the world, but life is still good for the lucky (and rich) few hundred persons who had their brains preserved in an automated conservatory. Although they have no bodies to move around with, they are free to mentally visit any of the other residents, and engage in all the emotional, intellectual and (pseudo-) sexual congress that they desire.
13847930	/m/03cl42p	Nevermore			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harry Houdini joins forces with Arthur Conan Doyle to solve a series of murders, which eerily re-enact the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
13851044	/m/03cl6y2	Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos	R. L. LaFevers	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Theodosia Throckmorton, a clever and shrewd girl of sorts, has the harrowing and busy work of nullifying curses in her father's museum, where the darkest spells abound. However, it is delicate work, and time is running out for her to set things right. A crate arrives from Theo's mother in Egypt, which contains a cursed statue of Bastet. While transferring the curse from the statue to a wax figure, she becomes distracted and redirects it into her cat, Isis. Her hands are full enough when her mother returns from the tombs of Egypt, bringing countless cursed valuables and antiquities with her. While picking her mother up at the train station, Theodosia catches a street urchin named Sticky Will trying to pick her father's pocket. He informs her that someone is following her mother. Theo tells him she will be at the station tomorrow and he can tell her more about the man then. Back at the museum, they unload Theo's mother's trunks.Theo senses the curses on the artifacts. The most powerful is a gem called the Heart of Egypt, with the power to topple the whole of Great Britain and the entire British Empire. The next day, her brother Henry returns from boarding school. The Heart of Egypt is stolen. Theo suspects someone from the British Museum and investigates, Henry tagging along without her consent. A Mr Tetley is acting suspiciously, and they decide to follow him. While traveling through the Seven Dials, they meet Will and witness a man taking the Heart from Mr Tetley, then the same man is stabbed in a churchyard. Theodosia hears the man mumble "Somerset House". She sends Henry and Will to Somerset House while she struggles to keep the man alive using her amulets. Will and Henry bring help, and Theo is introduced to Lord Wigmere, head of the Antiquarian Society and The Brotherhood of Chosen Keepers, a group dedicated to nullifying curses. Theo is relieved to know there are others like her, but disturbed that no one else can sense the curses the way she can. Henry and Will are not told the true nature of the Keepers, although Will is taken on as a message boy. Theo is also angry that Lord Wigmere may suspect her mother of stealing the Heart of Egypt, as she works closely with Count Von Braggenchnot, head of the Serpents of Chaos who will do anything to rain plague and pestilence down on England. After Theodosia escapes, she sneaks onto a ship on which her mother and father are traveling to go to Egypt. While in Egypt, Theodosia finds a hidden part of a pyramid, and fights von Braggenschnot and Nigel Bollingsworth, who turns out to be a spy. She ends up winning, and finding an important artifact.
13854249	/m/03cl9b4	Martha in the Mirror	Justin Richards		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Castle Extremis-whoever holds it can control the provinces either side that have been at war for centuries. Now the castle is about to play host to the signing of a peace treaty. But as the Doctor and Martha find out, not everyone wants the war to end. Who is the strange little girl who haunts the castle? What is the secret of the book the Doctor finds, its pages made from thin, brittle glass? Who is the hooded figure that watches from the shadows? And what is the secret of the legendary Mortal Mirror? The Doctor and Martha don't have long to find the answers-an army is on the march, and the castle will soon be under siege once more...
13854406	/m/03cl9fl	The Many Hands	Dale Smith		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book opens with the mysterious arrival of a baby in Edinburgh, 1773. The scene shifts to the city fifteen years earlier. The Doctor and Martha are confronted by the walking dead, first a solitary figure which attacks a stagecoach containing Benjamin Franklin, then by an army of the creatures rising from the putrid waters of the Nor' Loch. The British soldiers under Captain McAllister who have arrested the Doctor find themselves following his lead. Meanwhile at the Surgeon's Hall, Martha has met a couple of physicians, Alexander Monro, senior and junior, who apparently brought the first corpse back to life. They lock her in a small room with dozens of hands, disembodied but disturbingly active. The Doctor deduces the presence of a modular alien and discovers its sinister intentions. Benjamin Franklin reappears in the final chapter, set in 1771, meeting Alexander Monro, who reclaims the hand he gave Franklin years before, the last one on Earth.
13854604	/m/03cl9mf	Snowglobe 7	Mike Tucker		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Snowglobe 7 is set in 2099 when the world's global warming has become a great problem. Snowglobe 7 was one of the buildings set up to contain sheets of ice to preserve them against global warming. It is situated in Dubai. Due to Snowglobes being extremely expensive to maintain, many were sold off as visitor attractions. Snowglobe 7 was one of only three left that were purely scientific. The section of ice within it, unknown to the Humans, contained the last Gappa, bizarre, blood-thirsty aliens that look like a cross between a spider and a monkey with a massive, fleshy nose. While Martha tries to help with an unknown disease spreading through the dome, the Doctor investigates. The Gappa killed some humans on maintenance and used their bodies as hosts for future Gappa. Service robot Twelve collapsed several of the tunnels in the ice of Snowglobe 7 in an attempt to kill the Gappa, but failed. The Doctor detonated the engine of a ship that had crashed in the ice thousands of years ago, killing the Gappa but destroying the Snowglobe and melting the ice.
13856799	/m/03clctl	Deep Storm	Lincoln Child	2007-01-30	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Former naval doctor Peter Crane is sent to investigate a mysterious illness that has broken out on a North Atlantic oil rig. He meets his superior officer, Dr. Asher who hints at a fantastic secret being discovered. Government officials transport him to an amazing undersea habitat run by the United States military. He receives a confidential envelope that says that the military has found some evidence of Atlantis. As he is brought down into the "facility" codenamed Deep Storm, he discovers that nearly a quarter of the staff have been acting strangely. Working alongside the psychological doctor, Dr.Corbett and the chief military doctor Michele Bishop, Crane is witness to one of these incidents, one of the workers suddenly grabs a hostage and after screaming about "voices" he stabs himself in the neck with a screwdriver. After interviewing some of the patients there, Crane realizes that there must be some kind of unifying basis to them, that they should all have something in common.
13857268	/m/03cldfw	The Ice Limit	Douglas Preston	2000-07-18	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Meteorite hunter Nestor Masangkay arrives on Isla Desolación, an island near Cape Horn in Chile, tracking a possible meteorite. Using a tomographic scanner, Masangkay confirms that not only is there a meteorite present under the ground, but that it is incredibly massive. Excited, Masangkay digs down to unearth a small portion of the meteorite and is subsequently killed in a flash of light. Some months later, Masangkay's equipment is recovered by a Yaghan native and eventually makes its way to New York billionaire Palmer Lloyd, a collector of rare and exotic archeological artifacts. Wanting the meteorite for his soon-to-be-opened museum, Lloyd hires Masangkay's former partner, Sam McFarlane, to confirm the meteorite's existence and assist in its recovery. He also hires Effective Engineering Solutions, Inc., a high-priced "problem solving" firm, to design a plan for the unprecedented task of recovering and transporting what has been confirmed by McFarlane to be the largest meteorite ever discovered. Eli Glinn, the president of EES, puts together a comprehensive plan to effect the recovery, accounting for literally every complication he deems possible. To effect this plan he composes a team to augment Lloyd's personnel, notably including Rachel Amira, EES's brilliant yet grating mathematics expert, and Sally Britton, an out-of-work supertanker captain whose last ship crashed while she was drunk and on duty. Despite Britton's public image as a dangerous alcoholic, analysis by EES has led Glinn to peg her as professional, talented, and motivated never to fail again. After meeting her in person, Glinn finds himself becoming attracted to her. Glinn's expedition sets off for Cape Horn in a brand new oil supertanker, the Rolvaag, retrofitted with various high tech equipment but disguised to appear as worn down, barely functional ship, traveling under the guise of a failing mining company searching for iron ore. Despite possessing a legitimate mining agreement to this effect, Glinn is forced to bribe local Chilean officials for access to Isla Desolación, falsely confessing that they are searching for gold in order to allay any further suspicions. Both of these actions are witnessed by Commandante Vallenar, a locally stationed Chilean Navy officer, who objects angrily but is powerless to stop the bribes from being accepted. Once on Isla Desolación, operations start almost immediately. The body of Masangkay is recovered and analyzed by the expedition's doctor, who concludes that he was killed by a lightning strike; McFarlane attributes this to the meteorite acting as a lightning rod. Once properly examined, the meteorite is shown to be much smaller — and denser — than initially expected. However, when Glinn's crew attempts to lift the meteorite using hydraulic jacks the units fail, killing two members of the expedition. Tests McFarlane run on a sample of the meteorite reveal that the exterior of the meteorite is a single element, not an alloy, and has an approximate atomic number of 177. Though this explains why the jacks failed — the weight of the meteorite is somewhere in the area of 25,000 tons, more than double what was expected — it is also staggering scientific discovery: no known element has an atomic number anywhere near 177. McFarlane speculates that this element is part of the undiscovered elemental "island of stability", and further states that the meteorite could only have come from outside the solar system. During this McFarlane also becomes romantically involved with Amira. Now properly accounting for its weight, Glinn's crew is able to load the meteorite onto a massive cart which will move the meteorite to the Rolvaag. That evening, Commandante Vallenar sends a member of his crew, Timmers, to investigate Glinn's excavation. Timmers infiltrates the dig site, kills a guard, and enters the area housing the meteorite. Surprised by what he discovers, Timmers reaches out to touch the meteorite and is fatally electrocuted. Though confused at first, the expedition eventually is able to piece together what happened, concluding that the meteorite discharges electricity on contact. Plans to move the meteorite continue, albeit much more carefully. At the same time, Commandante Vallenar positions himself off the coast of Isla Desolación to prevent the Rolvaag from leaving. Glinn meets with the Commandante in an attempt to secure safe passage, admitting that the expedition is there to recover a meteorite, but is rebuffed by Vallenar. The next evening Glinn and his crew load the meteorite onto the ship under cover of fog, leaving lights and running equipment on Isla Desolación to serve as a distraction, then break for the open sea. When Commandante Vallenar fires on the Rolvaag and gives chase Glinn detonates two explosive devices surreptitiously placed on the Commandante's propellers during his visit, disabling the Chilean ship. This proves to be a temporary solution, as Vallenar's crew is able to replace one of the damaged propellers. By this time the Rolvaag is well on its way to international waters, and Glinn predicts that Vallenar will not pass the Chilean border (however, the doctrine of hot pursuit appears to allow this). When the Commandante continues pursuing them, Glinn belatedly realizes that Timmers must have been Vallenar's son; Vallenar has realized that Timmers is dead and intends to kill them out of vengeance. Captain Britton also notes that Vallenar's course has now cut them off from any chance of help. With no other choice, Glinn orders the ship to proceed south towards the Ice Limit, the border of Antarctic waters, where icebergs and even ice islands are common. During the Rolvaags flight the meteorite discharges again, though this time without anyone touching its surface. Eventually McFarlane and Amira figure out what causes the electrical discharges: contact with salt-containing liquids such as human sweat or ocean water. Meanwhile, Vallenar's ship closes on the Rolvaag over the course of several hours, getting into firing range just as the ship enters an area of icebergs. Though Captain Britton is able to avoid destruction by feigning the ship being in distress, eventually Vallenar inflicts enough damage to disable the ship completely. As his vessel closes between two ice islands to destroy the Rolvaag, a team of Glinn's men detonate explosives on one of the towering icebergs, shearing off a massive chunk of ice which capsizes and sinks the Commandante's ship. Though no longer pursued by the Chilean Commandante, the Rolvaag is now dead in the water, and the nearest rescue vessel is unable to approach for several hours due to a storm in the area. The continuing rough seas begin to take their toll on the ship; eventually Captain Britton realizes that the meteorite is severely unbalancing the ship, and must be jettisoned to prevent the Rolvaag from being snapped in half. At first both Palmer Lloyd and Sam McFarlane object vehemently to the idea, but after some argument admit that it may be the only way to save the ship and themselves. Glinn prepares to activate the jettisoning system, but abruptly stops, declaring that he is certain the ship will survive. Attempts to convince him otherwise fail, and as he is the only person with access to the system the crew has no choice but to abandon ship. Glinn moves to the meteorite holding area, attempting to secure the meteorite, only to discover that most of the securing devices have failed. Undaunted, he continues his efforts until he is interrupted by Captain Britton, who begs him to leave the ship with him in a lifeboat, confessing, "I could love you, Eli." Moments later the meteorite makes contact with the ocean, discharging a massive amount of electricity. McFarlane, Amira, Lloyd, and the rest of the crew watch from the lifeboats as the Rolvaag snaps in half and sinks. The lifeboats are ill-prepared for the harsh Antarctic waters, and many of the crew start to suffer from hypothermia immediately. The survivors take refuge on an ice island, where they start to slowly succumb to the extreme conditions. Amira attempts to tell McFarlane something she concluded about the meteorite, giving him a CD containing the test data they collected, but before she can finish she dies. McFarlane begins to slip away as well, but before he can the crew is rescued by a helicopter. Three days later, Palmer Lloyd and the handful of survivors are recovering inside a British Antarctic science station. Sam McFarlane arrives in Lloyd's room and begins to tell him about Amira's attempts to tell him about her discovery. Though Lloyd refuses to engage him, McFarlane continues speaking, describing a series of small ocean floor earthquakes recorded at a specific Antarctic location, and then revealing that the Rolvaag sank at the same location. He finishes by saying that he has figured out what Amira wanted to say: that what they recovered was not a meteorite, it was a seed, and that it is now sprouting.
13857532	/m/03cldwz	Jennie	Douglas Preston	1994-10-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Jennie is a chimpanzee, living in the 1970s. Naturalist Dr. Hugo Archibald delivers Jennie from her dying mother in the Cameroons and brings her home to his American family. His young son, Sandy, becomes extremely attached to Jennie, but Archibald's daughter, Sarah, resents the chimp. Jennie, through her learning of ASL (American Sign Language), starts to converse and interact with the humans around her. Eventually, Jennie is released into a wildlife preserve where she simply can not function.
13857684	/m/03cld_1	Mists of Dawn	Chad Oliver		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Dr. Robert Nye, a nuclear physicist working at White Sands Missile Range has finally finished his space-time travel machine after 20 years of research. On the eve of its maiden voyage to Ancient Rome, Dr. Nye's nephew Mark is trapped inside and sent back in time to the year 50,000 BC when a nearby rocket test explosion sends him careening into the controls. When Mark arrives at his destination he must survive the two weeks it takes the space-time machine to recharge for the return trip with nothing but a few matches, a pocket knife, and a 6-shot .45 revolver. ==Plot summary<ref name="Chad Oliver 1952"/
13860301	/m/03clhlv	A Far Country	Winston Churchill	1915	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book follows the career of Hugh Paret from youth to manhood, and how his profession as a corporation lawyer gradually changed his values. The title is a reference to the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where Luke 15:13 (KJV) provides that the son went "into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living."
13862600	/m/03clkbw	Christian Devotedness				 Subtitled The Consideration of Our Savior's Precept, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth". It is a little Bible study, expounding Jesus' teaching concerning stewardship of material possessions. He exhorted all Christians to live economically, trusting God to supply their needs, and devoting their income to the cause of the Gospel.
13864173	/m/03clltz	Brotherhood of the Rose	David Morrell	1984-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It tells the story of Saul and Chris, two orphans who are adopted by a top espionage agent and trained to be assassins. When their adopted father tries to have them killed, their training, determination and loyalty are put to the test. The brothers find out that the conspiracy is even larger than they expected spanning security agencies of different nations, Each of the brotherhood member is 4th in ranking in the respective organizations and have loyal assassins trained from tender age. Chris died during a duel with one of the loyal assassins of another brotherhood member and the story became that of revenge. Their adopted father Elliot ran into a sort of national safe house for security agents which is where the later part of the book concentrated on. Saul being a Jew later went back to his native land and married his love interest Erica from their training days, who is a Mossad Agent. The other novels in this loose trilogy are The Fraternity of the Stone and The League of Night and Fog.
13864566	/m/03clm70	Philosophy in a New Key				 "Langer elaborates her thesis in freshly conceived and interesting studies contained in chapters treating of the logic of signs and symbols, a comparison of discursive and presentational forms of symbolism (perhaps the heart of the book), verbal language, life symbols as the roots of sacrament and myth, the significance of music, the genesis of artistic import, and the fabric of meaning."
13866407	/m/03clnvx	Blink	Ted Dekker	2005-05-17	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Protagonist Seth Border is a college student who has one of the world's highest IQs. One day he begins developing a tremendous skill: the ability to see multiple possible futures. This ability first manifests itself for a few seconds at a time, and gradually exponentiates into an ability to see millions of possibilities that could happen hours and days later. Little does Seth know that when he is thrown together with a Saudi princess, Miriam Al-Asamm, who flees her country to escape oppression, he will soon have the adventure of his life as they explore the truth about Christianity and Seth's gift of precognition while running for their lives.
13866418	/m/03clnwl	Black	Ted Dekker	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 This book is about a man named Thomas Hunter in Denver, Colorado, 2010, who, after being knocked unconscious from a bullet wound to the head, wakes up to find himself in a strange world full of black, twisted trees. After being attacked by strange, bat-like beings called Shataiki and led out of the Black Forest by a white bat, he is rendered unconscious again due to blood loss. He wakes up to find himself back in Denver. Startled at the sudden change, he can’t figure out which world is real. He soon discovers that every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in the other world, until he falls asleep there. Outside of the Black Forest is the Colored Forest, a paradise inhabited by a civilization of immortal-yet innocent-humans beings who are watched over by Elyon, a God-like being, along with white, bat-like Roush, who are opposites of the Shataiki and act as servants of Elyon. Thomas eventually finds out that this other world is our own thousands of years in the future, and that a virus, mutated from a vaccine, would wipe out his present-day Earth later that year. Thomas is forced to fight evil in both worlds, a difficult prospect, for while evil is portrayed differently in each reality, it is equally as potent, and Thomas quickly finds that putting a stop to an event of apocalyptic proportions is no easy task.
13866424	/m/03clnwy	Red	Ted Dekker	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In Red: The Heroic Rescue, Thomas has spent fifteen years in the "dream world," having been persuaded by his wife Rachelle to eat the "Rhambutan" fruit which will prevent him from dreaming. Only eight hours have passed in the world of Earth, but the plague has been released in several cities. During this time Thomas is in a world torn by conflict. Followers of Elyon live in the seven forests and continue to bathe daily, as instructed. However, the deserts outside of the forests are home to the Horde, with a much larger population than the forests. Members of the Horde (individually referred to as "Scabs") are subject to the degenerative skin disease of the fallen world and are constantly trying to conquer and destroy the inhabitants of the forest. Moreover, they actually worship Teeleh, carrying banners with images of the Shataiki. Thomas is now referred to as "General Thomas of Hunter" and is commander of the Forest Guard, a legendary figure among the Forest Dwellers and the Horde alike. However as the story of Red unfolds, it is revealed that the Horde also have a legendary General emerging known as Martyn. One whose strategies are bolder and more clever, and have yet to be seen by the Forest Guard. In the forests, the people keep Elyon's seven rules but have added to them, scrupulously trying to make it as difficult as possible to violate the actual rules. The people continue to celebrate the themes of their life in the colored forest, before the Great Deception. Interpretation of the rules is vested in a priest-like figure named Ciphus, from the Southern Forest. Members of the Horde are allowed to come and bathe and become part of the forest dwellers, but this is actively discouraged as Ciphus has determined there is not enough water in the lakes to support a much larger population. This is generally not an issue, as the skin disease of the Horde makes any contact with water agonizingly painful, and the Horde view themselves as "normal" and the forest dwellers as "defective." Occasionally, however, a Horde member will be washed, as is the case with a wise village elder named Jeremiah. Also, forest dwellers who go too long without bathing in Elyon's water begin to develop the skin disease, eventually losing the ability to think rationally and becoming members of the Horde. The Forest Guard has developed extensive procedures for carrying bathing water with them while on patrol in order to try to prevent this. A new figure in the book is Justin, a former member of the Forest Guard under Thomas. When Thomas offered him the rank of second in command, Justin declined and left the Forest Guard entirely, leading to the young woman Mikil becoming Thomas' second in command. Justin begins to anger the leadership of the forest dwellers, however, by his unorthodox attitudes. He actively seeks peace with the Horde. Interestingly, as the story progresses, it is revealed that Justin always seems to be clean of the disease even when he seems to have been unable to bathe. Justin attempts to broker a peace between the Horde and the forest dwellers, on one occasion speaking with Martyn in the middle of a battle to secure the safety of the Southern Forests Guard and their leader Jamous(Who is in love with Mikil)and to encourage good will between the two cultures. However, Justin is betrayed and sentenced to death by the leadership under Ciphus. Initially he is forced into a Gladiator-style face off against Thomas of Hunter (whom the crowd and leadership are sure will be victorious). Justin does exhibit equal if not superior skills in sword and hand-to-hand combat though he never actually harms Thomas and seems to view the contest almost in a comical sense. As Justin emerges the victor he leaves the arena and greets a waiting Martyn at the crest of the arena to a shocked audience including Thomas. As Thomas signals his guard to move in on Justin and Martyn, Thomas himself confronts them face-to-face. When he draws his sword on Martyn he is horrified when Martyn reveals himself to actually be the once innocent Johan, Thomas' brother-in-law. Johan had once been part of the guard under Thomas' command and was assumed to have been killed in battle when in fact he became stranded and the disease took him. Later, it is showed that Justin is Elyon in an adult form. However, Thomas doesn't know this and makes a deal with Johan to pretend that Justin had betrayed both the Forest and the Horde, so that they can get him killed. Eventually it is known that an overwhelming Horde Army is encroaching on the Forest, and demands the right to carry out the execution as they consider Justin to have betrayed them, too. Justin is sentenced to death with the Horde's most feared form of execution: drowning in water. He is first hung over the lake and beaten until his bones are broken and he is severely disfigured. Mysteriously, during his drowning, Justin's body begins to be covered with the Horde skin disease. Upon his death, Johan in a fit of rage attacks Justin and thrusts his sword into his abdomen, his blood pours into the lake, violating Elyon's prohibition about blood entering the water. The next day, the water itself has turned to a blood red color and the forest dwellers are all completely infected with the skin disease. Yet Justin's dead body cannot be found in the depths of the lake. Rachelle remembers a command he had once given her to "follow me". First she, Thomas, Johan, and then others including both forest dwellers and members of the Horde, give up their lives in the red water, finding that they, too, are returned to life and completely cleansed of the skin disease. In fact, these new followers of Elyon through Justin discover that they need never be cleansed again: they are immune to the skin disease. Meanwhile, the leadership of the former forest dwellers have been corrupted by the disease and merge the religions of Elyon and Teeleh, inviting the Horde to come dwell in the forest. The sacrifice of drowning in the red water is unthinkable to those infected with the disease, and they view the cleansed people as defective "albinos." The "albinos" flee for their lives into the desert. On the way, however, Thomas’s wife Rachelle is shot with three arrows and dies. There, Justin himself meets them and excitedly proclaims his happiness over them. He proclaims the new group to be his "Circle" (a symbol of marriage dating back to the days of the colored forest) and to be his "bride," and ecstatically thanks his father for what he calls his "beautiful bride," referring to God as his "father." Justin reveals to the Circle that they will find more red pools hidden in the desert and that for the rest of their lives they will be his and will be charged with the mission of saving as many members of the Horde as possible by inviting them to drown in the pools. The title "Red" thus refers to the color of the blood shed by Justin to redeem his followers from the Fall, and to the blood-red pools in which his followers give up their lives in order to be reborn as Justin's people.
13866437	/m/03clnx8	White	Ted Dekker	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In White: The Great Pursuit, all those who follow Elyon through Justin's sacrifice have formed "The Circle". The roles have switched in the sense that the Horde has taken over the seven forests and The Circle now resides in the deserts, able to survive by the aid of Johan(formerly Martyn) who is familiar with life in the desert. They usually try to avoid the Horde but it is evident that in the 13 months since Justin gave his life The Circle has led roughly 1,000 Scabs to drown in the red pools and join The Circle. One night during a council meeting(composed of Thomas, Mikil, Jamous, William, Suzan, Johan and Justin's disciple Ronin) the new and more vicious commander of the Horde armies Woref orchestrates a massive invasion on Thomas' tribe. In an attempt to cover the tribes escape into the desert Thomas, Suzan, William and the brothers Stephen and Cain ride out towards the approaching army, leading to Thomas and the others capture. Subsequently they are imprisoned in the newly constructed Horde village in an underground dungeon. Qurong, the Horde leader takes his prisoners before his wife Patricia and daughter Chelise, whom Thomas met some time earlier in the desert when the disease had nearly overcome him, calling himself then by another name. When Qurong is presenting his 'prize' he also announces that Chelise is to be wed to the beast of a general Woref who was responsible for the capture of Thomas and the other "Albinos". Soon after, Thomas appeals to Qurong and Chelise's desire to learn the Books of Histories, knowing that the Horde cannot read them but members of The Circle can. Chelise pleads for Thomas to be spared his execution and instead made her servant. He is imprisoned in the library where he has access to the Books of the Histories and for a few days after spends his time searching out the blank books of history while also reading some historical stories to Chelise that effect her in ways she's never experienced - because she's hearing the truth. Unbeknownst to Thomas, he begins to fall in love with her, having not had feelings for a woman since the death of his last wife Rachelle, thirteen months before. The others in the Circle at first believe him to have gone mad but when they find out he truly does love this Scab, and Scab royalty at that, they're willing to risk themselves alongside Thomas to help. The problem is that she, being diseased, is completely forbidden from falling in love with an albino and is utterly terrified of the thought of drowning in the red pools. However, after willingly accompanying Thomas to the desert(though her family believe she's been kidnapped, while Woref remains suspicious) she begins to see Thomas' heart and realizes how deeply he loves her. Finally she embraces the notion that she does too in fact love him and they embrace the passionate moment by the campfire. She still does not decide to follow Elyon, seeing herself as incapable. Upon the groups return to their tribe, they're greeted by an angry William. Who informs them that the Horde has attacked killing 10 of their members, wounding some others and taking 24 prisoner back to the Horde village. Thomas in an attempt to free those 24, offers Qurong what he really wants: himself, Thomas of Hunter. Thomas returns to the forests with Mikil and subdue a border guard, instructing him to inform Qurong of their offer. He does and returns with a group of warriors who exchange the 24 albinos on horseback for Thomas. He is then imprisoned and beaten and ordered to renounce his love for Chelise to her face or she'll receive the same punishment that he will: death by drowning (traditional Horde execution). The thought is unbearable to Thomas, but the thought of Chelise dying before she has a chance to drown in the red pool is even more heart wrenching. He reluctantly goes through with it, utterly destroying himself in the process and nearly convincing Chelise when he knocks himself out to get away from the pain. When he reawakens he decides not to go through with it and rushes for Chelise professing his love for her as sure and true as it's ever been. At that moment as they're weeping together Woref bursts through the door (having been spying on the whole event) and in a fit of rage grabs Chelise and throws her against the wall, violently striking her in the face at the very moment that Qurong walks through the door, led in by a captive Mikil. Woref, Chelise and Thomas are all sentenced to death by drowning unless Chelise tells her father she doesn't in fact love Thomas (which Thomas tries to get her to do) but she does not. Upon Mikil's release she meets with Johan and Suzan and they begin to trace a portion of the lake that was not emptied by Ciphus when it had turned red after Justin's drowning for it was in fact a spring. They dig and eventually reach the flowing waters which they channel into the larger lake just before Thomas, Chelise and Woref are sent to the depths. As they all sink Chelise pleads with Elyon to take her, suddenly realizing that the water is turning red she drowns in the red water and experiences Elyon's sacrifice and love for her. Eventually she rises, simultaneously as Thomas does (much in the same fashion as when Thomas and Rachelle drowned at the end of Red). Qurong appears to be somewhat stunned by the turn of events, but allows Chelise, Thomas and the other albinos safe passage out of the forests to the desert, though he will not drown himself. Thomas, Chelise and the others leave the forests to the desert where their tribe is waiting. All while this is happening, events are still in motion in Ancient Earth. Thomas has successfully turned Carlos by allowing him to sleep while in contact with his blood, in which Carlos dreams of the other reality as Johan. He then believes and somewhat reluctantly decides to join up with Thomas in an effort to stop Svensson and Fortier from executing their full plans: Only releasing the antivirus to a small list of people they deemed worthy of its reception. Upon hearing this America has already turned it's naval fleet, airforce and nuclear arsenal over to the French, as a last-ditch effort to resist Thomas along with high-ranking U.S., British and Israeli officials order the USS Nimitz to fire on the fleet sinking all of it. When Thomas returns to Washington D.C. he meets with President Blair, Monique and his sister Kara at Genetrix Labs to check on the progress of the antivirus. They inform him that the only feasible cure is through his blood. Somehow it instantly eradicates the virus, and Monique and Kara believe it to be because he swam in Elyon's lake and breathed the water in effectively making his blood immune. However, since the virus is so widespread they need all twelve pints of his blood. A transfusion is out of the question because of the risk they would run of "watering down his blood with infected blood". Thomas agrees knowing that it's the only hope they have left of defeating the pandemic, his blood is dubbed the "Thomas Strain" by Monique. His only request is that he is allowed to sleep before they begin the procedure. As he does he reawakens in the other reality, the book concludes with Thomas at the oasis where his tribe stays, waiting on the top of a dune with Mikil, Jamous, Suzan and Johan (Suzan and Johan are planning their own marriage)as his bride Chelise is preparing for their wedding. A loud rumble is soon heard throughout the desert and a mass of Roshuim (white lions that were at the high lake with Elyon) begin to swarm around their oasis, lead in by a rider on a white horse - Justin. He rides straight for Chelise and dismounst, approaching her and grasping her hands. He exclaims his satisfaction to his father, Elyon, saying "she's perfect, my bride is perfect!". He then rides for Thomas where he lovingly embraces him and tells him "Well done, Thomas". He then mounts his horse and in the same fashion as when The Circle was first born, he rides around them with his sword in the sand symbolically carving a circle around them in the sand. He then proceeds to leave them, riding over the crest of the dune with the Roshuim in pursuit. It is stated in the few short days since Chelise drowned in the red water, some 5,000 Scabs followed in pursuit of Elyons gift through Justin.
13867659	/m/03clpvp	The Coxon Fund	Henry James			 At Wimbledon, outside London, the Mulvilles entertain with their guest Frank Saltram, a man “who had found out something” and they claim its everything; he poses as an intellectual when in fact he is a con man or perhaps a holy fool (possessed, regardless, of a real and powerful gift to delight with his conversation), conning the Mulvilles into paying his debts; the story revolves around Saltram and people who are fascinated with the man; Mulvilles also want to reunite Saltram with his estranged wife who plays the role of troublemaker in the story. Saltram is unsuccessful on all fronts, other than being entertaining as a dinner guest. Includes frequent common theme of James, interplay between Americans and British. Ruth Anvoy, an American woman, comes to see her aunt, Lady Coxon, who though born in the United States married a Brit and is now a widow; she meets George Gravener who has a future in politics and real intellect, he despises Saltram for being a fraud; Gravener and Ms. Anvoy become engaged, her father is very rich and she is a free spender, part of their relationship revolves around the large sum the couple will receive upon marriage; this changes as her father gets hit in the panic of 1893 and loses most of what he has, then he dies as Ruth Anvoy has returned to America to check on her family; she does not return for some time, neither does Gravener attempt to bring her back, so the engagement is in question, and her money is gone, there is no large inheritance now. Saltram has moved out from the Mulvilles and has gone to the Pudneys, who have more money, quite disrespecting all the Mulvilles had done for him; Ms. Anvoy returns to London and her aunt dies, a fortune is left to her, but there was a stipulation in the original Will when the money was left to her aunt that requests a sum of 13,000 pounds be set up into a fund for a forward thinker, money for a great man to publish and find “Moral Truth”; yet she has the option of keeping the money, this is Gravener’s preference, he wants to use the money to buy a house after they are married, but Ruth says no I must honor the request. This results in a reversal of their engagement. She picks Saltram as the candidate to receive the Coxon Fund, though she has suspicions about him. The narrator has information that will prove Saltram a fraud and he offers to show it to Ruth but she says no, destroy it, her decision has been made; The narrator liked Ruth from the first, yet neither gets married, Gravener marries a woman who is “criminally dull,” the Mulvilles suffer from boredom and they all miss the good ole days; Saltram produces nothing, ceasing to publish anything from the day he comes into the money from the Coxon Fund, proving that he was a complete fraud. Classical reference to old man of the sea, also in Homer’s Odyssey and the Arabian Nights. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/search/Search.aspx?SearchBy=4&Word=old+man+of+the+sea&Search=Search&By=0 This is found in chapter two. Issues of inheritance and marriage based upon a dowry. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, perhaps today also, it was fairly common for a wealthy American heiress to marry a Brit for the prestige of his title, with she receiving the benefits of said title and the Brit to become well funded and maintain the family estate.
13868692	/m/03clqkr	The Death of the Lion	Henry James			 The narrator suggests writing an article on Neil Paraday; his new editor agrees. The former spends a week with Neil and writes the article whilst there, alongside reading Paraday's latest book. His editor rejects the article however; he decides to write an article for another newspaper, but it goes unnoticed. Neil Paraday gets excited about writing another book, despite the fact that he doesn't seem successful still. However the narrator comes across a praiseful review in The Empire. Mr Morrow, a journalist suddenly interested in writing about Neil Paraday's life now that he is successful, comes round and ends up scaring the writer; the narrator manages to see him off. He tells Mr Morrow all there is to know about Paraday is in his work; the journalist is not amused. Later, he publishes an article on Neil's house in the Tatler. Embracing his fame, Paraday takes to going to London luncheons with women. The narrator meets Miss Hurter, an American admirer of the writer's, in his house. As the writer is again busy with Mrs Wimbush, he explains to the girl that the best thing she can do is not to bother Paraday and only admire him from afar, so as not to interfere with his writings. Nevertheless, he keeps her autograph album to show it to him. Later, he meets with her to read passages from Paraday; once while they are at the opera he points Paraday out to her. The narrator is annoyed with Mrs Wimbush for inviting Paraday to a party at Prestidge. Subsequently, he quotes from a letter sent to Miss Hunter while he was at the party. In this mise en abyme, he describes the way the other guests have not read Paraday's works; worse still, Lady Augusta confesses to having mislaid the text is expected to read out the next day - there is no extra copy. Paraday falls gravely ill; the guests, enhanced by the Princess, are merry since the party seems to be a success. Dora Forbes joins them - later to become Mrs Wimbrush's next 'henpecked' writer. The party is called off on doctors order; the Princess lets him pass away in one of her houses. Before his death, Paraday had asked the narrator to publish an unfinished text by him. Although the one lost by Lady Augusta has not been found again, the narrator and Miss Hunter shall keep Paraday's memory alive through their dedication to his texts.
13870257	/m/03cls4m	New Found Land	Samuel Youd	1983-01-27	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the first novel, Fireball, Simon and Brad are cousins who are mysteriously transported to an alternate history Earth, where the Roman Empire did not break up and Europe remains in pre-Dark Ages technology. In an attempt to improve their status in the new realm, Simon and Brad aid the Church, which is oppressed, to launch a coup by introducing the stirrup and the longbow. The coup succeeds, but the boys did not anticipate the Church as a state power would force everyone in the Empire to convert or die. At the end of the first book, they sail away to the New World, which in the realm, was not discovered yet by the Old World. At the beginning of this novel, they managed to reach the American continent safely. They are received warmly enough by the native tribes in North America, but soon find themselves yearning for more advanced civilizations. Trekking across the continent, they head for the only civilization in America which has significant urban living - the Aztecs. As the Roman Empire has persisted in Europe of this realm until the 20th century due to unchanging externalities, the Aztec too has continued without encounters from the Europeans' discovery of the New World. In order to quickly gain wealth and status to enjoy a comfortable living, they take part in the sacred games, which is a cross between squash, tennis and handball. Their aim though is to finish second, as the victors will be sacrificed to the gods. Unfortunately, they win. To escape the fate of the winners, they escape again, and this time, are captured by sailors from the Far East. Their story continues in the last book of the trilogy, Dragon Dance.
13870383	/m/03cls93	Dragon Dance	Samuel Youd	1986	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 At the end of New Found Land, Simon and Brad are in North America where they are captured by sailors from the Far East. When they awaken after losing consciousness during the capture, they find themselves aboard a Chinese junk crossing the Pacific Ocean. The junk is a paddle steamer that sails without human intervention. The crew have apparently put themselves into hibernation, indicating that they are accustomed to the trip and are expecting an uneventful journey. On their arrival in China they are taken to the Imperial Court, where the boys display their knowledge of modern technology. There, Brad becomes besotted with the Dowager Regent and became estranged from Simon. Unlike the other civilizations that they have encountered, which remain at a pre-Dark Ages technological level, the Chinese have continued their technological innovations and have come up with new inventions, even though their social development has stagnated. Simon is sent to the north to serve the general of the powerful Northern Army in charge of resisting nomadic barbarians. The arrival of the boys catalyses the ongoing court intrigue between the dowager regent and court officials. A series of bad news arrives in the north from the capital this implies that the young emperor is being held incommunicado, or has been secretly deposed and killed by the dowager regent. The general of the Northern Army, the most powerful army in the empire publicly declares that the dowager regent as a usurper, and mobilises his army to rescue the emperor, whose fate is unknown. He candidly admits to Simon that should the emperor be dead, that he the general would be the most likely to succeed to the throne. Simon attempts to help the general by the introduction of armoured tanks, but lacks detailed knowledge. Nonetheless Chinese engineers in the service of the general were able to build on the concept to produce some prototypes. The Chinese themselves use flying kites to give the appearance that dragons are aiding their military. However, the expedition becomes a disaster at the gates of the capital. Simon discovers that Brad has introduced airplanes to the dowager regent's forces. While the airplanes work, Simon's tanks do not. Having rid herself of all opposition, the dowager regent callously discards Brad and attempts to have him killed. The two boys manage to escape once again, only to encounter another fireball similar to the one which brought them into this world. Though he is given the option to go home, Simon follows Brad when the latter refuses to go home and instead decides to try for better luck in a new realm.
13873685	/m/03clw5l	Missing Men of Saturn	Robert S. Richardson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 ~Plot outline description~ -->
13873688	/m/03clw5y	Rocket Jockey	Lester del Rey		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Jerry Blaine, a young man studying at the Space Institute, is kicked out just after his second year exams at the request of his brother, Dick, in order to help him get his ship, the Last Hope ready for the 18th Armstrong Classic. Jerry is initially bitter, but realizes that how he conducts himself in the classic will go a long way toward proving himself as a spaceman, and eventually being readmitted to the institute. The Last Hope is a refitted asteroid mining ship using the Jerry and Dick's father's experimental fuel which is supposed to be a radical improvement upon existing technologies. Their parents were both killed in the first test of the fuel however, and it is only now, years later, that improvements in materials and engine design will allow the fuel to be tested again safely. Just before liftoff, Dick is injured when fuel splashes in his face, temporarily blinding him. Jerry is forced to take control of the Last Hope while his brother is incapacitated below decks. The qualification run to the moon is begun, and Jerry is racing against 10 other ships from earth for the right to represent their home planet in the classic proper. Jerry manages to win, but only after he witnesses the first fatality of the classic; a fellow earth pilot pushes his engines too hard and his ship overheats and is destroyed. After some political wrangling on the Moon that puts Jerry officially in charge of the Last Hope despite his brother's seeming recovery, they head out to touch on the 4 Galilean moons, Mars, and Venus. Heading for Mars first they make good time and land with high spirits. The Martians are not happy to see them, however. There has always been a bitter rivalry between the two worlds, and Mars has a reputation for winning the classic at all costs and through any means, scrupulous or otherwise. When they try to refuel the Last Hope they discover their shipment of fuel has somehow disappeared from the warehouse in which it was stored. A long drawn out search finally locates the missing fuel in a pile of garbage that was ready for destruction. Jerry, Dick, and Tod all believe that Mars was intentionally responsible for the delay of 18 hours searching for the fuel. They take off from Mars and head towards Jupiter. Halfway however, Jerry discovers that Dick has not fully recovered from his injuries. He becomes sick and delirious, and they are forced to turn back to Mars to get Dick the medical care he needs. By the time the Last Hope leaves Mars for the second time, they are nearly 100 hours behind schedule, and their carefully planned course is now useless. On route to Jupiter for the second time the Last Hope loses power due to a blockage of the rocket tube. Losing more time, they coast while making repairs. Unfortunately, they coast so far, they no longer have the distance necessary to decelerate to rendezvous with the Jovian moons. Jerry is forced into a nearly suicidal braking maneuver into the Jovian atmosphere known as the "Dead Man's Orbit". Despite Jerry's vague recollections, such a feat had never before been accomplished, and he receives admiration and applause upon arrival on Io. After visiting the other 3 Jovian moons and experiencing an unfriendly reception on Ganymede, considered by many to be a puppet of Mars, the Last Hope set course back to the inner planets: Venus, Mercury, and Earth. While approaching the asteroid belt, they intercept a distress call, and come to the aid of what appears to be the Martian racers. After rendering assistance and parting ways, Jerry realizes his asteroid chart has been stolen. He must now navigate the belt by memory and luck. After some close calls and an actual impact with a small pebble, the Last Hope makes it through the belt relatively unscathed. Because of the delay with the decoy Mars racer, they are no longer in a position to rendezvous with Venus. Mercury is now their best stop.
13873691	/m/03clw68	Stadium Beyond the Stars	Stephen Marlowe		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	- ~Plot outline description
13873697	/m/03clw6z	Rocket to Luna	Evan Hunter		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	- ~Plot outline description~--&#62;
13876614	/m/03clz5j	Origin in Death	Nora Roberts	2005-07	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 When Lt.Eve Dallas and Detective Delia Peabody are called to the murder scene of Dr. Wilfred B. Icove Sr., things already don't make sense. Dr. Icove was renowned as a sainted genius of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, and no one, not even his son Wilfred Icove Jr., benefits from his death. What's even stranger are the security disks that reveal a woman (with initials DNA) walking into Icove's office, killing him with a single stab in the heart and walking out again. When Dr. Icove Jr. is killed in the same way, Eve begins looking for another mystery woman, while her husband Roarke begins investigating an organization run by the Icoves and their partner, Dr. Jonah Wilson. Soon, they uncover a secret world inside a private school of young girls and women, created by the Icoves and Wilson. A world of children by design, where people aren't born, but cloned.
13877613	/m/03cl_79	Memory in Death	Nora Roberts	2006-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Following the events in Origin in Death, Lt. Eve Dallas only wants a break as Christmas nears, but her past is coming back to haunt her. A television news special about her and her husband Roarke's involvement in the destruction of the Icove center airs on national television, and in Texas, catches the eye of Trudy Lombard, who promptly comes to New York City with her son and her daughter-in-law. Lombard shows up at Eve's office, and Eve remembers everything about her. Eve was taken in by Lombard, after she killed her father. Lombard was an abusive woman, who often made Eve go without food, clean the floors with a toothbrush, locked her in her bed room without light, and scrubbed her skin raw in ice cold baths, all the time telling her she deserved it because she was a 'filthy' little girl who'd already 'engaged in sexual relations' (referring to the beatings and rape committed by Eve's father) before the age of ten. Eve realizes Lombard wants something, and her suspicions come true when Lombard tries to blackmail her for $2 million dollars. When Eve refuses, Lombard tries to blackmail Roarke, who also refuses. Shortly after, Lombard is found dead, at first it seems like a classical murder, Lombard has been hit on the head by a blunt murder weapon and articles of clothing, her purse, and her tele-link are missing. Eve Dallas however, who is familiar with Trudy Lombard does not believe it to be so clear a homicide, and Trudy Lombard's daughter in law, Zana Kline, seems too innocent to not have a hand in the murder, however, because there is no evidence pointing to her, Eve becomes extremely frustrated. At the end of the book it is revealed that Zana is in fact one of the children Lombard had fostered.
13878591	/m/03cm08k	The Raven's Knot	Robin Jarvis	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Something ominous is happening in Glastonbury. Two mysterious deaths and the women of the town are falling ill. Could the strange crow dolls appearing in their houses be involved? Back in London, Neil Chapman living in the Wyrd Museum (a strange building owned by the three mysterious Webster sisters) once more enters the 'Separate Collection,' and discovers a stuffed raven that has come back to life. Then one of the Webster sisters go missing, along with Edie Dorkins, the elfin girl brought out of the past to carry on the sisters' work. What has called Miss Veronica away from the safe-haven of the museum? A memory of a past life and a lost love, enough to risk her life and the destruction of her sisters and the powerful secrets they keep. Will Neil get there in time to save the women of Glastonbury from a terrible fate, and to save the Websters from the great Battle that is coming?
13878919	/m/03cm0hv	The Fatal Strand	Robin Jarvis	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The final chilling chapter in the Wyrd Museum Trilogy sees Neil Chapman and Edie Dorkins returning exhausted from the harrowing scenes at Glastonbury Tor only to find all is not well at the museum. Having lost one of her sisters, Ursula is behaving suspiciously - is she hiding another great secret? And will her iron will be enough to stave off the madness that has claimed her remaining sister? Who is the mysterious ghost-hunter who insists on entering the museum and discovering its ancient secrets? The museum knows it is being violated and its past reincarnations blur together with the present, putting all those inside in danger. The final great battle for the future of the world is coming, and the Wyrd museum is at the centre of the battleground, but it still has some help to give...
13881203	/m/03cm27d	1st to Die	James Patterson	2001-12	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The prologue introduces main character Inspector Lindsay Boxer, San Francisco P.D., who is in a depression and holding a gun to her head as a result of losing a love interest on a case called "The Honeymoon Murders". Book One begins with David and Melanie Brandt, freshly married, in their hotel room at the Grand Hyatt. A man outside the door calls "Champagne" and David opens the door. The man, Phillip Campbell, then violently kills the bride and groom and immorally brutalizes the corpse of Melanie. The book then cuts to Inspector Lindsay Boxer in her general practitioner's office. The doctor, Dr. Roy Orenthaler, tells Lindsay that she has a rare, and deadly, blood disease called Negli's aplastic anemia. Throughout the book, Lindsay struggles with the physical side-effects of getting blood transfusions for Negli's, and the emotional aspect of having a life-threatening disease. During the appointment, she is called to the crime scene of a double murder at the Grand Hyatt. At that scene she is introduced to Cindy Thomas, covering the story. A second pair of bodies are found, and after Lindsay is told she has a new partner due to the sensitivity of the case, Cindy, Lindsay and medical examiner Claire Washburn join forces to attempt to solve the case. A third pair of bodies is found in Cleveland, Ohio, which are thought to be connected to the San Francisco cases. As Lindsay and company go through the case they acquire a fourth friend, Assistant D.A. Jill Bernhardt. Together, the four friends attempt to pin down a suspect, leading to the shocking conclusion. A subplot features Lindsay's attraction to Chris Raleigh, her new partner, but will the attraction last until she soon realizes that there is absolutely nothing to lose?
13886716	/m/03cm6cv	The Unicorn Girl	Michael Kurland		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is the second part of the Greenwich Village Trilogy, with Chester Anderson writing the first book (The Butterfly Kid) and the third volume (The Probability Pad) written by T.A. Waters. This novel follows the adventures of Michael and Chester though unknown worlds in a quest to assist a damsel in distress - which turns into a quest to save reality. One of the parallel worlds visited is that of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy.
13887834	/m/03cm7xq	Monster	Jonathan Kellerman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A mutilated body of a wannabe actor is found in the trunk of a car parked near an industrial area. Weeks later, another body appears in similar conditions at another location. This time it's a female psychology doctor working in a state facility for psychotic criminals. One similarity of the mutilations was obvious. The eyes were targeted. The case goes to LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, assisted by Dr. Alex Delaware, an old friend and psychological consultant. The two find out that the eye mutilation was infamously performed in the case of a family mass murder some years ago, and the culprit is now in the same facility where the female doctor worked. The media had described him simply as a 'monster' following his arrest. Facing him, Milo and Alex find the 'monster' in a deteriorated condition locked within a highly secured cell. To add to the drama, the detectives get a tip-off that the killer, who hardly speaks, had said something that implied the doctor's mutilated eyes.
13891092	/m/03cmcll	The Blue Man	Kin Platt	1961	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Steve Forrester is a teenager who goes to live for a summer with his aunt and uncle, who run a rural motel. On his first day running the desk by himself, a strange man checks in, dressed in a scarf, hat, trench coat and gloves, unusual attire for summer. The light on the desk starts to flicker as the man signs in with an illegible scrawl. Later, Steve brings a towel to the stranger's room and sees something that launches him on an unusual and singular adventure: the man's skin is bright blue and he seems to be draining energy from a nearby lamp. After his uncle is seemingly murdered by the fleeing Blue Man, (who appears to possibly be of alien origin), Steve sets out on a cross-country search for justice and revenge.
13893938	/m/03nmz_j	Warrior Scarlet	Rosemary Sutcliff	1958	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In Britain during the Bronze Age (about 900 BC) a young boy, Drem by name, dreams of becoming a warrior. He has first to overcome the fact he has a crippled arm and pass the tribe's test of manhood. This test is killing a wolf, on his own. Should he fail, he will be doomed to farm sheep for the rest of his life. When his friend and blood brother, named Vortrix watches him nearly die on his wolf slaying attempt, he cannot help himself but intervene. He attacks the wolf, meaning that the kill is void, as Vortrix has had a hand in the killing. Although Drem is badly injured by the wolf, he survives. Apparently Drem will never be a warrior, nor wear the scarlet cloth reserved only for warriors. He contemplates suicide, rather than face the shame of telling his family that he has failed. However, he goes to the sheep, and lives for a year with his friend Doli, a farmer. However the next winter, he kills his first wolf as it attacks the sheep flock. It bites him in the same place, removing his old scars, so removing the record of the old failed slaying. As the mark of his first attempt is still visible on the wolf, it is accepted as a legitimate kill. He is allowed to become a warrior, and passed through the terrifying initiation ceremony, which apparently involves all the candidates being knocked out.
13896533	/m/03cmj7g	The Secret of the Swordfish	Edgar Pierre Jacobs			 The first volume, "Ruthless Pursuit," opens on the eve of a World War. Details are scarce, but the reader is told that the enemy is an Asian superpower known as "the Yellow Empire," ruled by the Emperor Basam Damdu; the free world and the Yellow Empire have been locked in a cold war for the past three years. Within the first few pages of the book, the Yellow launch a worldwide aggression with modern rockets, bombers and paratroopers that quickly destroy and conquer the world's other major powers. However, the British military has been secretly working on a new type of superweapon known as the Swordfish, in anticipation of the war. Forewarned of the attack by a traitor in the Yellow army, Captain Francis Blake, a British officer, and Professor Phillip Mortimer, the scientist developing the Swordfish, escape with the superweapon's plans, their destination being a secret base in the Middle East where they will be able to finish their work. The rest of the episode follows their attempts to escape the pursuing Yellow forces, led by the cunning and conniving Colonel Olrik, Basam Damdu's chief of security. They initially escape from Britain in a jet-powered airplane called the "Golden Rocket," but are shot down somewhere over Iran by Yellow interceptors, and must continue the trek to the secret base on foot. Along the way, they encounter resistance fighter Ahmed Nasir, who becomes an invaluable help to them, and finally seek refuge in a small town in the Herat province. There, they are quickly betrayed by a Yellow spy. The episode ends with a cliffhanger: the soldiers of the Yellow army are directed to the room where Blake and Mortimer are staying and as they enter they find an astonishing surprise (naturally the reader can only see their reaction, not the cause of it). "Mortimer's Escape" takes place in two distinct halves. The first one picks up right where "Ruthless Pursuit" left off. After finding the room empty, the enraged Yellow commander orders his troops to search the city until they find Blake and Mortimer; however, he executes one of the community's elders in the process when the latter refuses to cooperate. This sparks an immediate insurrection in which the outraged townsmen quickly massacre the Yellow troops; in the ensuing chaos, Blake and Mortimer emerge from hiding and take off again, still with Nasir helping them. Eventually, the three of them make it to the Strait of Hormuz, but Blake is injured and loses the wallet containing the Swordfish plans while trying to escape a Yellow patrol. Mortimer then tells Nasir to take Blake to safety, while he returns to search for the plans. He is himself then captured by Yellow troops, but not before he is able to find and conceal the plans. The second half of the episode begins three months later in Lhassa (the Yellow capital), with Colonel Olrik making a report to the high council of the Yellow Empire. The Yellow are having more and more difficulty controlling their new empire; rebellions and acts of terrorism have continued worldwide, and despite their best efforts, they have still not been able to sweat the Swordfish plans out of Mortimer. As chief of the Empire's security service, Olrik is the natural scapegoat for this state of affairs; he therefore decides to take the gloves completely off and torture Mortimer as harshly as necessary, hoping to finally elicit a confession. Under instructions from Nasir, who has managed to infiltrate his prison, Mortimer pretends to relent, and agrees to reconstitute the Swordfish plans for the Yellow. After this, we are finally shown the secret base, where Blake and the admiral in command, Sir William Grey, have been conducting resistance against the Yellow (including many of the incidents that Olrik is being blamed for). They now have two urgent priorities; first, to find the lost plans and second, to break Mortimer out of prison. The first problem is resolved when Mortimer is able to pass a message to Nasir telling him where the plans are hidden. Soon after this, Mortimer almost manages a prison break on his own; before the Yellow are able to capture him, he is rescued by Blake and Nasir, who then take him to a submarine and manage to escape under the nose of the Yellow navy and air force. "SX1 counterattacks," the third part of the saga, begins soon after Mortimer's escape. In the first pages, British commandos attack and capture a Yellow train taking imprisoned scientists to a forced labor camp. The scientists are freed and taken back to the Hormuz base, where they also begin to work on the Swordfish project. Soon after this, acts of sabotage begin to disrupt the base, and Blake suspects that one of the captured scientists was actually a Yellow mole. This is eventually revealed to be none other than Olrik himself, who personally undertook the operation in an attempt to reestablish his reputation before the Emperor. Olrik manages to escape from the base, and the British are faced with an imminent Yellow invasion. Mortimer suggests a drastic solution; concentrate all the base's efforts on the assembly of only two working Swordfish, which should be enough to destroy a Yellow invasion force. He estimates thirty hours are all the time needed to accomplish this, and Admiral Grey gives him his word that the base will hold. The next morning, a vast Yellow task force, composed of an aircraft carrier battle group and a number of land and air forces, appears and surrounds the base. The initial attacks are defeated and turned back by the heroic efforts of the British. However, Olrik then deploys new chemical weapons against the base, which allow the Yellow to gain a foothold and slowly begin to work their way inwards. However, both Mortimer and Grey keep their word, and the two Swordfish (designated SX1 and SX2, hence the title) are finished in time. The weapons, piloted by Blake and Mortimer, are unleashed and destroy the Yellow task force in minutes, though one of them is lost in combat. The base is saved, and Sir William Grey launches a radio call to the resistance movements of the world telling them the news and urging them to revolt. In the following week, open rebellions erupt worldwide, taxing the overextended resources of the Yellow to the limit until the Emperor decides to end the war by launching ICBMs against all the rebel targets (with Olrik strapped to one of the rockets as punishment for his failures). Before he can do this, however, an entire squadron of Swordfish arrives over Lhassa and nukes the city, killing Basam Damdu and decapitating the Yellow Empire under the mocking eyes of Olrik. The last scene shows Blake and Mortimer back in a ruined and destroyed London, with Blake commenting that they will rebuild and that civilization, once again, has had the last word &mdash; "hopefully, this time, for good."
13898474	/m/03cml3y	Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint	Jay Williams	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Through a mishap in Professor Bulfinch's laboratory, Danny accidentally creates an anti-gravity paint. In time, the government constructs a spaceship which uses the paint as a propulsion system. The spaceship is launched prematurely after Danny and Joe follow Professor Bulfinch and Dr. Grimes on a tour of the ship. A mechanical failure dooms the four to a trip out of the Solar System unless they can repair the ship. Should they fail in this, they will drift too far from the Sun and freeze to death.
13898739	/m/03cml81	Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Danny uses a computer that Professor Bulfinch has created for NASA to prepare his homework, despite Professor Bullfinch's warning that Danny is to leave the machine alone. With his friend Joe Pearson and his new neighbor, Irene Miller, Danny has some success with the machine before it is sabotaged. Danny figures out what is wrong with the machine and corrects the problem. Danny's teacher also learns about the machine, and has her ideas for the Homework Champions. Once she finds out, she thinks of a way to trick the kids.
13898822	/m/03cmlb3	Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Danny accidentally discovers that an ionic transmitter Professor Bulfinch has been working on can be used to create miniature rainclouds.
13898888	/m/03cmlcv	Danny Dunn on the Ocean Floor	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Another accident in Professor Bulfinch's laboratory, instigated by Danny, results in the creation of a transparent, resilient material. The material proves useful in creating a bathysphere, and Professor Bulfinch, along with his friend Dr. Grimes, Danny, Joe, and Irene, descends into the Pacific Ocean on an experimental voyage. Unfortunately, the bathysphere's pilot is rendered unconscious, and the bathysphere becomes trapped in a cave.
13899003	/m/03cmlgy	Danny Dunn and the Fossil Cave	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Danny and his friend Joe Pearson discover the entrance to a cave in the woods near their home. Professor Bulfinch has just invented a portable x-ray machine, and he, along with his geologist friend Dr. Tresselt, see an opportunity to use the device in the cave. The two adults, plus Danny, Joe, and Irene, enter the cave on an expedition. What they find is astonishing...but will they be able to escape to reveal their discovery?
13900748	/m/03cmnvy	Dark Universe	Daniel F. Galouye	1961	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Survivors live deep underground in a world of complete darkness, divided into two clans, one living in the Lower Level and one in the Upper Level. Their legends tell of the Original World where man lived alongside the Light Almighty (a concept of which they can no longer conceive) and away from the ultimate evil, Radiation, with its two Lieutenants the Twin Devils Cobalt and Strontium. The Lower Level Survivors venerate a relic known as the Holy Bulb. "So compassionate was the Almighty (it was the Guardian of the Way's voice that came back [to Jared] now) that when He banished man from Paradise, He sent parts of Himself to be with us for a while. And He dwelled in many little vessels like this Holy Bulb." Jared is the son of the Prime Survivor, the leader of the Lower Level clan. He is himself due to become a Survivor (i.e. an adult clansman), but Jared is too busy with his quest to find Light. He rationalize that to find distant Light he must first locate its opposite, Darkness, which is near and "abounds in the worlds of men!" He goes on to theorize that: "Darkness must be something real. Only, we can't recognize it." ... "There's a clue [however]. We know that in the Original World - the first world that man inhabited after he left Paradise - we were closer to Light Almighty. In other words, it was a good world. Now let's suppose there's some sort of connection between sin and evil and this Darkness stuff. That means there must be less Darkness in the Original World, Right?" ... "Then all I have to do is find something there's less of in the Original World [than there is here]." ... "If Darkness is connected with evil and if Light is its opposite, then Light must be good. And if I find Darkness, then I may have some kind of idea as to the nature of Light." By leaving the safety of the central echo-caster, with only a pair of click stones with which to listen, Jared exposes himself to soubat (once common cave bats that either "Cobalt or Strontium took ... down to Radiation and made [them] over into ... super-creature[s]") and Zivvers (people with the unfathomable ability to 'hear' their surroundings despite having poor hearing compared to the fine tune senses of the Survivors). The soubats and Zivvers are thought of as similarly, or even related by the Survivors because of their ability to navigate the subterran world perfectly without 'proper' hearing. "It was an uncanny ability nobody could explain, except to say [soubats and Zivvers] were possessed of Cobalt or Strontium." Jared's quest for Light is interrupted by unexplained disappearances and an arranged marriage to Della, a girl from the Upper Level, the daughter of their chief 'the Wheel'. Things get progressively worse as strange monsters roam the world and the hot springs begin to dry up. Along with his betrothed, Jared sets out for the Zivver world, hoping it will bring him closer to Light, instead they finding themselves fleeing from the monsters once again, and being pushed closer to the Original World.
13900857	/m/03cmp36	Danny Dunn, Time Traveler	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Professor Bullfinch's experiment with a time travel invention is being secretly observed by Danny, Joe, and Irene. The youngsters are startled by the appearance of a second Joe. During the following confusion, the time travel device transports them all into the past. Aided by Benjamin Franklin, the Professor works to return them to their present. In the meantime, the youngsters explore the society of American life under British rule, only to find one of their number in danger of being marooned in the past.
13900991	/m/03cmp8q	Danny Dunn and the Automatic House	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Professor Bullfinch develops the "House of the Future" in which all controls are automatic, and plans to debut it at an upcoming Science Fair. This includes temperature controls and other standard functions, but also items such as washing machines, food preparation and normal housework. Danny, Irene and Joe, as well as Irene's toddler cousin, go to explore the house and become trapped inside, as the locks were automated to have security settings to seal the house until the Professor's introduction. Danny and his friends learn that in addition to the automated locks, everything is only a fake sample and the windows cannot be broken. They are trapped inside with no food or telephone, and the Fair does not open for three days!
13901230	/m/03cmpm4	Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Professor Bullfinch has created a machine for the government which will shrink objects and be used for spying. When Danny sneaks into the lab, he and his friends discover the machine and try to use it for a problem they have been dealing with at school.
13901327	/m/03cmprw	Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Professor Bullfinch and Doctor Grimes take Danny and his friends to beginning of the Nile River in Africa to investigate local legends of a swamp monster. Despite unforeseen calamities, a new, rare species of electric catfish is discovered.
13901358	/m/03cmpvm	Danny Dunn Scientific Detective	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Professor Bullfinch and Doctor Grimes are working on more scientific ways to fight crime. Danny is facing an issue at school and needs to borrow the equipment to solve the school mystery.
13901395	/m/03cmpw_	Danny Dunn and the Universal Glue			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Professor Bullfinch develops a glue which is stronger than any known glue. He christens it Irenium in honor of Irene, of whom he is fond. The Blaze Chemical Company, which built a factory after draining a swamp, has leaked a chemical into the water which may cause the local dam to break. Danny, Joe and Irene use a can of irenium to patch up the dam. In a subplot, Danny also uses the glue as a form of protest against Mr. Blaze by placing it on the backseat of his vehicle, causing Mr. Blaze to be stuck to the seat and having to cut his trousers apart, resulting in a humorous event where an angered Mr. Blaze appears at a town meeting to voice concerns over his chemical company wearing a blanket over his legs, giving the appearance of a kilt. Mrs. Dunn, who originally protested the draining of the swamp, gives Danny a stern rebuke that the prank was immature and counterproductive, and that Danny is now required to make restitution, meaning he is now in debt to Mr. Blaze to pay for a new pair of men's trousers. Danny humbly sends a letter to Mr. Blaze with all the cash he has on hand apologizing for what he did with the promise to work out a payment plan. During Danny's birthday party, a surprise guest is Mr. Blaze, who commends Danny for saving the town's dam and that his company will now have tougher oversight on chemical waste, and refunds Danny his money saying "I guess a pair of pants was worth the lesson."
13904352	/m/03cmtdd	Lila Says	Chimo		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lila Says is a narrative of the protagonist's — Chimo, an Arab boy living in France — interactions with a catholic girl named Lila. Lila befriends Chimo and tells him very provocative and somewhat troubling incidents in her life and shares her experiences with him.
13906276	/m/03cmv_p	Our Twisted Hero	Yi Munyol	1987-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This story is told by a man named Han Byeong-tae (or Pyongt'ae), recalling his memories when he was in 5th grade. Due to Byeong-tae's father fails in business, they move to a low town and go to Y Elementary School. There, he meets Eom Seokdae (or Om Sokdae), a president of the 5th grade and one who holds everything in his grade, more than his teacher. However, it is really Eom Seokdae forcing students by force to follow him. Byeong-tae fight Soekdae's reign however every student supports Soekdae. Therefore everything goes wrong for him; his parents misunderstand him, his grades go down and his power rankings also go down. Hence he loses, give up, and goes under Seokdae's power. After it, Seokdae gives him a great treatment. First of all, he restores Byeong-tae's power rankings to normal, but higher than before. Second, he makes everyone play with Byeong-tae and is not alone. Byeong-tae also gets his grade back. But the story says, "I was thankful to Seok-hyen. But when I think it back, those things were the things I had lost to Seokdae. He has just given it back." But when Byeong-tae goes to 6th grade, Seokdae's power breaks, due to the new teacher who have senses in the goings. Seokdae, leaves the school and is last seen by Byeong-tae, saying "Do it well." The story zooms to the present. Byeong-tae's riding the train to where Seokdae is living to get a face of him. On the train, someone is being dragged by polices and is surprisingly Eom Seokdae. However, he does not recognize Byeong-tae.
13906880	/m/03cmwk2	The Little Red Schoolbook				 The book encourages young people to question societal norms and instructs them in how to do this. Out of 200 pages, it includes 20 pages on sex and 30 on drugs, including alcohol and tobacco. Other topics included adults as "paper tigers", the duties of teachers, discipline, examinations, intelligence, and different schools.
13907534	/m/03cmx67	Danny Dunn and the Voice from Space	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Professor Bullfinch has created a radio telescope ("dish") for the government which will try to determine if extraterrestrials are trying to contact Earth. When Danny sneaks into the observatory, he hears non-random sounds coming from space. He then must figure out how to translate the sounds. The observatory described in the book is similar to the real life SETI project which Carl Sagan would also use later in his novel Contact.
13913809	/m/03cn29h	Flour Babies	Anne Fine	1992-11-19	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story centres around Simon Martin, a pupil in class 4C at an unnamed school. 4C is the class reserved for the school's worst students. As it so happens, a new student has arrived at the school, and, by sheer coincidence, his name is Martin Simon. The two boys are the complete antithesis of each other – Martin Simon passed all his science exams with flying colours, reads voraciously and even speaks and reads French fluently. The class teacher, Mr. Cartwright, sends the boy to Dr. Feltham's class, and Simon, who had been sent there by accident, soon arrives. The class are choosing their options for their contribution to the school Science Fair. They wish they could work on one of the most exciting experiments – The Exploding Custard Tins, Soap Factory, or Maggot Farm, for example – but these have been reserved for those who passed their science exams. As a result, 4C have ended up having to choose between a series of boring experiments. First they have to choose a topic- their options are consumer studies, textiles, child development, nutrition, and domestic economy. Simon Martin is given the task of pulling a voting slip out of a tub; Martin Simon's slip comes out, and the topic he has chosen is "child development". The experiment which Dr. Feltham (an eccentric science teacher who organises the fair) has chosen for child development is 'Flour Babies'. Each boy is given a six-pound bag of flour, in rags to form the look of a baby, and he must care for it at all times, as if it were a real baby. They must also write a diary explaining how they cope with this responsibility. Needless to say, the boys are not happy with this experiment, and neither does their teacher. But Simon misunderstands a conversation he overhears between Dr. Feltham and Mr. Cartwright, and thinks that they will get to kick the flour babies to bits at the end. Mr. Cartwright decides to pick another topic, but Simon has already mistakenly informed the class about kicking the babies to bits, they like the idea, and press gang him into letting them do the experiment. Simon becomes fond of his flour baby, while the others complain. Simon reflects on his own childhood: his Dad left home when Simon was just six weeks old, and never came back. His relationship with his mother has always been precarious, and Simon now begins to learn about the pressures of parenthood.
13919468	/m/03cn6pl	The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa	Jules Verne	1872	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Three Russian and three English scientists depart to South Africa to measure the meridian. As their mission is proceeding, the Crimean war breaks out, and the members of the expedition find themselves citizens of enemy countries. This novel can be found under alternate titles such as "Adventures in the Land of the Behemoth," "Measuring a Meridian" and "Meridiana or Adventures in South Africa."
13921234	/m/03cn839	Fireshadow				 Taking place during World War II, Fireshadow follows two seventeen-year-old boys. Erich Pieters joins the German Wehrmacht to fight for Chancellor Adolf Hitler in 1941, and winds up in an Australian Prisoner of War camp after fighting in North Africa. Half a century later, Vinnie Santiani flees into the remote Australian Bush in an effort to cope with the death of his sister. Despite the fact that they live in different times, the boys' lives intertwine in the novel with haunting results. A reviewer for Magpies commented that the award-winning book's "language is exceptional throughout ... while the author's insights into the emotional lives of the young people are sensitively conveyed." The main character is Erich Pieters who is only 17 years of age. The novel doesn’t provide much of a physical description of him but is does provide a good description of his personality. Erich grew up in a small family of a mother, father and younger sister. His father wasn’t around much when he was younger as he was an army officer who worked for Hitler. When the war started (Erich was only 17 at the time) Erich signed up for the army to the disapproval of his mother and sister but not his father. His father was a very proud man and Erich took after him. Soon after Erich went to war, he was captured and sent to Australia to a prisoner of war camp. As he developed into a man, he became less proud and his personality developed as he tried to overcome his adversity of adapting to such different surroundings and treatment. As Erich aged he became wiser and more caring for those around him. As shown at the end of the novel, Erich is a gentle caring man who as he says “I may be sick, but my eyesight, hearing and memories are as strong as ever!”
13921561	/m/03cn8cx	The Sky People	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this alternate universe, life exists on Venus and Mars. Because of this discovery, the United States and the Soviet Union have poured all their resources into space exploration, sending their best and brightest to colonize Venus and Mars. Although there have been a few outbreaks of hostilities on Earth, an uneasy détente exists in space between the Americans and Russians who are struggling for supremacy, supported by their respective allies. The European Union is also anxious not to be excluded from this neo-colonial race but is far behind the other powers. In 1962 the USSR drops planetary probes on Venus and discovers people, both Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis, on the planet. Crewed flights by the Soviets and later by the Americans establish bases on the planet (the American one named Jamestown; the Soviet one Cosmograd) and find other familiar species, including dinosaurs. Both fauna and flora are strangely similar to those from Earth's past. In 1988, Lieutenant Marc Vitrac, a Ranger in the US Aerospace Force, has been on the planet for a year. Born in a Cajun family amidst the Louisiana bayous, his primary function is exploration of the vast wild lands but in the beginning of the novel he is tapped to welcome newcomers to the colony. The new arrivals are somewhat taken back by the ceratopsia used as a shuttle bus. The dinosaur has been “iced” by the insertion of an Internal Control Device into its brain, which allows the creature to be controlled with messages sent directly to the brain. These new arrivals include Cynthia Whitlock, a young African-American specialist, and Wing Commander Christopher Blair, a supposedly British linguist. As with all the Terrans on the planet, Cynthia and Blair also have other skills. Blair spends most of his time in the nearby town of Kartahown extending their knowledge of one of the native languages. As the story progresses many of the characters comment about how similar evolution has progressed on Venus and on Earth. Naturally, the scientists at the Jamestown base are puzzled by the seeming parallel evolutions. Although the base doesn't have any means to check the DNA (as in this alternate timeline, the majority of research funding has been spent on space travel), other tests indicate that the natives are closely related to Terrans. The fossil record is very spotty, with occasional infusions of new species, but no one has an explanation as to why there are humans and other Earth animals and plants on Venus. On another part of Venus, an unknown, external force interferes with the computer on a Soviet shuttle, causing it to crash land in the unexplored wild lands. The Soviets ask for American assistance to recover the crew. The airship Vepaja, with Captain Tyler commanding, is selected for the rescue attempt and Marc, Cynthia, and Chris are chosen as the crew. Jadviga Binkis, wife of the Soviet shuttle commander, is also included in the crew. Marc also takes his greatwolf pup, Tahyo, with them. The weather, animals, mechanical failure and sabotage from an unknown enemy eventually forces the group to abandon the airship. Once they arrive at their destination they find themselves in the midst of a civil war between the very human Cloud Mountain People and the Neanderthals. Additionally, an alien AI is annoyed at the Terrans for interfering with the Venusians. The AI is sapient, but not sentient and is able to control both Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis within a short range. Unsure as to what to do, the AI calls for its creator race to return. Additionally, Blair discovers that the Cloud People speak a Proto-Indo-European language, indicating that the creator race has taken Homo Sapiens from earth and seeded them on Venus within the last several thousand years. The group sides with the Cloud Mountain People, Marc having fallen in love with their princess, and help them defeat the Neanderthals. The Cloud Mountain People’s lands were destroyed, however, by a biological weapon on board the downed Russian shuttle. Marc thus leads the Cloud Mountain People on a five thousand mile overland journey back to Jamestown to settle around the base and brings with him an alien artifact that may be evidence of the alien race that brought life to Venus and Mars.
13925383	/m/03cncwj	The Bush Soldiers		1984	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The point of divergence within the story is the loss of the Battle of the Coral Sea by the Allies. Unlike real history, the Imperial Japanese Navy manage to inflict heavy casualties upon the American naval forces. After a three-day engagement, with the loss of four capital ships and dozens of smaller craft, the Allies are forced to retreat. The invasion of Australia begins on 12 June 1942, with the Japanese landing at Darwin, Cooktown and Cairns. A major assault is conducted on the New South Wales town of Newcastle, leading to the Battle of Newcastle, where two of the story's characters (Sawtell and Counihan) had previously seen action. The Japanese also make landings at Tweed Heads, Coffs Harbour and the Hawkesbury River. Sydney is subjected to naval bombardment and is dive-bombed by aircraft from the carrier Zuikaku. Sydney is evacuated in a rather chaotic and disorganised manner. In early July 1942, General Douglas MacArthur and the remnants of the US 41st Division sail from Melbourne and retreat to New Zealand. The Australian Federal government (presumably John Curtin and his cabinet) withdraw from Canberra and set up in Perth. It is noted that by the end of that year, members of the Volunteer Defence Corps are doing their best to implement the scorched earth policy to refuse the enemy access to any resources.
13933881	/m/03cnm_6	Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood	James Baldwin	1976	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 TJ plays ball with his friends outside; he grazes his knee, then hurts his buttocks. A police car drives by, looking for a man; they run away. TJ's father then invites WT over for cocoa. Later, TJ goes shopping for Miss Lee, under the aegis of WT. TJ is then summoned by Miss Beanpole; she wants him to go shopping for her; he goes with his three friends. They go to a store whose owner is Puerto Rican. On the way back, while playing ball again, WT hurts his foot and starts bleeding - a bottle fell down from a window and the shards hurt him. They go to Mr Man's and Miss Lee covers up his gash, starts crying, then gives him a Pepsi Cola. In the end, Blinky dances to Mr Man's record, to the delights of Miss Lee and Mr Man.
13938777	/m/03cnsg8	Deadkidsongs	Toby Litt	2001	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 The plot centers on Gang, a gang of four boys who play War, led by "the Best Father". All boys envy Andrew for having such a nice dad, while Paul's father is considered "the worst father", a reputation he was never able to shake off, after having told off Andrew's father for neglecting an accident that involved Matthew falling out of a tree. However, their revenge on Paul's father has to make way quickly for a much more serious operation. When Matthew dies of meningitis, and Andrew's father mentions the fact that Matthew's grandparents did not take him to the doctor's in time, the three boys decide to take revenge on them, blaming them for the death of their gang member. Matthew's grandparents, who became substitute parents for him and his sister Miranda, when their parents died in a car crash, are touched by the boys' helpful attitude towards them, and welcome them in their home, not knowing that they're the worst enemy they'll ever know. By then, Andrew, Paul and Peter have started calling them "the Dinosaurs", and their only goal is to "have them extinct by Christmas". A horrific battle ensues, and while Andrew and Paul start fighting for the leadership of Gang, things get out of control.
13939030	/m/03cnstd	Finding Myself	Toby Litt	2003	{"/m/05wkc": "Postmodernism"}	 The plot centers on Victoria About, a prolific female English writer, who has invited some of her friends and relatives to come and stay at a seaside house she has rented in Southwold. The only condition is the fact that they all have to allow her to watch them and to turn all she sees and hears into her next novel, "From The Lighthouse". Clearly inspired by Virginia Woolf, Victoria drafts a synopsis with things (such as rows & relationships) that will happen during the month. But as summer holiday starts, Victoria is not pleased with the general boredom and carefree conversations that happen in the house. Little does she know that when the guests discover she has hidden spycams all over the house, and when she gets trapped in the attic by all her friends and relatives, her life ànd her book start to take a twist.
13942435	/m/03cnxd2	Le Blé en herbe	Colette			 Phil and Vinca meet every year during the summer holidays. They have always been interested in each other, but Phil meets a woman who introduces him to carnal love. Vinca feels the betrayal of her friend. The most recent English translation of the novel (2004) is Green Wheat, translated by Zack Rogow, nominated for the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Award. An earlier translation (1955) by Roger Senhouse was entitled Ripening Seed.
13944463	/m/03cnzgh	Around the Day in Eighty Worlds	Julio Cortázar	1967		 ;Volume I *Chapter 01: This is How it Starts (with a pre-introductory dedication to Pablo Neruda and Aragon) ::*A touching memoir dedicated to Jules Verne and Lester Young without offending Phileas Fogg, about Charlie Parker, Stéphane Mallarmé, Passepartout, Aouda, Man Ray, Robert Lebel, Marcel Duchamp and Antonin Artaud. ::*How to dance a shirtless girl (short story / mini poem) ::*(Encore) *Chapter 03: Julios in Action ::*Jules Laforgue, Marcel Duchamp's drawing for the poem Encore a cet astre, Le Monde (thursday edition), Moulin a cafe, Dada exhibition in Paris (11.12.66), the first painting he saw by order of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Nu descendant un escalier) and a photograph of Julio playing the trumpet. *Chapter 05: Theme for San Jorge *Chapter 09: I fall... then emerge. *Chapter 10: The smiler with the knife under the cloak *Chapter 17: Clifford ;Volume II *Chapter 01: What Happens, Minerva? ::*Happenings, Benjamin Patterson's Lawful Dance, Paik's Omnibus Music No. 1, Le Monde, Dick Higgins, Thomas Shmidt, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Tetsumi Kudo. *Chapter 03: Around the Piano of Thelonious Monk *Chapter 05: On to Lezama Lima's Arrival *Chapter 09: Mallarmé's Tombeau *Chapter 13: The Nobel Art *Chapter 14: The Most Profound Caress es:La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos
13945880	/m/03cp023	62: A Model Kit	Julio Cortázar	1968	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book revolves around an introspective group of friends who call themselves the Tartars. The intellectual boredom of the group has lead them to invent various social experimentals and mental diversions, the most important of which is referred to as "the City." The city is a kind of imaginary metropolis the Tartars have built over time as a possible alternative to the normal world in which they feel so stifled. There is also a being referred to as "my paredros," the spirit or collective will of the group that acts through one member or another when they are at their most playful. The reader learns first about Juan, a translator by profession. Juan is one of the Tartars. It's Christmas Eve, and he is sitting alone in a restaurant meditating at length about a woman named Helene. Before concluding this inner monlogue, Juan's expresses a desire to reshuffle the events of the immediate past. The narrative then flashes back to describe Marrast, a sculptor living in London, and along with his girlfriend, Nicole, another member of the Tartars. The relationship between Marrast and Nicole is presented as an unhappy one, with Marrast indulging in painful speculations about Nicole's unrequited love for Juan. He has been contracted by a small town to start a new statue, but has yet to begin. Instead, he finds himself drawn to a painting in a museum that depicts an apparently useless branch in the hands of a medical doctor. Finding an ad one day inviting "sensitive, intelligent, anxious, or a little lonely" individuals to join something called "Neurotics Anonymous," Marrast decides to write to them about the piece to suggest that an investigation of it might be a more constructive use of their time. There are conflicting accounts about why he does this, or what he hopes to get out of it, but its immediate effects are soon related: the painting begins to receive more attention than those around it, which arouses the suspicions of the art museum's security and managerial staff, and Marrast meets a man who is familially connected to the institute's director, and to whom he passes a vague tale about certain undesirable persons attracted to the picture. Helene, meanwhile, is presented at a later date struggling to come to terms with the death of a young man at the hospital where she works and who reminded her of Juan. For some time previously, she has been rejecting Juan's advances, but not because she does not recicprocate his feelings—again, as in Marrast's case, her motives are complex and perhaps ultimately undefinable. But on the way home, she stops at the Cluny, a cafe in Paris where the Tartars usually meet, and encounters the youngest member of the group, a student named Celia. Celia has run away from home, and having nowhere to stay for the night, is invited by Helene to come to her apartment. The narrative twists in time again to present Juan before Christmas, and his lover, a woman named Tell who travels around the world with him. The pair are in Vienna where Tell has observed an old woman insinuate herself into a young female tourist's confidence. Believing something sinister is afoot, or perhaps just playing at believing, Juan and Tell check into the same hotel as the two women and begin to follow them. While Juan is at work, Tell watches the hallway outside the old woman's room in an effort to catch her visiting the girl, while at night, the couple takes turns. Finally, one evening while Juan is on guard, he does indeed see the old woman sneaking out of her room. Once she has proceeded to the second floor, he follows her. Back in London, Marrast invites Austin, one of the "Anonymous Neurotics," to join the Tartars. He also agrees to teach the young man French. But this development backfires when Nicole seduces Austin, then leaves Marrast for Paris. Marrast's museum scheme ends with the controversial painting's being suddenly removed by the director of the institute, much to the delight of the Tartars. Meanwhile, at Helene's apartment, Celia plays with a mysterious doll that was sent to Helene by Tell, who was given it by Juan, who received it in turn from the original manufacturer, a man referred to as Monsieur Ochs. Ochs has been imprisoned for hiding objects in his dolls, most notably a masturbatory device, so there is no telling what is in this one. Celia shares Helene's bed, and in the middle of the night is groped by Helene and taken sexual advantage of. In the morning, as a humiliated Celia rushes to repack her things, she angrily throws the doll to the floor, where it breaks. The contents, which are never revealed to the reader, spill out, and Celia screams and runs away. She, like Nicole, heads to Paris. Back at the hotel in Vienna, Juan and Tell follow the old woman, Frau Marta, to the young tourist's room, where they observe the girl sitting up in bed with two small marks on her neck, apparently waiting for a vampiric attack. But the old woman removes the girl's top instead. She stands up and leaves the room with Frau Marta through a door that may or may not be part of the city. When Juan and Tell follow, they find themselves back in the heart of the city, where a confused Juan momentarily sees Helene on a streetcar, but can't reach her, and he loses sight of both Frau Marta and the young tourist girl. Tell receives a letter from Marrast at this point detailing his and Nicole's rupture, and she leaves immediately to aid Nicole, whom Marrast may have poisoned with sleeping pills. While she is away, Juan intercepts another letter written to her, but from Helene. Helene implies that Juan, through Tell, sent the doll himself as a childish reaction to Helene's continued rejection of his romantic advances. Mortified by the accusation, Juan rushes off to Paris to proclaim his innocence. In Paris again, the narrative describes the efforts of another Tartar, Polanco, to use the engine from a lawn mower to power a small canoe, as he fancies himself as a kind of inventor. The Tartars agree to assist, but in the middle of their planning, someone from Scotland Yard arrives at the door. It seems Marrast's museum scheme has disturbed the government itself, and the group is informed that it might be in their best interests to leave the country, at least temporarily. But first there is the matter of the canoe. The Tartars successfully attach the mower to the canoe, but it's much too powerful for the small craft and knocks them overboard when they make a trial run with it in the small pond near where Polanco works. They seek refuge on an island in the middle of the pond, but the water is mysteriously rising. A chaotic scene unfolds with Polanco's girlfriend and others on the shore trying to "rescue" them, as they steadfastly refuse to simply wade back across. Finally Marrast arrives, blinking in disbelief. He takes a makeshift boat out alone to retrieve the pranksters. Soon it's time for the great unveiling of Marrast's sculpture, and all the Tartars attend the ceremony, even Nicole. Celia and Austin have fallen in love by this time, and Juan and Helene have spent a passionate night together. But the sculpture turns out to be a typical Tartar production, much to the outrage of the townspeople who paid Marrast a small fortune to make it. But the group is delighted with the results; both by the piece itself and by the crowd's reaction to it. The book concludes with most of the Tartars returning to Paris by train. A distracted Nicole wanders off at the wrong stop and finds herself in the city, by a canal. Celia and Austin also get off, ostensibly to look at cows. In the gloomy traincar, Juan sits across from Helene and tries to talk to her, but realizes that nothing has changed. The other Tartars have gotten off to look for Nicole, whom they presume is walking alone along the tracks towards Paris. Helene, unaccountably back in the mysterious city, opens a door in a hotel and walks into a dark room where Austin jumps out and stabs her to death. Juan, following, leans over the body a moment before exiting the room through a door that opens directly onto the canal—where he sees Nicole on a barge with the sinister Frau Marta. The last sentences of the book describe the remaining Tartars in a jocular group again, resuming their play at the train station in Paris.
13949879	/m/03cp2_g	A Visitation of Spirits	Randall Kenan	1989-07	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Horace Cross is a gay black teenager from Tims Creek, North Carolina. He is fascinated with science and comic books, and his family is convinced that he is going to make them proud. Horace grows up in a fundamentalist Baptist church family which condemns homosexuality, forcing Horace to stay in the closet for sometime, and constantly wrestle with his self identity. The story starts with an internal dialogue about Horace's desire and quest to turn himself into a bird. When his ritual for this transformation fails, he is apparently possessed by a demon. Armed with his grandfather's gun and mostly naked, he wanders around his hometown, experiencing flashbacks and revelations which tell the story of his life, his struggles with homosexuality, and the failures of his closest friends and family to save him from his fate. Mixed into the telling of Horace's journey is "present" and past events explaining more about how Horace's elder cousin, Jimmy Greene, becomes a minister and the principal of the local high school. Jimmy can't give any real advice of his own, and has to turn to the Bible when confronted with a problem (he references the Old Testament when Horace comes out to him and, in fact, advises Horace to, paradoxically, "Search your heart. Take it to the Lord. But don't dwell on it too much. You'll be fine. Believe me."). In the present to the story thread of this book, Jimmy drives his great-aunt Ruth and his uncle Ezekiel to see one of their relatives, Asa Cross, in the hospital. At a diner, Ruth has an argument with Ezekiel; Jimmy attempts to quell it but he remains unsuccessful, in spite of his being a church minister. In the end, Ezekiel tries to teach Jimmy that he can't turn to the Bible to solve all of his problems.
13951477	/m/03cp4xp	Cecilia	Fanny Burney	1782	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cecilia is a novel following the history of Cecilia Beverley, an orphaned heiress who will inherit three thousand pounds a year once she reaches the age of twenty-one, in addition to a personal fortune of ten thousand pounds. This inheritance is solely dependent on whether or not her future husband adopts the name of Beverley. The events of the novel take place in the eight months before Cecilia comes of age and is able to take up a house of her own. Cecilia begins with death of the heiress's uncle, the Dean, with whom she has been living, four weeks before the narrative starts. The Dean has appointed three guardians who will look after Cecilia's affairs during her minority: the spendthrift Mr Harrel, the parsimonious Mr Briggs, and the haughty Mr Delvile. All of the guardians are unknown to her, so she chooses to live in London with Mr Harrel, as he is the husband of her close friend, Priscilla. Priscilla is an impressionable unthinking woman who assists her husband in pressuring Cecilia to borrow money against her inheritance in order to pay his gambling debts and to fund their extravagant lifestyle. Harrel increasingly comes up with ingenious ways to make Cecilia feel obliged to pay him, including the threat of suicide. Priscilla's brother, Mr Arnott, is also imposed upon by the Harrels for money. Cecilia is also advised by Mr Monckton, whose wife, Lady Margaret, dislikes Cecilia because she is young and beautiful. Lady Margaret, who married Mr Monckton when she was 67 and is infirm and asthmatic, also suspects that Mr Monckton, a young man, is hoping to marry Cecilia after she dies. He gives Cecilia good advice, but his advice is always colored by this aim. Cecilia and her acquaintance attend an opera rehearsal at which Mr Albany, an eccentric religious man, warns her that she is in danger of being surrounded by people who will exploit her. At the end of Book I, Cecilia realizes how unfeeling Mr Harrel is when she encounters Mrs Hill, the wife of Mr Harrel's carpenter, outside their house. Initially Cecilia tries to give Mrs Hill a gift of money as charity, but Mrs Hill explains that she just wants her bill to be paid as her husband is unwell, having fallen off his ladder, and they have lost their son Billy to consumption. Mrs Hill has been sent away empty-handed many times, and asks Cecilia to intercede. Mr Harrel asks his brother-in-law, Mr Arnott to lend him the money to pay the bill. At the beginning of Book II, Cecilia decides that she must leave the Harrels' house, and she visits Mr Delvile. Delvile is so rude that she realizes she could not live with his family. In spite of their financial troubles, the Harrels hold a grand masquerade at their home. Mr Briggs turns up as a chimney sweep, and people are offended that he has used real soot. Cecilia is accosted by a masked character dressed as the Devil (Monckton in disguise) who won't let any men near Cecilia. A mysterious white domino takes care of Cecilia, protecting her from the worst advances of the masked Devil. The evening ends in chaos when a harlequin (Mr Morrice) attempts to jump across the dessert table and brings the awning down, plunging the room into darkness. After an opera performance, an argument between Mr. Belfield and Sir Robert Floyer over who has the honor of assisting Cecilia into her carriage leads to a duel. Shocked at their violent behavior, Cecilia cries out and stops Floyer from attacking Belfield at the opera; this show of compassion leads the public to believe that Cecilia is secretly in love with Sir Robert. The duel takes place, and Belfield is wounded. Cecelia visits Mr. Delvile again and is introduced to his son, who has admired her from afar, and to Mrs. Delvile. Young Delvile admires Cecilia and they become friends, though Cecilia is conscious of the Delvile family's preoccupation with rank in society. The book ends with Cecilia's concern for Mr Belfield's health. In Book III, Cecilia returns home to the Harrels' house to find them dealing with an attorney who is demanding money, Cecilia pays it because she is concerned that Mr Arnott is being imposed upon too much. She also tries to persuade Mrs Harrel that she needs to do more to control her husband's spending. Cecilia proposes to ask Mr Briggs, who is in control of her inheritance, to advance six hundred pounds. On her way to Briggs's house, she steps into a doorway to avoid a mob who are following a group of prisoners who are heading to Tyburn to be hanged, and encounters Delvile leaving Belfield's house. Delvile misconstrues that Cecilia is about to visit Belfield, thinking that there must have been a reason for him to fight a duel over her. Briggs refuses to give Cecilia any money and she decides to ask Mr Delvile to intercede with him on her behalf. She encounters Mortimer first, who embarrasses her by implying that she has visited Belfield. Careful not to reveal the financial affairs of the Harrels, Cecilia asks for six hundred pounds to pay a book bill. Delvile is shocked, denounces the reading habits of educated women, and suggests that Briggs is too vulgar for him to deal with. Returning home empty-handed Mr Harrel presents Cecilia with a plan to borrow the money from a Jewish money-lender, Mr Zackery, even though she is not old enough to legally contract a debt of this kind. She takes 200 pounds for herself and gives the rest to Harrel. She plans to give Mrs Hill 100 in order to set up her children in employment, but briefly lends the 200 to Harrel, who makes excuses and does not pay it back. Cecilia is only able to give the Hills 50. Mr Albany accosts her in the street and takes her to Belfield's houses, asking her to turn her back on her frivolous life and help them. She cannot help them, but she becomes friendly with Miss Befield and learns the history of the family.
13952263	/m/03cp61t	Freehold	Michael Z. Williamson	2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Earth in the future has become a rough society where pervasive bureaucratic regulation by a global (and extra-solar) UN means everything happens slowly, permits and licenses are required for most activities, all law-abiding citizens are tracked by computer implants constantly, and workers at all levels are unmotivated. Crime is basically unchecked: rape and burglary are considered commonplace and unavoidable, though still punishable. Petty theft and lesser crimes are all but ignored, and blame is attributed more to the victims than the perpetrators if they occur. Kendra Pacelli is a logistics noncommissioned officer in the UN Protection Force (UNPF) until she is implicated in a scheme that involved stealing millions of dollars worth of materiel from the Protection Force. The UN Investigators are notorious for brutal interrogations of prisoners and the slow pace of the bureaucracy means exoneration is unlikely even though she is innocent. Warned by a friend, she decides to seek asylum with the Freehold colony, which is independent of UN control. She moves to the colony, though due to the expense of her transit she must enter the colony’s indenturing program: an individual or a company assumes her debt and she pays it off gradually by working and having a portion taken out of her paycheck. Initially she is advised by Citizen Hernandez and finds work in city park services based on her experience with machinery in the UNPF. Kendra finds an apartment close to her work, where she meets Robert McKay. He is a highly decorated Freehold Military Forces veteran and a pilot of renowned skill who is involved in various real estate and other business ventures, and she relies on him to help with her introduction into Freehold society. She is eventually introduced to Marta Hernandez, another veteran, who is a high-priced escort. Through her two friends, she slowly becomes acclimated to the totally free market society of Freehold. Differences she must deal with include total lack of regulation of anything, pervasive personal firearms ownership (including high caliber military surplus), relaxed mores regarding sex and dress (many people in Freehold go partially or completely naked without comment, and she eventually becomes involved in a ménage à trois with Rob and Marta), voluntary taxation, almost nonexistent crime, and minimal government infrastructure where voting only takes place to elect Citizens who serve as a governmental body and judges when absolutely necessary, which is rare. The total lack of regulation on commerce causes the UN to impose sanctions on Freehold due to safety concerns, and Kendra is laid off from her job. At Rob’s suggestion, she enlists in Freehold’s military. She is required to go through basic training (which is more-or-less exactly like modern infantry basic training) and then through logistics training before she is assigned a billet as a corporal. Her superior, Alan Naumann, sends her to noncommissioned officer training after a short time, believing that war with Earth is imminent and unavoidable. Earth soon sends a large group of prisoners and political extremists to Freehold, claiming Freehold volunteered to accept them. Against Naumann’s advice, the Freehold government accepts them. The malcontented people are quickly confused and affronted by Freehold’s society: the criminals who try to operate are often shot by the armed citizenry or challenged to legal duels and die, and the political people assume the lack of voting or regulation means they have no say in how things are run and stage protests and riots which have to be put down. Earth’s media uses these incidents as propaganda to suggest Freehold is oppressive and savage and must be civilized by force. A covert operation from Earth attempts to infiltrate Freehold, but the UNPF forces are grossly incompetent; they are mostly eliminated by automated defenses or captured by citizens or regular FMF military. In retaliation, a Freehold covert unit subverts and destroys the main UNPF military HQ on Earth. Earth uses that as an excuse to launch an invasion. Naumann becomes the de facto commander of the entire FMF military, which doesn’t attempt to put up a direct defense against the numerically superior UNPF forces. Naumann instead uses his military people to immediately organize the armed citizenry and conduct guerilla warfare. Kendra is stranded out in the rural sections of the planet, and becomes a commander of a local guerilla force. She starts becoming hostile and participates in some brutality and violence beyond the rules of war. At one point, her prior criminal record on Earth is brought up and a reward offered, which requires her to shoot some of her colleagues who want to turn her in. The UN forces are hampered by the realities of Freehold: 90% of freehold is armed, a large number are military service veterans, the planet has gravity 1.18 times that of Earths', they do not know the terrain, and there is no government infrastructure for them to assimilate. Eventually Naumann calls in the guerillas and organizes a massive counter-offensive in which Kendra is charged with holding an infantry line against a numerically superior force with little support. She is seriously wounded in the effort, but holds her line and the UN forces are defeated. Kendra helps with the systematic urban warfare to clean out the cities, and in the process is raped. Naumann uses captured space materiel to launch orbital strikes on Earth, causing massive death and destruction. Earth negotiates a truce, and the aftermath is covered: Marta was assigned by Naumann to seduce and kill the UN general at Freehold, and in the process got captured, tortured, and gang-raped for an extended period, so must undergo counseling. Kendra tries to help, but must also undergo counseling about her violent actions as a guerilla. Rob had crashed and got infected with a nano-virus which renders him unable to fly. Kendra briefly considers returning to Earth (she is cleared of her crimes and offered compensation), but is convinced by Naumann and her friends to remain on Freehold.
13956051	/m/03cpbpk	The Quincunx		1989		 The novel begins in London with a secret meeting between two legal men. A bribe reveals the confidential details of a correspondent who is the link to a vital hidden document. Meanwhile young John Mellamphy is growing up in the remote countryside with his mother Mary, ignorant of the name of Huffam. Gradually it becomes clear that they are threatened by the search for the document.
13956178	/m/03cpbsl	Jack, Knave and Fool	Bruce Cook	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Sir John treats his household to a performance of Händel's music, but murder introduces a discordant note. Meanwhile, a runaway reprobate and a bodiless head present other problems to the magistrate.
13962123	/m/03cpj3z	La Mine d'or de Dick Digger		1949		 In Dirk Digger's Gold Mine, Lucky Luke and Jolly Jumper meet an old friend, the prospector Dirk Digger in extasty over a recent gold ore discovery, en route to register his gold mine claim in Nugget City. Celebrating loudly at a saloon, Digger is identified as a target of robbery by two hardened criminals, and after assaulting him alone in his room, they get away with his gold and a map leading to the gold find. The following day, Lucky Luke and Jolly Jumper take up pursuit following their trail. In The Look-Alike of Lucky Luke, Luke discovers he causes fear in the inhabitants of a town, because he is remarkably similar to a notorious fellain named Mad Jim, currently in prison and scheduled for hanging. Spotted by two thugs who are Mad Jim's associates, Luke is ambushed and knocked out in a scheme to replace him with the doppelgänger in a drunken sherrif's jail cell, in order to get a share of Mad Jim's loot. Taken without doubt for the dangerous villain, Lucky Luke barely escapes the mob lynching before he is able to pursue the criminals and bring them to justice.
13965663	/m/04yp_0m	The 4-Hour Workweek	Timothy Ferriss	2007-04	{"/m/012lzc": "Self-help", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the book Ferriss uses the acronym DEAL for the four main chapters. It stands for: Definition, Elimination, Automation, and Liberation. Definition means to figure out what a person wants, get over fears, see past society's "expectations," and figure out what it will really cost to get where a person wants to go. Elimination is about time management, or rather about not managing time. This is achieved by applying the 'Pareto principle' or '80-20 Rule' (80% of your benefits come from 20% of your efforts) to focus only on those tasks that contribute the majority of benefit, and using Parkinson's law (work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion) to limit the amount of actual time spent working. There's a difference, Ferriss says, between efficiency and effectiveness. The book's emphasis is on effectiveness. Automation is about building a sustainable, automatic source of income. This includes techniques such as drop-shipping, automation, Google AdWords and AdSense, and outsourcing. Liberation is dedicated to the successful automation of one's lifestyle and the liberation from a geographical location and job. Incidentally, Ferriss notes that if somebody has a regular job, the order of steps will be DELA, not DEAL. The book asserts that technology such as email, instant messaging, and Internet-enabled PDAs complicate life rather than simplify it. "Most fundamentally, Mr. Ferriss turned ruthless against e-mail. " It advocates hiring virtual assistants from developing countries such as India and Philippines to free up personal time.
13965783	/m/03cplq_	The Resistance	K. A. Applegate	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A free Hork-Bajir is captured by the Yeerks and involuntarily reveals the location of the Hork-Bajir valley. Jake and the other animorphs head to the colony to warn the Hork-Bajir. Jake thinks it would be best to abandon the valley and flee, but the Hork-Bajir, led by Toby Hamee, insist that they want to stay and fight. As a part of the battle strategy, the Animorphs (most of them) morph beavers to make a dam to flush the Yeerks out of the valley. Jake and Tobias spot a group of campers who would be likely be innocent victims of the fighting and approach them to try and convince them to leave. They don't buy Jake's lame story and Jake decides that he must show them the truth and he and Tobias both morph in front of them. It turns out that the campers are Star Trek fans and (believing the Animorphs to be actual aliens) insist on helping the Animorphs. They assist Marco's parents (who now live in the valley) and the free Hork-Bajir in an assembly line of creating spears and other weapons. Meanwhile, every other chapter consists of somewhat-related diary entries from Lt. Isaiah Fitzhenry, a great-uncle to Jake's grandfather, who fought in the American Civil War, specifically against General Forrest. The battle for the valley begins, and it is very bloody with many dead. Visser One morphs a horrible eight headed alien creature, and the formidable Yeerk force can only be driven back when the water from the dam is released down the valley. One of the campers was killed in the battle. Jake reminds Toby that the victory is only temporary and that the Yeerks will be back. Toby realizes that they must leave the valley, and Jake says that maybe one day they can return. Jake returns home and reads the conclusion of Fitzhenry's diary. He received a fatal wound in the battle, but expresses in his last written thought that he hopes he did his best. Jake is uncertain of how his story will end, but as he closes the book he whispers "Yeah, me, too."
13969327	/m/03cpqtq	The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse	Thornton Burgess	1915	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Danny begins his tale regretting the length of his tail until he is corrected by Mr. Toad. Then he has a series of stalkings by Reddy and Granny Fox. He is captured by Hooty the Owl and escapes mid-flight to Peter Rabbit's briar patch. Peter goes to Farmer Brown's peach orchard and gets caught in a snare and barely escapes himself. Finally Danny gets trapped in a tin can and must use his wits to escape Reddy Fox again.
13970297	/m/03cprqd	Two Old Women	Velma Wallis		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Long before the Europeans came, nomads roamed the polar region of Alaska in constant search for game. The people of the Gwich'in, who belong to the Athabaska tribes, wander the areas around the Yukon River, the Porcupine River, the Tanana River and their tributaries. Because of a lack of food and an upcoming strict winter, one of these Gwich'in nomad groups decides to leave behind two old women in the snow-covered wilderness. Left back and dumbfounded in fright, 75-year-old Sa' and 80-year-old Ch'idzigyaak remain seated in the snow after the leader announced the decision to the tribe. Before moving on, Ch'idzigyaak's daughter gives them an untanned moose's skin, or babiche. As another familial gesture, Ch'idzigyaak's grandson hides his osseous hatchet, which is the symbol of his manhood, for the two women. The tribe leaves. Left back to themselves, the two women at first sit silently. In their desperation, however, they decide it's better to die trying to survive. Sa' succeeds in killing a squirrel using the hatchet as a weapon. The two women boil the meat and drink the broth. They then go on to set rabbit traps and in the middle of the night wake to animal noises: they find two rabbits in their traps. The women now decide to move on to hunt better game. In order to cross the snow, they make themselves snowshoes. Eventually, they reach a river where their tribe had fished successfully in the warmer season. On each night of their journey of several days, the women dig a snow shelter protected by animal hides. They save the embers of their campfires to start a new fire the next evening. In this way, the fire never goes out. In the mornings, the two old women complain about their pains in the joints. Finally they reach their familiar river and set up a winter camp there. However, they hide inland from The People, another tribe, for fear of cannibalism. Fortunately, the two old women succeed in building up a generous supply of food made up of smoked musquashes and beavers. In the summer, they catch large amounts of fish and manage to dry and store them away. In the next winter, the tribe returns to the area. The leader concludes that the two women must have survived because there are no remains of them. He believes that if they can find the women, the tribe might be able to muster a new sense of survival, for his people are starving after having had little hunting luck all through winter. The leader sends off Daagoo, a tracker, and a few young warriors to locate the women. The weak group staggers away. But Daagoo picks up the scent of smoke, and before long they track down the women's camp. The two women at first do not trust the small group but Daagoo gives both of them his word: the men want peace with the two women. Sa' and Ch'idzigyaak hesitate for a long time. In the end they sense that Daagoo is honest. They submit to his request for they had been in fact very lonely, missing their home tribe a lot. However, they do not admit this right away. In spite of their deep mistrust (from having been left alone to die before) their hearts grow soft again. So in the end the two old women deliver rations of food to their own people. Ch'idzigyaak's grandson makes an effort and visits them in the camp, but the daughter is still ashamed and does not visit for a while. In the end, however, the daughter finally visits the mother. From then on the Gwich'in never ever leave their elderly behind. They will never think of doing that again.
13972363	/m/03cptyx	Little Foxes				 Billy Bunch is an orphan who has had many foster families, but none of them have worked out. He is currently living with a foster mother in the suburbs of a city. They don't get on well, and at school Billy is not good at subjects, especially English (he cannot read out loud because he has a stutter). One night, Billy tries to run away, and runs into the nearby abandoned land where there are the ruins of a monastery. There is plentiful wildlife living in this place that everyone calls "The Waste Ground". Billy fathers four orphaned foxes and develops a relationship with a swan, too. However Billy's secret place is found out and the fox family is gassed by the local council. But one survives Billy decides that his life is becoming a little better - he has found some animal friends and has lost his stutter. He returns to his foster home, but this doesn't last, and eventually he runs away with one of the young foxes (the other three were gassed by the local council), and goes on many adventures. At the end he lets the swan fly away freely. On these adventures, he meets a man who has a boat and cares for all the birds around the river. The man says that Billy can stay with him on his boat as they are going in the same direction. Eventually, Billy shoots above the foxes head and the fox runs away, never to return. Billy and the man then return to his home, where is adopted by the man and his wife.
13977855	/m/03cp_1s	Our Story			{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Our Story is an autobiography by the Kray twins. They were the notorious East End underworld gang leaders during the "swinging" sixties. This book tells their story from their humble beginnings in Bethnal Green to their life imprisonment in 1969 in their own words. The hardback version contains 16 pages of black and white photographs of the twins.
13982299	/m/03cq2bn	Djinn	Alain Robbe-Grillet	1981-03		 The Prologue opens with what we assume to be a police report. Simon Lecoeur has been reported missing for several days, so the authorities break into his apartment where they find a manuscript lying on the table. The contents of the manuscript are revealed in the following chapters. The narrator, responding to a newspaper ad, goes to a deserted industrial park to meet his potential boss, Jean. The narrator assumes that Jean is a man and sees him at the end of a building dressed in a coat, hat, and dark glasses. "Monsieur Jean" turns out to be an American woman. Djinn/Jean asks the narrator to join her social cause, and as proof of his fidelity, she asks him to meet someone at the Parisian train station, the Gare du Nord. The narrator stops at a café on his way to the train station. There, a young student tells him that he is going to be late and suggests a short-cut. The narrator assumes that this woman is one of Djinn/Jean's agents, as she seems to know who he is and where he is going. He leaves and takes the short cut, which leads him through the Rue Vercingetorix III, a street name that cannot possibly exist. There, he sees a boy run into the street and fall down as if dead. The narrator decides to help, and he carries the boy into the nearest building. The narrator meets the boy's sister, Marie, who tells him that her brother Jean "dies" frequently. The narrator takes this to mean that the boy is subject to some kind of seizure. The narrator asks about the boy and the girl's parents, and the girl shows the narrator a photograph of a Russian sailor who died at sea and whom she claims is their father. Marie gives the narrator a letter written by Djinn/Jean. In it, he reads that the train station destination was in reality meant to be nothing more than a wild goose chase. The boy wakes up, and the two children lead the narrator to a café. At the café, Marie asks the narrator to tell a story. When the narrator is unable to come up with a story that meets her specifications, she proceeds to tell her own tale. The time comes for the narrator to leave with Jean. He is made to wear dark glasses and carry a cane as if he were blind. Jean is his guide, and they get into a taxi. In the taxi, Jean gives the narrator a drug that makes him sleep. When he awakes, he is led into a large room with other people. He hears Djinn/Jean's voice explain their mission, which is to fight against machinery of all kinds. She warns that robots and computers will control the earth. The narrator manages to move the glasses while scratching his nose, and he sees that there are many other young men just like him, with dark glasses, canes, and little boys as guides. He also realizes that Djinn/Jean is not present. They are listening to a tape recording of her voice. The man next to him attempts to communicate something, but the narrator is knocked unconscious. The narrator (who is finally revealed as Simon Lecoeur) wakes up and has no memory of what has happened, other than he knows he met with Djinn/Jean and needs to go to the Gare du Nord. Again, he stops at the same café, which sparks some memory of which he is unsure. The server has changed to a lady named Marie. He notices a picture of a Russian sailor, and Marie remarks that this is her father, who died at sea. Simon notices a cane at the table next to him and decides to pretend like he is blind. He walks out of the café, where a young boy offers to help him on his way to the Gare du Nord. Realizing that they will miss the train from Amsterdam, the two start running, and Simon trips and falls on the boy, who looks as though he were dead. Simon decides to take the boy into the nearest house. Inside the home, he places the boy on the bed and sees a young woman who looks like Djinn/Jean. She explains that the boy can see visions of the future, and that she and the narrator are not real. They exist only in the boy's dream. She is long-dead, having died in an accident involving machinery and computers. The narrator is alive, but his true self is currently in a meeting across town involving an anti-machinery terrorist organization. She reveals that the narrator will become the boy's father and that he will die at sea. The narrator is now a woman. She answers a newspaper ad looking for a babysitter. Another applicant comes, and each mistakes the other for the potential employer. She and the other man Simon begin a friendly game where she pretends that she is the employer; and she makes up a story about an anti-industrial terrorist organization as a joke. They go to a café, where they tell stories. She takes a cab to the train station to meet her friend Caroline who is arriving from Amsterdam. Caroline comes with her niece Marie, whose father is a Russian sailor. In the background, the narrator notices the sinister cab driver as well as a blind man being led by a young boy. She feels that the cab driver is surveying her too closely, and she faints. When she awakes, she cannot remember anything other than the fact that she has a meeting with a potential employer in a deserted industrial park. She goes there and sees a man standing at the end of the corridor wearing a coat, a hat, and dark glasses... In the epilogue, the police have discovered a body matching the description of Djinn/Jean. However, the agent that we assume to be the police in the prologue is revealed to belong to some other counter-organization working against the police investigation. Of all the characters in the manuscript, the only one whose existence can be verified is that of young Marie.
13983812	/m/03cq3t_	The Disunited States of America	Harry Turtledove	2006-09-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in the 2090s and concerns two outsiders caught up in a war between Ohio and Virginia: a young girl from California visiting relatives with her grandmother, and a boy from our world's Crosstime Traffic trading firm.
13984088	/m/03cq41h	Pied Piper of Lovers	Lawrence Durrell	1935	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Walsh Clifton is an Anglo-Indian born of an inter-racial couple. His mother dies during childbirth in the opening scenes of the novel. He is raised in India by his father, John Clifton, and his aunt Brenda. Walsh is torn between his strong ties to India and his position as a colonial. He appears most comfortable around Indian characters, though they are not thoroughly developed in the novel, and he is regularly discomforted by representatives of European culture and Christianity in particular. He develops a sense of superiority over several Indian characters, typically echoing other European characters, but these feelings are regularly thwarted, often in tandem with challenges to traditional European notions of masculinity. This is compounded by Walsh's increasing awareness of his mortality, symbolized by the human ankle bone he sees in a pyre and his Grandmamma's morbid fixation on death. Walsh is then sent 'home' to England for his education by his father, where he is again caught in a conflict between being English or Indian. The former is often associated with paternal and masculine identity while the latter is frequently tied to maternal and feminine identity. This portion of the novel is largely concerned with his schoolboy experiences, his developing sexuality, and the eventual death of his father, who has remained in India. The protagonist has homosexual experiences, significant dream sequences, and comments on his wide readings. The final portion of the novel consists of a bohemian stage in Walsh's life, set in Soho and outside of London. He earns his living on his inheritance and by writing jazz music. Walsh ultimately rejects this lifestyle and concludes the novel with his first love, Ruth, who is terminally ill. She is diagnosed by the same doctor who delivered him and witnessed his mother's death.
13992166	/m/03cqdb3	Star Wars Republic Commando: Order 66	Karen Traviss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Etain Tur-Mukan finally tells Darman that her son, Kad Skirata, who is under the guise of Kal Skirata's grandchild from one of his biological children, is also Darman's son. Though Darman is angered by this initially for Etain and Skirata keeping this from him, he finally starts to spend time with Etain and Kad during their "quiet" moments when he and Etain are not out in battle in the Clone Wars. Skirata becomes a wanted in the Old Republic because of him falsely stating that he killed Kaminoan geneticist Ko Sai, who played a major role in creating the Jango Fett clones, and then stole her data. And during that time, Skirata manages to bust Ovolot Qail Uthan, Separatist scientist imprisoned three years earlier by Omega Squad for trying to create a Fett clone virus, from prison because Skirata believes that despite her actions, he sees her as the ultimate key to giving the Fett clones a normal life span, since their life spans are lengthened by double the time (e.g., if they are chronologically two years old, then they're biologically four years old, etc.). Along with busting Uthan from prison is Arla Fett, Jango Fett's long lost insane sister, and Ruusaan Skirata, Kal's biological daughter. Meanwhile, Besany Wennen, Republic Treasury agent who is now married to one of Skirata's clones, Ordo, is almost caught by the authorities for sneaking into data files to find out the Republic's plan for the clones in the near future of the war. However, the Gurlanins, who have reclaimed their home planet of Qiilura from the colonist humans under the machinations of Etain, decide to repay the debt by framing Besany's friend, Jilka Zan Zentis, for the crime. However, under Skirata's hand, Jilka is set free from the authorities, a wanted fugitive now, and under Skirata's band. But just when Skirata's plans for bringing a positive future for his clone adopted sons seem to come into fruition, Chancellor Palpatine enacts Order 66, which means that all clones must kill off their Jedi commanders. Etain managed to have renounced her Jedi ways prior to Order 66's enactment and married Darman in a traditional Mandalorian way over a comm message. But Etain is trapped on a bridge on Coruscant with many other citizens of the Republic by clone troopers who are scanning for any Jedi to be killed in the crowd. Skirata, Darman and Skirata's other clones arrive to extract Etain, but Jedi are found among the crowd. And during the ensuing battle, Etain protects a clone from being killed by a Jedi wielding a lightsaber, and she is killed from the wound. Darman's fellow clone brother, Niner, is wounded from the battle when his spine is broken, and clones extract Niner to heal him up, with Darman following along to stay with his wounded brother, now that he is grieving for his lost wife. Skirata and all the others leave Coruscant and head for the Mandalorian home planet of Mandalore just as the Clone Wars come to an end, along with the Jedi Order thanks to Order 66 and of the Republic, being replaced by Palpatine's self-promotion to Emperor of the new Galactic Empire. As for Darman and Niner, they are now Imperial Commandos.
13992977	/m/03cqf69	Among the Missing	Richard Laymon		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel takes place in Sierra County, California, primarily around the Silver Lake area. The story begins with a man and woman visiting a section of the Silver River referred to as 'the Bend', apparently with the intention of engaging in a romantic tryst. The next day, the woman's decapitated body is discovered by a young couple, Bass and his girlfriend Faye. Sheriff Rusty Hodges and his daughter-in-law, Deputy Mary "Pac" Hodges, are called in to investigate. The pursuit of the killer leads to a complicated series of events involving Merton (a homosexual drug dealer who was seen running from the scene of the crime), the dead woman's husband, and a revenge scheme involving two of the main characters.
13999574	/m/03cql5x	Bully and the Beast	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Bully and the Beast will be based on Orson Scott Card's short story "The Bully and the Beast" which can be found in his short story collection Maps in a Mirror.
14002738	/m/03cqpvm	A Small Place in Italy	Eric Newby		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The Newbys want to purchase a house in Italy before house prices start rising and, through the help of contacts, finally purchase I Castagni for two and a half million lire (£1,500) after a long and laborious sales process with the owner, a Signor Botti. Once they move in, they have to completely renovate everything, and are beset with various problems such as mice, a plague of cockroaches and an intractable neighbour who insists on using what he sees as a right of way for agricultural machinery that passes right outside the house - he even moves their outside dining table when he finds it blocking his path. The Newbys initiate a law suit against him which goes on for years owing to the dilapidated Italian legal system, but which they finally manage to win as a result of the man lying before the judge. The strength of the book is in its descriptions of some of the neighbouring families and the individual family members. Their closest neighbour is a sprightly Italian widow, Signora Angiolina, who helps them navigate their way through the intricacies of social life in their neighbourhood, as well as the Dada family who own several acres of vineyards and cook stupendous meals whenever the Newbys visit them at the Casa Dada. There is a very colourful description of the vendemmia, the annual grape harvest, during which Eric is roped into lifting bigonci, large barrel-shaped vessels full of crushed grapes, that nearly break his shoulder. Although the work is hard, there are merenda, consisting of huge outside picnics at which copious quantities of food are eaten, last year's wine drunk and bawdy gossip exchanged between the contadini. Another interesting description is when the Newbys join their neighbours in the annual funghi harvest in a very bountiful year, managing to gather ten full baskets between the four of them (less successful is a harvesting of wild asparagus when Eric forgets his bifocals and cannot see anything).
14007675	/m/0c5p44	English, August: An Indian Story	Upamanyu Chatterjee	1988-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The posting starts off as a tremendous culture shock for Agastya, a city boy. However, it eventually becomes one long philosophical journey and a process of self discovery. Written by a civil servant, the novel manages to capture the essence of an entire generation of Indians, whose urban realities jar in sharp contrast to that of rural India. Agastya Sen's sense of dislocation is only compounded by his extreme lack of interest in the bizarre ways of government and administration. While his mind is dominated by marijuana, masturbation and the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, images from his previous urban life. His work in Madna would ideally require him to be a devoted servant of the people.
14012645	/m/02rdk3s	Not About Nightingales	Tennessee Williams			 The play begins outside the warden’s office with Eva Crane and Mrs. Bristol. Eva is there for a job interview as the new secretary for the Warden, while Mrs. Bristol is here to give her son Sailor Jack some baked goods she made just for him. Moments after the scene begins, Jim walks through towards the Warden’s office and informs the women that the Warden is out inspecting the grounds, and may not be back for awhile. Mrs. Bristol can’t stay and leaves the food on the Warden’s desk. Warden Whalen enters in an unannounced, brash way. He is a short, fat, yet powerful man with a presence. Eva begins to beg him for a job; however the Warden doesn’t want to hear it, saying “A business executive is not interested in your personal misfortunes.” In the end, after careful consideration, he gives Eva the job. Meanwhile, Jim is being escorted back to his cell. Jim is a convict who helps out the Warden during the day. He enjoys the job because it gets him out of his cell all day. At nights when he returns, his cellmates are constantly calling him names such as Allison and Canary Bird. Some of the notable supporting characters introduced are; Butch, the unofficial leader among the inmates; Queen, a gay convict who’s not all that smart; and Ollie, a smart black convict who’s well respected by all the inmates. The next morning Mrs. Bristol returns to see the Warden and this time she had brought more food for her son. She explains how she hasn’t heard from her son in awhile and is getting worried. The Warden explains, in a coarse manner, that her son had gone insane and had to be killed. The next day, Eva talks to Jim and asks him about the eating conditions at the prison. Jim says the food is terrible; however the Warden enters, and says that the food is fine. In an effort to put Jim back in line he tells the story to Eva about when Jim first got to the prison and how he had to whip him for 14 straight days to try to break through his rough exterior. This story is too much for Eva as she ends up fainting at the end of the scene. Down in the prison, the prisoners begin to get pains in their stomachs and have a hard time getting to sleep. Butch says that it’s the poor food they are served everyday that is causing their pain, and suggests that they all go on a hunger strike. The men, all in pain, agree to the idea. Jim re-enters the prison and tells the men to hold off on the hunger-strike as he feels with his upcoming parole he can “tear down the walls of this prison”. The men agree and say they will hold off for a little longer, and instead go to dinner and cause a small prison riot. By doing so, they have all earned time in “the hole.” Back upstairs, Eva is working with the Warden alone in his office. The Warden begins asking personal questions toward Eva and also starts being suggestive, even asking her to “come into the closet with him.” Before anything can happen, Jim walks in with a report about the prisoners in “the hole,” even bringing them up to see him. After talking to them all, the Warden decides they all need more time and he sends them back. Ollie, however, loses himself and doesn’t want to go back; instead he rams his head into a wall and kills himself. Word reaches the prisoners and at this moment they can’t take it anymore. They are fed up with everything that is going on at the prison and begin their hunger strike. The Warden begins the act, talking with the Prisons Chaplain, who is concerned about how the Warden is treating his prisoners. The Warden portrays his, “my way or the highway” attitude toward the Chaplain. The Chaplain, not in agreement with the Warden’s methods, decides to quit. Out in the waiting room, life in the prison is getting a bit restless, due in part of the hunger strike. Eva is answering phone calls left and right, while showing signs of stress during the process. Jim enters and notices Eva’s bloody arm. She tells him that she walked to close to one of the cages and one of the inmate’s grabbed hold of her. Jim tells her she should leave this place, as it’s not safe, but she refuses. Her true feelings for Jim begin to show as she wants to wait till his parole comes up and leave with him. They begin to move in for a kiss when the Warden enters and breaks it up. The new prison reverend enters the office and is instantly hired by the Warden, saying “I pride myself on being adjustable.” He goes on to say that he won’t interfere with what the Warden does because he’s not in charge, he’s just the reverend. Afterwards, the Warden comes out and lets Jim and Eva know that if the hunger-strike continues, the men in Hall C will be moved to Klondike, a boiler room used as a torture room for out of line inmates, where the temperatures in the room can reach up to 150 degrees. Moments later, Jim and Eva are alone again in the Warden’s office. Jim opens up to Eva about how he can’t stand the prison, the inmates, the Warden, and the guards. Eva continues to remind him that once he gets parole in a month, the two will be able to run away together, but Jim is no longer optimistic about his parole. Eva reassures him that he will get out because she plans to go to the newspapers and tell them about all the terrible things that go on in the prison. At this moment, the Warden enters and tells Jim to take a file downstairs, thus leaving him alone with Eva once again. The Warden tells her that she can’t leave since the building has been put on lockdown. This frightens Eva, getting her worked up, and she eventually passes out. When she wakens, Jim is there by her side, telling her that the Warden was gone, and she will be fine. Eva tells Jim that she wants to leave the prison, no matter what it takes. Jim begins to devise a plan, to meet in the southwest corner of the prison yard when it’s dark out, to attempt their escape together. The act starts out in Klondike where the prisoners from Hall C are beginning to feel the heat from the steam boiler room. Butch is doing whatever he can to keep the moral up among his men by singing and dancing, but it’s having no effect. Meanwhile, Jim and Eva have met in the southwest corner of the yard, however, the guards and the Warden have caught them and have began to haul off Jim and put him in Klondike with the other prisoners. Eva, on the other hand, begs the Warden to let her go, and to mail the letter of recommendation for Jim’s release. The Warden sympathizes with her and agrees to both terms, for now. Back down in Klondike, Jim has joined the rest of the inmates, however, before Schultz, the head guard, can notice anything about Jim or the rest of the inmates, Butch has grabbed hold of the guard and Jim has stolen his revolver and keys. They inmates open the door and lock Schultz into the steaming cell, leaving him to die. Both Butch and Jim storm into the Warden’s office; Butch looking for the Warden, and Jim looking for Eva. When they have a minute to talk, Eva and Jim discuss their future outside of the prison, and how they’re in love and the many places they plan to travel to. Suddenly extra police forces arrive at the prison to deal with the prison riots. Jim comes up with a plan to jump out into the river and swim to shore away from all the riots and noise. He gives Eva his shoes and tells her to look for him in the personal columns. Jim jumps into the water, but because of the height of the jump and the fact that it is late in the night, Eva is unsure if he made it safely in the water. The police arrive up in the tower and grab Eva to take her to safety, bringing the play to an end. As the reader we are unsure if Jim ever did make it out safely.
14017148	/m/06vdr5t	On My Honor	Marion Bauer	1986	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It is about two boys, Joel and Tony, who are friends despite their very different characters. Tony, who is adventurous, challenges Joel, who is more responsible and cautious, to climb a large and dangerous cliff called Starved Rock. Joel knows this is unsafe and does not want anyone to get hurt, yet does not want to seem like a coward in front of Tony. Tony suggests a swimming race in a forbidden river, despite the fact that he's not a good swimmer. Joel tries to dissuade Tony from doing so as the river has very strong currents, but eventually agrees to the race. Joel ends up winning the race, but when he turns to look back at Tony, he finds that he has disappeared. Joel tries to find Tony in the river, but gets sucked into a current himself. However, he grabs a log, and manages to pull himself to safety. Joel lives with the horrible secret until Tony's and Joel's families finds out.
14019253	/m/03cr4j1	Floodgate	Alistair MacLean	1983	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 An Irish terrorist organization, known as the "FFF" has detonated a bomb, which bursts dykes in the Netherlands, causing massive flooding of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. Unless their demands are met (i.e. immediate withdrawal of all British military forces from Northern Ireland), they threaten to detonate more bombs, flooding Holland beneath a wall of water from the North Sea. Detective Lieutenant Peter van Effen, a man with a sardonic sense of humor and many hidden talents, and his fuzzy-minded boss, Chief of Police De Graaf, are called in. Lieutenant Van Effen is also an undercover operative with connections to a Dutch criminal gang, and sets about to sabotage the FFF terrorists, one way or another. Remarkably, in the Dutch translation of the book (Hoogwater) [1], the plot has been changed and Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport had not been flooded. In the Dutch version only a Fokker Friendship is destroyed on the runway [2].
14022859	/m/03cr871	The Documents in the Case	Dorothy L. Sayers	1930	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 This is an epistolary novel, told primarily in the form of letters between some of the characters. This collection of documents&mdash;hence the novel's title&mdash;is explained as a dossier of evidence collected by the victim's son as part of his campaign to obtain justice for his father. The main narrator, Munting, takes rooms with Lathom, an artist acquaintance. The landlord and downstairs neighbour, Harrison, is a staid, middle-aged widower who has married again; his new wife is young, attractive, passionate and rather foolish. Lathom and Mrs Harrison begin an affair, the husband suspecting nothing, and Lathom paints a remarkable portrait of her. Creeping downstairs to meet his mistress one night, Lathom encounters the Harrisons' live-in spinster companion, who mistakes him for Munting in the dark and makes accusations of assault. Glad of an excuse to leave a situation he finds distasteful, Munting moves away and marries his fiancée, leaving Lathom still in occupation. Lathom's portrait of Mrs Harrison is exhibited publicly, making his reputation on the London art scene. Some time later Munting meets Lathom by chance in London and learns that he is holidaying with Harrison at the latter's isolated cottage in Devon. Harrison's hobby is foraging for wild food, and he is an expert on edible mushrooms. Lathom persuades Munting to accompany him back to Devon, where they find Harrison dead, apparently having cooked and eaten poisonous fungi by mistake. However Harrison's son Paul suspects that Lathom and his stepmother have conspired to murder Harrison, and Munting is drawn unwillingly into the investigation. He discovers accidentally that muscarine - the poison that killed Harrison - can exist in a natural or a synthetic form. The molecules of both forms are asymmetrical; however the natural form is optically active - consisting of only one molecular form; the synthetic form is racemic - with equal quantities of both types of molecule; and the two forms can be distinguished only by using polarised light. The muscarine consumed by Harrison proves to be synthetic, indicating that the mushrooms he ate were poisoned deliberately. Letters between Mrs Harrison and Lathom indicate that she manipulated him into the killing by claiming that she was expecting his child. Lathom is hanged for murder.
14023862	/m/03cr985	Take a Good Look				 Mary is a nine-year-old partially sighted girl. She is tired of her lack of freedom due to her impaired eyesight, and one day when her grandmother is asleep Mary sneaks out to get some chocolate, crisps and coke. She is then caught up in a robbery and is kidnapped by two men. She manages to escape and helps the police trap the robbers.
14024425	/m/03crb9s	Nightwing	Martin Cruz Smith		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A disgruntled, disenfranchised Hopi shaman sets out to "end the world" by way of a ritual invocation of the Hopi god of death. Shortly after his mutilated corpse is discovered by a skeptical Tewa deputy the body count begins to rise as more strangely slashed and bloodied victims are found. The book has many elements: part love triangle; part Native American case study; part supernatural thriller. It was the author's own tribal ancestry which inspired the writing of this fictionalized anthropological mini-survey.
14024913	/m/03crc2w	Raven Rise	D.J. MacHale	2008-05-20	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins with separate narratives focusing on Patrick Mac and Alder, the Travelers of Third Earth and Denduron respectively. It follows the changes in their home territories and their realization that they are without Bobby Pendragon. On Denduron, the Bedoowan and Milago tribe are using the explosive tak that Bobby unearthed with a dygo from Zadaa to start a war with a neighboring tribe, the Lowsee tribe. On Third Earth, the once Utopian planet has morphed into a waste world. Bobby Pendragon, meanwhile, has been living comfortably on Ibara, the island community located on Veelox. Pendragon's own description states that he has been a contributor and leader of the rebuilding of Ibara, which was destroyed in the previous book by Saint Dane's Dimond Alpha Digital Organization D.A.D.O.army. Days after an unsettling conversation with Saint Dane, Pendragon encounters a drifting skimmer bearing a dying passenger on board (this passenger being Loque, one of the Jakills from The Pilgrims of Rayne who amazingly survived having a large amount of broken glass fall on him and slaving underneath Saint Dane while trying to dig up the flume in Rubic City along with the other Flighters). After hearing Loque's story, Bobby assumes that Saint Dane is after the flume and decides to prevent the flume from being reopened. He fails, and later discovers that Nevva Winter, Saint Dane's ally, has been living on Ibara disguised as Tribune Genj's daughter, Telleo, whom she killed months before. Hearing from her that Denduron is in danger, Bobby reluctantly sets out to rescue it. Emerging onto Denduron, Pendragon is nearly killed by a quig, later to be healed by Alder, whom he rescues from prison. Later, after failing to reseal the newly opened tak mine, the two of them realize that the territory is lost; therefore they travel to Second Earth to battle Saint Dane. On First Earth (1937) Mark and Courtney find that they have failed to prevent Mark's inventions from altering Earth's history. Mark is then black-mailed into giving up his Traveler ring to Nevva. They then head to the flume only to be intercepted by Patrick who came to First Earth in search of Bobby after realizing he couldn't save Third Earth alone. Mark and Courtney then return to Second Earth with Patrick in tow. Upon arriving they find that many people are worshiping a new cult, Ravinia, and both flumes have been revealed by Alexander Naymeer who is the leader of Ravinia and the "new" traveler of Second Earth as Bobby has quit. He is using the ring Nevva took from Mark. The goal of Ravinia is to reward the people who contribute to society, while punishing those who do not. Mark, Courtney, and Patrick head to the other flume to get off of Second Earth only to be intercepted by Naymeer. A chase ensues and Patrick narrowly gets away but not before being shot. Mark and Courtney are captured and brought to Naymeer's home which happens to be on top of one of the flumes, in the Sherwood house. A mortally wounded Patrick arrives on Denduron just as Alder and Bobby are about to leave. They heal him and send him back to Third Earth to find out what a possible Second Earth turning point could be. They then head to Second Earth to find Mark and Courtney. Bobby comes out in the flume below Naymeer's house. Just before Bobby arrives, Naymeer tells Mark and Courtney that the flumes and Traveler rings are made of dark matter. Bobby, Alder, Mark, and Courtney all talk with Naymeer who tells them he can't be stopped. They disagree and escape to Courtney's family's boat where they all decide that a vote to nominate Ravinia as "spiritual advisor" to the entire world is the turning point of Second Earth. Courtney's parents then show up with the cops. Another chase ensues and Mark and Courtney are captured but Bobby and Alder escape and take refuge with the main protester of Ravinia, Haig Gastigian. Patrick, on Third Earth, learns that the destruction there has begun with a mostly forgotten event known as the Bronx Massacre. He is killed while trying to convey word of this, but succeeds in telling Bobby about the event by sending him a message through his ring. Bobby and Alder witness what they think is the Bronx Massacre when Naymeer sends 12 people, including Mark and Courtney, into the flume to an unknown destination. Bobby and Alder later hear from Haig Gastigian, that he is holding a rally of 70,000 people in Yankee Stadium. At the rally the UN's vote is revealed to favor Ravinia, whereupon the 70,000 protesters gathered in Yankee Stadium are pulled into a giant flume which Naymeer creates, causing the true Bronx Massacre. Alder tries to stop him, but is killed in the process. Bobby is brought to a helicopter and flown above the stadium to witness everyone's deaths. It is revealed that Haig Gastigian was really Nevva who lured all the people to the stadium. Realizing this, Bobby throws Naymeer into the flume. At this, Saint Dane claims victory because Bobby had stooped to his level and failed his last test. Naymeer, falling into the flume, causes a beam of light to strike the helicopter. It spins out of control and falls into the flume. Saint Dane and Nevva escape and later tell the Conclave of Ravinia, the head of Ravinia, that Naymeer is dead but that Nevva is trained to take his place. Bobby then finds himself in space, looking down at the flumes, and watches them explode. He wakes up in the middle of an oblivious landscape, where he is confronted by his Uncle Press and the other nine travelers of his generation, both dead and alive. Uncle Press says that now is the right time to kill Saint Dane, since he believes that he has won. He also says that it is time for the current Travelers to learn the truth about themselves. The Travelers decide to finish the fight with Saint Dane, once and for all.
14028143	/m/03crgmr	Historias de cronopios y de famas	Julio Cortázar	1962		 This handbook recounts the birth of the Cronopios and the Famas. Cronopios and Famas are two kinds of living creatures conceived by Julio Cortázar's imagination. Also, there are different short stories, full of imagination and humor. es:Historias de cronopios y de famas fr:Historias de cronopios y de famas pt:Histórias de Cronópios e de Famas
14029788	/m/03crhyh	Inheritance	Christopher Paolini	2011-11-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Inheritance opens with the Varden's siege on Belatona, a city of the Empire. In the battle, Saphira is nearly killed by a Dauthdaert (death spear) called Niernen—a spear from the Dragon Wars intended to destroy wards and kill dragons. Belatona soon falls, and an alliance is formed between the Varden and werecats. Roran is sent on a mission to capture Aroughs, which proves to be a rather challenging task. He comes up with a risky, yet potentially rewarding, plan and Aroughs is taken, although Roran's force sustains many injuries. Roran rejoins the Varden at Dras-Leona when they are in the process of making plans to attack the city. Murtagh and his dragon Thorn are occupying the city, thus eliminating the chance of pulling off a direct siege successfully. Jeod finds references to the start of a sewer system that was never completed under the city. Assuming the existence of a secret tunnel into the city, Eragon leads a small group (himself, Arya, Angela, the werecat Solembum, and an elf named Wyrden) into the city to open the gates for the Varden. It turns out that the tunnels are used by the priests of Helgrind, and Eragon and Arya are captured after being separated from Angela and Solembum and witnessing the death of Wyrden. Because the priests are angry at Eragon for killing their gods, they intend to feed Eragon and Arya to Ra'zac hatchlings. Eragon and Arya struggle and injure themselves while being held captive until Angela and Solembum save them. Eragon is able to open the city gates and defeat Murtagh and Thorn, allowing the Varden to take control of the city. In the middle of the night, Murtagh and Thorn attack the Varden camp and capture Nasuada. In her absence, Eragon is appointed as the leader of the Varden as they march on to Urû'baen with hopes of overtaking the city. Eragon remembers Solembum's advice (in Eragon) concerning the Vault of Souls and the Rock of Kuthian. He summons Solembum to his tent and questions Solembum's knowledge of the Rock of Kuthian, of which the werecat has none. During the conversation, Solembum loses his consciousness as a new voice talks to Eragon before abruptly ending, bringing Solembum back from a trance he cannot remember. Eragon eventually discovers that the Vault is on Vroengard Island. Eragon then consults with Glaedr about the Vault of Souls but Glaedr cannot remember the conversation. Eragon realizes that powerful magic is causing everybody—except for Saphira and himself—to forget about the Vault of Souls after they hear of it. After Eragon finds a roundabout way to let Glaedr understand him, Glaedr believes that Eragon is telling the truth and advises him and Saphira to immediately find the source of and reason for the powerful magic, as it could help them in the fight against Galbatorix. Eragon and Saphira take Glaedr's Eldunarí as a guide. After a while on the island, Eragon and Saphira learn that they must speak their true names in order for the Rock of Kuthian to allow them to enter. After days, they find their true names and the rock opens. Inside, the three of them find a hoard of Eldunarí and dragon eggs that were hidden away before Galbatorix destroyed the Riders. Umaroth, the dragon of the last leader of the Riders, Vrael, speaks for all of the Eldunarí and says that the time has come for them to reveal themselves and to aid Eragon and the Varden in overthrowing Galbatorix. Eragon and the others depart from Vroengard with all the Eldunarí save five, who opted to stay and guard the eggs, and as they pass through the rock back onto the surface the knowledge of the existence of the stored dragon eggs is hidden from their minds. They make their way to Urû'baen, where the combined forces of the Varden, the elves (led by Queen Islanzadí), and the dwarves (led by Orik) are preparing to attack Urû'baen. Eragon and Saphira reach Urû'baen as the siege begins. The Eldunarí are revealed to the leaders of the Varden and all of them form a plan to attack the city. The forces of the Varden attack Urû'baen while Eragon, Saphira, Arya, Elva, and eleven elven spell-casters led by Blödhgarm break into Galbatorix's citadel. They proceed to the throne room after progressing through a series of traps, during which the elven spell-casters are taken captive. In the throne room, Galbatorix subdues Eragon, Saphira, Arya, and Elva and informs them that he has learned the true name of the ancient language (referred to as the Word). With the Word he is able to control the usage of magic. Galbatorix orders Murtagh and Eragon to fight using only their swords; Eragon eventually defeats Murtagh. Murtagh, whose oath to Galbatorix was broken due to a recent change in his true name, uses the Word to strip Galbatorix of his wards. Enraged, Galbatorix renders Murtagh unconscious and attacks Eragon with his mind, while Saphira and Thorn attack Shruikan. Using energy from the Eldunarí, Eragon casts a spell to make Galbatorix understand his crimes, and the pain and suffering that they have caused. Meanwhile, Arya kills Shruikan using the Dauthdaert. In retaliation to the pain and agony caused by Eragon's spell, Galbatorix utters the incantation for unmaking himself, which results in a huge explosion that destroys most of Urû'baen. Eragon, using energy from the Eldunarí, is able to protect those in the citadel. Murtagh and Thorn, being broken from their oaths of loyalty to Galbatorix, retreat to somewhere in the north to have some time to themselves to do some thinking. Before leaving, Murtagh teaches the Word to Eragon and then bids him farewell. Nasuada, after a heated debate with the leaders of the Varden, becomes the High Queen of Alagaësia and King Orrin of Surda pledges his allegiance to her. Arya returns to Du Weldenvarden to help choose a new monarch for the elves after the death of Queen Islanzadi in battle, and is chosen. She takes with her the rescued green dragon egg, which soon hatches for her. Thus, Arya becomes a Rider with her dragon named Fírnen. Eragon reworks the magic of the original pact between Riders and dragons to include both dwarves and Urgals, allowing the dragon eggs to hatch for members of their races. Eragon, coming to the conclusion that there is no safe place to raise the dragons and train new Riders in Alagaësia, begins planning transport of the Eldunarí and the eggs to a region east of Alagaësia. Save for two eggs which are kept in Alagaësia: one is to be sent to the dwarves, and the other to the Urgals. Those future Riders will travel to Eragon's new home for training, while new eggs will be sent back to Alagaësia to hatch for new Riders. Eragon says that he will never return to Alagaësia.
14036283	/m/03crqfn	The Great Elephant Chase	Gillian Cross		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tad Hawkins is 15 years old and lives in the fictional Pennsylvania mining town of Markle. After his mother died in childbirth, he was taken in by his overbearing aunt, who treats him as an unpaid servant, existing only to be bossed around and humiliated by Mr Jackson, the lodger, and Esther, the hired help. Tad's life is changed when he gets caught up in a crowd on their way to see a travelling elephant show which has just arrived in town. After witnessing the "miracle cure" of a young crippled girl by the elephant keeper, he spots Esther and Mr Jackson in the crowd and hides in the elephant's trailer. Before he can escape, Khush, the elephant, is loaded into the trailer and Tad is on his way to another town. When Tad is discovered by Michael Keenan, the elephant keeper, he discovers that the cripple who was cured in Markle is in fact Keenan's younger daughter, Cissie. Keenan offers Tad a job looking after Khush to keep him from exposing the scam. Tad takes to life with Khush and the Keenans. However, Tad is not the only person to have discovered the scam. Mr Jackson and Esther are on the Keenans' tail. A train crash kills Keenan and his eldest daughter, Olivia, on the way to Pittsburgh. Mr Jackson arrives, brandishing papers to prove that Keenan sold Khush to him for $500. Cissie, the only surviving Keenan, insists that the papers were faked and that Khush belongs to her. She, Tad and Khush set off on a journey West, towards the Nebraskan home of a friend from the travelling show, Ketty, with Mr Jackson and Esther in hot pursuit. A kind old widower helps them on their way by disguising Cissie as a boy and giving them a boat in which to sail down the Ohio River with Khush. Khush does not take kindly to his confined quarters on the small flatboat and, a few days into their journey, pitches himself and Tad into the river. On being reunited with them, Cissie begins to reveal her heartache over the deaths of her father and sister. The three travellers find rest in a small religious community who have heard of Mr Jackson's claim of ownership. The group's elders agree to take Tad, Cissie and the elephant to the large port of Cairo if Khush shows that he wants to go with the two youths. Khush follows them into the hold of the coal barge and so they carry on along the river. However, Khush again becomes impatient of his dark, cramped surroundings rocks the barge, forcing the Captain to make them disembark 200 miles from Cairo. After walking most of the way to the port, Tad leaves Cissie and the elephant to rest and continues ahead by himself. In Cairo, he is caught by Mr Jackson and Esther, who ply him for information and trick him into leading them to where Cissie and Khush should have been. Luckily, Cissie and the elephant have already left, spurred on by the thought of seeing Ketty in Nebraska. Tad stalls Mr Jackson and Esther and hurries to try and catch up with his friends. Cissie secures passage for herself and Khush on a large boat and Tad, hiding on their pursuers' boat, is helped along his way by a friendly woman travelling in the same direction. When Tad sees a sign on the riverbank that Cissie and Khush have disembarked secretly, he goes ashore to meet them, leaving Esther and Mr Jackson sailing past their prey. The friends are pleased to be reunited and Cissie assures Tad that they are now in Nebraska and near Ketty's house. However, the plains are desolate, with little water for Khush to drink and nowhere to hide from their pursuers. Khush becomes impatient and irritable as the three travellers near Ketty's home. They arrive just as Esther and Mr Jackson catch up with them and Mr Jackson asserts his claim to Khush. However, while agreeing that the papers that Mr Jackson has are not fakes, Ketty reveals that Keenan could not have sold Khush as she owns him herself. Mr Jackson petitions Ketty and her husband to sell him the elephant but, when she refuses, he and Esther eventually leave in a rage. Cissie is upset that Khush belongs to Ketty as she had intended to sell him and give the money to Ketty so that she could remain in Nebraska with her. Tad persuades Cissie that Ketty will take her in no matter what. Ketty, seeing how much the boy and the elephant love each other, appoints Tad as Khush's keeper in exchange for a portion of the elephant's earnings.
14036541	/m/03crqml	River of Death	Alistair MacLean	1981	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hamilton, allegedly an expert on the jungle, shows up in Brazil having apparently found a lost Indian civilization in the wilderness of the Amazon jungle. This attracts the attention of Smith, a wealthy German who appeared out of nowhere in the late 1940s with a fortune and group of ruthless cronies. Smith hires Hamilton to take him to see the lost city. Hamilton with his two trusty companions, together with Smith and his entourage set off, facing giant anacondas, giant spiders, cannibalistic natives, and so on, discovering a settlement of Nazi war criminals and their descendents, living as if the Third Reich had never ended.
14039364	/m/03crslg	Inventing Elliot	Graham Gardner	2003-03	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Inventing Elliot is the story of what happens when a young teenager decides to become a different person. For fourteen-year-old Elliot Sutton, the move to a new school in a new town where nobody knows him represents a chance to leave behind years of being bullied and start a new life, which is not actually true. Sick and tired of being a victim, he decides to change himself, subtly altering his physical appearance, and pretending to be far more confident and 'cool' than he actually is. His aim is to 'stand out just enough to fit in'. The plan works, but too well. While he is no longer the victim, he finds himself fast being pulled into the dark world of the Guardians, a secret society of older boys who are orchestrating a reign of terror at his new school. When the Guardians summon him, he thinks that his disguise must have failed. The truth, however, is that the Guardians are so impressed by the new persona Elliot has created that they want him to become one of them. The book follows Elliot's struggle to find a way out of his dilemma. Whilst he has escaped his traumatic past, his future seems to be that he will join the Guardians, and become one of the bullies that he once despised.
14045935	/m/03cr_f7	Adrift in Soho	Colin Wilson	1961	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens in the late summer of 1955. Nineteen year old Harry Preston, having been granted an early discharge from national service with the RAF, moves to London from a small English provincial town. Fancying himself as a writer, he drifts towards the central district of Soho, where he meets an out of work actor, James Street. Street introduces Harry to the bohemian way of life and the novel recounts their misadventures.
14047542	/m/03cs11j	Seawitch	Alistair MacLean	1977	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Lord Worth, ruthless and fabulously wealthy, has made a lot of enemies in the oil business. His new offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, named Seawitch, is one of the biggest in the world, and will put his competitors out of business. To destroy it and therefore be able to inflate the price of oil at will, the competitors get together and send one man to deal with Lord Worth. The villain has a personal score to settle with Worth and kidnaps him and his daughters. Fortunately for Lord Worth, his two daughters are betrothed to the protagonists, Mitchell and Roomer, two former police detectives/now private investigators. They set trying to save Worth and his daughters from certain death, as the villain intends to leave them on Seawitch when he destroys it with a stolen nuclear weapon.
14052144	/m/03cs4vr	Villa Amalia				 The middle-aged composer Ann Hidden has traced her partner of many years, Thomas, to the house where he is conducting an affair with a younger woman. At the scene she meets, for the first time since their adolescence, an old school friend from her childhood in Brittany, Georges Roehl. She takes the decision to end her former life, and in the space of a few months she leaves her part-time job as a music editor, ends her relationship with Thomas, visits her mother (from whom she is estranged) in Brittany but is not reconciled to her, sells the house in Paris that she has shared with Thomas, and asks Georges to create a place where she can live and compose in the grounds of his house near Sens in Burgundy, and leads him to believe that she will live there. Georges is eager to re-establish a relationship with her, since he is mourning the death of his gay partner. However, once the sale of her Paris house has been finalised, she leaves without giving any indication of her destination, and after some travelling establishes herself on the Italian island of Ischia near Naples, eventually renting and renovating an old house on a headland. The house is called Villa Amalia and gives the book its name. While on Ischia she begins an affair with a doctor called Leonhardt Radnitzky, who has recently divorced and has part-time custody of his four-year old daughter Magdalena (Lena). She spends much of her time swimming in the sea, and on one occasion becomes exhausted and is rescued by a couple in a yacht, Charles and his much younger partner Juliette (also known as Giulia). They are on the point of splitting up, and eventually Ann and Giulia form a profound relationship and live together in the Villa Amalia, and Lena lives with them when Leonhardt's work means that he cannot look after her. While Ann is out one day, and Giulia is asleep, Lena suffocates on a peanut. Giulia leaves and Ann's life disintegrates. Shortly afterwards, her mother dies; she returns to Brittany for the funeral, which is also attended by Thomas, by her father (a musician of Romanian Jewish origin, who left the family when she was a child) and by her school friend Véri, who has maintained contact between Ann and her mother. Ann refuses to be reconciled with Thomas, is rejected by her father, and quarrels with Véri. She returns to Burgundy and lives with Georges though they have no sexual relationship; at the end of the book he dies, with the implication that he has been suffering from AIDS though this is not stated.
14062078	/m/03cscss	The Bloody Red Baron	Kim Newman	1995	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book takes place during World War I, and centers around the Diogenes Club's efforts to investigate Germany's attempt to make powerful, undead fliers. Heading up the German operations are the likes of Rotwang, Doctor Caligari and Doctor Mabuse. One of their more successful efforts is an undead flier known as the Red Baron. The story also features Edgar Allan Poe as a vampire writer assigned to ghost write the Red Baron's autobiography.
14062309	/m/03cscyl	The Wednesday Wars	Gary D. Schmidt	2007-05-21	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 In 1967, Holling Hoodhood is a 7th grader on Long Island. In his town, families live in different areas based on religion. On Wednesdays, his Catholic classmates learn the Catechism, and his Jewish classmates attend Hebrew school. Holling, being Presbyterian, stays behind in class with his teacher Mrs. Baker, whom Holling believes "hates his guts" but later befriends. She at first instructs him to clean the room and do other chores; then she begins reading Shakespeare with him. While she makes Holling take exams and write essays on the plays to find out if he really understands them, Sycorax and Caliban, the class rats, who escaped from their cage when Holling was cleaning it as one of Mrs. Baker's chores, scuttle in the ceiling and some of the teachers try to catch them. Later on in the year, Holling begins to enjoy Shakespeare, particularly his colorful insults and curses. On one of the days he is with Mrs. Baker, she says he may have one of several dozen creams puffs if he cleans all the erasers. Even though he ruined all the puffs, when his friends find out that he got one, they say that he owes them cream puffs. He saves all of his allowance, but ends up short. The baker selling them, Mr. Goldman is, coincidentally, in need of a boy who knows Shakespeare. Holling gets the cream puffs in exchange for promising to play Ariel in a community production of The Tempest. The. Holling is quietly disappointed with his father, whose business ambitions dominate his life and conversation. He not only fails to attend the performance, but also fails to pick Holling up and take him to an autograph signing with his baseball hero, Mickey Mantle. Fortunately Holling makes it to the autographing by using public transit, but Mickey Mantle tells Holling that he doesn't do autographs for kids in yellow tights. Danny Hupfer, who has already gotten his baseball signed, drops his ball in front of Mickey, saying "I guess I don't need this after all,". He and Holling leave. Mrs. Baker, whose brother owns the sporting goods store, finds a way to make it up to Holling through her connections. She proceeds to have Horace Clarke and Joe Pepitone visit Holling and Danny for standing up to Mantel. Holling's older sister, Heather, referred to only as "my sister" for most of the novel, is in the midst of a rebellion against her father. She cares about civil rights, works for Bobby Kennedy, opposes the Vietnam War, and disagrees with her father about almost everything. She and Holling bicker, as siblings do, but they genuinely care for one another. Holling's relationship with Meryl Lee Kowalski begins to blossom, although her father is an architect in competition with Holling's father. A misunderstanding involving their fathers threatens to break them up, but they make up and become better friends afterwards. Meanwhile, their friend Danny Hupfer is anxious about his upcoming bar-mitzvah,However, Mrs. Baker, whose husband is missing in action in a dangerous part of Vietnam, treats her kindly, and her friends stand up for her. One of the many people to treat her bad is the cook, Mrs. Bigio, whose husband is away at war. He later goes missing and is found dead on a hill. After Mr. Hoodhood forces his daughter to work for him after school and on Saturdays, preventing her from volunteering for the Robert Kennedy campaign, the family tension increases. When her father dictates that she will not be allowed to attend college, his wish to keep her "safe" is transparent--he wants to keep her working for him for low wages and thus control her activities. She abruptly runs away with a boyfriend named Chit, and tension in the household increases. Mr. Hoodhood says that his daughter need not seek help from him in the future, and Mrs. Hoodhood quietly rebels in the only ways open to her, by no longer cooking her husband's favorite foods and by declining to join him for an evening drive in his new car. Holling joins a cross-country running squad and gets unexpected help from Mrs. Baker, who was once an Olympic medalist in When his father also defaults on taking Holling to Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, Mrs. Baker again comes to the rescue, for she recognizes that Holling is a good kid in a less than ideal situation. In a series of interesting and ironic twists, this event leads to a prize contract for Mr. Kowlaski, whom Holling's father had almost driven out of business. . During this episode, his sister's name is finally revealed in a touching coincidence. When his father refuses to drive him to the terminal to meet his sister, and his mother is apparently unwilling or unable to defy his father, he is given a ride by Mr. Kowalski. However, he still needs a way home for himself and his sister. His mother unhesitatingly gives him the money without telling her husband. He brings his sister home, and when Mr. Hoodhood mockingly asks his daughter whether she found herself, Holling replies for her, saying, "She found me." As the school year draws to a close, Mrs. Baker, who has learned that her missing husband is safe and will be coming home, takes the children on a camping trip. It involves many misfortunes, including losing the can-opener, being soaked by a downpour, and being attacked by clouds of mosquitoes, especially when the widowed Holling briefly describes the closing weeks of school and the reunion of Mrs. Baker and her husband, but the maturity he has gained from his experiences shows in his commentary about the Shakespeare plays he has read and the way he connects the Shakespearean life lessons to those around him. It is clear that with the help of his sister, his friends, and his caring teacher, Holling is on the road to choosing his life path for himself rather than being cowed by his father.
14063233	/m/03csdrt	Anno Dracula	Kim Newman	1992	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 In this world, Count Dracula has killed Van Helsing- an injury sustained to Doctor John Seward's hand during a fight with Renfield resulted in the group lacking the men to drive Dracula away from Mina Harker, resulting in Dracula killing Quincey Morris and Jonathan Harker before escaping with Mina-, and has married Queen Victoria, ushering in a period of increasing British vampire domination. Dracula is well-advanced in imposing a police state on Great Britain, where dissenters may be jailed or impaled without trial. Dieudonné has come down in the world, attending sick vampires in a clinic run by a doctor with a shady past. When a prostitute is murdered, Scotland Yard turns to them for an opinion. In the meantime Beauregard's social marriage preparations are interrupted by a summons to the mysterious Diogenes Club, which represents the crown in matters that cannot be made public. There, he is charged with finding Jack the Ripper. At the inquest for the recently destroyed vampire prostitute, Dieudonné and Beauregard appear, with Lestrade from Scotland Yard, and Dr. Jekyll. Each sets out independently, with differing agendas. Beauregard is abducted by an old enemy, a Tong leader who calls a truce on the understanding that Beauregard will collaborate in finding the killer. This precludes the Ripper being a member of organized crime, and periodically gives Beauregard inside information. Dieudonné stops at a pub, where she encounters the elite of Carpathian riff-raff which Dracula brought to London to control the locals. She confronts one bully, and, being the elder vampire, soundly bests him. Jack Seward, the physician at Dieudonné's clinic, recalls the early days of Dracula in London, before the signs of vampirism were recognized. As the demands of the Diogenes Club have first priority, a rift opens between Beauregard and his fiancee. Her fascination with social climbing is revealed: "Only vampires get anywhere, Charles." The intimates of Dracula discuss their continued takeover of the government, and set their own man to find Jack the Ripper: The destruction of the vampire prostitutes is drawing unwanted support for an anti-vampire Christian group. Seward becomes lustfully entangled with a "new born" vampire. Jack the Ripper strikes twice, failing to destroy one, who is brought to the clinic. The prostitute is a vampire of Dracula's line&nbsp;— a contaminated bloodline, from Dieudonné's perspective. It imperfectly changes shape, leaping at Seward as it dies. Trusting their associates, the implication is lost on Dieudonné and Beauregard. Seward notes the growing public hysteria, and reflects "I meant to destroy a monster, not become one." Beauregard and Dieudonné, having similar ideas, become closer, while his fiancée is increasingly annoyed at his lack of attention. Reporting to the Diogenes, Beauregard is puzzled that his meager progress is satisfactory. Leaving, he becomes entangled in an anti-vampire riot, however he is saved by one of the few vampires at the club, Sergeant Dravot. Beauregard's impatient fiancée becomes a vampire by one of Dracula's men. In her arrogance, the conversion does not go well, and she is barely able to reach the safety of her house. Beauregard and Dieudonné take her in care, Dieudonné observing, without being complimentary, that she may eventually become a strong vampire. Riots escalate, symbols of rebellion are being painted throughout London. An anti-vampire leader is shot, and one of Dracula's henchmen is destroyed, both perhaps by the same mysterious vampire. The ruling vampires react decisively. A large number of prominent people are to be imprisoned and treated ruthlessly, including George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, and W. S. Gilbert. Seward becomes increasingly infatuated with his vampire lover, having trouble distinguishing her now from the murdered Lucy. In Dravot, Dracula's henchmen Godalming believes he has found Jack the Ripper; he is pursuing him when he is destroyed by an old friend who he betrayed by becoming a vampire: Seward. Beauregard and Dieudonné finally realize that Seward is Jack the Ripper. They race to him, finding he has destroyed his vampire lover. As they leave with him in custody, they encounter Dravot, and the destroyed body of Godalming. Seward is murdered, but then Dravot produces a fabricated story about what happened: that there were two Rippers. Bemused, Beauregard realizes that he has been used as a tool of the Diogenes Club. However he and Dieudonné, by now having become lovers, are to be recognized by the queen for their work. The story concludes with a confrontation between Beauregard, Dieudonné, the queen, and Dracula, where Beauregard tosses a silver knife to Queen Victoria; knowing that he cannot kill Dracula in direct combat, Beauregard provides Victoria with a means of killing herself, thus depriving Dracula of the right to legally rule Britain and forcing him to flee the country.
14063598	/m/03csdz1	Judgement of Tears		1998	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 In 1959, several of the world's notable vampires gather in Rome for the wedding of Count Dracula. Nefarious schemes are afoot and being investigated by British Intelligence, the Diogenes Club, and several others, including a British spy on the trail of a sinister madman with a white cat.
14068467	/m/03csktj	A Wild Ride Through the Night	Walter Moers		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with 12-year-old Gustave, captain of the Aventure as he attempts to escape the deadly Siamese Twins Tornado. When the storm finally catches up with his crew, everyone is killed except Gustave, who meets Death, and his crazy sister Dementia. After the wicked siblings play dice for Gustave's soul, Death gives him six seemingly impossible tasks in order to stay alive. In one night, he must face six giants, rescue a damsel in distress from the clutches of a dragon, make himself conspicuous amidst a forest of evil spirits,encounter the Most Monstrous of all Monsters, and even meet himself. Can Gustave's wit and creativity win him his own soul? Or will he become a servant of Death, just like the rest of us? de:Wilde Reise durch die Nacht it:Folle viaggio nella notte
14069739	/m/03csm9f	The Golden Gate	Alistair MacLean	1976	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 A team of criminals led by mastermind Peter Branson kidnaps the President of the United States and his two guests from the Middle East, a prince and a king, on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, in a masterfully conceived and clockwork-timed operation. Branson and his men block off both ends of the bridge, wire it with explosives, and demand half a billion dollars and (adding insult to injury) a full pardon for themselves. Any rescue attempts will result in the detonation of the explosives, which will kill the President (and his guests) and destroy the Golden Gate Bridge. However, Branson is an egomaniac, and he cannot resist attention from the media. So he invites the press to stay on the bridge and cover the story. Aware that the FBI will have placed agents among them, he takes the precaution of searching them and removing the armed ones. However, Hagenbach (the FBI's dour but extremely adept head agent) has an ace in the hole: a hand-picked special agent, Paul Revson, who was equipped with only a camera. Allowed to remain on the bridge, Revson sets out to foil Branson's plans and rescue the President. With the help of a doctor and a female journalist, Revson gets a message to his superiors, suggesting various courses of action: supplying drugged food to the terrorists, placing a submarine under the bridge, and trying to neutralize the terrorists' equipment with a laser beam. He also arranges for several carefully disguised weapons and gadgets to be smuggled to him. Working on both ends, Revson, Hagenbach, and those working with them unleash their own carefully conceived plans.
14074160	/m/03csrds	The Memory Game	Nicci Gerrard		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel concerns the account of one Jane Martello, a middle aged woman undergoing divorce proceedings with her husband, and subsequently separating herself from a large and strong family she has known since her childhood. The intricate traditions of her family and the one she had married into begin to break down when the body of her sister-in-law, Natalie, is found buried in the garden, after over two decades. This startlingly close distance to the house leads to the revelation of the murderer being very close to the family after all. The revelation acts to bring down the family structure that for so long was unbalanced, but stable - such as Jane's father-in-law, Alan, an openly crude and sexist novelist having once frequently had relations outside his marriage (to the knowledge of the whole family) and other underlying tensions between family members. Jane undergoes psychiatric counselling, as she revels in the mysterious circumstances of one of her best childhood friend's death, and already present forerunnings to what appear to be a mid-life crisis. She undergoes a memory exercise (that the book is named for) to unlock memories lost from the trauma of her friend's death. What she unlocks proves seemingly to be the key to the death of Natalie, but the validity of the memories become questionable with the serious allegations they lead to.
14076166	/m/03cstf1	Forbidden City	William E. Bell	1990	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This book begins with a 17-year old boy named Alex Jackson who enjoys subjects related to military history, and travels to Beijing, China with his journalist father, Ted, to record some Chinese affairs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and cover the student protests. March 29th - You are introduced to Alex Jackson and his dad, Ted Jackson. They live in Toronto, Canada and before the book takes place, Ted has divorced his wife, Brenda Jackson. In this chapter both of their jobs/hobbies are revealed. Alex loves history, and has recently gotten into Chinese Military history. Ted almost sees his life through the lens of a camera, always lining up for the best shot possible. As mentioned before, Ted works for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and in this chapter is sent into Beijing, China to replace someone who works for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who got sick and didn't want to be treated in the Chinese hospitals. This person came back to Canada. Ted's job is to catch everything that they can of the Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, (Usually referred to as "Gorbachev") who was making an official visit to Beijing, China. Alex and Ted were both ecstatic about this and were rearing to go. March 30th - Alex and his dad leave for Beijing. Alex's dad gets drunk and takes a Gravol, which puts him into a sleepy mode while they are on the airplane. Alex basically has to steer him through the airport(s). They flew from Toronto to Vancouver, then from Vancouver to Beijing. April 1st - They land in Beijing at night and meet a man named Lao Xu, a co-worker of a man named Eddie. Eddie is does the video editing and helps stream the footage back to Toronto. Lao Xu drives them to the hotel that they will be staying in where they meet Eddie.
14078082	/m/03csw4g	Vampire Hunter D Volume 1	Hideyuki Kikuchi	1983-01-31	{"/m/06b_0_": "Light novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 It is the year 12,090 A.D. The world has ended, ravaged in a firestorm of man's wars and madness. But from the wreckage a few humans manage to survive. A few humans... and something else. Doris Lang knew what her fate was when the vampire lord Count Magnus Lee bit her. An agonizing transformation into one of the undead, to be stalked by her fellow villagers or cursed to become the bride of the unholy creature and face an eternity of torment, driven by the thirst for human blood. There was only one chance, and as she watched him ride in from the distance she knew there was hope. Salvation... from a vampire hunter named D. Magnus has his own problems; his beautiful daughter Larmica refuses to let a human into her family, and is all too willing to kill the bride before the wedding can take place. Enlisting the help of Garo, a werewolf retainer, she attempts to kill Doris, only to find D in her way. Greco Rohman, son of the chief, also wants Doris for himself. The same goes for the skilled figher Rei-Ginsei and his Fiend Corps. Both men are eager to eliminate D, as his skills and Doris' favor makes them see him as a threat. Doris knows she isn't the only one in trouble, her younger brother is perceived as her weakness, and there are more than one person out there willing to use him as leverage against her.
14079426	/m/03csx1t	The Every Boy	Dana Adam Shapiro			 In this debut novel a fifteen-year-old boy dies mysteriously, leaving behind a ledger filled with his darkly comic confessions.
14079779	/m/03csxgj	Vampire Hunter D: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea	Hideyuki Kikuchi	1988-10-31	{"/m/06b_0_": "Light novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The 17-year-old Wu-Lin is traveling from the fishing village of Florence to Cronenberg to have a strange jewel appraised. No less than three people try to steal it from her: the young commoner Toto, an old artist named Professor Krolock, and the grotesque Gilligan, an obscenely overweight gangland boss in a custom exo-skeleton. He has Wu-Lin killed, but her dying request of D is that he bring the gem back to her older sister Su-In in their village on the north sea. Gilligan is determined to have the gem. He dispatches five mysterious individuals with the promise that the one who brings it to him will get all he possesses. This group consists of such colorful characters as Shin the Puppetman, King Egbert, Undiscernible Twin, and Reminiscence Samon. Also tailing D from Cronenberg is handsome Glen, a warrior and "seeker of knowledge" who wants to kill the Vampire Hunter because he's the only thing he has ever feared. Everyone arrives in Florence just as its short, week-long summer is about to begin. Millennia ago, the area had been a resort for the Nobility until the day, about 1000 years ago, when a traveler in black arrived and punished the cruel vampire residents. Only Baron Meinster refused to leave, and the traveler threw him into the sea. Now, for the past few years, the village's summer has been marred by vampire attacks -- "Meinster's Revenge." Su-In hired D because something particularly distressing is going on here. Though the whole world knows that the Nobility have difficulty with rain or flowing water, the vampire in Florence seems to be coming from the sea. As the plot thickens, the five mercenaries hired by Gilligan resort to betraying each other and using dirty tactics to subdue D. Glen is able to dominate Simon into a love-hate-love relationship which leads to him becoming a noble, a desperate act following a near death at the hands of a jealous King Egbert. Throughout the second half of the story, the bead is lost and claimed by numerous characters, finally falling into the hands of Dr. Krolock himself. The Doctor is able to crack the secret of the jewel and obtains Nobility like status, but is easily felled by D's blade. Everything comes to a head when Glen is finally defeated by D and Meinster's abilities are revealed. Four summers ago, Su-in met a man who she fell in love with, but when he tried to make her commit a terrible deed, she killed him. His body was dumped into the sea, where it became the vessel for the defeated Noble, this resulted in "Meinster" having no recollection of his 'true' self. In the end, D prevails and Su-in returns to her happy life as a teacher for the village's children, with help from her friend Dwight and a reformed Toto. The latter of which who claims to have seen the Hunter smile before departing. In the close of the story, Samon confronts D. Wounded and near death, she is promptly defeated by the Vampire Hunter known as D.
14091616	/m/03ct8q6	The Road to Omaha	Robert Ludlum	1992-02-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Several years after the events of The Road to Gandolfo, the Hawk has discovered a long-forgotten treaty between the US government and a tribe of Native Americans. This treaty granted the tribe a vast area of land that has since become Omaha, Nebraska, and includes the home of the Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Base. Posing as a member of the tribe, the Hawk plans to bring suit against the United States and force it to give the land to the tribe. To further this goal, he ropes Devereaux (now retired from the military) into representing the tribe in court.
14093165	/m/03ctbzr	Girl in Landscape	Jonathan Lethem		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Pella Marsh is the only daughter and eldest child in a family that is leaving behind New York, in a near-future where the Earth has sustained severe damage from climate change. Before they can leave, Caitlin, Pella's mother, dies of a brain tumour, leaving Clement, her ineffectual father, to try to care for Pella and her brothers, Raymond and David. After twenty months of cryogenic suspended animation, the Marshs reach the Planet of the Archbuilders. This oceanless planet is inhabited by an advanced alien species known only as the Archbuilders, who are hermaphrodites. They built the complex and beautiful arch-like structures that dominate the terrain, terraformed their planet to provide a controlled climate, and used bioengineering to create several varieties of readily grown "potatoes" for a constant food supply. The Archbuilders themselves are furry and scaled creatures, with frond-like tentacles. There are also small, nearly invisible animals called "household deer," which inhabit most every corner of the region without much obvious impact. Despite their apparent lack of high technology, the Archbuilders are skilled communicators, and have twenty thousand indigenous languages on their world. They also rarely give birth, implying considerable longevity. Like the other colonists, Pella is instructed to take acclimatisation pills, ostensibly to ward off indigenous Archbuilder viruses, but, because of her father's new plans for the humans in living with the world, she does not take them -- much to the chagrin of the enigmatic resident Efram Nugent. After some time, rather like Ethan Edwards and Debbie in The Searchers (1956), Efram and Pella develop a love/hate relationship as she resists his misanthropic and speciesist attitudes toward both his fellow colonists and the Archbuilders. After she has decided to stop acclimatisation, she discovers that she has a rapport with the Archbuilders, and becomes increasingly influenced by their culture, civilisation and ecology, "going native". Her brother David and fellow child Morris Grant are similarly affected, as is the infant Melissa Richmond-Concorse. The four of them discover that one side-effect of adaptation to their new environment allows them to inhabit the bodies of the household deer temporarily. Ultimately, other colonists either leave the planet (like the Kincaids, after a mistaken child sexual abuse incident); die, like Efram Nugent (shot); or become similarly absorbed by Archbuilder culture. The latter are transformed into semi-nomads who dwell in the ruins of their former houses, as apparent entropy consumes their abortive colony - like Pella, David, Morris, Raymond and Doug. As for the Archbuilders, Truth Renowned dies in the fire that destroys Hugh Merrow's abandoned house and art studio, and Hiding Kneel is injured after Efram imprisons it in a shed. However, their community survives as a cohesive group, belying human perceptions of their alleged weakness and 'decay' of their civilisation and culture.
14094119	/m/03ctdd4	My Story		1993-09-10	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 This book is the follow-up to the jointly written Our Story by both Ronnie and Reggie Kray. In this book, Ronnie describes in his own words the murders of Jack "the Hat" McVitie and George Cornell; his bisexuality, and his feelings about spending 30 years in Broadmoor Hospital for the criminally insane. Also included is a chapter written by Ronnie's wife, Kate Kray, and 21 photographs depicting the young Krays, their family, friends and victims. Quote from book: "They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging Sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world... and me and my brother ruled London. We were fucking untouchable..." - Ronnie Kray.
14095986	/m/03ctgcr	The Golden Kite, The Silver Wind	Ray Bradbury			 The story, set in China, begins in a small pastoral town or village, apparently in a time or place where trade and agriculture are still the norm. There is little in the way of modern technology; no electricity, automobile or advanced irrigation. Superstition is also rampant. The town is described as being in a desert area, and within the vicinity of another, called Kwan-Si. The inhabitants of the town the story is set in are prone to describe their town to be in the shape of an orange, defined by the city walls. One day, a messenger comes to the Mandarin, or king, to inform him that the neighboring town has changed the shape of their walls to a pig – such that it would be interpreted by travelers as being about to eat the orange-shaped town. The messenger and the king discuss frantically how this will bring them ill luck – travelers would stay in and trade with the other town, and nature will favor the pig over the orange. Advised by his daughter, who stands behind a silken screen to hide herself, the king decides to have the town walls rebuilt to resemble a club, with which to beat the pig away. All is well in the town for a time, but soon the messenger brings news that Kwan-Si's walls have been reshaped as a bonfire to burn their club. The Mandarin of the first town has the walls changed to a shining lake; Kwan-Si's are changed to Mouth to drink the lake; the Mandarin's changed to a needle to sew the mouth; Kwan-Si's to a sword to break the needle. This goes on for quite some time, driving the cities' inhabitants away from their work at farms or in shops to fruitlessly rebuild the walls and wait for the other's response. Disease and famine are rampant. At last, the voice behind the silk screen, advising the Mandarin, says weakly "In the Name of the gods, send for Kwan-Si!" The two Mandarins, both starved and ailing, agree to stop their feud of superstition. The first Mandarin's daughter shows the men several kites, lying abandoned on the ground. 'What are kites,' she asks, 'without the wind to sustain them and make them beautiful?' Nothing, they agree. 'And what is the sky, without kites upon its face to make it beautiful?' Again, it is Nothing. Thus, she directs that Kwan-Si shall make itself to resemble the Silver Wind, and her town shall be made to resemble a Golden Kite, such that the two should sustain each other and they could live in peace. The kite is representing the wind.
14097788	/m/03ctjwv	Conspiracy in Death	Nora Roberts		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lt. Eve Dallas and her assistant Delia Peabody, are called to a crime scene by Officer Ellen Bowers, and Officer Troy Trueheart. A homeless man is killed, his heart removed. The man's heart is removed though, with the skill of a surgeon. Dallas and Peabody both know a serial killer is preying on the city sidewalk sleepers, and all of the cities resources, and Eve's billionaire husband Roarke, give her no solid leads, except a free clinic run by a saintly doctor, Dr. Louise Dimatto. Soon though, three are dead, and Eve is running out of time. Unfortunately for Eve, trouble is also coming from within the police force. Officer Ellen Bowers is deranged, and obsessed with Eve. She obsessively writes a journal about all the terrible things that, she believes, Eve has done. One night, going home to her apartment, still obsessing, Bowers is attacked, and killed. The blame is quickly placed on Eve, who is stripped of her badge, and goes into a deep depression. Only her husband Roarke can bring her back, and help her figure out why four people are dead, and the terrible jealousy that motivated these murders.
14098897	/m/03ctld_	Deep Fathom	James Rollins	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book starts off with three different perspectives of people across the world on a day of a solar eclipse, the first one of the new millennium. One of these characters happen around the President of the United States who is watching the eclipse from the island of Guam on a diplomatic mission with the Chinese. While the eclipse starts off fine, there are earthquakes on the island and the President is forced to evacuate on Air Force One. At the same time, Jack Kirkland is on an underwater salvage mission in the Pacific, trying to salvage gold bricks from a sunken ship when an underwater earthquake occurs causing an underwater volcanic eruption and the magma consequently consumes the ship taking all but one brick of the gold with it. Kirkland returns to his ship, a salvage boat - Deep Fathom, with the brick and shares the disappointment with his team when they are radioed by the U.S. Navy to go to a site close to where they are. Though reluctant, the Deep Fathom proceeds towards the co-ordinates given. On the other side, Canadian Professor Karen Grace and Professor Miyuki Nakano, Karen's Japanese friend from the Okinawa university, are in Okinawa trying to get to the jetty during a curfew. Undettered by earthquakes, they escape from patrols and get to the boat which Karen had hired to take them to the twin dragons, submerged pyramids which had come above the sea level along with a whole city. When they get there they go to a large pyramid to explore but are interrupted with three men come from nowhere and ask them to leave. The women refuse and after chased deep into the pyramid where they find a star-shaped crystal. Using the crystal, the women escape and return to Okinawa. Kirkland and his ship are requested to salvage at a crash site, which turns out to be the site where Air Force One crashed after taking off from Guam. Meanwhile, David Spangler, a covert operations commander and an old acquaintance of Kirkland is ordered by his boss in CIA and the vice-president to secure the black boxes of the crashed plane. Spangler, turns out to be the brother of Kirkland's fiancee, who was killed during a botched space mission, and now vengeful blaming Jack for his sister's death. Spangler decides to kill Kirkland as a side operation. Kirkland uses the Deep Fathom's submersible to find the crash site and along with it, a huge crystal pillar sticking out the ground with the plane's debris all around it. He also finds that all the metal from the plane seems to be magnetized as they work to get the pieces above. Another peculiarity is that his submersible seems to lose contact to the ship every time he went near the pillar and he takes more pictures for his team to study of the pillar. Kirkland and his team do not inform navy about the pillar but start investigating it on their own after they find ancient script on the pillar. Though slow work, they eventually find the plane's black boxes which are taken away by Spangler who subsequently orders Deep Fathom off the site. The writing is the same as that on the crystal found by Karen Grace which is found in Japan. She responds to the emails and decides to meet with Kirkland at Okinawa. Before Kirkland leaves, Spangler sets up two bombs to kill everyone but the one with Kirkland goes out of range before Spangler could detonate it. Kirkland and Grace then go to the risen pyramids and are attacked by fighter jets, when they get away they are found by the people who tried to kill Karen the last time she was there. Only, this time they don't try to kill them. The men, one named Mwahu take them back to Okinawa. When they meet with Miyuki they discover what the inscriptions were through the use of Miyuki's computer system which is an Artificial Intelligence system and how the same writing is found in many other places around the world theorizing that there was one major civilization which actually travelled and populated the other parts of the world. Soon Kirkland gets a call from his ship the Deep Fathom telling him they have a bomb aboard and when the phone terminates he believes that the bomb had exploded. Spangler, who had tapped into the call, is happy as Kirkland's ship and friends were now gone. Karen, Kirkland and Miyuki then go to the pyramid city with Mwahu to following the first civilization clues but when they arrive they are attacked by Spangler's men. Karen is caught, but the others escape and Kirkland is found by the Deep Fathom's crew who are still alive because they defused the bomb and sent out a false message to trick Spangler. Kirkland decides to rescue Karen and when he arrives on Spangler's ship he is fought off by Spangler and his men. Kirkland's team finds out that soon the world is going to be destroyed when a new solar flares hits the pillar by the crash site of Air Force One. Karen is taken to an underwater research base by the pillar where she is kept as prisoner. When she can send them a message they decide another strategy of rescuing Karen. When Kirkland leaves this time in his submersible towards the underwater station he is attacked by Spangler in another submersible. After a brief fight Spangler gets killed by a giant squid which tried to attack Kirkland earlier. Kirkland manages to get on board the deserted underwater base and is told by his team aboard his ship that they are going to destroy the pillar to prevent Armageddon by shooting it with a laser from a satellite that Kirkland had placed in space during his space mission. When the pillar is destroyed the world goes on like it would have on the day of the eclipse without the devastating earthquakes.
14099734	/m/03ctmh1	Federation				 The first half of the novel involves three parallel arcs. In one arc, Zefram Cochrane has just completed the first warp speed voyage, a solo journey to Alpha Centauri and back. His is the first successful manned flight beyond the Sol system. His benefactor and backer, Micah Brack, exploits the warp drive to help humanity burst into the stars and safeguard the future of the race, which he foresees disaster for because of the "Optimum Movement", perfectionists who are trying to perfect Khan Noonien Singh's failed attempt to unify and improve humanity. A second arc covers James Kirk and his crew, just after the successful conference on admitting Coridan into the Federation. Kirk is hauled onto the carpet by a Starfleet admiral demanding that he explain a subspace message showing "dead" Commissioner Nancy Hedford. Kirk discovers that Cochrane was kidnapped from his and Nancy's home at Gamma Canaris. A third arc covers Jean-Luc Picard and his crew, just after dropping off Sarek of Vulcan to another ship for his voyage home from the Legaran home world. A Ferengi ship leads them to a Romulan ship, whose commander is giving Picard what appears to be a section of a Borg ship, but with a Preserver artifact incorporated into it. The Cochrane arc jumps ahead 17 years, from 2061 to 2078, just before a devastating war on Earth and long after Micah Brack's mysterious disappearance. Cochrane risked visiting his home planet, and narrowly escaped the forces of the Optimum Movement whose leader, Adrik Thorsen, wants Cochrane's knowledge about warp fields to create a bomb. The Cochrane arc then jumps further to 2111, when he must flee Alpha Centauri, and begins his voyage into the future when the Companion finds him and takes him to a sanctuary, her home. Kirk and the Enterprise find the hijacked passenger ship that has Cochrane aboard, and cleverly rescue all aboard. However, they are in a battle with Klingon warships under the command of the robotic remnants of Thorsen, and the Enterprise is damaged. Cochrane and the Companion board a shuttlecraft that will take "shelter" inside the event horizon of a black hole, on a course calculated to bring them out again using a short burst of warp drive. However, one Klingon ship follows the shuttlecraft, and Kirk takes the Enterprise in, dispatching the Klingon ship with one torpedo. They cannot, however, now escape and the shuttlecraft is also doomed. Picard's crew study the Preserver artifact, and when Data tries to interface with it, Thorsen's essence emerges from the artifact and takes over Data. Data takes the Enterprise into the black hole where Thorsen saw Cochrane enter it a century before. The two Enterprises, once Data's body is shut off, coordinate to take advantage of gravity waves to save both ships and tractor the shuttlecraft out. By necessity, to emerge in their own times, Kirk's Enterprise must yield the shuttlecraft's mass to Picard's, and so when Picard and the Enterprise-D emerge, they find the shuttlecraft holds Zefram Cochrane and Nancy Hedford/Companion. Both of them die, even as the ship arrives at Gamma Canaris to find the planetoid has long ago disintegrated. Before the ships got too far apart, Picard sent a short signal identifying his ship by name. Kirk writes a letter on paper to the captain of that future Enterprise, to be released after certain events have occurred. Picard is given the letter not long after the Enterprise-D is lost on Veridian III. One of the common ties is Christopher's Landing, the location on the moon Titan where Sean Jeffrey Christopher made humanity's first landing on the moon of Saturn. Cochrane returned there after his successful warp flight; Kirk writes his letter there and Picard is given that letter. Over the course of 300 years... 2061 to 2265 to 2366... the environment of Titan is progressively terraformed to one where Picard is able to stroll outdoors. The events of the story were of course non-canonical, and conflict with what was established about Zefram Cochrane, his first warp flight, and first contact with the Vulcans, in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact.
14104237	/m/03gqjfj	What We Talk About When We Talk About Love	Raymond Carver	1981		 The story is about four friends—Mel, Teresa (Terri), Laura, and Nick. The setting is Mel's house, around a table with a bucket of ice in the middle. A bottle of gin is inside it. They soon start to talk about love (as the title suggests). Terri has had an abusive relationship, the abuse, she says, deriving from love. Ed, Terri's former abusive boyfriend, "loved her so much he tried to kill her." Ed would beat Terri, he dragged her around the living room by her ankles knocking her into things along the way. Terri believed that Ed loved her and his abuse was his way of showing it. No matter what Terri said, Mel refused to believe that was "love." Ed would stalk Mel and Terri. He would call Mel at work with threatening messages. At one point Mel was so scared he bought a gun, and made out a will. Mel even wrote to his brother in California saying that "if something happened to him" to look for Ed. Her abusive boyfriend eventually committed suicide after two attempts (as Terri sees it, another act of love). Ed's first attempt at suicide was when Terri had left him. Ed had drank rat poison, but was rushed to the hospital where he was saved. Ed's second attempt and success was shooting himself in the mouth. A person heard the shot from Ed's room and called the manager. Terri and Mel argued about whether she could be in the room with him when he died. Terri won and was with Ed as he died, as Terri put it, "he never came up out of it." Soon afterward Mel begins a story about an older couple and a drunk driver. The drunken driver was a teenager and pronounced dead at the scene. The elderly couple survived the car accident because they were wearing seat belts. Mel was called into the hospital one night just as he sat down to dinner. Once he got there he saw how badly the elderly couple had been injured. He said that they had "multiple fractures, internal injuries, hemorrhaging, contusions, and lacerations." The couple were in casts and bandages from head to toe. Mel's point in telling the story was that when the elderly couple were moved into ICU, intensive care unit, the husband was very upset. Mel would visit the couple every day and when he put his ear to the husband's mouth hole he told him that he was upset, because he could not see his wife through his eye-holes. Mel would stray from the topic with more talk about Ed, his own personal thoughts on love, hatred toward his ex wife, and life as a knight. Mel felt that even though you love a person, if something was to happen to them, the person still living will grieve but love again. After finishing the second bottle of gin, they talk about going to dinner, but no one makes any moves to proceed with their plans.
14106160	/m/03ctvxk	The Final Circle of Paradise	Boris Strugatsky	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ivan Zhilin, posing as a writer working on a novel, visits a seaside resort city to investigate a series of mysterious deaths. Zhilin's role as an undercover agent becomes apparent to the reader only gradually, and is not brought into the open until the final chapters of the novel. While being given a tour of the city, a tourism official tells Zhilin that he will get no work done, as he will be distracted by the "twelve circles of paradise" found in the city. These include the Fishers, which provide thrill seekers with situations of extreme and potentially fatal terror, the Shivers, which electronically induce pleasurable dreams to large crowds of people, and the Society of Patrons of Arts, who procure priceless works of art and ritualistically destroy them. The culture of this city has become utterly decadent, the product of an age of universal affluence. Zhilin refers to the present state of the world as "the age of the boob" where the highest priority is placed on orgiastic pleasure and staving off boredom, to the neglect of culture, education and scientific progress. The authors express the Marxist perspective in the scene of an argument between Zhilin and a third-world revolutionary: "The great revolutionaries would not have accepted your shibboleth: now you are free- enjoy yourselves. They spoke otherwise: now you are free- work. After all, they never fought for abundance for the belly, they were interested in abundance for the soul and the mind." (pg. 158) The ultimate expression of the decadence of Earth culture is the mysterious "Slug" which is apparently responsible for the deaths that Zhilin is investigating. At first Zhilin believes it to be some sort of narcotic, distributed by gangsters with secret laboratories and trafficking networks. Zhilin progressively finds clues that lead him to Peck Xenai, a former classmate of his and the last surviving member of his international unit that fought the Fascists some years before. Peck, however, is physically ravaged by alcoholism and the use of "Slug," and does not even recognize Zhilin when he finds him. Zhilin succeeds in getting a "slug" from Peck, in the form of a small silver electronic component. What Zhilin finds when he plugs the "Slug" into his radio receiver and lies in the bathtub causes him to rethink the entire situation. "Slug" turns out to be a way of generating an artificial reality significantly more intense than normal reality, to the point where there is virtually no comparison between our reality and that of the "slug." People become addicted to it and spend increasing amounts of time unconscious in their bathtubs until it kills them by nervous exhaustion or brain hemorrhages. This is "the final circle of paradise." It also turns out that the "Slug" is not the work of gangsters or a secret laboratory, but is a common electronic component being used in a novel way. If "Slug" were to become widely known, Zhilin concludes, nothing would stop it from being used by millions the world over. Zhilin, himself struggling not to use it a second time, concludes that "Slug" represents "the end of progress." He foresees humanity as a whole entering this illusory reality, which will eventually destroy mankind. At the end of Space Apprentice, Zhilin began to devote his life to making the solar system a better place for young people struggling to find purpose in the world. At the end of this story, he leaves his work with the World Council to fight "the last war - the most bloodless and most difficult for its soldiers" (Pg. 170) - that of making life worth living for the millions caught unprepared in an age of affluence, so that they will never need anything like "Slug." However, even as Zhilin is saying this, at the end of the novel it is left ambiguous whether he thinks he will be able to resist using the "slug" again.
14109572	/m/03ctyyn	The Door in the Dragon's Throat			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Coopers, a family of Christian archaeologists, are recruited by President Al-Dallam, a greedy oil sheik, to journey to the bottom of the dragon's throat, where many other expeditions have met with gruesome deaths, never having unravelled the mystery of what lurks at the bottom. However, the Cooper family have an edge: their unwavering faith in God, which holds up to scrutiny and testing throughout the book. Upon arrival, they are greeted by Gozan, Al-Dallam's aide, another fearful and greedy man, who shows them to the Dragon's throat. After a stakeout and a few scares, they realise that this 'Dragon's Throat' is more dangerous than they initially expected, but they journey down anyway. They are met by an earthquake, paranormal activity, and the Door, massive and ornate. While the Coopers continue trying to open the door, their activities are watched and thwarted from time to time by a Chaldean sorcerer. As well as the Shaman's efforts, Jay's beliefs are challenged by Gozan, who wants the 'treasure behind the door' for himself. Jay stands firm and makes himself an absolute model of Christianity for Peretti's young readers. As the Coopers realise the Door may not be breached by brute force, they hear a rumour of a key, the only thing that can open the colossal doors. As they search the winding eastern city for the 'Street of the Scorpion,' the key's location, Jay and Lila are separated and kidnapped by the desert shaman. The sorcerer is converted to Christianity, breaking all the curses upon him, and he becomes an ally. As Keeper of the door, he shows Jay and Lila the key, but tells them that it is not treasure behind the door, but a powerful demonic force awaiting its release upon the world. During this conversation, Gozan steals the key and rushes it to his president. A desperate chase begins to get to the Door before the president. He beats them to it but a last minute action by Jay saves the Earth.
14109968	/m/03ctz9p	Forrest Gump	Winston Groom	1986	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Forrest Gump, named after General Nathan Bedford Forrest, narrates the story of his life. The author uses misspellings and grammatical errors to indicate his Southern accent, education, and cognitive disabilities. While living in Mobile, Alabama, Forrest meets Jenny Curran in first grade and walks her home. By the time Forrest is sixteen years old, he is 6’ 6” (1.98 m), 242 pounds (110 kg), and plays high school football. Miss Henderson, whom Forrest is infatuated with, gives him reading lessons. He reads Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and two other books that he doesn't remember. While he enjoys the books, he doesn't do well on tests. He gains popularity as a football player, joining the All State team. When Forrest is called to the principal's office, he meets Bear Bryant, who asks if he'd considered playing college football. After high school, Forrest takes a test at a local army recruitment center, and is told he is "Temporarily Deferred." Forrest and Jenny meet again in college. They go to see Bonnie and Clyde, and play together in a folk music band at the Student Union, covering songs by Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul and Mary. When he and Jenny get together, "we done all sorts of things that... I never even dreamt of in my wildest imagination... We rolled all over the livin room an into the kitchen... When we is finally finished, Jenny jus lie there a while, an then she look at me an say, 'Goddam Forrest, where is you been all my life?'" Forrest flunks out of The University of Alabama after one semester. He and his friend Bubba join the army. Bubba dies in the Vietnam War. He meets Lieutenant Dan, who has lost his legs, in the infirmary. He also plays in a Ping-Pong championship in China, and goes on a mission for NASA with a female astronaut and an ape named Sue. After their re-entry, they are captured and held by cannibals for four years. Forrest also has brief careers as a chess champion, a stunt man with a naked Raquel Welch in Hollywood, and as a professional wrestler called "The Dunce". At the end of the book, Forrest honors Bubba's memory by starting a shrimp business, and he tries to make a life with Jenny and their child.
14112370	/m/03cv0cb	A New England Nun	Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman			 "A New England Nun" is the story of Louisa Ellis, a woman who has lived alone for many years. Louisa is somewhat of an eccentric, as she likes to keep her house meticulously clean, wear multiple aprons, and eat from her nicest china every day. She has an old dog named Caesar who she feels must be kept chained up because he bit a neighbor 8 years ago as a puppy. Louisa promised Joe Dagget 14 years ago that she would marry him when he returned from his fortune-hunting adventures in Australia, and now that he has returned it is time for her to fulfill her promise. When Joe arrives, however, it becomes obvious that Louisa sees him as a disruption of the life that she has made for herself. When Joe arrives, Louisa attempts to have a conversation with him, but is distracted when he tracks dirt on the floor, re-arranges her books, and accidentally knocks things over. The two have a cool and slightly awkward conversation when Louisa inquires after Joe's mother's health and Joe blushes and tells Louisa that Lily Dyer has been taking care of her. Clearly, she is only planning on marrying Joe because she promised that she would, since it would mean that Louisa would have to give up the life that she has made for herself. Later that night, as Louisa is enjoying a moonlit stroll, she happens to overhear a conversation between Joe and Lily. Through this conversation, Louisa learns that Joe and Lily have been seeing each other in the short time that Joe has been back, and that Joe is in love with Lily but refuses to break his promise to Louisa. Lily supports Joe's decision, and though Joe encourages her to find someone else, Lily says, "I'll never marry any other man as long as I live." The next day, when Joe comes to visit, Louisa releases Joe from his promise without letting him know that she is aware of his relationship with Lily. Joe and Louisa then part tenderly, and Louisa is left alone to maintain her present lifestyle. The last line of the story is: "Louisa sat, prayerfully numbering her days, like an uncloistered nun."
14121254	/m/03cv73_	Los Premios	Julio Cortázar	1960	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The winners of a state lottery, a cross section of the citizens of Buenos Aires, have received tickets for a mysterious luxury cruise. Summoned to meet in a popular café and escorted under the cover of darkness to the secret location of their ship, they embark without knowing where they are headed. Within hours the ship stops; the passengers are informed that a disease has broken out among the crew and that they will be confined to a small section of the ship. In suspense, the passengers mull over their pasts and the future, form attachments and suspicions, tell secrets, explore desires. But as some of them merely accept their confinement, others are increasingly driven to confront the crew, leading to an outbreak of violence that seems both inevitable and pointless. bn:লস প্রেমিওস es:Los premios
14123094	/m/03cv90x	The Way to Dusty Death	Alistair MacLean	1973	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The protagonist, Johnny Harlow, a world champion Formula 1 racing driver, who appears to have become an alcoholic after a devastating wreck kills his best friend and fellow driver, along with maiming his girlfriend. He realizes after being involved in yet another crash on the circuit that there have been too many accidents lately, and decides to investigate, but soon finds out that a few people will do anything to prevent him from discovering the truth.
14126167	/m/03cvd9j	My Gun Is Quick	Mickey Spillane		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story starts with Mike Hammer meeting a red-headed prostitute in a diner. She is hassled by a man she appears to know and fear but Mike deals with him swiftly. Despite little conversation, he gives her some money to get a real job and leaves. The next day she is found dead, the victim of an apparent hit-and-run accident. Mike does not believe this and proceeds to hunt down her murderers. In the process he uncovers a massive and powerful prostitution ring in New York.
14126296	/m/03cvdcl	Vengeance Is Mine!	Mickey Spillane		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Mike Hammer wakes up being questioned by the police in the same hotel room as the body of an old friend from World War II. His friend, Chester Wheeler, has apparently committed suicide with Hammer's own gun after they had been drinking all night. As it is not considered murder, Hammer is not under suspicion but the District Attorney takes the opportunity to revoke his Private Investigator and Gun licences. Considering the evidence, Wheeler had no motive to commit suicide and two bullets are missing from his gun with only one in his friend's body, Hammer does not believe that it was really a suicide and proceeds to investigate. During the investigation he finds a formerly small time criminal and a modelling agency are involved in a large blackmailing scheme that seems to include many rich and powerful people across New York. Parts of the investigation are carried out by Hammer's secretary, Velda, who has her own Private Investigator licence. This novel features the first time she shoots and kills someone.
14126310	/m/03cvdd8	One Lonely Night	Mickey Spillane		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After having been berated by a Judge, Mike Hammer goes for a walk and comes across a terrified woman and her pursuer. He kills the man but the woman, terrified, jumps to her death from a bridge. Each possessed an oddly shaped green card, a clue that Hammer pursues. His friend in the police, Pat Chambers, identifies them as membership cards for the local Communist Party. Mike attends a meeting and is mistaken for a spy from Moscow. At the same time, the FBI are searching for some lost secret papers and the career of a popular politician is threatened.
14126334	/m/03cvddz	The Big Kill	Mickey Spillane	1951	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Drinking at a seedy bar on a rainy night, Hammer notices a man come in with an infant. The man, named Decker, cries as he kisses the infant goodbye, then walks out in the rain to be shot to death. Hammer shoots the assailant as he searches Decker's body. The driver of the getaway car runs over the man Hammer shot to ensure that he won't talk. Hammer takes care of the infant and vows revenge on the person behind such a deed. Hammer's trail of vengeance leads him to hostile encounters with his police friend Pat Chambers, the District Attorney and his stooges as well as beatings, assassination attempts, and torture from gangsters that Hammer reciprocates in an eye for an eye fashion. Hammer also has loving encounters with two women he meets on his quest. Marsha is a former Hollywood Actress who was beaten by Decker when he robbed her flat. Ellen is the rich daughter of a horse breeder who works for the D.A..
14126418	/m/03cvdhq	The Body Lovers	Mickey Spillane		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Mike Hammer finds himself investigating a sex-orgy cult with money and murder on the agenda.
14126545	/m/03x_m6r	The Girl Hunters				 The reader discovers that Hammer has been a drunk living in gutters around the Big Apple for the past seven years. Hammer's secretary and fiancee, Velda, is believed to be dead after a botched protection job involving a Chicago socialite and her new husband. Then, Hammer is apprehended and taken to an undisclosed location, where he is interrogated by former friend, Captain Pat Chambers. Chambers, who blames Hammer for Velda's death, pummels him repeatedly, but slacks off. Richie Cole, a dock worker, is dying of severe gunshot wounds at City General Hospital and has insisted on talking to Hammer exclusively to reveal the identity of his killer. Hammer, upon interviewing the victim, discovers that Velda is still alive and facing execution by a top level Soviet assassin dubbed "The Dragon," her only chance being Hammer finding her first. The man tells Hammer that he has left clues to her location, but dies immediately afterwards. The alarming news causes Hammer to sober up and prepare to go out on his own, despite being out of commission. He soon discovers the pressure is on from Pat to discover the killer's identity. Despite many threats, Hammer successfully brushes off Chambers, but then finds himself being muscled by a Federal Agent named Art Rickerby. Rickerby reveals to Hammer that Richie Cole was a field agent and his former protégé. In order to gain information and gun carrying privileges, Hammer makes deals with Rickerby, the condition being that Hammer brings him the Dragon alive. Hammer's investigations lead him to Laura Knapp, the widow of a Senator also murdered by the Dragon. Whilst gaining more clues from Laura and death attempts by the Dragon, Hammer hurries to find Velda, as the clock is ticking, and time isn't on his side.
14131608	/m/03cvkfw	Double Indemnity	James M. Cain	1943	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 Insurance agent Walter Huff falls for the married Phyllis Nirdlinger, who consults him about accident insurance for her husband. In spite of his basic, instinctual decency, Walter allows himself to be seduced into helping the femme fatale kill her husband for the insurance money.
14134963	/m/03cvnjm	Chocolate Fever	Robert Kimmel Smith		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Henry Green likes to eat lots of chocolate. In some cases, he adds chocolate or chocolate flavoring to other foods such as mashed potatoes. One day, Henry comes down with a most unusual medical condition. The diagnosis is "chocolate fever." Later on, Henry learns about moderating his consumption of chocolate.
14141146	/m/03cvvnj	Caravan to Vaccarès	Alistair MacLean	1969	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 From all over Europe, even from behind the Iron Curtain, Gypsies make an annual pilgrimage to the holy shrine of their patron saint in the Provence region of southern France. But something is different about this year's gathering, with many suspicious deaths. Cecile Dubois and Neil Bowman decide to investigate. Eavesdropping, Bowman discovers that a man named Gaiuse Strome is financing the gypsies, and his suspicions on the real identity of Strome center on a highly wealthy aristocrat, distinguished folklorist and gastronome, Le Grand Duc Charles de Croytor, whose girlfriend Lila Delafont is a friend of Cecile. As they follow the caravan, Bowman and Cecile find that their lives in danger many times in an effort to uncover the secret the gypsies are so determined to hide, and before long are running for their lives.
14142810	/m/03cvx9v	Bird Girl and the Man Who Followed the Sun	Velma Wallis		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Long before Columbus: Jutthunvaa' is called the Bird Girl. She and Daagoo (Snow grouse) are members of two different clans of the people of the Gwich'in, belonging to the Athabaskan tribes. The two young people want to be free. So both stripes, each for itself, through the country. Their parents disapprove of such useless, inappropriate trips. Once Bird Girl and Daagoo meet in the back country. From this point their paths diverge. With reluctance, Daagoo goes with the hunters of his clan on a caribou hunt. After the hunt, the wandering Daagoo finds all hunters to whom also his father counts murdered. The murderers are, to Daagoo's view, invaders from the north - Inupiat, called by the Gwich'in Ch'eekwais (Inuit). Daagoo reflects and hurries to the rest of his clan, who are still alive. He leads the women, old men and children out of danger. Daagoo practices hunting with the boys in the new camp. When the clan's survival is finally secured, Daagoo has realized his dream. He leaves the icy regions of his home and moves southward to the Land of the Sun. Meanwhile the parents of Bird Girl want to marry her off. Defiantly, she escapes because she wants to prevent the dreaded pregnancy. Bird Girl would like to fight through on her own initiative. The clan finds a faraway cave and puts away winter provisions—only there is no caribou meat. Bird Girl goes on the caribou hunt. Besides, it is overpowered by a Ch'eekwai and is kidnapped northwards. As a slave, Bird Girl must bend to the will of her torturer and becomes pregnant. The newborn child, a boy, is taken away from her and is educated by a young Ch'eekwai woman. The three brothers of Bird Girl never give up the search for their sister in the following polar summers. During one of their expeditions in the north they are murdered by Ch'eekwais. When the murderers play football with the heads of the beaten brothers for all the world to see, it is the last straw. Bird Girl takes revenge. At night she plugs the smoke holes of the Ch'eekwai dwellings, and all the sleeping Ch'eekwai suffocate, even her own son. This had turned away from the mother. Bird Girl moves home. Meanwhile, Daagoo has found a woman in the southern Land of the Sun and they have children together. However, Daagoo must experience the murder of all his children. In the end, Daagoo leaves the Land of the Sun and returns to his clan. When Daagoo's and Bird Girl's clan want to get together, both central figures of the novel also find each other again.
14153373	/m/03cw6gr	The Big Blowdown	George Pelecanos	1996-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book opens with a gravely injured Peter Karras in a D.C. hospital in 1946. The plot flashes back to Karras and his friends as children in 1933. Karras gets into a fight with a group of African-American boys and his opponent, Junior Oliver, earns his grudging respect. Next the story jumps to 1944 and the Philippines theatre of World War II. Karras kills his first man and one of his childhood friends, Billy Nicodemus, is killed. Next the book returns to 1946 and we learn that Karras has gotten married, to Eleni, and how he came to be injured. Karras flippant attitude upsets his superior Mr. Burke and when Karras fails to collect a debt from another Greek Burke decides to have him punished. He instructs Recevo to betray his friend Karras. Burke dispatches his enforcer Reed to assault Karras after Recevo sets him up. Reed beats Karras with a baseball bat. When promiscuous Lola disappears in 1948 after moving to Washington her brother Mike Florek decides to search for her. Eventually Florek takes a job at Nick Stefanos' diner in 1949. Karras is now working there as a chef. Jimmy Boyle, now a beat cop, has become peripherally involved in the investigation of the murder of several prostitutes by a serial killer. Karras correctly suspects that Lola has become a prostitute and aids Florek in his search. Lola's madam Lydia is murdered by the killer and Lola witnesses the crime. Boyle locates Lola for Karras and Karras and Florek extract her from Morgan's brothel. Karras lets Florek and Lola leave town. Burke targets Stefanos' diner for his protection racket. When Stefanos resists Burke hires Bender's outfit to pressure Stefanos and fool him into believing he needs the protection. Karras sees through the scheme and they lure Bender's men into a trap and kill them. After rescuing Lola Karras suspects Gearhart as the murderer from her description. He enlists the help of Joe Recevo who informs Burke of Gearhart's murderous tendencies. Burke confronts Gearhart and begins to organize a cover-up. Recevo informs Jimmy Boyle of Gearhart's involvement and tells him to go to his apartment to retrieve the murder weapon. Burke dispatches Reed on the same mission. When Boyle reaches the apartment he is grievously wounded by Gearhart, who had disobeyed Burke's instructions and returned home. Boyle manages to shoot Gearhart in the struggle. Burke realizes that Karras is the common-link between Boyle and Gearhart and confronts Recevo. He instructs Recevo to bring Karras to him. Recevo brings Karras in but the two make a last stand together and kill Burke, Reed and many of their men before being shot. The book ends with a coda set in 1959 as Stefanos and Costa visiting Karras' grave.
14160671	/m/03cwf3z	The Dark Crusader	Alistair MacLean	1961	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bentall, a British physicist deployed for counterespionage duties, is suddenly recalled to London from a mission in Turkey involving the theft of information about British missiles. Eight top scientists have disappeared, after responding to advertisements that have been placed in newspapers, for top level scientists in different fields of research, all offering very attractive rates of pay, but with the precondition that all applicants to be married with no children. All eight scientists disappear either in Australia, or en route there. Bentall is paired with Marie Hopeman, another agent posing as his wife. No James Bond, Bentall is much the stumbling self-deprecating fool who gets things wrong from the start, and ends up in the position that the villains want him. Bentall and Hopeman are kidnapped at an unscheduled stop in Fiji, but escape to Island Vardu a remote coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Island Vardu is currently home to Professor Witherspoon, an archaeologist of some note, but with no radio transmitter or boat scheduled to arrive for three weeks. But there is something about Dr Witherspoon that Bentall finds suspicious. Later Bentall discovers that Witherspoon is actually LeClerc, the mastermind behind a plot to steal a British missile—the Dark Crusader, for an unnamed foreign power. The plot becomes even more complicated when Bentall and Hopeman find themselves falling in love even as they try to unravel a plot to steal highly classified missile technology. However, typically for MacLean, neither the female agent, nor the situation is quite as it seems. The novel really has two endings, one in which Bentall must chose between saving Hopeman and preventing the theft of the missile, and a second in which Bentall finally unravels the last details of the plot with his boss. Although not a standard literary device, the double ending packs considerable emotional punch.
14166176	/m/03cwml7	The Whaleboat House	Mark Mills	2005-01-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Little has changed in Amagansett since the first settlers arrived there some 300 years earlier, but the discovery of the body of Lillian Wallace, a New York socialite, by a local fisherman named Conrad Labarde, shatters the apparent stability and threatens to tear the close-knit community apart. Labarde (a second generation French Basque recently returned from the war in Europe), and Tom Hollis (a recently divorced former New York police detective posted to the area after his attempt to expose corruption resulted in the death of a colleague), are drawn to investigate Lillian's death, even though it appears to have been a tragic accident. They both have their own separate reasons to suspect that there is more to the death than meets the eye, and that it may have been the result of foul play.
14167028	/m/03cwnhg	M. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran				 The book begins with a young Moïse, commonly referred to as Momo, preparing to search for a prostitute. It is written as a reflection of his childhood, and he notes that he was only eleven years old at the time, but his height and his weight made him look older. He breaks his piggy bank open, takes his money, and heads outside to the Rue du Paradis (Paradise Street, or Heaven Street), to find a prostitute. The book is set in a real district of 1960s Paris, which is described in detail. Momo always stops by the shop of the Arab grocer, Mr. Ibrahim, and often shoplifts. After his stop in this small shop, he sets out to find a prostitute, but is turned down several times for lack of identification. Finally, he finds one who will offer her services, and they head off together. Momo forgets to bring a gift for the girl, and runs home to get his teddy bear, a final link to his childhood. As the book progresses, Momo speaks to Mr. Ibrahim more and more. Mr. Ibrahim shows Momo how to save the precious little money his father gives him, by buying day old bread and reheating it, filling bottles of Bordeaux with a cheaper variety, buying cheaper ingredients, etc. and also teaches him the art of smiling, which subsequently gets him out of trouble quite often. Momo's father hardly notices a difference in these new ingredients. Momo becomes closer to Mr. Ibrahim, who eventually takes him to see the "real" Paris, where the famous landmarks are. Shockingly, one day, his father, a struggling lawyer, decides to run off, leaving about one month's worth of money for Momo. He also left a note with a list of people whom Momo should contact. It is later revealed that he has committed suicide. After this incident, Momo becomes even closer to M. Ibrahim, who takes him on a vacation in Normandy, which Momo believes is too beautiful, bringing him to tears. Mr. Ibrahim is slowly teaching Momo the ways of Sufi Muslims, in an attempt to help the boy. Finally, Mr. Ibrahim purchases a car, and the two travel to his native Turkey, where they get in an accident, killing Mr. Ibrahim. The book ends with the small store being handed over to Momo, who is now much older.
14172888	/m/03cwt5c	Breath	Tim Winton	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the first part of the book, the narrator, Bruce Pike, recounts his boyhood friendship with Ivan "Loonie" Loon. As young boys, Pikelet and Loonie dare each other to perform dangerous stunts in the local river. When they become teenagers, they take up surfing and meet a former professional surfer named Sando, who leads them to new levels of recklessness. The novel explores the boys' youthful urge to seek out the farthest limits of courage, endurance and sanity in an attempt to escape the ordinariness of their lives. The second half of Breath is concerned with the disintegration of Pikelet's friendship with Sando and Loonie and his developing relationship with Sando's American wife Eva.
14173634	/m/03cwv9v	The Last Frontier	Alistair MacLean	1959	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Michael Reynolds, MacLean's protagonist, is a British secret agent on a wintertime mission inside Hungary at the height of the Cold War. Reynolds must rescue Professor Jennings, an elderly British scientist who is held by the communist government against his will. Reynolds is no James Bond and does not have any fancy gadgets but he is highly resourceful. His biggest advantages against the cruel and efficient Hungarian Secret Service are an ability to make commonsense on-the-spot decisions and the heroic help of friends in the Hungarian underground. Reynolds hooks up with the mysterious Jansci and his friend “the Count” and they strive to transport the professor over the border and back to England. The plot has the twists, turns, and betrayals in which MacLean specialized, and Reynolds realizes that he has only one chance to escape with Jennings before he is captured and killed by the Hungarian secret police.
14174189	/m/03cwvyq	Partisans	Alistair MacLean	1982	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 During World War II, Pete Petersen, a Yugoslavian agent with an unlikely name, and his team of compatriots cross war-torn Yugoslavia to deliver a secret message and unmask a double agent. It is not clear who Petersen is actually working for, as the plot meanders through the confusion of Yugoslavia's three-way civil war, with Communist Partisans, the Serb royalist Chetniks and the Croatian fascist Ustashe fighting as much against each other as against their Italian and German occupiers. Everyone's loyalties are uncertain. Obviously, the sardonic Petersen is not working for the Nazis, but what about those with him? nl:Partizanen (boek)
14176990	/m/03cw_09	The Golden Road	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1913	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot is based around the character Beverley who remembers his childhood days with his brother Felix and friends and cousins Felicity, Cecily, Dan, Sara Stanley (the "Story Girl"), hired-boy Peter and neighbor Sara Ray. The children often played in their family's orchard and had many adventures, even creating their own newspaper, called Our Magazine. More character development takes place in this novel than in its predecessor, and the reader is able to watch the children grow up; in particular, they are able to watch Sara Stanley leave the Golden Road of childhood forever. They also are able to see the beginnings of a relationship between Peter and Felicity, as chemistry between them starts to build; it also seems that Beverly and Sara Stanley are drawn to each other, but this is left undeveloped. Throughout the story it is hinted that Beverly's cousin, Cecily, is consumptive; in a passage where the Story Girl tells their futures, the adult Beverly confirms that Cecily never left the Golden Road. As well, she strongly hints that Peter and Felicity will be married. The novel ends after Sara's father collects her to give her a proper education, and their small group is never complete again.
14182497	/m/03cx3v0	Crime in the Kennel	Franklin W. Dixon		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Iola's dog Spike is kidnapped, and the Hardy Boys set out to find him.
14185891	/m/03cx629	Hilldiggers	Neal Asher	2007-07-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel describes the initial diplomatic contact between the Polity (an AI governed interstellar empire) and the isolated planets of Sudoria and Brumal who had been at war for nearly a century. The inhabitants of these two hostile worlds had to make many changes to their bodies and societies in order to survive, rendering their appearances and attitudes quite different from that of a 'standard' human of the time. Contact is being made officially by Consul Assessor David McCrooger, a hooper come diplomat from the planet Spatterjay, while the system is secretly observed by a Polity surveillance drone named Tigger. The Sudorians have also discovered an alien artifact they have nicknamed the "Worm". Research on this artifact enabled the Sudorians to make many technological advances that eventually gave them the upper hand in the conflict, allowing them to win the war with Brumal. Following the war, the Brumellians were nearly completely wiped out. Over time, the causes of the war began to be questioned in Sudoria as many of the justifications that had been taken for granted started to be doubted. Much of the story revolves around a conflict between two Sudorian factions; Fleet, who were once the dominant faction during the war, responsible for Sudoria's defence and navy, including the Hilldiggers, and the Orbital Combine, a large alliance of spacestations and other facilities orbiting around Sudoria, who both study and contain the Worm. The "hilldiggers" are the most powerful weapons in the Sudorian/Brumallian system. Part of the Sudorian Fleet, each of these 2 mile long ships are armed with "gravtech" weapons so powerful they can create new mountain ranges when used against a planetary surface, hence their name. The hilldiggers devastated the surface of Brumal, destroying the majority of Brumellian cities in a near genocidal final assault. After the war, the Hilldiggers remain the most powerful vessels in the Sudorian/Brumallian system.
14187860	/m/03cx7q5	Paprika	Yasutaka Tsutsui	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Dream monitoring and intervention as a means of treating mental disorders is a developing new form of psychotherapy in the near future. Nobel Prize-winning psychiatry research establishment employee is the most prominent scientist in this field, using her alter-ego to infiltrate the dreams of others and treat their illnesses. Her colleague, the brilliant but obese has created a super-miniaturized version of the Institute's existing dream-analysis devices calling it the . Unrest ensues when the new psychotherapy device is stolen, allowing the assailant to enter the mind of anyone and enact mind control. The frantic search for the criminal and the DC Mini has begun.
14189892	/m/03cx92l	Sebastian Darke: Prince of Fools	Philip Caveney		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Seventeen year old jester Sebastian Darke, travels to the opulent city of Keladon in an attempt to fill his late father, Alexander's, shoes and become a proper jester, and therefore save himself and his mother from poverty. Upon his journey, Sebastian meets the halfling warrior Cornelius Drummel, and by chance rescued the beautiful - and feisty - Princess Kerin, Keladon's future queen from a group of Brigands. However, when Sebastian, Cornelius and Sebastian's ill-tempered buffalope, Max, arrive in Keladon, they become entangled in the dastardly King Septimus's plot to do away with his niece, Princess Kerin, and ensure he remains king forever.
14192099	/m/03cxc1w	Nightmare Abbey	Thomas Love Peacock		{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 Nightmare Abbey is a Gothic topical satire in which the author pokes light-hearted fun at the romantic movement in contemporary English literature, in particular its obsession with morbid subjects, misanthropy and transcendental philosophical systems. Most of the characters in the novel are based on historical figures whom Peacock wishes to pillory. Insofar as Nightmare Abbey may be said to have a plot, it follows the fortunes of Christopher Glowry, Esquire, a morose widower who lives with his only son Scythrop in his semi-dilapidated family mansion Nightmare Abbey, which is situated on a strip of dry land between the sea and the fens in Lincolnshire. Mr Glowry is a melancholy gentleman who likes to surround himself with servants with long faces or dismal names such as Raven, Graves or Deathshead. The few visitors he welcomes to his home are mostly of a similar cast of mind: Mr Flosky, a transcendental philosopher; Mr Toobad, a Manichaean Millenarian; Mr Listless, Scythrop's languid and world-weary college friend; and Mr Cypress, a misanthropic poet. The only exception is the sanguine Mr Hilary, who, as Mr Glowry's brother-in-law, is obliged to visit the abbey from family interests. The Reverend Mr Larynx, the vicar of nearby Claydyke, readily adapts himself to whatever company he is in. Scythrop is recovering from a love affair which ended badly when Mr Glowry and the young woman's father quarrelled over terms and broke off the proposed match. To distract himself Scythrop takes up the study of German romantic literature and transcendental metaphysics. With a penchant for melancholy, gothic mystery and abstruse Kantian metaphysics, Scythrop throws himself into a quixotic mission of reforming the world and regenerating the human species, and dreams up various schemes to achieve these ends. Most of these involve secret societies of Illuminati. He writes a suitably impenetrable treatise on the subject, which only sells seven copies. But Scythrop is not despondent. Seven is a mystical number and he determines to seek out his readers and make of them seven golden candlesticks with which to illuminate the world. He has a hidden chamber constructed in his gloomy tower as a secret retreat from the enemies of mankind, who will no doubt seek to thwart his attempts at social regeneration. Meanwhile, however, he is constantly distracted from these projects by his dalliance with two women &ndash; the worldly and flirtatious Marionetta and the mysterious and intellectual Stella &ndash; and by the constant stream of visitors to the abbey. Things become interesting when Mr and Mrs Hilary arrive with their niece, the beautiful Marionetta Celestina O'Carroll. She flirts with Scythrop, who quickly falls in love; but when she plays hard to get, he retreats to his tower to nurse his wounded heart. Mr Glowry tries to dissuade Scythrop from setting his mind on a woman who not only has no fortune but is insufferably merry-hearted into the bargain. When this fails he turns to Mrs Hilary, who decides in the interests of propriety to take Marionetta away. But Scythrop threatens to drink poison unless his father drops the matter and allows the young woman to stay. Mr Glowry agrees. Unknown to Scythrop, Mr Glowry and Mr Toobad have already come to a secret arrangement to marry Scythrop to Mr Toobad's daughter Celinda; but when Mr Toobad breaks the news to his daughter in London, she goes into hiding. Back at Nightmare Abbey Marionetta, now sure of Scythrop's heart, torments him for her own pleasure. The other guests pass the time dining, playing billiards and discussing contemporary literature and philosophy, in which discussions Mr Flosky usually takes the lead. A new visitor arrives at the Abbey, Mr Asterias the ichthyologist, who is accompanied by his son Aquarius. The guests discuss Mr Asterias's theory on the existence of mermaids and tritons. It transpires that a report of a mermaid on the sea-coast of Lincolnshire is the immediate reason for Mr Asterias's visit. A few nights later he glimpses a mysterious figure on the shore near the Abbey and is convinced that it is his mermaid, but a subsequent search fails to discover anything of note. Over the next few days Marionetta notices a remarkable change in Scythrop's deportment, for which she cannot account. Failing to draw the secret out of him, she turns to Mr Flosky for advice, but finds his comments incomprehensible. Scythrop grows every day more distrait, and Marionetta fears that he no longer loves her. She confronts him and threatens to leave him forever. He renews his undying love for her and assures her that his mysterious reserve was merely the result of his profound meditation on a scheme for the regeneration of society. A complete reconciliation is accomplished; even Mr Glowry agrees to the match, as there is still no news of Miss Toobad. It is only now that we learn the reason for the change in Scythrop's manner. The night on which Mr Asterias spots his mermaid, Scythrop returns to his tower only to find a mysterious young woman there. She calls herself Stella and explains how she is one of the seven people who read his treatise. Fleeing from some "atrocious persecution", she had no friend to turn to until she read Scythrop's treatise and realized that here was a kindred mind who would surely not fail to assist her in her time of need. Scythrop secretes her in his hidden chamber. After several days he finds that his heart is torn between the flirtatious Marionetta and the intellectual Stella, the one worldly and sparkling, the other spiritual and mysterious. Unable to choose between them, Scythrop decides to enjoy both, but is terrified of what might happen should either of his loves learn of the other's existence. There is a brief and rather inconsequential interruption to the proceedings when Mr Cypress, a misanthropic poet, pays a visit to the Abbey before going into exile. After dinner there is the usual intellectual discussion, after which Mr Cypress sings a tragical ballad, while Mr Hilary and Reverend Larynx enjoy a catch. After the departure of the poet there are reports of a ghost stalking the Abbey, and the appearance of a ghastly figure in the library throws the guests into consternation. The upshot of the matter is that Mr Toobad ends up in the moat. Inevitably Scythrop's secret comes out. Mr Glowry, who has become suspicious of his son's behaviour, is the immediate cause of it. Confronting Scythrop in his tower, he mentions Marionetta, "whom you profess to love". Hearing this, Stella comes out of the hidden chamber and demands an explanation. The ensuing row comes to the attention of the other guests, who pile into Scythrop's gloomy tower. Marionetta is distraught to discover that she has a rival and faints. But her shock is nothing to that of Mr Toobad, who recognizes in Stella none other than his runaway daughter Celinda. Celinda and Marionetta both renounce their love for Scythrop and leave the Abbey forthwith, determined never to set eyes on him again. The other guests leave (even after the ghost is revealed to have been Mr Glowry's somnambulant steward Crow) and Scythrop becomes depressed. He contemplates suicide like Werther in the Goethe novel, and asks his servant Raven to bring him "a pint of port and a pistol", though he changes his mind and opts instead for "boiled fowl and Madeira". When he renews his determination to make his exit from the world, his father begs him to give him a chance to convince one of the young women to forgive him and return to the Abbey. Scythrop promises to give him one week and not a minute more. When the week is up and there is still no sign of Mr Glowry, Scythrop temporizes, convincing himself that his watch is fast. Finally Mr Glowry arrives. He is alone, but he has two letters from Celinda and Marionetta. Celinda wishes Scythrop happiness with Miss O'Carroll and announces her forthcoming marriage to Mr Flosky. Marionetta wishes Scythrop happiness with Miss Toobad and announces her forthcoming marriage to Mr Listless. Scythrop tears the letters to shreds and consoles himself with the thought that his recent experiences "qualify me take a very advanced degree in misanthropy; and there is, therefore, good hope that I may make a figure in the world." He asks Raven to bring him "some Madeira".
14196593	/m/03cxhbg	Eternity in Death	Nora Roberts	2007-10	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Tiara Kent lights several candles in her room, and turns off her security system. She drinks a special "potion", and prepares for her mystery man to arrive. The next morning, Lt. Eve Dallas, and Delia Peabody are called to Tiara's apartment. The man she invited bit her in the neck, and drank her blood as she bled out, and Peabody recognises the murder as one perpetrated by a vampire. Eve and Peabody talk to Tiara's friend, Daffy Wheates, who informs them Tiara was going to an underground vampire club, called Bloodbath, and had in fact met a man. Eve heads to see Iris Francine, and then Dr. Charlotte Mira, but is accompanied by her billionaire husband Roarke, who is curious himself about the vampire murder. Iris is unable to tell Eve much of anything, and Dr. Mira is only able to say that the killer believes he is a vampire, that he tried to turn Tiara into one, and he will continue trying until he gets it right. The tox report reveals that the "potion" Tiara drunk, was a mixture of hallucinogens, tranqs, date rape drugs, and human blood. Detective Ian McNab is called into to help with the investigation, not because of what he can contribute, but because he thinks vampires are cool. They head off to the club, and Eve discovers Peabody is now wearing a cross, to ward of vampires. Eve gets irritated, and makes Peabody repeat "Vampires don't exist" over and over again. Dallas, Roarke, Peabody, and McNab arrive at Bloodbath, which is literally, an underground club. They are greeted by the bartender, Allesseria Carter, who is serving pig's blood to people who think they are vampires, and Dorian Vadim, who owns the club. Dallas automatically suspects Dorian, who admits to being a vampire, but not to killing Tiara, and he agrees to give blood, to be tested against the blood found in Tiara Kent's stomach. He uses a syringe, brought by Allesseria, who also gives him an alibi for the time of the murder. Dallas checks Dorian's records, finding out he came from Europe, where he worked as a magician. As Allesseria Carter leaves Bloodbath for the last time, she considers calling the police, and admitting she lied for Dorian. Before she can, Dorian attacks and kills her, leaving twin puncture wounds on the neck. The next morning, Dallas and Roarke find a link message from Allesseria, that was interrupted when she was attacked. Eve and Roarke head out to the crime scene. Allesseria's blood has been partially drained, bottled, and drunk. Peabody gives Dallas the worst news she could get: Dorian's blood doesn't match the blood Tiara drank. Dallas does get some interesting news. The DNA Dorian gave to them does turn up at another homicide, as the DNA of a deadbody. A man in Bulgaria, named Pensky Gregor, who was a part of a prison work program, was killed by twin puncture wounds. They remember Dorian was originally a magician, and he swapped the vials of blood in his own night club, while three detectives and Roarke watched. Dallas head off to see Morris the coronor, who found saliva and semen on the body. On the way, she finds that Detective David Baxter has hung garlic up, and is carrying a wooden stake. The detectives and Roarke head to Bloodbath. Dallas tries to get Dorian to go to Cop Central, but Dorian is able to refuse because of his religious beliefs. No matter how hard Dallas tries, APA Cher Reo confirms her worst fears: they can't touch Dorian as long as the sun is up. Roarke puts a silver cross around her neck, to ward off vampires. Dallas organizes a conference, to prepare to take down Dorian after the sun goes down. Dallas herself will go to see Dorian, and the cops will move in, should he attack her. Before she goes, Baxter gives her his wooden stake. Dallas goes into Bloodbath alone, and is invited upstairs by Dorian. Dallas then tells him that she has his voice print, which she got off of Allesseria Carter's phone call. Enraged, Dorian attacks her, causing Roarke and the others to rush in. By the time they reach Dallas, they find Dorian has met a most fitting end: Dallas has stabbed him with the wooden stake.
14203201	/m/03cxprs	The Shawl	David Mamet			 ACT 1 takes place in John's office and introduces us to John and Miss A. John is an amateur psychic and Miss A. is a woman whose mother recently died and left her an inheritance. Miss A. seeks psychic advice concerning matters both personal and financial regarding her mother's will. John also advises Miss A that she may have untapped psychic abilities. ACT 2 introduces us to John's young protégé Charles, and alludes to the homosexual relationship between them. John explains to Charles the smoke-and-mirror tricks he uses on his customers, in particular Miss A, so that Charles may one day learn to make an "honest" living from this profession. Although John uses techniques of a questionable nature, he shows a more caring side towards his clients, whereas Charles is driven more by greed and ambition and is willing to compromise the ethics of the profession. They devise a plan to give Miss A what she wants: answers to her question about what to do with her inheritance. They plan to hold a seance and pretend to contact her deceased mother. In discussing the details of the plan, Charles pressures John into making it look like Miss A's mother will want to contest the will and give the inheritance to them. ACT 3 takes place the following evening. The seance is held and John uses his usual smoke-and-mirror techniques in concert with his seance research. He pretends to contact a 19th Century Boston Woman, who in turn allegedly contacts Miss A's mother. But Miss A puts the two charlatans to the test. She came prepared with a photograph of her mother, as she had been instructed by John the previous day. However, the photo is a fake. When tested, John claims the woman in the photo is that of Miss A's mother. Miss A then exposes them by declaring the photo a fraud. But just as she is about to storm out on them, John has a genuine psychic vision from Miss A's childhood regarding a Red Shawl. John is able to give a detailed description of The Shawl and how Miss A's mother would sing her to sleep as The Shawl, draped on her lamp, cast a red shadow. ACT 4 takes place the following day. John is having a heated argument with Charles as he gets ready for his appointment with Miss A. John, having finally had the breakthrough psychic experience he wished for throughout his amateur years, is revealing to Charles the last of his tricks while telling him this is the parting of the ways. As Charles gives his farewell and leaves, Miss A shows up for their appointment. Upon being questioned by Miss A, John honestly admits to her that the Boston Woman was a fiction. However, Miss A is intrigued that John was able to have a genuine vision of her mother, because nobody could have made up the vision of The Shawl. Miss A offers John payment for helping her decide she should contest the will. And finally, when she asks John for clarification of how she lost The Shawl five years ago, John offers more genuine insight and elaborates that she burnt The Shawl in a fit of rage ... but that's all he saw. *John - a man in his fifties *Miss A - a woman in her late thirties *Charles - a man in his thirties
14207472	/m/03cxtwl	Fantastic Locations: Dragondown Grotto	Ed Stark	2007	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 In the first chapter, Spawnscale Nursery, the characters are told of (or discover) an underground complex used to rear abandoned dragon eggs. The self-styled dragonlord Meepo, a kobold fighter has taken charge of the hatchlings, raising them as siblings and has reputedly been selling them as mounts or guardians to various patrons. His dealings have been disrupted by the invasion of a group of hobgoblins and their mercenary blackscale lizardfolk allies who have retaken the complex in order to restore it to its original purpose as a temple to the evil dragon-god Tiamat. After overcoming the occupation force of monsters, the players may either fight Meepo and two of his young dragon charges, or they may elect to negotiate with him--leading them to discover the dark nature of Targan Klem (who they may or may not be working for) who intends to sacrifice the unborn dragons within the eggs as a sacrifice to appease the resurrected dracolich he intends to raise. They are informed that two magical eggs may be retrieved to aid in the defeat of the wizard, which when hatched will birth Aspects of the Five-headed evil Tiamat and the benevolent platinum dragon god Bahamut. Though the two dragon-gods hate one another, they will both fight against a threat to dragonkind as that posed by Klem. They are given a map to find the two eggs. The second chapter, Forest Cliff Lair, begins as the characters follow a nearby stream for a day's travel to make their way to the location of the first egg, the Egg of Bahamut, held in the lair of the female green dragon Sekkatrix. She has enslaved ogres and basilisks to defend her lair. They must obtain the egg and move on to the second objective, the Egg of Tiamat. In chapter three, Dragon Graveyard, the hunt for the Egg of Tiamat takes them to the edge of the forest, where the land flattens into an ashen waste. It is reputed that here a great lord of the dragons once ruled over the entire region. Other dragons have migrated to this place, either to die alongside the revered wyrm or to plunder the graveyard. The egg is located at the center of the waste, on a dais built within the upward jutting ribs of the old dragon king. It is protected by the bound spectres of those who have before tried to rob the treasure. As well, the area is patrolled by cadaver collectors and dragon skeletons. Having taken both eggs, the characters proceed to the last chapter, Dragondown Grotto, a grotto formed from a cave collapse where a cabal of wizards hunted down the dracolich centuries ago after having destroyed its phylactery. Targan Klem and his black dragon cohort Blackbone are in the midst of raising the dracolich, a former blue dragon named Tsaggest Darkweld, when the characters arrive. Blackbone, as well as a group of dragonnes try to keep the adventurers at bay until the spell is finished and the Dracolich is awakened. Klem attempts to continue the ritual until it is absolutely impossible to avoid combat.
14216872	/m/03cy2d6	Calculating God	Robert J. Sawyer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Thomas Jericho, a paleontologist working at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, makes the first human-to-alien contact when a spider-like alien arrives on Earth to investigate Earth's evolutionary history. The alien, Hollus, and her crewmembers have come to Earth to gain access to the museum's large collection of fossils, and to study accumulated human knowledge in order to gather evidence of the existence of God. It seems that Earth and Hollus' home planet, and the home planet of another alien species traveling with Hollus, all experienced the same five cataclysmic events at roughly the same time. Hollus believes that the universe was created by a god, to provide a place where life could develop and evolve. Thomas Jericho is an atheist who provides a balance to the philosophical discussion regarding the existence of gods. At the end the star Betelgeuse goes supernova, threatening all life within hundreds of light-years with radiation. One of several dead civilizations discovered by the explorers deliberately induced the supernova in order to sterilize the stellar neighborhood. This was presumably done in order to protect the virtual reality machinery which now housed all of their personalities. According to the alien visitors, several worlds exist where the inhabitants uploaded themselves into machines instead of exploring the nature of the Universe and gods. Although the supernova happened over 400 years before the events of the novel, the radiation is reaching Earth. However, the alien ship's advanced telescope in orbit then sees a large black entity emerge from space itself and cover the exploding star. This is final proof that a controlling intelligence is guiding and preserving some life-forms. In the final chapter, the scientist, who is dying of cancer, travels to the entity on the alien ship, where a fusion of genetic materials from human and alien sources produces a new life form that the aliens conjecture will create the next cycles of the Universe.
14218661	/m/03cy4cg	The Full Cupboard of Life	Alexander McCall Smith	2003	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Mma Ramotswe is now engaged to the mechanic Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, but he seems reluctant to set a wedding date, which makes her a little unhappy. She takes on an interesting investigation: Mma Holonga, a rich businesswoman, is seeking a husband, and asks Mma Ramotswe to check the men on her shortlist of four, to eliminate those who only want her for her money. Meanwhile Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe's assistant, moves to better rooms thanks to her promotion and extra income, but is mourning the loss of her brother. Mma Potokwani, the formidable matron of the orphan farm, manoevures Mr J.L.B. Matekoni into agreeing to do a sponsored parachute jump to benefit the orphans. The gentle and timid mechanic is terrified at the prospect, Mma Ramotswe solves the parachute problem by persuading the garage apprentice Charlie to do it instead, convincing him that it will make him attractive to girls. Mma Potokwani offers to sort out the matter of the wedding by arranging it all herself, and presenting it to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni as a fait accompli - Mma Ramotswe agrees, although Mma Makutsi is horrified. Everyone assembles at the orphan farm to watch Charlie's parachute jump, which is successful. Mma Potokwani surprises everyone by announcing that she has made all the preparations for the wedding and, with the help of a priest who is present, Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni are married there and then.
14220004	/m/03cy5w4	Espresso Tales	Alexander McCall Smith	2005	{"/m/02x35fs": "Serial", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Pat is still sharing a flat with Bruce, the good-looking egotist, although she is no longer attracted to him. She decides to go back to university and obtains a place at Edinburgh, but still works part-time in Matthew's art gallery. Her friend and neighbour Domenica, the anthropologist, tries to help Pat with her love life by making the acquaintance of a good-looking waiter, but when he takes her to a nudist picnic Pat realises he is not for her. Domenica develops an interest in pirates and makes plans to travel to the South China Sea for some field-work. Matthew is upset when his wealthy businessman father finds a girlfriend, and misjudges her motives. He confides in Big Lou at the cafe, who has learned that her long-lost lover is returning to Scotland and hopes to resume their relationship. Far from being a gold-digger, Matthew's father's girlfriend persuades him to give Matthew £4 million. Matthew still cherishes feelings for Pat, but they are not returned. Ramsey Dunbarton, the lawyer, writes his memoirs and reads them to his wife. Stuart and Irene Pollock continue to hothouse their five-year-old son Bertie, whom Irene regards as a child prodigy. He yearns to go to Watson's school and play rugby, even securing a blazer and sneaking into lessons, but is sent to the Steiner School for gifted children instead. He remains in psychotherapy, and his mother is impressed and attracted by the therapist, Dr Fairbairn, who is troubled by guilt. Bertie and his father have an adventure, travelling to Glasgow on the train to recover their car, which Stuart has left there accidentally. They meet a gangster, Lard O'Connor, who takes a fancy to Bertie and helps them recover their car, but Bertie soon realises that although the registration number is the same, the car is not. Stuart realises how hard life is for Bertie because of his mother's expectations, and begins to stand up for his son a little more. Irene insults Angus Lordie's dog Cyril, who bites her. She announces that she is pregnant. Bruce loses his job after he is caught enjoying a romantic meal with his employer's wife, and is rejected by his American girlfriend. He decides to become a wine merchant and almost persuades a rich friend into partnership, but is foiled by the friend's girlfriend, to whom he is rude and dismissive. He fears that some Chateau Petrus he has bought cheaply may be bogus, but it is genuine and with the profit he makes on it at auction he moves to London and puts the flat at 44 Scotland Street up for sale.
14222404	/m/03cy879	Carnosaur	John Brosnan	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Set in a rural village in Cambridgeshire, England, the novel opens in a chicken farm which is attacked one night by a mysterious creature, leaving the farmer and his wife dead. A story circulates that the killer was a Siberian Tiger which had escaped the private zoo of an eccentric lord named Darren Penward. A reporter named David Pascal investigates the carnage and notices that the blood stained room where the attack has taken place has been thoroughly cleansed in a seeming attempt at covering the killer's footprints. A few days later, the creature attacks a stable, killing a horse, the keeper and her daughter, leaving one survivor, an 8 year old boy. Pascal arrives at the scene, only to find Penward's men already there, towing a concealed animal with a helicopter. Pascal interviews the boy who reveals that the killer was not a tiger, but a dinosaur. After unsuccessfully trying to interview Penward's men, Pascal moves on to begin a sexual relationship with Penward's nymphomaniac wife, who eventually takes him to her private quarters. From there, Pascal enters the zoo, only to discover that it is filled with dinosaurs. He is captured and given a tour of the establishment. He sees a variety of different species, mostly carnivorous, including the dinosaur that had escaped earlier which is identified as a Deinonychus, a sexually frustrated Megalosaurus and a Tarbosaurus. Penward explains that he recreated the dinosaurs by studying the DNA fragments found in dinosaur fossils, then using them as a basis for restructuring the DNA of chickens. He goes as far as saying that he intends to let his dinosaurs loose in remote areas of the world where they could flourish and eventually spread after what he considers an inevitable Third World War. Pascal is imprisoned, only to be rescued by Lady Penward, but only after promising that he permanently commit to her. As they make their escape, Pascal notices that his ex-girlfriend Jenny Stamper, a reporter herself, has been caught in the act of infiltrating Penwards zoo. Enraged at his insistence on helping her, Lady Penward releases the dinosaurs and other animals present in the zoo. Sir Penward is seriously wounded by an escaped bull and captures his maddened wife. Pascal and Jenny escape to the authorities, but are not believed until reports begin flooding in on mysterious deaths. A pleasure boat is attacked by a Plesiosaurus, a Dilophosaurus kills a Member of Parliament, the Megalosaurus gets run over by a lorry, an Altispinax attacks a herd of cows, a Scolosaurus confronts a FV101 Scorpion, and the Tarbosaurus destroys a pub before invading people's gardens. The British Army is called, and soon many dinosaurs are killed. The next day, Pascal goes to visit Jenny at her home, only to find her badly injured, and her family dead; killed by a Deinonychus which Pascal kills with a pitchfork. Meanwhile, the dying Sir Penward imprisons his wife in a farmhouse, where she is devoured alive by two newly hatched Tyrannosauruses. At the conclusion of the story, aside from the baby Tyrannosaurs, the only other dinosaur left alive is a baby Brachiosaurus.
14225919	/m/03cyc65	Escape from Raven Castle		1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book opened at a Saturday, 5:03 p.m., with a New York teen Stephen Lane, and his uncle Richard Duffy, being ambushed by hoodlums on a train stopping at a remote region in Scotland. The struggle ended with Stephen being kidnapped by two men who drove off in a black car while Richard was unable to follow as the train had started and was passing over a bridge. This was followed by a flashback to the day before which saw Stephen's father and mother going off on a junket to San Francisco at the invitation of Fell Industries, leaving Stephen in their New York home under the charge of Richard. The uncle-nephew were tossing ideas back and forth on how to spend the weekend when Richard received an emergency call from his old friend, Hamish Claymore, a retired British Intelligence officer, asking him to meet at Carrabash train station at 5:15 p.m. the following evening. Richard owed Hamish a favour from the past. The uncle-nephew duo found themselves flying Glasgow, after Richard called in a favour from another old friend, Lou. After being abducted at the train station, Stephen was brought to a lone medieval fortress known as Raven Castle, which overlooked Killy Bay and the North Sea. Killy Bay, Raven Castle and Carrabash are fictional places created for the book. In the castle, Stephen was brought before the main villain of the story, Jonathan Fell. Fell was an arms dealer who got his start in the business when as an officer during World War II, he misappropriated captured stocks of German weapons. He arranged the kidnapping of Stephen to force Richard Duffy to perform a mission. Stephen managed to escape from the castle and ran into Richard who was given a lift by Annie MacKenzie, a marine biologist sent by a Royal Commission to investigate why all fauna and flora died in the local lake four decades before, and nothing could live in it, earning it the name Death Loch. The trio soon found that though that Fell's gang of henchmen managed to cut off all routes in and out of this remote part of Scotland. The local town of Killy Bay had been at Fell's mercy for a long time. Richard decided that the only way to come out tops was to infiltrate Raven Castle and capture Fell.
14226643	/m/03cycvt	Joker in the pack		2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel describes the student life of Shekhar Verma, a middle class boy who grows up in the post liberalization era in India. Shekhar is described as a typical boy growing up in urban India - focused on Bollywood and Cricket. As he becomes older and faces Board Exams, he is pressured by his parents, relatives and neighbors to take life seriously and to consider pursuing a career in information technology. In order to achieve this goal, he decides to pursue his graduation in Information Technology but is disheartened when the IT bubble bursts and salaries plummet. Shekhar then trains his eyes on the IIMs, in the hope that an MBA from an IIM would help him get his dream job. The book describes in detail Shekhar's life at IIM Bangalore and introduces various personalities that make up life there. Shekhar is shown to mature as the book progresses, ultimately questioning the choices he has made, which though make him successful as per society's expectations, leave him confused about what he really wants in life.
14233619	/m/03cyn95	The Sky Village		2008-07-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 High above a troubled China, where animals battle machines for control, floats an intricate web of hot air balloons – the Sky Village. When twelve-year-old Mei Long's mother is kidnapped, her father sends Mei to live in the sky, surrounded by strangers, amid a growing threat. Half a world away, thirteen-year-old Rom Saint-Pierre struggles to survive in beast-controlled Las Vegas. When his young sister is stolen away by a pair of demonic creatures, Rom has no choice but to follow them into a shadowy underground world. He becomes enmeshed in gladiator-style arena fighting, in which battles between mechanical-beast demons entertain a chaotic community of gamblers. Mei and Rom have never met, but they share connected journals, books that mysteriously allow them to communicate. The journals also reveal that each of them carries the strange and terrifying Kaimira gene, entwining beast and mek qualities in their very DNA. In this intricately plotted novel, the first in a five-book series, Mei and Rom must overcome those forces that seek to destroy them, and find the courage to balance the powers that clash within. It is their only hope for survival, and for saving the ones they love.
14236113	/m/03cyqq5	How Children Fail			{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In How Children Fail John Holt states his belief that children love to learn, but hate to be taught. His experiences in the classroom as a teacher and researcher brought him to the conclusion that all children are intelligent. They become unintelligent because they are accustomed by teachers and schools to strive only for teacher approval and for the “right” answers, and to forget all else. In this system, children see no value in thinking and discovery, but see it only in playing the game of school. Children believe that they must please the teacher, the adults, at all costs. They learn how to manipulate teachers to gain clues about what the teacher really wants. Through the teacher’s body language, facial expressions and other clues, they learn what might be the right answer. They mumble, straddle the answer, get the teacher to answer their own question, and take wild guesses while waiting to see what happens- all in order to increase the chances for a right answer. When children are very young, they have natural curiosity about the world, trying diligently to figure out what is real. As they become “producers”, rather than “thinkers”, they fall away from exploration and start fishing for the right answers with little thought. They believe they must always be right, so they quickly forget mistakes and how these mistakes were made. They believe that the only good response from the teacher is “yes”, and that a “no” is defeat. They fear wrong answers and shy away from challenges because they may not have the right answer. This fear, which rules them in the school setting, does their thinking and learning a great disservice. A teacher’s job is to help them overcome their fears of failure and explore the problem for real learning. So often, teachers are doing the opposite &mdash; building children’s fears up to monumental proportions. Children need to see that failure is honorable, and that it helps them construct meaning. It should not be seen as humiliating, but as a step to real learning. Being afraid of mistakes, they never try to understand their own mistakes and cannot and will not try to understand when their thinking is faulty. Adding to children’s fear in school is corporal punishment and humiliation, both of which can scare children into right/wrong thinking and away from their natural exploratory thinking. Holt maintains that when teachers praise students, they rob them of the joy of discovering truth for themselves. They should be aiding them by guiding them to explore and learn as their interests move them. In mathematics, children learn algorithms, but when faced with problems with Cuisenaire rods, they cannot apply their learning to real situations. Their learning is superficial in that they can sometimes spit out the algorithm when faced with a problem on paper, but have no understanding of how or why the algorithm works and no deep understanding about numbers. Holt believes that end of year achievement tests do not show real learning. Teachers (Holt included) generally cram for these tests in the weeks preceding. Meanwhile, the material learned is forgotten shortly after the tests because it was not motivated by interest, nor does it have practical use.
14239822	/m/03cytr2	Monsieur D'Olive	George Chapman			 The drama's main plot centers on Vandome, a French gentleman and nephew to the King of France. He returns from a three-years' journey abroad as a merchant, to find that the personal lives of his friends and family are strangely disordered. He had previously kept up a chivalrous, courtly, and platonic affection with Marcellina, the wife of his friend the Count Vaumont. She missed Vandome so intensely, once he'd left on his travels, that her husband was provoked to a jealous outburst; and as a result, the offended countess has retreated into a life of seclusion, sleeping by day and waking by night. Vandome also discovers that his sister has died in his absence &mdash; and that her husband, the Earl of St. Anne, has been so overcome with grief that he has had his late wife's body embalmed, to keep at home and mourn over. Vandome is left to sort out the emotional problems of his friends and restore a semblance of balance and sanity to their little society. Marcellina's sister Eurione has joined her sister in her nocturnal lifestyle; she perversely idealizes both the Countess and the Earl. Vandome realizes that this idealization masks Eurione's romantic attraction to St. Anne &mdash; which gives him a potential solution to the Earl's predicament. He tells St. Anne that he, Vandome, is in love with Eurione, and solicits the Earl to act as his go-between. Their old friendship leads the Earl to acquiesce to Vandome's request; and once Vandome had gotten the Earl and Eurione together, he bows out of his fictitious attraction and lets nature take its course. The Earl of St. Anne and Eurione are betrothed at the play's end. Vandome takes a different approach to the Countess Marcellina's problem. Early one morning, as Marcellina and Eurione are about to retire for their day's night, Vandome interrupts them with a false report of the Count Vaumont's infidelity. Vandome works on their emotions so persuasively that the two women go to find Vaumont and confront him about his alleged unfaithfulness. When they reach the local Duke's court, only to realize that the story is false, the Duke thanks them for their attendance on his Duchess. Marcellina's spell of self-imposed nocturnal isolation has been broken. The play, however, draws its title from the central character of its comic subplot. Monsieur D'Olive is a satirical portrait of a Jacobean gallant, foppish, vain, pompous, verbose and fantastical, and liable to be duped through his own excesses of character and ego. He conceives himself a wit, though he is rendered wit's victim by the tricks of two joking courtiers. Mugeron and Rodrigue trick D'Olive into thinking that he has been appointed to an important foreign embassy...and that he must act the part. In attempting to do so, D'Olive embarrasses himself at the Duke's court, giving long-winded speeches about tobacco and kissing the Duchess. The two courtiers further play upon D'Olive by sending him a forged love letter from a prominent lady of the Duke's court; when he comes in disguise to meet his inamorata, he is exposed again.
14241537	/m/03cywpl	Evil in Paradise		1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Richard Duffy and his nephew went to Hawaii in answer to a call for help from Jade Munroe, an old friend of Richard's from his days as an adventurer. Arriving in Jade's hideout, they found themselves held at gun point by her. Barely escaping back to their hotel, they narrowly evaded poisonous snakes in their room and discovered Richard's old nemesis, the Shark, was not only alive, but also back in town with a new game of providing new faces and identities for criminals. However, they soon learned that they were dealing with a much more shrewd mastermind than the Shark ... the Mole, possessor of the only other Kronom K-D2 in the world.
14243496	/m/03cyyxr	Cold Heaven	Brian Moore	1983	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot concerns a lapsed Catholic, Marie Davenport, who is about to leave her husband Alex for her lover, Daniel, when Alex is apparently killed in a boating accident and then seems to have risen from the dead. The novel details Marie's dilemma in confronting this apparent miracle.
14243752	/m/03cyz3z	A Guide to the Perplexed		2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is presented in the form of unfinished memoirs of one Professor Gunther Wünker, born in Ramat Gan, Israel in the 1960s, an anti-Zionist and the founder of the philosophical school of 'Peepology' (the science of peep-show voyeurism). The novel takes place in a fictitious near future period, some 40 years after the State of Israel is dismantled and replaced with a State of Palestine. The novel excoriates what it calls exploitation of The Holocaust for propaganda purposes designed to shield Israel from scrutiny for its "transgressions" against the Palestinians. The perplexed are defined as "the unthinking chosen" who "cling to clods of earth that don't belong to them". The original Hebrew version of the novel was nominated for Israel's 2003 Geffen Award for science fiction.
14246801	/m/03cz28b	Odd Hours	Dean Koontz	2008-05-20	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After leaving the monastery in the previous book, Odd found a place to stay in Magic Beach with a retired actor. While out for a walk one morning, he finds a woman whom he had been seeing in his dreams; a young, pregnant woman who calls herself Annamaria. After being assaulted and nearly killed by a large man with two henchmen in tow, Odd is separated from Annamaria, though he uses his psychic magnetism to find her. Once he finds her they decide they need to leave immediately, but while making preparations to do so they hear a car door slam. They manage to find a spot to hide until after the men who had been chasing them leave. With the men now gone, Odd and Annamaria set out walking. On their walk, they encounter a large pack of coyotes that Annamaria somehow persuades to leave. After leaving Annamaria with a trusted friend, Odd flees to a local church, where he is subsequently turned in to the sheriff of Magic Beach. The sheriff, a man who seems to have many personalities, believes Odd is a government agent who has come to spy on his operation: the delivery and shipment of multiple nuclear weapons to terrorist groups inside the US via the Magic Beach harbor. Odd manages to convince the Sheriff that he is a government experiment gone wrong and that he is willing to help the sheriff. While the sheriff is setting up a transaction to buy his loyalty Odd manages to enrage the spirit of Frank Sinatra, who began accompanying him after the departure of Elvis. The rage caused by his spirit creates a violent whirlwind, and in the confusion Odd is able to escape from the police department. He quickly makes his way down to the harbor and is able to board the craft that is carrying the nukes. Though he does not want to, he is forced to kill everyone on board. Odd manages to run the boat aground in a nearby cove and ensures that the Coast Guard, DHS, and FBI are all aware of what the boat contains. He leaves the nuclear detonators in a Salvation Army donation bin, but his intuition tells him that something else is wrong. Odd returns to the church where he left Annamaria, whom he intends to leave Magic Beach with in the Mercedes he was lent. Odd discovers that the priest and his wife were both involved with the sheriff's plan to sell nuclear weapons through Magic Beach. The priest kills his wife and is then killed by the sheriff, who is in turn killed by one of his henchmen. The henchman, identified primarily as 'Meth Mouth' talks to Odd, still believing him to be a psychic government agent. While laughing over a joke of Odd's, Odd shoots him under the table with the wife's gun. The story ends with Odd and Annamaria leaving Magic Beach. Odd is sobbing over the murder of so many people, almost all at his hands. Annamaria comforts him with the knowledge that while he may have ended a few lives, he saved millions more. She then pulls the car over and asks Odd to show her the constellation Cassiopeia. Odd and Stormy would often point out Cassiopeia together as that was Stormy's mothers name, so Annamaria's request startles him, but he points the constellation out to her.
14247076	/m/03cz2mb	In the Company of Cheerful Ladies	Alexander McCall Smith	2004	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mma Ramotswe and her new husband settle down to married life with their foster-children, but problems are piling up. At Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's own house, the tenant is running an illegal drinking den. Mma Ramotswe's violent ex-husband Note Mokote reappears. Then Charlie, the apprentice, gets entangled with a wealthy married woman. Help arrives in the person of Mr Polopetsi, whom Mma Ramotswe accidentally knocks off his bicycle with her van. He has been unemployed following a spell in prison after what appears to have been a miscarriage of justice, and Mma Ramotswe persuades her husband to employ him out of guilt and sympathy, but he proves an asset to the garage. Mma Makutsi's love prospects improve when she starts dancing lessons and is partnered with another student, Mr Radiphuti. At first she tries to avoid him, as he is awkward and stammers, but he turns out to be a kind and gentle man and a romance begins. She removes some of Mma Ramotswe's burden of worry by solving an important fraud investigation on her own, and manoeuvring Charlie back to work. Mr Radiphuti's father enlists the help of Mma Ramotswe to put a proposal of marriage from his shy son to Mma Makutsi, and the two become engaged.
14247608	/m/03cz35k	The Towers of Trebizond	Rose Macaulay	1956	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book is partly autobiographical. It follows the adventures of a group of people - the narrator Laurie, the eccentric Dorothea ffoulkes-Corbett (otherwise Aunt Dot), her High Anglican clergyman friend Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg (who keeps his collection of sacred relics in his pockets), travelling from Istanbul (or Constantinople as Fr. Chantry-Pigg would have it) to Trebizond. A Turkish feminist doctor attracted to Anglicanism acts as a foil to the main characters. On the way, they meet magicians, Turkish policemen and juvenile British travel-writers, and observe the BBC and Billy Graham on tour. Aunt Dot proposes to emancipate the women of Turkey by converting them to Anglicanism and popularizing the bathing hat, while Laurie has more worldly preoccupations. Historical references (British Christianity since the Dissolution of the Monasteries, nineteenth-century travellers to the Ottoman Empire, the First World War, the Fourth Crusade, St. Paul's Third Missionary Journey, Troy) abound. The geographical canvas is enlarged with the two senior characters eloping to the Soviet Union and the heroine meeting her lover and her semi-estranged mother in Jerusalem. The final chapters after a fatal accident on the return journey raise multiple issues such as the souls of animals. At another level the book, against its Anglo-Catholic backdrop, deals with the attractions of mystical Christianity and the conflict between Christianity and adultery. This was a problem Macaulay had faced in her own life, having had an affair with the married novelist and former Roman Catholic priest Gerald O'Donovan (1871–1942) from 1920 until his death. The famous opening sentence is, The Turkish woman doctor says in the book of Aunt Dot, "She is a woman of dreams. Mad dreams, dreams of crazy, impossible things. And they aren't all of conversion to the Church, oh no. Nor all of the liberation of women, oh no. Her eyes are on far mountains, always some far peak where she will go. She looks so firm and practical, that nice face, so fair and plump and shrewd, but look in her eyes, you will sometimes catch a strange gleam." Barbara Reynolds has suggested that the character of Aunt Dot is based on Rose Macaulay's friend Dorothy L. Sayers, and that Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg has elements of Frs. Patrick McLaughlin, Gilbert Shaw and Gerard Irvine. The book was described in The New York Times: "Fantasy, farce, high comedy, lively travel material, delicious japes at many aspects of the frenzied modern world, and a succession of illuminating thoughts about love, sex, life, organized churches and religion are all tossed together with enchanting results."
14249924	/m/03cz5hw	Queen Camilla	Sue Townsend			 It follows The Queen, The Prince of Wales and his new wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who, at the start of the novel, have been living for the last 13 years on the Flowers Estate, now called the Flowers Exclusion Zone or 'The Fez'. The Fez is the private fiefdom of scaffolding magnate Arthur Grice, Prince William's employer. Grice fancies himself a grand-scale public benefactor; he often wonders why most Fez residents dismiss him as little more than the self-aggrandising businessman he is. He lobbies the Queen for a knighthood, which she cannot grant him, all honours having been abolished. The Exclusion Zones are the worst sign of the authoritarian country Britain has become, with almost lock-down security in the Fez. Jack Barker, Cromwell (formerly Peoples' Republican) Party leader and Prime Minister, is exhausted after 13 years in office, and wants out. The New Conservative ("New Con") Party elects "Boy" English as its new leader; Boy promises to restore the monarchy. The Queen, now 80, does not want to return to public life; she tells her family she has decided to abdicate. One reason: The Duke of Edinburgh, her husband, suffered a debilitating stroke 2 years earlier, and is now being (badly) cared for in a residence just outside the Fez. With The Queen's abdication, The Prince of Wales will now become King Charles III - but Camilla will only be his consort, not his Queen. Charles refuses to become King unless Camilla is his Queen. Prince William then offers, too eagerly for the Queen's liking, to reign in his father's place. Charles consults his friend, MP Nicholas Soames, who tells him there is no constitutional reason Camilla cannot become his Queen. Enter Graham Cracknall, who claims to be the son of Charles and Camilla, born in 1965. His adoptive parents revealed his biological parentage in a codicil to their will, opened only after both had died. Graham visits Charles and Camilla; the whole family takes an instant dislike to him - particularly after he claims that he, not Prince William, is second in line to the throne after Charles. Graham then attracts the online attention of a mysterious lady named Miranda - who, unknown to him, is a New Con operative in the General Election that is finally called. On learning of the New Con ruse, the enraged Graham goes to the Daily Telegraph with his story; he is not believed, causes a disturbance when thrown out, and ends up in Rampton Hospital. The New Cons win the election, restoring the monarchy as promised, but the Queen follows through on her decision to abdicate, and Charles becomes King. The other members of the Royal Family, including Queen Camilla, spend part of each day talking with tourists.
14252409	/m/03cz7wh	The King's Daughter	Suzanne Martel		{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jeanne Chatel is an orphan who lives with her grandfather until he dies of illness when Jeanne was only 10. Unable to live alone, Jeanne moves into a convent. She is an adventurous, boisterous girl, creating and telling the other girls grand, romantic stories. She also shows an aptitude for healing and herbal medicine. At the age of 18, Jeanne is offered to become a King's Daughter and travel to New France. Jeanne immediately agrees to this and sets out to New France with her friend Marie. Together they embark on their 41-day trip across the Atlantic ocean. Along the way, Marie falls in love with a sailor named Jean. The two girls arrive in New France in August, 1672 and are welcomed by the Lieutenant, their fiancées and a group of Hurons. Marie, having fallen in love along the way, becomes saddened at the thought of marrying someone else. Jeanne realizes that in order for Marie to be happy, someone else must marry the man that was chosen for her. Jeanne then takes the decision to get married in Marie's place. When Jeanne meets her new husband, she is sorely disappointed. Simon de Rouville is rude, callous, and unfriendly. However, the ever-determined Jeanne decides to stay and make the best of her situation. As her new life in the wilderness begins, Jeanne faces many hardships. And, in spite of constantly being told that she reminds everyone of Simon's first wife, Aimee, Jeanne stays to make a better life for her husband and his two children, Nicholas and Isabelle. Eventually, Jeanne and Simon fall in love with each other, and Jeanne grows strong as a result of her new life. She also cultivates her talents as a healer and becomes well known in the area. The book ends with an attack from the Iroquois aboriginals, a constant threat in New France. The de Rouville family survives, after many other conflicts.
14254036	/m/03cz93_	Der Nachsommer	Adalbert Stifter	1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This first-person narrative describes the main character Heinrich's maturation in the regimented household of his father and his subsequent encounter and involvement with the owner of the Rosenhaus, the home, and part of the estate, of a wise, but mysterious older man who becomes a mentor to Heinrich. Heinrich accepts his regimented upbringing without criticism. His father is a merchant who has planned out Heinrich's early education at home in the minutest detail. When it is time for Heinrich to head out on his own, his father allows his son to choose his own path. We are told that his father is a man of great judgement, as is his mother a model of the matronly virtues. Heinrich's narration is understated. His retrospective examination of his personal development is presented with what seems to be humility, objectivity and emotional distance. Heinrich becomes a gentleman Natural scientist exploring Alpine mountains and foothills. He is interested in the geology, flora and fauna of the region. On one of his hiking excursions, Heinrich attempts to avoid what he believes will be a dousing by an approaching thunderstorm. Going off the main highway, he approaches the almost fairy-tale like residence of the man of mystery, Freiherr von Risach. The Rosenhaus is the center of Risach's carefully ordered world devoted to art and gardening, among other things. His mentor's life-choices and interests, and the model of his day to day, season to season, orderly life in the Rosenhaus, expand Heinrich's understanding of the way to live his own life. Heinrich's repeated visits to the Rosenhaus influence his future life choices, including his eventual marriage.
14255883	/m/03czbyd	The Eternal Lover	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1925-10-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A cliff-dwelling warrior of 100,000 years ago, Nu, is magically transported to the present, falls in love with Victoria Custer of Beatrice, Nebraska, the reincarnation of his lost lover Nat-ul, and the two are transported back to the Stone Age. The story is set in Africa, and the present-day sequences guest star Victoria's brother Barney Custer, protagonist of Burroughs's Ruritanian novel The Mad King, as well as his iconic hero Tarzan from his Tarzan novels.
14256221	/m/03czc7c	The Cave Girl	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1925-03-21	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Blueblooded mama's boy Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones is swept overboard during a south seas voyage for his lifelong ill health. He finds himself on a jungle island. His bookish education has not prepared him to cope with these surroundings, and he is a coward. He is terrified when he encounters primitive, violent men, ape-like throwbacks in mankind's evolutionary history. He runs from them, but when he reaches a dead end, he successfully makes a stand, astonishing himself. While keeping the hairy brutes at bay, he meets a beautiful girl, Nadara, also on the run. In an uncharacteristic gesture, he saves her from the grasp of one ape-man during their escape. He is shocked that she believes him a hero, mistaking his frightened screams for war cries. She calls him Thandar, meaning the brave one. She teaches him the language, how to swim, how to fish, and basic woodcraft, as he begins to realize that he doesn't know everything. However, Nadara warns him that a newcomer to her tribe must fight the strongest men, who have killed many. When they reach her home village, he is horrified to see that despite her appearance, her tribe seems to be cavemen from the paleolithic era, not much better than the first tribe. In order to avoid death at the hands of the tribal bullies, he vanishes. As his jungle adventures continue, he finds that he is growing more healthy due to the constant physical demands of primitive living. Although he wants to go back to see Nadara, he recognizes that he will need more strength before he can make a difference. For six months he trains himself, and also makes some weapons. A modern ship stops at the island, but Waldo surprises himself by deciding to stay until he can ensure Nadara's safety. He gives the crew a letter for his mother and returns to the jungle. Upon reaching Nadara's tribe's caves, he finds them empty, for they routinely move to new caves. He kills one of her oppressors, but then misses her on the trail. He finds the tribe's new home, and her father charges Waldo to give her a packet of her deceased mother's things. Waldo tracks and finds Nadara, and kills the brutal man chasing her. She is uninterested in the packet, discarding it unopened as she knows her tribal mother had no possessions. Then they spy a ship approaching the island. As he suddenly realizes he loves her, and how harshly society would treat her, the two of them agree to head for the hills. The ship's search party finds the packet Nadara carelessly discarded, and discovers that the contents identify a married noble couple from modern society, who disappeared on a voyage less than 20 years previously. Before they get far, Waldo changes his mind, realizing that his love for Nadara is such that he wants her to have everything he can offer. However, they meet the hostile ape-men on their way to the beach, and when they finally arrive, the ship is gone. They return to Nadara's tribe. On his deathbed, her father explains her mother was actually a woman who arrived in a small boat with a dead man; she died right after giving birth to Nadara. Waldo decides that living with Nadara under primitive moral customs would be wrong, and determines not to take her as his wife until they can return to civilization. He teaches her English in preparation. Waldo teaches the tribe about rule by consent of the governed, and they choose him as king. He begins to introduce them to concepts such as agriculture and permanent housing. He has them make spears and shields, and they successfully fight off a raid by the ape-like tribe. However, one ape-man returns that night and kidnaps Nadara. Away from the caves, an earthquake frightens him and he releases her. When she returns to the cliff dwellings, she finds them in ruins. She cannot locate Waldo's cave nor lift the rocks she finds, so she assumes everyone is dead, and leaves the next day to find a new home. Back in the States, Waldo's parents decide to send another search mission after they receive his letter. His mother and father both come along. They find Nadara being chased by an ape-man, who they quickly kill. She explains Waldo's death in the earthquake, and Mr. Smith-Jones decides to bring her home. However, his wife is hostile to Nadara. The ship departs, but a storm blows it back towards the islands. When Stark, the first officer, grabs Nadara on the deck late at night, he kidnaps her overboard to a nearby shore. Upon returning to consciousness, she quickly escapes him, but they are captured by a tribe of cannibals. Stark is killed but she is treated considerately. In the meantime, it seems that Waldo is indeed alive, though he lay unconscious and trapped in his cave a long time. He discovers from a caveman that Nadara left on a ship, and determinedly builds a tiny boat to go after her. After a storm he is washed ashore on a new island, and saves a pirate king from a cannibal. One of the pirates tells of a white goddess at a cannibal temple inland, so Waldo goes to search for Nadara. He rescues her, but they are pursued all the way to the coast. His pirate friends have left, so they are forced to use his little boat again. When they reach land, they are captured by more pirates, who then bring them to a modern boat - his father's ship. It also is being held by the pirates, who are awaiting their leader's return. Waldo's parents initially do not recognize him, but after they do, Waldo's mother reconciles with Nadara. When the pirate king arrives, he recognizes Waldo as his savior and releases the entire group. They sail to Honolulu, and the ship's captain presents Nadara with the found packet as a wedding present, not realizing her connection to it. They discover her noble heritage, and she and Waldo marry.
14256309	/m/03czcbt	Jinx	Meg Cabot	2007-07-31	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jean "Jinx" Honeychurch is a sixteen-year-old girl from Iowa. Believing she was born with bad luck, she goes to stay with her Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Ted in Manhattan, New York, to escape the most recent bout of it. Her cousin, Tory, is convinced that Jean must join her coven of "witches". Jean denies being a witch, and refuses to join them. This angers Tory, causing her to seek revenge against her.
14257663	/m/03czds5	Circle of Friends	Maeve Binchy		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Benny, who was "large-boned obese girl", "soft like a cake hard like a rock", and an "adored" only daughter, and Eve, the wiry orphan brought up by the nuns, are best friends in the small fictitious Irish town of Knockglen. On their first day at the University College in Dublin, an accident brings the two characters together with fellow students named Nan Mahon and Jack Foley, and new friendships are quickly forged. But later on during the story, trouble occurs for the characters. Benny (the "good-natured clown" of the group) always seems to draw the short straw in life, while Nan (selfish and attractive) takes what she wants without expecting to pay for it. Eve (intensely loyal to Benny, and resentful of Nan’s careless optimism) becomes obsessed with the need to avenge Benny’s disappointments.
14258257	/m/03czf90	Out of This World Watt-Evans			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The premise of the novel is that parallel universes do exist. Some have intelligent non-human life, while others are populated by English-speaking humans. Prior to the events of the novel, one such reality is overrun by a malevalent force known as Shadow. The World of Shadow is a typical high fantasy realm where magic exists and men fight with sword and sorcery. Although pockets of resistance against Shadow exist, their reality has all but been conquered by evil. Another reality, the Galactic Empire, soon finds that they are being invaded by minions who serve Shadow, and declare war. The Galactic Empire is depicted as a science fiction realm of yester-year, akin to Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. Many planets are colonized by the technologically-advanced Empire, and telepaths serve in their military forces. Once the conflict with Shadow began, the Empire uses their telepaths to establish contact with the World of Shadow. The World of Shadow, in turn, use magic to stay in contact with the Galactic Empire. Although both realities share a common enemy, little progress is made in the way of a true alliance due to vast cultural differences. The Empire view the people of Shadow as brute barbarians who could be of no use in a real war, while the people of Shadow consider the Empire and their fascist ways as "possbly the lesser of two evils". Eight years pass by since initial contact and both sides have all but given up on receiving any true help from the other. Eventually the telepaths of the Empire discover that they have made contact with a third, as-yet-unknown reality, modern-day Earth. Independently, both worlds send diplomatic envoys to Montgomery County, Maryland, where they are either thought to be madmen or filming some sort of movie. However, a few people do eventually realize that these visitors are telling the truth and are convinced to travel to the World of Shadow, if just to verify their own sanity. However, not long after they arrive, Shadow attacks, and the group must flee through a portal to the Galactic Empire to survive. Stranded in another reality with little chance for rescue, this band of strangers from three different realities must put their differences aside and work together if they hope to survive.
14258289	/m/03czfb1	In the Empire of Shadow	Lawrence Watt-Evans		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A group from this world is trapped in a science fiction universe. Before the galactic government will send them home, they must agree to travel back to the fantasy universe first, in order to assess the power of the evil wizard who runs the place and any potential risks posed to the galactic empire.
14258407	/m/03czffh	The Reign of the Brown Magician	Lawrence Watt-Evans		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 By defeating the powerful wizard who runs a fantasy universe, a man from this world gains all of her powers. He sets about using these powers for the good of the world he is now effectively the ruler of and to fix what went wrong in the previous books.
14259395	/m/03czgfg	Blue Shoes and Happiness	Alexander McCall Smith	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mma Ramotswe is asked to investigate a cook who is being blackmailed, and a doctor whose nurse believes he is doing something illegal. She discovers the identity of the blackmailer, who is a newspaper agony aunt abusing the confidences of her correspondents, and forces her to stop. The doctor is selling generic drugs at the full cost to his patients, and she causes him to be reported. During the investigation she becomes more aware of her excess weight and its health risks and even tries to diet, but decides the most important thing is to be herself and happy. Mr Polopetsi, the new employee, is happy in his work but still struggles with poverty and hostility from relatives due to his spell in prison. He wants to help Mma Ramotswe, his mentor, with detective work, and when superstitious fears disturb staff at the Mokolodi Nature Reserve, it is he who discovers the cause: an injured ground-hornbill, believed to bring ill luck. He removes it, but it dies, and he fears he has lost Mma Ramotswe's trust, but is relieved and grateful when she shows faith in him after all. Mma Makutsi fears her engagement to Phuti Radiphuti is over after a misunderstanding about feminism, but all is explained and, in the process, Mr J.L.B.Matekoni gains a comfortable new chair which will make him happy too. She begins to appreciate how her fortunes will change with her marriage, and indulges her passion for impractical shoes with a new blue pair, even though they do not fit very well.
14260371	/m/03czhpp	Flood		2002-11-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 In 1953 the East coast of England was stuck by one of the worst storms of the century. In response to this, the Thames Flood Barrier was opened in 1984, to protect London from the danger. However global warming has resulted in raising sea levels, higher waves and more frequent extreme weather. Londoners have become complacent, thinking that the flood barrier will protect them. The events will prove them wrong. The Prime Minister is out of the country, leaving Deputy Prime Minister, and Home Secretary Venita Maitland in charge. As the danger signs mount up, officials at all levels of the government are reluctant to take the necessary precautions, relying on margins of error, earlier missed predictions and fearing the consequences of an unnecessary evacuation. A storm rages over the north of Britain, a troop carrier founders in the Irish Sea, flood indicators go off the scale, the seas are mountainous and a spring tide is about to strike the East Coast. Air sea rescue and military personnel struggle to save lives all down the coast. The worse is yet to come. When the storm reaches the south the two forces of wind and tide will combine and send a huge one-in-a-thousand tidal surge up the Thames. But surely London is safe: the Thames Barrier will save the capital from disaster as it was intended to do? The river is a titanic presence by now, higher than anyone has known it, and the surge thunders towards the Barrier. Scientists begin to talk of the possibility of overtopping. Can fifty feet high gates be overwhelmed by a wave? Then there is an explosion the size of a small Hiroshima: a supertanker is ablaze in the estuary and most of the Essex petrochemical works are going up with it. The Thames catches fire and the wall of fire and water thunders towards Britain's capital. This is the story of what happens next, and the desperate attempts to save the capital from destruction. Firefighters and other first responders from all around the country, supplanted by German, French and American military bravely fight against the disaster, but they can only save a fraction of those threatened. Eventually the saviour of London proves to be the same thing that threatened it, with rain from the storm extinguishing the fire.
14262248	/m/03czkrt	Loyalty in Death	Nora Roberts		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Lt. Eve Dallas and her assistant Delia Peabody, are called to the home of millionaire, J. Clarence Branson, the owner and co-president of Branson Toys and Tools. Considered by his friends, his brother, and his sister-in-law to be a good man, its all the more shocking when he is found with a hole drilled in the center of his heart. Branson's wife, Lisbeth Cook, comments about the reliability of the drill, and that she killed him because he was cheating on her. Before they can take Cook back to cop central, Dallas and Peabody are called to see a man named Ratso, who tells them he has good information to sell. Ratso tells them about a man named Fixer, who was killed when he was beaten and drowned in the river. Fixer was, much like his name suggested, good at fixing and building. Fixer had said he had a good assignment, building bombs for a group of people. The people though, wanting to cover their trial, eliminated Fixer. Eve agrees to look at the file, eventually. Dallas and Peabody finally take Cook, and have her booked, although the PA will accept a plea bargain. Eve heads home, where she explains the case to her billionaire husband Roarke. The next day, Dallas discovers that the PA has accepted a plea of man two, which she sees as wrong. Dallas had Peabody looking for data, when a stranger shows up looking for her. Peabody returns, and recognizes the man as Zeke Peabody, her younger brother. Zeke ends up staying with Peabody for a while. Dallas questions B. Donald Branson, Clarences brother, and Clarissa Branson, Donald's wife. They both claim Clarence was faithful, leaving Eve with nothing. Meanwhile, Peabody shows her brother her small apartment, and he reveals he is considering a relationship with a married woman, who is his employer. Peabody, however, is not ready for the shock, when Zeke reveals his employers are the Bransons. Dallas heads to Fixer's shop, to find it picked clean. He has a rack that is custom designed to hold weapons, and believes it would hold an army blaster. She goes to Roarke, who confirms her suspicion. Later, Dallas attends Branson's will reading, which Roarke also attends. Little to nothing is gained however, as all the people who got money from the will already had money, and the only thing established about J. C. Branson is that he was a good man. The next morning, Dallas is greeted by Peabody, and a text disc for her to read. The disc is from a group, calling themselves Cassandra, named after the woman of legend, claiming they will bring punishment to the city, and promising to give a demonstration of their power at 9:15 that morning. At 9:15, a bomb explodes, destroying an empty warehouse, owned by Cassandra's main target, Dallas's husband, Roarke.
14270845	/m/03czt6q	Nude Men	Amanda Filipacchi	1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nude Men is about a twenty-nine-year-old man who is sexually pursued by a precocious eleven-year-old girl. The novel explores his horror at his own attraction and recounts his efforts at resisting her advances. fr:L'Homme déshabillé it:Nudi maschili
14271604	/m/03cztzj	Look Me in the Eye	John Elder Robison	2007-09-25	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Published in 2007 on the Crown imprint of Random House, Look Me in the Eye describes how Robison grew up as a misfit in the 1960s, at a time when the Asperger syndrome diagnosis did not exist in the United States. The book describes how Robison learns to fit in, without actually knowing why he was different. His situation was made even more complicated at times by his neglectful and abusive father and a some-what crazed mother. After dropping out of school, he had a sudden fascination with sound engineering and electronics. His large interest led to unusual career choices, including time with Pink Floyd's sound company, making special effects for the band Kiss, designing electronic games and toys for Milton Bradley, and starting his own business repairing and restoring expensive cars. Robison finally learned about Asperger syndrome in 1996, at age 39, and his life was transformed by the knowledge. He was first introduced to the public in his brother, Augusten Burroughs', memoir Running with Scissors.
14276535	/m/03cz_ww	Cop Hater	Evan Hunter	1956	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02fgmn": "Police procedural"}	 The city has surrendered to a heat wave in July 1956. When detective Mike Reardon is on the way to work on the nightshift, he is shot to death from behind with a .45 caliber handgun. As Steve Carella and his colleagues from the 87th Precinct are looking for their friend's killer, they have no idea that this is just the beginning of a series of police murders. David Foster is the next victim, at the entrance of his apartment, where the killer has left behind a footprint at the crime scene. Steve Carella and Hank Bush question the family and wives of the deceased, as well as some suspects, but to no avail. A few nights later the unknown killer ambushes and murders Det. Hank Bush. Bush fought back however and shot and wounded the murderer. Steve Carella fears he will be the next target if he fails to stop him. When Carella is leaving the precinct, he finds a reporter, Savage, waiting for him. He asks Carella his thoughts on who the killer might be, stating that everything is off the record. Carella reveals that - due to the evidence collected from Bush's murder - the police now knows certain attributes of the killer, i.e. weight, profession, and build. Carella leaves telling Savage that he is going on a date with his girlfriend, Teddy. The next day we find out that Savage has published the conversation between him and Carella, including Teddy's name and address. When Carella finds this out he rushes to Teddy's apartment, hoping the killer is not already there. When Carella arrives at Teddy's apartment he hears shouting and cursing coming from inside. With his .38 in hand, Carella enters Teddy's room and is immediately faced with a man aiming a .45 right at him. Carella drops to the floor the instant he enters the room and shoots the man holding the .45 twice in the thigh. After making sure Teddy is okay, Carella interrogates the man, finding out that his name is Paul Mercer and that he was the murderer of all three cops. After further interrogation it is discovered that Alice Bush was behind the whole plot; she had convinced a previously unknown man named Paul Mercer to commit the murders. Apparently she had promised him her affections once he had killed off her husband. In the end, both are sentenced to death for their crimes and Det. Carella marries his girlfriend, Teddy Franklin.
14277147	/m/03c_0fr	Fado Alexandrino				 Part One: Before the Revolution The five characters have gathered at a restaurant and are recounting their lives ten years after their return home from Mozambique in 1970. The Soldier, named Abílio, got a job moving furniture for his uncle Ilídio’s company. Ilídio had remarried to a woman named Dona Isaura who had a stepdaughter named Odete. The Soldier lived with them and was intrigued by Odete. To gain money to take Odete out, the Soldier started accepting money for sex from a 60-year-old man, a painter. The Lieutenant Colonel, named Artur, went to seek his wife at a cancer institute only to discover that she had died just before his return. His memories were haunted by an African man he shot. He joined a military regiment and was promoted to the rank of commander. As members of the military conspired to overthrow the government, the Captain, named Mendes, came to the Lieutenant Colonel to try to convince him to join the uprising, but he does not have his troops participate in the revolt. The Communications Officer, named Celestino, returned to his godmother and a woman named Esmeralda. He joined a Marxist group working to overthrow the government. His contact Olavo got him a job in a ministry so he could infiltrate the government and sway others to his cause. He was put in contact with a young attractive female operative code-named Dália. He was then arrested and brutally tortured by the PIDE. The Second Lieutenant, named Jorge, reunited with his wife Inês, who came from an upper-class background. He recalls bargaining to buy a young girl in Mozambique who has one miscarriage and one successful birth. He also recalls the difficult courtship with Inês due to the difference in social class. Just before the uprising, the Second Lieutenant had an affair with a woman named Ilda, who got pregnant. He never sees her again after fleeing the country. In the present time, the five have had quite a bit to drink and make plans to move on to another venue. Part Two: The Revolution The 1974 Carnation Revolution provides the backdrop for the events of this part, recounted while the five characters are at a cabaret/brothel. The Soldier witnessed the attack on the PIDE headquarters. He continues to court Odete even as he provided sex for money to the old painter and others. He finally managed to woo Odete and marry her, though Odete was repulsed by what she saw as the Soldier’s lack of breeding. Odete left him, and it turns out she was the same woman as Dália, the resistance agent the Communications Officer was enamored with, a revelation hinted at when the Soldier found communist propaganda among Odete’s things. The Lieutenant Colonel was captured and taken to Captain Mendes. As he remained cautious about supporting either the insurrection or the government, he was ejected from the regiment and Captain Mendes was promoted to colonel. He became involved with a woman named Edite, known as the “cloud of perfume.” His first sexual experience with her is marred by impotence, but he later marries her. The Communications Officer languished in prison as the Revolution occurred. When the prison was liberated he rejoined Dália and the resistance cell. They plan a robbery, which goes awry when the car crashes. Dália informed him of a new plot to dress up like ambassadors and kidnap the president; this plan also failed. The Revolution brought panic to Inês’s family due to their upper class status, so the Second Lieutenant had to go to their home in Carcavelos to comfort them. He discovered Inês having sex with Ilka, a friend of her mother’s. The Second Lieutenant fled to São Paulo, Brazil with Inês’s family. In the present, the five plot to take prostitutes back to the Second Lieutenant’s residence. Part Three: After the Revolution The Soldier and his uncle Ilídio lived alone together after Dona Isaura died and Odete departed to live with Olavo from the organization. The Soldier took over the moving company and had an affair with a concierge. The Lieutenant Colonel married Edite and was promoted to general and director of a military academy. He started seeing a young salesgirl, Lucília, but was blackmailed by her mother into setting her up in an apartment. He found Lucília cheating on him and cut her off. He also found out that while he was occupied with Lucília Edite had been cheating on him. The Second Lieutenant divorced Inês, who got custody of their daughter Mariana. He returned from Brazil to Lisbon and took up with a midget. In the present time, the narratives reveal that the Communications Officer is the one who had an affair with Edite. Talk of killing him emerges among the drunken men. The Soldier suddenly stabs the Communications Officer in the back with a knife. He defends himself and claims it was an accident, but it is implied that he killed the man over Odete. The prostitutes begin complaining about the dead body and all have to decide what to do with the corpse. Chapter 11 of Part Three breaks with the novel’s structure. The chapter should advance the Communication Officer’s story, but he is already dead at this point. Instead, we get a first-person narrative from an unnamed female character. She recounts how her father was murdered when she was young. Her mother remarried a man who raped her before she was sent to Lisbon to work as a maid. After the husband of the house died, the woman brought home a boy that the two raised together. The boy grew up to be the Communications Officer, the lady of the house is his godmother, and the woman telling the story is Esmeralda. The novel wraps up with the group breaking ranks. The police find the body of the Communications Officer, pick up the prostitutes for questioning, and are on the trail of the soldiers.
14281536	/m/03c_5bh	The Prince and the Pilgrim	Mary Stewart	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Prince Alexander is diverted in his quest for justice by the enchantments of Morgan LeFay, the seductive but evil sorceress. She persuades him to attempt a theft of the Holy Grail so that she can own it and thus gain power over King Arthur and his court. Alexander's search for the mysterious cup leads him to Alice. Together the prince and the pilgrim find what they've really been seeking: love. The tale is a self-contained novel taking place during Arthur's reign (possibly during the events in The Last Enchantment ), and does not serve as a follow-up to The Wicked Day.
14284953	/m/03c_9kq	Hard Love	Ellen Wittlinger	1999	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 John can be a meanie only because he has been untouchable since his parents' divorce six years ago, and Marisol, who has recently come out as a lesbian, meet through their interests in writing zines, into which they pour their life stories. John arranges coffee dates that occur over several Saturdays, thus getting to know Marisol, and becoming friends. After Marisol tells John that she likes him, he is very surprised. No one had ever told him that they liked him, and he falls in love with her. Marisol doesn't know how to let him down, without losing her new best friend. Throughout the story, John and Marisol try to keep their friendship intact through writing zines together. As the story begins, John wonders what it would be like to meet one of his favorite zine writers, Marisol. From her personal biography, she describes herself as a "Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee Lesbian." John meets Marisol at a magazine rack on a Saturday when he asks her for coffee. Over time they start to spend more time together and she teaches him the ways of the zine writer. While John is spending time with his divorced father, he starts to ask questions about Al, the man his mother is marrying. John gets angry and throws a tantrum. Seemingly childish, the outburst becomes a topic for his writing, which he asks Marisol to read, instead of discarding it as he usually would have. Reflecting more on his life, John begins to understand his sexual orientation. This sudden embrace of his heterosexuality starts to give John ideas about his future with Marisol. Planning for the upcoming junior prom, John is thinking of taking Marisol. Marisol is aware that John only wants to go as friends, but is confused at John's desire to parade his heterosexuality to his friends. When John tries to kiss her, Marisol refuses. She yells at him, announcing that she is strictly lesbian, and that she thought he understood. Regretting his actions, John assumes he will never see Marisol again. To his surprise, Marisol calls him and she does not seem mad. She asks him to a zine conference on the shore of Cape Cod, next to the Bluefish Wharf Inn. Marisol tells him that this is the chance to express his feelings about the situation at hand to his parents, so he does. John writes letters to his mother and father, mails his father's to him, leaves his mother's on the table, and heads to the bus station for Marisol. One long bus ride later, they arrive at the conference surrounded by cabins and writers. John sees one of his favorite writers, Dianna Tree. As the weekend passes, Dianna and John develop a relationship while Marisol is off partying. Dianna sings a song for John called "Hard Love." After the convention ends, Marisol plans to go live in New York with her friends, Jane, Sarah, and B.J. John is completely taken aback by Marisol's plans. He tries to talk to her before she leaves but, running short on time, she hurries away. John is left to sort through his relationship with his parents and finish his last year of high school.
14287253	/m/03c_flz	Wrinkles in Time	George Smoot	1994		 On April 23, 1992 a scientific team led by astrophysicist George Smoot announced that they had found the primordial "seeds" from which the universe has grown. They analyzed data gathered by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite and discovered the oldest known objects in the universe&nbsp;— so called "wrinkles" in time&nbsp;— thus finding a long-anticipated missing piece in the Big Bang model. In this book, Smoot tells the remarkable tale of his quest for what has been called the cosmologists' Holy Grail. His quest for the seeds of structure in the universe consumed about twenty years. The book traces the obstacle course of discovery. In the book Smoot describes the adventure and along the way he brings the reader up to date in cosmology, giving brief introductions to some important concepts and discoveries in Physics and Cosmology. The research in the book eventually resulted in Smoot winning the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics; and the book was reprinted in 2007 as a result of the new interest generated by the award. On the cover of the reprint, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking calls Smoot's observations in the book "the scientific discovery of the century, if not all time".
14292082	/m/03c_l_h	Reserved for the Cat	Mercedes Lackey	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ninette Dupond was a dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet who was chosen to be the lead when Mademoiselle Jean-Marie Augustine is injured. She is fired when her performance receives good reviews but also when she catches the eye of the La Augustine's patron. Poor and desperate, Ninette is surprised when she finds a tomcat that is able to psychically talk to her. The cat, Thomas, convinces Ninette to migrate to England and become a premier dancer there. With no better options, Ninette takes the chance despite her disbelief in magic. On the way, Thomas teaches her English, instructs her on the basics of the magical world and convinces her to adopt the identity of the Russian ballerina, Nina Tchereslavsky. Thomas is also able to convince the owner of a music Hall, Nigel Barret, who is an Elemental Master of Air to take 'Nina' on as the main act of his show. In a ploy based on the fairy tale, Nigel and his partners discover Ninette posing as "Nina" supposedly shipwrecked on a beach near Blackpool. Inspired, Nigel and his partners, Arthur (who is in charge of the orchestra) and Wolf (a parrot who supposedly is the reincarnation of Mozart), create a production based on the experience. They set Ninette up in a nice apartment with a maid named Alsie McKenzie (who has no magic, but has the abilities of a Sensitive, which means she can see Elemental beings and the like ) and start rehearsals, with Ninette also doing some dancing acts on the stage in the meantime. Nigel enlists the help of Elemental Master of Fire and stage magician, Jonathon Hightower, both for the production and that he suspects the shipwrecking was actually an attack on Nina. The threat becomes real, when the real Nina Tchereslavsky discovers Ninette's impersonation. The danger in this is that the real 'Nina' is also a troll that is able to absorb people's identities and their memories.The troll had previously the taken on the forn of a young poet and from there seduced the real Nina into a bed then used its elemental powers to absorb her and then take her place.
14293841	/m/03c_njc	The Girl in a Swing	Richard Adams	1980-04-12	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alan Desland is a socially awkward Englishman who makes a living as a collector and dealer of fine pottery. On a business trip to Copenhagen, he falls headlong in love with a mysterious and beautiful young woman named Käthe (or in some editions, Karin), who does clerical work for him and one of his colleagues. After ten days of mutually infatuated courtship, he proposes marriage to her despite knowing nothing about her family or background. She accepts on the condition that their wedding should take place as a civil ceremony in England, and appears to have no interest in inviting any relatives or friends of her own from Europe. In the event, their marriage and honeymoon end up taking place near Gainesville, Florida in the United States, thanks to the intervention of an American acquaintance. Her playful sensuality overwhelms Alan, continuing to captivate him and their entire social circle after their return home to run his family's ceramics shop. However, Alan's psychic senses (mostly latent since adolescence) begin to warn him that something has gone wrong, building up to a catastrophic revelation of tragedy.
14294479	/m/03c_p1k	Midnight in Death	Nora Roberts		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Eve Dallas, and her husband Roarke's first Christmas together is interrupted when she is called to the murder scene of Judge Harold Wainger. The Judge has been found naked, strangled, tortured, and kept alive as long as possible. Words are burned to his chest, reading Judge Not, Lest You Be Judged. A note, draped on him like a loin cloth, reads Judge Harold Wagner P.A. Stephanie Ring Public Defender Carl Neissan Justine Polinsky Dr. Charlotte Mira Lt. Eve Dallas Dallas instantly recognises this as the work of a man named David Palmer, a serial killer, who Dallas had thrown in prison. Palmer was infamous for kidnapping women, and performing "experiments" on them, before strangling them. He was eventually captured by Dallas, and all of the people on his list are people who helped put him in prison. On December the 19, Palmer escaped, and neither Dallas, nor her commander were aware. Soon, two more people are dead, and Palmer has kidnapped Dr. Mira. Dallas must find Palmer, before he tires of Mira, and decides to end his experiment.
14295820	/m/03c_q92	The Growing Stone	Albert Camus			 The story follows a French engineer, d'Arrast, as he is driven by a local chauffeur, Socrates, to a town in Iguape, Brazil, where he is to construct a sea-wall to prevent the lower quarters from flooding. After a night-drive through the jungle, D'Arrast wakes in Iguape and is greeted by the notable people of the town. An incident follows when the chief of police, apparently drunk, demands to see d'Arrast's passport and claims it is not in order. The other dignitaries of the town are embarrassed and apologetic, and the judge asks d'Arrast to choose a punishment for the chief of police, which he later refuses to do. On a tour of the lower quarters of the town, d'Arrast sees the poverty of the poor, black people who live there. He is shown around a hut and offered rum by the daughter of the house as part of his visit, although he feels the hostility of the local people towards him and his guides. On his return, his chauffeur explains the ritual that is to take place that night. Having found a statue of Jesus drifting in from the sea and up the river, the local people had stored it in a cave, where, since then, a stone had grown. Now they celebrated the miracle each year with a festival and a procession. Socrates and d'Arrast then meet an old sailor who has his own miracle to tell of. He explains how his ship had caught fire and he had fallen from the lifeboat. He recognised the light from the church of Iguape and despite being a weak swimmer was able to swim towards it to safety. The sailor had made a promise to Jesus that, should he be saved, he would carry a stone of 50 kilos to the church in the procession. After telling his story, the sailor invites d'Arrast to come to a different ceremony that evening, with dancing, although he mentions that he himself will not dance as he has his promise to carry out the next day. As dusk falls d’Arrast follows the sailor and his brother to a hut near the forest, containing a statue or idol of a horned god, where men and women are dancing. As the drums get louder and faster and the dancers get wilder, d’Arrast’s new friend forgets his decision not to dance and joins the circle. D’Arrast tries to remind him not to dance but is asked to leave the ceremony. The next day d’Arrast is watching the town procession when he sees his friend of the night before trying to carry out his promise. The sailor is struggling to carry the fifty-kilo stone and falls more than once. D’Arrast goes to walk with him and tries to offer support but it is no use. Tired out from a night’s dancing, the sailor must give up his attempt to carry the stone to the church. When the sailor finally falls, d’Arrast decides to take over his task for him. He takes the stone from his friend and carries it towards the church. The stone seems to grow heavier as he goes, and he too struggles. However he suddenly decides to change his route, and carry his burden, not to the church, but down-town to the sailor’s own hut, where he flings it down in the centre of the room. As the sailor and his brother catch up with d’Arrast, they react, not with anger, but by asking him to sit and join them.
14298413	/m/03c_sgm	Ruth Hall	Fanny Fern	1854	{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef"}	 The autobiographical novel can be divided into three phases: Ruth's happy marriage, impoverished widowhood, and rise to fame and financial independence as a newspaper columnist. In the first chapter, young Ruth Ellet sits at her window on the night before her wedding, reflecting on her life so far. When her mother died long ago, she was sent away to boarding school, where she excelled at writing compositions. There is no love lost between Ruth and her father, who has plenty of money but begrudges her every penny; and although she adores her talented older brother, Hyacinth, he is a strange, cold-hearted man who slights his sister for her overtures of affection. Ruth, therefore, pins all her hopes on her impending marriage to Harry Hall. She duly marries Harry. He is a good, loving man, and handsome and prosperous, too. At this stage, the only thorn in Ruth's side is Harry's parents: old Mrs. Hall is so bitterly jealous of her son's pretty new wife that she finds fault with her constantly, and both in-laws meddle continually in Ruth's life. When Harry and Ruth move to a farm five miles away, they follow him. Harry and Ruth's first child, Daisy, brings them great joy. In the grandparents' eyes, however, the little girl is "out of control", and they consider Ruth a terrible mother. Ruth and Daisy play in the creek, and pick wild flowers together, which the grandmother hates. Daisy becomes ill in the winter and dies of croup because Dr. Hall, Ruth's father-in-law refuses to take Ruth's call for help seriously and fails to attend to the child immediately. Ruth and Harry have two more daughters, Katy and Nettie; then, while Nettie is still an infant, Harry contracts typhoid fever and dies. Ruth, left with very little money, applies to her relatives for help. The elder Halls and Ruth's father grudgingly provide her with a tiny income. She moves into a boarding house in a slum district, just up the road from a brothel, and searches unsuccessfully for employment as a schoolteacher or a seamstress. Her rich friends drop her, her relatives snub her, and only rarely does anyone offer help or encouragement. When Katy falls ill, Mrs. Hall persuades her to give up Katy to them and then treats the little girl harshly. Meanwhile, Ruth's funds continue to diminish, forcing her to move into a barren garret and live on bread and milk. Ruth, nearly desperate, hits on the idea of writing for the newspapers. She composes several samples and sends them to her brother Hyacinth, who is an influential publisher. He sends the samples back, along with an insolent note telling her she has no talent. Ruth perseveres, adopting the pen name 'Floy', and finally finds an editor, Mr. Lascom, who is willing to purchase her writings. Her columns are a hit; soon, she is publishing several pieces a week for Mr. Lascom and for another editor, Mr. Tibbetts. Subscription lists burgeon and fan mail comes pouring in, but Ruth is still barely getting by because neither editor will give her more money for her contributions. Accordingly, when a publisher named Mr. Walter offers her twice her present rate of pay to work exclusively for his magazine, she accepts. Mr. Walter becomes her best friend and advocate. Since she now has to write only one piece per week, Ruth has time to compile a book-length selection of her columns. This becomes a best-seller, making Ruth not only independent, but wealthy. She ransoms Katy and moves into a comfortable hotel with both her daughters. In the last scene, she visits her husband's grave and looks sadly at the space reserved for her at his side, then leaves the cemetery, thinking of the good things life might still have in store.
14301206	/m/03c_wqs	Magic for Marigold	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1929	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Marigold Lesley is an imaginative young girl whose father died before she was born. She grew up at her paternal relatives' estate, Cloud of Spruce. Marigold's family includes her loving but bossy mother, steely Young Grandmother, shrewd Old Grandmother, her Uncle Klondike who is a former sailor, and her Aunt Marigold, a doctor who saved Marigold's life as a baby. Because of that, the Lesleys named Marigold after her Aunt, and Uncle Klondike married her. These people made Marigold's life mostly pleasant and carefree, but she nonetheless had her share of adventures, fancies and troubles, many related to the peculiar environment she grew up in. The book relates Marigold's seemingly incurable jealousy of her father's first wife, Clementine; an encounter with a Russian princess; several attempts to be "good"' and a surprising cooking triumph. One long-lasting product of Marigold's imagination was Sylvia, her imaginary playmate whom she loved dearly and who took the place of many real-life friends for her. But as Marigold grew up and began having trouble with boys, she eventually had to say goodbye to Sylvia and her childhood.
14302298	/m/03c_y2k	The Beginning Place	Ursula K. Le Guin	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The narrative focuses on the journey of the two main characters from adolescence to adulthood in two alternate worlds, the real world and the idyllic Tembreabrezi. The story is told in alternating chapters from two starkly alternating viewpoints: that of Irene Pannis, and of Hugh Rogers. They live in the suburbs of an unnamed US city, in difficult circumstances and with troubled families. They independently discover a place hidden in a local wood, where time flows much more slowly than in the outside world and it is always evening, a "threshold" between their own world and another; though Hugh finds it first within the story, Irene has already been visiting the other world for some years. She has another life there in the town of Tembreabrezi, an adoptive family of sorts, and has learned the local language. Both Irene and Hugh love the "beginning place", the threshold; they feel a sense of belonging and home there that they lack elsewhere in their lives. As Hugh stumbles upon the beginning place, Irene discovers that something is wrong in Tembreabrezi; the paths which connect the town with the rest of the country are closed somehow, and no one can reach or leave the town except for her. The closing is not material but emotional; the townsfolk are struck by a desperate fear which will not allow them to move beyond the town limits. Despite her anger with Hugh, and her resentment of his disturbance of her hidden sanctuary, they find that they must work together; she has had increasing trouble in passing through the gateway into the other place, while he cannot always cross back into the 'real' world. By travelling together they can pass back and forth through the gateway at will, and so they return to Tembreabrezi together. Hugh is welcomed in the town as the hero for whom they have waited; Irene is jealous, wanting desperately to win the admiration and respect of the townsfolk and especially the Mayor or Master, Sark, whom she has loved for a long time. Hugh is largely unaware of her feelings, but wants to complete the quest to become worthy of the Lord of the Manor's daughter Allia. In the end, they embark together on a mission to save the town and reopen the roads. Together they track down the monster that brings the fear and Hugh kills it. He is injured in the fight, but Irene helps him to keep going until they can reach the gateway back to their own world. On the other side, the trust and the love they have discovered together opens a different sort of gateway, providing them with a possible future together that avoids the destructive patterns of their own families.
14314461	/m/03d07wk	Barracuda 945				 * The story begins with the interrogation of SAS British Captain Ray Kerman who was Muslim born and Harrow educated. # Kerman's character is developed; he, now a Major i/c, is training and observing Israelis in an operation in Palestine. The operation goes wrong and Kerman meets the beautiful Shakira. He kills two British NCOs because they killed her children. He then disappears to join the Arabs. # The story reaches the ears of Admiral Morris, director NSA. Guided by Lt Jimmy Ramshawe, they suspect Kerman may be with Hamas, staging recent bold, successful, bank heists. Admirals Morgan (Nat Sec advisor) and Morris agree to keep watch on the situation. # Captain Kerman is now General Ravi Rashood of Hamas. He trains and leads a team of men into Israel and breaks into a gaol, freeing all the prisoners. # Rashood meets Iranian and Arab military leaders and proposes a plan to persuade the Americans to leave the Middle East. He suggests they buy two nuclear submarines (Barracuda 945s) from the Russians using the Chinese as their agents. # Rashood learns that Morgan is a threat to the terrorists' plans, that Morgan is coming to London and that his parents have a good horse entered at Ascot. He goes to Ascot, is spotted by an old school friend, sees his parents, returns to London, kills the friend and his porter. He decides it is too risky to assassinate Morgan. # Rashood learns about submarines from the Russians. # Rashood and Captain Badr take the first submarine from Araguba, near Murmansk to Petropavlosk, Kamchatka. The second submarine leaves Araguba and goes silently past Ireland, heading for Africa. Ramshawe watches both. # Rashood marries Shakira and makes her a Lt-Commander. She joins him on the first ship. They almost sink a fishing trawler by getting caught in its nets. They head for Alaska going north of the Aleutian islands. # They send cruise missiles at Valdez and destroy an oil port. They head south for Graham Island and frogmen to cause two major breaks in an oil pipe. They head south and destroy an oil refinery and fuel farm at Grays Harbor with more cruise missiles. # The Russians tell the Americans they sold the first submarine to the Chinese. They imply the second one was stripped for parts. # They fire more missiles at Lompoc Power Station. The second submarine arrives at Petropavlosk. # They enter the Panama Canal which is controlled by the Chinese who then close the canal. The personnel are spotted by three American tourists who are killed as they abandon the submarine. # Morgan sends SEALs to blow up a lock gate. The water released smashes the next gate. The lake drops and reveals the empty submarine. *Epilogue. USA takes over the Panama canal. Rashood has escaped to fight another day.
14321313	/m/03d0gjd	Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky	Connie Lapallo	2006		 The story begins with Joan's early memories, and her first marriage. Her husband dies, and she marries Will Peirce. Together they make the decision to cross the sea and live in Jamestown, leaving Joan's daughter Cecily behind until she is old enough to earn the right to her own land. Joan and her younger daughter, Jane, are placed on a different ship than Will, where she meets Elizabeth, her highly irritable neighbor, and Maggie, a kind, cheerful woman. The ship sails through a hurricane, causing the ships to become separated. The ship eventually lands at Jamestown, where the settlers are already struggling. Maggie, Elizabeth, and Tempie share a house with Joan and Jane, and they work together to survive disease, starvation, and attack.
14321791	/m/03d0g_l	101 Ways to Bug Your Teacher		2005-07-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story opens with Sneeze, Hiccup, Goldie, Ace, and Pierre working on their Egyptian history projects. Their teacher, Ms. Pierce, has an unusual way of assigning punishments to her students: "the death roll". His parents tell him that he is going to skip the 8th grade and go straight to high school. Sneeze doesn't want to leave his friends so he makes a list of things to do to bug teachers. When Hayley confronts him, he kisses her smack on the lips. Sneeze enters the Inventors Club, and his mom has a baby named Alyssa Marie Wyatt, who inherits his allergies.
14322147	/m/03d0hd0	One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night	Christopher Brookmyre	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gavin Hutchinson, purveyor of non-threatening holidays to the British masses has organised a reunion for his old school classmates. The reunion will take place on his latest project - a unique "floating holiday experience" on a converted North Sea oil rig, a haven for tourists who want a vacation in the sun but without the hassle of actually interacting with any foreigners. And what better way to test out his venture than to host a fifteenth-year high school reunion, the biggest social event of his life... except no one remembers who Gavin is. Gavin may have been a non-entity while at school in Auchenlea but now he's made his fortune, he's looking forward to lording it over his old classmates, especially now he's having an affair with Catherine O'Rourke, PR specialist and one-time pin-up for his male classmates at St Michael's. Meanwhile Gavin's wife, who as 'Simone Draper' remains much more memorable to those from Auchenlea than her husband, is fed up with his philandering and aims to use the evening to publicly embarrass Gavin by announcing her plans to take the twins and leave him. Intent on ruining Gavin's evening, she's also added two extra names to the guest list - Hollywood star, famous comedian (and the recently suicidal) Matt Black, as well as class bampot, though now reformed artist, David "Dilithium Dave" Murdoch. As the ex-classmates gather on the almost finished holiday resort, currently moored off the coast of Scotland, little do they know that a troop of would be "soldiers of fortune" have been contracted to hit the rig for some blackmail action. The group of mercenaries (mostly recruited from the minimum wage end of the labour market, and already reduced in number due to some experiments with a rocket launcher) are made up of a variety of ex-terrorists from Ulster and Africa mixed in with a few professionals and to say they're not getting on well is a bit of an understatement...
14328220	/m/0hzr3r6	My Legendary Girlfriend	Mike Gayle	1998	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Meet Will Kelly. English teacher. Film fan. King of sandwich construction. Still in love with The One, desperately searching for An-Other One. In his decrepit flat, Will's lifeline is the telephone. There's Alice (who remembers his birthday), Simon (who doesn't), Martina (the one-night stand), Kate (the previous tenant of his rented Archway fleapit) and of course Aggi - the inimitable Aggi. His Legendary Girlfriend. Or is she? Two men, three women and a donkey called Sandy... basically it's your classic love hexagon.
14329460	/m/03d0ptf	Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall	Amy Chua	2007-10		 The book discusses examples of "hyperpowers" throughout human history. Chua describes in rough chronological order the hyperpowers, from the Achaemenid Persian Empire to the British Empire, with reflections on the United States of America as a hyperpower. The empires of Rome, the Tang, the Mongols and the Dutch provide examples of successful hegemonies, while the failures of imperial Spain, Nazi Germany and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere counterpoint them. Chua argues that preconditions for hyperpower status include tolerance of ethnic divisions, and that preconditions for its loss include either a growing intolerance by the traditional ruling élites or a failure to "glue" together the subject peoples into an overarching identity.
14335797	/m/04g4gp	The Alchemist	Donna Boyd	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 The Alchemist follows the journey of an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago. Santiago, believing a recurring dream to be prophetic, decides to travel to a gypsy in a nearby town to discover its meaning. She tells him that there is a treasure in the Pyramids in Egypt. Early into his journey, he meets an old king, Melchizedek, who tells him to sell his sheep to travel to Egypt, and his Personal Legend: what he always wanted to accomplish in his life. And that "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." This is the core philosophy and motto of the book. Along the way, he encounters love, danger, opportunity, disaster and learns a lot about himself and the ways of the world. During his travels, he meets a beautiful Arabian woman named Fatima who explains to him that if he follows his heart, he shall find what it is he seeks. Santiago then encounters a lone alchemist who tells about personal legends. He says that people only want to find the treasure of their personal legends but not the personal legend itself. He feels unsure about himself as he listens to the alchemist's teachings. The alchemist states "Those who don't understand their personal legends will fail to comprehend its teachings." It also states that treasure is more worthy than gold.
14339747	/m/0gw537	The Clue in the Old Stagecoach	Carolyn Keene	1960	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy searches for an antique stagecoach that, according to legend, contains something of great value to the people of Francisville.
14342236	/m/03d1298	Helmet for My Pillow	Robert Leckie		{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Beginning with boot camp in MCRD Parris Island, South Carolina, the story follows Leckie through basic training and then to New River, North Carolina where he is briefly stationed, and follows him to the Pacific. Leckie is assigned to the 1st Marine Division and is deployed to Guadalcanal, northern Australia, New Guinea, Cape Gloucester, before being evacuated with wounds from the island of Peleliu. Helmet for My Pillow is told from an enlisted man's point of view; a reprint edition stated the book was about "the booze, the brawling, the loving on 72-hour liberty, the courageous fighting and dying in combat as the U.S. Marines slugged it out, inch by inch, across the Pacific."
14342758	/m/03d12_n	Monsieur	Lawrence Durrell	1974	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the first section, "Outremer," Bruce Drexel is returning to Provence after learning of his lover / brother-in-law's suicide. His wife is institutionalized and has been for some time, and he revisits Avignon with his friend Toby while attending to the necessary funeral arrangements and reminiscing about his life with Piers and Sylvie. He recalls stylistically rich winter scenes when the three were first in love, as well as a novel written about them by Robin Sutcliffe. The second chapter, "Macabru," recounts Bruce, Piers, and Sylvie's journey into Egypt where they meet Akkad, who initiates them into a Gnostic cult. Akkad takes them to Macabru in the desert in order to explain the group's rituals. There is an extended journey on the Nile in this section that parallels a later journey on the Rhone in Livia. "Sutcliffe, or the Venetian Documents" presents a new narrator, which renders the previous materials fictional, unless this is another fiction. Sutcliffe has various misadventures in Venice and recalls his failed marriage to Pia, Bruce's sister. "Life with Toby" returns to Bruce and Toby in Avignon discussing a theory about the Knights Templar that returns to the Gnostic theme; this section is interrupted by another text in "The Green Notebook," which returns to Sutcliffe. Monsieur was initially composed in a green notebook, and "A Green Notebook" consists largely of the unrevised notes that preceded the novel. This section becomes highly fragmentary. "Dinner at Quartilla's" is the last section of the novel and introduces another author, Blanford, who is writing a book in which Sutcliffe is a character. He dines with his friend, the old Duchess Tu, who is actually long dead. The novel ends with an Envoi that gives a continuing list of who begat whom throughout the novel but without a final resolution.
14348829	/m/03d18yb	Penny from Heaven	Jennifer L. Holm	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book is set in New Jersey in the year 1953. Protagonist Penny Falucci is an eleven-year-old girl who lives with her widowed mother and grandparents. Since the death of Penny's father, Mrs. Falucci shuns her big Italian-American family, but she won't give Penny a good reason. Penny loves that side of the family and spends as much time with them as she can. After an accident that puts her in the hospital for several weeks, Penny learns the truth about her father, his death, and how it tore apart the two halves of her family. Penny's mother won't let her go to the movies or the pool, for fear of her catching polio. Her favorite uncle is living in a car and on top of it all, her mother is dating the milkman, Mr. Mulligan. In the end, Mulligan professes his love for Penny's mother after Penny agrees on his marriage to her mother,and they get married after Penny's terrible accident. She ends up living as a "normal" twelve-year-old in New Jersey.
14354699	/m/03d1gfx	The Maytrees	Annie Dillard	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Literate Provincetown bohemians Toby and Lou Maytree meet and marry, have a son, and begin to grow old before Toby decides to leave for Maine to build a new life with a family friend. Toby and Lou remain estranged as the book follows both characters through life's progress: Lou raises their son and Toby and Deary develop a successful business. When Deary falls ill and Toby loses his ability to care for her, the families are reunited.
14356271	/m/03d1hx_	Trapped in the USSR		1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Richard Duffy promised Stephen an uneventful week when the latter's parents went for a week-long trip to Clearwater, Florida, for business. Reasoning if they were not home, they would not receive emergency phone calls or visitors asking for help, the uncle-nephew duo went out for dinner. Yet barely a block from their residence, they were surrounded by 4 heavy-set men who forced them into a limousine, driven directly to an airport runway and made to board a waiting plane, bypassing all normal customs, immigration and security channels. They were flown to Estonia, and transferred to a submarine where a past adversary of Richard, Igor Borisov of the KGB, forced Richard to carry out a secret investigation into a plot by Soviet officials in the highest circle. Igor selected Richard because he could trust few people, and one of his own reliable men had been killed recently. In order to get himself and Stephen safely home, Richard had to agree, and even had to work with the beautiful Natasha Golovina whom Richard had outmanoeuvred in the past in Paris. To make things worse, Stephen had to mention Michelle LeBlanc whom he met in the previous story Pursuit of the Deadly Diamonds, arousing Natasha's jealousy. Convinced too that the plot Igor was facing was a threat to his own country and the world as a whole, they undertook feverish trips across the USSR, from Leningrad, to Moscow, to Tashkent, Bratsk, and finally, Odessa. Their assignment was to steal vital documents kept by five men identified as being chief conspirators in the plot.
14362754	/m/03d1q0_	Crow Lake	Mary Lawson	2002		 The death of their parents, when Kate is 7 years old, Bo a toddler, and her brothers in their late teens, threatens the family with dispersal and seems to spell the end of their parents' dream that they should all have a college education. Luke, the oldest but not the most academic, gives up a place at a teachers college in order to look after the two youngest and allow Matt, academically brilliant and idolised by Kate, to complete his schooling and compete for university scholarships. This sacrifice leads to much tension between the brothers. Both work intermittently for a neighbouring family, the Pyes, who for several generations have suffered from fierce conflicts between fathers and sons. In the final crisis, Matt, after winning his scholarships, discovers that he has made the meek and distressed daughter of the Pye household, Marie, pregnant; she also reveals that her father, Calvin Pye, has killed her brother, who was thought to have run away from home as several other Pye sons had done. Calvin Pye kills himself, and Matt has to give up his plans for education to marry Marie. Kate sees the loss of Matt's potential academic career as a terrible sacrifice, and is unable to come to terms with Marie or Matt thereafter. The dénouement of the adult Kate's story comes when she returns to Crow Lake for Matt and Marie's son's eighteenth birthday, introducing Daniel to her family for the first time. In the course of this visit, she is made to realise - first by Marie and then by Daniel - that Matt's loss though real was not the total tragedy she had always considered it, and that it is her sense of it as tragic that has destroyed her relationship with him. The book ends with her struggling to come to terms with this view of their past and present relationships; the struggle is left unresolved but the final tone is optimistic. The book is essentially a double Bildungsroman, in that the development of both Matt and Kate is charted; but whereas we see the key events in Matt's young adulthood more or less in sequence, the key events in Kate's are sketched in from both ends, towards a crisis that in terms of events is Matt's but psychologically is more significant for Kate. The mixture of perspectives involved in Kate's story allows the author to relate violent events and highly charged emotions in a smooth and elegant style, a quality for which the book has been widely praised by reviewers.
14366123	/m/03d1rq7	Mara, Daughter of the Nile	Eloise McGraw	1953	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Living in ancient Egypt, Mara is a slave under the rule of Queen Hatshepsut, living(or surviving) in Menfe. Mara is not like other slaves; she can read and write, as well as speak the language of Babylonian. She also, oddly enough, has bright blue eyes. Struggling daily to find a way out of her wretched life as a slave Mara takes secret visits to the marketplace, behind her cruel master's back. On one such trip, Mara is observed by two men, Nahereh and Sheftu, who both note her intelligence. The first man, Nahereh, appears shortly afterwards to buy her from her master and offers Mara an escape from her life: if she will serve him and the Queen as a spy and accomplish her mission, he promises her riches and freedom, but death, if she is found out. Mara accepts the task and she spies for the queen. The second man, Sheftu, appears on a boat as she makes her way to the golden palace of pharaoh in Thebes to spy. He thinks that Mara is only a runaway slave, nothing else. He tells her that he will not turn her in as long as she will deliver a message to Thutmose and work for him as a messenger to carry plans for coming rebellion. Mara enjoys her life at court so much that she decides to play both sides. She carries messages for Sheftu and throws small bits of information to her new master, Lord Nahereh. But unwillingly she finds herself tangled more and more in her own web, as she discovers that she is falling in love with Sheftu (as he falls in love with her). When Sahure, a juggler at the Falcon Inn where the rebels meet, turns spy for the Queen's men, Mara is found out by both sides. Despite Sheftu's attempt to kill her, she returns to warn him and his followers of the raid that will go down at their meeting place. While waiting for her warning to be heeded, the soldiers of pharoh come. Mara waits in the shadows to make certain everyone escaped and to find her own chance at escaping, but is captured by the soldiers. She is taken to the palace for interrogation, but continues to claim not to know the leader, despite the harsh beating and the offers of freedom and riches. Sheftu has in the meantime heard of what has been going on, he tries to rescue her, but is identified as the leader of the rebellion by Sahure. But he has been working well the last years and by now most of the priests, the nobles and the entire army are on his side and storm the palace. The rebellion is successful, Hatshepsut is allowed to die by her own hand by ingesting poison provided by Thutmose, and Mara and Sheftu end happily coupled.
14368738	/m/03d1tmr	Trullion: Alastor 2262	Jack Vance	1973	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Glinnes Hulden returns to Trullion after ten years of service in the Whelm, the Connatic's military force. Glinnes' older brother Shira is missing, so being an hour older than his sullen twin brother Glay, he finds himself the owner of the family holdings. However, while he was away, Glay had sold a choice island to an off-worlder, Lute Casagave. Glinnes wants the land back, but cannot come up with the 12,000 ozols, since Glay had already spent the proceeds. After an argument, Glay moves out. His mother also leaves, to go live with Akadie, a professional consultant and mentor. Glinnes evicts a Trevanyi family invited by Glay to camp on Hulden land. Later, they take revenge by ambushing him, robbing him of his life savings and leaving him unconscious for the merlings to kill. Fortunately, he wakes up before that can happen. Glinnes learns that the local, somewhat-impoverished aristocrat, Lord Gensifer, is recruiting a professional team to play hussade. The object is to grasp the golden ring attached to the clothing of the other team's sheirl, who must be a virgin. A ransom is paid and play resumes, but when a team runs out of funds, the ring is pulled and the sheirl's clothing falls away in full view of the spectators. Seeing an opportunity to earn the ozols he needs, Glinnes joins the "Gorgons". However, Gensifer insists on being the team captain. Several matches show that he is exceptionally inept; Glinnes and the rest of the better players quit in disgust. Their last opponent, the "Tanchineros", is a team whose strengths match the weaknesses of the Gorgons and vice versa. Glinnes and his fellow Gorgons are recruited, and a strong team is born. Duissane, a member of the Trevanyi family Glinnes evicted, agrees to be their sheirl. The new Tanchineros are successful immediately, winning and playing ever-better teams for more money. Finally, Glinnes half-jokingly challenges Lord Gensifer to a match. Surprisingly, Gensifer accepts. Gensifer unveils a whole new team for the match, an excellent touring team from off-world, but the Tanchineros are prepared. The teams are evenly matched, except in one respect: in his vanity, Gensifer has taken over as captain. The Tanchineros take advantage of this weakness. However, as Glinnes is grasping the opposing sheirl's gold ring for the final time, a notorious starmenter (space pirate) named Sagmondo Bandolio seizes the stadium and kidnaps three hundred of the wealthiest spectators for ransom, as well as several hundred women for other, darker purposes. Glinnes escapes with both sheirls. They hide out on a deserted island. One sheirl is grateful for her rescue, but Duissane is disgusted and leaves in the boat. The remaining sheirl suggests that perhaps Duissane is in love with Glinnes. When they are finally rescued, Glinnes learns that Akadie has been assigned to collect the enormous ransom demanded. Glinnes reluctantly agrees to hold onto it when Akadie fears being robbed. Duissane spends the night with Glinnes, believing that he will steal the money and take her off-world to live a life of luxury. However, Glinnes had, out of curiosity, already opened the package and found worthless papers inside; Akadie had apparently used him as a decoy. Duissane leaves, extremely distraught by this revelation. After she has gone, Glinnes notices that the ransom was actually hidden under the papers. Akadie picks up the money and gives it to Bandolio's man. Shortly afterwards, the Whelm finds Bandolio's hideout and captures him, but the ransom is not found and many suspect that Akadie still has it. Glinnes, through diligent investigation, finds the money in a locker. The courier was killed before he could deliver it, apparently by the inside man who arranged the mass kidnapping with Bandolio. Glinnes also deduces the identity of Bandolio's partner. Rhyl Shermatz, a self-styled "wandering journalist," turns out to be an important government official. Glinnes convinces him to bring Bandolio to Lord Gensifer's wedding to Duissane. While there, he encounters Lute Casagave. When Bandolio gleefully identifies him as a retired, rival starmenter, Glinnes unexpectedly gets back his island. However, he is not the man Glinnes came to unmask. That turns out to be the groom. Gensifer flees, but tumbles into the water and falls victim to the merlings. Shermatz (in reality the Connatic) strongly suspects that Glinnes has the ransom, but has no strong motivation to pursue the issue. Everyone else believes the money is lost for good. Duissane, her plans derailed once again, wanders away disconsolate. Glinnes follows her.
14372780	/m/03d1yw8	Journey to Atlantis		1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Unlike previous adventures, this novel was unique in that Stephen Lane's parents was not away from their New York home during the story, and they knew that Stephen and his uncle Richard Duffy would be away. Richard had received an invitation from an old friend, the Greek Constantine Andropolis, to stay at the Greek's new villa outside Athens. Over dinner, he proposed a week's trip with Stephen, suggesting that it would be helpful to Stephen's history education. As it was school term, Stephen would have to write a field report, but it also meant low season air fares, which persuaded Mr. Lane to agree. When Stephen questioned Richard privately, he was surprised that it was really meant as a pleasure trip and there was no mission awaiting them in Greece. Nonetheless, even before they touched down in Greece, they found their flight hijacked by a gang calling itself Hellenic Alliance to Terminate Exploitation (HATE). Following a daring rescue by Greek authorities when the hijackers forced the plane to land at airport of Iraklion in Crete, the uncle-nephew duo found their rescuer was none other than Constantine, who was supposed to be their host. Richard had conveniently omitted mentioning that Constantine was also head of Interpol dealing with art and artefact smuggling. When Constantine requested them to help him infiltrate a suspicious archaeological project, the uncle-nephew duo could not say no. Constantine had an undercover agent with the project taking place on a fictional uninhabited island named Ionia, made off-limits during the dig. The agent had managed to report treasure was found before radio contact went dead. Richard volunteered to go as an archaeologist to investigate. During their adventure, the uncle-nephew duo were menaced by greedy treasure hunters, terrorists as well as a beautiful but double-dealing woman.
14385302	/m/03d24nd	Boot Camp	Todd Strasser	2007	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the middle of the night, fifteen year old garrett is kidnapped and sent to a boot camp in upstate New York called Lake Harmony. Upon his arrival, he learns that his parents have sent him to the facility because he refused to stop dating his former math teacher, Sabrina, along with other things including staying out too late, and smoking marijuana. Garrett does not believe he belongs at Lake Harmony, but he is not allowed to leave until he has admitted his "mistakes" and conforms to the facility's standards of behavior. Staff members are authorized to use "any force necessary" to alter his behavior, including physical and psychological abuse. After attempting to talk his way out with no success, he realizes escape is his only option. He escapes Lake Harmony with two friends, Pauly and Sarah, after using chemicals to start a fire. They reach the Canadian border to escape from legal recapture, and their pursuers' boat begins to sink. He lets his friends out on the other side of the border, and then rescues his pursuers, who bring him back to Lake Harmony, where he is beaten senseless repeatedly. The director announces that all campers are being demoted, based on the privilege system they use, and to blame Garrett, so he is beaten yet again by the campers. Ultimately, he is "reformed". When his mother comes to pick him up with an investigator, the investigator asks if he was beaten. He breaks down and says that he was, but is still scared of what Lake Harmony would do to him. This forced him to say that he deserved all of it, since the director was standing there. It is possible that these events caused him to suffer from PTSD, as he appears to suffer from a mental breakdown when admitting what has occurred.
14389105	/m/03d2884	The Cry of the Owl	Patricia Highsmith		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Following a painful divorce from his wife Nickie, Robert Forester leaves New York and moves to a small Pennsylvania town, where he develops an obsession with the seemingly happy, 23-year old Jenny Thierolf. As a way of easing his own discontent with life, he begins spying on her through her kitchen window, and is surprised when she invites him into her house after spotting him one night. Jenny sees their chance meeting as an act of fate, and breaks off the engagement to her hot-tempered fiancé Greg Wyncoop. During the next weeks, Jenny in turn goes after Robert, contacting him at his home and the company he works at. Robert is offered a promotion at work (which will require him to move to another city), and he hopes this will put an end to Jenny's advances, which he is feeling increasingly uneasy about. One night, Greg starts a fight with Robert, which ends in Greg being knocked unconscious and left on a river bank by Robert. Soon afterwards, Greg is reported missing, with Robert becoming a suspect for the police. Also, Robert's ex-wife Nickie tells the police that Robert once threatened her with a weapon. After a newspaper article on the case appears, Robert's promotion is withdrawn. A badly decomposed body is found in the river which the police believe to be Greg's, but the identification proves to be difficult. The fragile relationship between Robert and Jenny deteriorates quickly, and finally Jenny commits suicide after coming to the conclusion that Robert's appearance in her life symbolizes her death. Nickies new husband Ralph informs Robert that Greg's disappearance is actually a plot of Greg and Nickie against him. Later, Robert is shot at by Greg (severely wounding another person instead). Greg is arrested by the police but released. In a final confrontation between Robert, Greg and Nickie, Nickie is accidentally killed when Greg tries to knife Robert. Again, Robert is a suspect in an apparent crime scene.
14389252	/m/03d28cl	Hope for the Flowers			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It all starts when Stripe, the main character, first hatches from an egg. He begins his life by eating the leaf he was born on. He realizes that there must be "more" to life than just eating leaves. He senses there must be a way to get up into the sky. He searches for a way and finds himself at the base of a pillar made up of caterpillars. They are all struggling to get up into the sky as well. Here he meets Yellow who also wants to get up into the sky by climbing to the top of the pillar. But she feels bad about what must be done to achieve this goal. You have to literally step on and climb over all the other caterpillars who are also trying to reach the top of the pillar. The two of them eventually decide to stop climbing and go back down the pillar. They live together for awhile. But Stripe's curiosity and unrest overcome him and he decides that he must get to the top of the pillar. Stripe says good-bye to Yellow. He focuses, adapts, and drives to reach the top, and eventually he succeeds at being on the top of the caterpillar pillar. This results in disillusionment, as he takes in a vast vista of other caterpillar pillars. Is this all there is at the top? He has not really gotten in to the sky. He just has a view of other caterpillars struggling to reach the top of their respective caterpillar pillars. Yellow, however, has followed her instincts, continues to eat and then spins a cocoon. She eventually emerges from the cocoon transformed into a butterfly and flies into the sky effortlessly. She has found the real answer to the feeling that there must be more to life than eating leaves, and who caterpillars really are. She is waiting for the disillusioned Stripe as he descends the pillar and eventually reaches the ground again. She shows Stripe her empty cocoon, and he eventually realizes what he needs to do. Stripe makes a cocoon of his own. Yellow waits for him. Stripe emerges transformed into a butterfly, and they fly off together.
14390472	/m/03d29b5	The Appeal	John Grisham	2008-01-29	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Mississippi attorneys Wes and Mary Grace Payton have battled New York City-based Krane Chemical in an effort to seek justice for their client Jeannette Baker, who lost her husband and young son to cancer likely caused by carcinogenic pollutants the company knowingly and negligently allowed to seep into the town of Bowmore's water supply. When the jury awards the plaintiff $3 million in wrongful death damages and $38 million in punitive damages, billionaire CEO Carl Trudeau vows to do whatever is necessary to overturn their decision and save his company's stocks. Since Mississippi Supreme Court justices are elected rather than appointed, Trudeau plots with Barry Rinehart of Troy-Hogan, a Boca Raton firm that specializes in elections and does secret deals off shore, to select a candidate who can defeat Sheila McCarthy, known for her tendency to side with the underdog. Their choice is Ron Fisk, a lawyer with no prior political experience or ambitions. He is naive enough to be impressed by all the attention shown him by his backers and not question the source of the considerable funds pouring into his coffers or the underhanded tactics used by his campaign team. Also thrown into the ring by Rinehart is heavy-drinking gambler Clete Coley, a clownish rogue third candidate designed to make McCarthy think her campaign will be easy, draw support away from her, and then cede it to Fisk when he eventually withdraws from the race. Fisk defeats McCarthy and immediately adopts the position expected of him. He votes against upholding several large settlements in cases brought before the court on appeal, and the Paytons expect he will do the same when their case comes up for review. What they don't anticipate is Fisk unexpectedly being forced to rethink his stand when his son is seriously injured by the impact of a defective product and left permanently impaired by a medical error. The issue of corporate responsibility affects him and his family on a personal level. However, even though Fisk feels that he has been used and tricked, he makes no move to do what is right, and has come to relish his new-found wealth and power. He sides with the big corporation and does not take any action for what happened to his son because he would "look silly."
14390890	/m/03d29ls	Hicksville				 Canadian writer Leonard Batts arrives in the tiny New Zealand town of Hicksville to research the early life of Dick Burger, whose work has taken the comic book industry by storm. He finds that Hicksville is a town in which everyone from the postman to the farmer is an expert on comics, yet everyone seems to hate Burger. The novel explores the machinations of the comic book industry, and contains a fictionalized account of the history of mainstream American comics, with particular attention paid to the era of Image Comics. Most of the characters are comic creators, and many of their strips are reproduced in full as part of the story, most notably Sam Zabel's extensive account of moving to Los Angeles in order to work with Burger, which he documents in his self published comic Pickle. Horrocks has said of the book: "It's a story about comics—their history and poetry—and also about what we New Zealanders call 'tūrangawaewae'—having a place to stand in the world—a kind of spiritual home. Hicksville is my way of creating such a home for comics."
14392845	/m/03d2c1j	Death of a Colonial	Bruce Cook	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A nobleman, last of his line, is executed and the crown prepares to seize his property. But a claimant to the estate appears, ostensibly from the American colonies, and Sir John is asked to investigate the validity of his claim.
14396032	/m/03d2dlp	Heroes: Saving Charlie	Aury Wallington		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel takes place during the first season, and chronicles the activities of Hiro Nakamura, a young man with the ability to stop time and experience time travel, after he transports himself back in time (as seen in the episode "Six Months Ago") in hopes of saving the life of Charlene "Charlie" Andrews, a waitress with enhanced memory, with whom Hiro has fallen in love, but who is destined to die at the hands of super-powered serial killer, Sylar.
14399548	/m/03d2ft5	I Know What You Did Last Summer	Lois Duncan	1973-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In an unnamed town, high school senior Julie James receives a sinister note from an elusive stalker telling her, "I Know What You Did Last Summer", referring to the previous year when Julie, her boyfriend Ray Bronson, Ray's best friend Barry Cox and Barry's girlfriend, Helen Rivers, accidentally killed a young boy named David Gregg after driving home from a party in the mountains to celebrate Ray and Barry's high school graduation. The four made a vow to never mention it to anyone, and drifted apart, Barry going to the local college, Helen dropping out of school, Ray taking off for California and Julie continuing to attend school. Fearful, Julie visits Helen, and informs her about the note. Barry is called but he assures the girls it is a prank and nothing more, as if anyone did know about their crime, they would inform the authorities and not write notes. The girls buy it, and Ray returns home to Julie, but is disheartened when she reveals she is now dating a man named Bud, and no longer wants to continue their relationship. It is revealed that shortly after the night of the incident, Helen was chosen via a beauty contest to be the Channel Five Golden Girl, meaning she would be the studio's new television personality, much to the fury of Elsa, her sullen, envious and unattractive elder sister. At the Four Seasons, a luxury apartment complex where she lives, Helen is suntanning when she meets a boy, Collingsworth "Collie" Wilson, just out of the army. After she is done talking to Collie, she goes to her apartment and finds a magazine cut out of a boy riding a bicycle taped to the door. Meanwhile, Ray is at his house and finds that he has been sent a newspaper clipping though the mail about the boy he, Barry, Helen, and Julie had killed last summer, David Gregg. In the article, it is revealed that his parents are Mr. and Mrs. Michael Gregg. Afterwords, the book takes the reader into a memory of Ray's, in which his father commented on his life; about having a popular football friend (Barry) and a cheerleader girlfriend (Julie) and Ray's father first meeting Barry. Ray then painfully remembers about the day it in which they ran over David Gregg and then called for help from a phone booth. On Memorial Day, Barry receives a call. After he hangs up, he walks out of the University frat house where he leaves to meet the person who had called him. As it is dark, he does not see too well and is shot. When Ray finds out, he calls St. Joseph's Hospital to ask how Barry is doing. He is told that Barry is in surgery. Helen finds out about Barry being shot when she is in the TV studio. When Collie finds out about Barry he immediately goes to the studio to pick up Helen and take her to the hospital. When they reach the hospital, Helen and Collie are sent away by Barry's mother, who accuses Helen of calling Barry and getting him shot. After Julie finds out, she receives a phone call from Ray asking if they could discuss what has been happening. She agrees to go with him. During the discussion the only thing the agree on is the shooter is not Helen. Then Julie suggests going to the Gregg's house to see if it is one of David's family members who is coming after them. After a little debating, Ray agrees to go. When Ray and Julie get to the house, they use the excuse they had car trouble to get in the house. Megan Gregg lets them in. Ray goes to her kitchen and fakes making a call while Julie talks to Megan. While Julie and Megan talk, it is revealed that Megan is David Gregg's sister. Megan also says that her mother broke down after David's death and was sent to a hospital in Las Lunas. Her father moved to be close to her mother. To comfort her, Julie reveals she had lost her father at a young age. After Ray is done making his fake call, Ray and Julie leave. When they get back to the car, Julie confirms it obviously wasn't the Gregg family after them and tells Ray what she found out. They decide to go to Helen's apartment and tell her what they had learned from Megan. Elsa is at the apartment, tormenting Helen about the attack on Barry and reluctantly leaves after Julie and Ray arrive. Julie suggests it may be Elsa responsible for the threats and the shooting, as she has always resented Helen, and may have learned about it by accident, as Helen used to share a room with her. Ray calls the Cox family at the hospital. He finds out that since Barry was shot in the spine, he has paralysis and it may be permanent. Ray then goes to the hospital and sneaks in to see Barry. While there, Ray tries to talk Barry into dissolving the pact of keeping the accident a secret. After Barry says no and lies that the shooting was a robbery and nothing to do with the accident, Ray leaves the hospital. Barry, however, thinks back to the night of the shooting, where he was lured out by an anonymous caller that supposedly had photographic evidence of the accident and would give the photos to Barry in exchange for money. Barry fell for it, agreed to meet the anonymous person at the University athletic field, and was shot. On the way out of the hospital, Ray sees Bud and they decide to go have coffee together. While they talk over coffee, Ray says that he will get Julie back. Bud challenges him then says Julie will not go to Smith because of him. Later, Helen unexpectedly meets Collie in her apartment, who solemnly reveals himself to be David's older brother. He, darkly remembering, tells Helen that he was the one that shot Barry and is the one that left the picture on her door. He then tells her that he is going to kill her and the girl he is going out with later tonight. Panicking, she immediately runs to the bathroom and locks the door. When Collie begins to take the door off the hinges so that he can get in, Helen breaks the glass of the bathroom window and desperately escapes. Julie prepares to go on a date with Bud, but then decides not to when her mother says she is worried and would like her to stay home. When she tells Bud, he convinces her to at least walk him to his car so they can talk. To Julie, Buds seems impatient and she realizes that she has never seen him act so angry. She remembers the first moment she saw Ray, after he came back from California, and realizes she doesn't want to date Bud anymore because she will always have feelings for Ray. When they get to Bud's car, he reveals that his name is really Collingsworth Wilson and that he was David Gregg's half brother. He tells Julie that he found out who had run down his little brother by asking a man who sold Julie the flowers she sent to David's funeral. He then starts to choke her. Julie is to the point of passing out when Ray saves her by beating Bud (Collie) with a flashlight. When the paramedics show up, they tell Julie and Ray about Helen's accident. Helen sent them to Julie's house, saying there would be someone trying to kill her. Julie then asks Ray how he knew of Bud intending to kill her and he tells her that Barry called him earlier and released him from the pact. After the phone call, he realized who Bud was. Then Julie asks Ray why Bud never tried to hurt him. Ray answers, "He did, tonight. He knew the worst thing for me would be to stay alive in a world without you."
14407897	/m/03d2ljs	La Petite Fadette	George Sand	1849		 The novel takes place in the French 19th century countryside. The parents of Landry and Sylvinet, identical twins, who are respectable and relatively rich farmers, do not follow the advice that was given at their birth to keep separating and differentiating them while they are still young. Consequently, they grow up always together and loving each other more than anything else. They are actually quite different, Landry being stronger both physically and mentally. But when they are 14 years old, one has to leave to work in a neighbouring farm. While the separation is also very hard for Landry, his pride makes him try to hide it, contrary to Sylvinet who cries and is very demonstrative. Sylvinet does not understand and therefore is hurt by Landry's cold attitude and regularly sulks. When looking for his brother, Landry must deal with Fadette. Fadette lives with her disabled and mentally slow brother and her grandmother who is very hard on them. They are despised by the other villagers because they are considered as witches and are always very dirty. This day, Fadette helps Landry to find his brother but he had to promise her that if she has to help him a second time, she could ask him to do anything she wants. And it happens that Landry needs her advice again to cross a river. Consequently, Fadette asks him to dance with her and only with her at the next village celebration. Landry is very annoyed since she has a bad reputation and besides, he wanted to dance with Madelon, a popular girl he is interested in. However, he reluctantly keeps his promise and even defends Fadette against boys who were bothering her. Touched and ashamed, she tells Landry to dance with whomever he wants and leaves the party. However, Landry goes after her and hears her crying. They then have a deep discussion for a long time in the dark and Landry realises that she is a very kind, sensible, intelligent and respectable person. He even wants to kiss her but she refuses, telling him that he will regret it the next day. And she was right. The day after, Landry, remembering her dirty face, does not understand how he could have felt such an attraction for her. But soon after, he overhears a conversation between Fadette and Madelon that shows how the first one is kind and humble and the other girl is vain and proud, which revives his feelings for her. Fadette and Landry later are engaged in a secret relationship. Sylvinet is aware that something is different with his brother and suffers a lot. He discovers their secret but keeps it to himself. But when Madelon finds out, she spreads the news in the village. Everyone including Landry's parents are shocked and urges him to end the relationship. Landry refuses but Fadette decides to leave to stop the scandal. Some time after, Landry also has to leave since he thinks that being separated would do his brother good. When Fadette comes back, she has become a respectable, clean and good-looking person. Thanks to her grandmother's death, she inherits a large amount of money and is able to look after herself and her brother properly. Everyone in the village finally acknowledges her merits and Landry's parents approve of their engagement. But jealousy again makes Sylvinet ill. Although he initially refuses to see Fadette, she actually manages to cure him and he finally accepts her... and even more since he decides at the end of the book to enlist, after his brother marries Fadette. Although Landry is unaware of it, their mother and probably Fadette realised that Sylvinet had fallen in love with her and did not want to obscure Landry's happiness.
14409494	/m/03d2n2_	Enter a Free Man	Tom Stoppard			 George is determined to follow his unrealistic dreams, despite the fact that his behavior becomes a problem for his wife Persephone and his daughter Linda. He even has to borrow money from his daughter, money which he spends at the local pub. George believes he has found a great new idea in reusable envelopes, but of course his plans do not come to fruition. He continues to put his family under pressure just as his daughter has begun searching for her own independence in the form of men. While George threatens to leave and Linda tries, the play concludes with everyone in the same position in which they had begun the story. Stoppard implies that perhaps this is actually, for all of its pitfalls, the best situation.
14411471	/m/03d2q8x	Mahars of Pellucidar	John Eric Holmes	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 West is an associate of Dr. Kinsley, who has developed a teleportation beam that can also see events taking place 200 miles below the surface. When they see people about to sacrifice a beautiful woman, Christopher obtains a pocket knife and a red fire axe and has himself beamed down to rescue the woman. Due to his unusual weapon, West becomes known as Red Axe among the stone-age human beings of Pellucidar. The story deals with West's efforts to free his new-found friends from the tyranny of the Mahars. The region visited by West is apparently an area of Pellucidar different from that in which Burroughs set his stories, from which the Mahars were driven at the end of the second book in the series, Pellucidar. Evidently there are other locales in which the reptiles are dominant. Therefore West never runs into any of Burrough's human Pellucidarian characters, such as David Innes, Abner Perry, Dian the Beautiful, Ghak the Hairy One, or any of the others.
14414811	/m/03d2t2n	A Jovial Crew	Richard Brome			 The play's opening scene introduces Oldrents and Hearty, two rural gentlemen and landowners. Oldrents is a generous and warmhearted countryman, who represents the best of the traditional order of England; but he is depressed and pre-occupied with a fortune-teller's prediction, that his two daughters will become beggars. Hearty, a younger and temperamentally more phegmatic man, works to cheer up his neighbor, and Oldrents tries to adopt a lighter demeanor. Oldrent's steward Springlove enters, to present the bookkeeping accounts and the keys of the estate, and to request leave to follow the beggars about the countryside for the spring and summer. Oldrents is unhappy about this: he wants his young steward to behave more conventionally, more like a gentleman &mdash; and offers to furnish him with funds and a servant ("Take horse, and man, and money") for respectable travelling. Yet Springlove rebels at this conventionality. The bird calls of the nightingale and cuckoo call him to vagabondage. (The play's stage directions repeatedly refer to summer birdsong.) As Oldrent's steward, Springlove has been a friend to the local beggars, feeding them generously and furnishing their needs; and once he joins them it turns out that he is something of a leader among them. Oldrents' daughters Rachel and Meriel are shown with their childhood sweethearts and suitors Vincent and Hilliard. The two young women deplore their father's depressed mood, and the staid order of their lives; they long for "liberty." Vincent proposes "a fling to London" to take in the races at Hyde Park, "and see the Adamites run naked afore the Ladies" &mdash; but the young women are determined to go in the opposite direction, and join the "stark, errant, downright beggars." They challenge their suitors to join them, and the young men can hardly refuse; they link up with Springlove's band, and enjoy his protection and guidance. It is their "birthright into a new world." Their initial efforts at the vagabond life are uneven, however; sleeping rough in the straw of a barn is less comfortable than a bed at home. When they try to beg, they employ the elaborate and courtly language they're used to, and ask for ridiculous sums, 5 or 10 or 20 pounds. Yet they persist with the beggars, and the play shows Springlove and his companions in their activities and celebrations. Oldrents is distressed to find that his daughters have left home; but Hearty prevails upon him to persist in his efforts to be cheerful. The plot thickens with the introduction of Amie and Martin. Amie has fled from the home of her uncle and guardian, Justice Clack, to avoid an arranged marriage with the ridiculous Talboy; she is escorted by the justice's clerk Martin, Hearty's nephew. They have disguised themselves in the clothing of the common people, and travelled toward Hearty's country estate &mdash; though they are pursued by Clack's son Oliver and by beadles and other officers. Martin wants to marry Amie himself, though she sours on the idea as she travels with him and learns more of his character. Once Amie meets Springlove, she quickly falls in love with him. Oliver, chasing Amie, meets Rachel and Meriel; he is attracted to them, and propositions them. He also gets into a disagreement with Vincent and Hilliard, which threatens to lead them to the "field of hnour" and a duel. Oliver visits the estate of Oldrents, and makes him aware of the pursuit of Amie &mdash; thereby drawing Oldrents and Hearty into the matter. The pursuing authorities round up many of the beggars and take them into custody, bringing them to Justice Clack. Oldrents and Hearty arrive at Clack's home; the beggars arrange to stage a play for the gentlemen. (As with his earlier The Antipodes, Brome incorporates the metatheatrical device of a play within a play into A Jovial Crew. Brome exploits the traditional equation of "strolling players" with vagabonds, by letting his vagabonds function as actors.) Oldrents is offered a choice of plays, with titles like The Two Lost Daughters, and The Vagrant Steward, and The Beggar's Prophecy. The old man recognizes all of them as versions of his own life, and rejects them, as "a story that I know too well. I'll see none of them." He finally settles on The Merry Beggars &mdash; but that too proves to be a version of his tale. The beggars' playlet reveals that Oldrents' grandfather had taken advantage of a neighbor named Wrought-on, acquiring his land and reducing the man the beggary. The Patrico, the leader of the beggars, turns out to be the grandson of that Wrought-on; he is also the fortune-teller who had given Oldrents the original forecast of his daughters' beggary. And the Patrico also explains Oldrents' strangely strong affection for Springlove: the young beggar/steward is Oldrents' illegitimate son, born of a beggar-woman who was Wrought-on's sister. The family linkage allows the play's reconciliation: Oldrents embraces his son, and restores Wrought-on's property. Rachel and Meriel are ready to leave vagabondage and settle down with Vincent and Hilliard, as Springlove is with Amie. (Martin and Talboy have to reconcile themselves to continued bachelorhood, at least for the present; Hearty assures his nephew Martin that he'll help him find a wife. And the young people agree with Oliver to forget about the potential duel, and about the fact that Oliver propositioned the two Oldrents daughters for twelvepence apiece.) The play's complications yield to a happy ending.
14421004	/m/03d3047	Blood's a Rover	James Ellroy	2009-09-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The book's title is taken from a poem titled "Reveille" by A. E. Housman: Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad; when the journey's over There'll be time enough for sleep. Ellroy&#39;s literary agent, Sobel Weber Associates, posted a brief blurb for Blood's a Rover on its website in September 2008. It mentioned the novel&#39;s three protagonists and briefly outlined some of the novel&#39;s major plot points. These include the reappearance of Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover, FBI infiltration into militant black power groups, Mafia activity in the Dominican Republic, and &#34;voodoo vibe in Haiti.&#34;
14422601	/m/03d31km	Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens	J. M. Barrie	1906	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Peter is a seven-day-old infant who, "like all infants", used to be part bird. Peter has complete faith in his flying abilities, so, upon hearing a discussion of his adult life, he is able to escape out of the window of his London home and return to Kensington Gardens. Upon returning to the Gardens, Peter is shocked to learn from the crow Solomon Caw that he is not still a bird, but more like a humanSolomon says he is crossed between them as a "Betwixt-and-Between". Unfortunately, Peter now knows he cannot fly, so he is stranded in Kensington Gardens. At first, Peter can only get around on foot, but he commissions the building of a child-sized thrush's nest that he can use as a boat to navigate the Gardens by way of the Serpentine, the large lake that divides Kensington Gardens from Hyde Park. Although he terrifies the fairies when he first arrives, Peter quickly gains favor with them. He amuses them with his human ways, and agrees to play the panpipes at the fairy dances. Eventually, Queen Mab grants him the wish of his heart and he decides to return home to his mother. The fairies reluctantly help him to fly home, where he finds his mother is asleep in his old bedroom. Peter feels rather guilty for leaving his mother, mostly because he believes she misses him terribly. He considers returning to live with her, but first decides to go back to the Gardens to say his last good-byes. Unfortunately, Peter stays too long in the Gardens, and, when he uses his second wish to go home permanently, he is devastated to learn that, in his absence, his mother has given birth to another boy she can love. Peter returns, heartbroken, to Kensington Gardens. Peter later meets a little girl named Maimie Mannering, who is lost in the Gardens. He and Maimie become fast friends, and little Peter asks her to marry him. Maimie is going to stay with him, but realizes that her mother must be missing her dreadfully, so she leaves Peter to return home. Maimie does not forget Peter, however, and when she is older, she makes presents and letters for him. She even gives him an imaginary goat which he rides around every night. Maimie is the literary predecessor to the character Wendy Darling in Barrie's later Peter and Wendy story. Throughout the novel, Peter misunderstands simple things like children's games. He does not know what a pram is, mistaking it for an animal, and he becomes extremely attached to a boy's lost kite. It is only when Maimie tells him that he discovers he plays all his games incorrectly. When Peter is not playing, he likes to make graves for the children who get lost at night, burying them with little headstones in the Gardens.
14423014	/m/03d31yn	The Little White Bird	J. M. Barrie	1902	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/078lw_": "Fairytale fantasy"}	 The story is set in several locations; the earlier chapters are set in the town of London, contemporaneous to the time of Barrie's writing, and involving some time travel of a few years, and other fantasy elements, while remaining within the London setting. The middle chapters that later became Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens are set in London's famous Kensington Gardens, introduced by the statement that "All perambulators lead to Kensington Gardens". The Kensington Gardens chapters include detailed descriptions of the features of the Gardens, along with fantasy names given to the locations by the story's characters, especially after "Lock-Out Time", described by Barrie as the time at the end of the day when the park gates are closed to the public, and the fairies and other magical inhabitants of the park can move about more freely than during the daylight, when they must hide from ordinary people. The third section of the book, following the Kensington Gardens chapters, are again set generally in London, though there are some short returns to the Gardens that are not part of the Peter Pan stories. In a two-page diversion in chapter 24, Barrie brings the story to Patagonia, and a journey by ship returning to England at the "white cliffs of Albion".
14423375	/m/03d3279	Saving Fish from Drowning	Amy Tan	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens with an article from the San Francisco Chronicle, stating that 11 tourists, including four men, five women, and two children have mysteriously vanished in Burma, after sailing away on a cruise on Christmas morning. From then on, the story is told through the omniscient first person narrative of Bibi Chen, the tour leader who unexpectedly dies before the trip takes place and who continues to watch over her friends as they journey towards their fate. The novel explores the relationships, insecurities and hidden strengths of the tourists, set against the uneasy political situation in Burma.
14424716	/m/03d33ln	You Don't Love Me Yet	Jonathan Lethem	2007-03-12		 Lucinda Hoekke is an underemployed woman in her late twenties, playing bass in a fledgling Los Angeles rock group. There are three other members: Matthew, the group's lead singer and Lucinda's ex-boyfriend, who kidnaps a kangaroo from the local zoo to save it from boredom; Denise, the clear-headed drummer, works at "No Shame," a sex shop; and Bedwin, the group's composer and lead guitarist, who is very fragile and suffers from writer's block. Bedwin watches the same Fritz Lang movie repeatedly. Lucinda takes a job at a performance art project called, "Complaint Line," listening to anonymous callers talk about their grievances. She falls for a regular caller, initially known only as the "Complainer," who amuses her with his acerbic reflections about life and self-deprecating humor. She begins using his musings as song lyrics, inspiring her band to new heights of creativity. She becomes obsessed with the complainer, whose name is Carl, and begins an unstable all-consuming love affair with him. The band's unexpectedly successful performance at a loft party leads to an invitation to appear live on Los Angeles' leading alternative music radio program. However, Carl, who uses his lyrics to force his way into the band, disrupts their radio broadcast, leading to romantic and musical consequences.
14427278	/m/03d35s3	The Man Nobody Knows		1925		 In this book Barton paints a picture of a strong Jesus, who worked with his hands, slept outdoors and travelled on foot. This is very different from what he saw as the "Sunday School Jesus", a physically weak, moralistic man - the "lamb of God" Barton describes Jesus as "the world's greatest business executive", and according to one of the chapter headings, "The Founder of Modern Business",
14428322	/m/03d36w6	Who Wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls?		1995-06-01	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 * Part I - A new Theory of Scroll Origins *#The Qumran Plateau *# The Manuscripts of the Jews *# 1947; The First Scroll Discoveries *# The Qumran-Essene Theory: A paradigm reconsidered *# The Copper Scroll, the Masada manuscripts, and the Siege of Jerusalem *# Scroll origins: Rengstorf's Theory and Edmund Wilson's response * Part II - Science, Politics, and the Dead Sea Scrolls *# The Temple Scroll, the Acts of Torah, and the Qumranologists' dilemma *# Power Politics and the Collapse of the Scrolls Monopoly *#:This chapter discusses Géza Vermes' involvement in the purchase of photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Oxford University under the condition that they only be shown to scholars selected by the official editorial team that controlled access to the scrolls. Golb states that "Vermes could not possibly have avoided knowing of the financial agreement that facilitated the transfer of photographs" (p.&nbsp;236), and that Vermes' statement of November 8, 1991, "directly contradicted the position taken by him and the [Oxford] Centre in the [London] Times correspondence published three months earlier" (p.&nbsp;237). The chapter also describes how Vermes used the media "to promote his support for the traditional Essene hypothesis," but showed "disdain" for the similar use of the media by Dr. Robert Eisenman to promote a different view (p.&nbsp;241). *# Myth and Science in the World of Qumranology *# The deepening Scrolls Controversy *# The New York Conference and Some Academic Intrigues *# The importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls
14430298	/m/05q9qwn	The Diversion	K. A. Applegate	2001		 The Yeerks begin to realize the "Andalite bandits" are humans. The Animorphs discover the Yeerks have been testing the DNA patterns in the blood they have left in their countless battles. When they discover the traces of human DNA they begin running massive amounts of tests on blood which has been stored in the area in order to discover a genetic match or root out the Animorphs' families. Using this process a genetic match between Tobias and his mother, Loren, is discovered and gives the Yeerks proof that at least some the 'Andalite bandits' are in fact human. They go through a brutal battle at the laboratory where they discover this information in which Marco is nearly killed. After they retreat to Cassie's barn, Jake orders that they all go home and 'sleep on it', the Animorphs will meet in the morning to decide whether or not to evacuate their families thereby revealing their identities and taking the fight into the open. Tobias does not return to his meadow but goes to the address the blood databank gave for his mother. He is crestfallen to discover that it is only a few blocks from the house in which he lived with his uncle yet his mother never once came to visit him or showed any interest in her son at all. Tobias easily spots that she is being watched by the Yeerks. He observes Loren leaving the house with a dog, and quickly realizes that Loren is blind. With the guide dog she walks to a church where she apparently volunteers as a crisis phone line operator, and Tobias follows her. In the morning the Animorphs unanimously agree to immediately evacuate their families. Cassie and Rachel reveal to their families the truth of the invasion and evacuate them to the Hork-Bajir valley. Ax helps with rescuing Rachel's mother and sisters. Jake tries to rescue his parents as well with the plan that they will subdue Tom and starve the Yeerk out of him at long last freeing Jake's brother. But they appear to be out of the house when the Animorphs arrive, in fact Tom's Yeerk has already had Jake's parents infested and they spring a trap for the waiting Animorphs. They escape and Jake morphs falcon in front of the Yeerks, because he wants to show that he has been fighting all along to inspire fear in the Yeerks and hope in his family that he will rescue them. Tobias morphs his mother's guide dog and spends the night at his mother's house. In the morning he finally meets Loren, who he discovers had lost her memory in an accident years before. But she knew she did have a son, and hoped that he was happy. Tobias laments the fact that he never knew her, and tells her he needed a mother. Tobias then hatches a scheme to help Loren escape by giving her the morphing power. She morphs Tobias in hawk form and they embark on a desperate escape which leads to another battle that they barely escape. During the battle Loren throws herself in front of danger to protect Tobias and is nearly killed. Loren is then evacuated to the Hork-Bajir valley. The morphing ability restores Loren's vision, but not her memories. Tobias still longs for his mother's love and affection which she displays for her beloved guide dog but not for him, however Tobias remembers that she did throw herself in front of danger to protect Tobias. The book ends with Jake as an emotional wreck and the Animorphs safely evacuated to the Hork-Bajir valley with their families. Tobias sits beside Jake and thinks that he and Jake have almost switched places, Tobias has always been the loner without a family and now his family is here with him and Jake is all alone. Tobias reassures Jake that they will keep fighting and they will rescue his family. *The Yeerks finally realize the "Andalite bandits" are, in fact, human. *Loren from the book The Andalite Chronicles shows up again in the series in this story. *Tobias is reunited with his biological mother. *Cassie and Rachel reveal the war to their families, who evacuate to the Hork-Bajir colony to join Marco's parents. *Jake's parents are infested by Yeerks of a low rank, as will be revealed in the subsequent book. *Loren receives the morphing power.
14431088	/m/03d39h0	Old Masters	Thomas Bernhard	1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is set in Vienna on one day around the year of its publication, 1985. (p. 193) Reger is an 82-year-old music critic who writes pieces for The Times. For over thirty years he has sat on the same bench in front of Tintoretto's White-bearded Man in the Bordone Room of the Kunsthistorisches Museum for four or five hours of the morning of every second day. He finds this environment the one in which he can do his best thinking. He is aided in this habit by the gallery attendant Irrsigler, who prevents other visitors from using the bench when Reger requires it. The book is narrated entirely by Atzbacher, who met Reger in the museum the day before and with whom Reger then arranged to meet again in the museum on this day - thus, exceptionally, visiting the museum on two consecutive days. They had arranged to meet in the Bordone Room at 11.30, but they both arrive early, and the first 170 pages of the book consist of Atzbacher's thoughts and recollections as he surreptitiously watches Reger in his usual position. These are dominated by Reger's thoughts and recollections, as previously related to Atzbacher. Atzbacher tells of the deaths of Reger's wife and sister, and of his contempt for various aspects of Austrian and occasionally German society, including Stifter, Bruckner and Heidegger, the state and "state artists" in general, and the sanitary condition of Viennese toilets. Reger considers the idea of a supposed "perfect" work of art to be unbearable, and so seeks to render them bearable by finding flaws within them. The second half of the book, once Atzbacher and Reger have met, is formed of the intertwined reports of Reger's speech now, in the museum, with what he had earlier said at a meeting of the two in the Ambassador hotel after his wife's death, and his statements when they had met in Reger's flat before her death. This death of Reger's wife - its circumstances and its effects on him - increasingly dominate the book as it moves towards its conclusion. It is revealed that Reger had first met his wife while sitting on the Bordone Room bench, and that she had then accompanied him on his visits to the museum. It was while walking there in winter that she had suffered an ultimately fatal fall, for which Reger blames the town authorities (for failing to maintain the path), the state (the owner of the museum, which failed to provide timely aid), and the Catholic church, which runs the Merciful Brethren Hospital which Reger believes botched an operation which could have saved her. Despite his continued attacks on the "Catholic National Socialist" museum and state (p. 301) and his contempt for humanity, exemplified by the conduct of his housekeeper in taking advantage of him after his wife's death, Reger describes how he overcame his initial inclination to suicide and managed to survive her. He found himself let down by art, which proved useless to him at the decisive moment: Convinced that people are the only possible means of survival, Reger re-engages with the world, aided only by his "misuse" of Schopenhauer (p. 288) and by the White-bearded Man, the only work in the museum to have stood up to his scrutiny for thirty years. The book concludes with Reger revealing the true purpose of his arranging to meet Atzbacher: to invite him to a performance of "The Broken Jug" that evening, despite his own hatred for drama. Atzbacher accepts, reporting that "the performance was terrible".
14434638	/m/03d3fn5	Under the Green Star	Lin Carter	1972-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 One night the narrator sees a green star in the night sky, and casts his soul towards it. He finds a cloud-covered planet which revolves around it and sees that its surface is covered with trees that (from his perspective) seem several miles high. Later, he follows a retinue of humans riding on horse-sized (based on humans retaining earthly size, as he explains at one later point in the novel and another later in the series) dragonflies (which he finds out later are known as zaiphs) to a splendid city which sparkles like a jewel collection. One of the men in the retinue, cruel-faced and clad in bright yellow, presents a proposal (which the author cannot yet hear) to the ruler of the city, a princess who looks about 14. At that point, the author is drawn to a large man's body preserved inside a casket—which he revives to the consternation of the yellow retinue, and the cheers of the jewel-city's nobles. As he has taken the body of a man preserved for over a hundred years (whose soul was banished by a sorcerer), the author has to "relearn" Laonese, the universal language of the planet; he learns that the Jewel-city is known as Phaolon, considered the most splendid city on the planet; that its beautiful ruler is princess Niamh the Fair; that the yellow-clad man was Akhmim ruler of the rival city of Ardha (also known as "yellow city"). He is also "brought up to speed" (the body he took was that of a warrior named Chong The Mighty) on swords, bows, and other weapons. One day, when Chong and Niamh are out on a hunt for celebrating the Festival of mating zaiph, they are confronted by a huge (somewhat larger than a Bengal Tiger) lizard known as ythid; the lizard is killed by an arrow from Chong's friend Panthon, but the spilled blood causes Niamh and Chong to fall into the web of an elephant-sized spider or xoph. As they escape from it, Niamh is drawn to a flower, which turns out to be a vampire species—but before it can kill her and Chong, the two are rescued by a band of outlaws. The outlaw band is led by a female, Siona, who falls in (unrequited, as he loves Niamh) love with Chong. Chong makes friends with one of the rescuers, Yurgon—but an enemy of another of the band, weasel-faced Sligon (who manages to find out about the secret of Niamh and Chong). Later, Sligon reveals the secret to Siona (whose father was banished by Niamh's) and strikes Chong with a poisoned dagger—only to be immediately slain by Siona. Chong aids Niamh in getting to the zaiph pens (to escape) prior to succumbing to the wound and poison—at which point the narrator (on earth) regains consciousness. Under the Green Star was followed a year later by When the Green Star Calls.
14434701	/m/03d3fq7	When the Green Star Calls	Lin Carter	1973-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This time, when he reaches the Green Star planet, he sees a boy about 16 spreadeagled to a branch with rawhide, so as to be killed by marauding animals (or to die of starvation, so his body may be scavenged). A huge scorpion or phuol attacks the boy and then withdraws (waiting for its venom to paralyse, so it can then consume his still-living flesh later). At that point, a man comes out from concealment behind branches, kills the phuol with a lightning-emitting wand, and rescues the boy in a sky-sled, which the narrator follows to a city which appears dead (later finding out this is so). The rescuer applies salves and injections to the boy, who dies during the night (known to the narrator, but not the rescuer) whereupon the narrator takes possession of the just-dead body; it takes him a little while to reconcile the memories of this new body, whose name he finds to be Karn the Hunter (of Red Dragon Tribe—the "Red Dragon" being a reference to the ythid), with his soul memories from his earlier incarnation as Chong The Mighty. Karn soon finds out that the dead city (known as Sotaspra) is a taboo area of the planet, only visited (or inhabited) by some scientists/savants such as his rescuer Sarchimus (self-titled "The Wise"). Indeed, Sarchimus considers all of the other savants of the city as rivals, chief of them Hume "Of The Many Eyes". Sarchimus warns Karn not to go exploring on his own—when Karn disobeys, he discovers the city is full of many mutant creatures, including a "death-fungus" which he narrowly misses, "crawler-vines" which try to strangle him and an amorphous creature Sarchimus calls "saloog", all of which were formed due to radiation from the crystals of which Sotaspra was constructed (when the crystals had energy, and the city was alive). Karn is astute enough to understand that Sarchimus did not rescue him for altruistic reasons. Sometime later, when Sarchimus has gone on an errand, Karn goes to another area where Sarchimus has forbidden him access—a set of doors sealed with Sarchimus' symbol, a scarlet hand. Doing so, he discovers that Sarchimus' experiments are partly guided by an original inhabitant of the city. Karn had earlier seen some statues of winged humanoids in very commonplace positions—but these were made of chalk, a rather brittle material; the inhabitant is the last living member of these "genii" as Karn thinks of them, over a million years old. The immortal, Zarqa the kalood (meaning "flying ones") tells him that the statues are the result of a failed experiment of immortality which produced a compound known as "Elixir of Light". Even correctly formulated, the Elixir lengthened the lives of male kaloodha but sterilised them as a price—while having no effect on the females, thus causing a slow extinction of this noble race; the statues are the result of consuming this elixir mixed lacking a crucial ingredient. Sarchimus has much-tortured Zarqa to find out the formulation—at the time Karn finds him, he has revealed all except one ingredient but not the correct formula. Karn is also told that there is another human captive, a Phaolonian, in the tower (who he finds at a later opportunity—recognising by face, but not by name—to be named Janchan). Eventually, Sarchimus treats Karn to a drugged feast (and then chains him) as a prelude to testing the Elixir on him—boasting that Zarqa (he doesn't reveal the name, as he does not know of Karn's knowledge) has revealed the correct formula to him. Karn is invigorated and strengthened greatly by the Elixir, but cannot break the chains fastened to him. Pleased at this sight, Sarchimus consumes the rest—and finds himself petrifying to chalk. Zarqa (who had been held in an energy-barrier set to Sarchimus' frequency) then releases Karn (and reveals to him the missing ingredient to be a component distilled from phuol venom—Karn was protected by residues of the venom from the stinging he had earlier received), who then releases Janchan. The three then find a map to Ardha and Phaolon—which they find are about 3,000 farasang (a unit of time misused by Laonese also for distance) away. Janchan enters Ardha and obtains employment as a soldier. In this employ, he finds Niamh (who was recaptured by Siona's band after her escape attempt and then given to Arjala the "goddess" of Ardha as captive—due to rivalry between Arjala and Akhmim, this allowed some power-josting). Soldiers in Arjala's employ have also captured Zarqa and display him as an amphasand, a mythical creature sacred to the Laonese. Janchan makes careful plans to rescue Niamh and Zarqa. Karn meanwhile has been attacked by a large bumblebee or zzumalak, which he mortally wounds—only to land in a swimming pool where the bee drops him. Taking some coins from this house, he runs into a trio of men who fight and capture him—who turn out to be of the assassin guild. One of this trio, Klygon, soon trains Karn in the arts of the guild. The chief of the guild, an obese man named Gurjan Tor (who most-closely resembles Jabba The Hutt of Star Wars), asks Karn to kill Niamh and Zarqa with a poisoned stiletto—and posts Klygon as his "partner" to ensure that Karn will not fluff the job or run away. Karn and Klygon fly to the temple tower (where Niamh is held) on zaiphs, and find that Janchan (and Zarqa) in the process of rescuing Niamh. Janchan's rescue goes somewhat awry as Arjala is present with two (very large, muscular eunuch) temple guards. Janchan's plans have been made in order to AVOID having a fight with these toughs (as he particularly fears they may raise an alarm); in desperation, he throws a lamp at one, breaking both it and the eunuch's skull (and discovers that the doomed eunuchs are also mute). The dead eunuch's body strikes Arjala knocking her unconscious—and forcing Janchan to rescue her as well. He quickly grabs Arjala and Niamh and puts them in the sky-sled with Zarqa. Karn who has seen this is now afraid that Klygon may kill him—as promised to Gurjan Tor. The cliffhanger above is the starting point for the series' third novel, By the Light of the Green Star.
14440432	/m/03d3m69	Traveller	Richard Adams	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 Traveller, the favorite horse of retired Civil War general Robert E. Lee, relates the story of his life and experiences to his feline friend. His narrative, meant to begin early spring of 1866, follows the events of the war as seen through his eyes, from the time he was bought by General Lee in 1862, until Lee's death in 1870. At the end of the novel, Traveller, with undying faith in Lee, becomes convinced that the Confederate Army beat the Union and that Lee is now "commander of the country" (versus his actual postbellum role as president of Washington and Lee University). And despite marching in Lee's funeral procession, Traveller does not understand that his master has died and will not return to ride again.
14441941	/m/03d3nww	Heart of Glass	Zoey Dean	2007-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Heart of Glass begins after High School ends for Anna, Cammie, Sam, and Dee. The girls have finally graduated and are looking forward to enjoying a carefree summer. But, while Anna and Sam are housesitting, Cammie convinces Anna to trespass on a neighbor's property. This neighbor has a vendetta with Cammie's father, the famous agent Clark Sheppard. Cammie and Anna are arrested. While Cammie remains unfazed, Anna is nervous. Fortunately, the girls' attorneys make a deal with the DA and they only have to complete some community service—helping run a charity fashion show for New Visions, an organization to help less-fortunate girls. Meanwhile, Eduardo and Sam are now back together, but Sam can't help feeling jealous and insecure over their relationship as Eduardo acts friendly towards a fellow Peruvian, a beautiful designer named Giselle. Anna and Ben are taking some time apart, and Anna is now dating her father's hot intern, Caine. Adam Flood has decided to spend the summer in Michigan, leaving a lonely Cammie alone in LA. Dee is still with Jack Walker. While having lunch with Eduardo and Giselle, Poppy, Sam's stepmother, invades. Poppy, now in her fit, post-baby shape, has found a new boy-toy, yoga instructor Bodhi Gilad. After seeing Poppy and Bodhi together, Sam is convinced that Poppy is cheating on Jackson with Bodhi. During a concert, Dee and Jack run into an old friend of Dee's, Aaron Steele, from Ojai (the rehab center Dee checked out of). While Jack feels negatively about Aaron, Dee is happy to see him and their friendship is resparked. When Cammie and Anna attend their first day of community service, they meet a younger girl named Champagne. Champagne is very beautiful, but comes from a lesser family than the girls. It is clear that Champagne is interested in modeling, but because she is too petite, she is often dismissed. Virginia Vanderleer, an older woman who is the head of New Visions, tells Cammie and Anna that Champagne is accused of stealing a dress not too long ago. Ben attempts to steal Anna back from Caine, whom he detests. He arrives at Anna's house and they talk. Later that night, Anna and Caine go on a fun date to a Ferris Wheel. That same night, a lonely Cammie dresses up and saunters into Trieste to see Ben, whom she has set her sights on now that Anna and Ben are not together anymore. She sidles up to the bar and flirts with him, and the two have a friendly drink together. Meanwhile, Sam is obsessed with catching Poppy's adulterous acts. She meets Parker Pinelli for lunch, and the two friends discuss a deal. Sam offers to give Parker a part on Jackson's newest movie, a remake of Ben-Hur. A stunned and surprised Parker thanks Sam immensely, but Sam mentions that in return, she asks that Parker help her by seducing Poppy. Parker will be kept anonymous, and Jackson will divorce Poppy, who Sam hates. However, Parker feels unsure, as Jackson may find out it was him and blacklist from any Hollywood acting jobs for life, ruining his career. Then, Sam, Cammie, Anna, and Champagne visit PacCoast, a modeling company, where Sam has connections, to pick models for the New Visions fashion show. Cammie decides to take Champagne under her wing when Champagne reveals some of her aspirations for her future. Anna, as well, is surprised and impressed by the girl's sincerity. Sam and Cammie approach Clark, Cammie's father, about the mysterious death of Cammie's mother. Clark admits that Jeanne was clinically depressed. Finally, he leaves Cammie with a letter her mother wrote when Cammie was born, which was meant to be given to her on her marriage day. Clark and Sam leave Cammie alone to read the beautiful, emotional letter. Parker acts very well in the scene with Jackson, and utilizes his opportunity to promote his career. Although he feels nervous, his ambitious nature pays off and he does well. At a Ben-Hur cast party that Poppy throws, Dee and Aaron become closer friends. Parker reveals to Sam that his flirting with Poppy was successful, and Poppy had given Parker her private cell phone number. Also, Jonah Jacobson, the son of motion picture mogul Andrea Jacobson, approaches Sam about a script he had written and given to Jackson's company. As part of Sam and Anna's job working for Jackson, the two read scripts and evaluated them. However, Jonah Jacobson (under the pen name "Norman Shnorman") had written a terrible script, and in return, Sam had given it a terrible evaluation. Sam is frightened that Andrea will take revenge on Jackson for the cruel words written about her son's script. Jack and Ben meet for a drink at a bar, and both admit they are in love; Jack with Dee, Ben with Anna. Cammie, Anna, and Champagne go shopping, and the good side of Cammie emerges. She agrees to help Champagne, giving her kindhearted advice, and buying her new, expensive trendy clothes. Then, Cammie calls Adam, but their conversation makes her depressed, as Adam reveals that he is not ready to return to LA anytime soon and wants Cammie to come to Michigan instead. He admits that he is having second thoughts about his college and is considering the University of Michigan. Anna sneaks into Jackson's office with Caine on a mission to change the evaluation that Sam wrote about Norman Shnorman's script. They successfully fix everything, and Caine attempts to seduce Anna on a couch. Anna resists, telling her she isn't ready for that. Caine does not seemed disturbed or upset, and immediately stops and the two exit the office. Jack rents a hotel room that he and Dee go to, which is rumored to be haunted, which thrills Dee. Then, Jack tells Dee that he wants to marry her and have children with her, and they could move to the East coast. Dee balks at the idea, and Jack laughingly tells her that he is joking. However, Dee is not so sure about his reassurance. While in Cammie's Lamborghini, Cammie tells Anna about her plan to help Champagne. Anna agrees to help and enlists some of her old connections from back in New York to help. For the fashion show, all of the models are trying new looks. Anna tries on a short dress, which looks stunning on her. Later, she bumps into Ben, who comments on how beautiful she looks, and tries to win her over yet again. Anna resists, but cannot deny the feelings she felt. The two share a kiss. Parker follows through with a plan Sam concocts. He meets Poppy at a hotel, after some flirting. They kiss, and a photographer Sam plants catches it on camera. Then, Parker makes a quick exit. However, Sam feels guilty about the pictures, and destroys them. Anna uses her East Coast connections to pull a deal with Lizbette Demetrius, an upscale cosmetics company CEO. Cammie sends pictures of Champagne from a modeling shoot to Lizbette. Unfortunately, the models from PacCoast riot, refusing to do the charity fashion show because they are not being paid. Instead, they decide to use other girls like Champagne to model in the show. Cammie offers to teach the girls everything they need to know to be runway-ready. To find male models, Champagne takes Cammie and Anna to The Firehouse, a restaurant/bar that her cousin Bryson works at. Bryson and the other handsome waiters/strippers that work at the Firehouse agree to be models for the show. Cammie and Anna are enjoying their visit, until one firefighter catches Anna's attention: Caine. Anna confronts Caine, who does not see what the big deal is. Anna tells Caine to take her seriously, and he agrees. When Anna returns home, she finds an email from Lizbette, who explains that she was quite pleased with Champagne's pictures and is interested in using her, and plans to attend the fashion show to meet Champagne in person. Cammie teaches the girls (Champagne, Consuela, Mai, Daisy, and Exquisite) how to model on the runway. Her leadership inspires the girls, and her nicer side is clearly visible. Cammie realizes that instead of being "bitchy", she feels good. Cammie once again visits Ben at Trieste. Instead of the usual clubbing scene, that night, it is more of a coffeehouse/arts show. Cammie and Ben retire to a private room, where they have champagne. Cammie feels tense, as Ben prods about Anna constantly, but later, they almost kiss. Cammie is caught up in the moment, but just before their lips meet, they both pull back. Ben keeps back his desire, and tells Cammie that if they got back together again it would be so much more than their relationship was before. At Cammie's house, Dee talks to Cammie about her confusion about Jack and Aaron. Later, Cammie's memories about her mother and the past lead her and Dee to venture up into the attic, where they find Jeanne's old clothes. Cammie finds a familiar outfit and tries it on, finally grieving over the loss of her mother. Dee pleasantly surprises Cammie by offering wise advice and comfort. Later, Jackson finds the new evaluation Anna wrote about Norman Shnorman's script, and confronts Sam. Anna jumps to her defense, and Jackson lets it drop. Then, they are interrupted by the delivery of the Galaxy (a celebrity gossip magazine) with the cover page showing Poppy and Bodhi's adulterous acts. Jackson confronts Poppy angrily, and she breaks down and leaves the house, leaving the baby behind. Dee tells Jack she is interested in helping Aaron, which distresses him, but he doesn't break up with her. Lizbette arrives at the fashion show and speaks with Champagne, but decides she is not right for the job. A stunned and infuriated Cammie confronts Lizbette angrily and stands up for the disappointed Champagne. At the fashion show, everyone does a good job, but when a dress goes missing, Anna is forced to wear a different outfit, which bares a lot of skin. However, Anna pulls it off with class and all of their friends in the audience support her. After the show, Champagne is accused of stealing Martin Rittenhouse's designer dress. However, Cammie reveals the truth—that Martin stuffed the dress into his own bag and pinned the act on Champagne. The designer confesses, and admits he did it for publicity. In return, Cammie, proposes that he launch a new petite line and use Champagne as his star model. Martin agrees, and Champagne is thrilled. During the afterparty, Cammie calls Adam and tells them if he is not back in LA in four days, she is breaking up with him and they are over. A surprised Adam pleads Cammie to reconsider, but she refuses, explaining that she wants him, but if being in Michigan is more important than she is, then it's over. Sam sees Giselle making moves on Eduardo and feels anxious, but Eduardo turns Giselle's proposal for lunch down, and stays loyal to Sam, which delights her. Anna confronts Caine and Ben simultaneously, telling them that she wants to date both of them at the same time. Caine agrees. Ben is incredulous, but eventually he kisses Anna sweetly and agrees, because he doesn't want to lose her. Cammie announces to Anna that if it doesn't work out between her and Adam, Cammie will go after Ben.
14441948	/m/03d3nx6	By the Light of the Green Star	Lin Carter	1974-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As Karn ponders on how to get past Klygon (who Gurjan Tor had ordered to kill him in case of failure), Klygon then tells him that they should escape together—as Gurjan Tor will also kill Klygon a "master assassin" even more tortuously, and as Klygon has no wish to kill his only remaining true friend. The two escape on their black-painted zaiphs tethering them a short distance outside Ardha (as night travel is extremely dangerous). In the morning, they see a flight of Akhmim's warriors pursuing the sky-sled (which Karn knows they cannot catch, due to its speed exceeding that of any zaiph). When the two set out for Phaolon at a higher altitude, a huge shadow comes over them. Klygon looks toward the shadow's source which turns out to be a dinosaur-sized hawklike bird or zawkaw. They attempt to flee from the zawkaw only to find that its speed exceeds that of their zaiphs; before fleeing Karn observes a beautiful (not in effeminate sense) bald, ebon-skinned human riding it. At that point, Karn finds the zoukar (an invention of the kaloodha, the lightning-emitting wand which Sarchimus had used to kill the phuol) and slays the zawkaw, panicking its rider who falls from its back into the abyss. However, he and Klygon are not able to regain control of their zaiphs till these hit the forest floor (which kills the zaiphs). In the meantime Janchan, Niamh and Zarqa (along with a captive Arjala) prepare to restart after a night spent parked; at this point Arjala's haughtiness comes to the forefront as she criticises the rude breakfast they have—and her feeling of humiliation is aggravated when Niamh reminds her that she (Niamh) too is a Goddess (as Princess/Goddess are integrated in Phaolon). When they restart the sky-sled at high altitude, they see a large floating city from which zawkaw with ebon-skinned riders (similar to the one that chased Karn and Klygon) flying around it. A flight of the zawkaw lands near the quartet, who are taken captive by the riders and taken into the city. There, an old man tells them the city is named Calidar, at which Arjala is initially overjoyed (she had earlier welcomed the ebon-skinned men as her "cousins", though they gave her no recognition)--but her joy is turned to horror as the old man, Nimbalim of Yoth, informs her that she is viewed as merely another captive. Niamh is thrilled at meeting Nimbalim (whom she had always been told had died a thousand years prior—even his city had been destroyed sometime later by the Blue Barbarians during one of their madness-times). Karn and Klygon have meantime taken shelter, but are disappointed at the forest floor as it provides only some tasteless (though plentiful) food items. They are captured by a tribe of albinos who ride on huge earthworms (known as sluth) and taken into caves in the trees' root-networks. There, they meet a blue-skinned man who identifies himself as "Delgan of the Isles" (the "of the Isles" particularly intrigues Karn who has lived entirely in the treetops), to whom Klygon takes an immediate dislike. Karn notices that Delgan is rather refined for a "Blue Barbarian" (the only race of which he knows having such skin colour). The troglodytes, led by Gor-ya, add Klygon and Karn to their herd of slave tenders of grubs known as ygnoum. Gor-ya also warns them that they must keep the ygnoum safe from enemies he terms kraan. When the kraan (hippo-sized red ants) later attack the troglodytes and slaughter many of the ygnoum, Gor-ya tries to punish Klygon by whipping him to death, but is stopped when Karn thrusts a torch in his face giving him serious burns—for which Karn is sentenced to be killed by the largest of the sluth (suggested to Gor-ya by Delgan). One of the younger of the black men of Calidar, Ralidux, finds Arjala fascinating; he discusses this with an elder, Clyon, who attempts to dissuade him. The travellers (including Nimbalim) plan on escaping Calidar but are initially stymied by the sky-sled's being too small—for which Niamh finds a solution, capturing (and riding) one of the zawkaw. Eventually, Zarqa is able to tap Ralidux' mind and use him to control a zawkaw—on which Niamh and Arjala ride with him. The travellers' escape is detected however, and a flight of the zawkaw-riders armed with a pain-rod (less-powerful version of the zoukar) knocks Zarqa (pilotting the sky-sled) unconscious. Janchan then takes control and brings the sky-sled to a stop. Delgan visits the condemned Karn and gives him his weathercloak, witchlight, rapier and zoukar—and tells him to hurry so they can escape. As they do so, the troglodytes awaken the huge sluth which pursues the trio. Karn then pushes a button on the witchlight (warning Delgan and Klygon to cover their eyes), and turns away. The witchlight has one lightning-bright flash which kills the huge sluth—but the reflection on the water's surface blinds Karn. The trio escape in a boat made from a fallen leaf to the inland sea, and land on a small isle—where Delgan strikes Klygon unconscious and robs the two of weathercloak, rapiers and zoukar. Mockingly he states, "in my land, I am a king; I go to reclaim my throne". Klygon regains consciousness, and he and Karn hear the wings of the zawkaw (piloted by Ralidux, now free of Zarqa's mind-control) overhead. Followed by As the Green Star Rises.
14442509	/m/03d3p6j	Patrimony: A True Story	Philip Roth	1991	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Roth's memoir recounts the life, decline, and death of his father, Herman Roth, from an inoperable (and originally "benign") brain tumor.
14445017	/m/03d3rfk	The Women of Algiers in Their Apartments	Assia Djebar	2002		 A collection of short stories about the lives of pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial women various levels of the Algerian society. It is a piece about the compartmentalization of women in Algeria and the harems in which they are put.
14445492	/m/03d3rzg	After Magritte	Tom Stoppard			 The play begins with an astonished policeman looking through the window of a house where a group of people are posed in a bizarre, surreal tableau reminiscent of the paintings of René Magritte. Finding this suspicious, he calls in his inspector. Inside the room, a rational explanation for the tableau gradually becomes apparent. Two ballroom dancers, a man and a woman named Reginald and Thelma Harris, are hurriedly getting ready for an event. A lampshade which had used bullets as a counterweight has broken and a woman crawls on the floor to look for them. The mother plays the tuba. The inspector arrives and asks about the family's memories of a man they had seen outside of the Tate Gallery where a René Magritte exhibit is being held. He invents an entirely false story, accusing the family of complicity in a crime known as the Crippled Minstrel Caper. As he continues, the stage picture becomes increasingly ridiculous. For instance, the couple offers the inspector a banana as the male dancer stands on one foot. One scene is even performed in total darkness. By the end of the play, the characters are posed in another Magritte-like tableau.
14446653	/m/03d3szh	The Angel of the Revolution			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story begins on September 3, 1903 with young man, Richard Arnold, twenty-six old scientist devoted heart and soul to the invention of flying machine, finally realizing his dream in the form of air-ship model that can fly on its own. However, living completely for his dream, he ended with no money to sustain even his next day's life, let alone do something practical with his revolutionary invention. The circumstances made him wander around the streets of London, until a stranger overheard his muttering about flying machine that he wouldn't want to put in hands of tyrants or for the use in war and destruction. The stranger introduced himself as Maurice Colston, and soon both men realized they share the same distaste for autocracy and the status quo as it was, placing themselves "at war with Society". With the arrangement of Colston, Arnold met with other heads of the Brotherhood of Freedom, the revolutionary organization of Anarchists, Nihilists and Socialists bent on ending the society of oppression and misery. Agreeing with their cause, he put his knowledge and skills at their disposal, while still keeping his complete control over the invention that will change the face of the Earth. During the meeting he met Natasha, the Angel of the Revolution, and already fell in love with her. However, the Cause they've been set to achieve was of far greater importance so the romance between them had to wait for better times. Equipped by the Brotherhood with everything he needed, Arnold finished the construction of first air-ship to ever fly the skies above Earth: the Ariel. First use of the air-ship was in the rescuing of Natasha in the March of 1904, arrested by Russian government about the time Ariel was built. On their flight towards the designated town in Russia where they'll attempt to rescue Natasha, the Terrorists - as everyone called the members of this secret order - decided to show the world the destructive power of the air-ship. Strongest European fortress Kronstadt, situated on the island in the Finnish Gulf, was picked as an example of what the Terrorists can now achieve. Within several minutes, the fortress was brought down to ruin, with weapons fired from the Ariel, of the devastating power that no army has yet seen. Through the use of such vessel and the innumerable agents the Brotherhood had all around the Western world, in all professions, the Terrorists managed to rescue Natasha before the convoy of political prisoners reached Siberia. The news of the mysterious air vessel and its power traveled all over the Western world, causing fear and panic in the ranks of both common people and the upper classes. Meanwhile, after forty years of peace, European powers were readying for the inevitable final clash: plans were being laid down, treaties made and tested, armies equipped and mobilized. Attempting to control the coming war and make it the war to end all wars, Terrorists set off to find a suitable place for headquarters from where they could send orders and organize their own troops without being distracted. A region in the midst of Africa, called Aerial by the English explorers who found it, made a perfect spot. The region was a paradise valley surrounded by high mountains, thus unreachable by any conventional vessel - except the air-ship. In that paradise Arnold and Natasha finally swore their love to each other, agreeing to prolong their longing passion until the war to end all wars is over and eternal peace restored on Earth. In the meantime, Terrorists built eleven more air-ships identical to Ariel and the twelfth - a flagship - with twice the firepower and the size. As the Europe sank into war between Anglo-Teutonic Alliance (led by Britain, Germany and Austria) and the Franco-Slavonian League (led by Russia, France and Italy), the new warfare proved to be more devastating than ever, especially with Russians and French employing the newly-built war-balloons. The balloons, although in many ways inferior to Terrorists' air-ships, were destroying a fort after fort, city after city, and securing numerous victories for the Franco-Slavonian League. Even though they could only drop dynamites from above, war-balloons were causing such a havoc, that German and Austrian armies could not cope with the situation, losing the land fast. During the early weeks of this war of the Titans, Terrorists tried to stay away from siding with any alliance, occasionally appearing here and there and settling their own issues with involved sides or their weapons of war, pushing their own well-planned agenda slowly but steadily. Still, by mere moment of lack of caution, Terrorists lost one air-ship to Russians, due to treason in their own ranks. Pursuing the lost vessel in attempt to either retrieve it or destroy, the Terrorists proved the superiority of their flying machines to any other human machine, including the war-balloons of the Russians and French. Finally retrieving the lost air-ship, they witnessed the destructive power Franco-Slavonian League had at its disposal against Anglo-Teutonic Alliance, which assured them that Britain and her allies had no chance of winning such a war. As the European war irresistibly drew closer to Britain shores, with Germany falling completely under the power of Russian Tsar, Terrorists had more important work to finish. Head of the American section of the Brotherhood, Michael Roburoff, asked for Natasha's hand, and at the utter disappointment of both Natasha and Arnold, Natasha's father sent her daughter to America. Both lovers did not try to challenge the will of the leading terrorist, so they accepted the change as they usually did - being certain that Natas' plan was again made with careful and rational preparation. However, it turned out that Roburoff was in fact blackmailing Natas: he was proposing to exchange the allegiance of American section for Natasha's hand. By the will of Natas, Roburoff was shot dead by Natasha's hand when he received her in his house in America, and the American section gained new leadership, ready for the revolution. On the night of the 4th of October 1904, the order was passed to millions of secret followers of the Brotherhood in America, and the next day production completely stopped, streets and institutions were taken by organized masses and the government was overthrown. New government arrested big capitalists who were scheming to use European conflict for gaining even greater profit by supplying the Franco-Slavonian League, and with a threat of air-ships and mass of troops devoted to Brotherhood's Cause the terrorists proclaimed new Anglo-Saxon Federation. Soon Canada faced the same destiny and the terrorists turned to Britain with a proposal: either face utter destruction by Russian and French forces, or become a part of the Federation. British government refused the proposal, willing to fight till the bitter end and still hoping that the islands could not be taken by any continental army. Much to their surprise, with the aid of war-balloons, Franco-Slavonian League managed not only to cut all oversea trade to and from Britain, but also arranged successful landing of troops on British soil, aiming to take London as a heart of Anglo-Saxon world. Under siege and with no allies left, Britain fought the last battle furiously, but the siege cut all food supply and left the Old Lion with no other choice than to accept newly sent proposal from the terrorists. At the highest pitch of his power, Russian Tsar was already looking forward to Britain's surrender and was taken by surprise as the new army arose in Britain: the army called by the terrorists, just like they did in America. Even greater was Tsar's surprise when he realized that terrorists had thousands of their men in his own ranks. Aided with air-ships and troops from American section, the Brotherhood - now acting as the Anglo-Saxon Federation - swiftly destroyed almost all Russian, French and Italian troops, forcing a surrender of all the armies and ending the world war in just two days. On the 9th of May, Conference was held to decide the future of the Western world. Having the power of millions of men under their Federation's banner, and air-ships in the sky, the terrorists easily convinced all European leaders that the only way to stop destruction was to make wars impossible to fight. Thus, disarmament of all standing armies was enacted, with police being the only force to keep the order. However, in the East, Buddhist and Muslim people fought each other without information of what happened in Europe. After defeating their opponents, the Muslims moved to Turkey in an attempt to conquer the Western world. Met with tremendous destructive power of the Federation, they soon admitted the defeat and accepted the conditions of surrender that were laid before them by the terrorists. The conditions were same for all the nations, now united under the banner of the Federation, the all-powerful peace force. Removing from the national laws all unjust and confusing parts and confiscating in the hands of the state all the land that wasn't directly used for production, the Federation finally achieved the order that suited the common man, without any fear of wars in the future. Willing and able to achieve their goal by any means at their disposal, the terrorists finally succeeded and concluded their war to end all wars.
14456197	/m/03d42m6	God is Dead	Ron Currie Jr.		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book begins in Sudan, where God, disguised as a Dinka woman, attempts to help out around a refugee camp. She speaks with the American diplomats visiting the camp, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, about finding the missing brother of the body she inhabits. While she is there, the camp is attacked by the Sudanese government, killing everyone, including God. The rest of the book focuses on how things unravel after God's death. A high school graduate watches in horror as a priest commits suicide. Soon after, a group of childhood friends form a suicide pact after all their relatives die in the chaos. People later begin to worship their children in the absence of religion, while the psychiatrists tasked to disrupt such unproductive behavior are the most hated people alive. The dogs who ate God's corpse are revealed to possess a higher knowledge, but this brings only death to all but one of them. The book closes with a view into war in this Godless world, which has changed from being driven by religion to instead being driven by different philosophical ideals.
14461916	/m/03d48xd	The Cry and the Covenant				 Ignaz Semmelweis is a curious child who often gets in trouble at school for asking too many questions. Later in life, he travels to Vienna to study medicine, having been taken under the wing of a wealthy friend. Ignaz concludes that washing hands prevents puerperal fever infections. Because of his nationality his theories are scoffed at and he is eventually driven mad in the face of the ignorance which causes so much death. He later commits suicide by slashing open his hands and thrusting them into a corpse, later to die of puerperal fever.
14462028	/m/03d48_m	The Land Leviathan	Michael Moorcock		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story of Oswald Bastable's adventures "trapped forever in the shifting tides of time" is framed with the concept of the book being a long lost manuscript, as related by Moorcock's grandfather. Several years after Bastable disappeared in 1910, the elder Moorcock travels to China in an attempt to track him down, meeting Una Persson of the Jerry Cornelius novels on the way who before disappearing leaves him a manuscript written by Bastable for Moorcock, relating what happened to Bastable after he unexpectedly left the elder Moorcock at the end of Warlord of the Air, probably bound for another alternate 20th century. Bastable's story takes in a post-apocalyptic early twentieth century between 1904 and 1908, where Western Europe and the United States have been devastated by accelerated technological change, which led to a prolonged global war causing their reversion to barbarism. By contrast, South Africa is ruled by Gandhi, apartheid never happened and is an oasis of civilisation which stayed out of the conflict being an affluent, technologically advanced nation in this alternate, anti-imperialist twentieth century. To restore civilisation and social order in the afflicted Northern Hemisphere, a 'Black Attila' leads an African army to beneficent if paternalist conquest of Europe and an apocalyptic war against the United States featuring the "vast, moving ziggurat of destruction" of the title. The historical personage of our world appearing as alternate versions of themselves include: *Mahatma Gandhi is president of the wealthy, Marxist Republic of Bantustan (which is our world's South Africa); *Herbert Hoover is a racist New York city gangster organizing the city's last stand against the black, African-based Ashanti Empire. White Americans have re-introduced African-American slavery as they blame the latter as scapegoats for epidemics that were actually initiated by biological warfare among the perished Western nations; *P. J. Kennedy is an amateur explosives hack which makes him the local mob lord or tribal chief of Wilmington (it's not made clear whether this is Wilmington, New York, Wilmington Township, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, or Wilmington Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania or Wilmington, Delaware, only that it is situated between New York City and Washington, D.C.) *Frederic Courtland Penfield, formerly a U.S. diplomat in our world as well as the one Bastable visits, is founder of a new Ku Klux Klan. He also serves as a nominal 'president' over a de facto, skeletal 'United States', in Washington, D.C. The former capital has been surprisingly immune from bombing and missile attack (as the government had fled into subterranean shelters at the beginning of the Great War) which makes up most of his realm. In some editions, the character is renamed "Beesley", whose description resembles that of Bishop Beesley, a character from the Jerry Cornelius novels. *Joseph Conrad as submarine captain Joseph Korzeniowski.
14462051	/m/03d490x	The Steel Tsar	Michael Moorcock		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In a story introduced by the ubiquitous Una Persson (who is also found in other works by Moorcock), the trilogy's hero, Captain Oswald Bastable, finds himself in an alternative twentieth century in which the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War and the October Revolution never occurred. Over the course of the story Oswald witnesses the destruction of Singapore at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Aerial Navy, is imprisoned on Rishiri, joins the Russian Imperial Airship Navy and is sent too put down the rebellious Cossacks under 'The Steel Tsar' otherwise known as Dugashvili, who is known to the real world as Joseph Stalin. He also experiences a repeat of events from the first novel as he is forced to drop an atomic bomb on the anarchist Nestor Makhno and his Black Flag Army.
14462075	/m/03d491y	A Nomad of the Time Streams	Michael Moorcock		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the first book, Warlord of the Air, Bastable finds himself transported to an alternate late-20th century Earth where the European powers did not stir each other into a World War and in which the mighty airships of a British Empire on which the sun never set are threatened by the rise of new and terrible enemies. These enemies turn out to be the colonized peoples trying to break free, supported by anarchist and socialist Western saboteurs opposing their own imperialist societies, and led by a Chinese general whose country is still nominally under Western control and ravaged by civil war. In The Land Leviathan, Bastable visits an alternate 1904 in which most of the Western world has been devastated around the turn of the 20th century by a short, yet terrible war fought with futuristic devices and in which also biological weapons were used. In this alternate world, an Afro-American Black Attila is conquering the remnants of the Western nations, destroyed by the wars. The only remaining stable surviving nations, aside from the African-based Ashanti Empire, are an isolationist Australian-Japanese Federation, which opposes the Ashanti Empire, and the wealthy Marxist Republic of Bantustan. Bantustan is the equivalent of our world's South Africa and is led by its Indian-born president Mahatma Gandhi; having never known apartheid or hostilities between the English and the Boers, it is a wealthy, pacifist nation, in which there is no racial tension. In the final book, The Steel Tsar, Bastable witnesses an alternate 1941 where Great Britain and Germany became allies around the turn of the 20th century and thus neither a World War nor the October Revolution took place. In this world's Russian Empire, Bastable encounters the rebel Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili.
14463469	/m/03d4bgp	Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land	Tom Stoppard			 A Select Committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom meets to discuss a ridiculous scandal on which the tabloid press has begun focusing. The papers allege that some mystery woman has accused 119 members of the House of sexual harassment. The six members of the Committee look into it so as to maintain the House's good name. Ironically, each member of the committee reminds the secretary, Miss Gotobed, not to bring up their most recent rendez-vous. They do not want the press to get the wrong idea. It turns out that the secretary, who is not very adept at dictation, is the woman from the newspapers. The curtain falls and then rises again for New-Found-Land in which an older and a younger man, two other Members of Parliament, briefly discuss the naturalization of an American into British citizenship. They laud the American nation as a whole, including every American patriotic cliché they can remember. Eventually, the Select Committee returns and tries to reclaim its room.
14465041	/m/03d4czj	In Flanders Fields. The 1917 Campaign				 The first chapter "The Deadlock" is a brief description of the causes and events of World War I leading up to the year 1917. It details the military plans of the year by the French, British and German High Commands with considerable references to the diaries and official histories of the commanders and countries involved, the press, journalists, historians and political figures. There are several maps and photographic plates of the battlefields in the book. While Third Battle of Ypres is synonymous with mud, death, futility of battles and horrible conditions of warfare, the writings do not play on these experiences of the soldier in the field too much, but instead gives the reader a somewhat unbiased view of what was really occurring at the very top of the commands: the British Prime Minister of the day, Lloyd George, Sir Douglas Haig, Sir William Robertson, Robert Nivelle, Ferdinand Foch and others. There are short quotes from newspapers of the day and soldiers at the front, with brief but vivid sketches of the actual battlefield, while comparing this with the views at Headquarters (none of the commanders of the armies seems to have ever visited the front or even seen it through field glasses and could not relate to the conditions of the battlefield and the struggles of the men through the unrelenting mud, and thus assessed the situations incorrectly, especially Haig). Sir Douglas Haig is shown to make large assumptions without proper intelligence about the German defences, enemy resources of men and guns, or the conditions of the battlefield. Leon Wolff does not say these things specifically, but gives the readers the facts as presented in official minutes of meetings with Lloyd George and the War Cabinet and diaries of high officers and leaves the reader to unequivocally reach his own conclusion of the characters involved. The book also details all the battles of 1917, from Nivelle's offensive and the French Army Mutinies (1917), Messines Ridge, Poelcapelle, Menin Road, the village of Passchendaele (fought by the Canadian Corps) and Ypres. It ends appropriately with a sequel of the end of the careers, and life after of Sir William Robertson, Sir Douglas Haig and David Lloyd George, quoting a line of Siegfried Sassoon's "On Passing the New Menin Gate" and ending finally with a passage of Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle which seems to truly explain the cause and reasoning of a war as horrible as World War I, if not all wars:
14467706	/m/03d4h97	The Virgin's Lover	Philippa Gregory	2004	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book opens in the autumn of 1558, just after the death of Mary I, and bells are heralding the fact that Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth, is now queen. The book is told from four main perspectives: Elizabeth I's; William Cecil's, the queen's main advisor; Robert Dudley, the queen's favourite; and Amy Robsart's, who is Robert Dudley's wife. Robert Dudley returns to court upon Elizabeth's coronation, and Amy hopes that his ambitions will not get him into trouble. During Mary's reign, Dudley was kept in the Tower of London, his father and brother were executed, and another brother died in Calais. However, her hopes for the quiet life soon die, as Elizabeth and Robert become closer and more intimate. Elizabeth has inherited a bankrupt and rebellious country, in turmoil as a result of the previous two monarch's reigns. Her advisor, William Cecil, warns that she will only survive if she marries a strong prince, but the only man that Elizabeth desires is her childhood friend, and married man, Robert Dudley. Robert is sure that he can reclaim his destiny at Elizabeth's side. And as queen and courtier fall in love, Dudley begins to contemplate the impossible - setting aside his loving wife to marry the young Elizabeth...
14468841	/m/03d4jy_	Troll Fell	Katherine Langrish	2004-06-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Troll Fell tells the story of young Peer Ulfsson, whose shipbuilder father has just died, and who is taken to live with his two wicked uncles, Balder and Grim, in a water mill under the shadow of Troll Fell, a mountain inhabited by trolls. Peer’s uncles make him do all the work around the mill, and at first he despairs, especially when he meets Granny Greenteeth, the sinister waterspirit who lives in the millpond. However, he is aided by the Nis (Norwegian Nisse), a mischievous though unpredictable house-spirit or brownie. His other friends are his dog, Loki, and Hilde, the pretty and confident daughter of Ralf Eiriksson, a nearby farmer. Ralf has sailed away on the Viking ship which Peer’s father built. In his absence, Peer and Hilde discover the plot which his two uncles are hatching: to sell children as slaves to the trolls, in exchange for gold. When Hilde’s little brother and sister are stolen away under cover of a blizzard, Peer and Hilde go together into the tunnels under the mountain in an attempt to bring them back. At the climax of the story, at a troll banquet when the troll king raises the top of the mountain on four red pillars, Peer is faced with the decision either to escape alone, or stay forever under the mountain with Hilde. Meanwhile Ralf has returned from his voyage and, along with his crew and many of the neighbours, forces his way into the troll banqueting hall. There is a stand-off with the trolls. Finally Peer discovers a way to trick his uncles into staying under the mountain in his and Hilde’s place, and in gratitude Ralf invites him, with Loki and the Nis, to live with Hilde’s family at the farm. In the last pages, we learn that Ralf’s voyage took him to Vinland in America, in a similar fashion to Leif Eriksson in the Saga of the Greenlanders.
14471780	/m/03d4n37	Out to Canaan	Jan Karon		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the story of Father Tim's Episcopalian Mitford parish continues, he finds himself in the very thick of things. Far from the bachelor life he knew for 62 years, he now finds himself opening his home to a myriad of friends, neighbors, and other lost souls, each giving new meaning to his God-centered life.
14472350	/m/03d4nh8	The War of the End of the World	Mario Vargas Llosa		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the midst of the economic decline — following drought and the end of slavery — in the province of Bahia in Northeastern Brazil, the poor of the backlands are attracted by the charismatic figure and simple religious teachings of Antonio Conselheiro, the Counselor, who preaches that the end of the world is imminent and that the political chaos that surrounds the collapse of the Empire of Brazil and its replacement by a republic is the work of the devil. Seizing a hacienda in an area blighted by economic decline at Canudos the Counselor's followers build a large town and defeat repeated and ever larger military expeditions designed to remove them. As the state's violence against them increases they too turn increasingly violent, even seizing the modern weapons deployed against them. In an epic final clash a whole army is sent to extirpate Canudos and instigates a terrible and brutal battle with the poor while politicians of the old order see their world destroyed in the conflagration.
14475864	/m/03d4rjs	The Singer of Tales				 The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the author concentrates on the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition and its implications for bards who would recite epic poetry and the eventual literary figures who converted that oral material into written form. His development of the theory is firmly rooted in studies of contemporary Serbo-Croatian poets who primarily use oral formulas to remember long passages that make up songs and epic. Chapter One serves as an introduction and gives the reader a brief outline of the history of the oral-formulaic theory while stressing the importance of the contributions of Milman Parry to the theory. Chapter Two, entitled Singers: Performance and Training, attempts to define the performer in question. It asks and attempts to answer the question of who were these traveling bards who would move from province to province to recite great epic. Moreover, the chapter discusses the level of control that Ancient performers had over these tales; it concludes that those who have to memorize such long tales never tell the same story twice with the same wording by examining the examples set by Serbo-Croatian poets. He describes three stages in the training of an oral poet. In the first, passive stage in which a young boy learns the themes and general structures of an epic. In the second stage, he first attempts to put the stories he knows in the context of the meter of poetic verse; finally, he attempts to recite-compose his first complete poem. Chapter Three is called The Formula and discusses what Lord believes to be a classic oral formula. In doing so, he borrows Parry's definition that defines a formula as "a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea." Parry's formulas are almost mathematical in nature; his discussion focuses on repetitions of meter and pitch more than textual content. However, he also notes that oral poets learn their epics like one would learn a living, evolving language. Chapter Four, The Theme, focuses on the repetitions in content that appear in ancient epic. Parry writes that the same theme can be expressed by many different formulas, and analyzes several examples from Serbo-Croatian poetry to demonstrate his points. Chapter Five, Songs and the Song, follows the intrinsic distinctions between the bard's attitude towards his own work and the tendency of modern scholars to think of the oral-formulaic poem as "a given text that undergoes change from one singing to another." In fact, he says, the ancient bard was more likely to think of himself as a "flexible plan of themes.". As a result of this, epic tends to change over time as imperfect memories bend the traditions in new ways. Chapter Six is called Writing and Oral Tradition. In it, Lord goes into the effect of the oral tradition on the writing of a given culture while also examining the transition of stories from an oral to a written (manuscript) tradition. However, he says, while the writing of a culture can have an impact on its oral tradition, that is by no means a requirement. Since oral poems are so fluid in nature, any written records we have of them represent only one performance of them. As a result, as writing replaced oral tradition, the two could not live in symbiosis and the latter disappeared. The second part of the book shows the application of the theory discussed in the first half to the work of Homer in general before more carefully examining its application to the Iliad, Odyssey, and medieval epic. Chapter Seven, Homer, attempts to prove, using the theory developed in the first half of the book, that the poet modern-day readers refer to as Homer was an oral-formulaic composer. Chapters Eight and Nine, The Odyssey and The Iliad, examine those two works in the context of composition by an oral poet. Chapter Ten, Some Notes on Medieval Epic, does the same for medieval French and English poetic epic, with a focus on similarities between Beowulf and Homeric epic, as well as other medieval epics such as The Song of Roland and a medieval Greek poem called Digenis Akritas.
14481196	/m/03d4wh4	Sébastien Roch	Octave Mirbeau	1890-04		 That is the emotional story of "the murder of a child’s soul" by a Jesuit priest, a teacher at the private school for boys of Saint-François-Xavier in Vannes, Brittany, where Mirbeau spent four painful years as a pupil, before being expelled, at the age of fifteen, in suspicious circumstances. At age eleven, Sébastien is sent to boarding school by his father, an ironmonger and terrible snob. The boy does not fit into the school and its aristocratic and wealthy students. He is ignored by nearly everyone until a pedophile priest starts to befriend him. The innocent 13-year-old boy is seduced, then sexually abused, by Father de Kern. Sébastien is expelled along with his only friend Bolorec, the boys having been accused of indulging in inapproprite sexual acts. The charges have been trumped up by Father de Kern. Sébastien's life is ruined and he is unable to hold down a job or make friends. He cannot even build a relationship with Marguerite, his childhood sweetheart. Aged twenty one, Sébastien is absurdely killed during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, his body being carried from the battlefield by Bolorec.
14481296	/m/03d4wkx	Troll Mill	Katherine Langrish	2005-07-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The hero Peer Ulffson now lives with his friend Hilde and her family. One evening on the beach, having just returned from a fishing trip in stormy weather, he is horrified when a neighbour’s young wife, Kersten, pushes her newborn child into his arms before throwing herself into the sea. As he carries the child home through the windy night, he sees the old deserted mill mysteriously working away ‘all by itself’. Rumours abound in the village that Kersten was a seal woman, and that her husband Bjorn the fisherman, Peer’s friend and mentor, is now cursed, doomed to die at sea. As he struggles to understand these mysteries and protect the vulnerable ‘seal-baby’ from the predatory water spirit Granny Greenteeth, Peer must also learn to cope with his feelings for Hilde, and try to carve out a future for himself. As in the first book of the trilogy, Troll Fell, Langrish uses a variety of folklore motifs such as the Orkney legends of seal people or selkies to create an unusual and believable fantasy.
14486915	/m/03d50w0	Everything Happens for a Reason				 Priya has married a handsome young Indian man living in America. Though she has moved from Delhi to Los Angeles - land of Hollywood excess and celebrity craziness - she still lives the life of an obedient Hindu wife: cooking, cleaning and obeying her in-laws in all things. So when her mother-in-law suggests that she goes out to work, Priya is a little surprised. But not half as surprised as her husband and his family would be if they knew the reality of her new job. Because Priya has just become the hottest, most in demand and most envied showbiz reporter in Hollywood. And they would NOT approve.
14491156	/m/03d54dz	The Dark Hills Divide	Patrick Carman	2005	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The 12-year-old Alexa Daley is spending another summer in Bridewell with her father, mayor of Lathbury. She looks forward to exploring the old Renny Lodge where she stays each year, with its cozy library and maze of passages and rooms. The book starts by Alexa going on a walk through the streets of Bridewell with her adventurer friend Thomas Warvold. During the stroll, Warvold tells Alexa a fable that he heard on one of his far-off journeys. The fable consists of six blind men who all felt an elephant and thought it was something different because of the part they were touching. When the fable is finished, Alexa finds that Warvold is dead. The following chapter turns to an event that happened before Warvolds death. Alexa and her father, James Daley, are on the road to Bridewell from their hometown of Lathbury. During the ride, Alexa insists that the story of the walls that surround Bridewell and the cities around it be told to her. The story is of an orphan named Thomas Warvold who wandered off from his hometown on his thirteenth birthday. For years no one knew or cared where he'd gone. After twenty years he eventually persuaded others to join him in a place most everyone believed was haunted, dark and dangerous. But, after time, more people became convinced that the place was safe to live in. The valley where Warvold settled, which is now called Lunenberg, filled up to capacity and provided no room for growth. One end of the valley was the already established town of Ainsworth. Because of the problem, Warvold decided to expand. He would build a walled road out into the unknown, and at the end of it he would build a new town. Only, who would build the wall? People of Lunenburg were afraid of the dangers outside. So Warvold decided to borrow convicts from Ainsworth, branded with a C for criminal, to do the hard labour. There was but one condition: After ten years, Warvold could return the convicts to Ainsworth, no questions asked. In three years, the convicts built the wall to what is now Bridewell and two more walled roads were started. Over the next several years the walled roads to Turlock and Lathbury were finished, completing the kingdom. In the middle of the story, Alexa and her father have a race with a mailman named Silas Hardy whom they meet on the road. Upon arriving at the Renny Lodge (Named after Warvold's wife Renny Warvold), Alexa is greeted by Ganesh, the mayor of Turlock and by Warvold himself. After going up to her room, Alexa uses a spyglass, stolen from her mother, to look over the walls from her window. She is interrupted by Pervis Kotcher, head guard of the Turlock gate, who takes the spyglass from her. Fortunately, Warvold comes just then (Pervis hides the spyglass) and takes Alexa for a walk which, as shown in the beginning of the book, ends in his death. Before getting help, Alexa takes a silver key from the locket around Warvold's neck. During Warvold's funeral Alexa sneaks to the library. While there, she drifts off to sleep in her favorite nook. She is awakened by Pervis, who breaks her spyglass before returning it. At dinner Nicolas (Warvold's son) tells Alexa about his mother Renny's interest in the art of Jocastas. That day, when Alexa is in her favorite nook again, she discovers that the medallions which the library cats Sam and Pepper have hanging from their collars, have Jocastas etched on them. Alexa is successful in looking at Sam's but receives a nasty scratch when she attempts to look at Pepper's. Later on, Alexa uses the silver key to open a passageway hidden behind her favorite nook. At the end of the passageway, outside the wall, Alexa is greeted by a short man named Yipes, who seems to have been waiting for her. Alexa follows Yipes up Mount Norwood and comes to a glowing pond. Inside the pond, she finds a green stone. Once she puts it in her leather pouch, Yipes takes her to his house. Waking up from her sleep, Alexa finds that she has the ability to talk to animals. Darius, a wolf separated from his family, leads her to a tunnel under the walled road between Lathbury and Bridewell. At the end of the tunnel, Alexa discovers that the convicts of Ainsworth inhabit The Dark Hills. Once she is back outside, a rabbit named Malcolm takes her to the forest king Ander, a grizzly bear. Ander tells Alexa that she can talk to animals as long as she has the green stone with her and is outside the walls. He also tells her that the convicts living in The Dark Hills are planning to attack and take over Bridewell. The leader of the convicts is someone the convicts call Sebastian, an escaped convict posing as a citizen of Bridewell. At the meeting Alexa meets Murphy (Squirrel), Beaker (Raccoon), Henry (Badger), Picardy (Female Black Bear), Boone (Bobcat), Odessa (Darius's wife) and Sherwin (Darius's son). The day after the meeting, Alexa is sent back through the passageway she came from. Back in the library she learns that Sam and Pepper are traitors. At her arrival, Silas, who Mr. Daley promotes as his personal mailman, asks her where she had gone. Alexa lies and says she was playing a game. During lunch, Pervis returns drunk from his holiday and is locked up. Later that day, Alexa visits Pervis in his cell and the two play a game of chess, in which the winner gets to ask 5 questions. Pervis is the victor and asks Alexa about the night of Warvold's death and her disappearance. Feeling that she could trust him, Alexa tells him about everything. The next morning, Alexa also tells her father about her disappearance and the plot against Bridewell. Hearing this, Mr. Daley calls for a meeting. During the meeting the group, which consists of Mr. Daley, Grayson (Librarian), Nicolas, Ganesh, Pervis, Silas and Alexa, come up with a plan to defend Bridewell and release Pervis. While looking at one of Warvold's favorite books, Alexa finds a page about Sebastian telling her to read page 194. Having figured out who Sebastian was, Alexa and Murphy go back to the passageway in the library way and come face to face with Ganesh. Ganesh admits that he was the one who poisoned Warvold and that he was Sebastian. The confession is followed by a fight in which Ganesh dies. Alexa is rescued by her father and Pervis, who take her back above ground. The convicts attack Bridewell at midnight but eventually fail. In the epilogue: All the walls are taken down except for the wall around Bridewell. * The plot above does not contain some details and events. The book is narrated from Alexa's point of view.
14491274	/m/03d54h0	Into the Mist	Patrick Carman	2007-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Before the walls went up... before the battle between Abaddon and Elyon... before Alexa Daley was born... there were two young brothers, Thomas and Roland Warvold, whose pasts were as mysterious as their futures. Raised in a horrible orphanage and forced to escape into a strange, unknown world, Thomas and Roland found adventure wherever they turned-and danger wherever they looked. Their story is one of magic, exploration, fellowship, and secrets-all of which need to be revealed as the chronicles of Elyon unfold.
14493125	/m/02qgmm3	Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs	Judi Barrett		{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is about a story that a kindly and elderly grandfather tells to his grandchildren about the town of Chewandswallow, where the weather comes three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and is always food and beverages. The rain is juice and soup, the snow is ice cream, and the wind brings hamburgers. Because of this phenomenon, there are no grocery stores. However, the weather soon takes a turn for the worse, at first simply just giving the people disgusting things, like pea soup fog, soggy green beans and Brussels sprout cakes. However, it quickly becomes catastrophic, and the portion sizes of the food grow to massive sizes, and the entire island is bombarded with a severe amount of food that completely buries buildings, crushes homes and blocks traffic. The people decide to use stale bread and pizza to build boats to escape from Chewandswallow, while they still have a chance before the weather completely destroys the island. Soon, the population of Chewandswallow arrive in a new town, where they struggle to adapt to their new lives in the world where the sky doesn't bring food.
14493568	/m/03d5716	The Jackal of Nar				 This powerful, multilayered saga features a complicated hero: brave yet sensitive General Richius Vantran. Ordered by the Emperor to halt a revolt by a religious faction, Vantran's success wins him both Imperial favor and a wife--though neither sits well with him. For in battle, he fell in love with a member of the very religious faction he put down. Torn between duty and passion, Vantran surprises himself by choosing to love the enemy--and march against his old companions. fr:Le Chacal de Nar pl:Szakal z Nar
14499409	/m/03d5f1x	The Wrong Side of the Sky	Gavin Lyall	1961	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Jack Clay, an ex-Royal Air Force military transport makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights of dubious legitimacy around the Mediterranean and other parts of Europe in an old Douglas DC-3. His dreams of having his own aeroplane and own charter company are rapidly fading due to age and lack of money, but at least he is flying. While in Athens, Greece he has a chance encounter with an old wartime friend and rival pilot, Ken Kitson, when the latter lands in a luxurious private Piaggio P.166. Kitson is personal pilot to the immensely wealthy former-Nawab of Tungabhadra in Pakistan, who is searching the world for his family's heirloom jewels, been stolen by a British charter pilot during the Partition of India. However, the Nawab is not the only one looking for the missing jewels, and is not the only one who would cheat, steal or murder to find them first.
14500121	/m/03d5fs8	Chucaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa	Francis Kalnay	1958	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 ==Reference
14501750	/m/03d5hr_	The Spook's Mistake	Joseph Delaney			 Tom is annoyed that the Spook will not allow him to leave the house, for fear that the fiend will get him. Alice is the same, wanting to do the grocery shopping instead of Tom. While the Spook is away, Tom goes to the village alone to get the groceries ignoring Alice's protests. On the way back, he is captured by a press-gang, a group of men who force boys into the King's army who are currently fighting a war. While tied up one night, Tom senses the presence of a dark force which takes the form of a malevolent witch, scaring the men away. It is only when the witch comes close to him, that Tom realizes that it is Alice using a type of magic called Dread. Keeping this a secret from the Spook, they tell him that Alice got the men to chase her allowing Tom to escape. The Spook decides to send Tom to another Spook, Bill Arkwright, for further training. Soon they are on the way to Caster, where Tom is collected by a ferryman and brought to the boundary of Bill's home. Tom lets himself into the house to find that Bill has left to deal with business, leaving Tom a note saying not to harm the ghosts that live in the house. Tom soon finds out the Bill is a drunk, he almost drowns Tom while teaching him how to swim, and beats him with his staff while teaching him how to fight. On top of that Tom is scared of Bill's two vicious wolfhounds Tooth and Claw. Having enough, Tom leaves in the middle of the night to return home after only the third day. Eventually he realizes that the dogs have been stalking him and Bill is waiting for him ahead. He gives Tom the letter that the Spook had sent to Bill. It said that after the treatment Bill gave previous apprentices, the Spook would never send another to him, but as the greatest threat to the Fiend, Tom is in danger and must learn to fight in order to survive, and Bill is the only one who can teach him that. Tom returns to study with Bill, learning about water witches and improving his swimming. He then is sent to find a path through the marshes to reach an abandoned monastery. The dogs would be sent after him, and if he reaches the monastery first he wins. While running through the marshes he sees a woman in front of him, too late he realizes that it is a water witch. Using her bloodeye to paralyze him, she hooks his ear before dragging him into the marsh. Just in time, Claw saves him by biting the witches finger off. Back at the house, Tom learns that the witch, called Morewenna, is the Fiends daughter, and Bill has been hunting her for years. After Tom sends a letter to the Spook, he and Bill leave with the dogs to hunt for the witch. After speaking with a hermit, who has the ability to find anyone, they come to a village and lodge in a tavern. After eating and Bill getting drunk, they sleep for a few hours before heading towards the lakes. Bill becomes violently ill, and Tom with Claw, leave to look for the witch. After a while they return to find Claw's mate Tooth dead, and Bill's staff broken and boot floating in the water. Back at the inn Tom uses a mirror to contact Alice to tell her of Bill's death. Afterwards he and Claw leave to return to Bill's house. They elude the witch chasing them and reach the house. That night, one of the house ghosts, Bill's mother, tells Tom the he is still alive and is being held captive. The next morning, Tom goes to the river, where the ferryman is delivering salt to the house, he also has a letter for Tom from the Spook, saying that Tom must leave immediately for Caster. While the ferryman insists that Tom leave straight away with him, Tom goes back to the house first to check on the dog and get his staff. At the house, he finds Alice and the two search around in the ferry, when suddenly attacked on their search. They soon realize that the ferryman is actually the Fiend. They are bait for a trap for the Spook, who manages to free them. Later they are able to find Bill and rescue him with the unlikely help of the assassin witch Grimalkin. The Fiend later sends Tom out to fight Morwenna, holding the two Spooks and Alice's lives in the balance. Tom meets Grimalkin along the way who once again offers her help,to ensure the death of Morwenna, and Tom accepts but asks her why she is sure that the fiend will not turn up and kill everyone because she broke the rules. Grimalkin replies that she is the mother of one the fiends children and whoever births a child of the fiend is put under protection by him. It is revealed that Alice contacted her and asked her to protect Tom. After the battle is won Grimalkin asks Tom to visit her on Midsummers (according to tradition it that the midsummer after the 14th birthday that the son of a witch becomes a man) for a gift. Learning that Alice has been using some witch powers, the Spook decides to bury Alice in a pit, but it is only with the persuasion of Bill and Tom, that he relents and banishes Alice to Pendle instead. Before she leaves, she gives Tom the blood jar containing Morwena's blood, so that he can protect himself, but he refuses to use it. Knowing it is unlikely she will see him again, she kisses him on the lips for a few seconds before turning and running to Pendle. The Spook then departs and Tom finishes off his six months training with Bill. On his way back to Chipenden the Fiend once again finds Tom. The Fiend tells him that Alice's mother and father were not her real parents, but rather he and Bony Lizzie are. After Tom later informs the Spook of this, John Gregory reveals he had his suspicions all along, and they together conclude Alice used her own blood in the bloodjar, so desperate was she to protect Tom.
14504141	/m/03d5n4d	Midnight Plus One	Gavin Lyall	1965	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lewis Cane is an ex-SOE operative who worked with the French Resistance against Nazi Germany. He stayed in Paris after the end of World War II, making a somewhat precarious living as a business expediter. One day he is approached by a lawyer, Henri Merlin, a former resistance comrade, with a job: a wealthy international financier, Maganhard, needs to be driven from Brittany to Liechtenstein in secrecy and within three days. The fact that the French Sûreté have an open arrest warrant out on Maganhard seems like a simple problem. However, when half the hit-men in Europe start gunning for them, things get complicated quickly. As Cane races the clock, the police, and the assassins across France and Switzerland, whom can he trust? His alcoholic and trigger-happy bodyguard? Maganhard's mysterious private secretary who seemingly goes out of her way to create problems? Or his former Resistance contacts, who might or might not sell him out for the highest price?
14504252	/m/03d5ndk	Shooting Script	Gavin Lyall	1966	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Keith Carr, an ex-Royal Air Force fighter pilot with combat experience in the Korean War is now living in Jamaica, where he makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights around the Caribbean in his mortgaged second-hand de Havilland Dove. After a rival pilot from his Korean War days lands a high-priced job commanding a squadron of de Havilland Vampire jet fighters for the hard-line military dictators on the nearby “Republica Libre”, Carr suddenly finds life more difficult. For some reason, the United States FBI is keeping him under surveillance. Republica Libre at first offers him a job, and then impounds his plane when he refuses – and one of his flying students ends up murdered. Carr is hired by the flamboyant movie director Walt Whitmore, who is filming an action movie on the north coast of Jamaica, and Carr is assigned to fly an old World War II vintage B-25 Mitchell medium bomber as a camera plane. However, it soon becomes apparent that Whitmore has more in mind for Carr and the decrepit bomber than just making a film. The character of Whitmore was inspired by John Wayne, with whom Lyall spent four days at a studio while Wayne was filming. Sounds like the new movie "Argo." Movie people and secret agents.
14504372	/m/03d5nph	Venus with Pistol	Gavin Lyall	1969	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Gilbert Kemp is dealer specializing in antique guns in London with a somewhat dubious background. He is approached by the mysterious Carlos MacGregor Garcia, a Nicaraguan and his employer, the very wealthy ex-professional tennis player Doña Margarita Umberto, who are traveling around Europe buying oil paintings to form a private collection which they allege will be donated to the Nicaraguan people. However, as many of the works are to be acquired from private collectors who do not wish the sale to be made public, and as many European governments would block the export of the historically valuable paintings, Kemp's services are needed in order to smuggle the paintings into Switzerland, from where they will be transported to Nicaragua in the diplomatic pouch. It seems like a straightforward matter of art smuggling until Kemp is mugged on arrival in Zürich, and a priceless Cezanne is stolen. On his next commission in Amsterdam, he helps obtain an un-catalogued work of Vincent van Gogh, but the art expert certifying the painting is soon brutally murdered. Things heat up in Venice and culminate in Vienna where Kemp finally unravels the web of treachery and deceit that he has unwittingly stumbled into.
14504641	/m/03d5p4p	The Fall of the Templar	Derek Benz	2008-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Lord Sumner has unlocked the secrets to the Spear of Ragnarök, unleashing a power that threatens to bring a second Ice Age. All hope seems lost until the Templar Knights discover clues that may lead them to a relic with the power to stand against the Spear. Now Max Sumner, Natalia Romanov, Harley Eisenstein, and Ernie Tweeny must join the Templar in a treacherous journey into the Underworld as they hunt for that lost relic and try and save the planet from extinction. But even if they make it through the underground labyrinth, an ageless dragon awaits at the end of their quest.
14504853	/m/03d5pdk	Antony and Cleopatra	Colleen McCullough	2007-12-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 McCullough continues her Masters of Rome series with the seventh and final installment, Antony and Cleopatra. The novel spans the years 41 BC to 27 BC, from the aftermath of the Battle of Philippi and the suicide of Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus until the downfall of the second triumvirate, the final war of the Roman Republic and the renaming of Octavian to Augustus in 27 BC. The novel, which is supposed to be McCullough's last in the series, focuses mainly on the famous love story between Mark Antony, victor at Philippi, and queen Cleopatra, earlier the lover of Julius Caesar. This book differs greatly from Shakespeare's treatment of these events; Cleopatra is portrayed as no great beauty, but rather an inept politician who helps ruin Antony's cause by publicly meddling in affairs of state, and Antony is, for much of the book, far more in love with Cleopatra's wealth than her person. Caesarion is portrayed as a gifted, idealistic youth who would be far happier had he never been a king, and who is not happy with his mother's ambitious plans to make him ruler of all the East. Octavian and his wife Livia are depicted as pragmatic to the point of total ruthlessness but not needlessly cruel.
14506667	/m/043t_g3	The Moffats	Eleanor Estes		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Moffats are a fatherless family in Cranbury, Connecticut, which Estes modeled after her hometown of West Haven. Mama is a dressmaker with four children: Sylvie, Joey, Janey and Rufus. The two youngest, ten-year-old Janey and five-year-old Rufus, are the focus of these stories. When the book opens Janey watches as a strange man nails a For Sale sign on their house. They've lived there since shortly after her father died, and Janey can't imagine living anywhere else. Mama tells the children not to worry about it until it sells. Each chapter in the book tells of one simple adventure the children had. For instance, when the first day of school arrives and Rufus goes to kindergarten, he takes very seriously the instruction to watch over his young friend Hughie. When Hughie runs away from school and hides on a train, Rufus follows him, and a helpful engineer gets them back just in time for lunch. Another time the children decide to rig up a ghost in their attic to scare the neighborhood bully. They use their Mama's dressmakers form, a pumpkin with real teeth and a scooter. When they take the boy up to see it, they get a big scare themselves, and only later realize their cat had made the 'ghost' move. When Rufus gets scarlet fever, the doctor puts a quarantine sign on their house. Mama, who can always find the good side of any situation, reminds the children that no one will try to buy it while someone inside has scarlet fever. In the meantime she entertains them all with stories of when she lived in New York City. Eventually one family, the Murdocks, becomes interested in the yellow house, but they can't make up their minds to buy it or not. The Moffats get very tired of having one or more of the Murdocks always coming by to look at something, and the little girl Letitia is the worst. She rings the doorbell over and over, and when she gets inside she eats candy, but never shares. Finally the house does sell, and the Moffats move to a different house, with a tiny yard, that turns out to have a girl Janey's age right next door. In the end, "Estes celebrates variety as the source of pleasure and growth."
14511796	/m/03d5xhc	The Tale of Fedot the Strelets				 The storyline is based on the folk tale Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What Fedot, a strelets, serves at Tsar's court as the royal hunter. Tsar orders him to provide the game for his dinner with English embassinger. Fedot was unlucky: he got not a single bird. When he tried to shoot at least a dove, it turned into a beautiful maid, Marusia (Maria), which Fedot adopted as his wife. Marusia, possessing magical skills, saves her man from Tsar's punishment: she summons Tit Kuzmich and Frol Fomich (two magical servants being a sort of genie, who could and would perform anything Marusia orders), and they fill Tsar's table with food. Tsar makes his diplomacy with the English noble, in hope to make him marry Tsar's daughter, the Princess, who is not beautiful enough to attract the suiters. Princess and her Nanny, an old angry woman, are not pleased and argue against the match with an ambassador, who seem greedy and stupid to them. After the dinner, the General, leader of the secret police, arrives to the Tsar. He tells his senior about Fedot's new pretty wife, and Tsar begins to plan how to steal Marusia from Fedot. He orders General to find a task for Fedot which he would be impossible to complete and it would let Tsar to execute Fedot for incompetency. General goes to the forest, where old witch Baba Yaga lives, and asks her advice. With her magic, Yaga finds the way. Tsar should order Fedot to bring him next day a magic carpet on which the whole Russia could be seen just like on a map. Tsar calls Fedot and orders him the carpet, Fedot feels low, but Marusia and her magic servants solve the problem and bring the carpet at morning. Tsar, though trying to seem happy, is upset. He calls fo General again, threatening he will be punished if no plan will be given. General, also upset, goes back to Baba Yaga, who gives him another plan. Now Tsar orders Fedot to bring him next day a golden-horned deer, which is thought to not exist at all. But Marusia and her servants bring the deer as well. Tsar forces General, General forces Yaga, and the final plan is prepared. The new task for Fedot is to find Something That Could Not Be in the World. Even Tit Kuzmich and Frol Fomich are unable to find a thing so loosely described. Fedot sets up to journey for his goal, leaving his young wife home. A few days later, Tsar, despite being continually mocked by the Nanny for this, arrives with the weeding gifts to Marusia. The young woman refuses to betray Fedot for old and vile Tsar, she turns into dove and flies away. Fedot is wandering the world in quest for Something That Could Not Be. Shipwreck puts him on an uninhabited island. Its only master is a Voice, a bodyless yet powerful spirit, who is living a boring life: he can summon himself any good he wants, but only thing he longs for is human company. Fedot, realizing he found his goal, persuades the spirit to join his way back to Russian Tsar. Returning home, Fedot discovers his house devastated by Tsar, and Marusia tells him about Tsar's harassment. Fedot calls to the simple Russian people to help him avenge the injustice, and they rise up. Crowd storms into Tsar's palace. Tsar, General and Baba Yaga, caught in charge, cowardly try to translate the guilt on two others. People sentence them to sail away in a bucket overseas. Then Fedot refuses a marriage offering from Princess, leaving her with his promise to find her another man, his twin. The tale ends up with the feast, supplied by Something-That-Could-Not-Be's magic.
14513508	/m/03d5z7g	Blind Faith	Ben Elton	2007-11-05	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Trafford Sewell, the novel's protagonist, sets off for work on a rare "Fizzy Coff" (a day he must be physically present in his office; like most people he usually telecommutes) and, in the short distance he has to travel, he is confronted by the numerous maudlin "tributes" to dead "kiddies", massive overcrowding, and oppressive heat that are typical of his world. His "Confessor", Bailey, confronts him about his lateness in posting an explicit video of Caitlin Happymeal (Trafford's daughter) being born on the "WorldTube". Trafford's given excuse is forgetfulness, rather than the illegal desire for privacy that is his true reason. A "Fizzy Coff" colleague, Cassius, begins to take an interest in Trafford and invites him to lunch at an "old-fashioned" falafel restaurant. There he tells Trafford that he is a "Vaccinator" who belongs to the "Humanist" group. This group believes in reason and science, opposing the Temple's message of blind faith. Having already lost an earlier child to a "plague" as all epidemics are called, Trafford tries to find a way to get Caitlin Happymeal vaccinated. Trafford's wife, Chantorria, is a devout Temple member and is against the idea. Trafford ignores her wishes and secretly vaccinates Caitlin against measles, mumps and tetanus. Vaccination is banned under the "Wembley Laws" as interference in "God's will" and as a result, half of all children born die of preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella and tetanus. When a measles epidemic comes to London, thousands of children die, including all the children in the Trafford's apartment building, but Caitlin Happymeal survives. Chantorria is aware of the fact that Catilin Happymeal has been vaccinated, but rather than accepting this cause and effect, she sees Caitlin Happymeal's survival as God's will. The Sewells become stars in their parish and Chantorria becomes the centre of attention, which she relishes. She gradually becomes convinced that she is one of God's chosen few and begins an affair with Confessor Bailey. During this time, Trafford has fallen in love with Sandra Dee, another "Fizzy Coff" colleague. He has been "Goog'ing" her and discovers that the videos that she "tubes" are not of her and her blog entries have been lifted wholesale from other people's blogs. This fascinates Trafford as he sees a kindred spirit in her: someone else who values privacy in a world where everything is made public. Trafford introduces Sandra Dee to the books that Cassius has lent him from the Humanist group's library. The relationship between the pair develops. The Sewells' world is then shattered by the death of Caitlin Happymeal due to a cholera epidemic, a disease against which she was not vaccinated. Chantorria becomes angry, telling Trafford that Caitlin's death is a punishment from God for his heresy in having her vaccinated at all. They are rejected by their community and arrested by the Temple and are tortured into implicating others. Chantorria accepts the torture as her "just punishment". As Trafford finally breaks and implicates Cassius, the Inquisitor tells him that they already knew everything, the torture was simply to test his endurance. In his cell, Trafford is visited by Sandra Dee, who turns out to be an undercover police officer, and the reason that the Temple knows all about the Humanists. She tries to recruit Trafford. He refuses and he and Chantorria are taken to the stake to be burned as heretics. On his personal PC, Trafford has set up an email bomb (containing a précis of the Theory of Evolution) which he tricks Sandra Dee into releasing under the pretense that it contains a love-letter from him to her. When being tied to the stake, Trafford notices a girl waving an Ev Love ("evolve" backwards) banner, showing that she received the e-mail. He goes to his death in hope of a better world, reasoning that a society which promotes ignorance over knowledge and values mediocrity will inevitably die out and "evolve" into one that values knowledge and excellence.
14513806	/m/03d5zpn	The Good Master	Kate Seredy	1935	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Young Kate isn't at all what Jansci and his family are expecting. She turns out to be an out-of-control little girl, sent by her father to live with her Uncle's family in the country. Kate's Uncle Marton is the "Good Master", a kind and respected man in the community. Her father has spoiled Kate since her mother died, and now he hopes his brother will be able to do something with her. At first Jansci is repelled by her unpredictable and disrespectful behavior. But he and Kate share many adventures on his father's ranch in Hungary—riding run-away horses, going to a Country Fair, celebrating Easter and Christmas in traditional ways. Eventually he learns to appreciate her spirit, and Kate learns to love and respect the people she has met. When her father arrives at the end of the book, he hardly recognizes his polite, self-controlled daughter, and she persuades him to move to the country to teach.
14515836	/m/03d616t	Word of Honor	Nelson DeMille	1985-11-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with Ben Tyson finding and reading excerpts from Hue: Death of a City, a recently published book by Andrew Picard about the Battle of Hue during the Vietnam War. The book highlights an incident similar to MyLai and is based on information provided to Picard from two men in Tyson's platoon and from a nun who escaped the incident. It names Tyson as the leader of the platoon, which is shot at as it approaches a hospital, suffering one casualty and two injuries. According to the book, a doctor at the hospital refuses to help one of the American soldiers because his condition is too bad; after an American soldier shoots the doctor and others are killed in the hospital, chaos ensues and, according to Picard, the platoon decides to kill all the witness (everyone in the hospital). The book never mentions names except Tyson's, stating that he was the platoon lieutenant. Tyson researches his possible options and learns that a platoon leader can be held accountable for the actions of his men if he should have anticipated them or possibly if he knew of them and did not report them. In this case, the charge would have to be murder since the statute of limitations ran out on other possible charges. Tyson tells his wife, Marcy, of the book and has her read it. He doesn't deny what the book charges but instead says that on the whole it is accurate. Marcy is a liberal, was very active in the 60's anti-war movement, and is somewhat skeptical of her husband's actions but still supports him. The Tyson's social life begins to take a hit and the tabloids begin to focus first on Ben and second on Marcy. A famous picture of a nude Marcy which was first printed in Life in the 60's is reprinted. Tyson is visited by Chet Brown, a mysterious high-level agent, who advices and warns him to play fair and not attack the Army, thereby further dirtying Vietnam and America's role in it. He also learns that the Army is looking into assigning him active orders again so that they will be able to court martial him for murder. Tyson is given the notice that he has been summoned to return to active duty, the first step before he will be court-martialed. The Army enlists Major Karen Harper to lead the investigation to see if Tyson should be court-martialed. The two meet and Tyson explains a different story to her of the Hue Hospital incident that contradicts Picard's. In his version, the platoon did not know the building was a hospital and that it was fortified by Vietnam soldiers. His platoon scored a victory over the Vietcong in the hospital. Tyson visits the Vietnam War Memorial and sees Larry Cane's name on it. Cane served in his platoon and died in the hospital incident. According to Picard's book, he was shot by Vietcong as the platoon approached the hospital. Tyson reflects on the kind letter he wrote to the Cane family, speaking of his bravery, and ensuring them that he died quickly without pain. He then reflects that this latter part was the only truth, something he knew because he "shot him through the heart." Tyson meets Major Karen Harper again and tempers run high as he smashes a glass across the wall. Harper tells him of the two men who told Picard about the story: a medic, Steven Brandt, and a soldier, Richard Farley. She also tells him the other infantry gave exactly the same story he did. Tyson and Harper begin to develop an attraction for each other but neither acts. They talk about truth and justice, the nun who Picard interviewed who is missing (Sister Theresa), and what should be done (whether Harper should recommend Tyson be court-martialed for murder). The reader also begins to learn of the environment that Tyson's platoon was in. The 25-year old Tyson was leading a platoon of 17-, 18-, and 19-year olds who had witnessed and participated in horrific battles over the last few months. Tyson visits Picard and shares a friendly visit with him where both men learn to respect the other. Picard seems to regret indicting Tyson in his book. Tyson decides to swim across the inlet from Picard's to the summer residence his family recently moved into to avoid publicity. His knee which was wounded in Vietnam, gives out and he almost drowns. He reconnects with his wife. And then reports to active duty. He meets with Colonel Levin and is ordered to stay on base and serve as a museum guide. On Levin's recommendation, he gets a good defense attorney. He also meets with Major Harper again who tells him she's found enough evidence to submit a charge of murder but at the same time suspects the government is tampering with the case. Harper asks if he can discredit Brandt. He says that he possibly could but then he would be like Brandt, bringing up war horror that should be left as it was. He denies her accusation that he has no self-preservation instinct by saying that he does but will not lower himself like others have. The two almost embrace but Tyson's wife Marcy comes to the door just before they do. A groundswell of public sentiment has been building for Tyson, as more and more people feel the war is over and the Army is hanging him out to dry. General Van Arken of the Army who started the entire process learns well-respected Colonel Horton that it is just that. Van Arken does not listen and says that it has already begun. Tyson sets up a meeting with and then punches the tabloid journalist who smeared his wife before Chet Brown and his guys intervene and talk with Tyson again. Tyson and his attorney Vincent Corva hear of and begin preparation for the trial process. We also learn that two weeks after the Hue Hospital incident, Tyson was wounded with shrapnel and the medic Brandt tried to kill him by injecting a lethal dose of morphine. A pre-trial Article 32 investigation takes place in which Corva pins Tyson with his medals for bravery in the Hue battle (one was never given to him and Karen Harper just procured it). This irritates Colonel Pierce, council for the prosecution. Major Harper interviews Andrew Picard and identifies that Sister Theresa told Picard that Tyson "spared" or "saved" her life. She spoke in French, however, and used "sauver" which could mean either. She asks Picard why he did not include this and he responds that it was an error of omission that he left out, because it did not fit with Brandt's story. Harper also gets Picard to admit that the nun said Brandt was a man who abuses young girls. Picard then explains that this trial of Tyson is a travesty and that he, now believes Brandt lied to him about Tyson ordering his troops to shoot anyone in the hospital and that he thinks Tyson's troops mutinied. Moreover, he states that even Tyson's platoon, in his estimation, were victims of "war, combat fatigue, and shock." Despite the positive results for Tyson, Col Gilmer decides to recommend a court martial in which Tyson will be tried for murder. The court martial begins with Pierce calling Richard Farley to the stand. Farley, a paraplegic gives wrenching testimony against Tyson. He first explains an incident the morning of the Hue Massacre in which Tyson "ordered" his troops to shoot civilians, then explains the Hue Hospital Massacre, how Tyson had all the platoon swear to never tell of the incident to anyone, and how the group concocted a new, different story to explain it. Corva cross-examines him and it is learned that Farley stated that Tyson said to "waste them" in the hospital. Then, according to Farley, the platoon killed everyone. Corva gets Farley to admit that Tyson said to "waste the Gooks" and that Tyson meant only enemy soldiers. Court is adjourned and Tyson meets Brandt in a back alley. Brandt is terrified and Tyson ambiguously talks about what Brandt did to him the last time they saw each other and how the other men are upset with him, and that there would be payback. Brandt's testimony supports Farley's and is damaging to Tyson. He explains how Tyson was very mad the hospital staff was not helping his wounded soldier and how the soldier was already passed the point of life. Corva gains some on his cross-examination of Brandt as it becomes clear he may not be telling the whole truth. In particular, Corva attacks Brandt's explanation of the first shots that rang out in the hospital and that how he cannot identify who they were from. Corva also gets Brandt to tell the court that Beltran threw a grenade into one room when before he said he couldn't see who did that. A barrage of questions and dialogue ends with Corva asking, "Did you see Larry Cane shoot anyone?" and Brandt responding, "No." To which Corva responds, "Larry Cane was dead, Mr. Brandt." The court members then question Brandt, asking him many questions about the incident and why he did not tell anyone until just recently. The prosecution rests, but after their performance Tyson's five platoon witnesses are unsure of testifying. Their lawyers are urging them not to because they could then face perjury charges. These witnesses offer to make statements in extenuation and mitigation if a guilty verdict is given. Tyson considers testifying but realizes it will be better to make a statement in the sentencing phase. The defense rests without calling any witnesses. There is a lengthy wait in which Tyson rejects seeing his family. The court members find Tyson guilty (2/3 concurring). Chet Brown meets with Tyson and tells him that if he reads a given statement he will be pardoned and serve no jail time. Corva also learns that the Army has found Dan Kelly, Tyson's radiotelephone operator. Kelly's testimony is similar to Brandt's but with glaring differences. He first explains Tyson's sarcastic order to shoot the civilians the morning of the Hue massacre. He explains how it was Tyson's men who were overly aggressive in attacking them and that Tyson was irate and sarcastically left them with that remark. In fact, Kelly even reports on hearing Simcox and Farley talking about how Tyson is "too soft of the gooks." Kelly also explains how a while ago, he and Tyson found Brandt raping young adolescent Vietnamese. As punishment, Tyson kicked and threw Brandt into water filled with leeches. Brandt was then cared for and Tyson returned that night to him and told him that if he did not report back to his platoon he would be court-martialed on a variety of charges. Upon hearing the beginning of this, Brandt leaves the courtroom. Kelly then explains the Hue Massacre. Colonel Sproule the judge, interrupts him, asking why he did not mention the death of Larry Cane outside the hospital. Kelly responds that this is because Cane was still alive in the hospital. Kelly explains how Peterson was dying at the feet of Tyson, begging for help. After the doctor refused to treat him, Tyson slapped him. Farley and Beltran then put Peterson on a hospital bed. An Australian then came into the room shouting obscenities at the American soldiers and America in general. Larry Cane screamed at him and then shot him. Beltran then shot two North Viets. Cane then fired his M-16 all over. Kelly and Tyson dove on the floor. Tyson drew his pistol, aimed it at Cane, and ordered him to drop his rifle. He didn't and Tyson shot him dead. Kelly then goes on explaining how pandemonium ensued, how Farley was livid that Tyson shot his friend, and how Beltran and the men mutinied and had their guns locked on Tyson. Tyson said they would all be charged and probably would have been shot, but Kelly punched him to remove the threat from Beltran and the others. Finally, Kelly explains how Tyson was a prisoner for a while, how he had to radio certain comments to remain alive, and how he eventually got control back by explaining that they would take an oath to never mention the incident again. Court adjourns and Tyson sees his wife and son for the first time in a while. The court-martial is concluded with Tyson giving a speech. He explains that he will not give a speech of extenuation and mitigation and how he knows that the crime he committed was nothing that happened in the hospital but instead the fact that he never reported what happened. He explains how he briefly considered reporting it but only briefly. And that, even though he knows it was an immoral and illegal one, he would make the same decision. He does explain how he was somewhat protecting his men and that he is sad for them and their families now that the truth has come out. But at the same time he points out that this sadness is nothing compared to the innocent lives lost at the hospital. He ends by saying he cannot think of anything extenuating and mitigating. Corva then questions him to continue and an awkward questioning phase begins until Tyson admits that everything could come under battle fatigue. Court adjourns and the members reach a decision quickly. They sentence Tyson to be dismissed from the Army and that is all. Pierce storms out of the courtroom. Tyson meets and embraces his family, and states, "Let's go home."
14516544	/m/03d624r	The Agent of Death	Nelson DeMille	1975		 The story focuses on Ryker's attempt to stop an unstable CIA assassin in New York City.
14516665	/m/03d627v	The Smack Man	Nelson DeMille	1975		 The novel focuses on super-cop Joe Ryker's attempt to stop a murderer from poisoning illegal drugs coming into New York City.
14516914	/m/03d62jg	Mayday	Nelson DeMille	1979-11		 A supersonic passenger jet flying over the Pacific Ocean, is struck by an errant missile. Due to the effects of decompression and oxygen deprivation, all but a handful are incapacitated. Three survivors must attempt to land the airplane, despite attempts to cover up the disaster.
14518884	/m/03d656j	The Forgotten Beasts of Eld	Patricia A. McKillip	1974	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the beginning of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, sixteen year old Sybel lives alone on a mountain, with only the mythical creatures that her deceased father Ogam summoned for company. Sybel cares for the creatures and shares a type of telepathy with them. However, in the dead of night, a man named Coren of Sirle gives her a baby to care for. Coren believes the baby is none other than the child of Rianna, the now deceased queen of Eld, and her dead lover, Norrel, although it is later revealed that he is the son of Rianna and Drede, king of Eldwold. Sybel accepts the baby, Tamlorn, on Coren's conditions that she love it, and cares for Tamlorn with the help of the witch Maelga who lives near the mountain. Twelve years later, Coren comes back for Tamlorn. Sybel refuses to return him, believing that Coren and his brothers would use Tamlorn in their plot against Drede, the king of Eld. She later reluctantly gives Tamlorn to Drede along with the mythical falcon Ter, to watch over Tamlorn. As a result Sybel falls into a depression and resumes her quest to summon the Liralen, a legendary white bird. Instead, she not only finds the Blammor, a creature of shadow that induces fear, but the wizard Mithran who has been paid by Drede to destroy Sybel's will and hand her over to him. However, Mithran desires Sybel and Sybel manages to escape by summoning the Blammor who crushes every bone in Mithran's body to splinters. Upon returning to her home, where Coren is recovering from his injuries caused by one of the creatures in Sybel's care, Sybel induces Coren to marry her, knowing he loves her and she can use him and his love as a tool for revenge against Drede. They journey to Coren's home and get married. Later in the book, Sybel and Coren transport the mythical beasts and Sybel's books to Coren's home. Sybel plans to start a war between Coren's people in Sirle, who oppose Drede, and Drede. Coren discovers this and is upset with Sybel. The Blammor, whom Sybel held on condition of her fearlessness, comes to Sybel in the night, and she sees in her mind, the Liralen with its neck broken. Sybel flees to the now deserted Eld Mountain and sets all the creatures free. They choose to lure Drede and his army, and the Sirle lords and their army, away from each other, thus defusing the war (although it is unknown at the end of the book whether the lords and armies will return, other than Coren). Tamlorn wakes Sybel up and tells her that Drede had died, that he thinks that whatever killed the wizard Mithran also killed Drede, and he is now king of Eldwold. They go to Maelga's house where Sybel meets Coren, who asks her why he should return to her. She tells him he is the only person who can bring her joy, and they reunite. On a hunch, Sybel summons the Blammor which reveals itself to be the Liralen. Sybel asks the Liralen to take her and Coren home.
14525778	/m/03d6d9f	Just Above My Head	James Baldwin	1979	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the life story of a group of friends, from preaching in Harlem, through to experiencing 'incest, war, poverty, the civil-rights struggle, as well as wealth and love and fame—in Korea, Africa, Birmingham, New York, Paris.'
14526487	/m/03d6f1z	Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone	James Baldwin	1968	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Leo Proudhammer, an African American actor who grew up in Harlem and later moved into Greenwich Village, has a heart attack while on stage. This event creates the present tense setting for the novel, which is mostly narrated in retrospect, explaining each relationship with a story from the actor's life. Barbara, a white woman, and Leo, a black man, are artistic partners for life&mdash;sometimes sexual partners, sometimes not. Jerry, their white friend, was Barbara's partner for a while, before Barbara revealed her love for Leo. Their life stories are intertwined, but not joined, due both to the racial pressures of society and Leo's bisexuality. One of Leo's lovers, "Black Christopher," is a significant political and emotional figure in the novel. Christopher's friends are all African-American, and his life centers around the struggle for racial justice. Barbara and Christopher have one sexual encounter, but, like much of the sex in the book, it is exploratory, and only significant for what it reveals to each of them. Barbara, Leo, and Christopher remain friends throughout the novel. Caleb, Leo's brother, a WWII vet, was falsely imprisoned when he is a young man, and eventually conquers his anger at white society through his conversion to fundamentalist Christianity. He judges Leo harshly for choosing "the world" over "the kingdom of God." Caleb's religion painfully isolates him from Leo. Black Christopher, the foil for Caleb, advocates violent revolution as the means for creating a just society. Leo recovers from his heart attack and returns to the stage at the end of the novel.
14527065	/m/03d6frt	Blues for Mister Charlie	James Baldwin	1964	{"/m/05qp9": "Play"}	 In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. In the aftermath of Richard Henry's murder, the trial of store owner Lyle Britten gives way to a reflection upon racism in America. The play is loosely based on the Emmett Till murder that occurred in Money, Mississippi, before the Civil Rights Movement began. "Mister Charlie" is a phrase used by African Americans that refers to the white man.
14531370	/m/03d6lrq	Light House: A Trifle	William Monahan	2000	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with a painter named Tim Picasso who suffers critical rejection from his peers and decides to take a break in the Caribbean, where he ends up crewing on a drug smuggling sailboat. When the captain gets drunk and falls overboard, Picasso takes the boat to Florida, and meets up with Jesus Castro, the lead drug smuggler. Castro intimidates Picasso into running the drugs from Miami to Boston, however after Picasso collects the $1.5 million payment from the Irish Republican Army, he escapes by train to the New England town of Tyburn, where a winter storm is picking up force. He decides to lodge at the seaside Admiral Benbow Inn for the weekend, until he can depart for Italy. Meanwhile, Mr. Glowery, a bitter New York journalist and writer who believes that a rival author is sabotaging his literary career, arrives in Tyburn where he is to speak at a fiction workshop being held at the Admiral Benbow Inn. He is immediately tasered by one of Castro's detectives, who mistakenly confuses him for Picasso. Back at the Admiral Benbow Inn, the innkeeper, George Hawthorne, worries about Mr. Briscoe, a cross-dressing contract worker who is stranded in the abandoned lighthouse just off the coast because of the raging nor'easter, while his unhappy wife, Magdalene Hawthorne, threatens to leave him. The next morning, Mr. Glowery is stuck in a restaurant where he is being coerced by a psychotic cook to peddle his novel in order to pay off a debt he incurred during the night. When Professor Eggman, the director of the fiction workshop, comes across Mr. Glowery, he rescues him and brings him back to the inn. However, few people show up for the fiction workshop because of the storm. Hawthorne's wife returns from a spa with Picasso; Mr. Hawthorne informs her that he is trying to procure a prostitute for his new arrival, Jesus Castro, who has registered under the false name of Mr. Wassermann. Mr. Hawthorne asks Picasso if he has had sex with his wife and Picasso meekly admits to it. At the lighthouse, Mr. Briscoe decides to brave the storm in a landing craft, but is immediately swamped with water and carried by the tide towards the mainland. After Castro avails himself of the services of a prostitute, he rampages around the property searching for Picasso. The storm crashes through the inn. A guest is killed by a billiards table that falls on top of him and is dragged off into the sea. Mr. Glowery is also dragged off into the sea by the storm. Castro and his assistant round up the guests and interrogate them about the location of the $1.5 million Picasso stole. In another part of the inn a fire starts. Finally, Mr. Briscoe shows up and kills Castro's assistant before knocking Castro unconscious. While Hawthorne learns his wife is leaving him for the prostitute, the inn becomes completely engulfed in flames. Picasso, Hawthorne, and Briscoe motor a lobster boat over to the lighthouse, and dump Castro's dead assistant into the sea along with Castro himself, weighed down with two cinder blocks chained to his ankles. When they land on the island, Briscoe runs into the lighthouse and blows himself up. Amongst the rubble of the lighthouse, Picasso notices the inscription "MORTE D'AUTHOR" painted on one of the surrounding rocks and says to the innkeeper "He's been thinking about this for some time, George."
14531553	/m/03d6m5q	The Salt Roads	Nalo Hopkinson	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Salt Roads is a novel that tells the story of the Ginen fertility god, Lasirén. As she moves through the bodies of female characters, inhabiting them for short and long periods of time, Lasirén helps women find their place in the world and give them the confidence to make decisions that they otherwise would not possess. The novel intertwines the stories of three major characters while illustrating the mysterious ways of Lasirén and her healing, life-giving powers. The novel begins by introducing the character of Mer, who is a healer in the slave community of a Caribbean plantation. In the beginning scene, she is seen delivering a mixed baby that is stillborn. As she, her helper and lover, Tipingee, and the baby's mother, Georgine, go to bury the baby at the river's edge, their mixed prayers to three different deities delivers Lasirén into being, launching her into the lives of the three main characters. She appears to Mer, subsequently, to inform her that it is her duty to pave the sea roads clear. And as her story progresses, her duty becomes clear. As the slaves around her are rallied by the demagogue, Makandal, to rebel against their white slave owners, or backra, Mer must watch as they risk their lives to pursue a dream that one iconoclastic human being is misleadingly placing in their minds. The slaves working in the homes of plantations across San Domingue are encouraged to inject poison into the food and water of their white owners. As Makandal incites more people, Mer's story comes to a climax as he orchestrates the arson of the home of Seigneur Simenon, the plantation owner. Her body finally inhabited by Lasirén's presence, Mer attempts to save the white folk and in essence the wrath they will ensue on her fellow slaves. However, Makandal and the slaves pin her down and cut off her tongue. As turmoil dies down with the burning of Makandal and his absence, the slaves return to their old ways. And Mer, given the chance to escape and be free of her enslavement, declines, knowing that her place is with the slaves on the plantation, healing those in pain and paving the roads clean for Lasirén. Another story that Hopkinson weaves into the story is that of Jeanne Duval. She is an actress and singer in Paris, France, that becomes the mistress of the author and poet, Charles Baudelaire. As he sets her up in her own apartment with her mother, Baudelaire eventually gets his inheritance taken away from him to be managed by a finance manager. As his wealth dwindles, so does the balance of power in his relationship with Jeanne. Scraping by, both Jeanne and Baudelaire must find ways of obtaining their needs. Baudelaire needs to support his mistress and Jeanne needs to help her ailing mother. However, Jeanne's mother dies and soon thereafter, Jeanne becomes infected with syphilis, and suffers a stroke that leaves her right side paralyzed. As she moves from her apartment to the sanatorium and back again, she is visited by her stepbrother, Joël, who ultimately causes a falling-out between her and Baudelaire and later, the selling of her furniture while she is away at the sanatorium. Alone and at an utter loss at her abandonment, Jeanne is confronted by, Moustique, her brother's friend. He takes her in, and in her sadness and loss of beauty and youth, Jeanne finally comes to find herself loved and content. The third character that Lasirén inhabits is Thais, a Nubian prostitute living in Alexandria, Egypt. Thais' journey begins when she and her slave friend, Judah, gather their scarce belongings and even scarcer money and escape their enslavement to Aelia Capitolina, or present-day Jerusalem. However, finally reaching their destination, they find themselves in a foreign place with no money, but what their bodies can offer. As they approach the famous Christian church that Thais desired to see, she finds that she has been carrying a baby, but miscarries it in the church's courtyard. Soon after, she finds herself wandering the desert for months, on little water and barely any food. As she contemplates her surroundings and finds herself trying to listen deeply and intently to nature, her thoughts, and even the thoughts of others, she comes to a revelation. Speaking with Lasirén and learning about the goddess' origins and place in the world.
14532845	/m/03d6p9x	Farthing	Jo Walton	2006-08-08	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At a weekend party at Farthing House, a large country house in Hampshire, Sir James Thirkie, a prominent politician who is considered likely to become a leading minister in an upcoming cabinet shuffle, is found murdered in his room, with a yellow Star of David pinned to his chest. Though suspicion immediately falls upon David Kahn, the only Jew invited to the party, the lead investigator, Inspector Peter Carmichael, is unconvinced. Carmichael, who along with Sergeant Royston was sent from Scotland Yard to investigate the murder, suspects that the star was placed on the body to divert attention towards David. Equally skeptical is David's wife Lucy, the daughter of estate owner Lord Eversley, who notes the tension between Thirke's newly-pregnant wife, Angela, and Angela's sister, Daphne, who was having an affair with Thirke. As Carmichael begins his investigation, he requests that the assembled guests remain at the house. Chafing at the oppressive atmosphere, Lucy accepts an offer from her father to go riding; while out, they are attacked by a young man, who shoots at them with a rifle before being killed by Lord Eversley. An inspection of the body uncovers a membership card identifying him as a Communist and an identity card for an Alan Brown, a different name from the one on the party ID. Carmichael is puzzled by the incident, which seems unconnected to Thirke's murder. As pressure grows for Carmichael to release the guests, a search of the Kahns' apartment turns up letters that offer evidence of David's involvement with an underground Jewish organization that sought the murder of Thirke and the other members of the "Farthing Set". Aware that an arrest will mean the effective conviction of David Kahn, yet still not convinced of his guilt, Carmichael convinces him to remain at Farthing House under police supervision. Returning to London, Carmichael is given until Friday to conclude the case. His ability to act is further hampered by the political situation, as Mark Normanby, Daphne's husband, the Foreign Secretary, and one of the guests in attendance at Farthing House, emerges from the cabinet shuffle as Prime Minister. Exploiting both Thirke's murder and the shooting incident, Normanby announces the introduction of identity cards, the expulsion of foreign nationals, the banning of Communists, and a delay in the general election. Resisting political pressure to arrest David Kahn, Carmichael pursues his investigation of Angela Thirke, discovering that her baby was likely the result of an affair with the family's chauffeur. Locating Brown's girlfriend, a young woman named Agnes Timms, in Southend-on-Sea, he travels there with Royston to interview her, whereupon they discover that Brown was approached by Angela Thirke to stage the attack on Lord Eversley, ostensibly as a joke. Returning to London, Carmichael learns that the yellow star was purchased by someone claiming to be David Kahn. With a warrant now issued to arrest David, Carmichael calls to warn the Kahns, giving them time to escape. With the Kahns now on the run, Carmichael goes to Wales to interview Thirke's mother, who recounts Angela Thirke's admission that she helped Lord Eversley and Mark Normanby murder her husband. While returning to London to arrest Angela and Normanby, however, Carmichael discovers that Agnes Timms has been murdered. Undaunted, Carmichael presents his findings to Penn-Barkis, the head of Scotland Yard, identifying the involvement of the three suspects in a conspiracy to murder Thirke and place the blame on the Jews for it. After listening to Carmichael's description, though, Penn-Barkis orders Carmichael to drop the case, using Carmichael's homosexuality to blackmail him into acquiescing in the official story.
14533960	/m/03d6s8d	Rich Like Us		1985		 This historical fiction entwines the fate of two upper-class females, Rose, a British immigrant and wife to powerful native business man Ram with Sonali, a highly educated young civil servant. The former struggles to find a sense of home in this foreign society, filled with ancient customs, including the sati, and exotic social standards. She is entangled in a three-pronged marriage, as she is the second wife of Ram’s. Rose suffers to understand the Indian culture, and its ramifications on the female spirit. As Ram’s health deteriorates, she realizes her rights as wife are in question. Dev, Ram’s son from his other wife, Mona, schemes to take all Ram’s assets by disposing of Rose. In fear, Rose turns to Sonali, her friend and niece. Sonali is an anomaly to the average Indian, aristocratic woman. She deals with the living and working in New Delhi during the political upheaval of the Emergency and is divided between two worlds, one representing her ideals and longing for progression and the other that embodies her upper-crust, conservative culture. From these two characters branch off numerous other tales, which provide a deep and thorough overview of life for all people during this critical historical period. At root of these stories lies the duplicitous role of women in the dynamic, chaotic, new India of the mid 20th century.
14534830	/m/03d6wmy	The Sparagus Garden	Richard Brome			 Brome's play involves the sexual themes, generational conflicts, and the confidence tricks that are typical of his drama. Touchwood and Striker are two London neighbors, both justices of the peace; they maintain a vigorous and long-running quarrel. Their hostility is counterpointed by the affection of their heirs: Touchwood's son Sam and Striker's granddaughter Annabelle are in love. When Touchwood discovers this fact, he forbids their marriage, and insists that Sam inflict some serious injury on the Striker family to stay in his father's good graces (and his will). Sam is fortunate to have two clever friends, Gilbert Goldwire and Walter Chamlet, who work up a plot to resolve Sam's predicament. Sam tells his father that he has impregnated Annabelle; and Touchwood, delighted at the scandal impending over the Striker household, sends his son abroad &mdash; or so he thinks; in fact Sam remains in London to carry out his plans. Annabelle's mother was Striker's daughter, now deceased; her father is Sir Hugh Moneylack, a down-and-out gentleman who survives by shady means. Striker is hostile to his son-in-law, and keeps Annabelle, his granddaughter and heir, from seeing her father. (The play confuses the family relationship, often referring to Annabelle as Striker's niece.) Sir Hugh functions as what is called a "gather-guest" for the Sparagus Garden, bringing in profitable trade to the facility. (Moneylack presents asparagus as an aphrodisiac, claiming that "Of all the plants, herbs, roots, or fruits that grow, it is the most provocative, operative, and effective" for that purpose. In actuality, the medical opinion of Brome's day regarded the vegetable as a mild diuretic.) The play shows that the Garden makes its money through private dining rooms made available to its customers &mdash; with a clear sexual innuendo in the arrangement: when Sam, Wat, and Gilbert show up at the Garden without female companionship, they are refused a private dining room. Sir Hugh Moneylack also is part of a group of charlatans; with his confederates Springe and Brittleware, he targets a naive countryman named Tim Hoyden who longs to be made a gentleman. The tricksters take every advantage of the man, physically abusing him with "bleeding" (bloodletting), "purging" (vomiting and enemas), and a starvation diet, and cheating him of £400 as they pretend to teach him the ways of fashionable society. Tim's brother Tom Hoyden comes to London in search of Tim, and chases around attempting to rescue Tim from the charlatans' clutches. Tom and his servant Coulter are from "Zumerzetshire," and inject into the play the kind of dialect humor typical of Brome's drama (Yorkshire dialect in The Northern Lass, Lancashire dialect in The Late Lancashire Witches). The charlatans have their own problems, though: Brittleware's wife Rebecca is distressed that she's been married for five years but does not yet have a child. She is vocal in blaming her husband for this, and makes husband Brittleware jump through hoops and pursue her around the town to punish him for his possessiveness and jealousy. The young conspirators manipulate Walter's ridiculous uncle Sir Arthur Cautious, a confirmed bachelor, into an arranged betrothal with Annabelle. Striker, who believes in her disgrace, is so eager for the marriage that he makes generous provisions for her. When their wedding day arrives, however, Annabelle appears dressed in black and apparently pregnant. Sir Arthur is appalled, and offers £1000 to the man who will take the young woman off his hands. Sam suddenly steps forward, and Striker is so desperate that he accepts his enemy's son as his son-in-law. Touchwood, too, is now ready to accept the match. Tom Hoyden has presented documents to the justice, to prove that foolish brother Tim is the long-lost son of Touchwood and Striker's late sister. Those two had had a relationship similar to that of Sam and Annabelle &mdash; but Striker had opposed their match, which instigated the thirty-year quarrel between them. Once both old men accept their heirs' marriage, Annabelle pulls a cushion out from under her dress, revealing her pregnancy fictitious and her virtue intact. (Brome's play shares this plot device with Thomas May's 1622 comedy The Heir.) Tim Hoyden is now the son of a gentleman, as he'd always wanted to be; the play's conflicts are resolved.
14536776	/m/03d6ydb	Trumpet	Jackie Kay	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This powerful novel begins just after the main character, Joss Moody, a famous trumpet player, passes away. It is immediately apparent that big news surrounds his death as paparazzi drive his widow, Millie, to steal away to a vacation home. Soon after, the reader learns that the big news is that Joss was actually born female. No one knew this shocking truth except his wife. Not even Colman, the Moodys' adopted son, knew the truth. The Moodys lived their life as a normal married couple with a normal house and a normal family. But when Joss dies they can hide the truth no longer. Colman's shock spills into bitterness and he seeks revenge. He vents his rage of his father's lie by uncovering Joss's life to Sophie, an eager tabloid journalist craving to write the next bestseller. After time, and a visit to Joss's mother Edith Moore, Colman eventually finds love for his father muddled in his rage. With his new-found acceptance of both his father and himself, Colman makes the decision not to follow through with the book deal. All the while, Millie deals with her grief and the scandal in private turmoil at the Moodys' vacation home, and a slew of characters whose paths have crossed with Joss's give accounts of their memories and experiences. Interestingly, all the characters seem either to accept Joss's identity or to perceive it as irrelevant. The title Trumpet refers literally to the main character, Joss Moody's, instrument. Moody was an amazing trumpet player and became famous in the jazz world. Figuratively, it could be argued, the trumpet embodies more than Moody's fame. Moody's trumpet serves as an equalizer of identity. The character Joss Moody is not a man or a woman, or a husband or a father. He is a trumpet player. The title of the novel gives his identity the opportunity to be that simple.
14538689	/m/03d6_ls	Jesus Dynasty		2006-04-04		 By his parents' marriage, Jesus was better placed to be King of Israel than Herod Antipas was. The two contradictory blood lines in the gospels are seen as compatible if one belongs to Mary and the other to Joseph. In such a case Jesus would have united a formidable list of families into his ancestors. Jesus joined John the Baptist's movement - John was a close relative of Jesus - and the two were prepared to bring about an uprising in Judaea, but John's arrest and execution caused Jesus to go underground to avoid the same fate. Eventually he resurfaced to carry on the Baptist's work alone. Jesus was a charismatic teacher and possibly a faith healer. James and Jude were his half-brothers (since Jesus is not Joseph's son, in Tabor's view) and inherited the leadership after Jesus' death. Tabor argues that the later, spiritualist, writings of Paul the Apostle polluted and effectively hijacked the movement, with the later Gospels following the Pauline point of view. Tabor produces many supporting statements from the Bible and New Testament apocrypha, which escaped excision by the later Church fathers, intent on selling the Pauline message at the expense of Jesus' dynastic one. The argument produces a portrait of a real man in a tumultuous time, who really believed that his actions would accomplish the end of the Roman occupation and a return of the Jewish kingdom. The book also speculates about whether the Talpiot Tomb in Jerusalem was the tomb of Jesus or his relatives, and whether Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera, a Roman soldier, was Jesus' father, although it reaches no definitive conclusions about either hypothesis.
14545047	/m/03d78l2	Tango on intohimoni		1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "Many people ask what the meaning of life is. I know: it's tango." So says Virtanen, the hero of Tango on intohimoni, or Tango is my Passion, the definitive Finnish tango novel. Virtanen is a tango obsessive, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject, which he insists on sharing with everybody he meets. He goes dancing every day in the various dance halls of Helsinki and sometimes Turku, but he only dances the tangos. But Virtanen also has principles. At the age of 15 he had read that Plato recommends 24 as the ideal age for sexual intercourse for women, and 35 for men. If Virtanen can hold on to his virginity until the age of 36, he will have beaten the old fraud. But this is difficult for someone with such a passion for tango: "My penis rises and interferes with the dance. So, immediately after the dance, I hasten into the woods, break a handful of twigs off a birch tree, and punish my penis with many sharp little blows. The chastisement makes it calm down, and I can then go and invite a new girl onto the floor."(page 8) Virtanen manages to avoid the blandishments of the various women he meets in the Helsinki hot spots, but when he falls in love with Anja his troubles really start. Interspersed with Virtanen's adventures is a history of Finnish tango, sometimes given by Virtanen himself, and sometimes by an anonymous third person voice, identified by a different typeface. Written by the Finnish bandleader M.A. Numminen, Tango on intohimoni has been translated into German, Swedish, and Italian; but there is no official English translation.
14546116	/m/03d7b6s	Gloriana	Michael Moorcock	1978	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel's plot concerns Lord Montfallcon and his contest for courtly influence against Captain Quire. Each man exploits Albion's shadowy network of espionage and deceit for his own ends, with Gloriana caught in the middle. Montfallcon has maintained peace throughout Gloriana's 13-year reign using terror, oppression, and a network of informants. He is the power behind Gloriana's throne, one of the few survivors of King Hern's court, where he saw most of his family killed to entertain that tyrant king. Montfallcon's sole purpose in life is to keep Gloriana's Albion free of tyranny and corruption but, in so doing, he repeats the worst practices of Hern's henchmen. His own best henchman is Quire. But when Quire feels Montfallcon has insulted him, he seeks revenge through seducing the frustrated Gloriana. He goes into the walls to spy on the court, to muster the rabble there into his personal army, and to make sorties into the court to commit murders and leave evidence that points to other courtiers. Finally Quire exits the walls and claims the role of Gloriana's court champion, later her lord chancellor, and ultimately her lover—threatening her place as sovereign and symbol of Albion.
14547507	/m/03d7cz9	As the Green Star Rises	Lin Carter	1975-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As Karn and Klygon (betrayed by Delgan on a deserted islet) wait for either an inevitable end by drowning (for the Green Star has risen, and a tide with it—threatening to swamp the islet), they hear the swish of oars. Karn then calls out to the ship (just prior to losing consciousness) and the two are then taken on board. The ship, named Xothun (after a large, inland-sea-dwelling reptile) is captained by Blue Barbarians led by the nasty, brutish Hoggur, who sends the two belowdecks as slave-rowers. Their companions include select citizens of Komar, a peaceful mercantile kingdom recently conquered and ravaged by the Barbarians (under the chieftainship of a mysterious "warlord" immune to their racial madness) including its ruler Andar; the ship is on its way to Komar's ally Tharkoon to espy it out for conquest—which Eryon deems as foolish due to Tharkoon being ruled by a wizard. One day, Eryon states that they approach the Angzar Reefs, an area of unpredictable storms—which prompts some of the desperate Komarians to hope for a quick death. However, it gives Klygon some hope, and he asks Karn if he should pick the locks (a skill Karn did not know Klygon possessed). The prospect pleases Eryon and Andar, who figure on using their release and the storm to retake the Xothun. When the storm strikes, the Komarians (released by Klygon's lock-picking) storm up the decks and attack the Blue Barbarians. When Karn runs up to enjoy his first re-taste of freedom, Hoggur crashes into him; Karn jumps on Hoggur and strangles him—strengthened as a residual effect of the "Elixir Of Light", and further by sheer rage—and is then swept overboard. Shortly after the storm the zawkaw carrying a woman (Arjala) lands on the stern—and Arjala alights while the tired zawkaw takes off elsewhere. The zawkaw carrying Ralidux and the two women lands on an island. The two flee in opposite directions to escape Ralidux—Niamh, into a structure and Arjala into jungled-area. Inside the structure, Niamh disturbs a large serpent or ssalith and flees promptly outside. Ralidux has meanwhile pursued Arjala, who escapes after scratching him to create such opportunity; she jumps on the zawkaw to escape, then hears a voice calling—and wonders whether it is Niamh (whom she doesn't really like) or Ralidux (from whom she is fleeing in terror). Niamh manages to grab the bridle of the zawkaw as Arjala takes off. Ralidux, finding the zawkaw gone, explores further and finds a tubular craft which can fly—and energises it. In the seawater, Karn hears a voice claiming to be Shann, a young boy from Kamadhong (another treetop city), and swims to Shann's rescue; Shann guides Karn to an island. Due to certain reactions of Shann, Karn deduces that Shann is an adolescent girl; he starts loving her (at least platonically, feeling guilty for deserting Niamh). The two construct a hut and survive for a time. One day, Shann sees an airborne craft coming towards her—as Karn asks for its description, Shann is kidnapped by the craft's occupant. As described in the ending of the article By the Light of the Green Star, Janchan has stopped the sky-sled. Unfortunately, he stopped it suddenly and struck his head on the windshield—knocking him unconscious alongside Zarqa. When he comes to, he finds Zarqa conscious—and Nimbalim warning them they are in serious danger, as the sled is held in a xophs web. Janchan tries cutting through the strands, but they are too thick, and prepares to face the xoph with his sword (no mean task, due to the xoph being about elephant-sized). Zarqa then reminisces that it would be nice if he had the zoukar, whereupon Janchan remembers another Kalood weapon, a vial of liquid flame. When Zarqa tells him that Karn had taken it, Janchan tells him of another which he had brought on board. he takes it out, and aims it at the xoph, incinerating it and setting its web on fire—which weakens it enough for the re-energised sky-sled to part. Zarqa then follows the mind-trail of Ralidux to the inland sea, and a small island where they continue searching till Zarqa loses the trail. The liberated Xothun has, meantime, reached Tharkoon where Andar asks its ruler Parimus for aid against the Blue Barbarians. Parimus confesses that he has no great fleet, but does have one large Kaloodha-manufactured advanced airship. The two then plan the invasion, from the Komarians by sea and the Tharkoonians by air. Two delays are then caused when a small aircraft comes in front of Parimus' airship and is shot down. Parimus lands the airship on an island looks to see if any have survived, and is reassured by Janchan and Zarqa that only some of the enamel was scratched—and then dispatches a group of warriors to help them extract the sky-sled. Travelling further over the island (named Narjix) with Janchan, Zarqa (and Klygon who has boarded the Tharkoonian ship), Parimus spots a young boy—whom Klygon recognises as Karn. As the Tharkoonians set down to rescue him, he is attacked by the ssalith--and rescued when Zarqa pursues the monster and makes it attack (and destroy) itself. Parimus then treats Karn's eyes, bandaging them with medicines, in hope of restoring his eyesight. Meanwhile, the Komarians aboard the Xothun, disguised as Blue Barbarians (but not with disguises that will pass muster under strong light) enter their capitol's harbour. Andar attempts to bluff his way past the harbour sentry and finds out (to dismay) that the Warlord has returned. He quickly kills the sentry, and fights his way to the palace where he meets the Warlord—finding the Warlord's swordplay skills to be as good as his own (unlike the rudimentary skills of the Blue Barbarians as a whole). Andar is almost killed by the Warlord, but narrowly escapes due to his own slipping—during which the Warlord slips behind a panel leading to many catacombs (where Andar does not pursue him, as this would take too long). The Komarians fight their way to the palace roof, where there is an idol of their god Koroga. At that point, several of the Komarians, including Ozad (from the Xothun) are killed by lightning blasts from a weapon (the zoukar) held by the Warlord—who forces Andar (and surviving supporters) to drop their weapons. However, at that moment, Parimus' airship arrives, and uses a combination of the airship's laser/electric cannon and his archers to inflict a reverse on the Barbarians—converted to a crushing defeat as the Komarians now re-grab their weapons. After the battle, Karn tests whether the treatment worked—and is able to see the Green Star rising through a gap in the planet's cloud-cover. Just then a tubular aircraft comes in over Komar with two occupants fighting in the cockpit. Janchan recognises one as Ralidux (shouting his name) and Karn recognises the other (by voice) as "Shann"--to be corrected as Janchan also sees her and shouts her real name, "Niamh". Niamh finishes the struggle by stabbing Ralidux with a small knife, the "Avenger of Chastity" (carried inside their garments by all Laonese women), and attempts to land the craft. Just then, Karn sees Delgan (the Warlord) jump inside, and a new struggle between Delgan and Niamh—but is too far away to help. However, one of the Tharkoonian archers, Zorak, jumps into the cockpit to see if he can kill the Warlord. As the craft flies out of Komar into the trees, Janchan and Zarqa follow at a distance in the sky-sled. They see a body fall from the craft, but cannot identify which of the three occupants fell. Arjala tells Karn and Janchan that Niamh had lost her grip on the zawkaws bridle. Arjala, being inexperienced at controlling the huge bird (and also needing, in any case, to flee from Ralidux) was unable to rescue her from the water. The 1976 sequel to this novel, In the Green Star's Glow was the conclusion of the Green Star Series
14549305	/m/03d7g4m	Madol Doova	Martin Wickramasinghe	1947	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Upali Giniwella is a boy living in a village in southern Sri Lanka. He had lost his mother at a young age, and is under the care of a stepmother. Jinna is the servant boy of their house, and is a close and devoted friend to Upali. The two boys get into a lot of mischief in the village with their boy gang, and is severely punished by Upali's father as a result. Upali is eventually sent to away to a new school, and has to live with a school teacher. When he returns home, the two boys are caught trying to raid an orchard. Afraid that they will be sent away to work or given up to the police, Upali and Jinna run away from home and end up working for a farmer named Podigamarala. While working, the two boys see an island covered by dense forest, and decide to go and live there. They learn that the deserted island, Madol Doova, is believed to be haunted, but start farming there with the help of Podigamarala. After spotting a mysterious light on the island, which was supposedly the ghost haunting it, they follow it and find out that it is in reality a fugitive hiding from the law. Meanwhile another man named Punchi Mahattaya arrives on the island and later helps them with their work. When Upali hears that his father is taken ill, he returns home and helps out his stepmother and stepbrother. After settling up a legal issue for farming on government land, he finally returns to the plantation on Madol Doova, which had now developed into a prosperous venture with the help of Jinna.
14550867	/m/03d7mbg	The Day Boy and the Night Girl	George MacDonald		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Day Boy and the Night Girl begins by telling of a witch named Watho who, in her pursuit of complete knowledge, undertook an experiment to mold two people from birth by strictly controlling their environments. Watho convinced two expectant mothers to visit her castle. Lady Aurora (whose ambassador husband was away on business) was given spacious, sunlit rooms to stay in; she gave birth to a boy. The witch promptly whisked him away, sending his mother back to her home burdened with the lie that her son had died shortly after birth. The other woman (who had recently been widowed and become blind) Watho settled in windowless, tomblike chambers elsewhere in the castle. Vesper died in childbirth, leaving her daughter to the witch’s keeping. Watho did everything in her power to ensure that the boy Photogen grew up strong, able, and fearless. However, her foremost concern regarding the boy was that he should never see the night. Watho desired the opposite for the girl Nycteris, who knew no other world than the stony chambers she had been born in and no other light than that provided by the single dim lamp. It came about that Nycteris, in her sixteenth year, found her way out of these chambers into a night lit by a full-moon. Nycteris was filled with wonder at this glorious new light and the rest of nature; she returned to her rooms before daybreak, desiring to see the outdoors again and not wanting to spoil her chance by arousing Watho’s suspicions. Around the same time, Photogen (who spent his days hunting) one morning spied a big cat of some sort slinking off to the forest and took it in his mind to hunt this skilled hunter. As the sun went down, Photogen left to hunt the nocturnal beast, violating the witch’s constraint. Once darkness fell, Photogen was beset with terror. He came across Nycteris in one of her outings, and gathered some measure of comfort from the strange girl’s calm. She agreed to watch over him while he slept, and so it was that she was for the first time yet outdoors when the sun rose. Photogen regained his courage immediately; assuring Nycteris that there was now nothing to fear, he went on his way, despite her terrified pleas that he stay and protect her from the blinding light. Photogen (wishing to prove his courage) stayed up for another night, only to experience similar results. Photogen and Nycteris eventually learned to use their strengths to bear the other up through their weakness. In this way they were able to defeat the witch Watho. Photogen and Nycteris married; they continued to rely on and rejoice in each other’s strengths, to the point that Photogen came to prefer the night and Nycteris the day.
14551200	/m/040vl3f	The Vor Game	Lois McMaster Bujold	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Miles graduates from the Academy, and is upset to learn he is being sent to replace the weather officer at the Empire's winter infantry training base on remote Kyril Island, to see if he can handle the discipline and military routine. Miles refuses to obey what he deems a criminal order by the base commander, who has him arrested for mutiny, and as he is Vor, treason. He is quickly returned to the capital and sequestered in the bowels of Imperial Security (ImpSec) by Simon Illyan, who, along with his father, conclude that Miles had behaved correctly, but that they have larger problems than insubordinate Vorlings. Young Emperor Gregor has disappeared while on a diplomatic mission to Komarr. Miles, traveling to the Hegen Hub on an unrelated mission for ImpSec, is framed for murder and arrested. While in custody, he is startled to find Gregor, who tells him that he ran away from the embassy on Komarr, but was then shanghaied as a technician by an unscrupulous ship owner. Miles complicates matters in an attempt to extricate Gregor, and is soon up to his neck in a mysterious plot involving an amoral femme fatale, his murderous former Kyril Island commanding officer, and Hub power politics. Miles encounters his mercenary friends and, after outmaneuvering their leaders, resumes command under his Admiral Naismith persona. He is able to rescue Gregor, and as a bonus, unify the Hegen Hub in repelling a Cetagandan invasion fleet, with a little timely help from a Barrayaran fleet co-commanded by his father and Emperor Gregor. Gregor and ImpSec decide to put the Dendarii on permanent secret retainer for covert missions, with Miles officially installed as liaison. Thus begins the portion of Miles' career that ends with his temporary disgrace in Memory.
14557022	/m/03d7v5v	Praisesong for the Widow	Paule Marshall	1983-02-14	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The opening begins with Avey "Avatara" Johnson packing her bags aboard her seventeen day cruise on the "Bianca Pride", during the late 1970s. The reason for her sudden departure began three nights before, when she had a dream about her great aunt Cuney and a disturbing encounter in the Versailles dining room with a peach parfait. Her first since the 1960s, the dream consists of Avey's aunt in Tatem attempting to convince Avey to follow her down the road in Tatem, South Carolina, a childhood vacation spot. When Avey resists, the two have a physical brawl. The next morning, Avey wants nothing more than to be alone, and yet cannot get away from anyone on the cruise ship, no matter where she goes. At this point, she makes the decision to leave the ship. The next morning, she packs her bags and leaves to the next port-of-call, which is the island of Grenada. On Grenada, the atmosphere seems to be festive, as people dressed in bright clothing, carrying packages, are getting onto boats. Confused, Avey Johnson is later informed by her taxi driver that it is the annual excursion to Carriacou, a nearby island. At the hotel, the sick feeling in Avey's stomach returns, and Avey spends her last moments of consciousness painfully reminiscing about her relationship with her late husband, Jerome "Jay" Johnson, and for the first time in four years, she mourns his loss. Avey wakes up the next day in the home of Rosalie Parvay, the widow daughter of Lebert Joseph. Along with Milda the maid, Rosalie washes Avey and feeds her a typical Carriacou breakfast, during which Lebert enters the home to see how Avey is feeling. Despite her sickness of the previous day, Avey decides to go to the dances that will take place that night. That night, Avey, Rosalie, Milda, and Lebert all go to the "Big Drum" dances. There, Avey is at first happy merely to be a bystander and watch Lebert and other elders of the community sing and dance for the ancestors. However, by the end of the night, Avey is dancing along with the other people celebrating their cultural roots to Africa. The next morning, Avey leaves on a plane back to New York, but decides to sell her home that she no longer needs and move to Tatem, in the home left for her by aunt Cuney. There, she will demand that her grandchildren come to see her, so that she may teach them about their heritage, like Cuney did for her.
14560286	/m/03d7yfc	Jane and Prudence	Barbara Pym	1953	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jane, a vicar's wife, lives a very different kind of life from her friend, the single and independent Prudence. The book details the period in Nicholas and Jane’s life when they take over a new parish in an (anonymous) English village and encounter the widower Fabian Driver, who Jane decides will make an excellent husband for Prudence. Prudence has an imponderable attraction to her older and completely impervious employer, the head of an unspecified academic foundation. There is, however, competition for Fabian - Miss Morrow, another spinster in the parish who seeks escape from her low-paid job as a companion to the domineering Miss Doggett.
14560682	/m/03d7ys7	In the Green Star's Glow	Lin Carter	1976-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Janchan and Arjala are married in Komar, where they also honeymoon. Karn, feeling that he needs to do something (almost anything) to help rescue Niamh, takes some of the leftover food/drink items from the wedding feast and stashes them in the storage compartment of the sky-sled which he then energises and heads towards the trees. As it is night, he quickly tethers it to a branch and falls asleep. He is awakened the next morning by a spear-point touching his chest—held by a teenaged girl, Varda. Some of Varda's companions (including one named Iona, at 15 slightly older than Varda) urge her to kill him. Due to Iona being a rival for leadership, Varda decides to spare but enslave Karn. On the tubular craft, Niamh scratches Delgan and advances on him with her knife but Delgan manages to persuade her to sheathe it through some oily words. Then, he forces her to back against the rear bulkhead by pointing the zoukar at her with a threat to use it, and advances to throw her off—only to be prevented as Zorak shoots him in the hand with an arrow. Due to the pain, he cannot use an oily tone, and his further attempts to persuade Niamh that he is "friendly" fall flat. When Zorak comes forward to stop the aircraft, Delgan tells him to back off or die—and is not persuaded of danger when Zorak points out the approaching tree boles. A branch then strikes inside the cockpit and pulls Delgan out—so he was the falling occupant seen by Zarqa and Janchan. After stopping the aircraft, Zorak and Niamh find themselves facing a ythid. Zorak tries to kill it by shooting it in the eye (unscuccessfully, as the lizard shuts its nictitating-membrane), while Niamh tries to poke her knife in from its back—which allows Zorak to shoot it in the throat. Niamh then almost faints from exhaustion and fear; Zorak, putting aside his weapons, prevents this but slips off the branch after stepping in the dead ythids blood. Niamh, taking the weapons, explores the branch until she comes upon a tower of strange design/construction (Karn would have told her that it was built by one of Zarqa's race), where she walks into a lab with a detached head. The head's eyes open and it cries "waa-waa-waaa...", whereupon an odd-looking dwarf, Quoron, comes in and takes her as prisoner. The head is the result of one of his experiments which failed (he believes, due to the brain being disconnected from oxygen for too long). He puts her under the guard of another of his experiments, Number Nine, a giant with four arms and two heads (one male, one female) but almost no intellect (according to Quoron). Niamh quickly figures that Quoron's experiments are just like those Zarqa told her the Kaloodha had conducted—a quest for immortality. Zorak, meanwhile, lands on a flower which tries to swallow him. As he struggles, a voice tells him to relax and wait for night. He finds the source of the voice to be a kraan, Xikchaka. The logic of Xikchaka is that when the petals close, the two of them can then destroy them (Xikchaka with his mandibles and claws, Zorak by pulling them at base)--which Zorak accepts, allowing the two to escape at night. As Zorak attempts to part later from Xikchaka, the latter's horde captures and enslaves him, setting him to manufacture weapons (swords, spears, bows, …) specifically modified for kraan usage. He finds out from Xargo, the chief smith (captive), that this is due to the plans of the horde's ruler, Rkkith, to invade and destroy one of the treetop cities, Phaolon—a plan put into Rkkith's mind by a treacherous, odd human captive. The treacherous captive once accompanies Rkkith on a weapons-manufacturing inspection tour—and is recognised by Zorak as Delgan (to no surprise). Eventually, when the horde nears Phaolon, they find an odd structure and a group of kraan led by Xikchaka (with Zorak along as a slave) is sent to investigate. Quoron eventually boasts to Niamh that he has perfected the technique by which his brain will survive—and trained Number Nine to do the surgery, as it can be performed much faster due to the multiple arms. He then chains Niamh and forces her to watch the surgery, grinning when his head is finally disconnected from his torso—only to react in horror as Number Nine then stabs him in the brain (and to death). Number Nine then destroys the lab, putting WaWa (the head which had made that sound, so-named by Quoron) out of misery. The kraan party has meantime, entered the tower, except for Xikchaka and the two guarding Zorak. They are promptly slain by Number Nine, but not before they maul the giant severely with their jaws and claws. Outside, Zarqa has arrived; when one of the kraan guards tries to stab him (with modified spear), Zarqa grabs the weapon and flings it through the insect's body—allowing Zorak to break the neck of the other. Zarqa then tells him that they must hurry as he has sensed Niamh's mind-radiations from a Kalood-built tower nearby. When they enter the tower, they find the lab destroyed—and no Niamh (though they do see the broken chains that held her, and know she is still alive). Zorak recovers his bow and quiver and the two then leave to search further. Xikchaka has freed Niamh from the chains with his mandibles and claws—and tells her to tell Zorak that at least one kraan (Xikchaka) now understands the meaning of "friendship", and also warns her that the kraan are advancing on Phaolon. Niamh then finds the tubular craft and pilots it away. Meanwhile, the amazons discover Karn's journey-stash and hit it with wild abandon—getting drunk in the process. Varda then forces Karn to lie in her bed—and is warned by him that another is watching. Iona, the watcher, then goes to get the other girls to gang-up on (and kill) Karn and Varda. Karn takes Varda in the sky-sled and pilots it away. Varda then asks Karn to kiss him; the two are then startled by a scream, as Niamh has seen them, leaving Karn dejected. Eventually, the kraan arrive in the neighbourhood of Phaolon and are detected by scouts. Phaolon's warriors, on their zaiphs attack the kraan host, but are not able to blunt the attack much—due to the sheer numbers of kraan pushing forward. Delgan smiles on seeing this, as his plan has been to destroy Phaolon—hoping the grief of its loss will then kill Karn, Niamh and others. Just then, two aircraft with three aboard come into view and land in Phaolon. Delgan recognises the pilots as Karn and Niamh, but does not know the third occupant (Varda). Karn and Niamh quickly take some of Phaolon's archers and fly out over the kraan host to do much more damage (than the frontal attack). At that point, Zarqa and Zorak (who Delgan also recognises) come in—the Kalood determines the kraan officers and directs Zorak to slay them. The loss of officers throws the forwardmost kraan into a state of retreat, and the ones following to continue pressing forward on "last orders", creating a jam which the Phaolonese exploit. This panics Rkkith, who flees. Delgan shouts that he can turn the tide of battle, but Rkkith in his panic fails to recognise him—mauling the Blue Barbarian Warlord (with his claws) and throwing him aside. Delgan then slays Rkkith with the zoukar, and has a last laugh before expiring. Xikchaka now becomes the new ruler of the kraan and negotiates a withdrawal from Phaolon. He promises his friend Zorak (who has served as emissary) that the kraan will never again attack the treetop cities. Varda then explains what happened to Niamh, who promptly announces to the victorious Phaolonese that she and Karn are to be married. Sometime after the marriage, the author puts Prince Karn's body in a state of temporary animation and makes a temporary return to his earthly body—to write down the accounts, and instructions for their release. Before he returns permanently (leaving the crippled, earthly body to die naturally) to Phaolon, he writes "I am caught in the Green Star's spell, and never wish to be free of it!".
14560785	/m/03d7ywb	Eat a Bowl of Tea	Louis Chu	1961		 Eat a Bowl of Tea begins by describing newlyweds Ben Loy and Mei Oi sleeping peacefully in their bed in New York City. They are abruptly awakened by a prostitute ringing the doorbell. Ben Loy, ashamed of his pre-marital history with prostitutes, lies to protect his secret from his "innocent, pure" wife. The story then jumps backwards several months to the "Money Come" gambling house and the men who spend their days there: Wah Gay, Lee Gong, Chong Loo and Ah Song. The text depicts the close friendship between Wah Gay and Lee Gong (both Chinese immigrants with wives back in Guangdong (Canton)), and a conversation concerning their unmarried children ensues. Upon learning that Wah Gay has a marriageable son (Ben Loy) here in the States, Lee Gong spies on him at his restaurant and decides that he is the right man for his daughter (Mei Oi), who is still in China. He and Wah Gay decide that Ben Loy will go to China and bring back Mei Oi as his bride. The two men write their wives (Lau Shee and Jung Shee) in anticipation. Although Ben Loy seems to be the epitome of a "good boy," he has a secret life. When he is not busy working at the restaurant (in the fictional suburb of Stanton, Connecticut), he and his roommate Chin Yuen visit white prostitutes in New York City, a habit Ben Loy picked up while serving in the Army during World War II. Ben Loy becomes addicted to these sexual flings, often sleeping with numerous prostitutes in a night. Without the permission of his father – who wants Ben Loy to stay in Stanton, away from the temptations of New York – Ben Loy and Chin Yuen move to an apartment on Manhattan's Catherine Street. When Wah Gay approaches Ben Loy about going to Sunwei, China to find a bride, Ben Loy is skeptical and unwilling. But he eventually warms to the idea of bringing a bride with him back to America and raising a family, and he assents to his family's wish. When he meets Mei Oi in China, he decides that he made the right decision – he is immediately enthralled by her beauty and pleased by her modesty and courtesy. After such ceremonial practices as the employment of matchmakers and the approval of the Fourth Uncle, the families plan a traditional wedding. Their Chinese wedding is mirrored by a Chinese wedding banquet back in Chinatown. Her arrival in New York should be a happy time for Mei Oi, as she is finally able to meet her father and to experience life in a big city. However, she feels lonely in the city and spends her days sobbing over her deteriorating marriage, not understanding the causes of Ben Loy's impotence. Although they made love during their first few weeks of marriage, since their arrival in New York he no longer appears to desire her affection, even when she attempts to arouse him. This rejection deeply hurts, frustrates and confuses Mei Oi, and she concludes that Ben Loy no longer loves her. It is not long before the novelty of living in Chinatown and marrying a gimshunhock ("Gold Mountain sojourner"--someone living in America) wears off. Mei Oi insists that Ben Loy consult a doctor about his impotency – he tries both an American doctor and a Chinese herb specialist, but to no avail. In July, an unexpected visitor appears at their apartment: Ah Song, a frequent Money Come guest who flirts shamelessly with Mei Oi while Ben Loy is at work, claiming to be deeply in love with her and divulging Ben Loy's secret shameful past. Confused and overpowered, Mei Oi surrenders to Ah Song and they make love – whether this is truly rape or not is left to the discretion of the reader. Regardless, they kindle a relationship and a secret affair begins. Mei Oi soon discovers that she is pregnant, but does not know who the father is (since she and Ben Loy had successfully slept together during a visit to Washington, D.C.). She continues her affair with Ah Song, oblivious to the increasing gossip that she is "knitting Ben Loy a green hat" – sleeping with another man. Eventually Soon Lee Gong, Wah Gay, and finally Ben Loy learn of the affair. The tong mocks the family and Mei Oi realizes the magnitude of shame she has brought upon them. The neighborhood eventually assumes the identity of the man as Ah Song, and Ben Loy and Mei Oi move to Stanton to avoid further embarrassment. Even the affections of Chin Yuen, Ben Loy's closest companion, cannot distract Mei Oi from the pain she feels away from Ah Song, and she eventually convinces Ben Loy to move back to New York. Back in the old apartment, the affair resumes right where it left off. Wah Gay, crazed by the shame this affair has brought upon his family, lurks near the apartment and attacks Ah Song as he leaves, slicing off his ear. When Ah Song presses charges, Wah Gay flees to a friend's home in New Jersey. However, because he is so well-connected in his tong through multitudes of devoted and powerful family members, he is not penalized for his actions. Ah Song, on the other hand, is exiled for five years. But Wah Gay and Lee Gong are too embarrassed to remain in the community and leave New York, heading their separate ways in solitude. Ben Loy and Mei Oi decide to free themselves of all family and community ties by starting anew in San Francisco. The birth of their child, Kuo Ming, and a new environment allow them to grow closer and mend previous wrongs. Ben Loy visits another Chinese herb specialist and decides to take the doctor's advice and "eat a bowl of tea" to treat his impotence. Whether it is the herbs or the increase in Ben Loy's independence, his masculinity is finally restored in all senses of the word.
14566630	/m/03d82mb	Honoured Enemy	William R. Forstchen		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Hartraft's Marauders, a band of kingdom raiders have come across a Tsurani patrol at a garrison overrun by moredhel (dark elves). This forces them to band together to survive.
14569165	/m/02q002c	Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence				 It considers violence in chimpanzees and its relationship to violence in human beings, while also reflecting on the more peace-loving bonobo. It also considers the relation of gender to violence, noting that in humans it is males which are violent, while in other animals e.g. hyenas it is the female that is more violent; according to Philip Regal the book is partly an attack on the deconstructivist feminist theory that male violence is a purely social construct. Regal also considers the book to be "a broadside against the old utopian dreams of Atlantis, Eden, Elysium, a Golden Age, Romantic paintings, and the late Margaret Mead" which imagined human beings as naturally peaceful.
14569180	/m/03d85np	Klipgooi				 The story starts off from the perspective of a person (who's gender is at first unknown) that returns to the town of their childhood (Klipgooi) for reasons also as yet unknown. As the story continues, it becomes evident that this person, a woman, has come back to the town of Klipgooi to face the demons from her past. She is however, at first very scared and on edge upon her return as she is scared that some of the residents that resided in the town from her childhood, may still be present and may recognise her. As she starts walking through the town the chapters from her past begins to play out and the reader is given an insight into what exactly happened in this woman's past that has left her with such a deep scar and a seeming genuine fear for the town.
14573590	/m/03d8bk7	The Albatross	Susan Hill			 It concerns Duncan, a mentally retarded 18-year-old who has grown up with his domineering wheelchair-using mother. Duncan finds it difficult to cope with anything outside his daily routine, but is forced to interact with a wider world when his claustrophobic relationship with his mother reaches breaking point.
14577172	/m/03d8fx9	Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio				 In 1948, twelve-year-old Peg Kehret starts to notice some twitching in her leg during her school choir class, and then she also falls. When she gets home, she and her parents call a doctor. It turns out that she is diagnosed with not one, but three types of polio. She spends the next several months in a hospital fighting for her life. She moves hospitals a few times, and she has to get rid of contaminated things along the way, like a teddy bear from Art, Peg's older brother. She has new room-mates, including Tommy, a younger boy in an iron lung, and "the iron horse",Peg's wheelchair. She struggles to overcome paralysis and learn to walk again. She also fights to stay off of a medical ventilator /respirator, and to swallow milkshakes (while in an oxygen tent) without choking which ends up saving her life. During her stay at a different hospital, she becomes friends with several other girls with polio: Renee, Shirley, Alice, and Dorothy. She learns that Alice had been at the hospital for 10 years, because her family didn't want her. Together, they endure hardships and celebrate accomplishments as they attempt to live normal lives in the hospital while fighting polio.
14580840	/m/03d8kpc	Special Delivery	Steven Mark Sachs	1997-06-25	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Danielle Steel explores finding love when, and from whom you least expect it in Special Delivery. Jack Watson was a man hardened to the idea of love. The death of his one true love followed by a messy divorce led him content to lead the ultimate bachelor’s life. Written about in the society pages, and despite his reputation, he never had trouble finding a date. It didn’t hurt that he owned one of the most successful women’s boutiques in Beverly Hills. Amanda Robbins was a successful actress who had already claimed an academy award when she met her husband Matthew Kingston and fell in love. Amanda gave up her acting career to be a devoted mother of two children. Her husband Matthew wasn’t interested in a working wife and Amanda was happy to oblige, until his sudden death from a heart attack. With the center of her life suddenly gone Amanda fell into despair and depression. Jack and Amanda didn’t travel in the same social circles however, the marriage of their children, Paul and Jan, created an undeniable connection. In the past, while Jack and Amanda were cordial with one another they didn’t go out of their way to spend much time together. One day Jan offers to take Amanda to one of Jack’s infamous parties. Amanda surprises herself when she accepts and has a great time. This sparked a new beginning as she and Jack began spending more time together, initially just to talk about their children. However, they soon discover that they have more than just children in common. This new relationship helps Amanda heal from the loss of her husband and causes Jack to realizes that life isn’t as fulfilling when you’re alone. An unexpected pregnancy nearly destroys their love, but ultimately brings them closer together. They end up seeing this new life as an opportunity to support Jan and Paul who have had trouble conceiving. At the last moment Jan finds out she’s pregnant and have decided not to adopt Amanda and Jack’s baby. Interwoven throughout Special Delivery are the stories of family challenges for both the Robbin’s and the Kingston’s. Tension between Amanda’s daughters, the difficulties of starting a family, and healing from the loss are all included as we watch Jack and Amanda fall in love with each other and learn how to make both of their families stronger in times of need.
14582040	/m/03d8lmj	Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence	Doris Pilkington Garimara	1996	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The book tells the story of Molly Craig, a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl, who is deemed "half-caste" by the Australian government. Along with two members of her family, her 8 -year-old sister Daisy Craig and their 10-year-old cousin Gracie Fields, Molly is taken by police officers from her mother in the community of Jigalong and transported 1,600 kilometres to the Moore River Native Settlement. In 1931, the three girls escape from Moore River, and with no maps or compasses, they use the immense State Barrier Fence which crosses Western Australia to navigate home.
14583711	/m/03d8n2t	The League of Youth	Henrik Ibsen			 Taking a different tack than Ibsen's earlier political play The Pretenders, The League of Youth features a protagonist Stensgaard, who poses as a political idealist and gathers a new party around him, the 'League of Youth', and aims to eliminate corruption among the "old" guard and bring his new "young" group to power. In scheming to be elected, he immerses himself in social and sexual intrigue, culminating in such complexity that at the end of the play all the women whom he has at one time planned to marry reject him, his plans for election fail, and he is run out of town.
14584895	/m/03d8pb1	The World My Wilderness	Rose Macaulay	1950	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In the summer of 1945, Helen Michel is living in the south of France in the difficult aftermath of the Second World War, grieving for her late husband, a French collaborator called Maurice Michel who was mysteriously drowned in the final months of the German occupation of France. Helen is beautiful, lazy, the daughter of an Irish peer, a painter and scholar who is fond of gambling. Her seventeen-year-old daughter Barbary Deniston (Helen left her first husband, an English barrister) and her fifteen-year-old step-son Raoul Michel have run wild, associating with the Maquis, helping a guerrilla band with schemes of sabotage and harassing the Germans. Helen also has a two-year-old son by Maurice Michel, whom Barbary dotes on, but mother and daughter have grown apart. Helen is visited in Provence by her English son Richie Deniston, Barbary's brother, who after fighting in the War is now a Cambridge undergraduate. When he returns to England, Helen sends Barbary back with him to live in London with her father, Sir Gulliver Deniston KC, and to attend the Slade School of Art. Sir Gulliver has a new wife, the ultra-conventional Pamela, and she and Barbary take a dislike to each other. At the same time, Raoul's grandmother Madame Michel also sends him to London, to live with an uncle who is in business there. Barbary has no wish to adjust to the respectable life of her father and stepmother. She discovers the bombed but flowering wasteland of the City of London in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral. Here she and Raoul find an echo of the wilderness of the Maquis and make friends with the spivs and deserters living on the fringes of society. Barbary and Raoul adopt an empty flat in Somerset Chambers and a bombed-out Anglican church, St Giles's, where Barbary paints a mural of the Last Judgment and confronts the fear and emptiness within herself. Poetic descriptions of the past and present of the City of London and its ruined churches are intertwined with Barbary's moral and religious confusion. On a family holiday to the Scottish Highlands, staying with an uncle who is a leading psychiatrist, Barbary becomes alarmed by his wish to question her, steals money from her aunt, and runs away back to London. There, she takes to shoplifting, but in running away from the police she has a terrible fall among the ruins of the City and is nearly killed. With Barbary hanging between life and death, her mother returns to London, staying with her former husband. The novel reaches its conclusion with a reconciliation between Barbary and her mother (Barbary explaining that she had nothing to do with the drowning of Maurice) and with a revelation about her conception.
14584897	/m/03d8pbd	Belinda	Maria Edgeworth	1801	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Belinda is a young lady who lives with her aunt, Mrs. Stanhope. Being unwed, Belinda is sent to live with Lady Delacour, whom Belinda considers fascinating and charming. Lady Delacour believes herself to be dying of breast cancer. She hides her emotional distress caused by her impending death and poor relationships with her family from Belinda through wit and charm. The first half of the novel is concerned with the blooming friendship between Belinda and Lady Delacour, which is broken by Lady Delacour's fear that Belinda plans to marry Lord Delacour, expressed in the line, "I see...that she [Belinda] who I thought had the noblest of souls has the meanest! I see that she is incapable of feeling." Belinda subsequently moves to the home of the Percival family, the embodiment of the ideal family. Once Lady Delacour seeks treatment for her illness, Belinda returns to support her. Upon her visit to the doctor, Lady Delacour discovers her disease is not terminal and reconciles herself with Belinda. She eventually makes a full recovery from her illness.
14589611	/m/03d8v0g	Portrait in Sepia	Isabel Allende		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Portrait in Sepia is the sequel to Daughter of Fortune and follows the story of Aurora del Valle, the granddaughter of Eliza Sommers (Hija de la fortuna). The daughter of Lynn Sommers (the daughter of Eliza and Tao Chi'en) and Matías Rodríguez de Santa Cruz (son of Paulina del Valle and Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz) has no memory of her first 5 years of life. She has recurring nightmares of men in black pyjamas looming around her, and losing the grip on the hand of someone beloved. Lynn died giving birth to Aurora, known also by her Chinese name Lai Ming, in Chinatown, San Francisco, while Aurora's biological father never acknowledged that he had a child until the end of his life; he died a slow and agonizing death of syphilis. After Lynn's death, Aurora's maternal grandparents raised her until the death of Tao Chi'en. After these events, Eliza approaches Paulina to raise Aurora while Eliza goes to China to bury Tao's body. Paulina makes Eliza agree to cut all contact with Aurora so she will not get too attached to the girl and have her taken away later on in life. So, Paulina del Valle tries to hide Aurora's true origins. Nevertheless, when Aurora talks to her real father, Matías, he tells the truth about her past. In this first part the writer also describes the War of the Pacific in which Severo del Valle is involved as a soldier. The descriptions of the war is very cruel; that can be seen in the scene where Severo del Valle loses his leg to gangrene. The second part is about the transition of Aurora's childhood to adulthood. She learns to be a photographer and she becomes an expert artist in that field. The family moves from San Francisco to Chile and Frederick Williams becomes Paulina's husband, so he will be accepted in Chilean society. Everyone there see him as a true English lord, but no one knows his origins are not noble. Allende also describes a civil war which affects them directly and the way Paulina del Valle endlessly creates new businesses such as growing French wine and selling cheese, in Chile. The Del Valle family then travels to Europe because Paulina has a tumor and needs an operation. The operation is successful and Paulina becomes healthy and strong once more. She is more than 70 years old, but does not show signs of being tired, ill or soft; she imposes her will on her body and thus she continues to rule the family as a matriarch. Thus, the novel is divided into three parts and an epilogue. The first part describes Aurora's infancy and family members, and the second is where Aurora's life comes more into play. The third part is where Aurora grows up, becoming a photographer, marrying Diego Domínguez and eventually leaving him. She takes a lover, Dr. Ivan Radovic, and their relationship is explained more fully in the epilogue. In the end, the mystery of Tao Chi'en's death is revealed and it plays an important role.
14597486	/m/03d90tb	Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream	H. G. Bissinger	1990	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book opens with Permian's regular-season ending game against their arch-rival, the Midland Lee Rebels, then flashes back to the teams trials and tribulations throughout the season. Interspersed with the football team's saga is the history of Odessa and West Texas. The role of Permian football in the town is examined. The Panther booster club is one of the largest social groups in the city. Many school children look up to the players and hope to play for the team one day. Many high school girls hope to become Permian cheerleaders, but the competition is fierce. Others become "Pepettes" who are assigned to one football player. Peppettes bring their assigned player gifts every Friday, are in charge of pep rallies, and personally decorate the exterior of the homes of their assigned player. In the 5A playoff semifinals, Permian meets Dallas Carter, a predominately black team. Carter's system is even more corrupt than Permian's, and in a hard fought game in the rain, the Panthers are defeated. Carter goes on to win the state championship, but faces severe penalties the next year for their grade tampering, giving the state championship to Judson High School. The book ends with Coach Gaines erasing names of the graduating seniors from his board and replacing them with names of the juniors who will replace them next season. Permian goes undefeated the next year, with future NFL player Stoney Case as quarterback, and becomes the 1989 Texas State football champions.
14598224	/m/03d91jj	True Talents	David Lubar		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It's been over a year since fourteen-year-old Eddie "Trash" Thalmeyer and his friends from Edgeview Alternative School found out about their special powers. Trash can move things with his mind; Flinch can predict the future; Lucky finds lost objects; Cheater reads minds; Torchie is a fire-starter and Martin can see into people's souls. They are now back home with their loved ones and are trying to get back to their normal lives, start attending high school and keeping in touch with their Edgeview friends. When Trash tests his power in the bank, accidentally stealing fistfuls of cash, he is kidnapped by a ruthless leader of an unknown organization trying to gather info on psychic phenomena and willing to do anything to get it. Martin and his friends team up to and use their hidden talents to rescue their friend while each figure out their own true talent in the process.
14604271	/m/03d996g	Point Blanc: The Graphic Novel	Antony Johnston	2007-09-03		 Alex Rider is assigned by MI6 to investigate the deaths of billionaires, Michael J. Roscoe and General Viktor Ivanov. Each of them had a son attending Point Blanc, an academy in the French Alps run by a South African scientist, Dr Hugo Grief, and both died under mysterious circumstances. Alex's cover is that of the son of a supermarket magnate, Sir David Friend. Alex is taken to a hotel on the way to Point Blanc, where his dinner drink is drugged. His bed is then transported where Mrs. Stellenbosch (the lady who took him from Mr. Friend's house) strips Alex and photographs his entire body. After the examination, Alex's clothes are put back on and he is returned to his hotel room. Upon arriving at Point Blanc, Alex befriends a student who goes by the name of James Sprintz. James thinks something is wrong with the academy because the other boys were rebellious before and then suddenly became complacent. One day, James is taken and replaced with a look-alike who is no longer rebellious. The following night, Alex examines the forbidden third floor to find replicas of the boys' rooms upstairs, with TV screens monitoring the boys' behaviour downstairs. Following later investigations, Alex's finds the real boys locked in a basement jail. Alex sees James and tells him the truth, his identity and the reason why he was sent to Point Blanc. A teacher named Mrs Stellenbosch is told this after someone overhears it and knocks Alex unconscious, captures him and turns him over to Dr. Grief, who then reveals his plan to take over the world, named "Project Gemini". In the 1980s, Grief cloned sixteen copies of himself in his home country of South Africa (where he greatly supported the apartheid regime). While the real boys are at Point Blanc, a plastic surgeon named Baxter surgically alters Grief's 14-year-old clones to resemble them. Soon, the clone and the real boy are swapped. The replica rooms are used by the clones to imitate the boys' behaviour so the parents will not notice that they have been swapped. When the parents die and pass on their inheritance, Dr Grief will take the assets from the clones. Eventually, he will be the most powerful man in the world, and reinstate apartheid globally. Grief imprisons Alex, planning to dissect him alive the next day for a biology class. Alex uses his exploding ear-stud that was given to him by MI6's gadget genius Smithers to escape his cage. He fashions a makeshift snowboard to escape, but crashes and Alex faints and is taken to a hospital, where a visiting Mrs Stellenbosch is told that Alex has broken several bones, fractured his skull and died. However, MI6 then sends him out again with a team of SAS soldiers (among them is Wolf, an SAS soldier introduced in Stormbreaker) to help liberate the school. As Dr Grief attempts to escape, Alex kills him with a snowmobile by driving it up a ramp and crashing it into Grief's helicopter, jumping off at the last minute. In the final chapter of the novel, Alex goes to his school to find a clone that resembles him, who avoided capture and escaped. The clone and Alex fight, starting a fire in the science building, ending with one of them falling to his death. It is left ambiguous as to whether the clone or Alex survived, though at the beginning of Skeleton Key it is revealed that the clone was killed and the real Alex lives.
14607140	/m/05b6wlj	Fablehaven	Brandon Mull	2006-07-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kendra and Seth Sorenson are shipped off by their parents to Grandma and Grandpa Sorensons house for seventeen days while their parents go on a cruise set up by Grandma and Grandpa Larson for their children and spouses after they died. When they get to the house, Grandpa Sorenson tells them that their grandmother is visiting their dying Great Aunt Edna and introduces them to Lena, the half-Asian housekeeper, and Dale, a man who helps Grandpa Sorenson tend to the grounds. Once Seth and Kendra's parents are gone, Grandpa Sorenson sets up two rules, which are that they must keep out of the woods, and that they cannot go in the barn. They visit their attic bedroom, and much to Kendra and Seth's delight, it is filled with many toys and activities to keep them busy. Also, there is a pet chicken named Goldilocks. Before he leaves, Grandpa Sorenson gives Kendra three keys so that they can, as Grandpa says: "See if you can figure out what each unlocks." Seth and Kendra go swimming the next day and Kendra brings out a mirror to shine light in Seth's eyes. When she leaves it out, hoards of butterflies, bumblebees, and hummingbirds flock over to it. When Kendra and Seth flip over the mirror, the obsessed critters flip it back over again. Later, Kendra finds that the biggest key unlocks a jewelry box full of costume jewelry, and the tiniest key unlocks an armoire inside the dollhouse. In the armoire is a piece of chocolate shaped like a rosebud, and a small golden key, bigger than the key that opened the armoire, but smaller than the key that opened the jewelry box. Kendra searches a telescope that stands near a window for keyholes, but finds nothing. She is about to turn away when she sees Dale carrying something in both hands. When she goes to the yard to confront him, it turns out that it is just milk. Dale tells Kendra that their milking cows make a little extra milk than they need, so he puts it out for the insects, and also not to tell Grandpa Sorenson in case he disapproves. Seth disobeyed direct rules and was wandering the woods when he found a creepy old lady in an ivy shack. He ran back to the yard once she dared him to do something almost certainly dangerous. Back at the house, Kendra finds the Journal of Secrets with 3 keyholes, but none of the keys she has fits except the golden one she found in the dollhouse. Seth shows Kendra a hidden pond with gazebos, a boardwalk, and a boathouse. That night at dinner, Grandpa asks a rhetorical question, stating, "What do you suppose makes people so eager to break rules?" When Seth says that they weren't afraid of ticks, Grandpa tells them the real reason why they have to stay out of the woods: He really runs a preserve full of endangered, poisonous animals. Seth goes into lawyer mode and manages to worm out of trouble. Since they have disobeyed his orders, they have to stay inside the house until their parents come to get them, but luckily, Kendra talks him out of it and they get partial punishment as a warning. Soon after, Kendra figures out how to open the journal completely, and inside all she finds is a single phrase, 'drink the milk'. Deciding that she needed a guinea pig to test the milk that Dale claimed to be hazardous, Kendra dared Seth to drink the milk. When Kendra drinks the milk, the insects flying around suddenly turn into fairies. Grandpa explains that his property is not a preserve for endangered animals, but for magical creatures such as fairies, trolls, and centaurs. This piece of information would completely turn their visit around, though not at first. Seth made a bad choice concerning a fairy, and was turned into some sort of mutated walrus. Luckily, the old lady Seth found in the woods managed to sort him out, though at a high price to his family. Later, Grandpa explains that Midsummer Eve is a time when all creatures, light or dark, can roam into the yard and warns to not, never, open the window, for whatever reason. Seth, giving in to his curious, disobedient reality, opened the window. That single action put his grandparents in danger, his sister in danger, and ultimately, he put the world in danger.
14610505	/m/074k1x	Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony	Eoin Colfer	2006-08-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In Barcelona, Spain, Artemis Fowl II and Butler, his bodyguard, wait for a demon. They eventually encounter a demon who would have taken Artemis through time had Butler not touched Artemis and worn a silver bracelet. The silver allows Butler to pull Artemis back through time. Meanwhile, Wing Commander Vinyáya brings Holly Short and Mulch Diggums, who have recently been working on their semi-successful PI business, to secret organisation Section Eight which monitors demon activity. There, Foaly informs them that Artemis Fowl was able to predict a demon materialisation that they were not. Holly is sent to ask Artemis how he could do so. On the demon island of Hybras, which is suspended in "Limbo" (where time is nonexistent), &#8470;1, an imp, is bullied because he has not "warped" (changed into a mature demon). After turning a wooden skewer into stone, &#8470;1 wonders if he is a warlock, though they all supposedly died. Leon Abbot, the leader of the demon pride, uses something suspiciously like mesmer to urge &#8470;1 to leave for the human world. Artemis, Butler, and Holly arrive at the Massimo Bellini Opera House, where Artemis has predicted a demon appearance. Here again, they see a blond girl they had encountered in Barcelona. Artemis concludes that she knows something about demons. She is identified as Minerva Paradizo. &#8470;1 materialises in a dark corner of the stage and is immediately shot with a tranquillizer dart using a rifle disguised as a crutch by Billy Kong, who is one of Minerva's henchmen, and is also known as Jonah Lee. Minerva leaves for her residence with Holly following. &#8470;1, in Minerva's home, tells her about demon culture. He also learns that Leon Abbot visited this very place under care and that the spell holding Hybras in Limbo is failing. Holly has feigned unconsciousness and is in a cell with Kong. Holly manages to knock him out. When Artemis distracts Minerva, Holly and &#8470;1 escape. Kong, who has some inaccurate knowledge of demons, demands that Minerva obtain another demon to avenge his deceased brother, for which he holds demons accountable. She is unable to comply, and he takes her hostage. Artemis, however strikes a deal in which he will trade &#8470;1 for Minerva at Taipei 101 in Taiwan. Kong plans to strap a bomb onto &#8470;1 and remove the silver bullet anchoring &#8470;1 to this dimension. However, Artemis has already removed it, and has instructed &#8470;1 to drop the silver bullet which he has been holding in his hand. When &#8470;1 drops the bullet, he almost immediately dematerialises but the large pendulum coated with silver, which is near where &#8470;1 is standing, keeps &#8470;1 in this dimension. Holly puts a silver bracelet around &#8470;1's arm when he materialises at the apex of the pendulum. Holly flies up to the next story, which is another observation deck under renovation, and encounters a worker. Holly has already mesmerised the worker so he suspects nothing. They then go down to the 40th floor in the elevator and meet with Artemis, Butler, and Minerva. They go to the Kimsichiog Art Gallery, which has not yet opened. Holly mesmerises the curator to grant them access to the main exhibition, a 10,000 year old sculpture of "dancing figures" which is really 4 of the 7 demon warlocks, frozen in stone. One of them had died instantly when his head had snapped off, two more had lost arms and legs. Two more had died from shock and one was missing. Only Qwan, who knew what was coming, had survived. &#8470;1 manages to release Qwan. Kong and his group reach the gallery and try to break the door open. Butler shoots the lock with his SIG Sauer 9mm handgun and destroys it. Kong's group manages to shoot the door until it is "Drooping slightly on its hinges". Butler rips the door open, drags Kong inside and with the help of Holly's Neutrino, knocks him to the ground thinking he was unconscious. Minerva kicks him in the leg against Butler's warnings. Kong grabs Minerva's ankle and Butler steps on Kong's wrist, then knocks him unconscious by hitting him between the eyes with his knuckle. In the time this took, Kong's gang gets in the door and one of the men throws a grenade into the room, but Holly shields it with her Section 8 helmet. The bomb gets handcuffed to &#8470;1 and Artemis, Qwan, &#8470;1, and Holly devise a plan to use Holly's wings to carry Artemis, Holly, and &#8470;1 to the next building over. Their plan fails when Holly's wings cut out and they fall against the side of the building. Artemis takes off &#8470;1's silver bracelet and they all dematerialise to Hybras. Artemis reasons that the bomb will provide sufficient energy for a spell to reverse the original time-spell. Qwan tells him that at least five magical beings will be necessary. They all think (with the exception of Artemis, who stole some magic in the time tunnel) that there are only three. On Hybras, Abbot crowns himself the demon king. He is notified that four figures, Artemis, &#8470;1, Holly, and Qwan, have appeared on the volcano. They accuse him of using the mesmer, but he states that demons cannot use magic. Artemis claims that Abbot took magic from Qwan's apprentice and stole it from the time tunnel. When Abbot asks for proof, Artemis reveals that he stole some magic himself. When Abbot states that this is not possible, he demonstrates the fact by creating a spark out of the magic he took from the tunnel, unknown to his companions. With this development, then there will be five magical beings present (Abbot included), enough to reverse the time spell. Holly dies, but Artemis takes advantage of the time spell's disintegration and consequent irregularity to bring her back to life. Artemis, having no experience with magic, is guided by Qwan, and the 'magic circle' is formed. However, not enough magic is available, as Abbot does not contribute enough. At that moment, Qweffor, Qwan's former apprentice, makes his appearance, revealing he has been living in Abbot after the first time spell was interrupted. With Qweffor's increased magic, the party is able to return to Artemis and Holly's dimension. When they land back in the 21st century, Artemis notices that he has switched an eye with Holly. Even though Qweffor's consciousness has once again been taken over by Abbot, &#8470;1 manages to expand Qweffor's consciousness enough to shut Abbot out. Unfortunately, the party is three years off into the future. Artemis now has twin brothers, Ark Sool has been fired, and Mulch has continued the PI firm, also recruiting Doodah Day, a pixie that he arrested with Holly at the start of the book. When Artemis sees Butler, now with a beard, Butler reveals that Minerva has grown to be "quite a beautiful young woman" who talks about Artemis extensively and that he is now the big brother of twins.
14611825	/m/03d9kvv	What's Mine's Mine	George MacDonald	1886		 The story of a poor Scottish chief and his brother, and their influence for good on two English girls, daughters of their supplanter.
14612277	/m/03d9lcq	The Warriors of Spider	W. Michael Gear	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The human race consists of billions of people spread throughout a relatively small area of space containing Earth and several other inhabited planets. The majority of the population lives on giant space stations, either in orbit or moving like giant ships. A change occurred over the generations that was caused by zero-gravity conditions and exposure to different radiations. Most are pale-skinned, thin and frail-boned; some would die if they experienced gravity. The human race is ruled over by the Directorate, a group of three genetically modified humans, through whom all information must pass before it is released; this has given the Directorate complete control over information for the last 600 years. They stopped all war and religion and caused humanity to be composed of mostly obedient cowards. Before this 600-year period, the Soviets ruled humanity after conquering North America. The Native American tribes, angered that the position of reservations had not changed, fought back against the Soviets and succeeded, to the point that they were all loaded onto a giant prison ship and deported to deep space along with other rebels of Latino and Caucasian decent—a population of over 5,000 consisting entirely of people with the will and heritage to survive. The ship crashes onto a planet that they name World. 600 years later the survivors have mixed into many different clans that comprise two distinctly different and opposing peoples, the Spiders and the Santos. Their culture is mainly Native American with the addition of large bore rifles, hand-forged from metal of the wrecked prison ship and used to deal with beings they call "bears," natural predators existing on World. The World bear is similar to a dragon-squid combination, having two spines that connect at the base and a tentacle on each side with suction cups on it that it shoots toward its prey. The Directorate accidentally picks up a bit of radio chatter from World, as the warriors use hand radios. They send out the Patrol, a combination military/police force that, under the guidance of the Directorate, has had no violence or wars to quell in over 200 years. They arrive at World expecting to find civilized people barely surviving, as with most other lost stations or colonies. On the contrary, the native warriors are savage fighters following the Native American tradition of "coup" taking, or scalping killed enemies as a method of showing how many they had killed. They then try to conquer the Romanans, as they take to calling the descendants of the crashed star ship the natives arrived in, the Nicholai Romanan, but find that these natives aren't going down without a fight, as the Spiders, who believe Spider is the name of God and the Santos, a mix of Christian and Mexican beliefs, who call God Haysoos, are all about warfare and following what they interpret God is telling them what to do.
14612354	/m/03d9lkz	Love Creeps	Amanda Filipacchi	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Love Creeps is about a triangle of stalkers composed of two men and a woman. They stalk each other obsessively, and then the stalking order changes, illustrating the changeability of an individual's attraction to another, as well as that individual's attractiveness to others.
14612889	/m/03gql5g	Now, Now, Markus			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Markus's parent's never really listen to what Markus has to say and instead often react with standard phrases ("Oh my goodness!" said his mother. "Now now now" said his father). So Markus has to attract their attention by dropping dead. When he finally gets them to agree that he can have a bird he comes home with a swan. Of course he is not allowed to keep it, so he decides to live in the woods. There he is eaten by a giant, but his swan saves him. When Markus comes back home and his parents, as usual, don't believe his story, all the beings that have been saved from the giant's stomach march into the house.
14613269	/m/03gqlly	The Blue Boy			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Blue Boy lives on a war -torn planet. When his parents get killed he does not want to love anyone anymore, because he has cried so much that he has no more tears left. He declines the company of a little dog, an old woman, a girl. Instead he builds himself a giant armoured robot to travel around in and starts looking for someone who cannot be killed by a gun. At last he meets an old man on the moon who cannot be killed by guns because there are no guns up there. But the Blue Boy has brought his gun with him. Only when the old men offers him to use his telescope to study the people down there on the blue planet and to find out why they fight wars and how this could be stopped he agrees to drop his gun so he can stay with the old man. "Who knows? Maybe he'll fly back one day and tell his people everything he's learned".
14617585	/m/03gqrph	My Booky Wook	Russell Brand		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 This "warts and all" account of Brand's life follows, in vivid detail, the star's life from his troubled childhood in Gray's End Close, Essex to his first taste for fame in Stage School up to his turbulent drug addiction and his triumphant rise to fame from RE:Brand to Big Brother's Big Mouth to Hollywood.
14619122	/m/03gqt3k	Imperial Stars	E. E. Smith	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The year is 2447 and the Empire of Earth comprises more than a thousand inhabited systems. A threat to the Empire has developed and the Imperial secret service "SOTE" has been unable to foil it. In desperation they turn to the Family D'Alembert for assistance. The Family D'Alembert are natives of the high gravity planet DesPlaines, giving them unusual strength and speed. Travelling the galaxy under the cover of their famous circus, they are the Emperor's super secret force.
14625938	/m/03gr2r_	Ports of Call	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Myron's family intended for Myron to follow a staid and respectable career in economics; however, when his wealthy and eccentric great-aunt Dame Hester came into possession of a space yacht, Myron suddenly found his long suppressed dreams of adventure within reach. Serving as Dame Hester's nominal captain on her journey to find a clinic reputed to restore lost youth to wealthy clients, Myron soon finds that his aunt is capricious as she is flamboyant, and after an argument, finds himself castaway on a remote planet. With no resources to return home, he obtains the position of supercargo on a tramp freighter, which enables him to travel further across the Gaean Reach to exotic lands.
14626702	/m/03gr3hq	Carpentaria		2006		 The novel tells the interconnected stories of several inhabitants of the fictional town of Desperance, situated on the Gulf of Carpentaria in northwest Queensland. There, the Aboriginal people of the Pricklebush clan are engaged in a number of argumentative conflicts with various enemies in the community, including the white inhabitants of Desperance, the local law enforcement and government officials, and a large multinational mining operation that has been established on their traditional sacred land. The narrative chronicles the interpersonal relationships shared between three men embroiled in these disputes: the wise, pragmatic, and blunt Normal Phantom; the nomadic, overzealous shamanic practitioner of Aboriginal traditional religion, Mozzie Fishman; and Norm's son, Will Phantom, who deserted his father's house to undertake a cross-country spiritual journey with Fishman, but who has now returned home with something of Fishman's character in him.
14627745	/m/03gr4s9	Gangster	Lorenzo Carcaterra	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens in 1996 as Gabe, now middle-aged man, keeps watch over an old Angelo Vestieri on his hospital deathbed. Slipping back in time to the Depression, the narrative tracks the rise of the famed mob boss from a simple Italian immigrant to the most powerful man of Manhattan's underworld, when a ten year old Gabe, by chance, walks into Vestieri's bar. Vestieri takes the boy under his wing and ushers him into the world of organized crime. Gabe learns what it takes to rule an empire with his mentor, yet when the time comes for Gabe to take over Angelo's operation, he refuses, choosing a normal life despite his deep love for Vestieri.
14628980	/m/03gr6cx	Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire	Mike Mignola	2007-08-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Each chapter begins with a quote from Hans Christian Andersen's, "The Steadfast Tin Soldier." The novel consists of several tales all interlinked around a fictional Captain Lord Henry Baltimore who leads a night attack on a battlefield during World War I, and the men who know him. His entire squad is killed by enemy fire and Baltimore himself is wounded in the leg and left for dead, he awakes some hours later to see giant bat creatures feeding on his dead men. When one attempts to feed off him, he slashes at it with his bayonet and scars its face hideously. The giant creature in return wounds him and infests his leg with such terrible gangrene that when he is later brought to hospital, it is amputated, leaving him with a jointed wooden leg. Unknowingly, Lord Baltimore struck a powerful vampire who is so angered by Baltimore's permanent blinding of his right eye that he causes a "plague" in warring Europe. People think this to be a sickness which spreads quickly across countries, but in truth it is vampirism. Baltimore returns home from war haunted by his encounter on the field, yet happy to be home early on account of his leg. But upon arrival, he discovers his parents and sister have succumbed to the plague - only his wife Elowen survived. The plot turns to three of Baltimores' companions who have helped in the past - battlefield surgeon Doctor Lemuel Rose, gentlemen trader Thomas Childress Jr., and sea captain Demetrius Aischros. They have all been called to meet at an inn with Baltimore, and while they wait for him, each tells two tales: how they met Baltimore and why they believe his tale of the vampire encounter to be true. The Doctor treated his leg, Childress grew up on his island home and Aischros shipped him home after the war. From their tales of Baltimore and the supernatural it becomes apparent that Baltimore has become a man bent on a mission to kill the "Red King vampire" (also known as Haigus), who infested his family and then murdered his beloved wife. He travels to kill the lesser vampires in hope of reaching the Red King, and has called his three friends forth in hope of their aid.
14630838	/m/03gr90w	The Primrose Path	Bram Stoker	1875	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jerry O'Sullivan, honest Dublin theatrical carpenter, moves to London, seeking a better job. Against the better judgement of the people surrounding him, Jerry decides to go to the metropolis with his faithful wife Katey. O'Sullivan is hired as head carpenter in a squalid theatre in London, but after several misfortunes he is strongly tempted by and eventually brought down by alcohol.
14631286	/m/03gr9ff	The Touchstone				 Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an advertisement in a London magazine promising the prospect of financial gain. Glennard was once pursued by Margaret Aubyn, a famous and recently deceased author, and he still has her passionate love letters to him. Glennard removes his name from the letters and sells them, making him a fortune and building a marriage based on the betrayal of another. However, his mounting shame and his guilty conscience ultimately force him to confess his betrayal to his wife. He fully expects (and even desires) that his confession will cause her to despise him. However, her wise and forgiving response opens a way for him to forgive himself and to make what limited amends he can make for his actions.
14634862	/m/04z762	Treading Air	Jaan Kross	1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Treading Air is the story of Ullo Paerand. It is narrated partly in the first person from the principal character's point of view, and partly in the voice of Paerand's schoolmate Jaak Sirkel, a character in several of Kross' recent novels. The novel opens with Ullo's reminiscences of a childhood trip to Germany in the 1920s, and ends with his vision of meeting his aged father who fled to the West together with his lover. The talented Ullo preserves memories of the happy childhood he knew before his father left and leaner years began. Together with his mother, Ullo fights for a better future. Despite minor humiliations, he gets a secondary education in one of Tallinn's best grammar schools. Soon after, due to his excellent memory and enterprising spirit, he enjoys professional success, rising to a position in the Prime Minister's Office. But fate lets Ullo down. The Soviet and German occupations deny him the chance of an upstanding career. Ullo joins with the nationalists to work towards the restoration of the Estonian Republic, and passes over an opportunity of escaping to the West offered by a representative of the Vatican. He lives the remainder of his life - some forty years - doing menial work, and making suitcases in a factory. Treading Air is one of the Kross' most successful books. It is on a par with Keisri hull (The Czar's Madman), regarded by many until now as Jaan Kross' best novel. de:Paigallend et:Paigallend
14639741	/m/03grjfr	The Romance of the Forest	Ann Radcliffe	1791	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Monsieur Pierre de la Motte and his wife, Madame Constance de la Motte, are fleeing Paris in an attempt to escape his creditors. Pierre, Madame, and their two domestic servants, Peter and Annette, are waylaid when the path they’re on becomes too dark to follow any longer. Pierre exits the carriage and continues on foot toward a light he notices some distance away from the carriage. Upon knocking on the door of a small and ancient house, Pierre is admitted into the house by a stranger. He is given a bed and promptly locked in the room. Sometime later, the door to Pierre’s room is unlocked and a beautiful young lady, Adeline, is being dragged behind the stranger who admitted Pierre to the house. The stranger states that “if you wish to save your life, swear that you will convey this girl where I may never see her more; or rather consent to take her with you.” Upon agreement to take Adeline with him, Pierre and Adeline are conveyed to the carriage by the ruffian stranger with Madame still inside. The family, with the addition of Adeline, proceeds into the darkened interior of a forest, hoping to elude discovery and heeding the warnings of the stranger to not come back on the land they just left. Eventually, they find refuge in a ruined abbey after their wagon wheel breaks. Initially, everyone in the group except Peter is afraid of what lies in waiting behind the abbey walls; however, closer inspection by Peter shows the only inhabitants are mice, owls, bats, and the like. Still afraid of being pursued by creditors, the family and Adeline stay close to the abbey. Peter is sent into the town of Auboine for supplies to fix their broken wagon wheel. After returning to the family, Peter confides to Pierre that while he was in town he got in a fight and was unable to procure the necessary supplies for fixing the wheel, but he did purchase some food to tide them over. The family and the servants settle into the rooms of the abbey, making each one more inhabitable the longer they stay. After some time passes, while in town, Peter comes across a gentleman who inquires about the La Motte family. Thinking the people inquiring about the La Motte family are creditors, the family, Adeline, and the servants all go into hiding through the trap door Pierre has found in one of the bedrooms. They spend the night in the dark and terrifying rooms, where unbeknownst to everyone else, Pierre discovers a skeleton in a chest. The next day, everyone agrees to send Adeline out to check if anyone is at the abbey since she is the only one who would be unrecognizable to creditors. Upon greeting one of her woodland animal friends, a young male stranger approaches her. Soon Adeline discovers that this stranger is actually Pierre and Madame’s son, Louis. They left Paris without giving notice to his regiment, and he had come searching for his parents. Soon after, Madame confides to Louis her jealous fears that Adeline seeks to have an affair with her husband. Louis is supposed to find out the truth of where Pierre has been spending his days, but is unable to do so after losing sight of his father in the dense forest. Madame stays hostile to Adeline, believing the worst of her in relation to her supposed affair with Pierre. At the same time, Louis has fallen in love with Adeline and pines for her saying “I should esteem myself most happy, if I could be of service to you.” Meanwhile, "Louis, by numberless little attentions, testified his growing affection for Adeline, who continued to treat them as passing civilities. It happened, one stormy night, as they were preparing for rest, that they were alarmed by a trampling of horses near the abbey." The riders introduce themselves as the Marquis de Montalt, who is the owner of the abbey, and his attendants, one of which is named Theodore. Pierre becomes more distressed after the appearance of the Marquis. Louis notes this distress, but must soon leave to return to his regiment. During this time, Theodore attempts to warn Adeline that he fears she has been deceived and danger is upon her. Before he can formally speak with Adeline, he is sent to return to his regiment as well. Pierre and the Marquis, at this same time, have been speaking in private to one another. After Theodore’s departure, Adeline fears her father will return for her when overhearing a conversation between Pierre and the Marquis. She relates her fears to Pierre, and he allows her to believe that is what the conversation’s subject consisted of. Throughout this time period, as well, Adeline also finds a manuscript written by someone who had been held captive inside the abbey during 1642. The writer of the manuscript relates his dire circumstances and impending death at the hands of an unknown perpetrator. Adeline notes when reading the manuscript that it "is in a barely legible and fragmented condition. It suggests much more than it can say.” Adeline ultimately informs Pierre of the manuscript once she reaches particularly terrifying point while reading it. Adeline is then warned of danger again, but this time Peter is the person who warns her. He attempts several times to tell her the issue at hand, until finally he is able to relate his findings. Adeline finds out the reality of the conversations between the Marquis and Pierre: The Marquis wants to make Adeline his wife and was discussing the matter with Pierre. However, Adeline discovers through Peter that the Marquis actually already has a wife and she would have really had a “fake marriage” and became the Marquis’ mistress. At no point, however, is Adeline inclined to become either the Marquis’ wife or mistress. Peter and Adeline concoct a plan to help her escape the abbey and a potentially reputation ruining situation. Unfortunately, when making her escape, Adeline is tricked, and instead she is taken to the Marquis’ residence. Adeline soon attempts to escape the Marquis by climbing out the window where she runs into Theodore, who is there to rescue her. The two leave in a carriage and the Marquis quickly follows once he realizes what has happened. Adeline and Theodore stop at an inn where the Marquis finds them. Theodore, who initially is ailing but eventually recovers, wounds the Marquis. Now instead of him being in trouble for just deserting his regiment, he also must face the consequences for wounding a superior officer. Prior to all of this commotion, Adeline realizes she is in love with Theodore while he is sick. Theodore is imprisoned, and Adeline is returned to Pierre de la Motte at the abbey. The Marquis informs Pierre that he wants to kill Adeline, not marry her, now. Pierre finds that he is "entangled in the web which his own crimes had woven. Being in the power of the Marquis, he knew he must either consent to the commission of a deed, from the enormity of which, depraved as he was, he shrunk in horror; or sacrifice fortune, freedom, probably life itself, to the refusal." Pierre finds he is unable to allow Adeline to be killed, thus he sends Adeline with Peter on horseback to Peter’s sister’s house in Leloncourt. When Peter and Adeline finally reach Leloncourt, Adeline is taken ill and is nursed to health first by Peter’s sister and later by Clara la Luc. Here, "Adeline, who had long been struggling with fatigue and indisposition, now yielded to their pressure ... But, notwithstanding her fatigue, she could not sleep, and her mind, in spite of all her efforts, returned to the scenes that were passed, or presented gloomy and imperfect visions of the future." After her illness, Adeline is essentially adopted by Arnaud la Luc, Clara’s father, and spends the remainder of her time with the family. Clara also has a brother, but he currently is not present. Yet, soon Monsieur la Luc’s health is failing (he is take with consumption), and the family must relocate to a different climate for a time. Eventually, Louis de la Motte finds Adeline and brings her news of Theodore. He informs her that he is imprisoned and his death is imminent because of the assault he made on his general officer. Here, Monsieur la Luc finds out that the Theodore in reference is actually his son that he has not seen for many years. Meanwhile, Monsieur and Madame de la Motte are facing their own troubles. Pierre de la Motte is placed on trial for a robbery he previously committed against the Marquis before he knew who the Marquis was. The Marquis would not have pressed any charges had Pierre assisted the murder of Adeline. Presently, however, Monsieur and Madame de la Motte are in Paris. Pierre is imprisoned and Madame is with him. Unaware of this, Adeline, Clara, and Monsieur la Luc travel to Paris to be with Theodore prior to his execution. While Pierre is on trial, witnesses come forward, and it is discovered that the Marquis is not who he claims to be; he had previously murdered a relation to Adeline and stole the person’s identity. Because of these recent developments, Theodore is released from his imprisonment while the Marquis poisons himself, but not before he confesses all his wrongdoings. "It appeared that convinced he had nothing to hope from his trial, he had taken this method of avoiding an ignominious death. In the last hours of his life, while tortured with the remembrance of his crime, he resolved to make all the atonement that remained for him, and having swallowed the potion, he immediately sent for a confessor to take a full confession of his guilt, and two notaries, and thus established Adeline beyond dispute in the rights of her birth, also bequeathing her a considerable legacy." *Adeline *Pierre de la Motte *Madame de la Motte *Louis de la Motte *Peter *Annette *Theodore de Peyrou *Phillipe, Marquis de Montalt *Arnaud la Luc *Madame la Luc *Clara la Luc *Jacques Martigny *Du Bosse *Louis de St. Pierre
14640164	/m/03grjr0	The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne	Ann Radcliffe	1789	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of two clans, those belonging to the Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. It begins by relating that Malcolm, the Baron of Dunbayne, murdered the Earl of Athlin. The Earl’s son, Osbert, is driven by a passionate desire to avenge his father’s murder. Despite the entreaties of his mother, Matilda, to conquer his passion and abandon his quest of revenge, Osbert launches an attack on Malcolm with the help of Alleyn, a noble and virtuous peasant. Alleyn is in love with Osbert’s sister, Mary, a virtuous and delicate lady whom he desires to impress. The attack on Malcolm’s castle fails, and both Alleyn and Osbert are taken captive as prisoners of war. Alleyn, however, manages to escape. Malcolm’s passion for destroying Osbert is supplanted by a passion to possess the beautiful Mary, and he sends men to kidnap her. Alleyn, on his way back to Athlin, intervenes, and after much fainting on the part of Mary, manages to rescue her. Mary, after recovering from the excessive fainting fits, falls in love with Alleyn, despite their class differences. Upon confiding in her mother however, she is urged to forget her love. Malcolm, angry at Alleyn’s escape and the thwarted attempt to kidnap Mary, demands a ransom for the release of Osbert: he will release the Earl only if he is allowed to marry Mary. Both Alleyn and Matilda are distressed by such news. Osbert, meanwhile, has found comfort in the fellow prisoners of the Baroness Louisa, Malcolm’s sister-in-law by way of his elder (and now deceased) brother, the former Baron, and her daughter Laura. Laura and Osbert fall in love. After many complications, Osbert is able to escape the restraints of Malcolm, whom he eventually challenges. Malcolm is then killed in the ensuing battle. Before he dies, Malcolm confesses to Louisa that her son, whom she had thought dead, was really alive. Malcolm had hidden him away with a peasant family in order to procure the title for himself. Laura and Osbert prepare to wed, but Mary and Alleyn are both unhappy. It is then miraculously discovered the Alleyn is in fact Philip, Louisa’s long-lost son. He is recognized by his mother by a strawberry mark on his skin. This makes Alleyn the rightful Baron of Dunbayne. The novel ends with the double wedding of Laura and Osbert, and Mary and Alleyn.
14640831	/m/03grkhp	Clermont	Regina Maria Roche		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 Clermont relates the story of the beautiful Madeline, who lives in seclusion with her eponymous father until they are visited by a mysterious Countess from Clermont's past. Madeline travels to complete her education with her and a series of assaults by shadowy foes cannot dissuade her from unravelling the mystery of her father's past and pursuing her paramour De Sevignie. She uncovers the secret of her own noble origins and her virtue proves its strength through a series of trials and tribulations.
14640941	/m/03grkpj	Le Calvaire	Octave Mirbeau	1886-11	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Le Calvaire is an autobiographical novel, in which Mirbeau romanticizes his devastating affair with a woman of dubious morals, Judith Vimmer, who appears as "Juliette Roux" in the novel. The main character, Jean Mintié, who has literary ambition and the potential to become a good writer, is incapable of overcoming his sexual obsessions. Victimized by a woman and reduced to a state of humiliated impotence, he tries to transform his suffering into an impulse to create. His redemptive passion is modeled on the Passion of Christ. In the final pages, the image of Christ is replaced by the corpses of men fallen in the battle of love.
14645143	/m/03grp_r	Goodbye California	Alistair MacLean	1978	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Set in the United States, an Islamic terrorist kidnaps nuclear scientists and steals radioactive material from a California nuclear power plant. The plot focuses on the plan of the kidnappers to build their own atomic bombs which if exploded along California's earthquake fault lines could kill millions of people and destroy California's major cities. The inspiration for the plot appears to be acknowledged by Maclean himself in his preface to the 1977 edition of the book where he describes his first experience of an earthquake while in California on 9 February 1972.
14650207	/m/0h3rz8r	Theologus Autodidactus	Al-Nafis			 The protagonist of the story is Kamil, an autodidactic adolescent feral child who is spontaneously generated in a cave and living in seclusion on a deserted island. He eventually comes in contact with the outside world after the arrival of castaways who get shipwrecked and stranded on the island, and later take him back to the civilized world with them. The plot gradually develops into a coming-of-age story and then incorporates science fiction elements when it reaches its climax with a catastrophic doomsday apocalypse.
14656511	/m/03gs0vs	Skeleton Man				 When two passenger airplanes collide over the Grand Canyon in the 1950s killing all aboard, John Clarke's body is lost, as is the briefcase of diamonds he had locked to his wrist. Scorning Mr. Clarke's pregnant fiancee, the wealthy Clarke family disclaims the out-of-wedlock daughter, Joanna Craig. When Clarke's father dies without heir shortly after the crash, the family fortune is entrusted to the estate's attorney, Dan Plymale, to create a charitable foundation. Mr. Plymale then proceeds to live well as executor of the foundation's funds, while Joanna Craig and her mother struggle in comparative poverty. Decades later, Billy Tuve, a Hopi, is arrested on suspicion of burglary and murder based on his possession of a rare diamond. Tuve's cousin, Cowboy Dashee solicits help from his friend Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee to clear Tuve's name. When retired Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn learns that his old acquaintance "Shorty" McGinnis acquired a similar diamond many years ago from a man whose story matches Tuve's story, the search begins in earnest for the missing diamonds and whatever may remain of John Clarke's body.
14660414	/m/03gs5kq	The Christmas Mystery			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Joachim buys a magic advent calendar on November 30 and every day, a piece of paper falls out of the door of the calendar. Each page tells the story of Elisabet Hansen, who chases a toy lamb that has come to life from an Oslo department store. While chasing the lamb, she meets the angel Ephiriel; the shepherds Joshua and Jacob; Caspar, the King of the Orient; and the cherub Impuriel.
14661037	/m/03gs6lc	A Special Providence	Richard Yates	1969	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Robert Prentice is drafted after graduating high school and enters World War II during its final days. His hopes of glory are dashed by the fact that the fighting is almost all over. He proves to be an incompetent soldier and soon spends time in an infirmary with pneumonia. When he returns to his unit he continues to struggle but finally achieves a kind of acceptance. This narrative is interspersed with scenes from his childhood viewed from the perspective of his mother, Alice Prentice. She spends Robert's childhood moving from place to place mainly within New York accruing increasingly larger debts as her sculpting earns less and less money. She increasingly slips into despair as the novel ends and Robert decides not to return home.
14661776	/m/03gs7lq	Good Morning Midnight	Reginald Hill		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The plot involves Dalziel and Pascoe's investigation into the suicide of local businessman Palinurus 'Pal' Maciver, who has killed himself in similar circumstances to those of his father, who shot himself ten years earlier. However, what begins as a routine case of an apparent copycat suicide soon develops into something of a more sinister nature, revealing family secrets, corporate chicanery involving the arms trade, government agents and Iraq.
14662428	/m/03gs8kn	To Kill the Potemkin	Mark Joseph	1986		 In 1968, a dangerous period of the Cold War, U.S. and Soviet forces engage in brinkmanship across the world. At sea, their submarines play a dangerous cat-and-mouse game. To Kill the Potemkin tells the story of a confrontation between these submarines - one being a new and advanced class of submarine whose existence must remain a secret. Jack Sorensen, one of the Navy's best sonar operators, is sonar chief of USS Barracuda, a nuclear-powered Skipjack-class submarine. Sorenson is a veteran who jokes about submarine warfare as a game (which he calls "Cowboys and Cossacks"), and he's determined to never lose. Using his sonar gear, Sorensen can find and identify submarines as few others can. Fogerty, a promising but inexperienced sonar analyst newly assigned to Barracuda, is determined to learn from Sorensen. Sorenson is something of an eccentric and also has a drug addiction (with drugs provided by one of the vessel's medical officers) and when in port, as a heavy drinker and partier, but this is tolerated because his determination and expertise make him so valuable. The novel begins as Barracuda departs it's east coast base for the Mediterranean Sea. Once there, Barracuda engages in anti-submarine warfare exercises with other Western submarines. Its mission is to "hunt" the U.S. Navy's 6th Fleet and the flagship, the aircraft carrier. The Barracuda "sinks" several of the American submarines playing the Soviet Navy vessels. The drill is interrupted by the appearance of a vessel that Fogarty correctly determines, that one of the submarines, which has the sonar signature of the American submarine USS Swordfish, is actually a Soviet submarine using special gear to mask its identity. The story then shifts to the bridge of the other submarine, which in fact is a Soviet vessel, and the first of new class of submarine. The first of its kind, Potemkin is equipped with an experimental stereo/sonar system designed to reproduce recorded tapes of American, British, and other submarines to fool the sonar nets stationed in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. As the Potemkin places itself into the Western navies' exercise, the political officer takes command of the vessel and places the captain under arrest for his repeated insults against the political officer and what he deems "un-Soviet remarks". Unfortunately, his incompetence leads to a collision with Barracuda. The American submarine is damaged in the bow area and the compartment is evacuated. Sorenson records the Soviet vessel sinking, and breaking up (being crushed by the water pressure as it sinks) on the sonar equipment. To his amazement, he hears what he thinks is torpedo being fired from the sinking vessel before it plunges to the ocean floor. The tape is sealed under orders from the submarine's captain. Everyone, the officers and crew, are all stunned and amazed to think that they managed to sink a ship of the Soviet Navy and are terrified of what the Soviets may do in retaliation. The injured vessel makes its way back to port and dry-dock for repairs. While Barracuda survives and reports the accident to higher authorities, it is revealed that the Soviet ship was damaged by the collision but was not sunk. It was able to duplicate the sound of an actual submarine breaking up and playing it through the sophisticated stereo system. Potemkin was seriously damaged; the ship briefly capsized, causing the reactor to automatically scram. Sorenson soon comes to suspect that the mystery sub did not really sink. Unbeknownst to the superior officers of the ship, he made a separate recording of the collision and the sinking and after listening to it, suspects something is wrong. The sound mistaken for the torpedo firing was actually the Soviet's electric motors driving the submarine away. He tells the captain of the sub his theory and he comes to believe him. When titanium fragments are found on a repaired portion of the bow that came contact with the other submarine during the collision, the crew now have reason to believe that there is a revolutionary class of submarine, using titanium instead of high-tensile steel, is in service with the Soviet Navy and it is still on the loose somewhere in the Med and most likely on the way to the Atlantic. The new class is designated an Alfa class submarine. The American vessel is assigned the top-secret mission of tracking down the Potemkin. With the ship's zampolit under arrest for negligence and the captain back in command, Potemkin makes a break for the Atlantic Ocean and a rendezvous with Soviet vessels working undercover in Cuba. The environmental system was damaged in the collision so the atmosphere can not be maintained leading to a build-up of carbon dioxide that slowly poisons the crew. Potemkin is unable to escape the Mediterranean before being located by Barracuda. Nevertheless, once out in the open Atlantic Ocean, the Soviet ship reaches full speed, and outpaces Barracuda - which, as a Skipjack-class submarine, is one of the fastest submarines in the world. Potemkin reaches Cuba and makes a rondezvous with the secret submarine stationed off the coast. This was supposed to be a top-secret meeting because of the Cuban missile crisis no Soviet vessels were supposed to be operating within Cuba's waters. Just as the two vessels are about to make contact, Barracuda arrives on the scene. Crew members on all three vessels realize the disastrous consequences of the Barracudas arrival at that exact time. The Russians realize that the American must be sunk from reporting the presence of Soviet vessels in Cuba's waters. Potemkin fires first but the torpedo misses. The Soviet vessel is too deep to shoot with the standard American torpedo so Sorenson orders the firing of a nuclear Mk 45 ASTOR torpedo. The explosion from the nuclear torpedo destroys the Potemkin and all the crew members. Sorenson and Fogarty retire to Sorenson's bunk. All the crewmen of the sub are horrified to realize they have just committed an act of war. The torpedo that was fired earlier by the Russian sub malfunctions and goes to "active seeking" mode and homes in on the noise made by Barracudas reactor pumps. The explosion blows the American sub in two; the vessel sinks in eight-tenths of a second and is crushed by the pressure of the deep sea killing the whole crew.
14665994	/m/03gsdh3	Dragon of the Lost Sea	Laurence Yep	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Shimmer, an exiled dragon princess traveling incognito in human form, senses powerful magic emanating from a small village. Investigating its source, she determines that it is the witch Civet, who sealed up the waters of her homeland, the Inland Sea, centuries ago in the form of a blue pebble, now making it known as the Lost Sea. Civet is staying at a local inn in disguise. Shimmer soon encounters a young, orphaned kitchen servant named Thorn who is being harassed by the local children because he claims to have seen the mythical Unicorn, one of the Five Masters. Supporting him, Shimmer is defended by Thorn when the children are about to turn on her, earning a beating from his master the innkeeper. She visits Thorn at the inn out of gratitude, and accepts his offer of a meal and a place to stay for the night, having never met with such hospitality during all her years of exile. Later that night, she saves Thorn from an attack by one of Civet's servants, an enchanted paper warrior sent to kill him because of his purported Unicorn sighting. The two are forced to flee the village after Shimmer defends Thorn against his master. To escape, Shimmer uses the dream pearl, a treasure which she was exiled for supposedly stealing hundreds of years ago, to change into her true form as a dragon in order fly away with Thorn. During the course of their flight, Thorn resolves to stay with Shimmer and help her with her quest, which she reluctantly accepts. The two fly to the forest of the Keeper, a once powerful wizard known for keeping a "menagerie of monstrous pets"., where Shimmer believes Civet is headed. In the ruins of his former city, they encounter the Keeper, who still has enough magic left to have recreated some of his pets. He reveals that Civet was able to steal his mist stone, a gem which can turn its user's form into cloud. Shimmer realizes that this will now make him covet her dream pearl. The Keeper tries to take it, but Shimmer and Thorn manage to escape. Pursued by the Keeper and his pets for hours, Shimmer manages to defeat them in an aerial battle near her former home, the Lost Sea, but her wing is injured and she is forced to land. She and Thorn have to traverse the vast expanse of salt the Lost Sea has now become for a few days on foot on the trail of Civet, who is bound for the city of River Glen, a city the dragons of the Inland Sea used to trade with. At River Glen, Shimmer and Thorn encounter Monkey, a powerful mage and formerly notorious troublemaker who has been charged by his master, a wizard known as the Old Boy, with protecting River Glen from Civet. Monkey welcomes Shimmer and Thorn, but drugs their tea, putting them to sleep to prevent them from interfering with his plan to apprehend Civet singlehandedly. Civet herself attempts to get into River Glen in disguise, but does not fool Monkey. Before he can subdue her, she manages to unleash the waters of the Lost Sea by destroying the blue pebble, leaving River Glen nearly totally submerged. Civet escapes by using the mist stone that she stole from the Keeper to transform herself into cloud. Monkey decides to try to steal the magical cauldron, known as 'Baldy's Bowl', from Shimmer's uncle, the High King of the Dragons, to boil the waters of the Lost Sea away. Shimmer tries to convince Thorn to go with him so he can be brought to a human city, but he vows to stay with her and help her catch Civet. Monkey gives them one of his hairs which will turn into an unbreakable magic chain on command to help. Shimmer and Thorn then set off for Civet's lair, the Weeping Mountain. At Weeping Mountain, they manage to fight their way past various opponents to reach a cavern where they summon Civet, who manages to capture them both despite having used up a great deal of her magic by having destroyed the blue pebble. As she is about to kill Shimmer, Thorn is able to convince her to allow him to prepare a meal for her because all her paper servants have been destroyed. During the meal, Civet reveals her past, which Shimmer was previously unaware of. She was a teenager from River Glen who was demanded as a bride by the King Within the River, a powerful magical being who could have destroyed River Glen at will. Her body was preserved as it was at the time of her death by drowning to join her husband, but she resented her marriage because the King was hideous and kept her sequestered in his palace. It took her a thousand years to learn enough magic from him to be able to turn him into a stone and escape, by which time River Glen had been transformed from a village into a prosperous, industrial city which had grown wealthy from its trade with the dragons of the Inland Sea. Wanting revenge against both the dragons and River Glen led Civet to seal up the waters of the Inland Sea and use them to punish River Glen. After she finishes her story, Thorn manages to disable Civet with Monkey's hair that he had planted in her noodles, which turns into a chain that gets into her stomach. After Shimmer is freed, she tries to kill Civet but cannot, because her perception of her has changed, making her realize that they are both alike in that they have lost their former homes. However the spell on Monkey's hair cannot be undone, leaving Civet paralyzed. Shimmer decides that the chain disabling Civet can be removed for any help she can give in restoring the Lost Sea, but she will need to journey to the dragon kingdoms in search of Monkey or a powerful mage. Thorn is determined to go with her, after which the two acknowledge their partnership and informally "adopt" each other before setting off.
14666287	/m/03gsdmy	Dragon Steel	Laurence Yep		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Shimmer and Thorn, transporting a disabled Civet, are met with a hostile reception while flying over the human capital of Ramsgate. The biggest threat to them is a massive, enchanted bird of fire, which they narrowly manage to escape and defeat after luring it out to sea. Arriving at an outpost of her uncle, High King of the Dragons Sambar XII, Shimmer does not receive the warm reception that she was expecting from the guards, but convinces their commander to let her see her uncle. On the way to his underwater palace, she discovers that relations between the humans and dragons have deteriorated as a result of increasingly provocative actions on the part of the human king known as the Butcher. The reception at Sambar's court does not get any better, as Sambar is not impressed by Shimmer's news that she has defeated Civet nor is he mollified when Civet and the Keeper's mist stone are presented to him as gifts, as he covets Shimmer's dream pearl. Shimmer creates an illusionary pearl to hand over, but Thorn, not knowing what she is up to, tries to take it back forcefully, getting them both thrown into the dungeons. There they meet Monkey, who was caught trying to steal Baldy's cauldron and has had a magical needle implanted in him which prevents him from using magic and cannot be removed without killing him. Thorn and Shimmer are placed in a cell, but Shimmer manages to create illusionary needles to take the place of the ones meant to restrain them. When they are left alone, Indigo, a servant girl working in the dungeons, helps them escape by suggesting that Shimmer try changing the tumblers on the locks to their chains and cell door. However Shimmer is unable to free Monkey, who suggests that he bring her a flower so that he can attempt to summon the Lord of the Flowers, a very ancient and powerful, yet whimsical being, one of the Five Masters, and the only person he can contact from his cell. Indigo, seeking a chance to escape the palace, convinces Shimmer to take her along, but earns Thorn's jealousy. The three manage to escape the palace after the alarm is sounded by being disguised as fish. Making their way out into the open ocean in the opposite direction of their anticipated escape route, they eventually run into a raiding party of krakens. Shimmer returns to her dragon form to fight them, but is outnumbered despite Thorn and Indigo's best efforts as fish to help her. Defeat seems certain until a patrol of dragons arrives. They turn out to be members of Shimmer's clan from the Inland Sea, who welcome her back and are overjoyed at the news of Civet being captured. Shimmer, Indigo and Thorn are taken to an underwater mountain fort and welcomed by hundreds of Inland Sea dragons from the oldest to the youngest, all battle-scarred, ready to fight, and bearing signs of the treatment they have had to put up with from Sambar. At the fort Shimmer discovers that a single stalk of a flower known as Ebony's tears, which used to grow abundantly around the shores of the Inland Sea, still exists and was magically preserved, having become a symbol to the entire clan. It is currently being guarded by a branch of the clan led by Lady Francolin, Shimmer's former history teacher. Shimmer seeks Lady Francolin out, who lives the undersea volcanoes where the Inland Sea dragons forge dragon steel, "the truest of all metals", which never rusts nor breaks and is so strong because it is "tempered long and often", which the dragons use for their weapons. Shimmer is able to convince Lady Francolin to relinquish Ebony's tears, and she, Thorn and Indigo manage to sneak back into the palace in disguise with the flower. The plan is nearly ruined when some guards find and decide to eat some of it, although Indigo is able to save some of its blooms. After foiling an attempt by Sambar's grand mage disguised as Monkey, he manages to summon the Lord of the Flowers, who agrees to help them by removing the needle implanted in Monkey and giving them access to Sambar's treasure vault where Baldy's cauldron is stored for 1,000 seconds. In the vault, they manage to fight off a massive guardian creature and Sambar's guards, retrieve Civet, Monkey's rod, and the cauldron, barely managing to escape. However the cauldron gets cracked in the process. Shimmer and her companions are then transported to Indigo's homeland, the massive forest known as Green Darkness on her request and left there. Monkey reverses the spell that transformed his hair into a chain that Civet had swallowed, and Shimmer strikes a bargain with her for help in restoring the Inland Sea in return for letting her settle in the Green Darkness. Indigo's homecoming proves to be bittersweet as she finds that much of the forest has been chopped down to construct warships and the young people of her village conscripted as labor. Shimmer and Thorn convince Indigo to come with them, just as war between the humans and dragons begins.
14671020	/m/03gsjm3	The Castle of Wolfenbach	Eliza Parsons	1793	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 Matilda Weimar and her servant Albert arrive at a cottage inhabited by two peasants, Pierre and his wife Jaqueline. Matilda is ill for unknown reasons and there is no bed for her to rest in, so they go to the neighboring haunted Castle of Wolfenbach. Bertha and Joseph, the castles’ caretakers, take in Matilda and Albert. That night, Matilda hears chains and groans and Matilda asks Joseph about the noises the next morning. He says him and his wife never hear them. Bertha then explains that Count Wolfenbach is the owner and he is a cruel man who locked up his wife and children and they died. They are the ghosts that one hears. Matilda ventures up into the tower where the noises came from and encounters a lady and her servant. Matilda tells them the story of her life: her parents died while she was an infant and she was brought up by her uncle. She had a good upbringing with her servants Agatha and Albert, but her uncle started to “caress” her and she overheard his plan to rape her, so Matilda and Albert fled. The lady then says that she has a sister, the Marquis de Melfort in France and that Joseph knows she resides up there. The lady offers Matilda to live with her sister in France. The next day, Matilda goes to converse with the lady of the castle again, but she is gone and the room is in disorder. Joseph and her find the lady’s servant murdered on the bed. Matilda leaves to go to France and tell the lady’s sister about her kidnapping. Count Wolfenbach arrives after Matilda leaves and tells Joseph that he has sold the property and Bertha and him are moving to another property of his. That night, Joseph wakes up to a fire in his room and escapes, but Bertha does not. The castle is burnt to the ground and Bertha is dead. In France, Matilda is staying with the Marquis de Melfort and we learn that the Lady of the Castle is the Countess of Wolfenbach. Matilda tells Charlotte, The Marquis, of her sisters kidnapping. Matilda receives a letter from Joseph telling her about the castle and Bertha’s ill fate. She shows the Marquis, and the Marquis decides to tell her about the Countess of Wolfenbach’s past. Victoria was in loved with a man, Chevalier, but their father made her marry Count Wolfenbach because he was rich and had power. The Count later sent the Marquis a letter saying that Victoria had died in childbirth along with their newly born child. A few weeks after that, the Marquis received a letter from Victoria saying she was alive. Matilda sees the Count de Bouville and falls in love with him right away and the love is reciprocated. Matilda’s uncle shows up at the Hotel de Melfort to get Matilda to marry him, but the Marquis sends him away and Matilda falls desperately ill after hearing this news. Matilda agrees to see him under the circumstance that the Marquis is in the other room listening to their conversation. Matilda and her uncle, Mr. Weimar, meet and he explains that she misunderstood his intentions of raping her. He then says that he is not her uncle, but rather Agatha found her at the gate and they decided to keep her and he now wants to marry her. The Marquis receives a letter from Victoria saying she is safe with a lady named Mrs. Courtney in England. Mr. Weimar tells Matilda she has to marry him, but she refuses, saying she is joining a convent. The Marquis and Matilda go to London where they meet up with the Countess of Wolfenbach and she tells them the story of her kidnapping. The Count and a servant burst into her apartment at the Castle of Wolfenbach accusing her of breaking her oath by talking to Matilda and Joseph when she is supposed to have no communication with anyone. They killed Margarite, her servant, so she wouldn’t tell anymore secrets and they took Victoria to the woods to kill her. The Count’s horse threw him off and the servant went to aid him while Victoria escaped. Mrs. Courtney found her and went with her to London. Next, the Countess tells the reader of her fatal marriage to the Count; she was exchanging letters with her true love, Chevalier, but the Count intercepted one of them and killed Chevalier right in front of the Countess and locked her in a closet with his bloody corpse. The Countess went into labor and delivered a son whom the Count took away from her and faked both of their deaths. Her punishment for communicating with the Chevalier was having her son taken away and she was to be locked up in the Castle and he made Joseph take an oath to never tell anyone, even Bertha of her occupancy there. The second volume of The Castle of Wolfenbach begins immediately after The Countess of Wolfenbach reveals the story of her past. Then the reader finds out that Mr. Weimar is in England and has spoken to the French Ambassador in an attempt to regain control of her. The reader also finds out that the Count de Bouville has travelled to England to join his friends after the wedding of his sister and the death of his mother. The Marquis consults first the French Ambassador and then the German Ambassador concerning Matilda’s situation. It is agreed that Matilda will remain under the protection for one year, during which time her parentage will be investigated. If no information about her ancestry is discovered, Mr. Weimar will regain custody of Matilda. The Count de Bouville, realizing he loves Matilda, proposes to her. “Your story, which the Marquis related, convinced me you had every virtue which should adorn your sex, joined with a courage and perseverance, through difficulties which might do honor even to our’s. Since I have been admitted a visitor in this house, I have been confirmed in the exalted opinion I entertained of your superiority to most women, and under this conviction I may justly fear you will condemn my presumption, in offering myself and fortune to your disposal.” Matilda rejects the Count de Bouville’s proposal, not because she doesn’t love him, but because she comes from an obscure background. “Ah! Sir, (said she, involuntarily) hate you! Heaven is my witness, that did my birth and rank equal yours, it would be my glory to accept your hand; but as there exists not a possibility of that, I beseech you to spare me and yourself unnecessary pain; from this instant determine to avoid me, and I will esteem you as the most exalted of men.” Attending the ball at night in the Lord Chamberlain’s box, Matilda meets Mademoiselle De Fontelle once again. Unbeknownst to Matilda, Mademoiselle has spent her time in England spreading vicious rumors about Matilda’s past and causing harm to Matilda’s reputation in the eyes of society. Once Matilda learns of the rumors Mademoiselle de Fontelle has spread about her, she decides to retire into an Ursuline convent in Boulogne, France. At the convent, Matilda strikes up an intimate friendship with Mother Magdalene, a nun who has lived at the Ursuline convent for ten years. Meanwhile, Mrs. Courtney has misconstrued the niceties and pleasantries of the Count de Bouville as overtures towards a more intimate relationship. In short, she becomes convinced that the Count wishes to marry her. For this reason, Mrs. Courtney writes a letter to Matilda informing her of the so-called romance between herself and the Count and intimates that they will soon be married. Matilda, now under the false impression that the Count’s affections were only cursory, congratulates Mrs. Courtney on the match. She incorrectly assumes that the marriage has already taken place and resigns herself to an austere life at the convent. One day the Marquis receives a letter from London from the German Ambassador. The letter states that the Count of Wolfenbach is dying and wishes to make amends to his wife. The Countess of Wolfenbach travels to see her dying husband and hears his confession before his death. After Matilda’s friends leave the area on matters of either business or pleasure, Mr. Weimar travels to the convent where she is staying and demands that she accompany him. The Mother Superior tells Matilda that she cannot legally protect Matilda. Mother Magdalene advises Matilda to write a few lines explaining her situation to both the Marquis and the Countess of Wolfenbach before leaving with Mr. Weimar, who, after a long journey, embarks with Matilda on a boat to Germany. A few days into their voyage, the boat is attacked by Barbary Corsairs. Mr. Weimar, thinking he is undone, stabs Matilda before turning the knife on himself. “I am undone, unfortunate girl; you have been my ruin and your own, but I will prevent both.” The pirates spare Matilda’s life and, upon her request, nurse Mr. Weimar back to health. While on his sickbed, Mr. Weimar reveals that Matilda is actually the daughter of his older brother, the Count Berniti (who Mr. Weimar murdered) and the Countess Berniti, who is still living with her family in Italy. The pirate captain, unhappy with his profession, promises to deliver Matilda to her newly-discovered mother. Meanwhile the Count de Bouville has learned of Matilda’s abduction and follows her path through Europe before finally finding her in the company of her mother, the Marquis and Marchioness, Lord Delby, and the Countess of Wolfenbach. The novel ends with Lord Delby’s marriage to the Countess of Wolfenbach and Matilda’s marriage to the Count de Bouville. Mr. Weimar enters a Carthusian monastery and plans to spend the rest of his life in penitence for his criminal and immoral actions.
14672040	/m/03gskc5	Duel for the Samurai Sword		1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Richard Duffy received urgent summons to Japan where his mentor, Ohara Noburu, was dying. Ohara was the last steward of a sword crafted by the famous swordsmith Masamune. During his adventuring days, Richard had been seriously injured when his ship was sunk. After ending up in a hospital in Tokyo, Richard managed to recover and got even better under the tutelage of Ohara. He also became one of Ohara's best disciples and incurred the enmity of a fellow student named Sakuma Mori by besting the latter in a sparring match. As Ohara was on his deathbed, Sakuma, who had become a yakuza gang leader, wanted to get hold of the famous sword in order to win respect of other yakuza chiefs and become their leader. Most of Ohara's other students were injured by Sakuma, and Ohara summoned Richard to entrust the sword to the American to prevent it from falling into criminal hands. After the funeral the following morning, Richard and Stephen had to keep the sword safe until they make it to their flight back home in the evening the same day. But a lot could happen in a day, a lot of dangerous things especially when one was a Westerner in faraway Tokyo. Mentioned in the novel were historical characters ) and who were famous swordsmiths. Their products clashed in the final battle to determine whether Richard would survive.
14672274	/m/03gskld	The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest	Karl Friedrich Kahlert	1794	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 Herman and Hellfried, two former university classmates and friends, reunite on a stormy night after thirty years of separation due to employment that forced them to travel. While recounting their past travels, the conversation quickly turns to the supernatural, and the two begin to relate a series of wondrous adventures. Hellfried begins the narrative with a story about a mysterious English lord who is lodging in the same inn as him. During his stay there, Hellfried is plagued by nightmares and apparitions, and loses several valuables and all of his money. The lord inexplicably returns several of his belongings and provides a loan. Hellfried, seeking an explanation to the series of events that have befallen him, meets an unknown figure in a late night rendezvous that claims to have the answers he seeks. The meeting ends in disaster, as Hellfried somehow fractures his leg and is bedridden for months. The story concludes with Hellfried returning to the inn and continuing on his travels. After a night of rest, Herrman continues the exchange of tales with an account of his travels with a ‘Baron de R–,’ for whom he was a governor. While the two traveled through Germany, they came upon a village in the titular Black Forest. Herrman and the Baron soon discover that the vacant castle in the village is haunted by its former lord, “a very wicked and irreligious man who found great delight in tormenting the poor pesants.” After joining forces with a Danish lieutenant, the group encounters a slew of supernatural and horrific events, culminating in a dark ritual in a dungeon involving an old sorcerer who is revealed as the Necromancer. They eventually escape, and arrive to their destination safely, thus concluding the story. Following several more days of conversation, Herrman and Hellfried part ways. Before Herrman leaves Hellfried’s estate, he gives him a manuscript of further adventures that comprise Part II of the novel. Part Two continues the novel in epistolary form, with a series of letters from various sources (50). The first is from the Baron to Herrman, describing the former’s unexpected reunion with the Lieutenant 20 years after their original adventure in the Black Forest. During this time, The Lieutenant gives the Baron a written account of his adventures. Having lost one of his favorite servants during the adventure in the Black Forest, the Lieutenant begins a search for new comrades and “hasten[s] to return to the skirts of the Black Forest” (54). He becomes acquainted with an old Austrian officer who also shares tales of the supernatural. The Austrian relays the story of Volkert, a sergeant in his former garrison who “was reported to perform many strange and wonderful exploits” (56). Volkert often dabbled in mysticism as a service to his fellow servicemen and the people of the village in which he was stationed. Volkert channels the husband of a recently widowed woman so that she can learn why he forbade their daughter from marrying her fiancée. The ghost of the father reveals that the fiancée is in fact her brother, and the girl dies of grief soon thereafter. As a result, Volkert ceases to experiment with the occult. At the behest of several soldiers, however, Volkert returns to magic by summoning another foreign Baron who is feuding with an officer in his cohort. The Austrian and his comrades are “chilled with horror” following the incident (66). This foreign Baron later writes to the officer, accusing him of “infernal torrents by supernatural means,”(70) and hastens his arrival to the town to proceed with the duel. Volkert leaves the town knowing that he is at risk of being implicated in the conflict, but not before he informs the town authorities of the duel the morning before it happens. The duel occurs, and the officer from the village is injured while the foreign Baron is arrested. Here the Austrian concludes his story. When the soldiers ask what happened to Volkert, the Austrian says, “he is dead” (76). The Austrian and the Lieutenant depart together and return to the Black Forest in an attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery. When they return to the Haunted Castle, they find a secret passage and overhear a conversation between a band of thieves. They learn that the Lieutenant’s servant is still alive. The thieves manage to escape before the heroes can confront them. After another series of minor supernatural events, the heroes decide to confront the Haunted Castle one more time, knowing that the Necromancer is still somehow tied to the myriad supernatural misfortunes that have befallen them. Part II and Volume I ends with the preparations for this endeavor. The third part of The Necromancer continues the story of the Lieutenant, as he prepares for his adventure with the Austrian and a miscellany of other officers. They manage to surround the Necromancer in a village inn near the Haunted Castle. After they witness a séance in which the Necromancer summons a phantom, the heroes assault the room. The Austrian realizes that the Necromancer and Volkert are the same person. After a round of brutal interrogation, the officers decide to leave the now enfeebled Necromancer to his own devices. While traveling, the Lieutenant seeks lodging at a suspicious woodman’s cabin and is ambushed in the night by “three fellows of a gigantic size” (116). These men capture him and bring him before an assembly of criminals. Among them is Volkert. The Lieutenant is freed from capture thanks to his leniency with Volkert back in the village. As the Lieutenant continues his travels, he is reunited with his lost servant. The servant describes how he was captured and forced to join the same band of thieves that now pervaded the narrative of the novel. With this knowledge, the Lieutenant is able to assist in the capturing of the band and their subsequent trial. Among the imprisoned is Volkert, who explains his origins to the Lieutenant. It was during his work as a servant to a German nobleman that he began to experiment with the occult. He admits the dubious nature of his craft, admitting that he “did everything in [his] power to drain the purses of the weak and credulous” (142). The Necromancer starts to recount all of his deceptions and supposed sorceries, including the story of the fiancée and the village and the duel, which was staged. He admits his devious machinations shamefully: “[I] suffice to say, that a complete account of my frauds would swell many volumes…I had, for the space of six years, carried on my juggling tricks with so much secrecy, that few of my criminal deeds were known…I always suffered myself to be blinded by the two powerful charms of gold and false ambition” (151). The narrative then commences with the trial of the bandits, including the testimony of an innkeeper named Wolf who often led the criminals (“the captain of the robbers”) and who made a majority of the deceptions possible (190). After naming his accomplices and their locations, Wolf is eventually sentenced to life imprisonment in the Black Forest “where he will have ample scope to reflect on his life past” (196).
14673180	/m/03gslzf	Dragonsword	Gael Baudino	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Suzanne Helling has been living a nomadic life since she went through the 1970 Kent State shootings, and she winds up in Los Angeles as a teaching assistant to history professor Solomon Braithwaite. Ten years earlier, his marriage ended, and he tried to kill himself. While comatose from his drug overdose, his unconscious mind took flight and created the land of Gryylth, which he patterned subconsciously on 5th-century Roman Britain, in a corner of the cosmos. Though Gryylth bears a superficial similarity to ancient Britain, there are anachronisms: the inhabitants speak modern English; no one remembers more than ten years back; and Gryylth is an incomplete land—it ends in mist and nothingness in the surrounding ocean. In this realm, Braithwaite has an alternate persona: Dythragor Dragonmaster, the protector of Gryylth and rider of the dragon Silbakor. There he is tall, strong, and a skilled fighter. In the real world, though, he is an old man with a failing heart. Silbakor has been pressuring him to choose a replacement in anticipation of his eventual death. When Braithwaite proves unwilling to choose, Silbakor chooses Suzanne and transports both of them to Gryylth. There, Suzanne also adopts a new persona: Alouzon Dragonmaster, who, like Dythragor, is tall, strong and skilled with weapons. A new peril faces Gryylth: the Dremords, invaders from the sea, have taken the Tree of Creation from the Blasted Heath and are planning a new invasion. This tree embodies uncontrolled change and chaos, and in the hands of Tireas, the Dremords' magician, it becomes a potent tool for war. While Dythragor and Alouzon clash on their leadership styles, Alouzon also realizes that Braithwaite's biases have colored Gryylth: the Dremords are unquestioningly feared as enemies; women are little more than chattel unable to bear weapons in their own defense; and magic is feared and distrusted. As the war with the Dremords grinds on, Alouzon makes friends and allies among the inhabitants of Gryylth and begins to see in it something worth fighting for and defending. At the same time, Dythragor's grip on reality is slipping, as both the war and Alouzon challenge everything he wants to be true. The magic of the Tree proves unstoppable, turning the soldiers of the First Wartroop into women and decimating the Second Wartroop. The Gryylthians decide to make a final stand at the Circle, which is a pristine replica of Stonehenge, where Mernyl, Gryylth's sorcerer, can tap the energies of the Circle to counteract the energies of the Tree. In this final standoff, Tireas and Mernyl wind up in a stalemate, with neither one able to gain a decisive victory and losses mounting on both sides. Remembering her history, Alouzon realizes that the megalith that the two magicians are standing by is only loosely anchored in the soil. She and her friends work to topple the stone on both sorcerers, hoping to end the struggle decisively. Seeing they are unable to topple the stone, Dythragor has Silbakor dive at high speed toward the stone, and he then launches himself off of the dragon's back at the stone, toppling it onto the sorcerers and the Tree and ending the conflict with his sacrifice. With the creator of Gryylth dead, the land begins to fade into nothingness. Alouzon realizes that she has the choice to become protector of Gryylth and save it from destruction. When she accepts, Gryylth becomes real again. Leaving Gryylth and flying over the ocean, she realizes that a new land was created out of her subconscious when she became protector: Vaylle. She returns to Los Angeles and finds Solomon dead.
14676131	/m/03gsq8b	The Dragon	Ray Bradbury	1955-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The story concerns two men, a moor, and a full blown dragon. The story begins with two knights, who, we are told, have a mission to go and slay a dragon. The dragon as they described, is huge, fire-breathing, horrific, and only has one eye. They charge at the dragon, and they fail. Presumably they died from the attempt. Readers find out that the 'dragon' is actually a train, a modern-age steam train. And the dragon's single eye is, in fact, the train's head light.
14683651	/m/03gt05p	Degeneration	Max Nordau	1892		 Nordau begins his work with a 'medical' and social interpretation of what has created this Degeneration in society. Nordau divides his study into five books. In the first book, Nordau identifies the phenomenon of fin de siècle in Europe. He sees it as first being recognised, though not originating, in France, 'a contempt for the traditional views of custom and morality.' He sees it as a sort of decadence, a world-weariness, and the wilful rejection of the moral boundaries governing the world. He uses examples from French periodicals and books in French to show how it has affected all elements of society. Nordau accuses also society of becoming more and more inclined to imitate what they see in art. He sees in the fashionable society of Paris and London that 'Every single figure strives visibly by some singularity in outline, set, cut or colour, to startle attention violently, and imperiously to detain it. Each one wishes to create a strong nervous excitement, no matter whether agreeably or disagreeably.' Nordau establishes the cultural phenomenon of fin de siècle in the opening pages, but he quickly moves to the viewpoint of a physician and identifies what he sees as an illness. 'In the fin-de-siècle disposition, in the tendencies of contemporary art and poetry, in the life and conduct of men who write mystic, symbolic and 'decadent' works and the attitude taken by their admirers in the tastes and aesthetic instincts of fashionable society, the confluence of two well-defined conditions of disease, with which he [the physician] is quite familiar, viz. degeneration and hysteria, of which the minor stages are designated as neurasthenia.' The book deals with numerous case studies of various artists, writers and thinkers (Wilde, Ibsen, Wagner and Nietzsche to name but a few) but its basic premise remains that society and human beings themselves are degenerating, and this degeneration is both reflected in and influenced by art.
14684199	/m/03gt0p4	Pursuit of the Deadly Diamonds		1984	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Mr. and Mrs. Lane invited charming French woman Annette Reynaud to their brownstone for dinner with the family, they had no idea that she was a jewel burglar whose real name was Michelle, and that Mrs. Lane's younger brother Richard Duffy had known Michelle from his past. Richard privately warned Michelle from having any ideas about his sister's home, but she assured him she was retired, having come to USA to get away from those who demanded she work for them. Shortly afterwards though, he got a strange phone call from her hinting she was in trouble but could not speak freely. The clues she gave in her talk were 'nice', 'park' and 'au revoir'. That got Richard and his nephew Stephen Lane to fly to Nice, booked into a Hotel Parc and saw from binoculars that Michelle was on board a yacht named Au Revoir. Faking a chance meeting, Richard learned that Michelle was being compelled to stage a diamond heist for a gang, whose mastermind's name she was hoping to learn to trade with the police. They even got ready imitations for Michelle to replace the real stones during the heist. With no other recourse available, Richard and Stephen could only keep a close watch on Michelle while trying not to be discovered. Their only ally was the police inspector Armand Duval, who was only prepared to take a chance on their crazy story because there was really a gang of thieves operating in the area, having stolen some very precious stones. The gang was likened to a hydra, and so far, the police only managed to get hold of the lowly footpads but had no inkling about the mastermind.
14687010	/m/03gt30t	The Firework-Maker's Daughter	Philip Pullman	1995-11-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A young girl called Lila wants to become a firework-maker, like her father Lalchand. Despite her talents, Lalchand believes this is an unsuitable job for girls. Lila disagrees, and journeys to get Royal Sulphur from Razvani the Fire-Fiend at Mount Merapi, as all aspirant firework-makers must do. The quest is nearly unsuccessful, as she does not have protection from the Fire-Fiend's flames or the Three Gifts to present to Razvani. However, her friends Hamlet, a talking white elephant, and Chulak, Hamlet's caretaker, manage to deliver the water of the Goddess of the Emerald Lake that will protect her. To Lila's surprise, Razvani recognizes her as a firework maker who has brought the Three Gifts, despite Lila being unaware of what the Three Gifts are. Upon her return home, she learns that Lalchand has been imprisoned for the disappearance of Hamlet. To save his life, Lila and Lalchand must win the upcoming competition for the Firework Festival against other extremely talented firework makers. Upon their victory, Lalchand explains to his daughter that she does possess the Three Gifts: rather than tangible objects, they are talent, courage, and luck, all of which she has. She has talent, having worked with her father at firework-making for many years; courage, for having undertaken the journey; and good fortune, which lies in having loyal friends, Chulak and Hamlet.
14697203	/m/03gtfhn	So B. It	Sarah Weeks	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Twelve-year-old Heidi lives in the town of Reno, Nevada with her mentally-disabled mother and their neighbor, Bernadette. Her mother only knows twenty-three words, including one mysterious one, "soof," that no one can define. Meanwhile, Bernadette has a serious condition called agoraphobia, which causes her to be too afraid to go outside her house. Heidi must take on responsibilities beyond her years to provide for their households. When Heidi finds some photos of her mother at a Christmas party in New York, Heidi decides to go to that state, anxious to uncover more about her family history and to seek what the word "soof" meant, after hearing her mother mutter it all the time. Although Bernadette is anxious about Heidi leaving, she reluctantly allows her to go as long as she calls every night. During her road trip to Liberty, New York, Heidi meets Georgia Sweet, a kind and curious lady on the bus. When she arrived at Hilltop Home, she felt unwelcomed by Thurman Hill. Feeling sorrowful, Ruby takes Heidi into her own home where she and her husband, Roy, investigate. She discovers that Thurman Hill, is her grandfather, Elliot is her father, and that her grandmother was named Diana. She finally finds out what her mothers word, soof, meant, which was her nickname for Sophia Demuth. By the end her mom dies.
14704275	/m/03gtq5r	Now and Forever	Danielle Steel	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Although Jessica and Ian Clarke have been married seven years, they insist the thrill and excitement haven't dimmed. At Jessica's urging, Ian has quit his advertising job to become a struggling writer, and she supports him with her successful San Francisco boutique. Ian's financial dependence on Jessica upsets him more than he admits, and in a moment of bored malaise, Ian's first casual indiscretion will create a nightmare that threatens everything Jessica and Ian have carefully built. What he does changes their lives, and them, perhaps forever, as they struggle to pay the price of his mistake.
14706938	/m/03gttzs	V		2008-02-05		 Set 20 years after the original miniseries, The Second Generation depicts an Earth still under Visitor domination with the Resistance fighting a losing battle. They desperately try to persuade the masses that the Visitors are evil aliens bent on mankind's destruction. However, they are largely ignored, as the many technological and social advancements brought by the Visitors to the planet have convinced the majority that the aliens have their best interests in mind. They are halfway to taking all of the planet's water, under the guise of cleansing it of all polluting substances. Many people were also convinced to join the Visitors' civilian militia, the Teammates (an evolution of the miniseries' Visitor Youth), for the purposes of hunting resistance members. Just when all seems hopeless, the message that Resistance leader Juliet Parrish sent into space at the end of the original miniseries is finally heard. An alien race called the Zedti, who are long-standing enemies of the Visitors, reinforces the Resistance in their time of need and soon the war is turned in their favor. However, all is not as it seems, as the Zedti's actions make the Resistance wonder about their newfound allies' actual motives.
14710236	/m/03gty92	Trace Memory				 After a mysterious crate containing an alien orb, destined for Torchwood, explodes on the docks at Tiger Bay in 1953, young docker Michael Bellini is sent bouncing randomly through time and space. He ends up in the Hub where all the current members of Torchwood realise they have met him at earlier times in their lives. Meanwhile, 'The Men in Bowler Hats' are following Michael as he jumps unpredictably from era to era...
14710449	/m/03gtyh8	The Twilight Streets				 Jack Harkness receives a message in 1941 which simply reads "Revenge for the Future". There's a part of the modern city that no one much goes to, a collection of rundown old houses and gloomy streets. No one stays there long, and no one can explain why - something's not quite right there. Even Jack himself seems unable to enter the area, feeling physically ill when he tries. Now the district of Cardiff is being renovated and opened with street parties and entertainers out in force to advertise the new area. All seems well until Toshiko recognises the sponsor of the event: Bilis Manger.
14710588	/m/03gtypt	Something in the Water				 An irregular bout of coughs and colds has Dr Bob Strong worried, especially when he himself starts to cough up blood. Saskia Harden is persistently found submerged beneath bodies of water and is not on any files apart from at Dr Strong's GP practice. Torchwood have found a dead body in an advanced state of decay that is still able to talk. And all it can say is 'Water hag'...
14712056	/m/03gt_7d	The Sacred Land	Harry Turtledove	2003	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the book, Sostratos, the more scholarly of the pair, visits Jerusalem, where he tries to learn more about the odd monotheists who live there. Menedemos, meanwhile, fulfills his usual role of paying more attention to profits than prophets and pays a great deal of attention to women (occasionally those married to other men).
14712817	/m/03gt_zf	Acorna's Search	Elizabeth Ann Scarborough	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The homeworld Acorna has never known was horribly scarred in the brutal attack by the cold-blooded Khleevi, but the Linyaari-the unicorn girl's gentle, spiritual race-live on. Now is the time for healing and rebuilding, for restoring the natural beauty corrupted by the savage insectile oppressors. But Acorna's Linyaari friends and colleagues begin mysteriously disappearing soon after work gets under way, among them her beloved Aari. And her desperate search for answers will lead courageous Acorna to a shocking descovery beneath the surface of her people's world-and deep into the realms of limitless space, where the truth of the origin of everything awaits.
14715138	/m/03gv2sv	Darkside	Tom Becker	2007-01-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Jonathan Starling is being chased by kidnappers, and accidentally stomps across the place called Darkside, a place known by his father but kept from him because of its dangerous ways. A place that is ruled by Jack the Ripper's descendants. The place is full of murders,thieves,werewolves and a vampire. Jonathan needs to escape from Darkside and back into the safe haven of central London .
14719038	/m/03gvcq5	Millions of Cats	Wanda Gág	1928	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The hand-lettered text, done by the author's brother, tells the story of an elderly couple who realize that they are very lonely. The wife wants a cat to love, so her husband sets off in search of a beautiful one to bring home to her. After traveling far away from home, he finds a hillside covered in "Cats here, cats there, Cats and kittens everywhere. Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, Millions and billions and trillions of cats..." This rhythmic phrase is repeated several other times throughout the story. The man wants to bring home the most beautiful of all the cats, but he's unable to decide. Each seems lovely, so he walks back home with all of the cats following him. His wife is dismayed when he arrives, realizing immediately what her husband overlooked: they won't be able to feed and care for billions and trillions of cats. The wife suggests letting the cats decide which one should stay with them, asking "Which one of you is the prettiest?" This question incites an enormous cat fight, frightening the old man and woman so that they ran back into the house. Soon, all is quiet outside. When they venture out, there is no sign of the cats: they'd apparently eaten each other up in their jealous fury. Then, the old man notices one skinny cat hiding in a patch of tall grass. It had survived because it didn't consider itself pretty, so the other cats hadn't attacked it. The couple take the cat into their home, feed it and bathe it, watching it grow sleek and beautiful as the days pass: exactly the kind of cat they wanted.
14724563	/m/03gvmvx	Men of Stone	Gayle Friesen	2008	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel follows protagonist Ben Conrad, a fifteen-year-old boy struggling with family affairs, school, and bullying. Ben is surrounded by girls at home: three older sisters and his mother. His father died when he was only five years old. Now that he has grown older, he knows he has to step up and be the man of his family. His Aunt Frieda comes to visit and he finds out how strong an old woman can truly be. The plot contains the story of Aunt Frieda's past life in Russia and her love and determination for her family. Rapidly, the two start building an unexpected relationship that strengthens both, especially Ben who learns to stand up for himself and believe in what he does.
14729644	/m/03gvttl	Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This story begins as Ender is made the commander of Dragon Army at Battle School, an institution designed to make young children into military commanders to fight in the next interstellar war against an unspecified enemy. Armies are groups of students that fight mock battles in the Battle Room, a null gravity environment, and are subdivided into squads known as "toons". Due to Ender's genius in leadership, Dragon Army goes on to dominate the competition, despite the teachers' attempts to put obstacles in their way. After his nineteenth consecutive victory, Ender is told that his Army is being broken up and his toon leaders promoted to be commanders in their turn, while he is being transferred to Command School for the next stage of his education. Here, a veteran named Mazer Rackham tutors him in the use of a space battle simulator. Eventually, many of his former toon leaders are brought along to serve under him once more. Once they are familiar with the simulator, they begin to fight a series of what Mazer tells them are mock battles against a computer-controlled enemy. Ender's team wins again and again, finally destroying a planet that the enemy fleet seems to be protecting. Once the battle is over, Mazer tells an exhausted Ender that all of the battles were in fact real, the children's commands having been relayed to the actual fleet, and that he just destroyed the enemy's home world and ended the war.
14733785	/m/03gvz7z	Evil Genius	Catherine Jinks	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins when a young Cadel Piggot is taken to a psychologist due to the fact that he is "different" from regular kids. Meaning he is more knowledgeable than other kids and is brilliant with computers. Because Cadel is a genius, his morality has significant consequences for those around him, and ultimately his use of his intellect destroys his surroundings until, at the last minute, he is saved by a moral code instilled in him by his relationship with a girl named Sonja Pirvert, who has cerebral palsy, although he does not know this or her name at first. His quest for moral direction is complicated by Phineas Darkkon, an evil genius of sorts whom he is told is his father, and Thaddeus Roth, his psychologist whom the police identify as Prosper English, a notorious criminal and right hand man of Dr. Darkkon, and who later also claims to be Cadel's father. He also meets a number of other talented people at the Axis Institute, which is the university Thaddeus and Phineas created for him to hone his criminal skills. His specialty is IT and hacking.
14735264	/m/03gw0g3	The Delivery Man	Joe McGinniss Jr.	2008-01-15	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story follows the lives of childhood friends who've been negatively affected in different ways from their years growing up in Las Vegas off the strip. When we meet the main characters – Chase, Michele and Bailey – they are now in their twenties and the story focuses on their lifestyle, illegal professions and their caustic influence on the generation right behind. The story is told from the perspective of Chase, an aspiring painter just out of college, who had left Las Vegas to study art in New York where he met Julia, an MBA student who represents the promise of a life outside of Las Vegas. After returning to Las Vegas to finish school and finding work as a high school art teacher, Chase struggles to break free of his old life and his old friends, who are entrenched in the Las Vegas life of excess. Plot summary from the Willamette Week in Portland, OR, "A sympathetic look at the life of drug-using, self-destructing hookers and hustlers sounds like an uphill battle, but the simple truth about these characters is that they aren’t hookers or hustlers. They are aspiring painters, film directors and grad students. Although they inevitably prostitute themselves, they seldom talk about it, because they are ashamed or because they don’t understand what’s happening in their lives. All they want is comfort, to live in the Sun King suite on the 22nd floor of the Palace and order room service. But before they know it, prostitution isn’t even paying the bills; one by one, they go into debt with their own bodies."
14735351	/m/06ssx_	The Ghost of Thomas Kempe	Penelope Lively	1973-03-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 James Harrison and his family move into a small cottage in a village called Ledsham. From the first day they are disturbed by incidents that are caused by a ghost called Thomas Kempe, James eventually learns. In life Kempe had been a 17th-century cunning man ("sorcerer") and now he wants to resume work. He attacks people whose work usurps his place, such as the village doctor, nurse, policemen, and pharmacist. He is also vicious regarding the vicar, but most dangerous regarding Mrs Verity whom he believes to be a witch. Kempe tries to make James his apprentice and James is blamed for many of the incidents. The Harrisons are among those who do not believe in ghosts or sorcery, so they blame James for a long time. The boy tries both alone and with outside help to resolve the situation but there is no way out until Kempe determines that the modern world is not for him.
14736797	/m/0gfhg_c	Shards of Honor	Lois McMaster Bujold	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Cordelia Naismith, captain of an Astronomical Survey ship from Beta Colony, is exploring a newly-discovered planet when her base camp is attacked. While investigating, she is surprised by a soldier, hits her head on a rock, and awakens to find that, while most of her crew has escaped, she is marooned with an injured Betan crewman and Captain Lord Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar, notorious as the "Butcher of Komarr". He had been left for dead by a treacherous rival. During their five-day hike to a secret Barrayaran base, she finds Vorkosigan not at all the monster his reputation suggests, and she is strongly attracted to him. The feeling is mutual&mdash;he asks her to marry him. She helps him to defeat a mutiny, despite some well-intentioned interference from her crew. She is then "rescued" and returns to Beta Colony. It turns out that Barrayar is planning an invasion of Escobar, to be led by Crown Prince Serg, the vicious son and heir of Emperor Ezar. Cordelia goes to Escobar in command of a decoy ship and successfully distracts the Barrayaran ships on picket duty at the wormhole exit so the transport ships following her can deliver a devastating new Betan weapon to the Escobaran defenders. She is captured, briefly tortured by the sadistic Admiral Vorrutyer, then unexpectedly rescued by Vorrutyer's mentally unstable batman, Sergeant Bothari, who kills his master. Afterwards, Commodore Vorkosigan hides the pair in his cabin. He is in disgrace, it seems, and has been assigned a minor role in the invasion under the watchful eye (and cybernetic perfect memory) of Lieutenant Simon Illyan. The new weapons give the Escobarans an overwhelming advantage and the Barrayarans are driven back with heavy losses. Crown Prince Serg, his flagship, and all hands aboard are lost. As Vorkosigan takes charge and organizes his fleet's retreat, Cordelia overhears one critical fact and deduces, step by step, a political secret that would plunge Barrayar into civil war if it ever got out. When Vorkosigan no longer needs to hide her in his cabin, she is placed in the ship's brig. When the ship is attacked, Cordelia is injured. She recovers in a prison camp on the same planet where she first met Vorkosigan. The planet was used to mass forces for the surprise invasion. The camp inmates, mostly women, live in fear until Vorkosigan arrives and summarily executes the officer in charge. Cordelia has inherited command of the camp by virtue of her rank and thus spends her time dealing directly with Vorkosigan. He proposes to her again, and she again rejects him because she sees what Barrayaran society does to people. Vorkosigan negotiates a prisoner exchange and then deals with a delivery of "uterine replicators" each containing a fetus from a woman raped by a Barrayaran soldier. One of them is Bothari's. On her way back to Beta Colony after the prisoner exchange, the Betan psychiatrist assigned to her is convinced that her injuries show that she was tortured by Vorkosigan, and the fact that she denies it means that she has been psychologically tampered with as well. She is assumed to be suffering from a form of "Stockholm Syndrome." Desperate to keep the secret of the Barrayaran plot, Cordelia refuses to let herself sleep, developing insomnia, stuttering, and a nervous tic, which further leads the authorities to conclude that she has been brainwashed and may even be a spy. Fending off attempts to "cure" her, she disables one of her "minders", takes her clothes and flees to Barrayar, where she marries Aral Vorkosigan. She also encounters Bothari, now in Vorkosigan's personal guard and much saner, thanks to good medical care. He has accepted his rape-child as his own and called her Elena. She is being raised by a local woman. The dying Emperor Ezar Vorbarra appoints Aral as Regent-Elect for his grandson and heir, the four-year-old Prince Gregor. Aral, who is next in line of succession, at first refuses, but Cordelia convinces him to take the job.
14738791	/m/03gw5ft	A Mysterious Affair of Style	Gilbert Adair		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Set in post-war London and at Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire, the "mysterious affair" of the title is the murder of ageing actress Cora Rutherford on the set of the film which she hopes will mark her comeback to the silver screen. As it happens, mystery writer Evadne Mount, an old friend of Cora's, and Chief-Inspector Trubshawe, retired, formerly of Scotland Yard, are watching the shooting of the scene in which the actress drinks from a champagne glass whose content, unbeknownst to everyone except the murderer, has been laced with a strong poison. Right from the start of the investigation, a neat group of suspects presents itself to the police. However, although each of them would have had means and opportunity to kill Cora Rutherford, none of them has the slightest motive to have done so. It takes amateur sleuth Evadne Mount several days to figure out the solution to the crime, and only by linking up the murder with an accident which happened some time previously, and eventually by using a decoy, is she able to solve the case.
14738951	/m/03gw5k7	Dragon Cauldron	Laurence Yep		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Shimmer, Monkey, Indigo, Thorn and Civet are forced to flee the Green Darkness after encountering the Butcher's soldiers and set off in search of the Smith and the Snail Woman, the only beings capable of repairing Baldy's cauldron, which was cracked when it was stolen from Sambar's treasure vault. They camp for the night by a lake in a wasteland that was the site of a former a kingdom destroyed by the Nameless One, a once powerful king and wizard who battled the Five Masters but could not be killed, and was punished by unknown, "terrible" means. While getting water, Civet notices a mysterious door at the bottom of the lake bed, from which she can sense a magical presence. Later that night the sound of weeping is heard coming from the lake. Monkey, Thorn and Civet get pulled onto the lake surface by the needleweed plants growing along the shore, and a whirlpool is created within the lake allowing them to access the door. Thorn and Monkey follow Civet inside, who is desperate for a means to supply her magic which has all been used up. The door leads to an ancient tomb, within which they encounter a mysterious, ghostly woman wearing a golden tiara with a pearl set in it. Drawn to the tiara, Civet takes it and puts it on, becoming possessed by the owner's spirit. Imbued with power, she begins to make strange prophecies. Despite the best efforts of Monkey and Shimmer, who soon joins them, Civet cannot be touched. Thorn succeeds in tricking her, allowing him to get the tiara immersed in a bowl of wine and destroying the pearl. The spell broken, the tomb begins to collapse and the whirlpool dissipate, from which the four manage to escape. Shimmer is disappointed in Thorn, further worsening their relationship which has been strained as Shimmer appears to have switched her favor to Indigo in an attempt to help her out, at Thorn's expense. Indigo is filled in on what happened, and after discovering the buoyancy properties of the needleweed, decides to take some of its juice. Civet later reveals that she believes she saw visions while possessed. Monkey discovers from spying on her that Civet believes her purpose in traveling with the group is not to help Shimmer, but rather Thorn. The next day the group enters the Desolate Mountains, which were once part of the Nameless One's kingdom. They get attacked by mysterious soldiers, who succeed in getting Shimmer entangled in a net. While seeking refuge on a ledge, the disguised cauldron is nearly lost. A sudden avalanche that is triggered sweeps them from the ledge and onto trees that had been broken loose and are being carried on a river that runs through the mountains. Monkey ends up on a tree with Thorn, finding that despite what he has had to put up with Shimmer, he sticks by her, because she was the first person in his life who showed him kindness. Thorn vows to prove that he is as worthy of her esteem as Indigo. Finding Shimmer, Indigo and Civet close by, they pass by a small, strange island with an odd, egg-shaped building on it. They are forced to seek refuge on the island in order to escape a waterfall the river empties into, and are helped by a mysterious, giant white dog. Trying to leave, they find that they cannot fly or swim away from the island due to a magical barrier in place around it, which also nullifies magic. Left with a boat building kit by the mysterious dog, they try various means of constructing a boat, which fail. The dog is not the only other being on the island, but they are unable to determine who it could be. Thorn figures out that the barrier spell is selective, filtering in certain things while blocking out others. The group searches the egg-shaped house on the island for suitable floatation devices, but when tested none proves to able to float past the barrier. After being goaded by Indigo, Thorn throws a pebble in his hand into the river in frustration, which skips several times. He realizes that clay is an exception to the barrier spell, or otherwise the island would have silted up. Monkey recalls a large lamp at the egg house that might work, which Shimmer manages to save after the mysterious dog hears of their plans. Although Monkey ties it up with rope, it manages to escape and succeeds in destroying the lamp when they try to bring it to the beach. However Thorn proposes using multiple smaller clay jars, which they are able to secure. Monkey finds a patch of human skin inside one of the jars, which is buried. Finding that the jars work, a raft is built out of them, but the reeds used to bind it prevent it from working. The glue left in the boat building kit proves to be quite strong and waterproof, so a smaller raft is made which proves successful, although it can only transport one person at a time. The surplus jars are destroyed, and Shimmer in her dragon form manages to float off the island, helping the humans cross the river. On a ledge opposite the island, while seeking a way out of the cavern, a mysterious white object is fished out of the river, which turns out to be the patch of skin encountered earlier. It manages to escape their attempts to capture it, at which point Civet realizes that her prophecy has come true, as the skin is the Nameless One who had been trapped on the island. The Nameless One adopts the name of the Boneless King after hearing them discuss him, and vows to turn the whole world into a wasteland. Thorn blames himself for letting the Nameless One lose, and refuses to go with Shimmer and Indigo when they leave to summon the Smith and Snail Woman. Shimmer misinterprets his intentions, leaving him with Monkey and Civet, who try to find the Boneless King, but are unsuccessful. Leaving the mountain on foot and in disguise, they encounter a group of soldiers, who arrest them and take them to where an excavation of the Nameless One's tomb is being undertaken by the Butcher. There their warnings fall on deaf ears, and they are reunited with Shimmer and Indigo, who were also captured in disguise. The Butcher himself arrives, accompanied by a strange dragon. Suspicious of them after hearing their warnings about the Nameless One, he takes a personal hand in their interrogation, which is interrupted by the discovery of the Boneless King himself in his current form, who proves impervious to all manner of attack, except for living fire, an ancient chemical substance which can burn in water that was buried in his tomb. However he manages to release his soul as his body is burned and possess the Butcher. The group takes advantage of the distraction to overpower their guards, while Monkey and Shimmer assume their true forms. However the Boneless King, whose men do not realize has possessed the Butcher, casts a spell that renders them unable to fly. Civet breaks away, declaring that she has paid her debt to Shimmer and the Inland Sea dragons. She creates a diversion by destroying the jars containing the living fire, causing a mass of confusion with the resulting fires, but dying amidst the flames as she had envisioned. Shimmer and her companions are able to escape, as the Boneless King’s spell requires him to keep them in sight. They are pursued by the Boneless King and Pomfret, and are again struck by the flightless spell. Just as a fight is about to ensue on the ground, the Smith and Snail Woman’s mountain arrives, forcing the Boneless King to retreat. The Smith and the Snail Woman are informed that the Nameless One has escaped and brought up to speed. The Smith recognizes Baldy’s cauldron as the greatest masterpiece of his grandmother, the Serpent Woman and one of the Five Masters. He agrees to try to fix it, informing them that a soul trapped within the cauldron gives it its power. In the forge, the group assists the Smith and the Snail Woman by working the bellows. They get the cauldron hot enough to the point where when it is struck on an anvil, the trapped soul within is released and escapes. Determined to mend the cauldron, they try their best to get the fire as hot as possible, but to no avail. Thorn realizes what needs to be done, and climbing onto the hearth, jumps into the cauldron, fusing his soul into it and becoming the cauldron himself. Shimmer is distraught, but the Snail Woman realizes what Thorn has done, and encouraged, they put in a final effort that manages to fix the crack in the cauldron/Thorn. Shimmer then tries to take Thorn back to restore the Inland Sea, but is refused by the Smith, who reveals that he and his wife plan to use Thorn in their fight against the Boneless King with the aid of the two remaining masters, the Unicorn and the Lord of the Flowers. Shimmer, Indigo and Monkey manage to steal Thorn back by disguising him as a hammer. The three return to River Glen to boil away the Inland Sea using Thorn, but are ambushed by the Boneless King who has rescued his giant white dog and is assisted by Pomfret, still unaware that he is no longer the Butcher. In recognition of their repairing the cauldron, the Boneless King imprisons them instead of killing them. As he flies off on Pomfret, Monkey and Shimmer see Thorn give a flash of light, seeming to communicate to them that things will work out and giving them hope.
14739080	/m/03gw5q1	Dragon War	Laurence Yep		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Boneless King captures Shimmer, Monkey, and Indigo. They manage to escape and attempt to retrieve Baldy's cauldron, in which Thorn's soul is now sealed. However the Boneless King turns the tables on them and traps them in an underground cavern beneath Egg Mountain where he was formerly imprisoned with the river poisoned and cavern sealed up. Indigo figures out that water is the exclusion to the barrier spell as the river can flow in, so transformed into ice versions of themselves, they are able to escape. Returning to the Boneless King's tomb disguised as soldiers, they find that he has finished his excavation and left. The three catch up to where the pack train is camped for the night, but are unable to bluff their way past the pickets and are forced to transform into horses. They discover that some of the guardsmen and horses have been poisoned from drinking the river water and that the pack train is transporting the stone soldiers that were found in the Boneless King's tomb. Still disguised, they accompany the pack train on its journey. On the way, mysterious gases emitted by the statues follow the pack train, arousing such resentment and fear from the population such that "the countryside was almost ready to rise in rebellion" by the time they reach the capital, Ramsgate. The pack train is nearly attacked by villagers at the capital's gates, but is saved by reinforcements. The statues are buried in a pit on the palace grounds. The three manage to follow the Boneless King disguised as guardsmen to the harbor and onto the flagship of his war fleet, necessitating a change in disguise to being sailors. Determining that Thorn is in the captain's cabin, they manage to convince the Boneless King's puppet wizard Horn to let them in, but rouse his suspicions and that of his massive white dog Snowgoose, who he had rescued from his island. Unable to retrieve Thorn in time, they transform into fleas and hide on Snowgoose's collar. Able to smell them but unable to determine where they are, Snowgoose gets so upset that the Boneless King loses patience with her and has her locked in a storeroom. They leave and return to the deck just as the fleet sets sail. Pomfret arrives after the fleet is underway to relay intelligence of the dragon army gathered at the Hundred Children, an archipelago formed from an undersea mountain chain. He also recognizes that the strange, deep sea creatures that suddenly attack the fleet are illusions cast by dragon mages, resulting in the Boneless King dispelling them. The fleet is confronted with a wall of fire as it nears the Hundred Children. As the Boneless King attempts to disperse it, Shimmer makes her move to rescue Thorn, but she and Monkey are captured. At that moment the dragon army advances towards the fleet despite counterattacks on the vanguard with a flammable liquid that can burn in water. As the Boneless King prepares to use the cauldron to boil the ocean, Shimmer and Monkey escape and leap into the sea. Along with Indigo in dragon form, they are chased by Pomfret and marines transformed into alligators. They are nearly captured while attempting to lose their pursuers within the caves of the Hundred Children which Shimmer played in when she was younger, but by using the buoyancy properties of the needleweed juice that Indigo has been carrying all this time, Pomfret and the marines are rendered helpless as they are carried to the surface. As they make their way towards the dragon army which has been forced to retreat and given 24 hours to surrender, Shimmer tries to convince Indigo to seek safety on the mainland. However Indigo adamantly refuses to go and vows to continue on with Shimmer, as Shimmer is “the only thing” she has ever loved given her rough existence, aided by Monkey’s suggestion that she may have a role in carrying out Civet’s prophecy. Catching up with the dragon army, on the way to Sambar’s palace they are met by badly injured members of Shimmer’s clan, who insist on escorting her. At the palace, Shimmer confronts her uncle, offering the dream pearl as temporary collateral for Baldy’s cauldron and better treatment of the Inland Sea dragons, and asking for help in rescuing Thorn. News is then received that the krakens have begun a large scale invasion, capturing the other forts and forges and forcing the Inland Sea dragons to flee. Sambar has a change of heart and vows to fight alongside Shimmer, who will direct the effort against the Boneless King while he handles the krakens. Indigo devises a plan to use the exotic creatures found in Sambar's larder to terrify the humans, enabling to her to exact some payback on the kitchen staff who formerly mistreated her and earning the respect of the Inland Sea dragons who help her out. After Shimmer's band of dragons is assembled, they receive intelligence on the Boneless King's dispositions from a mage named Bombax who spied on the humans in the form of a gull. It reveals that the Boneless King has erected a series of prefabricated forts on the Hundred Children, and that he is at one of the forts with Thorn and Pomfret. After Indigo observes that the defenses are oriented towards the east, Shimmer decides to use the dream pearl to cast an illusion augmented by the Grand Mage Storax's fog bank, while the other dragons hit the fleet from the west and Monkey rescues Thorn. When they are in position, Shimmer casts a great illusion of a dragon army approaching from the east, but the dream pearl physically drains her and nearly claims her life. Monkey is forced to destroy it to save her as Storax and his fellow mages create a fog illusion to mask that of the fake army. Monkey then infiltrates the fort where the Boneless King is and impersonates Pomfret, succeeding in getting the real Pomfret attacked by a second flame bird that the Boneless King had deployed. During its pursuit of Pomfret, this flame bird sails among the warships gathered in the channel, setting them ablaze and crippling the fleet. Monkey rescues Thorn just as the dragons begin their attack. They infiltrate the forts disguised as humans and disposing of the living fire bombs and sinking the remaining ships. He returns to the battle after leaving Thorn with Shimmer and Indigo, during which the unleashing of the exotic creatures of Sambar's larder on the forts proves the last straw for their garrisons, resulting in their surrenders. After it is over however, it turns out that Pomfret was able to steal Thorn back disguised as Monkey. Shimmer, still exhausted from using the dream pearl, along with Indigo and Monkey set off in pursuit. They catch up to Pomfret, who is transporting the Boneless King, Horn, and Snowgoose. He flies into Ramsgate, which has erupted in revolt, and is chased all the way to the palace. There, faced with a revolt of his own ministers, the Boneless King openly declares himself for who he is, offering greater rewards to Pomfret who throws his lot in with him. The Boneless King then unleashes the stone statues from his tomb that were buried in the palace grounds, which suddenly brought to life, begin to attack his enemies. Monkey uses clones of himself to distract them and get them to attack each other, just as the Smith and Snail Woman arrive and lend their assistance. Leaving them to deal with the statues, Monkey, Indigo and Shimmer to chase after the Boness King. Inside the palace, they realize that Thorn bears a striking resemblance to the last king before the Butcher, Emerald III, making him the crown prince. They confront the Boneless King in the throne room where they fall into an ambush, with Shimmer and Monkey getting bound with magical iron collars while Indigo is turned into a bronze statue. The Boneless King decides to send them all back to "before there was time...back to when nothing had form or shape", from which not even he himself could escape. While he casts the spell, Pomfret tries to convince Shimmer that he was right, based on the vision of him as the king of all the dragons that he as seen in the World Mirror, which was found in the Nameless One's tomb and reflects the possibilities that could have been and could be, but does not make predictions. With Monkey's help, Shimmer gets Pomfret to see that if the Boneless King rules the world, all possibilities are revealed to be a wasteland with no signs of life. As Pomfret has a change of heart, the Boneless King finishes summoning the portal to before time then turns on him and binds him. As he begins to have Shimmer dragged into the portal, Pomfret, realizing the magnitude of what he has done, with a final effort throws himself at the Boneless King, carrying them both into the portal chased by Snowgoose. The Boneless King's spells are dissipated, freeing Monkey and Shimmer and restoring Indigo. The news is broken to Lord Tower, the chancellor, that Thorn the crown prince is trapped in the cauldron. The Smith and the Snail Woman agree to help restore Thorn, taking a sample of one of the Boneless King's stone statues to study. The war between the dragons and humans over, Shimmer and her companions are later accompanied by the Inland Sea dragons and many humans from Ramsgate to River Glen, where the Inland Sea waters are boiled away with the cauldron. They then travel to the site of the Inland Sea, where its waters are poured out from the cauldron and restored. The Lord of the Flowers arrives and restores Ebony's tears, after which Indigo decides to join Shimmer's clan as she has lived among dragons for most of her life, being transformed into one by Storax. The Smith and the Snail Woman reappear with the news that they cannot fully restore Thorn to his human form, but can attempt to turn him into some form which will keep him as both part-cauldron and immortal, to which Thorn agrees, felt as a tingling when the cauldron is held. The Lord of the Flowers then reappears with Monkey's master, the wizard known as the Old Boy, who reveals that he left Thorn in the village of Amity as an infant. After he helps the Smith and the Snail Woman, Thorn is brought back in human form, but makes creaking sounds when he bends his joints. He is convinced to and agrees to assume the throne. Sambar later arrives following his victory over the krakens and bringing material aid and labor to help restore the Inland Sea. Disappointed that Thorn as the cauldron has been changed back, he accepts Thorn's pledge of friendship between the dragons and the humans. Monkey then departs the Inland Sea just before the arrival of the dragon King of the Golden Sea, from whom he had stolen his magical rod.
14741883	/m/03gw87k	Kagerō Nikki	Michitsuna no Haha			 Kagerō Nikki focuses on the development of Mother of Michitsuna's relationship with Fujiwara no Kaneie ("the Prince") and how these experiences affect her. The diary entries detail events of particular emotional significance, such as when Kaneie visits other women while she stays at home taking care of their son ("the boy"). Mother of Michitsuna's deep feelings for Kaneie are apparent in the way her words take on a tone of inner anguish as Kaneie's visits dwindle. In an attempt to find solace, Mother of Michitsuna makes various pilgrimages to temples and mountains of religious importance. She often desires to become a nun, but the effect that act would have on her son’s future plagues her mind, and prevents her from ever taking Buddhist vows. Towards the end of the diary, she finally reconciles herself to her separation with Kaneie and devotes herself to caring for her son and adopted daughter.
14747551	/m/03w9ftj	The Legion of Space	Jack Williamson	1947	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Legion is the military and police force of the Solar System. It was created to keep the peace after the overthrow of the "Purples", a dynasty that ruled all humanity for generations. John Ulnar, a young graduate of the Legion academy, shares a surname with the Purples but is an enthusiastic supporter of the Legion. A weapon called AKKA was used to defeat the Purples. Using a space/time distortion, it erases matter from the Universe -- any matter, of any size, even a star or a planet. The secret of AKKA is kept in one family, descended from its creator, and is passed down from mother to daughter. One of the Legion's most important tasks is to guard the current Keeper, a beautiful young woman named Aladoree Anthar. Through the machinations of his uncle, a powerful politician with a hidden agenda, John Ulnar is assigned to Aladoree's guard force at a secret fort on Mars. When she is kidnapped by a huge alien spaceship, John and the three other survivors of the guard force follow her kidnappers to a planet of Barnard's Star. They crash-land and must battle their way across a savage continent to the sole remaining citadel of the Medusae. John Ulnar's uncle and his nephew have allied with the Medusae as a means to regain their empire, and have kidnapped Aladoree to ensure that AKKA is not used against them. The Medusae, however, turn on the Purples, seeking to destroy all humans and move to the Solar System, as their own world, far older than Earth, is spiraling into Barnard's Star. John Ulnar and his companions rescue Aladoree, but the invasion of the Solar System has already begun. The Medusae conquer the Moon, set up bases there, and bombard Earth with gas projectiles. John, Aladoree, and their companions land on on a ravaged Earth. Fighting off cannibals maddened by the gas, they build AKKA and destroy the Medusae fleets (and Earth's Moon as well).
14750908	/m/03gwkpz	Will			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The latest incident – mooning the girls' school bus – lands him in the deputy principal's office. He could be suspended or expelled, but instead Will's concerned English teacher, Mr Andrews, makes a suggestion that he thinks will solve the problem. Will is to help out with the school musical, playing guitar in the band. For Will, the new punishment is ten thousand times worse than expulsion. Will doesn't know anyone in Year 11 who voluntarily takes part in school musicals, and even the prospect of meeting girls from Lakeside Girls' is not enough to make it worthwhile. The musical is definitely just for band geeks and try-hards. At the first audition and rehearsal, Will's fears are confirmed. But he's about to learn that stereotypes are not always what they seem. Year seven trombone playing geeks can be wiser than their years, hot girls like Elizabeth are not just in the musical to pretend they are stars on Australian Idol, and rugby-playing jocks like the new guy, Mark, can sing and dance – and they can be gay, too. Will thinks he can get through the eight weeks of the musical by staying in his bubble and not feeling anything. This technique has worked for the six months since his dad died (a fact that is revealed later in the book), but Will finds out that suppressing his grief and his emotions cannot work forever. Things come to a head just as the performances are about to start.
14752728	/m/03gwn84	The Black Curtain	Cornell Woolrich	1941	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story concerns a man with amnesia, named Frank Townsend. He cannot remember anything from the previous three years of his life. As it turns out, he may be a convicted murderer. He struggles to find a loophole in the overwhelming evidence.
14764033	/m/03gx67z	Necropolis: City of the Dead	Anthony Horowitz	2008-10-30	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Scarlett Adams' school tutor group is taken on a trip to St Meredith's Church where she sees a vision of Matthew Freeman, who leads her to the door with the pentagram etched into it. There, she is transported to the Ukraine, inside a monastery where she is captured by monks who worship the Old Ones. She is taken to the leader of the monastery, Father Gregory, who tells Scarlett of the Gatekeepers and the Old Ones. He and his followers built the monastery around the door in order to catch any of the Five for the Old Ones should they come through. Scarlett is taken to a cell, and that night she has a dream about a dragon and a strange neon sign that says "SIGNAL ONE". Later, she escapes by attacking the monks and returning through the door. She returns to St Meredith's, but her eighteen-hour long disappearance has sparked a media storm. In Peru, at Professor Chambers' hacienda, Matt finds out who Scarlett is through the media storm and decides that he should go back to London with the rest of the Five and his friend Richard Cole. However, later that night, a man named Ramon brings the diary belonging to St Joseph of Cordoba, claiming that he feels remorse for helping Diego Salamanda decode the diary. The diary contains the locations of twenty-five doors around the world that serve as portals to other doors. After studying the diary using his skills of reading old maps he learnt at university, Richard says that there are doors in Tuscany, Lake Tahoe, Cuzco, London, Ukraine, Cairo, Istanbul, Delhi, Mecca, Buenos Aires, the Australian outback, Antarctica and Hong Kong. Scott Tyler confirms Ramon's truthfulness by reading his mind, but the hacienda is then attacked and set on fire by strange zombies who kill Ramon with a fence post. Although their Inca allies arrive and finish off the zombies, Professor Chambers is mortally wounded and dies. Matt decides that the Five should split up so that the Old Ones cannot capture them all in one shot, and he, Jamie and Richard go to find Scarlett while Pedro and Scott go to the hidden Inca city of Vilcabamba to stay. In London, Scarlett is trying to get back to her normal life, but can't when she notices strange men following her. She receives a strange phone call from her friend Aidan, who persuades her to go to Happy Garden, a Chinese restaurant, for a Chinese man wants to see her. However, the restaurant is destroyed by a bomb. She unwillingly goes to Hong Kong for her father, who works for Nightrise. Matt, Richard and Jamie arrive in London and nearly cross paths with Scarlett, but are held up by an accident orchestrated by the shape changers working for the Old Ones. They go to the Nexus headquarters where Matt realises Ramon's arrival at the hacienda was a trap laid by the Old Ones to stop them from getting to England before Scarlett left for China. Matt theorises that Ramon was hypnotized to give the diary back to the group to create the idea of using one of the doors to get to Hong Kong. There would be agents waiting to immediately capture them once they emerged through the Hong Kong door, so they decide to fly to Macau to seek help from one of the Nexus' contacts before taking a boat into Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Scarlett arrives in Hong Kong, being looked after by a Mrs Cheng, who claims her father is away on urgent business. Scarlett meets the sinister Chairman of Nightrise at The Nail, Nightrise's Hong Kong headquarters, who gives her an ornate jade necklace, which is in fact a tracking device. Whilst in Hong Kong, strange and ominous things start happening around her. A person trying to give her a letter disappears in a swarming crowd, and the people that she meets stare at her intently. Mrs Cheng and Karl, the chauffeur, seem robotic and lifeless, and the smog surrounding Hong Kong is thickening. Scarlett follows a trail of clues telling her to go to The Peak and over there, two agents kill Mrs Cheng, who is revealed to be a shape-changer who is one of the Old Ones in human form. Scarlett is then taken to Lohan Shang-tung, whose agents have just helped her escape the Old Ones, and when the building is attacked by Old Ones and Police, they help her to escape again. She is then disguised as a boy, and pretends to be the son of a couple who are boarding a ship departing Hong Kong to Macau, where she will meet with the other Gatekeepers. However, her father, Paul Adams, stationed at the jetty, finds her and hands her over to the chairman, who recaptures her believing that it will help her, and keeps her at Victoria Prison. A dream call by Scarlett wakes a dragon (a metaphor for a typhoon), which starts to move towards Hong Kong. Matt, Jamie and Richard had arrive in Macau where they meet Han Shang-tung, who reveals himself as "The Master of the Mountain", the leader of the White Lotus Society, a Triad based in Macau and Hong Kong. Shang-tung explains that Scarlett has been taken prisoner by the Old Ones who plan to turn Hong Kong into a necropolis, a city of the dead, by using poisonous gases mixed with the pollution from mainland China that will suffocate and kill the residents there. Shang-Tung believes Scarlett is a reincarnate of a goddess and has had his people watch over her all her life. He agrees to help them after affirming that Matt and Jamie are indeed part of the Five with a test: climbing a sword ladder. Later that night Richard, Matt and Jamie travel by boat to Hong Kong and come under attack by the Hong Kong police (under the control of the Old Ones) after they are betrayed by the captain. In the struggle, Matt loses Richard and Jamie, arriving in Hong Kong alone. He sees people dying in the street because of the pollution, and recognizes several of the Old Ones' servants. Matt makes his way to Wisdom Court, where Scarlett's father now resides. Once there Matt lets himself be captured by the Chairman after being betrayed by a despondent Paul Adams, attempting to barter him for Scarlett. However, Adams is killed and Matt is taken to the same cell as Scarlett in Victoria Prison where they share their experiences. Matt reveals that his being captured was in fact a plan he had made with her father. He knew that the only way to get near her was to be caught, so he had contacted Lohan and his men earlier, telling them of his plan, and then Scarlett's father had agreed to call Nightrise in order to turn in Matt, even at expense of his own life. Matt also explained that he knew the Old Ones would think it was amusing to see two of the Five briefly imprisoned in the same room, before they were imprisoned in different rooms in different sides of the world. Because their powers are strengthened when together they begin to think of escaping. The meaning of "Signal One" is then explained. It is part of the Hong Kong Observatory warning system on the intensity of typhoons. To the Chinese, typhoons are also known as the dragon's breath, explaining the dragon Scarlett had been dreaming of in the Gatekeeper's dream world. She has the ability not just to predict, but to control weather conditions. It is also revealed that Scarlett knew of the typhoon and the power it would bring. Richard and Jamie find Lohan and he bands together his men to rescue Scarlett and Matt under cover of the rising storm Scarlett has made and take the prison, where he followed Matt to when he was being captured. The impending storm is creeping higher up the scale. Jamie knows that Scott will be able to feel the danger Jamie is in, and that he will try and use the door that leads to the Tai Shan Temple, which will undoubtedly be guarded. The group, along with Scarlett, who diverts the storm from them while it destroys everything around them, run to the temple to kill the guards protecting it before Scott arrives, which would result in his death or capture. At The Nightrise headquarters, a wooden sampan picked up by the typhoon smashes into the Chairman's office and ironically kills him; he despises naval craft. Meanwhile, Lohan's men kill all but one of the Old Ones' agents, who is wounded but hides. Scott and Pedro travel through the door and the last Old One agent aims at Jamie, but Scott pushes him out of the way and the bullet hits Scarlett in the head, rendering her unconscious. Without Scarlett to hold the typhoon back, it unleashes its full strength on them and disintegrates the temple. Jamie and Scott, Richard and Scarlett, Pedro, and Matt and Lohan dash through the door moments before the temple is destroyed, escaping the typhoon. Then the storm finally abates, revealing Hong Kong completely destroyed (although all the pollution was swept away). All of the Five are separated all over the world with their partners, due to having no preassumed destination decided between all of them, also it is said that since the door collapsed as they were going through it, one final trick was played on them. Meanwhile, Chaos, the King of the Old Ones, prepares to commence the war to conquer the planet and wipe out humanity. *Necropolis signifies a change in the structure of the narrative of The Power of Five series, with two character's tales being told side by side. It also sees the Gatekeepers actively seeking each other for the first time. *All five children have turned fifteen between Nightrise and Necropolis but, although Matt mentions his own birthday occurred while he was in Nazca, it is not explicitly mentioned if the Five were born on the same day. *This is also the first novel in the series which prominently features a somewhat divine opposition against the Old Ones, with the introduction of the Librarian. The Librarian's role is brief and never elaborated upon, but it is made clear the Librarian has vast power. It is obvious he is there to combat the Old Ones. This makes a significant change because in the first three novels the Old Ones had seemingly invincible power and the Five had to face them themselves with no help. *The final chapter of Nightrise, which introduced modern day Scarlett, is significantly revised in this novel. Scarlett's disappearance having occurred beforehand. *Pedro, who could not speak a word of English previously in the series, has apparently learned a sufficient amount of the language for communication purposes in the four months since the events of Evil Star. Again, this is not explicitly referred to in the narrative. *In Raven's Gate, Matt claimed he never smoked when Claire Deverill came over for dinner. However, in Necropolis, when he introduces himself in his diary, he claims that he had smoked with Kelvin Johnson but withdrew after his arrest. Of course, Matt hated and feared Deverill, and so may simply have lied to her. It is unlikely he would have felt any compunction about doing so.
14764340	/m/03gx6pc	Judas Country	Gavin Lyall	1975	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Roy Case, an ex-Royal Air Force military transport makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights around the Mediterranean in an old Beechcraft Queen Air. His dreams of having his own airplane and own charter company rapidly fading due to age and lack of money, but at least he is flying. However, conditions rapidly spiral out of control when he lands in Cyprus. Not only did his employers go bankrupt, leaving him stranded and without pay, but his plane is impounded, he is mugged by mysterious assailants on a dark back street, and is trailed by an Israeli Mossad agent. When he finds that the cases clearly marked “champagne” that he was supposed to be flying to Lebanon contain machine guns instead, he suspects that things are going to get a lot worse. When Case's friend Cavitt shows up, fresh from an Israeli prison, together with a mysterious Austrian archaeologist and his even more mysterious daughter, the plot thickens with hidden Crusader treasure, Lebanese gangsters, betrayal and murder.
14764341	/m/03gx6pq	Duel of Dragons	Gael Baudino	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story picks up a few weeks after Suzanne has returned to Los Angeles from Gryylth. Silbakor has returned with her and poses as statuette in a glass paperweight. Though she carries Silbakor around with her and can return to Gryylth at will, she finds she cannot bring herself to do it. One night, she has a dream that Solomon Braithwaite has risen from the grave and is trying to tell her something. The following day, she gets a phone call from Helen Addams, Solomon's ex-wife. She too had the dream and wanted to know what its meaning was. Suzanne visits her that night, and while there, they are attacked by the White Worm, Silbakor's antithesis. They flee on Silbakor and arrive in Gryylth to find that eighteen months have passed. Suzanne takes on her familiar persona of Alouzon. Helen takes on the persona of Kyria, a sorceress, but she finds herself battling between her own vitriolic personality and Kyria's more peaceable personality. The Gryylthians and the Dremords have made peace and are working together to make it through a difficult winter. Word comes that the town of Bandon has been destroyed by unknown means. When Alouzon and Kyria examine the wreckage, they see that modern weapons had been used: fighter jets, helicopters, napalm, rockets, machine guns, and bombs. The leaders conclude that the new land of Vaylle is responsible and decide to send a team to explore the new land and learn if they are responsible. Alouzon leads the team, consisting of soldiers from Gryylth and Corrin, Kyria, and Helwych, a Corrinian sorcerer, across the ocean. Landing, they find that Vaylle is an idyllic pacifist nation that worships a God and a Goddess: Solomon and Suzanne. Its king is a lame man known as King Pellam. There, they decide to split up: Helwych will stay behind in the capital city, and the rest of the party will continue across the mountains. When the party gets close to the mountains, Marrget, one of their party, is kidnapped by the Greyfaces, who are nameless and faceless soldiers in uniforms and gas masks. Following, the party finds themselves in a larger version of the Blasted Heath. When they split up, the Heath tests them with the embodiment of their worst fears. Alouzon and Kyria finally track down the source of the attacks: the Spectre, who embodies Suzanne's worst subconscious feelings about both war and Solomon Braithwaite. Alouzon and Kyria battle the Spectre, with Kyria striking a decisive blow using her memories of being Solomon's wife. In the aftermath, Helen's persona dies and Kyria's takes over for good. Alouzon flees on Silbakor and is attacked by the White Worm. Falling off Silbakor, she wakes up in Los Angeles, but in Alouzon's body, not Suzanne's.
14764731	/m/03gx6z9	Dragon Death	Gael Baudino	1992	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story picks up just after the end of Duel of Dragons. Alouzon is still in Los Angeles, and her party back in Vaylle is returning from the mountains with news of what has happened. Alouzon returns to Helen Addams' house and sees Helen's and Suzanne's bodies being carried from the wreckage. While Alouzon works on understanding the nature of her predicament, Helwych has returned to Gryylth with stories of Vaylle's treachery and sorcery. Using lies and manipulation, he maneuvers Gryylth's and Corrian's kings into sending a massive war fleet across the sea to Vaylle while he remains behind, ostensibly to guard Gryylth. When the kings arrive in Vaylle with their warfleet, Helwych erects a barrier across the sea to keep them out of Gryylth and conjures up 20th century troops and arms to consolidate his power and frighten the population. The Spectre also begins sending Grayfaces and modern weaponry into Gryylth to battle Helwych for power. When Alouzon is attacked in a park by supernatural beasts, members of her team discover a gateway from Vaylle to Los Angeles and come to her aid. Realizing this is the way to circumvent Helwych's barrier, Alouzon brings an army from Vaylle to Los Angeles and through another gateway, located in Solomon's old office at UCLA, into Gryylth. As Kyria battles Helwych, and the Gryylthian and Corrinian armies battle the Greyfaces in Gryylth, Alouzon engages the Spectre and the White Worm in a running battle through downtown Los Angeles that winds up at Solomon's grave. When they arrive there, Solomon's corpse rises from the ground and battles the Spectre to a standstill. While they battle, Alouzon sees a white tower that mirrors one in her dreams. Entering it, she finds the Grail and realizes that whatever higher power allowed the creation of Gryylth has put a choice before her. She can let Gryylth continue the way it has, or she can become more than its protector: she can become its goddess. Alouzon chooses to become goddess of Gryylth. With that choice made war in Gryylth comes to an end and the land is healed.
14767442	/m/03gx9m6	The Killer Inside Me	Jim Thompson	1952		 The story is told through the eyes of its protagonist, Lou Ford, a 29-year-old deputy sheriff in a small Texas town. Ford appears to be a regular, small-town cop leading an unremarkable existence; beneath this facade, however, he is a cunning, depraved sociopath with sadistic sexual tastes. Ford's main outlet for his dark urges is the relatively benign habit of deliberately needling people with clichés and platitudes despite their obvious boredom: "If there's anything worse than a bore," says Lou, "it's a corny bore." Despite having a steady girlfriend, Ford falls into a sadomasochistic relationship with a prostitute named Joyce Lakeland. Ford describes their affair as unlocking "the sickness" that has plagued him since adolescence, when he sexually abused a little girl, a crime for which his elder foster brother Mike took the blame to spare Lou from prison. After serving a jail term, Mike died on a construction site. Lou blamed a local construction magnate for Mike's death, suspecting he was murdered. To exact revenge, Lou and Joyce blackmail the construction magnate to avoid exposing his son's affair with Joyce. However, Lou double-crosses Joyce: He ferociously batters her, and shoots the construction magnate's son, hoping to make the crimes appear to be a lovers' spat gone wrong. Despite the savage beating, it's revealed that Joyce survives, albeit in a coma. Ford builds a solid alibi and frames other people for the double homicide. However, to successfully frame others when the evidence starts to go against him, he has to commit additional murders. These only increase suspicion against him however, and his mask of sanity begins to crumble under the pressure.
14767906	/m/03gx9zx	The Great Escape	Paul Brickhill	1950		 The book covers the planning, execution and aftermath of what became known as The Great Escape. Other escape attempts (such as the Wooden Horse) are mentioned as well as the postwar hunt for the Gestapo agents who murdered fifty of the escapees on Hitler's direct order. Much of the book is focused on Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, also known as "Big X", including his capture, early escape attempts, and planning of the escape. All the major participants and their exploits are described by Brickhill. Among these are Tim Walenn, the principal forger, who 'gave his factory the code name of "Dean and Dawson", after a British travel agency'; Al Hake, the compass maker; Des Plunkett, the ingenious chief map tracer, who made a mimeograph for reproducing maps; and Tommy Guest, who ran a team of tailors. Major John Dodge, who was related to Winston Churchill, was one of the escapees. The German officers and guards (called 'goons' by the prisoners) included teams of 'ferrets' who crawled about under the huts looking for signs of tunnels. They were carefully watched by teams of POW 'stooges', one of whom was Paul Brickhill, 'boss of a gang of "stooges" guarding the forgers'. In the end, seventy-six men escaped. Seventy-three were recaptured and fifty of those were shot by the Gestapo. Four of the remaining twenty-three later tunnelled out of Sachsenhausen, but were recaptured and chained to the floor of their cells. One of them, Major John Dodge, was released to secure a cease-fire. The book is dedicated "to the fifty". In the aftermath of the escape, according to Brickhill, 5,000,000 Germans spent time looking for the prisoners, many of them full time for weeks.
14768624	/m/03gxbn6	The Code of Romulus	Caroline Lawrence	2007-02-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins with Flavia Gemina, the protagonist of the book, arguing with her tutor, Aristo. Flavia insists that she is a detective, though Aristo doubts there is such a word. Aristo says that if Flavia can solve the mystery of who has been stealing rolls from Pistor the Baker, then they will not do maths for a month, just read stories. However, if Flavia fails, she can never mention the word "detective" again. Flavia and her friends realise that the theft must be an inside job, and decide to find out more about the baker's household. They make friends with the baker's younger son, Porcius, who shows them around the bakery and introduces them to his family and the slaves who work there. He also shows them his "Circus Minimus", where he races mice. Nubia is especially interested in the donkeys who turn the millstone. The next day they split up to follow the different suspects. Lupus follows Porcius and his brother to school, Nubia follows his sister to the temple, and Jonathan follows the slave Teneme to the granary, while Flavia talks to the slave Tertius, the bakery accountant. He shows her the magic square puzzle, the Sator square, which eventually leads her to the solution of the mystery. Flavia and Nubia attend a secret pre-dawn gathering of Christians and unmask the well-meaning thief, but promise not to tell on condition the stealing stops.
14771661	/m/03gxgbx	Dustbin Baby	Jacqueline Wilson	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When she was a few minutes old, April was abandoned by her mother in a dustbin behind a local pizza restaurant. She was discovered by a young waiter there and named April by the hospital as she was found on April Fool's Day. She was fostered by Patricia Williams, but only lived with her a short time before being adopted. April's first stop on her fourteenth birthday is Pat's house. She finds that she remembers little of it and Pat remembers little of her. However she does befriend one of Patricia's new foster children Tanya - a character seen before along with Pat in another of Jacqueline Wilson's books, Bad Girls. April then visits the graveside of her adoptive mother, Janet Johnston. Janet committed suicide a few years after adopting April, while battling depression stemming from her husband's affairs and the break-up of her marriage. April subsequently tells readers of the time she lived a residential care home called Sunnybank Children's Home, run by a man and woman, Little Pete and Big Mo respectively. Here, April is befriended by a much older girl called Gina. But, sooner or later, Gina calls upon April to "help" her friends in a series of burglaries after dark. April was bullied mercilessly by another resident, Pearl, until April took drastic action against the bullying by pushing Pearl down the stairs, causing Pearl grievous bodily injury and, consequently, April's removal from the home. After leaving Sunnybank April was taken to Fairgate, a school for learning-impaired children. Here April stayed for five years and formed a close bond with her history teacher Miss Marion Bean, and a friendship with a girl called Poppy, who has Down's Syndrome. Marion begins to bond with April and refers her to be moved to a mainstream school. Here April make new friends, Hannah and Cathy, and Marion with the help of social worker Elaine (which could be a reference to Tracy Beaker's social worker) decides to foster her. The story ends with April meeting the pizza boy, Frankie, who discovered her in the dustbin the day she was born and resolving the fight she had with Marion at the start of the story.
14773258	/m/03gxjgm	The Wizard of London	Mercedes Lackey	1005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As an acting prequel to the Elemental Masters series, this book details the past of Alderscroft, the powerful leader of the wizardry world in England, and his rise to power within magical society. Alderscroft is present in all the Elemental books that take place in England in varying degrees due to his role as the head of the Exeter Club/Magic Circle. This novel also introduces the concept of Talents or the Talented, which are likened to psychic abilities. As described in the book, some people will only have very small amounts of power while others will be able to gain full mastery of their abilities. The most powerful have equal standing with Elemental Magicians. By training their powers, very powerful Talents can manifest a psychic avatar and become a Warrior of Light. Avatars' appearance is based on historical and mythological imagery. Some Talented are able to acquire a familiar, an intelligent animal that shares a psychic link to them. Isabelle and Frederick Harton run a school for Talented children and children whose parents live abroad. An unusual household of Indian servants aids them. During the beginning of the novel, they acquire two new students, Sarah Jane Lyon-White and Nan Killian; both children show signs of Talent. The danger begins when Sarah begins to develop powers as a medium; she and Nan are lured into a trap set up by an Elemental Magician. Isabelle is forced to reconnect with her Elemental Magician friends; she is reluctant to do so due to her romantic past with the leader of the Elemental Masters, Lord David Alderscroft. Lord Alderscroft is in danger as well, as his mentor Lady Cordelia has aligned herself to an Ice Elemental and has plans to take David’s body to secure her goal to create an icy empire. To secure her goal, Cordelia has convinced David that he should distance himself from people and teaches him the power of Ice. The result has David looking down at his peers and isolating himself in the belief he is doing 'right'. The Hartons take the school to the countryside to better protect Sarah from any more attacks. Sarah, Nan and Isabelle encounter Puck, who warns them of impending danger. A chance encounter with David, leads Isabelle to realise that David is connected with this danger. As Cordelia is about to spring her trap on David, she in confronted by Puck, the Hartons and company. With their help, David is able to break Cordelia’s hold on him. Enraged, the Ice Elemental takes Cordelia as punishment for her failure. The novel ends with David becoming the patron for the school and starting to repair the gaps in his life.
14774306	/m/03gxkz3	The Waxworks Murder	John Dickson Carr	1932	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The body of a young woman, who has been stabbed in the back, is found floating in the Seine River. The body of another young woman, with a knife in her back, is found in the arms of a wax figure, the "Satyr of the Seine", in a local wax museum. All available clues lead directly to the infamous "Club of the Silver Key", where aristocratic masked club members mix and mingle in the darkened rooms in search of adulterous entertainment. Henri Bencolin and his friend Jeff Marle must penetrate the club and make sense of the few clues before Bencolin arrives at the solution and makes a very surprising wager with the murderer.
14774464	/m/03gxl4_	The Problem of the Wire Cage	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Arrogant and obnoxious Frank Dorrance is engaged to pretty young Brenda White and frankly admits he plans to marry her for her money, or rather her guardian's money. An impoverished local solicitor is simply in love with Brenda and believes that to approach Brenda would be foolish—until the body of Frank Dorrance, found strangled near the centre of a clay tennis court, leaves the field clear. However, there was only one set of footsteps on the soft clay surface, those of the victim. The victim's arrogance gained him many enemies during his lifetime, and a number of them are on hand in the vicinity with both motive and opportunity, but the authorities are finding it difficult to prove that anyone at all could have killed Frank Dorrance. Gideon Fell must take a hand and explain a number of unusual clues, including a picnic basket heavily laden with dirty dishes that mysteriously vanish. It is not until the murder of a second victim, a trapeze artist, that the crimes are brought home to their perpetrator.
14775033	/m/03gxlry	The Enchanter	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1986		 The story is essentially timeless, placeless, and nameless. The protagonist is a middle-aged man who lusts after a certain type of adolescent girls. Infatuated with a specific girl, he marries the mother to gain access to her. The mother, already sick, soon passes away, and the orphan girl now is in his care. He takes her on a tour. On their first night, she is terrified when she is exposed to his “magic wand”. Shocked at his own monstrosity, he runs out on the street and is killed by a car. None of the key persons is named; it is just "the man", "the widow" (also "mother", even "person"), and "the girl". Only the viewpoint of the man is presented, - we learn close to nothing about the views of his victims. He is conflicted and tries to rationalize his behavior, but is also disgusted by it. “How can I come to terms with myself?” is the opening sentence. He makes his moves like a chess player. But once he seems to have reached his goal, he is startled by her reaction. The conflict is not resolved but by his destruction.
14775250	/m/03gxlxd	To Wake the Dead	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Christopher Kent is a wealthy young man who has made a thousand-pound bet with his friend Dan Reaper that he cannot start at Johannesburg without a penny in his pocket and meet his friend at the Royal Scarlet Hotel in Piccadilly in London, England, some weeks later. Twenty-four hours before the deadline, Kent is in front of the hotel, penniless and not having eaten for a day, and decides to order breakfast and charge it to a room in the hotel. After he's finished breakfast, the hotel staff ask him to go and wake up his "wife" because a previous guest has left a valuable bracelet hidden in the room. Upon arrival at room 707, the group is met by a "Do not disturb" sign upon which has been scrawled "Dead woman"; Kent lets himself in and finds, unsurprisingly, the strangled body of his cousin Josephine. When Kent asks master detective Gideon Fell to extricate him from his predicament, Fell must also solve the murder of Josephine's late husband Rodney, which had happened two weeks earlier. The first murder had taken place at the country home of Sir Gyles Gay; Sir Giles had acquired it from the estate of its architect, Ritchie Bellowes, and maintains Bellowes' drunkard son as a hanger-on in the household. Sir Gyles had invited a number of Kent's friends and relatives for a house party where young Bellowes entertained the party with a demonstration of his photographic memory. Late one night, while extremely drunk, Bellowes sneaks into his former home and claims to have seen a man dressed as a hotel attendant, "wearing a uniform such as you see in the big hotels like the Royal Scarlet". Bellowes passes out and is found in the morning about the same time as the strangled body of Rodney Kent is discovered. There are a number of mysterious clues and indications, including a defaced photograph of the house party enjoying itself at a "fun fair", the fact that all the coins (but not the bills) are missing from the dead woman's purse, and two valuable bracelets, one with a mysterious Latin expression carved into its face. But it is a surprising and violent confrontation in a darkened cemetery that allows Gideon Fell to conclusively identify the murderer. it:Destare i morti
14775913	/m/03gxmld	The Nine Wrong Answers	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Bill Dawson is a broke young Brit sitting in the waiting room of a lawyer's office in New York City. He overhears Larry Hurst and his girlfriend Joy Tennant discussing with the lawyer the prospect of Larry becoming sole heir to the large estate of his uncle Gaylord Hurst, providing that Larry returns to England immediately and visits his uncle at least once a week. Larry, however, is convinced that his uncle wants to murder him. Larry and Joy ask Bill to witness Larry's signature, invite him for a drink, and propose that Bill impersonates Larry for six months for the sum of ten thousand dollars. Bill agrees; Larry is almost immediately poisoned. Bill escapes and takes the next flight to England to complete his end of the agreement. Upon arrival at Gaylord's flat, Bill soon learns that Hurst and his manservant Hatto are both practised sadists whose plans certainly included the psychological torture of Larry; however, Bill is soon found out. Hurst, not to be cheated of prey, offers Bill a bargain; continue to meet once weekly for three months and keep the ten thousand dollars he has already received. Bill agrees, and almost immediately there is an attempt on his life with a clever trap—then another, that lands him in the hospital. Finally, after another death, Bill confronts the villain in a dramatic conclusion that takes place in a reconstruction of the sitting room of Sherlock Holmes and that reveals a very surprising tenth answer to the book's events. it:Nove risposte per nove problemi
14776265	/m/03gxn6v	The Bride of Newgate	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0py65": "Historical whodunnit", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Miss Caroline Ross, in order to inherit a fortune, must be married but, in the London of 1815, such a marriage would turn control of the funds over to her husband. She therefore marries Dick Darwent, a convicted murderer who is to be hanged in Newgate Prison the next day, who agrees to the marriage so that Caroline will settle money upon his mistress, the actress Dolly Spencer. However, when it is learned that Dick has succeeded to the title of the Marquis of Darwent, his trial is invalidated; a peer must be tried by the House of Lords. The commutation of his sentence means that he has made a deadly enemy in the form of Sir John Buckstone, a brutal dandy who is one of Caroline's suitors. Darwent has been framed for murder by a mysterious figure known only as "the coachman". He must sort out his domestic arrangements, which include his wife and mistress under one roof, prove himself innocent of the murder of which he was convicted, and reveal the identity of the evil figure behind his problems.
14782140	/m/03gxvb8	Sepulchre	Kate Mosse	2008-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1891, Léonie Vernier is a young girl living in Paris until an invitation from her uncle's widow Isolde prompts a journey to the Carcassonne region with her brother, Anatole. Unknown to her, her brother and Isolde have been carrying on an affair, and he is being pursued by Isolde's jealous former lover, Victor Constant. For a while, they live an idyllic lifestyle in the country. However, Constant discovers where they are staying and sets out to exact his revenge. In the present day, an American, Meredith Martin, is in France to research the life of Claude Debussy for a biography she is writing. She is also trying to find out more about her biological mother. During the visit, she uncovers information that links her lineage to that of Léonie Vernier and discovers the truth about the events in Carcassonne during that period in history. Most of the action takes place in the Domaine de la Cade, a stately home in Rennes-les-Bains, which in 1891 is owned by Léonie's deceased uncle Jules and his wife Isolde of whom Anatole later marries. The house in Meredith's timeline has been repurposed as an upmarket hotel. There are also parts of the book that are situated in Paris at the same time as well as neighbouring towns and villages in the Carcassonne and the City of Carcassonne. The story features heavy reference to the occult and tarot readings, and the stories of Léonie and Meredith are brought together by a series of visions that are related to the tarot and a small church, known as a Sepulchre in the grounds of the Domaine de la Cade. Several of the major characters in Mosse's novel Labyrinth make cameo appearances in Sepulchre.
14782494	/m/03gxvlr	A Countess Below Stairs	Eva Ibbotson	1986	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Anna is a charming child who sees the good in everything and everyone: her cousin Sergei, her younger brother Petya, and all of her multiple governesses. She has lived her whole life being pampered and adored by her father, fussed over by the servants, and cosseted by her mother. However, she is forced to flee Russia after the Bolsheviks seized power and her father dies in The First World War. Forced to depend on the charity of her governess, Pinny, Anna decides to take a position as a housemaid at Mersham, home of Rupert Frayne, Earl of Westerholme. She keeps her decision a secret from her brother and cousin, telling her ailing mother she has been invited to stay at the country manor. The moment Anna arrives at Mersham, the staff resent her employment as they immediately realize she is nobly born. Despite their concerns, Anna proves herself hard-working and intelligent. As her fellow employees grow to love Anna, a message is received from the Earl that he is returning to Mersham from service in the war. Having made a promise to his late older brother, Rupert is bringing home a rich fiancee to help fulfill Mersham's many debts. Upon meeting Anna, her grace and high spirits are obvious to him, and the two get along very well. When Muriel Hardwicke, Rupert's fiancee, arrives, everyone is first compelled to love her. Soon afterward, Mersham's inhabitants and neighbors begin to realize that Muriel is a selfish, rude, vain and nasty young woman, despite her flawless appearance. She is unfriendly to the staff, the dowager, the dog, and even to good family friends the Minna, and Viscount Byrne, bluntly insulting their daughter, the Honorable Olive, and her disability (One leg is shortened due to a bad case of tuberculosis of the hip). Out of love and respect for Rupert, those Muriel offends suffer in silence, not wanting to ill-wish the Earl's bride. Learning of Muriel's deeds later, Rupert is angry and realizes he did not ever truly love her, just as he falls in love with Anna. Nonetheless, he is a man of his word and will not jilt Muriel. Meanwhile, Anna finds it harder to conceal her identity as a countess as she grows closer to the young earl. Eventually he learns of her identity while purchasing jewels for Muriel(she rejects his first gift of a Arabian mare), and his first instinct is to dismiss her from service. Speaking to Anna, Rupert sees she is miserable having heard of his plans to let her go and he cannot stand to sadden her further. He then knows she is of noble birth, but is still unaware of how high class she is. At a fancy-dress ball held in Muriel and Rupert's honour by the Byrnes living nearby at Heslop, Anna is asked to serve drinks because of her Russian nationality which would be helpful for some Russian guests. A school friend of the youngest Byrne boy, Henry, turns out to be Anna's younger brother, Peter. Unknowing of Anna's employment as an under-housemaid, he greets her and introduces her to all present as Countess Grazinsky. Her friends among the guests are not surprised and they act as if she was a guest to the house all along, for Peter's sake. Anna and Rupert share a dance, and spectators realize that the wedding in three days is between two people very wrong for each other, though nothing can be done for Rupert and Anna. The pair go outside, despite Anna's protests, and each confess their affections but accept that they have no future together. They return to the ball, and after several more dances Anna slips away into the night and sits in the wood to let off her feelings. A short while later, her cousin the Prince Sergei Chirkovsky finds her after running from his own problems and they confide in each other. The two cousins are embracing when Rupert sees them from the shadows and jumps to the conclusion that they are eloping together. He returns to the ball and goes on with the wedding. News from the ball reach Mersham's kitchens and the butler, Cyril Proom, finally decides to take action as is his nature. He acquires a large sum of money and uses it to convince Melvyn and Myrtle Herring, first cousins of Rupert, to carry out a favour. The distasteful Herrings and their estranged teenaged sons show themselves to be insane genetic mutations to Dr Lightbody, a good friend of Muriel who studies Eugenics. He is so upset that he stops the wedding at the last possible second, and Muriel is introduced to the Herrings. She is appalled that she nearly married into such a 'tainted' family, and elopes with Dr Lightbody. In London, Anna receives word and her depression lifts. Days later, a letter arrives from Mersham claiming that she still owes five days of work to the house. It also assures her that the Earl is out of the country. Before leaving, the woman carrying her family's fortune arrives at long last and her family begins to catch up on some of their old life. Anna's first job back at Mersham involves serving at the table for a small dinner party. Walking into the room, she is surprised when Rupert is present and he voices his anger in her direction. She lets out a defiant,long-winded reply and bursts into tears. Rupert stands up to comfort her, much to the surprise of his guests. The couple is married the following summer.
14782971	/m/03gxvwp	Uncle Target	Gavin Lyall	1988	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Palestinian-dominated Royal Jordanian Army's 17th Armored Brigade has revolted with Syrian assistance, and has seized the southern part of Jordan, including the port city of Aqaba. However, the major concern for the British Army is that a prototype main battle tank on trials in the Jordanian desert has gone missing. After a terrorist attack in London fails, British military intelligence discovers that the tank is hidden in the ruins of an ancient Crusader fort near Wadi Rum. SAS-trained Major Harry Maxim, who formerly trained the Jordanian Army, is the ideal candidate to send in a commando raid to destroy the tank before it can fall into rebel (and thus Soviet) hands. However, the mission is botched when Maxim's helicopter crashes, and Maxim, an infantryman with no Armoured experience, decides that the best chance for the survival of his small team is to attempt to drive the tank across a hundred miles of rebel held desert to the presumed safety of Saudi Arabia.
14783046	/m/03gxvyr	The Crocus List	Gavin Lyall	1985	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Former SAS Major Harry Maxim, reassigned from Number 10 Downing Street back to the Ministry of Defence after the demotion of his boss George Harbinger from the post of private secretary to the Prime Minister, is part of a security detail at Westminster Abbey for a state funeral. The guest list includes the Queen of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States, as well as numerous other heads of state of various NATO member nations. Political tensions with the Soviet Union are at an all time high over Berlin, and Maxim is worried that the gathering would be an all-too-tempting target. He is right. Shots are fired, and a low-ranking British civil servant standing next to the President is killed. The assassin kills himself before he can be apprehended and is found to be carrying an old Soviet sniper rifle. All fingers point to the KGB. However, Maxim is far from convinced, and his investigation into the shooting takes him from London to Washington DC, (where he is reunited with MI-5 liaison officer Agnes Algar), and from there to New York, the American Midwest and finally to East Berlin, as he unravels a conspiracy of massive proportions, which threatens to overthrow not only the British government, but all hopes for peace in Europe.
14785897	/m/03gxxp9	Hexwood	Diana Wynne Jones	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Sector Controller, who is responsible for overseeing Earth, among other worlds, receives a message that tells him that a mysterious machine called the Bannus has been activated (against orders) at Hexwood Farm Estate near London by the man who was responsible for maintaining the facility. Somehow, the Bannus has trapped both that man and an entire maintenance team inside the Estate. Following instructions in case of such an accident, the Sector Controller sends a message to the Reigners, the five people who rule the galaxy. In a wood, an amnesiac boy meets an android. The android, who is called Yam, tells him that his name is Hume, because he is a human. In a small village near London, a teenage girl, Ann Stavely, recovers from a serious fever. While ill, she talks with the four voices in her head: The King, The Prisoner, The Boy, and The Slave. Through her window, she witnesses some mysterious comings and goings at nearby Hexwood Farm Estate; a van, with a symbol like a pair of unbalanced scales on the side, pulls up and people go in, but they do not come out again. After many different people go in, but none come out, Ann becomes curious, and is determined to find out more. The next day, greatly recovered, she explores the tiny woods beside Hexwood Farm. When she enters it, she finds that the woods have expanded, and she encounters a futuristic chamber with a famished, exceptionally tall and skeletal man - Mordion Agenos - inside. He claims he has been asleep for centuries, but Ann knows she saw him enter Hexwood Farm just a few days ago. Mordion creates a boy from a pool of his and Ann's mingled blood, and sends him off on his own into the woods. The boy appears to be Hume, who we have already met in Chapter 1. Ann is horrified by Mordion's callous attitude and tells him that he must look after Hume - after all, he created him. Ann visits Mordion and Hume several times in the woods over the next few days. While she is in her own town, she and her brother see more and more people appearing to enter Hexwood Farm Estate and still none ever emerge. During one of her visits to Mordion and Hume, she helps Hume recover Yam from what looks like a future, ruined Hexwood Farm, where they encounter and escape from armored men armed with crossbows. Yam then tells Mordion, Ann, and Hume that they are all in the field of the Bannus, which warps time and space in order to run scenarios for some mysterious purpose. This is why things seem to be happening out of order. Later, we meet the five Reigners, tyrants who have ruled the galaxy for over a thousand years. They are very concerned about the Bannus, which, before they seized power, was used to pick new Reigners. Reigner Two and the Reigner's Servant (Mordion) have disappeared while trying to deactivate the Bannus. The remaining Reigners go to Earth (Reigners Four and Five alone, but then Three and One go together) to turn off the Bannus, but they too get caught in the Bannus' field of influence, forget who they are, and find themselves in the huge forest, which is somehow the little wood beside Hexwood Farm. When Reigner One and Reigner Three come to Earth, they take a girl from one of the major guild houses (who works in their basement, managing costuming for when the Reigners or their servants need to travel to a distant world) as a luggage-carrying assistant. This assistant, Vierran of House Guarantee, is a young woman in her twenties who considers herself a friend of the Reigner's Servant, Mordion Agenos. The Bannus, a cyborg designed to pick new Reigners, who the current Reigners cheated and locked away, is playing with the minds of all the characters and running scenarios in order to determine who the next five Reigners should be, while getting his revenge on the current Reigners. The Bannus has confused several of the characters as to who they are in order to run these scenarios. Vierran and Ann turn out to be different representations of the same person, Vierran of the House of Guaranty. Mordion Agenos is the Reigners Servant, and by looking after Hume, is making up for when he was a child and failed to protect other children in the Reigners care. Hume turns out to be Merlin, and "Ann's" brother is discovered to be Fitela, a dragon-slayer mentioned in "Beowulf". Yam, in a cunning twist, turns out to be the Bannus itself; by getting Mordion to repair him, he was returning himself to full power. Several other characters in the book turn out to be other legendary figures of note, the Reigners all get their comeuppance, and Mordion and Vierran are selected by the Bannus to be two of the five new Reigners.
14788819	/m/03gx_l7	Finding Violet Park	Jenny Valentine	2007-01-03	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Lucas Swain is a sixteen year old whose father left five years ago under mysterious circumstances. Lucas is now living with his mother Nicky, his brother Jed, and sister Mercy. In the beginning of the novel Lucas is going to the Apollo cars cab shop to get a cab so he can get home. Then he sees an urn inside the cab shop and a mysterious name runs through his head, Violet. He then starts having an obsession with Violet because he is sure that she has something to tell him about his missing father. Lucas then starts fantasising about what it would be like to be old. How he wants to act, where he wants to be buried, and whether his father is dead. Then he thinks of his grandmother Pansy, or the family medium, who he asks to get Violet from the cab shop. Later the person known to Lucas as Tony Soprano or the cab shop owner came by to give Violet “back” to Pansy. Norman, Pansy’s husband, almost ruining the plan by shouting out the random things he does because of the small strokes that he has. Later Lucas goes home to a worried/frustrated mother and a caring family friend and more whose name is Bob. Bob later tells Lucas that he and Pete were writing a book about violet and where she used to live. Shocked, Lucas decides to investigate more into violet. Later Norman, Jed, and Lucas are walking their dog Jack, Norman has a brilliant moment and tells Lucas as much as he can about pete and violet before the next stroke kicks in. Later Nicky decides that to get rid of Pete’s memory, they should get rid of his things. That is when Lucas finds Petes pocket watch and knows something isn’t right. Lucas and Nicky get into a fight about abandoning Pete’s memory but Lucas finds the crucial piece of evidence to show somethings wrong even though Nicky doesn't want to hear it. After more searching Lucas finally finds something that shocks him. His father is still alive, living under a completely different alias.
14791445	/m/03gy29q	The Damned Utd	David Peace	2006-08-17		 Told from Clough's point of view, the novel is written as his stream of consciousness as he tries and fails to impose his will on a team he inherited from his bitter rival, Don Revie, and whose players are still loyal to their old manager. Interspersed are flashbacks to his more successful days as manager of Derby County. Described by its author as "a fiction based on a fact", the novel mixes fiction, rumour and speculation with documented facts to depict Clough as a deeply flawed hero; foul mouthed, vengeful and beset with inner demons and alcoholism.
14796184	/m/03gy6w4	The Sleeping Sphinx	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Donald Holden, upon his release from the British Armed Forces, discovers that he has been announced as dead more than a year ago, which may complicate his love for the beautiful Celia Devereaux. When he announces the mistake to her, they are reconciled, but strange things have been happening to the Devereaux family. Celia's sister Margot died in mysterious circumstances more than a year ago, after an evening of spooky games during which each guest wore the death mask of a famous murderer. The London offices of a fortune teller have been abandoned, but someone still uses them. And someone or something has been moving the coffins around inside a sealed mausoleum. Some people think that Celia has inherited the family taint of hysteria, but it takes the combined efforts of Donald Holden and Gideon Fell to explain Margot's death and the moving coffins. it:La sfinge dormiente
14796393	/m/03gy74q	Patrick Butler for the Defense	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 James Vaughan and Hugh Prentice are the two junior partners of the law practice of Prentice, Prentice & Vaughan and its senior partner, Hugh's uncle Charles Prentice. Hugh and his fiance Helen are in Hugh's office, which is littered with detective stories; a French-speaking Arab who calls himself Abu of Ispahan arrives and asks for an appointment to discuss a private matter. Helen leaves, and Hugh must deliver a brief to famed defense lawyer Patrick Butler. Since Abu wishes to deal with no one except "Meester Pren-tees", Hugh asks him to wait for forty-five minutes; before Hugh leaves, Abu announces "All my troubles have been caused by your gloves." Hugh goes down the hall to speak with James Vaughan. When they hear a scream, both rush back to Hugh's office to find Abu stabbed; he has just enough time and breath to gasp "Your gloves" in French before he expires. Hugh immediately enlists the help of Patrick Butler, who is accompanied by the upper-crust Lady Pamela de Saxe. The three, with occasional assistance from Helen, embark upon a series of breakneck escapes from the police and Hugh's strait-laced uncle while they gather evidence (including the beautiful stage magician Cécile Feyoum, Abu's widow). In the course of the evening, Hugh falls out of love with Helen and into love with Pam, and at the night's climax Patrick Butler calls everyone together and reveals the name of the murderer, and the meaning of the gloves.
14796537	/m/03gy7cn	The Dead Man's Knock	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 In a little university town in the U.S. state of Virginia, surrounding Queen's College, Professor Mark Ruthven and his wife Brenda are arguing furiously because she is about to leave to meet her lover. Before the night is over, young and voluptuous Rose Lestrange will apparently walk into her bedroom and stab herself with a razor-sharp dagger—at least, that's what the police say, because the windows and door are securely locked and bolted from the inside. But Rose was being blackmailed. Is the blackmailer the same person who's been playing vicious pranks around the College's grounds, and also the murderer? Is the key to how the murder room was locked and bolted from the inside to be found in a locked-room mystery novel plotted by Wilkie Collins? It takes Dr. Fell to sort out the lies and reveal the surprising truth.
14796673	/m/03gy7mk	Castle Skull	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Maleger is a stage magician whose feats of magic are so mysterious and hideous, and his stage presence so evil, that his act frightens unwary children and many adults. In 1912, he purchases the famous Schloss Schadel—Castle Skull, on the banks of the Rhine, and transforms the ruin into a nightmare that is appropriate for its terrifying history (including scenes of torture, insanity and suicide). Twenty years later, one of Maleger's few friends is seen running about the battlements of Castle Skull—he has been shot three times in the chest, but was still alive when the murderer poured kerosene on him and ignited it. Maleger was traveling alone on the train to his castle; several days later, his body was fished out of the Rhine. Maleger's friend Jérôme D'Aunay, a Belgian financier, hires Parisian detective Henri Bencolin and his associate Jeff Marle to investigate these deaths and the strange goings-on at a house party staying at a villa across the river from Castle Skull.
14798605	/m/03gybz9	The Last Jew	Noah Gordon		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The year is 1492 and Spain is in the grip of the Inquisition. The Church has sponsored anti-Jewish feeling, culminating in the expulsion by royal edict of the entire Jewish community from their homes of many generations. Those that have not converted are forced to leave. However, 15-year-old Yonah Toledano has been left behind. He has lost family members to the troubles, both his father, a celebrated Spanish silversmith, and his brother. On a donkey named Moise, he journeys, remaining a Jew, growing to manhood across Spain to escape his fate.
14802084	/m/03gygr1	A Company of Swans	Eva Ibbotson	1985-06-27	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Harriet Morton lives in Cambridge with her widowed father, the intolerant Merlin Professor of Classics at the University, and her frugal Aunt Louisa, who wishes her to marry an uninteresting entomology professor named Edward Finch-Dutton. After her father bans her from attending school, believing women should not be highly educated, the only freedom allowed to her are ballet lessons at Madame Lavarre's school. One day, a lesson is visited by Sasha Dubrov, a famous ballet master who asks Harriet to join his company for a tour of South America, which will begin in Manaus. Although she wants to accept, her father refuses to let her join the tour, and instead bans her from ballet lessons when she suggests the idea. Shortly after this incident, Harriet joins Edward Finch-Dutton, Aunt Lousia and the rest of the Trumpington Tea Circle on a tour of Stavely, an old stately home which is beginning to fall into disrepair. While there, she leaves the group to explore the maze in the grounds, within which she meets Henry St. John Verney-Brandon, the son of the estate's owner, reading a book entitled "Amazon Adventure". Henry tells Harriet about his own desire to travel to the Amazon, and about the book's owner - an unnamed Boy who lived in the estate many years ago, and whom Henry, hearing the tales of the nurse the two shared, idolizes. Harriet, who has decided to run away to join the ballet company, promises Henry that she will search for the boy in Manaus, where he is thought to live. Harriet then runs away by pretending to visit her friend Miss Betsy Fairfield, cancelling the visit at the last minute without her aunt's knowledge. She joins the Company and they practice for a week in Century Theatre before leaving for Manaus, where they will perform Giselle, Swan Lake, Fille Mal Gardee, and Casse Noisette (The Nutcracker). On the first night in Manaus, Harriet's performance attracts the attention of Rom Verney, a wealthy Englishman who Harriet soon correctly suspects is The Boy Henry mentioned. The pair meet at a party Rom throws in his capacity as chairman of the Opera House trustees, and are instantly attracted to each other. The next day, Harriet confirms that Rom used to live at Stavely, and asks him to help out there "for Henry's sake", which angers Rom - who recalls his past as the youngest son of Stavely's former owner, who, upon his father's death, was ousted by his half-brother Henry, and left by his fiancee Isobel who then married Henry. Meanwhile, in England, the elder Henry Brandon is dead, having committed suicide after bankrupting the estate, leaving Isobel widowed and penniless. She then recalls Rom, and decides to travel to Manaus to enlist his help. She is joined on the steamer by Edward Finch-Dutton, sent by Harriet's father, who has discovered her deception, to bring her back to England. Isobel is delayed when Henry develops measles and the pair are forced to stop while he recovers. Edward travels on to Manaus to find Harriet; however, the ballet company form a plan to stop him. With Rom's help, they convince Edward that ballet is a perfectly respectable career, and he should convince Harriet's father to let her continue on the tour. However, Edward is then outraged when he sees Harriet dancing at a gentleman's club - which she does only to save her friend Marie-Claude from being seen at the club by her fiancee's cousin. Edward decides to kidnap Harriet and take her back to England, but she escapes with the help of Rom - who has realized the misunderstanding after seeing the elder Henry Brandon's obituary. Forced to abandon the ballet to avoid Edward, Harriet takes refuge in Rom's house, where, at her request, they become lovers. While Harriet believes that Rom will shortly leave her, Rom intends to propose to Harriet, but is disturbed by her occasionally distant attitude, which he believes is distress at being forced to abandon her promising ballet career. Harriet returns to Manaus to say goodbye to the ballet company as they leave for the next stop on the tour, and returns to Rom's house to find Henry waiting for her there, who informs her that his mother plans to marry Rom. She leaves without saying goodbye to Rom, and returns with the ballet company to England, intending to travel on to Russia and perform. However, she is captured by her father and locked in the house as punishment for many months. After Harriet has given up all hope, Rom finally tracks her down, having been searching since the day she disappeared. He pretends to be a doctor in order to smuggle her from her aunt's custody, and then tells her that he intends to marry her and make her the mistress of Stavely, which he has now purchased. He forces her father to give his permission, intimidating him in front of his students, who then rebel against their most boring teacher. In the epilogue, the pair are happily married with three children, and Henry, who has inherited part of the estate from Rom, intends to return to the Amazon and fulfill his dream of becoming an explorer.
14806350	/m/03gyj2q	The Man With the Iron Heart	Harry Turtledove	2008-07-22	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 June, 1942: SS "Reichsprotector" Reinhard Heydrich barely survives an assassination attempt in Prague (in reality, Heydrich was killed. This is where the story makes its first turn.) February, 1943: Shortly after the fall of German-held Stalingrad, Reichsprotector Heydrich meets with Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Schutzstaffel (S.S.). Foreseeing Germany's probable defeat, Heydrich convinces his superior to begin preparations for a possible partisan campaign should German forces lose the war. Two years later, Allied forces have conquered Germany. With the Nazi government having surrendered, Heydrich's forces begin a series of attacks against the occupying forces, using car bombs, anti-tank rockets, and suicide bombers. The terrorists assassinate Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev and American general George S. Patton. Though occupation officials quickly become aware of the campaign, they are unable to find any quick solutions to it. The American military attempts to tighten security in their sector, while the NKVD spearheads a ruthless suppression of German civilians, including deportations and reprisal killings. As the casualties mount, Americans at home begin to question the effort. An Indiana housewife, who is informed that her son died on occupation duty, turns against American policy and forms an organization agitating to bring American soldiers home. Her Congressman, a Republican, uses the issue to launch attacks against the Truman administration and is soon joined by other members of his party. In Germany, a truck bomb destroys the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, killing several officials and forcing a postponement of the trials of Nazi war criminals. In Berlin, dozens of Soviet officers are killed at a New Year's Eve party when the insurgency succeeds in poisoning their drinks using wood alcohol. Though the demonstrations in America grow, the Soviets respond by tightening their crackdown further. Undeterred, Heydrich continues his campaign. The American attempt to establish democratic institutions is thwarted when a mortar attack at a rally kills Konrad Adenauer, while the recapture of German nuclear physicists (during which Werner Karl Heisenberg is killed) leads Heydrich to a supply of radium that he uses in a dirty bomb which contaminates the American residential compound in Frankfurt. The Americans and the Soviets enjoy small successes against the insurgency, but the spectacular destruction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Westminster Cathedral and St. Paul's Cathedral in London by truck bombs further erodes Western resolve to remain in Germany. In the United States, the Republicans win the midterm Congressional elections of 1946. Now in control of Congress, they increase pressure on President Truman to withdraw American forces, refusing to fund their further presence. Though American officers appreciate the need to remain, discontent grows with the enlisted ranks, as many draftees begin staging protests demanding to be returned home. Another attempt to convene war-crimes trials against the Nazi leadership in the Soviet sector is frustrated when a C-47 Skytrain loaded with explosives crashes into the courthouse, killing the judges and staff inside. With American troops now being withdrawn in increasing numbers, the latest attack finally brings about a degree of cooperation between the Soviet and American counterintelligence services. At a meeting the Soviets turn over a Holocaust survivor who worked as a slave laborer constructing the bunker system Heydrich is using. He leads American forces to the bunker where the insurgent leader is hiding, and Heydrich dies while trying to escape. This success does not end the insurgency, however; Joachim Peiper takes over and orders the hijacking of three civilian airliners. While the Soviets remain committed to the occupation and to crushing the resistance, the Americans and British complete their withdrawal, leaving the Nazis ready to reemerge.
14812596	/m/03gys70	The Man Who Could Not Shudder	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Martin Clarke is celebrating his acquisition and refurbishment of an old stately home by inviting a number of guests to stay for the weekend. The house has an unsettling history; two decades ago, the butler, a frail man of over 80 years, was killed when he uncharacteristically decided to swing back and forth from the chandelier, which then fell and killed him. Another report features a chair which leaps off the wall at the viewer. Clarke's guests have been selected as a cross-section of "ordinary, skeptical human beings" and have been invited to investigate the rumours of ghostly hauntings. The weekend begins when, as the guests are entering the home, one woman screams and claims that something has clutched at her ankle—something "with fingers". The host immediately tells the story of a former owner of the home whose death was met with such suspicion of witchcraft from the servants that the body lay as it fell for days, and the servants reported that something seemed to clutch at their ankles. The weekend is off to a spooky start but proceeds spectacularly when three witnesses agree that a gun jumped off the wall and killed a seated guest, with no hand holding it. Famous crime-solver and debunker of impossible crimes Gideon Fell is called in to explain matters and does so in a way that leads to a spectacular and fiery finish.
14812781	/m/03gysfk	The Black Spectacles	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 In the small English village of Sodbury Cross, pretty Marjorie Wills is suspected of having poisoned some chocolates in the local tobacco-and-sweet shop, using a method pioneered by historical poisoner Christiana Edmunds. Her uncle, wealthy Marcus Chesney, believes that eye-witnesses are unreliable. He avers that to observe something, then to relate accurately what was just seen, is impossible. In order to prove his statements, he sets up a test; three witnesses are invited to witness some staged events not only in their view but in that of a movie camera. After the events, it is planned that they will answer a list of ten questions. Marcus Chesney takes a principal role in the staged events and, during them, is fed a large green capsule containing poison by a masked and disguised figure wearing black spectacles. Amazingly, the three witnesses cannot agree upon the answers to any of the questions and no one can identify the murderer. It seems as though Chesney very carefully set up the ideal conditions for someone to murder him and escape, but Gideon Fell, upon viewing the movie film, can answer all ten questions plus the eleventh—who is the murderer? it:Occhiali neri (romanzo)
14812901	/m/03gysl0	The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming	Daniel Handler	2007-10-28		 The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming is about an irate latke at Hanukkah who escapes from being boiled in a hot frying pan. He runs into various Christmas symbols (such as fairy lights, a candy cane and pine tree) who are all ignorant and uneducated about the customs of Hanukkah. The latke attempts to educate these people about the history and culture surrounding the Jewish holiday, but his attempts are always in vain and he runs away from each encounter in a fit of frustration.
14813210	/m/03gysw_	Till Death Do Us Part	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dick Markham is engaged to Lesley, but he doesn't really know much about her. When they attend a cricket match in the little English village of Six Ashes, they stop at the associated fete and Lesley insists on seeing the fortune teller. She is apparently unaware that the fortune teller is being played by Sir Harvey Gilman, the Home Office pathologist and expert on crime. After her visit, Dick visits Sir Harvey, who is apparently about to tell him something unpleasant about his fiancee when he is shot—accidentally, by all reports, and certainly non-fatally—by Lesley. Later that night, Sir Harvey tells Dick that Lesley is really a murderess who has poisoned three husbands using a mysterious method of death that seemingly must be suicide, whereby the victim injects himself with hydrocyanic acid. Later that night, Sir Harvey dies in a locked and sealed room, seemingly after having injected himself with hydrocyanic acid. Gideon Fell is called in to assist the police investigation. It is soon discovered that "Sir Harvey" is actually a confidence man named Sam De Villa, and his revelations about Lesley are untrue, but this doesn't answer other important questions. What is the significance of a box of drawing pins found scattered beside the corpse? Who fired a rifle into the murder room in the early hours of the next morning? It takes another murder before Dr. Fell reveals the identity of the murderer and the method by which the room was locked. it:Un colpo di fucile
14813480	/m/03gyt8q	The House at Satan's Elbow	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Garret Anderson, a historian, has enjoyed an unexpected financial windfall when one of his historical biographies is turned into a smash-hit musical. At loose ends, he agrees to visit an old friend's family home in Hampshire, England to bear witness to some unusual happenings. A missing family will is at the heart of matters, but things are also complicated by someone who is playing the role of the ghost of Mr. Justice Wildfare, 18th century hanging judge and family ancestor. When the head of the family is shot with a blank cartridge by a shadowy figure who vanishes through a locked window, and is later shot again, this time more seriously, Gideon Fell is called in to explain the bizarre events and bring them home to the criminal.
14814955	/m/03gywb7	A Place Called Here	Cecelia Ahern	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sandy Shortt has been obsessed with finding things which have been lost, since her childhood rival Jenny-May Butler went missing. Having worked for the Garda, the police force of the Republic of Ireland, she left her job to start an agency which looks for missing people. A man named Jack Ruttle asks Sandy for help looking for his younger brother Donal, who went missing the year before. She agrees, never expecting to become missing herself as she discovers the world where everything which has ever been lost goes to, a place called Here. Jack goes on a search for Sandy believing that she is the key to finding his brother but learning more about her personal life than he should. Meanwhile, Sandy's possessions keeps getting lost from Here but found in this world. Something is bound to happen but the both of them have yet to know what it is.
14815919	/m/03gyxhy	Burned	Ellen Hopkins	2007-10-23	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Pattyn is seventeen years old and is the oldest of seven girls in a Mormon household. Her father is an alcoholic who beats her mother, believing a wife must succumb to her husband's actions. Her mother believes her duty is to make as many children as possible, especially a boy to carry on the family name, just as her husband wishes. But Pattyn's mother only conceived seven girls, named after famous generals: (youngest to oldest) Georgia (George Patton), Roberta (Robert E. Lee), Davie (Jefferson Davis), Teddie (Theodore Roosevelt), Ulyssa (Ulysses S. Grant), Jackie (Jack Pershing), and Pattyn (George Patton). It is hinted that Pattyn deeply disagrees with the strict Mormon lifestyle she's lived throughout her childhood, as well as the expectations that will be held of her as a woman according to her Mormon community, and wishes to break free and gain the freedom to become her own person with her own take on life. She appears to also hold a resentment of her alcoholic father and oppressed, submissive mother, and having to care for her six younger sisters during their father's alcohol-induced rages. Pattyn is unable to take the stress going on in her home, and begins to question her role in life, especially through her father's eyes. Eventually, she starts to experiment with dating Derek behind her parents' backs, then leading to her getting caught drinking with her boyfriend in the desert, by her drunken father. Derek, her boyfriend, leaves her for another girl who is more experienced, whom Pattyn later on punches in the face in rage. Pattyn becomes openly defiant and talks back to her parents and pastor, lashing out and releasing all of the built up emotions and objections she's held for her Mormon lifestyle for a number of years. As a punishment, she is sent away to live with her Aunt Jeanette in eastern Nevada, for her mother is finally expecting a son and does not need to handle the stress Pattyn creates. As Pattyn stays with her aunt, Aunt Jeanette, who tells Pattyn to call her "Aunt J", continues, she finds love from her aunt and a boy named Ethan, who studies at UC Davis and is described by Pattyn as "beautiful". Ethan's father, Kevin, was once Aunt J's high school sweetheart, but after he received a threat with a gun and a beating from Aunt J's brother (Pattyn's father) for not being Mormon, they were forced to separate. During the time Pattyn lives with her aunt, she learns how to love and how to be self-confident, and finds out that there is more to life than just religion, as she thought before. Pattyn is led to believe in God the way her aunt believes in him. Aunt J explains that one does not need "a Mormon husband to meet you at heaven's gates and pull you in", and believes that with love—true and forever love—heaven's gates will open wide. Ethan becomes a dream come true to Pattyn, loving her even though she does not believe that she's beautiful. He teaches her the true meaning of love: Towards the end of the summer Ethan and Pattyn don't know what to do after Pattyn receives letters regarding Jackie (the next oldest sister) receiving beatings as a stand in for her pregnant mother. They do not confide in Aunt J in fear that she will contact the authorities. At the end of the summer, Pattyn returns to her family and receives her first beating after defying her father.
14825334	/m/03gz6xd	In a Lonely Place	Dorothy B. Hughes	1947	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The novel is a noir set in post World War II Los Angeles. Dix Steele, the main character, is an ex-airman who roams the city at night. He offers to help a detective friend solve the case of a serial killer. Eventually, however, actress Laurel Grey and the detective's wife discover that Steele himself is the murderer. and exposes the misogyny of American society at that time.
14825373	/m/03gz6yf	The Secret Servant	Gavin Lyall	1980	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Former SAS Major Harry Maxim is assigned to Number 10 Downing Street as a special assistant to George Harbinger, private secretary to the Prime Minister, following the suicide of his predecessor with the British Secret Service. Maxim is assigned to protect Professor John White Tyler, Britain's premier military strategist on nuclear weapons policy and famed war hero (as well as an insatiable lecher). Tyler’s many enemies, including local pacifists, leftists, and radical students, as well as the KGB will do anything, perhaps even murder, to keep Tyler from addressing a NATO summit in Luxembourg. However, are various events surrounding Tyler related? Such as a hand grenade thrown through the door to the Prime Minister's residence, or the death of a Czech defector? Assisted by MI-5 liaison officer Agnes Algar, Maxim must uncover a horrific secret from Tyler's wartime past in order to prevent a massive foreign relations disaster, as well as keeping Tyler alive.
14825386	/m/03gz6z3	The Conduct of Major Maxim	Gavin Lyall	1982	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Former SAS Major Harry Maxim is assigned to Number 10 Downing Street, where he works under George Harbinger, private secretary to the Prime Minister. Maxim is asked by a former colleague to assist Corporal Ron Blagg, who has gone AWOL from the British Army after assisting MI6 in a botched undercover operation. However, Maxim soon discovers that both MI6 and a shadowy Sovbloc service are looking for Blagg, with deadly consequences. Maxim's efforts to assist Blagg are stymied by a web of deceit and suspicion among the various offices and agencies within the British government, until he uncovers a secret from the darkest days of World War II so threatening to the leadership of the German Democratic Republic that they will kill to preserve it. The various settings for most of the action, housing projects in South London, a small rural town in Germany, and a fading port town in Humberside, are described in rich detail.
14828013	/m/03gz9fm	Jason and Marceline	Jerry Spinelli	1986	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jason Herkimer, the main character of Space Station Seventh Grade, is now in ninth grade. His relationship with his friend Marceline McAllister has developed into a real romance. The only trouble is that Jason isn't quite sure what to do with a girlfriend. His friends insist that the main function of a girlfriend is to make out, but Marceline says there's more to life than that.
14829216	/m/03gzbnk	Chosen	Ted Dekker		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Chosen is a book created by Ted Dekker. It is in the Circle series, and Elyon, (God) lost many of the forest to Teeleh (Satan). Evil is seeming to win, and the Horde, a group of humans with rotting flesh (the devil’s minions) are taking over much of the Forest. Thomas Hunter needs to raise an army of over 10,000 Forest Guard to stop the Horde. The general of the Horde is Qurong, and he wants to vanquish all seven forests and destroy all the water loving humans. Qurong has been supplied with information from a traitor of the Forest Guard. The traitor insists that the enemy Guard is building their forces rapidly, and Qurong insists that they are nothing important. Qurong’s major disagrees, telling him that the young are very crafty and aren’t to be taken lightly at all. However, Qurong has the Forest Guard tricked, since the Guard thinks they will attack from the East, and the Guard is putting many of their forces there. He, however is going in from the West, and will annihilate the Guard and take them by surprise. The Horde will attack within four days, and the Guard has to be ready to fight them and win at all costs. Meanwhile, in the Forest, a dozen of the strongest recruits are going to play a game Thomas Hunter called football. This game called football was from Hunter’s dream of some other land. The football was Horde hair, and that hair was given to Thomas by Johnis’ father, Ramos. Johnis’ mother was killed while going out in the desert to go look for a medicine for Johnis, who was struck with a fever. She went without an escort, and she was presumed dead. Ramos, in an outrage, goes out to the desert and kills several Scabs (members of the Horde) in a fit of anger, and takes their hair and ties it up and gives it to Thomas. Johnis hadn’t recovered from that incident, and he went and tried out to be a Forest Guard. However, he was dismissed because of his size. So Johnis went and sat on the sidelines. He watched the teams play football, 12 people on each team, and armed with sticks. When football started, Silvie was the first one to go and get the ball. Then, the lines of the football teams collided with their sticks hitting each other. Jackov, then swung at Silvie, but she ducked and he then, the ball flew up in the air, and into the mess of people attacking each other. Then, the ball came out of the pile of people attacking each other, and it rolled towards Johnis. Johnis hides the ball around his waist, and then Thomas called everyone to stop. He promised a horse to whoever found his Horde ball. Thomas knew already that Johnis had the ball, but he was trying to make a point. Many people weren’t doing anything, but Jackov tried to find the ball, but he couldn’t until Johnis shows him the ball. They fight, and Jackov is on his knees. Then, the crowd cheers wildly for Johnis. Thomas Hunter then chooses four people to lead the Guard, they are Billos, Silvie, Darsal, and surprisingly, Johnis, who doesn’t know what to say, but eventually agrees and says yes to the calling. After the choosing, the Chosen ride out into the desert. Johnis had to get food, which included taro root, sago cakes, and fruits. As they were riding they heard the noise of something unusual, and Johnis saw a figure with red eyes with wings. Johnis thought he had seen a Shaitaiki. Then the group rode on quickly, but they were arguing. All of a sudden, they saw some of the Scabs. Johnis, once again, had second thoughts about becoming one of the chosen ones. The four eventually killed all 5 of them. After that, they came to Igal point. You could see so much from that point. As they were talking along the way, Silvie’s horse then smelled something weird. There was at least 20 Horde, and Johnis could say only one thing, and that was to run. As Johnis was fleeing, he heard something say “This way! Over here!” It was a fuzzy white bat creature. He followed the creature into a crevice, and he discovered it was a Roush. The two Roush introduced themselves as Michal and Gabil (The names sound like Archangels Michael and Gabriel). The three conversed for a little while, and Johnis found out he might die because Gabil had told him that most chosen ones ended up dying. Gabil wanted Johnis to promise him that Johnis would stay alive long enough to find the Lost Books of History. Johnis promised, but he thought it sounded weird. Meanwhile, at the Horde camp, Qurong was angered at the loss of the assassins. Qurong wants Johnis dead because Thomas Hunter thinks Johnis could save the people; Johnis dead will devastate Hunter. In the forest, Thomas was worried about the four chosen ones. Mikil and Thomas are worried about the recruits, and that they are not probably strong enough to go fight the Horde. Over in the desert, Johnis was unsure. Johnis knew he had few qualities that seemed actually good to make him a good leader. Johnis wanted to leave them and go back the way he came. Johnis knew a passage that he could take, thanks to a Roush. Everyone looked at him strangely when Johnis said Roush; Billos then said the Johnis was mad. The group argued for a long time, but Darsal said she was the oldest, and that they were going back. Then the Shaitaiki appeared again at the cliff. Then, Billos was taken, and Darsal then wanted to save him. Johnis knew that he wasn’t dead, and he too wanted to save him. Meanwhile in the forest, Thomas was still pacing around in the war room. There was no sign of them, and it was dark. Then, Ramos, Johnis’ father, appeared in the room. He wasn’t happy with the fact that they didn’t know where his son was. Thomas then called Mikil to gather 100 of the best fighters, as they were going to leave soon. As the three were riding out in the desert, Darsal had second thoughts about going to go save Billos. Johnis wanted to save Billos. Johnis then said something stupid, and that was to follow him to hell, and their destiny was to ride out into the desert and save Billos. Silvie and Darsal disagreed still. Johnis told them about the story with the Roush, and that seemed to make them agree, but Darsal, as Johnis thought, took over the group. Then after riding, they got some sleep, and Johnis told them more about the encounter with the Roush. At the same time, Billos was with the Horde. He was being taken to Qurong in the morning, and he was scared. Then, as he was alone, something was cutting in the canvas tent. Billos thought it was Darsal. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he wasn’t in the tent anymore. In the morning, Johnis and Silvie were awake. None of them knew where Darsal had gone. Then Darsal had appeared behind them, and the Johnis realized that he was starting to become like a Scab. So was Silvie. The morning after that, Johnis couldn’t move. Johnis felt like a total idiot. Nobody disagreed. When they slept that day, Johnis slept on the book. He had a cut on his head from Jackov, and the blood mixed with the Book of History wasn’t a good thing. Meanwhile, at the Horde camp, Qurong wasn’t happy due to the fact that the prisoner Billos was missing. Qurong, though, was busy talking to the traitor, who supplied Qurong with tons of information. Thomas Hunter was at Igal Point, and recently found Billos’ extra horse and water from the horse. Thomas thought the three went out in the desert, but his general advised that only fools would do such a stupid thing. Ramos then thundered through the desert and then saw Thomas and asked if there was any sign of the four. Thomas replied that there was no sign of them so far. Ramos wanted an expedition set up, and Thomas did too, but by then the four would have all been Scabs. Ramos was panicking, because he wanted his son to survive. He was mad at Thomas for not heading up an expedition for his son. He did not want to lose his son too, like he lost his wife to the Scabs. Thomas reminded him that Ramos’ daughter was going to be without a father is Ramos went. Ramos, who was very unhappy, then thundered away on his horse. Thomas asked if Ramos was a sergeant, the reply was yes, and that Thomas said that he is a captain, and that he gets his honors. Johnis was getting ever so closer to becoming a Scab, and so were Darsal and Silvie. Johnis, while sleeping, had a nightmare with a beast, possibly Teeleh (the devil.) Johnis wanted to wake up from this nightmare. Then his dream changed to something peaceful, but then again to the same nightmare. Then he woke up, and Silvie was in terrible shape. He woke her up too, and him and Darsal. They rode along, until they saw an oasis, with palm trees and water. As the three were drinking water, Johnis saw the Roush, and Darsal and Silvie believed. (In a way, just like Doubting Thomas, he saw and believed.) As they were chatting, Silvie saw a rock, which told them about a path to the Dark One beyond the blue. Silvie ducked her head in water, and saw something. Johnis and Darsal did the same and dipped their heads underwater. They saw an image of some man beast with the Books of History. The three had an argument; Darsal went by herself, and Johnis and Silvie another way, to the second Lost Book. The two talked a lot as their horses were riding out into the desert, and both were scared. At the same time, Darsal was lost. Then, something had killed her horse. Something was attacking her, and things were cutting her. She blacked out. At nightfall, Johnis and Silvie rode for several hours before falling asleep. When Johnis woke up, Silvie was showing him something strange in the sky. They were Shaitaiki bats, and there was red coming from them. Something wasn’t right, and they prepared to go after them. Silvie noticed something bizarre. The bats were perched on something black, which seemed as if the whole world was at an edge; Johnis knew that it must have been the Black Forest. Johnis and Silvie then rode to the Black Forest. Surprisingly, the bats were perched on branches, and they let Johnis and Silvie pass by. As they were riding into the forest, they heard several screams. They went into the stadium and in the center of the field, and there was a wheel, and strapped to it were Billos and Darsal. The bats were flying into the bleachers, and Johnis knew it was a trap. As Johnis and Silvie gazed, something approached Johnis, and it was Teeleh. When the bats slapped the two back to consciousness, Darsal was sorry, and Billos was thinking Johnis came to die with him (He had lost his mind). The two were going to be drowned in water, and Johnis wanted to stop them. He told Teeleh that he would tell him where the Book of History was, and Teeleh eventually let them go. Meanwhile, Johnis promised to stay alive, and Johnis heard a legend that Teeleh was a beautiful creature created by Elyon, in fact the most beautiful. Now Teeleh was an ugly creature. (In relation to the Bible, Lucifer was a beautiful angel created by God, until he disagreed with God, and became known as Satan.) Then, after the other three had ridden out, Johnis refused to give Teeleh the location of the book, and Teeleh was infuriated. Johnis constantly kept on refusing, and Teeleh was getting angry. Then, Johnis was attacked and was knocked out subsequently. Then, as Silvie and the other two were riding out into the desert, the bats were attacking them. Silvie too, was captured, and she was blacked out. When she awakened, she and Johnis were on the same wheel, tied, just like Billos and Darsal were. The two were sobbing, and in tears. Johnis revealed the location of the books. Teeleh retrieved his two books. Overhead, in the desert, Gabil saw the two other chosen ones, Darsal and Billos, who had entirely lost their minds. Gabil had those two bathed in Elyon’s water so they could regain their minds. Gabil told them that they will go back, but Billos disagreed. Darsal agreed because Johnis saved them. Gabil told them that he knew what the black bats had feared the most. Qurong was readying his forces for a battle against the Forest Guard. The traitor knew that it was all ready, and Qurong was as ready as he has ever been. Meanwhile, a Shaitaiki bat gave his name to Johnis, and that bat’s name was Alucard. As they were talking, a fire broke out, and every bat was frantic, including Alucard and the toughest bats. In the sky, Gabil and the other two chosen were watching. They started attacking the bats. After that, they had found Johnis and Silvie and poured the healing water over them. Then, Johnis told them that they were going after the books. Meanwhile, Thomas was talking with Mikil about this fire from the western horizon, and it doesn’t seem good. Mikil thinks that those four are dead, and Thomas doesn’t think so. Mikil in response is ordered to take 10 of the best fighters, and extra water, and only 1 day out. Johnis, meanwhile, remembered something Alucard told him, and it was that the lair of Teeleh was below. He saw something, and he knew this was Teeleh’s lair. Johnis was going by himself, and Darsal gave Johnis a match. Johnis went down the stairs and in a room, against his own wishes. The room was filled with books, and other objects. Johnis thought this must have been the library or Teeleh’s room. Johnis then found the two Books of History. Johnis then went up the stairs and then, suddenly, dozens and dozens of Shaitaiki had appeared and were going to take those books back. The Chosen ones stood together, and Johnis truly saw Teeleh for the first time. Teeleh, perched on a branch high, ordered the bats to attack the chosen ones, and rip them limb from limb. Then, dozens and dozens of Roush appeared to take the bats on. The bats and the Roush clashed into battle, and Gabil told them to go to the pool, and to the forest, and don’t stop until they had reached the forest. As the four were riding out, the bats were killing the Roush. Meanwhile, Qurong saw smoke, and thought it was black magic. The traitor knew that a slaughter then would be coming up. Qurong knew it was the Forest Guard’s slaughter would be coming. Later that day, at the stadium, Marie, Thomas Guard’s daughter said that they were found. At first, Thomas didn’t believe it, but he saw four cacti, and the four chosen ones. A crowd was gathering. Then, Ramos, Johnis’ father, appeared, and was so overjoyed. Each of them became a sergeant. During the celebration, Michal told Johnis more about the 7 Lost Books of History and that there were now 6 Black Forests, since Johnis had destroyed the smallest forest. Johnis wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about the Books of History, or about the black forests, and after the short conversation, Michal left. Shortly after, Silvie approached Johnis with something from Michal the Roush. It was Johnis’ mother’s ring. Johnis knew that meant that his mother was alive, and not dead. She was taken hostage, and possibly now she was a Scab. Then, Billos approached Johnis and told him that Billos knew that Johnis deserved more respect than any other one of the chosen. Johnis thought that they should all make a vow. They all vowed to get the 5 Lost Books of History, and destroy the enemies fulfill their destiny.
14829643	/m/03gzc55	Written in Blood			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The Midsomer Worthy Writer's Circle, a group of amateur novelists, invite celebrated author Max Jennings along as a special guest. However, host Gerald Hadleigh is vehemently opposed to the idea but refuses to explain why, so he is promptly overruled by his peers. After the somewhat uncomfortable event, Hadleigh's companion Rex St. John is tricked into departing, leaving Hadleigh alone with Jennings. The next morning Gerald is found savagely murdered with a candlestick, his corpse stripped and all his clothes stolen, with no sign of Max.
14830988	/m/03gzdy6	Infidel	Ted Dekker		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Stretched to their limits and celebrated as heroes, the chosen will wish they had never been given that thankless task of finding the seven lost Books of History before the Dark One can. Martyn, a new Horde general, emerges and lures Johnis into the Horde city, Thrall, to force him into betraying Thomas. Once there, the chosen four are all caught by the Horde and Johnis is forced to strand Thomas into the desert to die. In the end, Johnis, Silvie, Billos, and Darsal are able to save Johnis' mother, retrieve three of the Lost books of History, and recruit the Dark Priest of Teelah's daughter into becoming a member of the forest.
14833449	/m/03gzhs_	Perfidia				 The novel opens with five-year-old Maddy and her mother, Anita, leaving her father, a Jewish professor at Dartmouth College. The two hit the road and travel extensively before settling in New Mexico. Hard-drinking and promiscuous Anita strikes up a casual relationship with an aging hippie named Wilkie. She becomes pregnant shortly thereafter and converts a derelict house into a lucrative art gallery/tourist trap. Anita later gives birth to a boy she names Billy. The relationship between the mother and daughter becomes inexplicably strained after the birth. Anita becomes increasingly neglectful of Maddy and clearly favors her son over her daughter. The relationship permanently sours when Anita takes up with Lion, a long-haired drug addict. Lion overdoses and young Maddy, afraid and not knowing what to do, leaves Lion alone in the house. Anita bitterly blames Maddy for his resulting death. Anita, who has become a full-blown alcoholic (who self-righteously swears off drugs), runs through a string of boyfriends, including psychiatrist, Ellery. She begins physically abusing Maddy as well. Things take a violent turn in the house. Anita, depressed over turning forty, loses control of the art gallery. She is enraged by Maddy's decision to return to New Hampshire to attend college and attempts to stab her daughter with a broken tequila bottle. The two women struggle over the weapon; Maddy wrests it from her mother and stabs her in self-defense, hitting her jugular vein. Anita dies from massive blood loss. Maddy is put on trial. She opts for a trial by judge. The judge sympathizes with Maddy's plight but finds her guilty of manslaughter. She is sentenced to four years in prison. While Maddy is in prison, she forms a sexual relationship with her cellmate, Lucille, and begins corresponding with Ellery's semi-estranged son, Keith. (Ellery and his wife have taken custody of Billy, who wants nothing to do with Maddy.) When she makes parole, she moves in with Keith. She gets a job against his wishes and becomes pregnant. Maddy and Keith soon break up. Buying a car, Maddy begins to travel from place to place much like Anita had in her youth. At the end of the novel, Maddy reveals that she has legally changed her name and that she has given birth to her child.
14834010	/m/03gzjht	Emmeline	Judith Perelman Rossner			 In 1839, thirteen-year-old Emmeline Mosher lives on a farm with her family in Fayette, Maine. Times are hard so when Emmeline's paternal aunt suggests that she go to Lowell, Massachusetts to support her family by working in the factories Emmeline dutifully leaves home. When she arrives in Lowell, she is sent to live in a boarding house for young female mill-workers. Emmeline is a good worker. However, she is unable to befriend any of the other girls who look down on her due to her country ways and her relative youth. Lonely, Emmeline is easily seduced by the Irish-born husband of the factory owner's daughter. She becomes pregnant, although she is not immediately aware of her condition. The embarrassed boarding house landlady contacts Emmeline's aunt who lives in the neighboring town of Lynn, Massachusetts and evicts her. Fearful of Emmeline's parents' reaction, Emmeline's aunt and uncle help her conceal the pregnancy. They send letters and Emmeline's savings (which they pass off as her regular salary) to her parents. They also arrange to have Emmeline's unborn child adopted. Emmeline gives birth to what she believes to be a girl; her aunt refuses to tell her what the sex of the child is or any other information about the baby in the belief that it will be easier for Emmeline to give the baby up that way. Emmeline returns home shortly thereafter. Part two of the book picks up more than twenty years in the future. Despite numerous proposals, a middle-aged Emmeline has never married or moved out of her family's home, a fact that chagrins her father. She does have a tight circle of friends, though, socializing primarily with two sisters of a widower who proposed marriage to her. One day, Matthew Gurney, an itinerant worker, rolls into town. He and Emmeline share a strong immediate attraction. Matthew proposes to her and Emmeline eagerly accepts. They marry with Emmeline wearing her sister-in-law's wedding dress and move into a house that they build themselves. Emmeline's aunt comes to visit after the wedding. She instantly recognizes Matthew and forces him to admit that he is twenty-one years old, not twenty-six as he originally claimed. At that moment, Emmeline realizes that she gave birth to a boy, not a girl, and that she has married her son. Her aunt tells her father who immediately disowns her. Word quickly spreads throughout town. Matthew deserts Emmeline, who is soon excommunicated by the preacher at her church. Emmeline spends the rest of her long life on the fringes of the town, ignored by all, and tries to subsist on what she can grow herself. A neglected old woman, she dies during a particularly harsh winter.
14834072	/m/03gzjlm	The Mad Hatter Mystery	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A young newspaperman, Philip Driscoll, is gaining notoriety by writing up a series of bizarrely inconsequential crimes in which various hats are being stolen and returned in unlikely locations; he ascribes the crimes to "the Mad Hatter". Driscoll's uncle, Sir William Bitton, is infuriated to have lost two hats in three days. He meets with Gideon Fell to discuss his possession of the manuscript of an unpublished story by Edgar Allan Poe. During the meeting, it is learned that Philip Driscoll has been found murdered at the Tower of London, with Sir William's oversized hat pushed down over his ears. After sorting out the comings and goings of Sir William's household and other visitors to the Tower, Gideon Fell must determine the fate of the manuscript and of the murderer. it:Il cappellaio matto ja:帽子収集狂事件
14834210	/m/03gzjqr	The Devil in Velvet	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cambridge Professor of history Nicholas Fenton, in the England of 1925, makes a bargain with the devil and is sent back in time to Restoration London in 1675 to solve a murder that is about to take place, in the body of Sir Nick Fenton. Fenton soon finds himself in love with the intended victim, Sir Nick's wife Lydia, and resolves to alter the course of history by preventing her murder. Fenton's mastery of 20th century swordsmanship makes him a fearsome antagonist in 1675, so much so that he becomes known as "the devil in velvet". Also involved in the action is a woman who has also sold her soul to the devil and travelled back in time, and Fenton finds himself torn between the two women. He must not only solve the approaching murder before it happens, but come to terms with Sir Nick's romantic and political entanglements—and even void his deal with the devil.
14834365	/m/03gzjw6	Death Turns the Tables	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mr. Justice Ireton believes that, when presented with circumstantial evidence about a crime, he can unerringly penetrate to the truth. He also believes that he can pay off handsome Anthony Morrell to break off his engagement with the judge's daughter Constance, in the hopes that Constance will marry the judge's assistant Fred Barlow (which would very much displease wealthy society girl Jane Tennant, who loves Barlow). However, there are a few problems that will stand in the way of that arrangement; notably, that the judge is broke and Tony Morrell cannot be bought off, although he is known to enjoy exacting revenge for slights both real and imagined. When Morrell is found dead in the Iretons' seaside cottage, a great deal of circumstantial evidence points to the judge, who cannot think of how to divert suspicion. It takes Gideon Fell to make sense of some very unusual pieces of evidence, which include a piece of chewing gum and an overstuffed pillow marked "Souvenir of Canada", and determine how Tony Morrell met his death. it:Il giudice è accusato
14836695	/m/03gzn2w	The Testament Of Gideon Mack	James Robertson	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main story of The Testament is set within a framing narrative which concerns a publisher who recollects the "strange disappearance" of the novel's main character, Gideon Mack, and the discovery of Mack's "last testament". The testament itself comprises the main narrative. It recounts the life of its author, a son of the manse (meaning the son of a minister of the Scottish Kirk), who has followed in his father’s steps, eventually becoming minister to the small town of Monimaskit. Since Gideon does not, however, believe in God as such, he becomes increasingly disillusioned with his existence, until an accident sends him tumbling into a local gorge. Believed to be dead, he emerges three days later, claiming to have met and conversed with the Devil, who has confirmed several of his doubts. After scandalising and alienating his friends, the parish, and the Kirk at large, Gideon once again disappears, leaving his written account for posterity. The epilogue to the novel is presented as the report of the freelance journalist who first brought the manuscript to the publisher’s attention. He interviews several of the inhabitants of Monimaskit who were mentioned in Gideon’s testament.
14838709	/m/03gzr2x	Berserk	Ally Kennen	2007-05-07	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Wouldn't it be cool to have a killer as penfriend? 15-year-old Chas is fascinated of this idea. He impersonates his mother and writes to a man, called Lenny, who is in a death row in the USA, because he allegedly had killed a teenager. The Man is from Chas' home town in England. And he actually writes back. A risking game! But that's not all. Chas steals a truck with his friend - only for fun. But the prison, in which the crazy teenagers land, isn't any fun. But he still gets letters by Lenny from America. Just before Chas was released from prison, he is told that Lenny was acquitted because of the absence of proof and that he is on the way to England. What started as game evolved into a nightmare: Lenny wants to pay an old bill. When Chas and his friends realize that THEY are the goal of vengeance, it is nearly too late...
14839702	/m/03gzrxp	No Jumping on the Bed!	Tedd Arnold			 Walter's father finds him jumping on his bed and warns him not to do it: "One day it’ll crash right through the floor." Walter tries to go to sleep but hears his friend Delbert in the apartment above jumping on his bed. Walter decides to have just one more jump himself, but instead keeps jumping higher and higher until the floor starts to crack. He and his bed fall into Miss Hattie’s apartment where he lands in her plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Walter and his bed continue to fall, along with Miss Hattie and the spaghetti, into Mr. Matty's apartment where he is watching monsters on his television set. Miss Hattie falls into Mr. Matty's lap, while Walter lands in his fish tank. The next stop for Walter's bed and the ever-growing crowd is Aunt Batty's apartment where her stamp collection gets scattered all over the floor. Aunt Batty and her stamps join the group as it falls into the next apartment, knocking over a castle of toy blocks that Patty and Natty have been building. Patty, Natty, and Fatty (their cat) are added to the group as it falls down into Mr. Hanratty's apartment where he is painting a picture at his easel. Walter, Miss Hattie, Mr. Matty, Aunt Batty, Patty and Natty, Mr. Hanratty, the cat, the paint, the spaghetti, the television, the fish, and various toys now land in Maestro Ferlingatti's apartment where he and his string quartet are practicing. They too join the tumbling crowd who all end up safely in the dark and quiet basement of the building. Walter is back in his bed and realizes that it has all been a dream, but he promises himself that he will never jump on his bed again and hopes that Delbert will learn his lesson as well. Then Walter hears Delbert jumping on the bed again, followed shortly by Delbert falling through Walter's ceiling.
14840213	/m/03gzsbs	A Mercy	Toni Morrison	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Florens, a slave, lives and works on Jacob Vaark's rural New York farm. Lina, a Native American and fellow laborer on the Vaark farm, relates in a parallel narrative how she became one of a handful of survivors of a smallpox plague that destroyed her tribe. Vaark's wife Rebekkah describes leaving England on a ship for the new world to be married to a man she has never seen. The deaths of their subsequent children are devastating, and Vaark accepts a young Florens from a debtor in the hopes that this new addition to the farm will help alleviate Rebekkah's loneliness. Vaark, himself an orphan and poorhouse survivor, describes his journeys from New York to Maryland and Virginia, commenting on the role of religion in the culture of the different colonies, along with their attitudes toward slavery. All these characters are bereft of their roots, struggling to survive in a new and alien environment filled with danger and disease. When smallpox threatens Rebekkah's life in 1692, Florens, now sixteen, is sent to find a black freedman who has some knowledge of herbal medicines. Her journey is dangerous, ultimately proving to be the turning point in her life. Morrison examines the roots of racism going back to slavery's earliest days, providing glimpses of the various religious practices of the time, and showing the relationship between men and women in early America that often ended in female victimization. They are "of and for men," people who "never shape the world, The world shapes us." As the women journey toward self-enlightenment, Morrison often describes their progress in Biblical cadences, and by the end of this novel, the reader understands the significance of the title, "a mercy."
14845052	/m/03gzx78	The Chocolate Touch				 John Midas is a very greedy young boy who only loves to eat candy, especially chocolate. His parents keep trying to get him to eat healthy meals, but all he wants to eat is chocolate, to the point where he must take nightly doses of a vitamin tonic to keep nourished. John has to find a way to continue eating chocolate without being noticed. One day, John happens across an unusual coin lying on the sidewalk, about the size of a quarter. One face depicts a fat boy, and the other is inscribed with his initials, "J.M." Shortly thereafter, he encounters a candy store he has never seen before, which is further mysterious considering the owner knows John's name immediately and claims that the strange coin is the only kind of money he accepts. John uses the coin to purchase a large box of chocolates. That night, in bed, John opens the box to dejectedly discover that it contains only one small chocolate ball, with an exquisite flavor.When John wakes up he brushes his teeth only to find his tooth paste turned to chocolate. What starts out as a dream come true quickly becomes uncomfortable, as John becomes thirstier and thirstier, sicker and sicker, and begins longing for the good, wholesome foods his parents always wanted him to eat. John complains of the condition to his father, who take him to the family doctor, where his condition is revealed, although the doctor thinks it is some rare disease. Discomfort turns to nightmare, as John tries to console his weeping mother with a kiss, only to turn her into a chocolate statue. Finally considering someone else's good above his own, John tracks down the storekeeper of the candy shop, and he tries to set things right. The mystery of the shop is is not explained that in the ending, when John as part of his reformed self, feels he should be grateful to the store owner for undoing all of John's damage, runs back to the candy shop only to find an empty lot where the store once stood, though it is highly possible that he cannot see it due to him overcoming his greediness.]]
14848198	/m/03gzzw4	Tenderness	Robert Cormier	1997	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Eric Poole is a convicted teenage serial killer. Lorelei "Lori" Cranston is a troubled 15 year old girl. Their lives intersect as they both search for "tenderness." The word tenderness itself is disputed as it is never clearly defined but is implied to be the struggle between love, lust, and the need for both, though it later becomes clear the definition of "tenderness" is quite different to both Eric and Lori. Lori is described as a beautiful girl with a very mature body at a young age. Consequently she must constantly deal with the wanted, and unwanted, sexual attention she receives from men. Her father was struck by a car when Lori was only two, leaving her and her mother to fend for themselves. They live on the east coast and are constantly moving. Her alcoholic mother has a history of troubled and abusive relationships. Her mother's latest ongoing relationship is to a man named Gary, who also has a sexual interest in Lori. Upon arriving in a new town Lori's mother begins working as a waitress, drinking so much she forgets Lori's birthday. This causes Lori to feel sad, yet remain in denial about her mother's problems, finding excuses and rationalizing her mother's behavior. Lori decides to run away leaving her mother a note in which Lori says she'll be staying with friends for a while. Though Lori admits that the friends mentioned in the note are a lie, she feels that she has successfully tricked her mother into believing they are real simply because her mother never asks about them, though other characters in the book imply that Lori's mom does know she has run away and simply does not care. As a little boy in New England, Eric Poole already exhibited symptoms of a sociopath. In accordance with one of the traits on the MacDonald Triad (used in identifying early characteristics of sociopaths), Eric tortured small animals, namely kittens. He does not feel any remorse and instead feels he is controlling the feline population in his neighborhood. Eventually, he moves from torturing kittens to killing his aunt's canary. Once sparked, his enjoyment in killing soon becomes a fixation, and he seeks to move on to larger prey, namely people. Eric is described as a tall, slender, blond, blue eyed and charming boy of 15 when he commits his first murders, He has no trouble luring in his victims with his innocent smile which he practices in the mirror. Though the book does not clarify whether or not they were murdered first, Eric is tried for murder as a juvenile and convicted for murdering only his mother and stepfather, whom he hates. He explains he murdered his mother in resentment for marrying his stepfather. Because Eric burned his arm with cigarettes and purposefully broke his own arm with a hammer, he managed to convince people he was abused by his parents. Yet he did not manage to fool everyone, especially Jake Proctor, a detective, who keeps a close eye on him throughout the book. There are three more of Eric's victims: all female, slender, with dark-hair and eyes. Eric describes the feeling of murdering girls with these specific characteristics as tenderness — tenderness associated with sexual desire. When Eric meets Lori, he also feels tenderness for her — tenderness to protect her. On his 18th birthday Eric is released from the juvenile criminal facility. His release causes a controversy in the community causing a media circus outside the facility. It is during a broadcast of his release that Lori first sees Eric and her fixation begins. During his stay in the facility, he kept to himself as much as possible and became known as "the Ice Man." One day, as he is on the verge of raping and killing another inmate, he changes his mind at the last minute and instead instructs him to stop bothering another inmate known as "Sweet Lefty." Sweet Lefty is indebted to Eric and comes into play later in the story, as he helps Eric out in various situations. Also, during Eric's stay in the facility, he meets Maria Valdez, whom he calls the Senorita. She fits the description of his preferred victims and he soon feels the need to have "tenderness" with her. Days before his release she gives him her phone number and he begins making plans to meet with her. Once out of the facility he moves in to his aunt's house in Massachusetts where the media circus follows, as well as Lori. One day Eric spots Lori on the front page of a newspaper, where she is known simply as "Ms. Anonymous." Lori's face sparks a memory about Eric's fourth and possibly last murder. Soon after receiving his driver's license Eric begins his planned road trip to find the Senorita, Maria Valdez. However, Lori is hiding in the car's back seat. Once he realizes Lori is in the back seat he agrees to drop her off at the next town but instead shows Lori the time of her life before he attempts to kill her at night. After shopping and going to a diner, Lori falls asleep at a motel where Eric tries to kill her, but he finds himself unable to do so. Lori wakes up and realizes what has occurred, and she seems happy. The next day at a carnival Eric meets the Maria. He attempts to murder her but Lori steps in and warns him that it's a set-up. Eric goes to a river nearby with Lori and goes on a boat where Lori falls and drowns. She makes an attempt to take Eric with her. The cops arrive and think Eric killed her, they incarcerate him. The book closes with Jake Proctor feeling guilty that it took the life of an innocent girl to lock Eric up and with Eric crying over his loss.
14849178	/m/03g_00z	Lucy Gayheart	Willa Cather	1935	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On Christmas holiday away from her piano studies in Chicago, Lucy Gayheart is ice skating in her hometown of Haverford, Nebraska. Harry Gordon, the most eligible bachelor in town, joins her. Later she takes the train back to Chicago - he is with her until the Omaha stop. In a prolepsis, she recalls going to a performance by Clement Sebastian and later to an audition with him - she has one scheduled for her return. Back in Chicago then, she goes to a concert by the same artist. The next day she goes to his place for a singing practice, and meets his valet Giuseppe. She will replace Sebastian's accompanist, James Mockford, whilst the latter is convalescent. During these practice sessions, Clement Sebastian seems distant. Once he gets a call asking for money, which must be from his wife. On another occasion, he goes to Madame Renee de Vignon's funeral; later he goes into that same Catholic church again. Sebastian goes off to Minnesota and Wisconsin on a tour with Mockford. Lucy feels dejected. However, she gets a telegram from Sebastian telling her to come to his studio the following day - this cheers her up. However, when she returns to his studio, she asks him if he ever got pleasure out of being in love. He says, "N-n-no, not much," then asks her "Why? -- Do you?" She replies, "Yes, I do. And nobody can spoil it." This embarrasses her—she worried that it exposed her love for him and she leaves abruptly. He manages to meet her again at Auerbach's (the studio where she studies and also gives lessons) and calms her fears. Later, both Lucy and Sebastian are depressed; the latter takes her to dinner and tells her about Larry MacGowan, a friend from his school days who died recently. The next day he tells her he loves her but is old enough to be her father so will not act on his love. He says that she is not really in love with him, only growing up and "finding things." Later, when Sebastian is off on an Eastern U.S. tour, Harry visits her and they go to operas and museums together. Although she seems appreciative and making an effort to be nice, she finds his visit stressful. She rejects his proposal for marriage, saying that she loves someone else. Sebastian finally comes back briefly; Lucy is to go to New York City to be his accompanist in the winter, after he tours Europe. Meanwhile she has to rehearse, and she will take up Sebastian's apartment as her studio. On his departure she cries. Later she receives a letter from her sister Pauline which says Harry has gotten married to Miss Arkwright. Professor Auerbach asks Lucy what she wants to do in her future—accompany other singers or get married to Harry (whom he briefly met). He implies that it is difficult for a female accompanist -- "For the platform they always have a man." -- thus, a female accompanist would only be for rehearsals. This discourages Lucy. In September, Professor Auerback reads in the newspaper that Sebastian and Mockford drowned in Lake Como, near Cadenabbia. Lucy returns to Haverford. No one knows why she has returned and there is some gossip about it with some saying that Professor Auerbach had fired her. Harry is very glib with Lucy whenever he meets her. She feels depressed, and her only solace is sit in the orchard. When her sister Pauline wants to remove it to make more money growing onions and potatoes, she throws a tantrum, Pauline gives in, and it is not cut down. Later she visits Mrs. Alec Ramsay, an elderly lady and old friend, who has been asking after her and plays the piano there. At night she sometimes has nightmares. She then goes into the bank in another attempt to talk to Harry, but again he sends her away glibly. Mr. Gayheart has bought tickets for the opera. The performance seems humdrum to Lucy, but she is very impressed with the soprano's performance. The soprano had obviously seen better days and a better opera company than her present traveling opera company, but yet she gave a wonderful performance. "The wandering singer had struck something in her that went on vibrating; something that was like a purpose forming, and she could not stop it." The day before Christmas, the thought comes to her -- "What if -- what if Life itself were the sweetheart? It was like a lover waiting for her in distant cities -- across the sea; drawing her, enticing her, weaving a spell over her." This cheers her up and the next day, she writes to Professor Auerbach and inquires about returning to her job with him in Chicago again. He replies that she can come in March, when her replacement, the current teacher, leaves. Meanwhile, Pauline has heard that Lucy may have had a love affair with a singer who died. In late January, Pauline announces that she has two piano students for Lucy. Lucy refuses to teach them. In the ensuing argument, Pauline indicates that their father has made financial sacrifices and gone into debt to finance Lucy's musical education in Chicago. She also indicates that she has heard talk about Lucy and Sebastian and that the gossip is that Harry threw Lucy over when he found out about the two. After this, Lucy leaves the house carrying her skates. She finds it hard going due to a recent snowfall and decides to catch a ride with whoever passes so that she can return. However, Harry is the person who appears. When she asks for a ride, he pretends he is too busy to take her back to her house and drives past her. She reaches the area that she and her friends had always used for skating. However, the river has changed its course since she last skated there and the shallow part that froze solid is no longer there. Lucy is so angry at Harry for driving past her that she does not notice any change in the river. When she skates toward the center, the ice cracks and she falls through. One of her skates catches on a submerged branch of a tree that had fallen in during the spring flood last year. Her body is found by her father and other locals. This book is written from Harry Gordon's point of view and includes his reflections. Twenty-five years later, in 1927, Mr. Gayheart is brought back from Chicago, where he died in a hospital. Pauline had died five years earlier, so he was the sole remaining member of the family. Many people turn up at the funeral. Harry had become chummy with Mr Gayheart after Pauline's death and they would often play chess together. It is revealed in Harry's thoughts that he had regretted his hasty marriage and that it had been in retaliation for Lucy's rejection. When she returned to Haverford, he realized that he still loved her, but still wanted to punish her for rejecting him so he avoided her and tried to distance himself from her, even though he knew she wanted contact. "He knew that if he were alone with her for a moment and she held out her hands to him with that look [of pleading], he couldn't punish her any more -- and she deserved to be punished." He blamed himself for her death. Harry had given Mr. Gayheart a mortgage with the Gayheart farm as surety in the last years of Mr. Gayheart's life. Mr. Gayheart had been unable to repay the mortgage, so Harry now owned the farm. He ponders on the footprints made by Lucy at 13 in a concrete sidewalk when it was newly laid. He tells his bank assistant Milton Chase that he can have the farmhouse to live in, provided that Chase makes sure that nothing happens to the footprints. He says that Chase will inherit the farm when he dies.
14852135	/m/03g_45s	Fine Things	Danielle Steel	1989-02-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The plot follows Bernard Fine, a fictional character in his 30's who has recently been promoted to senior vice-president of Wolff's Department Store in his home town of New York. Although enjoying his life, Bernie is sent to San Francisco to open a new Wolff's store. Bernie gets a new outlook on life when he meets little Jane O'Reilly, and soon after falls in love with her mother, Liz O'Reilly, a resident in California. After forming a relationship and marrying, Liz becomes pregnant with their first child, only to develop cancer shortly after the birth, given only a short amount of time to live. When Liz dies, Bernie is left with the responsibility of two children, and must take a new lease and have new experiences throughout his life.
14852520	/m/047gs2d	The Firebrand	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As the destruction of Ilium approaches, Kassandra foresees catastrophe and does all in her power to prevent it but is not listened to. Helen is abducted by Paris. This disaster is foreseen by Kassandra.Paris is her twin, and she has a psychic link to her brother, even when he was living in exile. Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Achilles soon follow with an army, and the war for Troy is begun. As these happenings spin out of control, Kassandra rediscovers the ancient worship of the Snake Mother and takes up residence in the Temple of Apollo, the god who has replaced her goddess. There she is assaulted by Khryse, a priest disguised as Lord Apollo himself. The priestess sees through his trick and fights him off. Khryse, angry and rejected, spreads the rumor throughout the city that Kassandra is cursed for refusing the love of Apollo. Ultimately, it is Kassandra herself (donning the mask of Apollo) who puts an end to Akhilles’ bloodthirsty reign of terror. Her arrow finds its mark in his unprotected heel. Rather than allowing a legend of the Styx to bring down the great hero, Bradley gives us a much simpler solution: a poison-tipped Amazon arrow. Feminism has seemingly triumphed over male chauvinism—for a time, broken by the brutal rape of Kassandra and her foster-daughter, who is about three at the time, Honey. The Fall of Troy comes and goes. Kassandra suffers her horrifying fate as the concubine of Agamemnon but is freed at last by Klytemnestra, her master’s wife and murderer. She makes her way back Asia Minor, where in the desert, she hopes to recreate a kingdom of old—one ruled by a powerful queen, as it should be.
14852524	/m/03g_4py	Mixed Blessings	Danielle Steel	1993-10	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 After the wedding of Diana Goode and Andrew Douglas, Diana comments that they will make a baby on their honeymoon. However, after the honeymoon period is over, she is still not pregnant. After repeated attempts, the couple both have to question their willingness to have a baby. The second couple consists of Charlie Winwood and Barbie Mason. The latter does not share Charlie's dreams of having a large family to raise in their house. After Charlie discovers he is sterile, he is forced to question his marriage, and his wife, who shares none of his dreams. The final couple is Pilar Graham, a successful lawyer from Santa Barbara, California and Brad Coleman, nineteen years older than she and father of two grown children. They are happy together until Pilar begins to alter her views on whether she should have a baby with Brad.
14856687	/m/03g_bxp	Out of Order	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Cape Cod's resident detective Asey Mayo has a long history with millionaire Bill Porter, owner of Potter Motors. Bill's men's club, the Hybrid, has a long history of funny bets on the night of the big football game, but when Bill Porter's enemy Harper Dixon bets Bill $50,000 that Asey Mayo couldn't "solve his Aunt Eugenia's grocery order", Asey must take a hand on behalf of his old friend, and returns from Jamaica to a New England blizzard. While approaching the Dixon home, he collects an assorted gang of characters and takes them to the Dixon's for safety. After they arrive, the group is locked in a powder room by a mysterious figure with a bright-red manicure. Upon their release, they discover Aunt Charlotte Dixon, drowned in her washbasin while in the process of shampooing her hair. When Asey Mayo learns that Aunt Eugenia's grocery order is the last thing she wrote before her death, he realizes that there is more at stake here than a bet.
14856846	/m/03g_bz1	The Crimson Patch	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Mr. Myles Witherall, retired New Englander, decides on a whim to take an inexpensive tourist bus to the little town of Skaket, and thereby gets involved in the movements of an escaped killer. Meanwhile, a young married couple of artistic antecedents find that Skaket's inhabitants have turned violently against them, just before they find the body of Rosalie Ray, radio personality, dead in her bed, murdered with a whale lance. It takes Asey Mayo's knowledge of Skaket mores, a session of bric-a-brac destruction with wilful ingenue Laurie Lee, and the breaking of a clever alibi before Asey can pinpoint the killer and administer justice personally.
14856956	/m/03g_c14	The Tinkling Symbol	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The little Cape Cod town of West Weesit has been rocked by four suicides from the same location, now known as "Suicide Cliff". Last month, Kay Francis was the latest body to be found at the foot of the cliff. Her father, Dave Truman, had already been depressed because his business had failed and his wife had left him. A number of witnesses in a neighbouring house see him come out on the porch with a gun and aim it at himself, and they assume the resulting shot is another suicide. But when it is learned that Dave had in fact been stabbed in the back, Asey Mayo takes a hand and soon becomes a target for a determined shooter. In between, he sorts out some local Cape Cod entanglements and learns the meaning of a dying clue left by Dave Truman -- "ink" -- and what the tinkling bell around the neck of Sully the cat has to do with anything.
14857060	/m/03g_c3k	Deathblow Hill	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Between two neighboring Cape Cod houses there is a chain link fence topped with barbed wire to signify the feud between the two halves of the Howes family. The disappearance of the fortune left by ancestor Bellamy Howes has divided Suzanne from her eccentric relative Simon. The fence has kept them apart, but now there are mysterious things happening at both homes -- unexplained ransackings, unexplained prowlers wearing yellow handkerchiefs, and two near stranglings. When wealthy Benjamin Carson is strangled and left on the doorstep of one of the two houses on Deathblow Hill, Asey Mayo is called in to set to right both little mysteries (such as Bellamy's ships-in-bottles collection) and large mysteries like a tidy murderer.
14857219	/m/03g_c7p	Sandbar Sinister	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The picturesque village of East Pochet in Cape Cod is not its usual self when Elizabeth Colton drives into it; the previous evening, a bootlegger dumped two hundred cases of liquor offshore, and the whole town reaped the windfall. At some point during the boozy celebrations, however, a bearded mystery writer ended up dead in the boat house at the Sandbar estate. Asey Mayo must figure out the comings and goings of a number of interested parties before he puts together the meaning of a mysterious fire in the living room and a tube of salve and solves the crime.
14857283	/m/03g_c8q	The Mystery of the Cape Cod Tavern	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Eve Prence is the glamorous and publicity-seeking owner of the famous Cape Cod Tavern, and uses her publicity to keep the Tavern filled with famous and/or wealthy guests. She has a house-full the night she's found at the bottom of the grand staircase, claiming somebody had tried to kill her. The following day, she is found with a knife in her ribs. Asey Mayo must work out the meaning of clues like a pair of antique pistols that contain a pair of antique daggers, and what exactly the blind boy on the scene of the crime heard, and a pair of dirty indentations on a windowsill before bringing home the crime to a surprising figure.
14858858	/m/03g_d92	By Love Possessed				 Arthur Winner Jr., an attorney in a small American town. The time is roughly contemporary. The novel follows Arthur through 49 hours of his life, with flashbacks to prior events that tell us more about Arthur, his acquaintances, and his community. Many of the more significant characters, including Arthur Winner Sr., the protagonist's father, are dead at the time of the novel and are only seen in these flashbacks. Arthur Jr. is a partner in the small law firm founded by his father and Noah Tuttle. As a young man, Arthur married Noah's daughter, Hope Tuttle; they had two children, a son and a daughter, who are now grown. Hope died after giving birth to their daughter. Arthur is now married to a younger woman named Clarissa, who had been his daughter's tennis coach. The law practice currently consists of Arthur, Noah, and another man named Julius Penrose. It is said that Arthur had a brief but intense affair with Marjorie Penrose, Julius' wife. Two cases preoccupy Arthur during the course of the novel. One concerns the probate of the estate of Michael McCarthy. The other is the arrest of Ralph Detweiler for rape. He is also called on to deal with a new pastor in the Episcopal Church, who is asking him to take a role in the leadership of the parish. He also meets with a friend of Marjorie's, a woman who wants to discuss converting to Catholicism. Many years ago, a trolley line had been built in the town. Noah Tuttle had encouraged his clients, including Michael McCarthy, to invest in it. The trolley company went bankrupt, however, due to the rise of the automobile. Noah handled the bankruptcy case and, to the amazement of all, managed to return some money to the investors. The novel, however, begins to hint at a darker side to Noah's brilliance. He ridicules an elderly woman for wanting to move some of her funds from bonds into stocks. He bristles at the suggestion that the endowment of the parish could be transferred to management by the dioceses. During a hearing supervised by Arthur, Noah has an outburst when questioned about the assets of the McCarthy estate. Meanwhile, Ralph Detweiler, a young man, has been accused of what would now be called “date rape," and is dealing with the pregnancy of another. He flees to New York, whereupon his distraught sister Helen commits suicide. Arthur examines the records that Helen has been maintaining and discovers that Noah has been embezzling from the trusts that he managed. This was the source of the money from the bankruptcy settlement. Noah embezzled $200,000 from the "Orcutt bequest" and has since been manipulating the money in his trusts, robbing Peter to pay Paul while attempting to replenish the funds. Arthur also learns that Julius Penrose has been aware of the embezzlement for some time. Julius urges Arthur to keep quiet, hinting that he is aware of Arthur’s affair with his wife, and that he is grateful that he has been silent about that. Arthur contemplates his position, where there are no good choices. He says: “Life, that has unfairly served so many others, at last unfairly serves me”.
14860900	/m/0d34t5	Dwellers of the Forbidden City	David "Zeb" Cook	1981	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The adventure begins when the player characters hear reports of bandits waylaying and attacking caravans in a jungle region. Most of the ambushed merchants and guards have been killed, but the few who have returned alive tell fantastic stories about deformed plants and deadly beasts in the jungle. The stolen goods taken from the caravans provide an impetus for the characters to enter the jungles in search of this lost treasure. After a long and perilous journey, the player characters encounter some friendly native people and are invited to stay in their village. The characters learn from the village's chief about the dangers of creatures called the yuan-ti and their servants, the tasloi, and that these creatures recently kidnapped the chief's son, taking him into the jungle. The chief and village shaman tell the player characters about a "forbidden city" in the jungle which they believe houses the ghosts of their dead enemies, and they supply the characters with guides to show the party the way to this forbidden city. The adventuring environment in this module allows for both action and intrigue. The player characters can recruit allies from the various power groups and factions within the city, namely the bugbears, mongrelmen, and bullywugs, or else help pit these factions against each other for their own benefit.
14864793	/m/03g_mnd	The Killings at Badger's Drift	Caroline Graham	1988	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the fictional village of "Badger's Drift", the elderly Miss Bellringer insists that her friend, Emily Simpson, did not die of a heart attack as her doctor claims, but was in fact murdered. An autopsy soon proves her right, as a mix of red wine and hemlock is found in the dead woman's system. While the village descends into panic, the murderer strikes again, claiming the life of Mrs. Rainbird, before leaving her corpse to be discovered by her son Dennis, a local undertaker. As Barnaby investigates, aided by Sgt. Gavin Troy, he uncovers a connection between an older crime and the current killings at Badger's Drift.
14868737	/m/03g_nwq	Lód	Jacek Dukaj	2007	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The protagonist of the novel is Benedykt Gierosławski, a Polish mathematician and notorious gambler, collaborating with Alfred Tarski on his work on many-valued logics. The Ministry of Winter's officials visit Gierosławski and make him embark on a Transsiberian journey to find his lost father, who is said to be able to communicate with Lute. During his journey Gieroslawski finds out that he is caught in a political intrigue, brought about by rivalry between two palace factions, liedniacy (conservatives and Siberian entrepreneurs backing the idea of "frozen Russia") and ottiepelnicy (mostly revolutionaries aiming for a literal and political "thaw"), supported also by the Tsar. He also meets Nikola Tesla in disguise, who has conceived a technology for manipulating and eventually destroying the Ice and has been hired by the Tsar to relieve Russia from the Winter. During the journey and upon his arrival in Irkutsk Gierosławski discovers that various political forces, including Followers of St. Marcyn, a sect worshiping the Ice led by Rasputin, followers of Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, who strive for assuring human immortality, and Siberian industrial potentates, are interested in his person and that Józef Piłsudski, in this reality leading a group of Sybiraks and Siberian separatists fighting for Polish independence, may possess knowledge about his father.
14874855	/m/03g_v0l	The adventures of Jonathan Gullible	Ken Schoolland			 Jonathan is a boy, who lives in a small town. All the people in his village he considers boring, and often he dreams about going to adventure. One day, when he is playing around in his boat, a storm takes him away to another land, where he starts to learn about the country's strange (and misguided) laws and regulations.
14875247	/m/03g_vks	The Jester	James Patterson		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The Jester is a novel focusing on a young man named Hugh, beginning in the year 1096. He is living in a time of unrest, when nobles treat peasants like himself as dirt. The region is ruled over by a tyrannical ruler named Baldwin. Seeking freedom, he joins the Crusades. However, when they manage to invade one of the Turk Cities, he sees the horror around him, and decides he cannot face it. He passes a church, where he sees a priest being beaten, and kills the men attacking him. At the now dead priest's side lays a staff, which Hugh decides to carry with him from then on. Hugh flees the Holy Land, returning to his home village of Veille du Pere, to find his wife kidnapped, his son Phillipe dead (whom his wife Sophie gave birth to after he left) and his inn destroyed. Townsfolk say the attackers wore no colors except for black crosses sewn onto their tunics, and were dishonored knights who seemed to be looking for him alone. Half mad with grief, he wanders into the forest, then goes to search for Sophie who he believes is still alive and being held captive in the dungeons at Treille. In the woods, he attacked by a boar which although he kills, wounds him badly. He is saved by Emilie, a woman who reminds him of Sophie. She turns out to be highborn, the daughter of the King of France, though he does not learn of this until much later. Hugh's plan is to infiltrate the castle of Lord Baldwin at Treille. With Emilie and the jester (at Boree) Norbert's help, he adopts the pretext of a Jester. After winning his Lord and the Lord's crowds' ear, he soon finds that his wife was never in Treille, with Baldwin. He travels to Borée to see Emilie once more. Winning Anne (Emilie's mistress)'s ear, he eventually finds that his wife, Sophie was in the dungeon of Borée all along, and that Anne had been lying to him. Killing three of the Tafurs (the guards of Anne which turn out to be the dishonored knights who took his wife), Hugh runs back to Veille du Pere. By then he is sure men are hunting him, but he knows not for what. The Tafurs launch an attack on Veille du Pere, but Hugh and his friends had prepared traps, and so killed all of them but one. This one attacks Hugh before his escape, and breaks his staff, but not the object within, which turns out to be the Holy Lance that pierced Jesus Christ's side as he lay on the cross. Peasants flock to the spear, so Hugh marches on Treille and takes Baldwin prisoner. Next he marches on Borée, but try as they might, they could not take it. Finally the leader of the Tafurs, "Black Cross" attacks Hugh and his Peasant army, but they rebuff them, Hugh killing Black Cross as they did so. Stephen (Anne's evil husband who had recently returned from the Crusades), threatened to kill Emilie, but a plot by Hugh and Anne save her. Stephen runs into the castle with Hugh in pursuit, Anne eventually killing Stephen with the Holy Lance. Emilie turns out to be the daughter of the King of France, and Hugh and Emilie get married, living well from then on.
14880653	/m/03h05_j	Brain Wave	Poul Anderson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the end of the Cretaceous period the Earth moved into an energy dampening field in space. As long as Earth was in this field all conductors became more insulating. As a result almost all of the life on Earth with neurons died off, causing the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. The ones that survived passed on their genes for sufficiently capable neurons to deal with the new circumstance. Now in modern times the Earth suddenly moves out of the field. Within weeks all animal life on earth becomes about 5 times as intelligent. The novel goes through the triumphs and tribulations of various people and non-human animals and groups on earth after this event. The book opens with a lyrical description of a rabbit stuck inside of a trap becoming able to reason his way out. This is a common theme in the book. Animal traps are based on the idea that the animal cannot reason their way out of them. When the animals get the ability to reason they start escaping. Institutions which seemed to be vital to human society, such as a money economy and centralized government, disappear in North America, while Africans, with the assistance of chimpanzees, overcome colonial rule and Chinese rebel against the Communist government. However, some of the means by which people cope with the "Change" are inventing new anti-scientific religions such as the Third Ba'al or adopting pseudo-science. As humans develop interstellar travel, they discover no other races are as intelligent as they; other races developed pre-Change intelligence, and there was no environmental pressure to select for higher intellgience after that.
14885267	/m/03h0fd3	Silent Honor	Danielle Steel	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In August, 1941, Hiroko migrates to the United States from Japan, as she has an uncle, aunt, and cousins living there. Upon first arrival, she settles in well and continues to lead a regular life, however, on December 7, 1941 — Pearl Harbor is bombed, thus making them an enemy in their community and across the USA, as they are considered foreigners. Ordered to stay by her father, she remains occupied in California, however, the military are ordered to remove all Japanese citizens, and she ends up being put in a detention centre, having to fight to stay alive.
14886624	/m/03h0gsd	Parnassus on Wheels	Christopher Morley		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Parnassus on Wheels is Morley's first novel, about a fictional traveling book-selling business. The original owner of the business, Roger Mifflin, sells it to 39-year-old Helen McGill, who is tired of taking care of her older brother, Andrew. Andrew is a former businessman turned farmer, turned author. As an author, he begins using the farm as his Muse rather than a livelihood. When Mifflin shows up with his traveling bookstore, Helen buys it—partly to prevent Andrew from buying it—and partly to treat herself to a long-overdue adventure of her own. The first of two novels to be written from a woman's perspective, as well as the prequel to a later novel (The Haunted Bookshop), Parnassus on Wheels was inspired by David Grayson's novel, The Friendly Road, and starts with an open letter to Grayson, taking him to task for not concerning himself (except in passing) with his sister's opinion of and reaction to his adventure.
14894118	/m/03h0rd9	Singularity	William Sleator		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sixteen-year-old identical twins Harry and Barry learn that their mysterious great-uncle has died, and his house and possessions now belong to their mother. The brothers travel to Sushan, Illinois to examine the house and its contents. Inside the cobweb-filled home, the rivaling brothers find mysterious animal skeletons and other odd objects. Outside Uncle Ambrose's residence, Harry and Barry find a small metal-reinforced building, which according to the accompanying keys, is called the "playhouse." When the twins explore the playhouse, they discover that the properties of time are altered inside, and the playhouse may explain the eccentricities of their great-uncle. When their quirky and cute neighbor Lucy enters their lives, competition between the twins escalates, and Harry makes a decision that will change the nature of their relationship forever.
14900373	/m/03h0zfv	Poison In Jest	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jeff Marle, who plays a sidekick role in other Carr novels, is visiting a friend at the Quayle mansion in western Pennsylvania. Although various members of the Quayle household hate each other, all are united in hatred of the paterfamilias, Judge Quayle. A few moments after being introduced to Marle, Judge Quayle collapses after having been poisoned. More than one poison is used in murder attempts in the household; strange shadowy figures are seen prowling the halls at night, and there is a creepy story about a marble hand that was broken from a statue of Caligula which apparently creeps around the house on its own. After the first two deaths, a young friend of the family, Rossiter, takes a hand in detecting, with the aid of Jeff Marle; Rossiter identifies the murderer.
14900619	/m/03h0zhk	The Arabian Nights Murder	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 When Scotland Yard detective John Carruthers attends the Wade Museum of Oriental Art, and begins to investigate the interior of one of a series of carriages on exhibit, he is sarcastically told by the night watchman "Watch out when you touch it! There's a dead man inside!" Of course, a dead man tumbles out. The corpse has been stabbed with an elaborate Persian dagger, is wearing an obvious set of false whiskers, and is clutching a cookbook. Gideon Fell must investigate the death and explain all the bizarre circumstances of what was a very busy night at the museum. it:Delitti da mille e una notte
14900692	/m/03h0zkz	Ratha and Thistle-chaser	Clare Bell		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Thistle-chaser, the daughter of the Named clan leader, Ratha, has no recollection of her past or true name. Due to this, she lives alone on a coastline, befriending the seamares that reside there, and goes by 'Newt'. In her dreams, a creature she knows as the Dreambiter, which bites her foreleg, often makes her go into seizures and fits of panic. A clan cat, Thakur comes across Thistle-chaser while searching for water. He befriends her and starts having her swim in a lagoon which acts as therapy for her shriveled leg. When he reports of the water and seamares that live there, Ratha decides to move the clan and their livestock to the coast, going as far as to capture the seamares. Thistle-chaser is upset by this and frees them, making Ratha, who refuses to believe that Thistle-chaser is her daughter, order the clan to attack Thistle-chaser if she tries anything like it again. Thistle-chaser eventually learns that Ratha is her mother and realizes that the Dreambiter would be destroyed if Ratha was killed. Ratha bit Thistle-chaser when she was young, which was the cause of the Dreambiter. Thistle-chaser decides to attack Ratha and the two get into a fight. When Ratha gets her foot stuck between two rocks, Mishanti, an Un-named cub which Ratha was going to abandon, gets caught in the fray and tries to defend Ratha. In her fury, Thistle-chaser goes after him, only to be stopped by Ratha, who calls her names and brings her back to reality. Thakur and Fessran, another clan cat, arrive soon and together with Thistle-chaser bring Ratha and Mishanti to safety. Through these events, Ratha is able to admit that Thistle-chaser is her daughter and Thistle-chaser is able to forgive her mother. Mishanti, being an orphan and lacking any proof that he is sentient, is taken in by Thistle-chaser who will raise him and bring out his hidden sentience. The Named are a group of prehistoric sentient large cats; they call themselves a clan and are led by the female Ratha. The clan is herds creatures and uses them as livestock, and also has fire, which they call Red Tongue, which they use for heat and protection. They are recognizable by their cleanliness and their eyes, which have a distinct look of knowingness and brightness. They can love and feel for other members of the clan and have morals and their own language. The group has Herders, who keep herd the livestock and protect them, and Firekeepers, who tend to the Red Tongue. The Un-named are the opposite; non-sentient large cats who live in no distinct group, but band together sometimes for attacks. They are dirty and their eyes are distinct and unaware of what happens. They rely on instinct and have no language. A cat can be born Unnamed, but it is due to related linage with members of the Named. Unlike the Named, they do not herd animals, but hunt instead.The Unnamed are Sabre Tooth Cats. Red Tongue is fire used by The Named. Seamare is the term used for water creatures with protruding teeth, a horse-like head and neck, and a blubbery body. They have webbed feet, and live in a herd.The Seamare are Paleoparadoxia.
14900714	/m/03h0zln	The Eight of Swords	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Mr. Septimus Depping is found dead in his Gloucestershire country house, shot with his own gun and holding a card from the Tarot deck, the eight of swords, which stands for "condemning justice". Among those present is an Anglican bishop who is an expert in criminology, and sees wanted criminals in every parlourmaid, and Henry Morgan, who writes exciting mystery novels under two different names. Mr. Depping turns out to have been an American criminal, and Gideon Fell must penetrate the secrets of his American associates as well as his British life in retirement in order to bring home the crime to the unlikely criminal.
14900792	/m/03h0zmb	The Four False Weapons	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04rlf": "Music"}	 Richard Curtis is a junior British barrister entrusted with disentangling a client of the firm, Ralph Douglas, from his involvement with poule de luxe Rose Klonec. The infamous Rose has had more lovers than she can count—she removes all their cash and jewelry in the process, then discards them. Rose's dead body has been found in Douglas's country villa and in the room are a pistol, a razor, a box of poison pills and a stiletto. Henri Bencolin, of the Paris police, proves that none of these four weapons were used to kill Rose, and that she has been the victim of an unusual fifth. The comings and goings at the villa that night are the subject of much investigation. It is not until Bencolin is invited to take a hand at the Corpses' Club to play an 17th century game of chance, basset, that has never been played by any living person, that he resolves the contradictions and solves the crimes.
14901146	/m/03h0zvh	Three Cups of Tea	Greg Mortenson	2009-01-22	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 In 1993, mountaineer Greg Mortenson attempted to climb K2, the world's second highest mountain and located in the Karakoram range of northern Pakistan-administered Kashmir, as a way of honoring the memory of his deceased sister, Christa. As a memorial, he had planned to lay her amber necklace on the summit of K2. After more than 70 days on the mountain, Mortenson and three other climbers had their ascent interrupted by the need to complete a 75-hour life-saving rescue of a fifth climber. After getting lost during his descent, alone, he became weak and exhausted. Instead of arriving in Askole, where his porters awaited, he came across Korphe, a small village built on a shelf jutting out from a canyon. He was greeted and taken in by the chief elder, Haji Ali of Korphe. To repay the remote community for their hospitality, Mortenson recounted in the book that he promised to build a school for the village. After difficulties in raising capital, Mortenson was introduced to Jean Hoerni, a Silicon Valley pioneer who donated the money that Mortenson needed for his school. In the last months of his life, Hoerni co-founded the Central Asia Institute, endowing the CAI to build schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to the book, Mortenson faced many daunting challenges in his quest to raise funds for the building of more than 55 schools in Taliban territory. Some of these challenges included death threats from Islamic mullahs, long periods of separation from his family, and being kidnapped by Taliban sympathizers. Reflecting on the state of a post-9/11 world, Mortenson advocates in his books and during his speaking engagements that extremism in the region can be deterred through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls. Formerly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, schooling focused on boys. Because educated boys tend to move to the cities to find jobs, they seldom return. By contrast, educated girls tend to remain in the community and pass their enhanced knowledge to the next generation, thus, Mortenson suggests, educating girls has more of a lasting benefit for their community.
14906243	/m/03h14md	The Farther Shore	Christie Golden	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 There is a Borg conspiracy going on on the Earth, and suddenly people begin to transform into Borg drones. Now Captain Janeway and her crew must save the Earth.
14908446	/m/03h165g	The Bottom Billion		2007-04-15		 The book suggests that, whereas the majority of the 5-billion people in the "developing world" are getting richer at an unprecedented rate, a group of countries (mostly in Africa and Central Asia but with a smattering elsewhere) are stuck and that development assistance should be focused heavily on them. These countries typically suffer from one or more development traps. The Conflict Trap: Civil wars (with an estimated average cost of $64bn each) and coups incur large economic costs to a country. Additionally, in the time period immediately following a major conflict, relapse is highly likely. Collier also argues that the longer a country stays in a state of conflict, the more players become established that profit from the state of tumult, making the situation increasingly intractable. The Natural Resource Trap: Countries that are rich in natural resources are paradoxically usually worse off than countries that are not. Collier attributes this to a variety of causes: * Resources make conflict for the resources more likely. * Natural resources mean that a government does not have to tax its citizens. Consequently, the citizenry are less likely to demand financial accountability from the government. * The exploitation of valuable natural resources can result in Dutch disease, where a country's other industries become less competitive as a result of currency valuation due to the revenue raised from the resource. Landlocked with Bad Neighbours: Poor landlocked countries with poor neighbours find it almost impossible to tap into world economic growth. Collier explains that countries with coastline trade with the world, while landlocked countries only trade with their neighbors. Landlocked countries with poor infrastructure connections to their neighbors therefore necessarily have a limited market for their goods. Bad Governance in a Small Country: Terrible governance and policies can destroy an economy with alarming speed. The reason small countries are at a disadvantage is that though they may have a low cost-of-living, and therefore be ideal for labor-intensive work, their smallness discourages potential investors, who are unfamiliar with the local conditions and risks, who instead opt for better known countries like China and India. He suggests a number of relatively inexpensive but institutionally difficult changes: # Aid agencies should increasingly be concentrated in the most difficult environments, accept more risk. Ordinary citizens should not support poorly informed vociferous lobbies whose efforts are counterproductive and severely constrain what the Aid agencies can do. # Appropriate Military Interventions (such as the British in Sierra Leone) should be encouraged, especially to guarantee democratic governments against coups. # International Charters are needed to encourage good governance and provide prototypes. # Trade Policy needs to encourage free trade and give preferential access to Bottom Billion exports. The book does not include a list of bottom billion countries because Collier believes this might lead to a "self-fulfilling prophecy." However, he states that there are 58 such countries mentioned throughout the book. In his book Wars, Guns, and Votes, Collier lists the Bottom Billion, to "focus international effort": Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Kenya, North Korea, Kyrgyz Republic, Lao PDR, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
14910682	/m/03h1848	The Color of Death: A Sir John Fielding Mystery	Bruce Cook	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 People got attacked by aliens. Even Sir John is laid low, and young Jeremy Proctor must take a significant role in the investigation.
14913203	/m/03h1bgw	Assassin		2006-02	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book begins with the story of Arabella "Bella" Getchel, who was taken hostage by John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of former President Abraham Lincoln, during the assassination at Ford Theatre itself. Wilkes, in the book's second chapter, mentions that he likes to be called by his last name. The book continually switches between the two stories, as Bella builds a friendship with a character named Steven and Wilkes. The friendship between Wilkes and Bella was merely a trap so he could get her to look for him in the theatre, where he locks her in a closet so she cannot stop him from assassinating the President.
14914446	/m/03h1cb6	Five Times Dizzy	Nadia Wheatley	1982	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Five Times Dizzy is about the comedy and drama of a Greek Australian family in a multi-cultural neighbourhood of inner-city Sydney. To help her Greek grandmother feel more at home, Mareka comes up with a brilliant plan to give her a pet goat.
14916084	/m/03h1dl1	Hag's Nook	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Tad Rampole is a young American traveling in England who, in a chance encounter on a railway platform, meets and falls in love with Dorothy Starberth. Rampole has a letter of introduction to Dr. Gideon Fell and both soon become involved in the affairs of the Starberth family. The family has a long history as having been the governors of Chatterham Prison and, in connection with that post, there is also a tradition that the "Starberths die of broken necks". Chatterham is now abandoned and inhabited only by rats, but the eldest son and heir to the Starberth family must spend the evening of his 25th birthday there, as directed by an ancestral will. The night after Rampole meets Dorothy Starberth, her brother is found with a broken neck, below the balcony of the room where he was to spend the night. Dr. Fell must sort out ancient superstition from modern-day malice to ensure that the responsible criminal does not go unpunished. it:Il cantuccio della strega
14916258	/m/03h1dpm	The Demoniacs	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Handsome young Jeffrey Wynne has just rescued pretty young Peg Ralston from a "fate worse than death"; she thought she was going to attend a French acting school, but soon learns that it is the "school for the French King's private brothel". Wynne was hired by Peg's father Sir Mortimer Ralston to retrieve her, possibly without the knowledge of Sir Mortimer's mistress, Lavinia Cresswell (and her brother, dangerous swordsman Hamnet Tawnish), who would like nothing better than to see Peg put in Bedlam. Wynne's ordinary job is somewhat similar; he is a thief-taker under the direction of Sir John Fielding, a real-life personage who was in charge of the Bow Street Runners despite his blindness. Wynne and young Miss Ralston soon become involved in the mysterious murder of an ancient bawd who lives on London Bridge; the old woman seems to have no mark of violence upon her body, but what might be a fortune in jewels is missing. The investigation of the crime leads Wynne through the heights and depths of society, including a bagnio in Covent Garden and a drinking bout with Laurence Sterne, until he perceives the well-hidden truth and solves the crime.
14916395	/m/03h1ds0	In Spite of Thunder	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Beautiful film star Eve Eden's fiancé Hector Matthews died in a strange accident while the couple was visiting Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden in 1939. Although he had no reason to commit suicide, he apparently flung himself off a high balcony to die hundreds of feet below—and no one was near him at the time, as the witnesses Gerald Hathaway and Paula Catford say. Years later, Eve is married to actor Desmond Ferrier and living in Geneva. Brian Innes, a painter who lives in Geneva too, is asked by his old school friend DeForrest Page to warn his daughter Audrey against continuing to associate with Eve. When Eve Ferrier appears at the Hotel du Rhône, where Innes had been dining with Sir Gerald Hathaway, she proves to be carrying a perfume bottle filled with oil of vitriol, apparently to her own surprise. The next day, when Innes is called to Eve Ferrier's villa by a desperate Audrey, he arrives in time to see Eve fall to her death from a high balcony—and no one was near her at the time. It takes the investigative genius of Gideon Fell to penetrate the ingenious murder method and reveal the criminal.
14916545	/m/03h1dxh	The Witch of the Low Tide	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 David Garth, M.D., has fallen in love with the beautiful widow Betty, Lady Calder. Detective-Inspector Twigg of Scotland Yard tries to warn Dr. Garth about the chequered past of Lady Calder, but it takes all the nerve of Garth's friend Cullingford Abbot, assistant to the Commissioner of Scotland Yard, to state that, among other things, Betty danced for three seasons at the Moulin Rouge and is thought to have joined a Satanist group in Paris. She is also reputed to be a blackmailer responsible for at least two suicides. However, Betty herself raises the possibility that she is being mistaken for the machinations of her sister Glynis. When Glynis is found dead on the beach near a bathing-pavilion, in the middle of a stretch of unmarked sand, Betty is suspected of arranging the death (although no one can suggest how it might have happened). It takes Dr. Garth's special knowledge of both medicine (the new science of "psychanalysis") and literature like Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room to solve the impossible crime and reveal the criminal.
14917027	/m/03h1f7q	The Quantum Prophecy	Michael Carroll	2006-01-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story opens with a seemingly random battle among the many superhumans that inhabited the western world, set ten years ago at the foot of a gigantic tank built and driven by Ragnarok that was on its way to New York City. During the course of this slugfest, the superheroes and supervillains all seem to lose their abilities. Ten years later, Brian McDonald has been told by the teacher to assign the class' homework assignment, and he chooses to write about what it would be like to be a superhero. On the way home, Brian's little sister Susie almost gets hit by a bus while riding her bike, but Danny Cooper foresaw it coming and rescued her in the time it took his friend, Colin Wagner, to turn his head twice. At home he ponders over this and comes to the conclusion Danny is a superhero. He confronts his friend about it later and Danny grudgingly reveals his father was Quantum and that he inherited his powers. When Colin gets home he starts to hear things far away, and his mom reveals she and his father were Energy and Titan respectively, two other heroes that were believed to have disappeared. Soon after that a helicopter comes and after a quick chase Colin, his parents, Danny, and Danny's father are captured and taken to America. Around that time a mysterious man known as Joseph gets broken out of a top-secret prison in Nevada by a man known as Victor Cross. In the airport Colin escapes from his captors and, following his fathers tip, searches for a man known as Solomon Cord, who used to be Paragon. He takes refuge in a shelter where, after a brief standoff, befriends the delinquent Razor. Later he and Colin escape by use of a stolen car when the police arrive. Colin refuses to answer Razor's questions and they make their escape to New York. Colin finds Cord but, refusing to believe him, Cord shuts his garage door. Colin rips it off, and Cord remembers a bit of Quantom's prophecy: "He will be strong, that's how you will know." Colin and Razor meet Cord's wife and two daughters, one of which Colin falls for. Around that time Danny and the others arrive at Cross' base, where they are held captive with the newly awakened hero Renata Soliz. Cord takes Colin to the base and they invade it. Soliz and Danny take out most of the guards and Colin get's captured. Danny runs in, seeing Colin being tested on similar to how he was. Cross enters with Joseph, who reveals himself to be Danny's father (Paul Joseph Cooper), the real Quantom, and the other to be Facade stuck looking like Quantom. Danny takes a gun and threatens to shoot. Joseph becomes grave and tells him to put it down. Danny replies there are no bullets inside, and Joseph says that doesn't matter. Danny then slaps him with the butt of his gun. He remembers when he threw a rock at the wall and it seemed to be moving slow but it exploded on the wall as blood spills onto the floor from Joseph's head.
14917564	/m/03h1fm4	2nd Chance	James Patterson	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Homicide Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer is still recovering from the recent loss of her partner and is just returning to the force when she is called in to investigate a series of murders that include an 11-year old girl and an elderly woman. Through her investigations she discovers a connection to a jail-hate gang called Chimera. After another police officer is sniper-killed by a sniper and then her boss is murdered, the trail leads to the ex-cop Frank Coombs. To further complicate all of the Women's Murder Club ladies, Jill is pregnant, Claire becomes a target for the Chimera killer, Cindy starts dating the murdered girl's pastor and Lindsay's father shows up. Finally after chasing the trail of Frank Coombs, Lindsay trails the real killer, Rusty Coombs - the son of Frank Coombs, to a tower on a college campus where he has opened fire and killed several students. Rusty is getting revenge for all that has happened to his father and no longer cares if he lives or dies. Lindsay kills Rusty at the college tower. As an epilogue, Lindsay receives a postcard from her father in Mexico saying sorry for lying to her about his crooked past and that he has bought a boat and named it Buttercup, his pet name for her. This is a story with the theme of revenge. it:Seconda chance (romanzo)
14923342	/m/03h1rns	The Creationists		1993	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The expanded edition covers the history of creationism from the time of Darwin to the present day. It first describes early opposition during Darwin's lifetime, then George Frederick Wright's conversion from Christian Darwinist to Fundamentalist opponent and how creationism influenced the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy and the rise of prominent populist creationists such as William Jennings Bryan. It then narrates the careers of two early, self-taught, 'scientific' creationists, Harry Rimmer and George McCready Price. It then chronicles the growth of creationist organisations in the mid 20th century, such as the Religion and Science Association, the Deluge Geology Society, the Evolution Protest Movement (in the United Kingdom), and the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), the latter moving almost immediately in the direction of theistic evolution. The book then narrates the young Earth creationist backlash against the ASA's modernism, with Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb, Jr.'s publication of The Genesis Flood and the forming of the Creation Research Society, which created the creation science movement. It continues with Morris' founding of the Institute for Creation Research and the Seventh-day Adventist Church's founding of the Geoscience Research Institute. The book finally describes the influence of creationism in churches and in countries outside the United States, then the rise of the intelligent design movement, before returning to the subject of creationism's global impact.
14924225	/m/067_w_n	Curse of Xanathon	Douglas Niles			 The Duke of Rhoona has begun issuing strange proclamations, such as decreeing that all taxes are to be paid in beer, horses are to be ridden backwards, and all dwarves are to be shaved and stretched to make them "presentable to human sensibilities". Duke Stephan is suffering from a curse which was brought upon him by Xanathon, chief cleric of the Ethengar Khanate immigrants living inside Rhoona's walls, and Stephen's own treacherous guard captain, Draco Stormsailer. The player characters must discover the nature of the Duke's affliction. They will need to learn how to lift the curse from the Duke of Rhoona, as he is needed to lead his troops against an invading army. They will need to find the antidote for the curse, battling Xanathon, Draco, and their minions to achieve their goal. Lawrence Schick, in his sourcebook of roleplaying games, Heroic Worlds, describes the module as a town adventure in which the players are tasked with solving a mystery in order to remove a curse. The cursed town is threatened by a dwarven army, and the player characters must save the town.
14924435	/m/03h1t2d	Sakkara	Michael Carroll	2006-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sakkara is a superpowers research facility in the heart of the United States. The adolescent superhumans of The Quantum Prophecy return; this time their covers are blown and they are forced to flee to the US in order to protect themselves from attack and publicity. The facility that they hide in is thought to be secret, until its name is known around the world following a terrorist attack in which the supervillain-turned-assassin leaves the word "Sakkara" spraypainted on the wall of an airport after killing dozens of people. Someone among the "New Heroes" or "old heroes" has broken protocol, but everyone is a suspect. As more and more attacks begin to occur, the pattern emerges that they are going after Trutopians. Trutopians are an international organisation designed to give each of its members security and equality, but with reduced comfort and freedoms. It is revealed that they are run by the antagonist of the last novel, Victor Cross, who is really just trying to "take over the world". The "New Heroes" learn more about their power and discover other heroes too. Colin learns that he actually inherited his powers from his mom, Energy, instead of his father, Titan. The heroes then learn that Yvonne was the one leaking information and in the end Solomon Cord, or Paragon, dies from a decision made by Colin.
14932116	/m/03h238l	Ha'penny	Jo Walton	2007-10-02	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is a mystery thriller set inside an alternate history in which the United Kingdom made peace with Adolf Hitler in 1941. It's 1949 and Britain has slid into fascist dictatorship. When a bomb explodes in a London suburb, Scotland Yard Inspector Peter Carmichael is assigned to the case. He finds a web of conspiracy and a plot to murder both Britain's new Prime Minister and Adolf Hitler, during the latter's Friendship visit to London. Carmichael's professional ethics became compromised during a previous case involving the aristocratic and political establishment, which may affect his ability to handle the case at hand. Life is also complicated for Viola Lark, who abandoned the upper class environment of her family and lost touch with her five very different sisters (inspired by the real-life Mitford sisters) when she chose to become an actress. Viola is given the role of a lifetime and hard decisions to make, as she becomes caught up in family politics. The first "Small Change" novel, Farthing, was released in August 2006 by Tor Books. A third novel in the series, Half a Crown, came out in September 2008, also from Tor.
14932225	/m/03h23k1	Half a Crown	Jo Walton	2008-09-30	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is a thriller set inside an alternate history in which the United Kingdom made peace with Adolf Hitler and the United States did not become involved in World War II. The British government has become fascist and authoritarian. Peter Carmichael, formerly a police inspector at Scotland Yard, is now head of the secret police called "The Watch". He must deal with political intrigue by those jealous of his position and safeguard his teenage ward while keeping secret his illicit activities helping Jews and dissidents who wish to flee the country.
14936899	/m/03h2brt	The Fifth Son of the Shoemaker	Donald Corley	1930	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book concerns the story of a Russian family of hereditary shoemakers who have immigrated from Moscow to New York, their establishment in a humble East Side cellar, rise from rags to riches, and travels around the world.
14942900	/m/03h2ljp	London Calling	Edward Bloor	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Martin Conway is an unhappy 7th-grade student at a conservative New Jersey prep school, All Souls Preparatory, that reveres the memory of such famous graduates as General "Hollerin' Hank" Lowery. His self-sacrificing mother doesn't listen and his father is an alcoholic and is seldom around. Their marriage is falling apart. The only person he is able to talk to is his grandmother. Martin is bullied both by students and teachers, his grades are falling and he has few friends, and is finally involved in an altercation with one of the school's most famous students, the grandson of an important World War II veteran. Almost simultaneously, Martin's grandmother dies. Martin becomes seriously depressed, and rarely leaves his basement room. In her will, though, she leaves him an antique radio. When he tries it out, its hidden static is ghostly signal is also a portal to the deadly past of the London Blitz. At first Martin believes he is having nightmares vision related to his stressful situation, but with the help of his older sister, an Ivy League graduate, he researches historical details from his visions. When they turn out to be true, he realizes that he is really traveling through time. A child with a British accent emerges through the radio static, and eventually leads Martin back to the streets of WWII-era England. Jimmy Harker is a boy in desperate need of help, but the help he needs will require more heart and courage from Martin than he ever knew he had. Martin complies with Jimmy's request and sets forth on an adventure in history, revenge and redemption, couched in serious questions about death and the afterlife. He begins to discover secrets he didn't know existed, and finds answers to questions people wanted to keep hidden. What he learns ends up changing the historical record on General Lowery, bringing peace to an old man's life, and altering a number of lives for the better, including his own. Another important plot theme is that of how family history and what we want to believe about people doesn't always match up with reality.
14950169	/m/03h2tzy	Cocaine Blues	Kerry Greenwood	1989		 After the Honourable Phryne Fisher solves a country-house jewel robbery in record time, she is asked by Colonel and Mrs. Andrews to look into the matter of their daughter in Australia, who they fear may be being poisoned by her husband. Having grown bored with English social life, Phryne is happy to have an excuse to put off making decisions about her future for the next few months or so, and promptly relocates to Melbourne.
14951085	/m/03h2vpf	Gemma Doyle Trilogy	Libba Bray		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story revolves around Gemma Doyle, a young woman sent from her home in British India to the mysterious boarding school, Spence Academy. There she meets Ann, Felicity, and Pippa, three other remarkable young women and together they discover the dark past of their school. Gemma learns of her own heritage and the magical powers she possesses. The three books in the trilogy span just one year, with A Great and Terrible Beauty beginning in June 1895 and The Sweet Far Thing ending in June 1896.
14953150	/m/03h2x08	Sword Quest	Nancy Yi Fan	2008-01-22	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 There is war in the kingdom of birds, which was started by the prehistoric birds known as the archaeopteryxes. In the only place where birds are still safe, a magical island called Kauria, the King, Pepheroh the Phoenix, orders his birds to make a sword as a result of what the Great Spirit tells him. Once the sword had been forged, a tear gem from the Great Spirit, a godly entity watching over birds, lands in the hilt of the sword, and seven other gems, each a color of the rainbow, are scattered around the world. These gems are the Leasorn Gems, and hold clues to where the magical kingdom of Kauria and the sword are found. A bird destined to be a hero will take hold of the sword at the fifth full moon three years from then and rescue the warring world. However, should the sword fall into evil hands, the world of birdkind shall be in peril. Hungrias the Second, Ancient Wing (or king) of the archaeopteryxes, sends Sir Maldeor, his top knights, and his son, Prince Phaethon, to a tribe of doves, who have the orange Leasorn Gem. The mission fails, as a monstrous four-winged bird/reptile creature attacks and eats Phaethon, who was in possession of the orange gem. The creature bursts into blue flames and Maldeor sends his troops to kill all the remaining doves. However, a dove named Irene manages to escape and lays an egg. When the egg hatches to reveal a fully feathered hatchling, she names him Wind-Voice. Meanwhile, the four-winged creature, named Yin Soul, is stuck between the world of the living and that of the dead, and can only escape if he can find the body of a likely hero that can get the Hero Sword, or else he will die a painful death. Yin Soul attempts to take control of Wind-Voice, but Wind-Voice sees through Yin Soul's illusion and refuses. Before meeting Yin Soul, it was revealed that Wind-Voice's mother had been killed, and he was made a slave. Wind-Voice later meets a wood-pecker scribe named Ewingerale, nicknamed Winger. Winger had been imprisoned after his tribe was destroyed. The archaeptyx were planning on fattening Winger up and eating him for supper. Wind-Voice breaks Winger out, is attacked by an archaepteryx guard, and is brought to Hungrias, where he is put over a spit to cook for supper. On the spit, after he faints from the heat and is brought to Yin Soul's realm, Wind-Voice escapes and meets Fisher, a battle scarred crane, in a tribe in the surrounding swamp, as well as Winger. Fisher begins to teach Wind-Voice how to fight with a sword and later tells him of the Leasorn Gems. Wind-Voice is determined to find the gems and finding the hero, who will bring peace to the world. Before leaving to find the gems, Fisher gives them a map to finding Fleydur, who will help them on their journey. Also coming along is Stormac; a myna who can't resist his temptation for riches. Wind-Voice, Winger, and Stormac meet a golden eagle, who is revealed to be Fleydur. The group head out into the desert and battle a group of an archaeopteryx, who are in possession of the red Leasorn. Winger and Fleydur manage to escape with the gem, but Stormac is mortally wounded and is later found by a group of parrots, who heal him with the use of there green leasorn. Wind-Voice has been captured and taken to the castle of the archaeopteryx, where Maldeor is the new emperor. Maldeor is revealed to be Yin Soul's apprentice and had wing chopped off and then exiled by Hungrias for losing Prince Phaethon. After nearly dying in a blizzard, Yin Soul summons Maldeor and gives him a new, bat like wing. But the wing needs a potion every new moon to keep it going. Maldeor goes to Hungrias, takes the throne and then kills him. Maldeor throws Wind-Voice in the dungeon and later attempts to have him executed by tying him to a log and throwing him off a waterfall. Wind-Voice survives and meets up with Stormac, who now has the green Learson gem. The two go to Sword Mountain and gain the purple gem. Meanwhile Winger and Fleydur are heading over the ocean the land of the penguins in search of the teal Learson. Along the way Fleydur reveals that he is actually a prince exiled from his home of Sword Mountain because of his belief that music can bring joy and healing to the world. Wind-Voice and Stormac are also heading over the ocean and end up in the Island of the Pirates, were they find the blue Learson gem and on Byrdsfish Island; the seagull tribe. Stormac is attacked and killed by a group of pirates lead by Captain Rag-Foot and Wind-Voice heads alone to Kauria. Yin Soul attempts to take control of Maldeor but is rebuffed and left to die. Later Maldeor launches an attack for Kauria, but ends up in the land of the penguins and most of the forces are defeated or killed. Maldeor and his remaining army head to Kauria, where he sees a recently reunited Wind-Voice, Winger, and Fleydur. An army of free birds arrive to battle against the archaeptyx forces. Wind-Voice and Maldeor both head to the island and the two begin to battle. Wind-Voice escapes from the fight and manages to find the Hero's Sword, but doesn't take it. Maldeor however has taken a false Hero's Sword and attacks Wind-Voice. The real Hero's Sword appearance in Wind-Voices claws and Maldeor is killed when the temple that they are in begins to fall apart. The archaeopteryx army leave and begin to form their own tribes and Fleydur is taken back into his family. Wind-Voice is renamed Swordbird by King Pepheroh and it is revealed that Wind-Voice's father is the Great Spirit. The clues on the Leasorn Gems disappear and the day that Wind-Voice became Swordbird is made a holiday called the Bright Moon Festival. Swordbird reveals to Winger in a dream that he too was killed by the rubble and that he is now a spirit and a guardian of peace, and will help any that summon him.
14958988	/m/03h2_zq	The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous				 Lysander Hawkley has a knack for trying to help the helpless, even if the helpless is a bored housewife. After his father refuses to lend him any money, his friend, Ferdie, comes up with a scheme to make money out of his womanizing: to help wives make their wandering husbands jealous. The plan, in theory, is simple: to make bored husbands realise why they had fallen in love with their wives in the first place.
14963606	/m/03h33z_	Cinna	Pierre Corneille			 Act 1 - Emperor Augustus has executed Toranius, the father of young Emilie whom he considers nonetheless like a daughter. Emilie, in love with Cinna, asks him to save her honor by killing Augustus. In exchange, she will marry Cinna. With the help of his friend, Maxime, Cinna plots to kill the emperor. Act 2 - Augustus, tired of ruling the Roman Empire, seeks the advice of his friends Maxime and Cinna. Should he renounce his rule? Because he desires the love of Emilie, Cinna advises Augustus to keep his throne so he can go forward with his assassination plot. Augustus thanks the two men by offering them important government posts and land, and he even offers Emilie to Cinna as wife. Act 3 - Meanwhile, Maxime is also in love with Emilie, and when Cinna reveals his true reason for advising Augustus to stay on the throne, Maxime is overcome with jealousy. Maxime's servant, Euphorbe, suggests that Maxime betray Cinna and go to Caesar with the assassination plot so that he may receive Emilie in marriage; however, Maxime does not listen. Cinna is faced with a dilemma: the goodness and generosity of Augustus has caused him to question his devotion to Emilie. He nonetheless decides to go through with the assassination attempt to please his lover. Act 4 - Euphorbe, claiming to be sent by Maxime, goes to August to reveal everything. Caesar's wife, Livie, tells him to pardon Cinna in order to gain glory and respect, but Augustus is apparently deaf to these arguments and calls Cinna before him. Maxime goes to find Emilie to declare his love, but Emilie pushes him away and accuses him of betraying Cinna. Act 5 - Emilie finds Cinna before Augustus. She declares her guilt and tries to clear Cinna's name by saying that she seduced him to do her will. Cinna tries to protect Emilie by declaring her story to be false. Finally, Maxime enters and declares that he and Euphorbe had made the entire story up. Faced with those he holds dear, Augustus decides to pardon them all. He proposes that his enemies take the government positions and lands that he offered them prior to the scandal, and they all accept and thank him graciously.
14971255	/m/03h3b_y	The Golden Keel	Desmond Bagley	1963	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Peter Halloran, a migrant to South Africa after the end of World War II has established himself as a successful and profitable designer and builder of yachts and small watercraft. Life is good – business is good, and he has a beautiful wife and daughter. One day, in the local yacht club bar, he meets Walker, an alcoholic ex-soldier, who tells him an improbable tale of a hidden treasure. When Walker was a prisoner of war in Fascist Italy, he managed to escape with a small band of Allied prisoners, including an Afrikaner named Coertze and some Italian partisans, and waged a guerilla campaign for several months in the hills of Liguria against the Nazi Germans. Towards the end of the war, their band ambushed a truck convoy, which contained a massive treasure in gold bars, jewels and even the State Crown of Ethiopia. Rather than turn the treasure over to the authorities, they hid the trucks in an abandoned mine and sealed the entrance. Now that the war is over, the treasure is for the claiming, provided that they can think of some way to smuggle it past Italian customs. Halloran thinks little of the tale until several years later, when life has turned sour. His wife having been killed in a traffic accident, he finds that he needs a change in life. A chance re-encounter with Walker leads to a meeting with Coertze, and with the three men agreeing to a partnership to recover the treasure. Walker and Coertze know where it is, and Halloran has the perfect solution to getting it out of the country. But questions start to worry Halloran – such as why only Walker and Coertze survived out of the much larger group of guerillas, and why Walker is so terrified of Coertze? The mystery deepens as the men travel to Tangiers, and from thence to ports around the Mediterranean and find their steps dogged by unsavory characters. It is soon clear that they are not the only ones after the treasure.
14971361	/m/03h3c2p	Wyatt's Hurricane	Desmond Bagley	1966	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 David Wyatt is a white West Indian, originally from St Kitts by way of Grenada, and is a meteorologist working with the United States Navy's “Hurricane hunter” flights researching storms and severe weather patterns. He is based out of San Fernandez, a fictional Caribbean island nation with a history and political background strikingly similar to Haiti. Wyatt is convinced that Hurricane Mabel will strike San Fernandez head-on, with a storm surge that will flood its capital of St Pierre, potentially killing thousands. The paranoid, megalomaniacal dictator of San Fernandez, General Serrurier, will hear nothing of it. A hurricane has not struck San Fernandez in over a hundred years, and he has much more important things to worry about – such as an armed revolt against his rule. As civil war erupts, Wyatt struggles to convince his superiors, the government, and eventually the rebels that the hurricane will be their most serious problem..
14971451	/m/03h3c3q	Running Blind	Desmond Bagley	1970	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ex-MI-6 spy Alan Stewart is coerced by his former masters to undertake a very simple mission – to deliver a small parcel to a man in Iceland. The mission should be simple for Stewart, as he happens to be fluent in Icelandic, and has an Icelandic girlfriend. However, immediately things go very wrong, very quickly. Soon after arrival, he is forced to kill a KGB agent who tried to take the package from him. When he tries to deliver the parcel, he realizes that he has been double-crossed, and that his former boss is now a double agent. Stewart sets off on a desperate race overland across some of the world’s most rugged, desolate and dramatic scenery, pursued by the KGB, the CIA, and his own people, who now think that he has become a traitor. The secret is with the mysterious parcel – and the opposition is more than willing to kill him to prevent him from discovering what that secret is.
14971527	/m/03h3c63	Bahama Crisis	Desmond Bagley	1982	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tom Mangan is a wealthy white Bahamian, and owner/president of a company operating resort hotels, marinas and car rental companies in the Bahamas. His business is successful and growing, and he has a beautiful wife and two children. Things could not be better. One day, he is visited by an old friend from his college days at the Harvard Business School, Billy Cunningham, and his beautiful younger cousin Debbie. The Cunninghams are owners of the Cunningham Corporation, a major conglomerate based in Texas. The Cunningham Corporation wants to invest heavily in developing the tourist industry in the Bahamas, and Mangan agrees to form a partnership with them. However, soon afterwards, disaster strikes. The yacht with Mangan's wife and one of his daughters mysteriously disappears, and the body of his daughter washes up on a beach hundreds of miles from where the yacht should have been. A rash of mysterious events strike the tourist industry, ranging from an unprecedented labor dispute and riot, Legionnaire's Disease striking the hotels, baggage carousels running amok at the airport, arson at an amusement center, and an oil slick from an oil tanker where it should not have been. As Mangan attempts to track down the murderer of his wife, he discovers that these seemingly unrelated events are all connected, and that the plot involves the future of the Bahamas itself as a nation.
14971627	/m/03h3cc8	The Enemy	Desmond Bagley	1977	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Malcolm Jaggard is, on the surface, a marketing research consultant. However, his real job is with an unnamed government department in industrial espionage counter-intelligence. After he becomes engaged to genetics researcher Penelope Ashton, on a whim he runs a computer search on her father, the wealthy and respectable entrepreneur George Ashton. Much to his amazement, he finds that any and all information regarding George Ashton is classified at an astronomically high level, and that he is not regarded as having a “need to know”. Furthermore, the very act of researching information on George Ashton sends alarm bells ringing in multiple departments in the Whitehall hierarchy. If this was not bad enough, a mysterious attacker throws acid in the face of his fiancée’s younger sister, causing the mysterious George Ashton to flee England. Without being allowed to know more about Ashton, Jaggard is sent on a desperate search to find him, racing the KGB to the forests of Sweden, and eventually to a remote island in the Scottish Highlands, where he finds that the true enemy is much closer to home.
14975869	/m/03h3gvj	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	Stieg Larsson	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In December 2002, Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of the Swedish political magazine Millennium, loses a libel case involving allegations about billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. He is sentenced to three months (deferred) in prison, and ordered to pay hefty damages and costs. He is invited to meet Henrik Vanger, the retired CEO of the Vanger Corporation, unaware that Vanger has checked into his personal and professional history; the investigation of Blomkvist's circumstances has been carried out by Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant but deeply troubled young woman who works as a surveillance agent with Milton Security. Vanger promises Blomkvist considerable financial reward and solid evidence against Wennerström, ostensibly for writing the Vanger family history, but really for discovering what happened to Harriet. Vanger believes that his great-niece Harriet, who disappeared 36 years earlier, was murdered by a member of the family. He has been trying to find out what happened to her ever since. Harriet disappeared during a family gathering at the Vanger estate on Hedeby Island, when the island was temporarily cut off from the mainland by a traffic accident. Blomkvist moves to the island and begins his research into the history of the Vanger family and Harriet's disappearance. Lisbeth Salander is under the care of a legal guardian, Holger Palmgren, the only person she trusts. When he suffers a stroke, he is replaced by lawyer Nils Bjurman, who takes advantage of his position to sexually abuse her. After using a hidden camera to record Bjurman raping her, she takes her revenge, torturing him and threatening to ruin him unless he gives her full control of her life and finances. She also brands him with a tattoo identifying him as a rapist to make sure he never harms anyone again. While searching through the evidence, Blomkvist decides that he needs a research assistant, and Vanger's lawyer mentions Salander. When he sees the report she prepared for Vanger, Blomkvist realises that Salander has hacked into his computer. Salander agrees to assist in the investigation, and eventually becomes his lover. Blomkvist and Salander soon realise that they are on the trail of a serial killer who has been preying on women for decades. When looking through old photographs, Blomkvist realises that they contain a clue to the murderer's identity. After an unseen assailant tries to kill him, Blomkvist becomes suspicious of Harriet's brother, Martin, and goes to his house. Martin has expected him, however, and takes him prisoner. Martin reveals that he was initiated as a teenager into rape and murder by his late father, Gottfried, who had also molested him. Martin brags about murdering dozens of women, but denies killing his sister. Martin tries to kill Blomkvist, but Salander arrives just in time and saves Blomkvist's life. Martin flees in his car, pursued by Salander on her motorbike. He collides head-on into a truck and dies. By following a trail of clues, Blomkvist and Salander discover that Harriet is still alive and living in Australia. Blomkvist flies there and meets Harriet, who tells him that her father had repeatedly raped her until she killed him in self-defense; Martin saw her do it, and began sexually abusing her until he was sent away to boarding school. She saw him on the day of the accident on the Hedeby Island bridge, and asked her cousin Anita to smuggle her out of Sweden in order to get away from him. Blomkvist persuades Harriet to return to Sweden, where she reunites with her great-uncle, who makes plans for her to take the position of CEO of the Vanger Corporation. Blomkvist accompanies Salander at the funeral of her mother, who has just died. Salander also tells him that, as a child, she had tried to kill her father by setting him on fire. Henrik Vanger gives Blomkvist the promised evidence against Wennerström, which turns out to be useless. However, Salander has already hacked Wennerström's computer and has discovered that his crimes go far beyond what Blomkvist documented. Using her evidence, Blomkvist prints an exposé and book which ruins Wennerström and catapults Millennium to national prominence. Meanwhile, Salander steals more than 2.4 billion Euros from Wennerström's secret bank account. Blomkvist and Salander spend Christmas together in his holiday retreat, and Salander admits to herself that she is in love. She goes to Blomkvist's house with a present for him, but retreats on seeing Blomkvist with his longtime lover and business partner, Erika Berger. Heartbroken, she throws the gift into a skip and leaves the country. As a postscript, Salander continues to monitor Wennerström, and after six months anonymously informs a lawyer in Miami of his whereabouts. He is found in Marbella, dead, shot three times in the head.
14976257	/m/03h3h8g	Socks	Beverly Cleary	1973	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is told from the perspective of a tabby cat with four white paws who lives with a young married couple, Bill and Marilyn Bricker. Initially, Socks and the Bricker couple are alone, and Socks receives a great deal of love and attention as a result. However, the Brickers soon have a baby son and Socks begins to feel as though he has been forgotten. In order to take care of the new baby, Socks receives less attention than he normally would, and even ends up living in the garage at one time when his behavior is misinterpreted. He has several misadventures in the course, culminating in a fight with another neighborhood cat. After this takes place, the Brickers realize they have been so wrapped up with the new baby that they have neglected Socks. Later on, Socks discovers that he has a new friend in little Charles and a new way to be part of the family.
14977169	/m/03h3h_m	The City of Dreaming Books	Walter Moers	2004	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Optimus Yarnspinner, or Hildegunst von Mythenmetz in the German version, is a Lindworm (dinosaur) who inherits his authorial godfather's possessions, including a perfect story written by an unknown author. An aspiring author himself, he travels to Bookholm, the city of dreaming books, in search of the unknown writer. Upon arrival, Yarnspinner falls in love with the city because of its literary appreciation. But beneath Bookholm stretch vast labyrinthine catacombs in which many valuable books lie hidden – but also dangers of unimaginable sorts: Various kinds of monstrous insects and other inconceivable horrors, the deadly Toxicotomes – books which can injure and kill anyone who touches them, blood-thirsty book hunters, and worst of all, the Shadow King. Yarnspinner is hoping this city of literature can fulfill his hunger for inspiration and help him solve the riddle of the mystery writer and his amazing story. Unfortunately the first real spark of hope gets a shower of questions when he is inexplicably warned for lurking danger and given the advice to flee while he still can. He comes into contact with a publisher in a cafe who directs him to Pfistomel Smyke. Smyke happens to control the entire book trade in Bookholm as well as much of the trade throughout Zamonia. When Yarnspinner travels to his house on 333 Darkman Street, Smyke reveals his plan to completely eradicate all forms of art in Zamonia. Then he is tricked into picking up a poisoned book and falls unconscious. He awakes in the famous catacombs of Bookholm, one of the most dangerous places in Zamonia.
14984064	/m/03h3p8n	The King's Peace	Jo Walton		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Sulien ap Gwien, a woman warrior and daughter of the King of a small part of the island of Tir Tanagiri, is brutally raped by six invading Jarnsmen and her brother is murdered. While travelling to the capital to request help from Urdo, the High King, she happens upon a battle between some more Jarnsmen and some of the King's soldiers. Sulien proves her skill in battle and, drawn in part by the young King's leadership and charisma, she enlists in the cavalry. The novel follows her journey up the ranks, the battles against the invading Jarnsmen and Isarnagans, and Urdo's efforts to unite the many kingdoms of Tir Tanagiri and restore peace and law to the land.
14991911	/m/03h3_wx	Fortune's Fool	Mercedes Lackey	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Fortune’s Fools is a story involving Ekaterina (Katya), youngest daughter of the Sea King and Prince Sasha of Led Belarus, seventh son of King Pieter. The novel starts with Katya being sent by her father to investigate rumours of bad news on the island of Nippon. Unlike the majority of Sea People, Katya is magically amphibious and is used by her father to spy on Drylanders (humans). Due to tasting dragon’s blood, Katya is able to speak with animals and is also able to speak and understand foreign languages. In Nippon, Katya is able to help a kitsune stop an evil sorceress from conquering the island and gains a valuable gift. The gift is a origami crane that can be sent to pass messages to people Katya knows or magically target someone who she needs. The Sea King sends her on another reconnaissance mission to Led Belarus, under the suspicion that it is too quiet and is a target for evil forces. Katya finds out that Prince Sasha is using his powers as a Seventh Son, a Fortunate Fool, and a Songweaver to subtly manipulate the Tradition into making Led Belarus a peaceful and prosperous kingdom. As the pair has no royal duties to fulfil, they decide to spend time with each other and fall in love. Soon Katya is sent on another mission, to investigate the disappearance of magical maidens near the castle of the Katschei. In disguise, Katya is kidnapped and taken to the castle by a Jinn. Since he has taken over the castle, the Tradition forces him to kidnap young woman, the Jinn uses that to his advantage and kidnaps magical girls so he can take their magic. Although the Jinn is able to sense when the girls use magic, Katya tries to convince the others to escape. She sends out her paper bird to seek help from the nearest Champions. When no sign of Katya arrives, Sasha decides to go after her despite not knowing her location. On the guidance of some witches, Sasha travels to the forest where Baba Yaga resides because she has something he needs. Sasha pretends to be a deaf-mute and becomes Baba Yaga’s temporary servant. Baba Yaga sets him up with the task of cleaning her stables where he meets Sergi, the Humpbacked Horse and frees him along with Baba Yaga’s steed, a Wise (intelligent) goat, and her tracker, a Wise Wolf. During the escape, Sasha ends up in the Kingdom of the Copper Mountain and is able to convince its Queen to help him. She sends him towards the Sea King and the Sea King sends him to two Dragons, the champions who found Katya’s bird. Meanwhile, Katya and the growing number of girls are able to work out they can use the Law of Names to re-seal the Jinn into his bottle. However finding the bottle itself proves difficult in a castle guarded by men and the Jinn himself. Sasha and the dragons, Gina and Adamant, try to work out a plan to save the girls and stop the Jinn. The trio also manage to convince the Queen of the Copper Mountain to lead them aid. Using Sergi as a messenger, the captives and the rescuers are able to work out a plan of attack. Katya sends the girls to escape via tunnels dug by the Copper Mountain subjects and sets out to confront the Jinn with help from the dragons and Sasha. The battle becomes a stalemate until the Queen appears to lend them the power of Earth. Katya seals the Jinn in his bottle and has Sergi send him back to the City of Brass. In the epilogue of the story, the castle of Katschei becomes the Belarus Chapter of the Champions Order of Glass Mountain. The majority of the cast are affiliated with the order and spend their time living happily ever after.
14997696	/m/03h466q	The City Wit	Richard Brome			 Master Crasy is a London merchant who has suffered a decline in fortune; he is honest and generous to a fault, and has encumbered himself with a load of debt. In the play's opening scene, a dinner is being held at his house for his debtors and creditors; the plan is that the two sides will reach an agreement that will keep Crasy from bankruptcy. Crasy himself, however, hesitates to join the dinner; he sits poring over his "empty Money-bags, Bills, Bonds, & Bookes of accomptes, &c." and brooding on his decline. His apprentice Jeremy then brings him news that the dinner has turned into a disaster: Crasy's mother-in-law Pyannet Sneakup, a shrew and harridan, has denounced him to the assembled company as a hopeless case: "Her mischievous tongue has over-thrown the good / Was meant to you." The woman herself enters, and reveals herself to be a ceaseless talker who browbeats her husband Sneakup into silence in her presence. Several of Crasy's debtors linger, including the pedant Sarpego, the courtiers Rufflit and Sir Andrew Ticket, and the merchant Mr. Linsey-Wolsey. Crasy makes a last attempt to get them to pay what they owe him, but without success. Crasy announces that he is leaving on a journey, a final attempt to restore his fortunes; he gives his apprentice Jeremy his freedom. Crasy's wife Josina returns to her parents' home. Crasy's departure, however, is a ruse; he remains in London to seek his revenge and the restoration of his credit. Disguised as a crippled ex-soldier, he robs Sarpego at sword-point and recovers the ten pounds the pedant owes him. Crasy's next disguise is more subtle: with a false beard and a gown, he masquerades as a physician, "Pulsefeel," who seeks out Josina as his new patient. She shows no remorse over her husband's fall, and is ready to move on to new fortunes and pleasures. Josina is handicapped by her illiteracy: she cannot read the love-letters and solicitations that Rufflit and Ticket send her. Crasy, as "Pulsefeel," promises to send a confidential servant to help her. Crasy the phony doctor is approached by Crack, a boy pimp in the service of a young woman calling herself Mistess Tryman. Tryman is a fallen woman who masquerades as a wealthy young widow, just come to town from Cornwall; she is instantly the target of fortune hunters, and has found a residence in the house of Mr. Linsey-Wolsey. A woman in her position can use a doctor as a confdiant; and Crasy quickly joins with Tryman and Crack, three allies in confidence tricks and chicanery. Linsey-Wolsey plans to marry Tryman himself, and lays out money in pursuit of that goal; but his neighbor Pyannet Sneakup barges in to disrupt things, with a goal of winning the supposedly wealthy widow for her son Toby. Tryman feigns sickness, and tempts her would-be exploiters with the bequests of her last will and testament. Toby Sneakup has recently won a place at Court; Crasy masquerades as a Court messenger to send false messages back and forth among the characters, playing on their greed and ambition. The talkative Pyannet admits to have cheated Crasy of valuable jewels; the disguised Crasy manages to reclaim them as they pass as intended bribes and gratuities. Crasy manages yet another disguise: Doctor "Pulsefeel" sends "Footwell" (Crasy-as-dancing-master) to Josina as her servant. Josina is eager to have a courtly lover, and is willing to accept either Ticket or Rufflit; "Footwell" pretends to be her go-between, but actually works to frustrate the intentions of all concerned. He inspires Josina to send gems and jewelry to the courtiers, and vice versa...only to intercept the gifts himself. He helps Ticket climb to Josina's balcony for an assignation...only to supend him in mid-air, so that Rufflit can beat him with a stick. He deludes Pyannet into believing that her husband Sneakup is cheating on her, making her a "cucquean" (a female cuckold); she goes to court to find Sneakup and beat him with a truncheon. The tangle of confusion and trickery comes to a head in the final act. Linsey-Wolsey, irate at losing the widow Tryman, apprehends Crack and threatens to turn the boy over to the beadles for whipping; and Crack agrees to expose all. At the Sneakup house, a marriage contract between Tryman and Toby Sneakup is arranged, and a marriage masque is rehearsed in which the real situation is revealed, to everyone's discomfort. Linsey-Wolsey bursts in with Crack, planning to expose Tryman as a fraud &mdash; but the exposé is even more extreme than expected, when Tryman lifts "her" skirts to show his trousers underneath. "Tryman" is actually Crasy's apprentice Jeremy in disguise, and Crack the supposed boy pimp is Jeremy's brother; they have been acting their roles to help Crasy recover his fortune and reputation. (It is in this sense that the play's subtitle, "the woman wears the breeches," applies.) Neither Linsey-Wolsey, nor Toby and the Sneakups, want to face public embarrassment over courting a boy in disguise; for all concerned, it is best to let the matter drop. Crasy has cheated his debtors out of the funds they owed him to begin with, and so has evened his score. Josina has not actually committed adultery with either of her would-be lovers, so that a reconciliation with her husband is possible; and Crasy the City Wit has managed to restore himself to his old prosperity once more.
15002237	/m/03h4bcf	Kowloon Tong: A Novel of Hong Kong	Paul Theroux	1997	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 He is made an offer for his textile factory by the shady Mr Hung, and has no choice but to accept, when it is made clear that Mr Hung knows all about the part of Bunt's life that he has kept secret from his mother.
15007383	/m/03h4h5b	Fifth Formers at St. Clare's				 Miss Cornwallis is mistress of the fifth form. Hilary Wentworth is a calm and dignified head-girl. Being in the fifth form means quite a lot of changes - for example, the girls have got studies of their own now, instead of common rooms and dormitories, the first- and second-formers have got to work for them. Two girls use their new power badly - Angela Favorleigh takes advantage of her prettiness and charm and turns the younger girls into willing slaves and so does Mirabel, who is games captain. Some room is made for the second-form - Antoinette, Claudine's little sister, has come to St. Clare's, too, and she proves to be as irrepressible as Claudine. There are three new girls in the fifth form and all of them are unpopular - Anne-Marie, who fancies herself a poet, Felicity Ray, a musical genius, and Alma, a fat girl who suffers from what nowadays would be called an eating disorder. Felicity's parents are very ambitious and, in spite of Miss Theobald's warnings, push their daughter too hard - she is to take a very difficult musical exam and works herself too hard. She starts sleepwalking and the end of the doctor tells Miss Theobald that the girl is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Little Antoinette plays tricks on Angela when she sends for her by putting shoe polish cream in their toast (when Annie-Marrie comes to read one of her poems) and polishes her shoes with her best face cream. One part of the book describes fat Alma stealing food from a store cupboard that Antoinette keeps midnight feast food in. Alison discoveres the cupboard open one day and reports to Claudine (Who owns the cupboard) about it, and Claudine then keeps the key to the cupboard safe. Alma is angry, and plays tricks on Alison. Anne-Marie is suspected by Alison because Alison worships a new teacher, Miss Willcox - and once more, she has to realize that the mistress is not as wonderful as she thinks. Miss Willcox dislikes Anne-Marie (even though Anne-Marie fancies her too and is later on jealous of Alison) and tells her that she cannot write poetry. Anne-Marie isn't jealous of Alison any more, (even though Alison still thinks that Anne-Marie plays tricks on her) takes revenge and traps Miss Willcox - she copies a poem written by Matthew Arnold and when Miss Willcox makes fun of her and the poem, Anne-Marie tells the mistress who wrote the poem. One night is especially exciting, and Mam'zelle is the main character. Anne-Marie is satisfied with her trick on Miss Willcox, but needs to prove to the girls that she is a genius. She knows that Felicity sleepwalks, and tries this out too, by pretending. Felicity also really sleepwalks that night, and the second form hold the midnight feast with the first form. Jane Teal, who is feeling very unwell because of the desire to be in Mirabel's and Angela's good books (and being unsuccessful with Mirabel because Mirabel thinks that Jane rang the fire bell in the middle of her meeting to stop it when it was actually Antoinette, will confess later)tries to run away home, and Alma hopes to get some food from the cupboard if it is left open. Alma also sent an anonymous letter to Mirabel saying that the second form were feasting that night, and will not be playing well against the other lacrosse team in the match the next day. As sports captain, Mirabel visits the dormy of the second form to see if they really were feasting. It is a very exciting night, and solves a few mysteries. Pat and Isabel are minor characters in this book, but at the end they are made head-girls because Hilary will leave St. Clare's and go to India to live with her parents. Alison, Anne-Marie, Angela, and Mirabel all redeem themself at the end of the book.
15011992	/m/03c9wqw	The Battle of the Labyrinth	Rick Riordan		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After being attacked by empousai cheerleaders at his new school, Percy returns to Camp Half-Blood and learns about the Labyrinth; part of the palace of King Minos in Crete that was designed by Daedalus. He also meets the camp's new sword master, Quintus. During a battle drill with Giant Scorpions at the camp, Annabeth and Percy accidentally find an entrance into the Labyrinth. Percy soon learns that Luke had used this entrance before and will try and lead his army through the Labyrinth straight into the heart of Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth reads the prophecy and comes back out of the Big House with a feeling of dread. When Percy and Annabeth privately meet afterwards in Athena's cabin, and Percy asks her if she is okay, she is moved to tears and holds out her arms. Percy hugs her, telling her that she shouldn't worry about whatever she was worrying about. What Percy doesn't know is that Annabeth thinks that Percy is going to die. Using the Labyrinth, Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson, must find Daedalus to prevent Luke from obtaining Ariadne's String; the tool that would allow Luke to navigate the Labyrinth. Percy and his friends encounter Kampê (Campe), a half woman, half-dragon monster, and free her prisoner, Briares the Hekatonkheires (Hundred-Handed One), Tyson's idol. After an encounter with the goddess Hera and a battle at the farm of Geryon, the group is reunited with Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, who blames Percy for the death of his sister Bianca. Percy helps summon the spirit of Bianca, and Nico is convinced to put his grudge behind him by the ghost of his sister. The next day, however, Percy and his friends (without Nico) depart to find Hephaestus, hoping he would know the location of Daedulus. While travelling, the group gets separated, with Percy and Annabeth searching for Hephaestus and Tyson and Grover searching for Pan. After a meeting with Hephaestus, Annabeth and Percy go to Mt. St. Helens. There he finds telekhines, also known as "sea demons". He is discovered by the telkhines, who attack him. Percy finds Annabeth and they have a short argument during which Percy tells Annabeth to flee. Thinking that Percy is the one to die in the prophecy, Annabeth kisses Percy, tells him to be careful, and disappears. In an attempt to escape the telekhines, Percy causes Mt. St. Helens to erupt, pushing him out of the volcano, draining his energy in the process. When he awakens after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, he finds himself in the mythical island inhabited by Calypso. After being treated for burns by Calypso and returning to the mortal world, Percy gets the help he needs from a mortal girl named Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who is able to see through the Mist; the magical veil that makes mortals see things differently than demigods. Grover finally finds Pan, but the god of the wild is dying and wants Grover to tell the other satyrs that they must save the natural world themselves. His spirit passes into all present, the satyr in particular, when he dies. They finally discover that Quintus, the mysterious new sword instructor at Camp Half-Blood, is actually Daedalus, who has attained extended life by putting his life-force, his animus, into a robot body and that Kronos has gained enough strength by Luke. He also possess Luke, using his body as a starter form. Kronos finds out that Nico di Angelo is a son of Hades and that he could be the child of the great prophecy, which states that a child of "Big Three" (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) would decide the fate of the gods. Luke has already reached Daedalus and attained Ariadne's string; using the magical instrument, he sends out Kronos's army to take Camp Half-Blood via the Labyrinth. While fighting a losing battle, the entire camp is either injured or killed, and Daedalus and Briares come out of the Labyrinth to help fight the battle and destroy Kampe. Grover rescues Camp Half-Blood by causing a Panic, which Pan had used once before, to scare away the enemy. After the battle, Daedalus sacrifices himself to close the Labyrinth, which is tied to his life. The camp say good bye to the dead, Nico leaves the camp, Grover travels trying to spread the message of Pan, Percy leaves for his 15th birthday and Nico comes by to offer him a proposal on how to defeat Kronos.
15015016	/m/03h4p4_	The Crows of Pearblossom	Aldous Huxley	1967	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This story, written Christmas of 1944, tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Crow, who live in a cotton-wood tree at Pearblossom. Due to the Rattlesnake living at the bottom of the tree, Mrs. Crow's eggs are never able to hatch. After catching the snake eating her 297th egg that year (she does not work on Sundays), Mrs. Crow requests that Mr. Crow go into the hole and kill the snake. Thinking better of it, Mr. Crow confers with his wise friend, Mr. Owl. Mr. Owl bakes mud into two stone eggs and paints them to resemble Mrs. Crows eggs. These dummy eggs are left in the nest to trick the Rattlesnake, who unknowingly eats them the next day. When the eggs get to his stomach, they cause the Rattlesnake such pain, that he thrashes about, tying himself in knots around the branches. Mrs. Crow goes on to hatch "four families of seventeen children each" and "uses the snake as a clothesline on which to hang the little crows' diapers."
15015546	/m/03h4pfy	The Seven Songs of Merlin	T. A. Barron	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Young Merlin has brought new hope to Fincayra, the enchanted isle that lies between earth and sky. Having finally freed it from the terrible Blight, Merlin and the forest girl Rhia set out to heal the land using the magical Flowering Harp. But Fincayra remains in great danger still — and the first victim of the renewed tide of evil is Merlin's own mother. Merlin's sole hope of saving his mother's life is to master the Seven Songs of Wizardry passed down from the greatest wizard Fincayra has ever known, Merlin's grandfather Tuatha. Only then can he voyage to the Otherworld of the spirits and obtain the precious Elixir of Dagda. Yet to do that he must first succeed where even Tuatha failed — by defeating Balor, the ogre whose merest glance means death. Even more difficult, Merlin must discover the secret of seeing not with his eyes, but with his heart.
15018458	/m/03h4s36	A Heritage and Its History	Ivy Compton-Burnett	1959		 69-year-old Sir Edwin Challoner lives with his extended family in a grand old house in rural Southern England. Unmarried, he has no direct issue, and the person closest to him is his younger brother Hamish, who is also his business associate. Hamish has a wife, Julia, and two sons, Simon, aged 25, and Walter, three years younger, who has dropped out of Oxford to be a poet. When Hamish Challoner dies of a heart condition, Simon prepares to become head of the house, as everyone assumes that it will only be a matter of a few years, if not months, before Sir Edwin also dies. However, the lonely old patriarch surprises them by announcing his impending marriage to their neighbour Rhoda Graham, who is more than 40 years his junior. After the newlyweds have returned from their honeymoon, Simon and Rhoda share a moment of unbridled passion in the old house ("Youth and instinct did their work"), and Rhoda becomes pregnant. As Sir Edwin and his wife have not had any sex during their brief marriage, there is no doubt as to who has sired the child. However, Sir Edwin decides to be its legal father, and swears Simon, Rhoda, and Walter to secrecy about the paternity of Rhoda's baby. When a healthy boy is born, he names him Hamish in honour of his deceased brother. The implications of this arrangement, ostensibly contrived to keep up appearances, are far-reaching. Suddenly Simon finds himself no longer in a position to inherit his uncle's fortune, which has been the only object of his life ever since he was a child, and he only has himself to blame for it. In addition, he feels that the natural order of things has been turned upside down as now his own son is to precede him as heir to the family estate. When, on top of all that, Sir Edwin asks Julia, Walter and Simon to live elsewhere, the latter feels "displaced" as well as "deposed." It occurs to him that, as a sort of recompense, he might marry Fanny Graham, Rhoda's younger sister, and move into the Grahams' large house, almost empty now, which is conveniently close to the family seat. A few weeks after that, the marriage is announced. Almost two decades later, Simon and Fanny Challoner have five children: Graham, aged 18; Naomi, aged 17; Ralph, 15; and two little ones, three-year-old Claud and two-year-old Emma. They still live in the other house together with Julia and Walter, and Sir Edwin Challoner, now approaching 90, is still alive. Hamish has received a good education and been prepared to inherit both the title and the place from who he believes is his natural father. Simon's line of the family, on the other hand, have been leading rather a modest life, with constant half-serious references to the workhouse as their ultimate dwelling place. Then, another four years later, the past suddenly catches up with the Challoners when Hamish and Naomi announce their intention to get married. It falls to Simon to make a late confession in order to prevent incest between two of his children. Walter, always the poet, calls his brother "the hero of a tragedy. It is a pity you are the villain as well." The one person most profoundly shocked by the revelation is Hamish, who, on an impulse, renounces his heritage ("I shall never marry, as I cannot marry Naomi") and goes abroad to escape the familial tension and to acquire new perspectives. When Sir Edwin, now aged 94, feels that he is going to die, he calls for his son, and Hamish arrives home on what turns out to be the eve of his father's death. On his deathbed, the old man makes Hamish promise to take his place as head of the house. It does not take long before the family realize that, as far as the inheritance is concerned, Hamish has actually made two conflicting promises, both under emotional stress, and that he will have to break one of them. After the funeral, Hamish surprises the Challoners by presenting to them Marcia, the woman he is going to marry. Describing herself as "older and plainer and less poor than I ought to be," Marcia dislikes the old house the moment she sets eyes on it. Said to be easily influenced, especially by his wife, Hamish finally cedes his inheritance to Simon, thus breaking the word he has given his deceased father. Relying on his spouse's financial support, it is now his turn, together with Marcia and his mother, to move out of the house and restore it to Simon, who has always considered it rightfully his. ("A few words sent the history of the house into another channel.") However, despite the fact that they are now occupying the position which was originally intended for them, Simon and his legitimate children are plagued by thoughts of the future now that the title and the place have been separated. On the one hand, Hamish's unborn children might object to their father having given up his heritage. Also, after Simon's death, it might seem more natural for his oldest son to succeed him, and that would be Hamish again rather than Graham. Ralph sums up these thoughts by remarking that "there may be troubles ahead." These deliberations are cut short by the arrival of two telegrams from Marcia informing them that Hamish has died after a short illness&mdash;of a heart condition, just like his grandfather&mdash;, and that she is not pregnant. In the end Rhoda and Marcia, who have decided to keep on living together, return to the neighbourhood of the old house. Hamish has bequeathed almost everything to Simon, with only a small allowance for Marcia. Moreover, the title and the place are united again, and Simon Challoner becomes Sir Simon.
15024378	/m/03h4z8b	Opium Season	Joel Hafvenstein	2007-11-01		 Joel Hafvenstein signed up for a year in Afghanistan in the heart of the country's opium trade, running an American-funded aid program to help thousands of opium poppy farmers make a legal living, and to win hearts and minds away from the former Taliban government. The author was soon caught up in the deadly intrigues of Helmand's drug trafficking warlords.
15026395	/m/03h50j9	Son of the Mob	Gordon Korman			 Vince Luca is a 17-year-old in high school. Vince falls in love with FBI agent Bightly's daughter Kendra. Vince gets mixed up in his father's illegal business when he is approached with a tale of woe by "Jimmy Rat." It seems that Jimmy Rat has a severe gambling debt, and some of Vince's "uncles" are planning to cut off his fingers as an encouragement to pay off a debt. Vince ends up loaning Jimmy a small amount of money, thinking that all will be well when he is paid back. At length, Vince realizes that one of his "uncles" is an FBI informant. Knowing that the "uncle" should turn his information in, Vince persuades him to do so and join the witness protection program. In gratitude, the "uncle" explains the situation to Kendra, causing them to resume their relationship. After an explosive argument, Vince's father cannot help but by impressed by Vince's bold action in finding the mole and rescuing Jimmy Rat, and their relationship returns to normal.
15029618	/m/03h551d	The Dream Merchant	Isabel Hoving	2002	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Twelve year old Joshua Cope is contacted by a corporation called Gippart International one day late at night. Joshua and his friend, Bhasvar (Baz) Patel go to Gippart and meet Max Herbert, a talent scout. Josh is sent into a dreamworld to sell products. But dreams also come with nightmares... Umaya, the collective dream of everyone at that point in time, is caught between dreams and reality. Josh, Baz and a fellow associate Teresa cannot get out of the dream-world, where time is running backwards due to a Gippart employee attempting to break into real time rather than dream-time. Along his adventure, Josh meets his dead twin sister Jericho, who has been attempting to get in contact with him for 350 years. But with Jericho comes Lucide, a guardian who makes sure that no one crosses the borders of life and death. The members of this troop find themselves with powers that they cannot explain. Baz, the first to find his powers, can control dream time by listening to the rhythm and matching it, causing it to slow, stop, or even rewind. Teresa changes Umaya with words, influencing people and surroundings to her will, she is the group storyteller. Josh is a thief and can change the very nature of things just by looking at them. However, they are trapped in umaya, the dream-world. The four children must find Tembe at the end of time and fulfill Siparti's last promise to Temberi. They learn about each of Siparti's six kids and put together the clues that each of them hold. After a harrowing ordeal, Josh, Jericho, Baz, Teresa, and Mervin Spratt manage to find their way to the edge of time itself, where the Tembe people live in a crumbling Fortress. The Tembe, descended from Temberi, have been trapped at the edge of time for over 1000 years. Luckily, the Tembe are friendly people, and show the associates how their Fortress is slowly being ripped away into the hurricane whom they have named Satura. Using the powers they gained in the journey, the children manage to find their way through the hurricane back into the real world. Unfortunately, in the end, Jericho decides to return back with Lucide and stay in Umaya.
15036419	/m/03h5gsg	Bagthorpes Abroad	Helen Cresswell		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Mr Bagthorpe sets off to write a script about ghosts and decides to get inspiration from renting a haunted house for the summer holidays. After some mis-understanding, Henry's family realizes that 'abroad' is Wales. With Mrs Fosdyke tagging along with her portable pantry, the latter arrives at Ty Cillion Duon. The house has huge holes in the roof, a blackened sink in the 'kitchen', and of course, ghosts. The Bagthorpes never actually see the ghosts, but do feel them.
15038490	/m/03h5jlz	Periwinkle at the Full Moon Ball	Geneviève Huriet			 A young rabbit named Periwinkle Bellflower ("Agaric Passiflore" in the French version) learns of the summertime Full Moon Ball that will soon take place in the community of Beechwood Grove. Unlike the other rabbits in his family, he cannot dance, and this makes him sad. But, with the help of a conniving magpie, Magda, and a wood pigeon and a frog as his teachers, he soon learns how to do so in a couple of days. On the night of the Ball, Periwinkle takes centre stage with his moves, unaware of Madga's plan: the whole of Beechwood is supposed to laugh at him in embarrassment. However, a white owl in the audience exposes the magpie's trick. Recognising his steps, she asks Periwinkle to dance them again, much to the joy of his family and the other rabbits. He continues until dawn, when the Bellflowers return home.
15042461	/m/03h5qln	The Gates of Sleep	Mercedes Lackey	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Hugh and Alanna Roeswood conceive a baby girl named Marina and invite all the godparents and villagers to her christening. The godparents go up to lay a blessing on the sleeping baby. Before the godparents had given their blessing, Hugh's sister Arachne, who wasn't supposed to have any magical abilities at all, laid a curse upon the infant. She was cursed to die at the age of 18. The sister then left leaving behind the curse and also Marina's terrified parents and godparents. One of the godparents, Elizabeth Hastings, attempts to remove of the curse, but can only change the nature of the curse instead. Hugh and Alanna know that there is only one option and they give Marina to Margherita and Sebastion Tarrant and Margherita's brother, Thomas Buford. They keep Marina successfully hidden away until about 6 months before her fateful 18th birthday, when her aunt kills her parents, finds Marina, and kidnaps her away from the only family she has ever known. Marina is forced to endure all kinds of lessons, including etiquette, dancing and proper conversation. She also has to endure the company of her cousin, Reginald or the "Odious Reggie" as she calls him. Meanwhile, a doctor by the name of Andrew Pike has moved into the estate next door to take care of his mentally unstable patients. Marina meets him when she attempts to help one of his patients, a girl who got lead poisoning from working at a pottery. In the process, Marina finds out that it is her aunt who poisoned, not only the little girl, but many others at her potteries. Arachne is trying to figure out how to re-instate the curse. Marina figures out exactly what Arachne is, but too late! Arachne re-instates the curse and calls upon Dr. Pike to help her with Marina. It eventually ends with two epic battles between Arachne and Marina and Reginald and Dr. Pike.
15049655	/m/03h5xch	Five Days In Paris	Danielle Steel	1995	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story follows two Americans, Peter Haskell, a man with a strong career and family and Olivia Thatcher, two citizens from different backgrounds and cultures who meet in the Ritz in Paris, France on the night of a bomb threat. The latter character is a woman who is unhappily married to a leading senator, and the first being the president of a significant pharmaceutical empire.
15050098	/m/03h5xsg	First Contact	Murray Leinster	1945	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A spaceship from Earth on a scientific mission to the Crab Nebula encounters an alien ship on a similar mission. The aliens are humanoid with a few differences, such as 'speaking' with microwaves rather than sound, but with far more similarities, such as a shared sense of humor. The crews of the two ships soon devise a means of communication, and find that they get along well. However, each group fears that they cannot allow the other to leave, and potentially carry information back to that species' home planet which would allow the destruction of the other. Months pass with the ships in stalemate before a junior scientific member of the human crew comes up with a proposal that allows both crews to return home without destroying each other: swap ships, but erase all records of their own home. First Contact was among the stories selected in 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one the best science fiction short stories published before the creation of the Nebula Awards. As such, it was published in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964.
15051808	/m/03h5z6j	Impulse	Ellen Hopkins	2007	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Conner is the perfect boy. He's handsome, has amazing grades, and is amazing at sports. His family seems like the poster family for the magazines. He and his sister are supposed to be perfect. His sister has achieved that status in the eyes of Connor's parents. However, when his parents' try to force him to live up to their impossible standards, Connor's only choice is to pull the trigger. Vanessa grew up in a broken family. Her father is overseas, her mother does anything to stop the hurt, and on top of it all Vanessa has to worry about watching after her little brother. When her Mother starts going crazy and talking to her "angel", Vanessa's only comfort is to put the blade to her wrist. Tony grew up in the streets mainly. His father abandoned him, while his mother hooks up with anybody. They leave their son all alone to deal with the hardships of life. Tony was sexually abused by one of his mother's boyfriends. Tony ended up killing the boyfriend. The only person that Tony could trust was his friend, Phillip, but when Phillip died, Tony's only decision was to swallow the pills. Three teens, three different stories, one death wish. Their lives will intersect at a psych hospital. Can they help each other deal with the pain of their previous lives? Most importantly, can they help themselves move beyond their personal demons? Or will the IMPULSE take control?
15053807	/m/03h60yj	Odalisque	Fiona McIntosh		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with a slave driver attempting to sell his latest finds, including a foreign captive known only as Lazar. Hot tempered and confident, Lazar invokes his right to a fight to the death that, if he wins, will grant him his freedom. Zar Joreb, Percheron's leader decides to attend the fight and is so impressed by the demonstrated fighting skills that he offers Lazar the elite position of Spur.
15053893	/m/03h6130	The Aware	Glenda Larke	2003-10-29	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 'I almost regretted having Awareness. Without it, I wouldn't have noticed a thing; I would have been as oblivious to the danger as everyone else.' Blaze Halfbreed doesn't like Gorthan Spit, but she's being paid to find an enslaved Cirkasian woman. A woman needed by the Keepers to further their political ambitions. When Blaze sees dunmagic running over the floor in the taproom of the Drunken Plaice, she knows trouble is not far away. Could it be in the form of the three tall, very handsome men at other tables? Just what is their business here? Her searth for the Cirkasian takes Blaze deep into Gorthan Spit, and she is horrified to unravel a threat to all the Isles of Glory...and a more immediate threat to her own life. Could the key to it all lie with an ancient legend of vanished islands?
15054346	/m/03h61qm	Born of Man and Woman	Richard Matheson	1950	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is written in the form of a "diary" in broken English kept by an apparently misshapen child, eight years old, who is kept chained in the basement by its parents, and frequently beaten. It is, however, able to pull its chain out of the wall and observe the outside world through the basement window. On one occasion it sneaks upstairs, although it has difficulty because its body drips green fluid that causes its feet to stick to the stairs. It eavesdrops on a dinner party, but is discovered by the parents, returned to the basement, and beaten. On another occasion it climbs to a small window and observes its young "normal" sister, (who does not know of the child's existence) playing with other girls and boys. One of the boys spots the child, and it is again beaten. In a final incident, its sister comes into the basement with her cat, investigating the boy's sighting of the child. The child hides from them in the coal pile, but is forced to crush the cat to death when it smells the child and attacks. The story ends with the child hitting a stick out of its father's hands and promising violence against its parents if they beat it further. It thinks about running along walls, and it is revealed it has more than one pair of legs, showing that it is extraordinarily different from a normal child. Born of Man and Woman was among the stories selected in 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the best science fiction short stories published before the creation of the Nebula Awards. As such, it was published in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964.
15058365	/m/03hg1lm	Çalıkuşu	Reşat Nuri Güntekin	1922		 The events in the novel take place in the early twentieth century, in a warworn Ottoman Empire that is about to collapse. Most of the novel is narrated in the first-person point of view by Feride. In the first section, Feride narrates her childhood and the events that brought her to the alien hotel room which she indicates she is in. The second and the largest section of the book is constituted of Feride's diary entries. The third section is the only one written from the third person point of view, and recounts the events during Feride's visit to her family. Feride is the orphaned daughter of an army officer, and as a teenager attends Lycee Notre Dame de Sion in the winter, and stays with one of her late mother's sisters during the summer holidays. She is given the nickname "the Wren" during her time at school for her vivacity and mischief, two characteristics considered unusual and even a bit inappropriate for Muslim girls at that time. She gets engaged to her charming cousin, Kamran, whom she leaves the night before their wedding, upon discovering that he has been unfaithful to her. She runs away from home to become a teacher in Anatolia, although she remains desperately in love with Kamran. She is forced to move from town to town several times during her first three years as a teacher, as a result of the incompetence of officials, the malice of colleagues and the unwanted attention she gets from men because of her beauty and her lively manner. Meanwhile, she adopts a little girl called Munise, finds out that Kamran has married the woman he had cheated on Feride with, and develops a friendship with Hayrullah Bey, an elderly military doctor who treats Feride with fatherly affection. At the end of these three years, Munise dies and Feride is forced to resign from her post and marry the doctor because of the rumors about her "indecent behavior". A couple of years later, Feride returns to Tekirdag to visit one of her aunts and her cousin Mujgan, where Kamran, now widowed and with a small child, also happens to be. He has never got over Feride, painfully regrets having cheated on her, and confesses to have married the other woman only out of pity after he heard false rumors about Feride being in love with another man. The night before her arranged departure, Feride confesses to Mujgan that her marriage to the doctor has never been consummated and he has in fact died recently. He told Feride to revive her ties to her family as his last wish, and gave her a package to be entrusted to Mujgan. Mujgan takes the package to Kamran, which turns out to be Feride's diary which was hidden and preserved by the doctor. Finding out that Feride is still in love with him, Kamran arranges to be wedded to Feride the next day without her knowledge. The novel ends with their long-awaited reunion, and Kamran's confession that he betrayed her all those years ago because of his insecurity about her love for and loyalty to him, due to her ostensible frivolity and harsh treatment of him.
15062031	/m/03hg58w	Nightwings	Robert Silverberg	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 In a decadent and caste-based future humanity is divided into guilds, each having a specific job to do. The members of some guilds appear to have undergone genetic engineering; for instance, the Fliers' ability to fly and the Watchers' ability to use their mental capabilities to watch distant stars. The main character in the novella is a Watcher, whose mission is to watch the skies with some sophisticated equipment and to inform the Defenders in the event of an alien invasion. Along with a young Flier girl and a Changeling (who belongs to no guild), he visits the old city of Roum (suspected previously to be called Rome), and becomes entangled in events including the possibility of invasion. Apart from Roum, only two other great cities are mentioned, Jorslem (Jerusalem) and Perris (Paris), but their greatness is relative, as they only have a few thousand inhabitants.
15064305	/m/03hg8yf	Sunset in St. Tropez	Danielle Steel	2003-06-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Diana and Eric Morrison are a couple residing in a Central Park apartment in New York City who celebrate the new year with their friends: Pascale and John Donnally and Anne and Robert Smith. During their new year celebrations, they agree to go on a summer vacation together to St. Tropez. However, shortly after the new year, Robert's wife, Anne, suddenly dies - and Robert hesitates whether to join his friends on the planned summer vacation. After much persuasion, Robert agrees to accompany them, inviting a younger film actress to accompany him as his guest. At first, the actress is not accepted kindly by the women, although the men appear to take a liking to her. The plot analyzes forgiveness and the ability to move on throughout life, despite some of the circumstances the couples have endured.
15072681	/m/03hgm74	Memoirs of a Madman	Gustave Flaubert		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Memoirs of a Madman alternates between the narrator's musings on the present and his memories of the past. In the sections that deal with the present, the narrator takes a bleak outlook on life, discussing writing, sanity, and death. More attention has been given to the memories of his past. In one section, he recalls a summer near the ocean when he is fifteen. There he meets and falls in love with a married woman named Maria (thought to be based on Elisa Schlésinger, who would later influence his Sentimental Education. Later in the work, he will remember returning to the seashore many years later to look for her again unsuccessfully. A second episode concerns his meeting two young English girls, one of whom seems to fall in love with him. Still in love with Maria, he cannot return the girl's emotions, and she moves away.
15077028	/m/03hgrwv	Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight	Ursula K. Le Guin		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A lost child tumbles into the confusing world of SouthWestern desert folklore and lives for a while with the trickster Coyote.
15077790	/m/03hgskh	Thor Meets Captain America	David Brin	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Just as World War II began to turn against them, the Nazis were suddenly championed by the Norse pantheon. However, Loki joins the Allies, and they prepare a last-ditch sneak attack against Valhalla called Operation Ragnarok. The story follows Captain Chris Turing, who is part of the team which is going to attack Valhalla and starts out with them traveling to their attack destination in a group of submarines hoping that what remained of the United States Surface Navy would be able to distract the Nazi and Norse pantheon forces. Originally the plan was for Chris' team and their commando escorts, but Loki informs Chris that he will accompany his troops to Gotland. Due to Loki's previous actions in aiding the Allies and the way he ended the Holocaust by saving the inmates of the concentration camps, Chris agrees and convinces Major Marlowe to allow it. While waiting for them to get to their destination, Chris recollects his memory of World War II and how the Nazi Party was about to be defeated by the allied forces until they received the aid of the Norse pantheon. Loki notices Chris and allows the captain to ask the Norse God three questions. Loki answers the questions asked, and in one answer mentions how he does not think that he is older than Chris and also implies that the Nazi extermination camps were established for reasons other than for "Nazi racial purification." The group arrives at Gotland, and during the operation Loki disappears and Thor defeats the troops. The survivors of Operation Ragnarok are taken prisoner after the failed mission and are given to Thor by his father Odin. While in custody, Chris recollects his memory of World War II and how the Nazi Party was about to be defeated by the Allied forces. He recalls how as a child he wished that he would have an event like the war that he could partake in like his father did. He ends up discussing the history of World War II with his captured troops, and ends up being taken to be interrogated by Thor and argues with the group about the way the United States should have simply bombed Germany in order to end the war as soon as possible. After this conversation, Chris is taken to be interrogated by Thor. At first, a Nazi starts interrogating him, but after the captain successfully angers the interrogator through verbal banter Thor interrogates him. Thor tries to get Chris to reveal the whereabouts of Loki, but the captive captain does not tell him and does not know. O'Leary ends up insulting Thor, insisting that they are aliens, and as a result Thor orders his death before revealing that the Norse pantheon were invited "upon the wings of death itself." O'Leary later tells Chris that Loki told O'Leary to tell Chris an answer to one of his questions: Necromancy. Chris realizes that the Death Camps were built not for "racial purification", but for human sacrifices to fuel magic. The captain also realizes that the Norse Gods were created by Necromancy due to Loki's admission that he is actually young. After realizing that he has gained superhuman powers from Loki, Chris attacks the guards and dies in an attempt to resist the Norse Gods after managing to destroy Odin's Spear. In doing so, he hopes that his actions will give hope to other heroes who will eventually rise up to overcome the Nazis.
15082088	/m/03hgx5v	A Lick of Frost	Laurell K. Hamilton	2007-10-23	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 A Lick of Frost begins one month after the events of Mistral's Kiss. The opening chapters show Merry and her guards Rhys, Galen, Doyle, Frost, and Abeloec in a conference room, being questioned about the charges of rape against Rhys, Galen, and Abeloec. King Taranis has brought the charges on behalf of the woman allegedly raped by the aforementioned fey. The meeting ends badly, with Taranis losing what little control he had on his sanity, and one of the officers of Taranis' guard, Sir Hugh, telling Merry that he is going to force a vote among the nobles of the Seelie court to choose a new king, and he wants Merry to take Taranis' place. When Merry and her guards get home after taking a trip to the hospital (as Doyle and Abe got badly hurt from Taranis' attack), they call Aunt Andais to tell her of all that has happened- specifically the offer to rule the Seelie Court. Andais believes Merry already agreed to rule and abuses one of her guards (Crystall) in a sadistic rage. Eventually, Merry and her men convince Andais otherwise, but she still continues to abuse the guard in reaction to many of them leaving to join Merry. The series of mirror-calls end, and Merry finalises the coming together of her, Ash, and Holly for later that night. Night comes and Holly and Ash arrive, along with all of the Red Caps in tow. Jonty, a Red Cap that helped Merry fight in Mistral's Kiss, sheds a tear as Merry tells him she would bring the Red Caps into their power. She catches the tear on her finger and consumes it. This brings on the remaking of Maeve Reed's house into a sithen. Those of faerie who stand in that room with no faerie dog to keep them grounded, crumple to the floor. Some of the crumpled men are revived by one of the dogs, but Frost stays down. The creation of the sithen (faerie land) allows the ring of fertility on her finger to flare to life and Merry realises that she is pregnant with twins. Each twin has three fathers like in the story of Ceridwen. A phantom image of Merry's children appear by their respective fathers, Rhys, Frost, Galen, Doyle, Mistral, and Sholto. There is also a dimmer phantom image of a 3rd child (that has the potential to be born after the twins). Frost turns out to be the sacrificial king for the creation of the new sithen. Merry prays for him not to die, and he turns into a white stag and runs off. Merry runs to one of the gardens of her sithen to be alone and grieve the loss of Frost. While out there, Taranis (using illusion to appear as one of her guards) knocks her out and takes her to his bedroom back at the Seelie Court. It is assumed that he rapes her, and then believes he fathers her children. Hugh, some others at the Seelie Court, and Doyle (in dog form) sneak her out of the bedroom and into a press conference where she tells the press that Taranis made the Seelie woman (Lady Catarin) believe that it was Rhys, Galen, and Abe who raped her. However, it was all just an illusion of Taranis' making and the woman was in fact raped by other Seelie nobles working with him. Merry also tells them that she is pregnant, and that Taranis kidnapped and raped her. The book ends with Merry in an ambulance with Doyle, continuing to mourn Frost and her current situation. She is on her way to the hospital to treat the concussion she received from Taranis and to take a rape test.
15093466	/m/03hh5b6	Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians	Brandon Sanderson		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians is a young adult novel which tells the story of Alcatraz Smedry, a young teen who is always breaking things. After receiving a bag of sand for his thirteenth birthday, he stumbles into a strange set of events which begins with a group of librarians stealing his bag of sand, which turns out to be rather unusual sand. The book starts with Alcatraz setting fire to his foster parents' kitchen. It is revealed that he has been sent to countless foster parents, all ending up with Alcatraz "destroying" things that were precious to the people taking care of him. Ms. Fletcher, Alcatraz's personal caseworker then arrives at his recent foster parent's home and scolds him about destroying his foster parent's kitchen and leaves. The next day, however, an old man knocks on the door and claims to be his grandfather and tells Alcatraz that he has a special, but powerful talent for breaking things. He later finds out that there is a special force called the Librarians, whose purpose is to conquer the remaining Free Kingdomers and rule the world.
15093614	/m/03hh5k2	Surface Tension	James Blish	1952		 Humans crash on a distant planet which is earth like but completely water-covered; their ship is too damaged to take off, nor do they have sufficient supplies to survive for long. The humans create a race of microscopic aquatic humanoids to carry on their legacy before they themselves die. The majority of the story concerns these creatures and their intelligence, curiosity, and evolving technology. In particular, the aquatic humanoids develop a "space ship", or rather "air ship", which enables them to pierce the previously impenetrable surface of the water and travel through what is, to them, hostile space—open air—to other worlds in other bodies of water. Surface Tension was among the stories selected in 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one the best science fiction short stories published before the creation of the Nebula Awards. As such, it was published in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964. It was adapted by George Lefferts as a radio drama for X Minus One in 1956. In this adaptation, the humanoids are part of an experiment running on a doomed Earth. Anthony Boucher, commenting on the collected version of the story, noted that although Blish might seem "to pass the most remote bounds of scientific extrapolation, . . . the details are worked out in magnificently convincing manner."
15093621	/m/03hh5ks	Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn	Robert Holdstock	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Christian Huxley enters Ryhope wood on a search for the compelling mythago Guiwenneth and for a better understanding of his mother's suicide. Inside the wood he joins a small group of mythago companions who, in turn, join a vast army of mythagos, numbering in the thousands. This army includes many mythic archetypes including shaman, shapeshifters, and warriors. Among these mythagos are those whose creation is influenced by King Arthur and the Welsh tales of the Mabinogion, specifically the tale of Culhwch and Olwen. Echoing the tales of Culhwch and Olwen, Christian is assigned with completing many impossible tasks. Holdstock uses the story within a story device to have Kylhuk retell a tale involving himself, Olwen and Pwyll, among others. This army, known as a legion, is pursued by the angry dead on its search for the gates to the underworld. As Christian nears the end of his quest in the wood, he has an opportunity to enter the underworld (like Orpheus) and grapple with the suicide of his mother which has two very different manifestations, one true and one false. While in the underworld he is also faced with a difficult choice of rescuing only one of two loved ones from death.
15096449	/m/03hh8gr	Wish You Well	David Baldacci	2001-06-30	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts out with the Cardinal family going on a trip to relieve them from some unknown stress. On the way back, it is revealed that the Cardinal family plans to move to California, due to financial concerns. Jack Cardinal is an acclaimed but underpaid writer, and plans to move with promises of higher pay. However, Amanda, his wife, is opposed to the idea, stating that they would not be happy and that Jack would not be free to write. Seeing that the children seem asleep, they battle it out. Eventually, a violent outburst awakes Lou, a young girl who greatly admires her father. She tries to stop the argument multiple times by offering a story, but Jack is undeterred. Meanwhile, Oz, Lou’s timid little brother is also awakened. Both Amanda and Lou hurry to comfort him, while simultaneously being calmed. As the argument further escalates, no one notices a man in the middle of the road, blocking their way. Jack turns the car just in time to avoid killing the man, but then loses all control. The car rolls, and when it stopped, Jack is dead, and Amanda faints. The story then shifts forward to the funeral, where it is discovered that Amanda is now paralyzed. Lou overhears two men discussing the fate of the children, and offers the idea of moving in with their great-grandmother in the mountains of Virginia, Louisa Mae. The men accept the offer, and the two children, a nurse, and their mother head off. When they arrive at the station, an African-American man picks them up and drives them through a series of towns, each more sparsely populated than the one previous. Soon they pick up a boy, who introduces both himself and their driver. Afterwards, he leaves to fish, and the others continue on towards Louisa’s house. Once there, Lou starts a completely new life, learning different chores and helping with the farm. In return, they achieve a comfortable lifestyle. Diamond, the boy they picked up, starts playing a bigger role, often taking the children out on adventures, showing them things such as a little collection of items, a wishing well, a danger-filled shortcut to the city, his version of constellations and the like. Eugene, the “mute” that drove the car, is also revealed as an honest man that will stand up for what is right. At around the same time, Cotton Longfellow, a lawyer, shows up, and offers to read to Amanda in hopes that she would get better. Then, a mysterious offer from Southern Valley, a coal and gas company, comes in, offering Louisa $100,000 for her land. She refuses, but receives pressure from her neighbors, who have also received the offer but is told that their land is useless without Louisa’s. Then, a series of incidents occurs. Louisa’s barn is burned to the ground in the middle of the night, causing her to suffer a stroke.. Diamond dies in a dynamite explosion, killed trying to save his dog. George Davis, a wealthy but hateful farmer, goes into Louisa’s land in search of something. Southern Valley comes back with an offer of 5 times the original, but is now refused by Cotton. It is then revealed that a court case is to ensue. Southern Valley is represented by Thurston Goode, a renowned lawyer from Richmond. He and Cotton each have several goes at the jury at a very eventful court case. In the end, however, Southern Valley wins, but Amanda comes in, supported by her children, and the book ends with her acknowledging Cotton for all he tried to help and, in the epilogue, it is revealed they married.
15105164	/m/03hhkq1	Speech Sounds	Octavia E. Butler		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the not-so-distant future, a mysterious pandemic leaves civilization in ruins and severely limits humankind’s ability to communicate. Some are deprived of their ability to read or write, while others lose the ability to speak. They identify themselves by carrying items or symbols that function as names. People communicate among themselves through universally understood sign language and gestures that can often exacerbate misunderstandings and conflicts. Additionally, it seems that as a result of the illness and their handicap, many ordinary people are easily prone to uncontrollable feelings of jealousy, resentment, and rage over their own impairments and the ability of others. In Los Angeles, a woman named Rye decides to seek out her only remaining relatives, a brother and his family in nearby Pasadena. But when a fight breaks out on a bus, Rye is forced to consider walking the rest of the twenty miles through dangerous territory. It is then she meets Obsidian, a man in a police uniform who stops to restore order and then offers her a ride in his car. Confronted with the hostilities of her fellow passengers or the threat of walking the streets alone, she cautiously accepts the stranger's offer, and together they resume the trip out of the city. Before long, Rye learns that Obsidian can still read a map, and she struggles with an intense feeling of jealousy and an urge to kill him. Instead, she reveals that she is still able to talk, and the two share an intimate moment and intercourse. Rye asks Obsidian to return home with her to which he reluctantly agrees. On the road home, the couple observes a woman being chased by a man wielding a knife. Both feel inclined to intervene in the woman’s defense but are unable prevent the woman from being fatally stabbed. After wounding the assailant, the man is able to wrestle the gun from Obsidian and shoot him in the head, which instantly kills him. Rye then kills the assailant. After the violence, two children emerge, a boy and a younger girl, apparently the children of the dead woman. Rye drags Obsidian back to the car with the intension of giving him a proper burial—and initially plans to ignore the plight of the children—but shortly afterward, she has a change of heart and returns for the body of the woman and her two children. As she reaches for the woman’s body, the girl speaks in coherent English, shouting “No. Go Away,” and the young boy tells her not to speak. This is the first coherent speech that Rye has heard in many years, and she realizes that her choice to adopt the children is the right one. “I’m Valerie Rye,” she says. “It‘s all right for you to talk to me.” It is the first time she has spoken her own name in a very long time.
15105382	/m/03hhl2f	Le père de nos pères	Bernard Werber		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The plot takes place mainly in the present, when Professor Adjemian, a palaeontogist, is murdered. Before he died, Adjemian claimed to know the answer to the fundamental question: “Where do we come from?” Lucrèce Nemrod, a young reporter, covers this case and decides to find out why the professor was murdered after the police close the case. For her article, Lucrèce asks Isidore Katzenberg, a former scientific journalist, for help. Isodore and Lucrèce leave for Africa in order to uncover a secret for which some people are ready to kill. Simultanenously, a second plot, becomes entwined with the investigation. This second story takes place "somewhere in East Africa", 3.7 million years ago. It deals with the life of a cave man known simply as "He". The suspense is very intense until it reaches the last word of the book which reveals the identity of the Missing Link. The literary genres of crime fiction], scientific journalism, adventure, biography, philosophical fiction and others are intermingled in Bernard Werber's typical style.
15106162	/m/03hhm4v	Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister	Aphra Behn		{"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This part is a story of wooing and seduction of a young woman, Silvia, by Philander, her brother-in-law. ;Silvia's and Philander's flight to Holland: Silvia, disguised as a young man with the name Fillmond, and Philander run away to Holland. Brilljard, who has been married to Silvia to save her from being married to another man by her parents, and two male servants accompany them. On their journey they meet a young Hollander, Octavio. Quickly, a strong friendship develops between Philander and Octavio. Not knowing that Fillmond is in fact a woman, Octavio nevertheless falls in love with Silvia on their joint journey. Philander confides to Octavio that he is in conflict with his King, and after Philander and Silvia decline Octavio's offer to stay with him in his Palace, he accommodates them at a merchant's house nearby. There Philander and Silvia, still in disguise, spend a happy time together. Brilljard, staying with them, falls secretly in love with Silvia. When Silvia falls into a violent fever, her true sex is discovered by the servants and the whole truth of their story is revealed to Octavio by Philander. ;Philander's flight from Holland: Octavio, torn between his affection for Silvia and his friendship to Philander, urges the same to leave the country within 24 hours as he fears he will otherwise be taken by force to the King of France. Philander's first response is that he'd rather die than leave Silvia behind. Also, he is scared that she might fall in love with someone else once he has left. But he then is convinced by Octavio and Brilljard – who both love Silvia and therefore have an interest in his departure unknown to him – to save his own life not only for his but for Silvia's sake also. It is agreed that Silvia is to follow him as soon as she has recovered, and equipped with money from Octavio, after a last encounter with Silvia and without telling her of his flight, Philander finally takes his leave to Collen. ;Brilljard's assault on Silvia: Silvia, devastated by his flight, believes his love has worn off already when she receives her first letter from him. And indeed, Philander reveals in a letter to Octavio that he finds life without Silvia less painful than expected. Octavio seizes the opportunity and reveals his affection to Silvia, which she strongly dismisses. Silvia, in need for a second opinion on Philander's letter, shows it to Brilljard, who, seizing his chance to harm the rival, agrees with her that there is a change in Philander's attitude towards her. Silvia gets into such a state that she faints into his arms. Brilljard, overwhelmed by his feelings, almost rapes the defenceless Silvia, but for Octavio's appearance. Though Brilljard can conceal his attack at first, he is later found out by Octavio and Silvia, who after an attempt on Brilljard's life decides to forgive him for her own sake as she depends on him in his position as her husband. Brilljard notices that Octavio's feelings towards Silvia are more than that of friendship and in his jealousy closes a deal with Antonett, maid to Silvia, to betray any news to him in exchange for his affection. Also, Brilljard gets a letter from Philander who confesses to him that, though still in love with Silvia, he has an affair with another woman, and asks him to do anything in his power to delay Silvia's departure for Collen. ;Octavio courts Silvia with the permission of Philander: While Silvia is waiting for further news from her Philander, Octavio is paying her regular visits and no longer hides his affection. Silvia, though she turns him down as she is still in love with Philander, is vain enough to be flattered and encourages him to pursue his advances further. In the course of the events, Silvia becomes increasingly sure of a growing decrease in Philander's love for her, and concludes that someone like him who has loved twice can fall in love for a third time, too. Her sorrow is more and more overcome with anger, and she decides to take revenge, using Octavio as an instrument. Hoping that jealousy will bring Philander back to her at last, she talks Octavio into writing a letter to Philander in which he confesses his love for Silvia, asking him for his permission to do so. Philander's answer is positive. He argues that in case Silvia is true to him, Octavio's love will not do any harm, and in case she turns false on him, she in his eyes is not worth to be preserved. Either way, he encourages Octavio to pursue his courtship. ;Philander confesses his new love to Octavio: In return for Octavio's honesty, Philander reveals to him that he has fallen in love again, too. During his journey, he has made the acquaintance of and become friends with the Count of Clarinau, a Spaniard. Philander accepts Clarinau's offer to stay at his palace. On a walk through the grounds, Philander notices Clarinau's wife, a young girl named Calista which was taken out of a monastery to become Madam the Countess of Clarinau. He observes her secretly, but just as he is approaching her, the Count enters the scene and Philander rushes back into his hiding place without having spoken to Calista, who has not seen a young handsome man before and therefore believes she has seen a vision. Philander spends the following days look-ing for her, without success. He trusts Octavio, his rival, with this secret, at the same time asking him not to use it against him with Silvia. Octavio is outraged when he recognizes that Calista is his sister. He is torn between his friendship with Philander and his love for Silvia, but his honour forbids him to make use of Philander's secret by revealing it to Silvia. ;Silvia's suicide attempt: At the same time, Philander also sends a letter to Silvia, in which he assures her of his love and criticizes her for being too self-interested to understand him. More certain of his betrayal on her than ever before, Silvia attempts to kill herself with a pen-knife, but is saved by Antonett. Being thus rescued, she turns to Octavio for his letter from Philander which she expects to be of use for her peace of mind, and at the same time replies to Philander, threatening him that if she ever found out about him lying to her, she would take revenge on him. At this point, it is not only her love for Philander that makes her go wild but also her pride that has been hurt. Silvia, who finds she is growing fonder of Octavio, still urges him to present the letter to her, and finally he confesses that he owns one. Though he at first denies her to see it, Silvia then gets herself in such a state that in the end, he begs her to let him show the letter to her. ;Brilljard's deceit and its effects: This is postponed when Octavio is called away for a day on sudden business. Brilljard has learned from letters from Octavio to Silvia, which Antonett took to him rather than Silvia first, about Octavio's way of writing. When he also gets hold of a letter from Silvia to Octavio, he misjudges the situation and takes it for sure that they have become lovers already. He therefore sets out and feigns a letter to Silvia, in which he suggest in the name of Octavio that she to him is no more than a common mistress and that the price for Philander's letter would be she herself. Silvia is outraged at first, but still in want of Philander's letter, makes plans for a revenge on Octavio. She agrees with her maid that Antonett will disguise as Silvia and receive him. Again, Brilljard keeps the letter to himself. He also has the letter from Philander, which Octavio sent to Silvia as he had promised to give it to her before. It is Brilljard, disguised as Octavio, who meets Antonett, disguised as Silvia, that night. He hands over the letter, which Antonett passes on to Silvia in an unobserved moment. That night, however, does not proceed according to Brilljard's plans. He has taken aphrodisiacs which made him sick, so that he has to leave Antonett. However, their encounter is observed by Octavio who has returned earlier than expected and who at once hastens to Silvia to see how she has taken Philander's letter. Seeing only Antonett and taking her for Silvia, he is sure that Silvia is entertaining an affair. Silvia in the meantime has read Philander's letter to Octavio. Overwhelmed with an-ger and pain, she faints and it is only with the help of Antonett that she recovers. She then writes an angry letter to Philander in which she calls herself his fiend and curses him. Still, she is aware that a love once lost cannot be retrieved, and encouraged by Antonett, she decides not to pity herself but to set out for revenge. ;Misunderstandings between Silvia and Octavio: Though still mad at Octavio and scared he might have found out what she believes to have been a deceit on him, she regards him as the person best suitable for her plans and therefore contacts him once more. Octavio, who is still in the dark about the previous night's happenings, is mad at her in return, and messages go back and fro further entertaining the misunderstanding between them which leaves him believing her to be a common mistress, while she is by then sure that he has found out about her cheat. It takes a couple of hot-tempered letters until the whole truth concerning the night in question is revealed. ;The proposal: Octavio falls in love with Silvia all over again, and Silvia forgives him for the sake of her revenge to Philander, though she also has to admit to herself that she cares for him, too. Silvia promises Octavio anything he wishes for if only he takes part in the revenge. He proposes to her, but she refuses him, telling him that she is expecting a child from Philander. It is only when Octavio shows her another letter from Philander that Silvia, mad with rage and determined to take revenge, makes up her mind, not considering her marriage to Brilljard nor telling Octavio about it at all. In the letter concerned, Philander is giving an account of his affair with Calista, who he has courted successfully. The couple has almost been discovered by Calista's husband, the Count of Clarinau, but for a spectacular flight of Philander's. Philander closes his letter to Octavio by telling him that he has now lost all feelings for Silvia. The second part of the 'Love Letters' closes with Antonett and Silvia setting off for a church in a nearby village, where they will meet Octavio. ;Dedication: To Lord Spencer: Aphra Behn praises Spencer for his noble birth and the glorious future, that is surely destined for him. The author pretends that there are no parallels between Lord Spencer and Cesario, because Spencer would be as loyal as his own father. However, she seems to warn him implicitly of making the same mistakes as Cesario, the character in her book. Cesario is highly ambitious and wants to become King. But he lacks good advice and patience. Therefore his rebellion against the King, his own father, fails and he dies on the scaffold. ;Characters: Silvia: a beautiful young woman, who eloped from her parents with Philander, the husband of her sister; married to Philander's servant Brilljard (a sham marriage); became Octavio's mistress in Philander's absence Philander: a young handsome man, who enjoys conquering women; left his wife Mertilla for Silvia; found a new mistress (Calista) in Cologne; a good friend of Octavio and his rival as well; a rebel who has joined Cesario's association Octavio: a handsome, rich and noble man; one of the States of Holland; Calista's brother; in love with Silvia and a rival to Philander Cesario: Prince of Condy; leader of the rebellion of the Huguenots in France; aspires to become the next King of France; he is the King's bastard son Brilljard: Philander's servant; Silvia's lawful husband, who promised not to claim her as his wife; however, he fell in love with her Calista: Octavio's sister, married to an old Spanish Count; Philander's slam piece Sebastian: Octavio's uncle, one of the States of Holland as well Sir Mr. Alonzo Jr.: a handsome young gentleman, nephew of the governor of Flanders, by birth a Spaniard; a womanizer Osell Hermione: Cesario's mistress, later his wife; neither young nor beautiful Fergusano: one of the two wizards appointed to Hermione; Scottish; deals with black magic ;Introduction: In the last part of Aphra Behn's “Love-Letters” it is difficult to ascertain the main plot line. Many new characters, such as Alonzo, are introduced and the plot contains various love affairs, disguises, mistaken identities, and personal and political intrigues. Despite the title “The Amours of Philander and Silvia” the love between these two characters does not seem to play the major role anymore (as it did in part 1). Their feelings towards each other are only dissembled and their relationship to other people gain in importance. Silvia is pursued by Octavio and by Brilljard, Philander pursues Calista and other women. Furthermore, a large part of the action is concerned with Cesario's political scheme to gain the crown. That is why it is hard to say, if Philander and Silvia are still the protagonists in part 3 of the novel. In comparison to the first part of the “Love-Letters” Silvia's character has changed a lot. She has become a calculating woman, who is only interested in her own profit. Much of her emotions are dissembled. It could be argued for some inconsistency in Aphra Behn's novel in her character development. What is more, it becomes harder to identify the major characters and to understand the motivations for certain actions. This hangs partly together with the change of the narrative form. The exchange of letters in part 1, and to a lesser extent in part 2, granted the reader more insight into the characters´ motives. The distance to the characters grows in part 3, where the omniscient narrator tells the story with less subtlety. On the other hand, this invites the reader to make up his or her own mind about the character's motives and developments. Silvia and Octavio have to flee. In part 2, Philander has fallen in love with Calista in Cologne. His former mistress Silvia learned about his cheat and wanted to take revenge upon him. She decides therefore to marry his close friend Octavio, who is truly in love with her. This secret marriage is prevented in part 3, but not by Philander. It is Brilljard, Silvia's lawful husband, who has grown jealous of Octavio. Although Brilljard had promised never to claim her as his wife, he reveals in public that he is already married to her. In this way, Silvia's reputation is damaged and consequently Octavio's. Although Octavio has learned that she is already married to Brilljard, he still wants to marry her. He even accepts to be deprived of his honours, when he is charged with not caring about state affairs. This shows that Silvia is more important to him than his own status and societal position. Octavio's powerful uncle Sebastian falls in love with Silvia and brings her to his own house, where he guards her well. He wants to marry her, but is shot dead beforehand, by one of Octavio's pistols that goes off by chance. Octavio and Silvia flee to Brussels. Silvia and Philander reunite. Calista decides to become a nun after having learned from Silvia that Philander has another mistress. The rejected Philander becomes Silvia's lover again. It is astonishing that Silvia yields so easily to him again, considering that she swore to take revenge upon him. What is more, it seemed as if she had gradually developed more feelings towards Octavio. It comes to a duel between the two rivals, in which Octavio is badly wounded. While Octavio is recovering, Silvia runs off with Philander to a little town. This seems to be a spontaneous and unwise action. In contrast to Octavio, Philander is not ready to marry her and thus not concerned about her good reputation. Furthermore, Octavio could secure her financially. Instead of enjoying their reunion Philander and Silvia soon get on each other's nerves and Philander starts having affairs with other women. By now, their love has entirely cooled down. Silvia gives birth to a child, an unimportant event, which is only meantioned in passing. It also remains open what happens to that child; she probably gives it away. Silvia and Alonzo become lovers. While Philander is absent in Brussels, Silvia follows in men's clothes in order to regain Octavio as a lover. She makes Brilljard her confident. To ensure his loyalty she grants him to have sex with her every once in a while. This marks the beginning of her career as a prostitute. Octavio does not fall for her feigned fidelity anymore. Like his sister Calista, he takes holy orders, because he has been disappointed in love. The good-hearted Octavio wants Silvia to lead an honourable life without the support of a lover. Therefore he settles a good pension upon her. However, Silvia immediately spends some of the money on fine clothes, jewels, and a new coach. With this equipment she impresses everyone, including Alonzo, at the “Toure” and she finally manages to gain Alonzo as her new lover. She first met this handsome young man on her way to Brussels. Alonzo then held her to be a French nobleman, because she was dressed in men's clothes. They became good “friends” and even shared the same bed. Silvia felt attracted towards him and wanted to test if he could not be turned into a constant lover. With Brilljard's help she manages to deprive him of his fortune. In the end of part 2, Silvia has turned into a successful prostitute, who enjoys her life. Considering the first part of the “Love-Letters” this is a rather unexptected change. ;The Political Plot: The political plot in part 3 is focused on Cesario's ambition of becoming King of France. His relationship to Osell Hermione plays a crucial role in this part of the story. She has been a former mistress to Cesario and is already past her beauty. To the surprise of everyone, the handsome prince falls in love with her. Only the reader gets to know the reason: Fergusano, a Scottish wizard, made a philtre, that bewitched Cesario and attached him to Hermione. She finally becomes his wife, and stirs up his ambition to become King with the help of two wizards. Cesario leaves with all his men from Brussels to France, where he proclaims himself King. He loses the aid of his more powerful friend, though, who dislike his false declaration to the title. Fergusano had his hand in this affair and it seems as if Cesario is rather gullible and easily deluded into believing in his ultimate success. Cesario's army is defeated by the Royal Army. He was too impatient and what is worse, abandoned by many of his own people. Philander was one of the deserters. He wanted to separate from his own party in France anyway in order to serve the King. This sudden change in his political attitude is not altogether surprising. In part 1, he already showed a lack of enthusiasm for the rebellion against the King. Cesario is finally executed, whereas Philander is pardoned and regains the affection of the King again.
15107299	/m/03hhnd0	Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages				 Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages is the story of a magic toymaker, Isaac Bodkins, who passes away before selecting someone to carry on in his work. His toys, each resembling a different recognizable animal, went to children in need; children who had lost parents, children who were ill, neglected, or abused. The plush animals would come alive, giving moral support in times of greatest need. When they were no longer needed, the magic would drain from them, and the children they had cared for would remember them as nothing more than childhood playthings. Now, chased by the evil toys made by Isaac’s predecessor, the toys, led by Amos the bear, must make their way through New York city on a dark and stormy night to seek out the toymaker Isaac had selected. If they cannot find her in time, an evil toymaker will take over and harm will come to the very children the Oddkins were created to protect. The Oddkins is quintessential example of postmodern Gothic fiction, showing the transition from the mythic fantasies of the countryside to the cold harsh Gothic reality of the urban center.
15107559	/m/03hhnn9	Before Green Gables	Budge Wilson	2008	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This book describes Anne's difficult pre-Green-Gables childhood, including the deaths of her parents.
15107673	/m/03hhnrf	Everything on a Waffle	Polly Horvath	2001-04-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Everything on a Waffle, set in a small Canadian fishing village, tells the story of an eleven-year-old girl named Primrose Squarp. Primrose's parents disappear in a typhoon, but Primrose refuses to believe they are dead and doesn't attend their memorial service. While she defends her family's survival,her custody situation moves around from aging neighbor Miss Perfidy to her preoccupied Uncle Jack. The only thing that remains constant is her enjoyment of a restaurant called the Girl on the Red Swing, where each menu item is served on a waffle. Restaurant owner Kate Bowzer takes Primrose under her wing. She teaches her how to cook (recipes are all cited in a notepad) She doesn't question or criticize her, even through her odd predicaments, such as accidentally setting the class guinea pig on fire Primrose is taken from the custody of her uncle 'Uncle Jack' to an older couple. While she likes them, she is involved in a variety of accidents, including losing a toe. Through her oddities and accidents, Primrose becomes a town curiosity, with neighbors questioning her emotional state. But even through all of this, Primrose never gives up hope in finding her parents and being a normal family again.Later on, her parents come back, which is a real shock to everyone in town.
15110969	/m/03hhrrk	To Live	Yu Hua	1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Xu Fugui, son of a local rich man, is a compulsive gambler. After he gambles away the entire family fortune, his father dies with grief and indignation. The Chinese civil war is occurring at the time, and Fugui is forced to join the army. By the time he finally returns home two years later, he finds his mother has died of a stroke, and his daughter has become mute and lost most of her hearing from a fever. Years later, Fugui's only son dies after a blood transfusion. The daughter finally grows up and finds a husband. They are a happy couple until she dies from dystocia. Soon after that, Fugui's wife dies of osteoporosis, and his son in law dies in a construction accident. Eventually, even Fugui’s last relative, his grandson Kugen (renamed Mantou in the 1994 movie adaptation), chokes to death while eating beans. In the end, Fugui buys an old ox to accompany him. It seems that in the world absolutely nothing is left for him, but he does not give up, he believes there is still hope, that just like they say, things would get better. The novel includes first-hand descriptions of some of the less successful aspects of Collectivist policy, such as communal agriculture and the attempt to build a village-based steel industry. A film based on the book was released in 1994, after numerous discussions between film director Zhang Yimou and the novelist author Yu Hua upon the proper film adaptation, keeping the plot within the frame of Yu Hua's artistic vision. Despite being less grim than the novel, the movie was banned in China, and director Zhang Yimou was banned from film-making for two years.
15116556	/m/03hh_83	Family Guy: Stewie's Guide to World Domination		2005-10-20		 Since his birth to Lois and Peter Griffin, Stewie has shown his intentions of world domination, to the extent of storing machine guns and other weapons in his bedroom for usage at whim. Upon deciding people must understand his plans before he can perform them, he discusses his dysfunctional family and modern day society throughout, as well as explaining how ide he intends to take over the world, as well as his personal beliefs on matters such as his family, love, parenting, work, preschool, pop culture, politics, play and more.
15117262	/m/0c__c2	Biting the Sun	Tanith Lee		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with the narrator visiting a close friend after his fortieth suicide-by-birdplane. Offended by his insensitivity, she kills herself, then, in a new body, embarks on a series of mundane attempts to amuse herself, including stealing a white fluffy desert animal that she keeps as a pet, programming elaborate dreams for herself, having unsatisfying sex with her peers, and employing a wide variety of legal drugs. Incapable of making emotional connections with anyone, she finds her life increasingly unsatisfying, though her demanding and difficult pet does interest her. Soon after going through the mundane rituals of her life the narrator feels like she should not be a Jang teenager anymore. However, the quasi-robots who run the city determine that she is not ready to become an older person. Soon she tries looking for a useful job, but to no avail: robots and computers perform every useful task. She then attempts to have a child, but is unable to find a suitable partner, tries to have a child with herself, and ends up causing the child to die. Unable to fill the emptiness she feels, she joins an expedition to explore the deserts outside the city. During this expedition, the narrator realizes the beauty of life outside of the domes and she gains a strong emotional connection with her stolen pet. However, it is then accidentally killed, devastating her. Upon returning to the city, she is still unable to make lasting emotional connections with her peers. She considers death and wonders if she really belongs in the city or somewhere else.
15120912	/m/03hj4j9	Shutter Island	Dennis Lehane	2003-04-15	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1954, widower U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule go to Shutter Island on a ferry boat to the home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, who has escaped the hospital and apparently the desolate island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant supervision. Visiting Rachel's room, Teddy and Chuck discover a code that Teddy believes points to a 67th patient, when there are allegedly only 66. Teddy also reveals to Chuck that he is there to avenge the death of his wife Dolores, who was murdered two years prior by one of the inmates, Andrew Laeddis. The novel is interspersed with graphic descriptions of World War II and Dachau which Teddy helped to liberate. After a hurricane hits the island, Teddy and Chuck investigate Ward C, where Teddy believes government experiments with psychotropic drugs are being conducted. One inmate tells Teddy that Chuck is not to be trusted. As Teddy and Chuck return to the main hospital area, they are separated. Teddy discovers an ex-psychiatrist, who says she is the real Rachel Solando, hiding in sea caves. She explains that he has no friends on the island and is himself a prisoner. She warns him to be careful that food, medication, even cigarettes he has taken have been laced with psychotropic drugs. Upon returning to the hospital, Teddy cannot find Chuck and is told he had no partner. He escapes and makes his way to the lighthouse to rescue Chuck where he believes the experiments take place. He reaches the top of the lighthouse and finds only hospital administrator Dr. Cawley seated at a desk. Cawley tells Teddy that he is Andrew Laeddis (an anagram of Edward Daniels) and that he murdered his wife, who is Dolores Chanal (an anagram of Rachel Solando), two years ago after she murdered their 3 children. Andrew/Teddy refuses to believe this and takes extreme measures to disprove it, grabbing what he thinks is his gun and tries to shoot Dr. Cawley; but his firearm is merely a toy water pistol. The man he thinks is Chuck then enters, revealing that he is actually Andrew's psychiatrist, Dr. Sheehan. He is told that Dr. Cawley and Chuck/Sheehan have devised this treatment to allow him to live out his elaborate fantasy, in order to confront the truth, or else undergo a radical lobotomy treatment. Teddy/Andrew finally realizes that he killed his wife and his service as a US Marshal was a long time ago. This breakthrough seems promising for his recovery. The next morning Andrew/Teddy wakes up, leaves the dorm and sits outside on the hospital steps. Chuck/Dr. Sheehan sits next to him. Andrew/Teddy says to Chuck/Sheehan, "I don't know, Chuck. You think they're onto us?" Chuck/Sheehan replies: "Nah. We're too smart for that." Chuck/Sheehan signals to Dr. Cawley and the guards that he believes the treatment was unsuccessful. Dr. Cawley and the orderlies approach Andrew/Teddy as he says "Yeah, we are aren't we?" The ending of the novel is unclear as to which "reality" is true. It is unclear whether he has truly regressed, or if he wishes to "die" (at the very least, lose his abilities for conscious thought, through lobotomy) in order to avoid living with the knowledge that he is a murderer.
15130869	/m/03hjhfy	What Was Lost	Catherine O'Flynn	2007-01-04	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 What Was Lost is a mystery story about a missing girl. It is also a portrait of a changing community over twenty years. It examines modern life's emptiness, and society's obsession with shopping. What Was Lost is set in the city of Birmingham, England. The main events of the novel take place in Green Oaks shopping centre. The first part of the novel is set in 1984. A 10-year-old girl called Kate Meaney frequently plays in the newly-opened Green Oaks. She pretends to be a detective, observing and following people. She carries her toy monkey Mickey and a notebook with her. Kate vanishes and Adrian, the 22-year-old son of a newsagent, is the prime suspect in her disappearance. He is hounded by the press and the police. Unable to handle the pressure, he disappears. The novel's narrative moves forward to 2004. Kurt is a security guard at Green Oaks. He has a sleeping disorder. Lisa is the deputy manager of a music store. She is unhappy because of the strange behaviour of her colleagues and customers and because of her relationship with her partner. She becomes friends with Kurt. A girl holding a soft toy is seen in a CCTV security monitor. Kurt and Lisa follow the girl through Green Oaks and investigate how she is connected to Green Oaks' unsettling history. It is revealed that both Kurt and Lisa have connections to the case of the missing girl.
15134792	/m/03hjncp	A Summer to Die				 Meg, the younger of the two sisters, is the story's narrator and primary protagonist. Their father, an English professor at a university, has decided to take a year off from teaching to write a book that he claims will shake the world of literature—only half jokingly. This means the family relocates to a small country house where his daughters are upset they will be sharing a room. Like most sisters, the two girls quarrel over silly things, and Meg is jealous of her sister's blond curls and long eyelashes. The owner of the house the family is renting lives down the road in a smaller house on the same property. The sisters soon establish a rapport with the elderly Will Banks, who learns about photography with Meg and teaches Molly about the abundant wildflowers covering the estate. A few months after coming to the country, Molly begins having constant nosebleeds the doctor blames on the cold weather. Unfortunately, he wasn't aware of the underlying cause, and it is not until Molly's bed is soaked in blood that she is rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with the ultimately fatal disease acute myelogenous leukemia. She seems to recover slightly, though the pills she's taking are causing her hair to fall out. Shortly thereafter, Ben Brady and a pregnant Maria Abbott, whom the townspeople incorrectly assume not to be married, arrive to make the third Banks house their home, and all the inhabitants of the property enjoy each others company for a while. Then the unthinkable happens, and Molly is rushed back to the hospital. She asks Meg to tell the baby to wait to be born until she comes home, and Meg obliges her, and also asks the baby to be born in the daytime since she's been invited to take pictures of the birth. They named it Happy William Abbott-Brady. In the end, Molly dies and the family moves back to the city. Through it all, and with help from those who love her, Meg finds the jealousy she once had for her sister has changed into pure love, and eventually she must choose to accept that bad things happen to good people. In the end, she does.
15135800	/m/03hjp6n	Moscow 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March	Adam Zamoyski	2004-08-03	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 Napoleon I of France was, at the time, a very prominent military and political figure, desiring to create a French-governed Europe. He succeeded in annexing many countries to France, placing his relatives and friends as monarchs in those countries. He managed to subdue Prussia and force her to become his ally, and to a great extent did the same to Austria. After winning a war with Russia, he made even the Russian Tzar Alexander (1801) his ally. Only two countries in Europe still resisted France's attempt at domination: United Kingdom and Spain. He failed when attempting to invade Britain and destroy it via a constant blockade. After the execution of duke d'Enghien, however, Tzar Alexander began to hate and detest Napoleon, and began to cooperate with the United Kingdom, disrupting the continental blockade. Napoleon decided then to wage war on Russia, in order to get her back as a French ally. In June 1812, the French invaded Russia on Napoleon's orders, making their way east towards Moscow, suffering large losses caused by lack of food, desertion, disease, exhaustion and battles. Napoleon eventually "conquered" Moscow, only to see the deserted city being set on fire by the Russians themselves, on the order of their commanders. After staying too long in the scorched city, Napoleon finally decided to march back, suffering enormous losses caused by harassment by the Russian troops, the disastrous battle at the crossing of Berezina river, and agonizing cold (down to -30&nbsp;°C) Napoleon's army of more than 500,000 soldiers was annihilated, thus marking a turning point in world affairs and events around the world.
15135832	/m/03hjp7b	Master Georgie	Beryl Bainbridge	1998-11	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is told in six chapters, starting in Liverpool in 1846 and ending outside Sevastopol in 1854. George Hardy, an attractive English surgeon, amateur photographer and bisexual, leaves his affluent lifestyle in Liverpool, where he is heir to a fortune, to go to war at Inkerman in the Crimea. He believes "that the war would at last provide him with the prop he needed." His story is told by three other characters: Myrtle, a lovestruck foundling who bears Hardy's children, Dr. Potter, an intellectual and geologist and Pompey Jones, a one-time street performer who learns photography from Hardy. United by a sudden death in a Liverpool brothel in 1846, the four characters are undeniably linked by love, class, war and fate.
15143867	/m/03hjwpl	Nine Months in the Life of an Old Maid				 Beth Cane, the thirty-year-old titular character, narrates the story. Beth is socially isolated and emotionally fragile, having been hospitalized for nervous conditions on several occasions. She lives with her older sister, Mimi, a mystery writer, and her brother-in-law, Barney, a poet. Unemployed, unmarried, and never having left home, Beth is very dependent on her sister, which the ultra-responsible Mimi encourages. The three of them, along with their servants, make their home at Yiytzo, the family estate. Yiytzo, which means "the egg" in Russian, had been established by Beth's communist parents, Josh and Lily, in 1929. Josh and Lily, who were narcissistic and not particularly interested in their children, grew tired of communism. The two got the opportunity to live in California because Josh, a semi-successful novelist, got a job as a screenwriter. They left the young girls in care of servants and rarely visited because, according to them, "you could not raise children in Hollywood." Set in the 1950s, the novel opens with the two sisters awaiting the arrival of their older half-brother Vincent. (Lily had abandoned her first husband along with eleven-month-old Vincent to run off with Josh.) Mimi isn't particularly happy about Vincent visiting; they don't get along well and Vincent enjoys provoking her. Beth, who has always liked her brother, is on edge about the fact that Lily is coming as well. Lily and Josh informally separated many years before and Beth resents the fact that her mother will only visit when Lily feels that Josh is likely to be at Yiytzo. Beth gets along well enough with her father but does not feel much of a bond with him. Mimi and Barney decide to go out alone before the guests arrive; they get into a one-car accident, driving their car partially off the road. They are unhurt and go to bed after resolving to call the mechanic the next day. After they go to their room, their neighbor from down the road, Max, knocks on the door. He has bumped into Barney and Mimi's car and decided to place a lantern on the trunk to warn others that the car is there. Beth invites him in and discovers that he is a former classmate of Vincent's. He leaves after drinking tea and inviting Beth to look at the house that he is renovating. Vincent arrives the next day and Lily arrives shortly thereafter. Lily, who has only come to see Josh, doesn't take much of an interest in the children, angering Beth and Vincent. Mimi announces that she is pregnant after her mother and brother leave. Vincent visits again later that summer. Lily also visits again, having found out that Josh plans to visit. Mimi happily announces her pregnancy to her mother who suggests that Mimi have an abortion if she doesn't want it. This reduces Mimi to tears. Vincent, who is also hurt by Lily's insensitive behavior, storms out of the house during the meal and doesn't even return to get his wallet. Beth ends up quarreling with her mother. Josh arrives via motorcycle on the last day of Lily's visit. During the visit, the family discovers that Josh has decided to sell most of the that make up the estate in order for the town to widen the road near their home. Beth is deeply upset by this decision and begins to feel resentful toward her father. When Thanksgiving comes around, Vincent visits with his girlfriend's son, who immediately bonds with Mimi. Mimi and Vincent also resolve their differences and bond which causes Beth to feel left out. She impulsively decides to leave the house and visit Max. Max is getting ready to visit someone else and invites Beth along. She reluctantly goes and decides not to tell Mimi where she is going in order to make her worry. Beth and Max leave shortly thereafter and Max takes her home. Max becomes a regular visitor afterwards. When Christmas rolls around the entire Cane family descends on Yiytzo. Vincent brings his girlfriend as well as her son this time. Josh and Lily, who travelled together in Spain, come to the house together. Josh gives Mimi and Barney the deed to the house and the acreage immediately surrounding it. He also gives Vincent a few acres nearby. Beth, angered all over again by Josh's determination to sell the land, quarrels with her father who drunkenly curses and insults her. At this point, Max, who has given Beth a beaded purse as a gift, convinces her to take a walk with him. During the walk, Max suggests that Beth marry him and move into the house that he has been renovating. Beth, not particularly eager to marry, promises to think about it. As Mimi's due date approaches, Beth begins to feel increasingly anxious. Beth, who dislikes children, isn't thrilled with the idea of being an aunt. One night, when both sisters are suffering from insomnia, Beth tells Mimi that Max asked her to marry him and that she seriously considering the offer, despite her ambivalence. Mimi and Barney, who had been up drinking in the kitchen, think this is a bad idea and vehemently oppose it. Beth asserts her right to marry as well as her right to keep her previous hospitalizations a secret from Max. Mimi, who has always felt hostile toward Max, begins to cry. Mimi goes into labor a few weeks later. Beth impulsively decides to run to Max's house, failing to put on shoes or a coat first. She shows up at Max's house with cold bleeding feet and accepts his proposal. Barney calls early in the morning and announces that Mimi gave birth to a girl. Beth and Max marry and, at the end of the book, have been together for a year.
15162417	/m/03hkc_d	A New Era of Thought				 A New Era of Thought consists of two parts. The first part is a collection of philosophical and mathematical essays on the fourth dimension. These essays are somewhat disconnected. They teach the possibility of thinking four-dimensionally and about the religious and philosophical insights thus obtainable. In the second part Hinton develops a system of coloured cubes. These cubes serve as model to get a four dimensional perception as a basis of four dimensional thinking. This part describes how to visualize a tessaract by looking at several 3-D cross sections of it. The system of cubic models in A New Era of Thought is a forerunner of the cubic models in Hinton's book The Fourth Dimension.
15162686	/m/03hkdfv	Darkwalker on Moonshae	Douglas Niles	1987-05	{"/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel and its trilogy use the Moonshae Isles as its setting. Kazgoroth, the Beast, has come into the world to destroy the power of the Earthmother. Changing its shape as needs be, the Beast goes across the island of Gwynneth, corrupting everything in its way. Its destination is a large gathering of Northmen raiders at Oman's Isle, in the middle of the Moonshaes, where they are preparing an assault on the kingdom of Corwell. The Northmen don't realize yet that this is going to be more than just a plundering raid. They don't know that their leader isn't King Thelgaar Ironhand, but the Beast, who has killed the king and assumed his shape. Meanwhile, the Earthmother, aware of the danger and hurting from the corruption brought to the land, her body, by the vile presence of the Beast, awakes her children - the Leviathan, the Pack, and Kamerynn, the Unicorn. They will try to stop Kazgoroth in different ways, but that won't be enough. At Caer Corwell, the seat of the king of Corwell, rumour brings word of war coming to the kingdom. Preparation is under way, but the Ffolk don't know where the enemy will strike. It is up to Tristan to organize the Ffolk against this both human and demonic threat. In his fight against the odds, helped by Robyn, he will grow into the responsible leader that should inherit his father's kingdom.
15166062	/m/03hkhqb	The Glass Palace: A Novel	Amitav Ghosh	2000	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel starts with a teenage boy called Rajkumar running through the city of Mandalay to find a woman called Ma Cho. He is the last surviving member of his family and comes to Burma from India with a bright entrepreneurial spirit and a hunger for success. Rajkumar's work as an assistant on Ma Cho's food stall takes place in the shadow of the Glass Palace, in which King Thibaw and his wife reside with their daughters, the princesses. As the British invasion comes to topple the incumbent regime, everyday citizens of Mandalay are able to enter the enshrined building, and it is then that Rajkumar spots Dolly, one of the princesses' attendants, and instantly falls in love with her. However, the entire Royal Family and their entourage are quickly extradited by the British and forced into house arrest thousands of miles away on the West coast of India. Whilst Rajkumar's quickly evolving career begins to take shape with the help of Saya John, a successful teak merchant (Ma Cho's sometime lover), we are given a glimpse into the awkward beginnings of a new life for King Thebaw and his family as they try to settle into the port town of Ratnagiri, north of Goa. Events conspire to weave Outram House (the name of the residence the British provide to house the family and what remains of their assistants) more firmly into the life of Ratnagiri than had been expected. King Thebaw is revered by the local community, and in time the family come to feel secure and even happy in their new surroundings. The arrival of a new Collector stirs up feelings of resentment towards the colonial regime, but Uma, the Collector's headstrong wife, is able to help bridge the gap by befriending Dolly. Meanwhile, Rajkumar has been enduring the hardships of the teak trade, having witnessed man and beast working together on an epic scale as elephants transport large volumes of wood down from the forests for sale into the British Empire's vastly expanding markets. Being the opportunist that he is, Rajkumar starts to make his own way in world after receiving advice from his new friend and colleague Doh Say. Borrowing cash from Saya John, he makes the journey to India to recruit poverty-stricken village-dwellers into the comparatively lucrative (yet undoubtedly perilous) world of early oil-mining in Burma. Having made enough money this way, Rajkumar does what has been his dream for some time: buy a timber-yard of his own, with Doh Say as business partner. Having built a more than modest commercial empire, Rajkumar had one piece of unfinished business: to track down the only girl he'd ever loved, Dolly. Through an Indian connection in Rangoon (Yangon), Rajkumar makes contact with Ratnagiri via Uma, and is accordingly granted an audience with the Collector and his wife over a meal that of course stiffly conforms to colonial best practice. To his surprise, Dolly is present, and after some drama, he finally persuades her to leave the family she has been exiled with, and return with him to Burma as his wife. Saya John prides himself on being able to spot the next big commodity, and on their return to Rangoon, he hands Rajkumar and Dolly a small clump of odd elastic material: rubber. A joining of multi-ethnic families in Calcutta. Life before World War II on a rubber plantation in Malaya by Rajkumar with help of Saya John. The story of the Japanese invasion of Malaya and Burma and the subsequent family losses of lives and properties. Post WWII lives of the scattered families.
15166173	/m/03hkhtf	Panic Spring	Lawrence Durrell	1937	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The character Marlowe is stranded in Brindisi during political strife in Greece, and he is eventually conveyed to Mavrodaphne by the boatman Christ who serves Rumanades, a highly successful businessman who owns Mavrodaphne. He is a disillusioned schoolteacher akin to Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall. Shortly after arriving on the island, he meets Gordon and Walsh, both characters from Durrell's Pied Piper of Lovers. In the third chapter, Rumanades' personal history is narrated, leading up through his display of fireworks on Mavrodaphne. This includes his capitalist successes and his acquisition of his fortune, as well as his failed marriage that his wealth could not control. The fourth and fifth chapters have Marlowe moving into one of Rumanades' villas on the island and meeting the remaining characters, Francis and Fonvisin. The narrative then turns to Marlowe's interests in Quietism. The subsequent chapters focus heavily on the individual characters in their own narratives: Walsh, Fonvisin, and Francis. Returning to the present moment on Mavrodaphne, the tenth chapter, "The Music," narrates a gramophone concert leading to an evening spent on a high cliff, with Francis, Marlowe, and Walsh in conversation. Marlowe then begins to write his treatise on Quietism, and Francis is called away from the island back to London, for which she is given a farewell celebration. However, before she can leave, Rumanades dies of a fever brought on by an evening spent in poor weather thinking of his lost wife. One of the priests dies on the same night, and this throws the small community of expatriates into turmoil as they must vacate the island, putting an end to their escape from financial crises, revolution, and the impending World War.
15171266	/m/03hknmg	Rough Justice		2008-04-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story picks up where Tough Love left off. This time it's all about Charley. She has it all now that she is officially a WAG. All the most glamorous parties, her husbands credit card and a million-pound penthouse. But behinds closed doors her life isn't as glossy as it seems. Joel Brady, her husband has a temper and beats Charley when they argue. She has to go, but there's one problem - she still loves him. Will she regret marrying in haste - and against her and her family's will?
15173120	/m/03hkqmf	Or All the Seas with Oysters	Avram Davidson	1958		 Struck by the fact that there are never enough pins and always too many coat-hangers, a bicycle shop owner begins to speculate on the possible parallels between natural and man-made objects.
15178037	/m/03hkx78	Tough Love		2007-10-18	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Leanne Crompton is a successful glamour model. But when she is sacked by her modelling agency because she's gotten too old she soon finds herself penniless. She decides to move her and her seven year child Kia back to her home town and to her wayward family. Leanne's mother, Tracy is an extreme alcoholic; and her two sisters, Jodie and Karina, want to escape Leanne's shadow; while her younger brother, Scott, is being cheated on by his girlfriend Charly. They all seem so lost in life, including Leanne, except for her older brother, Markie, who has just been released from prison. Having to start from the bottom once again proves tough for Leanne especially due to the secret she burdens, the celebrity identity of her daughter Kia. She questions whether or not to reveal her secret to her mum, who has a habit of selling stories to the newspapers. But before she gets the chance tell anyone, Kia's dad catches up to Leanne and tries unsuccessfully to silence her forever.
15184479	/m/03hl6fk	99 Coffins	David Wellington	2007	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 After having faced down vampires in the previous novel, Laura Caxton is more than happy to continue her career as a trooper in the Pennsylvania State Police. Her life is upended again when Special Agent United States Federal Marshal Jameson Arkeley contacts her to help investigate the discovery of a cache of Civil War-era coffins underneath the grounds of the Gettysburg Battlefield. There are one hundred coffins in the underground crypt along with ninety-nine hearts removed from the moldering vampire bodies, but one coffin is smashed and the vampire body is missing. Hobbled by his crippled hand, Arkeley presses Caxton into service as his field operative to hunt down the missing vampire body before another horrific outbreak of vampirism infects the local population. In a series of flashbacks told through letters, journals, and military reports it is revealed that the 150 year old vampires are the remains of a Union Army vampire corps that was used to turn the tide against the South at Gettysburg. Promised to be revived as human once a cure for vampirism was found, the soldiers were imprisoned in their tomb and were almost immediately forgotten by their commanders. The archeologist who discovers the tomb uses the vampires in a plot for his own personal gain.
15203202	/m/047gpr8	Blood Rites	Jim Butcher	2004-08-03	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After accidentally acquiring a stray puppy from a kidnapped litter of Tibetan temple dogs, Harry Dresden accepts a job from his White Court acquaintance, Thomas Raith, to investigate a series of deaths on a pornography film set led by director Arturo Genosa. After an entropy curse arrives and almost kills two more people, Lara Raith, another White Court vampire, appears as a replacement actress, discovers Dresden's presence, and soon decides to kill both Harry and Thomas for being involved. However, a surprise Black Court attack forces a truce between them and they flee to the Raith's Chicago mansion for safety. There, Dresden learns that Thomas is his half-brother and escapes an assassination attempt by Lord Raith, Thomas' and Lara's father. Soon after, Dresden finds a pattern to the curses and prepares a counterattack, but one of Genosa's ex-wives prevents him from saving the next target and frames him for the woman's death. He escapes and works out that all of Genosa's ex-wives are behind the curse, with Lord Raith supporting them. Before the next curse can be unleashed against him, Dresden calls upon Murphy to help him stop Lord Raith and maneuvers Lara to save them all from her father. At the same time, Harry has discovered a newly-established nest of Black Court vampires, led by a very old and dangerous vampire named Mavra. To wipe out the nest before it becomes entrenched, he enlists the help of his friend Karrin Murphy, the mercenary Jared Kincaid, and his mentor Ebenezar McCoy, but discovers that Kincaid and McCoy have already met. Despite almost getting blown up and burned to death, the crew successfully battle Mavra, destroy the nest, and rescue the children that had been taken as hostages. At the end, Thomas saves Harry by paying Kincaid's fee using his entire savings.
15203220	/m/047gprn	Dead Beat	Jim Butcher	2005-05-03	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It's three days before Halloween and nearly a year after the events in Blood Rites. Mavra, from the previous novel, forces Dresden to locate The Word of Kemmler for her within 3 days, or Murphy will be setup for the murder of one of Mavra's minions last year. Dresden has not heard of The Word, so he consults Bob, who used to belong to Kemmler, a powerful necromancer, the Word most likely being his journal or spellbook, and certainly hunted by his apprentices. Dresden consults Dr. Butters, the Chicago assistant coroner, about any peculiar recent deaths that could be linked to necromancy. They are attacked by zombies under the necromancer Grevane. Harry and Butters escape to Dresden's warded apartment. Dresden leaves Butters with Mouse to follow a lead, the book Die Lied der Erlking Grevane was using. Dresden searches for Die Lied der Erlking at an arcane book store near the University of Chicago. He meets Sheila, a recently hired employee of the bookstore, who assists him in finding a copy. Outside the bookstore, Dresden is attacked by two wizards, Cowl and a his attendant Kumori, for possession of the book. Fighting them to a standstill and utterly exhausted, Harry is saved by the Alphas, who are students at the University. With police sirens getting closer, Kumori and Cowl flee, and the Alphas get Harry home to rest. Dresden visits his old friend Mortimer Lindquist for some answers, who points out locate six areas of Black Magic which the local spirits are avoiding and where recent murders occurred. Dresden and Butters confirm that one of the Black Magic area victims was ritually murdered, and accidentally find flash drive in a corpse. Dresden gets a message from Sheila, asking him to come by the bookstore. While there, Capiocorpus (from Latin capio, "I take" and corpus, "body") and Li Xian begin interrogating the bookstore owner about the Erlking book. Dresden attempts to fight them off but is injured and overpowered by the duo who take his copy of the book. He is rescued by Ms. Gard - under orders from Johnny Marcone. He gives Dresden some information about the sidewalk murder and drops him off at the hospital emergency room. Thomas agrees to guard Butters, while Dresden summons his fairy godmother, Leanansidhe. Instead, Queen Mab answers his call. Mab tells Dresden that the Erlking is able to summon the spirits of past hunters for the Wild Hunt. Kemmler devised a way to devour the energy of the dead and turn himself into a demi-god. And, Darkhallow is Halloween. Queen Mab will tell Dresden everything he wants to know, if he becomes her Winter Knight. As her Knight, Dresden would have more than enough power to defeat these necromancers. Dresden declines her tempting offer and Mab vanishes. Dresden assumes the Darkhallow ritual will cause the Erlking to appear and summon the spirits of past hunters for the Wild Hunt. Then, the necromancer devours the energy of those spirits and turns into a demi-god. He guesses that the ritual only creates one demi-god, hence the competition among Kemmler's students. Back at his apartment, Dresden brings Thomas up to speed. Suddenly, Grevane besieges the apartment. Then, Capiocorpus arrives and attacks Grevane. While they are fighting, Dresden, Thomas, Mouse, and Butters escape, and hide in Murphy's house. That night, Lasciel's image appears in his dream and makes a similar offer to empower Harry. Dresden declines her tempting offer and Lasciel's image vanishes. The next day is Halloween - Darkhallow. Dresden has until sunset to figure out where The Word is hidden and prevent the Darkhallow ritual. Overwhelmed, Dresden calls on the White Council. The Wardens will come in force to deal with Kemmler's apprentices. Since Capiocorpus and Li took the Elrking book from him, Dresden must rely on Sheila's eidetic memory. As she recites the book, he identifies the summoning ritual by its rhythm and phrasing patterns. Leaving her apartment, Dresden is accosted by Kumori. She promises if he leaves town now, he won't be killed, but Dresden refuses. Dresden arrives early at McAnally's, so he can have a peaceful dinner before his meeting with the Wardens. With so many Wardens killed in the war with the Red Court, Captain Luccio deputizes him as a Warden and a regional commander, much to the dismay of Warden Morgan who has never trusted Harry. After planning, Dresden summons and traps the Erlking, so no one else can summon him during the Darkhallow. The Erlking assaults and the containment circle and it holds until Cowl attacks Dresden forcing him to lose concentration and the circle collapses. The Erlking summons the Wild Hunt. Cowl distracts Dresden, while Kumori kidnaps Bob. Dresden and Butters go to Sheila's for help from the Erlking book. Butters tells Dresden that he is talking to himself in an empty room, and Dresden realizes Sheila is imaginary and the working of Lasciel. She again offers to help Dresden, but Harry realizes accepting help from Lasciel is a path down a slippery slope to total dependence upon her. He mentally binds her. With his mind clear, Dresden realizes the flash drive data are GPS coordinates. After stealing a GPS unit, Butters locates The Word in the Field Museum - next to Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Grevane and his associate close in on them. Harry tells Butters and Mouse to flee to safety. Dresden quickly flips through The Word, so Lasciel can read it. Grevane captures Dresden and takes The Word. He gives the manacled Dresden to his associate, Quintus Cassius, the former host for Saluriel who Dresden previously brutally assaulted and humiliated. Cassius begins torturing Dresden, but Butters returns with Mouse, who attacks and kills Cassius. Forewarned, Cassius gives Dresden his death curse as he dies "DIE ALONE." The powerful curse knocks Dresden unconscious. He dreams that he makes a truce with Lasciel and she translates the German text of The Word for him. To be able to go near the Darkhallow, one must surround oneself with traces of necromancer-magic (by performing it). With Butters as his drummer, Dresden raises Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex from the dead, and they head to the gathering maelstrom over a local college. The five wardens are already on campus, fighting a group of zombies. Dresden runs Sue into the zombies and splatters them. The zombies sideline Warden Yoshimo. Sue eats Li. A wave of specters appear from underneath the Earth and attack the Wardens. Warden Kowalski dies during the battle. Captain Luccio is attacked by Capiocorpus and Luccio impales Capiocorpus but Capriocorpus switches bodies with Luccio and when Harry enters the alley, he is greeted by Capriocorpus in Luccio's body. Dresden recognizes Capriocorpus within Luccio's body and shoots her dead. Warden Morgan witnesses the shooting and it reinforces his belief that Harry is a traitor. Morgan viciously attacks Dresden and is about to kill him, but is shot by Warden Ramirez, who soulgazed Capiocorpus and confirmed that Captain Luccio is now trapped inside the necromancer's body. Dresden and Ramirez ride off on Sue to face Grevane, Kumori, and Cowl. They face Grevane and his zombies first. Sue mows down the zombies, while Dresden slugs it out with Grevane. After Ramirez shoots Grevane, they are ambushed by Kumori and Cowl. Ramirez is sidelined. Dresden attacks Cowl, but Cowl is too powerful for him and Kumori ends up holding Dresden at knifepoint. Bob, forced to reveal the contents of the Word of Kemmler to Cowl, signals to Harry that he is still allied with him. Harry releases Bob and his spirit enters Sue. As Sue, Bob eats Kumori. Quickly, Dresden smashes his staff into Cowl's face, disrupting the spell. The backlash from the botched Darkhallow spell apparently kills Cowl and knocks Dresden unconscious. When Dresden awakes, the Erlking confronts him about Dresden trying to ensnare him, but is pleased with Dresden's summoning of Sue for The Wild Hunt as well as his nerve. Dresden pockets The Word for his deal with Mavra. Then, Dresden and Butters evacuate everyone to Harry's apartment. Listens-to-Wind and his fellow healers arrive and moved the wounded to a more secure location. Dresden hurries to his meeting with Mavra, and they swap the Word for the photos, and Dresden warns Mavra against threatening his friends again. Later, Morgan almost says he is sorry that he misjudged Dresden. The story closes as Butters gives Dresden a guitar as therapy for his burned hand.
15203231	/m/047gpqx	Proven Guilty	Jim Butcher	2006-05-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It's been nearly a year since the events in Dead Beat. Warden Harry Dresden attends the trial and execution of a sixteen year old Korean boy. In his ignorance, the boy repeatedly violated of the Laws of Magic by turning his family and other people into mental slaves. He ordered them to kill others, and then kill themselves. He's been proven guilty. The sentence is death. After the execution, Senior Counsel member Ebenezar McCoy asks Dresden to discover why the Summer and Winter Fae have not attacked the Red Court vampires. The Gatekeeper secretly requests that Dresden investigate the use of black magic in Chicago. At home, Dresden starts the ball rolling. He calls Fix, the Summer Knight, and arranges a meeting for tomorrow. In his Lab, Dresden talks to Bob about temporal mechanics and detecting black magic. As Dresden prepares a ritual to use Little Chicago to locate instances of black magic, he's interrupted by a call from Molly Carpenter, Michael's eldest daughter. She's at a police station and wants him to post bail. At the station, Dresden discovers she lied. She wants him to bail out her boyfriend, Nelson. He was arrested for an assault, which he didn't commit. Molly wants Dresden to help Nelson, because the assault was bizarre—almost supernatural. Dresden takes Molly home. He discovers that Molly had moved out of her parents' home. And, she was arrested for drug possession. Michael pleads with Dresden to help to Molly and her mother reconcile. Dresden agrees, reluctantly. Molly takes Dresden to SplatterCon!!!, a horror movie convention, where Nelson’s alleged assault took place. Detective Rawlings is moonlighting as convention security and is guarding the crime scene. While Dresden looks for clues, the power goes out. Rawlings and Dresden discover a movie monster has come to life. Rawlings shoots the monster to no avail. Dresden destroys it with magic. When the police arrive, Detective Sgt. Greene interrogates Dresden about the attacks. Murphy intervenes and takes Dresden home. The next day, Dresden and Murphy question the survivors at the hospital. Dresden scans them with his Sight. They've been mentally attacked by phobophages: beings that feed on fear. He also finds two inexplicable holes on one victim's head. Dresden meets with Fix, the Summer Knight, and Lily, the Summer Lady, on neutral ground at McAnally's Pub. Dresden asks why the Courts haven't retaliated against the Red Court vampires for trespassing in Faerie. Lily explains that Summer cannot attack the vampires, because it would divert their forces from the Winter-Summer stand-off. Winter and Summer must move together against the vampires, so that neither will side will gain any advantage over the other. Lily invites Maeve, the Winter Lady, to join them. Maeve says that Queen Mab has forbidden them to attack the vampires. Maeve fears that Mab might be succumbing to madness, which would disrupt Faerie and the real world. The meeting adjourns peacefully, but the Summer-Winter stand-off is unchanged. Somehow, Dresden must convince Mab to act. At the convention, Dresden and Mouse feel something hinky about movie director Darby Crane. Murphy questions Crane about the attacks at the Con. Lucius Glau, Crane's lawyer, intervenes and ends the conversation. Crane and Glau recognized Dresden's and Murphy's names. Crane becomes their prime suspect. Sandra, the convention chair, tells Murphy and Dresden that Det. Greene has detained Molly for hours. Dresden tags investigative reporter Lydia Stern to help. Det. Greene and "Agent Rick," Murphy's ex-husband, have been forcefully questioning Molly for hours. Dresden confronts Greene about his illegal detention and interrogation of a minor without parental consent. When Greene gets aggressive, Lydia Stern enters and questions Greene why they're illegally detaining a teenage girl without her parents' permission. Her readers want to know! Greene releases Molly, immediately. Dresden rents a hotel room and casts a magical web to detect the monsters when they re-appear. A panicked Nelson asks Dresden for help. Dresden sends him to holy ground at St. Mary's. Then, he plans another spell to send the phages back at their summoner. When the ward candle flares red and the web hums with powerful magic, Dresden casts the redirection spell. Three phobophages are redirected, but he misses one. Dresden fights that phage with magic and Hellfire. Dresden and Rawlings start tracking the summoner, but they’re attacked by Lucius Glau. He drives his van over Mouse and holds Rawlings at gunpoint. Crane cold-cocks Dresden with a tire iron. When Dresden awakes, he's bound by magic-inhibiting manacles. Rawlings is handcuffed to a pipe. Glau guards them, while Crane auctions Dresden on eBay. The highest bidder is Duke Ortega's widow, Duchess Arianna of the Red Court vampires. Lasciel helps Dresden escape. Dresden frees Rawlings and they try to escape. As Crane is about to kill Rawlings, Thomas arrives and shoots Glau. Crane surrenders. Mouse is alive, but limping. Thomas explains that Crane is Madrigal Raith of the White Court vampires. Crane isn't to blame for the attacks at the Con. As they leave, a Scarecrow kills Glau. Dresden, Thomas, and Mouse fight the Scarecrow, while Madrigal escapes. They escape from the Scarecrow. After they get Rawlings to a hospital, they track the Scarecrow's to the Carpenter's home. Dresden realizes that he somehow sent the phages to Molly and feels guilty about it. Daniel, the oldest son, tells them everyone else is in the panic room. Charity and her children are all right. However, Molly was taken by the phobophages. Dresden and Thomas take the Carpenters to St. Mary's Church. Father Forthill tells Dresden that Nelson seems to be suffering from drug withdrawal. Daniel awakes and tells them that he and Molly tried to distract the phages from the younger children. Dresden looks at Daniel with his Sight so he can never forget what he did to that family. He accidentally looks at Nelson and notices two small circles in his head. Realizing what the holes are, Dresden asks Charity about her magic. Charity admits she has magic, but no longer uses it. She and Molly have been fighting about Molly’s desire to pursue magic. Charity and Dresden go to Dresden's apartment to track Molly, but the spell doesn't work. When Murphy arrives at Dresden's apartment, she suggests using Charity's blood to track Molly. The trail goes to Nevernever through one of the convention theaters. At the theater, they meet Lily and Fix. They can't help Dresden directly, so Dresden gives the debt that Lily owes him to Charity, someone who they can help. Lily opens the gateway to the Nevernever. Molly's trail leads to Arctis Tor: the capital of the Winter Court. Lily tells Dresden that she and Fix cannot go with them. She gives Dresden a fire butterfly to protect them from the cold and to guide them. Dresden, Murphy, Thomas, and Charity arrive at Queen Mab's fortress. It was attacked by someone using Hellfire. They're ambushed by the creatures who kidnapped Molly. Thomas and Murphy make a stand, while Charity and Dresden look for Molly. Molly is held captive at the top of the fortress in an ice garden. The Winter Knight and his Fairy Godmother are prisoners, too. The Knight is imprisoned for his treason and his Godmother for her presumption and arrogance. Neither can aid Dresden. He and Charity fight the Scarecrow to no avail. Dresden realizes the fire butterfly contains the power and light of Summer. Dresden uses the power of Summer to destroy the Scarecrow, but he accidentally blasts the Winter Wellspring. This enrages every being in the Winter realm—even the Erlking. They escape through Lily’s gate into the theater. Dresden realizes they've been used by Lily to distract the Winter Fae and break the Summer-Winter stand-off. They retreat to the safety of holy ground at St. Mary’s. Dresden confronts Molly about using magic on Nelson and Rosie. Molly did it to stop them from using drugs, because Rosie is pregnant. Dresden explains that using mind-control breaks one of the Laws of Magic. As a Warden of the Council, Dresden must bring her to trial. At the trial, most of the Senior Council cannot attend, due to a vampire attack on the Colorado training camp. Despite an impassioned argument, The Merlin votes to execute Molly. Dresden stalls the trial by declaring a point of order that the Gatekeeper has not voted. After deliberation, the Gatekeeper opens a gate for Listen-to-Winds, McCoy, Martha Liberty, Luccio, and a herd of apprentices. They survived another attack on the training camp by the demonic Outsiders. Michael Carpenter, a Knight of the Cross, comes through with them. Dresden calls for a vote of the recently returned Senior Council members. Since Michael has just saved about 40 of the White Council's children, they should save one of his: Molly. They vote to not execute Molly on the condition that she becomes Dresden's apprentice and is placed under the Doom of Damocles. Dresden is under the Doom of Damocles, too. If Molly heads back toward black magic, she will be executed—and so will Dresden, for letting her backslide. Dresden makes Molly return to live with her parents, to finish high school, and to dedicate herself to the apprenticeship. Molly whines and complains. Dresden warns that if she doesn't have the patience and dedication to abide with her own family, she won't find the patience and dedication to learn magic. In a cloud of teen angst, Molly returns home. Her family is glad to have her back and Dresden is happy to get Mouse back. The next day, Murphy tells Dresden that she has been demoted to detective sergeant for dereliction of duty. The few hours she spent in Faerie, were days in Chicago time. Later, Dresden and McCoy compare notes on the recent happenings. They agree there's a new group orchestrating events from a safe distance. Dresden refers to this group of unknown individuals as the "Black Council." They agree the attack on the training camp means there's a highly-placed traitor in the White Council, maybe even on the Senior Council itself. Only time will tell.
15203234	/m/047gpqj	White Night	Jim Butcher	2007-04-03	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A year after the events in Proven Guilty, Dresden is called by Murphy to the scene of an apparent suicide, and senses the victim is a magical practitioner. After investigating another victim, Dresden realizes a serial killer of magical practitioners is loose in Chicago. Acting on a tip, Dresden and Murphy show up at a meeting of female practitioners, the Ordo Lebes. After some initial hostility, their leader Anna Ash reveals that over 20 members of the Ordo and the local Wiccan community have vanished. Others appear to be victims of suicide. A few of the people who disappeared were last seen with a man in a grey cloak—like a warden's cloak. Others were seen with an extremely beautiful, dark-haired man, quite possibly Thomas Raith, Dresdens brother. Dresden goes to Thomas' apartment, but he's gone. There are photos and notes on all the missing and murdered women. While examining the memory of these notes Lash tells him there was a veiled presence at the Ordo meeting, quite possibly a threat. He returns and discovers the veiled person is Elaine, his ex, hired as a bodyguard. After realizing the building is on fire, they escape and Dresden sees a grey-cloaked man and chases him, but "Grey Cloak," jumps in a car and escapes. Eavesdropping by a spell, Dresden learns that a vampire of House Skavis killed the "suicide" women. Dresden's psychic thread follows Grey Cloak through Undertown to his lair, where he reports to his boss, Cowl—who didn’t die during Darkhallow (Dead Beat). Cowl detects Dresden and blasts his psychic thread. Dresden wakes up next to his melted model of Chicago, which absorbed most of the blast. Dresden and Murphy return to Anna's to confront Helen for being the Skavis' informant. Helen convinces everyone that she's not a spy. Olivia is missing. A surveillance photo shows Thomas escorting Olivia from her house. Dresden and Elaine go to Thomas’ boat for answers. They find Olivia and some women and children in the hold. Thomas has been smuggling the targeted women and their children to a safe house. Before Thomas can finish explaining, Madrigal Raith and his ghouls attack. Dresden creates an escape route. Elaine, Thomas and Dresden fight the ghouls, while the women and children escape. Wounded, Dresden falls into Lake Michigan and loses consciousness. When Dresden regains consciousness, he and Elaine check up on her clients. Anna is dead in Elaine's hotel bathroom—an apparent suicide. They find Abby, Priscilla, and Mouse hiding at Abby’s apartment. Now, Helen is missing. Murphy arrives and informs Dresden that one of the suicide victims had been a prostitute at Marcone's Executive Priority Health. Dresden and Murphy go to the fitness club-brothel. Marcone lets them speak to his brothel madam, Ms. Demeter, a.k.a. Helen Beckitt. With Helen's information, Dresden figures out that Priscilla is the Skavis. Dresden and Murphy speed back to Elaine's hotel. Dresden frees Elaine from the Skavis' mind control. Elaine blasts the Skavis and Mouse finishes the job. Elaine is hospitalized, so Dresden calls Carlos Ramirez to help him fight Grey Cloak and Madrigal. Dresden, Ramirez, Molly and Mouse head to the Raith estate for the White Court conclave. Lara Raith escorts Dresden and Ramirez into the Deeps, a cavern, where they wait until the right moment to challenge Vittorio "Grey Cloak" Malvora and Madrigal to combat for violation of the Unseelie Accords. Vittorio and Madrigal accept the duel to the death. They all fight with a combination of physical and magical weaponry and defenses. Dresden kills Madrigal. Vittorio calls Cowl, who opens a gate from Nevernever, ushering in an army of ghouls. Vittorio orders the ghouls to kill everyone. While the ghouls rampage, Dresden opens a gate. Thomas, Murphy, Marcone, and his mercenaries arrive with automatic weapons and high explosives. They escort Lord Raith, Lara, and their entourage to Dresden's gate. Vittorio casts a spell that crushes Dresden, Lara, Thomas, and Marcone to the floor. Inside a time warp bubble, Dresden and Lash discus free will and Lasciel's coin. Dresden refuses to accept the coin to defeat the vampires. Tortured by self-awareness, Lash sacrifices herself to protect Dresden's mind from Vittorio's spell. Suddenly free, Dresden blasts Vittorio with Marcone's shotgun, breaking the spell on the others. As Thomas hauls Marcone through the gate, Cowl closes it, stranding Lara and Dresden. Marcone's explosives go off and the cavern collapses. Dresden folds his shield into a bubble around Lara and himself. They ride the explosion of fire out of the tunnel to safety. Dresden finds out Lara was behind the plot to kill the female practitioners. Dresden agrees not to kill her in exchange for weregild (financial restitution) to the families of the Skavis' victims, for her word that the genocide of magical practitioners will never happen again, and for the release of the imprisoned little faeries. Lara agrees. At the hospital, Dresden learns that Ramirez will recover and Elaine is checking herself out. Elaine agrees to distribute the weregild to the victim's families. For those without dependents, like Anna, Dresden suggests the weregild could fund a safety network for minor practitioners. This paranormal network (Paranet) would provide self-defense classes, mutual support, and a hotline for supernatural problems. Elaine agrees that Anna would have wanted such a resource as her legacy. Dresden brings Helen and Marcone up to speed. Helen is grateful that Anna was avenged. Dresden keeps his word and signs the contract making Marcone a freeholding baron under the Unseelie Accords. Later, Dresden digs up Lasciel's coin and gives it to Father Forthill. Then, Dresden devotes himself to solving the mystery of what Thomas does for a living. He follows Thomas to a trendy boutique-coffee shop, the "Coiffure Cup." Thomas explains he put himself through cosmetology school and opened this hair salon—nothing illegal or immoral is involved. They resolve their differences over coffee and part on excellent terms.
15204080	/m/03hlsg_	Three Bags Full	Leonie Swann	2005	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 At the beginning of the novel, the sheep belonging to George Glenn awake to find their shepherd dead with a spade in his middle, and resolve to solve his murder. The story is set in the fictional Irish village of Glennkill. Horrified, Miss Maple, the cleverest sheep in the flock, suggests they find the murderer. The others agree, and Miss Maple volunteers to inspect the body. A little later, a certain Tom O'Malley finds the body and, panicked, runs to fetch the people of Glennkill. This draws not only the townspeople, but several reporters.
15237123	/m/03hmyht	The President	Miguel Ángel Asturias	1946		 The novel begins on the Cathedral Porch, where beggars spend their nights. One beggar, the Zany, is exhausted after being continually harassed about his deceased mother. When one of the President's loyal military men, Colonel Jose Parrales Sonriente, jeers the word "mother" at him, the Zany instinctively retaliates and murders the Colonel. The beggars are interrogated and tortured into agreeing that the retired General Eusebio Canales, once in the President's military, and the independent lawyer Abel Carvajal killed the Colonel because according the President's men, there is no way "an idiot is responsible". Meanwhile, a delusional Zany flees "away down the shadowy streets in a paroxysm of mad terror". A rare glimpse of the President shows him ordering Miguel Angel Face, sometimes referred to as the President's "favourite", to help General Canales flee before he is arrested in the morning for the murder of Sonriente. The President, who presumably orchestrated the accusations for his own purposes, wants Canales to flee because "running away would be a confession of guilt". At the Two Step, a local tavern, Miguel Angel Face meets Lucio Vásquez, a policeman, and is inspired to tell Vásquez that he is kidnapping General Canales's daughter, Camila, as "a ruse to deceive the watchful authorities". He claims to be kidnapping Camila to cover up the truth of Canales's escape. Later, Vásquez meets with his friend Genaro Rodas, and upon leaving a bar they see the Zany. To Genaro Rodas's horror, Vásquez shoots the Zany. The aftermath of this scene is witnessed by Don Benjamin, a puppet-master, whose "puppets took the tragedy as their theme". Genaro Rodas returns home and discusses the murder of the Zany with his wife, Fedina de Rodas, and informs her that the police plan to arrest Canales in the morning. Meanwhile, Canales leaves Miguel Angel Face's home, exhausted and anxious about fleeing the country. Later that evening, Canales escapes safely while the police ransack his home and Miguel Angel Face sneaks in to bring Camila safely to the Two Step. In the early morning, Fedina de Rodas rushes to Canales's house in an attempt to save him from arrest for the murder of Colonel Sonriente. She arrives too late and is found by the Judge Advocate, an aide to the President. He arrests her as an accomplice in Canales's escape, and tortures her in hopes of learning Canales's location. The soldiers smear lime on her breasts before giving her back her baby, which causes its death as it refuses to feed from "the sharpness of the lime". Back at the Two Step, Miguel Angel Face visits Camila. He tries to find her a home with her aunts and uncles but they all refuse to take her in for fear of losing their friends and being associated with "the daughter of one of the President's enemies". More is revealed of Miguel Angel Face's complex character and the struggle between his physical desires for Camila and his desire to become a better person in a world ruled by terror. Camila grows very ill and a boy is sent to inform Miguel Angel Face that her condition has worsened. He dresses quickly and rushes to the Two Step to see her. Eventually relieved of charges by the President, Fedina de Rodas is purchased by a brothel, and when it is discovered that she is holding her dead baby in her arms, she is placed in a hospital. Miguel Angel Face informs Major Farfan, who is in the service of the President, that there is a threat to his life. By this act saving a man in danger, Angel Face hopes "God would grant him Camila's life in exchange". General Canales escapes into a village and, assisted by three sisters and a smuggler, crosses the frontier of the country after saving the sisters by killing a doctor who harassed them with the payment of an absurd debt. A student, a sacristan and Abel Carvajal, together in a prison cell, talk because they are "terrified of the silence" and "terrified of the darkness". Carvajal's wife runs all over town, visiting the President and influential figures such as the Judge Advocate, begging for her husband's release because she is left in the dark regarding what has happened to him. Carvajal is given a chance to read his indictment but, unable to defend himself against falsified evidence, is sentenced to execution. Miguel Angel Face is advised that if he really loves her then Camila can be spared "by means of the sacrament of marriage" and the two of them are soon married. Camila is healing and struggling with the complexities of her new marriage. General Canales dies suddenly in the midst of plans to lead a revolution when he is falsely informed that the President has attended his daughter’s wedding. The President runs for re-election, championed in a bar by his fawning supporters, while Angel Face is entrusted with an international diplomatic mission. Camila and Angel Face share an emotional parting. Major Farfan intercepts Angel Face once he reaches the port and arrests him on the President’s orders. Angel Face is violently beaten and imprisoned and an impostor takes his place on the departing ship. Camila, now pregnant, waits anxiously for letters from her husband. When she is past hope, Camila moves to the countryside with her young boy, whom she calls Miguel. Angel Face becomes the nameless prisoner in cell 17. He thinks constantly of Camila as the hope of seeing her again is the "last and only thing that remained alive in him" and ultimately dies heartbroken when he is falsely told that she has become the President’s mistress. The Cathedral Porch stands in ruins and prisoners who have been released are quickly replaced by other unfortunate souls. The puppet-master, Don Benjamin, has been reduced to madness because of the environment of terror he has been made to endure. Readers are given one more glimpse of the maddening state of life under a dictatorship. The epilogue concludes with a more hopeful tone, which is seen through a "mother's voice telling her rosary" which concludes with the Kyrie eleison; the call for the "Lord to have Mercy".
15259866	/m/03hngjn	Three Days As the Crow Flies				 The book opens with Crow Shade, the protagonist, showering and getting dressed for the day. Crow is an African-American who lives in an under-furnished room in a boarding house in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He has an expensive cocaine habit. Withdrawing from the cocaine and desperate for another high, Crow resolves to visit his friend Danny, an artist, and borrow one hundred dollars. He arrives at Danny's apartment/studio only to find it empty. At that point, Crow impulsively decides to steal three of Danny's paintings and sell them for drug money. On his way out of the apartment, Crow also steals the manuscript that Danny has been working on so that he will have something to read on the train to Manhattan. Crow eventually ends up in Astor Place and heads for the sculpture in the square. He makes an unsuccessful attempt to sell the paintings before a white man named Bones Young strikes up a conversation. Bones, the son of a wealthy hippies, sells art. He offers to help Crow sell the paintings. After sharing a cigarette the two men head east to the Lower East Side. When the men arrive in the Lower East Side, they meet up with Candy, an old friend of Bones and a follower of the art scene. The two take him to the art gallery, which had been converted from a bodega. There they meet Geoff, a married straight man who adopts an exaggerated effeminate posture. Geoff racially insults Crow, who pulls his wig off in front of everyone. Crow then tries to leave but Candy stops him and convinces him to stay. Geoff eventually apologizes and offers to host a showing of Crow's work. He also suggests that Crow come up with more paintings as the three he previously showed Geoff aren't enough for a whole shoe. The group eventually end up at Club Chaos and meet up with Melissa. Melissa is a beautiful fifty-something mixed race woman. She gets Crow to recite poetry with her. After Crow leaves she reads his tarot cards, immediately sensing that there is more to Crow's story than she was led to believe. Later that night, Crow spends the night with Candy although they don't have sex. Early the next day, Melissa wakes the two by playing a flute underneath Candy's window. The three head to yet another club from there. Bones and Geoff show up and Bones, who has become jealous of the attention that Candy is showing to Crow, elbows Crow in the back of the head. The two men argue for a bit before Candy and Melissa lead Crow out of the club. The trio catches a cab to Melissa's house, a five story townhouse. The three sleep for a few hours before Melissa wakes Crow up and asks him to paint more paintings for the showing that Geoff arranged for him. Although Crow momentarily worries that he will be found out, he goes downstair in Melissa's studio and, drawing on the information that Danny has imparted to him previously, paints three pictures. Melissa is impressed with them. She arranges to have a friend, Burt, drive her and the others to the gallery for the showing. When Burt shows up, he insults Crow, touching off another tense confrontation. Melissa defuses the situation by chanting an incantation that terrifies Burt. She demands that she turn over the keys to his car and she, Crow, Candy, and Bones, who had previously arrived, head to the gallery. The show is a huge success. All of the paintings are sold and Crow makes six thousand dollars minus commission. He is elated but begins to feel guilty about stealing Danny's art work and resolves to give Danny a cut of the money. Candy, Bones, and Crow then accompany Geoff back to his home in suburban New Jersey (using Burt's car) to help him placate his angry wife. The four then ride back into the city and go to Melissa's house. After getting high again, Crow begins to tire of the non-stop party. Everyone except Bones agrees and they leave Melissa's house. Bones and Crow walk Candy part way home and Crow heads off to Brooklyn. Bones, who does not want to be alone, begs to go along with Crow. Crow reluctantly agrees and the two board the train. Bones falls asleep. When the two men reach Brooklyn, Crow makes several unsuccessful attempts to wake Bones up. He then decides to leave without him, leaving a note under his arm. Deciding to put off going to Danny's house, Crow steps into the Palm Coast Bar, an after-hours spot and notorious drug den. The police raid the bar. Crow is able to throw his drugs on the floor before the police see him snorting up. He is patted down by a police officer who doesn't find anything on him and leads him toward the door to release him. On the way out, he bumps into Sergeant Dobson, an old friend of Crow's late police officer father. Sergeant Dobson expresses sorrow that Crow is using drugs and tells Crow that his mother, who hasn't seen him since Crow's father's funeral, is worried about him. He also shares that his own son died of a heroin overdose. He promises to let Crow go if he agrees to go to rehab. Crow, who had already considered getting clean, agrees and accepts Sergeant Dobson's card. Dobson cuffs him and puts Crow into the cruiser (so that the others don't think Crow informed on anyone) and drop him off in front of his house. Crow then makes his way to Danny's house. He decides to tell the complete truth (as well as turn over Danny's share of the money) and ask for Danny's help in getting clean.
15262289	/m/03hnjbj	The Shakespeare Stealer	Gary Blackwood	1998-05-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Fourteen-year-old Widge is an orphan who doesn't even know his real name. Widge's previous master, a clergyman named Dr. Timothy Bright, taught him charactery, a shorthand language, to steal other preachers' sermons. His new master wants to use Widge's shorthand to acquire William Shakespeare's Hamlet, which hasn't been reprinted yet, for himself. Widge is given the assignment to write the play out in shorthand and sets off to London with a companion named Falconer. Falconer is a ruthless man, who is given the job of making sure that the deed is accomplished. During the play performance, Widge is so caught up in the play that before long, all he wants is to know what happens in the play. When he returns for a second try, his notebook is stolen. Widge comes back, posing as a hopeful player. He is accepted into the Lord Chamberlain's Men and, for the first time, feels like a part of a family. However, Falconer constantly presses Widge to steal the play, and Widge must decide between his master and the company.
15272742	/m/03hns3y	A Meeting at Corvallis	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Mike (Lord Bear) and Signe Havel of the Bearkillers and Juniper Mackenzie of Clan Mackenzie, travel to Corvallis, a neutral city-state, to convince them to join with them in resisting the PPA. Meanwhile, the Dunedain Rangers have captured a major knight of the PPA leading a band of raiders into their territory and take him to Corvallis for his trial. Sandra Arminger and her servant/assassin Tiphaine, also travel to Corvallis to speak in defense of the PPA. Sandra sends Tiphaine to kill the knight so he can not be used as evidence against the PPA. Tiphaine successfully kills the knight and flees the scene even though she was ambushed by the Rangers. At the Corvallis Faculty Senate, the governing body of Corvallis originally composed of professors from Oregon State University, the allied forces are unable to convince Corvallis to side against the PPA; but they are successful in getting Corvallis to recognize the Dunedain Rangers. Months later, Lord Protector Norman Arminger finally begins his war against the Bearkillers, Mount Angel, and Clan Mackenzie. Arminger divides his forces into three armies and dispatches them to destroy the three factions. While Corvallis refuses to help, two thousand Corvallis volunteers arrive to reinforce the Bearkillers and help them win their battle against Protectorate forces. The Central Oregon Ranchers Association also pitches in, sending a few hundred light cavalrymen to help the MacKenzies break the siege of Mount Angel. The remaining Protectorate forces regroup and retreat back to PPA territory. Rudi Mackenzie (the son of Juniper Mackenzie and Mike Havel), is captured in a PPA raid to free Princess Mathilda Arminger, and Sandra entrusts him to Tiphaine. Tiphaine takes the two children to her castle, where she holds them. Norman Arminger, however, decides to have Rudi captured and tortured, and sends one of his knights to collect him. A Ranger rescue mission to free Rudy, led by Astrid Larsson, arrives during the skirmish between the PPA factions, but Tiphaine is already victorious. Tiphaine had sworn vengeance on Astrid for killing Tiphaine's lover, Katrina, but Rudi and Mathilda persuade Astrid to leave Tiphaine alive and the women abandon their vendetta. Astrid and the Rangers leave with Rudi, leaving Mathilda with Tiphaine. The war breaks out again and this time the PPA has massed its entire army for one decisive battle. Ten thousand PPA lancers, spearmen and crossbowmen take the field against the combined allied army. Lord Bear Mike Havel, feeling that the allies may lose the battle, publicly challenges Arminger to a personal duel. Arminger, with rebellions back home and knowing that looking weak in front of his nobles would destroy his nation, accepts the challenge. Havel and Arminger meet each other in single combat with lances, swords, and daggers, and after a long fight, Havel slays Arminger with a dagger thrust. Havel, however, was fatally wounded during the battle and after giving his final orders and messages to his family and closest friends he dies. With both leaders dead, the PPA forces begins to break up and return to home. Sandra Arminger negotiates a truce with Juniper MacKenzie and the remaining Bearkiller leaders. They decide on an annual meeting to be held at Corvallis, a peace treaty, and agree that Princess Mathilda and Rudi Mackenzie would spend a few months each year in PPA and MacKenzie territory until they reach adulthood. Soon after, Mike Havel's funeral is held in Bearkiller territory. At the end of the book, Juniper has a vision during a Wiccan ceremony of an adult Rudi leading a massive army that is shouting his craft name "Artos".
15273424	/m/03hnssk	Double Solitaire	Melinda M. Snodgrass	1992-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In a previous volume Dr Tachyon had found his personality placed in the body of a pregnant teenage girl by his evil grandson Blaise. Blaise flees with Tachyon's body to Tachyon's home planet Takis. Determined to recover his body Tachyon and his friends Popinjay and Cap'n Tripps purchase travel on an alien spaceship and head to Takis. While there they have to fend off an attack by an alien race, in the course of which one of Cap'n Tripps' personas is killed.
15275289	/m/03hntx3	Owen Glendower			{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Rhisiart arrives at Dinas Bran, in the company of fellow-travellers including Brut and a group of monks led by the Abbot of Caerleon, to find himself embroiled in a struggle between the local authorities, who are about to burn "Mad Huw", a local friar who preaches that King Richard II of England is still alive, and those trying to prevent the burning. Mad Huw’s chief protector is a teenage girl, Tegolin, known as the "Maid of Edeyrnion", and Rhisiart immediately becomes infatuated with her. Having succeeded in preventing the burning, Rhisiart is approached by Meredith, the son of Owen Glendower, who invites him and his fellow-travellers to Owen’s stronghold at Glyndyfrdwy. They arrive there, in the company of Father Rheinalt (Tegolin’s natural father) and Father Pascentius from the nearby abbey of Valle Crucis, in time to save the life of Gruffydd Young, who has been captured and mistaken for a spy by Owen’s men. At Glyndyfrdwy they meet Owen’s wife (the “Arglwyddes”) and his eldest son, Griffith (Gruffudd ab Owain Glyndŵr), but Rhisiart is particularly taken with Owen’s young daughter, Catharine. After feasting and entertainment, they witness the death of the bard Iolo Goch. With his last breath, the bard predicts Owen’s rebellion. The monks, Rhisiart, Brut, Mad Huw, Master Young and a few other chosen individuals are summoned by Owen to give their opinions on the best course of action. During the meeting, a messenger arrives from the Pope in Rome. The following day, Rhisiart learns that the papal messenger has taken word of the proposed rebellion to Owen’s enemies, and Owen must act quickly. He has agreed to the Church’s demand that he give up Tegolin, Mad Huw, and a young woman named Alice, a former servant at Ruthin who has been captured by Owen’s men. Owen has refused to give up Walter Brut, but Brut insists on accompanying the others to Valle Crucis, and Rhisiart goes with them, gradually finding himself strangely attracted to Alice. The abbot of Valle Crucis, though sympathetic to their plight, allows the hostages to be taken into custody at Rhisiart’s ancestral castle of Dinas Bran, now the home of Tegolin’s mother, Lowri, and grandmother, the Lady Ffraid. On arrival at the semi-ruined castle of Dinas Bran, Rhisiart is taken into the custody of Adda, the elderly seneschal, who shows him a famous relic, the so-called “sword of Eliseg”. He is introduced to more of the castle’s female residents, including the mysterious Luned, her friend Efa (a teenage girl who has volunteered to be sacrificed as the “bride of Derfel”), and the dwarf Sibli. All three wait on Lowri’s mother, Ffraid ferch Gloyw, in her tower room. Rhisiart comes close to being seduced by Lowri, but she departs shortly after his arrival, with her lover Denis Burnell, the constable of the castle. Rhisiart and Brut are held hostage in the castle for three months, until Lowri and Denis return. Rhisiart makes an assignation with Lowri, but after he and Sibli eavesdrop on her and her ex-husband, Simon (now a prisoner at the castle), he realises that Lowri feels nothing for him and is making use of him in a perverted game she is playing with Simon. Soon afterwards the castle receives an unexpected visit from a party including Harry Hotspur and the young Prince of Wales, Henry of Monmouth (the future King Henry V of England). With them are monks from Valle Crucis, one of whom turns out to be Owen Glendower in disguise. Owen reclaims the hostages and takes them to Glyndyfrdwy, where he is proclaimed Prince of Wales by his followers. Chief among these is Crach Ffinnant, “the Scab”, a self-proclaimed prophet who follows the rule of St Derfel. Owen is expected to take Efa as his ceremonial “bride”, but instead he takes her to the home of his friend, the miller, Broch o’Meifod. Rhisiart, newly appointed Owen’s secretary, accompanies them. The miller’s wife, upset by her husband’s decision to join Owen’s rebellion, puts a curse on him, saying that he will only be successful as long as he destroys and kills, but will fail when he tries to rebuild. Almost two years pass, and Rhisiart continues to serve Owen as secretary, whilst beginning a romance with Owen's daughter Catharine. Owen, though aware of their relationship, has other plans for his daughter, as a potential pawn in the political game. After Adda is brutally murdered with the sword of Eliseg by the son of Lord Grey of Ruthin, attitudes towards the English harden. At the Battle of Pilleth, Owen is wounded but the Welsh are victorious against an army led by Edmund Mortimer. Rhisiart is horrified by the desecration of dead English bodies by a group of women led by Lowri. Mortimer, left unransomed by the English king, agrees to a marriage with Catharine that will give Owen the assistance of both the Mortimer and Percy dynasties. Rhisiart makes plans to elope with Catharine, but she refuses, choosing to obey her father's wishes. A further two years go by, and the narrative passes over the Battle of Shrewsbury and the death of Hotspur. Brut has married Alice, and the marriage of Catharine and Mortimer appears successful. Owen is tempted by prophecies he has heard about the crowning of a great king by a girl in armour, and toys with the idea of using Tegolin for this purpose. He continues to negotiate the Tripartite Indenture with Hotspur's father, the Earl of Northumberland, and receives ambassadors from King Charles VI of France. One of these, Gilles de Pirogue, is interrupted by Rhisiart and Father Pascentius in the process of torturing a dog and an elderly Jew, with the encouragement of Lowri and Sibli. Rhisiart's intervention causes a diplomatic incident. Owen signs the Tripartite Indenture, despite the news of a defeat for his forces in the north and the fatal injuries to his trusted "captain", Rhys Gethin (Lowri's current lover). He is obliged to punish Rhisiart for his offence to the French ambassador, and is about to banish him from the court at Harlech Castle when the other ambassador intervenes, ensuring that Rhisiart can remain in service when Owen's parliament meets. Rhisiart, Brut, Mad Huw and Father Rheinalt are scandalized when Owen forces Tegolin to appear before the assembled troops wearing golden armour, and they prepare to oppose the prince's scheme to take her into battle with him. Through their intervention, and that of his own son Meredith, Owen is persuaded to alter his plans, and gives Tegolin to Rhisiart in marriage. Following the ceremony, Rhisiart foils an assassination attempt by Dafydd Gam at the chapel door. Rhisiart and Tegolin are sent with an army to relieve the prince’s forces on the Usk, and the focus of the action shifts to Owen himself. He banishes the interfering Father Pascentius from the castle, but decides to release Dafydd Gam, who in his superstition has concluded that Owen is protected by powerful spirits and now wishes to serve him. Owen’s other followers, initially suspicious of Gam, are horrified when, during a pilgrimage to the shrine of Derfel, Crach Ffinnant is apparently killed by Gam in a mysterious “accident” arranged with Efa’s collusion. On top of the news of Crach Ffinnant’s death comes word that Owen’s armies on the Usk have been defeated. Owen’s own brother has been killed, as has his loyal supporter, the Abbot of Caerleon. Rhisiart and Tegolin have been taken prisoner, along with Owen’s eldest son Griffith. The Arglwyddes rebukes her husband in front of his remaining followers. With Rhys Gethin on his deathbed, Lowri, driven mad by the turn of events, murders her ex-husband Simon. As Harlech Castle fills with confusion and discontent, Denis Burnell and Sir John Oldcastle arrive to visit Owen. As they stand on the shore conversing with Broch, they witness the approach of two ships: one from France and another from Anglesey, the latter carrying Efa’s fiancé, a member of the Tudor family with whom Owen is allied. An English pirate ship attacks the French vessel, and Owen and Broch plunge into the sea to rescue what they take to be a Frenchman. It turns out to be a chimpanzee, sent as a gift for Owen by the French king. While they are recovering from their ordeal, a messenger arrives to tell them that a French army has landed safely in Milford Haven. Broch makes the decision to leave Owen and return to his family. A few months later, Rhisiart and Brut are prisoners in the city of Worcester when Owen arrives at the head of a large army, having recovered many of his losses with the aid of the French. Lacking reliable military advisors, he delays the decision to storm the city until it is too late, and is forced to retreat. This part of the narrative is seen partly through the eyes of the young herald, Elphin. Owen has been allowed a visit from Tegolin, who tells him that, by sleeping with the custodian, she has been able to obtain a guarantee that Rhisiart's life will be spared. She gives Richard a phial containing a colourless liquid which she claims is "certain death". The two prisoners are interviewed by King Henry and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rhisiart is condemned to the Tower of London and Brut to be burned at the stake. Rhisiart, in order to prevent his friend's suffering, tricks him into drinking the contents of the phial, and Brut dies instantly. The action moves forward to 1416. Owen's rebellion is over, and Catharine's son Rhisiart Mortimer is being cared for by Elphin, now known as "Father Sulien". Henry V is now on the throne, young Rhisiart's parents are both dead, and his godfather Rhisiart is at liberty. The boy tells Elphin/Sulien of a hermit who lives on a nearby mountain, and the two go to the hermit's cave to find that it is Broch. With him is Owen, now an old and sick man, and the prince is reunited with his grandson. Rhisiart ab Owen arrives in the company of Lord Talbot, sent by the new king to offer a pardon to Owen. Owen, using what seems to be magic, appears in a vision to both Rhisiart ab Owen and young Rhisiart Mortimer. By the time they reach his mountain retreat, he is dying, and passes away just at the moment the pardon is about to be bestowed, causing Rhisiart ab Owen to cast the document into the fire. The insult to the king's message prompts a formal but non-fatal duel between Rhisiart and Talbot, which Rhisiart wins. The book ends with Owen's son, Meredith, returning from his father's cremation. There is an atmosphere of optimism about the future of Wales. The fates of the remaining major characters are made known in the course of the epilogue: Dafydd Gam is "ransomed" but remains Owen's servant; the ransom money is used to help construct Owen's last remaining hiding places, and Gam is later killed in the king's French wars. Mortimer dies before Harlech is taken, his wife Catharine is taken prisoner and dies of plague while in captivity, along with her daughters. Sibli leaps to her death from the battlements of the castle when it is taken by the English. Meredith is pardoned by the king and goes to live quietly with his wife, though they have no children. Elliw's father, Rhys Ddu, is killed during the taking of Aberystwyth Castle, an event for which Elliw blames Owen. Lowri has returned to live with Denis Burnell at Dinas Bran. Mad Huw died at about the same time as Master Shore, the man with whom Tegolin was living. Tegolin and Rhisiart have a daughter, Catharine, and are due to be reunited at last, just as the book ends.
15275504	/m/03hnv18	The Liars' Club		1995	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The book tells the story of Karr's troubled childhood in a small Texan town in the early 1960s. Using a non-linear storyline she describes the troubles of growing up in a family and town where heavy alcohol abuse and psychological problems are common issues.
15278931	/m/03m3yzs	My Life as a Traitor	Zarah Ghahramani	2007-12		 The biography focuses on analysing the life of the author, Zarah Ghahramani and her imprisonment in the infamous Evin Prison. After taking part in student demonstrations at Tehran University, Ghahramani was taken, by police, from the streets of Tehran and put into this prison, where she was tortured and beaten. When in Prison, she was subject to not only beatings, but psychological torture, only retaining her sanity via scratching messages to fellow prisoners. She is kept in the prison for almost one month, and is released after being driven to a distant desert outside of Tehran, where, at the time, she was unsure of her fate and whether or not she would be executed or released.
15279338	/m/03hnxph	The Sight	David Clement-Davies	2002-06-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the beginning of the novel, a Dragga (the term a wolf uses for the dominant male of a pack) named Huttser, and his mate, the Drappa (The term for dominant female), Palla, seek a cave in the side of a mountain in which Palla had grown up, and where she can nurse the pups that were growing in her womb. They are trying to find this cave in order to raise their cubs in secret from Morgra, Palla's evil half-sister. Many dark rumors have cropped up around Morgra, and some say that she is afflicted with a feared power known as the Sight. Morgra has dark intentions for the wolf pack, which revolve around a legend which brings the wolves together with their most feared enemy: Man. The family experiences trying times and survives through death, sorrow, and pain to stand against Morgra and her hatred. But is their love enough to survive through a prophecy that promises the enslavement of all earth's creatures? Does Morgra win or does the family pull through with their life saving quest to save the ways of the wolf win to have freedom from the sight?
15279566	/m/03hnxv_	The Film Club	David Gilmour	2007-09		 David Gilmour allowed his 15-year-old son Jesse to stop going to school without getting a job under the condition that they watch three films each week together. They go by their film schedule for three years while discussing them with each other. During this time, Jesse has trouble with the influence of drugs and his girlfriend. By the book's completion, Gilmour works harder and Jesse tries to live successfully.
15285623	/m/03hp1x1	A stranger came ashore	Mollie Hunter	1975	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 One night on Black Ness, the Hendersons are sitting at home in their but-and-benhouse. There is a heavy storm outside. Then a figure bursts through the door, soaking wet. He is tall, lean and handsome, and calls himself Finn Learson, and he claims to be the only survivor of a shipwreck. The Hendersons trust and help him, except the youngest child, Robbie, his Old Da (grandfather), and his dog Tam, who are suspicious of Finn. Old Da takes an instant dislike to Finn, and Robbie also senses the man is not what he seems. Later that night, when the family have retired to bed, Robbie cannot sleep and hears peculiar noises coming from the main room, where Finn Learson and the dog, Tam, are sleeping. Robbie ventures to peek around the door, and is horrified to see that Tam is crouched low to attack Learson, but Learson gazes deep into the dog's eyes... sending Tam into a calm sleep. Robbie is appalled but hides what he has seen. Old Da mysteriously dies not long after, but before he does he warns Robbie not to trust Finn. He reminds Robbie of stories of selkies, sea spirits which are seals in the water, but are able to shed their seal skin on dry land, and appear as beautiful seductive humans. Robbie remembers stories about the Great Selkie, the malign ruler of the selkies, who dwells in his sea-palace and seduces golden-haired girls away with him to his home under the sea. Every so often, the Great Selkie returns to find another human bride, as each bride he abducts dies whenever she tries to escape his clutches; he then uses their golden hair to roof his palace. Robbie begins to fear for his elder sister, Elspeth, who is golden-haired, very beautiful and entranced by Finn Learson. Robbie becomes convinced that Finn is the Great Selkie, but his family does not believe him. Elspeth states that she will choose one man, Finn or Nicol,(Nicol, who was her man before Finn Learson came ashore) to marry her on the celebration night of Up Helly Aa. Robbie goes to the schoolmaster, Yarl Corbie, for help. Yarl has been accused of being a wizard. Yarl reveals that Finn is indeed the Great Selkie, that he knew all along, and that Finn will try to tempt Elspeth to join him under the sea, as he did with Yarl's fiancee many years before. They trap Finn and fight. Yarl uses his magic to morph into a raven, pulling out one of Finn's eyes. Finn, revealed as the Great Selkie, flees back into the sea in his seal form. He can still hunt fish with his remaining eye, but he can no longer return ashore to tempt girls away with him, as without an eye, he is no longer handsome.
15286333	/m/03hp2nh	Death is my Trade				 The story begins in 1913, when Lang is 13 years old. His parents give him a harsh catholic education, to which he reacts badly. His unstable father, with whom the young Lang has an awkward relationship, wants him to become a priest. At the age of fifteen, Lang starts a military career which leads in 1943 to the post of commandant of Auschwitz. At first a concentration camp, later an extermination camp, the camp, near town of Auschwitz, was the site of the “slow and clumsy creation of a death factory”. Lang works hard to achieve his mission: to kill as many Jews as possible, disposing of the bodies as efficiently as possible.
15287149	/m/03hp3lb	Man and Boy	Tony Parsons	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Harry Silver is a successful television producer about to turn 30. He is happily married, has a four-year-old son and drives a convertible sports car. Then he spends the night with a colleague from work and his life falls apart; his wife leaves him and emigrates to Japan, he loses his job and he has to cope with being a single parent... While coping with the stress of being a single parent, he meets another woman at a coffee shop, a woman whom he has already met with her child, then they apart Harry finds a new job and eventually moves on with his life.
15290077	/m/03hp693	Waiting for The Rain	Sheila Gordon		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When the book begins, Tengo and Frikkie are two young boys on Oom Koos's farm. Frikkie visits on holidays to escape the grinding boredom of the school term, and Tengo lives there with his family. Over time, Tengo comes to see more and more that their friendship is hesitant and tenuous due to the imposing laws of Apartheid, and wants to know more. He cannot understand why Frikkie does not like school when there is so much to learn. He desperately wishes to go to the city and get an education. To quench his thirst for knowledge, Selina asks for books from Mrs. Miller. Tengo receives them and loves them, but they only make him want to know more. Over the course of this book, Tengo is also learning more about Apartheid and how it functions. His cousin Joseph, who lives in the squalid township of Johannesburg, visits one day and tells Tengo of the evils that must be faced every day there. Tengo's eyes are opened after this conversation, and through several more events, he is determined to go to Johannesburg to get an education. He gets permission and leaves for the city. He finds that the city is smelly and noisy like Frikkie said it would be. In Part Two, Tengo becomes a much more active member in the fight against the white regime. About four years later than Part One, Part Two details more closely on Tengo's life in Johannesburg, and only briefly visits Frikkie as he is serving his mandatory term in the army. Tengo is receiving tutoring from Rev. Gilbert, and living with the Millers for a time. Soon, however, more and more protests break out in response to stricter rules set by the white government, and Tengo's school is shut down. He now has a choice to make: should he choose education and try to matriculate to college, or join the demonstrations against Apartheid? He wants to continue his education, but does not see how this is possible - at least, not until Joseph returns and offers him a chance to go overseas and be schooled. As Tengo tries to make the decision, the army is sent out to stop the erupting riots, and Frikkie arrives in Johannesburg as an enemy to Tengo and his fellow blacks. *Oubaas means "old master"; Frikkie's uncle. *Kleinbaas - "young master"; Frikkie is referred to as this by the black people who work on Oom Koos' farm. *Kaffir - a derogatory term directed at native South Africans. Similar to Nigger as used in the USA. Literally translated from Arabic, Kuffar means "non-believer". *Piccanin - a slightly derogatory term meaning one who is young and/or foolish. *Kraal - Small villages of mud huts for the blacks to live in.
15300781	/m/03m422r	Hotel for Dogs	Lois Duncan			 Andi Walker is a girl who does not want to move to her animal-allergic great-aunt Alice because to do so would mean having to say goodbye to her beloved dog Bebe. Regardless of this, she is forced to go. However, shortly after the move, she finds a stranded dog and wishes to keep her. Andi's mother vetoes this idea, so, along with her older brother Bruce, she keeps the dog (who she names "Friday") and her pups in an abandoned house across the street. After a while, Andi and Bruce allow in three more partners, Tim, Debbie, and Annabel and eight more dogs: Red Rover (an Irish Setter who ran away from his abusive owner and Bruce's enemy, Jerry Gordon), MacTavish (an abandoned dog), Preston (a paying tenant), and five "Bulldales". In the end, their expenses overwhelm them, and they are discovered by their father, mother, and aunt. During a final scene, Jerry's wickedness is revealed to his ignorant father, Red Rover, Sadie, and Bebe return home with the Walkers, MacTavish is adopted by Tim, the Bulldales find a home, and Andi's writing is finally published. Sequel: A book sequel, called News for Dogs, was released May 1, 2010.
15302610	/m/03m43pz	Jangloos	Shaukat Siddiqui			 The novel tells the story of two prisoners, Lali and Raheem Dad who escaped from the jail. The story is created in the backdrop of central Punjab (Pakistan).
15302986	/m/03m43_8	The Blessing	Nancy Mitford	1951	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is set in the post-war World War II period and concerns Grace, an English country girl who moves to France after falling for a dashing aristocratic Frenchman named Charles-Edouard who lusts after other women. Their son Sigi aims to keep his parents apart by engineering misunderstandings.
15307450	/m/03m49cq	The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep	Hans Christian Andersen			 Two china figurines (a shepherdess and a chimney sweep) stand side by side on a table top. They are in love. Their romance is threatened, however, by the carved mahogany figure of a satyr called "General-clothes-press-inspector-head-superintendent-Goat-legs" living on a nearby cabinet who wants the shepherdess for his wife. The satyr importunes a porcelain Chinaman on the table (who considers himself the shepherdess' grandfather) to give his consent to the marriage. When the Chinaman agrees to the union, the shepherdess and the chimney sweep flee, clambering down a table leg to the floor. They hide in a toy theater, and, when they emerge, discover the Chinaman has fallen to the floor in attempting to pursue them. The lovers then climb with great difficulty through a stove pipe to the roof, sustained in their flight by a star shining high above them. When the shepherdess reaches the rooftop and gazes upon the world before her, she takes fright at its vastness, and wants to return to the table top. The chimney sweep tries to dissuade her, but, as he loves her greatly, he finally accedes to her wishes and guides her back to the table top. There, the two discover the Chinaman has been repaired in such a way that he cannot press the shepherdess to marry the satyr. The lovers are safe at last.
15308087	/m/03m4b5z	Umrao Jaan Ada	Mirza Hadi Ruswa	1899	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Umarao Jaan is born as Amiran () to a modest family in Faizabad. After the criminal Dilawar Khan is released from jail he decides to get revenge as her father witnessed against him in court. Khan kidnaps Amiran and decides to sell her in Lucknow. She is imprisoned with another girl, Ram Dai, but the two are separated when Dilawar Khan takes her to Lucknow. There she is sold for 150 rupees to Khanum Jaan, the head tawaif of a kotha. She is renamed Umrao and begins to study classical music and dance. Together with the other apprentice tawaif and Gauhar Mirza, the mischievous illegitimate son of a local Nawab, she is taught to read and write in both Urdu and Persian. As Umrao grows up, she is surrounded by a culture of luxury, music and poetry. She eventually gains her first client, (earning her the suffix of jaan) but prefers the impoverished Gauhar Mirza, her friend. Umrao Jaan attracts the handsome and wealthy Nawab Sultan. The couple fall in love, but after a jealous customer tries to start a fight with Nawab Sultan, he shoots him and the jealous customer Zabardast Khan dies. He no longer comes to the kotha and Umrao Jaan must meet him secretly, by the help of Gauhar Mirza. As Umrao Jaan continues to see Nawab Sultan and also serve other clients, she supports Gauhar Mirza with her earnings. A new client, the mysterious Faiz Ali, showers Umrao Jaan with jewels and gold, but warns her not to tell anyone about his gifts. When he invites her to travel to Farrukhabad, Khanum Jaan refuses so Umrao Jaan must run away. On the way to Farrukhabad, they are attacked by soldiers and Umrao Jaan discovers that Faiz is a dacoit and all of his gifts have been stolen goods. Faiz Ali escapes with his brother Fazl Ali and she is imprisoned, but luckily one of the tawaif from Khanum Jaan's kotha is in the service of the Raja whose soldiers arrested her so Umrao Jaan is freed. As soon as she leaves the Raja's court, Faiz Ali finds her and gets her to come with him. He is soon captured and Umrao Jaan, reluctant to return to Khanum Jaan, sets up as a tawaif in Kanpur. While she is performing in the house of a kindly Begum, armed bandits led by Fazl Ali try to rob the house, but leave when they see that Umrao Jaan is there. Then Gauhar Mirza comes to Kanpur and she decides to return to the kotha. Umrao Jaan performs at the court of Wajid Ali Shah until the Siege of Lucknow forces her to flee the city for Faizabad. There she finds her mother, but is threatened by her brother who considers her a disgrace and believes she would be better off dead. Devastated, Umrao Jaan returns to Lucknow now that the mutiny is over. She meets the Begum from Kanpur again in Lucknow and discovers that she is actually Ram Dai. By a strange twist of fate Ram Dai was sold to the mother of Nawab Sultan and the two are now married. Another ghost of Umrao Jaan's past is put to rest when Dilawar Khan is arrested and hung for robbery. With her earnings and the gold that Faiz Ali gave her, she is able to live comfortably and eventually retires from her life as a tawaif.
15311113	/m/09mv9c	The Magicians	John Boynton Priestley	1954	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The main character, Sir Charles Ravenstreet, is an industrialist in his mid-fifties, the Managing Director of the Birmingham-based New Central Electric Company. At a meeting of the Board in London, he finds himself unexpectedly voted out of his position. He turns down an offer to be named Production Manager instead, and later rebuffs the Chairman's suggestion that he enter politics. Later that evening, at a dinner party at Mr Garson's house, he is introduced to Mavis Westfret, a youngish widow. He sells his stock for £200,000 and begins to frequent fashionable restaurants and clubs, but they bore him, and he starts going out with Mavis. After a sexual encounter, she bursts into a sobbing confession of her dissatisfaction with her life, both past and present. The next evening he goes, on the suggestion of an acquaintance named Karney and his friend Prisk, to meet the newspaper tycoon Lord Mervil, who has a new business proposition for him. The proposition concerns a new drug called Sepman Eighteen, which produces a mild euphoria. Initially suspicious, Ravenstreet tries a sample back at his club bedroom, and it makes him so cheerful that he telephones at once to ask for another meeting. The week after, Ravenstreet is driving to his country house, Broxley Manor, when he sees the crash of a jet fighter a few miles ahead. An inn called The White Horse has been destroyed; the only survivors are a barman named Perkins, and three elderly male guests: Wayland, Perperek and Marot. The three men strike him as harmless cranks, and Ravenstreet suggests that they stay with him at his house. On their arrival, Perperek goes straight to the kitchen, waves away Ravenstreet's housekeepers, and starts making goulash for dinner. While he prepares it he perplexes his host by claiming that he and his friends knew in advance that the jet would crash, but that no-one would listen to them. At dinner the three men assert that they are magicians, and although Ravenstreet will not discuss his recent meeting with the tycoon, he is sufficiently intrigued by their manner that he allows Marot to "show him his past." He finds himself reliving, in full, an afternoon from September 1926, when he was on holiday with his girlfriend at a cottage on Pelrock Bay. The day is a turning-point in his life, as it is the day on which he received a letter calling him back to work early, finally prompting him to break with Philippa in order to marry the boss's daughter Maureen. Philippa realises what is happening, but Ravenstreet is resolutely dishonest, and his future self finds the experience a torment, particularly as the decision turned out to be a poor one. Ravenstreet approaches the trio the next morning, and, still somewhat sceptical, asks for more information. They are reluctant to talk in detail, but say that superhuman forces are battling for control of humanity's destiny, and they succeed in persuading Ravenstreet to reveal that his dealings with Lord Mervil concern a new drug. Prisk telephones, wanting him to meet Ernest Sepman, the inventor, at his home. The magicians ask Ravenstreet to hold the next meeting at Broxley Manor so that they can inspect Lord Mervil and his associates. Ravenstreet drives to Cheshire and finds Sepman to be a bitter, cynical and greedy man who idolises his serially unfaithful wife Nancy, even while she boldly flirts with Prisk. Ravenstreet manages with difficulty to arrange a meeting at Broxley Manor. At first, Karney and Lord Mervil are furious at finding other guests in the house, but soon accept the magicians as harmless cranks, and during dinner they find themselves speaking with unusual frankness about their views. Lord Mervil asserts the necessity of a hidden elite in every society and Sepman loudly denounces him, in an outburst which causes his wife to run from the room with Prisk in tow. After dinner, the situation spirals out of Ravenstreet's control. Perperek announces that he has seen Karney somewhere before -- in 1921, in a police station in Constantinople, charged with smuggling. The revelation causes the ultra-respectable Karney to flee in irrational panic. Lord Mervil demands to know who the three strangers really are; Wayland humiliates him and somehow prompts a decompensation which ends in his fainting. When Prisk returns with Nancy, Sepman rounds on her and forces her to admit her unfaithfulness, and they both leave at once in Sepman's car. Ravenstreet pursues in his Rolls, accompanied by Perperek, but he is too late: the Sepmans are dead, having driven at high speed into a quarry. The entire night is spent talking to police. When they return, Wayland gives the exhausted Ravenstreet another vision, of the happiest morning of his life, in the summer of 1910. When he wakes up, he finds that Lord Mervil and his associates have left, and that he has been called to the Birmingham factory to help with a technical difficulty. He talks to the foreman, Tom Hurdlow, and surprises him by agreeing to finance his son's new business. When he returns home he finds that he and Perperek have been ordered to an inquest on the Sepmans' deaths. The inquest, presided over by a self-important coroner named T. Brigden Coss, descends into farce when Perperek is called as a witness. Perperek is charged with contempt of court, and taken to the police station. When the inquest is over, Ravenstreet hurries to the station with Inspector Triffett, where they find all the policemen aphasic and Perperek missing. All three magicians have left Broxley Manor, leaving only a cryptic note from Wayland. Not long afterwards, Ravenstreet is called to Purchester Cottage Hospital on the request of a Mrs Slade, who turns out to be the betrayed Philippa, now on the point of death. Wayland's letter gains meaning when Philippa informs him that one of her sons is also his, and that the two children he saw in the waiting room are his grandchildren.
15316107	/m/03m4p82	Kiss	Jacqueline Wilson	2007-11-10	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Sylvie and Carl have been friends since they were little. They have called themselves boyfriend and girlfriend since they were small and Sylvie has always believed they would end up married. As they start high school, Carl drifts further and further away from Sylvie. One day, she wanders into the girls' bathrooms and finds Miranda, the most popular girl in school, there. Miranda asks Sylvie to go to her party after finding out about Sylvie's "boyfriend", whom she has taken a shine to, even though they haven't met. Sylvie accepts and then asks Carl about it, hoping that he will not go. To her dismay, Carl is eager to go and they meet Miranda and her friends. They play a game of Spin The Bottle and Sylvie wishes to be kissed by Carl. Unfortunately, he does not kiss her (but to Sylvie's surprise he kisses Miranda) and Sylvie realizes that his feelings have changed. Carl invites Miranda, Sylvie and a boy called Paul to go bowling with him. Sylvie does not like Paul and is surprised when Carl tells Sylvie that he wanted to impress Paul by bowling. On Carl's birthday, Miranda, Paul, Sylvie and Carl go to Kew Gardens since Carl is obsessed with glass. They all get lost while playing hide-and-seek. Miranda and Paul went on the train so Carl and Sylvie go with Carl's mother, Jules. Carl refused to see anyone after that night and later tells Sylvie that he is gay. Sylvie then finds out that Carl had found Paul during hide-and-seek and kissed him. Paul kissed him back for a moment 'like he really cared about [Carl]', but then pushed him away, claiming Carl is a pervert. Carl gets teased and picked on at school. Later, Sylvie goes to find Carl and sees the Glass Hut (where Carl keeps his glass collection) is ruined with glass everywhere. Sylvie gets cut and tells Jules, Mick (Carl's dad) and Jake (Carl's older brother) about the Glass Hut. They see Carl in the bushes all cut from smashing all the glass. He cut all his fingers and wrist and needed lots of stitches. Carl comes out to his mother at the hospital (when asked why he smashed the glass) and she tells him she has no problem with him being gay. Miranda and Sylvie bunk off school to meet Carl in McDonalds for lunch, and after hearing about how he is being bullied at school, Miranda persuades Sylvie to meet Carl after school, impressing all the boys who see them. In the Glass Hut, Carl and Sylvie see all the damage. Sylvie thinks that Carl will not feel the same about her, but instead, he kisses her and says he will always love her.
15316300	/m/03m4pkq	On Wings of Eagles	Ken Follett	1983	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 In December 1978 two EDS executives working in Tehran are arrested on suspicion of bribery. Bail was set at 12.75 million dollars. When Ross Perot, head of the Dallas-based company hears about it, he decides to get his people out no matter what. While the firm's lawyers are trying to find a way to pay the bail, he also recruits a team of volunteers from his executives, led by a retired United States Army officer, to break them out by force, if necessary. Their well-rehearsed plan to break the two out of jail fails because of a prison transfer, and the team has to figure out another way to rescue their colleagues, culminating in a harrowing overland escape to Turkey. Meanwhile, riots and violence dominate the streets of Tehran more and more each day, culminating in the Iranian Revolution led by Khomeini against the Shah, endangering the other EDS employees as well.
15317071	/m/02rv4cg	Whiteout	Ken Follett	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When a rabbit being tested on to find a cure against a deadly virus, a more dangerous form of Ebola, is stolen from a lab in Scotland. Toni Gallo, head of security, knows that she has failed. But soon things turn out to be a lot worse when the virus itself is also stolen, with inside assistance, to be used in a terrorist attack. Through a Christmas Eve blizzard, and without much help from the local police, Toni has to chase the thieves to recover the virus and save the future of the lab as well as prevent a dangerous outbreak. Meanwhile, she's falling in love with her boss, who is having the family over for Christmas at his nearby mansion.
15318692	/m/03m4sv9	Nation	Terry Pratchett	2008-09-11	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The time is 1860 (the book refers to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species having just come out). The place is a world, strangely like ours, but different in many subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways. Scattered across the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean are chains of tiny islands. On one island, a boy named Mau has almost completed his ritual ordeal to become a man. Now he must launch the canoe he has built into the ocean and sail back to his home island, where he will receive his adult tattoos and be given a man-soul to replace the child-soul he has left behind. His entire village awaits him on the beach for his arrival. Aboard the schooner Sweet Judy, presently voyaging through the Southern Pelagic Ocean, bound for Port Mercia, Ermintrude ("Daphne") Fanshaw sails to join her father, the Governor of the Pelagic Territories, presently stationed at Port Mercia. In England, the dreaded Russian Influenza has killed all other heirs to the throne. The Gentlemen of Last Resort, a secret organisation serving the Crown, set out for Port Mercia to bring back Daphne's father within the nine months required by the ratified version of the Magna Carta, accompanied by the heir's mother. Thanks to the epidemic, he is now king, and Ermintrude is now heir to the throne of the British Empire. Neither she nor anyone else within ten thousand miles knows this. Far to the south, a volcano erupts, blowing itself to bits and setting off an enormous tsunami. When the wave has passed, only Mau and Ermintrude remain alive, marooned together among the wreckage and corpses on the island called the Nation. Having left his boy soul behind but with no one remaining to give him his adult tattoos, Mau considers himself to be without a soul. Without his soul, Mau describes himself as a vulnerable blue hermit crab that has left one shell to seek another. This is a major theme throughout the book, since Mau is a man without a country. Just as a soulless person hungers for a soul, Mau is driven to rebuild his country. Upon arrival at the island, Mau discovers that his entire village and family has been wiped out by the tsunami. Numb with horror Mau begins burying the dead, sending them into the sea wrapped in a substance called papervine, a type of tough local vegetation. Island tradition says that the dead, buried at sea will become dolphins. Distraught at what he is doing, he attempts to disassociate himself from his task, working on a kind of mental auto-pilot. Finally, after sending the last corpse into the sea he considers his life as a soulless person, neither boy nor man, and considers suicide. He is only prevented from doing so by Ermintrude, who tries to talk to him. In his dream state, Mau believes her to be a ghost, as she is pale-skinned and dressed in white. Ermintrude is a resourceful girl with an active interest in science. Her ocean voyage was intended to be a way to get away from her overbearing grandmother and create a new life with her kindly, widowed father. Instead, she finds herself surviving mutiny, storm, and shipwreck. She is afraid of Mau, but after watching him bury his dead, she leaves Mau a mango on a plate. When they meet again, she tries to shoot him with a pistol. Fortunately, the gunpowder in the pistol is wet, and the gun fails to fire. Mau mistakenly believes that by waving a gun around, Ermintrude is giving him a spark-maker to make fire. With determination and good faith, the two begin to help each other and establish some basic communication. Ermintrude introduces herself as "Daphne" and never uses her given name, which she has always hated. Soon, drawn by the smoke of Mau's fire, other survivors from neighbouring islands arrive at the Nation, including an old priest called Ataba, and a nameless woman and her infant. The woman cannot breastfeed, and the baby will die unless someone can find milk. With desperation and resourcefulness, Mau finds a way to get milk from a wild pig at great danger to himself. Due to Mau's lack of a soul and his rejection of the gods (since they failed to save his family from the tsunami), Ataba believes that Mau is possessed by a demon, referring to him as "Demon Boy" for most of the rest of his life. A few days later, more survivors arrive, including strong Milo and silver-tongued Pilu, two brothers who are able to communicate with Daphne in English. This speeds the translation of language along considerably. Milos' wife is heavily pregnant and 13-year-old Daphne is drafted as a midwife. She brings the child into the world, singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" throughout the birth, a choice that makes Milo revere Daphne throughout the rest of the book. Confronted with the problem of the missing "god anchors" (white, non-indigenous stones that are said to "anchor" the gods and stop them drifting away), Mau locates and then tries to salvage them from the lagoon, where they have been left by the raging tsunami. He locates and restores two of the original three god anchors but, whilst underwater, searching for the third, he discovers several more of the white stones, one of them with a carving on it. The priest, Ataba, tries to destroy one of the god stones, which he claims to be false. His rage causes him to thrash about in the lagoon and he attracts the attention of a shark. Mau is nearly killed rescuing him from the shark and, having suffered hypothermia and chronic sleep deprivation (he has obsessively spent his nights guarding the beach) Mau falls into a coma. Accepting a magic poison from the women of the island, Daphne travels to the land of Locaha, the Nation's god of death, and rescues him. Still more survivors arrive, bringing news of cannibal raiders from another island who are hunting survivors. Daphne is at one point told by the Grandmothers (the not-at-all remembered counterpart to the ancestral Grandfathers) to open the cave of the Grandfathers. Convincing Mau that this is what they should do, Daphne, Ataba, and Mau enter the Grandfathers' cave, an ancient burial chamber. There, they discover that the Nation is far older than any other civilisation on Earth, and has made huge discoveries (up to and including maps of the stars, telescopes and glasses) which have later been forgotten. Their knowledge of the stars is shown in the ancient legends of the Nation, which can also be seen as metaphors for the movements of the planets. It is from this ancient cave that the white stone that formed the god anchors came. The ancient discoveries remained part of the history of the Nation, but only as stories told to children. When Mau, Daphne and Ataba leave the cave they are met by two English men who mutinied on the Sweet Judy and who were set adrift by the captain of that ship. When the old priest Ataba threatens them with a spear, the mutineers shoot and kill him. They take Daphne hostage as she tells the islanders to melt into the forest. She learns from them that the leader of the mutiny, a man named Cox, has joined the tribe of cannibal raiders, who worship the death god Locaha. Soon after this Daphne offers the two men a local type of moonshine beer. However, one of the mutineers refuses to spit into the beer, which neutralises the poisons in the beer and his first drink kills him. This causes the other to be scared off. He later escapes the island and meets up with Cox and the cannibal raiders. Certain that the raiders will arrive soon, Mau arranges for the cannons on board the Sweet Judy to be set up overlooking the bay for the defense of the Nation. A test firing goes well. However, they only have enough gunpowder for one more shot. The Raiders arrive, with Cox as their new chieftain. Daphne immediately notices that the Raiders hate Cox, but according to their laws they must accept him as chieftain because he killed the previous chieftain. Instead of allowing Cox and the Raiders to attack the entire village, Mau has the only intact cannon, which was reinforced with papervine, fired, frightening the Raiders. The Raiders and the Nation then agree to have the chiefs fight in single combat, as is the tradition. Everyone is surprised when strong Milo announces that Mau is the actual chief of the Nation. Cox is annoyed because a small boy is a more difficult target than a large man, but he is sure that his two pistols can take care of Mau. Mau remembers Daphne's first wet attempt to shoot him, however, and he knows that gunpowder fails when wet. Mau takes the battle into the lagoon, where Mau's skill as a swimmer and his knowledge of the territory help him win the duel. Enraged with the wrath of Locaha, Mau drives away the Raiders, forcing them to release their prisoners. A few days after this battle, Daphne's father arrives. He, like Daphne, is fascinated with the discovery made in the Grandfathers' cave. The Gentlemen of Last Resort arrive two weeks later, informing Daphne's father of his new status as King and presenting him with the crown. Mau, who has learned about world politics from Daphne and Pilu, does not want to become part of the Empire but requests that his Nation become a member of the scientific Royal Society. In the end, Daphne leaves with her father. Though it is never explicitly stated in the book, it is clear that she and Mau would rather stay on the island and be together, but their combined sense of duty leads her to return to England and Mau to remain behind. Years later, in an alternate present day, an old scientist tells this story to two children of the present-day Nation. He explains that Daphne returned to England to marry a prince from Holland and that Mau died of old age. When Daphne died, her body was sent to the Nation to be buried at sea so that her soul would become a dolphin. He tells them that from those days onward, thousands of scientists have visited the island, including Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, and Richard Feynman, and that dozens of observatories have been created to learn about the stars, as the Nation has done for thousands of years. The book ends with the elder of the two children (the girl - by six minutes) standing guard on the beach, protecting the Nation as Mau had done years before. In the lagoon, a dolphin leaps from the sea and the scientist smiles. The book ends with several small "Don't try this at home" warnings, explaining how the book came about and how some of the things described in the book have real-world counterparts, if somewhat dangerous ones.
15321438	/m/03m4vwn	Waiting: A Novel	Ha Jin	1999-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Army doctor Lin Kong married his wife, Shuyu, as decided by his parents. While Lin spent most of his of time away from home for his job, Shuyu raised their daughter and cared for both Lin's dying mother and father. Lin feels no love for her, and once he meets Manna Wu, a nurse at the hospital, he falls in love with her and feels that he must divorce his wife. Year after year, Lin tries to divorce the woman he is embarrassed to be married to, and every year when he comes home for a few days during the holidays, he goes with her to the courthouse, and she agrees that she will consent to the divorce. But each time, once they arrive at the courthouse, she does not consent. The "Waiting" of the title refers to Lin's waiting to divorce Shuyu so he can be with Manna. He finally succeeds in divorcing Shuyu, thanks to a law that states that, if a man and wife have been separate for 18 years, the man can divorce her without her consent. Once finally with Manna, however, he feels unhappy with her as well, feeling no love, and the book ends on a dark note. Lin seems to always love the one he doesn't have.
15324587	/m/03m4yk0	Flyaway	Desmond Bagley	1978	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Max Stafford is owner and president of a security consultation company based in London, which specializes in corporate security and anti-industrial espionage. Although his company is successful, his marriage has collapsed, and work is starting to lose its luster. More on a whim, he decides to investigate the disappearance of minor accountant Paul Billson from one of his client firms. Billson's father, a famous aviator, had vanished in the 1930s on an air race from London to South Africa somewhere over the Sahara desert, and Billson had been obsessed for years with the desire to find out what had happened, and to dispel lingering slander that the disappearance had been staged as an insurance fraud. Soon after Stafford starts to investigate, he is assaulted by men who attempt to “discourage” further investigation. Stafford’s search takes him to Algiers, then the deep desert area around Tamanrasset in southern Algeria, and across the border into Niger. But he finds that he is not the only person looking for Billson and the missing Northrop Gamma. Other people, with tremendous resources are also searching – and will kill to prevent the truth of a 40 year old incident to emerge.
15328146	/m/03m53xv	The Brave Bulls	Thomas C. Lea, III	1949-04-20	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 The Brave Bulls is the story of Luis Bello, "The Swordsman of Guerreras", the greatest matador in Mexico, who is at the top of his profession, with everything that comes with it, money, a mistress, family and friends, bravado, the crowds are infatuated with him. But one day fear changes everything, he suddenly feels a fear that previously he had not felt in the invincibility that comes with healthy-macho-youth. His best friend and manager, Raul Fuentes, is killed in a car crash along with Luis's mistress, Linda de Calderon, after Linda and Raul had spent a romantic weekend together. This betrayal shakes Luis's beliefs about what has been real and what is real now. Now Luis must deal with these new found feelings while at the same time facing the most feared bulls in all of Mexico, "the brave bulls". In his first fight after the auto accident he is gored by a bull because of the doubt and guilt that has come into the ring with him. In addition, while under the influence of Tequila, and some pressure from ring promoter Eladio Gomez, he agreed to let his younger brother Pepe fight these top bulls with him. Luis must now examine his life to find out where the courage comes from and if he can get it back.
15333115	/m/03m58x1	Fortunata y Jacinta	Benito Pérez Galdós	1887		 The story revolves around Juanito Santa Cruz. The scion of a wealthy family, he goes around carousing and womanizing with his friends. In one of these episodes, he is taken with Fortunata, a young woman of the lower class. This encounter ends with Juanito growing bored of Fortunata and disappearing from her life. His mother decides to marry him to his cousin Jacinta. During their honeymoon, he tells her about his experiences in the poor neighborhoods of Madrid and talks to her about Fortunata. As time passes, Jacinta realizes she cannot have children and she and the rest of the family become obsessed with this. Ido del Sagrario is a poor man whom Juanito invited to the house with the intention of humiliating him for his own amusement. He shows up at the Santa Cruz home one day and informs Jacinta that Juanito had a son with Fortunata. Jacinta becomes very excited about the idea of having her husband's child, laying aside any feelings she had of betrayal. After consulting with Guillermina Pacheco (a saintly neighbor), the two women go through the Pitusín neighborhood. The baby's guardian is José Izquierdo, uncle of Fortunata, from whom they wish to buy the baby. When she talks to her husband, the discussion turns farcical. He tells her that the baby was not his. He is certain that he had a child with Fortunata, but that that baby died some time after he married Jacinta. Meanwhile, Fortunata has been living with various men, and living badly. If one man did not deceive her, he beat her, or abandoned her at the first opportunity. She was in Barcelona for a time, and on her return she moved in with Feliciana, an acquaintance of hers. Feliciana's boyfriend usually came to her house to visit with a friend of his, Maximiliano ("Maxi") Rubín. It is there that Rubín falls hopelessly in love with Fortunata. Soon the young man proposes to maintain her, and Fortunata, seeing this as an opportunity to escape her situation, accepts his offer. Maxi lives with his aunt, Doña Lupe. After a certain point he wants to marry Fortunata. He consults his aunt and brothers. Everyone agrees that Fortunata should spend some time in Las Micaelas convent in order to reform herself. After the prescribed time passed, they married. However, a trap awaits Fortunata in her new home. Juanito Santa Cruz has bought the apartment next door, and he bribes the newlywed's servant to sow discord between the couple. It did not take long before Fortunata took the bait. Maxi returns to his aunt's house, and Fortunata moves into the apartment paid for by Juanito. With time, Juanito grows tired of his vulgar desires. He tries to get far away from Fortunata to the point of abandoning her again, this time leaving her a small sum to live on for a while. Fortunata bumps into Don Evaristo Feijoo, friend of her brother-in-law Juan Pablo. Feijoo proposes a sexual relationship in which she will live well and see new faces. She stays with him for a time, though they do not live together. This works out until Feijoo begins to think he is too old and Fortunata finds herself once again in the gutter. Feijoo advises her to return to her husband's house, and, after pulling a few heart strings, she does. During this time she meets Segismundo Ballester, a co-worker of Maxi's from the pharmacy. Ballester is crazy for her. Seeing Fortunata reformed makes Juanito Santa Cruz want her once again by his side. Fortunata, without even fleeing from the house, falls for him once more. Maxi gradually loses his mind. One day, in his state of insanity, he discovers that his wife is pregnant. Meanwhile, Juanito begins to tire of Fortunata yet again. Fortunata is sure that she is pregnant, and rather than explain to Doña Lupe ("she of the turkeys") what has happened, she simply gets out of the house. Fortunata returns to her Aunt Segunda, in the place she was raised. She had her second child, attended by a doctor who was a friend of the Rubíns and of Segismundo. Maxi is told that Fortunata is dead. He refuses to believe this and is able to figure out where she is and even gets to know the baby. Fortunata is told that Juanito Santa Cruz was betraying her with Aurora, a family friend of the Rubíns and an intimate of hers. As soon as she finds herself alone at home, Fortunata plans to get even. In a few days she dies during a blood-letting. Before expiring, she writes a note in which she gives custody of her child to Jacinta. Maxi, who didn't know whether he was too sane or too crazy, was sent to the insane asylum at Leganés. The same day as Fortunata's funeral, they also bury Feijoo.
15334769	/m/03m5c70	Avilion	Robert Holdstock	2009-07-16	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Avilion takes place after the events in Mythago Wood. Steven Huxley and the mythago Guiwenneth have been living in Ryhope wood where they are raising their two children, each half-human, half-mythago. The older boy, Jack, wishes to know about the outside world while the younger girl, Yssobel, dreams about her uncle Christian, who vanished into Lavondyss at the end of Mythago Wood. Despite being comfortably settled and living an idyllic agrarian lifestyle, events at hand will change the family's future.
15342531	/m/03m5mpb	The Chinaman	Henning Mankell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In January 2006 the police make the gruesome discovery of the bodies of 19 people who have been brutally murdered in the remote hamlet of Hesjövallen in northern Sweden. The protagonist Birgitta Roslin, a district judge from Helsingborg, realises she has a family connection with some of the victims. Roslin's curiosity is raised by clues found at the scene and leads her to unofficially investigate the massacre. The narrative also chronicles the lives of several characters living during the mid-19th century in China and the United States, whose experiences are somehow also connected to the mass killings. As the plot unfolds, extending across four continents, Roslin unintentionally becomes embroiled in a web of international corruption and political intrigue.
15345332	/m/03m5ql4	Epiphany	Simon Hawke	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Towards the end of the year 1975, five students have been visiting a deserted barn in the woods of San Francisco as a place to take drugs and have sex. On Christmas Eve, a young boy is abducted from his sister and parents and dismembered body parts are also found near the woods. The kidnapper and murderer is Michael Quinn, one of the students who now frequents the barn. He is strongly obsessed with LSD, quantum physics and the ideas of Schrödinger's cat, which he uses to justify his actions. Fellow student Hal Jamieson finds himself trying to get himself out of the police net that will inevitably close around them, and involves Paul Dunsany, a kind hearted musician who fails to realise the monstrous acts evolving around him. All escape but Quinn, who is incarcerated for 20 years for murder, kidnapping and ransom. The missing child is never found. Towards the end of 1995, Paul Dunsany has grown up in Seattle, as professional musician and owner of a recording studio. He meets a mysterious woman by the name of Joni, who begins to probe him about his past. Hal Jamieson is a rich and successful software mogul, living also in Washington. He is married to Louise, one of the original five. Upon hearing of Quinn's release from prison, he decides to have Quinn taken into solitary 'care', for fear that he could incriminate the rest of them about what happened in early 1976. As Jamieson tries his best to reunite the original five and use his wealth to take care of the situation, he finds Dunsany cannot remember much of what happened, and the fifth person, a girl by the name of Mouse, is of unknown whereabouts. There is also the problem of the inquisitive woman, looking for the answer to what happened to the missing child. Quinn is older now, and has contracted HIV. But he still possesses the view of the world he gained from LSD, and is still very dangerous. Wishing for freedom, he plans his escape from the woodland house Jamieson has him forced to live in.
15347645	/m/03m5t0w	Doña Perfecta				 The action occurs in 19th century Spain, when a young liberal named Don José (Pepe) Rey, arrives in a cathedral city named Orbajosa, with the intention of marrying his cousin Rosario. This was a marriage of convenience arranged between Pepe's father Juan and Juan's sister, Perfecta. Upon getting to know each other, Pepe and Rosario declare their eternal love, but in steps Don Inocencio, the cathedral canon, who meddles and obstructs the marriage as well as the good intentions of Doña Perfecta and her brother Don Juan. Over the course of time, several events lead up to a confrontation between Pepe Rey and his aunt Perfecta, which is caused by her refusal to allow Pepe and Rosario to marry, because Pepe is a non-believer. The novel ends up with the death of Pepe Rey due to his aunt Perfecta. Rosario, Perfecta's daughter and Pepe's love turns mad and ends up in a madhouse. The novel illustrates the great power that the church wielded. It also describes the differences between the traditional, provincial outlook, and the modern, liberal outlook of Madrid, the capital.
15352910	/m/03m5yzn	Statement of Regret	Kwame Kwei-Armah			 Kwaku Mackenzie, founder of a Black policy think tank, hits the bottle after his father's death. As media interest in the once dynamic Institute fades, his team grows fractious and then, disastrously, he favours a young Oxford scholar over his own devastated son. When, in a vain attempt to regain influence, he publicly champions division within the Black community, the consequences are shattering.
15357916	/m/03m62fp	The Phenomenon of Man		1955		 Teilhard views evolution as a process that leads to increasing complexity. From the cell to the thinking animal, a process of psychical concentration leads to greater consciousness. The emergence of Homo sapiens marks the beginning of a new age, as the power acquired by consciousness to turn in upon itself raises humankind to a new sphere. Borrowing Julian Huxley’s expression, Teilhard describes humankind as evolution becoming conscious of itself. In Teilhard's conception of the evolution of the species, a collective identity begins to develop as trade and the transmission of ideas increases. Knowledge accumulates and is transmitted in increasing levels of depth and complexity. This leads to a further augmentation of consciousness and the emergence of a thinking layer that envelops the earth. Teilhard calls the new membrane the “noosphere” (from the Greek “nous,” meaning mind), a term first coined by Vladimir Vernadsky. The noosphere is the Collective consciousness of humanity, the networks of thought and emotion in which all are immersed. The development of science and technology causes an expansion of the human sphere of influence, allowing a person to be simultaneously present in every corner of the world. Teilhard argues that humanity has thus become cosmopolitan, stretching a single organized membrane over the Earth. Teilhard describes the process by which this happens as a “gigantic psychobiological operation, a sort of mega-synthesis, the “super-arrangement” to which all the thinking elements of the earth find themselves today individually and collectively subject.” The rapid expansion of the noosphere requires a new domain of psychical expansion, which “is staring us in the face if we would only raise our heads to look at it.” In Teilhard’s view, evolution will culminate in the Omega Point, a sort of supreme consciousness. Layers of consciousness will converge in Omega, fusing and consuming them in itself. The concentration of a conscious universe will reassemble in itself all consciousnesses as well as all that we are conscious of. Teilhard emphasizes that each individual facet of consciousness will remain conscious of itself at the end of the process.
15359055	/m/03m638h	The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant	Douglass Wallop		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel's protagonist, mild-mannered, middle-aged Joe Boyd, is depicted as a lifelong fan of the hapless Washington Senators. As the novel begins, the Senators are losing ground in the American League to their longtime nemesis, the New York Yankees. The discouraged Boyd runs into an unexpected offer from a fast-talking confidence man, who introduces himself as "Mr. Applegate." "Applegate" offers to transform Joe Boyd into Joe Hardy, a young baseball superstar, and facilitate his signing with the Senators' front office so that Hardy can help salvage the Senators' lost season. Boyd, suspicious, negotiates with "Applegate" and extracts a promise that the transformation will only be temporary and, after helping the Senators win a suitable number of games, Hardy will be able to re-transfer himself back to his Joe Boyd personality. The transformation takes place, Hardy joins the Senators, and all begins to develop as "Applegate" had predicted. However, the new baseball superstar begins to realize that his deal with "Applegate" may not be so temporary and he may have let himself in for more than he had expected to get. As Hardy's doubts grow over his predicament, "Applegate" presents Hardy with love interest Lola, depicted as a glamorous temptress in the style of the 1950s.
15371841	/m/03m6g7v	To Each His Own	Leonardo Sciascia	1966	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The novel opens when Dr. Manno, the town pharmacist, receives an anonymous letter made up of newspaper cuttings. The letter contains a death threat, but is dismissed by the locals as a practical joke. However, when Dr. Manno and his hunting companion, Dr. Roscio, are found murdered the next day, it becomes quite apparent that the letter was intended to do more than simply frighten the pharmacist from engaging in his favourite pastime. Although the double-homicide is interesting gossip for the townspeople, nobody gives the motives for the murders a second thought, and it is assumed that the pharmacist would have known the reason for his murder and would have thus deserved the consequences. Everybody in the town continues with their daily lives after a short lapse of time apart from Professor Laurana. When Dr. Manno initially received the letter, Laurana notices the word "UNICUIQUE" and proudly believes to be the only person with the knowledge to solve the case. For months Laurana follows various leads, and before long finds himself entangled in a web of corruption from which he cannot escape. Prof. Laurana is soon regarded to be a threat by the perpetrators of the crime, and it does not take long before he too is murdered.
15372940	/m/03m6gyv	The Teapot	Hans Christian Andersen	1863		 A porcelain teapot rules the tea table. She is very proud of her handle and spout, but not quite so proud of her lid (which is cracked). She is very proud of holding the tea leaves and of being the one to pour forth her contents for thirsty humankind. One day, the teapot is dropped and the handle and spout are broken. She is given to a beggar woman who fills her with soil and plants a flowering bulb within her. The teapot then feels a happiness she has never known. At the last, the teapot is broken in two, the bulb removed to a bigger pot, and the teapot thrown away. She cherishes her memories.
15373933	/m/03m6hks	The Turquoise	Anya Seton	1946	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Born in 1850 of a Spanish mother and a Scotsman in New Mexico, and orphaned at a young age in the town for whom she was named, Santa Fe (Fey) Cameron is taken in and raised by dutiful but apathetic neighbors. As a teenager, hot-blooded Fey takes the opportunity to leave town with Terry Dillon, a shifty traveling salesman. As they slowly make their way up the Santa Fe Trail, Fey convinces herself they are in love. Not disagreeable (for the time being), Terry enlists Richens Lacey Wootton to marry them at Raton Pass. Continuing east selling Terry's questionable medicine and utilizing several of Fey's talents to earn extra money, upon reaching Leavenworth, Kansas, they are able to raise train fares to New York. Fey and Terry arrive in New York City without any prospects and are soon forced to use up their small savings for food and board. Terry soon abandons Fey for greener pastures. Discovering she is pregnant, resourceful Fey seeks assistance at a local infirmary for women and makes arrangements to live there in exchange for helping out with the work. After her daughter Lucita is born, bewitching Fey sets her eyes on New York tycoon Simeon Tower as a means of securing her financial future and wins her way into his heart. After securing a discreet divorce for Fey, she and Simeon marry and achieve happiness. They endeavor to increase not only their fortune but their social standing over the years, but the year 1877 would be their downfall. Simeon not only finds himself close to losing nearly everything financially, but Terry Dillon reemerges to disrupt their lives. Terry's attempts to woo Fey and blackmail Simeon result in tragedy. Bankrupt and a social pariah, Fey eventually brings an ailing Simeon back to the simple life in New Mexico to live out their days.
15386721	/m/03m6t9l	Reflections in a Golden Eye	Carson McCullers	1941	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place at an Army base in the U.S. state of Georgia. Private Ellgee Williams is a solitary man full of secrets and desires. He has been in service for two years and is assigned to stable duty. After doing yard work at the home of Capt. Penderton, he sees the captain's wife nude and becomes obsessed with her. Capt. Weldon Penderton and his wife Leonora, a feeble-minded Army brat, have a fiery relationship and she takes in many lovers. Leonora's current lover is Major Morris Langdon, who lives with his depressed wife Alison, and her flamboyant Filipino houseboy Anacleto, near the Pendertons. Capt. Penderton, who is a closeted homosexual, realizes that he is physically attracted to Pvt. Williams, unaware of the private's attraction to Leonora.
15387047	/m/03m6th2	Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu	Honoré de Balzac		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Young Nicolas Poussin, as yet unknown, visits the painter Porbus in his workshop. He is accompanied by the old master Frenhofer who comments expertly on the large tableau that Porbus has just finished. The painting is of Mary of Egypt, and while Frenhofer sings her praises, he hints that the work seems unfinished. With some slight touches of the paintbrush, Frenhofer transforms Porbus' painting such that Mary the Egyptian appears to come alive before their very eyes. Although Frenhofer has mastered his technique, he admits that he has been unable to find a suitable model for his own masterpiece, La Belle noiseuse, on which he has been working for ten years. This future masterpiece, that no one has yet seen, is to be the portrait of Catherine Lescault. Poussin offers his own lover, Gilette, as a potential model. Gilette's beauty is so great that it inspires Frenhofer to finish his project quickly. Poussin and Porbus come to admire the painting, but all they can see is part of a foot that has been lost in a swirl of colors. Their disappointment drives Frenhofer to madness, and he destroys the painting and kills himself.
15389144	/m/03m6vs4	The Adventures & Brave Deeds Of The Ship's Cat On The Spanish Maine: Together With The Most Lamentable Losse Of The Alcestis & Triumphant Firing Of The Port Of Chagres	Richard Adams	1977		 The Ship's Cat is introduced as a patriotic swashbuckling crewmember of the English privateer Alcestis. After attacking a lone Spanish ship, the Alcestis is defeated by Spanish reinforcements and its crew taken as captives to the Panamanian port of Chagres. The Ship's Cat is initially imprisoned, but the gaoler's daughter takes pity on him and has him released to serve in the gaoler's kitchen. After the gaoler and his companions become drunk celebrating Saint Philip's Day, the Ship's Cat steals the keys to the gaol and releases his shipmates. Together, they steal a ship from the harbor and sail for home, pursued by their erstwhile captors. Their pursuers are frightened off by the sudden appearance of Sir Francis Drake (outward bound on his global circumnavigation of 1577). After Drake departs, the Ship's Cat reveals that he has discovered a hoard of treasure in the ship's hold. The crew sail home to England, where they are greeted as heroes and the Cat is knighted by Queen Elizabeth I.
15395414	/m/03m6zv5	Between the Bridge and the River	Craig Ferguson			 The novel follows two best friends from Glasgow: Fraser Darby, an alcoholic televangelist caught up in a sex scandal, and George Ingram, an attorney diagnosed with terminal cancer who contemplates suicide. In a parallel, the story also follows two half-brothers in the Southern U.S.: Leon and Saul Martini, the illegitimate children of a Las Vegas, Nevada showgirl, with the two fathers being Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford. Eventually the lives of these four men intersect in a journey that ranges from Scotland to France, from Atlanta, Georgia to rural Florida, and from Hollywood to Belgium during World War I. Supporting characters in the story include the poet Virgil, and Carl Gustav Jung, the eminent psychiatrist.
15405692	/m/03m791w	Murder in the Middle Pasture	John R. Erickson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Hank the Cowdog finds that there has been a murder on his ranch, so he sets off to investigate. After a few adventures, Hank thinks the Coyote Brotherhood is responsible for the killing. He travels to the Coyote Brotherhood, and demands to know who the murderer is. The coyotes just laugh and hold Hank hostage, and plan to eat him by dawn; it is later revealed that the coyotes were not responsible for the murder. Hank could have easily escaped had not Chief Guts ordered Rip and Snort, two stupid coyote brothers, to make sure Hank does not run away. They keep him in a cave, guarding the exit. Then Hank escapes (with the help of Missy Coyote) to his ranch. Once gets out he runs back to the ranch to find the real murderers. Apparently the real murderers were a dog named Buster and a gang of two dogs with a pug named Muggs as his assistant. Hank says mean things to the coyote (Scrunch,and Rip and Snort) and Buster and his gang but makes them think that it was each other that was saying mean things to them. The coyotes and the gang got into a fight and the coyotes won and chased the gang off the ranch. That's where the story ends.
15407077	/m/03m7b5m	Let Sleeping Dogs Lie	John R. Erickson		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Murder after murder at the chicken house is occurring, and Hank and Drover are beside themselves trying to find just who it is. But all investigating takes a back burner when Hank, out working traffic, sees Beulah and Plato in Billy's pickup. He tries to show off and annoys Billy, which results in him using the truck door to knock this four-legged nuisance over the ditch and "there were five draws to that stupid canyon, and I hit every stinkin' one of 'em" and after a nutty interrogation of Dogpound Ralph, Hank heads home to get bawled out by Loper. After a while he stakes out the chicken house and finds it was a hypnotizing skunk who has been doing the killing. After a brief scare during which Hank is accused of being the killer and is locked up, he breaks away and leaves, and saves Little Alfred from a hooking bull, and Sally May forgives him, and so the story ends.
15407438	/m/03m7bdh	The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob	John R. Erickson		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story begins with Sally May feeding Pete, Drover and Hank, two corncobs, and some steak fat. Hank and Drover get the and corncobs with Pete getting the rest. Hank wants the steak, but then Pete says he trade the steak for the corncobs. Hank just gets mixed up and says to Drover that the corncobs must be priceless if Pete was going to trade them for steak fat. So Hank and Drover each get one of the "Priceless Corncobs" and walk away. The next morning Hank and Drover quit being ranch dogs and go into the wilderness. But then while walking through a sleeping coyote brotherhood, Hank steps on Snort's paw, which awakens the whole brotherhood, which plan to eat them. But Hank escapes with his "Priceless corncob," leaving Drover to be eaten. But then Hank realizes that the whole "Priceless Corncob" thing was a curse. So he sacrifices the corncob to save Drover's life. They return to the ranch unnoticed and find another "Priceless Corncob."
15414649	/m/03m7q_x	Groosham Grange	Anthony Horowitz	1988	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The central character David Eliot is a 12-year-old seventh son of a seventh son, cruelly mistreated by his parents. His father chooses a series of repressive boarding schools for him, where David does not perform well. After being expelled from his "last-chance" school, they receive at home the unexpected call from an unknown school, Groosham Grange, of which nobody has heard of before. This school, located on Skrull Island, an island off Norfolk, earnestly invites David to enter it. His father jumps at the chance to pack him off, especially since it appears that the place is suitably severe. He must take a train from Liverpool Street to King's Lynn. On the train he meets two other new students, Jill Green and Jeffrey Joseph. A vicar sits with them and plays hymns on his guitar, but when they mention that they are going to Groosham Grange he suffers a heart attack. A hunchback called Gregor escorts them to the school. Along with Jill (seventh daughter of a seventh daughter) and Jeffrey, David anticipates more mistreatment, and makes a pact with them that they will escape at any cost. After they arrive, they start to learn strange things, are baffled by inexplicable disappearances, very peculiar teachers (including a werewolf and a ghost), assorted frights—and an absence of punishments. They are determined to solve the mystery of the school, but then Jeffrey begins acting suspiciously, seeming to side with the other students rather than with David and Jill. David manages to get a message to the outside world via a note in a bottle, but the school inspector sent to investigate is dealt with permanently courtesy of Mrs. Windergast's black magic. Jill helps David run away, but she gets caught. It is then that he learns that he has been recruited to a school for wizards and witches because he is a wizard himself, and that the staff hopes to help him unleash his full potential as the other students do. This must all be kept secret from normal, non-magical people. David must decide if he will remain at Groosham Grange or not. His dilemma lies in his wish to avoid evil, but the Headmaster tempts him with the promises that he can learn "how to make gold out of lead, how to destroy your enemies just by snapping your fingers... [and] to see into the future and use it for yourself."
15420579	/m/03m82p8	Beguilement	Lois McMaster Bujold	2006-10-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 We are introduced to the main characters in this book. Fawn, a Farmer girl of about 18, has run away from her family, because another Farmer has impregnated her, and made it clear that he wants no part of the baby when it comes. Dag, a Lakewalker patroller, first encounters Fawn hiding up in a tree. Later, they meet again, when Dag saves her from some slaves of a malice. Then she assists him in killing the malice, and, in the process, the ground of her unborn child creates a new sharing knife. Eventually, they realize that they are in love, against the customs of both their cultures, and the real story begins.
15421138	/m/03m82zk	Legacy	Lois McMaster Bujold	2007-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Legacy is the immediate sequel to Beguilement in the Sharing Knife series. It follows the pairing of farmer Fawn and lakewalker maverick Dag, after their marriage at Fawn's home in the previous volume. Where they, unencumbered by minor opposition, were married in accord with the customs of both groups. They travel to Dag's clan's home camp at Hickory Lake, where they find the expected prejudices against miscegenation between Farmers and Lakewalkers. Dag is called on to lead a group of Lakewalker patrollers against an advanced malice. Dag decides that confronting the malice is more important than trying to free several Lakewalkers who have been entranced in the mud-man-making process by which the malice produces its slaves. After Dag's group has killed the malice, Dag, himself, also becomes entranced. Fawn carries her heroine role through by thinking out a way to revive him, and the rest of the Lakewalkers. Neither achievement carries enough weight with Dag's brother and mother to make them relent in their efforts to break this pairing. These two carry the role of villains, but they are drawn so that the reasons for their awkward quirks are clear. Although their marriage, and Fawn's potential value to the camp are accepted by some of the Lakewalkers, The Dag-and-Fawn combination raises enough awkward precedents that they are about to be voted into exile when Dag subverts the process, stating that he intends to leave his home community in any case. Dag and Fawn then take as many portable assets as they can, and set out in chosen exile towards the southeast. There, Dag guesses he may be able to confirm his ideas about the near kinship of Farmers to Lakewalkers, and to find ways to combine their efforts toward the eradication of malices. These themes unfold in the next pair of books.
15422632	/m/03m83tq	Heimweg				 The focus of the story is on the first-person narrator, a grandfather named Josef. He returns home from Russian captivity after the war to find his wife Katharina in an adulterous relationship. Over the course of the story, he tries to get her back. In this respect, he is successful, seeing that she is becoming insane and in this connection only turns to him. The family history continues over several generations, revealing several torn characters and many murders, including his son's murder and suicide. In a key scene, it is revealed that Josef ordered the execution of a Russian commissar during World War II. This is executed helplessly and without judgment by the Commissar Order. After that, Josef needlessly kills another corpse of crouching boys. Towards the end of the story, the mental confusion of Katharina is explained. The "visitors" that she believes to be in her apartment, are in fact the family members of the dead. They appear again in the book on a fictional level as a quasi-ghost figure, while at the same time the heroes appear to be real. The reader learns this as the real family members begin to die. Finally, the first-person narrator finally turns out to be the spirits of the murdered boys.
15428906	/m/03m89f7	The Knight and Death	Leonardo Sciascia	1988		 The protagonist of the novel is a cultured and tenacious detective affected by a deadly disease (which is clearly a cancer, although it is never openly stated). The detective, whose name we never learn (he is simply called "il Vice", as "the Vice Chief of Police") investigates the murder of lawyer Sandoz. His chief believes that Sandoz has been killed by a mysterious revolutionary group, but the detective is convinced that powerful businessman Aurispa is involved in the crime, and that the phoney revolutionary group has been invented ad hoc as a scapegoat to cover up the real reasons behind the murder. The novel is permeated by a sense of impending death, as the increasingly ill and tired "Vice" tries to unravel the mystery.
15434217	/m/03m8y7j	Cat among the Pigeons	Julia Golding	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The setting is London in the late 18th century when slavery has just been ruled illegal in England but is still common in the British West Indies. Things are fine but then trouble rises as Pedro's old slave master, Mr. Hawkins, comes to London and tries to reclaim Pedro as one of his properties. He is at first thwarted by Cat but he vows to return. But not without a fight as Pedro's friends, Cat, Frank, Lizzie, Syd and the gang try to secure his freedom. Once again, Cat finds trouble following her once more as she is chased around in London by the Bow Street Runners coming for her arrest for biting Mr Hawkins after he taunted her. Disguising herself as a boy with the help of her friends, Frank and Charlie, she enters an aristocratic boarding school and learns things like Latin and fencing that girls are never taught. Cat is bullied for being clever and a 'pretty boy' by Richmond, the son of a plantation owner. When they find Cat with a medallion abhorring slavery Richmond and his gang beat Cat up. When Syd arrives bringing sasuages as a decoy, he's furious and wants to take Cat home immediately, but soon realises that she's safe where she is as the Bow Street Runners are still looking for her. Meanwhile Pedro is caught and is being held by Billy Shepherd for Mr Hawkins. Cat finds out where he is but can't inform the police as she has no proof against Mr Hawkins. Finally, as Mr Hawkins is about to set sail with Pedro on board Cat arrives with Lizzie, Frank, Mr Equaino and the Duchess to rescue Pedro. The Magistrate is called and Cat blackmails Mr Hawkins into setting Pedro free.
15438211	/m/03m94x3	The Last Voyage of Columbus	Martin Dugard	2005-06-01	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/014dsx": "Travel"}	 The books topic focuses on Christopher Columbus, who was one of the first European founders of the Americas. The book tells the story of his life, as well as the problems he faced with his journeys. Columbus had seduced some of the most powerful woman in Europe to pay the expenses of his trip. The book follows Columbus' departure from Spain prior to his first voyage before sunrise on August 3, 1492. After three days of sailing on the Pinta, the rudder became loose, unable to cope with the strength of the seas, Columbus and his fleet stayed for a month on the Canary Islands. After repairing the ship, the fleet resumed sailing, despite pleas from fellow crew members for Columbus to turn back, which he ignored. On October 11, 1492, after seeing a distant light, it was later confirmed this was the area which would soon be marked as the New World, claiming the land to for the Spanish sovereigns, as well as claiming numerous other islands for Spain. In reward for this, Columbus was given ten thousand Spanish maravedis and 1/10 of all Royal profits.
15442844	/m/03m9h74	Switchblade Honey	Warren Ellis	2003-07		 In the 23rd century, humanity is a multi-stellar nation embroiled in a hopeless war with the Chasta, an advanced species. John Ryder, an abrasive yet brilliant and noble starship captain, faces execution for refusing to destroy an ally starship as part of an involuntary kamikaze tactic. He has been given a chance to put his skills to use one last time, by leading a Dirty Dozen-like crew in a long-term guerrilla war against the Chasta.
15448921	/m/03m9pxt	Good Morning, Midnight	Jean Rhys			 Sasha Jansen, a middle aged English woman, has returned to Paris after a long absence. Only able to make the trip because of some money lent to her by a friend, she is financially unstable and haunted by her past, which includes an unhappy marriage and her child's death. She has difficulty taking care of herself; drinking heavily, taking sleeping pills and obsessing over her appearance, she is adrift in the city that she feels connected to despite the great pain it has brought her.
15454256	/m/03m9w24	The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal	Lilian Jackson Braun	1991	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jim Qwilleran and his lovable siamese cats, Koko and Yum-Yum, have moved into an apple barn on the Klingenschoen estate. After a successful closing night on the stage production Henry VIII in the theatre that was once the Klingenschoen mansion the actors throw a cast party at Qwill's new home. At the end of the party, Qwill notices one car had not left yet. Walking towards the car, wondering if someone has broken down or run out of gas, he discovers the dead body of the much disliked play's director and high school principal, Hilary VanBrook. VanBrook was killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head.
15454458	/m/03m9w9q	The Cat Who Tailed a Thief	Lilian Jackson Braun	1997	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The residents of Pickax take pride in a town which has considerably less crime than the places "Down Below." However, this holiday season has seen a streak of small crimes. New in town is the bank manager, Willard Carmichael and wife Danielle. Her cousin wants to historically restore Pleasant Ave, but something seems amiss to Qwill. Two deaths soon follow. One of the victims is a prominent figure of Pickax and the other is Willard.
15457550	/m/03m9z8c	The Matter of Araby in Medieval England	Dorothee Metlitzki	1977		 This part of the book consists of four chapters in which Metlitzki explores how scientific achievements were translated and transmitted from Arabic texts to Western (primarily English authors writing in Latin) texts. She begins this book by addressing the crusades and the development of scholarship by Mozarabs, i.e. Christians living under Muslim rule, particularly those in Muslim Spain and Sicily (p.&nbsp;3-10). She writes about several Western scholars who were involved in translating Arabic texts and studying Arab held libraries, including several key ancient Greek and Roman texts that were only available in Arabic. Some of these scholars included Adelard of Bath (p.&nbsp;26) who was a Western scholar responsible for translating Al-Khwarizmi’s texts on astronomy and Euclid’s Elements from Arabic into Latin. She details the lives of several of these key scholars including Petrus Alfonsi, a Christian converted ex-Jew living in Muslim Spain and author of the seminal text Disciplina Clericalis, which, according to Metlitzki was the first collection of Oriental tales composed in the West for Westerners (p.&nbsp;16). Robert of Ketton was the first translator of the Quran into Latin and also translated several key scientific texts such as Alchemy by Morienus Romanus and Math, Algebra and astronomy texts by Al-Khwarizmi. Michael Scot was a scholar interested in magic, alchemy and astronomy and was also the first translator of most of the works of Aristotle (from Arabic into Latin), whose writings had been banned in the West as being heretical (p.&nbsp;48). In part two Metlitzki explores key English medieval texts and suggests that they either are based entirely on Arabic stories or include elements from Arabic storytelling that suggest that they had been loosely based on Arabic stories. She then suggests that the English medieval Romance itself is strongly influenced by Arabic ideals of romantic chivalry as well as key Arabic stories from various sources including the 1001 Nights. The English texts she closely examines include Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the English Charlemagne Romances like Sir Ferumbras and the Sowdone of Babylone (p.&nbsp;172-3) and several others. In several of these texts, Metlitzki explains, are found the beginnings of the misunderstanding of Islam by the West and she explores the depiction of Islam and the Islamic prophet Muhammad in these texts in her chapter on History and Romance (p.&nbsp;95-210). On page 245 she also suggests that contributions to English and Western literature from Arabic literature includes several key themes (such as Romance) and also rhyming poetry itself.
15458772	/m/09gf05d	Night of Light	Philip José Farmer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In a world in orbit around a binary system, once every 7 years it is bathed in a bizarre radiance that rearranges physical reality. To cope with this, most inhabitants go to sleep for the entire two week period. To stay asleep, some of the inhabitants take a special medicine that keeps them under for the whole two week period. Only mystics, newcomers, and devotees to the bizarre religion are willing to stay awake and endure the two weeks of brilliance, where things materialize out of thin air. According to their religion, people undergo an unpredictable change, and many actually die. The good become better, and the bad become worse. One woman's husband metamorphosized into a tree. Another person was chased down streets by statues that came to life. But facing the brilliance is also a rite of passage if you must develop as a being inclined towards acts of goodness, or a being inclined towards acts of evil. It is during those two weeks that the good are pitted against the bad, and it is also a time when their living god must face his successor. To help in the conversion effort, Catholic missionaries have been sent to the planet to help reconcile the planet's religion with their own universal faith. The only problem is that the planet's religion appears to be spreading across the stars.
15463138	/m/03mb3m_	People of the Fire	Kathleen O'Neal Gear		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Amid disastrous climate changes, the Red Hand and Short Buffalo tribes struggle for survival, and against each other. In order to survive in the changing world, they must change with it, but to do that, they need the guidance of a new Dreamer, and the Red Hand's sacred Wolf Bundle must be renewed.
15464639	/m/03mb53s	Wiseguy	Nicholas Pileggi	1986	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Hill began his life of crime at age 12 in 1955 by working as a go-fer for Paul Vario, the local boss of Hill's working class Irish/Italian neighborhood. Eventually Hill was "promoted" to selling stolen cigarettes for Vario, which he was later caught and arrested for in 1959. Hill refused to cooperate with the police, earning the respect of Vario and Vario's associate Jimmy Burke. In 1960, when Hill was 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, to everyone's surprise. When questioned about his decision by Vario, Hill explained that he wanted to please his father, who disapproved of his son's association with the Mafia. While stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, however, Hill continued his criminal activities, which led to his discharge in 1963. He returned to the streets of New York, where he was happily welcomed back by Vario and Burke. In 1964, Hill met Tommy DeSimone, a young aspiring gangster with psychopathic tendencies, and both worked as stick-up men for Vario, hijacking trucks and selling the stolen goods on the street. In 1965 Hill reluctantly joined Lenny Vario, Paul Vario's son, on a double date, where he met Karen Friedman, a young Jewish girl from the Five Towns section of New York. The two continued to date and eloped only four months after meeting. They had their first child, Gregg, in 1966, and a second, Gina, in 1968. In 1967, Jimmy Burke masterminded a robbery of the Air France cargo terminal at JFK International Airport. The heist was carried out by Hill, DeSimone, Robert "Frenchy" McMahon, and Montague Montemurro in April of that year. In 1969, Hill began an affair with Linda Coppociano behind Karen's back, and bought a restaurant/lounge called The Suite. It was here that on June 11, 1970, Burke and DeSimone murdered William "Billy Batts" Devino, a made man with the Gambino family and a close friend of fellow mobster John Gotti. de:Wiseguy it:Il delitto paga bene
15475573	/m/03mblff	The Master Key	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The protagonist is a boy named Rob Joslyn. His age is not specified. Baum dedicated the book "To My Son, Robert Stanton Baum," who was born in 1886 and would thus have been about fifteen at the time it was published. Rob, we are told, is in truth, a typical American boy, possessing an average intelligence not yet regulated by the balance-wheel of experience. The mysteries of electricity were so attractive to his eager nature that he had devoted considerable time and some study to electrical experiment; but his study was the superficial kind that seeks to master only such details as may be required at the moment. Moreover, he was full of boyish recklessness and irresponsibility and therefore difficult to impress with the dignity of science and the gravity of human existence. Life, to him, was a great theater wherein he saw himself the most interesting if not the most important actor, and so enjoyed the play with unbounded enthusiasm. We are introduced to Rob as an electrical experimenter whose father encourages him and sees that he &#34;never lacked batteries, motors or supplies of any sort.&#34; A &#34;net-work[sic] of wires soon ran throughout the house,&#34; and the house is full of &#34;bells, bells, bells everywhere, ringing at the right time, the wrong time and all the time. And there were telephones in the different rooms, too, through which Rob could call up the different members of the family just when they did not wish to be disturbed.&#34; Rob loses track of the elaborately interconnected wires, and trying to get a cardboard house to light up, he &#34;experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike the right combination.&#34; There is a bright flash, and a being who calls himself the Demon of Electricity appears. He tells Rob that he has accidentally &#34;touched the Master Key of Electricity&#34; and is entitled to &#34;to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks.&#34; Rob protests that he does not know what to ask for, and the Demon agrees to select the gifts himself. During the first week, the Demon gives Rob three gifts: *A silver box of food tablets, each one of which provides sufficient nourishment for a whole day. *A &#34;small tube&#34; which can direct &#34;an electric current&#34; at a foe, rendering him unconscious for the period of one hour. As the story unfolds, it appears that this tube has no limit to the number of times it can be fired, and has other capabilities (such as breaking locks when fired at them). *A wristwatch-sized transportation device, which allows the wearer to fly at any height and travel at high speeds in any direction, when it is working properly. It is, however, somewhat fragile and becomes damaged and unreliable during Rob&#39;s adventures, creating predicaments for him. During the second week, the Demon gives Rob three additional gifts: *A &#34;garment of protection,&#34; which renders him invulnerable to bullets, swords, or other physical attack. *A &#34;record of events,&#34; which provides remote views of important events taking place at any part of the world at any time within the last twenty-four hours; *A &#34;character marker,&#34; a set of spectacles: &#34;while you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. The good will bear the letter &#39;G,&#39; the evil the letter &#39;E.&#39; The wise will be marked with a &#39;W&#39; and the foolish with an &#39;F.&#39; The kind will show a &#39;K&#39; upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter &#39;C.&#39;&#34; Over the next two weeks, Rob experiences adventures exploring the use of the Demon&#39;s gifts, but eventually concludes that neither he nor the world is ready for them. On the third week, Rob rejects the Demon&#39;s gifts and tells him to bide his time until humankind knows how to use them. The Demon leaves. With a light heart, Rob concludes that he made the right decision, and that &#34;It&#39;s no fun being a century ahead of the times!&#34;
15476322	/m/03mbl_b	The Eagle Has Flown	Jack Higgins	1991	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following the events in the previous novel, it is revealed that Kurt Steiner did not die after attempting to kill Churchill, but was only wounded. German intelligence learns that, after recovery in an RAF hospital, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Brigadier Dougal Munro and Captain Jack Carter (recurring characters in several novels by Higgins) of Special Operations Executive, arrange for Steiner to be relocated to a special prison in a priory in Wapping, and make sure, via double agents at the Spanish Embassies in London and Berlin, that German intelligence find out about it. They hope to catch German agents, including Liam Devlin, in their net. Learning of Steiner's survival, Heinrich Himmler summons SD General Walter Schellenberg and orders him to launch an operation to rescue Steiner. Himmler hopes to present him to Hitler as a propaganda coup and also to embarrass Wilhelm Canaris, who had originally opposed Steiner's operation. Schellenberg tracks down Liam Devlin, who is working in a bar in Lisbon and again bribes him to assist in the operation. Whilst Devlin parachutes into Ireland and enters England in the guise of an army chaplain, Schellenberg recruits Asa Vaughan, a pilot in the American Free Corps, to pilot Steiner's escape flight. This is planned to be from Shaw Place, a country house in Kent, owned by Sir Max Shaw and his sister Lavinia, long-standing Nazi sympathizers and 'sleeper agents'. In London, Devlin seeks sanctuary with two IRA sympathizers, living near the priory and also buys army radio communications equipment from the Carver brothers, vicious London gangsters and black marketeers. The rescue of Steiner from the priory, meticulously planned, is successful, although they are forced to take Munroe as a hostage. They drive to Shaw Place, but as Vaughan is making his landing in thick fog, a shootout ensues in which both Carvers and Shaws are killed. Leaving Munroe behind, Vaughan and Steiner fly to France and make a dangerous landing on the coast, also badly fog-bound. About to present Steiner to Himmler and Hitler at a chateau on the French coast, Schellenberg learns that Himmler is plotting to stage a coup and to assassinate Hitler, Erwin Rommel and Canaris. Deciding that the war will end quicker with Hitler in charge than a possible successor, he and Steiner commandeer a nearby force of paratroopers and foil the plot. Himmler makes it clear that the incident must not become public knowledge – in effect, it 'never happened'. Schellenberg opts to remain in Germany, and allows Vaughan and Devlin to 'escape'. They fly to Ireland, landing in County Mayo and sinking their airplane. Their subsequent fate is not revealed. As in several of the novels by Higgins, the plot is surrounded with a prologue and epilogue. In 1975, the author, Higgins, meets an American historian in London, who gives him a photocopy of an illegally obtained secret dossier, with a one hundred-year hold, from the Public Record Office. The document purports to tell the story of Steiner's rescue. Shortly afterwards, the historian is killed in a road accident, which is investigated by a senior police officer – possibly from Special Branch. Higgins contacts Devlin, still living in Belfast, and obtains some, but not all, of the story to corroborate the contents of the dossier.
15478389	/m/03mbnn8	Medalon	Jennifer Fallon		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Medalon Country is surrounded by Karien, threatening from the north with Fardohnya and Hythria in the south. For hundreds of years the Medalonians co-existed peacefully with the Harshini, a mythical race that is now long gone and the Sisters of the Blade now rule from the Citadel. The Harshini and their demons are thought to be extinct and Medalon has an uneasy peace with the other countries. R'shiel Tenragan and her half-brother Tarja, children of the current First Sister, find themselves caught up in the political schemes of the Sisters. When their mother's plotting becomes too much the siblings flee and find a world in turmoil. Meanwhile, Brak, a Harshini outcast, is called to find the demon child, the half-human child of the dead Harshini King, Lorandranek.
15480353	/m/03mbqs0	Queen of Camelot	Nancy McKenzie	2002		 The novel begins at the end of the story. The prologue leads you to know how Guinevere came to write the story of her and Arthur, and the Knights. Guinevere is in a convent when Lancelot comes to her telling her of Arthur's death and deterioration of Britain. Lancelot tells her that he had a vision of Merlin telling him to go to her and ask her to write down the story of her life, and the life of Arthur. He says that is isn't meant for the people of today, but a future generation of Britons. The novel then opens with Guinevere's birth, and a prophecy that was told to her father the night she was born. Guinevere is to be a "white shadow" or gwenhwyfar. Guinevere spends her early years being adored and pampered by her father, a minor king in northern Britain. As he ages, he sends her away to her mother's sister and her husband, who is king of a nearby land. Her aunt has one daughter near her age; Elaine. Elaine and Guinevere grow up together as best friends. Elaine is headstrong, stubborn, and always puts herself first, even before her older cousin. Elaine also adores the legend of Arthur, and then when Arthur takes his place at the throne of Britain, uniting the country and fighting the Saxons, Elaine becomes obsessed with him, believing herself to be his future bride, and meant for his unending love. When Arthur is chosen a bride, it is Guinevere, which complicates her relationship with Elaine, igniting fierce jealousy in the heart of Elaine. Lancelot is sent to retrieve Guinevere for Arthur and take her to "Camelot" for him. At their first meeting they fall passionately and helplessly in love. Though, here, Guinevere's affair with Lancelot is celibate, although no less passionate, and at times much more realistic then other versions of the story. When Lancelot tells Arthur about his bride, Guinevere, Arthur realizes Lancelot's love for her, but due to their great friendship, and his own love and trust in Guinevere, Arthur finds a way to accept it and move on. Years later, Elaine schemes to make Lancelot her husband, as revenge to Guinevere for taking Arthur from her. Though Lancelot does not love Elaine, he takes her for a bride and together they leave Camelot for his family's lands in Gaul, to start a family. As time passes, it becomes clear Guinevere cannot become pregnant. In need of an heir, she and Arthur decide to recognize his bastard son Mordred, whom he had with his sister Morguase. They bring Mordred and his half-brothers to Camelot, to train to become Knights. Guinevere takes a special liking to Mordred, who dreams of a unified Britain. His dreams are the undoing of Arthur. Mordred meets with Saxon leaders in secret to make a peace treaty, as Arthur goes to fight the Saxons. Seeing his son betray him, and stay on the Saxon side leads him to failure and his own death, by Mordred's hand. These are the events that have just taken place when we find Guinevere in the convent during the prologue.
15481276	/m/03mbrz5	The Chemistry of Death	Simon Beckett	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Forensics expert David Hunter is recovering from a shattering tragedy three years earlier. While he is working in an isolated Norfolk village as a doctor, a woman's mutilated corpse is discovered. Police want to exploit Hunter's forensic knowledge to help identify the killer, but he is wary of involvement. Another woman disappears and the small community in which Hunter has taken refuge is divided by suspicion, including suspicion of Hunter himself. de:Die Chemie des Todes pl:Chemia śmierci sv:Dödens kemi
15481793	/m/03mbskz	The Sweethearts; or, The Top and the Ball	Hans Christian Andersen			 In a drawer filled with playthings, a mahogany top woos a leather ball. The ball spurns the top, thinking she deserves a finer suitor. One day, the ball is taken outdoors, thrown high into the air, and disappears. The ball has landed in the roof gutter but the top believes she has become the wife of a swallow living in a nearby tree. Not being able to possess her, the top's infatuation deepens. Years pass, and, one day, the top is refurbished with gilding. He is spun and jumps into the dust bin. Among the trash lying about, he sees the ball who has suffered much from exposure to the elements. She doesn't recognize him as her former suitor and tells him she spent five years in the roof gutter soaked with rain before falling into the dustbin. The maid suddenly arrives, finds the top, and carries him into the house. The top puts aside the passion he felt for the ball, "for love vanishes when one's sweetheart has been soaking in a gutter for five years. You don't even recognize her when you meet her in a dustbin."
15482565	/m/03mbtb0	Ace in the Hole			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The plot of Jokers Wild centers on the 1988 Democratic Convention held in that universe's fictional Atlanta, Georgia. Following many years of inadequate recognition and inaction, the plight of the unfortunate victims of the Wild Card virus, the jokers, now forms a large part of the Democratic campaign. With this backdrop, numerous aces, jokers and "nats" (normal humans) converge on Atlanta to support or attempt to kill various candidates, lobby for more specific causes or just create and revel in chaos.
15486863	/m/03mby0_	Dead Mountaineer's Hotel	Boris Strugatsky		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel begins with Peter Glebsky, a policeman by profession, going on a holiday to the Dead Mountaineer's Hotel, a small resort located in a secluded valley in the Alps. He meets the other guests: Mr. Moses, a rich old man with highly eccenteric manners, and his stunningly beautiful wife; Mr. du Barnstocre, an illusionist who is accompanied by Brun, his niece (portrayed throughout the novel as an adolescent of unidentifiable sex); Mr. Simonet, the obsessed physicist; Mr. Hinckus, a custodial attorney; and Olaf Andvarafors. Not long after Mr. Glebsky's arrival, an avalanche blocks the entrance to the valley, thus cutting the protagonists off from outside world. At the same time, Olaf Andvarafors is found dead in his room, his door locked and his neck impossibly twisted. Glebsky is forced to start an investigation, but the more he searches for a logical explanation for the murder, the more he realises that the guests are not who they appear to be.
15489681	/m/03mb_gb	The Kid Who Only Hit Homers	Matt Christopher		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot of the book revolves around a boy named Sylvester Coddmeyer III, who is having trouble hitting on his little league baseball team. One day, Sylvester meets a mysterious stranger named George Baruth, who promises to make Sylvester the best player on his team. After meeting Baruth, Sylvester begins hitting home runs in literally all of his plate appearances. When his friend "Snooky" tries to convince him this mysterious man was just a figment of his imagination, Sylvester Coddmeyer III tries to prove to him the truth. But what was the question left unanswered "Who was Mr. George Baruth?"
15514492	/m/03mcxn0	Agent 13: The Invisible Empire	Flint Dille	1986	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Set in the late 1930s, just before the outbreak of World War II which ominous events around the world was portending, the book opened with a mysterious nocturnal trip made by a Nazi SS Colonel Schmidt to a clandestine meeting in a secret chamber beneath the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The chamber predated the existence of the church, and known only to the organization known as the Brotherhood, of which the colonel was a member of, sent as an agent to Germany in late 1918 to closely monitor the factions struggling for control of the humiliated, wrecked nation defeated in World War I. The Brotherhood was seeking to gain control over the whole world, and it was Colonel Schmidt who found a candidate with great potential in an anti-Semitic demagogue in Bavaria to be the puppet leader of Germany, an unwitting but definite pawn of the Brotherhood. Schmidt had carefully groomed the man, bankrolled the endeavor to take over from the troubled Weimar Republic, having first changed the man's name from awful Schicklgruber into Hitler. Having succeeded in securing his pawn as undisputed leader of Germany, and even arranging the disposal of Engelbert Dollfuss of Austria to pave the way for the Anschluss, Schmidt was in Istanbul to make a report to his superiors. He only made it as far as the concealed entrance of the secret chamber, killed right after he triggered the mechanism to disclose the hidden portal. His killer left a calling card on Schmidt's corpse, the number 13 burnt on the forehead of the dead man, and attended the meeting disguised as Schmidt. At the meeting, a senior Brotherhood member was inspecting all attendees, using a special crystal to reveal a number imprinted on the palms of all Brotherhood agents. The palm of Schmidt's killer was inspected and the number 13 was called out in the familiar routine. It was a moment before the significance struck and a gasp of sharp fear seized all who heard it. That moment was all it took for the killer to strike and slaughter all the others, before escaping with his goal accomplished, along with documents Schmidt was carrying, and the bonus of the special crystal, with which he could use to unerringly identify all members of the Brotherhood. The killer, known only as Agent 13 in the series, was once the best assassin raised from childhood and trained by the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood itself claimed to its members to be a hidden guiding hand in world affairs through the centuries, always keeping its presence secret in the background, while manipulating events around the globe through its agents, to direct the development of human culture. Its existence preceded the written history of mankind, originally founded by survivors of the Lemurian nation which was destroyed in antiquity long before the rise of ancient human civilizations. During his training, Agent 13 had perceived that the Brotherhood true nature not to be benevolent but evil, and fled. For years, he was hunted by Brotherhood agents, and in time, he turned around fought back, dedicating himself to cause as much damage possible in his mostly single vanguard crusade against an organization of unimaginable power, resources and reach into the world's governments. One of his main aim was to relocate the Brotherhood's main base. The close pursuit during his desperate flight from the Brotherhood's secret headquarters to the outside world prevented him from retracing his route later. After the debacle of Istanbul, the virtually immortal leader and founder of the Brotherhood, known as Itsu, the Hand Sinister, laid a cunning elaborate trap for Agent 13, knowing his agents were vulnerable with the special crystal (Seer Stone) in Agent 13's possession, the renegade who would stop at nothing to thwart the Brotherhood. From Schmidt's documents, Agent 13 learned of the Brotherhood's interest in an experimental Lightning Gun developed by American scientist Dr. David Fischer. At a successful demonstration of the gun's principles, conducted by the US military, and attended by senior officials, Agent 13 overheard the National Security Advisor (NSA) Kent Walters hurrying to call a National Security Council (NSC) in response to a blackmail threat just received. Infiltrating the meeting, which was attended by the NSC composed of John Myerson (Assistant Attorney General), Jack Halloran (Treasury), Kent Walters (NSA), Constantin Gyrakos (head, Secret Service, East Coast division), and Robert Buckhurst (Deputy Director, FBI), it was revealed through a projection of a film that an enemy, known as the Masque, using the omega as his symbol, easily capable of untraceable large-scale destruction was demanding the USA to drastically scale down its armament process. The blackmailer claimed responsibility for three disasters shown in the film: # Montana Rail Crash as the train Olympian was plying on an 180-feet high bridge. # Complete destruction of Westron Aircraft base for aircraft development and experiments. # Airship Hinderburg disaster. The deliberate filmings indicated prior knowledge of the disasters, and probably, responsibility by the blackmailers. The filmings also strongly hinted at the blackmailers having unknown advance technology, and capable of massive destruction. The council was undecided about the response to the threat when Agent 13 revealed himself. News, with more rumors than truth, of his exploits over the years had filtered to the intelligence community, causing the council to be just as undecided whether he was an ally or a foe. Before the decision was reached, elite assassins from the Brotherhood launched an ambush, killing almost everyone in the room. Only Agent 13 and Kent Walters narrowly escaped death, Kent Walters badly shot and barely alive. From clues collected from the bodies of one of the ambushers, Agent 13 deduced the local footpad was to collect his pay-off at an opera in New York city, performed by the world famous diva named China White. Agent 13 attended the opera disguised as the footpad, with his loyal assistant, Maggie Darr. Maggie noted that the mention of China White invoked a never seen before in Agent 13's otherwise perpetually emotionless expression. Using the Seer Stone as bait, Agent 13 and Maggie Darr were invited to China White's local lair, a speakeasy called the Brown Rat, located beneath the city. They barely escaped with their lives from watery death trap there, but found another clue to follow the Brotherhood's plot to the sailing of the luxury liner SS Normandie. When they discovered Dr. David Fischer was on board with his Lightning Gun, and China White was also along as a star performer, they realized what the Brotherhood wanted, but still did not know how it was to be carried out. Trying to avoid the easy way out to kill Fischer, Agent 13 and Maggie boarded the liner in disguise, separately keeping an eye on Fischer and on White. Too late, Agent 13 and Maggie discovered the Brotherhood intended to sink the ship, while kidnapping the scientist. Fighting valiantly, they managed to save the ship, but the Brotherhood agents escaped with the experimental weapon. Worst of all, Agent 13 was lost to the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, where he would have his watery grave after all, leaving Maggie Darr alone in the impossible fight against the Brotherhood.
15517328	/m/03mc_ly	Bright Day	John Boynton Priestley	1946	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gregory Dawson is an English screenwriter in his fifties, who fought in World War I, and who has spent most of World War II in England after ten years in Hollywood. He has retreated in the spring of 1946 to the Cornish village of Tralorna to finish the screenplay for a film called The Lady Hits Back. An oldish couple staying at his hotel, the Royal Ocean, seem strangely familiar. They are identified to him as "Lord and Lady Harndean". In the hotel's restaurant Dawson is condescending to the musicians, who attempt to impress him by playing the slow movement of Schubert's B flat trio. The music triggers Dawson's memory, and he realises that the couple are Mr and Mrs Nixey, whom he has not seen since 1914. He approaches and introduces himself. Back in his hotel room he recalls the Bruddersford of his youth, where he moved after the death of his parents to live with his maternal uncle. Lonely and missing his family, he finds himself charmed by a certain prosperous family he often sees on the tram and at concerts. He obtains a job at Hawes and Company, a wool firm, under the stentorian Joe Ackworth, and on the first day he is surprised to find that he recognises Ackworth's co-worker, Mr Alington, as the head of that happy family. In December, Mr Alington's daughter Joan stops by at the office, looking for him. She talks to Greg and invites him to a concert at Gladstone Hall. After the concert he is delighted to find himself accepted without question as one of their social circle: the Alington children, Joan, Eva, Bridget, Oliver and David, and their friends Ben Kerry and Jock Barniston. Ackworth quarrels with the cashier Croxton for sending samples away without his permission. Gregory enjoys Christmas 1912, which includes many visits, and a trip to the pantomime Cinderella; in May 1913, Greg accompanies the Alingtons to the village of Bulsden, on the edge of Broadstone Moor, for a picnic and a game of cricket. He meets the old painter Stanley Mervin. On arriving back home, the Schubert trio is played, but it is interrupted by the first arrival of the Nixeys. (Dawson's reminiscing is interrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth Earl, the English actress who is to be the star of the movie he is writing. She is injured by his cool reception. On going downstairs to the bar, he talks to the publicist, Jake West, and the movie's European director, George Adony. Adony believes that she is romantically involved with Dawson, and he tries to persuade him she is not.) In late summer 1913, Nixey takes Dawson out to the Market Grill and the Imperial Music Hall, and asks him about Ackworth and Croxton. Dawson goes on holiday to Silverdale with the Blackshaws, and meets their child Laura. In mid-September, he goes with Oliver and Bridget to a musical evening at the Leatons'. Nixey's monopolisation of a visiting customer, Albert Harfner, leads to a confrontation between him and Ackworth. Dawson guesses that Eleanor Nixey is having an affair with Ben Kerry, who is supposed to be "half-engaged" to Eva Alington. Dorothy Barniston tells Dawson's fortune. Joan demands that he tell her what is going on at the office that is upsetting her father; he quarrels with Ben Kerry at a showbiz party at the Crown. (Dawson explains to Elizabeth Earl that he is feeling troubled by his past.) He recollects 31 December 1913, the last party at the Alington residence, when the family played charades. The arrival of the Nixeys shortly before midnight ruins the atmosphere, and the New Year has, he feels "an ill-omened beginning." (The next morning, George Adony brings him breakfast in his room in order to talk about the script. He has lunch with Elizabeth Earl, who tells him that her agent Leo Blatt is coming this evening. After working for a few hours on the script, Dawson comes down and, during a conversation with Blatt, comes to the decision not to return to Hollywood.) In the late spring of 1914, Ackworth quarrels with Croxton, and soon afterwards decides to leave the company. In June, the Alingtons go for a picnic at Pikeley Scar, a limestone cliff, in the company of Dawson, Jock Barniston, and the 10-year-old Laura Blackshaw. Jock Barniston is to deliver a letter to Eva from Ben Kerry, and is worried that it may herald a break-up. They meet the artist Stanley Mervin again, and Dawson is chatting with Bridget by a river when they hear a scream. Eva has fallen to her death from the cliff, an event witnessed by Laura. It is ruled to be an accident. The day after the funeral, Mr Alington collapses at work, and a fortnight later the Nixeys call at his house, where they are confronted by Bridget, who blames them for what has happened. (Dawson again refuses Blatt's offer of work. Elizabeth Earl plans lunch at a certain seaside hotel, but by the time they arrive it is pouring with rain.) Dawson's last meeting with Joan is in early spring 1919, when they bump into each other at Victoria Station. He accompanies her to her flat and helps her carry her luggage up the stairs. She tells him that her mother has moved to Dorset, and Bridget has married an Irishman named Michael Connally. They go out to a revue, and then to a club, but on returning to the flat he makes the mistake of asking about Eva's death, and Joan becomes hysterical. (Elizabeth Earl's manner towards Dawson has cooled suddenly, because she has concluded that he is still besotted with Bridget Alington and not with her, as she had assumed. She tells him she has met David Alington -- now Sir David and a famous physicist. Back at the Royal Ocean Hotel, Dawson talks to Malcolm Nixey, who is leaving the next day, and perplexes him by demanding to know what he has "got out of it all", that is, out of the "successful" life he has lived. Later, Eleanor Nixey dumbfounds Dawson by informing him that she was indeed in love with Ben Kerry.) Having done with reminiscing, Dawson finishes the screenplay, and while chatting with the restaurant trio he hears them mention a fellow musician named Sheila Connally. When he arrives back in London, Elizabeth Earl organises a surprise meeting with Bridget Alington, whom he has not seen for decades. He learns that Joan is dead. Their talk is uninspiring and leaves them both disgruntled. At a party at Claridges, Dawson encounters Lord Harndean again, who asks him to phone someone called Mrs Childs, who is involved with a film-making youth group. It turns out, to his amazement, that Mrs Childs is in fact Laura Blackshaw. They talk about Bruddersford, and she tells him that she saw Joan push Eva from the cliff. This is the last piece of the puzzle. He agrees to help the youth group, and the book ends with the implication that one part of his life is finally over and that another has begun.
15519597	/m/03md1cp	Tom Clancy's EndWar	David Michaels	2008-02-04		 It is the year 2020. After capturing a Russian GRU Colonel named Pavel Doletskaya in Moscow, Team Victor of the Joint Strike Force (JSF) retreats from Russia, with Sergeant Nathan Vatz as the sole survivor. Colonel Doletskaya is interrogated by Major Alice Dennison back in the U.S. The colonel refuses to answer any questions, even under torture. The interrogation is then turned over to Charles Shakura, the JSF's top interrogator. Yet the Colonel still holds out and he is then sent to Cuba. Meanwhile, Outlaw Team, composed of Marine Force Recon, is dispatched to rescue the Colonel when his plane is shot down in the Cuban jungle. The team finds only one survivor, Shakura. Outlaw Team's leader, Sergeant McAllen, is told that this was only a decoy, and that Colonel Doletskaya was ferried to Cuba on a submarine. Prior to this time, all U.S. Special Operations Forces are merged into one combined task force termed the "Joint Strike Force" (JSF). In 2016, there is a nuclear war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, annihilating both countries. This war leads Russia into being the world's leading oil producer. In 2016, Europe becomes one country called the European Federation (EF). The United Nations is then disbanded. The US and EF are no longer allies. After launching the Freedom Star space station from the JFK Space Center in 2020, the space station is attacked by the Green Brigade, a powerful and infamous left-wing ecoterrorist group. All Marines aboard are killed and the Russians are blamed for this. The purpose of the space station is to allow the United States to be able to deploy 3 brigades of U.S. Marines anywhere in the world within 90 minutes. Meanwhile, Major Stephanie 'Siren' Halverson and her wingman, Captain Jake 'Ghost Hawk' Boyd, observe multiple Russian Ka-29 helos flying over Canadian land. While trying to scare the Russian helicopters back to the border, Captain Boyd's F35 is shot down by rocket fire. Major Halverson manages to shoot down 7 Russian helicopters and damage an eighth before trying to land her plane to rescue Jake. He refuses because Major Halverson would then run the risk of being captured or killed by the Spetsnaz forces. After giving her sidearm to Boyd, she returns and takes off in her F35. Soon after, Spetsnaz troops arrive via a Ka-29, and Boyd is killed. Halverson receives a call from the President, and the U.S. fully realizes that Russia is invading Canada. At that time, Canada is the world's second leading oil producer. After refueling and rearming at Igloo Base, which is destroyed seconds after both pilots take off, Major Halverson with her new wingman Captain Lisa 'Sapphire' Johansson and two other F35s attack and destroy a large staging ground with AN-130 super carrier jets. During that engagement, a flight of Russian SU-98 fighter jets shoot down all of the F35s, with Major Halverson being the only survivor. Back in the U.S., Major Dennison figures out the answers to the questions. Operation 2659 is the invasion of Canada, and Snegurockha is Colonel Viktoria Antsyforov. Colonel Doletskaya falls in love with her until she dies. During that time, Outlaw Team is sent to Canada to find Major Halverson and rescue her, their orders from the President himself. Sergeant Vatz's Team also arrives in Canada to combat Spetsnaz troops in the town of High Level, Alberta. Half of Vatz's team dies when the C-130 is shot down. Khaki, an ex-Canadian Special Forces soldier, is a helicopter pilot responsible for transporting Outlaw team to Major Halverson, lands in the town held by Sgt Vatz in order to refuel. At that point, the Russians stage an assault on the airfield, successfully destroying Khaki's helicopter. Outlaw Team begins to form a plan to take a Russian KA-29 helo, and in doing so, are able to enlist the help of one Captain Pravota. Outlaw team then tells Pravota to fly to the location where they will find Halverson. He agrees but warns that the helo has mechanical problems. Pravota tells them that he wants to go with the US soldiers on the return trip to the United States, and McAllen quickly agrees. After thinking they are Spetsnaz troops, Major Halverson begins to open fire at the helicopter, almost injuring the Outlaw Team. After realizing that is the Outlaw Team, she is rescued. Sergeant Vatz's Team, the Bravo Team, goes into combat with a handful of Spetsnaz, and some of his troops are killed. Back in Moscow, the president of the Russian Federation, is called. It is Snegurockha and Green Vox. Green Vox is the leader of infamous terrorist group, the Green Brigade Transnational. They tell the president that they have put two nuclear bombs in Calgary and Edmonton and will detonate them in 48 hours. The only catch is that they will wait for most of the citizen to evacuate, and more of the Spetsnaz to move in. The president demands help from the US to defuse it after all attempts on negotiations with the two terrorists fail. The terrorists put the nuclear bombs in the two cities in order to effectifevly turn the world guns on Russia, and bring any neutral countries into war, because the two cities also have large oil refineries. The President charges Sergeant Marc Rakken to send two Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) teams to defuse it. Marc Rakken leads them to the nuclear bombs and defuses it before it detonates. However, Marc Rakken sacrifices himself to save the entire NEST team when a lone Spetsnaz troop throws a grenade at them. In the end, Snegurockha kills Green Vox because they fail to detonate the nuclear bombs. Spetsnaz troops begin to evacuate from Canada. The Outlaw Team leader gets his legs shot up, but Major Halverson survives. Nathan Vatz is relieved that the war is over, but also finds out that Rakken died to save the entire NEST Team. Major Alice Dennison approached Colonel Doletskaya and tells him that Colonel Viktoria Antsyforov is still alive and currently hiding out in Canada. Colonel Pavel Doletskaya tells her that he will help Dennison to capture Viktoria, and she frees him. Major Dennison later calls President Becerra and tells him that she hasn't told all of the information to Doletskaya, but he's in on their plan.
15525090	/m/03md5cn	Native Speaker	Chang-Rae Lee	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Henry is the quintessential Korean-American, yet much of his Korean heritage resonates through his voice, personality, and beliefs. His Korean upbringing still shows up in his adult life. Like many American immigrants trying to find an identity in a foreign land, Henry is an “…emotional alien…stranger [and] follower…” who constantly feels isolated from the country in which he lives and also the country from which he came. Even though he is almost completely Americanized, Henry Park has trouble adapting to the U.S. There are many challenges that come with fitting in to American life because of the difference in culture, beliefs, behavior; and because of the desire to still hold on to one’s heritage.
15529320	/m/03md9z4	Life As We Knew It	Susan Beth Pfeffer	2006-10-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sixteen-year-old Miranda is living in Northeast Pennsylvania, United States. She is a sensitive teenager with a struggling life, seeing as how her parents are divorced, and her stepmother has a baby arriving. She has 2 best friends, Sammi, a carefree girl, and Megan, an overly religious girl. Told in diary form, Miranda lays out the story of a meteor knocking the Moon closer to Earth's orbit and causing worldwide catastrophes. She tells how her family struggles for survival in the apocalypse, which has caused tidal waves on the coasts, volcanoes that turn the air into killer smoke, and earthquakes shaking up the land. Miranda and her family do not live on the coast, nor near volcanoes, and her town has had little earthquake activity, but it affects the others around her, as some of the closest people to her begin to die and her dad's family faces challenges as they try to get to safety. Their family doctor, in a relationship with her Mom, dies of a raging flu that wipes out many people. Her only lifeline is her family, and they are forced to stay in their house and ration their food, water, and clothes. With the electricity out, Miranda starts to get used to her life in the apocalypse, but that changes as the moon's nearness causes climatic change that cools the earth, sending it into a horrible winter. Miranda's friend Sammi leaves with her 40-year-old boyfriend and Megan starves herself to death. Miranda's boyfriend, Dan, moves as well. She also meets her idol Brandon in the winter. Her family's ally Mrs. Nesbitt dies.
15553014	/m/03mdy6l	Heaven Has No Favorites	Erich Maria Remarque	1961	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The main figure, Clerfayt, is an automobile racer who goes to a Swiss hospital to visit a fellow racer, Holman. There he meets the young Belgian woman Lillian suffering from tuberculosis. She is in its terminal stage with no chance of a cure, and she wants to enjoy her last months rather than waiting for her death. Therefore, after a few days in Switzerland she decides to leave the Bela Vista sanatorium with Clerfayt. Together they travel over Europe, while Lillian enjoyed things she did not know before. Eventually they fall in love and Clerfayt starts to hope for a future with her. However, when he expresses his wish to settle down and wants to get her visited by a doctor, she starts feeling trapped and refuses the idea. Although she loves him, she decides to leave him before they start an actual life together. In one race Clerfayt is seriously injured and dies in the hospital. Lillian, devastated, returns to Switzerland. On her way there she encounters Holman, now healed, who has been offered the former job of Clerfayt. Six weeks later, Lillian dies. It is described as a peaceful moment, as if even the landscape had stopped breathing.
15555188	/m/03md_jl	Trust Me	Rajashree	2006	{"/m/04f2l4d": "Indian chick lit", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Set against the backdrop of the Hindi film industry, Trust Me is a comic story about love, heart-break and friendship. The protagonist, Parvati, decides to go off men when she is dumped by her boyfriend. She concludes that her girlfriends are right: all men are bastards. Her boss, the fatherly Mr Bose, is the one shoulder she can cry on. He is also the one man she never expects a pass from. She stands corrected: all men ARE bastards. Her girlfriends manage to keep their I-told-you-so’s to themselves. Parvati quits her job, and joins the unit of Jambuwant (‘Call me Jumbo!’) Sinha, assisting him in making his latest Hindi feature film. ‘Jumbo’ is a Bombay film-maker archetype: he believes in white shoes, black money and the casting couch. Manoj, the chief assistant, makes a pass at every woman he meets because he doesn’t want anybody to feel unwanted. And Rahul, an actor, claims to have fallen in love with her. Parvati hopes she is older now, and smarter - but perhaps not smart enough, because, very inconveniently, she finds herself liking Rahul far too much.
15556648	/m/03mf0zd	People of the Book	Geraldine Brooks	2008-01-01	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tells the fictional story of Hanna Heath, an Australian book conservator who is responsible for restoring the Haggadah. The story alternates between sections set in the present day with Heath and other sections showing the history of the Haggadah. Told in reverse chronological order, the story follows the Haggadah backward in time as it travels across Europe, from war-torn Sarajevo to the book's origins. It also explains such clues as missing silver clasps, preserved butterfly remnants, and various stains and spots, which are all eventually explained as part of the manuscript's long history.
15559635	/m/03mf3t5	Monkey Hunting	Cristina García	2003-04-15	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows three generations of one family: Chen Pan, who leaves China in 1857 on the promise of success in Cuba only to find himself enslaved as an indentured worker; his Chinese granddaughter, Chen Fang, who is raised as a boy so that she can be educated (unbeknownst to her father, who has returned to Cuba as a doctor); and Chen Pan's great-grand-grandson Domingo, who moves with his father to the United States, where he enlists to fight in Vietnam.
15559807	/m/03mf3zp	Shell Shaker	LeAnne Howe	2001-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Shell Shaker links two generations of the Billy peacemaking family through increasingly similar circumstances. The early tale, beginning in 1738 in pre-removal Choctaw Mississippi, tells the story of Red Shoes, a historical Choctaw warrior. When his wife of the Red Fox clan of the Chickasaws is murdered, his Choctaw wife, Anoleta, is blamed. Her mother, Shakbatina, forfeits her life to save Anoleta and avert a pending war between the tribes. Anoleta and her family attempt to move on as their tribe spends the next decade deciding what actions to take against Red Shoes as he plays both sides in what would become a war that devastates the people of Yanàbi Town and Anoleta's family. The later story follows the descendants of Shakbatina, now living in Durant, Oklahoma in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma in 1991. As a fire destroys the land around them, Redford McAlester, Chief of the Choctaw Nation, is murdered, and his lover, Assistant Chief Auda Billy, has been blamed. Her mother, Susan Billy, confesses to the murder while her uncle, Isaac Billy, brings together their scattered family to help in the investigation. As the family gets closer and closer to the truth, involving tales of embezzlement, rape, money laundering, contributions to the Irish Republican Army and Mafia involvement, their lives become increasingly parallel to that of their ancestors. They begin to feel the involvement of spirits long gone, complicated by a strange old woman claiming to be Sarah Bernhardt, who just may be more than she seems.
15562890	/m/03mf6jv	The Green Knight	Iris Murdoch			 The lives of Louise Anderson and her daughters Aleph, Sefton and Moy become intertwined with a mystical character whose destiny both affects and informs the novel's central conflicts which include a murder that never actually occurs, sibling rivalry, love triangles, and one extremely sentient dog who dearly misses his owner. This novel loosely parodies the Medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; however, it is largely a comedy of errors with bizarre twists and turns in circumstances that threaten the stability of a circle of friends in a London community.
15565262	/m/03mf8hv	The Romantics	Pankaj Mishra	1999	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Samar, the young narrator of The Romantics, arrives at a boarding house in the holy city of Benaras, an ancient city trying to cope with modern India. There he hopes to lose himself in books and solitude, but, far from offering him an undistracted existence, the city forces all his silent desires into the light.
15565525	/m/03mf8tt	I, the Supreme	Augusto Roa Bastos	1974	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 As critic John King notes, "it is impossible to summarize this extraordinary novel in a few lines. It incorporates the latest developments in linguistic theory and practice, talks of the arbitrariness and unreliability of language that purports to describe reality, rereads and comments upon the various histories and travelers’ accounts of Paraguay, ranges across the breadth of Latin American history, implicitly condemning Stroessner and debating with Fidel Castro, and exploring once again the gap between writer and reader." The book does, however, start by promising a linear narrative. It opens with the title words, set in a font designed to look like handwriting, heralding what appears to be an official order: I the Supreme Dictator of the Republic Order that on the occasion of my death my corpse be beheaded; my head placed on a pike for three days in the Plaza de la República, to which the people are to be summoned by the sounding of a full peal of bells... This pronouncement, it turns out, is not an official declaration. It is an imitation or forgery, found &#34;nailed to the door of the cathedral&#34; in Paraguay&#39;s capital, Asunción. Immediately following, then, is a discussion of this pasquinade: Dr Francia, the Supreme, and his secretary, Policarpo Patiño, discuss its meaning and possible provenance. Patiño is set the task of uncovering the perpetrator: &#34;You are to start tracking down the handwriting of the pasquinade in all the files.&#34; But this linear detection narrative soon starts to unravel. The Supreme casts doubt even on the presumption that the declaration is indeed a forgery, or rather suggests that the forgery could itself be forged: &#34;Suppose that I myself am an author of pasquinades.&#34; Moreover, the literary genre is undone by the introduction of footnotes (which blur the line between fiction and fact), and the narrative transparency subverted by the fact that the novel asserts its own materiality with interpolations such as &#34;(the rest of the sentence burned, illegible)&#34; and &#34;(edge of the folio burned)&#34;. The effect of these notes is to remind readers that they are reading a book, and that this book is incomplete, damaged, and fallible. As the novel continues, it becomes more and more caught up in digressions, such that the original narrative line is apparently forgotten. The Supreme and his secretary discuss an often bizarre series of topics: a meteor that is apparently chained to Francia&#39;s desk; a prison camp in Tevego whose inhabitants have been turned to stone; and increasingly the dictator also ruminates on the past, particularly the events of Paraguay&#39;s foundation when he had to fend off the attention of Spaniards, Argentines, and Brazilians, all of whom threatened the nascent country&#39;s independence. Chronology and logic are seemingly abandoned: at one point the dictator discusses the date of his own death; elsewhere he mentions events that will only happen long afterwards, such as the Chaco War of the 1930s (in which Roa Bastos himself fought). Moreover, readers are increasingly made aware of the marginal but insistent voice of the mysterious compiler. At the center of the book, it is revealed that the compiler is, in fact, in possession of the same pen used by the Supreme, a &#34;memory-pen&#34; that reproduces images as well as words, but that is now &#34;partially broken, so that today it writes only with very thick strokes that tear the paper, effacing words as it writes them&#34;. The novel ends at the end of Francia&#39;s life, with him condemning Patiño to death for supposedly plotting against him, followed by Francia&#39;s death in a fire in 1840. As the characters and plot disintegrate, so apparently does the novel. The final line is another interpolation: &#34;(the remainder stuck together, illegible, the rest unable to be found, the worm-eaten letters of the Book hopelessly scattered).&#34; And yet, this is not quite the last word, as it is followed by a &#34;Final Compiler&#39;s Note&#34; that reflects on the compilation and the book as a whole. Here the novel seems to pass responsibility on to &#34;the no less fictitious and autonomous reader.&#34;
15565943	/m/03mf93f	Gents	Warwick Collins		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 From Jamaica, Ez Murphy, takes a cleaning job in a "Gents" lavatory. His eye are opened to the meetings that take place in this unusual setting.
15566415	/m/03mf9kw	The Elf Mound	Hans Christian Andersen			 Two lizards scramble about the entrance to the Elf Mound, commenting on the hustle and bustle within. They have heard the elf maidens are practicing new dances and both wonder the reason why. An old maid elf hurries out and summons a raven to deliver invitations to an important event. The elf maidens begin their misty dances. The dishes for the night's festivities include skewered frogs, fungus salad made of mushroom seed, and hemlock. The king polishes his crown and tells his inquisitive youngest daughter that he has arranged marriages between two of his daughters and two of the sons of the Goblin Chief of Norway, who all arrive at that moment with pomp. The feast is held and the two sons prove rowdy and boisterous. The elf maidens are paraded as potential brides, declaiming their most notable talents. The Goblin Chief is so delighted he chooses one for his wife. Dawn approaches, and the old maid elf wants to close the shutters. The two sons of the Goblin King hurry outside to continue their tomfoolery and horseplay, leaving without selecting brides.
15572315	/m/03mfyft	The Saint of Dragons				 The story opens with a Dragonhunter named Aldric St George infiltrating the mansion of an ancient Dragon. The Dragon, despite his considerable age is still quite powerful and succeeds in killing Aldric's brother along with their entire party before finally being destroyed. As he dies, the creature mocks Aldric saying that he knows he has a son and his fellow Dragons are going after him. The book then introduces the main character, thirteen year old Simon St George who attends the prestigious Lighthouse School for Boys in a fictional New England town called Ebony Hollow. He appears young for his age, has a crush on a girl in a novelty shop near his school and lives with the rather dull school caretakers. Simon has never known his parents and is treated as something of an oddity by his arrogant fellow school pupils. One night when Simon is window-cleaning, (something he does as a favour for the school) he meets a somewhat deranged-looking man (who is actually Aldric) who claims to be his father and tries to get Simon to come with him. Simon refuses. On Halloween Night, during a party Simon gets bored and goes out into a corridor where he overhears the headmaster talking to a man in a white suit who claims to be his father. The man leaves, leaving Simon feeling curious. Whilst crossing a field Simon and some of his fellow pupils are attacked by some thugs who attempt to abduct Simon who is rescued by a man on horseback who is revealed to be Aldric and whom Simon recognises as the deranged-looking man who claimed to be his father. The man takes Simon back to his ship which is named The Ship With No Name. This is ironic as obviously the ship does have a name, that being The Ship With No Name, therefore its name is in fact a misnomer. Aldric reveals to Simon that the two of them are descended from Saint George the Dragonslayer and that Dragons are in fact very real and it is their job to hunt them down. Aldric is in possession of a book called the Book of Saint George which contains the name of every Dragon in existence along with their Deathspell, the incantation required to destroy them. To vanquish a Dragon one needs to apply their hand to its chest and speak its Deathspell. Aldric and his late brother, Ormando have travelled the world killing Dragons and there is only one left : the White Dragon of Manhattan, the brother of the Dragon Aldric killed at the beginning of the story. In New York, the White Dragon who goes by the name of Venemon has developed a crush on a human woman named Alaythia, an artist whose work nobody but he appreciates. When a Dragon makes love, they incinerate their partner who effectively becomes a living flame. Venemon thinks Alaythia would make an excellent flame and goes round to her apartment for dinner. He seduces her with a magical painting which he has made and is about to take her when Aldric and Simon arrive. Aldric and Venemon do battle and Aldric destroys him but a fire is started in the process. Aldric and Simon escape along with the unconscious Alaythia. Aldric and Simon then discover to their horror that there is one more Dragon alive in Venice. Alaythia who possesses magical powers and can read the language of Dragons accompanies them to Venice where they encounter the Water Dragon, Brakkesh, an Italian gangster with an obsession with jewellery. In the ensuing battle Brakkesh proves himself a formidable opponent and Simon almost inadvertently sets fire to all of Venice. Nevertheless Brakkesh is eventually forced to flee. Aldric, Simon and Alaythia go to the Dragons mansion which is brimming with water and infested with eels on account of Brakkesh's status as a Water Dragon. They discover that Brakkesh is planning world domination and in fact there are two Books of Saint George one of which is at the legendary Coast of the Dead, a place feared even by Dragons. Aldric, Simon and Alaythia journey to the Coast of the Dead where they discover the other book and find that there are thousands more Dragons in the world. They immediately leave but are apprehended near Russia and taken into custody. Aldric discovers that the Russian Military is under the command of a Dragon and they escape the detention centre and track down the Russian Dragon who has a mansion in Moscow. The Russian Dragon goes by the name of Russki and is quite old. He appears to be schizophrenic and has an obsession with cats. He is part of the Venetian Dragons plan to unite all the Dragons in the world and eradicate humanity and the Venetian is currently on his way to Moscow but because of their close proximity the Dragons' magic is going out of control causing Russki's fire to develop a mind of its own and defy him. When Aldric, Simon and Alaythia arrive at the Russian's mansion, Brakkesh the Water Dragon of Venice has already arrived along with Tyrannique, the Dragon of Paris, a debauched hedonist with a fondness for eating paintings and drinking paint. They eavesdrop on the Dragons' plan and discover that although Brakkesh is the ring-leader he answers to another Dragon whom he refers to only as "the Master." Simon blows their cover, shooting Brakkesh in the heart and the three Dragons attack. In the ensuing confrontation Aldric, Simon and Alaythia fall down a trap-door and are attacked by Fire-Creatures, conjured by the Dragons who make their escape. Simon shoots the glass dome in the roof causing the snow to fall down on the Firelings and he, Aldric and Alaythia escape. Alaythia feels like she isn't getting enough respect from Aldric and leaves, much to the distress of Simon who doesn't get along with his father and is fond of Alaythia. The somewhat callous and socially-inept Aldric does not go after Alaythia despite obviously having feelings for her. He and Simon go to Beijing to find the Chinese Dragon. There they discover that due to the vibrations in nature caused by the Dragons' considerable power people are quite literally melting into each other, resembling Siamese twins. Simon discovers the Black Chinese Dragon in an underground lair. He is considerably old and apparently harmless. He tells Simon that as well as the evil ones, there are many good Dragons of whom he is one. He tells Simon that there is a meeting taking place in an Art Gallery in London between the Light Dragons. Simon believes the Black Dragon and accompanies him via boat to London. At the Art Gallery however Simon discovers that he has fallen into a trap. There in fact are no Light Dragons and the Art Gallery is infested with evil Dragons. Aldric turns up at this point with Alaythia and the three of them are overpowered. Brakkesh's master arrives at this point and is revealed to be Venemon, the White Dragon of Manhattan who survived his battle with Alric on account of Aldric not speaking his full death-spell. The three of them are captured and taken to the palace of the Dragons, elsewhere in London. In a white dungeon beneath the palace, Venemon reveals his villainous plan to liberate the Dragon Goddess, the Serpent Queen from her underground prison where she was banished by the Ancient Egyptians. He plans to sacrifice Alaythia to the Serpent Queen. Having revealed his plan Venemon takes his leave. He goes upstairs to the throne room and does a grand speech to the assembled Dragons from around the world who will combine their powers to free the Serpent Queen. Meanwhile down below, the Black Dragon who has grown to like Simon and feels remorse for having double-crossed him releases him, Aldric and Alaythia. They go upstairs to the Throne Room and confront Venemon and the other Dragons. Aldric tricks the Dragons into thinking that Venemon plans to destroy them and the Dragons rebel. A furious battle ensues during which the combined energies of the Dragons awaken the banished Serpent Queen. The floor fades and the congregation see the terrifying form of the Serpent Queen rising from the centre of the Earth. Simon however combines the power of a scroll from the Coast of the Dead with one of the Dragonhunter arrows and shoots into the heart of the evil goddess who falls back to the centre of the Earth. In rage Tyrannique attacks Simon. Meanwhile Aldric manages to grab onto Venemon and utter his deathspell, destroying him. In the midst of the battle Brakkesh and Russki are also vanquished and the palace begins to collapse. The Dragons flee and Alaythia creates a magical shield to protect them. As the three of them emerge from the ruins of Venemon's white palace, Tyrannique, the Dragon of Paris attacks them but is destroyed mid-flight by the benevolent Black Dragon. As the result of all the paint the Parisian Dragon had eaten, the sky then sheds multi-coloured rain. The story ends with Aldric, Alaythia and Simon moving into a castle in Ebony Hollow where Aldric continues to teach Simon to be a full-fledged Dragonhunter.
15577490	/m/03mg8m9	Zeroville	Steve Erickson	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ike Jerome, a 24-year-old architecture student inspired by the few films he has seen, rides the bus into Hollywood. Jerome is almost autistic (later, his friend dubs him a "cineautistic") in his interactions with the world, and is deeply affected by his childhood with his religiously oppressive father. With a tattoo of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor as they appear in A Place in the Sun (a film that plays an important role in the plot) on his shaved head, he makes an impression on the people around him. Soon breaking into film as a designer and eventually a film editor, Vikar (as he is nicknamed) begins a dreamlike journey into the world of films that eventually ends in tragedy and almost horrific discovery.
15584298	/m/03mgj0m	The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times, The Institution That Influences the World	Gay Talese	1969	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 While Talese's book outlined the history of the paper back to Adolph Ochs's 1896 takeover of the then-failing paper, the focus was on The Times between 1945 and the 1960s. The Washington bureau of The Times sometimes was seen as the center of the paper's power, but after the death of publisher Orvil Dryfoos in 1963, Talese saw this center as shifting to New York City under Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger beginning in 1963. The title of the book indicated the thrust of Talese's thesis. The Kingdom was The New York Times newsroom, and the Power was the influence the paper wielded, particularly in its interpretation of the paper's famous motto "All the News That's Fit to Print". Talese looked at the personalities driving Times news coverage such as managing editor Clifton Daniel, executive editor James Reston, rising star A. M. Rosenthal and Punch Sulzberger. Time found Talese's portrayal of the highly-respected Reston as particularly critical. Talese described Reston as a "Times-man in the old sense, a man emotionally committed to the institution as a way of life, a religion, a cult."
15584906	/m/03mgjm6	Agent 13: The Serpentine Assassin	Flint Dille	1986	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Due to damages suffered, the SS Normandie was forced to turn around and sail back towards New York. On board, fighting back fears and tears as she watched the waters which she believed claimed the man she loved, Maggie Darr swore to continue his fight against the Brotherhood, despite the impossible odds. Unknown to herself, she still had allies she knew nothing about back in New York, watching over her as she made her way back to Agent 13's lair. Also unknown to her, China White had Agent 13 fished out of the waters, and despite him almost being dead, managed to arrange for him to be secretly transported back to the headquarters of the Brotherhood. In New York, Maggie reviewed the situation and decided to approach Kent Walters, the National Security Advisor who was recuperating in the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Walters had been injured during the events in the first book, ambushed along with Agent 13 by Brotherhood's assassins which saw the massacre of all other members of the National Security Council. She managed to gain Walters' cooperation who suggested she investigate General Hunter Braddock who was in charge of the Lightning Gun project. Braddock was also involved with China White in her diva persona. Meanwhile, Agent 13 was brought back from the brink of death, and told frankly by his former mentor, Jinda-dii, High Priest of the Serpentine Assassins, that he would be brainwashed to be the assassin the Brotherhood was training him to be, and be sent on a mission where he would die at the end of the job. He resisted valiantly, and for a brief moment, felt an unexpected support from an unknown source during the battling for his mind. Yet in the end, he could not prevail and his nemesis, Itsu, cackled gleefully. Tredekka, the original name given to Agent 13 by the Brotherhood, was sent on the spitefully vicious mission to murder Maggie Darr. He was programmed to remember his brainwashing at the completion of his mission, moments before the mantha, the oil of fire he drank before departure, would trigger upon his "success" to combust and consume him, giving him just enough time to fully comprehend the awful horror of what he did to the woman who loved him. Ignorant of the impending doom, Maggie Darr was working feverishly to investigate the disasters which the Masque claimed responsibility, unearthing clues which linked the events together in a previously unnoticed pattern, providing clues to an emerging, still vague but unmistakably ominous picture.
15586316	/m/03mgm7g	Sovereign	C. J. Sansom	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the autumn of 1541, the novel describes fictional events surrounding Henry VIII's 'Progress' to the North (a state visit accompanied by the royal court and its attendants, the purpose of which was to formally accept surrender from those who had rebelled during the Pilgrimage of Grace). Most of the novel is set in York, though events in London and on the return journey via Hull are also depicted. Matthew Shardlake (a London lawyer) and his assistant Jack Barak arrive in York ahead of the Progress to fulfill an official role, but also with a secret mission from Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. The official role is to deal with petitions to the King from the citizens of York; the secret mission is to ensure the welfare of an important political prisoner, Sir Edward Broderick, so he can be brought to London for questioning in the Tower of London. However, events are quickly complicated when the murder of a York glazier leads Shardlake to the discovery of important documents that bring the King's right to the throne into question.
15600794	/m/03mh2fn	Nevada	Zane Grey	1928	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ben Ide, restless with the rancher life, moves his family to Arizona, ostensibly for his mother's health, but also to search for his missing partner Nevada. He buys a beautiful ranch, in a territory known for cattle rustling. The deal soon sours as he struggles to keep his cattle and prize horses from the network of rustlers about the wild country of Arizona, not sure who he can trust and who he can't. Hettie Ide pines away for the missing Nevada, meanwhile fending off a horde of suitors. Nevada, having escaped the end of Forlorn River with only his life, resumes the life of an outlaw, seeking a way out of his situation, but working his way deeper amidst the labyrinthine social network of Arizona, in which everyone is a rustler and no one will say who leads the gangs.
15601080	/m/03mh2n5	The Day of the Beast				 It is the story of Daren Lane, who returns from the battlefields of World War I to a society tired of hearing about the war and declining morals. It is set in Middletown USA. It is set on the Victorian era's side in the culture conflict with the Roaring Twenties.
15602513	/m/03mh3x1	A Live Coal in the Sea	Madeleine L'Engle	1996	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Camilla celebrates a long and wonderful life with her friends and family when she is presented with an award for lifetime achievement. But her son's snide comments at the event stir up trouble which lead to Camilla's granddaughter, Raffi, demanding answers about her family history. Camilla relives her younger days as she attempts to give Raffi the answers she seeks. Camilla's story begins when she is an astronomy student in college. Her life has been peaceful until her mother, Rose, visits her on campus and promptly has sex with one of her professors, which Camilla accidentally sees. As she tries to get away, she bumps into a young man named Mac Xanthakos, who is volunteering at a local church, while training to be an Episcopalian priest. Mac invites Camilla in to talk and have a cup of tea, at which point, Camilla sadly explains about her mother. This event leads to a friendship between Camilla and Mac. A romance blooms between the pair but Mac suddenly pulls away. Camilla is left saddened and confused. She continues her education and devotes herself to her work. Then suddenly, Mac reappears and asks Camilla to marry him. Camilla accepts. Mac introduces Camilla to his wonderful and wise parents. They accept Camilla as their own daughter and Camilla begins to feel like she belongs with them. She and Mac are married and Mac begins to work at a church in a small town. Camilla becomes pregnant. The happiness ends in devastation when Camilla's pregnancy ends in miscarriage. Her pain is deepened when Camilla's parents announce they are expecting another child. Camilla becomes pregnant a second time. But once again disaster strikes. Rose is in a car accident and is killed. Before she dies, doctors are able to deliver her baby by c-section. The baby, a boy, needs a blood transfusion and Rafferty attempts to donate. When doctors compare the blood types, they discover a terrible truth. The baby is not Rafferty's. The true father of the baby is unknown. Rafferty is driven nearly insane by combined grief and anger. He begs Camilla to take the child and raise it, with the promise that he pay for all the costs of the baby. She and Mac agree to raise the baby and name it Artaxias, who is quickly nicknamed Taxi. A few months later, their daughter is born and named Frankie. Camilla and Mac raise Taxi as their own child and as Frankie's brother. But their idyllic bliss is shattered after a few short years. Red Grange, Camilla's former professor, appears and claims that Taxi is his son. He 'proves' his paternity with a letter from Rose that states that he is the father. Red gains legal rights to Taxi and takes him from Camilla and Mac. Years pass and Camilla and Mac do not know how to move past the loss of their surrogate son. Frankie is confused by the loss of her brother and constantly prays he will come back to them. Finally Taxi is returned but only after several years have passed and Red and his second wife have been killed in a car crash. But Taxi has changed and no longer remembers Camilla, Mac or Frankie. He is angry, rude, tough and very confused about his identity. Camilla and Max do their best to raise Frankie and Taxi but the problems are endless. Taxi tries desperately to distance himself from Red Grange and his past. He longs to be Camilla and Mac's true son but is constantly reminded by the world that he is not. He frequently acts out and disrupts their home. Frankie is confused by her changed brother and pours herself into her artwork. Camilla flashes forward to the future and explain to Raffi that nothing changed. Taxi became a soap-opera star, married and had one child, Raffi. Taxi is still hurting because his past and still confused about his identity. Frankie still pours her emotion into her art and has become a successful artist. Although the past may be gone and over with, it is still affecting the family and their future. Raffi accepts Camilla's story but is amazed when she accidentally discovers a missing piece in the puzzle. Red Grange was not Taxi's father. Red's son is Taxi's real father. Raffi is excited by this discovery and eagerly tells Taxi. Raffi believes her father will be happy to know that his father is not horrible Red Grange. Taxi instead lashes out and Raffi runs to Camilla for an explanation. Camilla simply says to give it time and Taxi will eventually calm. Raffi believes Camilla and despite the evidence otherwise, accepts Camilla as her one true grandmother.
15612171	/m/03mhp1q	Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood	Fatema Mernissi	1994	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The memoir details Mernissi's childhood and adolescence in a traditional harem in Fez, Morocco during the 1940s and early 1950s. The young Mernissi narrates her childhood at both the traditional, walled harem in Fez and the equally traditional but geographically open harem belonging to her grandfather, in the countryside. Of particular concern for Mernissi and her cousin Samir is the definition of adult concepts--throughout the memoir, they are constantly discussing the nature of the harem, of hudud (sacred frontiers), questions of truth versus convenience, and the growing tension between French colonial forces and Moroccan nationalists.
15619082	/m/03mhxfk	Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America				 The book starts off with some statistics on American spending habits and why certain things are there (i.e. the warning label) and it eventually concentrates on the American eating habits and some references to his movie. It also talks briefly about how McDonald's started and how much trouble many of their CEOs attempt to carry on Ray Kroc's legacy.
15629907	/m/03nn2ym	Ashes to Ashes	Tami Hoag		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A serial killer known as "The Cremator" is killing prostitutes in Minneapolis parks and setting their bodies on fire. When one of his victims turns out to be the daughter of a local billionaire, and a homeless teenager claims to have witnessed the burning, it brings together former FBI agent Kate Conlan (now working as a victim-witness advocate) and the Bureau's top serial-killer profiler, John Quinn. Conlan and Quinn share a painful personal history; now they have to work together against a very smart lunatic who seems to be able to read their minds.
15633473	/m/03nn5hg	Wedding Night				 After winning a contest Florence and Nicolas set out to get married in Niagara Falls accompanied by their family and friends. No sooner do they arrive than the situation turns sour, and the couple decides to call the whole thing off. Stuck in an unfamiliar town with their respective relatives, Florence and Nicolas have their illusions shattered regarding love and living as a couple. In their own ways the members of both families try to reconcile the ex-future husband and wife, but things are not so simple.
15640736	/m/03nndnq	2 Girls	Perihan Mağden	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bodies of several murdered men are found in Istanbul and the oppressive air is evident in the city. Meanwhile Behiye, rebellious, full of teenage angst, oppressed by her conservative family, achieves well in her university entrance exams and gets the chance to enter prestigious Boğaziçi University. This, however, does not take her angst away, but oppressions endure. Behiye's life, longing to get rid of her angst is changed drastically when she meets Handan, a beautiful and naive girl of her age who lives with her beautiful call girl mother. In short time, Behiye becomes attached to Handan and moves into their apartment. The girls form and intense and unidentifiable relationship which has both romantic and sisterly implications. Their uniting relationship has to face social problems and is damaged by peer boys, academic expectations, economic difficulties, and most of all different cultural backgrounds. The story continues as step by step Handan pain-givingly (this is a word) realizes the impossibility of their relationship.
15649304	/m/03nnmjh	The Mystery of the Black Jungle	Emilio Salgari		{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Few can live in the Black Jungle, a desolate place teeming with wild dangerous beasts. Yet it is among its dark forests and bamboo groves here that the renowned hunter Tremal-Naik makes his home. For years he has lived there in peace, quietly going about his trade until, one night, a strange apparition appears before him - a beautiful young woman that vanishes in an instant. Within days, strange music is heard in the jungle then one of his men is found dead without a mark upon his body. Determined to find some answers, the hunter sets off with his faithful servant Kammamuri, but as they head deeper into the jungles of the Sundarbans, they soon find their own lives at risk; a deadly new foe has been watching their every move, a foe that threatens all of British India.
15655813	/m/03nntgt	Thorn Ogres of Hagwood	Robin Jarvis	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Werlings, small creatures with the ability to transform into animals, suddenly find themselves thrust into a battle to overthrow the High Lady of the Hollow Hill, Rhiannon, whose servants are the monstrous thorn ogres.
15657169	/m/03w9gqb	In Search for Khnum				 The events of the novel take place in Ancient Egypt and in particular during the transitional period after the New Kingdom, towards the start of the Third Intermediate Period, during the 21st Dynasty (c. 1070-945 BC). At this time, Egypt was ruled by the High Priests of the god Amun-Ra, who dwelt in the traditional capital Thebes, which was also known as Waset in ancient times, and is known today as Luxor. This period is known as one of theocratic rule, due to the religious nature of the governments’ authority. Among historians, this is considered one of the rare times when ancient Egypt was directly controlled by the high priests. There was also a civil government who very probably had family ties with Pharaoh Ramses XI (c. 1099-1069 BC), the last king of the last dynasty of the New Kingdom (c. 1539-1070 BC), also known as the Imperial age or (by Egyptologists) as the 20th Dynasty (1186-1069 BC). With the end of the so-called New Kingdom, Egypt lost much of the power, prestige and domination that she had enjoyed earlier. Beyond her borders, the holdings of her empire had diminished, and within the country there was anarchy for a variety of causes. The most important was the split in government between the north and the south. The north was managed by Smendes, the governor of Tanis, a town in the eastern Delta, while the south was managed by the High Priest of Amun-Ra, Herihor, resident at Thebes. The events of the Tale of Wenamun are a good example of the decline in Egyptian possessions as defined by territories and states that characterized this period. In his tale Wenamun leaves the temple of Amun-Re at Thebes to acquire wood from the eastern coastal region of the Mediterranean which had previously been under Egyptian control for several centuries, in order to build a sacred bark for this god. During the dangerous journey the hero of this tale, Wenamun, experiences numerous difficulties: he is driven from one of the towns he visits and is once even threatened with death. All of these unfortunate events show how serious the situation of Egypt is at this time. The events of In Search of Khnum take place in this historical context. In a narrative framework, the author describes an imaginary situation that takes place in precisely this period of Ancient Egyptian history. It is thus not a real or even an experienced history, as was the case with the Pharaonic writings of the very great novelist Naguib Mahfouz: Khufu’s Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War, Before the Throne, Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth. In consequence this story takes place in ancient Egypt to reconstruct the reality and to observe it rather than reproducing it. At the same time, this novel is not only concerned with past time, but also reflects a diaphanous shadow on the present with a skillful literary talent. It is a novel that is as engaged with the present as it is associated with the past and with the fundamental aim of declaring itself optimistic for the future. What is truly remarkable about this literary work is its surprising capacity to reconstruct the Egyptian past and dwell on its fascinating details without bombarding the reader with subjects and historical events, and without compromising the truth of this distant period. Thus the history of Ancient Egypt is presented in such a literary and artistic manner that it confirms art’s true role and incredible capacity in preserving and reanimating cultural heritage. The author also knows how to renew and refashion this heritage in an engaging style which allows the observer to view it with a fresh eye, and both to enrich his thoughts about life and to deepen his knowledge of literature. It is not an easy matter to create a setting similar to the ambiance of the period’s chronicles, and this is what gives this work its originality and brilliance. The author’s style gives the novel its splendor to the novel, since he is a specialist in Egyptology and has a passion to make this science both his career and the subject of his writing. fr:À la recherche de Khnoum
15673453	/m/03np9d6	California Dreaming	Zoey Dean	2008-04-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book picks up with Anna Percy leaving for Bali with her childhood friend, Logan. Unfortunately, there is a problem with the plane so it turns around and heads back to L.A. Anna starts calling Sam on the airplane's phone, but she loses the connection. Meanwhile, Sam is with her fiancee Eduardo, when she sees the news of the troubled flight on television; she turns to Eduardo and tells him that "If Anna makes it out safe, we'll get married in a week." Anna indeed does make it out safely from the plane and at the airport, her father and Sam are waiting for her. Ben was also there, watching from a few feet away but decides to leave when he sees Anna and Logan kiss, not wanting to ruin their happy moment. Before going to the airport, Ben was with Cammie at the new club, Bye Bye Love, when unexpectedly Adam Flood shows up. While talking to Adam, Cammie gets a call from Sam about Anna, whom she is actually worried about, and she goes inside and turns on the television. Ben sees and goes "home". Sam meets her parents—Jackson and Dina(whom Sam is surprised is back in her life)--to meet Eduardo's parents Consuela and Pedro. They are all very excited about the wedding but Eduardo's parents are hesitant about the marriage since Sam will be at USC film school and Eduardo in Paris. Sam doesn't know if she wants to give up her place at her dream school to be with Eduardo in a different country and tells the others she is not ready to make her decision. All the while, Cammie is at the club with Ben, trying to rekindle their relationship. Anna wakes up to talk to her dad, still undecided about Yale. She decides to finish the screenplay on her laptop that she started in Manhattan and sends it to Sam Sam, Cammie, and Dee get their nails done and Sam decides she wants Cammie to be her Maid Of Honor and for Dee to be a bridesmaid. Later on Monday morning, after 24 hours of writing, Anna meets up Logan who insists they go to Bye, Bye, Love as Logan got an invitation. At the club, Anna spots Cammie and Ben together. When Ben spots her with Logan, she thinks he seems jealous. Anna has second thoughts about going to Bali with Logan. Sam attends a USC orientation, and is surprised to find herself excited for school which causes her to have second thoughts about going to Paris with Eduardo. Later on she goes to have coffee with Dee and Cammie so they can help plan her wedding, but Cammie is too busy with the club which cause Sam to get angry that Cammie is not fulfilling her responsibilities as Maid of Honor. She announces that Dee, who had always been ecstatic about the wedding planning, is her new maid of honor, and if Cammie is still interested, she can be a bridesmaid. Anna goes to a meeting after which she catches up with Logan, when she gets an emergency call-her dad at the hospital with a case of subdural hematoma. Sam also comes to the hospital to show support for Anna. While there, Ben, who got a call from Sam, shows up saying that he's sorry how things got so weird between them. Anna agrees and that encounter changes things. Sam has read Anna's screenplay, but has not told her. Instead, she goes to Marty Martison,a huge movie producer, to see if it can be a movie but she leaves disappointed. Later on, Sam goes for a fitting on her new dress designed by Giselle, a Chilean designer who she thought was interested in Eduardo, and suspects she is a lesbian. After her mother, Dina, comes and they have a heart-to-heart conversation about why she never showed up in her life. Anna is at the hospital with her dad who says he was playing tennis when the ball hit him. Surprisingly, Anna's estranged sister Susan shows up and announces she will be staying with their father so that Anna will be free to leave for Yale on Saturday, which Anna begins having second thoughts about. Adam and Cammie reconnect at Sam's wedding rehearsal but not in a romantic way. Anna makes her final decision and tells Logan she hasn't regretted anything they've done together, but she's not going to Bali with him and she is not attending Yale either. Sam begins having pre-wedding jitters and starts to wonder if she is too young to get married when she walks in to her father and mother kissing. Sam goes back to the rehearsal, saying she can't get married, but her parents convince her it is only pre-wedding jitters but Cammie disagrees. She announces to the others that Sam doesn't want to get married while Sam just nods in response which crushes Eduardo and he tells her he wish he never met her. Sam and Anna are out for drinks next day and they decide to make big plans for Anna's last day. Sam calls Cammie, who is with Ben. She tells him that the club is his thing and that they should just be friends when she receives Sam's call who tells her to grab her bridesmaid's dress and meet her and Anna on Jackson Sharpe's boat. While on the boat, Anna is confronted by none other than Marty Maritson, saying that he read the screenplay and it is the perfect thing and they would love to make a deal. Anna is shocked—Sam not only read it but had gotten one of Hollywood's biggest producers to help make it a movie. She agrees, but only if Sam can direct. Anna goes to find Sam, who reveals she was listening in from the balcony. They agree to change the title to The A-List and start discussing actors to star in it, setting the stage for the The A-List: Hollywood Royalty. Cammie goes to Adam and apologizes to him, saying she will move to Michigan with him, just to be together but Adam tells her he's changed his mind and will be attending Pomona, a college nearby. He tells Cammie that he did not want to tell her about his decision because he knew she would only be with him because of that fact. While Sam's mom and dad are getting remarried, a helicopter enters with Eduardo who apologizes to Sam and asks her to keep in touch. Anna and Ben meet up and Anna tells him she loves him. The books ends with the two sharing their first kiss since their break up. This book is the last novel in the series.
15673480	/m/03np9dx	The Running Man	Bill Pronzini		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story takes place at a diner in the warm deserts of Arizona. The protagonist, Jack, walks through the desert thinking about his love, named Karen. He arrives at a diner in which the cook and his daughter, the waitress, were alone. Later on, after Jack got his food, two well dressed men called Frank and Earl came into the diner. Unexpectedly, the two men pulled out guns, not to rob the place but to quiet the people and prepare them for what was about to happen. They explained that there would shortly be a man coming to the diner, to find a car that will take him to his destination but the car will not be there. Frank and Earl will be instead.
15676062	/m/03nphw7	Eichmann Interrogated	Adolf Eichmann	1983		 Eichmann was a German World War II war criminal who was living in Argentina under a false identity when he was captured by Israeli forces in 1960. Upon being brought to Israel, he was interrogated for 275 hours before his trial. This book contains testimony where Eichmann speaks of his life, from childhood to his years in hiding, though the focus is on his role in organizing the mass executions of civilians, particularly Jews, by the Nazi regime. Eichmann Interrogated reads mostly as Eichmann denying any personal responsibility for Germany's mass executions. He repeatedly claims he was only in charge of transportation of Jewish and enemy civilians, he was only following orders, and that disobeying such orders would have result in his own execution. He also claims that other, previously tried German war criminals, deliberately implicated him to mitigate their personal responsibility. Eichmann also denies any feelings of antisemitism; indeed, he claims to have attempted to create a homeland for Jews, once in Madagascar and later in Eastern Europe. These claims are challenged by his interrogator, Avner W. Less, a German Jew who escaped the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel. Less, who is also quoted in the book, often asks Eichmann about a particular event; after Eichmann would deny knowledge of or culpability for it, Less would produce a signed document or other evidence to show Eichmann was responsible. Eichmann referred to Less as "Herr Hauptmann," German for "Mr. Captain." :Eichmann: Except for the Jewish functionaries, with whom I worked all those years, I did not decide a single personal fate; and as for the functionaries, I never decided their fate, I never had any of them evacuated, let alone killed . . . or anything of the kind. :Less: Now let me show you a letter of December 2, 1942, from your bureau to the Foreign Office. "Re: The Jew and former French prisoner of war Roger Masse, born in 1884. The above-mentioned Jew was deported to the East - Auschwitz - on June 5, 1942. For reasons of principle, I cannot agree to having him shipped back. per proc. Eichmann." :Eichmann: That's a normal routine communication, drafted by a clerk. :Less: But it shows that you personally . . . :Eichmann: Herr Hauptmann, it's a form letter. A routine communication. It's not a decision on my part. :Less: But it says "I": "For reasons of principle, I cannot agree . . ." :Eichmann: Yes, yes, of course. That's a bureaucratic . . . always the same old story . . . obviously. I was the bureau head. It had to have my name on it. This letter had no effect on the fate of the man concerned. :Less: Of course not, because he wasn't sent back. Quite right. From page 141. (All ellipses are in the original)
15678856	/m/03npmj9	The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other	Peter Handke			 In an interview with Sigrid Löffler for Profil in May 1992, Handke described the idea behind the play: The trigger for the play was an afternoon several years ago. I'd spent the entire day on a little square in Muggia near Trieste. I sat on the terrace of a café and watched life pass by. I got into a real state of observation, perhaps this was helped along a bit by the wine. Every little thing became significant (without being symbolic). The tiniest procedures seemed significant of the world. After three or four hours a hearse drew up in front of a house, men entered and came out with a coffin, onlookers assembled and then dispersed, the hearse drove away. After that the hustle and bustle continued - the milling of tourists, natives and workers. Those who came after this occurrence didn't know what had gone on before. But for me, who had seen it, everything that happened after the incident with the hearse seemed somewhat coloured by it. None of the people on the square knew anything of each other - hence the title. But we,the onlookers see them as sculptures who sculpt each other through what goes on before and after. Only through what comes after does that which has gone before gain contours; and what went on before sculpts what is to come.
15685289	/m/03w9gwc	Reflex	Steven Gould		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Since the conclusion of Jumper, David Rice, a young man with the ability to teleport, has married Millie and occasionally works for the National Security Agency, only accepting jobs that he finds to be morally acceptable. During a meeting with Brian Cox, his handler, Brian is killed and David is kidnapped by a powerful criminal organization with influence over the NSA and other government agencies. Millie discovers that she, too, has the ability to "jump", and sets out to find and rescue David with help from members of the NSA and, later, the FBI. The novel tells the story from David's and Millie's perspectives in alternating chapters.
15686522	/m/03npxsm	Eyes of the Emperor	Graham Salisbury	2005	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts in Honolulu in 1941, where a Japanese boy, Eddy, lives. He has a brother, Herbie, and numerous friends. His friends are in the army, and Eddy, who is 16 years old, joins the US army by illegally altering his birth certificate to appear 18 years old. They enlist in Camp McCoy. Eddy's father strongly opposes this as he feels that Eddy is betraying Japan, but soon Japan attacks Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Eddy and his Japanese company must do manual labor, such as digging trenches, while the soldiers of other nationalities go on with regular army training. He then is mobilized by Lieutenant Sweet to Cat Island, Mississippi, along with his comrades. They then embark on a secret mission commissioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which is for training dogs: Dogs are trained to smell the Japanese people, and this is training them so that when they are released in the Pacific theater, the dogs would track and kill the Japanese soldiers. This severely demoralizes the soldiers. Later, when they commute from the island to the mainland, their boat motor stalls. When they call for assistance, the US Coast Guard comes and shoots the boat, suspecting that they were the enemy. Accidental attacks continue, and the treatment of the Japanese-American soldiers becomes worse as the war worsens. Eddy is nearly killed once when his dog's trainer, Smith, calls the dog back slightly late. The soldiers are forced to treat the dogs harshly, which is against their will. After a few weeks of grueling treatment of the Japanese, the government observes and evaluates this project. It is deemed unsuccessful, and Eddy now is assigned to combat in the European theater.
15687176	/m/03npyds	Something Upstairs	Edward Irving Wortis	1988-09-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Something Upstairs is about a twelve year old boy, Kenny Huldorf, who tells a story to Avi who had visited the school on a book tour. He moves from Los Angeles to Providence, Rhode Island. He lives in a house of past events, built in 1789. Kenny's room is in the attic. One night Kenny wakes to a scraping noise in the old slave room. When he looks inside, he sees a ghost that tries to get out from a stain on the floor. It moves a box full of books out of the way. Once it is out, the ghost feels the attic walls, in search of something. Kenny and the ghost see each other; the ghost does not speak, and flinches away and disappears when Kenny raises a shoe in defense. Kenny tells his father there is something upstairs, but his father interprets that as a metaphor for “something you don’t want anyone to know about. Secrets.” Kenny visits the local library, where he meets an old historian, Pardon Willinghast, who is also curious about the property. Kenny tries to talk with the ghost boy, who mutters the word “slave.” He asks Willinghast if any former owners had slaves, but he doesn’t get a candid answer. After getting a sample of the floor analyzed by a chemist, Kenny talks with the slave boy, whose name is Caleb, who affirms that’s his blood, and that he was murdered in his sleep. He wants Kenny to help him find who did it. Kenny doesn’t think that’s possible, but as he leaves, he finds his room changed. Kenny finds himself in an earlier time period. He follows a man who was staring at his window. Another man sees Kenny and asks him to pass a message, which he does, but he also reads it, noting it concerns a meeting aboard The Gaspee. Kenny runs back to his house and returns to his own time. Kenny asks Caleb why he can’t leave. Caleb says his death was unnatural, so he’s a memory fixed in time and space. Caleb affirms the men were slave traders, and gives Kenny the approximate day he was killed. Kenny confirms in the news articles that Caleb was found dead in the locked attic room in an apparent suicide. Caleb denies the suicide, but Kenny agrees to help him. They go back in time and listen in on the conversation aboard The Gaspee, which also includes Pardon Willinghast! The men talk about how they can preserve their slave trade, by motivating the slave trade workers outside to go to Olney Lane to silence the blacks who live there. Caleb disappears. Kenny tries to leave but is stopped by Willinghast, who tells Kenny that he is a memory as well, and that Caleb’s running and the men leaving are all going according to plan. He takes Kenny’s keychain and states that Kenny could be stuck in this time period forever as a ghost because of altered events. Kenny goes to Olney Lane and finds Caleb who has a musket. Then the angry drunken mob approaches, but Caleb confronts them, and gets hit in the face with a rock before Kenny pulls him back. The mob sets fire to one of the nearby houses. Caleb is furious that he shoots and kills one of the mob. The mob tries to go after Caleb and Kenny, but they escape in the rain. Kenny and Caleb retreat to their house. After figuring a way to lock the room from the inside, Kenny goes out to seek help, but is stopped by Pardon Willinghast, who has a proposal for Kenny. In order to return to the present time, Kenny will have to kill Caleb in the locked room to fulfill the suicide scenario. Willinghast also reveals that he originally killed Caleb, and that others were given a similar situation and had killed Caleb. He gives Kenny a double-barreled pistol. Kenny returns to Caleb and says that he was the murderer, but it was Willinghast who blackmailed him. The boys think of a way to change the situation. They fake Caleb’s death using the blood from his cheek, and lure Willinghast into the room. Willinghast arrives and checks Caleb’s body but finds he is still alive. He orders Kenny to shoot Caleb and dangles the keychain. Kenny shoots. Kenny wakes up in the present time and sees there is no stain on the floor. The library article now reads that Willinghast committed suicide and the slave boy is missing. Kenny wonders if Caleb is truly free or whether he will be stuck in another house as a memory.
15690678	/m/03nq4lw	His Dark Materials	Nicholas Wright			 The play follows the same plot as the books - a story of the coming of age of two children, Will Parry and Lyra Belacqua and their adventures as they wander through a series of parallel universes against a backdrop of epic events. During their quest, the pair encounter various fantasy creatures such as witches and armoured polar bears in a journey which they hope will take them to The Republic of Heaven. There are however some substantial differences, most notably the removal of the character Dr. Mary Malone, whose role in the story is turned over to the witch Serafina Pekala. Similarly the eponymous amber spyglass of the third novel, associated with Malone, is also largely absent.
15692410	/m/03nq83_	The Barbed Coil	Julie Victoria Jones			 The novel is set mostly in the Kingdom of Rhaize where the coming together of three individuals, Tessa McCamfrey, Ravis of Burano and Camron of Thorn, is about to unleash a series of events that culminate in the fight to save the kingdom from the armies of Garizon. Tessa has suddenly been thrust from her life of telesales in present day Earth into a world filled with danger where she meets Lord Ravis, who is himself delayed in a city which has been "marked for the kill". Camron of Thorn is a man seeking revenge for his father's murder and demands that Lord Ravis help him to achieve it.
15695638	/m/03nqbmr	Honor Thy Father	Gay Talese	1971		 The book begins when Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno is kidnapped from the streets of New York in 1964 and the Bonanno crime family is thrown into disarray for two years in a power struggle called the Banana War, culminating in an armed-ambush in Brooklyn in which Joe's son Bill Bonanno is nearly killed. Though punctuated by life-threatening encounters, Talese also recounts how much of a mafioso's life is as tedious as any person's: days filled with television, overeating, time spent with family. Prominent mafiosi, like Vito Genovese, Lucky Luciano, Joseph Profaci, feature in Talese's account, but the story is focused on Bill Bonanno's thoughts about his life as mafioso. Talese notes the similarities of Bonanno's life to many ordinary Americans &mdash; homogenized from his ancestors culture, an alumnus of the University of Arizona where he belonged to ROTC. But as son of Joe Bonanno, he was an heir to his father's empire, a source of great stress for him. The book's title was suggested by Bill's wife Rosalie as acid commentary on the deleterious effect of Joe Bonanno on her husband's life. A review in The New York Times wrote that Talese "conveys the impression that being a mobster is much the same as being a sportsman, film star or any other kind of public 'personality.'" Talese concludes with the controversial thesis that the Italian mafia was little different than gangs that came with previous waves of immigration, such as Irish gangs in the century before, or black and Latino-gangs that Talese saw as following. Talese attributed the rise of the gangs as a consequence of a majority that oppresses a minority group.
15705001	/m/03nqqs9	La Maravilla		1993-04-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centers on a young boy named Beto, who has been left by his mother to be raised by his Spanish grandmother Josephina and Yaqui grandfather Manuel, both of whom carry on the spiritual traditions of their cultural heritages, Manuel as a shaman and Josephina as a curandera. The two grandparents each pass on to Beto the knowledge they have preserved, in order to prepare him to return to his mother and enter the larger world. Although the novel centers on Beto around his grandparents, it presents a picture of their 1958 community, a spot-in-the-road outpost of Phoenix, Arizona known at the time as "Buckeye Road" (and which has since become part of the metropole under the name Buckeye). Buckeye Road contains an assortment of characters from various ethnicities: Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Euroamericans, African Americans, even Chinese and Hindu residents. It seems to be a town built by outsiders, including not only ethnic minorities but prostitutes, lesbians and transvestites. Véa uses this collection of people to explore not only the intersection of ethnic marginalization, but also the similarities and overlaps between spiritual traditions. Véa allows a place for Latino Catholicism, African American Christianity, peyote shamanism and Creole spirituality in this generous novel.
15707237	/m/03nqvss	Gather Together in My Name	Maya Angelou		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The book opens in the years following World War II. Angelou, still known as "Marguerite," or "Rita," has just given birth to her son, Clyde, and is living with her mother and stepfather in San Francisco. The book follows Marguerite from the ages of 17 to 19, through a series of relationships, occupations, and cities as she attempts to raise her son and to "find her niche," or place in the world. It continues exploring the themes of Angelou's isolation and loneliness begun in her first volume, and the ways she overcomes racism, sexism, and her continued victimization. Rita goes from job to job and from relationship to relationship, hoping that "my charming prince was going to appear out of the blue" (p.&nbsp;114). "My fantasies were little different than any other girl of my age" Angelou wrote. "He would come. He would. Just walk into my life, see me and fall everlastingly in love... I looked forward to a husband who would love me ethereally, spiritually, and on rare (but beautiful) occasions, physically" (p.&nbsp;141). Some humorous and potentially dangerous events occur throughout the book. While living in San Diego, Rita becomes an "absentee manager" for two lesbian prostitutes. When threatened with incarceration and losing her son for her illegal activities, she escapes to her grandmother's home in Stamps, Arkansas. Her grandmother sends her back to San Francisco for her safety and "protection" after physically punishing Rita for confronting two white women in a department store. This event demonstrates their different and irreconcilable attitudes about race, paralleling events in Angelou's first book. Back with her mother, Rita attempts to enlist in the Army, only to be rejected during the height of the Red Scare because she had attended the California Labor School as a young teenager. Another event of note described in the book was, in spite of "the strangest audition" (p.&nbsp;117), her short stint dancing and studying dance with her partner, R. L. Poole, who became her lover until he reunited with his previous partner, ending Rita's show business career for the time being. A turning point in the book occurs when Rita falls in love with the Episcopalian preacher, L. D. Tolbrook, who seduces Rita and introduces her to "the life" of prostitution. Her mother's hospitalization and death of her brother Bailey's wife drives Rita back to her mother's home back in San Francisco. She leaves her young son with a caretaker, Big Mary, but when she returns for "the baby", she finds that Big Mary had disappeared with Clyde. She tries to elicit help from L.D., who puts her in her place when she finds him at his home and requests that he help her find her son. She finally realizes that he had been taking advantage of her, but is able to trace Big Mary and Clyde to Bakersfield, California, and has an emotional reunion with her son. She writes, "In the plowed farmyard near Bakersfield, I began to understand that uniqueness of the person. He was three and I was nineteen, and never again would I think of him as a beautiful appendage of myself" (p.&nbsp;192). The end of the book finds Rita defeated by life: "For the first time I sat down defenseless to await life's next assault" (p.&nbsp;206). The book ends with an encounter with a drug addict who cared enough for her to show her the effects of his drug habit, which galvanizes her to reject drug addiction and make something of her life for her and her son.
15708246	/m/03x_pc3	The Case of the Gilded Fly	Edmund Crispin		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Up-and-coming playwright Robert Warner has chosen an Oxford repertory theatre rather than the West End as the venue for the première of his new play, Metromania. He has brought with him Rachel West, his mistress of five years, who is going to be the star of the show. Two other members of the cast are the Haskell sisters&mdash;Yseut, who is in her mid-twenties, and her younger half-sibling Helen. While Helen is a quiet beauty, Yseut's sexually promiscuous lifestyle and her condescending way of treating men have gained her many enemies among discarded lovers and jealous female rivals alike, and she has difficulty acknowledging the fact that, about a year ago, it was Robert Warner rather than she herself who ended their brief affair. Among the motley group arriving at Oxford at the beginning of October are also Nigel Blake, a former student of Fen's who now works as a journalist in London; Nicholas Barclay, a university dropout of independent means in search of the good life; Donald Fellowes, organist and choirmaster and desperately in love with Yseut Haskell; and Jean Whitelegge, a "plain but not unattractive" young student who fancies Fellowes and works as the secretary of the theatre club. This in crowd, and some more, are all present at a party thrown by a military officer stationed in Oxford in the course of which Yseut, completely drunk, starts threatening Warner with the host's military revolver. On the following evening she is shot with exactly that weapon while secretly searching Donald Fellowes's rooms at the college. At the alleged time of the murder, Fellowes and Nicholas Barclay are in a colleague's room on the same corridor listening to an opera on the radio, and Gervase Fen and some of his inner circle are discussing playwriting with Robert Warner in Fen's rooms one floor above. When they hear a shot they rush downstairs and discover the body. On the one hand there is no one who mourns Yseut's death or at least pretends to do so; on the other, very few of those who expressed their dislike of her while she was still alive have an alibi. While the police, for want of clues, assume suicide, the theatre people are prone to believe that one of Yseut's numerous affairs has triggered her violent death. Although the opening of the new play is fast approaching and rehearsals become more intense, Robert Warner appears quite glad to be rid of Yseut as he has had an understudy for her waiting in the wings right from the start of rehearsals. Fen is the only one to realize that it was not a sexual motive which prompted Yseut Haskell's killer to commit the deed. However, his reluctance to reveal what he knows, and the subsequent inability of the police to arrest the perpetrator, lead to a second murder just a few hours before the first curtain. When the show is over, and all suspects are assembled inside the theatre, the identity of the murderer is disclosed, and they meet with a violent death before they get a chance to escape.
15710194	/m/03nqyb7	Mr. Monk Goes to Germany	Lee Goldberg	2008-07-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Adrian Monk is solving crimes left and right like never before, including the murders of a couple in the Federal Witness Protection Program. However, when Dr. Kroger, Monk's psychiatrist, announces that he is going to a conference in Lohr, Germany, Monk falls completely apart, not the least because he is not going to see Dr. Jonah Sorenson, the one-armed psychiatrist he had seen in the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink" when Dr. Kroger briefly ran into retirement. Eventually, Monk relaxes and makes the decision to actually stalk Dr. Kroger to Lohr. Even more so, his assistant Natalie Teeger is willing to help. Natalie has her own reasons not to stop Monk, mostly because of payback for the time that Dr. Kroger used medication to enable Monk to follow her to Hawaii (Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii"). As Monk has a fear of flying, he is drugged with Dioxynl, a drug that relieves him of his compulsions and phobias (but which also limits his ability to solve crimes, as demonstrated in the season 3 episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine"). When Monk and Natalie land at Frankfurt International Airport, they rent a car and drive into Lohr. Lohr is renowned for its glassworks which produced mirrors that could see the truth, inspiring the magic mirror in most versions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Natalie also mentions the similarities between the fairy tale and the story of Sophie Margaret von Erthal, the baroness who lived in the castle outside of Lohr. Shortly after they arrive, the Dioxynl wears off and Monk is back to himself and he has a sudden outburst when he spots a man with six fingers on his right hand, matching the description of the man who killed Trudy. When Monk shows up at the Franziskushohe, where the conference is being held, Dr. Kroger is at first unable to register the thought of Adrian being in Germany. He angrily criticizes Natalie for enabling her boss to follow him all the way over to Germany. Natalie sets Monk up with his appointment. He emerges more relaxed then ever, and even solves a homicide in San Francisco over the phone (reflecting on a scene in the season 2 episode "Mr. Monk and the Paperboy" where Monk solved a homicide in Paris over the phone). Natalie is prepared to enjoy a European vacation, but they get caught up in the unsolved homicides of magazine journalist Bruno Leupolz and his next-door neighbor Axel Vigg. Monk promises his services over to the local homicide captain, Hauptkriminalkommisar Stoffmacher. Examining the scene, Monk finds that the killer fired a gunshot into the wall to scare Bruno Leupolz to death (but used a pillow as a silencer), and accidentally killed Vigg. So the killer then disguised Vigg's death as a suicide. Later, Monk and Natalie follow the six-fingered man Monk had seen back to the Franziskushohe where Dr. Kroger is staying. The man's name is Dr. Martin Rahner, who runs a mountain retreat for people with physical abnormalities. But when Monk sees Rahner getting his picture taken with Dr. Kroger, he is horrified, realizing that Dr. Kroger is part of a conspiracy: whoever ordered Trudy's death also wanted Monk kept under control to prevent him from ever re-joining the police department. He runs away from the hotel in terror. Natalie also believes it, and shortly after Monk vanishes, she punches Dr. Kroger in a rage. Kroger manages to calm Natalie down and assure her that she and Monk are leaping to unwarranted conclusions. Monk is convinced that Dr. Rahner is guilty of something, whether of killing Trudy or of killing someone else. Natalie later finds Bruno Leupolz's dead body on a hiking trail, and Monk finds the laptop that was missing from Leupolz's apartment. Whoever killed him also took his laptop's hard drive. Monk's next appointment with Dr. Kroger is at the inn where he and Natalie are staying. He asks Dr. Kroger about the injuries on his nose. Kroger explains that he received them the day before when Natalie attacked him, which she proudly admits to doing. Monk's theory that Dr. Kroger is part of a conspiracy is strengthened further when Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher do some digging back in the States and find that Rahner was in the Bay Area two weeks before Trudy's death, on a lecture tour funded by Monk's old enemy, Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck. To prove that Rahner is innocent, Dr. Kroger encourages Monk and Natalie to take a tour of Rahner's special clinic, a mountain retreat for people with physical abnormalities. At the end of the tour, Monk says he's convinced that Rahner didn't kill Trudy - he only killed Bruno Leupolz and Axel Vigg. After doing some background research with the magazine in Berlin, Monk finds that Dr. Rahner was about to be exposed as a fraud who was embezzling money from his clinic. After Monk and Natalie escape a murder attempt by Dr. Rahner, they present their proof to the police. Rahner went to Bruno Leupolz, the journalist, to destroy any evidence against him. He used one of the pillows as a silencer and fired a shot into the wall, scaring Leupolz to the point that he died of a heart attack. Rahner had accidentally killed Axel Vigg, so he made Vigg's death look like a suicide and then took any evidence of foul play from Leupolz's apartment. The drawstring on the trash bag containing the evidence is tied in a way similar to the knots on the shoes Dr. Rahner wears. Although Rahner is angered by Monk's claims, Monk explains that when you have six fingers on your right hand, you can't find a perfect set of gloves. Rahner poked a hole in one of the gloves he used in the murder to fit his extra finger in, and then he cut off a finger from another glove to cover it. Even more so, using the pillow as a silencer caused Dr. Rahner to get feathers all over his clothes. He was still covered in feathers when Monk first encountered him at the conference and Natalie had attacked Dr. Kroger. Rahner confesses to his crimes, and Monk asks him, point-blank, if he killed Trudy. Rahner swears he didn't, and Monk believes him. Impressively, Monk managed to solve the case even while under the influence of his special anti-OCD medication, Dioxnyl, which alleviates his phobias but cripples his amazing observational and deductive abilities, as shown in the season 3 episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine". While under the influence of the drug, Monk cheerfully allows himself to be photographed in a state of abnormal filthiness. Natalie, deciding that she'll never have another chance for a European vacation, uses the photo to blackmail Monk into agreeing to stopping for a few days in Paris, France, on their way home, a direct tie in to the next novel, Mr. Monk is Miserable.
15711952	/m/03nqzmm	Chilly Scenes of Winter	Ann Beattie			 As the novel begins in the time between Christmas and New Year's, Charles, several days short of his 27th birthday, is dealing with his mentally ill mother's recent hospitalization. His 19-year-old sister is home from college for the holidays. Neither is fond of their step-father Pete, a friend of their late father, who died of a heart attack at the age of 39. His mother has been hospitalized in a mental institution in the past. Charles is obsessively in love with Laura, a married woman who once worked as a librarian for his employer. After she left her husband, they lived together briefly, but she returned home. He still yearns for a reconciliation with Laura. He must plow through his dull daily life while dealing with his feelings for her and coping with his family and his friend Sam.
15712109	/m/03nqzs2	Ironman	Chris Crutcher		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in Spokane, Washington where Beauregard Brewster (Bo) lives with his mother and younger brother Jordan. Motivated by years of fishing with his father and a recent dispute with Coach Redmond, Bo’s football coach and English teacher, the teenager trains vigorously for the Yukon Jack Ironman Triathlon. Along the way Bo is forced to enroll in the school’s anger management program, where much to his surprise he meets a wise old shop teacher and a group of supposed delinquents who inspire and support him further in his efforts.
15733052	/m/03nrhp6	Pitcairn's Island	James Norman Hall	1934	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After two unsuccessful attempts to settle on the island of Tubuai, the Bounty mutineers returned to Tahiti where they parted company. Fletcher Christian and eight of his men, together with eighteen Polynesians, sailed from Tahiti in September 1789, and for a period of eighteen years nothing was heard of them. Then, in 1808, the American sailing vessel Topaz discovered a thriving community of mixed blood on Pitcairn Island under the rule of "Alexander Smith" (the assumed name of John Adams, the only survivor of the fifteen men who had landed there so long before).
15734119	/m/03nrjs_	Born of the Storm	Nikolai Ostrovsky		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The action of Born of the Storm goes on in autumnal days of 1918 when Poland was regaining its independence after 123 years of partitions. German occupational forces moved away from Ukrainian territories while local Polish legioners had been formed with dreams of adding some Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands to the Polish state bordering on the ruins of Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian empires.
15737012	/m/03nrq5v	The Hills of Varna	Geoffrey Trease	1948	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 In 1509, Alan Drayton, a young Yorkshireman, has to leave his college in Cambridge after a tavern brawl. His tutor Erasmus sends him to the continent to try to retrieve a manuscript of The Gadfly, a lost play by the ancient Greek writer Alexis from the time of Socrates. He believes that it is in the monastery of Varna in the Balkans. Alan intends to deliver the play to the printer Aldus Manutius in Venice, refusing to take employment with the ruthless Duke of Molfetta, who wants the play for his private collection. He is joined on the arduous journey to the monastery by a young Italian woman, Angela d'Asola, who disguises herself as a boy. They encounter Adriatic pirates, shipwreck, Turkish janissaries and sinister monks, all the while being doggedly pursued by the agents of the Duke. They find the manuscript but lose it again. In the end, their love of learning saves the day. The author avoids the obvious ending of having the two leading characters marry each other, instead following the custom of the time Angela marries an older wealthy man whom she has had in mind for some time. Alan returns to England, on the verge of its own Renaissance, to continue his education.
15737638	/m/03nrs8j	Starspawn				 The story begins with the Da’nevl a Rz’uwlian star ship running into a magnetic disturbance whilst in hyperspace. The hyper drive rods are damaged meaning that the ship has to land and make repairs. It finds a previously unexplored Earth which the captain plans to explore. The Da’nevl is revealed to be a cargo ship carrying specimens of species that the Rz’uwlians have collected from all over the galaxy. After they have landed the captain arranges for the oxygen breathing species to be allowed supervised movement on the planet. The specimens from the ship are then penned within force fields to stop them escaping. On the back of a ferocious creature which is being studied are two parasitical creatures which are an intelligent and malevolent parasitical race that once swept through the galaxy like a plague. Through a mistake of the crew the creature is allowed to leave the ship and go into one of the force field pens for fresh air. The creatures use their intelligence to incapacitate a guard and make their escape. Upon leaving the ship the creature attacks a cart overturning it and wounding one of its passengers, it then carries off the second. Sir Morrough of Ely a professional knight finds the cart and upon the request of the father which he mercifully kills goes in search of the second passenger and the creature. Morrough finds him dead in the mouth of the creature, the creature is described as being 9 feet tall, with a snout full of teeth sharp like daggers. It has two heavily muscled rear limbs on which it walked and two shorter limbs similar in size to that of human arms, the creature also has a large serpentine tale. This creature is described by Morrough as “something from out of his nightmares” and he refers too it as a dragon. Morrough on horseback quickly dispatches the creature and one of the parasites is killed by his second pack horse the other parasite is nowhere to be found. Morrough then buries the two men before setting up camp, as the fire is dying down he feels a light pressure on the back of his neck and is subsequently turned into a host of the parasite which refers too itself as Jinui. Jinui tries to tempt Morrough with sexual delights in order to gain his obedience Morrough does not succumb in the way Jinui hopes and so pain has to be administered when Morrough does not cooperate. Jinui describes a resiliency within the host’s mind which unsettles him. Preceding these events Morrough under the control of Jinui engages a scouting patrol of Rz’uwlians and kills three Loiv’thos but through interference from Morrough the first in command escapes to report the matter. The captain deciding that with Morrough on the loose and a threat to the ship apparent that more information should be gathered about the species that the parasite has become master to. A human named Brother Gregory who knew Morrough previously is abducted by the aliens for examination. Through him they develop camouflage technology that renders them human and also acts as a communication devise. Jinui then tells Morrough of his plans to multiply and seeks out the dwelling of Simon Prescote whom he says will be spared if Morrough keeps Jinui a secret from him. Fortunately Simon is blind and Jinui is able to accomplish his task but is detected by Simon’s daughter Alice Prescote. Upon awaking with a newly created Jinui Morrough leaves Simons dwelling and continues on his journey to castle Auckland which the Jinui intend to bring under their control. On the journey there Morrough apprehends Alice Prescote and places one of the Jinui of her neck which attempts to take control of her. They then continue on their journey but get attacked by bandits Morrough kills all of them but Alice to Jinui’s surprise escape’s. Deciding to carry on Morrough and Jinui reach the castle and the Jinui proceed to consolidate their power there. Meanwhile the Rz’uwlians find Alice and keep her confined and with Brother Gregory’s help track Morrough to the castle which is now under Jinui’s control. The Rz’uwlians with the help of their queen create a plan to storm the castle with a newly hatched army. They reach the castle and besiege it with the help of local rivals of the lord of the castle. Countering this Jinui attacks the newly repaired Da’nevl which has been moved closer to the castle to mount the attack. The attack fails and the Rz’uwlians develop a method to remove the parasites tipping the odds in their favour. Through knowledge gained from the Jinui the Rz'uwlians learn of another alien entity that invaded human minds many thousands of years ago. This entity it is revealed is sutained through emotion particully; lust, hate, envy and a desire for violence which leads the Jiniu to believe that this entity is if not their god is most certainly their devil.
15738917	/m/03nrv2n	The Intergalactic Kitchen			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story starts with Mr Bird installing a protection system for the house. Mrs Bird presses the emergency button and the kitchen goes into orbit. When in orbit many events happen. These include: *A Intergalactic Traffic Warden, *A Gossiping Alien, *Gas and Electric Readers *A Salesman *A Bulldozer!
15745503	/m/03x_pvr	Go Jump in the Pool	Gordon Korman	1979	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure"}	 Macdonald Hall is losing all of their swim meets to rival school York Academy, which Bruno and Boots attribute to the school not having their own pool. After one meet, where the York Academy spitefully ignores the traditional handshake at the end, the two friends, after retaliating by dumping 20&nbsp;lbs of effervescent solution into the pool, take this fact into account and ask Headmaster Sturgeon (aka The Fish) if there would be a chance at all of the Hall would be able to utilize its own pool, but he tells them the institution's fifty thousand dollars short of the cost of such a facility. Thus, Bruno and Boots take things into their own hands. They start off with a flea market (without Mr. Sturgeon first knowing about it) and make $1426. After talking through the idea of fund-raising, Mr. Sturgeon allows them to pursue other means of making money and creates a bank account for them. This includes running a talent show, a photo-contest, and an Individual Effort Day. This is all in close cooperation with Ms. Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies, the girls-only school across the road. Their efforts in raising money are even more important when Boots reveals he might be transferred to York Academy because his parents think they have a better athletic program. After many fund-raisers, Mr. Sturgeon then tells them that they cannot gain any more money from the students and staff of the school because that is not a reliable source of revenue anymore and if they want to raise money, they have to gain it from outside resources. Dejected, Bruno gets the desperate idea to set up a toll booth on a public road. Before anyone pays them, though, Mr. Sturgeon catches them, and after an awful encounter with Ms. Scrimmage and her students, punishes them severely and notifies them that they cannot raise any more money. He also comes to believe that the pool they desire is borne out of jealousy of York Academy. Eventually Mr. Sturgeon learns from a mocking phone call by the headmaster of York that many parents of his students, including Boots', are considering transferring students out of the school and into York Academy due to their better athletic program (mainly their pool). Realizing that the boys' attempts at raising money are not a result of pure jealousy, but a fierce loyalty to the school and each other, he takes them off their severe punishment. While complaining about never getting enough money, Bruno and Boots encounter George Wexford-Smyth III, Boot's wealthy old roommate. He tells them the solution, the stock market, and offers to invest their earnings under his direction. Although leery of this idea, the boys agree and George makes astute investments in a silver mining operation which then makes a spectacular discovery of a major supply of the element. As a result, the boys eventually sell the stock for $64,469.64, which is more than enough for the pool.
15752495	/m/03x_q09	L’Opoponax	Monique Wittig	1964	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 L'Opoponax is about 'typical childhood experiences like the first day of school and the first romance'.
15752627	/m/03nsb74	Les Guérillères	Monique Wittig	1969	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Les Guérillères is about a war of the sexes, where women 'engage in bloody, victorious battles using knives, machine guns and rocket launchers'.
15752864	/m/03nsbkt	Le Corps Lesbien	Monique Wittig	1973	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 According to Wittig's New York Times obituary, 'lesbian lovers literally invade each other's bodies as an act of love'.
15753413	/m/03nscd1	The Danish Girl	David Ebershoff	2000	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is a fictionalized account of the life of Lili Elbe, the first person to undergo sex reassignment surgery.
15756680	/m/03nsglf	A Good and Happy Child		2007	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Thirty-year-old George Davies can’t bring himself to hold his newborn son. After months of accepting his lame excuses and strange behavior, his wife has had enough. She demands that he see a therapist, and George, desperate to save his unraveling marriage and redeem himself as a father and husband, reluctantly agrees. As he delves into his childhood memories, he begins to recall things he hasn’t thought of in twenty years. Events, people, and strange situations come rushing back. The odd, rambling letters his father sent home before he died. The jovial mother who started dating too soon after his father’s death. A boy who appeared one night when George was lonely, then told him secrets he didn’t want to know. How no one believed this new friend was real and that he was responsible for the bad things that were happening. Terrified by all that he has forgotten, George struggles to remember what really happened in the months following his father’s death. Were his ominous visions and erratic behavior the product of a grief-stricken child’s overactive imagination (a perfectly natural reaction to the trauma of loss, as his mother insisted)? Or were his father’s colleagues, who blamed a darker, more malevolent force, right to look to the supernatural as a means to end George’s suffering? Twenty years later, George still does not know. But when a mysterious murder is revealed, remembering the past becomes the only way George can protect himself–and his young family.
15758285	/m/03x_q54	All That Glitters	V. C. Andrews	1995-06-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The third entry begins with Ruby and her daughter Pearl living in the bayou, Ruby having fled New Orleans at the end of the last book. Paul Tate, Ruby's half-brother, tries to convince her to marry him so he can take care of them both. Ruby is touched by his love but is reluctant to marry, partly because they are related, partly because she knows that Paul's mother, Gladys, hates her. She eventually agrees after she is almost raped by Buster Trahaw. Octavious Tate, Paul's father, tries to convince Ruby not to marry Paul, offering her a substantial amount of money to move away and start again, but Ruby has little respect for his opinion, as he raped her mother, and the marriage goes ahead, on the understanding that it is for show only. At first, Ruby is happy. Paul is a loving father figure to Pearl and treats Ruby with great respect. She has space and time to continue her paintings and her reputation as an artist is growing. Then her twin sister Giselle reappears. Giselle has now fully regained the use of her legs. She brings the news that their Uncle Jean committed suicide at the mental institution and Beau Andreas, Pearl's father, broke up with his fiancée in France. Some point after her first visit, she writes to Ruby to let her know that Daphne died in a horseriding accident. Later on, Giselle marries Beau, mainly out of spite towards Ruby. Tormented by their loveless marriages, Ruby and Beau begin a secret affair. Beau is at ease with the arrangement, as he is sure Giselle also takes lovers, but Ruby feels terrible guilt, as she knows that Paul truly loves her and would be very hurt if he discovered what was going on. After another visit to Cypress Woods, Giselle is stricken with encephalitis from a mosquito bite and becomes deathly ill with no chance of recovering. Beau and Ruby take advantage of this situation to pretend Giselle is Ruby and vice versa. Paul is not happy about it, but goes along with the plan because he knows that it will make Ruby happy. Ruby finds it difficult to act like Giselle, and Paul becomes convinced himself that it really was Ruby who died. Grief-stricken, Paul goes off into the swamps drunk with grief and inadvertently drowns. After Paul's death, Gladys Tate seeks revenge on Ruby, as she knows it was really Giselle who died. Most of the town believe Paul to be Pearl's father, so Gladys tries to get custody of Pearl. At the custody trial, Ruby reveals her true identity, but Gladys sways public sympathy in her favor by disclosing the affair. Left with no other choice, Ruby pleads with Octavious to tell the court that Gabrielle Landry was Paul's mother, not Gladys, which he does to Gladys' horror. Ruby and Beau keep custody of Pearl. The book ends with Ruby having twin boys, Pierre and Jean, named for Ruby's father and uncle respectively.
15772457	/m/03nt1x2	T-Backs, T-Shirts, COAT, and Suit	E. L. Konigsburg		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Chloë Pollack, in order to evade the pressures of her friends, agrees to spend the summer with her stepfather Nick's sister Bernadette, whom Chloë hasn't seen since Nick married her mother. At first, Chloë and Bernadette seem a poor match in personality and lifestyle, but Chloë has promised Nick to "help" Bernadette, and to "give the unexpected a chance". Chloë goes to work in Bernadette's food van, and soon becomes a close part of her life. Bernadette teaches Chloë to swim; they both take up rollerblading; and share duties around the house, especially with Bernadette's dog Daisy. Along the way, Chloë begins to learn of Bernadette's past, how she raised Nick, how they spent time in a commune, how she got Daisy, and what led her to her present life. Their new bond is threatened by the pressure from coworkers for Bernadette to wear a "t-back" (thong) which has been promoting sales, from the opposition group COAT which wants to ban t-backs, and from a religious group that has come to the conclusion that Bernadette is a witch based on a ruse Chloë attempted on a rival boy. In the end, what Chloë learns most is the danger of conformism.
15772882	/m/03nt2j0	Family Moving Day	Geneviève Huriet			 Because there is so little room at the home where they live, Bramble Bellflower () decides that he and his family should move. He does not announce the plan until later, when the seven members come over to the other side of the hill and look at their new property. They do not know that Bramble has actually bought and remodelled the house, which is called The Berries. It will be eight days before the family settles in their new spot. But Periwinkle, one of Bramble's five children, is deeply affected by the change of address; he is afraid he will miss his neighbour, Pimpernelle, and his old home, in the process. He finds his new room, which he will share with brother Dandelion, too large for his liking. Next day, Mistletoe, another young Bellflower, insists that the house's fixing up be finished. He calls on his four siblings for the task, and they secretly set off to do it. However, when Papa enters to get a lost tool, he is dismayed at the mess they have made. Angrily, he and Aunt Zinnia send them back home, and the father cleans up after them. Soon, he announces that two strapping rams will carry the family's furniture in carts; the Pedal Express will be involved as well. When the day comes, Bramble, Mistletoe, Poppy and the Bellflowers' neighbours help out on the goods, while Zinnia and the other children wait for them at The Berries. By afternoon, everything is in place, but the bunnies find out that Periwinkle is nowhere in sight. Instead, the lonely child has set up a small canvas tent near the old home, close to a hazelnut grove. Knowing where Periwinkle possibly could be, Papa searches for him and eventually comes across the tent. Inside, he reminds his son that no one lives at the old Bellflower home any more. But, when Papa tells him of a housewarming at their new place, Periwinkle cheers up, and the two of them head back over the hill to join in the fun.
15773551	/m/0gx1rxp	The Last Ringbearer	Kirill Yeskov		{"/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The novel is based on the premise that the Tolkien account is a "history written by the victors". In Eskov's version of the story, Mordor is described as a peaceful country on the verge of an industrial revolution, that is a threat to the war-mongering and imperialistic faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude has been described by Saruman as "crafting the Final Solution to the Mordorian problem") and the elves. For example, Barad-dûr, Sauron's citadel, is described in chapter 2 as The tale begins by recapping the War of the Ring. The Ring itself is a luxurious ornament, but powerless, crafted by the Nazgûl (a group of ancient scientists and philosophers who take turns as the Nine to guide Mordor through its industrialization) to distract Gandalf and the Elves while Mordor built up its army. Aragorn is portrayed as a puppet of the elves who has been instructed to usurp the throne of Gondor by murdering Boromir (who he had discovered alone after Merry and Pippin were captured) and then Denethor. Arwen, being 3000 years older, holds Aragorn in contempt but uses their marriage to cement Elvish rule over Gondor. Faramir has been exiled to Ithilien where he is kept under guard with Éowyn. The Elves have also corrupted the youth of Umbar, which they aim to use as a foothold into Harad and Khand. After defeating the Mordorian army, the Elves enter Mordor to massacre civilians with the help of Men from the East, supposedly to eliminate the "educated" classes. Two Orc soldiers ("Orc" being a slur used by the West against foreign men), Haladin and Tzerlag, are fleeing the battle plain. They rescue Tangorn, a Gondorian noble who had been left buried in the desert for attempting to stop one of the massacres. They locate the mercenaries and kill the Elf, Eloar, taking his possessions. Haladin is soon visited by one of the Nazgûl, Sharya-Rana, who explains that the physical world, Arda, is linked to the magical world from which the elves came, by the power of Galadriel's mirror in Lórien and the palantíri. He is given the task of destroying the mirror in order to separate the worlds and complete the goal of making men truly free. Haladin is chosen as he is a rare individual in whom there is absolutely no magic, and has a tendency to behave irrationally, for example joining the Mordorian army as a medic to impress his girlfriend and almost dying as a result, instead of putting his talents to better use at home in the university. While the Nazgûl cannot foresee how the quest is to be completed, he is able to provide Haladin with useful information, including the current location of the palantíri. An elaborate plan is devised which involves the forging of a letter from Eloar by a Mordorian handwriting expert. Tangorn manages to arrange a meeting with the Elves in Umbar, while interfering with Gondor's efforts to eliminate him. He is eventually killed, which convinces the Elves to pass his message on to Eloar's mother, Eornis, a member of the ruling hierarchy of Lórien. She is led to believe that her son is captured rather than killed. A palantir is dropped into the forest by a Mordorian researcher developing flight-based weapons (under the secret patronage of Aragorn), and Eornis is instructed to bring the palantir to Galadriel's mirror. This will prove that she is in Lórien, whereupon she will be allowed to communicate with Eloar. At the appointed time, Haladin brings another palantír to Mount Doom. Gandalf figures out his plan, and concerned that magic will be banished from Middle-Earth, casts a spell on the palantír to turn Haladin's hands into stone, but this has no effect. Saruman, despite opposing Gandalf's methods, believes that Sharya-Rana's hypothesis about magic is incorrect and attempts to reason with Haladin. Unfortunately, Tzerlag touches the palantír by mistake and his hands are turned into stone. Being irrational, Haladin decides to drop the palantír into Orodruin because Saruman is unable to reverse Gandalf's spell. This causes the flame to be transmitted to the other palantíri and the mirror, destroying them and the magic of the Elves. Haladin goes into self-imposed exile and Tzerlag's descendants pass on the story orally, although the historical record officially contains Aragorn's version of events. Although despised by the Gondorian aristocracy, Aragorn finds favor with the people as his policies result in an "economic miracle" and after his death, childless, the throne reverts to the "rightful" king Faramir. The Elves end their occupation of Mordor and eventually leave Middle-Earth.
15777573	/m/03nt93q	The Root Cellar	Janet Lunn	1981	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Twelve-year-old Rose Larkin is an orphan whose parents have died when she was only three years old. Rose originally lived with her grandmother. After her grandmother dies, she is sent off to live with relatives in Ontario, Canada. After being miserable about the way her cousins treat her, she flees down into a root cellar. There, Rose is transported back in in time to the 1860's and the American Civil War.
15780326	/m/03ntc29	Hedwig and the Angry Inch	John Cameron Mitchell			 The story is told by Hedwig directly to the audience in the form of an extended monologue. The concept of the stage production is that the audience is watching the character Hedwig's musical act as she follows rockstar Tommy Gnosis's (much more successful) tour around the country. Occasionally Hedwig references Gnosis's concert which is playing in an adjoining venue. Hedwig's band (including the character of Yitzhak) appears on stage for practically the entire duration of the musical, as does Hedwig herself. Hedwig tells of Hansel, an East German "slip of a girlyboy" who loves philosophy and rock music, is stuck in East Berlin until he meets Luther Robinson, a U.S. soldier. Luther falls in love with Hansel and the two decide to marry. This plan will allow Hansel to leave communist East Germany for the capitalist West. However, in order to be married, the couple must consist of a man and a woman. Hansel's mother, Hedwig, gives her child her name and passport and finds a doctor to perform a sex change. The operation is botched, however, and her surgically constructed vagina heals closed, leaving Hansel – now Hedwig – with a dysfunctional one-inch mound of flesh between her legs, "with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face." Hedwig goes to live in Junction City, Kansas as Luther's wife. On their first wedding anniversary, Luther leaves Hedwig for a man. That same day, it is announced that the Berlin Wall has fallen and Germany will reunite. Hedwig recovers from the separation by forming a rock band composed of Korean-born Army wives, which she names "The Angry Inch". Hedwig befriends a shy and misunderstood Christian teenager Tommy Speck, with whom she writes some songs. Hedwig gives him the stage name "Tommy Gnosis", but he later leaves her and goes on to become a wildly-successful rock star with the songs Hedwig wrote alone and with him. "Internationally ignored" Hedwig and her band the Angry Inch are forced to support themselves by playing coffee bars and strip mall dives. The song "The Origin of Love", based on Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, explains that three sexes of human beings once existed: "children of the sun" (man and man attached), "children of the earth" (woman and woman attached), and "children of the moon" (man and woman attached). Each were once round, two-headed, four-armed, and four-legged beings. Angry gods split these early humans in two, leaving the separated people with a lifelong yearning for their other half. Hedwig believes that Tommy is her soul mate and that she cannot be whole without him. She feels driven to either reunite with him or destroy him.
15788207	/m/03ntt34	Truancy		2008-03-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The book starts out with 15-year old Tack just trying to survive a ruthless high school where any infraction means expulsion. And expulsion means death. After a run in with some bullies, Tack escapes into abandoned District 19, where he meets Umasi. Umasi pays Tack to do menial chores like sorting through salt and pepper, and trains him in several fighting ways. On a routine inspection of Tack's school, his little sister Suzie takes the blame for her friend Melissa for throwing a stink bomb at the Disciplinary Officer. Suzie is expelled on the spot and is taken away from the school. Tack immediately follows and leaves the school just in time to see a firebomb fly into the car killing Suzie and the Disciplinary Officer. As he holds his sisters dead body, he sees the person who killed Suzie, calling her "Collateral Damage". Tack runs away and passes out on a dock. When he wakes up he is found by two members of the Truancy, which is a group of children trying to overthrow the City. He joins the Truancy under the name Takan, thinking that he can find the one who killed Suzie if he does. He eventually finds her killer, whose name is Zyid, but he is the leader of the Truancy. Tack sympathizes with the Truancy and feels he can not kill their leader. He eventually replaces a girl named Noni as Zyids favorite because of his fighting skills taught by Umasi. Tack eventually falls in love with Noni. The Mayor hires one of Umasis former pupils named Edward, and appoints him as the Chief Enforcer and leader of the "student Militia", which are students that were promised instant graduation if they fought the Truancy. Zyid confronts Umasi and tells him that he must correct his mistake and kill Edward. Umasi doesn't want to, as he has become a pacifist and has never enjoyed killing people. Umasi eventually agrees to do it, and finds and kills Edward that night. The next day, Zyid tells Tack that the war will end that night, and asks Tack to join him to "plead their case to the city" by breaking into a radio tower and setting a tape to loop constantly. After they do this, Zyid reveals that he knows who Tack is and says "killing me won't bring her back". They agree to a duel to the death. Right before the duel, Zyid reveals that his real name is Zen, his brother is Umasi, and both of them are the adoptive twin sons of the Mayor. What follows is a lengthy duel between the two that gets interrupted several times. Tack eventually wins by kicking Zyid off of the top of his old school. Umasi comes and stays with Zyid as he dies. Zyid asks Umasi to promise to help Tack. The Story ends with Tack becoming the leader of the Truancy under the name Takan.
15789415	/m/03ntwrr	Pretend You Don't See Her	Mary Higgins Clark	1997		 Real estate agent Lacey Farrell witnesses the murder of a client, Isabelle Waring, in an expensive show home, and just before dying Isabelle tells Lacey that she thinks her killer, psychotic assassin "Curtis Caldwell", is after her late daughter's journal.The novel is based on how the cops find out who assigned Caldwell to kill Isabelle and her daughter with the help of Lacey Farrell.
15793842	/m/03nvg1f	Cebu	Peter Bacho	1991-11		 The novel's main character is an American priest named Ben Lucero, who is the son of a Filipino mother and a Filipino American father, as he makes his first trip to the Philippines. When Ben's mother dies, he takes her body to Cebu, Philippines for burial; it is his first trip to his mother's country. In the Philippines, he stays with his mother's best friend from childhood, "Aunt" Clara Natividad, who has become a wealthy and powerful businesswoman but led guerilla fighters during the war and earned her fortune through ethically questionable business practices. The novel follows Ben's encounters with Philippine culture and tradition, both in Cebu City and in Manila, where he spends time with Clara's assistant Ellen but also sees the violence around him, such as a protest at the U.S. Embassy in which Philippine soldiers attacked their own people. Unnerved by his experiences in Manila, Ben returns home to Seattle, where he finds himself caught up in an escalating cycle of violence within the Filipino immigrant community. Ben is confused by his experiences, feeling like an outsider in both his mother's homeland and his own local community. Prologue: Ben's arrival in the Philippines and reunion with Aunt Clara Part 1: The history of Clara's friendship with Ben's mother, Remedios; how Clara became wealthy, how she rescued Remedios from the Japanese, and how Remedios married Ben's father, Albert, and moved to the States. Part 2: The story of Clara's friend Carlito as he tries to save his daughter through personal sacrifice; more on Clara's history during the War. Part 3: The discovery of Carlito's actions. Part 4: Ben's stay with Ellen in Manila as he waits for a flight back to the States Part 5: Ben's return to Seattle and resumption of his priestly duties, which involve a series of killings in the immigrant community.
15793998	/m/03nvgs3	Hidden Jewel	V. C. Andrews	1995-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Pearl Andreas, Ruby Landry's daughter, is graduating high school and goes to an apprenticeship at a hospital. There, Jack Weller invites her to his house ("to study") and tries to seduce her, saying she is "frigid". Pearl leaves, but begins to wonder about what he said. Whilst Ruby is at Pearl's graduation party, her friend Nina dies. Nina sends a message for Ruby to hurry, but Ruby stays for the rest of the party. When she does get there, Nina is already dead. Soon after, one of Pearl's little brothers, Jean, dies from a snakebite. His twin, Pierre, become catatonic with grief, Beau begins to drink, and Ruby, thinking that this happened because she did not go to Nina when she was asked, flees to where she grew up- the bayou. Pearl follows her there, and while there looking for her, begins a relationship with Jack Clovis. Pearl is kidnapped by Buster Trahaw, to whom Grandpere Jack promised Ruby many years ago. Pearl escapes, and when Buster tries to follow her he is eaten by alligators. Eventually Pearl and Jack find Ruby, who practices a vodoo ritual. Ruby and Pearl return to New Orleans, and Pierre eventually comes out of his catatonic state. Pearl keeps up her relationship with Jack Clovis.
15799399	/m/03nvq5d	Truesight		2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Truesight, a novel written by David Stahler, Jr., takes place in the futuristic colony, Harmony Station, which is located on a foreign planet. Everyone in harmony is willingly or genetically blind. They follow the philosophy of Truesight in which people cannot see, so they do not get caught up in external beauty of the world but internal beauty of people. The protagonist, Jacob, is a 12 going on 13 year old boy living in Harmony. While at school, he has a terrible headache that is described as being like “a web of fire.” The headaches eventually leads to Jacob receiving sight. The novel portrays this as a gradual shift from blur to clarity. While in the early stages of his sight’s development, Egan, Jacob’s best friend, proposes that they check out a delivery. Deliveries are the rare occasions in which “seers” bring supplies or food from Harmony’s Earth-based foundation located in Australia. Harmony’s rules state that every citizen must be inside their houses during a delivery following the curfew unless otherwise authorized. Jacob manages to escape his house and he finds a bush to hide behind to check out the delivery. He finds another of his friends, Delaney, who is the daughter of the high councilor, and his mother’s prime music student, there too. Both of them are discovered and run in different directions. Jacob gets back to his house, but Delaney dies. Later, after running down a hill with Egan and falling, Jacob can see clearly. He has to keep his sight a secret. He skips school one day and saves a field worker’s life but cannot tell anyone because he would be discovered. He plays games in which he avoids other people’s detection as he passes them on the streets. He enjoys this sight, but that goes against the very foundation of his community. He tells Egan the secret of his sight, but Egan turns him in. Jacob is taken to the high councilor’s house and is sentenced to surgery to remove his sight as well as his memory of sight. He is conflicted by the idea that sight isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He goes to Delaney’s grave using a tool people in Harmony use to find other people called a finder. However, he concludes that she’s not dead, but that she ran away because the finder points away from the community. He doesn’t run away to find her too due to his lack of preparation. While Jacob is preparing for his surgery, he talks to the high councilor. He learns that the high councilor is having an affair with Jacob’s mother and that the high councilor can see too. Jacob jumps up and runs away. He grabs provisions from his house and exits harmony “for good”
15799751	/m/03nvqhf	Genesis Alpha		2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Josh worships his older brother, Max. They look alike, they sound alike, and they both have the same interests, including their favorite multiplayer online role-playing game, Genesis Alpha. But Josh and Max have an even deeper connection. When Max was sick with cancer, it was Josh's stem cells, harvested when Josh was just a baby, that saved Max's life. One day, while the two are playing a game of Genesis Alpha, Max stops responding. Josh soon realizes that Max was arrested in his college dorm room for the brutal murder of a teenage girl. As Josh tries to reconcile the brother he knew with the monster they talk about on television, he also has to deal with his own guilt: If his cells had not saved Max's life, would this girl still be alive? But this is only the beginning, and soon, Josh will come to a number of startling revelations—revelations that have dire implication not only for Max's future, but for Josh's as well. Josh needs to know the truth is it in the real world or did Genesis Alpha have a more sinister part in his life than he knew?
15801208	/m/03nvrfr	The Good Dog	Edward Irving Wortis	2001		 The story takes place in the town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It is recounted from the dog's point of view with animals able to express themselves to each other in English. The protagonist is a Malamute named McKinley, who protects his "human pup," Jack. While helping a runaway greyhound named Duchess, McKinley meets the wolf, Lupin, who is trying to recruit dogs into her shrinking pack. McKinley must deal with Jack's desire to join the wolf pack, protect Lupin from hunters, and figure out how to handle Redburn, an ambitious Irish Setter. By the end of the book, after overcoming many obstacles some with the help of his best friend Aspen, a retriever (breed not specifically named in book) that lives next door, McKinley is transformed from a happy-go-lucky pet into a true leader.
15802946	/m/03x_rn2	Jack, the Giant Killer	Charles de Lint	1987-11	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The plot concerns a young woman living in Ottawa named Jacky Rowan who, after a late-night encounter with a motorcycle-riding version of the Wild Hunt, picks up a red cap which enables her to see into the Faerie realms. She is soon drawn into a supernatural struggle between the weakened forces of the Seelie Court and their ominous enemies, the Host or Unseelie Court. She is regaled as the Jack of Kinrowan, a trickster figure who represents the Seelie Court's hope for victory against the forces of evil. With the help of her friend Kate Hazel and an array of faerie friends and allies she makes along the way (and a considerable amount of good luck), Jacky manages to rescue the kidnapped daughter of the Laird of Kinrowan and defeat the Unseelie Court, thus bringing peace and safety to the land.
15812987	/m/03nwmnb	Bad Land: An American Romance	Jonathan Raban	1996	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book begins by going into detail how the area was initially settled. The author places a particularly heavy emphasis on "scientific" developments of the time, sociological conditions, and the exploitation of those developments and conditions by the United States Government and the Milwaukee Road. These were represented in the book by the Campbell's Soil Culture Manual, the desire by those living in Europe and the eastern United States to become landholders, The Homestead Act and government agencies, and advertising by the railroad. As the author states at one point, '... there was real mendacity in the way the scheme (dry homestead scheme) was advertised. The copywriters (who had probably never set eyes on the prairie) and the art editors created a paper-country, as illusory as the Land of Cockaigne. The misleading language and pictures of the pamphlets would eventually entitle the homesteaders to see themselves as innocent dupes of a government that was in the pocket of the corporation fatcats - and their sense of betrayal would fester through the generations.' Further into the book, the author describes the settlement in terms of a grand experiment to impose civilization on a previously wild region. The society of that period is portrayed as one filled with innocent optimism and feelings of unlimited potential to be part of big, important things. This is represented in the book by the barbed wire fence and set piece, half-section farm plots of . The author further delves into the societal development of the settlers by describing many details of the aforementioned society after it becomes established. The Montana plains society is depicted as one that seems to be realizing its dreams, attracting people and commerce, and having all the trappings of an American frontier settlement. It is clearly indicated that this society is at its apex. The stories of various settler families are recounted, particularly that of Ned Wollaston and his family who started out - just like the other immigrants - farming their of dust. Raban acknowledges his debt to Percy Wollaston for his unpublished memoir, Homesteading, and is frequently accompanied by Michael J. Wollaston who helps him 'shape the story over a succession of field trips, lunches and burrowings in the Wollaston family papers.' Reality comes crashing down on the settlers when, as the author puts it, the land asserts its wild self, throwing off the civilization imposed on it. The settlers realize that the land could not support the number of people who were trying to make a living from it. Even back in 1908, when Congress was debating the Enlarged Homestead bill, representative William A. Reeder from Kansas had, in Raban's words, struck a note of dour realism, only to be shouted down as being a pawn of the big ranchers: 'I say that the settler cannot make a living on of [semi-arid land], nor on . There is the trouble. If he could make a living on , it would be all right, but there is where people are deceived. They cannot make a living on , in most cases.' Because many of the settlers felt they had been betrayed by those who convinced them to move to the area and farm there, another societal development is observed: a fiercely independent and rebellious attitude of anti-authoritarian distrust towards Corporate America (particularly 'the dwarfish, rabbit-toothed, fat-lipped figure of James J. Hill and his shadowy son, Louis', owners of the Great Northern railway line) and to a much greater extent, the United States Government. As the realization sets in that the land can't support everyone, many are seen leaving-selling their land to those who chose to stay and continue farming. Even the aging Ned and his wife, Dora, eventually send their son, Percy, to Seattle and are forced to lease their land to a young farming couple, prior to moving westwards in their son's footsteps and settling down Thompson Falls. The downward spiral of the once bustling civilization is seen as having stabilized by the present day. This status quo is one of uneasy teetering between subsistence and poverty. Such is the desperation to "become something" again that some are willing to attempt anything to attract cheap attention, publicity, visitors, and above all, outside commerce and money. The utter disappointment and futility of such efforts are summed up in the failed Ismay/Joe, Montana Day, in which the town adopts the figure of the American football player, Joe Montana, in an attempt to boost its revenues. However, it is from his attendance at a local rodeo and his invitations to the b-b-q lunches during the branding season (the end of May/early June) that Raban really sees how a rural society has emerged from the failures of the past: 'Yet in the last sixty years a form of society has evolved here. It was more modest than the one envisioned by the early settlers. After the great humbling of the Dirty Thirties, people learned how to conform themselves to the place. The land allowed just so much habitation and farming, and no more. The chastened survivors cautiously built their world. And here it was - in the cluster of well-dressed, well-fed families around the coral. One would never have guessed at the amount of ruination that had gone into the making of this scene, of country neighbours, at ease with themselves and each other. This was exactly how the Wollastons, Dockens, Yeargens and the rest would have imagined their new lives on the prairie, as a rooted and stable rural community, with its own language and architecture, costumes and customs.' The book concludes with the author returning home to Seattle, WA from southeastern Montana and following the paths of many who left the area featured in the book. The author expresses joy to be living in a place where reality isn't so sharp, but also reminds himself that not far from where he lives and even in his own backyard, there are places, situations, and circumstances that make his life uncomfortably similar to that of someone living in southeastern Montana. The book is 324 pages long and contains themes, circumstances, and events that repeated themselves in rural areas and towns across the Great Plains during the time period covered.
15832789	/m/03x__v_	The True Meaning of Smekday	Adam Rex		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is told in essay format, to be sent to a committee and put in a time capsule, to be opened in 100 years. The protagonist is eleven year old Gratuity Tucci (sometimes nicknamed 'Tip'), who must survive on her own after her mother is abducted by aliens. The aliens, called Boov, arrive and take over the Earth, which they call Smekland after their leader, Captain Smek. Christmas, the day of the Boov's arrival on Earth, is renamed "Smekday". On "Moving Day", all humans are required to relocate to Florida. Tip decides to drive instead of being transported by the Boov. She soon makes friends with a Boov, who calls himself J.Lo, and is actually very friendly. The two journey to Florida, but discover the Boov like oranges and told the humans to go to Arizona instead. They travel across the United States, running into all kinds of problems and adventures, including two organizations called B.O.O.B., a crazy Indian, cat allergies, and the fact that J.Lo accidentally summoned the Gorg, a more evil group of aliens. The Gorg have taken the Boov's old planet, Boovworld, and are looking to conquer Earth also. They want to eat their planet and enslave the humans. It is up to Tip and J.Lo to find Tip's mother, Lucy, and save the world.
15833601	/m/03qctkc	Killing Time		1994	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Feyerabend discloses that he did not keep any careful records of his life and destroyed much of the documentation autobiographers usually preserve, including a family album discarded "to make room for what I then thought were more important books", and correspondences ("even from Nobel Prize winners"). The book relies on Feyerabends's own memory as well as the various stray sources that he did manage to keep. His personal and intellectual experiences and his romantic and artistic adventures comprise roughly half the book. He recounts how he survived the depressions and suicide of his mother, his bare survival of World War II as an officer in the Wehrmacht, and his forgone apprenticeship as a tenor to Bertolt Brecht. His stormy relationships with philosophical luminaries such as mentor Karl Popper, friend and colleague Imre Lakatos and department chair of philosophy at University of California, Berkeley John Searle are described in lurid anecdotes. The book contains ruminations on the themes of evil, compassion and anti-Semitism.
15838830	/m/03nwz3g	Anathem	Neal Stephenson	2008-09-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Anathem is set on and around the planet Arbre. Thousands of years prior to the events in the novel, society was on the verge of collapse. Intellectuals entered concents, much like monastic communities but focused on intellectual endeavors rather than religious practice. Here, the avout— intellectuals living under vows and separated from Sæcular society, fraa (derived from Latin frater) for male avout and suur (derived from Latin soror) for female avout — retain extremely limited access to tools and are banned from possessing or operating any advanced technology (at a level beyond paper and pen) and are watched over by the Inquisition, which answers to the outside world (known as the Sæcular Power). The avout are forbidden to communicate with people outside the walls of the concent except during Apert, a 10-day observance held only once every year, decade, century, or millennium, depending on the frequency with which a given group of avout is allowed to interact with the Sæcular world. Concents are therefore slow to change - unlike the rest of Arbre, which goes through many cycles of booms and busts. Interaction between the avout and the Sæcular world is not, however, limited to Apert. The secular power may "Evoke", or remove from the concent, members of the avout, when needed to address pressing scientific ("theorical") issues facing Sæculars. Such removal is one of many "Auts" (ritual acts) performed on certain occasions – much like rituals or sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. The act of removing an avout from a concent at the request of the Sæcular Power is called "Voco" (a Latin word meaning "I call": most of the technical words used in Anathem are derivations or puns on Latin words, cf. Lucub – a late-night study session – from the Latin lucubratio), or "evocation", the avout called being "evoked". The narrator and protagonist, Erasmas, is a fraa at the Concent of Saunt Edhar (Saunt, abbreviated St., is a corruption of the ancient word savant and is a title bestowed on influential intellectuals of the past). His primary teacher, Orolo, discovers that an alien spacecraft is orbiting Arbre &mdash; a fact that the Sæcular Power attempts to cover up. Orolo secretly observes the alien ship with a video camera which is prohibited by Cartasian Discipline. Erasmas is unaware of the content of Orolo's research until he deciphers it after Orolo is banished in a rite called Anathem (cf. the Christian rite of bell, book, and candle anathematization) as the result of his possession and use of proscribed technology within the concent. The law of the Second New Revised Book of Discipline that governs the lives of the avout at the time of the narration – which bans the avout from owning anything but two pieces of clothing and a sphere with multiple uses, and bans them from using or even knowing how to use any technology but paper and pen – was developed in response to the third large-scale plundering of concents by the Sæacular world, which itself was initiated due to the Sæcular belief that certain avout, especially of the Millenarian Maths, had developed a praxis (technology) that required nothing more than the mind, and was (depending on a specific avout's inclination or area of study) able to effectively change the past ("the Rhetors") or the future ("the Incantors") through an unknown method, making it much more powerful and dangerous than any "real" technology. It was later recognized as some sort of many-worlds interpretation "narrative shifting", in being able to shift consciousness – which is hypothesized as the driving force behind reality, as something is not measurable until it is observed in quantum theory, thus a phenomenon called wave function collapse occurs from many very similar cosmi to the "real" one. This is made possible because the mind is found to inhabit many slightly different cosmi, and moments of thought where everything "falls into place" are recognized as the mind's reaction to waveform collapse. There is much discussion of a methodology by which narrative shifting occurs. In general it is centered on the idea that information may flow between different worldtracks (known in the books as "Narratives") via a method modeled using directed acyclic graphs, in which information may only flow in one direction. This premise, which is discussed in an appendix (a "Calca"), is key to understanding later events in the book. Several months pass, and Erasmas falls in love with Suur Ala, another avout at Saunt Edhar. Immediately after this, the Sæcular Power removes (Evokes) her along with several other avout, and Erasmas expects never to see her again. Erasmas, still upset about Orolo's banishment, throws himself into his work. The presence of the alien ship soon becomes an open secret among many of the avout at St. Edhar. Several weeks later, a laser shines down from the ship and illuminates the Millenarian Math of Saunt Edhar. Now that the aliens have shown themselves openly, the Sæcular Power evokes many avout from Saunt Edhar, this time including Erasmas himself, along with one Millenarian - Fraa Jad. Erasmas and the rest of the avout are told to travel to the concent of Saunt Tredegarh, two thousand miles away. But Erasmas and some like-minded avout also desire to find Orolo first, and subsequently enlist a few extramuros (non-avout) volunteers (including Erasmas' half-sister Cord) on an unauthorized journey to Bly's Butte, where they think Orolo has traveled to continue his astronomical observations. Upon arriving there they discover that Orolo had already left for a destination unknown. Fraa Jad urges Erasmas to continue his search for Orolo towards the North (over the frozen pole of Arbre), suggesting that Orolo has valuable information about the aliens. Erasmas agrees and sets off with just three companions to pursue Orolo, while the others turn back and head to Tredegarh. Along the way, they determine that Orolo's destination is likely to be the isolated former concent of Orithena, far in the opposite hemisphere of Arbre. They also acquire another companion named Yulassetar Crade, a tough wilderness guide with skills important for their trek. By this time, the aliens have come to be known as the Geometers because of a graphical proof of Pythagoras' Theorem (which in the alternate world of the book is referred to as Adrakhones' Theorem) seen inscribed on the hull of their ship. After a dangerous journey over the planet's frozen pole, Erasmas and his comrades eventually arrive at a concent-like establishment called Orithena, and reunite with Fraa Orolo. Orolo holds discussions with Erasmas about the nature of the cosmos and consciousness, and how he believes that the Geometers are not simply from another planet, but from another cosmos which is influenced by Arbre. During the discussions between Orolo and Erasmas, a small spacecraft lands on Orithena. A female Geometer is on board, but dead of a recent gunshot wound. She brings with her four vials of blood &mdash; presumably that of the Geometers &mdash; and much evidence about their technology. Shortly thereafter, the Geometers propel a massive metal rod at a nearby volcano, triggering an eruption which destroys Orithena. Orolo sacrifices his life to ensure the safety of the dead Geometer's remains, an event that leads to his canonization as Saunt (Savant) Orolo. Erasmas soon arrives at Saunt Tredegarh, which is home to a joint conference (convox; from "convocation", meaning "speaking together") of the avout and the Sæcular Power dedicated to dealing with the military, political, and technical issues raised by the existence of the alien ship in Arbre's orbit. Tredegarh is where the Sæcular Power had brought many of the evoked avout of Saunt Edhar (including suur Ala) to work on methods of collecting and interpreting the limited information regarding the alien spacecraft, as well as researching possible military options. Much research is done on the Geometers, who are found to come from four planets in four distinct parallel worlds (cf. Many-worlds interpretation): Urnud, Tro, Fthos and Laterre ("The Earth" in French: "La Terre"). Through observation and experiment, Erasmas and his companions determine that the conference is infiltrated by the aliens, and unmask a Laterran linguist - Jules Verne Durand, known to them as Zh'vaern. He explains that the Geometers are experiencing internal conflict between two factions. The currently ruling faction intends to attack and raid Arbre for its resources, while the opposing faction favors open negotiation. Jules Durand offers to assist the avout of Arbre in resisting the ruling faction of the Geometers, believing that they can bring the situation to a peaceful conclusion. Under fear of a Geometer attack due to the uncovering of the infiltration, the avout flee Saunt Tredegarh and the other concents on Arbre, dispersing into the Anti-Swarm (an organized dispersal of the avout throughout the planet, amongst regular society). Erasmas and several of his old and new avout friends are taken to a distant sanctuary, where they receive training for a mission to board the Geometers' ship &mdash; the Daban Urnud &mdash; and disable its weaponry. They are launched into space, unknowingly bringing with them "Everything Killers" (Neutron Bombs), which the Sæcular Power intends to use as a last resort should the explicit goal of the avouts' mission fail. Three people &mdash; including Fraa Jad &mdash; are issued detonators. The avout team boards the ship and the narrative of the novel splits several ways, in keeping with the book's theory of multiple parallel universes. Several avout trained in martial arts destroy the ship's main weapon, perishing in the attack. In one Narrative, Fraa Jad leads Erasmas into the command center of the "Daban Urnud", where it emerges that the Millenarian avout of one thousand years in the past may have used their "incanting" powers to summon the ship to their cosmos from another parallel (or higher?) one. In yet another Narrative, Jad opens a door into a protected area and, upon being attacked, triggers the Everything Killers; Erasmas dies and most people on the Daban Urnud starship are killed. In the final Narrative (the one that continues ahead) Erasmas awakens in a hospital on the starship to the perplexing news that Fraa Jad had died soon after their launch, contradicting his obvious presence and memories up to that point. It remains unclear which (or how many) of these contradictory narratives is real, and what may have happened in different worldtracks that have crossed and overlapped. However, Fraa Jad had hinted that the Incanters (and possibly Rhetors) were capable of operating simultaneously in parallel universes, so Jad is likely to have survived in other world lines. Erasmas discovers that the Geometers have brought up a high-powered delegation from Arbre, including Ala and his sister Cord. A funeral ceremony for those lost on both sides of the attack forms part of the signing of a peace treaty between the "aliens" and the Arbrans. On Arbre itself, the Sæcular Powers and the avout have agreed to cooperate as equal powers. The people of Arbre inaugurate a second historical "Reconstitution", revising many of the rules that had restricted the work and lifestyle of the avout (which included drug-induced sterility). Erasmas and friends set about the task of building a new concent, though they do not call it such, as a temple dedicated to Saunt Orolo. The closing scene is a rousing double wedding, with Erasmas marrying Ala, and his sister Cord marrying Yulassetar Crade.
15839469	/m/03nwzk8	Ma Dalton	René Goscinny			 Mrs. Dalton, the mother of the Dalton Brothers, spends a relatively quiet life in retirement until she invites her four sons for a visit. At first, Joe uses Ma's reputation among the fellow citizens to commit robberies — and later, Mum, for the love for her sons (Averell in particular), decides to return to family business once more, presenting Lucky Luke with an additional headache: How to deal with a reckless old lady shootist?
15839601	/m/03nwzqt	Jesse James	René Goscinny			 1880 in The story begins with Jesse James, who idolizes and tries to emulate Robin Hood, but somehow he is not able to clearly define the line between the rich he is supposed to rob and the poor he is supposed to help. With the help of his Shakespeare aficionado brother Frank, he therefore simply redefines the term "poor" for his own benefit, and along with Cole Younger the two begin robbing trains en masse, forcing Lucky Luke to move out and stop them with the somewhat inept assistance of two Pinkerton detectives.
15839847	/m/03nwzwz	Billy the Kid	René Goscinny			 1878 in The town of Fort Weakling, Texas, is "terrorized" by the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid - or rather, the citizens cower in fear of the things Billy, a bullying type, could (supposedly) do to them. When Lucky Luke, who happens to pass by, does not succeed in bringing in Billy through the local justice, he decides to teach the citizens that desperados are not as bad as they pretend to be by playing the role of a desperado himself, with the help of the only courageous person in the town, the local newspaper editor. And so, much to Billy's increasing consternation, the townspeople begin to view him no longer as their primal terror, but as the one who will free them of this new "menace". This ends in the situation depicted on the cover: Lucky Luke giving Billy a sound spanking before ferrying him to jail. As a result of his unusual action, the people of Fort Weakling find the courage of fending off desperado incursions with nothing more than a smile and cool wits - as Jesse James is quick to discover.
15840192	/m/03nw_8j	Dalton City	René Goscinny			 Lucky Luke closes down the corrupt settlement of Fenton Town, Texas and arrests the owner, Dean Fenton. Fenton brags about his town to the Daltons while in prison. A mixup with the newly installed telegraph results in Joe Dalton being released for good behavior(!). He breaks out the others and they decide to fix up Fenton Town, renaming it Dalton City. They capture Lucky Luke, who agrees to help them with the town. They hire some dancing girls and Lucky Luke plants the idea of staging a wedding to lure people. The wedding is between Joe and Lulu Breechloader, the singer. The guests arrive, but when the wedding is announced, it turns out that Lulu was unaware and is already married to the pianist, Wallace. Initially the guests shoot at Lucky Luke, but turn on Joe. The Calvary arrives to round the criminals up, having been tipped off by Wild Trout, an Indian who won at roulette, having bet a vase, and expecting 36 other vases. After everyone has left, Belle, one of the dancing girls, manages to jumps out of the (abnormally hard) cake. Dalton city eventually becomes Angel Junction, a town of 243,000 people.
15840287	/m/03nw_b8	Barbed Wire on the Prairie	René Goscinny			 Lucky Luke involves himself in a quarrel between peaceful farmers and unscrupulous (and fattened-up) ranchers who indiscriminately drive their cattle right across the farmers' crops in search of new pastures. The only way the farmers can see to stop this continual rampage is to use the titular material to fence off and protect their land: barbed wire. With the assistance of Lucky Luke, both sides eventually come to realize that without greens there can be no meat, and the matter is settled in the usual happy-end manner.
15841636	/m/03nx064	The Dashing White Cowboy	René Goscinny			 Lucky encounters a wandering theater troupe, whose specialty play is the titular drama, "Le Cavalier Blanc" (literal translation: The White Cavalier). But in each town where they perform, a major robbery takes place right during the climactic end scene. His suspicions aroused, Lucky Luke decides to keep a sharp eye on the group, but in the course of his investigation nearly ends up being framed as the culprit twice. Only with the help of a repentant member of the troupe can he bring the culprits to justice.
15844676	/m/03nx259	The Open Boat	Stephen Crane			 None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. &#34;The Open Boat&#34; is divided into seven sections, each told mainly from the point of view of the correspondent, based upon Crane himself. The first part introduces the four characters—the correspondent, a condescending observer detached from the rest of the group; the captain, who is injured and morose at having lost his ship, yet capable of leadership; the cook, fat and comical, but optimistic that they will be rescued; and the oiler, Billie, who is physically the strongest, and the only one in the story referred to by name. The four are survivors of a shipwreck, which occurred before the beginning of the story, and are drifting at sea in a small dinghy. In the following four sections, the moods of the men fluctuate from anger at their desperate situation, to a growing empathy for one another and the sudden realization that nature is indifferent to their fates. The men become fatigued and bicker with one another; nevertheless, the oiler and the correspondent take turns rowing toward shore, while the cook bails water to keep the boat afloat. When they see a lighthouse on the horizon, their hope is tempered with the realization of the danger of trying to reach it. Their hopes dwindle further when, after seeing a man waving from shore, and what may or may not be another boat, they fail to make contact. The correspondent and the oiler continue to take turns rowing, while the others sleep fitfully during the night. The correspondent then notices a shark swimming near the boat, but he does not seem to be bothered by it as one would expect. In the penultimate chapter, the correspondent wearily recalls a verse from the poem &#34;Bingen on the Rhine&#34; by Caroline Norton, in which a &#34;soldier of the Legion&#34; dies far from home. The final chapter begins with the men&#39;s resolution to abandon the floundering dinghy they have occupied for thirty hours and to swim ashore. As they begin the long swim to the beach, Billie the oiler, the strongest of the four, swims ahead of the others; the captain advances towards the shore while still holding onto the boat, and the cook uses a surviving oar. The correspondent is trapped by a local current, but is eventually able to swim on. After three of the men safely reach the shore and are met by a group of rescuers, they find Billie dead, his body washed up on the beach.
15847119	/m/03nx2lc	Laura Warholic	Alexander Theroux	2007		 The Sexual Intellectual, a column that discusses anything related to sex, is written by Eugene Eyestones, an erudite recluse and spectacled Vietnam veteran, as a contributor to Quink, a monthly magazine published in Boston by (Minot) Warholic prone to pepper his verbal outbursts with Yiddishisms. Quink has a eclectic group of coworkers and collaborators, an unlikely “universe” of colorful and diverse people full of disagreement and prejudice, that include characters named Discknickers, the “pseudo-fascist” accountant, Ratnaster, the atheist interviewer, Duxbak, Eyestones' only friend, Mutrix, the homophobe lawyer, Chasuble, the homphile movie critic, Harriet Trombone, an outspoken Caribbean islander, and the lesbian pair of Ann Marie Tubb and The Krauthammer. Laura Warholic, the estranged former wife of the publisher, had moved from San Francisco to Boston and is being befriended by Eyestones. Younger than he, she is “long and sexless as a rolled umbrella” with the “small white face of a vireo”, lacks charm, interests, drive, and ambition, is unable and unwilling to work, and interested only in rock and rock musicians. He does not find her attractive but feels sorry for her; pity appears his main attractive force, yet he also exploits her for his writings. Eyestones has secret longings for Rapunzel Wisht, a beautiful young woman working at the local bakery. After writing a misogynistic and controversial essay - even Warholic finds it "harsh on the chicks" - , opining that women who create "abrogate their own psychobiology", Eyestones takes a break from writing and invites Laura on a Summer vacation drive across the country. During their tour their incompatibility becomes more apparent. Back in Boston, they start to drift apart, and Laura becomes obsessed with the Craven Slucks, a local rock band, throwing herself at its lead singer Jeff. Eyestones, after the Christmas Party of the office, joins his coworkers for a trip to the strip bar. Crayola de Blu, the seductive main attraction, is none other than his adored Rapunzel; he is angry, feels cheated, lost and deprived. In his crisis he determines that all this was his own shortcoming and that he had exploited Laura. Confessing his failures to Duxbak, Eyestones realizes that he has to ask for forgiveness. He tries to see Laura to amend, but due to a misidentification gets shot and killed. Laura, lonely and desolate, hangs herself.
15848760	/m/03nx323	Camilla				 Camilla focuses on the story of the Tyrold family. Augustus ("Mr Tyrold") and Sir Hugh Tyrold are brothers who, after a period of estrangement lasting an unspecified number of years, are reunited after Sir Hugh sends Mr Tyrold a letter expressing his desire to move near his parsonage, requesting him to purchase an estate called Cleves and prepare it for the arrival of Sir Hugh, his niece Indiana Lynmere, and her governess Miss Margland (his other ward, Clermont Lynmere, is to be sent to "the Continent" to be educated). His primary motivation for the move is that after years of being an active bachelor and confirmed bachelor, he suddenly finds himself injured and too physically weak to partake of the active physical and social life he once enjoyed. Forced to find entertainment and solace in more sedentary ways, he finds himself woefully unprepared and further engages Mr Tyrold to engage a tutor. Mr Tyrold complies and hires Dr Orkborne, a man better suited to private academic pursuits than pedagogy. This plan proves to be untenable and Sir Hugh is left scrambling to find a permanent "scholar" to place under Orkborne's tutelage, not wanting to offend the academic by dismissing him so soon after dragging him all the way out to Cleves. In the meantime, Sir Hugh becomes enchanted by his brother's middle daughter, Camilla, and decides to make her heiress to most of his fortune. He also requests the privilege of raising her, which makes Mr and Mrs Tyrold uneasy because as much as they value Sir Hugh's kindness and generosity, they both find him unsuitable as a guardian as he is too indulgent and desirous to please. Nevertheless, they allow Camilla to go to Cleves. It is there that Camilla's brother Lionel, elder sister, Lavinia, and younger sister, Eugenia, and her father's ward, Edgar Mandelbert, go to celebrate Camilla's tenth birthday. Mrs Tyrold allowed Eugenia to join the festivities only on the promise that the party of young people are not leave the grounds of Cleves because the girl had not yet been inoculated against smallpox. Unfortunately, Lionel's mischievous and restless nature leads him to convince his uncle to allow the entire party of children to go to a fair. It is here that Eugenia is exposed to and contracts smallpox. Eugenia is disfigured but survives, only to suffer a tragic see-saw accident which leaves her further maimed and crippled. Naturally, this leads Sir Hugh to disown not only Camilla but all of his nieces and nephews in favor of making Eugenia his sole heiress. He justifies this sweeping action by arranging an eventual marriage between Eugenia and Clermont Lynmere. In the meantime, he consigns Eugenia's education to Dr Orkbourne so that if she will not be a beautiful bride, she will at least be a highly intelligent one able to entertain and engage her future husband in what he calls hic hæc hoc -- that is, is to receive the same sort of intensive, classical education that was at the time more generally given to boys and rarely (if ever) to girls. Though at first dismissive of the idea of educating girls in general and the teaching of Greek and Latin to females in particular, Dr Orkbourne discovers that Eugenia is not only an enthusiastic student but one who is also extremely intelligent and capable. At first, Edgar Mandelbert finds himself drawn to Indiana's exquisite beauty. Sir Hugh decides that despite their young ages (13 and ten respectively), Edgar and Indiana are clearly destined for each other. This means that Sir Hugh spends much of the early part of the novel waiting and planning for the day when Edgar and Clermont leave off their educations and finishing tours of the Continent so that they may marry Indiana and Eugenia. When Edgar does finish his education and reaches the age of majority, he leaves university to take over the running of his finances and estate, Beech Park, from his guardian, Mr Tyrold. In re-acquainting himself with the Tyrold sisters and Indiana, Edgar finds himself drawn to Camilla. She also finds herself drawn to Edgar. Unfortunately, the mortifying realization that he is considered to be Indiana's intended complicates his attempts at courtship until he can resolve the misunderstanding. Even so, the machinations of Miss Margland, the jealousy of Indiana, circumstances in general (including Camilla's misadventures in navigating country society and new acquaintances such as the dim-witted Mr Dubster, the rakish Sir Sedley Clarendel, and the beautiful, reputable, witty, but lamentably satirical widow Mrs Arlbery) and Edgar's judgmental nature in particular serve to make his wooing of Camilla extremely protracted. He finally wins Camilla's hand only to relinquish it almost immediately after catching Camilla's debasement at the lips of Sir Sedley Clarendel. Clarendel, a frivolous and flirtatious baronet, in having been mortified to have fallen in love with Camilla, tried to save face by protesting that he had no serious designs on Camilla's affections or pretensions to marriage with her. Once done, he kisses the confused girl's hand. Edgar witnesses this with the same level of revulsion and astonishment usually reserved for catching one's grandparents in the act of sexual congress, which naturally offends Camilla. She frees him from their engagement and with her father's blessing and encouragement, removes to Southampton to visit her new friend, Mrs Berlington with Eugenia, Indiana, and Miss Margland following behind a few hours later to provide company and proper supervision. This is, of course, taken by Edgar as further sign that Camilla is capricious, weak, frivolous, and above all a debased flirt. Dr Marchmont, Edgar's tutor and mentor in matters of the heart, encourages these assumptions. While Camilla suffers through one misadventure after the other, her sister Eugenia attracts the notice of fortune hunter Alphonso Bellamy. He appeals to Miss Margland's vanity by flattering her into pleading his case to Eugenia and Sir Hugh and eventually asks Sir Hugh for Eugenia's hand. He is refused, not being known to Sir Hugh nor particularly welcome as Eugenia is intended for Clermont. Bellamy eventually kidnaps Eugenia and forces her into marriage, Edgar eventually stops listening to the misogynistic Dr Marchmont, Camilla falls into and gets out of debt, Lionel is forced to give up frivolity, Sir Hugh is nearly bankrupted by his nephews, and Mr Tyrold spends some time in debtor's prison. But all ends well as Bellamy accidentally kills himself, Mr Tyrold is freed, Camilla and Edgar are married, Lavinia marries Hal Westwyn, Indiana elopes with a penniless hotheaded military ensign called Macdersey, Clermont gets beaten by a servant he unfairly tried to whip, and Eugenia (it is hinted) eventually marries Mr Melmond, a man whose fine education and extremely emotional outbursts had won her heart early in the novel.
15848791	/m/03y02qb	The Underdogs		1915		 The book tells us the story of peasant Demetrio Macías, who becomes the enemy of a local cacique (leader, or important person) in his town, and so has to abandon his family when the government soldiers (Federales) come looking for him. He escapes to the mountains, and forms a group of rebels who support the Mexican Revolution. Some of them are prototypes of the sort of people that would be attracted by a revolution, like Luis Cervantes, who is an educated man mistreated by the Federales and therefore turning on them, or Güero Margarito, a cruel man who finds justification for his deeds in the tumultuousness of the times. Also Camila, a young peasant who is in love with Cervantes, who cheats her into becoming Macías' lover, and whose kind and stoic nature gives her a tragic uniqueness among the rest. With a concise, unsympathetic tone, Azuela takes us along with this band of outcasts as they move along the hills of the country, seemingly struggling for a cause whose leader changes from day to night. The rebels, not very certain of what or whom they are fighting for, practice themselves the abuse and injustice they used to suffer in the hands of the old leaders. So the Mexican people, as the title of the book hints, are always the “ones below”, no matter who runs the country. In the end, Macías has lost his lover and most of his men, and reunites with his family with no real desire or hope for redemption or peace. He has forebodings of his destiny, and the last scene of the book leaves him firing his rifle with deathly accuracy, alone and extremely outnumbered by his enemies.
15852265	/m/03nx41l	Kyle XY: Nowhere to Hide			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins by introducing a high school classroom, and introduces a small portion of Kyle's past. After Kyle learns about an unknown event, the Monster Mash, he begins to question the concept of costumes and Halloween, which he had no previous knowledge concerning. Josh takes it upon himself to teach Kyle all about Halloween by taking Kyle to a costume store. There Josh dresses in a football costume, which causes one girl, Samantha Jeffries, to mistakenly believe him to be a quarterback (with Josh's help). Kyle finds himself upset with the entire concept of "pretending" for Halloween and considers it lying. Nicole tries to ease Kyle's pain by explaining the fun of Halloween, but Kyle struggles with this concept. Due to his amnesia he believes he is already pretending to be someone he is not. As Kyle questions his role in Halloween, Lori and Josh experience their own problems. Lori continues to struggle with her relationship to Declan. While Lori wants to go with Declan and attend the Monster Mash together, Lori refuses to ask Declan to go, believing that the man should ask the woman, much to Hilary's chagrin. As Josh prepares for his date with Samantha, whom he considers to be the hottest girl around, he realizes he needs to learn how to handle alcohol consumption, as many of the football players drink. When he fails to get into his parents' locked liquor cabinet he finds a bottle of vodka and begins pouring shots. After several drinks, he passes out. The next day, Lori notices that Josh is hungover, and the incident helps Josh to realize he never wants to drink again. Kyle's quest to get Amanda to notice him takes an interesting turn when Hilary decides to launch Operation Make Her Jealous, in an effort to get Amanda away from Charlie and with Kyle. Hilary begins spreading rumors about Kyle, while a rumor that Declan had a date put Lori on edge. When the Mash finally arrives, Josh is forced to reveal that he is not a football player, which immediately disgusts Samantha. As she drunkily stumbles away Josh realizes that it was better if he wasn't with her, and ironically, he runs into Ashleigh Redmond, the girl who skinny-dipped with Josh in Diving In. Kyle decides he doesn't want to lie to Amanda when he sees her look of disappointment at the notion of Kyle and Hilary together. Amanda disappears from the Mash, while Kyle tries to look for her and explain. On the school roof, a fight breaks out as Kyle arrives to look for Amanda. In the midst of the fight, Kyle and Asheigh are thrown from the roof, and Kyle instictively grabs Asheligh, but cannot land evenly, crashing onto his back. Having worn a Halloween mask, Kyle escapes without anyone realizing his identity. Declan visits Lori at home, where she stayed and the two reconcile their feelings. After returning to the Mash sans mask, Kyle finds Amanda and the two connect for the first time. Amanda is unsure what to say to Kyle, but she is interrupted by Charlie. After Amanda leaves, Kyle and Hilary have a discussion in which Hilary, for the first time tells the truth, admitting her crush on Kyle. As the dance ends, Kyle cannot wait to return home.
15855368	/m/02nrn7s	Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir	Mark Salter	1999-08	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Slew McCain commanded the aircraft carriers of Task Force 38 in the Pacific War in late 1944 and 1945, ultimately having 15 carriers and 8 battleships, plus their escorts, under his control for operations against Japan in July 1945. Jack McCain was a submariner in the U.S. Navy during the Pacific War, and later rose to four star rank and became Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater from 1968 to 1972. John McCain writes forthrightly of his rebellious and misspent youth, and his conflicts about following in his forefathers' steps. The centerpiece of Faith of My Fathers is a lengthy account of McCain's five and half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnamese camps, of the torturing and suffering he and his fellow prisoners endured, and the various kinds of faith that enabled him to carry on through the ordeal. It describes the injuries he sustained during his shoot-down and imprisonment, and the origin of why he cannot lift his arms above his shoulders. The book concludes with the release from captivity of him and the other POWs in 1973. The following passage explains the book's title:
15863041	/m/03nxfbk	The Return	K. A. Applegate	2000-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins with a cold open into Rachel's dream-within-a-dream to give the impression of reality; the Animorphs are taking a tour of the White House just as the Yeerks launch an attack. Hork-Bajir and Taxxons try to prevent the President from being airlifted away from the scene, but Rachel attacks them and lets the helicopter fly off. Jake approaches her and tells her that he had already told her to de-morph and stay out of the fight, as she was badly injured, but Rachel tells him not to tell her what to do. They have a brief fight for superiority, and Rachel is defeated as she is bleeding to death, however immediately awakens (at the time, believing she has actually awoken from the whole dream) screaming after thinking a stream of blood rather than sweat is running down her cheek. Following this are a succession of events in the dream, including: Marco, Ax, Tobias and Rachel at Ax's scoop discussing their current situation and the Yeerks' plans, as well as stories appearing on the Internet of first-hand accounts of Yeerk battles (which Rachel notes as actually happening in the real world) and Rachel feeling victimized and set apart by the others for her opinions; Tobias and Rachel flying over the forest, further talking about Rachel's attitude to battle, with Tobias clarifying that "I don't think anyone really understands where you're coming from." Rachel then finally wakes for school, and attends but feels disillusioned and disconnected from everyone and everything; asking Cassie to meet her after school at her farm, Rachel walks to Cassie's barn but is set upon by a large pack of rats, as is Cassie. It is eventually revealed that this strange event was a manipulation of reality by Crayak, the recurring red light in her dreams and at school. With the help of Crayak, David, the boy who betrayed the Animorphs after being recruited to the team, has returned for revenge on Rachel after she trapped him in rat form (explaining the recurrence of rats earlier). As part of the manipulation of (but still) reality, Rachel awakens in a small cube underground, and David is set in front of her outside the cube by two teenagers. He brags to her about commanding an army of rats to escape from the island, climbing into a boat which belonged to scientists counting the bird population, and doing all sorts of deeds for him once making it back to the mainland, including swarming Rachel and Cassie at her farm. He also claims to have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars since being trapped as a rat by getting into places no human can. He says this is how he has bribed the two teenagers to bring him to Rachel. He also brags and tries to manipulate and sway Rachel, telling her she is a bully for what she did to him, and showing her a locked-up Cassie and forcing Rachel to morph to rat to become a nothlit like him or Cassie will suffocate. Soon Crayak arrives, and Rachel concludes that David has for the most part been lying about his exploits, and he admits he has, and that he has been brought to her by Crayak. The Drode, who has accompanied Crayak, reveals, however, that David's desire for revenge is not their reason for appearing to Rachel. Crayak intimidates Rachel and shows her what she could be (a far more powerful, taller version of herself with retractable metal claws and all kinds of advanced reflexes) if she accepts his offer to be a leader and stop the Yeerk invasion of Earth; all she has to do is kill Jake. She says "I am one of the good guys," but Crayak tries to sway her by switching her between her rat morph (fighting with David) and "Super-Rachel". He then brings Visser One to her, and they fight, with Rachel triumphing until Crayak switches realities again as Rachel refuses to eliminate him. He and the Drode eventually disappear, calling her a fool and a coward, and insisting she is weak for not living up to her potential. Rachel appears back in rat morph, but convinces the two teenagers, offering them David's fake stashed cash as a reward, to free her just in time for her to de-morph. They escape when she morphs to grizzly to scare them. David also tries escaping, and Rachel frees Cassie, but tells her to leave without her, telling her she is going after David. Ultimately failing to escape after Rachel follows him, David finds himself in Rachel's clutches again and he begs her to kill him, insisting putting him back on the island would be a fate worse than death. David's ultimate fate is unexplained.
15865634	/m/02rt201	John Dies at the End		2007-08-15	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The main characters, John and Dave, are friends from an undisclosed town in the Midwestern United States. The story opens as Dave is discussing the unusual events he has experienced with a reporter named Arnie. The first story opens as Dave goes to help John's band play at a local party, just outside of town at a lake. At the party, Dave finds Molly, the dog, and meets a strange "Jamaican" dealing a drug called "Soy Sauce." After taking the drug, John begins to see things. Thinking John is having a bad trip, Dave decides to take John to the hospital but, after Dave receives an impossible phone call, they end up at the home of "Big Jim" Sullivan and his sister Amy, trying to return Molly to its owner. Amy tells Dave that she's afraid that Jim is dead, and he didn't come home after the party. Not knowing what else to do, and wanting to put the whole episode behind them, the two go to work at the local video store. At work, Dave accidentally cuts himself on the syringe that contained John's dose of the Soy Sauce and begins having unusual experiences as well. Dave and John are brought down to the police station for questioning regarding others who have taken the drug, and are now missing or dead. While they are being questioned, John mysteriously collapses and is taken to the hospital. Dave receives another strange phone call, telling him to go to the pseudo-Jamaican's trailer. Dave finds the fake Jamaican's stash of 'Soy Sauce', but is interrupted by the police, getting shot in the process. However, due to a miraculous occurrence, he survives relatively unharmed. Molly rescues him from the burning trailer and leads him to John's comatose body, which has been kidnapped by an evil force on its way to Las Vegas. That evil leads them to the Luxor Hotel, where Dr. Albert Marconi is having a conference on the paranormal. The conference descends into chaos as the evil attacks, and Dr. Marconi helps send it back to where it came from. The second major incident Dave explains to Arnie happened a year later. Dave and John are called in to help investigate a strange death apparently caused by Molly. It turns out that the evil is on the loose again in Undisclosed in the form of a sports reporter, Danny Wexler, who has been possessed by a shadowy entity, likely after taking Soy Sauce. With the help of Wexler's girlfriend, Krissy, John and Dave have a car chase with a man made of cockroaches, and are led on a video-game inspired chase through the abandoned mall, where they have a stand off with the entity that has taken Wexler. There the evil possesses Dave, but it is ultimately defeated. The third story starts the next summer as Dave notices that someone is watching him through his television set. The feeling continues until one winter night he has an episode of missing time just as Amy disappears. While they investigate Amy's disappearance, Dave begins to feel that he may have killed her, and peeking into his tool shed and seeing what appears to be a dead body, he is sure of it. When Amy reappears, however, the mystery deepens. As the darkness descends on them, Dave has to come to terms with how his paranormal encounters have irreversibly affected him.
15868410	/m/03nxlrr	The Land of Laughs	Jonathan Carroll	1980	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In a used book store, Thomas Abbey, an avid fan of Marshall France, a deceased writer of unique children's books, has a chance encounter with Saxony Gardner, another enthusiast of that reclusive man. Together, they set out to the town of Galen, to meet Anna France, the writer's daughter, in order to obtain her permission to write Marshall France's biography. Prepared for rejection, they are warmly welcomed and settle into the community and their literary endeavor. However, they find an uncanny resemblance between the town of Galen and its inhabitants, and the literary world of their idol. Figures from Marshall France's books are alive in Galen, and Thomas and Saxony begin to question if the books were patterned onto Galen, or if the writer's magic created Galen. Equally disturbing is Thomas' role as biographer, who appears to create reality by his writing, and begins to question the motives of Anna and the inhabitants of Galen. Events reach a crisis point when Thomas' biography reaches the time of Marshall France's arrival in Galen.
15868517	/m/03nxlvv	Echohawk				 Echohawk was a little boy when he was taken from his white family and adopted into a Mohican tribe. For years Echohawk has been speaking and thinking in the Mohican language. He enjoys hunting with his adoptive father Glickihigan and younger brother Bamaineo. Yet as time passes, Glickihigan thinks an English education will help his sons in the changing world and sends them to be schooled by white people. It's then that Echohawk's earliest memories return. Soon the time will come for him to choose between the world of the Mohicans and the world he came from long ago.
15868585	/m/03nxlz8	Betsy Zane, the Rose of Fort Henry				 Toward the end of the Revolutionary War, Betsy sets out alone from Philadelphia to rejoin her five brothers in western Virginia. ---- Thirteen-year-old Betsy Zane is bored with her privileged life in Philadelphia, bored with her great-aunt"s stories about the old days, and bored with trying to be a lady. She longs to rejoin her brothers at the family homestead along the Ohio River, where she can finally be free to enjoy the unspoiled countryside that she has missed ever since she was forced to leave it as a child. When her great-aunt dies, Betsy has the opportunity to return to her frontier home. She frees the house slaves, bundles up the few belongings she can carry, and sets off to find safe passage to the homestead she has dreamed about for so long. At Zane Station she finds much excitement-and some tough choices. Her new life forces her to think more deeply about slavery, loyalty, and family. Betsy begins a romance with a dashing young soldier, and takes part in the greatest adventure of her life, a heroic run for gunpowder-a historical event-that saves Fort Henry in what proved to be the final battle of the Revolutionary War. Based on the true story of Betsy Zane, this exciting account of a real-life heroine"s adventures on the western frontier is rich with vivid and carefully researched historical detail. Author"s note, bibliography
15869044	/m/03nxmj9	Tornado			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 To calm the fears of his boss's sons as they wait out a tornado in a storm cellar, Pete tells some well-worn stories of his childhood dog, Tornado: how he arrived intact in his doghouse during another tornado; how he could do a card trick; how he met the cat Five-Thirty; how he was reunited with his previous owners. Other stories will have to wait for another storm.
15869897	/m/03nxn77	Kyle XY: Under the Radar		2008-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story once again begins with the rather strange life of Kyle Trager. A few days after the bonfire and the release of the infamous "list," Kyle is trying reconnect with Amanda Bloom, while Lori struggles with her own relationship to Declan, who has become distant unexpectedly. After a freshman student cuts through a park near the school, he finds himself being chased by a football jock, who catches up with him on school grounds and brutally attacks him. When Kyle sees the student in trouble, he immediately steps in and delays the larger and more muscular jock with ease. Immediately Kyle's popularity rises, which quickly has an unintentional effect on Josh, who has grown jealous of Kyle's new status. Kyle's popularity jumps once more when he is nominated for school student government president. Once learning of the job and responsibility required, he believes he can live in Baylin's words and make a difference, while also winning back Amanda. Josh grows even more jealous of Kyle and wants to find a way to get himself noticed, against Andy's best advice. While Kyle is excited at the thought of becoming school president, his trainer, Tom Foss, disagrees. Foss believes that the election could be a trap meant to lure Kyle out into the open. Foss attempts to teach Kyle to see through an object, a talent Baylin used only once and discovered shortly before his death. Upon the end of the training session, Foss presents Kyle with Baylin's journal hoping it will bring Kyle to his senses, but the early entries only exaggerated Kyle's quest to make a difference. As Kyle prepared to run for the election, Lori used her newly self-appointed position as campaign manager to avoid thinking about her failing relationship with Declan, and avoid the fact that she really isn't over Declan. Josh attempts to hatch a scheme to bring himself into the center of attention, as everyone goading over how awesome Kyle was had begun to prey on his mind. Against Andy's judgment, Josh sneaks into the school at night and steals the donkey and elephant stuffed animals put out every year during the election, previously thought to be impossible. On the day of the election, every student was impressed with the prank Josh performed, only another student tried to take responsibility; Josh foolishly told the students the prank was his own idea. As Kyle began his speech, the assembly chanted for a Trager, but Josh, not Kyle, and Josh was escorted from the assembly and disciplined. Kyle's speech went over extremely well, and it seemed Kyle was a shoo-in for victory, but when Kyle discovered a strange metallic device in his backpack, and read more of Baylin's journal, he realized how dangerous being in the spotlight had become. After flushing the device down the toilet, Kyle made his way to the votes room, attempting to prevent himself from winning, but a locked door stood in his way. Finally realizing what all his training had been for, Kyle used telekinesis to toss out some of his votes. When being brought on stage to announce the winner, Kyle feels incredibly sick, collapses and goes into seizures. When the ambulance arrives, Foss sneaks aboard and changes Kyle's test and symptoms to dissuade any questions. Kyle realizes that he must stay under the radar to avoid bringing any danger to himself or the Tragers. Josh's parents reconcile with him, realizing that they all had got swept up by Kyle's success. Kyle was now prepared to focus on his training, finally committed, and keeping his secrets at all costs.
15875486	/m/03qc_1j	Russka	Edward Rutherfurd	1991-07	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The narrative spans 1,800 years of Russian history. The families that provide the focus for the story are the Bobrovs, Romanovs, Karpenkos, Suvorins and Popovs. Between them these five families span the main ethnic groups and social levels of the society in this northern empire. Historical characters encountered through the narrative include Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible and his secret police, the westernizing Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and the Bolsheviks of the twentieth century. The stories of different characters in those families use real known stories of different Russian families. For example, the peasant family turned nobility thanks to their business is based on the Stroganovs. The noble who was a friend of Ivan IV of Russia and asked his territory to be part of the Oprichnina was also based on a member of the Stroganovs, but at a different period.
15875654	/m/03qc_6b	The Forest	Edward Rutherfurd	2000-04-06	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in the New Forest of southern England, this novel covers the lives of number of families tracing their history from the Saxons and Normans in 1099 through to "Jane Austen" style world of the early 19th century. Story and characters combine to reveal and decorate the narrative in an important region in England not often used by writers.
15876930	/m/03qd0h7	Ireland: Awakening	Edward Rutherfurd	2006-03-02	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This sequel to Dublin: Foundation also set in Ireland follows the clans or families of the O'Byrnes, Walshes, MacGowans etc. In addition to the previous novel other families appear on the scene and together they live through the Cromwellian period, the Protestant Ascendancy and the Famine.
15881536	/m/03qd8py	A Walk in the Sun	Geoffrey A. Landis	1991-10		 The story follows Trish, the only survivor of a terrible crash landing on the moon. After regaining her senses, she contacts Earth and learns that it will be thirty days before she can be rescued. In the meantime, she depends on a wing-like solar panel to provide power to her suit's recycling facilities. While she waits for the rescue party, she has to continually walk westward in order to stay in the sunlight.
15883779	/m/03qdfzs	Witness	Karen Hesse	2001-09-01	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Witness tells the story of the Klan's attempt to recruit members in a small town in Vermont in 1924. A young black girl, Leanora Sutter, feels isolated by racial prejudice and her mother's recent death. She is befriended by Esther Hirsh, a younger Jewish girl, whose innocence and natural optimism provides a sharp contrast to the other characters. The Klan's hate-filled message of white supremacy is voiced by Merlin, a teenager, and Johnny Reeves, a minister in the town, who both become members. Other characters — the town constable and newspaper editor — try to walk a careful line of neutrality until they realize the importance of taking a stand. Storekeepers Viola and Harvey Pettibone represent two opposing reactions to the Klan's methods as they discuss the issue in their own home. Iris Weaver's character reflects a new freedom for women who had just gained the right to vote. Over the course of many months, residents are affected in many ways by pressures that build in the community, leading up to a climactic moment of violence. In the voices of eleven residents of the town, we experience this series of events from many different points of view, in the form of a poetic play in five acts. As the characters speak directly to the reader and relate the juxtaposition of acts of hate and love, violence and peace, terror and kindness, they illuminate the full range of human strengths and weaknesses in one small town.
15885903	/m/03qdkps	The Informant	Kurt Eichenwald	2000	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 The Informant is a true-crime account that takes place in Central Illinois during the early 1990s at the Fortune 500 company Archer Daniels Midland, known as ADM. ADM is an agri-business powerhouse and one of the largest companies in the world. Its former chairman, Dwayne Andreas, had extensive political connections to both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and was also connected indirectly to President Nixon's Watergate. Whitacre was a young rising star at ADM where he was president of the bio-products division and corporate vice president of the company. As a result of some very odd circumstances, Whitacre also became the highest-level executive to turn whistleblower in U.S. history. One night in early November, 1992, the high-ranking ADM executive did something extraordinary. He confessed to an FBI agent that ADM executives—including Whitacre himself—routinely met with competitors to fix the price of lysine, a food additive. Whitacre’s wife, an elementary school teacher, forced Whitacre to become a whistleblower by threatening to go to the FBI herself if he did not inform the authorities of ADM’s illegal price-fixing activities. The meeting between Whitacre and an FBI agent marked the first time a participant in a price fixing cartel voluntarily tipped off law-enforcement officials. After informing the FBI, Whitacre assisted in gathering evidence by clandestinely taping the cartel’s activity in business meetings in locations such as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong. During Whitacre's undercover work, which spanned almost three years, the FBI collected hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes documenting crimes committed by executives from around the world in fixing the prices of food additives, in the largest price-fixing case in history at the time. In a stunning turn of events immediately following the covert portion of the case, it was reported in headlines around the world that Whitacre defrauded $9 million from his company at the same period of time he was secretly working for the FBI and taping his co-workers. No sooner did an army of federal agents stage a dramatic raid on ADM's Decatur, Illinois, headquarters than the company hit back with damning evidence that the government's star witness had his own agenda. Whitacre became delusional and lied extensively to the FBI in a failed attempt to save himself. The FBI quickly learned Whitacre was suffering from manic-depression, also known as bipolar disorder, with resulting grandiosity and embellishments in full bloom. Worst of all, Whitacre told stories to the media about FBI agents trying to force him to destroy some of the tapes (stories he later recanted). The Informant focuses on Whitacre's meltdown and bizarre behavior resulting from the pressures of working undercover for the FBI, going into great detail. Whitacre became extremely manic, stopped sleeping most nights, and was seen using a gas leaf blower on his driveway during a thunderstorm at three o’clock in the morning. Whitacre attempted suicide a few months later, but was saved by his groundskeeper. Whitacre, who earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University in nutritional biochemistry, is the most improbable figure of the story. With his extremely poor judgment associated with bipolar disorder, he believed up to the end that he would become chief executive officer of ADM when the dust settled. His wife tried to convince him otherwise. He was also peculiarly suggestible. After seeing the movie The Firm he imitated its hero, Mitch McDeere, played by Tom Cruise, and began taping the FBI agents and storing the tapes for later use. Indeed, at one point, corporate investigator Jules Kroll, founder of Kroll Associates, was convinced Whitacre was acting out a delusional fantasy based on The Firm and came up with forty-six parallels between the ADM case and the Grisham tale. In the end, because Whitacre violated his immunity agreement with the government, he was also charged for price-fixing, the same case that Whitacre exposed for the FBI, in addition to wire fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering. In order to save Whitacre, his first attorney, James Epstein, presented a sterling performance to the top U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, convincing them the government was not duped by Mark Whitacre; that, instead, the government had created Whitacre. Epstein emphasized Whitacre was not trained for FBI undercover projects; he was simply thrown into it with no training whatsoever and with no support to prevent him from cracking under pressure. Epstein told DOJ officials he would go public in a trial with everything Whitacre went through for three years working undercover only to be punished after helping crack one of the largest white-collar cases in history. He convinced the government that Whitacre solved a billion dollar case for the FBI, and that the case was a hundred-fold larger than Whitacre's fraud case. Epstein was successful in getting a very light sentence for Whitacre. However, Whitacre, with his manic-depression fully out of control, saw it differently and fired Epstein because he was not willing to do any jail time. Whitacre then hired another attorney. They distanced themselves from the government, where Whitacre was no longer of value as a witness. The government used the tapes in the ADM trials, but not Whitacre. Whitacre received a federal prison sentence three times longer than the sentences of the white-collar criminals he exposed in a much larger criminal conspiracy. Kurt Eichenwald, author of The Informant, and several FBI agents adamantly disagreed with the nine-year sentence Whitacre received. The story ends with the FBI agents, along with John Ashcroft, working on their attempt to obtain a presidential pardon for Whitacre. Both during Whitacre's prison tenure and afterwards, Dean Paisley, former FBI supervisor of the case, lobbied for a presidential pardon with support from all three FBI agents and one of the former prosecutors on the case. Paisley traveled to Washington, DC, to meet with government lawyers in his quest for a pardon for Whitacre. With remarkable support from Whitacre's wife and the FBI, Whitacre eventually bounced back after years of jail time and years recovering his mental health, and later, as reported in Forbes magazine, was promoted to COO and president of a California biotechnology company. As a result of the hundreds of tapes made by Whitacre, the lysine conspirators, including ADM, ultimately settled federal charges for more than $100 million. ADM also paid hundreds of millions of dollars in class action settlements to customers it gouged with the price-fixing schemes. Several Asian and European lysine and citric acid producers, who conspired to fix prices with ADM, paid criminal fines in the tens of millions of dollars to the U.S. government. A few top executives, including the vice chairman of ADM, who was the son of the former powerful chairman, received three years of federal prison time. The ADM investigation, in turn, convinced antitrust prosecutors price-fixing is a far more pervasive problem than they had suspected and led to prosecutions of cartels in vitamins, fax paper, and graphite electrodes. Billions of dollars have been paid in antitrust fines to the U.S. government since Whitacre first blew the whistle in 1992.
15888413	/m/03qdv4j	Leaving Fishers	Margaret Haddix		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dorry Stevens, a lonely new transfer to Indianapolis, is befriended by a group of attractive and attentive young classmates who invite her to a number of church functions. Their warm welcome has quite an effect on her, and she is soon baptized into her new faith at a Fishers retreat. After returning from the retreat, she finds out that her mother has had a heart attack. Her family life becomes more difficult as bad grades pile up and the pressure from the Fishers to gain "virtue" points and abstain from sin increases. Eventually, after a particularly bad incident concerning children that she babysits, she takes the initiative to leave the oppressive cult and forms a group of her own of "Seekers", those hollowed from their experiences in Fishers. Her faith in God remains strong, and she considers herself to be searching for the truth.
15894908	/m/03qf453	The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian	Sherman Alexie	2007	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with Arnold's explanation of the fact that he was born with an excess of cerebrospinal fluid in his skull (an event that he describes as being "born with water on the brain"). The brain damage that resulted from this and the surgery that he underwent to remove the excess fluid, left Arnold with many physical problems. Some of these problems are that he has forty-two teeth (which are pulled out to make him have the right amount), is skinny, and has an over-sized head, hands, and feet. He also suffers from poor eyesight, experiences frequent seizures, stutters, and has a lisp. Mistreated by others on the reservation because of these problems, Arnold is regularly beaten up and given such nicknames as "retard" (for the brain damage that he has sustained) and "globe" (for his large head). His family, like the majority of the other reservation families, is incredibly poor: This point is emphasized when Arnold's adopted dog Oscar begins to suffer from intense heat exhaustion and Arnold's father is forced to shoot him to avoid having to pay the expensive veterinary treatment necessary to save him. Arnold's life on the reservation is brightened by his friend Rowdy, described by Arnold as being "the toughest kid on the rez". Rowdy's father abuses him and his mother, thus they are constantly and noticeably covered in bruises. Despite the hardships that he experiences and his cold, tough attitude, Rowdy stays true to his friend Arnold and tries to protect him from some of the physical abuse he is dealt. On Arnold's first day of high school, his geometry teacher, Mr. P, hands out textbooks to the students and Arnold realizes that his book has his mother's maiden name written in it. She was thirty years old when she gave birth to Arnold, thus making the textbook at least forty years older than Arnold himself. Arnold is angered and saddened by the fact that the Spokane reservation is so poor that it is unable to afford new textbooks for its high school. Because of this, Arnold violently throws the book, which ends up colliding with Mr. P's face and breaking his nose. The school subsequently suspends Arnold. During Arnold's suspension, Mr. P meets with Arnold to reveal to him his sister's dream to be a romance writer, he is not angry with him, and that "You [Arnold] have to leave this reservation". A week into the school year, Arnold transfers to Reardan High School, a school full of rich white kids in the countryside. Arnold is the only Indian at Reardan besides the team mascot. Although Arnold's mother is an ex-drunk, his father a drunk, and they are poor, they still allow him to transfer to Reardan. Despite his initial troubles adjusting to the new school, Arnold begins to enjoy Reardan, developing a crush on a white girl, Penelope, and making friends with a student named Gordy. Arnold tries to talk to Rowdy about his crush on Penelope, but their relationship is strained by Arnold's decision to go to Reardan. In contrast, Arnold and Penelope develop a closer relationship and even go to a dance together. Arnold makes the Reardan varsity basketball team and plays two games against his former school, Wellpinit, and specifically Rowdy. Before their first game begins, someone in the crowd hits Arnold with a quarter splitting open his forehead. Arnold gets Eugene to give him stitches in the lockerroom and returns to the game. Wellpinit wins after Rowdy elbows Arnold in the head and knocks him unconscious. In their second meeting, Reardan wins with Arnold guarding Rowdy and holding him to only four points. Arnold believed he wanted to win, but after seeing the Wellpinit players' faces after their defeat, he cried and felt ashamed of himself. Throughout the novel, Arnold is struck by many tragedies—his grandmother is run over by a drunk driver, Gerald, while walking home from a powwow, his father's best friend Eugene is shot in the face by his friend Bobby after fighting over the last drink of alcohol, and his newlywed sister and her husband die when their mobile home is accidentally set on fire after a night of heavy drinking. In the end, Arnold and Rowdy reconcile at turtle lake and resolve to correspond no matter where the future takes them, concluding the story.
15895443	/m/03qf4sq	The 5th Horseman	Maxine Paetro	2006-02-27	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Somebody dies. A young mother is recuperating in a San Francisco hospital when she is suddenly gasping for breath. The call button fails to bring help in time. The hospital's doctors, some of the best in the nation, are completely mystified by her death. How did this happen? Apocalypse nears. This is not the first such case at the hospital. Just as patients are about to be released with a clean bill of health, their conditions take a devastating turn for the worse. Accompanied by the newest member of the Women's Murder Club, Yuki Castellano, Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer probes deeper into the incidents. Could these cases just be appalling coincidences? Or is a maniac playing God with people's lives? When someone close to the Women's Murder Club begins to exhibit the same frightening symptoms, Lindsay fears no one is safe. The 5th horseman rides. It is a wild race against time as Lindsay's investigation reveals a hospital administration determined to shield its reputation at all costs. And while the hospital wages an explosive court battle that grips the entire nation, Lindsay and the Women's Murder Club hunt for a merciless killer among its esteemed medical staff.
15897785	/m/03qf91z	City of the Sun	David Levien	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 A 14 year old boy is kidnapped on his usual newspaper round. His parents' relationship suffers through the unknowing of their child's fate. A former police officer, who lost his own son at a young age and who has issues with the police hierarchy, accepts the case.
15903020	/m/03qfm6x	Each Little Bird That Sings	Deborah Wiles			 This book tells about how death is a part of life. Comfort Snowburger's Aunt Florentine dies in her garden, and her Uncle Edisto dies the day had planned a picnic. Comfort is very worried about her next funeral, which will be her 248th, and whose it will be. She is also annoyed with the burden of having to care for her cousin, Peach, after the funeral. After a while, this is when Comfort realizes that her true friend had been there all along with Peach. All Comfort wants to do now is hide in her closet with Dismay. However, Comfort, Peach and Dismay are caught in a flash flood at the cemetery, and struggle to stay above water on an oak tree. Comfort tells Peach to let Dismay go, but Peach doesn't hear her, submerged underwater. Comfort pries Peach’s fingers off of Dismay's collar, leaving the dog to float down the stream alone. Dismay's collar is found by Declaration close to a drainage ditch near Lake Tallyhoma. Knowing he is dead, Snapfinger holds a memorial service for Dismay,but Declaration and Comfort are still upset with each other. Main Characters: *Comfort Snowberger is the 10 year old main character of the series, and the whole book is told from her point of view. Her family owns the Snapfinger funeral home. *Merry Snowberger is Comfort's little sister. *Tidings Snowberger is Comfort's older brother. *Uncle Edisto Snowberger is Comfort, Tidings, and Merry's great uncle. *Great Aunt Florentine is Comfort, Tidings, and Merry's great aunt who loves studying Snapfinger. *Peach Shuggars is Comfort's 8-year-old cousin. At the beginning, he is described as a spoiled and annoying little boy, who ruins every family occasion. However, throughout the book, he shows his sensitive side. *Declaration Johnson is Comfort's best friend from the beginning of the book. Her father owns the company which makes the local newspaper called, "The Aurora Country News". However, halfway through the story, Declaration made friends with mean, snobby, and very spoiled other girls, and alienated Comfort, leaving her alone. After Dismay's incident, Declaration wanted to befriend Comfort again, but Comfort becomes upset and rejects her pleas. *Dismay is a Black Labrador that Comfort got as a gift for her 4th birthday and gained everyone's love very quickly. Dismay dies in chapter 20, and Comfort and Peach are very upset.
15916434	/m/03qg904	The Clone Republic	Steven L. Kent	2006-09-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In a galactic military largely consisting of clones raised to be unquestioning soldiers, Wayson Harris initially has difficulty as he seemingly isn't a clone and he does not follow orders as quickly. His first official posting, a desert planet named Gobi, seems like a punishment as there are many things wrong with it (poor discipline, contaminated drinking water). After Harris and a mercenary named Ray Freeman prevent an ex-general from killing all the marines and raiding the armory, Harris is promoted and transferred to the flagship Kamehameha. The Kamehameha deploys to the planet Ezer Kri, which is attempting to leave the Unified Authority and establish a nonstandard culture (namely, a Japanese one). After a platoon is killed by locals (they ignite a fuel pumping station), marines are ordered to occupy the largest town on the planet, where Harris runs into Freeman. Freeman sends another soldier back with Harris's helmet on, then leads Harris to the hotel across the street where they ambush Kline, a man they'd dealt with in Gobi, wielding a rifle that has been set to track Harris's helmet signal. During his interrogation, Kline is revealed to be a Morgan Atkins separatist (an influential terrorist group). Shortly thereafter, a fleet of separatist ships carrying the deserters from Ezer Kri flee from the planet before anyone can react. ; Wayson Harris: The protagonist of the book, born the (novel) year 2490, Wayson has better than average tactical skills, responds fast to orders for a human (though not fast enough to avoid some mild reprimands). He originally thinks he's the only human at the orphanage he came from, but it is later revealed he is a newly minted Liberator-class clone. He was created at Unified Authority Orphanage #553. Like all Liberator-class clones, he is engineered to be ambidextrious, but has a preference to be right handed. ; Vince Lee: A clone who has partial realization that he is a clone, or at least enough doubts to make him worry that he will activate the gene that would kill him for that knowledge. He originally transfers Harris to the Kamehameha via shuttle, which is where they become friends. He is an avid bodybuilder and hates other clones. He ends up finding a way to suppress the death reflex by heavily abusing medications, and starts a small band of similarly realized clones. ; Ray Freeman: A massive, tall, black, bald freelancer. In a time when race normally doesn't exist anymore, Ray really stands out. A humorless mercenary, Ray sometimes goes to extremes to get the knowledge he wants. His physical strength is roughly the strongest in the series, only potentially being matched by the Seal-class clones, though their fighting style relies less on brute strength and more on speed. He also has in his possession various types of robots and at least two ships, all heavily armoured and armed. He wears pitted and scratched up body armour over coveralls, made of stiff bulletproof canvas. Normally has an oversized particle beam pistol, a low yield grenade (described as only having the power to take out a few buildings) and a grenade launcher. He is described by Harris as being intimidating and having intensity radiate from him, and also has intimate knowledge of UA standard equipment. ; Tabor Shannon: One of the last Liberator-class clones, Shannon is standoffish on duty, (being described as gruff, ruthless and profane by Harris) but is considerably more relaxed off duty. He is described physically as tall, thin and wiry, with steep shoulders, fine white hair and sunburned. He is presumably killed on Hubble in a type of cave in, trying to flush separatist enemies out. He is very self-sacrificing as an officer, and indeed, his last command was to try to save as many of his unit as possible, at cost of his own life. ; Captain Gaylan McKay: Under Klyber, he had been given access to high profile assignments, color guards, and generally bypassed many other officers despite his rank. He has an informal style of command, treating all as equals. He also is mindful of the equipment the soldiers use; something else uncommon for ranking officers. He explains this as being due to his visor once blacking out in the middle of a fight and him nearly shooting his commanding officer. This was later revealed to be part of a more elaborate way to retrieve the camera footage in Harris's helmet for study; allowing the UA to confirm who had attacked Gobi station. ; Fleet Admiral Bryce Klyber: Klyber is the commanding officer of the Kamehameha. He is one of the highest decorated officers in history. He is described by Harris as looking incredibly gaunt and skeletal, the impression is that he could be physically snapped like a twig, but in contrast, his personality and charisma are very pronounced. The only black mark on his record is the Liberator clones he made, which ended up attacking whole worlds. He has an unusual style of command in that, while his fleet is up to date and generally devastating, his own personal command ship is currently the single oldest ship still in service. He has actually upgraded almost everything on the ship itself so that it can easily match anything the newer ships have, but because of its smaller profile and obsolete nature, it is continually underestimated. ; Admiral Robert Thurston: A prodigy, Thurston bests Klyber in a simulated battle so effortlessly, that he gets to control the UA fleet and redesigns most of it. Most of the officers give him grudging respect. ; Admiral Che Huang: Secretary of the Navy, Che Huang, in a bid to get more power, manages to overthrow Klyber and install his own man (Thurston) aboard the UA's flagship the Kamehameha. ; Kasara and Jennifer: Two ladies that Harris and Lee met while in Honolulu. The pair had been saving up all year to go. Kasara is easily the more fun loving and reckless of the two, and is the one that suggested Harris to fight the Adam Boyd clone. Jennifer has a fling with Lee, and Kasara has a fling with Harris. Nearer the end of the book, there is a small mention that Kasara got married when she went back home, but it is debatable on if it lasted. They both are in the second book. ;Lector, Marshall, Saul: three other liberators who also fought in the Galactic Eye and went around killing many people thus getting liberators banned. They also knew Klyber was making more Liberator Clones so they went around killing them but they could not find Harris until he was on the Kamehameha with Klyber. When they were discovered by Huang they were instantly put back into service under Thurston. ;Kline: A pathetic fool who takes orders from Crowley which managed to get a grenade glued to his hand by Ray Freeman, which he later cut off because the grenade was timed, on Gobi and a rifle butt to the face when Harris takes the rifle from him before it locked on to his helmet to shoot, on Ezer Kri. ; InterLink: A type of catch-all media technology. Radio, TV, phone, email/internet all in either civilian headset form, or built into the bubblehead armor. Used frequently to communicate over large distances in civilian application, used as a squad radio in combat. Can be jammed and disabled fairly easily by experienced saboteurs. The civilian version is called mediaLink, and is essentially the same, but with no expectations of security. ; Cloning: Most soldiers are clones, bred in vats, and raised in what the government calls orphanages. There are currently only three classes of clones; Liberator class, Seal class, and Bubblehead class. They are demonstrated is being able to have sexual intercourse, but none shown yet able to bear offspring. Part of their Neural Programming is that they would rather be "in the thick of it" than sitting around idle. ; Standard Clones: The UA has countless clones, and for the most part, they are treated like expendable equipment. They wear combat armor, and are generally referred to as bubbleheads because of the shape of their helmets. They are all cut from the same helix and are unquestionably loyal, responding to orders before thinking about them. They are designed to think that they are not clones, and a gland in their bodies releases a deadly toxin into their blood, killing them instantly, if they ever accept that they are clones. This has been called the death reflex. ; SEAL Clones: A new type of clone designed by Huang and Thurston. Harris calls them "Adam Boyd" after fighting against one, who had been given that name. Undersized, thin, and with clawed fingers, they are easily identified by a branding tattoo. The military uses an establishment in Hawaii to give them real fighting experience; each pretends to be 'Adam Boyd' and collectively they have only ever lost one fight, to Harris who killed the clone he fought. They are far faster than the standard clones, meant for guerrilla operations, assassinations, and surgical strikes. They have no death reflex. ; Liberator Clones: These clones were originally bred to fight an unknown enemy in the Galactic Central War approximately 40 years before the start of the book. Liberator clones were designed with a special gland that releases a synthetic hormone during combat that gets them addicted to battle. Following the massacres on several planets by Liberators, this type of clone was outlawed, and all clones since then were bred with the death reflex. The history books refer to them as 'Liberators' because the more accurate 'Butchers' would have been too disrespectful. ; Particle Beam Pistol: Extremely accurate pistol. Has roughly the same range as the m27 but has a higher armor penetration value. Can be set to self-destruct. Can be considered useless if there is enough particles and debris in the air. Is preferred in low gravity and thin air, but is unreliable in sandy locations as sand that gets trapped in the housing can scratch up the mirrors. Costs 2000$ on the open market. Has internal components that have to be replaced on a regular basis. ; m27: A lightweight, standard issue assault rifle. This is the standard weapon for clones, as it is reliable and easy to maintain. It is depicted as being scoped, with a detachable rifle stock, ; Armored Transport "Kettle": Orbital dropship. Has effective atmospheric shields that burn ozone upon entry causing the cabin to smell bad and heat up. The name 'kettle' is not its specific name, nor the name of any one specific ship; it is the universal nickname given by all marines to the class of ships. ; Kamehameha (ship): The oldest ship to still be used in the UA standing army and the last of the Expansion-Class of fighter carrier. Continually upgraded by its commander, named after the Hawaiian king. Its age by comparison to the rest of the fleet makes it be continually underestimated by foes. This is normally a fatal error as the ship has the best shields possible, and has a weapons load out capable of matching, if not besting, any of the newest ships in the galaxy. Retrofitted to be modern, this is the flagship of roughly every commanding UA officer. Can carry approximately 2300 marines and 15 Armored Transports. ; Doctrinaire (ship): The newest ship, under the command of Klyber, a bat-winged shaped assault vessel. Roughly the biggest ship of the fleet, it was originally meant to be kept a secret. It has multiple launch bays and a fuel supply that takes up two-thirds of the remaining internal space because it has engines that are 5 times the size of those used on Perseus-Class fighter carriers. Self broadcasting. It is 2 miles wide, twice as wide as a Perseus-Class fighter carrier.It is that large that it needs Dual-Cold fusion reactors to power the onboard electrical systems. It has 13 decks, including the bridge. If one chose to walk from one of the two hangar bays to the bridge, it will take approximately 25 minutes.The Doctrinaire has two forward-facing fixed cannons that are used for bombarding stationary targets, that are both laser and paticle beam enabled. The Doctrinaire also has 300 particle beam turrets, 20 missile stations and 15 torpedo stations positioned around its hull. The Doctrinaire has a complement of 280 Tomcat Fighters. ; Perseus-Class Fighter Carrier : New class of fighter carrier which replaced the old Expansion-Class, like the Kamehameha. This class is 45 hundred feet long and 51 hundred feet wide, twice as big compared to the Expansion-Class. Can carry 11000 marines and can carry 3 times more tanks, transports, gunships and fighters than the Expansion-Class. ; Broadcasting: A series of mirrors between Earth, Mars, and countless other destinations. In effect, it is essentially a relay transporter. Plans are found of the main facility among the Morgan Atkins separatists intel. Without the broadcasting array, countless worlds would not be able to sustain life for more than a few months. When destroyed later in the series, it causes galaxy wide panic, and many planets simply die off due to unsustainable populations having insufficient resources. Ships that Self-Broadcast capable need to be at least 1'000 miles from any Broadcast Discs to prevent causing any damage to the Discs. It is believed that Mogat (GEF - Galactic Eye Fleet) have been modified in some way not to have this effect.
15919825	/m/03qgmm1	Between Two Seas		2008-01-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story starts in 1885, Grimsby, England. Marianne is the illegitimate daughter of a once wealthy English woman and a Danish father, who left her mother not knowing that she was pregnant, and promising to return to England one day. Marianne's mother is dangerously ill and on her deathbed, gives Marianne some money, telling her to search for her father in Denmark. Marianne's mother dies, poor and friendless, living in squalid surroundings in Grimsby. And so Marianne starts the perilous journey to Skagen, Denmark to find her father. The journey is long and hard, and finally she arrives at Skagen, now penniless and destitute, and foreign, unable to speak Danish, only to find that her father, Lars Christensen, has been dead for years! So that was the reason why he did not return for her mother! Marianne is stranded in Skagen with nowhere to go, and so is forced to stay with a poor fisherman's family as a servant. They live in a horribly dirty house with grime on the walls and windows, where the children are covered with lice, the mother suffers from post-natal depression, the father is a drunk and they have barely enough food to live on. Nevertheless, Marianne works and lives there in exchange for a little bit of food and lodging. Marianne is afraid to tell anyone of her birth, fearing that they will despise and ridicule her, as everyone did in London. However, she befriends a girl called Hannah, who is also an illegitimate child. She is surprised at how everyone in Skagen accepts Hannah into society and does not seem to mind about her origin. She is still afraid to tell anyone, even Hannah, about her birth, though. She discovers that her father had a brother, who still resides in Skagen! So now she has an uncle! She contemplates on telling him about her existence, however, she decides against it on finding that he has a reputation for being a very strict man. She is afraid that he will despise her birth, even though they are family. She becomes close friends with his son, and grows to treat him like a cousin, although he himself is unaware that they are related. She falls in love with a young fisherman named Peter, but her love for painting and rumours about her friendship with a French painter, separates them. They come together again at the end, and Peter proposes. She accepts but, saying she wants to carry on learning to paint. She is also reunited with her father, who was really the man she thought was her uncle.
15922234	/m/03qgt7z	Born To Rock	Gordon Korman	2006-03-28		 This book centers on the life of 18 year old teen Leo Caraway, a member of the "Young Republicans" group at his school. He discovers that his biological father is not the man he thinks he is, but a punk rocker named King Maggot (real name: Marion X. McMurphy). Leo's scholarship to Harvard University is revoked after giving a classmate help on an exam. He joins Maggot's band, Purge, as a roadie, to convince Maggot to pay his tuition. He has many adventures working as a roadie. Further on in the novel, however, he discovers that King Maggot is not in fact, his biological father. It is instead Bernie, the man Leo considered up until that point to be his cousin. Even though Maggot is not his father he chooses to help because Bernie is an unfit father. Maggot pays for Leo's tuition money for Harvard university.
15923588	/m/03qgxlq	Plum Lucky	Janet Evanovich	2008-01-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Diesel and Stephanie end up teaming up with a strange man who thinks he's a leprachaun in an effort to save a horse named Doug and Grandma Mazur.
15924713	/m/03qgz8q	Backup: A Story of the Dresden Files	Jim Butcher	2008-10-31	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Thomas Raith discovers that his younger half-brother, Harry Dresden, has taken a case that could cost him his life. Lara tells Thomas to meet a courier with the latest intel on the Oblivion War. Lara and Thomas are the only Venatori, Oblivion combatants, in the White Court. But first, he feeds on Michelle Marion - a vampire has to eat. Thomas obtains his nourishment by feeding on the clients in his hair salon. During the shampoo phase, his Hunger feeds upon Michelle’s life energy. Thomas feeds lightly, holding his Hunger in check by sheer force of will. Without this restraint, Thomas' Hunger would control him, which would be fatal for Michelle. After lunch, Thomas goes to meet the courier. The courier is Justine. The message is the Ladies of the Dark River, aka The Stygian Sisterhood, are in town. While Thomas was dithering around at the salon, a Stygian took a child. Then, she used the kidnapping to dupe the one person in Chicago who could hinder their cause, Harry Dresden. He doesn't know that his client is using him to bring one of their Old Demon-Goddesses into this plane of existence. The deity of the Stygians gains power from the knowledge and belief in its existence. The more people who know about the deity, the greater its power. Part of Thomas’ duties as a Venator is to obliterate all knowledge and talk of the Old Gods and Demons. Thomas cannot tell Justine and Dresden about the Oblivion War. But, Thomas can help Dresden from the shadows and give him some backup. Using a tracking spell, Thomas locates Dresden near the Pavilion in Millennium Park. It's an ambush. The Stygian has a glamor, making her look and track like Dresden. She and two ghouls attack Thomas. Instead of killing Thomas, the Stygian casts an illusion to change Thomas' appearance. Thomas kills the ghouls, but the Stygian escapes. Thomas has been careless and reckless; she could have just as easily cast a killing spell. For some reason, she wants Thomas alive. In over his head, Thomas goes to Dresden's apartment to consult Bob and have the illusion removed. Thomas asks for Bob's help, but he cannot reveal the true identity of Dresden’s client. Bob refuses to help. If Thomas will divulge the whole truth about the danger Dresden is facing, Bob will reconsider. Thomas makes a bargain. He will tell everything, but Bob can only tell Dresden - or anyone else - if it will not endanger Dresden’s life. Thomas relates the perilous knowledge about the Old Gods and Demons. At a certain level of human awareness, these Old Gods and Demons can return to the mortal world. Dresden’s client is a member of one of the many factions working to restore that awareness. Dresden is being set up. When he finds the kidnapped child, he will also find a grimoire, the Lexicon Malos. As a warden, Dresden is honor bound to give the book to the White Council. The Council will publish the grimoire, believing that the mass dissemination will weaken the rituals. This is how they dealt with the prior incident. By publishing the Necronomicon, its summoning rituals became diffused and weakened. The Lexicon poses a different danger. The publication would raise the human awareness to the point where the Old Ones could re-enter the world. In one night, Dresden’s involvement and the aftermath could help the Stygians win the Oblivion War. If Dresden finds out about this plot, the Stygians will kill him. If Dresden tries to give the grimoire to the White Council, the Venatori will kill him. Either way, Dresden will die. If Thomas can find the grimoire before Dresden, he can save Dresden's life - but only with Bob's help. Bound by his word, Bob must help Thomas save Dresden while never revealing the true identities and motivations of the factions. Bob speculates that the Stygian didn't kill Thomas because Dresden would sense Thomas' death in her aura. Thomas realizes that she cast the illusion on him, hoping that Dresden would mistake him for the kidnapper and kill him. Clever, actually. Thomas decides to use this illusion to his own advantage. Bob helps Thomas locate the real Dresden. He and the Stygian have staked out an abandoned warehouse guarded by ghouls. At 4 AM, Dresden makes his move. He takes out the ghouls and breaks into the warehouse. Thomas uses the diversion to get into the warehouse ahead of Dresden. He finds the Lexicon and puts it in his backpack. He could leave, but the Stygian has messed with his little half-brother. Payback time! Thomas jumps into the role of a bloodthirsty cultist just as Dresden bursts through the door with the Stygian in tow. Disguised by the Stygian's illusion, Thomas threatens to harm the child tied to the altar. The Stygian is surprised. Dresden hits Thomas the cultist with a blast that blows him across the room. Thomas kills the lights and goes after the Stygian. Able to see in the darkness, the Stygian slashes Thomas with a poisoned dagger. Thomas leaves with the grimoire before Dresden or the Stygian can do any more damage to him. By poisoning Thomas, the Stygian awakened his Hunger. To overcome the poison, Thomas must feed very deeply - fatally. He stalks the Stygian until she is alone. In her hotel room, Thomas gives in to his Hunger. The Stygian never has a chance. When the sun rises, the illusion melts. Thomas looks like himself again. After a long cleansing shower, he visits Dresden's office. Dresden relates the events of the past night. The rescued boy ran home to his real parents. The real parents want the police to arrest Dresden. His client skipped out without paying. Thomas commiserates and offers to buy him breakfast. After all, it's a terrible thing to be unappreciated.
15928089	/m/03qh24q	One for the Road			{"/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature"}	 The book is a non-fiction travel book, narrated in the first person by the independently travelling author. Three different journeys from the period 2001-2003 are described in three main chapters: The Utterly Deep South While traveling in Patagonia the author manages to get a discounted "last minute ticket" to a cruise to Antarctica. He has to wait a couple of weeks in South America for the cruise to begin, and spends the time hiking in Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and near El Calafate in Argentina. The main part of the chapter is dedicated to describing what visiting Antarctica is like. In and Out of Africa A travelogue from two months of independent travel ("[backpacking]") in Southern Africa. The trip begins and ends in Cape Town, looping through South Africa and its neighbouring countries, most of the time visiting national parks and small towns. Summer in the Pity A month of travel on and along the Trans-Siberian Railway, starting in Vladivostok and ending in Moscow, with several stops in between. A part of the distance is done by boat, from Kazan to Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River.
15931932	/m/03qhcvj	Poison Study	Maria V. Snyder	2005-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Not everyone is pleased by Yelena's acceptance of the role of food taster, especially not General Brazell, whose son Yelena was in prison for killing, despite it being in self defense. His want for her death causes Valek, the assassin and right hand man to the Commander, who rules Ixia with an iron fist without ever bending the rules, to take her under his protection, despite having fed her Butterfly Dust to prevent her escape: if she doesn't have the antidote every day, she will die. But unfortunately for Yelena, she is developing strong magical abilities that she cannot control, which are illegal and a cause for death in Ixia. But she must use her abilities to protect herself not only from other magic users coming into Ixia, but against those who plot against the commander and against Valek, who she is slowly developing feelings for. In the end, she and Valek discover that General Brazell and a rogue magician from Sitia are behind the plot, as well as the kidnapping of many children from Sitia, including Yelena, for their magical abilities. The magician has stolen the souls and magic of many of the young children, and has opened the Commander's mind to magical influence. Yelena and Valek defeat him and capture Brazell, but the Commander's mind has fled and it is up Yelena and her magic to find it. She discovers that the Commander was born a woman, and promises to keep that secret. But for her use of magic in the inflexible land of Ixia, she must be put to death. Valek delays the death order long enough for her to leave with the other kidnapped children to return to Sitia, where she nervously hopes to be united with her family and to learn to control her magic.
15933140	/m/03qhf6r	The Queen's Gambit	Walter Tevis	1983	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Named after a chess opening favored by the protagonist Beth Harmon, The Queen's Gambit traces Harmon's life from her childhood in an orphanage through her struggles with tranquilizer and alcohol addiction to her triumphant rise through the Grandmaster ranks. Eight-year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable -- until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she’s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as she hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting.
15940266	/m/03qhqv3	Bone Dance	Emma Bull	1991-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the opening scene, Sparrow cannot recall what took place in the preceding 36 hours. Awakening yet again in a novel place with new hurts, the urge to fix the problem is intense. On the way to enlightenment comes a cryptic Tarot reading from friend Sherrea, abduction by a dead man animated by what might as well be a Loa, and introduction to a Vodun-based community that is dedicated to replacement, and if necessary to overthrow, of the status quo in the city. The latter has the individual most responsible for the inter-continental war near its power apex, a character who is also the revenge target of another survivor from his kind. Those are the "Horsemen," modified people who can move their consciousness from body to body, much like the central figure in Mind of my Mind by Octavia Butler. The second half of the story shows Sparrow's awkward progress toward a fully human condition and becoming a valued member of a community, and is capped by a closing conceit: that the whole telling has been an autobiography.
15940383	/m/03qhqzy	The Gypsy Game				 In this sequel, the children have decided to play that they are Romany, and begin their usual practice of copious reading and reproduction of authentic practices. While April plunges in with enthusiasm, the more Melanie learns, the more something seems to be holding her back. Meanwhile, Toby Alvillar reveals that he actually has some Gypsy ancestry. He believes he can get some of his grandmother's things to use as props for the new game. However, the children never get around to playing the Gypsy Game. Toby becomes the subject of a custody dispute between his eccentric artist father and his wealthy, conservative grandparents. Under the extreme pressure, Toby runs away and begins a life on the street. Along the way, the kids discover some nasty historical facts about the Romany, not to mention the hard lives of the homeless people Toby meets. The story goes on to describe how the children locate Toby and decide to abandon their fantasy games, taking on real-world responsibilities.
15943052	/m/03qhtfp	Caverns	Ken Kesey	1989		 According to Kesey's "Introduction," the novel was inspired by an actual news clipping, an Associated Press story on October 31, 1964 entitled "Charles Oswald Loach, Doctor of Theosophy and discoverer of so-called 'SECRET CAVE OF AMERICAN ANCIENTS,' which stirred archaeological controversy in 1928." The rest of the novel appropriates Loach as its central character. Set in the 1930s, Loach is imagined as a convicted murderer (he killed a photographer to protect the secret of the cave) who is released from San Quentin Prison, in the custody of a priest, to lead an expedition to rediscover the cave. The novel—described by The New York Times as Indiana Jones meets The Canterbury Tales—features a motley crew of characters: Father Paul, an unbalanced priest; an archaeologist, Dr. Jocelyn Crane; Loach's brother, a museum curator; publisher Rodney Makai and the "Blavatskian Makai sisters"; their African-American driver, Ned; and Juke and Boyle, World War I veterans still suffering the ill effects of mustard gas. The characters spend most of the novel together in a military vehicle making their way to Utah where Loach says the cave is located, and getting caught in various comic misadventures along the way.
15948847	/m/03qh_gq	The Dragons of Babel	Michael Swanwick	2008-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following the same time period as the Iron Dragon's Daughter; a crippled dragon crawls to a village in Avalon, somewhere in Faerie minor, and crowns himself king. He makes young Will his lieutenant and by night, he crawls in the young fey's mind to get a measure of what his subjects think. But, the dragon’s arrival sets Will on a life-changing adventure where he will encounter danger, deceit, and a truth that was conceived with his birth. Later on, Will travels with Centaurs, acquires a surrogate daughter named Esme who has no memory of her past and may be immortal, witnesses the clash of Giants, and travels to Babel as a refugee. There, Will rises as underground politician, and finds his one true love, a high elven woman to whom he dare not aspire.
15957491	/m/03qj7jv	The Dead of Jericho	Colin Dexter	1981-06-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Detective Chief Inspector E. Morse of the Thames Valley Police meets Anne Scott at a party hosted by Mrs Murdoch in North Oxford. Six months later Anne Scott is found hanging in her kitchen at 9 Canal Reach, Jericho, Oxford. Initially Chief Inspector Bell, from the closer Oxford Central station on St. Aldate's Street, is assigned to the case; but a fortnight later Morse takes over the investigation and subsequently both of Mrs Murdoch's sons, Edward "Ted" Murdoch and Michael Murdoch, as well as Anne Scott's former employers, brothers Charles Richards and Conrad Richards, and Charles's wife, Celia, come to the attention of Morse. As do Ms Scott's neighbours, including the nosy handyman George Jackson, and Sophocles's Oedipus Rex (the latter also figures in episode 3.1 of the spin-off TV series Lewis).
15958476	/m/03qj821	How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater	Marc Acito	2004-09	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with a discussion of the character’s summer goals: Paula losing her virginity and all of the characters having “madcap adventures.” Then Edward meets his father’s girlfriend, Dagmar. While driving around they spot a green Ceramic Buddha and come up with their plan called Creative Vandalism, which means bringing “flair and vitality” to the suburbs without doing anything illegal. Ed then finds out Dagmar and his father Al are getting married. Edward throws a big party at his house to celebrate the end of the summer and a lot of people he doesn’t really know show up. He ends up revealing that he has strong sexual feelings for Doug. Edward learns that his step mom, Dagmar, is a “raving lunatic.” Then Edward’s world falls apart when he learns that his dream of going to Juilliard and becoming an actor may be hindered because his father refuses to pay for Edward’s college unless he goes into business. Natie decides that Edward needs to get a job to pay for college. Doug asks Edward if he bisexual, Edward says yes. Edward quits the school play in order to do his job, and in his absence Doug and Kelly grow close. Kelly wants to have sex, but Edward keeps avoiding it. Edward declares himself financially independent of his father and needs somewhere to live, so he moves in with Kelly. Edward grows more in love with Doug and eventually admits it to him. Edward needs to go to an audition for Juilliard so he goes to New York. He goes to a gay bar and sees his teacher, Mr. Lucas, who takes him back to his apartment to get him out of the bar. In the morning Edward wakes up hung over and late for his audition. During the audition Edward can’t remember his lines and breaks down ranting about his father and how much he hates him, which fits his speech. He leaves convinced he has not got in, but he does. Edward breaks up with Kelly, so now Kelly and Doug are dating. Doug (who is fluent in German; Dagmar's native language) and Edward learn that Dagmar has been stealing money form Edward’s father they decide to steal it and put it into a scholarship that Edward will be sure to get. On a choir trip to Washington D.C. Doug and Edward almost have a gay moment. However, Ziba invites a past boyfriend to hang out at the hotel but he refuses to leave. He is reduced to repeated vomiting followed by passing out. They then take incriminating pictures of him to use as blackmail to get Edward money for college. Edward then visits Paula in New York and Edward finds out that he didn’t get the scholarship. Dagmar knows that Edward stole her money but can’t prove it. Aunt Glo gets arrested. Her car was used in vandalism cases over the past summer and the Buddha was reported stolen. When Edward goes home he finds Ziba and Kelly fooling around in bed, They go to pick up the Buddha and on the way back are stopped, the Buddha is discovered and they are arrested. After some negotiating and phone calls they are let out and must return the Buddha. Kelly and Edward have sex and it progresses for a while but ultimately Kelly goes back to Ziba. To create the scholarship they steal a dead little girl’s identity, and it turns out to be the late sister of one of Doug’s friends: he keeps quiet and even gets a scholarship out of it. The school production of Godspell goes really well, phenomenally well and Edward is just reassured that this is what he wants to do for his whole life. The good feeling form the play is cut short however because Dagmar is getting closer to finding out about the money. To counter this they decide to take incriminating pictures of Dagmar to get Al to divorce her so that he will pay for Juilliard. While they are taking the pictures Edward’s mother returns form her spiritual journey in South America. After some discussion with her Edward finds out that Al must pay for him to go to the college of his choice, it says it in the divorce papers for his mother and father. Al agrees to pay if that’s what Edward wants also him and Dagmar split up. In the end everybody goes their separate ways for college.
15960045	/m/07b_mq	Fateless	Imre Kertész		{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The novel is about a young Hungarian boy, György "Gyuri" Köves, living in Budapest. The book opens as György's father is being sent to a labor camp. Soon afterwards, György receives working papers and travels to work outside of the Jewish quarter. One day all of the Jews are pulled off of the buses leaving the Jewish quarter, and are sent to Auschwitz on a train without water. Arriving there, Georg lies about his age, unknowingly saving his own life, and tells us of camp life and the conditions he faces. Eventually he is sent to Buchenwald, and continues on describing his life in a concentration camp, before being finally sent to another camp in Zeitz. György falls ill and nears death, but remains alive and is eventually sent to a hospital facility in a concentration camp until the war ends. Returning to Budapest, he is confronted with those who were not sent to camps and had just recently begun to hear of the terrible injustice and suffering.
15963557	/m/03qjd77	The Whitby Witches	Robin Jarvis	1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the deaths of their parents, eight year old orphan Ben and his older sister, Jennet, have been pushed from foster home to foster home for the majority of their young lives. After living at a dreary hostel for a few months, the mistress Mrs Rodice has the children hauled off to live in the seaside village of Whitby, with relish. Ben and Jennet do not get along as Ben possesses a sixth sense meaning that he can see the spirits of dead people, including his parents. Jennet does not share this gift and therefore assumes he is lying and deliberately causing trouble. It is Ben's uncanny ability to see the dead that has caused him and his sister to be shunted between homes, as the families fostering them are unnerved by Ben. Upon arrival in Whitby, the children are adopted by a kind and eccentric elderly spinster named Miss Alice Boston, a former university lecturer. She and the children take to each other almost immediately, despite the children being a little bemused by Miss Boston's (or Aunt Alice as they grew to call her) odd mannerisms and lifestyle. Miss Boston tells Ben the scary stories of Whitby much to his delight as he adores horror stories, but Jennet does not approve as she believes it will encourage his lies and his stories that he can see their dead parents. Miss Boston is friends with many of the elderly spinsters in the Whitby community. The widowed Mrs Prudence Joyster, whose late husband was in the army; the batty, cat-loving Miss Matilda Droon, Miss Edith Whethers the postmistress, and the wealthy and grossly obese Dora Banbury-Scott, twice the widow who refuses to grow old gracefully. Ben and Jennet settle into Whitby and Ben encounters the "Fisher Folk", or the "Aufwader" as they call themselves, a reclusive and mysterious tribe of humanoid dwarf-like beings who are unseen by all except those with the sixth sense. Ben meets Nelda Shrimp, the youngest of the diminishing tribe and her aunt, Hesper Gull. They tell them that their kind are forbidden to fraternise with humans as it has done nothing but cause grief in the past. But Nelda has a premonition that Ben is involved in the fate of their tribe. The Fisher Folk were once plentiful in centuries past, but after the witch-doctor of the tribes, Oona, fell in love with a human fisherman and together they produced a half-breed child. Enraged with this act of violation the Lords of the Deep, spirit-lords of the oceans, killed the fisherman and Oona committed suicide. Cheated of revenge, the Lords of the Deep turned to the Fisher Folks and condemned all the females to die in childbirth, meaning that the tribes would never prosper. Nelda's own mother fell victim to this terrible fate along with so many other female Aufwaders. Meanwhile, a newcomer in town, Mrs Rowena Cooper, opens up a new antiques shop, and begins making herself very popular with the Whitby residents, by donating large sums of money to charity and charming even the most disagreeable neighbours. After being invited to tea at Mrs Cooper's house, Miss Boston and Mrs Joyster are instantly suspicious; Mrs Cooper appears ditzy, childish and too friendly for their liking. However, she has managed to woo over Miss Whethers, Miss Droon and Mrs Banbury-Scott most of all, whom she practically force-feeds expensive chocolates. After they leave, Miss Boston and Mrs Joyster share their doubts about Mrs Cooper, and Mrs Joyster is certain she has seen her before, but cannot recall where or when. She returns to her seaside cottage and reads her late husband's journal. In its pages, she discovers a horrifying truth. Rowena Cooper is in fact an evil woman named Roslyn Crosier, who, along with her diabolical husband Nathan, tormented and tortured an African tribe, inflicting unspeakable cruelty on them using black magic. The journal briefly mentions a gigantic black dog which terrified the tribe. Overcome with fury, she confronts Cooper, but is killed on the way home after an enormous black dog attacks her.
15963620	/m/03qjd99	A Warlock in Whitby	Robin Jarvis	1995	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the seaside town of Whitby just before Bonfire Night, the novel is set a few months after The Whitby Witches. Having failed to retrieve the moonkelp, Nelda is forced to marry the wicked aged Esau Grendel. A fish Demon from the distant past that was imprisoned beneath the Earth after the imprisonment of the Monstrous serpent Morgawrus, awakes once more and haunts Whitby, eating cats. Rowena Coopers husband, Nathaniel Crozier travels to Whitby to find out what happened to his wife. Tricking Aunt Alice into leaving Whitby for London to see her dying friend Patricia, Nathaniel realizes the staff of Hilda was one of four magical objects created to defend the world against Morgawrus. Nathaniel plans to destroy these guardians and unleash Morgawrus upon the world, planning to use him to take over. Followed by Ben, Nathaniel goes to a church where he finds one guardian and destroys it. He then discovers that the second guardian belongs to the elderly Mr Roper, a friend of Bens whom he kills although not before Roper is able to give the guardian to Ben. Nathaniel threatens Jennet who is bewitched by him, forcing Ben to hand over the guardian which he promptly destroys, loosing Morgwrus. He then goes to try and take over Morgawrus while setting the Fish Demon loose in the Aufwader caves, knowing that the last guardian is somewhere there. In exchange for allowing Esau to make love to her, conceiving their child, Esau gives Nelda the last guardian which she gives to Tarr. Esau is killed by the Fish Demon before it is killed as the caves are destroyed as a result of Morgawrus breaking free. Nathaniel attempts to bewitch Morgwrus but is stopped by Aunt Alice who has returned from London, Patricia having been murdered by a slave of Nathaniels. Nathaniel is killed by Morgawrus who attempts to kill Aunt Alice. However the old woman uses the book of shadows, given to her by Patricia, a book which contains all she knows, to defeat Morgawrus who is imprisoned once more. But this brave act is to much for the old woman and her body gives up. She becomes a feeble helpless old thing, reliant on the work of her friends, family and Doctor to just continue living.
15965644	/m/03qjg4s	Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice	Victor Appleton	1911	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom Swift & friends journey to the Arctic in his custom airship to seek for the legendary Valley of Gold. When his map is stolen by his longtime nemesis, Andy Foger, who has himself built a competing airship, the race is on across frigid Alaska to see who will be the first to find the limitless fortune.
15966019	/m/03qjg9l	Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers	Victor Appleton	1911	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/06bm_y": "Edisonade"}	 Tom Swift flies his airship to the mountain tops of Colorado to seek for the secret of the Diamond Makers: criminal scientists who have figured out the formula of manufacturing a limitless fortune in diamonds. But these rogues will stop at nothing to keep their secret. Tom & friends are soon captured and left to die in a collapsing mountain.
15966642	/m/03qjgvs	Tom Swift and His Wireless Message	Victor Appleton	1911	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom Swift & friends decide to trial an experimental airship near the New Jersey coast, and are unexpectedly swept out to sea by hurricane winds. Unable to steer or navigate without tearing the airship apart, the hapless crew must simply let the storm take them wherever it will. Unfortunately, the storm proves too much for the craft and Tom makes a crash landing on the uninhabited and crumbling Earthquake Island.
15967014	/m/03qjh54	Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout	Victor Appleton	1910	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom Swift enters an upcoming race with his specially-designed prototype electric race car. But as he makes the final preparations and adjustments, days before the race, he discovers a plot that would bankrupt not only his family, but also everyone else that relies on the local bank (which is the target of a nefarious bank run scheme). Tom must solve the mystery and stop the criminals behind the plot before he will test himself on a 500 mile race against some of the best cars and skilled drivers in the United States.
15967269	/m/03qjhcb	Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat	Victor Appleton	1910	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom Swift's father has been working diligently on a secret project, which he reveals at the beginning of the book as a submarine. With the submarine, named the Advance, he plans to enter a contest for a government prize of $50,000. While in New Jersey to launch the submarine, Tom reads in a newspaper that a ship named the Boldero sank off the coast of Uruguay during a storm, taking down with it the sum of $300,000 in gold bullion. Tom persuades his father to pursue this treasure as opposed to competing for the government prize. While picking up a hired sea captain, Tom's plans are overheard by a contestant in the government contest, and a rivalry for the treasure begins. The other submarine, named the Wonder, soon sets off to follow Tom and his crew after they embark on their journey. Tom's crew consists of Tom Swift, his father, Mr. Sharp, Captain West, and Mr. Damon. Each of these take chores on board, including Mr. Damon, who seems to be the cook of the voyage. The submarines hold up at an island to resupply, and during the night, the Advance tries to slip away from the Wonder. Tom knows that the Wonder and its crew is not certain of the location of the wreck, and is merely following the Advance, hoping to steal the treasure at the last moment. After the Wonder tries to ram the Advance, Tom and his father take to the heavy underwater cannons, and successfully disable the Wonder, leaving her damaged and immobile. Tom and the Advance seize the opportunity to push ahead. An engine mishap forces the Advance to surface off the coast of Brazil, where they are soon confronted by the Brazilian battleship São Paulo. Tom and his crew are captured and scheduled to be executed two days later, and the submarine turned over to the Brazilian government. Tom and his friends are held prisoners aboard the battleship. The night before their execution, a hurricane strikes, and the São Paulo is pushed aground by the winds. The crew take this opportunity to break out and escape, while the battleship's crew are busy trying to save the ship. Using cover from the ship, which is acting as a shield from the waves and winds, Tom's group take to a lifeboat, and escape to the Advance, diving just in time to escape the Brazilian crew of the São Paulo. It is not long before the Advance arrives at the wreck. They struggle to find it at first, but soon are successful. In their extreme-depth diving suits, Tom and Captain West enter the waters where the wreck is, which is at a depth of over 2 miles—similar to the RMS Titanic. Sharks attack but are fought off. Gold was found in a secret compartment behind the Captain's safe, and recovered from the Boldero just in time to escape from the now-arriving Wonder. With the $300,000 in gold as a deposit at Tom's local bank in Shopton, the bank considers Tom one of their biggest investors, and with this new power, Tom manages to bring his chum, Ned Newton, a promotion.
15968805	/m/03qjjk6	Tom Swift and His Airship	Victor Appleton	1910	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In Tom Swift and His Airship, Tom Swift has finished his latest invention- the Red Cloud, a fast and innovative airship. Tom is anxious for a cross-country trial, but just before he and his friends take off, the Shopton bank is robbed. No sooner is Tom in the air than he is blamed for the robbery. Suddenly, he's a wanted fugitive but doesn't know why until he's half-way across the country. With no safe harbor or friend on the land below, Tom must race back to Shopton to clear his name before he's shot out of the sky.
15968948	/m/03qjjn_	Tom Swift and His Motor Boat	Victor Appleton	1910	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom Swift's father, a world famous scientist, has been robbed of one of his greatest inventions, and it's up to Tom to bring the criminals to justice without getting himself killed in the process. Unfortunately, Tom himself quickly becomes a target of the rogues' anger when he unknowingly buys a boat in which they had hidden a stolen diamond. Tom must use every bit of his wit to keep himself ahead of the gang of hardened felons.
15969720	/m/03qjk6w	Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle	Victor Appleton	1910	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/06bm_y": "Edisonade"}	 Tom Swift, in his first adventure, has purchased a motorcycle and immediately gets busy modifying it. Eager to test his enhancements, Tom volunteers to transport his father's revolutionary turbine design plans across the country roads to Albany. Unaware of the evil corporate investors who want to steal the invention for themselves, Tom falls into their trap and finds himself facing the greatest peril of his young life. It is up to Tom not only to retrieve the blueprints and turbine prototype, but also to bring a gang of hired thugs to justice.
15969915	/m/03qjkb_	Conflict of Interest		1992	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 (from Amazon) A propane truck falls from an overpass, killing dozens of innocent people on the freeway below. When Robert Kerrick, one of Houston's most respected trial lawyers, agrees to represent the families of the victims, a bizarre chain of events is set into motion that ultimately threatens his career, his family, even his life. Pitted against the ruthless lawyer Jimmy Coleman, partner in the mega-firm Booker & Baine, Herrick finds himself careening between black-tie balls and opulent private jets to an underworld populated by drug pushers and topless dancers. With hundreds of millions of dollars and his own life and practice at stake, one lawyer struggles to find justice for his clients even while a psychopathic murderer lurks in the shadows.
15970886	/m/03qjl09	The Cancer Journals	Audre Lorde	1980	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book consists of an introduction and three chapters, each featuring passages from her diary. The first chapter, 'The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action' is a speech first given on December 28, 1977 at the Lesbian and Literature Panel of the Modern Language Association. Starting with an excerpt from The Black Unicorn, Lorde calls on the reader to relinquish silence and speak out. The second chapter, 'Breast Cancer: A Black Lesbian Feminist Experience', is a day-to-day account of her cancer experience, from biopsy to mastectomy. Lorde focuses on the importance of the love received from the women around her throughout her experience. She also harbours her solace at talking about it with other lesbian cancer survivors. Further, she mentions her refusal to wear a silicon breast after the operation. In the third chapter, 'Breast Cancer: Power vs. Prosthesis', Lorde dwells on her coming to terms with the outcome of the operation, with one breast. She explains that although it would be fine for women to resort to a prosthesis if they wanted to, it seems like a cover-up in a society where women are solely judged on their looks. She also harbours the possibilities of alternative medicine, arguing that women should look at all the options.
15977957	/m/03qjr4_	My Mortal Enemy	Willa Cather	1926	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Myra and her husband Oswald return to their fictional hometown of Parthia, Illinois, to visit their relatives. Nellie and Aunt Lydia then leave to spend the Christmas holiday in New York City with them. They live on Madison Square. They dine with Ewan Gray, a friend who has an infatuation with another actress, Esther Sinclair. Oswald receives silver-buttons for his shirt from an old Western acquaintance, and asks Lydia to pretend she gave them to him to thwart his wife's jealousy. Later Myra and Nellie go to the opera; in a loge they spot an erstwhile friend of Myra's, which makes her sad. Later they take a hansom around a park and chance upon a rich acquaintance of Myra's, which leads her to be scornful over her own poverty. They spend Christmas dinner with friends of the Henshawes - both artists and people of privilege. Later they spend New Year's Eve with artists again. A few days later Nellie witnesses the Henshawes argue; the husband takes her out to lunch. Soon after, she and her aunt are to return to Illinois. On the train, they are joined by Myra, who has argued with her husband again and is going to visit a friend in Pittsburg for a change of scenery. Ten years later, Nellie moved into a shabby flat in a little town on the west coast, and bumps into the Henshawes. Myra is now bedridden and Oswald works full-time; their upstairs neighbours are atrociously noisy, regardless Myra's illness. Nellie takes to visiting her at tea-time; she also takes her out by the sea. Myra expresses her regrets over her husband. (If she had not married him, her great-uncle would have bequeathed her his fortune. Instead, she eloped and he gave it away to the church.) Oswald takes to having lunch with a young woman Once, Nellie asks her why she is so harsh on her husband, and Myra dismisses her. Shortly after, her condition gets worse. She dismisses everyone and runs away; she is found dead by the seaside the following day. Her husband expresses no remorse about his wife; he loved her despite her difficult conduct. After her death he moves to Alaska and later Nellie hears about his death.
15990347	/m/03qk4h8	The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Wind	Fuyumi Ono	1993-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Born in Japan and raised as a human, Taiki is overwhelmed when he's brought back to the kingdom of Tai, where he's told he's a kirin. With little knowledge or guidance, he must trust his latent instincts to choose a king for the Kingdom of Tai from among dozens of men and women who seek the position. Will the frustrated Taiki, who can't even figure out how to transform into animal form, make the right choice? And more important, will he discover the kirin that lives within?
16001986	/m/03qkgqc	Ways to Live Forever	Sally Nicholls	2008-01-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Sam Oliver McQueen is an eleven-year-old child, terminally ill with leukaemia, who, during one of his special education sessions decides to write a book about his life. In the book he talks about his life while being ill, the things he'll remember when he dies and, in a section called "Things I want to do", Sam makes numerous lists of questions. With the help of his teacher and friend Felix Stranger (who is also ill with cancer), they conduct various experiments, Sam and Felix break world records (including the world's smallest night club). However things take a turn for the worse and Felix becomes ill, this surprises Sam as Felix was known as a 'fighter'. But in this scenario the opposite happens and Felix dies in hospital. This leaves Sam devastated. Sam and his family go to Felix's funeral. Sam is puzzled by the sadness and writes in his book that everyone should have been happy and making jokes and Felix should have worn his favourite top. Having said, that he told in his book he wanted to make sure no one would do that at his funeral. A couple of weeks later, the doctors realize the medication isn't working as well and Sam makes the decision to stop all medication. Sam finishes his list of "Things to do" and about a month later he has a dream: all his family (his dad, his mum and his sister Ella) are all sleeping together… then he wakes up and sees his dads face. His dad says "I love you", but Sam drifts back asleep. Sam dies in his sleep; but he has given his parents a form to fill in about his death so he could finish his book. The last comment is made by his mother, who says, "Sam died quietly in his sleep. He was in no pain." The book was made into a film during 2010.
16002410	/m/03qkgz8	Killing For Culture		1994		 Killing For Culture is a look into death on film including mondo films and snuff films. It's divided into three sections, each with its own focus. This section deals with snuff films as seen in fictional movies. It starts with a chapter on the infamous 1976 film Snuff. Made by husband-and-wife team Michael Findlay and Roberta Findlay in 1971, it was left unreleased until 1976 when Allan Shackleton added a new ending, a scene depicting what was supposed to be the film crew for the preceding movie murdering one of the actresses. Shackleton marketed the film as authentic snuff and the film was a huge hit. The second chapter starts with an examinaion of Michael Powell's 1960 Peeping Tom. The film follows the exploits of a photographer, who in his spare time kills women while filming them. Considered obscene and depraved, even with its lack of nudity or blood, the film ruined Powell's otherwise good career. The next film looked at in this chapter is Joe D'Amato's 1976 film Emanuelle In America, part of the Emanuelle series. Emanualle, played by Laura Gemser, is a photographer and journalist who investigates a snuff film and gets a little too close to the truth. This section of the book covered Mondo films, a series of exploitation "shockumentaries" that presented "actual" footage of deviant sexual activities or death. Many scenes in these films, while represented as real, were false. This section of the book discusses actual deaths caught on film, as presented through the media. One of the main subjects of the section was the broadcast suicide of Pennsylvania State Senator R. Budd Dwyer.
16006687	/m/03qklj1	Pattern for Conquest	George O. Smith	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns Earthmen who are overwhelmed by alien invaders, whom they then attempt to conquer from within.
16006765	/m/03qkll3	Celia en el colegio			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A sequel to Celia, lo que dice (1929), the story narrates Celia's adventures following her father's decision to give in to her mother's wishes of sending their daughter to a convent school for girls. At the school, Celia has many difficulties adapting to the strict rules of the nuns and is often reprimanded by Madre Loreto, whom Celia describes as "very strict and scolds much". During her first days there, Celia is convinced that her father is not at all happy with the change and that he greatly misses his little girl, thus Celia tries to get herself expelled from the school by trying to make the nuns believe she suffers from a sleepwalking problem. Celia is unsuccessful, but she soon learns that though her father misses her, he is willing to allow her to stay at the school, which is good for Celia, who actually enjoys her new home. Celia is the favorite among many of her classmates, but she does have many quarrels with a few other girls who find her behaviour disruptive and inappropriate. Madre Isolina, an English nun Celia describes as "very intelligent and understanding" is Celia's favorite nun at the school because she sometimes helps her out of mischief. Celia tries desperately to be good, she even wishes to become a saint. The priest, Don Restituto, tries to guide Celia, but when the girl starts creating more trouble than usual in her attempt to become a saint, or at least a martyr, he gives up on her and forbids her from being either. Following the end of the term, the other girls leave the convent, but Celia is left there with the nuns since her parents have left the country hoping to find a better job elsewhere and earn money to stabilize themselves economically. Doña Benita, the old lady that had looked after the girl for some time before, comes to the school and takes Celia with her for some time. During those days, Celia and the old woman visit a circus, and from there Celia imagines all sorts of tales following her imaginary escape with the gypsies (tales she narrates in Celia, novelista). In the summer, en elderly woman, Doña Remedios, who is soon mocked and renamed Doña Merlucines by Celia and some of the nuns and workers at the school, arrives and she and Celia become fast enemies. Doña Remedios, who is very kind to Celia at first, is soon irritated by the girl's wild ways and wishes she had more discipline. After many quarrels between the two, Celia gets her revenge by filling the sleeping Doña Remedios' bed with cockroaches. Another schooling term begins and Celia's popularity with the other girl students begins to largely decrease. One day, an angry Tío Rodrigo, Celia's uncle, arrives at the school and demands to be allowed to take his niece away with him to her parents who currently reside in Paris, France. The book is told in first-person narrative from Celia's perspective, following a brief introduction in third person from the author's.
16009290	/m/03qknm3	Minions of the Moon	William Gray Beyer	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is a space opera about a contemporary man who awakens in the far future.
16010213	/m/03qkpcw	The Chosen	L. J. Smith	1997-02-01	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 This book begins with an introduction to the central protagonist, Rashel Jordan. Newly turned 5 Rashel is introduced to the Night World with the murders of her mother and her brother Timmy who she was "a whole month older than" by an unknown vampire, who is later revealed to be Hunter Redfern, a respected lamia elder. This traumatizing event is offered as the motivation behind Rashel's decision as a 17 year old to hunt and kill vampires. In the opening chapters the reader is offered an insight into her mind as she goes about her business after dark in Boston. Rashel's eventual love interest is also introduced at an early stage in the book. John Quinn, or 'Quinn' as he is known, is described in a melancholy state, reminiscing on his rebirth as a vampire and his early love, Dove Redfern. Similar to Rashel's inset hatred of vampires, Quinn is presented as hating humans due to the murder of Dove at the hands of his father. In this manner, the two central protagonists are provided with motivation to hate each other, though we suspect this hatred will be short lived. Quinn is discovered and captured by a group of vampire hunters and imprisoned in a cellar. Rashel, who numbers among the group, takes pity on him, and encourages her fellow vampire hunters to continue the hunt while she stands guard over the prisoner. She suspects that the others means to torture him, and intends to kill him honorably. Before Rashel can do this, Quinn engages her in conversation. Rashel finds herself attracted to the vampire and allows him to break free of his constraints. The two fight, however upon touching they find themselves drawn to each other and seem to see into each other's souls . Before Quinn can remove the ninja-type mask that Rashel wears, the other vampire hunters return and the couple are broken up as Quinn is forced to flee. When Rashel returns to the cellar area to search for vampires, she is just in time to rescue a human girl, Daphne, who has been captured by vampires and just managed to escape. With Daphne's help, Rashel goes to a club where vampires, including Quinn, are capturing human girls for the slave trade. Her plan is to be captured herself so she can infiltrate a vampire enclave; the plan works, but on the island enclave, Rashel learns that the girls are not to be normal slaves, but will be drained dry in a Bloodfeast; something illegal in the Night World. Escaping with the girls to the Warf, Rashel, masquerading as a girl called Shelly, is saved from an angry werewolf guard by Quinn, who does not know her true identity as the girl in the cellar first, but later connects the two instances after Rashel fights him and defeats him. Choosing not to kill him, Rashel knocks Quinn out and returns to the house to kill the vampires who were going to participate in the Bloodfeast. Quinn recovers quickly and captures Rashel. Always a stickler to the rules, Quinn tells Rashel he is going to make her a vampire so that they can be together without breaking the Night World law that states a Night Worlder can not fall in love with a human. Despite Rashel proclaiming that she would stake herself as soon as she woke up as a vampire, he bites her anyways, sure that she'll change her mind once he turns her. However, when he drinks from her the Soulmate Principle takes over and their minds merge. Quinn is then able to see that Rashel hates vampires because of the one that killed her mother. Now understanding what drives her, he decides to accept her the way she is and tries to help her stop the Bloodfeast. When they confront the other vampires, they learn that Hunter Redfern is the one who staged the Bloodfeast, and Rashel recognizes him as the one who killed her mother. Cruel as ever, Hunter taunts Rashel by revealing her childhood friend: Timmy, still exactly the same as he was the last time Rashel saw him, a four year old child, now a made vampire, turned presumably by Hunter. Quinn and Rashel face off against Hunter and the vampires from the Bloodfeast. As they prepare to fight, Nyala, a fellow vampire hunter who has gone a bit insane due to the death of her sister and discovering about the Night World, appears with a burning gasoline bottle. Because the house is wood, it is a death trap for vampires, and they flee as Nyala sets the house on fire. Quinn and Rashel escape with Timmy, whom she refuses to leave behind. As soon as they get out, Rashel wants to go back and rescue Nyala who is still in the burning house. Quinn goes instead to Rashel's dismay, but returns alive with Nyala in tow but passed out. While she was waiting for Quinn, Timmy crankily asks her why she saved him, and with tears in her eyes she replies, "Because my mom told me to take care of you." Her mother had asked that of her at the beginning of the book. After Quinn comes out, they leave on Hunter's yacht, the other girls already having left. Rashel knows the place for them now is Circle Daybreak with the "damned Daybreakers," a group consisting of Night People and humans who are trying to work together to make peace among the Night World and the human world.
16012951	/m/03qkrxr	Cosmic Engineers	Clifford D. Simak	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a group of earthmen and a girl, who is awakened from suspended animation, being contacted by aliens with whom they join to prevent the collision of one universe with another.
16015603	/m/03qktnt	Renaissance	Raymond F. Jones	1951	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story concerns two worlds: the remnants of Earth, which has been destroyed, and Kronweld, which exists in another plane.
16018753	/m/03qkx1x	The Starmen	Leigh Brackett	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is a space opera concerning the only race that is able to endure the rigors of interstellar travel.
16020246	/m/03qkygl	Iceworld	Hal Clement	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel concerns an interplanetary narcotics agent who is forced to work on an incredibly cold world (from his point of view — the planet is in fact Earth), where he teams up with natives of the alien planet (humans) in his attempt to stop the smuggling of a dangerous drug (tobacco) to Sirius. Although the story involves both aliens and humans, it is told primarily from an alien perspective.
16021545	/m/03qk__c	Mel Oliver and Space Rover on Mars	Joseph Samachson	1954	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of a boy and his sapient dog as they join a Martian circus.
16026877	/m/03ql7dz	The Forgotten Planet	Murray Leinster	1954	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The "forgotten" planet had been seeded for life, first with microbes and later with plants and insects. A third expedition, intended to complete the seeding with animals, never occurred. Over the millennia the insects and plants grew to gigantic sizes. The action of the novel describes the fight for survival by descendants of a crashed spaceship as they battle wolf-sized ants, flies the size of chickens, and gigantic flying wasps.
16028070	/m/03ql89w	Erec rex	Kaza Kingsley			 Life is not easy for twelve year old Erec Rex. His single mother works constantly, but can barely support her adopted kids. They have moved again, into an apartment so tiny that Erec sleeps with the washing machine. And worse, there is a strange force in Erec that makes him to do odd things. No matter how hard he fights it, his urge to obey grows until it is impossible to resist. Usually, it makes him do good things, like putting pillows at the bottom of stairs moments before his sister crashes down. But what if, someday, he is made to do something terrible? Then one morning, Erec's mother is missing. His power commands him to find her, taking him on an adventure that will change him forever. He meets Bethany, a kindred spirit who also lost both parents in a mysterious past. Together, they discover the magical worlds of Alypium,Ashona, and Aorth, where the knowledge of magic is kept. Things in Alypium are amiss: their King Piter is hypnotized, and his castle lies on its side. When Erec tries on his mother's glasses, he finds he can see her wherever she is. She is a prisoner of King Pluto of Aorth, one of the triplets that rule over the Kingdom of the Keepers. Erec can not understand why Pluto would want her ... but secrets start to tumble out. Erec learns he was born in Alypium, and he may not be safe there. He is upset she has hidden so much from him, and loses trust in her. His only hope to rescue his mother is to find ingredients for a formula to blast her free. While searching for them, he enters contests to choose the next three rulers of Alypium. The contests, including the "Pro and Contest", where they are reprimanded by movie characters, and the "Under Mine", are challenging enough, but somebody is attacking the winners, making kids afraid to compete. Erec's magical power helps him save friends from such things as swamp gas, attack fleas, and a minotaur. Balthazar Ugry, not only evil, but with a terrible smell, seems to be the culprit. Just looking at him makes Erec tremble. What's more, Erec discovers someone is planning to take over Alypium, as well as the other magical lands—Aorth and Ashona. Could this be Ugry as well? When the blasting formula is ready, Erec crosses King Pluto's deadly dungeons to save his mother, but he makes a mistake. He doubts her advice, and almost loses his life to the deadly destroyers and shadow demons. Amazed he survived, he puts on the glasses to find he freed his mother. With renewed confidence in each other, they plan a strategy. If he becomes the next king, he can save Alypium from Ugry, and his family could come out of hiding. Odds stacked against them, Erec and Bethany advance to the final contest, but something is not quite right. He must retrieve an eye from a ferocious dragon. King Pluto wants the eye, but Erec learns he must keep it. He escapes to the castle, where he is thrown into the clutches of his most deadly enemy. Ever since Erec Rex returned home, his siblings Danny and Sammy have been acting strange. They follow him, staring like lost puppies. The shock of Erec and their mother missing must have been too much for them. Erec returns to Alypium to tackle the twelve trials necessary to become king. When Danny and Sammy follow him there against his mother's wishes, Erec finds out they are impostors. The real Danny and Sammy have been kidnapped. Erec follows clues that lead him into the Green House, where President Inkle lives. He starts to believe the strange Hermit hanging around the castle might have something to do with the twin's disappearance. Erec wonders what harrowing escapade his first trial will be, and learns he has to . . . open a nestful of dragons eggs. Not only are the eggs difficult to open, but feeding the dragon hatchlings stings his fingers. On top of searching for Danny and Sammy, Erec is attempting to learn magic from his magic tutor Mr. Peebles. To make matters worse, the annoying Balor and Damon Stain, through a loophole in the magical law, are competing against him. Balor, Damon, and Rock Rayson are also working with Erec's enemy, Baskania, and if Erec doesn't win his quests, the future of the Kingdom of the Keepers won't look good. While Erec opens the dragon eggs, Damon Stain keeps interfering with him so Bethany and Jack try to fight him off resulting in one of the baby dragons getting hurt. After all the eggs hatch, it seems as if Balor won. After being defeated, Erec tries to feed them, hurting his fingers in the process, and the dragon mother comes back. After communicating with each other using Erec's dragon eye, the dragon mother thanks them and gives Erec a scroll, the scroll of Alithea which holds all of the answers in the universe. Erec's next trial is to "defeat the monsters in otherness", but he is not sure how to begin. He hears that two children are being held prisoner of terrible monsters called vogum in "Otherness", the wild magical worlds outside of Alypium, and he realizes they might be Danny and Sammy. A "snail mail" love letter, written on a real snail shell from a secret admirer, turns into a correspondence that helps Erec wind his way through the perils of Otherness to find the twins. Erec discovers the "monsters" are actually quite nice. In fact, Tina, his secret admirer, is a hydra herself. Baskania has massed an angry horde to "kill the hydras and save the children", planning to kill the hydra and valkyries for his dark purposes. Erec stands before Tina and her people, arms outstretched, pleading with the mob that the hydras are good, but Baskania twists his words. In a last attempt, Erec holds up the Scroll of Alithea. Shots ring out, and Erec waits for the sting of arrow and bullets, but then there is silence.He didn't get hit because Aosqueth, the dragon, blocks a death spell from Baskania. He then takes Aosqueths eye, giving him 2 eyes. The mob has dropped its arms, but Baskania vanishes. All seems lost, but Erec, using his dragon eye, finds Baskania just as he brought back one of his ancestors from the dead. With the help of this ancestor, and now the dragon eye he will take from Erec, Baskania will rule the world. With the help of an ancestor of his own, and using what he has learned, Erec saves the day, though in the process discovers two dangerous secrets. Baskania is madder still, and more determined to kill Erec and take his dragon eye. In book 3 of the Erec Rex series, Erec is faced with even more daunting tasks, choices, and dangers. Baskania is somehow getting information out of his friend, Oscar Felix. He cannot trust his friend. When Erec goes to collect his quest, Baskania is there. He pulls the quest out of Al's Well, but it is torn. All it says is "get behind". Erec goes in search for the Well of Delphi so he may talk to the fates in person. He does so but the fates are not much help, and just laugh and giggle like fangirls. Oscar suddenly shows up and demands to know how his father died. The fate tell him "Rosco killed him". But they are not alone. Balor Stain shows up just as Erec asks the fates who his father is. The fates become confused and think he means who is Balor's father. Balor turns out to be a clone of Baskania. The latest contest for Erec is to "get bee-hind and set it free". A Bee Hind is a mystical hind (deer) that attracts bees, not to mention the Substance. Erec must take this bee-hind from its home and let it roam free to spread the Substance all over the world. But the Bee-Hind is protecting a man, who had been a lackey of Baskania until he outsmarted him (he apparently did "something bad" to Ugry under Baskania's orders), and his son. If Erec removes the Bee-Hind, his new friends will be killed by a manticore. Erec eventually sets the Bee-Hind free, but instead of running away, he stays behind. He tells Bethany to go home, but she will not, even when he tries to trick her into leaving. Erec later saves the day by luring the manticore into a hole in the Substance, killing it. Erec's next task is to retrieve the five Awen from their mystical hiding places and unite them, a herculean undertaking that has laid waste to all those who have attempted it. Erec collects the Awen with the help of his friends, but the Twyth Boar is a trickier matter. The man who owned it once upon a time was now dead. Erec goes back in time to retrieve it, and discovers something truly shocking - he is one of the royal triplets. Erec goes back to his time and confronts King Piter, his father. Piter reveals that if Erec found out, the castle would collapse, which it promptly does. Erec goes to connect the Awen to the Twyth Boar. He gains perfect knowledge of all things, but gets rid of it to help fix the Substance. But the Boar comes back to him, though the intelligence does not. Erec and Bethany later discover that Baskania has kidnapped her brother. She goes to save him, but Baskania appears and captures her and demands to know her secret. Bethany, put under a spell, tells him that the Final Magic is found in the smallest child of the first king of Alympium's greatest seer, which happened to be Bethany. Erec saves Bethany in the end, but she was shot with an old spell. She is put in a deep sleep. After a day or so, a thought strikes Erec. He kisses her and she wakes up. In the Three Furies, Erec Rex is faced with more challenges than before. His best friend, and secret crush, Bethany, has been captured by Baskania, and he could not get to her in time to save her. She had been writing him letters, but he had been so concentrated on his mixed feelings about her since he kissed her to save her in the last book, and had not answered her. Thanatos Argus Baskania is the Shadow Prince who is after the Great Secret, which will direct him to the Final Magic. Erec has cloudy thoughts that appear in times of crisis, that help him stop bad things from happening. Once before he had a cloudy thought and pretty much turned into a fire breathing dragon. His most recent cloudy though brought him to the realization that Bethany was in danger. And he was correct. She has been taken by Baskania. Erec must return to the Kingdom of the Keepers to rescue Bethany, but he won't be going alone. His family will endure this adventure with him. Erec must visit with the Fates to see if they can help him figure out a way to save Bethany. Of course, like any adventure to save a damsel in distress, the task ahead will not be an easy one. There will be only one way to save Bethany, the steps that Erec must take will be extremely challenging. These steps will guide him down his path to becoming the King of Alypium. He must go to the Nightmare Realm where no one has ever returned from. Despite the dangers, Erec continues forward with these quests, determined to rescue Bethany. By using his mother's Seeing Glasses, he is able to contact Bethany. Her condition is not good, since she is chained to a chair with small metal cones around her head, which pull out her memories and play them on a screen so Baskania can sort through them to try to find the secret to the Final Magic. Bethany tries to persuade Erec not to rescue her, since she is being held in Baskania's most protected fortress, knowing he very well might not come out alive. Erec begins to worry, but continues to plan on helping her escape. After plenty of ordeals and challenges along the way, Erec finally makes his way into the fortress to help Bethany, but not without being caught by Baskania first. Baskania in turn multiplies Bethany so that there are a hundred Bethanys in the room, and he continues to kill them with magic until he hits the right one. Using his own magic, Erec manages to multiply himself and Baskania into different copies. Using his dragon eyes, and a comment to the real Bethany about how he told her he loved her, Erec manages to get Bethany and his friends out of the fortress. But that is not all. After completing his fifth quest, Erec gets his next quest, which tells him to give himself up to the three Furies. In other words, he has to give his soul to them and die, so that they can take revenge on the world. He has a hard time leaving his family, and Bethany, but he manages to sneak away to Tartarus to speak to the three Furies. Initially, he was hoping to find some way out of Tartarus alive, but after speaking with the Furies, he believes it to be impossible. The Furies do escape Tartarus into the real world, but whether or not Erec makes it out too is undisclosed unless you read the book. Erec Rex has had many difficult tasks in the past but none like the task he has to face right now. Erec has lost most of his soul and has to retrieve it from the three furies. If Erec doesn't get his soul back soon, he will turn evil. Meanwhile his brother, Trevor, is in trouble and Erec needs to save him as well. Erec has also received his 7th task which is just as dangerous as the last. Bethany, on the other hand, is stuck at home with Erec's family and Jam. Erec is also trying to release the souls kept by the furies free. To do this, however, he has to give himself up to his worst enemy: Baskania.This couldn't be a worst time for Erec to be facing what he is. For more info read Erec Rex: The Secret of Ashona
16029050	/m/03ql962	Edgar Huntly	Charles Brockden Brown	1799	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 Edgar Huntly, a young man who lives with his uncle and sisters (his only remaining family) on a farm outside Philadelphia, is determined to learn who murdered his friend Waldegrave. Walking near the elm tree under which Waldegrave was killed late one night, Huntly sees Clithero, a servant from a neighboring farm, half-dressed, digging in the ground and weeping loudly. Huntly concludes that Clithero may be the murderer. He also concludes that Clithero is sleepwalking. Huntly decides to follow Clithero when he sleep walks. Clithero leads Huntly through rough countryside, but all this following doesn't lead to Huntly learning much about the murder. Eventually, Huntly confronts Clithero when they are both awake and demands that he confess. Clithero does confess, but not to Waldegrave's murder. Instead he tells a complicated story about his life in Ireland, where he believes he was responsible for the death of a woman who was his patron, after which he fled to Pennsylvania. Clithero claims to know nothing about Waldegrave's murder. One night, soon after Huntly goes to sleep in his own bed, he wakes up in a completely dark place made of rock, which he eventually determines is a cave. He is hungry, thirsty, and feels as though he's been beaten. He is attacked by a panther, which he manages to kill and then drinks some of its blood and eats some of its flesh. Looking for his way out of the cave, he finds that some Lenni Lenape, an Indian tribe, are holding a white girl prisoner at the mouth of the cave. Edgar kills the guard and rescues the girl. In their flight, he kills more Indians, who seem to have begun a war. By the end of the novel, Edgar learns (among other things) that he himself has been sleepwalking, that Clithero was indeed not involved in Waldegrave's murder, that Waldegrave was murdered by a Lenni Lenape Indian, perhaps one he himself had killed, and that he and his fiancee are both destined to inherit nothing.
16029439	/m/03ql9js	No Picnic on Mount Kenya				 Detained at P.O.W. Camp 354 near Nanyuki, Kenya, Felice Benuzzi from Trieste, together with two fellow-prisoners Dr. Giovanni ('Giuàn') Balletto from Genova and Vincenzo ('Enzo') Barsotti from Lido di Camaiore, escaped in January 1943 and climbed Mt Kenya with improvised equipment and meagre rations, two of them reaching a point above the Petit Gendarme, at about 5000 metres, high up the NW ridge. After an eventful 18-day period on the mountain (24 January-10 February), and to the astonishment of the British camp commandant, the three adventurers broke back into Camp 354. As reward for their exploit, they each received 28 days in solitary confinement, commuted to 7 days by the camp commandant in acknowledgement of their "sporting effort". From the flyleaf of the 1952 William Kimber edition of the book: :"One of the most unusual adventures of the war years has now been written by the man who led it, and who has the ability to tell his story with the accuracy and vividness that compels the readers to live through it with him. Felice Benuzzi was a P.O.W. in a British Camp facing Mount Kenya (5,199 m - 17,058 ft). The depressing tedium of camp life and the fascination of the mountain combined to inspire him with a plan. He first put the prospect of escaping to climb it to a fellow prisoner who was a professional mountaineer. The expert told him that the idea was mad, that they would need six months' training on first-class food and porters to carry equipment to a base camp. But Benuzzi was not to be put off. Eventually he got two others to conspire with him, a doctor and a sailor. Surreptitiously they improvised scant equipment and saved what food they could from rations. Their only 'map' of the mountain was a sketch of it on the label of an Oxo tin. :"And then they escaped, and went to climb the mountain. The sailor was ill immediately after breakout but decided to carry on. The lower reaches of Kenya are jungle and forest infested with big game. They were unarmed, and their encounters with the animals are some of the most exciting passages in the story. But Benuzzi writes with a simplicity and vigour that take you with him every yard of the way. At the foot of the highest peak the sailor was too ill to go further, and Benuzzi and the doctor went forward to the climax of their adventure. Their way back was as hazardous as the ascent, and the tension never relaxes until they at last break back into the P.O.W. camp from which they had escaped and give themselves up to the British Commandant."
16036731	/m/03qlkwg	Star Bridge	Jack Williamson	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The scattered planets are held together by the Eron Company, holder—at least apparently—of the secret of faster-than-light travel through the Tubes. The leaders of Eron are gathered on ancient Earth to dedicate a new Tube. Though aging General Manager Garth Kohlnar is nearing death from natural causes, the adventurer Horn has been hired by parties unknown to assassinate him. Making his way through the desert, past a gauntlet of guards and security forces, Horn encounters Wu, an aging Chinese vendor, and his curious shape-changing companion Lil, neither of whom seem capable of surviving the dangers and harsh conditions of the desert. Yet they are every bit his equal in reaching the celebration, descending from hiding to mingle with the wealthy, entertaining the idle while Lil steals and consumes their diamonds. Horn completes his mission, and in the desperate struggle to escape the ensuing manhunt, he encounters Wendre Kohlnar, the beautiful daughter and now possibly the heir-apparent of the dead man. Escaping through a transdimensional Tube in a space suit, Horn finds himself on the planet Eron, a world consumed by the Eron Company. Here he encounters a corrupt and effeminate aristocracy, a brewing power struggle over the succession, a covert revolution, a secret subway known only to the Directors—and Wu and Lil, at every turn displaying more mysterious knowledge and capability. The mystery of who actually knows the secret of the Tubes becomes increasingly important in the quest to become General Manager. Horn attends a meeting of the Directors in disguise, with Wu playing the role of Director Matal (the real one having been murdered by an agent of the ambitious Duchane, Director of Security). Horn and Wu rescue Wendre and escape while the other Directors are locked in a presumably fatal struggle. They make their way to the North Polar Cap and attempt to turn off the Tubes, finding that mere possession of pure Golden Blood is not, in fact, the secret of deactivating them. Troops and revolutionaries clash incoherently at the polar cap, and Horn is eventually captured and sent to the prison planet of Vantee. Forging an alliance with the outlaws there, he takes advantage of the political conflict in the home world to capture the prison, apparently rescuing in the process Peter Sair, the Liberator, the leader of the failed revolt against Eron wherein Horn learned his skills. Returning with Sair to the chaos of Eron, Horn is able to capture the critical polar cap Tube station and thus take control of the planet, which he hands over to Wendre, and she in turn to Sair. As Horn and Wendre Kohlnar interview the imprisoned Duchane, Horn is tricked into shooting the prisoner just before he can reveal a key secret: the nature of Wu. Wu, in turn, falls victim to the temptation to explain his curious place in history to Horn, his intended victim, but Horn is rescued by Wendre and Wu is apparently (finally) shot dead. Wendre and Horn plan to marry and move to the rural Cluster, far from her Eronian home. Is Wu the puppet master controlling all, or merely an immortal opportunist? Is freedom an illusion or a necessity, or both? The answers are recorded in a manuscript in Chinese that no one but Wu can read.
16037913	/m/03qlpc4	Noonshade	James Barclay		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the end of the last book Denser had cast dawnthief to destroy the Wytch Lords, and just to make sure they don't come back he opened a dimensional rip leading to nowhere. But unknowingly he had it opening into Sha-kaan's (the golden dragon in the last book) dimension. In this book the Raven have to close the dimensional rip hovering above Parve, which is growing. If they fail then the Khaan brood won't be able to hold the other, larger broods off.
16039594	/m/03qlw9c	Address: Centauri	F. L. Wallace	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns people with incurable injuries and defects who volunteer for the first interstellar flight.
16041414	/m/03qlzxy	Kirinyaga	Mike Resnick	1988-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story is set on an artificial orbital colony that recreates an African savannah environment. It follows a man named Koriba, the mundumugu of a Kikuyu tribe living there. Koriba was raised in a Western tradition and received several graduate degrees. Later, he led several Kikuyu colonists to Kirinyaga to recreate a traditional Kikuyu utopia. When he kills a newborn child he believes is a demon, Maintenance (the people who maintain the environment and orbit of Kirinyaga) decide to send an investigator to see if they need to interfere with and regulate the Kikuyu traditions. Koriba is unbending in his insistence that Maintenance not interfere with their traditions no matter how much they dislike them. In the end Maintenance informs Koriba that they will not tolerate the killing of infants, and thus he begins to train the young men of his tribe to be warriors.
16042000	/m/03ql_v4	Sargasso of Space	Andre Norton	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel starts with Dane Thorson getting assigned to work as a Cargo master apprentice on a Free Trader ship named Solar Queen. A Free Trader (not working for any intergalactic trading companies) means that the crew has to take on trading contracts with remote and recently discovered planets, which can be very dangerous and unpredictable. The crew wages all their saving, including their own salaries, to win a bid for trading right with the planet Limbo. Upon their arrival, they learn that intelligent life on Limbo is very limited and trading is almost impossible, and they also discover that they are not the only humans on the planet. The criminal group used sophisticated machinery to crash and loot various ships on the planet. Dane and his friends are able to contact the police and shut down the system the criminals used. At the end, Limbo is handed over to the police and Solar Queen gets a much better trading contract.
16044402	/m/03qm63k	This Fortress World	James Gunn	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a man's fight against the power of a future church.
16045550	/m/03qm75l	Play to the End	Robert Goddard	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Middle-aged actor Toby Flood is touring the South of England with a recently discovered play by Joe Orton called Lodger in the Throat. When the company arrive in Brighton for a one-week run at the Theatre Royal, Flood is confident that he will be able to use his stay to get in touch with his estranged wife Jenny, who has filed for divorce and is now living with Roger Colborn, a local businessman, on the outskirts of the city. Flood is surprised to find that it is Jenny who contacts him first: She tells him she is being stalked and, as she believes that her husband is to blame for it, asks him to do something about it. This is how Flood meets Derek Oswin, the alleged stalker, an eccentric man his own age who, just like his deceased father and grandfather before him, worked for the Colborns' family business until its liquidation in 1989. It turns out Oswin has written a history of the company but so far has not found a publisher. Talking to Oswin and to other people he meets, either by chance or by design, Flood more and more gets the impression that Roger Colborn is a dangerous man who has something to hide, and that Jenny must be saved from the clutches of the Colborn family before it is too late. Thus, Flood's interest in the affairs of a now defunct company is fuelled by his desire to win back Jenny, so much so that his professional life is affected. Trying to dig up dirt on the Colborns, he is drawn into a quagmire of events he cannot make head or tail of and eventually misses an evening's performance without giving any notice. When, however, on the following day he finds his understudy&mdash;the man who saved his neck the previous night&mdash;dead in the streets of Brighton he realizes the seriousness of the situation. In the course of one week homes are broken into, evidence is stolen, several people die, family secrets are uncovered, and an inheritance is reclaimed. Justice triumphs in the end.
16046766	/m/03qm93k	Donald Duk	Frank Chin	1991-02	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Donald Duk is a twelve-year-old Chinese-American. He is the son of a Chinese chef father named King Duk, and a Chinese mother named Daisy Duk. Donald has two older twin sisters named Penelope and Venus Duk. From the start of the book we are told how embarrassed Donald is of his name and of being introduced with his family. The story begins with Donald comparing himself to Fred Astaire. Donald believes he dances as well as Fred and throughout the novel considers himself the real "Chinese Fred Astaire" (91). Donald immerses himself in old black-and-white movies, and especially admires Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films. He envies the way "everyone" adores Fred when he dances. Donald wishes he could "live the late-night life in old black-and-white movies and talk with his feet like Fred Astaire, and smile Fred Astaire's sweet lemonade smile" (1). Donald Duk's father, King, feels Donald dreams too much in black-and-white, wanting to become as American as possible. Donald is ashamed of the way his family rejects American culture and that even when they watch television "they make everybody on the TV look Chinese!" (91). Donald does not want to be like them, he considers himself American because he was born in America. Donald's father tells him, "I think Donald Duk may be the very last American-born Chinese-American boy to believe you have to give up being Chinese to be an American" (42). As Donald and his family welcome the Chinese New Year, Donald's best friend, Arnold Azalea, stays over at Donald's home in Chinatown in order to observe Chinese culture and celebrate the new year. On the first day of the New Year, Donald's family begins to talk about Chinese immigrants working on the Central Pacific Railroad end of the Transcontinental Railroad. Donald begins to have dreams of being a part of the Chinese men that built that railroad. Every night he dreams of the days getting closer to the Chinese men finishing and ending up at Promontory Summit. As these dreams progress, he is inspired to research the work the Chinese immigrants put into this track laying and found no credit had been given to the Chinese immigrants in American history books. Suddenly Donald finds himself claiming that white people are racists. Upon reaching this conclusion, King tells his son that not all white people are racist and that up to that point, Donald was the one that was ashamed of who he was. Donald realizes he can be American born and be influenced by his Chinese heritage.
16050961	/m/03qmhm2	The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn				 The plot centers on the eponymous hero, Savva Grudtsyn. Savva is the son of Foma Grudstyn-Usov, a merchant from the city of Velikii Ustiug in the northern Vologda region of Russia. As a young man, Savva goes to live in the town of Orel, where he is offered great hospitality by a friend of his father's, Bazhen Vtory. Bazhen is an old, respected, well-to-do merchant who is married to his third wife, a much younger woman who remained unnamed in the story. Savva is seduced by this woman and begins a sexual relationship with her: the narrator makes it clear that the woman and the Devil are primarily to blame rather than Savva himself. However, while attending church on the holy festival of the Ascension, Savva repents and refuses to continue the affair. Bazhen's wife, furious, poisons Savva's wine with a powerful aphrodisiac that causes his lust to return. However, she refuses to submit to him when he approaches him and drives him away from the house. Savva, still desperately lusting for Bazhen's wife, makes a Faustian bargain with the Devil: he realizes he would be willing to serve the Devil in order to sleep with this woman. Sure enough, a demon appears in the guise of a brother figure from Great Utsiug. He informs Savva that he can have his heart's desire if he writes a letter to renounce Christ and God, which Savva promptly does. The extent of Savva's consciousness in writing the letter is unclear: Savva visits a golden city with this demon, a representation of Hell, where he is treated to a lavish meal at the table of Satan and presents his letter to him. They continue their travels to the town of Pavlov Perevoz, where a holy beggar tries in vain to get Savva to repent. He gains the respect of the Tsar and fights against the Poles in the city of Smolensk. The demon tells him he will face and defeat three brave warriors, but the third will injure him; indeed this comes to pass. Shortly afterwards, in Moscow, Savva falls seriously ill while living under the care of a Captain and his wife. His wife calls a priest to get Savva's confession administer the Last Rites, in case he does not survive. He finally confesses to the priest, but a multitude of demons appear and he faces extreme pain and torture when doing so. However, Savva is eventually saved and sees a vision of the Virgin Mary, John the Apostle and Metropolitan Peter of Moscow. He fully recovers physically with the help of the Captain, his wife and the support of the Tsar. He is called by God, and a miracle occurs in church before the Tsar and the Metropolitan: his letter denouncing God becomes a profession of faith to the Virgin Mary and God. Savva renounces his wicked ways, distributes his wealth to the poor and becomes a monk.
16052848	/m/03qmmhj	Caddie, the story of a barmaid				 The book tells the story of Caddie, starting with her birth in Penrith, New South Wales, in 1900 to a family living in poverty. They move to railway camps at Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains where her father works as a railway fettler. His abuse becomes worse when her mother dies in childbirth and her brother is killed at the Gallipoli landing. To escape her family, she moves to Sydney to work as a shop assistant with her friend, Esther, while still a young woman. She meets and marries a middle class man, John Marsh, and has two children by him. She feels constrained by the control taken by her mother in law, living next door, who treats her as undeserving of her son, as Caddie is not "pure merino" (i.e. with only free settler, not convict, ascendants). Caddie leaves when she uncovers John's sexual relationship with Esther. John and his mother endeavour to retain custody of the children, although Caddie believes this is really only to spite her. Caddie moves to the first available cheap accommodation, only to find that it is predominantly used as a brothel. Caddie finds better paid work as a barmaid, a morally suspect position- her first employer tells her to shorten her dress, for example, because "she was an artwork, and he liked his artwork on display." She places her children in the care of a Church- run home, having tried leaving them with carers who mistreated and neglected them. She visits weekly, often with her barmaid friend, Leslie. When the Depression hits, tips are less common and both women's incomes drop dramatically. Through Leslie, Caddie meets a Greek immigrant and business owner, Peter, with whom she establishes a loving relationship, with Peter buying gifts for weekend visits with Caddie's children. Caddie and Peter are distressed when Peter's estranged wife and ill father call him back to Greece to run the family business. The couple corresponds, with Peter reporting that his attempts to divorce his wife have been unsuccessful. With the effects of the Depression deepening, Caddie takes additional work by running tabs for the pub's SP bookmaker. She takes back custody of her children and rents a house, furnishing it with fruit cases for chairs. She befriends Bill "the Rabbittoh" (rabbit seller), Sonny his brother and their parents, and Bill helps her sign up for the dole (sustenance food provisions meant for those without income). Caddie saves some money when she starts running the SP books herself, the bookmaker having moved on to legal bookmaking at the racecourse. Caddie decides to leave the city, having been offered work on a farm. She moves house to share with rabbittoh for a week to save rent before moving to mountains for other work, but remains there when the work offer is withdrawn. She emotionally supports, and is supported by, Bill's family, including caring for his elderly father before his death. Around this time, Peter's wife dies, and Peter asks Caddie to migrate. Caddie feels unable to do this, but Peter is tied to Greece to keep the business alive. The story ends in tragedy when Peter returns, following the death of his wife, and the couple is finally able to make plans to marry. When he buys a new car, he takes the whole family driving and dies in a tragic car crash when swerving to avoid collision with a truck, only four days before their planned wedding. Caddie makes a chance reacquaintance with Esther, who has been deserted by John, and has contracted tuberculosis. Against her wishes, Caddie's son enlists at the outbreak of World War II. Bill and Sonny go "on the wallaby track", searching remote areas for subsistence work.
16053821	/m/03qmntt	The French Confection	Anthony Horowitz	2003-01-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Diamond Brothers win a dream holiday in Paris due to an award from a yoghurt company. On the train, they meet Erica Nice, a French baker, and Jed Mathis, a Texan oilman. The Diamond Brothers mention to them that they are staying at Hotel Le Chat Gris. The steward drops some coffee at hearing this. As the Diamond Brothers get off the train, they are met by the steward who tells them to beware of someone called the Mad American and hands them a sugar sachet. The steward is later pushed under a train. At the hotel, they see a man in gray who seems to be interested in them. Two thugs, Bastille and Lavache, accost the brothers in the street with a knife, and threateningly demand to know what the steward gave to them. While trying to get away from them, Nick and Tim jump from a bridge into a passing bateau mouche. They are locked up by the gendarmes but when they mention Bastille and Lavache they are hurriedly released. They return to find their hotel room has been turned upside down, soon after they are kidnapped and interrogated. They realize they are in a drugs factory, and Nick guesses that the sugar sachet must contain drugs. The criminals try to kill the brothers by giving them an overdose, but fortunately they are taken to hospital just in time, as the Police were out looking for them. The man in grey, who is from the Sûreté, asks for their help. He is revealed to be from a French company fighting against drugs, and says Le Chat Gris is sometimes used by the Mad American, meaning he thought the Brothers had come to buy drugs. Nick remembers some things about the place they were held and realises the place is in the Jewish Quarter, due to a blue star he saw, and they track down the Mad American - who turns out to be Madame Erica Nice. She is arrested for running a drug smuggling racket after Nick and Tim knock her out with a giant cake when entering her cake shop, 'The French Confection'.
16059037	/m/03qmxlc	Dogeaters	Jessica Hagedorn	1990-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dogeaters follows the stories of several characters in the Philippines, including members of the Alacran, Avila and Gonzaga families. A dictator rules the country. However, leftists are challenging his authority and his actions, resulting in great turmoil and violence. The book begins with lengthy introductions and character descriptions. Rio Gonzaga plays the role of narrator for her family; other important characters are introduced through a third person narrator, such as the wealthy Severo Alacran, and his wife Isabel. The contrast between the upper-class lives of the Gonzagas and Alacrans and the poorer characters portrays the disparity amongst the different classes in Filipino society. Another narrator is Joey Sands, a local DJ at a gay club and a male prostitute. The book also explores the relationship between aspiring actor Romeo Rosales and Trinidad Gamboa. Despite the beliefs of many Filipinos, the lives of actresses such as Lolita Luna are not glamorous, but are instead a spiraling trap of drugs and sexual exploitation. The novel intertwines these characters and stories through a series of events, including the "Young Miss Philippines" annual pageant, the Manila International Film Festival, and the assassination of human rights activist Senator Domingo Avila. Daisy Avila, the Senator's daughter, wins the beauty pageant, but instead of rejoicing in her victory, she becomes depressed and withdraws into her family home. She later publicly denounces the pageant, enters into a tumultuous relationship with foreign banker Malcolm Webb and then gets involved with political leftist Santos Tirador. Meanwhile, the collapse of a cultural center during construction for the film festival kills many Filipino workers. The First Lady orders cement to be poured over the bodies and the continuation of construction. Rainer, a German director visiting for the film festival, convinces Joey to stay with him for the week that he is there. On the last day, Joey steals money and drugs from Rainer and witnesses Senator Domingo Avila's assassination. Joey ends up escaping to a rebel camp in the mountains. There, he meets Daisy Avila, who has been raped and tortured by General Ledesma and his military men as a result of her relationship with Santos, and hopes her sister and mother have escaped the country. It is revealed that Romeo has been framed for Senator Avila's assassination. Rio then narrates the rest of the story, explaining the life stories of her family members.
16064339	/m/03qn1m7	Reprieve from Paradise	H. Chandler Elliott	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set after an atomic war and the world is run by Polynesians. The hero discovers a plot to turn the earth on its axis in order to create an Antarctic utopia.
16066169	/m/03qn3zx	The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.	George Steiner	1981-05	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 From his base in Tel Aviv, Holocaust survivor Emmanuel Lieber directs a group of Jewish Nazi hunters in search of Adolf Hitler. Lieber believes that the former Führer is still alive and following rumours and hearsay, he tracks Hitler's movements through South America, until after months of wading through swamps in the Amazon jungle, the search party finds the 90-year-old alive in a clearing. Lieber flies to San Cristóbal where he awaits the group's return with their captive. But getting the old man out of the swamp alive is more difficult than getting in, and their progress is further hampered by heavy thunderstorms. Meanwhile, broken and incoherent radio messages between Lieber and the search party are intercepted by intelligence agents tracking their progress, and rumours begin to spread across the world of Hitler's capture. Debates flare up over his impending trial, where it will be held and under whose jurisdiction. Orosso is identified as the nearest airfield to the last known location of the search party, and aircraft begin arriving at the hitherto unknown town. But when the search party's radio fails and communication with Lieber is lost, they must make a decision: do they sit out the storms and deliver their captive to Lieber later, or do they try Hitler here and now in the jungle before their prize is snatched from them and Israel by the world at large, who they know will be waiting for them? Their decision is the latter, and against Lieber's advice ("You must not let him speak [...] his tongue is like no other") they prepare for a trial with a judge, prosecution and defence "attorneys" selected from the members of the search party. Teku, a local Indian tracker, who had earlier burst in on their camp, is asked to observe the trial as an independent witness. The attention Hitler is receiving, however, renews his strength, and when the trial begins, he brushes aside his "defence attorney" and begins a long speech in four parts in his own defence: #Firstly, Hitler claims he took his doctrines from the Jews and copied the notion of the master race from the Chosen people and their need to separate themselves from the "unclean". "My racism is a parody of yours, a hungry imitation." #Hitler justifies the Final Solution by maintaining that the Jews' God, purer than any other, enslaves its subjects, continually demanding more than they can give and "blackmailing" them with ideals that cannot be attained. The "virus of utopia" had to be stopped. #Hitler states that he was not the originator of evil. "[Stalin] had perfected genocide when I was still a nameless scribbler in Munich." Further, Hitler asserts that the number of lives lost due to his actions are dwarfed by various world atrocities, including those in Russia, China, and Africa. #Lastly, Hitler maintains that the Reich begat Israel and suggests that he is the Messiah "whose infamous deeds were allowed by God in order to bring His people home." He closes by asking, "Should you not honour me who have made [...] Zion a reality?" At the end of his speech, Teku is the first to react and jumps up shouting "Proven", only to be drowned out by the appearance of a helicopter over the clearing. *Emmanuel Lieber – Jewish Holocaust survivor and director of the search party to find Hitler; after crawling out of a death pit in Bialka he never took the time to mend and embarked on a life-consuming obsession to bring those responsible for the genocide to justice. *Search party (all Jewish with family ties to the Holocaust, except for John Asher) **Simeon – search party leader and "presiding judge" at Hitler's trial; he is Lieber's confidant and torn between leading the party into "unmapped quicksand and green bogs" and turning his back on the "quiet mania of Lieber's conviction". **Gideon Benasseraf – falls ill and dies before the trial begins; during one of his fever-induced ramblings he suggests that Hitler is Jewish; he had sought out Lieber after being released from a sanatorium and spending three years recuperating in Paris where the care-free living consumed him with guilt. **Elie Barach – Orthodox Jew and "prosecution attorney" at the trial; he is the moral compass of the group, but his convictions are disturbed by Gideon Benasseraf's fever-induced assertions that Hitler is Jewish and ends up believing that Hitler may be the second Messiah. **Isaac Amsel – an 18-year old boy and witness at the trial; **John Asher – half-Jewish and reluctant "defence attorney" at the trial; *Teku – local Indian tracker and independent witness at the trial; previously the search party's guide who had abandoned them when they insisted on entering uncharted regions of the jungle, he continued tracking them from a distance before revealing himself. *Adolf Hitler – now 90 years old, the former leader of the Third Reich had not died in the Führerbunker in Berlin, but escaped to South America and hid in the Amazon jungle.
16066275	/m/03qn43c	Highways in Hiding	George O. Smith	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel concerns ESP and a disease that turns men into supermen. It contains multiple plotlines concerning the interactions of people that can sense things (espers) and people that can read thoughts (telepaths). This is set against the plot of a secret society that is harboring people that are infected with a spaceborne illness called Mekstrom's Disease. The disease is the point on which the plot turns. People get infected and it slowly turns them into a sort of rock. The hardening begins at one of the extremities such as a finger or toe and slowly begins to creep up the infected limb. Eventually all the extremities are hardening and the disease makes its way to the body proper. At this point, the body is hardened until the vitals fail and the patient dies. The plot turns on a secret society that has found a cure for the infected. To hide themselves from the public at large they have devised a hidden highway program that leads the infected to "Mekstrom safehouses" of sorts.
16069407	/m/03qn6t_	World Without End	Joe Haldeman	1979-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Captain Kirk and a landing party of four have gone aboard an alien starship/planetoid. They are in prison, awaiting questioning. Commander Spock is in command, but is unable to do much. Mysterious tentacles have ensnared the ship, draining power. Spock finds himself with little options, remaining on board and eventually crashing to the planetoid surface or beaming inside to join the Captain.
16070416	/m/03qn87f	Plague Ship	Andre Norton	1956	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The main protagonist of the novel is Dane Thorson, Cargo-master-apprentice on the Free Trader rocket ship the Solar Queen. Free Traders take on trading contracts on remote and recently discovered planets, which can be dangerous and unpredictable. The Solar Queen has recently obtained a valuable trading contract on the planet Sargol and are building a relationship with one of the races on the planet, the cat-like Salariki. The process goes slowly till the Slariki discover that the Solar Queen is carrying catnip and other plants from Terra that are unknown on Sargol. The traders exchange what little of the plants they have for the rare and valuable Koros stones and collect a native red-colored wood to exchange at home. At the last minute the storm priests of the Slarariki demand that the Solar Queen take a pre-paid contract to return within 6 months with more plants. A few days after leaving the planet, several members of the crew suffer from attacks, which start with severe headaches and end in a semi-coma state. Only 4 of the younger members of the crew are unaffected, including Dane Thorson. Upon exiting hyperspace on return to the vicinity of Terra, the crew discovers that they are pariah and have been declared a plague ship. On the short hop to earth, the crew discovers that pests have invaded the ship and are the cause of the illness. In a final bid to prove their case they kidnap a medic and present his evidence by video to a solar-system-wide audience, which is successful. In the meantime the rest of the crew have recovered, and after a final effort of negotiation the Solar Queen preserves its reputation by selling the contract with the Salariki to a large intergalactic trading company in exchange for credits and a quiet inter-solar mail route, which should lead to no more trouble.
16072612	/m/03qn9v0	Cemetery Dance	Douglas Preston	2009-05-12	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Pendergast returns to NYC in New York Times bestselling authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's newest novel featuring the enigmatic FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. After celebrating their first anniversary, William Smithback, a NY Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archeologist, return home from a romantic dinner. Kelly slips out to pick up a pastry from the local shop, but upon her return to their apartment in the Upper West side of Manhattan, she finds the door ajar, Smithback dead, and is attacked as she approaches. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, the attacker seen leaving the building was an individual who lived in the apartment building along with Smithback and Kelly. The twist: the man that witnesses believe is Smithback's murderer was pulled from the river dead, after committing suicide, two weeks before the attack. D'Agosta, a homicide detective, leads the official investigation, while FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast's and Kelly's involvement leads to a less traditional quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them into a part of Manhattan they never imagined could exists: a secretive and deadly hotbed of Obeah, the West Indian Zombi cult of sorcery and magic. It is here they find their true peril is just beginning. it:Il sotterraneo dei vivi
16081895	/m/03qnlcq	Lilith: A Snake in the Grass	Jack L. Chalker	1981	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Confederacy, a massive space empire, duplicates the personality of its best agent and implants it into four brain-dead hosts. These hosts are sent to the four planets of a penal colony, the Warden Diamond, to investigate an alien threat and assassinate the four lords of the planets, the "Four Lords of the Diamond." The original agent is on a picket ship and downloads information from his copies. A copy of the agent wakes up in the body of "Cal Tremon," a criminal on a prison ship heading to Lilith. He must then adapt to Lilith, a beautiful tropical world where its Warden Organism, a symbiotic microorganism, destroys all non-Lilith material, making modernization very difficult. Thus, the several million inhabitants of Lilith's feudal society are serfs. The nobility of Lilith are the few who can control the organisms. The agent thus finds himself a serf, with no hope of advancing unless he harnesses the power of the Warden Organisms. When a girl he liked was being taken away for experimentation, he taps into his Warden powers and kills the overseer, a petty tyrant. While living in the Castle, the residence of the Duke, Cal gains some initial training and knowledge. He escapes when he learns that the nobles plan to kill him. Outside of the castle walls, he gains a secure status in Lilith's society and no longer desires to serve the Confederacy. Instead, he realizes that the Lord of Lilith, Marek Kreegan, a former Assassin of the Confederacy, cooperates with the aliens to preserve peace and order. Cal learns that Kreegan dissuaded the aliens from a genocide against humanity, choosing the slower course of subversion and sabotage instead. Cal does not kill Kreegan. His girlfriend, believing that Kreegan's death would will elevate Cal to Lordship, kills Kreegan by using a potion to draw on Cal's power. The Agent wakes up in the picket ship, worried about his duplicate's behavior in Lilith.
16084780	/m/03qnp8x	Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored		1992-08	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The beginning of the book describes Cole's background, and that of every member of the band. He also briefly describes the atmosphere of 1960s London. He claims that he always wanted to be in the music business, and that at one point he began to play the drums but did not pursue this path. He recounts his experience as tour manager for The Who and his venture into other aspects of the 1960s London scene, including the mod subculture. The book documents Cole's personal experiences as tour manager for one of the biggest bands of all time. It also shows how the constant pressure of touring and recording was beginning to take a toll on the band's members, even as early as 1969. Cole reveals that he developed close and personal friendships with each of the band members, and recounts the devastating impact that the death of John Bonham had on him. He also discusses the substance abuse problems which he developed in the 1970s, and which ultimately led to him being fired by Led Zeppelin's manager, Peter Grant, after the Knebworth Festival in 1979. The book also describes his life immediately after Led Zeppelin's downfall. At the time of their collapse he was trying to shed his heroin addiction in Italy when he was falsely accused of terrorism for involvement in the 1980 Bologna railway station bombing. Whilst imprisoned he underwent forced detox from heroin. Sleepless nights, constant sweat, diarrhea, and pain were some things he experienced while he was in the custody of the Italian police. When released, Cole was no longer addicted to heroin but he had no money as he had spent it all on drugs prior to his incarceration, and he could no longer rely on a steady income from an involvement with Led Zeppelin. He said that for the first time since before he became a tour manager he had to work on the scaffolds.
16088871	/m/03qnvtb	Queen of Demons	David Drake	1998-01-01	{"/m/03qfd": "High fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the introduction, the current King of the Isles, Valence III, and his wizard, Silyon, make a deal with the Beast to regain control of his kingdom from his wife, the Queen. Meanwhile, the main characters are in Erdin where they discover the dead remains of a Scaled Man on their ship, which Tenoctris sees as a bad omen. With the exception of Ilna, they book passage on the ship Lady of Mercy, bound for the Isle of Valles, where Garric intends to declare himself King of the Isles. Before they leave, Ilna gives Liane a sash that she has woven which will notify her if Liane is ever in trouble. Before the ship reaches Valles, a lens appears in the sky and swallows the ship, causing it to wreck. Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris awake, following the shipwreck, in the land of the Ersa. They eventually make it back to their own world. There they are picked up by a hunting party, led by the noble, Lord Royhas. Rather than dispose of Garric, as he was ordered to, Royhas takes Garric back into the city and holds a council with several other powerful nobles. They express their loyalty to the King but ask Garric’s help in overthrowing the Queen. Tenoctris uses a mirror to spy on the Queen and discovers that she is a demon. Garric plans an attack on the mansion. When they’ve passed all the Queen’s safeguards, Garric uses iron to destroy the Queen’s gate to another world, but the she has already escaped. Following this, Garric appoints himself Prince Regent under King Valence III and demands the allegiance of the Lords who backed him in the revolt. Meanwhile Admiral Nitker, of the Royal Navy, has declared himself the new Lord of the Isles. Garric promises to destroy Admiral Nitkers and the rebellious navy if they don’t return to the King’s service. Garric goes before King Valence III and receives his blessing as Prince Regent. Tenoctris discovers that the Queen’s mansion was a nexus of portals to many different worlds, one of which led to the Beast. Cashel uses his quarterstaff to escape the lens that swallowed the ship and saves Sharina as well. They are rescued by Folquin, King of the nearest Isle, and his two wizards, Halphemos and Cerix. Folquin then seeks to marry Sharina. When Halphemos' talking ape, Zahag, throws a fit during a chess game with Liane, Cashel attempts to settle him down. Halphemos, casts a spell to immobilize the ape but the wizardess Silya secretly interferes and sends them to another world. Folquin immediately has Halphemos arrested. Cashel awakes after the transportation on a parallel island of Pandah. He and Zahag meet the lady Sosia who asks Cashel to save her daughter, Aria, who is imprisoned by a wizard Ilmed and the Scaled Men who serve him. Cashel and Zahag succeed in rescuing the princess Aria, but she is less than thrilled. They flee through several magical portals, eventually ending up back on the Isle of Pandah. After they defeat the wizardess Silya, Princess Aria (who has decided to marry Folquin) arranges a boat to help Cashel find Sharina. They arrive in Valles where they run into Ilna, Cerix, and Halphemos and then make their way to the palace where they find Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris. Sharina and Cerix break Halphemos out of prison and then they go in search of Ilna for help in recovering Cashel. But a wizard with the appearance and voice of Nonnus, Sharina’s one-time protector, shows up and tricks her into leaving with him on another ship. Cerix and Halphemos to continue on their way to find Ilna. Sharina eventually discovers the treachery and jumps ship. She is rescued by a large man, named Hanno, who takes her to his home on the Isle of Bight. A phantasm and a group of Hairy Men sent by the Queen attack Hanno and Sharina, but they defeat them. They later discover that the Hairy Men have destroyed Hanno’s boat. While searching for a way off the island, the false Nonnus and his crew discover Sharina. The spirit of the true Nonnus comes to her, possesses her body temporarily, and destroys her pursuers. She and Hanno make their way to the volcano at the center of the island and climb to the top. From there they can see that the Hairy Men, led by phantasms, are building boats so they can attack Ornifal. One of the phantasms captures Sharina and conveys her to the Queen. The Queen shows Sharina images of her friends (and an image of the Hairy Men on their way to Valles) and implies that she controls their fates through a chess board. The Queen tells Sharina that she intends to use her to find the Throne of Malkar. Sharina watches as the fleet of Hairy Men reaches the Royal Navy and destroys it, but Admiral Nitkers escapes. When the Queen threatens to send a giant ammonite against Cashel, Sharina agrees to help her. Ilna begins setting up shop in Erdin, but this time with the intent to good rather than evil. Using her craft she begins improving the conditions of the city. But Cerix and Halphemos eventually find her and seek her help in recovering her brother Cashel. Cerix realizes that many of Ilna’s patterns contain writings in the Old Script—even though she can’t read or write. She agrees to go with them. Before they can leave Erdin, though, they are captured by a band of Scaled Men. They load Ilna onto a ship and travel through a portal. Cerix and Halphemos find her sash, which she dropped during her tussle with the Scaled Men. It reveals a spell that takes them into a desert world. When Ilna’s captors are attacked by Flyers, Ilna leaps through a portal opened by Cerix and Halphemos. Just as they seem to be succumbing to the desert, The People of Beauty arrive and rescue them. Ilna convinces the People of Beauty transport them to the city of Divers on Third Atara. They seek out the Baron Robilard. In his palace, Halphemos gets into trouble and Baron Robilard has him arrested. Ilna goes to Robilard to seek Halphemos’ release. Robilard makes demands, which Ilna fulfills, though to unfavorable results. A humbled Robilard frees Halphemos and offers to personally escort them to Valles. When they get there, Ilna is relieved when she finally finds Cashel. They make their way to the castle where they find Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris. When all except Sharina have been reunited, they set out to find the lair of the Beast. Admiral Nitkers arrives in Valles to warn them of the oncoming invasion of Hairy Men. Garric immediately orders preparations for battle. The Queen forces Sharina to participate in a spell which is meant to reveal the Throne of Malkar. Instead they learn that it is Garric, not Sharina, that the Queen needs. In the castle, the wizard Silyon and Admiral Nitker kidnap Liane and turn her over to the Beast, fifty meters down a well. At this point Ilna tears her sash and it reveals how to rescue Liane, by giving the key words (in the Old Script) needed to enter its lair. Garric enters the well and Ilna, Cerix, and Halphemos follow him down. The Beast attacks them, revealing that the Yellow King had imprisoned it there long ago and that it had lured them there to release it from its prison. It devours Halphemos and a grieving Cerix finishes the incantation so that the Beast can’t escape. Instead it dissolves into fiery lava, unable to die because of its immortality, endlessly burning. Meanwhile, Tenoctris opens up the Queen’s escape portal and Cashel and Zahag travel through it to where she is holding Sharina captive. He uses his staff to destroy the Queen and rescue Sharina. They meet back up with Tenoctris. A little later, Ilna, Cerix, Garric, and Liane arrive, escaping from the Beast’s lair. Tenoctris and Cashel confiscate the Queen’s chessboard. Tenoctris notes that the Queen herself was a pawn on the board, just like those she tried to manipulate. She and Cashel also notice the appearance of a new piece on the board—representing an island-sized black ammonite that an unknown wizard has just called up from the depths of the ocean.
16090862	/m/03qnxx0	Path of Unreason	George O. Smith	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a physicist who is trying to explain the mysterious "Lawson Radiation" while his researches drive him insane.
16091126	/m/03qny4m	The White Gryphon	Mercedes Lackey	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place ten years after the end of The Black Gryphon. The k'Leshya tribe of the Kaled'a'in nation, along with the gryphons, some hertasi, tervardi, and kyree, have fled from the gates that they escaped before the Cataclysm from the end of the mage wars. They have traveled very far and have reached the ocean, and now have established a city called, White Gryphon. The city is named based on its shape, a large gryphon preparing for flight over the ocean, and the white gryphon, Skandranon. The city has established a council to govern all aspects of the city life. The council members consist of Skandranon, Amberdrake, Cinnabar, Judeth, and Snowstar. The Cataclysm has led to mage storms that causes magic to be unstable, meaning that many that had the mage ability have lost their powers, or are seriously weakened. Amberdrake as one of the council members brings up a man that is practicing as a kestra'chern illegally. Judeth orders for the arrest of this man, Hadenalith, through her position as the leader of the newly established Silver Gryphons. Hadenalith is arrested while he is molding a woman to be his slave. The city does not have a jail, and his crimes are not severe enough for instant death, so the Silver Gryphons decide to exile him to the forests on one side of the city, presuming that the animals will take care of him. Hadenalith is very upset about the interruption to his deeds and swears revenge on Amberdrake, and White Gryphon. Later, there are ships spotted by a gryphon, and Skandranon is contacted using the city's mind connection, Kechara. Kechara has been recruited by Judeth and is being used to communicate with the Silvers in White Gryphon. Some of the council members, Skandranon, Amberdrake, Judeth, and Tamsin, arrive on the dock and await the people to exit the ships. Amberdrake has identified the crewmen as members of the Haighlei, pronounced "highly", Nation, a nation of all black people. Three of the Haighlei crewmen exit the ship and claim that the land that White Gryphon is part of their country. Judeth makes a stand claiming that the gryphons flew from one part of the land to another and never saw any markers that showed that the land belonged to any other place. At this time, the crewmen finally notice Skandranon and decide that they need to contact their home city. After the discussion with their leaders, the crewmen decide to stay in the city of White Gryphon and then take Skandranon, Zhaneel, and their children (Tadrith and Keeneth), along with Amberdrake, Winterhart, and their daughter (Windsong) back to their nation.
16091288	/m/03qnybz	Starman's Quest	Robert Silverberg	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel concerns twins, one of whom travels in a spaceship and is subject to the Fitzgerald contraction thus aging slower than the other.
16093021	/m/03qn_41	Tros of Samothrace	Talbot Mundy	1934	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns the swashbuckling adventures of the title character as he battles Norsemen, pre-Roman Britons and Julius Caesar.
16095782	/m/03qp1tt	The Survivors	Tom Godwin	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A ship heading from Earth to Athena, a planet 500 light years away, is suddenly attacked by the Gerns, an alien empire in its expansion phase. People aboard are divided by the invaders into Acceptables and Rejects. The Acceptables would become slave labor for the Gerns on Athena, and the Rejects are forced ashore on the nearest 'Earth-like' planet, called Ragnarok. The Gerns say they will return for the Rejects, but the Rejects quickly realise that that isn't going to happen. Ragnarok is not so 'Earth-like.' Its gravity is 1.5 times that of Earth, it is populated by deadly, aggressive creatures and it contains little in the way of usable metal ores. This, combined with a terrible deadly fever that kills in hours, more than decimates the population. The novels follows the stranded humans through several generations as they try to survive there, and their unswerving goal to repay the Gerns for their cruelty. Comic book writer Warren Ellis counts the novel as one of his early favorites, writing, "I must have read that book twenty times. It just rips along (in many senses of the word “rips”), as shamelessly gleeful as a short genre book should be." There is a sequel from 1964 called The Space Barbarians.
16096176	/m/03qp29m	Crossing the River	Caryl Phillips	1993-01-18	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel’s opening is mostly the perspective of Nash, Martha, and Travis’ “father” mixed with the thoughts of the English slave trader James Hamilton, which are expressed in italics. The narrator explains that he had to sell his three children to slavery because his crops failed and he had no money. Nash’s story as an adult is first revealed through the perspective of his white master Edward Williams, who freed Nash so that he could go to Africa with the American Colonization Society to teach black natives. Edward, however, receives a letter saying that Nash had disappeared from the African village where he had been teaching. Edward immediately boards a ship to take him to Africa, and after many days of searching, a former slave of Edward’s informs him that Nash had died from fever. Edward is horribly upset, and his grief is further drawn out when he realizes that his beloved Nash was not the holy Christian he thought him to be. He finds plenty that points out Nash’s negative behavior, such as his large collection of native wives. The chapter ends with Edward gaping at the hovel that was once Nash’s residence while natives stare on, trying to understand the apparent momentary insanity of the shocked and aggrieved stranger. The story then switches to Martha, an old woman who, after losing her husband and daughter at a slave auction, decides to run away from her owners in Kansas and seek freedom in California. She only makes it to Colorado, however, where the group she is traveling with leaves her because she is slowing down the party. A white woman offers Martha a place to room for the night out of the bitter cold, but it is not enough. When the woman returns to Martha the next day, Martha is dead. The white woman decides that she is going to have to “choose a name for her if she was going to receive a Christian burial” (p.&nbsp;94), which is ironic since Martha hated receiving a new name each time she was passed to a different owner and because Martha didn’t believe in God. The final section is told through the eyes of Joyce, a white Englishwoman who falls in love with Travis, who is the “brother” of Nash and Martha. Since Travis’ story occurs during World War II (about a century after his supposed brother Nash's), it can be assumed that Travis is a sort of reincarnation of Nash and Martha’s brother from more than a century before. In that case, it can be implied that the ancestor narrator is not the children’s true father; rather he is some sort of all-knowing ancestor who has “listened” to his “children” for the last “two hundred and fifty years” (p.&nbsp;1). Joyce meets Travis at her husband’s store. Joyce’s husband habitually beats her, and when her husband is taken to prison for selling items on the black market, Joyce and Travis have an affair. Joyce has Travis’ baby but has to give it up after Travis dies in the war because it would be unacceptable for her to raise a black baby on her own. The chapter ends with a visit from Greer when he is twenty years old, who meets his mother for the first time after being raised in an orphanage. The book ends with the ancestor narrator once more, who provides an optimistic view even after all his children have died, saying that though he “sold his beloved children … they arrived on the far bank of the river, loved” (p.&nbsp;237).
16096326	/m/03qp2g2	The Bird of Time	Wallace West	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of the Martian bird-woman Yahna and Earthman Bill Newsome and the conflict between their worlds.
16097253	/m/03qp2_9	Purple Pirate	Talbot Mundy	1935	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns the further adventures of Tros of Samathrace who battles intrigue in Cleopatra's court while he woos her sister.
16097630	/m/03qp33s	Grief: a Novel	Andrew Holleran	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrative takes place in a predominantly gay neighborhood in Washington D.C. near the famous Dupont Circle. The story focuses on the exploits of a middle-aged, gay man who has recently moved to the city after the death of his mother. The novel follows this protagonist as he goes through the grieving process, holding true to the belief our deceased loved ones stay with us forever, or at least as long as we continue to grieve for them. Considering the novel’s exploration of the complex and highly personal emotion of grief the title seems simple, yet remains effective. The protagonist convinces himself the emotion has become one of the major aspects of his life as a survivor. In essence, he lives to grieve both his mother and the numerous gay friends he lost during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Characters frequently debate grief at various instances. Some of these individuals find the emotion unnecessary baggage. The protagonist refuses to accept this argument; he feels strongly that grief provides a crucial link between the living and the dead. The novel opens with a first-person narrator, a nameless, middle-aged, gay man. He has decided to take a teaching position in Washington D.C. He starts his journey waiting for his flight during a layover in Atlanta. Sitting in the departure lounge, he can’t help but think about his late mother. He reminisces how his life used to revolve around her when she was terminally ill. He remembers how he lacked any serious social life because he would spend every weekend with her after picking her up from the nursing home. After she passed, he realized a change in scenery was in order. His life in Florida had become hollow and depressing. The narrator arrives at his new residence on N Street N.W. to discover his landlord and future roommate is out of town. He has mixed emotions about having the new house to himself on his arrival. He enjoys the solitude, but feels a bit lonely. He takes time to observe the furniture, art work, and architecture of his new residence, as well as the exteriors of the other residential buildings throughout the neighborhood. Overall, he rather likes his new environment. During his first night in the house he comes across a book in his room entitled, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters. The work consists of numerous letters written by the former first lady after the death of her husband. The narrator relates deeply to the grief Mary Todd Lincoln expresses throughout the pages of the text. After her husband died, she no longer had a stable home; she simply wandered the world in a permanent state of mourning. The narrator continuously reads this book throughout the novel; comparing Mary Todd Lincoln’s suffering to that of his own. During his first few days alone in the house, he encounters numerous interesting locals around N Street. He meets a homeless man who works as a con-artist, telling people he needs money to take his nonexistent wife to the hospital. He also notices the handsome, yet reclusive, military veteran who cleans leaves off the sidewalk and receives helpful advice from the homosexual couple who live in the townhouse beneath him. The landlord soon returns from his business trip and introduces himself to the narrator. Similar to the protagonist, this character also remains nameless. The landlord is also gay, middle-aged, and currently single. The two men acquaint themselves and discuss current events taking place in the city. Apparently, a racial schism has broken out between blacks and whites after the mistreatment of a local African American politician. The narrator realizes he has picked a very tumultuous time to move to the nation's capitol. After getting settled, the narrator decides to visit his friend, Frank, who recommended him for the teaching position. Frank is also gay; however, he behaves far more flagrantly than the narrator or the landlord. During their visit the two discuss the death of the narrator’s mother and the hardship of living as middle-aged gay men. Frank also mentions he has a new boyfriend, a handsome and muscular young man which he refers to as the Lug. Desperate for the two of them to meet, Frank suggests the three of them should go out to a movie. The narrator declines, explaining he would rather explore the more intellectual aspects of his new city. Over the next couple weeks he peruses the numerous museums and evening concerts Washington D.C. has to offer. He enjoys the culturally experience, but regrets having to do it alone. Walking through the streets alone at night tends to remind him of the grief he feels from his mother. One morning, after the landlord has left for work, the narrator discovers the man keeps his dog, Biscuit, cooped up in the study all day. He opens the door in hope the dog will come out, only to realize the animal enjoys her confinement. The narrator begins liberating the dog from the study on a regular basis and grows fond of her company. He keeps this secret from the landlord, worried it will upset the man. As the days turn to months, the narrator and his landlord develop a platonic friendship with one another. They share meals together and frequently discuss the local gay community. The landlord reveals himself to be a very popular individual on N Street. Unfortunately, personal issues have driven him to leave his previous social life behind. He admits to having been romantically involved with a member of the gay couple living beneath them. The relationship ended badly and the landlord finds it difficult to socialize while his ex-lover lives happily with another man. Nevertheless, the landlord continues to post personal ads in the local newspaper with the hope of attracting a new boyfriend. With time the narrator grows comfortable in his teaching position at the local university. His course focuses on literature specifically relating to homosexuality. He decides to reference the Mary Todd Lincoln book by comparing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to the homosexual AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. This analogy angers one of his students, who viciously argues gays had a choice while Lincoln did not. The narrator proceeds to end the discussion by stating that “AIDS is dead,” considering it was primarily a homosexual disease, which will never impact the remaining population on such a high level. Few middle-age American homosexuals exist as a result of the 1980s epidemic. Such thoughts remind him of the numerous gay friends he lost to the virus. Just for living through the decade, he feels very much like a survivor. The narrator realizes he harbors a great deal of grief not just for his late mother, but for the many gay friends he lost during the 1980s. A few days later, the narrator encounters the belligerent student at the Metropolitan Museum. The student explains he takes the discussion of AIDS personally, because he had a gay brother who died from the virus. Their parents were appalled by their son’s homosexuality, so he tended to his dying brother alone. The student quickly excuses himself, but leaves the narrator with many thoughts about his deceased gay friends and the choices they had made. One day while liberating Biscuit from the study, the narrator comes across a photo album. Flipping through the pages he notices his landlord knew his late friend, Nick. The two discuss their mutual friend in detail. Nick was a beautiful young man who the narrator had known in New York City several years ago. Nick was one of the many AIDS victims during the 1980s. The landlord explains that Nick’s mother lives alone in Washington, not far from their house. The narrator pays her a visit and the two end up spending the day together. Over dinner, the two discuss grief and the impact it has had on both of their lives. In the end, they both agree mourning for lost loved ones remains one of the most human qualities on earth. As spring approaches, the narrator’s teaching position ends and he prepares for his departure. Both his landlord and Frank encourage him to stay in Washington, assuring him the transition would be beneficial. Nevertheless, the narrator feels he must return to his house in Florida. He still has emotional issues he needs to deal with before he can truly move on with his life. Shortly before leaving, the narrator confesses to Frank he had lied to his mother about his sexual orientation. Allowing his mother to die ignorant of his homosexuality fills him with the grief he carries everyday of his life. Upon returning to his Florida home he finds the grief to be overwhelming. He turns to pray in a hope God will bless the spirits of his deceased father and mother.
16100263	/m/03qp4x8	Invaders from the Infinite	John W. Campbell	1961	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a trio of heroes, Arcot, Morey and Wade, and their attempts to help a race of superdogs.
16101610	/m/03qp5qs	The Philosophical Corps	Everett B. Cole	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of the philosopher Commander A-Riman who attempts to re-educate aliens from whom he brooks no nonsense.
16104196	/m/03qp75p	Hotel world	Ali Smith	2002-01-15		 Hotel World is divided into five sections. The first section, “Past” tells the story of Sara Wilby The second part, "Present Historic", is about a homeless girl (Else) begging for money outside the Hotel. The “Future Conditional”, the third section of the novel, Lise, a receptionist. The fourth part is “Perfect” with its far from perfect character Penny. The fifth section of the novel titled “Future in the Past,” is entirely Clare’s memories on the life and death of her sister Sara. “Present” is the title of the last part of the novel. Edited by Ali Smith, Author of this book
16107095	/m/03qp8d6	God of Carnage	Yasmina Reza			 Before the play begins, two 11-year-old children, Ferdinand Reille and Bruno Vallon (Benjamin and Henry in the Broadway production), get involved in argument because Bruno refuses to let Ferdinand join his 'gang'. Ferdinand knocks out two of Bruno's teeth with a stick. That night, the parents of both children meet to discuss the matter. Ferdinand's father, Alain (Alan in the Broadway production), is a lawyer who is never off his mobile phone. Ferdinand's mother, Annette is in "wealth management" (her husband's wealth, to be precise), and consistently wears good shoes. Bruno's father, Michel (Michael in the Broadway production), is a self-made wholesaler with an unwell mother. Michel's wife, Véronique (Veronica in the Broadway production), is writing a book about Darfur. As the evening goes on, the meeting degenerates into the four getting into irrational arguments, and their discussion falls into the loaded topics of misogyny, racial prejudice and homophobia. One of the central dramatic moments of the play occurs when Annette vomits onstage, all over the coffee table and books.
16111851	/m/03y0545	The General	Robert Muchamore	2008-08-07	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book starts off before Christmas with James Adams taking part in a mass riot organized by the leader of the SAG (Street Action Group), Chris Bradford. He later acts as Bradford's bodyguard during a meeting with a gun supplier and successfully plants a surveillance device, only for the police to arrive unexpectedly and arrest everyone, aborting the mission. Meanwhile his sister Lauren and some of the younger agents are sent to test the security of an air traffic control centre. They capture all the security guards and cause a lot of damage, but miss an engineer who calls in the RAF. The mission is still regarded as successful, having exposed security weaknesses. On New Year's Day a select team of CHERUB agents including James and Lauren fly to Las Vegas for a brief vacation on the way to Fort Reagan, the world's largest urban warfare training compound. They are to take part in a two-week exercise along with forty British commandos, posing as insurgents in an area controlled by an American battalion - a thousand soldiers. Weapons are restricted to paint guns and grenades. Under the leadership of the Ukrainian trainer Kazakov, who is bitterly anti-American, the 'insurgents' soon make their first move, knocking out aerial surveillance by wrecking the American spying drones. During this raid, James and the Sarge sneak into the army base to add a powerful laxative to the base's water system. Before long around nine-tenths of the American troops are disabled by violent diarrhoea. The insurgents persuade some drunken students, posing as 'civilians' in the exercise, to join them in storming the base. At this point the American military leader General Shirley is "killed" (killed in the exercise means that you have to get yourself washed and come back in 24 hours) by a paint grenade dropped by Kevin Sumner. The Americans are overrun and suspend the exercise, after only two days. Kazakov's tactics, though effective, are so controversial, that he and James are asked to leave before the exercise restarts. As they have some free time, Kazakov persuades James to put his mathematical skills to illegal use, playing blackjack in Las Vegas. Despite James almost being caught, they end up winning over $90,000.
16113337	/m/03qpf94	Operation Storm City			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Rebecca and Douglas (known as Becca and Doug in the books) return to their home town of Lucknow, in India, after their adventures in Operation Typhoon Shore. They continue their quest to find their parents and uncover the secrets of the Guild. They become reunited with Miss Liberty Da Vine whom they rescued from Sheng-Fat on Wenzi Island in Operation Red Jericho and travelled with aboard the Expedient in Operation Typhoon Shore. Operation Storm City is the final installment of the trilogy. From India to the desert wastes of China, Becca and Doug must follow every clue and scrap of information discovered so far in their adventures to guide them to the truth about their missing parents. Old friends join them in new alliances, for Becca and Doug know now that they must find Ur-Can the fabled machine at the very heart of the story which is hidden deep in the Taklamakan Desert - the so-called ‘Desert of Death’. They now know Ur-Can holds the answers they seek, as it was the destination of their parents’ lost expedition. But Ur-Can has fallen into the hands of a mad Russian general intent on using the machine’s colossal power for his own evil ends. Becca and Doug are tested beyond anything they have so far endured in the trilogy as they try to conclude their gruelling quest.
16115021	/m/03w9pzy	Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse	Ursula Moray Williams			 The book contains 19 chapters. The little wooden horse is a toy horse originally intended to be sold by his maker Uncle Peder. His only desire is to stay with and serve his maker but when the latter is forced out of business by the availability of cheaper mass produced toys he becomes ill through poverty. The little wooden horse then sets out into the world to make himself a fortune for the two of them to live in peace. Through a combination of misfortune and exploitation the little wooden horse is forced to travel a great distance and earn and lose his fortune through each of the chapters. Eventually he does hold onto a fortune, but returning home he finds his maker has disappeared. Eventually they are reunited through a chance and highly emotional meeting.
16119841	/m/03w9ssz	The Case of the Missing Bird Dog	John R. Erickson			 This is the 40th book in the "Hank the Cowdog" series.
16123150	/m/03w9vwy	The Strange Death of Tory England	Geoffrey Wheatcroft	2005-03-31	{"/m/05qt0": "Politics"}	 The book begins with the Conservative leadership contest of 1963, following the resignation of Harold Macmillan, which turned into a fight between Iain Macleod, the modernizing chairman of the party, and the Earl of Home, the aristocratic dark horse. Home won, disclaimed his peerage, became Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and was elected to the House of Commons at a hastily-arranged by-election. Wheatcroft depicts this contest as a clash between supporters of "the virtues of an hereditary governing class" and those of "worth proved by ability". Next comes a history of the Tory party from its 17th-century beginnings at the time of the Restoration, followed by an account of the Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath years and Britain's trials and tribulations of the 1970s, culminating in the election of Margaret Thatcher's first government in 1979. Within a few years, while holding onto power, the Conservative Party began to split and to fall apart. Wheatcroft seeks to explain this decline, offering factors long discussed by commentators: internal splits over Britain's place in Europe, political sleaze and a fundamental lack of ideology, and a growing desire in the country for change after eighteen years of Conservative rule, coinciding with Tony Blair's "brilliant cynical sincerity".
16123624	/m/03w9w4y	The Ebb-Tide	Robert Louis Stevenson	1894	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens by introducing three destitute beggars in the port of Papeete on Tahiti. They are Herrick, a failed English businessman; Davis, an American sea captain disgraced by the loss of his last ship; and Huish, a dishonest Cockney of various employments. One day an off-course schooner carrying a cargo of champagne from San Francisco to Sydney arrives in port, its officers having been killed by smallpox. With no-one else willing to risk infection, the U.S. consul employs Davis to take over the ship for the remainder of its voyage. He carries the other two men along with a plan to steal the ship and navigate it to Peru, where they will sell the cargo and vessel and disappear with the money. Once at sea, Davis and Huish start drinking the cargo and spend almost all of their time intoxicated. Herrick, whose conscience is severely troubled by the plan but feels he has no other way to escape poverty, is left alone to manage the ship and three native crew members, despite having no seafaring experience. However, several days later the would-be thieves discover they have themselves been victims of a fraud: most of the cargo is not champagne but merely bottles of water. Evidently the shipper and the previous captain had intended to sink the ship deliberately and claim the full value of the "champagne" on insurance. Even worse, the now-sober Captain Davis discovers that due to his rushed preparations for departure, and his drunken wastage, the ship is not carrying enough food to reach Peru, or anywhere else except the port they started from, where they would surely be imprisoned for their actions. Just then they sight an unknown island, where they discover an upper-class Englishman named Attwater. Attwater, a devout Christian, has been harvesting pearls here for many years with the help of a several dozen native workers, all except four of whom have recently also died of smallpox. The three men hatch a new plan to kill Attwater and take his pearls, but Herrick's guilt-stricken demeanour and Huish's drunken ramblings soon betray them. Attwater and his servants force them back onto the ship at gunpoint. Unable to live with himself, Herrick jumps overboard and tries to drown himself. Failing even in this, he swims to the shore and throws himself on Attwater's mercy. The next day, Huish proposes a final plan which shocks even the unscrupulous Davis: they will go to meet Attwater under a flag of truce, and Huish will disable him by throwing acid in his face. However, Attwater is suspicious, realises what is going on, and shoots Huish dead. He appears to be about to kill Davis as well, but forgives him, saying "go, and sin no more". A short epilogue set two weeks later shows the surviving men preparing to leave the island as Attwater's own ship approaches. Davis is now repentant and fervently religious to an almost crazed degree, and urges the atheist Herrick to join him in his faith.
16131517	/m/03w9z_6	The Gorgon's Gaze	Julia Golding	2006-09-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Gorgon's Gaze takes place after the events in Secret of the Sirens, and follows the story of Connie and Col. Mallins Wood is under danger, and it is home to the only gorgon left in the world. Connie might be able to help, but the problem is... she's been taken away by her great-aunt Godiva! Connie's parents have asked Godiva and her brother Hugh to stop their world travels to take Connie away from Evelyn and "wean her off of the Society." Thus, Connie is now living in the town of Chartmouth with Godiva and Hugh, where she's denied contact with any mythical creatures. Meanwhile, Col is introduced to the Gorgon, his mother's companion species. On his second visit, Col is taken over by a mysterious creature - one who appears to be a Pegasus, but doesn't feel like one. Col finds himself to be the property of Kullervo, the evil shapeshifter! Connie must go to save her friend, while remaining safe herself and not letting her great-aunt know she's gone.
16132258	/m/03w9_l9	Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down	Ishmael Reed	1969	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down jumps into the narrative of the main protagonist, Loop Garoo, a black, silver tongued, circus cowboy, who represents the devil to the white men. The circus troupe heads into Yellow Back Radio, a sparsely populated ghost town overtaken by a child population in Indian garb. The circus troupe and the children are massacred by the adults that were chased out by the children, while Loop Garoo escapes with his life and a desire for vengeance. Drag Gibson, a homosexual and influential land-owner who is head of the city, is also introduced. As Drag deals with the problems from a deteriorating city, Loop Garoo is saved from being eaten by wild animals by Chief Showcase, a Native American who fights his oppressors through suave and underhanded means. Loop begins his Hoodoo curses on Drag, giving him the retroactive itch and other inconveniences, as the conflict builds. Drag murders his sixth wife and orders his seventh through the mail order service. Her name is Mustache Sal, a nymphomaniac who seeks to murder Drag to inherit his vast fortunes. She proceeds to have sex with just about every main and minor male character, showing a complete lack of discrimination. As Drag continues into a progressively more deteriorating state of mind because of the uncontrollable loss of power and influence around him, Loop Garoo continues to gain influence through his appearance in town, soundly whipping the marshal and pushing the Preacher into the brink of insanity. Mustache Sal’s attempt to poison her husband fails and she is fed to the iron-jawed pigs. Drag then brings in John Wesley Hardin, a sharp-shooting racist who kills black people out of pleasure. When Loop Garoo quickly kills him, Drag’s health quickly deteriorates until his savior, the Pope, arrives riding on red bull. He describes to the city’s citizens the Hoodoo Loop Garoo is putting on them and proceeds to capture Loop with no difficulty. However, when the Pope fails in persuading Loop to return to Rome with him, he leaves in defeat. Drag sets the execution of Loop up but fails to execute him; instead through the sudden appearance of children with new technology, Amazonian women, and Field Marshal Theda Doompussy Blackwell's Raygun wielding detectives, Drag falls into the pit of pigs and dies.
16142406	/m/03wb5rh	The Drawing of the Dark	Tim Powers	1979	{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The year is 1529, and Brian Duffy, a world-weary Irish mercenary soldier is hired in Venice by the mysterious Aurelianus to go to Vienna and work as a bouncer at the Zimmerman Inn, former monastery and current brewery of the famous Herzwesten beer. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Turkish army under Sultan Suleiman I has achieved its most advanced position yet in their march into Europe, and is poised to capture Vienna. With the Turkish army travels Ibrahim, a magician who intends to use horrific spells as part of the siege. Duffy spent some time in Vienna years ago, and as he returns, he is haunted by memories of past events, and now he also finds himself having visions of mythical creatures and being ambushed by shadowy people and demonic monsters. Upon arriving in Vienna, Duffy meets Epiphany, a former girlfriend from his previous time in Vienna, and her father, Gustav Vogel, who is working on a painting he calls "The Death of St. Michael the Archangel". It seems the painting is never quite complete, and the elder Vogel is continuously adding additional detail to the work, causing it to gradually become more and more obscure. Then Duffy finds himself not only drafted into the city's defensive army, but also led by Aurelianus down mystical paths from the surprisingly old Herzwesten brewery to even more ancient caves beneath the city, in search of defenses against the approaching army and clues to Duffy's very nature. As it turns out, Aurelianus knows more about Duffy and his past than Duffy himself knows, and his real purpose in hiring him is to protect the hidden Fisher King, secret spiritual leader of the western world, and to defend him and the West against the Turkish advance in the siege of Vienna. And the real reason that it's critical that Vienna not be captured by the Turks is because it's the site of the Herzwesten brewery. The Herzwesten light and bock beers are famous throughout Europe, but the dark beer, produced only every eight hundredth year, has supernatural properties and must not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Meanwhile, others are drawn to Vienna in anticipation of significant events. The so-called "dark birds", magically sensitive individuals from far flung corners of the world, arrive in the city hoping for a sip of the Herzwesten dark, and a small group of middle-aged Vikings have improbably sailed their ship up the Danube River to Vienna, having sensed the possibility that the prophesied final battle of Ragnarok will take place here.
16151227	/m/03wbbn2	Leyendas de Guatemala	Miguel Ángel Asturias	1930		 Leyendas de Guatemala is made up of a series of short stories, which transform the oral legends of popular culture into relevant textual manifestations. Guatemala serves as the first introduction to the legends about the Central American nation bearing the same name. This story presents Guatemala as a palimpsest, in which the duality of past vs. present and the Maya-Quiché vs. the Spanish identities becomes prominent. The story begins with a winding road and a cart approaching an unnamed city and focuses on a pair of goitered elders, Don Chepe and Niña Tina, who are laden with the country's heritage. To stitch together the legends that compose the rest of the book told by these elders, the character, “Cuco de los Sueños,” is introduced. The narrator then tells two anecdotes, one about Brother Pedro de Betancourt and another about Fray Payo Enriquez de Rivera. Both stories emphasize transformation and contrasting elements. Asturias' main argument is that Guatemala is a nation built on nations and that change is possible. Asturias makes references to the main cities and sites of Guatemala, such as Guatemala City and Antigua, which were formed during the colonial era of Guatemala. He also mentions the Guatemalan sites of Quiriguá, Tikal, as well as Palenque and Copán, which although they are not part of modern-day Guatemala, were part of the "Maya Empire". It is explained in this leyenda that the modern cities of Guatemala have been physically constructed upon previous colonial and indigenous cities, which creates an image of Guatemala as "a house of several levels" and gives legitimacy to the "unity of the Hispanic and Maya races". Asturias emphasizes that ancient cultures are preserved within these layers. This first introduction is about the reinstitution of the past culture and lost traditions. As such, "Guatemala" can be understood as a personal declaration of its own aesthetic, since it is a text where, as in the buried and overlapping cities, everything is combined. This discursive strategy marks the complexity of Guatemalan identity that Asturias tried so fervently to understand and delineate in literary terms for most of his life. Asturias presents himself at the end of the story. Upon arriving to the capital he exlaims, “Mi pueblo! Mi pueblo!” Thus it is argued that this first story reveals Asturias' feelings of nostalgia. (I Remember Now) This story serves as a second introduction and presents creation as an inseparable element of destruction. This is the first of seven legends that the figure Cuero de Oro will tell. Cuero de Oro is the mythical manifestation of our newcomer, pale-skinned narrator. This figure engages in a narrative interplay with don Chepe and doña Tina, who are also mysterious figures that represent the elders who tell the tales of Guatemala. These elders speak of a tree that destroys the notion of time. "At the beginning of the narrative, the three initial paragraphs are in the present [tense], and then become the past tense once the story of Cuero de Oro (...) begins. This provokes a certain surprise, not to mention a certain (...) temporal confusion". That is to say, mysterious and almost magical elements enter within the context of this story. The emphasis on the oral qualities of traditional story telling are also evident in this short story. The narrator is telling us about his journey, and his anguish during his delirious night. This narration is full of voices, for example as don Chepe and Niña Tina respond to Cuero de Oro's exhortation. Asturias even ends the tale with the final sentence: and the conversation ended. The textual interplay between Cuero de Oro and don Chepe and Niña Tina can also be interpreted as representative of a child who is searching for the roots of his identity, questioning those who have access to this knowledge of another (mythical) time and space. (Legend of the Volcano) Leyenda del Volcán teaches that destruction is always followed by rebirth, implying that Maya-Quiche culture can be reborn. It relates the origin of the people in Guatemala in "one day that lasted many centuries". It begins with six men, three of whom appeared from the water and three of whom appeared from the wind. Asturias' emphasis on the number three throughout the legend is in reference to the number's importance in Nahuatl tradition. The three men from the water nourish themselves with stars and those from the wind walk through the forest like bird-men. In addition to these men there are two gods, Cabrakán, who provokes earthquakes, and Hurakán, who is the giant of the winds and the spirit of the sky. Hurakán produces a tremor and all of the animals flee from the forest. One of the six men, who is named Nido (the word for "nest" in Spanish), is the only being that remains and is ordered by a trinity, consisting of a saint, white lily, and a child, to build a temple. Afterwards the trees begin to fill with nests, illustrating how this story exemplifies the process of renewal. This legend narrates a clear struggle between religions. It contrasts Catholicism (e.g.: references to "little crosses" and the trinity) with the forces of Cabrakán and Hurakán, who represent Maya-Quiche religion. Set in the seventeenth century, this legend illustrates the capacity humanity has to overcome oppression. In the first paragraph we are presented with the protagonist, a beautiful novice at a convent who, with time, will later become Madre Elvira de San Francisco. This character changes names various times in the story. The next several paragraphs are dedicated to describing the ambiance of the convent that encircles her, subtly moulded by her emotional perspective. She is plagued by her braid because it incites the physical arousal of men. Eventually she becomes mortified, therefore cutting off her braid, which then turns into a snake. The snake coils around a candle, putting out its flame, and sending the man to hell. Preito shows how the Cadejo was "...born out of temptation and ready to haunt humanity until the end of time. Through the description of how Madre Elvira de San Francisco was able to rid herself of her braid, Asturias demonstrates how humanity possesses the means to liberate itself from the "yoke" which binds it, regardless of how oppressive it may be. In this story there are frequent images of death and dead bodies, as well as instances of magical happenings. In the last paragraph of the story it is unclear whether or not Asturias indicates that the events were nothing more than a dream. This legend aims to describe ways in which humanity can and will regain its freedom. The legend is about an almond tree, that is described as a "priest-tree". This tree guards the Maya traditions and recounts the passing of the years. The tree divides its soul between the four paths that one encounters before the underworld known as Xibalbá. These four paths are marked by different colors: green, red, white and black. Each portion of the soul embarks on a different path on which they each face temptations. The black road, which in Mayan tradition leads to the underworld, trades part of its soul with the merchant of Priceless Jewels, who then uses in exchange for the most beautiful slave. The slave escapes, and the character of the tree, searching for the missing part of his soul eventually finds her. The Inquisition then intervenes and sentences to kill them. In the end, the beautiful slave escapes the night via the magic of a boat drawn on her prison wall. On the morning of the execution the only thing the guards find in the prison cell is an old almond tree. In this legend, Master Almond represents the Maya-Quiche civilization and the Inquisition represents a foreign power. This legend shows that "the soul is not at the mercy of external forces" and "therefore humans always have the means to recover their independence". In this legend, Asturias takes the idea of the child/demon, el Sombrerón, and explores it through a lens of magic; he creates a ball which appears and disappears, in which he encloses a Sombreron or devil. The protagonist is a monk, who becomes tempted by a ball that bounces through his window into his cell. He find himself enthralled by the ball and even begins to wonder if it may be affiliated with the devil. He spends countless hours playing with the ball, and when he talks to a woman whose son had lost the ball, and feels pressured to return it, the neighbors claim he appeared to look like the devil. He then eventually throws the ball out his window, and the ball transforms into the Sombrerón. Thus again, Asturias is showing that humans "are capable to breaking the ties that bind them to the undesirable". This legend, like Leyenda del Cadejo, corresponds to the Spanish colonial period in Guatemala, and is written in a simple colloquial tongue. It focuses on the Spanish and a Christian aspects of Guatemala and it takes place in the city of Antigua. Sáenz asserted in his analysis that the ball that the monk enjoys and plays with symbolizes an ancient Maya ball game. Thus, in this legend Christian and Maya traditions are combined as the ball equates an element of Maya ritual, but also has the characteristics of a devil. (Legend of the Treasure from the Flowerying Place) This legend takes place at the time when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Guatemala, while the natives celebrate the end of a war. It is situated near the lake Lago de Atitlán, where the Tz'utujil people live. Near this lake is a volcano named Abuelo del Agua, which means "grandfather of the water". This volcano hides the treasure from the bordering tribes who escaped from the plundering of the Spanish. The legend begins at twilight, which, according to Sáenz, can be seen as a comparison to the decline of the indigenous civilization. The end of the war is announced and a night-long celebration of peace ensues among the aboriginal people in the story. There's a list of the squadrons of soldiers, and each one is distinguished by the colors of the feathers they wear. The head of the local Maya brings together those who are to be sacrificed. The moment of destruction begins as the priests exclaim ritual sentences to the volcano, while the Spaniards ("white men") approach. The tribes are terrified and flee to the lake to protect themselves against the invasion, leaving the treasure behind. Out of all eight texts which compose the original first edition, this last one is the only one which is set in the pre-Hispanic era, even if it is set right at the moment of the arrival of the Spanish. Asturias contrasts the two cultures; he describes the natives as connected to the natural world (their arms green with plant blood) and associates them with abundance and a sense of richness (they had flowers, fruits, birds, beehives, feathers, gold and precious stones), while emphasizing the scarcity and want of the Europeans by repeating the preposition "without" over and over again in their context. (The sorcerers of the spring storm) This legend is an interpretation of the creation of the world by the work of gods, and contains many magical and symbolic elements. It is divided into six parts and it describes the mythological fights for the survival between the three kingdoms: animal, plant, and mineral. Juan Poye is the protagonist of the legend and is a "man-river" that symbolizes fertility and the living. When the humans forget the rules of love and act cruelly, the river becomes a source of punishment for the immoral humans. All that remains at the end of the legend is cities covered by the vegetation of the Quiché land. In this story Asturias creates a new magical language in which he mixes Maya and Judeo-Christian ideas of an apocalypse and combines them to create this Apocalypse of Juan. (alternate spelling: Kukulkan) This is the last story in Leyendas, and was written in the form of a play. It was added to the legends in the second edition. The three scenes are separated by colored curtains that indicate the passing of time; the curtain colors (yellow, red, and black) and scene changes follow the movement of the sun. The main characters are: Guacamayo, a bird of a thousand colors, who is deceitful, Cuculcán, or Plumed Serpent, and Chinchinirín, who is Cuculcán's warrior-attendant. Yaí is another character who is a "woman-flower" and is to be sacrificed. Guacamayo and Cuculcán dispute the legend of the sun, and behind his back, Guacamayo accuses him of being a fake, and argues with Chinchinirín. Finally, plotting to take Cuculcán's place, Guacamayo makes a deal with Yaí, but Cuculcán is saved. In the end the moon is born from Chinchinirín's body as he tries to reach Yellow Flower. This final legend is a lucid re-elaboration on the Maya legend of the Plumed Serpent in order to permit an approach to the question of identity as a social construction. The tricky mirror which appears in the story (which confuses Guacamayo and Cuculcán about what is "real") is a metaphor for a brutal relativism which Asturias introduces in order to express the dual and complementary character of reality. That is to say Asturias presents the reality of an identity as dual, diglossic, and relative in the universe of Cuculcán, and applies this to the newly constructed, hybrid Guatemalan identity
16153052	/m/03wbctf	The Tale of Frol Skobeev				 The story begins in Novgorod in 1680, where Frol Skobeev, a poor nobleman and legal clerk known locally as a cunning rogue, has designs on marrying Annushka of the prominent and well-placed Nadrin-Nashchekin family. Annushka’s father is described as a stol'nik, meaning he was a ranking official in the Tsar’s court and probably one of the richer and more influential members of the Russian aristocracy. Knowing that there is little chance of meeting Annushka in person, or of her father agreeing to their marriage, Frol concocts a devious plan to meet with her. He gets acquainted with Annushka’s nurse, offers her money – asking for nothing in return at first – and from her learns that Annushka will shortly be having a Christmas party. He arranges to get his sister invited to the ball, and disguises himself as a noblewoman and comes with her to the party. There, he bribes the nurse to get close to Annushka. The nurse orchestrates matters so that the disguised Frol and Annushka are together in her chambers, and tells him to play a game of ‘bride and groom’. Frol reveals himself to Annushka and takes her virginity. While Annushka initially resists him, she quickly finds pleasure in their relationship and keeps Frol in her home for three days under cover, during which time he remains disguised as a woman. The Nadrin-Nashchenin family, including Annushka, then relocate from Novgorod to Moscow. Frol follows them and again devises a plan to outwit Annushka’s parents with the aid of the nurse. This time he sends a carriage to the family home and pretends Annushka is to be taken to her aunt, who is a nun in a local convent. In reality, Annushka elopes with Frol and they marry shortly afterwards. When Annushka’s father discovers she is missing, he publicly campaigns for the return of his daughter and threatens to punish ruthlessly anyone involved in her disappearance. After reflection and taking counsel from a friend, Frol decides to come forward, confess and ask for Nadrin-Nashchekin’s mercy. His ingratiating attitude persuades Nadrin-Nashchekin not to punish him. Frol and Annushka also manage to wangle money and valuable items from them. Annushka feigns an illness and her parents send a bejeweled icon; they also begin to send carriages with money and food on a regular basis. Finally, Nadrin-Nashchekin offers Frol Skobeev a large estate, three hundred rubles and Frol secures a position as his heir. The story concludes by telling us that Frol also managed to arrange a propitious marriage for his sister, and that he and Annushka lived happily after ever.
16158530	/m/03wbhhf	Night Walk				 Emm Luther is a planet ruled by a single, worldwide theocracy. It is sparsely populated, and a couple of railroads run up and down the coasts of the largest continent. Earth sends secret agent Sam Tallon to Emm Luther to infiltrate the theocracy, and extract the coordinates of the jump points, a closely guarded secret. When the religious secret police discover he has false credentials, and has entered the world under false pretenses, a frantic chase and flight ensues, terminated only when they break down his hotel room, and a high-ranking Security Agent fires his dart gun into Sam's eyes, permanently blinding him. He is taken to a secret prison complex in the southernmost tip of the most distant continent to convalesce. While he is there, he enlists the aid of the scientific elite in the ranks and files of the political prisoners there, and together they design a pair of electronic "sonar" eyes. Equipped with an audio feedback system depending on which direction he turns his "eyeglasses" or headgear, he discerns a different kind of audio tone. Then, with the aid of two other prisoners, they have a chance at escaping the prison, traveling across the diameter of the planet, and reaching his secret contact. Managing to get the necessary equipment, they escape, wading through 20 miles of swamp and shallows. Tallon manages to cross the single continent of Emm Luther, rendezvous with secret agents whose covers are not yet blown, and escape the planet by boarding a spaceship and departing from the local planet. Later, he finds he must master the intricacies of the "jump stick," a form of jump drive via portals to "null-space" (a hyperspace parallel universe passing through which instantaneous space travel is achieved).
16169780	/m/03wbszy	Doom 3: Worlds on Fire	Matthew J. Costello		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The year is 2144 and the battle over Earth's precious resources has raged for a century. With global economies in ruins and all-out world war more than a possibility, the U.S government turned to the Union Aerospace Corporation, giving it carte blanche on the legendary red planet of Mars in a desperate bid to construct an off-world outpost that might provide resources and a military advantage, as well as something so secret that even members of government do not have a clue about it. Special ops marine lieutenant John Kane was once a careerist simply glad to have a job, and could not care less about politics as long as Uncle Sam's check cleared. But that was before he listened to his conscience and disobeyed a direct order. Busted down to private, Kane has been reassigned to the "U.S. Space Marines" - the private army of the UAC - with the prospect of becoming little more than a glorified security guard on Mars. Now Pvt. Kane's fate leads him to Mars City - part environmental community, part lab center, and all owned and protected by the UAC. It is a strange world with a fatal environment, and the thousands who live and work within the city have already begun to think of themselves as Martians. And away from Mars City, at the strange ancient sites uncovered on the planet, a small squad of marines stand guard while scientists uncover wall glyphs and search for artifacts, having already found something that is so far amazing and inexplicable - including the relic called "U1," nicknamed "the Soul Cube" - and unknown to all, the bringer of destructive chaos and unspeakable horror...
16170773	/m/03wbtjx	Pursuit of the Screamer	Ansen Dibell		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jannus is the son of Mistress Lillia, the ruler of Newstock, a village near the river in Bremner. The competing villages are protected by the Valde, strange female warriors who serve ten years in the villages. The few that reach the end of their service are allowed to get married with one of the rare male Valde. The Valde are tall, beautiful, filled with quick animal instincts, sexually mature at nine and dead of old age around thirty, are also gifted with empathy; the power to feel one's emotions. While watching a duel to the death between Poli - Jannus's favorite Valde - and another Valde, Jannus discovers a Screamer, a fragile humanoid creature that is hunted without pity by the Valde. He saves the Screamer who tells him that he is an immortal Tek. Each time when a Tek dies he is reborn again. The Tek wants to return to Kantmorie to end his thousand years of regenerations. The Tek, called Lur by Jannus, persuades Jannus to accompany him. Together with a merchant family, the Yrsmits and a number of Valde warriors Jannus follows the river downstream. Among the Valde is Poli who served her ten years. After a number of adventures the Tek, Jannus, Poli and the leader of the merchant family find themselves in the desert trying to reach the location where the Shai is, the huge intelligence guiding the star ship that brought the Teks to the world, to end the endless cycle of rebirthing. * Pursuit of the Screamer, DAW Books, June 1978, ISBN 0-87997-386-2 * Circle, Crescent, Star, DAW Books, February 1981, ISBN 0-87997-603-9 * Summerfair, DAW Books, July 1982, ISBN 0-87997-759-0 * Tidestorm Limit, 1983, (published in Dutch and French translations only) **Stormvloedgrens, Dutch edition **Aux confins de l'ouragan, French edition * The Sun of Return, 1985 (published in Dutch and French translations only) **Gift van de Shai, Dutch edition **Le soleil du grand retour, French edition
16175477	/m/03wbys5	Union Street	Pat Barker	1982-05-13		 The novel is divided into chapters each covering the same few months but centering around the life of one of seven working class women living the area of Union Street in northeastern England. The characters range in age and circumstance, Alice Bell is in her seventies and dying whereas Kelly Brown is eleven, but all of them face struggles and poverty. The book begins with the character of eleven year old Kelly Brown and deals with her rape and the response of Kelly and her community to the rape. When the people on the street find out about her rape they will not deal with it openly with her; instead, they react with general sympathy, in the way they would have if she had been ill, but both the adults and children talk about the incident behind her back. Kelly becomes increasingly isolated, distrustful of adults and no longer feeling at home with the other children; she spends an increasing amount of time by herself at night in the neighbourhood. As time passes Kelly's silence turns to anger, responding to the trauma of the events with acts of rebellion and violence, such as cutting her hair short and breaking the windows of a school. This culminates with Kelly walking away from the area of Union Street.
16176956	/m/04n7r_0	Going, Going, Gone	Jack Womack		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Set in 1968 New York in an alternate universe to the Dryco universe of the previous five iterations of the series, Going, Going, Gone nevertheless disposes of several of the series' characters in its closing chapters. Its protagonist is Walter Bullitt, an egocentric expert in psychoactive substances who freelances for various branches of the United States government spy apparatus. Though he passes for white, Bullitt is in fact of African-American descent in a world where almost all full-blooded members of that race died sometime in the early twentieth century in an apparently engineered plague and all black music is banned. Walter becomes subject to increasingly strange experiences, hearing voices and seeing ghosts from a parallel New York which is blending into his one. Walter is taken to this alternative New York which has been flooded and moved north, populated by black people and an analogue of television absent from his world. The novel ends with the two epistemic worlds converging into a New York which is, in the words of critic Paul Dukes a "morally better place than either of the two which composed it".
16180447	/m/03wc2p6	Ladies' Night	Jack Ketchum			 The novel takes place in New York City, where a chemical truck gets into an accident and spills its contents on the street. Curiously, the trucker has fake identification, and no one seems to have heard of the company name on the truck: "Ladies, INC." Later that evening, Tom Braun and his family go to a party. Tom gets into a shouting match with his wife, Susan, which their son, Andy, overhears. Andy retreats to his room to pack for a scout camping trip. After Tom leaves the apartment for the night, the women of New York who inhaled the spilled chemicals (including Susan) begin to have severe headaches. Within a short time, the women are overcome by a desire to have sex with any man they can find. Finally, the women begin attacking those who have not been similarly affected by the spilled chemicals. In increasingly gruesome scenes, women kill their children, husbands, brothers, etc., and the seemingly few unaffected women of the city. As Tom works with a small band of men to make it home to Andy, Susan first tries to mate with her son, then tries to kill him. Andy hides in a bathroom until an unaffected woman unknowingly saves his life by knocking on the door. The woman is subsequently attacked by Susan and other crazed women. Tom is wounded on his journey home, but manages to severely injure his wife before she can kill their son. Susan then kills Tom, whereupon Andy shoots his mom with several arrows (which he had for his camping trip) to make sure she is not able to recover from her injuries.
16185864	/m/03wc8bg	The Five Chinese Brothers	Claire Huchet Bishop	1938	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Long ago in China lived a family with five brothers who resembled each other very closely. They each possessed a special talent. One can swallow the sea; one has an iron neck; one can stretch his legs; one can survive fire; and the last can hold his breath forever. When one of the brothers, a somehow very successful fisherman, agrees to let a young boy accompany him on his fishing trip, trouble results. This brother holds the entire sea in his mouth so that the boy can retrieve fish and treasures. When the man can no longer hold in the sea, he frantically signals to the boy, but the boy ignores him and drowns when the man releases the water. The man is accused of murder and sentenced to death. However, one by one, his four brothers assume his place when subjected to execution, and each uses his own superhuman ability to survive (one cannot be beheaded, one cannot be drowned, one cannot be burned, and one cannot be smothered). At the end of the story, a judge decides that the brother accused of murder must have been innocent, since he could not be executed, and the five brothers return home.
16185993	/m/03wc8h_	Storm Thief	Chris Wooding	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with a scene of a seabird flying through the clouds. It falls out of the sky with exhaustion and crashes through a window, dying, where it is found by a strange golem-like creature. Then later that day in the other side of Orokos in the Ghetto's, the two protagonists, Rail and Moa, are sent on a mission to steal from the hideous creatures called Mozgas. They sneak through a large building and find a small box with different sorts of treasure within. Rail also finds an artifact that is known to be Fade-Science. They manage just to escape from the Mozgas and report back to the obese thief mistress Anya-Jacana. Rail debates about whether to give her the Fade Science but chooses not to. They depart and leave for their small living place. Anya-Jacana sends a small group of boys, led by her favourite Finch, to get the artifact off them. They arrive soon enough and Rail and Moa are trapped. Moa then puts the artifact on her finger and manages to fall through the wall behind them. She pulls Rail through just as the gang enters. They discover the artifact can open 'doors' though solid objects. As Rail and Moa escape, they meet a golem named Vago. He had escaped from his own master after getting beaten. The three proceed to discover the truth behind their unjust society.
16186265	/m/03wc8v9	Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold	Jack L. Chalker	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 "He" wakes up on a prison ship, and discovers that "he" is a copy. But he receives another shock, as he discovers that he is in a woman's body, a criminal named Qwin Zhang, who was mindwiped so that his recording could be inserted. He quickly learns that this is not an insurmountable problem, as the Warden powers on this planet are such that everyone has them, but it manifests itself as body swapping, a process that occurs when both parties are asleep. The Warden Organisms exchange information pertaining to memories and personality, so that if given sufficient time, the two sleepers will fully exchange bodies. The agent arranges to sleep next to a male during the newcomer orientation, and so has a male body again. He also learns that Cerberus is covered completely in water, with the only "land" being the tops of underwater trees that grow tall enough to extend beyond the water's surface. Given that Cerberus is a world of white collar criminals, and that their technology is 20 years behind the times, "Qwin" can do quite well, and quickly establishes himself as "president" of a minor subsidiary of a large company. He does this with the help of Dylan Kohl, a boat captain, and Sanda Tyne, a host mother. Host mothering is an important profession, as the body swapping allows for people to live forever, so long as there are enough new bodies to swap with. After a series of improbable adventures that gain him the position of company president, he attempts to carry out his mission of assassinating Wagant Laroo, the Lord of Cerberus. In the process of this, he comes across Dr. Dumonia, a psychologist who is later revealed to be a part-time Confederacy agent, though not especially loyal at all times. Qwin also learns that the human imitating robots are given human minds on Cerberus, specifically on Wagant's island. With the help of his friends, he manages to get on that island, and even arranges to come up with the solution to a problem of Wagant's. The problem Wagant had was that the robots are better in every way, and nearly immortal and invulnerable. But Wagant does not want to put his mind into one, as the aliens who provide the robots have hidden commands in them that make the person the slave of the aliens. Not being able to get rid of those commands, Wagant accepts Qwin's help in getting rid of those commands. Qwin does so by asking his over-Agent in the picket ship to do so, which not only gets him in good with Wagant, but lets the Confederacy have a sample of the robot body and brain for examination. Wagant, while very untrusting of Qwin, does eventually transfer his mind into the body of a "cleared" robot. What Wagant doesn't realize is that it wasn't quite fully cleared, and when Qwin recites a Lewis Carroll poem in front of him, it places Wagant under Qwin's complete control. Thus assassination is not necessary, as Qwin and Dumonia are in effect the rulers of Cerberus. The book closes with the Agent in the picket ship feeling more concerned, as he saw himself change again, this time putting other people above his own needs and mission. This increases his turmoil and soul searching. The saga continues in the third book of the series, called Charon: A Dragon at the Gate.
16186787	/m/03wc9fd	Into the Out Of	Alan Dean Foster	1985	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Maasai people become aware that a global crisis is approaching. Malevolent, unearthly creatures called shetani, which inhabit another dimension the Maasai know as the “Out Of” (because all things, such as humans, animals and plants, originally came "out of" it), are finding their way into the world. They are fomenting trouble between the superpowers, intent on causing mischief up to and including war. If not prevented, the barriers between the two dimensions will be breached and uncountable hordes of shetani will overrun the world, destroying all life. Olkeloki, a Maasai elder, comes to Washington DC to warn the US President and seek help. He encounters Joshua Oak, a disenchanted FBI agent, and Merry Sharrow, a shy and unfulfilled call centre worker. He is convinced that they are the key people he has been seeking, and his persuasion, coupled with several dangerous encounters with shetani, convince them to return with him to Africa, where they join in Maasai attempts to hold back the shetani. Eventually Olkeloki takes Merry and Oak into the Out Of, where, with their help, he performs a ritual which seals the breach between dimensions, sacrificing his own supernatural powers in the process. All three return to this world, where the shetani’s tricks have ended and the diplomatic crisis is receding, and Oak and Merry realise they have found what they have been looking for in each other.
16197210	/m/03qn0x6	The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog	John R. Erickson			 The setting is in the panhandle of Texas probably during the 1980s when the book was written. It starts off with Drover, Hank's assistant, coming to him and waking him up saying there's been a murder. They find a dead chicken and Hank says it was a 'raccoon' who did it, and he says he knows where it is. But the thing he finds in a bush is a porcupine, and later the local barncat, Pete, teases Hank for having quills in his nose. Later that day around dark, Hank assigns Drover to watch the chicken house while Hank goes on patrol. A couple hours later, Drover starts yelling there's a monster, Hank comes running and attacks the 'monster' which turns out to be a cow. The next day Hank and Drover sneak a trip on the back of a truck to town. In town the two dogs anger Bruno, a large boxer. The next day back at the ranch they find another murdered chicken, and Hank can't resist and he eats it. He wakes up and finds that he is in pile of feathers, and Sally May finds him and thinks that he is the murderer,so High Loper then ties the chicken's head around Hanks neck. Hank then realizes that he has to leave the ranch. He heads out and meets two turkey vultures, Wallace and Junior, in the end he gives them the chicken's head and they fight over it, but in the end a hawk swoops down and grabs it. The next day Hank finds a female coyote named Girl-Who-Drinks-Blood (who he calls Missy), they become good friends but then Missy's family shows up. And the next thing Hank knows, Missy is his fiancée. Her brother Scraunch has met Hank on the field of battle before. He and Hank are now worst enemies. Hank becomes good friends with the two coyote brothers named Rip and Snort. After a long time with the coyotes, Scraunch decides that if Hank wants to prove himself to the coyote tribe and marry Missy, he must join in for a raid on the ranch. So Scraunch, Rip, Snort, and Hank along with other coyotes raid the ranch. But Drover, during the middle of the raid, convinces Hank that what he is doing is wrong. So Hank turns on them, and in the end Scraunch is about to kill Hank when a gun goes off. The coyotes then run off. It ends with Hank being back on ranch as Head of Ranch Security.
16198081	/m/03wcqw3	Louis Lambert	Honoré de Balzac			 The novel begins with an overview of the main character's background. Louis Lambert, the only child of a tanner and his wife, is born in 1797 and begins reading at an early age. In 1811 he meets the real-life Swiss author Madame de Staël (1766–1817), who – struck by his intellect – pays for him to enroll in the Collège de Vendôme. There he meets the narrator, a classmate named "the Poet" who later identifies himself in the text as Balzac; they quickly become friends. Shunned by the other students and berated by teachers for not paying attention, the boys bond through discussions of philosophy and mysticism. After completing an essay entitled Traité de la Volonté ("Treatise on the Will"), Lambert is horrified when a teacher confiscates it, calls it "rubbish", and – the narrator speculates – sells it to a local grocer. Soon afterwards, a serious illness forces the narrator to leave the school. In 1815, Lambert graduates at the age of eighteen and lives for three years in Paris. After returning to his uncle's home in Blois, he meets a woman named Pauline de Villenoix and falls passionately in love with her. On the day before their wedding, however, he suffers a mental breakdown and attempts to castrate himself. Declared "incurable" by doctors, Lambert is ordered into solitude and rest. Pauline takes him to her family's château, where he lives in a near coma. The narrator, ignorant of these events, meets Lambert's uncle by chance, and is given a series of letters. Written by Lambert while in Paris and Blois, they continue his philosophical musings and describe his love for Pauline. The narrator visits his old friend at the Villenoix château, where the decrepit Lambert says only: "The angels are white." Pauline shares a series of statements her lover had dictated, and Lambert dies on 25 September 1824 at the age of twenty-eight.
16203597	/m/03wcw8y	"G" Is for Gumshoe	Sue Grafton	1990-05-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Three things happen to Kinsey Millhone on her thirty-third birthday: she moves into her remodelled apartment, which has finally been finished; she is hired by Irene Gersh, a sickly Santa Theresa resident, to head out to the Slabs in the Mojave Desert and locate her mother; she gets the news that Tyrone Patty, a particularly dangerous criminal she helped the Carson City Police Department track down a few years back, has hired a hitman to kill her. After her first night in her new place, Kinsey heads out early the next day in search of Mrs Gersh's mother, Agnes Grey, who lives in a trailer in the desert. Agnes isn't home, and the trailer seems to be occupied by two teenage runaways, but Kinsey eventually tracks Agnes down at a local convalescent hospital, where she has been since being taken suddenly ill on a trip to a local town sometime before. Agnes, 83 years old, hasn't exactly been a model patient, and the hospital staff are delighted to hear that she has relatives who can take responsibility for her. Irene makes plans to transfer Agnes to a facility in Santa Teresa, but Agnes seems terrified of going there, and tells Kinsey a confused story about a number of people from the past, including Lottie, and Emily who died. Kinsey makes plans to come home, but before she can do so, a man in a pick-up truck deliberately runs her off the road, seriously injuring Kinsey and totalling her treasured VW. Kinsey recognises the driver as a man she has seen travelling with his young son a couple of times on the journey to the Slabs, and realises she needs to take the death threat against her seriously. She hires Robert Dietz, the PI who helped her briefly by phone in A is for Alibi, as a bodyguard. His vigilance initially frustrates Kinsey, used to making her own decisions, but they soon begin an affair. Dietz discovers the hitman is Mark Messinger, who absconded with his son, Eric, eight months previously. He arranges a meeting with the child's mother, Rochelle, who is desperate to get her son back, and offers to help her. Meanwhile Agnes goes missing only a few hours after getting to Santa Teresa, and although she is soon found, she is dead within a day - of fright, according to the pathologist - and they suspect she has been kept prisoner somewhere. Irene suffers a serious panic reaction when she sees a tea set Kinsey found amongst her mother's possessions, and Kinsey suspects this has triggered a buried childhood memory. Further anomalies occur when Irene tries to fill in the paperwork relating to the death: Kinsey realises that Irene's birth certificate is faked, and that Agnes Grey is a pseudonym. It's Kinsey's CFI colleague Darcy who points out Agnes Grey is the name of a novel by Anne Brontë, which seems to link to the names Emily and Lottie (Charlotte) Agnes had mentioned. She tracks down a family called Bronfen who match the circumstances Agnes described, and surmises that the surviving brother of the family, Patrick, murdered Lottie and Emily. She is convinced that Agnes Grey was Anne Bronfen, a third sister, who took off with Irene to protect her when Patrick killed Irene's mother, Sheila, changing their identities and posing as her mother. The three daughters were presumably named for the Brontë sisters, which explains the alias Anne chose to use. Patrick faked Anne's death in order to gain sole possession of the family property. Kinsey is convinced that Patrick is responsible for Agnes's death, to cover his past crimes, and discovers evidence of further killings at his home. When she confronts Patrick, she is interrupted by Messinger, who kills Patrick. Dietz and Rochelle have managed to get Eric away from Messinger, and Messinger's stated intention is to use Kinsey as a hostage to exchange for Eric. As she drives Messinger to the airport at gunpoint to intercept Rochelle, Kinsey is convinced Messinger will kill them all. However, Rochelle outsmarts Messinger and kills him first.
16204072	/m/03wcwml	"H" Is for Homicide	Sue Grafton	1991-05-15	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The eighth novel in the Kinsey Millhone series opens in the midst of troubling times for California Fidelity, the insurance company Kinsey does occasional freelance work for in return for office space. First, a recent employee and friend of Kinsey's, Parnell Perkins, is shot and killed - and the police investigation seems curiously lacking in results. Second, in the wake of poor profit figures, company troubleshooter Gordon Titus (or 'tight-ass' as he is immediately nicknamed) arrives to shake things up. The informal arrangement with Kinsey seems high on his list of targets. In the new mood of nervous efficiency prevalent at CFI pending Titus's arrival, Kinsey is passed the claim file of Bibianna Diaz to investigate for possible fraud. Kinsey assumes a false identity as Hannah Moore in an attempt to befriend Bibianna, who by co-incidence is in a relationship with a former schoolmate and associate from police academy days of Kinsey's, Jimmy Tate, recently relieved of police duties on the grounds of corruption. Bibianna has problems too, it seems: her former boyfriend Raymond Montanaldo, of whom she is - rightly as it turns out - terrified, is the jealous type, and is hunting her down. Kinsey realises that a CFI colleague has inadvertently given away information on Bibianna to Raymond's gang, and things come to a head while she is out drinking with Bibianna and Tate. Raymond's brother Chago and his girlfriend Dawna accost Bibianna, and in the fracas which ensues Tate shoots and kills Chago. Bibianna is taken into custody with Kinsey deliberately sticking to her in order to cement their relationship. Kinsey's enforced overnight stay in the police 'tank' is interrupted by Lieutenant Dolan, who has a job offer for her: Raymond is the head of a huge insurance fraud gang and the police want Kinsey to use her new position as Bibianna's confidante to get the evidence they need; there seems to be a leak somewhere in the police department and they need someone unconnected they can trust to bring Raymond to justice. Kinsey withdraws her initial gut refusal when Dolan tells her Raymond killed Parnell, but they have been stalling the murder investigation in order not to jeopodise the longstanding fraud case. Kinsey agrees to help out of a sense of duty to Parnell, but the police plan to have Kinsey wired for her own protection goes awry and she is left to fend for herself. Thus begins a dangerous and stifling few days for Kinsey, undercover and up to her neck in an a criminal ring headed by a deluded killer. Raymond effectively keeps both Kinsey and Bibianna under house arrest in Los Angeles, with the aid of his second in command, Luis. Raymond can't accept Bibianna's rejection of him and is determined to force her into marriage. The snag in the plan, which Bibianna doesn't dare confess, is that she has actually just married Tate. Tensions run high, while Kinsey learns much about the car insurance fraud business, keeps her eyes open, and eventually establishes the leak is a clerk at the County Sheriff's office, whose father is a crooked doctor heavily involved in Raymond's ring. Matters come to a head when Bibianna escapes, and is pursued almost to her death by one of Raymond's henchmen. Visiting her in hospital, the doctor inadvertently lets slip to Raymond that Bibianna's next of kin is her husband, Jimmy Tate. Enraged, Raymond shoots Jimmy. Kinsey sets off in hot pursuit and received unexpected help from Luis, who turns out to be an undercover LAPD cop. Kinsey makes it back to Santa Teresa in the nick of time for her friend Vera Lipton's wedding. Both Bibianna and Tate survive, but despite her success in wrapping up the insurance fraud claim, Gordon Titus fires Kinsey from CFI.
16204124	/m/03wcwnm	The Year of Living Dangerously	Christopher Koch			 Guy Hamilton, a neophyte foreign correspondent for an Australian network, arrives in Jakarta on assignment. He meets the close-knit members of the foreign correspondent community including foreign journalists, diplomatic personnel, and a Chinese-Australian dwarf of high intelligence and moral seriousness, Billy Kwan. Guy is initially unsuccessful because his predecessor, tired of life in Indonesia, has departed without introducing Hamilton to his contacts, and Guy receives only limited sympathy from the journalist community, which competes for scraps of information from Sukarno's government, the (Communist) PKI and the military. However, Billy Kwan takes a liking to Guy and gets him interviews, and Guy's reputation soars. Billy introduces Guy to Jill Bryant, a beautiful young assistant at the British embassy. Billy and Jill are close friends, and Billy subtly manipulates Guy and Jill's encounters. After some initial resistance because she's scheduled to return to the UK, Jill falls in love with the equally smitten Guy. Jill discovers that the Communist Chinese are planning to arm the PKI and passes this information in confidence—or so she believes—to Guy. But Guy, now overly focused on his career and unconcerned with the well-being of his friends and allies, wants to be the one to break the huge story, and the civil war that he believes will ensue when the arms shipment reaches Jakarta. Guy visits Central Java and accompanies a march of PKI sympathizers marching towards the capital, and at one point his car is surrounded by a hostile crowd and he fears for his life. Upon returning to Jakarta, Guy accompanies one of his fellow journalists, Pete Curtis, on a visit to a seedy area of the city in search of prostitutes, but then realizes his folly. At the Wayang bar in the luxury hotel (Hotel Indonesia) where Guy is based, Billy outs one of Guy's fellow foreign correspondents who has been having homosexual relationships with Indonesian men. As a result Billy is ostracized and loses contact with Guy and the rest of the foreign correspondent community, leaving Guy to depend on his assistant Kumar, who is secretly PKI. Catalyzed by the death of a poor child, whose mother Billy has been assisting with food and money, Billy becomes outraged by Sukarno's failure to meet the needs of the majority of Indonesians. He protests Sukarno's lack of help to the needy by hanging an anti-Sukarno banner from the window of a room of the Hotel Indonesia, which Sukarno is about to visit, but Billy is pushed from the window and is found dead. Guy and Jill are present at the hotel at the time, and Guy becomes aware of evidence that Billy was shot before his fall by agents of the Indonesian security service. Following Billy's death, Cookie drives to Billy's bungalow to remove files that Billy has been furtively compiling on various subjects including the various foreign correspondents in Jakarta, as well as Jill and Sukarno. Guy, who is still in search of "the big story", then visits the Presidential palace following reports of a coup. Guy is viciously struck down by an Army officer, suffering an injury that threatens to blind him in one eye. Guy rests alone in an apartment rented by the British Embassy. Kumar visits him, but Guy fails to persuade him to abandon the PKI. Risking permanent damage to his eye, Guy disregards his doctor's advice and insists on being driven to the airport. He leaves Jakarta and is reunited with Jill, who is now pregnant, and the two fly to Europe.
16205905	/m/03wcxvs	The Will of an Eccentric	Jules Verne	1900	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 William J. Hypperbone, an eccentric millionaire, living in Chicago, has left the sum of his fortune, $60,000,000, to the first person to reach the end of "The Noble Game of the United States of America." The game he devised is based upon the board game "The Noble Game of Goose"; however, in his version, the players are the tokens and the game board is the United States. The contestants are Max Réal (with his companion Tommy); Tom Crabbe (with his trainer John Milner); Hermann Titbury (with his wife Kate); Harris T. Kymbale (on his own); Lizzie Wag (with her friend Jovita Foley); Hodge Urrican (with his companion Turk) and the mysterious player only known as "XKZ." And who is this mysterious "XKZ" who was added to the game by a codicil to the will? Time and completion of the game will tell. (Courtesy djk) In 1897 the first Baedecker guide book for the U.S. was published, and Verne used this as the source for his descriptions of the modes of transport, timetables, and geographic descriptions of the numerous places the twelve participants were required to visit in order to claim the prize.
16208031	/m/03wczmm	Foundling Mick	Jules Verne	1895	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story begins in Westport, Connacht, with the wandering puppeteer Thornpipe demonstrating his puppets to the destitute populace. After the mechanism animating the puppets unexpectedly goes off, the onlooking public with a priest among them discovers that the mechanism was operated by a tortured, hungry, pale boy of scarcely 3 years, concealed in the cart, whom the master spurred with a whip, claiming that the mechanism was operated by a dog. Revealed later to be abandoned while only 6 months old, the boy does not know his proper name; being the protagonist, he is known only as Lit'l Fellow (P'tit-Bonhomme) for the remainder of the story. The public confronts Thornpipe and stands up for the boy, driving Thornpipe out of town. With no local family able or willing to raise the foundling, he is given to an orphanage known as Ragged School in the neighboring town of Galway. Neither O'Bodkins, the principal of the school, nor his assistants (with the exception of the 16 year old Grip) care much about the well-being of children, let alone their conduct or education, and Lit'l Fellow continues to suffer, now at the hands of his peers (particularly Carker, the leader of the gang) for honesty and dignity which he has begun to show at such early years, and hence refusal to follow the gang's ways of theft and panhandling. Lit'l Fellow recalls what he remembers of the early years of his life to Grip (who has become a close friend of the boy), mentioning an evil woman Hard and a compassionate girl named Sissy&mdash;the only person who cared for him in his early years, and whom he indeed came to think of as an elder sister. After the death of yet another child who lived with them, Lit'l Fellow ran away from Hard's hut, only to be found by Thornpipe. This chapter of Lit'l Fellow's life ends when he finds a bottle of vodka, which he decides to bring to the orhpanage in order to consult with Grip regarding how to return it to the owner. Unfortunately, he is noticed by Carker, who proceeds to appropriate the bottle, lock up Grip and Lit'l Fellow in the attic, and throw a drinking party. In the orgy that ensues, the drunk boys set the school building on fire, and Grip, without any way out of the attic, in desperation throws Lit'l Fellow off the roof to the ground, where the latter is caught by the onlookers. Lit'l Fellow is then noticed by the young and popular actress Anna Waston, who happened to travel through Galway when the Ragged School building caught fire. She immediately adopts the boy, much to the dismay of her middle-aged servant Elisa, who knew the pretentious and emotionally unstable nature of her master too well. At first, Anna takes care of the boy and shows promise of being a good foster parent, but Lit'l Fellow's hopes of a good childhood again meet an end when the boy travels with Anna to Limerick, where the actress decides that her newly found "angel" would make a good actor, and drags him into playing a role in a popular performance. But the boy, only 5 years old at the time and not yet able to tell reality from a show, takes the play literally and ruins the performance. Offended, Anna dumps the boy in Limerick and leaves Ireland, never to return. The boy is found at the steps of a cathedral near a local cemetery by the visiting farmers, Martin and Martine MacCarthy, a middle-aged couple with 3 grown-up children. The family shelters Lit'l Fellow to live with them on their Kerwan farm in County Kerry, Munster, where the boy spends the next 4 years of his life. Having proven himself to be hardworking and honorable even before settling on the farm, Lit'l Fellow now desires to be of help in the household, occupying himself on par with the rest of the family, altogether 5 people: Martin's elderly mother, known simply as Grandmother; Martin and Martine themselves, their younger son Simeon, their elder son Murdock with his wife Kitty. Absent was the couple's second son, Patrick, who entered the service as a seaman. Becoming a good farm worker, Lit'l Fellow requests only one thing for his payment&mdash;a small rock for every day he would spend in service of the family. But after becoming an integral part of the MacCarthy family, getting a formidable secular and religious education (the family being devout Roman Catholics), even becoming the godfather of Kitty's newborn daughter Jenny and saving her life from a wolf who dug its way into the house during the family's absence, Lit'l Fellow again sees his hopes of a good life reduced to naught when, after a year of natural disasters and poor harvest, the family is left with no money to pay the rent and is evicted from the farm by the landowners. Murdock is imprisoned for half-year due to his participation in the nationalist movement for home rule, supported by Martin and Simeon by the circumstances which led to their eviction. The Grandmother, severely ill at the time, meets death at the hands of the landlord's manager and police guards come to evict the family. Lit'l Fellow, who was absent at the time walking several miles to a neighboring village trying to obtain a medicine for the dying Grandmother, arrives to see the family gone and the farm demolished. Burying a pot containing all the little pebbles earned during his 4 years on the farm under a fir tree which he planted on Jenny's birthday, the boy leaves for Limerick, where the family was supposedly taken. After nearly perishing in the freezing cold, Lit'l Fellow is saved by the family's shepherd dog, Birk, who was driven away at the time of eviction. Birk, however, leads Lit'l Fellow away from Limerick and into Newmarket, County Cork. There, Lit'l Fellow happens to find a briefcase lost by a local landlord, marquis Piborne. After returning the briefcase containing £100 to marquis' residence, Trelingar Castle, Lit'l Fellow is invited to serve in the castle as a groom to marquis' son, count Ashton. The boy accepts and serves in the castle for several months, once again suffering constant ridicule from other servants and antics of the spoiled Ashton. Birk, being at odds with Ashton's dogs, cannot be taken by the boy into the castle and has to be taken care of in secret either by him, or (in his absence) by his only friend in the castle, the aged laundress Kat. But the boy must yet again hit the road when Birk, roaming the surroundings, encounters one of Ashton's dogs. The latter attacks Birk, who defends himself and kills Ashton's dog. When Ashton learns whom the attacker belongs to, he sets up a hunt on Birk, and Lit'l Fellow, having rescued his dog, has nothing else to do than leave while still in one piece. Now 11 years of age and having earned around £4 while in lord Piborne's service, the boy with his faithful dog decide to make their way into the city of Cork, but on their way Birk rescues another boy out of a river. It is revealed to be Bob, a 7-year-old whom Lit'l Fellow once saved from Ashton's whip, risking his position of a groom. Together, the boys make it into Cork. This is where Lit'l Fellow's merchant inclinations, first become manifest while still at Kerwan farm, are finally put to practice as he sets up a newspaper kiosk&mdash;a small trolley dragged around the streets by Birk. Prior to their departure from Cork, the boys already own £30. The city of Cork is also where the boys reunite with Grip. After barely surviving the fire at Ragged School which separated the friends, Grip settled as a fireman on a steam vessel Vulcan, making regular trips between Dublin and the United States. Grip, foretelling Lit'l Fellow to become a successful merchant, advises him to move to Dublin, where he also appears regularly. Lit'l Fellow agrees, and soon after he and Bob leave for Dublin. Instead of spending money on the journey, they decide instead to earn more along the way, and continue to operate the kiosk as they take on a 250-mile journey on foot. When 2 months later they make it into Dublin, they again reunite with Grip. Having earned £150 at this point, Lit'l Fellow decides to start his own business. After renting a few rooms from an old retired businessman, O'Brien, he opens the collectible store "Thin Purses" by Little Boy & Co. The store quickly becomes popular among the residents of the city, earning the 12 year old businessman a fortune of £1000 by the close of the first year. Grip, now a regular customer and assistant during the times free from his duties as a fireman on board Vulcan, is reluctant to join the business despite Lit'l Fellows' and Bob's pleas. Kat, however, is invited by Lit'l Fellow as well, and arrives from Trelingar Castle on a short notice. With poverty left behind, now only one thing troubles Lit'l Fellow&mdash;the fate of people dear to him; of those who, at one point or another, were a family to him. With the help of O'Brien he learns that MacCarthy's family has left their homeland and migrated to Australia, but no further information could be obtained at the moment. At some point, Lit'l Fellow leaves to visit Belfast in order to negotiate over an issue with his supplier; negotiations having been successful, he prepares to leave but is caught in a thick crowd during a worker strike, when he notices a young female worker calling for help shortly before collapsing of weakness. It was Sissy, now 18 years old, barely recognized by the young merchant. Without hesitation the boy takes Sissy to the train and leaves for Dublin, where the girl becomes a gladsome addition to the store personnel, marrying Grip some time afterwards. Thus, the young merchant was able to repay his first debt, tearing from the clutches of poverty the first person who ever did a service to him&mdash;his adoptive sister. Only one thing disturbs the boy's peace of mind now&mdash;the MacCarthy family. One day O'Brien finds out that, having met no better luck in Australia, the family was returning home on a sailing vessel. The trip was taking a long time, while the boy, having himself nearly perished during a tempest on board a cargo vessel for refusing to abandon the cargo (into which he invested most of his fortune), perseveres in his trade and earns a capital of £20000. When MacCarthy family finally arrives, Lit'l Fellow, having offered them a sum of £100, anonymously invites them to meet him and his friends at the ruins of the Kerwan farm. Following the unexpected reunion, Lit'l Fellow instructs his goddaughter Jenny, now 8 years of age, to dig up from under the fir tree the pot of pebbles he earned during his stay at the farm. The old farmer is then stunned to find out that the pebbles, of which there were 1540, are now returned to his family as pounds sterling&mdash;enough for them to buy their familial land off the landowners and reconstruct the farm. This was the manner in which the young merchant, now 16 years old, repaid his debt to the family which had sheltered him in the time of need.
16208949	/m/03wc_5w	The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You				 A ruthlessly "successful" man is transported to an unknown island whose location is never revealed, the implication being that it doesn't physically exist in our world. The island is inhabited by whom he gradually learns are a deceptively primitive people where every aspect of their waking lives is governed by their dream life. Initially in conflict with their ways, the unnamed protagonist, according to Bryant, "is dragged kicking and screaming to his own salvation." He realizes that the people of this island, through their dreaming, support and maintain the real world, and that he needs to incorporate this world view so he can successfully return to his former life. It can be read as an allegory of spiritual growth, and shows the influence of modern anthropological writings on indigenous peoples and the writings of psychologist Carl Jung.
16214395	/m/03wd313	Alerte aux Pieds Bleus		1958		 Convinced that they will find firewater among the palefaces, blue-foot (like the Blackfoot) Indians besiege the town ... Lucky Luke will see all the colors!
16215956	/m/03wd3r4	A Cage of Eagles	James Follett	1989	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The book centers on the battle of wits and the ambiguous relationship developing between U-boat ace Otto Kruger, leader of the captured Germans, and Ian Fleming in his real-life WWII role as an intelligence officer which would later inspire the James Bond books. It ends on December 1941, with an open-ended conclusion clearly leaving the possibility of a sequel.
16216395	/m/03wd40t	Brown Girl in the Ring	Nalo Hopkinson	1998	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story takes place in the city core of Metropolitan Toronto (Downtown Toronto) after the economic collapse, which saw investors, commerce and government flee to the suburbs. After the police left, the city erupted in chaos and the Riots occurred. As a consequence of the Riots, Toronto is isolated from other satellite cities in the surrounding Greater Toronto Area (North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke) by roadblocks and Lake Ontario has become a mudhole. In the twelve years since the Riots, the city is now ruled by a criminal mastermind named Rudy Sheldon. Rudy is commissioned to find a heart for the Premier of Ontario, who needs a heart transplant. Normally, the Porcine Organ Harvest Program is used, but Premier Uttley deems the program "immoral" and prefers a human donor instead. Ti-Jeanne is the heroine of the story. She's a new mother who gets visions of people's deaths, and her grandmother, Gros-Jeanne, is a well-respected apothecary and spiritualist who runs an herbal and medicine shop. Ti-Jeanne left her former lover, Tony, but, after Tony defies Rudy, whom he works for by refusing to kill someone for their heart, he arrives on her grandmother's doorsteps asking for protection. Ti-Jeanne decides to help him with the aid of her grandmother. Later in the novel, Rudy is revealed to be Ti-Jeanne's grandfather, Gros-Jeanne's husband. It turns out that Rudy was an abusive husband and Gros-Jeanne kicked him out and found a new lover, named Dunston, and since Rudy has been vengeful. Meanwhile, Rudy summons the Calabash Duppy spirit and commands the duppy to kill Gros-jeanne, Ti-Jeanne and Tony, who was sent to kill Gros-Jeanne and take her heart for Primier Uttley). It's revealed that the duppy is Mi-Jeanne (Ti-Jeanne's mom). In the CN Tower, Rudy sets the Calabash spirit on Ti-Jeanne who has come to confront him after Tony killed Gros-Jeanne. Ti-Jeanne is trapped and injected with Buff, a drug that paralyzes her. While in a state of paralysis, Ti-Jeanne slips into an "astral" state or spirit state, and she calls upon the ancestor spirits to help her. They kill Rudy by allowing the "weight of every murder he had done fell on him." Meanwhile, Premier Uttley's new heart (Gros-Jeanne's heart) attacks her body. Eventually, it takes over her spirit and when she wakes up from the surgery, she has a change of mind about human heart donorship and declares that she will make an attempt to help Toronto return to a rule of law by funding small business owners. On Gros-Jeanne's Nine Night event, all her friends arrive to help out, and so does Tony. Ti-Jeanne has trouble forgiving him for killing Gros-Jeanne, but Jenny tells her "he wants to do penance." She lets him into the event to say goodbye to Gros-Jeanne and is surprised that Baby doesn't cry around him anymore. It ends with Ti-Jeanne sitting on her steps, thinking of what she'll name Baby, who is possessed with the spirit of Dunston, Gros-Jeanne's former lover.
16223705	/m/03wdbby	The Tale of Peter and Fevronia				 Apanage prince Paul () is disturbed, as a guileful snake has gotten into the habit of visiting his wife disguising himself as the prince. His wife finds out that the only man who can defeat the snake with a magiс sword is Paul's brother, Peter (). Peter defeats the snake, but its blood spills on him and his body is covered with aching scabs. No doctors can help, but suddenly Peter hears of Fevronia (), a wise young peasant maiden, who promises to heal him. As a reward she wants to marry Peter. When healed, he does not keep his promise and instead sends rich gifts to Fevronia. However, soon Peter's body is again covered with scabs. Fevronia heals him again and this time they get married. Prince Paul soon dies and Peter and Fevronia come to reign in Murom. The boyars are unhappy to have a peasant woman for princess, and they ask Fevronia to leave the city taking with her whatever riches she wants. Fevronia agrees, asking them to let her choose just one thing. The boyars find out that the wise maiden's wish was to only take her husband, so Peter and Fevronia leave Murom together. The city remains without a prince. The boyars start strifes over the reign, Murom is in havoc, and finally Peter and Fevronia are asked to return. They reign wisely and happily until their last days, which they spend in monasteries. They know they will die on the same day and ask to be buried in the same grave. The Russian Orthodox tradition does not allow for a monk and a nun to be buried together, but the bodies are twice found to disappear from the original coffins and finally remain in the common grave forever.
16230393	/m/03wdkgt	Dragons of Summer Flame	Margaret Weis	1995-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After a battle, the Nightlord Steel Brightblade finds Palin Majere, nephew of the famed mage Raistlin. He allows him to return with the bodies of his two brothers, slain in the battle, to their parents, Caramon and Tika. The Knights of Takhisis visit an island where the hidden race of Irda make their home. The Irda hide themselves with an illusion, pretending to be primitive humans, and the knights leave. This fearful encounter causes the Irda to believe that another invasion will come, and convinces them to break open a magical item known as the Greygem of Gargath. The Irda did not know that the Graygem holds the entity known as Chaos inside it, long thought too dangerous to dabble with, which sets in motion the Chaos War. Among the Irda is Usha, an orphaned human girl they had raised among them. They believed while their kind would be immune to the effect of the Greygem, that she, being a human, might be affected by it. So they decided to send her away, giving her a message to deliver to Lord Dalamar, master of the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas. After she is gone, they crack open the Graygem and release the god Chaos.
16230977	/m/03wdkzw	The Borrowers Aloft	Mary Norton	1961		 With the help of their friend Spiller, the Clock family have relocated to the miniature village of Little Fordham where they try to live in secret. They were discovered by a couple who own a rival model village and are kidnapped with the intention of being put on display as an attraction when that model village opens for tourist season. Imprisoned through the winter in the couple's attic, the Clocks are able to use materials they find to create a balloon and basket which lifts them out of a window and to freedom before they can be put on display. Knowing they cannot risk moving back into Little Fordham the family again take to the great outdoors, in search of a new place to call home.
16233557	/m/03wdnw2	The Monster of Florence: A True Story	Mario Spezi	2008	{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 The book recounts the authors' personal experiences while investigating the case and their problems of being accused by the Italian criminal justice system. Preston and Spezi are outspoken critics of the tactics and theories pursued by the Italian police and prosecutors in the Monster of Florence case.
16234855	/m/03wdrh3	The Cloven Viscount				 The Viscount Medardo of Terralba, and his squire Kurt, ride across the plague-ravaged plain of Bohemia en route to join the Christian army in the Turkish wars of the seventeenth century. On the first day of fighting, a Turkish swordsman unhorses the inexperienced Viscount. Fearless, he scrambles over the battlefield with sword bared, and is split in two by a cannonball hitting him square in the chest. As a result of the injury, Viscount Medardo becomes two people: Gramo (the Bad) and Buono (the Good). The army field doctors save Gramo through a stitching miracle, the Viscount is “alive and cloven.” With one eye and a dilated single nostril, he returns to Terralba, twisting the half mouth of his half face into a scissors-like half smile. Meanwhile, a group of hermits find Buono in the midst of a pile of dead bodies. They tend to him and he recovers. After a long pilgrimage, Buono returns home. There are now two Viscounts in Terralba. Gramo lives in the castle, Buono lives in the forest. Gramo causes damage and pain, Buono does good deeds. Pietrochiodo, the carpenter, is more adept at building guillotines for Gramo than the machines requested by Buono. Eventually, the villagers dislike both viscounts, as Gramo' s malevolence provokes hostility and Buono's altruism provokes uneasiness. Pamela, the peasant, prefers Buono to Gramo, but her parents want her to marry Gramo. She is ordered to consent to Gramo's marriage proposal. On the day of the wedding, Pamela marries Buono, because Gramo arrives late. Gramo challenges Buono to a duel to decide who shall be Pamela's husband. As a result, they are both severely wounded. Dr. Trelawney takes the two bodies and sews the two sides together. Medardo finally is whole. He and his wife Pamela (now the Viscountess) live happily together until the end of their days.
16235225	/m/03wdr_d	Midnight Robber	Nalo Hopkinson	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel is set in the far future, where interplanetary and alternate-dimension travel is possible. In addition, an Internet-like information system, known as “Granny Nanny”, dominates daily life, with each person being injected with nanomites that allow mental access to Granny Nanny at birth. This access takes the form of an eshu, a mental voice within the head that provides information upon request and operates as a sort of sixth sense. The use of Granny Nanny is so widespread that the word has somewhat of a religious overtone (characters will often swear to Granny Nanny, for example). The story is eventually revealed to be narrated by Granny Nanny, speaking to Tan Tan’s child as he is being born. Its protagonist is Tan Tan Habib, a seven-year-old girl living in Cockpit County on the Carib-colonized planet of Toussaint, with her father Antonio and mother Ione. The story begins during Carnival season, of which the highlight for Tan Tan is the Robber Kings: performers who dress up as the mythical figure of the Robber King and tell exaggerated, boastful tales of their adventures. Antonio (an adulterer himself) discovers that Ione has been having an affair. After driving out the lover and separating from Ione and Tan Tan (who becomes distraught over the incident, blaming herself for Antonio’s abandonment), he then challenges his wife’s lover to a duel for her honor during Jour Ouvert. During the duel Antonio ends up killing the lover with a poisoned machete blade, causing him to escape Toussaint with Tan Tan. The two take a shift portal to New Halfway Tree, an alternate universe version of Toussaint that serves as a place of exile for convicts. They are met by Chichibud, a douen (one of several alien species on New Halfway Tree), who takes them to the nearest human settlement, Junjuh Village, run harshly by One Eye the sheriff and his deputy Claude through a system of punishment (being locked in a tin box for several hours at a time) and death (hanging). Tan Tan eventually adjusts to life in New Halfway Tree, growing familiar with the other locals of the town such as, Michael and Gladys the local blacksmiths, and Janisette her father’s new wife. She even befriends the local boy Melonhead, and together the two plan to move to Sweet Pone together, a better settlement on New Halfway Tree. As Tan Tan grows older, her father slowly slides into alcoholism and depression, until he takes to raping Tan Tan on a regular basis. On her sixteenth birthday, Tan Tan kills him in self-defense and, pregnant with his child, flees into the forbidding bush that surrounds their small settlement with the help of Chichibud, who takes her to live among the Douen in his village tree. The Douen, concerned about letting a human into their home tree and learning their secrets, reluctantly allow her to live with them. Tan Tan struggles and fails to adopt to the Douen lifestyle, although she does end up likewise befriending Abitefa, Chichibud’s daughter. She eventually hears of and visits a human village, looking for a doctor to abort her baby. While there, she defends a man being abused by his mother, assuming the persona of the Robber Queen as she does so. Over time, she returns to the village night after night in the persona of the Robber Queen, seeking to right wrongs and make up for the guilt she feels over killing her father. She is finally found by Janisette who, with a car and rifle built by Michael and Gladys, has been looking for her and seeking vengeance for Antonio’s death. In the process of running away she inadvertently leads Janisette and the other two to the Douen tree, forcing them to destroy it and move on to other trees. Tan Tan and Abetifa are left behind, to fend for themselves. The two take to wandering through the bush, looking for a town for Tan Tan to live in, still being hunted by Janisette. Tan Tan visits the villages they pass in the night, under the guise of the Robber Queen, seeking to do good for others. As the two travel on she hears stories being told about her exploits, both real and imagined. After some traveling she arrives in Sweet Pone. She runs into Melonhead, who is now the local tailor, and the two strike up their friendship once again. Tan Tan becomes torn between her desire to stay with Melonhead and her fears of Janisette, all the while still feeling guilt over her father's death and disgust at her still-unborn child. She ultimately stays for Sweet Pone’s carnival, dressing up in the Robber Queen costume Melonhead made for her, until Janisette arrives in a tank, demanding Tan Tan’s return to Junjuh village and her revenge. Tan Tan finally confronts her face to face, accusing her of knowing that Antoine was raping her all those years and admitting to both herself and to Janisette that she killed Antoine out of self defense. Janisette, ashamed, leaves while Tan Tan, relieved from her guilt and sensing the oncoming delivery, returns to the bush. There, accompanied by Melonhead and Abitefa, she gives birth, accepting her son as her own and naming him Tubman.
16239030	/m/03wdvhz	Vita Brevis				 In the introduction, Gaarder claims that he found the old manuscript at a bookshop in Buenos Aires and translated it. According to his plotline, it was written by Floria Aemilia, Augustine's concubine, who after being abandoned by him, got a thorough Classical education, read his Confessions (where she is mentioned but not named, unlike their son, Adeodatus) and felt compelled to write this text as an answer.
16240817	/m/03wdws8	Enchantress from the Stars	Sylvia Engdahl	1970	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Elana belongs to a peaceful, technologically advanced, space-faring civilization called the "Federation", which monitors worlds which are still "maturing", allowing them to grow without any sort of contact or intervention. Elana stows away on a ship in order to accompany her father on a mission to a planet where intervention has been deemed necessary because a technologically advanced empire has invaded the planet in order to take advantage of its resources. In order to lead a young woodcutter (a native of that planet) against them (without exposing him to the truth about either alien civilization) Elana takes on the role of an enchantress. She gives him various tools, leading him to believe that they are magical.
16243392	/m/03wdy59	Eager	Helen Fox	2003	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot is set in England at the end of the 21st Century, and revolves around an experimental type of robot that can think for itself, EGR3 (called Eager). Eager learns by experience as a child does, is intellectually curious and capable of emotion. He can feel wonder, excitement and loss. His inventor sends him as an assistant to an old-fashioned robot, Grumps, who acts as butler to the Bell family. Though much-loved, Grumps is running down and can no longer be repaired. Mr. Bell works for the all-powerful technocratic corporation, LifeCorp, who supply the robots which cater to every human need. His children Gavin and Fleur learn of an underground group which opposes LifeCorp, and there is danger of a robot rebellion brewing. The ultra-high-tech, eerily-human BDC4 robots are behaving suspiciously and the Bell children and Eager are drawn into a great adventure. Eager's extraordinary abilities are tested to the limit and he tries to find out the answer to the question: What does it mean to be alive?
16245289	/m/03wdz5l	13 Little Blue Envelopes	Maureen Johnson	2006-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Virginia "Ginny" Blackstone, a seventeen-year-old girl who is on summer break before her final year of high school, has received 13 blue envelopes from her self-proclaimed "Runaway Aunt" Peg, who is now dead. Ginny is told that she is about to leave for several weeks and will travel to foreign lands. Her aunt leaves her four rules to follow: you can only bring what fits into your backpack, you cannot bring any kind of journal or foreign language aid, you cannot bring extra money of any kind, and you cannot use or bring anything electronic with you. She is only allowed to open the next envelope once she has reached the destination or has completed the task set in the previous letter. The envelopes lead her to London, where she meets a "starving" artist named Keith, and Aunt Peg's best friend and roommate, Richard. She realizes she has a crush on Keith, and they go to Scotland to meet her aunt's guru, artist Mari Adams. Ginny then has an argument with Keith and they part ways. She meets him again in Paris. Later, she encounters a horrible hotel in Amsterdam, along with a very hyperactive family. Following, she goes to Denmark and meets four Australian students, Emmett, Bennett, Nigel, and Carrie. Together they form the "Blue Envelope Gang" and follow the second-to-last envelope to Greece. On the way, the 12th envelope tells her she can open the last one whenever she feels ready. While there, her backpack is stolen, along with the 13th envelope. She enlists Richard's help to return to England; upon arriving there Richard tells her that he and Peg were married during her final illness, which makes Richard Ginny's uncle. This last bit of information completely unsettles the already-distressed girl, who runs to Keith's house for the night. Returning to Richard's apartment the next day, she manages to discover a trove of her aunt's final paintings, in the attic of Harrods, a large department store in London, which her aunt used as a private art studio. The painting collection is sold at auction, and the proceeds become her inheritance. She writes a letter to her aunt, letting her know that even though she never read the 13th envelope, she knows what it said. Ginny finally makes her way back home to New Jersey, after leaving half the inheritance to Richard.
16250456	/m/03wf0lb	"B" Is for Burglar	Sue Grafton	1985	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the second installment of the "Alphabet Mysteries", private investigator Kinsey Millhone is hired by Beverly Danziger to locate her missing sister, Elaine Boldt, whose name is needed on some paperwork regarding an inheritance. Elaine was last seen getting into a cab with the intention of flying down to Boca Raton, Florida, where she spends her winters, but appears to have disappeared along the way. It seems a relatively straightforward matter, so much so that Kinsey is not sure Beverly needs a PI, but she agrees to take the case. Things are not as easy as they seem however, as Kinsey can find no trace of Elaine anywhere in Florida, although she does find a woman called Pat Usher, who claims Elaine agreed to let her sublet the Boca Raton apartment where Elaine lived while she was off travelling. This claim rings false to Kinsey, since no one but Pat Usher has received a postcard from Elaine on her supposed trip, so she secures the able detective assistance of Elaine's elderly neighbour, Julia, to keep an eye on things in Florida while she goes back to California. Kinsey suspects there is a link between Elaine's disappearance and the death of her Santa Teresa neighbour, Marty Grice, who was apparently killed by burglars who then set fire to the Grice home a week before Elaine left. Someone breaks into the home of Elaine's Santa Teresa apartment supervisor, Tilly, apparently on the track of some bills of Elaine's which Tilly was holding ready to forward on to her. Someone also searches Kinsey's apartment, and Kinsey realises it is Elaine's passport which the thief is after. Gravely concerned for Elaine's safety, Kinsey suggests to Beverly that Elaine's disappearance should be reported to the police, but Beverly objects so violently that Kinsey terminates their relationship and starts working for Julia instead. Kinsey reports the disappearance and meets Jonah Robb, a recently-separated cop working on missing persons - but despite her attraction to him she is reluctant to get involved. A visit from Beverly's husband, Aubrey, complicates matters further, as it turns out he was having an affair with Elaine, which Beverly had discovered, and Kinsey begins to wonder if Beverly herself could have had a hand in Elaine's disappearance. Kinsey becomes increasingly convinced that Elaine is dead, and that Pat Usher is involved. Pat has now disappeared, after totally trashing the Boca Raton apartment. Eventually, she discovers that Pat Usher has applied for a driving licence in Elaine's name, thus proving Pat's involvement. Marty's nephew Mike, a teenage drug dealer, confesses that he was at the Grice home the night of the murder, and from the discrepancy in times between his account and what was told to the police, Kinsey realises that it was Elaine who died in the Grice fire, not Marty. Marty and her husband killed Elaine to steal her identity (which Marty assumed) and her money. They then passed Elaine's dead body off as Marty's by switching the dental records. Marty departed for Florida as Elaine, and arrived as Pat Usher, with some cosmetic surgery to help. Having been unable to find Elaine's passport, she and her husband have been forced to wait for a new one to come through before they can skip the country. Kinsey returns to the Grice home to look for the murder weapon, but while she is there, the Grices find her. Kinsey is shot in the left arm during the fight that ensues, but she manages to detain the two criminals, and calls for help.
16250549	/m/03wf0ps	"C" is for Corpse	Sue Grafton	1986	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The third Alphabet Mysteries series installment finds Kinsey at the gym, rehabilitating herself after the injuries she sustained at the end of B is for Burglar. Also working out at the gym is Bobby Callahan, a twenty-three-year-old who was nearly killed when his car went off the road nine months before. Bobby is convinced that the road accident in which his friend Rick died was an attempt on his life, and suspects that he may still be in danger, so he hires Kinsey to investigate. The downside, however, is that Bobby lost his memory after the crash, and can't remember any of the details surrounding it. He can't even explain why he thinks someone wants to kill him; it's just a feeling he has. Kinsey takes the case, despite the vague information, because of her personal liking for Bobby. She meets his rich but dysfunctional family: mother Glen is an heiress on her third marriage to Derek Wenner, whose daughter Kitty is a 17 year old drug-user seriously ill with anorexia. Glen has spared no expense in seeking treatment and counselling for Bobby but he is struggling to come to terms with Rick's death, his own injuries and the loss of his prospects at medical school. A few days later, Bobby dies in another car accident and Kinsey is convinced that this too is the result of a murder attempt more successful than the first. There are several people with a motive: Kitty stands to inherit 2 million dollars from Bobby's will, Derek has insured Bobby's life for a large sum without Glen's knowledge, and Rick's parents are still very bitter about their son's death, for which they blame Bobby. However, Kinsey thinks the solution lies elsewhere. A friend of Bobby's gives her Bobby's address book which shows that Bobby was on the track of someone called Blackman. Bobby's former girlfriend tells her that Bobby had ended their relationship because he was having an affair with someone else, and she thinks Bobby was trying to help this woman with a problem involving possible blackmail. Kinsey eventually finds out that the woman with whom Bobby was involved was his mother's friend, Nola Fraker, who confesses to Kinsey that she was being blackmailed by someone who knows that Nola accidentally shot her husband, a well-known architect called Dwight Costigan, during a supposed struggle with an intruder at their home years before. The blackmailer has the gun with Nola's fingerprints on it. In seeking answers to what Bobby might have discovered at the hospital where he was working before his accident, Kinsey realises that 'Blackman' is code for an unidentified corpse which has lain unclaimed in the morgue for years. She suspects that Bobby had discovered the gun was concealed in the corpse, which turns out to be true. However, while she is at the hospital, she finds the recently-murdered body of the morgue assistant, and realises the killer is on her track at the hospital. It is Nola's current husband, Dr Fraker, a pathologist from the hospital, who is the blackmailer and killer. Bobby found out what Fraker was up to, but Fraker rigged the first car accident before he could do anything about it, and then cut the lines on Bobby's car when Bobby put Kinsey on the trail. Fraker traps Kinsey and gives her a disabling injection but she manages to cosh him and escapes to a phone to call the police.
16250593	/m/03wf0qt	"D" Is for Deadbeat	Sue Grafton	1987	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In "D is for Deadbeat," Kinsey is asked by ex-con Alvin Limardo to deliver a check for twenty-five thousand dollars to a fifteen-year-old boy named Tony Gahan. According to Limardo, Tony helped him through a tough time in his life, leaving Limardo indebted. However, when the retainer check Limardo made out to Kinsey for four hundred dollars bounces, she learns that Alvin Limardo is actually John Daggett, a man known by all and liked by few, recently released from a local prison. He was also a bigamist: his first wife Essie's fanatical religious views have kept her married to Daggett, while Daggett, in disregard of his marital status, underwent a second marriage to Lovella on his release from prison, but has subjected her to repeated violence. In her search to find Daggett and get her money back, she discovers that he was found dead on the beach only a few days after hiring her. Through Daggett's daughter Barbara, Kinsey learns that Tony Gahan was the sole survivor of a family killed in a car accident caused by Daggett, for which he received a conviction on charges of vehicular manslaughter. Tony's been a wreck since the death of his family, rarely sleeping and doing poorly in school. He now lives with his uncle and aunt, Ramona and Ferrin Westfall. Also killed in the accident was a friend of Tony's young sister, and a boy called Doug Polokowski, who had hitched a ride in the car. Kinsey tracks down an ex-con friend of Daggett's, Billy Polo, now living in a trailer park with his sister, Coral. Billy is the one who introduced Lovella to Daggett. Kinsey finds out that Doug Polokowski was Billy and Coral's brother. There's no shortage of people with a motive for Daggett's death, but the police are classifying it as an accident. Kinsey discovers that shortly before his death Daggett was staggering about drunk at the marina in the company of a blonde woman in a green outfit. She sets out to discover which of the numerous blonde women in the case might be the killer. She also suspects that Billy Polo is not giving her the full truth about his involvement with Daggett, a suspicion confirmed when Polo is also murdered at the beach, shot with Kinsey's own gun, stolen from her car a few days earlier. Coral finally levels with Kinsey: she, Billy, and Lovella were plotting together to rob Daggett of money he had come by illicitly in prison, not knowing that Daggett had given the money to Kinsey to pass on to Tony. The police investigating Billy's murder discover a home-made silencer used in the killing. Kinsey immediately recognises the towelling used as padding as coming from the Westfall household, and Ramona jumps to the top of her suspect list. This means confronting Tony, who has given Ramona an alibi for the time of Daggett's death. In pursuing Tony, Kinsey realises Tony himself, dressed as a woman in his aunt's wig, was actually the killer. He was also the one who stole her gun, and killed Billy Polo, who had recognised Tony at Daggett's funeral. Killing the man who killed his family has done nothing to ease Tony's torment, however, and he commits suicide by throwing himself off a building in front of Kinsey, who has been unable to talk him down.
16250678	/m/03wf0t6	Tale of Woe and Misfortune				 The tale begins with a variation on the story of Adam and Eve before introducing the reader to a nameless youth who, having reached "the age of discretion," receives counsel from his parents. His parents advise him not to attend feasts, drink too much, be tempted by beautiful women, fools, or riches, visit taverns, steal or rob, deceive or lie, and last but not least, not to disobey his parents. The youth, ashamed to submit to his father and mother, goes out into the world and ends up gaining much wealth and many friends. One day, a friend of his tempts him to a tavern and convinces him to drink mead, wine, and beer, promising the youth that he will watch over him and make sure he gets home safely to his parents. The youth drinks the mead, wine, and beer, falling into a drunken slumber. When he wakes up toward night time, he realizes everything he had, including his clothes, have been stolen. He is covered with tavern rags, at his feet lay ragged sandals, and under his head is a brick serving as a pillow. Being ashamed to return home or to his former friends in such a condition, he travels to another town and comes across a feast. He approaches the merry guests, who welcome him to their festivities. Upset over what has transpired, he is not enjoying himself and the guests notice and ask him what is wrong. After telling them what happened to him, they offer him practical advice and he sets off to another town with their counsel in mind. He begins to live wisely and acquires even greater wealth than before. At a feast he has organized himself, he begins to boast about his success. Woe (a personification-"spirit") overhears him and threatens the youth not to boast anymore, appears in two of the youth's dreams, and convinces him to spend all his money on drink. Ending up yet again with nothing, he is again ashamed and moves on to the next town. He comes across a river, and despite Woe's taunting, manages by virtue of a song he sings to have the ferrymen take him across. When the youth decides to return home, Woe gets in his way. The youth then transforms into several different life forms and ends up being able to protect himself from Woe only by entering a monastery, which he does, leaving Woe at the holy gates.
16250752	/m/03wf0w8	Prince of the Blood	Raymond E. Feist	1989-07-28	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Twin sons to Prince Arutha, the Princes Borric and Erland have lived a life of relative luxury. Though well educated and talented swordsmen, they spend their time brawling, gambling, and disrupting their father's court. After the twins show no sign of maturity after a year stationed at the Kingdom's northern border, and with Borric being Heir Presumptive to the throne in Rillanon after the drowning of King Lyam's only son, Arutha decides that his two sons cannot afford the luxury of youth anymore. He sends them as ambassadors to the Empire of Kesh for the Empress' 75th birthday jubilee. Baron James ("Jimmy the Hand") and Baron Locklear accompany the twins, their presence made all the more vital after an assassination attempt on Borric before their departure is narrowly averted, and the assassin is found to be of Keshian nobility. On the way to Kesh, the embassy stops at Stardock. There James meets Gamina, Pug's adopted daughter, and they fall in love at first sight. James and Gamina wish to marry but James must seek Arutha's permission as a member of his court. Along with granting permission, Arutha promotes James to the rank of Earl, and the two are married. Gamina then joins the group as they continue their journey south. Upon entering Kesh, the party is attacked during a sandstorm, and Borric is captured by slavers. His companions scout the slavers' camp, but are unable to locate the prince, and certain that he has been killed, continue onward to the capital, grief-stricken. At the capital, the embassy is introduced to imperial customs and meet the various people who form the Empire, and begin to gather information on the plot against Borric and the political unrest within the Keshian government. Erland enjoys an affair with the Empress' granddaughter, Princess Sharana, while Locklear also pursues a relationship with the Empress' daughter, Princess Sojiana, rightful heir to the throne. Later, after expressing unease about some of the things he has learned, Locklear suddenly disappears and is accused of the murder of Sojiana. Meanwhile, Borric manages to escape from the slavers, and with the help of a beggar boy, a mercenary named Ghuda Bule, and a trickster named Nakor, makes his way to Kesh, learning more about the plot against him and the Empress on the way. Eventually, the plot is uncovered, the Empress' life is saved, and the conspirators are revealed and punished for their treasonous acts. The brothers and their companions, happy to be reunited, but mourning the loss of Locklear, who was found murdered by the conspirators, return to Krondor.
16251903	/m/03wf25g	"E" Is for Evidence	Sue Grafton	1988-05-15	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The fifth "Alphabet" mystery novel opens just after Christmas, with Kinsey discovering that five thousand dollars has mysteriously been credited to her bank account, and flashes back a few days when she was asked to investigate a fire claim at a factory in Colgate as part of her informal office space rental arrangement with California Fidelity Insurance. The business in question, Wood/Warren, is owned and operated by the Wood family, whom Kinsey has known on a personal level since high school. Company founder Linden Wood is dead, but his son Lance now runs the company, and his four other children, Ebony, Olive, Ash and Bass all have a stake. Ash is Kinsey's former schoolmate, and Bass was an acquaintance of her second ex-husband, Daniel Wade. Olive is married to Terry Kohler, Lance's second-in-command at the company. After a solitary Christmas, with Henry away visiting relatives, and Rosie's Tavern shut down till the new year, Kinsey writes off the fire as an industrial accident, but upon submitting her report to her boss, she finds that significant papers have been removed from the file and others substituted, giving an appearance that Lance Wood has bribed Kinsey not to label the fire as arson. In the middle of protesting her innocence, the five thousand dollar credit takes on a sinister significance. Temporarily suspended from California Fidelity, Kinsey takes up her own investigation to prove her innocence, aided (unwillingly at first) by CFI administrator Darcy. Darcy's united with Kinsey in her dislike of claims manager Andy Motycka, who is Kinsey's chief suspect in the set-up, although she's at a loss who he could be working for. Kinsey reconnects with the Wood family, and learns some of their dark family secrets: that Ebony, the oldest sister, wants control of the business and that Lance was practically a criminal in high school. She also learns that a former Wood/Warren employee, Hugh Case, committed suicide two years before, but the suspicious disappearance of all the lab work on Hugh's body seems to support his widow Lyda's claim that it was murder rather than suicide. Kinsey remains unconvinced by Lyda's conviction that Lance was Hugh's killer but can't seem to find any other leads. Her spirits are at a low ebb and it's the worst possible moment for Daniel to show up, eight years after leaving without a word. Kinsey finds it hard it cope with but eventually agrees to store a guitar for him while he sorts himself out. On her way to a new year party at Olive and Terry's home, Kinsey is almost killed when a bomb, disguised as a gift left on the doorstep, explodes. Olive is killed and Terry is badly injured. Kinsey does her best to resist Daniel's attempts to nurse her, and her distrust is proved right when she finds out the guitar she has been storing for Daniel is bugged, and he has been reporting on her investigation to Ebony and Bass Wood. She discovers Daniel and Bass are lovers - Bass is the person Daniel left her for. Shortly afterwards, Kinsey finds Lyda Case's dead body in a car outside her apartment. Forcing answers from the Wood family, Kinsey learns an even darker family secret: that Lance had an incestuous affair with Olive when they were teenagers leaving Olive emotionally and sexually scarred for the rest of her life. Kinsey's suspicions immediately jump to Terry Kohler, and when the police identify fingerprints on the car Lyda was found in as belonging to an escaped convicted bomber called Chris Emms, she realises Terry and Emms are the same person. Unfortunately, Emms has anticipated her solving the case and is waiting at her apartment with another bomb. Before it explodes he explains he killed Hugh Case because Hugh had realised his true identity, and Lyda because she had belatedly found Hugh's records of that. He engineered the fire at Wood/Warren and set up Kinsey (with the aid of Andy Motycka) to get revenge on Lance, after Bass spilled the family incest secret to him. Kinsey manages to shoot Emms and disables him sufficiently to get out of the bathroom window just as the bomb is exploding, killing Emms and destroying her garage apartment. After Daniel leaves with Bass, the only loose end is the five thousand dollars Emms put in her account, and on the advice of Lieutenant Dolan, Kinsey keeps it.
16252029	/m/03wf2cv	"F" Is for Fugitive	Sue Grafton	1989	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The sixth novel in the series sends Kinsey to Floral Beach, California, while back at home, Henry Pitts is having her garage apartment rebuilt after it was destroyed at the end of E is for Evidence. She has been hired by Royce Fowler, who wants her to delve into the past to exonerate his son of the murder of Jean Timberlake, seventeen years before. Bailey, who had been a teen tearaway, pleaded guilty to killing Jean, his sometime girlfriend, but escaped from prison soon afterwards. He's apparently been living the life of a model citizen under an assumed name but has just been recaptured and is claiming his innocence. Kinsey heads to Floral Beach, a tiny local community, to pursue the cold trail, and stays with the Fowler family at their motel. Royce is dying of cancer, his wife Oribelle is sick with diabetes and their daughter, Ann, Bailey's senior by 5 years, has taken leave of absence from her job as a counsellor at the local high school to provide care. Bailey's lawyer, Jack Clemson, fills her in on the details of the case: Jean, 17 when she died, was a 'problem' child who was doing badly at school and engaged in numerous sexual encounters with the local boys at school - and, as it turns out, some of the local men too. She was pregnant at the time of her death. Everyone knows everyone in Floral Beach and Kinsey acquaints herself with a number of the locals in pursuit of the truth: Pearl, the local bar-owner, whose son's evidence put Bailey on the spot at the time of Jean's death, Tap Granger, who was Bailey's accomplice in several robberies before the murder, the unattractive local pastor Reverend Haws and his wife, and the local doctor Dr Dunne, whose wife Elva turns out to have a violent objection to being questioned. The High School Principal, Dwight Shales, who was in post at the time of the murder, offers some help, but Jean's single mother, Shana, whose friendship with Dwight is causing raised eyebrows around Floral Beach, and who is struggling with longstanding alcohol problems, is less co-operative, and refuses to identify Jean's father. Nobody seems convinced that the killer could be anyone but Bailey. At Bailey's arraignment, Tap Granger stages a hold-up, allowing Bailey to escape once more, and is himself killed in the process. Kinsey gets confirmation from Tap's widow that Tap was paid to do it - for the first time providing concrete evidence that someone wants to keep Bailey discredited. Kinsey's room at the motel is broken into, and she receives threatening calls in the middle of the night as she pursues the case. Ori is murdered when her insulin, administered regularly by Ann, is tampered with. Kinsey eventually establishes that Dr Dunne is Jean's unknown father, but Shana is murdered when she sets out to keep a rendezvous with him. Kinsey ends up running from the cops herself after she finds the body, and seeks refuge with Dwight Shales, who finally confesses that he was also having an affair with Jean, and was probably the father of her child. Kinsey wonders whether Dwight could be the link between the two, having realised that Ann Fowler seems jealous of anyone who comes into contact with Dwight. She searches Ann's room, and finds evidence that Ann supplied Tap with the hold-up gun and made the anonymous phone calls. Unfortunately, she also finds Ann waiting for her, armed with a shotgun. Jean had confided in her, as school counsellor, that Dwight was the father of the child. Motivated by jealousy, Ann killed her, and being equally jealous of her brother's position as favoured child of their parents, Ann was happy to see him take the rap. Her plan is to use the money she'll eventually inherit from her parents to tempt Dwight, to whom she has been fanatically devoted for years, into marriage. She killed her mother to hasten the plan along, and Shana because she was jealous of her friedship with Dwight. Before Ann can kill Kinsey, she is accidentally interrupted by Royce, who wrestles the gun away from Ann, shooting her in the foot accidentally in the process. Ann is arrested for the murders of Shana and Ori, and although there's insufficient evidence to prove her the killer of Jean as well, the circumstances are sufficient to ensure that Bailey is cleared.
16252078	/m/03wf2fx	"I" Is for Innocent	Sue Grafton	1992	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After being unceremoniously fired by California Fidelity Insurance at the end of H is for Homicide, Kinsey has found herself new office space with her attorney, Lonnie Kingman, at the beginning of I is for Innocent. Lonnie has a case he wants Kinsey's help with - 6 years ago, David Barney was acquitted of killing his estranged wife, talented but insecure society house-designer Isabelle Barney, by shooting her dead through the spy hole of her front door. David's desperation to rebuild the marriage after the split netted him an injunction for harassment, so he was the obvious suspect, particularly since he inherited Isabelle's multi-million dollar business, but the prosecution couldn't make it stick. Now Isabelle's previous husband, Kenneth Voigt, is trying again in the civil courts, in an attempt to secure the fortune for his and Isabelle's daughter Shelby, and Lonnie needs some evidence. The previous PI on the case, Morley Shine, has just died of a heart attack, and Lonnie asks Kinsey to step in. Kinsey agrees, and knowing Morley of old, is surprised to find his files in a mess, with crucial witness statements missing. One new witness has come forward: Curtis MacIntyre, a habitual jailbird who shared a cell with Barney for a night and claims that Barney confessed to his guilt just after the acquittal. Kinsey is very doubtful of this story, especially when she finds out Curtis was in custody on another matter on the date in question. In trying to fill in the other blanks, she uncovers more evidence in Barney's favour than against him, not least that Barney appears to have a cast-iron alibi; he was the victim of a hit and run whilst out jogging at the time of the murder some miles away. Kinsey tracks down both the driver - Tippy, the daughter of Isabelle's best friend Rhe Parsons - and a witness who can swear that Barney was knocked down by her. Kinsey also finds out that Tippy, drunk, and in her father's pick-up truck, was the perpetrator of a previous, and fatal, hit-and-run on the same night, the victim being an elderly man called Noah McKell. She realises Morley was on the same track, and begins to have suspicions about his death. She eventually establishes that Morley was poisoned by a pastry left at his office made with lethal mushrooms. She also finds out that Kenneth Voigt has been paying Curtis 'expense money' for years, which casts further doubt on his testimony. Curtis comes up with an alternative story: the confession was actually made some time after the acquittal during a drunken evening at Barney's home. This sounds even more unlikely to Kinsey's sceptical ears. She begins to suspect that someone else from Isabelle's immediate circle might be the guilty party - Isabelle's sister Simone, Ken Voigt's new wife Francesca, or Isabelle's former business partner, Peter Weidmann and/or his wife Yolanda. Meanwhile, at home, her octegenarian landlord, Henry Pitts, is entertaining his hypochondriac elder brother, William, for a visit. Both Henry and Kinsey are astonished to find that romance begins to bloom between William and Rosie, the proprietress of Kinsey's local Hungarian tavern, which has recently been taken over as a favourite haunt by some local sports fans. Rosie charms William with her acceptance of his imagined illnesses. Back on the case, Kinsey has a sudden flash of inspiration looking at the time gap between Tippy killing Mr McKell and knocking down Barney. Tippy admits that, panic-stricken after the first accident, she went to confess what she'd done to her 'aunt' Isabelle, but didn't get an answer at the door. Kinsey realises Barney's alibi is worthless: having just killed Isabelle, he could have hitched on Tippy's pick-up and then rolled off it later at an appropriate time in front of witnesses, to establish his 'alibi' miles away. Kinsey's train of thought is interrupted by a call from Curtis, asking her to meet him at the bird refuge. He sounds terrified, and Kinsey suspects he has been taken hostage. She arranges for Jonah, her ex-boyfriend cop, to provide back-up and calls in at the office to pick up her gun on the way. Barney has anticipated that she would do this and is waiting for her, along with Curtis's corpse. They play a cat-and-mouse version of Russian roulette with their respective guns until Kinsey, in possession of a gun with an extra chamber in the barrel courtesy of Robert Dietz's advice in G is for Gumshoe, emerges victorious, having shot and killed Barney. Kinsey's prized Volkswagen Beetle, a mirror of the one author Sue Grafton owns in real life, is destroyed in this novel.
16252208	/m/03wf2kw	"J" Is for Judgment	Sue Grafton	1993	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 July 1984 contains two surprises for Kinsey Millhone in the tenth of the 'Alphabet' murder series, both connected to her past. First, California Fedelity Insurance reappears in her life in the form of Mac Voorhies, who wants her help with a case some seven months after his boss Gordon Titus terminated Kinsey's loose employment relationship with CFI. Secondly, in the course of the investigation, Kinsey makes a shocking discovery about her own past when she discovers she has a family she knew nothing about. The case Mac hires Kinsey to investigate is that of Wendell Jaffe, assumed to have died five years previously when his boat, the Captain Stanley Lord, was found drifting off the Baja coast. He left behind a suicide note, a whole bunch of creditors who had invested in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, and a family: wife Dana, and sons Michael and Brian. It seemed certain Jaffe had killed himself to avoid the disgrace and jail sentence which fell instead to his business partner, Carl Eckert, but with no body to prove death, CFI made Dana wait the full statutory five years to presume death before paying out on Jaffe's half million insurance claim, and she has been making ends meet by working as a wedding planner. Michael, now 22, has coped reasonably well with suddenly being the man of the house, and is a new husband and father himself. Eighteen year old Brian on the other hand is in a mess, currently residing in juvenile hall. Two months after the insurance money was finally paid, a former colleague of Mac's has spotted a man he is convinced is Jaffe in Viento Negro, Mexico. Mac hires Kinsey to go there and check it out. After a little hotelroom breaking and entering, she finds Wendell is now known as Dean DeWitt Huff, travelling with a woman called Renata Huff, who has a residence on the quays in Perdido, near Santa Teresa, as well as a boat of her own. Before Kinsey can prove his identity, they skip out; on the same day, Brian is arrested in the middle of a botched escape attempt in which a female motorist, as well as his three conspirators, are killed. Kinsey is convinced Wendell will be heading back to California to reconnect with his son. Doing a door-to-door back in California, Kinsey is astonished to be asked if she is related to the Burton Kinsey family of Lompoc, as she looks so like them. Kinsey denies the connection, but undertakes a little detective work on her behalf and is amazed to find her mother's father was indeed Burton Kinsey. Far from being family-less, Kinsey has cousins, aunts and a grandmother living less than an hour away. Her cousin Liza shows up to tell her the family scandal: Kinsey's mother was cut-off from her family for marrying Kinsey's father. Kinsey is aghast that no one has tried to track her down in the 29 years since her parents were killed and is resentful of any intrusion into her solitude at this late date. Her thoughts are dragged back to the case at hand when through an apparent police clerical error, Brian is suddenly released from prison. Kinsey is certain Wendell has engineered it, and is planning to slip through her fingers again with Brian. Renata catches Kinsey red-handed searching on her property but when Kinsey turns the tables (and her own gun) on her, Renata admits Wendell is visiting Michael. At last, Kinsey has tracked Jaffe down, but her success is short-lived when someone takes potshots at them both, and Wendell escapes once more. The day after, the Captain Stanley Lord, where Eckert has been living for the past few years, also goes missing while Eckert is away, and when it's found drifting uninhabited a few miles off-shore there's a distinct sense of deja-vu about Wendell's disappearance. Nevertheless, it's enough for CFI: Kinsey has proved Jaffe didn't die and therefore the insurance money can be reclaimed from Dana. But Kinsey is dissatisfied... she wants the truth, and is prepared to pursue it on her own time. She finds Brian, and also finds out from Eckert that there was three million dollars from their fraudulent business scheme on board the missing boat. Renata confesses that she killed Wendell, dumped his body at sea and then set the Lord adrift, making her way back to shore in her own dinghy. She then wades out into the sea to kill herself, and Kinsey is unable to stop her. Renata's story is apparently confirmed when Jaffe's body washes up on the shore. But Renata's never does, leaving Kinsey wondering if she has managed to fake her own death just like Wendell. "J" Is for Judgment was a New York Times best-seller and had an initial press run of nearly half a million copies.
16252523	/m/03wf2sf	"K" Is for Killer	Sue Grafton	1994	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In the eleventh of the 'Alphabet Murder' series, Kinsey Millhone is hired by Janice Kepler to investigate the death of her daughter, Lorna Kepler. Lorna had been found dead and badly decomposed ten months earlier in her secluded cabin home. The police at the time suspected it might have been a murder case, but from lack of evidence as to cause of death, the official line was that Lorna died naturally, as a result of an allergic reaction. Now someone has sent Janice a tape of a porn movie Laura apparently made before her death, and Janice, who has coped badly with her daughter's death, wants Kinsey to find out the truth. Mace, Janice's husband, and her two surviving daughters, Berlyn and Trinny, seem less keen on the investigation, and Mace and Berlyn, in particular, become positively hostile to Kinsey as she sets out to find out what happened to Lorna. With some help from Officer Cheney Phillips, Kinsey quickly learns that Lorna, who was a receptionist at the water treatment plant by day, had accumulated a modest fortune as a high class prostitute by night. Lorna was a beautiful loner, but had some friends - mainly people who like her tended to be up and about at night. Kinsey finds herself having to abandon her usual day-time routine in order to get herself into Lorna's world. Lorna's body was found by Serena Bonney, night-shift nurse and estranged wife of Lorna's boss at the water treatment plant, Roger Bonney. Serena's father, Clark Esselmann, is a powerful business tycoon with a number of enemies. She also befriends Danielle, a teenage colleague of Lorna's in her night-time occupation, who obliges Kinsey by giving her a badly needed haircut. When Danielle is savagely attacked in her home, Kinsey becomes convinced there's a link to Lorna's death, and her quest to discover the truth becomes more personal. Meanwhile, Kinsey has a terrifying Mafia-style encounter with a man describing himself as an attorney for a Los Angeles man to whom Lorna was engaged. He asks Linsey to keep him abreast of any developments in the case by giving her a telephone number. Kinsey soon uncovers a variety of secrets: Berlyn actually discovered Lorna's body, but kept quiet about in order to lift some of Lorna's money, and also sent her mother the porn video. Leda, the wife of Lorna's landlord JD, had bugged Lorna's cabin because she was worried (needlessly, as it turned out) that Lorna and JD were having an affair - and still has the tape. With the help of Lorna's friend, late-night radio DJ Hector Mereno, Kinsey transcribes a phone conversation Lorna had before her death which seems to have upset Lorna, but she can't make sense of it until Clark Esselmann is electrocuted in his swimming pool. Kinsey realises that the conversation on the tape is someone telling Lorna the plot - and surmises that having objected to it, Lorna was killed so that the plot could still be carried out. Her suspicions turn to Stubby Stockton, a business opponent of Esselmann's, and to Roger Bonney, since Kinsey now knows, from Berlyn's admission of the discovery of the body, that Lorna was already dead when Roger claimed he spoke to her for the last time. He is also the one with the necessary knowledge and access to his father-in-law's pool to have set up the electrocution. The final link in the chain is when Kinsey, in the course of cleaning up Danielle's trashed apartment while she's still in hospital, finds a photo of Lorna and Danielle with Stockton and Bonney. Kinsey talks to Cheney about her suspicions of Roger, but he points out there's no evidence. Frustrated that Bonney may get away with murder, the final straw is when Danielle dies in hospital. Kinsey phones the secret number and reports that Bonney is the killer. Overcome with guilt, she immediately tries to warn him, but he misunderstands, thinking she has come to confront him with the murder, and stuns her with a tazer. While Kinsey lies powerless on the floor, the Mafia types arrive and escort Bonney away. He is never seen again.
16252578	/m/03wf2v4	"L" Is for Lawless	Sue Grafton	1995	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kinsey is asked by her landlord Henry Pitts to help out Bucky, the grandson of their recently deceased neighbor Johnny Lee. Bucky is trying to ensure his grandfather has a military burial, but when Bucky submits a claim for his grandfather's death benefits, the military has no record of his grandfather. It appears that Johnny's past is not what it seems. Ray Rawson and Gilbert Hays, old acquaintances of Johnny Lee, turn up unexpectedly and are interested in the meager contents of Johnny's garage apartment. Events send Kinsey across the country in a wild search for the proceeds from a crime committed 40 years ago.
16252603	/m/03wf2vj	"M" Is for Malice	Sue Grafton	1996	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kinsey Millhone is hired to find the black sheep of the Malek family after the death of his multi-millionaire father. Guy Malek had been a ne'er-do-well rebel, who had finally tried his father's patience too far twenty years before, and been thrown out and never heard from since. His unlikeable brothers do not want him back in their lives, and especially do not want him taking a share of the millions they feel he did not deserve. Yet the man Kinsey tracks down has changed his life radically and seems to be the best of the Malek boys. His reappearance, followed within days by his murder, opens up wounds which had been hidden for decades. At the same time, Kinsey is trying to cope with her own personal problems, not helped by the reappearance in her life of Robert Dietz, the attractive but non-committing private investigator with whom she had had a previous relationship.
16252757	/m/03wf2z3	"O" Is for Outlaw	Sue Grafton	1999-10-12	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Kinsey’s curiosity is roused when she receives a call from a man who has bought some of her possessions at an auction of defaulted storage locker items. She recognises the box as stuff which she left in the possession of her former husband, Michael Macgruder - whom she met and married during her time on the Santa Teresa Police Force at the age of 21 - when she walked out 8 months into the marriage in 1972. Mickey had asked her to give him a false alibi when he was accused of violence against a recently-returned Vietnam veteran Benny Quintero, who later died. Kinsey refused to lie, assuming his guilt, and left him. As well as high school and police academy memories, she finds in the box a letter written to her 14 years before, shortly after she left Mickey, which never reached her. It’s from Dixie Hightower, barmaid at an old haunt from that era called the Honky-Tonk, saying that Mickey was with her the night he was accused of killing Benny. Whilst shocked to find out her husband was cheating, Kinsey realises she did Mickey an injustice thinking he killed Benny and sets out to find out what has happened to him. The trail leads her to Shack, a former colleague of Mickey’s, and to Tim Litenberg, the son of another colleague, who is running the Honky-Tonk, as well as to Dixie herself, living in new-found luxury with her Vietnam vet husband Eric. Kinsey finds out Mickey had been frequenting the Honky-Tonk and is suspicious of his motives, sensing that he had uncovered some sort of illegal activity. She also contacts Mark Bethel, Mickey’s lawyer on the Quintero manslaughter charge, another veteran now running for political office. Two LAPD officers shock Kinsey with the news that Mickey is in a coma, having been shot with a gun registered to her, a present from Mickey she abandoned along with him. She is disconcerted to find this puts her high on the suspect list, especially since her assurances that she hasn’t spoken to Mickey in years are belied by a record of a 30-minute call from Mickey’s number to her apartment in recent weeks. Illegally breaking into Mickey’s apartment in search of answers, Kinsey finds a stash of weapons, false IDs, and evidence of a trip Mickey made to Louisville, Kentucky, but her search is interrupted by a biker called Carlin Duffy, looking for Mickey, and who has been a frequent visitor in recent months according to Mickey’s neighbour Wary Beason. Duffy, a habitual criminal, turns out to be Benny Quintero’s half brother, and like his brother, hails originally from Louisville. Clearly he and Mickey shared an interest in finding the truth about Benny’s death. From Duffy, Kinsey learns that Mickey was interested in Benny’s connections to a young Louisville journalist called Duncan Oaks, who was killed in Vietnam. Benny had Duncan’s press pass and dog tags, which Duffy passed to Mickey, and which Kinsey assumes have been stolen from Mickey’ s apartment, though she later find she has them herself, sewn into a jacket of Mickey’s she took from the apartment as a souvenir. Kinsey follows Mickey’s trail to Louisville. She discovers that Oaks was injured in Vietnam but disappeared in transit for medical treatment, and also that he was a classmate of Mark Bethel’s wife Laddie. She deduces that Duncan and Laddie had some sort of affair, giving Mark Bethel a motive for Duncan’s disappearance in Vietnam. Back in Santa Teresa, the LAPD detectives reappear and confirm they have traced Bethel’s fingerprints in Mickey’s apartment, searching for the missing press pass, and suspect him of shooting Mickey. They compare notes and conclude that Bethel must have pushed Oaks out of the medical helicopter, witnessed by Benny Quintero. When Quintero headed for California after the war and presumably tried to blackmail Bethel, Bethel killed him and set Mickey up to the take the rap. Years later when Mickey finally uncovered the truth, Bethel shot him, implicating Kinsey. Kinsey is reluctantly persuaded by the detectives to attempt to trap Bethel into a confession, an operation which goes badly wrong, and she ends up a target. However Duffy, now understanding Bethel to be the one responsible for his brother’s death, decapitates Bethel with a digger, saving Kinsey. Meanwhile Kinsey has uncovered the truth at the Honky-Tonk: it is being used to manufacture fake IDs, as Mickey had discovered. She reports the scam, and having exonerated Mickey on all fronts, is with him when he dies without regaining consciousness.
16253575	/m/03wf3gd	Twilight at the Well of Souls	Jack L. Chalker	1980	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The plot of Twilight at the Well of Souls is a direct continuation of the plot of The Return of Nathan Brazil. As that novel concludes, guards at the South Zone of the Well World have killed Nathan Brazil. Or have they? As Twilight at the Well of Souls opens, it turns out that Brazil is not killed so easily. Yet another being carrying Brazil's appearance is shot down by the guards, and the leader of Zone, Serge Ortega, is informed that the latest victim is the 27th of the current day. Ortega reveals that he has deduced that Brazil had actually entered several weeks before, even arriving prior to his companions Mavra Chang, Marquoz, and Yua (all of whom had been led to believe that Brazil had not yet journeyed to the Well World). Marquoz has been busy in his short time on the Well World. After awakening as an armored war-lizard in Hakazit, he immediately insinuates himself into the local government. He learns that the government is a sort of a dictatorship, but one in which anyone who assassinates the current leader is elevated to that position themself. Marquoz does not wish to take overall leadership, but he does assassinate and supplant the head of the secret police. He leverages this position and the Hakazit lust for war and combat to raise an army to fight on Brazil's behalf. In contrast, Yua finds what seems like a hopeless situation in Awbri. The society there is dominated by the males, because every month the females go into heat (referred to as the Time) which can only be relieved by mating with a male. Just as Yua is despairing of being able to do her part to assist Brazil, she receives instructions which had been planted subconsciously by Obie. These instructions give Yua the recipe for making a hormonal replacement that will prevent the Time from occurring. Fortified with the means to gain control from the men, Yua sets about raising her own army. Mavra prefers to begin in Dillia by journeying to the neighboring hex of Gedemondas. She recalls that during her previous visit to the Well World, she had seen that the inhabitants there had amazing mental powers, with the ability to control the thoughts of others. She believes that the Gedemondans would be powerful allies, and she wants to do something more than just sit and wait until she is called. Mavra is able to catch on with a hunting party headed by Colonel Asam, as Asam has heard the stories of Mavra's previous visit to the Well World and is also very interested in meeting a Gedemondan. Their party is waylaid near their first overnight rest stop in Gedemondas. Although they succeed in fighting off the attackers, several members of the party perish and Mavra is critically injured by a blow to the head, putting her in a coma for three days. After turning the other wounded members of the group over to a rescue party, Mavra and Asam travel further into Gedemondas. At one of their rest stops, the Gedemondans arrive to meet them. Holding Mavra and Asam in thrall, the Gedemondans heal their wounds, then discuss the mission to repair the Well. Mavra asks for their assistance, but is not told whether it will be offered. The Gedemondans inform her of a council of war that will soon be conducted in the empty Gedemondan embassy in South Zone, and Mavra suggests that the fastest way to get there is via the Gedemondan Zone Gate. The Gedemondans take her and Asam there, though they do not allow either traveller to remember anything of the journey. At the council, the three conspirators are reunited, and they learn of one another's new forms. The last member of the council is Gypsy, who inexplicably retains the same appearance as he had before arriving at the Well World. Gypsy informs the rest of the council of Brazil's early arrival on the Well World, and discusses the plan for misdirection of the search for Brazil. Gypsy demonstrates that he has the ability to morph into the same appearance as Brazil, capable of fooling any observer not aware of the switch. He informs the group that he will join their army at some point in the future in the guise of Brazil, with the intention of drawing attention away from the approach of the real Brazil to the Well.
16254019	/m/03wf47l	"T" Is for Trespass	Sue Grafton		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kinsey’s cantankerous neighbor Gus is badly injured in a fall and hires Solana Rojas, a private nurse, to help him while he recuperates. Kinsey becomes suspicious when Gus becomes isolated and withdrawn. She finds out that Solana is con artist who engages in identity theft. What Kinsey doesn’t know is that Solana is a dangerous sociopath with an accomplice and a history of clients who died under her care. Kinsey works with other neighbors and friends to rescue Gus and expose the con-artist without rousing her suspicions. At the same time, Kinsey investigates a case of possible insurance fraud involving a student who drove into another car. The female passenger in the other car had extensive injuries and she and her husband are suing the student and the insurance company. Kinsey must track down a reluctant witness and use her rather rough charm to get him to come forward. Unlike previous books in this series, this book alternates between two perspectives; Kinsey's and Solana's.
16255882	/m/03wf5q4	The Naughtiest Girl in School	Enid Blyton			 "I won't! I won't!"-Those are Elizabeth's favourite words. Hoping to get sent back home, she tries every trick she knows, and indeed she knows many-breaking rules, being rude and being sternly disobedient. However, she has a heart of gold beneath her bad behaviour, and when she meets a girl with a broken heart, it has strange effects on her. Elizabeth Allen is a spoiled girl who is the only child of her parents. She becomes very upset and outraged when she learns that she is being sent to a boarding school. When Elizabeth joins Whyteleafe School she is determined to misbehave so that she will be expelled and able to go back home as soon as possible. At Whyteleafe Elizabeth discovers a new world. Because of her mischief she is first disliked by her fellow students, but slowly, Elizabeth learns how to share and get along with people, she learns to make friends and understands the importance of friends. She likes Rita and William - the Head Girl and Head Boy of the School. Rita tells her that a girl in her class - Joan Townsend - is not happy, as her parents neglect her, and Elizabeth promises to try to make friends with Joan. Joan convinces her that misbehaving in order to be expelled is a bad idea, and advises her to be good, and to ask the heads of the school to tell her parents that she is unhappy and to ask them to take her away, but not in disgrace. Elizabeth accepts this suggestion, and her behaviour improves a lot. She also makes good progress at her piano lessons and secretly longs to play at the function held after the half-term break, though she knows this will not be possible if she goes home at half term. Her friendship with Joan develops and Joan talks about how much she loves her mother and how hurt she is by her mother's neglect. Joan knows that her mother will not send her any birthday presents or cake. Elizabeth arranges for a large cake, presents, and cards to be sent to Joan for her birthday, as if from her parents. Joan is overjoyed at first, but when she writes to her mother to thank her, her mother replies that she did not send anything. Joan is distressed, wanders off in the rain, and becomes very ill. Elizabeth writes to Joan's mother to confess her role in making Joan ill. Joan's contrite mother arrives to visit Joan, and explains to the heads that her neglect of Joan stems from a resentment that Joan survived an illness years before, while her more loved twin brother died. Joan and her mother reconcile, and Joan becomes happy again. Meanwhile, Elizabeth, with the help of Rita and William makes up her mind to stay at Whyteleafe as she realizes she is happy there and does not want to leave behind her friends.
16256136	/m/03wf5zr	Blue Light	Walter Mosley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 1965, a mysterious beam of blue light came down from space and overlooked Northern California. This light had extraterrestrial powers that caused whomever the beam touched to die, go mad, or acquire a special unique power. This power is defined as full actualization of humankind, with strengths, understandings and communication abilities that exceed our normal capabilities. The people touched by the light in the novel were soon referred to as "Blues" and were segregated from society because of their new and improved super human powers. Soon after this discovery, they came together to try and find their purpose in the universe. As they look for their calling in life, an evil force emerges which sets the stage for a battle later on in the novel between good and evil. The evil represents the "Gray Man"l which is Horace LaFontaine, a character in the novel who is struck by the light at the moment of death and revived as a demon sent to kill all of the "blues". Once the "blues" discover this nemesis, they take refuge in the forest outside of Northern California. Soon the Gray Man finds out where they are hiding from inside sources and the "blues" come to a consensus in which they are going to confront their enemy and declare war with the Gray Man. This epic battle takes place at the ending of the novel and has an extraordinary finish. The "blues" all use their powers that they were given to destroy the Gray Man. They soon reside in the small cities of Northern California and live normal lives with the people of California.
16258814	/m/03wf8f_	Adrenaline	James Robert Baker			 The book is about two "lusty" gay lovers from Los Angeles named Nick and Jeff who at the beginning of the novel were having passionate sex when two "wildly homophobic cops" break in on them. They fight back and while trying to defend themselves, they take one cop as hostage.
16267972	/m/03wfh_n	Vectorial Mechanics	Arthur Milne			 Vectorial Mechanics has 18 chapters grouped into 3 parts. Part I is on vector algebra including chapters on a definition of a vector, products of vectors, elementary tensor analysis, and integral theorems. Part II is on systems of line vectors including chapters on line co-ordinates, systems of line vectors, statics of rigid bodies, the displacement of a rigid body, and the work of a system of line vectors. Part III is on dynamics including kinematics, particle dynamics, types of particle motion, dynamics of systems of particles, rigid bodies in motion, dynamics of rigid bodies, motion of a rigid body about its center of mass, gyrostatic problems, and impulsive motion.
16269821	/m/03wfk8k	The Ointment Seller			{"/m/05qp9": "Play"}	 There are two extant fragments of this manuscript. This plot summary pertains to "The Museum Fragment (Musejní Zlomek)." The play begins with Rubin approaching the Merchant and telling him that he will gladly serve him if the Merchant gives him a pot of barley porridge and three new spoons. The Merchant agrees to provide these goods if Rubin helps him find a place to set up a stall to sell his ointments. Rubin then starts to sing a song with Pusterpalk extolling the virtues of the Merchant's ointments, and continues after the song to praise the Merchant and his ability to cure sicknesses of all kinds. Rubin runs off amongst the people and the Merchant, not able to find him, calls for him repeatedly. When Rubin returns to him, the Merchant asks him to take out the ointments and enumerate them for him. Among these ointments is one that is "so precious that neither Vienna nor Prague has it: A young lady made it all out of gnat lard, she added a few farts to it so that it should not quickly spoil; that's the one all praise most keenly." The Merchant suggests after some time that they should set up their stall somewhere else since no customers are coming. Rubin then tells him that he has heard that there are three ladies in town seeking good ointments. The three ladies - all named Mary - are standing in the crowd and Rubin calls them over. The Marys ask for ointment to anoint their Lord Jesus Christ's body. At this point Abraham appears carrying his son Isaac and asks the Merchant to heal him and make him rise from the dead. The Merchant agrees but only if Abraham gives him gold and his daughter, to which Abraham agrees. The Merchant proceeds to pour feces over Isaac's backside. Isaac then rises and gives thanks to the Merchant for healing him. The Marys continue to request ointment to anoint Jesus Christ. The Merchant asks for two talents of gold instead of three as usual and the Merchant's wife then yells angrily at him for offering the ointment for less gold, blaming him for their poverty. To his wife's outburst, the Merchant exclaims: "I would advise you to stop, to let me be in peace. And if you do not stop it maybe you will rise and go away from me in tears. Busy yourself with your distaff at once, or I will punch you in the face!" Rubin and Pusterpalk then have a conversation about their lineage and get into an argument, whereby the Merchant tells the Marys not to pay attention to their fighting. This is how the Museum Fragment ends.
16271091	/m/03wflm5	Don't Call Me Ishmael	Michael Gerard Bauer	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel's main character, Ishmael Lesuer, is named after the main character of Moby-Dick. He was given the name because just before he was born, his parents performed a scene from the novel. He is fourteen years old and the world's only sufferer from the self-diagnosed Ishmael Leseur's Syndrome – a chronic ailment capable of turning an otherwise normal person into a "walking disaster area registering nine point nine on the open-ended imbecile scale". Ishmael showed no symptoms of his apparent syndrome until his first day of secondary school. The school bully, Barry Bagsley, teases him about his name. He tries to avoid Barry and acts invisible but swears to stand up to Barry in Year Nine. His Year Nine teacher, Miss Tarango, tells the whole class about the name Ishmael coming from Moby-Dick, which gives Barry and his friends more names to tease Ishmael with. Ishmael later intervenes when he sees Barry and his friends tease a boy who joins Ishmael's year level. A new boy called James Scobie becomes a target for bullying because of his appearance. However, James responds to the bully's taunts with humour. He tells the class that he is fearless because he had a brain tumour that damaged the part of his brain that feels fear. Barry is the only person that does not believe James. About a week later Barry puts a lot of insects and spiders in James's desk, but James is not frightened. During a rugby match James's fearlessness changes the course of the game. Ishmael, Scobie, a hilarious, outgoing and independent boy called Orazio Zorzotto, an overweight, sci-fi geek called Bill Kingsley and a very smart nerd Ignatius Prindabel participate in debating. Barry and his friends mock Bill about his weight by destroying his debating certificate. Kelly Faulkner, a girl Ishmael starts to fall in love with, thanks Ishmael because she is the sister of the Year Four boy Ishmael saved from Barry. On the last day of school at the 'end-of-year extravaganza thingy', Ishmael invents a prayer that will humiliate Barry. However, he eventually decides not to say his prayer, because he does not want to humiliate Barry's innocent parents, ruin the ceremony for the people who worked to make it or become the person Barry was. Ishmael then receives a letter from Kelly. He runs out on to the school's oval, completely ecstatic and bursting with happiness, and reads the letter, which says that she has invited him to her friend's party. He finally realizes that his life is not as bad as he once have believed.
16274255	/m/03wfpy3	The Forbidden Garden	Eric Temple Bell	1947	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the search for soil from a remote part of Asia for the cultivation of weird flowers that can destroy humanity.
16274299	/m/03wfpzz	Untamed	Kristin Cast	2008-09-23	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Zoey is hiding in the stables with her horse, Persephone. After an internal debate she finally decides to talk with her friends. On the way to the cafeteria she feels the presence of Darkness and rushes inside. She tries to blend in and act normally but her friends ignore her and the situation degenerates with the appearance of a newly re-Marked Aphrodite, who chooses to sit with the 'nerd herd'. A confrontation is postponed by the arrival of new fledgling and famous archer James Stark. After lunch, Zoey meets Aphrodite and Stevie Rae in her room. She finds out that Stevie Rae is mostly normal now and the only differences she experiences is an intense aversion to sunlight, and that Aphrodite's Mark is fake- she has mostly reverted to a human teenager, except for her visions. Aphrodite tells Zoey that she had a vision of a world full of violence, hatred, and darkness, which was triggered by Zoey's death. When Zoey asks, Aphrodite reveals she saw Zoey die two ways: The first way was drowning near a European palace and the second way was decapitation by a strange blackness - in both visions, Zoey was alone as Neferet planned. After Stevie Rae's departure, the two are about to leave Zoey's room but meet Damien, the Twins, and Jack on the threshold. Aphrodite explains to them that Zoey confided in her because she was the only other one who could block her mind from adult vampyres and that her visions show Zoey dying alone. They make up with Zoey. After they leave, Aphrodite asks Zoey to cast a circle to see if she still has her Earth affinity. When the green candle "zaps" her, Aphrodite is convinced that the goddess has taken back her gift because she was disappointed in her. Zoey casts the circle and asks for guidance. Nyx appears to tell them that she still loves Aphrodite, that she was only safekeeping the Earth affinity for Stevie Rae, and that she reverted back to human because her own humanity was too strong. After the goddess' disappearance, they rush to a Council meeting. They find out that the Priestess of all vampyres, Shekinah, has come to the House of Night to reject Neferet's declaration of war on humans. She follows Zoey's advice to put Detective Marx on the case instead. Erik Night returns to the school and takes over Professor Nolan's drama class, much to Zoey's dismay. On her way back Zoey meets Stark and watches him practice. He confesses to her that he has a gift for archery- that he never misses a target- and it was discovered when he killed his mentor by mistake. Because he fears his power, he asks Zoey to use her powers to protect the others from him. When she starts to leave, his body rejects the Change and he dies in her arms. Zoey tells him, before he dies, that he might be revived as a red fledgling. Zoey, Darius and Aphrodite go to Street Cats, a local cat shelter, as Zoey has been searching for a community activity for the Dark Daughters. The organization is led by nuns from the Benedictine Abbey. Their leader, Sister Mary Angela, astounds Zoey with the contrast between her beliefs and John Heffer's. At the shelter, Aphrodite is chosen by a cat, to her delight, and names her Maleficent. On the way back they stop to eat at one of Zoey's favorite restaurants where they have a run-in with Heath, who is with one of Zoey's old friends. He tells Zoey that he's given her up as loving her hurt too much. At school she's late for drama class and Erik, the new teacher, makes her play Desdemona to his Othello in a Shakespeare improvisation. She's initially mad, but uses this as an opportunity to explain her feelings for him and kisses him just before the bell rings, but he storms off. Outside, she meets Darius who brings her to Aphrodite, revealing a gift for speed. Aphrodite has been having a vision of Sylvia Redbird's house and copies out a poem in her writing. Zoey calls her grandmother and together they uncover that the poem is a warning about an ancient Cherokee legend. The poem warns that Kalona, a fallen angel, will rise again throughout the help of the Tsi Sgili queen, a dark witch that uses pain. Her grandmother also warns her to beware the Raven Mockers, half-raven half-human offspring of Kalona. Zoey asks her to come to the House of Night to be safe. Zoey then goes to Shekinah, and is attacked by a Raven Mocker on the way. She escapes Aphrodite's second vision of death by calling for Damien, who sends Air to banish the creature. Outside the Council chambers she happens to eavesdrop on a discussion between Neferet and Shekinah. She incredulously hears how Neferet manages to twist all the problems she's faced since the beginning of her change and make it seem as if they were Zoey's fault. After Neferet leaves, Zoey tells Shekinah about Street Cats and asks for lodging for her grandmother. On the doorstep she bumps into Erik and explains to him about Loren. Her grandmother arrives and she moves into Zoey and Stevie Rae's room. In the middle of their discussion they discover a Raven Mocker listening at their window. The next day, Zoey is woken up by Shekinah, who announces that her grandmother was hurt in a car crash. She and Aphrodite rush to the hospital. To be sure her grandmother is guarded from Raven Mockers, who she suspects of causing the crash, she asks the hospital if a medicine man could sit at her grandmother's bedside. When the Catholic hospital refuses, she asks Sister Mary Angela instead. Back at school, Zoey begins a cleansing ritual at Shekinah's request. Zoey tries to introduce the red fledglings and Stevie Rae makes an appearance, but is interrupted by Neferet who brings an undead Stark and tries to frame Zoey. In the ensuing commotion, Neferet makes Stark shoot Stevie Rae, fulfilling another line of Aphrodite's poem. Her blood frees Kalona. Neferet reveals herself as the Tsi Sgili queen from the poem, and then kills Shekinah with her thoughts to prove it. As the Raven Mockers explode into their physical form and start a feeding frenzy, Zoey and her friends blend in with the night and together they escape to the Tulsa Depot tunnels.
16277049	/m/03wft1q	The Book of Ptath	A. E. van Vogt	1947	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a tank-battle casualty reincarnated as a dispossessed god-figure who struggles against one of his two consorts to re-establish his dominion in the far future Gondwanaland.
16279498	/m/03wfw6t	Holiday	Stanley Middleton	1974	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel revolves around Edwin Fisher, a lecturer who takes a holiday at a seaside resort. The work takes place entirely within the mind of Fisher, with much of the book's development dealing with the painful realities of Fisher's mind and life.
16279722	/m/03wfwg0	The Elected Member	Bernice Rubens	1970	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's main character is Norman Zweck, who is addicted to amphetamines and is convinced that he sees silverfish wherever he goes.
16279809	/m/03wfwk3	Saville	David Storey	1976	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centers around Colin, a young boy growing up in the fictional Yorkshire mining village of Saxton during the Second World War and the postwar years.
16280520	/m/03wfxdz	Sinister Barrier	Eric Frank Russell	1943	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a future where the human race is owned and operated by the invisible Vitons, parasites that feed on human pain and anguish. The Vitons are only visible when humans come into contact with a certain combination of chemicals. After several people use the combination of chemicals painted on the skin and die the person investigating the suspicious deaths is puzzled by the victims apparently insane actions.
16283455	/m/03wfzn4	Dexter by Design	Jeff Lindsay		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Dexter Morgan leads a double life: a vigilante serial killer by night and a blood spatter analyst with the Miami Police Department's forensics team by day. After the events of Dexter in the Dark, Dexter is eager to resume his hobby, but first must endure a honeymoon in Paris with his unsuspecting wife Rita. At an art gallery, Dexter and Rita are introduced to the concept of body parts being used as art by an avant-garde performance piece called "Jennifer's Leg" in which the artist amputates her own limb. On returning home, Dexter finds that his relationship with his sister, Deborah Morgan, has become strained since she learned of his murderous pastime at the end of the first book. Deborah is a Sergeant detective in the Miami Police Department's Homicide Unit and is torn between loyalty to her brother and their father (who trained Dexter to confine his murderous impulses to other killers, and taught him how to escape detection) and her duty as a police officer to arrest him. At work, Dexter is called to investigate a gruesome tableau on a local beach, where a pair of bodies have been mutilated and arranged in a display that parodies the state's tourist trade. At home, Rita is concerned for her children, Cody and Astor, who appear withdrawn and different from normal children. Dexter knows that the two share his pathology (which he calls the Dark Passenger) and has promised to train them to kill those who "deserve it", as his adoptive father, Harry, trained him. Cody is enrolled as a Cub Scout, which Rita believes will help him to bond with normal children. Dexter believes it will help him learn how to pretend to be normal.
16288255	/m/03wg2v1	Der Schrecksenmeister				 The novel takes place in Malaisea, the "least healthy place in Zamonia". The city is dominated by the Alchemaster of the title, Ghoolion, who lives in a building which towers over the town and who combines a range of activities: alchemy; controlling the city's Ugglies (roughly equivalent to witches); spreading disease among the city's inhabitants; and painting pictures of natural disasters. The novel's other main character is Echo, a Crat (an animal identical to a cat except that it can speak all languages and has two livers). On the death of his owner, Echo faces starvation until he makes a deal with the Alchemaster: the latter will fatten the Crat for a month, in return for which he will then be permitted to kill Echo and extract his fat. Ghoolion intends to use the fat for various alchemistic purposes, but in particular as the final ingredient which he needs to secure the secret of eternal life: it turns out that Echo's deceased owner had been the long-lost lover of Ghoolion, who intends to bring her back to life. Echo attempts to escape from his pact, enlisting the help of a Tuwituwu (a one-eyed species of owl) by the name of Theodore T. Theodore, and the last Uggly in Malaisea, Izanuela, who is in love with Ghoolion. Echo and Izanuela plan to use a love potion to make Ghoolion return the Uggly's love. The plan fails, and Izanuela is killed, but in revenge the living houses of the Uggly destroy the Ghoolion's castle. Echo is saved and sets off in search of his own love with a female Crat.
16288479	/m/03wg34c	Skylark of Valeron	E. E. Smith	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns Richard Seaton and Martin Crane, who reach new heights in superscience while fighting Blackie DuQuesne.
16290780	/m/03wg5kp	Seven Out of Time	Arthur Leo Zagat	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is written as a first-person narrative, the narrator being a young attorney from New York named John March. While investigating the disappearance of Evelyn Rand, a young heiress, March is transported across time and space. He finds himself on a strange world which is inhabited by bizarre tentacled creatures who claim to be the descendants of the human race. There he finds Evelyn Rand, abducted as he was, and the two become enamoured of each other. Also present are many historical people who disappeared mysteriously, including the poet François Villon, King Arthur, the lost Dauphin, John Orth of Austria, and the Prophet Elijah. The seven band together to confront their captors, demanding to know why they are there. Two chapters are devoted to an exposition of the history of the human race in evolutionary terms. Despite their technological prowess, the "future men" have lost certain human qualities - including love, loyalty and faith - which they now believe vital to their survival. They will stop at nothing to wrest these "secrets" from their abductees. Horrified by their inhumanity and ruthlessness, the seven vow to stop them at any cost. As the creatures suffer an attack by mindless monsters which they themselves created, John March and Evelyn Rand are transported back to 20th-century America. March decides to publish a record of their experiences in the hope of changing the direction of human civilization.
16300873	/m/03wgcw9	Purple Hibiscus	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	2003-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Purple Hibiscus is set in postcolonial Nigeria, a country beset by political instability and economic difficulties. The central character is Kambili Achike, fifteen for much of the period covered by the book, a member of a wealthy family dominated by her devoutly Catholic father, Eugene. Eugene is both a religious zealot and a violent figure in the Achike household, subjecting his wife Beatrice, Kambili herself, and her brother Jaja to beatings and psychological cruelty. The story is told through Kambili’s eyes and is essentially about the disintegration of her family unit and her struggle to grow to maturity. A key period is the time Kambili and her brother spend at the house of her father’s sister, Ifeoma, and her three children. This household offers a marked contrast to what Kambili and Jaja are used to. Though Catholic, it practices a completely different form of Catholicism, making for a happy, liberal place that encourages its members to speak their minds. In this nurturing environment both Kambili and Jaja become more open, more able to voice their own opinions. Importantly, also, while at Aunty Ifeoma’s, Kambili falls in love with a young priest, Father Amadi, which awakens her sense of her own sexuality. Ultimately, a critical mass is reached in terms of the lives of Kambili, Jaja and the existence of their family as it once was. Unable to cope with Eugene’s continual violence, Beatrice poisons him. Jaja takes the blame for the crime and ends up in prison. In the meantime, Aunty Ifeoma and her family go to America to live after she is unfairly dismissed from her job as lecturer at the University of Nigeria. The novel ends almost three years after these events, on a cautiously optimistic note. Kambili has become a young woman of eighteen, more confident than before, while her brother Jaja is about to be released from prison, hardened but not broken by his experience there. Their mother, Beatrice, having deteriorated psychologically to a great degree, shows small signs of improvement. In essence, a better future is possible for them all, though exactly what it might involve is an open question.
16303447	/m/03wgfpd	Vectors in three-dimensional space				 Vectors in three-dimensional space has six chapters, each divided into five or more subsections. The first on linear spaces and displacements including these sections: Introduction, Scalar multiplication of vectors, Addition and subtraction of vectors, Displacements in Euclidean space, Geometrical applications. The second on Scalar products and components including these sections: Scalar products, Linear dependence and dimension, Components of a vector, Geometrical applications, Coordinate systems. The third on Other products of vectors. The last three chapters round out Chisholm's integration of these two largely independent developments.
16305778	/m/03wgj11	The Coming of the King	Nikolai Tolstoy		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set in 6th century Europe after Arthur's death, the novel retells part of Merlin's life using the Black Book of Carmarthen, Robert de Boron, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and other sources. Elements of the childhood of Taliesin are also used. The novel covers Merlin's life from infancy to adulthood as well as British and Saxon conflicts, climaxing with a battle at Dineirth in Wales. Historical and legendary figures appearing in the novel include Cynric of Wessex, Maelgun Gwynedd, Beowulf and Taliesin himself. Merlin serves as mentor to Maelgun instead of Arthur as popularized by Thomas Malory and others.
16310007	/m/03wgncz	Charon: A Dragon at the Gate	Jack L. Chalker	1982	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 "He" wakes up on a prison ship, and discovers that "he" is a copy. He learns that he is in the body of a notorious killer of women named "Park Lacoch", and that he is very short. At the orientation on Charon, a hot and steamy world of jungles and deserts, he learns that magic works. Magic here means that some individuals can sense, and learn to control, the Warden organism that pervades everything and everyone. It is possible to fool the Wardens into believing they are something else, such as converting a fruit juice to poison, or changing a person into an animal. One's status depends a lot on how much of the power one can learn to use. Park is singled out early, during the placement interviews the newcomers are getting. He is told that the leadership of the planet is aware that there is a Confederacy Assassin planted on Charon to kill the Lord of Charon, Aeolia Matuze. The agent "Park" is well aware of this, as he is that very agent, just arrived. Fortunately for him, the security interviewer is under the impression that Park's new girlfriend, Zala, is the Assassin, as she has a genetically created double mind. Park is assigned as a Town Accountant to a town where the authorities believe he will be contacted by a well-organized group of revolutionaries seeking to re-install a former Lord of Charon that Aeolia displaced. After a series of adventures, Park gains much control over the power, and with Zala (aka Kira) and his new girlfriend Darva, assists in an attack on the palace where Aeolia Matuze resides. This attack is a coordinated one, coinciding with the overthrow of the government everywhere, and prompted by Dr. Dumonia of Cerberus, a Confederate plant with many agendas. The attack is successful, but the former Lord of Charon cannot go through with killing Aeolia, who was his ex-wife that he still had feelings for. Aeolia, not as sentimental, kills him. When it seems that all is lost, Kira kills Aeolia, with the tacit approval of Aeolia's Chief of Security, Yatek Morah, who as it turns out, is really in the employ of the aliens. Yatek having no love for the late Aeolia, is willing to discuss matters with Park, and there is the implication that Park will have a chance to become the new Lord of Charon. The book closes with the Agent in the picket ship being even more affected by this latest experience. He more than ever questions the values and efficacy of the Confederacy, and wishes to delay making a final report because he fears what his government's response will be. The computer shows that it is more than merely an assistant or partner, by nearly overriding him, and almost not letting him out of the capsule. "Mr. Carroll" manages to convince the computer that he will return, and only wishes to gather the final report from Medusa before making his report to the Confederacy. The saga continues in the fourth and last book of the series, Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail.
16311721	/m/03wgps_	A Useless Death	Patti Smith	1972	{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 The poem talks about a person witnessing the execution of a queen.
16312111	/m/03wgq2m	John Halifax, Gentleman	Dinah Maria Murlock Craik	1856	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The action is centred in the town of Tewkesbury, scarcely disguised by the fictional name Norton Bury, in Gloucestershire. The story is narrated by Phineas, a friend of the central character. John Halifax is an orphan, determined to make his way in the world through honest hard work. He is taken in by a tanner, Abel Fletcher, who is a Quaker, and thus meets Phineas, who is Abel's son. John eventually achieves success in business and love, and becomes a wealthy man.
16315591	/m/03wgs1k	Red Sky in the Morning				 Anna is ecstatic when her parents announce to her that they are having a baby. She sees this as her opportunity to show that she is grown-up and can take care of the family. But Ben's birth is overshadowed by the fact that he is born with hydrocephalus. At first, it is very hard for Anna to cope with this new situation, but she really loves Ben and does her very best to take care of him. At school she has problems explaining to people what is wrong with her brother, because she thinks that they will not understand and she doesn't want their sympathy. Soon after Ben 'meets' Anna's school-mate, Miranda, for the first time, the word of him being disabled quickly spreads to the rest of Anna's classmates. Anna gets angry, but then breaks down, and all her friends feel sympathetic toward her. She then says how Ben really is and invites her friends to meet him: it turns out they love him as well. The book focuses mainly on the difficulty faced by Anna and her family in dealing with Ben's disability and later coming to terms with losing him and trying to move on with their lives.
16315793	/m/03wgs8f	Lush Life: A Novel	Richard Price	2008-03-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and begins with a crime that at first seems straightforward, but quickly expands into a thicket of complications. On the way home from a night of drinking, three men—cafe manager Eric Cash, bartender Ike Marcus, and a friend of Marcus'—are accosted by two muggers. Marcus is shot and killed, in a manner echoing the real-life murder of Nicole duFresne. NYPD Detective Matty Clark winds up investigating the crime, and keeping an eye on Ike's distraught father Billy, whose behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Cash is initially arrested for the crime, but later released when the accounts of other witnesses back up his own; his own behavior is affected as he has difficulty coping with the memory of the incident and the stresses of the police interrogation. Interwoven with the main plot are vignettes of the Lower East Side and the waves of immigrants that have come through there and lived in its tenements over the years.
16320493	/m/03wgvx_	Scenes of Clerical Life	George Eliot	1857	{"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 The titular character is the new curate of the parish church of Shepperton, a village near Milby. A pious man, but "sadly unsuited to the practice of his profession", Barton attempts to ensure that his congregation remains firmly within the care of the Church of England. His stipend is inadequate, and he relies on the hard work of Milly, his wife, to help keep the family. Barton is new to the village and subscribes to unpopular religious ideas; not all of the congregation accept him, but he feels that it is especially important to imbue them with what he sees as orthodox Christian views. Barton and Milly become acquainted with Countess Caroline Czerlaski. When the Countess' brother, with whom she lives, gets engaged to be married to her maid, she leaves home in protest. Barton and his wife accept the Countess into their home, much to the disapproval of the congregation, who assume her to be his mistress. The Countess becomes a burden on the already stretched family, accepting their hospitality and contributing little herself. With Milly pregnant and ill, the children's nurse convinces the Countess to leave. Milly dies following the premature birth of her baby (who also dies) and Barton is plunged into sadness at the loss. Barton's parishioners, who were so unsympathetic to him as their minister, support him and his family in their grief: "There were men and women standing in that churchyard who had bandied vulgar jests about their pastor, and who had lightly charged him with sin, but now, when they saw him following the coffin, pale and haggard, he was consecrated anew by his great sorrow, and they looked at him with respectful pity". Just as Barton is beginning to come to terms with Milly's death, he get more bad news: the vicar, Mr. Carpe, will be taking over at Shepperton church. Barton is given six-months notice to leave. He has no choice but to comply, but is disheartened, having at last won the sympathies of the parishioners. Barton believes that the request was unfair, knowing that the vicar's brother-in-law is in search of a new parish in which to work. However, he resigns himself to the move and at length obtains a living in a distant manufacturing town. The story concludes twenty years later with Barton at his wife's grave with one of his daughters: Patty. In the intervening years much has changed for Barton; his children have grown up and gone their separate ways. His son Richard is particularly mentioned as having shown talent as an engineer. Patty remains with her father. The second work in Scenes of Clerical Life is entitled "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story" and concerns the life of a clergyman named Maynard Gilfil. We are introduced to Mr Gilfil in his capacity as the vicar of Shepperton, 'thirty years ago' (presumably the late 1820s) but the central part of the story begins in June 1788 and concerns his youth, his experiences as chaplain at Cheverel Manor and his love for Caterina Sarti. Caterina, known to the family as 'Tina', is an Italian orphan and the ward of Sir Christopher and Lady Cheverel, who took her into their care following the death of her father. In 1788 she is companion to Lady Cheverel and a talented amateur singer. Gilfil's love for Tina is not reciprocated; she is infatuated with Captain Anthony Wybrow, nephew and heir of Sir Christopher Cheverel. Sir Christopher intends Wybrow to marry a Miss Beatrice Assher, the daughter of a former sweetheart of his, and that Tina will marry Gilfil. Wybrow, aware of and compliant to his uncle's intentions, nonetheless continues to flirt with Tina, causing her to fall deeply in love with him. This continues until Wybrow goes to Bath in order to press his suit to Miss Assher. He is then invited to the Asshers' home, and afterwards returns to Cheverel Manor, bringing with him Miss Assher and her mother. Wybrow dies unexpectedly. Gilfil, finding a knife on Tina, fears that she has killed him, but the cause of death is in fact a pre-existing heart complaint. Tina runs away, and Gilfil and Sir Christopher fear that she has committed suicide. However, a former employee of Sir Christopher and Lady Cheverel returns to the manor to inform them that Tina has taken refuge with him and his wife. Gilfil seeks her out, helps her recover and marries her. It is hoped that marriage and motherhood, combined with Gilfil's love for her, which she now reciprocates, will endue her with a new zest for life. However, she dies in childbirth soon afterwards, leaving the curate to live out the rest of his life alone and die a lonely man. Janet's Repentance is the only story in Scenes of Clerical Life set in the town of Milby itself. Following the appointment of Reverend Mr Tryan to the chapel of ease at Paddiford Common, Milby is deeply divided by religious strife. One party, headed by the lawyer Robert Dempster, vigorously supports the old curate, Mr Crewe; the other is equally biased in favour of the newcomer. Edgar Tryan is an evangelical, and his opponents consider him to be no better than a dissenter. Opposition is based variously in doctrinal disagreement and on a suspicion of cant and hypocrisy on the part of Mr Tryan; in Dempster's wife, Janet, however, it stems from an affection for Mr Crewe and his wife, and the feeling that it is unkind to subject them to so much stress in their declining years. She supports her husband in a malicious campaign against Mr Tryan, despite the fact that Dempster is frequently drunkenly abusive to her, which drives her to drink in turn. One night her husband turns her out of the house; she takes refuge with a neighbour, and, remembering an encounter with Mr Tryan at the sickbed of one of his flock, where she was struck by an air of suffering and compassion about him, asks he might come to see her. He encourages her in her struggle against her dependence on alcohol and her religious conversion. Shortly afterwards Robert Dempster is thrown from his gig and seriously injured. Upon discovering what has happened, Janet, forgiving him, returns to her home and nurses him through the subsequent illness until he dies a few weeks later. Tryan continues to guide Janet toward redemption and self-sufficiency following the death of her husband. She, in turn, persuades him to move out of his inhospitable accommodation and into a house that she has inherited. It is hinted that a romantic relationship might subsequently develop between the two. His selfless devotion to his needy parishioners has taken his toll on his health, however, and he succumbs to consumption and dies young.
16320519	/m/03wgvyb	When You Are Engulfed in Flames	David Sedaris	2008-06-03	{"/m/01tz3c": "Anthology", "/m/02t97": "Essay"}	 Sedaris's sixth book assembles essays on various situations such as trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, associations in the French countryside, buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina, having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane, armoring windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds, lancing a boil from another's backside, and venturing to Japan to quit smoking. Little, Brown and Company issued a first-run hardcover release of 100,000 copies.
16328503	/m/03wgzqh	Le Vingtième siècle. La vie électrique			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 An electric storm raging in France as a result of the breakdown at one of the electric stations accidentally puts in contact George Lorris and Estelle Lacombe who meet each other via the téléphonoscope. George, a lieutenant of the French army in the corps of chemical engineers, is the only son of the great scientist and inventor Philox Lorris. Estelle belongs to a middle class family. George is planning to marry Estelle, a plan which encounters opposition from his father. The latter wants to marry George to either La Docroresse Bardoz or La Senatrice Coupard, de la Sarthe, either of which is a woman of great accomplishments. George insists on his original intention, and when he and his bride embark on a pre-nuptial journey, Philox Lorris employs his colleague Sulfatin to break the relationship of the couple. Instead of the tour over the factories and scientific laboratories suggested by Philox Lorris and intended to fatigue the young pair, George takes Estelle and Sulfatin to a quiet village whose inhabitants resist modern technology and live in the traditions of the 19th century. Sulfatin takes along on a journey his ward and patient, an invalid Adrien La Héronnière who is suffering from the exhaustion of the body due to an intensive mental work during his lifetime. Despite the instructions of Philox Lorris, Sulfatin does not meddle in the relationship of George and Estelle, apparently trying to make his boss disinherit George. This would make Sulfatin the sole successor of the great scientist. Philox Lorris seeing the failure of his plans, engages George in military maneuvers where George excels and advances in esteem of his bride even further. When George returns from his trip, more than ever convinced in the rightness of his decision to marry Estelle, his father becomes furious. Still, Philox Lorris believes he can alter the choice of his son. Presently, Philox Lorris is working on his two novel scientific applications: a biological weapon and a vaccine that is meant to give boost to one's health. To promote these achievements and lobby them on a political level, he organizes a large party at his house to which he invites various dignitaries, including Arsène de Marettes, a prominent political figure. George is asked to collect the video-recordings of the greatest singers and performers of the past and play them for the audience. Unfortunately, as the party begins and the videos are played out, the sound quality turns out to be mediocre. The voices recorded on the tapes sound as if their owners caught a cold. This is due to Sulfatin's absent-mindedness: he took the tapes out to a chilly air last night. Due to this unforeseen circumstance, the video concert is going to be stopped in the middle. However, Estelle had taken the copies of the tapes for her personal enjoyment, and since the copies have not been affected by the cold air, she is able to replace the originals with them after which the concert continues with great success. Meanwhile, Philox Lorris explains his inventions to politicians. Sulfatin who is assisting him with the demonstrations, confuses the health vaccine with the biological weapon and lets some of the latter escape into the room where the guests are gathered. Panic ensues; and many people including Philox Lorris and Sulfatin are poisoned. Luckily, the weapon is not lethal, and only incapacitates the affected. The house of Philox Lorris is transformed into a hospital where the guests (named the martyrs of the science in newspapers) occupy sick-beds. Philox Lorris and Sulfatin quarrel, but soon notice that Adrien La Héronnière recently cured by Sulfatin by the vaccine is immune to the poison. Philox Lorris has an idea: he tries the vaccine on himself and in two days recovers completely. He repeats the application of the vaccine on the rest of the sick and achieves the desired effect. This makes a phenomenal advertisement of the vaccine which is immediately accepted as panacea on a national level. George marries Estella, and Philox Lorris has to save his face before La Docroresse Bardoz and La Senatrice Coupard, de la Sarthe having previously offered the hand of George to both. He escapes the looming lawsuits by managing to marry La Senatrice Coupard, de la Sarthe to Sulfatin and La Docroresse Bardoz to Adrien La Héronnière.
16328656	/m/03wgzsy	The Ravenous	T. M. Gray	2003	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Ravenous introduces us to Eddie Spears, a teenager who is into video games and hanging out with his best friend, Jess Brown. Eddie has a problem: he can hear distant whispers and this causes severe headaches. When he discovers the true cause for his town's prosperity: a sacrificial pseudo-Druid cult, Eddie comes to realize he has a special gift—but can he use it in time to save his sister's life?
16330288	/m/03wg_rj	Ghosts of Eden	T. M. Gray	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Ghosts of Eden set in 1947 is the story of a young woman who returns to her childhood home in Bar Harbor after spending several years in a mental ward. Ghosts of Eden introduces us to Saxon Faraday, a heroine struggling with a tragic past who unlocks the mystery surrounding her home, Roquefort Manor. Is she strong enough to battle the evil ancient entity she discovers there, or will she succumb as a victim of the Great Fire of 1947?
16332528	/m/03y05ky	Apex Hides the Hurt	Colson Whitehead	2006-03-21	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is set in the fictional town of Winthrop. The protagonist of the book is an unnamed African-American "nomenclature consultant" who has had recent success in branding and selling Apex bandages, which come in multiple colors to better match a broad array of skin tones. The novel begins with the main character being contacted by his former employer, which he had left after losing a toe. He travels to the town of Winthrop after requests from the town council, which has proposed that the town be renamed. However, three key citizens disagree what the name should be: Albie Winthrop, descendant of the town's namesake (who'd made his fortune in barbed wire); Regina Goode, the mayor (descendant of one of the town's two founders); and Lucky Aberdeen, a software magnate who's leading the drive to rename the town. Winthrop wants to keep the name; Goode wants the town to revert to the name it bore at its founding as a town of free blacks, Freedom; while Aberdeen wants to call it "New Prospera."
16337366	/m/03wh4j7	The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy				 The boys receive a letter from Alfred Hitchcock requesting they visit a friend of his, Professor Yarborough, who has a mummy along with other artifacts in his house. The mummy has been whispering in a strange language, but only when Yarborough is alone in the room. They also receive a letter from a Mrs Banfry in Santa Monica, whose distinctive cat has gone missing. They meet with the Professor and his butler, Wilkins, who is convinced the whispering is an ancient curse. They also approach Yarborough's neighbor, Professor Freeman, for help on the language. Jupiter gets the mummy to whisper to him while disguised as the professor. Pete tackles a boy hiding in the grounds of the house, and later befriends him. The boy is named Hamid and believes the mummy is one of his ancestors. Pete and Hamid hide in the mummy's case when thieves steal it and take it to a warehouse. They escape, but can't find their way back until they get a lead from placing a series of telephone calls to friends, who then call their friends and so on. Jupiter calls this a Ghost to Ghost Hookup. The boys learn that the mummy and missing cat cases are connected, and when Jupiter happens upon the warehouse and the thieves, he must hide in the mummy case to avoid being caught. The case is taken to a familiar location and Bob and Pete quickly arrive on the scene and the villain is caught. sv:Tre Deckare löser Viskande mumiens gåta
16341024	/m/03wh7p0	Jake's Tower	Elizabeth Laird	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Every day life for Jake is a struggle due to his mother's horrible and violent boyfriend, Steve. To escape his problems, Jake dreams of having his own tall tower where he can be peaceful and safe. In his pretend tower he daydreams of his father, who gave him a hug and a fluffy duck when he was born. Though certain he will never see him again, Jake believes that he might somehow get to meet him one day. But when the struggle gets too much for him and his mother, they run away from Steve to Jake's grandmother (his father's mother, Mrs Judd). She never believed that Jake was her son's son until she meets him and, seeing the resemblance, she helps protect him from the danger that he is involved in. However, Jake's mother insists on fighting for Jake's custody, resulting in a case conference between Jake's mother and his grandmother. Meanwhile, Jake bestfriend Kieran, a boy at his school and they agree to go to and from school with each other. When Kieran is sick one day, Jake takes a shortcut, only to be apprehended by the one person he did not want to meet - Steve. Steve grabs Jake, but immediately releases him when Jake's teachers come out. However, when his teacher leave, Steve starts to intimidate Jake again. Jake manages to escape to his grandmother's house, where Mrs. Judd manages to get rid of Steve when he follows Jake. The following day Jake returns home from school while Mrs Judd and his mother are at his case conference. Suddenly the door opens - standing at the living room door is Jake's father.
16341169	/m/03wh7rs	The Garbage King	Elizabeth Laird	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It tells the story of Mamo and Dani. Mamo is from a very poor family where everyone has died except for him and his sister, Tiggist. Mamo is kidnapped by a slave trader who claims to be his Uncle Merga. "Merga" takes Mamo far from the city and sells him to a cruel farmer. Dani comes from a rich and privileged family in a prosperous part of Addis Abbaba. His father, however, wants him to join the army to toughen him up. Dani's mother is sick and is moved to London, England, to receive better medical care. Dani runs away to escape his father. At the same time, Mamo escapes from the cfarmer and hitchhikes back to Addis Ababa, and hides in a graveyard where he meets Dani who is also hiding there. They form an unexpected alliance and together join a gang of beggar street boys. The gang members offer different talents to the group, and share a strict code of sharing whatever they obtain. Mamo becomes "the garbage king" because he is an expert at finding treasures in rubbish heaps. Dani writes stories which the others sell for money. Mamo tries to sell a story to a schoolteacher that turns out to be one of Dani's teachers, Ato Mesfin. Ato Mesfin recognizes Dani's handwriting, and approaches Dani's father, Ato Paulos. Ato Mesfin and Ato Paulos learn of the boys' pitch to sell their stories by talking with homeless street people. Eventually they find Dani and his gang, and Ato Paulos is angry that his son left a prosperous home to become a street urchin. Dani returns home with his father once he hears his mother is recovering, and that she will soon return home. Mamo sets off to find his sister, and learns she now lives with a new husband. When they reunite, Tiggist is happy to have her younger brother back. The two boys remain friends and provide food and new clothes for their old gang members.
16342723	/m/03wh990	The Bridge of Light	Alpheus Hyatt Verrill	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the search for a lost city in South America.
16343135	/m/03wh9n0	The Cometeers	Jack Williamson	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Young Bob Star—the son of hero John Star—lives in Purple Hall on Phobos, feeling like a prisoner. Grim news arrives about a "comet" approaching the solar system comet that moves about as if it is managed by intelligent beings. The invading aliens are referred to as The Cometeers. After the so-called Cometeers penetrate into the secret archives of The Green Hall and carry out information that a man named Merrin alive, the Council of The Green Hall decides to destroy the comet with the secret weapon AKKA. Jay Kalam the commander of the Legion seeks peaceful contact with the aliens at first. The Green Hall directs John Star to kill Merrin if necessary. Merrin is Stephen Orco - his old acquaintance the Legion Academy. Merrin is in fact a psychopathic, outlawed android who once subjected Star to horrific torture with the help of the Iron Confessor device developed by the "Reds" of the Old Earth. Kalam tells Bob that entrepreneur Edward Orco found in space a life-support space capsule with a child inside who Orco adopted under the name Stephen. Stephen Orco graduated the Academy, was assigned to Callisto, created a vortex gun based on the plasma weapons of the Medusae, and raised a revolt against Green Hall. Aladoree Anthar's attempt to destroy the rebels with AKKA failed, as Stephen Orco has the same weapon, designed by himself. However, the Legion was able to develop its vortex cannon and forced Orco to surrender. Orco bargained for her life, only Bob Star can kill Orco. Kalam leaves Star on Neptune, which contain secret prison with Orco and goes off on a mission of goodwill to Cometeers. Bob Starr sees a girl, begged him to kill Orco. Suddenly appear Cometeers, kidnapped prisoner and murdered all jailers. Surviving legionnaires Gilles Habibullah and Hal Samdu with Bob Star found the wrecked ship Jay Kalam, which was destroyed by Cometeers. Then they find the ship "Kingfisher Bird" and fly away. But Cometeer destroys the engines. Heroes find a mysterious asteroid - the base of a brilliant scientist (but they also found traces of Cometeers). There, Bob Star finds a girl who uses a certain kind of teleportation. Asteroid is sucked into a comet. Legionnaires find a cache with fuel and fly to the main comet planetoid, where are captured by Cometeers. Kalam understand the language of a girl. She is one of the descendants of the Spanish crew of the research starship captured by Cometeers. She knows that in the center of the main planetoid is a weapon that can destroy the body intangible Cometeers. Bob Star can incite the prisoners to revolt, the heroes get to the center planetoid, where they find an empty box. Kalam tells Steven Orco (he became Cometeer) and the ruler of a comet that Orco - android, an artificial person, created in the asteroid exile scientist Eldo Arruni. Realizing what the devil he has created, Arruni placed Orco in a capsule and sent it into space. At this time, Habibullah finds a mysterious weapon and sends it to Bob Star, he remembers that Orco was unable to break his will with the help of the Iron Confessor and destroys cometeers. He speaks to his mother that the girl is his bride.
16343682	/m/03whb1m	Traveling Scholarships	Jules Verne	1903	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Antilian School is a renowned London college, which hosts only young European people born in the Caribbean. Nine of its students are to be awarded travel grants offered by the school's sponsor, a wealthy Barbados woman. Harry Markel, a former captain turned pirate, has been captured and transferred to England, but he escapes along with his right-hand man John Carpenter and the rest of his accomplices — known collectively as the "Pirates of the Halifax" — and seizes the Alert, a three-masted ship leaving, after having massacred the captain and crew. It is precisely the ship that's just embarking the winners, accompanied by their mentor Horatio Patterson, the bursar of the school. The long voyage across the Atlantic starts and Markel and his crew, who have assumed the identity of the murdered officers and sailors, prepare to kill the passengers. But Markel learns that they will receive a large sum of money from the hands of their benefactor upon their arrival in Barbados. By greed, he resigns himself to temporarily leave the students alive a little more. On stops in stops, they visit the islands where they were born, receiving a warm welcome from their parents and their friends. The trip in the archipelago is a delight, but it may end tragically. Indeed, when Markel confirms that the youngsters are in possession of the prize offered by Mrs. Seymour, he is preparing to commit his crime. However, to Markel's bad fortune, a sailor named Will Mitz takes place on board the Alert on the recommendation of Mrs. Seymour. Mitz surprises the criminal plan of the false captain, over-hearing one of the pirates' conversations. Taking advantage of the night, he attempts an escape with the students and Patterson, but fails, then after a brief confrontation, takes command of the ship after locking up Markel and Carpenter on the captain's quarters and the other pirates in the ship's cellar, where they discover rum and get drunk. After a while, Markel and Carpenter finally manage to get out and go free their fellow criminals, but it is too late. The pirates experience a horrible end, having accidentally caused a fire that sinks the vessel. Meanwhile, Mitz and his protégés succeed in escaping in the ship's demise aboard a boat, and live through difficult times before being rescued by a steamer and repatriated to Britain where, having received notice of their adventure, they are received by the press and a large crowd. At the end, after their exciting and eventful trip, the students gather at their school for another busy year. cs:Cestovní stipendia de:Reisestipendien es:Los piratas del Halifax fr:Bourses de voyage pl:Sakiewki podróżne ro:Burse de călătorie
16345197	/m/03whc1m	The Purchase of the North Pole	Jules Verne	1889	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In the year of 189-, an international auction is organized to define the sovereign rights to the part of the Arctic extending from the 84th parallel, the highest yet reached by man, to the North Pole. Several countries send their official delegates, but the auction is won by a representative from an anonymous United States buyer. After the auction closes, the mysterious buyer is revealed to be Barbicane and Co., a company founded by Impey Barbicane, J.T. Maston and Captain Nicholl — the same members of the Baltimore Gun Club who, twenty years earlier, had traveled around the Moon inside a large cannon shell. The brave gunmen-astronauts had come out of their retirement with an even more ambitious engineering project: using the recoil of a huge cannon to remove the tilt of the Earth's axis — so that it would become perpendicular to the planet's orbit, like Jupiter's. That change would bring an end to seasons, as day and night would be always equal and each place would have the same climate all year round. But the society's interest lay in another effect of the recoil: a displacement of the Earth's rotation axis, that would bring the lands around the North Pole, which they had secured in the auction, to latitude 67 north. Then the vast coal deposits that were conjectured to exist under the ice could be easily mined and sold. The technical feasibility of the plan had been confirmed by J. T. Maston's computations. The necessary capital had been provided by Ms. Evangelina Scorbitt, a wealthy widow and ardent Maston's admirer (whose more than scientific interest was lost on the obsessive engineer). The cannon needed for that plan would be enormous, much larger than the huge Columbiad that had sent them to the Moon. Once the plan became public, the brilliant French engineer Alcide Pierdeux quickly computes the required force of the explosion. He then discovers that the recoil would buckle the Earth's crust; many countries (mostly in Asia) would be flooded, while others (including the United States) would gain new land. Alcide's note sends the world into panic and rage, and authorities promptly rush to stop the project. However Barbicane and Nicholl had left America for destination unknown, to supervise the completion and firing of the monster gun. J. T. Maston is caught and jailed, but he is unwilling or unable to revel the cannon's location. Frantic searches around the world fail to find it either. The cannon in fact had been dug deep into the flanks of Mount Kilimanjaro, by a small army of workers provided local sultan who was an enthusiastic fan of the former Moon explorers. The projectile, steel-braced chunk of rock weighting 180,000 tons, would exit the barrel at the fantastic speed of 2,800 kilometres per second — thanks to a new powerful explosive invented by Nicholl, which he had called "melimelonite". The cannon is fired as planned, and the explosion causes huge damage in the immediate vicinity. However, the Earth's axis retains its tilt and position, and not the slightest tremor is felt in the rest of the world. Alcide eventually deduces that J. T. Maston, while computing the size of the cannon, had made a calculation error — the first of his life. Indeed he had accidentally erased three zeros from the blackboard when he was struck by lighting during a telephone call from Ms. Scorbitt. Because of that single mistake in the data, twelve zeros got omitted from the result. The cannon he designed was indeed way too small: a trillion of them would have had to be fired to achieve the intended effect. Riduculed by the whole world and bearing the bitter resentment of his two associates, J. T. Maston went back into retirement vowing to never again make any mathematical calculations. But Ms. Scorbitt finally declared her feelings, and he gladly surrendered to marriage.
16348641	/m/03whfbq	Subspace Explorers	E. E. Smith	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It is essentially in three overlapping parts: * A space catastrophe and its results * The discovery and scientific study of psionics * A war between the corrupt and shortsighted (including Labour, politicians, Soviet-style communists and greedy capitalists) and those who can see a bit further (mostly tradesmen, professionals, and businessmen).
16350745	/m/03whhyx	The Reformed Coquet				 The story begins by briefly recounting the history of the main character, Amoranda. Her father was primarily interested in “whoring and drinking” and her mother was a “Lady clandestinely.” Her father’s brother had made a fortune as a merchant and repurchased the family’s estate, which he gave to Amoranda’s father. By the time she was seven years old, Amoranda was very vain, insisting on being called “madam” and she spent much time dressing herself in front of a mirror. In a notable anecdote, a little boy “who used to call her Wife” tried to give her a hug, but she shoved him away and told him to “see her no more.” The boy responded by saying that he liked another girl more, and Amoranda was left crying due to her jealousy. Davys notes, “Women like the Love, though they despise the Lover.” By the time Amoranda was fifteen, however, both of her parents had died and she was left with three thousand pounds a year, equivalent to about £ in present day terms. Her uncle was left as her guardian; however, he resided in London and Amoranda lived in the country, and her uncle considered the city to be a place of too many temptations. Thus, she was left alone in the country with her servants. The years had given her much appeal and grace, and she was greatly desired “for ten Parishes round.” Lord Lofty was chief among her admirers, and while he was waiting to visit her one morning, he found a letter on the ground, written by a woman and directed to Amoranda, warning her that Lofty “carries nothing but Ruin to our whole sex.” He proceeded to put the letter in his pocket and did not mention it to Amoranda. Amoranda later realized that Lofty had stolen her letter, but she remained mute on the matter. After dinner, Froth and Callid, two of her suitors, are frustrated that she will not have either of them. Together, they devise a plot to kidnap her in the night while she is outside with them, but their scheming is overheard by one of Amoranda’s servants. The servant tells Amoranda and she rewards her with a few guineas. Later, a stranger shows up at Amoranda’s home and hands her a letter from her uncle declaring that the stranger, an old man named Formator, is to be her new guardian. Amoranda tells Formator of Froth and Callid’s plot against her, and he decided that he, along with some hired footmen, will dress as women in her place. The next morning, one of Amoranda’s servants presents her with Lofty’s silver snuff box which she found in the garden. The box contained a paper that provided evidence that Lofty had broken a contract to either marry a woman or pay her ten thousand pounds. She shares the evidence with Formator who deicides to turn Lofty away when he visits. At this point, Amoranda declares that she will obey and that she likes Formator, in spite of his age. At the appropriate time that night, Formator and his companions foil Froth and Callid’s plot. Froth and Callid are taken completely unaware and, ultimately, both die as they run one another through with their swords. Lofty, after being turned away twice by Formator, wrote Amoranda a letter, but, while she was reading his letter, a stranger came to visit her. The stranger was shortly revealed to be Altemira, the woman who Lofty was supposed to have married. She shares her story with Amoranda. Altemira was about fifteen when her brother attempted to have incestuous relations with her, so she ran away from home. She stayed with a woman named Cook, who married a gardener of Lofty’s. Lofty showed up one night and inquired of Cook about her. Eventually, Altemira and Lofty began something of a relationship, but she would not sleep with him. Finally, Lofty promised that he would marry her and presented her with the contract that Amoranda’s servant had found in Lofty’s snuff box earlier. With this in her possession, she felt secure in her decision to finally sleep with Lofty. After she slept with him, however, Lofty stopped seeing her and she found that the contract had been stolen from her possession. However, she tracked him down and warned Amoranda with the letter that Lofty had found earlier in the story. Amoranda replies to Lofty’s letter that she will meet him in her summer-house and marry him. However, they trick Lofty into marrying Altemira instead, and Lofty offers her his “Heart for Life.” The next morning, Lofty, Altemira, Amoranda, and Formator departed to Lofty’s estate. Later, Altemira receives a letter from her brother declaring that he misses her and apologizing for his previous actions. When Amoranda departs, she is attacked by masked men, but Formator fends them off and they race home. Later, Amoranda’s childhood friend, Arentia, with her friend Berintha, come to visit. They are suspicious of Formator, and Formator is suspicious of Berintha actually being a man. Nonetheless, Amoranda spends a good deal of time with them. After a few days, they desire to go on a boat trip down the river with her. Amoranda goes with them against Formator’s advice, and Birintha reveals himself to be Biranthus, a man. Biranthus, aided by his barge-men, attempt to kidnap her, and he runs ashore with her and Arentia. Arentia gets bitten by an adder, or venomous snake, and dies. A man who names himself as Alanthus shows up on horseback, and Amoranda pleads for his help. After Biranthus attempts to shoot Alanthus with a pistol, one of Alanthus’s men kills him with his sword. Meanwhile, barge-men friendly to Amoranda have retaken her boat and they return to her home. Suspiciously, the plot progresses without Alanthus, with whom Amoranda has become smitten with, or Formator having met, and Alanthus sends Amoranda letters claiming that he is sick and therefore cannot visit her. Alanthus’s sister, Lady Betty, stops by Amoranda’s home and, as they talk, Amoranda learns that he has not written his sister for several months. Eventually, Amoranda’s stables catch fire in the night and Formator hastily runs to her bedroom. In doing so, he forgets to put on his beard, and when Amoranda looks at him she sees Alanthus. He hands her a letter from her uncle stating that Alanthus, a marquis, is the man that he has chosen for her to marry if they liked one another. Shortly thereafter, Lady Betty and Amoranda’s uncle both showed up and they were married that afternoon; a week later they all went to London.
16351148	/m/03whk29	Waking the Moon	Elizabeth Hand	1994	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sweeney Cassidy starts out as a freshman at University, where she meets the mysterious Angelica and falls in love with the strange and beautiful Oliver. She gets tangled up in sinister, supernatural events involving the awakening of an ancient, malevolent goddess. According to the afterword for the short story "The Bacchae", found in the collection Last Summer At Mars Hill, it is another trope on ancient Greek myth that prefigures Waking the Moon. They both involve murderous cults of women. Elizabeth Hand has said that she wanted to show that ancient goddess cultures were not all as peaceful and idyllic as we tend to think.
16355739	/m/03whnxm	Dreadful Sanctuary	Eric Frank Russell	1951	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns an international conspiracy to prevent humanity from achieving space travel.
16363568	/m/07kjfsg	Replay				 Leo is 12 years old, imaginative, sympathetic, but often lost in his large family, with his busy parents, older sister, two younger brothers, and large extended family. He has just tried out for the school play, a fantasy about an old man who accepts two lost children into his life and regains some of his childhood magic, and Leo is cast oddly as "the old crone". At the same time, Leo is learning more about his father after finding an old autobiography his father wrote at 13 and has had stashed in his attic along with some tap shoes. Part of the discovery is of the existence of a long-lost aunt. Leo's friend Ruby, who plays a donkey in the play, also reveals the death of her younger brother. Leo is trying to make sense of losses, life-changes, and regrets as the play and his life lead to mutual revelations. Leo wonders about the mysteries of his life, not least of all, why his father is so sad and what happened to Rosaria, his sister, and why no one mentions her. Leo feels lost in the sea of people that are his family. He dreams of changing the world, or at least getting his family to notice him. Leo's family is very busy with their own problems, and hardly talk to him besides to tell him to do one chore or another. Near the beginning of the story Leo joins a play called Rumpopo's Porch.
16364840	/m/03whvw1	Seeds of Life	Eric Temple Bell	1951	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the creation of a superman using radiation.
16368948	/m/03whz48	Fat Chance		1996-04	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is set in suburban Melbourne, Australia. The protagonist, Lisa Trelaw, is a teenage girl who is overly concerned about her weight. Other characters include her brother, Nick, who frequently teases her; Lisa's hard working father and over-weight mother; and her best friend Penny. The narrative follows Lisa through a series of life changing events. First, the 'Dog Squad' food van her parents bought and she worked in. Also, the cliff accident where a large rock fell, crushing two of Lisa's friends and narrowly missing her. The story has an ambiguous climax when Lisa is offered a modelling contract. By this stage Lisa's attitude had gone full circle. She had started out obsessed with her weight, always binge eating and then starving herself. In the end she is confident, eating healthy, with no eating disorder.
16369910	/m/03wh_31	The Crystal Horde	Eric Temple Bell	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is a science horror story that involves crystalline life.
16371741	/m/03wj0jx	The Berkut		1987	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel begins in the final days of Nazi Germany with Hitler sheltering in his bunker. Hitler officially commits suicide along with Eva Braun. However, after Eva kills herself, a preselected double takes Hitler's place and is disposed of along with Braun in the Chancellery yard for the Russians to find. The real Hitler escapes the bunker along with Colonel Günther Brumm, a German commando officer and together with a rag tag team, escape Berlin. Stalin meanwhile has intuitively deduced that the psychological make-up of Hitler is not that of a man who would commit suicide. Hence he sets up a special team of five operatives with wide ranging powers to round up Hitler and bring him back for Stalin's personal revenge. The novel soon becomes both a thrilling chase and a ruthless game of cat and mouse. Hitler and his protectors make their way across Germany, a charred wasteland where Hitler's dreams of glory lie in ruins and ashes. Their ultimate goal is Italy (where they have been promised sanctuary) but the Russian team is in hot pursuit. Along the way, Heywood provides an unforgettable historical snapshot of the aftermath of World War II. It is worth noting that many of the German survivors are depicted as admirable, while Red Army and even United States Army personnel are shown to be either timid, short-sighted, or corrupt. In one particularly chilling sequence, US Army Major Rosemary Wilson, a rich older woman, stumbles upon Waller, the beautiful German girl who is carrying the plans for Hitler's escape. Instead of interrogating the girl or turning her over to the American MP's, Major Wilson insists on renting a room for Waller and taking her to dinner at a small, dimly lit restaurant nearby. Wholly intent upon a classic lesbian seduction, Rosemary Wilson proves no match for the highly-disciplined German girl. She drinks far too much at dinner and falls into bed in a state of blissful anticipation, only to be found dead the next morning with an SS dagger buried in her breast. The Russians ultimately catch Hitler and bring him back to Stalin. Hitler is secretly imprisoned in a hanging cage in a sub-basement of the Kremlin which is too small for Hitler to either stand or lie fully. He is fed scraps through the bars of the cage and allowed no toilet facilities. Over the years, Hitler changes to a filthy, senile beast who has his right leg amputated above the knee and his left leg amputated above the ankle as gangrene sets in. He is finally executed by Petrov when Stalin is on his death bed and the sub-basement in which Hitler was kept is walled off forever.
16388491	/m/03wj9gp	The Promised Land	Władysław Reymont	1899		 Karol Borowiecki, a Polish nobleman, is the managing engineer at the Bucholz textile factory. With the help of his friends Max Baum, a German who is the heir to an old handloom factory, and Moritz Welt, an independent Jewish businessman, they embark on setting up their own brand new textile plant. Borowiecki's affair with Lucy Zucker, wife of another textile magnate, gives him advance notice of a change in cotton tariffs and helps Welt to make a killing on the Hamburg futures market. But more money has to be found, so all three characters cast aside their pride to raise the necessary capital. On the day of the factory opening, Borowiecki has to deny his affair with Zucker's wife to a jealous husband. But while Borowiecki accompanies Lucy on her exile to Berlin, Zucker apparently takes his revenge by burning down the three partners' uninsured factory.
16392407	/m/03wjc0y	Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil	Robert Zubrin	2007-11-10	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Zubrin contends that OPEC nations, particularly Saudi Arabia, have used their enormous oil wealth to fund Islamic extremism; in effect, the US is financing both sides of the War on Terror. They have been able to do this through colluding illegally to keep oil prices high. Due to its dependence on their oil, the United States (and the rest of the world) is powerless to do anything about this. The key to winning the war on terror, therefore, is to create a substitute for oil. Zubrin argues that a mandate that all new cars sold in the United States be flex-fueled (FFV, for Flex-Fuel Vehicle, able to run on gasoline, ethanol or methanol, or any combination thereof) would very quickly make such vehicles the world standard, as occurred in the early 1980s with the introduction of catalytic converters. As a result, consumers would demand ethanol- and methanol-blended fuels due to their price competitiveness with gasoline, which would in turn prompt gas stations to instal biofuel pumps. Under such a situation, competition would drive oil prices down. Zubrin argues that biofuels should be subsidized in order to keep their price advantage over gasoline, as it is the only way to cripple OPEC. Some have argued that a switch to electric cars would be more beneficial. While this may be a longer-term solution, a switch to biofuel can be achieved in a few years (as in the case of Brazil). Additionally, existing cars (including hybrids) can be retrofitted with flex-fuel capability for "between $100 and $500". A switch to biofuel would have the additional benefit that it is potentially a carbon-neutral fuel. Ethanol is produced primarily via the fermentation of corn or sugar cane (or indeed any other glucose-rich crop). Methanol can be produced from any plant matter. As both of these products can easily be produced in developing countries, Zubrin contends that the resultant expanding market for farm produce would be greatly beneficial for third-world farmers. There would be no need for western nations to subsidize their own farmers, as third-world produce could be absorbed into the larger market without causing a price-crash that would bankrupt western farmers. Anne Korin, of The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, has developed this concept further, adding to Zubrin's mandate the necessity to eliminate ethanol and sugar import tariffs in the United States for it to succeed.
16394479	/m/03y05_p	Captain Pantoja and the Special Service	Mario Vargas Llosa	1975		 The novel narrates the story of a Peruvian Army captain, Pantaleón Pantoja, whose superiors involve him, despite his reluctance, in a mission to satisfy the sex drives of soldiers stationed in the Peruvian department of Amazonas. Pantoja is chosen to carry out the mission by virtue of being a model soldier, free from vices and without children of his own. At first Pantaleón rejects the idea since it contradicts his principles, but nonetheless finds himself forced to carry it out. He decides to clean up the zone and military base since they are in terrible condition, and does not say anything to his wife Pochita, since his mission is top secret. The services—which are designated by the term “benefits”—that Pantoja tries to provide are called Servicio de Visitadoras para Guarniciones, Puestos de Frontera y Afines (SVGPFA) (Audit Services for Garrisons and Border-Related Posts), and consist in supplying prostitutes (“visitadoras”) to the barracks in Iquitos, where they are supposed to sexually satisfy the enlisted soldiers first, and to then be made available to the officers, while being an entirely secret matter. Among these sex workers is a very seductive woman, Olga Arellano (nicknamed “the Brazilian”), who becomes involved with Pantaleón, as the latter winds up being unfaithful to Pochita. Pantaleón is a man who is drowned by the solidity of his principles.—Mario Vargas Llosa After “the Brazilian” is assassinated by a group of furious locals, Pantaleón shows up at her funeral dressed in military uniform (thus going public with the nature of the audit services and revealing the secret which he was obliged to keep) in order to raise the morale of the sex workers. Due to the SVGPFA receiving a series of internal and external complaints from the Army, Pantaleón is thus forced to shut down the service under pressure from his superiors. The ensuing complication leads him to believe that his military career has come to an end, but his superiors grant him a last chance and send him far away, to Lake Titicaca (Peruvian Andes), to take charge of a garrison located there.
16401189	/m/03y0887	Hundred-Dollar Baby	Robert B. Parker	2006	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 April Kyle appears in Spenser's office after several years without any contact. She's been put in charge of a new upscale brothel by her mentor, the madame Patricia Utley. She says she's being harassed by someone who wants her to pay an extraordinary protection fee. Thugs appear and scare off her customers. Spenser and Hawk manage to fend off the thugs, but things are not as they seem as soon as Spenser starts asking questions. April begs him to stop investigating, but, Spenser being Spenser, can't stop until he unravels the mystery. What surfaces is a web of deceit, greed and the fragile psyche of April Kyle.
16407708	/m/03y0dcl	Pregnancy after a loss		1999	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Lanham says that after her first loss, that she was anxious about another child. She thought that he would end up just like her miscarriage. She covers all the feelings that she felt and being pregnant with her second son Andrew. There is also a dads view in the story. It covers many things such as, gaining the courage to try again, Trying Again, and waiting for the new baby.
16410116	/m/03y0fz6	A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose	Eckhart Tolle	2005	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Tolle begins with an allegorical evocation: "Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun ... this momentous event heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants". This is used by Tolle as an analogy for a transformation in human consciousness that he sees is about to occur and has already begun. Tolle believes that the earliest such "flowers" or spiritual messengers were in the forms of Buddha, Jesus, Laozi and other such great teachers, and that at those particular time periods in history, these great teachers’ messages were not fully understood. Tolle explains In his book A New Earth, Tolle defines the term ego as an "illusory sense of self" based on one's memories and thoughts. Tolle says that when studying history "it becomes obvious that the human ego in its collective aspect as “us” against “them” is even more insane than the “me,” the individual ego, although the mechanism is the same. By far the greater part of violence that humans have inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego. One can go so far as to say that on this planet “normal” equals insane. What is it that lies at the root of this insanity? Complete identification with thought and emotion, that is to say, ego." Tolle describes our identification with things: things that we use every day for self enhancement or things we have become attached to and become obsessed with. He describes how inferiority changes the way we act with other people and creates an ego that we didn’t normally have. Tolle uses his term pain body to describe the human tendency to carry around "an accumulation of old emotional pain". The identification is what causes all the reoccurring pain in the individual. Being able to know where the pain is coming from will prevent the pain body to renew itself through you. Our inner consciousness can change the world by not just being satisfied with what you do. Our destinies can be determined by how we carry out our actions and how we can fulfill them with the best possible consciousness. In these chapters, Tolle makes many distinctions: between "knowing yourself and knowing about yourself"; between the "Dreamer" and the "dream"; between the objects of consciousness and the space of consciousness; between outer space and inner space; and between outer purpose and inner purpose In the final chapter, Tolle discusses what he calls "the three modalities of awakened doing": acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Acceptance is when you may not enjoy what you are doing but you have to be able to accept it. This is essentially being able to take responsibility in your life and to take action with certain things that are not enjoyable at all and to find peace within these activities. Enjoyment is the next modality and it is being able to make the present moment a pivotal part of your life. This doesn’t mean that if you want to do something that you will find enjoyment in it. It means that with everything you do that you need to enjoy it in the present; you can’t let the moments pass you by or tell yourself you will enjoy something in the near future. The final modality of the inner consciousness is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm entails that there is a deeper enjoyment in the actions you do and being able to work towards a final goal, with a sense of urgency, but without stress.
16413173	/m/03y0hgk	King Leary	Paul Quarrington	1987		 The novel's protagonist is Percival "King" Leary, a legendary retired ice hockey player living in a smalltown nursing home, who is invited to Toronto by a young hotshot advertising executive to record a ginger ale commercial. The novel tracks his experiences on the trip, as well as exploring his past career through flashbacks. Included amongst these reminiscences are his times at a juvenile reformatory as well as his years with several hockey teams. The book's cast consists of various hockey players; an aged journalist, ‘Blue’ Hermann, who chronicled Leary’s professional life; and members of Leary’s family. In addition to chronicling his experiences on the trip, the novel explores his emotional life, as ghosts from his past come to confront him about his virtual withdrawal from any kind of life outside of the nursing home.
16416725	/m/025vcn8	A Matter of Profit	Hilari Bell	2001-09-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ahvren's people, the Vivitare, have conquered the T'Chin confederacy. After spending two years fighting a brutal war on another world, Ahvren welcomes peace. However, he is suspicious of his people's easy victory, wondering why the T'Chin surrendered. It is rumored that the Vivitare emperor is in danger of being assassinated and Ahvren offers to uncover the plot, in return for the freedom to choose his own path. To do it, he must understand what motivates the T'Chin.
16419291	/m/03y0m3j	Man of Many Minds	E. Everett Evans	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of George Hanlan, a secret service agent who has the ability to read minds.
16429591	/m/03y1m0t	Tripmaster Monkey	Maxine Hong Kingston	1990		 Set in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s, Wittman Ah Sing is conflicted over his Chinese ancestry. He looks down on immigrants from China and refers to them as fobs, while also resenting Asian-American women who alter their appearance to appear more white and know little about the culture of the countries their ancestors came from. He asks Nanci Lee, who is also of Chinese ancestry, out on a date. As time goes on, Wittman become more and more upset at the racism towards Asian people he sees around him. His thoughts become more fixated on the similarities between himself, and the character of a monkey king, Sun Wukong from the Chinese epic novel Journey to the West, giving the novel its name. He loses his job at a department store after becoming irritated at a customer and positioning wind-up monkey toys and barbie dolls in sexual positions. Nanci Lee ends their relationship after Whittman begins imitating the monkey king in front of her. Wittman then goes to a party mainly attended by followers of the Beatnik movement. After overhearing a woman, Taña De Weese, reciting poetry, Wittman composes the basic structure of a play. Only a few of the guests are sober, not under the influence of drugs, and awake the morning after the party, and Wittman briefly performs his play. Wittman and Taña walk home from the party through a park, and are married by a priest so that Wittman will not be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Wittman cannot find work, and eventually decides he should put on his play at a local community center. After rehearsing, the play is reproduced in the text of the novel. The play is quite long and resembles an epic legend. On the closing night of the play, Wittman gives a monologue that establishes he has accepted his ancestry and culture.
16429873	/m/03y1mg6	Three Thousand Years	Thomas Calvert McClary	1954	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns scientists who attempt to build a utopia after the earth has been placed in suspended animation for 3,000 years.
16431337	/m/03y1nrt	Operation: Outer Space	Murray Leinster	1954	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel concerns the first interstellar flight, financed by making it into a television show.
16433180	/m/03y1qkx	G.O.G. 666	Eric Temple Bell	1954	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel concerns Russian genetics experiments resulting in a being that is half ape, half brain.
16433790	/m/03y1r2f	Insoumise et dévoilée		2008-03	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Insoumise et devoilée is the story of Karima, a 32-year-old Muslim woman from Belgium who talks about her life and her violent education, from her childhood to her forced wedding in Morocco. She was beaten by her father to get her to follow their conservative traditions. This book was a real catharsis for the young woman. She broke the silence, but was threatened with murder even before the release of the book. The Muslim community of Verviers wanted to stop her from releasing the book and took her to court.
16436057	/m/03y1t6h	The Macdermots of Ballycloran	Anthony Trollope	1847	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrative of The Macdermots of Ballycloran "chronicles the tragic demise of a landowning family. Larry Macdermot lives in a dilapidated mansion in Co. Leitrim, whose mortgage (enforced by his enemy, the vulgar builder Joe Flannelly) he cannot keep up. Enmity between the Macdermot and Flannelly families is sharpened by Larry's having declined to marry Joe's daughter, Sally. Macdermot's daughter, Feemy, is herself seduced by the locally hated English police officer, Captain Myles Ussher. Ussher, who enforces the excise laws against poteen distilling, is murdered by Feemy's brother, Thady. He is hanged, his father Larry goes mad, Feemy dies bearing Ussher's bastard and the Ballycloran house is finally vacated of Macdermots."
16437495	/m/03y1vqn	Under the Triple Suns	Stanton A. Coblentz	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the survivors of the destruction of the earth and their attempt at settling a new planet.
16437827	/m/03y1wh2	Alien Minds	E. Everett Evans	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of George Hanlan, a secret service agent who has the ability to read minds, on the planet Estrella.
16438788	/m/03y1xc8	Islands of Space	John W. Campbell	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of a trio of heroes, Arcot, Morey and Wade.
16448980	/m/03y4k44	The King's Buccaneer	Raymond E. Feist	1992-10-18	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Nicholas, as third son, is third in the line of succession of the Kingdom of the Isles. However, due to his gentle nature and a deformity, an underdeveloped left foot, his father, Prince Arutha, decides that Nicholas would benefit from a rougher lifestyle than he is used to in Krondor. Arutha sends Nicholas to stay with Martin, Duke of Crydee, Warden of the West, and brother to Arutha and King Lyam. Nicholas is to learn what life is like outside the comforts he is used to as son of the Prince of Krondor, and Arutha deems that the distant town of Crydee, though twice the size of when he was a prince there, is rough enough living to make Nicholas learn to think for himself. Nicholas is accompanied by his faithful squire and friend Harry, and sails on the Royal Eagle, captained by Admiral Amos Trask, to the small town of Crydee. While there, the boys become friends with two girls of the court, Martin's daughter Margaret, and Abigal, daughter of the Baron of Carse. However, after about a month, Crydee is attacked, along with the other coastal towns of Carse and Tulan, by a well-organized army of pirates, hired Tsurani assassins, and Durbin slavers. All three towns are destroyed, and many are taken prisoner during the attack, including Margaret and Abigail. With Martin injured in an accident following the attack, Nicholas vows to rescue the prisoners and takes command. He is accompanied by Trask, Harry, Martin's son Marcus, Calis, son of Tomas and elf queen Aglaranna, the magicians Nakor and Anthony, Ghuda the mercenary, and a company of sailors and soldiers of the Kingdom that survived the attacks. They sail to the island city of Freeport, where Nicholas kills his first man, a pirate named Render who was involved in the attack. Through the encounter with Render, and with the help of a girl thief named Brisa, they learn that the captives were taken on a giant ship to the southwest, across the Endless Sea. The crew of the Royal Eagle, now disguised to hide its origin and renamed the Raptor, follows the captives across the sea with guidance from Anthony, who can sense the whereabouts of Margaret. After two months at sea, they nearly overtake the slave ship, but through magic are first becalmed and then sunk. The survivors wash up on the shore of the distant, unfamiliar continent of Novindus. The crew first must find a way up the cliffs that surround the northeastern edge of Novindus before they starve. After a few days, Calis, Marcus, and Nicholas find a way up the cliffs, but their men are tired and hungry, and many have died. At the top is an oasis, and the last water to be seen for miles. After some deliberation, Nicholas decides to head southeast, in the direction the captives' ship was heading. After crossing the Hotlands, Nicholas and his company stumble upon a plot that appears to be intended to overthrow the Overlord of the City of the Serpent River. However, it turns out that the Overlord is a pawn of the wizard Dahakon and the Lady Clovis, who in turn are in league with the Pantathian Serpent Priests. After some time, Nicholas gains the trust of one of the clans of the City, Calis learns of the whereabouts of the prisoners, and Nakor is able to learn more about the Overlord, Dahakon, and Lady Clovis. When Nicholas's men infiltrate the compound where the prisoners are being held, Anthony makes a terrible discovery: the Pantathians have devised a plague that will kill over half of the people in the Kingdom, throwing it into turmoil, allowing them to reach the Lifestone below Sethanon and accomplish their master plan which will destroy Midkemia. The Pantathians have made copies of the Kingdom prisoners, which are infected with the plague and are to be returned on nearly perfect replicas of two Kingdom ships, including the Royal Eagle. Nicholas and his allies, both those from Crydee and those that joined during their time in Novindus, manage to free the prisoners, capture the copy of the Eagle, and begin the journey home following its sister ship, a replica of the Royal Gull. As Trask is seriously wounded during the capture of the Eagle, Nicholas takes command, despite his relative inexperience at sea. After trailing the Gull closely for the long journey back to the Kingdom, Nicholas and his crew finally engage the ship in battle, burning it and sinking it to destroy the plague-carrying copies. During the battle, a bireme driven by the wizard Dahakon appears, and when all attempts to defeat him fail, Anthony summons the magician Pug, who appears riding the great dragon Ryana and destroys the evil necromancer and his ship and crew of undead minions. Nicholas returns home with his crew to a heroes' welcome, having saved the Kingdom from destruction, and proven his worth as Prince as well.
16452006	/m/0c24mv	Rainbow Boys	Alex Sanchez	2001-10	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story follows the overlapping lives of three high school seniors, with the chapters alternating between their different points of view. Jason Carrillo, the jock, finds himself questioning his heterosexuality and decides to attend a meeting for gay youth. He does not expect to see his classmates Kyle Meeks and Nelson Glassman at the meeting. Afterwards, Kyle, the mostly-closeted swimmer, decides to help tutor Jason in math. It is revealed that Kyle has had a crush on Jason for the past three years of high school. They bond over their shared feelings towards coming out and their families. Which leads them to become more than friends.' Nelson, the flamboyant class clown, has conflicting feelings towards Kyle and their relationship. He's very close to his mother who claims to have always known about his homosexuality, but rarely sees his father. After getting into an argument with Kyle, he decides to hook up with an online stranger named Brick. He has sex for the first time, and fears he has contracted HIV. He becomes friends with HIV-positive Jeremy, and they begin a relationship.
16452030	/m/0c26_7	Rainbow High	Alex Sanchez	2003-11	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It is the final semester of Jason Carillo's, Kyle Meeks's, and Nelson Glassman's senior year of high school. In the beginning they write letters expressing their past experiences and their current issues. They face the issues of coming out to the public, deciding which college to go to, and the ever-present threat of HIV/AIDS. Nelson is relieved to discover he does not have HIV, but his boyfriend Jeremy is HIV-positive. Nelson thinks Jeremy is pushing him away when Jeremy is just afraid of infecting Nelson. Nelson's mother keeps wanting to meet Jeremy and approves of their romantic relationship until she discover that he is positive. After a while, Nelson suspects Jeremy wants to break up with him, so decides to break up with Jeremy first. They meet in a cafe and Nelson still is undecided about breaking up with Jeremy but eventually Jeremy decides to break up their relationship. Nelson is hurt when Jeremy is immediately content with the idea. Jeremy and Nelson stay friends (or try to), and go to the prom on a platonic date. He is also upset because his best friend Kyle might be going to Princeton without him, leaving him to go to Tech (a boring, nerdy school in his opinion) alone. He feels insecure about his loneliness and his friends, and feels a little left out sometimes. Kyle faces the problem of deciding which college to go to: Princeton or Tech. Jason may be going to Tech, so Kyle invests his hope in the possibility of going to Tech with him. Kyle is afraid of losing Jason when they leave for college. He's willing to give up Princeton for him. Kyle encourages Jason to come out and hopes that he and Jason will be able to be open about their relationship. There are also problems on the swim team. Someone on the team had their parent write a letter to the coach saying that they don't want to shower with a homosexual (Kyle). Kyle just waits until he gets home to shower until the big swim meet. Kyle gets upset from guys bashing him and almost walks out of the front door of the hotel the team was staying at. Coach threatens to take him out of the meet and calls Kyle's father. Kyle apologizes (his father told him to) and he's able to swim in the meet. Later Kyle's father talks to the swim Coach and defends his son and his homosexuality. Kyle and Jason go to prom. In the end, Kyle decides to go to Princeton. Jason wants to come out to the team but is afraid that he will lose his scholarship from Tech. He tells his Coach who handles it very well and so does the team. The team wins state. Jason and Debra have a civil conversation. Jason's confused on why Kyle would give up Princeton for him. He doesn't want Kyle to throw his life away. Jason gives a TV interview about his homosexuality and when asked if he had a boyfriend he says no. Kyle is upset about this. When the team wins state he and Kyle kiss on the court which makes up for the interview. Jason's mother is still having a hard time accepting his sexuality. Tech takes his scholarship away saying that it was due to an altercation earlier that year. Jason thinks that this is false. He and Kyle finally go to the prom together.
16452599	/m/03y4w18	Song of the Sparrow	Lisa Ann Sandell	2007-05-01	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 When Elaine of Ascolat's mother is murdered by a Pict warrior, her family's house was burned to ashes on their island of Shalott, and she now lives with her two brothers, Lavain and Tirry, and her father in an army encampment for Briton. Elaine is only 8 years old. She quickly makes friends with Arthur, Lancelot, Tristan, Gawain, and many others. Over the years, Elaine turns into a beautiful young girl of sixteen, with long, fiery red hair. She does all of the mending, washing, and healing of all three hundred and fifty soldiers in the camp. Elaine is in love with Lancelot, Arthur's right-hand man, her long-time playmate and companion. Suddenly, when Aurelius, the leader of the entire Briton army, is poisoned by a Saxon spy, Arthur is left to lead and unite all of Britain.Many leaders don't appreciate Arthur's youth, and even though he is an experience fighter, they leave with their men and horses. The night that Arthur is proclaimed leader, Lancelot tells Elaine he must go and win the favor of Lodengrance, for he is needed at Arthur's round table. Elaine gathers at the Round Table with her father and brothers to listen to Taliesin, the Merlin, give Arthur his title. Being the only girl there besides Morgan, Elaine feels awkward but familiar. After the men accept Arthur as their new leader, Elaine goes to talk to Lancelot who calls her "grown up now" and "a woman" . She is astonished. They part and Tristan comes up to her and speaks about how he came to be part of the army. The next day as Elaine is working on Tirry's clothes, she pricks herself with a sewing needle, something she hasn't done in years." She runs out from the tent weeping, only to be found by Morgan. Elaine says it is a "bad omen" and Morgan brings Elaine to her tent to comfort her. Arthur comes in and they discuss the planned attack on the Saxons, in which Arthur explains that he doesn't want to murder, but it must be done to protect the people. A few days later, Lancelot returns from his mission, bringing back Lodengrance and his stunning daughter, Gwynivere, to be wed to Arthur. However the new dux bellorum is not too ecstatic. Lancelot introduces his feelings for the new girl in front of Elaine. "She should be mine. But I will never have her," says Lancelot, which crushes Elaine, especially when he calls her "a child." To add to her heartbreak, she finds Gwynivere to be "filled with poison." Gwynivere's superior attitude puts the two girls at odds right when they meet. Elaine and Tristan place a frog in Gwynivere's embroidery pouch as a way of repenting her cruelness to Elaine. After the act, he warns her not to follow the men to the Saxons, which is exactly what she decides to do. On the day of their leaving, Elaine, a jumble of worry and nerves, says goodbye and good luck to her father and brothers. She waits a while before taking her own saved provisions and following in their tracks. A brave and persistent woman in her endeavor, she faces loneliness and a nagging feeling of a following presence on her journey. She crosses a river that almost takes her life, simply to be caught by Saxon soldiers. A fight ensues, and Gwynivere appears from the woods, defending Elaine by attacking her captors. The two girls are then both caught and taken to the Saxon camp as prisoners. Tensions and injuries pose obstacles and strain as the time passes, locked away from battle and the men they love. Elaine awakens to the sound of Arthur's army fighting the Saxons. She begins to talk to Gwynivere, admitting her worry and senselessness. While Gwynivere comforts Elaine, Gwynivere confesses herself to be "a jealous person." Later, Yellow Hair's companion comes in to give them a bedpan and unties the ladies. When they hear of the Saxon's surprise attack on Arthur, Elaine solidifies her decision to escape and warn him. The two girls begin to dig a hole near an open tent flap. Once Elaine gets freed, she sprints and distracts the Saxons as Gwynivere sneaks out and dashes to find Arthur around the mountain. Elaine makes her way to a river to find a Saxon boat, but before she gets in, an arrow from the Saxons pierces her chest. She crawls in the boat and starts to float downstream, pondering before blacking out. As Elaine heals from her wound, Arthur decides to move camp back to Carleon-Usk. Elaine is tired often, and takes frequent rests, in which she receives visits from some men, like that of Lancelot. The two resolve their strain, finally friends again. Tristan later joins Elaine on one of her rests, professing his jealousy of Lancelot and his true love for Elaine, who suddenly and shockingly realizes she loves him as well resulting in a shared kiss between the two. Upon return to camp, they all gather at the round table as Arthur invites them to start a new life and city with him, upon that very place. Elaine and Tristan, Elaine's family, and many of Elaine's friends stand with their consent to build their new city and establish their freedom in Camelot.
16455226	/m/03y6ch9	The Medici Seal	Theresa Breslin	2006-08-03	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Italy, 1502. Matteo is saved from drowning by friends of Leonardo da Vinci. The artist and scholar takes the boy under his wing. Matteo accompanies him both as he pursues knowledge and paints magnificent pictures and as he travels across Italy. Soon his story continues. Serving Leonardo da Vinci, seeing first hand the ruthless rule of Cesare Borgia, the ambition of the Medici and the revenge of the dell'Orte. Florence, Milan, Castell Barta and many other places in Renaissance Italy.
16458859	/m/03y6j49	Zombie Broadway				 In Zombie Broadway, the human population of Manhattan has been decimated to the point where the only survivors are a few unlucky civilians and a bunch of stuck-up Broadway effites. The acting mayor (the others have been eaten or killed) of New York has convinced the President to try taming the zombies through theater before the ultimate resolution of dropping a nuclear bomb on the city. The story of Zombie Broadway takes the form of an ensemble black comedy, full of violence and humor.
16459381	/m/03y6jtz	The Jem Star		2007-05-01		 The Jem Star begins in Westford in late November. Tansy is riding the Gravity Grinder; a new and thrilling fairground ride that Mal has just introduced her to. Soon after, she becomes locked in a bitter row with her mother, Pauline. Trying to make her feel better, Mal offers Tansy a trip into Westford the following evening which Tansy accepts instantly as she knows her mother would disapprove, but before the night is over, Tansy finds herself having another confrontation, this time with her brother's drunk and violent friend. Later, she rows with her brother himself. Joe insults Mal and, anger surging, the television screen explodes. Thinking that Tansy has thrown the remote control at the television in a fit of rage, Joe runs off to grass to their mother. But his assumption is wrong as Tansy finds that she is still holding the controls in her hand. At this point the reader discovers that this is not the first time Tansy has experienced such a problem. It seems that her temper and electrical equipment do not mix! Tansy feels alone in her problem and does not even confide in Mal. He is suffering with a gluten allergy and is bed-ridden. Bored and alone, Tansy seeks excitement and finds it when she meets Jem, a seventeen-year-old Irish boy. Tansy quickly develops a fascination with Jem: his good looks and cheeky persona. Also, it quickly becomes clear that he knows about her 'problem'. He explains that she is a developing Medlar. Medlars are gifted individuals with many strange abilities and problems; heightened temper response being one of them. He explains that he is a Medlar scout and will therefore help her come to terms with her newfound quirks. Tansy starts to neglect her normal life in favour of spending time with Jem. However, as he is a stranger, her family are deeply suspicious of him and warn her to keep away. But Tansy does not listen. She meets Jem secretly and gets drawn more deeply into the Medlar world. Just when Tansy is starting to feel completely at ease with her new friend though, Jem drops a bombshell and explains her family's mistrust of him. He is on the run from the police. Jem explains that he was arrested after abducting Jessica Wallis, an eleven-year-old girl. However, he insists that it was all a misunderstanding and begs Tansy for her help in clearing his name. He tells her that he escaped from police custody by using his Medlar skills to melt the metal handcuffs that were fastened to one of his wrists. Feeling sorry for Jem, Tansy agrees to help. Soon after, she meets Aidan, Jem's younger brother who she learns she will have to work with in order to help Jem. After making a dodgy deal with Jem, Tansy invites him to tea. But things go from bad to worse when, for the first time ever, she sees a ghost at the dinner table and seizes up with the shock. Later, Jem explains that she has progressed to the next Medlar hook (or level) and will soon be ready to help clear his name. Tansy is hysterical about this new and unsettling ability, so she is pleased when Jem lends her his mobile phone. It has been specially adapted to block out the paranormal - but only when it is switched on. She must also stay within three metres of it for it to have any effect. In order to help Tansy and Aidan overcome their fear of the supernatural, Jem subjects them to a PEPA Flood. This stands for Prolonged Exposure to Paranormal Activity. It's a proven method of tackling Medlar phobias and could help them advance to the next Medlar hook more quickly. But it is not without risks. Although Aidan's flood is a success, Tansy's is anything but. Not only does she witness a disturbing paranormal assault on a young boy but she also encounters Jem's fiery girlfriend, Finola, who inadvertently lets a flood devil into Tansy's flood and it has to be stopped. Tansy later discovers that the young, tortured boy in her flood was Jem at seven years old. He tells her about his aunt, Faith, explaining that ten years ago she stole a precious brooch - the Jem Star - from his mother. In doing so she activated a PEPA Flood which led to the seven-year-old Jem being savaged by a pack of flood devils. Jem shows Tansy a tattoo-like mark of the Jem Star on his upper arm. The next day Tansy has a Near Death Experience. During her conversion from Earth to Heaven she encounters Faith. This pushes her courage to the limit and gets rid of her fears. She therefore advances to the next Medlar hook. But while Tansy's life is spared and she is sent back to Earth, Mal is not so lucky. Tansy finds him covered in blood and dying. He has been stabbed several times and dies in her arms. In his dying seconds he reveals to Tansy that he killed Jem and Aidan's mother ten years before. Tansy keeps Mal's confession to herself for the time being and mourns his death by trying to keep busy. She insists that Jem work her hard as he trains her to use her developing skills. He introduced Tansy and Aidan to the Memo Re-writer; a form of hypnotism which they pick up quickly despite Tansy struggling to cope with her grief. She is also becoming suspicious of her family and of Mal's parents who have refused to inform the police of his death. When Tansy's parents attempt to stop her from seeing Jem and Aidan, she runs away and lives with the boys in their van. Tansy soon gets to see Jessica Wallis for the first time. Using the Memo Re-writer she has to convince the girl that Jem did not abduct her. She is successful, but as she celebrates with Jem and Aidan, Jem is spotted by the police. This gives way to a car chase. Tansy, Jem and Aidan escape and hide in a deserted farmhouse. While they are they, Tansy questions Jem about Mal's confession that he killed his and Aidan's mother. But Jem insists that his mother is still alive. Mal did not kill her; he killed her sister - Jem and Aidan's wicked Aunt Faith - unintentionally. Later, Tansy sees a different side to Jem when he has an anger attack and vandalises the house by psychic power alone. As Tansy and Aidan hide, Aidan explains that Jem has been suffering from these attacks for the last ten years. They are a consequence of his assault at the hands of the flood devils. When he has recovered, Jem tells Tansy how he usually stops the anger attacks occurring. His girlfriend, Finola is a temper-taker and absorbs his anger when they kiss. As they have not been together for a while his anger has surged, resulting in the attack. The police find Jem and he is arrested but Tansy and Aidan manage to escape. They return to the fairground to look for the Jem Star brooch which Jem believes Mal stole from Faith's dead body ten years before. He also believes that it may help them to free him from prison. Thanks to another development in her Medlar powers, Tansy witnesses and listens in on the police interview with Jem. They are getting nowhere until the arrival of an imposing man who insists on questioning Jem alone. He turns out to be John Kerrigan, Jem and Aidan's father, who works for the British Government. Tansy listens to their conversation and is shocked to discover that she is not who she thought she was. Apparently, she is not Tansy Strange at all but Shannon Kerrigan; Jem and Aidan's sister. Ten years ago on the night of Jem's flood devil attack and Faith's death, a fifteen-year-old Mal abducted her whilst trying to save her life. In a panic, he smuggled her back to the fairground where she was brought up by the Stranges. After a final confrontation with Faith, involving not only the Jem Star, but Jem, Aidan, the flood devils and the spirit of Mal, Tansy confronts the Stranges about her true origins. She finally understand their reasons for not reporting Mal's death to the police and also discovers who murdered Mal. It is agreed that she goes to live with her rightful family in Ireland. The final scenes see Tansy saying goodbye to the Stranges and blackmailing Mal's murderer. Also, Jem is reunited with Finola. In the last paragraph of the book, Tansy leaves the fairground to start her new life accompanied by John Kerrigan, Finola, Aidan and Jem. She is looking forward to meeting her real mother and to getting acquainted with her new spirit guide, Mal.
16459763	/m/03y6kdj	The Heads of Cerberus	Gertrude Barrows Bennett	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns people who are transported to a future totalitarian Philadelphia in 2118, after inhaling a grey dust.
16462714	/m/03y6qvd	The Abyss of Wonders	Perley Poore Sheehan	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a lost race in the Gobi Desert.
16470857	/m/03y7lp8	Airhead	Meg Cabot		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Seventeen-year-old tomboy and anti-materialist Emerson Watts, forced by her mother, accompanies her sister, Frida, and her best friend, Christopher, to a Stark Mega store opening in So Ho, which is attended by the teen supermodel, Nikki Howard. In addition to Howard's celebrity presence there will be an appearance by British heartthrob, singer, and songwriter, Gabriel Luna. Frida has a crush on the musician. The event is protested, and one of the protesters shoots a plasma screen with a paint ball gun, snapping the wires. Emerson (Em for short) saves her sister from being hit by the plasma screen crashing down, and takes the hit herself. At the very moment, Nikki faints and goes brain-dead. A month later, Em finds herself in the hospital, trying to recall what had happened. She finds out she is in Nikki Howard's body when she is kidnapped by Lulu Collins, Nikki's best friend, and Brandon Stark, her on again off again boyfriend. She screams in the limo seeing that she is in Nikki Howard's body on the way to Nikki's loft. She tries to remember the events that went on during the last month, and Em finds out that not only did she die during the accident, but incidentally Nikki Howard had also suffered a fatality as well. Unknown to and without her permission, her brain is transplanted into Nikki's brain-dead body, due to the fact Nikki suffered from a fatal collapse at the same time Em got hit. In an effort to save Em, her parents had agreed to a controversial brain transplant surgery offered free by Stark Industries, on condition that Em continues Nikki's career as the face of Stark Industries. From then on, Em is forced to live the high life while concealing her real identity or be faced with the contract penalty of two million dollars. Em is forced to take on the role of Nikki Howard, all the while struggling with the fact that she does not have control over her life. She tries to let go of her tomboyish ways to take over the highly glamorous life that Nikki had lived. Although she is now dealing with Nikki's job, Nikki's friend Lulu and many boyfriends, she still fights to keep some of her old life by going back to school, also to face Christopher, on whom she has a secret crush. As Em follows through with Nikki's commitments (photo shoots, interviews, etc., not to mention continuing school at Tribeca Alternative High School), she realizes that the supermodel lifestyle is a lot harder than she perceived it to be. Em notices that her best friend Christopher, is now a broken mess after her death. She goes out of her way to try to talk to him, and try to let him realize that she is still alive in someone else' body, by leaving an important clue as stated early in the book. This part of the story ends with Em bringing Lulu to her family's house for dinner, Em learns that Lulu doesn't have a family and spends most of her time drinking and partying. When asked 'how does she know them,' Em answers, 'doesn't know where to begin.' Leaving an open space for the sequel.
16473093	/m/03y7r41	Godfrey Morgan	Jules Verne	1882	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Godfrey, an idle twenty-two-year-old, lives with his uncle, the wealthy Lord William W. Kolderup. Prior to marrying the young and pretty Phina, he asked to undertake a sea voyage of two years. Acceding to his desire, his uncle sends him around the world on board the Dream, commanded by Captain Turcott, with his mentor, teacher, and dance instructor, Professor T. Artelett aka "Tartlet". Unfortunately, the ship sinks a few miles from an island where Godfrey will have to learn to survive, to organize his life, face the savages, and overcome other obstacles—together with Tartlet, the only other survivor of the sinking Dream. Faced with this, the jaded young man discovers the value of effort and gains poise and courage.
16482944	/m/03y8b5c	Christmas Angel		1996		 On each page, a different person is wondering where Christmas Angel is. Children can find her by opening the flaps. The aim of the book is to help young children learn how to read.
16483818	/m/03y8bvb	Hero in the Shadows	David Gemmell	2000-10-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Waylander, the assassin anti-hero of Waylander and Waylander II, is now a rich old man looking for a world that will give him peace and atonement for his crimes. However, his relatively quiet peace is broken by the appearance of old demons from the past, and enemies from the present. Faced with enemies he cannot easily fight, even a magical sorcerer working for an unknown cause, he is forced to take up his crossbow and sabre to once again become Waylander. Aided by an idealistic warrior, a braggart with a stolen sword, a girl with a special talent, and a mysterious priestess and her followers, he seeks to close the chapter of his life by destroying the evil he has created by his own hand.
16487472	/m/03y09jx	Birds, Beasts and Relatives				 Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, like My Family and Other Animals, offers a series of autobiographical anecdotes from the Durrell family's five year sojourn on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. Gerald was aged ten when his mother, sister and two brothers moved from England to Corfu. The stories related in the book do not occur in chronological order, and are in some cases semi-fictionalised. For example, Gerald's eldest brother Larry - the novelist Lawrence Durrell - was not living with the rest of his family as is depicted in the stories, but was living separately with his wife Nancy, who is not mentioned in the books. Characters in the book also include their widowed mother, the gun-mad brother Leslie, his sister Margo, and Roger the dog. The family are protected by their local friend, taxi-driver Spiro (Spyros "Americano" Chalikiopoulos) and mentored by the physician and polymath Dr Theodore Stephanides, who provides Gerald with his education in natural history.
16494088	/m/03y8qlk	Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania	Bayard Taylor	1870	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Joseph, a young man, marries a wealthy woman just as he is discovering an even more powerful love with his new friend Philip and must contend with the revelation of his wife's manipulative nature as well as his increasing feelings for Philip.
16499587	/m/03y8tnr	A Thousand Country Roads	Robert James Waller	2002-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story relates what happened to Robert Kincaid and Francesca Johnson following their passionate and ill-fated love affair in The Bridges of Madison County. Kincaid initially finds himself with just memories of a lonely existence and of Francesca Johnson, whom he felt a great passion for. Pushed by these memories and desiring to give meaning to his life, Kincaid takes to the road again. A Thousand Country Roads explores his development as he explores himself and the world around him on his journey.
16515705	/m/03y91x8	Dead Heat	Joel C. Rosenberg		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The year is 2016. In Yemen, a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert military strike against one of the head members of the Italy-based terrorist cell “The Legion” succeeds, and the strike team manages to obtain a laptop which bears blueprints for the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California which is currently hosting the Republican National Convention. President James MacPherson is scheduled to deliver a speech at the convention later that day. The president's advisors inform him of the CIA raid in Yemen and about the information recovered from the laptop and express concern for his security. The United States Secret Service also expresses great concern about the president's security, due to new information from British, Canadian, and Mexican intelligence agencies about several terrorist suspects converging on Los Angeles, even with heavy air and ground security at Los Angeles International Airport and the Staples Center. In spite of these security concerns, the president decides to go ahead with his speech. Meanwhile in Jordan, Jon Bennett rushes his wife Erin, a victim of bacterial meningitis, to the hospital in the United Nations relief camp they are working in. As the doctors examine Erin, they discover that she is pregnant. While Erin remains hospitalized, Bennett receives a phone call warning about an impending attack on the United States. At the NORAD Headquarters in Colorado Springs, the Air Force detects the launch of several short-range missiles off the coast of Washington, New York City, Seattle, and Los Angeles. The Air Force, unable to prevent the missiles from reaching their target, fears that each missile is equipped with a nuclear warhead. Their fears prove true when the District of Columbia is obliterated in two massive nuclear blasts. At the same time, Manhattan is flattened and becomes a nuclear wasteland along with Seattle and Los Angeles. NORAD commander Lt. General Charlie Briggs orders the evacuation of the vice president from his private residence in Jacksonville, Florida. Vice President Bill Oaks is sworn in as President of the United States on board Air Force One. Oaks now becomes the forty-fifth President of the United States. Along with death of President MacPherson, the Republican and Democratic Party leadership, members of the United States Congress and the United States Supreme Court are all dead, and millions of lives have been lost. The attack on Washington also leads to the loss of the majority of U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, and hinders the president's efforts to find those responsible for the attacks. As one of his first acts as president, Oaks orders United States Navy to deploy its entire fleet to sea, in order to avoid an attack similar to Pearl Harbor. As China begins to move military forces towards Taiwan, the president orders the United States Navy's 7th Fleet in Japan to the East China Sea, in order to prevent a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China believes that the United States might be holding them accountable for the attacks. As the United States prepares to respond militarily, China warns it will strike if it feels threatened. The U.S. Coast Guard locates one of the cargo ships which launched the missiles which struck D.C. They then pass this information on to the United States Navy. The Navy contacts General Briggs who orders an F/A-18 figher squadron from Naval Air Station Oceana to destroy the cargo ship. In short order, the Navy fighters destroy the cargo ship. Soon afterwards, Navy and Air Force fighters locate and sink the remaining cargo ships which destroyed New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle. During a meeting in Babylon, U.N. Secretary General Salvador Lucente meets with Iraqi President Mustafa Al-Hassani. There they discuss Israel’s continued construction of the Third Temple and how to stop it. Both agree they will have to tolerate this nuisance until they amass enough power. With American economic and military power effectively neutralized, no one will stand in their way. With Manhattan in ruins, Al-Hassani invites Lucente to move the UN Headquarters to Babylon. Lucente publicly accepts Al-Hassani's offer. In Jordan, the mysterious caller contacts Bennett again and asks him to come with Erin to Bangkok. Bennett explains that the President has arranged for him to return to the United States. The line goes dead. The caller is revealed to be Indira Rajiv, a former mole and traitor in the CIA. She begins to plot how to transport Bennett and Erin to her location. Bennett, with help from the National Security Agency and the Israeli Mossad, attempts to trace the call. The president orders the deployment of Delta Force teams to Thailand to capture the caller. Rajiv, however, narrowly escapes being captured by Delta Force. Bennett and Erin, still on a stretcher, board an ambulance headed to Queen Alia International Airport in Amman where a U.S. military aircraft is waiting to return them to America. On the way, the driver is shot by an unseen sniper, and the ambulance fishtails and lands on its side. As a cement truck is bearing down on it, Bennett manages to crawl out of it right before it crushes the ambulance, killing Erin and the nurses in the back. A small squad of men rush toward him from the surrounding hills and knock him unconscious. In America, Homeland Security Secretary Lee James is sworn in as Vice President. The remnant of the government begins receiving intelligence that implicates North Korea as the culprit in the nuclear attacks. President Oaks orders the Air Force to conduct reconnaissance flights off the coast of North Korea. During one such flight, An Air Force RC-135 from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa is shot down by North Korean fighter jets over the Sea of Japan. Also, satellite imagery shows a massive concentration of troops on the border with South Korea. President Oaks and his military advisors begin collaborating with South Korean officials on how to respond to the threat of an invasion. Meanwhile, back at Cheyenne Mountain, Bobby Caulfield, an aide to President Oaks learns that most of his family died in the attack on New York and begins to suffer a mental breakdown. This is coupled with the fact that his older brother is in the United States Army and is stationed along the DMZ with the Eighth Army in South Korea. Caufield also notices that he has run out of his hidden cocaine stash and begins to suffer from delirium. He then assaults a military policeman and steals his Beretta pistol. As he is a presidential aide, he is able to get into a conference room where the president is having a meeting without being searched. He then holds Oaks at gunpoint, demanding that he order U.S. Forces in South Korea not to fight against the North. Unsatisfied with how his demands are being received, he assassinates the President before committing suicide. Vice President Lee James now becomes the forty-sixth President of the United States. Because of the amount of responsibility now heaped in his lap and his doubts about his abilities, President James becomes a Christian. United States Secretary of Defense Burt Trainor becomes Vice President. Israeli Prime Minister David Doron is awoken in the middle of the night with intel placing Jon Bennett in North Korea. Because he is a friend and helped rediscover the Ark of the Covenant, Doron feels his rescue is a top priority. He orders an extraction team to locate and rescue him. Bennett wakes up in a cold, dark cell in North Korea. When two interrogators walk in to extract information, Indira Rajiv enters and shoots them for killing Erin because she was a friend. She tells Bennett that she did not want them to be harmed. She hands him a drive with a plethora of files detailing the names, locations, and plans of every member in the Legion before shooting herself. In America, President Lee James prepares for the first press conference since the attacks. He signs the orders detailing America’s retaliatory strike against North Korea that includes nuclear missiles which are immediately launched. After Indira commits suicide, Israeli special operations soldiers launch a raid on the North Korean prison Jon Bennett is being held in. They manage to rescue Bennett and escort him to their UH-60 helicopter. After the helicopter manages to take off, Bennett notices something streaking across the sky. Tragically, Bennett and the Israeli soldiers are vaporized by one of the six thousand U.S. cruise missiles launched against North Korea. At his underground command center in Mount Weather, Virginia, President James begins his speech before a global audience of more than three billion. As he details what has happened in the last several days and how the government is responding, North Korean cities and targets are being destroyed in milliseconds. During the course of the address, he instantly vanishes. Dmitri Galishnikov, founder of Medexco, an Israeli oil company, and his wife sit in their family room astonished at what has just happened. Having heard End Times prophecies from the Bennetts and others, he realizes the Rapture has occurred. He immediately calls all Christians he knows, and none answer. In the epilogue, a week has passed since the disappearance of President James and nearly one billion others worldwide. Leaders of thirty-nine countries are gone, too, and with their disappearance, most of Israel's key allies in the global community. David Doron is eager to sign a peace treaty proposed by Salvador Lucente. During this time, the Galishnikovs convert to Christianity. Dead Heat ends with them sending an e-mail to the employees of Medexco outlining their conversion and their plans for the future.
16518434	/m/03y93l8	Running Before the Wind	Linda Woolverton	1987	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 For thirteen-year-old Kelly, running is like running away from the anger and the pain - it lets her forget, at least for a few miles a day, just how much she hurts. But when she is invited to join the junior high track team, Kelly's father dashes her hopes with a blunt "No". Kelly knows there is little she can say to change his mind. In fact, she is afraid of saying anything at all. Kelly lives in fear of her father. He could be nice for days, then lash out in frightening violence. While her mother and sister will do anything to keep the peace, Kelly refuses to pretend that nothing is wrong. Then suddenly, miracously, Kelly is freed from her father's unpredictable rage. But now she feels trapped in a life filled with anger and violence of her own.
16518528	/m/03y93lz	Star Wind	Linda Woolverton	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When she returns home from summer camp, Camden Douglas finds that her best friend Mitch is running with a new group. They're followers of an older teen who calls himself WT-3 and tells the "kidsters" that "grownies" are "double ungood" bosses who give children no rights. Miffed at her busy parents, Cadmen plunges in, but a series of nightmarish dreams reveal the truth.
16521950	/m/03y95j8	The Mechanicals	Richard Kelly	2007-01-31		 July 2, 2008: Madeline Frost Santaros (Mandy Moore) (daughter of the current Senator) calls her father and tells him that Boxer Santaros has been missing for several days. She and Boxer were married for several years. If word got out of his disappearance, it would effectively ruin Senator Bobby Frost’s chances of being re-elected. A person is at the area where the first ball is buried and where Boxer is expected to arrive with the first clue. The person’s mission is to kidnap Boxer and abandon him in the desert. July 3, 2008: Back at the Treer Plaza, General Teena MacArthur was inspecting the body found in the burnt-up SUV, so she calls a long friend named Simon Theory (Kevin Smith) to help her. Ronald Taverner, Zora Carmichaels, Dream and Dion are having breakfast at their restaurant. He wants them to bring himself and his brother to a hospital, believing that there is something wrong with both of them. The Neo-Marxists explain their plan to Ronald. They show him ‘The Power’ script. They are going to get him to go on a ride-along with Boxer for preparation and research for his character. Dion and Dream are going to stage a dispute that Ronald will have to go investigate and pretend to shoot them both dead...and all on Boxer’s video camera. At Fortunio Balducci’s house, he is reading the script when Serpentine (a mistress of the Baron’s) calls him and tells him to facilitate a meeting between Ronald Taverner and Boxer and in return she will pay him for it. At the Neo-Marxist HQ, Roland Taverner is tied up and injected with Fluid Karma. The unconscious Roland begins singing All These Things That I've Done-The Killers. They inject him once more and he stops. Ronald finds a letter belonging to his brother from someone called Pilot Abilene. He asks Zora what he was. She tells him that he was an actor in a comedy troupe and he met Zora, Dion and Dream where they became ‘The Lighthouse Gang’. Pilot Abilene is a former soldier who is now a guard of the generator dubbed ‘Utopia Three’ at the Santa Monica Pier. He was an actor who started out in an action movie with Boxer Santaros. The film was very bad but he became well-known from it, but his career ended when he was drafted to Iraq. It was here where he met Roland and the two became best friends. They learn of an experiment called ‘Serpentine Dream Theory’-all they know is if they sign up for it, you are used as a guinea pig but soon after, you are sent home. They go one night to visit Simon Theory (who is in charge of the experiment). He says no at first, saying that it isn’t for volunteers, but changes his mind once they bribe him. The next morning they are taken to a nearby airbase and each given an injection of Fluid Karma. The next day, the two are about to drop in from a helicopter. Pilot is nervous about it so Roland gives him his iPod to listen to during the drop...the song is ‘All These Things That I Have Done’. They drop successfully and they infiltrate a building where their telepathy kicks in...the drug is working on them. Roland is in a state of dementia, so he throws a grenade into a room, which explodes right next to Pilot, which sends shrapnel into the left side of his face. They never saw each other after that day. The Neo-Marxists are holding another meeting, this time a lottery for thumbs (certain people will be selected to have their thumb cut off to rig the election, they can re-use the same thumb as many times as possible, turning the election in their favour). Ronald, Zora, Dion and Dream are in attendance. The winner is Bing Zinneman who receives a check for $50,000 and then had his thumb cut off his hand. Afterward, Krysta Now and her friends and colleagues Sheena Gee, Shoshanna Cox and Deena Storm are in the middle of a conversation. Krysta tells her three colleagues that she booked a gig on the Mega-Zeppelin for the Baron on July 4. While this is happening, Boxer is walking the beaches of Venice during the night. He takes out the Fluid Karma syringe and injects himself...before he loses conscious, he murmurs ‘Three Days...Three Final Days’... After Krysta leaves the bar where she was talking with her friends, she is cornered by Fortunio. He tells her to tell him everything about ‘Serpentine Dream Theory’. She says that Serpentine is ‘The Great Mistress of the Great Wizard’ who some call the Anti-Christ... Revelation 22:5 - For It Will Never Be Night Again, And They Would Not Need Lamp Light Or Sunlight, For the Lord God Will Be Shining On Them...And They Shall Reign Forever and Ever
16524993	/m/03y975j	Surviving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083	Andrea White	2005	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Surviving Antarctica takes place in the year 2083 in a television-crazed country of United States. The Secretary of "Entertainment" is the Head of the Department of Entertainment or the DOE. Public schools shut down and are replaced with "Edu-TV" which are lessons with Interactive Quizzes on a television screen. It is mandatory and only goes up to Eighth Grade. After completing the required Eighth Year of Edu-TV, one must pay for High School and College. In the year 2083, America is awfully poor and very bad in the economy. People live in shacks similar to Hoovervilles during the Great Depression. So to pay for further education, a few sponsored scholarships are given out. The most popular is "The Toss" which is a game of pure chance. The administer calls out a number, and the 14 year-old wishing for the full scholarship rolls two dice, hoping it will land on that number. In Edu-TV the Social Studies/History show is called "Historical Survivor". The Secretary of DOE (aka "Hot Sauce" by her employees) gathers a "lucky few" to re-enact parts of history. The five kids (Robert, Polly, Grace, Andrew, and Billy) see an advertisement by the Secretary of Entertainment for a new Historical Survivor Series that features kids. It is called "Historical Survivor: Antarctica". She offers $10,000 to whoever is chosen to re-enact the expedition of Robert F. Scott and an extra $90,000 to the MVP (most valuable player). They had to fill out an application to be eligible. These five kids (out of about 4,000 applicants) made it, unlike most of the others. Unbeknownst to them, however, the Secretary has placed mini camcorders in the eyes to film instead of a camera crew. Hot Sauce also planned different calamities to happen to the kids on their journey that also happened to Scott. But a group of night shift employees engage in acts of sabotage to help the kids on their way. All five come from completely different backgrounds and walks of life, but will have to cooperate to survive Antarctica. Through a series of tragedies and misfortunes, they end up in the middle of nowhere, frostbitten and hungry. But will they get help from the one person nobody would expect- the camera crews?
16525158	/m/03y979b	Conan the Defender	Robert Jordan	1982	{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book opens during midmorning in the mansion of and with Albanus the wizard, Vegentius the Commander of the Golden Leopards (the bodyguard regiment of Nemedia's Kings), Demetrio Amarianus a landowner, Constanto Melius a noble, and Sephana Galerianus a rejected mistress of King Garian. They are gathered to plot the usurping of the Dragon Throne of the kingdom of Nemedia. During the meeting, Albanus demonstrates some magic to placate and wow his guests by summoning a fire elemental to destroy one of his servants. The conspirators are impressed by this and desire to have some magical devices of their own "As a token that [they] are all equals." Melius chooses a sword imbued with the skills of six master swordsmen. The sword grants the wielder sword mastery. Moving the focus of the novel to Conan, it describes how the city of Belverus in Nemedia is unsafe, the tariffs exorbitantly high, starvation rampant, sedition brewing, and that King Garian seems ineffective as a ruler. In reality, Albanus is busy funding and controlling all the unrest in Nemedia as a means of focusing hatred on King Garian. Conan is attacked in Belverus by Melius, who it later turns out was driven insane and "possessed" in a fashion by the tortured spirits in the magical sword he was given by Albanus. Albanus did not know that the blade could cause such madness. Conan is rescued by the town guard who find, to their horror, that they have just slain a noble. Conan picks up the blade and wraps it with the hopes of selling it for a few pieces of silver. Shortly thereafter, Conan meets up with Hordo, a friend of his from several previous and mostly unsuccessful quests who is now a smuggler. Hordo tries to get Conan a job as a smuggler as well, but is harangued by his boss for not being cautious enough (exposing a smuggler fetches a high bounty). Hordo decides to quit his job and join Conan in his mercenary venture. Hordo is often used as a foil to Conan, contrasting the intelligence of Conan to Hordo's less sophisticated thought process and abilities of perception. The pair go to a tavern where Conan's fortune is divinated by an old man. The same fortune appears on the first page of the first mass market printing. The first part of the prophecy comes true as Conan thwarts an attempt by a lady patron of the tavern from pick pocketing him. Leaving the tavern, Conan and Hordo noticed they are being followed by what turns out to Ariane, a poet and patron the inn the Sign of Thestis. The three are then attacked by footpads. All the footpads are slain. Hordo and Conan then spend the night at the Sign of Thestis, telling stories of their adventures. Conan learns that the Thestians (Including Ariane and Sephano, a sculptor) are plotting an uprising against the king along with Taras and the mercenaries which he is hiring to aid in the uprising. Conan and Hordo then are attacked by more armed murderers. Conan figures someone is out to kill him, though he knows not who. It turns out later to be Albanus trying to recover the magic sword and cover up all traces of it. Upon returning to the Thestis, Conan sells the magic sword of Melius to Demetrio, an agent of Albanus, for fifty gold marks. Conan uses the money from the sword to found his own free-company of mercenaries and teaches them horse archer techniques unknown to the Nemedian forces. The next time Conan returns to the Thestis, Conan receives a message that he should meet Hordo at the Sign of the Full Moon. The Thestians are worried that they may be betrayed, but Conan allays these fears by vowing to never betray them. At the Sign of the Full Moon, Conan is ambushed and attacked by assassins. He is also pursued by the Belverus town guard who have also been paid off by Albanus. The message was fake. The next day, Ariane sets up a meeting for Conan with Taras to see if Conan can be hired for the uprising. It turns out Taras is not hiring mercenaries and intends to kill Conan as per Albanus's request. The attempt is thwarted and the ambushers are all killed by Conan. Ariane, having followed Conan, sees the butchery and believes that Conan has betrayed them. The horse archer skills get Conan's company a job in the Nemedian military and Conan a room within the palace, much to the dismay of Vegentius the conspirator. Conan winds up practicing his sword skills with King Garian and besting Garian each time. Meanwhile, Albanus has captured Stephano the sculptor and forced him to create a likeness of King Garian. Conan is asked by the king to deliver a letter to Albanus. While at the palace, Conan sees Stephano and later tells Ariane where Stephano has gone. Ariane goes to find Stephano at Albanus's mansion but is captured and hypnotized by Albanus. Vegentius ambushes Conan in the halls of the palace and frames him as a traitor. King Garian decides that the "Ancient Punishment" would be the best in the case of a turncoat. Meanwhile, Albanus uses magic on the clay sculpture of Garian and animates it so as to be a simalcrum of Garian. Albanus kills Stephano. The plan is: The simalcrum takes over the place of the real Garian, Albanus sends the signal for the unknowing Thestians to rise up and rebel, and the simalcrum hands over power to Albanus to appease the rebels. Conan learns that King Garian has been replaced when Albanus and the simalcrum come to gloat over Conan in the dungeons of the palace. Conan learns this because the simalcrum does not have the bruises that Conan gave the real Garian while they were sparring. As Conan is imprisoned, the people rise up at the behest of the hypnotized Ariane. Conan is sent to the arena of Belverus to be devoured by the wolves as the ancient punishment dictates. Conan thwarts the wolves by rushing into them as they are released and smashing through them and out the still-open gate through which the wolves were released. Conan fights his way through and is rescued by Hordo, Karela (The Red Hawk, friend of Hordo who knows the secret passages of the palace), and the rest of Conan's free-company. Conan and friends ride through the uprising streets of Belverus, creep over the Albanus's walls, and into Albanus's mansion; they promptly rescue King Garian from the dungeons of Albanus. Reasoning that most of the Golden Leopards are still loyal to King Garian, the whole group rides up to the gates of the palace and Garian instructs the guards that Albanus and Vegentius are traitors and to spread the message that all who do not shout "Death to Albanus and Vegentius!" are traitors and are to be killed. Conan's company and Garian split at this point. Conan and his company fight their way through the palace. Eventually, Conan leaves his company and kills Vegentius in one of the palace courtyards. Conan finally confronts Albanus in one of the giant auditoriums of the palace. Conan impales Albnus, but as he dies he is chanting and summoning a great demon. Luckily, the demon fades. The chant was either incomplete or the demon just left. The story ends with Conan, Hordo, and Karela split. Conan leaves for Ophir, listening to the prophecy of the old man. "Beware the gratitude of kings."
16529964	/m/03y9b19	Skulduggery Pleasant 2: Playing With Fire	Derek Landy	2008-04-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A year after the events of the first novel, Stephanie Edgeley (now known as Valkyrie Cain) continues to work with Skulduggery Pleasant, an undead skeleton detective, capturing villains for The Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is now ruled by Thurid Guild in a new location after the massacre in the previous Sanctuary. Soon Baron Vengeous (one of the original three generals of Mevolent) escapes his prison and begins searching for the armor of Lord Vile, another one of Mevolent's Generals with which he will be able to resurrect The Grotesquery, a hybrid monster made from a Faceless One's remains with the power bring back the Faceless Ones. Arriving in Ireland, he meets an accomplice vampire named Dusk. He orders Dusk to kidnap Valkyrie Cain. Dusk bites and enslaves two humans to help him. After losing to Skulduggery Pleasant, Baron Vengeous goes after China Sorrows who was once part of a cult that worshiped the Faceless Ones and also included Serpine and Vengous himself. The Baron confronts China Sorrows in her apartment whilst Valkyrie is visiting. Valkyrie hides whilst China and Vengous talk. Vengeous reveals that he was released from prison by an assassin named Billy-Ray Sanguine who promptly arrives along with Dusk. A battle ensues during which Valkyrie reveals herself and defends China. Valkyrie Cain is soon chased by Billy-Ray Sanguine who can travel through earth and buildings. After being in a struggle, Valkyrie is saved by Tanith Low. In the progress Valkyrie steals Billy-Ray Sanguine's razor, his primary weapon, leaving the psychopathic assassin with a grudge against her. Valkyrie and Skulduggery along with a convict called Vaurien Scapegrace went to the Magician's village of Roarhaven to find a mysterious man called the Torment who has information they need. After a battle in a seedy pub with some thugs (including a giant) and an unpleasant incident with some massive spiders, they find the Torment and ask for his help. The Torment only says he will help them find Vile's armour if Skulduggery kills Valkyrie, who is descended from the Ancients whom the Torment despises, as he thinks any power will corrupt civilization. Skulduggery takes Valkyrie around a corner and they summon her Reflection, a living mirror image of Valkyrie who she uses as a decoy, enabling her to live a double life. Skulduggery takes Valkyrie's reflection before the Torment and shoots it. The Torment is satisfied and tells Skulduggery the whereabouts of the Grotesquery. He and Valkyrie return Scapegrace to prison and go to find the Grotesquery, unfortunately Vengeous's minions have already obtained it. Soon after, Skullduggery and Valkyrie take the reflection back to Valkyries's house. Valkyrie touches the mirror to absorb its memories and remembers what it is like to be shot. Valkyrie then notices that whenever she tries to look back in her memories one part always remains blank and she cannot pin it down. She realizes that her reflection hid something from her, and finds it disconcerting and dangerous. However, she goes on with Skulduggery without mentioning it to him. Valkyrie is kidnapped by Sanguine who takes her to an old abandoned church to the Faceless Ones where she is taken before the altar where Vengeous awaits her. The evil sorcerer cuts Valkyrie's finger and spills some of her blood onto the Grotesquery's body before using the Armour's shadow powers which mingle with the blood. Skulduggery subsequently arrives and rescues Valkyrie. After stealing the Grotesquery, Valkyrie is incapacitated and wakes up in hospital. While wearing a 'respectable' blue hospital gown, Skulduggery wears a pink one decorated with bunnies and elephants for the doctor's amusement. Skulduggery turns the lifeless Grotesquery over to the Sanctuary's top scientist to take apart, however, the Grotesquery has already absorbed a lot of power from Vile's armour and Valkyrie's blood, and so wakes up in the middle of the night whilst being operated on. He kills the scientist's assistants and goes after Valkyrie. Skulduggery and Tanith arrive and the three of them attack the Grotesquery before escaping. Meanwhile, members of Sanctuary's all across the world are being murdered by assassins to distract people from Vengeous's plan. Billy-Ray Sanguine has also released Springheeled Jack from prison and sends him after a Sanctuary official in London. After discovering that he is being manipulated by Vengous in a plan to bring back the Faceless Ones, Jack kills his victim. Skulduggery works out that Vengeous is actually a pawn in someone else's plan and accuses Thurid Guild of being in league with this mystery benefactor. In a rage, Guild fires Skulduggery who decides to go after Vengous anyway. Valkyrie begrudgingly goes to her family reunion as a distraction to Dusk. The Torment, meanwhile, has discovered that Valkyrie is alive and goes after her only to be confronted by Skulduggery and Tanith Low. The Torment transforms into a giant spider but Skulduggery and Tanith defeat him nevertheless. Valkyrie is subsequently attacked by vampires and forced to flee. Dusk corners her and vows that when he has transformed her into a vampire he's going to set her loose on her parents while in her bloodlust. Valkyrie stabs Dusk in the leg with the syringe he uses to curb his vampiric side whilst he is transforming, and as a result, he is caught between vampire and human and put in intense pain. Springheeled Jack comes and rescues her and defeats Dusk so as to frustrate Vengeous's plans because he doesn't want the Faceless Ones to return. Meanwhile China is attacked by Vengous in an underground carpark. The dark wizard brutally murders China's bodyguards and viciously beats her unconscious before taking her to Clearwater Hospital, his headquarters. Accompanied by Tanith Low, Mr Bliss and some Cleavers, Skulduggery and Valkyrie go to Clearwater Hospital and do battle with the Grotesquery which due to being part Faceless One is virtually invincible. Mr Bliss is incapacitated but the Cleavers mercilessly attack the Grotesquery and almost overpower it when Vengous arrives along with China whom he has taken captive and together with the Grotesquery he kills the Cleavers and beats Skulduggery and Valkyrie into submission. Valkyrie tricks Vengous into releasing her, saying that she will join him but she releases China who attacks Vengous and the Grotesquery, giving Valkyrie time to free Skulduggery who joins in the assault against Vengous, tearing off his helmet and his breastplate before shooting him in the stomach. In a swoon, Vengous crawls toward the Grotesquery but his god callously breaks the Baron's neck. The Torment subsequently arrives and attacks the Grotesquery but he is defeated and almost killed. In the ensuing battle Valkyrie stabs the Grotesquery through the heart, killing it but before it dies it utters a terrible scream. Sanguine is then seen meeting his mysterious master who reveals that he had never expected the Grotesquery to succeed but he knew that when it was vanquished, the beast's dying scream would alert the Faceless Ones spirits as to the whereabouts of the Earth meaning that all he has to do now is open the door. The mysterious man then pays Sanguine and takes his leave. Valkyrie is later seen talking to Skulduggery on a pier. They reason that they must find out who Vengous and Sanguine were really working for and if Thurid Guild is in league with him. Skulduggery ominously tells Valkyrie "Bad things are coming." They are subsequently attacked by a vampire and the book ends with them going into battle once again. pt:Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire
16541064	/m/03y9gw7	Kira Ein Hund Namens Money				 Kira, who is twelve years old, is intent on wasting her limited pocket money on dolls and other childish things. She lives in poor circumstances, her parents constantly arguing about the shortage of money. Kira is therefore upset by the subject of economics and wishes to avoid it. However, when she twice rescues a stray dog (later named Money by Kira), the dog, in gratitude, reveals its ability to talk. The dog seems to have a in-depth knowledge of economics.
16543334	/m/03y9hr5	Apocalypse	Tim Bowler	2004-10-07	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book begins with a of people (later revealed to be ancestors of the Skaerlanders) attacking a mysterious man on a rock. The man does not flinch as he is beaten to death. The story then moves into the present, with a family of three on board a yacht on a sailing voyage. The protagonist, Kit, and his parents, Jim and Sarah Warren, are taking a final voyage on their yacht, the Windflower. Once a wealthy family, Kit's father has been recently declared bankruptcy, and their yacht will have to be sold when they return. However, they are flung into a nasty storm and lose all their equipment's signal. During which time, Kit picks a small carved boat out of the water and glimpses a man who resembles him in every single way, except age. They run aground on a mysterious island and find it difficult to get their yacht back to sea. Kit goes exploring and sees the man he saw at sea again, as well as a young girl about his age, who quickly disappears. A large wave hits the rocks nearby and Kit is surprised by this. He returns to the boat and tells his parents about his findings. They do not believe him, however. To prove his point, Kit takes them up a mountain nearby. They find a small village over it and go over to it to ask for some help. However, when they arrive, the villagers react with hostility, especially when they notice Kit. They pull out some clubs and charge at them. However, an elderly man with some authority reprimands the leader, Brand, and questions the family. Despite their description of their predicament, the man is unhelpful and contemptuous towards them. The family leave the village and go back to their vessel. They pack up and prepare to leave. Meanwhile, Kit goes off exploring and notices the girl from the day before again. He chases her and loses her. However, after a bit of searching, he finds her pinned against a rock with a couple of men. The more muscular of the two is attempting to rape her. Kit attacks them and manages to free the girl, who runs away and jumps off a nearby cliff. Kit goes back to his boat and takes his dingy to sail around the island. He finds the girl again and manages to run aground. He meets the girl and follows her to her hideout. She tells him the names of several villagers and that her name is Ula, the two who attacked her were called Uddi and Zak, the old man was called Torin and the eldest is called Wyn. She also explains that the island is called Skaer and that it is going to suffer an Apocalypse (come to an end), as everything is dying on the island and the women are all infertile. Kit returns to his yacht and discovers that the tent is slashed open and his mother and father are both missing. He searches, but cannot find them, so he returns to the nearby village to confront the Islanders. However, he is attacked and chased by the angry Islanders, whose attention is briefly diverted by the same man. Ula, however, appears and provides Kit with enough cover to allow him to escape. He follows her back to her cave. Ula explains to Kit that the Islanders are a religious community who believe themselves to be Torchbearers to God and that they will be saved from the Devil. The Devil is apparently the man Kit keeps seeing. She leaves him for a moment to find his parents. He leaves the cave and goes round to the back of the island, where he sees the man building a cairn and is forced to help. However, they are attacked by the Islanders. Windflower is destroyed by the flaming torches of the Islanders. Kit manages to escape, but is knocked out when he is touched by the strange man on the chest. Ula manages to get him to the safety of a cave by the time he regains consciousness four days later. She reveals that the man had forced all the islanders to leave. Wyn has stayed behind. Ula and Kit go down to confront her, during which time, Ula reveals that Uddi is Wyn's son and hates Ula because she had killed his brother (who had raped her). She tells Kit that his parents are in the church nearby and are starving to death. He goes up to the church and discovers that she was lying - Uddi and Zak and Brand are in there. The men attack him and manage to pin him down and strip him naked. They then torture him and attempt to get him to tell them where the Devil was. He does not know, so they hang him in a crucifix position against a very rough wall. His back is grazed horribly and his body sags under his own weight. Kit is left to die and Ula is captured. The man, however, releases him and gives him some water. Then he takes Kit and jumps into the water with him to get to a boat. The remaining islanders appear and attack them. The man insists on rowing the boat himself, but is bludgeoned to death by the Islanders. A wave suddenly appears and threatens to drown them all. Kit manages to escape and he and Ula return to shore, with the island now empty. They climb a hill to get back to the village, when they run into Torin, who had also sheltered in a cave. He insults them while throwing stones at a nearby cairn. He tells Kit that his parents are on a rock nearby and are starving to death. Ula enquires on her own parents. Torin tells her that her mother died at childbirth and that her father was worse than the mother, who lied and concealed his evil from the community. When Ula asks when her father died, Torin responds "Even as you watch," and throws himself to his death. She is filled with grief and buries Torin in a cairn nearby. Kit makes plans to go to the rock and find his parents. They return to the village and Ula gives the weak Kit some food. Later that night, Kit wakes up and cannot find Ula. Despite his searches, he still cannot find her. However, she quickly returns and explains that she had gone to get his dingy, Splinters. However, she reveals that she cannot come with him, as she wants to be the last Skaerlander to die on the island before the Apocalypse arrives. Kit accepts her decision but notices that the two are suddenly speaking stiffly and awkwardly. Ula then passionately kisses Kit. She helps him out of his clothes, strips her own off and the two make love. The next day, Kit and Ula part and Kit sets off for the rock that Torin had told him about. He reaches it and finds his parents barely alive. He helps them into the dingy and they set off for land. Two days later, they meet with a fishing boat and are rescued. Kit learns from the Skipper's daughter that the island is now known as Cairn Island. After about a day of rest and a lot of catering to suddenly, they lose all radio contact, just like at the beginning and the story ends with the Apocalypse suddenly happening. However Kit remembers Ula's advice to 'Love as much as you can' and tells himself that together they can stop the apocalypse.
16545511	/m/03y9k4c	Fingerprints	Richard Kelly	2006-09-15		 June 30, 2008: Ronald Taverner is still on the houseboat with his father and cousin and his girlfriend Sarah Fieldman. We learn that he is suffering from amnesia. His father, Tab, brings him below deck to show him something. Down there is his twin brother-Roland Taverner, he is tied up to a chair. Tab tells him that Ronald kidnapped his own brother to hide him up at the lake for several days. His father tells him that he doesn’t remember it because he hit his head, which caused memory loss and he instructs him to keep taking the injections. His brother Roland was drafted in the Iraqi War and was sent home to work for the U.P.U. (Urban Pacification Unit) Level 2 and uncovered a conspiracy and if the government found him, they would get the information out of him. They need Ronald to impersonate Roland for several days as a part of a mission to destroy US-IDent. He is to meet with a woman named Zora Carmichaels (Cheri Oteri)-a Neo-Marxist (a member of the revolution against US-IDent) in Venice Beach. Zora takes Ronald and the tied-up Roland to Los Angeles. July 1, 2008: Boxer Santaros and Krysta Now finally arrive in Los Angeles. They and Fortunio Balducci (now a producer due to the contract signed in Buffalo Bill’s) visit a friend of Krysta’s named Tawna McBride for research on the script. She tells Boxer to remain in character the entire time. Inside, Tawna tells Krysta that her husband, Rick, died recently due to a drug-over dose, with the same syringe that Boxer had. Boxer shows her the syringe he has and Tawna asks where he got it from and asks whether or not he volunteered for the program. Rick was in the army and volunteered for a Top-Secret program and that the weeks leading up to his death, Rick began to act crazy, wandering off into the desert in the middle of the night saying that he was going to see the Chief. This makes Boxer feel unpleasant so he goes to use the bathroom. Inside the bathroom, a character in the mirror begins talking to Boxer . He keeps asking Boxer: ‘Do You Bleed?...Not Like we Do Future-Man’. Boxer asks who the Indian is. The man says that the Indian is a natural bleeder and that it took long to make contact, he took a shot of Fluid Karma (The name of the substance inside the syringes), The Indian is a natural bleeder (he sees forward in time) and the man in the mirror and Boxer are Chemical Bleeders (they see back in time) but when Chemical Bleeders take Fluid Karma too much, they begin to see both ways...this is why the man in the mirror is seeing into the future-at Boxer. He is 6 months behind in January 2008. The man asks is he fucking Tawna and asks where he is. He then begins to recognise Boxer and his films. The man in the mirror is Rick-Tawna’s husband. Boxer tells him that he is dead. Rick doesn’t believe him and he takes a shot of Fluid Karma and he then falls to the ground and dies. Boxer comes rushing out telling Tawna that he saw her husband die and that he was a part of it. She becomes very upset and she kicks them out of her house. Boxer then faints and falls onto the ground... Boxer seems to be dreaming, he is in a big maze. All of a sudden, a giant snake appears from behind him and it begins to chase Boxer around the maze. Boxer runs up a set of stairs and into a portal. He lands on the other side and sees Ronald standing there. Ronald asks Boxer who he is...Boxer calls himself ‘Jericho Cane’. All of a sudden, Ronald wakes up from his dream. He is still with Zora in her van driving into Los Angeles. He begins to describe the dream for her. In the Treer Plaza, Inga von Westphalen and two fellow scientists are discussing an experiment that they are conducting (several people involved in it is the Taverner twins and Boxer). Boxer was apparently guided to Krysta for a reason (which we don’t know yet). Krysta was a part of the experiment also because of her psychic abilities. They believe that her script ‘The Power’ is a ‘guide map for the experiment’ and a work of prophecy. They administered Fluid Karma into Krysta’s system, hypnotised her and also had her read the entire Book of Revelation, then they told her to create a document that would detail the final three days on Earth before the apocalypse. Inga gets a telephone call from Zora, who tells her that Ronald has experienced his first ‘Fluid Karma dream’. Krysta takes Boxer and Fortunio to a barnyard outside of Los Angeles, where many Neo-Marxists are attending a huge party. They meet up with Jimmy Hermosa who leads them into his tattoo parlour. Krysta tells Boxer that this is where he will become Jericho Kane. He is getting numerous tattoos all over his body. At the same time Ronald and Zora arrive at the barn and she introduces Ronald to Dream and Dion (The leaders of the Neo-Marxist movement). Moments later, Boxer Santaros is introduced to the crowd, who cheer wildly. Ronald is shocked...it’s Jericho Cane from his dream.
16550271	/m/03y9n7k	Le Vingtième de cavalerie	René Goscinny	1965		 The 20th Cavalry detachment under the stern commander Colonel McStraggle is besieged by the Cheyenne, because the Indians claim that white men had wantonly killed buffaloes, which the Cheyenne need for their survival. Worse than that is that someone has even provided the Indians with firearms! Lucky Luke volunteers as scout for the 20th Cavalry and quickly finds out that Derek Floyd, a renegade cavalrist is hatching a plot against McStraggle for having kicked him out of the army. The situation for the beleaguered soldiers becomes more desperate as Floyd exploits his insider knowledge of the fort to starve out his ex-comrades.
16550561	/m/03y9nft	L'Escorte	René Goscinny	1966		 Four years after the great clash between Lucky Luke and Billy the Kid resulting in a 1200+ year prison sentence for Billy, Luke is asked to escort Billy to New Mexico to face trial for the crimes he committed there. However, Billy's enduring reputation and his repeated attempts at escape - mostly with the inept assistance of felon Bert Malloy - offer Luke and Jolly Jumper their fair share of excitement on the way.
16550800	/m/03y9npt	La Diligence	René Goscinny	1968		 Due to an increasing rate of stagecoach holdups, Wells Fargo & Co. decides to organize and conduct a special trip with a load of gold from Denver to San Francisco, with Lucky Luke participating as an escort, to reboost the company's failing public image. As expected, the stagecoach becomes the target for various hold-up attempts, in addition to an Indian attack, an encounter with the bandit poet Black Bart, various on-board gambling sessions, and a continuous diet of bacon and potatoes (as prescribed by the company). In the end the gold not only arrives safely in San Francisco, but also the passengers have gained some new personal insights from that trip.
16551467	/m/03y9p3p	The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate	Ted Chiang	2007-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a fabric merchant in the ancient city of Baghdad. It begins when he is searching for a gift to give a business associate and happens to discover a new shop in the marketplace. The shop owner, who makes and sells a variety of very interesting items, invites Fuwaad into the back workshop to see a mysterious black stone arch which serves as a gateway into the future, which the shop owner has made by the use of alchemy. Fuwaad is intrigued, and the shop owner tells him three stories of others who have traveled through the gate to meet and have conversation with their future selves. When Fuwaad learns that the shop keeper has another gate in Cairo that will allow people to travel even into the past, he makes the journey there to try to rectify a mistake he made twenty years earlier.
16556404	/m/03y9ywf	Firestar's Quest	Cherith Baldry	2007-08-21	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Firestar's Quest takes place between The Darkest Hour and Midnight. The novel follows Firestar, leader of ThunderClan on a journey to find a fifth lost Clan of the forest called SkyClan. Firestar and his mate Sandstorm journey upriver in order to rebuild the long-lost Clan. When they arrive at the Clan's former home, they meet Skywatcher, (the remaining survivor of SkyClan), who tells them about SkyClan's story, and shows them the Whispering Cave, they also find SkyClan's old home deserted, the caves strangely marked with tiny claw marks resembling those of rats. Firestar gathers together Leafdapple, Sparrowpelt, Sharpclaw, Echosong, Rainfur, Petalnose, Clovertail, Patchfoot, Shortwhisker, Cherrytail, Sagekit, Mintkit, Tinypaw, Rockpaw, and Bouncepaw. Eventually, Firestar re-establishes the Clan and helps the Clan fight the force that destroyed the ancient SkyClan: rats. Though SkyClan emerges victorious, the warrior Rainfur is murdered and Firestar loses his second life. As Firestar and Sandstorm prepare to return home, Leafdapple is made the leader and renamed Leafstar in the Whispering Cave, which is used to connect to the SkyClan ancestors. Sharpclaw is made deputy of the Clan, and Echosong becomes the medicine cat. In the epilogue, Sandstorm and Firestar's new kits are born. They decide to name one Squirrelkit (after her bushy tail), and the other Leafkit (in honor of SkyClan's new leader, Leafstar, and after Spottedleaf). SkyClan blood runs through ThunderClan in cats such as Spottedleaf from Spottedpelt and Tigerclaw from Gorseclaw. Before Firestar left the forest, a whole series of events happened that weren't shown in the The New Prophecy. Such events included the warrior Longtail losing his sight because a rabbit clawed his eyes, Willowpelt being killed by a badger, and Bramblepaw receiving his warrior name Brambleclaw. warrior ceremony. Also, Sootpaw got a new mentor, Thornclaw. This book is also the origin of the prophecy "There will be three, kin of your kin who holds the power of the stars in their paws." The prophecy was passed on to Firestar by Skywatcher.
16566702	/m/03yblq7	Reize door het Aapenland				 The protagonist, J.A. Schasz, strands on an island inhabited by monkeys, each one numbered by importance. The monkeys mistakenly think that Schasz is a returned primate citizen who has managed to achieve the status of human being. Hereafter, a large portion of the monkeys want to look more like humans, by means of amputating their tails.
16569570	/m/03yb_cs	Still Walking	Yaky Yosha	2008-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrative takes place in Tel-Aviv, at the dawn of the war in Lebanon. Mickey, an ex Special Forces officer, and ex "Shabak" agent (Israeli Security Services), has spent the night in a casino, losing a fortune. Now, at 4 AM, Mickey is lying in a rainy, darken alley, having a severe heart attack. While Mickey recovers, we find out that he is married to Laura, presently an alcoholic, and formerly—like most characters entangled in this story—a vivacious, beautiful and promising young individual. We also find out that Absalom, his son, both condemns and loves him, and that he is involved with Olga, a Russian immigrant and former prostitute. We find out that Mickey was shamefully released from his elite unit, for inappropriate compassion - sparing a young Arab terrorist, and later from the “Shabak”, for unjustified cruelty - killing an innocent Arab, father of six. We follow Mickey as he discovers that his family, mistress, and brothers in arms cannot prevent him from sinking into the pit he dug for himself. We watch as Mickey struggles to compensate for his transgressions, while eluding the mafia goons that are after him for his gambling debts.
16575287	/m/03ych3d	Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga	Richard Kelly			 June 30, 2008: Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson) wakes up alone in the Nevada desert, he takes out a red syringe and injects himself in the neck. He begins walking through the desert. Fortunio Balducci (Will Sasso) is on a houseboat with Tab Taverner-Former Mayor of Hermosa, his son Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott) nephew, Jimmy Hermosa and friend, Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Fortunio is currently in an online-poker game with several American soldiers in Syria and loses, but the connection is lost because the soldiers were attacked—which means Fortunio is still going to lose his money. Fortunio owes some bookies in Las Vegas $100,000 so Tab suggests that Fortunio get out of Nevada before the holiday weekend begins; this should buy him some time. Fortunio can’t get across the border because he has no interstate visa to get across and will take sometime for him to get one. Krysta Now tells Fortunio that she can get him a visa and to meet her at a bar called Buffalo Bill’s situated at the border. Fortunio leaves the boat and drives towards the border. On his way, he finds Boxer passed out on the road. He pulls over and approaches him. Boxer stirs and says: ‘I am a pragmatic prevaricator, with a propensity for oratorical seniority, which is too pleonastical to be expeditiously assimilated by any of your unequivocal veracities.’ Fortunio puts him inside the car and they begin to drive off again. Fortunio asks Boxer how and what he was doing out in the middle of the desert. Boxer doesn’t know and asks the date. He seems to suffer from amnesia. At the same time, a Nevada park ranger is tipped off about the whereabouts of an abandoned SUV with a burned-up dead body inside. The SUV is a prototype vehicle belonging to Treer which is powered by ‘Fluid Karma’. The vehicle and corpse is taken away to a facility nearby. The facility is broken into by armed-men, killing everyone inside and taking the SUV and corpse. Fortunio asks Boxer if he can remember anything. The only thing he seems to remember is a maze made of sand. Fortunio says that he is a big fan of Boxer’s. Boxer is confused and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Fortunio tells him that he is Boxer Santaros-a very famous action star and ex-pro-football player. He then tells him of the incidents that occurred on July 4, 2005. The two make it to Buffalo Bill’s where Krysta Now is performing on stage but instead of stripping, she begins to sing poetry. Fortunio explains the situation to Krysta, that he found Boxer lying in the desert, picked him up and that he has amnesia, so now he needs two visas. Krysta will get the visas on one condition-play along a game she has created. Using Boxer’s amnesia to her advantage, she will tell Boxer that the two of them were together in Vegas for the weekend, partying and working on a script that she wrote called ‘The Power’, she was researching a character at Buffalo Bill’s (her character in the movie is an intelligent dancer interested in astrophysics). She then goes on to say that Fortunio has to pretend that he is a private detective and was hired to find Boxer and bring him to Krysta, if he doesn’t do it, she will deliver him to the bookies in Vegas. She ends up convincing the naive Boxer. Apparently, the script (‘The Power’) was written solely by Krysta, and that Boxer never had anything to do with it to begin with, but she has convinced him that he is starring in and directing the film. He asks what it is about and who he plays. Krysta says that Boxer plays a renegade L.A.P.D. cop called Jericho Kane and that it revolves around the end of the world. She gives him a copy of the script to read. Krysta begins talking to Fortunio outside her hotel room. She tells him to contact a lawyer and have him draw up a short form contract for himself for ‘The Power’ and to give himself $100,000 to settle his debt with the bookies. While Boxer is reading the script, the phone begins to ring. He answers and the woman on the other end tells him: ‘is this the Pragmatic Prevaricator?-Stay with the girl, she is your only chance for survival, We saw the Shadows of the Morning Light, The Shadows of the Evening Sun, Until the Shadows and Light were One. Cross the Border At Dawn, Stay with the Girl, and whatever she says, Keep Taking the Injections, and whatever you do-do not board the roller coaster.’ Krysta enters the room and asks about the script. Boxer says he likes it but there is lots of work to be done on it. Later, Boxer signs the contract given to him by Fortunio and Krysta. He goes to get a check from the bank, he places his thumb on the scanner, which is fed back to US-IDent (who are looking for Boxer). Boxer tells Krysta about the phone call and of his dream in the desert; she was in his dream and he remembers the song she sang in Buffalo Bill’s in the dream. She tells him that they have to ride the roller coaster across the road from Buffalo Bill’s. Boxer is hesitant at first but agrees. He takes an injection before they go on. Once they get to the top, Boxer has a vision...a vision of 1902, a Native-America tribe standing there. Boxer waves at one of them. He seems to have created a rupture in the fourth dimension. He goes back to 2008 all of a sudden and he tells Krysta about his vision. The two of them exit the roller coaster together.... The book takes on a classical literature type of story, the title, "Two Roads Diverge" is from a famous poem by Robert Frost. The cover from the book has a quote from T. S. Eliot, stating that our world will not go out with a bang as we expect, but with a whimper. June 30, 2008: Ronald Taverner is still on the houseboat with his father and cousin. We learn that he is suffering from amnesia. His father, Tab, brings him below deck to show him something. Down there is his twin brother-Roland Taverner, he is tied up to a chair. Tab tells him that Ronald kidnapped his own brother to hide him up at the lake for several days. His father tells him that he doesn’t remember it because he hit his head, which caused memory loss and he instructs him to keep taking the injections. His brother Roland was drafted in the Iraqi War and was sent home to work for the U.P.U. (Urban Pacification Unit) and uncovered a conspiracy and if the government found him, they would get the information out of him. They need Ronald to impersonate Roland for several days as a part of a mission to destroy US-IDent. He is to meet with a woman named Zora Carmichaels (Cheri Oteri)-a Neo-Marxist (a member of the revolution against US-IDent) in Venice Beach. Zora takes Ronald and the tied-up Roland to Los Angeles. July 1, 2008: Boxer Santaros and Krysta Now finally arrive in Los Angeles. They and Fortunio Balducci (now a producer due to the contract signed in Buffalo Bill’s) visit a friend of Krysta’s named Tawna McBride for research on the script. She tells Boxer to remain in character the entire time. Inside, Tawna tells Krysta that her husband, Rick, died recently due to a drug overdose, with the same syringe that Boxer had. Boxer shows her the syringe he has and Tawna asks where he got it from and asks whether or not he volunteered for the program. Rick was in the army and volunteered for a Top-Secret program and that the weeks leading up to his death, Rick began to act crazy, wandering off into the desert in the middle of the night saying that he was going to see the Chief. This makes Boxer feel unpleasant so he goes to use the bathroom. Inside the bathroom, a character in the mirror begins talking to Boxer . He keeps asking Boxer: ‘Do You Bleed?...Not Like we Do Future-Man’. Boxer asks who the Indian is. The man says that the Indian is a natural bleeder and that it took long to make contact, he took a shot of Fluid Karma (The name of the substance inside the syringes), The Indian is a natural bleeder (he sees forward in time) and the man in the mirror and Boxer are Chemical Bleeders (they see back in time) but when Chemical Bleeders take Fluid Karma too much, they begin to see both ways...this is why the man in the mirror is seeing into the future-at Boxer. He is 6 months behind in January 2008. The man asks if is he sleeping with Tawna and asks where he is. He then begins to recognize Boxer and his films. The man in the mirror is Rick, Tawna’s husband. Boxer tells him that he is dead. Rick doesn’t believe him and he takes a shot of Fluid Karma and he then falls to the ground and dies. Boxer comes rushing out telling Tawna that he saw her husband die and that he was a part of it. She becomes very upset and she kicks them out of her house. Boxer then faints and falls onto the ground... Boxer seems to be dreaming, he is in a big maze. All of a sudden, a giant snake appears from behind him and it begins to chase Boxer around the maze. Boxer runs up a set of stairs and into a portal. He lands on the other side and sees Ronald standing there. Ronald asks Boxer who he is...Boxer calls himself ‘Jericho Kane’. All of a sudden, Ronald wakes up from his dream. He is still with Zora in her van driving into Los Angeles. He begins to describe the dream for her. In the Treer Plaza, Inga von Westphalen and two fellow scientists are discussing an experiment that they are conducting (several people involved in it is the Taverner twins and Boxer). Boxer was apparently guided to Krysta for a reason (which we don’t know yet). Krysta was part of the experiment also because of her psychic abilities. They believe that her script ‘The Power’ is a ‘guide map for the experiment’ and a work of prophecy. They administered Fluid Karma into Krysta’s system, hypnotised her and also had her read the entire Book of Revelation, then they told her to create a document that would detail the final three days on Earth before the apocalypse. Inga gets a telephone call from Zora, who tells her that Ronald has experienced his first ‘Fluid Karma dream’. Krysta takes Boxer and Fortunio to a barnyard outside of Los Angeles, where many Neo-Marxists are attending a huge party. They meet up with Jimmy Hermosa who leads them into his tattoo parlour. Krysta tells Boxer that this is where he will become Jericho Kane. He is getting numerous tattoos all over his body. At the same time Ronald and Zora arrive at the barn and she introduces Ronald to Dream and Dion (The leaders of the Neo-Marxist movement). Moments later, Boxer Santaros is introduced to the crowd, who cheer wildly. Ronald is shocked...it’s Jericho Kane from his dream. July 2, 2008: Madeline Frost Santaros (Mandy Moore) (daughter of the current Senator) calls her father and tells him that Boxer Santaros has been missing for several days. She and Boxer were married for several years. If word got out of his disappearance, it would effectively ruin Senator Bobby Frost’s chances of being re-elected. June 27, 2008: Boxer and Madeline are at a Charity Scavenger Hunt sponsored by Treer. They are guests of honour at it. Before they go out on stage, Madeline gets pissed off as to why they would be associating with a nut-job like Baron Von Westphalen. But Vaughn Westhouse (Hollywood advisor to the Elliot-Frost campaign and Boxer's agent) gets her to get out on stage or he will tell Boxer that she is having an affair with her assistant - Brandt Huntington. Boxer goes out on stage and talks about the Scavenger Hunt, whoever finds the last mechanical ball (remote antennas for the energy fields) buried underneath the ground will win a brand new SUV powered by Fluid Karma. A person is at the area where the first ball is buried and where Boxer is expected to arrive with the first clue. The person’s mission is to kidnap Boxer and abandon him in the desert. July 3, 2008: Back at the Treer Plaza, General Teena MacArthur was inspecting the body found in the burnt-up SUV, so she calls a long friend named Simon Theory (Kevin Smith) to help her. Ronald Taverner, Zora Carmichaels, Dream and Dion are having breakfast at their restaurant. He wants them to bring himself and his brother to a hospital, believing that there is something wrong with both of them. The Neo-Marxists explain their plan to Ronald. They show him ‘The Power’ script. They are going to get him to go on a ride-along with Boxer for preparation and research for his character. Dion and Dream are going to stage a dispute that Ronald will have to go investigate and pretend to shoot them both dead...and all on Boxer’s video camera. At Fortunio Balducci’s house, he is reading the script when Serpentine (a mistress of the Baron’s) calls him and tells him to facilitate a meeting between Ronald Taverner and Boxer and in return she will pay him for it. At the Neo-Marxist HQ, Roland Taverner is tied up and injected with Fluid Karma. The unconscious Roland begins singing All These Things That I've Done-The Killers. They inject him once more and he stops. Ronald finds a letter belonging to his brother from someone called Pilot Abilene. He asks Zora what he was. She tells him that he was an actor in a comedy troupe and he met Zora, Dion and Dream where they became ‘The Lighthouse Gang’. Pilot Abilene is a former soldier who is now a guard of the generator dubbed ‘Utopia Three’ at the Santa Monica Pier. He was an actor who started out in an action movie with Boxer Santaros. The film was very bad but he became well-known from it, but his career ended when he was drafted to Iraq. It was here where he met Roland and the two became best friends. They learn of an experiment called ‘Serpentine Dream Theory’-all they know is if they sign up for it, you are used as a guinea pig but soon after, you are sent home. They go one night to visit Simon Theory (who is in charge of the experiment). He says no at first, saying that it isn’t for volunteers, but changes his mind once they bribe him. The next morning they are taken to a nearby airbase and each given an injection of Fluid Karma. The next day, the two are about to drop in from a helicopter. Pilot is nervous about it so Roland gives him his iPod to listen to during the drop...the song is ‘All These Things That I Have Done’. They drop successfully and they infiltrate a building where their telepathy kicks in...the drug is working on them. Roland is in a state of dementia, so he throws a grenade into a room, which explodes right next to Pilot, which sends shrapnel into the left side of his face. They never saw each other after that day. The Neo-Marxists are holding another meeting, this time a lottery for thumbs (certain people will be selected to have their thumb cut off to rig the election, they can re-use the same thumb as many times as possible, turning the election in their favour). Ronald, Zora, Dion and Dream are in attendance. The winner is Bing Zinneman who receives a check for $50,000 and then had his thumb cut off his hand. Afterward, Krysta Now and her friends and colleagues Sheena Gee, Shoshanna Cox and Deena Storm are in the middle of a conversation. Krysta tells her three colleagues that she booked a gig on the Mega-Zeppelin for the Baron on July 4th. While this is happening, Boxer is walking the beaches of Venice during the night. He takes out the Fluid Karma syringe and injects himself...before he loses conscious, he murmurs ‘Three Days...Three Final Days’... After Krysta leaves the bar where she was talking with her friends, she is cornered by Fortunio. He tells her to tell him everything about ‘Serpentine Dream Theory’. She says that Serpentine is ‘The Great Mistress of the Great Wizard’ who some call the Anti-Christ... Revelation 22:5 - For It Will Never Be Night Again, And They Would Not Need Lamp Light Or Sunlight, For the Lord God Will Be Shining On Them...And They Shall Reign Forever and Ever
16584043	/m/03yczt2	Cage of Stars	Jacquelyn Mitchard			 Young Veronica (“Ronnie”) Swan's idyllic life in her Mormon community is shattered when her two younger sisters are brutally murdered by the schizophrenic Scott Early. As a remorseful Early is sentenced to a maximum security facility for the criminally mentally ill, his disability is increasingly tempered by medication and therapy. Guided by their faith, Ronnie’s parents take the unusual steps to visit and ultimately forgive him, as their surviving daughter silently plots to drop her strict religious identity and exact her revenge upon his release.
16585777	/m/03yd1gm	The Black Death	Basil Copper	1992	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel is set in Victorian England and concerns John Carter, an architect who leaves London to become a junior partner in a prosperous building firm in Thornton Bassett, a village in Dartmoor. His hopes for a new life fade as he discovers a sinister mystery.
16588581	/m/03yd9lc	The Good Husband of Zebra Drive	Alexander McCall Smith	2007	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 As winter turns to spring across the red earth, all is not quite as it should be on Zebra Drive. There are the usual number of cases to be pursued, from persistent theft at Teenie Magama’s printing works to the case of three suspicious deaths at the Mochudi hospital, but there is also discontent among the ranks. Charlie is off on another escapade and Mma Makutsi’s impending marriage threatens her happy working relationship with Mma Ramotswe. And when Mr J. L. B. Matekoni decides to try a little detective work, disaster looms. One of the threads in this story that deals with a hospital in Mma Ramotswe's home town of Mochudi is the same as a plot line in an Inspector Frost mystery- the season 8 story "Benefit of the doubt"
16590139	/m/03ydc61	The House of the Toad	Richard L. Tierney	1993	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel concerns James Kerrick, an archaeologist and black marketeer who sells artifacts from a lost city in Mexico. He soon discovers himself the focus of a conspiracy of ancient cults. Various of the evil characters are servitors of the Primal Ones, incredibly ancient and powerful entities which sowed life throughout the universe and caused it to evolve both intelligence and the capacity to suffer. The novel incorporates references to Robert W. Chambers's King in Yellow mythology as well as to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The God 'Ghanta' is in the story is hinted to be identical to the Ghatanothoa of Lovecraft's story Out of the Aeons. S.T. Joshi provides an extensive description of the plot and a criticism of the work in his The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos (Mythos Books, 2008), pp. 273-75.
16593147	/m/03ydg4k	The Miracle at Speedy Motors	Alexander McCall Smith	2008	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 It has never occurred to Precious Ramotswe that there might be disadvantages to being the best-known lady detective in Botswana. But when she receives a threatening anonymous letter, she is compelled to reconsider her unconquerable belief in a kind world and good neighbours. While she ponders the identity of the letter-writer Mma Ramotswe has a further set of problems to solve, both professional and personal. There is an adopted child’s poignant search for her true family, and Mr J. L. B. Matekoni’s pursuit of an expensive miracle for their own foster daughter Motholeli.
16614225	/m/03yf1y1	Catcall	Linda Newbery	2006-10-19	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story focuses on a young boy named Josh, whose family goes through a dramatic upheaval. There is a new stepdad and a new baby sister. Josh's younger brother Jamie takes this badly and soon develops an obsession with wild cats and a refusal to speak. Josh uses all his skills, and a cat scrapbook, to help his family heal.
16614375	/m/03yf257	Ivan the Terrible	Anne Fine	2007-06-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It is Ivan's first day of school. He can only speak Russian and it's Boris's job to look after him and translate for him. St Edmund's is a civilized school, but Ivan isn't civilized. Boris knows that he is going to have trouble teaching Ivan.
16617888	/m/03yfb0j	Armance			{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 It concerns Octave de Malivert, a taciturn but brilliant young man barely out of the École Polytechnique, who is attracted to Armance Zohiloff, who shares his feelings. The novel describes how a series of misunderstandings kept the lovers Armance and Octave divided. Moreover, a series of clues suggest that Octave is impotent as a result of a severe accident. Octave is experiencing a deep inner turmoil; he himself illustrates the pain of the century's romantics. When the pair do eventually marry, the slanders of a rival convince Octave that Armance had married only out of selfishness. Octave leaves to fight in Greece, and dies there of sorrow. Armance is based on the theme of Olivier, a novel by the Duchess Claire de Duras, whose scabrous nature forbade publication. But Stendhal has very quietly inserted the secret, without talking about it openly.
16618146	/m/03yfbjs	Shanghai Baby	Wei Hui	1993		 The novel's narrator and main character, supposedly a semi-fictionalised version of the author, is a 25-year-old Shanghainese woman named Nikki, or Coco to her friends, a waitress in a Shanghai cafe. Coco is trying to write a first novel after previous success publishing a collection of sexually frank short stories. At the cafe, Coco meets a young man, Tian Tian, for whom she feels extreme tenderness and love. However, Tian Tian – an artist – is reclusive, impotent and an increasing frequent user of drugs. Despite parental objections, Coco moves in with him, leaves her job and throws herself into writing. Shortly afterwards Coco meets Mark, a married German expatriate businessman living in Shanghai. The two are uncontrollably attracted to one another and begin a highly charged, physical affair. Torn between her two lovers, and tormented by her deceit, her unfinished novel and the conflicting feelings involved in love, lust and betrayal, Coco tries to understand who she is and what she wants from life.
16618924	/m/03yfcw7	Stoneheart	Charlie Fletcher	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After getting in trouble on a school trip to the Natural History Museum, George takes off in a huff and, out of anger, breaks off the head of a stone dragon on the side of a wall. This sets off a stone pterodactyl literally peeling itself off the top of the building and chases George. As George runs away he sees three stone salamanders too chasing him. During the chase, George bumps into the Gunner, a statue of a World War I soldier who helps him escape the pterodactyl and salamanders. He explains to George that by breaking the stone dragon, he has entered a different world - an unLondon - where statues move and talk. There are many worlds and the world George has entered is one where all the statues and sculptures and spits and taints are at war with each other. No one else can see what is happening to him, except Edie Laemmel, a glint. She has the power to experience past events recorded in stones by touching them. But unknown to them the Stone has alerted the Walker, one of its servants, who stalks them with the help of his own servant, the Raven. On his journey, George discovers he has special powers. The Black Friar identifies George as a maker, someone with a special gift for sculpting things from stone or metal. The Friar also tells them to find the 'Stone Heart' and put the broken dragon carving back to make amends for the damage George has done. But on the way the Gunner has sacrificed himself by breaking his promise sworn in the Maker's name to the Walker to try and save Edie, and ultimately falls into the clutches of the Walker. It is left to George to use his new-found gifts as a maker to rescue her. In so doing he sacrifices his own safety and is fated to take 'The Hard Way', remaining with her in this dangerous unLondon. In Ironhand, the gunner is imprisoned below the city in an old water tank. At the moment George and Edie set off to try and rescue him they are separated, as George is snatched into the air by the cat-faced gargoyle named Spout. Edie sets off on her own. George is seemingly rescued from Spout by Ariel, a spit who is also an Agent of Fate come to ensure he takes The Hard Way. She takes him to receive the challenge issued by a statue called The Last Knight. He has to fight three duels: on land, on water and in the air. He is rescued from certain death on the end of the Knight's lance by the timely arrival of Spout who snatches him into the sky. George mends Spout's broken wing, and the two form a bond. Spout calls George Ironhand, which he pronounces as 'Eigengang'. Although he has cheated death, the legacy of The Hard Way is inescapably carved into George's flesh, as three veins of marble, bronze and stone twine up his arm, each representing a duel to be fought. Each one will only stop moving fatally towards his heart as he fights and wins the duel it represents. Edie meanwhile has gone back to the Black Friar for help but, helped by an urchin-like statue named Little Tragedy, tries to escape the pub when it appears the Walker has come to the door. Only when they arrive at their destination through the mirrors does it become apparent that Tragedy has betrayed her to the Walker, since they are now in a past London, the London of the Frost Fair where she once glinted herself being killed. Meanwhile the Gunner has discovered that the Walker has killed many glints and stolen their sea-glass heart stone in his search for power. He escapes the water tank by crawling through London's underground rivers, taking the stones with him. He expects to die at midnight (turn o' day) but survives because George stands his watch on his plinth in his place. While he does this, he experiences what the Gunner and his brother soldier, the Officer, experience every night, an hour in the trenches under bombardment during an artillery duel in World War One (this is his first duel). While he does this, he meets a soldier with his own dead father's face and, though the soldier dies, George is able to heal his guilt at his father's death and realize he was both loved and known to love him back. The Gunner and George and the Officer are reunited, along with the Queen (Boadicea) and her daughters who have taken an interest in saving Edie. They travel through mirrors into the past to try and rescue her. Edie escapes briefly from the Walker but is recaptured, after she has buried her sea-glass heart stone to save it. He takes her to the Frost Fair, where, despite having foreseen it, she is unable to prevent her own death beneath the ice. George fights the Walker on the ice (his second duel) while the Gunner retrieves Edie's body. The Queen takes them all through the mirrors in her chariot but, at the moment they almost run down the Walker, he escapes into the Outer Darkness beyond the Black Mirrors. Unseen by any of the others, but felt as an icy blast, an Ice Devil enters our word as he exits it and follows them back to the present. Edie is revived by the power of all the stolen heart stones the Gunner saved from under the city, and she finds, among them, her mother's own stone. This is doubly shocking for Edie - she knows her mother didn't realize she had been a glint, and the fire remaining in the stone suggests her mother, believed dead, may actually be alive. George has one more duel to fight before the last stone vein twines into his heart and kills him. The arrival of the Ice Devil has frozen time and the city, which is disappearing under a heavy snow fall. And the ordinary people seem to have disappeared, leaving George and Edie the only normal humans in a city now only populated by warring statues. The city of London is in the middle of one of its most destructive wars in history. And yet most of its inhabitants don't even know it. The battle between the spits and taints of London rages on. The stakes are high, with the spits engaged in a struggle against the evil taints that will determine the fate of their very souls. Twelve year old George Chapman and his friend Edie are caught in the middle. A glint with the ability to "see" the past, Edie has become a crucial asset in the ongoing war. The Gunner, a statue of a World War I soldier, continues do his part to help them in their quest. But George knows that he is the one who must play the biggest role in helping to bring an end to the war. With the Walker intent on forcing his evil designs on London and the world, George realizes that his destiny is inextricably tied to the Walker's destruction. In the end, the most important soul he manages to save might just be his own. Filled with intriguing suspense, invigorating action sequences, and well developed characters, Silvertongue is a thrilling conclusion to the international blockbuster Stoneheart trilogy.
16622189	/m/03yfl4j	Change of Heart	Jodi Picoult	2008-03-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A man is killed by a drunk driver, leaving his wife June and his daughter Elizabeth behind. At the scene of the accident, June meets a police officer named Kurt Nealon, who becomes a close friend and later marries June. Years later, June is pregnant and Kurt plans to create an addition to their home. A young man named Shay Bourne offers to help with the addition, which June says is "the beginning of the end." Elizabeth and Kurt are found murdered, and Shay is identified as the only suspect. The case and his trial become a media sensation. The jury convicts Shay of two counts of capital murder. The jury deliberates on the death penalty. After much time, they all agree, with Michael Wright, a young man about Shay's age, being the last juror to agree on the death penalty after being coerced by other jury members. Shay Bourne is transferred to the I-tier at the Concord state prison. Shay is in the cell next to Lucius DuFresne, an artist with HIV who killed his gay lover, Adam. During the night Shay tells Lucius that he wants to donate his heart to a little girl he saw on TV. She is revealed to be June and the late Kurt's daughter, Claire, who has a terminal heart condition. Michael the juror has become the junior priest at a parish in Concord, New Hampshire. He tries to change the stereotype of a priest. June agrees to meet Shay in a restorative justice meeting. There she asks him, "Why did you do it?" Shay answers, "She was better off dead." June agrees to take Shay's heart out of spite. A lawyer, Maggie, starts the legal process to petition the commissioner of corrections to allow Shay to be hanged so his heart can be donated to Claire. Claire's doctor determines that Shay is a perfect heart transplant match. Maggie brings Father Michael to her parents' house for dinner. During a religious discussion, Rabbi Bloom gives Father Michael a book about the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, written by Ian Fletcher. (He is a character in a previous Picoult novel, Keeping Faith.) Shay has quoted parts of the Gospel of Thomas. One of the prisoners in the I-tier attacks a guard guard with a broken broom handle while cleaning his cell. He is pronounced dead by the EMT's, as Shay huddles in the corner of his cell praying. The dead guard comes back to life while the EMT's are moving his body. Another prisoner using the confusion attempts to kill Shay. Father Michael visits Ian Fletcher to discuss the Gnostic gospels. Maggie arranges a dinner meeting with Dr. Gallagher to discuss organ donation for Shay. The dinner turns into a date. June sneaks Dudley (a spaniel) into the hospital to make Claire feel better; and a nurse reveals the upcoming transplant, which June has not discussed yet with Claire. Shay's trial begins, and Father Michael testifies to the prisoner's religious belief that he needs to donate his heart to Clarie to obtain redemption. Father Michael uses Shay's quotations from the Gnostic gospels as his religious foundation. Ian Fletcher testifies as an expert on the Gnostic Gospels. Father Michael admits to Shay that he was on the jury that convicted him. Father Michael locates Shay's sister, Grace, and tries to convince her to forgive Shay for setting the fire that disfigured her face. Grace started the fire in an attempt to kill their abusive father. Shay took the blame to protect his sister. While Shay testifies, all of his chains fall away from him for no apparent reason. It is later revealed that Kurt was sexually abusing Elizabeth. At the time of the murders, Shay walked in on Kurt sexually abusing Elizabeth. He killed Kurt, who had shot Elizabeth accidentally instead of Shay. Shay had picked up Elizabeth and put her panties in his pocket, where they were found by the police. Three weeks after her surgery, Claire goes home, where Grace visits her. Claire sees that her dog Dudley has died in her room but, when she picks him up and holds him to her chest, his heart starts beating again.
16622708	/m/04111fr	The Accidental	Ali Smith	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel consists of three parts: "The Beginning," "Middle" and "The End." Each part contains four separate narrations, one focusing on each member of the Smart family: Eve, the mother, Michael, her husband, Astrid (12) and Magnus (17), two children of Eve’s from a previous marriage (to Adam Berenski). Opening and closing the novel, and between each part, we have four sections of first-person narration from ‘Alhambra’ – who we can assume is Amber, the Smarts' uninvited house-guest. The novel opens with Alhambra telling us of her conception in ‘the town’s only cinema’. We then come to “The Beginning”, which consists of a third-person narration focused first on Astrid, then Magnus, then Michael, then finally Eve. Through each character we obtain a different view of how Amber came into their lives, and who they believed her to be, when she arrived unannounced and uninvited at their Norfolk holiday home, claiming her car had broken down. Through “The Beginning”, we learn of Astrid’s obsession with video-taping her life, seemingly as proof it existed; of Magnus’ involvement in a school prank which resulted in the suicide of one of his classmates; of Michael’s affairs with his students (he is a university lecturer); and of Eve’s writer’s block. The second first-person narration we have from Alhambra is altogether different to the first – here we are not offered her history, but rather a history of 20th century cinema – a past which she seems to adopt as her own, as if she were each of the characters in those films. “The Middle” deals, again, with each of the family members’ experiences of Amber: she throws Astrid’s camera off a bridge into the road, she seduces Magnus, and reveals flaws in Eve and Michael’s relationship. “The Middle” ends with Eve throwing Amber out of their holiday home. The third first-person narration from Alhambra follows, which is much the same as the second. We then have “The End”, which takes us to the Smart home once they return from holiday. The house has been emptied of all possessions – we must assume, as the family do, by Amber – leaving nothing but the answering machine, which contains messages forcing Magnus, Michael and Eve to face up to their past. Magnus and Astrid seem freed and excited by the experience of losing their possessions, their past – Michael also seems to find some redemption. Eve, however, runs away from the family, embarking on a round-the-world tour – eventually ending up in America, where she goes in search of her old family home. “The End” ends, ominously, with Eve seeming to take up Amber’s mantle, arriving at someone’s house as an uninvited guest. The book then finishes with a short section from Alhambra, reinforcing her connection to the cinema.
16623453	/m/03yfmwk	A Dog's Tale	Mark Twain	1904	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The book is told from the standpoint of a loyal household pet, a dog self described by the first sentence of the story; "My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian." The story begins with a description of the dog's life as a puppy and her separation from her mother, which to her was inexplicable. Her puppy and her owner's new child were soon added to her new home. When a fire breaks out in the nursery, the dog risks her life to drag the baby to safety. In the process, her motives are misunderstood and she is cruelly beaten. Soon however, the truth of the situation is discovered and she receives no end of praise. Later in the story, her puppy dies as a result of the owner's biological experiments. Only a servant seems to realize the irony, exclaiming, "Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child!" In the end, the dog pines inconsolable over the grave of the puppy with the clear implication that she will do so until death.
16628640	/m/03yf_n0	Daughter of the Forest	Juliet Marillier	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 From the novel's jacket: “Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac. But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, too young to have known her mother, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift. To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss and terror. It seems there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once.” Sorcha, the seventh child of Irish Lord Colum of Sevenwaters, has been raised almost entirely by her six older brothers. Having lost her mother at birth, Sorcha is more or less completely ignored by her father. When her father's new wife, the Lady Oonagh, attacks Sorcha and her brothers, Sorcha alone is able to flee into the forest and escape. Sorcha's brothers, however, have been turned into swans. What follows is a twist on the classic tale of "The Six Swans." Sorcha learns that if she can spin six shirts from starwort, remaining absolutely silent until the last one has been completed, she can free her brothers from Oonagh's spell. Sorcha agrees to this and spends several years in the forest, hiding from Oonagh as she works on the shirts. At first she survives in the Forest, relying on the help of the Fair Folk and her only companion—Cormack's dog, Linn. Her brothers are able to visit her twice a year as humans as she labors on her task, which is to make shirts out of starwort, a needle-like plant whose touch is poison and disfigures the hands. One day, she is found and raped by several brutal men, who are led to her by the village idiot who thought she was a faery. They also kill Linn, and her brothers find her weak and bleeding. Padriac heals her while three of her other brothers, (including formerly peaceful Finbar), go out and kill her rapists with the help of the Fair Folk. After several years of solitary struggle, Sorcha is saved from drowning by a British lord, Hugh of Harrowfield (a.k.a. "Red"). When Red returns to Britain, Sorcha unwillingly accompanies him. Red correctly believes that Sorcha has information concerning his brother, Simon, whom Sorcha had nursed back to health after Simon's capture by Lord Colum. Sorcha remains with Red as she continues to work on the shirts. Though under Red's protection, Sorcha encounters a new danger in the form of Lord Richard, Red's uncle and the one who has been attacking Sevenwaters. Sorcha must fend off the attacks of Richard even as she continues silently working to save her brothers. Though she earns true friends in John, Ben, and John's wife Margery, the majority of Red's household believe her to be a witch, and they play cruel tricks on her. As the days go by, Red and Sorcha gradually fall in love, though they are separated by his need to find Simon and her fear of men after her rape—as well as her belief that he only loves her because the Fair Folk bound him to her as her protector. While his marriage to Elaine, who is Lord Richard's daughter, draws nearer (they had been engaged since before Red and Sorcha met) and while Elaine is kind to Sorcha, Lord Richard continues to constantly threaten her. Then, Red takes Sorcha off to the shore, where only he and Simon ever went, and proposes to her, asking him to marry him and telling her that he's canceled his marriage with Elaine. She is fearful that he will try to claim his rights as a husband, but he assures her that, if she wants, the marriage will be only in name and that it will protect her. He gives her a ring and then leaves to search for Simon and find out the truth about Lord Richard's involvement in his brother's capture. One summer, in Harrowfield when Red is still gone, Sorcha meets with Conor, her brother. She was spotted meeting him at night, and everyone accuses her of adultery, since she is married to Red. Because of this crime Red's uncle turns everyone against Sorcha and decides to burn her at stake. On the day the shirts are finished, all six swans come flying to her. Red returns home, and is outraged when he sees Sorcha tied at the stake. Unable to speak, Sorcha quickly throws the finished shirts on her brothers, but because she did not have time to finish one of the sleeves Finbar is cursed with one wing. Her brothers are extremely protective of her, and declare her marriage to Red invalid. They refuse to allow her to be alone with him until Sorcha insists on it herself, and she is the one to tell Red good-bye, believing that he will forget her once she is gone and still under the delusion that he only loves her because of the Fair Folk's intervention. He lets her go, and Sorcha and her brothers return to Sevenwaters, where they find it a mess. Some peasants recognize them and inform them that their father is not well, and they hasten to the palace, where Donal, the former leader of the King's armies who was fired for letting Simon escape, informs them that Lady Oonagh has disappeared. The family slowly rebuilds Sevenwaters, and Sorcha finds out from the Lady of the Forest that Red was under no spell, and that he truly loved her. This causes her much pain until one day, he shows up and declares that he has abdicated his rule and wants to stay with her, and Sorcha kisses him so passionately that she makes Liam, her eldest brother, blush. Almost all of the mysteries are solved, except for their half brother (the son of Lord Colum and Lady Oonagh). Two of the brothers set out to find this brother, while Conor travels aways with the Druids. The seven children of Sevenwaters separate to lead their individual lives. Liam stays with Sorcha in Sevenwaters, and Finbar disappears in the waters, leaving only a feather behind. = Characters in "Daughter of the Forest" =
16629981	/m/03yg0yj	The Animal Family	Randall Jarrell	1965	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A man, a boy, a mermaid, a lynx and a bear - all orphans - find a home together in a log cabin in the woods by the sea. Through their shared experiences and self-created myth of their own origins, they create their own unique identities.
16632451	/m/03ygnmk	Saving Faith	David Baldacci	1999	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The botched attempt on Faith's life led to an all-out hunt for her by three parties - the FBI, the CIA and her boss, Danny Buchanan. Fleeing for her life, Faith was not sure who she can trust, including the stranger Lee Adams who saved her life and admitted being hired to watch her. While Faith was on the run, Buchanan planned on turning tables on Thornhill before it was too late, but found himself outclassed as an amateur against a professional spook. Meanwhile, the FBI began to look among their staff for a traitor, with suspicions falling to the dead agent, and Brooke Reynolds. Despite the setbacks, Thornhill began mastermind several separate moves to deal with Buchanan, Faith and the FBI.
16633650	/m/03yh4mw	Kampung Boy		1979	{"/m/03pm2b": "Autobiographical comics"}	 The Kampung Boy tells the story of a young ethnic Malay boy, Lat, and his childhood in a kampung (village). A graphic novel, it illustrates the boy's life in pictures and words. Aside from being the protagonist, Lat is also the narrator. The story opens with his birth in a kampung in Perak, Malaysia, and the traditional rituals surrounding the event: the recitation of blessings, the singing of religious songs, and the observance of ceremonies. As Mat grows older, he explores the house, gradually shifting the story's focus to the comic activities of his family outside their abode. Lat starts the first stage of his formal education&mdash;reading the Qur'an. At these religious classes, he makes new friends and joins them in their adventures, swimming in the rivers and exploring the jungles. Lat's parents worry over his lack of interest in his studies; he acknowledges their concern but finds himself unmotivated to forgo play for academic pursuits. When he reaches his tenth year, he undergoes the bersunat, a ritual circumcision. The ceremonies that precede the operation are elaborate, with processions and baths in the river. The circumcision proves to be "just like an ant bite!" Sometime after recovering from the circumcision, Lat trespasses on a tin mine with his friends. They teach him how to gather the mud left in the wake of the mining dredges and pan for valuable ore. The activity is illegal but often overlooked by the miners. Lat brings the result of his labour back to his father, expecting praise. Instead, he is punished for neglecting his studies and future. After overhearing his parents' laments and being shown the family's rubber plantation, Lat finds the will to push himself to study. He is rewarded for his efforts, passing a "special examination" and qualifying for a "high-standard" boarding school in Ipoh, the state capital. Rushing home to inform his parents, Lat discovers his father in negotiations with a tin mining company, which is surveying the land. The company will offer a large sum of money for the family's properties if they discover tin on it. Other villagers are hoping for similar deals with the company. They plan to buy houses in Ipoh if their hopes are realised. The day for Lat to depart the village has arrived and he is excited, but as he is about to depart, sadness washes over him. He acknowledges the emotions as his love of the village and hopes that the place where he was born will remain unchanged when he returns.
16637082	/m/03yhxhq	Scenes from a Bourgeois Life	Mervyn Jones			 The book is an apologia for the paradoxes and anomalies of the author's own career. Jacob had drifted into journalism and become a Reuter's correspondent, first in London and then in Washington. He followed the war closely in North Africa, the Far East and finally in Russia where his resentment against the pursuit of wealth through industrial capitalism, found an expression in the socialist ideals of the Soviet Union. The novel is written with wry humour and with Dickensian names which lightly disguise the real people Jacob had known. It contains many amusing incidents, such as his account of losing his virginity to a bored married woman ("Madame Bovary"). It also introduces some original reflections, ranging from how easy it is for an Englishman with the right accent to seduce American girls, to an analogy between his great-great-uncle General John Jacob and the spirit of Marxist revolution. The opening chapter "Post Bellum Omne Animal Triste" describes the author travelling home to England after the war in the company of "Harrington Square" the railway shunter's son who had risen to the top strata of the Foreign Service. Jacob expresses great nostalgia for an England which he saw becoming swamped in mediocrity, typified by the ribbon development of the 1930s. Jacob's father was Harold Fenton Jacob of the Indian Civil Service, sometime Political Agent in Aden, but was not so rich as his status might have suggested. Jacob describes his family as having devoted itself selflessly to serving the church and the Empire and regrets the displacement of an old order by the nouveaux riches who have dedicated themselves to the greedy pursuit of money. This resentment showed early when young Jacob, given a place at his prep school on reduced fees, associated with the sons of families much better off than his own. He failed to achieve his educational potential and became a provincial journalist in the West of England. During this time the charming young man was chased successfully and unsuccessfully by older women, but tiring of this life moved to London where he lived a bohemian life in Chelsea. An interesting range of characters and liaisons crossed the screen before he met Miranda the officer's wife whose marriage had been doomed before it started. Jacob briefly saw British fascist Oswald Mosley's New Party, as a hope for putting England to rights, but quickly realised that the remedy was worse than the disease. Instead, concerned at the hunger marches and unemployment of the 1930s he saw his position as a gentlemen proletariat leading him to socialism. English snobbery, which seems to foreigners at once ludicrous and pathetic, is in reality a mighty force which adroitly handled, could be turned to revolutionary ends. There are many ways to socialism; the snob’s way may be the English way. The American worker is ambitious to own the factory he works in. The English worker desires to become a gentleman who, only incidentally owns the factory. Once let him feel that such ownership is incompatible with the status of gentleman, and factory-owning would cease to be a respectable occupation. For though the word gentleman does not exist in French, and is rarely used in the American language, it is with us a master-word which unlocks many a closed English cupboard. Immemorial usage has given it an almost mystical quality. Woe to him who debases its sovereign gravity in the coinage of English words. The English do not really love a lord. What they love is the principle that originally lay behind ennoblement. This was to impose a standard above that of mere wealth by rewarding outstanding services to the crown, which preceded the nation-state as the unifier in men’s lives, by admission to the orders of chivalry. It is foolish in foreigners to sneer at the Englishman for loving titles when this reveals a reverence for something higher than money. In practice robber-barons may have become viscounts, knavish viscounts earls, and so upwards, but the process only became finally ridiculous when it was extended beyond the owners of acres and peasant “souls” to the owners of pieces of machinery and shafts of coal. At this point the Englishman, seeing chivalric values being debased, clung to one standard that he felt still rang true – what was, and was not done by a gentleman. And more often than not his definition of gentleman was one who “puts more into life than he takes out of it”. Which comes very close to the quality which Lenin required from the knightly missionaries of his Communist Society.” Posted to Washington, he admired F. D. Roosevelt, but he regarded Americans in general with a mixture of fascination and distaste, particularly in the light of aggressive capitalism. The rise of the United States, displacing the British Empire as a world power, mortified him. Being at the centre of power at the time, he presents an interesting analysis of attitudes leading up to the war. “Then there’s really no hope of getting American weight on to our side of the scale until the shooting actually starts?” “Probably not,” said Harrington, crushing his Melba toast into a handful of dust. A little man with a yellow complexion and wearing inexpensive, steel-rimmed glasses came and sat down at our table. “Our young friend here,” he said indicating me, “is a regular fire-eater. Most Englishmen here give the impression that Hitler is just a vulgar fellow but he really seems to feel that he’s a s----.” And out came a raw, four-letter word. “I get the impression” said Harrington, “that many Americans hate Hitler more than we do because they have fixed hatred as the limit of their responsibility in the matter, Whereas we shall have to both hate him and fight him.” “You are right,” said the little man, sliding off towards an adjoining table. “But do be sure, whatever war you get into, that it is really the right one.” Harrington asked me who the man was. “Constantine Oumansky, the Soviet Ambassador”. His war reporting culminates in the USSR, where after watching the Battle of Stalingrad he spent time in Moscow meeting an interesting range of characters, particularly women. What impressed him was the raw spirit of commitment and involvement which he saw in Soviet Russia and the way this influenced the arts. He compared this with the stay-at-home intellectuals he knew in England, people with comfortable jobs in the BBC and the Ministry of Information who carried on writing as if there was no war. He particularly targeted Cyril Connolly, another pupil at his old prep school, St Cyprian's writing in The Unquiet Grave under the name Palinurus. :On the same page on which he empties these dregs of his despair, Palinurus vows that there can be no going back to Christianity. People cannot be expected to revert to threadbare myths, he implies. They demand new ones. :&#34;Communism,&#34; says he, &#34;is the new religion which denies original sin. Yet seldom do we meet a Communist who as a man seems either complete or happy.” :Oh the ignorance of the sophisticated person who thinks all the best thoughts! Is there anything in the wide world to equal it? :The one place in all my travels where I met men and women who seemed complete and happy was in Russia, in the darkest days of the war. In Russia I encountered a character long missing from the world which Palinurus and I once shared. The Hero. I put my hand on the shoulders of such men. They were real. We in the West had written off the type as the obsession of that dead bore Carlyle. But now the Hero was resurrected and in this war he spoke in the Slavonic tongues. I do not mean that Russian bravery was superior to English bravery – the boy Matrosov who silenced a machine gun by thrusting his own body into its embrasure was perhaps less imaginative but not more courageous than the British soldiers who knowingly went to their deaths in obsolete tanks. I refer not to bravery at all but to the heroic view of life which departed from English society long before the war and never returned during it. Never returned because, I think, it would not in any case have been in keeping with the kind of war we fought. We fought to survive. We fought not to win a new world but to keep the old one. And in any case there were two wars. I saw both of them. In the West a relatively gentlemanly affair, with quarter given and prisoners cared for; in the East, an inferno of unrestricted extermination. Jacob&#39;s final chapter "England our cow" laments the feeble socialism of the post war Labour government and the missed opportunity of Britain holding the balance of power between Russia and America rather than submission of British interests to the United States. It concludes with an empty bottle of gin.
16638957	/m/03yj09_	Keeper of the Doves	Betsy Byars			 Amen McBee is born in 1891, the disappointing sixth daughter of a wealthy family; but grows up well-loved and into an awareness of everyone's strengths and weaknesses. Her twin sisters Arabella and Annabella teach her boldness and humour; older sisters Augusta and Abigail inspire more kindness. Her father is stern but loving, her mother loving but frail, and she also lives with her father's cold spinster sister. Amen's maternal grandmother, a progressive spirit bearing gifts of cameras, arrives during her daughter's new pregnancy, which culminates with long-awaited arrival of a son. Amen is also learning of the more secret parts of the family history, especially the death of an infant sister, and the mysterious Mr. Tominski, who might have saved her father's life as a child, but now inspires only fear in the children. He lives as a hermit on their property, caring for trained doves, until a misunderstood word brings tragedy and changes the lives of Amen's family. Amen starts to write poems.
16640199	/m/03yj2y0	Son of the Shadows	Juliet Marillier		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In this novel, Liadan grows up in Sevenwaters with her twin brother Sean and her older sister Niamh. They are the offspring of Sorcha and Iubdan (formerly Hugh of Harrowfield). Liadan follows in her mothers tradition in learning the healing arts. Niamh has great beauty and is 'expected' to wed Eamonn, a neighbouring chieftain. Eamonn actually asks for the hand of Liadan, she says that she will give him an answer in one year. While staying at Sevenwaters, Eamonn tells a tale of a recent attack by a band of mercenaries. Upon this attack, all his men were killed, and his life was spared by a man called the Painted Man. He swears that he will kill him. During the festival of Imbolc, a young druid named Ciarán tells the tale of Aengus Óg and Caer Ibormeith and catches the fancy of Niamh, they are soon having a secret love affair. Liadan discovers their secret during a walk in the forest. When the truth comes out, Ciarán leaves the Druids and Sevenwaters and Niamh is forced to marry the Uí Néill chieftain, Fionn. Liadan goes with her sister on the trip to her new home and on the way back she is kidnapped by an outlaw and brought to the camp of "The Painted Man." In order to attempt to save the life of their smith who was injured in an accident. She accepts the task and eventually falls in love with Bran, their leader. When Bran finds out that she is actually daughter of Hugh of Horrowfield, he sends her back home. When she returns to Sevenwaters, she finds she is pregnant with Bran's child. The Tuatha Dé Danann demand that she and her son remain in the forest, but she refuses to comply. With the help of Finbar she realises that she has his gift of sight and the ability to read and heal the minds of others. Sean, Liadan's brother and heir to Sevenwaters, wants to purchase the Painted Man's fighting force in their long battle for the sacred islands. All of the leaders go to a counsel to discuss the feud with the Britons. Liadan and her sister visit Sean's future bride and Eamonn's sister at his estate called Sídhe Dubh. During this visit Liadan discovers that her sisters husband has been beating and abusing her, she uses her mind gifts to help Niamh. With the help of Bran they plan on secretly taking Niamh out of Sídhe Dubh and take her to a Christian nunnery where she can be safe. At the last moment Eamonn and Fionn return and attack Bran and Gull as they escape with Niamh. Eamonn returns from the chase and tells the tale of how Naimh slips on the rocks and fell into the bog and died, all that remained was a cord that Liadan made for Niamh that held a white stone given to her by Ciarán. Liadan finally gives birth to her son and her mother and father realise when the child is born that his father (Bran) must have been the son of John and Margery, kinsman of Iubdan when he was Lord of Horrowfield. Liadan names the child Johnny. Shortly after the birth of Johnny, Sorcha dies. But before her death Liadan tells Sorcha, Iubdan and Finbar the story of Niamh's abuse by her husband; the escape from Sídhe Dubh with the help of Bran; and her belief that Niamh is not dead. On her deathbed Sorcha tells Iubdin that he must return to Harrowfield and learn the truth about John and Margery's son. Ciarán returned in hiding as a tinker during the ceremory for Sorcha. He tells Liadan that Niamh is indeed alive and safe. He also tells her the truth of why they could not wed. Ciarán is the son of Lord Colum and the Lady Oonagh, he is half brother to Niamh's mother. So their union was forbidden by blood. This was why they were not allowed to wed and that he could never be a druid since he carried the blood of the sorceress Lady Oonagh. Ciarán gives Liadan a gift for helping rescue Niamh for her abusive husband and returning her to Ciarán, a mysterious raven Liadan names Fiacha. Bran comes to Sevenwaters in secret to meet with Sean and meets Liadan, she tells him of his son. After Bran leaves, Liadan has a vision of her Uncle Liam's death; a vision of Eamonn telling Aisling that she could not marry Sean and then her suicide. They then learn that Fionn was recently strangled in his sleep. Liam was indeed killed by a Britons arrow and his nephew Sean takes control of Sevenwaters. Sean fearful for Aisling convinces Liadan to go to Sídhe Dubh to bring Aisling back so they can be married. Liadan has had visions of Eamonn torturing Bran. When she arrives at Sídhe Dubh she learns from Eamonn that he indeed has Bran held prisoner. She makes a deal with Eamonn, in exchange for not revealing that Eamonn betrayed his kinsman Liam and sacrificed his life in exchange for the Painted Man capture. Aisling will be allowed to go Sevenwaters and Liadan can leaves with Bran and Gull if she can find them and leave before dusk. With the help of some magic and Fiacha they make it safely through the bog that surrounds Sídhe Dubh. Liadan learns Bran's hidden truth about his childhood during her fight to bring him back from the torture inflicted on him. She reveals this to her father Iubdan and she convinces Bran that his future might lie in returning to his roots at Harrowfield in Briton, while his men talk of setting up a school for warriors.
16640940	/m/03yj4r8	Child of the Prophecy	Juliet Marillier		{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Fainne is a sorcerer's daughter growing up in Kerry. Her mother, Niamh (Son of the Shadows) had drowned in the sea when Fainne was quite young, her father Ciarán, the son of Lady Oonagh (Daughter of the Forest) and a former druid (Son of the Shadows), teaches her the art of sorcery during her childhood, including the Glamour, the art of changing one's appearance at will. Fainne becomes close friends with Darragh, one of the tinkers who returns every summer. When Fainne is old enough, Ciarán decides that she must go to her mother's family at Sevenwaters to learn of her heritage, after her grandmother teaches her some new lessons. Fainne's grandmother arrives just after Ciarán departs and teaches Fainne with very strict and harsh methods how to use her gift to make people bend to her will and do her bidding, especially men. After her grandmother's training is over, Fainne is told that she must go to Sevenwaters and thwart the long scheme of the Túatha Dé Danann to get back the sacred islands. The alliance that is preparing to take back the islands forcibly from Edwin of Northwoods is led by her cousin Johnny, the child of Liadain and Bran (Son of the Shadows) and child of the prophecy (that a child of Briton and Erin and of neither, marked by the raven, would save the sacred islands). To force Fainne to do this, her grandmother threatens her father with sickness and a slow death. Her grandmother gives her a charm to wear to protect her from the people of Sevenwaters; in reality, this charm allows her grandmother to see Fainne and to partially control her thoughts. During the trip to Sevenwaters, Fainne and Darragh's easy friendship is broken when they quarrel over the use of her sorcerer's gift. Darragh gives up the travelling life and accepts a job taking care of horses. Fainne arrives at Sevenwaters and gradually becomes accepted as part of the household. After she settles in, she is goaded by her grandmother to start a fire which disfigures her young cousin Maeve and kills a visiting druid. While Maeve is slowly recovering, Fainne and the other young girl cousins are invited to visit their Uncle Eamonn at Glencarnagh, where Eamonn shows great interest in her. Disappointed at Fainne's continued lack of progress, her grandmother threatens harm to all those Fainne loves, including Darragh, who visits one day. Fainne then bargains with Eamonn for marriage in exchange for information that will allow Eamonn to kill his longtime enemy the Painted Man, Johnny's father. Fainne returns to Sevenwaters and Eamonn's formal proposal of marriage is refused by her uncle Sean. She turns into a moth to spy on a secret meeting at Sevenwaters. Johnny and his mother Liadain decide to take Fainne to the island of Inis Eala where they are preparing for the final battle for the sacred islands. Darragh forces his way into the band of warriors by showing his prowess as a swimmer. Given hope by an unexpected encounter with her uncle Finbar (Daughter of the Forest), Fainne transforms into a dove and follows the warriors to the final battle for the islands. Johnny and Bran lead a small secret mission to sink the Britons' ships, during which Eamonn's spy mistakenly attacks Johnny instead of Bran and is killed. An injured Johnny is captured by the men of Northwoods. Johnny's men believe him dead but go on with the attack under Bran's leadership. Fainne transforms back to human and awaits the right moment to act, coached by the Old Ones. During the battle, the overrun Britons use Johnny as hostage to force the alliance to retreat. Johnny challenges a Northwoods champion to single combat, with the terms being complete control of the islands. During their fight, Fainne comes out of hiding, pushed by her grandmother to kill Johnny at this pivotal moment. Eamonn saves Fainne from death but dies from the Briton arrow himself. At the last moment, Fainne defies her grandmother with the help of her uncles Finbar and Conor the archdruid and is punished by the sight of Darragh being pushed off a cliff. Ciarán then appears to protect his daughter from his mother, who boasts of killing his wife Niamh. Ciarán is almost killed by her himself, but Finbar throws himself in the path of Lady Oonagh's death bolt and dies in his stead. Thwarted, Lady Oonagh reveals the second part of the prophecy, that once the child of the prophecy has retaken the islands that person must climb up to The Needle and remain in solitude watching over the islands. Johnny, a warrior and leader, is not suited to this task; all believe the prophecy has failed. Then Fainne volunteers, as she meets all the criteria of the prophecy: she is both of Erin and Britain and has a scar given her by her father's familiar Fiacha, a raven. Her childhood learning the lore in silence and solitude has prepared her for this task. The Túatha Dé Danann reveal themselves to take Fainne away. The Lady Oonagh still threatens to kill Fainne and is finally turned into a mouse by Fainne and is quickly eaten by a passing bird. The Fair Folk then tell everyone that they all must leave the islands that night or else they die, as the prophecy has been fulfilled and they must begin their lives anew. Fainne is brought by the Fair Folk to the Needle where her and her descendants must remain performing the old rituals, shrouded in the mists hidden from the world until men again remember his bond with the earth, his mother once more. How will she have descendants she asks? It seems that the Fair Folk and the old ones saved Darragh and turned him into a selkie and Fainne sings him back into a man. Darragh tells Fainne that he is willing to give up his original life to be with her. They are left alone on the island. The island is then shrouded in the mists only to be seen briefly by the occasional seaman until that time in the far future when men again remember. There is an excerpt in the end that gives the readers a peek into Fainne's life. She has two children, a boy and a girl.
16649707	/m/03yjngt	Loitering with Intent	Muriel Spark	1981	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Fleur Talbot is struggling to complete her first novel, Warrender Chase, in early 1950s London. She manages to secure a job working for Sir Quentin Oliver as secretary for the 'Autobiographical Association', whose eccentric members are seeking to write their memoirs. Fleur assists in this and gains valuable source material for her novel whilst growing increasingly suspicious that Sir Quentin may be blackmailing the association's members. Sir Quentin meanwhile discovers Fleur's novel-in-progress and seeks to suppress it as it reveals his evil plans. Here fact and fiction imitate each other as Fleur and Sir Quentin compete for the truth...
16661865	/m/03ykh3b	The Big Rock Candy Mountain				 In this section, Elsa leaves her family home after breaking with her widowed father when he becomes remarried to Elsa's best friend. She moves to North Dakota where she meets Bo Mason, who runs an illegal saloon or blind pig. Despite being disturbed by Bo's sometimes violent behavior, Elsa strikes up a romantic relationship with him. Against her father's advice, she becomes engaged to Bo. The second section describes the Masons' failed attempts to run a hotel, as well as the early childhood of their sons Chester and Bruce. Bo's relationship with Bruce becomes increasingly abusive, especially around issues of toilet training. After an especially strong outburst of violence against Bruce, Bo abandons his family. In this section Bo has begun to establish a relatively stable life for himself running a bunkhouse in Saskatchewan. In the meantime, Elsa moves back in with her father after her son Chester gets in trouble for engaging in sexual play with a girl in the orphanage he attends. After returning home, Elsa considers getting a divorce and marrying a former suitor, but eventually she accepts Bo's offer of reconciliation. This short section of the book is told from the perspective of Bruce and addresses an idyllic summer spent at the family's homestead. This section will later be important as a memory as the adult Bruce reflects back on his life. Also, in this section Bruce the child begins to regain memories of the abuses he suffered in infancy. This section is set against the historical backdrop of the 1918 flu epidemic. Down on his luck, Bo realizes that because of the flu epidemic he stands to make a small fortune if he begins bootlegging whisky to Canada, due to the perceived medicinal benefits of alcohol. While Bo is away in the United States purchasing whisky, the flu epidemic hits his home town and eventually Chester is forced to guard the family homestead himself while all the other family members are sick. The sixth section is set during the Prohibition Era. Bo has supported his family for several years by bootlegging, but eventually the family decides to leave the small Canadian town they live in on the Canada/Montana border after Bo is arrested for bootlegging on the same day his son, Chester, is arrested for arson. The seventh section of the book takes place in Salt Lake City, Utah. Chester Mason is about to graduate from high school. His parents attempt to steer him away from his romance with an older girl, Laura, and into a promising career as a baseball player. However, when the Masons' house is raided by the police, Chester quits his baseball job and elopes with Laura. During this section Bruce's study at law school is interrupted when he learns that his brother, Chester, has died. In addition, his mother's cancer is worsening, and eventually Bruce returns to his family for his mother's sake. This section deals with the death of Elsa Mason from cancer, and the subsequent rift that develops between Bo and Bruce Mason, during which Bruce considers murdering his father. This final section is told first from the perspective of Bo Mason, who is now an aging widower in Salt Lake City, oppressed by frequent feelings of self-hatred. Eventually Bo kills himself after murdering a former lover. The end of the section deals with Bruce's attempts to look back on the tumultuous history of his family and trying to come to terms with his role as the sole survivor.
16663141	/m/03ykjlx	Love & Sleep	John Crowley	1994	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The previous novel is briefly addressed in the book's first section "To the Summer Quaternary" with the pretension of being a synopsis Pierce is preparing of book project for possible publication. From here, the shifts abruptly to Pierce's boyhood, describing his early life with his cousins near the Cumberland Mountains in Kentucky. While cleaning the ashes from burning garbage one day, Pierce sees some embers escape, and cause a minor forest fire. His older cousin, Joe Boyd, immediately blames Pierce for the whole incident and frequently arises in conversation for the rest of the novel. As a result of his blame, Joe Boyd often excludes from the secret clubs he forms with his siblings. After the death of Pierce's Aunt and his cousins' mother Opal Oliphant, the children are neither homeschooled nor attend school, and Sam Oliphant instead orders a large number of books at a time from the State Library to keep the children busy. Pierce finds great interest in the encyclopedias of mythology and occult, and eventually constructs his own mythology, presenting to his cousins as another secret club called the Invisible College, rival to that of Joe Boyd's. Sam eventually comes to request for the children a tutor, answered by a local Nun, Sister Mary Philomel, who trains the children in strict traditional Catholicism, despite Sam's antipathy for religion. For a short period, the children secretly shelter a girl known as Bobby Shaftoe in their home. The plan backfires when Bobby becomes violently ill and eventually infects the other children. At this point, they reveal to Sam their having her in the house. Her father Floyd eventually returns for her. When the children try to visit Bobby at her home, they are terrified by Floyd's apocalyptic threats. In the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno is revealed to have safely made the journey to England and is living in the household of John Florio. Bruno serves on some diplomatic meetings with Florio, and eventually comes to lecture at Cambridge (nearly missing a performance of Dido, Queen of Carthage). He meets John Dee who, impressed by Bruno's intellectual daring, invites him to his home. Dee and Edward Kelley abruptly leave England following the supernatural child-like being from the previous novel, Madimi, to the continent eventually to the court of Rudolf II who commissions them to create a Alchemical stone. In the present, Pierce is continuing to work on his book, exploring various systems of thoughts with possible modern applications. At the same time, his neighbour Beau Brachman independently happens upon many of the same topics including Hermeticism, though he interprets each through a strongly New Age influenced approach. Rosie Mucho continues with her separation proceedings from her husband Mike Mucho, coming to trust Mike to care for her daughter Sam for periods of time. Mike is expanding his work from psychotherapy to exploring speculative religious practice with his patients. Rosie is very much distracted with the declining of health of Boney Rassmussen, who is on his own quest to find the Philosopher's Stone which Fellowes Kraft had, while alive, teased him existed in Prague. In short order, Boney dies leaving a Will containing many impossible requests, including being buried in a private field he did not own. Rosie Mucho confides in Pierce in this time, who comforts her during the funeral proceedings. Eventually Pierce becomes frustrated with his book project, taking a grant Kraft's foundation had offered him to take a research trip to Prague.
16670308	/m/03ylg6s	Lady Lazarus	Andrew Foster Altschul			 As an adult, Calliope has become one of the best-known poets in America. But she has also been famous since birth. She is the daughter of rock stars Brandt Morath and Penny Power, whose resemblance to Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love is underscored by Brandt's suicide at the height of his fame, while his daughter was still a small child. Unlike the real-life Frances Bean Cobain, Calliope is a presumed eyewitness to her father's death, an event that traumatizes her into not speaking for several years. When she does regain her voice, it is as a poet, and ultimately as the book's co-narrator (she shares the task with a music journalist who, in a post-modernist trope, bears the same name as the author).
16674623	/m/03ylttw	Marrying Buddha	Wei Hui	2005		 Set four years on from the events of Shanghai Baby, Marrying Buddha continues the story of Coco, a writer from Shanghai, now aged 29. The plot intersperses Coco's adventures in New York, and later in Madrid, Barcelona and Buenos Aires, with her journey in China from Shanghai to the Buddhist monastery on Mount Putuo, (Putuoshan). In New York, Coco meets a Japanese-Italian documentary filmmaker named Muju, and after a short romance moves in with him. Muju is a divorcee with strict ideas about women's roles and behaviour. He prefers his girlfriends, for example, to be competent cooks and willing to demonstrate their expertise for him. Coco, who cannot cook, finds it difficult to adapt to life with Muju. After a few months, Coco meets another man, the all-American Nick. When she travels to Spain without Muju, she resists embarking on an affair with Nick, who coincidentally visits the same cities and stays in the same luxury hotels as Coco. In Buenos Aires, Coco and Muju meet again, but Muju is disappointed with what he feels is Coco's snobbery and arrogant, self-centred behaviour. The two argue, and soon after returning to New York, Coco travels home to Shanghai without knowing whether she and Muju are still lovers. In Shanghai, after resuming her old, pleasure-filled life, Coco travels to the place of her birth, Mount Putuo, where she spends time with an elder in a Buddhist monastery. Later, Nick pays a surprise visit to Coco in Shanghai, and Coco finally relents and sleeps with him. After he leaves, Muju pays a surprise visit to Coco in Shanghai, and Coco sleeps with him, too. Shortly afterwards, Coco learns she is pregnant, but she does not know who is the father, Muju or Nick. Marrying Buddha is supposedly a continuation of the Wei Hui's semi-autobiographical story of Nikki/Coco, a young Shanghainese author of erotic literature. The novel is set in various locations, but mainly New York, Shanghai and Mount Putuo, site of Coco's birth and a Buddhist monastery. Although there is some mention of the events and people from Shanghai Baby - in Marrying Buddha, Coco embarks on a tour of Spanish-speaking countries to promote that novel - some key characters and plot points, including the suicide of Coco's then boyfriend Tian Tian are not referred to at all. In addition, new facts that were not mentioned in Shanghai Baby emerge: including that shortly before the events of Shanghai Baby, Coco attempted suicide by slashing her wrists and that she had a boyfriend with Mafia connections. In New York, Coco is a student at Columbia University, an observer of American life and an avid consumer of American brands and culture. She visits Chinatown, shops at Barneys New York, Barnes and Noble, and Bloomingdales, and is perplexed by the American men she dates. Soon, she meets Muju, a half Japanese, half Italian documentary filmmaker. At first, Coco is not impressed: Muju buys her a humidifier as a gift. However, Coco is soon won over by Muju's knowledge of tantric sex practices and Eastern wisdom. After a few months, Coco moves into his apartment. Things do not always run smoothly though: Muju expresses his deep respect for women who can cook delicious meals, just like his ex-wife, who one day turns up and does just that. When Coco tries to cook Chinese food in Muju's kitchen, disaster occurs - she burns the shrimp and a drop of fat jumps out of the frying pan and burns her cheek, temporarily marring her complexion. Muju and Coco fight, and when Coco throws a jar of designer face cream into the toilet, Muju is disappointed by her immaturity. Later, Coco and Muju try out new tricks in the bedroom, and Muju displays his knowledge of Eastern wisdom by refusing to ejaculate and sharing a variety of Japanese traditional sex aids. Coco suggests a threesome, and Muju is impressed when she is not jealous of the American prostitute whom they invite to their bed. The two are happy, although the relationship is not perfect. It is shadowed by the fact that Muju has some faults that Coco cannot reconcile. For example, he refuses to ever accompany anyone to the airport, he refuses to ejaculate, and he is missing a joint on one of his fingers. Muju is similarly frustrated by Coco's lack of self-control, her inability to cook, and her desire for a baby despite her immaturity. Whilst out one evening in New York with her visiting Chinese cousin Zhu Sha, Coco meets Nick, a middle-aged but very attractive New Yorker: He looked very like George Clooney, but even more handsome, slim and stylish, dressed entirely in black Armani. He seemed about forty-five years old...When he spoke I was startled by his magnetic voice. Hearing him talk was like ice-cream to the ears Initially, Coco refuses to embark on an affair with Nick, rejecting his advances despite her attraction to his magnetic, ice-cream voice. When Coco travels to Madrid to promote her now best-selling novel, she bumps into Nick in a restaurant. Coincidence following coincidence, Nick is also traveling on to Barcelona at the same time as Coco, and is staying in the same hotel. Coco is very attracted to Nick, but manages to reject all his advances. After Barcelona, she leaves for Buenos Aires with only his contact details. In Buenos Aires, Coco meets up again with Muju. Things seem to be going well, until Muju criticises Coco for her behaviour towards the wait staff in the hotel: Muju took a sip of tea. "Perhaps you weren't aware of it, but for a second there you demonstrated unnecessary arrogance". I nearly spat the bread out of my mouth. "I've no idea what you're talking about." My voice trembled and my hands clenched themselves into fists. Coco is extremely upset at Muju&#39;s criticism, and although the two are reconciled in New York, Coco decides to return to Shanghai to start work on her new novel. In Shanghai, she is surprised to learn that Nick is also in the city. Coco is delighted, and the two meet in the Shanghai Ritz-Carlton hotel, where Nick is staying. To impress Coco, Nick buys her a very expensive Ferragamo Christmas tree. Back in his hotel suite, Coco is overwhelmed by this purchase and lets Nick make love to her without contraception. The very next day, Nick flies back to New York. Shortly afterwards Muju flies to Shanghai to see Coco. The two make love in her apartment, without using contraception. Muju ejaculates for the first time, surprising Coco. After Muju leaves, Coco discovers that she is pregnant. She decides to keep her baby, although she is not certain which of her two lovers is the father. The novel is interspersed with the story of Coco&#39;s visit to her birthplace on Putuo Island. There, she gains wisdom from her discussions with a Buddhist elder at the monastery in which she was born. It is this wisdom that allows her to cope with her pregnancy.
16681435	/m/03ymgbv	Unleashing the Ideavirus				 Interrupting people is an inefficient approach to marketing, and one doomed to failure. Instead marketers should strive to spread ideas. An Ideavirus is an idea that moves and grows and infects everyone it touches. An Ideavirus is based on customers marketing to each other. The book refers to hives and sneezers. Hives are the groups of people to whom the idea has some specific relevance, sneezers are the people likely to spread your idea. A successful Ideavirus requires the sneezers and weezers infecting the hive.
16686626	/m/047gqp9	Flight of the Nighthawks	Raymond E. Feist		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Flight of the Nighthawks focuses primarily on the adventures of two young boys, Tad and Zane, and the organization they become involved with, the Conclave of Shadows. The story picks up shortly after the end of Exile's Return (2004), the final book in the preceding Conclave of Shadows series by Feist. The book begins in the town of Stardock, where the two boys are still living at home. Marie, Tad's biological mother and Zane's surrogate mother (Zane's parents having died years earlier during an attack by trolls on the town) is concerned about the boys' tendency to get into trouble, and when her lover, Caleb (son of the magician Pug), comes back to Stardock, she begs him to take the boys to be apprenticed. Caleb consents and travels with the boys to The Empire of Great Kesh to find them an apprenticeship. Along the journey they are ambushed by bandits and Caleb is gravely wounded. The boys manage to bring Caleb to a friend, and unbeknownst to them, and agent of the Conclave. The Conclave is able to heal Caleb, and while they decide what to do with the boys, Caleb decides to formalize his long relationship with Marie and marries her, adopting the boys as well. The Conclave becomes aware of trouble in the capital of Kesh, where nobles are being murdered, ostensibly as part of political maneuvering between two factions to establish the next emperor. The Conclave sends three sets of agents to investigate: Talwin Hawkins and his assassin-turned-servant Petro Amafi, Kaspar and Pasko, and Caleb and the boys. During their time in the city, Tad and Zane are aided in a fight by a boy named Jommy who has been living in the streets, whom Caleb also takes into his care. The Conclave's agents discover that the necromancer, Leso Varen, has entrenched himself and intends to use the secret guild of assassins, the Nighthawks, to cause utter chaos in Great Kesh. Kaspar realizes that Varen has taken over the body of the Emperor, while Caleb falls into a trap set for them by the Nighthawks, and barely manages to escape alive. The Conclave agents regroup, and make plans to root out the nest of Nighthawks and foil Varen's plan. Pug and Magnus (his eldest son and Caleb's older brother) venture into the sewers to locate the Nighthawks' hideout, but both possible locations are empty. The Conclave realizes the Nighthawks have established themselves in the palace itself, and the entire royal family is in danger. On the eve of Banapis, the midsummer celebration and the biggest festival of the year, Varen reveals himself and attempts to kill the members of the royal court. He is stopped by the Conclave, with Caleb and the boys stumbling into a Nighthawk staging area and assisting in its destruction, Kaspar managing to aid in securing the safety of the emperor's heirs, and Pug, Miranda, Nakor, and Magnus opposing Varen's deadly magic. In the end, Varen's body is destroyed, but his soul manages to escape again through a rift into the world of Kelewan.
16686635	/m/047gqpp	Wrath of a Mad God	Raymond E. Feist		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Wrath of a Mad God finishes the Darkwar saga. Pug, Magnus, Nakor and Ralan Bek have reached the Dasati home world, and are now working with the followers of the White, what they called their pantheon of gods who were evicted from the second plane by the Dark God. Macros learns that the living Gods of Midkemia -- including the Nameless -- made an agreement with the gods of the second plane of reality (if they are not one and the same), and a result was that the soul of Macros was forced into the second plane of reality after his encounter and subsequent death at the hands of Maarg the demon king of the 5th plane of reality. Ralan Bek is not the God Killer, containing not a sliver of Nalar the nameless one, but he carries a sliver of the Dasati god of war to prepare the way for the true God Killer. The Dark God turns out to be an obese Dread Lord, feeding off the countless souls of the dead in the Dasati realm. The Dreadlord had previously invaded the third and fourth plane of reality, consuming all life within both realms. His ultimate goal is to devour enough souls in the second plane to transport himself into the first plane, where the world of Midkemia resides. As the invasion of Kelewan begins, the Dasati take many prisoners and throw them back through the rift to the Dasati world straight towards the waiting Dreadlord who consumes the souls of the falling bodies. The Dreadlord is eventually defeated by a combination of two factors as it tries to travel through the rift to Kelewan; the God Killer, which is revealed to be the tiny sliver of Nalar sheltered by Leso Varen, is released by Nakor in his final act and attacks the Dreadlord from behind, whilst Pug puts a rift in front of Kelewan's moon and slightly adjusts its orbit, forcing a massive chunk of rock to collide with the Dreadlord as it tries to emerge from the rift. For once, Nalar, the mad God of Evil, worked in concert with the other gods of his pantheon, to prevent the Dreadlord from subverting his role as the ultimate force for evil in the first plane of reality. Continuing on with the two stories, one book -theme started in the preceding book, Miranda, who remained behind in the first plane of reality, escapes from the Deathpriests of the Dasati. She travels to Kelewan, and there leads the Tsurani in the defense of their, ultimately doomed, home-world. There are several small continuity errors in this book if considered as part of the wider Feist canon: Lord Erik von Darkmoor is described as regretting that he never "married and had children", in contradiction to Rage of a Demon King, where Erik married Kitty before the fall of Krondor. On his website in the FAQ section, Feist states that while Erik did marry, that "Erik and Kitty didn't stay married long, because of the 'married to two wives, me and the Kingdom' sort of thing, but it got cut because it was too soap opera. No kids, though." When Jim Dasher arrives with Tomas on the back of a dragon to aid Kaspar and the anoredhel elves, Kaspar asks to be introduced to the Warleader and says "I know him by reputation only". It is also stated that Kaspar's only previous contact with an elf had been a "most fleeting" encounter with an envoy at Sorcerer's Isle. However, Kaspar journeyed to Elvandar with Pug and the Talnoy in Exile's Return, met various elves including the Elf Queen herself, and fought alongside Tomas to defend Elvandar. The Dread are also retconned as being from the 'void', as opposed to the Sixth Circle. Also, the Dread were retconned to be unkillable, which is in direct opposition to actions in Magician. The Minwanabi reappear in the Empire despite the destruction of that house in Servant of the Empire, with only an inadequate explanation as to their reappearance. On his website's FAQ section Feist states "I did not detail how the Minwanabi gained back their estates under the Acoma generosity (nor the end of House Lujan) as that was too much backstory for what I was writing about and would only confuse those who hadn't read the Empire Trilogy." Sezu, Emperor of Tsuranuanni, and grandson of Justin mentions that no one has lived on the ancestral lands of the Acoma since Justin was proclaimed emperor. Yet at the end of Mistress of the Empire an imperial proclamation was issued naming Lujan head of House Lujan and giving him title to live on the ancient Acoma lands. On the FAQs on his website, Feist writes "There was a minor plot point that got lost, really, regarding Lujan. I'll fix that when I do the paperback fixes; mostly his line didn't last very long, in a story I'll reference, but never get around to writing." and "It was a minor gaff on my part, not putting in a line or two to explain that. At one point Lujan's heir did not have children, so the estate reverted to the crown." Chapter 8, "Threats", of the Harper Voyager paperback edition includes the line "No one has lived there since the son of Lord Lujan died without an heir and it reverted to the crown" (spoken by Sezu to Miranda.) In explaining the errors, in the FAQ section of his website Feist writes "A lot of things have happened in my life and in the series between Eric and Kitty (for one example) and the new book. So the fan can go, 'Oh, that annoys me,' with justification. Me I go, 'Damn, I was going to toss in a line about how things didn't work out and I forgot.'" and further explains "It used to be it would be copy-edited. ... Now, copy-edit is done on the fly by the editor or is out-sourced to a copy edit service. That means internal stuff may be caught, such as 'he was wearing green in chapter 1 and now it's blue. Did he change?' What it doesn't give you is continuity over a span of books."
16689232	/m/025zqy7	Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging	Louise Rennison	1999-06	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is told through the journal of a teenage girl named Georgia Nicolson. Georgia is growing up in England with her best friend Jas and the rest of the Ace Gang, a group of best friends who share secrets, have sleepovers, and talk about boys whom they have snogged. She lives with her mother, father, her mad little sister Libby and her half Scottish Wildcat, Angus, whom the family found on a small family holiday to Scotland. Angus gets into trouble from Mr and Mrs Across the Road, the Prat Poodles, and his Kitty Girlfriend Naomi. Georgia falls for a boy named Robbie and her best friend Jas falls for Robbie's brother Tom, But Robbie starts to go out with a "wet weed", Lindsay, a year older than her. Eventually the two of them fall in love, and Georgia is hoping to start a relationship with Robbie, the sex god. The stories then continue on in the other books, following Robbie and Georgia's growing relationship until Robbie, Georgia's "first love" moves to Kiwi-a-go-go land (AKA New Zealand) to snogg Wombats. Soon Georgia falls for the "Italian Stallion" Masimo. As the series progresses, readers wait in anticipation to see who Georgia chooses in the end; Robbie, Masimo, or the one who really and truly loves her Dave (the Laugh). We follow through Georgia's mad adventures through 10 books.
16692331	/m/03yn41l	The Saturdays	Elizabeth Enright	2008-01-22	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The four Melendy children live with their father, a widowed professor of economics, and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper, in a brownstone in New York City. There's thirteen-year-old Mona, who has her heart set on becoming an actress; twelve-year-old mischievous Rush, who plays the piano; ten-year-old Miranda "Randy" who loves to dance and paint; and thoughtful Oliver, who is six. Tired of wasting Saturdays doing nothing but wishing for larger allowances, the four Melendys jump at Randy's idea to start the Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club (I.S.A.A.C.). If they pool their resources and take turns spending the whole amount, they can each have at least one memorable Saturday afternoon of their own. Before long, I.S.A.A.C. is in operation and every Saturday is definitely one to remember. Each Melendy child is able to do exactly what he or she pleases, discovering new ideas along the way. Randy becomes friends with an old lady who was once kidnapped by gypsies, Rush brings home a stray dog, and Mona shocks her family by takes a first step toward adulthood. But when Oliver wants to be out on his own, too, the rest of the family has second thoughts.
16694742	/m/03yn9cw	A Year in Provence	Peter Mayle		{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Peter Mayle and his wife move to Provence, and are soon met with unexpectedly fierce weather, underground truffle dealers and unruly workers, who work around their normalement schedule.
16695774	/m/03ync82	Sputnik Caledonia	Andrew Crumey	2008		 *Book One Robbie Coyle, nine years old at the start of the book, lives in Kenzie in Scotland’s Central Belt in the early 1970s. He dreams of going into space; but because of his father’s anti-American, pro-Soviet views, he wants to be a cosmonaut rather than an astronaut. He picks up an Eastern European radio station called Voice of the Red Star, imagines it to be a telepathic signal from another planet, and begs to be taken there. *Book Two Nineteen-year-old Robert Coyle lives in the British Democratic Republic – a Communist state founded after the overthrow of Nazi occupation in the “Great Patriotic War” – and has arrived at the Installation, a secret military base in Scotland, to take part in a space mission. A strange new object has been detected in the solar system, believed to be a black hole, and the volunteers are to explore it telepathically. Robert has confused memories of the time before his arrival, and the reader is left guessing the connection between Books One and Two. Perhaps the Robbie of Book One has been transported to the other world as he wished; or perhaps the Robert in Book Two is a “parallel” version of the younger Robbie in Book One. The Installation itself is like a “black hole” in the sense that people arrive from the outside, but nobody ever seems to leave - except perhaps in death. *Book Three In a present-day recognisable reality, Robbie’s parents from Book One are now pensioners. Their story alternates with that of “the kid”, a runaway 13-year-old obsessed with science fiction stories such as Doctor Who, and with the idea that “in an infinite universe everything is possible”. He meets a middle aged man (“the stranger”) who claims to be a spaceman on a mission. The stranger could be the parallel-world Robert grown older - or a terrorist engaged in identity theft. Resisting logical resolution, the novel reprises and reworks themes that have recurred throughout the course of the book, creating an aesthetic unity that is emotionally ambivalent: a juxtapostion of the comic tone of Book One with the dark pessimism of Book Two.
16695961	/m/03yncg7	Aetheric Mechanics	Warren Ellis	2008-10		 Aetheric Mechanics is set in an alternate history March 1907, where steampunk technology is advanced far beyond the technology of the modern real world, including two-way television communications, air- and spacecraft powered by reactionless drives, and large combat mecha. The British Empire (which in this setting, includes realms on other planets) is engaged in a war against Ruritania. The war is not going favorably for Britain; however, the British government is covering up just how badly the war is going, including the fact that Ruritania is preparing an invasion of Britain. Dr. Robert Watcham, a captain and doctor in the British army on the French front, returns to London at the start of the story after his tour of duty is over. His friend, roommate, and colleague, Sax Raker, is the greatest detective in London, and one of the finest minds in Britain, with Watcham having written a number of exploits about him for the popular press. At the time of Watcham's return, Raker has been commissioned by Inspector Jarratt of Scotland Yard to investigate another case. A number of observers witnessed a spectral figure, flickering in and out of existence, murdering an engineer specializing in aetheric mechanics outside of the Royal Society, with several others having gone missing. Investigating outside the Society, Raker notices traces of mud beneath the victim, then is drawn to a figure standing in the crowd. Raker reveals it to be none other than his persistent rival, Inanna Meyer, whom Watcham (in a period of narration) notes that Raker is obsessed with but is unable to face that fact. Originally surmising that Inanna was hired by the Ruritanian government to destabilize Britain's vital science and engineering community, she reveals that she is now working for the British government: Raker's brother, Dunmow, recruited her into the British Secret Service, and she was also investigating the murder. With that piece of information, Raker is able to solve the case, deducing that the mud near the victim came from the River Fleet. He therefore surmises that a villain has been kidnapping scientists in order to create some type of weapon directly beneath London, and the murder was done to silence a failed kidnapping. Raker, Watcham, and Inanna head into the River Fleet's underground channel as the Ruritanian airplanes begin a heavy fire-bombing of London in preparation for their final assault on Britain. Beneath London, they indeed find a large colony of kidnapped scientists, now escaping from the Ruritanian bombing. The "man who wasn't there" is also found, and identifies himself as Jonathan Vogel. Vogel explains that he is actually from the future, and that the reason he is fading in and out if existence is due to an accident he experienced. Vogel was a scientist working on an addition to the Large Hadron Collider which would have enabled ansible-like communication with a space probe being sent to Pluto using a quantum string. However, the "other" end of the string became loose, fixing onto 1905 - the year the special relativity was proposed by Albert Einstein, thus eliminating the theory of aether that had been held before. Vogel was sent back through time, along with his personal handheld computer - containing, among other things, the stories of Sherlock Holmes and Sexton Blake, The Prisoner of Zenda, and a number of old movies and Japanese anime. Vogel explains that, in order to 'bridge' between the two realities, the stories contained in his handheld were merged with the real-world 1905, creating the world of Aetheric Mechanics - and that neither Sax, nor Watcham, nor Inanna, nor Ruritania were real. Vogel states that the flickering is him being stranded between two worlds, and he has constructed a computer which, within a few hours, will finish its calculation to repair the damage caused to time, allowing Vogel to return home by destroying the fictional world he created. Seeing that as a chance to prevent Britain's destruction by Ruritania, Inanna and Watcham agree to let Vogel continue. They do not notice that Raker is horrified and outraged at the thought of not existing. Raker removes his pistol and shoots Vogel in the chest, killing him. He explains that he has finally realized the one thing he can't do: bear to think of a world where Inanna doesn't exist. Leaving Inanna and Watcham dumbstruck behind him, Raker races back through the tunnels below London, promising that using his intellect, he will still manage to find a way to prevent Britain from losing the war.
16697904	/m/03yngr9	The Narrows				 The novel’s non-flashback narrative arc occurs within the period of a few months. At the beginning of this time, the Powthers move in as Abbie Crunch’s boarders. The main action begins when Link “rescues” Camilla Treadway Sheffield (who gives her name as “Camilo Williams”) from the advances of Cat Jimmie, a disabled veteran. Link does not realize that Camilo is white until later in the evening. Eventually, Link and Camilo begin a clandestine affair, primarily meeting in New York, though sometimes spending the night in Abbie’s house in The Narrows. On one of these occasions, Abbie finds the two in bed together and angrily throws Camilo out of the house. Link finds out, when Bill Hod leaves an old newspaper around for him to see, that Camilo is really Camilla Treadway Sheffield; in other words, not only is she white, but she is also rich and married. Link fears that Camilo is merely repeating a pattern from the days of slavery: “I bid two hundred; look at his teeth, make it three hundred; look at his muscle, look at his back; the lady says one thousand dollars. Sold to the lady for a thousand dollars. Plantation buck. Stud.” He breaks off the relationship with Camilla, but she is convinced that he must be seeing another woman. In revenge, she screams and tears her clothing, accusing him of attempted rape when the police arrive. There is little circumstantial evidence for her accusation and, in the intervening time before the trial, Camilla begins drinking too much. One day, while driving intoxicated, she hits a child with her car (thereby destroying what credibility she might have had in court). Her mother, Mrs. Treadway, bribes Peter Bullock to keep the story out of the newspaper. However, Mrs. Treadway and Captain Sheffield still want to assure Camilla’s victory in court, so they kidnap Link and try to make him sign a confession. When he “confesses” that he and Camilla were in love, Captain Sheffield shoots and kills him. In the aftermath of Link’s murder, Mrs. Treadway and Captain Sheffield are arrested. Abbie, however, realizes that Bill Hod will not rest until Camilla has paid for her part in Link’s death. At the end of the novel, she resolves to go to the police, tell them of her suspicions, and therefore end the chain of violence. She takes J.C. Powther along with her, symbolizing her “adoption” of him and her resolve to care for him as she had failed to do for Link.
16699082	/m/04y5kr7	The Best Man	Gore Vidal			 At the Presidential primaries in the summer of 1960 in Philadelphia, an ethical man running for the Presidential nomination runs against an "unscrupulous" man. Populist southern senator Joseph Cantwell is a "bigot and a charlatan", while William Russell, who prides himself on his honesty, is the liberal candidate, "likable, forceful and humorous." Both candidates try to get the endorsement of the popular outgoing president, who enjoys not telling them which one he'll endorse.
16703737	/m/03ynqx7	The Sand Dwellers	Adam Niswander	1998	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the Superstition Mountains where the commander of a secret military installation is affected by strange forces that take over his mind.
16706128	/m/03h25hg	A Prisoner of Birth	Jeffrey Archer	2008-03-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After proposing to his childhood sweetheart Beth Wilson, Danny Cartwright takes her brother Bernie and her to celebrate at a nearby pub. In the pub, they are accosted by four people. Danny, Beth and Bernie attempt to leave the pub without getting involved in a fracas, but Spencer Craig, one of the four that confronted them, follows them out of the pub along with his friends. A fight breaks out; Bernie is stabbed and dies. Danny is blamed for his murder in a well-orchestrated plot by Spencer and his friends: a popular actor, an aristocrat, and a young estate agent. Danny is arrested and convicted. Sentenced to 22 years in Belmarsh prison, the highest security jail in South-east London, United Kingdom, he encounters two prisoners, Albert Crann, known as "Big Al," and Sir Nicholas Moncrieff. Meanwhile, outside the prison, Beth is pregnant with Danny's daughter. Sir Nicholas slowly teaches Danny to read and to write. Their friendship grows closer, and Danny decides to dress like his friend in the hope that it will help his upcoming appeal. Danny begins to gather evidence for his appeal with the help of a young lawyer, Alex Redmayne, but unable to present the new evidence, Danny's appeal is denied, and he must serve his complete sentence in Belmarsh prison. Nicholas is murdered by a fellow inmate and his death is made to be seen as a suicide but he was thought to be Danny himself. The timely intervention of Big Al leads to the subsequent escape of Danny. On the outside of the prison, Danny pretends to be Nicholas. He finds that he must sort out his friend's family affairs before pursuing his goals of clearing his name and taking revenge upon the four individuals who framed him for Bernie's murder. A lengthy legal battle between himself and Nicholas' hated uncle Hugo leaves Danny Cartwright in the possession of over 50 million dollars (20 million pounds) with which he plans to expose Spencer Craig and clear his name, so that he will be able to live with Beth and his daughter. Dann is caught out by Nick's friends and is held in custody, while his counsel begins Danny's bid for freedom the Barrister (QC), Actor and friend are all brought to justice. Alex's father (ex Barrister QC and Judge at the High Court) gains Danny's freedom and his name is cleared. Danny has another child (male) and it's called Nick in honour of his friend and Alex his Barrister is given title of Godfather for all his hard work in freeing Danny.
16709999	/m/0403whg	Great Sky River	Gregory Benford		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 After the events of Across the Sea of Suns small groups of humans have settled on other star systems. However there is a constant threat from the Mechs, a civilization of machines leftover from other civilizations and evolved to see all biological civilization as unstable and dangerous. Great Sky River tells the story of the Bishop family, who fight for their very existence on the planet Snowglade, which has been taken over by the Mechs. The Bishops are one of a number of families on Snowglade, all named for chess pieces. These "families" are more like clans or tribes. All use cybernetic implants and mechanical aids to enhance their perceptions and physical abilities. Personalities of dead members of the Family can be stored in memory tabs and accessed by plugging them into ports implanted in the neck. Bodily functions, such as the sexual drive, can be turned off to remove distractions. The Families seem to be equipped for long conflicts and periods of privation, migrating to avoid the Mechs. The novel takes place during a period when the Mechs have invaded Snowglade and are slowly altering its climate to suit themselves, drying it out. This adversely affects the humans, who otherwise seem to exist in a wary truce with the Mechs. Then the Mechs begin destroying human settlements. For some reason they are interested in Killeen Bishop, leader of the family. As the series progresses, it is revealed that the Bishops and related colonists are post-humans, or as the text describes them, a "fourth species of chimpanzee". (This may be a reference to Jared Diamond's book The Third Chimpanzee.) The adults are actually 3 meters in height and have a better skeletal structure than humans. They are the survivors of thousands of years of conflict with the Mechs on Earth, the beginnings of which were described in the previous novels. Having defeated the Mechs in the Solar System, they have traveled to near the galactic center using slower-than-light space vessels, meaning that the setting is tens of thousands of years in the future. The remainder of the series describes the Bishops' progress to the center of Mech power, and the great secret they carry, which the Mechs fear.
16710808	/m/0403x8x	Chasseur de primes	René Goscinny	1972		 Following a short introductional treaty on the general status of bounty hunters in the Old West, we get introduced to the titular character, Elliot Belt, a notorious and unscrupulous representative of his trade. His current target is Tea Spoon, the Cheyenne caretaker of the horse ranch of Bronco Fortworth, who is accused of stealing the rancher's price stallion, Lord Washmouth III; the bounty has been set at a dizzying $100,000. Not caring about whether or not Tea Spoon is innocent, Belt takes up the task of hunting him down, while Lucky Luke tries his best to stop him. Eventually, Elliot Belt himself ends up on the wrong side of the law as he nearly triggers a war with Tea Spoon's tribe to get his hands on the bounty, and now he is pushed into the role of the hunted.
16711040	/m/0403xpl	Le Grand Duc	René Goscinny	1973		 A Russian grand duke pays a diplomatic visit to the United States, but in order for an important treaty to be completed, he first wants to have a recreational trip through the West, complete with bandits and Indian attacks! Lucky Luke is assigned as a bodyguard to the duke, who is quickly targeted by all sorts of villainous persons - first and foremost a Russian spy who tries his best (or worst) to assassinate the grand duke.
16711341	/m/0403xyn	La Guérison des Dalton	René Goscinny	1975		 A famed psychologist announces that crime is a psychologically-based personal inefficiency which can be cured by therapy, and he chooses the Dalton Brothers as his test subjects. But the story experiences a major twist: not only does the experiment fail spectacularly, the doc also decides to participate in the Daltons' exploits! Once more it is up to Lucky Luke to remedy this delicate situation.
16711420	/m/047vqvw	Dread Mountain	Jennifer Rowe	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The trio is journeying to Dread Mountain when they come across a spring. Although initially distrustful of its contents, they drink the water out of thirst, noting a nearby sign saying: "Drink, gentle stranger, and welcome. All of evil will beware." and several oddly shaped rocks encircling the spring. They decided to take a rest there and Lief awakens to find one of the "rocks" unfurling. It reveals itself to be a mammalian flying creature called the Kin, which most Deltorans believe to be extinct. It explains to Lief that the water from the spring makes one dream of whomever one is thinking of during ingestion. The three head to Dread Mountain with the help of the Kin, landing there only to find the mountain thickly overgrown, deserted of its inhabitants, the Dread gnomes, and overrun by beasts. However, the companions find the entrance into the Mountain, and after avoiding the numerous traps the gnomes have set up to repel invaders, it was discovered that there is a monstrous toad named Gellick that was controlling the gnomes. The trio makes a bargain with the head of the gnomes to rid Gellick for them in return for freedom and the emerald that was studded onto Gellick's head. The fight ends with Lief tossing water from the Dreaming Spring into Gellick's mouth, as it also has a deadly, paralyzing effect on "those with evil intent". The gnomes thank Lief by making peace with their longtime prey, the Kin, and agreeing to hamper the progress of their common enemy, the Shadow Lord in finding the trio. The companions then continue their journey to the Maze of the Beast.
16711712	/m/0403y5d	A Contract with the Earth	Newt Gingrich	2007		 A Contract with the Earth's is, broadly, a manifesto that challenges those on the right to provide a strategy for repairing the planet and calls on government to embrace the concept that a healthy environment is required for a healthy democracy and economy. This approach, alternately branded mainstream and entrepreneurial environmentalism by the authors, requires that companies should lead the way in environmental issues while governments provide them with incentives to reduce their carbon footprint. With its 10 "commandments", A Contract with the Earth calls for politicians to abandon adversarial politics and for business and conservationists to form compatible partnerships. In one of the book's themes, Gingrich and Maple argue that environmental efforts shouldn't be exclusive to one political philosophy and reject the idea that free enterprise and a cleaner world are opposing forces. The book generated a storm of media attention in late 2007 and early 2008 as the U.S. presidential campaign began to heat up. Gingrich in particular made numerous media appearances arguing that the Republican Party was losing popular support because their response to environmental policy was simply, as he put it, "NO!" Maple toured the country as Gingrich's stand-in, most notably before the Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP, www.repamerica.org) during their annual meeting (at which John McCain was endorsed as the most "green" of the Republican presidential candidates). In 2008 Gingrich published another book that advocated oil drilling, Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, and many pundits called his environmental commitment into question. However, this book's fifth chapter provided an argument for environmental protection. Like many aspects of Gingrich's career, his interest in environmental issues has generated controversy. The book, whose title is similar to Gingrich's co-authored book Contract with America, criticizes the Democratic Party's legislation and litigation on environmental protection issues.
16712047	/m/0403yf0	La Ballade des Dalton	René Goscinny	1978		 The story opens in a Western saloon, where a young musician with a banjo begins to tell a tale of Lucky Luke and his sworn enemies the Dalton brothers: Joe, William, Jack and Averell. Luke has, once again, as he has done many times before, thrown the four outlaws into jail. The prison is also the abode of a guard dog named Rin Tin Can (Rantanplan in the original French language version). No sooner have the Daltons entered the jail than they are met by a lawyer named Augustus Betting. Betting informs the brothers that their Uncle Henry Dalton has died by hanging. However, over the course of his criminal career, Henry Dalton amassed quite a fortune, and has chosen to leave it all to his nephews on the condition that they kill the judge and jury who sentenced him to death. To make sure that the task is completed, Henry Dalton states in his will that his nephews must be accompanied by the only honest man that he has ever known, Lucky Luke. If the task is not successfully completed, the entire fortune will instead be given to charity. The brothers then decide to tunnel out of the jail, but end up digging into the dynamite storage building. When Averell lights a match, the building blows up. The Daltons, along with Rin Tin Can, are blown far away from the remains of the jail. Their disappearance along with Rin Tin Can leads the prison officers to believe the Daltons are now dead. When Rin Tin Can recovers from the explosion, he assumes that the prison was stolen, and upon seeing only the Dalton brothers nearby, suspects them. He then follows them on their journey to find Lucky Luke. The brothers first hold up a travelling hardware merchant. When the merchant stops at the nearest town, Lucky Luke overhears his talk, confirming that the Daltons are indeed alive. Luke heads out to find the Daltons, who offer to make a deal with him. If he refuses to help them, they will kill him. If he accepts, he gets a share of the inheritance (a ruse by the Daltons, who plan to still kill Luke if he helps them). Luke agrees to help supervise the killings and offers to help kill the judge and jury as well. However, he reveals to his horse, Jolly Jumper, and to the audience, that he was only attempting to deceive the Dalton brothers when he said that. Luke and the Daltons then cross the plains in search of the judge and jury. However, every time they find one of their intended victims, Luke manages to play some trick on the Daltons so that they believe their target has been killed. Once they believe their task is done, the Daltons and Luke head off to meet Augustus Betting. However, also waiting for them are the judge and jury they thought had been killed. The Dalton brothers are accused of attempted murder, and with Luke having witnessed their intentions, the jury that had found Henry Dalton guilty, now finds his nephews guilty as well. The Daltons are returned to the prison, along with Rin Tin Can. Henry Dalton's fortune is then given away to charity.
16713082	/m/0403z96	La Corde du pendu	René Goscinny	1981		 This volume contains a number of short stories, including the titular story: * La Corde du pendu: In a small town, a rope seller named Ropey regularly instigates the local mob into hanging every culprit for even the smallest of offenses - a method Lucky Luke decides to put to an end.
16714937	/m/0c0245w	Isle of the Dead	Jennifer Rowe	2004-05-19		 The Shadow Lord has been defeated by the power in the Belt of Deltora, and also by the magic from the Pirran Pipe, but now King Lief has realized a great danger. He finds out that he has put four evil creatures known as the Four Sisters, in Deltora, which by their poisonous songs, kills the people slowly by making harvest hard for many. Lief, Barda and Jasmine now must destroy them all, and to do that they need the help from Deltora's ancient protectors: the dragons of Deltora. Aided by a part of an ancient map of Deltora that the great explorer Doran the Dragonlover drew Lief, Barda and Jasmine find the first dragon, the topaz dragon in the Os-Mine Hills and also found the second dragon, the ruby dragon, in Dragon's Nest, and destroyed the first Sister. They then found the next map part, and traveled to Shadowgate and found the lapis lazuli dragon and the emerald dragon on the way there, and destroyed the second of the Four Sisters, but now they have arrived at Dread Mountain to get help from the fabled creatures, the Kin. By the help of the Kin they fly away in their pouches, but a great wind comes and separates them, and Lief and Barda arrive at the wrong destination in the western part of Deltora: in the Toran/amethyst territory. Here they find an old ghost ship and flowing casino known as Lady Luck. It was once owned by the criminal Laughing Jack who then he used his real name Captain James Gant. He is now evil and has been given magical powers by the Shadow Lord in exchange for him to work as one of his servants. Lief and Barda comes on board the ship as it's too dangerous to remain in the water of the sea. On their time around here, they all see strange visions created by magic, which tells and shows the past of the places they are in. They tell of Laughing Jack who makes a contract with the old lighthouse keeper, Red Han, and Red Han by that promises to pay back, but then he doesn't do that, so Jack takes his daughter and ties her to the front of the ship, but Verity, Red Han's daughter had developed magical powers since her birth and is a skilled painter, and creates a magical painting. Lief and Barda then get trapped in the gambling room with all the games, and the rule is that people must play and finish their games to get out. But Lief and Barda don't have any money, but luckily James Gant loans money to people from a case inside the room, but what Lief doesn't know is that you must pay three coins back for one coin and they gets trapped and the dead rowers, Laughing Jack's old crew which he promised gold, comes up from the floor to take Lief and Barda. They come because Lief and Barda finds the painting by Verity, and as verity means truth in Latin, they soon see that things are wrong in the painting and touch the places that aren't right, which gets warm and glows, and changes. Lief and Barda manage to flee the ship before getting killed, and they rush to the water, pass out and wake up in the place called the Dreaming Dunes. Here they meet the amethyst dragon Veritas, which has been sleeping under the sands for years, but Lief had awakened it. He unites its power and strength with its matching gem, the amethyst, and gives it its power back and makes it fresh. Then Jasmine, the Kin and some of the Torans appears. After all this, Lief, Barda and Jasmine gets some goods from Tom's shop: A bottle of fire beads, and some candy for Ava the fortune-teller, Tom's sister. They travel to Ava's house which is used as a kind of shop too, and get their fortune told: that danger is ahead, but Barda thinks she is an evil witch which uses trickery. They loan a little boat, and take it to Blood Lily Island, a scarlet isle with red flowers known as blood lilies, and fleshbanes which sucks and eats the flesh of people's legs then walking among them. They find that the diamond dragon Forta is dead, but a diamond dragon's egg is hidden under the skeleton of the fallen dragon, and helps open the egg with the diamond. They then take off to the Isle of the Dead, located next to Blood Lily Island which is located next to the Finger, a finger of rock which stretches out from the land of Deltora. Here on the isle they find that Doran the Dragonlover has been turned into the guardian of the Sister of the West on his quest to find and make the seven dragons sleep a magical sleep. With the help of Veritas they destroy the Sister, and also Doran as he wanted for years. They then buried Doran on a grave in a harsh windy rock where the Isle of the Dead can be seen from. And they find the fourth part of the four-part map, which tells that the next and last of the Four Sisters is located in the city of Del.
16722252	/m/040468b	Kingsblood Royal	Sinclair Lewis	1947	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The protagonist, Neil Kingsblood, a white middle class man, discovers that he is partly of African American descent while researching his family background. He then begins to see himself as black, despite his lack of racial features, and is forced to choose between continuing what he now sees as a hollow existence in the white community and the oppressed minority existence of the black community. After he admits his heritage to several white friends, the news quickly spreads, and he engages in a quixotic struggle against the racism prevalent in the community. The climax of the novel comes when a mob comes to evict Neil from his house in a white suburb, and he is able to stand them down.
16723048	/m/0404742	Merlin Effect	T. A. Barron	2004-09-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Kate Gordon travels to a remote lagoon in California, hoping to help her father discover a sunken ship that disappeared centuries ago. In time, she learns that the ship may have carried a mysterious drinking horn out of Arthurian legend, which possibly ended Merlin himself.. As she explores alone in her kayak, Kate encounters several pieces of the puzzle: a terrible whirlpool, a group of ever-singing whales, a seemingly ageless fish, and a prophecy that, under certain conditions, the ancient ship may rise and sail again. She plunges into an undersea world of bizarre creatures and terrifying foes. But to save the life of her father, she must find some way to regain her own free will, and to succeed where even Merlin failed.
16726224	/m/04049q0	Klingsor's Last Summer	Hermann Hesse		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is an account of the final months of the life of Klingsor, a forty-two-year-old expressionist painter. A lover of poetry, a heavy drinker and a womanizer, he spends his final summer in southern Switzerland, torn between sensuality and spirituality and troubled by feelings of impending death.
16736533	/m/0404kxl	The Nonexistent Knight	Italo Calvino	1959		 The Nonexistent Knight is set in the time of Charlemagne, and draws material from the literary cycle known as the Matter of France, referencing Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Agilulf is a righteous, perfectionist, faithful and pious knight with only one shortcoming: he doesn't exist. Inside his empty armour is an echoing voice that reverberates through the metal. Nevertheless, he serves the army of a Christian king out of "goodwill and faith in the holy cause".
16738220	/m/0404lz_	Death of a Gossip	Marion Chesney	1985	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Eight people of varied background meet in the fictional village of Lochdubh in Northern Scotland. They attend the Lochdubh School of Casting : Salmon and Trout Fishing, owned and operated by John Cartwright and his wife Heather. What should be a relaxing holiday amid glorious Highland lochs and mountains becomes a misery. One of the party, Lady Jane Withers, a society widow and notorious gossip columnist, upsets everyone with her snobbishness, sharp tongue and rudeness. Lady Jane soon learns that each of her fellow guests has a secret in their past that they would prefer to remain unknown. When her Ladyship is found dead in Keeper's Pool, no-one is surprised and everyone is relieved. Hamish Macbeth, Lochdubh's local policeman, has to search for a murderer amongst the many suspects. No-one is willing to talk. With the assistance of Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, the love of his life, Hamish solves the mystery in his usual unorthodox style. Hamish's success does not endear him to Chief Inspector Blair, a senior detective from the nearby fictional town of Strathbane.
16745293	/m/0404stk	Tom Swift and His Sky Racer	Victor Appleton	1911	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 A $10,000 prize lures Tom into competing at a local aviation meet at Eagle Park. Tom is determined to build the fastest plane around, but his plans mysteriously disappear, which means Tom must redesign his new airplane from the beginning. A side-plot through the story is Mr. Swift's failing health.
16747736	/m/0404w62	Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle	Victor Appleton	1911	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/06bm_y": "Edisonade"}	 While Tom Swift is working on his latest new invention, the electric rifle, he meets an African safari master whose stories of elephant hunting sends the group off to deepest, darkest Africa. Hunting for ivory is the least of their worries, as they find out some old friends are being held hostage by the fearsome tribes of the red pygmies. Swift builds two major inventions in this volume. The first is a replacement airship, known as The Black Hawk. This new airship is to replace The Red Cloud, which was destroyed during his adventures in Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice. This airship is of the same general construction as The Red Cloud, but is smaller and more maneuverable. Of foremost notice is Swift's invention of the electric rifle, a gun which fires bolts of electricity. The electric rifle can be calibrated to different levels of range, intensity and lethality; it can shoot through solid walls without leaving a hole, and is powerful enough to kill a rampaging whale, as in their steamer trek to Africa. With the electric rifle, Tom and friends bring down elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffalo, and save their lives several times in pitched battle with the red pygmies. It also can discharge a globe of light that was described as being able to maintain itself, like ball lightning, making hunting at night much safer in the dark of Africa. In appearance, the rifle looked very much like contemporary conventional rifles.
16749552	/m/0404xmg	Ally	Karen Traviss	2007-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The worlds orbiting Cavanagh's Star are in turmoil. Civil war on Umeh—ignited by outsiders—threatens to annihilate the teeming masses of a grossly overpopulated planet. On Bezer'ej, the handful of native aquatic creatures who survived extermination must take extraordinary and terrible steps to ensure the future of their kind . . . And the interlopers from a distant planet called Earth can only watch the chaos they helped, in part, to create—knowing their home world will be next to suffer. The day of reckoning is rapidly approaching when the powerful Eqbas will remake the Earth at the expense of its dominant species. And Shan Frankland—once a police officer, once human, now something much more—must decide where her loyalties truly lie: among the gethes, on a planet she once called home, or here, where a dying species presents her with a new and unexpected crisis. Harper Collins Books
16750133	/m/0404xzf	Body Bags			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Jenna Blake begins her freshmen year at Somerset University meeting new friends, new teachers, and a distant father she barely knew due to her parents' divorce. She lands a job at Somerset Medical Center as a medical examiner's assistant, assisting in paperwork and autopsies. When a congressional aide goes insane and drops dead, the pathology team at Somerset Medical Center discover his brain infested by insect larvae during the autopsy. As more people turn up with the same disease, including one of her teachers, Jenna Blake begins piecing clues together that even the police have been missing, which draws her dangerously close to truth behind the mysterious infections and whoever is behind it.
16750592	/m/0404yct	Tom Swift in the City of Gold	Victor Appleton	1912	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom receives a message from his missionary friend whom he saved from captivity in Africa during the adventures of the preceding volume. The message describes a wonderful underground city, filled with treasures of gold, somewhere deep in the heart of Mexico. Not one to turn down adventure, Tom accepts the challenge to find the lost city. Around this time, Andy Foger and his father had lost their fortunes and are off after Tom's trail in order to steal the treasures from him. In order to make the trip possible, Tom must remodel his previous airship- a hot air balloon with an enclosed cabin. Accompanying him on the journey is Ned Newton, Mr. Damon, and Eradicate. They set off on a tramp steamer to Mexico. On this steamer, they uncover two mysterious passengers who they confirm to be the Foger's. In Mexico, they hire a team of Mexicans who catch onto the city of gold plot and chase after it in competition with Tom as well as the Foger's. To make things worse, Tom had been warned about "Head Hunters" by his missionary friend. After finding the underground city and losing the trail off the two competing parties, Tom's gang end up accidentally sealing themselves into the city for about a week. They finally escape when their enemies release them unintentionally. The Foger's and the Mexican team show up at the entrance with the escort of the Head Hunters. By trying to get in, they let Tom and his team out. Before the others can explore the city, an underground river floods it and they make off with a huge wealth of salvaged gold.
16753145	/m/0404_tq	Tom Swift and His Air Glider	Victor Appleton	1912	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 While testing out one of his many airships, Tom needs to make emergency landing for repairs. He complains of the poor quality platinum used for his magneto, and is overheard by an escaped Russian exile. The man tells Tom of a secret platinum mine, deep in Siberia. The man also explains that his brother is still in exile, and will be more useful in locating the mine. Tom organizes an expedition to save the exile and find the platinum mine. It is to note that the Russian revolutionaries in the book are referred to as the Nihilist movement. However, given the time in which the book takes place, the author would more likely have been referring to Bolsheviks.
16759219	/m/04053ws	The Getting of Wisdom	Henry Handel Richardson	1910		 Henry Handel Richardson was the pseudonym of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, a writer who was born in 1870 to a reasonably well-off family which later fell on hard times. The author's family lived in various Victorian towns and from the age of 13 to 17 Richardson attended boarding school at the Presbyterian Ladies' College in Melbourne, Victoria. It's this experience that feeds directly into The Getting of Wisdom. Laura Tweedle Rambotham, the main character, is the eldest child of a country family. She is a clever and highly imaginative child, given to inventing romantic stories for the entertainment of her younger siblings, and an avid reader. She is also both proud and sensitive and her mother finds her difficult to handle. Her mother is the widow of a barrister who supports her family in genteel poverty on her earnings from embroidery. At the age of twelve Laura is sent off to boarding school in Melbourne. Her experiences at school shock and humiliate the unworldly Laura. The girls at the school are generally from rather wealthy families and those, like Laura, who come from less fortunate backgrounds learn very early not to divulge their circumstances for fear of ridicule. From time to time Laura lets little snippets of information about her family slip out, and she suffers for it. In fact, these seem to be the main forces controlling the action of this book: fear of the judgements of one's peers, the desire to "fit in", embarrassment about one's family—it is shameful to have a mother who works for a living—and the desire to "better" oneself by belittling others. None of the girls in the school, nor the teachers for that matter, come across as anything but self-serving and boorish. Even Laura, who starts out so young and strong and idealistic, surrenders to the role expected of her. Essentially, this is a story about the destruction of innocence. Laura undergoes a form of redemption at the end of the book, convincing herself that cheating in an exam is actually God's will, and then later deciding that while she was wrong to do so, she got away with it and therefore God had no actual hand in the matter or else he would have punished her for the sin. A neat case of self-delusion. At the end, when Laura is walking away from the school for the last time, she is overcome with a desire to run, and the last we see of her is a rapidly diminishing form disappearing through a park. She is free at last: free of the overwhelming constrictions of the school, the teachers' expectations and the other schoolgirls' callous disregard.
16759791	/m/04054j6	The Well Dressed Explorer	Thea Astley	1962	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows journalist, George Brewster, who moves from city to city, from empty love affair to empty love affair, until he dies. He is married, but faithless to his wife...and is ultimately a "pathetic figure".
16761092	/m/04055rm	She Came to Stay	Simone de Beauvoir		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in Paris on the eve of and during World War II, the novel revolves around Françoise, whose open relationship with her partner Pierre becomes strained when they form a ménage à trois with her younger friend Xaviere. The novel explores many existentialist concepts such as freedom, angst, and the other.
16763654	/m/0405bgc	The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic	Sophie Kinsella	2000	{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rebecca Bloomwood lives in a flat in fashionable Fulham, London, that is owned by her best friend Suze's wealthy, aristocratic parents. Becky works as a financial journalist for the magazine Successful Savings, a job she says that no one who works there is very excited about, and they all say that they just "fell into", while in fact being unable to get better jobs. The book emphasises that her cycle of debt is not easily broken, as, even as she is thousands of pounds in debt, Becky still receives letters offering her credit and department store cards. She often rationalises her overspending, for instance by referring to items as an 'investment' or necessary. Unfortunately for Becky, she considers things such as birthday presents for her friends as necessary. On her way to a press conference held by Brandon Communications, Becky notices a sale sign in the window of the Denny and George shop. She sees that the scarf she has long craved for is on sale at a discount of 50%. Becky sees this as a unique opportunity but realizes that she has left her Visa card at the office and asks the shop assistant to reserve the scarf until she can retrieve her credit card. The assistant reluctantly agrees to hold it until the end of the day only. Upon arriving at the press conference, she is greeted by a staff member of Brandon Communications, who mentions that there's been some surprising news in the banking field and asks Becky her opinion on the news. Becky has no idea what the woman is referring to and has to feign knowledge. After the staffer leaves, Luke Brandon, head of Brandon Communications, realizing that she was feigning knowledge of what was happening, tells her that one financial group recently bought another, and it was recently rumored that Flagstaff Life was going the same way. Halfway through the conference Becky is given another errand by her employer and realizes that she will not have time to return to the office for her credit card, but only needs twenty pounds more to buy her Denny & George scarf. She asks her friend Elly Granger if she can borrow some money, but Elly has none. Luke hears Becky ask for twenty pounds, and stops the whole Press Conference just so he can hand a twenty pound note to her, once she has made up a story of needing the money to buy a present for her aunt who is in hospital. Right after she has bought the Denny & George scarf she bumps into Luke Brandon and has to make excuses to leave, before he finds out that she's lied. Later on during the week, Becky's flatmate Suze asks her to go to a restaurant with her and her cousins, including Tarquin. There, Becky sees Luke and his parents having dinner. The mother comments on Becky's scarf, and she blabs about getting it as a bargain. Then she realizes her mistake, and abruptly tells a suspicious Luke that her aunt died. Becky is mortified. Luke runs into Becky after that and asks her to come shopping with him at Harrods. Initially she really enjoys shopping with him for luggage and goes up and down the shop wheeling around the luggage playfully, helping Luke choose the best purchase. After he reveals that the luggage is actually for his girlfriend, Sacha, Becky is very upset, telling Luke that she feels he's used her and not treated her with respect. Throughout the story, a man named Derek Smeath, who is the manager of Becky's bank, is constantly trying to get hold of her so he can set up a re-payment schedule for her overdraft. Becky always has some excuse as to why she cannot send a cheque or meet with Mr. Smeath and his assistant, Erica. The excuses range from a broken leg, a dead aunt, etc., etc., until it becomes obvious to Mr. Smeath that Becky is quite unable to repay the overdraft. He becomes quite insistent upon setting up a meeting with her. Suze and Becky happen to be flicking through a magazine and see a list of eligible millionaires. Tarquin is the fifteenth richest there, but also on the list happens to be Luke Brandon. Tarquin asks Becky out, while there Tarquin compliments Becky on her scarf and she continues the pretense that it's from her deceased aunt. She further embroiders that her aunt had set up a charity for children abroad to be given violin teachers. Tarquin writes out a cheque for £5000, which would solve Becky's financial problems, but she feels she can't possibly accept it, and painfully refuses. While Tarquin goes to the bathroom, Becky sneaks a look at his chequebook, wondering if a millionaire gets to buy a lot of lavish items. The content isn't extraordinary. Tarquin returns and Becky is sure he saw her looking at the chequebook. Becky gives up trying to date Tarquin, as he is just not her type, even if he is very rich. At this point her bank manager is trying to arrange a meeting. Unable to come up with any more excuses, Becky goes back home to hide at her parents' house, lying to them when he calls and saying he is a stalker, Becky learns that her next door neighbors made a financial decision based on advice that Becky had absentmindedly given them and stand to miss out on thousands of pounds in a windfall resulting from a bank takeover. The bank had sent an offer of a carriage clock to people who would get the windfall, if they change their account to a different plan. The bank knew of the planned takeover and upcoming windfall, while the customers do not, but if they accepted the plan for which they are offered a gift, the customers will not receive the windfall. Becky is horrified by being partly culpable for her kindly neighbors losing out, and sets out to make things right by writing an article that exposes the bank's duplicity. The article is a success, and leads to Becky appearing on a daytime television show called The Morning Coffee. Unfortunately, Becky did not know that the bank was a client of Luke Brandon's PR firm. Luke became very angry with her, and thought she wrote the article just to get back at him for treating her poorly. Becky and Luke square off during her appearance on The Morning Coffee. After arguing with Becky, Luke conceded that she was right, the bank had defrauded their customers. So Luke Brandon announces that Brandon Communications will no longer be representing that bank. Becky gets a regular slot on the show. Luke Brandon invites Becky out for a seeming business dinner at the Ritz Hotel. When Becky arrives at their meeting, business is not on the agenda and instead they eat their fill of the food, including a selection of all the puddings they liked the sound of, and then end up spending the night at the Ritz together. Becky has to miss yet another meeting arranged with her bank manager, but he writes and tells her this can be postponed, as due to her regular slot on television, her finances are now rosy. But the bank manager, Derek Smeath, will continue to keep an eye on her account.
16764797	/m/0405czj	Tom Swift in Captivity	Victor Appleton	1912	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom Swift is approached by Mr. Preston, the owner of a circus, and begins to tell the story of Jake Poddington, Mr. Preston's most skilled hunter. As it turns out, Jake went missing just after sending word to Preston that Jake was on the trail of a tribe of giants, somewhere in South Africa. That was the last Preston has heard of Jake Poddington. Preston would like Tom to use one of his airships to search for Poddington, and if possible, bring back a giant for the circus.
16766544	/m/0405ff0	Procession of the Dead	Darren Shan	2008-03	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The story begins with Capac Raimi getting off a train to begin his new life as a gangster in a city controlled by a man known simply as 'the Cardinal'. Leaving the train station, Capac hailed a taxi and headed to his uncle's home. His uncle Theo was a gangster who lost his wife during the birth of their child, who died shortly afterwards. Because of this Theo became severely depressed and his power in the city slipped. Capac joined him as his heir and learnt the tricks of the trade. Soon they got a deal that would aid them massively in the gangster business. Capac, Theo and three guards went to meet the gangster. Before anything was arranged, Theo and the guards were shot dead by gangsters and Capac was taken to the 'Party Central' to face the Cardinal, head of all gangsters and the most powerful man in the city. As Capac worked under the Cardinal, he eventually discovered his real identity, the secrets behind his past and a group of individuals known as 'the Ayuamarcans'.
16768926	/m/0405h_z	The Melting of Maggie Bean		2007-04-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Maggie Bean is the average 7th grader, having a tough year. Her dad lost his job, and her mom is stressed about money. So Maggie focuses on keeping up her straight A average and eating chocolate—lots and lots of chocolate. But it all changes when Maggie gets a chance to try out for the synchronized swim team. Becoming a Water Wing has always been Maggie's dream. She and her friend Aimee work to complete their goal and Maggie might finally stop being a social outcast. Who would not want a cute silver bathing suit, an awesome circle of friends, and the boyfriend of her dreams? But it is all up to Maggie, and who she thinks she is. She also is forced to join the "Pound Patrollers", a club of other heavy people, where she meets Arnie, another chunky boy her age who turns out to be Peter (her dream boy's) cousin. She forms a friendship with him. At school, she also gets a little closer to Peter, though not boyfriend-girlfriend close. Her sister, Summer, Aimee, and of course Maggie herself, work to help find her dad a job. She also begins to lose weight and takes nearly 20 pounds off her original 186. She eats less, gets rid of her chocolate, and practices for the Water Wings tryouts, which she eventually nails. However, cocaptains Julia and Anabel keep her off the team, causing Maggie to become depressed. Later, her gym teacher realizes this and offers Maggie a chance to join the Water Wings OR the regular swim team. She chooses the latter. Her dad also makes progress towards getting a job through Maggie's help. Maggie Bean a self-conscious 7th grader whose father has recently lost his job. Because of this, Maggie goes from 149 pounds to 186 and that's not good when you're 5' 7". Her measurements are 42-34-44. Maggie is a straight-A student. Maggie has a crush on Peter Applewood, a baseball player. Maggie dislikes Anabel Richards and Julia Swanson, the captains of the Water Wings, but she envies them for their bodies and popularity. To deal with the stress of her father losing his job Maggie does what she knows best: she eat lots of chocolate and get straight A's. Peter Applewood A popular, good looking baseball player and Maggie's crush. He's quite nice to Maggie and is her locker neighbor at school. Aimee thinks he may like Julia Swanson, though it's revealed she was actually just stalking him and only thought they were going out. Arnie Peter Applewood's cousin and a boy that Maggie met at the Pound Patrollers. Arnie is also overweight like Maggie and he plays the flute. He hopes to start a business someday. Aimee McDougall Maggie's well-intentioned, athletic best friend who encourages her to try out for the Water Wings. She's prettier and skinnier than Maggie and has a long list of admirers, but still sticks up for Maggie and helps her. "Anabel Richards and Julia Swanson" the popular queens of the seventh grade and also the cocaptains of Water Wings. Julia seems to be the more evil one, who more openly mocks Maggie and tries to get Peter, while Anabel seems a little nicer, as at the Water Wings tryouts she actually encourages Maggie and seems to express a little guilt at keeping her off the team. Summer Bean Maggie's encouraging younger sister. She's ten years old. Aunt Violetta Maggie's overweight aunt who convinces Maggie to try the Pound Patrollers to lose weight.
16770754	/m/0405kwq	Careful, He Might Hear You	Sumner Locke Elliott	1963	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Careful, He Might Hear You is based on the author's childhood. The secure world of an orphan living with his working-class aunt and uncle is changed forever with the arrival of another aunt from London who wishes to raise him as her child.
16771582	/m/0405l9t	Tom Swift and His Wizard Camera	Victor Appleton	1912	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom Swift is still working on his long-term project, a noiseless airship, when he is approached by James Period, the owner of a motion picture company. Mr. Period wants to hire Tom to travel around the world and take motion pictures of strange and exotic places. These films will be shown in theaters, hoping that the exciting content will draw crowds. At first Tom declines, but eventually his adventurous streak wins out, and Tom sets out with friends for some old-time reality motion pictures.
16775340	/m/0405ptk	The Slow Natives	Thea Astley	1965	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in sub-tropical Queensland, the novel examines the relationships between suburban Brisbanites including a priest, nuns and a couple and their teenage son.
16777586	/m/0405sjm	Owls to Athens	Harry Turtledove	2004	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Sostratos and Menedemos arrive in Athens in time for the Dionysia. Sostratos spends much of his time visiting with his old teachers. His cousin, Menedemos finds himself having a sexual encounter with an important Athenian woman.
16777639	/m/0405sm0	Mahōtsukai no Yoru				 Near the end of the Shōwa era in the late 1980s, an old mansion is rumored to be the home of a witch. After moving into the mansion, Aoko Aozaki begins to learn sorcery from a young mage, Alice Kuonji, the rumored witch of the mansion. Unexpectedly, a young boy named Sōjūrō Shizuki is drawn to the mansion and comes to reside with them as well.
16781602	/m/0405y69	Frostbite	Richelle Mead		{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The story begins with Rose and Dimitri traveling to meet the legendary guardian Arthur Schoenberg for Rose's Qualifier Exam. Once they arrive at the home of the Moroi family he protects, they discover a bloody massacre of the entire family and their guardians, including Arthur. Rose also discovers a silver stake, a magical device which Strigoi cannot touch, meaning the Strigoi must have had human assistance in their attack. The massacre puts the vampire community on high alert. To keep the students at St. Vladimir's Academy safe, a ski trip to a lodge owned by a wealthy Moroi family is required right after Christmas. During the ski trip, panic sets in when news of another Strigoi attack on a royal Moroi family spreads, where one of the dead was Mia's mother. During her stay at the lodge, Rose meets a royal Moroi named Adrian Ivashkov, who shows obvious interest in Rose, and later becomes friendly with Lissa after they both discover they are Spirit users. During Adrian's pool party, Mason, his friend Eddie, and Mia begin voicing their opinions about hunting Strigoi. After a heated argument with Dimitri, Rose tells Mason confidential information about the possible whereabouts of the Strigoi's hideouts. Using Rose's information, Mia, Mason, and Eddie sneak out of the ski lodge and travel to Spokane, Washington, to hunt down the Strigoi themselves. Rose discovers their plan, and she and Christian run out to stop them. Rose and Christian find the group and convince them to return to the lodge. However, they are ambushed by Strigoi, who hold them captive for days, threatening to kill the young novices and convince either Christian or Mia to turn into Strigoi by killing one of their friends. Rose eventually comes up with a plan to escape, and they all manage to get out of the house into the protection of the light, except Rose, who is left fighting two Strigoi. Mason's neck gets snapped, killing him instantly when he returns and attempted to help Rose. Rose then kills both of the Strigoi by beheading them in rage from Mason's death, and collapses into shock, just as Guardians arrive. Once back at St. Vladimir's, Rose receives two molnija marks for her Strigoi kills. Dimitri also tells her that he turned down Tasha's offer to become her guardian, admitting that his heart is with Rose and wiil never leave her,then he kisses her.
16782931	/m/0405zf6	Switchers	Kate Thompson	1994	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Having recently moved to Dublin, Tess finds solitude in her power to Switch (shapeshift), escaping city life in favour of the animal world. However, she is troubled by a boy named Kevin, who constantly follows her home when she gets off the school bus, and claims to need her help. He soon reveals that he is also a Switcher, and that he has joined her on several of her recent excursion as an animal. However, Kevin is almost fifteen years of age, and once a Switcher turns fifteen, they lose their powers (something of which Tess was not aware). After much prodding, Tess agrees to follow Kevin to a house owned by an elderly former Switcher named Lizzie, who reveals that enormous, ice-dwelling Arctic slugs called krools have been roused from a millennia-long slumber by recent oil drilling in the area of their hibernation. Now that they are wakeful, they have begun to lower the temperature of the Earth so as to make it more comfortable for themselves, and will not stop until they have brought the entire planet into a new Ice Age. Only Tess and Kevin have the power to stop this. In the forms of whales the two Switchers swim to the Arctic, where they rest as polar bears. During a dream, Tess suddenly realizes the meaning of Lizzie's advice about "being what isn’t". She explains to Kevin that because they have been so focussed on what exists in the here and now, they have closed their mind to alternative possibilities, such as Switching into creatures which once existed and are now extinct. Armed with this knowledge, the two transform themselves into mammoths, in which form they continue their journey. A krool sees the mammoths approaching, and resolves to consume them to appease its hunger. As its enormous body rears up to swallow them, however, Tess makes a sudden leap of imagination by Switching into a dragon. Kevin follows suit, and together they melt the krool with their fiery breath. Unfortunately, an American military helicopter sees them, and, mistaking them for UFOs, attempts to destroy them with missiles. The creatures evade these attacks, and begin to move about the Arctic, killing all the krools they can find, thus causing the snowstorms all over the world to die down. While Tess and Kevin are returning to Ireland, the war-planes pursue them once more, this time attacking with a napalm bomb. They swerve away from the explosion, Switching into birds as they do so, but Kevin's Switch comes a few seconds too late, and he is caught in the blast. Tess waits in the sky above the bomb-site until the dawn of Kevin's fifteenth birthday, but it is clear that he died in the explosion. She returns to Dublin, and speaks to Lizzie, who is not nearly as upset about Kevin's death as Tess had expected. Lizzie explains that she does not know whether there is an afterlife or not and therefore is not in a position to think about where Kevin now is. Tess returns home, and her parents are overjoyed to have her back. However, they notice that she has gone through considerable changes during her absence, and is more isolated than ever before. For the next several months, she considers what to become when she turns fifteen, and finds a downside to almost every option. Tess becomes increasingly lonely as time passes, until one night, she is visited by Kevin, now permanently in the form of a phoenix. Her friend made an immense leap of faith as he was swept up in the explosion, allowing him to survive because phoenixes by nature rise from their own ashes when killed. The book ends as Tess prepares to become a phoenix and fly with Kevin over the city.
16783203	/m/0405zlq	Banaag at Sikat	Lope K. Santos	1906	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is about two friends: Delfin and Felipe. Delfin is a socialist, while Felipe advocates the works of an anarchist. As a socialist, Delfin believes and wishes to spread the principles of socialism to the public, where the citizens could have more right in all the businesses, properties, and other national activities. Although he is poor who studies law and works as a writer for a newspaper, Delfin still strongly believes that a society inclined to the cause of the poor through peaceful means, a challenge that could be achieved through violence. On the other hand, Felipe – who advocates anarchy – believes in the forceful way of destroying the existing powers and cruelty harbored by the rich landowners. He wants to dispel the abusive members of society who rule society. Even though he is the son of a rich town leader, Felipe hates the cruel ways of his father. He would rather see a society with equal rights and equal status for all its citizens: where there is no difference between the poor and the rich classes. Due to his hatred of his life as a son of a cruel and rich landowner, Felipe left his home to live a life of poverty. He left his life of luxury in order to join the common class of society. He decided to live with Don Ramon, a godfather through the Catholic sacrament of confirmation, in Manila. Later on, Felipe also felt hatred against his godfather who was just like his father: a rich man cruel to his helpers. Felipe fell in love with Tentay, a commoner but with dignity despite of being poor. Felipe was forced by his father to return to their home in the town of Silangan, but was only forced to leave the home after teaching the farmers at household helpers about their inherent human rights. Don Ramon, Felipe’s godfather, has two siblings. Thalia was the eldest and Meni is the youngest daughter. Delfin - Felipe’s friend – fell in love with one of these two siblings, a woman named Meni. Meni became pregnant and was disowned by Don Ramon. Meni decided to live with Delfin to live as a commoner. Because of what Meni did, Don Ramon left the Philippines, together with a favored household helper named Tekong, but was murdered while in New York. Don Ramon’s body was brought back to the Philippines by Ruperto, the long lost brother of Tentay, Felipe’s lover. It was Ruperto who revealed the reason why Don Ramon was killed by an unknown assailant: he was ruthless to his household helpers. The novel ends at a scene when Felipe and Delfin decided to stay for a while at the grave of Don Ramon. They talked about their principles and social beliefs. They left the cemetery while approaching the darkness and the depth of the night.
16783984	/m/0406047	TIM Defender of the Earth	Sam Enthoven	2008-01-17	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins with the newly appointed Prime Minister, Mr Sinclair, being taken by Dr Mckienzy to a top-secret underground lab. There he views TIM (Tyrannosaur Improved Module) sleeping in a giant tank. Mckienzy explains that the military have been developing hybrids to fight their wars, but all except Tim have died. Mr Sinclair then tells her that he considers her experiment a failure, as over twelve years of work has only produced one monster, and she has to close it down, killing Tim in the process. He sees himself out, but not before telling Mckienzy that her funding will go to another project – "but it's classified." Meanwhile, a class visits the British Museum. Chris, who is desperate to fit in with the cool kids, is dismayed when he is paired with geeky Anna. He wanders off in a huff, and comes to the museum basement. There, he meets a female security guard, who shows him a strange bracelet, which glows when Chris goes near it. The guard clamps it on his wrist and tells him that he is now joined to the Defender of the Earth. Chris dismisses her as mad, and leaves to join the rest of his class, having discovered that he is unable to remove the bracelet. Dr Mckienzy floods Tim's enclosure with gas, to poison him. However, Tim breaks out, and rampages over London, scared and confused by the world that he finds himself in. As he accidentally crushes buildings and tramples streets, he blocks London Bridge which Chris and his parents are driving over. As he gets close to Tim, Chris's bracelet starts glowing, and Tim suddenly feels peaceful. He trots into the Thames and wades off. The next morning, Anna's father, Professor Mallahide, is giving a demonstration to an audience that includes the head of the army and Mr Sinclair. He reveals to them that he has created a swarm of nanobots for the military, which can apparently do 'anything'. His audience is unimpressed when he demonstrates by changing a squirrel from grey to red, but when his nanobots eat the squirrel alive on his orders, increasing the swarm, they immediately give him permission to continue his work. Once they have departed, Mallahide restores the squirrel to full health, calling the prime minister and his friends morons. Swimming in the sea, Tim is surprised when he runs into the Kraken, who is many times larger than he is. The creature informs hims that he is going to be the 'Defender of the Earth'. Tim does not really understand this, so the Kraken begins to explain. Meanwhile, Chris returns to the museum, to ask the guard that gave him the bracelet to remove it. She tells him that her sacred task was to guard it until it choose its bearer – Chris. It is a focus for the Earth's power, and if used correctly, can do great things. Chris is unimpressed and demands to know how to take it off. When he learns that the guard has no way of doing that, he stalks off. Mallahide has prepared his machines to do the unthinkable – to devour him, and make him one with the swarm. He enters a steel box, and orders them to take him apart. The nanobots obey, and begin stripping him down. At first, there is no pain, but when they have almost finished, he is struck by a hot, unbearable itching, and, just as he is almost gone, thinks of Anna and regrets his decision. Then he is completely eaten, and the experiment appears to have failed. Anna waits in her family's flat for Mallahide. He does not appear, and at 11 o'clock, his work rings to tell her that there was an accident at the lab, and her father has died. She fumes at this, because she and her father have argued about him doing an experiment like that with the nanobots for years, and he never listened. She is lying in bed, with a counselor sent over by the government sleeping on the sofa, when her father turns up. She begins to argue with him. The noise in her room wakes the counselor, who comes up the stairs. Mallahid hears her coming, and disappears into thin air.
16791995	/m/04069ck	Buckskin Brigades	L. Ron Hubbard	1937-07-30	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction"}	 The book references a journal entry from Meriwether Lewis during the Lewis & Clark Expedition. In a July 27, 1806 entry, Lewis describes how he had killed a Blackfeet Native American chief during the expedition, and in another entry in the journal he mentions a white man living with the Blackfeet tribe. Part of Hubbard's story is based on this white man, referred to in the book by his Native American name, "Yellow Hair". After the death of the Native American chief, Yellow Hair attempts to protect his adopted people from fur traders. Yellow Hair is sent to join the fur traders and learn how their future operations will affect his people. The white fur traders are portrayed as evil savages.
16792059	/m/04069fz	The Girls of Slender Means	Muriel Spark	1963	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 It is set in 'The May of Teck Club', established "for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London". It concerns the lives and loves of its desperate residents amongst the deprivations of immediate post-war Kensington between VE Day and VJ Day in 1945. The frame story, set in 1963, concerns the news that Nicholas Farringdon, an anarchist intellectual turned Jesuit, has been killed in Haiti. Journalist Jane Wright, a former inhabitant of the Club, wants to research the backstory of the priest's martyrdom. The bulk of the novella is taken up by flashbacks to 1945, concerning Farringdon and the Club. The narrative slowly builds up to the unfolding of a tragedy that killed Joanna Childe, the elocution instructor, and led to Farringdon's conversion through the evil heartlessness he perceived in Selina's behavior.
16795100	/m/0406dlb	Glamour Girl		2008-10-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Leanne has turned the tables on her career and is now managing her little sister Jodie's glamour career. Jodie will do anything to get to where she wants to be and is determined to be even more famous than Leanne ever was. So she hits all the parties with one thing in mind&nbsp;– get noticed. She decides that to top it all of she wants the perfect man&nbsp;– Ben Ridely, the owner of a leading property company. But she's too busy spending his money to realise that it's not coming in the legal way. Jodie needs to be careful because if she's not she could end up in big trouble.
16795469	/m/0406f6n	The Janissary Tree	Jason Goodwin	2006-05-16	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In June 1826, the Sultan Mahmud II disbands and slaughters the Janissaries, once elite troops of the Ottoman Empire but long an unruly element beyond the control of the Sultan or anybody else. Ten years later, the new Westernized corps which replaced the Janissaries are to perform a military exercise. Ten days before the event, four officers disappear; subsequently, one officer is found dead. The general entrusts Yashim the eunuch with solving the mystery. Meanwhile, the Sultan's newest concubine is murdered and the Sultan's mother's jewelry stolen. Yashim must simultaneously investigate three different cases. The cases bring Yashim in and out of the palace, to various embassies, a mosque, and the alleyways and streets of Istanbul. To solve the cases, Yashim employs the assistance of a Polish ambassador and the wife of a Russian ambassador. He discovers that the cases are related, and that they not only involve a plot for revenge by surviving Janissaries hidden somewhere but also the power struggle between the palace eunuchs and the military's extreme pursuit of democratization. In the end, Yashim, against all odds, succeeds in preventing several conspiracies.
16796064	/m/0406g03	An Episode of Sparrows	Rumer Godden			 The novel focuses on children in Catford Street, a working-class London street of much stone and asphalt but only few green spots. A difficult young girl named Lovejoy Mason, living with the aspiring restaurateur and his wife with whom her irresponsible mother has left her, finds a packet of cornflower seeds and plants a small garden in a wrecked churchyard, filled with rubble from the Blitz. Although other children dislike her, Tip Malone, the boss of a boys’ gang, takes an interest in Lovejoy and her small project. Ultimately, several adults become involved in the children's lives as a result of Lovejoy's garden, with significant consequences for their future.
16796971	/m/0406h5l	Blart III: The Boy Who Set Sail on a Questionable Quest	Dominic Barker	2008-04-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book starts the day after Blart II: The Boy Who Was Wanted Dead or Alive - Or Both ends, with Blart about to be murdered in his sleep by two assassins. He reacts while dreaming and manages to knock the two assassins unconscious when the emergency bell, the Gigantic Bell of Disaster, rang. It is a bell that rings only in times of national emergency. (It didn't ring in the past books because its clapper was being serviced.) Blart rushes to the throne room, along with Sir Beowulf the Knight(Beo for short), who had been newly appointed by the King of Illyria to fulfill Beo's dream of becoming a knight. There, the King and his Queen address the crowd gathered outside for the ringing of the Gigantic Bell of Disaster. Princess Lois has been kidnapped an hour ago in the night, thus starting a prophecy about Illyria's doom, aptly titled "The Chilling Prophecy of Endless Torment". This prophecy states that if a newly-wed princess goes missing at dead of night for one month, Illyria should BEWARE! Unless the husband of the bride, that is Blart, returns her before the month is up, then all of Illyria would be saved, except for her husband who must die. Obviously Blart refuses to go on a quest to fulfill that prophecy as that would result in his death. Capablanca the Greatest Sorcerer in the World is recovering from a poison-induced fever from the Guild of Assassins. Thus, he is unable to accompany Blart on this quest. Beo and Blart, then, interrogate the two assassins in Blart's bedroom, only to find that they have regained consciousness and are escaping. Beo and Blart manage to catch one, Mika, while the other, Uri escapes. Blart and Beo then drag Mika to Capablanca's room to hear his confession. Capablanca is currently being cured by Lowenthal, the Court Physician, with leeches. It turns out that there is another prophecy of doom for Styxia, claiming that the people of the Kingdom of Gregor the Grizzled would rise up in a great revolution, slaughter the royal family and declare itself a republic. Only when Gregor's son, Prince Anatoly, married the heir to the Illyrian throne, that is Princess Lois, would the royal family be saved. But Princess Lois rejected Prince Anatoly's suit. He was determined to persist until he finds out that Princess Lois was married to Blart. (in order to fulfill a prophecy in the previous book) Thus the King decided to kidnap Princess Lois and arrange for a huge bounty to be put on Blart's head for the Guild of Assassins, as well as poisoning Capablanca with a deadly toxin to prevent him from intervening. Beo was not seen to be quite a big problem as Capablanca, and was ignored, much to Beo's indignation. Capablanca, after hearing Mika's confession, lapsed back into deliriousness. Beo and Blart then informed the King of the latest news and repeated the last words that Capablanca said: soup, earwig, hamster, promise and suitors. The last two words reminded the King of a plan Capablanca set in place to deal with the prophecy. Each suitor for Princess Lois, before pressing their suit, must make a solemn vow to defend Princess Lois's marriage with all their power. As Princess Lois has rejected 75 suitors, there are 75 noblemen all over the world sworn to defend her marriage. Messengers will be sent to all of them, asking them to bring a ship of fully armed men to the Illyrian harbour to form the greatest fleet ever seen. This armada will be led by Illyria's new flagship and its captain will be Princess Lois's husband, Blart. The armada will set sail to Styxia and lay siege to the capital until the Princess is returned. Before they set off, Capablanca gives Blart the Misty Mirror of Miracle, which may sometimes clear and show the user something far away. After a brief fiasco where Blart names the new flagship "The Golden Pig", they set off to Styxia.
16797581	/m/0406j1g	Last Bus to Woodstock	Colin Dexter	1975-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Two young women are waiting for a bus to Woodstock, and they decide to hitch a lift. Later that night, one of them, Sylvia Kaye, is found murdered and apparently sexually assaulted in the car park of the Black Prince pub in Woodstock. Suspicion falls on various characters. The body is reported found by John Sanders, a young man who, it later transpires, is addicted to pornography and sometimes paid Sylvia for sex. He admits to waiting for her on the night of her murder but found her dead. It turns out he interfered with the body but did not murder her. Inspector Morse discovers the lift was offered in a red car and guesses various bits of information about the owner. His discoveries lead him to calculate the chances of finding a red car in North Oxford which meets all the criteria. There is only one, and it belongs to Bernard Crowther, a don at the university who lives on Southdown Road. Crowther admits that, although married, he is having an affair with another woman. He admits giving a lift to two women and dropping them in Woodstock while on the way to meet his mistress. Crowther's wife kills herself, mistakenly thinking that her husband is the murderer; Crowther himself dies shortly afterwards from a heart attack, thinking that she is the killer. In the end it turns out it was neither of them but rather the other girl at the bus stop, Sue Widdowson, who was Crowther’s mistress. Crowther had dropped her off and had sex with Sylvia. Widdowson became insanely jealous, crept up behind Sylvia in the car, and hit her on the back of the head with a tyre lever lying in the lot. A further complication involves Jennifer Coleby who worked with Sylvia in an insurance office. Jennifer is having an affair with her boss, Palmer, and shares a flat with Sue Widdowson. Crowther types coded messages to a girlfriend who proves to be Widdowson. He leaves the messages with Coleby at her work, and she delivers them to Widdowson. The police are sent on a merry dance chasing them.
16799556	/m/0406lbs	Revelation	C. J. Sansom	2008-04-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The plot centres around the challenges of post reformation England and draws on the prophesies of the Book of Revelation and features Archbishop Cranmer.
16802480	/m/0406pv0	How It Happened in Peach Hill		2007-03-13	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is about Annie, a teenage girl, and her mother, the amazing Madame Caterina, a self-styled clairvoyant. They move from town to town swindling people out of their money, trading on their suffering and secrets. The mother uses her daughter to follow people around posing as an idiot so she can listen in on their conversations. Caterina then uses the common gossip the daughter has procured to predict the troubles that the person (usually a woman) is suffering. When they arrive at Peach Hill in New York, Annie decides she wants to be a normal girl with a normal life. When her mother begins to flirt with a supposedly wealthy man, Annie seizes the opportunity to have an episode and magically gain intelligence. The mother and daughter spend the book trying to outthink each other to get what they want: Caterina wanting money and a steady stream of customers, Annie wanting to go to school, make friends, and impress the handsome Sammy Sloane.
16803139	/m/0406qhp	The Waltz Invention	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1938		 Act 1:In the office of the Minister of War: The minister of war receives Salvator Waltz - " a haggard inventor, a fellow author" - who declares that he controls a new machine of immense destructive power called Telemort or Telethanasia that can blow up cities, mountains, even countries. The minister dismisses him as a nut. Shortly thereafter a mountain in the vista of his windows blows up exactly at the time predicted by Waltz. He is called back and explains to the dubious minister that this was indeed the planned experiment to showcase his weapon; the minister and his advisor are not yet convinced and do not know what to do. Trance (in Russian her name is son, meaning dream), a journalist who becomes Waltz's assistant suggests to appoint a committee. Annabella appears and indicates that on the mountain lived once an old enchanter and a snow-white gazelle. Act 2: In the Council Hall of the Ministry: A committee of bumbling old generals is in session to decide what to do after more experimental explosion have made it clear that the power of the weapon is enormous. Trance suggests to buy it. Waltz is called and offered money but refuses to sell it. He declares that he has the weapon to create a new world order, war and military and politics become superfluous. Waltz shows his side as a poet when he extols the New Life where he will be the "keeper of the garden key". Annabella, the daughter of a general, objects to the "bad dreams" Waltz has, but Waltz prevails and is welcomed as the new ruler. Act 3: In the office of the Minister of War: Waltz is in charge but bored by the day-to-day drudgery of governing. There was an assassination attempt on him presumably by a foreign agent, and in response he blows up the city of Santa Morgana. He plans to move to the island of Palmera and from time to time check on the affairs of government which should be easy as no country will be able to resist him. He demands luxury and servitude. His dream is becoming a nightmare. A parade of women is shown to him to please him, one of them citing a poem he had written a long time ago, but he wants Annabella. He summons her father who, however, refuses to submit; he will not deliver his daughter to Waltz. Waltz threatens to blow up everything, but Trance now makes it clear: there is no Telemort machine. It all was the imagination of Waltz. Reality now sets in, the real interview of Waltz takes place. The minister rejects him in less than a minute, opens the window, the mountain is still there, and Waltz is taken to the madhouse.
16807486	/m/0406x3p	Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight	Victor Appleton	1912	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom has finally perfected one of his latest inventions, a noiseless airship. This is a project Tom has been working on since the last few volumes, and now that it is finished, it appears that Tom is suddenly under scrutiny by United States border agents, who are tracking smuggling operations which utilize airships to move goods out of Canada, and avoid paying duty tax. Once Tom convinces the agents that he is not involved in smuggling, he is hired to help break up the operations.
16808384	/m/0406xyz	Skinny	Ibi Kaslik	2004		 Skinny is about two sisters, 22-year old medical student Giselle and 14-year old track star Holly. Giselle suffers from anorexia possibly linked to the love-deprived relationship with her father, who has been dead for nine years and had always favoured Holly. The story is told from the perspective of both girls.
16813732	/m/040753k	Bata, Bata… Pa’no Ka Ginawa?	Lualhati Bautista	1988	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel began with an introductory chapter about the graduation day from kindergarten of Maya, Lea’s daughter. A program and a celebration were held. In the beginning, everything in Lea’s life was going smoothly – her life in connection with her children, with friends of the opposite gender, and with her volunteer work for a human rights organization. But Lea’s children were both growing-up – and Lea could see their gradual transformation. There were the changes in their ways and personalities: Maya’s curiosity was becoming more obvious every day, while Ojie was crossing the boundaries from boyhood to teenage to adulthood. A scene came when Lea’s former husband came back to persuade Ojie to go with him to the United States. Lea experienced the fear of losing both her children, when the fathers of her children decide to take them away from her embrace. She also needed to spend more time for work and with the organization she was volunteering for. In the end, both of Lea’s children decided to choose to stay with her – a decision that Lea never forced upon them. Another graduation day of students was the main event in the novel’s final chapter, where Lea was the guest-of-honor. Lea delivered a speech that discusses the topic of how life evolves, and on how time consumes itself so quickly, as fast as how human beings grow, change, progress and mature. Lea leaves a message to her audience that a graduation day is not an end because it is actually the beginning of everything else that will come in a person’s life.
16813808	/m/0407596	Celia en el mundo			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Published after Celia novelista (1934), the book picks up the story that was left off in Celia en el colegio (1932). Celia's uncle, Tío Rodrigo, had arrived at the school where Celia attended class with the nuns and had rudely taken her away, without her parents permission or consent, because he strongly believed that the nuns were a poor influence for Celia, and her mind would only be filled with uncultured foolishness rather than educational nourishment. Celia is taken to her uncle's home in Madrid, to live with Basílides, Rodrigo's servant, and Maimón, a young Moor boy; two characters who could hardly stand each other's presence. Rodrigo wants the nine-year-old girl to "see the world", but not the world as in "earth", the world as in "real life". Living with her uncle, Celia spends many days without the company of boys and girls her own age, but rather that of older people. Her uncle asks her to behave when he takes her out with his friends to restaurants or to the park, but Celia hesitates; the grown-ups she spends time with make such curious, sometimes silly, remarks that Celia feels she must have a say in their conversation. Rodrigo's rule for Celia in order for her to be a well-behaved little lady, is for her to speak only when spoken to and to remain still the rest of the time. At home Celia deals with constant arguments between her uncle and Basílides, as well as the latter's beloved pet owl, and the battling between the servant woman and Maimón. Celia, Rodrigo, Basílides and Maimón, as well as the animals, the owl Casimira and the cat Pirracas, spend their summer in a French villa. Basílides has a hard time adapting to this strange place where no one can understand her Spanish, but Celia manages to make a couple of very good friends. The young girl Paulette becomes Celia's best friend and companion during the summer, visiting each other at their houses or spending time at the beach. The two have another friend, a girl named Claude. Claude is from a poor family and has an older brother named Raymund that cannot join her during her vacation, because their family cannot afford to send them both on holiday to the beach. Celia comes up with a plan to help Claude's brother through numerous schemes to earn money from people, including the selling of Rodrigo's berries and flowers as well as telling the people she meets at the beach about the sad situation of Claude's family, especially her brother's. Celia's aunt and Rodrigo's sister, Julia, arrives just in time to help Celia's cause, but soon the aunt contributes to a lot of bothersome hassle within the French villa. When summer's over, Tío Rodrigo bids farewell to Basílides and Maimón as he sends them back to Madrid, Spain on train. Rather than return home, Celia and her uncle and invited to spend Christmas with Paulette's family in a grand castle, where Celia again stirs up plenty of trouble. When the two girls are severely punished over a series of mischief, Celia tries to escape with Paulette, who's being sent off to a school in Paris, and manages to crash the car she had stowed away into against a tree. Unconscious and believing herself dead, Celia wakes up to the voice of her own father, who's come to return her to Spain, because he wants his daughter to bloom as a Spaniard, and believes the constant changing of culture and language is too much for her young mind. The book is told in first-person from Celia's perspective, like in all previous books, following a third-person introduction from author Elena Fortún's.
16814004	/m/04075th	Tom Swift and His Giant Cannon	Victor Appleton	1913	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story opens with a discussion between Barton Swift and an old friend, Alec Peterson. Alec is trying to convince Mr. Swift to finance an expedition to locate a hidden opal mine, but Mr. Swift is reluctant. In the middle of the conversation, Tom is flying one of his airships, but gets tangled up in power lines. Mr. Peterson cuts the wires, saving Tom's life. Tom is so grateful to Mr. Peterson that Tom is willing to finance the expedition himself. In the meanwhile, the story segues to Tom's next invention, a cannon bigger than any that has been built to date. Tom hopes to sell his invention to the United States government, for use in protecting the Panama Canal, which was still under active construction at the time of the story.
16814286	/m/04075_v	Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone	Victor Appleton	1914	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Tom and his father are arguing about Tom's latest idea, a photo telephone. Mr. Swift is adamant that the idea will not work, but Tom has some ideas in mind, and refuses to back down. Tom read about a recent news event where a photograph was transmitted over telegraph lines, and there is no functional difference between the wires used for a telephone to those used in telegraphs. In the meantime, some shady occurrences are happening in the neighborhood. Tom and Ned are almost run over by a speeding motor boat, operated by a con-artist known as Shallock Peters. The feud between Mr. Peters and Tom begins when Mr. Peters refuses to acknowledge the accident. The animosity between the two only grows deeper as Mr. Peters tries to buy Tom out of some of his inventions, under the guise of making a profit. Tom refuses to allow anyone other than himself permissions to his patents, and this infuriates Mr. Peters. Later, Tom learns that his good friend, Mr. Damon, is having serious financial troubles. As the plot gets thicker and thicker, one of Tom's airships is stolen, and then Mr. Damon unexpectedly disappears. All this while Tom is desperately trying to get his latest invention working.
16815202	/m/040777w	Shame the Devil	George Pelecanos	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Two ruthless killers head into a pizza place to rob the joint while one of the men's brother waits in the car. The robbery goes wrong and the men kill the restaurant's employees. The robber in the getaway car is killed by a cop and the robbers hit a little boy in their escape. The novel jumps forward two and a half years and introduces the character of Dimitri Karras, the father of the young boy. He attends grief counseling sessions with the family members of those who were killed that day. Karras begins to get used to living again when his friend, Nick Stefanos sets him up with a job at, "The Spot" where he is bar tender. Meanwhile, the robbers are plotting revenge. It all leads up to a showdown of good versus evil.
16818634	/m/0407blr	Almost Like Being in Love				 The book centers around the relationship between two men, Travis and Craig, who meet and fall in love in 1978, during their senior year of high school. Travis is the school nerd, obsessed with musicals and constantly picked on. Craig is the school jock, lauded with the school's Victory Cup for athletic achievement. The two meet on the set of the school's production of Brigadoon, and the unlikely couple began a whirlwind romance. However, after their summer together, they part and set off to different colleges. The book moves forward 20 years later, to 1998. Travis and Craig have fallen out of touch, and they both have strong careers and potential suitors. Travis is the first to realize that his first love is his only true one, and he embarks on a cross-country journey, risks his job and enters the great unknown to try to get Craig back.
16824523	/m/0407k56	One L	Scott Turow	1977	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 One L tells author Turow's experience as a first-year Harvard Law School student.
16825737	/m/0407l98	The Laws of Our Fathers	Scott Turow	1996	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When last seen in Turow's The Burden of Proof, Sonia Klonsky was a prosecutor in Kindle County Courthouse with a failing marriage, an infant daughter, and a single mastectomy. She becomes the narrator here. Now she is a Superior Court Judge presiding over the murder trial of one Nile Eddgar, who is accused of arranging the murder of his ghetto-activist mother. The story is told in two parallel narratives, one regarding the current trial and the other taking the reader through the 1960s. Many of the minor characters in The Laws of Our Fathers also appear in Turow's other novels, which are all set in fictional, Midwestern Kindle County. es:The Laws of Our Fathers (novela)
16829053	/m/0407nsj	Personal Injuries	Scott Turow	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Personal Injuries, Turow continues to explore the justice system through Faulknerian characters such as attorney Robbie Feaver, agent Evon Miller, U.S. Attorney Stan Sennett, and Justice Brendan Tuohey. These individuals drive the mystery at the core of the book. The novel begins with Robbie Feaver seeking advice from attorney George Mason, the narrator. Feaver admits that he has been bribing several judges in the Common Law Claims Division to win favorable judgments for years. U.S. Attorney Stan Sennett has uncovered Feaver's secret and wants Feaver to strike a deal to get at the man he believes to be at the center of all the legal corruption in the metropolitan area, Brendan Tuohey, Presiding Judge of Common Law Claims and heir apparent to the Chief Justice of Kindle County Superior Court. An undercover scheme is put in motion to trap the guilty parties. The novel follows the FBI as it pursues the legal community of Kindle County in a web of tapped phones, concealed cameras, and wired spies.
16829319	/m/0407p1t	Limitations	Scott Turow	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 As Turow's other novels, it is set in fictional Kindle County in Illinois, and he revives some familiar characters, including George Mason from Personal Injuries and Rusty Sabich, the hero of his acclaimed fiction debut, Presumed Innocent. Mason is now a judge, faced with the challenge of deciding a high-profile case involving a rape case that reawakens his long-suppressed guilt over his own role in a similar incident decades before. To compound this inner struggle, Mason finds himself the object of threatening e-mails from an unknown source, all while trying to care for his cancer stricken wife.
16833103	/m/0407s8x	A Posse of Princesses	Sherwood Smith	2008-03-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Rhis, princess of a small kingdom, is invited along with all the other princesses in her part of the world to the coming of age party of the Crown Prince of Vesarja, which is the central and most important kingdom. When Iardith, the prettiest and most perfect of all the princesses, is abducted, Rhis and her friends go to the rescue. What happens to Rhis and her posse has unexpected results not only for the princesses, but for the princes who chase after them. Everyone learns a lot about friendship and hate, politics and laughter, romantic ballads and sleeping in the dirt with nothing but a sword for company. But most of all they learn about the many meanings of love.
16838230	/m/0407xfm	Here Comes Everybody	Clay Shirky	2008-02-28	{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the book, Shirky recounts how social tools such as blogging software like WordPress and Twitter, file sharing platforms like Flickr, and online collaboration platforms like Wikipedia support group conversation and group action in a way that previously could only be achieved through institutions. In the same way the printing press increased individual expression, and the telephone increased communications between individuals, Shirky argues that with the advent of online social tools, groups can form without the previous restrictions of time and cost. Shirky observes that: "[Every] institution lives in a kind of contradiction: it exists to take advantage of group effort, but some of its resources are drained away by directing that effort. Call this the institutional dilemma--because an institution expends resources to manage resources, there is a gap between what those institutions are capable of in theory and in practice, and the larger the institution, the greater those costs." Online social tools, Shirky argues, allow groups to form around activities &#39;whose costs are higher than the potential value,&#39; for institutions. Shirky further argues that the successful creation of online groups relies on successful fusion of a, &#39;plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain for the user.&#39; However, Shirky warns that this system should not be interpreted as a recipe for the successful use of social tools as the interaction between the components is too complex. Shirky also discusses the possibility of &#34;mass amateurization&#34; that the internet allows. With blogging and photo-sharing websites, anyone can publish an article or photo that they have created. This creates a mass amateurization of journalism and photography, requiring a new definition of what credentials make someone a journalist, photographer, or news reporter. This mass amateurization threatens to change the way news is spread throughout different media outlets.
16838684	/m/07s82zg	The Last Lecture	Randy Pausch	2008-04-08	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The Last Lecture fleshes out Pausch's lecture and discusses everything he wanted his children to know after his pancreatic cancer had taken his life. It includes stories of his childhood, lessons he wants his children to learn, and things he wants his children to know about him. He repeatedly stresses that one should have fun in everything one does, that one should live life to its fullest because one never knows when it might be taken. In the book, Pausch remarks that people told him he looked like he was in perfect health, even though he was dying of cancer. He discusses finding a happy medium between denial and being overwhelmed. He also states that he would rather have cancer than be hit by a bus, because if he were hit by a bus, he would not have had the time he spent with his family nor the opportunity to prepare them for his death.
16838742	/m/0407xyy	Last of the Duanes	Zane Grey	1996	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Buck Duane is the son of a famous Texas gunman, a fact which brings him almost nothing but trouble. Duane shoots a man who threatens him and flees the law. He mixes with outlaws while clinging desperately to the last of his principles. He rescues a girl named Jennie from the hands of an outlaw king, but loses her in the escape. He then wanders aimlessly, desperation growing as the worth of life slips away.
16839895	/m/0407yz1	No Second Chance	Harlan Coben	2003-04-28	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When the first bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter... Dr. Marc Seidman has been shot twice, his wife has been murdered, and his six-month-old daughter has been kidnapped. When he gets the ransom note-he knows he has only one chance to get this right. But there is nowhere he can turn and no one he can trust.
16843669	/m/04080z_	The Republic of Wine	Mo Yan	2000	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 ;1 :Ong Gou'er, 48-year-old special investigator, gets a lift with a "lady trucker" (that he is quite taken with) to the Mount Luo Coal Mine, Liquorland (a fictional Chinese province), where he has been sent to investigate claims of cannibalism: claims of baby boys prepared as gourmet dishes. He is greeted by the Mine Director and Party Secretary and immediately taken to a banquet in his honour. ;2 :Introductory letter from Li Yidou ("one-pint Li") to Mo Yan. Li is a PhD candidate in liquor studies at Brewers College in Liquorland, and aspiring author. He includes a short story (Alcohol) that he wrote after watching Red Sorghum, the film adaption of Mo Yan's novel of the same name. ;3 :Mo Yan's reply to Li Yidou. Mo informs Li that he has sent his story to the editors of Citizens' Literature. ;4 :Li Yidou's short story, Alcohol. ;1 :The Mine Director and Party Secretary treat Ding to an expansive feast, and goad him into drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Ding does not hold his alcohol well. Deputy Head Diamond Jin, a Party official with a notorious capacity for drink, also joins them. ;2 :Second letter from Li to Mo, and Li's second story, Meat Boy, which he calls "grim realism". Li is now bolder, in his requests to Mo's assistance to become a published author, comparing himself to Lu Xun and saying, "If you have to host a meal [to get it published], go ahead. If a gift is required, you have my blessing." ;3 :Mo's reply to Li, commenting on Meat Boy. ;4 :Li's short story, Meat Boy. One day two parents prepare their baby boy for a special event. The father, Jin Yuanbao, takes the boy on a journey to the Special Purchasing Section of the Culinary Academy in a village across the river. He waits with other parents and sons, perturbed by the presence of a small red demon. His son is eventually assessed by the staff there and judged to be "top grade". Jin is paid 2140 yuan. ;1 :The centrepiece of the banquet is revealed, "Stork Delivering a Son". It appears to be a whole human baby boy, sitting up in a dish, and smells delicious. Ding draws his gun and accuses his company of cannibalism. Diamond Jin insists the dish is a culinary masterpiece -- a fake child. Ding panics and fires his gun wildly, shooting the baby boy in the head and collapses, drunk. The serving girls bring him sobering-up soup and he recovers somewhat. Diamond Jin explains how the fake boy is created and convinces Ding to eat a lotus root arm. :After further drinking, Ding has an out of body experience where he witnesses the serving girls taking his comatose body to an underground hotel room. While his body is there, a "scaly-skinned demon" enters the room and strips his body of useful implements. ;2 :Third letter from Li to Mo. ;3 :Short story Child Prodigy by Li, in the style of "demonic realism" (according to Li). It follows the children who were sold at the Special Purchasing Section, and the little demon's attempt to lead them away. ;4 :Mo's reply to Li.
16845793	/m/040839q	Hello Sailor	Eric Idle	1975	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 Hello Sailor is a satirical view of British politics. Characters included in the plot include a stuffed corpse which serves the post of Foreign Secretary.
16857366	/m/0408lzy	The Time Stream	Eric Temple Bell	1946	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns time travel and links the world Eos at the beginning of the universe with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
16862416	/m/0408tx7	The Mightiest Machine	John W. Campbell	1947	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 This space opera novel concerns the harnessing of energy from the sun and encounters with aliens who turn out not to be truly alien at all. It also touches on the legends of ancient civilizations on earth, Atlantis in this case, and what may have happened to them.
16864642	/m/0408wps	Final Blackout	L. Ron Hubbard	1948	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Set in the future, the novel follows the rise of a Lieutenant (known in the book only as "The Lieutenant") as he becomes dictator of England after a world war. The Lieutenant leads a ragtag army fighting for survival in a Europe ravaged by 30 years of atomic, biological and conventional warfare. As a result of the most recent war, a form of biological warfare called soldier’s sickness has ravaged England, and America was devastated by nuclear war. At the start of the novel, a quarantine placed on England due to the soldier’s sickness prevents The Lieutenant from returning to England from his encampment in France. The Lieutenant commands the Fourth Brigade, which is composed of one hundred and sixty-eight soldiers from multiple nations, leading them throughout France in search of food, supplies, arms and ammunition. Soon, Captain Malcolm informs The Lieutenant that all field officers are being recalled to General Headquarters (G.H.Q.) with their brigades to report to General Victor, the commanding officer at G.H.Q. Upon the brigade's arrival at G.H.Q., The Lieutenant is informed by General Victor and his adjutant Colonel Smythe that he is to be reassigned and will be stripped of his command. He is confined to his quarters and is told his entire brigade will be broken apart and assimilated into another brigade. Meanwhile, in the barracks at G.H.Q., the Fourth Brigade learns of crucial news through back channels: a vaccine exists for the soldier's sickness, and General Victor’s plans for their brigade. The men decide to rebel, and break through the defenses of the barracks, free The Lieutenant and kill Captain Malcolm. The Fourth Brigade successfully escapes G.H.Q. in France and begins to make their way to London, along with other soldiers who are dissatisfied with General Victor's command. A battle ensues between General Victor's men and The Lieutenant's troops. The Lieutenant and his expanded Fourth Brigade eventually successfully take control of London and subsequently all of England and Wales. The Lieutenant's government runs smoothly for years, until the battleship U.S.S. New York arrives from the U.S. carrying two United States Senators and Captain Johnson, captain of the New York and commander of the U.S. fleet. Under threat from the U.S. battleship, The Lieutenant negotiates terms to transfer power to the Senators' associates &ndash; General Victor and Colonel Smythe. If anything happens to General Victor and Colonel Smythe, the country would be controlled by its officer corps. chaired by the Lieutenants confidant Swinburne. In addition, The Lieutenant requests that immigration of Americans to England be kept to no more than 100,000 per month, and demands that a favorable price be set for the purchase of land from their English owners. After these terms are established, The Lieutenant opens fire on General Victor and his men and a battle ensues. General Victor, Colonel Smythe and The Lieutenant and several of his men are killed. Years later The Lieutenant’s men still control England, and a flag flies honoring his memory. A memorial plaque at Byward Gate on Tower Hill reads: "When that command remains, no matter what happens to its officer, he has not failed."
16865147	/m/0408x57	The Loch	Steve Alten	2005-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 American Marine Biologist Zachary Wallace went on an expedition into the Sargasso Sea to witness giant squids. While there, the sonar picked up a reading that the military had named the Bloop. As the bloops closed in, the three passengers aboard the submarine witnessed the giant squid mercilessly get torn apart by a number of unidentified creatures. The submarine's acrylic bubble suffered severe damage as Zachary, Hank, and the pilot quickly race to the surface. Before reaching the research boat, their submarine's bubble pops, allowing the unforgiving Atlantic to flood in killing the pilot and drowning Wallace as he pushed Hank to safety. Miraculously, Wallace survived, and sadly, after returning to South Florida to take his position at Florida Atlantic University, he finds out that David blamed him for the destruction of the sub and the death of their pilot. Fired from the university, Zachary's life goes downhill, spending all of his savings on drinks and in nightclubs. Weeks after, he receives word that his biological father is on trial for murder. His father, Angus Wallace, lives in a village on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland. Zachary has not seen his father since his mother divorced him and moved back to the United States seventeen years ago. However, he agrees to go visit Angus when his half brother says he is needed in the trial. Zachary reconnects with some old friends back home and prepares to help his father. However, this is complicated by the fact that during the trial, Angus testifies that he is not guilty of the murder and that he actually witnessed the victim being attacked by the Loch Ness Monster. The British Tabloids go berserk and soon the Loch is full of boats and crews searching for Nessie. Desperate to salvage his academic reputation, Zachary must discover the truth among his friends, family, the mysterious Black Knights (a branch of the Knights Templar) and other secrets.
16865814	/m/0408x_1	Smuggler's Moon	Bruce Cook	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Sir John and Jeremy are sent to East Anglia to investigate smuggling, but when the smugglers turn to murder, Sir John takes it as a brazen assault on the law.
16880989	/m/0409cnx	The World Is Full of Married Men	Jackie Collins	1968	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in London in the swinging sixties, middle-aged advertising executive David Cooper cheats on his wife Linda. When he meets the young and beautiful Claudia Parker, David wants to marry her. However, Claudia has different ideas; she wants to be a model, an actress, and a star. When Linda finds out about the affair she ends the marriage and files for divorce. At first protesting, David finally relents and moves into an apartment with Claudia. After six months however, the pair are sick of each other and now that the divorce is finalised, Linda has started seeing Hollywood film producer Jay Grossman. Realising his mistake in letting Linda go, David fails to win her back and falls into an alcoholic stupor that renders him virtually impotent and only able to perform with his mousy spinster secretary, Miss Fields, who ultimately falls pregnant with his child.
16881714	/m/0409dcd	Murder House	Franklin W. Dixon	2008-09-30	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Mission: To finally get to the bottom of the ongoing deadly scares taking place on the set of the reality TV show Deprivation House. Location: A Huge Villa in Beverly Hills, CA, without a single luxury left inside. Potential Victims: Every contestant on the reality show is in extreme danger Suspects: It's possible one of the new contestants has a devious agenda, or else someone who's been there all along is hiding a huge secret.
16881962	/m/0409dn0	Greasy Lake & Other Stories	T. Coraghessan Boyle	1985		 T. Coraghessan Boyle combines surreal situations with regrets about lost youth and satires of contemporary politics. The writing, especially the collection's cartoonish characters, is reminiscent of the 1950s pulp fiction genre of escapist fictional adventures and dime novel detective stories. The first short story "Greasy Lake" and its tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s pop song "Spirit in the Night" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mi0g9JMo14&feature=related emphasizes the superficiality of the post Vietnam War era in the United States. The frustration of individual characters and their particular decisions make this collection especially
16888830	/m/041160d	Sister of My Heart: A Novel	Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Princess in the Palace of Snakes follows two cousins from birth until their wedding day. The sudden death of their fathers on a reckless hunt for rubies sends Anju and Sudha’s mothers into premature labor, and the two girls are born twelve hours apart. From a young age the girls become best friends, sisters, and each other’s constant companion. Anju and Sudha grow up in a household run by their three mothers: Pishi, Gouri, and Nalini. Even though Anju and Sudha call each other sisters, they are technically cousins. Pishi is the girls’ aunt. Pishi’s youngest brother, Bijoy Chatterjee, married Gouri. Anju is their daughter. So in addition to Pishi and Gouri, there is Nalini, Sudha’s mother. The family relationships may seem complicated, but they play an important role in the novel. Anju and Sudha are inseparable, but different. Beautiful and calm, Sudha is a storyteller and dreams of designing clothes and having a family. Anju has a fierce spirit and longs to study Literature in college. The girls get caught skipping school and this event, along with a health scare in the family, suddenly changes plans for college to plans of marriage. Book one ends with Anju and Sudha getting married on the same day. Sudha will move in with her husband and in-laws who live in another part of India. Anju’s husband works in the United States, and she plans to join him after getting a visa. More than marriage has driven Anju and Sudha apart. Sudha has learned a dark secret about their family’s past. Shame and guilt over keeping this secret causes Sudha to pull away from Anju. But her love for her sister does not falter, and she even refuses to elope for fear it would damage Anju’s reputation. On the night of their double wedding, Anju becomes aware of her husband’s attraction to Sudha. Anju does not blame Sudha, but it is with some relief the two young women begin to live separate lives. In The Queen of Swords Sudha quickly learns the ways of her demanding and controlling mother-in-law. After five long years, Sudha is elated to learn she is pregnant. Meanwhile, Anju’s life in the United States has not entirely turned out as she expected. Anju and Sudha exchange regular letters and short phone calls, but their old intimacy is missing. The friends discover they are pregnant at the same time and both seem finally happy. Sudha’s mother-in-law finds out that Sudha’s child is a girl. She demands Sudha abort the baby, believing the first child should be a son. Sudha has nowhere to turn, leaving her husband would be grounds to talk to each other again as true sisters. Refusing to tie her life to another man and realizing Anju needs her, Sudha and her daughter decide to go to the United States. After many years, the sisters are reunited, but future obstacles still loom.
16890015	/m/041176n	Julian: A Christmas Story	Robert Charles Wilson	2006	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Julian is told from the perspective of teenager Adam Hazzard, who lives in the rural town of Williams Ford, in the state of Athabaska (today a region in Canada, but in the story, a part of the greater United States) in 2172, at a time when technology has regressed to 19th century levels. The story deals with his relationship with his friend Julian Comstock (later in life called Julian Conqueror or Julian the Agnostic), an aristocratic boy of his age with radical beliefs about God, science, and evolution, notably his beliefs in DNA and the Moon Landings, in defiance of the omnipresent and theocratic Church of the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth, which came about as a result of the end of oil in the 21st century, a time which was later interpreted as a Biblical Tribulation. Julian is the nephew of the President, Deklan Comstock, and it is rumored that Deklan may send Julian to fight in the Labrador War against the European powers, in order to quiet dissent against him that his family does not care about the soldiers. The story centers on how Adam and Julian will avoid the coming draft and remain alive despite Julian's beliefs. Robert Charles Wilson has created a full length novel of the story of Julian, titled Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America.
16896268	/m/04t3ks4	Blood Shot	Sara Paretsky	1988	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 V.I. Warshawski isn't crazy about going back to her old South Chicago neighborhood, but she's never been a woman who breaks a promise. Returning to her old neighborhood for a school reunion, she finds herself agreeing to search for a childhood friend's missing father, a man her friend never knew and about whom her friend's dying mother will not speak. What ought to have been a routine missing-persons case rapidly turns up a homicide; and Warshawski must battle corrupt local politicians and businessmen, who do all they can to derail her investigation.
16898816	/m/0411l4c	Midnight's Choice	Kate Thompson	1998	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the form of a phoenix, Tess flies out of her room to join Kevin, who is now permanently in the shape of such a magical bird. She tries to ask Kevin what has happened to him since they last spoke, but her mind is overwhelmed by the purity and beauty of the phoenix’s nature, and she instantly loses interest in asking questions. The following night, she becomes worried about the restless behaviour of her pet rat Algernon, and her animal-mind detects a telepathic summons being sent to all the rats in the city. Algernon breaks out of his cage and escapes into the sewers, and as a rat Tess follows him to an empty house filled with thousands of his kind. There, she discovers that the source of the mysterious call is a male Switcher. The next day, Tess investigates the house, and sees a red haired boy standing in the doorway of a house across the street. Somehow sensing that he is the Switcher, she resolves to speak to him when she gets the chance. Upon reading a newspaper article, Tess discovers that the phoenix has been captured in the Phoenix Park, and is now on display in Dublin Zoo. Therefore, she sets off to visit the Switcher and ask for help in breaking her friend out of confinement. Tess finds the boy (Martin) sleeping in the darkness of his room, and tells him that she knows he is a Switcher. Martin agrees to help her, but only on the condition that she return to his house that night so that he can demonstrate his skill as a Switcher to her. When she does return, he takes her for a walk through the streets, and then demonstrates the truly awesome and horrible skill which he has learned by Switching into a vampire. Martin feeds on her blood, the shock of which stimulates Tess’ survival instincts, and she Switches into the only form in which she will be safe from Martin: a vampire. Once she is in this form, all of Tess' revulsion toward the concept of vampirism vanishes. She bemoans her hunger for blood, but Martin warns her not to kill her victim when she feeds, as doing so would arouse suspicion. After much hunting, the two come upon a young couple in a car, on whose blood they drink. For the next few days, Tess behaves scornfully toward her parents, upsetting them greatly. At last when her mother mentions the phoenix, the memory of her time as one of those glorious, pure bird dispels the lingering aspects of the vampire personality, and she apologises for her behaviour. The family visit the zoo to see the bird, and there Tess meets Lizzie, who claims to be worried about something. The old woman informs her that the phoenix is a powerful force of good, and will change many lives, but according to the nature of the world, some dark force must have come into existence to balance out the presence of the phoenix. Upon entering the building in which the bird is caged, Tess is suddenly overcome by a feeling of joy and warmth, and realises that the bird is having this effect on everyone who sees it. Outside, she and her parents enjoy a game of Frisbee, all their arguments forgotten, not even becoming upset when Tess accidentally loses the Frisbee in the bushes. However, Lizzie tells Tess that the she has "work to do", and is wasting time. Tess visits Martin again, and he explains to her the gruesome circumstances of his father's death. She is horrified, but he seems not to care. He takes her into the crypt which he plans to make his home, and she realises that he has been using the rats to excavate this crypt. She tells him that she never wants to return to being a vampire, but Martin claims that now he has bitten her, she will become one of the undead as soon as she dies. He tells her that his fifteenth birthday is the following day, and, because he intends to remain a vampire, he offers her the chance to join him willingly. She refuses, claiming that if she chooses to become an immortal phoenix, she will never succumb to death or vampirism. So as to destroy Tess' confidence, Martin sends the city's rats to kill Kevin at the zoo, but the phoenix escapes with Tess's help. He and Martin confront each other in the park, and Tess steps between them, where she is confronted with the choice between becoming like either of them. Martin uses his hypnotic powers to coerce her, and in turn Kevin uses his purifying powers to draw her toward him. Tess alternates between allegiances and the struggle within her becomes so strong that it begins to damage her mind. As she tries desperately to choose her path, Tess suddenly remembers some prior advice given by Lizzie, and realises what she is doing wrong: She has been convinced that she must choose to be either a vampire or a phoenix, when in fact, the option of simply remaining human was never closed to her. Tess chooses to retain her humanity, and this somehow transforms both Martin and Kevin back into their human forms. Martin, his defences lowered, breaks down over the loss of his father, but when Tess tries to comfort him, he realises he is vulnerable and runs off into the trees. Tess follows, but slips on the Frisbee which she lost earlier. Tess enters Martin's home in the form of a cat, and but doesn't see Martin there. She checks on Martin's mother, who Tess has realised that Martin had been feeding on for a while before she met him. However it seems that his mother is still alive, but exhausted. Tess takes Kevin back to her home, where they discuss the events of the past few days. Kevin claims that because he and Martin balanced each other out, Martin's return to humanity meant that Kevin too lost his supernatural form. Their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Algernon, who informs them that Martin has disappeared, and that his control over the rats of the city is broken. Tess and Kevin realise that Martin has chosen to remain human, and decide to help him through his newly exposed grief.
16899424	/m/0411lns	The Mislaid Charm	Alexander M. Phillips	1947	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns Henry Pickett, a traveling salesman, and his adventures after he acquires a magical tribal charm belonging to some gnomes.
16899542	/m/0411lty	Identical	Ellen Hopkins	2008-08-26	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 From the bookjacket "Kaeleigh and Raeanne are 16-year-old identical twins, the daughters of a district court judge father and politician mother running for Congress. Everything on the surface of their lives seems Norman Rockwell perfect, but underneath run deep and damaging secrets. Kaeleigh is the good girl-her father's perfect flower, something she has tried so hard to be since she was nine and he started sexually abusing her. She cuts herself and vomits after every binge, desperate to feel something normal. Raeanne uses painkillers, drugs, alcohol, and sex to numb the pain of not being Daddy's favorite. Both girls must figure out how to become whole, but how can they when their world has been torn to shreds?"
16900898	/m/0411mvq	Strange Life of Ivan Osokin	P. D. Ouspensky	1915		 When the protagonist realizes that he can recall having lived his life before, he decides to try to change it. But he discovers that because human choices tend to be mechanical, changing the outcome of one's actions is extremely difficult. He realizes that without help breaking his mechanical behavior, he may be doomed to repeat the same mistakes forever.
16905773	/m/0411r26	The World Is Full Of Divorced Women	Jackie Collins		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In New York, English journalist Cleo James finds her husband having sex with her best friend, and she knows it's time to end the relationship. In London, Muffin, the hottest nude model in town, finds her man wants more from her than she is prepared to give.
16909503	/m/0411wjc	Femmes fantastiques				 Set in the imaginary lands of New-Navarre and the Domanial Republic, Femmes fantastiques gathers the stories of some twenty women (and four or five men), relating the tumult and complexity of their intimate and social lives. The stories are bound together by a web of connections, some characters making appearances in the stories of others. Saphism being a social norm in this imaginary universe, the love these women experience is often with other women. In these imagined worlds many of our own social conventions are often presented as peculiar or are simply absent: people may forget to ring the door before entering or may be completely oblivious to the waves on the sea.
16914694	/m/04120wm	Wild Blood	Kate Thompson	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At her cousins' farm, Tess discovers that the house is infested with rats, which enrages her (easily angered) uncle Maurice, who is planning to sell the nearby wood for development. Tess' cousin Orla protests, but when she mentions 'Uncle Declan', Maurice becomes furious, and terrifies them all into silence. The next morning, Orla claims that she is going to see their uncle Declan, but Tess declines the offer to join her. Kevin (who has come to help Tess through her birthday) poses as an exterminator, and Maurice agrees to pay him £100 to get rid of the rats. Kevin sets about his work, playing a flute and pretending to lure the rats in a manner similar to that of the Pied Piper; in fact he is using his knowledge of the rats' telepathic language to send out a sort of evacuation order. Unfortunately, Maurice finds the corpse of a rat a few days later and takes this as proof that Kevin did not complete his contract. He therefore decides not to pay Kevin, and orders the youth to leave. While Maurice is showing a property developer around the woods, Tess explores the area with her cousins. She is suddenly dazzled by a flash of light, and when she recovers the three children have disappeared. Maurice and the developer arrive moments later, and they all see Kevin standing nearby, seemingly implicating him as a kidnapper. Maurice commands his wife not to call the police, after which he sets out to find the children. Tess asks her aunt Deirdre about Declan, and is shocked to learn that he is Maurice’s long-dead twin brother. When Tess finds Kevin, he is adamant that he has not been anywhere near the woods since Maurice ordered him to leave. Tess explains the situation, and he informs her of his belief that an ancient, magical presence may be abroad in the woods, one which even they, with their experience of the supernatural world, have never imagined. In the form of a rat, Tess summons the rats of the area to see if they know anything of her cousins’ disappearance. One white rat (identifying herself as "Cat Friend") transmits an image of four pairs of feet, which Tess recognises as Colm’s, Orla’s, Brian’s and, unfortunately, Kevin's. Returning to the farm, Tess again asks about Uncle Declan, and Deirdre reveals that twenty years previously, Maurice’s brother Declan disappeared near where the children went missing. The loss of his twin traumatised Maurice, and he spent days searching for Declan in the woods. Tess tracks down Cat Friend, but is surprised when the rat provides her with an image of her cousins and Kevin walking straight through the face of a crag. At Cat Friend's suggestion, Tess becomes a rat and holds onto Cat Friend's tail, allowing Cat Friend to pull her through the rock-face. Inside, Tess finds an enormous fairy sidhe, within which she finds her missing cousins along with Kevin and another boy. Orla introduces the boy as Uncle Declan, and Kevin explains to Tess that the person she saw kidnapping her cousins was in fact Declan, who used a glamour to disguise himself. Declan tells Tess that he and Maurice were both Switchers in their younger days, and that on their fifteenth birthday they agreed to become members of the Tuatha Dé Danaan so that they could retain their powers; however, at the last moment, Maurice broke his promise and remained human. Ever since then, Declan has resented his brother for abandoning him, and has harassed him in various forms. Declan goes on to explain that all Switchers are descended from the Tuatha de Danaan, which is why they possess the ability to change their forms. When Declan states that his kind are forced to return to Tír Na nÓg when their homes are destroyed, Tess realises that Maurice had intended to sell the land in the hope that Declan would be banished from his life forever, and that Declan is therefore holding Maurice's children hostage. However, Orla speaks up, claiming that her father loves Declan, and moved by her words, Declan agrees to speak to his brother. They find each other in the woods, and reveal the years-old sorrow borne by each at the loss of the other, Maurice explaining that he didn't abandon Declan, but simply hesitated when he considered what their disappearance after their transformation would do to their parents, the hesitation causing him to pause just long enough for him to miss his chance to transform. The rift between them is healed, and Declan agrees to let the children go, as long as Maurice promises not to sell the land, a condition to which Maurice happily agrees. Once the children are safely with their father, Declan offers to show Tess the possibilities which face her if she chooses to become like him. She agrees, but promises Kevin that she will return to speak to him before her time is up. With Declan, Tess discovers the true extent of her powers and her heritage: She learns how to Switch other objects, how to control the weather, and how to ride the wind, as well as dancing with her immortal ancestors on Ben Bulben. With the moment of her fifteenth birthday only a few minutes away, Tess rides the wind back to where Kevin waits, informing him of her choice to remain a fairy. However, having spent the past few hours considering everything, Kevin insists that this is the wrong choice, and that she should remain human. He reminds her of one of Declan's prior statements about fairies adapting to human perceptions, and tells her that becoming like Declan may make her nothing more than "a figment of someone else’s imagination". Furthermore, he claims that with their knowledge of the animal world, he and Tess can fight for the world's animals, and protect them from the ever-more-dangerous human race. Tess agrees, and chooses to live out a mortal life as a human. Despite Declan's original fury at this rejection, he accepts Tess' choice.
16918680	/m/04124cg	Outcast	Erin Hunter	2008-04-22	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the beginning of the book, Hollypaw, Lionpaw, and Jaypaw, apprentices in ThunderClan, resume their daily lives after the events of Dark River. Jaypaw becomes obsessed with learning about cats who live by the lake before the Clans, whom he meets in the previous book during a time-travelling experience. Lionpaw continues training with Tigerstar, a dead evil cat, in his dreams. Hollypaw realizes she wants to become leader of her Clan one day. Each finds the idea of traveling to the mountains intriguing, and when cats from a group in the mountains called the Tribe of Rushing Water ask ThunderClan for help, they get their chance. ThunderClan finds out that the Tribe is harassed by a group of rogue cats who steal the Tribe's prey. It is revealed that Stormfur and Brook Where Small Fish Swim return to ThunderClan from the Tribe in Twilight because they are banished: Stormfur leads the Tribe into battle against the rogues, but cats die because the Tribe is not used to battling other cats. Brambleclaw, Squirrelflight, Tawnypelt, Crowfeather, Stormfur, Brook, Breezepaw, Jaypaw, Hollypaw, and Lionpaw journey to the mountains to help deal with the rogues. The Clan cats attempt to reason with the rogues and mark borders. The rogues ignore the borders, forcing the Tribe to take more drastic measures. The Clan cats teach the Tribe cats to fight. The Tribe is reluctant to fight at first, but manages to defeat the invaders. Meanwhile, Jaypaw continues to try to find out about the ancient cats' prophecy that refers to himself and his littermates: "There will be three, kin of your kin, who hold the powers of the stars in their paws". He learns that the Tribe originally lives by the lake and decides to tell his brother and sister about the prophecy at the end of the book.
16930074	/m/0412hr2	Faces in the Moon	Betty Louise Yates Perez	1994	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins in present time. Lucie returns to her mothers house when Gracie has fallen ill. While her mother is in the hospital, Lucie stays at Gracies house, and her memories take her back to different parts of her childhood. We are offered a glimpse into a very bleak reality. Lucie is required, at the age of four, to make breakfast for Gracie and her current boyfriend, J.D. One morning while Gracie is sleeping off the drinking from the previous night, J.D. begins to verbally abuse Lucie. He mimics her; he tells her shes trash and so is her mother. All of this is being said while the four year old makes him breakfast. After J.D. sexually molests her, Gracie decides to take Lucie to the farm to stay with Lizzie. Unaware of the abuse, she only sees that J.D. is upset with Lucies lack of respect for two years, and most of the novel takes place during this time. It is here that Lucie hears more stories of her heritage. Arriving a child wise beyond her years to the pain of the world, Lucie's time at the farm allows her to learn how to be a child, to play, to pretend.Voices from the Gaps: Women Artists and Writers of Color, An International Website. ©2004 Regents of the University of Minnesota. http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Critique/review_fiction/faces_in_the_moon_by_betty_louise_bell.html Accessed 20 April 2008. It is Lizzie, a "full-blooded" woman, who mediates the young girl's relationship to the traditional past. Lizzie not only represents an alternative to Gracie's dissolute lifestyle, but she also helps preserve the history and meaning of the lives of the women in the family by telling and retelling stories imbued with what she thinks it means to be an Indian woman. Years later, when Gracie is hospitalized, Lucie returns to Oklahoma, and with her return come the memories of childhood.Sanchez, Greg. American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 268-269. University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
16931176	/m/0412jr5	The Babysitter	R. L. Stine	1989-07	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jenny Jeffers, a sixteen year old girl, takes a babysitting job for a child named Donny. While babysitting, she gets menacing phone calls from someone and finds a threatening note in her backpack. She soon figures out that Donny's father, Mr. Hagen, was the one making those calls after finding a stash of newspaper clippings in his closet. Apparently, Donny had a sister when he was younger, but she died in an accident when a previous babysitter wasn't paying attention to her. After Chuck, Jenny's love interest, comes over while she is babysitting, Mr. Hagen catches them kissing and becomes angry, having told Jenny never to invite over friends while she was babysitting, explaining how his daughter had died due to neglect. Mr. Hagen then offers Jenny a ride home, but she soon finds out that he is actually taking her out to a rock quarry that had been deserted for years. When they get out of the car, Mr. Hagen forces her to move to the edge of the quarry right beside a deep pit. He tries to push her, but he misses and falls to his inevitable death.
16932679	/m/0412l2t	The Unexpected Guest	Charles Osborne		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 On a foggy night, a man called Michael Starkwedder breaks down near an isolated house and, entering it, finds the body of a dead man slumped in a chair. A woman stands over the corpse, gun in hand, and confesses to the murder but it is clear that she is covering up for someone else.
16932853	/m/0412l8w	Daniel's Story	Carol Matas	1993	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Daniel barely remembers leading a normal life before the Nazis came to power in 1933. He can still picture once being happy and safe, but memories and days are fading away as he and his family face the dangers threatening Jews in Hitler's Germany the late 1930s. No longer able to practice their religion, vote, own property, or work, Daniel's family is forced from their home in Frankfurt. First, they are deported to the ghetto in Lodz,Poland, and then to Auschwitz (the Nazi extermination camp). He survives the torments of the concentration camp and is transported to Buchenwald. Daniel endures to witness the camp's liberation in 1945. Though many around him lose hope in the face of such terror, Daniel, supported by his courageous family, struggles for survival. Yet he manages to retain his life, hope and dignity through the horrors of Hitler's Final Solution.
16933300	/m/0412lnq	Spider's Web	Charles Osborne	2000	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Clarissa Hailsham-Brown, the wife of a foreign office diplomat finds herself having to deceive the police when she finds the dead body of a blackmailer in the drawing room of her house in Kent. Her teenage stepdaughter confesses to the crime and she utilises all of her wits and charm to inveigle her house guests into helping protect her, but the police eventually get at the unexpected truth.
16946317	/m/0btc9g	Which Witch?	Eva Ibbotson	1979	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins when a wizard named Arriman the Awful decides to choose a wife from his hometown of Todcaster; his ulterior motive is a prophecy that foretells that another, darker wizard will take over Arriman's burden of smighting and blighting, which bore him by now. It is proposed by his servant that the prophecy must have meant Arriman's son. Since Arriman has no son, nor even a wife, the seven witches of Todcaster are to take part in a contest that will decide whom he will marry: whichever witch performs the blackest act of magic will be his bride. However, most of the witches of Todcaster are downright revolting and nasty. The exception to this is Belladonna, who is beautiful and secretly loves Arriman, but is a white witch, unable to perform any black magic. Before the contest begins, Belladonna encounters a small orphan named Terrence Mugg and helps rescue him from the orphanage using an uncharacteristically dark spell. Believing that Terrence's pet worm Rover is her familiar, an animal that is key to her working dark magic, she and Terrence agree to work together. While the other witches' magic goes hilariously or horribly wrong when it is their turn in the competition, there is one problem Belladonna didn't count on. Madame Olympia, a truly evil enchantress joins the contest and is willing to do anything to make sure she will win the hand of Arriman. After spending time with Arriman, Terrence discovers the perfect piece of magic for Belladonna to do: raise the ghost of Sir Simon, Arriman's friend, which Arriman has been trying to do for some time. Olympia, on her day, performs a terrifying piece of magic known as the "Symphony of Death." It seems that unless Belladonna can perform her necromancy, she will certainly lose. However, the day before her turn, her familiar goes missing. Only Terrance knows, as Rover was with him at all times. Without telling Belladonna, Terrance devises a plan with Arriman's servants (who all agree that Belladonna would be the best wife for Arriman). Terrance goes into town to hire an actor to play Sir Simon. Belladonna, unaware that Rover is gone, performs as scheduled. After an amazing display, "Sir Simon" appears to everyone, alive. Arriman is overjoyed. A message saying that the actor was unable to arrive on time, however, jolts the plotters into the realization that Sir Simon has truly been resurrected. It turns out, however,it was not Belladonna who did it, but Terrence, who hid with her to hold Rover for all her performances and imitated her spell-casting. Delighted to have found his prophesied replacement, Arriman marries Belladonna and they take Terrence in as Arriman's pupil. sv:Häxtävlingen
16952261	/m/04134tn	The Spare Room	Helen Garner		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is told from the first person perspective of a woman, Helen, who lives in Melbourne near her family. A friend Nicola, who is ill with bowel cancer, comes to stay with Helen in order to pursue alternative therapy for her disease, which is considered terminal by her doctors. Helen is suspicious of the treatment and becomes more so as she sees it in action and its deletrious health effects. As the three weeks of the novel progress Helen becomes increasingly angry with Nicola for denying the seriousness of her illness, forcing those around her to do emotional work on her behalf in confronting her death, and in making light of them for doing so. At the end of the novel, Nicola returns to mainstream oncology treatment, and the doctors find that some of her symptoms are due to cancer having destroyed part of her vertabrae. The novel flashes forward to the months ahead, where Nicola returns to Sydney and eventually dies. A number of friends and family, including Helen, take turns as her caretaker. Nicola only truly embraces her death when a Buddhist friend tells her that in dying, she has something to teach them. The novel draws heavily on both events and details from Garner's life. The narrator Helen lives next door to her daughter Eva and Eva's children, as Garner does with her daughter Alice Garner and her children, and plays the ukulele as Garner does. The events in the novel are based on Garner's spending a period caring for her friend Jenya Osborne when Osborne was dying. Garner chose to use her own first name for the narrator character as she wanted to admit to the least attractive or acceptable emotions that she felt as her friend died.
16955957	/m/04138y6	Three Hundred Years Hence	Mary Griffith	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel concerns a hero who falls into a deep sleep and awakens in the Utopian states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
16958903	/m/0413dlg	After Babel	George Steiner	1975-01		 In After Babel Steiner states "To understand is to decipher. To hear significance is to translate." He challenges conventional theories of translation by maintaining that all human communication within and between languages is translation. He argues that deception was the reason for the development of different languages: it was humanity's deep desire for privacy and territory that saw the creation of thousands of languages, each designed to maintain secrecy and cultural isolation. Steiner states that the reason for the lack of new developments in translation theory is that translation is a hermeneutical task, "not a science, but an exact art." He then presents a new translation model that combines philosophical hermeneutics with existing translation studies to form a "systematic hermeneutic translation theory". The new model comprises four "movements": trust, aggression, incorporation, and retribution.
16959943	/m/0413ftl	The Finishing School	Muriel Spark	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The school is run by Rowland Mahler and his wife Nina Parker. Rowland is trying to write a novel but discovers that a new star pupil, Chris Wiley, only seventeen is also writing a novel, which eclipses Rowland's efforts. Frustrated by his own inability to make progress, and increasingly aware of Chris' prodigious talent, Rowland becomes obsessed with the boy, occasioning dry ironies about twists in human relations. Chris recognises this and keeps his novel under wraps whilst at the same time encourages his attention, increasing Rowland's frustration...
16960544	/m/0413gdp	Remember Me	Mary Higgins Clark		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After losing her young son Bobby in a tragic accident, bereaved mother Menley Nichols finds her relationship with husband Adam, a high profile criminal attorney, steadily falling apart. However, the birth of their second child, Hannah, promises to save their marriage, and the three of them start a new life in a rented house on Cape Cod. But as Menley will soon learn, things are never that simple. For at her new home, the aptly named Remember House, strange incidents force her into reliving the terrible night she lost her first son, and she soon fears for the safety of her new daughter. Meanwhile, Adam takes on a client suspected of drowning his wife, and the two scenarios soon collide and result in a dramatic final confrontation on a rainswept beach for the Nichols.
16963222	/m/0413j_v	The Suffrage of Elvira	V.S. Naipaul	1958		 The novel describes the slapstick circumstances surrounding a local election in one of the districts of Trinidad, and is a satire of the democratic process and the consequences of political change. It also delves into the multiculturalism of Trinidad, showing the effects of the election on various ethnic groups, including Muslims, Hindus, and Europeans.
16972562	/m/0413zdq	Indian Killer	Sherman Alexie	1996-09		 A serial murderer terrorizes Seattle, hunting and scalping white men. The crimes of the so-called 'Indian Killer' triggers a wave of violence and racial hatred. Seattle's Native Americans are shaken and confused. John Smith, born Indian and raised by whites, desperately yearns for his lost heritage and seeks his elusive true identity. He meets Marie, an Indian activist outraged by people like Jack Wilson, the mystery writer who passes himself as part Indian. As a bigoted radio personality incites whites to seek revenge, tensions mount and Smith fights to slake the anger that engulfs him.
16973869	/m/04140v8	On	Adam Roberts	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story follows the life of an adolescent named Tighe (pronounced, roughly, Tig-Hee). Tighe's village is built on the ledges and crags of an enormous cliff-face, called the Wall or the World-wall. Every morning, the sun rises from the bottom of the wall, and every evening it sets at the top. The first part of the novel introduces Tighe and the hardness of life in his village, the abuse Tighe receives from his family members, and the unusual (to us) state of his world. Partway through this part of the book, Tighe's parents mysteriously disappear, and his grandfather takes care of him. Tighe concludes that his parents must have fallen off the wall. Eventually Tighe himself falls off, falls over 10 miles, and lands in the midst of an army preparing for war. He survives. While recovering from his injuries, he learns the local language, and that the army will soon attack the Otre, a nearby civilisation. Tighe is drafted into the army, but the campaign goes badly, and Tighe's entire platoon is lost. Tighe himself is captured by the Otre and sold as a slave. During the battle, he sees a silvery flying object that he takes as an enemy balloon, and that calls his name. However, he is forced to run from Otre troops before he can react. The slave trader who buys Tighe takes him on a long journey across the wall, intending to sell him in a large city. Before arriving at the city, they again encounter the silvery flying object. The pilot is a man who speaks Tighe's native language, and looks very like his grandfather. He kills the slave trader and takes Tighe on board his craft. Tighe's mother is on board, but in a nonresponsive mental state. The pilot, who Tighe calls Wizard, is in control of technology that is highly advanced by our standard, almost incomprehensibly so for Tighe. He tries to explain that gravity once pointed towards the centre of the earth, but catastrophically changed due to mankind's over-dependence on Zero Point Energy as an energy source. He explains that he had implanted machinery in Tighe's and his mother's brain when they were young, but he avoids Tighe's questions about his identity, or where Tighe's father is. Tighe grows to mistrust the Wizard, and after his mother dies, he shoots the Wizard in the eye with a firearm. This only blinds and irritates the Wizard, but it gives Tighe the opportunity to escape from the Wizard's craft. The environment outside the craft is inhospitable, but Tighe is rescued by others with similar technology to the Wizard's. They question him, and release him. The last two chapters describe how Tighe makes his way slowly back in the direction of his village. The story ends with Tighe rounding a corner on a shelf, and suddenly re-encountering the Wizard, whose plans for Tighe have apparently not changed. According to the author's website, this ending received some criticism, but seemed to the author to be the only possible way the story could end.
16979393	/m/04147wd	The Torch	Jack Bechdolt	1948	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the year 3010, in the ruins of New York after an atomic disaster. Fortune is the captain of the army of the Towermen, those who live in the remaining skyscrapers and rule the city with an iron hand. He is taken captive by the people of the Island of the Statue. There, Fortune learns of a prophecy that states that the people will be free when the torch burns in the hands of the statue. Fortune is redeemed by his captors and leads them in a revolt against his former masters.
16980181	/m/041495q	St. Leon				 Set in Europe during the Protestant Reformation, St. Leon relates the travails of an impoverished French aristocrat, Count Reginald de St. Leon, who obtains the philosopher's stone and the elixir of immortality, elixir vitae, from a mysterious stranger named Francesco Zampieri. In this philosophical fable, endless riches and immortal life prove to be curses rather than gifts and transform St. Leon into an outcast. St. Leon becomes an alchemist who can create gold and who possesses immortal life. As a result, his son Charles rejects him, he is separated from his daughters, and his wife Marguerite de Damville becomes impoverished and dies. He is the target of German authorities and the Spanish Inquisition. He also encounters a Hungarian misanthrope named Bethlem Gabor. William Godwin's second Gothic novel explores the predicament of a would-be philanthropist whose attempts to benefit humanity are frustrated by superstition and ignorance. The novel explores the themes of immortality, the domestic affections, and alchemy. The novel is a radical experiment in fictional genres. Into a historical novel of vast range and violence Godwin melded elements of the domestic novel, the philosophical novel, and the scientific fantasy. More relentlessly than the earlier Caleb Williams, this novel tests Godwin's philosophical premises to destruction, showing the importance—and failure—of family affections and the disintegration of effective social responsibility.
16981101	/m/0414b32	I Heard That Song Before	Mary Higgins Clark		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The daughter of a landscaper for the wealthy Carrington family, six year old Kay Lansing sneaks away from her father's side one morning, and overhears a woman blackmailing a man for money. When she tells him that this will be the last time, he caustically responds: "I heard that song before". That same night teenager Susan Althrop, eldest son Peter Carrington‘s girlfriend, vanishes into thin air and is never seen again. Twenty-two years later, Peter, forty-two, now runs the family empire and has been widowed; his pregnant wife drowned in their swimming pool eight years ago. As fate would have it, Kay falls in love with Peter after she approaches him about hosting a literary luncheon, and the two promptly marry. However, his peculiar nocturnal habits soon set her teeth on edge, especially when he's unconsciously drawn to the place where the former Mrs. Carrington met her end...
16982109	/m/0414d9_	The Oblivion Society		2007-09-10	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Vivian Gray is stuck in a dead-end job with a horrible boss in a town full of aging seniors in Florida. She supports her unemployed brother, Bobby and his geek friend Erik in a small apartment in town. Just when it seems that she has a shot to get out of town, and start a career in modeling, the end of the world happens. Vivian and a rag-tag band of survivors must survive attacks from mutant creatures to make it to a distant sanctuary, that may or may not exist.
16982625	/m/0414fmn	The Innocent Mage	Karen Miller	2005-07-25	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Doranen have ruled Lur with magic after fleeing the evil Morg who took over their homeland. For an Olken (Lur's original inhabitants) it is unlawful to use magic. Any Olken who breaks the law will be executed. Asher has come to Lur‘s capital city to make his fortune. He begins as a worker in the stables of the Royal Palace but is soon made an assistant to the magicless Prince Gar, who is the mediator between the Olken and the Doranen. Soon, he hopes to gain enough money to buy a boat and fish with his father for the rest of his life. But unrest starts to show among the Olken. It has been prophesied that the Innocent Mage will be born, and the Circle is dedicated to preserving the magic of the Olken until the saviour arrives. The Circle have been watching Asher, and as the city streets are filled with Olken rioters, his life takes a bitter turn.
16982821	/m/0414f_t	Empress of Mijak	Karen Miller	2007-06-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 "Hekat will be slave to no man..." And thus the first Godspeaker book begins. Hekat, a girl born no better than a slave to an unloving father who beats his wife. Who rapes her on the insistence that she should birth him more sons. Who kills his own flesh and blood when it runs away, and who trades them to strange men for gold. Hekat...sold to slave trader Abajai. Once sold, she begins her journey to Abajai's homeland, Et-Raklion city in the land of Mijak. along the way, Abajai teaches her how to speak, how to dress, and how to sing and dance, and holds her away from the rest of the slaves. Her first love, he treats her as human, until she realizes too late, to him she is just a slave. A pretty slave that with some training will fetch much. Heartbroken, Hekat runs and joins Et-Raklion Warlord's army through the help of the nameless god, and pity to those who stand in her way, because Hekat will not be tamed. Hekat will be slave to no man. She is in the god's eye, precious and beautiful.
16982839	/m/0414g0p	The Homunculus	David H. Keller	1949	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns Colonel Horatio Bumble who has retired to his ancestral home with his wife, Helen and their Pekingese, Lady. The Bumbles are childless. Colonel Bumble employs the siblings Pete and Sarah at his home. The Colonel is also attempting to create a baby through parthenogenesis. As a result of his experiments, the Colonel is kidnapped and Sarah rescues him by employing supernatural means.
16984030	/m/0414hcc	Lords of Creation	Eando Binder	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Homer Ellory awakes in the year 5000 AD after sleeping for 3,000 years and discovers the earth in a state of barbarism. He befriends the people of North America who have been conquered by the Antarkans. Ellory leads a revolt and is captured by the Antarkans. Imprisoned in the Antarkan city of Lillamra and under sentence of death, the Lady Ermaine falls in love with him and enables his escape. He returns to North America where he leads a second revolt. After the surrender of Antarka, he is proclaimed the leader of the Earth's peoples.
16984909	/m/0414jcb	Exiles of Time	Nelson S. Bond	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 After a strange bloodstone amulet is found in an ancient Arabian tomb by archaeologists, the native employees of the expedition attack the others when they refuse to leave. One of the archaeologists, Lance Vidor, seeks refuge in the tomb, where he is transported to a different point in the time circle of Earth. Vidor finds others who have been summoned to the time period for the purpose of saving the Earth from an oncoming comet.
16985103	/m/0414jld	The Big Wave	Pearl S. Buck	1948	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kino lives with his family on a farm on the side of a mountain in Japan while his friend, Jiya, lives in the fishing village below. Though everyone in the area has heard of the Tsunami no one suspects that when the next one comes, it will wipe out Jiya's entire family and fishing village below the mountain. Jiya soon must leave his family behind in order to keep the fisherman traditions alive. Jiya, now orphaned, struggles to overcome his sadness is adopted into Kino's family. He and Kino live like brothers and Jiya takes on the life of a farmer. . Even when the wise Old Gentleman offers Jiya a wealthy life at his rich castle, Jiya refuses. Though Jiya is able to find happiness again in his adopted family, particularly with Kino's younger sister, Setsu, Jiya wishes to live as a fisherman again as he comes of age. When Jiya tells Kino that he wishes to marry Setsu and return to the fishing village, Kino fears that Jiya and Setsu will suffer and it is safer for them to remain on the mountain as a farmer, thinking of the potential consequences should another big wave come. However, Jiya reveals his understanding that it is in the presence of danger that one learns to be brave, and to appreciate how wonderful life can be.
16986340	/m/0414lrf	The Riven Kingdom	Karen Miller	2007-12-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 For hundreds of years, the small island kingdom of Ethrea sat in the middle of a precariously balanced treaty agreement that ensured peace. With the king on his deathbed, and no male heirs, Princess Rhian must find a way to keep the kingdom out of the hands of the evil Prolate Marlan, and prevent a war.
16987265	/m/0414mg4	The Fairy-tale Detectives	Michael Buckley	2005-10	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Eleven year old Sabrina and seven year old Daphne are orphans that go to live with their grandmother (who they thought was dead) in the town of Ferryport Landing. After the disappearance of their parents and going through numerous foster homes, they soon find out that their grandmother is a very strange person who says that the town is filled with fairy-tale beings, also known as Everafters. Daphne believes her, Sabrina does not and wants to escape but when she and Daphne try to, they are attacked by Fireflies in the woods who are controlled by Puck. Later, their grandmother and Mr. Canis get kidnapped by a Giant that is destruction in the town. Sabrina and Daphne, alone in the woods, soon meet Puck (From A Midsummer's Night Dream), and mistake him for Peter Pan, enraging him. He agrees to help them save their grandmother since she was kind to him and fed him sometimes. They also meet the Magic Mirror that is a household item in their home. While being pursued by the police(the three little pigs). Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck escape the house on a magic carpet and fly to the Ferryport Landing jail where they rescue Jack (From Jack and the Beanstalk.) Jack forms a plan to sneak into the Mayor's Mansion and try to get information about the giant. But the giant finds them instead and wrecks the rich mayor's mansion. Sabrina (disguised as Mama Bear from Goldielocks) and Daphne (disguised as the Tinman) escape and find out that Jack tricked them. He was the one who set loose the giant hoping that by killing it in front of a crowd of news reporters he would come back into immense fame. They also discover he is part of a shady organization known as The Scarlet Hand. But just as things are looking their bleakest, he is stopped by Mr. Canis, who transforms into the Big Bad Wolf (trapped in Mr. Canis's body), and the giant is sent back to his kingdom.
16987645	/m/0414mpw	Po-on	F. Sionil José		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The events in Poon A Novel happened from 1880 to 1889, when an Ilocano family abandoned their beloved barrio in order to overcome the challenges to their survival in southern Pangasinan in the Philippines, and also to flee from the cruelty they received from the Spaniards. One of the principal characters of the novel is Istak, a Filipino from the Ilocano stock who was fluent in Spanish and Latin, a talent he inherited from the teachings of an old parish priest in Cabugao. He was an acolyte aspiring to become a priest. He was also knowledgeable in the arts of traditional medicine. The only hindrance to his goal of becoming a full-pledged priest was his racial origins. He lived in a period in Philippine history when it a possible Filipino uprising against the Spanish government was about to erupt, a time after the execution of three mestizos, namely Mariano Gómez, José Apolonio Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora (or the Gomburza, an acronym for the three) at Bagumbayan (now known as Rizal Park) in February, 1872. There were signs that a revolution will happen, despite of the lack of unity among the inhabitants of the Philippines islands at the time. Another approaching occurrence was the help the Filipinos would be receiving from the Americans in finally removing the governing Spaniards from the archipelago after three hundred yearsThe novel recreates the societal struggles in which the characters of Po-on were situated in, which includes the protagonist Istak 's personal search for life's meaning and for the true face of his beliefs at principles. Throughout this personal journey, he was accompanied by a dignity that is his aloneIstak was assigned the task of delivering a message to General Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine revolutionaries, but died at the hands of American soldiers, on his way to delivering the message.
16987881	/m/0414mxp	Mauprat	George Sand	1837	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel's plot has been called a plot of female socialization, in which the hero is taught by the heroine how to live peacefully in society. Mauprat resembles the fairy tale "Beauty and the beast". As this would suggest, the novel is a romance. However, Sand resists the immediate happy ending of marriage between the two main characters in favor of a more gradual story of education, including a reappraisal of the passive female role in courtship and marriage. Sand also calls into question Rousseau's ideal version of the female education as described in his novel Émile, namely, training women for domesticity and the home. The novel, set before the French Revolution, depicts the coming of age of a nobleman named Bernard Mauprat. The story is narrated by the old Bernard in his country home many years later, as told to a nameless young male visitor. Bernard recounts how, raised by a violent gang of his feudal kinsmen after the death of his mother, he becomes a brutalized "enfant sauvage". When his cousin Edmée is held captive by Bernard's "family", he helps her escape, but elicits a promise of marriage from her by threatening rape. Thus begins the long courtship of Bernard and Edmée. The novel ends with a trial similar to the one in Stendhal's The Red and the Black. During the period Sand wrote the novel, she was gradually becoming more interested in the problem of political equality in society and in the views of socialist thinkers such as Pierre Leroux. Mauprat depicts a new type of literary figure, the peasant visionary Patience. Part of the novel takes place during the American Revolutionary War.
16988081	/m/0414n3m	The Eternal Conflict	David H. Keller	1949	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns two conflicts. One is between the sexes, the other in a woman's mind.
16992679	/m/0414vkr	Nomad	George O. Smith	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns Guy Maynard, of Earth, who is rescued from his Martian captors by Thomakein of the planet Eterne, an invisible wandering planet. After spending time on Eterne, Maynard returns to Earth where he uses the knowledge he gained to launch an invasion against the newly discovered planet Mephisto. He returns to Earth a hero, but is later court martialed and driven from the Galactic Patrol. He seeks refuge on Eterne by impersonating their ruler. When he is discovered, he flees to Mephisto and there raises an army enabling him to conquer the Solar system becoming its emperor.
16992827	/m/0414vpl	The Lady Decides	David H. Keller	1950	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns a man with a dream and an allegorical quest through Spain.
16993828	/m/0414wv5	The Unusual Suspects	Michael Buckley	2005-10	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sabrina and Daphne are off to school, but when Sabrina's teacher, Mr. Grumpner, is murdered, with a scarlet handprint left on the chalkboard (the sign of the Scarlet Hand), they realize that something is very odd. With the help of Puck and Wendell, the son of the Pied Piper of Hamelin; who is also the principal of their school, they search the school's halls for clues, finally coming upon a shocking secret and a deadly encounter with the children of some very famous fairy-tale characters and the monstrous Rumpelstiltskin, who has been discovered by one of their ancestors to have the ability to act like a bomb. Sabrina and Daphne discover a cave under school using matches that Mayor Charming gave them to take them wherever they needed, where she finds her family and friends trapped in a web where they would be soon suffocated to death when Rumpelstiltskin would have the power (which he gets from strong feelings such as anger) to blow up the entire cave so they could escape from a magical barrier trapping the Everafters in the city, but which isn't as strong deep underground. Sabrina, while defeating Rumpelstiltskin and his supporters, discovers that the plotters are part of a secret Everafter organization called the Scarlet Hand, who had killed Grumpner and kidnapped her parents. Sabrina, after saving the trapped people, goes to a ruins of a hospital using the matches and comes face to face with the kidnapper of her parents who is a mentally imbalanced girl, although the kidnapper's face was hidden under a hood. Book 2 ends here, but the scene continues on in Book 3.
16995033	/m/0414y3x	The Problem Child	Michael Buckley	2006-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sabrina, the middle child, confronted by a mentally challenged girl who has kidnapped her parents (who may be the person mentioned in the title) and a vicious monster, continues to fight when Puck comes to save her (once again, he complains). Just then, the portal which Sabrina used to get to her parents burns out, and Sabrina and Puck are trapped in an old asylum. Puck and Sabrina escape, but Sabrina is injured by the monster. After her injuries heal at the hospital, Sabrina goes back with her family to Relda's house where they hold a celebration to welcome back Sabrina. That night, after investigating through many journals, the criminal becomes clear: Little Red Riding Hood. The following night, wanting to know about Red Riding Hood, Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck go to the ruins of the asylum where she had met the Everafter child. They search for medical files in hopes of finding a clue, but a mysterious man discovers them. He seems to know Sabrina and Daphne's name, but thinking that he is part of the Scarlet Hand, the three escape back to her grandmother's house. In the morning, Sabrina, Daphne, Relda and Puck travel to the newly built school for the opening ceremony, where Mayor Prince Charming gives a speech. However, he is distracted when the Queen of Hearts announces that she dislikes Charming's ideas and she will seek election as mayor. Suddenly, just as the chaos began, the mysterious man Sabrina had met at the ruin pops out of nowhere. He turns out to be Jacob Alexander Grimm, Relda's son and Henry's brother who gets Sabrina addicted to magic and later gets her into trouble with Baba Yaga, an ancient witch who is rumored to be a cannibal. That night, while everyone was asleep, Sabrina sneaks into the room where Jacob was sleeping, to take a look at the files in search for clues. She accidentally wakes Jacob, but instead of sending her back to bed, he explains about a few things about Red Riding Hood. The kidnapper had fallen in despair after she had lost many people that she had cared for, and thinking that her dead kitten was the ferocious monster called the Jabberwocky, she went on kidnapping other people she thought she had lost. That was how the sisters Grimm's parents were kidnapped, with Little Red Riding Hood thinking that they were her dead parents. Red Riding Hood seems evil only because of the Jabberwocky; once the Jabberwocky is killed, she is not to be feared. But Sabrina discovers that the only thing that can kill the Jabberwocky is the Vorpal blade, which was divided into three pieces and distributed to separate places in Ferryport Landing. They already have the first piece. Sabrina, Daphne, and Jacob must find the remaining two. Uncle Jake wants to take Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck out for a drive. Granny sends Sabrina to get Puck, where she finds him pouting because Granny gives more attention to Uncle Jake then him. Sabrina tells him that the whole family cares about him, he believes what she's trying to say is that she cares about him and he plants a kiss on her. Sabrina freaks, punching Puck in the stomach. It is implied later in "The Problem Child" and "Once Upon A Crime" that she uncovers some of her true feelings for him, and regrets slugging him after the kiss. Later during their drive, the Jabberwocky attacks and rips Pucks wings off. After two narrow escapes, they get hold of the pieces from Baba Yaga and the Little Mermaid, who is hugely fat, turning to food for comfort, after being left by an unknown "topsider". Sabrina tries connecting the pieces together, and finds a puzzle on the blade, which was supposed to show who the Blue Fairy was disguised as so as she could make the sword into one whole object. The Blue Fairy turns out to be a waitress at a restaurant. After the sword is mended, Sabrina and Daphne fight the Jabberwocky and kill it. Unfortunately, Uncle Jake is so addicted to magic that he attacks the Blue Fairy with the Vorpal Blade and forces her to grant him a wish. He wishes for all her power, and the fairy is forced to give it up. He uses the fairy's powers to take away the Everafters' immortal powers, which begins to kill them. He gives everyone else a wish, and Sabrina wishes that "Uncle Jake, you're smart, you've got a great family, and you're a Grimm. I wish that deep down you had always known how much power that gave you." This alters the past and changes where Uncle Jake attacks the Blue Fairy to Uncle Jake being happy with how it turned out and hugs Granny. Sabrina and Daphne then get their parents back. However, they could not be woken, as far as they know of, and Puck is getting weaker. Book 4 continues with saving Puck.
16995594	/m/0414yqx	The Blind Spot	Homer Eon Flint	1951	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel concerns an interdimensional doorway between worlds.
16995823	/m/0414ywq	American Beauty	Allen Steele	2006-09-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is graduation time for the A-List crew. That means lavish yacht parties, designer caps and gowns, and saying bye-bye to high school for good. Despite the festivities, Anna is not in a partying mood. Ben has been acting distant and she is worried. Maybe her father's hot tattooed intern, Caine Manning, will help cheer Anna up! Ever since her illicit kiss with Parker, Sam has been Eduardo-less and heartbroken. But hopefully Sam will use her brains and considerable means to get creative about winning Eduardo back. And infamous Cammie? She could not care less about graduation, not when she is so close to unraveling the mystery of her mother's death. She will stop at nothing to find out the truth. The book starts out with Anna driving to Sam's pre-graduation party on her father's new yacht. While talking to Cyn, her best friend from New York, she stops to let a couple cross the street, and a woman hits the back of her car.
16995937	/m/0414z1k	Where Are You Now?	Mary Higgins Clark		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ten years ago, 21-year-old Charles MacKenzie, Jr. ("Mack") walked out of his apartment without a word and has never been seen again. He does, however, call his mother annually on Mother's Day to assure her of his health and safety, then hangs up, leaving her frantic questions unanswered. Even his father's death in the 9/11 attacks didn't bring him home or break the pattern of his calls. Now, Carolyn MacKenzie has decided the only way to move on with her own life is to find closure and bring an end to the mystery of her brother's disappearance. This year when Mack makes his regular Mother's Day call, she declares her intention to track him down, no matter what. The following day, Monsignor Devon Mackenzie receives a scrap note reading: Uncle Devon, tell Carolyn she must not look for me. Despite the disapproval and angry reactions of loved ones, Carolyn persists in a search that plunges her into a world of unexpected danger and winding questions. What secret does the superintendents of Mack's former apartment have to hide? What do his old roommates know about his disappearance? Is he somehow connected to the girls who have themselves gone missing in the past ten years? Could he possibly be responsible for the brutal murder of his drama teacher and for what purpose? Carolyn's persistence for the truth leads her into a deadly confrontation with someone close to her whose secret they cannot allow her to reveal.
16997594	/m/0414_t0	I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon	Federico Fellini	2003-12-07		 Introduced by novelist Italo Calvino to Federico Fellini (1920–1993) on the set of Fellini's And the Ship Sails On in 1983, Pettigrew shot in-depth interviews with Fellini, material later used in his documentary. Returning to their original q&a, he extracted a compilation of Fellini's responses. Arranged alphabetically according to subject, the transcripts focus on the maestro's late philosophical views leavened with quips and one-liners, the enigma of memory and inspiration, style and aesthetics that were conducted expressly as a filmed testament in collaboration with Pettigrew. Sepia scrapbook photos appear alongside b&w stills from 8½, La Dolce Vita, La Strada, I vitelloni, and others while color images are selected from classics such as Amarcord, Satyricon, And the Ship Sails On, Intervista, City of Women, Roma, and Juliet of the Spirits. Production photos capture Fellini on Cinecittà sets, directing and gesticulating.
17005035	/m/04159_b	Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil	David Goodstein	2004-02-02	{"/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 The book gives the scientific view that the age of petroleum is coming to an end, and the future is dangerously insecure. Oil demand will shortly exceed the production capacity of even the largest suppliers. The book begins by citing the work of M. King Hubbert. Then Goodstein briefly mentions thermodynamics, electromagnetism and geology. He then describes the alternative energy technologies. He opines that the alternative energy technologies will not be effective because of the time it will take to improve them for continuing the present day industry. According to the book, the age of oil is ending. Oil supply will shortly begin to decline, precipitating a global crisis. Even if coal and natural gas are substituted for some of the oil, human civilization will start to run out of fossil fuels by the end of the 21st century. He concludes with the warning: "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels".
17005346	/m/0415blz	Mass Effect: Ascension	Drew Karpyshyn	2008-07-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel takes place shortly after the attack of the Reaper Sovereign and his allies Saren and the Geth. The Illusive Man, the leader of the rogue, xenophobic organization called Cerberus, watches on as he plots Cerberus' next move. One of his long-serving subordinates, Paul Grayson, is a troubled drug addict who was assigned with raising an infant girl with huge biotic potential, Gillian. The autistic girl is now a member of the Ascension Project, initiative aimed at developing biotic abilities in humans. Grayson, despite having much affection for his adopted daughter, is now reduced to a link man between Cerberus and their man inside Ascension Project, Dr. Jiro. Their mission is to administer Cerberus' biotic-enhancing drugs to Gillian and evaluate their efficacy. Meanwhile, another Cerberus operative Pel is on a mission in distant system Omega, nominal capital of the rogue Terminus Systems, to acquire the current position and access codes to the Quarian Migrant Fleet and contacts a banished Quarian named Golo. As it turns out, Golo can't provide necessary data but assures Pel he knows how to obtain it. He lures a Quarian scout team into an ambush, and Pel manages to take a prisoner. However, during the ambush, the Quarian is infected with a virus and becomes delirious, making it impossible to interrogate him. Back at Ascension Project, Gillian, who had been administered a new drug by Jiro, has a biotic outburst after being mocked by another student. She is kept in hospital for observation, which makes it difficult for Jiro to apply another dose of the new drug, as instructed by Cerberus. In a desperate move he takes her for a walk to station's Atrium where he injects the medication, which unexpectedly induces a seizure. Meanwhile, Kahlee Sanders of Ascension Project staff and security chief Hendel Mitra, who is also a biotic, have put the pieces together and deduced Jiro was more than he let them know. After running intuitively to the Atrium, Hendel is overpowered by Jiro's stunner, who in turn is subdued by Kahlee. Grayson is informed by Ascension Project staff that his daughter has survived an assassination attempt from a Cerberus agent. Grayson is ordered to withdraw Gillian from the Ascension Project before Jiro reveals the entire plot. When Kahlee suggests she and Hendel will accompany him, he agrees expecting that Pel, his former partner, will easily get rid of them. However, Pel takes everybody prisoner, including Grayson, explaining that he decided to abandon Cerberus in favor of the promise of wealth. The Collectors, a mysterious alien race that lives outside of known space, have put up a bounty for human biotics and Pel plans to sell Gillian and Hendel to them. Lemm, a Quarian on his pilgrimage, finds out that a scout ship has disappeared and intends to find it and use the information to end his Pilgrimage. At first he suspects the infamous Golo, but the banished Quarian diverts Lemm's attention to Pel. He provides Lemm with blueprints of Pel's hideout and teaches him basic assault rules, but at the same time he informs Pel when the attack is due to take place. Lemm takes Pel by surprise by attacking a day early, rescuing Hendel, Gillian and Kahlee. Kahlee is very surprised as the Quarian recognizes her. After escaping Pel's warehouse, stealing Grayson's shuttle, and setting course to the Migrant Fleet, Lemm explains to Kahlee that she is regarded as an AI expert due to her collaboration with Dr. Shu Qian - who found Sovereign and led Saren to it - and he would like her to be his pilgrimage gift. Grayson, who was left behind, manages to escape and kill Pel on the warehouse roof amid his mob's firefight with runaway party. He later finds the captured Quarian who had gone mad and now only mumbles the access codes to the Migrant Fleet. Grayson informs The Illusive Man of Pel's betrayal and he deduces that Kahlee and the others are heading for the Migrant Fleet. The Illusive Man wants to leave Grayson out of mission to reclaim Gillian due to his emotional involvement, but Grayson threatens not to give away the access codes unless he is included. After reaching the Migrant Fleet, Kahlee gives her opinion on Sovereigns attack on the Citadel and its influence on the Geth. It seems insignificant to her but it's apparently an important factor in deciding whether the Quarians will launch risky exploratory missions. The Admiralty hypothesizes that they may be able to use Reapers to influence the Geth and reclaim their homeworld. Meanwhile, Gillian spends much time with Hendel, Kahlee, and Lemm and in increasingly familiar surroundings of Grayson's shuttle she becomes more open and happy. Grayson, with two squads of Cerberus commandos and Golo, attacks the Quarian ship. Cerberus soldiers have the upper hand in the firefight but they retreat after Gillian, told by Kahlee to hide on ship's upper levels, runs back to the shuttle looking for some comfort. Grayson, ordered by Golo to stay in the shuttle because of his emotional involvement, is welcomed by Gillian - who always reacted allergically to touch - with a hug. Grayson informs her they are leaving but after she refuses saying she won't leave without her friends, he is forced to use a stunner and puts her to bed. Kahlee, who hadn't found Gillian in upper levels, guesses she went to the shuttle. She confronts Grayson but is knocked down by the returning Golo. Kahlee, continually kicked by Golo, describes how much better Gillian has been feeling after escaping Cerberus' care. Grayson has a change of heart after recalling Gillian hugging him and calling Kahlee, Hendel and Lemm her friends. He talks Golo into starting the engines and kills him. The attack on the Quarian ship turns out a decisive factor in sending a mission to find habitable worlds or Sovereign-like ships to drive the Geth from the Quarian homeworld. As he is being transported to Alliance territory, Grayson manages to overpower Kahlee and Lemm and escapes. Believing that Grayson won't trouble them anymore, Kahlee and Lemm decide not to pursue him. Kahlee returns to the Ascension Project, while Gillian, Hendel and Lemm board a Quarian exploration ship. Grayson contacts The Illusive Man, concedes he will sooner or later be caught and killed by Cerberus but he trades his silence about Cerberus' other projects for Kahlee's safety. The Illusive Man reluctantly agrees and is left seething at his defeat. cs:Mass Effect: Vzestup it:Mass Effect: Ascension pl:Mass Effect: Podniesienie ru:Восхождение (роман) uk:Mass Effect: Ascension zh:质量效应：飞升
17011636	/m/0415k09	Prayers for Rain	Dennis Lehane	1999-11	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 After the events of the preceding novel, Gone, Baby, Gone, Patrick Kenzie is working solo; Angie Gennaro has left their partnership for employment at a large investigative firm, moving out of Dorchester and turning her back on a possible personal relationship with Kenzie. A young woman has leapt to her death from Boston's landmark Custom House tower, and Kenzie is shocked to hear that she is one of his former clients, Karen Nichols. A dressed-for-success career woman, Nichols had hired him several months earlier to scare off a stalker she had attracted at her fitness club. An unpleasant visit from Kenzie and his explosive friend Bubba Rogowski had apparently been enough to deter the stalker, Cody Falk, an upscale predator with a long history of restraining orders. But news of Nichols' suicide leads Kenzie to recall, with some guilt, a loose end from her case. Several weeks after he'd confronted the stalker, Nichols had left a message on his answering machine -- and he had neglected to return her call. Stung by his former client's death, Kenzie makes a quick investigation and finds that at the time of her call, Nichols had been experiencing a suspicious run of bad luck. Her fiancé had been hit by a car and later died of the injuries; she had lost her job while caring for him; and, according to the police, the pert young client Kenzie recalled as "someone who would iron her socks" had become a strung-out prostitute working from a cheap motel. When Kenzie once again questions Falk, he discovers that the stalker had received several notes, purporting to be from Karen Nichols herself, inviting him to continue pursuing her. Horrified and fascinated, Kenzie embarks on the search for a vindictive mastermind who manipulated Falk and others in a complex scheme to destroy Nichols' life.
17017040	/m/0415ppv	Leviathan	Paul Auster	1992	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is told by Peter Aaron about the victim, Benjamin Sachs, his best friend whom he first meets as a fellow writer in a Greenwich Village bar in 1975. Peter decides to try to piece together the story of Ben's other life after agents from the F.B.I. approach him in the course of their investigation. Of their friendship, Peter acknowledges Ben’s lost years of suffering and painful inner state, saying — In 15 years, Sachs travelled from one end of himself to the other, and by the time he came to that last place, I doubt he even knew who he was anymore. So much distance had been covered by then, it wouldn't have been possible for him to remember where he had begun. The two first meet as struggling novelists, Peter with the “wheeling” mind and the provocative Ben with his perfect marriage to the beautiful Fanny. Both have a wish to “say something”, to make a difference in the real world. Privately, Ben himself is full of doubts and his marriage is showing cracks, when one night at a drunken party by freakish chance, he tumbles from a fourth-floor fire escape, nearly losing his life. The fall is both actual and metaphorical. For days afterward he refuses to speak and on recovery he is strangely remote. Within a week of turning 41, Ben expresses a desire to end the life he has lived until then. Feeling that his life has been a waste, he declares he wants everything to change, and serving himself with an all-or-nothing ultimatum, decides he must take control or fail. In evincing this change, he leaves Fanny, moves to a cabin in Vermont where he begins to work on a book – then vanishes. There is no further contact with Fanny and one final meeting with Peter where he confesses all. His cabin and its contents is deserted, his manuscript, titled Leviathan, lies abandoned. Peter pieces together Ben’s life after disappearing which involves the photographic artist Maria and her closest friend Lillian. Lillian&#39;s husband and Vietnam War veteran is Reed who becomes Ben’s alter ego after a violent random encounter that sends Ben in a radically new direction.
17020313	/m/0415tpn	Requiem of a Spanish Peasant	Ramón José Sender Garcés			 The story is narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator who has insight into Mosen Millan's thoughts and feelings. Three distinct planes of narration exist in the novel: the present, Millan's recollections of his relationship with Paco from birth to death; and the ballad the altar boy sings which recounts Paco's life. In the present, Millan, fatigued, prays as he awaits the requiem mass with recollections of Paco's life. As he prays he rests his head against a wall - a habit - which bears a dark spot. The altar boy comes and goes and both remark on the lack of people attending mass. Millan, knowing and feeling guilty knowing that he played a role in Paco's death, asks the altar boy to leave the church to look for mass attenders in the town square when the altar boy sings the parts of the ballad that refer to Millan.
17025398	/m/0415_2x	Pushing the Bear	Diane Glancy	1996		 Pushing the Bear tells the story of Cherokee removal and what is now referred to as the Trail of Tears. Diane Glancy weaves the story together through the voices of a variety of characters, the majority of whom are Cherokee Indians, but also through historical documents, missionaries and the soldiers who were responsible for guiding the Cherokee along the trail. Glancy describes the horror and tribulations close to thirteen thousand Cherokee Indians faced from the months of September 1838 to February 1839. Maritole, a mother, wife, daughter and aunt, is the main voice in the novel. Her character reveals the thoughts of the women, the relationship between soldiers and those walking the trail, and the losses, both emotionally and physically, that the people suffered. Through the plethora of voices, Glancy is presents the knowledge of Indian Removal, with the perspectives of those who walked, suffered and died along the trail. After nine hundred miles of trudging through mountains, snow and water, the bitterness and pain experienced by the Cherokee is combined with their sense of helplessness and their sorrow over losing their connection with their land, their livelihood, their traditional gender roles, and their family. The novel travels chronologically through each month and location along the Trail of Tears. Glancy taps into an emotional and horrific, but historically accurate account of what many now refer to as Indian genocide. In an interview with Jennifer Andrews for the American Indian Quarterly, Glancy tells Andrews that “the land had to give me permission to write. The ancestors had to give permission to write, too. For instance, I started off Pushing the Bear with one voice, and it wasn’t enough. I had to go back and add her husband and everybody who had traveled with them on the Trail of Tears. It takes many voices to tell a story, and I think we carry those voices within us” (Andrews 651).
17030638	/m/04163m0	The Nemesis of Faith	James Anthony Froude	1849		 The story of Markham Sutherland is presented through letters, journals, and the third-person account of the novel's supposed editor, Arthur. Sutherland, under pressure from his father to become a clergyman, confesses to Arthur his reservations about accepting the Thirty-Nine Articles and contemporary English Christianity in general. In particular, Sutherland is concerned about the depiction of God in the Old Testament, God's patronage of the Israelites on non-moral grounds, the doctrine of Eternal Punishment, and the supposed inerrancy of the Bible. Sutherland was profoundly influenced by John Henry Newman in his early years, but was ultimately unable to accept Newman's doctrines. Sutherland also seeks guidance in the writings of Victorian historian and sage Thomas Carlyle (who was Froude's chief intellectual influence in later years), but finds no solutions. Tormented by his doubts and subsequent alienation from his family, Sutherland becomes morbidly depressed. On Arthur's advice, Sutherland takes orders, hoping that his doubts will eventually pass when he enters a more active life. Because of the selectivity of his sermons, however, his parishioners begin to suspect him of Socinianism. When Sutherland is tricked into making a harsh criticism of the British and Foreign Bible Society, claiming that the text of the Bible without clerical guidance is more likely to lead to wickedness than to Christian faith and virtue, his doubts are revealed, and he is forced to resign his position. Sutherland travels to Como to rest and recover from illness, indulging in free religious speculation while there. He befriends Helen Leonard, who sympathizes with his troubles and listens to his doubts. Helen's dull, unloving husband prefers to spend time away from his wife, and leaves her in Sutherland's company for the season. Helen and Sutherland fall in love, causing both great anxiety, although the relationship never becomes physical. The two consider eloping, but Helen decides she cannot leave her daughter, Annie. During this conversation, however, the unsupervised Annie dips her arm into the lake, causing her to fall ill and die soon after. Sutherland again becomes depressed, believing that his religious speculations have brought himself and Helen into sin. He plans suicide, but is stopped at the last moment by an old friend, representative of John Henry Newman. Sutherland retires to a monastery, although his repentance is short lived, and he dies still in doubt. Helen, meanwhile, separates from her husband and retires to a convent, although she is unreconciled with the Church because she maintains that her love for Sutherland is holier than her marriage.
17031088	/m/04164d7	An Experiment In Treason	Bruce Cook	2002	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A pack of confidential letters is stolen from the Secretary of State for the American Colonies. With cross-Atlantic tensions rising, Sir John is ordered to interrogate the American representative in London, one Benjamin Franklin.
17031213	/m/04164lc	Lost Boy, Lost Girl	Peter Straub	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel revolves around a middle-aged writer named Timothy Underhill, struggling to help his brother Philip and his nephew, Mark, cope with the recent suicide of Philip's wife, Nancy. A perplexing series of events revolving around a haunted house, a pedophilic serial killer and the lost girl of the title, is triggered when Mark suddenly goes missing and is suspected to be the latest victim of the killer. Mark had begun to harbor an obsession after the death of his mother, with an abandoned house on the Underhill's street. Timothy and Philip struggle to connect the threads of this mystery and find Mark before he falls victim to the horrors of the abandoned home; horrors both human and supernatural in nature.
17033977	/m/04167y4	The Assassini	Thomas Gifford	1990-08	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Set in 1982, while the Roman Catholic Church's papal conclave is preparing to elect a new pope as the old one is dying, the book describes the attempts of lawyer Ben Driskill to solve the murder of his sibling, Sister Valentine, a nun who was an outspoken activist and a thorn in the Church's side. Driskill's world-spanning investigation leads him to the discovery of a document from a forgotten monastery in Ireland, which proves the existence of the Assassini, an age-old brotherhood of killers, once hired by princes of the Church to protect it in dangerous times; and the person who now controls them in his Machiavellian bid for power.
17035775	/m/04169rn	Belladonna	Anne Bishop	2007	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Book ends with Belladonna making herself even more evil than the Eater of the World inside of the school that she had been kicked out of in the events of Sebastian. She traps the Eater of the World and somehow Michael finds a way to bring her back to the world.
17036689	/m/0416c22	Fields of Force	William Berkson			 Fields of Force has a preface, an introduction, ten chapters, a historiographical appendix on field theory, and name and subject indexes. The introduction and the ten chapters all consist of 6 or more sections.
17038015	/m/0416dhm	Arabian Jazz	Diana Abu-Jaber			 The novel focuses on the happenings of the Ramoud’s. The widowed father of the family, Matusseum Ramond, lives with his two daughters and was accompanied to America with his sister and brother-in-law. Matusseum and his daughters reside in a middle class house in the midst of a run-down, low class neighborhood. Their environment mimics that of a hazardous dumping ground, with their house being surrounded by broken down cars and trailers that have neither running water nor a proper sewage waste system. Diapers and garbage liters their backyard providing the ideal tone for the family’s mixed emotions and values. Matusseum’s American-born daughters are older, but both seem to still struggle with their identities, contemplating their roles in American culture versus Middle Eastern culture. Aunt Fatima, Matusseum’s devoted Islamic sister, desires for the two daughters, Melvina and Jemorah, to follow the conventions and traditions of their motherland – Jordan. Fatima concerns her new, American life with the local gossip and obsesses over Melvina and Jemorah’s dating life. Fatima is disgraced that both of her nieces are not yet married; she makes it her life mission to find suitable, affluent suitors for them. Melvina, the younger of the two daughters, has found herself successful and happy in her career as a nurse; yet, her older sister Jemorah has yet to find a satisfying career path and struggles throughout the novel with her cultural and career oriented identity. Her father is clearly Middle Eastern and still has a stronghold in the traditions of the east, but her deceased mother merged well within western culture and trends. Thus, Jemorah feels stuck in the middle, not quite Arabian and not quite American. Her aunt clearly desires for her to conform to the traditions and customs of Jordan, but Jemorah finds that those conventions neither fill her cultural void nor feel natural and comfortable. Matusseum is too struggling simultaneously along with his daughters, attempting to discover his new place in America devoid of his loving wife. Unlike Melvina, he does not find comfort in a career, but rather feels most at peace making jazz music on his drum set. It is only when he is playing this music in the local bar that he forgets about the death of his wife and the personal crisis that was created through his immigration. Both his daughters and his sister find this hobby bizarre and somewhat embarrassing. It is only after Matusseum journeys back to Jordan that his daughters are able to find themselves and their place within culture. This journey too has a similar effect on Matusseum, allowing clarity to his thought process and his actions.
17038668	/m/0416f38	Slaves of Sleep	L. Ron Hubbard		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns Jan Palmer, a young millionaire, who surprises a prowler who is attempting to burgle his collection of antiques. The prowler opens a jar that bears the seal of Sulayman releasing an Ifrit, named Zongri, that was imprisoned. The Ifrit kills the thief and curses Palmer with eternal wakefulness. At night, Palmer assumes the identity of an adventurer in another dimension where the Ifrits rule the humans under the Ifrit queen where he becomes embroiled in the conflict between Zongri and the Ifrit queen.
17039299	/m/0416fxc	Floating Dragon	Peter Straub	1982	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set during the spring and summer of 1980, the novel deals with events that befall the affluent suburb of Hampstead, Connecticut. An adulterous housewife named Stony Friedgood is brutally murdered by a man she picks up in a bar; at the same time, her husband, Leo, is involved in a cover-up at a chemical plant conducting research for the Department of Defense. Meanwhile, the descendants of the town's original founders have returned to Hampstead for the first time in over a hundred years: Richard Allbee, an architect and former child actor with a wife and a baby on the way; Graham Williams, a screenwriter and amateur local historian whose career was derailed by the McCarthy hearings; Patsy McCloud, an abused housewife with supernatural powers; and Tabby Smithfield, an extraordinary young boy with similar abilities. Drawn together by fate, the four find themselves struggling against a cycle of evil that plagues the town every thirty years.
17039744	/m/0416gfn	Forces and Fields				 Forces and Fields has eleven chapters. The first ten chapters consist of 5 or more sections. The eleventh, 2 sections. These chapters are titled The Logical Status of Theories, The Primitive Analogies, Mechanism in Greek Science, The Greek Inheritance, The Corpuscular Philosophy, The Theory of Gravitation, Action at a Distance, The Field Theories, The theory of Relativity, Modern Physics, and The Metaphysical Framework of Physics.
17042961	/m/0416l2k	The World Below	S. Fowler Wright		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a man who travels 500,000 years into the future with the aid of a time machine. There he encounters a race of intelligent furry beings, the Amphibians. With their help he explores the planet and is eventually captured by the Dwellers, super-intelligent beings who direct the destinies of the planet.
17048903	/m/0416rth	Kinsmen of the Dragon	Stanley Mullen		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns an empire of invisible wizards and adventure in the realm of Annwyn.
17050560	/m/0416t8l	Come Home, Charlie, and Face Them				 Charlie Pritchard arrives in the fictitious North Wales seaside town of Permadoc on April 1, 1929. After seven years working for Cadwallader’s Mercantile Bank, the 23-year-old is discontented as he takes up his job in the local branch, especially because he is to lodge with the branch manager, Ewan Rhys-Jones. Ewan and his wife, Gladys, immediately start throwing their daughter, 27-year-old Ida, at Charlie. Charlie and Ida become good friends and begin a sexual relationship, but without any romance involved. Charlie’s serious interest is focused on the woman who works at the Rainbow Café, two doors down from the bank. The beautiful Delphine is the prime attraction of the Café, and Charlie learns that she runs it with her brother, Beppo. Charlie comes to the attention of the two when he stops a factory worker’s advances on Delphine, long enough for Beppo to notice what is going on and intervene. Things deteriorate at Charlie’s lodgings when Ida leaves for London. Gladys and Ewan assume it has something to do with Charlie, and the atmosphere at the bank, never too good, become even worse. Charlie is therefore all too ready to listen when Delphine makes a proposal to him — she, her brother and Charlie should rob the bank, tunnelling from the café into the basement, where the vault is, and obtaining or forging keys to the locks. At first Charlie is dismissive, but then he decides that he has “damn all to lose”. The planning for the bank break-in continues, with Charlie continuing to hope for a relationship with Delphine. When the Rhys-Joneses decide there may be some chance of salvaging the hoped-for marriage to Ida, and Ewan approaches Charlie, Charlie pretends that he and Ida had considered marriage, but that, given the bank’s slow promotion pace, there seemed no point. Ewan reassures Charlie, and tries to get rid of another bank employee in the hopes of getting a better job for Charlie. Charlie writes Ida a letter, and calls the bank heist off, but Beppo blackmails him by threatening to use some preparatory drawings made by Charlie, threatening to send them to the bank’s home office. Charlie is shocked when he spies on Delphine and Beppo and learns they are actually lovers, not brother and sister. Angered and disgusted, he decides to go his own way after the heist. Ida sends a letter saying she is coming home on the very day set for the heist. Charlie replies that he will be away at his father’s retirement ceremony, and asks her to come the following week. The day of the heist arrives, a Saturday, and Charlie succeeds in obtaining a final key from the possession of Ewan. He does so by drugging Ewan and his wife with their bedtime cocoa. While waiting for Delphine, he notices a half-burned envelope in the fireplace. It is a passport envelope, addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Giuseppe Beppolini”. He rifles the couple’s travel bags and finds a passport for a married couple and train tickets to a destination different from the port Charlie had been told would be the escape route. Realising that the couple have deceived him and intend to swindle him out of the money, Charlie slips the passport and tickets into his pocket. Charlie and Beppo break through the wall, enter the vault, and take about twenty thousand pounds. On their return to the café, they find that Delphine has discovered Charlie's subterfuge, and has turned on the lights and music in the café to cover any altercation. Beppo takes out a gun, but Charlie rushes him, knocking him down a flight of stairs as the gun goes off. Beppo dies of a broken neck, and Charlie finds that the bullet has hit Delphine, killing her. In a state of shock, Charlie answers a knock on the café door. It is Ida, just returned, having through Charlie's lies and somehow sensed his predicament. She assists him in disposing of the bodies, in an area in which fill is being placed to level the ground for a park. They bury the bodies and the money, and return to the Rhys-Jones house. Charlie asks Ida to marry him, and she agrees, though without much enthusiasm, revealing that the reason she ran off to London was because she was pregnant with Charlie’s child, which was then given up for adoption. Ironically, it will be the only child they will ever have. Once Gladys and Ewan awaken from their drugged sleep (the key being returned), they are delighted. On the following day, the bank manager and his future son-in-law elect arrive on Monday morning at the bank to find that it has been robbed. The investigation drags on for weeks. At the end, Ewan is forced to retire. Ewan defies the bank directors, making it clear that the head office in Cardiff is responsible for the heist, since they gave him inadequate security. He stalks off, gets drunk, catches pneumonia, and dies only days later. After the funeral, one of the police inspectors makes it clear he suspects Charlie, but there is no evidence of involvement, and Charlie and Ida marry as planned. Charlie rises to become a bank manager himself, and the two live to old age. When Ida dies, Charlie returns to Penmadoc, seeking to rid himself of the ghosts of the past, and rents a room in what had been the Rhys-Jones house. To his shock, he sees that the park where the Beppolinis lie buried is being dug up for a car park. He watches every day, until they and the money are found, but there is no evidence after forty years to connect Charlie with the skeletons and the money, even when the bodies are identified. Charlie learns that he is dying. He begins to write his story (this book), intending it to be lodged with a solicitor and released after his death.
17051385	/m/0416v0n	Miramar	Naguib Mahfouz		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in 1960s Alexandria at the pension Miramar. The novel follows the interactions of the residents of the pension, its Greek mistress Mariana, and her servant. The interactions of all the residents is based around the servant girl Zohra, a beautiful peasant girl from the Beheira Governorate who has abandoned her village life. As each character in turn fights for Zohra's affections or allegiance tensions and jealousies arise. In a style reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, the story is retold four times from the perspective of a different resident each time, allowing the reader to understand the intricacies of post-revolutionary Egyptian life.
17057307	/m/0416zw0	Crooked Zebra	Bob Weltlich	2004-11-24	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Jim Stanton, the narrator, tells the tale of Bob Girard, a former college basketball player who now runs a popular basketball camp for children in South Florida. Chad Payne, an eleven year old basketball phenom, sneaks into the camp. Girard rescues Chad from a broken home and encourages him. Eventually, Chad grows up, becomes a star and signs with Duke University. Meanwhile, Girard becomes a college basketball referee with troubled finances. Bob begins to make extra money by fixing games, he becomes so good at it, and so greedy, that he, with support from the mafia, attempts to fix the national championship game.
17063939	/m/041756g	Brethren	Robyn Young	2006-08-24	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel describes the fictional story of a young teenager by the name of William Campbell who starts out as a sergeant and later is promoted to a full Knight Templar. He is tasked with the search of the Book of the Grail which, if ever in the wrong hands, could potentially result in the downfall of not only the Anima Templi (a secret order within the Temple), but also the Temple itself. However, Will finds he's not alone in the search of the book. There are also Prince Edward and The Order of the St John's or the Hospitallers who want the Book as part of their plans to bring down the Temple. The story of Will Campbell runs parallel to that of Baybars Bundukdari, a slave who rose to become Sultan of the Mamluks motivated purely by his hatred of the Franks. In the earlier parts of the story, Will does not know that his father James Campbell is also part of the Anima Templi (or Brethren) and that there is a contact deep within Baybars' circle of trusted advisors who works with the Brethren to achieve long-lasting peace in the Holy land and the reconciliation of the three dominant faiths of the West: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The book has a sequel written by the same author. "Crusade" follows Will as he becomes further entangled in the Brethren and Baybars.
17067988	/m/04178b2	Murder in Millennium VI	Curme Gray		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set 6,000 years in the future, the novel concerns the murder of the head of a matriarchal society. Victor Mitchel and his parents and sister struggle to replace her and find the killer before the society collapses. The novel is unique in that anything which would have been known to the people of its time was not explained.
17068483	/m/04178ny	Space Platform	Murray Leinster	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel concerns the sabotage of attempts to place a platform in Earth orbit.
17068763	/m/04178wg	Space Tug	Murray Leinster	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the problems of running of a space station.
17069591	/m/04179lp	Son of Scarface		2007	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The autobiography, chronicles the author’s broken childhood as he uncovers family secrets that his abusive mother attempted to keep him and his sister from pursuing. As an adult he seeks the truth about both his grandfather and his father
17076520	/m/0417hwz	Empire of the Atom	A. E. van Vogt	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel concerns adventures of a mutant genius in a barbaric future where spaceships and other forms of advanced technology are used without being understood, most knowledge having been destroyed in an atomic war with an alien species long before the opening of the story.
17077656	/m/0417jd7	The Cloning of Joanna May	Fay Weldon		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Joanna May was once married to Carl May, the wealthy CEO of a nuclear energy corporation, but they have been divorced for ten years after Joanna was caught in an incidental love affair. Since then, Carl May has done everything in his power to make Joanna's life difficult. When Joanna decides she's had enough, and pays a visit to her former husband, she is in for a surprise – Carl May has made several clones of her.
17080244	/m/0417kxx	The Fall of Colossus	Dennis Feltham Jones	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Five years have passed since the computer known as Colossus used its control over the world's nuclear deterrent to take control of humanity. Superseded by an even more advanced successor system built on the Isle of Wight, it has abolished war and poverty throughout the world. National competition and most sports have been replaced by the Sea War Game, where replicas of World War I dreadnoughts battle each other for viewing audiences. A group known as the Sect, which worships Colossus as a god, is growing in numbers and influence. Yet despite the seeming omnipresence of Colossus' secret police and the penalty of decapitation for anti-Colossus activities, a secret Fellowship exists that is dedicated to the computer's destruction. Charles Forbin, the former head of the design team that built and activated the original Colossus, now lives on the Isle of Wight with his wife and son, serving the computer as Director of Staff. Though contemptuous of the growing cult of personality around Colossus, he has reconciled himself to Colossus' rule. His wife Cleo, however, loathes Colossus and is a member of the Fellowship. One afternoon while taking her son to a secluded beach, she receives a radio transmission from the planet Mars. Identifying Cleo as a member of the Fellowship, the transmission offers help to destroy Colossus and asks her to return to the same spot the next day for further instructions. She returns with Edward Blake, Colossus' Director of Input and the head of the Fellowship. Together they receive instructions to obtain a circuit diagram of one of Colossus' input terminals and a sample of the information fed into it, along with instructions to proceed to two locations&nbsp;— one in St. John's, Newfoundland, the other in New York's Central Park&nbsp;— to receive further transmissions. Though Blake passes the necessary information along to Cleo, she is quickly arrested by the Sect and sentenced by Colossus to spend three months at an "Emotional Study Center" where she is repeatedly raped as part of an experiment designed to help Colossus better understand human emotion. Now under suspicion, Blake approaches Forbin, who is devastated by his wife's arrest. Explaining the details of their plot, Blake convinces Forbin to help after explaining the details of Cleo's captivity. Forbin travels in disguise with the requested information, first to St. John's, then to New York City, where he receives an incomprehensible mathematical problem that the transmission claims will destroy Colossus once it is fed into the computer. Upon his return, Forbin slips the problem to Blake, who enters it into Colossus. While Forbin converses with the computer, Colossus begins to make verbal errors, then stops. Increasingly erratic, it attempts to warn Forbin of a threat from space that it was preparing to meet but breaks down before it can complete the message. Now free of Colossus' rule, Blake moves to seize power, using the automated fleets of the Sea War Games to threaten the world's capitals. As Blake gloats, Forbin tells him of Colossus' warning. Requesting any reports of unusual astronomical activity, they learn that two contacts have been detected leaving Martian orbit and heading towards the Earth. The novel ends with the two men hearing a radio transmission repeating, "Forbin, we are coming."
17085241	/m/0417x02	Flower Net	Lisa See	1997	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The time frame for Flower Net is January 10, 1997-March 14, 1997. The main narrative ends February 13, 1997—just before the death of Deng Xiaoping on February 19. Much of the story involves flashbacks to the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and its traumatic impact on the lives of a great number of people. The novel's key characters are Liu Hulan, inspector in the Ministry of Public Security and a Red Princess, and David Stark, Assistant U.S. Attorney, who loves her. Gary Krist writes that "Hulan is a provocative mixture of vulnerability, bitterness and hardheaded practicality," a survivor of the Cultural Revolution who has learned that survival means hiding her emotions from the outside world. The book begins with the murders of two young men, one the son of the U.S. ambassador to China and the other the son of one of the richest and most powerful men in China. For reasons not clear to Hulan and David, the Chinese and American governments come to the unusual agreement that the two should jointly investigate the murders. Their initial assumption is that the killings must be related to the Rising Phoenix, a criminal gang operating in both China and Los Angeles. The case is complicated because Hulan and David have previously been lovers, and each is devoted to his or her country. See also describes Vice Minister Liu and his frosty relationship with Hulan, his daughter. Near the end of the novel seven gruesome murders are solved. Although the young men of the Rising Phoenix are indeed involved, the murderer hounding Hulan and David is revealed to be Hulan's father, Vice Minister Liu, who has been consumed by greed and the desire for revenge, mistakenly blaming his daughter for the hard time he served in a Chinese work camp early in the Cultural Revolution and for the serious injuries his wife, Hulan's mother, suffered during the same period. The narrative concludes with Hulan's thoughts of the coming spring and her anticipation of the birth of her first child.
17085697	/m/0417xp5	Goddess of Yesterday	Caroline B. Cooney	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Anaxandra is the daughter of Chrysaor, a chieftain who rules of an uncharted island. When Nicander, king of the island Siphnos, comes to demand a tribute, he takes Anaxandra to be his daughter Callisto’s playmate. Unable to return home, she comes to love the small island of Siphnos and lives there for six years with Nicander's family. When pirates attack the island, Nicander and his family are killed while Anaxandra survives by scaring off the pirates by pretending to be Medusa. Found by Menelaus, king of Sparta, Anaxandra assumes the identity of Princess Callisto, believing that Menelaus will otherwise abandon her to her doom. Brought into Menelaus's household in Sparta, all the members of his family welcome her, except Menelaus’s beautiful wife, Helen. Suspicious of "Callisto," Helen's animosity towards Anaxandra places her in greater danger than ever. When Menelaus leaves for Crete to repay its king for slaves, Paris, a prince of Troy arrives to plunder Sparta's treasury and takes an eager Helen away with him. To save Helen's daughter Hermione from leaving, Anaxandra takes her place and soon becomes the sole protector of Helen's infant son, Pleisthenes. Upon arriving in Troy, Anaxandra is exposed again by Helen, who will stop at nothing to make Anaxandra suffer and neglects her own son in favour of her new life as the bride of Paris. Helen is quickly beloved by all of Troy, save Paris's sister Cassandra who has foreseen that Helen will destroy the city but is cursed so her prophecies will never be believed. In spite of her suffering, Anaxandra befriends Andromache, the bride of Prince Hector, and Cassandra. When Menelaus learns that Paris has stolen Helen and the treasures of Sparta, he calls upon his brother Agamemnon and all of Helen's former suitors who have sworn to defend his honour and to declare war upon Troy. As Helen revels in the war that will occur for her sake, Anaxandra finds herself falling in love with Euneus, the neutral king of Lemnos who is a friend of Hector. Torn between her love of Troy and her loyalty to Menelaus, Anaxandra must find a way to rescue Pleisthenes and return the young prince to his father before Troy is destroyed.
17088523	/m/0417_x1	Black Notice	Patricia Cornwell	1999	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dr. Kay Scarpetta is still shocked by the tragic loss of Benton Wesley. She is trying to carry on, but she gets a letter from Benton, written before his death and left to Senator Lord, who had agreed to deliver it a year after his death. Dr Scarpetta and Marino start working on a new case after a body is found in a container arriving from Belgium. There is writing in the container that says "Bon voyage, le loup-garou" (Have a nice trip, the werewolf). The body has a strange tattoo and wears rich clothes and there are some baby-like hairs inside the garments. Kay and Marino get in touch with European Interpol and with Jay Talley, who calls them and makes them fly to Paris to meet the Chief Medical Examiner. They get to know that the body found in the container is a member of one of the richest and oldest families of Paris, the Chandonnes, who live in an ancient mansion on the Île St Louis. It is also rumored that this family has got a son with a rare disease that makes hair grow on his entire body (hypertrichosis). This person has always been hidden, and he is believed to have committed several murders. Kay and Jay have a short liaison, and it seems the man is really involved, while Dr Scarpetta tries to keep him at distance. Kay finds out that Lucy is in part involved in this case, since she is investigating a Miami group of weapons and drugs smugglers related to the Chandonnes, the "One Sixty-Fivers". Back to Richmond, Virginia, Kay and Marino deal with the case of a woman brutalized and killed in a little shop and with attempts from a member of Dr. Scarpetta's team to sabotage her. Thanks to Marino, they learn that the new police chief, Diane Bray, is behind the sabotage because she wants to get control on how investigations and exams are held. Bray is also behind a drugs-smuggling operation, but she is killed with the same modus operandi as the young woman in the shop. It is clear that the killer is at large and trying to kill the people investigating the death of the man in the container. Dr Scarpetta is in her house when the alarm rings. The police come quickly, but they find nothing. After a while, someone knocks at her door claiming to be a police officer and that someone had reported seeing a prowler. Kay does not realize that le loup garou is fluent in English, and she opens the door. She then realizes that she is under attack. During the struggle, Kay throws a bottle of formalin onto the loup garou's face, which temporarily blinds him. She then runs out of the house, but falls and breaks her elbow, making her unable to fire her gun. At this time, Lucy and Jo return, and Lucy runs over and points a gun at the assailant's head, with the intention of killing him, but Marino and Kay convince her not to do it.
17091126	/m/041825f	Song of the Saurials	Kate Novak	1991-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This novel is the final book of the Finders Stone Trilogy.
17095281	/m/0421bck	The General of the Dead Army	Ismail Kadare	1963	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 In the early 1960s, nearly 20 years since the Second World War ended, an Italian general, accompanied by a priest who is also an Italian army colonel, is sent to Albania to locate and collect the bones of his countrymen who had died during the war and return them for burial in Italy. As they organise digs and disinterment, they wonder at the scale of their task. The general talks to the priest about the futility of war and the meaninglessness of the enterprise. As they go deeper into the Albanian countryside they find they are being followed by another general who is looking for the bodies of German soldiers killed in World War II. Like his Italian counterpart, the German struggles with a thankless job looking for remains to take back home for burial, and questions the value of such gestures of national pride.
17100250	/m/0421q_v	Blanquerna				 The central character of the novel named after him, Blanquerna, was born to Evast and Aloma. Before marrying, Evast, a nobleman, had wanted to follow a religious life but at the same time wished to experience matrimony. He became a merchant after his marriage to Aloma, and he gives his son an education based on religious and philosophical pursuits. In the second part of the novel, Blanquerna confronts the same choice his father did: between a celibate life and a married one. Blanquerna decides to become a hermit, which saddens his mother; she tries to have her son marry the beautiful Cana. But Blanquerna persuades Cana to become a nun, and she later becomes an abbess. Blanquerna also faces sexual temptation in the form of a maiden named Natana. This second part includes a description of the seven sins. In parts three through five of the novel, Blanquerna, having chosen a religious life, becomes a monk (though he desires to become a hermit instead), and quickly becomes an abbot. In time, he is elected pope. The road to the papacy pope is not easy; Blanquerna is constantly faced with troublesome decisions and temptations, and he is not perfect. Indeed, Blanquerna "is made credible precisely because he is prone to make mistakes and to experience temptation, and in the end this gives him an authority which other authorities are obliged to recognize." Blanquerna's life takes him through widely varying places and social strata, from uninhabited forests and wildernesses to the dense Roman urban landscape of thieves and prostitutes, from interactions with young maidens to interactions with popes and emperors. As he matures, Blanquerna listens to the advice of a jongleur, a "wise fool" named Ramon. Blanquerna reforms the Church completely as pope, with Ramon’s help, and finally becomes the hermit he had always desired to be. As a hermit, he composes a book of meditations to help his fellow hermits defeat temptation: this is the Llibre d'Amic e d'Amat, which consists of 365 love poems. This text "purports to offer the protagonist’s mystical confessions, based on personal experience and examples of 'Sufi preachers,' as a guide to contemplation within the apostolic utopia of a reform of contemporary Christendom."
17103727	/m/04214g5	My Bonny Light Horseman		2008-09-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts with Jacky back on sea after visiting her dear friend, Amy Trevelyne, after her adventures throughout the U.S. frontier. She sails her ship the "Nancy B. Alsop" while waiting for Jaimy to come back from the Orient to marry her. Soon though, a British warship, the HMS Dauntless has come to imprison Jacky and her crew but after an intense confrontation with Bliffil (an old nemesis of Jacky's) and British soldiers, Jacky surrenders, asking that the British spare her crew. Much to their dismay, Higgins and the Nancy B. Alsop accept this change and sail away. Despite Jacky's skeptic attitude once being aboard. She is realized as nothing but a young, innocent girl that was wrongly labeled a rogue by King George, despite Bliffil's slanderous accusation of her being known as "Tuppence a lay" on the HMS Dolphin and a threat to every man board. She soon meets up with two acquaintances, David "Davy" Jones and Joseph Jared and she befriends the Dr. Sebastian and Captain Hudson of the Dauntless. Bliffil nags and nags on Jacky, libeling her name like dirt until the crew can't take it no more. Bliffil is met with several threats if he ever insults Jacky but they do not come, especially from Jared. Jacky gains freedom of the ship at will for being such a good captive. She takes up with Dr. Sebastian and paints him a much-acclaimed portrait and portfolio. He shows her a rare Mexican dung beetle and she meets his other assistant. Once Captain Hudson hears and sees of her talent, he has her paint him a portrait of his own. Later, Hudson and Sebastian meet in private discussing how they feel about Jacky being a "rogue" and a "pirate" by the King himself and how Sebastian has even taken up the idea of adopting her. Jacky loves the thought of it, smirking. They sail to British waters but after the senior crew is struck with food poisoning, Jacky persuades Hudson to allow her to take command. While Hudson and the rest of the crew that ate the fish are ill, the Dauntless is attacked by the French and Dutch. Jacky is forced to strike colours, but not before she's had the ill officers brought to their stations on stretchers, to preserve their honor. The crew is taken to the French prison of Cherbourg. Jared takes to sleeping in the same bed as Jacky, to still her continuing nightmares. Hudson is soon paroled, and Jared assaults Bliffil as he continues to insult Jacky (Now claiming to be male Midshipman "Jack Kemp", a play on "Jack Hemp"). The Dauntless prisoners are joined by the captured crew of the HMS Mercury, and Jaimy has been severely wounded. Bliffil had passed a note to a guard, and Jacky is exposed as the pirate La Belle Jeune Fille sans Merci, "The Beautiful Young Girl Without Mercy". A lawyer by the name of Jardineaux comes for Jacky to take her to the guillotine. Jared once again attempts to kill Bliffil, but is beaten down by the guards. She is sent to be executed, but en route to the site of the execution, she is switched with another girl. She is sent back to London to meet with First Lord Thomas Grenville and Mr. Peel of Naval Intelligence, with Bliffil attending. Upon her arrival, she attacks the three and attempts to garrote Bliffil. Grenville and Peel smooth things over and she releases Bliffil from near-death. Grenville leaves Mr. Peel to give Jacky the mission and he informs her of the cover-up. British Intelligence wants the French to believe that Jacky Faber is dead in order to send her back across the channel as a spy. Jacky is to train as a ballerina, performing in a Parisian nightclub frequented by French officers, who often vie to "escort" the young girls home. She is told that if she refuses the mission, British Intelligence intends to "hurt" the ones she loves. Jacky cannot bear to lose her orphanage, but bargains to have Dr. Sebastian, Jaimy, Jared and Davey released. Jacky spends the next two weeks training in Ballet, shopping for new clothing and gear, and visiting both St Paul's Cathedral and the Fletcher household, family of her betrothed. Jaimy's father and brother both receive her much more warmly than his mother had (in Under the Jolly Roger), and grimly bear the news of Jaimy's injuries. The last night Jacky is in England is the first night Jaimy is at home, and the two share a tender moment before she has to leave for her mission. The British escort Jacky to France where they place her in Paris. She establishes herself in an apartment, and learns that Jardineaux is her "Control". She acquaints herself with her Royalist Handler by the name of Jean-Paul de Valdon and they establish a fast friendship, guiding her through the Notre Dame de Paris, The Louvre (notably, a painting of one of his relations, Charlotte Corday the assassin of Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat Jacky joins the troupe "Le Petit Gamine" under the name Jacqueline Bouvier, and she is approached by her first target, one Field Marshal de Groote, nicknamed "The Goat" by the other girls. Jacky offers to meet him the following Tuesday evening, and then arranges for his wife to catch him "in the act". He arrives on the night of the sting dressed in a wolf mask, earlier having referred to her as "Little Red Riding Hood". After plying de Groote with Cognac laced with Paregoric and prying Napoleon's troop movements out of him, his wife arrives brandishing pistols. The ensuing altercation injures de Groote, disabling him and attracting the attention of the police. Jardineaux proposes to next have Jacky serve as a camp follower, trailing Napoleon's men. Jacky, offended, decides to dress as a man once again, this time joining Napoleon's messengers, granting her ready access to military documents. She assumes the name Jacques Bouvier a West Point Cadet. Upon arrival, she is given the duties of training a unit of inexperienced, untrained soldiers. She runs afoul of a Major Levesque but also makes friends amongst the officers and soldiers under her command. She and her soldiers, nicknamed the "Clod Hoppers" due to their rough, country origins meet Napoleon, presenting him with a captured Prussian flag. Soon afterwards, Jacky is reunited with Jean Paul and Randall Trebvelyne. They see action in the Battle of Jena and Napoleon releases her from the Army, awarding her a Legion of Honour. After war, she gives Mathilde to her assistant-in-war Denis Dufour. Meanwhile, Jaimy is fully awaken from his concussion and tries to find what happened to Jacky after the stint at the French prison. They find out she was working in Paris so they set sail aboard the Nancy B. Jacky's days of war are over and she reports back to Paris. She meets Jardineaux there, where things turn fierce. Jardineaux tells Jacky his disappointment in her for not killing Napoleon and brands her a traitor. He holds her at gunpoint and has her ride with him to the docks where he would kill her. Once there, Jean Paul appears to reveal more of what Jardineaux had plotted for Napoleon and just as soon as Jardineaux is about to kill Jacky. Jean Paul impales him with Jacky's shiv (which he had taken prior to her being taken to the dock), saving Jacky. Before this, however, Jardineaux showed Jacky that her ship, the Nancy B. Alsop was coming into dock. So she leaves Jean Paul at the dock to be picked up by Jaimy, Higgins and the rest of the crew, saying, "I have come home."
17106013	/m/0421t07	Lock and Key	Sarah Dessen	2008-04-22	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After her drug and alcohol addicted mother abandons her, child services forces 17-year-old Ruby Cooper to move in with her sister, Cora, who had left for college when Ruby was young. Ruby is upset about this arrangement and continues to wear the key to her old home on a chain around her neck. After learning she will be transferring to a new high school, Ruby attempts to run away but is found out. Nate Cross, Jamie and Cora's next-door neighbor, covers for her. Over the span of the story, Ruby slowly becomes closer to Nate. As Ruby adjusts to her new life, she learns Cora had not been avoiding her; in fact, Cora had been trying to rescue Ruby from their mother but had always been stopped. Ruby feels overwhelmed with all this, so she skips school to take alcohol and drugs, and later finds herself in Nate's car when he picks her up. Ruby comes home to a furious Jamie, who accuses her for being ungrateful to him and her sister. Having seen resemblances between herself and her mother that night, Ruby becomes determined to change her ways. One of Nate's clients, a high-strung woman named Harriet, offers Ruby a job at her jewelry store in the mall. Harriet's business booms after a line of key-shaped pendants, inspired by Ruby's necklace, becomes an instant hit. Harriet struggles with a conflict of her own: Because of her independency, she is reluctant to form a relationship with Reggie, who owns the kiosk next to her. Throughout the story Ruby becomes suspicious about Nate's father, and eventually learns that he abuses Nate. Nate is defensive about this, and that leads to them they fighting and breaking up. One day, Cora and Jamie inform Ruby that the police had found her mother unconscious in a hotel room and was sent to a rehabilitation center. Later, Ruby finds out that Nate has run away, but finds him in an apartment room that she and Nate had visited while she was tagging along with him on his job. Ruby drives Nate to the airport when he decides to leave his father to live with his mother. After a sudden realization, she takes the key to the yellow house off its chain, replaces it with the key to Cora and Jamie's house, and hands the necklace to Nate. At the end of the school year, Ruby gives her English report on the meaning of family. She offers the idea that the word has a flexible definition. For evidence, she shows two pictures, both of family. The first was of Jamie's huge family, while the second was taken at Ruby's eighteenth birthday party. After trying for months, Cora learns she is finally pregnant, and Ruby is accepted to the same university as Nate. She wants to write a letter to her mother, but not knowing what to say, simply mails a copy of her acceptance letter. At the end of the novel, she stands in the backyard, and as Cora and Jamie are calling for her to leave for her graduation, she takes out the old key to the yellow house from the pocket of her robe and drops it into the pond.
17107438	/m/0421k7k	The Creator	Clifford D. Simak	1946	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novelette suggests that our universe was not created by God.
17112533	/m/0420zdm	The Old Red Hippopotamus				 The first chapter of the novel is called ‘Desher Wer,’ which means ‘old red’ in Ancient Egyptian. This term for the hippopotamus, of outstanding longevity milestone, gives the novel its title ‘The Old Red’. Before the reader meets the Old Red, he begins to discover the village of 'Per Mora' or ‘the House of Mora’, who is the goddess of the village, the giant goddess of fertility and love, because most events take place on its area. Then the reader meets the grandfather Anatem, the legendary founder of the village. From him is descended Onan, the main character and master of the places with which the second chapter of the novel is particularly concerned. Then the reader discovers the eternal lake which the villagers and the other artisans depend on for their food by fishing. Finally, the reader begins to learn about ‘the old red hippopotamus,’ the lord of the lake and exclusive controller of the village and its people. Readers will appreciate the human side of the ‘old red’ as he waits for the birth of his offspring, in a state of stress and anxiety that develops during foaling as he dreams of perhaps this time having a male baby to inherit his kingdom. The reader also learns about the villagers and their activities and also the goddess Mora, the beautiful brunette mistress of the village. The real torment for the villagers is that as they sleep during the night, hippopotami eat the harvest they have struggled to grow. So they seek revenge on his herd of hippos and their leader the Old Red. After careful planning, Naram, the only son of the master of the village Onan, makes a trap with which he manages to catch the small hippopotamus, the only son of the Old Red, the master of the lake. The furious Old Red decides on reprisals against the entire village and it attacks and kills both Naram, the only son of the village master Onan, and his wife Myriam as they sail in a felucca in the middle of the lake. However, it pushes the cradle of their baby Asheel to the shore but despite this kindness, rivalry increases between the Old Red the master of the lake and Onan master of the village. The second chapter of the novel, entitled ‘Onan,’ begins with his biography and the reason for his revenge on the Old Red for killing his son after the murder of his offspring, the little red. The chapter ends with the disappearance of Onan and his execution by the ‘old red’. The third and final chapter of the novel, entitled ‘Oshtata’ concerns the most heroic of women, Oshtata, who is Onan’s wife and the mother of Naram. She decides to avenge her husband and her son. After an interminable and exhausting battle with ‘the old red’, she herself dies, thinking that she has succeeded in getting rid of him. The novel ends in an enigmatic spiral that affirms the continuity of an eternal struggle between human and divine will. The idea of revenge can destroy human life, as is shown by most of the novel's characters who fail to realize their hopes. fr:Le Vieux Rouge
17117244	/m/0421lmh	Behind the Evidence	William L. Crawford	1936	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns conspiracy theories and a case similar to the Lindbergh kidnapping but set in a mythical Germanic country
17123035	/m/04099wh	Centurion	Simon Scarrow	2007	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 During the reign of Emperor Claudius in the 1st century AD, the powers of the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire are jockeying for influence over the Kingdom of Palmyra, which buffers the two empires and keeps an uneasy peace. Fearing a Parthian invasion of the Roman province of Syria, the Romans send an Auxiliary cohort to build a hill fort on the banks of the Euphrates. In response, the Parthians ambush the fort, slaughtering the garrison. Meanwhile, the Tenth legion, Third legion and the Sixth legion are drilling for war against the Parthians. Prefect Macro and Centurion Cato are drilling the Second Illyrian auxiliary cohort, attached to the Tenth legion for the war. Cato and Macro were sent east by Claudius' personal secretary, Narcissus, to gather proof that the Roman governor of Syria, Longinus is planning to use the Syrian legions in a bid for the imperial throne, however, thus far they failed to prove his treachery. During their time in Antioch, Crispus, a Roman legionary murders an auxiliary during an argument, leading to Crispus being put to death, causing a rift between the auxiliaries and legionaries on the base. A Parthian convoy arrives, delivering the head of Centurion Castor, the soldier who led the auxiliaries to build the Roman hillfort, and warns of Parthian intervention, should Rome continue to meddle in Palmyra's affairs. Shortly thereafter, a Roman soldier guarding a Roman diplomat, Lucius Sempronius, arrives from Palmyra, announcing that Palmyra has descended into civil war. Prince Artaxes, an ambitious heir to the Palmyran throne leads an army against his father, King Vabathus, blockading them in the Palmyran Citadel. Fearing the Parthians will arrive before the Romans can, Longinus sends the Second Illyrian, and a cohort of the Tenth legion to reinforce the Palmyran loyalists until the Roman army can arrive in force. Along the way, the Roman column under Prefect Macro are aided by the mysterious Prince Balthus, who covets the Palmyran throne, despite not being Vabathus' first born. The Roman column manages to fight their way through the city and into the citadel, where they realise the gravity of the situation. Vabathus' first born is Prince Artaxes, a Parthian sympathiser, whilst Balthus, despite being a skilled soldier squanders his time in trivial pursuits. Prince Amethus is easily persuaded, and is often used to further the ambitions of Krathos, an ambitious Palmyran noble. Following a banquet to celebrate the successful defence of a rebel attack, Amethus is found murdered, with Balthus being the prime suspect. Meanwhile, Cato meets Sempronius' daughter, Julia, and the two fall in love. Following a rebel bombardment of the citadel, the food stores are destroyed, with only two days of supplies left. However, Longinus arrives with the Tenth legion, Third Legion and several auxiliary cohorts, lifting the siege. Longinus later reveals to Macro and Cato that they were never meant to reach Palmyra, and were meant to die in the desert, thus removing the two spies that had frustrated his plans. Against the advice of Cato, Longinus leads the army out into the desert, determined to destroy Artaxes' army and his Parthian allies. During a night attack, Longinus panics, orders a retreat and leaves the army at the mercy of the Parthian horsemen. On the suggestions of Cato, the army manages to defeat the rebels and the Parthians in a pitched battle, leading to the death of Prince Artaxes on the order of Balthus. Back in Palmyra, it is revealed that Balthus had ordered his slave, Carpex, to murder Amethus, and he is arrested, to be put to death. Sempronius reveals that the Empire is to annex Palmyra, and absorb it into the province of Syria, as there are no heirs that Rome can work with. Macro and Cato are released from Narcissus' employment, ending their posting in the East, and Sempronius gives his consent for Cato to marry Julia.
17125741	/m/043skqd	Fearless Fourteen	Janet Evanovich	2008	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Stephanie Plum apprehends Loretta Rizzi for failure to appear in court, but Loretta, who is a distant cousin of Stephanie's policeman boyfriend, Joe Morelli, agrees to go along only if Stephanie will take care of her son, Mario. Unfortunately, Loretta has no collateral and no relatives willing to sign for her, so she doesn't get bonded out. Meanwhile, Ranger calls Stephanie with a job: Brenda (a famous one-name singer like Cher or Madonna) is coming to town and she needs security, so Stephanie reluctantly obliges, Stephanie and Ranger's assorted merry men help to protect Brenda from PETA protesters, women protesting Brenda's breast augmentation, and Brenda's cousin/stalker, Gary, who claims to have psychic abilities since being struck by lightning. Stephanie is now responsible for Mario, a.k.a. Zook, who is obsessed with playing Minionfire. Loretta is eventually bailed out, but within hours of her release, she is kidnapped. Stephanie contacts Loretta's brother, Dom, who has a history of anger issues and has just finished a prison term for a bank robbery of nine million dollars. Dom is enraged to learn that his nephew has been staying at Morelli's, and alleges that Mario is Morelli's son (as Loretta had never revealed the identity of his father) and threatens to kill Morelli. Stephanie takes Zook to stay with her parents, and he quickly gets Stephanie's Grandma Mazur. After Zook upsets Stephanie's mother by decorating the house with graffiti, however, Stephanie has to take him back to Morelli's until she can locate Loretta. Then, Stephanie's ex-stoner classmate Mooner arrives at Morelli's, revealing that he is the Minionfire player Moondog. Stephanie is working with Ranger to protect Brenda, and trying to survive Lula's engagement to Tank, Ranger's right hand man. Brenda tries to start a bounty-hunter reality show and goes with Stephanie and Lula on an apprehension, but causes them to be attacked by the FTA's pet monkey. Gary the stalker also begins to lurk at Morelli's house with Zook and Mooner. After repeated break-ins and the discovery of a dead body in the basement, Stephanie and Morelli realize that either the money or some clue to its location is buried in the basement, which is a problem because Morelli had a concrete floor poured after inheriting the house, which would have gone to Dom, had he not been convicted of robbery. Stephanie discovers that Dom has been staying with his old friend Jelly Kantner, and breaks into the apartment to investigate, when two men come looking for Dom. She hides under the bed, but hears enough to realize that they're the other two partners in the robbery. After Brenda, who is now trying her hand as an investigative reporter, suggests on television that the money is buried in Morelli's yard, local treasure-hunters keep showing up with shovels, effectively destroying his yard. Morelli, tired of the chaos and already footing the bill to feed everyone who's begun frequenting his house, pays Zook, Mooner, and Gary to act as security and keep the treasure-diggers away. Then, in a more serious turn of events, Stephanie receives a package containing a severed pinky toe, purportedly Loretta's. Figuring out that the corpse in Morelli's basement was one of Dom's three partners in the past robbery, Stephanie goes to confront Stanley Zero, the other known partner, but finds him dead. Stephanie is contacted by the unknown fourth partner, who wants to trade Loretta for the money, which is hidden in a van in a location that only Dom knows. The police prepare a duplicate van and fake money, but the fourth partner contacts Stephanie and tells her that he's aware of the deception, and unless she gets the real money to him by noon the next day, he will cut of Loretta's hand. Then, Stephanie discovers that a camera has been mounted on the house across the street from Morelli's, which explains how the kidnapper has been aware of events at the house. Morelli sends a lab technician to disable the camera, and when Stephanie talks to him, she recognizes his voice: He was the other man in Jelly's apartment, and therefore the fourth partner in the robbery. a camera in Morelli's neighborhood and calls a tech guy to disable the camera, and see who might have hung it. Then, Dom arrives, recognizes the kidnapper, and makes a deal to take him to the money. Stephanie tries to get Dom to stall until the police arrive, but he refuses, so she, Mooner, Zook, and Gary (along with their homemade potato guns which they've been using for security) pursue them, followed by Brenda and her TV crew. As the kidnapper is escaping in the van, Mooner shoots a potato through his windshield, causing him to crash into a deli. This makes the van explode, killing the kidnapper and sending the stolen money flying. Loretta is retrieved from the kidnapper's basement, uninjured and with all her toes intact. Gary's prophecy comes true: the explosion at the deli caused Brenda to be hit by a flying frozen pizza. The story ends at Morelli's house with everyone watching the news. Mooner managed to collect some of the stolen money during the explosion, but gives most of it away. Brenda announces that she's leaving New Jersey to do a reality show with Gary. Dom decides that he no longer wants to kill Morelli, and Loretta explains that she never slept with Morelli as a teenager, and that Mario's father was a classmate who'd died in a freak accident the day after he got her pregnant.
17126431	/m/043psql	The Interior	Lisa See	1999	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Flower Net ends March 14, 1997. The setting of The Interior is summer 1997—China "post- Deng Xiaoping", a period characterized by "an unholy alliance between post-Deng Communism ('market socialism') and American capitalism", the China of Jiang Zemin. In the novel the narrator speaks about the times in more personal terms: "As the saying went, the blade of grass points where the wind blows. The only problem was that the wind was blowing in so many directions these days no one could completely protect himself". The plot centers on the conniving of American and Chinese businessmen to exploit poorly paid Chinese workers, especially women, for profit and power. See describes in great detail the dangers women face because they work in an American toy factory, located in a remote part of the interior of China, that lacks adequate safety protections and is a virtual fire trap. Miaoshan was working at the toy factory before her death. Elisabeth Sherwin quotes Lisa See speaking about the role of Chinese working women from a somewhat different perspective: "'The women making $24 a month in those factories are changing the face of China . . . They are making enough money to open up small stores in their home villages. These women are working at a free market economy and are providing an economic value they never had before.'" At the end of The Interior Hulan and David solve several murders related to the toy factory. The novel begins with Hulan's friend Suchee and the murder of Miaoshan, her daughter. It concludes with the solution to the mystery of Miaoshan's death (which had nothing to do with the toy factory) and with her mother Suchee working in the fields, unable to forget her.
17127610	/m/043sj_6	The Last Days of Judas Iscariot	Stephen Adly Guirgis			 The Last Days of Judas Iscariot tells the story of a court case over the ultimate fate of Judas Iscariot. The play uses flashbacks to an imagined childhood, and lawyers who call for the testimonies of such witnesses as Mother Teresa, Caiaphas, Saint Monica, Sigmund Freud, and Satan.
17129362	/m/043sf8m	A Single Man	Christopher Isherwood	1964	{"/m/0cgx58": "Gay novel"}	 An English professor, about a year after the sudden death of his boyfriend, is unable to cope with the despondent, bereaved nature of his existence and decides on one fateful day to make preparations to take his own life. Throughout the day, he has various encounters with different people that color his senses and illuminate the possibilities of being alive and human in the world.
17132183	/m/043jnmk	The Night People	George Henry Weiss	1947	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns J. Smith who breaks out of prison by means of time travel.
17135880	/m/043q6ww	Against All Things Ending	Stephen R. Donaldson	2010-10-19	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After the resurrection of Thomas Covenant, Covenant's mind is fractured and often becomes lost among his vast memories of the Land's past acquired from Covenant's existence as the Timewarden. Linden Avery resolves to find Jeremiah before confronting the newly awakened Worm of the World's End, when The Harrow appears and claims that he can take her to her son. It is The Harrow's purpose to confront the Worm, for which he requires the Staff of Law and the white gold ring; he demands to borrow their use, in payment for which he offers to retrieve Jeremiah. The Ardent, a representative of The Insequent, arrives to ensure that The Harrow does not betray Linden Avery. Thomas Covenant, who must struggle with his memories, takes the Krill from its place in Andelain. However, his former wife Joan is able to attack Covenant with wild magic through the Krill. And without the Krill's protection, the Skurj and the Sandgorgons (now controlled by the Raver Samadhi Sheol) will lay waste to Andelain, and the surrounding Salva Gildenbourne. Ultimately, with assurances that The Ardent - and through him, the entire race of the Insequent - will ensure that The Harrow does not deal falsely, Linden agrees to the bargain, and surrenders the Staff and the ring. The Ardent is charged by his kindred to both constrain and assist The Harrow - which means that, by the innate law of the Insequent, his life is forfeit to failure as well. The Harrow and The Ardent transport Linden and her companions to The Lost Deep, the ancient domain of the Viles, to find Jeremiah. There, at the great bridge the Viles called The Hazard, Anele becomes enraptured by the deep stone of the earth, and prophesies that the Worm will ultimately seek the EarthBlood as its final sustenance: when the Worm drinks the EarthBlood, the Arch of Time will fall. In witnessing this prophecy, The Ardent accomplishes one of his private goals; however, The Harrow fails to open the portal to the Lost Deep. Ultimately it is Linden, using the Staff, who is able to unweave the Vile magics due to the insight she gained from Caerroil Wildwood, and from her personal encounter with the Viles themselves in the Land's past. It is revealed that it was to steal this insight that motivated The Harrow's initial attempt to possess Linden, before he was denied by The Mahdoubt. By regaining the Staff, Linden also discovers that far beneath even the Lost Deep slumbers a powerful bane called 'She Who Must Not Be Named' - a tormented avatar of countless betrayed women throughout history, including Kastenessen's lover, and the banished wife of the Despiser, Diassomer Mininderain. Linden discovers that it is this bane which is the source of Kevin's Dirt. The bane slumbers, however, and without any conceivable means to oppose it, the party leave it sleeping, and enter the Lost Deep. While Linden's companions are held enthralled by the wonders of the Viles' ancient abode, The Harrow leaves them to take Jeremiah for his own ambitious schemes. There, he confronts the croyel, which hides in one of Jeremiah's constructs, designed to conceal it from the Elohim (who had previously told Linden they were unable to free her son). Liand attacks it, and the croyel nearly kills him. The Harrow believes that due to this construct, the croyel will be unable to summon aid - meaning Roger (who was gifted one of the mad Elohim Kastenessen's hands, and therefore has some Elohim powers). However, the croyel surprises him by summoning skest instead, and the party are nearly overwhelmed. In desperation, Linden destroys the construct, which immediately allows Roger to transport himself to the fight, where he promptly murders The Harrow. Before Roger can claim the Staff and Ring, however, his father intervenes, battling against him with Loric's Krill. Through the Krill, Joan exerts her power to harm Covenant, and his hands are so badly burned that Linden is later forced to amputate his remaining fingertips. With Stave's aid against the croyel, Linden is able to combine forces with Covenant to force Roger to flee. At last Esmer arrives, with the Ur-viles and Waynhim, and prevents Roger from fleeing with Jeremiah. Covenant is able to capture the croyel using the Krill, and Esmer takes Roger and transports him away from the fight; he shortly returns with a group of Waynhim and ur-viles, who assist the party to escape. The conflict of these forces awakens She Who Must Not Be Named. Linden and her companions follow the Ur-viles and Waynhim in seeking a way out, and rely heavily on the strength and endurance of Ironhand Coldspray and her Swordmainnir. By holding the croyel at bay with the threat of Loric's Krill - one of few weapons that can slay the monster - the party are able to bring Jeremiah and the croyel with them. The Skurj also arrive to worsen the situation. Exposed by her EarthSight more intimately to the bane's evil than the other party members - and being a more ready target due to her family history of abuse and despair - Linden's hope finally fails when the party is cornered, and she falls into a catatonic state, deeply traumatized. Covenant first tries to reason with She Who Must Not be Named, then tries to convince Esmer to reveal her true name which would release her. When Esmer refuses Covenant asks Anele to use Liand's orcrest stone to summon the spirits of his parents, Sunder and Hollian. They leave, however, and summon High Lord Elena's spirit as bait for She Who Must Not Be Named. This ploy succeeds at delaying She Who Must Not Be Named from attacking the group. As Elena is being consumed Covenant convinces Esmer to leave them, which allows the Ardent to transport the company away. The Ardent transports the group to a location near Landsdrop. The Ardent can no longer assist them since he failed to protect The Harrow, and begins to madden and die, though through him the race of the Insequent announce that he has become the greatest among them. Somewhat later, as a final service to Linden, he transports the Cords to Revelstone, so that they might convince the Masters to march against the Sandgorgons and Skurj that are attacking the Upper Land. In the meantime, the party rest and recuperate from their narrow escape from death. Linden is recalled from her catatonic state by Covenant, but her yearning for his love is (from her point of view) spurned. She grows bitter towards him as a result, and refocuses herself on the plight of her son. After a failed attempt by Linden to free Jeremiah from the croyel - during which the flames of Earthpower which she draws from the staff are tainted black, apparently permanently - the group are attacked by caesures, brought on by Joan's awareness of Linden's attempted use of wild magic. No less than six caesures assail the company, and in the chaos Anele touches the dirt and is possessed by Kastenessen; the mad Elohim immediately kills Liand in an effort to protect the croyel. After Linden quenches the caesures, the Giants and Stave construct a rocky cairn for the slain Stonedownor, whose lover Pahni is inconsolable. The devastated group is soon attacked again by Roger and an army of Cavewights. During the battle, Galt sacrifices himself to protect Anele, indicating an alteration in The Humbled's stance towards the menace of his Earthpower. Anele then uses Liand's Orcrest and sacrifices his life to both slay the croyel, and to transfer his innate Earthpower, and heritage as the "Last hope of the Land", into Jeremiah. During the battle, Esmer arrives in yet another attempt to betray Linden for Kastenessen, but is pursued by the ur-Viles, who at last reveal the purpose of the manacles they forged: they capture Esmer with them, restraining his power and freeing the wild magic to act. Infuriated by the loss of Anele and Galt, and exalted by the rescue of her son, Linden wields the white gold and utterly routs Roger and his Cavewights. In the battle's aftermath, it is revealed that Jeremiah remains locked in his isolated mental state, and that Galt was actually Stave's son, though the two had become estranged by Stave's repudiation of The Masters. As for Esmer, the tormented half-Haruchai begs Linden for the release of death, but she cannot bring herself to do it, though the required weapon, Loric's Krill, is at hand. Stave sees this and kills Esmer as an act of mercy - upon both Esmer and Linden, so that she would not have to. Finally, through the offices of the Giants, whose gift of tongues is restored upon Esmer's death, Linden is finally able to communicate with the ur-Vile Loremaster, who she thanks and promises to give assistance to at some later time. The Demondim-spawn then depart. Abruptly, Covenant leaves with the two remaining Humbled to confront Joan. Linden and her companions follow the Ranyhyn, trusting the wise horses to know best what they must do next to confront the Land's doom. They lead Linden to a quarry of bones named Muirwin Delenoth. The bones belonged to Quellvisks, an extinct race of monsters that Lord Foul created in an attempt to rouse the Worm by attacking the Elohim (this plot failed, and the Quellvisks were eradicated by the Elohim). Unprompted, Jeremiah begins building a construct with the Quellvisk bones, somehow using the ancient lost craft of anundivian yajna. The group are promptly targets for more than one foe: Joan begins assailing them with caesures, and shortly afterward Infelice appears and attempts to stop them. She hints that Jeremiah's construct will capture the Elohim, which she cannot permit. She describes his actions as "ruin incarnate". She also warns that Lord Foul's "deeper purpose" (which he hinted at when Linden was summoned in Runes of the Earth) is to use Jeremiah's power, after the fall of the Arch of Time, to create a prison for the Creator, allowing Foul to rule all universes. This, at last, is what has long been hinted at in references to "the shadow on the heart" of the Elohim: Infelice insists that Jeremiah's building must not be completed. In exchange for Linden stopping Jeremiah, Infelice offers a promise of the Elohim's protection for the boy, to ensure he does not fall back into the Despiser's hands. Linden refuses the bargain, and as a caesure attacks, Infelice binds Linden and Stave with enchantment, and moves to attack Jeremiah. However, Stave and Linden resist, and with the assistance of the Ranyhyn, Linden is able to throw Jeremiah's old toy race car (that Esmer had previously repaired) to her son, who uses it to complete his construct. Infelice vanishes, presumably ensnared by the construct, and Jeremiah is simultaneously freed from the prison of his mind. At last he and his mother share an embrace, and Linden is able to believe "that her rent heart might heal". Meanwhile, Thomas Covenant travels to the ruins of Foul's Creche to face Joan. He refuses to ride a Ranyhyn per his ancient bargain with them, so the Humbled's Ranyhyn bring with them the steed formerly ridden by The Harrow, which they compel to bear Covenant. On the journey he speaks to the Feroce, diminutive creatures who worship the Lurker of the Sarangrave. They are offshoots of the same race that produced the skest and the sur-jheherrin. The Feroce tell Covenant that the Lurker wants to be allied with Covenant, since it has realised the peril of the Worm as a common enemy. Covenant accepts this alliance, and the Feroce later help him when they battle with the Skest. Covenant reaches Joan by entering a caesure; Branl and Clyme follow him with dogged Haruchai loyalty, though Covenant is only able to free himself from the warped instant of time. He realises that Joan is beyond reach as she rebukes his efforts to help her, and intends to kill him. Covenant calls the Ranyhyn, who are able to distract Joan - due to her love of horses. The distraction provides him the opportunity to drive the Krill through Joan's heart, ending the caesure and freeing the Humbled. Turiya Herem, the Raver who had possessed Joan, flees, and Covenant takes his ex-wife's wedding ring, stripping Foul and his allies of the white gold. Covenant and the Humbled climb onto the shore to evade a tidal wave caused by the Worm's approach to the Land; they survive, though the Humbled's Ranyhyn mounts are lost. The morning sun has failed to dawn, and Thomas Covenant watches as the stars begin to wink out, one by one.
17136775	/m/043ndlw	Conan the Formidable	Steve Perry	1990	{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with Conan walking to Shadizar through the Karpash Mountains. He is ambushed by some bandits in mountains and rescued by the giantess Teyle. She leads Conan back to the giant village in the swamp they inhabit at the foot of the mountains. The swamp is also inhabited by Vargs, who are described as "Green dwarves" but act more like goblins or orcs. Upon arriving, he is knocked out by Teyle to be experimented upon by the request of Raseri the giant chieftain and Teyle's father. Conan awakes in a cage made of the bones of giants and finds he is being experimented upon by Raseri to research the physical endurance for damage of humans. At the same time, Dake the freakmaster is on his way to the giant's village with his entourage of Penz the wolfman, Tro the catwoman, Sab the four-armed man, and Kreg the assistant to the freakmaster. Dake's mission is to capture a giant and a "green dwarf" for his freak show. On the way, the freak show is attacked by vargs, but the vargs scared off by a massive, red demon that Dake summons (which is an illusion). Penz captures one of the Vargs at the behest of Dake. Dake promptly enspells the Varg into servitude. The Varg that is captured turns out to be Vilken, the son of Fosull the Varg chieftain. Conan eventually escapes the cage in which he is being held and sets fire to the hut he was stored in sending all of Raseri's research on humans into flames. Conan escapes into the swamp, running through some Vargs and killing several of them. At the same time, Dake arrives in the night in the hopes of capturing a giant for his freak show with the help of Tro the catwoman's night vision. The flaming hut distracts many of the giants and Dake is able to capture Teyle, as well as Morja and Oren who are also Raseri's children. As Conan escapes, the giants release their "Hellhounds", a massive beast with the appearance of a cross between a bear and a wolf. The hellhounds, Vargs, and giants are tracking Conan in that order of following. Conan slays all the hellhounds. When the Vargs and giants find these corpses they are amazed. Conan finally escapes the swamp only to be magically captured by Dake. Figuring that more of his own kind will attract too much attention, Raseri decides to leave the swamp to look for his children by asking the local humans if they have seen a man like Conan. Fosull decides likewise but coats himself in mud (so as not to display his green skin) and follows the cart's tracks, knowing what they look like. Fosull manages to get a ride with a drunk wine seller in the wine cart. Dake forces Conan to display his strength so that it may be measured. Dake learns that Conan is stronger than all the rest of the freak show combined and sets Conan to use as his strongman for the traveling circus. Raseri eventually finds Fosull's wagon and learns that the cart in front of him contains a Varg that is tracking their children. Fosull learns that he is being tracked by a giant, but knows not who. Dake exhibits his circus to a village. Conan learns that rage helps to weaken Dake's spell. Penz reveals that he knows a few of Dake's spells. Fosull and Raseri form a temporary alliance to rescue their children. Dake meets up with a caravan of other merchants. They stop for the night and Dake sends Morja to the leader of the caravan as a gift. Raseri and Fosull have managed to sneak up This enrages Dake's slaves and they manage to break the spell of entrapment set upon them. The former-slaves, Raseri, and Fosull manage to rescue Morja before she arrives at the merchant's wagon, kill some guards, and escape. The group kills the merchant and several guards in the ensuing battle. Oren throws a rock at Dake as Dake is reciting his enslavering spell. The spell gets 2/3 done and binds the ex-slaves and Raseri and Fousull (except for Conan) before the thrown rock smashes Dake's teeth preventing the final articulations of the spell. Conan promptly slays Dake. Raseri is convinced that the group should not be able to leave knowing how to get to the swamp village of the giants. Raseri tells the group that he has a potion which will help them forget how to get to the village. The potion is actually poison. Penz sprinkles a powder (Stolen from Dake) that turns all liquid to water into the cups of the slaves while Raseri is not watching. All the group drinks the potion and Raseri reveals they are about to die. Fosull, whose drink was not sprinkled with the magical powder, kills Raseri with his poisoned spear and dies shortly afterwards. Teyle decides to let the group go and the book is concluded.
17139588	/m/043mvvd	The Fermata	Nicholson Baker		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Arno Strine discovers he can stop time when he is a young man. He works on this power, and learns how to trigger and control these time stoppages. However, instead of becoming rich or a diabolic criminal, Strine becomes an elaborate voyeur. He stops time so that he can see women naked, and eventually creates scenarios that he can watch after he allows time to start again. But despite his enjoyment of this power, Arno wants a real relationship, and he overcomes his shyness to begin a relationship. When he finally consummates this relationship, his power to stop time passes to his girlfriend, whose own time adventures begin. Arno works on the story of this time power, under the title "The Fermata."
17141716	/m/043rm_7	Brasyl	Ian McDonald	2007-05-03	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Brasyl is a story presented in three distinct strands of time. The main action concerns Marcelina Hoffman; a coked-up, ambitious reality TV producer in contemporary Brazil, a striving amateur capoeirista who transcends the cliches of luvvy television phony and becomes a full-fledged, truly likable person as we watch her embark upon a mad new project. Marcelina is going to find the disgraced goalie who lost Brazil a momentous World Cup half a century before and trick him into appearing on television for a mock trial in which the scarred nation can finally wreak its vengeance. Another strand is set in mid-21st century São Paulo, at a moment when the first quantum technologies are reaching the street, which industriously finds its own use for these things. Q-blades that undo the information that binds together the universe, Q-cores that break the crypto that powers the surveillance state that knows every movement of every person and object in Sampa and beyond. The final strand is an 18th-century Heart of Darkness adventure in the deep Amazon jungle, as we follow an Irish-Portuguese Jesuit into slaver territory where he is sent to end the mad, bloody kingdom of a rogue priest who scours the land with plague and fire. He is joined by a French natural philosopher, who intends to reach the equator and discover the shape of the world with a pendulum.
17142041	/m/043s6h0	Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married	Marian Keyes	1996		 Lucy visits a fortune teller with her three mis-matched friends, and a marriage is predicted in her future. When the fortune-teller's prophecies for her friends come true, Lucy begins to suspect that she will soon be marrying. Lucy spends the following 12 months looking for Mr Right. Various eligible bachelors are introduced, among them Gus, Lucy's unreliable lover; Daniel, her oldest friend; Chuck, a handsome American; and Adrian, the video shop man. This is followed by a series of disastrous dates, drunken nights out, confessions and revelations. Author Keyes has said, "I'm very fond of that book and I think I have the most affection for Lucy Sullivan as a character. There's a lot of me in there [...] I wanted to write about a single girl in London who goes out with eejit after eejit, you know, because that was really the life I had led, and there was this strange culture of singleness I encountered and I found this very funny. Lucy's depressive, but she has a sense of humour, and that's why I like her."
17142627	/m/043qngd	Elite da Tropa				 Based on real facts, this book shows stories about the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (BOPE), considered an elite squad in Rio de Janeiro's Military Police. The book shows the officers from BOPE as an incorruptible and extremely violent troop. This book also shows the plan to assassinate Leonel Brizola, at that time, governor of Rio de Janeiro. es:Elite da Tropa pt:Elite da Tropa
17147981	/m/043mh4g	Barbaro, Smarty Jones & Ruffian: The People's Horses				 Through the lives of these three dynamic “fan favorites,” Hanna shares all aspects of the sport as well as many pieces of personal information on Barbaro, Smarty Jones and Ruffian gathered from her research. Through exclusive interviews with owners, trainers, jockeys, equine veterinarians, pedigree specialists and racing officials, she carries fans to a new level of knowledge and appreciation. Speaking from the perspective of a “fan,” Hanna educates her audience in the nuances of breeding, training and racing. The reader will be readily drawn into the “new Golden Age of Horseracing” in the ‘70s, as Ruffian makes her dramatic debut at Belmont Park and smashes track records during this brief and brilliant career. Insights from her trainer, Frank Y. Whiteley, Jr., shed new light on her devastating and fatal breakdown during The Great Match Race of 1975. As Smarty Jones captivated America with his Triple Crown bid in 2004, Hanna weaves readers into the history of horseracing in his home state of Pennsylvania and the positive reverberations there caused by the “Smarty Effect.” All aspects of Smarty Jones' brief career are presented in great detail with new revelations concerning his much-criticized retirement in August 2004. In an introduction to the book written by Smarty’s owner, Patricia L. Chapman, readers are reminded of all aspects of the sport-positive and negative. Both Chapman and Hanna speak to the need for greater rescue efforts for needy horses and to the call for greater responsibility for all within the sport. As a designated charity for a portion of the book’s proceeds, Hanna directs her readers to The Kentucky Equine Humane Center in a Preface by Staci Hancock who outlines the Center’s wonderful efforts in horse rescue and placement. Another large segment of the population was drawn to Thoroughbred horseracing, as it watched Gretchen and Roy Jackson’s Barbaro struggle for survival after breaking a leg during the 2006 Preakness Stakes. With poignant detail, Hanna moves her audience through the interworkings of veterinary orthopedics at New Bolton Center, an eight-month public relations/media effort on national television and an on-going and astounding fan base for the fallen hero, Barbaro. Since his death in January 2007, Hanna relates that fans have united in new and far-reaching causes in his name. In a final section of the book, which Hanna titles Legacy, she examines significant and timely equine topics. Some of these include: the injuries of these horses, an analysis of their pedigrees, efforts toward anti-slaughter, the need for rescue efforts, the work of the Fans of Barbaro and the legacies of these three special equine athletes. As a final kudo to fans young and old, Governor Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania addresses the wonderful careers of Barbaro, Smarty Jones and Ruffian in what has evolved as a feel good story about these horses’ lives.
17149705	/m/043kwbc	Keeping the Moon	Sarah Dessen	1999-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nicole Sparks (Colie) and her mother used to be poor and moved often. They were very overweight and spent most of the time living in their car while her mother switched jobs. That all changed when her mother started taking aerobics classes, which lead to both of them losing weight and her mother becoming a well known aerobics instructor. Eventually her mother had a line of fitness equipment, a television show and TV specials, improving their financial status greatly. Colie remains insecure, however, and bullied by other students at school. Before she lost the weight, they made fun of her for her size, but after she lost the weight, they made up rumors about her being promiscuous, giving her the nickname "Hole In One". When Colie's mother goes over to Europe for a tour of her new fitness line one summer, Colie spends it with her aunt Mira in Colby, North Carolina, a prospect that she isn't too thrilled about. When she meets her Aunt Mira and her hippie tenant Norman, they do not improve her first impressions of Colby. She explores the town and arrives at the Last Chance Bar and Grill where she meets perfectionist Morgan and in-your-face Isabel, who immediately rejects Colie. Colie is convinced that no one in Colby will want her, similar to her life back home. Later, Morgan makes Isabel apologize for her rude commentary, and when she and Norman stop in to help with a particularly rough shift, she lands herself a job at the grill. Morgan and Isabel help Colie build confidence and start loving herself. Colie endures the aftermath of “chick night” and enjoys her new found confidence, finally standing up to her bully back home and giving her number to a cute guy she meets, Josh. He calls her at the restaurant, and Norman gets jealous. Colie realizes that she has to mend their friendship, and asks Norman for a second shot at being in a portrait for his art school, that she forgot about the night before. Meanwhile Morgan decides to go to Durham to surprise her fiance, Mark, which worries Isabel because of past problems with Mark. Morgan gets hit with reality when she finds Mark married to a pregnant stripper, and she takes it out on Isabel by locking her out of the house. Colie and Norman become more interested in each other while they are working on the portrait, and when the art sessions end, Norman invites Colie over for a date for the unveiling of Colie’s finished portrait. The novel comes to an end with all of the characters in balance: Morgan is getting over her loss for Mark, Norman and Colie are in a relationship, and Isabel and Morgan reunite during a disco beat. At 12:15 Colie gets to see her first eclipse and watches in awe as she looks across her row of new friends, and at the sky as the moon disappears.
17151926	/m/043jx67	A Fraction of the Whole	Steve Toltz	2007-07	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Fraction of the Whole uses a multi-perspective narrative, often going back in time to show Martin's perspective on events before returning to Jasper's story in the present. The framing narrative of the novel is written from the perspective of Jasper, writing secretly from the prison cell he is incarcerated in for an initially undisclosed crime. The story jumps back to when Jasper was five, and was pulled out of school by his father, Martin. Rather than using a typical school curriculum, Martin teaches his son his beliefs about how life is, how it should be, and how to survive it. Martin gives Jasper a highly detailed account of his own childhood. He has dealt with many problems in his life, from Terry's criminal behavior, to Martin's own depression, to his four year coma, to his mother poisoning him while she went mad from fear of her terminal cancer. Martin clearly remembers telling his brother that the two criminal kids, whom Terry would later join, are cheating. These kids had been beating Martin up, and he knows that telling Terry this lie would make him go after them. Terry does go after the bullies, and they stab him in the leg. This injury cripples Terry for life and renders him incapable of playing sports. Martin comes up with the idea of a suggestion box, where everyone in town is welcome to enter recommendations for town life. It starts off well, but soon everyone in town is criticized by someone else. Each slip is anonymous, making it impossible for anyone to get mad, except at the person who invented the suggestion box. No one ever finds out that it was Martin. Finally, there is the loss of Martin's true love, Caroline, to Terry. After Terry is imprisoned, she leaves the town and visits every now and then. Martin's mother is diagnosed with Cancer, and Martin vows that he won't leave her, effectively trapping himself in the town he hates. Once the town burns down, killing his mother and stepfather, and burning down the prison, he leaves town for good, having wanted to for so many years. Before he leaves he collects what he believes to be his brother's ashes from the prison, and scatters them in a puddle. Martin leaves his hometown in Australia for Paris. He has picked Paris because he figures that he may as well start where he believes Caroline Potts to be. He has traced the postcard he has received from her to the original address. Upon arrival, he learns that she has recently moved, and no one is quite sure where. Martin decides to live in Paris, where he meets two important people. Eddie comes off as a very friendly Thai who loves to take pictures and constantly takes Martin's photograph. Eddie is not the type of person Martin likes and he decides never to see him again but unfortunately for Martin, Eddie becomes his dearest and longest friend. Eddie is always there for Martin, giving him jobs and money when he needs it. Martin also meets Astrid (real name unknown) in a café. He finds her extremely attractive and assumes that his affair with her will be a one night stand, but in fact it becomes the exact opposite. Astrid and Martin move in together, and Astrid unexpectedly becomes pregnant. During her pregnancy, Astrid becomes crazy, repeatedly painting a violent and horrific face and trying to converse with God. She becomes angry when God does not respond, so Martin starts pretending to be him, answering her questions while hiding in the bathroom. He learns a great deal about her, and realizes that she is becoming suicidal. After giving birth to Jasper, Astrid commits suicide. Eddie continues to help the Dean family financially. The Deans meet another central character, Anouk. Although they meet on undesirable grounds (Anouk vandalizes Martin's car), they become close family friends, as Martin hires Anouk to clean for them. Martin is deemed mentally unstable and is sent to mental institution. Jasper (Martin's child with Astrid) is sent to a foster home against his will. When Martin is released, he buys a rotting, broken-down house in the middle of nowhere. Martin builds a house and labyrinth on the property to have maximum privacy. Jasper, in high school, meets the Towering Inferno (real name unknown). She is Jasper's first girlfriend, but everything ends in shambles when Jasper discovers that she is having an affair with her ex-boyfriend, Brian the newscaster. Finally, with the assistance of Anouk, Martin finds his purpose in life: to tell his ideas. Martin comes up with a way to make everyone in Australia a millionaire, using a system similar to a lottery. He proposes the idea to Anouk, who helps get it approved by the most wealthy man in Australia and his son, both of whom are in charge of the nation's network of tabloids and paparazzi artists. Anouk eventually marries Oscar, the son. They put him on the covers of all the newspapers. Martin becomes the most beloved person in the country, except for Terry. People often refer to Martin in terms of being Terry's brother. This annoys Martin, but he is happy to know he is famous now. Out of the few randomly selected winners, Caroline, his true love from his childhood, is picked. Right before the ceremony, they get engaged, as do Anouk and the son of the wealthy man who had helped them. While presenting the first millionaires, Martin declares that he is running for prime minister. Being beloved so much despite his foul speech, he is elected by a landslide. With Eddie at his side helping with the lottery, it seems that nothing can go wrong, but eventually everything does. Soon after Martin's victory, he, Jasper and Caroline are living happily. It is discovered that Eddie has committed fraud; he has fixed the whole idea, setting it up so Caroline and all of Eddie's friends would win. When the story gets out, Martin becomes the most hated man in Australia, and is forced to leave the country. After escaping to Thailand, with Eddie leading the way, Jasper, Caroline and Martin have no idea where they are going. They had never suspected that someone had been paying Eddie to be friendly to Jasper and Martin, yet he has hated them the entire time. It turns out that Terry has been alive after all. He has not been killed in the fire, but instead has just run away and employed Eddie to give money to the Deans and take photographs. Terry has become very fat, and is the head of an entire criminal group. He has also forgotten about love, but instead has three prostitutes as friends whom he hires almost every night. Soon afterwards it is revealed that Caroline is having an affair with Terry. Martin is dying of cancer, Eddie has gone completely crazy and Jasper tries to get the family back together. Eddie, desperate to make his dead parents proud, tries to resume his pre-Dean career of being a doctor, but finds that the local population are happy with their existing doctor and his apprentice. He poisons them and upon discovery the village turn on Eddie and all of the Deans. Eddie and Caroline are killed. With Martin nearly dead from his cancer, he says he wants to die in Australia and Jasper decides to go with him. Terry arranges it for Jasper and Martin to be smuggled back to Australia on a smuggling boat. On their return Jasper and Martin bond for the very first time. They enjoy each other's company and understand each other better. Just when Australia comes in sight, Martin dies smiling, and his dead body is thrown overboard, just as he had requested. Jasper is arrested on the boat's arrival by immigration and Jasper ends up in a detention center, grieving for his father. Eventually Jasper reveals who he is and he is released. The authorities take him to a storage room where Martin's belongings have been stored. Jasper is convinced it is mostly junk but discovers Martin's diaries, on which some of the book is based, and paintings of a face painted by his mother. He realizes he's seen this face before and has been haunted by it. Jasper also realizes that he will not become his father - his greatest fear - because his mother is part of him as well. He sets off to Europe in search of his mother's past, with financial assistance from Anouk who has become the richest woman in Australia.
17152401	/m/043jx0r	The Sunken World	Stanton A. Coblentz		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns Anton Harkness, the commander of an American submarine in World War II which is caught in a whirlpool which drags it to the bottom of the sea where it collides with a glass dome. The crew are rescued by the Atlanteans who live beneath the dome. Harkness falls in love with an Atlantean girl with whom he escapes after the Atlantean dome is destroyed.
17155058	/m/043kthr	Death's Deputy	L. Ron Hubbard		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns a man who is unnaturally accident-prone.
17155179	/m/043lt_7	Cecilia Valdés	Cirilo Villaverde			 Action (in both the novel and the zarzuela) takes place in colonial Cuba about 1830. The young and beautiful light skinned mulatta, Cecilia Valdés, is the illegitimate daughter of powerful land magnate and slave trader, Candido de Gamboa. Leonardo de Gamboa is his legitimate son. Leonardo falls in love with Cecilia not realizing that she is his own half-sister, and they become lovers. At the same time, hopelessly in love with Cecilia is also another man, the poor black musician, José Dolores Pimienta. His advances Cecilia rejects; and she conceives Leonardo's son. Love between Leonardo and Cecilia does not last, however. He abandons her and becomes betrothed to a white upper class woman, a certain Isabel Ilincheta. Cecilia turns to the faithful Pimienta to plan revenge. On the day of his wedding he is assassinated on the steps of the cathedral by Pimienta who acts on the instigation of Cecilia. He is executed, and she is thrown in prison. Cecilia Valdés reveals the intricate problems of race relations in Cuba. There are the elite social circles of Spanish-born and creole whites; the growing number of mulattos, of which Cecilia is one, and the blacks, some slaves, some freed men. The blacks are also divided between those who were born in Africa and those who were born in Cuba, those who worked on the sugar plantation and those who worked in the households of the wealthy in Havana. Cecilia Valdés is a canvas displaying the sexual, social, and racial interaction of the Cubans of the day.
17158679	/m/043p72_	The Radio Man	Roger Sherman Hoar		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns electrical engineer Myles Cabot, who disappears from his home in Boston while performing an experiment. He finds himself transported to the planet Venus where he is captured by the Formians, a race of ant-like creatures. After learning of the Cupians, a human-like race that is subservient to the Formians, Cabot escapes and falls in love with the Cupian princess Lilla. He goes on to introduce the Cupians to gunpowder and leads them in a revolt against their Formian masters.
17160931	/m/043l06w	Dragon Bones	Lisa See	2004	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the start of the novel, the couple mourns the death of their young daughter Chaowen. Guilt and anguish have driven the lovers apart, unable to get past their mutual loss. Hulan's inner turmoil is made even worse when she is forced to shoot and kill a woman at an All-Patriotic Society rally to save a young girl from being stabbed by her mother. The Chinese government opposes the Society as a threat to public order, an opinion that Hulan strongly shares. Hulan and David are brought together to work on the same case from different perspectives. Hulan is sent to an archaeological site near the construction of the massive 3 Gorges Dam project to investigate a suspicious death. In an NPR report, See emphasizes the potent symbolism of the Dam, alluding to a 4,000 year old Chinese saying: "He who controls the water controls the people". She concludes her report by returning to the same idea: ". . . no matter how the outside world views the dam, inside China it will be there to remind the people of a sage emperor; in other words, the current government, who serves the people by controlling the waters". David is sent to the same site to find out how precious Chinese artifacts are being smuggled out of China. The archaeologists at the site are working frantically to find as many antiquities as they can before the dam is completed, flooding their dig site as well as many others. They are especially interested in finding evidence that people in the area have maintained continuous culture for 5000 years. The plot weaves together several story lines. One involves the difficult task of finding out the true intentions of the All-Patriotic Society. Another is concerned with Chinese archaeology and whether the men and women who work at the dig site are involved in the smuggling of antiquities. With dead bodies turning up rather frequently, Hulan's task in solving these crimes is challenging. And there is also the painful journey of Hulan and David as they try to accept their daughter's death. Reviewers of Dragon Bones have tended to be somewhat ambivalent about it. Lev Raphael's review is rather typical in this regard. Raphael finds the novel to be "overly romantic" and the conclusion melodramatic. On the other hand, "the real strength of this book is the absorbing portrait of China, from the bugged office of a high official to the dismal hut of a starving peasant, the kind of person who knows what it is 'to eat bitterness.'" See presents an "effective depiction of a modern land held emotionally and socially hostage to the past . . ."
17164647	/m/043pfwr	An Expert in Murder	Nicola Upson	2008-03-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the London theatres of the 1930s. The book revolves around Josephine Tey, a version of the famous novelist. The story begins with Tey taking the train from Scotland to London in order to attend the final week of performances of her renowned play, Richard of Bordeaux, written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot. On board, she meets a young woman, Elspeth Simmons, the adopted daughter of hatmakers from Berwick-upon-Tweed. The two strike up a friendship on the journey, as the girl is a fan of Tey's work, and is on her way to see the play again. Upon arriving in London, the pair separate, as Elspeth has left her bag on the train. Soon after, the girl is found dead, apparently having been stabbed with a hat pin, a crime which seems to have been carefully planned. Here enters Detective Inspector Archie Penrose, an old acquaintance of Tey's, the best friend of her lover, whom Penrose saw die at the Somme. Clues and circumstance suggest that Tey may have been the intended target, so the narrative follows her and her time at the theatre. There, we are introduced to a world of excitement and intrigue, and more death follows. We meet the leads in the play, Johnny and Lydia; the two are presumably based on the real life leads in the best-selling run, John Gielgud, whose career it, arguably, made, and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies. The back-stabbing world of casting and performance combines with the classic murder mystery plot.
17165147	/m/043qzn_	Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers	Lois-Ann Yamanaka	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel takes place, roughly, over a period of three years. Part One begins when Lovey is in the sixth grade and she and her best friend Jerry are watching a Shirley Temple movie. Lovey comments on how there is always a happy ending in movies, but never in real life – especially in her own life where she is pure Japanese, and not pretty like the haoles and hapa children in her class. And so she and Jerry constantly make up their own obituaries when they are playing together. We are introduced to both of Lovey’s parents in Part One: Verva Nariyoshi being the mother that always seems unhappy with Lovey, and Hubert Nariyoshi being the father that treats Lovey like the son he never had. Other characters in this section include Katy – the Nariyoshi’s pregnant teenage neighbor that teaches Lovey that babies come out of a woman’s vagina and not the other end. Aunt Helen is another neighbor, and Verva's best friend. Among all the characters in the novel, Lovey learns the most from her father Hubert. He teaches her about the "dominate and recessid jeans" of pea flowers and rabbit mating on their farm, hunting wild turkey and other animals, and tells her not to get too close to any the animals bred for food - like the cow that Calhoon names Bully. Hubert also teaches Lovey about his Japanese Samurai ancestors, how they moved to Hawai'i to work on the plantations on the island of Kaua'i, and how Lovey should be proud of her heritage. Part Two begins at school, probably at the beginning of the seventh grade. Although Jerry is handsome enough to attract the eyes of the popular Lori Shigemura, their classmates still call him "Queer" and "Fag" and call Lovey "Queen" and "Lez." This is the section where Jerry's homosexuality is alluded to the most. He and Lovey both argue over who David Cassidy would rather date, and they both decide that it would be a blonde haole girl. This is also where Lovey gets her period and realizes that she hates being a girl. In this section we are introduced to Jerry's older high school-aged brother Larry. Larry is always violent towards Lovey and Cal and Jerry, later killing their pet Koi in Part Three because they watch him and his girlfriend Crystal have sex in her bedroom. Part Three is where most of the rising action occurs throughout the novel. Lovey and Jerry are now in their last year of middle school. We are given fuller descriptions of the Rays of the Rising Sun, a YMCA club consisting of the most popular girls in Lovey's class. Lori is a part of this group, and dances with Jerry at their Graduation Dance at the end of the year. Lori is constantly calling Lovey names because she is jealous of the relationship she has with Jerry. And as mentioned before, Larry kills Lovey and Calhoon's pet Koi out of anger - Crystal gets pregnant and her mother takes her to Japan to abort the baby. However, a few months after she comes back home, she again gets pregnant by Larry. Refusing to live with the shame, she hangs herself. But the most traumatic event in Part Three is when Hubert loses his eyesight during a hunting accident. Out of anger he yells and throws dirt at Lovey. And out of guilt he gets drunk and accidentally blows out his eyes when trying to shoot a deer. Lovey feels responsible, and finally learns that being proud of her ancestry is more important than the physical things that she lacks - things that society tells her she should have. Lovey flies to the island of Kaua'i to get a bag filled with dirt for her father to "see" his home again.
17166254	/m/043l6s1	Murder Madness	Murray Leinster	1931	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a tyrant that attempts to control civilization by using a madness inducing drug.
17182328	/m/043k7hh	Cereus Blooms at Night	Shani Mootoo	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 At the beginning of Part I, Tyler addresses the general audience. His intention for telling the story of Mala is in hopes that the book will eventually reach Asha Ramchandin, Mala’s long-lost younger sister. Mala is an aging, notoriously crazy woman suspected of murder. She was ordered to Paradise Alms House after the judge found her unfit to stand trial. Part I opens with Mala first arriving to Paradise Alms House. She is heavily sedated and kept under physical constraint. All of the nurses are afraid to attend to her because of her infamous reputation. Tyler, being the only male nurse in the nursing home and a subject of gossip and scrutiny for his alternative sexuality, is immediately drawn to her. He cares for her and slowly gains her trust. The first sounds that Mala makes are perfect imitations of crickets, frogs, and species of birds. However, she does not speak. Then Tyler begins to tell the story of Mala’s dad, Chandin Ramchandin, which he had heard from his Cigarette Smoking Nana. Chandin’s father was an indentured field labor from India. At an early age, Chandin became the adopted Indian son of Reverend Thoroughly, a white man, in exchange for his parents’ conversion to Christianity. The Reverend also wanted to adopt an Indian child in hope to have closer connection with the Indians in Paradise. Growing up, Chandin found himself madly in love with Lavinia, the daughter of the Reverend and, therefore, his "sister." Attractive and beautiful, Lavinia brushed off all attention from boys and remained in the company of one girlfriend, Sarah, who happened to be Indian and the only other girl in the seminary school. When Chandin grow into a fine young man, he decided to confess his love to Lavinia. Lavinia firmly rejected his love and announced that she would be leaving for the Shivering Northern Wetlands in three days. Later, Chandin had heard the news that Lavinia was engaged to her distant cousin in Wetlands. Heartbroken yet trying to conceal his feelings, Chandin announced that he has fallen in love with Sarah and wanted to marry her. Then began Mala’s life. Chandin traveled around paradise with the Reverend, spreading the gospel and encouraging more conversions to Christianity. Sarah gave birth to two daughters, Pohpoh (Mala) and Asha. In the meantime, Lavinia had returned to Paradise with the news that she broke off her engagement. Lavinia visited Sarah often since they are childhood friends and Chandin again begin to feel the sting of Lavinia’s unattainability. One day, Pohpoh caught Lavinia and Sarah in a moment of intimacy. Eventually Chandin had also notice the unusual affection between his wife and Lavinia. He confronted Sarah. In hope to be with each other, Lavinia and Sarah decided to elope together with the children. However Chandin unexpected returned home early on the day of the planned escape. In the mist of confusion and screaming, Pohpoh and Asha were left behind with their enraged and demented father. After the news spread of his wife leaving her with another woman, Chandin gave up his religion, his God, and began to drink heavily. Then one night, he raped Pohpoh, his eldest daughter. The sin continued in which every night he would call one of his daughters into bed with him. During the day, the children went to school like other children but, at night, they lived under the sexual tyranny of their father. Pohpoh had a childhood admirer and friend, whom she called her Boyie. One day, she seduced him in his mother’s house but stopped right before sexual intercourse. Back in the nursing home, Mala begins to have visitors, Otoh and his father Ambrose Mohanty. Ambrose was Mala’s Boyie. Part II of the novel further traces the development of the relationship between Mala and Otoh, a plot line that interweaves with one of Mala’s memories of Pohpoh. In the memory, Pohpoh sneaks out of her father’s home, enters another house, and returns safely, all the while being “protected” by the adult Mala. The memory is rich in detail about the nature that Pohpoh feels, smells, and hears, since the entire time she is covered in darkness. At the same time that Mala is reflecting on her quite vivid recollections of Pohpoh, Otoh begins to work up the courage to come see her. His father Ambrose had taken up an almost constant sleep and only awoke once a month to prepare provisions (a source of contention with his wife), which Otoh would then deliver to Mala. During one such delivery, Otoh dared to enter the Mala’s yard dressed in his father’s old clothes. Mistaking him for Ambrose, Mala dances with him and then takes him inside to show him the long-decaying body of her father. Terrified, he ran away and collapsed on the street outside. When he recounted what he had seen, the police came into Mala’s house and investigated. Upon discovery of the body, they arrested her and prepared her for a court visit. However, before the police had a chance to retrieve the body from Mala’s house, Otoh decided to make the rather decisive move (especially in comparison to his father) of burning down Mala’s house. Parts III, IV, and V of the novel are all significantly shorter than the first two sections. Part III provides a flashback to the budding romance between Ambrose and Mala after he returned from studying in the Shivering Northern Wetlands, culminating in their act of making love. Unfortunately, it is that same day that Chandin realizes his daughter’s affair and, as a result, abuses and rapes her severely. The next day, when Ambrose returns, there is a confrontation between all three. Ambrose runs away during the conflict, leaving Mala to lock her father’s unconscious body in a room downstairs. Part IV of the novel includes the discovery that Ambrose’s wife has left him and an explanation by Ambrose to Otoh that murdering her father had driven Mala mad. She attacked Ambrose anytime he tried to visit. Part V provides a sense of resolution to the novel with the discovery of several letters sent from Asha to Mala that were never delivered and the subsequent attempt by Tyler to contact Asha through this book.
17189201	/m/043rgq7	Loss and Gain	John Henry Cardinal Newman	1848	{"/m/07z5s9": "Campus novel"}	 Charles Reding arrives at Oxford University planning to follow the advice and example of his father, and to submit to the teachings of the Church of England without becoming involved in any factious parties. Reding is inclined towards a form of Latitudinarianism, following the maxim "Measure people by what they are, and not by what they are not." His conversations with his friend Sheffield convince him, however, that there must be right and wrong answers in doctrinal matters. In order to follow the right views, Reding seeks a source of Church authority, and is disappointed to find only party dissension and the Protestant doctrine of Private Judgment, which locates interpretive authority in the individual and thereby leads (in Newman's view) to the espousal of contradictory views. Furthermore, Reding begins to have doubts about the Thirty-nine Articles, to which he must subscribe in order to take his degree. His doubts are briefly dispelled following the death of his father, but return soon afterward. In particular, several brief encounters with Willis, a former Oxford peer who converted to Roman Catholicism, greatly excite and trouble him. Suspicious of his speculations, Jennings forces Reding to live away from Oxford while studying for his exams, so as not to corrupt other students. Reding confesses his doubts to his sister Mary, who does not understand them and loses trust in her brother. When Reding finally decides he must convert, Mary, his mother, and several family friends express resentment and anger. He travels to London, on the way receiving encouragement from a Catholic priest (perhaps Newman himself), the first he has ever met. While in London Reding is confronted by emissaries from various religious and philosophical sects who, hearing about his departure from the Anglican Church, want to recruit him for their own causes. Ultimately, however, Reding arrives at the Passionists Convent, where he joins the Roman Catholic Church.
17189926	/m/043rd97	The Return of Chorb	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1929		 The Kellers are a bourgeois couple living in a smaller German town whose daughter has married the Russian emigre writer Chorb. The distrust between Chorb and his father-in-law is deepened when Chorb and his bride escape from the formality of their wedding to spend their first night at a local seedy hotel. On the honeymoon, the bride accidentally touches a live electric wire near Nice and dies. Chorb now returns to recreate her image by visiting the sites they had been to together and to tell her parents. Arriving in the evening he only finds the maid at the Keller's home who have gone to the opera to see Parsifal. Chorb does not want to break the news to her and tells her that his bride is ill and he will be back in the morning. He returns to the hotel to spend the night in the same room he had been with his wife. Unable to stay in the room alone, he pays a prostitute to stay with him. When the Kellers get home, they are too alarmed to wait for the morning and leave for the hotel. There, during the night, Chorb sees his wife in the prostitute, screams, and the terrified woman is about to leave: at this moment the Kellers arrive.
17191213	/m/043qlmz	Imperial Bedrooms	Bret Easton Ellis			 The novel opens with Clay, a 45-year old screenwriter, explaining that an author had adapted the events of his early-1980s Christmas vacation into a novel which later became a film. The author had been in love with Clay's girlfriend Blair, and depicted Clay somewhat differently from how he really is. The action of Imperial Bedrooms depicts Clay upon returning to Los Angeles, having lived in New York for four years, in order to assist in the casting of his new film. There, he meets up with his old friends, who were seen in Less Than Zero. Like Clay, they have all become involved in the film industry: His philandering friend Trent Burroughs- who has married Blair- is a manager, while Clay's former classmate at Camden, Daniel Carter, has become a famous producer. Julian Wells, who was a male prostitute in Less Than Zero, has become an ultra-discreet high-class pimp representing struggling young actors who do not wish to tarnish future careers. Rip Millar, Clay's former drug dealer, now controls his own cartel and has become disfigured through repeated plastic surgeries. Clay attempts to romance Rain Turner, a young woman auditioning for a role in his new film, leading her on with the promise of being cast, all the while knowing she is too old for the part. His narration betrays that he has done this with a number of men and women in the past, and yet often comes out of the relationship hurt and damaged himself. Over the course of their relationship, he is stalked by unknown persons driving a Jeep and is frequently reminded by various individuals of the grisly murder of a young producer whom he knew. Clay disinterestedly watches a snuff film of the murder—later attributed to Rip—on the YouTube application on his iPhone. As the novel progresses, Clay learns that Rip also had a fling with Rain and is now obsessed with her, killing anyone he believes will pose a threat to a future relationship. When Clay discovers that Julian is currently Rain's boyfriend, he conspires with Rip to have Julian murdered. After Julian's death, Clay receives a video of the murder from Rip, which has been overdubbed with an angry voicemail from Clay as a means to implicate him in the crime. The novel then depicts sequences of the savage sexual and physical abuse of a beautiful young boy and young girl, perpetrated by Clay. The novel offers no indication as to whether these scenes are fantasy or reality. Clay experiences no feelings of remorse or guilt for this, for Julian's death, or for exploiting Rain. In the last scenes, it is suggested that Blair could have been the one hiring people to follow Clay. In exchange for some undisclosed favor, she casually offers to provide Clay with a false alibi that will prevent the police from arresting him as an accomplice to Julian's murder.
17192597	/m/043qh9k	Wolf Island	Darren Shan	2008-10-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book starts with Grubbs fighting a demon alongside Beranabus and Kernel in the Demonata universe. After subduing and torturing the demon they are fighting, they question it about the Shadow, but learn nothing. Later, they meet up with Shark, Meera, Bec and Dervish. They discover that the Lambs were responsible for the attack on the Grady's home in Carcery Vale and it is decided that Grubbs should go after them to find out more. Shark assembles a team of soldiers he names the "Dirty Dozen". One of them is Timas Brauss, a computer expert, who finds the Lamb's Headquarters. Upon their arrival, they find a man named Antoine Horwitzer in charge, in place of the missing Prae Athim. Antoine explains that Prae stole around six to seven hundred werewolves from their breeding facility. They learn, through Timas' efforts, that Prae took all the werewolves to "Wolf Island" and Antoine accompanies them there. On the island, they find Prae a prisoner. It emerges that Antoine and Juni Swan were behind the assault. Juni Swan arrives shortly after and they are attacked. They manage to flee and attempt to escape on the helicopter they arrived in but it is destroyed. They try to escape the released werewolves through a window but are attacked before they can open one. Shark is left behind in the subsequent fight. Grubbs, Meera, Prae and Timas try to escape by sea since the werewolves cannot swim but ultimately find themselves surrounded. Grubbs becomes a werewolf and kills the leader of the pack, replacing him and assuming control of the werewolves. He makes the wolves go back to attack Juni. Grubbs fights Juni but is eventually overpowered. Just as he is about to be killed, Juni has a vision. She says that Grubbs is tapping into great magic and that the world is being destroyed, informing him "the demons will not destroy the world, Grubbs Grady - you will." With that, she leaves. Grubbs later finds Antoine trying to escape by boat. Grubbs agrees not to kill Antoine if he calls his Lambs off their attack and has them escort Bec and Dervish to safety. Once this is done, Antoine asks Grubbs to keep his end of the bargain. Grubbs confirms he would not kill Antoine, "but that doesn't mean the pack won't". Antoine is savagely killed. On the way back to the docks, they see a man lying on his back in a boat, this is revealed to be a severely injured Shark, who fought and killed the werewolves he was left to fight with. When Grubbs gets back home, he finds Dervish has decided to stay and die instead of going to the Demonata world. A window opens and Grubbs, Bec, Dervish, and Kirilli prepare to fight.
17194261	/m/043qdk6	Ivan's Appeal		2007-11		 Whilst on a family cruise in the Antarctic, Jo and Colin meet an iceberg called Ivan. He is slowly melting and pleads with the children to help him before it's too late. Their father makes a videotape recording of Ivan and the problems faced by himself and the glaciers which is then aired on Blue Peter. This initiates a nationwide contest amongst schools to devise better environmental ways, and the prize is to visit the Antarctic to find Ivan. Thanks to a host of clever ideas from the children and an enlighted head teacher, Jo and Colin's school wins a place on the amazing sea voyage. They manage to locate Ivan, who is pretty ill, in time to tell him that his appeal has not been in vain.
17195440	/m/043lk22	La Boîte à merveilles				 The narrator adult, plagued by loneliness begins his story to better understand dating his solitude forever. It then presents the tenants Dar chouafa: lalla kenza the seer (ground floor), Driss El Aouad, his wife and their daughter Rahma zineb (first floor) and fatma Bziouya the second floor). It evokes memories Moorish Bath and its Wonders box where the objects found there to keep him company. Then he recounts memories of a dispute between his mother and Rahma. Returning from m'sid, the narrator finds his ailing mother .. Lalla Aicha her friend comes to visit and convinces to visit Sidi Boughaleb.A the end of the visit, Sidi Mohamed is scratched by a cat. Tired, the child does not go m'sid and describes the mornings at home while evoking the origin of their parents, and the memory of the nasty Driss, apprenticed to his father. The narrator recounts his day at Msid. evening, noting that Fatima Bziouiya lights with an oil lamp, Lalla Zoubida insists that her husband bought one of which is the following day. Then He reminded of the disappearance of zineb, and how his mother managed to find her at home Idrissides. Rahma, as a praise to God, preparing a meal for beggars. All the neighbors involved with a good heart. The first days of spring, Lalla Zubaida and his son visiting Lalla Aicha. Sidi Mohamed took the opportunity to play with the neighbors' children. Lalla Aicha then tells her friend the misfortunes of her husband with his partner Abdelkader. The next day, the mother reported that her husband unhappy story. This will raise with the small Sidi Mohamed Abdellah memories of the grocer who told stories. A Wednesday Fquih explains to his students his plans for Ashura. At home, Lalla Zoubida not get tired to recount the misfortunes of Lalla Aicha at Fatima Rahma then making them promise to keep the secret. Then, the narrator recounts the memory of the death of Sidi Tahar Ben billion. Who attended the scene, the child had a nightmare the night. During the preparations for the Ashura Msid the Fquih organizes the work and form teams. The small Sidi Mohamed was appointed head of the brushes. The next morning, he accompanied his mother to kissaria to buy a new jacket. Back home, Sidi Mohamed argues with Zineb.Sa mother angry. Sad and taken Hunger, the child plunges into her dreams. The narrator then tells us the story of Lalla Khadija and her husband's uncle Othman told the neighbors by Rahma. On the eve of Ashura, women buy drums and a trumpet Sidi Mohamed. He participates in Msid preparations for the feast. The next day, he accompanied his father to the hairdresser where he listens without interest to adult conversations. The day of Ashura, the child wakes up early and put his new clothes before going to m'sid celebrate this special day .. After the meal, Lalla Aicha comes to visit the family of the narrator. After Ashura, life regains its monotony. But with the first warm days, the mother declares war on bedbugs. One day, the narrator's father decides to take his wife and son to the souk to buy jewelry bracelets. Fatma Bziouya accompanied the family of the narrator arrives at jewelers souk but the father is the face all bloody after a fight with a broker. Lalla Zubaida, superstitious, does not want these bracelets, she thinks they are evil. Mother Lalla Aicha tells the misadventures of the souk. Sidi Mohamed sick. The father lost all his capital. He decides to sell the bracelets and go to work at around Fez. Sidi Mohamed still suffering from fever. Father's departure is Véu as a great drama. One day, the mother visits her friend Lalla Aicha, who offered him to consult a soothsayer: If elArafi. the narrator evokes memories of seeing if Elarafi. Lalla Zoubida returns home while keeping the secret of the visit ... she decides to keep her child at home and take each week to visit a marabout. One morning she was visited by a messenger from her husband. Lalla Aicha just ask his girlfriend to visit him the next day because she has something to tell him. In Lalla Aicha, women talk. It is visited by Salama, who recounts his role in the marriage of the daughter Larbi If the hairdresser and the problems of the new couple .. The narrator in this last chapter recounts the return of his father. Sidi Mohamed tells his father past events during his absence. The narrator's father learns that M.Larbi broke with his young wife .. Sidi Mohamed, still at the beginning and also solitary dreamer, takes out his box and wonders lulled by his dreams fr:La Boîte à merveilles
17199676	/m/043sgn8	Gilda Joyce: Psychic Investigator	Jennifer Allison	2005-07	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Gilda Joyce is a spunky, 13-year-old that wants to be a psychic investigator. She (and her not so enthusiastic friend) start an investigation. They go around town spying on people. Gilda lives in Detroit with her mother, and older brother, Stephen, as her father died of illness two years ago. Before his death, he told Gilda that she should have his typewriter, saying that "it's a magic typewriter," so Gilda keeps it with her as much as possible and tries to incorporate it into her psychic investigations, such as for Automatic Writing. After Gilda, following her instinct, lies to her class and teacher saying that she is going to San Francisco for the summer. She looks into ways of getting to San Francisco for the summer, so that her bluff wouldn't actually have been a lie. She soon learns of her uncle, Lester Splinter, her mother's second cousin and a stranger to the family, whose sister, Melanie Splinter, met her death through a suicide jump from the top of a tower in the Splinters' own backyard. Thrilled at this opportunity for investigation into Melanie's death, Gilda quickly writes a letter to Mr. Splinter introducing herself and requesting that she be allowed to stay at his house for the summer. The letter, upon its arrival in San Francisco, is found by Mr. Splinter's assistant, Summer, who finds Gilda very intriguing and writes back inviting Gilda to stay, and providing airline fare for her. Meanwhile, Juliet Splinter, Lester Splinter's 13-year-old daughter, is bedridden with a broken rib and a twisted ankle. Juliet, having come home from ballet class one day, was considering swallowing some of her father's sleeping pills when she seemed to see Aunt Melanie standing at the top of the stair case she was climbing, causing her to faint and fall down the stairs. When Gilda arrives in San Francisco to find that the sunny, warm paradise she had pictured was covered with fog during the summer so the mansion she will be staying in is hardly a place of fun and that her only company of her age group will be Juliet Splinter, Mr. Splinter's petite who is an unsociable, sadistic daughter who is currently recovering from an "accident" which makes her enthusiasm dampen slightly. But soon, through a little investigation, Gilda and Juliet become unlikely partners on their mission to uncover what really happened to Melanie Splinter. Together, they complete the mystery all and all, and Gilda is sent back to her regular life.
17203281	/m/04czd3m	A Month in the Country	Ivan Turgenev			 The setting is the Islaev country estate in the 1840s. Natalya Petrovna, a headstrong 29-year-old, is married to Arkadi Islaev, a rich landowner seven years her senior. Bored with life, she welcomes the attentions of Mikhail Rakitin as her devoted but resentful admirer, without ever letting their friendship develop into a love affair. The arrival of the handsome 21-year-old student Aleksei Belyaev as tutor to her son Kolya ends her boredom. Natalya falls in love with Aleksei, but so does her ward Vera, the Islaevs' 17-year-old foster daughter. To rid herself of her rival, Natalya proposes that Vera should marry a rich old neighbour, but the rivalry remains unresolved. Rakitin struggles with his love for Natalya, and she wrestles with hers for Aleksei, while Vera and Aleksei draw closer. Misunderstandings arise, and when Arkadi begins to have his suspicions, both Rakitin and Aleksei are obliged to leave. As other members of the household drift off to their own worlds, Natalya's life returns to a state of boredom.
17204667	/m/043ml7_	The Widows of Eastwick	John Updike	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Thirty years have passed since Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart and Sukie Rougemont terrorized the Rhode Island town of Eastwick with their witchcraft and cavorted with Darryl Van Horne, possibly the devil. All three women had remarried, left Eastwick and gradually fallen out of touch. They begin to restore their friendship as they one by one become widowed. After touring the Canadian Rockies (Alexandra), Egypt (Alexandra and Jane) and China (all three), they agree to revisit Eastwick, largely out of unspoken guilt for their role in the death of their romantic rival, Jenny Gabriel, who died of metastasized ovarian cancer shortly after her marriage to Van Horne. While conducting a white magic spell at their rented condominium (part of Van Horne's old mansion), Jane, who had earlier been complaining of odd electric shocks, suddenly dies of an aneurysm of the aorta. Alexandra and Sukie both learn that Jenny's brother, Christopher (who had also been Van Horne's lover) killed Jane using methods involving electrons and quantum physics he learned from Van Horne. He plans to kill the other two witches next but doesn't, possibly because Sukie seduces him. Alexandra returns to New Mexico, where she previously settled with her second husband after first leaving Eastwick, and Sukie moves to Manhattan with Christopher.
17205642	/m/043qqq2	Azincourt	Bernard Cornwell	2008-10-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Nicholas Hook, a forester and archer, feuds with Tom and Robert Perrill and their biological father, the priest Father Martin. He is compelled to participate in the hanging and burning of a community of Lollard heretics. One of them, an archer himself, asks Hook to protect his granddaughter after he (the condemned man) is gone. But Father Martin decides to take the girl for himself, and in an unsuccessful attempt to shield her, Hook attacks the priest. Hook is then held for trial and anticipated execution. Father Martin and Tom Perrill rape and murder the girl, and Hook's guilt at failing to save her haunts him throughout the story. Hook escapes and joins an expedition to Soissons, in Burgundy, as a mercenary archer. Burgundy and France are in bitter conflict and the French attack, win easily, sack the town, and torture and kill the English archers as well as the loyal French citizens which shocks Europe. Hook manages to conceal himself in a house and save a local nun, Melisande, from rape. Hook believes he is guided in their escape by the voices of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, the patron saints of Soissons. Melisande becomes Hook's companion and lover. Later, he discovers she is the bastard child of the powerful French Lord Ghillebert, seigneur de Lanferelle (called the "Lord of Hell"). By returning alive from Soissons, and reporting the treachery of the English knight Sir Roger Pallaire, who conspired with the French and sacrificed his own archers, Hook earns good stead with his new lord, Sir John Cornewaille, and with King Henry V. Hook returns to France serving under Cornewaille with the royal army to win Henry the crown of France. The campaign starts horrendously with the siege of the port of Harfleur. The town's capture takes too many weeks, and disease decimates Henry's army. During a failed attack, Hook kills Robert Perrill by thrusting a crossbow bolt through the man's eye. During the siege Hook meets the seigneur de Lanferelle, who disapproves of Hook's relationship with his daughter, Melisande and claiming that he does indeed care for his illegitimate child vows to kill Hook and return Melisande to the nunnery. Sometime later Hook and Melisande are formally married. Henry, against the advice of his vassal lords, then decides to march his ragged army to Calais along the coast of France as a demonstration of his sovereignty (and an insult to the French king). The Hook - Perrill feud reignites during the march as Tom Perrill frames Hook's brother Michael for stealing a religious pyx. Henry hangs Michael in public for the crime. To reach Calais, the English army must cross the River Somme. But the far larger French army blocks the fords and the two opposing armies meet at Agincourt, on the day of St's. Crispin and Crispinian. Torrential rain soaks the newly ploughed land, turning it into a treacherous morass, especially for the French knights in full plate armour. There are natural obstacles on both sides that narrow down towards the English. The battle (like Crècy) takes place on a slope going to the English. Before the battle Henry under the guise of 'John Swan' speaks with the men, Hook realises that it is indeed the king after noticing his distinctive scar and tells 'John Swan' that the king claims to be a religious man but is sinner for killing an innocent man, Michael. 'John Swan' seems deeply affected by this and tells Hook the king will pray for Michael every day, which comforts Hook. The French foolishly allow the English to advance within range of the English longbows. The English are ordered by Henry to hammer sharpened stakes into the ground, forming an impenetrable wall to repel the cavalry, Hook and Tom Perrill agree to end their feud until the battle is over believing they will both be killed by the French anyway. The archers launch volleys as the French begin a difficult advance toward the English. The first attack is driven back by the English as they step back, behind the stakes and the French horses either bolt in terror or are impaled upon the deadly spikes. During the mayhem, Father Martin attempts to rape Melisande. Melisande kills Martin using her crossbow. The battle is also portrayed from the opposite side via the seigneur de Lanferelle who hopes to capture valuable prisoners including his rival and Hook's lord Cornwaille. The English repel the second attack through a combination of their remaining arrows and the surprising skill of the archers in hand-to-hand combat. The French decline to launch a third attack and retire, leaving thousands of French dead, and many French lords in captivity. Hook takes Lanferelle prisoner, and Lanferelle kills Tom Perrill as Hook had vowed to his friend and mentor Father Christopher that he wouldn't kill Perrill. The English claim a famous victory, and Hook returns to England with Melisande and his prisoner the seigneur de Lanferelle who now accepts and approves of Hook. Hook now a wealthy man after being promoted to command Cornwaille's archers as well the ransom from his prisoner, pays a priest to say prayers for the girl he couldn't save.
17205776	/m/043q5yz	The Rat Race	John Franklin Carter		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns Lieutenant Commander Frank Jacklin who is blown up in a thorium bomb explosion while on the battleship Alaska. He awakens in the body of Winnie Tompkins who had perpetrated the explosion. As Tompkins, he learns of a plot by German agents to poison Franklin D. Roosevelt and he tries to warn the authorities. He continues to become involved in intrigue until another accident restores Tompkins to his body, leaving Jacklin in the body of a dog.
17207019	/m/043m0xt	After 12,000 Years	Stanton A. Coblentz		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns Henry Merwin, who after taking part in an experiment finds himself 12,000 years in the future. Taken captive by a giant race, he is forced to care for their insect pets. He falls in love with a fellow prisoner, Luellan, but his captors will not allow them to marry. Instead he is forced to go to war with his insect charges. The insects eventually grow to such a size that they take over much of the earth. Merwin returns to rescue Luellen, escaping to her home in Borneo.
17208586	/m/043lsv3	Leven Thumps and the Wrath of Ezra	Obert Skye	2008-09-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Foo—the place between the possible and the impossible—is a realm inside the minds of each of us that allows mankind the power to hope and imagine and dream. The powerfully gifted Leven Thumps, once an ordinary fourteen-year-old boy from Oklahoma, has been retrieved from Reality and sent to stop those in Foo who are nurturing dark dreams and plan to invade and rule Reality. In book four, the war to unite Foo and Reality has begun and is in full motion. Not only must Leven race across Foo to stop the war. With him now being The Want, Geth, Winter, and he must fight to save Foo before all is lost. There is no place like Foo. Nowhere are the shores more beautiful or the skies so deep and moving. Unfortunately, the beauty is unraveling quickly. A great darkness is ascending from beneath the dirt as the true evil of Foo is unlocked and the Dearth rises above the soil. Assisted by Azure and an army of rants and other beings determined to merge Foo and Reality, the Dearth had brought war to the very borders of Sycophant Run. Normally the sycophants would have the situation well in hand, but with the secret of their mortality finally leaked, Clover and his breed are vulnerable as never before. Wreaking havoc in Reality, Terry and Addy are about to join forces with a one-time janitor and the angriest, most confused toothpick alive-Ezra. He's got the answers. He's got the attitude. And he's selfish enough to sacrifice the dreams of all mankind for his own desires. Get ready to dine with Eggmen, ride on the backs of a Wave, find the Invisible Village, travel by rope, wrestle in chocolate, battle blindfolded, and, of course, live the impossible with the awesome Geth.
17210447	/m/043m23r	Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship	Victor Appleton	1915	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story was written in 1915, and World War I, known as The Great War, was already in progress. As the story opens, Tom is explaining his newest invention to his friend, Ned Newton. Just as Tom is in the middle of explaining the problems he is having, a fire erupts in one of the sheds, where explosives are stored. After the fire has been put out, careful investigation shows that the fire was set deliberately. In preparation for presenting his new airship to the United States Government, Tom has invited a Lieutenant Marbury, from the Navy, to review his ship. Marbury informs Tom of a possible plot against Tom and his inventions, past and present. Tom scoffs at the idea, but soon finds out otherwise, as his new airship is hijacked by foreign spies with an unknown agenda.
17212708	/m/043mzjd	The Dark Other	Stanley G. Weinbaum		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel concerns Patricia Lane who is in love with Nicholas Devine, a quiet and gentle writer. Devine undergoes sudden changes becoming cold and calculating. Frightened by this, Lane consults psychologist Dr. Carl Horker who rescues her from Devine while under the influence of one of his spells. Devine again attacks Horker, and overcomes him. He is then shot by Lane and rushed to a hospital where a second brain is discovered and removed.
17216588	/m/043lyzm	The Iron Star	Eric Temple Bell	1930	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns an African expedition. Swain, a member of the expedition, becomes demented and attempts to exterminate a peculiar species of African ape. The other members of the expedition are befriended by an intelligent ape called the Captain. The expedition discovers that the apes are in fact humans that have evolved in reverse due to exposure to a meteor and that the Captain was once human.
17221944	/m/043ngl9	Lecture Demonstration	Hal Clement	1973	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction"}	 Dr LaVerne, a teacher with the College, takes a party of Mesklinite students on a geological expedition. Whilst examining a layer of rock, it collapses. Teacher and students fall into a cavern. They are unable to climb out; the limiting factor is time as the teacher is enclosed in a suit with a finite oxygen supply. The students and teacher discuss various possibilities until they realise that they can raise the melting point of the surrounding ammonia 'snow' to the point where it soldifies. They climb out to safety.
17222063	/m/043n9rl	Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie	Jordan Sonnenblick		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The protagonist Steven, an avid drummer, narrates the story during the month of September, discussing in the novel the previous ten months about his struggles of his little brother's cancer. Steven has had a crush on a girl named Renee Albert since the third grade. In the beginning of the novel, Steven's brother Jeffrey has been acting strangely. Finally, Steven finds out that Jeffrey has cancer. Everyone at his school starts to notice him because his brother has cancer. Towards the end of the story, Steven leaves his big fundraiser concert to go to the hospital with Jeffrey. It turns out he had an ear infection and Steven missed his performance for that. Later, Steven asks about Sam, a friend he met at the hospital who also has cancer, and finds out she had died and her sister never came to her. The story ends with Steven's Graduation.
17224006	/m/043pm89	The Atom Clock	Cornel Lengyel		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05qp9": "Play"}	 The play concerns a worker who rebels against military control of atomic energy.
17227230	/m/043sj52	Run Before the Wind	Stuart Woods	1983-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Will Lee ran from a life of Southern wealth and privilege to spend a peaceful summer on the coast of Ireland. But there is no peace in this beautiful, troubled land. Restless and dissatisfied, Will dreams of shipbuilding and sailing on crystal-blue waters. But an explosion of senseless violence is dragging the young American drifter into a lethal game of terror and revenge. For the fires of hatred rage unchecked in this place of lush, rolling hills and deadly secrets. Now Will Lee must run for his life from a bloody past that is not his own-and he will find no sanctuary on the rolling waves of the Irish sea. A breathtaking novel of suspense and high-adventure by New York Times bestselling author Stuart Woods.
17227374	/m/043rjfy	Drome	John Martin Leahy		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Two explorers travel miles beneath Mount Rainier and discover a cavernous realm, filled with glowing mist, called Drome, which is home to a lost civilization and fantastic animals, including bat-apes, snake-cats, and tree-octopi.
17227674	/m/043s9j9	Chiefs	Stuart Woods	1981-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The First Chief: Will Henry Lee: The novel opens in 1919, when the growing town of Delano, Georgia hires its first police chief. The city council, led by banker and prominent investor Hugh Holmes, chooses farmer Will Henry Lee over Foxy Funderburke, an eccentric, wealthy, dog breeder and gun collector, for the job. Will Henry is unschooled as a policeman but is honest and determined to do the job well. Not long after he assumes his new responsibilities, the dead body of a young man is found naked at the bottom of a cliff. A medical examination concludes that the boy died from a broken neck as a result of his fall but also that he had been tortured—cuffed and beaten with a rubber hose—for some time before his death. The medical examiner tells Will Henry that the crime had a strong sexual component, and that while the boy had not yet been sodomized, the assault on him could have gone further had the boy not evidently escaped. Will Henry conducts a thorough investigation but is frustrated in his attempts to locate the killer, not least because the uncooperative Skeeter Willis, the sheriff of Meriwhether County, of which Delano is a part, insists that the boy was killed by some of the many transients in the area at the time. Will Henry is unconvinced, but eventually runs out of leads. He believes that a second murder, taking place some four years later and just outside of his jurisdiction, is connected to the first but has no real proof and no real authority to pursue the matter. Finally, Will Henry hears from Skeeter Willis about a young runaway who might be passing near Delano and also learns that someone with a Delano PO Box had attempted to purchase a pair of handcuffs from a police supplier. The box belongs to Foxy Funderburke, whom Will had questioned after the two murders, since the bodies were discovered near Foxy's property. Other clues also point in Foxy's direction. Looking around the property, Will Henry notices the outline of what appears to be a freshly dug grave but is observed by Foxy. As he rushes to obtain a search warrant, Foxy follows, intending to kill him, and so is nearby when Will, diverted by a problem involving the Coles, a black family that had once worked for him, is shot and killed by the black father, who is in the grip of a malaria-induced delirium. Will Henry dies as the shooter's teenage son, Willie, is escaping to relatives in another town. The Second Chief: Sonny Butts: The scene shifts to 1946. After World War II, Delano welcomes home its returning veterans, including Billy Lee, the late chief's son, a young lawyer who served as a bomber pilot in Europe, and Sonny Butts, a decorated Army infantryman. Billy has become a protégé of Hugh Holmes and the two men decide to launch Billy into politics by having him run for Holmes's seat in the Georgia State Senate, from which the banker intends to retire. Sonny lands a position on the Delano police force, which now consists of a chief and two officers. He is a quick success as a police officer, but rumors of abuses at the police station are heard. When the chief dies, Sonny is named his replacement. Examining old police files, Sonny comes across Chief Lee's notes on the two murders in the 1920s. He also begins to track the last known sightings of a number of young men, likely runaways, in the years since and notices a geographical pattern in the disappearances: Delano is at their center. Seeing in Will Henry's notes a reference to interviewing Foxy Funderburke, Sonny decides to keep an eye on Foxy as a possible suspect. Sonny is undone by his virulent racism and propensity to violence. After he beats and kills a local black businessman, a grand jury is empaneled for the purpose of indicting him, though perjured testimony lets him off the hook. But Sonny was also observed beating a man at the county fair the evening before, and Hugh Holmes is determined to fire him. Desperate to hang onto his job, Sonny heads to Foxy's property and catches Foxy digging a fresh grave for a recent victim. Momentarily distracted by the chance to save his reputation, Sonny is attacked by Foxy, who shoots him and buries him in the new grave with his police motorcycle. The Third Chief: Tucker Watts: The time frame changes once again, this time to 1963. Billy Lee is now Georgia's lieutenant governor and is planning to run for governor in the next election. Hugh Holmes asks Billy's help in searching for a new Chief, who will now supervise six officers. An integrationist, Billy is alerted to the resume of Major Tucker Watts, a retiring Army MP, who is black. Mindful that Delano has yet to hire a black officer, let alone a chief, Billy decides to forward Watts's resume to Holmes and recommends his hiring. Holmes makes a persuasive case for Watts at the city council hearing and he is hired as Chief, setting off a media frenzy over the first black hired to head a police force in the South. Tucker assumes his duties as Chief welcomed by many residents but scorned by others. He makes a good impression on the overall community, however, and at first seems able to weather the problems he faces. But Tucker harbors a painful secret: he is Willie Cole, whose father killed Chief Lee decades earlier and who, so far as Delano knows, died in an accident not long after fleeing. Tucker is deathly afraid of being discovered and nearly kills a man who recognizes him. After coming to his senses, he relaxes and, like Sonny Butts, begins to organize old police files. He, too, reads Chief Lee's report on the old murders and observes Sonny Butts's notations regarding the pattern of subsequent disappearances. Building on the work of his two predecessors, Tucker also begins to suspect the now-aged Foxy Funderburke and makes inquiries about him. A confluence of events distracts Tucker, including his own arrest on trumped-up charges and Billy Lee's race for governor, in which Tucker's hiring becomes an issue. These problems leave him inclined to do nothing about Foxy for the time being. Then, John Howell, a reporter for The New York Times, convinces Tucker to take his evidence to the FBI and obtain a search warrant through them. The FBI reluctantly agrees to issue the warrant, and Tucker and federal agents search Foxy's property, finding nothing at first. Tucker is fearing that he might have dealt a fatal blow to Billy Lee's campaign when one of the agents trips on what proves to be a motorcycle handlebar protruding from the ground. As Foxy emerges from the house, armed and intending to kill Tucker and the agents, he is distracted by John Howell and is himself shot dead. The ensuing investigation determines that Foxy had tortured, sodomized, murdered, and buried at least forty-three young men over the decades. John Howell discovers Tucker's true identity but decides to keep it a secret. The novel ends as Hugh Holmes, pleased for Billy's success in the election but crushed by the revelations about Foxy and the shame the murders will bring to the city he did so much to build, is suffering a potentially fatal heart attack.
17227893	/m/043lnwz	Green Fire	Eric Temple Bell	1928	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel concerns two corporations competing to develop the power of atomic energy. Independent Laboratories is working for the advancement of mankind, and Consolidated Power is working for personal gain. Nature goes berserk, and James Ferguson, the leader of Independent, discovers that Jevic, the Director of Consolidated, has achieved his goal. Nebulae in space are marked with a greenish glow and then are obliterated. MacRobert, who has previously refused offers from either corporation, is placed in charge of Independent. He disposes of Jevic in time to end the destruction.
17228437	/m/043sb1h	Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism	Sean Hannity	2005		 In the book, Hannity explains a direct progression from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin through Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. He praises world leaders such as George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan for moral clarity and vision, and contrasts these with the viewpoints and actions of current politicians he sees as liberal.
17228616	/m/043lnmq	The Planet of Youth	Stanton A. Coblentz		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns the first real estate boom on the planet Venus.
17241598	/m/043ql2f	The Rich Pay Late				 The story opens in 1955. The printing firm of Salinger & Holbrook (mainly Holbrook) is interested in becoming major shareholders in Strix, a magazine of commerce. Donald Salinger, Jude Holbrook, and Somerset Lloyd-James all have trouble with women. Holbrook and Lloyd-James are both unhappily married; Salinger gets engaged to the promiscuous Vanessa Drew who tries to restrict her sex life (to only a few places and not with people Salinger knows or even knows of). Holbrook, a repulsive man who hates old people, help his secretary Miss Beatty to force her old mother into a retirement home. The spinster Beatty becomes more lively after this and picks up a rather boring man on a pub. Later on, she is found gruesomely murdered in her flat, although the details aren’t revealed. Lloyd-James manages to make his friend Peter Morrison MP a member of the board of Strix, so the board consists of Lloyd-James, Morrison, Lord Philby, Harry Dilkes and Roger Constable. Morrison is against Salinger & Holbrook buying Lord Philby's place, despite his friendship with Salinger. One reason for this is his dislike of Holbrook, who has not given a raise to employee Dexterside and who didn’t attend Miss Beatty's funeral. Holbrook is trying to make Lloyd-James into an ally. Lloyd-James expects that this could improve his political career and also bring him some money. Holbrook also knows of the constant infidelity of Vanessa Drew to Salinger and he blackmails her to persuade Salinger to be more positive about buying Strix. Since Salinger at heart is a rather vain man, she succeeds in this. After their honeymoon, Salinger and Vanessa (now Vanessa Salinger) throw a big party which is not a complete success. Salinger tries to mix his former friends, the intellectual proletariat, with his newer acquaintances, the country gentry. Susan Grange breaks the lavatories just for the fun of it. Angela Tuck and Somerset Lloyd-James meet for the first time in over 10 years and discuss events that took place in “Fielding Gray.” Tom Llewyllyn gets extremely drunk and is rude to the Morrisons, then (for £200) reveals to Holbrook and Lloyd-James a scandalous story: in 1944, Peter Morrison MP made a 14 year old girl pregnant, and she married her fiancé who took on the role of the father. This unhappy man has told Lloyd-James of the whole thing. Towards the end of the party Llewyllyn behaves even more outrageously and knocks over statues in the garden. Right then it is revealed that the huckster Mark Lewson has stolen £75 from Salinger. Susan Grange, who bathed naked in the pool, gets really depressed and is escorted home by the chivalrous Lloyd-James. Some time after the party Vanessa finds out that she’s pregnant. Since the father may be a black man it would be tricky to suggest to Salinger that he’s the father, and Vanessa settles for abortion. Lloyd-James, who often engages in S & M, starts a relation of that kind with Susan Grange, always interested in trying something new. Susan tells Lloyd-James that he, however, must settle with the role as “second string lover” since she’s already engaged to another man. Holbrook checks the story about Morrison and finding it to be true, tries to blackmail Peter Morrison into voting for Salinger & Holbrook as new majority holders but he refuses. Right after this, Lord Philby mentions casually to Lloyd-James that he has Susan Grange as his mistress, Lloyd-James reveals nothing. Holbrook, having had a bad day in general, writes a number of letters to parliament, the press etc. with the story about Peter Morrison. People around him consider this utterly foolish. Since Llewyllyn is mentioned as a source of the story he gets haunted by the surprisingly decent journalist Alfie Schroeder. Llewyllyn, haunted by bad conscience, tries to deny the whole affair and even tries to give Peter Morrison some help but Peter refuses, in a friendly way. Salinger is going to visit old Mrs Beatty but loses his way and walks into the abortion clinic where he finds Vanessa, who faints at the sight of him. Salinger is fooled into believing the child was his and forgives Vanessa the whole thing while he promises her a trip around the world so they can have some quiet time for themselves. Both Llewyllyn and Schroeder go to the little village where Morrison’s bastard is living, to discover the truth. When they meet in the village they decide to cooperate. Schroeder finds out that the girl Morrison was said to have raped (almost) was blind at the time, but Morrison’s father later paid for an operation to recover her eyesight. Susan Grange settles for marriage with Lord Philby and Lloyd-James finds that all his plans have come to naught. He has fallen out with Salinger because of the failed affair, he has fallen out with Peter because of his betrayal to him, he will not receive money or improve his political career and he even loses his mistress. Angela Tuck, on the other side, inherits a fortune since her husband Mr. Tuck has been run over when drunk. Salinger, planning for his trip around the world, pays Holbrook to dissolve their partnership since his disgraceful role in the Morrison affair will ruin Salinger's reputation. Salinger even doubts the mental condition of his soon-to-be former partner. Schroeder and Llewyllyn find Purchase, the village clergyman, and after a bit of hesitation he tells a very different story about Peter Morrison and the girl. The young blind Betty was raped by a gang of boys after she had been deliberately left alone by Mrs Vincent, the mother of her fiancé. Peter and his father came to her rescue but when she woke up in the arms of Peter she thought, shocked as she was, that he was the seducer. The reverend had been told this by Mrs Vincent on her deathbed. Angela, now rich, summarily dumps Holbrook and tells him how inhuman he is. Llewellyn has great success with a book about communism and gives 50% of the royalties to Lloyd-James, under the terms of a loan he gave Llewyllyn. Llewyllyn don’t care much about the money (since there is lot of it) and Lloyd-James despite his earlier setbacks, makes a fortune. During a meeting Peter Morrison reveals to Llewyllyn why he didn’t try to defend himself during the scandal. The Suez crisis is approaching and as a former military man, Morrison's conscience wouldn’t allow him to criticize the army in public, despite the fact that he private feels the action foolish. He needed an excuse to resign which Llewyllyn's scandal gave him. Morrison's good friend, Detterling, is heading for Suez and that wouldn’t have made things easier for the honest MP. The book ends with a party hosted by the famous gambler Max de Freville, where the majority of the main characters appear. Donald and Vanessa are about to start their long trip, Lord Philby is there with his soon-to-be wife Susan, the pleased Lloyd-James is there, happy with his new income and a possible political career after Peter's resignation and Detterling’s adventures in Egypt. No one know where is Holbrook, who has lately lost his son Donald to meningitis. sv:The Rich Pay Late
17246888	/m/043nxzz	A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge	Josh Neufeld		{"/m/012h24": "Comics"}	 The online version of the story encompasses a two-part prologue, 13 chapters, and an epilogue — 15 chapters in total. In the prologue, from a "God's eye" perspective, A.D. shows Hurricane Katrina as it builds from a tropical storm in the Bahamas and moves inexorably toward New Orleans. Katrina slams into the Gulf Coast. Winds and rain lash New Orleans and Biloxi, Mississippi. The levees burst and the city is flooded. Going back in time to more than a week before the storm, readers meet the protagonists in their pre-Katrina lives. Then in the days leading up to the hurricane, the characters learn about the approaching monster storm. On the Saturday before the hurricane, Leo tracks the storm on his computer as he and Michelle decide whether to evacuate. Meanwhile, The Doctor makes plans to host some friends at his French Quarter home for a “hurricane party.” On Sunday, August 28, 2005, one day before Katrina, Hamid sends his wife and family off to safety in Houston. Kevin helps his family prepare to evacuate to Tallahassee. Denise goes with her niece and grandniece to take shelter at the hospital where her mother works, but when they are turned away from a private room due to overcrowding, she angrily returns to her apartment alone. Leo and Michelle spend hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to Houston, while Kevin and his family do the same en route to Tallahassee. Meanwhile, Hamid and Mansell excitedly outfit themselves for the storm at Hamid’s store. Monday, August 29. As the storm’s pre-winds batter New Orleans, The Doctor’s hurricane party is in full swing. Hamid and Mansell hunker down at the store. When the full force of the hurricane hits, Denise learns just what a mistake it was to forsake the refuge of the hospital for her apartment. Her apartment is shaken repeatedly by the storm, the ceiling in the bedroom comes down, and she spends the night holding onto a bed wedged in the hallway. We also check in on Kevin and his family in Tallahassee, and Leo and Michelle in Houston. No one is yet aware that the levees have been breached. Tuesday, August 30. Katrina has finally passed New Orleans, and Hamid and Mansell emerge, blinking in the sunlight, ecstatic to have survived the storm. But then the flooding begins. Reluctant to abandon the store and fearful of looters, the two men stand fast in the rising waters. Wednesday, August 31. Hamid and Mansell wake up from a long night on the roof of Hamid's maintenance shed. They spend the day wading through the chest-high waters, refusing a boat ride out of the flooded sections of the city. Denise and her family, having momentarily escaped the flooding, await transport out of the flooded city. What they find instead is a van to the Convention Center. In Houston, Leo and Michelle are dismayed to discover that their neighborhood took over five feet of water. The Doctor makes the rounds of the French Quarter, administering aid where needed. Hamid and Mansell deliver much-needed water to a trapped neighbor. And in Tallahassee, Kevin sees footage of the flooding and realizes he won’t be returning home any time soon. Denise arrive at the Convention Center to find it completely without vital services, and filled with abandoned people. Mansell narrowly avoids being crushed by a bobbing refrigerator case. Mansell's asthma and the high water makes Hamid face the fact that they probably should evacuate the flooded city. In Houston, Leo & Michelle discuss what their next move should be. And in Tallahassee, Kevin learns that he and his younger brother will be sent off to California to attend school there. Thursday, September 1. Three days after the hurricane and two days after the city began flooding. Denise and her family, having been dropped off at the New Orleans Convention Center, find themselves stranded and abandoned, surrounded by thousands of other refugees. And from there things only get worse. Denise and her family are still trapped at the New Orleans Convention Center. The NOLA police roll by in armored SWAT vehicles, with rifles loaded — but no food or water. This companion section to Chapter 12 tells the real story — from the perspective of the people who were there — of what went down at the Convention Center in the days after Hurricane Katrina. In the epilogue, "Picking Up The Pieces," A.D. concluded its online run with a final look at all the characters. Picking up the story a year and a half after the hurricane, readers find out about Denise's escape from the Convention Center; Hamid & Mansell's rescue from the flooded store; Kevin's years-long odyssey; the Doctor's formation of the New Orleans Health Department in Exile; and Leo & Michelle's return to their flooded home. The epilogue concludes with a jump of another year ahead in time, to early 2008, and a final check-in with the Doctor, Leo, and Denise. The A.D. book includes 25% more story and art, as well as extensive revisions to the material from the webcomic. Other changes include dividing the book into five sections rather than 15 chapters, as well as the changing of some of the characters' names.
17249739	/m/043khzj	Blood Red, Snow White	Marcus Sedgwick	2007-08-06	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is in three parts. The first part, "A Russian Fairy Tale", deliberately evokes the atmosphere of Arthur Ransome's Old Peter's Russian Tales. It is a fairy-tale account of the circumstances leading to the Russian Revolution, featuring the poor woodcutter, the orphaned children, the romantic but oblivious Royal family, the mad monk, the sleeping bear and the two conspirators in the wood. The novel continues by presenting history from the perspective of an individual, an outsider. The English writer Arthur Ransome, in Russia to collect folktales, stays to observe events, becoming a correspondent for the Daily News. In the second part of the novel, "One Night in Moscow", Ransome is haunted by the scenes he has witnessed. They appear as a scatter of flashbacks, reflecting the confusion in his mind. He has experienced the pull of Bolshevik idealism, and has fallen in love with Trotsky's secretary, Evgenia. On the other hand he is appalled by the brutality of some revolutionaries and considers helping his friend Robert Lockhart of the British Embassy. He finally decides that he has no business interfering with the destiny of Russia, one way or the other, and leaves Moscow for Stockholm. The final part, "A Fairy Tale, Ending", focuses on Ransome's private life, and shifts into first person narration. Ransome's supposed Bolshevist sympathies bring him under suspicion when the Red Terror begins, but he redeems himself by helping to free Lockhart from the Kremlin. Ransome is happy with Evgenia in Stockholm and when she has to return to Russia, he chooses to go with her. To ease his return, he reconsiders the offer from the SIS, and becomes agent S76. Lenin welcomes him back to Russia, dismissing Trotsky's fears that he might be a spy. On what is intended to be a brief visit to England, he meets unexpected difficulties, being questioned by the authorities and losing his job with the Daily News. It is some months before he regains his journalist status, and meanwhile there is civil war in Russia. As the Tsarist White Army makes advances against the Bolshevik Red Army, he becomes worried for Evgenia's safety. He takes considerable risks to return to Russia, and eventually succeeds in bringing her back west with him.
17253265	/m/043rb_9	The Celestial Plot	Adolfo Bioy Casares	1948		 A soldier must pilot a new plane. He suffers an accident and is injured. He is interrogated and the army does not believe he is from Argentina. They mistake him for a spy. He calls his friends and nobody recognizes him. He cannot explain the situation, but a friend of his, the author, helps him. The author discovers the truth: he has travelled to a parallel universe, a little different from this.
17253525	/m/019qz_	Flowers for Algernon	Daniel Keyes	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The short story and the novel share many similar plot points but the novel expands significantly on Charlie's developing emotional state as well as his intelligence, his memories of childhood, and the relationship with his family and Miss Kinnian. The story is told through a series of journal entries written by the story's protagonist, Charlie Gordon, a man with an IQ of 68 who works a menial job as a janitor in a factory. He is selected to undergo an experimental surgical technique to increase his intelligence. The technique had already been successfully tested on Algernon, a laboratory mouse. The surgery on Charlie is also a success and his IQ triples. Charlie falls in love with his former teacher, Miss Kinnian, but as his intelligence increases, he surpasses her intellectually and they become unable to relate to each other. He also realizes that his co-workers at the factory whom he thought were his friends, only liked him to be around so that they could make fun of him. His new intelligence scares his co-workers at his job; they start a petition to have him fired. Everyone signs it except Fanny Girden. When Charlie finds out about the petition, he quits. As Charlie's intelligence peaks, Algernon suddenly declines — losing his increased intelligence and dying shortly afterward, to be buried in a cheese box in Charlie's backyard. Charlie discovers that his intelligence increase is also only temporary. He starts to experiment to find out the cause of the flaw in the experiment, which he calls the "Algernon-Gordon Effect". Just when he finishes his experiments, his intelligence begins to degenerate, to such an extent that he becomes equally as unintelligent as he was before the experiment. Charlie is aware of, and pained by, what is happening to him as he loses his knowledge and his ability to read and write. He tries to get his old job as a janitor back, and tries to revert back to normal but he cannot stand the pity from his co-workers, landlady, and Ms. Kinnian. Charlie states he plans to "go away" from New York and move to a new place. His last wish is that someone put flowers on Algernon's grave. The novel opens with an epigraph discouraging people from laughing at those who are perplexed or weak of vision. The epigraph is taken from Plato's The Republic, part of which reads: Charlie Gordon, 32 years of age, has an IQ of 68 and holds a menial job at a bakery which his uncle had secured for him so that Charlie would not have to be sent to a State institution. Wanting to improve himself, Charlie attends reading and writing classes at the Beekman College Center for Retarded Adults; his teacher is Alice Kinnian, a young, attractive woman. Two researchers at Beekman are looking for a human test subject on whom to try a new surgical technique intended to increase intelligence. They have already performed the surgery on a mouse named Algernon, dramatically improving his mental performance. Based on Alice's recommendation and his own peerless motivation to improve, Charlie is chosen over smarter pupils to undergo the procedure. The operation is a success, and within the next three months Charlie's IQ reaches an astonishing 185. However, as his intelligence, education, and understanding of the world around him increases, his relationships with people deteriorate. His coworkers at the bakery, who used to amuse themselves at his expense, are now scared and resentful of his increased intelligence and persuade his boss to fire him. One night at a cocktail party, a drunken Charlie angrily confronts his scientific mentors about their condescending attitude toward him. Charlie also embarks on a troubled romance with Alice. Unable to become intimate with the object of his affection, Charlie later starts a purely sexual relationship with Fay Lillman, a vivacious and promiscuous artist in the neighboring apartment. When he's not drinking at night, Charlie spends intense weeks continuing his mentors' research on his own and writing reports which include observations of Algernon who he keeps at his apartment. Charlie's research discovers a flaw in the theory behind Nemur's and Strauss's intelligence-enhancing procedure, one that will eventually cause him to revert to his original mental state. His conclusions prove true when Algernon starts behaving erratically, loses his own enhanced intelligence, and dies. Charlie tries to mend the long-broken relationships with his parents but without success. He remembered that as a boy his mother had insisted on his institutionalization, overruling his father's wish to keep him in the household. Charlie returns after many years to his family's Brooklyn home, and finds his mother now suffers from dementia and, although she recognizes him, is mentally confused. Charlie's father, who had broken off contact with the family many years before, does not recognize him when visited at his worksite. Charlie is only able to reconnect with his now-friendly younger sister, who had hated him for his mental disability when they were growing up, and who is now caring for their mother in their now-depressed neighborhood. Charlie promises to send her money. As Charlie regresses intellectually, Fay becomes scared by the change and stops talking to him. However, Charlie finally attains sufficient emotional maturity to have a brief but fulfilling relationship with Alice, who cohabits with him until the extent of his mental deterioration causes him to finally order her to leave. Despite regressing to his former self, he still remembers that he was once a genius. He cannot bear to have his friends and co-workers feel sorry for him. Consequently, he decides to go away to live at the State-sponsored Warren Home School where nobody knows about the operation. In a final postscript to his writings, ostensibly addressed to Alice Kinnian, he requests that she put some flowers on Algernon's grave in Charlie's former back yard.
17254822	/m/043qh3c	The High King's Tomb	Kristen Britain	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Karigan G’Ladheon, a member of the King’s Green Rider messenger service, finds her life increasingly tangled in the third book of the Green Rider series. King Zachary, for whom Karigan has feelings, has admitted his feeling for Karigan but is being forced into a political marriage with Lady Estora of Coutre. This causes difficulties for all three as Karigan and Zachary cannot be together and Karigan is now jealous of Estora and ceases to show friendship to her former friend. Soon Karigan is sent on several messenger errands as Captain Mapstone attempts to separate her from King Zachary. Accompanied by rider-in-training Fergal Duff, she delivers several messages, the last one a decoy message presented to her old school nemesis, now lord-governor Timas Mirwell, in an attempt to contact Rider Beryl Spencer. Meanwhile, Riders Alton D’yer and Dale Littlepage’s attempts to mend the wall at the Blackveil Forest are met with failure, and the wall’s strength continues to wane. “Grandmother,” the leader of the Second Empire, plans to overthrow Sacoridia and return the Empire by using her magic and a book that must be read at the tomb of the Sacoridian High King which reveals the history of the D’Yer Wall, which protects the kingdom from the Blackveil Forest, and thereby how to destroy it. After delivering her messages, Karigan discovers Lady Estora, who had been kidnapped by men working with Second Empire. She offers herself as a distraction, changing clothes with Estora, to allow the King’s betrothed to escape safely and return to Sacor City. Karigan is captured but escapes with the aid of Lord Xandis Amberhill. Knowing the Grandmother’s plot, Karigan travels back to Sacor City to try to stop it. When she arrives, Karigan joins a band of Weapons, guards highly committed to guarding the King and the dead royalty, who enter the tombs to stop the Second Empire from reading the book. She successfully recovers the book, and it is revealed that she is an avatar of the god Westrion. In the aftermath of these events, Karigan is knighted by King Zachary and Alton succeeds in partially healing the wall with the help of the mages. Second Empire continues to plot as Grandmother and the Second Empire journey into the Blackveil hoping to "awake the sleepers". The author has confirmed that there are more books to come. The fourth book in the series, "Blackveil," was released in February 2011.
17258010	/m/043qkrf	Capital Crimes	Stuart Woods	2003-10	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 In Capital Crimes, Will Lee finds himself in the middle of a tangled web of intrigue and danger, politics and power. Now at the pinnacle of his career, serving as president of the United States, Lee is faced with a most unusual task-that of marshaling federal law enforcement agencies to catch an assassin who is picking off some of the nation's high-level politicos. When a prominent conservative politician with a shady reputation is expertly killed at his lakeside cabin, authorities can come up with no suspects and even less hard evidence. But then, within days, two other, seemingly isolated deaths-achieved by very different means-are feared linked to the same ruthless murderer. With the help of his CIA director wife, Kate Rule Lee, Will trails the most clever and professional of killers before he can strike again. From a quiet D.C. suburb to the corridors of power to a deserted island hideaway, Will, Kate, and maverick FBI agent Robert Kinney track their man and set a trap with extreme caution and care-and await the most dangerous kind of quarry, a killer with a cause to die for.
17260078	/m/043lrjw	Fielding Gray	Simon Raven			 The story starts after the end of World War II in Europe, in May 1945, at the school that is attended by Fielding Gray and his friends. A service in memory of the dead is held and among the names mentioned is Andrew Morrison, older brother of Peter Morrison. Gray, who seems bored during the whole service, mentions early in his story that he has an affection for Christopher Roland, another boy of the school. After some flirting they meet for a tryst in a barn, after a game of cricket. Roland is disgusted with himself for climaxing too soon, and believes himself to be patronised by Gray. People are starting to talk about their relationship and Gray doesn’t really dare to see Roland again, at least not in school. He is criticized by Peter Morrison, who thinks the relationship may hurt the rather fragile Roland. Gray goes home to his parents, his bullying father and weak mother, for the school holidays. A Mr. and Mrs. Tuck are introduced to the household and we soon learn that Mr. Gray and Mr. Tuck want to send Fielding to a tea plantation in India. Fielding will, of course, hear none of this, and plans to go to Cambridge to study Latin and Greek. He flirts with the young Mrs. Tuck, Angela, who even promises him a sexual relationship on a longer basis if he joins them in India. Fielding is also corresponding with Roland, who sends him a photograph with a dedication, which Fielding puts away in a drawer. On VJ-day in September 1945, Fielding is out in the streets and meets two sisters, Dixie and Phyllis. He fondles Dixie a bit and then runs away. When he makes a visit to Angela he hears her in the bedroom with his father, and slams the front door in fury when he leaves. On his arrival home, his mother tells him that Angela has called to tell her that his father has died of what seems to be a heart attack during a visit. Fielding suspects that it was because of the slamming of the door but he reveals nothing about the affair. His mother inherits the modest fortune of her husband and goes away for a while. On her return she is often visited by the Tucks, who seems to become good friends. During the period she’s away Fielding visits his friends and has a drunken party that ends with Lloyd-James vomiting. Later, he and Lloyd-James visit a drunk Angela Tuck, who is celebrating her 21st birthday. The party ends up with Angela and Lloyd-James having sex while Fielding leaves. The social climber Lloyd-James demands later that he should be taken more seriously by his comrades, since he is a man with ambitions. He even has plans of becoming head of school, a post that the headmaster wants to give to Gray. Together with Peter Morrison and his father they watch horse racing, where Morrison Senior’s horse Tiberius dies during the race. Peter does his National Service and is shipped away to India (described more closely in Sound The Retreat). Letters to Fielding from Christopher suggest that he is very depressed. Gray has dinner with the Tucks and things turn ugly when India comes up. Fielding visits a prostitute to find out what its like to be with a woman. During a meeting with the Headmaster Fielding is told that Christopher has been arrested for strange behaviour outside an army base. He is later informed that Christopher has shot himself with his father's gun. The friends are attending his funeral and on the way back to town the Headmaster and Gray give a lift to a soldier who also attended the service. The soldier (whose name is never revealed) was on the base where Christopher was arrested and had seen him standing outside every day for two weeks. Fielding receives a letter from Christopher, written before he killed himself, where he reveals that his tutor (whose name is not given) has told him that Fielding doesn’t really love him and that this is the reason for his suicide. After this, Fielding's mother finds the photo of Christopher in the drawer and blackmails Fielding into turning down his scholarship at Cambridge. When he refuses to obey (and he even hits her) she tells the board at Cambridge and Fielding's chances are spoiled. Senior Usher (a master at Fielding's school) is, however, prepared to pay for Fielding's education at Lancaster College, where Robert Constable will accept him. The plan is that Fielding will do his National Service and then go straight to Lancaster College. One evening, during his service, he meets Peter Morrison who tells a disturbing story. Morrison has met with Fielding's mother and told her about his plan, since he didn’t think he could lie to her. The mother, furious, has done what she could to prevent the plan and has told Constable about Fielding's lies and how he hit her. Constable, who said nothing about Gray's homosexual leanings, thinks this is outrageous and refuses to accept Gray as a pupil. With all roads blocked, Gray settles for a career in the army, something that Captain Detterling, an old boy of the school, had urged on him earlier. Towards the end of the book Fielding is describing a short but bitter meeting he has had with Peter on the island of Santa Kytherea (where he is stationed) in 1955. Peter admits that Fielding Gray had become alien to him already by the end of the summer 1945. sv:Fielding Gray
17270969	/m/043jt81	Three Men on a Horse	John Cecil Holm			 Mild-mannered Erwin Trowbridge, bored with his suburban New Jersey life with his wife and brother-in-law and frustrated by his low-paying job writing greeting card verses, decides to declare his independence by skipping work and spending the day in a local saloon. There he meets two men and a woman who make a living by betting on horse races. When they discover Erwin has an almost supernatural ability to go through a racing form and pick the winners, they persuade him to join them at a New York City hotel and regularly give them tips. Complications arise when Erwin begins to miss his wife and job and his cronies insist he put some money on a horse himself, despite his claim he will lose his power if he places a bet.
17271493	/m/043km4w	Snow Flower and the Secret Fan	Lisa See	2005	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In rural Hunan province, Lily and her friend Snow Flower are a laotong pair whose relationship is more close than a husband and wife's. Lily's aunt describes a laotong match this way: "'A laotong relationship is made by choice for the purpose of emotional companionship and eternal fidelity. A marriage is not made by choice and has only one purpose — to have sons.'" The two girls experience the painful process of foot binding at the same time, and write letters to one another on a fan with Nü Shu, a secret phonetic form of 'women's writing.' In addition to the language itself, the young women learn Nü Shu songs and stories. Both friends are born under the sign of the Horse, but they are quite different. Lily is practical, her feet firmly set on the ground, while Snow Flower attempts to fly over the constrictions of women's lives in the 19th century in order to be free. Their lives differ as well. Although Lily comes from a family of relatively low station, her feet are considered beautiful and play a role in her marriage into the most powerful family in the region. Lily is later known as Lady Lu, the region's most influential woman and a mother to four healthy children (three sons and one daughter). Although Snow Flower comes from a formerly prosperous family, she is not so fortunate. She marries a butcher, culturally considered the lowest of professions, and has a miserable life filled with children dying and beatings at the hand of her husband. The novel depicts human suffering in many ways: the physical and psychological pain of foot binding; the suffering of women of the time, who were treated as property; the terrible trek up the mountains to escape from the horrors of the Taiping Revolution; the painful return back down the mountain trail with dead bodies everywhere. Some estimate that the number of people killed during the Revolution was approximately 20 million. The detailed treatment of the suffering which Lily and Snow Flower experience in their laotong relationship is a major aspect of the book. Lily's need for love and her inability to forgive what she considers to be acts of betrayal cause her to inflict harm on many people, Snow Flower most of all. Believing that Snow Flower has not been true to her, Lily betrays her by sharing all her private secrets to a group of women, virtually destroying Snow Flower's reputation. When Snow Flower is dying, Lily is called to her bedside and tends to her until the end. As the book returns to the present (1903), Lily is an 80 year old woman who has lived 40 years after her friend's death. Her own husband and children have since died, and she quietly watches the next generation in her home.
17276237	/m/043kwc1	Unwed Mother	Gloria D. Miklowitz	1977		 Kathy Sellers is the daughter of lower middle-class parents, living in Los Angeles, California. Her mother Helen is on her fourth marriage to Mike, an unemployed man who uses his back as an excuse to avoid work, and living with them are Kathy's 16-year-old twin sisters, Mona and Dona. After a sexual encounter with her 18-year-old boyfriend Guy, Kathy learns she is pregnant. She is sent to live at St. Anne's, a home for unwed mothers until her delivery, which happens not long after her fifteenth birthday. After he initially reacts with outrage, she does extract a promise from Guy (who enters the Army) that he will send for her once he gets settled. Despite her regular series of letters to Guy in the military, he doesn't reciprocate. Thus, that day never comes for Kathy. She gives birth to a baby boy whom she names John. She initially decides to give John up for adoption, but changes her mind and tells Miss Ambrose, her social worker, that she wants to try to raise her baby on her own, after Helen tells her she and the family will help raise him. She is given an allotment of food stamps and welfare money, which Helen decides to use as a vehicle to move the family into a larger apartment. Within a few short months, Kathy begins to mature as a mother, wanting more for her child, and knowing that living with her parents and sisters isn't going to make that possible. She begins to explore options of moving into a place of her own, which doesn't sit well with Mike and Helen, who depend on her welfare money to pay for the bigger apartment. She makes friends with Linda and Sue, two other girls in a teen mother program to move into a rented house with their children in a middle-class family-type neighborhood. She also makes friends with her neighbor Jane, a married woman about ten years her senior with a house, her fireman husband Allen, and their young daughter Wendy. Kathy sees Jane's family as perfect and wants to aspire to that level, but isn't sure how. However, Kathy's dreams of sharing responsibilities with her roommates as a collective effort to rise above their circumstances are quashed when Linda throws a party with booze found in a baby bottle. After a near-violent confrontation, Kathy learns that her roommates (mostly Linda) are only interested in having a place of their own so they can continue their reckless behavior. Feeling trapped again, with her illusion of cooperative motherhood shattered, Kathy begins having second thoughts about her role as a mother. Following the earlier confrontation, Kathy takes her now-four-month-old son outside in their backyard and sees Allen, Jane and Wendy in their own backyard, enjoying their time as a family. Kathy decides that despite her best efforts, she ultimately has to do right by John. She calls Miss Ambrose and tells her that she's reconsidered her decision to have John put up for adoption. Most people close to Kathy condemn her decision, but she finds a friend in Jane, who offers to help her on her road to building a better life for herself if she promises to keep in touch. Kathy happily agrees. Miss Ambrose tracks down Guy in the Army and gets his permission to allow the adoption. He apologizes to Kathy through Miss Ambrose for running out on her. At the end of the story, Kathy appears to get cold feet about the adoption, but it is implied that she goes through with it.
17278777	/m/043jv1v	People of the Comet	Austin Hall	1948	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns super-beings who reveal that our solar system is an atom in a larger universe.
17278824	/m/043rtv5	Noite	Erico Verissimo	1954	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 In the 1950s, a man finds himself in the middle of the streets of Porto Alegre with a wallet full of money... and no memory of any past events. He finds two "vultures of the night", enigmatic noctivague figures with a high penchant for bohemian lifestyles. The "vultures" (called The Master and The Hunchback) take the man on a surrealistic journey through the darkest places of the city, to "enjoy the night": a funeral parlor, the emergency service of a hospital, a deluxe whorehouse and a low-level working class cabaret. At the same time, the two enigmatic figures surreptitiously try to make the man-with-no-memory assume that he committed a horrendous crime early that night, in which a woman was the subject of a brutal passion-related crime and no perpetrator was yet arrested by the police. The book has a unique atmosphere in depicting the low-level bohemy that crowded some places in the Brazilian urban legends. In the 1980s, Brazilian film director José Louzeiro conducted a movie loosely based on the book.
17280018	/m/043myd9	The Moon Maiden	Garrett P. Serviss	1978	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a love tale and lunar beings who have been guiding the earth for millennia.
17284095	/m/043jtw9	The Ash Garden	Dennis Bock	2001-09-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrative alternates between three characters (Emiko, Anton and Sophie) and takes place around the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, though the back story of each character is told. Emiko was a small girl living in Hiroshima with her parents, younger brother, and grandfather during WWII. Following the atomic bombing, with her parents dead, Emiko and her brother recover in a hospital and her grandfather cares for patients. Though her brother dies, Emiko travels to the United States as part of a group of girls receiving reconstructive surgery. On the way, the American media takes an interest in the girls and she appears on an episode of This Is Your Life thanking the American audience for bringing her to the US. She later becomes a documentary filmmaker and, in 1995, approaches Anton Böll to be part of a new project. Anton was a scientist in Nazi Germany who, following a disagreement regarding the direction of its nuclear program, is recruited by the US and flees via France, Spain, and Portugal. He becomes a part of the Manhattan Project, witnesses the tests, and travels to Hiroshima recording the aftermath. Anton regrets the consequences of the atomic bombs, attends the Pugwash Conference, but maintains his belief that it was necessary to end the war and prevented more deaths. He marries Sophie and becomes a professor at Columbia University in New York. With Sophie, he retires to a small town outside of Toronto. As WWII was beginning, Sophie's Jewish parents sent her away from Austria. She was on board of the MS St. Louis when it was turned away from Cuba and sent to the United Kingdom. She was living in a refugee camp in Canada when she met Anton. She was diagnosed with lupus and takes up gardening, planning elaborate landscapes every year. In 1995, after refusing further medical treatments, and with Anton by her side, she succumbs to the disease. After Sophie's funeral Anton reveals to Emiko the extent to which he had been involved in Emiko's life. He first met her while volunteering at the hospital in which her grandfather was working. Feeling he had to make amends in some way, he ensured that Emiko was on the list of girls to get reconstructive surgery, and secretly filmed her at memorial events. He had been waiting for her to find him.
17288561	/m/043jz_z	Odd and the Frost Giants	Neil Gaiman		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Odd is a young lame Norseman whose father, a woodcutter, drowned during a Viking raid. His Scottish mother marries a fat widower who neglects him in favour of his own children, and when soon after the winter drags on unnaturally long, Odd leaves his village for the forest. There he meets a fox, an eagle and a bear, the latter with its paw trapped in a tree. Odd aids the bear, and learns that these are not normal animals, but the gods Loki, Odin and Thor. The gods have been transformed and cast out of Asgard by a Frost Giant who tricked Loki into giving him Thor's hammer, granting him rule over Asgard and causing the endless winter. Deciding to help the stranded gods, Odd travels with them to Asgard. There, Thor leads him to Mimir's Well, and he receives wisdom and a vision of his parents in their youth. He eventually speaks with and outwits the Giant, convincing him to return home. In return, the goddess Freya heals his leg, though she cannot mend it completely, and Odin gives him a staff. He returns to Midgard, somewhat bigger than when he left, and as the winter ends he reunites with his mother.
17295755	/m/043n30s	The Post-American World	Fareed Zakaria	2008-05	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The content is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the thesis of the book: that a 'post-American' world order is emerging in which the United States of America will continue to be the most powerful nation but its relative power will be diminished. He believes that there have been three power shifts in the last 500 years: a shift of power to the West during the Renaissance, a shift of power to the US making it a superpower, and now a shift to several surging countries, especially China and India, and to non-governmental organizations. Zakaria believes that international organizations are not adapting well to emerging challenges and that there is too much focus on problems arising from potential market failures or general crises (e.g. terrorism) at the expense of focus on problems stemming from success (e.g. development causing environmental degradation, or rising demand creating high commodity prices). The second and third chapters examine factors that led to the current power balance. Power shifted to the West because it fostered trade with foreign peoples and developed superior labour productivity per capita. Power shifted to the US because of its strong democracy and capitalist market. Zakaria argues that the success of the US in promoting free market capitalism and globalization has led to power being dispersed to several other countries. Economies have been surging for decades, in part due to large new players entering the global market place. He compares this era's economic growth to the economic surges of the 1890s and the 1950s which also saw new players become global powers. At the same time, Zakaria sees attitudes in the US becoming insular and distrustful of foreigners. The fourth chapter focuses on China. Its strategy of small, gradual reforms have allowed it to quietly modernize. It has become the second most powerful nation, but still unlikely to match the US for decades to come. China's strengths include a philosophy that reflects Confucian ideals of practicality, ethics and rationalism. Its non-combative foreign policy is more appealing, most notably in Africa, over interventionist Western-style policy that demands reforms in other countries. China's weakness, though, is a fear of social unrest. The fifth chapter focuses on India. Contrasted to China, India has a bottom-up democratic political system constantly subject to social unrest but which only results in few politicians losing an election. Its political system is characterized by strong regionalism — often placing high priority on regional interests rather than national. Zakaria lists India's advantages: independent courts that enforce contracts, private property rights, rule of law, an established private sector, and many business savvy English-speaking people. The sixth chapter compares the American rise to superpower status and its use of power. He draws parallels between the British Empire in the 1890s and starting the Boer War with the US in the 2000s and starting the Iraq War. The difference between them is that the British had unsurpassed political power but lost its economic dominance, whereas the US, in the 2000s, had huge economic power but faltering political influence. Zakaria defends the US from indicators that suggest American decline but warns that internal partisan politics, domestic ideological attack groups, special interest power, and a sensationalistic media are weakening the federal government's ability to adapt to new global realities. The final chapter outlines how the US has used its power and provides six guidelines for the US to follow in the 'post-American world' envisioned by Zakaria. {| class="wikitable" |+ Zakaria's guidelines for the US in the 'post-American world' |- ! ! Guideline ! Notes |- | 1 | Choose | Choose priorities rather than trying to have it all |- | 2 | Build broad rules, not narrow interests | Recommit to international institutions and mechanisms |- | 3 | Be Bismarck, not Britain | Maintain excellent relations with everyone, rather than offset and balance emerging powers |- | 4 | Order à la carte | Address problems through a variety of different structures (e.g. sometimes UN, sometimes NATO, sometimes OAS) |- | 5 | Think asymmetrically | Respond to problems (e.g. drug cartels, terrorists, etc.) proportionately and do not respond to bait (i.e. small attacks meant to draw attention) |- | 6 | Legitimacy is power | Legitimacy creates the means to set agendas, define crises, and mobilize support |}
17296693	/m/043rw4g	Indignation	Philip Roth	2008-09-16	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in America in 1951, the second year of the Korean War, Indignation is narrated by Marcus Messner, a college student from Newark, New Jersey, who describes his sophomore year at Winesburg College in Ohio. Marcus transfers to Winesburg from Robert Treat College in Newark to escape his father, a kosher butcher, who appears to have become consumed with fear about the dangers of adult life, the world, and the uncertainty that awaits his son. At Winesburg College, Marcus becomes infatuated with a fellow student, Olivia Hutton, a survivor of a suicide attempt. The sexually inexperienced Marcus is bewildered when Olivia performs fellatio on him during their one and only date. Marcus's mother objects to his dating someone who attempted suicide and makes him vow to end their relationship. Marcus has an adversarial relationship with the dean of men, Hawes Caudwell. In a meeting in Dean Caudwell's office, Marcus objects to the chapel attendance requirement on the grounds that he is an atheist. In this meeting, he quotes extensively from Bertrand Russell's essay "Why I Am Not a Christian". Later, the dean finds Marcus guilty of hiring another student to attend chapel in his place; when Marcus refuses to attend double the amount of chapel services as punishment, the dean expels him. His expulsion allows the U.S. Army to draft him and send him to fight in Korea where he is killed in combat. Early in the novel, Marcus explains that he is dead and telling his story from the afterlife; later it is revealed that he is unconscious from his combat wounds and the morphine that has been administered. The backdrop of Winesburg is an homage to Sherwood Anderson's book Winesburg, Ohio.
17297134	/m/043rtfg	The Blood Knight	Gregory Keyes	2006	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this third novel of the series, Anne Dare continues her flight from her Uncle's minions, with the help of the dessrator Cazio and the knight Sir Neil MeqVren. The Holter Aspar White and the monk Stephen Darige continue on their own path, attempting to unravel the mysteries of the Briar King. Anne's mother, Queen Muriele, remains imprisoned by the usurper, Robert, while the musician Leoff engages in a dangerous game of deceit with Robert, attempting to recreate a lost dark art.
17297456	/m/043r8jl	The Born Queen	Gregory Keyes	2008-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this final novel of the series, Anne Dare, finally on the throne of Crotheny, goes to war with both the Church and the powerful northern nation of Hansa. Her eldritch powers continue to grow and threaten to overwhelm her. The monk Stephen Darige, now aligned with the Blood Knight, attempts to fulfill his role in an ancient prophecy, while the Holter Aspar White continues to battle abominations and save his forest, while trying to understand the mysteries surrounding him. Meanwhile the dessrator Cazio is rescued by and reunited with his mentor, the swordmaster z'Accato. Queen Muriele and the now badly injured Sir Neil MeqVren are sent by Anne to Hansa on a mission of peace, while they covertly look for a way to defeat them.
17297892	/m/043pwts	On Love and Death				 Süskind begins by describing differing views of love, and then elaborates using a combination of personal anecdotes, brief biographies of historical figures such as Heinrich von Kleist, and mythological stories of love. The first example involves Süskind bearing witness to a couple having oral sex during a traffic jam. The second example centers around a dinner party attended by Süskind, during which a couple fawn over each other and ignore the rest of the dinner guests. The third example is an account of German poet Thomas Mann and his infatuation with a young waiter named Franzl. Süskind then analyzes these examples in terms of Plato's philosophy. The first example is used to illustrate "animal love", the second used to illustrate "delusion" or "frenzy", and the third used to illustrate ideal, "Platonic love." Süskind then proceeds to relate love and death. Kleist and Goethe occupy this section of the essays. Both Kleist and Goethe harbored suicidal thoughts stemming from their respective love lives. Süskind uses these stories as well as brief references to Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde to illustrate a central theme of the essays: an "erotic longing for death." The final section of the essays is devoted to a comparison of two mythological accounts of love: the stories of Orpheus and Jesus Christ. Süskind likens the two figures to each other in that both ventured into the realm of death because of their love; however, Süskind is critical of Jesus for his almost political motives and his "distance and inhumanity", in the sense that he was completely immune to the frenzy of love. He praises Orpheus for his courage and selflessness. While Jesus could count on divine assistance, asserts Süskind, Orpheus ventured into Hades with only his prodigious skill as a musician and his desire to reclaim his beloved Eurydice. In addition, Süskind states that the story of Orpheus is more moving to readers because it is a story of failure. Whereas Jesus is "only a god", Orpheus is "a more complete human being."
17299258	/m/043p74c	The Diamond of Darkhold	Jeanne DuPrau	2008-08-25	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins with the Builders discussing what the Emberites should do when they are released from the city. The chief builder decides they should give them a piece of their own technology, but it is not found by the citizens of Ember because the vault door is covered by trees. Nine months later Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow are curious when a roamer comes into town with a mysterious book. They trade the roamer a match for the book and discover it only contains eight pages. On the front of the book the words "For the People of Ember" are printed in gold letters. Since they can't make sense of the book, they decide to go back to Ember. When they return, a family of squatters has taken over the darkened city. The Troggs (Washton, Kanza, Minny, Yorick and an adopted boy called Scawgo, who are named after various American cities) believe they own Ember, and rename it Darkhold. They capture Doon while Lina goes back to Sparks for help. Meanwhile, Lizzie Bisco (from Ember), Torren Crane, and Kenny Parton (both from Sparks) realize that the two are gone, and decide to go and try to find them. They don't succeed and a search party goes to look for them. While Doon is with the family they show him a diamond they found just outside Ember. Doon steals the diamond and escapes from Ember with help from Scawgo. While escaping, he also breaks the pipe connecting the generator to a waterwheel that created power for Ember, therefore shutting down Ember's lights for good. He finds Lina, who is being attacked by a pack of wolves. Doon throws the diamond at the wolves to frighten them away but shatters it in the process. Lina treats his wound and takes Doon up to where the book with eight pages and the original diamond were discovered. They find a switch that uncovers shelves filled with hundreds of diamonds. Lina and Doon figure out that the diamonds are solar-powered sources of electricity. A lot of people decide to help them go back to Ember and look for other things to help in the winter. Doon thinks about going back to his old home and recover his book of bugs, but changes his mind, stating he can create a new one filled with the unique bugs in Sparks. Lina, however, looks for her drawings of her dream city at her old home but it isn't there. She then goes to City Hall and stands on top of the mayor's building and says "Goodbye Ember, forever." They bring back thousands of new inventions, which earns the town money and food to last the winter. A weary group of roamers, who are actually the Troggs, come into town one day, and the diamond is returned to them. But soon they learn the truth. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of them and they can power all sorts of electronic devices as well as start fires. They also learned that Doon and many others lived in Ember before them, and that they left and evacuated because Ember was dying. So the Troggs come to live in Sparks as well. In the end, it is revealed that in the future, cities are rebuilt with the power of the diamonds and Lina, Doon, and Poppy all live together in a house in Sparks. It is revealed Lina and Doon are married,and have four kids named Mariana,Johnny, Pedro and Eliza. Lina gets a horse named Fleet and becomes a messenger between towns and Doon goes on to study the diamonds.
17300248	/m/043rqtp	La Rabouilleuse	Honoré de Balzac	1842	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The action of the novel is divided between Paris and Issoudun. Agathe Rouget, who was born in Issoudun, is sent to be raised by her maternal relatives, the Descoings in Paris by her father Doctor Rouget. He suspects (wrongly) that he is not her true father. There she marries a man named Bridau, and they have two sons, Phillipe, and Joseph. Monsieur Bridau dies relatively young, Phillipe, who is the eldest and his mother's favourite, becomes a soldier in Napoleon's armies, and Joseph becomes an artist. Phillipe, the elder son is shown to be a courageous soldier, but is also a heavy drinker and gambler. He resigns from the army after the Bourbon Restoration out of loyalty to Napoleon. Joseph is a dedicated artist, and the more loyal son, but his mother does not understand his artistic vocation. After leaving the army Phillipe took part in the failed Champ d'Asile settlement in Texas. On returning to France he is unemployed, and lives with his mother and Madame Descoings, and becomes a financial drain on them, especially due to his hard drinking and gambling lifestyle. Phillipe becomes estranged from his mother and brother after stealing money from Madame Descoings. Phillipe is soon afterwards arrested for his involvement in an anti-government conspiracy. Meanwhile in Issoudun, Agathe's elder brother Jean-Jacques takes in an ex-soldier named Max Gilet as a boarder. Max is suspected of being his illegitimate half brother. Max and Jean-Jacques' servant Flore Brazier work together to control Jean-Jacques. Max leads a group of young men who call themselves "The Knights of Idleness" who frequently play practical jokes around the town. Two of these are against a Spanish immigrant named Fario, destroying his cart and his grain, and therefore ruining his business. It is now that Joseph and his mother travel to Issoudun to try to persuade Jean-Jacques to give Agathe money to help cover Phillipe's legal costs. They stay with their friends the Hochons. Jean-Jacques and Max only give them some old paintings, but only Joseph recognises their value. Joseph tells of his luck to the Hochons, not realising that their grandsons are friends of Max. Afterwards when Max discovers the value of the paintings he coerces Joseph into returning them. Then one night whilst out walking Fario stabs Max. As Max is recovering he decides to blame Joseph for the stabbing. Joseph is arrested, but later cleared and released, and he and his mother return to Paris. In the meantime, Phillipe has been convicted for his plotting. However, he cooperates with authorities and gets a light sentence of five years Police supervision in Autun. Phillipe gets his lawyer to change the location to Issoudun in order to claim his mother's inheritance for himself. He challenges Max to a duel with swords, and kills him in the duel. He then takes control of Jean-Jacques and his household, forcing Flore to become Jean-Jacques' wife. Phillipe marries Flore after the death of Jean-Jacques. Flore too soon dies. The book hints that both of these deaths are arranged by Phillipe but is not explicit about the means. Through his connections, Phillipe has now obtained the title Comte de Brambourg. Phillipe later marries a rich man's daughter. An attempt by Joseph to reconcile Phillipe and their mother before her death fails. Phillipe's fortunes take a turn for the worse after some unsuccessful speculation, and he rejoins the army to take part in the war in Algeria where he is killed in action, so that in the end Joseph, now a successful artist, inherits the family fortune.
17302236	/m/043p5fw	Too Loud a Solitude	Bohumil Hrabal	1976	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The entire story is narrated in the first person by the main character Hanta. Hanta is portrayed as a sort of idiot and a hermit, albeit one with encyclopedic literary knowledge. Hanta uses metaphorical language and surreal descriptions, and much of the book is concerned with just his inner thoughts, as he recalls and meditates on the outlandish amounts of knowledge he has attained over the years. He brings up stories from his past and imagines the events of whimsical scenarios. He contemplates the messages of the vast numbers of intellectuals which he has studied. The novel is vibrant with symbolism. A simple but obscure plot is present, however. "For thirty-five years now I've been in wastepaper, and it's my love story" says Hanta in the opening line of the book. He goes on to describe his methods for work, and for using his job to "save" incredible numbers of books for reading and storage in his home...
17303387	/m/043n26_	The Port of Peril	Otis Adelbert Kline	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set on Venus, the novel concerns Robert Grandon whose wife Vernia is kidnapped by the Huitsenni, a race of pirates. Grandon pursues them to their hidden port where, after joining forces with rebels, he overthrows their king. He discovers that Vernia has been taken to the north. He follows and eventually rescues his bride. They are both then captured by the Huitsenni and must be rescued by an army of allied nations working with the Huitsenni rebels.
17306745	/m/043s4pm	Dwellers in the Mirage	A. Merritt	1932	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns American Lief Langdon who discovers a warm valley in Alaska. Two races inhabit the valley, the Little People and a branch of an ancient Mongolian race and they worship the evil Kraken named Khalk'ru which they summon from another dimension to offer human sacrifice. The inhabitants recognize Langdon as the reincarnation of their long dead hero, Dwayanu. Dwayanu's spirit possesses Langdon and starts a war with the Little People. Langdon eventually fights off the presence of Dwayanu and destroys the Kraken.
17309139	/m/043pkcg	The Sabre Squadron				 The story takes place in Göttingen in 1952. The young mathematician Daniel Mond (of Jewish-German descent but born in England) arrives to study “The Dortmund papers”, a collection of notes left by the German mathematician Dortmund (died 1938). Mond is a student of Lancaster College which appeared in Fielding Gray. Early during his stay he gets to know the American historian Earle Restarick who is friendly for a while and then withdraws. Mond meets a large number of soldiers from The Sabre Squadron in the Earl of Hamilton’s 10th Regiment, among them his comrade from Lancaster, Julian James. Fielding Gray is also in this group and the two men have many discussions. Mond follows the soldiers during a “night on the town” (the first of many) but goes on picnic with Gray and his chauffeur Michael Lamb the next day. Gray tells Mond about the reason for the army’s presence in the area: to handle a nuclear war. A big exercise called “Apocalypse” will be held in September in which the soldiers will practice what to do after a nuclear war. Mond is present at several dinners with the squadron and meets a former German officer, Pappenheim, who is very curious about Mond's research. His German colleague, Dr von Bremke, is also rather curious. Mond is trying to reveal the story about Fielding Gray and his failure to attend Lancaster, but the rumours are too vague after seven years. During a meeting with the officers Leonard Percival and Pappenheim, Mond is told that his friend Restarick (and the US) are supporting former Nazis to save West Germany from influence from the Soviet Union. They offer Mond protection if he reveals what he has found in the Dortmund papers. During an evening on the town Mond is humiliated by the antisemite von Augsburg, who is challenged to a duel by the officer Giles Glastonbury. This results in von Augsburg ending up in hospital and Glastonbury in jail. As a key witness, Mond is now prohibited from leaving Germany. This news is delivered by Tuck (from Fielding Gray) who is now a member of the Allied Control Commission. As Mond will later discover, the whole affair was arranged to keep him in Germany. Glastonbury is, however, freed when his friend Captain Detterling (from Fielding Gray) arrives on his way to Baden Baden. Detterling can’t prevent Glastonbury from being sent to Hong Kong and Fielding Gray is suddenly head of the Squadron. During a visit to Dortmund's grave, Mond is harassed by Restarick and a number of soldiers. Shaken, he tells the truth to Fielding Gray. In the papers, Mond has found a way to create atomic chain reactions much more powerful than those of an atomic bomb. Mond is really scared about what this knowledge could lead to and will not tell a single person something of substance about how to achieve this. Gray and his squadron show a touching loyalty to Mond and promise they will help him escape. Mond gets a guard consisting of soldiers Lamb, Bunce, Chead and Mugger and he is dressed up as “Trooper Lewis.” In this guise he will escape during Operation Apocalypse, earlier mentioned by Gray. All goes well except for the fact that Mugger is severely beaten up in a fight with fusiliers. During the trip Mond also meets the genial journalist Alfie Schroeder, who recognises him but is persuaded to keep quiet. Mond is handed over to Captain Detterling who, after some hesitation, smuggles him out in an ambulance. Mond is put in an anti-radiation costume, but the zipper jams and he is, for a while, afraid that he will not get out of the suit before the oxygen expires. When, after a long trip, he steps out of the ambulance he finds himself face to face with Restarick and Percival. He faints but wakes up without the suit and in Strasbourg. Percival and Restarick try to threaten him into giving away what he knows. When Mond refuses they threaten to destroy the career of Mond and his squadron since they’ve broken a number of rules to get Mond out of Germany. Mond gives up and asks for his paper. When he is alone he thinks about the motto of the Squadron (Res Unius, Res Omnium – one for all and all for one) and, touched by the loyalty of Gray and his men, he cuts his throat with a penknife. sv:The Sabre Squadron
17315305	/m/043kbqz	Peak		2007-09		 Peak is a book of the writings of a fourteen-year-old boy named Peak who is climbing Mt. Everest. The narration is set up in a way that it is supposed to be like one is reading the Moleskine notebooks in which he records his adventure. In the opening scene Peak writes about scaling the Woolworth Building in New York to tag his blue mountains on them. His face freezes to the building and ends up receiving stitches when he gets back down. He is spotted by someone inside the building during a reception the mayor was attending and was thought to be a terrorist. He is arrested for climbing and vandalizing. These blue mountains are a stencil that he sprays on the buildings that he had climbed and this was the sixth. After this, he is in jail for a while then a boy dies trying to copy his stunt of climbing a building. Because of this the people of New York want to make an example of him by giving him a harsh punishment. The question is how harsh would the punishment be? When Peak goes to court, his biological father, Joshua Wood, comes and offers to take Peak back to Thailand to live with him for a while until the situation is less severe in New York. It is either jail in New York, or live in Thailand with Josh, his biological father who he hasn't seen for seven years. There is not much of a choice for Peak so he leaves to go live with his father out of the country, and to never ever give up on stupid dreams that only little kids will think of. In the first flight Josh and Peak fly to Bangkok, Thailand. Josh told Peak that they are not going to Chiang Mai, where Peak was expecting to go, but will be traveling to Kathmandu. At the Summit Hotel in Kathmandu, Josh leaves Peak and tells him to wait for one of Josh's friends, a Buddhist monk by the name of Zopa. Zopa will take him to Base Camp where they will prepare for the long climb up Everest. Sun-jo, a Nepalese boy, comes to the hotel room to take him to Zopa. Peak goes and gets climbing gear and prepares for the trip. Sun-jo, Peak, Zopa, and two climbing sherpa brothers named Yogi and Yash travel to Tibet in the back of a pick up truck. After a long journey they arrive at Base Camp. When they get there, Peak meets Holly Angelo, a reporter from New York, and he learns that she will be climbing the mountain with him. Stunningly, Peak also realizes at this point that his father Josh, bailed him out of jail to come and climb Mount Everest. This is important because if he makes the climb, he will be the youngest person to reach the top of the summit of Mount Everest. Later a German climber is brought down the mountain in a Gamow bag. A Gamow bag is designed to help prevent the progress of a disease called H.A.P.E., a disease that is a type of altitude sickness. Then they go to ABC(advanced base camp). Peak receives letters from home making him miss his family. There is a secret meeting being held at HQ, after all the other climbers go to sleep. By invitation only, Josh, the film crew, Sparky, Dr. Krieger, Thaddeus Bowen, and Zopa, who had brought Sun-jo with him, all attend. Josh asks about Peak's health, and wonders if he can make it to the top, explaining that “Peak either makes it [to the summit] on the first try or he doesn’t [make it at all]." Peak has caught some sort of virus that has been spreading throughout the camps on Mt. Everest. If you get sick on Mt. Everest, there is a very slim chance you will make it to the top. After Josh finishes explaining his concern for Peak, Holly comes in and tells them all that Sun-jo is Zopa's grandson. Becoming suspicious, Josh asks Sun-jo how old he is, to find out that he is fourteen too, and that he and Peak are climbing for the same reason. Later, Peak calls his mother, and is told that he should not be on the mountain, as well as he should be selfish, or else he will not be able to climb the mountain. After a few rough days of climbing, Peak wakes up and finds that the people paying for the trip are having a meeting of their very own. They tell Peak that they want him off the mountain. Josh tells Peak that “They're right. This is their climb. They're paying the tab.” Shocked, Peak almost explodes with anger. But despite all this, Peak climbs in the truck with Zopa, and is driven away from camp. After a while, Zopa gives Peak a letter from Josh telling him that he had staged it all, and that he would be climbing up to the summit. Now Peak has to climb on a faster but more dangerous route, with the help of Zopa, Sun-jo, Yogi, and Yash. After all the steep paths and the perilous Yellow Band, they use the last of their strength to climb up to the summit of the mountain. But Peak lets Sun-jo make it to the top, and take the title of the youngest climber to ever climb Mt. Everest. Since Sunjo's father died saving Peak’s father, reaching the top would save Sun-jo and his sisters from poverty; with the money from the equipment endorsements he would receive, they would all be able to go back to school. Sun-jo ties Peak's yellow prayer flag to the top, while Peak records the whole thing. After Peak comes back down the mountain, he flies home after saying goodbye to Josh. When he gets home, his parents throw him a birthday party and tell him how they missed him. It is also the twin's party. Peak speaks with his teacher, who tells him that his Moleskines are due, which Peak had been writing in throughout his climb. Peak then finishes his second Moleskine with the observation: “The only thing you’ll find on the summit of Mount Everest is a divine view. The things that really matter lie far below”
17321945	/m/043rl_m	Chances	Jackie Collins	1981	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Chances is broken up into parts, the first part looks at the blackout in New York City and how this affects the main characters. The second is focused on Gino Santangelo and later includes his children Lucky and Dario. The third part examines the life of Carrie Berkley and later her son Steven. The blackout, a real event that Collins describes in some detail affects all the major characters either directly or indirectly. *Lucky Santangelo was in Costa Zennocotti's office, trying to convince Costa not to let her father Gino Santangelo return to America, she does not know he is in a plane circling the city. When the blackout occurs she is trapped in an elevator between floors with Steven Berkley. The two end up talking and when they are rescued from the lift Lucky goes back to Steven's apartment for breakfast and a change of clothes. *Steven Berkley, a District Attorney, was in his friend Jerry Myerson's office working on an indictment for Enzio Bonnatti. He ends up trapped in the elevator with Lucky. *Gino Santangelo was in a plane returning from a seven year tax exile in Israel when the blackout occurs. His plane is diverted to Philadelphia when in a hotel, a flight attendant tips the press that he is back in the country. *Dario Santangelo is trapped in his own apartment after his male lover takes his keys, gun and knife. Dario is forced to phone Costa in order to escape alive. *Costa Zennocotti stays in his office after the blackout, not willing to walk down all the stairs and Dario calls him and says that he needs something "arranged". Costa calls Sal, a freelance enforcer to take out the boy but ends up double crossing him and kidnapping Dario. *Carrie Berkley drives to Harlem in her Cadillac Seville to meet a blackmailer, during the blackout she is targeted by a gang of youths who assault her and strip her of her jewellery. She is arrested when she is in the area of the riots and looting but her husband, Elliot Berkley, bails her out. The next day, dressed more conservatively, she takes a cab back to Harlem having received another call from the blackmailer. Gino's story begins in 1921 but backtracks to narrate details of when Gino's parent's, Paulo and Mira Santangelo emigrated to New York City from Italy in 1909 when Gino was three. From an early age Gino takes to a life of crime, stealing a car at the age of fifteen and ending up in a juvenile home. ===Epilogue===
17323939	/m/043krx0	The Return of Tharn		1956	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns the prehistoric adventures of Tharn.
17327032	/m/043ntrn	Chaff on the Wind				 Two young men, Dingding and Pateh, travel by ship from a rural village to the main city. Pateh is outgoing and reckless, with an eye for the ladies. Dinding is socially cautious, but sensible and possessing of business acumen. In the city, Dinding meets a young man, older than himself but not yet middle-aged, named James. James is a Christian and a very serious person. He becomes a major influence on Dingding. Pateh gets a job on the loading docks, and seduces a young girl named Isatou. Pateh is fond of fine and showy clothes. To maintain his clothing budget and his schedule with the ladies, Pateh begins working as a smuggler. Later, Isatou marries Charles, an old man who had never married before. He is the cousin of a Signare. Isatou does not feel close to Charles. After their marriage, Isatou finds herself pregnant with Pateh's child. The pair chooses to flee to Senegal. Dingding continues to prosper in business, and Pateh goes to work for Dinding. Pateh and Isatou become parents. While the child is still an infant, a French colonial policeman confronts Pateh with evidence of Pateh's criminal activities. Pateh sets the evidence on fire. During a fight with the policeman, the officer strikes a mortal blow. Pateh dies with his family by his side.
17328064	/m/043lf37	The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity	William P. Young	2007-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the American Northwest. The main character is Mackenzie Philips, a father of five, called "Mack" by his family and friends. Four years prior to the main events of the story, Mack takes three (of his five) children on a camping trip to Wallowa Lake near Joseph, Oregon stopping at Multnomah Falls on the way. Two of his children are playing in a canoe when it flips and almost drowns Mack's son. Mack is able to save his son by rushing to the water and freeing him from the canoe's webbing, but unintentionally leaves his youngest daughter Missy alone at their campsite. After Mack returns, he sees that Missy is missing. The police are called, and the family discovers that Missy has been abducted and murdered by a serial killer known as the "Little Ladykiller." The police find an abandoned shack in the woods where Missy was taken, her bloodied clothing is found, but her body is never located. Mack's life sinks into what he calls "The Great Sadness." At the beginning of the book, Mack receives a note in his mailbox from "Papa," saying that he would like to meet with Mack on that coming weekend at the shack. Mack is puzzled by the note – he has had no relationship with his abusive father since he left home at age 13. He suspects that the note may be from God, whom his wife Nan refers to as "Papa." Mack's family leaves to visit relatives and he goes alone to the shack, unsure of what he will see there. He arrives and finds nothing, but as he is leaving, the shack and its surroundings are supernaturally transformed into a lush and inviting scene. He enters the shack and encounters manifestations of the three persons of the Trinity. God the Father takes the form of an African American woman who calls herself Elousia and Papa, Jesus Christ is a Middle-Eastern carpenter, and the Holy Spirit physically manifests himself as an Asian woman named Sarayu. The bulk of the book narrates Mack's conversations with Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu as he comes to terms with Missy's death and his relationships with the three of them. Mack also has various experiences with each of them. Mack walks across a lake with Jesus, sees an image of his father in heaven with Sarayu, and has a conversation with Sophia, the personification of God's wisdom. At the end of his visit, Mack goes on a hike with Papa, who shows him where Missy's body was left in a cave. After spending the weekend at the shack, Mack leaves and is so preoccupied with his thoughts that he is nearly killed in an automobile accident. After his recovery, he realizes that he did not in fact spend the weekend at the shack, but that his accident occurred on the same day that he arrived at the shack. He also leads the police to the cave which Papa revealed, and they find Missy's body still lying there. With the help of forensic evidence discovered at the scene, the Little Ladykiller is arrested and put on trial.
17329380	/m/043ls0p	The Sorrows of an American	Siri Hustvedt	2008		 On the death of their father Lars, a retired Professor of History, Erik Davidsen and his sister Inga, a philosopher, clean out his home office in rural Minnesota and, while going through his copious papers, find a cryptic note written and signed by someone they do not know called Lisa which suggests to them that as a boy back in the 1930s their father was involved in some illicit act and that he has kept his promise never to tell anyone about it. The siblings decide to investigate the matter further, if only half-heartedly at first. For the time being, Erik Davidsen is preoccupied reading his father's journals, which the latter completed only shortly before his demise. For Erik, all this will mean that in the months to come he will not only be haunted by the ghosts of the present but also of the past. It has been pointed out that none of the characters in The Sorrows of an American leads a carefree, untroubled existence. The narrator himself suffers from a slight form of depression triggered by his recent divorce, childless state, and subsequent feeling of loneliness but still finds satisfaction in attempting to cure his patients of the complaints he occasionally recognizes in himself. His sister Inga has had absence seizures from childhood and migraines all her adult life. What is more, when the novel opens she is being harassed by a female journalist who states her intention to publicize hitherto unknown facts about Inga's deceased husband, a cult author and filmmaker, and who demands that she be co-operative without telling her what exactly she is aiming at or planning to do. Inga's 18-year-old daughter Sonia suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder, having witnessed, from the windows of her Manhattan school, the September 11, 2001 attacks and the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Lars Davidsen, the long-term patriarch of the family, was a fugueur. But also the characters outside the family show neurological symptoms. Whereas the journalist who is harassing Inga only bears an age-old personal grudge against her (of which the latter is unaware) and is out for straightforward revenge, Erik's friend and colleague Bernard Burton, apart from sweating excessively, has not been able to cope with the fact that Inga is not in love with him and, without her realizing it, has kept a watchful eye on her over the years in a way which might be construed as stalking. Edie Bly, a former actress who is now impoverished, is a recovering substance abuser who has an illegitimate son by Inga's deceased husband and appears to be in an unstable psychological condition. Finally, the real stalker in the novel, a photographer and installation artist called Jeffrey Lane, displays various signs of compulsive behaviour, for example the urge to document virtually everything in his life by taking photos. He crosses the psychiatrist's path while pursuing his former girlfriend, a Jamaican-born beauty who has recently rented, and moved into, the downstairs apartment of Erik's now too large Brooklyn brownstone. Erik Davidsen is immediately drawn towards Miranda, the young woman from Jamaica, and Eglantine, her pre-school daughter by Jeffrey Lane. He soon falls head over heels in love with the dark-skinned woman while at the same time watching what he perceives to be the slow but steady deterioration of his own self. Gently rejected by Miranda, he has enough willpower left to go on a date with a sexy colleague and, for purely physical reasons, starts an affair with her. As the story progresses, however, he is more and more pulled into the quagmire of events surrounding Miranda, Inga, and himself. At one point he catches a burglar in his empty house at night, is surprised to see it is Lane, confused when the escaping Lane takes a photo of him wearing nothing much but wielding a hammer, and shocked when, months later, he recognizes the image at one of Lane's exhibitions with a caption saying, Head Doctor Goes Insane. Most of the mysteries are cleared up in the end. Erik and Inga succeed in tracking down the mysterious &mdash; and now dying &mdash; Lisa, and it turns out that all those years ago a young Lars Davidsen helped her bury her illegitimate, stillborn child, in all secrecy, somewhere on his family's farm. The reputation of Inga's deceased husband is not smeared either when the existence of a batch of letters to Edie Bly can be established without doubt but when it turns out at the same time that they have no sensational value because they belong to the realm of fiction&mdash;they are addressed to the character Bly played in one of the author's films rather than Bly the actress and mother of his child. Bernard Burton proves instrumental in procuring the letters without succumbing to the temptation to actually read them, in a chivalric act in which he dresses up as a frightful bag lady in order not to reveal his identity, a scene which also provides some comic relief. The conclusion of the novel is a four-page stream-of-consciousness-like recapitulation of the story's images racing through Erik's mind, and the assurance that the characters' fragmented lives will remain that way.
17339607	/m/043mcd9	The Goddess of Ganymede	Mike Resnick	1967	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns Adam Thane, a soldier of fortune who fights for the woman he loves against the immortals of Ganymede.
17345460	/m/043lpvx	Tanar of Pellucidar	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1930	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The author’s friend Jason Gridley is experimenting with a new radio frequency he dubs the Gridley Wave, via which he picks up a transmission sent by scientist Abner Perry, from the interior world of Pellucidar at the Earth's core, a realm discovered by the latter and his friend David Innes many years before. There Innes and Perry have established an Empire of Pellucidar, actually a confederation of tribes, and attempted with mixed success to modernize the stone-age natives. Lately things have not gone well, and Innes is currently held captive in an enemy realm. Perry transmits a lengthy account of how this has come about, as reported by Innes’ native comrade in arms Tanar, and appeals for aid from the outer world. Tanar’s narrative comprises the bulk of the novel. Innes had led an army to the relief of the member tribe of Thuria and the remnants of the Empire’s former foes, the reptilian Mahars. Both had been attacked by a previously unknown people, the Korsars (corsairs), the scourge of the internal seas. These, it is eventually learned, are the descendants of outer world Moorish pirates who had penetrated Pellucidar centuries before through a natural polar opening connecting the outer and inner worlds. The empire’s forces succeed in repulsing the Korsars, but the raiders retain as hostage Tanar, son of Innes’ ally Ghak of Sari. They hope to trade him for the secret of the empire’s superior weaponry. Leaving his forces to construct ships to counter the enemy fleet, Innes and his comrade Ja of Anoroc set out alone to rescue Tanar, guided by their own prisoner, the Korsar Fitt. On the enemy flagship Tanar is interrogated by the Cid, leader of the Korsars, and his ugly henchman Bohar the Bloody. The young warrior also encounters Stellara, supposedly the Cid’s daughter, who attempts to intercede on behalf of Tanar and his fellow captives. A storm destroys the ship, and the crew takes to the lifeboats, leaving Tanar and Stellara adrift on the wreckage. Stellara confides to him that she is not really a Korsar, as her mother Allara was stolen by the Cid from the native island of Amiocap and she bears a birthmark proving she is actually the daughter of Fedol, her mother’s former mate. Eventually the derelict ship drifts to Amiocap itself, but the island’s suspicious inhabitants take the two for Korsar spies and imprison them in the village of Lar. Escaping, they by chance encounter Fedol, who recognizes Stellara by her birthmark and gives them refuge in his own village of Peraht. But Bohar’s group of Korsars attacks Peraht and kidnaps Stellara, while Tanar falls prey to the Coripies, a cannibalistic subterranean race. Escaping again, Tanar kills Bohar and frees Stellara, to whom he avows his love. Their joy is short-lived, as she is then abducted by Jude of the nearby island of Hime, who had shared Tanar’s captivity among the Coripies. Tanar pursues them to Hime, where they are overtaken by Bohar’s crew. Seeing Tanar with Gura, a girl of Hime who has developed a crush on him, Stellara rejects him and reassumes her former role among the Korsars; Tanar and Gura are taken in chains across the ocean to the Korsar city. There Tanar finds himself a fellow prisoner with David Innes and Ja of Anoroc, whose quest to succor him has miscarried. The three feign acquiescence to the Cid’s demand they manufacture modern firearms for him, and so are given greater liberty. Meanwhile Gura has discovered that Stellara, despite her jealous anger, still loves Tanar, and lets Tanar know. The party plans its escape and flees north with the reconciled Stellara. After confirming the existence of the polar opening they turn south again, bound for Sari, only to encounter a large party of pursuing Korsars, at which they split up in an attempt to ensure some at least can carry word back to the empire. Stellara, Tanar and Innes are recaptured, and the latter two each confined solitarily in lightless, snake-infested cells. Tanar, in his cell, eventually locates the opening through which the snakes enter, widens it, and achieves freedom. He locates Stellara in a heated faceoff with Bulf, the Korsar to whom the Cid has promised her; she swears to kill him and herself both rather than submit. Tanar intervenes and dispatches Bulf. He and his lover then leave the city in Korsar guise, and after many perils return to Sari, where they find Ja and Gura to have arrived safely as well. After hearing the complete transmission, Jason Gridley pledges to lead an expedition to Pellucidar through the polar opening and rescue David Innes, thus setting the stage for the sequel Tarzan at the Earth's Core, a cross-over novel linking Burroughs’ Pellucidar and Tarzan series.
17347115	/m/043lgc3	Brokedown Palace	Steven Brust	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The land of Fenario, on the borders of Faerie (read:Dragaera) is ruled by King Laszlo, oldest of four brothers. Prince Andor, second son, is an indulgent man, unable to discover his place. Prince Vilmos, third son, is a giant, such as are occasionally born into the line of Fenarr. The youngest, Prince Miklos, is at the center of the story. The family makes their home in a four-hundred year old palace, which is crumbling away under their feet. The story concerns the destruction of their crumbling home, which serves as fulcrum around which many themes revolve. Desperation at things' ending, joy at new beginnings, and the way in which we choose to separate the two, are central themes of the novel.
17350965	/m/043nl8k	Outcast				 The subject of Outcast is a Jewish convert to Islam, Ahmad (Haroun) Soussan, based on the historical figure, Ahmad (Nissim) Soussa. After converting in the 1930s the real-life Soussa became a tool for propaganda under the Ba'athist regime. Ballas presents Soussan in a sympathetic light, giving voice to his complex relations with his Jewish family and friends, and his struggle as he moves from genuine conviction in Islam to the realization that he will never be fully at home in the Muslim sphere, just as he was not comfortable in the Jewish sphere. Ballas' treatment of Soussan suggests that the reader should attempt to comprehend the quandaries faced by those few Jews who sought to remain in Iraq in the years after 1948.
17351050	/m/043p6fb	Storm Rising	Mercedes Lackey	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Duke Tremane, who has been sent by the Empire to conquer Hardorn, is having second thoughts about his homeland. Since he has been basically stranded by the Emperor, he takes matters into his own hands. As he has a copy of the Emperial Seal locked up in a special desk inherited from his aunt, he writes documents authorizing him to take all the contents of an Imperial storehouse. Then the mages in his army create a gate to the storehouse and Duke Tremane and a number of his men then proceed to take as much of the contents as they can. Meanwhile, in Valdemar, Karal has been assigned to take over as Karsite ambassador following the death of his mentor and previous ambassador, Ulrich. He has to deal with the Shin'a'in ambassador taking over from the previous one, who has also died. However, Andesha is able to help and the Shin'a'in ambassador eventually apologizes to Karal for his previous behavior. Duke Tremane has elected to sever ties with the Empire and devotes his time to helping the people of Hardorn. All spies in his army defect over to him and the local people start to like having Duke Tremane around, especially when he and some of his men help find a group of kids who ended up being lost in a snowstorm. Karal, Andesha, and Natoli use magic to spy on Duke Tremane and discover that he isn't what he seems. The firecat Altra agrees that it would be a good idea for Duke Tremane to join the Alliance and Jumps Karal with him to Hardorn. There, Karal hands Duke Tremane a message tube and asks him to consider joining the Aliiance. Altra returns a week later to collect the tube. Meanwhile, the Son of the Sun Solaris visits Valdemar with her Firecat Hansa to further relations with Valdemar and Queen Selenay. Needless to say, Solaris and Selenay are shocked when they read the message that Duke Tremane wishes to join the Alliance. Solaris confines Karal to his room and has Hansa Jump her to Hardorn. After confronting Duke Tremane, she decides that he doesn't mean any harm and leaves, but not before doing a spell that will keep him from ever lying again in the future. Karal is not punished and is allowed to continue as the Karsite Ambassador. Sejanes, a very old mage, and teacher to Duke Tremane, is sent to Valdemar to help deal with the magic storms currently going on. Karal, Andesha, Firesong, and Silverfox leave Valdemar for Uthro's tower in order to deal with the storms. The Companion Florian goes with them, and several other Companions go along as well to carry the other people.
17351255	/m/043l0j4	Lady Boss	Jackie Collins	1990	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Lady Boss tells the story of Lucky Santangelo taking over a movie studio in Hollywood called "Panther Studios."
17352127	/m/043kxvl	Drop Dead Beautiful	Jackie Collins	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story focuses on the character Anthony Bonar (Enzio Bonatti's grandson), who's seeking revenge against the Santangelo family as Lucky Santangelo is responsible for the deaths of his grandfather and father. Lucky's daughter - the rebellious teenager Maria, also known as Max' - is arranging to meet up with a mysterious boy on the internet, in the hopes of making an ex-boyfriend jealous. However, the mystery boy turns out to be a middle-aged man named Henry, who has a hatred for Max's mother Lucky as she didn't cast him for a movie which she developed a few years ago. On the day of meeting Henry in Big Bear, many miles away from her Bel Air home, Max meets the nineteen year old Ace.
17356159	/m/043pkqg	The Gate House	Nelson DeMille	2008-10-28		 The Gate House is the sequel to The Gold Coast, released by the aforementioned publisher. The book begins when John Sutter, former Wall Street tax attorney, returns to the Gold Coast of Long Island, NY for the imminent funeral of a family servant; Ethel Allard. On John's return to the United States he realizes that he has no standing line of credit, no money, no home, no friends and no family – that which he wants to speak to – and has therefore taken up residence in the gate house of Stanhope Hall, the ancestral manor of his ex-wife Susan Sutter. The mansion itself is huge and sits on 323 acres and has since been seized by the government after the former owner, Frank Bellarosa – the original antagonist from The Gold Coast – is charged with tax evasion and has his assets seized by the I.R.S.; therefore the government has sold the mansion to an Amir Nasim, an Iranian businessman and devout Muslim. John, realizing that Ethel has a life tenancy until she dies, takes up residence without notifying Mr. Nasim, for the purpose of both having a life tenancy and the fact that since the book takes place after 9/11, the relations between Muslims and Americans have become "frosty" at best. John had started a new life in London, after a 3-year sail around the world that finally landed him in London, England where he became a partner of a prestigious tax law firm in Britain and even got a new girlfriend named Samantha.
17360425	/m/043pxlj	Tom Swift and His Big Tunnel	Victor Appleton	1916	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Titus Brothers Contractors company have won a government contract in Peru to blast a tunnel through a mountain and connect two isolated railroad lines. The deadline is approaching, and the contractors have hit a literal wall: excessively hard rock which defies conventional blasting techniques. The company is under pressure to finish, or else the contract will default to their rivals, Blakeson & Grinder. Mr. Job Titus has heard of Tom Swift and Tom's giant cannon, which is used in protecting the Panama Canal, and wants to hire Tom to develop a special blasting powder to help them finish the excavation. Mr. Damon, Tom's very good friend, arrives in the middle of this conversation, and is unaware of the situation. By coincidence, Mr. Damon is invested in a business which procures cinchona bark from Peru, but production has all but ceased, prompting Mr. Damon to invite Tom to accompany him to Peru and discover the source of the problem. Tom, Mr. Damon and Mr. Titus (along with Koku, Tom's giant) embark for Peru. On the way, they encounter Professor Swyington Bumper, who is on a lifelong quest to locate the lost city of Pelone. Professor Bumper returns to Peru each season, and has thus far been unsuccessful. When Professor Bumper discovers that Tom is headed to the same general area, Rimac, Professor Bumper decides to join the company.
17361988	/m/043q5j6	Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho		1990-04-15	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 From Hitchcock's acquisition of the original novel by Robert Bloch to his work with two different screenwriters, casting, filming, editing, scoring, and promotion, the book takes readers into the day-to-day lives of moviemakers who believed they were making a modestly budgeted, black-and-white shocker that represented a radical departure from the elegant, suspenseful films that had made director Hitchcock's reputation, including Rope, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much and North by Northwest. The project Hitchcock tackled in part as an experiment to compete with financially successful, low-budget, youth-oriented horror movies went on to astound many by becoming a cultural watershed, an international box-office success, a film classic, and a forerunner of the violent, disorienting films and real-events of the turbulent Sixties.
17363594	/m/043rcsr	The Lone Star Ranger	Zane Grey	1915	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Buck Duane is the son of a famous outlaw. Though an outlaw is not always a criminal, if the Rangers say he is an outlaw, its just as bad - he's a hunted man. After killing a man, Duane is forced to 'go on the dodge'. Duane turns up at an outlaw's hideout, still revolting at the idea of outlawry. Worse still, all the men he kills haunt him, for years. At the outlaw hideout, he meets a kidnapped, beautiful young woman and desires to see her free. In the second part of the book, Duane joins the Rangers, who want him to clear the frontier of outlaws, in return for the Govenor's pardon of his illegal deeds. The book takes place in Texas, which is known as the Lone Star State. Buck Duane is made a Texas Ranger toward the end of the novel. The title also highlights the social isolation of the main character. It was adapted as a radio series in 1933.
17366841	/m/043ksvs	Sound the Retreat	Simon Raven			 The story takes place between November 1945 and June 1946 in British India. Peter Morrison and his cadet comrades arrive in Bangalore for military service and are informed that they will have an Indian commander. The cadet Alister Mortleman disapproves strongly. During a visit with Captain Detterling to Ley Wong's restaurant, the Earl of Muscateer, the son of Detterling’s cousin Lord Canteloupe, gets food poisoning and later dies of jaundice. The cadets meet their Indian commander, Gilzai Khan, and (except for Mortleman) take a liking to him. Khan starts a sexual relationship with the cadet Barry Strange. Khan shows strong feelings during Muscateer's funeral, and later during some heavy drinking at Ley Wong’s is rebuked by Mortleman. Khan arranges an unusual duel in which Mortleman will have the advantage of youth and Khan that of experience: the men will demonstrate their sexual endurance with Ley Wong's waitresses, and the one who displays the highest number of ejaculations will win. Mortleman beats Khan by 3 – 2. Shortly after, Peter Morrison starts a relation with a prostitute, Margaret Rose Engineer. Riots and unrest are breaking out all over India and Khan, a non religious Muslim, predicts bloodbaths between the Hindus and Muslims when the British leave. Morrison is blackmailed by Margaret Rose who says that he promised her marriage, and would have to resign his commission. Khan saves him by planting false evidence that she’s been forging ID cards at her home, and the charge against Morrison is dropped. Shortly after that Khan is removed from his command because of his positive attitude to British rule. An emotional farewell dinner for Khan is held at Ley Wong’s. Murphy, a cadet held back in hospital for a while, is rapidly promoted to captain by chance. Morrison, Mortleman and Strange are posted to Berhampore. When they arrive they are informed of Khan's resignation from the army without any explanation. Morrison is visited by Murphy, now working for the viceroy, who explains that Khan left the army to become a political agitator. Khan wants the British to remain in India to prevent the Hindus and Muslims from slaughtering each other. Murphy orders Morrison to “fix” the affair, i.e. kill Khan. Shortly thereafter, Khan also visits Morrison, reveals that his group will block the local railway and asks Morrison and his friends to stay away if they can. Morrison tells Khan about his own orders, and they part on friendly terms. Very soon, Morrison, Strange and Mortleman face Khan during the action against the railway. Morrison is trying to arrest Khan but Strange and Khan have a quarrel, Strange stabs Khan with a sabre who dies congratulating Morrison on contriving his death. The men are devastated but are hailed as heroes and cleared of any charges. As they return to England they are given news that Murphy has been killed by a car bomb. sv:Sound The Retreat
17367469	/m/043l02r	Staring at the Sun	Julian Barnes		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Julian Barnes examines the ordinary life of Jean Serjeant from her childhood in the 1920s through her adulthood to the year 2021. Throughout her life, Jean learns to question the world's idea of truth while she explores the beauty and miracles of everyday life.
17367847	/m/043k_55	Friends in Low Places	Simon Raven	1965	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The story starts in the little town of Menton (April 1959) where Angela Tuck spends some time with the recently widowed con-man Mark Lewson. Lewson, who’s waiting for some economic gain, steals 40,000 francs from Angela and is trying to his luck at a casino. After he’s lost almost everything he is rescued by professional player Max de Freville and leaves the casino with 100,000 francs. De Freville makes him a proposition. Two of his colleagues, gamblers Stratis Lykiadopolous and Jacques des Moulins, have got hold of an interesting letter since the latter has seduced the son of a minister of Lebanon. This letter proves that the British government (or part of it) planned the Suez crisis together with Israel. Since the two men want to protect the minister’s son they’ve hidden the letter. De Freville wants Lewson to steal the letter and he accepts the mission and goes to Venice, where Lykiadopolous lives. During this time, old friends Alistair Dixon and Rupert Percival have a discussion about who is going to succeed the former when he retires as MP for the district Bishop’s Cross. As things turns out, both Peter Morrison and Somerset Lloyd-James are candidates for the title. Fielding Gray, who has, quite literally, lost his face in a bomb explosion and has retired from the army, sees his old friend Somerset Lloyd-James to ask for work. The always Jesuitical Lloyd-James can’t see a reason to refuse and will give his old friend some work in the literary field. Gray also meets Tom Llewyllyn, who has become a successful writer. Llewyllyn is soon to be married to Patricia Turbot, the younger daughter of the politician Sir Edwin Turbot. During a party at the Turbot mansion, where lord Canteloupe is drinking rather heavily, Carton Weir appears to give news about Canteloupe becoming secretary for the development of British Recreational Resources. Many people around the lord thinks this is outrageous since they consider him a moron. Mark Lewson is trying to get hold of the letter and succeeds after the son of the minister gets killed by a bomb in Paris. Lykiadopolous simply gives it to him since he no longer has any reason to hide it. Lewson also frequents director Burke Lawrence, who is pestered by former model Penelope Holbrook. De Freville tells Lewson to “do” something about the letter. Lloyd-James manages to kick Robert Constable off the board of Strix on a technical question. He replaces him with Lord Canteloupe. Gregory Stern wants to become publisher for Gray and even print an edited version of his journal, in more literary form. Gray becomes a lodger at Tessie's, who also takes in Jude Holbrook, who hasn’t been seen in years. Lewson manages to sell the letter to Lloyd-James and the two of them visit Sir Edwin to persuade him to give the party’s support to Lloyd-James. Tom and Patricia marry at midsummer and most of the characters attend the wedding. Grey and Morrison meet for the first time since 1955, Salinger is trying to suck up to the rather drunk Lord Canteloupe and even Sir Edwin becomes rather drunk and sentimental. A cigarette causes a fire and the firemen arrive right at the moment when Isobel Turbot and Mark Lewson take of in a sports car. A fireman is even killed in the tumult. Lord Canteloupe struggles with a camp site he has constructed called “Westward Ho!” With the help of Maisie and some torture, Jude Holbrook nabs the letter from Lloyd-James. Unknowing, Sir Edwin has made his party support Lloyd-James. De Freville, plagued by mental problems, gives a last scandalous evening of gambling and later tells his friend Captain Detterling about the letter and the many twists the story has taken. A number of persons are now chasing Isobel and Mark (mostly Mark): a group consisting of Morrison, Detterling and Gray; the team Alfie Schroeder and Tom Llewyllyn and also Carlton Weir, sent out by Lloyd-James. Maisie tells Gray about how Holbrook stole the letter from Lloyd-James and after some detective work he finds him hiding at his mothers. Holbrook threatens Gray with acid but the already disfigured Gray isn’t very afraid and overcomes Holbrook. He is now owner of the letter. At that time, Isobel and Mark arrive at “Westward Ho!” and try to act like normal campers. By coincidence almost all of the different search parties arrive at the site at the same time. Mark and Isobel, returning with their car, have an accident and Mark dies. While the friendly Stern is comforting the hysterical Isobel the other argues about what to do with the letter. Lord Canteloupe eventually destroys it. This doesn’t make things easier for Morrison since Sir Edward and the Tories continue to back Lloyd-James, a man they consider easier to handle than the always “moral” Morrison. Towards the end of the book Tom and Patricia can, at last, have their honeymoon while Stern marries Isobel. In the last scene Angela Tuck (again) and Max de Freville discuss everything that has happened.
17370186	/m/043nr26	Sasquatch	Roland Smith		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When Dylan accompanies his father to a meeting of the Bigfoot International society, he's sure that it's just another of Dad's odd hobbies. Soon after, his father joins the society's sinister leader in an expedition to hunt down a Sasquatch specimen, and Dylan decides to go along. He hooks up with an old hermit who seems to be familiar with the area and the legend. When it appears that someone is following the old man, Dylan begins to suspect that his companion may be hiding a mysterious past. In addition, evidence that the Sasquatch may be more than a legend begins to accumulate and Dylan realizes he must prevent the society from killing them. With an exciting climax set amid a Mount Saint-Helens eruption, this fast-moving, suspenseful story provides lots of action and appeal.
17371752	/m/043sm01	The Temple of the Ten	H. Bedford-Jones	1973	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel adventures in the realms of Prester John.
17373247	/m/043ngpd	The Judas Boy				 The story takes place in 1962. Tom Llewyllyn have been working at the BBC for some years. He engages Fielding Gray to do a documentary about Cyprus. Gray, who had his face disfigured on that very island is reluctant but gives in since he hopes to find some facts that will give him some kind of revenge. Llewyllyn is not terribly happy in his marriage with the sloppy and not 100% mentally stable Patricia. Her sister Isobel, on the other side, is very happily married to Gregory Stern. The publisher Stern has lately become very interested in his Jewish heritage and neglects his publishing a bit. When Gray goes by train to Greece he meets Leonard Percival, who warns him to continue the trip on that particular train. A nervous Gray eventually jumps of the train in Yugoslavia right before it crashes off a bridge, killing all aboard. Gray, who is unharmed, is transported to Athens where he meets friend and colleague captain Detterling. Meanwhile, Somerset Lloyd-James and Lord Canteloupe, scared that nasty things about the British engagement on the island will be revealed, are trying to prevent Llewyllyn and Gray from making their documentary. Gray and Detterling also meet the couple Max de Freville and Angela Tuck. De Freville is trying to make a comeback as a gambler and tells some interesting things about Cyprus. Gray has sex with Angela and they discus memories from the summer of 1945. Leonard Percival arrives also and confirms that forces on Cyprus wanted to kill Gray. An important person in this group is Earl Restarick, an American spook working for the CIA. De Freville can, however, prove that this man has been involved in killings on Cyprus since he left a handkerchief near the body of a murdered boy. Gray, after arriving at Cyprus, manages to find the body and the handkerchief. To get more proof against Restarick, Gray wants an interview with the famous guerrilla leader colonel Georgios Grivas. Restarick, who has been following the affair, has his own interview with Angela Tuck and she reveals some of Grays’s weaknesses. Somerset Lloyd-James is trying to drag Tom Llewyllyn down by using Maisie but she refuses, and even tells Llewyllyn about the dodgy business. Restarick sends out the beautiful Greek boy Nicos to catch Gray, and he manages quite well. The somewhat confused Gray takes him for his dead lover Christopher. Nicos manages to keep Gray away from Athens and Grivas and Gray forgets about all his duties. Meanwhile, Tom Llewellyn is fired from the BBC since it turns out that he hasn’t had a National Insurance Card for years and didn’t even know about it. Tom has even lied about the card since he wasn’t that interested in the matter. When Restarick hears about this he recalls Nicos, who unceremoniously dumps the devastated Gray. At that moment Isobel Stern is having a miscarriage in London. Gray stays in Argos and drinks very heavily for a week but Max de Freville, a somewhat decent fellow, sends his friend Harriet Ongley to pick him up and get him in shape. Tom is invited to take up a Namier Fellowship at Lancaster College and accepts - right at the moment when his wife Patricia finds she’s pregnant for the second time. sv:The Judas Boy
17374248	/m/043j_0_	Éramos Seis	Maria José Dupré	1943		 Éramos Seis chronicles the struggles of a middle-class family in São Paulo through the eyes of its matriarch Dona Lola.
17376344	/m/043mb1p	Chandler College				 Sophomore Tom Brautigan couldn't wait to get back to Chandler College. Away from his parents' divorce. Away from his suicidal brother. Back to the relative insanity of dorm life. Senior Elsie Barnum is just a few months away from graduation. After a string of bad decisions, including sleeping with a professor, Elsie grows increasingly desperate in her outlook on life. Both Tom and Elsie are searching for something at Chandler College...is it each other?
17378957	/m/043k9nl	Almuric	Robert E. Howard		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is a planetary romance in which Esau Cairn, a former boxer seeking a life strenuous enough for his great strength and violent nature, is transported from Earth to the planet Almuric to escape the clutches of a corrupt city government. Cairn finds ape like human tribes in fortified towns and fights other apelike humans, winged demons, and various monsters. By the end of the novel, he and his friends from the towns Khor and Koth capture Ugg - citadel of the winged Yaga demons.
17379669	/m/043k7qq	Oreo	Fran Ross	1974	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Born to a Jewish father and black mother who divorce before she is two, Oreo grows up in Philadelphia with her maternal grandparents while her mother tours with a theatrical troupe. Soon after puberty, Oreo heads for New York with a pack on her back to search for her father; but in the big city she discovers that there are dozens of Sam Schwartzes in the phone book, and Oreo's mission turns into a wickedly humorous picaresque quest. The ambitious and playful narrative challenges accepted notions of race, ethnicity, culture, and even the novelistic form itself; its quest theme is inspired by that of the Greek tale of Theseus. Ross uses the structure of the Theseus myth to both trap Oreo and allow her to reinvent it. Oreo's white father, who abandoned her, forces her to live out this inherently white, male narrative. However, the trope of lost patriarchy is essential in black cultures so Oreo can reappropriate the myth and make it entirely non-foreign. Furthermore, Oreo reinvents the archaic myth by living a black narrative through it, suggesting that blacks can reappropriate themes from the white culture they are forced to live in. The search for paternity within the Theseus myth is essentially futile since Oreo gains nothing from finding her father, which undermines the importance placed on the search for paternity.
17381904	/m/0479bg2	House of Many Ways	Diana Wynne Jones		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Charmain Baker has led a respectable, sheltered life. She has spent her days with her nose in a book, never learning how to do even the smallest household chores. When she suddenly ends up looking after the tiny cottage of her ill Great Uncle William she seems happy for the adventure, but the easy task of house-sitting is complicated by the fact that Great-Uncle William is also the Royal Wizard Norland and his magical house bends space and time. Though she is supposed to clean up the mess Great-Uncle William has left the house in, Charmain knows next to nothing about magic, and yet she seems to work it in the most unexpected way. The house's single door can lead to almost any place - from other rooms like the kitchen, to faraway places like the Royal Palace, and even other time periods. In her first days in the magical house she ends up looking after a magical stray dog named Waif, had an encounter with a horrible lubbock, has to share a roof with a confused young apprentice wizard named Peter, tries to work some spells from her Great Uncle William's library, and has to deal with a clan of small blue creatures called Kobolds. When Charmain is caught up in an intense royal search to remedy the kingdom's financial troubles, she encounters Sophie Pendragon, her son Morgan, a beautiful child named Twinkle (who is really Howl in disguise), and their fire demon Calcifer. One of the messes Twinkle gets Charmain into results in Twinkle climbing onto the roof of the Royal Mansion. She is soon involved in curing the kingdom of its ills and rediscovering the long-lost Elfgift.
17382754	/m/04650d6	The York Realist	Peter Gill			 It is set in the early 1960s and revolves around George (a Yorkshire farm labourer involved in a production of the York Mystery Plays who withdraws from the production), John (the production's shy assistant director who tries to convince him to come back), the love affair between them, and the clash between regional and London culture.
17384208	/m/04d_vxw	In Good King Charles's Golden Days	George Bernard Shaw			 A discussion play, the issues of nature, power and leadership are debated between King Charles II ('Mr Rowley'), Isaac Newton, George Fox and the artist Godfrey Kneller, with interventions by three of the king's mistresses (Barbara Villiers, 1st Duchess of Cleveland; Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth; and Nell Gwynn) and his queen, Catherine of Braganza.
17384925	/m/04g1mbn	The Bowl of Baal	Robert Ames Bennet	1975	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel adventures in the lost world of Baal in Arabia, which is inhabited by dinosaurs.
17385768	/m/04g00dn	The Writing on the Hearth	Cynthia Harnett	1971	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Stephen, whose father was bodyguard to his Lord of Suffolk, is under taken into the Lord's household when his stepfather remarries and his sister enters a convent. Stephen is keen to learn and to enter the University at Oxford under the patronage of his Lordship's chaplain, but he becomes embroiled in some mild political intrigue when he believes he has let a copy of an indiscreet letter fall into the hands of his Lordship's enemies.
17392692	/m/04f_g5v	Pack Animals				 Gwen witnesses a Weevil attack at a shopping centre, Ianto is injured by alien tech at the zoo and aliens are invading on Halloween. Torchwood may be able to control small alien threats, but someone is allowing a large pack of predators to hunt on Earth... <!-
17392817	/m/0462jhg	SkyPoint				 SkyPoint is a brand new high-rise block of flats, popular with young Asian couples. However, Torchwood soon discover that residents are going missing and something is coming out of the wall... This is the last novel in which Owen and Tosh are featured, as after this it's the series two finale... <!-
17392941	/m/04642v7	Almost Perfect				 A woman has a new weapon to aid her search for Mr. Right and it has made her almost perfect. Meanwhile, Ianto wakes up with no memory of the previous night, in the body of a woman. <!-
17394784	/m/047dgwv	Lords of the Bow	Conn Iggulden	2008-01-02	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Under the name Genghis, the protagonist unites the Mongol tribes, finally defeating the last alliance against his rule. After the killing of the Khan of the alliance, the defeated shaman decides to tie his fate to that of the new Mongol nation. Genghis orders all of the tribes to assemble the following summer in the pastures around the Black Mountain. The following summer sees the tribes gathered, waiting for Genghis to lead them where he will. They are anxious to be off, but he is determined to wait for the Khan of the Uighur to show up with the five thousand soldiers he wishes to have. While stuck in one place, the new Nation becomes impatient and tempers flare. In one incident, Genghis' brother Hasar is forced to defend his honour against the sons of a lesser Khan. He is helped by the young Tsubodai, who is rewarded later in the book. When his brother, Temuge, tries to intervene, he is forced to his knees. Genghis shows up on the scene, and tries to sort out the situation. Almost everyone has their honour satisfied, except for Temuge, who complains that he was made to kneel. Genghis uses his sword to cut the Khan's thighs, so he cannot stand in return. Close to the end of the summer, the Uighurs arrive. Their Khan submits privately to Genghis, which is taken as even more binding than the public oaths the entire Mongol nation takes under a ceremony presided over by the shaman. As the price for this support, Genghis promises the Khan of the Uighars that he will march against the Xia, and the Uighars will receive the assorted libraries of the conquered people. As well as military support, Genghis negotiates that his shaman and his brother Temuge be taught to read and write. The entire Mongol nation then begins to march southwards, to take the kingdom of the Xia. Facing them is the arduous crossing of the Gobi desert. Having crossed the desert the Mongol hordes attempt to take the kingdom of Xi Xia, the Mongols inexperience in siege craft shows when they are held at bay by the walls of Xi Xia, the division between the kingdom of Xi Xia and the Chin empire is also highlighted at this time. Eventually the Xia kingdom capitulates and Genghis wins a princess of the city as his bride as well as many other spoils of war. From this point on there is tension between Borte (Genghis' first wife) and Genghis' second wife. Also highlighted in this book is Genghis' estrangement from his eldest son Jochi (who's legitimacy Genghis doubts) and the strife within Genghis' family that this estrangement causes. Khasar and Temuge are also featured greatly in this book as they take a trip with a captured Xi Xia officer down the Yellow River to a Chin city to find masons to help them break city walls. On their adventures they come across the leader of the Blue Tong (a criminal fraternity) who helps Ghengis' brothers in exchange for a promise that he will be leader of his city after it is conquered by the Mongols. Another character of note is introduced in this book Kokchu a shaman who smells of blood and is very self-serving, he gains Genghis' trust and starts to teach Temuge the ways of a Shaman, during the course of Temuge's lessons he becomes addicted to Opium which Kokchu provides for him.
17400877	/m/047rr57	Worldbinder	Dave Wolverton	2007-09	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Fallion returns to Castle Coorm in Mystarria, following his defeat of Shadoath. There he finds The One True Tree reborn, but it is surrounded by a twisted Seal of the Inferno. Fallion tries to heal the rune, only to discover that it was a trap left by the Queen of the Loci, in the form of Shadoath. The only thing he can do to save himself is to combine his world with the other linked to the Seal of the Inferno. The two worlds crash together with some unexpected results. Some people who happen to be standing in the wrong place recover from the melding of the two worlds to discover that they have a vine growing through their hand. Some combine with the version of themselves from the other world to produce a hybrid, but those whose other self has died or was never born are weakened. In this new world men, who are several feet taller than the men from Fallion's world, are locked in a mortal struggle with a race called wyrmlings. The wyrmlings are light-sensitive, and are approximate to the Inkharrans from Fallion's world and they carry parasitic wyrms inside them (like the loci of Fallion's world). They are led by Death Lords and Knights Eternal, undead creatures that perform the will of the Queen of the Loci. The battle between wyrmlings and men is at an uneasy truce because each holds a captive of the other race&mdash;the wyrmlings hold the prince Areth (the equivalent of Fallion's father, Gaborn, the Earth King) and the men hold the princess of the wyrmlings, Kan-hazur. Even though the Knights Eternal are rumored to be impossible to slay except in daylight, Fallion and Jaz manage to kill one before they are taken captive by one named Vulgnash. This earns them the respect of the warrior men of that world. Those men, led by High King Urstone (who is the equivalent of Fallion's grandfather on this world), mount a rescue of Fallion and his companions. The legendary Daylan Hammer is present on this new world and he convinces the King to try to exchange hostages with the wyrmlings because it is immoral to keep the princess hostage. The wyrmlings pretend to make the exchange and then ambush the men. This is followed by an all-out attack on the main fortress of the men, Caer Luciare. During this battle the High King is slain, as well as Jaz, and Fallion is again taken by the Knight Eternal, Vulgnash. The wyrmlings make a deal with Prince Areth to spare his people if he'll accept a wyrm. The Queen of the Loci accepts him as her host and then uses his power as Earth King to Choose all of the wyrmling horde for the Earth.
17402867	/m/04662z_	Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism	Sean Hannity	2002		 According to the publisher, in the book "Hannity offers a survey of the world &mdash; political, social, and cultural &mdash; as he sees it." The book has been described as "an unapologetic diatribe against liberalism, questioning its logic and posing questions about the outcome of its agenda for Americans". The book's publisher, ReganBooks, a division of HarperCollins, was owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News.
17404719	/m/0462p8w	Peony in Love	Lisa See	2007	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Peony's father, a wealthy, cultured man with important political contacts, is planning a performance of The Peony Pavilion on his estate. This is seen by many as controversial because the opera may influence young women into imitating Liniang, starving themselves to death in hopes of finding love. Unfortunately, this is just what happens to Peony. She is deeply moved by the text and performance of The Peony Pavilion, having extensively written about her feelings and reactions to love in her copy of the text. On the evening of the opera performance, Peony accidentally meets a handsome young man. After three nighttime meetings, Peony falls in love, but she also falls into deep despair, feeling doomed because of being trapped in an arranged marriage. Following the example of Du Liniang, she starves herself to death, only to learn right before her death that the man her father has picked for her is Wu Ren, the man she loves. Most of Peony in Love takes place after Peony's death. Because her funeral rituals are not concluded properly, she becomes a "hungry ghost", who wanders far beyond the inner world of women that constrained her in her youth. In the process, she encounters a number of women writers who lament the difficulty of getting their voices heard in a male-dominated world. From her dead grandmother, she learns many painful details about her family's past as the Qing Dynasty violently replaced the Ming Dynasty, details later amplified by Peony's mother. Peony comes to learn about the courage and extreme suffering both older women experienced during the fighting and that the sternness her mother treated her with as a girl was only her attempt to protect her daughter from the evils of the outside world. Peony shows her enduring love for Ren by her influence on his second and third wives, who add their personal responses to The Peony Pavilion, thus becoming sister wives, although Peony remains first wife. Given the appropriate funeral rites at last, Peony is no longer a hungry ghost but a spirit who looks forward with great joy to meeting her husband again in the afterworld.
17405842	/m/047c31b	Daz 4 Zoe	Robert Swindells	1990	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 'Subbies' live in the suburbs of Silverdale, a large fictional city. 'Chippies' live in the run-down city. The subbie children like to go out 'chippying' (visiting nightclubs in Rawhampton). This prompts adverts on TV about the dangers of chippying. Zoe is friends with Tabitha, the daughter of a very wealthy property developer. She encourages Zoe to go chippying with her, Ned and Larry. Ned drives them to the Blue Moon nightclub, where Daz is as well. In order to leave the suburb, they tell the guard on duty that they are visiting Zoe's cousin in the next suburb and are made to show their ID cards to the bouncers who guard Silverdale.. Zoe and Daz fall in love when they first set eyes on each other, although, at first, Zoe thinks it may be the 'lobotomizer' (coke, rum and 'a couple of other ingredients') that she has been drinking. Larry spots an attractive chippy girl and subtly tries to call her over to him. She smiles out of embarrassment, but he thinks she fancies him. Eventually he shouts her loudly, his outburst coinciding with a pause in the music. Her boyfriend picks up a chair and goes over to Larry. A policeman steps between them. The chippy throws the chair, which Larry deflects with his arm. Daz comes over to rescue Zoe, taking Larry by the arm and telling the group to run and save themseves.
17409251	/m/04f_6rb	Fortune by Land and Sea	Thomas Heywood			 The play relates the story of two interlocked rural families &mdash; two patriarchs, known simply as Old Forrest and Old Harding, each of whom has three children. Forrest has two sons and a daughter, and Harding has three sons. Through the course of the play, it is revealed that the families have endured contrasting reversals of fortune: when the two patriarchs were young men, the Forrest family was prosperous and land-rich, while the Hardings were their tenant farmers. Over the course of the two men's lives, the Forrests were reduced to comparative poverty while the Hardings flourished. Their contrasting fortunes may be the result of the two men's characters: Old Forrest is a mild-mannered and moral gentleman, while Old Harding is grasping and ruthless. In the opening scene, Old Forrest tries dissuade his headstrong elder son Frank from carousing with his fair-weather friends, a "quarrelsome gentleman" named Rainsford and his hangers-on Foster and Goodwin. Frank Forrest ignores his father's sententious advice; but during the evening Rainsford insults Old Forrest to his son's face, calling him a "fool" and "dotard." The two draw their swords and fight, and Frank Forrest is killed. His family recover his body, but cannot prove the crime against Rainsford, who has powerful connections with the nobility. Meanwhile, Old Harding has just married a new young wife. Harding's younger sons William and John, unhappy at this development, are hostile to their new stepmother, until Old Harding makes his displeasure plain; then the two young men grow more respectful. When Old Harding learns that his eldest son Philip has married Susan Forrest, a young woman of virtue but no dowry, he rejects the match and refuses the young couple all support. To survive, Philip and Susan must become servants in Old Harding's household. The new Mrs. Harding treats the couple with compassion, though brothers William and John are harsher toward their fallen older brother and his wife. Another Harding family servant is the play's Clown, who provides the comic relief. Old Forrest's second son, known simply as Young Forrest, seeks out Rainsford and challenges him to a duel. The two fight, and Rainsford is killed. Young Forrest is pursued by the authorities and by Rainsford's friends Goodwin and Foster; fleeing, he leaps the Hardings' garden wall and confronts Mrs. Harding. Hearing his story, she feels compassion for him; she conceals him for a week, then sends him to her brother, a London merchant. He is similarly taken by Young Forrest's good nature, and helps the young man to travel abroard on one of his ships. The Merchant leaves for a voyage of his own shortly after. At sea, the Merchant's ship is waylaid and overcome by two notorious English pirates, Purser and Clinton. Young Forrest has the opposite success: he is elected to lead the crew of his vessel when their captain dies, and conducts a successful campaign against Spanish shipping, taking several prizes. Eventually Young Forrest and his crew engage Purser and Clinton in a sea fight, and emerge triumphant; Young Forrest releases the Merchant from captivity and restores his goods and profits. At home, Philip and Susan must endure the oppression of service in the Harding house. The Clown almost tricks Foster and Goodwin into loaning Philip Harding the money he needs to set up his own farm; but Philip's naive honesty makes the trick fall through. Old Harding is prepared to sign the papers that will disinherit son Philip permanently and settle his estate upon younger brothers John and William; but a sailor arrives with the news of the Merchant's original capture by the pirates. Old Harding is heavily invested in the Merchant's venture, and the bad news strikes him so hard that he collapses. The Clown brings word of the old man's sudden death with comic distress: ::O, my master, my master! what shall I do for my poor master? the kind churl is departed! never did poor hard-hearted wretch pass out of the world so like a lamb! alas! for my poor, usuring, extortioning master! many an old widow hast thou turned into the street, and many an orphan made beg for bread! Oh, my sweet, cruel, kind, pitiless, loving, hard-hearted master! he's dead; he's dead; he's gone; he's fled; and now full low must hang his head! Oh, my sweet vile, kind, flinty, mild, uncharitable master! Old Harding has died before the inheritance documents are signed. From the lowly position of a servant, Philip Harding now inherits his father's estate, leaving his younger brothers dependent upon his goodwill. Better news, of Young Forrest's triumph and the Merchant's rescue, quickly arrives; far from taking a large loss, the Harding estate is now wealthier than ever. Philip and Susan are grateful to Mrs. Harding for the favor she showed them in their servitude. By law, Mrs. Harding receives a third of Old Harding's estate, and her investment in her brother's voyage has made her even richer. Young Forrest earns a pardon for Rainsford's death through his defeat of the pirates. Purser and Clinton are shown on their way to execution; they reminisce romantically about the drama and success of their careers in piracy, before they are led off to the gallows. Young Forrest and the Merchant return home to a welcome from their Forrest and Harding relations; the impetuous Young Forrest asks Mrs. Harding to marry him almost as soon as he meets her. The play ends with a general reconciliation; the two younger Harding brothers, and Goodwin and Foster too, have all been reduced to beggary by loose living and ill luck &mdash; but the generous and forgiving Philip Harding offers to relieve their wants.
17413325	/m/047p2fn	School Days	Robert B. Parker	2005	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Months after a school shooting at an elitist prep school in small-town Massachusetts leaves fifteen students and faculty dead, Spenser is hired by the grandmother of one of the alleged killers, a rich old lady who firmly believes in her grandson's innocence: she is convinced that he is not the one of the two shooters who never lifted his ski mask in front of their victims and who somehow managed to disappear in the crowd without being identified. Both suspects are now in custody but unwilling to talk to anyone. Wherever Spenser turns, people are reluctant to co-operate with him, if not outright hostile. The local police chief considers the case closed as both perpetrators are under arrest, awaiting trial and have already confessed to the crime. The head of the school is concerned with the school's reputation, bans Spenser from the school premises, and prohibits students to talk to him should he accost them anywhere in town. Even the boys' parents and their respective lawyers do not wish to throw any more light on the matter. For Spenser, however, three decisive questions have not been answered yet: where the two youngsters got the weapons from and how they were able to pay for them; where and from whom they learned to shoot; and why they planned and carried out the massacre in the first place. The pupils Spenser meets at one of their hangouts, however, are thrilled to disobey their head teacher and collaborate with a private eye. This is how Spenser learns where the less fortunate youngsters in town who attend the local public school usually meet, that a young man of mixed ethnicity supplies them with drugs, and that he might also have sold weapons to the shooters. Spenser is soon able to answer his first two questions, but for the time being he sees no way to find a good reason why two 17 year-olds with no criminal record should go ahead and cause a bloodbath. Gradually, however, he realizes that the motive is more to do with parents and teachers than anyone is prepared to admit. In School Days, Spenser's close friend Hawk does not appear but is mentioned. Susan Silverman is away at a conference and only returns at the end of the novel to celebrate the successful conclusion of the case. Pearl, however, having been left behind by her mistress, is constantly present.
17413520	/m/047t_b7	Adeline's Dream	Linda Aksomitis	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 The narrative follows the story of twelve-year-old Adeline Mueller as she moves with her mom and five-year-old brother to Canada from their German home to move in with her father to start a new life. Adeline has not seen her father since she was eight and she is expecting a great and wonderful life in Canada from the description in the letters she has received from her father. But Adeline's relationship with her father has been strained ever since he left her and the rest of the family to move to Saskatchewan. Her father worked in a bank in Germany and then, after being fired, decided to find a better life for the rest of the family in Saskatchewan. Finally Adeline's father had reported that he has started a splendid new life for the family. The book begins with Adeline, her mother, and her brother Konrad traveling by steamship and then by train from Germany to Saskatchewan. The family then arrives at Qu'Appelle. When Adeline arrives, the truth is revealed. Adeline's father now works on a farm bagging flour and doing the accounts which does not make enough money to provide a home. So the family lives in a soddle made of grass and earth. All her life Adeline had dreamed that one day she would be a singer but she feels that because her father has brought her into these horrible conditions, that her dream will be ruined making their relationship even more strained. Adeline soon learns that the richer townspeople do not take kindly to the immigrants that move to the area. But through all the prejudice, Adeline makes two friends, Kat and Henery, who are also immigrants. Kat helped Adeline fight off prejudiced bullies at their school. One day the farm where her father was employed is burned down and her father is forced to get a new job. Kat's family moves and Adeline is left to fight the bullies, especially a girl named Sarah: a girl who sings just like Adeline and takes her solo in the Christmas play. By the time of the play, Adeline has begun to get along with her father and Sarah allows Adeline to have the solo at the play and Adeline's dreams start to come true.
17416040	/m/047d0sv	The Morning Gift	Eva Ibbotson	1993		 The Morning Gift tells the story of Ruth Berger, whose family is part of the Jewish Intelligentsia in Vienna. When the Nazis take over, the Bergers organize a student visa for Ruth to be sent ahead to England, not realizing that she will not be allowed to leave Austria because of her political leanings as a Social Democrat. When her father is suddenly arrested by the Gestapo, he is told to leave Austria within a week and while his family is able to escape to London, Ruth on a separate transport is stopped on the boarder by the SS and sent back to Vienna. Quinton Somerville, an English professor and scientist who worked with Professor Berger in the past, arrives in Vienna for an award ceremony and learns that Professor Berger has been dismissed. Trying to contact the family, he visits Bergers' home and discovers Ruth, who is desperate to find a way to escape to England. Several attempts to get a valid visa for Ruth fail and Quin realizes that the only way to get her out of the country quickly is through a marriage of convenience. The marriage has to stay a secret until Ruth receives British citizenship, but once safe in London, the annulment of the marriage takes much longer than expected. Ruth and her family try to re-establish their life in the world of refugees, using their humour to keep the terror and desolation at bay. When the university that Ruth is set to attend is forced to transfer her, the Quakers enrol her into Quinton's University. She ends up being lectured by her own husband by coincidence, alongside the snobbish and clever Verena Plackett, who has ambitiously set her sights on Quinton. Unaware of Ruth's marriage of convenience, her real fiance Heini, a talented pianist from Budapest, escapes to England, and the unfolding events put Ruth and Quinton's secret marriage of convenience on the verge of being discovered and betrayed. Desperately trying to cling to their moral values, Ruth and Quin deny their growing attraction for each other - then WWII breaks out and personal intentions become insignificant.
17418685	/m/0463qm1	If you're reading this, it's too late	Pseudonymous Bosch	2008		 For 500 yearses, the secret society of the Midnight Sun has been waiting for the homunculus, the man-made man, to rise, and now the evil Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais are going to throw Cass and Max-Ernest to the sharks unless they tell them where he resides. After going on an excursion with their science teacher, the two are tricked by Dr. L after receiving a note from Pietro saying he will meet them on a ship, from which they barely escape. After finding out their teacher is really Owen, the accent changing member of the Terces Society, they are introduced to the great magician himself, Pietro, who gives them a mission. find the homunculus before the Midnight Sun does. Max-Ernest also finds out that 'Terces' is "secret" backwards. Cass is grounded when she returns home, because she was missing for too long. While on the Midnight Sun ship, Cass and Max-Ernest discover a strange ball [also called the sound prism], which enables her to hear all types of sounds by putting it to her ear and makes wonderful music when thrown in the air carefully. Cass also discovers a birth certificate. The name is unrecognizable, thus making Cass wonder if she was the wrong girl the Terces Society wanted. She ignores it, even though it pains her, and continues her mission. Later Cass finds out she is really adopted and was delivered in a box on her grandfathers' doorstep. This time teaming up with a new classmate named Yo-Yoji, the three need to escape the grasp of their parents, and find the alchemist's grave. Cass convinces her grandparents to take her, Max-Ernest, and Yo-Yoji camping to find the homunculus, When they find the homunculus, they take it back to Terces, but it runs away when they find out they don't have good food. Meanwhile, Amber gets to meet the Skelton Sisters, who are in cahoots with Midnight Sun, and they ask her to do something for her. Later that night, Amber is hidden in Cass' bushes, and Cass hears noises. She goes outside and plays the Sound Prism, thinking it's Mr. Cabbage Face. Amber records the song from the sound prism, which attracts the homunculus, and gives it to the Skelton Sisters. They play it at a concert, and end up trapping the homunculus and Cass. They end up back near Whisper Lake, where they went camping. The Midnight Sun took them there because Lord Pharaoh's, the nasty man who created Mr. Cabbage Face, the homunculus, grave is there, and with it, all of his alchemist things, which is what Ms. M and Dr. L want in order to help their mission, in receiving immortality. The Midnight Sun and Terces Society members engage in combat, while Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji are up on a mountain, with the Sound Prism and a whip. They're plan is to create a sonic boom with it, and make the mountain avalanche onto the Midnight Sun/seal the coffin in the ground. When only a huge ball falls off the mountain from the s. boom, Cass and Mr. Cabbage Face, now freed, are trying their own efforts to put the coffin back in the grave, but Mr. Cabbage Face screams to Cass to get out of the way, because the ball was heading towards her. He pushes her out of the way, and gets pummeled. The homunculus dies, due to, and is sealed with his maker in that grave forever. Midnight Sun members disperse, not before Dr. L can have a nice chat (surprisingly) with his brother/old friend. At the end, Max-Ernest, Cass and Yo-Yoji take the Oath of Terces, created by the Jester, the homunculus' only friend 500 years ago, and Cass' father's father's father's father's father...
17419637	/m/04g1txq	Dating Hamlet		2002-11	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is a retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia's point of view.
17424156	/m/04crgw8	The Martian General's Daughter	Theodore Judson	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As with his previous work Fitzpatrick's War, The Martian General's Daughter borrows heavily from classical history; in this case, the setting is reminiscent of the Roman Empire during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and his son, Commodus. Unlike Fitzpatrick's War, Judson provides little background to explain how the world evolved into the shape set forth in the novel. The story takes place in the late twenty-third century, in which much of the Northern Hemisphere, as well as extraplanetary colonies on Mars and Jupiter, are dominated by the Pan-Polarian Empire, which is implicitly descended from the United States of America (though this is never expressly stated, references are made to the "old capital" near Maryland.) Pan-Polarian society is based on that of Imperial Rome, including an imperial cult and a variety of polytheistic and monolatric religions that have largely replaced the major religions of our time, including the cults of "El Bis" and the goddess Marilyn. The Empire's primary rivals are Persia and China, but which also fights against a number of enemies in Africa and South America. A nano-engineered plague has been released by one of the warring parties which causes metal to corrode and become useless; as a result, advanced technology is beginning to fail and the world is quickly degenerating to pre-industrial technology. The setting alternates between chronicling the career of General Black (and his daughter's career as his aide-de-camp) during the 2270s and 2280s and his attempt to seize the Imperial throne in the 2290s during a multi-party struggle resembling the Year of the Four Emperors and the Crisis of the Third Century. General Black makes his career fighting under philosopher-emperor Mathias the Glistening, who perishes when his cybernetic implants become infected with the nano-plague. Mathias is succeeded by his sociopathic son, Luke Anthony, whose behavior becomes increasingly erratic over time. Justa relates the excesses of Luke's regime, including his execution of perceived enemies, financial corruption, sexual perversion, etc. General Black is made governor of Anatolia but is periodically recalled to provide various services to Luke. As a result of personally witnessing the Emperor's madness, General Black becomes more and more disillusioned and his health begins to suffer. Ultimately Luke is murdered and a struggle ensues between various short-reigned barracks emperors. By this time General Black and Justa are stationed on Mars, but when one of Black's political rivals seizes power, kills Black's family on Earth and infects Mars with the metal-eating nanoplague, Black's troops (many of them Boers, who are described as largely nomadic in the twenty-third century) declare him emperor and he leads an invasion force back to Earth. Although victorious in battle, the nanoplague renders the conflict moot as technology will no longer support an empire as large as the Pan-Polarian state, which crumbles into a myriad of ethnic and regional successor states. Ultimately, Justa and her father settle in Amsterdam, which has regained the prominence it enjoyed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is the center of a prosperous successor state, where Justa marries, has children, and assiduously avoids politics.
17425467	/m/03c0ccl	Cowboys for Christ	Robin Hardy	2006	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Beth is a successful pop music singer and a devout Protestant Christian from Texas, USA. She and her boyfriend Steve both belong to a group known as the "Cowboys for Christ", who travel to "heathen areas" of the world to preach Christianity. They travel to Glasgow, Scotland, hoping to save some souls once there. However, they are shocked when they receive a very negative reception, Beth even being set upon by a large dog. After performing a concert at a local cathedral, the duo are approached by Lord Lachlan and his wife Delia, aristocrats from the small village of Tressock in the Scottish lowlands. They invite Beth and Steve to come back with them to Tressock in order to preach. Meanwhile, detective Orlando is sent to Tressock, posing as the local police officer, in order to secretly investigate reports of a pagan cult. Beth and Steve decide that they shall begin their preaching at the May Day celebrations in the village. Meanwhile Orlando discovers that the people of the village worship the ancient Celt goddess Sulis. In an attempt to impress the locals, Steve and Beth agree to becoming the local Queen of the May and the Laddie for the festival. In this role, they must split up for the day, and it is during this that the Laddie is devoured by the locals on an island in the middle of the river Sulis. Beth discovers this, and tries to escape, but is captured and embalmed.
17429681	/m/047rn6c	All Quiet on the Orient Express	Magnus Mills	1999-09-20	{"/m/0q9mp": "Tragicomedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The narrator is spending a few weeks camping in the Lake District before setting out on a motorcycle trip to India. He agrees to help the campsite owner, Tom Parker by performing a simple chore, painting a gate but one thing inexorably leads to another and he finds himself drawn in to a succession of disparate tasks, each more complex and time-consuming and from which there appears to be no escape...
17432177	/m/0464htt	Equality	Edward Bellamy	1897	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The story takes up immediately after the events of Looking Backward with the main characters from the first novel, Julian West, Doctor Leete, and his daughter Edith. West tells his nightmare of return to the 19th century to Edith, who is sympathetic. West's citizenship in the new America is recognized, and he goes to the bank to obtain his own account, or "credit card", from which he can draw on the annual stipend all citizens receive. He learns that Edith and her mother do not normally wear the long skirts he has seen them in (they have been wearing them so his 19th century sensibilities will not be shocked), and when Edith learns that he would not be shocked to see them dressed otherwise, immediately runs into the house and comes out dressed as a modern woman in a pants suit. Clothing varies widely, since it is made of strengthened paper, and is recycled when dirty and replaced at very small expense (shoes and dishes are made of variations on the same substance). Julian learns that women are free to compete in many of the same trades as men; the manager of the paper factory he goes to view is a woman. Edith herself is in the second year of the three year general labor period required of everyone before choosing a trade, but is on leave from that employment. The two tour a tenement house, in which no one now lives, kept as a reminder of things how used to be and a reminder not to go back to them. Julian opens his safe (a device unknown in 2000 outside museums). Dr. Leete sees his mortgages and securities not as long-obsolete claims to ownership interest in things, but rather in people and their labor. The papers are worthless except as antiquities, as most of such papers were burned at the conclusion of the economic transition, in a great blaze on the former site of the New York Stock Exchange. The gold coins in the safe are admired for their prettiness, but are also worthless. Julian learns more about the world of the year 2000. Handwriting has been virtually replaced by phonograph records, and jewelry is no longer used, since jewels are now worthless. Julian is amazed by a television-like device, called the electroscope. World communication is simplified, since everyone now speaks a universal language in addition to his native tongue. Not only are there motor cars, but also private air cars. Everyone is now vegetarian, and the thought of eating meat is looked upon with revulsion. The book concludes with an almost uninterrupted series of lectures from Dr. Leete and other characters, mostly concerning how the idyllic state West has arrived in was achieved.
17434043	/m/04cxz3j	Return to Mars	Ben Bova	1999-06-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Navajo geologist Jamie Waterman returned to Earth as a hero, travelling the globe, giving speeches on Mars, and supporting a return voyage. Now six years later, Waterman gets to return to his beloved red planet, and to the mysterious dwelling in the Valles Marineris region. However, the second voyage has sponsorship not from governments, but from corporations, most notably from millionaire Daryl Trumball, whose son is sent on the mission to make his father proud... and money. Now, Jamie finds himself locked in a war between Trumball's wishes of exploiting the planet, his job as mission director, and his own desires to explore the cliff dwelling that could hold the key to discovering the planet's past inhabitants.
17434140	/m/04g0w50	The Three Palladins	Harold Lamb	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is an adventure story about the rise of Genghis Khan and the fabled kingdom of Prester John.
17435050	/m/04d_3r0	Firebird	Mercedes Lackey	1996	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story revolves around the life of a clever young man named Ilya, who is one of the eight sons of a powerful Tsar (Russian prince) named Ivan. Being in a household where the philosophy is 'survival of the fittest', Ilya has to contend with his jealous and overcompetitive brothers, who fear him for his intellect and abuse him constantly. His only friends are a priest and a shaman, who are both as unwanted as he is, and an elderly woman who runs the dairy. His already dismal life takes a turn for the worse when the legendary Firebird, an enormous hawk of fire similar to the phoenix, visits his father's prized cherry tree orchard and eats all of the ripe cherries. Days pass on and more cherries disappear, causing Ivan great anger as the culprit remains unknown and free. In a fit of rage, he promises a great reward to whoever catches the thief and brings them to him. However, this proves to be useless as well for none are able to catch the culprit without falling asleep. Curious, Ilya spends the night at the orchard and, through the use of charms and some clothespins, manages to stay awake enough to see the Firebird. Shocked at what he found, Ilya remains quiet about his discovery and is soon rewarded for his silence with the gift to speak with animals. He is, however, cursed with terrible luck afterwards, which leads to him losing his horse and wandering the forest in early winter. He soon stumbles upon the castle of Kashchei the Immortal and finds himself within reach of Princess Tatiana, the most beautiful girl in the world. Pretending to be a half-witted fool, Ilya must use all his wits to win the Princess’ freedom. But once he saves Tatiana, he realizes that he isn't in love with her.
17442007	/m/0465zm6	Of Missing Persons	Jack Finney	1956		 The story is framed as a one-sided conversation between two people, with Charley doing all of the talking. Charley recounts how he had fallen into a similar conversation with another man in a bar years before, and that man had told him to go to Acme Travel Bureau, a small travel agency located on the 200 block of West 42nd Street in New York City, and hint to the proprietor that he would like to "escape" from Earth and its ever-growing list of problems. Charley seeks out the travel agency and strikes up a conversation with the proprietor, who remains nameless. After taking some time to assess Charley, the proprietor of the travel agency confides that "just as a sort of little joke," he had printed up a travel brochure for a supposedly fictional planet named Verna, whose inhabitants had evolved some time prior to humans, but were physically very similar to humans. As opposed to the warlike ways displayed by humankind through the years, the Vernans had advanced to a peaceful society on an idyllic forested planet. When the Vernans discovered Earth, they observed it for an unstated period of time, even going so far as to put one of their people on Abraham Lincoln's cabinet. In 1913, just before World War I erupted, they chose to go from passive observation to active intervention, picking a small number of humans over time to invite to Verna. In discussing the Vernans' motivations, the proprietor reasons to Charley, "If you saw a neighbor's house on fire, would you rescue his family if you could? As many as you could, at least?" Over time the Vernans opened branches of Acme Travel Bureau in every major city and invited people from all over the earth, including Ambrose Bierce and, speculates Charley, Judge Crater. When Charley asks him, "when does it stop being a joke?", the proprietor tells him, "Now. If you want it to." He gives Charley a bus ticket and asks him for whatever money he has on him — "two five-dollar bills, a one, and seventeen cents in change" — as payment, saying that he wouldn't need it on Verna and that it would help to pay the light bills and rent for Acme Travel. When Charley questions the price, the proprietor says that an identical ticket had sold earlier for $3,700 and another for $.06. The proprietor then directs him to Acme Depot, from which a bus will take him to the departure point. He arrives at a small bus station "on one of the narrow streets west of Broadway" occupied by a few other people. They all board a decrepit bus and drive out to rural Long Island, where they are deposited at a dilapidated barn and told to wait for departure to Verna. As he sits and waits in the dark barn, Charley descends into a rage after he concludes he has been played for a fool. He storms out of the barn, but just as he crosses the threshold, he looks back and briefly glimpses, in a flash of light, the planet Verna through the back window of the barn before the barn door slams shut. By the time he gets the barn door back open, the people he left in the barn are gone, taken to Verna. Returning to the travel agency some time later, Charley is greeted by the proprietor, who hands him his money and says, "You left this on the counter last time you were here. I don't know why." The story ends with Charley telling his new acquaintance how to find Acme Travel, what to say, and how to act. He then emphasizes to the other person not to back out at the last minute, since no one gets another chance to emigrate to Verna, no matter which branch of Acme Travel they go to, because, in his words, "...I've tried. And tried. And tried."
17442950	/m/04g0k27	Places Where They Sing				 The story takes place in Lancaster College in 1967. The board discusses what to do with a surplus of money. One proposal is to create a building on a nearby meadow to be able to let in more students. Undergraduate Hugh Balliston is drawn into revolutionary activities by Fellow Tony Beck and the unknown revolutionary Mayerston, much to the dismay of his girlfriend Hetta Frith. Tom Llewyllyn, a fellow of the college since 1963, has become impotent and has an unhappy marriage with Patricia. Daniel Mond, the mathematician who was the protagonist of The Sabre Squadron (15 years earlier) is a (literally) quiet man who can only speak in whispers because of a self-inflicted injury to his throat, but who is still teaching mathematics. Among other teachers is the odd Lord Beyfus and his friend, the somewhat radical Mona Corrington. Through Hugh, Mayerston is trying to start violent protests on the campus but most of them end up as fiascos since the Provost of the College, Robert Constable, treats them with a mixture of contempt and tolerance. Isobel advises Patricia to take a lover and she ends up in bed with Hugh who she, in a farcical scene, must shut in the wardrobe when her daughter unexpectedly comes home. Llewyllyn and Mond invite old friend Fielding Gray to the college but he is rather soon picked up by his over-protective mistress Harriet Ongley. Hetta, who has left Hugh, cries on the shoulder of lord Beyfus, who very much likes to comb her hair. The atmosphere in the school turns to the worse and Mayerston uses more violent methods. During a ceremony in the Chapel (with several of the known characters attending) he and his followers burst in to the building and try to destroy the altar and the statue of Henry VI. Tom Llewyllyn saves the statue by use of force and Hetta, fed up with the revolution, protects the altar with assistance from Lord Canteloupe and some other people. During the tumult she is, however, killed by a blow to the head. This tragedy kills also the revolutionary atmosphere of the college. Tony Beck and Mayerston disappear. Constable makes note of how the conservative side have gained a “martyr” in Hetta and find this of some use to keep things calm. Lord Canteloupe comforts the sad Lord Beyfus by giving him the address of the whore Maisie. Patricia comforts Hugh, forgiven for his revolutionary mistakes, in bed. sv:Places Where They Sing
17448792	/m/0466msv	Genius Squad	Catherine Jinks	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book begins roughly 5 months after the events of Evil Genius. Cadel is now living with foster parents,in a state of legal limbo. Not knowing where he was born, his true father or where he was born. His life is made even worse due to his foster brother "Mace" (real name: Thomas) constantly bullying him. With no school to go to due to his questionable legal status, Cadel spends his time either on the computer, idling or visiting Sonja. The police,and FBI also occasionally turn up to question him on what he knows about Dr Darkkon, Prosper English and the Axis Institute. During these questionings Cadel meets Saul Greniaus, a detective who is now in charge of his case. His style puts him in conflict with Cadels social worker Fiona Currey. On his second visit to Sonja he is confronted by Trader and Judith.Trader and Judith attempt to convince Sonja and Cadel to join Genius Squad. An organisation formed to take down GENOME [a corporation founded by Darkkon] and which is funded by Rex Austin, an American millionaire who suspects the company murdered his son. Despite Cadels initial suspicions they may be working for Prosper, Cadel and Sonja agree to join Genius Squad. They learn that Genius squad is disguised as a youth home and they have other kids also working for the squad. While Saul and Fiona initially object, but they relent after a particularly heated confrontation with "Mace". Cadel arrives at the youth home, Saul and Fiona help him move his belongings. Cadel is introduced to Devin and Lexi[the Twins],Hamish Primose, Dot[the sister of Com from Evil Genius] and the rest of the adult staff. While genius squad works away, trying to avoid notice by Cadel's various body guards,they uncover a web of deceit, crimes and cerebral implants. During this time, "Mace" finds the address of the Genius Squad foster house and attempts to frame Cadel for theft by planting a stolen watch on him (a plan which ultimately fails and leads to Mace's arrest). Cadel also finds that Gazo Kovacs has made contact with GENOME, unaware of their sinister intentions. Unfortunately, GenoME manages to spring Prosper from jail and he immediately moves to kidnap Cadel. Cadel is taken to the house of Judith, one of the other members of Genius squad. From here, Prosper flees to a private air strip to leave the country after Cadel attempts to contact Saul for help. Saul gets a group of police officers down to the airport in time to save Cadel, but Prosper manages to get away. At this point, paternity tests show that Prosper English isn't really Cadel's father, even though he thought he was. Cadel's real father is Chester Cramp who runs Fountain Pharmeceuticals, another Darkkon corporation. However, with Chester sitting in an American Jail. Cadel agrees to being adopted by Saul and Fiona, who happened to be getting married. Saul finally finds out about Genius Squad, and though he is very upset that Cadel lied to him for so long, he agrees to let Genius Squad live on. His reasoning for this, is that he believes that Genius Squad might just be their best chance of finding Prosper and bringing him down once and for all.
17451636	/m/047r3h0	Pagan Babies	Elmore Leonard	2000	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins in Rwanda. The protagonist is a priest named Terry Dunn. It is a few years after the genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus. Father Terry Dunn lives in Rwanda with his girlfriend Chantelle. He doesn't have qualms about substituting punishment for penance. If that means killing four Hutu murderers who slaughtered his Tutsi congregation, so be it. After being an instrument of divine wrath Dunn breaks camp and heads for Detroit. He wants to raise money for "Pagan Babies" — the children orphaned during the genocide. Dunn's brother Fran specializes in lawsuits for personal injuries. He is helping Debbie, a woman who spent three years in jail for deliberately hitting her ex-husband Randy with a Ford Escort. Debbie is trying to have a career as a comedian. In the meantime we learn more about Terry's past and his problems with the IRS, which was the reason for his fleeing to Rwanda to help his uncle. Debbie's ex-husband Randy now owns a restaurant and is involved with some of the same gangsters that Terry once knew. Debbie and Terry begin a relationship. Randy stole sixty-seven thousand dollars from Debbie and now it's only a matter of time before Debbie's desire for cold, hard cash and Dunn's fundraising for Rwandan orphans join forces in a carefully plotted financial assault on Randy. They want to receive a donation of 250.000 dollars from Tony Amilia, the local wise guy for the 'Pagan Babies'. Now in the Randy's restaurant all of the local wise guys, hit man, scam artists twist and twirl around each other for the money and for their lives. Who will survive...
17452817	/m/04f3gt3	The Butcher's Boy				 The Butcher's Boy features an unnamed hitman as primary protagonist. Murder is a craft for the "Butcher’s Boy", a reference to the man's foster father, "Eddie the Butcher", who raised him in the trade. After the contract killer successfully completes a series of hits in the American west, he arrives in Las Vegas, Nevada to pick up his fee. Once there, however, he learns that he has become a liability to his shadowy Mafia employers, faces an attempt on his own life, and begins to violently improvise as he seeks to escape the criminal organization. The initial hits completed by "The Butcher's Boy" attract the attention of U.S. government specialists on organized crime. Elizabeth Waring, a bright young analyst in the Justice Department, begins to see a pattern in the killings, and as the violence escalates around the United States, works her way closer to the identity of the murder "specialist". The book features sections from the viewpoint of both major characters and draws the reader into the minds of the killer and investigator. Most critics reported that readers hope the "Butcher's Boy" will succeed in evading both his Mafia pursuers and the government agents.
17453781	/m/047clwp	Tiny the Bee		2002		 Tiny the Bee is about a young bee who is forced to face the perils that accompany tolerance, friendship, patience, kindness, and hopelessness, to name a few. As he travels through his journey, he meets new and interesting characters who force him to face different aspects of acceptance. It is through these encounters that Tiny learns to accept who he is and truly soar above and beyond expectations. Because of the size of his wings, Tiny is, at first, shunned by his friends. After being unable to continue on his expected journey, Tiny decides to find his own path in life. He travels for many days, after which, he meets new friends, who accept him for exactly who he is inside; the size of his wings are no matter. Tiny learns from them true friendship and, unbeknownst to him, grows from this knowledge. He is finally able to return home to realize his dreams.
17455370	/m/047pp02	Cause Celeb	Helen Fielding		{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rosie Richardson works in marketing at a publisher's, when she starts dating Oliver Merchant, and falls in love with him. Oliver is the host of the TV show called SoftFocus where they tackle mostly cultural and political topics. Their relationship is formed by his erratic behaviour, like one day telling her he loves her and then not calling for days. When Rosie has to go to Nambula on a business trip, the poverty and general environment shock her into the realisation that she wants to spend her life doing something meaningful. So she breaks up with Oliver and leaves to go to Nambula and work at a refugee camp, organised by Sustain. Four years later, she's running the camp and feels attracted to a new doctor, Robert O'Rourke. Unfortunately, rumours about a locust invasion spread and about the shipping of food that will be late. So Rosie decides that she has to take matters into her own hands. She flies back to England and gets in touch with Oliver and his circle of famous friends to raise funds. After some convincing, the stars and Rosie fly to Nambula for a one hour fundraising show. In the meantime, Oliver tries to get back together with Rosie, who refuses him. After they handle some catastrophes, the show airs and is a full success. Food is delivered, the stars fly back and Rosie gets together with O'Rourke.
17456358	/m/04dz7bs	Come Like Shadows				 Tom Llewyllyn and Somerset Lloyd-James (the latter by mistake) have been engaged to write the script of a movie version of The Odyssey, to be shot on Corfu. After some wrangling they ask Fielding Gray to help, since he is a man with knowledge of Greek and the classics in general. The shooting has many comic turns since the movie team wants to do a sexy story while the foundation supplying the money demands something more radical that will substantially alter the story. Left-wing actress Sasha Grimes, who is to be the foundation's "watcher" during the shoot, suggests, for example, that Odysseus give away his land to the poor. Gray works hard to keep the original story and even starts a sexual relationship with Grimes to be able to control her better. Max de Freville and his friend Lyki are also engaged in the movie and make visits during the shooting. They also bring Angela Tuck, suffering from terrible obesity in later years. When Angela, in a deal with Fielding, watches him having sex with Sasha, she has a heart attack and dies. Fielding, thinking about old age, is trying to blackmail producer Foxy Galahead for £50,000 to continue to keep Sasha Grimes under control. Galahead, Max, Lyki and director Jules frame Fielding and he is arrested by Earle Restarick during a trip to Zurich. Restarick and his thugs keeps Fielding prisoner in Athens and since the film team told them another story Restarick believes that Gray once again is digging in the things told in The Judas Boy. Restarick threatens to turn Fielding into a junkie to make him confess. Galahead throws a Christmas party for a number of guests, among them Lord Canteloupe, Somerset Lloyd-James and Captain Detterling. When Galahead brags to actress Elena about how he framed Fielding, she tells the three Englishmen at the party, and they decide to rescue Fielding. Canteloupe, infuriated by the thought that an Englishman be kept prisoner in a country of no importance (like Greece), bursts into the villa where Fielding is (officially) being nursed after a "mental breakdown" and takes him home to England. When Fielding arrives home Harriet is not there. At peace, he begins on a number of new commissions given him by Gregory Stern. sv:Come Like Shadows
17459118	/m/04g20s4	The Revenge of Dracula	Peter Berresford Ellis	1978	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel concerns the story of Count Dracula in England and is set before the events in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.
17459907	/m/04g2k1w	Act of Providence	Joseph Payne Brennan		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The novella features Brennan's supernatural detective Lucius Leffing and is set during the first World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island in 1975.
17461540	/m/04g171y	The Black Wolf	Galad Elflandsson	1979	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel is a Lovecraftian story of werewolves.
17463045	/m/0463t1c	Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis	Meins G. S. Coetsier			 Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis is an account of the life, works and vision of two prominent mystical thinkers, Etty Hillesum and Eric Voegelin, whose lives were shaped by the totalitarian Nazi-regime. This book explores how mystical attunement to the flow of presence is the key to the development of Etty Hillesum’s life and writings. Eric Voegelin’s analysis of the history of order is focused on the responses of individuals and societies to the divine presence. Etty Hillesum’s The Letters and Diaries illustrates her heroic struggle to come to terms with her personal life in the context of her gradual response to the flowing presence. Etty Hillesum died at the age of twenty-nine in Auschwitz midway through World War II. All her energy had been absorbed in a daily search for the meaning of her life, for an understanding of her relationships with others, and for an insight into the ultimate purpose of each individual’s contribution to the well being and maintenance of the human spirit. Eric Voegelin’s philosophical symbol "the flow of presence" ("the intersection of time with the timeless") is designed to “catch’’ changes and shifts in the mode of human responsiveness to the divine presence and it is especially helpful in clarifying what is taking place in the soul of Etty Hillesum. Her response to the flow of presence while she was undergoing significant breakthroughs in her spiritual life in the context of a period of overwhelming social disorder, amounts to a testament of great courage. It is an inspiration and an affirmation of the indestructible wonder of life. In one of his final conclusions Coetsier writes: “The complexity of the human condition will require the ability to be human in transcending our immediate and simply given context through an attunement to the flow of presence.” Etty Hillesum and Eric Voegelin have provided a welcome antidote to the restless and wandering spirit of a complex and turbulent era and this book guides the reader to the heart of their mystical thought. With the current explosion of interest in inter-religious dialogue, peace studies, Judaism, the holocaust, gender studies and mysticism, it is an attempt to respond to the signs of the times. Accompanying the treatment of Voegelin’s and Hillesum’s writing, this book includes an extensive bibliography of international scholarship on both authors.
17463595	/m/047s_f3	Against the Tide of Years	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 As the series progresses, it becomes clear to Nantucket's government that sitting back and adopting isolationism will only profit those renegades who, under the leadership of ex-Coast Guard lieutenant William Walker (inspired directly by William Walker), have fled the island to exploit the Bronze Age peoples of Europe and the Middle East. Walker—who, unfortunately, is as smart as he is callous—exploits the "magic" of gunpowder, iron-forging, and the spinning jenny to build up an empire of his own, one that threatens to conquer the entire world unless the people of Nantucket build an army, a navy, and a web of foreign alliances to take the fight to Walker. Against the Tide of Years takes place approximately 10 years after the events of the first book. The leadership of the Republic of Nantucket has invested a great deal of time and effort into building up a substantial military force, both a deep-water navy and a Marine Corps, but the bulk of Nantucket's population are more interested in commerce and exploration than in bringing the renegade Walker to justice. A sneak attack on Nantucket itself by the nation of Tartessos, led by an ally of Walker, unites the factions of the Republic behind an all-out effort to topple Walker's growing empire, centered in Achaea (Greece), in a two-pronged campaign, attacking Tartessos and opening a second front in the Middle East (through an alliance with Babylon, Hittite Empire and Mitanni).
17468324	/m/047bb11	The Other Place	Monica Hughes	1999-08-19	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 16-year-old Alison Fairweather and her family are living in a not-so-distant future when they are taken from their homes and forced to stay in a penal colony, Habitat W, for five years because of a crime against WOGPO, the World Government. Within a month, Gordie Fairweather, Alison's 8 year-old brother, starts having dreams about "Xanadu", a paradise he believes existed behind the walls of their prison. Gordie succeeds in finding Xanadu, and Alison follows him. In Xanadu, Gordie and Alison meet Jay, the supposed leader of Xanadu. Alison finds that all of Xanadu's inhabitants, besides Jay, are young children. At first, the children do not approve of Alison because of her age, but they become familiar with Alison, and accept her. One day, when Alison and the children are eating dinner, Alison catches sight of a wild-looking young woman her age. She discovers that the woman is Kristin, her long-lost friend, who was among the inhabitants of the Habitats. Kristin was not accepted as part of the "Xanadu Family", and has been living in Xanadu, but as an outcast. Kristin does not like Jay, so she and Alison try to follow Jay into his underground home, which he stays in at night. Kristin and Alison find that Jay was the one calling the children to go to Xanadu, and for each child he named the paradise differently. They also find out that Jay was the one who had the idea of Xanadu, which was originally the "Botany Bay Project". Jay catches Kristin and Alison, but still lets them stay in Xanadu, both as regular inhabitants. The children living in Xanadu learn to adapt, and Jay is pleased. Also, Jay reveals to Alison and Kristin that he is really a psychologist. As soon as everyone in Xanadu learns to become a real community, Jay leaves to tell WOGPO that everyone in the prison has died. Xanadu is therefore renamed "Jay's World".
17469150	/m/047fhzg	Ghoul	Brian Keene	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Timmy Graco and his best friends Barry Smetzler and Doug Keiser are looking forward to a summer they will never forget; they have made the perfect secret underground clubhouse in the local cemetery known as "the dugout." The book opens with two high school seniors having sex in the cemetery. As they finish the boy realizes a figure has been watching them. The ghoul lashes out with rage, repeatedly smashes the boy's head against a tombstone until he dies; the chapter ends as he approaches the helpless girl. Another figure comes before sunrise and cleans up the mess. Timmy's grandfather (Dane Graco) dies the next day, the first Saturday of the summer. His family buries him in the local cemetery; the same one that also houses Timmy's secret hideout and the ghoul. Timmy sees his longtime crush Katie Moore whose older sister has gone missing. While walking through the cemetery with Katie and her father, the local pastor, they find a broken sigil stone and Pastor Moore tells Timmie and Katie the legend of the ghoul that once terrorized the area. He was said to be bound by a Sigil Stone under the ruins of the old church. They all notice that the cemetery grounds are dilapidated as headstones are falling over and sinking into the ground. Barry's father is the caretaker of the cemetery and after the funeral he and Barry bury Dane Graco. It is then revealed that Barry's father Clark is in cahoots with the ghoul acting as his familiar. Clark even kidnaps a local woman as a mate for the ghoul. The ghoul believing himself to be the last of his kind is mating with this woman and the older Moore sister. At the same time you learn that as a commandment from "Him" that the ghouls may not taste fresh meat. Anyone he kills he must let fester for several days. The town becomes very suspicious with six missing people in less than a week and the boys' families will no longer let them play in the cemetery woods. The boys begin to notice sinkholes forming all over the graveyard. Barry's father has told him he believes there is a cave under ground responsible for all the damage to the grounds. The boys find a hole large enough to enter but do not have time to explore it just then. The boys' local rivals see them discover the entrance and assume it is the dugout. That night they go into the graveyard under the cover of a storm and enter the cave hoping to trash the dugout. The ghoul kills two of the boys underground as the ringleader attempts to escape. Clark stumbles across him fighting his way out of the ghoul's grasp halfway in the entrance to his warren. Clark recognizes him from a scuffle between him and his own son. He steps on his hand causing him to fall into the hole where the ghoul violently kills him. That night Doug spends the night at the Graco house and tells Timmy about how his mother sexually abuses him on a nightly basis. Comparing his stories to the obvious physical abuse Barry receives from his father he decides that adults are the real monsters. Clark then bans Doug and Timmy from the graveyard and will only allow Barry to work there in daylight. He catches the kids trying to sneak into the shed where the other boys entered the cave and attacks them both physically and mentally. They then take a long walk into the woods beyond the graveyard and find the remains of Katie's older sister's boyfriend in his car, squashing the rumor they ran away together. Doug badly wants to spend the night at Timmy's house to avoid the advances of his mother. Timmy's mom will not allow him to so he goes home and locks himself in his room only to be woken up by his mother who has snuck in through the window and is attempting to molest him. At the same time Barry's father beats him nearly to death (at this point Barry notices Dane Graco's Freemason ring on his father's hand.) Timmy tells his dad he believes there is a ghoul on the loose in the cemetery and he believes that it has eaten his father's corpse. His father becomes very angry and take Timmy and his prize comic book collection into the basement and forces him to watch him rip them apart one by one. Doug leaves his house to go to Timmy's but sees all the lights off and decides to sleep in the dugout. Upon entering the cemetery he sees Clark and the ghoul arguing loudly. Doug flees but his bike's kickstand rattles and the ghoul begins to chase him but he escapes. The ghoul goes back and attempts to kill Clark by slashing him across his neck and face with his claws. He smells Doug returning and goes to meet him at the dugout. Doug begins editing a map of the forest and eating a Kit Kat when the ghoul bursts through the bottom of the dugout and Doug falls into the grasp of the ghoul who decides to forgo the commandment not to eat fresh meat. Barry decides to run away from home to escape the abuse of his father, he goes to say goodbye to Doug who is not home and then to Timmy who tells him his suspicions of the ghoul and what his father did. The two form a plan and go to the dugout which they find collapsed into the ghoul's warren. Timmy ventures in and finds Doug's map freshly smeared with Kit-Kat and realizes the ghoul has taken him. He instructs Barry to go start the cemetery's backhoe and start digging the cave up. Barry finds his father mortally wounded bleeding and unconscious as a result of the Ghoul's attack and uses bungee cord to tie him to a stump. He retrieves the backhoe and begins digging. Timmy finds Karen Moore and the kidnapped woman bound to the walls inside the cave. He frees Karen but the other captive's mind is gone from the trauma of the Ghoul kidnapping and raping her. The ghoul appears holding Doug's head. Timmy and Karen are able to escape and run blindly through the tunnels. Above ground Clark regains consciousness and frees himself and climbs onto the backhoe. As he and Barry struggle the backhoe collapses though the top of the cave and crushes Clark beneath it. Timmy and Karen escape through the hole made by the backhoe and the ghoul follows them out into the sunlight where he melts. The book then goes to an epilogue twenty years later where Timmy's father is being buried in the cemetery and Barry is now the caretaker. His son has bruises consistent with abuse and Timmy realizes ghoul was not the only monster in the cemetery.
17470595	/m/04g1km_	Hugo Pepper	Paul Stewart	2006-04-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This novel is set in the same world as Fergus Crane and Corby Flood. It stars Hugo Pepper, a young boy who was raised by reindeer herders after his parents were eaten by polar bears. When Hugo discovers that his parents' sled has a very special compass which can be set to 'Home', he sets off to find where his true home is.As he does this, he unravels the mystery of 'The Firefly Quarterly's' Institute disaster and where the treasure of his Great great grandmother , Brimstone Kate...
17470635	/m/04fzy_1	Fergus Crane	Paul Stewart	2004-04-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Fergus Crane is a young boy, who lives in the Archduke Ferdinant Apartments with his Mother Lucia. A mysterious little flying box arrives at his house three different times at his house and he find letters in it, from his 'long lost uncle Theo' warning him that he is great danger and is sending help. After this, a flying horse arrives at his window and takes him to a magnificent mountain chalet, where his adventures begin.
17471039	/m/0479713	I, Coriander	Sally Gardner	2005-08-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It tells the story of a girl named Coriander, and her childhood. Coriander starts an adventure she cannot stop when she slips on a pair of silver shoes from an anonymous person. Her mother insists that she must not have them, whilst she herself insists she must. Eventually, her father gives into them and her world begins to fall downhill. Coriander's dad is arrested and is left with her step mother and step sister. The step mother has sacked Coriander's favorite servant as well as friend. After hiding a doll in the cupboard Coriander's step mother is mad.Coriander cannot wait until her dad's return. But is he going to? It all starts to slowly change, a thread that never ends, and one that Coriander cannot control. She soon finds out all her mother's deepest secrets and must fight the evil Queen Rosmore, her grandfather's 2nd wife who has put him into a trance. To save her mother's beautiful, yet deadly power and her father's faith, she falls in love with Tycho, a fairy prince from the other world, a dangerous thing for her to do. As all things she once knew vanish, she must fight the horrors of the angry, puritan world in which she lives, and those of the world of magic, which holds the secret of time and all things possible. But as a death draws nearer, there is another question to answer. Whose is it?
17471265	/m/047lhkl	The Whispering Road	Livi Michael	2005-01-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Whispering Road documents the stories of Joe, a young, orphaned boy who loves to tell fantastical stories, and Annie, his younger sister who can contact the dead. Since their mother left them on the front step of the local workhouse, Joe and Annie have been searching for her, but to no success. At the beginning of the novel, they work for a cruel master and mistress, whose chores they complete. An abusive old man named Old Bert supervises them constantly and punishes them for the least mistake. Old Bert forces Joe and Annie to sleep in the chicken coop, and threatens to kill Joe if they wake him up. After Annie becomes cold, Joe, angered at the people of the farm, makes the decision to run away; he tries to catch one of the chickens. Joe's perturbed efforts wake up most of the chickens, attracting Old Bert, who Joe hits over the head with a shovel. Young Bert sends the farm owner's hounds upon the siblings, who make for the nearby fence separating the estate from the woods. It is assumed that they escape and fall asleep somewhere in the woods, thus, when they wake up, they are greeted by a hobbit-like man who seems warm and kind. He names himself as Travis, and tells them many stories about his adventures in the woods, such as meeting Dog-woman, an outcast angel. Joe and Annie travel far and wide searching for their mother. Soon they meet other outcasts in a traveling circus. Joe sells Annie and sets off for Manchester, where he meets a street gang. He becomes a member and stays with them for a while. They taught him about Manchester and he taught them how to use a sling. Suddenly, an epidemic spread through the gang. A member, called Lookout, becomes sick and soon dies.
17471329	/m/04cs8_f	Spilled Water	Sally Grindley	2004-08-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is told in three parts : early childhood, life as a domestic servant and life working in a factory. It is told through the eyes of Lu Si-Yan, an eleven year old girl. Her early childhood is described as a rural idyll. She has a doting father who works growing vegetables on a small strip of land. A baby brother is born, whom Si-yan loves. Unfortunately, the father is killed in a road accident and Si-yan's mother, overwhelmed by grief, cannot keep the family going when faced with one disaster after another. Disapproving Uncle Ba takes Lu Si-yan to market to sell her, calling her "Spilled Water" : a waste because she is not a boy. She joins the Chen household as an unpaid domestic servant. She is well fed and well clothed but works very hard. Si-yan is constantly criticised by Mrs Chen. The only people in the household who keep her going are Xiong Fei, an art student employed as a cook, who is also a fun loving young man; and Mr Chen's wheelchair bound mother Mrs Hong. Lu Si-Yan is frightened by the Chen's son Yi-mou, whom she is told she must marry. He acts strangely because he has a brain damage. Mrs Hong finds out what the Chen's are up to, gives Lu Si-Yan money and helps her to escape. Lu Si-yan goes to catch the boat up river, but discovers she had been robbed. A couple, Mr and Mrs Wang, offer to pay her boat fare and to give her a job in their factory. The factory creates toys. The employees work under harsh conditions. They are never paid what they are owed and are forced to work long hours and even overtime. They are only paid a fraction of from their pay. Lu Si-yan is befriended by a group of young women who are optimistic despite being in the same state as Si-yan -- trapped in the factory. Eventually, Lu Si-yan becomes so ill and frail, due to overwork and the poor working conditions, that she is hospitalised. When she regains consciousness, Uncle Ba is by her bedside in the hospital and is terribly remorseful. He brings unlucky news that her Mother has died and he plans to take her and her brother into his home, look after them properly and gain their forgiveness. Lu Si-yan realises that her only option is to go back with Uncle Ba. Si-yan also longs to see her brother. The Uncle promises to send her to school and receive good education. Li Mei, the best of her new factory friends, manages to get some money for Lu Si-yan and enough for Si-yan's trip back home, from the Wongs. The Wongs pay their workers the money that the workers are owed. They are terrified that their poor working conditions and exploitation of minors will be exposed to the public. The main themes of the book are the portrayal of rural versus town life in China, domestic servitude, sweatshops and the role of women. It is also simply and beautifully written. It is rather very exciting, with a few climaxes and twists. I would highly recommend those who haven't read the book yet to quickly get this book and read it!
17471487	/m/04f_bpf	Cloud Busting	Malorie Blackman	2004-09-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story begins when Mr Mackie, the teacher, assigns the homework to the class – to write a poem. Sam wants to write his poem about Davey. Alex, his ex-best friend, mocks him for doing so. Sam quotes: "I want to write my poem about Davey Because now he's gone And I can't get him out of my head." Davey, or 'Fizzy Feet', is a new boy. Everyone (except Alicia) hates him. He has holes in his jumper, and strange ideas fill his mind. Sam, the school bully, makes fun of him. He dislikes Davey as much, if not more, than everyone else. That is, until Davey saves his life, pulling him from in front of a speeding vehicle. The two soon become friends. Davey's way of looking at life begins to seem fun. Sam learns that Davey has an allergy to peanuts, and Davey tells him to keep it a secret as he didn't want a fuss. But, in front of his ex-best friend, the bully, Alex, he accidentally lets it slip – big mistake. Alex, as a joke, offers Davey a part of his sandwich, with a peanut slipped inside. Davey immediately has an allergic reaction, and Mr Mackie is forced to use the epipen. Davey regains consciousness and is whisked to hospital. Davey begins to avoid Sam, after letting his secret slip. He loses his eccentric imagination. What should have happened: The two go to the park cloud busting together, and become best friends again - this time not in secret. What did happen: Sam goes cloud busting alone. Davey, telling no-one, slips away and leaves.
17471692	/m/04cr510	The Fire-Eaters	David Almond	2003-08-14	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel is set 1962, before and during the Cuban missile crisis. Bobby Burns, who lives in a quiet coal-mining town near Keely Bay in Northumberland, has had a wonderful summer. But in autumn his father falls mysteriously ill, and he loathes his new school which is pervaded by bullying. Perhaps worst of all, Bobby is worried there will be a nuclear war. Bobby's wonder-working friend Ailsa Spink and McNulty the crazy fire-eater open Bobby's eyes to the possibility of miracles.
17472991	/m/047dj3c	On Pointe	Lorie Ann Grover	2004-05-25	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story involves a girl named Clare who dances. Her best friend is Rosella. Her family's dream is for Clare to be in City Ballet, a program for very skilled dancers. There are only 16 positions in City Ballet. Things take a turn for the worse when her instructor tells her she's too tall, not only to be in City Ballet (although if she weren't as tall, she would have named it in), but to be in her own dance school! She is very upset at this. She is invited to dance with the adult class, where the adults dance, just to dance, but thinks the adult class is stupid. When her grandfather has a stroke, he loses the ability to talk and move his right side. When Clare finally steps up to take the adult class, everything changes.
17474857	/m/04cx0k4	The Various		2003-08-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Midge is sent to stay with her Uncle Brian at Mill Farm in Somerset while her mother is on tour with the orchestra. She comes across a small winged horse which is trapped and injured: her first introduction to the hidden world of the "Royal Forest", an impenetrable thicket on a hill within the farm boundaries. Meanwhile, all the tribes who live in the forest, the Ickri, Naiad, Wisp, Troggles and Tinklers, unite to send a group to search for the missing horse, Pegs. The adventures of the group demonstrate the dangers posed to the Various by the Gorgi world, as Lumst is killed by the ferocious tomcat Tojo. While Midge is accepted by the queen and her advisers as the saviour of Pegs, despite the news she brings of her uncle's plan to sell the forest land, Scurl and his archers believe that she is herself a danger to the tribes and intend to kill her. At the climax of the novel the archers attack the farm when Midge and her cousins are there alone. Throughout the novel Midge senses another presence, the girl in the photograph on the kitchen wall: it is Celandine, who once lived at the farm and was thought mad for believing she had seen fairies. The story of Celandine is told in the second book of the trilogy, and the bond between her and Midge is explored in Winter Wood.
17476676	/m/04f_p3g	Fangland	John Marks	2007-01-15	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins with Evangeline Harker, an associate producer of the television news program, The Hour, and the daughter of a rich Texan magnate, is engaged to her boyfriend Robert, looking forward to their honeymoon. When she is given an assignment to investigate the Eastern European crime lord Ion Torgu in Romania, she worries about it. However, she accepts anyway. Arriving at Romania, she meets a young companion named Clementine Spence. Together, they travel to a disclosed location. There, Evangeline disappears after meeting with Torgu. She is then infected with vamparism; she then kills Clemmie by slicing her throat and drinking her blood; she disappears. The staff at The Hour is filled with guilt and dismay. Mysterious tapes appear, infecting the entire audio system with a weird noise. Two months later, Evangeline is found. Her memories are scrubbed, but slowly return. However, their terror only drives her insane. She is forced to attack anyone. Robert, meanwhile gets attacked by Torgu. However, Evangeline defeats Torgu in the final battle.
17477340	/m/04g0_2j	Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders	Victor Appleton	1917	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Professor Bumper, introduced in the previous volume, is on the trail of another lost city, this time the lost city of Kurzon, somewhere deep in Honduras. The Professor has come into some documents which he thinks will help him locate the city, and the documents make mention of a huge idol made of solid gold. Professor Bumper would very much like Tom Swift to accompany the expedition. As circumstances would have it, Professor Bumpers rival, in the form of Professor Fenimore Beecher, is also on the trail of Kurzon. Unfortunately for Tom Swift, Professor Beecher is also trying to win the heart of Mary Nestor, Tom Swift's sweetheart! Envy, rather than fame or fortune, drive Tom to finally accompany the expedition to Honduras, as Tom hopes to prevent Professor Beecher from discovering the idol and presenting some of the gold to Mary Nestor as a betrothal gift.
17480810	/m/0466mjy	The Earth House	Jeanne DuPrau	1992	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 They hadn't pictured themselves as the sort of people to take up Eastern spiritual practice, but on their first visit to a zen center, two women discover something that speaks to them on a level deeper than their everyday experience, and they begin to make a new plan for their lives. They begin to consider giving up their suburban comforts and build a house beside a monastery in the mountains. As the walls of the house go up, the two women make and re-make plans, wrestle with a chainsaw, learn to make windows, and set up a computer powered by the sun. Their spiritual practice transforms their vision of the house, and the building of it transforms them both.
17481030	/m/047d0t5	Ombria in Shadow	Patricia A. McKillip	2002-01-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In the beginning of Ombria in Shadow, Royce Greve, ruler of Ombria, has just died and his mistress Lydea is being thrown out of the castle by the ancient, evil, and powerful Domina Pearl who wishes to gain control over the court by acting as regent for Royce's young son Kyel. Lydea flees through the dangerous night-time streets and eventually, with some aid from a mysterious source, reaches the tavern of her father. Meanwhile, beneath Ombria, Faey, a sorceress who can wear any face she likes, and her assistant Mag, who helped Lydea survive her flight from the castle, work on magical potions and charms for the wealthy of the city, including Domina Pearl. In the castle Ducon Greve, Royce's bastard nephew, tries to support Kyel against the machinations of Domina Pearl in an increasingly paranoid climate. Various nobles, unhappy with Domina's ruthless rule, attempt to convince him to work against her and set himself up as the new prince of Ombria. Unwilling to go down such a dangerous route and concerned that it could have dire consequences for Kyel, Ducon manages to foist them off, escaping through the vast network of secret passageways and rooms that permeate the castle. Faey is hired by one of Ducon's enemies to kill him; she makes a magical piece of charcoal that is imbued with poison. Mag, who has been observing Ducon, does not want him to die and searches for a way to undo the spell. However, she becomes trapped in the castle, eventually freed by the historian Camas Erl on the promise that she will bring him to meet Faey, who has been alive for ages, and whose history is entwined with the city's. Ducon uses the charcoal to sketch a man who looks just like him, who seems to come to life. Pursuing him, but delirious from the poison, he inadvertently falls into Faey's lair. Lydea, there to seek Faey's help, insists that Faey cure him. With Ducon and Faey's help, Lydea is able to return to the castle where she works as Kyel's tutor alongside Camas Erl, who is obsessed with discovering the secret to Ombria's shadowy underworld. After being introduced to Faey, Camas wanders the underworld, trying to find out about the Shadow City and how Ombria has been changed in the past by its manifestation. Mag is given a pendant by Faey, which had been left with her as a baby on Faey's doorstep. Using the small piece of charcoal that she finds inside, Mag begins to draw random shapes. The drawings are able to destroy various parts of Domina's body. Domina, enraged by what she considers Faey's betrayal, captures Ducon and Lydea along with Mag, bringing them to the secret room where she keeps her regenerative bed, the reason that she has lived so long. Faey leaves the underworld, and the stirrings of the incredibly powerful sorceress are the trigger for the manifestation of the Shadow City. While Ducon fights Domina, Lydea escapes with Kyel by running through a rift into the Shadow City shown to her by the same mysterious man seen earlier by Ducon. Ducon kills Domina, and then meets the man who looks like him - His father. From Ombria's reflection, years ago he fell in love with Royce's sister, and tarried with her long enough to get her with child. The shadow transition eventually finishes, and Ombria has changed. No one has memories of the previous Ombria but for Faey and Mag. Ducon is now Prince and Lydea his love, Kyel is his heir and Mag is Kyel's tutor. All is happy.
17482095	/m/0466mbd	Tempted	Cecily von Ziegesar	2008-06	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After two weeks of being back at Waverly for almost being expelled, Jenny Humphrey has now become the new it girl (first it was Tinsley Carmichael). At the upcoming Halloween masquerade Jenny decides to dress up as Cleopatra and beats Tinsley for the best costume award. Meanwhile, Callie attempts to win back Easy in a Cinderella costume with a secret proving that she's a good person. But it backfires when Callie's costume reminds Easy of the snobby princess she is. After Easy tells her off, Callie runs away to a "health spa" set up by her mom. During the masquerade, Brett and Jeremiah reunite after Brett lies to him about Kara, her very friendly friend. After the masquerade, Easy climbs and accidentally collapses an oak tree, leaving first floor Dumbarton residents (like Kara) homeless. Tinsley, being the "angel" that she is, gives Kara a home, creating a very awkward rift with Brett in the room. Meanwhile, Callie finds out that the supposed health spa her mother set up for her is actually some kind of rehab-work camp. Luckily, through group confessions, she learned to get over, and let go of Easy. Easy, in an attempt to get over Callie and be able to stay in Waverly, searches for an extracurricular activity, but instead finds himself in Heath's club, Men of Waverly. While Callie's away, Jenny will play, with Drew that is, her supposed savior who paid for her re-admittance by paying off the owner of the burned barn. While going through Callie's things, Jenny finds out that it was Callie who paid for the burned barn fiasco. Once Jenny realizes it was Callie who saved her, she sees that Callie is a good friend after all. She leaves Drew and hides trying to stay away from her room. Meanwhile Tinsley has just gotten an email from Callie telling Tinsley where she is and that she needs help. Tinsley, feeling lonely and desperate now that she's a nobody, decides she needs to go rescue Callie but she can't do it alone. On her way out she bumps into Jenny and they formulate a plan putting their differences aside to help Callie. By getting Sebastian's car, Drew's roommate and also the guy Brett is supposed to tutor, Tinsley and Jenny head off to Maine. Heath and Kara have broken up when he told everyone about Brandon's baby blanket because Kara feels that he is insensitive and said it reminded her that he used to tease her. At the next Boy of Waverly (BoW) meeting, Heath is still trying to get over his breakup with Kara. Jeremiah and Brett later show up to the meeting and Jeremiah soon finds out the truth about Brett and Kara. Jeremiah then breaks up with Brett saying that it's for good. While on the drive to Maine, Sebastian's car breaks down leaving Jenny and Tinsley stranded.Jenny takes out her cell and texts Easy telling him what a good person Callie is. Easy, once getting the message, takes a charter plane straight to Maine to rescue Callie. At the rehab facility Callie has been trying to get over Easy and was put on a survival test out in the woods which turned out to be only fifty yards from the campus. Easy finds her and takes her back to the airport where they make up and get back together. But their reunion is short lived because when they get back the principal and Easy's guidance counselor are waiting for them. Easy broke his probation by leaving the school grounds without permission and the author makes it unknown if Easy will get expelled. Tinsley and Jenny go to sleep in Sebastian's car and when they wake up, they find that they were right next to a country club.It is later shown in the last IM conversations of the book that on the trip that the two become friends.
17482677	/m/04cttgq	The Other Side of the Sky: A Memoir		2005		 Farah Ahmedi was born in Kabul, Afghanistan near the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. When she was in second grade, she stepped on a land mine while taking a shortcut through a field to school. Farah was transferred to Germany where her leg was amputated. After over eighteen months in Germany, she returned to her home in Kabul. Shortly after she returned home, her father and sisters were killed by a stray rocket while Farah and her mother were shopping for fabrics, and her two brothers left Afghanistan in order to avoid a draft. Fearing for their lives, Farah and her mother fled to Pakistan where they endured harsh conditions in refugee camps for a couple years before World Relief rescued them and provided them a home in Chicago, Illinois. In Chicago, Farah and her mother began to adjust to their new life in Chicago, with major help from Alyce Litz, one of Farah's new friends.
17482839	/m/04fzy89	Ender's Homecoming	Orson Scott Card			 When Ender’s mother, Theresa Wiggin first gets a letter from Colonel Hyrum Graff she is shocked to learn that he thinks that Ender might need protection. However, as she thinks about it and discusses it with her husband, John Paul Wiggin she realizes that Ender would never be safe on Earth. Since they cannot come right out and say that they want their son to stay in space they decide to get their super-genius children to help persuade people that this is the best thing to do. Theresa sends the letter from Graff to Ender’s sister Valentine which helps her to realize that Ender won’t be safe on earth. John Paul makes a comment to Peter to suggest that he will always be in Ender’s shadow if he returns to earth. As a result Valentine and Peter begin a media campaign to keep Ender in space. Valentine then writes a letter to Graff asking to be sent into space to be with her brother. In the final pages Card reveals that there is no end conceived for the Ender story line.
17486358	/m/047dknw	Bring Forth the Body				 This part of the sequence revolves around the life of Somerset Lloyd-James but tells in part also the story of Captain Detterling and Leonard Percival, who investigate the death of Lloyd-James. When the story opens on May 10, 1972, Captain Detterling arrives at Somerset Lloyd-James's to discuss the health of Lord Canteloupe, since the Minister of Commerce seems broken down by his heavy work routine. Dolly, the housekeeper, who is in a state of shock, shows the captain the body of Lloyd-James in a bathtub filled with blood. Everything seems to indicate a suicide. The police explain to the captain that the affair officially will be regarded as a suicide caused by exhaustion. The government don’t want the police to look too deeply into the matter since some scandal may be revealed. However, the police agree to let Detterling be part of a silent investigation to find the truth about why Lloyd-James killed himself. In the evening the captain has a rather boozy dinner with his distant cousin Canteloupe who seems to be in rather good health, despite the rumours, but drinks more than ever. Detterling suggests that Canteloupe make Peter Morrison his new under-secretary. At the time of his death Lloyd-James helped Canteloupe to sell a new kind of light metal for a British company and also planned how to blacken the name of competing companies. Detterling talks the always ”moral” Morrison into accepting the job. Detterling and Leonard Percival, who suffers from stomach ulcers, attend the funeral of Lloyd-James and start their investigation right after the service. During this investigation a number of people are visited by the couple and the first is Maisie Malcolm (whose surname is revealed here for the first time), the prostitute frequented by Lloyd-James for many years. She has nothing to tell, except stories of a sexual nature. After this, they go to Corfu to interview Max de Freville and also see the grave of Angela Tuck, turned into a bizarre mausoleum by the heartbroken Max. Detterling and Percival discuss many issues during the investigation and for the first time Captain Detterling reveals why he, after so many years in the army, never reached a higher rank than that of captain. During the war, he had signed an order for gasoline, without checking the number of gallons. Another officer had apparently sold much of this gasoline on the black market and, through his negligence, Detterling became a suspect when this affair was revealed. Eventually he was let off the hook but in reality his career came to a halt. After this story they visit Lloyd-James's mother, who mentions that she hadn’t had “real” connection with her son since he was twelve even though he visited her once or twice a year. Roger Constable, provost of Lancaster, is the next person on the list and he reveals a story about how Lloyd-James stole the contents of an essay he was given a prize for from an unpublished essay written some 20 years earlier. However, nothing could be proved. Tom Llewyllyn, who lives with his odd daughter “Baby” at the college, also discusses this essay. When Detterling and Percival visits Fielding Gray he talks about the party that took place in 1945 which ended with Lloyd-James being sick and passing out. During a pause there is held a memorial (and, indeed, memorable) dinner for Lloyd-James with nine guests: Carton Weir, Tom Llewyllyn, Peter Morrison, Jonathan Gamp, Gregory Stern, Kapten Detterling, Lord Canteloupe, Fielding Gray and Maisie Malcolm. During this dinner Peter Morrison reveals a story he has just been told by old schoolmate Ivan Blessington who heard it from Lloyd-James himself recently: after the infamous party in 1945 the mean Lloyd-James had left half a crown instead of the ordinary five shillings for cleaning up. The outraged housekeeper, a young woman, had gone searching for Lloyd-James and found him sleeping. As it turned out the two of them had sex and she became pregnant. Lloyd-James didn’t know of this until recently when she wrote to him, telling him she had born him a son (officially with another) in 1946. She was now a widow and lived in poor circumstances and therefore asked Lloyd-James for some help. According to Blessington, Lloyd-James had been happily surprised and had been looking forward to meet his son. Percival and Detterling trace the woman in question, Meriel Weekes, and visit her. It was her shop that Lloyd-James had been visiting on his last day. Her son is living with her and this young man, James Weekes, has become physically disfigured and mentally retarded after a car crash. Before that he was involved in crime, and crashed when he was chased by the police. Meriel Weekes tells Detterling and Percival about how shocked Lloyd-James had been during the meeting though he had provided them with some money. In the last discussion between Detterling and Percival they understand how the somewhat religious Lloyd-James had been broken down by what he considered to be a cruel joke on God’s part. sv:Bring Forth The Body
17489965	/m/0465dl3	The Blurred Man	Anthony Horowitz	2003-01-06	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The story opens with the Diamond Brothers being hired by the American crime author Joe Carter, who finances Lenny Smile's children's charity Dream Time. Lenny Smile apparently died in a tragic accident when he was run over by a steamroller just before Carter was due to meet him for the first time. The American wants them to find out what really happened to the reclusive philanthropist he so much admired. He shows them his only photograph of Lenny, in which the man's features are blurred. Tim and Nick interview Lenny's two assistants at the charity offices and his neighbour, and visit his grave. At the cemetery, Nick spots someone who looks like the Lenny Smile in the photograph, and wonders if he could still be alive. They visit the Steamroller driver who is in a mental hospital, but due to Tim's words, like 'The clues are a bit thin on the ground,' the man loses more of his sanity. The brothers discover that a balloon seller advertising the Russian circus may have witnessed the accident, but when they go to the circus to speak to him, Nick again sees someone who looks like Lenny Smile, and they find the balloon seller has just been stabbed to death. Tim foolishly picks up the knife and the circus performers assume he is the murderer, partly due to Tim trying to correct a clown's grammar. A bizarre chase across the fields ensues, before a Police Car driven by Snape saves the Brothers. After hearing that the charity is under investigation for fraud, Nick finds out about the missing investigator and decides to visit the grave of Lenny Smiles again. It is there he realizes that the corpse is not of the Lenny but the investigator. In a thrilling finale at the London Eye, Nick deduces that 'Lenny Smile' is simply an assumed name that could be used by Lenny's 'assistants' as cover for their own crimes. They then reveal the compartment was bugged, and the Police are in compartments on either side.
17496824	/m/04f_kg3	Fields of Sleep	E. C. Vivian	1923	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns English adventurer Victor Marshall who is hired to find a fellow Englishman who is lost in Asiatic Sapelung. Marshall discovers a hidden valley and is imprisoned by its inhabitants who are descended from ancient Chaldean colonists. The inhabitants are dependent on a narcotic flower whose fragrance produces ecstasy. Marshall finds his countryman living among the inhabitants. After a flood, the flowers are destroyed and without it, the inhabitants including Marshall's countryman perish. Not dependent on the flower, Marshall survives.
17500292	/m/0464ttf	Fateful Harvest	Duff Wilson	2001		 The story begins with farmer Dennis DeYoung outside of Quincy, who in 1985 buys fertilizer from the local Cenex/Land O'Lakes corporation, and subsequently experiences yields one-tenth of usual (21). DeYoung, who keeps his bills, notes later that he paid prices varying from 2.5 to 9 cents a pound for nitrogen fertilizer. (In 1985 the average price for nitrogen fertilizer was 11 cents.) In 1986 Washington begins to pass stricter laws against dumping toxic waste. Cenex, the local agricultural company, begins to dump its excess chemicals into a concrete rinsate pond rather than on vacant land. The pond fills up quickly. Len Smith, who worked there for a summer dumping cans into the pool, recounts seeing its levels drop mysteriously overnight (23). By 1990, however, Cenex develops spreading technology which allowed it to use all its chemicals on farms and the corporation wanted to get rid of the rinse pond. Given the choice between spending $170,000 to put it in the Arlington, Oregon hazardous waste facility, or "sell" the mixture as fertilizer, the company's managers chose the latter. Later company officials claim under oath that state officials (whose names could not be remembered) had told them it was OK to dump the waste as fertilizer. The company avoids testing the pond for anything but fertilizers and pesticides. Cenex pays DeYoung to apply the "fertilizer" to his land, and then attempts to dilute it with massive amounts of water. The spreader, Dane Lindemeir, remembers objecting to the spreading of what he was told was a mix of fertilizer, atrazine, and trifluralin, because it didn't look healthy and it didn't make sense to apply both atrazine, which kills beans, and trifluralin, which kills corn, together (28). Later that year, Cenex salesman Nerpel, a friend of DeYoung, tells DeYoung that he should check into the fertilizer. The corn planted hardly grew, and what was grown was sold as animal feed. DeYoung, worried about the liability of the toxic waste, tries to get Cenex to take over the land, which they reluctantly do. Cenex plants Sudan grass, known for soaking up heavy metals, but the "extremely rank stand" of Sudan grass only covers 22 percent of the land (41). Although Cenex claims it will not sell the grass, its Quincy manager John Williams sells it to a neighbor for her horses. Several of the horses die. Meanwhile, DeYoung hires lawyers, but does not make much headway against Cenex, which has the state government on its side (53). Another farmer purchasing from Cenex, Tom Witte, finds that his fields yielded substantially less, and his cows begin getting cancer. His field man gets muscular distrophy, and in 1991 he files for bankruptcy. This draws the attention of several community members, led by Patty Martin. When Patty Martin calls the EPA, she is confused with Senator Patty Murray and the EPA descends upon the city for a thorough investigation. It finds that the rinsate pond used to dump excess fertilizer and pesticides, and then later sold as fertilizer, has beryllium levels over 6 times toxic levels (1.39 ppm), cadmium over 12 times toxic levels (25.2 ppm), and chromium 3.6 times toxic levels (360 ppm), as well as a variety of other metals and materials. Titanium levels "hundreds of times higher than the highest level of titanium found in uncontaminated soil" (76) are also found in several fertilizer tanks used by the affected farmers. The farmers have their fertilizers and crops tested independently and find that they are full of lead and arsenic (94). Martin and other farmers' families have their children's hair tested, and find high levels of all the metals previously mentioned. The homoepath testing them claims that the families' have the highest levels he's ever seen (121). The affected farmers are largely bankrupted, and lose their court cases. One case loses because a memo to the regional manager saying that Cenex could save $170,000 in hazardous waste costs by selling the waste as fertilizer is discovered too late (82). Instead, in 1995 Cenex receives a $10,000 fine for using a pesticide for an unapproved purpose, which has a maximum penalty of $200,000 (91). It appears to the farmers that having toxic metals in fertilizer is not against the law, although Tom Witte later cites a $1,000 fine for adulterating fertilizers. Alarmed by this issue, Patty Martin runs for mayor. She and her bankrupt farmer friends begin to research the mysterious origin of metals in fertilizer. They eventually discover that the ubiquitous practice of mixing tailings and other industrial waste with fertilizer is an accepted and even encouraged way to recycle waste with some zinc or iron (97). Exploding landfill costs had exacerbated this trend. Patty Martin discovers, for example, a proposed state rule for disposing of cement kiln dust by using it as agricultural lime. They also discover that Alcoa sold waste product as a fertilizer or road deicer through L-Bar, a smaller company. The product received at least two lawsuits in Oregon, where farmers settled out-of-court (105). She also believes that cancer rates are higher in Quincy, but the state toxicologist dismisses her claims, although Martin believes that is because the state tracks deaths, not illnesses, and tracks it by place of death when many of the victims' travel out of county to die in advanced hospitals. Later, five people in Quincy come down with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and Dr. Ganesh Raghu tells Wilson that this phenomenon strongly suggests environmental factors, as the disease is extremely rare (167). The group contacts Duff Wilson in 1996, and he begins investigating. He finds that most government agencies don't know much about fertilizer, but he's eventually referred to EPA scientist Alan Rubin, "the king of biosolids". Rubin comments in 1997 that while the purely organic, heavily studied and regulated biosolids are vilified, there is "almost no federal regulation on fertilizer" and that "I have never seen a state or federal limit on heavy metals in fertilizer" (105). Wilson discovers that the only group researching these health risks, the Heavy Metal Task Force, was industry-funded despite being established by the state of California. The group was concerned about California's Proposition 65, which required that people be informed if they were being subjected to toxins. However, the group crafted a loophole to get around laws on hazardous wastes. Products were not waste: thus the limits of heavy metals in wastes did not apply to fertilizers, which were products rather than waste (133). One of the particular loopholes is electric arc furnace dust K061 (its hazardous waste ID), which is "simply not considered hazardous waste if it was [is] used to make fertilizer" (154). Wilson and a couple others travel to a meeting held in February 1997. They count 15 industry officials and 5 state officials. The meeting begins with fly ash; one of the men claims that 4 million tons of coal ash and 2.1 million tons of flue dust was recycled into agricultural fertilizer and sold under names such as Lime Plus. Also in attendance is Dr. John Mortvedt, a researcher whose study which found that cadmium did not build up in soils because it was absorbed by growing plants (173). At the meeting, one of the members suggests that Wilson examine Bay Zinc Company in Washington state, a leading manufacturer of the recycled "fertilizer". Before meeting with Dick Camp Jr. of Bay Zinc, Wilson looks online and finds Cozinco, whose founder Kipp Smallwood is concerned about the metals in zinc fertilizers. The company has a comparison table and offers a free test, while claiming that most zinc fertilizers are 3 percent lead (148). Wilson later cites Zinc Nacionale, a Mexican recycling company, as another source of good zinc through high-temperature purification. Wilson reports that the Bay Zinc Company, founded by Dick Camp Sr., is a pioneer in the recycling of industrial byproducts into fertilizer. Dick Camp Jr. recounts that his dad may have been the first to use flue dust from steel smokestacks, which is higher in heavy metals than the previously used zinc skimmings. Wilson finds that in 1988 Camp had been instrumental in creating the loopholes in the which allowed heavy metals in fertilizers to go unregulated. Wilson discovers that between 1990 and 1996 Bay Zinc took in roughly one and a half million pounds of lead, eighty-six thousand pounds of chromium, and nineteen thousand pounds of nickel. However, Wilson notes that Bay Zinc is relatively small in comparison to Alabama-based Frit Industries, the leader, which connected one its major factories to Nucor Steel. Together eight companies process 120 million pounds of industrial byproducts into fertilizer, roughly half of the total zinc fertilizer sold in the country (157). Wilson says this trade is facilitated by state industrial material exchanges (IMEX) and that twenty-six states have them. Later Wilson goes to see what he calls Monsanto Mountain -- Monsanto had decided in 1994 that it no longer wanted the liability of using its industrial byproducts as fertilizer. Wilson finds that there are two major scientists: Dr. John Mortvedt, and USDA scientist Dr. Rufus Chaney. Mortvedt studied the uptake of cadmium by plants and found that in acidic soil, plants absorbed cadmium quickly. He believes that the cadmium amount in the foods was small enough to be safe, and cautions that the soil should be kept alkaline. Chaney disagrees with Mortvedt. Wilson writes that Chaney, an expert in phytoremediation, believes that a high zinc-to-cadmium ratio (at least 100 to 1) is important for avoiding the toxic effect of cadmium. Chaney also notes that "heavy metals persist in surface soils for centuries to millenia in absence of erosive loss" (176). Chasey also brings up a case in Georgia, where over of peanuts were decimated when the pH dropped. The fertilizers had been bought from SoGreen. Wilson is forced to publish the story when he heard that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is working on it. He says that the New York Times ignored it, and most of the other newspapers relegated it to the last pages, but the story resonated with many people, including experts such as an immunologist, several EPA officials, Congress members, and assorted other people. It also drew the attention of industry, who discuss the ugly details of labeling. Some fertilizer companies, such as IMC Global, become aware of the problem with using these wastes and stop the practice. The Environmental Working Group publishes a report on the issue. Governor Locke of Washington initially seems willing to tackle the problem, but Washington state ends up with an industry-written bill with no labeling requirements (toxicity information would be put on websites) and looser standards than Canada (253). Washington state's new regulations lead to 56 stop-sale orders, 45 denied license applications, and 10 companies with cleaned up materials. One of these stop-sales goes against Siemens AG, which previously sold nuclear fuel processing waste as fertilizer (253). No other state passes a law as strong as Washington. Chaney remarks that keeping the regulations at the state level is the most effective way to block effective regulation. Dennis DeYoung, whose court judgment was overruled gets a retrial in which the jury gets to decide only damages, but a local jurors are sympathetic to Cenex and think DeYoung was just an incompetent farmer, so they award him nothing. Other farmers face similar defeats, and they are denied the right to a class-action lawsuit.
17504105	/m/04ctm2f	That Pesky Rat	Lauren Child	2002-05-23	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is narrated by a rat who wishes he could live the life of a proper pet. He visits several friends who are proper pets, including a chinchilla and a cat. However, he doesn't like the way any of them live. In the end, he puts up signs, asking if there is any one who wants a rat as a pet, and goes to a pet store. He is finally taken home from the store by an old man with poor eyesight sees him in the display window and mistakes him for a cat. In the end, the rat says that he doesn't mind pretending to be a cat and that he likes his life as a pet.
17504410	/m/04g0bjh	Stop the Train	Geraldine McCaughrean	2001-10-18	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 During the Oklahoma Land Run, Cissy and her parents arrive from the east to settle in Florence Town, a new settlement. Within a few days, it becomes apparent that a local railroad company wants to use the land for itself and attempts to purchase it from the people of the town. The townspeople don't want to sell their land, and after falling foul of the railroad company, the director announces that no trains will stop at the town. Suffering hardship through having no railroad connection, the townspeople decide to make efforts - both legal and illegal - to stop the train that passes through their town. The story documents the life of Cissy as she grows and people in the town struggle to make some sort of living. Rumours of a young girl's death under the wheels of a train sparked a sabotage of the railway removing a length of rail, and blocking the road crossing. Realising what damage to human life they might cause, the townspeople manage to reconstruct the track before the train comes through, thereby averting disaster. Deciding that they should take a more peaceful approach to persuading the trains to stop, the townsfolk hold a fair to show their community off to a trainload of passengers, hijacked by a group of the town's men. Following the success of the Florence Fair, and the overwhelming response from the passengers pressuring the railroad company to stop ignoring Florence, trains begin to stop at the town after that, which allows the town to grow. To pay tribute to the town's new start, and in a gesture of reconciliation towards the railroad company, it is renamed Olive, hence the "Olive Branch Line". The book may be partly influenced by the Enid-Pond Creek Railroad War, and is dedicated to the people of Enid, "who did stop the train".
17506191	/m/04f_6yx	The Survivors				 The story takes place in Venice during the autumn of 1973. Detterling, Fielding Gray and Mr. and Mrs. Stern take part in a meeting of the International PEN Club. Tom Llewyllyn and his daughter "Baby" are also attending. Right after the conference the company are told of the death of Lord Canteloupe, Minister of Commerce. Since the lord has lost his son (as told in Sound The Retreat) and his male siblings are dead, Captain Detterling will inherit the title being the closest male relative. Peter Morrison succeeds Canteloupe as minister of Commerce. Tom Llewyllyn mentions that he is waiting for Daniel Mond but does not reveal that Mond is dying and wants to spend his last days in Venice. The company also meets Max de Freville and Stratis "Lyki" Lykiadopolous, who are about to open a casino in the city. With them is a young Sicilian by the name of Piero. Max and Lyki live in Palazzo Albani which they are renting from the absentee owners. Detterling arranges so Tom and Daniel can live in the tower of the palazzo. During a dinner the company discusses the family portraits of the house, including one of an unknown young man. Captain Detterling brings Baby back to England and they become friends. Together with her aunt Isobel, Detterling helps Baby into a school more to her taste. Isobel and Gregory tell Detterling the story of how Baby's mother Patricia ended up in a mental hospital. Piero, who has become friends with Daniel, makes small trips with him, at one time to a monastery on the island called San Francisco del Deserto. While there, Daniel recognizes one of the Franciscan friars as former undergraduate Hugh Balliston (from Places Where They Sing). Balliston deeply regrets his actions of 1967 and has become a monk. Meanwhile, Lyki and Max have troubles with rich Arabs who play with high stakes in their casino, which means the partners must have lots of money at hand. Piero finds an old manuscript from the late 18th century, with part of the story about the Albani family. Fielding Gray discoversd that the young man on the painting is a certain Englishman by the name of Humbert FitzAvon. After having found another manuscript Fielding realizes that FitzAvon, who in 1797 was hanged by a mob of peasants, was son of the first Lord Canteloupe. He had corrupted the Albani family and married a peasant girl he had made pregnant before being lynched. Gray understands that if male descendants of FitzAvon and the girl still live, one of them is really the rightful Lord Canteloupe. With Tom and Piero Fielding heads off to the place where FitzAvon is buried and meets Jude Holbrook, who lives in the area with his mother. With the help of Holbrook the company finds a living male descendant, an imbecile little boy by the name of Paolo Filavoni. No-one wants to reveal the secret since this would mean trouble to Detterling but Piero eventually tells Lyki. Fielding uses the story in a novel but changes the facts radically. Daniel, who has been investigating a tool that has been used in the casino, dies. Piero talks to Hugh who agrees to their burying Daniel on his island. A magnificent funeral procession by boat for Daniel ends the story. The major characters are all participating, except for Fielding Gray and Leonard Percival, who watch the procession from a bridge. Many people from the life of Daniel (and the novel sequence in general) attend too: Robert Constable, Jacquiz Helmut, Balbo Blakeney, soldiers Chead and Bunce, journalist Alfie Schroeder and even Mond's old nemesis, Earl Restarick. During the procession Lyki tries to blackmail Detterling about his title since he needs money. Detterling reveals that Daniel had found out that the instrument he was studying is used for cheating in the casino. Detterling promises to keep quiet about this if Lyki does the same. The funeral ends and the participants strike up small conversations in their boats on the way back. Only Piero, who is about to become a friar himself, notices a black stain spreading across the water of the lagoon.
17506785	/m/0463nzm	Operación Masacre	Rodolfo Walsh		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The novel details the Jose León Suárez massacre, which involved the 1956 capture and shooting of Peronist militants, including rebel leader Juan José Valle. These events followed a 1955 military coup, known as the Revolución Libertadora, which deposed Argentine president Juan Perón and eventually brought the hard-line general Pedro Eugenio Aramburu to power.
17507285	/m/0462jyk	Songs of the Humpback Whale	Jodi Picoult	1991	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jane Jones, a speech pathologist, has been married to Oliver Jones for almost twenty years. Together, they have a teenage daughter named Rebecca. Oliver, a world-renowned marine biologist, has a history of being emotionally abusive and unavailable. After an argument that culminated in Jane slapping Oliver, Jane calls her brother, Joley, who is living and working on an apple orchard in Massachusetts. Through a series of letters, he guides her and Rebecca across the country until they are reunited, while Oliver begins tracking them down. The orchard is owned by Sam, who employs and lodges his friend, Hadley, as well as Jane's brother, Joley. Soon, Jane and Sam begin an affair, and a relationship develops between Rebecca and Hadley. This is controversial, because Hadley is 25 and Rebecca is 15 (Jane is 35 and Sam is 25). Jane is worried about Rebecca and persuades Sam to chase Hadley away. Sam agrees reluctantly. Eventually, Oliver is able to track Jane and Rebecca to the orchard. He arrives there with the intention of bringing them back to San Diego. However, Rebecca, afraid of being separated from Hadley, runs away to his mother's house where he is staying. They are discovered one morning on top of a mountain and confronted by Oliver, along with Sam and a park ranger. Hadley falls from the mountain to his death. Sick with pneumonia from spending the night outside, Rebecca has no choice but to return to the farm. Confronted with the consequences of her actions, Jane returns home with Oliver and Rebecca.
17507535	/m/04g01z0	Potshot	Robert B. Parker	2001	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Spenser is approached by a beautiful blonde widow who wants him to find the identity of the murderer of her late husband. He agrees, but this case will take him away from Boston to Arizona and the resort town of Potshot. Questioning all of the victim's acquaintances yields little information. However, the couple had just recently moved from Los Angeles, so Spenser heads there to talk to their old neighbors. His visit there is very fruitful, but raises as many questions as it answers. Returning to Potshot, Spenser follows-up on what he found out from old neighbors in LA. Meanwhile, he is investigating a band of thugs that live on the outskirts of town in an area called "The Dell". Everyone is convinced that they killed the victim, and had publicly threatened him. "The Dell" gang is led by a man who calls himself The Preacher. He organized the gang from a ragtag group of drunks and junkies. Now, with leadership, they are bullying the townspeople and extorting protection money from local businesses. After a public confrontation with the gang, the town's leaders ask Spenser if he can rid the town of the menace. They agree to pay a healthy sum for the service, so Spenser forms a small private band of mercenaries composed of several associates, most of them criminals or people with criminal backgrounds. But he hires them for their shooting skills, which will be needed for the coming battle. The further Spenser digs, however, he finds that all is not what it seems in Potshot and the killing of the widow's husband may just be the tip of the iceberg of a much larger conspiracy.
17508834	/m/04f_clj	Durandal	Harold Lamb	1981	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A Crusader, betrayed by a scheming emperor and pursued by Muslim swordsmen, discovers the sword of Roland.
17526164	/m/047qsws	Twenty-Six	Leo McKay, Jr.	2003-04-15	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the fictional town of Albion Mines, Nova Scotia, the novel takes place against the backdrop of a coal mine explosion that kills twenty-six miners, loosely based on the real-life Westray Mine explosion of 1992. Like the real-life incident, the novel's Eastyard mine disaster has themes of government corruption and the greed of the mine operator. The story primarily revolves around the family of Ennis Burrows, a former union organizer. His sons, Ziv - a college drop-out now working at the local Zellers - and Arvel, a miner who has followed in his father's footsteps. Their stories and those of other supporting characters unfold from the novel's beginning with the mine explosion, and working backward to show how the tragedy has fundamentally changed each of their lives.
17535876	/m/04633cc	Maurice			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In "Part I", a traveller arrives in Torquay, Devonshire. He sees a funeral procession passing by and notices a beautiful, distressed young boy taking part. The traveller goes to a local inn, where a countryman tells the story of Maurice and the late-dead Old Barnet. Old Barnet was a fisherman married to Dame Barnet. She had died a little over a year ago and Old Barnet was distraught; he had no wife to come home to. One day, Maurice showed up and volunteered to help him out around the house while he was out fishing. Poor and sickly, Maurice could not perform difficult tasks, but he was diligent. Old Barnet grew to love Maurice, as did the villagers. "Part II" opens with Old Barnet's brother informing Maurice that he must leave the cottage after one week. Maurice spends his days mourning the fisherman. One day the traveller returns to the village and seeks out Maurice; he stops at the cottage and asks to stay the night. He and Maurice talk and Maurice tells of his plans to leave the cottage and find work on a farm. He also tells the traveller of his poor family and how he does not want to be a bother to them, revealing that his father used to beat him because he did not believe Maurice was really ill. The traveller and Maurice sit together, enjoying nature, and discuss the pleasures of country life and reading. The traveller offers to care for Maurice and to educate him. The traveller explains in "Part III" how he is the son of an Oxford mathematics professor. When young, he loved to read outdoors and wanted to know how the world worked. He became an architect and travelled throughout Europe. Eventually he married a lovely woman with whom he had a son, Henry. One day the couple left their son with his nurse during an outing and she fell asleep. When they returned, their son was gone, and he could not be found. The traveller spent years searching the countryside for his son; one day he met the woman, Dame Smithson, who had stolen his son. To please her sailor husband who wanted a child, she lied to him and said she was pregnant. Before his return, she needed a child, so she stole the traveller's. Unused to the harsh life of a peasant, the child suffered and became sickly. As a result, the woman's husband disliked him and beat him, believing him to be worthless. Hearing this story, Maurice reveals himself to be the traveller's son; he had changed his name to avoid the person he believed to be his cruel father. Overjoyed to be reunited with his son, the traveller buys the cottage for him and they return every once in a while. Maurice is educated, grows up, and travels widely. He returns to see that the cottage has disintegrated; he builds a new one for another poor fisherman's family, beside the lot of the old one.
17546696	/m/0463dsm	Brothers in Arms	Don Perrin	1999-08		 Brothers In Arms begins where The Soulforge left off, after Raistlin Majere has passed the Test of High Sorcery. Raistlin and Caramon Majere have decided to be hired as mercenaries, and are attempting to go to Langtree, the base of the army of Baron Ivor of Langtree. Antimodes goes with them part of the way. On the way, Raislin's horse throws him while fording a river, and Raistlin catches pneumonia. He is taken to Haven, where he is healed by his friend, Lemuel. Antimodes leaves the brothers there. They winter in Haven, setting out in the spring towards Langtree. At the same time, Kitiara uth Matar, the twins' sister, is in Sanction, trying to advance in the ranks of the Dragonarmy. To prove her worth, Ariakas sends her on a special mission: convince the red dragon Immolatus to come to Ariakas in Sanction, where he will receive orders from him. Kitiara succeeds, and the orders are to go to the city of Hope's End, and find the hiding place of the Gold and Silver Dragon Eggs. Meanwhile the twins have joined the Army of the Baron Ivor, and are trained: Raistlin as a war mage by Master Horkin, Caramon as a warrior. They also meet Scrounger, a half-kender and fellow recruit, and forge a friendship with him. Finally, they receive marching orders: the army has been hired by Good King Wilhelm of Blodehelm to destroy the city of Hope's End whose citizens have rebelled against the king.
17549049	/m/04g229_	The Kill-Off	Jim Thompson	1957	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Manduwoc, a small seaside resort town (located "a few hours train-ride from New York City" (6)) has been suffering financially from gradual loss of its tourist trade, and morally from gossip spread by Luane Devore about the seedy activities of the town's inhabitants. Before the murder even happens, numerous characters are viewed as potential suspects, notably the psychotic Bobbie Ashton, whose future was ruined when Luane revealed him as the bastard offspring of a mixed-race relation. Also involved in the potential crime is the suspected hoard of money Luane keeps from her husband Ralph's earnings. When finally Luane is found dead, having fallen down a flight of stairs, the characters scramble to establish their alibis. Ultimately local businessman Pete Pavlov confesses to unintentionally having pushed Luane down the stairs during a confrontation, although he suspects that Luane did not die immediately but was killed by a third person.
17550833	/m/0462yst	8th Confession	James Patterson	2009-04-27	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 From the bookjacket "As San Francisco's most glamorous millionaires mingle at the party of the year, someone is watching--waiting for a chance to take vengeance on Isa and Ethan Bailey, the city's most celebrated couple. Finally, the killer pinpoints the ideal moment, and it's the perfect murder. Not a trace of evidence is left behind in their glamorous home. As Detective Lindsay Boxer investigates the high-profile murder, someone else is found brutally executed--a preacher with a message of hope for the homeless. His death nearly falls through the cracks, but when reporter Cindy Thomas hears about it, she knows the story could be huge. Probing deeper into the victim's history, she discovers he may not have been quite as saintly as everyone thought. As the hunt for two criminals tests the limits of the Women's Murder Club, Lindsay sees sparks fly between Cindy and her partner, Detective Rich Conklin. The Women's Murder Club now faces its toughest challenge: will love destroy all that four friends have built?"
17552689	/m/047tj5d	Hallucinating Foucault	Patricia Duncker	1996	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A postgraduate student writing a thesis on the French writer Paul Michel starts a relationship with the Germanist, a girl he meets in the library, at Cambridge University. She encourages him to look at his biography more closely rather than only focus solely on the texts. They have dinner with her father; later in London he meets Jacques Martel, a friend of her father's who knows Paul Michel. He then decides to move to Paris to find him, and reads his letters to Michel Foucault in the library. He finds out Paul Michel lives in an asylum in Clermont-Ferrand. He arrives there at night and finds accommodation in Romagnat. He starts meeting with Paul Michel. Soon enough, they are allowed to spend whole days out in the gardens. Eventually, they manage to winkle a day outside of the premises. Michel gets attacked by a man in a bar and fights back. He then kisses the protagonist. Michel manages to trick the restaurant into believing they are with the town major and thus get off without being reported for the fight. Paul Michel is later granted two months away from the madhouse since the protagonist's visits have improved his condition considerably. The protagonist drives him down to Nice, where they stay with an old friend of his, Alain Legras, and his wife. During their stay they finally become lovers when Michel reassures the protagonist he needn't worry about his virtue and the protagonist argues asking if his opinion on the matter doesn't count. While the protagonist wants Michel to start writing again as part of his "recovery" Michel is, like the Germanist predicted, unable to do so because Foucault, his reader, is dead. Michel tells him about his relationship with Michel Foucault and claims that their relationship cannot last, that the protagonist must go on to write his thesis about him. Eventually, Michel gets up one night, takes the car and he kills himself, under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Although it is clear to all it was intentional. After the funeral, the protagonist returns to England, writes his thesis and becomes the foremost expert on Paul Michel's writing, but fails to expand on the writer's life. His relationship with the Germanist, who flew to France to help him after the accident and got him through the funeral, ends after that, even though they move in similar academic circles.
17553673	/m/0464vz7	The Long Road Home				 Gabriella Harrison, a child of the fifties suffers abuse from the hands of her mother, Eloise, who explains her abuse as disciplining Gabriella for being so bad. Frequent beatings mar her life. Her father scared of annoying her mother plays a spectator to all the evil happenings. Before Gabbie turns thirteen her father, tired of his wife's constant abuse towards their daughter, leaves. Her mother as always accuses Gabbie's badness for her father's departure. She says it's only because of her badness that her parents hate her, and that is exactly why her father has left them. Gabbie is then gotten rid of at a nunnery to finish out her education by her mother so she can abandon the biggest disappointment in her life. While there, Gabriella decides she wants to become a nun. In the course of being a postulant, she falls in love with a priest, Father Joe Connors. They want to move in to the real world to live their life loving each other, but the priest is not confident about making it in the real world for Gabbie and the symbol of their love growing in Gabbie's womb. Incidentally the priest commits suicide with a turmoil for he cannot break the promise made to the brotherhood of serving the needed, and for he cannot live without Gabriella. Gabriella thus loses her love, and then their child in a miscarriage. Ultimately she is compelled to leave the convent for the sin committed. Cast out into society, Gabbie is determined to move on and finds an apartment where the tenants welcome the young woman lovingly, particularly an old professor. Everything seems to be going well; Gabbie has a job at a pastry shop, but loses it when she defends a child whose mother dislocates her arm in a fit of impatience. Eventually she finds a job at a book store whilst buying a Christmas present to her doting friend, the old professor. Gabbie also meets a new tenant named Steve Porter in the boarding house. She initially does not approve of him, but eventually falls for him. She has a long relationship with him. He does not have a job and is constantly after Gabbie to give him money. She obliges, until the day he steals from her. He turns out to be a con artist, wanted by the police for stealing money from several people. When she comes to know of this, he demands she give him most of the money the old professor leaves her when he dies. She refuses to give him any money after learning his true face and about him being responsible for the professor's death. He then beats her up, nearly killing her. Gabbie is taken to a hospital, where she becomes friends with a Doctor Peter presiding over her. They like each other. But before moving on with her life with Peter, Gabriella decides to meet her parents and ask them the long avoided question - why they abandoned her and never loved her. Towards the end of the book Gabbie visits her father hoping to get some answers on why he allowed her mother to treat her so horribly. Her father offers no answer except that he was weak. Gabbie then visits her stepfather and his new wife where it is learned that her mother never changed her bitter ways till the end and even went so far as to verbally abuse her new husband until she died of cancer. At last, after realizing that it was not her fault that her parents never loved her, she lets go of the past and moves on with her life with her new love - the doctor by her side. pt:The Long Road Home fi:Kotimatka (Danielle Steelin romaani)
17554529	/m/0465t4x	The Insatiate Countess	John Marston			 As the play opens, Countess Isabella is at her house in Venice, where she observes the customary period of mourning for her recently-deceased husband Viscount Hermus. Her state of mind is far removed from what society expects: instead of grieving over her husband's death, she wishes he had died much sooner. She quickly strikes up a new romance with Roberto, the Count of Cyprus; they violate mourning with a sudden marriage. A masque is staged at their wedding feast &mdash; and the wanton Countess is attracted to one of the dancers in the masque, Count Massino. She writes him a love letter; they meet and quickly flee together to Pavia. There, Isabella meets Massino's friend Gnaica, the Count of Gazia, and just as precipitously she conceives a passion for him. Gnaica resists her advances at first, unwilling to betray his friend; but the Countess's appeal soon overwhelms his scruples. Massino returns from hunting, only to be denied admission to Isabella's presence. He denounces her uncontrolled lust in satiric verses; she, outraged, solicits Gnaica to kill Massino. The two meet and duel &mdash; but soon find that their hearts aren't in the matter. They talk over the situation, and part amicably. Isabella is even more outraged by this, and determines to work the deaths of both men. A Spanish colonel named Don Sago falls in love with her on first sight; she uses him to kill Count Massino. Sago is captured and brought before the Duke of Medina; he confesses fully. As a result, Isabella is condemned to death. Her husband Count Roberto, disguised as a friar, visits her on the scaffold, to offer her his forgiveness and bid her a final farewell. Isabella's lustful career is contrasted with the three virtuous women of the play's subplot. Two foolish citizens, Mizaldus and Clardiana, are determined to continue a family feud begun by their grandfathers; even on their mutual wedding day, the two quarrel in the street. Their new brides, Thais and Abigail, are old friends, and decide to teach their silly husbands a lesson. The two men are not brave enough to fight an actual duel; each tries to gain advantage on his rival by seducing the rival's wife. Thais and Abigail use this circumstance to stage a doubled version of the bed trick that is so common in English Renaissance drama. Both Rogero and Clardiana have sex with their own wives, each mistakenly thinking that he is a successful seducer. Meanwhile, the virtuous widow Lady Lentulus is being pursued by her own would-be seducer, Mendoza Foscari, nephew of Duke Amago of Venice. When Mendoza tries to climb to the widow's balcony, his rope ladder breaks under him. Mendoz is injured in the fall; he crawls away from the Lady's house, and is apprehended by the night watch. The watch assume that the Duke's nephew has been assaulted, and scour the city for suspects; they find Clardiana and Rogero in each other's houses, and arrest them both. The two silly men are ready to be wrongfully condemned, rather than admit publicly that they've been cuckolded (as they now believe); Mendoza, wanting to spare Lady Lentulus dishonor, claims that he was climbing to her apartment to steal her jewels. The exasperated Duke sentences all three men to death, hoping that the move will shock someone into telling the truth. On the day appointed for the executions, Abigail and Thais come forward to explain the double bed trick; their husbands, now realizing that they are not cuckolds, retract their confessions and are released. (Mendoza's part of the story is never resolved.)
17558218	/m/0465_l6	Child of the Northern Spring	Persia Woolley	1987	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel begins on the night before Guinevere's departure from her home, the kingdom of Rheged to Logres, in order to marry King Arthur. Along the journey, Guinevere recalls scenes from her childhood. Later, Bedivere retells the story of Arthur's ascension as High King, focusing on the events that surround Arthur meeting his father Uther, his investiture of Excalibur by Vivien the Lady of the Lake (and her subsequent death at the hands of Sir Balin) and the subsequent war with King Lot of Lothian. Afterwards, Guinevere retells how the war with Lot affected Guinevere's people directly. The book continues to show episodes of her youth and several proposed offers of marriage, including, among others, Gawain, Uwain, her cousin Maelgwn (who was willing to put aside his own wife in order to marry her), Gildas and King Mark of Cornwall (made on his behalf by his nephew Tristan). Arthur and Guinevere's marriage is a hasty affair, due to an invasion that was timed to coincide with the wedding celebrations, an act attempt at catching Arthur unaware. During this time Guinevere is left with Igraine and Morgan le Fey, the latter leaves when Guinevere discovers her and her paramour Accolon. Following Arthur's return there is the first meeting of the Round Table, which is a suggestion of Guinevere's.
17562786	/m/0465chq	As It Is Written	De Lysle Ferree Cass	1982	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of Datu Buang who discovers a lost city and battles with ape-like creatures.
17564352	/m/0465jrt	Fair Stood the Wind for France	H. E. Bates	1944	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story concerns John Franklin, the pilot of a Wellington Bomber who badly injures his arm when he brings his plane down in Occupied France at the height of the Second World War. He and his crew make their way to an isolated farmhouse and are taken in by the family of a French farmer. Plans are made to smuggle the them back to Britain via Vichy controlled Marseilles but Franklin's conditions worsens and he remains at the farm during the hot summer weeks that follow and falls in love with the farmer's daughter Françoise. Eventually they make the hazardous journey together by rowing boat and bicycle...
17564895	/m/04640xq	Behind the Attic Wall				 This is a story about a twelve-year-old girl named Maggie who has been kicked out of many boarding schools and foster homes. She is sent to live with her two great-aunts Lillian and Harriet and her uncle Morris. Maggie is at first rebellious and disobedient. It is not until she ventures behind the attic wall and discovers a pair of dolls that can walk and talk like real people that she begins to change. Maggie is loved unconditionally by her new friends and she in turn learns to love. Not until later do the readers and Maggie find out that the dolls are not ordinary dolls but once were the head mistress and headmaster of the boarding house.
17569334	/m/04652fc	A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights	Jesse Jackson, Jr.			 The title of the book comes from the Preamble to the United States Constitution. The preamble includes the phrase "in Order to form a more perfect Union" as the first specifically mentioned purpose of the United States Constitution. The book has several sections. The first four chapters relate autobiographical details to his experience in touring the Civil War battle sites. In the subsequent section, he discusses federalism. In the third section he describes his economic plan. Then, Jackson outlines eight constitutional amendments. In the final section, he discusses achieving these policy goals set forth in the third and fourth sections. On March 4, 2003, Jackson proposed these eight amendments. The book includes full chapters for each amendment. The eight amendments are as follows: #the right to public education of equal high quality; #the right to health care of equal high quality; #equal rights for women; #the right to decent, safe, sanitary and affordable housing; #the right to a clean, safe and sustainable environment; #the right . . . to full employment and balanced economic growth; #the explicit fundamental right of citizens to vote; and #an amendment regarding taxing the people of the United States progressively. The Education Amendment which reads "(1) All persons shall enjoy the right to a public education of equal high quality; and (2) The Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation," has received public attention for several years. Jackson feels that his amendment is a natural response to San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, , which determined that an education is not a constitutionally protected fundamental right. An important theme of the book is the North-South relationship as it influences the extent of federalism in the United States. The book describes how from before the Civil War to well after the Civil Rights Movement the balance of power between protectors of state's rights and defenders of the federal government have battled over resources and power along North-South alliances. Jackson is a detractor of state's rights and feels that the extensive power given to states has slowed our broad distribution of social goods by perpetuating inequality and thus unrest. Dyson also notes that Jackson attempts to bring class to the forefront of the discourse in an effort to offer a political vision toward social equity and equality. He says Jackson views race as the lens to optimally view American history and views economic issues as the hearing aid through which the politics of today can best be heard.
17575241	/m/04667z7	Terminal Freeze	Lincoln Child	2009-01-27	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The events take place in Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle. Evan Marshall, a paleoecologist, is a team member from Northern Massachusetts University studying the effects of global warming on a receding glacier near the fictional Mount Fear. The expedition discovers a monstrous ancient animal, presumed to be a preserved example of Smilodon populator, frozen in solid ice inside a lava tube made into an ice cave. The expedition's corporate sponsors, sensing huge publicity, decide to have the beast cut from the ice, thawed, and revealed live on television. Meanwhile, local Tunit try to warn the scientists that they do not understand what they have found. Specific warnings are that the animal only exists to kill and that they (the Tunit) do not believe that it is dead. A fanatical documentary producer continues his attempt to capture the events of the discovery, even after the animal exceeds any expectations of its capabilities. (Tunit was the name assigned to the Dorset People in Greenland by the early Thule proto-Inuit. The last Dorset survivors died in 1902 and no Dorset People ever lived in Alaska, being resident in eastern Canada and Greenland.)
17580911	/m/0465x_y	A Ghost in the Machine				 Midsomer resident Dennis Brinkley, an enthusiastic collector of old war machines and torture weapons, suffers a gruesome death after being crushed by one of his own devices. Although his demise is initially regarded as an accident, his best friend Benny believes otherwise, and her suspicions are only confounded by local psychic Ava Garrett, who tells her that she will ask Derek to identify his killer at her next seance. However, the elusive murderer silences her before the event can go ahead, leaving Chief Inspector Barnaby, accompanied by his Sgt Gavin Troy, with two gruesome slayings and an increasingly complex mystery to unravel...
17581666	/m/0465286	Hanging Curve				 Mickey Rawlings has just been traded from the NL Cincinnati Reds to the AL St. Louis Browns, a proverbial team on the rise, but is stuck on the bench. Melvin Greene approaches him to play in an exhibition under an assumed name (Mickey Welch) for Enoch's Elcars, a semipro team from East St. Louis, Illinois. Mickey agrees, but comes to regret it after going 0 for 4 with 3 strikeouts against Slip Crawford, a ringer for the Elcars' opponents, the East Saint Louis Cubs, who win the game 9-5 despite several unsavoury incidents. As the Browns open a promising season with victory over the Chicago White Sox, East St. Louis marks the passing of Crawford, apparently lynched by a mob of white men after J.D. Whalen, who looked terrible against him in the exhibition, said he heard him insult a white woman. Most of the Elcars and Enoch are members of the Ku Klux Klan. Mickey is recruited by Karl Landfors and Franklin Aubury to investigate the crime. Rawlings is performing terribly at the plate, is temporarily abandoned by live-in girlfriend Margie Turner after she reveals she had married someone else when she was younger on a dare (and therefore could not marry him), and as worse comes to worst, is suspended for fifteen days after his participation in the semipro game is revealed. But his investigation introduces him to the world of Black America, as revealed in his interactions with Aubury, Bell and other black men. Rawlings' investigations take him to Indianapolis and Evansville, Indiana, even as the Klan try to get him on their side. There are back and forth incidents of retaliation, including the destruction of Enoch's car service, the burning down of Cubs Park and the beating up of Enoch's son. Finally, after a memorable day on the field, Rawlings is beaten with a bullwhip by six Klansmen, prompting him to fight back. Rawlings learns that the reason for Crawford's death leads back to the riots of 1917 in St. Louis. J.D. Whalen, while he thought he was alone, killed a white co-worker, Tim Lowrey, who he thought was muscling in on the chance to succeed Enoch and marry his unattractive daughter Jessalyn. Unbeknownst to Whalen, Crawford saw him do it and at the game, mentioned it to him, causing Whalen to panic and stir up a mob against Crawford to kill him. After confronting Whalen, Rawlings goes to Enoch with his findings and a few days later, Whalen is found dead on the train tracks.
17584202	/m/02rbvd6	The Coffin Quilt	Ann Rinaldi	1999-10	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rinaldi tells the story of the Hatfield-McCoy feud in the late 19th century through the eyes of Fanny, a young female member of the McCoy clan. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, Rinaldi illustrates the fervent code of honor in the mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia as her protagonist struggles to understand the superstition and loyalty fueling the cycle of violence in Tug Valley. In the end, Fanny must choose between her family and her future to escape the feud. When Fanny’s sister, Roseanna, the “purtiest girl in the county,” has an affair with Johnse Hatfield, the slow brewing hatred between the Hatfield and the McCoys erupts. As the families take the law into their own hands through dubious pacts and midnight raids, Fanny follows her sister Roseanna into a nest of secrets. Pregnant and estranged from her lover, Roseanna sews a coffin quilt to preserve the family members so quickly disappearing from Tug Valley. Fanny disapproves of the quilt despite her loyalty to her sister and evolves from innocent bystander to judicious dissenter as the violence escalates. With the help of her mysterious “Yeller Thing,” Fanny learns to overcome the petty hatred plaguing both families.
17584330	/m/0465hvl	Pygmy	Chuck Palahniuk	2009-05-05	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The plot revolves around a 13-year-old boy named Agent Number 67 from an unnamed, totalitarian state described as a "mash-up of North Korea, Cuba, Communist-era China, and Nazi-era Germany", as an exchange student to live with an American family from an unnamed Midwestern location as a sleeper agent to execute a terrorist attack on the United States codenamed "Operation Havoc". Nicknamed "Pygmy" by his American family for his diminutive size, he is introduced into the rituals of modern American life such as enrolling in public school, and going to church. On a trip to Wal-Mart with his host brother, in the bathroom he sodomises a bully who had been victimising his host brother. The scene is described in graphic detail. This is only the first of many acts committed by the operative in order to adjust to American life, while preparing with his fellow operatives, also masquerading as exchange students, to execute "Operation Havoc".
17589267	/m/04632zn	The Elfin Ship			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story centers on a river trip organized when trading ships with Christmas items inexplicably fail to arrive. Unknown to the heroes, their route downriver to a seaside trading center will take them through areas under siege from evil forces including crazed goblins, malevolent witches, and the sinister dwarf Selznak. Professor Wurzle provides somewhat misguided explanations and histories for events as they arise. The youngest character, Dooly, is given to wild fantasies and stories. This frequently leaves the inexperienced adventurer, cheesemaker Jonathan Bing, with competing and implausible explanations as to what is actually going on. (As the story progresses, it becomes evident that many of Dooly’s apparently wilder statements are true.) Downstream, they encounter Miles the Magician, the carefree link men, and the elves at Seaside running the mysterious elfin ship, which is seen at rare, inexplicable moments. These friends are needed to thwart Selznak’s plans, which are entwined in their own in ways that only slowly become evident. Dooly’s piratical grandfather is hunted down at his fantastic submarine, and forced to reveal his role in assisting Selznak. They decide how to deal with the various threats, Bing, Wurzle, Dooly and Dooly’s grandfather heading back upriver to confront Selznak in his castle lair.
17589802	/m/04639z2	The Man in the Moon	James Blaylock	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story centers on a long river trip organized when trading ships with Christmas items inexplicably fail to arrive. Unknown to the heroes, their route downriver to a seaside trading center will take them through areas under siege from evil forces including crazed goblins and malevolent witches. Professor Wurzle provides somewhat misguided explanations and histories for events as they arise. The youngest character, Dooly, is given to wild fantasies and stories. This frequently leaves the inexperienced adventurer, cheesemaker Jonathan Bing, with competing and implausible explanations as to what is actually going on. Downstream, they encounter Miles the Magician, the carefree link men, and the elves at running the mysterious elfin ship, seen at inexplicable moments. (Here, the plot diverges significantly from the rewrite, The Elfin Ship. Editor Del Rey described the plot as having gone "haywire".) The heroes from the downriver trip are taken in an elfin airship to the moon. There, amid lush valleys, the elves have a kingdom. They begin to look into the activities of Dooly’s mysterious grandfather, but before significant conclusions are reached, they decide to test the curious object carried by the Professor. Discovered in an elfin ship, and believed by him to be a weapon, it is actually a treasure-hunting device. Following minor misadventures, a treasure is found, and the heroes return home to distribute their shares of the treasure to the townspeople.
17592016	/m/0466k_d	Nerve			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Robert Finn watches a fellow steeplechase jockey blow his brains out in the parade ring at Dunstable races, just before a race. As Finn and the other jockeys cope, some better than others, with the stress of their jobs, other incidents lead him to conclude that someone is trying to destroy the lives of jockeys all over England. Finn is not the average jockey. The only child of famous virtuoso musicians, and the single family member to not be gifted musically, he has followed a different path than that of his family's vocation. He has inherited other skills that will help him as he unravels a sad and warped trail. And he has been remarkably successful jockey for a man with only 2 years experience. Soon, he is the next target. A losing streak that lasts weeks threatens his job until he takes it upon himself to do a little sleuthing, and uncovering the identity of the culprit. Now, Finn wants his revenge, and he takes his time setting it up.
17592509	/m/04645v4	My Sister Jodie	Jacqueline Wilson		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Pearl and Jodie are sisters. Jodie, 13, is very protective of her younger sister, Pearl. Jodie is boisterous, mischievous and dresses in a flamboyant manner. Pearl, 10, is shy and loves to read books. She also admires and looks up to Jodie. Their mother and father, Sharon and Joe, decide to move to Melchester College, where they have both been offered new jobs as a cook and caretaker, respectively. Their motivation is to give the girls an opportunity to receive an excellent education. Jodie does not want to move because her mother says she will have to retake Year 8 because her current school is not giving her a proper education. Pearl, however, is glad because she is the victim of constant bullying at her school. She views the move as an opportunity to have a fresh start at a different place. When family moves to the college, Jodie is grumpy and says that she is only joining everyone else because she needs to look after Pearl. Once they reach their destination, Miss French, the school secretary, comes to meet them at the gate. The family seems to like her because of Miss French's friendly nature. On their first night at the school, they meet Mr Wilberforce, the Headmaster, as well as his wheelchair-using wife Mrs Wilberforce. They eat dinner in the Wilberforces' bungalow where Miss French is also an invited guest. As it is the summer holidays, very few students reside at the school. The sisters meet tall, badger-watching Harley, with whom Pearl makes very good friends. They are also introduced to three little children: Zeph, Dan and Sakura. Out of the three, Pearl prefers Sakura. They also meet other members of staff, the under matron Miss Ponsonby ("Undie") and the gardener, Jed. Jodie begins a serious relationship with Jed almost immediately, even though he is five years older than she is. Jodie likes Jed because of his 'bad boy' nature. At first, Jed does not appear to be interested in Jodie. When Pearl turns eleven, she receives several lovely presents. Mrs Wilberforce gives Pearl a manuscript book and tells her that she has to write her own story in it. Harley gifts her with a torch, and they go out to badger watch together every night. One night, much to Pearl's pleasure, they even hold hands. When Pearl comes home, Jodie demands to know what's going on because she gets the wrong idea and thinks that they are being romantic. Pearl tells her they have been watching badgers and did not want her to come because she was too noisy. When term starts, Pearl makes friends with a group of girls: Harriet, Sheba, Freya and Clarissa. She enjoys her lessons and for once in her life, is not bullied. Pearl also continues to do well in her schoolwork. Jodie, however, has a difficult time. The other boys and girls in her year call her a "tart" and make her life miserable. When she goes off into the woods with two boys, her reputation gets even worse, although she tells Pearl she did not do anything with them. Furthermore, Jed the gardener is being romantically pursued by some other girls in Jodie's year. Pearl becomes increasingly concerned about her sister's behaviour. As a consequence of the fact that Jodie's classmates refer to her as a 'Ginger Minger,' Jodie dyes her hair dark black, but it goes wrong and comes out purple. Another unfortunate incident occurs when Jed runs over a baby badger, one of two cubs Pearl and Harley have been watching. When it dies, Jodie, Pearl and Harley are disgusted with Jed's uncaring behaviour towards the badger cub. Jodie dumps Jed for the final time. She soon sees Jed with the cleaner's daughter, Tiffany Colgate. Pearl becomes even more worried when she finds a pregnancy test in the bathroom and confronts Jodie, thinking it belongs to her which Jodie strongly denies. At the Halloween party, Jodie dresses up and plays with the children at the Halloween party. She then takes the little boys back to their dormitory. Pearl takes the little girls to their dormitory and tells them stories about a pumpkin fairy. Jodie, however, conjures up a frightening horror story that scares the little boys to death (figuratively). Many of the boys fall ill and have terrible nightmares. As a punishment for scaring the boys, Jodie has to stand in front of all the children at school and tell them that the 'sad white whispering woman' who lives in the tower is not real. Everyone laughs at her but Jodie does not seem to care. Everyone is being extremely cruel to Jodie. For example, one of her classmates keeps teasing her about the 'sad white whispering woman.' On Guy Fawkes Night (Bonfire Night), Jodie climbs up to the tower and dresses up as the ghost, causing several people (even the seniors) to become frightened. Jodie then realizes that little Dan, for whom Jodie has a soft spot, is very scared. She pulls the dress off and attempts to open the window and call out that it is only her. She tugs too hard, then disaster strikes, and Jodie falls out of the window, breaks her neck and dies tragically. Pearl and her parents are devastated. Newspapers claim Jodie committed suicide (although she did not). They leave Melchester College to live in a flat in London, because they say that they would not be able to face Melchester College ever again. Before they move, Sharon reveals she is having a baby, meaning the pregnancy test was hers. Pearl is not keen at first but soon grows to love her new sister May, even using the book that Mrs Wilberforce gave her to write about the story of her and Jodie, so that May can read it when she is older. At the conclusion of the book, Pearl states that while she will be a good big sister to May, however, she'll never be as good as Jodie.
17592586	/m/0462q5d	The 3 Mistakes of My Life	Chetan Bhagat	2008-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Each has a different motive: Govind's goal is to make money; Ishaan desires to nurture Ali, a gifted batsman; Omi just wants to be with his friends. Govind is the narrator and the central character of the novel, and the story revolves around the three mistakes caused by him and the religion
17598521	/m/0465p1v	The Secret Order of the Gumm Street Girls	Elise Primavera	2006-09-26	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 At the start of the novel, Franny Muggs is surveying Gumm Street, scowling at the thought of Pru and Cat when she spots a new family moving to #5 Gumm. She’s immediately intrigued and scurries down her steps to greet her new neighbors. She is greeted by former beauty queen, Pearl Diamond, and her daughter, Ivy. Pearl fusses over a piano arriving as Mr. Staccato introduces himself lavishly with his two dogs, Fred and Ginger. He offers to teach Ivy piano lessons in light of their new instrument. Ivy accepts the offer and quickly makes friends with Franny. Ivy and Franny soon discover a letter tucked into a creepy portrait of Aunt V (the relative that left the Diamond family the house) saying that she faked her death to avoid a run-in with taxes. Pearl excuses it as simply Aunt V losing her marbles and Ivy discards the letter. As the novel progresses, Ivy quickly learns from Franny the social situation on Gumm Street. Pru hates Cat, Cat hates Pru, they both don’t like Franny and Franny doesn’t like either of them. Cat’s stuck-up and thinks she’s “all that” with her ESP and Pru is a coward thinking of nothing but books. Franny points out that Ivy should try her hardest to get into Liverwurst, a class at Sherbet Academy,because she is in Liverwurst. Cat and Pru being the “stuck-up know-it-alls they are” are in Tuna-on-Rye. The origin of this class system goes back to Heironymus Gumm, the founder of Sherbet Academy. He named the classes after his favorite sandwiches: Egg Salad, Bacon Lettuce and Tomato, Liverwurst, and Tuna-on-Rye. Abiding by Franny’s request, Ivy does her best to take the placement test to get herself into Liverwurst. However, when the door opens, she’s introduced to the Tuna-on-Rye class. Cat immediately sees Ivy’s Jinx, freaks out, and is sent out of class because of her disruption. Pru, however, take the opportunity to introduce herself to Ivy, for any enemy of Cat’s is a friend to Pru. Much to Pru’s dismay, she finds that Ivy is too strange too hang out with her group of friends. After learning Ivy made it into Tuna-on-Rye, Franny abandons her and Ivy is once again left alone to curse her Jinx. After a depressing day, she makes it over to Mr. Staccato’s for her first lesson at # 7 Gumm Street. She’s greeted by the strangely human terriers, Fred and Ginger, and first sees the glamorous Ruby-Red slippers from the MGM film, The Wizard of Oz. Mr. Staccato teaches Ivy middle C on the piano because this is where “it all starts” or sometimes “where it all ends.” During the lesson, Ivy learns about Mr. Staccato’s past and his involvement in The Wizard of Oz film. After a few days of misfortune, Ivy discovers that Mr. Staccato’s house is the only place she feels safe and away from her Jinx. Ivy asks Mr. Staccato if, after school everyday, she can clean his house as a job. He agrees and offers that in exchange for teaching her lessons for free. The days slip by until Franny begins talking to Ivy again. She exclaims that she’s going to be in Liverwurst (as a result of Ivy failing Tuna-on-Rye). The time of the ever ominous piano recital comes and Pru plans to beat out Cat and be the star of the whole show. Cat has no worries about the event; only, she’s having uneasy feelings and consults her I Ching. It warns her to pack up and leave town as well as beware of hurricane Cha Cha. She dismisses the warning as ludicrous. She also unknowingly conjures a wizard in a balloon that tells her “Heironymous Gumm... Behind” and to watch out for a backwards tidal wave. On the actual day of the recital, Ivy and Franny are at #5 Gumm and Franny gives Ivy a shirt with “Carpe diem” written on it. Ivy then wishes her hair wasn’t so stringy, and Franny offers to cut it. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a choppy disaster. With no time to fix it, Ivy and Franny whisk off to the recital. The two crash in during Pru’s performance, ruining it, and much to Pru’s horror, Cat uses the opportunity to ridicule her. Ashamed, she storms out of the room. Ivy then gives a lukewarm performance and after going offstage, Pearl spots her is mortified at the sight of her daughter’s new haircut. Misplacing her anger, she takes it out on Franny and demands that Ivy come home. Mr. Staccato scolds Cat for her cruelty towards Pru; shortly after, Cat apologizes along with Franny and Ivy for ruining her performance, but Pru accepts none of it. She vows never to speak to any of the girls again. Humiliated and guilt-ridden, Ivy begins to cry whereupon Mr. Staccato’s tells her, her unique talent: strength. Mr. Staccato also reveals to her the origin of the ruby slippers. He also tells her that she is the true owner of the slippers, also warning her never to give them up. Sherbet’s first hurricane strikes during the conversation. They receive a phone call from Pearl; Ivy speeds off home at the thought of her mother’s wrath, but Staccato has more to tell her. Regardless, she promises to visit him tomorrow. At #3 Gumm, Franny once again observes the street through her binoculars when she spots Mr. Staccato’s form levitating in the sky. He tells her, “You make a better door than a window” and disappears into the stormy clouds. Shocked, Franny wakes up Ivy and tells her the Mr. Staccato’s dead. Shortly after, Fred and Ginger show up on her doorstep crying. The next day, the hurricane dissipates and the two friends make their way over to #7 Gumm. Ivy takes the Ruby Red Slippers. Just then, Cha Cha, a glamorous woman claiming to be Mr.Staccato’s sister, then niece, appears demanding ownership of the shoes. She also threatens to call Judge Gumm if Ivy doesn’t cooperate. Ivy and Franny manage to escape and in Ivy’s room, they discover that the ruby red paint is rubbing off of one of the slippers, revealing its true silver color. Ivy and Franny both realize the seriousness of this predicament and agree to call Pru for help. She refuses to even consider helping Ivy, but at the thought of Cat coming too, changes her mind joins them. Once there, she reads passages from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. They all conclude that Ivy, whose mother’s middle name is Gale, is a descendant of Dorothy, and that Fred and Ginger are related to the famous terrier, Toto. Despite Pru’s protest, they agree to call Cat and ask for additional assistance. However, before she can provide much help, the four Gumm Street Girls hear Cha Cha entering the house. Ivy ushers them into her closet, for she doesn’t wish for them to get into trouble either. Cha Cha, once again, request she hand over the silver shoe, even offering to make Ivy a deal. If she gives her the shoe, she’ll take the Jinx off her hands forever. Holding out still, Cha Cha tries to take them by force and is electrocuted across the room. Cha Cha then discloses she meant to give the Jinx to Pearl in the first place, and threatens to do so now. Backed into a corner, Ivy gives up the shoe. Still unsatisfied, Cha Cha asks where the other one is located. Truly clueless, Ivy says she doesn’t know. Cha Cha makes her exit, as the Jinx becomes one with Ivy’s shadow once again. The closet door opens, revealing a passed out Pru. They’re all abuzz about their situation and Cat suggests that this villainous Cha Cha is the Wicked Witch of the West or someone related to her. Cat then explains how she conjured up the Wizard that said “Heironymus Gumm... Behind.” Pru starts up an argument again, saying that the girls wouldn’t have believed her if she was saying all this. Cat consults the I Ching, which brings more ambiguous bad news. Franny gets excited and says they should start a secret club appropriately named, “The Secret Order of the Gumm Street Girls.” They see the idea as either lame or unimportant. Ivy insists she can handle this on her own, but Franny points out the eye on her hand (which she got from first touching the shoe) and that she has a witch after her! Franny persuades the girls to put their differences aside and ‘stick together’ to help Ivy. Meanwhile, Cha Cha has enchanted all of Sherbet with her stylish clothing and tips on fashion. Even the girls’ parents, including Pearl, find her to be simply fabulous. The Gumm Street Girls all come up with a plan to solve their witch problem once and for all. They pack up a few things in backpacks and disguise an ordinary high heel with silver paint in a false surrender to Cha Cha. At the Colossal Candy Bar, the girls’ plan backfires and Cha Cha ends up trapping them in a champagne-colored Cadillac filled with jellybeans, sending them off in a “backwards tidal wave.” They speculate whether or not they’re going to end up in Oz. Franny, Ivy, Cat, Pru and Fred and Ginger wake up to find themselves in a place called Spoz. The peculiar place is covered ceiling to floor with the color pink. Small pink people they conclude are munchkins walk about ignoring the visitors. The girls realize they’re actually underground with no running water and meet the vicious teens, Bling Bling and Coco. They introduce themselves with a string of insults and their title as Cha Cha’s nieces (or the Wicked Witch of the West's daughters). The sisters find themselves in a predicament as well. Without Cha Cha, their beauty and “visibly firm skin” will all disappear and are not content with waiting until their aunt returns. Both are eager to try the Beautyliator, an odd machine used to transform raisins into grapes, on humans. Unwilling to be insubordinate with Cha Cha, they enslave the girls and send them to harvest potatoes and make French fries for them for the rest of the summer. The four girls and two terriers agree to stick together and see each other through this. With most of the summer worked away peeling potatoes and properly disposing of toenail clippings, the girls’ situation doesn’t seem to be getting much better. One day, Pru is caught by Coco under her bed. Pru is shocked to discover that Coco has transformed into an old hag with many fine lines and thick ankles. In a desperate attempt to save herself from being thrown into the Beautyliator, she offers to go pick up Coco’s vitamins in Spudz (the mysterious place the sisters have been threatening the girls with all summer). However, before Pru can make her daring journey, Cat and she wake to find that Ivy and Franny are missing. It turns out that Ivy decided to face her Jinx once and for all and in doing so, she injures her arm and ends up in the dreaded Spudz. Franny wakened to find Ivy gone and followed after her. Coco grows tired of waiting for their aunt’s return and makes to throw Cat and Pru in the Beautyliator. Cat pushes Coco inside instead and Pru pushes the button for her to be “beautified.” The escapees flee to Spudz after Ivy and Franny. Ivy meets the fearful and unfriendly, Dr. Iznotz, a giant potato with several eyes and roots for hair. He doesn’t give her medicine for her arm nor Bling Bling’s vitamins. He does, however, give her witch vanishing potion, for he fears that Ivy herself is a witch and her Jinx. She asks where she can find the other silver shoe and quickly suggests talking to someone named Maz in Wormz Pock. On her way there, she’s intercepted by Maz and meets up with Franny. Being the motherly spud she is, Maz gives the two girls a thick liquid that tastes like hot chocolate and heals Ivy’s arm. They fall asleep and when Ivy wakes up, she sees Franny eating pancakes exclaiming that Maz knows everything about Staccato, the shoes and even her Jinx! Maz’s story consists of the history of the silver slippers and how they came to be lost in the desert. Her tale also suggests that the shoes are capable of time travel and unknown power. Ivy asks about her Jinx and Maz says that he will never leave her. “Your Jinx dozz not like being a Jinx.” Cat and Pru make their way up a potato mountain with Fred and Ginger in search for their friends when they get into an argument over directions. They temporarily stop speaking to each other and sit in discontent. Under Maz’s instruction, Franny and Pru make their way through the Ooze where they encounter the “zombie” of Aunt V. In the letter, it said she’d faked her death, but it turns out, she met her accidental demise when she electrocuted herself with a fork and toaster. Reminiscent of Cha Cha, Aunt V asks where the shoes are and Ivy refuses to answer. Aunt V proposes that they can be a good team together. Before Ivy and Franny can run off the Jinx grabs Ivy and plunges into the ooze. Franny dives after her. In their silence, Pru discovers that they were close to the “sky” of Spudz. There was a hole in this sky and she asks Cat for a boost. Much to Cat’s surprise, Pru isn’t afraid. Setting their anger aside, they make their way through the discovered tunnel and along with Fred and Ginger, meet up with Ivy and Franny as they shoot out of the ooze. With the six reunited companions together again, they come across light and find a gingerbread cottage with a picture of Heironymous Gumm inside. There, they catch up on what Franny and Ivy have learned from Maz and Aunt V run-in. They also grieve over Mr. Staccato and decide to name the small house “Middle C Cottage” in honor of their piano teacher. After a day of being in Middle C, they find a secret passage behind the picture of Heironymous Gumm (Heironymous Gumm... behind) and at the end of it, a safe just like the one at #7 Gumm Street with the title “What is My Unique Talent?” Ivy asks Franny what Mr. Staccato said to her when his spirit was floating in the sky. “You make a better door than a window.” With the words spoken, the safe opens and inside they find the missing silver shoe. The Gumm Street Girls find themselves in Mr. Staccato’s museum room. Pru finds a newspaper and spots an article on them! Cha Cha had fabricated a story of how the girls were sent off to a special music school for the summer to make sure they weren’t missed. Cha Cha makes her entrance and demands for the shoes. The girls had already prepared the witch vanishing potion, but before it could be used, Cha Cha flings Franny across the room and dumps the potion down the drain. Fred, Ginger, Ivy and the rest run to # 5 Gumm to escape Cha Cha. They smell something burning and realize the house is on fire. Barely making it out, the girls watch the ill-fated house fall on Cha Cha and the Jinx positions himself to attack Ivy. Ivy takes the silver shoes and braces herself. Instead of killing Ivy, the Jinx hugs her and transforms into someone Ivy hasn’t seen in seven years: her dad. After a week of being back in Sherbet, the Gumm Street Girls rest and prepare for the first day of school. Cat consults her I Ching and it predicts “your work has just begun” while Pru spent the last week of vacation in her room reading books. The reunited Diamond Family found a will of Mr. Staccato’s and discovered that he left his home and all his possessions them. Now, at #7 Gumm, the Diamonds and Fred and Ginger make their home. Ivy, being ever so cautious though, keeps the two silver shoes separated and hidden as Staccato did. The novel ends with the foreshadowing of Bling Bling’s reappearance and the actual reappearance of the suspicious Aunt V. Franny spotted her through her binoculars and immediately called for a meeting of the Secret Order of the Gumm Street Girls the next day.
17601067	/m/0463zzv	Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with a Circus	James Otis Kaler			 Toby Tyler tells the story of a ten year-old orphan who runs away from a foster home to join the traveling circus only to discover his new employer is a cruel taskmaster. The difference between the romance of the circus from the outside and the reality as seen from the inside is graphically depicted. Toby's friend, Mr. Stubbs the chimpanzee, reinforces the consequences of what happens when one follows one's natural instincts rather than one's intellect and conscience, a central theme of the novel.
17602477	/m/0462zr2	Escape to Last Man Peak	Jean D'Costa		{"/m/06m9m8": "Social science fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 At the beginning of the novel, the narrator, eleven-year-old Nellie Atkins, as well as nine other children at the Sunrise Home Orphanage (Jimmy; Pauline; Sylvia; Wuss Wuss; Gerald; Frankie; Myrna; Pet and Precious) are shocked to discover that the matron of their orphanage has died in the hospital from the pneumonia epidemic (referred to as "the sickness") that is raging through the country. Afraid that they will be made to work in a labor camp, the children are at first desolate; however they later learn that eleven-year-old Wus Wus, a shy albino boy, is the secret owner of a house and a very large plot of land on the other side of the island called Last Man Peak, where he once lived with his uncle. Gathering the remains of food, clothing and other resources that they have left, the children skulk from the orphanage before dawn the following day. They first visit their neighbor Mr. Henry, who lives about half a mile away, and he explains that his wife has died, and that he has also caught the virus. He entrusts his large Alsatian dog Bess to Jimmy with commands for her to "guard" and follow Jimmy. After a tearful goodbye, the children set off to their other remaining friend, the old Teacher Mack. Teacher Mack gives the children useful advise on how to travel, and the route they are to take, and repeatedly cautions them to avoid being seen by others. After the children leave Teacher Mack, they trudge onward through fields and forest lands, and at nightfall, sleep in an old hut deserted by the path. During the night, Nellie and Jimmy hear footsteps outside and realize that someone has seen them; however, Bess' barking chases the assailants away. The following day, the children hear the sounds of drumming and singing, and are soon approached by a group of mysterious people dressed in white robes. The group, which is really a cult that believes that sacrificing children can prevent/cure the sickness, attacks the children. While the children eventually escape, Bess is stabbed at the neck (although the wound is shallow as her collar deflected the knife's impact), and Wus Wus is injured. Later, the children face more danger when a woman begins to shoot at them with a rifle. Increasing threats of human confrontation force the group of children to forge a path along a more hilly and shrubbery terrain. Someone then notices that Bess is missing, and the group begins to contemplate whether it is safe to even continue on the journey. While resting near a ravine, Wus Wus claims he hears a baby crying, and is determined to go into the ravine to investigate. There they discover Bess, a donkey, a small boy of about seven years old, and a baby all partially submerged in a pool at the bottom of the ravine. Wus Wus acts at once, and with the help of Nellie and Pauline, saves the two children from drowning, and the group is reunited with Bess. The following day, the children are surprised to meet a friendly Rastafarian named Isaiah at Brown's Town, Saint Ann, and he, along with his neighbors Mr and Mrs Jarrett, offer the children refuge for a day. They hold a feast for the children, which the entire community attends, and they hail the children as a sign of "better things to come". On their departure the next day, Isaiah and the Jarretts give the children food and water for the next stage of their journey, and two calves as a Christmas gift. At Goodhope, a town located a few miles from Last Man Peak, the children learn that a dangerous gang, which has been looting and attacking and beating people, are living in an old abandoned hotel by the side of the road. As the group deduces, it would be dangerous to steal past the hotel, since they may be discovered and followed to as far as Last Man Peak, and would never feel safe from future attack. However, Gerald formulates a plan that he believes will ensure the group's safe passage to Last Man Peak. In the pitch dark of the night, while the Goodhope gang prepares to sleep, the older children masquerade themselves in glowing, scary outfits, and with Bess and the animals, perform a strident, eerie song and dance on the front lawn. Believing the raucous to be the work of [ghosts, the Goodhope gang flee their home in terror. The next day, on Christmas Eve, approximately two weeks after the children of Sunrise Home began their journey, they reach their destination.
17609968	/m/04663jq	Understood Betsy	Dorothy Canfield Fisher	1916	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story tells of Elizabeth Ann, a 9-year-old orphan who goes from a sheltered existence with her father's aunt Harriet and cousin Frances in the city, to living on a Vermont farm with her mother's family, the Putneys, whose child-rearing practices had always seemed suspect to Harriet and her daughter. In her new rural life, Elizabeth Ann comes to be nicknamed "Betsy," and to find that many activities that Frances had always thought too demanding for a little girl are considered, by the Putney family, routine activities for a child: walking to school alone, cooking, and having household duties to perform. The child thrives in her new environment, learning to make butter, boil maple syrup, and tend the animals. When Frances announces she is to be married and has come to "save" Elizabeth Ann from the dreaded Putney cousins, she is amazed to discover that the little girl is quite content to stay. The story ends after Frances has returned home, with Betsy, her aunt Abigail, uncle Henry, and cousin Ann sitting quietly and happily around the fireplace enjoying the knowledge they will now be a family for good.
17611471	/m/0463_fz	Olivia	Judith Perelman Rossner			 The book opens with Caroline "Cara" Ferrante (née Sindler), a chef and popular cooking teacher, doing a screen test for a cable cooking show. Despite a messy mishap during filming, Caroline easily aces the test, having successfully entertained her audience with anecdotes about her daughter, the title character. Later, at home, she has an unpleasant encounter with her teenaged daughter who is furious that she was discussed on the show. Olivia storms off to her room, leaving her mother on the verge of tears. At this point, Caroline begins to explain her situation with her daughter. In flashback, Caroline, the daughter of two Jewish professors at Columbia University, recounts her early childhood interest in cooking. This is an interest which her academic parents discourage. Learning recipes from several of the housekeeper-cooks that the family employs, Caroline learns to speak Italian from Anna, one of the housekeepers. When Anna leaves to help her sons run a restaurant in Italy], Caroline becomes her family's cook. Caroline eventually enrolls in college, which she hates. Dissatisfied, she drops out to work as a mother's helper in Italy. She reconnects with Anna, who gives her a job at the family restaurant. It is there that she meets Angelo Ferrante, a thirty-something Sicilian who also works at the restaurant. Nineteen-year-old Caroline and Angelo begin an affair. Caroline becomes pregnant and, despite the fact that she is not in love with Angelo, marries him in a civil ceremony. She gives birth to Olivia in October of the same year. Anna dies of heart disease and Angelo begins to squabble with her sons about the menu at the restaurant. Anna's son push Caroline and Angelo out of the business. The couple then sets up a restaurant in Rome. Caroline and Angelo's marriage begins to sour. Angelo begins to cheat, even going so far as having an affair with one of the waitresses. He has also begun to turn Olivia against her mother and to belittle Caroline's Jewish heritage. After several episodes of abuse--one of them physical—Caroline decides to divorce Angelo, leaving twelve-year-old Olivia, who prefers her father, in Rome. Caroline returns to the states and begins teaching cooking classes to support herself. She regularly writes and calls Olivia who wants nothing to do with her having formed a tight bond with her father's girlfriend. Several years later, Olivia comes to the United States to live with Caroline; Angelo has broken up with his girlfriend and Olivia does not get along with Angelo's new wife. Caroline and Olivia have a tense relationship. Olivia, who shows little interest in Caroline, is moody and quick to take offense. She has also internalized her father's anti-Semitism and believes the negative stories that her father has told her about Caroline. Olivia enrolls in high school. A good student, Olivia earns high marks in school, setting her sights on Harvard University. She also gets a part-time job babysitting for Leon Klein, the doctor who lives upstairs. Caroline eventually strikes up a casual friendship with Leon and his children, preparing matzo ball soup for them and teaching the children to bake cookies. When Olivia finds out, she petulantly quits and begins ignoring the Kleins. Caroline and Leon begin to date. They decide to keep the relationship secret from their respective children until Leon officially divorces his wife who abandoned the family many years previously. At around this time, Olivia begins to date Pablo Cruz, a much older telephone company employee. Although Caroline disapproves of the age difference, she does like Pablo and makes an unsuccessful attempt to counsel Olivia about the importance of using birth control. This offends Olivia, who despite never going to church, still considers herself Catholic. Caroline's relationship with Leon intensifies; Even though Caroline is disappointed by Leon's desire not to have any more children, the two talk of marriage, even making a late night visit to the hospital for what they later discover is an unnecessary blood test. Caroline backs out of marriage plans but does move upstairs into Leon's apartment. The two then begin plans to combine the two apartments, obtaining permission from the landlord. She decides to let Pablo and Olivia live downstairs but continues to use the kitchen and office area. Caroline begins to suspect that Olivia, who is experiencing nausea, is pregnant. Olivia confirms Caroline's suspicions. Caroline convinces Olivia, who has been accepted into Harvard, that she cannot attend college in the fall if she goes through with the pregnancy. Caroline then calls the doctor and makes an appointment for a gynecological exam. She also promises to arrange an abortion for Olivia who claims not to want a baby. Olivia talks things over with Pablo who convinces her that it is a sin to terminate a pregnancy. The two run off to Florida and get married in a civil ceremony. When they return, they announce their intention to marry in the Catholic Church in order to please Pablo's family. The newly married couple asks Caroline to cater the event for them. Realizing that Olivia will never have the abortion, Caroline reluctantly agrees. This enrages Leon who feels that Caroline's decision to go along with Olivia's plans is a "cop out." This creates tension between the two; Leon correctly guesses that Caroline is not pushing Olivia to abort because she secretly wishes to become the baby's primary caretaker. He reiterates his desire not to have any more children in his care. After Olivia and Pablo's wedding, Caroline and Leon get married as well, serving kosher food at their ceremony. Olivia gives birth to a girl soon after. Olivia sinks into a deep post-partum depression completely ignoring the baby and taking little interest in anything that goes on around her. After Pablo and Caroline discover Olivia curled up in the cradle one night, they send her to psychiatrist who prescribes anti-depressants. Olivia slowly recovers but never takes much of an interest in her daughter, Donna. The work of caring for the baby falls on Pablo, whose relationship with Olivia begins to fray, and Caroline, who has quit her cooking show. Even Leon develops a fondness for Donna Olivia and Caroline settle into a reasonably friendly relationship. At the end of the novel, Olivia, who intends to enroll in college, who had always claimed to have few positive memories of her mother, spontaneously recounts the times where they walked through the streets of Rome together looking at the statues and visiting the tourist areas. She then holds Donna in her lap.
17612031	/m/0466f2x	Secrets	Jacqueline Wilson	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Treasure lives with her mother and her abusive stepfather, Terry, whom she hates very much. When Terry whips Treasure with his belt, scarring her forehead, her grandmother Rita puts her foot down and takes Treasure in herself, although she still has nightmares that Terry is coming to get her. India lives in the upper-class Parkfield estate with her parents and her au pair, miserable Wanda. Her father is a businessman with a terrible drinking problem, and her mother, Moya Upton is a controlling fashion designer who finds India's weight problem particularly embarrassing. India is unpopular at school and her only friend now goes to boarding school. Her only source of comfort is rereading The Diary of Anne Frank, whom she considers her heroine. One day, after Wanda fails to collect her from school, India decides to walk home. While passing through the Latimer Estate she meets Treasure, and the two hit it off instantly. India is very taken with Treasure's charismatic family, and Treasure is impressed by India's posh lifestyle. Their friendship proves to be the bright spot in both of their lives, as India begins to suspect that her dad is having an affair with Wanda and Treasure receives a phone call from her mum and Terry, telling her that they are coming to take her home. To protect Treasure, Rita sends her granddaughter and the other kids out of the flat until the coast is clear. However, Treasure is spotted by Terry and has to run away where he can't find her - to India's house. India takes advantage of her family's inattention to hide her friend away in her attic, where she can live "like Anne Frank". She lends the book to Treasure, who begins to idolize Anne as well. Meanwhile, word has spread around the Latimer Estate that Treasure has been abducted. Her mother and stepfather broadcast an appeal on the news, and her neighbour's son, "Mumbly" Michael Watkins, is accused of kidnapping her. Treasure is horrified and wants to go home, knowing that her Nan is worried about her, but India does her best to convince her to stay where she is safe, all the while coping with her own problems, including her father's alcoholism and the fact that Wanda may be pregnant. When Nan shows up at India's school, demanding to know where Treasure is, India has no choice but to reveal their secret. Her mother is horrified, and scolds her, which results in India revealing Wanda's secret too, out of spite. After Nan promises to keep India's involvement in the incident quiet, and takes Treasure home, Treasure tells her Nan that she is going to tell everyone the truth about Terry. Her revelation on the news leads to a custody battle between her parents and her grandmother, which Rita eventually wins with the aid of a campaign.Treasure's mum declares that she doesen't want Treasure anymore because she told the truth about terry but they hug each other and Treasure sets out into her new life with Rita. In the last chapter, India discloses that her parents are getting a divorce after her father narrowly escaped arrest for embezzlement; Wanda was sent back to Australia, allegedly after terminating the pregnancy; and India is in love with her new therapist, Chris, who has encouraged her to pursue a career in psychology. Treasure, meanwhile, is still her best friend: she is now working as a model for India's mum (Moya Upton, the clothes designer), who takes them on a photoshoot to Amsterdam at the end of the story, complete of course with a visit to Anne Frank's attic. The sight of the book makes both girls cry; although they cannot read Dutch, India states that it wasn't necessary as "we both know it by heart".
17612431	/m/046526v	Genius Wars	Catherine Jinks	2009	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After abandoning a life full of deception and mistrust, fifteen-year-old Cadel has finally found his niche. He has a proper home, good friends, and loving parents. He's even been studying at a real university. But he's still not safe from Prosper English, who's now a fugitive from justice and determined to smash everything that Cadel has struggled to build. When Cadel's nearest and dearest are threatened, he must launch an all-out attack on the man he once viewed as his father. Can Cadel track down Prosper before it's too late? And what rules will he have to break in the process?
17612767	/m/0463b93	Spaceship Medic	Harry Harrison		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 On a routine trip to Mars, the passenger liner Johannes Kepler is hit by a meteorite, killing the captain and almost all the senior members of the crew and resulting in the loss of much of the ship's breathable air. Lieutenant Donald Chase, a junior medical officer, finds himself the highest-ranked surviving crew member and has to take over the running of the ship. He is helped by Chief Petty Officer Kurikka, who is familiar with the technical aspects; the Mexican scientist Dr Ugalde, a passenger whose mathematical genius enables the new crew to navigate the ship; and various others. Chase solves the air shortage by using the oxygen content of some of the ship's water. Once the situation has stabilised, a passenger, General Mathew Briggs, who had criticised Chase's methods, overthrows him by force with the apparent help of Ugalde. However, it turns out that Ugalde had only pretended to shift his loyalties and Briggs is faced down by Kurikka, defeated and imprisoned. The ship's occupants are also struck by a deadly plague carried by the meteorite, but Chase and his medical colleagues eventually find a cure, although Chase collapses from disease and exhaustion. Recovering in hospital after the ship has docked safely, he is presented with a captain's cap by his crew.
17612827	/m/0463cs_	The Glass Bees	Ernst Jünger		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Out-of-work former cavalryman and tank inspector Captain Richard is offered a job interview with a "catch" by a former comrade, Twinnings: namely, he suggests a morally questionable position with Giacomo Zapparoni, whose firm builds advanced robots; occasionally one of his engineers deserts, and he needs a man to "take care of" the problem to protect company secrets. At this point a reluctant Richard offers the first of many essayistic narrative asides, as he outlines the social magnitude of Zapparoni's creations, and the first of many autobiographical flashbacks, recounting his days in Military Academy under the guidance of his strict yet caring instructor, Monteron. Two days later, while nervously awaiting Zapparoni, Richard notices how Zapparoni's modest house appears strangely old-fashioned for a man who made his vast fortune in robotics. This tension between new and old prompts Richard to nostalgically reflect upon the historic demise of cavalry, supplanted by mechanized modern warfare. The suicide of his comrade Lorenz, who refused to adapt to the vertiginous pace of technological, social change, figures prominently in his reflection; for Richard, Lorenz's death exemplifies the fate of those who cannot “find firm ground under [their] feet in the present.” Richard's ruminations then turn inward, as he narrates his own lack of worldly success and his negative evaluations by superiors as an "outsider with defeatist inclinations." When the elderly Zapparoni finally makes his entrance, Richard senses his latent power, remarking that there is more to him than his intelligence. In a narrative aside prompted by a question from Zapparoni, Richard contrasts his former comrades Fillmor, Lorenz, and Twinnings. Unlike either Lorenz and Twinnings, Fillmor, now a successful high officer, is driven entirely by ambition, yet totally lacks imagination. So when Zapparoni asks Richard for his opinion on Fillmor’s memoir, Richard is unsure how to respond. Over the course of a tactical conversation, Zapparoni begins with familiar territory for Richard, namely war, yet is quickly able to master the discussion, forcing Richard into contortions and self-contradictions. Zapparoni then announces that he has other matters to attend to, and asks Richard to wait for him in the garden, warning him to beware of the bees. Out in the garden Richard, through a pair of sophisticated binoculars, discovers the glass bees. Watching them, he observes how these robotic bees are much more efficient at gathering nectar than real bees, and marvels at their construction. As he watches the bees, he notices a pond filled with severed ears. Richard briefly considers contacting the police but realizes that the powerful Zapparoni could easily frame him. Richard's predicament spurs a childhood reminiscence about Atje Hanebut, "chief" of Richard's neighborhood gang. One day, Atje has them savagely beat a member of a rival gang. Richard tries to stop Atje, calling his attention to the boy's bleeding nose, for which Atje has the boys beat Richard, after which they flee. The rival gang then finds Richard, beating him further in retaliation. Finally at home, Richard is beaten once more, this time by his father. Leaving the garden, Richard encounters Zapparoni, who reveals that the ears had been severed from humanoid robots, and were a test that Richard has unfortunately failed. Zapparoni then surprises Richard by offering him a different job requiring sharp moral discrimination, which Richard accepts. On the way home, Richard buys Teresa a red dress, they go out for dinner, and Richard begins to forget the events in Zapparoni’s garden.
17619103	/m/0463mvt	War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage	Lawrence H. Keeley	1996	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Keeley conducts an investigation of the archaeological evidence for prehistoric violence, including murder and massacre as well as war. He also looks at nonstate societies of more recent times — where we can name the tribes and peoples — and their propensity for warfare. It has long been known, for example, that many tribes of South America's tropical forest engaged in frequent and horrific warfare, but some scholars have attributed their addiction to violence to baneful Western influences. Keeley says peaceful societies are an exception. About 90-95% of known societies engage in war. Those that did not are almost universally either isolated nomadic groups (for whom flight is an option), groups of defeated refugees, or small enclaves under the protection of a larger modern state. The attrition rate of numerous close-quarter clashes, which characterize warfare in tribal warrior society, produces casualty rates of up to 60%, compared to 1% of the combatants as is typical in modern warfare. Despite the undeniable carnage and effectiveness of modern warfare, the evidence shows that tribal warfare is on average 20 times more deadly than 20th century warfare, whether calculated as a percentage of total deaths due to war or as average deaths per year from war as a percentage of the total population. "Had the same casualty rate been suffered by the population of the twentieth century," writes Nicholas Wade, "its war deaths would have totaled two billion people." In modern tribal societies, death rates from war are four to six times the highest death rates in 20th century Germany or Russia. One half of the people found in a Nubian cemetery dating to as early as 12,000 years ago had died of violence. The Yellowknives tribe in Canada was effectively obliterated by massacres committed by Dogrib Indians, and disappeared from history shortly thereafter. Similar massacres occurred among the Eskimos, the Crow Indians, and countless others. These mass killings occurred well before any contact with the West. In Arnhem Land in northern Australia, a study of warfare among the Indigenous Australian Murngin people in the late-19th century found that over a 20-year period no less than 200 out of 800 men, or 25% of all adult males, had been killed in intertribal warfare. The accounts of missionaries to the area in the borderlands between Brazil and Venezuela have recounted constant infighting in the Yanomami tribes for women or prestige, and evidence of continuous warfare for the enslavement of neighboring tribes such as the Macu before the arrival of European settlers and government. More than a third of the Yanomamo males, on average, died from warfare. According to Keeley, among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, only 13% did not engage in wars with their neighbors at least once per year. The natives' pre-Columbian ancient practice of using human scalps as trophies is well documented. Iroquois routinely slowly tortured to death and cannibalized captured enemy warriors. See Captives in American Indian Wars. In some regions of the American Southwest, the violent destruction of prehistoric settlements is well documented and during some periods was even common. For example, the large pueblo at Sand Canyon in Colorado, although protected by a defensive wall, was almost entirely burned; artifacts in the rooms had been deliberately smashed; and bodies of some victims were left lying on the floors. After this catastrophe in the late thirteenth century, the pueblo was never reoccupied. For example, at Crow Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a mass grave containing the remains of more than 500 men, women, and children who had been slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an attack on their village a century and a half before Columbus's arrival (ca. A.D. 1325). The Crow Creek massacre seems to have occurred just when the village's fortifications were being rebuilt. All the houses were burned, and most of the inhabitants were murdered. This death toll represented more than 60% of the village's population, estimated from the number of houses to have been about 800. The survivors appear to have been primarily young women, as their skeletons are underrepresented among the bones; if so, they were probably taken away as captives. Certainly, the site was deserted for some time after the attack because the bodies evidently remained exposed to scavenging animals for a few weeks before burial. In other words, this whole village was annihilated in a single attack and never reoccupied. He makes three conclusions which the New York Times considers unexpected: *that the most important part of any society, even the most war-like ones, are the peaceful aspects such as art *that neither frequency nor intensity of war is correlated with population density *that societies frequently trading with one another fight more wars with one another
17626047	/m/0464vbz	Kept in the Dark	Anthony Trollope		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The plot is a simple one - Cecilia Holt ends her engagement to Sir Francis Geraldine because of his indifference to her; she goes abroad and meets Mr George Western, who has been jilted by a beautiful girl. They marry, but she does not tell him she has been previously engaged, although he has told her his story. When Western is informed of the previous engagement by Sir Francis, he leaves his wife and goes abroad; Cecilia returns to Exeter to live with her mother. Her sister-in-law in the end effects a reconciliation. There is a comic sub-plot, as so often with Trollope, involving one of Cecilia's friends who attempts to marry Sir Francis. The novel is principally about duty and truth in marriage, and the relationship of a couple to society.
17628700	/m/0465qb2	Starclimber	Kenneth Oppel	2008-08-26	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 Matt Cruse is piloting an aerocrane for the France's Celestial Tower where he narrowly survives a terrorist attack by the Babelites, a group of people who are opposed to humans reaching the heavens. After the incident, he meets with Kate de Vries, and is saddened to hear that Kate will soon return to Lionsgate City. Canada's Minister of Air wants Canadians to be the first in space, and invites Kate to join the expedition as an expert in aerial zoology, while Matt is offered a chance to become one of the world's first astralnauts on board the Starclimber. Matt decides to visit his mother and sisters. While he is there, he accepts a party invitation sent by Mr. and Mrs. de Vries. During the party, Matt is informed that Kate's parents will probably marry Kate to James Sanderson. Upon hearing this, Matt seeks out Mr. Sanderson during the party. Matt is enrolled in the astralnaut program and becomes friends with fellow astralnaut trainee Tobias Blanchard. Three people are chosen to be the first astralnauts, but Matt is not amongst them. When he leaves the room, Kate follows him to try and cheer him up. When she takes his hands, Matt finds an engagement ring on her finger. Matt leaves, heartbroken, and goes to a bar with the rest of the rejected astralnauts-in-training. The other astralnauts tell him that he deserved to be chosen. The next morning, Captain Walken tells him that one of the men they chose broke his leg, and offers Matt a spot on the space trip as a replacement. Matt accepts, even though the thought of seeing Kate again is painful. On the day of the Starclimber's maiden voyage, the complete crew is assembled: astralnauts Chuck Sheperd, Tobias Blanchard, and Matt Cruse; photographer and journalist Evelyn Karr with her pet monkey Haiku; zoologists Kate de Vries and Sir Hugh Snuffler; along with Chef Vlad Herzog, Captain Samuel Walken, and Dr. Sergei Turgenev. They board an airship and are brought to the Starclimber's launch site. During the trip, Kate apologizes to Matt, telling him that the engagement was just a way to obtain her parents' consent to go on the space trip, and that she will break it off when she returns home. Matt is not comforted, especially when Kate tells him that they must be careful about whatever suspicions the crew members have about their relationship. The Starclimber is revealed to be an orbital elevator-type cabin, rather than an actual "ship", and climbs on a cable that is held up by a rocket that acts as the counterweight. When the crew is at zero gravity, Tobias is chosen to be the first man in space. He is enthralled by the endless vista of space in front of him and threatens to unclip his harness, provoking Matt to rescue Tobias. That evening, they discover a problem in the cable that endangers the crew. They quickly come to the conclusion that the rocket that pulled the cable up did not reach the proper altitude because of a blown fuse. The team successfully relaunches the rocket, and Matt rescues Captain Walken along the way. Later on, they discover a new creature -which Kate names "etherian"- a limbless creature having baleen that moves by ejecting bursts of air from various holes in its body and emanates light like a firefly. During the journey, Matt discovers a letter from James Sanderson to Kate, leading him to believe that Kate really is preparing to marry James. That night, he tells Tobias his feelings for Kate, hoping that he can help him with his troubles. Tobias suggests that Matt propose to Kate. When he does, Kate attempts to change the subject, only to provoke Matt to claim that she is deceiving him about breaking off her engagement with James Sanderson. A few days after Matt's failed proposal, the Starclimber is homebound. However, unexpected astral barnacles are discovered on the cable. While Matt and Shepherd attempt to clear the barnacles away, the cable snaps, Shepherd is killed, and the Starclimber is left drifting in space with no way to return to the surface. The remaining members of Starclimber are left in orbit around the earth when Matt develops a crude but brilliant brainstorm using an emergency oxygen tank as a propellant and using the toilets' flush mechanisms as maneuvering jets, giving the crew only one chance to reenter the atmosphere. The beginning launch is successful, but Captain Walken is knocked unconscious, and Matt and Tobias are left as the only members of Starclimber's crew who are able to pilot her. Together with Kate and Dr. Turgenev, the four manage to guide the Starclimber into the first stage of reentry. While they are falling, Kate throws away her engagement ring and confesses her love for Matt. However, Dr. Turgenev reveals that everyone already knew, adding that it was "painfully obvious". The Starclimber, after a turbulent fall, successfully lands in Cairo. Kate receives a telegram from her mother, saying that James Sanderson had eloped with another woman. Once Kate and Matt are alone, she apologizes to him. Matt then proposes to her again, using Sanderson's engagement ring, and she accepts, though they both know that getting Kate's parents' consent will be difficult.
17633022	/m/047b15t	The Thing About Jane Spring		2005-07-07	{"/m/06cvj": "Romantic comedy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The plot of the novel revolves around the title character Jane Spring, an attractive and intelligent 31-year-old Manhattan assistant district attorney and West Point general's daughter who grew up without a female role model and struggles to understand why she fails to 'keep' men in a relationship. Spring is described as "militaristic", "no-nonsense", "aggressive", "abrasive", "caustic" and "tomboyish", and a "domineering hellion ... who makes old ladies cry on the stand and men run for the hills". A review in The Age characterizes Spring as the antithesis of Helen Fielding's fictional character Bridget Jones. A military brat, she prioritizes discipline and motivation and disdains 'civilians' who lack these qualities. A series of events, including overhearing her colleagues' thoughts about her and seeing a Doris Day marathon, ultimately give way to an epiphany and prompt her to reevaluate her approach and undergo a transformation to "get in touch with her feminine side".
17642903	/m/0466cxc	Dolly West's Kitchen	Frank McGuinness			 The play is set in 1943 during the second world war in the small town of Buncrana, on the border with Derry, Northern Ireland during the Emergency. Dolly West is home after fleeing Italy before the war. She runs the household for her elderly mother Rima, her elder sister Esther and her younger brother Justin. Also living in the house is Esther's husband Ned and the housemaid Anna. Justin, a junior Officer in the Irish army is deeply nationalistic and in favour of Irish neutrality. But questions are asked of the neutrality of both Ireland and the house, when three foreigners are invited across the border into the house by Rima. The first is Alec, an English officer, and former lover of Dolly's. The other two are American soldiers, Marco and Jamie. Soon clashes over issues of loyalty, jealousy, sexual identity and love creep into Dolly West's Kitchen.
17647828	/m/0463l4t	Tom Swift and His War Tank	Victor Appleton	1918	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 When the United States joins in The Great War, it seems that everyone has war fever. A military base close to Shopton is training soldiers in the art of trench warfare, while pilots are learning aerial combat. Ned Newton has quit his job to sell liberty bonds full-time. Many of the young men have enlisted, or even hoping for the draft. Everyone seems to be doing their bit, except for Tom Swift, which raises many concerns that Tom is a slacker. Tom does not let his country down; the reason he appears to be idle is that he has secretly been developing a new tank for use in combat. The project is so secret that Tom does not even let his close friends know, which causes the concerns being raised about Tom's patriotism. Even though the development is in secret, that does not stop German nationals from trying to steal his tank.
17649338	/m/04636y3	The Bourne Sanction	Eric Van Lustbader	2008-07-29	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 At the beginning of the book, Bourne is at Georgetown University talking with Moira Trevor. Moira Trevor wants Bourne to be the head of security at their new liquid natural gas terminal in Long Beach, California. Meanwhile, Veronica Hart, a woman determined to get the DCI job, is on her way to the Oval Office to meet with the President of the United States, Luther LaValle (pentagon intelligence czar), and Army General Richard P. Kendall. Whilst at a restaurant with Moira, Bourne senses somebody watching him. He has Moira surruptitiously call him on his phone, leaves the restaurant and waits for his enemy to appear. That failing, Bourne goes back into the restaurant to join Moira. He gradually realizes that it is Moira who is the one being followed. Luther LaValle, Rob Batt and General Kendall are hatching a conspiracy amongst their little triumvirate to get Veronica Hart sacked. They want her out of her job as soon as possible. When Bourne and Specter meet in a library, Specter tells Bourne of Pyotr Zilber and his death. Zilber, it is revealed, was a former student of Specter's at Georgetown University. Specter reveals to Bourne that he is a terrorist hunter as well as an academic and would like Jason to go after Semion Icoupov. In Europe, Jason's investigation into the Black Legion turns into one of the deadliest and most tangled operations of his double life: the pursuit of the leader of a murderous terrorist group with roots in the darkest days of World War II. During all of this Leonid Arkadin, who is just as talented as, but even more damaged than Bourne, is getting closer by the minute. While Bourne thinks he is getting closer to Arkadin, Arkadin thinks he's getting closer to Bourne. Bourne goes to Moscow using information provided by Professor Specter. He is followed by many people sent in pursuit of him because of intercepted information. Bourne checks in to the Metrtopolya Hotel with a girl named Gala. His arrival is expected by many. The taxi driver, Yakov, is paid by a man named Harris Low to drop him off at the hotel. Yakov is a poor man with an unpleasant past who does what he must to survive. Meanwhile in the hotel, Bourne wrestles with and garottes a phony waiter (agent Anthony Prowess) after dodging his blade. As he exits the room he finds a blood trail that leads to the closet where Prowess had executed a man also sent to trail Bourne. Meanwhile, Soraya and Tyrone are meeting with Luther LaValle and General Kendall. Tyrone and Soraya are to meet with them because LaValle and Kendall believe they are getting intel on the Black Legion. Tyrone wanders off to finish what he, Soraya and a woman named Kiki are there for. He gets caught and is thrown into a cell. LaValle and Kendall leave Tyrone's life up to Soraya. She must trade Hart for Tyrone. But what LaValle did not know was that Hart was gathering intel that Rob Batt has been gathering ever since he was fired for being a mole. In Moscow, Bourne meets with Dimitri Maslow, who vaguely tells him about Arkadin's life. After the meeting Bourne calls Specter. Specter reveals that Pyotr Zilber was his son and a member of the Black Legion. Bourne knows what Arkadin is capable of doing and is going to go after Specter's last man, Kirsch. Later on when Bourne is in a museum in Munich he leaves Kirsch behind a statue. When he returns he finds him lying there with a bullet through his head. He meets Jens, one of the men Specter sent to give his apartment to Bourne. The pair leaves the building and Semion Icoupov rides up and shoots Jens point blank outside the museum. Escaping the mayhem in the State Museum in Sheremetyevo, Bourne and Petra, a security guard paid to shoot Kirsch, visit Herr Pelz, an older man that Petra knew when she was a child. He helped her in Dachau, where she grew up. "Old" Pelz tells Bourne more information about the Black Legion. Bourne shows Pelz a picture and asks him if he can identify the people in it. Pointing to the picture of Professor Specter he says "Damn, I'd swear this one is Asher Sever." He told Bourne that Sever's dad, Ibrahim, killed Semion Icoupov's father. For that Icupouv executed Ibrahim. The brothers hated each other and wanted the other one killed. After being dropped of at Kirsch's apartment by Petra, Bourne finds a tiny transmitter planted on his passport. The door bells rings and it is Semion Icoupov. A couple of minutes later Arkadin blasts through the window with Devra coming in the back way and armed as well. Icoupov shoots Devra in the chest, but she then manages to shoot him in the shoulder, and he runs out of the house escaping to a rooftop. Arkadin then catches up with Server and Icoupov in their Mercedes and executes them in cold blood with a SIG Sauer Mosquito. Bourne jumps out a helicopter onto the 'Moon of Hormuz' (the tanker), following Arkadin. Bourne and Arkadin team up (or at least Bourne thinks so) to find Sever's man on board with the Black Legion symbol. Once Moira kills the doctor---Sever's man---Bourne comes down in the lower room because the captain told him that she was down there. As he comes up Arkadin lunges at him with a knife aiming at Bourne's stomach. After a long fight, Arkadain goes overboard with a twelve story drop, plunging into the frigid water below. Back at the hospital where Asher Sever (who we find out is Dominic Specter) is on life support, Bourne meets Willard, the chef at the NSA Safe House. There Willard tells him that Arkadin was a member of Treadstone. Conklin knew Icoupov and they agreed it would be good to train Arkadin because he had the drive and nothing to lose. In the end, however, Jason Bourne was the superior asset. fr:Le Danger dans la peau
17651888	/m/0466d2k	The Dark Fields		2003	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Eddie Spinola is a copywriter at a small publishing house in New York City. He starts using MDT-48, a fictional experimental drug granting heightened intellectual, creative, and learning powers, and enabling its user to see meaningful patterns in large amounts of disparate information. However, he experiences drug dependence and mental instability. On the run from police and creditors, facing death due to withdrawal from the drug, which he can no longer afford, his new career in high finance cut short by his increasingly erratic behavior, Eddie notices the President on television and recognizes the "alert, gorged MDT expression in his eyes."
17652229	/m/0462jt2	Phantasmagoria	Lewis Carroll			 "Phantasmagoria" is a narrative discussion written in seven cantos between a ghost (a Phantom) and a man named Tibbets. Carroll portrays the ghost as not so different from human beings: although ghosts may jibber and jangle their chains, they, like us, simply have a job to do and that job is to haunt. Just as in our society, in ghost society there is a hierarchy, and ghosts are answerable to the King (who must be addressed as “Your Royal Whiteness”) if they disregard the "Maxims of Behaviour”. Ghosts, our Phantom tells the narrator, fear the same things that we often fear, only sometimes in the reverse: : “Allow me to remark : That ghosts has just as good a right, : In every way to fear the light, : As men to fear the dark.”
17654119	/m/047q00l	Who's on First	William F. Buckley, Jr.			 CIA agent Blackford Oakes is sent to Hungary amid an anti-Soviet uprising.
17654136	/m/047mmgn	Marco Polo, if You Can	William F. Buckley, Jr.			 CIA agent Blackford Oakes is shot down in a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in 1958.
17654170	/m/047t5gn	The Story of Henri Tod	William F. Buckley, Jr.			 CIA agent Blackford Oakes is sent to West Berlin East Germany in 1961, during the time leading up to the building of the Berlin Wall. Henri Tod is a German Jew who during WWII is sent to England to prevent his conscription into the army. After the war he returns to Germany and becomes Germany's leading Freedom fighter. Henri Tod carries a burden of guilt because while in England he told someone of his sister who was still hiding on a farm in Germany. This information gets back to the Death Squads who kill the foster parents and send his sister, Clementa, to the death camps. His sister is rescued from Auschwitz at the last minute by the Soviet armies, but after the war becomes a pawn in an East Block effort to secure Tod's capture. Thrown into this mix of lively characters is a curious East German couple that play crucial roles in the tableau. Of historical interest is their secret meeting place, a relic German railcar, that once belonged to Adolf Hitler. And, of course there's Blackford Oakes. Oakes's mission is to infiltrate the Bruderschaft (Tod's organization) in an effort to learn of its intentions. All this occurs, of course, during the days leading up to the building of the Berlin Wall.
17654258	/m/047tcn6	See You Later, Alligator	William F. Buckley, Jr.			 CIA agent Blackford Oakes is sent to Cuba to meet with Che Guevara, attempting to ease tension following the events surrounding the Bay of Pigs Invasion in the 1960s.
17654292	/m/047n80z	High Jinx	William F. Buckley, Jr.			 CIA agent Blackford Oakes is sent inside the Soviet Union to monitor an internal power struggle within the Kremlin in 1954.
17654323	/m/047m_tm	Mongoose R.I.P.	William F. Buckley, Jr.			 CIA agent Blackford Oakes is sent to Cuba to determine the feasibility of overthrowing Fidel Castro, following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963.
17654333	/m/047rxmp	Tucker's Last Stand	William F. Buckley, Jr.			 CIA agent Blackford Oakes is sent to Vietnam in 1964 to assist in cutting off supply lines to the Viet Cong.
17654350	/m/047cztl	A Very Private Plot				 In early 1995, CIA agent Blackford Oakes is called to testify before the United States Congress regarding a suspected plot to assassinate Mikhail Gorbachev.
17654376	/m/047md9d	Last Call for Blackford Oakes				 CIA agent Blackford Oakes confronts Kim Philby, a spy for the Soviet Union, in 1987.
17654377	/m/047fjw1	The Bell	Iris Murdoch		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dora Greenfield leaves her husband Paul Greenfield at the start of the novel, but realises that she is more afraid of him when she is away from him than when they are together, so agrees to return to him. During this time Paul has temporarily moved to Imber Abbey, Gloucestershire to work on some 14th century manuscripts. Dora takes a train to Imber, and on her way she sees Toby Gashe (who is going to stay at the community before he goes to Oxford) and James Tayper Pace (a member of the community), but does not realise who they are. During the train journey Dora spots a butterfly crawling along the carriage and picks it up to avoid it being crushed. On the station Paul is waiting for Dora where she is introduced to Toby and James. During this conversation Dora releases the butterfly and they all watch it fly away. Dora, distracted with rescuing the butterfly, leaves the suitcases on the train. Paul then drives them all to Imber where Dora is introduced to Mrs Mark, Michael Meade, Mark, Catherine, Peter Topglass and Patchway. They all attend a small service during which Dora leaves to explore the lake. While doing this she throws her shoes off and forgets where she put them. Shortly afterwards Toby and James volunteer to find them, Toby being the successful person. During that evening Paul tells Dora the legend of the bell and how a nun had a lover but she wouldn't confess when called to do so. Because of this a bishop put a curse on the abbey; the bell then plummeted into the lake. At the same time James and Michael discuss where Toby should stay during his time at Imber. James reluctantly agrees with Michael that Toby should stay with Nick Fawley (Catherine's brother) to keep him company and keep an eye on him as he has threatened suicide in the past. Michael first knew Nick when he was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy. Michael had to leave his position as a teacher after Nick, who was sixteen at the time, told the Headmaster about the sexual relationship they had. Dora has a tour of the grounds with Mrs Mark, before returning to the station to collect her luggage. Dora then visits the White Lion pub, again forgetting her luggage, and returns to Imber. Michael takes her back up to the house, and on the journey back they see Toby naked by the lake. The scene is described to us as though it were the garden of Eden. Michael is woken by a nightmare which is repeated later on in the book. A meeting is held to discuss important issues such as the arrival of the new Bell. During chapter seven we learn of Michael's past homosexual relationships. We then discover that he used to be a Schoolmaster and had a relationship with Nick Fawley. Nick eventually told the headmaster what happened, ending Michael's dream of wanting to become a priest. Despite this we still get the impression that Michael is still partly in love with Nick. In this chapter, when Dora expresses her disbelief at Catherine wanting to join a convent, she tells her that often the best things in life are things "one doesn't choose", which Dora interprets as her being forced to become a nun. Toby decides to explore a new part of the lake and discovers the old bell at the bottom of the lake and decides that he will come back at another time to see it in greater detail. Michael then takes Toby with him to go and collect the mechanical cultivator, which is being held for them in Swindon. On the way back they stop at the pub where Michael gets slightly drunk. During the drive back to Imber Michael feels a great deal of responsibility and tenderness towards Toby. When they reach Imber Toby wants to see if human eyes reflect car headlights, but as he reaches the car Michael leans out of the window and kisses Toby. Just after this has happened Nick walks up to see what's going on, before Michael swiftly retreats back to the house, worrying if Nick saw what happened. During the next few days both Michael and Toby are very confused and upset and avoid speaking with each other. Michael then decides to apologise to Toby who in turn agrees to bury the matter. During which time, Toby decides to enter the abbey; however he is caught by two nuns who politely show him where the exit is. In the next chapter Dora decides she will go to London to show Paul that she is an independent woman, and visit Noel Spens. Dora and Noel talk about the events of Imber before they both end up dancing together. Dora then leaves Noel to visit the National Gallery where she seems to have a religious experience when admiring the paintings that have become so familiar to her. Dora then decides to return to Imber but when she returns the community are listening to a Bach recital. Toby sees her outside and comes to join her. Toby then shows Dora the bell who decides that they should bring it to the surface and substitute it for the new bell during the ceremony in an attempt to trick the community that a miracle has happened. Michael preaches his sermon before going to see Nick who is fixing the lorry. The conversation between them is awkward on Michael's behalf as Nick appears to be mocking him. We also get our first inkling that Catherine is in love with Michael. Toby and Dora meet to haul the bell out of the lake. Toby successfully does this by using the tractor, and drags it into a nearby barn. Toby then embraces Dora and starts to kiss her before they roll into the bell making it ring. Michael is awakened by the noise and goes outside to see what is going on. He meets Paul who is looking for Dora and both go to Nick, who tells Michael that he saw them kissing in the woods. Noel turns up to Dora's horror intent on doing a report on the new bell shortly followed by the bishop. A small ceremony is held for the community during which Dora breaks out into uncontrollable laughter and drops a note, addressed to Toby which Noel picks up. Nick stops Toby leaving the house and a short scuffle breaks out, after which Nick explains that he knows what Toby has been doing and that he must confess it all to James. The day of the ceremony arrives and goes badly. The bell ends up falling into the lake as Nick has sawed through part of the causeway, perhaps to stop his sister entering the abbey. Catherine then runs off pursued by Dora. Catherine tries to drown herself and Dora tries to save her but cannot swim, and both end up being rescued. The Straffords then take Catherine off to a clinic in London. James tells Michael that Toby confessed what went on between them and that he has sent Toby home. Michael says he will step down from Imber. After this conversation takes place they are alerted to Nick's house where it has soon become apparent that he has shot himself. The community soon breaks apart until Dora and Michael are the only two remaining. They get on well and Dora decides she will not return to Paul but instead will go and stay with her friend Sally. Michael then leaves, making Dora the last person at Imber.
17660330	/m/047d94z	Dead Cert	Dick Francis	1962	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Admiral should have won his race at Maidenhead, but an unexpected fall gave jockey Alan York and his mount the win instead. But Alan recognized sabotage when he saw it, and was not about to let a murderous act go unpunished, even if it meant risking his own life to bring his friend's killers to justice.
17666005	/m/047bl14	Turn Coat	Jim Butcher	2009-04-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy"}	 Nearly a year and a half after the events in Small Favor, Dresden's nemesis, Warden Morgan, shows up and asks for protection from the other Wardens. Morgan remembers going to sleep two days ago, waking up in Edinburgh today, and standing over LaFortier’s corpse with the murder weapon in hand. Dresden and Morgan agree that someone may be eliminating wizards who have hindered their schemes. When asked about pursuit, Morgan reveals he was given a favor by the Summer Queen which he exchanged to muddle the tracking spells of the Council. The faerie spell masking Morgan from the Wardens will expire in about 48 hours. While obtaining supplies, Dresden spots a naagloshii, a 'skinwalker' following him using his Sight. The psychic trauma of seeing incapacitates Dresden, who crashes his car. After Dresden recovers, he enlists the Alphas to help investigate the naagloshii, which ambushes them, killing one of the Alphas and putting another in ICU. The remaining Alphas are shocked, and demand to be given more information in the future if they are to help. While investigating a lead at the Zero nightclub, Harry learns from Justine that Morgan is being hunted by supporters via a Craigslist ad, before being interrupted by Madeline Raith, who tries and fails to seduce Harry, and threatens Justine's life. Thomas incapcitates his cousin and holds her down for Justine, who tortures Madeline with her touch leaving her wounded and burned. Outside the club, captain of the Wardens Anastasia Luccio appears and interrogates Dresden about consorting with the vampires, and tells him about LaFortier’s murder. She was worried that Morgan escaped to kill Dresden - thinking that Dresden was LaFortier's true murderer. She knows Morgan didn't do it, because she has known him for over a hundred years, him having been her apprentice. While Dresden is at the night club, Molly arrives at the apartment for her potions lesson, becoming legally enangled and agreeing to help care for Morgan. They move Morgan to a magically-warded storage unit in an upscale neighborhood with frequent police patrols. Dresden goes to council headquarters in Edinburgh, where he informs the Merlin that he wants to find the killer, who quietly accepts his help. Once Dresden is back in Chicago he enlists the help of Murphy to accompany him to the storage unit. The hideout is attacked by Binder, a mercenary named for his use of bound demons. After a large attack and outnumbered, Dresden draws a circle around Murphy and himself for protection from the demons. While occupying Binder, Molly and Morgan, veiled, draw out a circle around the demons defeating them and turning into Ecto-Plasm. In the confusion, Thomas disappears. Now cornered, Binder begins to run away as Murphy runs him down tackles him and arrests him for questioning. Dresden takes the others through a Nevernever shortcut and they head back to the safety of his apartment. Dresden invites Luccio to accompany him on a visit to Lara Raith and accuse her of complicity. Before Lara can retaliate, the mansion is attacked by the Naagloshii who trashes the mansion and exterminates Raith's entire security team. Facing Dresden and Lara, it demands Morgan in exchange for Thomas' safe return. Realizing he needs far more strength to combat the skinwalker, Dresden decides to perform a Sanctum Invocation to the mysterious island of power in Lake Michigan (site of the finale in Small Favor). The Sanctum Invocation involves summoning and fighting the spirit, genius loci, of the island. After besting the spirit, Dresden conducts the ritual and names the spirit "Demonreach". Despite this, Dresden, aware that he can't fight each fight one at a time, calls the Council, House Raith, and the Naagloshii, convincing each that Morgan is on the island or that the island is where they will meet to discuss further strategy. On the island, Lara Raith and the representatives of the senior council (Ebenezer McCoy, Listens-to-Wind, and Ancient Mai) are displeased to see each other. Before Dresden can explain the complex chain of cats-paws, they are attacked by Madeline Raith, Binder, and Binder’s demons. The murderer is on the island, but is working with someone else on a second front on the island. Dresden uses his connection to Demonreach and the island to direct the Wardens and vampires in combat. Dresden and the Alphas are ambushed by Madeline and Binder, but are supported by Lara, who kills Madeline. Dresden defeats Binder, who gives him Madeline's cell phone. In exchange, Dresden lets Binder go free. While fighting the Naagloshii, Thomas is thrown into the cabin with Molly and Morgan. Tortured by the Skinwalker beyond his energy reserves, Thomas is starving. Molly activates a crystalline force field to prevent Thomas from eating them. Dresden puts up a fight that keeps even the Naagloshii on the defensive but eventually collapses from exhaustion. Listens-to-Wind then arrives and drives off the Naagloshii. Lara collects Thomas, promises to take care of him, and leaves. Since the White Council didn’t actually see the murderer, it is still politically expedient to charge Morgan for the crime. Dispirited and out of options, Morgan surrenders. Dresden attends Morgan's trial, held in the underground of Scotland. He testifies that the Nevernever gateway into Chicago was staked out by his dog, Mouse, and a private detective who photographed everyone entering and leaving. Since Mouse is a Foo dog, Ancient Mai and others on the Council accept Mouse as a reliable, incorruptible witness. The photo shows a very highly-placed clerk named Peabody coming through the gateway. Dresdeen reveals that Peabody has also been influencing virtually everyone on the Council by use of magically poisoned ink. At this, Peabody smashes a jar, releasing a Mistfiend spirit mixed with mordite. The spiritm, drawn to the light that many wizards summon by reaction, kills everyone it touches. In the panic, Peabody escapes using safe words he implanted in minds of the recently-recruited wardens, rendering them mute and paralyzed. Dresden pursues Peabody as the Merlin contains the Mistfiend. Attempting to escape, Peabody opens a Way into the Nevernever. Overpowering Dresden, Peabody is about to kill him when Morgan arrives and kills Peabody with Luccio's gun, but the strain reopens Morgan's wounds fatally. Morgan then explains that it was Anastasia Luccio who actually killed LaFortier, under the influence of Peabody, and Morgan acted to protect her. Morgan then passes away. In the aftermath, Gregori Cristos fills LaFortier’s Senior Council seat. The Merlin had rigged the election to appease Cristos and his faction and prevent a Council schism. Since Cristos is probably a member of the Black Council, they managed to place one of their own on the Senior Council despite everyone’s efforts to the contrary. During a respite, Luccio approaches Dresden, and reveals that her romantic feelings for Dresden were most likely manufactured by Peabody’s subtle influences, and ends the relationship. Murphy runs the numbers on Madeline’s cell phone. There are repeated calls to restaurants in Algiers and Egypt - probable locations of Black Council activity. Dresden and Ebenezar speak after the Council meeting. Ebenezar is slowing drumming up support, quietly, from those who believe in the Black Council. They have to be silent since the Merlin denies the existence of such a group and proposing such a thing could be considered treason. They accept this and then decide to call themselves the "Grey Council". Dresden contacts Lara and asks to see Thomas, who explains that the Naagloshii had tortured him, and forced him to fatally feed on several women. After repeated fatal feedings, he now views everyone as food, and comments that his sister is proud of him. However, Thomas still has feelings for Justine and smiles at Harry before he leaves.
17667350	/m/047g0dg	Dead Sea	Brian Keene	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows Lamar Reed, a young black gay man living in Baltimore. One day in New York rats come up from the city, not just rats but dead and rotting rats. Any person who is bitten or gets any blood or saliva into an open wound or orifice dies very shortly after and rises from the dead craving human flesh. The media refers to it as Hamelin's Revenge after the town from the Pied Piper myth. Lamar is flushed from his house as Baltimore is slowly burning to the ground. He encounters several other survivors and the fight their way to the harbor where they are rescued by the USS Sprattling. From there they set sail out to sea realizing that the land now belongs to the dead.
17670146	/m/047ngbr	Faithful unto Death				 When local housewife Simone Hollingsworth doesn't show up for bell-ringing practice, nobody even raises an eyebrow, let alone suspect anything sinister. However, after her suspicious neighbours, the elderly Brockley's, notice her husband digging holes in his garden late one night, they call in Chief Inspector Barnaby for help unearthing his dark secrets...
17670367	/m/047bg_j	Death of a Hollow Man				 While attending an amateur production of Amadeus with his wife, Joyce, Chief Inspector Barnaby witnesses the gruesome, all-too realistic murder of an actor on stage, after the fake prop knife used to slit his character's throat is replaced with a real one. As he investigates the shocking crime, Barnaby unearths a whole host of dark passions and resentments nestling beneath the surviving cast's genial facade...
17670572	/m/047tt2m	Death in Disguise				 In a country manor house currently owned by a New Age cult of mystics, the mysterious death of member William Carter stirs all the local gossips into a frenzy of speculation. However, the rumours of sinister goings on are confirmed when the so-called Master of the Lodge also dies, after somebody throws a knife his way during a psychic regression. Meanwhile, untrustworthy financier Guy Gamelin tries reconciling with his estranged, cultist daughter Sylvia, now called Suhami, and Chief Inspector Barnaby finds himself lost amidst a labyrinthine puzzle of deception, evil and pseudo-supernatural forces...
17670799	/m/047qmb1	A Place of Safety				 Ferne Basset vicar's wife Ann Lawrence accuses Carlotta, a young homeless girl her husband has taken in, of stealing her precious heirloom earrings. Their argument escalates and the pair end up fighting on the area's picturesque bridge, when Carlotta falls off into the river below. After her body doesn't re-surface, witness Charlie Leathers begins blackmailing Ann for money, until he's found garrotted and his pet dog, Candy, left savagely beaten. However, still another blackmail demand arrives and this time Ann won't pay. Meanwhile, Chief Inspector Barnaby peels away at the wholesome veneer of Ferne Basset in his hunt for a dangerous and sadistic killer...
17671840	/m/047tcyh	The Fate of the Phoenix				 Klingons and Romulans are gearing up for war again and the Enterprise must face the threat of Omne. He is a man who cannot die due to having perfected a cloning process of advanced complexity.
17671976	/m/047f7wr	Seventeen Against the Dealer	Cynthia Voigt	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Seventeen Against the Dealer is the final novel in the seven-part Tillerman Cycle. The novel takes up the story of Dicey Tillerman, now 21, who has dropped out of college despite a scholarship in order to start her own business building wooden sailboats. Dicey is the eldest of the four Tillerman children, whose journey to Crisfield, Maryland and subsequent life there with their grandmother, Abigal Tillerman, or Gram as the children call her, is described in the preceding novels Homecoming, Dicey's Song, and Sons from Afar. As a continuation of the preceding Tillerman novels, this novel contains characters developed in the previous Tillerman books, notably Dicey's siblings James (now 18), Maybeth (16), and Sammy (15); her boyfriend Jeff Greene (23); her friend Mina Smiths (21), and Gram, the Tillerman's maternal grandmother with whom they have lived for 8 years. The book is set in around 1986, and the events of the novel take place over a short time-span, between New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day. At the start of the novel, Dicey is just beginning her new boatbuilding business, which she has dropped out of college to start. To learn the trade, she has worked hard in a series of low-paid jobs in Annapolis and Crisfield and now she has built up a small amount of savings that she hopes will enable her to start realizing her dream. Dicey becomes increasingly absorbed in and even obsessed by her work, to the detriment of her relationship with Jeff, who asks Dicey to marry him at the start of the book, explaining that he does not want to have a casual relationship with her. Dicey makes some crucial mistakes in her new business, including failing to take out insurance on the tools and equipment in her workshop. When the workshop is broken into, she loses all she has and cannot make it up, despite help from Jeff. Increasingly desperate, Dicey takes help from a smooth-talking drifter who turns out to be a con artist. Eventually Dicey stacks the odds against herself and has to close up shop. As Dicey's preoccupation with her work increases, her family and friends fade from the pages of the novel, reflecting her neglect of them. Eventually, after a series of crises culminating in Gram's serious illness, Dicey realizes that her relationships are as important, if not more so, as her work. Also Dicey has her shop broken into. The novel also develops, albeit in a lesser way, the characters of the other three Tillerman children, now young adults. James is a stellar student at Yale but as in previous novels experiences problems associated with reason and ethics. He has made close friends - including with Toby, whom he meets in Dicey's Song and is a chess aficionado. Maybeth has grown into a beautiful young woman, who has many female friends and is attractive to men - yet she is still studying hard and failing most classes in school. As she is courted by older men, the novel is haunted by the danger that she could repeat the mistakes of her mother, who left home to pursue an affair with a drifter twelve years her senior. Sammy is a hardworking young man who has a part time job pumping gas in a service station; he has learned to take apart engines and helps the Tillermans buy their first car. He is a budding tennis star and wants to attend an expensive tennis summer camp. The Tillermans' home has grown from an isolated place into a centre for social activity - on New Year's Day, for example, a tradition has grown up whereby family and friends gather at the Tillerman home, and a festive meal is eaten with singing and merriment. Gram is a central part of this, having grown considerably since her days of extreme isolation and loneliness. Although Voigt's characters grow and learn over the course of the novel, the ending does not provide any definite resolutions or total closure. The characters still face difficulties and problems, and it is not clear how marriage to Jeff, for example, will bring Dicey, a hardworking and independent young woman, a resolution to her need and desire to express her independence through work.
17671995	/m/047cxqk	The Starless World	Gordon Eklund		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Enterprise is sent to investigate Klingon activity in the galactic core. They encounter a shuttlecraft piloted by Thomas Clayton, from the long-lost ship, the USS Rickover. Clayton is also an old friend of Kirk's, a former roommate from his time at Starfleet Academy. Kirk is prepared to dismiss his unfortunate friend as a madman until a mysterious force seizes control of the ship. Clayton declares the Enterprise is now going to meet his new god.
17672363	/m/047d5r_	Blood Noir	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Blood Noir appears to take place a short time after The Harlequin; however it is not noted exactly how much time has elapsed. There are a few main themes in the novel, which are mostly resolved by the end. * In Jason's hometown, one of his ancestors had more than his fair share of offspring. Hence, Jason's features are repeated in various cousins and other relatives. During high school Jason was always confused with two of his cousins who happen to be twins. Keith Summerland used the confusion to his benefit a few times, tricking people to believe he was Jason or letting Jason get the beating for Keith's deeds. ** As soon as Jean-Claude's private jet lands in North Carolina, Jason is confused for Keith. The local and national media is interested in Keith Summerland because he is getting married and his father, who is currently a governor, is thinking of running for the Presidency. Meanwhile, Jason's father has been given only weeks to live, so time is of the essence. In addition, Jason has rented a hotel room in the same location that Keith is supposed to stay in and where the bridal party is taking place. ** Keith Summerland is in trouble again, he's fallen for a vampire and would rather marry her than the girl his father wants to marry him to. However, the vampire is already married and her husband does not take kindly to Keith trying to take his bride. * In The Harlequin Anita was given a charm that is supposed to keep Marmee Noir away. When Anita meets a tiger that calls to one of the tigers inside her, the charm fails or perhaps the Mother of Darkness overpowers it. Previous books have had Anita give her beast to someone else since she cannot shift with a fair amount of success, however Jason would only be able to help Anita if her inner wolf was giving her trouble. Marmee Noir uses Anita to send out a call to every unattached tiger in the nation. ** Specifically, two tigers in the area come to Anita, and Jason, instantly and are essentially raped by her for two days. One is Crispin from Las Vegas (who broaches the rape issue), a stripper and the other is Alexander Pinn, who is a closeted reporter. Crispin is from a white tiger clan, while Alex is from a red tiger clan. ** Once again, Anita could be pregnant. Jason tells the possible-daddies-to-be tigers that the would-be baby is probably his and they then allow her to get a morning-after pill. Otherwise, either tiger would have happily married and taken Anita back to his clan. Crispin appears to have been rolled by Anita and is rather heartbroken when she sends him away, while Alex had a harder time fighting Anita's call. ** Marmee Noir may be thousands of miles physically from Anita, but she can still reach out and touch the necromancer. When Anita loses consciousness, Marmee Noir wakes her and slashes her shirt open despite being so far away. However, she does not reveal why she is so interested in Anita. It could be that she wants Anita for her own human servant, as other Masters of the City may as well. When the link between Anita and Jean-Claude is broken, they believe that Anita may have been marked by Marmee Noir, but once Anita reclaims her anger from Richard the link is back. Marmee Noir cannot understand Anita's rage because it belongs to Anita and was not passed down from her to any of Marmee Noir's vampire descendants. * The last theme is the desire to be "normal", which most of the main characters admit to wanting. Normal as in what society says most humans want: find a true love, meet the family, get married, have kids, live happily ever after. Unfortunately for Anita, her life is anything but normal, but she's the only one who appears to accept that. When Jason takes Anita home to meet his family, Jean-Claude and Micah both express the desire to do that as well. ** Jean-Claude is jealous because while he would want Anita to meet his family, they have all died so long ago that no one knows him from when he was human is left. Anita tells him that she has in a sense met his mother, she's in some sense met Belle Morte and he replies that she is not 'his people.' Belle Morte may be the head of Jean-Claude's bloodline but she is not the matriarch of his family. ** Micah broke his ties with his family to keep them safe. When Chimera was alive, he would use family against the members of his pard. With Chimera dead, Micah expresses the desire to introduce Anita to his family. However, Nathaniel is also a part of Anita's and Micah's life which leaves Micah uncertain if all three of them should visit. Nathaniel's role in their life is not so clear and simple nor "normal" as the roles of 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend.' ** Richard also wants his life to be normal, he wants Anita to be his wife and to live essentially behind a white picket fence. They have quarreled about this many times in many books. When he finds Anita has gained two more lovers to her list or bed post, Richard is distressed. Once Anita takes away her rage from him, he gains a new talent. The talent is the ardor and unfortunately, there is a learning curve to it and at first he tries to use it against her until Jason calls him on it and then Richard simply leaves Anita alone. ** Jason's desire to be normal shows in trying to appease his father one last time. To try to convince him that Anita is his girlfriend is the least he can do, while he still has time left to say goodbye to his father. A media frenzy of poor timing and rumors will not stop him in visiting his abusive father in the hopes for that one perfect moment of acceptance that he never had when he was growing up. Jason had no desire for athletics and his choice of theater was not what his father wanted for him. In fact, nearly everything Jason has tried to do to please his father has failed. It is not until the end of the book, when Jason is nearly taken away from his family that Franklin Schuyler realizes exactly how much Jason means to him.
17672576	/m/047qtgb	Spy Story	Len Deighton	1974	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The story opens with Armstrong and his colleague Ferdy Foxwell returning from a six-week mission aboard a nuclear submarine during which they gathered data on Soviet communications and electronic warfare techniques in the Arctic Ocean. He and Foxwell visit "The Bonnet", a rural Scottish public house. On returning to London, Armstrong's car breaks down on his way home and he decides to use the phone in his old flat, for which he still has the key. He is surprised and disturbed to discover that the flat has been refurnished, including photographs which he owns, but with an unknown individual replacing him in the images, and clothes identical to his own. He also discovers a door hidden in the back of the wardrobe leading into the adjoining flat, which has been fitted out as some kind of medical facility. When he leaves the flat thinking that a taxi he ordered has arrived, he is confronted by Special Branch officers who have a former member of the Studies Center verify who he is before releasing him. While they have been away on their six-week mission, the Studies Center has acquired a new boss, the abrasive American Charles Schlegel, a former Marine Corps Colonel. Foxwell and Schlegel do not get on at all well, and even less so when Schlegel makes Armstrong his Personal Assistant. Shortly after his return, Armstrong is about to leave his flat when it is ransacked by KGB Colonel Oleg Stok and two assistants, who even blow open a safe left by the previous occupant. They offer no explanation for this, leaving Armstrong yet more puzzled. At a party at Ferdy Foxwell's palatial London house, Armstrong learns that Foxwell is close to MP Ben Tolliver, and has even been passing him classified information. Foxwell shows him a photo of Rear-Admiral Remoziva of the Soviet Northern Fleet, who Armstrong immediately recognises as the person who had been inserted into the photographs at his old flat. Also at the party is Dawlish, the head of the intelligence organisation WOOC(P) of earlier books. We learn that Armstrong worked for Dawlish before deciding to quit intelligence work altogether. Dawlish tries to recruit him, but Armstrong turns him down. Tolliver has a suspicious car accident returning home from Foxwell's party. Armstrong traces the woman who was reported to be with him to a small French restaurant, where he discovers photos of Remoziva and a Soviet Admiral's uniform being made. He returns to the restaurant later to discover it deserted. Breaking in, he discovers all traces of what he had earlier seen have been removed along with all paperwork. Leaving the restaurant, he is met by a high-ranking police officer who escorts him to Battersea, from where a helicopter takes him to Heathrow Airport, from where in turn he is flown north in a small single-engine aircraft. It takes him to a remote location in the West of Scotland, where he finds Toliver and his co-conspirators. It appears that they have been running their own unauthorised intelligence operation to arrange the defection of Admiral Remoziva, who will die within a year if he does not receive treatment for a kidney condition. The plan is to meet the Admiral on the Arctic ice, and leave a corpse in his place. They had planned to keep him at Armstrong's former flat, and use the adjoining medical facility to treat his condition. Armstrong receives a message from an unidentified member of the clique advising him to leave, which he does. After a nightmare journey through a snow storm, he reaches a road, where he finds Dawlish and Schlegel waiting. They tell him that the defection is still to go ahead, though using a USN submarine instead of a British one. Out on the Arctic ice, they make the arranged rendezvous with Remoziva's helicopter, but it turns out to contain Colonel Stok. After a brief struggle the helicopter takes off with one of Stok's men holding on to Foxwell. Armstrong grabs Foxwell's legs and is also hauled aloft. He fires at the man holding Foxwell and they both fall to the ice. He manages to lift Foxwell and staggers off to where their submarine has surfaced, but by the time he reaches it Foxwell has died. At the end of the book it is revealed that the scheme's real intent was to discredit Remoziva and, by association, his siblings; his sister was playing a crucial part in talks to unify Germany and is forced to step down, causing the talks to collapse.
17673431	/m/04csk5r	The Conscience of a Liberal	Paul Krugman	2007-10-01	{"/m/05qt0": "Politics", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is a history of wealth and income gaps in the US in the 20th century. The book documents that the gap between rich and poor declined greatly in mid-century—he refers to this as the "Great Compression"—then widened in the last two decades to levels higher than those in the 1920s. Most economists—including Krugman himself—have regarded the late 20th century divergence as resulting largely from changes in technology and trade, but now Krugman writes—particularly in Chapters 1, 3, and 4—that government policies—particularly the establishment of, and subsequent attacks on, the social safety net or "welfare state"—has played a much greater role both in reducing the gap in the 1930s through 1970s, and in widening it in the 1980s through the present. He talks about the history of American conservatism, both, in Chapter 2, pre-New Deal conservatism—dominating the period between the American Civil War and the Great Depression (which he calls the "Long Gilded Age")—and, in Chapter 6, modern-day "movement conservatism";—he argues—particularly in Chapters 5, 6, and 9—that the subtle exploitation by movement conservatives of racial and cultural resentments through small-government rhetoric (see "dog-whistle politics") and of national-security fears were key in the movement's ability to win national elections—even though its policies concentrating wealth at the top should be deeply unpopular. He talks extensively, in Chapter 6, about William F. Buckley, Jr.'s, Irving Kristol's and Ronald Reagan's role in building the movement—and, in Chapters 7 and 8, about the role of "institutions [particularly labor unions] and norms [particularly corporate policy]"—vis a vis government policy—in increasing or decreasing economic inequality. He rebukes the George W. Bush administration for policies that were currently widening the gap between the rich and poor. Nevertheless, Krugman expresses optimism in Chapter 10 that demographic trends—particularly on race and culture—and what he sees as conservative overreach during the Bush years—are creating a new center-left political environment and are slowly undermining the conservative movement. (He references John Judis and Ruy Texeira's book, The Emerging Democratic Majority.) Krugman proposes, in Chapters 11 and 12, that Democrats propose a "new New Deal", which includes placing more emphasis on social and medical programs—particularly universal health care—and less on national defense. Finally, in Chapter 13, he talks about what it means to be a "liberal", about the rise in new progressive organizations—which, unlike conservative think tanks, publications and other organizations, are actually more de-centralized and independent-thinking,—and how many more people appear to support "liberal" policies than are prepared to use that word to describe themselves.
17675910	/m/06xz23	Dear Mr. Henshaw	Beverly Cleary		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dear Mr. Henshaw begins with the book's main character, Leigh Botts, writing a letter to his favorite author, Boyd Henshaw. He continues to write him letters occasionally until the sixth grade when he is expected to write a report on an author. Naturally, he chooses to do it on Mr. Henshaw, and writes him a series of questions. Mr. Henshaw writes back with silly responses some questions for Leigh to answer. At first Leigh is reluctant to reply to Mr Henshaw, but his mother finds out and demands he reply because the author answered his questions. Through his answers to Mr. Henshaw, Leigh's personal matters are revealed, such as his struggles with his parents' divorce, his complex relationship with his father, as well as his being the new kid in school. Later, Mr. Henshaw encourages Leigh to keep a diary of his thoughts and feelings, and the book then switches from a letter format to a diary, in which Leigh writes to Mr. Pretend Henshaw. By writing to Mr. Henshaw, Leigh Botts must learn to accept that he cannot change parts of his life. For example, his parents may never re-marry, people will continue to steal his lunch, and that he can never count on his father to be available when he is needed. He must deal with problems that many other children also have to cope with: feeling lonely because he is new in town, school assignments, etc.Plot summary from Bookrags.comPlot summary from Scholastic Books
17677240	/m/047cq01	This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall	Gordon Korman	1978	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure"}	 The two main characters, Bruno Walton and Melvin “Boots” O'Neal are two small-time troublemakers who share a room at the boarding school Macdonald Hall. Across the road is a girl's boarding school, Miss Scrimmage's Finishing School For Young Ladies. Best friends, they play mischievous pranks on the school, faculty and other students. They are constantly under the watch of Headmaster William R. Sturgeon, nicknamed “The Fish” due to his surname but also due to the trademark stern, fishy-like stare he implores on his students whenever he disapproves of them. Following the abduction of an overweight cat mascot of a rival hockey team (in an attempt to demoralize them), Sturgeon comes up with the decision to forbid them from seeing each other and separating them completely. Bruno moves in with the school genius, Elmer Drimsdale, while Boots is placed with wealthy hypochondriac George Wexford-Smyth III. The two both realize they can't stand their new roommates and decide to meet at a cannon at night to discuss ways of getting back into their old room together. The two prominent ideas they have, including having both Elmer and George complain to the headmaster to get them to move elsewhere, and then framing their roommates to have themselves moved away from them, only get them into more trouble. Eventually they come up with the idea to study hard to get into the Honor Roll to show they're capable and should be able to move back in together as a reward, but the plan backfires after Sturgeon attributes the boy's resulting high marks as the result of him separating them. In desperation they meet again, but while en route to the cannon, they spot an entangled hot air balloon stuck in a nearby tree and find a boy stuck up there. They rescue the boy (named Francisco) using a volleyball net and take him to Sturgeon, who realizes he's the son of an important Ambassador from Ottawa who got lost in a balloon during the day. They are then interrupted by Elmer Drimsdale, who had witnessed the balloon in his telescope and had concluded it was a UFO. He goes off and causes a massive disturbance between both schools. The next morning, the Ambassador arrives at the school to retrieve his lost son and goes on to honor the people responsible for rescuing him – Bruno, Boots, and Elmer, who receive medals from the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police, and from the Ambassador himself, who is ironically representing the country of Malbonia, the country of which flag Bruno and Boots had used in a prank earlier on in the novel. For Macdonald Hall to honor them, Elmer receives a new telescope and Bruno and Boots get their wish – to share a room again.
17679293	/m/047fqbq	I Want to Go Home	Gordon Korman		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure"}	 The novel revolves around its central character, Rudy Miller, who on the advice of the guidance department at his school is sent to an athletic camp (which is situated on an island) against his wishes, and his attempts to escape it. While there, he befriends Mike, who has similar views and attitudes of camp and sports.
17684640	/m/047tq76	Dragon: the Old Potter's Tale	Ryunosuke Akutagawa	1919-05	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The story revolves around a practical joke played by the monk E’in. E’in erects a sign next to the Sarusawa Pond reading "On the third day of the third month, the dragon of this pond will ascend to heaven". However, though E’in intended the joke to affect only those in his immediate area, his sign ends up attracting many from miles around, including many influential lords and his superstitious aunt. A numberless crowd watches the lake faithfully as E’in both scoffs their ignorance and marvels at the turnout. Eventually, the sky darkens and everyone gathered, including E’in, believe they see a dark powerful dragon ascending towards the sky. Afterwards, no one will believe E’in’s claim that the sign was a practical joke; even E’in, the instigator, believes a dragon from the pond actually flew towards his home.
17688405	/m/0479dws	The Valley	Barry Pilton	2005		 Those living in the insular Nant Valley believe they are immune to the changes going on in the outside world. However, outsiders have discovered the rural idyll and are moving in to enjoy its benefits. Dafydd, the ubiquitous postman, is uncertain the Valley is ready for newcomers. The mysterious Stefan buys a derelict manor house and tries to become a squire - but finds his money impresses no-one and can't even get a drink in the pub as Gwillim the landlord hates all customers. Jane and Rob, artistic but impoverished urbanites, want to live The Good Life, but their passion for alfresco nudity has tragic repercussions for the farming community. Gradually the fabric of rural life comes undone as local and outsider collide with dramatic results...
17690899	/m/047sk15	Lee and Grant at Appomattox	MacKinlay Kantor	1950	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot of Lee and Grant at Appomattox is centralized around the surrender of the Confederate States of America to Union soldiers. In specific, it portrays the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, helping to bring about the end of the American Civil War. Kantor mainly discusses the feelings of each army, both victorious and shellacked, and pays special attention to the history and interaction between Grant and Lee. The story also addresses the lasting bitterness between the North and South for years following the Civil War.
17691282	/m/047lz3w	The Disappearing Dwarf		1983-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Professor Wurzle, a know-it-all scientist, inveigles Jonathan, the master cheeseman of the High Valley, into accompanying him on a trip downriver. Wurzle's real plan is to revisit Hightower Castle, from which the heroes routed Selznak in the previous novel. There the pair discover a treasure map and encounter Miles the Magician, a travelling wizard, in a nearby inn. Miles alerts them that the Squire, a linkman they befriended in the previous novel, has disappeared. Learning that Selznak was seen nearby at the time they fear the worst. The trio travel to the Territory, ruled by the Squire's father. There they once again encounter linkmen poets Bufo and Gump, as well as Twickenham the elf, who flies the mysterious elfin airship. Twickenham and Miles determine that the Squire has accidentally activated the Lumbog Globe, a magical paperweight allowing travel into the land of Balumnia. Balumnia can also be reached through magical doors, using one Jonathan, Ahab, the Professor, Miles, Bufo, and Gump enter Balumnia. The group has adventures as they make their way to Landsend, a major port and subject of the treasure map. The dark presence of Selznak and an omnipresent, sinister witch is mitigated by light encounters with an inept stage magician, and an extraordinarily extended panegyric to the virtues of coffee. In Landsend the adventurers encounter the natural fool Dooly with his grandfather Theophile Escargot, who trades in Balumnia using his marvellous submarine. After searching for the treasure, the group splits and Jonathan, Ahab, and the Professor find themselves once again menaced by the evil Selznak, who is plotting to use the Lumbog Globe to terrorize the High Valley. As in the previous novel, however, unexpected allies such as the Strawberry Baron and Cap'n Binky of the magical blend prove crucial in resolving the plot.
17692816	/m/047c84z	The 47th Samurai	Stephen Hunter	2007-09-11	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The story begins with Bob Lee now living in Idaho. There along with his wife, former wife of his spotter Donny Fenn, he is cultivating his land by using a scythe. The story starts while Bob Lee is cutting away at his land with the scythe while an expensive car pulls up. Bob Lee is aggravated by this, since his previous encounters with such cars and men in them have led him into troublesome situations. Having this predisposition to the men within the car, Bob Lee confronts them to make them leave him and his family alone. Instead he finds a man roughly the same age as himself, looking for Bob Lee, since he is the son of the man that killed his father during the battle of Iwo Jima. Here the book changes to the situations that led to the awarding of the Medal of Honor, to Earl Swagger during a battle on Iwo Jima.
17696795	/m/047njgt	His Little Women				 The story is narrated by Nell Pearlstein Berman, daughter of the legendary movie producer, Sam Pearlstein. Nell is Sam's second daughter; Sam left his first wife and daughter, Louisa, to marry Violet, Nell's self-absorbed movie star mother. The book opens as fifteen-year-old Nell describes her life. Her parents have been divorced for nearly four years—Sam having left Violet and fathered two other daughters, Sonny and Liane, with his third wife, Lynn. Nell has not seen or spoken to Sam in all that time. Nell lives in Beverly Hills with her mother and stepfather, Tony, a native of Italy. After initially ignoring Tony, Nell bonds with him, listening to opera records with him. When Tony dies unexpectedly, Sam re-enters Nell's life, even agreeing to escort Violet to the funeral. At the funeral, Nell is approached by Louisa, her New York-born half-sister, whom she has never met before. She agrees to take a ride with the twenty-something woman and the two sisters get acquainted. After the funeral, Nell moves in with her father. Later, Louisa escorts Nell to the reading of Tony's will in which he deeds his record player and opera records to Nell. It is there that she meets Tony's daughters and their husbands for the first time. Louisa, whom Sam can't stand, becomes a frequent visitor at his house. She spends most her time talking to Nell—the only person in the family that will tolerate her. After a particularly tense visit, Sam demands that Louisa leave the house. Nell feels bad about what happened so she agrees to visit Louisa at her house. Louisa, who works for a soft-core porn magazine that Sam owns, lives in the old magazine headquarters. She suggests a visit to the I-Land, an island getaway modeled after the Playboy Mansion. While Louisa is busy talking with the operator of the I-Land, Nell wanders around. While strolling around the pool, she sees a man who looks like Jack Campbell, her stepsister's husband. Although she isn't sure, she thinks that he is having sex with one of the many women who are partying at the mansion that night. She leaves hurriedly and mentions what she saw to Louisa. Nell graduates from high school and goes to Barnard College. She meets Saul Berman, a Columbia student from Atlanta who is active in the Students for a Democratic Society. The two fall in love, attend law school together, and get married. The couple then moves to Atlanta to be closer to his family. The marriage falls apart in a few years. Nell, who was never an observant Jew, has a difficult time fitting in with Saul's family, which is staunchly Orthodox. She is also unable to find work as a lawyer and is not interested in having children. The couple divorces and Nell returns to New York. Not too long after landing in New York, Nell learns that Louisa, who has abandoned a five-year-old son at the beginning of the novel, has had another baby, a girl she named Penelope. She and Louisa renew their acquaintance and Nell, who had never had strong feelings about feminism, agrees to do legal work for Louisa's feminist magazine. Nell also makes a visit to the West Coast where she is horrified by the condition her family has fallen into. Sam, who has had cosmetic surgery, is suffering from diabetes and is noticeably less than healthy. Lynn has had a nervous breakdown after the failure of a film she has produced and can barely function. Sonny and Liane—who are now in their teens—are both addicted to drugs and are highly promiscuous. In fact, Sonny, who had always been difficult to manage, has also had a nervous breakdown. Sometime later, Louisa is sued by Jack Campbell for libel; he feels that the plot in her new bestseller too closely paralleled events in his own life for it to have been a coincidence. With Nell's help, Louisa is able to defeat Jack Campbell in court. At a party to celebrate the victory, Sam who has not been adequately managing his illness, collapses. He spends the last three months of his life slipping in and out of a coma. When he dies, Nell and Louisa's relationship becomes strained. Louisa is angry at what she feels is an inadequate inheritance. Nell, who is beginning to realize how much she allowed her father to monopolize her life, begins a memoir detailing her life with him. She contacts Shimmy, an old friend of her father's, for information about Sam's pre-Hollywood life. Shimmy makes an unsuccessful attempt to seduce Nell. Nell, who is initially horrified, finds herself attracted despite their considerable age difference. After a disastrous fling with another lawyer, Nell decides to date Shimmy. She makes arrangements to come to California to be closer to Shimmy. In the final chapter of the book, Louisa and Nell have a final falling out over the apartment that Sam bequeathed to her. Louisa wants Nell to sign it over to her as Nell is moving. Nell stands firm, telling Louisa that she plans to keep it no matter what. This angers Louisa; she writes another novel that casts Nell in a negative light. Nell completes her own book. At the end, Nell states that she has come to believe that "there is some complicity between reader and author in an account that makes no claim to the truth" and that "it goes without saying that I would like the reader to regard my own account as an exception to this truth."
17706213	/m/047g5dn	The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey	Trenton Lee Stewart	2008-05-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story starts when Kate, Reynie, and Sticky meet at Kate’s farm to go to Mr. Benedict’s house. Mr. Benedict is planning to send the children on a huge treasure hunt. When they arrive, they find out that Mr. Benedict was kidnapped by his evil twin, Mr. Curtain. In a letter, Mr. Curtain explains that he needs a certain rare plant and that a person extremely close to Mr. Benedict knows where to find it. He also says that Mr. Benedict and his assistant, Number 2, will be in danger if he doesn’t get this info. Constance, Mr. Benedict’s adopted 3 year old genius, soon reveals that Mr. Benedict gave her a letter to open when the others came. The letter has a riddle in it,and when they solve it, it leads them to a dictionary, then a journal with another riddle. After solving this riddle, the children realize that they are supposed to take a ship called the MV SHORTCUT, the fastest ship in the world. So they sneak off to the ship and find new info. That leads them to a castle in Portugal. There, they find evidence that leads them to a library in a city called Thernbaakagen. There, they learn that the rare plant is called duskwort and might be extinct. It has the power to put an entire city to sleep and also has the power to cure narcolepsy (which Mr. Benedict and Mr. Curtain are suffering from). They rest at a hotel that evening but are found by Mr. Curtain’s agents called Ten Men, but are rescued by Milligan, Kate’s recently found dad, and go to the island that was referred to in the library to have the remaining duskwort in the world. On the island, they find Number 2, who tells them that Mr. Benedict is on the top of the mountain on the island. When Milligan tries to rescue Mr. Benedict, the children are attacked by Ten Men. Milligan comes back and saves the children by fighting the Ten Men while the children escape. Later, they find Mr. Curtain, who tricks the children into being captured also. After Mr. Curtain leaves to run an errand, Mr. Benedict tricks S.Q., their guard, and they get away. As the climb down the mountain, Mr. Benedict falls asleep due to his narcolepsy and the children carry him down the mountain. They soon find Milligan, who is extremely injured from the battle, and after Mr. Benedict wakes up, they run to the bay and are soon surrounded by Ten Men. But just in time, the Shortcut and its crew come to save them. Everyone runs into the security hold of the ship and try to hide from the Ten Men, but the Ten Men find them. Just as the Ten Men plant a bomb near the hold, the Royal Navy shows up. Kate throws away the bomb and Mr. Curtain escapes,but the children make it back home to their families. They all safely arrive at Mr. Benedict's house without any troubles.
17711632	/m/047bjph	Echo Round His Bones	Thomas M. Disch		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story revolves around Captain Nathan Hansard, an officer of the United States Army in the near future. In this future a machine has been developed to transmit matter instantly. The United States has created a Mars base, Camp Jackson Mars, to which supplies and personnel are transmitted regularly. Captain Hansard, stationed at Camp Jackson Earth, is going to be stationed there and thus is transmitted. At that moment Hansard discovers an unknown side effect of the process. He finds himself not on Mars but remaining on Earth, except in a phantom state, unable to be perceived by anyone in the original world and able to walk through buildings and swim through solid ground with minimal effort. The only items he can fully interact with are other copies of people or items sent through the matter transmitter. Air and water are available, in the vicinity of another transmitter that sends these to Mars, but he has no food and finds himself pursued by a group of soldiers in the same situation who have turned to cannibalism, waiting near the transmitter to kill other newly-created duplicates. Hansard is saved when he finds a friendly group comprising two duplicates of the transmitter's elderly and wheelchair-using inventor, Panofsky, and three of Panofsky's wife Bridgetta (who has adopted various distinguishing roles as Jet, Bridget and Bridie). They explain that each time anyone is transmitted, a copy (or "echo") of that person is made. The group is being provisioned by the original Panofsky, who believes on theoretical grounds that this copying process is taking place and is sending the group food and drink by repeatedly transmitting it on the pretext of testing the effect of transmission on foodstuffs. Together they are able to avoid the soldiers looking for them. Eventually, however, they are found and a showdown takes place where Hansard kills the leader of this group, at the expense of the death of one Panofsky duplicate and of one of the Bridgettas, whom Hansard was about to marry (it having been explained to him that the original Panofsky/Bridgetta marriage is purely one of convenience). Meanwhile the original world is faced with nuclear disaster. A order has been sent to Mars with the original Hansard (Hansard 1) to launch nuclear weapons on to Earth at certain date. Hansard's copy (Hansard 2) and Panofsky 2 decide that this must be stopped at all costs, but they need to be able to communicate with someone in the original world. They determine that this might be done by a copy occupying the same space as the original and subtly affecting the original's mind during sleep. Hansard 2 transmits to Mars (creating a Hansard 3 echo who dies) and links up with Hansard 1 to communicate a plan to avoid the destruction of the Earth. Hansard 1 is able to build some transmitters himself and place them in specific spots on the Earth, transmits it to the other side of the sun to avoid the nuclear weapons. To atone for his guilt about killing a child during the Vietnam War, Hansard 1 chooses not to be transmitted and dies, left behind in space. The Earth's echo, Earth 2, becomes solid for Hansard 2. The novel ends with Earth 1 and Earth 2 safe, with Panofsky 2 making plans to retrieve the Moon, left behind when Earth 1 was transmitted and which is no longer orbiting the insubstantial Earth 2. Multiple weddings take place between the three Hansard and Bridgetta duplicates on Earth 2. They are transmitted to different destinations for their respective honeymoons, creating further, tertiary, duplicates. Panofsky wishes the latter, via a note, "Happy Honyemoon".
17715417	/m/0479trl	The Other Queen	Philippa Gregory	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Other Queen begins with Mary Stuart, cousin to Queen Elizabeth, arriving in England after having fled her country, expecting Elizabeth to restore her to the throne of Scotland. She has lost the love and support of her people by marrying the man believed to have killed her previous husband. Elizabeth, however, puts her in the custody of George Talbot and his wife Bess of Hardwicke as a result of Mary's repeated attempts to claim to English monarchy for herself. Mary is indignant at the captivity, repeatedly stating her claims to royalty, and is upset when she is given some of the reigning queen's gowns to wear, saying that they are "hand-me-downs." She is unafraid of punishment for any reckless or insulting behavior she makes to her cousin, believing that one would never execute a fellow monarch. Most of the novel centers around the first few years of Mary's Stuart's imprisonment, during which time she makes several failed escape attempts and almost immediately begins to seduce the earl. George slowly begins to feel his loyalty to Elizabeth fade, replaced by a strong attachment to the captive queen. This results in marital problems with Bess, who ultimately separates from him. The last chapter takes place fifteen years after the previous one. It is narrated by Bess, who reveals that Mary has recently been executed for participating in a plot to steal the throne of England. George watched the beheading in tears and was bankrupt from the years of expense to house her. Bess ends the book saying that she is well off, wealthy and prosperous, and that her granddaughter Arbella is an heir to the English throne. (However, this claim was not acknowledged, and James I was crowned after Elizabeth's death in 1603.)
17716886	/m/047pby9	Mistress of the Empire	Janny Wurts	1992-04-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the last novel of the series, Mara's actions in the first two books come back to haunt her. Although revered by the general population as the Servant of the Empire, her enemies plot revenge. Mara's son and heir Ayaki is killed by the Hamoi Tong in an attempt on Mara's life. Although the tong is known for secrecy concerning its employers, a token of the Anasati house is found in the assassin's hiding place. With her heart set on vengeance, Mara, as leader of Clan Hadama, calls for war with Clan Ionani, of which the Anasati, led by Lord Jiro, are a member. The Assembly of Magicians, "Great Ones" tasked with protecting the Empire, forbid the war, claiming the conflict would tear the Empire apart. Two years later, an assassin of the Hamoi Tong poses as a Midkemian trader and poisons Mara with a chocolate drink. Mara's Spy Master Arakasi ruthlessly tortures the apothecary who sold the poison in order to find an antidote, and her husband Hokanu, although ambushed by assassins, manages to survive and return with the recipe. Mara survives, but her unborn child dies, and it is discovered that Mara will be able to bear only one more child. As she recovers, Arakasi is given the task of destroying the Hamoi Tong by stealing its records. Mara gives birth to Hokanu's daughter, who is named Kasuma. Arakasi infiltrates the tong, killing its leader and stealing the records. On delivery, it is discovered that the death of Hokanu's father, Kamatsu, had been paid for by Jiro. Mara realizes that the Great Ones forbade the war against the Anasati as a result of a centuries-long policy of keeping Tsurani culture in stagnation, as well as a fear that she will be responsible for a radical upheaval in society. Hoping to find a way to resist the Assembly, Mara commits her children to the protection of the Emperor and journeys to the heart of the Thuril Highlands and Chakaha, the city of the cho-ja, where she convinces the cho-ja to aid her. Two cho-ja magespowerful creatures whose presence in the Empire is forbidden under the terms of an ancient treaty between the Tsurani cho-ja and the Assemblyreturn with her to her estates, where she immediately learns that the Emperor Ichindar has been assassinated and that all the Houses of the Empire are mobilizing for war. Mara quickly realizes that her enemies, the Anasati foremost among them, seek to claim the Emperor's Golden Throne and that it is Jiro's intention to marry the late Emperor's daughter, Jehilia. Mara's children, trapped in the Imperial City of Kentosani, represent major threats to anyone who wishes to take the throne; in particular, because of her adoption into the Imperial Family in Servant of the Empire, Mara's twelve-year-old son, Justin, is Ichindar's closest living male relative. Allies of the Anasati are situated within immediate range of Kentosani, and although the Acoma army is able to block reinforcements, neither Mara, Hokanu, or Jiro can initiate the conflict without incurring the wrath of the Assembly. Fighting breaks out amongst other Houses, but without the involvement of the Acoma, Shinzawai, or Anasati, no definite conclusion can be reached. Mara and Jiro are summoned to Kentosani by the Assembly; Jiro, who is several days closer, orders his allies to attack the city once he is inside, while Mara devises a way to disrupt his plans. She takes ten guards and makes her way toward Kentosani, while her oldest advisers and a large honour guard provide a distraction on the main roads. At the same time, she commands her army to attack the Anasati army, and though the Acoma are the larger force the battle is interrupted by the Great Ones, who force a withdrawal and, after questioning her Force Commander, begin to suspect her alliance with the cho-ja. They set out to find her, but in an expensive sacrifice the decoy force succeed in taunting a hot-headed Great One into destroying them all, allowing her time to avoid an Anasati ambush and enter a cho-ja hive. Hokanu launches a mounted attack on Jiro's own honor guard, who prove ill-prepared to fight against men on horseback. Hokanu strangles Jiro, then proceeds toward Kentosani. The Great Ones, angered by Mara's new alliance, inadvertently break their treaty with the cho-ja in an attempt to kill her, and the cho-ja mages are able to transport her to the Imperial City. A marriage is hastily arranged between Justin and Jehilia, which takes place as the Great Ones try to breach wards set by the cho-ja. Justin's coronation is completed just as the Great Ones are about to break through, but, faced with a new emperor who holds the support of the temples (and the Gods), they are forced to accept Mara as Regent as well as the introduction of a new social order. The series ends with a reunion between Mara and Kevin of Zūn, who returns to Tsuranuanni as an ambassador from The Kingdom of the Isles, unknowing that he has fathered a child, and shocked to find his son upon the Imperial Throne. Kevin and Mara, who has divorced Hokanu, quickly resume their romance. Arakasi, Mara's Spymaster, is focused upon more in this novel: he falls in love whilst infiltrating the Hamoi Tong, and his struggle to reconcile his emotions and his profession form a running subplot.
17716888	/m/047txwz	Servant of the Empire	Janny Wurts	1990-09-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Having risen in wealth, power and social standing but still threatened by powerful enemies, Lady Mara of the Acoma is in as much danger as ever after her triumphs in Daughter of the Empire. Lord Desio of the Minwanabi, son of the defeated Lord Jingu, swears an unbreakable blood oath to the Red God of Death that he will destroy the Acoma or end his own bloodline. He enlists into this cause his cousin Tasaio, the cruel military genius who had managed to send Mara's father and brother to their deaths without breaking any laws or losing honor. Though challenging the norms of Tsurani society had served her well, Mara is still a product of her culture and does not question many of her beliefs and conventions. Through the eyes of her Midkemian slave Kevin of Zūn, she begins to see the flaws, contradictions, limitations and potential of the Tsurani Empire&mdash;and finds Kevin, a love like she has never known. The Minwanabi plot to kill the Acoma military commander Keyoke and then force Mara into a campaign in the faraway desert lands of Dustari. Thanks to Mara's cho-ja warriors and Kevin's innovative "barbarian" tactics, Mara and her ally the Lord of the Xacatecas manage to overcome a Minwanabi ambush and secure an unprecedented treaty with the desert chiefs of Dustari. Tasaio is exiled for his failure against Mara, but ascends to Lord of the Minwanabi after Desio's death in battle on the barbarian world of Midkemia. Mara barely survives an extended overnight attack orchestrated by Tasaio in the Imperial capital of Kentosani, and continues acquiring allies and favors toward an endgame she knows is unavoidable. Her hopes of freeing Kevin from slavery are dashed by a proclamation from the Emperor Ichindar forbidding such practice, and soon she is even forced to relinquish Kevin for an Imperial exchange of prisoners with the Barbarian King. However, Mara manages to influence Ichindar and manipulate the High Council to thwart Tasaio's ambitions and destroy the Minwanabi once and for all. Mara&mdash;pregnant with Kevin's child&mdash;is named Servant of the Empire.
17716889	/m/047nywp	Daughter of the Empire	Janny Wurts	1987-05-19	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At age 17, Mara's ceremonial pledge of servantship to the goddess Lashima is interrupted by the news that her father and brother have been killed in battle. Now Ruling Lady of the Acoma, Mara finds that not only are her family's longtime enemies, the powerful Minwanabi, responsible for the deaths of her loved ones, but her military forces have been decimated by the Minwanabi betrayal and House Acoma is vulnerable to utter destruction. An immediate assassination attempt thwarted, Mara relies on the loyalty and advice of her military commanders Keyoke and Papewaio, her former nurse Nacoya, and her own wits to find solutions that will stave off the enemies who would see her ruined. Mara bends tradition to suit her needs by contriving a way to recruit grey warriors &mdash; the former soldiers of fallen Houses, traditionally outcast &mdash; to bolster the ranks of her army. Among them is the Spy Master Arakasi, whose network of informants had failed to save his former Lord from destruction at the hands of the Minwanabi, but remains intact and at his disposal. Mara makes an alliance with the Queen of a new colony of cho-ja, an insectoid species comprising both fierce warriors and gifted artisans, improving both her military might and potential wealth from cho-ja exports. Mara also arranges a political marriage with her family's second most powerful enemy, the Anasati. Given a choice between the second and third Anasati sons, she makes the surprising choice of Buntokapi, the third son, generally regarded as incompetent and brutish. After their marriage, Buntokapi reveals himself to be a strong military leader and much smarter than others have given him credit for, but also proves to be both an abusive husband and a somewhat inept ruling lord. Mara becomes pregnant with an heir, securing her alliance with the Anasati, and sets in motion the rest of her plan; falling prey to her machinations, Buntokapi finds himself forced to commit ritual suicide to save his honor. Finally, facing Lord Jingu of the Minwanabi himself on his own estates at a celebration attended by the many noble families of Kelewan, Mara avoids assassination and turns the tables to contrive Jingu's own "honorable" suicide, avenging her father and brother.
17723324	/m/0479mp0	Murder at School	James Hilton		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Oakington is one of the lesser-known public schools in England, and Dr Roseveare, its headmaster, has been trying hard for seven years to improve its reputation. When, in the winter term of 1927-1928, one of the pupils is killed in his sleep by an old gas fitting falling down from the ceiling he contacts Colin Revell, an Old Boy, to discreetly investigate the matter. Not entirely convinced that there was no foul play involved but unable to pin down a motive on anyone, Revell leaves again after a few weeks, and most of the evidence is destroyed by the installation of electricity in the whole building. A few months later Revell is shocked to learn that the deceased boy's brother has also died under mysterious circumstances&mdash;he seems to have jumped into the school's indoor swimming pool late at night after the water had been drained&mdash;and travels to Oakington of his own accord. Now it turns out that the closest relative of the two brothers, who have been orphans for years, is actually a teacher at Oakington, and that he stands to inherit a small fortune. At the same time Revell falls in love with that teacher's beautiful young wife.
17724689	/m/047g8d6	Zombies Calling	Faith Erin Hicks			 Joss, Sonnet and Robyn are all dorm-mates at London University, a university in southern Ontario. Joss is studying for exams, but while on a snack run, she's nearly overrun by zombies. Initially afraid, the "First Rule of Zombie Movies" kicks in for Joss: confronted with zombies, ordinary people will transform into tough, adept and ruthless fighters. Joss survives the attack and runs back to her dorm in a panic, but Sonnet and Robyn don't believe her. The zombies have since dispersed, and are nowhere to be seen. Later, during the exam, the zombies return. Joss gets Sonnet and Robyn, and they barricade themselves in their dorm, since the nearest mall is too far away (another Zombie Rule: "Never leave the mall"). The phones are out, according to another Rule, so they remain in the dorm room. Meanwhile, the Canadian Army are figuring out what to do about the zombies. A high-ranking officer mentions that his son, Robyn, can "turn the tide of a Zombie invasion". The next morning, the zombie epidemic is just as bad. Joss wants to stay in the dorm and await rescue, but Sonnet and Robyn know another Rule: no one ever rescues the survivors. They make a break for it, armed only with a spork. Soon, however, they're surrounded. As the Zombies close in, Joss' English professor emerges, and explains that he created the zombie epidemic by poisoning the coffee at the campus coffeehouse as a statement about the cheapening of higher education: few university students care any more about education, and would rather just pay for a degree. They are figurative zombies, so the professor has turned them into literal zombies. Just then, the Army launches air strikes to purge the zombies. Joss, Sonnet and Robyn still need to get away, however, so Joss follows another Zombie Rule: sacrifice yourself to lead the zombies away. The zombies corner her in the university library, which is then bombed. Joss survives the collapse, and wakes up a few weeks later in the hospital. The university is in ruins after a large portion of its student and faculty population became zombies and were purged. Mortified to hear this, Joss decides to vacation in England. The Canadian government has paid for Joss' trip to England. There she meets a boy wearing a Canada t-shirt, and they go walking along the Thames together.
17725250	/m/047gbv7	Waiting for the Galactic Bus	Parke Godwin	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The tale begins with two college-age brothers, Barion and Coyul, members of an advanced alien world. Their race is endowed with the power to manipulate physical matter with their minds, a power which is exploited incessantly by the young adults. An accident strands the brothers on Earth, which at the time has no human race. The brothers hope for rescue, but eventually grow despondent. In their free time, they cause a series of evolutionary changes in the indigenous primates of Earth, which eventually lead to the blossoming of human civilization. The brothers grow fond of their project, which they ardently monitor, intervening when necessary. With all the progress they are able to endow humans with, they are never able to rid them of the dim memory of primal darkness, causing a permanent schism between intellect and emotion, which is termed "spiritual schizophrenia". Humans have an insatiable need to decipher the meaning of life, a thirst which leads to stubborn belief systems and immense amounts of violence. Eons later, the brothers' creation is in danger due to an unlikely courtship. Charity Stovall is a passionately religious young woman from a small American town. She is poised to marry Roy Stride, a violent young fascist. The young couple is oblivious to the fact that if they were to bear a child, it could possibly be more destructive than Hitler to human culture and possibly humanity itself. Subsequently, the two brothers literally put the duo through hell to keep them apart, subjecting them to outrageous scenarios beyond their control.
17725426	/m/047gbzc	Stormchaser	Chris Riddell	1999-11	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Set two years after Beyond the Deepwoods, the protagonist, Twig, is a full member of his father, Cloud Wolf's, sky ship the Stormchaser. When a disastrous encounter (made worse by Twig) with a league ship forces the crew to dispose of their precious cargo of logs, Cloud Wolf has no option but to return to Undertown and arrange a way to repay his debts to Mother Horsefeather, a greedy, selfish shryke who had paid for the repairing of the storm chaser after it became infested with woodbugs. Meanwhile, in the floating city of Sanctaphrax, stormphrax and phraxdust supplies are running low, threatening to leave the floating city able to break free of its chains and fly into open sky. Also, if phraxdust supplies run out, the already dirty water in Undertown would become even more polluted and undrinkable. Against the wishes of the Most High Academe Vilnix Pompolnius, a deal is struck between Cloud Wolf, Mother Horsefeather and the Professor of Light (Cloud Wolf's former mentor in the prestigious Knights Academy) to erase Cloud Wolf's debts if he successfully chases the predicted Great Storm and retrieves some of the sacred substance stormphrax. Without this stormphrax, both Sanctaphrax and Undertown cannot survive. Though Cloud Wolf forbids Twig to set sail with the rest of the crew on this dangerous voyage, he is willingly smuggled on board the Stormchaser by the mutinous quartermaster Slyvo Spleethe and his accomplice Mugbutt. On approaching the Great Storm, Spleethe and Mugbutt are killed by the result of a failed mutiny and the Stormchaser becomes badly damaged. Cloud Wolf is injured while fighting Sylo Spleethe. The crew abandon ship into the Twilight Woods below, except for the Captain Cloud Wolf, who stays with his ship. On landing, Twig reunites the crew and prepares to take over his father's mission. Although Twig tries to maintain his crew's sanity in the mystical Twilight Woods, Tem Barkwater and Stope Boltjaw are overcome by the disorientating golden mists and are lost to its madness. Other members of the crew were badly injured in the crash, but the extent of their injuries are not to be revealed until they enter the mire, and the immortal effects of the Twilight Woods wear off. Twig and the remaining crew make it to the Mire, where they are lured in by the treacherous guide Screed Toe-taker, an ancient Knight Academic driven mad by the Twilight Woods himself in his quest to retrieve stormphrax and complete his quest. Hubble's injuries were internal and prove to be fatal as he collapses during the long journey across he mire. Spiker is murdered by Screed. As Screed attacks the Stone Pilot, he is confronted and killed by Twig, who then helps the injured Storm Pilot to a shipwreck, which turns out to be Screed's old storm-chasing ship. They discover a chest of sacred stormphrax, gathered by the insane Screed from each small speck of stormphrax filed from the toenails of Screed's unfortunate victims after they had trekked through the Twilight Woods. The Professor of Light's injuries also prove to be fatal, but not before he realises the secret of safe production of phraxdust (which has hitherto been kept secret by Vilnix Pompolnius, as it was the source of his power, although we later find that Vilnix's first success in creating phraxdust was fluke and he doesn't actually know anything about it - he is a fraud). Twig discovers that the Stone Pilot is an unturned Termagent Trog named Maugin (he has a special affection for unturned trogs, due to his experiences in the previous book), who helps Twig to rebuild Screed's old ship, the "Windcutter." During this time, the two form a bond, which is revealed in a later book to be a romantic interest. With a plentiful supply of stormphrax they rebuild the ship and its flight rock with plans to return to Sanctaphrax and overthrow Vilnix Pompolnius. With the help of the Professor of Darkness they deposit the stormphrax in the treasury, saving the city from breaking its moorings and flying into open sky. The secret of safe phraxdust production is revealed to Undertowners one and all and the rivalry and monopoly over phraxdust ends. The story concludes with Twig getting a ship of his own, the "Edgedancer", and also a new crew. Led by the Caterbird (introduced in book one), they travel over the edge into open sky, farther than any sky ship has ever ventured before, to save his father Captain Cloud Wolf.
17725587	/m/047fbyc	A Picture of Freedom		1997-03		 The book is written in the form of a diary kept by Clotee, a young slave girl on a Virginia plantation in 1859. Clotee secretly taught herself to read and write while fanning William, her owner's young son, during his lessons with his mother Mistress Lilly. Clotee is discovered by Mr. Harms, who is actually an abolitionist working to help slaves escape on the Underground Railroad. When Clotee is given the opportunity to escape, she must decide whether to run away to freedom or stay behind to help other slaves escape. Clotee's best friend on the plantation is a very strong girl named Spicy. Spicy desperately wants to change her name to Rose (the name her mother picked out for her), but must is forced to accept the name her owners gave her. Clotee later writes in Spicy's Bible, the only keepsake that Spicy has from her mother, that Spicy's name is actually Rose. Clotee and Spicy are the property of "Mas' Henley," a cruel man. While Master Henley never whips or beats Clotee in the book, he does strike Spicy across the face in the final chapter. Mistress Lilly Henley is a weak, foolish woman and an uninterested mother. Clotee's mother was Lilly Henley's personal maid, but Master Henley forced his wife to sell her maid; Clotee's mother later died far from her daughter. Clotee's father is not present in the story " he drowned in the river before she was born. Mistress Lilly often tries to make Clotee her little pet, claiming that Clotee's mother was a very good friend of hers. Clotee always finds a way to decline and Lilly soon gives up, taking another housemaid under her wing and trying to turn the household servants against each other. When Ely Harms is driven off the Henley Plantation, Clotee takes his place as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Clotee eventually runs away; we later learn that she has become a teacher. She also keeps up correspondence with William Henley, who becomes an abolitionist as well. Clotee dies at the age of 92, and the book ends with the quote from her gravestone: "Freedom is more than a word".
17725634	/m/0479gf8	Tom Swift and His Air Scout	Victor Appleton	1919	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 World War I still rages on in Europe, and Tom Swift is still inventing wartime technology, but inspiration comes in the form of infatuation: while taking Mary Nestor for a brief flight, he is unable to communicate due to the noise of the engine, which sets Tom onto the track of developing a totally silent airship. While Mary Nestor was the spark, Tom intends to offer this to the United States government for use on the western front. While this is still a germ of an idea, Tom is approached by Mr. Gale and Mr. Ware, representatives of the Universal Flying Machine Company, a competing airship manufacturer. Tom is offered a lucrative salary to join the firm, but Tom is uninterested in the money. Tom's refusal infuriates the men, and events are set in motion, which include the (accidental) kidnapping of Mr. Nestor, Mary's father.
17731218	/m/0479n11	The Riddles of Epsilon				 The Riddles of Epsilon focuses on the character of Jessica (‘Jess’), who moves with her mother and father to the fictional island of Lume, far from the mainland (Scotland), after being expelled from school. While speaking to her friend Avril in an internet chatroom, Jess encounters the mysterious character of ‘V,’ who begins to warn her of an impeding danger, relating to Lume’s distant past. Later she dreams of a boy named Sebastian, who she realizes lived in the same house as her nearly one hundred years previously. As the story progresses, events in Jess’s life begin to parallel those of Sebastian’s, particularly the fact that both the children’s mothers seem to be acting incredibly strangely. Much of the exposition in the novel is handled by way of riddles and clues, which take the form of puzzles and images, through which Jess discovers, with the help of ‘V,’ the truth about the strange events taking place on Lume. Jess, having recently moving house to the Island of Lume after being expelled from school, is talking with her friend Avril in an internet chatroom, when someone called V also appears in the chatroom, who kicks Avril out of the chatroom. He talks about her being on Lume, despite her not mentioning the name to Avril. Later, exploring the island, Jess discovers a small cottage in the forest near the "Big House", where she now lives. On the black obsidian doorstep are carved symbols and the words "WHERE _ _ SILON DWELLS". She goes into the cottage, where she thinks she sees a tall shadowy dark man standing by a rocking chair, but when she blinks, he is only an old coat with the sleeve resting on the chair. She attempts to explore the house, but then sees the rocking chair moving by itself. Terrified, she rushes out into the garden, where she discovers an arrow carved on the garden wall, pointing into the ground. She digs down at the place specified and discovers an old bucket, with a symbol like "half a feather, on its side" and the word "EPSILON" carved on its base. In the chat room that evening telling Avril about it, the mysterious V appears and tells her to put the bucket on her windowsill. Later investigating, Jess finds that she can find no trace of "V" in the chatroom history or on the print-outs of her conversations with Avril. As V told her, she puts the bucket in her window and finds that somehow 37 symbols are projected on the walls of her room, despite there being nothing on the bucket for them to reflect off. She copies them down, and upon entering the chatroom, is told by V to use the symbols on the black doorstep at the cottage to translate them. She questions him as to how he knew the black doorstep was there, but he logs out of the chatroom. She uses the English words on the doorstep to translate the symbols from the bucket when her parents are out which turns out to be the verse, "With a mirrored dream A followed sound Thus let it begin." Before she can puzzle this out any further, her parents return from their walk, having found a "whole belemnite, whatever that is". Later that night she has a dream about a boy, sleeping in her attic bed, who wakes in the middle of the night and scribbles on a piece of paper before rushing outside, drinking from a water pump and then following the sound of a flute down towards the cottage. Jess wakes up herself, writes about her dream in her diary, before realising she too can still hear the flute music, which she follows down to the cottage. She walks in the door, and the flute music stops, the flute itself falling to the ground, as if whoever had been playing it had literally just dropped it. She picks it up, and finds it dusty and ancient, with Epsilon's symbol carved on it. She tries to blow it, and blows out a piece of paper stuck inside it. The paper is a sketch of her, sitting in her attic bed, reaching out for her globe lamp, and also a diary page written by a boy called Sebastian Wren. The diary page is apparently what she saw Sebastian writing in her dream before he went down the cottage, and in it he talks about just having a dream himself about a girl who follows a flute down to the cottage (Jess). He talks about her nose ring being a sign of the 'Borus, which Jess does not understand, and also that Epsilon has told him to write the diary. He signs it, using the words "as Agapetos is my witness", and the date, 1894. Jess is bewildered, but realises the words a "followed sound" mean the flute music, and the "mirrored dream" is what she and Sebastian have just experienced: "I drew him, just as he looked when he woke after dreaming of me. He drew me, just as I looked when I woke from a dream about him." But she doesn't know what will now begin. The next day Jess falls ill, and her Mum, concerned, gives her the belemnite she found, which Jess does not appreciate - ")Oh wow. A baby stone carrot. Why can't she give me a CD like other mums?)" The doctor, Dr. Parker, also comes to check her over, and tells her that it is probably just running about in the heatwave, and that even in the early mornings when she goes out she must be careful. She spills out all her woes to Dr. Parker, but feels protective when he picks up the bucket off her windowsill, and feels like something is flowing out of it. He invites her to his garden party, the Greet, next week, and leaves, but when Jess checks the bottom of the bucket again, the base is bare - Epsilon's name and symbol have gone. In the chatroom, Jess works out that V is actually Epsilon, as he gives her the riddle "V is a letter that is not a letter". The letter V actually corresponds to the Roman numeral 5, E is the fifth letter of the alphabet, and in Greek the letter "E" is called "Epsilon". Epsilon tells her that her mother is in danger, and that she shouldn't trust Dr. Parker. He also tells her that someone evil is watching her, whom he calls the "Eye of Miradel". Jess becomes exasperated with him and leaves the chat room. She later goes down to the cottage, where she spots the tall, dark man again. She opens one of the drawers in the desk, to find 3 boxes, only the first of which she can open. In it she finds another diary page from Sebastian. He has discussed the girl he saw in his dream (Jess) with Epsilon, and the whole village is getting ready for the Greet. His mother is behaving strangely, collecting hundreds of shells from the beach, which she has dumped in his father's hollyhocks, which has made him angry; Epsilon has warned Sebastian to look after her. He also writes down the "Ballad of Yolandë", which he has heard the carver of the may pole (or the Coscoroba), Jerry Cork, singing. Epsilon also warns him that this ballad is not all it seems and gives him the clue "V then V then V then V", which Sebastian does not understand. He has also heard his mother singing this ballad in the middle of the night, which worries him. Jess reads the ballad and cannot understand what Epsilon means about it, as it seems perfectly innocuous. But then, in another chat Jess has had with Epsilon, when Epsilon said goodbye, E, "Or should I say V." At this she realized there were 5 V's, not four, and this is what she finds out from "The Ballad of Yolande" (every five words): "I awake in the time of dark choices I stir in my wrath For the treasures of the deep Are hidden from my eyes. The workers of my enemy are busy. I will call my faithful out From east, west, north and south. I sip weakness like nectar - Crush honesty to dust. My bone hands bring lies and death. I must possess! My black heart sows ruin; To ruin is my delight. Mark my chanting, travellers -- Flee from my song of beauty!" She was appalled at this, and went on the greatest, biggest adventure of her life, to save her mother, and herself, and destroy the evil beings. But is Epsilon a bright or an evil being? Jess has yet to discover this . . .
17734863	/m/047b5x0	Evil Always Ends	Joseph Payne Brennan		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The novella is a supernatural detective story set during the World Fantasy Convention in New Haven, Connecticut.
17736688	/m/047c0kl	The Gypsy Morph	Terry Brooks	2008-08-26	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Angel Perez is found by Kirisin and Simralin, and brought to the blind elven tracker Larkin Quill for healing. Leaving Angel, Kirisin and Simralin use a hot-air balloon to travel to the elven city of Arborlon where they discover a demon army hiding outside the city, waiting for the order to attack. The two manage to evade the demon army and enter the city where they gain an audience with the elven High Council. The King is still skeptical about the danger awaiting Arborlon until it is violently revealed in the Council that the elven tracker Tragen is a demon in disguise. Tragen is killed and the elven King is finally convinced that the Arborlon and its guardian tree, the Ellcrys, must be transported within the Loden Elfstone to a safe location. Meanwhile, the Ghost tribe is reunited with Hawk, Tessa, and Cheney. Hawk uses his magic to heal the comatose Logan Tom who has a vision in which he is instructed to help the elves bring the Loden to safety. Logan leaves the ghosts and, with the help of an Owl named Trim, finds Arborlon. There, he meets, and falls in love with, Simralin. Kirisin then uses the magic of the Loden to encase the entire city and most of its inhabitants within the small stone. Simralin, the King, and a small contingent of elves hold off the demon attackers so that Logan can help Kirisin escape with the stone. Simralin and her companions are separated from Logan and Kirisin, but not before Kirisin gives Simralin the blue Seeking Elfstones for protection. Kirisin is later captured by flying demons called Skrails, but manages to drop the Loden before he is taken to the demon camp. After a frightening interrogation by the demon commander, Findo Gask, Kirisin is rescued by Logan. They then make their way to the camp of refugees led by Helen Rice. After being healed by Larkin Quill, Angel and Larkin encounter a monstrous demon called the Klee which was sent by Findo Gask. The demon kills Larkin then suddenly flees. Angel leaves and travels towards the refugee camp. As the Ghosts move eastward Tessa reveals that she is pregnant with Hawk's child. After a skirmish with some militia, they are then attacked by the Klee. Hawk finds he can use his magic to make himself invisible, and after a struggle with the ghosts, the Klee flees again. The Ghosts eventually return to the refugee camp, with the Klee secretly following. Logan, Angel, and the Ghosts are reunited at the camp. Logan and Angel leave in search of the Loden, which they find in the grasp of a fallen elf comrade. They return to the camp and make preparations to defend the main bridge across the Columbia River against the advancing demon army. They hope this will give the refugees time to put some distance from their demon pursuers as they escape. After defending the position as long as possible, the order is given to blow up the bridge. However, the detonation mechanism fails. Fixit, a member of the Ghosts, manages to repair it and is killed instantly in the following explosion. While searching for the Klee, Logan Tom finds Simralin, who recounts her narrow escape from the demons. They affirm their love for each other and return to the camp. The Klee, meanwhile, using its shape shifting ability tricks Hawk and Tessa to leave the camp to kill them. Candle senses the danger and brings Angel Perez, the wolf-dog Cheney, and several Ghosts to the rescue. Together they succeed in destroying the Klee. Catalya, a human who is slowly turning into a Lizard due to radiation exposure, decides to leave the camp and travel the world on her own before she completes her transformation. She is worried that the Ghosts will reject her in her misshapen form. Panther uses Cheney to track her, and the three ultimately decide to travel north together on their own, choosing to live their lives in the wilderness. When the demon army eventually catches up with the refugee caravan, Hawk uses his magic to create a massive earthquake which swallows the demon forces. Findo Gask, riding a Skrail, confronts Hawk and Angel and cripples both. Logan and Simralin return in time and Logan engages Findo. Just when it seems Findo has won, Simralin uses the Seeking Elfstones to weaken him, giving Logan the chance to deal the finishing blow. The caravan continues eastward towards the mountains for weeks, picking up equipment and groups of travelers, including various mutants, along the way. They finally arrive at a pristine valley and release Arborlon from the Loden. Hawk then leaves his friends and climbs to a lookout point where he uses his magic to generate a mist that encapsulates the entire valley, enveloping him as well. The refugees are protected from the nuclear winter that occurs when a military officer, gone mad from being trapped within a nuclear missile bunker, launches all of the weapons. The world outside Arborlon is devastated, while the refugees remain safe in the valley within the bubble of Hawk's wild magic. An unknown time later, Hawk emerges from the mist, now drained of his magic powers, and heads back into the valley in search of his old life.
17737605	/m/047cx06	The Soft Whisper of the Dead	Charles L. Grant		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel concerns vampires in the Connecticut town of Oxrun Station, a suburb of New York.
17745908	/m/047fhqx	Romance of Two Worlds	Marie Corelli	1886		 A Romance of Two Worlds starts with a young heroine, in first person, telling her story of a debilitating illnesses that includes depression and thoughts of suicide. Her doctor is unable to help her and sends her off on a holiday where she meets a mystical character by the name of Raffello Cellini, a famous Italian artist. Cellini offers her a strange potion which immediately puts her into a tranquil slumber, in which she experiences divine visions. Upon wakening, she craves more. Later, she meets her guardian angel named Heliobas, the hero of the story, who whisks her through infinite solar systems faster than a shooting star while human spirits fly by like gossamer silk. He shares the truth of religion and the secret of human destiny, but still she longs for more. She comes to understand God as pure light and pure love, but it's not enough that she should see and hear these things from the touch of an angel. She wants to master this ability on her own and seeks a oneness with God through a series of meditative disciplines while locked away in a monastery.
17749440	/m/04790xh	Threshold	Sara Douglass	1997-01-29	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Set in the Egypt-like kingdom of Ashdod and primarily narrated by the glass-working slave Tirzah, the novel takes place during the final stages of the construction of the titular Threshold, an enormous glass-clad pyramid. Designed by the Magi, an order of mathematically-obsessed sorcerers, it is meant to open a gateway into Infinity, allowing the Magi to pass through and unite themselves with the One, an abstract proto-Platonic ideal of perfection. When the pyramid is activated, however, it instead allows the demonic entity Nzame to cross from Infinity into Ashdod, taking control of its people and turning most of the land into stone and black glass. Among those who escape are Tirzah, who is secretly a "cantomancer," able to communicate with the spirits of objects, principally those of glass, and her former master, the conflicted Magus Boaz, who may hold the key to the destruction of both Nzame and Threshold. Characters Tirzah Magus Boaz
17751530	/m/047920l	Maigret at the Gai-Moulin				 Jean Chabot and René Delfrosse plan to hide in the cellar and rob the till at the Liege nightclub, Gai-Moulin. After the nightclub closes for the night, they venture out of the cellar and stumble on the body of a Greek man. Frightened and in shock they run away from the nightclub. Jean, who has been taking money from the petty cash at the office where he works, needs to return the money before the books are closed and so René steals cash from the till at his uncle's chocolate shop. When they find that they are being followed, they decide to throw the money down the toilet but Jean is arrested before he can do that. He insists he is innocent but the stories of Adèle, a dancer at the Gai-Moulin, Victor, a waiter at the Gai-Moulin, and Gennaro, the proprietor all seem to point at the guilt of the two boys. However, some suspicion also centers on a Frenchman who arrived in Leige on the same train, was staying at the same hotel as the murdered man, and who was at the Gai-Moulin at the same time. Inspector Delvigne does not know what to think when Maigret makes a surprising appearance on the scene.
17762811	/m/0479vnt	The Snow Empress	Laura Joh Rowland	2007-11	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The prologue begins in autumn of AD 1699, with the murder of an unidentified woman in Hokkaido, followed by the kidnapping of Sano Masahiro, son of the Shogun's Lord Chamberlain, Sano Ichiro, at the autumn festivities at the Zōjō Temple in Edo city. Several months later, Sano is summoned by the shogun to undertake a mission. Lord , who administers the country's northernmost domain, has failed to report to the capital as scheduled, and messengers despatched to Hokkaido have not returned. With tensions rising between Sano and his rival, Lord Matsudaira, the last thing Sano wants is to leave Edo, but Matsudaira produces the piece of a toy sword belonging to Masahiro: it seems Matsudaira's agents have sent Sano's son north, leaving him no choice but to go to Ezogashima. Left with little choice, Sano departs, accompanied by a small retinue, including his wife Reiko, his chief retainer , and "The Rat," an Ezo migrant to Edo. Hirata had been training with an ancient martial arts mystic when he sensed Sano was in trouble. He also sensed that the attainment of the next level of mastery which had eluded him would be found in the mission. The mission was almost over before it began when their ship was wrecked off the coast of Hokkaido. The survivors were found and sheltered by local natives who refer to themselves as the Ainu instead of the derisive term Ezo used by the Japanese. The Ainu were much spiritually closer to their natural world than the Japanese, and in there Hirata sensed the key to his breakthrough. When Sano finally managed to get an audience with Lord Matsumae in his court at his castle in Fukuyama, he found the daimyo half-mad with grief at the unsolved murder of his favourite concubine, who was an Ainu native. In order to locate and rescue his son, Sano agreed to investigate the murder to find the real culprit. He was simultaneously assisted and hindered by the daimyo's retainers, who on the one hand had little regard for the concubine for her perceived barbaric background, and on the other hand, desired their master's return to normalcy. As the story developed, Sano and his friends got a first-hand glimpse on the little-known effects of the impacts and clashes of the "civilised" Japanese people intruding into the lives of the natives who were of very different backgrounds and views of the world.
17762837	/m/047bkz1	Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia	Greg Rucka			 Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia is a modern Greek tragedy of duty and vengeance. When Wonder Woman partakes in an ancient ritual called the Hiketeia, she is honor-bound to eternally protect and care for a young woman named Danielle Wellys. But when the Wonder Woman learns that Danielle has killed the sex-slavers/drug dealers who murdered her sister, she suddenly finds herself in battle with Batman, who is searching for the female fugitive. Caught in a no-win situation, Wonder Woman must choose between breaking a sacred oath and turning her back on justice. In the climax, as Wonder Woman and Batman duel by the top of a cliff, Danielle finally decides to sacrifice herself and leaps. She dies in Wonder Woman's arms and tells her that she has released her of the Hiketeian ritual.
17766076	/m/047f0tx	Widow's Walk	Robert B. Parker	2002	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Boston bank manager Nathan Smith has been shot through the head while lying in bed. His new wife Mary, is the chief suspect, although she swears she was watching television at the time and never even heard the gunshot. Despite mounting evidence against her, and a prosecution witness who claims Mary hired him to kill her husband, the defence make a last-ditch attempt at proving her innocence by hiring Spenser, the Boston based P.I. However, everyone Spenser speaks with are systematically murdered.
17772462	/m/0479856	Maigret Has Scruples	Georges Simenon	1958-06-25		 On one of those rare days when all is quiet at the Quai des Orfèvres Maigret receives a visit from the mild-mannered toy salesman (at the Magasins du Louvre) Xavier Marton. Marton thinks that either his wife is trying to poison him or he is just crazy. Then Mme. Marton also shows up leaving Maigret rather bemused. Worried about his own wife's health and musing over his marriage, Maigret decides to investigate despite an order from the public prosecutor not to. When a body finally shows up, the reality is a surprise to everyone.
17774124	/m/047dr8_	The Empress of Mars	Kage Baker		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows Mary, a woman who owns the only bar on Mars. After being let go as the xenobotanist for the British Arean Company, she and a few loyal supporters work very hard to create not only a bar, but a business empire that deals in everything from barley to diamonds.
17786812	/m/047fdv7	To the Stars	L. Ron Hubbard	1950	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Protagonist Alan Corday is a young engineer, and is kidnapped from a spaceport called "New Chicago" and taken aboard the interstellar trading starship Hound of Heaven. The ship is commanded by a charismatic leader named Captain Jocelyn, who tells Corday to use his skills to help the Hound of Heaven in its travels between Earth and space colonies in other star systems. On the first page of the book's prologue Hubbard cites "the basic equation of mass and time.... AS MASS APPROACHES INFINITY, TIME APPROACHES ZERO", meaning that interstellar travelers at near light speed experience time relative to their environment, and when they return to their home star will find that decades or centuries may have passed. Six weeks of time aboard the ship amounts to roughly nine years experienced by those on Earth. Corday resists mingling with the culture aboard the starship, but when he returns home after travels with the Hound of Heaven he finds that his fiancee has aged and has trouble with her memory. Corday realizes his only home has become that of the starship. Captain Jocelyn is killed in an ambush on a dystopian Earth, and Corday takes command of the ship.
17794492	/m/0479w2k	Yellow Men Sleep	Jeremy Lane		{"/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of Con Levington, a Secret Service agent, who travels to the Gobi Desert searching for the source of the drug Koresh. There he discovers an ancient civilization.
17796063	/m/047f95b	The American Claimant	Mark Twain	1892	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 <!-- ===Chapter summaries===
17797585	/m/047cxvb	The Hundred-Year Christmas	David Morrell		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns the friendship between Father Christmas who lives for 100 years and Father Time who lives for only one. Each year Santa Claus watches a new version of his friend grow old and die, before being replaced, however Santa's hundred years is up and it is now his turn to find a replacement. If he fails then no one will be around to take care of the infant Father Time and time itself will stop.
17799143	/m/047b5qw	The Eyeless	Lance Parkin		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Doctor, now on his own, is drawn to the ruins an ancient weapon at the heart of a destroyed civilisation. There he discovers survivors from the world before, people who were children when the weapon fell out of the sky and destroyed the great city, now adults heading a small tribe with offspring of their own. The tribe rests far beyond the city, away from the dangers of the decayed buildings and the ghosts of those who once lived in them. But there are new dangers arising. A race of glass conquerors calling themselves 'The Eyeless' have also been drawn to the ruins by the ancient power of the weapon, and the Doctor must venture deep into the centre of it to uncover why it suddenly appeared, and why it destroyed everything...
17799196	/m/047bwhb	The Story of Martha	Dan Abnett	2008	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The Story of Martha details Martha Jones' journey around the Earth during the Master's reign. Along the way, she encounters different people who survived the initial decimation of the Earth. The book goes on to divulge that while on the run from the Master and his armed forces, the stories Martha tells these people provide them with hope that she and the Doctor can defeat the Master; which eventuates in the television episode "Last of the Time Lords". The story ends at the point where "Last of the Time Lords" begins, with Martha meeting Tom Milligan on the shore of Britain. This book includes four short stories as well as the ongoing narrative of The Story of Martha. "The Weeping" is written by David Roden. This story is one which Martha tells to a little girl who sees past her perception filter near the beginning of the book. It tells of The Doctor and Martha's journey to a planet called Agelaos, after receiving a warning signal. As the population lived near a wormhole; they developed a degree of psychic ability. The Doctor and Martha meet an old man named Waechter, who saves them from an unknown beast and leads them to safety. It's revealed that Waechter is the guardian of the Beacon on the planet, the only person left on Agelaos. He is being kept alive by a circuit wired into his neck. He is also revealed to retain a psychic ability himself, shown when the Doctor's psychic paper and his mind clash. The Doctor agrees to take Waechter away with them on the TARDIS, and transport him to another planet; when suddenly he begins to die on board as Waechter's link to Agelaos is still transmitting through the chip in his neck. After an inspection of the chip, the Doctor comes to the realisation that the population of Agelaos hasn't disappeared; but merely evolved into the creatures from who they were trying to evade in the beginning. The chip was just holding Waechter's humanity in balance. The Doctor provides Waechter with the choice of destruction of the chip and transformation into the alien creature, or leaving the chip and living alone on Agelaos as a human. After seeing his future in the psychic paper, Waechter decides to become one of the alien creatures as a way of never being lonely again. After imparting his thanks and some final psychic predictions to Martha and the Doctor, Waechter leaves the TARDIS to be with his people; as the Doctor and Martha set off on another adventure. "Breathing Space" is written by Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis. The second story in the novel; Breathing Space is told to a group people in a survivor camp in France. After spending time on a resort planet, the Doctor and Martha are once again pulled to a location after the TARDIS intercepts a 'whale song'. They arrive on a space station in 2088, looking over the Earth and also strange looking signals. They meet Professor Conrad Morris; of whom the Doctor seems to be a big fan. Introducing themselves as John Smith and Dr. Martha Jones, they are told about the Benefactors; a solitary race, supposedly the salvation of mankind. They sent a broadcast to the people of Earth, offering salvation from global meltdown from the effects of global warming and atmospheric pollution. The Doctor immediately recognizes the Benefactors as an alien race called the Cineraria; who steal planets and proceed to wipe out all lifeforms and resources in existence. However, Morris and the Head of Security, Daniel Grant; refuse to believe the Doctor's warnings. After escaping from Grant and his guards, the Doctor sends Martha to run and lead them away from the TARDIS as to give him more time to fix the problem with the Cineraria. Grant however, catches up with Martha and forces her back into the control centre, where the Doctor suddenly appears from the TARDIS on the centre's monitors. He explains that the 'whale song' is actual a group of encoded signals which are transmitted between each of the signals outside as way of updating the Cineraria of gas levels stored. Using the sonic screwdriver, the control centre begins to drop towards the Earth as the creatures on the outside take a protective position around it. Appearing in the control centre, the Doctor and Martha notice that the creatures prepare to kill the population of Earth below. The Doctor states that it could all end if Professor Morris asked the Cineraria to stop. They'd have admitted defeat in this sense because they act on stealth; and the Doctor had unconvered their plot. As the Cineraria depart, the Doctor reveals to Professor Morris that he believes that the human race is amazing in itself and they can fix their own problems without the help of an alien race. Inside the TARDIS, Martha asks the Doctor to take her to Earth, ten years in the future; so she can see how the world has managed to sort itself out. The Doctor reassures her that everything will be brilliant and they depart. "The Frozen Wastes" is written by Robert Shearmen. The Frozen Wastes is the first of two stories Martha tells while she is captured and sent to a labour camp in Japan. This story tells how Martha had always wanted to be a doctor since she was a child, after becoming fascinated with the her bones' healing process after she broke her arm. The tale then goes onto detail an adventure wherein the Doctor and Martha join a French Arctic Expeditionist named Pierre Bruyere in 1890, on his maiden voyage. Pierre had planned to fly a hot air balloon to the North Pole as a way of fulfilling a childhood dream. As Pierre spoke to the Geographical Congress, the Doctor explains to Martha that Pierre disappeared after he took off in April, 1890. Martha remarks that they are in June, 1890, to which the Doctor replies that Pierre doesn't seem to know he is a dead man. The Doctor, Martha and Pierre set off in the balloon successfully; with the Doctor remarking on Pierre's brilliance along the way. Martha recalls the happiest times of the expedition which were when the trio would come together as team and sing songs. As Martha slept, she dreamed of being a Doctor once more; and hearing a voice coming through when she was sitting her exam. She is shaken awake by the Doctor to find the balloon is losing height; and the team begin to throw their luggage out in order to lighten the load. Averting disaster, Martha found herself dreaming of her medical exam again; the voice asking for details about her bones. The three would share their dreams, the Doctor becoming interested when Pierre mentions he dreams of nothing but white. The Doctor denies that he dreams anything; however he tells Martha that he dreams about the unknown and the dangers of it. When Pierre awakes, he states that they have reached the North Pole as they have been travelling constantly for about five months. Martha believes it to have been only a fortnight, and the Doctor reveals that they have in fact been travelling for years because they were frozen in time. Using the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor causes the balloon to pop; only to reveal to Martha and Pierre that they were being suspended in mid air. The Doctor explains that Pierre had been caught in a time loop as a result of his journal; sending him back to redo the expedition again and again, always doomed. Pierre becomes disturbed by the revelation when he sees one of his many counterparts alongside his own. Draining the life of his counterpart by holding his face; the Doctor realises that Pierre has been overcome and forces him to do the same to him, thinking that the vast amount of knowledge he retains will weaken Pierre. The Doctor was mistaken, as Pierre's hunger was too insatiable; and he cries out for Martha. She does the same thing and holds the Doctor's face to give him warmth, which unfreezes time to leave the two alone, holding each other. On board the TARDIS, The Doctor remarks that they never did get to the North Pole; and he takes Martha there to be the first human to set foot in the region. Then covering her tracks as to not interrupt history, the Doctor takes Martha to the North Pole, 200 years in the future; where the region had an interactive museum. He tells her of his dreams; that when he was a child, the Doctor had wanted to be an explorer. But he knew it could not be because his people had already discovered everything. They advised him not to leave Gallifrey as there was no point, but the Doctor found one; and whenever he'd dream, he'd see it. "Star-Crossed" is written by Simon Jowett. The final tale Martha tells is again to her fellow prisoners inside the labour camp in Japan. The tale picks up where Martha has her hands held behind her back as the Doctor regains consciousness in a room full of armed men. The Doctor tries to talk to the men, but is struck hard on the head by one named Breed as the man holding Martha strengthens his hold, almost choking her. The Doctor orders them to cease, but Martha is dragged away as the Doctor intervenes in a non-violet fashion to prevent them attacking Breed and possibly harming Martha in the process. In flashback, the Doctor and Martha discover a room full of empty cryogenic units. This leads the Doctor to conclude that they are on a generation ship full of frozen colonists. They will thaw and awake when they reach the target planet. And, as the ship they are on has yet to reach its target, the cargo should still be dormant. This flashback is revealed to be a part of Martha's memories, as things begin to happen which she knows did not occur first time around. Martha regains consciousness, revealing the flashback to have been a dream-memory, and comes face to face with a young woman and Breed. They are not alone. The room is paced with other people, all wearing Breed's face. Elsewhere, the Doctor meets the Head of the Steering Council, Treve; who with along another group, had been hunting Breed. It is revealed that Treve and Laine, the leader of the smaller group, had been frozen themselves; and had been awake for two years. Breed was classed as an Artificial, genetic clones made to perform maintenance checks and to deal with emergencies. Treve states that Breed and the other Artificials have changed their designations and given themselves human names. Breed now calls himself Edison. Becoming individuals themselves, the Breeds had developed beyond their original function. Meanwhile, Martha discovers that the Steering Council want Edison dead because he fell in love with the young woman, Romea. Romea states that Edison didn't mean any harm but the Artificials were stronger than the humans. Edison and Romea had broken the rules by fraternising together and so they were both on the run. A fight breaks out between the Artificials and the Colonists as Martha tries to reach the Fabricator, which would provide everything needed to colonise the target world. As the fight continues, Martha is thrown against a wall after being caught in a collision between a Colonist and an Artificial. As Romea runs to her aid, she is held back and a Colonist approaches Martha with a large spanner. An Artificial protects her and Martha screams out for the fighting to stop. The Doctor arrives and orders the same thing and the fighting stops when he takes order of the ship. The Doctor reveals that he'd seen the Pilot's log and discovered that the Artificials were linked to the Pilot System. They'd be created when there was a problem; for instance the cyro-system failure which had apparently killed half the Colonists. The Doctor remarks that ALL of the Colonists were killed, meaning that everyone bar them on the ship was in fact an Artificial. Around them, the Artificials slowly comfort each other to Martha's amazement. The Doctor tells her that everyone is an Artificial now, but love is real. After providing the ship with enough energy, Martha asks what the Doctor had done in the corridor when he'd been confusing the armed men. The Doctor remarks that he was using Amtorian jiu-jitsu, revealing that that he'd never taken his final rank grading; and that it can take place at any moment. Upon hearing a noise, Martha asks if he's told the Amtorians he wasn't going to take the grading to which the Doctor urgently assures her before pushing her into the TARDIS, and setting off.
17799952	/m/047brjg	General Winston's Daughter	Sharon Shinn	2007-10-18	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Averie is thrilled to visit Chiarrin, a colonized land her father oversees as general of the Aebrian military. As the foreign rhythms of her new life sweep her along, the general's daughter begins to question the ethics and wisdom of colonial governance, depicted as a rough parallel to British rule during empire days. She delves into the culture, strains against the fussy restraints of her era and social class, and finds herself drawn to an officer of non-Aerbrian descent. But it is an interesting young woman from the marketplace, Jalessa, who truly opens a window into Chiarrizi culture. As political resistance begins to threaten colonial rule, security becomes tighter and tensions rise.
17808486	/m/047chfb	The Magician: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel	Michael Scott		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sophie and Josh Newman – 15 year-old twins – are in Paris with the alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel, and his friend, Scathach. They now face Niccolò Machiavelli and his colleague, but also rival, John Dee, both work for the Dark Elders. Machiavelli is plotting to capture the twins and Flamel with the missing pages of the Codex – or Book of Abraham the Mage – before Dee can arrive in France from San Francisco. The twins seek out a friend and student to Nicholas, Comte de Saint-Germain, who teaches Sophie to use the elemental magic of Fire. Saint-Germain's wife, Joan of Arc, helps Sophie to learn to control her aura and to sort out the Witch of Endor's memories from her own. Josh is given the legendary stone sword Clarent, twin blade of Excalibur, by Nicholas. Clarent is an ancient Fire Elemental sword. Josh, Joan, and Scathach encounter three Disir, more commonly referred to as Valkyries. The Disir are ancient enemies of Scathach and bring along the soul-devouring Nidhogg, a ferocious monster once trapped in the roots of Yggdrasil – the world tree. The monster was freed after Dee destroyed Yggdrasil and attacks Scathach but fails to slay her. Instead, it captures Scathach in its claws, but flees with Scathach when the ancient sword Clarent, wielded by Josh, wounds it. Meanwhile, Nicholas' wife, Perenelle Flamel, who had been captured, is taken to Alcatraz as a prisoner. While Josh is fighting Nidhogg, Joan of Arc and Sophie are busy fighting two of the Disir. After a lengthy battle, Sophie manages to freeze the two in an iceberg. They chase after Nidhogg. As Nidhogg flees, Dee, Machiavelli and Dagon (Machiavelli's assistant), who are watching, express remorse at the Disir's failure. Machiavelli then allows Dagon to chase Nidhogg and kill Scathach if the beast fails to do so. The monster escapes through the streets of Paris, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. One of the trio of Disir, as well as Josh (who is still trying to save Scathach) follow. They arrive on the banks of the Seine and, with the help of Dee, Josh manages to stall the Disir and escape. He then leaves with Dee and Machiavelli. Sophie, Joan, and Nicholas arrive, defeat the Disir and Nidhogg, and save Scathach. On Alcatraz, Perenelle is helped by the ghost of Juan Manuel de Ayala, a Spanish sailor. Sophie, Joan, and Nicholas are talking to Scathach when Dagon erupts out of the river and drags her back in with him. The group miss Scathach, but decide to go after Josh, and, by using Sophie's aura, they track Dee and his comrades to the catacombs of Paris. There, Josh's magical ability is awakened by Mars Ultor and he is given a special "gift" similar to what Sophie received from the Witch of Endor – Josh now has Mars' military knowledge. When Sophie, Josh, and the rest escape from the catacombs, Dee and Machiavelli have set a trap, making the gargoyles and statues of Paris come to life and attack. Josh, Sophie, Saint-Germain, and Joan of Arc combine powers to destroy the statues. Flamel and the twins escape via a train and head for London. Perenelle is still stuck on Alcatraz and fears recapture.
17810707	/m/047fv_k	Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang	Joyce Carol Oates	1993	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book takes the form of a memoir by Madeleine "Maddy" or "Monkey" Wirtz. Maddy is a fifty year old astronomer's assistant, but as a young girl was one of the five original members of Foxfire. This group included Betty "Goldie" Siegfried, Loretta "Lana" Maguire, Elizabeth "Rita" O'Hagan, and their leader, Margaret "Legs" Sadovsky. The girls all grew up together in the fictional town of Hammond, New York (the same setting Oates used for her 1990 novel Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart). Legs is an athletic, charismatic girl with feminist ideals about female pride and solidarity. She holds a Foxfire initiation ritual on January 1, 1953, involving secret tattoos of the gang's symbol, a red flame. Soon afterwards, Legs announces her first plan for the gang: the public humiliation of their high school math teacher. Mr. Buttinger has taken an inappropriate interest in Rita, often mocking her in class and requiring her to stay after school for "disciplinary" sessions where he gropes her breasts. This first Foxfire adventure is non-violent; the girls paint graffiti messages on Mr. Buttinger's car such as "I TEACH MATH & TICKLE TITS". His secret now public, Mr. Buttinger is openly laughed at in school and quickly retires from teaching altogether. Encouraged by this first victory, Foxfire becomes increasingly bold in their activities. Although much of their early activities involve small-scale vandalism and shoplifting, they also brutally beat Maddy's uncle after he sexually assaults her. Yet Legs also insists that the gang take an interest in charity, anonymously donating money to needy people in their community. They also successfully protest a local pet shop to end the cruel treatment of the animals for sale there, in the process acquiring a "silvery-haired raccoon-faced husky" named Toby who becomes Foxfire's mascot. Foxfire begins to gain attention in school and around town. Several other girls ask to join the gang. One day, Foxfire members are involved in a schoolyard fight with boys from another gang. The girls run from the school and wind up going for a joyride in a car they find left with the keys in the ignition. This leads to a police chase that ends in a crash for the Foxfire girls. None are seriously injured, but Legs is sent to Red Bank, a girl's correctional facility. The other Foxfire members involved in the incident are placed on probation. Legs spends more than a year at Red Bank. After her release, Legs manages to rent an old house outside town and dubs it the "Foxfire Homestead". Most of the gang members move into the house, but they have difficulty earning enough money to support themselves with their legitimate jobs. The gang eventually begins stealing and extorting money from older men. Eventually, Legs comes up with a plan for the "final solution" of their financial problems: the kidnapping for ransom of a wealthy local man. When the kidnapping plan goes wrong, it results in the breakup of the Foxfire gang and the mysterious disappearance of Legs herself.
17812383	/m/047df3t	The Scourge of God	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Rudi Mackenzie and company stage a rescue of Mathilda Arminger, Odard Liu, and Ingolf Vogeler from High Seeker Kuttner. They manage to free their companions and kill Kuttner, but not before he becomes possessed and almost strangles Rudi. Following their victory, Frederick Thurston decides to travel with Rudi to Nantucket instead of staying in Boise to fight his brother Martin Thurston. Back in Twin Falls, the Prophet Sethaz orders High Seeker Twain and Major Graber to kill Rudi. Rudi meanwhile comes upon a group of Mormon rebels, including Rebecca Nystrup and her brother. They join up with Rudi and reach the Deseret town of Picabo, now occupied by Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT). Ingolf, Rudi, Edain Aylward, and Odard pose as slavers, with Rebecca acting as one of their slaves, in an effort to infiltrate the town. In order to preserve their cover, however, Edain is forced to attempt to shoot an apple off of Rebecca's head. He misses, killing her. Ingolf's plan goes off the night before the CUT forces leave but it is interrupted by Graber, who wounds Rudi. Ingolf manages to lead the party to safety while the Mormon rebels go into the wilds. Still chased by Graber, Rudi's company attempts to find a place they can hole up so Rudi can heal. While unconscious, Rudi has an out-of-body experience in which Odin tells him he will not die of his wounds but instead will die in an act of self sacrifice for his people. Ritva Havel is ambushed by a CUT scout while hunting. Ritva barely defeats him; in return for his life, he warns her that High Seeker Twain has captured her twin sister Mary. Ritva rescues Mary and kills Twain, but not before Mary loses an eye. The whole company is later discovered by a group of Buddhist monks and they winter in their monastery. While at the monastery, Ignatius receives a vision from Mary telling him to look after Mathilda. After leaving the monks, the company is joined by Virginia Kane. As the group enters Sioux territory, they are greeted by Sioux chief Red Leaf and his soldiers who demand that they leave. However, Virginia is the daughter of a prominent local rancher who was Red Leaf's blood brother. Her father was killed by a rival and his CUT allies. For Virginia's sake, Red Leaf gives the group sanctuary, but they run into the group of ranchers chasing her, along with Major Graber. Graber and Rudi fight; Rudi is victorious, but spares Graber. The ranchers and the CUT are driven away after the two forces accidentally upset some lions. Rudi and his group stay with Red Leaf's tribe, but leave just before Graber returns with reinforcements. With the help of Red Leaf's son, they manage to get on the other side of a huge stream of migrating buffalo, thus losing Graber. Rudi and company make it to Iowa and, thanks to Ingolf's connections with a local influential farmer, are able to make it to Des Moines, where they hope to finance a trip into the eastern deathlands. The group, however, is ambushed by the State Police. Rudi, Ingolf, Mathilda and Odard are captured. It appears that the Bossman of Iowa is angry with Ingolf for not completing a salvaging expedition he had paid for into the eastern deathlands. Rudi volunteers to retrieve the goods that were abandoned in Illinois. The Bossman agrees on the condition that Rudi must do it alone in one month. As Rudi continues his quest, events back in Oregon come to a boil. The leaders of the Meeting agree that the CUT threat is too great to ignore. They decide to attack Pendleton. An army is formed, led by Astrid Larsson with Lady Tiphaine as second in command. As the army marches toward Pendleton, Astrid leads a black op to capture the Bossman of Pendleton and his family. With the help of a spy in the service of Sandra Arminger, Astrid, Eilir Mackenzie, Alleyne Loring, John Hordle and other members of the Rangers, sneak into the city and get access to the Bossman's palace. Meanwhile, BD, a merchant in the service of the Meeting, gets invited to a party the Bossman is throwing. While there, she sees that both President Thurston and Sethaz are present along with soldiers from their respective nations. Astrid captures the Bossman and his family, but Sethaz incites the crowd to attack the Rangers, who are forced to flee with only the Bossman. Tiphaine is able to rescue them but Astrid has been injured and has to cede command of the army to Tiphaine. Thanks to a traitor from Boise, Tiphaine knows she is outnumbered by the combined forces of Boise, CUT, and Pendleton. She attempts a fighting retreat in an effort to buy time for the infantry to escape. Chuck Barstow, commander of the Clan Mackenzie forces, is killed during the battle. He awakens in an idyllic afterlife. The Bearkillers' commander Eric Larsson loses his hand and almost his life except for quick action by Mike Havel Jr., but the army succeeds in breaking contact with the enemy. Back home, the Mackenzies and Bearkillers mourn their dead. Oak vows in front of Juniper Mackenzie to not rest until the killers of his father are defeated. At Larssdalen, Mike Jr. is promoted to the rank of A-lister and is offered the position of his late father, Lord Bear. He respectfully declines saying he has much to learn before he can accept.
17817327	/m/047tclh	Starting With Alice	Phyllis Reynolds Naylor	2002-09-01		 The book begins with Alice moving from Chicago to Takoma Park, Maryland with her single father, Ben Mckinley, and older brother, Lester Mckinley. As the new girl in school, she doesn't know a single person except for her next-door neighbor Donald Sheavers, who is not only a boy, but also seems to be a little bit peculiar. She gets off to a rough start when she meets three snooty girls, Jody, Dawn and Megan, whom Alice nicknames "The Terrible Triplets" after they make it clear they don't want to get to know her. Along the way, she makes some new friends, gets a cat, attends a wedding, attends a funeral, confronts bullies and continues to learn about the world around her.
17822296	/m/047g7gn	Grail Prince	Nancy McKenzie	2003		 Before his death, King Arthur sends young Galahad the oldest son of Lancelot and Elaine on a quest to find the lost treasures of an ancient king — a Grail, a Spear, a Sword — which will safeguard Britain’s future. For Galahad the search becomes a transforming journey into manhood.
17827209	/m/047dgcp	The Dark Cry of the Moon	Charles L. Grant		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel concerns werewolves in the Connecticut town of Oxrun Station, a suburb of New York.
17828192	/m/047cz2x	Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality	Andrew Sullivan	1995	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book presents the reader with four groups of citizens who view homosexuality in a specific manner within American society, criticizing the arguments: Prohibitionists, Liberationists, Conservatives, and Liberals. The Prohibitionists comprise Thomas Aquinas and strict followers of the Bible. They believe that "homosexuality is an aberration and that homosexual acts are an abomination" and that homosexuality should either be punished or "cured". Sullivan asserts that there is inconsistency with Prohibitionists that use Biblical and moral arguments against homosexuality yet not against other conditions many Christians find sexually immoral. In order for Prohibitionists to have effective policy, they have to be hypocritical in their denial of marriage to gays yet not to infertile couples (because they claim marriage's sole purpose is procreation). However, if the Prohibitionists are consistent (i.e., "no one can marry unless the wife will become pregnant from the man's seed"), then their views are too marginal to be accepted by society at large. The Liberationists are epitomised by Michel Foucault and Queer Nation. They believe, like the Prohibitionists, that no one is "homosexual" but for a different reason. To a Liberationist, the words "homosexual", "homosexuality", "gay", "lesbian", etc., are just tools that the straight majority use to oppress the gay minority. An example of this would be that a gay man who feels sexual attraction for a particular woman would be limited by the chains of his "sexual orientation". Sullivan claims their flaw to be that liberationist policy, by rejecting the notion of limiting oneself to words, fails to improve the plight of the gay community. Conservatives, unlike the former two, don't believe that everyone is essentially heterosexual. They acknowledge the existence of a gay minority. However, they believe that homosexuality should be only a private matter and kept silent in public matters. They further believe that gays should not seek to change public acceptance of homosexuality because social change will come with time, just as it has for other minorities. Sullivan says that the problem of the Conservatives is that as gays gain increasing acceptance in Western societies, they are faced with two alternatives. The first is a path of "increasing isolation and uncomfortable hostility to homosexuality". The second is to incorporate homosexual trends into their conservatism, as those originally opposed to women's suffrage eventually accepted the notion of women contributing to the conservative tradition of democracy. The Liberals seek to apply liberalism as has been applied to other minorities to the gay community. Sullivan argues that the liberals want to apply a cookie-cutter agenda of "liberalism" that would render many gays as permanent victims of civil rights abuse. He says that the liberals are guilty of "trying to use easy remedies for a problem that knows no easy remedies; using the language of rights in an area where it is impossible to avoid the language of goods; encouraging an attitude among homosexuals that might actually increase their isolation rather than undermine it". They are said to limit the freedom of the majority to give rights to minorities. Sullivan also adds that anti-discrimination laws are reifying. Finally, Sullivan concludes on gay marriage, arguing that it would be a good thing as it would be both a humanising and traditionalising effort. He also advocated the repeal of Don't ask, don't tell, which was still in effect when he wrote the book.
17828740	/m/047fz2k	In the Courts of the Crimson Kings	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins in 1962 where several famous science fiction authors are watching an American space probe as it lands on an inhabited Mars. They watch as human-like Martians arrive in a "land ship" and take the probe with them. In 2000, both the US and Sino-Soviet "Eastbloc" have bases on the planet. The US has their base off in the wilderness away from the major cities while the Eastbloc have placed their base inside the remnants of the Tollamune emperor's realm within Olympus Mons, a ruling dynasty that once ruled all Mars. Although in decline, Martian civilization is considerably older than that of Earth and has considerable expertise in genetic engineering. Archeologist Jeremy Wainman is sent by the U.S. Aero-Space Force to explore the lost city of Rema-Dza out in the "Great Beyond", or the Martian desert. The USASF also hires a female Martian mercenary, Teyud za-Zhalt, who leads the expedition to the city. While fighting a pack of feral engines under the city, Jeremy and Teyud fall in love. It becomes apparent that there is more to Teyud than she initially recounts. When the expedition discovers the lost "Invisible Crown" of the Tollamune emperors, a symbol of authority that gives the wearer immense power, everyone is startled to find that Teyud can wear it even though only someone from the Tollamune dynasty is capable of doing so. Teyud admits that she is the illegitimate daughter of the current emperor. Now the former mercenary commands the power of an ancient technological artifact allegedly created by the aliens that terraformed Mars and Venus, and seeded them with life from Earth. Jeremy and Teyud soon discover that there are Tollamune dynastic factions who know of Teyud's ancestry and are looking to either kill or capture her. Jeremy himself is captured while attempting to protect Teyud. This forces her, with the help of her father's soldiers, to attempt to rescue him from the fortress of a potential usurper, who had been displaced from the imperial succession after the Emperor recognises his daughter's legitimacy. The Crown Prince is later defeated after playing a game of Atanj (Martian chess), using people as the pieces, including Teyud and Jeremy. Teyud's father also dies passing the title of emperor to her. With the Crown Prince dead and a Tollamune once again ruling all of Mars, Teyud takes Jeremy as her prince consort. The couple are visited by an ancient alien computer program which cryptically announces that they will proceed to the next stage. Though both are unsure what this means, but they soon discover that three interdimensional "Gates" have opened up on Earth, Venus and Mars, each leading to another world. The book ends with Teyud and Jeremy visiting "Vow'da" (Moon-World) the new colony on the other side of the Martian gate.
17829001	/m/047f27m	The Undying Land	William Gilmour		{"/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of Starrett, an aviator who is becomes lost in Africa and discovers a lost civilization.
17834637	/m/0479pzl	Asterix Conquers Rome				 After a Roman centurion is continually defeated by the Village of Indomitable Gauls, he concludes that they must be gods. Julius Caesar sets twelve tasks that only gods could perform, similar to the twelve tasks of Hercules, to prove that the Gauls are mere mortals. If the Gauls succeed, he will admit defeat and let the Gauls become the rulers of Rome, but if they fail, they will become his slaves. The challenge is accepted and Asterix and Obelix are chosen to represent the village, eventually succeeding in all tasks. At the end Caesar admits the Gauls' superiority. He is shown living in retirement married to Cleopatra, although it is explained that the ending is what it is because it's just a cartoon film, so "anything goes".
17836724	/m/047fnm0	Academ's Fury	Jim Butcher	2005-07-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Approximately two years after the events in Furies of Calderon, Tavi is attending the finest school in Alera, The Academy. His patron, the ruler of Alera, has generously paid for his schooling and employed him as a page in the capitol. He still has no furies and remains the only Aleran to have no furycrafting ability. He struggles to deal with his perceived disability while training to be a Cursor of the crown, the First Lord's messengers and covert agents through the realm. Tavi must confront his peers and enemies alike as Alera is quietly being invaded by the Vord, his Aunt Isana in danger, the First Lord's failing health, and all with the threat of civil war looming over their heads.
17836802	/m/047dq3w	Captain's Fury	Jim Butcher	2007-12-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Two years have passed after the Night of the Red Stars and the Battle at the Elinarch (in book three of the Codex Alera, Cursor's Fury). Rufus Scipio/Tavi had been repelling attacks from the Canim forces for two years and the war against Kalare raged on. Senator Arnos who is in charge of the war committee is pushing for the destruction of all of the Canim forces in Alera. Isana is faced with telling Tavi of who his father is and confronting her own abilities. Tavi must find a way to end the conflict between the Canim and Alera or it may mean the destruction of all of his forces. Gaius Sextus, and the Count and Countess of Calderon take on a secret mission to stop Kalare. Senator Arnos comes to the Elinarch to take over command of the battle against the Canim. Senator Arnos is working with Invidia Aquitaine to remove Tavi as leader of the battle and eliminate him entirely. Arnos is accompanied by several singulares who are a constant threat to Tavi and who attempt to eliminate him through the book. Isana, after several attempts of trying to tell Tavi that she is his mother and that his father was Gaius Septimus, was unable to do so. Araris delivers the message instead. Tavi has a meeting with the Canim leader, Nasaug, where he tells Nasaug that he knows that the Canim are trying to build ships to get them back to their homeland. He strikes a deal with Nasaug that he would help them but Nasaug says the only way that a deal can be struck is if Tavi returns Ambassador Varg to them. Arnos spies on this meeting and through the plotting of Arnos, Invidia and Marcus/Fidelias Tavi is removed from his command as Captain for conspiring with the enemy. Prior to leaving Tavi places Crassus in charge of the Alerian forces. Tavi escapes from the prison and with Isana, Kitai, Ehren, and Araris they board a ship to take them to Aleria Imperia. During that voyage they are attacked by Arnos’ singulares and the group uses furycrafting to board the enemy ship and kill the witchmen that are hiding their presence from the leviathans. The enemy ship is destroyed by leviathans but Arnos’ singulares escape. During this battle, Isana’s powers grow and she is able to heal Araris who was seriously injured without a bathtub which is only performed by the most powerful healers and high lords and ladies. Gaius takes Amara and Bernard into Kalarus’s lands as he tells them that Kalarus has woken one of the Great Furies in the Kalare mountains and if Kalare is killed the mountain will erupt and kill everyone in the region, Gaius intends to disarm the Fury. During their journey Gaius cannot use his powers as this will signal Kalare that he is on Kalare’s lands and ruin their mission. Gaius gets an infection as his feet blister from walking 300 miles to the mountain and he must be tended to along the way. As they approach the mountains the group is discovered by a legion of Immortals led by Brencis Minoris, Kalarus’s son. Gaius heals himself and destroys the legion. He then releases the great fury which destroys Kalare and all who reside in the area. Amara, who is angry at the First lord for lying to her, throws her silver coin in his face and leaves him. At the same time Tavi is able to free Varg from the Grey Tower and returns him to the Canim forces. He then announces his identity as Gaius Octavian and challenges Arnos to a Juris Macto. Pharygiar Navaris, who is the deadliest cutter/sword in all of Alera, represents Arnos in the duel. Marcus (Fidelias) is instructed by Invidia to kill both Arnos and Tavi after the duel, using a balest, to make it look like a Canim attack. Marcus aims the balest and is able to strike both Arnos, as he tries to escape after Tavi wins the duel, and Invidia who Arnos grabs for protection. Invidia survives the initial injury but has the poison of the garic oil in her system. Tavi is able to strike a deal with Gaius Sextus allowing the Canim to return home and to send a cohort with them to ensure their safe passage and assist them in destroying the Vord that have taken over their lands. In the end it is also revealed that Tavi is now able to furycraft.
17840107	/m/047f6y4	The Princes of the Golden Cage	Nathalie Mallet	2007-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Prince Amir lives in a lavish and beautiful cage. He lives in a palace with hundreds of his brothers, all barred by law from ever leaving the palace until he, or one of his brothers, becomes the next Sultan. Living under constant threat of death at the hands of his scheming brothers, Amir has chosen a life of solitude and study. His scholarly and alchemical pursuits bring him under suspicion when his brothers begin to die from seemingly supernatural means. Amir finds himself thrown together with his brother Erik, the son of a barbarian princess. Together they must discover the dark secret that is stalking the halls of their golden cage.
17841827	/m/047fvd9	Marianne and Mark	Catherine Storr	1960	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Now aged fifteen Marianne returns to Brighton, where she recuperated from her illness at the end of Marianne Dreams, when she was ten. Much to her disappointment she finds Brighton a lonely and boring place, and she tags along with local girls Alice and Josie despite having little in common with them. One evening Josie's friend Billie tells the girls of a visit to a local fortune teller who apparently gives remarkably accurate readings. Reluctantly, Marianne joins the girls on a trip to the fortune teller and there she is astonished at how much the woman guesses about her life, including details of her illness five years ago. The fortune teller assures Marianne that she will not be lonely for much longer and that soon she will experience romance. Spurred on by this Marianne accepts a date with a boy called Alan, whom she doesn't realise is Billie's former boyfriend. This inadvertent betrayal alienates Marianne from the few friends she had, and after Alan also deserts her she is left on her own. It is then that she meets Mark, a boy from London who, it transpires, is the same boy with whom she shared a tutor but never met in Marianne Dreams. The two enjoy the last few days of the holiday together and promise to meet again in London.
17842687	/m/047dqfh	Shesher Kobita	Rabindranath Tagore	1929		 The novel recounts the love story of Amit Ray (pronounced "amito rAy"), a barrister educated at Oxford, whose virulent intellectualism reveals itself in its opposition to all forms of tradition. He meets Labannya in a car accident and the romance builds up in the misty hills of Shillong. Though the novel is primarily set in Shillong, it was written when Rabindranath was in Bangalore. Amito's iconoclastism meets Labannya's sincere simplicity through a series of dialogues and poems that they write for each other. The novel also contains a self-reference of significance in Bangla literature. By the late 1920s, more than a decade after his Nobel Prize, Tagore had become a towering presence in Bengal, and was facing criticism: :A younger group of writers were trying to escape from the penumbra of Rabindranath, often by tilting at him and his work. In 1928 he decided to call a meeting of writers at Jorasanko and hear them debate the issues. Shortly after this meeting, while writing this novel, Tagore has Amito railing against a much revered poet, whose name turns out to be Rabi Thakur - Rabi is a common short form of Rabindranath, and Thakur is the original Bangla for Tagore. Amito remarks: "Poets must live for at most five years. ... Our severest complaint against Rabi Thakur is that like Wordsworth, he is illicitly staying alive." These remarks aroused much mirth among the reading public, but the novel is also a serious attempt at demonstrating his versatility, at age 67. Even the theme was novel - after building up their affair and obtaining the blessings of Labannya's employer Jogmayadevi (Labannya served as her daughter's governess but they shared a very close relationship and she was considered Labannya's real guardian), the lovers decide to marry other suitors, without the air of tragedy. In the text, the reason appears to be that they feel that daily chores of living together will kill the purity of their romance: :Most barbarians equate marriage with the union, and look upon the real union thereafter with contempt.... ketakI and I - our love is like water in my kalsi (jug) ; I fill it each morning, and use it all day long. But Labannya's love is like a vast lake, not to be brought home, but into which my mind can immerse itself. However, this surface text is subject to many interpretations. Rabindranath biographer Krishna Kripalini, writes in the foreword of his translation of Shesher Kabita (Farewell my Friend, London 1946): :[Labannya] releases [Amit's] own submerged depth of sincerity, which he finds hard to adjust to... The struggle makes him a curiously pathetic figure... The tragedy is understood by the girl who releases him from his troth and disappears from his life. The poem "Nirjharini" from the book was later published as a separate poem in the collection of poems known as Mohua. A film adaptation of the book is in production. It will be directed by Suman Mukhopadhyay and will star Konkona Sen Sharma as Labannya and Rahul Bose as Amit Ray. You can see a full radio play of Shesher Kabita on YouTube. It was performed at the lawn of Sir. P.C. Mitter's heritage house on Elgin Road on 1 April, 2012 .
17843812	/m/047g9hm	Crusader	Edward Bloor	1997	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The central character in Crusader is 15-year-old Roberta Ritter, who lives in south Florida with her widowed father. Roberta is an aspiring journalist, but works after school and on the weekends at Arcane, the virtual-reality arcade run by her father and uncle. Roberta is not content with her life so far; her father barely seems to notice her, instead spending much of his free time with his new girlfriend, Suzie. Roberta doesn't approve of the games offered in Arcane, which are all filled with over-the-top violence and racial overtones, nor does she like having to deal with the arcade's often unsavory clientele. Roberta deals with coming of age problems, criticized by her cousin's popular friend Nikki for her disinterest in make-up and never having menstruated. She also is forced to come to terms with finding many of the people around her to be motivated by self-interest and the deaths of both an elderly friend and her mother. Roberta takes it upon herself, with the occasional help of some friends and her high school journalism teacher, to investigate a series of incidents at the mall where Arcane is located. These incidents range from hate crimes perpetrated against vendors, to rumors that the mall developers are planning to have the mall demolished. She also begins to dig into the facts surrounding her mothers murder. Roberta likes the idea of mud-raking as a way of unveiling hidden injustice, but also becomes disillusioned with both her teacher and the local news station after witnessing the inability to pursue real journalism.
17845285	/m/04791fb	Kushiel's Mercy	Jacqueline Carey	2008-06-12	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Upon reaching the City of Elua, Sidonie and Imriel find that there are many people awaiting them. Some, like the Yeshuites and the Tsingani, are there simply because Imriel was foster-son to Phèdre nó Delaunay and Joscelin Verreuil. Also there are small knots of people, each wearing black armbands around one of their arms, signifying death. They all hold out their fists, thumbs pointed downward. Imriel later learns that these people are the families of his mother, Melisande Shahrizai's, victims. In the City, Imriel parts ways with Phèdre and Joscelin, declining their offer to stay at the townhouse in favor of confronting Queen Ysandre. Upon reaching the palace, Imriel comes to find that the Queen has seemed to have cooled off since he had last seen her. His room are ready for his use and he takes the opportunity to have a much-needed bath. Hearing a commotion outside his door, he allows his cousin, Mavros Shahrizai, to be admitted to see him. Mavros comes in and begins berating Imriel for not sending word and worrying him. His anger melts away, though, and he sits and listens to Imriel's story - of Imriel's hunt for Berlik, how he was captured, how Berlik wanted to die, and how Imriel made it back and buried Berlik's head at Dorelei's feet. The conversation eventually drifts to Imriel and Sidonie, and Mavros offers the support of House Shahrizai, though he warns that it may not count for much. Imriel is then summoned to a meeting with the Queen in her private chambers; the attendance of her Secretary of the Presence, however, showed that this was an audience of state and not a family chat. The Queen thanks him for avenging Dorelei's death, then promptly dismisses him, telling him they'll talk about the "other matter" at another time. She also tells him that a Priest of Elua would be by to see him soon. One of Sidonie's personal guard finds him after the audience, and tells him that the Dauphine has requested to see him. He follows and tells Sidonie about the upcoming meeting with the priest. Sidonie says that she had to prove her love for Imriel to the priest, and now Imriel must convince him. The Queen, as a way of delaying her decision, decides to treat Imriel and Sidonie's love like it does not exist. Eventually, the summons from the priest comes. Imriel asks Sidonie what she had said to convince the priest. She says that she spoke of how, sometimes, it isn't the person who choses but love itself. She had said that her mother would have allowed her anyone else, but that then she would have learned nothing of the power and might of love. More than that Sidonie does not mention, saying that she wants Imriel's reactions and replies to be genuine and not appear rehearsed. The next day, Imriel goes to see the priest. He is escorted to the large common area and finds that there are priests of all of Elua's companions except Cassiel, there to decide on the sincerity of his love. Imriel tells the priests and priestesses of how he loved Sidonie, how he would do anything for her, how others had been hurt because they had defied Blessed Elua's precept. Even though Irmiel can not explain why, he does his best to make his feeling known. The Kusheline priest is the first to declare that he believes Imriel. The priestess of Namaah and priestess of Eisheth both voice their approval at exactly the same moment. After some discussion, the opinion is shared by Shemhazai's priest, Anael's priestess, Azza's priest, and the priest of Camael. The priest of Elua verifies with his counterparts and informs Imriel that he will deliver their opinions directly to the Queen. Finally the time has arrived for Ysandre to deliver her decision on Imriel and Sidonie's relationship. Before a packed Hall of Audience, Ysandre asks both Sidonie and Imriel if it is still their wish to be united and acknowledged in the eyes of the realm and the throne. Upon their consent, Ysandre declares that she will not forbid their relationship because the priests declare their love to be genuine and she must abide by Elua's precept, "love as thou wilt." BUT, their relationship is causing much turmoil in the kingdom and verging on civil unrest. So, if Sidonie declares Imriel her consort, Ysandre says she will not acknowledge it and thereby give it no legal binding. If Sidonie marries Imriel, Ysandre states she will disinherit her and her title to the throne will go to Alais. The only way around this vow, unofficially understood, is for Imriel to find and bring his mother to justice - the execution she managed to escape from twenty-one years ago. Following this declaration, Imriel, Sidonie, and a few of their closest, most trusted friends hold a conference of their own to decide what to do. Sidonie immediately dismisses the idea of setting off to find Melisande anytime soon, on the ground that she wants Imriel to be around as long as humanly possible. Imriel proposes the idea of asking The Master of the Straits for assistance, by searching with his mystical sea-mirror. That night, Imriel realizes that he has to tell Sidonie about a shadowy part of his history - his involvement with the Unseen Guild. He speculates that could find his mother's whereabouts by contacting them, but to do so, he has to tell Sidonie of the dangers they present. Once she is informed, she goes to find her mother and have a talk about the situation. During this time, Imriel is asked to see Claude de Monluc, the captain of Sidonie's guard. It appears that Claude de Monluc is worried that Imriel might be after his post. Imriel manages to allay his fears and they come to an understanding. Upon her return from her talk with her mother, Sidonie tells Imriel that her mother already knew of the Unseen Guild, from Phèdre. Though Imriel had told Phèdre a year earlier, he did not know that she had told the Queen. In the months that follow, they settle into a routine. There are Parliamentary decisions to made, parties to attend, plans to be made. Finally, word comes back from The Master of the Straits: Melisande is not on Alban or d'Angeline soil. She is somewhere else. Imriel realizes that he will have to call upon the Unseen Guild and decides to contact Diokles Agallon, who had approached Imriel for a favor on the Guild's behalf a couple years before. Before he puts that plan into motion, however, he decides to get as much out of his situation as he can. The Longest Night is approaching, and he and Sidonie decide to attend it together. Calling on Favrielle nó Eglantine, the two decide on their theme for their costumes - Night and Day. Imriel would be Night and Sidonie Day. The Palace Ball goes smoothly, except, however, for a minor lord from one of the estates bordering one of Imriel's holdings. The lord, who is more than a little drunk, begins to insult Sidonie publicly. It becomes clear that the lord has been put up to this by Barquiel L'Envers, who still has a deep-seated grudge against Imriel. Both are promptly thrown out by Ysandre herself. Finally, with the arrival of winter, the time had come for Imriel to put his plan into motion. He writes to Diokles, being very vague and suggestive in his letter. Once sent, he settles into his other problems. When spring arrives, people began to wonder at Imriel's lack of action. Sidonie dismisses the guards in her service who have been gossiping about her and Imriel's relationship, and finds that there are many more who apply to take these positions. Upon choosing the replacements, she finds that they want to dote on her. Soon after, Imriel decides to keep his long-standing promise to Alais and goes to Montrève to select a new puppy for her. Sidonie goes with him, and they pass several days of happiness and peace with Phèdre and Joscelin at Montrève. At long last, Imriel's response arrives. But it was not what he had expected. To all outward appearances, the letter seemed to be a love note from a besotted peer. Upon further inspection, however, Imriel finds the note contains a hidden message, similar to the medallion Canis had given him in Kushiel's Scion. Upon research, Imriel learns the message says that Diokles does not have the answers Imriel wants but someone in the Carthaginian entourage does. All Imriel had to do is push for their delegation to enter the City of Elua and the answer will present itself to him. There has been a Carthaginian delegation awaiting approval for entry into the City of Elua for a weeks now, with no decision having been made yet. The new general of Carthage, Astegal of Sarcal, wishes to make alliances and become better friends with his neighbors, and he claims he is enamored with Terre d'Ange. The Queen is cautious, however, because Carthage and Aragonia seem to be having tense relations, and it is clear that Carthage wants to occupy Aragonia. Aragonia is a long-time ally of Terre d'Ange, including through marriage via Nicola L'Envers y Aragon, and sent a squadron of their best archers to help defend Terre d'Ange at the Battle of Troyes-le-Mont. Upon this news from the Unseen Guild, Imriel and Sidonie go to speak to the Queen. Ysandre does not seem too upset about the proposal, but is curious and cautious. Soon after, as planned, Ysandre convenes a session of Parliament with the intent to decide on whether or not to allow the Carthaginian delegation into the City. After hearing the long list of tribute General Astegal has to give them, Parliament, almost unanimously, votes to allow them entry. Imriel, however, feels uneasy about the prospect and worries about what the Unseen Guild has to do with all this. About two weeks later, six Carthaginian ship sail into the City's docks. As the tribute is being unloaded, Astegal of Sarcal comes to speak to Ysandre, Drustan, Sidonie and Imriel. He says many flattering things and actually seems genuinely interested in the City of Elua. He also brings news from his horologists that a great occurrence in the skies will happen soon. He has even brought his horologists with him to show the entire city a "marvel", which can only be seen when the moon falls under the world's shadow and the planets are aligned just so. That night, the Queen throws a fête in honor of the Carthaginians. It is at this celebration that a man named Sunjata, an apprentice to a Carthaginian jeweler, comes up to speak to Imriel. Imriel learns that Sunjata is a eunuch and it seems that they have somewhat in common, both having been abducted by Carthaginian slavers. Just before parting, Imriel discerns that Sunjata is a member of the Unseen Guild but he is separated from him before he can ask anything else. Soon after, another man, Gillimas Hiram, approaches Imriel bearing an offering from the Council of Thirty as an apology for Imriel being abducted by Carthaginians. Imriel notices the gift contains the symbol of the Unseen Guild, the inverted lamp. Gillimas also says that, should it catch his fancy, Imriel should make a journey to the isle of Cythera, where the wood to make the gift had come from. It was thus clearly hinted by Gillimas that he is also a Guild member. However, no more than this is exchanged and Imriel unfortunately loses track of him before the end of the party as well. The next day, Imriel hears that Astegal wants to experience the pleasures of the Night Court and wishes Imriel to accompany him. During the excursion, Imriel learns from Astegal, which he had already heard from Sidonie, that Astegal had made a bid for Sidonie's had in marriage. Imriel dismisses this as politics and it seems that Astegal does not know of Imriel's relationship with Sidonie. Upon arriving at Jasmine House, Imriel sees an opportunity to gather more information about the Unseen Guild; Gillimas has joined the group going to the Night Court, gotten very drunk, and has taken a liking to one of the adepts. Imriel asks the Dowayne to have the girl seeing to Gillimas to come and get him once he had passed out. She does and Imriel sneaks into the room. He sits on Gillimas, ready to strangle him, and threatens him to get him to talk plainly. While this is all a ruse, Gillimas falls for it and is frightened enough to tell Imriel that his mother is indeed on the Isle of Cythera, the mistress of the lord of Paphos. After all have been sated at Jasmine House, Imriel goes back to the castle and Gillimas tells no one what happened. Imriel tells Sidonie what he did and she wonders at the safety of the attempt. The next day, however, the horologists' spectacle is to take place, so the incident will have be discussed later. Imriel keeps having a sense of impending trouble about the horologists' "marvel" but without any real reason. He goes to look at the progress of the set up; large mirrors are being carefully placed all around the walls of the city, being headed by Astegal's half-brother, the scholar and mage Bodeshmun. While the city will be well protected, Imriel's gut feeling still says that something is very wrong. Imriel and Sidonie quarrel for the first time about this. They go to the Queen and tell her privately of his feelings, but since he has no good reason to call it off and no proof of something wrong, they all agree that spectacle will have to go ahead. The city is well guarded and the preparations have been closely watched including by D'Angeline horologists, who have no idea what this "marvel" behind the lunar eclipse could be. On the evening of the spectacle, everyone in the City is gathered around Elua's Oak in the central square to watch the show. Just before it begins though, Sunjata reappears and asks for a private word with Imriel. Though reluctant, Imriel is sure that it must be related to the Unseen Guild and his mother and thereby is very important. The show is nearly beginning and everyone is looking into the sky and mirrors. Alone and off to the side under the large oak, Sunjata leans in and tells Imriel somewhat before stabbing him with a long needle. Imriel falls to the ground in agony, with no one noticing, as the "marvel" begins. Sunjata tells Imriel that he is sorry and that it is hard serving two masters. He tells him that the fever will break in a month, that he is lucky his mother loves him, and that if he wished to undo what has been done, he must go to Cythera and speak to Ptolemy Solon. Sunjata then steals his ring - the simple gold ring with a knot in it, of which Sidonie has the matching one and is a token of their love - and leaves. Writhing on the ground, confused and alone, looking at all the city staring at the sky, Imriel sees a green flash, then passes out. Imriel wakes up in a bed, feverish and not knowing who or where he is. Slowly, his sense of self returns, but he does not know anyone around him. All he knows is that he must reach Cythera. He shouts obscenities and threats at the people caring for him, not knowing who they are. He is tied to the bed and writhes against his bonds, giving himself lasting scars, flailing like a madman. This lasts for what seems forever. Then all at once, at the touch of the full moon's light on his skin, the madness vanishes and Imriel comes back to himself, weak and disoriented. Phèdre is next to his bed, dozing in a chair and looking clearly haggard. Imriel speaks to her and, realizing he seems sane, she calls Joscelin. Imriel convinces them that he is all right. He realizes that it was Phèdre and Joscelin who had taken care of him in his madness and all of the truly horrible things he said to them. They easily forgive him, knowing it was the madness and not him. He realizes, however, that he remembers nothing of Sidonie coming to see him or take care him. He asks how she is and why she didn't come, and Phèdre and Joscelin look clearly puzzled. After a few moments he begins to realize that, even though he has overcome his madness, they all seem to be clearly mad and confused. They do not remember his relationship with Sidonie, and during his trying to remind them, it reaches the point where Phèdre and Joscelin begin to think Imriel is still insane, even though he is quite himself. They tell him that Carthage is a very close friend of Terre d'Ange and that Sidonie has happily gone off to marry Astegal nearly a month ago! Trying to regain his strength (for he ate little during his madness and strained his muscles nearly constantly), and remembering what Sunjata said to him, Imriel begins to think of ways to get out of the city and go to Cythera. He overhears a conversation between a guard and a chambermaid that Barquiel L'Envers and Ysandre had been in a shouting match, with L'Envers telling her she is mad to align with Carthage. And then it occurs to him: everyone in the city seems to be under the same madness as Phèdre and Joscelin, but L'Envers had not been in the city that night. He thinks that this must only be affecting those who saw the "marvel", of which no one can seem to explain what they saw and what it was other than that it was amazing. He sees a thread of hope and gets up, leaving the room, and demanding to speak to L'Envers. After a bit of a scuffle, Barquiel agrees to see Imriel, realizing that they both are not under the madness that has gripped the City of Elua. Imriel tells him everything - including the bits about the Unseen Guild and Cythera. Barquiel implies that he had heard of the Guild years ago, but dismissed it without evidence. He also tells Imriel that Ysandre was even considering sending the D'Angeline army to the Aragonian border in support of Carthage's new war on Aragonia! Barquiel L'Envers and Imriel quickly realize, grudgingly, that they must trust each other despite their long history of animosity, for the good of Terre d'Ange. Imriel asks Barquiel to help get him out of the city and to Cythera. During their discussion, Imriel realizes that, if he makes it to Cythera, the price for Solon's help will likely be a pardon for Melisande. Barquiel is reluctant at first, but Imriel says that he still has to try. He also tells Barquiel that, one way of diverting at least some of the madness, would be to send to Alba for Alais and try to talk some sense into Ysandre and Drustan. She would be the only one capable of sitting the throne, Imriel reasoned, and Barquiel grudgingly agrees that it might actually be plausible. Barquiel agrees to assist Imriel but also swears a vow to him: if he proves false or fails, Barquiel will make it his life's work to hunt Imriel down and kill him. Imriel agrees, and the plans are set. Imriel takes a trip to the Temple of Eisheth, under the guise of a "healing journey." While alone, one of Barquiel's guards comes to get him and, under a heavy cloak, escorts him to a carriage. Imriel soon arrives at the City's wharf, where Barquiel has found a barge willing to take Imriel down the Aviline River on the way to Marsilikos. Imriel is then on his own to find his way to Cythera. Imriel's horse is waiting on the barge - he insisted he must have "the Bastard" with him - and those working on the barge have not been affected by the city's madness and are thereby willing to help him and stay quiet about what they do. One piece of information catches Imriel's attention - Jeanne de Mereliot, the daughter of the Lady of Marsilikos, was not in attendance at the "miracle" in the City of Elua. Upon his arrival in Marsilikos, under an assumed guise, Imriel sends her a message. A reply comes back swiftly; a meeting is arranged and Imriel goes to see Jeanne, whom he has met before. During this meeting, Imriel tells her all that has happened to him. She decides to research a bit about the needle and why Imriel went mad for a month. She learns from a Hellene book, "To induce madness, forge a needle of silver that has never seen daylight, one hand-span's length. Bathe it in the sweat of a lunatic's brow mixed with the effluvium of a horned toad. For one year, expose it to the light of the full moon. When plunged into the vitals, it will induce madness for the duration of the moon's cycle." After talking with Jeanne, Imriel manages to secure passage on a ship bound for Cythera. As it so happens, the ship that would be carrying him and his horse, the Bastard, to Cythera was none other than the Aeolia, the ship that had carried him to Tiberium and back a couple years earlier (see Kushiel's Scion). Without any incident, they made it to Cythera, and the next stage of Imriel's journey. Imriel finds his way to a villa and sends a request for an audience with Ptolemy Solon, called the "Wise Ape" for his vast brilliance and unbelievable ugliness. The next day, Imriel receives his summons, and meets with Solon. Solon knows who Imriel is, even though he had been traveling under the name "Cadmar of Landras". Solon tells Imriel that Melisande is indeed on Cythera, but in her own private villa, and that he wanted to talk to Imriel alone first. Solon asks Imriel whether the needle had worked or not, and also says that he is undecided on whether or not to help him. He does tell Imriel, however, that the most likely way to sway him would be to commute Melisande's sentence from execution to exile. During this conversation with Solon, Imriel also learns that Sidonie has actually married General Astegal, some two weeks before Imriel arrived on Cythera. Also, Solon says that Carthage should be preparing to launch its invasion of Aragonia soon. Solon asks Imriel if he would willing see his mother, and Imriel agrees to do so. They have another intellectual discussion, and then Imriel is sent to bed, so that he may see his mother the next day. Imriel, while practicing his Cassiline swordsmanship, meets Leander Maignard, who is clearly of Kushiel's line and a distant kinsman, there to take Imriel to his mother. Once at his mother's villa, Imriel meets her for the first time in many years, and is at a loss for what to say. He tells her that her sentence will be commuted to exile if Solon helps Terre d'Ange, and Imriel is successful and he will do anything she asks to obtain her help. She thanks him for the offer, but asks only that he talk to her for a while. She assures him she will talk to Solon and request his assistance, for she does care for Terre d'Ange deeply, but that she can not assure him that Solon will decide to help. They talk for the rest of the day and Imriel realizes he cannot hate his mother, and even comes to care for her in some small way. He feels she is repentant for what she has done, somehow, though that can not make up for the lives she has ruined. The next day, Imriel again meets with Solon. Solon says that he had enough information to hazard a guess at what Carthage means to do, but he makes Imriel tell the tale, over and over and over again. After many, many tellings, Solon sends Imriel away to begin working on figuring out how to unravel Carthage's spells. During this time, Imriel spends more time talking to Melisande and Leander, learning about them and what has happened since Melisande escaped the Temple of Asherat in La Serenissima. Finally, Solon sends word that he has found the key. Solon tells Imriel that there are several spells at work: one bound to Terre d'Ange and one bound to Sidonie. Imriel learns that there is malevolence at the heart of the spell that binds Terre d'Ange, a bound ghafrid-gebla, or desert spirit also called an elemental. The way to end the spell would be to free the ghafrid, but to do so, Imriel must find the vessel it is bound to and how to open it. Second, to free Sidonie, he must retrieve his gold knotted ring from Astegal, who now wears it to hold Sidonie's love to him. There is only one way to do both of these: Imriel must sneak into Carthage. But everyone knows who he is, so he will have to go under the guise of a glamour. The only troubling part is Astegal's brother, the great sorcerer, will not be fooled by any casual disguise. A simple glamour will not work. Imriel must believe he is this other person. The person chosen for Imriel to become is none other than Leander Maignard. Solon warns Imriel of the risks, but there is no other solution, and Imriel is sure that the love between him and Sidonie will be felt through any spell and help them to succeed. Later, Solon performs the rituals, weaving the glamour into all of Leander's clothing and personal items. The only way anyone will see Imriel as Imriel would be if they saw him mother-naked. Then Solon submerses Imriel's consciousness into himself, making him believe he is Leander. To help with the effect, Leander tells his life story to Imriel while he is in trance, making Leander's story his own. This spell will only be reversed, making Imriel become himself once again, when he kisses Sidonie on the lips. With everything in place, Imriel, thinking himself Leander, sets off for Carthage, to be Solon's ambassador to Astegal and help the Unseen Guild, or so he now believes. (Note: because of the hypnosis and spells, Imriel now thinks of himself as Leander, and shall be referred to as such until he is returned to himself) Leander arrives in Carthage, and quickly integrates himself into the scene. He rents a house, with full staff, and goes to the slave market to purchase some bearers for his palanquin, which every noble "needs" to have in Carthage. Being on a diplomatic mission from Cythera's ruler, Ptolemy Solon, he is adequately endorsed to afford all he needs. At the market, Leander sees an Aragonian boy being sold, spoils of the war with Aragonia, which upset him for some unknown reason. He quickly dismisses it, however, in favor of finding his bearers. He picks an older Hellene wrestler, two Carthaginian brothers, and an Amazigh, a man of the southern tribes of the desert. Once back at his house, Leander lays out his plans to them and promises to set them free once he has accomplished his goals, thereby managing to secure their loyalty. First, Leander has the old Hellene wrestler, Kratos, learn the streets of the city so that he may find his way around more easily. Leander then goes to see his friend from Cythera, Sunjata - the same Sunjata who had stabbed Imriel with the needle - under the guise of needing a new gemstone for a damaged ring. Pretending they do not know each other, a deal is struck. Sunjata is later sent to see Leander and show him some of the gems. Leander greets Sunjata and takes him to his room. It becomes clear that they had been lovers in Cythera and Leander flirts with Sunjata asking how much time until he has to get back. He also gives him a letter from Melisande that he has sworn not to read. In the letter, Sunjata is clearly told of the spells on Leander - or Imriel. He asks Leander to get naked, which he does happily, including taking off his ruby earrings that he always wears. Sunjata stares at him for a while, now seeing him truly as Imriel, but says nothing. Feeling hurt, Leander asks what is wrong and Sunjata demurs, telling him nothing of the spells. They make love and afterward Leander tells Sunjata his plan. Sunjata is cautious but does as the letter from Melisande clearly must have instructed him: go along with it and help Imriel. In the streets of Carthage, Leander goes to Astegal's house to see the royal escort and palanquin with princess Sidonie in it. She is always escorted by four Amazigh but is still trying to interact with the townsfolk who have come to see her, feeling that she is well-loved. Leander is struck by her beauty and becomes enamored by her though he knows he can never have her, given that she is a princess and now married. Still, he has overwhelmed by his desire to see her, which catches him entirely by surprise. Sunjata, who was with him, is surprised as well but makes sure that Leander stays on course and does not embarrass himself. Leander soon learns that, to see the D'Angeline princess Sidonie de la Courcel, he must go through Bodeshmun, the hologist half-brother of Astegal. He plans a meeting with Bodeshmun where he sends his compliments from Solon and flatters him greatly about his magical skills. Leander says he wants to see Sidonie in order to see the power of the spells and figure out how they work; only because it is an intriguing puzzle and because Leander and Solon want to learn the 'marvel of Bodeshmun's magical knowledge'. Bodeshmun, feeling very proud but still cautious, after much consideration consents to allowing Leander to see princess Sidonie but threatens to mortally injure him if he upsets her in any way or reveals that she is under a spell. Leander agrees. The first time Leander goes to see Sidonie he makes a bit of a fool of himself while trying to flirt with her. She is charmed, however, perhaps by his very foolishness and he is told to come to see her the next day, so that they may get to know each other better over chess. On his way home, Leander finds he cannot stop thinking about her and wonders what is wrong with him. The next day, he presents himself at Astegal's home to play chess with Sidonie, as they had arranged. Their sessions continue for several days. During the time, Leander is secretly looking her over to see what she wears that is the same every time, to find her item that binds her to the love-spell connection with Astegal. He makes a gambit, thinking her ring might be it, and finds out it is not. The puzzle continues but at least he knows one side of the spell; Leander has Sunjata make a replica of Imriel's gold ring, that Astegal now wears, to begin the other phase of his plan later on. Similarly, Leander gets his Amazigh slave to get him one of their traditional outfits -blue flowing robes that cover all but the eyes- and teach him how to tie it and wear it. This he does and Leander hides it in the bottom of his trunks. Over the course of their meetings, Leander comes to realize that he might be falling in love with Sidonie. Sidonie also comes to realize that Leander is discouraging her from talking about Terre d'Ange, which he was told to do by Bodeshmun, and this unnerves her. During one of the meetings, after Sidonie has discreetly questioned Leander about why he is acting strange and why she can not know anything about Terre d'Ange, she invites him to go with her to New Carthage (Aragonia), which she would be departing for shortly in order to be with her husband, who is eager for heirs. Leander agrees, as it would progress his plans. He also finally comes to realize he is deeply in love with Sidonie. Before setting off for New Carthage, Leander releases his slaves. All but Kratos leave him to find their ways in the world but Kratos likes him and stays on as a loyal man. Upon arrival in New Carthage (Aragonia), Leander manages to secure lodging in the palace from Astegal, who had been convinced to do so by Sidonie, and sees Leander as a harmless friend. Also, Leander meets an old friend of his from Cythera, Justina, who also works for Melisande and perhaps the Unseen Guild as a spy. Later, she makes contact with him in the palace, and finding out that Astegal takes her to bed sometimes, Leander asks her to try to switch Astegal's ring with the fake one he had made. Leander and Sidonie resume their games of chess while in New Carthage and learn more still about each other. After one such match, Leander finds a message from Justina awaiting him, and goes to see her, finding that she could not do as he asked and she returns the fake ring to him. Kratos, however, saves the day by presenting an alternate plan with the same outcome: have one of the Aragonian servants in the public baths switch the ring while Astegal is being massaged. Thus, Leander compels into his service a young girl named Esme, who hates Astegal and is more than willing to help him. It is decided between Leander and Esme that she will steal the ring and switch it for the fake that Leander gives her. As it turns out, the gambit pays off. Esme is able to steal Astegal's ring, replace it with the fake, and deliver the real one to Kratos, who takes it to Leander. Unplanned by Leander, he witnesses an argument between Astegal and Bodeshmun; Astegal is shouting at Bodeshmun about Sidonie, who has regained a bit of herself (which Leander knows is because Astegal's magical ring was taken) and had spoken to the Aragonian King, who is being held in the palace. She learned some very strange things and is realizing that some of her memories are disjointed and don't make sense. During this time, a bond of trust has sprouted between her and Leander, though he is still being very cautious and she is never left alone with him. Due to Sidonie's discussion with the King of Aragonia, Sidonie is now even more puzzled and beginning to get suspicious of those around her (except "simple harmless Leander"). In her discussion with the King, he said that they had been allies and that Terre d'Ange had betrayed them to Carthage, but her memories tell her otherwise. Bodeshmun is angry because he had instructed the Aragonians not to talk to her and not talk about the past. As punishment, Bodeshmun summons the Aragonians in front of an audience, including Leander, but without Sidonie. Bodeshmun takes a powder out and places it in his palm. A young Aragonian noble, who had spoken out in defense of his King, is told to step forward. Bodeshmun blows the powder in his face and suddenly the man begins to suffocate. He dies of suffocation in front of all watching as an example to obey Bodeshmun. This frightens everyone and disturbs Leander greatly. Finally, Astegal sets off to conquer the rest of Aragonia and leaves Bodeshmun in charge of Sidonie. Sidonie continues to endeavor to find a time when she and Leander can speak in private. They try taking a walk, but Astegal's Amazigh guards tail them relentlessly. On their way back to the castle, having given up, an Aragonian gardener tries to attack Sidonie. Leander protected her faster than the guards and Sidonie seizes her chance. Bodeshmun calls Leander before him and compliments him on his reflexes with the princess. He also, in a conversation with Sidonie's physician, alludes to the possibility that she might be with child. A few hours after Leander is dismissed from Bodeshmun, Girom, the physician, comes to tell Leander that the princess is deeply bothered by the attempt on her life and feels that no one can keep her safe except Astegal, who is not there, and Leander. The physician says she will not take a sleeping draught without Leander there to protect her and that she can not be reasoned with. Leander goes with him immediately to Sidonie's apartments. Once there, Sidonie makes Leander promise to stay until she falls asleep and then guard her door while she sleeps, to which he readily agrees. The physician then tells her to take the sleeping draught, in front of him to make sure she has taken it, and she does. The physician then agrees to leave them alone, as she had asked, and that he will wait outside until Leander comes out. They are finally alone. Sidonie, who evidently was pretending to be more bothered than she is, says that the sleeping draught is very powerful and they don't have much time. Quickly, she asks Leander to explain himself and why they are irresistibly drawn to each other, but instead ends up kissing him. This triggers the return of Imriel to himself, coming quickly and shockingly. Now realizing who he is and what has happened, he tries to convince Sidonie that she is under a spell. Having forgotten all about Imriel, she asks who he is, still thinking he is Leander. He explains to her why some of her memories don't make sense and gets her to listen to him. They come to some small understanding of the situation, but, not wanting to push her and knowing the draught will take effect in soon, Imriel leaves to guard her door as he had promised. He tells Girom outside of her room that she sleeps, and Girom leaves. Imriel knows that all others still see him as Leander because of the spell woven into the clothes, but this will not fool Bodeshmun. He is scared that he will run into him any time and hurried to his rooms. Once back in his rooms, he sees Sunjata and realizes what had happened back in Carthage and what Melisande's letter must have said. Sunjata has always known and seen him as Imriel. Sunjata, seeing that Imriel knows this and has come back to himself, takes out the trunk that Melisande had had Leander (Imriel) deliver to him in Carthage. In the trunk are Imriel's weapons and bracers and some clothing. Imriel tells Sunjata that he must leave and that his debt to help Imriel has been paid; Imriel will not have his death on his hands. Sunjata agrees and says he will be gone in a day, back to Carthage. Kratos later appears and Imriel tries to explain the situation to him, and to send Kratos away with Sunjata because Imriel is afraid that Kratos will be harmed. Kratos chooses to stay, saying he doesn't care who Imriel is, that he is an interesting fellow, and that he wants to see where this story goes. Thankful, Imriel and Kratos begin to set their plan into motion: rescuing Sidonie. Kratos finds a way for them to escape and learns the patterns of the Amazigh guards while Imriel stays hidden in order to avoid Bodeshmun. That evening, Imriel goes to see her, as she has asked for him again and he had said the night before that he would watch her again if she wanted. Once alone with her again, he learns that she has drugged the guards to buy them some time. They had decided that he would prove who is to her, so he begins to remove all of Leander's clothing, keeping only a pair of pants (that he wore underneath) that were his own. She sees the truth of who he is and realizes that, somehow, she "knew" him but could not "remember" him. Believing his story that she is also ensnared and that she must be wearing something to tie her to Astegal, she removes all her clothing. Nothing happens. As she turns, Imriel sees that the spell was not in the clothing; she has been tattooed in the middle of her back with the seal of House Sarkal. She does not remember this at all and adamantly tells him to cut it out of her. He does so, feeling sick, but tells her to try to hide how much pain she is in, otherwise he will not be able to do it. Once it is done, she is back to normal and swearing to kill Astegal herself! Then she looks at Imriel, and asked how she could have ever forgotten him. Imriel explains that she hadn't, that she had found him inside Leander, and they had simply fallen in love all over again, proving that Elua always has a purpose and a power when he unites people together. She stops his explanation with a kiss, and then asks him to erase every trace of Astegal from her flesh and soul. Imriel does so, and they make love with all that they are. Afterward, Sidonie asks Imriel to explain what is plan is to save Terre d'Ange, which he does. During the bandaging of her wounds, Imriel voices her concerns over her being with child, although he adamantly swears he will love any child of her blood. She explains that she couldn't be, for she and Astegal had been married in the Carthaginian fashion, with no prayers to Eisheth to open her womb, and perhaps in that way she had always known that their relationship was not right. And so the last part of Imriel's plan is put into motion. He and Sidonie come up with a plan to free her. That night, Imriel waits outside her door, dressed again as Leander, and communicates with the Amazigh that he won't tell anyone they fell asleep, and that Astegal and Bodeshmun will never know their shame. The next night, Sidonie goes to Bodeshmun and tells him she is with child. They have a toast, as he is the only family she has to celebrate with now, but she has drugged the drink with some of the sleeping draught. Meanwhile, Imriel has disguised himself as an Amazigh warrior, and dispatched one of the Amazigh guards on his way to Bodeshmun's quarters. He sneaks in and finds both Bodeshmun and Sidonie asleep. But as he moves, Bodeshmun wakes. He takes out the powder but Imriel is quicker. Imriel blows and Bodeshmun suffocates, like the Aragonian noble, on his own powder. Before he dies, Imriel whispers, "It is not wise to meddle with D'Angelines in the matters of love." Imriel takes the talisman that contains the key word to the ghafrid-gebla, from Bodeshmun and then sits with Sidonie for hours, hoping she will wake. When she does not - time is running out, and someone is bound to check on them - he is forced to roll her into the carpet and carry her out through the wine cellar, hoping she does not suffocate. This was their plan, but she was not supposed to be unconscious! After a long and agonizing walk, he reaches the ship that had brought him from Cythera. The captain (who at first does not believe Imriel and thinks that Sidonie is being kidnapped), waits until he receives the order from Sidonie herself to set off. She, who has just woken up, does so, and they are off to Marsilikos. Once at sea, Imriel tells Sidonie, at her request, how Bodeshmun died. In the master cabin, he inspects her wound and finds that it is starting to become infected. Soon, however, they realize they are being pursued by swifter ships and being herded back to New Carthage. Someone in New Carthage had caught on and sent a ship after them. Realizing they could not get away, or reach Marsilikos in time, Kratos proposes a drastic plan. They have no other choice and it is put into motion. They go toward the still free city of Amilcar. It is blockaded by Astegal's navy. Once close enough to the blockade, they set fire to the ship. Not wanting to catch on fire themselves, the Carthaginian ships spend all their efforts trying to move out of their way, without enough time to fire at them. They sail through most of the blockade and then switch to a rowboat, barely making it through, leaving their burning ship behind. They are taken into custody by the soldiers in Amilcar. Once everything is taken care of, the sailors and Kratos, who has suffered severe burns and a broken rib, along with Sidonie, all are seen to by a chirurgeon. Lady Nicola L'Envers y Aragon comes immediately to see them. She tells them that her son, Serafin, has taken over the rulership of Aragonia in the absence of the king and they set off to see him. At a council, Imriel and Sidonie explain their story and Imriel, still under Solon's spell, reveals himself to dramatic effect and thereby proving the truth of his hard-to-believe tale. After the council, Sidonie receives a poultice for her infected wound, but is told not to move for two whole days. She dislikes this greatly, but abides, with Imriel's help. Eventually, Serafin calls the council to discuss what is to happen. After a moving speech by Sidonie, they decide to assist Sidonie and Imriel but only if they can get Euskerrian troops to come to their aid and help fight the Carthaginians. Euskerria, a small country that is composed of land of both Aragonia and Terre d'Ange, has long wanted to be independent of Aragonian rule. Aragonia has refused this and Terre d'Ange will not give over Euskerrian territory without Aragonia doing the same. Aragonia agrees that, if the Euskerri help them, they will give them their territory and self-rule. But how do they get out of Amilcar? Serafin can not send many men to help them get past Astegal's siege army camped outside their walls, but he commits some and gives them a brilliant plan. Before they depart, however, to raise spirits and so as to help give the impression to Astegal's forces that the Aragonians would be drunk and disoriented and thereby not give an offensive the next morning, Nicola throws a fête. During this party, Imriel meets his kinsman Marmion, who expresses his desire to see things set right and his happiness at the prospect of having Sidonie as his near-kin by marriage to Imriel. The next night, the secret mission is launched. Imriel, Sidonie, and a single guide manage to get past Astegal's army amid the planned chaos caused by the Aragonian soldiers. They make it to Roncal, the easiest-to-reach Euskerri settlement, within several days. But they are being pursued by Astegal's Amazigh, three hundred strong, though they are a few hours behind. Quickly, Imriel and Sidonie persuade the people of Roncal to fight but they force Imriel to fight with them as a sign of commitment. The Amazigh are slaughtered with minimal loss on the Euskerri side. Now, Janpier Iturralde, the closest thing to an ambassador the Euskerri have, convenes a meeting of all the villages in Euskerri. Within a few days word has spread and the village representatives, which is nearly everyone, arrive. After incredibly long discussion, they come to a decision: the Euskerri will help Aragonia and take their sovereignty, but only if Imriel and Sidonie go with them. They are highly displeased by this for they are only a couple days from Terre d'Ange which is still ensnared in Bodeshmun's spell. They do not even know what the state of their country is and are eager to heal their country. After much debate between Imriel and Sidonie, they decide they little other choice and cannot make it through Euskerria without the consent of the Euskerri. They swear to go with them. All the Euskerri settlements are alerted and it is expected that some six thousand will show up at the decided location. Imriel and Sidonie, who is well trained in war tactics, plan their siege of Astegal's forces. Given that the Eukerri do not entrust war to women, however, Imriel presents the plan. The Euskerri like it, though it is very different from their own tactics, and the plan is put into motion. Imriel has three hundred Euskerri don the Amazigh's garb, to try to draw Astegal's forces out. This group leads a portion of Astegal's forces into an ambush, the favorite tactic of the Euskerri, killing all of them but not without heavy losses. At the same time, Serafin launches his own attack and the battle breakes out. The other Euskerri attack and the Amazigh-group, led by Imriel, later make it back to the battlefield. Once the fighting finally stops, Imriel learns that Astegal has been captured alive, much to his and Sidonie's delight, but then learns of the losses incurred in the battle: of the six thousand Euskerri who had come to help, only fifteen hundred remain. Still, they had held up their end of the deal and Aragonia gives them their sovereignty. All that remains is Astegal's execution. The next day, as Astegal is being walked to the block, he breaks his bonds, steals the executioner's sword, and takes Sidonie hostage. Imriel, who suffered from a wound taken the day before, offers him a deal: fight him one on one, and if Astegal wins, he will get a fast horse and an hour's lead. Astegal accepts, despite Imriel's insistence that he will not win. During the fight, Astegal tries to upset Imriel by telling him of things he had done to Sidonie, but gets no reaction. In his arrogance, he lets his guard down and Imriel stabs Astegal in the stomach. Imriel then tells Astegal what he had said to his half-brother Bodeshmun, "It is not wise to meddle with D'Angelines in the matters of love." But before the killing blow, Sidonie asks to share the death. She places her hand on Imriel's, over the hilt of his sword, and together they drive it through Astegal's heart. With the loss of their leader, the Carthaginians flee back to New Carthage, where they will hopefully be easily overrun, especially once Terre d'Ange comes back to Aragonia's aid. Finally, it is time to return home. Sidonie, Imriel, and Kratos board a ship captained by the same man who had brought Imriel from Cythera and head for home. On the way to Marsilikos, Imriel suddenly remembers that anyone affected by the spell who leaves the shores of Terre d'Ange would be outside of the spell's range and regain their wits but, once back on the shores of Terre d'Ange, they would lose them all over again. He speaks to Sidonie about it but they have no idea what to do. Upon reaching Marsilikos, they are stopped by a ship from Admiral Rousse's navy, but who is loyal to Alais. They explain what has happened and the details of the spell. Apparently, the more one tries to talk sense into the people affected, the more belligerent they become, and things in Terre d'Ange have taken a serious turn for the worse. They must go see Alais. Sidonie is also desperate to see her sister, but she cannot step on D'Angeline soil. Imriel, however, gets an idea. Imriel decides to cast the spell that was cast on him by the ollamh in Alba in a last-ditch effort to keep Sidonie sane. He gets all the components needed and does the binding ritual. They step onto the land of Terre d'Ange, and the bindings seem to have worked, though for how long, they do not know. They are secreted to Turnone, where Alais, Barquiel L'Envers, and a shadow Parliament are ruling everything outside of the City of Elua. They make it inside and meet with Alais and Barquiel. During their time in Euskerria, Sidonie and Imriel had sent a messenger to warn Barquiel of the dangers of the spell, and what bound it - a green gemstone - with instructions to look for it. Upon arriving, Imriel learns that, despite a thorough search, no gemstone had been found. After only a short while, for they want their presence to remain a relative secret just in case, they meet with the shadow Parliament, giving them hope. They also learn that Ysandre, seeing plots and deceit everywhere, has decided to declare war on Alais and Barquiel and vowed that, after one month to think about it, she will begin to sack one town every day until they kneel before her and surrender. Horrified, Sidonie hatches a quick plan: she will take Imriel and Kratos into the City with her, with her as the grieving widow, Kratos as her husband's most loyal bodyguard sworn to protect her, and Imriel as her still-mad cousin who seems besotted with her, but eases her soul. They set their plans into motion and leave, secretly again, on the same barge that had carried Imriel out of the City, back into madness. It is also clear that Sidonie's bindings fade with time, and they do not know how long she will remain immune. Reaching the City, they are admitted readily once the guards realize who Sidonie is. Ysandre and Drustan await them, and they listen gravely to her story. It is clear that those in the City have been deeply affected by the spell. Violence is far more commonplace, as are severe punishments. Phèdre now treats her servants as non-equals, Joscelin has sworn that if Ysandre seems to be losing, he will perform the terminus for her, and Mavros has blood-lust and has joined the military. Truly, the spell has evil at the heart of it. Sidonie, at the funeral for Astegal, proposes to the whole City that they scour the City for a green gemstone that Bodeshmun gave Terre d'Ange to protect its borders. After five days of nothing, tempers begin to flare. In a dinner one night, with nearly all of House Courcel gathered, Imriel offers a suggestion to Ysandre and Drustan. They overreact and throw him out, forbidding him to call on Sidonie and thus ending their contact for the time being. The next day, Ysandre declares an official end to the search for the gem. Several days later, staying with Phèdre and Joscelin, Imriel awakes to a summons to the palace. There is a delegation from Alais. At the hearing, Imriel sees that Sidonie has removed her bindings, but still seems to trust and rely on Kratos. Ysandre, after hearing that Alais is not going to surrender, again overreacts and throws Alais' delegation into the dungeons. After leaving, Imriel again goes to Elua's Square, where he is certain the gem is hidden, to see if he can find it. The flagstones had been ripped up already and the City had been mercilessly searched. After a fruitless search, he prays to each of Elua's Companions, hoping they will grant their city mercy. He returns to the palace, where Ysandre and Drustan are preparing to declare war. A day later, Ysandre and Drustan declare war on their "traitorous daughter". At the declaration at the palace, which is a public affair, Imriel, filled with divine presence, walks up to the front of the Hall of Audience, giving an empathetic speech: "Your majesties, you must not do this thing. The gods themselves forbid it." Joscelin, protecting the Queen, however, comes from behind and knocks him unconscious. When he awakes, he re-sees a picture, made of jewels, which was presented to the Queen by Astegal on his visit to the city. The picture is of Elua's Square, and in the picture, inside the tree in middle of the square, is a green gem. He had looked at the picture a number of times, but it was only clear from this new angle; "the God answer your prayers, sideways." He stands up and tries to leave, but Joscelin blocks his way. Kratos, who had stayed with Imriel, fights with Joscelin, being a former champion wrestler. Kratos, being a star wrestler, overwhelms Joscelin, who is used to sword and dagger combat, and knocks him unconscious. Kratos and Imriel then hurry for Elua's Square, following the Queen and her entourage to the general public announcement of war in Elua's Square. He reached the Square and, before everyone, scales the tree, searching for the gem. Just as he is about to give up hope, he finds it in a mud-covered hollow and removes it, attempting to break the spell by saying the word of power. He tries and tries several times, but nothing happens. Meanwhile, Joscelin, who has awoken and made it to the Square, is alerting the guards. Kratos is trying to guard him and the guards are slow to the scale the tree, but Imriel must hurry. In desperation, he takes Sidonie hostage. He speaks to her of his love for her, tells her to look into her heart for the truth, to forget her memories, feel her love for Imriel. He gives her the stone and tells her to read the word of Bodeshmun's talisman. After a pause, with a whisper she reads it. Imriel throws the stone away and it suddenly explodes, showering many people with shards of emerald. Imriel protects Sidonie, shielding her with his body, but receives many shards of emerald in his back. The demon bursts from the stone and shoots through the city towards its home, now free to return to it. In the aftermath of the spell's release, confused and horrified at their behaviour while under the spell, everyone looks to Sidonie and Imriel for answers. Ysandre, ashamed and horrified with herself, tries to abdicate the throne and give it to Sidonie, but she refuses, saying she had fallen under the spell's influence, the same as everyone else, and that there is no fault in it. She does, however, agree to serve as regent for the duration of one month while Terre d'Ange is brought back to order. During her time as regent, things return to a semblance of normalcy. Imriel, as Sidonie's consort, is treated as co-regent and, with his battle-knowledge, a military figure as well. The castle guard and the Royal Army consult him on matters of defense and his word is seen as interchangeable with Sidonie's. The shadow of doubt about "Melisande Shahrizai's son" is completely gone; the people of Terre d'Ange trust and respect Imriel as a saviour. A delegation is sent to bring back Alais and Barquiel, and reunite the realm and House Courcel. A week later, they arrive, with Hyacinthe in tow. At a ceremony in Elua's Square, Ysandre presents the Medal of Valor to both Alais and Barquiel for holding the country together in its time of need. Months pass and things in Terre d'Ange are righted. Alais, always displeased with the way things had been run in Alba, ends her engagement to Talorcan and asked to become an ollamh. This will give her nearly as much power as the Cruarch and is accepted by her parents. Ysandre resumes the throne from Sidonie. Imriel and Sidonie's betrothal is announced throughout the realm to a happy reception. The wedding date is set for one year later, the next summer, so as to give the land some time to heal and also to allow the occasion to be as joyous as possible. Word comes from Aragonia that the Carthaginians had surrendered. Drustan returns to Alba, but before he leaves, there is a small gathering for the family, where Imriel finally fulfills his promise to Alais by bringing her new puppy. The seasons change and slowly Terre d'Ange heals. A year later, as is tradition, Imriel and Sidonie are separated before their wedding. Two days before the wedding, Imriel finally sees Sidonie and learns something she had done. With the help of Amarante, she has turned her scar from the removal of Astegal's tattoo into a marque; a sunburst. She tells Imriel it is his mark, as she belongs to him, wholly and completely. That night, Imriel and Sidonie make love like they had on her seventeenth birthday; he, binding her with silk rope. One day before the wedding, Imriel hears that Sidonie has been taken to the Temple of Eisheth, that she might ask the goddess to open the gates of her womb so that she may bear children. The day arrives. Imriel is fussed over for a long time by Favrielle no Eglantine's apprentices, until he finally shoos them away as Phèdre and Joscelin arrive to escort him. He arrives to crowds, walking towards Sidonie, glorious in her white dress, at the altar with flower petals falling all around them. The priest and Amarantes' mother, the Priestess of Naamah, evokes Elua and speaks the vows. They seal it with a kiss and the celebrations begin. At the celebration, Imriel sees and speaks to many of his friends: Lucius of Lucca, Eamonn and Brigita, Maslin de Lombelon, Urist of Clunderry, even Leander Maignard appears, hoping to see Sidonie and report back to Melisande. Sidonie is amused to meet the real Leander, and seemingly to stir up trouble, kisses him passionately enough to unnerve him, to Imriel's entertainment. The night ends as Imriel, who is full of more happiness that he has ever felt, picks his new wife up in his arms and set off towards the palace, whispering his love for her, trailed by many, many friends and loved ones.
17845780	/m/047fttd	The Onion Girl	Charles de Lint	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/0134b1": "Contemporary fantasy"}	 Jilly is struck by a car and becomes paralyzed on her right side. She discovers she can dream herself to the spirit world like her friend Sophie has long known how to do. Her physical body remains in the hospital bed while a dream version of herself, young and not paralyzed, traverses the spirit world. There she meets her friend Joe Crazy Dog, who can travel to the spirit world while awake. He tells her he has sent for a pair of "crow" girls who might be able to cure her condition, but only after she deals with emotional wounds from her past. Somebody breaks into Jilly's studio and destroys many of her paintings. Her friends keep seeing on the streets a woman who looks just like Jilly. They wonder if a shadow twin might be behind both Jilly's "accident" and the vandalism. Jilly meets in the dreamlands a young man named Toby. He is an Eadar--a fictional character who acquires a physical presence in the spirit world, but whose existence depends on there being people who believe in him. Together they spend several nights climbing a big tree to get some magical twigs that may help both of them. In flashbacks, the book gradually reveals details of Jilly's past. As a child, she was repeatedly raped by her brother Del. She finally ran away from home and by her teens was a junkie and prostitute living on the streets, until a kind cop named Lou rescued and rehabilitated her. Back at Jilly's former home, Del turned his attention to her younger sister Raylene, who never forgave Jilly for abandoning her. Raylene finally stabbed Del and ran away with her best friend Pinky. To make money, they performed badger games and ended up killing a dirty cop. Pinky eventually became a pornstar, while Raylene started working in a print shop. There she fell in love with one of her coworkers, who taught her how to use computers, but finally died in a shootout. Pinky served several years in prison for assault, and during that time she and Raylene began having shared dreams in which they were wolves hunting unicorns. Raylene found out her sister's whereabouts from an article. On the day of Pinky's release, Raylene bought a pink Cadillac and the two of them rode off in search of Jilly. That's when Raylene destroyed Jilly's paintings, and continued to stalk her. In the hospital, Jilly and Sophie discover that they can share their dreams as well, and when they find themselves in a forest, they encounter a pack of wolves, one of whom Jilly recognizes as her sister. She realizes that Raylene must be the lookalike who destroyed her paintings. Raylene is upset that Jilly has now invaded her dreams. She wants to find a way into the dreamlands while awake, so that she can avenge Jilly there. She sees Joe on the street and recognizes him from his Don't! Buy! Thai! T-shirt as he slips into the spirit world. By watching him, she figures out how to enter the spirit world herself. She and Pinky kidnap the sleeping Jilly and carry her body into the spirit world. The dreaming version of Jilly has reached the top of the tree and found the twigs, which have made Toby no longer an Eadar, but which have no effect on Jilly's condition. But because Jilly's physical body has entered the dreamlands, she feels pulled toward it, and she must climb down the tree to reach it. When she reaches Raylene, they begin talking. Raylene realizes how silly it is to hold a grudge against her sister for something she did when she was a kid just trying to survive. Unfettered, Pinky points her gun at Jilly and fires--but Raylene places herself in the line of fire and dies. Joe arrives at that moment with a pitbull, which kills Pinky. Toby reaches the clearing with a wreath of the twigs, now powerful enough to cure Jilly's paralysis. Jilly instead uses it to bring Raylene back to life. Because Raylene killed all those unicorns, she must never return to the dreamlands, or else Joe's friends will hunt her down. The crow girls visit Jilly and tell her that they cannot cure her condition, but they give her feathers so that she can call them anytime she wants.
17853256	/m/0479vsl	Tom Swift and His Undersea Search	Victor Appleton	1920	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 A Mr. Dixwell Hardley approaches Tom with a proposition to help recover sunken treasure. Mr. Hardley was on board a ship which was carrying gold to help finance an illegal revolution. When the ship sank, Mr. Hardley overheard the captain recording the coordinates. Now he wants Tom's help to recover the gold, under the guise of both financing the expedition as well as rewarding Tom with a portion of the recovered treasure. Unfortunately for Tom, after agreeing to the expedition, he learns that Mr. Hardley is a con-artist, who recently scammed someone out of the oil well rights. Making matters worse, the victim is Barton Keith, a relative of Mary Nestor. Rather than cancel the expedition, Tom decides to carry on in the hopes of restoring Mr. Keith's claims to the oil wells.
17854958	/m/047dx0l	Winter Reckoning	Noel-Anne Brennan		{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of Molly Kerbridge, a member of the Planetary Federation, on a world called Tringe. There she encounters the Fnick, a reptilian race intent on conquest.
17855797	/m/047fmw9	If It Was Easy	Stewart F. Lane			 Legendary producer Steve Gallop, suddenly down on his luck, is seduced by the charms of a beautiful showbiz columnist, Randi Lester, who’s betting she can improve Gallop’s Broadway track record with a musical based on the life of Frank Sinatra. The idea is to attract front page attention around the world; hundreds of Sinatra wannabes swamp Gallop’s offices. Investors plead for a piece of the action. Not among the pleading masses is mobster Joey Fingers, whose “family” knew Frank, and who naturally expects to bankroll the entire show. Opening night, it looks like curtains for the whole cast until Joey gets an offer he can’t refuse.
17857064	/m/047fk9h	The Long Night of the Grave	Charles L. Grant		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel concerns mummies in the Connecticut town of Oxrun Station, a suburb of New York.
17858918	/m/047c7f7	Yellow Fog	Les Daniels		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel concerns the vampire Don Sebastian in Victorian England.
17859084	/m/047bc0b	All Seated on the Ground	Connie Willis	2007-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows Meg, a newspaper columnist who has joined a commission studying aliens that have landed on the Denver University campus. The aliens glare at everyone, and allow themselves to be led to various locations, but the commission has no idea how to communicate with them. Following an incident at a local mall during the Christmas shopping season, Meg and a school choir director team up to try to decipher the aliens' actions before they leave Earth.
17860438	/m/0478xsh	Enchanted Faces		1991		 Each of Bob Harman's sketches are of women from between the two World Wars.
17865380	/m/047dhl5	Swindle	Gordon Korman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In the beginning, Griffin, "The Man With the Plan", as his best friend Ben Slovak likes to call him, gets an idea to sleep in the old Rockford house scheduled for demolition. They then proceed to lie to their parents so they can go have a sleepover there before it gets demolished. They start snooping through the house and they come to a drawer; they open it to find an old Babe Ruth card. Wondering about it, they take it to a pawn shop owned by S. Wendell Palomino, nicknamed "Swindle"; they ask him how much Palomino would give them for the card. Palomino tells him the card is a replica and tricks them out for $120. Griffin’s parents are not doing well financially, due to Griffin’s dad's invention, a machine that picks fruit automatically named the SmartPick. Griffin also finds out his family is going to have to sell their house to move to a more reasonably priced neighborhood. If his family had to move, Griffin would have to leave his best friend Ben behind, and he also finds out the card was actually real, and that Palomino is going to sell it for millions. Griffin, with Ben's help, decides to make a plan to break into Palomino's store to get the card from the safe. They break into the shop by getting in a large crate. A man that works in the store, Tom Dufferin, carries the box inside. When the boys are securely inside the shop, they discover that the safe has disappeared. To break out of the store, Griffin and Ben climb the fence, and break the alarm code using a video recording of Dufferin, as he punches the code in after he closes the shop. After the failure, he had moved the card to his house. Griffin and Ben make another plan to break into the house and steal the card back. The only problem is that they need six sixth graders to help. They recruit four in all. Logan, an actor-to-be, takes care of the suspicious neighbor of Palomino’s. Pitch is a climber, and they need her to climb up and get in from the bathroom skylight. They need Savannah, an animal lover, to calm the guard dog down, and make Melissa take care of the security system so they can get in. Suddenly, Darren, a boy who is loved by Ben and Griffin, hears about the plan to break in and blackmails them into letting him join in on the plan for some of the money. They need Swindle to get out of his house so the plan can happen and, knowing Swindle is a stealer, Griffin and Ben buy him a ticket to a New York Rangers hockey game and they "accidentally" mail it to him, faking it as a birthday card. Everyone agrees to the plan, and so it begins. On the heist night, Pitch sprains her ankle; Ben falls asleep in a bush, and they almost ruin the entire heist. Then Darren tries to take the card for himself. Only thinking of the one guard dog, they get inside to find two. After they manage the affair, they find the safe, but the card isn't in there, so they look around the entire house until Griffin remembers from an interview where the reporter asked why the card was so cold. Griffin then ran to the freezer. However, something sets the security system on and the team hears the police coming. In shock Darren grabs the card and tries to run. When running outside, Darren loses grip and the card ends up in a tree. Griffin remembers his dad’s invention, the SmartPick, and runs home to get it. They manage to get the card and make a run for it. Luckily Griffin has a Plan B. Unfortunately; they get caught, since Pitch left the climbing harnesses. Later, Griffin goes to retrieve the card, but he is arrested by Detective Vizzini. Swindle doesn't want to press charges (so he can avoid an investigation so he won't risk getting in trouble when he cheated Griffin), and Winifred Rockford Bates, the last surviving member of the original Rockford family, gives the Babe Ruth baseball card to her youngest relative, Darren Vader. Ben had said earlier that Darren claimed to be related to the Rockfords. However, Griffin and Ben did not believe him donate the money, in total $974,000, making it the second most expensive collectible ever. They then have to give the card to the Cedarville Museum. In the end no one got any money from the heist, though all the talk about the heist caused Griffin's dad to have the SmartPick patented. After that, Griffin and his family do not have any more financial problems. As of 2009, a movie deal on Swindle and Schooled (another Gordon Korman book) was made public, although not many details have gone out.
17869299	/m/047bgbk	Night of the Hawk				 After the Old Dog mission, one of the crew members - Dr. David Luger sacrificed himself to allow his comrades escape from the airbase at Anadyr. Although everyone thought he was dead, he is not. Years later, he is now a completely brainwashed Soviet aircraft designer working for an aircraft design bureau called Fisikous is Lithuania. His whereabouts are found about by the Americans while they are extracting a Lithuanian defector. Now, known to the Old Dog crew and the high-ranking officials in Whitehouse as Dr. Ozerov, Luger must be saved from the grips of the old KGB. Luger has been forced to work on a stealth bomber called Fisikous Fi-170 which rivals the EB-52 Megafortress he had developed in the States. Parallelly the former Soviet state of Belarus is planning to invade Lithuania. Its Military commander Gen. Voschanka plans a decisive attack and use their nuclear arsenal if necessary, to force Lithuania to surrender. The Americans learn of this move by intelligence gathering and mount a covert mission to stop Belarus from invading Lithuania. An air squadron with CH-53E Superstallions and AH-1 Cobra choppers is first sent to evacuate the citizens at the American Embassy in Lithuania, followed by an air assault to destroy Belarusian ground targets. Meanwhile, a special Marines team in V-22 Ospreys, along with Patrick McLanahan, Jon Ormack and Hal briggs arrive at the Fisikous institute which is now run over with Lithuanian soldiers, to save Dave Luger. After a V-22 crash, followed by fierce gun battles, Patrick, Luger, Ormack escape in the Fi-170. On their way, they destroy several Belarusian ground units and take out a MiG-29 fighter, after which they make their way to Scotland. The EB-52 Megafortresses are sent to aid the Lithuanian ground troops led by Maj. Dominikas Palcikas in defending their soil. They take out nuclear missiles bound for Lithuania, detonating one of them with an AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile, causing a small blast. Voschanka's entire command centre is taken out by the Russian Commonwealth forces, during which he is shot dead. The Belarusian troops finally withdraw after suffering heavy casualties. Luger finally reunites with the Old Dog crew at HAWC, amidst potential military investigations into his recent past.
17872693	/m/047cx8g	The Horror of Howling Hill	Colin Brake			 Help the Doctor and Martha discover the truth behind the legend of Howling Hill, before the horror that stalks the night catches up with you. -->
17872975	/m/047f9ld	Second Skin				 When you find yourself on a twenty-third century space station, you soon realise a dangerous alien parasite has taken over most of the people on board. Can you and the Doctor destroy it before it reaches Earth?
17873035	/m/047fjhc	The Dragon King	Trevor Baxendale			 Your journey takes you to the planet Elanden, where people live side by side with dragons. But hunters from a neighbouring planet are attacking... Can you restore peace to these two clashing worlds?
17874327	/m/047dgzl	The Sorceress: The Secrets Of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel	Michael Scott		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Flamel and Palamedes take the twins to Stonehenge, where they enlist the help of Gilgamesh. While the twins are adjusting to the powers Gilgamesh has taught them, Cernunnos returns with the Wild Hunt and attacks the twins and Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is wounded by the Archon, but the twins use their newly found powers to protect the King. But what Nicholas Flamel withholds from the twins is that Gilgamesh the King is insane. Though he has no aura - and hence cannot use his powers - he can still pass on his knowledge to the awakened human twins. If Gilgamesh refuses to teach the twins, they will be unable to escape back to San Francisco using the Ley Lines and will be trapped in Dr. John Dee's city, his hometown of London, where he is at his strongest. Flamel uses Francis to enlist Palamedes, the Saracen Knight, to help them. Palamedes takes them to his home, a junkyard in London, and they manage to work together to contact Perenelle. Perenelle is trapped on Alcatraz with the friendly but untrustworthy spider elder, Areop-Enap, after narrowly escaping the Sphinx and defeating the Morrigan. Morrigan had been suppressed sufficiently by the Words of Power that resided on the island that her body was retaken by her two sisters, Macha and Badb. Perenelle also makes fleeting contact with Scathach and Joan of Arc by scrying. Areop-Enap and its spider army are then attacked by an onslaught of poisoned flies, killing most of the spiders and wounding Areop-Enap. Billy the Kid has joined forces with Machiavelli in an attempt to kill the sorceress, but Perenelle, aided by Macha and Badb, tricks the pair and steals their boat, travelling back to the mainland with her new ally, the Crow Goddess. Unfortunately, the Dark Elders have awakened an ancient being even more powerful and mysterious than them: an Archon. The Archon, named Cernunnos, is known as the Horned God and is the leader of a pack of wolf people called the Wild Hunt. Cernunnos, the Wild Hunt, and Dr Dee engage Shakespeare,the Gabriel Hounds, Palamedes, the twins, and Flamel in a vicious battle. While making their escape, Josh loses Clarent, and Dee grabs the sword, reuniting it with its twin, Excalibur. The two swords fuse together to make a new sword. They activate the ley lines at Stonehenge and are greeted by Perenelle at the other end. Meanwhile, Scathach and Joan of Arc try to get to Alcatraz to help Perenelle but are trapped in a prehistoric era by Machiavelli, who had deliberately set the trap to snare them. They do not know how to return to their time and must try to survive while they wait for Flamel and the others to find and rescue them.
17876314	/m/047rz3q	Fatal Terrain		1997-07-01		 Taiwanese politicians vote to declare independence from China in early June 1997 and the US immediately recognizes Taiwan as a sovereign state. However, Beijing does not take the declaration lightly and plans offensive operations to reimpose the one-China policy, with the initial swing led by the PLAN's deployment of the aircraft carrier Mao Zedong. Meanwhile, the US government authorizes a covert deployment of two EB-52 Megafortresses to patrol over the Taiwan Strait and keep watch on the situation. Lt General Bradley Elliott successfully reorganizes the survivors of the original Old Dog crew for the operation as part of a plan to pitch the Megafortress as new aircraft for the USAF. A stand-off between a Taiwanese Navy frigate and the Mao Zedong taskforce escalates as the Old Dog crew is forced to intervene. The battle opens an opportunity for the Chinese to wage an international public-relations campaign to paint the US and Taiwan as the aggressors. Chinese Admiral Sun Ji Guoming uses Sun Tzu's lessons on deception to give the campaign added leverage. His schemes include launching torpedoes against the Mao Zedong and frame the attack on the Taiwanese submarine Hai Hu shadowing it in Hong Kong harbor, disguising a ferry as a cruiser to provoke an attack by the Megafortress, and detonating a suitcase nuke on the USS Independence as it steams out of Japan for deployment to the Taiwan Strait. Sun uses the success of his deception operation to launch a massive air campaign against Taiwan, starting off with nuclear-tipped SAMs fired on Taiwanese F-16s attacking a naval base in Fujian province. The Chinese attacks on Taiwan - with nuclear weapons used on several of them - prompts the US to prepare its own strategic nuclear forces. The fallout from the events also affect the US leadership's confidence in Elliott's team while many countries in the Pacific Rim ban US warships from their waters. The US military tries to impound the Megafortress planes while in Guam, but Elliott's crew hijack one Megafortress and fly to a secret underground airbase outside Hualien, where a surviving Taiwanese Air Force F-16 unit welcomes them as the "new Flying Tigers." As Sun gloats over the success of his plan and expects the Taiwanese government's surrender, the joint US-Taiwan force starts attacking Chinese strategic assets deep in the mainland, which helps PLA commander Chin Po Zihong convince President Jiang Zemin to launch a ballistic missile at Andersen Air Force Base in the belief that it was the staging area for the attacks. Chin - who has been disgusted with Sun's tactics that do not require an actual invasion of Taiwan - orders an attack on the secret airbase after a patrol plane follows a flight of F-16s returning from another strike before being shot down. Elliott's team and the Taiwanese planes launch ahead of the Chinese assault. At the same time, the US Navy's carrier planes and the Air Force - which finally called off its strategic forces alert - savage the Chinese planes to help the Megafortress attack the Second Artillery Corps' missile silos. In the ensuing battle, the Megafortress suffers heavy damage while destroying many silos. Elliott orders McLanahan and the rest of the crew to eject while guiding the bomber for a kamikaze attack on the last DF-5 silo. The crew is captured by the Chinese, but are returned to the US after Sun surrenders to the Americans at Kadena Air Base and threatened to reveal the Chinese plan for recapturing Taiwan, causing Beijing to declare a ceasefire. The group - who expected jail time for going renegade - arrives at Dreamland, where President Martindale declares that it was reactivated and renamed in Elliott's honor. He also designates Eighth Air Force chief Gen Terrill Samson as base commander and McLanahan drives off contemplating an offer to be the base's operations director.
17878179	/m/047rrfv	The Unfortunates	B.S. Johnson	1969	{"/m/037750": "Ergodic literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A sportswriter is sent to a small city (Nottingham) on an assignment, only to find himself confronted by ghosts from his past. As he attempts to report an association football match, memories of his friend, a tragic victim of cancer, haunt his mind. The city visited remains unnamed, however the novel contains an accurate description of Nottingham landmarks, its streetscape, and its environment in 1969, with additional recallings of 1959. The football ground in the novel is obviously Nottingham Forest's City Ground, from whence the fictional football club 'City' comes.
17878308	/m/047q2kr	Senselessness	Horacio Castellanos Moya	2004		 A sex-obsessed lush of a writer is employed by the Catholic Church to edit and tidy up a 1,100 page report on the army's massacre and torture of the indigenous villagers a decade earlier. The writer becomes mesmerized by the poetic phrases written by the indigenous people and becomes increasingly paranoid and frightened, not only by the spellbinding words he must read, but also by the murders and generals that run his country. The country, never named, is identifiable as Guatemala through the mention of two presidents, Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo and Efrain Rios Montt.
17878993	/m/047p3yj	Just in Case	Meg Rosoff	2006-08-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 The book is set in Luton, Bedfordshire where fifteen-year-old David Case saves his younger brother from falling out of an open window. Scared by the experience, he starts to see danger everywhere, believes that Fate is stalking him, and decides to change his identity in order to escape his destiny. He changes his name to Justin, adopts a new wardrobe, seeks out new friends, acquires an imaginary dog, all in the hope of avoiding Fate. His new, moody, self-absorbed persona attracts attention, not all of it good, and Fate is not fooled at all. The title and David's adopted name Justin Case refer to his preparation phobia.
17879621	/m/047p6q3	The Frog King	Adam Davies	2002	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Harry Driscoll is an editorial assistant living in New York. He works for a major publishing house but is failing to make an impression by not taking his job seriously and constantly arriving at the office late and intoxicated. He is bitter, cynical and troubled but very charming, and the only thing he (secretly) cares about is his long suffering girlfriend - Evie. But he is unable to commit, be faithful or tell her he loves her and soon his self destructive actions will send his life into a rapid descent.
17890491	/m/047rkvr	The Magician Out of Manchuria	Charles G. Finney		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns the adventures of a hero who encounters a queen with remarkable talents.
17891337	/m/047nkcp	The Red Necklace	Sally Gardner	2007-10-04	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is principally set in and near Paris between 1789 and 1792. Yann Margoza, the protagonist, is a young traveling entertainer with the ability to read minds and throw his voice. When he gets older he finds that he can move objects with his mind (telekinesis). He meets Sido, the unwanted daughter of the cruel and foolish Marquis de Villeduval, and she helps Yann escape from the murderous Count Kalliovski, a menacing nobleman who holds the majority of the French aristocrats in the palm of his hand. He, too, has the power of telekinesis. After being educated in London, Yann returns years later to rescue Sido from the twin perils of the Terror and the Count's evil desire to have her as his bride.
17891865	/m/047st84	Focus	Arthur Miller			 The novel is set in New York towards the end of the Second World War. Its protagonist is a Gentile named Newman, a personnel manager for a large company, who lives with his mother. Newman, though too timid to do much about them, shares the prejudices of his neighbor Fred, who is determined to deal with the "new element" in their neighborhood, particularly a Jewish candy store owner called Finkelstein. However, a new pair of glasses have an unfortunate effect on Newman, altering his appearance in such a way that he begins to be mistaken for a Jew. He hires a prospective secretary who his boss thinks is an assimilated Jew using a WASP-sounding fake name, and is told he will not get a promised promotion and be moved to an office where fewer people could see him. He is furious about being mistreated and quits; ironically, he later gets a new job at a company where the owner and much of the staff are actually Jewish. As antisemitism mounts throughout the city and the Christian Front organizes to turn general ill will into action, Newman marries a girl called Gertrude. She has seen antisemitism mobilized at close quarters before, when she lived with the ringleader of an organization that abused Jews in California (someone whose views that the U.S. will soon get rid of all Jews she notes without any editorial comment), and recognizes how risky a position Newman is in when his garbage can, as well as Finkelstein's, is turned over in the night. She has also been mistakenly identified as Jewish, and is angry at this...because she is a Christian and is disgusted that anyone would think she is Jewish, not because she thinks anti-Semitism is wrong and hateful. Newman's principles and character mean that he would prefer to stand aside while the persecution of Finkelstein continues – his own latent antisemitism tacitly endorses it, while his reticence makes it hard for him to participate. But, accidentally caught up as a victim, non-participation is not an option. An attempt by Newman to convince Fred and his collaborators of his allegiance to their cause by attending an antisemitic rally results only in his being again taken for a Jew, attacked and ejected. Approached afterwards by Finkelstein, Newman tries to politely sell Finkelstein on the idea of leaving the neighborhood and moving somewhere where he won't be threatened. Finkelstein forcefully tells Newman he won't move: the anti-Semitic forces want to take over the U.S. (confirming what Gertrude told him earlier) and their crusade against Jews don't make any sense in that context because Jews comprise a very small percentage of the population. Finally, Newman and Finkelstein are together attacked in the street by a gang of men, who they fight off. Newman realizes he cannot count on Gertrude and walks away from their marriage, later going to the police to report the attack. Asked by an officer "How many of you people live there?" he declines to correct the mistake, realizing that by accepting it he sets himself against those who have abused him, rather than against their intended targets.
17897539	/m/047lw9j	Tom Swift Among the Fire Fighters	Victor Appleton	1921	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 While Tom and Ned Newton are reviewing financial records, a fire breaks out at the fireworks factory in town. Assisting the firemen, they rescue Josephus Baxter, Mr. Baxter is developing a new dye formula, and has hired out laboratory space at the factory. During the mayhem created by the fire and the rescue, Mr. Baxter loses the formula, but he is positive that the owners of the factory have stolen it. Tom feels pity on the man, and allows him use of the labs at the Swift Construction Company. While observing the blaze, Tom wonders that there is not a more efficient way to fight fire, especially having troubles with multi-storied buildings or skyscrapers. These thoughts lead him to develop a new fire suppressant chemical, and an air-borne system to deliver the new chemicals to the upper stories of skyscrapers. Tom also rescues a small boat in distress, with the aid of a naphtha launch.
17900841	/m/047tstq	All the Sad Young Literary Men				 Gessen's novel centers around the stories of three literary-minded friends: Keith, a Harvard-educated writer living in New York City; Sam, living in Boston and writing the "great Zionist epic"; and Mark, who is trying to complete a history dissertation on the Mensheviks at Syracuse University.
17905402	/m/047s823	Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive	Victor Appleton	1922	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Richard Bartholomew, president of the Hendrickton and Pas Alos Railroad Company (H&PA) is under pressure to save his company from bankruptcy. If Mr. Bartholomew cannot come up with a means to compete with the Hendrickton & Western railroad, the H&PA will be doomed to failure. Mr. Bartholomew has contracted The Swift Construction Company to build a new electric locomotive which can travel at 2 miles per minute ( ). The catch is that the owner of the competing H&W railway, Montagne Lewis, is dishonest and will stop at nothing to prevent Mr. Bartholomew from succeeding. Hired thugs are under orders to destroy Tom's developments. Tom, and his friends Ned Newton and Mr. Damon, have several life-threatening encounters with these hired gunmen.
17914626	/m/047nvk1	Passage	Lois McMaster Bujold	2008-04	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Passage is the immediate sequel to Legacy in The Sharing Knife series. It takes farmer's daughter Fawn and Lakewalker maverick Dag back to her home farm as a first step on their 'honeymoon trip' to the Southern Sea, which is analogous to the Gulf of Mexico in The Sharing Knife series' alternate-world setting. At the farm they add the first of a considerable list of fellow-travelers: Fawn's older brother Whit. Once on their way again another odd companion is added by accident, quite literally, as Hod the charity-case helper of the teamster taking them to find flatboat passage on the Grace River (the Ohio River) gets his kneecap shattered by Dag's ill-tempered horse. This begins a series of events in each of which Dag's ground-working abilities are stretched past old limits, ground being the series setting's term for what might well be read as chi. Hod happens to owe much of his sloth and sly theft of edibles to a well-grown tapeworm, not suspected by his employer and only noticed in passing by Dag. But by his good curing works Dag has, as he feared, left himself open to an avalanche of farmer folk with ailments. He has, also, unwittingly beguiled Hod—Hod follows him, and wants more of Dag's ministrations. So there are dangers to the farmers he tries to cure, too. Much of the novel follows out his attempts to present what Lakewalkers do, how, and with what limitations, in ways that farmers should understand. This action violates long-standing Lakewalker secrecy about just these matters. Dag, in his effort to reduce a culture gap that has already led to violent misunderstandings, sees no choice but to risk apostasy. After he, with help from two other Lakewalkers, and many of the so-called farmers (in this book, the non-Lakewalkers mostly work with boats, not farms) defeats a renegade Lakewalker, who has been leading a group of murderers and robbers, Dag even demonstrates, for a group of farmers, the ceremony that turns a knife made from a bone from a deceased Lakewalker into a sharing knife. He also discovers how to remove a beguilement. The core of the novel is set on a flatboat, patterned on craft used in the middle 19th century to move goods downstream on America's navigable rivers, and large enough to need a crew of around eight (and with space for cargo, chickens, a goat, and Dag's horse). For the details of this pre-steamboat era Ms. Bujold has drawn from a number of histories and biographies, listed and annotated in an Author's Note page at the very end of the text. Like the rest of the series this is a romance, but one that rides on deeper questions of personal and social relationship, including those of leadership, honesty, caste relations and power. It also presents some clear moral choices, for those who were recruited to join the renegade Lakewalker. It ends with the motley crew, Lakewalkers and farmers, that has made its way to the mouth of the Gray River (the Mississippi River) having a picnic on the sands of the River's delta and considering the whens and hows of their return journey up-river. A fourth volume, The Sharing Knife: Horizon, published in January, 2009, completes the tetralogy.
17915207	/m/047rfsv	When the Sacred Ginmill Closes	Lawrence Block	1986	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 It deals with an alcoholic detective who quit his job because he had shot a little girl while working for the New York Police Department. He frequents many bars such as Ms. Kitty's. There are three crimes that Scudder solves in this novel. First, there is a robbery of a safe at the Morrisey's, who support the IRA. Second there is a robbery of the real books that shows Skip's and Kasabian's tax evasion records. Third, there was a guy that murdered his wife. In the end, Bobby was the one that helped two actors rob the Morriseys and Skip. Skip turns Bobby in to the Morriseys to get a $10,000 reward. They later find the three people dead. Scudder gets a phone call from a depressed girlfriend of the man that killed his wife. She later kills herself and Scudder makes the evidence frame the guy. He thinks that it serves justice.
17918465	/m/047qfnd	Silver Tower				 Armstrong Space Station known as the Silver Tower is the first military station built by the United States to defend against ballistic missiles. With its arsenal of Thor Anti-ballistic missiles and a Tactical High Energy Laser weapon called Skybolt, it is a fearsome military weapon in space. Along with its highly specialised crew of scientists and engineers, led by General Jason St. Michael it forms a vital "eye in the sky", to assist the US military on the battlefield. The Soviets have decided to invade Iran in order to gain control of the Persian Gulf. They mount a surprising lightning air attack on Iran and place their Aircraft Carrier flotilla near the Persian Gulf. The Americans send the USS Nimitz and her carrier battle group in response. They also have Silver Tower, the ace up their sleeve to watch over the carrier and provide real time view from space. The Soviets who are aware of Silver Tower use a powerful ground laser in an attempt to destroy or cripple the space station. But to the Soviet's surprise, the tower and its crew survive and continue to assist the Nimitz. Furious on their previous failed attempt, the Soviets send Elektron Spaceplanes to destroy the space station. This time, the station is massively crippled, but some of the crew members sacrifice their lives by manually launching the Thor missiles at one of the space planes, destroying it. The crippled space station is then evacuated to the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Meanwhile, the situation back on the ground gets tense, with F-14s and F-15s engaging in dogfights with Tu-22M bombers and Su-33s launched from the aircraft carriers and missile ships exchanging fire. Both sides suffer heavy casualties. However, the Americans succeed in keeping the Soviet carrier group out of the Persian Gulf. The survivors Jason St. Michael and Anne Page return to Silver Tower hoping to restart its systems, only to be met with another attack from the Elektron spaceplanes. However, they restore the Skybolt laser module and fire on the spaceplanes, vaporizing them. They then fire the laser on Soviet cruise missiles heading for the Nimitz group. In the end, even though the battle is not over, the Red Fleet is kept out of the Persian Gulf and Silver Tower is to be repaired and returned to operation.
17921273	/m/047rvq6	Albert Savarus	Honoré de Balzac	1842		 Rosalie is the only daughter of the Wattevilles, a distinguished family of Besançon. Her father is very timid and spends his time working on a lathe, while her mother is quite proud and domineering. Her mother is trying to encourage Rosalie to take an interest in M. de Soulas, who is a young fop. At a dinner party, the Abbe reports the spectacular success of a lawyer Savaron, who has settled quietly in the town. Rosalie takes an interest in the lawyer, who is good-looking, and gets her father to build a gazebo in the garden with the secret intent of being able to watch Savaron. Savaron is successful in several cases, and it becomes known that he has started a local literary journal. Rosalie persuades her father to subscribe, and reads a story obviously penned by Savaron. In Savaron's story, two young men are touring in Switzerland. From a boat on a lake, Rudolfe, one of the young men, becomes captivated by a girl he sees leaning out of a window in a house on the lakeside. He instantly decides to stop in the village, and makes enquiries. He is told that the girl is a young English girl staying with her grandfather who has come there for his health with a dumb girl as a servant. Rudolfe tries to obtain invitations and eventually creeps into the garden and overhears the two girls talking Italian. It emerges that they are Italian émigrés who are hiding in Switzerland. Furthermore, it turns out that the girl, Francesca, is married to the old man. Rudolfe befriends them and enters into a chaste love affair with the girl. They are in love and agree to wait until the old man dies to get married. News comes that their exile has been lifted and the Italians depart to Geneva, where Rudolfe is to meet them later. When he gets there, it turns out that Franscesca is a princess and her husband is a Duke. Rudolfe is invited to the house, and they swear undying love, before Rudolfe departs to make his name in the world. When Rosalie has read the story, she suspects it is the true story of Savaron, and becomes jealous. She tricks her servant into obtaining Savaron's correspondence, and after a letter to Leopold, finds letters to the Princess and confirms that the story is true. Savaron ries to make his name in the town and stands for elections. There is much complex politicking to obtain him the vote. Wrapped up in it is a law suit over M. de Watteville's land. Rosalie persuades her father to enlist the help of Savaron, but he refuses to come into the open about it until after the election, because of possible effects on the electorate. Suddenly just before the election, Savaron disappears and is never heard of again. Rosalie's mother tries to push the marriage with M. de Soulas but Rosalie is totally opposed. Thus they fall out and after the death of her father, Rosalie is left in very difficult circumstances. In response to Rosalie's taunt, her mother ends up marrying de Soulas herself. Rosalie seeks the aid of the Abbe to find Savaron, and confesses to him the awful secret she has hidden. It turns out not only did she intercept Savaron's mail and prevent it reaching him, but also substituted letters to the Princess. In particular she wrote that Savaron was to marry herself and so Savoron's disappearance is linked to the marriage of Francesca to another man shortly after the death of her old husband. Savaron is tracked down to a monastery where he has shut himself off from the world. Rosalie is still vindictive and tries to find Franscesca, delighting in telling her what happened and handing over the letters. Shortly afterwards Rosalie is horribly disfigured in a steamboat accident on the River Loire.
17927963	/m/047njn9	Shadowland	Peter Straub		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story concerns two young boys, Tom Flanagan and Del Nightingale, who spend a summer with Del's uncle Coleman, who is one of the foremost magicians in the world. As time passes, however, Tom begins to suspect that what Coleman is teaching is not a series of harmless tricks, but is in fact real sorcery.
17930827	/m/047q07g	La porte étroite	André Gide			 The story is set in a French north coast town. Jerome and Alissa as 10-11 year olds make an implicit commitment of undying affection for each other. However, in reaction to her mother's infidelities and from an intense religious impression, Alissa develops a rejection of human love. Nevertheless, she is happy to enjoy Jerome's intellectual discussions and keeps him hanging on to her affection. Jerome thereby fails to recognise the real love of Alissa's sister Juliette who ends up making a fairly unsatisfactory marriage with someone else. Jerome believes he has a commitment of marriage from Alissa, but she gradually withdraws into greater religious intensity, rejects Jerome and refuses to see him. Eventually she dies from an unknown malady which is almost self-imposed. de:Die enge Pforte fr:La Porte étroite ja:狭き門 no:Den trange port pt:A porta estreita zh:窄門
17932670	/m/047njww	The Case of the Stick				 Damião (pronounced Dan-mi-an-o) is a young man who escapes from a seminary. Afraid that if he returns home, his father will force him to return to the seminary, he goes to ask help of Miss Rita (pronounced He-tah), a window and the lover of Damião's godfather, João Carneiro (pronounced Jo-an-o Ca-he-ney-roh). She agrees to help him, and he hides in her house, where she has a number of girls working for her. When Rita asks why he does not speak with his father, Damião tells Rita that his father does not listen to anyone. Rita suggests that he seek help from his godfather. At first, Damião resists, but eventually agrees, and João Carneiro is sent for. While they wait for João Carneiro at Rita's house, Damião tells jokes to the girls. One of them, a slave named Lucrécia (Lou-kreh-see-a), is distracted from her work. Seeing this, Rita threatens to beat Lucrécia with a stick, the usual punishment, if she does not finish her work. Feeling sympathy for the small scarred black girl Damião decides that if Lucrécia does not finish the work, he will try to protect her, but says nothing. João Carneiro arrives and Rita tries to convince him to intercede with Damião's father. She is insistent, and sends him off. Then she tells Damião to go eat dinner. Some local women come to Rita's house for coffee and conversation. After the women leave later in the day, Damião becomes increasingly nervous and, certain that if he remains at Rita's house, his father will find him and send him back to the seminary, decides to try to escape. Clad in a chasuble, he begs Rita for some plain clothing. Laughing, she tells him to relax, and that everything will turn out well. But soon a note from João arrives with the news that the father is unconvinced. Damião sees that Rita is his only hope. She takes a pen and paper and writes a note to João telling him that if he cannot convince the father, they will never see each other again. Then Rita goes to the collect the work from the girls. Seeing that Lucrécia has not finished her work, she takes Lucrécia by the ear and tells Damião to fetch the stick. He is torn between his desire to help the girl, who begs him for help, and his desire to escape the seminary, he feels remose, but gives Miss Rita the stick. pt:O Caso da Vara
17940084	/m/047rlyt	Métaphysique des tubes	Amélie Nothomb	2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel, apparently autobiographical, describes the world as discovered and seen by a three-year old child born in Japan to a Belgian family. It encompasses the themes of self-awareness, language acquisition, bilingualism, and developmental psychology. The Japanese believe that until the age of three, children, whether Japanese or not, are gods, each one an okosama, or "lord child." On their third birthday, they fall from grace and join the rest of the human race. The narrator of the novel has spent the first two and a half years of her life in a nearly vegetative state until she is jolted out of her plant-like, tube-like state, and gains a peculiar but complete awareness of the world around her. Most fascinating to the narrator is the discovery of water in oceans, seas, pools, puddles, streams, ponds, and, rain - one meaning of the Japanese character for her name and a symbol of her amphibious life. es:Metafísica de los tubos fr:Métaphysique des tubes nl:Métaphysique des tubes
17940490	/m/047ldd8	Irish Tiger	Andrew Greeley	2008-02-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
17948275	/m/047srbm	Letters from Hell	Valdemar Adolph Thisted			 The narrator, Otto, who has died in the prime of life, relates the torments and regrets that are a consequence of the self-centred and dissipated life he led in the world. He also describes the fates of other lost souls who inhabit Hell, concluding with the arrival in Hell of the narrator's mother. Some of the book's descriptions of Hell are reminiscent of Emanuel Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell.
17969404	/m/047tgkr	Bridge of Sighs	Richard Russo	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is set in small, fictional town in upstate New York called Thomaston. Like Empire Falls, the town is quickly deteriorating. The story is about Louis Charles ("Lucy") Lynch, his family, his wife, and his best friend. Sixty-year-old Lou Lynch has cheerfully spent his entire life in Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah. He is the proprietor of three convenience stores.
17971412	/m/047n585	Mrs. God	Peter Straub		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel concerns a professor who is researching the poems of his grandmother at an English manor. He finds himself drawn into a nightmarish landscape where he is pursued by dead babies.
17973693	/m/047mmbw	Free Baseball				 The main character is Felix in story Free Baseball, by Sue Corbett. This adventure is about a boy and his love for the game of baseball. Felix is a Cuban boy who crossed borders by boat with his mother at the age of 3. When Felix enters a radio contest and wins two tickets to a local minor league baseball game his journey begins . Felix gets supposedly separated from his babysitter who took him to the game and decides to stowaway on the opposing team bus. He did this because the miracle, the opposing team, had a Cuban player on the team that might be able to tell Felix about his father, a famous baseball player on the Cuban national team that stayed back from crossing borders. Felix called his mom and told her he was staying over a friend’s house. Felix pretends to be the bat boy.
17974753	/m/047nlpz	Back to the Stone Age	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1937	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story reveals the fate of Wilhelm von Horst, the lost member of the previous book’s outer world expedition to Pellucidar, which had been led by Jason Gridley and Tarzan to rescue Pellucidarian emperor David Innes from the Korsars. The action begins by recapping the incident in which Gridley, von Horst, and Tarzan’s Waziri warriors, led by Muviro, are caught up in and separated by a horde of saber-toothed tigers’ cooperative hunt. Now on his own, von Horst quickly becomes lost, links up again with the Waziri by accident, and gets lost again when he foolishly goes out hunting on his own. In the most powerful sequence in the book, von Horst becomes prey himself when a Trodon, or pterodactyl, carries him off to its nest in the crater of a dead volcano. The explorer is left poisoned and paralyzed together with other victims, all of them intended as a living larder to feed the creature’s young as its eggs hatch. Von Horst passes the time by getting to know a fellow paralytic, the native warrior Dangar of Sari, a member-tribe of Innes' empire. From him, the outer worlder gradually learns the Pellucidarian language. Fortunately for von Horst his clothing prevented him from receiving a full dose of venom, and he recovers from his paralysis in time to save Dangar from the next hatchling. Shooting the immature trodon, he makes a long strap from its hide, lasoos the parent on its next return, and after allowing it to fly off just past the lip of the crater, shoots it in turn. After securing the free end of the strap to the still paralyzed Dangar, he uses it to climb out of the trap, pulling his companion up after him. In the forest at the foot of the mountain he constructs a treehouse to serve them as a secure base while Dangar recovers. Subsequently von Horst rescues another native, Skruf of Basti, from a hyaenodon; Skruf is on a quest to kill a tarag (saber-toothed tiger), the head of which he needs as bride-price to secure a mate. As he knows the country, von Horst and Dangar accompany him once the latter has recovered. In due course they encounter the desired beast, from which Skruf hides in fear while his companions make the kill. Despite his cowardice Skruf takes the trophy, and the three continue on to the cliff-village of Basti. But once there he turns traitor, not only claiming the deed as his own but betraying his companions into slavery. Von Horst and Dangar are put to work with other slaves of Basti digging new caves into the cliff. Von Horst becomes enamored of La-ja of Lo-har, a fellow captive, and in defending her touches off a general slave revolt. He leads all the slaves to freedom, whereupon they separate to return to their native tribes. Von Horst elects to accompany La-ja to Lo-har rather than continue to Sari with Dangar. The plot of the novel continues to unfold in its pattern of liberty, capture and escape, with the protagonist’s goal imperceptibly altering from rejoining his outer world comrades to romance with La-ja. The feelings of the principals, while plain to the reader, are masked from their objects of affection by culturally-based misunderstanding, as is typical of Burroughs’ novels, postponing the ultimate resolution nearly to the end of the story. The initial path of von Horst and La-ja takes them through the ill-reputed Forest of Death. Within the forest are the labyrinthine caves of the Gorbuses, cannibalistic albinos who, in an eerie touch, are intimated to be murderers from the outer world, reincarnated in Pellucidar and consigned to this place as punishment. This is Burroughs’ sole nod toward the notion that his interior world might relate in any way to the concept of a subterranean hell. Falling prey to the Gorbuses, von Horst and La-ja are soon joined as captives by the Bastians Skruf and Frug, who have been trailing them. The four set aside their differences to effect their escape, but afterwards the Bastians betray the others’ trust, kidnapping La-ja. Von Horst pursues the kidnappers, incidentally coming to the aid of a tandor (mammoth) wounded by sharp stakes of bamboo, which, Androcles-like, he removes. He overtakes his quarry, but before matters can be settled, he and Frug are taken by the Mammoth Men, a native tribe utilizing mammoths as mounts; Skruf and La-ja elude the interlopers. Boarded on the family of a tribal warrior, von Horst once again commences plotting to escape, aided by dissatisfied locals, whose support he enlists, and the friendship of Thorek, a member of the tribe who had shared his earlier captivity in Basti. His opportunity comes when he and other prisoners are pitted against each other, sabertooths, and mammoths in a gladiatorial-like contest. One of the mammoths proves to be Old White, the beast he had aided previously; joining forces, they survive the melee and make a successful break for freedom. Once again von Horst happens on Skruf and La-ja, intervening as they are attacked by the Ganaks, or bison-men. While able to kill a few of these he ultimately falls captive to them, this time in the company of La-ja. Their escape is aided by Old White, after which they are separated again, but von Horst falls in with another from La-ja’s country, Gaj, a fellow former-prisoner of the Mammoth Men. Gaj’s guidance enables him to follow La-ja to Lo-har. There he saves her from Gaz, an unwanted suitor, and he and La-ja finally acknowledge their love for each other. Their union results in him becoming chief of Lo-har, his new bride being the daughter of the Lo-harians’ former ruler Brun, who is absent searching for her. The remaining plot threads are tied up by the arrival of a party from Sari led by David Innes, accompanied by Brun. Innes, it turns out, has taken up the pledge of Jason Gridley at the end of the previous book to rescue the missing von Horst—Gridley himself, anti-climatically, is revealed to have let himself be persuaded by other members of the expedition from the outer world to leave Pellucidar with them instead. Von Horst declines Innes’ offer take him back to Sari and what passes for civilization in the inner world, electing to remain in Lo-har with La-ja.
17983346	/m/047rfl_	The Face in the Abyss	A. Merritt	1931	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns American mining engineer Nicholas Graydon. While searching for lost Inca treasure in South America, he encounters Suarra, handmaiden to the Snake Mother of Yu-Atlanchi. She leads Graydon to an abyss where Nimir, the Lord of Evil is imprisoned in a face of gold. While Graydon's companions are transformed by the face into globules of gold on account of their greed, he is saved by Suarra and the Snake Mother whom he joins in their struggle against Nimir.
17986635	/m/047pccr	Honorine	Honoré de Balzac			 Maurice is a Consul at Genes, a Mediterranean town where he has married Onorina the daughter of the only wealthy man into the town, although it seems he was originally extremely reluctant to get married. They are having a dinner party with guests from Paris, and Maurice recounts some of his history. When Maurice was young, he became secretary to Count Octave. The count was very good to him but seemed very sad and mysterious as if hiding some past misfortune. Eventually Maurice discovers that he had been married, but his wife had left him. She, Honorine, had been brought up with him from a very early age, having been adopted by his parents, and they were devoted to each other. They had become married almost as a matter of course. However after a few months she just disappeared. Octave then discovered she had gone off with an adventurer who had abandoned her, pregnant. She had the child but lived full of remorse, and resisted all attempts of Octave to get in touch with her. Octave is still devoted to her and secretly helps her in her business of flower arranging. However she still refuses to have anything to do with him. The Count therefore gets Maurice to act as a go between, arranging for him to occupy the house next to her, and pose as a misogynistic flower breeder. Eventually Maurice makes contact and indirectly puts the Count’s case. Honorine is still too overcome with remorse and shame. Eventually however she agrees to see the count, and then goes back to live with him. Maurice has to leave the Count’s company because of the part he played and that is why he became consul. Two years after, he heard of the death of Honorine, and soon after was visited by the Count who had grown old before his time, and who died shortly after departing. The story is full of discussion about the meaning of relationships and Maurice acts throughout as interpreter for the two parties. There is also the implication that he had in fact fallen in love with Honorine himself, which is why he avoided marriage initially.
17986748	/m/047qdfk	La Fausse Maîtresse	Honoré de Balzac			 Clemintine is a descendent of rich and noble families whose wealth has been dissipated. She married Count Laginski a Polish immigrant who is quite prosperous. They are a happy couple well set up in an attractive house. Clementine discovers that Adam has a friend who is acting as steward and general manager, a handsome young man who has kept in the background. Adam and Thaddee had served together in the army and were close friends, although Thaddee was poor, but very capable. He was devoted to Adam, and had volunteered to look after Adam’s affairs since he was worried that Adam and his wife would dissipate their fortune. Clementine insists that Thaddee join in their various social activities and finds him attractive. Thaddee falls in love with Clementine, but his devotion to his friends puts him in complete anguish. When Clementine tries to find out more about him, he invents a secret mistress who is a girl in the circus called Malaga. Having done this, he has to make the story true, and tracks down Malaga and sets her up as if he were his mistress. However he does no more apart from paying for her keep, but upsets Clementine by carrying on with her and occasionally having to borrow money. In time, Thaddee believes Clementine is capable of looking after the finances, and claims that to get Malaga out of his mind he is leaving Paris and going into the army again. Nothing more is heard of him, until one night, when an infamous rake tries to seduce Clementine, taking her away in his carriage. A figure grabs Clementine and sets her on the right track in her own carriage. It is Paz, who has never left Paris but has kept in the background looking after his friends. It is revealed that the invention of Malaga as his imaginary mistress was a ploy to discourage Clementine from taking an interest in him, thereby preserving his friendship with Adam. It is not quite clear whether Adam had had an affair with Malaga which Paz had to keep quiet.
17991767	/m/047t22g	Sea Change	Robert B. Parker	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In his grittiest investigation to date, Jesse Stone hunts for the killer of a woman whose body washes up on shore. The woman turns out to be Florence “Flo” Horvath, of Miami, Florida. She was pushed off a boat, then run over; knocking her unconscious and causing her to drown. The investigation comes to a halt shortly after she is identified, until Jesse acquires a tape of Flo having sex with two men at the same time. He also discovers that Flo rented a boat before she was murdered, but that it was returned to the wrong place. During the investigation he is led to the yacht “The Lady Jane.” He questions the yacht owner Harrison Darnell, and the other occupants, who of course all deny knowing Flo. In an attempt to get more information, Jesse sneaks onto the yacht and finds a stack of sex tapes. He takes one and reviews it, and although it is sexual in nature, he does not find anything criminal. Later seventeen-year old Cathleen Holten comes to Chief Stone with accusations of rape. She claims that a man took her onto his yacht, The Lady Jane, forces her to strip for his friends and then rapes her in his cabin. Although, Jesse does not believe her, and the rape later proves to be consensual sex, he uses this opportunity to get a warrant and search the yacht. Having been there before he goes right for the video tapes and confiscates them. While reviewing them with Molly, she recognizes her daughter’s fifteen year old friend as one of the sex partners. Although Jesse now has the yacht owner for statutory rape, he continues to investigate, determined to get the murderer. However in the end he does have him and another man arrested for statutory rape. He next finds one of the men in Flo’s sex tape and discovers that the men in the tape were brothers. He reveals that it was Flo’s sisters that made the tape. He next interviews Flo’s sisters, twins Claudia and Corless. They tell Jesse they learned of Flo’s death from their friend Kimmie Young. They also tell him that they made the tape to make Flo’s boyfriend, Harrison Darnell, jealous. Jesse strikes up a partnership with Miami detective Kelly Cruz, and has her interview Flo’s parents and Kimmie. Although Flo’s parents seem harmless, Kimmie tells Cruz that she had no idea that Flo was dead. She later tells Cruz that Flo’s father raped her when she was fifteen and routinely had sex with all three of his daughters. Kelly Cruz also interviews Darnell’s private pilot and discovers that he flew her to Boston a few days before her murder. Finally Chief Stone discovers through Flo’s father's E-ZPass that he drove to Boston the week that she was murdered, although he denies the trip. After discovering this, Jesse flies down to Miami where he and Kelly Cruz confront him about the trip. His wife, in a drunken rage, accuses him of murdering their daughter and he confesses. Jesse later speculates that Flo’s father had her rent a boat, pushed her off of it, then returns it to the first place he sees, explaining why it had been returned to the wrong place. He responds that he did indeed argue with her on the boat, and push her off, but that she simply drowned unbeknownst to him. After he discovered she had died he denied the trip all together fearing that he would be accused of murder. Jesse later asks the twins why they said they learned of Flo’s death from Kimmie, because had they not said that he may have never suspected their father. They claim to not remember saying Kimmie. Jesse speculates that they may have subconsciously wanted their father caught. The twins also reveal that the sex tape was not made for Flo’s boyfriend, but for their father. It is this tape that causes him to fly into a jealous rage and drive up to Boston to murder her. Having all seen the tape, it causes the twins and their mother all to suspect that he murdered Flo.
17995902	/m/047mh1h	Maigret in Exile	Georges Simenon			 The mysterious moves of bureaucrats have exiled Maigret to a small town in the coast of Normandy where it rains all the time and there is nothing to do except for playing billiards in the local pub and sniff the gel that the local inspector lathers into his hair. Then an old woman shows up with a story about a body in the house of a judge in the fishing village of l'Aiguillon and things get interesting. A young woman with a mysterious ailment (something to do with being over-sexed but Simenon never explains what exactly is wrong with her), a young man with a temper, a hotel waitress with a secret, and an ex-judge with taste and style.
18002583	/m/047n3t2	Khasakkinte Itihasam	O. V. Vijayan		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Khasakkinte Itihasam does not have a single narrative plot. It is crafted in the form of the spiritual journey of an under-graduate dropout, Ravi, plagued by the guilt of an illicit affair he had with his stepmother. Ravi abandons a bright academic career and a research offer from Princeton University. He deserts his lover Padma and leaves on a long pilgrimage, which finally brings him to the small hamlet of Khasak near Palakkad. At Khasak, he starts a single-teacher school as part of the District Board’s education initiative. The novel begins with Ravi’s arrival at Khasak and his encounters with its people, Allappicha Mollakka, Appukkili, Shivaraman Nair, Madhavan Nair, Kuppuvachan, Maimoona, Khaliyar, Aliyar, and the students of his school like Kunhamina, Karuvu, Unipparadi, Kochusuhara and others. After some years, his lover Padma calls on him and Ravi decides to leave Khasak. He commits suicide through snakebite while waiting for a bus at Koomankavu. The novel has no story-line per se. It recounts the numerous encounters of Khasak from a spiritual and philosophical bent of mind. Through these encounters, Vijayan narrates numerous stories, myths and superstitions cherished in Khasak. He places them in opposition to the scientific and rational world outside, which is now making inroads into the hamlet through Ravi's single-teacher school. The irony of the interface between these two worlds occupies a substantial space in the novel. Through the myths and stories, Vijayan also explores similar encounters of the past recounted by the people of Khasak, enabling him to have a distinctly unique view of cultural encounters across time and space.
18006063	/m/047qyd4	Resident Evil: City of the Dead	S. D. Perry	1999-05-01	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The narrative follows Leon S. Kennedy fighting the mutated William Birkin for most of the story, while Claire Redfield fights the Tyrant. The book downplays most of the puzzle-solving elements from the game and focuses more on the interaction between the characters. There are also added scenes in the book involving the supporting characters such as Ada Wong, Annette Birkin, Sherry Birkin, and Police Chief Brian Irons. The ending is slightly altered, in which the survivors of S.T.A.R.S. Exeter, characters featured in Caliban Cove (including Rebecca Chambers, pick up Leon, Claire, and Sherry, as opposed to the "walk into the sunrise" ending featured in the game. Due to City of the Dead being written before the release of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis the book has some contradictions. For example, in the beginning of the book, Jill Valentine leaves Raccoon with Chris Redfield and Barry Burton to infiltrate Umbrella's HQ in Europe. In the game series, however, Jill has to fight her way out of Raccoon, Chris has already skipped town, and Barry comes back to help Jill escape at the end. fa:رزیدنت ایول: شهر مرده pt:City of the Dead it:La città dei morti (Perry)
18006205	/m/047srl5	The Twelve and the Genii	Pauline Clarke	1962	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Max is an eight-year-old boy whose family has just moved into an old farmhouse in Yorkshire. He discovers some old toy soldiers in the attic and is surprised and delighted to find that they come to life. The soldiers, known as the Twelves, or the Young Men, have different personalities; they are brave, intelligent and very independent, not to mention argumentative. They adopt Max as one of their Genii, or protective spirits, and he begins to spend most of his time watching and thinking about them. He learns from the local parson that they once belonged to the Brontës, who wrote stories about their adventures. When his older sister Jane discovers the secret, she becomes as keen on the soldiers as Max is. The local newspaper publishes a letter about the Brontë wooden soldiers, from an American professor offering £5,000 (at the time a small fortune) to anyone who finds them. Max and Jane's older brother Philip believes the Morley soldiers may be the Brontë ones, and impulsively writes to the professor about them — only to deeply regret his act when he too discovers the truth. The soldiers learn that they are in danger of being taken to America and disappear in the night. The children have some anxious moments before they discover that the soldiers have determined to return to their original home in Haworth, now a museum dedicated to the Brontës. Their march across the countryside is fraught with peril, but they finally reach safe haven with the protection of the Genii.
18009121	/m/047pljf	Street of Shadows	Michael Reaves		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The story features characters from the Medstar Duology, which was published in 2004. <!-
18021536	/m/047r76j	Harris and Me	Gary Paulsen	1993-10-29	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Harris and Me is a story, told in the first person, about a boy whose alcoholic parents send him away to spend each summer with family relatives. One summer he is sent to stay with the Larsons, farmers in a remote area of Minnesota. The story focuses around the humorous events of a city boy learning to live on a farm with Harris. According to the author, Gary Paulsen, this story is based on his own life.
18026096	/m/047ml1s	Millennium Falcon	James Luceno		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Much of the novel delves into the long and exciting history of the Millennium Falcon, as it had been called many names and had many intriguing adventures, from the time it came off the assembly line almost like a wild animal, to when it became the magnet in attracting the adventures of the great Han Solo. In 19 BBY, during the Clone Wars' Battle of Coruscant, the Falcon had undergone the name of Stellar Envoy under the captaining of Tobb Jadak and his copilot Reeze Duurmun. Jadak and Duurmun had acted as conspirators as part of a plot to overthrow Supreme Chancellor Palpatine as leader of the Old Republic. Their mission failed when an erratic hyperspace jump landed the Envoy into an accident that killed Duurmun and landed Jadak in a coma that lasted for more than sixty years. By 43 ABY, two years after the end of the Second Galactic Civil War, Jadak awakens, having barely aged since his time in the coma. And with the help of ne'er-do-well Flitcher Poste, they work their way forward in time from 19 BBY in order to find out what happened to the Stellar Envoy. Meanwhile, the Solos discover a mysterious object aboard the Millennium Falcon, and they decide to go on a fact-finding mission in order to discern the Falcons origins. They work their way back in time from when Lando Calrissian first owned the ship until they eventually cross paths with Jadak and Poste. Jadak reveals that the mysterious object in the Solos' hands will lead them to a treasure on the world of Tandun III, which was meant to overthrow Palpatine. On their heels is Lestra Oxic, a mysterious businessman who wants the treasure. When all of these parties arrive on Tandun III, they find that the planet has undergone an apocalypse thanks to the Yuuzhan Vong invasion that was wrought upon it years earlier. They discover the treasure, but it turns out to be a fake. Oxic then hires Jadak and Poste to help him find the real treasure just as the Solos escape with the other parties from a collapsing Tandun III. They all make it out in time and the planet explodes with no one dead. The novel ends with Luke Skywalker calling the Solos to come back to Coruscant because Galactic Alliance Chief of State Natasi Daala had Luke arrested for lack of action in defeating Jacen Solo in the first place during the Second Galactic Civil War. And so the Millennium Falcon flies back to Coruscant, another journey for the centenarian freighter.
18039974	/m/047nv5c	Bad Business	Robert B. Parker	2004	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Spenser is hired by a wealthy woman, Marlene Cowley, to gather evidence on her husband's infidelity. While following the husband, Trent, one evening and finding him meeting his mistress, Spenser discovers that she too is being followed by another private detective. Things get even stranger when Spenser discovers that Marlene Cowley is also being followed by a third P.I. Eventually, Trent winds up dead as Spenser is waiting to follow him outside his place of business, Kinergy, where he is CFO. The investigation picks up steam as Spenser tries to solve the murder. More people end up dead and the other two P.I.s Spenser ran into disappear. The story involves corporate corruption and an accounting scandal that only a detective as determined as Spenser can unravel. Several Spenser-verse reappearing characters are featured in this book including Hawk, Vinnie Morris, Susan Silverman and Pearl, their dog.
18040846	/m/047sqvg	The Teahouse of the August Moon	John Patrick			 In the aftermath of World War II, the island of Okinawa was occupied by the American military. Captain Fisby, a young army officer, is transferred to a tiny Okinawa island town called Tobiki by his Commanding Officer Colonel Purdy. Fisby is tasked with the job of implementing “Plan B”. The plan calls for teaching the natives all things American and the first step for Capt. Fisby is to establish a democratically elected Mayor, Chief of Agriculture, Chief of Police and President of the Ladies League for Democratic Action. Plan “B” also calls for the building of a schoolhouse (Pentagon shaped), democracy lessons and establishing capitalism through means left up to the good Captain’s judgment. A local Tobiki native, Sakini by name, is assigned to act as Fisby’s interpreter. Sakini, a Puck-like character, attempts to acquaint Fisby with the local customs as well as guide the audiences through the play providing both historical and cultural framework through his asides and monologues. After receiving many gifts from the villagers, including a geisha named Lotus Blossom, Fisby tries to find local products on which to build his capitalist endeavor. He is discouraged when the villagers can’t find a market for their handmade products, items like getas (wooden sandals), lacquered bowls, cricket cages, and casas (straw hats). He is also frustrated when the newly elected democratic government votes to build a teahouse for geisha Lotus Blossom with the building supplies designated for his Pentagon shaped school. Through the villagers, Captain Fisby starts to see the beauty of preserving their culture and a slower way of life. He agrees to build the teahouse (Chaya) and even lands on a moneymaking product – sweet potato brandy. Soon the Cooperative Brewing Company of Tobiki is churning out liquor by the gallon and selling it to all the neighboring military bases. The gala opening of the teahouse is the moment when Colonel Purdy decides to make his progress inspection and finds Captain Fisby serenading the villagers in his bathrobe with a rendition of She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain. He is in danger of court martial and reprimanded for misusing government supplies, selling liquor and "not turning the villagers into Americans fast enough". Col. Purdy orders the destruction of all the stills and the teahouse. Sakini and the villagers outsmart the Colonel and only pretend to destroy everything, instead they hide everything “quick as the dickens”. Their foresight proves fortuitous when Purdy learns that Congress is about to use Tobiki as a model for the success of Plan B. The villagers rebuild the teahouse on stage, and even offer a cup to Col. Purdy in a gesture of goodwill. Like all great comedies, in the end, all is forgiven. The village returns to the rich life they once knew (plus a teahouse, export industry and geishas), Fisby is touted a hero, and Purdy, we hope will get a brigadier general’s star for his wife Grace after all. Teahouse of the August Moon is a comedy whose laughs come from the inability of the American characters to understand Tobiki culture and tradition. However, it is not just a story of culture clash. Through the character of Fisby we see acceptance and the beauty of making peace with oneself somewhere between ambition and limitations. We also learn, like Fisby, that sometimes the better life is had by taking a “step backward in the right direction.”
18042052	/m/047tgy2	Under the Dome	Stephen King	2009-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Shortly before noon on Saturday October 21 of an unspecified year after 2012 (evident by mention of a faded bumper sticker for Barack Obama's successful 2012 re-election campaign), the small Maine town of Chester's Mill is abruptly and gruesomely separated from the outside world by an invisible, semipermeable barrier of unknown origin. The immediate appearance of the barrier causes a number of injuries and fatalities, and traps former Army Captain Dale "Barbie" Barbara—who is trying to leave Chester's Mill—inside the town. Police Chief Howard "Duke" Perkins is soon killed when his pacemaker explodes after getting too close to the barrier. This removes the last significant opposition to James "Big Jim" Rennie, used car salesman and the town's Second Selectman. Big Jim exerts significant influence within Chester's Mill, and seizes the opportunity to use the barrier as part of a power play to take over the town. Big Jim appoints one of his cronies, the incompetent Peter Randolph, as the new Police Chief. He also begins expanding the ranks of the Chester's Mill Police with questionable candidates, including his son, Junior Rennie, and his friends. Junior has frequent migraines caused by an as-yet undiscovered brain tumor which has also begun affecting his mental state; unbeknownst to Big Jim, Junior was in the process of beating and strangling a girl to death when the barrier appeared, and has killed another girl by the time Rennie places him on the police force. Elsewhere in Chester's Mill, Julia Shumway, the editor of the local newspaper, is phoned by Colonel James O. Cox, who has her carry a message to Barbie to contact him. When he does, Cox requests that Barbie act as the government's liaison in an effort to bring down the Dome, as it has come to be known. Because of Barbie's talents as a former bomb factory hunter, Cox gives him the task of locating the source, which is believed to be inside the Dome. Cox is also able to foresee the small town political ramifications of such a situation. By virtue of a Presidential order, Barbie is reinstated in the US Military and promoted to full Colonel. Barbie is also presented with a decree granting him authority over the township. However, smalltown politics being what they are, this action is not well received by Big Jim and his misguided band of renegade police officers. As Big Jim covertly encourages and orchestrates unease and panic among the town to build up his grab for power, Barbie, Julia and a number of other townspeople attempt to stop things from spiraling out of control. After crossing Rennie's path on several occasions, Barbie is framed and arrested for 4 murders. He is accused of killing Reverend Lester Coggins, who laundered money for Rennie's large-scale methamphetamine operation, and Duke's widow Brenda Perkins, who were both murdered by Big Jim. While Barbie is in jail other residents track the source of the Dome to an abandoned farm, and the device is strongly indicated to be extraterrestrial in origin. The restrictions issued by Rennie become more severe and the police force grows more abusive, galvanizing the town and eventually leading some residents to break Barbie out of jail, killing Junior seconds before he can murder Barbie. The semi-organized resistance flees to the abandoned farm, where multiple people touch the strange object and experience visions. They not only conclude that the device was put in place by extraterrestrial "leatherheads" (so named for their appearance), but that specifically they are juveniles who have set up the Dome as a cruel form of entertainment, a sort of ant farm used to capture sentient beings and allow their captors to view everything that happens inside. On an organized "Visitors Day"—when people outside the Dome can meet at its edge with people within—Big Jim sends Randolph and a detachment of police to take back control of his former meth operation from Phil "Chef" Bushey, who is stopping Rennie from covering up the operation as well as hoarding the more than four-hundred tanks of propane stored there. Many are killed in the ensuing gunfight and Chef, who is mortally wounded, detonates a plastic explosive device he has placed in the meth production facility. The ensuing explosion, combined with the propane and meth-making chemicals, unleashes a toxic firestorm. More than a thousand of the town's residents are quickly incinerated on national television, leaving alive only the twenty-six survivors at the abandoned barn, an orphaned farm boy hiding in a potato cellar, and Big Jim and his informal aide-de-camp, Carter Thibodeau, in the town's fallout shelter. Big Jim and Thibodeau eventually turn on each other; Big Jim stabs and disembowels Thibodeau, only to die several hours later when hallucinations of the dead send him fleeing into the now-toxic environment outside. The survivors at the barn begin to slowly asphyxiate, despite efforts by the Army to force clean air through the walls of the Dome. Barbie and Julia go to the control device to beg their captors to release them. Julia is able to make contact with a single female leatherhead, no longer accompanied by her friends and thus not caught up in their peer pressure. After repeatedly expressing that they are real sentient beings with real "little lives", and by sharing a painful childhood incident with the adolescent alien, Julia convinces the leatherhead to have pity on them. The Dome raises up slowly and vanishes, allowing the toxic air to dissipate and finally freeing the town of Chester's Mill.
18044714	/m/047rsf3	The Promise of Eden	Eric Durchholz	1999	{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy"}	 The Promise of Eden tells the story of a young boy, Gregory Coleman, who lives in the small town of New Harmony, Indiana. He is raised less by his largely indifferent parents than by a seemingly kind spirit who masquerades as his imaginary playmate named Anna. Anna teaches Gregory about life and love, while secretly preparing him for a journey she needs him to take to a mysterious world called Ibscaca. Anna is further aided by Joseph, an enigmatic hermit with mysterious ties to the small town. At first Gregory accepts Anna at face value, but as Gregory ages and matures he begins to question Anna's true nature and motives. The fates of both Gregory and Anna are further complicated by the malevolent intentions of Sylvie, a 200-year-old poltergeist which also inhabits the Coleman household. Sylvie is a decidedly evil entity with aspirations of becoming a goddess. While Anna and Sylvie often find it necessary to work together, their relationship is not one of friendship and trust, and their ultimate goals are not the same. As Gregory continues to grow up, he begins to devote less time to Anna. He also begins to develop and explore his sexuality, beginning a relationship with a boy his own age named Jason. Anna, who at first encouraged Gregory to develop other friendships outside their own, begins to see that his new social life is jeopardizing her plans. When Anna's true plans for Gregory are finally revealed, the decisions he makes have a dramatic impact on both Gregory's own world, and that of Ibscaca.
18062202	/m/02x1xfv	The Weakness	K. A. Applegate	1999-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 During a failed attempt to assassinate Visser Three using cheetah morphs, the Animorphs learn that the Council of Thirteen has sent an inspector to check up on the progress of the invasion of Earth. Seeing an opportunity to discredit Visser Three politically, Rachel devises a plan to terrorize local businesses run by known Controllers. With Jake out of town, Rachel is temporarily elected to lead the Animorphs, much to Marco's disdain. The Animorphs spend the day putting Rachel's plan into action. Their first raid occurs at a news station, where a tour is being given to a group of people. An elderly man is shocked by the sight of wild animals destroying the news room and falls down. During a break in the operation, Rachel and Cassie see a news report covering the first raid and learn that the man who fell down has died of a heart attack. Rachel pushes the Animorphs for one last raid at the Community Center, and opts to go in with everyone morphed as polar bears. The others are hesitant since they have lost the element of surprise and the Community Center is a Yeerk stronghold, but Rachel remains insistent. The raid goes badly after Visser Three and the inspector, a Garatron-Controller, join the fight. Having all morphed the same animal and therefore having no versatility, the Animorphs are forced to withdraw, but Cassie is captured before she can get out. The remaining Animorphs return to Cassie's barn. Rachel, devastated by her leadership failure, attempts to pass the responsibility to Marco, who berates her for her show-off attitude seen throughout the day. Marco declines, saying that any attempt to rescue Cassie is Rachel's responsibility. With less than an hour to save Cassie, Rachel comes up with a plan to get them into the Yeerk pool. Rachel, Marco, and a human-morphed Tobias and Ax assemble at Morgan Airport, where they jump the fence and hijack a private jet belonging to Phillip Morris USA. After putting the plane on a collision course with a vacant building that is known to harbor a large entrance for Bug fighters to access the Yeerk pool complex, the Animorphs bail out of the plane in their various bird-of-prey morphs and fly into the Yeerk pool. Rachel is the first to arrive, where she and Cassie are forced to engage several Hork-Bajir-Controllers. The fighting is quickly halted by Visser Three, however, when he challenges the Garatron-inspector to defeat the "Andalite Bandits" for himself. The inspector reluctantly accepts and engages Rachel and Cassie. They struggle to hold their ground against the incredibly fast Garatron-Controller until Tobias and Ax arrive, carrying Marco in cobra-morph. Marco manages to fatally bite the inspector and the Animorphs make their escape. Visser Three makes no effort to stop them and mocks the inspector as he slowly dies from the venom. Rachel visits the family of the man who died during the raid on the news station. After offering her condolences, she quickly leaves and finds Jake waiting for her in the driveway. Rachel tells Jake that she "screwed up", but Jake retorts that she didn't get anyone killed and that is all that matters. Rachel tells Jake to never go away again.
18083232	/m/047phh6	Cats of the Clans	Erin Hunter	2008-06-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the introductory chapter, "Three Lost Travelers", the kits Mosskit, Adderkit and Blossomkit have somehow walked from StarClan to Rock's home under the earth. Rock tells the three that they did not live long enough to learn about their Clanmates. He says he will answer their questions "about the cats you left behind." Rock describes himself as "the keeper of the world beneath the one your former Clanmates walk." The remainder of the book consists of Rock's stories about each Clan, and various cats (or a group of cats) within the Clan. Rock describes major events in the cat's life, and often comments on why the cat is special or acted as he/she did. There are also stories about a few cats from the Tribe of Rushing Water, SkyClan, and BloodClan in addition to some loners and kittypets. Although Rock, as the narrator, claims neutrality, the book does not treat each Clan equally, devoting more space to ThunderClan cats and being highly critical of one of the other Clans. This is to be expected since readers get to know more of the ThunderClan cats from series than those from the other Clans.
18087955	/m/047m7xg	Grey Star the Wizard	Joe Dever	1985	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The series plays for the most part at the tip of south-eastern Magnamund, in the land then known as the Shadakine Empire. A tyrant called Shasarak the Wytch-King has subjugated the people and with the help of seven Shadaki Wytches is ruling with an iron fist. The Shianti, members of a mystical race, wish to help, but because of their exile on the Isle of Lorn they are forced to remain neutral in the conflict. However, one night the situation changes when a storm wrecks a vessel near the island, with a human infant being the only survivor. In this child the Shianti see a chance to help the people of Magnamund without breaking their vow to Ishir, and they raise the boy in the arts of magic, giving him the name Grey Star: the star as the symbol of hope, and grey for the white-grey streak the boy has in his dark hair. Once his training is complete, Grey Star is sent out to retrieve the Moonstone, an ancient Shianti artefact, from the Daziarn, for only with its power can Shasarak be defeated. The first book of the series details Grey Stars travel to the Shadakine Empire and his desperate attempt to find a guide to lead him to the Shadow Gate.
18089226	/m/04crmts	Windfall	Desmond Bagley	1982	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This is a novel about the source of a mysterious 40 million pound legacy. The main benefactor was a small college in the remote Rift Valley in Kenya. The heirs were the South African man Dirk Hendricks and the unknown, recently discovered, descendant, Henry Hendrix from California. Max Stafford, security consultant, is suspicious of Henry being an impostor and the violent reaction to his arrival in Kenya points to a sinister and far-reaching conspiracy far beyond mere greed.
18095869	/m/04cy5q7	Five Get into a Fix	Enid Blyton	1958	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel begins with the four and their dog Timmy, having the worst Christmas holidays ever with coughs and colds at Julian’s house. To recover Julian’s mother sends them to a farmhouse, in the Welsh mountains during the last week of their holiday. The Five had nearly reached their destination, when they get lost in the dark and drive up a dead-end driveway leading to a large and strange old building called "Old Towers" on the top of the lonely hill. They think of asking for directions but seeing the building and grounds being protected by huge gates and snarling dogs, they hurriedly depart. However, while going down the slope their car feels heavier than before, as if someone/something is pulling it back. Finally, they reach the farmhouse where they meet Mrs. Jones, the owner of the farmhouse. The next morning when the five come down for breakfast they meet Mrs. Jones son, Morgan. They find Morgan to be as strong as ten elephants, his voice can be heard from miles away and his seven dogs are as furious as him. When the five go for a walk that day Timmy gets bitten by three savage farm dogs which prompts George to resolve to leave the next day. Leaving George, Anne and Timmy in the farm house, the boys spend the day at a hut on the hills. On the way back,they meet a wild little girl in rags, Aily with her dog named Dai and her lamb, Fanny. Aily is a shepherd’s daughter. Mrs. Jones however dislikes Aily and asks Julian AND Dick to stay away from her. Julian and Dick share their experience with George and Anne and they decided to spend their holidays at the hut instead of the farm. They enjoy their day at the hut, but at night strange sounds and vibrations come from the "Old Towers". Next day they decide to meet the caretaker of old towers who tells them that no one lives there. But at night they come across people at the old towers which turns them suspicious about the whole affair. The Five decide to seek the help of Aily as she roamed about the hills and perhaps to the Old Towers too. Aily slowly becomes friends with the Five and gives them information about how the owner of old towers lives with many other people.Once when she had spotted the owner dropping a piece of paper out of a window, Aily had picked it up but as she didn’t know how to read or write, she didn't know what to do with it. She hands it over to the five and to their astonishment the note reads “I’m kidnapped in my own house. Please call the police”. On reading this they think of rescuing the owner, but Aily refuses to take them to the old towers. On seeking Morgan's help, he snatchs the note from them and tells them not to interfere with this. Thus, Aily agrees to take them to the old towers. She takes them to a pothole which led to a tunnel leading to the old towers. They met the owner and asked her why she was kidnapped she said that there was a very precious metal with magnetic properties beneath the hill. While getting out of there they spot Morgan and the shepherd on a rescue mission. But all are spotted by the kidnappers, Morgan calls to his dogs who help in the rescue. When all of them return to the farm they find a party being arranged as it is Morgan’s birthday.
18097398	/m/09s_br	Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast	Robin McKinley	1978-10-25	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Beauty is the youngest of three daughters of a wealthy merchant, Roderick Huston. Her given name is Honour, but she said that she'd rather be called "Beauty". The nickname has stuck since then. As she grows older, she feels increasingly ill-named as her sisters, Grace and Hope, become lovelier and more socially adept. Soon Grace becomes engaged to one of her father's ship captains, Robert Tucker, and Hope later beomes engaged to a blacksmith named Gervain Woodhouse. Robert's ship becomes lost at sea only a few months after the engagement along with all of Huston's other ships. Destitute, the family relocates to a town in the north near to Gervain's home town to begin afresh, a journey that takes nearly two months. Their lives begin to take a turn for the better as the city-bred family adapt to their new lives, and Hope and Gervain are later married and have two children. Almost a year later, they receive news of one of Huston's ships arriving back into port. Huston prepares to make the long journey alone to sell the ship's cargo. Before he leaves he asks his daughters if they want any gifts; Grace and Hope jokingly request expensive gifts, while Beauty asks only for a rose cutting or seeds for the garden. Huston returns home sooner than everyone expects with a beautiful rose, looking much worse for wear. Once he regains his strength, he tells everyone that on his return from town, he was caught in a blizzard a few miles from home and lost his way in the forest, stumbling across a mysterious castle as he and his mount came to the end of their strength. Huston was given shelter for the night and waited on by invisible servants. As he left the next day he found a beautiful garden and plucked one rose to bring home to Beauty. The owner of the castle, a great beast, appeared before him furious for the theft and ready to kill him for his crime. Huston begged for his life, pleading that he had daughters to return to. The Beast decided to let him go if he returned in one month with one of his daughters, assuring him that she would not be harmed and live safely with him in his castle. Despite her family's pleas, Beauty insists that she be the one to go in her father's place. As the months pass, Beauty comes to enjoy living in the castle. There are only two problems: she misses her family and every night the Beast asks her to marry him. Every night she answers no, but as they become close, Beauty feels bad for hurting the Beast even though she cannot bring herself to do what he asks. One night, the Beast again proposes marriage and Beauty states that she cannot marry him but hates constantly refusing him. Later, Beauty asks when she will be allowed to return home. The Beast reveals to her that he cannot let her go because he can't live without her. Upon hearing this, Beauty goes into shock and faints. She awakens in the arms of the Beast and flees to her room, too terrified to listen when he tries to tell her that she unconsciously refused to let go of him when he caught her. Beauty's dreams of her family become even more vivid and detailed than before and her senses becomes more acute and attuned to her new world. The Beast reveals that he sends the dreams to her to comfort her and that her way of seeing things has changed because of her sensitivity and because she has adapted to and accepted the magic that surrounds her. He also shows her a magic mirror that allows her to see her family. Through the mirror, Beauty sees Grace make the decision to accept a proposal of marriage from the local minister; however, she still loves Robert. Beauty wonders what has happened to Robert, and immediately the mirror shows her that Robert is alive and has only recently returned despite his ship being almost completely wrecked. Beauty begs to see her family one last time to tell Grace the news, promising to return in a week and stay with the Beast forever afterwards. The Beast reluctantly allows her to go, hinting that he will not be able to live without her if she does not return in time. Beauty's family is overjoyed at her return though disheartened to hear that she will only stay with them for a short time. Beauty tells her family about her time in the castle and convinces them that the Beast is not the monster that they have feared. She also tells Grace that Robert is alive, and arrangements are begun to have Robert brought to the Huston home. During the days without the Beast, Beauty begins to recognize how she truly feels about the Beast, proclaiming him to be even dearer to her than her family. When Beauty stays a day longer than planned at her family's behest she dreams that the Beast has died in her absence. She tries to return to the Beast but gets lost in the woods. After finding her way back Beauty discovers the Beast nearly dead, but is able to revive him. Realizing how close she came to losing him, Beauty confesses her love for the Beast and tells him that she will marry him. In an instant the enchantment on the Beast and the castle is broken. The Beast is returned to his handsome human form, explaining to the astonished Beauty about how his family had been cursed by the local magician for being arrogant and over-sealously pious, but because their piety was actually so strong, the curse was delayed intil a descendant mis-stepped and that he was the one who fell. He tells her that the spell could be broken only if a woman agreed to marry him despite his appearance. But Beauty then becomes self conscious and begins refusing to marry the Beast until he shows her her reflection in a mirror, revealing how she has blossomed into a true beauty. Beauty is reunited with her family and the novel ends with Beauty and her prince walking out to meet everyone, excited to start their new life together
18102411	/m/04cv7p_	Peter the Great's Negro	Aleksandr Pushkin	1837	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens with a picture of morals and manners of the French society of the first quarter of 18th century; with the Negro's life in Paris, his success in French society, and his love affair with a French countess. But "summoned both by Peter and by his own vague sense of duty" Ibrahim returns to Russia. The following chapters, full of historical color and antiquarianism, sketch the different strata of the Russian society: ball at the Winter Palace and boyars' dinner at the boyar Gavrila Rzhevsky's place. The latter is interrupted by the arrival of the Tsar, who wants to marry Ibrahim to the Gavrila's daughter, Natalia.
18112020	/m/04cv6mc	Doomsday Plus Twelve			{"/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction"}	 In 1988, an incident in Saudi Arabia touches off World War III between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Things get out of hand and nuclear weapons are used. American deaths number 120 million. The effects of EMP, ozone, and epidemics (California was dusted with anthrax) are depicted. Twelve years later people living in a rural Oregon have survived with their only contact with the outside world coming from Japanese merchants who have built a base near them. They are later, however, visited by representatives from San Diego, one of the few American cities to survive the war. The visitors preach their plan to restore the United States by driving out the Japanese with a nuclear submarine that survived the war and ask for volunteers to join their army. Most people are not interested in their message but when the militants launch an attack on the Japanese merchant base it inspires a trek to San Diego led by a charismatic young girl to peacefully protest their actions. On the way they meet various groups of survivors: a gang of Hells Angels bikers who join up with them, monks living in a still functioning observatory, and refugees in the desert living in abandoned military vehicles. When they arrive in San Diego they find the city in ruins (the missile that was supposed to hit exploded in the ocean causing a tsunami that destroyed the city). They peacefully march into the base discovering that the militants were too afraid of their own soldiers to provide them with ammo and the nuclear submarine they boasted about had long since sunk to the ocean floor.
18119737	/m/04cw33x	Drakon	S. M. Stirling	1996	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Set centuries since the last war between the Domination and the Alliance, the Domination has conquered the Earth and the solar system, while the Alliance survivors have fled to the Alpha-Centauri star system where they have started a new civilization called the United States of Samothrace. The two societies have traded technology and skirmished some, focusing most of their efforts on colonizing all new habitable worlds they discover. Space combat is rare since faster-than-light travel is impossible. Combat only occurs when colonists from both sides reach the same world, an incident that happened only once. (Stirling later said the Samothracians won due to their superior ship .) The Draka continue their enslaving any new intelligent species they discover, using genetic engineering to produce a meek and submissive version of it.
18124375	/m/04ct6qk	This Rough Magic				 Actress Lucy Waring leaves London to join her married sister Phyllida Forli in Corfu where the Forli family own three houses—two of them modern. One is occupied by the Forlis, the other rented out to Godfrey Manning who is taking photographs for a coffee table style book. The third, the much older Castello, is rented to actor Julian Gale and his son Max who is a musician. Julian Gale has two godchildren, twins Spiro and Miranda, who work in the Forli's houses. The idyllic scene is shattered when Spiro is reported drowned after falling overboard while out at night sailing in Godfrey Manning's boat. One theme running through the book is the idea that Corfu is the setting for The Tempest. Another theme is that of a dolphin which will approach humans. The book was serialised in the British magazine Woman's Journal. Julian Gale and the play Tiger, Tiger (with a different author) are also mentioned in The Wind Off the Small Isles (1968) by the same author.
18124467	/m/04ctrfd	In Odd We Trust	Dean Koontz	2008-06-24	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In Odd We Trust serves as a prequel to the first Odd Thomas novel. The ghost of a young boy appears to Odd, and he embarks on a quest to bring justice to the boy's killer so that his ghost can move on. Odd's friend, the Chief of Police Wyatt Porter, shares some details of the case, and informs him that the boy's babysitter is the one that discovered the body. The babysitter turns out to be Sherry Sheldon, a childhood friend of Odd's girlfriend and soulmate, Stormy Llewellyn. Sherry relates that a stalker has been leaving her disturbing notes for several months, and believes this stalker may be the murderer. Odd and Stormy resolve to catch the stalker before he kills again. Odd asks the ghost of the little boy to help him find his killer, and Joey leads him to a street corner, where he sees a suspicious man. The man flees when Odd tries to address him. Odd gives chase, but loses his quarry when he trips over a lawn gnome. Four neighborhood children are believed to be targets, as they have each received a note from the killer. Chief Porter assigns police escorts to each of the houses, and Odd and Stormy decide to spend the night with Sherry at the house where she is babysitting a girl named Angelica. The policeman on stakeout at the house finds an empty car containing a mutilated mannequin, and from this Odd deduces that the killer is nearby, taunting them. He throws open the doors of a nearby van, and discovers the man he chased earlier. He and Odd trade veiled threats, but when Stormy shows up with a gun, the man drives off. Chief Porter traces the van's license plates to a man named Kyle Bernshaw, and gives Odd the resulting address. Odd and Stormy break into Bernshaw's house, to find giant piles of magazines (from which his mysterious notes have been cut and glued together), and a note to Odd, revealing that this was a trap. Odd turns to find himself cornered by a vicious dog, from which he is saved at the last minute by Joey's ghost. Odd and Stormy race back to the house where they left Sherry, only to find out that Angelica's parents have fired her and she has left. Odd realizes that Sherry, not one of the four children under police protection, was the target all along. The two borrow a car and, using Odd's psychic magnetism (an ability that draws him to a person if he concentrates on them while traveling), they locate Bernshaw in an abandoned slaughterhouse. Odd fights him, with limited success, until Stormy shoots him in the leg, and Odd is able to subdue him. They free Sherry from the trunk of Bernshaw's car. The killer is taken into custody, but refuses to confess, insisting that he will be given a chance to escape, as he has made a deal with the devil and everything he wants always comes to him. He threatens to reveal Odd's identity and abilities to the world, bringing a storm of media attention, one of the very things Odd fears most. Odd lies and pretends that he, too, has sold his soul to the devil for his powers, but just as he begins to make headway with taking Bernshaw into his confidence, a guard collapses and the killer is able to grab the guard's gun. He fires, but the bullet ricochets off a chair Odd is holding. The bullet kills Bernshaw. Angelica's parents re-hire Sherry, and the story ends with Odd and Stormy musing on the happy ending they have managed.
18128510	/m/04ctf3t	The Inventors	Alexander Gordon Smith	2007-04		 Nate is at home, about to test his latest invention - a machine that can dress humans, like in cartoons. However, the invention goes wrong and ruins his room, upsetting his parents. Nate goes to his best friend Cat's house, to test their latest invention, the Bully Blow - also known as Pergophosphaticus III - a goo-like substance that causes whoever eats it to turn blue. They test it on the school bully by putting some in her chocolate brownie, but it is confiscated by the Headmaster, who turns blue when he eats it. Rather than getting Nate and Cat into trouble, he asks them to take part in Ebenezer Saint's competition. They have under a week to invent something so good that Saint's company, Saint Solutions, will take it on. The winners will be given a year-long scholarship at Saint Solutions, working with Ebenezer himself. After many failed attempts at making Facial-Recognition Glasses, they decide to use the Bully Blow, now in the form of a helmet for the army, allowing the wearer to blend in with the surroundings by turning the appropriate color. Saint loves their invention, and they, along with the other winners, are taken to Saint Solutions. At Saint Solutions, they soon realise that Saint is reluctant to let them leave. He wants to create a nuclear bomb to wipe out the world and start again. However, the kids escape, but Nate and Cat stay behind to stop his bombs from being sent out. They use an EMP Cat hid on the bombs to detonate them early, with the duo just managing to escape before the compound is destroyed, along with Saint. In an epilogue, it is revealed that Saint's memory was saved onto a computer, which downloads his mind into a robotic body. As his memories come back, the robotic Saint heads for the exit.
18132988	/m/04cw816	Becoming Naomi León	Pam Muñoz Ryan	2005-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Naomi and Owen Soledad León are the children of Santiago Zamora León, a Mexican fisherman and craver, and Terri Lynn, a troubled American woman who lost her parents in a car accident when she was a teenager, making them half American-half Mexican, with Naomi taking the Mexican side and Owen taking the American side. The family live in Puerto Escondido, Mexico, however Santiago and Terri Lynn had a lot of arguments, which is thinning their marriage. When Naomi was four and Owen was one, and when Santiago was fishing, Terri Lynn went shopping in Tijuana when she supposed to look after Naomi and Owen, leaving the kids to baby sit themselves at a motel. No one could find Terri Lynn for days and a hurricane suddenly hit after she left. Naomi and Owen were rescued by Santiago and taken to a church, where Santiago left them in the care of the church's priests to move his boat, but he got lost a sea on the way and was rescued over a week later. Meanwhile Terri Lynn returned and took the kids to Lemon Tree, California, where she once lived with her widowed grandmother, Mary Outlaw. After arriving at her apartment, Terri Lynn told her that she couldn't handle two kids by herself, especially with one of them deformed (Owen) and left the kids with Mary so she could find her life, and never returned, forcing Mary to raise the children on her own. Soon after Mary took the kids to live in the Avacado Acres Trailer Rancho trailer park so Owen would have room to be a "wild monkey". Mary became attached to the kids and feared of losing them as she enrolled them in school and got doctors for them when Terri Lynn didn't return. Seven years later, Naomi, now eleven years old and now known as Naomi Soledad León Outlaw, has a lot to deal with, such as having the "funniest last name in the universe" for one. Then there are her clothes (sewn in polyester by Gram), her difficulty speaking up, and her status at school as "nobody special". She also doesn't remember her parents but knows that her father is Mexican and her mother is American, and still has scars from her mother's abandonment years before and also thinks that her father never wanted her and Owen, who is now eight and is still physically deformed. She and Owen still live with Mary, who is now known as Gram, in Lemon Tree, California in the trailer Baby Beluga (named by Gram) and in the trailer park consumed with the three things Naomi's good at, soap carving, worrying, and making lists. Naomi and Owen's life with Gram and their loving neighbors in Lemon Tree is happy and peaceful, despite being 'left-overs', until the day Terri Lynn, who now renamed herself Skyla Jones, suddenly reappears after the seven years of being gone. With her arrival, she starts to stir up all sorts of questions. Naomi and Owen are both thrilled on her arrival and they try to get to know her, and Naomi had many questions for her sudden return, along with the sadness that Skyla wasn't anywhere near the mothers that she had imagined. During their mother's stay, Skyla is buying things for Naomi and Gram and never gets anything for Owen, and her mood has been changing mysteriously, which confuses only Naomi. Also what confused Naomi more is Skyla insulting her every time she speaks quietly and ordering her to talk louder. Also Gram seemed to always be angry with Skyla, and she fears that something might go wrong, which adds more confusion to Naomi, along with the thought that Gram is hiding something, but she very little knew that things were going to take turns from the thrilling to the worse. Gram later tells her and Owen the truth, but they don't really know the truth, until the day of the conference where Skyla promised to come and meet Naomi's new school friend, Blanca, who came from Atascadero, California and was full Mexican, but she didn't. That day Naomi realized that her mother is really an alcoholic and that her father really wanted her and Owen but Skyla didn't let him keep them. On Thanksgiving Day, Skyla's boyfriend, Clive, comes over for the holiday. However things went bad when Skyla and Clive tell Naomi since Clive was moving to Las Vegas because of his job, that they decided that she was a perfect friend for his daughter, Elizabeth, who Clive renamed Sapphire. Gram doesn't allow it which seems to anger Clive, and things went more worse when Clive takes one of Naomi's soap carvings and uses it to wash his hands, which made Naomi upset that one of her precious cravings was destroyed, but before things went more worse Owen played checkers with the neighbors, which he always won at. When Skyla played, he let her win some. However when she found out, her mood changes and she orders him to play like he means it, which Owen did and he won a game, which angers Skyla, causing her to insult him about his deformities and his love for wearing tape across his shirt, saying he didn't 'look' smart. However after Clive played with him and lost three games, he thought that his deformities can be used for getting money in gambling, which angers Gram and the neighbors. When Clive and Skyla are about to leave, Naomi notices beer in the back seat of their car, which made her question if Skyla was going to drink again. Skyla, knowing that Naomi saw it, tells her to mind her own business before they leave, leaving Naomi increasingly confused. After going back to school on Monday, Naomi tells Blanca about what happened, and with that Blanca, now worried about the frightening mood swings and threats Skyla makes to Naomi and Owen, tells Naomi that she needs to wake up before something bad happens, since Naomi didn't know for sure if Skyla was really going to drink the beer, but Blanca informed her that Skyla wouldn't have told her to mind her own business if the beer was just for Clive. However Naomi kept refusing Blanca's information to tell Gram, saying that she had enough worries right now, and won't tell her unless she knew for sure. Three days later Owen's regular check-up at the doctor's was coming up, and Skyla volunteered to take Owen since Gram had to help one of her neighbors, Fabiola, with a bride's wedding gown, and she promised Gram that everything will end well. At the doctor's, things take a turn for the worse when Skyla's mood swings again and she thought of Owen as a "Blem" when the doctors told her that he was going to be an FLK (Funny Looking Kid) for a few more years, and she was furious that they couldn't do anything else about him for now. When they got back to Baby Beluga, Skyla suddenly becomes more infuriated and tells Naomi that Clive's job finally came through in Las Vegas, and she was coming with them, but Naomi knew that the only two reasons that they want to take her is because they only wanted her to be a babysitter for Sapphire, and get welfare from having her. Naomi, knowing that her mother was drinking again, refuses to go with her by telling her about her past mistakes, what kind of harm she caused, and the good things Gram did for Owen and her unlike Skyla, which greatly angers Skyla that she slaps Naomi across the face in front of Owen, and she threatens Naomi that if she didn't come with her to Las Vegas, something bad would happen to Gram on account of her. Horrified, and now thinking that Skyla would hurt or kill Gram, Naomi successfully managed to get herself and Owen away from her and they immediately go to tell Gram. Skyla follows to claim Naomi and even though she thinks she has the right to take Naomi because she is her mother, Gram tells Skyla that she would fight for Naomi, telling her that she would go to the end of the earth to protect Naomi, even if it meant going to court, and get the rightful guardianship over her and Owen. Skyla however doesn't take in what Gram said and threatens her that if Naomi's things weren't packed and she wasn't ready in a few days, she would arrive with a police officer, believing that the police will never believe her grandmother's story. Then Skyla informs Gram that Naomi didn't belong to her, and she was her daughter before she leaves, leaving both Naomi and Owen terrified after they realized Skyla's true nature: an abusive and unstable alcoholic mother who only wanted to claim Naomi, but not Owen because of his deformed appearance. Realizing that the law was on Skyla's side and determined of saving Naomi and Owen, Gram takes the kids on a whirl-wind journey accompanied by their neighbors Fabiola and Bernardo Morales (who were also there when Skyla threatened to take Naomi) to the city of Oaxaca, Mexico and stay with the Morales's relatives. There they go on a quest in which Naomi is determined to find their father Santiago, whom Owen and Naomi have not seen in many years. During their stay Owen becomes friends with Fabiola's niece's son, Rubén, and the two were rarely seen apart. Naomi even thought of Rubén's mother, Graciela, as her mother, because of her kindness and her desire to find her life with Rubén after the divorce with her husband, rather than be away from him to find her life like Skyla. They ask many people if they knew a man named Santiago Zamora León, which to Naomi's despair they don't, but she keeps believing that he will come, since he always came to carve in the Night of the Radishes competition. The group participate in the Las Posadas and the Night of the Radishes competition, where the men have Naomi carve a lion. After winning the competition in second place, Santiago shows up, but when he sees Gram, Owen, and Naomi, he runs off, and Naomi runs after him after Gram told her it was him. Unable to catch up with him, the downcast Naomi goes back to Gram and kept asking why Santiago ran. Later that night Santiago returned, and Owen and Naomi have a tearful and joyful moment with him, with Naomi explaining the situation. The next day, Gram tells Naomi and Owen that they had to leave because of court, and Naomi asks Santiago if he could move with them, but he told her that he has to stay where he lives in Mexico because of his job. After Naomi promises to come visit him he told her 'Be brave, Naomi León' before they leave. When they go to court, Naomi, remembering what her father told her, tells the judge everything from the beginning: after Gram was widowed, Naomi and Owen's life with her, when Skyla came back after seven years of abandonment and always ignored Owen because of his appearance, the incidents at teachers' conferences, Thanksgiving Day, and at Children's Hospital, when Skyla slapped and threatened Naomi, and when she went to Mexico and found her father. After telling the whole court that she wants to live with Gram and Owen because she belonged in Lemon Tree, she loved Gram, Owen, Blanca, and her school, and she didn't want to go with Skyla because of the reasons she explained, the judge grants full guardianship to Gram, since she didn't want to separate relatives who have lived together all their lives, especially if there are loving and responsible relatives, like Gram and Santiago as she pointed out, despite Skyla trying to lie to the judge that Naomi was making up stories in order to get her. After the happy trio return to live their peaceful life in Lemon Tree with Gram saying that Skyla might try to take them back to court someday. Naomi is then reunited with Blanca when she goes to back to school, and after school that day she tells Naomi that her voice is louder. In the epilogue, Naomi narrates that nothing much as changed and she (Naomi) was different. Naomi supposed that she and Owen might long for Skyla a little, and they wondered what it could have been like if she had been different. Gram said it wasn't likely if Skyla would come visit them, but Naomi wouldn't mind. Naomi also narrates the time she found her father, who loved her and Owen without being nearby and tells the reader to imagine all that love floating in the air, waiting to land on someone's life. She says next that even though they found their parents, their lives were with Gram. In Mexico while Santiago was teaching her about the magic, Naomi saw it worked on people as well. She refers Skyla as 'a mother with a cat's claws,' (due to her troubled life and the violence she did on Naomi and Owen), next she refers Santiago as 'a father with a lion's heart', (because of his possession of exceptional courage and fortitude), referring Gram as 'a great-grandmother with a bird's protective-outstretched wings',(due to her protectiveness of Naomi and Owen) and referring herself as 'a mouse with a lioness voice' (as revealed near the epilogue). Naomi then realized she was becoming 'who she was meant to be', a mouse with a lioness' voice and the Naomi Soledad León Outlaw of her wildest dreams.
18133305	/m/04cqtdr	Angel of Grozny: Inside Chechnya	Åsne Seierstad	2008-03-06	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Angel of Grozny attempts to give an accessible and impartial account of the complicated historical and political forces at play in the Chechen conflict whilst also describing her encounters with combatants and civilians on both sides. The book features an account of her meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. As well as trying to understand the mindset of the Chechen and Russian people, one of the books key themes is the exposure of corruption in the process of reconstructing Chechnya. The Angel of Grozny of the book's title is a Chechen woman Hadijat Gatayeva who has turned their home into an orphanage for street children of the war.
18133738	/m/04ctzxf	Soul Mountain	Gao Xingjian	1990	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The first of the two characters to be introduced is "You". He is described as a local tourist---"not that sort of tourist" but a backpacking one "wearing strong sensible sports shoes and a backpack with shoulder straps". He seeks out the elusive Lingshan, a sacred mountain. "You" has long lived in the city, but yearns for a rural existence from the past He shuns the idea of settling for "a peaceful and stable existence" where one wants to "find a not-too-demanding sort of a job, stay in a mediocre position, become a husband and a father, set up a comfortable home, put money in the bank and add to it every month so there'll be something for old age and a little left over for the next generation". "You" meets up with another wanderer, a troubled and emotional "She". And so "You"'s journey also becomes a journey into an erotic relationship. "You" also travels inwards as he explores his powers as a storyteller. Later in "You"'s story, "She" departs "as if in a story, as if in a dream". Meanwhile, "I" is a writer and academic who travels to Sichuan after having been misdiagnosed of a terminal lung cancer. He wants to take a break and start looking for an "authentic life" -- meaning the opposite of that of the state's concept of real life. The characters' sense of humanity is revealed during their quest. "I" realizes that he still craves the warmth of human society, despite its anxieties. "Soul Mountain" is essentially a two-part novel featuring two main characters -- known only as "You" and "I" who turn out to be alter egos of the same persona. The "You" character occupies the odd-numbered chapters 1-31 and the even-numbered chapters from 32-80, while the "I" character's includes even-numbered chapters 2-30 and odd-numbered chapters 33-81. (The idea that they are two sides of the same character is revealed in Chapter 52).
18135724	/m/04cs8sx	Les Mystères de Marseille	Émile Zola	1895	{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 Les Mystères de Marseille recounts the love of Philippe Cayol, poor, untitled, republican, and of young Blanche de Cazalis, the niece of De Cazalis, a millionaire, politician and all-powerful in Marseilles. Philippe's brother, Marius devotes himself to protecting the two lovers – and the child Blanche gave birth to before entering a convent – from the anger of De Cazalis. fr:Les Mystères de Marseille it:I misteri di Marsiglia
18136431	/m/04cqtss	La mécanique du cœur		2007-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book opens in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1874. Little Jack is born on the coldest day ever, which causes his heart to be frozen solid, requiring a replacement: the midwife, Docteur Madeleine, grafts a cuckoo clock to his heart of flesh and blood.
18158459	/m/04cv0sy	Feast of Souls	Celia S. Friedman	2007-01-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this fantasy, the first of a new trilogy, the world's magic comes at a terrible cost: a witch's own finite life force, which drains away with each spell. The sole exceptions are the nearly immortal Magisters, who secretly tap a more murderous fuel for their power. No woman has ever found its source, until young Kamala, hardened by life as a child whore, insists on an apprenticeship and secretly becomes an unheard-of female Magister. Meanwhile, Prince Andovan, third son of the avaricious King Danton, is expiring from the baffling Wasting disease, which can only be caused by a Magister. When the enraged king banishes his right-hand Magister, the mysterious and sinister Kostas takes his place, much to the dismay of Andovan's mother, Queen Gwenofar. As an ancient, monstrous power stirs and threatens to drag the world toward a dark age, Kamala and Andovan find their fates entwined.
18159566	/m/046c8f9	Fire in the Mist	Holly Lisle	1992-08-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Fire in the Mist is the story of Faia Rissedote, who as the story begins is a shepherd from a small village. Faia returns from tending her sheep to find everyone in her village dead from the plague. In her anguish, she loses control of her magic and destroys the entire village. This act is felt even in the far away town of Ariss, where staff of the university that exists there to train mages travel to the village to see what happened. They find Faia and bring her back to their university. Faia does not fit in there, as she is a much stronger mage but has little control; the other mage students either don't believe in her power or dislike her for being from a humble background. She does meet and sleep with a young mage, which is expressly forbidden as sex is supposed to be harmful to magical talent. A series of murders occur; primarily targeting young mages with potential. The women at the university believe it to be the work of the men, as the murders resemble a much earlier legend which implicated the men. Faia's body is taken over by the spirit of the murderer, who it turns out was actually a woman (and is the same person from the legend) and proceeds to start killing the mages of the university. Faia defeats the murderer by surprising her with the fact that she (the murderer, in Faia's body) is pregnant, and regains her body. She escapes the university, the staff of which still bear a grudge against her, in spite of explanations, and begins to travel.
18163141	/m/04cr6sk	Thorns	Robert Silverberg	1967-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Humanity has colonized the solar system and moved outward to begin exploring the far reaches of the galaxy. An interplanetary audience follows real-life stories of triumph and tragedy presented to them by Duncan Chalk, a media mogul with apparently limitless resources. Chalk, unknown to all around him, is a kind of psychic vampire who draws sustenance from the emotions of others, particularly those of pain and trauma. Though he enjoys playing his inner circle of assistants against each other as a sort of daily snack, Chalk's true nourishment comes from the dramas he orchestrates for his audience. Chalk's latest drama involves the pairing of Minner Burris, a space explorer who was captured and surgically altered by aliens on the planet Manipool, and Lona Kelvin, a 17-year-old girl who donated eggs for a fertility experiment that produced a hundred babies. Burris, whose freakish appearance draws attention whenever he ventures out in public, has withdrawn into seclusion and bitterness. Kelvin, whose brief fame as the virgin mother of an army of children has begun to fade, has twice attempted suicide because she has not been allowed to adopt or even see any of her offspring. Chalk promises Burris a full round of surgery and treatment to restore his human appearance, and offers Kelvin a chance to adopt one of her babies, if the two agree to come together for an all-expenses paid tour of the solar system. At first the two wounded subjects enjoy each other's company and even become lovers. Kelvin's empathy and compassion are stirred by Burris's plight, and Burris enjoys playing masculine protector and guide to the naive teenager. The affection soon curdles into irritation, hostility and even hatred—all of which provide a psychic feast for Chalk. The two finally break off after a particularly vicious fight, which Chalk uses as a pretext to void the agreement. He does, however, try to keep them on the hook by dangling new offers: for example, he asks Kelvin to befriend David Melangio, a childlike man whose feats of memory and calculation are his only means of meeting a world that has already subjected him to overwhelming traumas. Kelvin erupts in rage and is carried off by Chalk's assistants. Burris, meanwhile, has a sexual fling with Elise, the widow of an astronaut who accompanied Burris on the Manipool landing, and who died from the surgical alterations performed by the aliens. Elise is both aroused and repulsed by Burris' body, and the sadomasochistic nature of her attraction eventually alienates Burris. His withdrawal causes her to commit suicide in a particularly grisly fashion. Burris, deeply shaken, returns to Earth. He has realized that Chalk's promise was empty, and that such help may no longer even be possible—the changes wrought by the Manipool aliens appear irreversible. What's more, the surgery that turned him into a monster has also "improved" his body in unexpected ways that Burris has come to appreciate. With the inadvertent help of Melangio, who during a typically bland chat lets slip some information that gives them clues into Chalk's true nature, Kelvin and Burris confront the media baron in his office. They expose the full, unfiltered core of their mutual pain to Chalk, who is overwhelmed and finally killed by the intensity of the emotional flood. As the novel ends, Burris has convinced Kelvin to join him in a trip back to Manipool, where they will confront the aliens and, presumably, undergo alterations that take them beyond humanity.
18166606	/m/04cv30j	Madam, Will You Talk?			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Charity Selborne is on holiday in Provence with her friend, and former colleague, Louise. Before her marriage to Johnny Selborne they both taught at the same school in the West Midlands. Charity is now a widow; her husband's plane was shot down in France during the War. She is staying at the same hotel as David Shelley and his stepmother, Loraine Bristol. Mrs. Bristol has taken David to France from England. David's father, Richard Byron, an antique dealer, who has been accused of murder, is pursuing his son across France. Also staying at the hotel are John Marsden who is English and reads T. S. Eliot at breakfast and Paul Véry, who is French. Both have parts to play in subsequent events.
18166964	/m/04cx1nx	My Brother Michael	Mary Stewart			 Camilla Haven has recently broken her engagement to Philip and is holidaying on her own in Greece. She is sitting in a cafe in Athens writing to Elizabeth, who would have been with Camilla but for a broken leg, when a man appears with a message about a hired car for Delphi. Camilla hasn't requested it, but no one else claims the car. She wants to visit Delphi, but was doubtful about being able to afford it. She's told that it is a matter of "life and death" and that the deposit has been paid. So, after leaving her hotel address with the café's proprietor, she drives the car to Delphi herself. On the way she meets Simon Lester. Simon is in Greece to learn more about the death of his brother Michael during the Second World War.
18167415	/m/04cxmlj	Airs Above the Ground	Mary Stewart		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Vanessa March is married to Lewis, who works for the Sales Department of Pan-European Chemicals. Having tea with her mother's schoolfriend Carmel Lacy at Harrods, she learns that Lewis, whom she believes to be in Stockholm on business, appears in a newsreel story about a circus fire in Austria. Carmel, assuming Vanessa will be joining Lewis in Austria, asks her to accompany her seventeen-year-old son Timothy, who wants to visit his divorced father in Vienna. Seeing the newsreel for herself, Vanessa sees Lewis in Austria — with his arm around a blonde girl. When she receives a message from Lewis postmarked Stockholm, Vanessa immediately agrees to travel to Austria, unaware that by doing so she is endangering her husband and herself. The story is set against a backdrop of circus life, stolen goods, international smuggling, and an old mystery involving the disappearance of a famed Lipizzaner stallion and his groom.
18167630	/m/04cw35m	The Wind Off the Small Isles				 Perdita works for children's writer Cora Gresham as secretary and personal assistant. Cora is writing about pirates on the Barbary Coast and wants to visit the Canary Islands. After hearing Perdita's description of the various islands, Cora decides on Lanzarote. Only two days after arriving there, Cora decides she wants to buy a house. While driving around the island they reach Playa Blanca and Cora sees just the house she is looking for. She sends Perdita to ask who owns it. Perdita, after getting no answer at the front door, meets Michael in the grounds who is supervising building work. There is a mention of Julian Gale from Stewart's earlier novel, This Rough Magic.
18170251	/m/04cwlrb	Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia	Elizabeth Gilbert	2006-02	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 At 32 years old, Elizabeth Gilbert was educated, had a home, a husband, and a successful career as a writer. However, she was unhappy in her marriage and often spent the night sleeping on her bathroom floor. After separating from her husband and initiating a divorce, which he contested, she embarked on a rebound relationship which continued for some time but did not work out, leaving her devastated and alone. Afterwards, while writing an article on yoga vacations in Bali, Gilbert met a ninth-generation medicine man who told her she would one day come back and study with him. After finalizing her difficult divorce, Gilbert spent the next year traveling around the world. The trip was paid for in advance with a book deal from the publisher. She spent four months in Italy, eating and enjoying life ("Eat"). She spent three months in India, finding her spirituality ("Pray"). She ended the year in Bali, Indonesia, looking for "balance" of the two and found love ("Love") in the form of a dashing Brazilian factory owner.
18171684	/m/04csm5v	Geography Club	Brent Hartinger	2003-03-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Russel Middlebrook is homosexual and feels isolated and alone from the rest of the people in his high school. His two best friends (Gunnar and Min) are not aware of his sexuality. Russel feels sexual attractions towards many 'jocks' in his school, especially when they are getting changed in gym, and particularly Kevin Land. In the cafeteria, the jocks play a cruel prank on the 'school outcast', Brian Bund, causing Russel to feel sympathetic towards Brian. That night, he is on a gay internet chat room when he speaks to another person from his school who is also gay. They agree to meet up, where Russel finds out Kevin is homosexual. After a brief period of awkwardness, Russel and Kevin become friends, with their sexuality in common. Russel decides to tell Min, one of his friends. Min then responds by telling him that she is a lesbian, then changing her mind to bisexual. Russel decides to organise a meeting in the local pizza shop, with all the gay people in the school. Russel, Min, Therese, Kevin and Ike attend this meeting, where they have a lively discussion. They therefore decide to start up the 'Geography Club' where homosexuals can meet, naming it such in the view that nobody would want to attend 'such a boring club'. The meetings of the club go well. Later, Russel decides to join the baseball team, mainly to get closer to Kevin. After winning a school game, he becomes a school hero, and friends with all the 'jocks'. Meanwhile, Gunnar (Russel's friend) persuades him to attend a 'double date' with him. The pair go to the cinema with Kimberley and Trish. However Russel thinks Kimberley is only going out with Gunnar to give Trish a chance to go out with himself. Despite his previous persuasion methods, Gunnar asks Russel to come on another date. This time they go dancing. Trish and Russel go for a drive, with Russel getting increasingly awkward. When they stop the car, Trish tries to have sex with Russel, with Russel turning her down saying that he is a virgin and wants his first time to be special. Trish accepts this, but Russel fears this is not the last he will hear about the issue. Russel is distressed about this date, and decides to call Kevin when he gets home. They meet up, talk and then kiss, much to the delight of Russel who has been infatuated with Kevin for a long time. It is then suggested that Russel and Kevin engage in sexual activity, though it is never made clear. Meanwhile, Geography Club sees trouble when Belinda turns up, who actually wants to study Geography. This causes panic in the club, because the rules state they have to let anyone join, so many think it means the end to the club. In a later meeting, Belinda overheads one of the characters saying that it is a gay club. She later informs the group that she also has problems (her mother's alcoholism) and therefore should be allowed in the group. The Geography Club allow her in. A teacher publishes an article in the school paper, discouraging homophobia. In the article the teacher writes that she spoke to a homosexual student in the school recently. This causes gossip in the school, with many people trying to find out who the 'gay kid' is. Many think it is Brian Bund. Min therefore wants to let Brian in the club so he has friends. They decide to hold a vote, which Russel feels split on, because if he votes to let Brian in, he would offend Kevin (who is now his boyfriend) but if he votes not to let him in the club, he would offend Min. He votes on Kevin's side, upsetting Min. Russel experiences an incident when to members of the baseball team bully Brian Bund. Russel joins in, to impress his new friends. However, unknown to Russel, Min witnesses this and gets very angry with him. On Russel's third and final double date with Trish, Kimberley and Gunnar they go to a beach house, where Kimberley drinks a lot of alcohol. Russel decides he wants to leave, against Gunnar's will. Russel leaves the beach house and calls Kevin who picks him up. In revenge, Gunnar puts in an application for a 'Gay Straight Alliance' club, under Russel's name. This causes the school to believe Russel to be gay. Many members of the baseball team therefore bully him homophobically, with Kevin joining in, in an effort not to lose respect with his friends. Brian Bund puts the application under his name, reverting the school's attitude back to Brian being the 'gay kid' meaning Russel is out of danger. In a second vote, Russel votes to allow Brian into the club, making him friends with Min once again. Kevin wants to get back together with Russel, now he is popular again. However Russel breaks up with him, saying he wasn't who he thought he was. Russel informs Gunnar of his sexuality, however Gunnar already knew, pointing out that the fact that Russel loved Disney musicals was an indication. The story ends with Russel abandoning his popularity by becoming friends with Brian Bund, and with the formation of 'Gay Straight Alliance', consisting of Russel, Min, Gunnar, Brian and others. Hartinger later adapted his novel into a play, The Geography Club.
18172194	/m/04cxg0s	A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier	Ishmael Beah	2007-02-13	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The book starts with Ishmael Beah, his older brother Junior, and their friend Talloi traveling from their village of Mogbwemo to Mattru Jong in order to perform in a talent show. Ishmael, Junior, and their friend dance and sing rap music. Thinking they would return the following day, they tell no one of their leaving. During their stay in Mattru Jong with Gibrilla, Khalilou, and Kaloko, the RUF attacks. The three are able to flee the village without the rebels' following them. They decide to head back home. On the way, it turns out that their village was also captured by the RUF. According to an old man who was sitting outside the village, most of the people had fled to a village on the Sierra Leone coast. Ishmael, Junior, and their friend decide to travel there in order to locate their families. On their, they encounter multiple other villages. They are accepted into another village on the grounds that they help with the farming. After months, the village is attacked. Caught by surprise, Ishmael, Junior, and their friend split up and run into the swamps. It is unknown what happens to his friends afterwards. Ishmael roams around the wilderness by himself for a while, until he meets up with another group of traveling boys whom he recognizes from his home village. The boys then travel together to another village on the coast. Many refugees fled to this village because the Sierra Leone Armed Forces occupied it. In search of safety, the group of boys and Ishmael go to that village, but soon leave. Ishmael then learns from a woman from his hometown that Junior, his younger brother Ibrahim, and his parents are safe in another village with many others from Mattru Jong. Just before they reach the village, the boys meet a man named Gasemu whom Ishmael knew from Mattru Jong. Gasemu tells them that Ishmael's family are indeed safe in the village, and ask the boys to help him carry bananas back to that village. However, moments before they reach the town, it is attacked by the RUF. Although their bodies are not found among the dead or in the burning house where they lived, Ishmael assumes that his family is dead. Devastated, and believing that Gasemu is to blame for his not being able to see his family on time, Ishmael attacks Gasemu but is stopped by the other boys. They are then chased into the forest by remaining RUF soldiers, and Gasemu dies from being shot, leaving Ishmael more saddened. The boys then settle into another village protected by the army. After many uneventful days, the lieutenant in charge of the troops in the village announced that the RUF was beginning to assault the village. The lieutenant said that in order for the people to survive, they must contribute to the war effort by enlisting in the army; escape was not an option. By doing this, the lieutenant secures many child soldiers, the weapon of choice for both the RUF and the Sierra Leone Armed Forces. Ishmael becomes a junior lieutenant for his skill in executing prisoners of war and is put in charge of a small group of other child soldiers. As a child soldier, Ishmael is exposed to extreme violence and drug usage. The drugs he used are described in the book as “brown brown”, “white pills”, and marijuana. In January 1996, during one of the roll calls, a group of men wearing UNICEF shirts round up several boys and takes them to a shelter in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, where they and several other child soldiers are to be rehabilitated. However, the children cause much trouble for the volunteer staffers at the facility, with Ishmael experiencing symptoms of drug withdrawal as well as troubling memories of his time as a child soldier. Despite the violence caused by the children, one of the staffers, Nurse Esther, becomes interested in Ishmael, learning about his childhood love of rap music and purchasing him a rap cassette and Walkman, when she takes Ishmael and his friend Alhaji to the city. It is through this connection and his numerous counseling experiences with Esther that Ishmael eventually turns away from his violent self and starts to heal from his mental wounds. Eventually, Ishmael becomes adopted by his Uncle Tommy in the city and settles down with him and his family on the outskirts of Freetown. It is during this time that Ishmael is chosen to speak to the United Nations (UN) in New York City about his experiences as a child soldier and the other problems plaguing his country. While at the UN meeting, Ishmael met several other children who were also experiencing problems in their countries. There were 57 children present at the meeting, and each told his story to the UN. Ishmael also meets Laura Simms, his chaperone, who is a storyteller and his future foster mother. In 1996, when Ishmael returns to Sierra Leone, Freetown is invaded by a combination of the RUF and the Sierra Leonean government army, causing many civilian deaths, including the death of Uncle Tommy from malady. Believing that he can no longer stay in Freetown for fear of either becoming a soldier again or of being killed by his former army friends if he refused, Ishmael decides to get in contact with Laura Simms. He then escapes Sierra Leone and crosses the border into Guinea, where he eventually makes his way to the United States and his new life abroad.
18177858	/m/04csdz9	Something Else	Kathryn Cave	1994	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Something Else (the name of the protagonist) is excluded from everything because he looks different. He does not play the same games, eat the same food or draw the same pictures. Then one day Something turns up and wants to be friends. However, Something Else does not want to be friends with this creature as he believes that they are not the same and he refuses to eat sandwiches with 'Urgy stuff' in them. He sends Something away and then suddenly realizes that he acts like all the other people who always sent him away. Eventually Something Else and Something become best friends.
18179814	/m/04crgx_	Freedom Summer	Deborah Wiles	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The set is in Mississippi during the summer of 1964, a summer of desegregation in the South, the book is about two best friends. John Henry is black and Joe is white. They do everything together, such as swimming in a creek. They cannot swim in the town pool together because blacks are not allowed to use the public swimming pool. Joe is then told that a law has been passed that blacks can do everything that whites can do. He is really excited because this means that he can go to the town pool tomorrow with John Henry. The boys are more excited than ever before but when they arrive at the town pool the following day, they are in shock because the town pool has been closed. The entire pool has been filled with black sticky disgusting tar as white people would rather close down the entire pool instead of sharing it with black people. They did not want these people to have their own lives so they turned them down. No voting for them. The boys are heavily disappointed and the book ends with the two boys entering a grocery store which was previously for whites only.
18182903	/m/04cv6qg	Cold Skin		2002	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The novel chronicles the stay of an unnamed weather official on a remote island in the south Atlantic close to the Antarctic Circle.
18194874	/m/04csd3t	The Developers		2005-05	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A team of web developers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula build a city-based social networking website for a small community. The system becomes a big hit, but the team is then asked to build something much larger: an Internet portal that will be monitored in Big Brother fashion by the United States government. While the group mulls its options, the members become engrossed in personal issues. Matt Severson, the owner of The Developers, is constantly chasing after Katy Terrill, a Developer and recent divorcee. Drew Davis, an original co-founder of the group, spends much of his free time as a world-renowned bingo caller. The youngest Developer, Kevin Gentry, often confuses his feelings of love for women with his appetite for fast food. Lastly, Sarina Metcalfe appears to have a fetish for Richard Simmons, while often wearing skimpy clothing during runs in subzero temperatures.
18202173	/m/04cv3p4	The Wicked Son	David Mamet			 In the Passover Seder, four different sons ask a question. The wicked son asks, "What does this ritual mean to you?", in essence separating himself from the group by sarcastically and scornfully declaring that the ritual has no personal meaning for him. In a series of related essays, Mamet uses this concept of the wicked son as a symbol of the atheistic or agnostic self-hating Jew in Western society. Mamet gives his own personal, unapologetic explanation of Israel’s situation. He declares that “The Jewish State has offered the Arab world peace since 1948; it has received war, and slaughter, and the rhetoric of annihilation.” He notes that “It is a country, and like any country, will make mistakes.” Yet as Mamet sees it, Israel is “not by proof, but by the mere process of indictment, excluded from the family of humankind.” Unlike more familiar defenses such as those by Alan Dershowitz in The Case for Israel, Mamet focuses on what he sees as the anti-Semitic psychology and underlying double standards of attacks on Israel. He sees the media portrayal of Israel as “a modern instance of the blood libel - that Jews delight in the blood of others.” For example, he writes: “The everyday announcements of the so-called ‘cycle of violence’ in Israel are race slander, a pro-forma reminder of the availability of the Jews as an object of disgust.” He sees antisemitism in “the inability to assign to Israelis a basic humanity…the happy assignment of wicked motives to the Israeli soldier.” He underlines the double standard of antisemitism: “…’reprisals’…’retaliation’…the very words are revelatory, for such actions by the United States are known as ‘defense’…” Mamet goes on to analyze what happens when Jews abandon loyalty to their religion and tradition in order, as he sees it, to find acceptance in Israel-bashing liberal society. "It is the sin of the spies, a ‘coward generation’ with a ‘lack of belief in God.’ People have a drive to worship something, and will fill the void left by rejecting God by worshipping sports, celebrities, ‘wealth, fame, status, sex, physical fitness, good works, human perfectibility.” (p62) In the lavish bar mitzvah, Mamet sees the sin of the golden calf: "in the absence of God, lapsed Jews worship Man, power, gold. It is self-worship, the idolatry of human power." “Our own enclave, the Jews, exists, in truth, in learning, containing wisdom, solace, tradition, and mutual support.” "Secular Jews reject their birthright of ‘connection to the Divine.’" “(Our religion) is a gift from God – what greater joy than to support it, to devote ourselves to it, and to enjoy it?”
18203264	/m/04cyvy8	Seth Material				 The core teachings of the Seth Material are based on the principle that consciousness creates matter, and that each individual creates his or her own reality through thoughts, beliefs and expectations, and that the "point of power" through which the individual can effect change is in the present moment. The Seth Material discusses a wide range of metaphysical concepts, including the nature of God, referred to in the Material as "All That Is" and sometimes "The Multidimensional God" (who takes its form in many parallel or probable universes); the nature of physical reality; the purpose of life and the nature of good and evil; the purpose of suffering; parallel lives and transpersonal realms. According to the Seth Material, the entire self or "entity" is a gestalt consisting of the inner self, various selves that the entity has assumed through past existences (physical and non-physical), plus all the currently incarnated selves, and all their probable counterparts, and reincarnation is included as a core principle. Wouter Hanegraaff, Professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, states that Roberts' views (when speaking as Seth) on the nature of the self have been influential to other new age authors (some of whom use the term "Higher Self" to refer to the same concept), and that Roberts' terminology has been adopted by some of those authors. Hanegraaff states that Seth uses various terms to refer to the concept of the "Self", including "entity", "whole self", "gestalt", and "(over)soul". The Seth Material says that all individuals create their own circumstances and experiences within the shared earthly environment, similar to the doctrine of responsibility assumption. This concept is expressed in the phrase "you create your own reality", which may have originated with the Seth readings. The inner self is responsible for the construction and maintenance of the individual's physical body and immediate physical environment, and the unfolding of events is determined by the expectations, attitudes and beliefs of the outer ego, that portion of the self that human beings know as themselves. The books discuss the idea that the physical environment is constructed and maintained by the inner selves of the individual occupants (including the animals). The inner selves project, en masse, a pattern for physical reality which is then filled with energy, as needed, by each individual. All events are also produced in the same manner.
18209410	/m/04cxvxr	The Last Victim	Jason Moss		{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In 1994, Moss was an 18-year-old college student at UNLV. While studying for his honors thesis, he established relationships with John Wayne Gacy, Richard Ramirez, Henry Lee Lucas, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Charles Manson. He obtained samples of correspondence from and interviews with these men. Moss researched what would interest his subject the most and then cast himself in the role of disciple, admirer, surrogate, or potential victim. In his book he mentioned that he was interested in a career with the FBI; he reasoned that gaining the trust of a serial killer, possibly learning more about their stated crimes or unsolved murders, was a way to distinguish himself as a job candidate. Moss forged the strongest relationship with Gacy; letters led to regular Sunday morning phone calls, during which Gacy trumpeted his innocence even as he gave Moss a guided tour of his world. In the book, Moss tells the story of his correspondence and eventual meeting with Gacy shortly before Gacy was executed. According to the viewpoint informing the title of this book, Moss became Gacy's "last victim" after a face to face meeting in prison, in essence being overpowered by a manipulative, depraved sociopath. Moss felt that this misadventure allowed him to understand how a killer's mind works in not only controlling the vulnerable but also in terms of how to break them. Jason Moss committed suicide in June 2006
18210508	/m/04crfgk	The Greek Who Stole Christmas	Anthony Horowitz	2007-10-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The Greek Who Stole Christmas is a short Diamond brothers story by Anthony Horowitz. At a place at Christmas is fast approaching and once again Tim Diamond and his younger brother Nick are flat broke. So when they are hired to investigate an anonymous death threat made to world-famous Greek pop singer and movie actress Minerva, they jump at the chance to earn some extra money.her hotel, they learn that the death threat may have something to do with a cancelled concert that was meant to benefit a society called overweight Albanian Kids (OAK). Minerva's husband, Harold Chase, is especially worried since Minerva will be appearing in public the following day, having been booked to turn on the Regent Street Christmas lights. A box of crackers is sent to the room with a death threat inside. Tim and Nick are shocked to hear that Minerva hates Christmas and everything about it, but agree to be at the event to protect her. At Regent Street the next day, someone fires two shots. In the ensuing commotion, Tim accidentally turns on the lights, spoiling the ceremony. However, now that they are on, Harold easily spots someone on one of the rooftops, holding what looks like a gun. Nick rushes to the rooftop via the store below, but only hears the supposed assassin say "I d-d-didn't..." before he runs away. Chase fires Tim. Then Nick explains that Chase wanted to kill Minerva due to her hatred of Christmas. He faked the death threat and to avoid suspicion, hired a private detective (Tim), while at the same time making sure that he was dumb and half-witted. Then, he paid Parker to go up on the rooftops, but fired some blanks from his pocket. Then, he killed Parker since he knew he was working as the Harrods Santa, Nick realises Tim's card fell out of his pocket during the fight. He took his place, and began waiting till Minerva would visit, then he would give her the bomb. In the end, Nick and Tim get paid ten thousand pounds, and buy plane tickets to Australia so they can visit their parents.
18212738	/m/04csh53	Two to the Fifth	Piers Anthony	2008-10-16	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 According to Pier Anthony's newsletter,"Two to the Fifth" is "the story of Cyrus Cyborg, a playwright who is considered a catch by several of the lovely actresses in his plays. The Princess Rhythm, age twelve, confesses to having a crush on him. He refuses to take that seriously; she's a child. Bad mistake; she's also a Sorceress. Never antagonize a Sorceress of any age. She enchants herself to be ten years older, grabs him, and hauls him into a love spring. Gives one heroic ellipsis... And reverts to her normal age after an hour, leaving him hopelessly in love with a woman who won't exist for another decade. But the stork, having received the signal, brings her a baby. There are reasons for the dread Adult Conspiracy that children don't necessarily appreciate. Then it gets complicated. Even when unapproachably young—Cyrus naturally honors the Adult Conspiracy throughout—and with a daughter who can't be explained to others, the princess proves to be a dangerously jealous lover, and Cyrus is constantly wary. Aside from this incidental interaction, there is the challenge of Ragna Roc, who means to take over Xanth in a dramatic final battle, or destroy it. He does have the power. The three princesses together, their magic cubed, take him on in the finale without any certainty of winning."
18213861	/m/04crhxz	Criminal Conversation				 Sarah Welles, 34, a private school English teacher, is happily married to Assistant District Attorney Michael Welles, Organized Crime, Manhattan. Michael Welles is chasing suspected Mafia-connected businessman Andrew Faviola, 28, son of jailed don Anthony and himself pushing to establish a new territory by the creation of "moon rock," a brand of cocaine and opium with far-reaching interests. Sarah meets Andrew Faviola while she is on holiday in the Caribbean. Little does she know that after he saves her pre-teen daughter from drowning, he will come after her next--or that their trysts at his apartment are being taped by Michael (her husband) in an effort to gain criminal evidence of Andrew's mafia activities. When Michael realises that the "unknown blonde" is his wife, their marriage and relationship is under threat.
18217791	/m/04ct6hb	Destiny of Souls			{"/m/070wm": "Spirituality", "/m/04s0m": "Metaphysics"}	 In his second book, and through his groundbreaking research into the afterlife, Michael Newton has documented the more indepth results of his clinical work in spiritual hypnotherapy. These are presented in a form of case studies and uncover the hidden aspects of the spirit world, and provide a better understanding of the incredible sense of order within the afterlife.
18226020	/m/04cvms0	The She Spot	Lisa Chen	2008-06-01	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The She Spot focuses on the impact of women on social change. The book focuses on the influence women have had on the world, as well as on volunteering. The book incorporates several case studies, polls, and the potential for women to be underrepresented in these polls and studies. The She Spot also covers the potential mis-representation in marketing towards women.
18226449	/m/04cr67c	Beyond the Gap	Harry Turtledove	2007-02		 When a gap opens in the glacier, Count Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki are dispatched by Emperor Sighvat II of Raumsdalia to explore the other side. Together with Earl Eyvind Torfin and a wizard, Audun Gilli, they team up with Trasamund, a chieftain of the nomadic, mammoth-herding Bizogot nation. Crossing through the gap, the explorers discover that a powerful tribal confederation, who call themselves "the Rulers," are preparing to burst through the gap and seize the lands to the south for their own.
18228376	/m/04cx0xv	The Dolphins of Laurentum	Caroline Lawrence	2003	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 October, AD 79: Flavia Gemina and her friends Nubia, Jonathan, and Lupus, are enjoying dinner together at Flavia’s home, when a bedraggled stranger stumbles through the front door. To Flavia’s horror, the man is her own father, Geminus, who has been shipwrecked and severely injured. With the aid of Jonathan’s father, Dr. Mordecai, Marcus makes a gradual recovery. But more bad news arrives: not only has her father’s ship been lost with all hands and its cargo, Marcus’s bank announces that it is calling in the loan on the ship immediately, or else they will seize his house and property. Flavia’s uncle Gaius convinces the bank to give them one extra week, but no longer. Everyone is suddenly in need of money: Gaius doesn’t feel able to marry Jonathan’s sister, Miriam, after his farm was lost in the eruption of Vesuvius; Nubia is shocked to recognize her elder brother, Tarhaqo, among a group of slaves being sold in the market; Lupus is enraged to learn that his hated enemy, the slave dealer Venalicius, has bribed his way out of prison. Lupus wants to hire an assassin, but the man names an impossible price for his services. The family’s dismal mood is lifted by the arrival of a young stranger: Pliny the Younger, the nephew of Admiral Pliny, who has just inherited his uncle’s property. Remembering their friendship with his uncle before his death, and keen to hear their accounts of his last days, Pliny invites Marcus to his villa in Laurentum to recuperate, including the children, Miriam, and the children’s teacher Aristo. Mordecai endorses the suggestion gratefully, while Gaius remains behind in Ostia to sort out the financial mess. When the family arrives at Laurentum, they are delighted to meet Phrixus, Admiral Pliny’s slave, who has just received his freedom. Over dinner, the family play music and tell stories to entertain each other, and Marcus, with coaxing, tells of how he was shipwrecked. As he regrets the loss of his cargo, Pliny muses about the treasures lost under the sea, mentioning that there is a shipwreck visible under the water, just off the coast from the villa. It was rumored to be carrying a cargo of gold, but it is sunk too deep for any of the local fisherman to reach it. Elated, Lupus reveals to the others that he is Greek in origin, born on the island of Symi, and, like his father before him, is a trained diver. With his instruction, the others equip a boat to take to the wreck site. During his first dive, he manages to reach the wreck, something no other local has managed to do, though he considers himself out of practice. Pliny insists on having a celebratory feast on the beach. That night, the four friends are enchanted to see phosphorescent plankton lighting up the beach, and when they all jump into the ocean, find themselves swimming with dolphins. Aristo is cajoled to tell several Greek myths having to do with dolphins during their lessons, including the stories of Arion and Delphinus, and of Poseidon and Amphitrite. With practice, Lupus makes several dives of increasing duration, managing to reach the wreck several times, but unable to retrieve any of the amphorae he finds inside. With Aristo’s help, Jonathan designs a float rope to attach to the vessels, but everyone becomes alarmed when Lupus begins showing signs of pressure sickness. Aristo orders him to rest before his next dive, but Lupus becomes sullen and obsessed with retrieving the treasure, even snubbing his friends when they want to play music or go swimming with the dolphins again. On his last dive, Lupus is attacked by an octopus inside the wreck, losing his lifeline. He fights off the octopus, but loses consciousness underwater. A friendly dolphin nudges him to the surface, and Jonathan is able to revive him with artificial respiration. When they return to the villa, Aristo misconstrues an exchange between Miriam and Pliny, and the two men begin fighting over her. Furious, Miriam tells them to stop and runs off by herself. Then Gaius arrives at the farm with grave news: the “assassin” that Lupus tried to hire was in fact an agent of the local magistrate, Bato, who deliberately named an impossible sum to prevent Lupus from trying to hire him. Gaius is now worried that Lupus is obsessed with finding enough money to have Venalicius killed, so much that he will injure or kill himself diving to the wreck. When Flavia and the others wonder why Lupus hates Venalicius so much, Gaius has a startling document to show them: last month, Mordecai was in jail on a wrongful charge (during The Assassins of Rome). Venalicius was his cellmate, and narrated a confession that Mordecai wrote down: Venalicius’s real name is Phillippos, Lupus’s uncle. When he was a boy on Symi, he was abused and laughed at because of his ugliness, except by one girl, Melissa. Because he was a good diver, Phillippos wanted to find a pearl for Melissa being so nice to him, but ended up rupturing one of his eyes from pressure sickness. Now even uglier, he was even more abused by his father, who later sold him as a slave. Years later, Phillippos returned to the island, now free, and a rich and ruthless slave dealer. He was enraged to find that his handsome younger brother had married Melissa, and killed him. Melissa’s son yelled that he would tell on his uncle, and Phillippos grabbed the boy and cut his tongue out, telling Melissa that the boy would die if anyone followed him. He then sailed away, and the boy escaped when the ship reached Ostia. Lupus has overheard Gaius’s reading, and adds one detail: Venalicius had told him that his mother was also dead; now knowing that this isn’t true, Lupus realizes she may be alive somewhere. Now more determined than ever to retrieve the treasure, Lupus sneaks out of the villa and hires one of the fishermen to take him to the wreck. When he gets there, he is shocked to see Dr. Mordecai and Venalicius together. Venalicius dives into the water, and Mordecai yells at Lupus to stop, Venalicius is trying to help them. Ignoring this, Lupus dives and races his uncle to the wreck. Once there, Lupus sees the octopus attacking his uncle. Somewhat to his own surprise, Lupus stabs the octopus and drives it away. When Venalicius is brought up, he begins to suffer terrible pains, as he has made many more dives that day than is safe. Lupus realizes his uncle is dying; before he does, he begs his nephew to forgive him. Lupus does, reluctantly, and agrees to perform the last rites. The treasure is never recovered, but the family’s problems are still solved: Flavia secretly sells her most prized possession, a kylix she received from Publius Pollius Felix (in "The Pirates of Pompeii") to Pliny in exchange for enough money to anonymously pay off her father’s loan; Pliny makes Gaius tenant on one of his farms, so he can afford to marry Miriam; and Mordecai informs Lupus that, before he died, Venalicius accepted Christian baptism and willed all of his money and possessions to his nephew, including his ship. Lupus makes Marcus the new captain of his ship (re-christened the Delphina), and agrees to carry out his uncle’s dying wish of rescuing all the children he abducted and sold into slavery. The only one saddened is Nubia, who learns that her brother was sold to a gladiator school in Capua. The next morning, Flavia, Jonathan, and Nubia read a note left by Lupus telling what little he remembers from that terrible night: after his uncle’s ship left Symi, some of the other sailors had to stop the bleeding in his mouth by cauterizing the stub of his tongue: "I opened my mouth because I thought that it couldn’t hurt any worse than it already did. But I was wrong.” They look up and are heartened to see Lupus out at sea, lifted of the burden of his hate, and taking a carefree ride on a dolphin.
18235701	/m/04cvjgv	Knot Gneiss	Piers Anthony	2010	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This is about Jumper's friend Wenda Woodwife, who has a nymphly front but no back, being hollow from behind, who speaks with the forest dialect: "I wood knot dew that to yew." She has to transport a boulder made of petrified reverse wood that naturally terrifies (petrifies) everyone else. She has to put together a group of six or more and starts out her journey asking help from her best friend Jumper, King of the Spiders
18236541	/m/04cwqwq	Wide Awake	David Levithan			 * 9/11. * The Greater Depression (aka The Debt, Deficit, and Fuel Depression) transpired when, after the American government began spending more and landed itself further in debt, foreign countries started asking for repayment: prices started inflating rapidly, causing a depression even greater than that of the 1930s. * The Andreas Quake occurred on 3/12 and helped to inspire the Jesus Revolution (see below). * Hurricane Wanda occurred on 7/23 and also helped to inspire the Jesus Revolution. * The Reign of Fear began when the President decided to end the Greater Depression by launching The War to End All Wars, which led to the tragic events of 4/5, unexplained to readers. The Decent party was established, and members created the Denial Education program. The Opus Dei Trials took place. * The Prada Riots took place when The War to End All Wars proved ineffective, and citizens began to protest that some people remained rich while the rest were yet struggling. * Worldwide Health Care has been established to combat the monopoly of drug companies over whole dying nations. * The Jesus Revolution, described by critic Wayne Hoffman, author of Hard, as "Levithan's most ingenious creation", is a Christian movement promoting Jesus Christ as a messenger who preached love and peace as opposed to violence and intolerance. It encourages many of the young faithful to vote, and is thus decisive in turning the election in Stein's favour. * AIDS is a thing of the past. * The United States Supreme Court has affirmed the civil rights of homosexuals, including marriage. The novel opens with the revelation that the United States has just elected into power Abe Stein, its first openly gay (and Jewish) president. Alongside running mate Alice Martinez, Stein won a tight race by the mere margin of 1,000 Kansas votes, signalling a watershed for progressive politics, which take the limelight for the first time in decades. Although the lives of American homosexuals are drastically improved even before Stein's election, and the country is in the main far more liberal, it remains divided along acute political lines: as Hoffman notes, "the pendulum has merely swung slightly to the left, thanks to voters fed up with economic inequality, ongoing health crises and a politically motivated 'War to End All Wars' against 'extremists everywhere.'" The novel's focus, however, is on the personal impact of the election on a teenager named Duncan, who is also Jewish and openly gay. Although too young to vote, he is a strong supporter of Stein; thus, when the conservative governor demands a recount, and Stein's followers are prevailed upon to gather in support, he finds himself in a dilemma between his parents, who want him to stay home, and his politically passionate boyfriend, who demands that he stand up for what he believes in.
18244161	/m/04cy2dq	Immortality	Milan Kundera			 The novel begins with a woman's wave to her swim instructor: "She walked around the pool toward the exit. She passed the lifeguard, and after she had gone some three or four steps beyond him, she turned her head, smiled, and waved to him. At that instant I felt a pang in my heart! That smile and that gesture belonged to a twenty-year-old girl! Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly colored ball to her lover. That smile and that gesture had charm and elegance, while the face and the body no longer had any charm. It was the charm of a gesture drowning in the charmlessness of the body. But the woman, though she must of course have realized that she was no longer beautiful, forgot that for the moment. There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless. In any case, the instant she turned, smiled, and waved to the young lifeguard (who couldn’t control himself and burst out laughing), she was unaware of her age. The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me. I was strangely moved. And then the word Agnes entered my mind. Agnes. I had never known a woman by that name." Divided into seven parts, Immortality centers on Agnes, her sister Laura and her husband Paul. Part One: the Face establishes these characters. Part Two: Immortality depicts Goethe's fraught relationship with Bettina, a young woman who aspires to create a place for herself in the pantheon of history by controlling Goethe's legacy after his death. Part Three: Fighting returns to Agnes and Laura, detailing the deteriorating state of Laura's relationship with Bernard Bertrand. Part Four: Homo Sentamentalis chronicles Goethe's afterlife and postmortem friendship with Ernest Hemingway. Part Five: Chance sees Agnes' death, and intersects these fictional events with Kundera's seemingly autobiographical account of a conversation with Professor Avenarius. Part Six: the Dial introduces a new character, Rubens, who had an affair with Agnes years prior to the onset of the main events in the plot. Part Seven: the Celebration concludes the novel in the same health club where Kundera first observed the inspirational wave gesture.
18244814	/m/04cqyl3	Dawkins vs. Gould	Kim Sterelny	2001		 In the introductory chapter the author points out that there have been many conflicts in biology. Still, few have been as public or as polemical as the one between Dawkins and Gould. Dawkins sees evolution as a competition between gene lineages, where organisms are vehicles for those genes. Gould, a paleontologist in the tradition of George Gaylord Simpson, has a different perspective. For example, he sees chance as very important, and views organisms as being more important than genes. Their broader world views also differ, for instance they have very different beliefs about the relationship between religion and science. This begins with a discussion on genes and gene lineages (chapter 2). Dawkins' view on the nature of evolution, as outlined in The Selfish Gene, has genes as the units of selection, both in the first replicators and in more complex organisms, where alliances of genes are formed (and sometimes broken). He then discusses in chapter 3, Dawkins' view of heritability, with genes as difference makers that satisfy replicator principles and have phenotypic power, increasing the likelihood of phenotypic expression, depending on environmental context. In chapter 4, he discusses aspects of genomes and genetic replication, using various examples. He notes that in a story about magpie aggression, "Dawkins' story will be about genes and vehicles", whereas Gould and others will describe it in terms of phenotypic fitness. (p.&nbsp;39) He discusses ways in which genes "lever their way into the next generation", including genes that are loners, or 'Outlaws', and which promote their own replication at the expense of other genes in their organism's genome. He then discusses the role of extended phenotypes, in which genotypes that influence their environment further increase the likelihood of replication (chapter 4). Chapter 5 explores selfish genes and the selection within the animal kingdom of cooperation as opposed to altruism, levels of selection, and the evolution of evolvability itself. Sterelny notes that on the issue of high-level selection, "Dawkins and Gould are less sharp than they once were." (p.&nbsp;65) In chapter 6, Sterelny notes that "despite the heat of some recent rhetoric, the same is true of the role of selection in generating evolutionary change", (p.&nbsp;67) and naive adaptationism. "Everyone accepts that many characteristics of organisms are not the direct result of selection", as in the example of redness of blood, which is a by-product of its oxygen-carrying properties. (p.&nbsp;70) Numerous general truths are uncontroversial "though their application to particular cases may be. Nor is there disagreement between Gould and Dawkins on core cases", such as echolocation in bats, which "everyone agrees is an adaptation". (p.&nbsp;71) They do however differ on the relative role of selection and variation. For example, they have different emphases on development. Developmental constraints are fundamental to Gould's approach. Dawkins gives this less weight, and has been more interested in enhanced possibilities open to lineages as a result of developmental revolutions. For example, the evolution of segmentation increases variation possibilities. He discusses this in Climbing Mount Improbable, and "returns to similar themes at the end of The Ancestor's Tale: major transitions in evolution are developmental transitions, transitions that make new variants possible, and hence new adaptive complexes possible". (pp.&nbsp;77–78) "Gould, on the other hand, is inclined to bet that the array of possibilities open to a lineage is tightly restricted, often to minor variants of its current state." (p.&nbsp;78) Gould sees morphological stability as "probably explained by constraints on the supply of variation to selection". (p.&nbsp;78) But whereas in his earlier work Gould considered variation supply as a brake on evolutionary change, in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory he carefully notes that it can also enhance possibilities for change. "So while both Dawkins and Gould recognise the central role of developmental biology in an explanation of evolutionary change, they make different bets as to what the role will be. Gould but not Dawkins thinks that one of these roles is as a brake", damping down change possibilities. (p.&nbsp;78) Another difference is Dawkins conception of evolutionary biology's central problem as the explanation of adaptive complexity, whereas Gould has largely focused on the existence of large-scale patterns in the history of life that are not explained by natural selection. "A further disagreement concerns the existence and importance of these patterns", (p.&nbsp;79) which leads on to Part III. In discussing Gould's perspective, Sterelny begins with two fundamental distinctions that Gould saw between his viewpoint and that of the Dawkins camp. Firstly, Gould thought that gene selectionists misrepresent the role of genes in microevolution, ascribing a causal role in evolution, rather than by-product record of evolutionary change. Moreover, evolutionary biologists have often neglected non-selective possibilities when formulating hypotheses about microevolutionary change. For example, contemporary sex differences in human males and females need not be adaptations, but could be evolutionary vestiges of a greater sexual dimorphism in ancestral species. But Gould's main target is 'extrapolationism', concerning the relationship between evolutionary processes occurring within species and those of large-scale life histories. In this view, the evolution of species lineages is an aggregate of events at the local population scale, with major changes being the additive result of minor changes over successive generations. While not disputing the relevance of this, Gould argued that it is not the whole truth. "Indeed, it is not much of an exaggeration to say that Gould's professional life has been one long campaign against the idea that this history of life is nothing but the long, long accumulation of local events." (p.&nbsp;86) Sterelny offers four highlights to illustrate this. Firstly, punctuated equilibrium, in which new species arise by a split in a parental species, followed by geologically rapid speciation of one or both of the fragments. A period of stasis then occurs until the species either becomes extinct or splits again. Gould argued that punctuated equilibrium challenges the gradual change expected by extrapolationists. In the case of Hominid evolution, and the evolutionary trend of marked increase in brain size. To Gould, this trend was the result of species sorting, in which species with relatively larger brains were more likely to appear, or to survive. Secondly, in his Natural History writings, Gould often argued that the history of life was profoundly affected by mass extinctions caused by environmental catastrophes such as an asteroid impact causing the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which wiped out pterosaurs, large marine reptiles and non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Such a mass extinction would be sudden at not just the larger geological time-scale, but also the more ephemeral ecological one. "The properties that are visible to selection and evolution in local populations—the extent to which an organism is suited to life here and now" become irrelevant to survival prospects in mass extinction times. "Survival or extinction in mass extinction episodes determines the large-scale shape of the tree of life". Massive culling of synapsids at the end of the Permian "gave the dinosaurs their chance. The death of the dinosaurs opened the door for the radiation of mammals." (p.&nbsp;89) Thirdly, in Wonderful Life, Gould describes the Burgess Shale fauna, which is known in detail due to fortuitous preservation of both hard and soft tissue around 505 million years ago. Gould argues that the Burgess Shale fauna demonstrate both diversity of species and disparity of body plans. He accepts that diversity has probably increased over the last few million years, but argues that disparity of animal life peaked early in evolutionary history, with very little disparity generated since the Cambrian, and profound conservatism in surviving lineages. For example, despite diversity in beetle species their body plans follow the same general pattern. He argues that survival has been contingent, and that if the tape of life was replayed from the earliest Cambrian, with small alterations in the initial conditions, a different set of survivors may have evolved. Fourth, in The Spread of Excellence, "Gould argues that evolutionary trends are not the scaled-up consequences of competitive interactions among organisms." (p.&nbsp;90) For example, morphological changes in horses are not the cumulative result of the competitive success of horses better adapted to grazing. "Rather, Gould argues that this trend is really a change in the spread of variation within the horse lineage", which used to be species rich with a wide range of lifestyles and sizes. "But only a very few species survived, and those few happen to be largish horses. The average horse is larger now only because almost all horse species went extinct, and the few survivors happened to be somewhat atypical", and there is no evolutionary 'trend' towards increased size. (p.&nbsp;91) Similarly with complexity. While complexity has increased over time, it is misleading to see this simply as a trend towards increased complexity, from simple organisms such as bacteria to complex organisms such as us. Rather, the distance from the least to the most complex living organism has increased. "The real phenomenon to be explained is this increase in variation rather than an upward trend in average complexity. There is, Gould argues, no such trend." (p.&nbsp;92) Sterelny notes two issues arising from consideration of Gould's case against extrapolationism. "Are the patterns in life's history that he claims to detect real? And do these patterns really show the existence of evolutionary mechanisms other than those operating at the scale of local populations?" (p.&nbsp;92) Sterelny then outlines in chapter 8 Gould and Eldredge's punctuated equilibrium hypothesis. They argued that the appearance of stability in species evolution is not a mere effect of the gappiness and imperfection of the fossil record. Rather, it is the result of discontinuous tempos of change in the process of speciation and the deployment of species in geological time. Sterelny notes that this hypothesis has been misunderstood in two important ways. First, in some early discussions of the idea, the contrast between geological and ecological time was blurred, with Gould and Eldredge interpreted as claiming that species originate more or less overnight in a single step. However, Gould and Eldredge were referring to geological time, in which speciation taking 50,000 years would seem instantaneous relative to a species existence over millions of years. A second misunderstanding relates to further evolutionary change following speciation. They are not claiming that there is no generational change at all. "Lineages do change. But the change between generations does not accumulate. Instead, over time, the species wobbles about its phenotypic mean. Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch describes this very process." (p.&nbsp;96) Sterelny notes that despite the fact that the fossil record represents, for several reasons, a biased sample, "the consensus seems to be shifting Gould's way: the punctuated equilibrium pattern is common, perhaps even predominant". Yet even if stasis is common "why suppose that this is bad news for the extrapolationist orthodoxy?" (p.&nbsp;97) He notes that "the problem is not stasis but speciation. How can events in a local population generate a new species?" (p.&nbsp;98) In discussing this issue, he notes "any solution to the speciation problem will take us beyond events in local populations observable on human timescales", and "it is likely that whatever explains the occasional transformation of a population into a species will rely on large-scale but rare climatic, biological, geographic or geological events; events which isolate populations until local change is entrenched". (p.&nbsp;99) He notes that speciation is not just the accumulation of events in a local population, but dependent on the population's embeddedness into a larger whole. "There is a break with a strong version of extrapolationism, but it is not a radical break. Dawkins could, should, and probably would accept it; in The Ancestor's Tale, he has an inclusive view of speciation mechanisms." (p.&nbsp;100) Thus, while "Gould somewhat overstates the adherence of orthodoxy to strict extrapolationism", punctuated equilibrium is more important than some of the more "ungenerous treatment" that has been meted out. (pp.&nbsp;100–101) In chapter 9, Sterelny discusses mass extinction, and notes Gould's hypothesis that mass extinctions are more frequent, rapid, intense and different in their effects than has been supposed. (p.&nbsp;108) Moreover, Gould argues that during such extinctions, there are evolutionary principles that would enable the prediction of winners and losers. "The game has rules. But they are different rules from those of normal times ... Species survival is not random, but the properties on which survival depends are not adaptations to the danger mass extinction threatens. If a meteor impact caused a nuclear winter, then the ability to lie dormant would have improved your chances. But dormancy is not an adaptation to the danger of meteor impacts." (p.&nbsp;110) Similarly, "species with broad geographical ranges, species with broad habitat tolerances, species whose lifecycle does not tie them too closely to a particular type of community all would have had a better chance of making it", (p.&nbsp;110) and this amounts to species selection. However as Gould concedes, there are no well-worked-out case studies. "In short, Gould's case for the importance of mass extinction depends on the view that there is a qualitative difference between mass extinction and background extinction, and that major groups have disappeared that would otherwise have survived". (p.&nbsp;113) A plausible but difficult to prove claim, as is the claim that mass extinction regimes are species selection regimes. In chapter 10, Sterelny discusses the fossil evidence of Cambrian fauna, and how this provides the basis for Gould's challenge to gradualistic orthodoxy. About 543 million years ago, at the base of the Cambrian, the Ediacaran fauna, characterised by small shelly fossils, fossilised tracks, and burrows, apparently disappeared. From available evidence, diversity of fauna was very limited at the beginning of the Cambrian Period. "By the middle of the Cambrian, about 520 million years ago, animal life was rich and diverse", (p.&nbsp;116) as demonstrated by the Maotianshan Shales fossils, in Chengjiang, China, which "are as spectacular as the Burgess Shale fauna, and significantly older." (p.&nbsp;116) "Thus the fossil record seems to show that most of the major animal groups appeared simultaneously. In the 'Cambrian explosion', we find segmented worms, velvet worms, starfish and their allies, molluscs (bivalves, snails, squid and their relatives), sponges, brachiopods and other shelled animals appearing all at once, with their basic organisation, organ systems and sensory mechanisms already operational." (p.&nbsp;116) "This explosive evolutionary radiation of the Cambrian seems to be unique. Plants seem to have arisen somewhat more gradually ... nor was there a similar radiation when animals invaded the land ... the colonisation of the land saw no new ways of making an animal." (p.&nbsp;117) Despite adaptations, the basic body plans remain recognisable. One possibility is that the 'Cambrian explosion' is "an illusion generated by the failure of earlier Precambrian fossils to survive to our times," (p.&nbsp;117) that there is a long history of hidden evolution preceding the appearance of multi-celled animals in the fossil record. "This remains a live option. There are fossil embryos of animals from China dating to about 570 million years ago", (p.&nbsp;120) and there are many animal lineages for which there is no fossil record, possibly due to being small and soft-bodied, so leaving no detectable traces. Certainly Precambrian animal life is evidenced by the Ediacaran fossils, but the relationship between fauna from these two periods remains unclear. Gould was inclined to support the view that the Ediacaran fauna became wholly extinct prior to the Cambrian, thus were not Cambrian ancestors, "hence their existence does not extend the timeframe of animal evolution into the Precambrian". (p.&nbsp;120) However, the development of methods of calibrating rates of change in DNA sequences has given the ability to estimate the last common ancestor of various lineages. It also allows the obtaining of molecular clock dates for lineages without a fossil record, which shows that zero-fossil phyla are also ancient. Such information comes with important caveats in relation to methodology, including the underlying assumptions of each method. "However, even the youngest dates from molecular clocks place the origins of the deepest branches in the tree of animal life—where the sponges and jellyfish branch off from the other early animals—over 600 million years ago, and so quite deep in the Precambrian." (p.&nbsp;125) Gould accepted this, but noted that this does not negate the Cambrian Explosion. Molecular clocks date origins, while fossils date geographical spread and morphology. Molecular clock data cannot decide between gradual morphological change and rapid evolutionary bursts after initial species divergence. "Moreover, Gould argues that the fossil record supports the model in which the lineage splits much earlier than the distinctive morphologies evolve. For that explains why we find no Precambrian proto-arthropod fossils. In short, the 'hidden history' hypothesis remains an open option, but so does Gould's guess that the Cambrian explosion was genuinely explosive rather than an illusion generated by incomplete preservation." (pp.&nbsp;125–126) Of relevance to the explosive radiation hypothesis are the findings from the Cambrian sites: the Burgess (~505 myr), the Chengjiang (~522 myr), and the Sirius Passet formation in Greenland, which is dated at about 518 million years Before Present. Sterelny describes the distinction between disparity and diversity, and then explores Gould's claim that since the Cambrian, diversity has increased, but disparity has decreased. Since the Cambrian, not just species within phyla, but whole phyla themselves have become extinct. The major subdivisions of animal life are phyla, each of which is a distinctive way of building an animal. Gould's claim is that "the Cambrian phylum count was larger, maybe much larger, than the contemporary count. No new phyla have appeared, and many have gone. That count, in turn, is a reasonable measure of disparity. So Cambrian disparity was considerably larger than current disparity. The history of animal life is not a history of gradually increasing differentiation. It is a history of exuberant initial proliferation followed by much loss; perhaps sudden loss." (p.&nbsp;129) Gould doubted that selection played much role in either the early burst of disparity, the post-Cambrian conservativeness of evolution, or the roster of loss and survival. To Gould, there is a conservative pattern of history indicated by a reduction in disparity as measured by both the lack of new body plans and the lack of any major modifications of old ones. Given that evolution in general has not ceased in the past 500 million years, this poses a number of questions. However, Dawkins and more so his former student Mark Ridley think Gould's basic claim about history's pattern is incorrect. Central to Ridley's approach is cladistics, in which the purpose of biological systematics is to discover and represent genealogical relationships between species. Biological classifications are thus evolutionary genealogies, where only monophyletic groups (e.g. genera, families, orders, classes, phyla) are recognised and named. To cladists, similarity and dissimilarity are not objective features of the living world; they are products of human perceptions. Thus, whereas some morphological and physiological differences are more salient to us, and more striking or surprising, this is a fact about us, not the history of life. Conversely, genealogical reconstructions—who is related to whom—are objective facts independent of the observer's perception. Sterelny discusses how both cladists and Dawkins think that Gould overestimates Cambrian disparity, and he notes that while the distinction between disparity and diversity is very plausible, in the absence of a good account of the nature of disparity, and objective measures, "the existence of Gould's puzzling pattern remains conjectural". (p.&nbsp;141) Finally, in chapter 11, Sterelny discusses the "evolutionary escalator", or the tendency over time for life on earth to show a progressive increase both in compexity and adaptivity. While Gould does not outright reject this, he thinks it is a misleading way to think about the history of life. As above, with the example of horses, Gould argues that there has been no directional trend, but rather, a massive extinction in the horse lineage, with the surviving remnants happening to be largish grazers. So the appearance of a trend is generated by a reduction in heterogeneity. "A trend which is hostage to one switch between life and death is no trend at all." (p.&nbsp;146) At the scale of complexity, the same applies. "What we think of as a progressive increase in complexity is a change in the difference between the least and the most complex organism. It is a change in the spread of complexity." (p.&nbsp;146) Life starts in the simplest form that the constraints of chemistry and physics will allow, with bacteria probably close to that limit. "So life starts at the minimum level of complexity. Since even now nearly everything that is alive is a bacterium, for the most part life has stayed that way." (p.&nbsp;146) But occasionally life builds a lineage that becomes more complex over time. There are no global evolutionary mechanisms that either prevent more complex organisms evolving from simpler ones, or that make it more likely to occur. Complexity tends to drift up because the point of life's origin is close to the physical lower bound. Such complex creatures are relatively less than bacteria, which still dominate life, but the difference between the simplest and most complex organisms tends to become greater over time. So the increased range is wholly undirected. Displayed as a frequency distribution curve or histogram, the shape would be skewed to the right (i.e. positively skewed), with the mode near the left. Over time, the range would increase as average complexity drifts upwards. But the mode would remain at left, with the curve spreading to the right, because there is a wall imposed by the laws of the physical sciences to the left, but not to the right. To Gould, this upward drift in complexity is not the same as directional progress. 'Replaying the tape' of life's history would not guarantee the same outcomes, especially as mass extinction events make history utterly unpredictable. Conversely, Dawkins and Simon Conway Morris think that the course of evolutionary history is more predictable than does Gould. They argue that "convergent evolution is such a ubiquitous feature of evolution that the broad outline of evolution is highly predictable. Evolutionary pathways are constrained by both opportunity and possibility. There are not many ways of building working organisms, and so we can predict that evolution will move along this small set of pathways. Many of the most distinctive features of living systems have evolved more than once. Some of them (like eyes) have evolved many times." (p.&nbsp;149) Also, Dawkins thinks that evolution is progressive, not in an anthropocentric sense, but because over time life is becoming better adapted, although not in every aspect, as when local conditions change and organisms must move or readapt. "There is no reason to suppose that there is any arrow of overall improvement here." (p.&nbsp;150) However, Dawkins thinks that relationships between organisms and their enemies, such as predator-prey, or parasite-host relationships, are locked into a permanent arms race, and such lineages generate progressive change. "Both predator and prey will become absolutely more efficient in hunting and avoiding hunters, though their relative success with respect to one another may not change at all over time." (p.&nbsp;151) Thus progress is real though partial and intermittent. "Partial because it is generated only when selective regimes are both directional and stable: selecting for the same kind of phenotypic change over long periods, as in arms races ... intermittent because every arms race will ultimately be disrupted by large-scale environmental changes." (p.&nbsp;151) However, while they were in progress, each lineage was objectively improving. To Sterelny, Gould overstates his case, and "there is more to the history of life's complexity than a gradual increase in variance". (p.&nbsp;151) He cites the 1995 work The Major Transitions in Evolution by John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry, in which life's history involves a series of major transitions and hence inherent directionality, with each transition facilitating possibilities for the evolution of more complex organisms. Dawkins pursues a similar, though less detailed, argument* in discussing the evolution of evolvability, in which a series of 'watershed events' make new life forms possible. These watersheds in evolvability comprise the evolution of sex, of multi-celled life together with a life cycle that takes large organisms through a single-celled reproduction stage, and the evolution of a modular mode of the development and construction of bodies. "Segmentation, for Dawkins, is a special case of modularity; of building a creature out of relatively discrete chunks. For once a chunk has been invented by evolution, it can be modified or redeployed without stuffing up the rest of the organism." (p.&nbsp;152) While Gould too is interested in evolvability, the crucial difference between Gould's view, and that of Maynard Smith, Szathmary and Dawkins, is in how they see the spread of complexity. To Gould, complexity drifts upward, having a lower boundary or wall to the left, "but no upper bound, and these features of complexity are fixed by biochemistry, not the course of evolutionary history". (p.&nbsp;153) Maynard Smith and Szathmary consider that evolutionary history has had upper bounds, or walls to the right. For example, until eukaryotic life evolved, there was an upper bound of complexity set by the intrinsic limits on the size and structural complexity of prokaryotes, and for "perhaps 2 billion years, bacterial evolution was confined between these two limits." (p.&nbsp;153) Similarly, until a series of evolutionary innovations facilitated the evolution of multi-celled organisms, eukaryotic complexity was set by the limits on a single eukaryotic cell. "Maynard Smith and Szathmary argue that social existence, too, has evolutionary preconditions. Until these are met, a wall remains to the right." (p.&nbsp;153) Whereas to Gould, there are unchanging boundaries set by physics and chemistry, Maynard Smith, Szathmary and Dawkins view evolution as irreversibly transforming these boundaries. "The eukaryotic cell, sexual reproduction and cellular differentiation all change the nature of evolutionary possibility. These possibilities have changed over time in a direction that increases the maximum attainable complexity. In short, over time the rules of evolution change." (pp.&nbsp;153–154) So evolvability has changed, with developmental mechanisms determining the variation available to selection. Gould claims that bacteria dominate every age, including this one.* They are the world's most numerous organisms, have the most disparate metabolic pathways, and may constitute most of the world's biomass. "All this is true and important", with Dawkins making similar observations.* "But it is not the whole truth. We live in an age in which many biological structures are now possible that were once not possible. That too is true, and important." (p.&nbsp;153) In Chapter 12, Sterelny notes that "Dawkins and his allies really do have a different conception of evolution from that embraced by Eldredge, Lewontin and other collaborators of Gould", but that this does not explain the undercurrent of hostility generated in the debate, as illustrated by a series of exchanges in the New York Review of Books. But the issues pertain mostly to matters internal to evolutionary theory, and apart from banal psychological explanations pertaining to human reaction to public criticism, Sterelny thinks that at core is their different attitudes to science itself. To Dawkins, science is not just a light in the dark, but "by far our best, and perhaps our only, light." (p.&nbsp;158) While not infallible, the natural sciences are society's one great engine for producing objective knowledge about the world, not just one knowledge system among many, and certainly not a socially constructed reflection of contemporary dominant ideology. Dawkins accepts that science cannot say what we should accept and reject, "but does not think of values as a special kind of fact that can be studied non-scientifically", notwithstanding that values are a kind of fact that anthropologists can and do study. "Least of all does he think religion has any special authority on values." (p.&nbsp;158) Gould's perspective is more ambiguous, in which some important questions are outside the scope of science, falling into the domain of religion. "On this issue, Dawkins' views are simple. He is an atheist. Theisms of all varieties are just bad ideas about how the world works, and science can prove that those ideas are bad. What is worse, as he sees it, these bad ideas have mostly had socially unfortunate consequences." (pp.&nbsp;158–159) In contrast, Gould thought theism is irrelevant to religion. "He interprets religion as a system of moral belief. Its essential feature is that it makes moral claims on how we ought to live. In Gould's view, science is irrelevant to moral claims. Science and religion are concerned with independent domains." (p.&nbsp;159) Sterelny considers Gould's views on religion "doubly strange". (p.&nbsp;159) First, various religions make innumerable factual claims about the history of the world and how it works, and those claims are often the basis of moral injunctions. Second, Gould's conception of ethics seems strange. "Does he think that there are genuine ethical truths? Is there genuine moral knowledge?" (p.&nbsp;159) Recent ethical thinking has two approaches to this question, with perhaps the main contemporary argument being the 'expressivist' view that moral claims express the speaker's attitude towards some act or individual. In this view "when, for instance, I call someone a scumbag, I do not describe a particular moral property of that person. Rather, I express my distaste for that person and their doings." (pp.&nbsp;159–160) The main alternative is 'naturalism', in which moral claims are based on facts, albeit complex, about human welfare. Gould seems to deny both options. "If 'expressivism' is right, there is no independent domain of moral knowledge to which religion contributes", with moral utterances reflecting not objective features of the world, but attitudes and opinions of the speakers. Conversely, "if naturalism is right, science is central to morality. For it discovers conditions under which we prosper." (p.&nbsp;159) Gould thinks that there are important domains of human understanding where science has no role, and moreover he is skeptical about science's role within its 'proper' domain. Nevertheless, he rejects extreme versions of postmodern relativism. Evolution is an objective fact, containing objective facts, and those facts are not just aspects of a Western creation myth reflecting the dominant ideology, or an element of the current paleontological paradigm. "So to some extent Gould shares with Dawkins the view that science delivers objective knowledge about the world as it is." (p.&nbsp;161) But while science reflects objective evidence and is not a mere socio-cultural construction "Gould argues that science is very deeply influenced by the cultural and social matrix in which it develops", (p.&nbsp;161) with many of his writings illustrating the influence of social context on science, and its ultimate sensitivity to evidence. These writings "began as reflections on natural history; they ended as reflections on the history of natural history". (p.&nbsp;161) Gould's Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (first published in 1987) "locates the development of our conception of deep history in its cultural and intellectual context without any suggestion that that cultural context perverted the development of geology", whereas "in Wonderful Life, Gould argued that the Burgess Shale fauna were misunderstood because they were interpreted through the ideology of their discoverer". (p.&nbsp;162) The Mismeasure of Man is Gould's most famous work on the themes of socio-cultural interests leading to bad science, pseudo-science, racist and sexist science, where "a particular ideological context led to a warped and distorted appreciation of the evidence on human difference". (p.&nbsp;162) Thus, "one sharp contrast between Dawkins and Gould is on the application of science in general, and evolutionary biology in particular, to our species". (p.&nbsp;162) Yet paradoxically, Dawkins' most systematic writings on human evolution explore the differences between human evolution and that of most other organisms, in which humans pass on their values through ideas and skills which Dawkins calls memes. To Dawkins, ideas are often like pathogens or parasites, replicating throughout human populations, sometimes quite virulently, with evangelical religion being a salient example. Doubts about the reliability and accuracy of idea replication suggest Dawkins' own view of cultural evolution may not work. But his general approach has gained some popularity, as illustrated by works which explore the interaction between cultural and biological evolution, such as Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd's Not By Genes Alone,. as well as Eytan Avital and Eva Jablonka's Animal Traditions. "So though Dawkins approaches human behaviour using different tools to those of standard sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists, he is fully committed to the idea that we can understand ourselves only in an evolutionary framework." (pp.&nbsp;164–165) This contrasts with Gould. While "Of course" he accepts that humans are an evolved species, "Everything that Gould does not like in contemporary evolutionary thinking comes together in human sociobiology and its descendant, evolutionary psychology. The result has been a twenty-year campaign of savage polemic against evolutionary theories of human behaviour. Gould hates sociobiology". And "It is true that some evolutionary psychology does seem simple-minded," such as Randy Thornhill's "unconvincing" attempt to argue that a tendency towards rape is an evolutionary adaptation. (p.&nbsp;165) However, contemporary evolutionary psychologists, and especially biological anthropologists, have accepted the need for caution in testing adaptationist hypotheses. (p.&nbsp;165) However, even the most disciplined sociobiological approaches reflect different approaches to evolution to that exemplified by Gould. They "tend not to emphasise the importance of development and history in imposing constraints on adaptation, the problems in translating microevolutionary change into species-level change, the role of contingency and mass extinction in reshaping evolving lineages, or the importance of paleobiology to evolutionary biology", (p.&nbsp;166) which likely played a part in Gould's hostility. But Sterelny suspects more most of all, Gould thought "these ideas are dangerous and ill-motivated as well as wrong. They smack of hubris, of science moving beyond its proper domain, and incautiously at that". Conversely, to Dawkins, knowledge of evolutionary underpinnings to human behaviour is potentially liberating, and "might even help us to escape the poisoned chalice of religion". (p.&nbsp;166) Finally, in chapter 13, Sterelny summarises the fundamental contrasts between the views of Dawkins and Gould. In Dawkins' argument, selection acts on lineages of replicators, which are mostly but not exclusively genes. Ideas and skills are the replicators in animals capable of social learning, and "the earliest replicators were certainly not genes". (p.&nbsp;167) Genetic competition occurs through vehicle-building alliances, with selection dependent on repeatable influences on those vehicles. Other genetic replication strategies include Outlaws, the prospects of which are enhanced at the expense of vehicle adaptiveness. And extended phenotype genes advantageously enhance their environment. The vehicles of Dawkins replicators need not be individuals, but can also be groups, although animal cooperation is not sufficient to claim group selection. Evolution's central explanatory imperative is the existence of complex adaptation, which can only be explained by natural selection. This complex adaptation evolves gradually, with occasional replication errors resulting in large but survivable phenotypic change. Humans are unusual species in that they are vehicles for memes as well as genes, although humans are not exempt from evolutionary biological explanations. Extrapolationism is a sound working theory, with most evolutionary patterns the result of microevolutionary change over vast geological time. Major animal lineages are the result of ordinary speciation processes, although possibility-expanding changes may result in some form of lineage-level selection. In contrast, Gould sees selection as usually acting on organisms in a local population, although in theory and practice, it can occur at many levels, with change at one level often affecting future options at other levels. Selection can occur at the group level, with some species lineages having characteristics which make extinction less likely, or speciation more likely. And while rare, selection can occur on genes within an organism. While selection is important, and requires understanding, it is just one of many factors explaining microevolutionary events and macroevolutionary patterns. Further, complex adaptations are but one phenomenon explanations in evolutionary biology. Extrapolationism is not a good theory, with large-scale patterns in the history of life not explainable by extrapolating from measurable events in local populations. Evolutionary biology needs a theory of variation, explaining the effect of variation supply on change potentiality. While humans are evolved animals, attempts to explain human behaviour using techniques from evolutionary biology have largely failed, "vitiated by one-sided understanding of evolutionary biology. They have often been biologically naive." (p.&nbsp;170) Sterelny notes that these debates remain alive and developing, with no final abjudication possible as yet. "But we can say something about how the argument has developed." (p.&nbsp;170) He claims that "the idea that gene-selectionist views of evolution are tacitly dependent on reductionism and genetic determinism is a mistake. Dawkins and the other gene selectionists do not think that nothing happens in evolution but changes in gene frequency." (p.&nbsp;170) They do not deny the significance of the organism or phenotype, which they see as vehicles of selection, or 'survival machines', which interact with other survival machines and with the environment in ways replication of the genes whose vehicles they are. But there are other replication-enhancing strategies apart from organism construction. Extended phenotypes, as exemplified by parasitic species, are common and important, with probably all parasitic gene pools including "genes whose adaptive effects are on host organisms." (p.&nbsp;171) And "the outlaw count is unknown, but it is growing all the time", and may transpire to be more common than thought. Sterelny notes that "gene selectionism is not determinism. No gene selectionist thinks that there is typically a simple relationship between carrying a particular gene and having a particular phenotype". While they exist, such as the sickle-cell haemoglobin gene, they are the exception not the rule. Gene-selectionist ideas are compatible with context dependence of gene action, but they do assume some reasonable regular relationship between a specific gene in an organism's genotype, and some aspect of the organism's phenotypic expression. They assume that within gene lineages, the effect on their vehicles will be fairly similar. "So while gene selectionists are not genetic determinists, they are making a bet on developmental biology. When revitalised to reoccurring features of context, gene action will turn out to be fairly systematic. There is no reason to suppose that this hunch is false, but it is not known to be true." (p.&nbsp;172) Developmental biology is relevant to this debate in another important way: "The role of selection in evolution. Gould is betting that when the facts of developmental biology are in, it will turn out that the evolutionary possibilities of most lineages are highly constrained", with some characteristics "frozen" into their respective lineages. "They are developmentally entrenched. That is, these basic organisational features are connected in development to most aspects of the organism's phenotype, and that makes them hard to change." (p.&nbsp;172) And "since variation in these frozen-in features is unlikely, selection is not likely to be important in explaining their persistence", (p.&nbsp;173) and Gould thinks 'frozen accidents' are important in explanations of evolutionary patterns found in the fossil record. Conversely, Dawkins thinks that over time, selection can alter the range of a lineage's evolutionary possibilities. "So he thinks both that selection has a larger range of variation with which to work, and that when patterns do exist over long periods ... selection will have played a stabilising role." (p.&nbsp;173) The integration of evolution and development "is the hottest of hot topics in contemporary evolutionary theory, and this issue is still most certainly open". In discussing the effects of mutations, Sterelny's "best current guess is that developmental biology probably does generate biases in the variation that is available to selection, and hence that evolutionary trajectories will often depend both on selection and these biases in supply" (173), vindicating Gould's view that developmental biology is crucial to explaining evolutionary patterns. (p.&nbsp;174) "But it is harder to see how to resolve some of Gould's other claims about the large-scale history of life. Despite the plausibility of the distinction between disparity and diversity, we are not close to constructing a good account of disparity and its measurement". (p.&nbsp;174) Further, convergent evolution belies the unpredictability that Gould supposes. However, "most examples of convergence are not independent of evolutionary experiments. For they concern lineages with an enormous amount of shared history, and hence shared developmental potential", as in "the standard example of streamlining in marine reptiles, sharks, pelagic bony fish like the tuna, and dolphins". (p.&nbsp;175) Further, "the scale is not large enough. The fact that eyes have often evolved does not show that had, say, the earliest chordates succumbed to a bit of bad luck (and become extinct), then vertebrate-like organisms wold have evolved again." (p.&nbsp;175) Moreover, Gould's main concern is not with adaptive complexes, which are the source of the above, oft-cited examples, "but with body plans—basic ways of assembling organisms." Sterelny thinks that "we have to score Gould's contingency claims as: 'Don't know; and at this stage don't know how to find out'". (p.&nbsp;175) Gould seems right that mass extinctions played a role in shaping evolutionary history, and "is probably rignt that extinction works by different rules n mass extinction regimes". (p.&nbsp;176) Some ideas are difficult to asses, such as whether mass extinctions filter out the features of species or of individuals comprising species. It is also difficult to tell the how fundamental is the disagreement between Gould and Dawkins on this. But Sterelny's bet is that Gould may be right in thinking that survival or extinction in mass extinction depends on species properties. "However, it has proved hard to find really clear, empirically well-founded examples to back up this hunch." (p.&nbsp;176) It was once thought that sexual reproduction was maintained by species selection, which Sterelny outlines. He notes however that "this idea has recently fallen on hard times", with new individual-based ideas being developed. Further, species-level maintenance of sexual reproduction "has a problem: sex does not always promote evolvability", breaking up as well as creating advantageous gene combinations. (p.&nbsp;177) "So it has been hard to find really convincing examples of species-level properties that are built by species-level selection. The problem is to find: (i) traits that are aspects of species, not the organisms making up the species; (ii) traits that are relevant to extinction and survival; and (iii) traits that are transmitted to daughter species, granddaughter species and so forth". And "transmission to daughter species is especially problematic". (p.&nbsp;177) In the end, Sterelny states his own views are much closer to Dawkins than to Gould's, especially regarding microevolution—change within local populations. "But macroevolution is not just microevolution scaled up. Gould's paleontological perspective offers real insights into mass extinction and its consequences, and, perhaps, the nature of species and speciation". And Gould is right to expand the explanatory agenda of evolutionary biology to include large-scale patterns in life's history. "So, Dawkins is right about evolution on local scales, but maybe Gould is right about the relationship between events on a local scale, and those on the vast scale of paleontological time." (p.&nbsp;178) The Suggested Reading section for each chapter is an extension of the chapter, aimed at pointing the reader in the direction of material that may assist their understanding of the issues under discussion. This section of Sterelny's book contains, chapter by chapter, a comprehensive list of recommended reading, covering all of the main publications by Dawkins, Gould, and their respective proponents, along with many lesser known publications by them, with accompanying commentary on either the authors, the publications, or both. Also, the readability of the various publications, and the relevance of the publications to the issues under discussion, as well as the relationship of the publications to each other, such as authors responding to each other through their publications, or supporting the stance of other authors, etc. He also tries to further clarify some points in the process.
18245199	/m/04cwyc5	Kanakalata				 The plot of the novel centres round two pairs of lovers: Dhananjay and Kanakalata whose love-at-first-sight culminates in marriage after overcoming the hurdle of dowry dispute, Rajendra and a child-widow named Uma whose passion and love for each other remain unfulfilled with Uma's death and Rajendra renouncing the world and turning into a sanyasi. The plot is in fact an indictment of the evils of dowry system in rural aristocratic society and the predicament of the child-widows who were condemned into a life of anguish and suffering. The novelist's zeal for social reforms is clearly evident in the language and plot-structure of the novel. The novel also portrays a realistic image of the typical landscape and lifestyle of rural Orissa in the early decades of the twentieth century.
18248248	/m/04cwrph	The Outlaws of Sherwood	Robin McKinley		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Robin is on his way to meet his friends Marian, a noblewoman, and Much, the miller's son, at the Nottingham Fair. Robin serves as a king's forester in Sherwood forest and fletches arrows to make enough income to keep his holding. Robin is just a mediocre archer - his father Robert was much better, and Robin feels he doesn't live up to his father's legacy. On his way, Robin is accosted by some of the other foresters. An archery contest ensues between Robin and one of the foresters, Tom Moody, and Robin miraculously wins. As he is walking away, one of the foresters shoots an arrow at Robin that nearly kills him. Without thinking, Robin shoots at arrow at Tom Moody's leg, but it instead hits his heart and kills him. Robin runs away and hides in the forest until Much and Marian find him. Much hides Robin in his father's barn at the mill, and Marian steals Robin's father's longbow for him from Robin's house. Much thinks that Robin should hide in Sherwood Forest and gather a band of men with him as an idealistic resistance to the tyrannous sheriff of Nottingham. Robin disagrees, not wanting to put others in danger, but is overruled when Much begins to hold meetings in his house with other disgruntled members of the community. Robin finds a place in the woods, which later earns the name Greentree, for the outlaws’ camp. Marian assists the effort by procuring green fabric for clothing. The band grows, and they live by killing the king’s deer with arrows they make themselves. They also begin to rob the rich who pass through the forest to assist the local families. Many members join the band, including the huge man Little John, who killed a man coming to arrest him for the debt he owed on his farm, and Will Scarlet, a cheerful nobleman, as well as several female members and families. Will soon receives troubling news that his younger sister has locked herself in her room rather than wed a Norman baron, but Robin refuses to help, thinking the effort too dangerous and not worthwhile. Soon a young minstrel named Alan-a-dale seeks their help. His beloved, Marjorie, is to wed a baron, and he wants to rescue her. Despite Robin’s misgivings, the band agrees. They seek out Will’s friend Friar Tuck to perform the wedding ceremony and show up at the chapel on Marjorie’s wedding day, where Marjorie marries Alan instead of the original groom, the disgruntled baron. Meanwhile, Little John and others rob the baron’s house. Following the wedding, Alan and Marjorie join Robin’s band. Robin’s band soon after takes on a mysterious young man named Cecil, who Robin suspects was once an aristocrat because he avoids Will and Marian, who frequently visits the outlaws, as they are people who possibly once knew him in his former life. He is assigned to Little John for training. Robin soon hears word that Sir Richard of the Lea, a man who was very kind to him when Robin was a king’s forester, is about to lose his property due to debts racked up by bailing his troublesome son out of trouble. The son was sent off to fight with King Richard in the Holy Lands, but Sir Richard will lose his castle. Robin and his men gather up the riches “collected” from those who pass through their forest and head off to Sir Richard’s castle the day it is to be turned over to its new owner. The only reason the outlaws are not all killed is because Marian is present and negotiated on Robin’s behalf. Her suitor, Nigel, is jealous of the way that Robin and Marian act towards each other, and Robin and Nigel even get into a fight that Robin wins. Though Sir Richard is grateful, Robin’s worries increase because he realizes the sheriff of Nottingham has even greater cause to hate him because Robin made him appear foolish. The day before the Nottingham fair, a year after Robin became an outlaw, Cecil is discovered to be a girl, and Will recognizes her as his sister, Cecily, who had hid in her room so she wouldn’t have to be married. They make up, and Cecily is allowed to stay in the band. Marian brings Robin news of an archery contest at the fair with a prize of a golden arrow – it is obviously a trap for Robin. Robin does not go, but Cecily and Little John go in disguise to see what happens. They watch an archer win the contest, who everyone believes to be Robin Hood. However, Little John and Cecily realize that the man is actually Marian in disguise. Guy of Gisbourne, a mercenary hired by the sheriff of Nottingham, attacks Marian, thinking she is Robin. Cecily and Little John, with the help some traveling performers, spirit Marian away to Friar Tuck’s hideout in the forest. Marian has a deep wound to the stomach. Little John runs to get Robin back at Greentree, who recklessly runs to Tuck’s place as fast as he can. He and Marian talk, and for the first time, he tells her he loves her. He also asks her to marry him, and is slightly relieved when Tuck thinks Marian will recover. Soon after, Guy of Gisbourne and his men find Tuck’s hideout, believing he is hiding an injured Robin. Robin and his band attack Guy’s men, and though they are heavily outnumbered and sustain many injuries, they manage to defeat them. However, several members of their band die in the effort. During the battle, Marjorie runs to get help from Sir Richard, who arrives the next morning and takes the outlaws back to his castle to keep them safe from the sherrif. The sheriff is furious that Sir Richard is hiding the outlaws, and both he and Sir Richard send word to King Richard the Lionheart, who has just returned from captivity in a German prison. During their stay, Little John and Cecily profess their love for one another, and the outlaws begin to recover from their wounds. After some days, King Richard shows up at Sir Richard’s castle unannounced. He makes all the outlaws swear fealty to him, and then discusses their fates. He tells them that every able-bodied one of them must go to fight in the Holy Lands against the Saracens for their punishment. He offers the injured ones a chance to stay in England, but they all wish to go with Robin to the Holy Lands. Since Sir Richard’s son died in the war, the king makes Robin the heir to Sir Richard’s lands and will allow Robin and Marian to marry before the band must leave for the Holy Lands. The book closes with a toast to health, victory, the king’s mercy, and comrades.
18252345	/m/04crt37	The Seven Who Were Hanged	Leonid Andreyev	1909		 The Seven Who Were Hanged depicts the fates of five leftist revolutionaries foiled in their attack and two common peasants who have received death sentences. These condemned men are awaiting their executions by hanging. In prison, each of the prisoners deals with his fate in his own way.
18252667	/m/04crq2n	The Fools in Town are on Our Side	Ross Thomas			 The novel is set around the time of its publication and follows Lucifer Clarence Dye, freshly exposed as a US intelligence agent following a bungled operation in Singapore (where a Chinese operative Dye had been trying to recruit instead died of a freak heart attack during a routine polygraph test.) Having just been released from a three-month term in a Singaporean jail in exchange for an official US apology (and a large bribe), Dye is cashiered by the small, independent agency Section 2 and is immediately offered a job by an eccentric young man, Victor Orcutt. A self-proclaimed genius, Orcutt has decided to address the then-topical challenge of urban decay; however, his immodestly named "Orcutt's First Law" states that "Before things get better, they must get much worse." Dye's assignment is, therefore, to "corrupt me a city." The city in question is Swankerton, a fictional settlement on the Texas Gulf Coast where Victor Orcutt Associates has been hired to aid the election of a "Reform" slate to city offices. Swankerton hardly needs corrupting, being practically afloat on a cesspool of vice and depravity already; the "Reform" poobahs are if anything worse than the current leadership, which is knee-deep in drugs, gambling, whores, and worse, and is backed by a New Orleans mob boss, Giuseppe "Joe Lucky" Lucarelli. Nevertheless, Dye and Orcutt's other operative, semi-disgraced ex-police chief Homer Necessary, dive right in. Alternating chapters flash back to Dye's past: his childhood as the ward of Tante Katerine, White Russian madam of Shanghai's best whorehouse, his adoption by Gorman Smalldane, war correspondent, and their internment by the Japanese, his marriage to the daughter of the head of Section 2 and his subsequent recruitment, and the violent rape and murder of his wife during an attempt by an enemy organization to coerce information out of his father-in-law. The rest of the main story deals with Dye's budding romance with Orcutt's assistant, the ex-prostitute Carol Thackerty, his meteoric ascent through the rotten power structure of Swankerton, and his conflict with Ramsey Lynch (née Mongomery Vicker,) the New Orleans mob's representative in Swankerton and brother of Gerald Vicker, whom Dye had caused to be dismissed from Section 2 on suspicion of spying for China while Vicker was his subordinate at its Hong Kong station. After his efforts begin to draw attention, Dye is ordered out of the limelight by his former employers, a request he places himself in additional danger by refusing.
18253821	/m/04csjz5	Rose in Bloom				 The story begins when Rose returns home from a long trip to Europe. Everyone has changed. As a joke, Rose lines up her seven cousins to take a long look at them, just as they did with her when they first met. The youngest accidentally mentions that the aunts want Rose to marry one of her cousins to keep her fortune in the family. Rose is very indignant, for she has decided ideas about what her future holds. From the beginning, she declares that she can manage her property well on her own and that she will focus on philanthropic work. Charlie has already decided she is marked out for him, with the approval of his mother. Phebe also comes home no longer the servant that Rose "adopted" but as a young lady with a cultured singing ability. Rose challenges anyone who would look down on "her Phebe", and she is readily accepted as part of the Campbell clan until Archie falls in love with her: the family feel that Archie would be marrying beneath himself. Phebe's pride and debt to the family make her wish to prove herself before she will accept Archie; so she leaves the Campbells' home and sets off to make a name for herself as a singer, to try to earn the respect of her adopted family. After some time at home, Rose has her "coming out" into society, much to her Uncle Alec's chagrin. She promises to try high society for only three months. During that time, her cousin Charlie falls in love with her and tries in various ways to woo her. Rose begins to give in to his charm, but he derails the budding romance by coming to her house, late one night, very drunk. This ruins all her respect for him and she sees how unprincipled he really is. After the three months are up, Rose begins to focus on her philanthropic projects and convinces Charlie to try to refrain from alcohol and other frivolous things, in order to win her love and respect. She tries to help Charlie overcome his bad habits with the help of her uncle, but fails. Charlie does all he can to win her heart, but in the end he succumbs, hindered by his own weak will and his constant need for acceptance by his friends. Being spoilt by his mother meant he never learned to say "no", even to himself, and his lack of discipline proves fatal: Charlie's life ends tragically in an alcohol-induced accident on the eve of his voyage to see his father and restore his good character. Although Rose never was in love with Charlie, she did have hope that he would return a better man and that they might see what relationship could develop. Several months after Charlie's death, Rose finds out that another cousin, Mac, is now in love with her. At first, never thought of him as anything but "the worm", she refuses his love; but she does declare the deepest respect for him. This gives Mac hope, and he goes to medical school, willing to work and wait for her. She finds his devotion touching, and she begins to see him clearly for the first time, realizing that Mac is the "hero" she has been looking for. He is exactly suited to her tastes and has become a man in the noblest sense of the word. He also settles a joke with her by publishing a small book of poetry to wide critical success, earning her respect even more deeply. It is his absence that shows her how much she cares for him. While Rose is discovering her heart, Steve and a minor character, Kitty, engage to marry. This creates a new sensation in the family, and Kitty begins to look to Rose for sisterly guidance. Rose encourages her to improve her silly mind, and Kitty is a very willing pupil. Rose continues to wait for Mac's return but reaches a crisis when Uncle Alec becomes very sick while visiting Mac; Phebe nurses him back from the brink of death, at personal peril, and returns him to the anxious Campbells to be greeted as a triumphant member of the family, sealing her own engagement with Archie with everyone's blessing. This homecoming is completed for Rose when she is reunited with Mac and finally declares her own sentiments. The book closes with three very happy couples, and much hope for their felicity.
18256673	/m/04crwj4	Room For Love				 Jacquie Stuart has just turned 32 and she wants to do a major rewrite on her life. Her salary at a snarky film magazine barely covers her mortgage, her bratty sister has staked permanent claim to her couch, her best friend is in an obscenely happy marriage, and the only guy who really gets her is gay. Worst of all, she keeps falling for broke, self-involved commitment-phobes. In a moment of brilliance (and financial desperation) Jacquie takes a break from celebrity interviews to pitch a wild idea to an editor at a glossy women’s magazine: What would happen if she answered “Roommate Wanted” ads as a ploy to meet men? She would have intimate access to countless single guys. And as a potential roommate, she could unearth all the insights that usually stay buried on a first date: what books he reads, whether he cleans the bathroom sink, whose picture adorns his nightstand. Why, it’s untapped man market genius! And so it is that Jacquie embarks on a hunt designed to find way more than a place to hang her fabulous wardrobe. After colorful near-misses that bring her into the slums of the East Village, the brownstones of Brooklyn, and the dingier digs of the Upper East Side, Jacquie thinks she's finally found her dream guy and stuns her friends by moving out of her beloved apartment—and into his. Complications ensue that force her to question the shaky foundations of the bed she has made for herself. Jacquie’s been looking for love in other people’s homes all over town, but could the key to her happiness lie under her own roof?
18258915	/m/04cy4y4	Tree: A Life Story	Wayne Grady	2004-09	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book consists of five chapters: Birth, Taking Root, Growth, Maturity, and Death. The book opens with an Acknowledgments and an Introduction section, and closes with Selected References and Index. In the introduction, Suzuki describes the tree at his home and the series of ideas and events that led to the writing of the book. Along with the narrative of the tree's life, the book includes digressions into related topics, such as the history of botany and animal life in the forest. The tree written about in the book is not any specific Douglas-fir, but rather a generic one. The first chapter, Birth, begins with lightning starting a forest fire. The heat dries the Douglas-fir cones enough for their scales to spread and release winged seeds. Rain water transports one seed to a sunlit area with well-drained soil. Rodents and insectivores, whose food stashes were destroyed in the fire, eat truffles, which survived underground, and leave feces containing nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil. Following one dormant winter stage, the seed begins to germinate. In the second chapter, Taking Root, the embryonic root emerges through a small opening in the seed coat and through cell division, aided by plant hormones, it grows downward. Water and nutrients enter the root by osmosis and are transported to the seedling. A symbiotic relationship develops between the roots and the truffles. The roots give its extra sugars to the truffles, which it uses for energy, and the truffles assist the roots' uptake of water and nutrients. From excess starches and nutrients gathered by the root, a stem similar to the root but surrounded with thin, grayish bark, grows upwards. As the starch reserves are exhausted, its first needles sprout and photosynthesis begins. The tree anchors itself with a deep taproot and a web of roots begin to grow laterally. Some roots develop symbiotic relationships with near-by red alders which excel at nitrogen-fixation but lack the storage capacity that the Douglas-fir can offer. In early April of every year, a new layer grows between the bark and wood. As this new layer takes over transportation of fluids throughout the tree, last year's layer of cells die and form a ring in the wood. After about 20&nbsp;years, the tree begins to develop fertile cones. Buds form where auxins accumulate; these become either new needles or cones. The buds remain undifferentiated until July and continue to develop throughout the fall and winter. The next year, some buds will open in mid-May exposing a new set of needles. The cone buds on the lower end of the tree while other buds burst open in April releasing a mist of pollen. The cones at the top of the tree open their scales for wind-borne pollen to enter. Within the cone, the pollen fertilizes a seed which is released in September. The quantity and quality of seed production varies year-to-year but a particularly effective crop is produced about every 10&nbsp;years. Less than 0.1% of seeds survive Douglas Squirrels, Dark-eyed Juncos, and other seed-eating animals. Over the centuries, the tree grows thicker and taller as successive rings develop around its trunk and new buds grow on the branches. The tree becomes part of an old growth forest with a shaded and damp understory of broadleaf trees, shrubs, and ferns. In the canopy, a mat of dead needles and lichen accumulate on the wide upper branches. Exposed to light, air, and rain, the needles decompose and the mat becomes colonized by insects, fungus, and new plants. In the opening of the final chapter, Death, the tree is 550&nbsp;years old and stands 80&nbsp;meters (260&nbsp;feet) tall. Under the weight of too much snow accumulating on the canopy mat, a branch breaks off. Stresses from a long winter with a dry summer weaken the tree's immune system. The exposed area where the branch broke becomes infected with insects and fungus. Insect larvae eat the buds and the fungus spreads into the middle of the tree and down to the roots. With its vascular tissue system compromised, the tree diverts nutrients elsewhere, resulting in needles turning orange on the abandoned branches. Death takes years to occur as successive parts are slowly starved of nutrients. As a snag, it becomes home to a succession of animals, like woodpeckers, owls, squirrels, and bats. Eventually the roots rot enough that a rainstorm blows it down. Mosses and fungi grow on the deadfall, followed by colonies of termites, ants, and mites, which all help decompose the remaining wood.
18261326	/m/04cr7h7	Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful	Alan Paton	1983	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel has multiple storylines that alternate one another, all reminiscent of the true-life experiences faced by Alan Paton and his political colleagues in resisting National Party rule in South Africa during the 1950s. The book is divided into six parts: Part One: The Defiance Campaign Part Two: The Cleft Stick Part Three: Come Back, Africa Part Four: Death of a Traitor Part Five: The Holy Church of Zion Part Six: Into the Golden Age It was originally conceived as the first part of a trilogy.
18262197	/m/04ctcl_	Harvesting the Heart	Jodi Picoult	1993	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Paige O'Toole only has a few memories of her mother, who left her when she was five, one of the most vivid being painting winged horses on the ceiling of her childhood home. After she grows up, marries Nicholas and gets pregnant, she starts to doubt her own maternal love and ability, based on her history and lack of maternal care as a child. After their son Max slips off the couch and gets a nosebleed, she, questioning her own competence as a mother, flees and goes on a journey of self-discovery. Paige revisits her childhood home in Chicago and tracks down her mother, now teaching children how to ride horses. She understands more about her childhood and her mother, and returns to her husband and child.
18267433	/m/04czc5m	Blue Willow	Doris Gates	1940	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Janey Larkin is the ten-year-old daughter of a migrant family in San Joaquin Valley, California, in the late 1930s when America is still suffering the effects of the Great Depression. Her most treasured possession is a Blue Willow plate that had once belonged to her great-great-grandmother. The picture of a bridge and a stream and a little house on the willow pattern plate represents the permanent home she dreams of. Janey can barely remember her old home, a farm in Texas, and now that her father is an itinerant worker she has no place to call her own and no lasting friends, as the family has to move constantly. Despite the grinding poverty, the family is close and loving, and fun is had, as when Janey and her friend Lupe attend the county fair, and when the family goes fishing beside the river. When Janey's stepmother falls sick, they have difficulty paying the rent. The rent-collector, Bounce Reyburn, is unsympathetic, and Janey is faced with having to sacrifice her one treasure.
18284065	/m/04cv98x	Abbé Jules	Octave Mirbeau	1888-04		 After reading Dostoïevsky, Mirbeau plumbs the depths of psychology to describe a Catholic priest, Jules Dervelle, whose body and mind are rebelling against social oppression and the corruption of the Catholic Church. An indictment of the dreary materialism of provincial French society, where life is governed by cupidity and closed-mindedness, Octave Mirbeau’s 1888 novel, L'Abbé Jules also offers an indictment of the repressive institutions of family and religion. Object of his neighbors’ fearful curiosity, the novel’s eponymous hero, Jules Dervelle, constitutes, for the author, a vehicle for exploring the mysteries of the human psyche, the abuses of religion, and the human longing for the transcendental and the sacred. Returning to his native village of Viantais after a six-year absence in Paris, Jules revolutionizes his countrymen with his scandalous behavior and unorthodox religious views. Consenting to tutor his young nephew, Albert Dervelle – whom Mirbeau uses as an uncorrupted and innocent narrator – Jules exposes his ideas on sexuality, education, and man’s « quest for an ideal ». Retrospective narrative allows Mirbeau to recount Jules’s past, his introduction into the priesthood, and the scandalous behavior resulting in his subsequent exile to a remote parish. After his repatriation in Viantais, Jules installs himself in an overgrown country estate, where he delights in the unspoiled simplicity of nature. Wishing to instill in Albert the artlessness of animals, Jules instructs his young charge to throw away his books. He advises Albert that it is easier to « fabricate a Jesus or Mohammed » than it is to dismantle the adulterated social being that each individual has become so that can return to the original purity of his status as a “Nothing.” Jules is a self-contradictory and self-loathing character. He is a bibliomaniac who despises the artificiality of the knowledge found in books ; when he comes to finagle from Père Pamphile – an old Trinitarian monk, who is both a double and the opposite of Jules – money he needs for his library, Pamphile indignantly refuses. He is an enemy of Catholicism, but he yearns for an experience of the divine. Through Jules and Pamphile, two rich and complex characters, the author elaborates his evolving views on the social evils that pervert man's instincts, artistic sensibilities, and spiritual yearnings for the absolute. Robert Ziegler : « For the most part, the message of Mirbeau's novel is a negative one, aimed at exposing the imposture perpetuated by doctors, judges, educators and priests, demantling the symbolic systems that culture creates. Mirbeau's text designates literature as repository of meaning. »
18290415	/m/04ctqvh	The Wonderful Country	Thomas C. Lea, III	1952	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Martin Brady, at age 14, flees to Mexico from Texas after he kills the man who murdered his father. Now, fourteen years later, in 1880s Mexico, he is called Martin Bredi. He is a hired gun for a rich Mexican rancher and Chihuahuan warlord, Cipriano Castro. Brady starts to feel like he would like to return to Texas. Castro send him north to Puerto, Texas, to guard a load of silver ore, with the intention of smuggling arms back to the Castros. When he gets to Texas he breaks his leg and has to stay put in the town while he heals. He is approached by the head of the Texas Ranger Division in Puerto about joining after the Captain confirms his identity and lets him know that he, Brady will not be prosecuted for killing his father's murderer. He also is enamored by the ranger captain's daughter, Louisa Rucker. After killing a man who injured a friend, he returns to Mexico again, and is sent on an impossible errand to deliver a load of gunpowder by General Marco Castro, the brother of Cipriano. The wagon blows up before it is delivered. After returning to Chihuahua, Cipriano Castro sends Brady on an errand to assassinate a rival Salcido, however the Castros are suspicious of him and have him followed. During his sojourn in Chihuahua, he meets an acquaintance from Puerto and learns that the man he killed was a criminal with a reward for his death. Wanted in the United States and now distrusted in Mexico, he makes his way back to Texas and on the way assists a lost column of Buffalo soldiers that is deep into Mexico fighting Apache Indians. Back in Texas Brady joins the Texas Rangers, as part of a deal for his being a wanted man, and helps them fight the Apaches back in Mexico. A crucial character to the story is Brady's horse, a black Andalusian stallion named Lágrimas ("tears").
18294595	/m/04cqzl2	The Book of Air and Shadows				 Set concurrently in the 1600's and the current century, the novel is an intriguing and complex thriller based around the mystery of William Shakespeare. Jake Mishkin, a lonely and troubled lapsed Catholic intellectual property lawyer (though he is generally assumed to be Jewish-American despite his Waffen SS Officer grandfather) teams up with a young man, Albert Crosetti, who has taken a job at an antiquarian bookstore in the hope of saving enough to fund his studies at NYU film school. Together they hunt for Shakespeare's elusive lost manuscript.
18301916	/m/04cqsxl	The Other Side	Jacqueline Woodson	2001	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The narrator and protagonist of the story is Clover, a young African-American girl. She lives beside a fence which segregates her town. Her mother instructs her never to climb over to the other side. Then one summer, she notices a white girl on the other side of the fence. The girl seems to be very lonely and is even outside when it's raining. Clover decides to talk to the girl on the other side of the fence. Both girls aren't allowed to cross the fence, so they simply decide to sit on the fence together. First, Clover's friends won't let Annie, the girl from the other side, play with them but then all of the girls realize that the fence (a symbol for segregation) should not be there.
18302404	/m/04cs5l3	Genome	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Alex Romanov is a pilot-spec, born on Earth, gets out of the hospital on the planet Mercury Bottom, where he spent six months after an accident. Alex meets Kim Ohara, a runaway fourteen-year-old girl, who is an unformed fighter-spec, escaped from her home on Eden. He invites the hungry girl to dine, but, during dinner, her metamorphosis kick in. Unfortunately, the process must take place in a hospital under the watchful eyes of qualified doctors, but Alex is out of money and does not know anyone on this planet. As a pilot-spec, Alex is psychologically incapable of not helping someone in his charge. He takes her to a cheap hotel (the Hilton) and tries to help her through the transformation. For this he needs medicine, but he has spent everything he had left on the hotel room. He uses the network terminal in the hotel to search for work. He surprisingly quickly locates a perfect and extremely attractive offer — the post of captain on a small but new ship Mirror with the right to choose his own crew. While Alex is skeptical that this is just too good to be true, he has no choice but to sign the contract. He gets his advance and uses the money to help Kim. During the metamorphosis, Kim reveals that she has a secret compartment in her body, containing a fairly large gel-crystal — one that is usually used in a supercomputer. The crystal costs a fortune, and the fact that a poor, hungry girl is carrying it around makes no sense at all. With Alex's help, Kim successfully goes through the metamorphosis overnight and is completely fine in the morning. She refuses to talk about herself or of how she got to the planet. She only confirms that she does not know anyone on the planet and has no job or identification. Taking command of his ship, Alex begins the process of hiring his new crew. He hires a Black-race doctor named Janet Ruelo from the quarantined planet Ebon, a spec with five specifications. Other crewmembers include a nineteen-year-old energetic-spec Paul Lurie and a navigator-natural Pak Generalov. Later, he hires a co-pilot, a spec named Hang Morrison. Instead of looking for a fighter-spec (the crew requirements are very specific in the contract), he decides to give Kim a try. However, this is problematic, given that she has no ID. In order to obtain one without contacting Eden, he has to bend the rules: Alex and Kim get temporarily married, Kim takes Alex's last name as her own, and gets a new ID as Kim Romanova. With his crew ready, Alex is ordered by the owner of the ship to take on several passengers and do whatever they ask. The passengers turn out to be two Czygu tourists, Zei-so and Sei-so, as well their guide-spec Danila C-third Shustov, an employee of the Sky Company, who are also the owners of the Mirror. Apparently, as Alex finds out, their job is to transport alien tourists to see Imperial planets. Unfortunately, the situation is not very pleasant. One of Janet Ruelo's specifications is as an executioner-spec, meaning she specialized in killing aliens and utterly hates them. Kim becomes hysterical, after finding out that one of their stops is the planet Eden, as she is afraid to return to her homeworld. Alex finds out that Pak Generalov pathologically hates clones and has a hard time accepting C-third on their ship. Alex has to convince Kim, demand Janet to give him a warrior's oath not to harm the Czygu, and reason with Generalov. There is another problem, however. After a genetic test, Alex finds out that Kim is not only a figher-spec, but also a hetaera-spec. The latter specification demands the love of her object of desire, who turns out to be Alex. But Alex, being a pilot-spec, is physically incapable of loving Kim. And Kim physically cannot stop loving Alex until he returns her feelings. The tour almost immediately results in a disaster. While entering the hyperchannel, another ship nearly collides with the Mirror which would have forced the ship to end up in Brauni space. Alex's Czygu passengers would have almost certainly been taken prisoner. Fortunately, with Janet's quick thinking, they were able to avoid the collision. During the flight, Kim reveals to Alex the secret of her gel-crystal. Apparently, the crystal contains an encoded personality of a friend of Kim's, an adolescent boy named Edgar. Edgar explained to Kim that his personality was artificially created to become a unique spec — a genetic constructor, a spec creator. Growing up within the crystal's virtual world, Edgar managed to gain access to the public network, meeting Kim. He then programmed his lab's robot to give the crystal to Kim and destroy the lab, so that everyone thinks that Edgar's crystal perished with it. Kim have long protected Edgar's secret, carrying his crystal inside her body. Unfortunately, her mother accidentally discovered the crystal and called the police. Kim and Edgar were forced to flee. Alex, connecting the crystal to his personal computer, enters Edgar's virtual world and meets the boy. While Edgar confirms Kim's story, Alex sees certain inconsistencies in his virtual surroundings and the boy's behavior. Alex asks Edgar for a favor — to create a substance which would temporarily disable a spec's emotional modifications. Alex wants to give this substance to Kim to "cure" her of her love for him. While no one believes that such a thing is possible, Alex finds out that Edgar is truly a genius. He gives Alex a formula to synthesize the blocker, and Alex orders it from a pharmaceutical lab on the planet New Ukraine. However, before risking giving an untested substance to Kim, Alex takes a few drops of it himself. The effect is nearly immediate — Alex loses the pleasurable feeling every pilot-spec gets during the neural connection with the ship. Also, he understands that this feeling, like the usual pleasures of sex — are simply shadows of the true feeling which he has been denied. Still not understanding what it means to love, Alex begins to feel sorrow and the feeling of enormous loss. Before landing on the planet Zodiac, the crew finds out that a crime has taken place on board the ship — Zei-so has been brutally murdered. The ship remains in orbit and receives two visitors: a detective-spec named Peter C-forty-fourth Valk, preferring the name Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, a natural forensics expert Jenny Watson. While the crime itself is horrendous, the consequences are even more so. Apparently, Zei-so was an heiress to the Czygu throne. As such, the Czygu are preparing for an all-out war with the Empire. Since the forces are about even, the war is bound to devastate both species, and the victor will be too weak to stand against the other races, who will not miss their chance to gain extra territory. This has already happened to the once-mighty Taii, who are now a dying race. The Empire, faced with such prospects, will be forced to lift the quarantine of Ebon. The military power of Ebon is so great, that the Czygu will have no chance, but the other races will forget their differences and united against humanity. There is only one way of preventing the war — find the murderer within two days and show the Czygu undeniable proof that justice has been served. If Sei-so personally executes the killer, the war will be averted. Unfortunately, the murder was committed by a professional — no trace has been left in Zei-so's quarters. Also, every crew member had the opportunity and the motive to perform the deed. After further conversing with Edgar, Alex realizes who he really is. He is not an adolescent consciousness artificially grown in a gel-crystal. In fact, it is the consciousness of a long-dead legendary genetic constructor named Edward Garlitsky, who is credited with founding the science of specification. Garlitsky wanted to create a superhuman, who would unite all the enhancements from all specs. Unfortunately, his work was not only deemed unneeded, it was seen as dangerous. Garlitsky was fired and, at the Emperor's decree, his consciousness was copied onto a gel-crystal and his body destroyed, so he could continue working on specifications but under a watchful eye of the overseers. Unable to find another way out, Garlitsky saw his chance when he was requested to create a new secret agent specification. He made certain unnoticed alterations to the specification, like a hidden pouch in the stomach. This child turned out to be Kim Ohara. Garlitsky made contact with her, falsifying his identity, and convinced her to help him escape. His goal is to become a physical human again. When Alex claims he knows the identity of the killer, the detective-spec allows him to do whatever is necessary to reveal him or her. Using Edgar's blocker, Alex reveals the killer — an undercover agent-spec, pretending to be a member of the crew. The killer is apprehended and executed, although Sei-so is critically wounded in the process. Unfortunately, further investigation turns out to be fruitless, as everything points to people too powerful to accuse. The Sky Company is bankrupted, and the crew of the Mirror is fired. The body of the executed person is bought out by Kim, who plans to give it Edward "Edgar" Garlitsky. Alex begins to understand that the effect of Edgar's substance is not temporary, which means that he will retain the ability to love for a long time, possibly forever.
18304885	/m/04crt7q	Escape from Hell	Jerry Pournelle		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Following events in the first novel, in which Carpenter learned that it is possible to leave Hell, Carpenter wants to help others in the way his benefactor helped him. Carpenter meets and travels through all the circles of the Hell described by Dante. He is accompanied in his travels by Sylvia Plath (whom he rescues from the Wood of the Suicides by burning her tree, causing her physical body to reform itself), attempting to understand the purpose of Hell and free many of the damned. Carpenter discovers that, apparently because he returned to Hell of his own free will to help others, he now possesses powers and abilities such as his mentor, Benito, also displayed. In his travels, Carpenter meets many well-known individuals deceased as of 2009. In addition to Plath, some of the notables encountered by Carpenter include: * Lester del Rey * Anna Nicole Smith * Else Frenkel-Brunswik * George Lincoln Rockwell * Ted Hughes * Charles Francis Adams, Sr. * Albert Camus * Carl Sagan * Seung-Hui Cho * Kenneth Lay * Aimee Semple McPherson * Peter Lawford * J. Edgar Hoover * Melvin Belli * Reinhard Heydrich * Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell * Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet * Jesse M. Unruh * Leon Trotsky * Pontius Pilate * J. Robert Oppenheimer * Frank Harris In the end, and partly as the consequence of some unusual changes to Hell itself, Carpenter not so much escapes as that he is shown the door for being a troublemaker.
18304980	/m/04ct09d	Beware The Fish!	Gordon Korman	1980	{"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Macdonald Hall is having a severe budget problem. The Headmaster, William R. Sturgeon or by his nickname, The Fish, is taking budgetary measures like lowering dormitory temperatures and removing junk food from the menus in the cafeteria. When Bruno and Boots figure this out after being forced into Dormitory 2 with Elmer Drimsdale when he closes the third dorm building, they decide to try to gain Macdonald Hall some publicity in order to enroll more students and solve their money problems. Elmer Drimsdale comes up with a new machine that mimics a broadcasting system, with a lens and microphone pointed at a labeled diagram of a Pacific king salmon, but he informs the hopeful two that it won't broadcast further than the room. Still, Bruno uses it to channel his frustrations by pretending to be a conspirator of an evil fish organization (never appearing on camera but narrating the plans of the conspiracy). Unknown to Elmer and Bruno, the device can actually broadcast a radius of 43 kilometres around the school and overpower all commercial television broadcasts on its frequency within that range. Meanwhile, everyone is trying to think of ideas of coming up with publicity. This leads to the idea of breaking the world record of the largest tin can pyramid. During the nights of the weekend almost the entire student body leaves the property to go and collect soda cans from nearby townships and villages. Bruno and Boots go all the way to Toronto, hitching a ride in the morning on a school bus field trip back to Ms. Scrimmage's Finishing School For Young Ladies, the girls' school across from Macdonald Hall. Throughout the novel two undercover agents stay in separate rooms right next to each other at a hotel in the town of Chutney, one from the RCMP, the other from the OPP, investigating the fish conspiracy that people had been complaining about seeing on their televisions. They are both at first under the impression that the other is “The Fish,” the head of the evil organization, but soon trace the investigation back to Macdonald Hall. During a night of interruption from Ms. Scrimmage who catches the boys from the hall trespassing on the property, she along with Mr. Sturgeon unwittingly come upon all the stored cans in the vacant dormitory three. The boys had been coming to get all the cans from the girls who'd also been collecting them. Mr. Sturgeon expects Bruno and Boots to be the culprits, but just before they tell him of the whole process, they are saved by Cathy Burton, one of their friends from Scrimmage's, who tells him that the cans are her collection. Thus, the cans are removed from the property to be stored at Scrimmage's and Sturgeon does not dispute this claim considering that Ms. Scrimmage, who has been annoying him, will have to deal with them herself. In the climax, the police form a barricade around the school to attempt to arrest Sturgeon, whom they believe to be The Fish, due to his surname and the nickname "the Fish" that the students have given him. All the students, from both schools, come out in wonder. Everything is exposed as Bruno reveals it was Elmer's device that had caused it, but he hadn't known it was that powerful. Due to all the exposure from the police, the explosion due to Elmer's equipment being buried with the chemicals reacting to the shotgun blasts from Ms. Scrimmage, and most of all the press that had arrived to capture The Fish being caught, the right message gets through and the school gets its publicity. A record enrollment comes up for next year, solving all the school's money problems. In the end, Ms. Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies wins the world record for the largest tin can pyramid, to Bruno's severe chagrin. Macdonald Hall is stated to be located along Highway 48 and seven miles south of the fictitious town of Chutney, Ontario. (pop. 3100)
18307489	/m/04cx_5k	Land of Terror	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1944	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel relates the adventures of David Innes on his return from Lo-Har to Sari in the wake of the events of Back to the Stone Age. It is divided into five adventures: * The Oog Women (chapters 1-4) * Among the Jukans (chapters 5-15) * With the Azar giants (chapters 16-18) * Captured by the giant Ants (chapters 19-21) * On the Floating Island of Ruva (chapters 22-28)
18307630	/m/04cx5gh	Savage Pellucidar	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 'The Return to Pellucidar'. David Innes goes for a war and becomes a POW again, while Abner Perry makes a balloon, which escapes with Dian the Beautiful in it. 'Men of the Bronze Age'. Dian meets the people who have advanced to bronze age and is made a goddess. 'Tiger Girl'. David Innes goes after Dian in another balloon, he plays the role of a god. 'Savage Pellucidar'. Two separate search parties are looking for the lost ones without knowing the other has already found the ones they are seeking.
18312595	/m/04csd_b	The Remorseful Day	Colin Dexter	1999-09-15	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Morse tries to solve the unsolved murder of Yvonne Harrison as his health deteriorates. Morse dies of cardiac failure at the end of the story.
18312637	/m/04cs8_2	Logan's World	William F. Nolan	1977-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Logan and Jessica have lived on Argos (the fabled Sanctuary), a space station in orbit about Mars, for four years, along with three thousand other Runners. They have a two-year-old son named Jaq. On Earth, Ballard's escape line for Runners at Cape Steinbeck is discovered and destroyed by Deep Sleep operatives. Ballard escapes to Crazy Horse Mountain, and sabotages the Thinker complex buried in the catacombs below the statue. Although he is killed in the explosion, he succeeds in destroying the computer network and making the world free. With Ballard's death, supply ships to Argos cease. For six more years the Runners there hang on, until there are less than a few dozen of them. They have no more food, and plague is running rampant. They draw straws—a handful will return to Earth. Logan, Jessica and Jaq are among those chosen. Logan and family settle with a group called the Wilderness People along the Potomac River in Washington D. C. Life is tough—learning to farm is not easy—but good until Jaq falls deathly ill. Logan sneaks back into the Angeles Complex to get medicine for his son. While he is gone, an insane pack of devilstick-riding Borgia gypsies murders Jaq and kidnaps Jessica. Logan finds himself on the run again, this time to save his wife, and to avenge his murdered child. As the story unfolds, he meets blind mystics who live on the rusted shell of the Golden Gate Bridge, he travels to the New York Complex, and finally back to Crazy Horse Mountain where he discovers the Thinker is being reactivated by Gant, a former DS man, one who passionately hates Logan for his part in destroying his world. Gant has purchased Jessica from the gypsies to lure Logan into a trap. Mary Mary, a young woman, who as a "Cub" met Logan and Jessica on their earlier run, helps them defeat Gant's plan to reenslave mankind.
18313128	/m/04cyg7c	Bones of the Hills	Conn Iggulden	2008-09-01	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Genghis Khan, powerful leader of a nation united from the tribes, is victorious in the long war against the Chin, the Mongolians' ancient foe. Now trouble arises from another direction: his embassies to the west are rebuffed, his ambassadors murdered. The nation must embark on its greatest journey, through present day Iran and Iraq, to the edges of India. They face enemies as powerful and ancient as any they have known and the Khan's path will lead them either to victory or utter destruction. Genghis has proved himself as a warrior and a leader. He must now face the challenges of civilisation, what it will mean for his people and those who come after him. His sons have become generals. He must choose between them before they destroy all he has built. sv:Bergens väktare
18314763	/m/04cxkcw	Synthetic Men of Mars	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1940	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Like several previous novels in the Barsoom series, Synthetic Men introduces a completely new character as its protagonist: Vor Daj, a warrior from Helium and a member of John Carter's personal guard. Vor Daj narrates the action in the first person, so that when John Carter appears in the story, he is described in the third person (unlike other Barsoomian novels that feature Carter as the first-person narrator). Synthetic Men also brings back a familiar character, Ras Thavas, a brilliant but evil scientist who functions as the villain in The Master Mind of Mars.
18317443	/m/04cyk_q	Jumper: Griffin's Story	Steven Gould		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel focuses on the character Griffin which was created by screenwriter David Goyer specifically for the film. Because Griffin had not appeared in Gould's two prior Jumper novels (dealing with David Rice and Millie Harrison), Gould developed Jumper: Griffin's Story as a backstory of the character's early childhood before the film. When writing the novel, Gould had to work closely with a producer of the film to ensure that the story did not conflict with the film's premise.
18318387	/m/04cxxdw	Bella at Midnight	Bagram Ibatoulline	2006-03-28	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 ,Maud sister Catherine has just married Sir Edward of Burning Wood when he forbids her to see her family again. Three years later, Maud receives an urgent summons from her brother-in-law to aid her sister in childbirth. The child is delivered safely, but Catherine falls ill and dies. Edward flies into a fury and orders Maud to get rid of the child. Maud christens the child Isabel, after her late mother, and gives her to the family of a blacksmith named Martin. His wife, Beatrice, recently served as a wet nurse to the fourth son of the king, Prince Julian. The prince frequently returns to visit over the course of his childhood, and he and Isabel, or "Bella", become fast friends. One day, when Julian is older, he is approached by Bella in front of his peers. But instead of acknowledging her as a friend, he pretends not to know her. Later, he is on his way to apologize to her when a messenger stops him to inform him that he is to be a hostage in a neighboring kingdom, Brutanna, with which they had been at war. The captivity is to enforce a peace treaty between the two kingdoms. Some time later, Maud returns to Bella's village with a summons from her father, who has recently remarried. Bella sorrowfully leaves her family and journeys with her aunt to meet her father. Once there she finds him still cold and cruel, and her stepmother Matilda and stepsister Marianne unkind as well. Her other stepsister Alice has been silent ever since the death of her father. Marianne becomes lady-in-waiting to the queen, and thus is privy to some royal secrets. When she comes home she gossips with her family about the plot to attack Brutanna at the expense of Julian's life. Bella cries out in protest and expresses her intent to save him, but her stepmother, trying to protect Marianne's place at court, locks her in the storeroom. Alice sneaks to the storeroom and gives Bella a hairpin to pick the lock with. Once she is free, Alice gives her a ring that shows her the person she wants to see. Bella flees to Maud's house, and Maud gives her the means to save Julian, including a gown and glass slippers. Bella rides to Brutanna as quickly as possible and warns Julian of the king's plot. Julian rides out to convince his brother to leave, but he is captured. A battle begins between the soldiers of the two kingdoms when the Worthy Knight appears, halting the battle and blinding King Gilbert. Julian searches for Bella, but only finds her possessions. Sadly, he returns home to act as regent for his brother. He visits Sir Edward's family, where Alice shows him how to use the ring. He sees the Knight and asks Alice to accompany him to find the Knight. They return to Brutanna to discover that the Worthy Knight is none other than Bella. She is heavily wounded but recovering in the care of a poor man and his son. Julian brings her back to Moranmoor and takes her to visit her adoptive family. He asks Martin for Bella's hand in marriage, and, having consulted Bella and receiving a positive answer, accepts.
18319784	/m/04crwqb	The Forbidden City	Ian Page	1986	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The series plays for the most part at the tip of south-eastern Magnamund, in the land then known as the Shadakine Empire. A tyrant called Shasarak the Wytch-King has subjugated the people and with the help of seven Shadaki Wytches is ruling with an iron fist. The Second installment of the World of Lone Wolf series takes place after Grey Star has found the Lost Tribe of Azanam. Grey Star begins his journey with the aid of a Kundi mystic named Urik, and journeys through Desolation Valley, beyond the Mountains of Morn. There, he makes new allies, faces new dangers, and helps to stoke the flames of a fledgling rebellion against the Shadakine Empire, all in a desperate attempt to find the Shadow Gate and travel through it to the Daziarn plane and retrieve the Moonstone of the Shianti.
18327869	/m/04cqnmf	The Beggar of Volubilis	Caroline Lawrence	2008	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Flavia takes a vow to the goddess Diana to renounce men, and almost immediately her vow is tested by a proposal of marriage from Flaccus. Her father is furious at her refusal and orders Flavia and Nubia to stay inside the house while he goes to Alexandria. Defying her father's orders, Flavia takes on a mission from the emperor Titus to find a lost gem, an unusual emerald which is the subject of a prophecy. She is particularly keen to do so because the emperor wants them to start looking in North Africa, which is where she believes her uncle Gaius has gone, despite the general opinion that he has committed suicide by drowning. She and her three companions take a boat to Sabratha, but there lose all their money and possessions. Narcissus, a pantomime performer, hires them as musicians and they join a caravan to cross the Sahara desert. In the weeks of travel they become accomplished performers, learn to handle camels and discover the dangers as well as the beauties of the desert. In Volubilis they find both Gaius and the emerald, but it is not as easy to take them back to Italy as they had supposed. During the adventure, they meet a woman who claims to be descended from Cleopatra and a man who could be the late emperor Nero.
18335444	/m/04f0xln	The War With Mr. Wizzle	Gordon Korman	1982	{"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Macdonald Hall starts off the year in a fix due to a new dress code, and Bruno, Boots, and the rest of the ensemble soon find out that a new assistant, Walter C. Wizzle, is instituting the new functions. He institutes a dress code, a demerit system, schedules psychological tests for the students, and worst of all, calls the institute in danger of becoming 'a dinosaur' and starts installing a new software program called Wizzleware (that he wrote himself) to handle all office, school, and teaching functions. The school atmosphere becomes strict and restricted for everyone, including the teachers, staff, and Headmaster Sturgeon. The only person not standing for it is Bruno Walton, who starts up a committee against Wizzle and his functions, and with the gradual help of other students comes up of ways to remove Wizzle from the school. They write a Free Press newspaper, exchange his anticipated printer paper with toilet paper and napkins, and work at night in the gym building a large comic Wizzle balloon. With the help of genius Elmer Drimsdale and a device he created (along with a convincing presentation supporting the "fact" that Wizzle's guest cottage is along a fault line), they give Wizzle earthquakes at night. But the problems aren't only at Macdonald Hall - across the road at Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies, Ms. Scrimmage hires a new assistant for herself, Ms. Peabody, who is from the Marines. She turns the school into an army camp with her strict physical training exercises and morning calisthenics. Both schools have their share of problems and both have their own number of counter-attacks on the assistants. Eventually, Sturgeon, who loathes Wizzle himself, realizes what his students are doing and orders them to stop the harassment and disband the committee, even while he refuses Wizzle's advise to have Bruno expelled for his disrespectful behaviour (although the assistant is unaware of the true scope of the boy's resistance). However, Bruno and Cathy, from Scrimmage's, joining their forces as The Coalition, get the idea to marry the two assistants off. Through romantic talking and dinners they actually manage to get them married, and the two schools turn back to normal. However, Sturgeon, although pleased at the departure of Wizzle, takes a firm hand at his students' flouting his prohibition of the resistance. He institutes a new school rule forbidding the formation of any student organizations without the approval and participation of the faculty and creates a new committee to order Bruno and his upper echelon comrades in The Committee to wash dishes for a few months as punishment.
18338316	/m/04gg98d	How to Survive Summer Camp				 Stella goes to summer camp while her mother and stepfather are on their honeymoon.Since Stella is scared of swimming her mother promised her that she will not have to swim eventhough later on she is forced to swim by the brigadier. At summer camp she befriends a girl called Marzipan but does not get on with Louise and her friend Karen, two rather vile girls who nickname the main character Baldy due to her short hair cut. There are some strange goings on: a crying noise in the night, Stella's fairytale book falling apart and a wet patch in the bedroom. Stella soon discovers this was all caused by a fox, who was being looked after by the cleaning lady,as he had hurt his paw.
18341016	/m/0416svc	Very Hard Choices	Spider Robinson	2008-06-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In this novel, Nika and Russell discover that protecting the secret of Smelly's telepathic abilities has brought them into conflict with the Central Intelligence Agency, who have been pursuing him since his escape from the MK Ultra Project in the 1960s.
18341673	/m/04f2xn2	Brigands M.C.	Robert Muchamore	2009	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins in 2003 with the death of Dante Scott's mother, father, older sister and brother at the hands of the Brigands M.C. South Devon President, The Führer, after Dante's father refuses to go through with the plans to redevelop the Brigands' clubhouse, turning it into shops and flats. After saving his eighteen-month-old sister Holly from the burning house (the Führer attempted to burn all evidence), nine-year-old Dante escapes, is put under the wing of child psychologist Ross Johnson, and is questioned by police in an attempt to convict the Führer. On the night of the murders he was forced into a boxing fight with Martin, the Führer's eldest son, and got blood on his shirt; he lies to the police telling them that it was a 'nosebleed'. The defence solicitors could use the unreliability of his statement to clear the Führer. Much to Dante's fury, the courts decide that there is insufficient evidence to convict the Führer, and he is released. After moving in with a foster family, a member of another Brigands chapter attempts to murder him with a bomb inside a toy car on his birthday. Shaken, Dante moves in under the care of Ross again. Dante is drugged by Jennifer Mitchum (the same person that drugged James Adams in "The Recruit") and is sent to CHERUB where he befriends Lauren Onions (soon to be changed to Lauren Adams). 4½ years later Neil Gauche, an undercover policeman who is a part of a mission to infiltrate the Brigands M.C., tries to join them. Unfortunately, the Führer realises he is a policeman and knocks him out. Ross and Neil visit CHERUB Campus and James Adams, Dante and Lauren are assigned to a mission to infiltrate the Brigands M.C. with their last names changed to Raven. To avoid Dante’s old friends recognizing him, Dante also changes his first name to John. Dante and Lauren make friends with Joe Donnington (the Führer's younger son). Meanwhile James purchases a new bike, and is invited on a run with the Brigands. He ends up being ‘hero worshipped’ by Dirty Dave after James saves his life when a member of the Vengefuls tries to stab him with a sharpened hammer. At the same time Jake McEwen and Neil attempt to uncover a weapons deal orchestrated by the Brigands, worth £600,000 by following two friends of James: Julian and Nigel. When James gets to The Rebel Tea Party, a biker war breaks out between the Brigands and three other gangs (The Vengeful Bastards, Satan's Prodigy and the Bitch Slappers), but James manages to escape. Meanwhile Dante and Lauren end up at Joe’s house party which is invaded by sixth formers ending in police being called after windows get broken and a fight breaks out between Joe, Dante, Lauren and the party-crashers. Unfortunately, Julian later gets scared and confesses to his father, who is a judge. This leads to riot police arresting McEwen and Neil, blowing the operation and McEwen ‘nutting’ a riot officer who insulted his intelligence, resulting in McEwen being forced to six months file sorting in the basement of CHERUB’s mission building. Since the mission is ending, the agents are sent back to campus. Before Dante leaves, he sneaks into the Führer's house, intent on killing him, but can't bring himself to do it. Instead he carves a message into the Fürher's table, implying he is a member of the Vengeful Bastards, to give the Führer something to think about. Dante takes an old photograph from the Führer's study of his and the Führer's family together. James also gets invited to become a stripper at "Dirty Dave's" Devon Strip Joint but refuses and leaves. Lauren, Chloe Blake (the mission controller and posing as the mother of the family) and Dante get a good laugh out of this.
18357392	/m/04f2z79	The Forever King	Molly Cochran	1992	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 From the front inside flap of The Forever King: In a darkened house not far from the place where Camelot may once have stood, a madman schemes. Once the cup that men call the Holy Grail was his. Soon it will be his again. The Grail’s protectors are few and weak: an alcohol-soaked ex-FBI agent; a courtly old gentleman who once, long ago, held awesome power; and a ten year old boy. Arthur Blessing is no ordinary boy. The Grail is his by chance, this time, but the power to keep it-is his by right. Now he must stay alive long enough to use that power. Arthur needs a defender, a man of great strength, skill, purity, and faith. Fate has given him Hal Woczniak, a broken-down drifter plagued by nightmare memories of a dead child. When Hal quit the FBI, he practically quit the human race as well. Now, at the darkest time in his life, he is offered the chance to redeem himself. One he failed to save a child. Once he failed to save a world. He will not fail again.
18359340	/m/04f6ck9	Beyond the Nightmare Gate	Ian Page	1986	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The series plays for the most part at the tip of south-eastern Magnamund, in the land then known as the Shadakine Empire. A tyrant called Shasarak the Wytch-King has subjugated the people and with the help of seven Shadaki Wytches is ruling with an iron fist. In an attempt to find the lost Moonstone of the Shianti and destroy the Shadakine empire, Grey Star made his way to the location of the Shadow Gate and beyond into the realm of the Daziarn itself. The Daziarn is a shadow realm with many strange beings and fearsome creatures inhabiting it. Grey Star is forced to travel across the gray plains of the Neverness to find the Moonstone but comes upon an unexpected ally; one he thought he would never see again. With her help, he must retrieve the moonstone and find a way to return to Magnamund if the Wytch-King is to be defeated.
18361351	/m/04f3h1d	The Mucker	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1921-10-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Billy Byrne is a low class American born in Chicago's ghetto. He grows up a thief and a mugger. "Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough." He is not chivalrous nor kind, and has only meager ethics - never giving evidence against a friend or leaving someone behind. He chooses a life of robbery and violence, disrespecting those who work for a living. He has a deep hatred for wealthy society. He trains as a prizefighter but can not stop drinking. When falsely accused of murder, he flees to San Francisco and is shanghaied aboard a ship. Ironically, enforced sobriety, brutal ship's discipline and productive work improves him. The ship's secret mission is soon enacted - the hijacking of a specific yacht to take a millionaire's daughter, Barbara Harding, for ransom. Billy Byrne brutally beats her suitor, Billy Mallory, leaving him for dead. "He knew that she looked down upon him as an inferior being. She was of the class that addressed those in his walk of life as 'my man.'" After Barbara confronts him and calls him a coward, a change begins in Billy Byrne. He saves the life of one kidnapper, Theriere, rather than letting him be washed overboard, though he cannot fathom his own reasons. After a terrible storm, the ship is damaged and only makes it to land with Billy's help at the wheel. He rescues Barbara from the wreck and brings her ashore. Barbara is kidnapped by headhunters descended from medieval Japanese. Byrne and Theriere race to rescue her from the daimyo's hut in the middle of the village, but Theriere is fatally wounded in the escape. Billy protects Barbara from the jungle for weeks while his own wounds heal. After realizing he's in love with her, he agrees to let her teach him how to speak properly. When he is again wounded while rescuing two of her father's ships officers from savages, she confesses her love for him also. Learning that Mallory is still alive, and being held by the headhunters along with her father, Billy sets off to free them. During their escape, Billy is severely injured. Certain he is mortally wounded, he sends Mr. Harding and Mallory to care for Barbara. However, the next day finds him clinging to life, and he slowly retraces his steps to where he left Barbara. Believing him dead, they have all left. Months later, he is picked up by a ship. Upon returning to the States, Billy gets a job as a fighter. As he reads about his victory in the papers, he spots a small notice that Barbara's engagement to Mallory has been broken. Coincidentally, Barbara sees the news about Billy's fight, and sends for him. As he enters her father's posh home, he realizes that he can never fit in there. He explains that the gulf between them cannot be bridged, and that she and Mallory must marry. PART TWO - The Return of the Mucker (or "The Man Without A Soul") Billy returns to his old Chicago haunts intending to clear his name. His time with Barbara imbued him with faith in the law and justice. However, he soon realizes that the system is more interested in finding someone guilty than in finding the guilty party. Awaiting the verdict, he reads that Barbara and Mallory are about to marry. He is found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Disillusioned, he jumps from the train carrying him to the state prison. He falls in with Bridge, a poetic gentleman tramp who refuses to turn him in after finding out he's on the lam. He and Bridge head south, pursued by a detective. To avoid capture, Billy determines to cross to Mexico, and Bridge elects to come along. Mexico is torn by internal warfare, and they are quickly captured by a bandit general, Pesita. He hires Billy into his private army, but Bridge has to seek work at a nearby American ranch. The ranch is owned by Mr. Harding, who has foolishly brought his daughter Barbara to this unstable country, at her insistence, to escape questions about her cancelled marriage. In the meantime, Billy is sent to case a garrisoned town to plan for Pesita's force to storm and rob the bank. Billy finds the layout trivial and stealthily robs it himself. Coincidentally, Bridge has been sent to the same town to collect the payroll from the bank. Bridge notices a figure on horseback as Billy leaves town. Bridge gives chase to the unknown horseman, and the two exchange fire before recognizing each other. Billy's horse is killed, so Bridge insists he take his ranch horse, Brazos, and escape before the garrison catches him. Back at the American ranch, some hands spot a large American riding Brazos during a raid by Pesita. The foreman demands that Bridge explain, but he cannot without betraying Billy. All assume Bridge robbed the bank, and the foreman plans to turn him over to general Villa, who will hang him. Barbara helps him escape, but he is later captured. Barbara pays a shady native, Jose, to take a message to the unknown large American, asking him to aid the imprisoned Bridge. Billy rescues Bridge from jail and they ride back to Pesita's headquarters. When Billy learns that Brazos belongs to an unnamed girl Bridge admires, he decided to return the horse regardless of his own safety. An errand for Pesita stops him at Jose's house, where he is captured by the American foreman and some of Villa's men. Knowing he robbed the bank, they secure him for the night at the ranch. Barbara comes to talk to the unknown American, and discovers Billy. She helps him to escape, and immediately afterward she is kidnapped. Billy learns about the kidnapping and races back to the ranch. He and the American hands ride out to search for her. The Mexican hands decide to go into town, leaving only Mr. Harding and three servants. Pesita learns that the American ranch is ripe for a raid. Bridge overhears this, takes off to the ranch and organizes its pitiful defences. Billy tracks Barbara to a native village and rescues her. They return to the ranch in time to save Bridge and Mr. Harding, and they all ride for the USA. At the border military compound, Billy tells Barbara he won't give her up again, and they plan to leave the country. Billy runs into the detective who had chased him, and finds out the guilty man has confessed and Billy himself has been pardoned. Mr. Harding, Barbara and Billy depart for New York, and Bridge returns to his vagabond life.
18365852	/m/0bx_ctd	The Blade Itself	Marcus Sakey	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel, set in Chicago, is the story of two childhood friends and young criminals, Danny Carer and Evan McGann. Years after their criminal partnership dissolved, just as Carter has reformed himself and started a respectable new life, his former partner soon returns from prison to threaten Carter's peaceful new existence with demands of re-teaming.
18369668	/m/04f5gnn	A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living	Michael Dahlie	2008-06-30	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is about a man, named Arthur Camden, who is the great-grandson of the owner of a club which is named Maidenhead Grange. The club is a beloved Catskills fly-fishing lounge. The lounge is home to the Hanover Street Fly Casters, a group that was founded in 1878 by 12 Manhattan financiers. Arther burns Maidenhead Grange to the ground. He didn't burn down the club on purpose, he did it on accident. Arthur has also destroyed his marriage and an import-export business that is owned by his family.
18372202	/m/04f6b0k	Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules	Jeff Kinney	2008-02-01	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Greg is enrolled into swimming class. Meanwhile, his older brother, Rodrick, tries to push him, holds a wild party in the house, writes an embarrassing essay about "100 years ago" and gets in a fight. The next day, he gets his band, Loded Diper, to perform at a school talent show. During the song, Greg filmed them performing but when he filmed Mom, the person who started the "Mom Bucks" program, he stayed there till the song was over and they find out that all the acts were shared with another act. A few days later they spend a night Grandma's house as he spits milk on Greg then Greg runs after Rodrick in his underwear then he goes in the ladies bathroom when a women thinks he's a peeping tom. The story ends with Greg uploading a video on the internet called "Dancing Mom" then it becomes an instant hit because of his mom dancing to Rodrick's band in the video. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules is the second book in a seven book franchise. The third, The Last Straw was released January 13, 2009, has been on the list for 65 weeks (peaking at number 1). The fourth, Dog Days was released October 12, 2009. The book was peaking at #1 for all 25 weeks of publication, making Dog Days the #1 Best Selling Book of 2009. The fifth, The Ugly Truth was released November 9, 2010. The sixth, Cabin Fever was released November 15, 2011. The seventh, The Third Wheel will release on November 13, 2012. Rodrick Rules has been on the sellers list for 117 as of April 4, 2010.
18372234	/m/04f5g2v	Trelawny of the 'Wells'	Arthur Wing Pinero			 Trelawny of the 'Wells tells the story of Rose Trelawny, a popular star of melodrama plays at the Barridge Wells Theatre (a thinly disguised Sadler's Wells Theatre). Rose gives up the stage when she decides to marry her sweetheart, Arthur Gower, in order to please his conservative family. She finds life with Arthur's grandfather and great-aunt, Sir William and Lady Tralfagar, unbearably dull and they detest her loud and unrestrained personality. Rose runs back to the theatre, abandoning Arthur. But her experience of the 'real world' has killed her talent for melodrama, and she cannot recapture the liveliness that had made her a star. Meanwhile, Arthur has secretly run away to become an actor at the Bristol Old Vic. The problem is solved when Rose encounters Sir William again, and she reawakens his memory of admiring the great actor Edmund Kean as a young man. Sir William offers to help Rose's friend Tom Wrench, an aspiring playwright who dreams of staging plays in a more realist style than the melodramas that dominate the stage. Tom stages the play with Rose as the star, and her newfound seriousness fits his style perfectly. Tom secretly arranges for Arthur to play the leading male role, and the lovers are reunited on stage.
18384765	/m/04f6b7g	City of Bones	Cassandra Clare	2007-03-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Fifteen-year-old Brooklynite Clary Fray is at a nightclub with her best friend Simon when she witnesses a murder by a group of teens at the club she is at, surprised that Simon and the club's security guard cannot see the killer, a teenage boy called Jace. Jace claims that the boy he murdered was a demon before Clary leaves with Simon, confused by how she can see them yet no one else could. The next day, while at a coffee shop with Simon, Clary sees Jace yet again, once again invisible to everyone but her. After Clary hesitantly goes outside with him, he offers to introduce her to his "tutor." Before she can respond, she receives a distressing phone call from her mother, who frantically demands her not to come home, obviously to avoid some type of danger. Clary ignores her mother's warnings and rushes home anyways. Upon her arrival, she finds her mother missing, the apartment trashed, and a monstrous creature (later revealed to being a Ravener demon) waiting. She defeats the creature by shoving a weapon of Jace’s, called a Sensor, down its throat, but is injured in the process. Jace, who is a demon fighter known as a Shadowhunter, finds her and takes her to his home, called "The Institute." The Institute is an old Gothic cathedral that humans, known by the term "mundanes" or "mundies" in the Shadowhunter world, can't see, because it is shaded from human eyes with magic called glamour. Here, she recuperates; sleeping for three days. After she wakes up, she meets Hodge Starkweather, Jace's tutor, as well as his adoptive siblings Isabelle and Alec Lightwood. Hodge then acquires the help of a monk with magical powers, called a "Silent Brother," Jeremiah, to discover how Clary is able to see Shadowhunters despite being a mundane, and why she and her mother were attacked. Jeremiah discovers a block on Clary's mind, keeping her memories sealed, and takes her and Jace to the City of Bones, where the other Silent Brothers attempt to break it. Although the attempt fails, Clary discovers flashes of information, particularly the name Magnus Bane. With Isabelle's help, Clary traces Magnus Bane to a party, which she attends with Jace, Simon, Alec and Isabelle. There, they discover that Magnus is the High Warlock of Brooklyn, and he placed the block on Clary at her mother's request. Magnus reveals that when Clary was little, her mother, an ex-Shadowhunter, realized she could see creatures of the Shadowhunter world. She initially hoped Clary hadn't developed this ability, known as the Sight, hoping she would live a normal, mundane life. However, when she caught a two-year-old Clary trying to play with faeries one day, she realized her daughter would discover the Shadowhunter world if she continued to see its creatures. She went to Magnus with hopes of repressing Clary's memories so she would never discover the Shadowhunter world. She had been sending Clary to Magnus every two years ever since, where he would continue to block her memories and Sight; keeping her in the dark about her true self. Clary, Simon, and the Shadowhunters confront Magnus, asking him to bring back Clary's memories. However, Magnus refuses to bring them back, claiming it will be too difficult, although he says they may slowly come back to her over time, now that she knows the truth. During the party, Simon ignores Isabelle's protests and consumes a drink offered to him by a faerie, which consequently turns him into a rat. He is then abducted by a vampire from Clary's bag, leaving her and Jace to rescue him from a vampire-infested lair. Clary and Jace are helped into the lair, the abandoned Hotel Dumont, by a teenager named Raphael, who then betrays them, revealing that he is the current leader of the vampire coven that is residing inside that hotel. Soon, Clary and Jace are fighting for their lives. They are saved by werewolves who claim they want Clary, but Clary and Jace escape, and manage to rescue Simon, who eventually returns to his human form. Here she and Simon share an intimate moment where they hug each other in relief for the other's safety; however Jace, upon seeing this moment, "looks away as though the sun is too bright." At the Institute, while Jace and Simon heal, Clary is approached by Alec in the hallway. The two begin fighting when Alec demands she return to her own world, claiming she is only hurting Jace by putting him in danger. Clary then reveals that she knows he is gay, and how he feels about Jace - he's in love with him. Alec pins her against the wall, demanding she never reveal his feelings to Jace, before walking off, clearly stunned by his actions. Later, Simon finds Clary and they talk together on Clary's bed. Clary wakes up suddenly when she hears someone knocking on her door. Clary finds Jace outside her room looking for her, wanting to take her to celebrate her 16th birthday. He takes Clary to the Institute's greenhouse, where the two talk and eat a meal. He then shows her how the flowers in the greenhouse bloom every night at midnight. As they return back to her room, Clary and Jace share their first passionate kiss outside the door of the room. However, things are left on something of a sour note when Simon walks in on them kissing when leaving Clary's room, causing Jace to leave. In Clary's room, Simon and Clary argue when over her taste in men. However when Clary brings up Isabelle and how he had been flirting with her, Simon, on impulse, angrily reveals to Clary he had only been trying to get her jealous. Simon then confesses to her how he has been in love with her for over ten years and had only flirted with Isabelle to see how she felt about him back. He says how he's upset that she failed to notice his feelings for her despite how obvious it had been to everyone else. Later on, while drawing in her sketchbook to calm herself about the night's events, Clary realizes where the Mortal Cup is and she, Jace, Isabelle, Alec, and Simon go and retrieve it at a neighbor of Clary's apartment. They are attacked by a Greater Demon, but Simon saves them all by shooting an arrow at the roof. Alec gets injured by the Greater Demon and nearly dies, but Magnus Bane manages to heal him at the Institute. When Clary and Jace give the Mortal Cup to Hodge, he reveals he's actually working for a man named Valentine, who is meant to be dead. Valentine kidnaps Jace, saying he was going to take Jace to his father, making Clary fear for him since Jace's father is told to be dead. Clary goes after Hodge, but is knocked unconscious in the process. When Clary wakes up, she finds out her mother's best friend, Luke, is a werewolf and took her away for the sake of her safety. Clary then finds out that Valentine is actually her biological father (her mother having told her that her father was dead when she was little), and Luke and Clary track down Jace and Valentine. Luke and his werewolf pack raid Valentine's lair, but they are ambushed. During the attack, Luke and Clary get inside Valentine's lair. While Luke is distracted, Clary finds Valentine and Jace. Valentine reveals to them that he is actually Jace's father as well, making them siblings, shocking and horrifying both Jace and Clary, who by then realized that they have fallen in love with each other. Luke then returns to fight Valentine, along with Jace's help, but Valentine escapes to the Shadowhunter capital, Idris, where he has now hidden the Mortal Cup, which can used to create Shadowhunters. The Mortal Cup is one of three Mortal Instruments given to the first Shadowhunter by the angel Raziel, and if Valentine has them, he will create a whole army of Shadowhunters. Clary finds her mother, who is in a coma caused by a potion, and takes her to a hospital. In the meantime, Alec has been healed by Magnus Bane and he and Clary decide to start fresh. Afterwards, Clary and Jace meet at the Institute and express their frustration that they cannot be together like they once believed.
18386020	/m/04f3lw_	Marked "Personal"				 On the evening of July 13th, 1863, two men from Washington and Boston, respectively, leave their homes after showing signs of agitation and distress throughout the day. That morning, each one had received a mysterious letter marked 'personal', which they both quickly destroyed...
18396746	/m/04f2hzr	The Merlin Mystery				 The book starts with an unnamed black cat investigating the run-down former living quarters of the wizard Merlin of Arthurian Legend with the implied intent of trying to find something worth stealing. While there she meets a Northern Spotted Owl who takes her through the house and explains Merlin's life, magical abilities, and what the book describes as 'The Pendragon Alchemy', a philosophy of life that says that giving nets greater rewards, both monetary and emotional, than taking. The book deviates from previous Arthur legends and tells of Merlin protecting an unnamed princess from a cadre of evil sorcerers (and in the process creating a ring of stones in Avebury), and falling in love with Nimue, The Lady of the Lake, here described as being a water sprite princess. During this it is revealed simultaneously that the black cat is Nimue and the owl is Merlin, who resume their love. Nimue retrieves the Merlin's Wand in order to give it to the aforementioned evil sorcerers to free them in the misguided belief that they will begrudgingly help save the magical world. However, in trying to defend Merlin she accidentally uses the wand on him, shattering his soul and destroying both his body and his wand in a large fiery flash. Merlin's last magical act is to rescind Nimue's human form, and she becomes the water of the lake near the cave where Merlin was destroyed. However, Merlin has become the mountain and cave next to the lake, and the two remain, insubstantial but together, until, as Merlin explains, 'The seeker' (here to mean the reader) casts 'the spell' (the solution to the puzzle) and causes the wand (the reward for solving the puzzle) to appear.
18400257	/m/04f0jmf	Accident	Danielle Steel	1994	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Page Clarke is a 40-year-old-happily married woman who lives with her 44 year old husband Brad Clarke, her 15 year old daughter Allyson and 7 year old son Andrew. One night Brad goes on an unexpected business trip to Cleveland and Allyson reports she is going to have dinner with her friend Chloe and Chloe's father Trygve Thorensen. Instead Allyson goes out with Chloe and two older boys named Jamie Applegate and Phillip Chapman. While crossing the Golden Gate Bridge the teenagers have an accident with supposed senator's wife Laura Hutchinson. Phillip is killed; Jamie survives with only a small cut; Chloe suffers leg damage, a broken pelvis and a shattered hip; and Allyson has severe head trauma. Both girls are rushed to the hospital and both Trygve and Page arrive before the surgeries. Page is unable to reach Brad until after the surgery has begun, and Brad is outraged that she did not consult him beforehand. She tells him that Allyson would have died at six'o'clock if the surgery had not been performed. One hour later, Brad arrives at the hospital and leaves for their house before Page does. Later, Page confronts him as to why he is home early from his "trip" and he confesses that he has been cheating on her. Soon afterwards Brad starts disappearing several times. Eventually Page's mother, Maribelle and sister Alexis arrive in San Francisco and laze about the house while Allison remains in the hospital. One night after dinner, Page rages at her mother, demanding why she pretends that she did not know that her father molested her and her sister when they were children. Soon she forces Brad to move out and sends her mother and sister back to New York. By then she and Trygve had confessed their feelings toward each other. For four months, Allyson remains in a coma and Andrew, who has attempted to run away, is taken to see his sister. Soon Trygve and his children Nick, Bjorn and Chloe go to a lake for the weekend, and Allyson awakens from her coma. When Page goes to join them at the lake, she confesses to Trygve that she is pregnant with his child, and they begin to plan their wedding. fr:Accident (roman)
18409468	/m/04f1tmn	Wellen				 Doralice, Countess of Köhne-Jasky, has walked out on her much older husband and run off with Hans Grill, a young artist who had been commissioned by the Count to paint his wife's picture. Now, a year later, Hans and Doralice have come to the Baltic coast to spend a solitary summer's holiday in a fisherman's hut. They are said to have got married in London so their relationship is outwardly considered "correct" although their marriage is generally seen as a misalliance, especially by the society Doralice has left behind. While she herself is rather unsure about her future, Hans Grill is an optimistic free spirit, though not quite a libertine, who is full of plans in which Doralice figures prominently. He dreams of setting himself up as a successful painter in Munich &mdash; thus being eventually able to stop living off his wife's money &mdash; and of living with her in a small suburban house. Rather than shunning the unlikely couple, the other tourists at the small fishing village feel morally obliged to associate with them, at least perfunctorily. They are the extended Buttlär family: Baron von Buttlär; his wife Bella; their three children Lolo, Nini, und Wedig; and Baron von Buttlär's mother-in-law, the Generalin von Palikow. They are soon to be joined by Hilmar Baron von dem Hamm, Lolo's dashing fiancé, who is an officer in the German army. Also present is the Geheimrat von Knospelius, a high-ranking civil servant. Burdened with a physical handicap, and never having married, Knospelius is used to leading a vicarious life through the people he surrounds himself with, and as soon as they have arrived he introduces himself to both the Buttlärs and the Grills. The presence of a scandalous couple does not go unnoticed by the Buttlär children. Rather, it is one of their games to sneak out of the house at night together with Ernestine, one of the young servants, to catch a glimpse of Doralice through the open window of the Grimms' rented hut. One day, while swimming in the sea, Lolo meets Doralice on a sandbank and is deeply impressed by her cheerful manner, her wit, and her beauty, so much so that she decides to send her a huge bunch of red roses, while instinctively choosing her as her role model. Others who are also impressed by Doralice's beauty include Baron von Buttlär, a known womaniser, who is now jealously guarded by his wife, and Hilmar von dem Hamm, who openly starts courting Doralice despite her husband's and his own fiancée's presence. His endeavours to win Doralice's heart culminate in a boating trip that he undertakes with her while the others stay behind. Doralice feels flattered by the attentions of a member of the very social class that has ostracised her. At the same time, she realizes her indebtedness to, and possibly love for, Hans and stops all further advances on Hilmar's part. Lolo on the other hand, aware of her fiancé's infatuation, but due to an over-protective upbringing unprepared for life's harsh realities, decides to sacrifice herself by committing suicide. At night she secretly leaves the house wearing only her bathing costume under her coat, walks down to the beach and starts swimming out into the ocean, far beyond the sandbank where she met Doralice. She is rescued by local fishermen who drag her half-conscious body into their boat and return her to her family. Although Lolo makes a quick and full recovery, etiquette demands of the Buttlärs that they depart immediately. Those who stay behind into the autumn are Hans and Doralice Grimm and Geheimrat Knospelius &mdash; the latter because, unbeknown to everyone, he has handed in his resignation and now has all the time in the world, and the Grimms because they actually have no other place to go. In the course of the summer, Hans has become more and more monosyllabic, and Doralice longs for some serious talk concerning their future together: She realizes that she desperately needs Hans's reassurance of his love for her. Hans, however, keeps postponing that talk to the following day and indulges in his growing fascination with the sea. Not only does he paint it; he now accompanies the fishermen on their nightly routine on a more or less regular basis and then sleeps during most of the day. One night he goes out fishing with Steege, a notorious drunkard whose vice has prevented him from buying a new fishing boat. The old dilapidated one cannot defy the thunderstorm of which they have been warned, and the sea claims two more lives: After long days of waiting, Doralice and Mrs Steege finally accept the fact that their husbands are not coming back. At this point Knospelius makes Doralice the unexpected offer to be his companion for the foreseeable future and to spend the winter with him touring the Greek islands.
18411184	/m/04f60d2	The End of Oil	Paul Roberts	2004	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Though The End of Oil is not a chronological history of humanity's use of fossil fuels, Roberts begins by recounting how Thomas Newcomen, in 1712, presented the first large steam engine, and thus helped spark the Industrial Revolution. He then goes on to explain the problems that have since developed, or may develop in the future, from humanity's reliance on oil and its "geological siblings", coal, and natural gas. While there is a chapter on hydrogen as a possible alternative to oil (not as an energy source, but as an energy carrier), the book is not focused on any one solution to the problems it lays out. According to Roberts, oil faces three major dilemmas. Most importantly, all fossil fuels are by their very nature limited in supply; as far as oil is concerned, the resulting dilemma is best known as the question of peak oil. Further, much of the oil consumed by affluent countries such as the United States is extracted in countries that are rather unstable politically, such as some of the members of the OPEC. The oil trade is therefore prone to become intertwined with international relations, although the nature of this interplay is highly controversial, with some citing oil as a reason for conflicts such as the Iraq War and others denying such claims. Finally, since the burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide that was previously locked in the ground, humanity's reliance on oil may contribute to global warming. As to the aims of the book, Roberts states at the end of the prologue:
18412442	/m/04f0tc8	Gollum: How We Made Movie Magic	Andy Serkis	2003-12-22	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Gollum details how a three-week commission for Andy Serkis to provide a voice-over for Gollum grew into a five-year commitment to breathe life and soul into The Lord of the Rings most challenging creation. Andy Serkis tackles various subjects throughout the book, including character conception (Gollum's "cough" is derived from his cat coughing up a hairball) as well as the hard work it took to act out Gollum and replace it with CGI. He also discusses the controversy of whether he should have been eligible for an Academy Award for his work as Gollum.
18418383	/m/04dzj2d	Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood	Wayne Grudem			 Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood presents its essays in five sections: # Vision and Overview (2 essays) # Exegetical and Theological Studies (12 essays) # Studies from Related Disciplines (5 essays) # Applications and Implications (6 essays) # Conclusion and Prospect (1 essay) It also contains two appendices — an essay by Wayne Grudem and the Danvers Statement, and a Prefatory essay by John Piper.
18419259	/m/04f1rg2	Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique	Michel Tournier	1967-03-15		 The young Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked on a desert island that he names Speranza (Hope). Crusoe tries to civilize and control the nature of the island, but is redeemed by the appearance of 'Araucanian' whom he names as Friday. Because of the deep change that happens in Crusoe during the stay, he finally does not want to return from the island, while Friday does.
18421313	/m/04d_g74	Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America				 The author's thesis is that Richard Nixon manipulated the political and social events between 1965 and 1972 in a way that shaped the political divisions of the present day. The author frames the divisions of the 1960s as between the "Franklins" and the "Orthogonians", names taken from two social clubs at Nixon's alma mater of Whittier College; the Franklins were the privileged elite, and the Orthogonians the social strivers. The author casts Nixon as the "King of the Orthogonians", who would play upon the growing resentments of "Orthogonians" nationwide (Nixon's "silent majority") to electoral success. Perlstein also presents a broader overview of The Sixties' cultural and political turmoils, including the 1968 Democratic Convention, but, as the book ends with Nixon's reelection in 1972, only peripherally covering Watergate.
18421606	/m/04f3_47	Cold in the Earth	Ann Granger	1992	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The first death is from a drug overdose; the victim is a promising young girl from a respectable local family. However, Markby's investigations, which aim at getting hold of the suppliers, do not lead anywhere. Shortly afterwards, the body of a stranger, possibly a foreigner, is found buried in a shallow grave in a trench at a building site on the outskirts of Bamford. Finally, a local construction foreman employed at that very building site is slain to death on a lonely country road. Mitchell and Markby probe into the dubious roles played by land developers, diehard farmers and juvenile delinquents alike.
18425112	/m/04f633k	Improbable				 Improbable is the story of a gifted young man named David Caine, who has been troubled by debilitating epileptic seizures to the extent that his medical condition has thrown his life completely off track. He is a compulsive gambler, and heavily in debt to the local mafia. During the course of the novel, Caine undergoes an experimental medical treatment in an attempt to set his life straight. After the procedure, he discovers that he is able to make predictions using his enhanced calculative skills, and change the future based on his discoveries. However, shadowy forces want to use his power for their own ends, and he faces a desperate battle for survival.
18427573	/m/04f4_1k	Designing Economic Mechanisms	Leonid Hurwicz			 Authors of this book, Leonid Hurwicz and Stanley Reiter, helped found the field of mechanism design. This book provides a guide for those who would design mechanisms. A decentralized mechanism is a mathematical structure that models institutions for guiding and coordinating economic activity. Such institutions are usually created by administrators, lawmakers, and officers of private companies to achieve their desired goals. Their purpose is to achieve their desired goal in such a way that economize on the resources needed to operate the institutions, and that provide incentives that induce the required behaviors. In this book, systematic procedures for designing mechanisms that achieve specified performance, and economize on the resources required to operate the mechanism, i.e., informationally efficient mechanisms, are presented. Most of the book deals with the systematic design procedures which are algorithms for designing informationally efficient mechanisms. In the book, informationally efficient dominant strategy implementation is also studied.
18427724	/m/04f4jlr	La Belle Bête	Marie-Claire Blais	1959		 La Belle Bête starts off as the three main characters return home on a train. Immediately, the characters’ relationships with one another, as well as their physical beauty as a status, are established. As they return home, their daily activities reveal even more of their living situation with one another, as Isabelle-Marie is the Cinderella of the family, working hard and being neglected, while Louise fawns over her beloved beautiful Patrice. Patrice is so incompetent from his constant dependence on his mother, that he can do nothing but accept her attention. Eventually, Louise announces that she needs to travel to pick up farm equipment for their vast land, and leaves Patrice and Isabelle-Marie. Isabelle-Marie continues her distaste for her brother, and as her mother is no longer there to support Patrice, she takes the opportunity to let him starve to release her anger and jealously towards him As she grows to pity his incompetence and dependency on Louise, Isabelle-Marie begins to care for him ever so slightly. When Louise returns, she brings with her Lanz, who becomes the new controlling figure over the family. Patrice rejoices and cleaves to his mother, but she can no longer respond with her attention as she is consumed by her own relationship with Lanz. As Lanz brings Louise further and further from her children, Patrice spirals into deterioration while Isabelle-Marie relishes in her new found freedom. As Isabelle-Marie becomes more upbeat, she learns to care for Patrice, as well as meets her lover Michael, who she convinces to love her by lying about her beauty . From here the story splits into two. On one side of life, Isabelle-Marie begins her life with the blind Michael, while Patrice is continued to be neglected as Lanz demands the attention of Louise. Both children’s’ stories end in despair as Michael eventually regains his vision and comes to terms with the ugliness of Isabelle-Marie and consequently, their newborn child Anne. He abandons both of them and disappears from their lives. As the torn spirit of Isabelle-Marie returns to her unwanted home, she finds that Louise is being controlled by Lanz, and has chosen him over Patrice. Her new found anger towards outer beauty drives her to push Patrice’s face into a pot of boiling water, thus bringing his now beast-like face to her lowly status. Patrice cries to his mother, and she makes the ultimate choice to live her life with Lanz, abandoning Patrice entirely (pg 52). Patrice is sent to an insane asylum by Louise, who becomes fed up with his incompetence, however he escapes shortly afterwards. As their lives quickly become disillusioned, Isabelle-Marie ends up setting fire to the farm. Louise, who has slowly been cracking under the loss of her beautiful child, and the control – and eventual death - of her husband is lost in the fire. Isabelle-Marie commits suicide as she pushes her child off the train tracks that once brought her home, as Patrice drowns himself when he sees his hideous face in the reflection of a lake.
18427816	/m/09v22gf	Swords and Deviltry	Fritz Leiber	1970	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. The pieces in Swords and Deviltry introduce the duo and their relationship ("Induction"), present incidents from their early lives in which they meet their first lady-loves (Fafhrd in "The Snow Women", the Gray Mouser in "The Unholy Grail"), and relate how afterwards in the city of Lankhmar the two met and allied themselves with each other, and lost their first loves through their defiance of the local Thieves' Guild ("Ill Met in Lankhmar").
18430877	/m/04f4vxp	Affiliate				 The story is set in New York in the 1980s, and then moves to Los Angeles. It is told in the first person by a man called Dalmatov, seemingly loosely based on Dovlatov himself: he is an immigrant from Russia, and an unsuccessful writer, working for the American-based Russian-language press. Dalmatov presents a programme in Russian on the radio, and is sent to Los Angeles to report on a conference of Soviet dissidents. When he arrives, he bumps into his first love, Tasya, and the memories of their courtship when they both lived in the Soviet Union come flooding back.
18437102	/m/04f1lx4	Cairo				 The story is set in contemporary Cairo, and follows six characters as they are drawn into the intrigue surrounding a stolen hookah, a box containing East and the Under-Nile of legend.
18438819	/m/04f47wb	Jhegaala	Steven Brust	2008-07-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Vlad Taltos, after leaving Adrilankha, decides to visit Noish-pa, currently residing in the Szurke region as Vlad′s regent. While there, Vlad expresses interest in finding out about his mother. Noish-pa remembers that Vlad′s mother left him a runic thank you note containing her full name, Marishka Merss Taltos. Noish-pa reveals that Merss translates as “pulper” and is likely associated with a town called Burz. Vlad decides to head into Fenario in search of his mother′s kin. After arriving in Burz, Vlad takes on the name Merss and discovers he doesn′t fit in among other Easterners and is greeted with suspicion, especially due to his choice in familiar. Good witches have birds, mice, or cats. Vlad stays at an inn he refers to as the “pointed hat”, run by a man named Inchay. There he is approached by Barash Orbahn, liquor importer, who answers some basic questions about Burz and agrees to ask about Vlad′s kin. Vlad decides to begin his own investigation by questioning the local merchants. Upon inquiry into his family, the name Merss is taken as a threat; Vlad is accused of being an erdergbasson, or “Witch who studies things nice people don′t talk about,” and is threatened that all the merchants in town belong to The Merchants′ Guild. This is unusual as guilds typically consist of tradesmen banded together to gain power over merchants. Vlad returns to the inn without receiving much information. The next day Orbahn meets Vlad again and informs him the head of the Guild is a man named Chayoor, and it would be best if Vlad stopped searching for his family at the risk of upsetting the Guild. Digesting this information at the dock, Vlad is approached by Tereza, a prostitute, who after proper bribing tells him to seek out a coachman named Zollie at the inn Cellar Mouse. Vlad meets with Zollie, who informs him the Merss belonged to a group of witches the Count believed was trying to kill him, and that most of the family fled west. The remaining members live outside of town. Vlad decides to visit the family, only to find that they have been murdered and their house burned down with fire that could only have been produced by a witch. He is aided in burying the family by neighbors and a Verra priest named Father Noij. Vlad is filled with uncharacteristic rage and decides he will seek revenge for the murder of his kin. The next day Vlad decides to use the Art to heal the blisters from the previous day; during the spell his mind is read and Loiosh cannot prevent it. Vlad decides to confront the Guild leader Chayoor, who somehow knows Vlad’s true name of Taltos, and informs Vlad that the Guild holds the authority in town. Vlad then seeks an audience with the Count, who politely refuses, but Vlad decides to go anyway under the guise of being an emissary of the empire interested in paper. Upon returning to town, he learns Zollie has been murdered and witches are suspected because her lips have turned red. Vlad realizes this is not the work of a witch, only meant to appear to be. Vlad decides to take a walk at night despite his poor night vision, and is approached by a man named Dahni who claims to work for the Count, who is interested in helping Vlad against their common enemy; who that enemy is, Vlad does not know. Vlad decides to find out about the Coven of witches in Burz by following one of them home and forcefully questioning them; he finds out limited information about the good witch, bad witch phenomenon, and the general location of the Coven headquarters in the woods. Vlad continues his night activities by tracking down Dahni and forcefully questioning him about the Count’s offer, and Vlad agrees to meet with the Count. Vlad moves to the Cellar Mouse inn to make it harder to trace him. The next day, a message arrives from the Count that Vlad should come to his estate, but first Vlad sends Loiosh and Rocza to do surveillance on Orbhan and Tereza, who are acting suspiciously. At the Count’s, Vlad is drugged and tortured for several days about his connection to the king of Fenario and his plans to steal the secret recipe to make paper, and then turned over to the Guild for several more days of torture before, in a moment of lucidity, informing Loiosh to notify Dahni to come and rescue him. The Count regrets Vlad’s treatment and provides sanctuary and medical treatment to the now crippled Vlad. It is revealed that Dahni had been working for a Jhereg assassin who is after Vlad, and after questioning reveals the location of the assassin, who is hunted down and killed. Vlad moves back into the Cellar Mouse where, despite his injuries, he uses Loiosh and Rocza to gather information while he questions those who come to see him: Father Noij, some very distant kin, and Meehayi, his caretaker. Vlad figures out who was behind the attack on his kin and sets in motion a plan to destroy the Guild and Coven by pretending he was killed by witches, causing a mob to hunt down the Coven, while simultaneously having the Count arrest the Guild. The Coven kills Chayoor in the belief that he has been trying to set them up. The feeble Vlad escapes with the help of Father Noij to Fenario. After several years, the now mostly recovered Vlad completes his revenge by returning to Burz, stealing the Count′s paper recipe, and sending it to Her Imperial Majesty Zerika the Fourth.
18442553	/m/04f19k0	The Celebrity				 John Crocker has been the friend of the Celebrity long before he became famous. During a summer retreat at Asquith resort, he runs into the Celebrity who has taken the identity of another man for anonymity. The Celebrity meets Irene Trevor, daughter of an Ohio State Senator, and asks her to marry him. When a more desirable female, Marian Thorn, arrives at Asquith, the Celebrity leaves her without breaking off the marriage. This goes against the moral fiber of the Celebrity's stories. Both women know his true identity as a famous writer and are familiar with his published works. Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke and his wife are wealthy and have made a summer retreat of their own named Mohair. The Celebrity leaves Asquith for Mohair to be with Marian Thorn, who is the niece of the Cookes. The slighted Irene Trevor confides in John Crocker that the Celebrity never broke up with her and this could be used against him in the future. Mr. Cooke throws a party and invites the people from Asquith to join them. John Crocker and Miss Trevor reluctantly go. It appears to John Crocker that Miss Thorn and the Celebrity are romantically involved and he is jealous. Mr. Cooke buys a new yacht, the Maria (named after his wife), and invites all his guests for a trip to Bear Island. At Bear Island a newspaper brought on board the yacht reveals in a story that Charles Wrexell Allan has embezzled $100,000 from the Miles Standish Bicycle Company. This is the same man the Celebrity is impersonating. When the Celebrity asks John Crocker and Miss Trevor to reveal his true identity, they decide to be mischievous and pretend not to know him by any name but Allan. Another yacht enters Bear Island harbor and a man in an obvious disguise, Mr. Dunn, visits the island. The party believes Mr. Dunn is a detective. Mr. Trevor demands the Celebrity be turned over to authorities. The Celebrity is hidden in a cave for the night. The next day Mr. Dunn is gone. Mr. Cooke insists on taking the Celebrity to Canada. A police tug boat catches up to the Maria and the Celebrity is hidden in the ballast area. Captain McMain, Chief of the Far Harbor Police searches the boat but does not find the Celebrity. Mr. Cooke finds a cove to sleep in for the night. In the morning while rowing passengers back to the Maria, the police return. John Crocker, the Celebrity, Miss Thorn and Miss Trevor are left behind on shore. During this time the Celebrity asks Miss Thorn to marry him. She tells Miss Trevor about the proposal. She states that she is still engaged to the Celebrity. It is at this time John Crocker realizes that the girls where in on a plot to humiliate the Celebrity for going against his own doctrine from his stories. After being humiliated he leaves the three and escapes into Canada. The police come back and pick up John, Miss Thorn and Miss Trevor in the police tug that is towing the Maria. During the trip back Captain McCann says he is still looking for the embezzler, Mr. Allen. Miss Thorn reveals to John Crocker that she has secretly admired him ever since they met. They realize they are going to become romantically involved in the future. When they reach shore it is revealed that Mr. Dunn, the suspected detective turns out to be Mr. Allen. The story is wrapped up with the marriage of John Crocker and Irene Thorn. They go to Europe and while at a party, a book the Celebrity wrote is brought up. It is signed by the author. After inspection Crocker realizes the signature is a fraud. He realizes Mr. Allen is posing as the Celebrity and traveling through Europe on a book signing tour. Later during their stay in Paris the Crocker's meet the Celebrity. He has a new girl, has no hard feeling about his summer stay at Asquith and Mohair, has traveled around the World and met Charles Wexell Allen in his travels. He reveals that Mr. Allen thanked him for inadvertently helping him in the embezzlement!
18445190	/m/04gnqt_	The Rose Rent	Edith Pargeter	1986	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In late spring of 1142 the Benedictine friars of Shrewsbury Abbey are thinking of the June 22 feast day honoring the translation of Saint Winifred from Wales to the altar in the Abbey. The political disruptions of the Anarchy are not touching Shrewsbury. During the King's illness early in the year, Empress Maud moved into Oxford, while her staunchest supporter, Robert of Gloucester went over to Normandy for meetings with her family. King Stephen began to be active again, having taken Wareham, giving heart to his supporters. Sheriff Hugh Beringar heads to his manor in the north, to see to his sheep. The Abbey has a second duty for the last three years on that day, to complete their agreement with the widow Judith Perle. Her husband died and she miscarried twenty days later, over three years before. She gave their home and lands in the Foregate to the Abbey, half her patrimony, in a charter, in exchange for a single white rose from the garden, delivered to her in person. Brother Eluric, who tends the altar funded by the rent the Abbey realizes from the house, has delivered the rose each year. Eight days before he must deliver it the fourth time, he asks Abbot Radulfus to be released from this duty, as he is tormented by his desire for the widow Perle. Abbot Radulfus releases him. In discussion with Cadfael and Anselm, the Abbot decides to have the rose rent delivered by Niall the bronzesmith, who rents the property from the abbey. Judith visits the bronzesmith to ask him to make a new buckle for a girdle; he is touched by her beauty and loneliness. Judith Perle has several suitors but is not interested in marrying again, still grieving the happy years with her husband. She discusses with Sister Magdalen the option of taking the veil and living with the sisters at Godric's Ford. Sister Magdalen convinces her to wait but says that her door is always open if she is in need of a place to rest and think. Niall, a widower, keeps his young daughter with his sister in Pulley, just three miles away. He returns from an overnight visit and finds that the white rose bush has been hacked at its bole. At its base lies Brother Eluric, dead with a knife by his side. While investigating the murder scene with the Abbot and Brother Anselm, Brother Cadfael finds a distinctive footprint and makes a wax impression. Cadfael tells Judith about Brother Eluric's desire for her. Before going to bed that night, Judith tells her servant Branwen that in the morning she will go to the abbey to draw up a new charter to make the gift of the property unconditional. The next day, Judith fails to arrive at the abbey. Sheriff Hugh Beringar, called back to town, Cadfael, and Abbot Radulfus believe that Judith was kidnapped, either to be forced into marriage or to void the charter by her absence on rent day. The search begins. Cadfael finds the once firmly-attached bronze tag from the end of Judith's girdle, suggesting a struggle. It is found under the bridge where a boat had been hauled up for convenient use, possibly stolen by the kidnapper. Cadfael's search of the river with Madog finds a stolen boat discarded downstream on the River Severn. Bertred, one of Judith's foremen, remembers that on the night that Judith announced that she would go to the abbey to remake the charter, one of Vivian Hynde's men visiting at the Perle household left abruptly after Branwen shared that news. Bertred believes he knows where she is being held, having followed Hynde or his man out of the town after the search ended for the day. In the middle of the night, he makes his way to Hynde's disused counting-house, now an outbuilding to store the wool clips. It had been searched that day, but the disused room was not known to the Deputy Sheriff, nor mentioned by the owner. Bertred can hear Judith Perle inside with her gaoler, Vivian Hynde. In a surprising turn of events, Judith is in control of the situation. Vivian is pleading with Judith to marry him, but she scornfully rejects him. Bertred has been holding onto the sill; it gives way and makes a sound, which alerts those within and the watchdog. Bertred runs toward the river to escape. The watchman and his dog pursue. The watchman gives him a glancing blow to the head but Bertred dives into the water, hits rocks on the shelving bank and is knocked senseless. He is not followed by the watchman who believes this interloper is swimming across the river. Back in the counting-house, Judith convinces Vivian to take her to Sister Magdalen, where she will say she has been in retreat during the past days. She promises not to reveal the truth about Vivian. She wants this episode behind her, her good reputation intact. He agrees; soon they slip out to stay in his mother's house until they can start out for Godric's Ford. Someone comes upon Bertred in the shallows, checks to see he is alive, and then kicks him out into the current of the river. Cadfael, working near the river the next morning, finds the dead body of Bertred. After examining Bertred's body, Cadfael sees that Bertred's boots are a match for the wax impression of the boot found near the rose bush when Brother Eluric was killed. They have apparently found the murderer of Brother Eluric. Hugh and Cadfael talk to the watchman and discover that Bertred had been at Vivian Hynde's storehouse the night before, where they find the broken window sill. They ask to search within but find no trace of the pair's presence the night before. Niall goes to Pulley again to visit his daughter. He wants to bring her home to live with him, but will wait until life in Shrewsbury calms down. On his return in the moonless night, he hears sounds and takes cover, believing he hears bandits. He sees a man on a horse with a woman riding pillion and recognizes her as Judith Perle. He follows them for an hour until he hears Judith tell the man to let her go the rest of the way alone. After the man leaves, Niall approaches closer when he hears her scream as someone is attacking her with a knife. He struggles with her attacker and knocks the knife away, getting a gash on his left arm. The attacker flees. Niall and Judith continue to the Benedictine nuns at Godric's Ford. Judith tells Sister Magdalen their story and she agrees to go along with Judith's deception about being with the Sisters for three days, well understanding the importance of reputation. Sister Magdalen accompanies them back to the Abbey then on to town, staying close to Judith until all is well with her. After her reunion at her home in town, Judith tells her tale of being attacked to Hugh. She tells him the truth about her abduction, adding that after being released by Vivian she wants the matter to end and will not bear witness against him. Vivian was with her when they heard Bertred fall and be chased by the night watchman, so he could not have killed Bertred. Hugh acquiesces, telling her that Vivian Hynde is already taken; Hugh will release him eventually. Cadfael asks Sister Magdalen to obtain two well worn left shoes for him from Judith's household. She sends them via a trusted messenger, Edwy Bellecote the son of the carpenter. He brings them to the waiting Cadfael, who examines the shoe that belonged to Bertred. It does not match the mold of the print from Brother Eluric's murder. The other shoe does match. Thinking there might be more trouble with the rose bush, Cadfael walks out to find the bush ablaze; the fire pulls many local men out to assure it does not spread. The bush was covered with oil then had a burning torch dropped on it, from over the wall. The bush is destroyed. Early the next morning, the day of St Winifred's translation, Hugh visits Judith Perle's home to ask her cousin Miles when he gave his boots to Bertred. Miles' mother reveals that he did it on the day Brother Eluric was found dead. Miles had killed Brother Eluric and then given his boots to Bertred. Miles confesses all, trying to mitigate his guilt, and he is taken away by Hugh's men to await his trial. Judith is hurt by this betrayal. Cadfael and Hugh explain what they know. Miles, hoping that Judith would enter the convent and leave her shop and property to him, had the idea to destroy the rose bush, causing the house to revert to her estate. But Eluric discovered and stopped him in the first attack on the rose tree, so Miles stabbed him, leaving that boot print. Later, he followed Bertred to the Hynde property and killed him. The next night he followed Judith en route to Godric's Ford, where he tried to kill her, stopped by the unexpected Niall. Miles is the only person with a motive to kill Judith, as he would inherit her business and property. Cadfael and Judith reflect sadly that Miles never intended to do so much evil, but his first step, motivated by ambition and greed, led him down a path he did not escape. Her house emptied, first by Hugh, Cadfael and Sister Magdalen leaving, then the funeral for Bertred. She has two childless widows to support now. She told her aunt what she must know about her lost son. Judith has the full responsibility of the clothier business in her hands again, and will remake the charter with the Abbey, making a full gift of that house. In mid afternoon of Saint Winifred's day, Niall and his young daughter Rosalba arrive at Judith's house with a white rose. He had picked the bloom yesterday, before the fire. He delivers the rose rent to her, thus securing the charter. He begins to leave, but Judith asks him to stay, rediscovering her reasons to live.
18451040	/m/04p_zyl	Paper Towns	John Green	2008	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Paper Towns takes place in Orlando, Florida. The novel begins in a subdivision called Jefferson Park. The protagonist and narrator, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, and his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman, both nine years old, go to the park and discover the corpse of Robert Joyner, a divorced man who has committed suicide. The novel flashes forward to Quentin and Margo as high schoolers who have grown apart. One night Margo shows up at Quentin’s bedroom window wearing all black and black face paint. She convinces him to sneak out and help her get revenge on people she feels have hurt her. The first characters they visit are Margo’s ex boyfriend Jase and the girl with whom he was cheating on Margo, Becca. Margo has Quentin call Becca’s father and inform him that Becca is having sex with Jase in the basement of their home. Then Quentin and Margo break into their home, graffiti a blue ‘M’ on their wall, and leave a fish for Becca. The second person they visit is a character mentioned only once throughout the story. They leave her a bouquet of flowers, as she is the character who informed Margo that her boyfriend was cheating on her. After that they go to Jase’s house, break in and leave him a fish and a blue ‘M’. They then visit a character named Lacey, who becomes a more prominent character in the last half of the book. Margo felt that Lacey had never been a good friend to her, and that she had ridiculed her too often and made backhand comments that were truly meant as insults. They leave a fish for her in her car and graffiti a blue ‘M’ on the roof of her car. At 3:15 in the morning, they enter the SunTrust bank building and they relax on one of the higher floors for a short while. This is the first time Margo calls their town a "paper town", describing it as “fake” and “not even hard enough to be made of plastic”. Once they leave the SunTrust building, Margo asks Q who he would like to get revenge on, and he chooses the high school bully Chuck Parson. Margo and Q sneak into his house, remove one of Chuck’s eyebrows with hair removal cream, and slather Vaseline on all of the door handles in his house. After getting revenge on Chuck they break into SeaWorld, but leave disappointed because none of the animals are in their showcases. Margo and Q return to their homes close to the time they are supposed to be getting up in the morning to go to school. The next day at school all Q thinks about is how things have changed. He wonders if Margo will start hanging out with him and his friends and sitting with them at lunch, but Margo doesn’t show up to school that day. After Margo has been missing for three days her parents file a report. Margo had run away five times in the past so her parents were more frustrated than worried. After learning that Margo has run away, Q notices a poster of Woody Guthrie taped to the back of her shades. The poster leads him to a song called Walt Whitman's Niece, which, in turn, leads him to a book of poems, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The poem has highlighted sections that Q believes to be clues left by Margo to lead him to where she is. Q continues to search for clues and finds an address scrawled on a small piece of paper. Hoping it will lead them to where she is hiding, Q and his friends Radar and Ben skip school the following day and go to the place on the piece of paper. They find an old abandoned mini-mall which contains evidence that Margo was recently there. Eventually the clues lead Q to believe that Margo may be hiding out in one of the many abandoned subdivision projects around Orlando; what Q’s mother likes to call "pseudodivisions". He drives to all of the pseudodivisions where he feels she may be hiding, but has no luck locating her. While getting ready for graduation, Q makes a connection which leads him to discover that Margo has been hiding in a fictional town in New York called Agloe. Q, Radar, Ben, and Lacey all opt to skip graduation to drive to New York to search for her. They make the drive from Orlando, Florida to Agloe, New York in just shy of twenty-four hours. They find Margo living in an old dilapidated barn. But instead of being grateful for them finding her, she reacts negatively. Angry that Margo is not grateful for all their efforts to find her, Radar, Ben, and Lacey leave and spend the night at a hotel. Q stays behind and talks things over with Margo. She decides to stay in New York. Q wants to stay with her, but returns home with his friends in the end.
18455306	/m/04f0q9w	War of the Wizards	Ian Page	1986	{"/m/03ff00": "Gamebook", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In this, the final installment of the World of Lone Wolf, Grey Star and Tanith have just completed a harrowing quest in the Shadow realm of the Daziarn. Upon retrieving the Moonstone, the two return to Magnamund to find the forces of good and evil poised on the brink of final conflict. Shasarak has enlisted the aid of the dreaded demon lord Agarash the Damned in order to eradicate the resistance movement once and for all. Battling their way through hordes of demons and undead minion, Grey Star and Tanith must struggle to rejoin the Freedom Guild, defeat the forces of the Wytch-King, and fulfill his destiny and promise to the Shianti.
18456055	/m/04f4wj9	King of the Pygmies		2005-10-11		 Penn is an average American high school boy living in the small town of Havre de Grace, Maryland. He has a crush on the new girl at school, Daisy. He looks out for his older brother, Matt, who has had brain damage from birth. Penn is on his way to a successful life. All of this changes when he starts hearing voices. He learns of the worries that his brother does not voice out loud, the depression that his neighbor is fighting, and the quiet struggles that his parents face each day. After Penn shares the details of being able to hear people's thoughts, his mother forces him to see a psychiatrist as she suspects that he suffers from schizophrenia. He desperately tries to show his father that he is not insane and takes him to see his Uncle Hewitt, who had convinced Penn that he too could read people's minds. Unfortunately, his uncle could not correctly guess the thoughts of Penn's father, and both Penn and Hewitt are left looking as if they are not mentally stable. Penn is let down by his uncle again after he promised that a man would come and see him and explain the Pygmy disease, which causes the ability to hear the thoughts of other people. The man does not show up, leaving Penn unsure whether his Uncle can truly hear the thoughts of other people, and even creates doubts concerning Penn's mental state and whether he is magic or mentally unstable.
18456695	/m/04f6k0g	The Great Kapok Tree	Lynne Cherry		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Great Kapok Tree is set in the Amazon rainforest. A young man begins to chop down a kapok tree, following the orders of a "larger man". After he has hit the tree a few times with his axe, he sits down to rest and falls asleep. While he sleeps, several rainforest animals and a Ya̧nomamö child whisper into his ear and beg him to spare the tree, explaining its importance in the fragile ecosystem. When the man awakes, he leaves his axe at the foot of the tree and walks away.
18459545	/m/04f333m	The Great Dinosaur Robbery	David Forrest		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The book is set in New York City in the 1970s, and follows attempts by a group of British nannies who discover that a microdot containing Chinese military secrets that they believe to be vital to the survival of the British Empire has been hidden in a skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History. They cannot find the message, so contrive to steal the entire skeleton and mail it to the Queen. The Chinese agents who hope to retrieve the message, and the Americans searching for the missing dinosaur, play important roles.
18466831	/m/04f65x0	The Ox-Bow Incident	Walter Van Tilburg Clark	1940	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Ox-Bow Incident takes place in 1885, and the story is told in the first-person perspective by Art Croft. It begins with two riders, Art Croft and Gil Carter, riding into the town of Bridger's Wells. They go into Canby's Saloon and find the atmosphere is tense, partly due to recent incidents of cattle rustling. Gil has a propensity for fighting. During a poker game, Gil's unusually good luck causes a fight between Gil, a local rancher named Farnley, and Art. While Art takes Gil outside to clear his head, a young man named Greene comes into town bringing news that a local named Kinkaid has been murdered and a large number of cattle have been stolen from Drew, the largest cattle rancher in Bridger's Wells. The townspeople begin to form a lynch mob. Two local men, Osgood and Davies, attempt to deter them. Art is sent with a boy named Joyce, clerk in Mr. Davis's store, to bring Judge Tyler. When Tyler questions Greene, it turns out that Greene had not even seen Kinkaid. Tyler is almost able to defuse the situation, until the arrival of cold-hearted former Confederate soldier Tetley, his son Gerald, and Amigo, one of Tetley's hired hands. Amigo explains that he almost ran into the rustlers, but was able to avoid being seen. As the mob of 28 men sets out, Judge Tyler warns Tetley that the men must be brought back alive to stand trial. But Tetley wants to make his son manly by murdering one of the men, as he believes his son to be too "feminine" in his eyes. On their journey, the riders encounter a stagecoach. They try to stop it, but the stagecoach guard assumes that it is a stickup and shoots, accidentally wounding Art in the left shoulder. In the coach are Rose Mapen, Gil's old girlfriend, who was run out of town earlier, and her new husband, Swanson. After tending to Art's wounded shoulder, the mob finds three men sleeping on the ground around a campfire, and cattle bearing Drew's brand. Tetley interrogates the men: a young, well-spoken man named Donald Martin; an old, raving man named Alva Hardwick; and a Mexican named Juan Martinez who claims to be unable to understand English. Martin says that he purchased the cattle from Drew, but that he received no bill of sale as the transaction occurred out on the range. Drew was to send the bill of sale to Martin at a later date. No one believes Martin, and the mob decides that the three men are to hang. It is clear to Martin and Davies that they had already made up their minds, no matter what was said. The hanging is postponed until dawn. Martin, as his last wish, writes a private letter to his wife. Martin asks Davies to deliver it. Davies is vehemently opposed to the lynching and is the only one in the crowd that Martin trusts. Davies reads the letter, and, hoping to save Martin's life, tries to have the others read the letter. When Martin learns of this, he becomes angry at Davies for the breach of his privacy and revealing his most intimate last thoughts intended only for his wife. Taking advantage of the distraction caused by the argument between Martin and Davies, the Mexican, Juan Martinez, tries to escape. He is shot in the leg. The riders then discover that Juan is able to speak "American." During his escape he used a pistol engraved with Kinkaid's name. This confirms the decision to lynch the three men. With Davies still trying to avert the lynching, a vote is taken on whether the men should be hanged or taken back to face justice in the town. Of the group, only five are opposed to the hanging, Tetley's son Gerald among them. When sunrise approaches, the condemned men are placed upon their horses with nooses around their necks. Tetley orders three people to tend to the horses, one of them his son Gerald. When the command is given, Gerald Tetley balks and the horse simply walks out from under Martin, leaving him to slowly strangle. Farnley shoots Martin as he hangs. In anger, Tetley pistol whips his son to the ground. After the lynching, the riders head back toward town, where they meet Sheriff Risley, Judge Tyler, Drew, and, much to their surprise, Lawrence Kinkaid, who it turns out is very much alive. Drew confirms that he'd sold the cattle to Martin, who was not a rustler. The infuriated judge declares he will have the entire mob--most of the men of the town--up on charges for murder. However, after silently staring down each member of the lynch mob one at a time, Sheriff Risley declares that he will pretend he saw nobody and knows nothing. "It'll have to be this way," he says to the protesting judge. Sheriff Risley then takes ten men with him to form a posse, who will go after the real rustlers. Once back in town, Tetley returns to his house and locks out his son. His son, horrified by his own participation in the lynching, his own weakness in being unable to stand up to his father, and shamed, goes into the barn and hangs himself. When Tetley hears of his son's death, Tetley takes his own life as well, by falling on his cavalry sword. Later, Davies confesses to Art that he feels he is responsible for the deaths of three innocent men. Because of the shame and guilt that plague him, Davies feels he is unable to face Martin’s widow, so he asks Drew to deliver the letter to her, as well as a ring Martin bade Davies to deliver. The novel ends with Gil saying "I'll be glad to get out of here." Art says "Yeh."
18474334	/m/04f341r	The Slave-girl from Jerusalem	Caroline Lawrence	2007	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Jonathan's sister, Miriam, is approached by Hepzibah, a girlhood friend from Jerusalem. Hepzibah is in serious trouble. Formerly a slave owned by the wealthy landowner Dives, she claims that she was manumitted (set free), but Dives has just died, and his heir, Nonius Celer, says he has no proof of her freedom and insists on keeping her as part of the estate. Miriam asks Flavia, Jonathan, Nubia, and Lupus, to help prove Hepzibah is free. But they have barely started investigating when the town is upset by a series of murders: first, Papillio, one of the town Decurions, and then Mercutor, a freedman on Dives's (now Celer's) estate. Before long, Celer brings charges against Hepzibah for murder. His theory is that the Decurion would have confirmed that she was never set free; and the freedman must have suspected that Dives didn't die of natural causes – Hepzibah killed him. She had a motive: Dives was a soldier (as was Celer's father) in the legions that sacked Jerusalem during the Great Revolt. Hepzibah is tried in the basilica; the children's old friend Pliny offers to help, but withdraws quickly when Celer retains the legendary orator Quintilian to present his case. The children turn to their other friend, aspiring lawyer Gaius Valerius Flaccus ("Floppy"). During the first day in court, however, things do not go well; Quintilian is polished and smooth, while Flaccus's speech comes off as rehearsed and insincere. The evidence against Hepzibah is strong: witnesses say that Dives wanted to marry her, but she ran away, screaming that she hated him. Hepzibah is forced to admit this is true. Moreover, the two murder victims were killed by someone unfamiliar with a sword, most likely a woman. Even worse, the children's old ally, local magistrate Marcus Artorius Bato, appears as a witness for Celer, and does everything possible to slander Hepzibah and her friends, including the children and every member of their family. Elsewhere, Celer's agents have been digging up dirt against the children to discourage them from helping Hepzibah, and Nubia is forced to go into hiding when it is revealed that her own manumission was not legally completed. Before he died, Papillio managed to whisper a clue to Nubia to "find the other six." At first, Flavia believes that this is a reference to the siege of Masada, of which there were only seven survivors, including Hepzibah. But then she realizes that, under Roman law, a will requires seven witnesses. The two murder victims must have been witnesses to Dives's real will, and they have to find the other five. On the second day, Flaccus rallies and gives a riveting oration, while Lupus and Jonathan search the town for the real will. But in the middle of the trial, Flavia solves the case, and whispers the solution to Flaccus, who is so overjoyed that he kisses her in full view of the gallery. What really happened was: Celer knew he had been cut out of Dives's will, so he killed Dives and forged a will, then tried to eliminate the seven witnesses to the real will. Hepzibah had to be silenced, because Celer suspected that she might be one of the seven, or even that Dives's real will left the estate to her. The proof? Flavia realizes that the wounds on Papillio and Mercutor's bodies show that they were both killed by a left-handed man – which also explains the killer's unfamiliarity with a sword, since left-handed men are not allowed to serve in the Roman army. Flaccus demonstrates, then points out that Celer is left-handed. For the finale, Lupus and Jonathan deliver the copy of Dives's real will, which Flaccus reads aloud to confirm that Celer had a motive: * the estate is left not to Celer, but to one of Dives's Jewish freedmen; * Hepzibah's freedom is confirmed, and she is left a sizable portion of the income (usufruct) from the estate; * a similarly sizable portion is left to the synagogue in Ostia; * in mockery, Dives leaves a pittance to the sycophants and fortune-hunters who have surrounded him all his life, and to his so-called friend, Celer, nothing except a coil of rope, "with which he may hang himself." The will also names the seven witnesses to it, including the murdered men. Trapped, Celer confesses, but angrily says that he had a better claim to the estate than anyone else: Dives built his fortune using a relic looted from the Temple of Jerusalem; Celer's father saved Dives's life, at the cost of his own, when they were both trapped by a fire in the Temple; in exchange, Dives promised to make the elder Celer's family his heirs, but selfishly changed his mind later. Hepzibah is acquitted, and several citizens step forward to bring suit against Celer. It is revealed that Bato received a large sum of money from Celer in exchange for his testimony. Quintilian, impressed by Flaccus's speech (and not at all abashed at having represented a murderer in court) offers Flaccus an apprenticeship with him in Rome. But the novel ends on a tragic note: Miriam dies in childbirth at the age of fifteen, giving birth to her twin sons.
18485314	/m/04f1nct	First Light	Geoffrey Wellum	2003-05-01		 The book opens with Wellum's interview for the Royal Air Force and his training. It then shifts to his participation in the Battle of Britain and to his participation in Operation Pedestal, flying planes to Malta off an aircraft carrier. It then closes with him being grounded, recovering from sinusitis, and then returning to duty as a test pilot.
18491744	/m/04f11tp	The Unwilling Warlord	Lawrence Watt-Evans		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 ~Plot outline description~ --> The Kingdom of Semma is on the verge of war but the VIII Hereditary Warlord has died. The King sent out a search party to the Hegemony of Ethshar where with the aid of magic they track down the heir to the title, the Unwilling IX Warlord Sterren. The story evolves as Sterren, along with assorted others hired to help in the war, is hauled off from his career as a low stakes gambler to Semma. One of his companions is Vond, a master Warlock who is feeling the Calling and who is seeking to get as far away from Aldagmor as he can because once a Warlock gives in to the Calling they are drawn to Aldagmor and are never seen again. Vond takes a liking to Sterren who was actually apprenticed as a Warlock for three days before being dismissed as unable to perform. Of course it is against the Guild law for any magician to practice in more than one field so Sterren was disqualified to take up any of the other studies. Not long after arriving in Semma, Vond discovers a second source of power for Warlockry and quickly becomes the most powerful magician in the Small Kingdoms.
18496711	/m/04f2ffr	Beyond Thirty	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1955	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel, set in the year 2137, was heavily influenced by the events of World War I. In the future world depicted in the novel, Europe has descended into barbarism while an isolationist and politically united Western Hemisphere remains sheltered from the destruction. The title Beyond Thirty refers to the 30th meridian west that inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere are forbidden to pass.
18499453	/m/04f54wy	Plague Ship	Jack Du Brul	2008-06-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The crew has just completed a top secret mission against Iran to steal a rocket torpedo that was illegally sold to them by the Russian Federation, when they come across a cruise ship adrift at sea. The passengers and crew were killed by a hemorrhagic fever, similar to Ebola, and, as Captain Juan Cabrillo tries to determine what happened, explosions rack the length of the ship. Barely able to escape with his own life and that of the liner's sole survivor, Cabrillo finds himself plunged into a mystery as intricate—and as perilous-as any he has ever known and pitted against a cult with monstrously lethal plans for human race—plans he may already be too late to stop.
18500691	/m/04f2ckn	Isle of Swords	Wayne Thomas Batson			 The fates of the crew of the William Wallace are dramatically altered when Anne, daughter of the awesome pirate Captain Declan Ross, finds a young man unconscious on a deserted island. The young boy had been nearly whipped to death and, when the kind crew of the William Wallace revives him, he has no memory at all of his past. He soon becomes friends with the crew members, particularly Anne. All they can determine of the boy's past is that, judging from his confident, daring sailing skills, he was once a pirate. They dub him Cat based on both his ability to survive his violent whipping and the instrument that probably did it: the cat o'nine tails. Later, when stopping briefly at a monastery, Captain Ross agrees to the request of the monks dwelling there: to take one of their number, Padre Dominguez, aboard and keep him safe. Their reason is the priceless map tattooed on Dominguez's back, a map leading to the Isle of Swords, where the legendary Treasure of Constantine awaits. The monks know that Bartholomew Thorne is after the great riches and, hence, after Dominguez. On their route to the Isle of Swords, the ship docks temporarily at an island that seems vaguely familiar to Cat. Though both he and Anne were ordered to stay aboard, Anne encourages her friend to come with her and sneak away from the ship for a time. Cat reluctantly agrees to the mutinous act, and they steal ashore to search for clues to his past. They discover an abandoned pirate stronghold that holds signs of a gruesome past, and, to Cat's horror, the place seems slightly familiar. While trying to flee the place he and Anne are captured by a group of British soldiers headed by Commodore Blake. They believe the two young pirates know something about the fort and the whereabouts of its former inhabitant: Bartholomew Thorne. Anne manages to escape and tells Declan of Cat's plight. Ross rallies a group of men to help him and, together with local friend Jacques St. Pierre, they heroically spring Cat from the island's British jail. Taking Jacques with them, the crew of the William Wallace sets off again. After being punished for their mutinous behavior, Cat and Anne sign the ship's articles and become official members of the crew. When Ross later stops at another island to pick up some final supplies, in his absence Thorne attacks the William Wallace. He burns the ship and takes Anne and Padre Dominguez as prisoner. When Ross discovers this he is devastated, but quickly harnesses his emotions into hard resolve to get Anne back. With the help of his remaining crew members, including Cat, he buys a ship to chase after Thorne. In the prison of one of Bartholomew's strongholds, two of Thorne's crewmen make the fatal error of whipping Dominguez without their captain's permission. Now that some of the map is destroyed, Thorne resorts to torturing the monk to make him explain what is broken on the map. When this fails, Bartholomew turns his torture instruments on Anne, and at this Dominguez breaks down and tells everything. Thorne, satisfied, leaves Padre in his cell to bleed to death and takes Anne with him, on to the Isle of Swords. Ross, close behind Thorne, is not close enough to save Dominguez. When he discovers Bartholomew's deserted fort, Padre is almost dead. The monk manages to assure Ross that Anne is still alive, and then Dominguez dies. In a final confrontation in the treasure chamber on the Isle of Swords, Thorne and Ross's crews face off. The battle ends when Thorne, after identifying with shock Cat as his son, gains the upper hand. He ties Cat, Ross, and Anne to pillars in the chamber, which is beginning to become unstable due to the eruption of a nearby volcano. The rest of Ross's crew is forced to join Thorne and he leads them down to his ships, where they begin loading treasure. Due to some secret help from Stede, Cat, Anne, and Ross escape, though the latter is injured. They escape to their ship and a sea battle begins. Ross's crew in the enemy ships sabotage them and then escape to Declan's side. Commodore Blake, too, joins the fray, having been carefully tipped off earlier by Ross of Thorne's whereabouts. Thorne is captured and Ross is invited to meet with the British for a parlay. At the meeting with the Commodore, Ross begins to work out a peaceable offer with Blake about offering a pardon to pirates who stop their ways. Suddenly, however, a vast tidal wave strikes the town, completely submerging the prison where Thorne was held. The Commodore, Declan and his group rush to the jails and find, to their horror, that Bartholomew has disappeared.
18517700	/m/026cgb_	The Boy Next Door	Sinclair Smith		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The main character in this novel is Melissa Fuller, but "You can call me Mel", as she says. Mel is a gossip columnist for the New York Journal and has just broken up with her longtime boyfriend, Aaron Spender. Her best friend, Nadine Wilcock, a food critic, is getting married to her boyfriend, Tony Salerno, who is a chef at the popular restaurant Fresche. Melissa also has many coworkers, including Dolly Vargas, an outlandish Style Editor who has her eyes on quite a few men. The book starts with Melissa being late to work after finding her neighbour, Mrs. Helen Friedlander, facedown on the carpet of her apartment after a brutal attack. Mel gets her to the hospital but has yet to solve the problem of walking Paco, Mrs. Friedlander's Great Dane. She calls upon Mrs. Friedlander's nephew, Max Friedlander, to come and take care of Paco and the two cats Tweedledum and Mr. Peepers. Max, who is on vacation with the supermodel Vivica, calls upon his millionaire friend John Trent, who is a crime reporter for the New York Chronicle, the Journals top competitor. John impersonates Max and moves into Max's Aunt Helen's apartment. John and Melissa get off to a good start after sharing mutual affections for not only each other, but other things as well. They go on a date but are stopped by Tweedledum's hospitalization. Afterwards, John kisses Mel over Chinese food, and gets mixed reactions from her as she jumps off to her apartment. John is troubled over whether he should sleep with Mel. He asks for advice from his family, including his grandmother, Genevieve Randolph Trent, his rich brother Jason Trent, and his sister-in-law, Stacy Trent. They each feel that he should go for it. He does, in fact, take Mel out for dinner and afterward, they have sex. They express their love for each other. Max's ex-girlfriend, Vivica the supermodel, later spoils their love by telling Mel the big secret. Mel lashes out at John and they split up. Meanwhile, Max replaces John in the apartment and takes over the pet jobs. It is expressed that he is interested in the thought of insulin injection killing his aunt (his aunt would bequeath him $12 million upon her death), which worries Mel and prompts her to forgive John and ask him for his help in saving Max's aunt. They wire John and catch Max with a murder intent. The book ends with John proposing to Mel, and she agreeing to marry him.
18519986	/m/04f2mcc	The Sunne in Splendour	Sharon Penman		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins in 1459 with Richard as a young boy, and ends in 1485 with his defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Penman rejects the common belief that Richard killed the "Princes in the Tower," the sons of his brother King Edward IV, and attributes their deaths to the overly ambitious Duke of Buckingham. When their father is killed, Richard's older brother Edward leads the House of York to victory and becomes king as Edward IV. Edward dies prematurely at age 40, and Richard becomes the Protector of the Realm for Edward's sons, Edward and Richard. When he learns of his brother's marriage to the boys' mother, Elizabeth Woodville, he calls it illegal because of a secret previous marriage, making Edward's children illegitimate making him the heir to the throne. When Elizabeth's brother, Anthony, Lord Rivers, engages in a plot to crown young Edward without Richard's knowledge, his protectorship is ended. Once crowned, Richard's son, Edward, and his wife, Anne, die. After two years as king, he faces his greatest challenge from an army of French mercenaries led by Tudor, the future King Henry VII. At Bosworth, betrayed by two of his nobles, he is killed a few feet from Henry.
18530416	/m/04f00ch	Under the Yoke	S. M. Stirling	1989	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Tanya von Shrakenberg established a plantation in formerly-French Touraine Province. Her slaves include Marya Sokolowska and Chantal Lefarge, formerly a Polish nun and a French Communist respectively. Fred Kustaa, agent for the Alliance secret service (the OSS), attempts to keep a resistance movement alive in Europe. He smuggles weapons to guerillas in Finland, and later attempts to smuggle the German professor Ernst Oerbach, who has vital knowledge on nuclear fusion. Marya Sokolowska is Fred's contact in this second mission. Chantal Lefarge meanwhile is raped by Tanya's husband, and impregnated with twins. Fred attempts to flee but things go wrong leading to the deaths of Fred, Marya, and Ernst. Chantal manages to escape to the USA on a submarine. In New York City, she gives birth to Fred and Marya Lefarge (named after her rescuers).
18530428	/m/04f3066	The Stone Dogs	S. M. Stirling	1990	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 During the cold war between the Alliance and the Domination, Frederic and Marya work for the OSS as spies and assassins. During the Draka conquest of India, Marya Lefarge is taken prisoner. She becomes a serf to Yolande Ingolfsson, who after torturing her repeatedly with a neural weapon, forces her to become a "brooder" (i.e. a surrogate mother) for her offspring, Gwendolyn. Yolande also swears vengeance on Fred Lefarge after he kills her lover, Myfanwy Venders, during the Indian Incident. As both superpowers expand into space, they prepare different doomsday weapons. The Alliance's weapon is a computer virus ("comp plague") secretly planted in Draka military computers by spies; the Draka's is a biological virus called the Stone Dogs that causes infected personnel to go insane. Yolande discovers Marya, who has contacted the OSS, planting the comp-plague and allows her to escape with knowledge of the Stone Dogs. This forces her uncle, Archon Eric von Shrakenberg, to use the weapon prematurely. The Draka win the resulting conflict; however, their incomplete victory leads to Eric negotiating an arrangement whereupon the Alliance is allowed to launch its generation ship "The New America" and the remaining Alliance survivors in space are granted limited Draka citizenship.
18535171	/m/04f31f1	Century	Fred Mustard Stewart	1981	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Seven-year-old Princess Syliva Maria Pia Angelica Toscanelli is called to the Mother Superior's office. She is told that her father, Prince Filiberto was killed in battle, making the princess an orphan. Private Augusts Dexter is on his way back from Savannah, Georgia, after delivering confidential papers from General Sherman when he decides to spend the night at a burned plantation house, in order to rest and loot the house. An old slave, offers him his mistress's jewels for fifty dollars. Augusts gives him thirty dollars and his father's gold watch. He plans to sell the jewellery and use them to fund his plans of building a bank in New York. Alice Dexter, the wife of Augustus, is vacationing in the Villa dell'Acqua after having struck up a friendship with Princess Sylvia. She meets Vittorio Spada, a servant child, with whom she takes a great liking to. Franco Spada, the older brother of Vittorio, and the gardener of the villa, bribes the local priest with a gold watch. Franco asks the priest to care for Vittorio, in the case of his death. The next morning, Princess Sylvia goes on her daily horse ride, when she encounters what appears to be an unconscious Franco. When she dismounts and attempts to wake him, Franco immediately holds her at gunpoint in the hopes of kidnapping her so that the royal family will give enough money to send him and Vittorio to America. Princess Sylvia laughs at him, and demands that he help her to mount her horse. Afterwards, she invites him to meet her at the library where she begins to teach him how to read and write. She is later warned by Alice of the suspicions that could possibly arise from her teaching Franco, particularly the suspicions of her husband. Princess Sylvia ignores it, and continues to teach him. Prince Giancarlo returns home after a bomb scare. He meets with a Mafia man to arrange for Franco's removal from his wife's presence. One night Franco is awoken and arrested for the rape and murder of a local girl. He is later arraigned and given a life-sentence. Princess Sylvia makes it her life goal to fight for his release, knowing that Prince Giancarlo, was likely behind the arrest. She writes to Alice explaining her woes and the fear for Vittorio's future. Alice, who is unable to produce children, decides to have Vittorio sent to America to become her son, against the wishes of Augustus. Franco is later transferred to the island of San Stefano to live out the remainder of his life sentence with hard labor. He becomes chained to Fillipo Pieri with whom he immediately bonds to. Vittorio is now known as Victor Dexter, the legally adopted son of Alice and Augustus Dexter. Augustus continues to treat him as a nuisance but slowly shows signs of warmth. He is called into Augustus's office to be pressured into attending the family Christmas party. Victor decides to ask Lucille Elliot, his cousin, but she is already attending with her boyfriend. At the Christmas party, he dances enthusiastically with an unattractive girl, with whom he was tricked into dancing with by his cousin Rodney. Lucille takes notice and asks Victor to dance with her. Shortly after, a drunk Rodney and Lucille's boyfriend gang up on Victor leading to a public fight. Afterwards, Victor leaves and travels to Little Italy. A prostitute approaches him, and he decides to give in to his sexual urges for the first time. The next day Victor returns home to inform Alice and Augustus that he is moving out, and living with an Italian family. He meets Gianni, the family's son, with whom he is asked to teach English to. When Victor returns to work at the bank, Augustus calls him to his office, to question the loan application of an Italian grocer. Victor informs him that he recommended the grocer to apply at their bank. The two argue after Augustus chooses to reject it based on his racist hatred of Italians. After the argument, Augustus approves the loan. A celebration with the local Italians ensues, and Gianni asks Victor to accompany him to a "club". The club turns out to be a gang led by Little Vinnie. Victor rejects the invitation to join and leaves. Alice is becoming weak due to tuberculosis. She celebrates her thirty-sixth birthday with her family. Victor meets up with Lucille and tells her that he loves her, and to marry him. She decides to date him. Upon their first date, he discovers that Howard Cantrell, the genial cashier of the bank is embezzling money. After confronting him, Howard runs and away and drowns himself. Augustus later praises Victor for his discovery, and finally attempts to connect with him. On his way back home, Victor runs into Gianni, Little Vinnie and their friend Marco. The three are drunk and decide to teach him a lesson. An accident ensues in which Marco is killed. Little Vinnie assures Victor before they leave, that Marco's death will not be forgotten. Later, Victor moves back home with Alice and Augustus. He later confesses the accident to Augustus, who accepts it calmly but secretly harbors mixed feelings regarding Victor's true nature. Alice dies ten days later from her illness. In Italy, Franco writes in his diary that Fillipo has died due to a heat stroke coupled with twelve years of back breaking work. He plans to escape the prison and prepares to do so, only to find that the newly widowed Princess Sylvia has managed to have him pardoned by the King, and released. She brings him back to the villa where he cleans and is offered the services of a prostitute. However, Franco rejects her, and confesses his love for the princess, who has secretly harbored feelings for Franco as well. The two becomes lovers, and he decides with her support to create a socialist newspaper, which eventually becomes successful. The eleven years after Alice's death, were happy ones for Victor. He married Lucille and fathered three children with her. Also during that period, he and Augustus shared a greater relationship, before Augustus's death from a cerebral hemorrhage. Three days after Augustus's funeral, the will was read. Victor learned that he had been left a large amount of money. Yet, the controlling shares of the Dexter Bank were left to Lucille. Eventually, Victor came to understand that it was Augustus's way of conveying to Victor, that he didn't completely trust him, after the night he learned that Victor killed a man. With Victor as the new president of the Dexter Bank, he immediately initiates great changes by reaching out to new classes of depositors &ndash; primarily the urban poor and immigrants. Little Vinnie learns of this change, and meets up with Victor at the bank to blackmail him into giving him a hundred thousand dollar loan. Victor fears that Little Vinnie will tell the media about Marco's death. He arranges to speak with the uncle of Julia Lombardini, his new secretary, due to his insights on Little Vinnie's criminal activities. Later, Little Vinnie and Gianni are arrested on charges of robbery. The two had been manipulated into committing a crime that Victor and an undercover police officer had planned. Lucille decides to use some of the income from the bank stock to build a mansion for the family. She hires Archie Winstead, an architect, to aid in the design and construction. Victor worries that she will drive the bank into bankruptcy with her spending. Tensions arise when she informs Victor that he can do nothing to stop her plans for the building, nor her plans for moving upwards in the social hierarchy. Eventually, Victor asks Lucille to sell him her stock. She refuses, because she enjoys the new power that she holds over him. On the day that Victor receives news of Little Vinnie's arrest, Lucille asks him to make love to her. He rejects her, making her realize that her once compliant husband is rebelling. During Christmas, Lucille is in London buying furniture for their home. Victor is invited to Julia's home to spend Christmas with her family. After dinner he and Julia walk along the beach, when he confesses that he is falling in love with her. She accepts his kiss before pushing him away and insisting that she be his secretary, rather than his mistress. Back at Julia's home, Victor asks her uncle who owns a local Italian newspaper for help in forcing Lucille to sell her stock. With the newspaper, they ask the Italian community to deposit their money into the Dexter Bank. Lucille returns home ecstatic with the deposits and increases in stock. She buys a new dress, only to discover that the new Italian depositors, are withdrawing their money. Lucille quickly realizes that Victor had planned the sudden deposits to force her to sell. They argue with Victor telling her that she has forced him into doing this for fear that she will sell the stock out of the family in order to climb the social ladder. She cries and asks Victor if he loves her. He admits that he does not know anymore. Afterwards, she tells him that she will sell the stock to him, leaving Victor to realize by doing so it may have cost him his marriage. Meanwhile, in Italy Franco is now a senator and living with Princess Sylvia and their twin sons. He uses his position to pressure the senate into launching a crusade against the Mafia. Sylvia worries for his safety and asks that he hire a bodyguard. Their son Tony, is under the tutelage of Cardinal dell'Acqua, in hopes of becoming a priest. The Cardinal presses Tony to encourage his parents to solidify their marriage by marrying. Despite Franco's continuous attack on the Church, the couple agree. Later, Tony's brother Fausto pressures him into coming along to La Rosina, the local brothel. Although Tony is initially resistant he agrees. He sleep with a woman for the first time. Later, he angrily admits to Fausto that he enjoyed it. The next day he informs his mother that he is going to be a priest. Back in America, Julia is now Victor's mistress despite her desire to be anything but. She argues with him to divorce Lucille. Victor continually insists that the timing is wrong despite his desire to be with her as well. Eventually, Victor and his family are aboard a ship to Italy where they have been invited to attend Franco and Sylvia's wedding. It will be the first time Victor has returned to Italy in thirty years. Yet, he cannot be happy while Julia is upset at him. That night, Victor and Lucille engage in an argument before Victor asks her for a divorce. She refuses and informs him that he is not rich enough for her to divorce him yet. On the third day of traveling, they reach Rome where Victor tearfully reunites with Franco. The two converse that night with Franco telling Victor, that it is apparent he is unhappily married. Franco and Sylvia are later married by Cardinal dell'Acqua where a grand celebration takes place afterwards. When the Dexter family returns home, Julia meets with Victor and tells him that while he has been away, she has been dating a wine importer and accepted his proposal in spite of the fact that she does not love him. Victor tells Julia that he has tried to divorce Lucille, but she will not agree. Julia does not relent and admits that she has grown to despise being his mistress. They depart by saying thank you for the last six years shared together. A week later Victor receives a cable from Sylvia informing him that Franco was run over by a car and killed. He retreats into a room to mourn his losses. In Rome, Fausto angrily tells his mother that his father's death was no accident. He is certain that the Mafia was involved. He promises to avenge his death. A woman named Elaine Fitzsimmons has approached Victor with the idea of writing a book about his life. He considers it, before inviting her to spend the weekend with his family at their weekend house on Sands Point. Before leaving the office, he meets with Morris David, a director, writer and producer of films. Morris asks Victor to aid him in financing his next film. Victor agrees under the condition of seeing Morris's other works. That night, he attends the movies and watches Morris's The Undressed Salad. He decides to finance it. Drew Dexter and his friends steal a speedboat with the intentions of returning it. They are caught and end up in jail for the night. Victor decides to have him work with the Sand Point road crews in order to learn his lesson. In the meantime, Barbara Dexter meets Morris who has come into Sand Points attempting to meet with her father. They find themselves amused by the differences in their personalities as they ride back to her home. Before leaving he tells her to contact him if she finds any good books that could possibly be made into films. Elaine has tea with Lucille who has been hiring her to seduce Victor. Lucille hopes that by entrapping Victor, she will receive a generous divorce settlement. However, Elaine finds herself turned off by Lucille's cold nature. She confides in Victor and the two become lovers. Unbeknownst to the two, Lucille is all too aware of their relationship and sends two photographers to their rooms. When he returns home, she triumphantly announces what she intends to reap from their divorce settlement. Before he leaves, she is startled to hear him say that he feels sorry for what he knows she will become. As he walks out she finds herself wishing he would come back. In Italy, Lieutenant Fausto and his men are captured during the Battle of Caporetto. The German captain who has caught him allows him to escape home where Princess Sylvia has transformed the palazzo into a hospital for wounded soldiers. Fausto returns and takes note of a pretty nurse named Nanda Montecatini. He asks his mother to introduce them. Yet, Fausto is not the only one to notice Nanda. Tony struggles with his role as a priest and his strong desires for Nanda. During Fausot's first date with Nanda, he mistakenly falls prey to the rumor that all Jewish girls are easy. He attempts to force Nanda to sleep with him. She knees him in the groin. He apologizes and the two agree to see each other later. Meanwhile, Tony confesses to Cardinal dell'Acqua his lustful thoughts of Nanda. Cardinal dell'Acqua insists that Tony must purge himself of such thoughts. Later, Fausto is traveling a taxi to rejoin his commanding officer. They are forced to stop due to a crow of people gathered around Benito Mussolini. He steps outside and finds himself entranced by the speaker. Morris David and Barbara Dexter are now married and living in Hollywood, where David has become a successful comedic film producer. They hold a great celebration filled with various Hollywood celebrities for their open house. Also in attendance, is the newly married Lucille, her young husband Archibald Pembroke and Lorna Dexter. During the party, Morris makes an announcement that he intends to create Russia, the most expensive dramatic film of its time, in order to document the suffering of the Russian Jews. While at the party Lorna meets Carl Maria von Gersdorff, a concert pianist. Though engaged, she finds herself attracted to him. While filming Russia, numerous difficulties, accidents and upsets cause the film to be delayed and even more costly. Barbara decides to fund the film so long as Morris changes the genre to comedy, which he ultimately agrees to after realizing that all of the accidents and dramatic effects have essentially created a comedy. Back in New York, Lorna visits Victor to inform him that she is marrying Carl. Although happy for her, Victor feels even lonelier knowing that his last daughter is now leaving him. On the night of the premiere of Russia, Morris and Barbara return home. The film is well received by fans and critics alike. However, as Morris professes his love for Barbara's faith in him, she slaps him. Morris eventually learns that Barbara had discovered that he had been sleeping with Laura Kaye, the female lead in the film. Soon after, Morris manages to charm Barbara into forgiving him. A week after the premiere, Lorna marries Carl. Eight months later they have a baby girl named Gabriella. ===Part VII: Church and State (1927 art VIII: A Christmas Present for Gabriella (1929&ndash;1934 art IX: Death of a Dream (1936 art X: Gabriella in Love (1940 art XI: War (1942 art XII: The Eternal City (1943&ndash;1944 art XIII: The Queen of Seventh Avenue (1950 art XIV: Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor(1959&ndash;1960)===
18535832	/m/04f1s0_	Foreigner	Robert J. Sawyer	1994-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the beginning of the novel, Afsan is accidentally run over by a chariot, causing severe crush injuries to his face. As Quintaglios can regenerate large amounts of tissue, Afsan heals, and in the process, his eyes, which were cut out by Yenalb in Far-Seer, also regenerate. However, Afsan does not regain his sight, despite having fully anatomically functional eyes. Believing suggestions that the issue may be psychological, he consults Mokleb, who has recently pioneered the new field of psychoanalysis. While this does not cause him to regain his sight, it does cure the chronic nightmares and insomnia he suffered after setting up the royal culling in Fossil Hunter. With the moon on which the Quintaglios live continuing its inward spiral towards the giant planet known as the "Face of God", the death of their world continues to put a forced acceleration of Quintaglio scientific advancement. Within the discovered Jijaki spacecraft, the Quintaglios accidentally trigger the formation of a tower of kiit – a blue nanotech material. Much to their astonishment, this tower extends all the way to the Lagrangian point above the moon's surface. Novato ventures upwards, making a monumental discovery: she discovers that there is a sort of surveillance camera system overlooking all of the worlds to which the "Watcher" (from Fossil Hunter) had the Jijaki transport life from Sol III (Earth). Staying to watch, she glimpses many life-forms, including red blob-like creatures, Quintaglios, and humans. She also notices that several cameras are returning black screens, unsettling her as to the possible meaning. Proceeding to explore the structure at the top of the tower, she accidentally opens an airlock, nearly killing her. While saved by the emergency systems, she realizes that the Quintaglio aviation advancements up to that point will not be sufficient to evacuate their moon, as there is no air in space on which winged aircraft can fly. Meanwhile, Toroca makes an equally astounding discovery – another sentient species of saurian, inhabiting a small archipelago on the other side of the moon from the continent known as Land. These dinosaurs are markedly different both in physiology and psychology to the Quintaglios; most significantly, they use tools and cook meat, are capable of lying, and have a reduced sexual dimorphism, the last of which causes all Quintaglios except for Toroca – who has no territorial instincts – to immediately enter dagamant. After Captain Keenir kills two of the "Others" in such a frenzy, Toroca attempts to negotiate, not altogether unsuccessfully. However, the Others eventually decide that the Quintaglios are a threat to their survival and decide to exterminate them, sending a huge fleet for Land. In a last-ditch attempt to settle the dispute, Afsan ventures to one of the ships, where he is shot. Overcoming their cultural aversion to tools, the Quintaglios retaliate, using their prototype aircraft as bomber planes, dropping a napalm-like substance on the enemy fleet, destroying it. Afsan does eventually regain his sight, but shortly thereafter dies from his wounds. Toroca, having rescued a child of the Others, raises it as his own. In an epilogue, the Quintaglios have successfully achieved spaceflight, and send a great many starships out to many planets, including at least one – the Dasheter – to Earth, the original homeworld. Other advancements have been made as well; for example, the Dasheter is navigated by an AI named Afsan, built to mimic the mannerisms of the long-dead astronomer.
18544333	/m/04g08gc	The Scrambled States of America Talent Show	Laurie Keller	2008	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 New York comes up with the idea of having all the states participate in a talent show. The states eagerly agree and prepare for their acts. However, Georgia has stage fright and is worried how her performance will go.
18545016	/m/04f_xqy	Arizona	Augustus Thomas			 Arizona tells the story of the affection between a young cavalryman and a rancher's daughter. The cavalryman is accused of theft, forced to resign, and then accused of murder. Sub-plots include indiscretions of the young wife of an older cavalry officer, a cavalry officer who will not support his illegitimate child, and the love between a vaquero and the daughter of a German cavalry sergeant. The play is set just before the Spanish-American War and at Aravaipa Ranch, in the Aravaipa Valley near Fort Grant, Arizona. ;Act I Evening, the interior of the adobe courtyard of Canby's ranch house. ;Act II Midnight, drawing-room of Colonel Bonham's quarters at Fort Grant. ;Act III Two months later, dining room at Aravaipa Ranch. ;Act IV Twenty minutes later, the interior of the adobe courtyard of Canby's ranch house.
18546523	/m/04f___v	Sports, Sin and Subversion	Evan X Hyde	2008-07-23	{"/m/01z02hx": "Sports", "/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Hyde takes as his point of departure his childhood in the downtown area of Belize City, discussing in effect the history of Belizean sports and sports personalities as he saw it from the late 1950's through to the present day. Hyde makes many references to famous sportspeople in Belize, as well as famous internationals who interacted with Belize and Belizeans: Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Muhammad Ali, as well as popular sports teams: San Francisco Giants, New York Yankees, Philadelphia 76ers and Chicago Cubs.
18547030	/m/04g1q3x	Gears of War: Aspho Fields	Karen Traviss	2008-10-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Gears of War: Ashpo Fields follows two storylines, constantly jumping between different time periods both before and after the events of Gears of War. One begins one week after the events of the first game, and the other flashes back to decades earlier, chronicling Marcus Fenix's childhood up to his involvement in Operation Leveler three years before E-Day. Flashing back to 26 years before the events of the first game, a 10-year-old Marcus Fenix arrives at Olafson Intermediate School. His quiet demeanor and rich background attract the attention of school bullies, but Carlos Santiago is quick to rise to his defense. Marcus quickly becomes fast friends with Carlos and his brother Dom, and spends most of his time with the Santiago family, becoming an 'honorary Santiago.' The Santiago family is in sharp contrast to Marcus's own, with the Fenix parents putting their work before their family as compared to the closeness of the Santiagos. During this time, Marcus's mother disappears, further dividing Marcus and his father. Four years before Emergence Day, Marcus decides to enlist in the COG army, following Carlos's path despite Adam Fenix's intentions for Marcus to join the COG as an officer after finishing his education. Dom, at 16, is expecting a child with girlfriend and future wife Maria. He also enlists, becoming a special forces commando. A year later, the COG begin planning Operation Leveler, a covert assault on an enemy research facility developing the Hammer of Dawn at Aspho Fields. Dom's squad is selected to infiltrate the base, while the COG army surround and protect the base from any attempt at attack. Although the battle is a pivotal event of the Pendulum Wars the war is also notable as important Gears perish during this time, such as Anya Stroud's mother, Major Helena Stroud, as well as Dom's brother, Carlos. Planning continues for the invasion of Aspho Point, with both then-Major Hoffman and Adam Fenix taking part in the plans for the operation. It is revealed that the area near the research facility has been reinforced albeit in the wrong position, but the COG continue with the covert operation. The commando squad led by Hoffman that includes Dom infiltrates the base and begins capturing personnel and data. At the same time, the COG land ashore north of Aspho Fields and establish themselves along Aspho Point to divert the Pellegrian forces from the COG forces' objectives. The covert mission's secrecy is compromised when a lone security guard in the research facility manages to evade capture and alert the nearby reinforcements. While the commandos struggle to complete their task, the main army comes under attack. During the present course of the novel, the story picks up one week after the Lightmass Bombing from the finale of the first game. During this time, Marcus and the rest of Delta Squad unexpectedly find Bernadette Mataki, a Gear that had been Marcus' superior during Operation Leveler. Her reappearance causes Dom to question Carlos' death again, asking Bernie for her version of the events resulting in the death of his brother, as Marcus has given him little information. However, she is equally reluctant. At the same time, a Locust attack is discovered to be aiming for the city of Jacinto's food supply at North Gate. A contingency plan is organized for the COG to transport the necessary equipment from North Gate to a secure location.
18550096	/m/04g18jd	Cross Country	James Patterson	2008-11-17	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 An African warlord known as the Tiger, aided by his crew of angry young men, horrifically murders author Eleanor 'Ellie' Cox and her entire family. Alex Cross and girlfriend Bree Stone go investigate, when Alex recalls Ellie had been his one time girlfriend, whom he had loved at one point. He is instantly terrified by this so much he gets no sleep, does no work for the case, and stays up late at night, sitting in his bed. He then figures out the Tiger's next murder, and arrives on time to stop the Tiger and his gang of kids, where most of the villains escape including the Tiger and most of his gang. After gaining access from the CIA he plans on going to Nigeria, where he hopes to find and stop the Tiger, using the knowledge based on the Tiger's whereabouts. After convincing a bitter Nanna and nervous Bree, he goes on a plaine trip to Nigeria, where he is annoyed by their customs. He is then kidnapped by 'cops' and put in jail, where his nose is broken, he is horribly injured, and starves as well as having to deal with no water. After nearly three days or more, he is bailed out by American Ian Flaherty who gives Cross advice to flee while he still can. He is then called by Bree who says there has been another murder by the Tiger. Instead of listening to Flaherty, Cross instead goes to Sudan, where he meets veteran, Moses, who feeds him and gives him water. Later that night, Cross, when alone by himself, is ambushed by the Tiger's gang, however, he escapes with Moses' help and buys a truck which he later gives to Moses. Father Bomata, a priest whom he met during the plaine ride to Nigeria, informs him his cousin, Addane Tansi, may be able to help Alex, who meets Addane, a reporter who had, unbeknowst to Alex, befriended Ellie, whom had gone to Nigeria some time before her death. Addane introduces Alex to her family and shares a kiss with him, which he refuses to think of because of Bree; Flaherty later reveals that the Tiger's real name is Abidemi Swonade. Alex and Addane go to a hobo camp where they are attacked by Janjaweed, ruthless men who rape, injure, and kill women and children. After barely escaping due to the 'Peacekeepers' who only do it so they gain no bad publicity, especially by Addane. After returning to Nigeria, Cross and Addane discover that Addane's family have been murdered. When trying to get closer, Cross and Addane are taken to jail by cops. Alex witnesses Addane get murdered by Tiger, after being raped, is released afterwards. Heading back to Washington, he is annoyed by all that has happened. After the course of events, many more murders have occurred. Heading home, he learns that Alex's family have been kidnapped by the Tiger, who then gives Alex coordinates to the hideout. Alex, Bree, and allie, John Sampson, go and defeat the Tiger's gang, while Alex follows Swonade (Tiger) whom nearly overpowers him, bit Alex kills the Tiger. Ian Flaherty is revealed to be working with Swonade and is arrested. Shortly afterward, his family are found; Alex instantly thinks the CIA might have worked with the Tiger. Alex calls upon Merrill Synder and Steven Millard, from the CIA, and arrests them, after discovering they and Flaherty were associated with Tiger. The book ends as Alex gets an alarming phone call from Kyle Craig, who has escaped from prison and wants revenge on Alex Cross, after the events in the previous book - and escaping from prison.
18551994	/m/04f_0xk	The Stranger Beside Me	Ann Rule	2001	{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 The first few chapters following the brief introduction about Bundy's birth and family describe Rule's friendship with Bundy, her first impressions of him, and her reluctance to consider the evidence that he might be responsible for the crimes of which he was accused. The events of the Chi Omega murders at Florida State University in January 1978 are written in third person, but not omnisciently, as the perpetrator is not identified as being Bundy, thus keeping the documentation of these events in-sync with the knowledge available to officers at the time. It is not until Bundy's capture and trials in Florida that Rule fully accepts that Bundy is a serial killer. She finds the idea shocking to the point that she "[runs] to the ladies room and throws up" An afterword, following Rule's lament for Bundy and his victims, describes the Kimberly Leach trial. The 1989 update outlines Bundy's execution, and the 2000 update touches on many things, including various women claiming to have encountered Bundy in the 70's, Robert Keppel's retirement from detective work and his employment at the University of Washington, and Bundy's possible involvement in the unsolved disappearance of Ann Marie Burr, a girl who disappeared in 1961 when Bundy was 14. A 2008 update of the book includes more stories from women who have contacted Rule with stories of their "near-miss" contacts with a man they believe was Ted Bundy, and also a 'Ted Bundy FAQ' section where Rule tries to answer the questions most frequently asked by readers, including the fact that he was not responsible for the 1973 murder of Kathy Merry Devine, for which he was long suspected. DNA testing linked that killing to an ex-con named William Cosden, who was subsequently tried and convicted of her murder.
18555159	/m/04f_l24	Alhaji				 The novel's central character is a sixteen year old boy, not named until the last page of the book. The boy does not like school, as he doesn't care for his teacher, Quasi. The boy's favorite companion is a horse, Alhaji. A businessman named Alhaji Kebba contacts the boy and wishes to buy and/or borrow the horse Alhaji. While the protagonist is reluctant to sell or loan him, the businessman is persistent and uses various methods to try to persuade him, including the use of a prostitute. Later, two agents introduce themselves to the boy. One is Quasi, who has been posing as a teacher. Another is Nicholls. The men have been tracking Alhaji Kebba's illegal activities. Quasi and Nicholls have a plan to catch Alhaji Kebba, and they recruit the protagonist to help them.
18558354	/m/04fzycr	Eva	Peter Dickinson	1988-10-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel opens as Eva wakes up in a hospital bed, paralyzed. Her mother assures her she will be fine, that the doctors will gradually reduce the paralysis. Eva guesses that her face has been badly scarred, but when she looks in a mirror, she sees the face of a chimpanzee. An experimental procedure has been used to transplant Eva's "neuron memory" into Kelly, a young chimp from her father's research facility. Eva learns to adapt to her new body, using a keyboard to simulate her voice. She has dreams of a forest she has never seen - that Kelly has never seen either - and imagines it comes from the chimpanzee unconscious. She realizes that she must accept the chimpanzee part of herself, which is easier for her as she has grown up with her father's chimps. The cost of the procedure has been met by a media company in return for broadcast rights. Eva is a big hit with the public and her family has to cope with massive media interest. The power of the 'shaper' companies is immense in a world where many people spend all day at home. 'Shaper' technology is a cross between television and virtual reality. Eva spends most of her time with humans, even going to school, but also spends time in the Reserve, where she learns to adapt to the chimpanzee social group. Her human understanding helps her to manipulate some of the situations and she becomes accepted by the others. One particularly intelligent chimp, Sniff, is intrigued by her. With the introduction of enthusiastic animal rights advocate Grog Kennedy the novel takes another turn. He convinces Eva that for the sake of the species the chimpanzees must return to the wild. Not only do they belong there, but Grog believes the human race is running out of steam and will before long no longer bother to care for animals in captivity. At this stage there are only small pockets of wilderness left, and most species have died out. Grog and Eva devise an ingenious plan to get the chimps to the island of St. Hilaire near Madagascar where Eva and Sniff lead the others in an escape. Her human knowledge is necessary to help the chimps learn the skills necessary to survive, which means that she must cut herself off from other humans. The novel ends twenty-four years later when Eva is near death, the human race is in decline and Eva imagines a future in which the descendants of her band of chimpanzees become the new dominant race.
18558694	/m/04g0rtf	The Silkie	A. E. van Vogt		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel has four sections, each consisting of a story previously published as part of a series. A young woman, eking out an existence with her father on a boat moored somewhere in Haiti, learns of a medical man with a possible secret of eternal youth. Suspecting a swindle, but keen to get close to any source of money, she joins the various elderly expatriates in a trek to Echo Island, where the supposed genius, Dr. Sawyer, is living. Instead she is confronted with a young man who emerges from swimming underwater, transforming from a fish-like form to human as he does so. He identifies himself as the product of Sawyer's work, and tell her that he and Sawyer need women to bear his children. The story concludes with him saying, "I'm a Silkie. The first Silkie." Nat Cemp, a Silkie travelling through space under his own power, is hailed by a ship full of Variants. These are the result of further experimentation on the Silkie genome. Each has Silkie abilities to some degree. This particular ship consists mostly of aquatic Variants. Cemp is conducted into the ship, shifting from his hard, bony, space-travelling form into his aquatic shape as he does so. Cemp meets a powerful boy aged about 10 who claims to be his son. Since Silkies have to return to water to breed every 9.5 years, and are not allowed to meet their children afterwards, the boy's claim is credible. He tells Cemp that he wishes to return to Earth to learn how to tame his unusual powers. Cemp agrees to this, even though it means he himself will not be allowed to return to Earth as he needs to, in order to complete another breeding cycle. However, after Cemp contacts Earth and then leaves the ship, the boy reveals himself to be a malevolent shape-shifting alien. Cemp returns to Earth clandestinely in order to see his wife Joanne, but finds that the alien has taken on her form and is waiting in his house. The alien, known as the Kibmadine, displays Silkie-like control over energy during the fight which occurs after Cemp discovers the deception. The alien flees. With the aid of the main computer at Silkie Authority, Cemp analyzes his own sense-impressions of the Kibmadine. The result is a picture of race which enters into an erotic-cannibalistic relationship with its victims, taking on their shapes and then consuming them. Armed with this, Cemp meets the Kibmadine and uses Logic of Levels to send it into an amplified memory of the previous victims. Taking on the shape of the former race, the alien then consumes itself. Silkies all across Earth are confronted by apparent doubles of themselves, who then flee as space-travelling Silkies. Cemp traces them to an asteroid making a close approach to the Sun, inside which is a mysterious power which both controls these new Silkies and also gives them abilities that Cemp and the Earth Silkies cannot match. On the asteroid is a complete population of Silkies, both male and female, who can take on any shape, unlike Earth Silkies. This discovery threatens the relationship between Silkies and humans, especially between Silkies and their wives. Apparently the story of Dr. Sawyer was a fraud, intended to allow Silkies to live on Earth after the asteroid first approached the Sun. On subsequent returns the space Silkies had to deal with the discovery of the Special People and the creation of Variants. The latest return is part of a long-term plan. However, just as the Earth authorities come to an agreement with the space Silkies and the unknown power behind them, a new force encloses the Earth and drags it from orbit. Cemp manages to escape, only to find the Earth now reduced in size and mounted as a trophy inside the asteroid. The being in the asteroid, known as the Glis, seems to come from an ancient time when the laws of nature were different. The Glis openly threatens to destroy all Silkies if Cemp moves against it, as the asteroid moves many light-years from the Sun. Cemp, however, finds the Logic of Levels key to the Glis's true nature and trips a feedback which forces it out of its state of retarded development, into the next phase. The Glis becomes a huge pink star, liberating thousands of planets from its collection to orbit around it. Many are dead, having been in storage for too long, but on the liberated Earth mere seconds have passed and all are well. Now humanity and the space Silkies must learn to co-exist on an Earth which is part of a huge new Solar System. While exploring the new planets, one of the Earth Silkies is killed by an unknown force. Cemp tries to investigate, but meets hostility from the other space Silkies. It is possible the victim recognized the nature of the attacker before dying, out of some ancient racial memory. Cemp eventually confronts a powerful alien called a Nijian, which seems to be able to manipulate time and space itself. Using one of the Glis's weapons, he survives the encounter, but Nijians begin kidnapping Silkies and Special People from Earth. Alarmingly, this means they learn the Logic of Levels, one of the few weapons which might work against them. Cemp learns that each Nijian lives alone on a planet, ruling its people like a god. Like the Glis, the Nijians seem to come from an ancient time, when time and space were plastic and could be ruled by Will. Pushing his shape-shifting abilities, Cemp is able to take on the form of the Nijians. Using Logic of Levels, he starts a sequence of reactions in them which infects each one and passes to another Nijian along the communications links they maintain. The self-destruction caused by this collapses reality itself, until Cemp's awareness is the only thing left in existence. Cemp realizes that, while in the form of a Nijian, he can imagine any kind of Universe and bring it into being. He decides to imagine one without the Nijians, the Glis or the Kibmadine. He restores the Earth to its place in orbit around the Sun, also decides to make all humans into Silkies, abolishing the divisions threatening to tear the Earth apart. He then enters this universe and re-joins his people, and especially his wife.
18568353	/m/04g0rfq	Relic of Empire	W. Michael Gear	1992-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Humanity is trapped in a "gravity well", the so-called Forbidden Borders. Two remaining human empires - the Regan Empire and the Divine Sassa - are poised to fight one last war for domination of Free Space. The Lord Commander, Staffa Kar Therma a.k.a. The Star Butcher, is a mercenary who leads an elite group of soldiers (the Companions). He has aligned himself to The Seddi Order, a former quasi-religious group in an effort to stop humanity from making itself extinct. The Regan Emperor has been assassinated, and Internal Security Minister Ily Takka has now taken control of the Regan Empire. She plots darkly, and has ordered little respected, but brilliant Division First (Commander) Sinklar Fist to return to Rega and become the leader of her military. The reader can expect shenanigans. She will attempt to rule all worlds under human control in Free Space ... but at what price?
18571091	/m/04g0d8k	Dimension of Miracles	Robert Sheckley			 Thanks to a computer error, Tom Carmody, an unlucky civil servant, wins the main prize of the Galactic Lottery. Being a human from the Earth, he doesn't even reach the level of the 32nd class creature, therefore he doesn't possess galactic status and shouldn't even be eligible. However, he obtains the Prize before the mistake is found out and is allowed to keep it. That's when his adventure begins, since, not being a space-traveling creature, he has no homing instinct that can guide him back to Earth, and so the galactic lottery organizers cannot transport him home. At the same time, his removal from his home environment has caused, by the 'universal law of predation', a predatory entity to spring in to existence that perpetually pursues and aims to destroy him. So Carmody is forced to be on the run, and with the help of his Prize meets several well-meaning (but usually not very competent) aliens that attempt to find where, when and which Earth he belongs on. He ends up transporting from Earth to Earth: different phases and realities of his planet, which of course, is not in the time or condition he expects it to be.
18574598	/m/04g2g2r	The Lost Fleet: Valiant	John G. Hemry	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Not sure what to expect after the heavy damage the Syndicate's inflicted on his fleet when they escaped 11 days before, John 'Black Jack' Geary discovers the system is practically undefended with nothing left behind but warships too badly damaged to participate in the fleet chasing him. The Alliance fleet quickly gains control of the system and lays a trap for the pursuing Syndicate Fleet. When the Syndicates arrive 5 hours later, they fall for the lure of unprotected auxiliaries and quickly get decimated by Geary's plan to explode the cores of the abandoned Syndic ships left in the system. When the surviving Syndicate leaders realize their huge pursuit fleet has been destroyed, they order the two remaining Syndic battleships guarding the hypernet jump gate to destroy it. The resulting explosion unleashes a large nova-like explosion that destroys practically everything in the system except for the Alliance fleet which only suffers minor damage. Meanwhile Geary and Victoria Rione end their relationship with Rione feeling that Geary actually is in love with Captain Tanya Desjani. Captain Geary jumps to the Branwyn Star System where he finds no threats to his fleet. Right before jumping to Wendig, he receives a message about a computer worm in the jump engines which would have left his ship and a few others trapped in jump space forever. Geary now realizes that his enemies within the Alliance fleet are getting desperate and are willing to take whatever means necessary to remove him and his supporters. In the Wendig Star System, they discover the Syndicates Leaders have abandoned the system, but left 500 civilians to die on the main planet as their life support fails. Believing no one should die like that, Captain Geary orders the civilians to be rescued. Before the shuttles arrive at the planet, another worm is discovered, this time targeting the weapons systems to have them destroy the civilians. The worm is blocked and the citizens of the Wendig Alpha surrender themselves to the Alliance fleet and heads towards the Cavalos jump point. Ten days later, in the Cavalos Star System, Captain Geary safely delivers the Wendig citizens and faces off against another fleet of Syndicate warships. Emerging victorious, he captures a Syndicate CEO and gets him to admit that there is an alien civilization on the other side of Syndic space. Geary lets the CEO go after making a deal with him about working together to end the war. Later Geary and Desjani admit to each other their feelings for each other but realize that as long as Geary is her commanding officer they can never be together. Desjani also fervently believes that Geary has a mission from the living stars themselves to end the war and he must complete this also before they can be together.
18577586	/m/04g1vv_	Two Bad Ants	Chris Van Allsburg	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The title characters, while journeying through a human home, decide to exploit a sugar bowl on their own rather than delivering the crystals to the colony's queen. They experience misadventures: they land in a cup of coffee, fall into a sink and are threatened by its garbage disposal unit, are ejected from a toaster, and are nearly electrocuted when they enter an electric outlet. Chastened, they rejoin a line of ants carrying sugar back to the colony.
18578566	/m/04f_bzg	3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows		2009-01-13	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 3 Willows follows the characters of Polly, Ama, and Jo as they deal with issues in their personal lives as well as the stress of growing up. Polly is an outcast with dreams of having a more glamorous life and to become a model like the grandmother she never met. However issues with her mother could threaten to overshadow her hopes. Ama is a smart girl originally from Ghana. Though she is not particularly outdoorsy, her scholarship lands her in wilderness camp in Wyoming. Jo has become quite popular during her time away from Ama and Polly, winning the attention of both the popular kids as well as a cute guy named Zach. When his girlfriend comes back to town, Jo attempts to win Zach back only to end up losing her job. With her parents separating, can she find out what's most important in the end?
18580673	/m/02zlm	Frankenstein	Mary Shelley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Frankenstein is written in the form of a frame story that starts with Captain Robert Walton writing letters to his sister. The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form, documenting a correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole and expand his scientific knowledge in hopes of achieving fame. During the voyage the crew spots a dog sled mastered by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same over-ambitiousness and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning. Victor begins by telling of his childhood. Born into a wealthy family in Geneva, he is encouraged to seek a greater understanding of the world around him through science. He grows up in a safe environment, surrounded by loving family and friends. When he is around 4 years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza, an orphan whose mother has just died (she is Victor's biological cousin in the first edition, but an adopted child with no blood relation in the 1831 edition). Victor has a possessive infatuation with Elizabeth. He has two younger brothers: Ernest and William. As a young boy, Victor is obsessed with studying outdated theories of science that focus on achieving natural wonders. He plans to attend the University of Ingolstadt in Germany. Weeks before his planned departure, his mother dies of scarlet fever. At university, he excels at chemistry and other sciences, and develops a secret technique to imbue inanimate bodies with life. The details of the monster's construction are left ambiguous, but Frankenstein finds himself forced to make the creature roughly eight feet tall because of the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human body. His creation, which he has hoped would be beautiful, is instead hideous, with dull yellow eyes, and a withered, translucent, yellowish skin that barely conceals the muscular system and blood vessels. After bringing his creation to life, Victor is repulsed by his work: he flees the room, and the monster disappears. Victor becomes ill from the experience. He is nursed back to health by his childhood friend, Henry Clerval. After a four-month recovery, he determines that he should return home when his brother William is found murdered. Upon arriving in Geneva, he sees the monster near the site of the murder, and becomes certain it is the killer. William's nanny, Justine, is hanged for the murder based on the discovery of William's locket in her pocket. Victor, though certain the monster is responsible, doubts anyone would believe him, and does not intervene. Ravaged by his grief and self-reproach, Victor retreats into the mountains to find peace. The monster approaches him, ignoring his threats and pleading with Victor to hear its tale. Intelligent and articulate, it tells Victor of its encounters with people, and how it had become afraid of them and spent a year living near a cottage, observing the DeLacey family living there and growing fond of them. Through observing the De Lacey family, the monster became educated and self-aware. It also discovered a lost satchel of books and learned to read. Seeing its reflection in a pool, it realized that its physical appearance is hideous compared to the humans it watches. Though it eventually approached the family with hope of becoming their fellow, they were frightened by its appearance and drove it off, and then left the residence permanently. The creature, in a fit of rage, burned the cottage and left. In its travels some time later, the monster saw a young girl tumble into a stream and rescued her from drowning. A man, seeing it with the child in its arms, pursued it and fired a gun, wounding it. Traveling to Geneva, it met a little boy — Victor's brother William - in the woods outside the town of Plainpalais. The monster hoped the boy was too young to fear deformity, but upon its approach, William cried out, threatening the monster with the weight of his family - the Frankensteins. The creature grabbed the boy by the throat to silence him, and strangled him. It is unclear from the text whether this was an accident on the monster's part or a deliberate murder, but in either case, the monster took this as its first act of vengeance against its creator. It removed a locket from the boy's body and placed it in the folds of the dress of a young woman — William's nanny, Justine — who had been sleeping in a barn nearby, assuming she would be accused of the murder. The monster concludes its story with a demand that Frankenstein create for it a female companion like itself. It argues that as a living thing, it has a right to happiness and that Victor, as its creator, has a duty to obey it, with the chilling words, "You are my creator, but I am your master. Obey!" It promises that if Victor grants its request, it and its mate will vanish into the wilderness of South America uninhabited by man, never to reappear. Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees and travels to England to do his work. He is accompanied by Clerval, but they separate in Scotland. Through their travels, Victor suspects that the monster is following him. Working on a second being on the Orkney Islands, he is plagued by premonitions of what his work might wreak, particularly as creating a mate for the creature might lead to the breeding of an entire race of monsters that could plague mankind. He destroys the unfinished example after he sees the monster looking through the window. The monster witnesses this and, confronting Victor, vows to be with Victor on his upcoming wedding night. The monster murders Clerval and leaves the corpse on an Irish beach, where Victor lands upon leaving the island. Victor is imprisoned for the murder of Clerval, and becomes seriously ill, suffering another mental breakdown in prison. After being acquitted, and with his health renewed, he returns home with his father. Once home, Victor marries his cousin Elizabeth and prepares for a fight to the death with the monster. Wrongly believing the monster's vowed revenge was for his own life, he asks Elizabeth to retire to her room for the night while he goes looking for the fiend. He searches the house and grounds, but the creature murders the secluded Elizabeth instead. Victor sees the monster at the window pointing at the corpse. Grief-stricken by the deaths of William, Justine, Clerval, and now Elizabeth, Victor's father dies. Victor vows to pursue the monster until one of them annihilates the other. After months of pursuit, the two end up in the Arctic Circle, near the North Pole. At the end of Victor's narrative, Captain Walton resumes the telling of the story. A few days after the vanishing of the creature, the ship becomes entombed in ice and Walton's crew insists on returning south once they are freed. In spite of a passionate speech from Frankenstein, encouraging the crew to push further north, Walton realizes that he must relent to his men's demands and agrees to head for home. Frankenstein dies shortly thereafter, not before imploring Captain Walton to carry his mission of vengeance to its completion. "The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious motives, I asked you to take up my unfinished work; and I renew this request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue." Walton discovers the monster on his ship, mourning over Frankenstein's body. Walton hears the monster's adamant justification for its vengeance as well as expressions of remorse. Frankenstein's death has not brought it peace. Rather, its crimes have increased its misery and alienation; it has found only its own emotional ruin in the destruction of its creator. It vows to exterminate itself on its own funeral pyre so that no others will ever know of its existence. Walton watches as it drifts away on an ice raft that is soon lost in darkness.
18584357	/m/04fzzpp	The Orphaned Anything's		2008-02-18	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 An “I'm up, what more do you want from me?” sticker hideously controls the back of Ayden Kosacov’s bedroom door. In his mind what started as a joke is slowly becoming his "glorious and underrated mantra". Ayden Kosacov is alive, and that is about all you can say. In the throes of a mundane and jejune life Ayden is slowly coming to the realization that if all his world is a stage then he wouldn’t care if he did or did not miss the final scenes. Through an almost "accidental" suicide attempt and the recovery that soon follows, Ayden learns that there is more to living than just being alive. Finding his way through diverse experiences and people he comes to terms with God, his family, and finally himself. The Orphaned Anything’s style of writing is in the likes of Denis Johnson (Jesus' Son) and Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and yet designed to give life lessons, encouragement, and hope like books by Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist) and Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz).
18585836	/m/04g089x	Marihuana	Cornell Woolrich		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 King Turner is in a deep funk after his wife, Eleanor, left him. He's fallen in with a pair of reprobates, Bill Evans and Wash Gordon, who are more interested in him as the butt of their jokes than as a friend. One night they drag King and a girl named Vinnie to a "ranch"—a sort of speakeasy where people smoke "grass". After getting high, King hallucinates that Vinnie is his ex-wife and begins chasing her around the room. Bill hands him a knife as a lark and tells him to "pin her down." King does exactly that and then flees the room. He finds a sleeping bouncer and steals the man's gun. Before he can leave the ranch, a couple police officers arrive, but King manages to sneak past them. King evades pursuit and hides out in the phone booth of a candy store. While there, a police officer enters and walks towards the store's proprietor to buy a numbers ticket, but King, paranoid from the marijuana, thinks the officer is there to arrest him, and responds by gunning the man down. King flees the store and heads to the hotel where his ex-wife is living. Eleanor agrees to talk with King in her room. After hearing his story, she tries to calm him down but with little effect. She convinces him to let her order some sandwiches and coffee from room service. On the phone, she tells the clerk that she wants her order fixed "just like the other night," referring to the fact that she'd had sleeping powder added to her coffee to help with insomnia. But before the order can arrive, King grows paranoid that Eleanor has betrayed him to the police. When he thinks room service is taking too long, King shoots Eleanor and flees the room. With nowhere else to go, he heads back to his apartment, where the police are waiting for him. King escapes onto the ledge of the building. Detective Spillane, the officer in charge of catching him, follows him out, but before he can save him, King jumps to his death. The book ends with a final twist—back in her apartment Vinnie is alive and well, telling a friend about the gag she, Bill and Wash had pulled on King. Bill had only handed King a butter knife, and when King stabbed her, Vinnie took a ketchup-soaked piece of bread and squeezed it to simulate blood. Vinnie is completely unaware of subsequent events and thinks the whole situation hilarious, though her friend has doubts. The story ends with Detective Spillane arriving and Vinnie's friend thinking, "He's either a bill collector or a plainclothesman ... or maybe a little of both."
18586476	/m/04g2h9f	The Black Swan				 Rosalie, a 50 year old widow, finds her youthful manner diminished by the "organic phenomena of her time of life," or menopause. She lives with her adult, but unmarried, daughter and an adolescent son all of who juxtapose youth and her "superannuated" purpose in life. The family hires a young, American-born man to tutor for her son. Rosalie is strongly attracted to him and is soon infatuated. Her abnegating daughter disapproves more strongly now of her still socializing mother. Then, seemingly miraculously, Rosalie's menopause reverses. Where her vitality, and sexual awareness would be in decline, she is in a heightened state of sexual awareness including the return of menstrual bleeding. Rosalie plans a family trip and declares her intentions and availability to the young man. They plan a liaison in the Rhine castle Schloss Benrath, but it never takes place, however. She is found dead of a hemorrhage caused by a metastatic tumor in her uterus. The surgeons' commentary include a discussion on the possible causes of Rosalie's newfound youth. Cancer was an obvious cause of her tumor, but one doctor supposes that it could have been the yearning for love and her altered or re-awakened erotic personality that stimulated her ovaries thereby causing the cancerous growth.
18586828	/m/04g1p59	Sign of the Cross	Chris Kuzneski	2006	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Jonathon Payne and David "D.J." Jones are recruited to find Dr. Charles Boyd, an archeologist who recently found the Catacombs of Orvieto, the safe haven for the popes of the Middle Ages. While Boyd avoids pursuit, a series of victims turn up dead, people who were tortured and crucified like Jesus Christ on his final day. All the incidents are interconnected, but it’s up to Payne and Jones to figure out the common thread and why they were selected to solve the puzzle.
18587676	/m/04f_kff	Clubbing				 Teenage clubber Charlotte Lottie is sentenced to spend summer on her grandparents' rural country club after an incident involving a fake ID. While working and helping in the club, she discovers a body. After getting involved with a local youth, the two discover that Lottie's grandmother was attempting to summon a demon. After thwarting her grandmother and the local ladies' plans, Lottie is sent to Asia to finish her sentence.
18587802	/m/04g0by6	Geisha in Rivalry				 The book Rivalry begins with the return of the story’s protagonist, Komayo, to the Geisha world. Having left the pleasure quarters to live in the countryside, she returns several years later because her husband has died, leaving her to fend for herself. She decides that she would rather relive her days as a geisha than to live as a peasant. Upon her return, she is reunited with a lover from her past, Yoshioka. The two had spent time together before Yoshioka left the country to study abroad. Yoshioka feels a rekindled desire for Komayo and calls for her often to spend much of her time with him attending various events. Soon he suggests that he should become her danna. Although Komayo would be glad to have the financial support, she shies away from his proposal. Komayo and Yoshioka go on a weeklong vacation to hot spring resorts, but Yoshioka has to leave early, unexpectedly. Komayo stays and runs into Segawa, a man whom she desires instantly. After a brief, but unforgettable affair, Komayo returns to Tokyo. At the Kabuki theater Yoshioka overhears a conversation about the love affair between Komayo and Segawa. He seeks his revenge by becoming involved with the geisha Kikuchiyo, a promiscuous geisha from Komayo’s okiya. As the novel progresses Komayo discovers that Yoshioka betrayed her. She’s hurt but pursues her relationship with Segawa with renewed determination. However, Segawa does not reciprocate the same devotion as Komayo. After a performance, Yoshioka’s first mistress, Rikiji, seeks her revenge on Komayo by introducing Segawa to a wealthy former geisha, Kimiryu. This new geisha’s financial situation pleases Segawa’s mother who never approved of Komayo. Hence, the novel concludes with Komayo alone. Both the man that offered to support her and the man she loved have left her for other geisha. The mother of her okiya dies and her husband, Old Gozan, recognizes his inability to continue the house on his own; he passes it on to Komayo. The story ends with Komayo suffering from the loss of both lovers, but also her realization that the geisha okiya means a lot to her. Gozan’s offer to pass on the okiya adds a glimmer of hope for Komayo with a life running the household herself.
18590451	/m/04g2c5b	The Memorandum	Václav Havel			 Josef Gross (Andrew Gross in the Wilson translation), a director of an unnamed organization, receives a memorandum written in Ptydepe, a constructed language, about an audit. He finds out that Ptydepe was created to get rid of similarities between words, such as fox and box, and emotional connexions. He tries to get someone to translate the memorandum for him, and gradually becomes opposed to the use of Ptydepe. Gross finally finds a reluctant secretary named Maria (Alice in the Wilson translation) who explains that, while she can translate the memorandum, she does not yet have a permit to do so. The next day, his deputy Jan Ballas (Max Balas in the Wilson translation) takes over Gross's job. Gross becomes a "staff watcher", someone who spies on the workers of the unnamed organization. Meanwhile, Maria gets fired for translating Gross's memorandum. The last few Ptydepe learners in the organization give up learning. After a while, Ballas gives his job back to Gross. Ptydepe is replaced with another language, Chorukor, one with very extreme similarities between words so as to make learning it easier, but finally it is decided to get back to the mother language. The play ends up with most of the characters going to lunch.
18591107	/m/04f_913	Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants		1991-05-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure"}	 The year is 1925 AD. Dr. Henry Jones Jr., better known as Indiana Jones, has secured his first teaching job as a professor in London University's archaeology department. It is here that Indy first meets a very attractive twenty-year-old Scottish girl by the name of Deirdre Campbell. She is the brightest student in his class but Indy quickly learns that her knowledge goes far past the contents of his lectures. In her thesis for the class, she quite seriously claims to have uncovered a golden scroll that proves of the true existence of Merlin the sorcerer. Intrigued by the thesis and by Deirdre herself, Indy once again takes up the bullwhip and fedora for an action-packed chase across Britain filled with magic, mystery, murder, a lesson in love and the threat of world domination.
18592505	/m/04g1n38	The Lost Fleet: Dauntless	John G. Hemry	2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 John 'Black Jack' Geary has recently been rescued from a 100-year-old escape pod with a damaged beacon. He was the commanding officer of an early battle in what has become a century-old war between the Syndicate Worlds and the Alliance. His last actions in that battle led to his immortalization as a hero of the Alliance people and fleet, which by the time of the book has become blown out of proportion. Still feeling weak from being frozen for 100 years, Geary arrives at what is supposed to be a decisive battle for the Alliance against the Syndicate. The battle turns out to be a trap and as the leaders of the fleet board a shuttle to negotiate surrender, the Admiral calls on Geary to lead the fleet if anything should happen to him. Geary, assuming that the old laws of war still apply and that nothing ill would happen to his leaders, accepts. Mere hours later after the Admiral is executed, he finds himself in command of 200 ships that have been badly beaten and are cut off from retreat. Having been frozen while the hypernet technology was invented Geary realizes that while the faster hypernet gates are blocked, the Syndicate ships have left the old jump points unguarded. Geary commands his ships to feint then run for those jump points. In the process he loses a ship commanded by his great nephew who stayed behind to buy time for the fleet to jump. After the first jump, Geary has to establish command over people who naturally assume they should be leading the fleet. With the last one hundred years of war having been one of severe attrition, few of the officers and crew surviving under him have any experience with tactics or chain of command. The whole fleet is run as a democracy with captains vying for votes in the decision-making process. Geary abolishes this practice and exerts his authority and in the end creates enemies within his own fleet. Despite all of this he manages to teach a majority of the fleet how to fight in complicated but powerful formations, how to respect authority and how to use the jump point system of travel. Cut off from the hypernet and on the run, Geary still manages to win victories against the Syndicates who are in pursuit. Decisively winning battle after battle Geary gains the trust and adoration of many of his subordinates, and angers his enemies. The story ends with the fleet still on the run, but working ever closer to home while evading and confronting the enemy as needed.
18595675	/m/04g252p	The Willow Tree	Hubert Selby, Jr.	1998	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist is a fifteen year old African American boy named Bobby who lives in an apartment in South Bronx with his mother and siblings. Despite his young age Bobby has intelligence that is advanced to most of the people around him. Bobby's Hispanic girlfriend Maria often spend time together and have plans for the upcoming summer. Bobby and Maria's lives are shattered when a vicious Hispanic street gang attack Bobby and Maria while the two were walking to school. Bobby and Maria are severely beaten and Maria is sent to the hospital suffering from near-fatal wounds. After Bobby is beaten he gets picked up by an old holocaust survivor named Moishe and an unlikely friendship between Bobby and Moishe begins. Maria, unable to cope with the mutilation of her face caused by the lye, commits suicide. We hear Moishe talking about his tragic story while he was in a concentration camp, while Bobby tells Moishe what has happened to him and Maria. Bobby states that deep in his mind, he still has a desperate need for revenge.
18598123	/m/04g148k	Half of a Yellow Sun	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	2007-01-15	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in Nigeria during the Nigerian-Biafran War in 1967-1970. The effect of the war is shown through the dynamic relationships of four people’s lives ranging from high-ranking political figures, a professor, a British citizen, and a houseboy. After the British left Nigeria, the lives of the main characters drastically changed and were torn apart by the ensuing civil war and decisions in their personal life. The book jumps between events that took place during the early 1960s and the late 1960s, when the war took place. In the early 1960s, the main characters are introduced: Ugwu, a 13-year-old village boy who moves in with Odenigbo, to work as his houseboy. Odenigbo frequently entertains intellectuals to discuss the political turmoil in Nigeria. Life changes for Ugwu when Odenigbo’s girlfriend, Olanna, moves in with them. Ugwu forms a strong bond with both of them, and is very loyal. Olanna has a twin sister, Kainene, a woman with a dry sense of humour, tired by the pompous company she is forced to keep. Her lover Richard is an Englishman who has come to Nigeria to study the arts. Jumping four years ahead, trouble is brewing between the Hausa and the Igbo people and hundreds of people die in the massacres, including Olanna's beloved auntie and uncle. A new republic,called Biafra, is created by the Igbo. As a result of the conflict, Olanna, Odenigbo, their daughter Baby and Ugwu are forced to flee Nsukka, which is the university town and the major intellectual hub of the new nation. They finally end up in the refugee town of Umuahia, where they suffer as a result of food shortages and the constant air raids and paranoid atmosphere. There are also allusions to a conflict between Olanna and Kainene, Richard and Kainene and Olanna and Odenigbo. When the novel jumps back to the early 1960s, we learn that Odenigbo slept with a village girl, who then had his baby. Olanna is furious at his betrayal, and sleeps with Richard in a moment of weakness. She goes back to Odenigbo and they take in his daughter, whom they call Baby, when her mother refuses her. Back during the war, and Olanna, Odenigbo, Baby and Ugwu are living with Kainene and Richard where Kainene is running a refugee camp. The situation is hopeless as they have no food or medicine. Kainene decides to trade across enemy lines, but does not return, even after the end of the war a few weeks later. The book ends ambiguously, with the reader not knowing if Kainene lives.
18599398	/m/04gs7p0	Date with Darkness	Donald Hamilton	1947		 Navy Lieutenant Philip Branch is on leave in New York City when he becomes snared in a glamour girl's schemes.
18600487	/m/04grmxb	The Spring Madness of Mr. Sermon				 At the age of 49, schoolmaster Sebastian Sermon has become vaguely dissatisfied with his life. Distant from his wealthy, ten-years-younger wife, Sybil, and teenage children, he works competently at his ill-paid job at a boys' preparatory school. One spring afternoon, he reacts to a schoolboy prank by repeatedly hitting the perpetrator. The headmaster hears the commotion and breaks things up. The headmaster is willing to hush things up, but Sermon defends himself, throws up his job and goes home. Rebuffed by his wife sexually (though she immediately regrets it), he takes a few belongings, and sets out, he knows not where. He takes a bus to London and then a train to the West Country. He meets up with a junk/antique dealer, Tapper, on the road and helps him out with his trade (for which Sermon proves to have quite a knack), and goes with him to the fictitious upscale Devon seaside resort of Kingsbay. Sermon captivates several women, first a barmaid, and then his Kingsbay landlady, Olga Boxall. When Sermon and Boxall take a bus excursion, and when the bus driver is injured, Sermon must drive the bus back to Kingsbay. That evening, the two have sex—and Boxall, who has long figured out that Sermon is married, leaves the next day on a trip to give the two time to figure out if they are right for each other, while renting her house to Sermon. Sermon saves a little girl from drowning, whose nanny (who is immediately discharged) is a young woman he's met before in his time at Kingsbay and in fact briefly taught at his school. The woman, Rachel Grey, proves to be the daughter of the headmaster of Barrowdene, a (fictitious) highly regarded public school near to Kingsbay. She brings him to the school to meet her father, and Sermon and Headmaster Fred Grey hit it off, while Sermon feels very much at home at the school. Upon his return from the school, Sermon finds a policeman waiting for him—his using a cheque to pay for the rent has alerted Sybil to his location. Sermon tells the policeman that he will mail a letter to his wife, which he does. Sermon's heroics bring him to the attention of the town authorities, who hire him to supervise the various public works by the shore, including the pay toilets, and he gets the Town Clerk to hire Rachel Grey to run the small zoo. Sermon's summer settles into a routine; days supervising foreshore operations with lunch with Rachel Grey, Saturdays at Barrowdene, Sunday running the antique shop. Things are rudely interrupted when Sermon, rescuing a woman from a pay toilet with a jammed lock, finds his wife and daughter staring at him. He has lunch with his wife, and says they need to make a new start in someplace like Kingsbay. Sybil is taken aback by Sermon's new confidence, but is unwilling to move from the London area. She returns home with her daughter. Rachel Grey, who observed part of the tête à tête between the spouses, later behaves sexually provocatively towards Sermon. Sermon, fearing the effect both on his relationship with her, and with Fred Grey, does not take up the invitation. Sermon returns to his routine, now and then teaching a class or two at Barrowdene. The Headmaster offers Sermon a job teaching at Barrowdene, and gives him time to think about it, telling Sermon that his prospects would be much brighter if he could persuade Sybil to join him. Boxall simplifies Sermon's romantic life somewhat by sending a letter indicating that she has become infatuated with another tourist, and later, offering to sell her house. He informs Sybil by phone. She is hostile to the idea, but willing to talk it over if Sermon comes home. In fact, she has a male friend over, Scott-James, who volunteers to go down to Kingsbay and seek evidence towards a divorce. Against her better judgment, Sybil agrees. Scott-James arrives, and takes photographs of Sermon and Rachel in Sermon's Kingsbay house together—for Sermon has had Rachel spend the night (in separate bedrooms) after the two were soaked after a flood at the zoo. When Scott-James introduces himself, and states the purpose of his business, Sermon punches him, and confiscates and burns the film, and, after Scott-James staggers off, Sermon has sex with Rachel. Tired of being ruled by events, Sermon sets out to his home and Sybil. Realizing that he owns the family home, Sermon sells the house to his mother in law, and accepts Boxall's offer to sell her house to him. Sermon confronts his wife and tells her this, and when the enraged Sybil stabs him with nail scissors, he (as suggested by his mother in law) spanks her. This clears the air, and the two reconcile, and consummate their renewed relationship. A short epilogue looks ahead to Sermon's fiftieth birthday. Sermon is immersed in his duties at Barrowdene. Sybil is pregnant with their third child. Fred Gray makes Sermon a housemaster, and Sybil is much more acquiescent to the prospect of moving from Kingsbay to the school grounds than she was about the first move.
18607207	/m/04gph7y	The Steel Mirror	Donald Hamilton	1948	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Chemist John Emmett hitches a ride with a beautiful woman who might be a murderer.
18607735	/m/04glm6n	Smoky Valley	Donald Hamilton	1954		 John Parrish doesn't run, even when the local land baron tries to burn him out of his home. The former soldier has to stay alive long enough to outwit his enemies.
18608719	/m/04gvxw3	The Klingon Gambit	Robert E. Vardeman	1981-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Klingon ship 'Terror' has recently murdered the innocent crew of a Vulcan science ship. The Enterprise is sent to meet this new threat, only to fall apart from within. Crew members throw immature temper tantrums. Orders are ignored. One by one, the crew are losing their minds.
18608787	/m/04ghdpx	The Covenant of the Crown		1981-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Spock, McCoy and Kailyn, the beautiful heir to the Shaddan throne are the only survivors of an Enterprise shuttle crash on the barren planet of Sigma 1212. The three must survive Klingon scouts and literally reclaim the Shaddan crown; else risk a Klingon territorial takeover.
18608863	/m/04gk9pq	The Prometheus Design		1982-03-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The U.S.S Enterprise arrives to assist the Helvans, who are being plagued with outbreaks of many types of violence. Soon Captain Kirk becomes mentally ill. He is removed from command and Commander Spock takes over, but it is not exactly an improvement. Spock's orders seem to be just as irrational and cruel.
18608969	/m/04gvsv4	The Abode of Life	G. Harry Stine	1982-04-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The citizens of the isolated planet Mercan cannot conceive of the existence of much past their home planet and their dangerous, flaring sun. The USS Enterprise, severely damaged, must somehow find a way to repair itself without exposing the Mercanians to societal concepts for which they are not yet ready. The Federation's 'Prime Directive' forbids interference in less advanced cultures.
18609155	/m/04gm0xl	Black Fire		1983-01-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 An explosion destroys the bridge of the Enterprise, killing trainee crewmembers and severely injuring the main crew. Spock ignores a chunk of metal in his spine to take command and figure out exactly what happened. His investigation soon leads him and the Enterprise's Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott to the discovery of the Tomarii, an alien race who reveres war and conflict. Despite the urging from Scott and others, Spock refuses to take the time to have his injuries treated. Scott and Spock meet with a small grouping of Romulans and Klingons, all three races having been attacked. The grouping is captured by the Tomarii, who use them in other conflicts. Meanwhile, Spock has been framed for the explosion and Captain Kirk, recovering from his own wounds, must clear his friend's name.
18609233	/m/04grdkb	Triangle		1983-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Both Captain Kirk and Commander Spock have fallen in love with the same woman, Federation Free Agent Sola Than. This situation ties into the galaxy threatening danger of the immense intelligence known as the 'Totality'.
18610497	/m/04gpg4w	Highways to a War	Christopher Koch	1995	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When legendary Australian war photographer Mike Langford goes missing in Khmer Rouge Cambodia in 1976, childhood friend Ray inherits his taped diaries. Using these, his own memories, and the recollections and records of others, Ray attempts to reconstruct Langford's life, to understand how he became a myth and why he went back into Cambodia. Eventually this will lead Ray to Thailand, to the Cambodian border and the truth about Langford's fate. Though different parts of Highways to a War are told from different perspectives, the overall result is a coherent narrative and a portrait of a life. It begins with Langford's childhood on a Tasmanian farm, his "novitiate" in Singapore, where he nearly starves before finding work, and his early experiences in Vietnam, in Saigon and in the Mekong Delta with the ARVN, the South Vietnamese army. The story then jumps from Saigon in 1966 to Phnom Penh in 1973. Among other dramatic episodes, Langford is captured by North Vietnamese troops and witnesses the fall of Saigon. The story is tense and gripping, but the centre remains Langford's development: he is a tough man, a survivor, but he is also an idealist and, when he loses his objectivity and becomes involved with the Free Khmer, his fate has a tragic inevitability to it. Its unity comes from its focus on Langford, but Highways to a War has plenty of other memorable characters. His fellow photographers and correspondents are a fascinatingly idiosyncratic bunch. And Langford's romantic idealisation of women makes them a key part of his life: in Australia, the daughter of a poor fruit-picking family and then the wife of his mentor, in Saigon an older French-Vietnamese woman, and in Phnom Penh the Cambodian woman whose fate becomes tied up with Langford's. Highways to a War also offers a vivid perspective on the course of the Second Indochina War. This, however, is implicit: Koch makes no attempt to write a history of that war (and readers without any background knowledge may find parts of the novel confusing), or to take sides in the debates over that history, and it is through personal stories and personal tragedies that he sheds light on the broader tragedies.
18612259	/m/04gkv9h	Web of the Romulans		1983-06-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A deadly virus causes desperate Romulans to invade Canara and incite a battle with the U.S.S. Enterprise. Captain Kirk, fully willing to get the antidote to the Romulans, has to deal with the ship's central computer. It has developed romantic feelings for Kirk himself.
18615381	/m/04gshz9	Journey Through a Small Planet	Emanuel Litvinoff	2008-08-07		 In "Journey Through a Small Planet" (1972), the writer Emanuel Litvinoff recalls his working-class Jewish childhood in the East End of London: a small cluster of streets right next to the city, but worlds apart in culture and spirit. With vivid intensity Litvinoff describes the overcrowded tenements of Brick Lane and Whitechapel, the smell of pickled herring and onion bread, the rattle of sewing machines and chatter in Yiddish. He also relates stories of his parents, who fled from Russia in 1914, his experiences at school and a brief flirtation with Communism. Unsentimental, vital and almost dream like, this is a masterly evocation of a long-vanished world.
18617803	/m/04gtj4x	Thunder and Lightnings	Jan Mark	1976-04	{"/m/026llv5": "Literary realism", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Andrew Mitchell moves to Tiler's Cottage in East Anglia. He goes to his new school and meets Victor Skelton in G.S. The two slowly become friends, and do things together like go to RAF Coltishall and see the aeroplanes, which are English Electric Lightnings. Victor is devastated when he discovers that his beloved Lightnings are to be replaced with Jaguars.
18619336	/m/04gsz4r	In Her Shoes	Jennifer Weiner	2002	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Rose and Maggie Feller are two young sisters who share little in common except their shoe size. Rose is the eldest and has been watching after Maggie since they were young children and their mother Caroline died in a car accident. They were raised by their father Michael (perpetually in mourning for Caroline) and stepmother Sydelle (who resents them both). Rose is a thirty-year old single, successful lawyer who struggles with her weight, and who resents her younger sister's beauty and success with men. Maggie, a twenty-eight year old who uses her beauty and charming nature to hide the obstacles she faces due to dyslexia and related learning difficulties, resents Rose's academic success and consequent wealth. While close as children, standardized testing sets them on different paths in high school: Rose's success on the exams leads to Princeton University and University of Pennsylvania Law School; Maggie's failure on the exams leads to a future path of drifting through a string of clerical jobs until she ends up homeless and jobless on Rose's couch. Both nearing the age of their mother when she died, Rose and Maggie each feel as if there is a vacuum in their lives which they are unable to fill. After wearing out her welcome with Rose (and being evicted from her father's home by her step mother), Maggie runs away, choosing to hide in Princeton University, which she had visited when Rose was a student. Finding shelter in a lower level of the library (with a fully equipped bathroom/shower), Maggie fills her free time doing something that she had avoided her entire life: reading. She also accepts a part-time position as a care-taker for a nearby elderly woman. Maggie is surprised to find that when reading in her own way at her own pace, she enjoys the activity and even begins to attend a poetry class. Eventually, however, a boy (whose wallet she had stolen) discovers her belongings in the library. Realizing her charade at Princeton is over, Maggie runs away. She travels to find her long-lost grandmother, whose old letters she had discovered previously in her father's desk. Rose, meanwhile, leaves her career in law in order to discover what life as a dog-walker would be like. She also begins to date Simon Stein. Grandma Ella, who had previously tried to track the girls via the Internet (only finding information on Rose) is delighted to see Maggie and invites her to stay in her home. Gradually Maggie, Ella, and eventually Rose reconcile with each other, and in the process come to terms with both the life and death of Caroline.
18619382	/m/04gnj46	Mutiny on the Enterprise	Robert E. Vardeman	1983-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A much needed peace mission to the Orion Arm is delayed when the Enterprise becomes damaged while in orbit around a living planet. Further problems arise when a mysterious female guest causes much of the crew to become hardline pacifists. Kirk must now lead the rebellion against his own crew.
18619744	/m/04gqh63	The Trellisane Confrontation		1984-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The planet Trellisane is the breeding ground for a three-way war. Captain Kirk ends up as a passenger on a Klingon warship. Doctor McCoy is stuck with cannibals. The USS Enterprise is surrounded by Romulans and the Neutral Zone is filled with more danger then ever.
18619825	/m/04gr6c9	Corona	Greg Bear	1984-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A sentient force of protostars, called 'Corona', endangers a team of Vulcan scientists. Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise arrive, their onboard situation complicated by a female reporter and a new computer system that can override Kirk's commands. The situation further degrades with it is learned the protostars might restart the entire universe.
18622554	/m/02x5vwq	My Enemy, My Ally	Diane Duane	1984-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The USS Enterprise is contacted by Ael i-Mhiessan t'Rllaillieu, a Romulan commander whom Captain Kirk has tangled with several times before. Ael has become disillusioned with the Romulan Empire's politics, and is especially concerned with a secret project she has discovered which seeks to use medical research on captured Vulcans to allow Romulans to develop extensive mental powers. She convinces her crew to cross the Neutral Zone into Federation space, where the Enterprise is patrolling with the Starships Constellation, Intrepid and the Denebian Defender-class battleship Inaieu. Ael hopes to convince Kirk to launch a strike against the medical facility. The Captain declines, but when the USS Intrepid mysteriously vanishes during an ion storm, Ael convinces him that the ship has been captured by Romulans and its Vulcan crew will become part of the project. This convinces Kirk to take the Enterprise with Ael's ship, Bloodwing, into Romulan space in a rescue mission. The plan involves Ael's ship pretending to capture the Enterprise, taking it back home through the Romulan defences on a course which will pass close to the research station. The plan proceeds smoothly until a double cross by Ael's son, Tafv threatens to leave the Enterprise genuinely captured. This attempt is overturned, the Intrepid and her crew rescued, the base destroyed, and the Enterprise duly heads back to Federation space. Ael and Kirk go their separate ways, he back to duty and she to a life of exile as a traitor. Before leaving she tells Kirk all of her names and their meaning, a highly symbolic act for a Romulan which is only done to "one closer than kin". She tells him her names will be purged from the records back home, rendering her essentially a non-person in Romulan eyes. On returning to Earth Kirk hangs a pennant with Ael's names on it in a remote valley, symbolically counteracting this status.
18622638	/m/04gn4rh	The Tears of the Singers	Melinda M. Snodgrass	1984-08-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise joins with the Klingons to investigate a spatial anomaly that has already swallowed one starship. Kirk suspects the problem has something to do with the nearby lifeform on Taygeta V, beings preyed upon for the jewels they secrete at the moment of their death. Unfortunately a Klingon officer has mutiny on his mind and the anomaly threatens to destroy all of known space.
18622812	/m/04gqxs6	The Vulcan Academy Murders	Jean Lorrah	1984-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy travel to a hospital facility on Vulcan to acquire treatment for a badly wounded Enterprise crew member. Kirk encounters Spock's mother, Amanda Grayson and soon becomes heavily involved in Spock's personal life. Then people begin to die. Kirk, trying to solve the case, is hampered by some Vulcan's belief that it would be too illogical for murder to be happening on their homeworld.
18622862	/m/04gmvk0	Uhura's Song	Janet Kagan	1985-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Lt. Uhura's friendship with a cat-like diplomat from Eeiauo becomes vital when a plague threatens the population and the Enterprise itself.
18626341	/m/04glslj	Shadow Lord	Laurence Yep	1985-03-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Prince Vikram of the planet Angira has spent some time studying on Earth. He plans to return home with new ways of changing his homeland. Accompanying him are Spock and Hikaru Sulu. Resistance comes from Angrias who hate new technology. The two Starfleet officers are swept up in the fighting and must use primitive weapons themselves to survive.
18626481	/m/04grsq_	Killing Time		1985-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A Romulan time-tampering experiment changes the past. Kirk is now a cynical ensign and Spock is the troubled captain of the ShiKahr, the alternate-universe version of the Enterprise. The two must work together to keep the Romulan incident from destroying the galaxy.
18626535	/m/04ghwnn	Dwellers in the Crucible	Margaret Wander Bonanno	1985-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Warrantors of peace are a new plan for preventing war among the major powers of known space. Basically hostages, a representative of each race would be killed if their people start a war. Unfortunately outside agents then take six warrantors; a situation that threatens to start a war. Hikaru Sulu of the USS Enterprise is sent off to rescue all six Warrantors.
18626580	/m/04gs3l3	Pawns and Symbols		1985-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jean Czerny, a Federation survivor of an earthquake, is suffering from amnesia. She becomes involved in a Klingon crisis, caused by an empire-wide famine. Captain Kirk and the Klingon Captain Kang clash over the potential war brewing and the fate of Jean.
18632107	/m/04gw79y	Prisoner of the Daleks			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The TARDIS arrives on the planet Hurala. Whilst investigating the deserted site the Doctor makes his way to the base's computer data core room, where he is locked inside by the computer along with the corpse of another person previously trapped inside. Five days later, the bounty hunter ship Wayfarer lands on the planet, its crew of five hoping to use the fuel stores to refuel their ship. They soon come across the TARDIS, and then hear a repeating tapping noise. One of them, called Scrum, realises that its a Morse code SOS message. They quickly trace it to the computer data core room where they find and free the Doctor, who has been sending it out with a spoon. On the insistence of the Doctor and another of the bounty hunters, Stella, the group investigate the computer's systems. They discover an override which, when activated, took control of the base and trapped the Doctor. Someone had used the computer to set a trap. Who did is soon answered when the group are attacked by a Dalek patrol. The Doctor and the bounty hunters, who now reveal that they kill Daleks for a living, race back to the Wayfarer, escape to the TARDIS being blocked by Daleks. They manage to take off but the Daleks blow up a refueling pump, sending debris flying into the ship through the open landing ramp, badly wounding Stella. As the crew attempt to put her into cryo-freeze a Dalek manages to get into the ship through an air-lock, and exterminates Stella. Before it can kill anyone else the Doctor freezes it using the emergency cryo-charge intended for Stella. With the Dalek immobilized Stella's body is also frozen and the crew make a course for Auros, Stella's home world. On the way, the Dalek's eye stalk is removed so that the crew can claim the prize-money for killing it, and it is placed in the cargo hold. Whilst talking with the crew the Doctor realizes that he's travelled back along the time line to before the Time War. At this point in history the Daleks are locked in a huge galactic war with Earth's first empire, at a moment when victory can go either way. The Doctor also learns more about the crew. Commanding the ship is Bowman, a former Earth trooper who has been fighting the Daleks for years and is a veteran of the Draconian Wars. Scrum is the crew's technician, Cuttin' Edge is a former Space Marine who was dishonorably discharged and Stella was the ship's Medic. The other crew member, Koral, is a humanoid alien whose planet and people of Red Sky Lost were destroyed by the Daleks. Upon arriving at Auros the Doctor and the crew discover that the planet's population are abandoning the planet as the Daleks are preparing to invade. Using the Osterhagen Principle, they detonate a series of nuclear bombs and destroy the planet to prevent it falling to the Daleks. The Doctor and Bowman realize that the Daleks will now ambush the retreating convoy. They try to warn them but before they can the Daleks arrive, forcing the convoy to surrender and destroying its flagship as a warning to the other ships. Furious at the loss of Stella and her home world, the crew of the Wayfarer decide to interrogate the captured Dalek. With the Doctor's reluctant help they disarm it, and then Koral uses its claws to open the casing. They then remove the creature inside and torture it, despite the Doctor's protests. Eventually they give up when the Dalek tells them nothing. After they've left the cargo hold, however, the Doctor returns and reveals to the dying Dalek who he is. The Dalek, amongst its predictable ranting, lets slip that the Daleks plan to 'eliminate all humanity from its very beginnings!' Eventually the Dalek dies, and the Doctor works out what it meant. He reveals to the crew that the Daleks must be looking for the Arkeon Threshold, a schism in time and space which, if opened, will give the Daleks access to the Time Vortex. Deciding that the Doctor is telling the truth, Bowman orders the crew to head for the remains of the planet Arkeon, which had been destroyed at the start of the war. When they arrive they find that the planet has been split in two, with the surviving half still retaining a breathable atmosphere. The Wayfarer lands and the Doctor and the crew disembark. Whilst looking round the devastated landscape they encounter dozens of mutated Arkeonites, devolved by the radiation fallout. They chase the crew to the very edge of the planet, where they are captured by Daleks. After destroying their weapons the Daleks force the Doctor and the crew onto a lift, which descends down the side of the planet towards they core. Here the Doctor discovers that the Daleks, far from searching for Arkeon, have been on the planet for years. They have constructed a huge underground base where thousands of human prisoners from Auros are mining the core, looking for the Threshold. The base also contains experimentation labs, and the largest Dalek Prison outside of Skaro. The Doctor and the crew are taken into the base where they are scanned for 'suitability'. Scrum is found to be of marginal use. Cuttin' Edge and Koral are both sentenced to work in the mines. When Bowman is scanned its is discovered that he is in fact 'Space Major Jon Bowman', the designer of Earth's defence system and high on the Dalek's list of wanted people, causing the commander to be alerted. Upon being told by the Command Dalek that Bowman will be taken for brain excoriation, which will kill him, Koral, who is secretly in love with Bowman, lashes out at the nearest Dalek. In retaliation the Daleks kill Scrum, the weakest member of the group. As the Daleks prepare to take Bowman away the Doctor stops them and whispers something to the Command Dalek. The Command Dalek, suddenly terrified, orders two of its minions to scan the Doctor. They immediately identity him and prepare to exterminate him. The Doctor persuades them to interrogate him first, however. News of the Doctor's capture is sent to the Supreme Dalek on Skaro, who sends the Primary Intelligence Unit, led by the Dalek Inquisitor General, to interrogate the Doctor. Cuttin' Edge and Koral are sent to work in the mines, replacing a group that is exterminated for being to slow. The Doctor is placed in the same cell as Bowman, who reveals to him that the Dalek Inquisitor General, called 'Dalek X' by the Earth authorities, is second in command to the Supreme Dalek and is described as being 'the Devil in Dalek form'. Dalek X accepts his Earth designation to cause fear. Dalek X arrives at Arkeon aboard the Exterminator, the Dalek Empire's most advanced ship, containing 500 Daleks and accompanied by a small fleet of Dalek saucers. Upon arrival Dalek X takes over command of the base, and exterminates one of the its mining Daleks for failing to meet its target. He then orders that every hour the weakest group of workers will be exterminated. Soon after the Doctor is brought to the interrogation room, where Dalek X measures the Doctor's capacity for physical pain using a mind probe, simply out of curiosity. Dalek X reveals he gave the order to destroy the Auros Ship. After an unknown length of time in pain the Doctor is released from the mind probe, and shown around the base by Dalek X. Meanwhile the Wayfarer is destroyed, and Bowman is taken to have his brain removed. Dalek X reveals to the Doctor that once the planetary core has been extracted, the Daleks will locate the Threshold using a Large Chronon Collider. They will then open it, access the time vortex and defeat the Time Lords. There is a chance that the collider won't work properly, however. To ensure success the Daleks need a control element; the Doctor's TARDIS. The Doctor refuse to co-operate, but the Daleks threaten to exterminate a woman and her daughter from Cuttin' Edge's and Koral's work force if he doesn't comply Eventually, the Doctor agrees to help, but under the condition that Cuttin' Edge, Koral and Bowman come with them to help him operate the TARDIS. The Daleks agree and Bowman is released, just before he is about to be killed. The Doctor tries to have the Woman and her daughter taken as well, but the Daleks refuse. The Exterminator and its escort fleet head for Hurala, with the Doctor, the surviving Wayfarer crew members and the Dalek Temporal Research Team on board. When they reach the TARDIS the Doctor claims to have lost the Key, saying it is in the room he was locked up in at the Dalek Base. As they head for it, Cuttin' Edge recognises the identification symbol on one of the Daleks. It is the same one that killed Scrum. He lashes out at it, knocking it down the steps, and is exterminated by Dalek X, though he pulls another Dalek into the ray, destroying it. The Doctor, Koral and Bowman use the distraction to escape into a maintenance duct. After escaping the Doctor reveals his plan. There is still enough astronic energy fuel on the planet to cause a huge explosion. If they can detonate it they can destroy Dalek X, the Temporal Research Team and the orbiting Dalek fleet. They make their way to a silo that still contains fuel, and the Doctor starts to rig it to explode. Dalek X, enraged by the Doctor's escape, catches up with them and prepares to exterminate the Doctor. Dalek X is attacked by Koral and Bowman, who eventually disable it and push it over the edge of the gantry they are standing on. The Doctor is nearly finished, but realises that he can't stop the safety override by remote control. Someone will have to stay behind and hold the manual override lever down until the silo reaches critical. Bowman volunteers to stay behind, refusing to leave despite protests from Koral. Eventually he knocks out the protesting Koral so that the Doctor can take her back to the TARDIS and safety. The Doctor and Koral make it into the TARDIS just as the Daleks arrive. In the silo Bowman holds the lever down as the Daleks approach, and as the whole base beings to shake the Daleks retreat. Finally the silo reaches critical mass and Bowman prepares to face death. He is saved at the last second by the Doctor, however, who materialises the TARDIS on the gantry. Bowman leaps into the TARDIS just as the Command Dalek tries to exterminate him. A second later the silo explodes, killing every Dalek on Hurala, as well as destroying the Exterminator and its escort fleet. Back on Earth Bowman and Koral report to the Earth authorities. They learn that the Dalek fleet is in complete disarray thanks to them, and a task force is preparing to attack the Dalek base on Arkeon and release the prisoners. The Doctor leaves as Bowman and Koral prepare to go and meet Bowman's parents. The Doctor travels to Hurala, where it has been sealed off for 5,000 years due the radiation fallout. There he finds Dalek X, badly damaged but still alive at the bottom of a pit. The Doctor informs it that Arkeon has been taken by the Earth forces, the Daleks are in full retreat on all fronts and that he has sealed off the Threshold. The radiation will help Dalek X keep alive, but by the time the Quarantine is over Dalek X will be dead. Regardless of the Doctor's revelations, Dalek X rants that the Daleks are never defeated. The Doctor replies that the Daleks are always defeated, because they can never accept that every other form of life in the Universe is better than the Daleks. To prove this the Doctor points out that there is no form of life in the Universe that would volunteer to be a Dalek. As the Doctor prepares to leave Dalek X vows to hunt him down. The Doctor responds by simply stating that he'll be waiting. The Doctor then finally departs Hurala, leaving Dalek X trapped on the planet, alone.
18633007	/m/04gvyks	Mindshadow	Jeanne Kalogridis	1986-01-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The peaceful planet of Aritani becomes the center of a Romulan plot to gain power. A Romulan double agent and a severely injured Spock further complicate the situation.
18633048	/m/04gkzwy	Crisis on Centaurus	Brad Ferguson	1986-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 On the planet Centaurus, the planetary capital of New Athens has been annihilated by a terrorist antimatter bomb. Millions are dead; because of a computer malfunction, the planetary defense system is preventing any rescue ships from approaching the planet. No subspace communication is possible, and traditional speed-of-light radio is blanketed with heavy static. Despite an emergency do-not-approach warning (known as Code 7-10, which went unheard), the first three relief ships, carrying hundreds of medical personnel, are destroyed by ground-to-air missiles as they assumed standard orbit. The USS Enterprise has been sent to assess the situation and offer what relief they can, but they are in need of help themselves as the ship is falling apart around them due to an unexplainable massive computer malfunction of their own; the transporter is made inoperable by the antimatter's residual tachyon radiation. The tragedy has a personal touch as well-- Doctor McCoy's daughter Joanna is among the missing, as well as friends and relatives of other crewmembers. While Spock attempts to disable the planetary defense computers, Captain Kirk, Mr. Sulu and attorney Samuel T. Cogley become involved with the terrorists when the terrorist leader contacts Cogley and ask him to represent them in Federation court. Despite his personal feelings, Kirk is determined that the terrorists will get a fair trial under Federation jurisdiction, but certain individuals in the patchwork government are equally determined that the terrorists will not leave Centaurus alive. While the surviving Centauran government engages in an all-out search for Kirk and party, Kirk learns that three more antimatter bombs are somewhere on the planet, and is forced to take refuge in the one place he cherishes most - the little cabin he had built in Garrovick Valley, on the river Farragut. On seeing the names 'Garrovick' and 'Farragut' on a map, Commander Spock correctly surmises the position of Kirk's buen retiro, and a scan from orbit reveals an army of government hovercars flitting around the cabin. By leveraging the Enterprise's crippled warp drive's controls, engineer Montgomery Scott and his second-in-command succeed in enabling the Enterprise to enter the atmosphere. The government hit squad's weapons are no match for a starship's phasers set on stun; the captured terrorists are taken in custody, but the secret of cheap antimatter synthesis is lost: its creator was the suicide bomber who set the first weapon off. In the epilogue, Spock traces the computer malfunction to a quantum black hole accidentally forming, against all odds, within the Enterprise in warp, drilling a hole straight through a good part of the computer memory banks.
18633107	/m/04gj0wp	Dreadnought!	Diane Carey	1986-05-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel begins with Lt. Piper (no first name), a native of Proxima Beta, taking the Kobayashi Maru simulation at Starfleet Academy. After her "ship" takes several hits and takes heavy damage, Lt. Piper uses an unusual method to issue commands to the ship's computer via handheld communicator. The technique results in the computer controlling the simulation crashing. The simulator's commander comments during the debriefing that she has come closer to checkmating the no-win scenario than any other command-line candidate, then tells her that she has been reassigned to the starship Enterprise by special request. Lt. Piper meets briefly with Brian Silayna, an Academy cadet in the engineering program and her friend and lover. Piper and Silayna had originally been assigned to the same ship, but with Piper's reassignment (which Silayna reveals was from Captain Kirk, who had been observing the Kobayashi Maru simulation) they wind up saying their goodbyes instead. Lt. Piper takes a shuttle to the Enterprise and reports to her assigned cabin. Here she meets her cabin-mates: a Gorn named Telosirizharcrede, a human from Earth named Judd "Scanner" Sandage, a humanoid from Altair Four named Merete AndrusTaurus, and a Vulcan named Sarda. It is revealed that Piper and Sarda have a history together which has generated animosity between them. Shortly thereafter, Lt. Piper is s summoned to the bridge where she finds out that a top-secret Federation vessel named Star Empire, first of a new class of heavily-weaponed and heavily-shielded dreadnought, has been stolen by persons unknown and that the Enterprise has been dispatched in pursuit. The head of the dreadnought project, Vice-Admiral Rittenhouse, is in pursuit as well aboard the destroyer Pompeii. She also finds out that the Star Empire has transmitted rendezvous coordinates to the Enterprise and that Piper's unique biocode would be needed to enable transmissions at the rendezvous point. After a conference, Piper retires to her cabin and has a conversation with AndrusTaurus, where it is revealed why Sarda and Piper have strained relations. Sarda has a talent for defensive weapons design, which Starfleet keeps developing for offensive uses as well and that is something which Vulcans considered immoral. Piper, in her ignorance, informed the Academy staff of Sarda's talents, which led to his great personal embarrassment and being ostracized by other Vulcans in Starfleet. Piper and AndrusTaurus do some research on Vulcan and decide to consult with a Vulcan embassy that specialized in human-Vulcan relationships. Upon arrival at the rendezvous point, the Enterprises finds Star Empire being attacked by four Klingon vessels. The Star Empire is apparently helpless, its crew unable to fight while the attacking Klingons inflict heavy damage the dreadnought with phaser fire. Enterprise moves in to help the cripped dreadnought, engaging the Klingons with phasers and photon torpedoes. One is damaged and retreats to hide in an asteroid field and hard fighting results in another Klingon ship being destroyed. However the Enterprise is also damaged in the fighting and is left facing long odds against the two remaining Klingon ships. Suddenly movement is detected in the asteroid field, and a second Star Empire appears. Engaging the damaged Klingon ships with heavy photon torpedoes, this unhurt Star Empire destroys two of them and sends the last one fleeing. Then it is revealed that the damaged Star Empire is in fact a sophisticated sensor projection when it dissolves from sight shortly thereafter, followed by the creation of five more dreadnought projections. This projection device is one of Sarda's weapons projects he finds embarrassing. Captain Kirk hails the Star Empire and after Piper's biocode is transmitted communication is established. To everybody's great surprise, Brian Silayna appears on the screen. He reads a message from Commander Paul Burch stating that they have seized the dreadnaught in the name of galactic civility and request an ambassadorial party of Kirk, Piper, and a Vulcan. Kirk refuses to comply and orders Piper arrested for conspiracy with terrorists, then cuts the transmission. Kirk orders the security guards to confine her to her quarters. In her quarters, Piper reflects on the situation and decides she had to get over to Star Empire to find out what was going on, why Silayna was on the dreadnought, and why he had never revealed his intentions to her. She tricks open the door by cutting the fire-alarm circuits to the bridge then triggering the heat sensor with a curling iron so that the safety features override the door lock and lets her out. Piper runs to the nearest transporter room and begins to activate the equipment with the intention of beaming over to Star Empire. Sarda finds her there, having deduced her intentions and location after discovering her missing from her quarters, and informs her that the Star Empire has moved out of transporter range. Instead they move to the hangar bay, open the doors, steal a 2-seat Arco-class light attack "sled", and head towards the Star Empire. During the flight, Sarda informs Piper that 3 more starships (Hood, Lincoln, and Potempkin) have been ordered by Admiral Rittenhouse to the location, and also accidentally reveals another benevolent invention that Starfleet weaponized and that he is embarrassed about. Their trip to Star Empire is cut short, however when the destroyer Pompeii drops out of warp, interceps the attack sled and uses a tractor beam to haul it inside its hangar bay. They meet Vice-Admiral Rittenhouse, who informs them that Commander Birch was his personal aide but had deteriorated until Rittenhouse believe he had become sociopathic. They discuss the situation of Piper and Sarda briefely with Captain Kirk, then Rittenhouse discusses the recent galactic political situation and hints at his desire to unite the various galactic governments under a common flag of peace. He then leave the conference room to attend to other duties. Piper, sensing something in the hints that Rittenhouse dropped, uses the destroyer's computer to access Starfleet and Federation organizational charts. She and Sarda find a disturbing pattern: men that had served with Rittenhouse over the years had been placed in high levels of the civilian and military leadership, including the captains of the three other starships en route. Believing Rittenhouse may be planning a military coup, Piper tries to contact the Enterprise, but Rittenhouse and Dr. Boma, a civilian scientist who also worked on the dreadnought project, stop her and order Piper and Sarda thrown in the destroyer's brig. While in the brig Piper and Sarda discuss Earth history and Piper explains the pattern of socialist political, military, and economic changes that Rittenhouse is repeating and how it would affect the Federation and its galactic neighbors. Suddenly, the power to the brig is briefly interrupted (by Boma, after he realizes Rittenhouse's plans for Star Empires crew), and Sarda acts quickly, throwing himself through the cell's doorway before the forcefield could re-activate. Sarda then turns off the forcefield and he and Piper flee the detention area. Moving through the destroyer, they spy the senior officers from the Enterprise and three other starthips walking through the Pompeii’s corridor into the conference room. Fearing for the safety of Kirk and his officers, Sarda and Piper move to the engineering section, bluff past the engineers there, and find an isolated spot from which to contact the Enterprise. Sarda contacts AndrusTaurus and Sandage, who transport over. With Sandage's help they manage to use the ship's intercom system to listen in on the meeting. During the meeting, Rittenhouse and his hand-picked captains square off against Kirk, with Rittenhouse advocating for harsh measures and indifferent to the potential deaths of the crew on Star Empire and Kirk advocating talks and negotiation with the Star Empire. Kirk becomes increasingly suspicious of Rittenhouse's unwillingness to let him contact the dreadnought's crew and disregard for their lives and balks. Rittenhouse finally orders security to arrest Kirk and his officers and lock them in a stateroom. Piper, Sarga, Sandage, and AndrusTaurus surprise and disable the guards outside the stateroom and an effort to free Kirk and his officers. Only they find that Kirk and his officers have disabled the guards inside their room and were planning to come and rescue them. They then sabotage the Pompeii’s phasers before meeting in the transporter room. Kirk, Spock, Scott, and McCoy beam back first; however before the others can the Pompeii’s crew disable the transporter. They move immediately to the hangar bay; however they have another encounter with a security team. A fight ensues, ending when AndrusTaurus grabs a guard's dropped phaser and shoots him with it. Against regulations the phaser is set to disintegrate instead of stun and the guard is vaporized. AndrusTaurus feels horrible guilt about her action as they continue to flee to the hangar deck. Once at the deck, they are confronted by Rittenhouse and more guards. Piper threatens to self-destruct the Arco attack sled they arrived on and take the destroyer with it. Rittenhouse, seeing that she's serious, withdraws from the deck and allows them to escape. The four of them escape in two attack sleds, skimming along the destroyer's hull to avoid being shot by the Pompeii’s phaser batteries. Piper destroys one phaser bank, then the two sleds vector away from the destroyer and towards the Star Empire before the Pompeii can bring more phasers to bear. They escape to the Star Empire and rush to the bridge. There they find a skeleton, untrained, largely bureaucratic crew that has only basic control over the ship's systems. Commander Burch explains the situation and they try to contact the Enterprise. Pompeii tries to jam the signal, and when that fails the destroyer opens fire on the ill-prepared Star Empire. A fierce battle then ensues. The Pompeiis phasers were disabled after the initial shots, leaving three other starships against Enterprise and Star Empire. Piper is able to unlock the ship's systems, giving Star Empire increased shielding and weapons ability to withstand the heavy attacks by the opposing starships. However Star Empire still takes significant damage, as Burch is not a combat commander and is reluctant to fire on other Federation vessels. Enterprise feigns fatal damage, luring Rittenhouse to order two other starships in to evacuate the Enterprise crew. Kirk then fires on the two starships, inflicting heavy damage and evening the odds. The two sides maneuver warily, until Commander Burch is disabled in an attack. Piper is forced to take command of Star Empire and begins to move aggressively, using the dreadnought's multiple phaser banks and newly-activated secondary shielding to dish out heavy hits on the opposing starships. With Rittenhouse's three starships considerably damaged, Piper bluffs their commanders by arming Star Empires heavy photon torpedoes. Rittenhouse's ships fall back, and Star Empire presses in. Rittenhouse, seeing that he no longer has the upper hand and that victory is out of reach, orders Pompeii to make a suicide run on Star Empire. Kirk, seeing this, moves in quickly and destroys Pompeii before she can collide with Star Empire. With Rittenhouse dead, the commanders of his three other starships surrender. The novel ends with medals being awarded to several of the crew and Piper gets promoted to Lieutenant Commander. Then Captain Kirk extends an offer to Piper to go sailing with him on his schooner.
18633166	/m/04gv6nj	Demons	Jeanne Kalogridis	1986-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A strange device found by a scientific expedition is taken to the planet Vulcan. It begins taking people over one by one, replacing them with malevolent power-hungry entities. The crew of the Enterprise, those not yet replaced, must contain this threat to Vulcan and defeat it. This story is continued in the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Possession, also by J.M. Dillard, where it is revealed the device is one of many.
18638433	/m/04gkybf	The Wizard in the Woods	Jean Ure	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with the wizard exam of second class jr. wizard Ben Muzzy. Things go awry when he accidentally teleports himself to a mysterious forest. There he meets twins named Gemma and Joel who pledge to help the lost wizard find his way back home.
18647651	/m/04gp_vl	Battlestations!	Diane Carey	1986-11-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Lt. Commander Piper is taking a vacation from her dealings with the traitorous Vice-Admiral during the events of the novel Dreadnought!. She is swept up in new problems when Captain Kirk is arrested for the theft of transwarp plans, a new form of transportation. Piper, Commander Spock, and Doctor McCoy attempt to get to the bottom of things.
18648058	/m/04gnlxk	Chain of Attack	Gene DeWeese	1987-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 While mapping gravitational anomalies, the USS Enterprise is hurled millions of light-years off course. They find themselves in a galaxy devastated by war and soon they are under attack by both warring fleets. Captain Kirk risks his ship and crew in order to stop the war and get home.
18648095	/m/04gjdvw	Deep Domain		1987-03-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Admiral Kirk and the Enterprise visit the ocean-world of Akkalla for diplomatic reasons. Soon Spock and Chekov become lost. A civil war and secrets under the water threaten the entire planet and the Enterprise.
18648779	/m/04gh84k	Dreams of the Raven		1987-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A mysterious distress call leads to the USS Enterprise being attacked by the same forces assaulting the other ship. Dozens of Enterprise crew members die in the attack and Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy is critically injured. Although the Doctor recovers from his injuries physically, mentally he has lost of all sense of his former identity. Kirk discovers it is much more difficult tracking down their new enemies without McCoy's always valued advice.
18648852	/m/04gr_fs	The Romulan Way	Peter Morwood	1987-08-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Deep-cover Federation spy Agent Terise LoBrutto has her carefully maintained life disrupted by an unpleasant discovery. The chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise, Doctor McCoy, has been captured. It's up to LoBrutto to rescue McCoy.
18649043	/m/04gq1cr	The IDIC Epidemic	Jean Lorrah	1988-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Vulcans, Humans, Klingons and countless other races live and work together on 'Vulcan Science Colony Nisus'. The colony becomes infected with a contagious disease. The threat to so many races threatens to cause interstellar war. The solution to both aspects of the problem seems to buried in the Vulcan saying 'Infinite diversity in infinite combinations'.
18650330	/m/04gwgc6	The Given Day	Dennis Lehane	2008-09-23	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Given Day is a historical novel set in Boston, Massachusetts and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The story has two main characters: Aiden "Danny" Coughlin, an ethnic Irish Boston Police patrolman, whose father is a prominent detective and captain in the department; and Luther Laurence, a talented African-American amateur baseball player from Columbus, Ohio. The novel starts at the end of World War I, when union organizing activities are high across the country. The year is 1918 and the BPD patrolmen have not been given a raise since 1905; they are working for below-poverty level wages. The Boston Social Club (BSC) is the fraternal organization of the BPD patrolmen and its members begin to discuss their grievances and possible actions. Due to his family's high status and reputation in the police department, Danny is reluctant to attend BSC meetings . His partner, Steve Coyle, is able to get him to attend some meetings where the BSC hopes to join the American Federation of Labor, a national union. BPD Captain Thomas Coughlin (Danny's father), FBI agent Rayme Finch, and a Department of Justice lawyer, the young J. Edgar Hoover, assign Danny to infiltrate the Roxbury Lettish Workingman's Society in promise of his detective's stripes. Danny is told that they may be collaborating with other radical cells to plan a national revolt on May Day. As Danny is undercover attending meetings with the Letts, he begins to identify with some of the principles they preach. He soon is elected as the vice president of the BSC. Luther Laurence and his pregnant wife, Lila, move from Columbus to Tulsa, Oklahoma to start a new life closer to some of her relatives in the Greenwood District. Laurence and his friend Jessie earn some extra money running numbers for a local bookie and gangster, Deacon Skinner Brocious. When Jessie gets caught skimming from Deacon, a deadly confrontation ensues. Laurence has to leave his wife in Tulsa and flees to Boston, where his uncle sets him up with the Giddreauxs, an African-American couple who lead the Boston chapter of the recently formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In Boston Laurence gets work as a handyman and servant in the home of police Captain Thomas Coughlin. While working for the Coughlins, Laurence becomes close friends with Nora O'Shea, an Irish immigrant and servant. She was taken in by the Coughlins five years earlier, when the captain found her shivering in the streets on Christmas Eve. Nora and Danny had a love affair, which ended when he discovered a dark secret from her past. She has become engaged to his younger brother, a rising attorney. Laurence is manipulated by Lieutenant Eddie McKenna, best friend to Captain Coughlin and godfather to Danny. Delving into Luther's past, McKenna has discovered that he is running from the deadly altercation in Tulsa. Laurence has been earning his board at the Giddreauxs' home by renovating an old building as the new NAACP headquarters in Boston. McKenna forces him to obtain NAACP membership information and to build a secret chamber in the new headquarters. When the Coughlins discover Nora's secret, she is banned from their household. Laurence is banned after being caught spending time with her and giving her food. Danny's involvement in the BSC takes him away from his family as well; his father is particularly opposed to Danny's new "radical and Bolshevik-like" views. Nora, Danny, and Luther form a close friendship when each finds that the others are the true friends to count on for dealing with their individual hardships. Nora is on her own just as she was five years ago, the men of the BPD are counting on Danny to lead them to a fair wage and working conditions, and Laurence is trying to escape McKenna's clutches and make it back to his wife and child. The story culminates in the historical Boston Police Strike, which is precipitated by the police commissioner's refusal to allow the nascent police union's right to affiliate with national labor organizations, or to exist. In the chaos of the strike, Laurence saves Danny's life. By this time Danny had reunited with and married Nora. Luther reconciles the difficult situation he had run from in Tulsa, and succeeds in returning there to join his wife and recently born child in the Greenwood District. (This is before the area was destroyed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot.)
18650871	/m/04gsg02	Timetrap		1988-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The USS Enterprise investigates the distress call of the Klingon ship 'The Mauler'. It is being assaulted by powerful energies. Despite their situation, the Klingon ship refuses all offers of help. However, Captain Kirk and two security officers beam aboard anyway. The Mauler is seemingly destroyed. Kirk, lacking his security team, finds himself seemingly one hundred years in the Klingon Empire's future.
18650947	/m/04gkl03	The Three-Minute Universe	Barbara Paul	1988-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Sackers, a race of physically repellent beings, murder an entire race to steal a powerful device. This device rips a hole in the fabric of space, bringing in a brand-new universe that threatens the old one.
18651008	/m/04gsnf8	Memory Prime	Garfield Reeves-Stevens	1988-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 'Memory Prime' is the name of a planet home to aritifical intelligences called 'Pathfinders'. These beings help Federation personnel sort the information coming from all over Federation territory. The planet is also the host to a current series of scientific award ceremonies. Unfortunately the visitors are being stalked by a killer and Spock is being accused of being part of a Vulcan terrorist cell, the Adepts of T'Pel.
18651058	/m/04gn43k	The Final Nexus	Gene DeWeese	1988-12-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In this sequel to Chain of Attack, the Enterprise must deal with an ancient series of warp-gates, now malfunctioning, that threatens to tear apart the galaxy.
18651232	/m/04gr1gy	Double, Double	Michael Jan Friedman	1989-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 One android has survived the destruction of Roger Korby and his scientific facilities. The robot creates another Captain Kirk and fools the U.S.S. Hood with a distress signal. The Hood's command crew is soon overtaken by murderous androids and Kirk himself is framed for murder. Kirk's android double takes over his command position on the Enterprise. The regular Kirk rallies the survivors of the Hood and his own crew into destroying the android's threat.
18651453	/m/04gtrbz	The Cry of the Onlies		1989-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Boaco Six is caught up in revolution and Captain Kirk is sent in to re-establish diplomatic ties. His efforts are going well until an experimental Federation ship destroys a Boacan vessel. In order to stop a war, Kirk attempts to track down and uncover the secrets of the Federation ship.
18651559	/m/04gjr0m	Rules of Engagement	Peter Morwood	1990-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 James T. Kirk is sent to assist in the evacuation of Federation personnel from the crisis-wracked planet of Dekkanar. He is ordered to only participate in the evacuation, not to even raise shields or fire weapons. The situation becomes complicated when Captain Kasak takes an experimental Klingon warship to the planet as well The novel also offers an alternate explanation, via Kasak's viewpoint, why Klingon's facial features have changed over the years.
18651605	/m/04grb5f	Pastors and Masters				 70-year-old Nicholas Herrick owns and heads a small day school for 10 to 14-year-old boys in the vicinity of his old alma mater but only spends ten minutes a day at the school to read prayers in the morning. The school is run by Charles Merry, a 50-year-old man without a degree who has become a schoolmaster out of financial necessity. Married with four young daughters, he does his best to keep up appearances and make parents believe&mdash;mainly on Herrick's behalf&mdash;that they are sending their sons to the right school, despite their inadequate equipment and their motley staff of only four: Merry himself; his wife Emily, a mother figure as unqualified to teach as her husband; Miss Basden, an unmarried middle-aged schoolmistress with slight feminist tendencies; and Mr Burgess, a very young and inexperienced graduate. Herrick, who lives together with his unmarried sister Emily, deplores the fact that he has never got round to writing a novel, which in his eyes would make him a "real author." As a matter of fact, his lack of talent has prevented him from ever having a book published, and so he keeps spending his days idling in his study. When a very old don dies and Herrick helps clear out his rooms he finds the typescript of a short novel which he believes the deceased academic has written. He steals it and claims that he has had a sudden inspiration for his long-due book. At about the same time Richard Bumpus, a don and a friend of the Herricks, announces his intention to publish a short novel, a complete rewriting of the book he authored as a young man and the only copy of which, as he found it of inferior quality and thus inadequate for publication, he asked William Masson, a friend and colleague, to bury in someone's grave. The night Herrick and Bumpus want to give a reading from their respective works in progress Masson surprises everyone by stating that he has actually kept, and read, Bumpus's youthful foray into fiction and that he is looking forward to comparing the two versions. When the two authors discover that their first sentences are identical it becomes clear that neither of them has written anything recently and that the only novel which ever existed is Bumpus's early work.
18651758	/m/04gv4qz	The Pandora Principle		1990-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A Romulan Bird Of Prey drifts over the Neutral Zone and into Federation territory. Admiral Kirk and the Enterprise take the ship back to Earth, unaware of the deadly force hiding inside. It is soon learned one way to battle the threat is via the traumatic childhood knowledge of Saavik and her birth planet of Hellguard.
18651841	/m/04gm28y	Doctor's Orders	Diane Duane	1990-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In response to good-natured complaints about his command style, Captain Kirk leaves Doctor McCoy in command of the Enterprise. Kirk beams down to the planet 'Flyspeck' in order to facilitate its acceptance into the Federation. Kirk soon vanishes, leaving McCoy stuck with the ship against his will; regulations forbid him from passing on command to Commander Spock. Kirk is nowhere to be found and to complicate matters, the Klingons show up, claiming to have a stake in 'Flyspeck' as well. It is later found that Kirk had been lost in the time stream, as one of Flyspeck's races do not fully live in linear time.
18654305	/m/04gr5r_	Enemy Unseen		1990-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Enterprise is assigned to carry a diplomatic mission, which is nothing new. Things start to go really wrong for this one. The Federation ambassador is an old 'flame' of Kirk's, who aggressively tries to rekindle their old romance. Another diplomat presents Kirk with three of his wives, a situation he is not comfortable with. Things take a turn for the worse when another diplomat is found killed.
18657203	/m/04gs4xh	The Swisser	Arthur Wilson			 The play is set in Lombardy, and bases its characters on actual historical figures of the early seventh century A.D. As the play opens, Lombard soldiers are fleeing the battlefield, after defeat by the forces of Ravenna. The Swiss mercenary Andrucho, the title character, observes and comments upon the action. The King of the Lombards enters with his courtiers, including his cowardly and defeated general Timentes. (Andrucho, an unsubtle soldier, functions as something like the King's jester; the King calls him his "bandog," and allows the Swiss to criticize the courtiers with little restraint.) The King demands that Timentes rally the troops and lead a counterattack. Andrucho and the old courtier Clephis speak up critically; Clephis in particular advises the King to replace Timentes with the banished nobleman Arioldus. The Lombard troops themselves cry out and demand Arioldus for their commander. The second scene shows Arioldus at his country estate; he lives in retirement with his books, glad to be away from the royal court. Andrucho comes to visit him; their conversation reveals that the Swiss mercenary is actually Aribert, another banished Lombard nobleman. Suddenly, courtiers begin arriving at Arioldus's house, assuring him of their (previously invisible) support and affection. Clearly, a change is in the wind. The King arrives, reverses Arioldus's banishment, and appoints him general of the army. The common troops are revitalized, and Arioldus wins a quick (offstage) victory over the army of Ravenna. Arioldus comes away from his victory with a young female captive called Eurinia. An honorable man, Arioldus protects the virtue of his captive; but she quickly becomes a focus of courtly gossip. When the King meets her, he is strongly taken with her beauty; Arioldus wants to shield Eurinia, but the King commands both of them to attend at his court. The early scenes in the play delineate two factions: the virtuous courtiers, Arioldus, Clephis, and Andrucho/Aribert, are opposed to the more amoral, cynical and self-interested courtiers, Antharis, Asprandus, and Iseas. Antharis and Clephis are old rivals; but their children, respectively son Alcidonus and daughter Selina, are in love and secretly married &mdash; though parental opposition forces them to conceal the fact and live apart. Timentes comes to be the play's clown substitute, its focus for broad humor. Andrucho and other courtiers convince Timentes that he is being pursued by an angry mob. To hide, Timentes climbs into an empty coffin, and faints from fear. He is thought dead, until he recovers consciousness and climbs back out of the coffin. Later, Timentes gains a false courage through drunkenness. At court, the King attempts to seduce Eurinia; she resists and stand upon her honor, but the hot-blooded King rapes her. Arioldus learns of the crime, and faces a conflict between his personal honor and his oath of loyalty to the King. The two men confront each other over the issue &mdash; but the King is penitent, in his own limited way; he tries to repair matters by arranging a marriage between Arioldus and his sister, the princess Panopia. Arioldus rejects this; and the King offers to fight him, even providing Arioldus a pardon in advance, in case Arioldus kills him. The two are about to fight, when the eavesdropping Andrucho interrupts and prevents them. The young lovers Alcidonus and Selina are surprised in a clandestine meeting, and separated by their fathers. Antharis, ignorant of their marriage, tries to squelch their affair by telling his son a giant lie &mdash; that Alcidonus is a bastard, and Selina's half-brother. The two lovers meet over this distressing news; believing themselves guilty of incest, they decide on suicide. They share a vial of poison. Their bodies are found, and Antharis is driven mad by the consequences of his deception. But the prudent Clephis, anticipating trouble, made sure that what the lovers thought was poison was only a sleeping potion. The lovers recover, though Antharis does not. The drama concludes in a large revelation scene, in which Arioldus, Andrucho, and Panopia manipulate the King into a positive resolution. A faked assassination attempt reminds the King that he is not invulnerable. Andrucho is revealed as Aribert, and redeemed from banishment; Eurinia is revealed as Aribert's daughter Eugenia. Years before, the King had loved Eugenia; now, he marries her as a way of repairing the damage he has done to her. Arioldus and Panopia also marry, yielding the requisite happy ending of the tragicomic form.
18657850	/m/04gp3s6	The Murder Book	Jonathan Kellerman	2002-01-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 During a surprise trip to Paris, Alex Delaware's girlfriend Robin announces that she will be working as part of the road crew for a rock music tour, while Alex remains at home. The split is hard on Alex, who uses the time to question his relationship with Robin as well as to start drinking heavily. An enigmatic package arrives at Alex's house containing a photo album of violent photographs depicting victims of various cases. Labeled the Murder Book, Alex's friend, homicide detective Milo Sturgis, inspects the book and is disturbed by the image of the body of a young woman, who had been tortured, strangled and dumped. The murder was one of Milo's first cases as a rookie homicide cop.
18673418	/m/04gqqym	The White Mary	Kira Salak	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 For years, war reporter Marika Vecera has risked her life, traveling to the world’s most dangerous places to offer a voice for the oppressed and suffering. But one day her luck nearly runs out: while covering the genocide in war-ravaged Congo, she is kidnapped by rebel soldiers and barely escapes with her life. Marika makes it home to Boston, where she left behind a burgeoning relationship with Seb, a psychologist who has offered her glimpses of a better world. But her chance for a loving, stable relationship with him is tested as she vows to continue her risky work at whatever cost. It isn’t long before Marika receives devastating news: Robert Lewis, a famous, Pulitzer-winning journalist, has committed suicide. She always deeply admired Lewis for his courageous reporting on behalf of the world’s forgotten. Wanting—needing—to understand what could have caused him to take his own life, she stops her magazine work to write his biography. In the course of doing her research, a curious letter arrives from a missionary who claims to have seen Lewis alive in a remote jungle in Papua New Guinea. The information shocks Marika. She wonders, What if Lewis isn’t really dead? Marika is determined to find out if the letter is true. She leaves Seb to embark on her hardest journey yet, through one of the most exotic and unknown places on earth. She must rely on the skills and wisdom of a mysterious witchdoctor, Tobo, who introduces her to a magical world ruled by demons and spirits, and governed by strict taboos. Marika’s quest for Robert Lewis carries her not only into the heart of New Guinea, but into the depths of the human soul. What she learns about herself—and life—will change her forever.
18676011	/m/04grdz3	The Two Jasons	Dave Stone			 A few years ago, Jason Kane created three clones of himself, to help him in a scam. Afterwards, the replicants went their separate ways, but now somebody is trying to kill them. Plagued by flashbacks of the original Jason's life, the surviving clones must join forces or die. Or possibly both.
18677377	/m/04gn33x	Double Trouble	Franklin W. Dixon	2008-11-25	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 From Chapters.ca: Teen superstar Justin Carraway is being stalked, and Frank and Joe must figure out who is the culprit. But the case only gets more complicated after they meet Justin's twin brother, Ryan.
18680164	/m/04gwgfm	Home Is the Hunter		1990-12-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Captain Kirk, commanding the USS Enterprise, gets into a fight with a Klingon ship concerning arguments over a primitive planet and its inhabitants. A mysterious, powerful entity named 'Weyland' stops the fight and decides to punish three of the Enterprise crew with their own history. Hikaru Sulu is sent to feudal Japan during a bloody power struggle. Scotty is sent to Scotland in the eighteenth century on the eve of revolt. Chekov is sent to his beloved homeland of Russia during World War 2. All three eventually make it back home to their right time and place, Sulu even managing to leave a literal mark on history with a carved message on a durable rock.
18682755	/m/04gtd16	Night Walker	Donald Hamilton	1954		 Navy Lt. David Young hitches a ride with a friendly stranger and wakes up in a hospital bed with a new name and a pretty young wife.
18686774	/m/04gtfng	Assignment:Murder	Donald Hamilton	1956	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Dr. James Gregory, a scientist at a secret laboratory in New Mexico, becomes a hunter's prey and his estranged wife is kidnapped.
18688329	/m/04gqjl3	Cherubs!				 On the trail of the murdering archangel Abaddon, the Cherubs get stuck in the mind-numbing mediocrity of Limbo - but not for long. They escape and make it to New York where, looking for signs and portents, they foil a mugging and are befriended by Mary, a sexy 'exotic dancer'. But she has a problem: her boss is Frankie Dracula and his vampire minions are out to kill her!
18689714	/m/04gqf5h	Mad River	Donald Hamilton	1956	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction"}	 Boyd Cohoon comes back from prison for the girl, her brother, who'd done the crime, the mine owner who'd gotten rich, and the sheriff, his boyhood friend.
18689981	/m/04gm47v	The Big Country	Donald Hamilton	1958	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction"}	 Maryland sea captain James McKay goes west to Texas, to claim his bride, and steps into a violent feud over land.
18690659	/m/04gnrp4	The Man From Santa Clara	Donald Hamilton	1960	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction"}	 Photographer Alexander Burdick drives his old mule-drawn army ambulance and a smooth-bore shotgun to the New Mexico Territory and into a range war.
18692300	/m/04gq178	The Valley-Westside War	Harry Turtledove	2008-07-08	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The Mendoza family, funded by a Crosstime Traffic grant and disguised as traders, return to postwar Earth to learn who initiated the hostilities. Liz Mendoza frequently visits the UCLA library to analyze the period books and magazines, searching for insight and reasons for the conflict. It is on her regular trips to the library that she meets Dan, a Valley soldier whom she initially considers dull and dumb. Dan, however, is not as unschooled and ignorant as Liz thinks, and, although he is attracted to her, he has his misgivings about the Mendozas. His suspicions are confirmed, and he blows their cover and causes them to return to their own time alternate, but not before he asks why someone from a different time, who has the knowledge and expertise to help Earth recover from its postwar havoc, does nothing.
18692875	/m/04gh7ct	My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir	Clarence Thomas	2007-10-01	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Thomas describes his life chronologically in My Grandfather's Son. The early parts of the book are dominated by the impact his grandfather had on him, while sections describing his adulthood up to his Supreme Court appointment focus on overcoming personal demons without describing too much about his career. Following his confirmation to the Court, Thomas centers his writing on professional, ideological and judicial issues. The themes of race and self reliance run throughout, and many issues are framed through one or both of those lenses. My Grandfather's Son begins with Thomas's birth, in rural Georgia in 1948, to Leola Anderson, a maid who earned $10 a week. Thomas's father abandoned the family when Thomas was a toddler. In first grade his mother sent him and his brother to live with his maternal grandfather, Myers Anderson, and his wife in Savannah. He attended all black schools until the 10th grade, when Anderson paid for Thomas to attend a Catholic boarding school. Thomas, who had been an altar boy throughout his childhood, wanted to be a priest and was one of only two black students at the school. Upon graduating, he began studying to be a priest, but gave up at the age of 19 because he was disappointed with the church's stance on racism. As a result of Thomas dropping out of school, his grandfather kicked him from the house. Thomas moved to Massachusetts to attend The College of the Holy Cross. One of his reasons for moving was the racism he had encountered as a child, and his belief that in the North he would be freed from that. Once there, he found Massachusetts to be plagued with latent racism and far from the utopia he had anticipated. Thomas excelled academically and socially at Holy Cross, graduating with honors and marrying his long term girlfriend Kathy Ambush shortly after. He also began drinking steadily, a problem that would haunt him in later years. Thomas attended Yale Law School, graduating in 1974. After Yale, Thomas took a job as an assistant district attorney under John Danforth, then Missouri's Attorney General. My Grandfather's Son continues to follow Thomas's career, including a stint at the legal department of Monsanto Company and his 1979 move to Washington, D.C. to work for then-Senator Danforth. Throughout this period Thomas made an intellectual journey from libertarian to conservative, culminating in changing his party registration to Republican in 1980. In 1981 he joined the Reagan Administration's Department of Education as its Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Civil Rights, and in 1982 he was promoted to head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The main focus, however, is on Thomas's financial and emotional struggles. Although he says he was never an alcoholic, Thomas says that in the late 1970s and early 1980s his drinking became worse, and that he often drank while home alone. These confessions were the first time there had been any public suggestion that Thomas was a heavy drinker. Burdened by student loans and subsisting on low government salaries, Thomas had a difficult time financially, almost getting evicted from his apartment several times. In one incident, a car rental agent cut up Thomas's credit card in front of him. After falling out of love with his first wife, Thomas worried about the morality of leaving her and his child. Throughout most of this period Thomas was still estranged from his grandfather, and describes being haunted by the memory of Anderson kicking him out of the house. The two reunited briefly in 1983 when his step-grandmother was in the hospital, having a meaningful conversation and embracing at the end. The new found closeness was short-lived, and Anderson died the next month of a stroke before Thomas had another chance to see him. Around this point, Thomas describes himself regaining control of his life. In 1983 he quit drinking cold-turkey. Approximately a third of My Grandfather's Son is spent discussing Thomas's nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court. My Grandfather's Son goes through the hearings day by day, with Thomas defending himself against his accusers and criticizing their motives. Thomas says he learned of the accusations of sexual harassment by Hill over the weekend after the first five days of the hearings when a pair of FBI agents visited his home.
18693031	/m/04gntqt	Ke Keno Kibhabe	Qazi Anwar Hussain	1989		 Someone is stealing US$ five million in front of everyone's eyes and after letting everyone know of the theft from Mido Steel Consortium. But no one knows 'Who' is doing this, 'Why' is the computer doing hiccups, and 'How' can the money be consumed by the thief or thieves. So baroness Lina calls up Masud Rana to solve the mystery. Will he be able to uncover the criminals? or will he be killed by the criminals?
18695021	/m/04gjm7z	Texas Fever	Donald Hamilton	1960	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction"}	 Three years after the Civil War, the McAuliffe family drives a herd of cattle north from Texas to Kansas and into another kind of war.
18695356	/m/04gnvnq	In High Places	Harry Turtledove	2005-12-27	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The book focuses on the relations between Christians and Muslims, as well as slaves and masters, in the medieval society through the eyes of Annette, an eighteen year old time traveller from the late 21st century who poses as the daughter of a Muslim merchant and who is captured and sold into slavery. It is also the first book in the series to concentrate more upon the late 21st century origins of the Crosstime Traffic organization.
18695907	/m/04gjqbz	Gunpowder Empire	Harry Turtledove	2003-12-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 In the novel, Jeremy and Amanda Solter are two teenagers living in the late 21st century. Their parents work for Crosstime Traffic, a trading company using time travel to go back and forth from parallel versions of Earth to trade for resources to help sustain their version of Earth. One summer, the children work with their parents, going to Polisso - in our timeline a village in Romania with ancient ruins nearby, in the alternate timeline a major city of a Roman Empire that never collapsed. In the intervening centuries, the Romans advanced to the extent of inventing gunpowder - hence the title of the book - putting their armies on about 17th Century level. By 2100 they had not, however, gone through an industrial revolution and much of their social institutions, in particular slavery, remain as much as they were in earlier Roman times. North of the Roman Empire, a rival Lietuvan Empire has grown up, with occasional wars breaking out between the two. It is said that most of these wars would end in an exchange of border provinces. Romans consider the Lietuvans as "barbarians", though in fact the two have much the same level of technology and culture. When the youngsters' mother becomes sick, their father takes her back to their home time for treatment, expecting to come back in a few days - but the cross-time travel equipment suffers a break in link, stranding Jeremy and Amanda in Polisso just as the Lietuvan Army crosses the border, placing Polisso under siege. At the same time, the Roman authorities begin to grow suspicious of their trade mission and the origin of such items as watches and Swiss army knives which they offer for sale and which no artisan in the Empire can match.
18696093	/m/04gs6ns	Personal Demon	Kelley Armstrong	2008-03-25	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The initial story is mainly narrated by Hope Adams an Expiso half-demon with other events being narrated by Lucas Cortez, a sorcerer. In the latter parts of the story the narrating is more evenly distributed between the two characters. Chapters narrated by Hope are given chapter titles while those narrated by Lucas are given chapter numbers. Hope Adams works as a tabloid journalist for the fictional newspaper True News and also for the inter-racial council. Hope's Expiso half-demon nature gives her the ability to sense other supernatural's powers, detect chaos and experience visions of chaotic events. While investigating a story she is approached by Benicio Cortez, CEO of the Cortez cabal and father of Lucas Cortez, with an offer of a job which would repay Hope's debt to him. A rebel gang of young supernaturals led by Guy Benoit has come to notice of the Cortez cabal. The job offer is simple - to investigate the rebel gang. But the bigger worry is if Hope will be able to keep her instinct and lust for chaos in check. As Hope discovers more about the gang and starts a relationship with a particularly charismatic member Jaz, her ex lover, the werewolf thief Karl Marsten, arrives to help and honour his half of the debt. The two find the situation may not be as simple as they thought. With Hope infiltrating the gang, two members of the gang are abducted and a third killed, apparently by the Cortez cabal. This prompts Lucas Cortez and Paige Winterbourne to come to Miami to help Hope and Karl before a war between the rebels and the cabal can destroy them all.
18698252	/m/04gkkm1	My Place	Sally Morgan	1987		 Recounts of several of Morgan's family members are told. The story setting revolves around Morgan's own hometown, Perth, Western Australia and also Corunna Downs. The book has been published in several parts 'for young readers' in the following parts: Sally's story (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1990.) edited by Barbara Ker Wilson ('My Place' for young readers, part 1'. For children.) ISBN 0-949206-78-4 Arthur Corunna's story (Narkaling Productions, 1995) edited by Barbara Ker Wilson ('My Place' for young readers, part 2'. For children.) ISBN 0-949206-77-6 Mother and daughter: The story of Daisy and Glady's Corunna (Narkaling Productions, 1994) Edited by Barbara Ker Wilson ('My Place' for young readers, part 3'. For children.) ISBN 0-949206-79-2 The book is widely studied in Public Schools across NSW, Australia as part of an &#39;Aboriginal Studies&#39; program compulsory for all students.
18699030	/m/04grldh	Panic Nation				 The book comprises a series of essays written by specialists and experts in related fields. These experts address the state of knowledge in the specific fields and how this conflicts with common knowledge. The contributors are: Stanley Feldman, Vincent Marks, Michael Fizpatrick, Maurice Hanssen, John Henry, Mick Hume, Lakshman Karalliedde, Malcolm Kendrick, Peter Lachmann, James le Fanu, Sandy Macnair, Sam Shuster and Dick Taverne QC.
18706676	/m/04gk9rs	Blackbird House				 Surrounded by fields of sweet peas and fruit vines in rural Massachusetts sits Blackbird House, a haunting house to the women who live in her. A raging storm in 1778 sees John Hadley and his sons lost at sea. From then, the lives of the inhabitants are tangled together, until present day when the history of the house, its ghosts and the tragedies yet to come arrive at a dramatic climax.
18713202	/m/04gm0zn	The Ice Queen				 The Ice Queen is a nameless woman who makes a wish as an eight-year old child that ruins her life. She grows up cold and unfriendly until, as she stands by her kitchen window, she is struck by a bolt of lightning. She survives but is changed, as if she is made of ice. She can also no longer see the color red. She hears of a man called Lazarus Jones, who also survived being struck by lightning, and is reputed to have a heart and soul made of fire. He came back to life being dead for forty minutes. They embark of a turbulent love affair whilst trying to hide their secrets - how one became full of fire and the other became made of ice.
18713342	/m/04gqvws	Practical Magic	Alice Hoffman	1995		 For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally endured that fate: As children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their darkened house and their love concoctions and their crowd of black cats. All Gillian and Sally wanted to do was escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared brought them back to each other, and to the magic they couldn’t escape. A delicious novel about witches and real love, family life and everyday spells. A literary incantation.
18714324	/m/04gm243	The Samurai’s Garden	Gail Tsukiyama	1996-05-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Twenty-year-old Stephen leaves his home in Hong Kong just as the Japanese are poised to further invade China, towards Hong Kong. He is sent to Tarumi, a small beach-side village in Japan, to recuperate from tuberculosis. There, he meets and develops friendships with three adults, Matsu, Kenzo, and Sachi, and a young girl, Keiko, who is his own age. Keiko becomes his first love, but it can't be because she is Japanese and he is Chinese. The Japanese and Chinese were fighting a war at that time, and Keiko's family had prejudiced opinions about Chinese people (especially Keiko's father). Yet Keiko still sees Stephen. Then Keiko's brother eventually dies fighting for Japan, and that causes Keiko to feel guilty for dating Stephen. She ends the relationship because of that. Also, there is a bitter love triangle between Sachi, Kenzo, and Matsu. Sachi is now an old woman with leprosy. Lepers are forced into exile and are said to dishonor their family, because of their disfigured bodies. Sachi says that society thinks of her as a monster, and those thoughts have obviously rubbed off on her self-concept. She always makes sure that no one can see the right side of her scarred face (the left is unblemished and considered to be the most beautiful face Stephen has ever seen). Such beauty existing next to the scars shows that beauty is in everything. Now, when Sachi was younger and "one of the most beautiful girls in Tarumi", she was engaged to Kenzo, another good looking boy who had promise for a great, successful future. But when Sachi got leprosy, Kenzo's parents forbade his going to Yamaguchi, and Kenzo was also afraid of seeing what happened to Sachi. He never realized it, but he had fallen in her love with her beauty, and not the soul. In order to keep in some contact in the later years with Sachi, Kenzo sent messages through his childhood friend, Matsu. Matsu is one of the main characters in this book and housed Stephen. Matsu was Stephen's grandfather's servant, and is a very understanding, quiet man. Matsu taught Stephen many lessons about honor, the cruelties of humanity, and what it is to love someone. Matsu was the only person who was truly there for Sachi, and over the years he and Sachi had started a loving relationship. This was very understated throughout the book, as if Gail Tsukiyama wanted to point out how simple everything was then. Also, Stephen's Ba-ba (father) had an affair with a Japanese woman, and even gave money to his mistress. This tarnished Ba-ba's reputation in Stephen's mind, and he felt betrayed by his father. Throughout the book there is an underlying sense of society being out place, what with their crazy ideas of honor and the fact that there was a war going on. The unwinding stories of his new friends, war, and family eventually bring him to the beginnings of wisdom, love, honor, and loss.
18714949	/m/04gndl2	A Panther in the Basement	Amos Oz	1998-10-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Oz's reminiscent novel describes the doings of a twelve-year-old boy in 1947, the last year of the British Mandate of Palestine, during the British–Zionist conflict. Young Proffy has organized a pro-Israel underground cell that proposes to blow up Buckingham Palace or perhaps 10 Downing Street. These heroic dreams are no danger to anybody, but Proffy's friendship with a kindly British soldier causes his two fellow panthers to accuse him of treason.
18715899	/m/04gvn9c	Feuchtgebiete	Charlotte Roche	2008	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Set in an anonymous German city, Feuchtgebiete is told by 18 year-old Helen Memel, a schoolgirl who spends some days in the proctological ward of a hospital to be treated for anal fissure caused by the careless shaving of her anal hair. Deep at heart Helen is lonely and bored, and has been so since the breakup of her parents' marriage. Her secret plan is to reunite her father and mother by having them visit her at the same time. However, her parents seem to have little interest in their daughter's well-being and show up only occasionally, only for short periods of time, and at different hours. When she learns that her surgery, which included the removal of haemorrhoids, has been successful and she is going to be released soon, she desperately looks for means to prolong her hospital stay. She secretly rams the pedal of her hospital bed into her anus and immediate emergency surgery has to be carried out to prevent extreme blood loss. Thus having successfully extended her stay, she waits in vain for her miracle to happen: her parents have stopped visiting altogether, and when she tries to contact them by phone all she gets is their respective answering machines. During this time she falls in love with her favourite male nurse called Robin and tries to draw the young man into her world. At the end of the novel the doctor tells Helen she can go home and she asks Robin if she can go to live with him. It becomes apparent that Helen is mentally ill, following a childhood experience when her mother tried to commit suicide. As the novel ends Robin is escorting her through a door in the hospital.
18719484	/m/04gl05j	Thaïs	Anatole France	1890		 Paphnuce, an ascetic hermit of the Egyptian desert, journeys to Alexandria to find Thais, the libertine beauty whom he knew as a youth. Masquerading as a dandy, he is able to speak with her about eternity; surprisingly he succeeds in converting her to Christianity. Yet on their return to the desert he becomes fascinated with her former life. She enters a convent to repent of her sins. He cannot forget the pull of her famous beauty, and becomes confused about the values of life. Later, as she is dying and can only see heaven opening before her, he comes to her side and tells her that her faith is an illusion, and that he loves her.
18719930	/m/04gt_bg	The Associate	John Grisham	2009-01-27	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As an idealistic law student and editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, Kyle McAvoy has the promise of a highly successful career, although after graduation, he intends to devote three years to public service before applying for employment with a prestigious firm. His plans are derailed when he is approached by two FBI agents (later proved to be bogus) who interrogate him and then pass him on to a mysterious man known only as Bennie Wright. Bennie has a videotape of a party that took place in Kyle's apartment five years earlier, when he was an undergraduate student at Duquesne University. In it, two of Kyle's fraternity brothers, Joey Bernardo and Baxter Tate, are seen having sexual relations with Elaine Keenan, a coed who later claimed she was raped while unconscious, a charge seemingly supported by Joey asking Baxter "Is she awake?" on the tape. At the time, the incident was investigated by local police, who determined there had been no assault and declined to take further action. With the tape now in his possession, Bennie threatens to expose Kyle's secret unless he cooperates with him and his associates. Bennie's plan is to have Kyle accept a position at New York City-based Scully & Pershing, the world's largest law firm, which is representing Trylon Aeronautics in its case against Bartin Dynamics. The two defense contractors had joined forces to design the B-10 HyperSonic Bomber for The Pentagon, and when they won the contract over Lockheed, the competitor sought support from senators and lobbyists. Legal battles ensued, and Trylon and Bartin – each laying claim to ownership of the design and technologies developed for the project – are ready to wage battle in court. Kyle will be required to infiltrate Scully & Pershing's files and deliver to Bennie crucial information the people he represents need. His first instinct is to ignore Bennie's blackmail threats and deal with whatever consequences may arise, but the thought of the shame and embarrassment his family will suffer if he is indicted for the incident in his past, not to mention the negative impact on his own future, leads him to agree to Bennie's demands. Constantly under surveillance while outdoors and living in an apartment in which he knows bugs and cameras have been hidden, Kyle slowly learns how to trick those who are trailing him into believing he is unaware of their presence. He seeks help from Joey, who has more to lose than Kyle does if the videotape is made public, and with his old friend as a somewhat unwilling accomplice, plots to outwit his blackmailer. What he doesn't anticipate is the re-emergence of Elaine, who still maintains she was raped, and Baxter, who has completed a lengthy stint in rehab and, as part of his twelve-step program, wants to make amends to the girl he raped. His admission of guilt will give Elaine the proof she needs to file charges, and with Kyle drawn into the spotlight, his position at Scully & Pershing will be jeopardized, a risk Bennie must eliminate by any means. Baxter is found shot dead, with no evidence of the murderer's identity, although Kyle is certain that Bennie ordered it. After working at the law firm's 'boot camp' for some months, as do all new associates, Kyle eventually gets drawn into the Trylon case and is granted access to the highly secure computer room where the confidential information is stored. Bennie and Nigel, a computer expert, force him to use a thumbdrive to download the files, which he does. But by this time, realizing that Bennie is nearly always one step ahead of him, Kyle has spoken to Roy Benedict, a criminal lawyer and former FBI operative. He tells Roy the whole story. Roy still has good connections within the FBI, and they set up an operation to catch Bennie as the information is being transferred. But it misfires; Bennie and his associates vanish and remain unidentified and unapprehended. Kyle admits his actions to the firm's partners, and agrees to leave their employ immediately and not practice law in New York for two years. He also voices his belief that one of the firm's partners has acted as a 'mole', passing information to Bennie. Refusing the FBI's offer of witness protection, Kyle goes home to his father, also a lawyer, who knows the whole sorry saga. He plans to became a partner in his father's law firm.
18720180	/m/04gs85w	The Gospel According to the Son	Norman Mailer	1997	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel employs first person story-telling from the perspective of Jesus. It stays nearly entirely true to the text of the four canonical gospels. Jesus tells his own story, from his birth to a teen-aged virgin named Mary to his execution by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. Just as in the gospels, he is resurrected from the dead, and ascends to heaven.
18721536	/m/04gjvb4	Shopaholic & Baby	Sophie Kinsella	2007	{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The plot jumps several months forward from Shopaholic and Sister. Becky is now heavily pregnant with her first child, and is happily preparing for the arrival of her newborn. While getting a sonogram with Luke, it's revealed that they don't know the sex of the baby because Luke wants it to be a surprise. After he and the sonographer leave the room for a moment, Becky takes the ultrasound stick to find out for herself. She initially thinks that they are having a boy, but when the sonographer catches her using the equipment, she explains to Becky that she was looking at her bladder. Becky and Luke have recently sold their flat in order to buy a house, but have difficulty finding a place that meets her specific qualifications. The biggest being a state of the art Shoe Room. Becky's relationship with Jess has drastically improved in the last couple of months. Though Jess persists that she do environmentally-conscience things like make her own baby wipes, and use a recycled crib. Becky's friendhsip with Suze has also improved, though she sill doesn't like her new friend, Lulu, being boring and drab. Luke has also been under a lot of stress due to his company's business partnership with Arcodas. While shopping at Bambino, Becky hears about a celebrity obstetrician named Venetia Carter, who has just moved back from L.A. and wants to have her. Luke is against it for a personal reason and wants to stick with his family's obstetrician, Dr. Braine(whom Becky never liked being he's old-fashioned). She convinces Luke to go with her to an appointment and discovers his real reason why he was against switching obstetricians from the start. It turns out Venetia is Luke's ex-girlfriend. Becky is taken aback toward her flirtatious behavior with Luke, but dismisses it when she finds out Venetia already has a boyfriend. Unfortunately for Becky, she learns that Venetia has broken up with her significant other after he went back to his wife, and that Venetia has a penchant for married men. As the novel progresses, Becky grows more and more suspicious of the relationship between Luke and Venetia; even going as far as to hire a private detective. Closer to the end of her pregnancy, Venetia spitefully confesses that she and Luke were meant together and that Luke marrying Becky was a mistake, but he doesn't want to jeopardize being in his child's life. Becky is extremely hurt and shocked and plans to catch Venetia in the act after Luke attends a party with her. An extremely miserable Becky arrives at the party to find Venetia and Luke dancing. She passes out. Luke denies any romantic involvement with Venetia, but Becky is suspicious. The couple decide to go back to their original obstetrician. While at her baby shower, Becky finds a love note sent by Venetia. She goes to the birthing center in order to confront her, and pretends to be in early labor in order to do so. Becky is shocked to find her family and friends arriving for the presumed birth. Venetia then arrives in the hospital room to check up on the baby. Becky tells Luke, what Venetia plans to do. At first Luke is in disbelief and questions Venetia on her anticipating actions. She admits what she thinks and even goes as far as to question his marriage to Becky. An angered Luke tells Venetia off that Becky is more caring than her because she puts everyone before herself. He explains that she was trying to keep morale for his company up while he was dealing with Arcodas. It was then Becky tells Luke they lost their family home and it was sold to someone else. He orders Venetia to get out of his life and brings in Dr. Braine to assist with the pregnancy. Becky soon gives birth to a baby girl, whom they name Minnie. For a time being, Becky, Luke and Minnie lives with her parents until they can find a new home.
18734710	/m/05pdcbz	Every Man Dies Alone	Hans Fallada		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story takes place in Berlin during World War II, with Germany firmly under Nazi terror. The book conveys the level of fear and suspicion engulfing Germany at the time because of the constant Nazi threat of arrest, imprisonment, torture and death. Even if one were not subjected to any of these, one could find oneself ostracized and unable to find work. Escherich, a Gestapo inspector, must find the source of hundreds of postcards encouraging Germans to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis with personal messages such as “Mother! The Führer has murdered my son. Mother! The Führer will murder your sons too, he will not stop till he has brought sorrow to every home in the world.” Escherich is under pressure from Obergruppenführer Prall to arrest the source or find himself in dire straits. Nearly all those who find the cards turn them in to the Gestapo immediately, terrified they themselves will be discovered having them. Eventually, someone denounces the postcard writer, who turns out to be a quiet, working class couple, Otto and Anna Quangel. The Quangel's acts of civil disobedience are prompted by the loss of their only son, who has been killed in action. They are arrested and brought to trial at the Volksgerichtshof, the Nazi "People's Court", where the infamous Roland Freisler presides. The Quangels are sentenced to death and later executed.
18743180	/m/04gnpkf	The Seven Hills	John Maddox Roberts		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rome has reconquered Italy and is resettling it to be as it was before the Carthaginians came. Four legions cut off in Egypt and led by Titus Norbanus, march along the Mediterranean to get back to Rome. Meanwhile, Marcus Scipio prepares Egypt to attack Carthage by investing in new inventions made at the Library of Alexandria.
18743877	/m/04gmnhh	Das Königsprojekt	Carl Amery	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Vatican gains possession of a time machine from Leonardo da Vinci after the inventor's death. Selected members of the Pope's Swiss Guard are sent back in time to alter history in favour of the Catholic Church. All this is supervised by a very small group of church officials and without the specific knowledge of the current Pope. The Vatican learns that major historical events can't be prevented, only their details can be altered. For example, the Reformation can not be undone, but the details surrounding it can be changed: Martin Luther can't be killed before publishing The Ninety-Five Theses, but the failed attempt on his life by a time-traveling agent is interpreted by Luther as a visitation by the devil. In 1688, the Progetto Reale (English: Royal Project) is undertaken by the men in charge of the department. The project's aim is to reestablish Catholicism in England through restoration of the House of Stuart. The Catholic Church perceives the Stuarts as too weak for their purposes and instead selects the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach as an alternative. For the purpose of legalising the claim to the British throne, a member of the Swiss Guard, Arnold Füßli, is sent out to exchange the Stone of Scone for a fake. While this mission succeeds, the stone is deposited at what later becomes a reservoir and is lost for the cause. The Church's main asset, its loyal Swiss Guard soldier Franz Defunderoll, however, chooses to desert and meet his unsuspecting self in the future. Eventually, the time machine is destroyed. In the finale of the book, the rebellious Bavarian-Scottish troops sacrifice themselves in the reservoir attempting to recover the Stone.
18746505	/m/04gjlh6	Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages	Manuel Puig	1980	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in Greenwich Village, near Washington Square. Larry, a poor and otherwise-unemployed former college student, accepts a part-time job taking care of 74-year old Mr. Ramirez. Mr. Ramirez is an Argentine expatriate who has apparently lost his memory, as well as his understanding of basic concepts such as love and sexual arousal. Though the two men are ostensibly strangers, their conversations reveal that they may somehow have intimate knowledge of each other's pasts. Abruptly and without clear explanation, dialogue often digresses into elaborate melodramatic reenactments of events that may or may not have happened to the two men. 1980 – ; English translation: Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages (1982)
18747482	/m/04glvdm	Keziah Dane	Sue Grafton	1967	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Keziah Dane is a widow who lives "on the brink of poverty" with her children in a small Kentucky town. She lost her husband in a flood that also devastated their town. A vagrant named Web gains Keziah's trust then attempts to rape her eldest daughter. The daughter fends off the attack but kills Web in the process. The body is dumped in the flooded town and unexpected complications ensue for the Dane family.
18748329	/m/04glflw	The Rebels	John Jakes	1975	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins on June 17, 1775, at the Battle of Bunker Hill, in which Philip Kent participates. One major event, the marriage of Philip and Anne Ware, took place in the interim. In September of that year Anne gave birth to her first child, whom they named Abraham after her father. Philip then participated in Henry Knox’ mission to transport cannons from Fort Ticonderoga. Meanwhile, Judson Fletcher, a drunkard and a womanizer still pursued Peggy Ashford McLean, the wife of his friend Seth McLean, whom he had courted before her marriage. Judson lived with his father on Sermon Hill, a large tobacco plantation on the Rappahannock River in northern Virginia. During a great rebellion of slaves Peggy was raped, Seth killed; his father opposed to Judson's defense of black slaves (and his accusation of white violence that caused it) and his way of life, and put his son out of house. Judson’s brother, Donald, was a Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress, but he suffered from gout and was unable to fulfill his duty, so designated Judson to act in his stead. While attending Congress in Philadelphia Judson began an affair with Alicia Parkhurst, who now called herself Alice, a former lover of Philip Kent’s. When Tobias Trumball, Alicia’s uncle, found her, he tried to take her home, which Judson prevented, after which Trumball challenged Judson to a duel and scheduled it for July 3, 1776. The day before the duel, during a debate on the Lee Resolution, Judson was dismissed from the Virginia delegation for drunkenness and therefore missed his chance to vote on the resolution. The next day, he killed Trumball in the duel and shortly afterwards, Alicia committed suicide by drowning. While Philip was camped with George Washington’s army in August 1777, he was reunited with his old friend from France, Gil, the Marquis de Lafayette. They participated in the devastating Battle of Brandywine, which left Philadelphia, then the American capital, to be captured by the British. After his expulsion from the Virginia delegation, Judson returned home, but could not move back to Sermon Hill with his father; instead, he lived with Lottie Shaw at a place once owned by her late husband. One day, in a drunken rage, he expelled her from her own property. Soon after, he visited Peggy McLean, by then a widow, and raped her; unbeknownst to him, this encounter would produce a daughter, Elizabeth. Later, when his brother told him that George Rogers Clark had returned to Virginia, Judson rode to meet him. Clark had been a childhood friend and was now recruiting men for a military expedition to the Northwest Territory. Judson enlisted with him, but when he returned home he was met by a disgruntled Lottie, who shot him and left him for dead. Though Judson, because of his wounds, missed his rendezvous, once he recovered he set off for Pittsburgh in hopes of meeting Clark. When he was reunited with Clark, Clark refused to include him in his detachment, due again to drunkenness. On returning to his boat, Clark caught a spy in the act of stealing his orders. After a scuffle the spy shot at Clark, but Judson absorbed the ball and was killed. Meanwhile, Anne Kent had taken the money she had inherited from her father, who had recently died, and invested it with privateers who were aiding the Americans on the high seas. During the time that Philip was away with the army, one of the privateers with whom Anne had invested her money, Malachi Rackham, made overtures towards her, which she rejected. In 1778, he abducted her and took her aboard his ship. After he repeatedly beat and raped her, she fought for her freedom, but in the ensuing struggle both Anne and Rackham were thrown overboard. Philip participated in the Battle of Monmouth and was wounded in the leg, after which he was mustered out of the army. He was informed of Anne’s disappearance in a letter from a member of the privateer in which Anne had invested. As the privateer had captured a British vessel, the investment provided Philip with the money he utilised to begin a publishing firm, Kent and Son. Almost a year later, Gil introduced Philip to Peggy McLean, who would become his second wife.
18756772	/m/04gmd19	"Rommel?" "Gunner Who?"		1974	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 Milligan’s 19 Battery 56th Heavy Rgt. R.A. has arrived in Algeria. With his rank of gunner, there is no one under his command; his promotion later in the book is the source of comment. An officer, Lt. Budden says: "Bombardier?" He turned and looked out the window. "Oh, dear." One of Milligan’s first battle encounters is to yell at a passing airplane "I hope you crash, you noisy bastard!" — it immediately does. But the plane was Allied. In a couple weeks they leave the comforts in the area of Cap Matifou, heading east into battle areas, and are now eating army food. Their cook is upper class: :"'Where'd you get that accent, Ronnie?'.... :'Eton, old sausage.' :'Well, I’d stop eatin' old sausages.'" Milligan stays in various accommodations, from a two-man tent stolen from American supplies (which his best friend Edgington burns down while attacking a scorpion), to appropriated housing. The native Arabs are still in the area. Milligan sneaks food a few times to a farmer whose family is "having a rough time". Later, they adopt a French dog; when the owner returns to check his house, he mistakenly shoots it; they spend the evening drinking with him in commiseration. As they see action, one gun crew is puzzled to discover their gun is missing after being fired. It's gone over a cliff, and narrowly avoids killing future Goon Harry Secombe, whom Milligan later meets in passing: : "I saw something that I felt might put years on the war. It was a short Gunner, wearing iron frame spectacles, a steel helmet that obscured the top of his head, and baggy shorts that looked like a Tea Clipper under full sail....It was my first sight of Gunner Secombe: what a pity! We were so near to Victory, and this had to happen. I hadn't crossed myself in years, and I remember saying, 'Please God...put him out of his misery.'" Part of Milligan's job is laying phone lines. On one occasion silence is imperative, since they're close to the enemy, however the hole in the cable drum spool is square, making a great noise as it unreels. :"There was a suppressed laughter. Unable to stop it, we all burst out laughing again. :'Stop it at once!' said Dawson, through his own laughter. We stopped. 'Now stop it, or I'll kill the bloody lot of you.' : A white star shell lit the night. :'What's that?' asked Ernie Hart. :'That, Ernie, means that a child has been born in Bethlehem.'" There's limited time for band music, but Milligan and Edgington play on opposites sides of a bombed out floor. Shortly after Edgington finishes, the piano falls through. Milligan reflects: "It's not often we had been detailed to:—'Clean up that mess of a French Colonial Piano.'" While driving with Major Chater Jack: :"'How does it go again? called Chater. I re-sang the opening bars with intermittent rain. :'Doesn't he know any other tunes,' said Edward. :"'Any others? Christ, he doesn't know this one, he only brings me along as an amanuensis.'" Amid Milligan's persistent whistling and joking are moments of reflection: :"We sang songs, those nostalgic slushy moon-June love songs that had fucked-up my generation....If I sang a song, I was Bing Crosby, if I played trumpet, Louis Armstrong...but who was I when washing out my socks?" And, at the end of the book, as the army triumphantly enters into Tunis: :"Here was I, anti-war, but like the rest of us feeling the exhilaration of the barbarian."
18757635	/m/04grgvy	Shades				 The plot revolves around a family, the Farboroughs who lived in the Eastern Cape of South Africa in the early 1900s, in a small community known as St Matthias. The story follows Walter Brownley, explaining what life was like in South Africa just before the first Boer War. African exploitation, as seen in the mining on the Highveld, is a major theme of the story.
18758099	/m/04gp3zd	The Fixed Period	Anthony Trollope			 Gabriel Crasweller, a successful merchant-farmer and landowner, is Britannula's oldest citizen. Born in 1913, he emigrated from New Zealand when he was a young man and was instrumental in building the new republic as one of a group of similar-minded men which included his best friend John Neverbend, ten years his junior, who is now serving his term as President of Britannula. Whereas decades ago Crasweller also voted in favour of the law which introduced the "Fixed Period," he gradually becomes more pensive as the day of his deposition is approaching. Neverbend has long been planning that day and envisaging it as a day of triumph, believing that mankind and civilisation will move an enormous step forward towards perfection. As the originator of the idea, Neverbend also hopes that his name will go down in the annals of history as one of the great reformers. He considers it unfortunate that his friend Crasweller, as the first one to go, does not show any of the signs of old age for which "the Law" was made in the first place: Crasweller is healthy and vigorous, his mental abilities have not started to deteriorate in any way, and accordingly he is more than capable of managing his own affairs and of earning his living. When all of a sudden Crasweller starts lying about his age and claiming that he was in fact born a year later, Neverbend realises that measures must be taken to ensure the smooth execution of the Law. However, he soon finds out that it has dawned on other elderly citizens as well what the state has in store for them, and that various individuals have come up with all kinds of excuses and plans as to how they are going to oppose their deposition and, eventually, departure. He finds a supporter in Abraham Grundle, one of the young Senators, but is shocked when he realizes that Grundle, who is engaged to Crasweller's daughter Eva, only wants to inherit his friend's fortune as soon as possible. But despite this setback, and although both his own son Jack and his wife Sarah turn against him, Neverbend, who has long since passed the point of no return, considers it his duty as President and law-abiding citizen to have Crasweller deposited. As a man of honour, Crasweller finally yields to Neverbend's arguments and stoically accepts his fate. However, on the very day of his deposition the carriage that is to transport the two men to the College is held up in the streets of Gladstonopolis by British armed forces. They have arrived on a warship of enormous dimensions and, by threatening to destroy the whole city with their "250-lb swivel gun," compel Neverbend to release Crasweller and eventually to step down as President. Britannula is re-annexed by Great Britain, a Governor is installed, and John Neverbend is forced to return to England with them. During the passage Neverbend commits to paper the recent history of Britannula, finishing it only two days before his arrival in England. He plans to write another, more theoretical book on the "Fixed Period" and to preach to the English about this necessary step in the progress of mankind. However, he realizes that he does not really know whether he will be treated with respect in the old country or not, or whether he will ever be able to return to Britannula.
18758709	/m/04gr0h_	Generation Dead		2008-05	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The protagonist of the story is goth teenager Phoebe Kendall who, along with her best friends Margi and Adam, attends the fictional Oakvale High School. The world in which the story takes place is a strange one, with a supernatural phenomenon that causes dead teenagers to wake from their graves and move about like regular people—except they don't breathe. With help from the school's principal, Tommy joins Oakvale High's football team. The coach is openly hostile towards him and instructs the other players (in particular Pete, his lackeys Stavis and Harris, and Adam) to do their utmost to injure him so severely that he can no longer play. Adam refuses, and Pete and the others fail. Adam and another living boy, Thornton Harrowood, come to accept Tommy, but when the team plays their first match, they are harassed by anti-zombie protestors. Tommy bargains with the coach, promising to quit as long as he can play, however briefly, in the second half of the game. The school is also visited by the Hunter Foundation, which aims to promote tolerance and understanding of the living impaired. Founders Alish and Angela Hunter announce a work and study program open to all students, intended to improve relations between traditionally and differently biotic people. Phoebe, Margi, Adam and Thornton are the only living students to sign up for the class (affectionately referred to as 'Undead Studies'), along with their differently biotic classmates Tommy, Karen, Evan, Colette, Kevin, Sylvia and Tayshawn. When the class list is posted publicly in the school, Pete steals it, planning to go after each of the class members in turn. It is revealed that Pete's first love, a girl called Julie, died suddenly of an asthma attack some time ago and did not 'come back'. As a result of this, he harbours a deep bitterness and hatred for all differently biotic people, believing them to be unworthy of the second chance that Julie was denied. His mental stability is uncertain, since he sees hallucinations of Julie semi-frequently and often refers to Karen and Phoebe as 'Julie' by mistake. Tommy takes Phoebe and Adam to an abandoned house deep in the nearby Oxoboxo Woods. A number of the living impaired who were abandoned by their families reside there and refer to it as 'The Haunted House'. Tommy takes Phoebe upstairs and shows her the 'Wall of the Dead' - a wall of photographs of zombie kids from all over the country. He then tells her to lie down on the floor in the darkness. When she does, he leaves her there for a short time. She becomes frightened and Tommy later tells her that now she knows how it feels to be dead. Tommy invites Phoebe to his house so he can show her his blog on a website called mysocalledundeath.com, which he uses to get in touch with other undead teenagers and to campaign for rights for the living impaired. Phoebe, knowing that her parents will disapprove of her associating with a dead boy, asks Adam and Margi to cover for her. It has been established by now that Adam has feelings for Phoebe and is unhappy about her developing relationship with Tommy, but he agrees. He and Margi visit the Oxoboxo Lake, where Colette drowned a few years earlier. When she was alive, Colette was best friends with Phoebe and Margi (the three of them being collectively known as 'The Weird Sisters') but they haven't spoken since her death, which is a source of constant guilt and misery for Margi. Soon after in Undead Studies, Colette tells the class about her experiences following her return from death. She walked seven miles from the morgue to her family home, where her mother screamed at her to go away and her father threatened her with a shovel. (The family later left Oakvale without Colette.) She then went to a friend's house but was turned away again. Margi bursts into tears and protests that she was scared, ultimately revealing that this 'friend' was her. She runs out of the class, whilst Phoebe stays and reconciles with Colette. Margi later refuses to return to the class and is removed from the program. Meanwhile, all over the country, undead teenagers are being brutally 'reterminated' (i.e. killed permanently, which involves the irreparable destruction of the brain). There are no laws against murdering zombies since they are, technically, already dead. Furthermore, since the differently biotic are widely shunned by living society, the stories of their murders do not even make it into the news. Tommy is constantly doing research into the crimes against the undead, and presents his findings at each meeting of the Undead Studies class. Many of the reterminations seem to involve a mysterious 'white van', suggesting that the killings are planned and systematic. Phoebe and the other living students are horrified, whilst the undead members of the class are unsurprised and seem quite aware that many people would like to see them destroyed. Phoebe and Tommy finally go out on a date and see a movie, after which Tommy asks her to the homecoming dance. He tells her she doesn't have to answer straight away, though she later says yes. Pete makes his first move against the members of the Undead Studies class. His first target is Evan Talbot, a red-headed zombie with a sense of humour that Adam is fond of. Pete, with help from Stavis and Harris, reterminates Evan using a maul. Adam, who was aware of the threats Pete was making towards the living impaired kids, suspects he is the perpetrator, and Pete indirectly confirms his suspicions. Tommy arranges a meeting at the Haunted House to discuss Evan's murder. There, Phoebe and Adam meet Takayuki, a dead boy with a large section of his right cheek missing (leading to Adam nicknaming him 'Smiley') and a marked dislike for the living. When Adam reveals that it was Pete who killed Evan, Tommy announces that they will go to the police with the information. Takayuki is disgusted by this, believing that the police will do nothing, and he and a few other zombies leave. Tommy and Karen then announce their plans to host a party at the Haunted House after homecoming, since many of the undead kids will be unable to attend the dance. Phoebe feels that Adam was being rude and insensitive at the meeting, especially to Takayuki, and they have their first argument. On the school bus the next day, Margi tells Phoebe that she is coming back to Undead Studies. Colette approaches them; Margi apologises to her and Colette invites her to the homecoming party at the Haunted House. Later, Margi and Phoebe ask Karen how she died and she tells them, to their shock, that she committed suicide by taking an overdose. The homecoming dance seems to go smoothly, but unbeknownst to Phoebe and the others, Pete's next target is Tommy, and he plans on attacking him at the after-party (which he found out about by bullying the information out of Thornton). He and Stavis (it is mentioned that Harris, after assisting in Evan's murder, has refused to be part of Pete's schemes any longer) follow the group to the Haunted House. Tommy and Phoebe go outside into the woods to talk. Tommy tells her that he died in a car crash that also killed his father, and reveals that the zombies with the highest level of functionality are the ones who are loved by their friends or families even after their deaths. (This explains why zombies like Colette, who was abandoned by her family and, until recently, ignored by her friends, move and speak so slowly.) Tommy states his belief that if he can get a living girl to fall in love with him and kiss him, he'll come 'back to life' even more. Phoebe has been concerned for a while that Tommy is only interested in her because she is alive, and this seems to confirm her fears. Pete, who has been watching them, is gripped by a hallucination - instead of Phoebe, he sees Julie, and believes that she is about to cheat on him with Tommy. He is armed with a gun, which he intended to use to shoot Tommy, but instead takes aim at Phoebe. Meanwhile, back at the party, Karen advises Adam to tell Phoebe how he feels about her. He goes to find her and hears her screams. Following the sound, he sees Pete about to shoot. Without hesitation, he throws himself into the line of fire and is shot in the chest. Realizing what they've done, Stavis and Pete flee the scene. Pete is caught by Takayuki, who inflicts an injury on Pete's face similar to his own. The screams and gunshot alert the rest of the party-goers to the confrontation, and everyone emerges from the Haunted House and gathers around Adam while Phoebe cries out at them to help, though she knows that Adam is already dead. However, within minutes he returns from death, and is at first completely unaware that he was killed. He realizes something is wrong when he tries to talk and move as normal and finds he can't, and then Phoebe tells him what happened. He tries to tell her that he loves her, but manages only an incoherent gurgle. When the police and an ambulance finally arrive, Phoebe decides that she is going to do everything in her power to bring Adam back as much as possible.
18760099	/m/04gqc6y	The Lost Fleet: Fearless	John G. Hemry	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 This is the second book in the Lost Fleet series that follows the adventures of Black Jack Geary. This novel begins with Jack and the fleet arriving in the Sutrah system. As their detection systems come on line, they detect two enemy warships. Disobeying orders, four of the ships of the Alliance Fleet break formation and charge after the Syndic ships, not knowing that a minefield trap had been laid. Despite Geary's attempt to recall them, the ships fly right into the mine field. During a meeting after the incident, Geary is indirectly accused of cowardice because of the incident by officers who resent his command of the fleet. As the Allied Fleet is planning to raid the system for resources, it is discovered that there is a prison colony on one of the planets containing Alliance prisoners of war. Upon liberating the POWs, it is discovered that among them is a former hero of the Alliance, Captain Falco, who believes he and not Geary should command the fleet, and who has secret allies among the officers under Geary's command.
18761463	/m/04gj50d	Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw	Jeff Kinney	2009-01-13	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 As a continuation of the second book, this novel rounds out the second semester of Greg's seventh grade school year. The book starts with New Year's Day. The follow-up is Greg's Christmas, which is similar to Christmas in the first book. Greg gets nothing he likes from anyone. Uncle Charlie gives Greg a "laundry hoop" and Greg's mother, inspired, starts making Greg do his own laundry. Due to Greg's laziness, he does not do his laundry and does not plan to either. This plays a significant role later in the story. Valentines Day is coming up, and Greg goes to the Valentines Dance. The dance was originally supposed to be at night, but they couldn't get enough chaperones, so they put it right in the middle of the school day instead. The music is lame, and their dancing would count for 30 percent of their Phys-Ed grades. He eventually finds Holly Hills, and slowly dances toward her, but Fregley had a sugar rush and ruins a moment between Greg and Holly. One day, his dad finds Manny's old blanket, Tingy, and throws it away. Manny gets revenge when he uses his dad's American Civil War battlefield as a play set. Then Manny walks up to Greg and says "Ploopy!" Greg doesn't know what it means, so he asks his mom, but she's talking on the phone. She says, "What is a ploopy?!" which was the exact thing Greg wanted to know. Then Manny starts calling Greg "ploopy" to get whatever he wants. On Easter Sunday, Greg gets in the car, accidentally sitting on Manny's chocolate Easter bunny. He gets out of the car with chocolate on the back of his pants. His Mom then says that the family cannot skip church. When Rodrick takes off his pants and says "He can wear MY pants," Mom gives Greg her Easter Jacket to tie around his waist. During Easter church service, he looks at Manny, who is playing with the things Mom and Dad brought to entertain him, and then thinks about the day when Manny threw a fit at preschool when his mom cut his sandwich in half, not in quarters the way he likes it. Mom had to drive all the way there to make the extra slice. Then he whispers in Manny's ear, "Ploopy!" Manny starts crying and Mom can't calm him down, so they have to go home. Afterwards, Greg is enrolled in soccer and dislikes it. His clothes are running out and it fails to toughen him up. Later, the Heffleys see Lenwood at a ticket booth with a crew cut, proper and incredibly polite. This causes Frank to decide to enroll Greg into military school, Spag Union, which takes place during Greg's summer vacation. Greg tries in vain to change his father's mind by doing Boy Scouts. However, it does not work. Finally, he settles for the sad fact he has to settle for Spag Union. But his summer won't be bad if he took some memories with him. He tries to make a good impression on Holly, but when she calls Greg "Fregley" his chances are ruined. Also mentioned earlier in the story, the Heffley's neighbors, the Snellas, are having a half-birthday for their youngest child Seth. During the party, the adults in the neighborhood have to perform silly acts and Mr. Snella sends the videotapes to America's Funniest Families, a spoof of America's Funniest Home Videos, to win the $10,000 grand prize. It is revealed that Frank hates the performing and will do anything to get out of it. On the day of the party, Manny throws Seth's present into a tree because he knows that Greg would snatch it away. It is a blue knit blanket, like Tingy in its early stages. When Greg goes and retrieves it, his pants, borrowed from Rodrick, fall down revealing Wonder Woman underwear, which he wore because it was one of the only clean undergarments he has left. Frank, who happens to be next in line to perform gets away as Mr. Snella points his camera to an embarrassed Greg. He repays Greg the next morning by not sending him to military academy, suggesting there are other ways that Greg can stay fit. While Greg enjoys his morning he goes to see Rowley and tells him he didn't have to go to Spag Union after all. Rowley had no idea Greg might have been sent away. The story ends abruptly as Rowley and Greg are sitting on the curb and meet a girl named Trista. Greg thinks Trista is cute and imagines that she and himself are in Rowley's country club in swimsuits with Rowley serving them drinks.
18766270	/m/04gjxtk	Dances on the Snow	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/070yc": "Space opera", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Tikkirey "Tiki" Frost lives on the planet Quarry, poorly adapted for human life and stricken with poverty. Due to the planet's high radioactivity, the inhabitants of Quarry are forced to live in a protective dome and pay for food and air, or "social support". Unemployment is a major problem on Quarry. In fact, one's ability to obtain a job depends on the quality of his or her neuroshunt implant, allowing direct mind-to-machine connection. Tikkirey's parents' neuroshunts have become obsolete and they have no money for an upgrade. His father has been unemployed for years, and his mother makes a pittance. Incapable of paying for their social support, Tikkirey's parents are forced to invoke their "constitutional right to commit suicide." For that, Tikkirey's social support is extended by 7 years, during which he can get education and find a job, as his neuroshunt is above the local standard. If his parents forgo their "constitutional right", the entire family will be evicted from the Dome. The life expectancy outside the Dome is 1-2 years. After losing his parents, Tikkirey decides to leave Quarry by any means necessary. As such, he signs up on an interstellar ore transport as a "calculation module" — a wetware computer used for complex calculations at faster-than-light speeds, as normal computers fail to work. A calculation module remains in hibernation, most of the time, while a stream of data is shunted through his brain. While this is a highly paid position, continuous misuse of the brain atrophies the frontal lobe, causing the person to lose his free will. After the expiration of the standard five-year contract, 97% of calculation modules are incapable of making their own decisions and continue flying for the rest of their lives. The other 3% manage to muster enough willpower to leave the ship (2%) or cancel the contract before time is up (1%); however, even they have to spend years relearning to make even the simplest decisions (e.g. a simple choice of soft drink is an extremely difficult process for them). After regaining consciousness on the beautiful and wealthy planet of New Kuwait, Tikkirey demands to cancel his contract and leave the ship. He immediately finds out that a clause in the contract prevents him from doing just that, as he must pay off his 150,000 credit insurance policy, which will require Tikkirey to serve another 1.5 years on the ship. The contract is specifically written to prevent calculation modules from using ships as free rides. Fortunately, Tikkirey finds out that the crew took pity on the boy and broke the law by not getting him an insurance policy. He receives his earned credits and leaves the ship. He then takes a taxi and gets a room at a cheap hotel. He then hits another snag: his money will only last him about a week. New Kuwait's laws require local permanent residency for employment, but the process of obtaining it takes at least six months. At the hotel, Tikkirey meets Lion, a boy his age, who was born and grew up on a space station. The next day, Tikkirey encounters and befriends a mysterious man named Captain Stas, who turns out to be a phage from the planet Avalon. Phages are knight-like members of an organization whose goal is to rid the Empire of its enemies. Unlike the rational humans around them, phages are encouraged to listen with their hearts. A phage is genetically engineered to be stronger and faster than any normal human. He is capable of using something called an "imperative voice", causing most humans to follow his instructions without question (similar to the Voice from Frank Herbert's novel Dune). A phage's weapon of choice is a multi-functional semi-intelligent plasma whip, chosen not for its deadliness but for its psychological effect. The phages' mission, abilities, and moral code have earned them the nickname "jedi", which they tend to dislike, as it trivializes the phages' purpose. Stas is on a mission to investigate the suspicious activity on New Kuwait of agents from the planet Iney ("frost" in Russian). Iney has already "peacefully" allied with several other Imperial worlds and is gaining in strength, threatening the stability of the Empire. Before Stas or Tikkirey can do anything, most of the population of New Kuwait suddenly falls asleep. Tikkirey and Stas are one of the few still awake. Stas takes the boy and, at Tikkirey's request, the unconscious Lion with him on his ship. They are able to launch before the population awakes and announces its allegiance with Iney. With some quick thinking, Tikkirey connects Lion's brain to the datastream of the ship, temporarily turning him into a calculation module. The plan works, and Lion awakes shortly after. However, his free will is gone. Stas takes the boys to his homeplanet of Avalon, where the phages' headquarters are located. Tikkirey is hired by the phages to work in support role, while he takes care of Lion. Basically, Tikkirey is forced to tell Lion to do almost everything, hoping that he may one day get better. He also makes friends with his neighbors, a brother and a sister of a slightly younger age. One day, Tikkirey is asked by his supervisor to destroy a faulty plasma whip, which refuses to bond with any phage. To Tikkirey's surprise, the whip bonds to him, and he refuses to destroy the semi-living device. That same day, his neighbors invite him and Lion to go camping at a nearby lake. Since it is wintertime in that part of Avalon, the lake is frozen over. The teenagers (except for Lion) begin to ice skate, but ice cracks under Tikkirey, and he falls into the water. He attempts to get out by using the whip but to no avail. Surprisingly, Lion snaps out of his daze and saves Tikkirey. Stas arrives with paramedics and explains that the whip was a test of loyalty, which Tikkirey has failed. Tikkirey shows that the whip bonded to him, which surprises the phage, as this has never happened before. Tikkirey and Lion are taken to the phage headquarters, where Lion is given a clean bill of health by a psychiatrist. Lion explains that, during the time he was asleep, he has lived an entire lifetime as a citizen of Iney. The boys find out that the phages are planning on sending them back to New Kuwait to conduct an investigation as to how Iney is controlling the population. Tikkirey and Lion are dropped in a pod made of a special form of ice, which melts on landing, leaving no trace. However, the boys are quickly captured by a team of girls armed with crossbows. They are escorted to their base camp, where Tikkirey encounters a disabled old man he met while escaping from New Kuwait. The girls are members of a former hip hop dancing troupe who have become guerrilla fighters. They help the boys sneak into the city, where Lion is reunited with his family, who all behave like a stereotypical perfect TV family. Tikkirey and Lion are sent to a boarding school "to learn to serve the society better." Everything appears to be going well, except that the boys know they are under surveillance. One night, the old man's daughter Natasha sneaks into their room and informs them that Iney counter-intelligence is following their every move. They decide to escape and hide in a school located in a poor district. They are able, for a time, to remain undetected by the Iney. Once, however, Natasha introduces Tikkirey to another girl, who claims to also be an agent for the phages. She informs Tikkirey that a wealthy Imperial industrialist has arrived on New Kuwait and that he is secretly working with Iney against the Empire. The girl orders Tikkirey to execute the industrialist and his teenage daughter. While morally disagreeing with the girl, Tikkirey decides to go through with it. Tikkirey, Lion, and Natasha sneak into the villa where the industrialist is being treated as an honored guest. However, upon attempting to ambush the man and his daughter, Tikkirey is surprised to learn that the industrialist is, in fact, Stas in disguise. His "daughter" is a young phage-in-training dressed as a girl. The real industrialist has been detained by the Imperial forces, and the phages have been sent in their stead. Stas immediately realizes that the girl who gave the execution order is an Iney agent, which means that their cover is blown. He decides to attempt to smuggle Tikkirey, Lion, and Natasha from New Kuwait in suitcases. There is one problem, however — due to a quirk of nature, FTL travel is lethal to human females (the reasoning behind this is not explained, although it is mentioned that a Y-chromosome is necessary to survive an FTL jump). As such, Natasha must be placed into a cryogenic pod. Due to the shortage of space on the luxury transport, the dock workers decide to leave Tikkirey's suitcase in storage to be sent with the next ship. An old female dockworker decides to look inside and finds the boy. Instead of reporting him, however, the old lady feeds him and asks him to tell her what is happening. After hearing his story, Tikkirey asks her to contact Stas and tell him to freeze Natasha. When she comes back, the lady begins to explain certain unknown facts to Tikkirey. She explains that the president of Iney, a woman by the name of Inna Snow, is, in fact, a clone. At one point in time, a genetic genius named Edward Garlitsky has decided to fundamentally alter humanity for the better. For this purpose, he cloned himself into a woman named Ada Snezhinskaya, but their views on the means of achieving the change were radically different: Edward wanted to act behind-the-scenes (according to the novel Genome, he became the father of specification), while Ada wanted to directly alter the current social and political structure of the Empire. For that purpose, Ada created thousands of clones of herself and of Edward and spread them throughout the Empire (at that time, it was common practice for parents to buy fetuses). The first names of the female clones were always four letters long with a double consonant in the middle, while the last name was in some way related to snow (e.g. Inna Snow, Anna Neige). Sooner or later, most of the clones were tracked down and offered to have the collective memory of the clones imprinted on them. Most agreed. They all began to set themselves up in certain key political positions. Eventually, Inna Snow discovered a way of using neuroshunts to slowly download a dormant program into people's brains. A certain signal would then trigger the program, which would allow the affected people to live out entire lifetimes in their heads. While each person's "dream life" was different, several constants remained the same: Inna Snow and Iney are good, the Empire and the Emperor are bad. The medium for implanting the program was chosen to be the many TV series produced on Iney and watched throughout the Empire. After hearing this, Tikkirey realizes that the old lady is Ada Snezhinskaya, who reveals that Tikkirey Frost is himself a clone of Edward Garlitsky. Despite this realization, Tikkirey attempts to kill Ada with a whip, but he only wounds her and gets captured by Iney forces. Finding himself in a prison cell with Stas, the phage-in-training, Lion, Natasha, and her grandfather, Tikkirey questions Stas and finds out that Stas knew about him being a clone. The group is then taken to a factory to meet Ada and Inna, where, after a verbal joust, Stas reveals that the Empire has begun a massive invasion of all Iney-occupied worlds, using a modified version of Inna Snow's program to remove Iney's propaganda from the affected people's minds. In a last-ditch effort to save herself and her plan, Ada uses the imperative voice to order Tikkirey and Natasha to jump off the catwalk into a pool of strong solvent. Natasha's grandfather sacrifices himself to save his granddaughter and push both Ada and Inna off the catwalk. Stas uses his own imperative voice to override Ada's order and frees the teenagers. With the threat of Iney gone and the clones in custody, Stas offers to take Tikkirey back to Avalon. However, Tikkirey first makes a stop at Quarry to get two of his friends off that rock. As a side note, he mentions that a genetic cure has been found to allow women to safely traverse FTL hyperchannels without the use of cryogenics. ru:Танцы на снегу (роман) zh:雪舞者
18770583	/m/04gv3xv	Young Samurai: The Way of the Warrior	Chris Bradford	2008-08-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Jack Fletcher, a 12-year-old English boy, is sailing with his father and his crew in search of the legendary Japanese islands. The group are shipwrecked off the coast of Japan in 1611 in a village named Toba, whereupon the crew are attacked by a ninja (which they believe at the time to be wokou, Japanese pirates). Only Jack survives and his father leaves him with his prized possession, a rutter (a precursor to the modern navigation chart). Jack is rescued by legendary samurai swordsman Masamoto Takeshi who decides to adopt him until he is old enough (16), which makes Masamoto's son Yamato envious. Jack discovers that the leader of the ninja was known as Dokugan Ryu (Dragon Eye) through Masamoto following Jack's description of his distinctive solitary green eye. Yamato and Jack engage in heated sparring with their bokken After defeating a ninja in another attack, Masamoto enrolls him in his samurai school in Kyoto, the Niten Ichi-ryu to train as a samurai. Jack develops a strong relationship with a girl, Date Akiko. At the same time, Jack is singled out by Oda Kazuki and his friends who bully him on the basis of being a gaijin (a derogatory term for a foreigner). Jack is generally disliked until he wins a taryu-jiai tournament against a rival school, which earns him Yamato's respect. During a festival, Jack, Akiko and Yamato discover Dokugan Ryu attempting to assassinate Takatomi Hideaki, daimyo of Kyoto province. They manage to make him flee and are rewarded by Takatomi and Masamoto.
18776505	/m/04gllgl	Resistance	Jeanne Kalogridis	2007-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Picard must rebuild his crew after the death of Data and departure of Capt. William Riker and Counselor Troi. Picard selects newly promoted, and acting first officer, Commander Worf as permanent first officer. A Vulcan, T'Lana, is granted commission as the Enterprise's new counselor. The captain is looking forward to putting the devastation of war behind him, shaping his new crew, building his relationship with Dr. Beverly Crusher and returning at last to being an explorer. However, Worf refuses the promotion and Picard senses his new counselor does not approve of Worf. Quickly after being assigned a simple shakedown mission for the restored U.S.S. Enterprise-E, Picard once again begins hearing the voice of the Borg Collective. After reporting this to Starfleet, Admiral Janeway feels the Borg are decimated and are no longer a threat. Picard knows she is wrong and believes they are regrouping in the Alpha Quadrant for an annihilation-style attack on the Federation and all of the Alpha Quadrant's inhabitants.
18777587	/m/04gg_bh	Commonwealth	Joey Goebel	2008-07-04		 Somewhere in the middle of America dwells Blue Gene Mapother, a trashy, mullet-headed Wal-Mart stockboy-turned-flea marketer who staunchly supports any American war effort without question. Besides patriotism, little enlivens him besides pro wrestling, cigarette breaks, and any instance in which he thinks his masculinity is at stake. Curiously, he is also a member of one of the wealthiest families in the country. His mother, the fanatical Christian socialite Elizabeth Mapother, has a prophetic dream in which she sees Blue Gene’s older brother, the handsome but nervous John Hurstbourne Mapother, becoming an apocalyptic world savior. In order to fulfill his mother’s prophecy—not to mention his father Henry’s lifelong desire for his bloodline to ascend to Washington—John is running for Congress. John soon finds that as a corporate executive he is not popular with his largely working-class constituents, many of whom work for him and his father. Now, after years of estrangement, the Mapothers need Blue Gene’s common man touch in order to cast their family name in a more favorable light with the voters. The Mapothers no longer shun Blue Gene for his embarrassing, low-class ways; they embrace him as political gold. Will Blue Gene allow himself to be used? His family has ignored him the last four years and has only invited him back into the fold as campaign time looms near. But then again, even though the superrich John Hurstbourne Mapother clearly represents the interests of big business, man, he sure does have all the right values. Through dark humor and cinematic story-telling, this small-town epic goes from a flea market to mansions to abandoned Wal-Mart buildings, dramatizing the deranged, absurd relationship between the high and low class of America.
18778666	/m/04gn6r2	Dark Mirror		1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In Dark Mirror, the Mirror-Spock left the Enterprise and rose through the ranks and spearheaded an effort to reform the Empire. However, the Mirror-Kirk framed him for treason, which resulted in Spock's execution. Soon afterwards Mirror-Sarek was assassinated by another Vulcan seeking his job. As a result, Spock's attempted reforms died with him and the Empire is still alive and powerful. The Klingons are a conquered race who were forced into slavery by the Empire after their defeat. The Romulan Empire has also been defeated by the Empire, but committed suicide en masse rather than submit to Terran rule. Dark Mirror tells how Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D are forced to deal with their counterparts. Like the Original Series episode Mirror, Mirror, their counterparts are brutal and savage. For example, the Mirror-Captain Picard had murdered the Mirror-Jack Crusher so as to claim his wife, Beverly Crusher, for himself. Crusher is further forced to build biologically-based weaponry. The Mirror-Deanna Troi is a security officer who freely uses torture. The missions of the crew of the Mirror-Enterprise-D's are filled with brutality and even genocidal activities. Interestingly, personal communicators are intentionally not used in the mirror Starfleet; due to the prevalence of assassinations, they make crewmembers too easy to track down and kill. When the Enterprise-D crew meet with their alternates, they discover that the Empire is planning to cross into and invade the Federation's universe. The first step of the plan is to capture that universe's Enterprise, kill the crew, and use the vessel as an infiltrator. However, the crew of the Enterprise is able to foil their plans, and find a means to prevent the Empire from invading the Federation. Captain Picard found that the Mirror Universe Empire had almost reached the limits of what it was presently capable of expanding to. Picard comes to believe they plan to invade the 'main' universe, simply because they have no other choice. He also finds that the seeds of the Mirror Universe's brutality lie in Khan Noonien Singh winning the Eugenics Wars. Toward the book's end, Picard speaks to Mirror-Worf and explains that soon the Empire will be too far spread to maintain control over the worlds it controls that it will collapse, and Worf should inform his people so they can be ready when this day comes.
18785257	/m/04ydsdy	Show Boat	Edna Ferber	1926	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The time is the late nineteenth century. Captain Andy Hawks is a former riverboat owner with a shrewish wife, Parthy Ann, and a ten-year-old daughter, Magnolia. He buys the new show boat Cotton Blossom. Among the actors are Julie Dozier and her husband Steve Baker, and Ellie Chipley and her husband, affectionately known as "Schultzy". Other members of the crew are Pete, the engineer of the towboat Mollie Able, which propels the show boat; Frank the utility man, and Windy McClain, the pilot. Steve and Julie are close, and Julie becomes Magnolia's best friend, showing motherly affection toward her. For a time, all is well, but soon Pete begins making unwanted advances toward Julie. He gets into a fist fight with Steve, is soundly beaten, and swears revenge. He implies knowing some dark secret concerning Julie. When the troupe arrives at Lemoyne, Mississippi, Pete steals Julie's picture from the box office and takes it to the local sheriff. Julie claims she does not feel well enough to perform, and Parthy observes that Julie fell sick the year before in the same town. When they hear what Pete has done, Steve takes out a pocket knife, makes a cut on Julie's hand, and sucks blood from it. The sheriff arrives and announces that there is a miscegenation case on board: since Julie is black and Steve is white, their marriage is illegal. Julie admits that she is half-black. Ellie, who has been very close to Julie, becomes upset at the revelation and hysterically denounces her friend. Steve says he has "negro blood" in him, and the rest of the company backs him up. The sheriff, not realizing that Steve's claim is based only on his having sucked some blood from Julie's hand (this refers to social conventions classifying as black anyone with known African ancestry), believes he cannot arrest the couple and leaves. He tells Steve and Julie to leave the boat, which they do, after Julie sorrowfully says goodbye to the girl Magnolia. Years later we return to the boat, where Magnolia is now eighteen and the newest leading lady. She has no leading man. After Gaylord Ravenal, a handsome riverboat gambler, is hired, he and Magnolia promptly fall in love and elope. Months later, Magnolia has had a baby daughter, whom she names Kim (because she was born at the moment when the Cotton Blossom was at the convergence on the Mississippi of the states of Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri). Shortly after, Captain Andy falls overboard during a storm and drowns. Rather than live with the stern Parthy, Magnolia and Ravenal leave for Chicago with Kim. In the big city, the couple is alternately rich and poor, depending on Ravenal's gambling winnings (he does not try to find regular work, and cheats on Magnolia with prostitutes). Finally, after about ten years, Parthy announces she is coming to visit; the destitute Ravenal, desperate for money, borrows some from Hetty Chilson, the local whorehouse madam. He returns to Magnolia at their boarding house but is drunk. As he sleeps off his stupor, she returns the money to Hetty, and discovers the madam's secretary is Julie Dozier. Julie is devastated that Magnolia has found her working in the whorehouse. (The fate of Steve goes unmentioned in the novel.) When Magnolia returns to the boarding house, she finds Ravenal gone, leaving nothing but a farewell note. She never sees him again. She goes out to get work and is hired at a local nightclub called Joppers. The story moves forward to 1926, when show boats are becoming scarce on the Mississippi River. Kim has married and become a successful actress on Broadway in New York City. Her father Ravenal has been dead for several years. One night, Magnolia receives a telegram announcing the death of her mother Parthy, from whom she has been long estranged. She returns to the show boat, which she decides to keep and manage, rather than to scrap. She gives all of her inheritance from Parthy, a fortune, to her daughter Kim. Joining Magnolia is Ellie, a widow since her husband Schultzy has died.
18793334	/m/04gs25f	The Tail of Emily Windsnap	Liz Kessler	2003		 Emily Windsnap is a girl who lives on the boat The King of the Sea with her mother Mary Penelope. She requests swimming lessons repeatedly until her mother, who is afraid of the water, allows it. After a few shocking incidents, Emily discovers she is half mermaid, half human. Her legs become a tail when she is immersed in water and become legs again when she leaves it. She meets another mermaid whose name is Shona, and they quickly become best friends. Together they discover that Emily's father is currently in the mer prison for marrying a human and that Mary is under a spell which makes her forget everything. The girls plan to save Emily's father, but do not know how. Later, Emily finds a chance to carry out her "daydream" plan and manages to drive their houseboat near the prison. Her mother follows and regains her memories of Jake Windsnap, her husband (Emily's father). They are caught by Neptune and brought to trial, where Emily manages to convince Neptune for the sake of their family's mutual love to let them go. Neptune releases the entire Windsnap family on one condition: they must live on a deserted island!
18793694	/m/027z96z	Darkest Hour	Meg Cabot	2001-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Suze Simon is forced to work a summer job by her stepfather, Andy, a first in her life. So her stepbrother Jake (Sleepy) gets her a pretty decent job as a hotel babysitter at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort. The pay is good, the job is relatively easy, and there's plenty of eye candy—like Paul Slater, the big brother of her usual charge, Jack, a particularly weird looking and whiny eight-year-old boy. While she finds Paul really interesting, she feels like she's cheating on Jesse because her true feelings were for him, not Paul. Suze soon realizes that Jack's misery is mainly caused because he could see dead people; in other words, he is also a mediator. As Suze helps Jack Slater realize ghosts do not mean to do any harm and just want help to go to the afterlife, he becomes more confident and reassured. Soon, he is becoming more like the average eight-year-old boy in America. Paul is surprised by this and asks Suze to join them for dinner. Suze politely declines and avoids talking to Paul the rest of the day. Suze's dry routine for the summer is interrupted when her stepfather and stepbrother—trying to install a hot tub—dig up something in the backyard—letters from a person named Maria de Silva to her fiance, Hector de Silva. Suze soon realizes that these letters belonged to Jesse. Problems start as Suze is threatened by Maria's ghost, who does not want them to find the letters. In her attempts to maintain her role in society, Maria starts harassing Suze's family, such as turning the juice in the refrigerator to bugs. Suze fears that if she finds Jesse's remains in the backyard, Jesse will move on to the next world and leave her alone. Despite her fear, Suze attempts to give those letters to the Historical Center, where the conservator Dr. Clive Clemmings thinks Jesse did not die from murder, but ran away from his wedding because he was too frightened. She notices Maria's picture and a small portrait of Jesse in the museum, and after listening to Dr. Clemming's speculation of the de Silva's history, becomes very upset. The following day, Suze is confronted by the police, who inform her that the conservator is dead and Hector de Silva's portrait is missing. Paul stops them from inquiring her further, saying that he can "attract more flies with honey rather than vinegar", and she finally concedes to go out on a date with him. As Suze returns home from the date, Brad (Dopey) and Andy unearthed Jesse's remains in the backyard. Suze throws up her dinner and assures herself, when she could not find Jesse, that he was only away for a time. Jesse had promised not to disappear if his remains were found and she believes him. The hours drag on as Suze waits for Jesse to return. Jack Slater then calls her to inform her of his successful exorcism of the "ghost who was bothering Suze" for a long time. According to Jack, a pretty Maria ghost had told him how to exorcise a ghost, and he succeeded without sweat. Suze is horrified. She is attacked by Maria de Silva and Felix Diego, her late husband, who helped kill Jesse in the past. They try to kill her, but only give her a concussion by throwing her in the dug-up hole Andy and Brad had been working on. The next day, Suze marches up to Jack and orders him to exorcise her. She believes that if she ended up in the same place as Jesse, she would be able to bring him back. Before she could do so, however, Father Dominic, who realizes her plan, intervenes and prevents the whole process from occurring. Father Dom agrees on doing a "proper exorcism" in the Mission, mainly because he believes Suze will not stop at any account on saving Jesse. He warns her against persuading Jesse with her female attributes, however, or keeping Jesse against his will. She has thirty minutes to go find him and come back, or she will die. Jack arrives in the last minute with the rope to tie around her waist and help her get back. Suze finds Jesse on the "other side". At first, Jesse was hurt because he thought Suze had exorcised him herself. When he was reassured that it was not her, however, he becomes furious with her safety and tries to lead her back to their world. It turns out that Maria had cut Suze's rope while she was trying to find Jesse, so Suze and Jesse were lost. Paul—who turns out to be a mediator as well—appears and taunts them. Suze realizes that Paul had been working with Maria and Felix, distracting Suze from saving Jesse from being exorcised. Jesse, furious with Paul's selfish outlook on the mediator "gift", punches him. They barely make it back to the Mission, only to find Maria and Felix Diego attacking Father Dominic. Suze finally manages to exorcize Maria de Silva and Felix Diego, and Jesse decides to stay in the living world. The Slaters leave the hotel, leaving Suze a huge tip and some cryptic letters. As Suze goes up, she finds Jesse wanting to talk. She says she does not want to talk, for fear of confessing her feelings, but Jesse finally kisses her. pt:Darkest Hour (livro)
18798648	/m/04gj21v	Monty: His Part in My Victory		1976	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 With the fall of Tunis in 1943, the Nazis surrender in Africa. Milligan has varied impressions: :"Dead soldiers in grotesque ballet positions, Arab families emerging from hiding, baffled and frightened, and the children, always the children, more baffled and frightened than the rest." An odd atmosphere pervades where enemy soldiers are found chatting together on the streets; a group of Italian soldiers tries to surrender to Milligan and his friends: they tell the Italians that they are British Army prisoners (i.e., to go away). The regiment's lieutenant asks two German officers drinking coffee in a cafe what they are doing: "Ve are vaiting to be took prisoners old poy." There is time on leave, in celebration parades, and in performing shows; the most traumatic experience is the transfer of Major Chater Jack — leaving the battery now without two of their favorite officers. Major "Jumbo" Jenkins, a humorless, unpleasant martinet is the replacement, with consequences for Milligan in the next volume. They move to various locations, some flat and barren. During one war game exercise, Milligan asks if they can "kill" themselves so they can play cards. The lieutenant suggests lunch, first. A referee rides up, and marks them with chalk — they are casualties. Remounting his motorcycle, he breaks his leg; Milligan marks him with the chalk. In a camp where Milligan builds an elaborate tent, a friend bets Milligan and Edgington he can get them out in two minutes; he sets an armored vehicle toward their tent, unpiloted. Milligan and Edgington move the tent, still inside. Writes Milligan, "We were all bloody mad." While Milligan points out to the reader that shows cannot be described, one must be there, he describes at length a series of musical activities and successful shows, culminating in one directed by Kenneth Carter, later a British producer and director. (The playbill is reproduced.) With the invasion of Sicily, the idyllic days are over. Milligan thinks about rewriting his will, since the last one was about getting killed in the Africa landings, not the Italian ones. He concludes the book on the ship HMS Boxer: :"'I wonder why we're waiting?'... :'We're waiting for the tide,' says Kidgell. :'That's the best news I've had.' :'Why?' :'The Med's tideless.'" Milligan does not know the gravity of the situation at Salerno until reading General Alexander's biography, twenty years later. The fighting starts in the next volume soon after they have landed.
18801293	/m/04gq4vb	Madame Doubtfire	Anne Fine	1987	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Daniel and Miranda Hilliard are separated, and Miranda, a successful businesswoman, severely limits the amount of time her husband, an impractical, out-of-work actor, is allowed to spend with their three children. When Miranda decides to hire a nanny, however, Daniel disguises himself as a woman and gets the job. The two eldest children immediately know who "Madame Doubtfire" is, but the youngest and Miranda are fooled. Daniel uses his disguise to spend time with his children. Miranda comments that the house has never been run better. After Miranda discovers Daniel's secret — and after one more terrible fight — both parents admit to mistakes and make arrangements for Daniel to see his children more often.
18802753	/m/04gll0v	The Wizard in Wonderland	Jean Ure	1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The plot details the reunion of junior wizard Ben-Muzzy and his friends Joel and Gemma. They visit Wonderland on Ben-Muzzy’s magic broomstick, however their fun is interrupted when a race known as the Airy Fairies steals the broomstick. Now the three friends must retrieve it before it is missed by the other wizards.
18812496	/m/04gr1vz	The Lonesome Place				 Taking place in an unnamed community, The Lonesome Place is told through the eyes of Steve, the narrator, and his best friend, Johnny Newell. The two boys are very scared of the dark and they believe that there is something living in the lonesome place. The lonesome place is an old grain elevator surrounded by tall trees and many piles of wood from the lumber yard that surrounds it. The story begins with the narrator's Mother asking her son to run errands for her before dinner at twilight. In order for the boy to get to the local grocery shop he needs to cross through the old lumber yard and past the lonesome place. At first sight, the lumber yard seems harmless enough, but after the sun goes down and the stars peep out into the sky the lumber yard becomes a place where shadows lurk and screams are drowned in darkness and never heard again. In the book it says Johnny and the narrator tend to run by the lonesome place when unable to avoid it because of the scary creature that they believe lives there. Both have their own hair-raising stories of going past the lumber yard and grain elevator at night. Johnny tells the narrator how the creature almost got him the night before, showing his ripped shirt as evidence of his close escape; the narrator returns with a tale of how he heard it knock over some lumber during his own trip through. The narrator has never seen the creature, but can feel its presence. When the boys run past the dark place their hearts race and their imagination runs wild. As they compare their experiences they conjure up a monster with big clawed feet, scales, a long tail and yet has no face. This creature waits for fearful children on which to prey. The creature is also able to climb the tree and lie in the trees. The creature also is known to lay by the lumber but the children can’t see the creature because it’s so dark in The Lonesome place. When the grain elevator is torn down and the boys are all grown up and become less fearful of the Lonesome Place, the monster waits for other fearful boys and girls in the dark. Many of the boys take their dates here because the lumber yard is so creepy for the girls. When Bobby Jeffers is killed by being mauled by some type of animal, the narrator and Johnny believe they are responsible for the boy's death, since they had left that conjured monster free to feed on another child's fear. They felt that they should have done something about it when they were younger. Now that Bobby is dead the boys feel guilt for creating the monster out of their own fears.
18814395	/m/04gkzd3	Missile Gap	Charles Stross	2006-12-31	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 On October 2, 1962, the universe underwent a change - instantly, the continents of the Earth were no longer wrapped onto a spherical planet but were on the surface of an Alderson disk. Measurements on Cepheid variable stars indicate that the Alderson disk is located in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, and that the epoch is roughly 800,000 years later than the calendar date (give or take 100,000 to 200,000 years). In the sky, the stars of the Milky Way are reddened and metal-depleted, evidence that it is now controlled by a Type-III civilization capable of controlling the resources of an entire galaxy. Three theories for the change are suggested within the novella: # the atoms making up the surface and people of earth have somehow peeled off the Earth and shipped to a new location # Marvin Minsky suggests that a snapshot of the world was taken and the snapshot has been used as the basis for a physical recreation # Hans Moravec suggests that a snapshot of the world was taken and the snapshot has been used as the basis for a simulated reality The first hypothesis would indicate that the characters of the book are the original humans of the 20th century Earth. The latter two hypotheses would indicate that the characters of the book are duplicates of humans that lived and died thousands of years previously. The creatures that moved or copied humanity are unknown, as is the technology they used and the purpose for their action. Because of the projection of a spherical surface onto a flat surface, some changes occur: North America is now much farther from Asia, as there is no polar route. Furthermore, launching an artificial satellite into orbit becomes impossible, and chemical-fueled ICBMs are no longer capable of reaching other continents. The gravitational attraction in the near field of an Alderson disk does not drop away according to the inverse-square law but is approximately constant and perpendicular to the disk, so missile trajectories become parabolic rather than segments of elliptical orbits. Thus, both the strategic bomber and ICBM "legs" of the nuclear triad are no longer feasible so nuclear deterrence breaks down, and the Soviet Union takes advantage of this to conquer much of Western Europe. The deterrent role is taken over by long-range nuclear-powered cruise missiles. Cold war tensions between the two super states provide the in-between plot direction. There are several sub-plots - the exploration of the new world by both superpowers forms much of the major plot. Yuri Gagarin captains a huge, nuclear-powered Ekranoplan on behalf of the Soviets, whilst the Americans launch cruise liners filled with colonists for distant islands. On one such island, Madelaine Holbright (initially a housewife) begins an affair with an John Martin, an entomologist who is almost fatally stung by native termites which begin to display signs of intelligence. During his travels, Gagarin turns up further examples of "Earths" far away from the currently inhabited areas, with cities that have clearly been destroyed in nuclear war in the distant past. A character named Gregor seems to be highly connected with the American Government, and is later shown to be in fact an advanced alien termite with pheromone control, and is guiding the transplanted humanity towards nuclear destruction, to clear the path for the "mock aboriginal termites" that have previously stung Martin. Eventually Gregor is successful, and humanity is destroyed in a nuclear exchange - Gregor's intelligence is saved and it is heavily implied that not only has this happened before, but that it will happen again, supporting (but not actually confirming) the second two of the suggested theories. To explain plot sections and provide background information, Stross makes use of themes that recur in his works - the use of security clearance briefings, and codewords to infer secret levels of information - COLLECTION and RUBY for Missile Gap
18820005	/m/04ghz3y	The Little Walls	Winston Graham	1955	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of Phillip Turner who refuses to believe that his brother’s death was suicide. He sets out to find out how his brother Grevil, an eminent archaeologist, came to be found dead in an Amsterdam canal. The official investigation is led by Inspector J.J. Tholen.
18823362	/m/04mz4rg	The Masks of Time	Robert Silverberg	1968-05	{"/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Vornan-19 arrives on Christmas day, 1998 in Rome. He floats down from the sky naked, landing on the Spanish Steps. The police try and arrest him but he knocks them over with a touch. He is helped and given clothes by Horst Klein who believes that the apocalypse will come in 389 days, Vornan-19 tells him that he is from the year 2999. Jack Bryant, a graduate student under Leo Garfield at the University of California is working toward a process to extract huge amounts of energy from ordinary matter. He leaves the physics department, gets married to pretty blond named Shirley and they move to the deserts of Arizona. Leo Garfield spends several months with Jack and Shirley to get a break from his physics work. During Vornan-19's first public press conference he mentions the fact that in the future society is very different due to the fact that they have tapped the energy within all matter so that no one has to work to obtain energy. Leo Garfield tells Jack that he left the University because he had actually finished his thesis showing how to extract the enormous amounts of energy within all particles of matter. He could not bear to release this theory since it would dramatically change human society. He asks Jack to use his influence to question Vornan-19 on the subject to see if it was his theory that was used in the future. When Jack returns to the University, he has a call from the White House and is forced to join a group of scientists working for the US government on how to best deal with Vornan-19. Vornan-19 comes to New York City where he meets with the group of scientists, attends an outrageous house party and tours the New York Stock Exchange. He reveals during the tour that in 2999 there is no capitalism and even no money. All citizens have all that they need. After visiting the stock market Vornan requests a visit to an automated brothel in Chicago. During an interview in California, Vornan-19 says that in the future they have determined how life began on the earth. An alien spacecraft visited the earth long ago on a scouting mission and discovered no life forms and so departed, before they left they jettisoned a load of their garbage that landed on earth and eventually started life. Vornan goes to moon, when he returns he takes a break from his tour of the earth by staying with Leo's friends Jack and Shirley in Arizona. Shirley subtly offers herself to Vornan but he shows no interest, Vornan instead seduces Jack. Shirley then sleeps with Leo who has been wanting her for years. Vornan has been made into a messiah by the people of earth. He visits Buenos Aires using a personal shield technology that should allow him to interact with the crowds. The shield fails and Vornan is grabbed by the crowd and his body is never recovered. Jack remains in Buenos Aires until the turn of the century.
18826873	/m/04gn0hg	Nobody's Baby But Mine	Susan Elizabeth Phillips	1997	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Physics professor Dr. Jane Darlington spends her 34th birthday in tears. She wants a baby, but not a husband. Where can she find an average or, preferably, stupid man? She decides that Cal Bonner, legendary quarterback for the Chicago Stars is perfect. Jane sets her plan into action and after some trail and error she succeeds. But the results are more than she bargained for when Cal discovers her duplicity. How can a football player with an interfering family and a nerdy professor who has never known family love ever fall in love? With lots of honesty, understanding and a whole lot of humor. Don't miss this one! It's filled with engaging characters, laughs galore and a feel-good ending.
18830192	/m/04grny5	The Clone Wars	Karen Traviss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story follows the heroic Jedi Knights as they struggle to maintain order and restore peace during the tumultuous Clone Wars. More and more systems are falling prey to the forces of the dark side as the Galactic Republic slips further and further under the sway of the Separatists and their never-ending droid army. Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan learner Ahsoka Tano find themselves on a mission with far-reaching consequences, one that brings them face-to-face with crime lord Jabba the Hutt. But Count Dooku and his sinister agents, including the nefarious Asajj Ventress, will stop at nothing to ensure that Anakin and Ahsoka fail at their quest. Meanwhile, on the front lines of the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Master Yoda lead the massive clone army in a valiant effort to resist the forces of the dark side.
18838423	/m/04gn38r	Soldier Boys	Dean Hughes	2003-05-01	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Dieter Hedrick, once a small and timid person, over time becomes a member of an anti-aircraft gun battery that scores at least one kill during Allied bombing raids. Moving steadily higher in rank in the Hitler Youth, Dieter is promoted to lead a group of 180 boys, who are part of the enormous project to build the Westwall (Siegfried Line) before the Allies arrive. Two fellow HJ's are less fortunate: Ernst Gessel is killed when a British Spitfire strafes the site, and Willi Hoffmann is shot for attempting to desert. Dieter proves himself to be a capable leader, and he, along with a few other HJ leaders meet Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer and are decorated for their contributions to the German war effort. Dieter is anxious to fight and, following other senior HJ's, goes into the Wehrmacht. Assigned to a unit that is demoralized and badly understrength, Dieter meets Schaefer, a weary soldier whose cynical attitude contrasts sharply with Dieter's blind, fiery patriotism. Schaefer had a son, an HJ, who was killed while manning an AA gun in an Allied bombing raid and has seen far more of the war than Dieter, being a veteran of Stalingrad. He constantly criticizes Dieter's blind devotion to Hitler, truthfully saying that the war is lost for Germany and that surrendering is the best thing any German soldier can hope for. Despite their constant arguing, Dieter gradually begins to form a father-son relationship with Schaefer. Spence and Dieter are both sent into Battle of the Bulge. When both boys kill their first enemy, they react differently. Dieter is proud to have killed an enemy of Germany, while Spence is far less enthusiastic. As fighting continues, both sides suffer losses. Ted and half of Spence's company are killed after being ambushed by German tanks and infantry. Later, Dieter boasts of having shot several of the American infantry, while Schaefer reveals having deliberately aimed beneath them. Overnight, the Americans bring up reinforcements, with the result that when the Germans attack them again the next day, they are going up against a force much stronger than they expected. Dieter charges up the hill, making it farther than anyone else, but is shot several times and is left by the surviving men of his unit as they retreat. Schaefer is killed but Dieter, unaware of this, begins to call for him with increasing desperation as the night goes on. A group of German medics attempt to retrieve Dieter, but retreat after one of their number is shot by a young GI. Spence, against orders from his squad leader, decides to crawl out onto the open ground where the Germans lost in the charge had fallen. Dieter, realizing an American has reached him, initially tries to push Spence away and cannot understand Spence asking him where he is wounded, or telling Dieter he is there to help. Spence persists, however, and uses equipment carried by the dead German medic to bandage Dieter's wounds. Dieter gradually calms down, and having become somewhat delusional, is partially convinced Schaefer has at last returned to save him. As Spence tries to get Dieter back to his own lines so he can reach medics, he is shot by German medics, who have returned for Dieter once more and this time are taking no chances. Fatally wounded, Spence soon dies on the hill. Taken to a field hospital, Dieter learns what happened to him, the American who helped him, and Schaefer. As Dieter and a sergeant from his unit await transfer from the front lines to undergo surgery, Dieter's blind patriotism begins to fade. Unable to ignore the significance of what Spence, an enemy, did for him, Dieter realizes he will think about Spence for the rest of his life. Back in the United States, a funeral is held for Spence, and a letter arrives for his parents from Sergeant Pappas, Spence's squad leader. Learning that their son gave up his life to save a German, the Morgans decide against revealing this to friends and relatives, since hatred for Germans is running high. They remember, however, Spence's promise that he would not let fighting in the war corrupt him- a promise he ultimately kept.
18847976	/m/04gv4k3	Ubu and the Truth Commission	Jane Taylor			 Pa Ubu (played by Dawid Minnaar) has been spending a great deal of time away from home, much to the concern and suspicion of his wife (Busi Zokufa), who smells on him an odour which she suspects may be that of a mistress. In truth, however, he is an agent of a governmental death squad, and the odour that she smells is of blood and dynamite. With the abolishment of apartheid, the TRC is set in motion. Amnesty is offered those war criminals who come forward and offer full and truthful testimony regarding their infractions. Ubu, suspecting a trick, is unsure of what to do. The play follows his indecisive actions as they lead his path finally to a convergence with that of the TRC.
18850234	/m/04gpw_w	Ghost Walker	Barbara Hambly	1991-02-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Elcidar Beta III, inhabitated by the Midgwins, is a planet strategically located between the Federation and the Klingon empire. The Midgwins' refusal to embrace technological advances have left their planet devastated and their people endangered. The U.S.S. Enterprise tries to help but is hampered by a murderous force that roams its corridors seemingly at will.
18850312	/m/04ghk74	A Flag Full of Stars	Brad Ferguson	1991-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 It has been eighteen months since the end of the original five year mission. Captain Kirk, now an admiral, is on earth, in a new relationship, overseeing the refit of his beloved ship. Plans are to hand it over to its new captain, Willard Decker. Kirk meets a scientist, G'Dath, who has invented a device that could tip the balance of power for the Federation and the Klingons. Both sides pursue the man. Kirk and his former crewmate, Kevin Riley, attempt to save the day.
18856300	/m/04grywr	The Mother-Daughter Book Club		2007-04-24		 The book is divided between seasons, and the point of view from each girl. The book starts off with Emma Hawthorne on the bus on her way to her first day in the 6th grade at Walden Middle School in [Concord, Massachusetts]. She gets made fun of by Becca Chadwick and Ashley Sanborn because of her hand-me-down skirt from a girl named Nicole Patterson (who is in the same grade as her brother, Darcy). Emma talks about how she hates the first day of school. She started hating the first day of school when she started fourth grade, when her former best friend Megan replaced her with three popular girls named Becca, Ashley, and Jen. She also explains that Megan became rich because her father created a "computer gizmo". Emma also recalls that Megan made "the most amazing clothes for our Barbie Dolls." As she enters the school, her brother Darcy helps her find her homeroom. She asks if her best friend, Jess, is there too, but isn't. She enters the class and is sitting across from Megan, and sitting next to Zach Norton, her crush. Emma also explains that Darcy calls Megan, Becca, Ashley, and Jen "the Fab Four", which they think is so cute because they have a crush on him and Zach Norton. When Emma gets home, she eats dinner with her family in their pink kitchen. She explains that her father does all the cooking, that her mother is a great cook and "she can boil water really well". She also explains that her mother is "a Jane Austen freak" or a "Austen Nut" and that her mother named her and her brother after characters in her favorite novels (Emma after Emma, and Darcy after Pride and Prejudice). Her mother tells her that she and a few mothers were talking at yoga club and that they decided to start a mother–daughter book club. Emma asks her mother who is going to be there but she refuses to tell her. That night she goes to the local library to have her first book club meeting. Megan texts her best friend Becca, "that she and her mother are in a book club and that she hates it," during book club, and Emma peeks at her hopefully. Her mother tells her that starting the club will look good on her application to the colonial academy, which Megan has no interest in, because she wants to be a fashion designer. She describes the future her mother wants for her and how frustrated she is that her mother does not approve of her dream. Megan describes that she and her mother are 100% different and that her mother likes to help causes. Megan and her mother are driving to the library for the meeting. She sees Zach Norton (she also has a crush on him) and exits the car, and acts a little ugly. She also sees Ethan MacDonald, and Third (his real name is Cranfield Bartlett III). She also sees Emma Hawthorne, whom she hates and in her mind she criticizes Emma's outfit, because she has no fashion sense( Megan loves fashion.). She and her mother, Emma, and Emma's mother enter the library. A few minutes later, in walks in Cassidy Sloane with her mother (a former, world famous model), Clementine. Megan compliments Cassidy in how she doesn't look anything like her mother and how much of a tomboy she is. Also, Jess walks in and Megan talks about what a weird-o she is and how she and her friends call her "Goat Girl" because she lives on an organic farm with many goats. She also describes how Jess's mother "ran away" from home to go to New York to audition for a soap opera called HeartBeats.Becca's mother enters the library and Megan states that no one likes Becca's mother. Becca's mother says that she's sorry that Megan couldn't come shopping with Becca, Ashley, and Jen and criticises the book club. Mrs. Hawthorne announces that the girls will be reading Little Women and the first book club meeting ends. Cassidy walks into her home after school and her mother greets her from the kitchen. Cassidy walks into the kitchen and sees her mother is making cupcakes for a Halloween party that her mother hosted without confronting Cassidy first. Cassidy's mother ask what she thinks of the cupcakes and Cassidy says they look radioactive. Because of this, Cassidy gets sent to her room. Meanwhile, she confronts her older sister, Courtney, who tells her that she should be nicer to her mother. She says that she must be having a hard time since her father's death. Cassidy ignores Courtney's comments and heads off to the ice rink. Skating for an hour calms her down and she bikes home. After the book club meeting at her house, Cassidy goes downstairs to the Halloween party. She is wearing her hockey uniform, so nobody can see her face. She overhears Becca, Megan, Ashley, and Jen gossiping about how she is nothing like her mom or sister which makes her mad. She teams up with Zach, Ethan, and Third to pull a prank on Becca, Megan, Ashley and Jen, who are known as the "Fab Four". She has Emma and Jess helping her and it is a success but Cassidy ends up getting in trouble. Emma tries to convince Jess to try out for the school play, Beauty and the Beast. Jess refuses because she is upset that her mother "ran away" to be an actress in a soap opera called HeartBeats. The girls watch the hockey try-outs, no one except them knowing that Cassidy is trying out for the boys' hockey team. Becca, Ashley, and Jen all make fun of Jess and Emma. Becca's mother and Megan appear with popcorn and soda. Emma's brother, Darcy, is trying out for the team, and so is Becca's brother, Stewart. Becca's mother scowls at Emma and Jess, being on their case since the Halloween prank. Cassidy got caught and is now grounded, but she didn't rat out Jess and Emma. Out of the blue, Becca grabs Emma's journal from her backpack and calls Zach Norton, Emma's crush, to come over and reads a poem out loud about that Emma wrote about him. Zach and Emma are both embarrassed. She rushes out of the stadium and Jess runs after her. They come back to Emma's house and they bake cookies for the book club meeting. Megan and her mother come in, while Cassidy's mother storms in furious. She says she received a call from Becca's mother saying that Cassidy made the boys' hockey team without her permission and that her spot on the team should've gone to someone else, and that Becca's mother claims it should have been her son's. Cassidy's mother tells her that hockey is dangerous and feels betrayed that everyone seemed to know about Cassidy trying out but her. Cassidy is also furious and tells her that she wishes she had a different mother and they both storm out. The book club meeting is canceled. Cassidy and her mother head to the middle school to pick up Jess from rehearsal. Jess got the part of Belle, but the Fab Four spreads rumors all around the school that the drama teacher gave her the part because her mother ran away because they were cast as dancing silverware. Cassidy also tells Jess to ignore them. Jess goes along with it. Cassidy and her mother go see a shrink or as Cassidy's mother would like to word it, family counselor. Clementine thinks that Cassidy's attitude towards her and other people is very disrespectful, and decides to put herself and Cassidy in counseling. The counselor talks to them both, saying that Clementine does not want her to play hockey because she is afraid that she will lose her like she lost her husband. Cassidy says that she will compromise with Clementine by having a better attitude and not talking back. In return, Clementine will let Cassidy play. They both agree by signing a contract but is not legally bound. Cassidy, Emma, Jess, and Megan leave the school, on their way to Megan's house for book club. Mrs. Wong brings out vegaterian cookies which Cassidy hates. Megan disappears and Mrs. Wong asks all the girls to look for Megan. They begin to search for Megan (Cassidy saying "It's hard to believe that only three people live here" because the Wongs' own a house that "looks like a museum"). They find Megan in her bedroom. Cassidy tells Megan to hurry up. Emma sees the old Barbie clothes that Megan made when she and Emma used to be friends. Megan is furious and snatches it away from her. They all go into the living room and have their book club meeting and all discussing their future careers. Mrs. Wong disagrees with Megan's chosen career as a fashion designer. Cassidy's mother still does not like the idea of Cassidy becoming a pro hockey player one day. Emma wants to become a writer and Jess wants to become a veterinarian. All of the mothers chip in for a Christmas Party and they should all dress up like the characters from Little Women. Cassidy says that she does not want to wear a dress, but Clementine pulls the contract out and immediately Cassidy is forced to agree. It is snowing hard outside and Mrs. Hawthorne plans to cancell the Christmas party because of the roads being blocked. Jess's father later comes by in a carriage drawn by his two horses, Led and Zep (which he named after Led Zeppelin). They pick up the Wongs and sing Christmas songs all the way to the Sloane's house. The girls all dress up in fancy dresses ( Cassidy wears sweatpants under hers) and they talk about who they are supposed to be. They all receive presents from Mrs. Delaney and Emma has Megan decorate a dress for her paper doll she received. She sees a true smile on Megan and starts thinking she might get her old friend back for Christmas, however her mother ruins this by suggesting to Megan to design a dress for Jess to wear for the play. Still envious that Jess got the part she wanted, Megan turns back into her old self again. It is almost time for the play and Jess becomes nervous. She stays in her room and talks to her mother who is on TV even though she can't hear her. Jess is upset that her mother could not be at her performance and wonders if her mother ever gets nervous when she is about to perform. After dinner at the Hawthorne's, Jess goes to school to prep for the play. Mrs. Sloane fixes her hair and makeup and Zach Norton, who plays Beast, gives her a red rose. The Fab Four whisper and call her "Goat Girl". On stage, Jess shines as she performs and loses all stage fright that she had before. In the middle of the show however, Jess's pet goat Sundance is let loose on the stage. This destroys the entire scene. Sundance runs away scared until Darcy hands her to Jess. They restart the scene after, Darcy and her dad put Sundance back into her crate. Megan is mad that she got into so much trouble for helping Becca with the goat stunt. She thinks that it was a silly prank and is angry that Zach is barely talking to her. The book club has an emergency meeting and decides that new rules should be made. All the girls sign the new rules. They decide not to kick Megan out as long as she makes it up to Jess. They decide that Megan can design a dress for Jess to wear to the Spring Fling Dance. By the end of the chapter, Megan realizes that she really does miss Emma and wants to have a better friendship with the other girls. They all celebrate by eating pie. Becca texts Megan but Megan decides not to answer her phone. Cassidy's team, the Concord Comets, are competing for the championship title against the Minutemen. Cassidy scores another point and ties up the game. After her water break, she is ready to win the game but ends up getting boarded by a Minuteman defenseman. Cassidy says she heard the coach telling the Minuteman to hurt her. Mrs. Sloane starts being "Queen Clementine" as Cassidy calls her,and ends up threatening the coach of the Minuteman in front of everybody and the Minuteman is out for the rest of the game. With only thirty seconds to go, Cassidy scores the final goal, and the Comets win the game. Cassidy sees the whole mother- daughter book club cheering for her, and her mother, who previously had been hiding her face because she was scared, is standing and cheering too. The chapter ends with the Comets winning and everyone cheering for Cassidy. Emma has a sleepover with Jess, Cassidy, and Megan. She says that Megan is still with the Fab Four but that they had started including her more ever since she apologized to Jess. The girls go to the Patriot's Day parade which is a historical event in Concord filled with a special breakfast and a Revolutionary War reenactment. At the breakfast, Jess's twin brothers, Ryan and Dylan bother Becca's older bother Stewart and make fun of him for being a redcoat. Becca yells at them and ends up pushing them. This makes Jess angry and she confronts Becca and tells her to leave her brothers alone. This surprise everyone since Jess is so quiet, and Cassidy and Emma back her up. Ashley and Jen back Becca up but Megan stays in the middle. Becca makes her choose and without hesitation she choose Emma's group. She throws her pancakes on Becca getting syrup in her hair. Everyone ends up in a food fight and the four girls laugh all the way back to Emma's house where they watch the parade. The girls go to Cassidy's house to get ready for the Spring dance. Megan makes Jess and herself a dress. Jess's mother sends them "goodies" that the cast of her TV show use. They all come downstairs in their outfits. Cassidy is wearing her sister's old dress decorated with roses. Megan's dress is ice blue and Jess's is a pretty pink. Emma is wearing a yellow dress which used to be Nicole Patterson's. She becomes upset since her dress is too formal for the dance. Megan improvises by fixing the sleeves and changing the length. This makes Emma happy again and everyone compliments Megan's talent at designing. At the dance, Zach Norton calls Jess "Beauty" (because of the play) and asks her to dance. This makes Emma jealous and she runs out of the gym, crying. Megan and Cassidy cheer her up and Jess tells Emma that she doesn't like Zach, and admits that she likes Emma's brother Darcy ever since he saved Jess's goat at the play. Cassidy tells Emma that Zach only likes Jess as a friend and that he is comfortable around her which is why he asked her to dance. They all go back to the gym. Cassidy dances with Zach, Jess with Ethan, Megan with Darcy, and Emma with Third. They didn't get exactly what they wanted, but it ended up fine. For the very first time, the mother- daughter book club is being held at Jess's home, Half Moon Farm. Jess watch her mom on TV and then spends some time in her "secret hiding place". When the book club starts, her dad ends up embarrassing her by almost having her and her friends dance the "Dance of the Maypole Maidens". Everyone tries not to laugh, and her dad is surprised since he read it in a magazine. Jess becomes upset and goes to her room, fuming about how her family is weird. Emma, Cassidy, and Megan all come upstairs and comfort her. Emma tells Jess that all parents humiliate their kids. Cassidy tells Jess people always point and stare since her mom is a supermodel and she doesn't look like her at all. Megan reminds Jess of the vegetarian cookies her mom served at the book club meeting. This makes Jess feel better and they all end up laughing about it. Dad comes and talks to Jess and explains how he is having a hard time raising the kids while their mother is away. He apologizes and they go back downstairs to finish the book club meeting. ===Emm ega assid es haracter he Daughter he Mother ther Family Member riends and Acquaintances=== *Zach Norton One of Cassidy's best friends, and a good friend to Jess as well. He is tall with blonde hair and blue eyes. Becca and Megan have a major crush on him, however, he does not like them at all. At a hockey game in the first book, Becca steals Emma's journal and reads a poem that Emma had written about him out loud to him and his friends. While Zach avoids Emma for a while, he eventually comes to like her as a friend. Zach plays Little League with Cassidy. *Ethan McDonald One of Cassidy's friends. Cassidy plays Little League with Ethan and Zach. He is nicknamed Tater. *Cranfield Bartlett III, or Third One of Cassidy's friends. Third plays hockey with Cassidy and is good friends with Zach and Ethan. *Ashley Sanborn One of Becca's wannabees and a part of the Fab Four. Ashley was afraid to stand up to Becca and does whatever Becca wants her to do. She is described as having black hair and deep tan skin which Cassidy becomes jealous of. Like both Becca and Megan, she loves fashion. *Jennifer, or Jen Webster One of Becca's wannabees and a part of the Fab Four. Like Ashley, Jen is afraid to stand up to Becca and does whatever Becca wants her to. She is friends with Megan, Ashley and Becca. She is an amazing artist. She plays a rather small role in the series. *Stewart Chadwick Becca's clumsy older brother. He plays on the local hockey team, since he is not nearly good enough to get on the Concord Comets, and because the local team "basically takes anybody that breathes." He enjoys hockey anyway. He is very similar to Emma because he likes poetry.
18857515	/m/04gr5kt	Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings, Seditious Verse, and the Birth of the Modern World	David Bodanis	2006-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book starts with a "flash forward" in which Émilie du Châtelet is briefly introduced. It is June in the year 1749, and Émilie is in the final stages of her pregnancy. She is struggling to complete a book of her theories and calculations, and fears that she will not have enough time to finish the thesis. The book then jumps back in time to the year 1706, and to a younger Émilie. She has not yet met Voltaire, and is but ten years old. She lives with her parents, and is considered an unusual child because of her love of books and reading.
18859554	/m/04ghv29	Brood of the Witch Queen				 The novel begins with the strange murder of Mr Ferrara. A horrifying series of events follows, leading to a woman being used against her will to prey on her husband and then abducted and killed in inside a secret chamber in an old Egyptian pyramid. Only after a series of adventures and investigation is Anthony Ferrara made powerless by Dr Bruce destroying the source of his control — the famed Book of Thoth — upon which Ferrara is no longer able to control the elemental he has summoned and is found as a burned corpse the day after.
18862646	/m/04gv153	Supreme Courtship	Christopher Buckley	2008-09-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After several failed attempts to seek Senate approval for his Supreme Court nominations, perpetually unpopular President Donald P. Vanderdamp (nicknamed "Don Veto" by Congress) decides to get even by nominating Judge Pepper Cartwright, star of Courtroom Six and America's most popular TV judge, to the Supreme Court. Soon, Cartwright finds herself in the middle of a Constitutional crisis, a Presidential campaign, and entanglements both political and romantic in nature.
18865559	/m/04gkysj	Sacred	Dennis Lehane	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired by a dying billionaire to find his daughter, Desiree, after the disappearance of previous detective, Jay Becker, who has disappeared while in St Petersburg, Florida, working on the case.
18872432	/m/04gt54y	The False Inspector Dew	Peter Lovesey	1982-03-11	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 It is 1921, and Alma Webster, a reader of romances, is passionately in love with her dentist, Walter Baranov. There is only one foreseeable outcome: the murder of his wife. Inspired by the real-life Dr Crippen case, they plot a way to achieve it perfectly aboard the ocean liner, Mauretania. The dentist takes on the identity of Inspector Walter Dew, Crippen’s nemesis, but then a murder occurs aboard the ship and the captain invites "Inspector Dew" to investigate.
18877923	/m/04glpy8	Gray Victory	Robert Skimin	1988-02	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 Despite the South's victory, the population is still coming to terms with the enormous costs of the war. Edward A. Pollard, the editor of the Richmond Examiner is one of them, blaming J.E.B. Stuart for having caused the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg. Seeking reelection (a historically inaccurate element, as presidents were allowed a single six year term under the provisions of the Confederate constitution), Jefferson Davis convenes a court of inquiry to provide a public airing of the accusation. Though Stuart (who, in another point of divergence, has survived his wounding at the battle of Yellow Tavern) welcomes the inquiry as an opportunity to clear his name, Davis intends to make Stuart the scapegoat for the defeat. To represent him in the tribunal, Stuart approaches his good friend John S. Mosby. Now the head of military intelligence, Mosby accepts, juggling preparations for the inquiry with his other duties. His primary concern is "Abraham", an organization of southern African Americans pursuing an end to slavery in the South. Enjoying a cordial relationship with the movement's leader, a local businessman named Jublio, he nonetheless recruits an informant to monitor Jublio's activities. Yet Abraham is not the Confederacy's greatest problem. A band of northern abolitionists and freed slaves, bitter at the way the war ended and southern slavery continued, form a terrorist cell known as "Amistad", named for the famous slave ship. Organized by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, they plot to infiltrate the Confederate capital of Richmond and stage an incident which will rally the slaves and restart the war. Though the cell is made up of African Americans, the leader is Salmon Brown, the surviving son of John Brown, who is consumed with guilt at having backed out of his family's raid on Harpers Ferry and determined to redeem himself. Brown is unsettled, though, by the addition of an octoroon woman named Verita to the cell, while the group's plans are jeopardized by a vainglorious member code-named Crispus who writes compromising letters to the authorities in Washington taunting them about the cell's upcoming actions. Not wanting to jeopardize relations with the Confederacy, President McClellan orders General John Rawlins to investigate the letters. The court of inquiry attracts considerable attention from the public and the press. Many prominent women rally around the handsome Stuart, most notably Bessica Adams Southwick, a beautiful and wealthy widow. Her casual flirtation with Stuart soon develops into love, though Stuart's sense of honor restrains him from betraying his marital vows. Intrigued by the opportunity presented by the trial, Higginson arranges for Verita to travel to Richmond. Posing as a French actress, she is hosted by Southwick, who soon gives Verita access to many prominent Confederate figures, most notably Judah P. Benjamin, with whom Higginson encourages Verita to begin an affair so as to learn what the Confederate official knows about funding for underground activities. Higginson also orders the remainder of the group to Richmond in preparation for their attack. When the inquiry begins, Mosby quickly becomes aware of the hostility of the members of the court &mdash; Braxton Bragg, George Pickett, and John Bell Hood &mdash; towards Stuart. Nonetheless, he mounts a vigorous defense of his friend. A greater challenge for him is the growing romantic interest of Spring Blakely, the niece of Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge and a secret abolitionist. While attracted to Blakeley, Mosby holds back, still grieving for his recently-deceased wife. He also attempts to deal with the threat posed by Amistad. Alerted to the possibility of a plot by Rawlins, the two pursue their investigations in consultation with one another. As the inquiry continues, Amistad prepares to carry out their plan to attack the dignitaries assembled in the courtroom. Approaching Jublio, they attempt to utilize his Abraham branch in their plans, but he keeps a wary distance from the plotters. Brown also attempts to deal with his growing jealousy over Verita's affair with Benjamin, and when confronted by her he admits his love. Distracted, he is unaware of Crispus's growing instability, which threatens to expose the group. Nevertheless, it is Crispus who identifies Mosby's informer among the Abraham organization. He kills the informer, but not before the informer succeeds in sending to Mosby a garbled name which Mosby eventually figures out is that of Salmon Brown. Mosby enjoys a similar breakthrough in his case. After careful study of the records, he decides to shift the blame for the defeat to James Longstreet, who long sought Stuart's court-martial for his actions during the battle. With Davis's plans in ruins and the members of the court preparing to clear Stuart of all blame, the Confederate president suffers an additional blow when Robert E. Lee himself agrees to testify. Lee's appearance catalyzes the Amistad plotters. As Lee testifies in the courthouse, the plotters dynamite the Confederate White House, the destruction of which draws away many of the guards stationed at the courthouse in anticipation of an attack on the inquiry. With the courtroom weakly defended, the Amistad plotters rush the room, and gloatingly hold the famous Confederates hostage. Finally, a firefight erupts in which most of the Amistad group die, but they succeed in killing a number of people, including Benjamin, P. G. T. Beauregard, and Stuart, who dies protecting Lee - and also Rawlins of the USA.. A decisive factor in the battle is the sudden appearance of the armed Jubilo, who decided to turn against the Amistad group and who kills Solomon Brown. With Lee surviving, a US officer among those killed by the Amistad group and a prominent local Black activist having turned against the Northern Abolitionists, the incident fails to reignite war between the USA and CSA, as the conspirators hoped. However, there is much rioting and bloodshed inside the Confederacy's own territory, with angry mobs attacking random Blacks and the Black activists of "Abraham" succeeding to fight back in some locations. A meeting between Mosby and Jubilo in the aftermath gives the impression that the Confederate government would have to change its attitude to the Black population - not only eventually abolish slavery but also grant civil rights to the increasingly organized and self-aware Blacks. Meanwhile, Verita - the only one of the Amistad group to survive the fighting - is sentenced to death. She haughtily rebuffs Mosby's suggestion that she ask for clemency, telling him "I will be alive when you are dust" and prepares to die as a martyr and create a heroic myth for future radicals.
18885841	/m/04jdfs5	The Tashkent Crisis				 The novel is based on events that may have followed the receipt of the following transmission from Moscow by the incumbent President of the United States: MOSCOW EXOR MSG6 TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: WE HEREBY DEMAND THE UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER OF YOUR COUNTRY 72 HOURS FROM THIS TRANSMISSION... Evidence is offered that a new weapon is in Soviet hands that renders the US vulnerable to an attack consistent with this warning. Thereafter it is the task of US agents to avoid the need for the US Government to surrender within the given timeframe. Their first hint as to what action to take is that a coup d'etat has taken place within the Soviet Union and a new leader is in charge. The action taken is to destroy the beam weapon in use by a pocket nuke consisting of an Einsteinium warhead contained within the stock of a modified pistol.
18891399	/m/04jh9yy	Clash of Eagles		1990-07-29	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 Nazi Germany launched a major invasion across the Atlantic, out of the United Kingdom which was conquered in the previous year. German forces under Erwin Rommel land in Quebec and sweep across New England to New York City. The rest of the United States remains unoccupied but perilously exposed to further attacks, and the Roosevelt Administration evacuates the endangered Washington, D.C. and moves westwards.
18901607	/m/04jgd7v	The Divine Worshipper	Christian Jacq	2008-04	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Accused of murders he did not commit, a young scribe named Kel is continuously evading the forces of justice in a desperate attempt to prove his innocence. Aided by Nitis (a beautiful priestess and his wife) and Bebon (an actor and his closest friend), Kel manages to flee south and eventually take refuge in Thebes, safely out of the reach of the pharaoh Ahmose and his main pursuers, Judge Gem and Henat, head of the spies. Protected by the spiritual leader of Thebes, a venerable lady known as The Divine Worshipper, Kel manages to finally clear his name, but not in time to save Egypt, as the Persian forces swarm across the border and overrun the country.
18903816	/m/04jc7fy	A Jolly Good Fellow		2008	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Two weeks before Christmas in Boston, Duncan Wagner, a lone down-and-outer who has been living in self-imposed exile for several years, kidnaps Gabriel Booker, the eleven-year-old son of State Representative Winthrop Booker. Wagner takes the child to his apartment and ties him to a chair in front of the television, then leaves for work as a self-employed charity Santa Claus. When Wagner returns to his apartment, Gabriel is no longer in the chair. Thinking the boy has fled, Wagner goes into his room and finds him sleeping on the bed. In spite of a lingering edginess, the two grow more cordial toward each other. Wagner locks Gabriel’s ankle to a long chain to make sure he doesn’t run away. Gabriel hounds Wagner to supply him with Christmas decorations and other goodies to help pass the time. Wagner awkwardly complies. Gabriel turns out to be a vegetarian. And a bed wetter. After a day, Wagner makes a ransom demand for one hundred thousand dollars from Representative Booker. Almost immediately the missing child case turns into an Amber Alert and dominates news headlines. One night Wagner, bothered by the clinking sound of the chain, unlocks Gabriel’s ankle in order to have a decent sleep. In the morning, Gabriel is gone and with him, all Duncan’s charity money. Duncan goes to town in his Santa suit, hoping to elude hoards of police he is sure will swarm to his apartment. While in town, he helps a street artist, Martina, whose purse is being rifled by a pair of thieves. He realizes Martina has an eye for his Santa character, though he also realizes that by kidnapping Gabriel, he has imprisoned himself as well. Back at his apartment there are no police. Later on, Gabriel shows up in disguise after spending the day exploring Boston and buying money orders with Duncan's cash. The friendship is solidified, although the ransom deal seems to be going sour... The real story is the relationship between Duncan and Gabriel, which takes surprising but endearing turns.
18908367	/m/04jhp_9	The Wench is Dead	Colin Dexter		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In 1859, the body of a young woman was found floating in the Oxford Canal; her death led to a sensational murder trial, and two men were eventually hanged for the murder. In 1989, Inspector Morse is recovering from a bleeding ulcer in Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Morse is given a book by the wife of a recently deceased patient at the hospital. The little book called Murder on the Oxford Canal tells the story of the murder of Joanna Franks aboard the canal boat Barbara Bray. Morse is soon convinced that the two men hanged for the crime were innocent and sets out to prove it from the confines of his bed. The title of the novel comes from Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta, the following quotation serves as the epigraph to the novel: :FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou hast committed-- :BARABAS. Fornication: but that was in another country; :And besides, the wench is dead.
18909926	/m/04jkbjk	Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall		1978	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 Milligan's Italian adventures start well, as one of their battery guns knocks the top off an enemy hill just sighting down the barrel. The next day he has a temperature of 103, and is sent to a hospital. Although he's released in a few days, transportation back to his group is not available until October 19, during which time he gets leave in Naples and Pompeii. Otherwise, he is so bored he volunteers for work. He defends his favorite comics to a North Country soldier: :"Gracie Fields," I guffawed, "she's as funny as a steam roller going over a baby." :"You must be bludy thick, she's a scream." :"Yes, I scream every time I hear her sing." :"Ooo do you think is foony them?" :"W.C. Fields, Marx Brothers." :"Oooo?" The other preferred George Formby, who "cud play 'is bludy 'ead off." The idea of a headless Formby fills Milligan with delight. A threat to desert sent to Major Jenkins finally elicits a truck to return Milligan to his group. He returns to find his pack of war souvenirs was lost, with his Nazi war loot, including an Iron Cross and pornographic photographs taken from a dead German soldier in Africa. (Milligan was going to send them home to the soldier's mother.) The war has been a religious turning point for Milligan: :"A Catholic priest visited us this evening and asked if anyone wanted Confession and Holy Communion. I nearly went but since the war started, my belief in a God had suffered a reverse. I couldn't equate all the killing by two sides, both of whom claimed to be a Christian society. I was, as Gary Cooper would says 'kinda mixed up inside'." On December 5, the men are billeted in a four-story Victorian Gothic farmhouse, including utility buildings. They clean vigorously, including a yard so heavily covered with manure that when they uncover the cobblestone, the farmer who had lived there since a boy says he didn't know it existed. During the night, rain fills the courtyard with manure again. Before Christmas the men organize a show, however lack of facilities reduce it to nudity, instead of the more rarefied skits and music — in spite of Italian farmers and their wives being invited. On the 27th, they are on leave in Almafi: :"The whole place has architectural maturity: there are numerous creepers and vines growing in profusion on the walls and balconies. In summer it must be a riot of flowers, right now it's a riot of gunners, there is a scramble as we dash for the best beds (if any)...." Of the many complaints Milligan and the men have about their Major Jenkins are his poor musical abilities, lack of humor, and not keeping the men notified about orders. In the end of the book, an observation post is in a "dodgy" situation, and Jenkins has sent up everyone for duty there, except himself. Milligan is sent up, but doesn't come back under his own power, after being hit by a mortar bomb: :"....he can see us! We hit the deck. A rain of them fall around us. I cling to the ground. The mortars rain down on us. I'll have a fag, that's what. I am holding a packet of Woodbines, there is a noise like thunder. It's right on my head, there's a high-pitched whistle in my ears, at first I black out and then I see red....I know if we stay here we'll all die...I start to scramble down the hill." Major Jenkins criticizes him, but Milligan can't stop shaking and crying. He's invalided, and "court martialled" by Jenkins, despite a discharge certificate reading "This man must be rested behind the lines for a period to stabilise his condition". Tranquillizers turn him into a zombie. "All the laughing had stopped," he writes. For the moment.
18914499	/m/04j9_1d	Chhinnamastar Abhishap	Satyajit Ray		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Feluda and his two associates Topshe and Jatayu decide to visit Hazaribagh, a town situated in Jharkhand, India. On their way, they meet a middle aged gentleman who introduces himself as one Preetindra Choudhury working in an electronics company. His car went out of order and requests a lift to Hazaribagh. Later it is known that Preetindra is the youngest son of an established retired advocate Mahesh Choudhury.Mahesh Choudhury's eldest son Arunendra is a Kolkata based On reaching Hazaribagh, they come to know that the tiger of the circus company performing in the town has run away. Feluda and co. settle in the empty home of one of Feluda's former clients. The home is only a stone's throw away from Mahesh Choudhury's home. Feluda meets the owner of the circus company as well as the first ring master of the fled away tiger. The ringmaster Karandikar blames appointment of a second ring master behind tiger's escape. Next day, Feluda meets Mahesh Choudhury and learns that his second son went away from his home many years ago. The entire Choudhury family goes for picnic to Rajarappa where Feluda and co. also accompany. At the picnic spot, Mahesh Choudhury mysteriously becomes unconscious and falls flat on the ground and later dies. Feluda starts investigation and comes to know that although Mahesh Choudhury was soft and gentle during his old age, he was a rather short tempered man in his earlier times. Many years ago, at the height of his anger, one day he murdered his watchman. However, Arunedra became the witness of the offence. But this fact was not known to mahesh Choudhury. Mahesh Choudhury however regretted for the murder during whole period of his rest of the life. On the day of picnic, Arunendra, reminds Mahesh Choudhury of his crime at which Mahesh Choudhury breaks up and collapses. Feluda also knows that the first ringmaster Karandikar is actually the second son of Mahesh Choudhury whose real name is Beerendra.
18920495	/m/04jdly5	The Four-Story Mistake	Elizabeth Enright	1942	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The four Melendy children live with their father, a widowed professor of economics, and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper. During the height of World War II, the Melendy family moves out of New York City and into the countryside. Miranda "Randy", the third child, dislikes change and is saddened by the move. But the house they move into turns out to be an adventure. Called by locals "The Four-Story Mistake", it is an odd-looking house with a rich architectural history, surrounded by the country. The four Melendy children soon find adventure discovering the many hidden attractions of the house. Oliver discovers buried history, Rush is stranded in a tree during a storm, Randy finds a diamond in the most unlikely of places, and Mona learns what it truly means to be an actress. None of them could have guessed at the secret hidden in their very own play space, the office&mdash;a secret that had been shut away for over 60 years.
18920756	/m/04jchv1	Then There Were Five	Elizabeth Enright	1944	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The four Melendy children live with their father, a widowed professor of economics, and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper, in an old house in the countryside of New York. Their Father has been hired by the government for a secret, World War II related job, and the children venture into their new neighborhood with the intention of helping their country. They end up making new friends collecting scrap metal, and also brush up against some local scoundrels. The most notable of their new friends is Mark, a boy about Rush's age, who is under the care of his abusive adult cousin Oren Meeker. The Melendy children want to help Mark, but don't know how. Meanwhile, there are adventures to be had: Rush composes his Opus 3, Miranda "Randy" and Mona try their hand at canning, and Oliver is entranced by the possibilities presented by fish and caterpillars. But when Cuffy, their housekeeper, goes away to visit a sick cousin in Ithaca, the unexpected occurs. A fire brings Mark to live at The Four-Story Mistake, where he becomes a permanent member of their family.
18920820	/m/04jm7lf	Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze	Elizabeth Enright	1951	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 "Randy was certain this was going to be the worst winter of her life." Miranda "Randy" Melendy and her younger brother Oliver find themselves the only children in their family for the first time in their lives. Rush and Mark have gone away to a boarding school, and Mona now lives in New York City with the family's elderly friend, Mrs. Oliphant. Randy hates change of any sort, and even placid Oliver has a hard time dealing with being left behind. Then a mysterious note arrives in the mail, inviting the children to solve a rhyming clue. Each note leads to another one, with the promise of a treasure at the end. Randy and Oliver find themselves exploring the countryside, their community, and even discovering family history as they race through a maze of guesses and misdirection. The final chapter reveals the authors of the clues to be their family and Mrs. Oliphant, and Randy and Oliver are treated to the "rare reward" they were promised at the start of the game, with everyone together again for the summer.
18922116	/m/04jjmg4	Return to Gone-Away	Elizabeth Enright	1961	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Portia learns of her parents buying Villa Caprice, a tumbledown Victorian house close to Gone-Away Lake, she is excited. She, her brother Foster and her cousin Julian enjoy learning about the "new" old house, with the help of elderly neighbors Mr. Payton and Mrs. Cheevers.
18926742	/m/04jdt6m	Catwings Return				 James and Harriet return to the city to find their mother. When they arrive, they find a small black kitten with wings. They gain the kitten's trust and find their mother. The kitten is hers, lost when the old dumpster was moved. While the mother declines to return, she asks James and Harriet to bring the kitten with them. As they return to their home, the two children who were caring for them see her and name her Jane.
18927750	/m/04jfns0	Gone Tomorrow	Lee Child	2009	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It's 2am, and Jack Reacher is travelling on the New York underground. He notices a suspicious looking passenger, who begins to tick off a majority of entries on his mental list for finding suicide bombers. When he approaches her, he says he can help but she commits suicide by shooting herself. NYPD are eager to close the file without investigating the night's events, but Reacher has other ideas. He wants to know what happened that night, and more importantly why. Is everyone as honest as they claim to be? And if so, then why are there so many questions asked, or avoided? Reacher is advised to walk away, but of course this is not an option. He's fallen down the rabbit hole, but the question is: whose hole is it? And where does it land?
18929154	/m/04jbq83	The Colossus of Rhodes	Caroline Lawrence	2005	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is April, and the beginning of the sailing season. The book opens on the marina pier at Ostia as the newly-fitted Delphina (formerly the slave ship Vespa) prepares to sail. Passengers and crew are saying goodbye to their loved ones, making Lupus keenly feel the absence of his family. Though the purpose of the voyage is to rescue the freeborn children sold as slaves by Venalicius (the ship’s former owner), Lupus secretly intends to find his mother and not return to Ostia. Several bad omens make Captain Geminus consider postponing the trip, but Lupus, as the ship's owner, insists on sailing immediately. At the last minute, Marcus Artorius Bato joins the ship as a passenger, anxious to follow a recently-departed Greek ship connected with fresh cases of kidnapping in Ostia. Other passengers are the children’s tutor Aristo, the patrician poet Gaius Valerius Flaccus and his slave-boy, Zetes. Crew members include Atticus the cook, the good-looking Silvanus, and Zosimus, who keeps homing pigeons. During the voyage many things go wrong, and they begin to suspect there is a traitor on board. They drop Aristo off at Corinth to visit his family, and call at Symi to find Lupus's mother. He discovers she has gone to Rhodes to dedicate herself to the temple. On the way to the island, they discover that Zosimus is the traitor, who has been sending messages ahead via his pigeons. Bato and Flaccus tie Zosimus up and interrogate him about the gang’s activities, but Flaccus is shaken to learn that Zetes, his own slave boy, is one of the gang’s freeborn abductees. In Rhodes they learn about the mysterious slave overlord Magnus who has everyone dancing to his tune. Captain Geminus, Bato, and Flaccus leave the ship to investigate the slave vessel Medea. What they don’t know is that they are being lured into a trap: the Medea is brimming with Magnus's thugs, while other men of his sneak aboard the Delphina and take Flavia, Nubia and Jonathan prisoner. Over the fallen Colossus, Lupus corners Magnus, who tells him that his friends have been captured and forces him to make a terrible choice: according to Magnus, Lupus’s mother has pledged to sacrifice her life to Apollo in exchange for her son’s safety; if Lupus runs to the temple, he might be able to save her, but in the meantime, the Delphina will set sail with Flavia and the others, and all the kidnapped children aboard. Lupus remembers that, despite the vow he made to find his mother, he made another vow to always stand by his friends. He runs to the local authorities and brings the local police to the Medea in time to save Geminus and the others from the trap. They then return to the Delphina in full force, rescuing Flavia and the others. As soon as they are safe, Lupus runs to the temple, but is told he is too late. However, Magnus was lying, or at least bending the truth: Lupus’s mother, Melissa, is not dead; she has become a priestess of Apollo, as she swore to do if she received word that her son was still alive, which she did a month earlier. She has already left for another temple in Greece. Lupus is saddened, but understands that his mother, like himself, made a vow which she cannot break. The day is saved, though Magnus has managed to escape Rhodes. On the pretext of continuing his tour of Asia, Flaccus swears to hunt him down and find all the children he sold as slaves, impressing Flavia. The Delphina sets sail for her next port, laden with valuable cargoes, and carrying the four now-inseparable friends.
18934264	/m/04jfgz5	Arctic Drift	Clive Cussler	2008	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The plot begins in the year 1847, when the Franklin Expedition becomes stranded trying to find the Northwest Passage. They experience a harsh winter. The men are seemingly going mad. Their stranded boats (Erebus and Terror) are loaded with a mysterious, unidentified silvery metal. The story switches to the present day. There is an ongoing quest to save the earth from Global Warming. All of the world's scientists are looking for a solution. Some people are trying to thwart these efforts. The NUMA team, headed by Dirk Pitt, Al Giordino and Dirk Pitt's children, Dirk Junior and Summer, are trying to find a way to stop Global Warming. Their quest leads them to investigate a series of mysterious asphyxiations. They soon realize that the solution they are looking for is hidden in the heart of the Arctic; in an old forgotten ship. They will need to solve a centuries old mystery to save the earth.
18939847	/m/04jfqlv	The New Life	Orhan Pamuk	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot centers around a young engineering student in Istanbul who discovers a "new life" in the pages of a book of the same name. The protagonist is so thrilled by this novel that he sets off in search of the new life it describes, finding a number of other readers who have become similarly consumed as well as a few people who seek to destroy the book because of the effect it has on its followers. No passages from the book are revealed, and readers of the novel are left to hypothesize about its nature through the actions of the main character and other obsessed readers.
18949410	/m/0lj5	And Then There Were None	Agatha Christie	1939-11-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Ten people—Lawrence Wargrave, Vera Claythorne, Philip Lombard, General Macarthur, Emily Brent, Anthony "Tony" Marston, Dr. Armstrong, William Blore, and the servants Thomas and Ethel Rogers—have been invited to a mansion on the fictional Soldier Island ("Nigger Island" in the original 1939 UK publication, "Indian Island" in the 1964 U.S. publication), which is based upon Burgh Island off the coast of Devon. Upon arriving, they are told that their hosts, a Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen (Ulick Norman Owen and Una Nancy Owen), are currently away, but the guests will be attended to by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. Each guest finds in his or her room a framed copy of the nursery rhyme "Ten Little Soldiers" ("Niggers" or "Indians" in respective earlier editions) hanging on the wall. {| class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; font-size: 85%; background:#E2DDB5; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 28%;" | style="text-align: left;"| The currently published, not the original, version of the rhyme goes: Ten little Soldier Boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little Soldier Boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little Soldier Boys travelling in Devon; One said he'd stay there and then there were seven. Seven little Soldier Boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six. Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little Soldier Boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little Soldier Boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little Soldier Boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little Soldier Boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little Soldier Boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none. |} After dinner that evening, the guests notice ten soldier boy figurines on the dining room table. During coffee, a gramophone record, unknowingly turned on by Mr Rogers, plays, accusing each of the ten of murder. Each guest acknowledges awareness of (and in some cases involvement with) the deaths of the persons named (except Emily Brent, who tells only Vera, who later tells the other guests what happened to Brent's former maid), but denies any malice and/or legal culpability (except for Lombard and Blore, the latter telling only the former). The guests realize they have been tricked into coming to the island, each of them lured with something special to them, like a job opportunity or mention of a mutual acquaintance. Unfortunately, they soon find they cannot leave: the boat which regularly delivers supplies has stopped arriving because of the storm. They are murdered one by one, each death paralleling a verse of the nursery rhyme, with one of the figurines being removed after each murder. The first to die is Anthony Marston, who chokes to death when his drink is poisoned with cyanide ("one choked his little self"). No one thinks much of this, although some people are suspicious. That night, Thomas Rogers notices that a figurine is missing from the dining table. Mrs Rogers dies peacefully in her sleep that night, which Dr. Armstrong attributes to a dose of sleeping aid, which the killer later comes in and attributes a sleeping aid, which she then overdosed,("one overslept himself"). Rogers reports another figurine gone. The guests become more on edge. General Macarthur fatalistically predicts that no one will leave the island alive, and at lunch, is indeed found dead from a blow to the back of his skull by a life preserver ("one said he'd stay there"). Finally, the point is driven home that these three deaths have been murder. Meanwhile, a third figurine has disappeared from the dining room. In growing panic, Armstrong, Blore, and Lombard search the island in vain for the murderer. Justice Wargrave establishes himself as the decisive leader of the group and asserts one of them must be the murderer playing a sadistic game with the rest. The killer's twisted humor is evidenced by the names of their "hosts": "U.N. Owen" is a pun and a homophone for "unknown". The next morning, Rogers is missing, as is another figurine. He is found dead in the woodshed, struck in the back of the head with an axe ("one chopped himself in halves"). Later that day, Emily Brent is killed in the dining room by an injection of potassium cyanide that leaves a mark on her neck ("A bumblebee stung one"), which at first appears to be a sting from a bumble bee placed in the room. The hypodermic needle is found outside her window next to a smashed china figurine. The five remaining people, Armstrong, Wargrave, Lombard, Claythorne, and Blore, appear to become increasingly frightened and paranoid as the noose tightens, both psychologically and in reality. Wargrave suggests they lock up any potential weapons, including Armstrong's medical equipment and the judge's own sleeping pills. Lombard admits to bringing a revolver to the island, but immediately discovers it has gone missing. Resolved to keep the killer from catching anyone alone, they gather in the drawing room and only leave one at a time. Vera goes up to her room for a shawl and is frightened by a strand of seaweed hanging on a hook in her bedroom in the dark: an allusion to the boy the gramophone alleged that she had drowned. Her screams attract the attention of Blore, Lombard, and Armstrong, who rush to her aid. When they return to the drawing room, they find Wargrave in a mockery of a judicial wig and gown with a gunshot wound in his forehead ("one got into Chancery"). Armstrong confirms the death, and they lay Wargrave's body in his room and cover it with a sheet. Shortly afterward, Lombard discovers his revolver has been returned. That night, Blore hears someone sneaking out of the house. He and Lombard investigate and, discovering Armstrong missing, assume the doctor is the killer. In the morning, Blore leaves for food and does not return. Vera and Lombard soon discover his body on the terrace, skull crushed by a bear-shaped clock ("a big bear hugged one"). At first, they continue to believe Armstrong is the killer until they find the doctor in the sea, drowned ("a red herring swallowed one"). Paranoid, each assumes the other is the murderer. In the brief but tense standoff that follows, Vera feigns compassion and gets Lombard to help her move Armstrong's body away from the water, using the opportunity to pick his revolver from his pocket. She kills Lombard with a shot through the heart on the beach ("one got frizzled up") and returns to the house. Dazed and disoriented, she finds a noose and chair waiting for her in her room. In an apparent trance, she hangs herself, kicking the chair out from underneath her, thus fulfilling the final verse of the rhyme. Inspector Maine, the detective in charge of the Soldier Island case, discusses the mystery with his Assistant Commissioner, Sir Thomas Legge, at Scotland Yard. There are no clues on the mainland—Issac Morris (mentioned to be responsible for crimes unprovable by the law), the man who arranged "U.N. Owen's" purchase of the island and sent out the invitational letters, covered his tracks quite well, and was killed the day the party set sail. Times of death cannot be found through autopsies, and the police have failed to link the nursery rhyme to the deaths. While guests' diaries establish a partial timeline that establish that Marston, Mrs. Rogers, Macarthur, Mr. Rogers, Brent and Wargrave were the first 6 to die (in that order), the police cannot determine the order in which Blore, Armstrong, Lombard, and Vera were killed. Blore could not have dropped the clock on himself, and it would also be a highly uncommon method of suicide; Armstrong's body was dragged above the high-tide mark; Lombard was shot on the beach, but his revolver was found on the floor in the upstairs hallway. Vera's fingerprints on the gun, the fact that hanging is a highly sensible method of suicide, and the clock that killed Blore having come from her room all point to Vera as "U.N. Owen"... but someone had to have been alive after she died because the chair Vera used to hang herself had been righted and replaced against the wall. Inclement weather, combined with the fact that Fred Narracott (the man who ferried the guests to the island) sent a boat to the island as soon as weather allowed (sensing something to be amiss), would have prevented the murderer from leaving or arriving separately from the guests: he or she must have been among them. But since the first six murders at least appear to be accounted for, and since the last four victims cannot have been the last ones alive, the inspectors are ultimately left dumbfounded, asking themselves: Who killed them? A fishing trawler finds a letter in a bottle off the Devon coast; it contains the confession of the late Justice Wargrave. He reveals a lifelong sadistic temperament juxtaposed uneasily with a fierce sense of justice: he wanted to torture, terrify, and kill, but could never justify harming an innocent person. As a judge, he directed merciless jury instructions/summations and guilty verdicts, but solely in those cases in which he had satisfied himself of the guilt of the defendant(s), thrilling at the sight of the convicted person crippled with fear, facing their impending death. He also saved a few defendants from suffering punishment when he was convinced they were innocent of their accused crime. But the proxy of the bench was unsatisfying: Wargrave longed to commit murder by his own hand. Prompted to action by the discovery that he was terminally ill, he sought out those who had caused the deaths of others but managed to escape justice, finding nine (not including Isaac Morris), whom he lured to the island using his financial resources to investigate his victims' backgrounds to come up with plausible invitations from sources they trusted or from people with whom they were acquainted. After the phonograph accusations were made the first night he carefully watched, as he had in the courtroom for so many years, the reactions of his guests to the accusations. Seeing their fear or anxiety, he was certain of their guilt. He decided to start with the less serious offenders (i.e. Marston, whom Wargrave determined was "amoral" and had committed the crime by accident, as well as Mrs. Rogers, who had acted under her husband's direction and had clearly been traumatized by guilt ever since), and to save "the prolonged mental strain and fear" for the colder-blooded killers. Wargrave arrived at the island with two drugs: potassium cyanide and chloral hydrate. After the gramophone recital, Wargrave slipped cyanide and chloral into the drinks of Marston and Mrs. Rogers respectively. Marston choked to death, and Mrs. Rogers was given another sleep medication, leading to death by overdose. The next day, after Macarthur made his fatalistic prediction, Wargrave sneaked up on him and killed him, although the specific weapon was never found or discussed. The next morning, he killed Rogers in the woodshed as he was cutting firewood. During breakfast, he slipped the rest of his chloral into Miss Brent's coffee to sedate her, and after she was abandoned at the table, Wargrave injected her with the rest of his cyanide using Armstrong's syringe. Having disposed of his first five victims, the judge persuaded the trusting Armstrong to fake Wargrave's own death, "the red herring", under the pretext that it would rattle or unnerve the "real murderer". Since Armstrong was the only person who would closely examine the judge's body, as well as having done preliminary autopsies for the other victims up to that point, the ruse went undetected. That night, he met Armstrong on the cliffs, distracted him by pretending to see something and pushed him into the sea, knowing the doctor's disappearance would provoke the suspicions of the others. From Vera's room, Wargrave later pushed the stone bear-shaped clock onto Blore, crushing his skull. After watching Vera shoot Lombard, he then set up a noose and a chair in her bedroom in the belief that after having just killed Lombard she was in a psychologically post-traumatic state and would hang herself under the right circumstances, i.e. a noose and chair waiting for her. He was right and watched (unseen in the shadows) as she hanged herself. Wargrave then pushed the chair she had stood on against the wall, wrote out his missive/confession, put the letter in a bottle and tossed it out to sea. Wargrave admits to a "pitiful human" craving for recognition that he had not initially counted on. Even if his letter is not found (he decides there is about a 1 in 100 chance of it being found), he believes there are three clues which implicate him, although he surmises (correctly) that the mystery will not have been solved: # Wargrave was the only one invited to the island who had not wrongfully caused someone's death, initial public speculation around the time of the trial of Edward Seton, whom the gramophone accused Wargrave of murdering, notwithstanding. Seton was, in fact, guilty of the murder for which he had been convicted, and overwhelming proof emerged after Seton's death confirming this. (When questioned about the Seton matter by his guests after the gramophone recital, Wargrave actually told the truth—albeit not very convincingly and not mentioning the posthumous evidence against Seton—to wit, that Seton was guilty and he had instructed the jury accordingly. Wargrave knew his fellow "guests" would not believe that and would, despite his judicial vocation, consider him a fellow escapee from justice.) Thus, ironically, the only innocent guest must be the murderer. # The "red herring" line in the poem suggests that Armstrong was tricked into his death by someone he trusted. Of the remaining guests, only the respectable Justice Wargrave would have inspired the doctor's confidence. # The red mark on Wargrave's forehead received from shooting himself is similar to the one God bestowed upon Cain as punishment for killing his brother Abel. He says the brand of Cain might lead the investigators to realize he was the murderer. Wargrave describes how he planned to kill himself: he will loop an elastic cord through the gun, tying one end of the cord to his eyeglasses, and looping the other around the doorknob of an open door. He will then wrap a handkerchief around the handle of the gun and shoot himself in the head. His body will fall back as though laid there by Armstrong. The gun's recoil will send it to the doorknob and out into the hallway, roughly where Vera dropped it while she walked to her room, detaching the cord and pulling the door closed. The cord will dangle innocuously from his glasses, and the stray handkerchief should not arouse suspicion. Thus the police will find ten dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on Soldier Island.
18950736	/m/02y_35n	Automated Alice	Jeff Noon	1996	{"/m/01qpc": "Cyberpunk", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story of Automated Alice tells of the character of Alice from Lewis Carroll's books in a future version of Manchester, England. After following her Great Aunt Ermintrude's parrot Whippoorwill through a grandfather clock, Alice and Alice's doll Celia get lost in a world inhabited by Newmonians, entities made from two objects combined, for example a zebra and a human.
18951386	/m/0h53	Atlas Shrugged	Ayn Rand	1957-10-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 As the novel opens, protagonist Dagny Taggart, the Operating Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental, a giant railroad company originally pioneered by her grandfather, attempts to keep the company alive during difficult economic times marked by collectivism and statism. While Dagny runs the company from behind the scenes, her brother, James Taggart, the railroad's President, is peripherally aware of the company's troubles, but will not make any difficult choices, preferring to avoid responsibility for any actions while watching his company go under. He seems to make irrational decisions, such as preferring to buy steel from Orren Boyle's Associated Steel, rather than Hank Rearden's Rearden Steel, despite the former continually delaying delivery of vital rail. In this as in other decisions, Dagny simply goes ahead with her own policy and challenges him to repeal it. As this unfolds, Dagny is disappointed to discover that Francisco d'Anconia, a true genius and her only childhood friend, first love, and king of the copper industry, appears to have become a worthless playboy who is destroying his family's international copper company, which has made him into one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. Hank Rearden, a self-made steel magnate of great integrity, has recently developed a metal alloy called Rearden Metal, now the strongest and most reliable metal in the world. Hank chooses to keep the instructions to its creation a secret, sparking jealousy and uproar among competitors. False claims are made about the danger of the alloy and are backed by government agencies. As a result of this, pressure is put on Dagny to use conventional steel, but she refuses. Hank's career is hindered by his feelings of obligation toward his manipulative wife, mother, and ungrateful younger brother, who show no appreciation for everything he provides for them. Dagny also becomes acquainted with Wesley Mouch, a Washington lobbyist initially working for Rearden, whom he betrays. Mouch eventually leads the government's efforts in controlling all commerce and enterprise, intentionally destroying the common man's opportunity to build a largely successful, free-market business. The reader also becomes acquainted with Ellis Wyatt, the sole founder and supervisor of the successful enterprise Wyatt Oil. He is a young, self-possessed, hard-working man&nbsp;— one of the few men still loyal to Dagny and Hank's efforts in pushing for a system of business free of government meddling and control. While economic conditions worsen and government agencies continue to enforce their control on successful businesses, the naïve, yet weary mass of citizens are often heard reciting the new, popular street phrase, "Who is John Galt?" This sarcastic phrase is given in response to what tend to be sincere questions about heavy subjects, wherein the individual can find no answer. It sarcastically means, "Don't ask important questions, because we don't have answers", or more broadly, "What's the point?" or "Why bother?" Dagny begins to notice the nation's brightest innovators and business leaders abruptly disappearing, one by one, under mysterious circumstances, all leaving their top industrial businesses to certain failure. The most recent of these leaders to have vanished is Dagny's friend Ellis Wyatt, who, like the others, has suddenly disappeared into thin air with no warning, leaving nothing behind except an empty office and his most successful oil well now spewing petroleum and fire high into the air (later to be named "Wyatt's Torch"). Each of these men proves to be absent despite a thorough search put on by ever-anxious politicians, who have now found themselves trapped within a government that has been "left to dry", by its leaders in business&nbsp;— utterly helpless without them. In a romantic subplot, Dagny and Hank fall deeply in love. Rand refers to their love as a purer kind of love than the one that most men and women experience. These two people have a similar purpose in life, and they see in each other a kindred soul. In the universe of the novel, men and women with purpose are rare and, to an extent, deified&nbsp;— thus making their love especially sacred. Hank (who is still married to another woman) goes on vacation with Dagny on a drive across the United States. They discover, amongst the ruins of an abandoned factory, an incomplete motor that transforms atmospheric static electricity into kinetic electricity. Deeply moved by the significance of a motor which has the potential to completely transform the world, Dagny sets out to find the inventor. In addition to the inventor of the motor, Dagny also makes it her mission to find the reason so many important people keep disappearing. These two quests converge when Dagny flies to Utah to speak with a scientist she has working on reverse-engineering the motor. While still at the airfield, she discovers the scientist has just flown off with a mysterious man. Dagny follows the plane to where it mysteriously disappears, eventually crash-landing through a "ray screen" used to hide Galt's Gulch - the hidden Atlantis where John Galt has been bringing those he recruits. John Galt proceeds to explain the series of events which led to an organized "strike" against those who use the force of law and moral guilt to confiscate the accomplishments of society's productive members. Unable to give up her railroad to destruction, Dagny leaves the valley as soon as she can. As the nation is collapsing, Galt follows Dagny back to New York City (where she learns he has been working in plain sight for her railroad as a lowly laborer), where he hacks into a national radio broadcast to deliver a long speech to the people(70 pages in the first edition), serving to explain the novel's theme and Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. As the government begins to collapse following Galt's message, the leaders decide the only way to restore order is to capture Galt and force him to save them. While they succeed in following Dagny to him and subsequently taking him prisoner, they are unable to turn Galt, who is eventually freed in a rescue mission by a group of friends. While they are flying back to their hidden valley, they see the lights go out in New York City - the indication that their mission has been completed. The novel closes with a brief section where the strikers complete their preparations and Galt announces that they will return to the world.
18953944	/m/04jbsc9	The Eagle in the Sand	Simon Scarrow	2006	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Trouble is brewing on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. The troops are in deplorable state, while the corrupt behaviour of their senior officers threatens to undermine the army's control of the region. To restore the competence of the men defending a vital fort, two experienced centurions are dispatched to Judea from Rome. On their arrival Macro and Cato discover that there is an even more serious problem to deal with. Bannus, a local tribesman, is brewing up rebellion amongst the followers of Jehoshua, who was crucified in Jerusalem some seventeen years earlier. Now Bannus is pushing the faction towards violent opposition to Rome. As the local revolt grows in scale, Rome's long-standing enemy Parthia is poised to invade. Macro and Cato must stamp out corruption in the cohort and restore it to fighting fitness to quash Bannus - before the eastern provinces are lost to the Empire for ever...
18960109	/m/061l4	Peter Pan	J. M. Barrie		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Although the character appeared previously in Barrie's book The Little White Bird, the play and the novel based on it contain the portion of the Peter Pan mythos that is best known. The two versions differ in some details of the story, but have much in common. In both versions Peter makes night-time calls on Kensington, London, listening in on Mrs. Mary Darling's bedtime stories by the open window. One night Peter is spotted and, while trying to escape, he loses his shadow. On returning to claim it, Peter wakes Mary's daughter, Wendy Darling. Wendy succeeds in re-attaching his shadow to him, and Peter learns that she knows lots of bedtime stories. He invites her to Neverland to be a mother to his gang, the Lost Boys, children who were lost in Kensington Gardens. Wendy agrees, and her brothers John and Michael go along. Their magical flight to Neverland is followed by many adventures. The children are blown out of the air by a cannon and Wendy is nearly killed by the Lost Boy Tootles. Peter and the Lost Boys build a little house for Wendy to live in while she recuperates (a structure that, to this day, is called a Wendy House.) Soon John and Michael adopt the ways of the Lost Boys. Peter welcomes Wendy to his underground home, and she immediately assumes the role of mother figure. Peter takes the Darlings on several adventures, the first truly dangerous one occurring at Mermaids' Lagoon. At Mermaids' Lagoon, Peter and the Lost Boys save the princess Tiger Lily and become involved in a battle with the pirates, including the evil Captain Hook. Peter is wounded when Hook claws him. He believes he will die, stranded on a rock when the tide is rising, but he views death as "an awfully big adventure". Luckily, a bird allows him to use her nest as a boat, and Peter sails home. Because he has saved Tiger Lily, the Indians are devoted to him, guarding his home from the next imminent pirate attack. Meanwhile, Wendy begins to fall in love with Peter, at least as a child, and asks Peter what kind of feelings he has for her. Peter says that he is like her faithful son. One day while telling stories to the Lost Boys and her brothers, John and Michael, Wendy recalls about her parents and then decides to take them back and return to England. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to Peter, Wendy and the boys are captured by Captain Hook, who also tries to poison Peter's medicine while the boy is asleep. When Peter awakes, he learns from the fairy Tinker Bell that Wendy has been kidnapped – in an effort to please Wendy, he goes to drink his medicine. Tink does not have time to warn him of the poison, and instead drinks it herself, causing her near death. Tink tells him she could be saved if children believed in fairies. In one of the play's most famous moments, Peter turns to the audience watching the play and begs those who believe in fairies to clap their hands. At this there is usually an explosion of handclapping from the audience, and Tinker Bell is saved. Peter heads to the ship. On the way, he encounters the ticking crocodile; Peter decides to copy the tick, so any animals will recognise it and leave him unharmed. He does not realise that he is still ticking as he boards the ship, where Hook cowers, mistaking him for the crocodile. While the pirates are searching for the croc, Peter sneaks into the cabin to steal the keys and frees the Lost Boys. When the pirates investigate a noise in the cabin, Peter defeats them. When he finally reveals himself, he and Hook fall to the climactic battle, which Peter easily wins. He kicks Hook into the jaws of the waiting crocodile, and Hook dies with the satisfaction that Peter had kicked him off the ship, which Hook considers "bad form". Then Peter takes control of the ship, and sails the seas back to London. In the end, Wendy decides that her place is at home, much to the joy of her heartsick mother. Wendy then brings all the boys but Peter back to London. Before Wendy and her brothers arrive at their house, Peter flies ahead, to try and bar the window so Wendy will think her mother has forgotten her. But when he learns of Mrs Darling's distress, he bitterly leaves the window open and flies away. Peter returns briefly, and he meets Mrs. Darling, who has agreed to adopt the Lost Boys. She offers to adopt Peter as well, but Peter refuses, afraid they will "catch him and make him a man". It is hinted that Mary Darling knew Peter when she was a girl, because she is left slightly changed when Peter leaves. Peter promises to return for Wendy every spring. The end of the play finds Wendy looking out through the window and saying into space, "You won't forget to come for me, Peter? Please, please don't forget".
18977642	/m/04jlj73	The Folk of the Faraway Tree				 Jo, Bessie and Fanny (or Joe, Beth and Frannie) have Connie over to stay because her mother is sick. Connie is stuck up and bossy and does not believe in magic. She says that Dick (or Rick) told her all about his stay in the country. The children are overwhelmed because it does not seem like Dick/Rick to tell stories. She calls the Enchanted Wood silly, the Faraway Tree ridiculous, Moonface, Dame Washalot and Mr Watizisname stupid, Saucepan Man mad and says that magic is made up and old fashioned. The three children get mad at her for calling their friends rude names and old fashioned. After she arrives, Moonface comes. Connie does not believe that Moonface is real so he tells her to think that it is a dream. Connie soon believes them and has a wonderful time in the country. She then regrets that she has to leave. They have a wonderful time with Connie although she does lead to trouble like going up to the Land of Marvels and climbing up the Ladder That Has No Top. Good thing Moonface saves her. Another time she listens to some else's secret in the Land of Secrets. Mrs Hidden takes away her voice and the children have to get it back. Luckily, the Land of Enchantments comes after The Land of Secrets leaves. Lastly, Connie's third mistake is mistaking Dame Slap (or Snap) for Mrs Saucepan (Saucepan's mother, who is the cook at Dame Slap's school). In the end, they all have to join Dame Slap's school except Fanny and Bessie who have to help out in the kitchen because Mrs Saucepan quits when Saucepan arrives. They are rescued by Saucepan who arrived earlier and was walking around with his mother.
18979678	/m/04jff0b	Death in the Andes	Mario Vargas Llosa	1997-02-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Peruvian police investigate a death; was it the terrucos of the Maoist Shining Path, or something even more terrible?
18992622	/m/04jl8pg	The Scribes from Alexandria	Caroline Lawrence	2008	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts with Nubia struggling in the sea and Flavia waking up on a beach. On the way home to Ostia from Volubilis, they have suffered shipwreck. Flavia soon finds Lupus and Jonathan alive, but Nubia and Flavia's uncle Gaius are missing. Nubia has been seen in the company of one of the scribes from the Library, but the scribe, a eunuch called Chryses, cannot be found. The Head Scholar assigns another young scribe, a devout Jew called Seth ben Aaron, to go with the children to find Chryses and Nubia. Starting in Chryses's sleeping quarters they find a trail of riddles and anagrams leading to different places in Alexandria, and then to the Great Pyramid. Their search is complicated by the fact that they are being pursued by Roman soldiers. Seth's cousin Nathan, a smuggler, takes them up the Nile on his sailing boat, hoping to find treasure. They find more clues leading far up-river and realise that Nubia is returning to her native land. They follow, but wonder if Nubia will want to go back to Ostia with them. Some of the chapters describe Nubia's journey with Chryses, by donkey-cart and camel, and her meeting with other members of the Leopard clan on Elephantine, an island in the Nile on the southern Egyptian border.
18993730	/m/04jcl_t	Gym and Slimline	Emma Burstall	2008-08-21		 Percy likes sorting out other problems, but her own life is a shambles, with a secret addiction. Patrice, wealthy but emotionally damaged is desperate to have another baby but her husband Jonty is not interested. Carmen is determined to get pregnant by her cold, treacherous boyfriend and Suzanne is in love with her second husband but worries that she is neglecting him for her career.
18993901	/m/04jj_12	The Blue World	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Sklar Hast, the protagonist, had achieved a measure of success and prosperity by passing his examination to be a “Hoodwink”, or semaphore tower operator – a prestigious position on the Blue World, a planet with no land at all. During the space of twelve generations, the descendants of a crashed prison ship have created a rudimentary civilization on the water-covered planet, living on huge sea plants. However, they must beware the kragen, giant, semi-intelligent squid-like predators which roam the ocean. The colonists eventually develop a relationship with one of these, King Kragen. It drives off other kragen in return for offerings of food organized by an entrenched quasi-religious priesthood built up over generations. King Kragen grows to become the largest and most powerful kragen, demanding more and more food as time goes by. When Sklar questions the need to continue to worship and feed this predator, King Kragen appears, wrecks his home and kills his mentor. Rather than regard this as divine punishment, Sklar suspects that the conservative priesthood has enough control over King Kragen to kill those who oppose their views, and to thus uphold their privileged status. Can he convince his fellow citizens that they must kill King Kragen in order to be free? If so, how can they do it in a world without materials to make weapons?
18994887	/m/04jmk21	The Flood	Ian Rankin	1986		 Mary Miller has always been an outcast. As a child, she fell into the hot burn - a torrent of warm chemical run-off from the local coal mine - and her hair turned white. Initially she was treated with sympathy, but all that changed a few days later, when the young man who pushed her in died in an accident. Now many years later, Mary is a single mother caught up in a faltering affair. Her son, Sandy, has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl - and both mother and son are forced to come to terms with a dark secret from Mary's past.
19000014	/m/04jg8sg	The Mona Intercept	Donald Hamilton	1980	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Cuban exile Jimmy Columbus uses hijacking on the high seas, drugs, and murder to fuel his dreams of an empire.
19000303	/m/04jmbpt	Cruises With Kathleen	Donald Hamilton	1980		 Matt Helm creator Donald Hamilton gives up power boats for sailing and advises readers on everything from hull design to electronic gadgets. His cruises begin in Vancouver and conclude in the Bahamas.
19002535	/m/04jdw4h	The Soft Centre	James Hadley Chase		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Val Burnett's husband, Chris, has had a near-fatal head injury and has now been brought to the Spanish Bay Hotel, Paradise City, to lie in the sun-and-sands and recuperate. He is almost a zombie by now, although there is hope of recovery. One day he vanishes from the Spanish Bay Hotel, only to be found the next day, roaming around in a disheveled state on the highway. The same day, a hard-faced prostitute, Joan Parnell, is found horrifically ripped apart in a nearby motel room. So far no connection. But a cigarette lighter presented to Chris by Val, is found in the scene of the crime. And blackmailers, gangsters, corrupt private eyes, homosexual criminals and other assorted crooks have a field day.....
19002829	/m/04jnxkx	Michael	Joseph Goebbels	1929		 In a diary form the story follows the journey of Michael, a fictional character who represents a young Joseph Goebbels. At the beginning of the novel Michael has just returned home from service in the Great War. He finds a new democratic Germany which invoke feelings of both love and hate. Throughout the novel Michael wrestles with this mix of nationalist pride and anger towards Weimar Germany and he explores his personal philosophy and belief system.
19006335	/m/04jcshg	The Five Gold Bands	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Picaresque Irish adventurer Paddy Blackthorn is caught attempting to steal an interstellar space drive and is sentenced to death by the ruling council of mutant humans. The mutants' creator bequeathed them the secret of the drive, and with it a monopoly on space travel, which allows them to dominate normal humans. During his escape, Paddy discovers that the knowledge of how to manufacture the engines has been stored in five gold rings, one for each mutant race. The rings are hidden in five secret locations for safekeeping. With the help of a beautiful human secret agent, Fay Bursill, Paddy searches the home planets of each of the mutant species, in the hope that Earthfolk will be able to resume their rightful place in space.
19010811	/m/04jjh9g	From Here to Infinity	Ian Stewart	1996	{"/m/01p4b_": "Popular science"}	 After an introductory chapter The Nature of Mathematics, Stewart devotes each of the following 18 chapters to an exposition of a particular problem that has given rise to new mathematics or an area of research in modern mathematics. *Chapter 2 - The Price of Primality - primality tests and integer factorisation *Chapter 3 - Marginal Interest - Fermat's last theorem *Chapter 4 - Parallel Thinking - non-Euclidean geometry *Chapter 5 - The Miraculous Jar - Cantor's theorem and cardinal numbers *Chapter 6 - Ghosts of Departed Quantities - calculus and non-standard analysis *Chapter 7 - The Duellist and the Monster - the classification of finite simple groups *Chapter 8 - The Purple Wallflower - the four colour theorem *Chapter 9 - Much Ado About Knotting - topology and the Poincaré conjecture *Chapter 10 - More Ado About Knotting - knot polynomials *Chapter 11 - Squarerooting the Unsquarerootable - complex numbers and the Riemann hypothesis *Chapter 12 - Squaring the Unsquarable - the Banach-Tarski paradox *Chapter 13 - Strumpet Fortune - probability and random walks *Chapter 14 - The Mathematics of Nature - the stability of the Solar System *Chapter 15 - The Patterns of Chaos - chaos theory and strange attractors *Chapter 16 - The Two-and-a-halfth Dimension - fractals *Chapter 17 - Dixit Algorizmi - algorithms and NP-complete problems *Chapter 18 - The Limits of Computability - Turing machines and computable numbers *Chapter 19 - The Ultimate in Technology Transfer - experimental mathematics and the relationship between mathematics and science
19011615	/m/04jdhkl	MAX: A Maximum Ride Novel	James Patterson	2009-03-16	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Flock has barely recovered from their Antarctica adventure they are pulled into another one. Dr. Martinez and several of her colleagues establish the Coalition to Stop the Madness, an ecological conservation effort which involves spreading environmental awareness at the Flock's public air shows, taking place in some of the world's most polluted cities. During a show in Los Angeles, the Flock find themselves under fire from an assassin in the middle of an aerial performance. The crowd however thinks that this is all part of the show and applauds at the Flock's various maneuvers to avoid the sniper's bullets. The day ends with the Flock attacking the assassin only to have him blow himself up inside a nearby warehouse to hide his identity. A later investigation of the scene results in the find of a pistol biologically attached to a recovered stump of an arm. At another show in Mexico City (which the Flock dislike due to the air being so polluted it made the air uncomfortable to breathe) the Flock do another aerial performance, when they see the entire stadium is surrounded by 60 bionic human "ninjas" (which Max later nicknames M-Geeks). Despite wanting to avoid harming performance crew, Max's biological mother Dr. Valencia Martinez, her half sister Ella, Total, Dr. Brigid Dwyer, Max's biological father Jeb Batchelder, the surrounding reporters, and the 114,000 fans packed into the stadium, the Flock has no choice but to battle and destroy them on the field. Later, Jeb, Valencia, and the Flock are all taken to a secret location on the outskirts of the city for protection. The group decide that it is best that they cancel the shows due to the inability for tight enough security. In the middle of the night, after Max and Fang have a conflict over Brigid (who had apparently taken a liking to Fang, much to Max's jealousy) Max goes on a flight only to be shot in the wing by a group of M-Geeks. She meets Mr. Chu, a short Asian man who claims to represent many of the worlds wealthiest and most powerful people. He tells Max to put a stop to CSM. When she refuses, she is warned that she will regret her decision. After refusing to explain her injuries, and later asking Jeb about Mr. Chu (who lies badly about knowing nothing of him) Jeb and Valencia suggest that the group go to the Day and Night School for the gifted. Despite Max's refusal, the Flock agrees to try it out. Nudge finds the school incredibly fun, much to Max's dismay. When Dr. Martinez is suddenly kidnapped, the Flock agree to go on a search for her with the aid of the and the United States Navy. Nudge decides to stay because she "wants to be normal." They go to a boot camp in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor where they surprise their teachers and excel at all their survival courses. The on the night they are approved to go on the sub expedition to search for Dr. Martinez (who is, based on the video tapes sent to them, believed to be held on a boat located somewhere off the coast of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, fairly close to where millions of fish seem to be mysteriously dying) Fang and Max go on a "date". The night goes off perfectly, with many unexplainable feelings for Fang filling Max, however it is interrupted when they are assaulted by a group of M-Geeks who the two accidentally send hurling off a cliff. Later on their way back to base, they encounter Angel, Iggy, and Gazzy who had been stung by a poisonous fish (which he quickly heals from the next day thanks to the Flock's rapid regeneration abilities) and find that Nudge had returned to them. The next day the Flock and Brigid, who surprises Total with his beloved Akila, all arrive on the USS Minnesota. Brigid continues to "flirt" with Fang which upsets Max, who is already unhappy to be on a submarine. Later on the expedition, Max and Brigid take the miniature sub to take a closer look at the seabed for any signs of contamination that might have killed the fish. As the return they find the Minnesota attacked by a group of M-Geeks which Max takes out with the mini-sub's mechanical arms as well as with a homemade bomb from Gazzy and Iggy. When neither seem to fend them off completely, Gazzy and Iggy come up with a way to destroy them with the same technique as the lightning rod weapon they created when M-Geeks had attacked the group's safe house before leaving for Hawaii, destroying them all. But as the group comes across radioactive barrels labeled "Property of the Chu Corporation" which reveals the cause of the dead fish, an apparent underwater mountain that was seen in earlier surveillance tapes emerges form the sea floor. Inside it is an underwater cave which Max and Fang explore along with two accompanying scientist, one being Brigid, the other a friend of Dr. Martinez. As Max finds herself lost and attacked by a giant squid, she loses her underwater breather, only to discover that like Angel, she and Fang have developed gills. After fending off the squid, the group comes across a group of frighteningly enormous underwater snakes that had apparently mutated from the radioactive material. Angel telepathically convinces them that they mean to help and the snakes lead them to a giant underwater dome where Max finds her mother being held. After breaching the forcefield, Max barely escapes with her mother as the facility is flooded due to the acidic mucus of the snakes burning through the dome. After returning to the base where Dr. Martinez is in recovery from torture and dehydration, The Voice in Max's head tells her to beware of Mr. Chu as well as Brigid who were both in conference about the barrels found. As the Flock leaves, Max and Fang hold hands as they fly, Max having confessed her love to Fang before they entered the cave. Max discusses with Fang how special the Flock is and how happy she is for them to be together. Fang and Max kiss, and Angel mentally approves of their relationship.
19021213	/m/04jn4nq	La Maison du chat-qui-pelote	Honoré de Balzac	1829		 The artist Théodore de Sommervieux falls in love with Augustine Guillaume, the daughter of a conservative cloth merchant, whose house of business on the Rue Saint-Denis in Paris is known by sign of the Cat and Racket. Théodore, a winner of the Prix de Rome and a knight of the Legion of Honor, is famous for his interiors and chiaroscuro effects in imitation of the Dutch School. He makes an excellent reproduction of the interior of the Cat and Racket, which is exhibited at the Salon alongside a strikingly modern portrait of Augustine. The affair blossoms with the help of Madame Guillaume's younger cousin Madame Roguin, who is already acquainted with Théodore. The lovers become engaged, somewhat against the best wishes of Augustine's parents, who had originally intended her to marry Monsieur Guillaume's clerk Joseph Lebas. In 1808 Augustine marries Théodore at the local church of Saint-Leu; on the same day her elder sister Virginie marries Lebas. The marriage is not a happy one. Augustine adores Sommervieux but is incapable of understanding him as an artist. Although she is more refined than her parents, her education and social standing leave her too far below the level of her husband to allow a meeting of minds to take place. Théodore's passion for her cools and she is treated with disdain by his fellow artists. Théodore instead finds a kindred soul in the Duchesse de Carigliano, to whom he gives the famous portrait of Augustine and to whom he becomes hopelessly attached, neglecting his rooms on the Rue des Trois-Frères (now a part of the Rue Taitbout). Realizing after three years of unhappiness that her marriage is falling apart and having been informed by a malicious gossip of Théodore's attachment to the duchess, Augustine visits Madame de Carigliano not to ask her to give her back her husband's heart but to learn the arts by which it has been captured. The duchess warns her against trying to conquer a man's heart through love, which will only allow the husband to tyrannize over the wife; instead a woman must use all the arts of coquetry that nature puts at her disposal. Augustine is shocked to learn that Madame de Carigliano sees marriage as a form of warfare. The duchess then returns to Augustine her own portrait, telling her that if she cannot conquer her husband with this weapon, she is not a woman. Augustine, however, does not understand how to turn such a weapon against her husband. She hangs the portrait in her bedroom and dresses herself exactly as she appears in it, believing that Théodore will see her once again as the young woman he fell in love with at the sign of the Cat and Racket. But when the artist sees the portrait hanging in her bedroom and asks how it came to be there, she foolishly reveals that it was returned to her by the Duchesse de Carigliano. "You demanded it from her?" he asks. "I did not know that she had it", replies Augustine. Théodore realizes that his wife is incapable of seeing the painting as he sees it - a consummate work of art. Instead of falling in love with its subject, he regards its return as a slap in the face from his mistress. His vanity wounded, he throws a fit and destroys the portrait, vowing vengeance upon the duchess. By morning Augustine has become resigned to her fate. Her loveless marriage comes to an end eight years later when she dies of a broken heart at the age of twenty-seven.
19021507	/m/04jd8d9	Le Bal de Sceaux	Honoré de Balzac	1830		 After having haughtily refused a number of suitors, under the pretext that they are not peers of France, Émilie de Fontaine falls in love with a mysterious young man who quietly appeared at the village dance at Sceaux. Despite his refined appearance and aristocratic bearing, the unknown (Maximilien Longueville) never tells his identity and seems interested in nobody but his sister, a sickly young girl. But he is not insensible to the attention Émilie gives him and he accepts the invitation of Émilie’s father, the Comte de Fontaine. Émilie and Maximilien soon fall in love. The Comte de Fontaine, concerned for his daughter, decides to investigate this mysterious young man, and he discovers him on the Rue du Sentier, a simple cloth merchant, which horrifies Émilie. Piqued, she marries a 70 year old uncle for his title of Vice Admiral, the Comte de Kergarouët. Several years after her marriage, Émilie discovers that Maximilien is not a clothier at all, but in fact a Vicomte de Longueville who has become a Peer of France. The young man finally explains why he secretly tended a store: he did it in order to support his family, sacrificing himself for his sick sister and for his brother, who had departed the country.
19024397	/m/04jjpl7	Ink Exchange	Melissa Marr	2008-04-24	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The prologue of Ink Exchange revisits a scene from Wicked Lovely narrated by Irial, King of the Dark Court, in which he walks into a tattoo shop with Leslie, a 17 year-old human. The novel then follows Leslie as she prepares for a normal day of school. Leslie's alcoholic father and Ren, her drug-dealing brother, neglect her. Having once been drugged and raped by Ren's customers,to cover one of his debts, Leslie fears her family, yet still pays the bills by working as a waitress. When Leslie reaches school, she is suspicious of how well Aislinn, the protagonist from Wicked Lovely, has adjusted to her new life as a faery. Aislinn, though once human, is the Summer Queen in the world of the fey, a world which she tries desperately to keep from Leslie. The novel then begins to follow Irial. It is revealed that the Dark Court feeds off emotions such as anger, hate, lust and pain to stay strong. When one of his own is killed by a simple human bullet, Irial is desperate for a way to protect his kind. With the help of his "left hand" Gabriel and his pack of "Hounds," he keeps his own and other courts in check. When confronted with numerous rebellions, Irial decides to pursue an ink exchange with a mortal to provide a constant stream of emotion to feed his court. When Leslie, the chosen mortal, gets a tattoo, the traditional tattoo ink is exchanged with the Dark Court's blood and tears, thereby joining the Dark King and the mortal. Soon, as an effect of the ink exchange, Leslie begins to feel and see as Irial would, seeing past faeries' human disguises. When she falls in love with Niall she avoids admitting her connection to his world. Her connection to the faeries deepens when she returns to the tattoo shop and begins to hear Irial's voice in her head. Irial has come to the conclusion that he loves her, and refuses to let any harm come to her. When Leslie goes to a club to celebrate her finished tattoo with Seth and Niall, Irial begins to speak through her to deflect the advances of other faeries. In the club, Irial and Leslie finally unite, connected by a shadow vine that represents the ink exchange. Niall, still in love, soon tells Leslie that he can help her break the bond with Irial, should she ever want to. Over the next few weeks, Leslie blurs in and out of consciousness, incapable of leaving Irial's side for more than a minute. When Leslie begins to understand that Irial is feeding on her negative emotions, leaving her incapable of feeling them, she realizes he has taken away her freedom to live. In an attempt to produce in Leslie more pain to feed his court, Irial and his faeries murder several human companions at once, displaying them in scenes from plays, a gross attempt at humor. When Leslie asks Niall to help free her, he uses sunlight and frost taken from the Winter and Summer Queens to burn and freeze the link and the tattoo off Leslie. Before restoring her human life and leaving the faerie world behind, Leslie goes to Irial one last time, asking him never to use the ink exchange on another human again. He solemnly agrees. The novel ends with Irial making Niall the new king of the dark court and them both watching Leslie and her new human friends.
19024681	/m/04jbrqp	La Queue du Marsupilami		1987		 In the Palombia jungle, Bring M. Backalive, a hunter who seeks personal glory, searches for a marsupilami, an animal that nobody had never captured. The hunter's attempts are occasions for some gags. The tone is largely humoristic and the hunter rather a comic character than a dangerous man. The story is also an opportunity to discover the way of life and the several abilities of the marsupilamis including the ejector paws and elongating tails.
19034119	/m/04jjz3w	The Riddle of the Third Mile	Colin Dexter	1983-10-27	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel is divided into three books - the first mile, the second mile and the third mile. The title is a reference to the biblical sentence "And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain" as in St Matthew, Chapter Five, Verse Forty-One. The third mile could also indirectly refer to a particularly elaborate scheme used in the book to lure three of the college staff to London. There are three main narratives in this book. During the world war, there are three brothers Albert, Alfred and Johnny Gilbert serving as tank officers in the army. Albert and Alfred are said to be lookalike twins. The youngest brother is trapped in his tank during an offensive and is burnt to death. The two elder brothers are unable to help due to a direct order from the lieutenant Browne-Smith. They develop a hatred to Browne-Smith (mistakenly) believing that he was a coward not to try and save a fellow officer. At the present time, Browne-Smith is a Professor at Oxford. He departs on a mysterious trip to London where he visit a topless bar and then proceeds to a brothel. There he is served drugged drinks and he collapses on the floor. A few days later, the Master of Lonsdale college invites Morse and voices suspicion about the disappearance of Browne-Smith. He has left the college without any communication or forwarding address. Morse promises to keep an eye out for any information that comes his way. It is revealed that Morse was a student of Browne-Smith in his college days and the reason Morse picked up his obsession for grammar and spelling. We also see a short flashback into Morse's college days and his breakup with his college sweetheart. Then, the police discover a dismembered corpse in the water at Trupp. The corpse is missing the head, arms and legs. This makes identification difficult but Morse believes that the corpse could be that of Browne-Smith. It is also found that Browne-Smith was suffering from brain tumour and had only a few more weeks left to live. As more evidence accumulates, suspicion seems to fall on Prof.Westerby who was antagonistic towards Browne-Smith at college and is supposedly on a vacation to Greece after his recent retirement. But Morse speculates that the body is not that of Browne-Smith but probably Westerby thereby the need to dismember the corpse to confuse the police. During a visit to Browne-Smith's room at the college, Morse meets one of the Gilbert twins who is running a packers and movers business engaged to shift the retired Westerby's effects. Thereby Morse, gains the address of Westerby's new flat in London. On travelling there, he finds another corpse, this time stabbed with a screw driver. In a moment of forgivable lapse brought about his fear of corpses, Morse does not recognize the murderer and allows him to walk free. The second mile concludes with three more deaths - one being murder, one suicide and one general causes, thereby leaving none of the suspects alive. Morse largely guesses how things happened. His theory goes as follows: The Gilbert twins wanted to kill Browne-Smith in order to avenge the death of Johnny Gilbert and set up an elaborate scheme to lure him to London. They realize that Johnny actually committed suicide so let Browne-Smith go. Browne-Smith in turn uses the same scheme to lure Westerby and confronts him. Browne-Smith in turn, realizes that he was mistaken in his antagonism. He has always assumed (wrongly) that Westerby had voted against him in the election for Master of the college. Westerby and Browne-Smith both realize that the current Master had voted against both of them in their previous elections. So they use the same scheme for the third time to lure the Master to London and kill him. Browne-Smith was, however, guilt-ridden and tried to steer Morse to the culprits. It is suggested that he was mentally not in control due to side-effects of the tumor. Morse further guesses that the corpse found in Trupp was the Master. Westerby killed Alfred in his London flat and in turn, Albert killed Westerby and then committed suicide. Browne-smith died of his tumor.
19034594	/m/04jmhk7	The Road of Bones	Anne Fine	2006-06-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story centres on a Russian boy named Yuri who in school is taught that the revolution liberated his country, and that the new leaders are always working for greater good. But the life for his family and people around him is full of poverty and misery, and the government only punishes those who protest. And one day Yuri is considered an 'enemy of the state' for saying a few careless words, and is sent to a camp in the frozen wastelands of Siberia.
19035826	/m/04jns5_	Last Seen Wearing	Colin Dexter	1976-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A man, later known to be Donald Phillipson, goes for an interview in Oxford to be headmaster of a school, later known to be the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School in Oxford. At the bus stop a girl gets into conversation with him and later seduces him. She turns out to be a girl from the school, Valerie Taylor, and a year later she goes missing. Two years after that Inspector Morse picks up the case following a road accident in which Chief Inspector Ainley was killed. A mysterious letter arrives apparently from Valerie, but Morse is convinced Valerie must be dead and tries to find out what happened on the day she disappeared. She went home from school for lunch and was last seen by a lollipop man carrying a bag. Morse discovers she was pregnant and suspects she had been sent off for an abortion. The plot thickens when Reginald Baines, another teacher at the school, is found murdered at his house near Oxford Station. Three suspicious characters had been near his house—Mrs Phillipson, Valerie Taylor’s mum, seen wearing her distinctive cherry coloured coat, and David Acum, a French teacher who had taught Valerie’s last lesson. Morse also suspects Acum’s wife, but rejects this when he discovers she is living in North Wales and does not drive.
19036152	/m/04jl8pt	Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam	Alan Dershowitz	2008-06-24	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book portrays Husseini, a member of an important Jerusalem Arab family, as an anti-Semite and a key figure in infusing the modern Arab world with anti-Semitic attitudes. It asserts that Husseini's views were the casus belli for virtually all modern Middle Eastern terrorism - "an unbroken chain of terror from Adolf Hitler, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Sayyid Qutb, and Yasser Arafat to Hamas' founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman, and Ramzi Yousef, who planned the World Trade Center bombings of 1993, to Osama bin Laden and Mohamed Atta, to Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the Pakistani Muslim terrorist who planned the kidnapping and murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, and to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
19036301	/m/04jk82w	The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn	Colin Dexter	1977-05-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The Oxford Foreign Examinations Syndicate runs school exams in the Persian Gulf and other places with a British connection. The Secretary Dr Bartlett and Mr Roope, a chemistry don and a member of the committee, disagree about the appointment of a new member of staff. Roope gets his way and Nicholas Quinn, a deaf man who lipreads, gets the job. When Quinn is found murdered in his maisonette all the staff are under suspicion. There is Bartlett, his deputy Ogleby and the attractive Monica Height, who has liaisons with some of the others - especially young Donald Martin. Strangely, nearly all of them, including Quinn, appear to have tickets for The Nymphomaniac at Studio 2 in Walton Street on the afternoon of the murder. When later Ogleby is himself found murdered, a neat drawing of Quinn’s ticket is found in his diary. Morse tries to deduce which of the others is the murderer but keeps getting it wrong. An intrigue involving wealthy Arabs and prior knowledge of exam papers is clearly the cause, and Quinn had found out about it and paid for it with his life. Colin Dexter's stylistic device of introducing each chapter with either a genuine or fabricated literary quotation was first used in this book and was maintained throughout the rest of the series.
19037260	/m/04jnk88	Service of All the Dead	Colin Dexter	1979-10-18	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel is divided into four books. Each book follows a different style of writing. Notably, the third is in the form of a statement taken from a witness and the fourth (mostly) takes the form of court proceedings. The first book details the lives of the characters Lionel Lawson, Harry Josephs, Barbara Josephs, Paul Morris, Ruth Rawlinson and Peter Morris. It doesn't directly mention Philip Lawson but there are several indirect references to him as the tramp. This book sets up the various motives for the plot. It also highlights the jealousy and hatred some of the characters feel towards each other for various reasons. Morse is on furlough and by chance happens to visit St. Frideswide. There he comes to know about the murder of Harry Josephs and the subsequent suicide of Lionel Lawson. He finds out that Harry Josephs was first poisoned with morphine before being stabbed in the back. This curious fact sparks his attention and he begins to take an active interest in the case. When Inspector Bell who was previously charge of the case goes down with the flu, Morse & Lewis take official charge of the investigation. True to his usual self, Morse comes up with several theories each of which is shown to be wrong with gathering evidence. Subsequently Morse locates the dead bodies of Paul Morris and Peter Morris by instincts. When Barbara Josephs is also murdered, Morse finally sees the light in the case. He figures out that Ruth would be the next victim and the church (again) would be the scene of the crime. He then places Lewis in an opposite building to watch the church, and he hides in the church. Morse confronts the murderer, revealed to be Harry Josephs, atop the church tower. The two men struggle, and Harry falls from the tower to his death. This book is about the statement given by Ruth to Lewis. She explains how she was hard up for money and agreed to help Lionel Lawson in a plot to murder Harry Josephs. She tries to put it across that she was never directly involved except as a witness to identify the dead man. On reading the statement, Morse rejects is as complete perjury and tears it up. This book mostly takes the form of court proceedings as Morse reveals how the murderer Harry Josephs committed the crimes. He guesses that the first victim was Philip Lawson and Ruth's role was mainly to misidentify the body as that of Harry Josephs. He subsequently explains how Harry murdered the Morris father and son and then his wife Barbara. As for the question of Lionel Lawson, Morse suggests it was suicide. Ruth is sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment for perjury. In the first closing scene, it is implied that Lionel Lawson was in fact murdered. In the last scene, Morse visits Ruth at her flat after her release and they start off a romantic relationship.
19046084	/m/04jftp5	Ranks of Bronze	David Drake	1986-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A defeated Roman legion is sold into slavery to alien traders seeking low tech soldiers to be used in conflicts to secure trading rights on alien planets. Their new masters soon learn that the Romans are the best low tech fighters that can be found. Given their worth as soldiers and success on the battlefield, the Romans' alien masters provide them with everything, including near immortality. However, the Romans want only one thing, and that is to go home.
19046625	/m/04jj08k	The Forlorn Hope	David Drake	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set in the Hammer's Slammers universe, The Forlorn Hope follows the fortunes of a different mercenary company named "Fasolini's Company". On the planet Cecach, a civil war has raged between the secular Federals and their religious zealot adversaries, the Republicans. Fasolini's Company is to provide heavy support to a Federal firebase. When the firebase is cut off and surrounded by Republican troops, the Federals surrender, offering Fasolini's Company to the Republicans as part of the bargain. Since the Republicans have vowed to execute any mercenaries who fall into their hands, Fasolini's Company decides that it must flee the firebase before the Republicans arrive to take control. Fighting both the turncoat Federals and the Republicans, Fasolini's Company, with the aid of a loyal Federal logistics officer and the captain of a planet trapped interstellar freighter, must march across enemy lines to reach the safety of the intact Federal and still loyal Federal lines.
19048140	/m/04jlzbg	Des gaffes et des dégâts	André Franquin	1968		 In this album, Bertrand Labévue and the Gaffophone appear for the first time. Most of the gags are caused by the instrument. *filter for gases: to be placed on the exhaust pipe of one's car to prevent CO2 emissions *a rocket to modify the weather: rocket full of explosive, but inefficient *quick floor polisher: consists of an old fire extinguisher. *table : a table camping which can fold automatically, thank to a small button situated at the center of the table, which can cause some unexpected and accidents
19048330	/m/04jmcvy	Un gaffeur sachant gaffer	André Franquin	1968		 In this album, Leon Prunelle replace definitively and officially Fantasio who left the office to make reports. Freddy les-doigts-de-fées appears for the first time.
19048475	/m/04jhx46	Lagaffe nous gâte	André Franquin	1970		 Prunelle definitively replaced Fantasio. He begins to swear some "Grdidji" and the famous "Rogntudju". Several running gags feature new Gaston's inventions. Bubulle, Gaston 's fish, appears for the first time. *bomb against termites: bomb to be placed in each cupboard *giant insecticide: very handful spray, but much too powerful *cuckoo clock: cuckoo taking the form of a spaceship *alarm clock: device which explodes when turned on *giant fly: made of papier-mâché, wood and cardboard, the fly is too realistic and frighteing *personal atmosphere: invented perfume for Gaston's personal office which attracts horses *special transformer: transfomer to allow Christmas strings to flash on and off, but too much powerful, so that it has effects on neighbouring houses *experiment to extract energy from mouvements: when one tries to open the doors in the offices, it turns out to be very difficult *a portable version of the Gaffophone, played in the woods for M'oiselle Jeanne, resulting to a catastrophic fall of the leaves from the nearby trees
19048697	/m/04jnpz4	Gaffe à Lagaffe !	André Franquin	1996		 *petrol: special petrol for the Gastomobile, it also can cause unexpected fireworks *anti-hold-up system: system which consists in spreading marbles to make robbers slide *radio-controlled iron: efficient iron, but not to be lost of sight, for it tends to fly away *heating for birds: system of pipes installed on the rooftop of Spirou editorial offices and connected to the heating system of the building *English divan: sofa made with elasticated plastic and buttons that tend to suddenly and break loose, causing high damage
19048886	/m/04jb6wd	La saga des gaffes	André Franquin	1982		 Most of the running gags feature Longtarin and Lagaffe, engaged in an intense struggle.
19049119	/m/04jj8cr	Lagaffe mérite des baffes	André Franquin	1979		 In this album, a struggle between Longtarin and Lagaffe begins. This theme will also be the occasion of most of the gags in the next album. *parking meter: fake meter, so well imitated that drivers fill it *mini lawn ower: miniature lawn mower to avoid cutting daisies *heating for motorbikes: suit linked to the radiator of the motorbike, and in which heated water flows, so that the motorcyclist is never cold; the only problem is that it lacks a regulator *electricity generator: thanks to a dynamo, a treadle lights a small lamp and allows the staff to deal with very urgent work in case of power failure *inflatable bag: bag to protect car occupants in case of accident, it goes off even in case of slight contact
19049230	/m/04jd4rp	Le gang des gaffeurs	André Franquin	1979		 *divan : highly comfortable divan, full of late readers' letters *giant shoe :shoe made for a shoes seller *a giant aquarium: a network of pipes in which water flows *scented aerosol: a revolutionary substance through which the light can not go *machine to play cup-and-ball: device badly adjusted, so that it can hit the user *gas generator: engine fed with fuel, but too much polluting *miniature plane: this plane perfectly works, but the radio control turns out to control a Russian satellite
19049295	/m/04jl0wk	Gaffes, bévues et boulettes	André Franquin	1973		 De Mesmaeker is back in the gags. * barbecue: made up of an old lid * blend of fertilizers: it allows plants to grow very fast, including with carnivorous ones
19049434	/m/04jb49h	Le géant de la gaffe	André Franquin	1972		 Le géant de la gaffe is the first album in which Franquin inserts eccentric signatures. Monsieur De Mesmaeker is less present than in previous albums. *alcohol detector: device to mesure the rate of alcohol in the blood, it must not be exposed to fire *electric umbrella: umbrella that can open and close pushing on the same button *coffee-maker: personal invention that delivers very strong coffee *graft for cactus: graft which allow cactuses to grow extremely rapidly *spring-wire for phones: wire very elasticated, that may hurt dangerously the user *soap: soap that blows a lot of bubbles once it is in contact with water *automatic door: door that open automatically thanks to photoelectric cells *heating system: system for cars installed which conducts the gas by a chemney *spray for carburetor: an effective but polluting system *hand-armchair : very comfortable armchair designed as a giant hand *monorail: device linked to rails set in the ceiling to get around easily in the offices *monorail monoplace: the same monorail, modified -because being too low, it could hurt people- but with a default in the brake system
19049545	/m/04jhby6	Le cas Lagaffe	André Franquin	1971		 Two new Gaston's pets appear: the cat, the black-headed gull, plus already presented the mouse Cheese and the fish Bubulle. These new pets cause most of the gags of the album.
19050247	/m/04jh1tc	Democracy and Education	John Dewey	1916	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Dewey sought to at once synthesize, criticize, and expand upon the democratic (or proto-democratic) educational philosophies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Plato. He saw Rousseau's philosophy as overemphasizing the individual and Plato's philosophy as overemphasizing the society in which the individual lived. For Dewey, this distinction was largely a false one; like Vygotsky, he viewed the mind and its formation as a communal process. Thus the individual is only a meaningful concept when regarded as an inextricable part of his or her society, and the society has no meaning apart from its realization in the lives of its individual members. However, as evidenced in his later Experience and Nature (1925), this practical element—learning by doing—arose from his subscription to the philosophical school of Pragmatism.
19050309	/m/04jh1tq	Gaffes et gadgets	André Franquin	1985		 Fantasio finds it difficult to put up with Gaston's devices and inventions. *paperclip: the biggest paperclip ever invented *Gastomobile: small vehicle which allows Gaston to get rapidly around Spirou offices. *a rocket: it intriguished many foreign secret services *anti-black ice chair: chair on casters to prevent Gaston from sliding on patches of black ice *automatic filing chest: a small button open directly the filing chest, no need to open drawers *artificial satellite : consists in making a ball turning around one's head
19050894	/m/04jcmgl	Death Is Now My Neighbour	Colin Dexter	1996-09-24	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 At 17 Bloxham Drive, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, a pretty 29-year old physiotherapist named Rachel James is shot almost point blank through the closed shade of her kitchen window early in the morning of 19 February 1996. The shooting took place between 7:00 and 7:30 with a .577 caliber howdah or Lancaster pistol as the pony-tailed young woman was getting breakfast prior to heading to work, her head and upper body silhouetted in the window, as her assailant stood in her backyard. Unfortunately, none of the other residents of Bloxham Drive can recall seeing anything suspicious that morning, including her immediate neighbour Geoffrey Owens at number 15, a newspaper reporter desperate for the scoop on this breaking news story that happened so close to his home. Chief Inspector Morse, aided by Detective Sergent (DS) Lewis, soon discovers a cryptic 'seventeenth-century' love poem by John Wilmot and a photograph of Rachel with a mysterious grey-haired man, clues which lead them to the prestigious Lonsdale College, where the rivalry between Julian Storrs and Dr. Dennis Cornford for the position of Master, to replace Sir Clixby Bream, is about to turn deadly. Morse goes to the extreme of employing a known house burglar and lock expert to learn more about Owens. Morse also diagnoses himself with diabetes, and, after he going to the local clinic to confirm his condition, is immediately placed in John Radcliffe Hospital for five days. He also divulges his Christian name, Endeavour (named after Captain James Cook's ship), for the first time in the series. At the conclusion of the novel, Morse's new love interest, Sister Janet McQueen (a nurse from the hospital), insists that he let Lewis know of his first name and convinces Morse to send Lewis a postcard, which he signs with his full name.
19050921	/m/04jj0j3	The Daughters of Cain	Colin Dexter	1994-11-11	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The body of Dr. Felix McClure, Ancient History don of Wolsey College, Oxford, is found in his flat. A brutal murder - a single stab to the stomach with a broad knife. The police have no weapon, no suspect and no motive. The case leads Morse into the path of Edward Brooks, who himself disappears following a museum theft. Then the weapon is found and there are suddenly too many suspects.
19050986	/m/04jld1r	The Way Through the Woods	Colin Dexter	1992-10-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Morse is intrigued by a cryptic clue relating to missing Karin Eriksson, which is taken to mean she has been murdered. He is given the case and notes that the clue seems to include a reference to Wytham Woods, where he believed the police should have searched in the first place. The police search the area with help from head forester David Michaels and a body is found but it's a man. Morse and Lewis talk to George Daley, who found Karin's bag. His wife Margaret gives them some photos developed from Karin's camera, showing a young man and a house, but tears up some more showing Karin naked. Morse identifies the house in the photo but the tennant, McBryde, disappears before he can be questioned. Morse and Lewis find the house was being used to make pornographic films and the client list includes Daley and a local lecturer, Alan Hardinge. Daley is found dead in the woods. Michaels is suspected but was showing some RSPB representatives around at the time, since the gatewarden recalls when Daley entered the woods. The first body turns out to be Doctor Myton, the man in the photographs. Hardinge admits that Myton was taking photographs of Karin in private at the house but when the others in the house checked on them they were both dead. He, McBryde, Daley and Michaels conspired to hide the bodies. Morse, however, realises this is a lie and Karin is still alive. Daley's son Phillip commits suicide but has an alibi for his father's murder. Morse and Lewis speak to Michaels' wife Cathy and realise she is Karin. She killed Myton when he tried to rape her and was sheltered by Michaels, who persuaded the others to cover the matter up. Morse realises Michaels killed Daley and then had Cathy dress up as him and drive to the woods to hide the body, in order to give himself an alibi. Lewis learns Morse sent the cryptic clue in the first place.
19059077	/m/04jbmdt	45 obrtaja: Priče o pesmama		2007		 The book title refers to the speed (45 revolutions per minute) of a vinyl single. Although the book, consistent with the title, has forty-five chapters, it deals with forty-six songs, the epilogue being an analysis of Don McLean's "American Pie" lyrics. The Rolling Stones are the only artist represented with two songs ("(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "Sympathy for the Devil"), while the chapter on "Walk This Way" features biographies of both Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C.. The Chapter "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" deals with the history of the band Pink Floyd, with a special accent on one of its former band members, Syd Barrett. The chapter on "Dancing in the Street" performed by Martha and the Vandellas also focuses on the history of Motown Records, the chapter on "Woodstock", originally performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, focuses mostly on the career of the song author Joni Mitchell, as well as on the event itself and the chapter on "Tiny Dancer" performed by Elton John also focuses on the career of movie director Cameron Crowe and his movie Almost Famous, in which the song is featured. Every chapter features a Serbian language translation of the song lyrics, except the chapter on "Walk This Way" which features an apology by the writer who states he can not translate the song lyrics (possibly because of the slang or the sexual innuendo featured in the lyrics). The book also features several autobiographical moments from Cukić's career as a member of Tilt, Bulevar, Bajaga i Instruktori, as well as from his solo career.
19062831	/m/04jj_67	A Fine Companion	Shackerley Marmion			 The play opens with its lovers, Aurelio and Valeria. Aurelio is a worthy son who has been disinherited by a capricious father, in favor of his wastrel younger brother Careless (the latter is the "fine companion" of the title). The lovers' plans to marry are frustrated by Aurelio's lack of means; and they are separated physically by Aurelia's father, the usurer Littlegood. His own father being deceased, Careless is determined to spend and enjoy his patrimony. He mortgages his lands to Littlegood and wastes his funds on high living; his tailor, sempster, and haberdasher wait upon him faithfully. He is surrounded by a set of questionable friends. Spruce is a would-be lady's man who carries a box full of pre-written love letters, only the names left blank. Captain Whipple and Lieutenant Stern are cashiered soldiers who mooch what they can. Littlegood has two daughters and a son. In addition to Valeria there is the high-spirited Aemilia; son Lackwit is the darling of his mother, Fondling Littlegood, who encourages him to live the life of a gentleman and a gallant, much to his father's displeasure. Littlegood wants to marry off his daughters to husbands of his choice; he plans to bestow Valeria upon Spruce, and Aemilia on the elderly Dotario, the uncle of Aurelio and Careless. Aemilia, however, is determined to foil her father's plans; she prefers Careless for her husband. Directed by Aurelio, Valeria pretends to be mad; Aurelio disguises himself as the doctor who is to cure her. Careless disguises himself as Dotario, and makes off with Aemilia. (Lackwit mistakes the real Dotario for a false Dotario, and scares him away with a longsword.) The disguised brothers marry their brides. Littlegood and Dotario are stunned to learn they've been duped, though Fondling is pleased with the results. To avoid public embarrassment and keep the family secrets, Littlegood agrees to return Careless's mortgaged lands to him, and Dotario provides Aurelio with an income. Interspersed with the play's main plot scenes are scenes of the comic subplot, which trace the adventures of Careless, Lackwit, the Captain, and comic servants through a milieu of taverns, confidence games, and pranks. Captain Whipple is a version of the "Miles gloriosus" of classical comedy: he talks big and blusters, but is a coward at heart. He indulges in a fantastic style of speech &mdash; :There's a wench that has her suburb tricks about her, I warrant you. Hold there :Bellerophon! take thy Ocyrois, and mount her like Phlegon. Yet by the end of the play he has been humbled: he marries the Hostess of the tavern where he resides, and becomes the Host.
19064111	/m/04jd1v5	Le lourd passé de Lagaffe	André Franquin	1986		 This album is made up of all the gags and illustrations that had not been previously published in album.
19064114	/m/04jc870	En direct de la gaffe	André Franquin	1974		 This album is made up of small-sized strip and article relating Gaston' blunders. All the gags and articles, entitled "En direct de la rédaction", wrote by Yvan Delporte for the Gaston Lagaffe series are grouped in this album. It is also constituted of Spirou covers.Many new characters are introduced, such as Jules Soutier, Bertrand Labévue, Beaucoudeau and Mélanie Molaire. The Gaffophone also appear for the first time. *trousers press: system to make the ironing of trousers easier *Klaxophone: instrument made with car horns *anti-mosquitoos powder : powder which causes explosions and attract mosquitoos *guitar walkie-talkie: built sa that Jeanne can constantly listen to Gaston's guitar and voice
19064116	/m/04jc0_b	Gare aux gaffes du gars gonflé	André Franquin	1973		 Longtarin appears for the first time and watch over Gaston very carefully, all the more as he Gaston have acquired a strange automobile. Gaston signs a contract with De Mesmaeker. *vehicle to take downstairs: vehicle which slides on the ballisters, but cannot turn *filter for cigarettes: filter which causes explosions, the rights were bought by a joke shop *ejector seat for cars : seat not to leave lying in offices, for it can be dangerous for someone *machine to cork bottles : machine that must been well-adjusted, at the risk of damages *mini-go-kart : roller skate with the engine of a lawn mower *petrol for rockets: dangerous petrol powder *coffee maker with petrol : coffee maker which can take off like a rocket *table: table hanged up to the ceiling to ease cleanup. *relax-armchair: armchair with instructions for use that must be read before using *swing with elasticated strings : swing with amplified movements *overcoat linked to the central heating: allows to work having warm *filing system: system consisting in tying each document to the ceiling with an elasticated thread *automatic polishing: automatic machine to polish shoes, and occasionally trousers *special flash: too strong flash that sets fire to clothes *thread for Christmas trees: thread which make the tree turn, so that one can see the hidden part of it, and with the possibility to regulate the speed
19064118	/m/04jmfyb	Le bureau des gaffes en gros	André Franquin	1972		 Gaston invents a robot and strange appeaux. Mademoiselle Jeanne appear for the first time.
19064121	/m/04jjrs0	Gala de gaffes à gogo	André Franquin	1970		 Monsieur De Mesmeaker appear for the first time and try to sign contracts, in vain. The Gaston-Latex also appear, causing running gags. Finally, Prunelle and Lebrac appear at the end of the album, but they do not play an important role as yet, and most strips feature only Fantasio and Gaston. *electric hammer: it must be fixed to the wall *rubber chair: chair that collapse when someone sits on it *Gaston Latex: rubber replica of Gaston *Mastigaston: saves someone from chewing before swallowing foods s
19074607	/m/04jh4jp	Son of the Tree	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Son of the Tree begins with the arrival of Joe Smith on the planet Kyril, so distant that Earth is but a myth. Kyril is dominated by a religious aristocracy called "Druids", who rule over the five billion commoner "Laity", and who control worship of the "Tree of Life" – a huge tree with a trunk five miles in diameter, and height of twelve miles. The Druids are xenophobic, and consider Joe to be a spy. For unknown reasons, he is befriended by Hableyat, a native of the world of Mangtse, self-admitted spy who finds him a job as a chauffer for Druid Princess Elfane. After witnessing a murder committed by Princess Elfane's lover Manaolo, Joe Smith flees Kyril on the spaceship Belsaurion bound for the world Ballenkarch, his original destination – only to find that his fellow passengers include Hableyat, Manaolo and Princess Elfane, and that he is caught up as a pawn in a complex three-way political plot between the opposing worlds. Surviving a couple of murder attempts and puzzling over the intentions of Hableyat and Princess Elfane, he arrives on Ballenkarch, where he finds to his surprise that the earthman he was seeking has made himself ruling prince, with the woman he left behind on Earth as his princess. However, his biggest surprise is yet to come, when he discovers the horrific true nature of the so-called "Tree of Life".
19077095	/m/04jh45p	Dancing in my Nuddy-Pants	Louise Rennison	2002		 The book is written in the form of a diary. It is about Georgia Nicolson (about fifteen years old), her friends (the Ace Gang) and her infatuation with boys (or snogging in particular). Georgia's boyfriend Robbie ('the sex god or SG') has been invited to go on tour with his band The Stiff Dylans. He has received an offer to go to Los Angeles in hamburger-a-gogo-land (United States), where Georgia is thinking of becoming a 'girlfriend to a pop-star'. At the end of the book he goes for an interview and gets a job in Whakatane (New Zealand) instead. Even though Georgia is upset about this she still has enough courage in her to (when her house is empty) dance in her nuddy-pants (naked).
19079482	/m/04j9rjk	Man's First Word				 The story begins with Telford receiving a phone call from Billiam Pinch-Penny, an anthropologist at the local museum, regarding the discovery of a tablet of stone with Hieroglyphic carvings. It is unique in the fact that the people depicted have open mouths and appear to be attempting to speak. The tablet is a slab of Iguanastone, found only in the Atlas Mountains. Earnest notes that a piece has broken off, and Telford, Earnest and Billiam pack their bags for Morocco. After a trip which leads them through London, France, and Spain, the trio eventually find themselves in Tangiers, where a local basketweaver suggests that they look for the broken piece in a small village in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains called Yackama. There, Earnest literally trips over what they are looking for, and they arrive at an answer to their question.
19085924	/m/04jms2j	The Howling II	Gary Brandner		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Three years after the events of The Howling, Karyn Beatty has now remarried and lives in Seattle. Although content with her new life with her husband, David Richter, and her young stepson Joey, she is still haunted by the memories of her terrifying ordeal in the Californian mountain village of Drago with its werewolf inhabitants. Karyn regularly sees a therapist to help work through her problems, but after a spate of sinister occurrences that culminate in the horrific killing of the family's housekeeper, Karyn is convinced that the surviving werewolves of Drago have tracked her down. Fearing for the lives of her new family, Karyn leaves town hoping she will lead the evil creatures away from her loved ones. Karyn's fears were well founded as she had indeed been tracked down by none other than her ex-husband Roy (now a werewolf) and Marcia Lura, the evil Drago werewolf who first bit him. Both Roy and Marcia survived the fire in Drago, but Marcia is now partially scarred and incapacitated due to being shot in the head with a silver bullet by Karyn at the end of the first novel. Though the bullet did not kill her as expected, it left a streak of silver through her black hair and rendered her unable to fully transform into a werewolf as before. Now, when the moon is full, she becomes a grotesque half-woman/half-wolf creature, and wants revenge for what Karyn did to her. In Mexico, Karyn tracks down Chris Halloran, the family friend who helped her during her first ordeal in Drago. She tells him that the werewolves of Drago have come for her and she needs his help once more. However, Chris's new girlfriend, Audrey, is jealous of his prior relationship with Karyn and does everything she can to undermine their friendship. When Roy and Marcia finally track Karyn down to Mexico, they set a trap for her at a mountainside cabin with Audrey's help, and close in for the kill. Again, Chris comes to Karyn's rescue and fights with Roy (who takes the form of a wolf). Chris eventually manages to kill Roy with a silver knife, but in the nearby mountainside cabin, Marcia is holding Karyn hostage and is about to torture her using a set of red hot pliers. However, as the full moon rises, Marcia abruptly begins her agonizing change into the half-wolf creature. She drops the pliers which then cause a fire to break out in the cabin, allowing Karyn to escape. Outside, Karyn is reunited with Chris while Marcia (or the creature she has become) burns to death as the cabin goes up in flames.
19087305	/m/04jlq89	The Steel Remains	Richard Morgan		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Almost ten years after the Human-Kiriath Alliance repelled the invading Scaled Folk in a terrible war, three of the war heroes still have difficulty adjusting to the uneasy peace and the renewed conflict between the northern League and the Yhelteth Empire. Ringil Eskiath lives in self-imposed exile from his native Trelayne, exchanging war stories for board and lodging in a small village's inn; to most people he is the hero of Gallows Gap, but his own family shuns him because he is gay. Lady kir-Archeth Indamaninarmal, the only human-kiriath half-breed, was left behind when the Kiriath abandoned the world, and finds herself more and more unable to tolerate the decadent court of the Yhelteth Emperor. Egar Dragonbane, a Majak mercenary, returned to his people after the wars, but having seen the wonders of the civilized world he feels out of place as a nomad clan leader in the steppe.
19097744	/m/04j9j0s	Ramage	Dudley Pope	1965	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Nicholas Lord Ramage is the third lieutenant on His Majesty's ship Sibella, but assumes command when the Captain, and the First and Second Lieutenants are killed by fire from a French ship. The French ship had fatally crippled the Sibella and had killed over half of her crew, including the surgeon and surgeon's mate. As the new Captain, Ramage decides to abandon the sinking ship. He leaves the injured on the deck to be taken prisoner by the French and hopefully treated by their surgeon. Before he abandons the ship, Ramage retrieves some documents and the late Captain's last orders. The remaining crew then loads into the four lifeboats and rows away. As they are rowing away, the crew of the French ship set the Sibella on fire after taking the injured off. Ramage opens Sir John Jervis's orders to the late Captain and finds that the Sibella was on a rescue mission to extricate the Marchesa di Volterri along with five other nobles including the Marchesa's two cousins. Ramage decides to go through with the rescue. He takes the captain's gig with several topmen and the former Captain's coxswain, Jackson, with him and sends the other surviving sailors to Bastia. Ramage and his men then land upon Monte Argentario and find the Marchesa with the help of a local charcoal maker. Half of the nobles decide not to risk trying to escape in a small boat, but Ramage rescues the Marchesa and one of her cousins, Count Pisano, although the other cousin, Count Pitti, is apparently killed by Napoleon's cavalry during the escape. The refugees are eventually picked up by the Lively frigate under the command of Captain Probus. That night Pisano accuses Ramage of cowardice in connection with the death of Count Pitti, submitting a formal accusation to Probus. During their time together, the Marchesa and Ramage develop a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque relationship, with the conniving of her family and the demands of discretion upon them. After the Marchesa is safe, Ramage is sent to trial according to the Articles of War for his loss of the Sibella. Captain Croucher, a political enemy of Ramage's father, brings the accusation of cowardice into the trial. Ramage's trial is interrupted by Lord Nelson's arrival, effectively ending the trial. Nelson gives him the command of the cutter Kathleen sending him to rescue the crew of the frigate HMS Belette which had run aground and was under fire from Napoleon's troops. Ramage saves the stranded crew and returns to Nelson. Upon his return, he learns that Count Pitti, who he had been unable to rescue had not been killed, but instead had hidden and later escaped. The book ends as Ramage considers his orders to carry the Marchesa and Count Pitti to Gibraltar.
19098596	/m/04jkjjc	Lucinda Brayford	Martin Boyd	1946	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story of a beautiful woman set mainly in Melbourne, Victoria and England from the early 1900s to the Second World War. Lucinda Vane was born into a wealthy Melbourne family. She spurns the love of a distinguished family friend to marry the dashing Aide de Camp to the Governor, Hugo Brayford. Lucinda's life of ease is replaced by hardship when Hugo takes her to England just before the first World War. She then realises that her husband married her for her money, and he has a mistress.
19099649	/m/04jfsbk	Incandescence	Greg Egan	2008-05-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel has two narratives in alternate chapters. The first follows two citizens of the Amalgam, a Milky Way-spanning civilisation, investigating the origin of DNA found on a meteor by the Aloof. The Aloof control the galactic core and until the novel begins, have rejected all attempts at contact by the Amalgam. The second narrative is set on a small world known as the Splinter, and covers the attempts by its inhabitants to understand the environment within which their home exists. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that the Splinter orbits a collapsed star within its accretion disk and is subject to various dangers. The two stories come together in a complex twist which involves a kind of past/future first contact role reversal. Much of the narrative explores the effects of orbital dynamics around a high mass object and requires an understanding of Newtonian gravitation and at least a basic familiarity with general relativity and its application to black holes and neutron stars to be compelling. Understanding the story's wider frame of reference and the Splinter's encounter with the Wanderer are tied in with this. The Amalgam is explored in two other short stories, "Glory" and "Riding the Crocodile".
19102459	/m/04jlvp7	Disguise	Hugo Hamilton	2008-06-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins during the Battle of Berlin. A mother, Mrs Liedmann and her son are living in a house in the city. Her husband is fighting for the German forces on the Western front. A bomb falls on their house and kills her son Gregor. Distraught, she searches among the ruins for her son. Her father, Emil Liedmann, who is a deserter from the army, comes to take her home To Nuremberg. On the outskirts of a country town he finds an orphan boy the same age as Gregor and makes his daughter promise to raise him as her own child and never to tell a soul that he is not her son. Soon after Emil disappears while searching for fuel on the black market. Later it emerges that Emil was shot by American forces as he tried to escape the Germans, who wanted to capture and punish Emil for being a deserter. In autumn 2006 a grown up Gregor meets with friends and family in a orchard in the German countryside. Gregor meets his wife Mara, from whom he has bees separated for thirty or so years, his best friend Martin and his son Daniel who is with his girlfriend Juli. Over the day spent picking apples Gregor reminisces over his life. In his teenage years he began to suspect that he was not his parents child, given that he looked nothing like them and on account of a slip up made by Uncle Max, an old friend of Emil. He runs away and travels throughout Europe for several years, returning to Germany intermittently to earn money for his travels. By the late sixties he is in Berlin and working as a musician. He meets Martin and Mara, telling them that he is a orphan. After some years he marries Mara when she becomes pregnant. The couples relationship comes under strain however when Mara visits Mrs. Liedmann who insists that Gregor is her biological dad. forced to choose between the word of her husband or his mother she becomes confused. Gregor decides to leave for a while to travel to Toronto with a group of musicians. Gregor maintains a long distance relationship with his family. After a time he returns to Berlin but finds it too hard. He leaves for Ireland where he lives for several years before he returns to Berlin following the fall of the Berlin wall. As time passes he gradually sees more of Mara and the two reform their friendship. At the end of the book, after Daniel has blamed Gregor for having fabricated the story of his existence, Mara takes the pair to a room in the back of the farmhouse where they are staying. In it is all of the possessions of Gregor's childhood home. Mara finds the clothes in which Gregor was found as a boy. Mara theorises that Mrs. Liedmann kept the clothes to let Gregor know of his origins. After this Daniel believes his fathers story.
19103725	/m/04jfvkq	The Chimera's Curse	Julia Golding	2007-09-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Connie is the world's last Universal and the only one who can communicate with everyone and everything; the only person who can keep peace and unity between humans and the mythical beings being destroyed by human hands. But, the evil shapeshifter Kullervo wants her power. He wants to destroy all humanity for wiping out the mythical creatures. During a scorching summer, Kullervo prepares for war. The serpent-like Chimera is only a small part of his deadly army. As the dangerous fire of Kullervo's hatred bursts into life, Connie and her best friend Col must stop him. But how? And who will survive this fight to the death? And what must be sacrificed for it? During this thrilling finale to the Companions Quartet, gifts are revealed and friendships tested, and no one leaves unchanged.
19116759	/m/04jnb3b	The Maze of Bones	Rick Riordan	2008-09-09	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story begins with Grace Cahill laying on her deathbed requesting William McIntyre to change her will to the alternate version and dies soon after it is changed. After he is sure she is truly dead, the Man In Black steps out of the shadows and talks with McIntyre. The main characters, Amy and Dan Cahill, are then introduced. They are Grace's grandchildren going to her funeral at her mansion with Grace's sister and their guardian Aunt Beatrice. Right before the funeral Amy and Dan run into the Holts. The parents, Eisenhower and Mary-Todd, and their children,Hamilton (fourteen), Madison and Reagan,(eleven), turn Dan upside down. Then a non-random selection of Cahills, including Amy and Dan, are called away in private for the will reading. Also called away are the Holts, the Kabras (nicknamed the Cobras), Isabel, Natalie (eleven), and Ian (fourteen), Alistair Oh (inventor of microwaveable burritos),Irina Spasky (ex-KGB agent), The Starling triplets (Ned, Ted, and Sinead), Jonah Wizard (famous rapper host of the reality TV show "Who Wants to be a Gangsta"), Uncle Jose, Aunt Ingrid, and Aunt Beatrice. It was not known until Rapid Fire Two, but Astrid Rosenbloom was there also. William McIntyre shows them a video of Grace Cahill telling them there are on the brink of their greatest challenge yet. Mr. McIntyre then says they have a choice,one million dollars, or a chance to be the greatest Cahill in history and gives them five minutes to decide. Dan wants the money for baseball cards, while Amy wants the chance in order to make Grace proud. Then the Kabras try to discourage them from taking the challenge. Then the people at the will reading are told by Mr. McIntyre that people like Abraham Lincoln, Harry Houdini and Lewis and Clark are Cahills. In the end Amy and Dan chose the chance and receive a sealed envelope that they are instructed not to open. Then the Holts, Alistair, Starlings, and Spasky all accept the challenge. The envelope says: Resolution: The fine print to guess. Seek out Richard S. As Amy and Dan think over what this means, the Starlings, Holts, Kabras, and Irina leave. Meanwhile WIlliam gives the kids Grace's last warning, " Beware the Madrigals." Amy then goes to the library but does not find anything there, but Dan opens a passageway into Grace's secret library where Alistair and them find a copy of Poor Richard's Almanack. They give it to Alistair to look at, but just then the mansion burns down. They barely escape through the vents (Dan grabbing Grace's cat, Saladin and a box of jewels on the way out) and go home where they convince Nellie to be their chaperone for their trip. They then head to the Franklin Institute, and then France. In France they reject the offer of Jonah Wizard and then follow Irina Spasky, who, due to a theft chain, now has the almanac. Irina lured them into a trap on an island, but they were later saved unpredictably by the Holts, a family who is also after the Clues. After their escape, Amy and Dan told Nellie all about the 39 Clues, and Nellie decides to help them. With their information, the Cahills go to the Paris Catacombs. They find some bones which have numbers on them: a magic box number game, planted there by Franklin to give the coordinates to the next Clue. This leads them to a church where they find a room with a mural of the four original Cahills, after who the four Cahill branches are named. Inside the room is a small vial, with scrambled words on it. Dan solves the anagram, and they resolve to insert the vial into a lightning rod—one of Franklin's inventions—to charge it. Amy succeeds, but the vial is then stolen by the Kabras. However, Dan still has the original envelope, and solves the puzzle for the clue: iron solute. Amy's Internet searches for Franklin also have led them to the probable location of the second Clue: Vienna, Austria, the home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
19120439	/m/04jk8_r	Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death				 A local bookseller, Matthew Glynn, is found bludgeoned and strangled, setting Wycliffe on the trail of a killer whose identity is imbedded deep within a mountain of family secrets. These include the vanishing of Matthew's wife years earlier, the increasingly bitter arguments with his brother, Maurice, over the sale of ancestral land, the mysterious seclusion of his other sibling, Alfred, the web of deception weaved by their sister, Sara, and the discovery of important documents in Matthew's safe. And, as all of these sinister factors collude, the cycle of death continues and claims another life...
19123890	/m/04j9ysg	The Broken Shore	Peter Temple	2005	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel's central character is Joe Cashin, a Melbourne homicide detective. Following serious physical injuries he is posted to his hometown where he begins the process of rebuilding the old family mansion and his physical and mental strength. Against a background of family tragedy, politics, police corruption and racism, he investigates the death of a wealthy local man, Charles Burgoyne. His closest friend and police superior is Villani, who is the central character in Truth.
19124928	/m/0gmpfd	The Mark of the Assassin				 When a terrorist bomb blows Flight 002 out of the sky off the east coast, there is only one chilling clue. A body found near the crash site bears the deadly calling card of an elusive, lethal assassin-three bullets to the face. Michael Osbourne of the CIA knows the markings. Personally. Propelled by an obsession that threatens to consume his career, his family, his life, Osbourne in now hot on the assassin's trail. But in a world of shadows and lies, intrigue and cover-up, the man with a mission puts himself and his loved ones in the sights of the most ruthless, diabolical assassin on earth.
19125174	/m/04jj801	The Fatal Contract	William Hemings			 The Fatal Contract is set in the earliest period of the French monarchy. Childerick is king; Fredigond, his wife and queen, is the play's villainess; Clotair and Clovis are their sons. In the play's backstory, Clotair raped Chrotilda, the sister of two young noblemen named Lamot and Dumain (the play's virtuous characters). One of their relatives mistakenly killed the queen's brother Clodimer in revenge, thinking him the rapist; Fredigond is now quietly and systematically exterminating the members of Chrotilda's family. In a macabre touch, the queen maintains a group portrait of the family; she paints in the members &mdash; grandmother, parents, infant child &mdash; as she kills them off. (In a sudden frenzy of rage, Fredigond stabs the painting.) The queen is assisted in her villainy by a Moorish eunuch called, with brutal literateness, Castrato. Childerick is poisoned by Fredigond; Lamot and Dumain are blamed for the death, but manage to escape. The prince Clovis is in love with Aphelia, and she with him; but his elder brother, and now king, Clotair is envious. Castrato helps Clotair plan Aphelia's rape. Clovis intercepts his brother; as they fight, Castrato raises an alarm and their mother Fredigond arrives. Rather than trying to stop the fight, she eggs them on. Clotair stabs Clovis, who is carried off, presumably dead. Ferdigond and her lover Landrey are in her chamber; Castrato sets the room on fire, but the queen disguises her lover as the ghost of Clovis. Fredigond plans to rule the kingdom with Landrey once Clotair, Clovis, and Aphelia are dead. She wants Clotair to execute Aphelia, to placate Clovis's "ghost." Clotair initially falls for the trick, but Castrato, who is busily manipulating the other characters ("on all sides the eunuch will play foul"), informs him of the queen's intentions. Clotair responds by marrying Aphelia instead of killing her. Lamot, disguised as a surgeon, has discovered that the wounded Clovis is still alive. Clovis masquerades as the ghost of his father Childerick, and terrifies the queen into admitting that she poisoned her husband. Clovis turns Fredigond and Landrey over to Castrato, who starves the imprisoned queen and her paramour, then poisons them. Landrey tries to escape with a concealed dagger; but in his weakened state he is unable to evade Castrato, who trips him, sits on him, and stabs him. Castrato has convinced Clotair that Aphelia has been unfaithful to him; Clotair binds his wife and Castrato tortures her (he "sears her breast"). Castrato displays the corpses of Fredigond and Landrey, and Clotair understands that Aphelia is innocent and that he has been abused. Clotair stabs Castrato, who, dying, reveals her true identity as Chrotilda. Lamot and Dumain break into the castle with a party of supporters. The play's conclusion indicates that Clotair, Aphelia, and Chrotilda will die and that Clovis will inherit the throne.
19128365	/m/04jb25_	The Mermaids Singing	Val McDermid			 In the fictional English city of Bradfield, men are being abducted and tortured to death using brutal medieval techniques. The bodies are then found in areas frequented by gay men and women. The police reluctantly recruit a criminal profiler, Dr. Tony Hill. He joins forces with Detective Inspector Carol Jordan, for whom he develops complicated romantic feelings. Dr. Tony Hill has problems of his own, including a mysterious woman named Angelica who frequently calls him for phone sex. As Tony becomes increasingly involved in the investigation, it becomes apparent that the killer is seeking Tony as the next victim. The killer is revealed to be the anonymous caller Angelica, a transsexual woman who kills men that do not return her affections. When kidnapped, Tony figures out her weakness (her desire to be loved) and uses it to avoid being tortured and murdered. He kills her in self-defence.
19133725	/m/04jgg0y	The Gargoyle: A Novel	Andrew Davidson	2008-08	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Gargoyle follows two different time lines, one in the form of a story [or ‘memory’], and one in real time. In real time, an unnamed atheist and former porn star with a troubled childhood is driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Hallucinating that a volley of arrows is being shot at him from a forest, he swerves off the road and into a ravine. There his car sets alight, and he begins to burn. Just as he thinks he will die, the car tips into a creek and he survives, though badly burned. While recovering, the Burned Man becomes addicted to morphine and believes there is now a snake in his spine. Hatching a suicide plan, he gets a visitor named Marianne Engel, who is a sculptress suspected of having Manic Depression or Schizophrenia. Humoring her at first as she believes she knew him several hundred years prior, they soon begin a friendship/ relationship, and he moves in with her. Throughout, Marianne reveals their ‘past’, and tells tales of love and hope, inspiring the Burned Man to live. Their ‘past’ story begins in fourteenth-century Germany, at a monastery named Engelthal. A baby is found at the gates, and taken in and raised as a nun. The young sister Marianne is soon found to possess incredible language skills, understanding languages she has never been taught. One day, a man is brought to the monastery. He is severely burned, except for a small rectangle over his heart where there is an arrow wound. The man is a member of a Condotta, a mercenary troop. The nuns believe the burned man is too injured to live. Marianne however looks after him, and he survives. Finding love with each other, the Burned Man and Marianne flee the monastery and begin a new life together, getting married and conceiving a baby. One day while out shopping, they see the troop that the Burned Man was once a part of. If he is found alive, he will be put to death for being a deserter. Seeing an old friend of his, Brandeis, still with the Condotta, Marianne lures him back to their apartment where the two soldiers reunite like brothers. Brandeis too is eager to escape, so they hatch a plan. After a few months, Brandeis has escaped, and comes to live with Marianne and the Burned Man. But trouble follows as they are hunted down by the Condotta. Heavily pregnant, Marianne and the two men try to escape. Eventually they are caught. Brandeis is executed and the Burned Man is tied up and burned alive once more. In order to spare him pain, Marianne shoots an arrow through his heart, exactly through the first wound. However, the Condotta see her, and chase her over a frozen river. Falling through, Marianne encounters three ‘presences’, who claim they are now her three masters. As penance for the sins she had committed, she was told she now has a chest full of ‘hearts’, that she must give away, which she does in the form of sculpting. She will have one heart left for her lover, who must ‘accept it, and then give it back’ to set her free. As their love story unfolds past and present, Marianne also spins romantic tales from across the centuries and around the world that defy pain and suffering and bring hope and succor to her deeply damaged friend. But as he starts to fight his demons and the morphine-addicted serpent embedded in his spine, Marianne begins the count down of her hearts...
19135867	/m/04j9kng	Fifteen	Beverly Cleary		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jane Purdy is a 15-year-old student at Woodmont High School in California. She dreams of having a boyfriend like blonde, popular, and sophisticated 16-year-old Marcy Stokes has. Jane feels somewhat left out of social circles at her high school, and envies the more popular girls who go out on dates, seem more confident and wear more expensive clothes. One day while babysitting, she meets 16-year-old Stan Crandall, who is a delivery boy for a pet-food store. Jane is immediately attracted to Stan, although she does not believe that he will be attracted to her as she forgets to pretend to be sophisticated during their brief encounter. However, Stan calls her later, and asks her out on a date.Jane is extremely upset but it turns out that Stan asked Bitsy to the dance before he met Jane and he feels he cannot break the date now even though he is not attracted to Bitsy. Jane and Stan's relationship fluctuates throughout the book. Jane constantly analyses her status with Stan, worrying about whether she's ready to date someone without scaring him off. After another outing, Jane takes Stan's unusually quiet and detached behavior as a sign that he's tired of her, but later she learns that he is sick with appendicitis. In the end, Stan reassures Jane that she's his girlfriend, and gives her his ID bracelet as a symbol that they are going steady.
19137726	/m/04jb2ch	Santa Esperanza				 Santa Esperanza is a multi-cultural country stretched on three small islands lost somewhere in the middle of the Black Sea. The islands are inhabited by the Georgians, the Genoese (descendants of the Black Sea settlers), the Turks and the British. The islands are often visited by tourists, who essentially view the place as an earthly Paradise. However, there are occasional tourists who take a closer look at the distinct and singular culture, as well as the traditions turned into taboos. Since the Crimean War, the Island has been under British rule. Apparently, at that time they leased the three islands for 150 years from the last governor Sarri-Beg, a Turk of Georgian origin. The main story of the novel unfolds in 2002, when the British leave the islands and Santa Esperanza gains independence. The rivalry between the local powerful clans grows into a civil war, which has no clear political coloring, it rather is a clash of spiritual monsters reared during the lull of several centuries. For this reason, the war has no obvious cause, and the only tangible conflict is the primacy of the clan to receive the state insignia from the British Governor. The hostilities are instigated by the Visramianis, the wealthiest Georgian clan, owners of one of the islands. The family traditions and internal regulations comprise a sophisticated system of numerous prohibitions and complicated, opinionated restrictions, which eventually causes dramatic developments in the personal lives of the younger generation. One of the central stories is a love relation between Salome Visramiani and Sandro da Costa, the heir of an eminent Genoese family. For nearly twenty years the Visramianis have been fighting the relationship of their girl with the lad brought up on completely different principles and traditions. The Visramianis call themselves ‘the Preserved’ while looking down on the Genoese, considering them foreigners, and opposing the marriage of the loving couple. The love between Salome and Sandro, which began in school, finishes tragically: in the ensuing chaos, Salome, turned into a drug addict in the turmoil, becomes the head of her family, which eventually brings Sandro, the young poet stranded in the other part of the city torn by the hostilities, to commit suicide. The novel abounds in extracts from his diary and unsent letters, telling their adventures from childhood to the war onset. Another narrative line of the novel describes the life of Data, the prodigal son of the Visramiani clan. He is obsessed with playing cards, an ungainly and unacceptable pastime for the millionaire’s family. Data’s appearance on the pages uncovers yet another layer in the traditions and cultural life of Santa Esperanza, related to a popular local card game Intee (‘run’). The 36 booklets of the novel are designed following the Intee structure and their titles represent individual cards. The game is absolutely dissimilar to any other known card game, as it presupposes its own rules combined with no less complicated regulations reflecting life itself. The other local tradition that Data is tightly linked to is the singing: a unique kind of folk song, the Blue Song, only performed by women. Due to their proverbial passion, they were prescribed to hide their faces behind veils. Even nowadays, as a result of the ancient custom, the women remain faceless and nameless singing in clubs with restricted access. The emergence of the Blue Songs was rather strange too: a woman would sit at the waterfront, accompanying the waves with her wordless, but deeply emotional singing. Data is infatuated by Kesane, one of the singers. She also falls victim to the civil war: captured by the guardsmen, she jumps from the Citadel keep. Data, together with Panteleimon, an Orthodox monk, his only and the most loyal friend, flee the turmoil in a boat, not knowing whether they are going to ever reach any coast. The Eastern Orthodox Monastery is the oldest stone building of the island. It was here that the monks used to write the local history, preserving and unveiling the past in their chronicles. One of the main metaphors of the novel is a pair of windows. One is in the Monastery, through which a monk first observed a strangely grieving woman singing her Blue Song on the beach many years ago. The other is in the Citadel (which housed the museum during the British rule) from which Kesane, the bluemarina, jumped. These two windows have been facing each other for centuries over the old Slave Market Square, used for exactly that purpose in the Middle Ages. One can get an absolutely stunning view of Santa City from these windows. It is through the Monastery window that an old-fashioned arrow finds its prey, Nick, a mobster seeking refuge on Santa Esperanza. He fled Georgia only to find himself involved in the islanders’ entangled relationships. The Visramianis force him to marry Salome, but a mysterious intrigue and a constant necessity to hide, make him an irreconcilable opponent of his new family. There are 25 active characters in the novel. Among them are three British intelligence agents trying to ensure a peaceful transition of power. The British political priority is a formal hand-over of the island to the direct descendant of Sarri-Beg, the last governor. This happens to be an old woman known as Queen Agatha, who lives alone in considerable poverty in her small cottage. Nick, the Georgian mobster, and Parna the Standard Bearer, a professional gambler and Data’s friend, are among her courtiers, who share a tragic end with their Sovereign. Another line of the plot is the story of the Sungalis, who make up the fighting force of the opposing sides. This ethnic group, inhabiting one of the three islands, has its own century-old insular traditions and customs, demonstrating unwillingness to mingle and inter-marry the multi-cultural population of the main island. Seven or eight centuries ago, having decided to safeguard them, one of the Georgian kings asked the then governor of Santa Esperanza to take these people under his protection. (It was not uncommon for the Georgian rulers of the olden days to hide entire villages from the Mongol tax-collectors.) The Sungalis are illiterate peasants with a militant spirit, who strictly follow their archaic traditions and live in small communities on their island, where everyone is everyone else’s relative. In the tourist attraction areas they work as guards in cafes, restaurants, clubs and hotels. These goblin-like people are extremely open-hearted and ingenuous, though fighting and warfare is in their blood. With the Esperanza clans it is an old tradition to take them as servants, guards and bailiffs. As a result, every clan has a formidable host of the Sungalis at its disposal. The Sungalis have their own hereditary priests, but they don’t liaise with any official church. These people stranded in the history have two leaders: a retired bailiff Khetia, who keeps a country guest-house, and Martia, the head of the Visramiani security. The friendship and enmity of the two men with complex characters determine much in the narrative. Sly and crafty Khetia leads the rebellion. He is the one behind the entire intrigue, which eventually threw the country into the civil war. Resisting the whole idea of the war with all his heart, Martia nevertheless finds himself deeply involved in it, which finally leads to his death. Martia is hopelessly in love with Salome, also adored by a former sailor Luka, who is the author of a once best-seller. Luka’s character seems to have travelled from an old-fashioned novel. Despite numerous hardships, he radiates kindness and cheerfulness, his unbelievable stories and adventures entertain everyone around him. Luka’s line is entwined with that of his ex-wife, Jessica de Rider, the author of popular romances. One of the characters is Lamour the Walker, the representative of an old local trade: in the pre-newspaper times, his ancestors used to make a living by passing the news across and between the islands. But he manages to combine his hereditary trade with the job of a private eye, which enables him to sell gossip in a most cynical manner. Another character is Monica Uso di Mare, a journalist desperately in love with Sandro da Costa. She is the reason of unhappiness of an English writer Edmond Clever, who is famous for his several books featuring Santa Esperanza. One of his books is In Search of the Lost Pipe dedicated to yet another local myth: governor Ali-Bey had a pipe of such length that its end rested on the other island and seagulls were perched on it. Several pieces of the legendary pipe are truly sacred for a lot of islanders. One of them is Morad-Bey, a coffee-shop owner, trying to collect all the pieces in order to put them together. Rummaging through Queen Agatha’s possessions, Alfredo da Costa, the Museum Director, comes across a sack full of the pipe pieces. Three British agents assemble them only to find that Ali-Bey’s pipe was actually much shorter than it was believed. Alfredo da Costa, Sandro’s uncle and the sole survivor of the family, sets to work on the family history in the post-war Santa City. Just before the hostilities began, austere and mighty patriarch Constantine Visramiani died of haemorrhage. On his deathbed he clearly realised where his ambition had brought the entire country, but was unable to say anything due to serious brain damage. However, he managed to scribble the word ‘run’ on the blanket for his grandson Data to see. Data and Salome’s mother Kaya becomes a hostage of her own clan. Salome succeeds in putting an end to the hostilities, but the flourishing Santa Esperanza of the British period is razed to the ground. The main characters are dead. The culture and traditions reigning the small country throughout the centuries lie waste. The book finishes with the dramatic events unfolding on the Sungali Island, as it is attacked by the peace-keeping forces from three sides.
19140059	/m/04lh388	Soledad's Sister				 The novel starts in a cloudy August night when a casket bearing the corpse of one who is identified as Aurora V. Cabahug arrives in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport from Jeddah. Mysteriously identified by Jeddah authorities as having died from drowning, she is one of 600 Filipino overseas workers who return as corpses to NAIA every year. The corpse, however, is not the real Aurora Cabahug but of her older sister, Soledad. The real Aurora Cabahug, called Rory, has in fact never set foot beyond the small town of Paez and is a singer in the Flame Tree, a KTV nightclub frequented by cops, the town’s vice-mayor and Koreans. Rory learns of her sister's death and she claims the body with the help of a local police officer, Walter G. Zamora. Along the way, their vehicle along with the casket is stolen by notorious carnapper known as Boy Alambre. In the end, Soledad's casket, is discovered by Boy Alambre. He pushes the casket into a murky river, but in an ironic twist of fate, the thief is taken along and drowns with the corpse. Soledad remains as faceless as she was when she came home. In a series of flashbacks and narrations, we learn of the stories in each of the main characters’ lives. Their mysteries are not fully unraveled however, left to the past or to events that have yet to be told.
19147304	/m/0bmjc2n	Gone, Baby, Gone	Dennis Lehane	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Boston based lovers and private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are hired by a woman to look into the case of her niece, Amanda McCready, whose disappearance has become an important local news story. They take the case despite the seeming reluctance off the girl's uncle Lionel. During the investigation they quickly come to the conclusion that Amanda's mother, Helene, who has been prominently featured in the news stories about the case, is a degenerate and neglectful parent. At the time of Amanda's disappearance, Helene had left her alone for several hours while she partied at a local dive bar. In another incident, Helene had left her daughter unsupervised on the beach for several hours, resulting in the girl getting a terrible sunburn. While Helene has been pleading with the public for her daughter's return, in private she often seems more concerned about her own life and the possible benefit the publicity might have on it. In perhaps the most irresponsible act of parenting, Patrick and Angie discover that Helene had taken Amanda along while she and her then boyfriend Skinny Ray stole several thousand dollars from men working for the imprisoned drug dealer Cheese. Patrick and Angie quickly begin working with police officers Remy Broussard and Nick "Poole" Raftopoulous. The police receive an apparent ransom demand calling for a meetup at the Quincy Quarries. Under cover of Darkness, Angie, Patrick, Poole and Remy arrive at the quarry, but before they can meet the kidnappers a confused gun battle breaks out, resulting in the death of a couple of gangsters working for Cheese and the disappearance of the ransom money. Angie finds Amanda's favorite doll, which had been taken along with her, in the water of the quarry and they conclude that the little girl was likely thrown in and drowned. Later on, Patrick learns that Remy had previously worked in the unit responsible for investigating crimes against children and that he had known Lionel, Helene's brother. Questioning Lionel, he discovers that the whole kidnapping had been orchestrated at Lionel's behest in order to get Amanda away from Helene's neglectful care. Remy and Poole, disguised as burglars, stage a hold up of the bar where Patrick, Angie, and Lionel are meeting and kill Lionel. Patrick gives chase to Remy and mortally wounds him. Remy confesses that he is part of a small ring of cops who take children from abusive and neglectful homes and place them with caring competent parents. The first child had been his own daughter, who he had found as an infant malnourished and abused in a crack house, her birth parents were so disinterested in her welfare that they didn't even file a missing persons report after Remy took her. He, Poole, and their Captain, had taken Amanda after Remy learned of Helene's neglectful parenting from Lionel. Patrick and Angie go to the captain's beach home where they discover Amanda McCready, apparently happy and well care for. The Captain begs Patrick and Angie not to reveal Amanda's whereabouts, insisting that she will be placed with a loving family. Angie and Patrick argue about the proper course with Patrick finally informing the authorities about the kidnapping. Angie, disappointed, leaves Patrick. it:La casa buia sv:Gone, Baby, Gone
19149368	/m/04lgym3	Gallia				 Ever since their only child Gallia decided to get a university education about five years ago, Lord and Lady Hamesthwaite have been carefully watching their daughter's silent alienation from their world and have had their doubts if she will ever consent to marry one of the eligible young men that present themselves to the family. Gallia is attractive, healthy and clever but all the men around her agree that she never behaves in an easy-going, coquettish manner. Family and friends are occasionally shocked by the topics she chooses for polite conversation, such as politics or sex. Since her Oxford days, Gallia has known Hubert Essex, who has embarked on an academic career and does research on Darwinian theory. It is Essex with whom Gallia genuinely falls in love. Her honesty compels her to confess her love for him, and she is devastated when she is rejected by Essex. When he tells her bluntly that his "life has no need of" her, Gallia knows that she will never be able to experience romantic love again. What Essex omits from his speech is the fact that he is suffering from a hereditary heart condition and that he is very likely to die young. When Gallia is introduced to Mark Gurdon, an ambitious social climber who wants to get ahead within the British Civil Service, and when she realizes that he is handsome, healthy, and virile, she chooses him to be the father of her future child, or children. Gurdon, whose guiding principle in life is decency, is keeping a mistress in a studio flat in London who resorts to a self-induced abortion to terminate a pregnancy just at the time when Gurdon starts being attracted by Gallia. But Gallia does not mind: when he proposes to her, she accepts but makes it clear right from the start that she will never be able to love him.
19150589	/m/04lgd33	Magic Study	Maria V. Snyder	2006-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After saving the life of the Commander, falling in love with Valek, the assassin, and discovering she was kidnapped as a child because of her suspected magical abilities, Yelena is forced to return to her original home of Sitia to train in magic so she is no longer an unstable threat to the magical world. The death sentence upon her from Ixia for her ability to do magic, despite her saving the Commander, also prevents her return to Ixia and her love, Valek. Yelena is taken to the Zaltana clan and meets her long lost parents and older brother, Leif, who despises her and states his belief that she is a spy for Ixia. Because of his abilities as a magic user himself, many in her clan think he may be right, but her parents are welcoming despite her inability to remember them. When Leif leaves for the Academy to advise the Council, Yelena must accompany him to start her training at the Academy. Along the way, they are ambused by Cahil and his soldiers, who tells her that he is the sole heir to the throne of Ixia, the only one that Valek missed during his assassinations in the Commander's takeover. He intends to have what is rightfully his, and wants Yelena to give him information about troop movements and such in Ixia. Though Yelena protests that she is not a spy, Cahil keeps her in chains. She escapes, but comes back later that night of her own accord to strike a deal with Cahil, since they are going to the same place and she wants to prove her innocence. Cahil brings her before the First Magician, Roze, who essentially rapes Yelena's mind before declaring she is not a spy. Yelena manages to mostly fend her off, but spends several days in horror recuperating before beginning the basics of her training. During her training, Yelena assists in helping a young women raped and beaten by a serial killer who inadvertently left her alive. In doing so, she discovers that she is likely a Soulfinder, a very powerful magic user. However, Yelena tries not to believe this is so, as the last Soulfinder stole people's souls and used them to his own purposes before he was finally killed. She has a talent for influencing people and can at times take over their bodies, leaving her own. Yelena's methods of doing things her own way and relying only on herself bring the wrath of her mentor, the Fourth Magician Irys, and when she goes off on her own to meet the serial killer, who has taken eleven souls of girls and needs a twelfth to come to him willingly, Irys breaks off the mind link between them in anger. But Yelena has Valek for help, as he has arrived in disguise with an Ixian delegation and has a natural immunity to magic. Together, and with help from her reluctant brother, they capture the killer. With the help of a Story Weaver magician named Moon Man, Yelena and Leif work out their differences as well, though they still banter as a real brother and sister. However, the killer, who they nickname Ferde, is not the only rogue magician still out there. Yelena and another group of magicians fight many of the rogues, but are forced to retreat to fight another day. Valek returns to the delegation headed back to Ixia, and Yelena joins them briefly as well, at the request of the Commander, who promises to revoke her death sentence if she becomes a spy. Instead, Yelena offers to act as an intermediary between the two countries, once her magic training is complete.
19150782	/m/04lhlf1	Midnight: A Gangster Love Story	Sister Souljah	2008-11-04	{"/m/084s13": "Urban fiction", "/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Midnight tries to manage his life with Akemi and look out for his family and hang with his friends while managing his family's newly opened business, he comes to terms with struggles that occur from day to day.
19151146	/m/04lg6nc	Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three			{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 On May 5, 1993, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steven Branch went missing from their homes in West Memphis, Arkansas. The next day, their bodies were found in the woods near their homes with evidence showing that they had been brutally beaten and savagely murdered. In the case of Christopher Byers, the evidence revealed that he had been castrated and his penis had been skinned before he was killed. News of the boys deaths and the manner in which they happened soon reached the inhabitants of the small community. The rumor then spread that the nature of Christopher Byers death in particular hinted that the deaths may have been related to a Satanic ritual. Weeks after the murders, a local woman by the name of Vicki Hutcheson brought her eight-year-old son Aaron to see the police. Aaron claimed to have witnessed the kidnapping of his three friends. Vicki Hutcheson volunteered to help the investigation by becoming "involved" with both Jessie and Damien. Hutcheson was a neighbor of Jessie's and coaxed him into setting up a "meeting" with Damien so Hutcheson and Damien could get to know each other. Vicki Hutcheson would later admit to the police that she had attended an Esbat with both men. Years after the trials, Hutcheson would admit that she had lied about attending the Esbat. Over the months that led up to the arrests and trials, her son Aaron would also change his account of what happened numerous times, each time the story becoming more outrageous and unbelievable. Eventually, the police brought in Jessie Misskelley for questioning in relation to the murders. Misskelley was 17 and considered mildly retarded. Despite this, a simple questioning turned into a heated interrogation by West Memphis Police which resulted in a confession from Misskelley that was almost immediately recanted. Based on this confession and the story told to police by Aaron Hutcheson, Misskelley, Echols and Baldwin were all arrested and charged with three counts of Capital Murder. Each of the three men encountered issues during the course of their trials, including the inability to have the trial moved away from Arkansas area, lack of the prosecution's required assistance in the delivery of all intended evidence to the defense, and what is perceived by the author to be a biased judge. Author Mara Leveritt makes numerous comparisons to the trials of the three men to that of the Salem Witch Trials, stating that the men were convicted based on the "Satanic Craze" the community was surrounded by after the murders. Actual evidence used by the prosecution during the trials included pictures of Metallica t-shirts worn by Jason Baldwin and books checked out by Damien Echols at his public library. Prosecution cases contained little more than circumstantial evidence. Eventually, all three men were convicted of the murders, with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley receiving life sentences without parole and Damien Echols receiving the death penalty.
19153303	/m/04lfq7h	A Pinch of Snuff	Reginald Hill	1978-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Receiving a tip from his dentist Jack Shorter, Inspector Peter Pascoe takes a closer look at the Calliope Kinema Club, a film club notorious for showing adult entertainment movies. Shorter is convinced that one particular scene in a movie he recently saw was too realistic to have been staged with fake blood, but when Pascoe starts investigating, he soon comes across the actress in question, Linda Abbott, who obviously didn't suffer from any harm and assures Pascoe that his and Shorter's concerns are unnecessary. Meanwhile, the "Calli" has been vandalised and its proprietor Gilbert Haggard has been assaulted so badly that he succumbs to a heart attack. The only existing copy of "Droit de Seigneur" - the film Jack Shorter was so worried about - has been destroyed, and when 13-year-old Sandra Burkill accuses the dentist of being the father of her (yet unborn) child, it begins to look as if Shorter had merely tried to avert suspicions by his claims against the "Calli".
19156824	/m/04ljxl1	Avon: A Terrible Aspect				 The story begins approximately 26 or 27 Earth years before the events of Blake's 7 proper, when Rogue Avon, a former professional assassin defected from the Federation death squads, on the run from his former employers, briefly meets a young woman called Rowena and fathers a child, the future Ker Avon, before continuing his attempts to evade his pursuers and reach Earth. The first part of the novel follows the further adventures of Rogue Avon as he travels from Phax, a fictitious moon of Uranus, through the Clouds of Magellan to Earth, where he is eventually killed by his half brother Axel Reiss, who has remained loyal to the Federation. The second part of the novel details Rowena's endeavours to raise her son Kerguelen and avenge his father; however, she fails in the latter and is killed on Reiss' orders. The third part portrays Reiss' attempts to mould the education of the young Ker Avon in order to use him in his schemes to achieve more power in the Federation hierarchy. In the fourth and final part of the novel, these plans misfire when Ker Avon, whose intelligence and survival skills have been honed in the challenging environment of Federation intrigue and double cross, turns the tables on Reiss and kills him, partly to avenge his father and partly as an element in his scheme to defraud the Federation banking system and abscond to a safe haven outside the Federation's sphere of influence. However, in the course of his final duel with Reiss, Avon sustains injuries that prevent him from avoiding capture. Avon is sentenced to be deported to the prison colony of Cygnus Alpha, and the novel ends as Avon boards the Federation prison ship London, seconds before the beginning of the first season episode Space Fall in which Avon first meets Blake.
19160096	/m/04lfpnh	Crusade	Robyn Young	2007-08-02	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Crusade, like Brethren before it, follows Will Campbell, a Templar involved in a secret order known as the Anima Templi, as he tries to secure peace in the Holy Land with the help of Kalawun, a high-ranking officer in the Mamluk court ruled by Sultan Baybars. Both of these men face plots from within their own organizations to throw the Holy Land into war: in Acre, Will must stop a cabal of merchants seeking to start a war by stealing the Muslim relic known as the Black Stone; while in Egypt, Baybars' son Baraka Khan and soothsayer Khadir al-Mihrani are plotting to overthrow Baybars and redouble the attack on the last remaining Franks in the Holy Land. Meanwhile, Will's childhood friend, Garin de Lyons, is now in the employ of King Edward I and has returned to Acre to extort money from the Anima Templi and to pursue his own, more selfish ends; and Will faces a threat from Baybars as the sultan gets nearer and nearer to discovering that it was Will who, many years before, ordered an assassination attempt which had failed but had taken the life of Baybars' closest friend.
19161995	/m/04ldkdw	Improbable Fiction	Alan Ayckbourn			 The play begins with Arnold anxiously setting up the chairs for a writers' circle meeting. First to arrive is Ilsa, a young girl whom Arnold hires to serve the tea. Ilsa also looks after Arnold's live-in bed-ridden mother, who periodically demands attention by banging a stick on the upstairs floor. She holds Arnold and the rest of the group in awe on the grounds that they are all writers, although Arnold himself, the only member of the group to have had something published, only writes instruction leaflets. When the rest of the group arrive, they all, over the first act, reveal what they are working on. Grace shows her illustrations for her children's story "Doblin the Goblin" (with friend Sid the Squirrel), Jess tells her of her vision for her period romance, Vivi explains how her latest detective novel is darker than the last three, Brevis plays a (somewhat tuneless) song "There's Light at the End of the Tunnel" from his musical adaptation of The Pilgrim's Progress, and Clem reads out an extract from his science fiction story (or, as Clem sees it, "science fact", with names changed to protect identities). All the writers have obvious weaknesses with their writing. Grace's children have long since grown up and her ideas would be confusing to the age this kind of story is aimed at. Jess never manages to start writing, whilst Vivi is clearly over-writing, and her description of the detective's smitten sidekick is obviously modelled on her and her search for the right man. Brevis's long list of successfully performed musicals can be attributed to the fact that he was a teacher at a school, and now that he is retired he is stuck. And Clem gets angry that no-one can follow his incomprehensible plot, and his persistent mispronunciation of words (such as "invulshable" instead of "invincible") drives Brevis up the wall. There is not much sign of the writers helping each other that much, and the group is still reeling from last week's visiting writer (if you can count someone who is only publicised on the internet as a writer), whose summary, in Arnold's words, was that "You should get the F-word on with it" (to which Brevis points out he finished with "you bunch of wankers.") When a nervous Ilsa enters and serves the tea painfully slowly, the rest of the group start making wild speculation about her. With the meeting over, the five writers go home, leaving just Ilsa, waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up on his motorbike. Suddenly, the lights go out, and Arnold sees Ilsa, in Victorian dress, walk towards him with a candle and a knife. The other five writers also surround him in Victorian dress. Ilsa screams, Arnold cries "Good Gracious!" and the first act ends. With the second act starting exactly where the first one left off, Arnold suddenly hears Jess narrating the story, somewhat in the style of Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters. Ilsa, it seems, has turned into an heiress who has seen some sort of ghost. But before this mystery can be solved, the room changes into that of a 1930s house, and a detective (Clem) and his assistant (Vivi, behaving very similar to the real Vivi) question Arnold about the murder of his wife, rather like a Poirot mystery. And then, before this is solved, Arnold finds himself confronted by a group of agents investigating the alien abduction of his mother-in-law (this time, with striking similarity to The X Files, Alien or The Matrix), with the leader (Brevis), mispronouncing all the long words exactly how Clem would want them. As Arnold flits back and forth through the stories, the first two mysteries are solved relatively easily. The ghost that the heiress/Ilsa saw, was, of course, just a model created by her scheming cousin (Clem) so that she could be declared insane and he could get the inheritance, but he gets rumbled. And so (or, as Jess narrates "And so, dear reader ...") this story ends. The murder's alibi in the 1930s is exposed when it is pointed out she did not have her glasses at the time, but not before the detective comes across a strange instruction manual in his pocket. Making the first kind comment ever to his sidekick (and Vivi says "Isn't he wonderful!") he leaves Arnold with the maid/Ilsa, who now seems to be his mistress. Ilsa advances on a bemused Arnold, but before she can have her way with him, he is back in the sci-fi story. The agents capture an alien pod and use it as trade. Whilst waiting, Brevis almost starts playing a song he wrote on the piano, but gets interrupted by the release of the captive. Suddenly, the alien pod starts to open to reveal ... Doblin the Goblin (Ilsa). A much more tuneful version of "There's Light at the End of the Tunnel" starts playing, Doblin sails down the river (the open alien pod now serving as Doblin's walnut-cum-boat), Sid the Squirrel follows, with all the rest in tow. And so Arnold is left alone again. He says "It's nice to finish with a song". The real Ilsa joins him - evidently, whilst he spent an hour in other people's imaginations, for her it was just a moment in another room. It is clear that Arnold and Ilsa have a genuine friendship. Then, after Ilsa leaves, to prove it is back to reality, Arnold's mother bangs on the ceiling once more. He goes upstairs saying "It was a quiet evening really. Nothing unusual ..."
19164626	/m/04lgs46	Treasure Fever!	Andy Griffiths	2008-04-01		 He tells the class that a man has a goat, a wolf and some cabbage, and he needs to cross a river. There's a boat there, but it can only hold two things. If the man takes the wolf, the goat will eat the cabbage, and if the man takes the cabbage, the wolf will eat the goat. The class starts arguing about why he needs the things anyway, and why he needs to cross the river. To get them to try to work it out, he offers a lollipop to whoever gets it right, much to Henry's desire. While trying to work it out, Clive shoots spit balls at him. Although it's annoying, Henry uses the chewed up bits of paper to help him solve the problem, winning him the lollipop. At recess Clive and Fred, Clive's brother, claim that the lollipop is his, because he used Clive's spitballs to help him work it out. Fred and Henry then have a fight, until Mrs Cross stops it. Even though Fred started it, Mrs Cross blames it on Henry, as she and all the other teachers see him as a model student. As a result he gets sent to the principal's office. Expecting the worst, Greenbeard actually understands what he's talking about and tells him of a treasure full of things that he had, buried in a hill that he named "Skull Island", which had been stolen by another pirate! The object left in the chest was a note: Search the Northwest Southeast seas Search upon bended and bloodied knees But of your riches you will only dream - Greenbeard's pirates are no match for me. McThrottle would go through all lengths just to find. He finds out that the line &#34;Dig for a thousand nights and a night&#34; was a reference to a book named The Thousand and One Nights. He reads it, and discovers that the line &#34;But of your riches you will only dream&#34; is a reference to one of the stories in the book. The ending of the story leaves him to conclude that th He asks another boy at class, Grant Gadget, to borrow his metal-detecting machine. The next day, Henry, his friends and Grant watch as the metal detector (or what he calls the &#34;super charged treasure detector&#34;) blow up and reveal a key. Unfortunately, gossip has passed around the school, Fred and Clive pop up again, and outsmart one of Henry&#39;s friends, Jack Japes, into revealing that a treasure does indeed exist. Henry double-crosses Fred by providing him with a realistic-looking fake map and get back to work. Unfortunately, they are caught by Mrs Cross, who just happens to be passing. Mr Brainfright to conduct an archaeological dig to find the treasure. They do indeed find the top of the treasure box with the help of Mr Brainfright&#39;s jackhammer. This annoys Mrs Cross and she leaves to the principal&#39;s office to request that Mr Brainfright be fired. Gretel manages to dig out thechest, but Fred snatches it, and opens it up with the key. All that is found is a marble, a rock, a pencil, a yo-yo, a shark&#39;s tooth, a rabbit&#39;s foot, a black-eye patch, a plastic ring, a water pistol, and a football card. Fred gets angry with Henry when he saw what was inside, and attempts to attack him. Instead, he trips over Newton&#39;s foot and falls into the hole where the treasure was found, giving time to grab it and race to Greenbeard&#39;s office. Greenbeard gets so happy that his book was found, and saw that the bottom of the box had the initials - Mrs Cross&#39; name before she was married! Henry and his friends take one item each from the box, but it&#39;s not over yet - the pencil that Henry picks up turns out to be the Pencil of Doom!
19176750	/m/04lf7ql	The Knife That Killed Me	Anthony McGowan	2008-04-03	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Knife that Killed Me is a novel which follows a teenager, Paul Varderman, as he tries to fit in with a group in his school. At the beginning of the book, he is a loner, looking into the groups from the outside. A series of events in which he stands up for members of a group known as "The Freaks" lead to him becoming included by them. "The Freaks" are different from the other groups as they do not live under the rule of the school thug, Roth. As Paul becomes more involved with "The Freaks", he also begins to become influenced by Roth. Roth uses Paul as a messenger between himself and a rival school and gives him a knife. The relationship between the two schools develops, with Roth leading the way to war between them.
19176822	/m/04ld9bb	The Knife of Never Letting Go	Patrick Ness	2008-05-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Todd Hewitt is the only boy left in Prentisstown, a small settlement on 'New World' where all boys become men at the age of 13. He begins the novel oblivious to Prentisstown’s history, having been told that all women have been killed by a ‘germ’ released by the native species on his planet known as the Spackle. As a side effect of this germ, the remaining men in Prentisstown can hear each other's thoughts, described as an ever-present cascade of ‘Noise’. Todd, however, is soon forced to learn the truth. Ben and Cillian, his adoptive parents, have been planning his escape for the past eleven years. When Manchee, Todd's dog (which was a present from Ben on his 12th birthday), spills them out, Todd is forced to tell them of a spot of moving silence in the Noise; the two men immediately force him to leave Prentisstown. Todd unwillingly obeys, taking with him a rucksack Ben has prepared containing Todd’s deceased mother’s diary. Ben then proceeds to give him his hunting knife when they part ways. He follows a map through the swamp. Whilst Todd is escaping, they are attacked by the town priest, Aaron, who has recently been provoking Todd in physical and mental fights. Managing to escape him, Todd comes across the spot of silence and meets the girl who is causing the silence. She says nothing but leads him through the swamp to her spaceship, where her parents’ bodies are half buried. It is apparent that she has crash-landed on New World. They begin traveling together. During their journey, Todd realizes that he, infected with the germ, might transmit the germ to the girl and kill her. She hears this in his Noise and flees, but he pursues her until they both encounter Aaron and men from Prentisstown who are tracking them. The girl eventually saves them both and tells Todd her name, Viola. After their escape, Todd and Viola are found by a woman. She tells Todd that the 'germ' is not fatal for women and in fact does not affect them at all. She then takes the two to her settlement. At nightfall, an army of men from Prentisstown arrives and burns down the town, killing all those who will not join them. Todd and Viola escape and flee for the most technologically advanced settlement on New World, Haven, where there maybe be a cure for Noise and a transmitter tower to contact Viola's people still in space. After a few days, the Mayor’s son, Prentiss Jr., finds them. Todd tries to kill him but discovers he cannot. Instead, Todd ties up the Mayor’s son before heading off for Haven with Viola. During this trip, they find a live Spackle. Todd is shocked, since he had believed that all Spackle had been killed in the war. Having grown up hearing terrible stories of the Spackle, Todd leaps at the Spackle and kills it, but is greatly disturbed by the Spackle's fear and the blood. Aaron then finds them, stabs Todd, and kidnaps Viola. Several hours later, Todd wakes up and hurriedly goes after Aaron, although his stab wound becomes infected and sickens him. Todd rescues Viola, by choosing to sacrifice his dog Manchee. The pair escape on a boat, where Todd collapses from his shock. When he wakes up, Todd insists on a walk and surprisingly encounters Ben. Ben explains the truth: the Noise germ was a natural part of the planet, not an attack by the Spackle. The men of Prentisstown, driven mad by Noise and resenting the women's ability to remain silent, killed the women and were subsequently banished from the rest of the world for this crime. The boys were supposed to learn the truth on their thirteenth birthday. This was why Todd had been sent away - he could only be accepted by the rest of the world if his thoughts were wholly innocent. Ben, Todd, and Viola continue toward Haven, but Prentiss Jr. finds them again. Ben distracts him to allow Todd and Viola to run, but then the two run into Aaron. Aaron corners them in a cavern near a waterfall. Todd then realizes that the boys of Prentisstown become 'men' by killing someone upon turning thirteen. Aaron thinks of himself as a symbolic sacrifice for the 'last boy' in Prentisstown and tries to provoke Todd into killing him. Instead, Viola kills Aaron. She explains that this way, Todd does not let the Prentisstown ritual have power over him. Prentiss Jr. again intercepts the pair on their way to Haven and shoots Viola through her stomach. Todd escapes him and carries Viola to Haven to try to find help. However, Mayor Prentiss is already there to greet them; Haven had surrendered without a fight, allowing the Mayor to declare himself President of New World. Through his despair, Todd realizes that he can no longer hear the Mayor's Noise.
19177423	/m/04ld89w	Chasing Darkness	Robert Crais	2008	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 In the midst of a hillside fire caused by the Santa Ana Winds, police and fire department personnel rush door-to-door to evacuate local residents. They discover the week-old corpse of an apparent gunshot suicide. In the victim's lap, however, is a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women -- one per year, for seven years. The suicide victim, Lionel Byrd, was the former suspect in one of those murders, a female prostitute named Yvonne Bennett. Arrested by L.A.P.D., a taped confession coerced by the detectives inspired a prominent defense attorney to take Byrd's case, and Elvis Cole was hired to investigate. Cole's eleventh-hour discovery of an exculpatory videotape allowed Lionel Byrd to be set free. Elvis was hailed as a hero. But the discovery of the 'death album' in Byrd's possession changes everything. To all appearances, the 'World's Greatest Detective' was an unwitting accomplice to murder. Only the murderer could have such gruesome material. Yvonne Bennett was the fifth of the seven victims -- two more young women were murdered after Lionel Byrd walked. Elvis Cole, along with his partner Joe Pike, set out to discover if he cost two more young women their lives by having the real killer released from custody. Even so, the pair are shutout by a special L.A.P.D. task force investigating the case, seemingly determined to close it. Elvis and Joe desperately fight to uncover what actually happened with Lionel Byrd and the string of serial murder victims, and why L.A. power brokers and police want to sweep it all under the rug without finding the truth behind it all. it:Attraverso il fuoco
19180204	/m/04ld_md	Run				 This novel tells the story of Bernard Doyle, an Irish Catholic Boston politician. He married, had one son, and adopted two more. The adopted kids are African-American brothers named Tip and Teddy. (The adoptees' names were given to them by the Doyles as a tribute to the Massachusetts senators Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and Edward "Teddy" Kennedy) Four years later, Doyle loses his wife to cancer. Sixteen years after his wife's death, their two adopted sons are University students. Bernard, the former mayor of Boston, has invited them to a Jesse Jackson lecture. After the lecture, Bernard asks his sons to go to a reception. Tip declines and backs off a curb into the path of an oncoming car. A woman in the crowd pushes him out of the way and is injured in the process. The novel's plot centers around the story of that woman's identity. Her daughter, an 11 year old girl named Kenya, asks to live with the Doyles. The plot has to do with interracial adoption, familial allegiances and rivalries, Boston’s notoriously complex political and racial history.
19186304	/m/04lgvfp	The Beauty of Fractals	Heinz-Otto Peitgen	1986		 The books starts with a general introduction to Complex Dynamics, Chaos and Fractals. In particular the Feigenbaum scenario and the relation to Julia Sets and the Mandelbrot set is discussed. The following special sections provide in depth detail for the shown images: Verhulst Dynamics, Julia Sets and Their Computergraphical Generation, Sullivan's Classification of Critical Points, The Mandelbrot Set, External Angles and Hubbard Trees, Newton's Method for Complex Polynomials: Cayley's Problem, Newtons's Method for Real Equations, A Discrete Volterra-Lotka System, Yang-Lee Zeros, Renormalization (Magnetism and Complex Boundaries). The book also includes invited Contributions by Benoît Mandelbrot, Adrien Douady, Gert Eilenberger and Herbert W. Franke, which provide additional formality and some historically interesting detail. Benoit Mandelbrot gives a very personal account of his discovery of fractals in general and the fractal named after him in particular. Adrien Douady explains the solved and unsolved problems relating to the almost amusingly complex Mandelbrot set.
19188375	/m/04lhgtn	Wycliffe and the Last Rites				 The vicar of Moresk, a quiet Cornish village, is shocked by the discovery of a woman's corpse sprawled across the church steps, raising suspicion that a Satanic ritual has taken place in the grounds. Wycliffe slowly becomes convinced that the murder is an expression of hatred for the whole community, instead of just the victim herself. When another slaying strikes the area, he develops a theory about who the killer could be; but can he prove it?
19188600	/m/04ld57n	Wycliffe and the House of Fear				 For five hundred years the Kemps, a fiercely Catholic family, have held onto their ancestral home of Kellycoryk. But when dwindling finances looked as though they might be forced into selling it on, patriarch Roger married the tough and uncompromising businesswoman Bridgit, who would only save the house if she could take it over for development, an idea that greatly displeased her husband. Then, without warning, she vanishes into thin air just as Roger's previous wife, Julia (another wealthy, independent woman), did several years ago, supposedly having been killed in a boating accident. When Wycliffe, who has been recovering from an illness in the area, arrives on the scene, his curiosity aroused by the mystery of Roger's wives and his home, he soon suspects that the family know more about matters than they're letting on...
19188664	/m/04lgktn	Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy				 The village of Kergwyns is baffled by the bizarre shooting of an attractive local woman; the only thing stolen from the scene being her left shoe and stocking, exposing her foot deformity. As Wycliffe investigates, he becomes acquainted with the life of a deeply unhappy woman who routinely manipulated the men around her. When it becomes apparent that she left clues regarding her murder imbedded in crossword puzzles, the detective wonders why, if she knew about her impending death, did she do nothing about it? And, perhaps more importantly, is somebody of power carefully stage managing the case's progress?
19188776	/m/04ldb_z	Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat				 A young, auburn haired and naked woman turns up strangled in a seedy hotel room down by the docks, her face savagely beaten after death. The discovery of a thousand pounds stashed underneath some clothing, along with the observance of expensive luggage indicating more class than her present surroundings, exacerbate the mystery of her murder, and Superintendent Wycliffe finds himself drawn towards the investigation, interrupting his seaside holiday so he can make inquiries of his own...
19188971	/m/04lfx75	Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi				 Social butterfly Caroline Bryce causes a scandal in her home village of Treen, when her dead body is dragged from the bottom of a local river. Baffled as to a possible motive for killing the beautiful and personable Ms. Bryce, Wycliffe mulls over several possibilities. Could it have been a lover's qaurrel? Family feud? Or perhaps even the explosion of a long held resentment for the woman? However, as the detective steadily untangles a spiders web of love and hate, he finds himself up against a psychotic nemesis who feels no remorse, no compassion, and would not think twice about killing again...
19189773	/m/04lg__2	Jubilee City				 The book begins in Andoe’s place of birth Tulsa, Oklahoma, the location of a popular department store in the 1960s, Jubilee City, from which the book takes its name. The first third of the memoir describe his childhood and teen years. Andoe presents his young self as reckless, with no attempt to control his dangerous impulses. Art is rarely mentioned, with the exception of a few pages concerning an art club at his high school. His first love, Kay will later become a major influence on his art, and be the sole human figure he will paint “ So after being in New York for twenty years, all of a sudden I had the urge to paint the human figure...They all looked alike. They were all the same girl with the round face called Kay.” Andoe attended college majoring in art. It is during this time that he becomes involved in a turbulent relationship, which after marriage becomes rockier still. Soon thereafter the couple moves to New York, where Andoe and his wife have a child. The wife is the primary provider for the family and Andoe assumes the role of a stay-at-home dad, though he does continue to paint. Acclaim for his artwork begins to accumulate, and with success a more stable lifestyle ensues. Soon his wife and him separate, and once again drugs and alcohol, become a major part of his life. It is during this time he lived at the Hotel Chelsea like so many fellow artists. The book ends on a slightly upward note, as Andoe learns how to better balance his life and ceases to drink..
19190045	/m/04ljnyg	Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin				 With his wife away for Christmas, Wycliffe readily accepts an invitation to stay with a Penzance lawyer and his family in their remote country home; although when he arrives he finds the atmosphere less than welcoming, and the unease soon culminates in the disappearance of a young girl, whom he had seen playing the Virgin Mary in a recent nativity play. He soon discovers that the missing youth was unpopular in her local community, and even her parents seem indifferent about the whole affair. Nevertheless, the detective leads a mass search for her and is soon caught up in a major criminal investigation...
19190224	/m/04lj45h	Wycliffe and the Beales				 The Beales, a strange, reclusive family living on the edge of Dartmoor in Ashill House, consist of Simon, an old man entirely withdrawn from active life, Nicholas and Gertrude, perpetually hitting the bottle and playing war games, and the painter Edward, who takes long walks along the moors in search of artistic inspiration. The only one with any drive or ambition is Gertrude's husband Frank Vicary, and all of his time is absorbed by the task of running the family business. When a murder rocks their local community, no-one has any reason for suspecting one of the Beales, until Wycliffe arrives on the case and finds his investigation leading him up the Beales's garden path.
19190809	/m/04ldm8p	Wycliffe and the Pea-Green Boat	W. J. Burley			 Somebody has booby trapped a boat in the ownership of Cedric Tremain's father, blowing him apart. Following Cedric's subsequent arrest, his fellow villagers are unanimous in their belief that he isn't a likely murderer. However, circumstantial evidence soon begins piling up and conspiring against the hapless sailor. When Wycliffe arrives on the scene of the crime, he too finds himself believing Cedric's protestations of innocence, and soon establishes a link between the current murder and that of a young woman twenty years ago, supposedly strangled by a cousin of Cedric's, who served fourteen years of a commuted death sentence.
19190948	/m/04lj83_	Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine				 On the moor west of St Ives, an artists' colony has been running on the site of a disused mine, run by the married astrologers Archer and Lina. The latest member is the shadowy and beautiful Francine, who hopes to invest a legacy into the business. Because of her Scorpio star sign, Archer isn't convinced, although Lina soon accepts her offer. However, the trouble begins when Francine is found dead, killed by a deliberately blocked gas heater. Wycliffe soon makes his presence known as a murder investigation begins, and he quickly learns that several of the creative souls assembled have justifiable reasons for not wanting the police intruding on their private affairs. ...
19191006	/m/04ljny3	Five Go To Mystery Moor	Enid Blyton	1953	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 George and Anne are spending their holiday at a riding school called "Captain Johnson's Riding School" by themselves. There, George meets a girl called Henrietta who is similar to her in that she likes being a boy. One day, George and Anne hear about travellers across "Mystery Moor" and become very curious about it. But when Julian and Dick decide to come to the stables and hear about the travellers, the fun begins. The four children meet a blacksmith who tells them a story about "Mystery Moor". The four children decide to follow the travellers and camp on the moor. There is something mysterious about "Mystery Moor". The Famous Five risk treacherous mists to follow the travellers across the moor—but will the trail lead to danger?
19191236	/m/04lh0jz	Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery				 Fifteen years ago, Cochran Wilder supposedly vanished during a walking holiday in Cornwall, and has now just been released from a psychiatric hospital, where he was incarcerated after successfully pleading insanity for an indecent assault charge. His father, a prominent MP, regards his son as a horrible embarrassment, and is in for more professional strife when Cochran's murdered body is found buried deep inside a sand dune. Wycliffe suspects one (or possibly even all) of six figureheads in the local community, who had been spending an illicit weekend at a Chalet near the scene of Cohran's grisly end. When a series of threatening communications begin circulating and a second murder is committed, the sleuth finds himself caught up in a deadly race against time...
19191495	/m/04lh75k	Wycliffe and the Tangled Web				 Shortly after informing her boyfriend and sister of her pregnancy, a young woman from a quiet Cornish village goes missing, opening up the possibility that she may have been raped or murdered. When a body surfaces, Wycliffe thinks he may have solved the vanishing, but his theory is soon dashed after an identification proves it isn't her. As he recommences his investigation, he steadily unwinds a tangled web of complex family relationships, rivalries and pure hatred, all the time wondering weather the unclaimed corpse may still have some bearing on the case...
19192151	/m/04lfwb9	Wycliffe and the Scapegoat				 Every Halloween in Cornwall, the life size effigy of a man rolls down the cliffs and into the sea inside a flaming wheel; the morbid commemoration of an age old Pagan ritual whereby the dummy would in fact be a human sacrifice. This year, however, every gruesome detail of the legend is re-enacted when respected builder and undertaker Jonathan Riddle finds himself signed up as the so-called 'scapegoat', strapped within the blazing ferris wheel and pushed towards a fiery grave. Wycliffe's investigation, meanwhile, proves almost as bizarre as the crime itself, with baffling new evidence arriving by the bucket load, and the eventual discovery of a solution stranger than anything he's ever encountered before...
19192893	/m/04lhbmr	Wycliffe and the Redhead				 Simon Meagor, a lonely bookseller and divorcee, ends up falling for pretty redhead Morwenna, whose father killed himself as a result of Simon's testimony in a murder trial several years ago. Initially horrified by the young woman's application for a job in his shop, he reluctantly accepts and, mesmerised by her charms, remains oblivious as she steadily manipulates her way into every corner of his life, before mysteriously disappearing. Her body eventually shows up in a flooded quarry and police suspect suicide, especially after the discovery that she was suffering from a fatal illness, but soon all the evidence begins pointing towards foul play and Simon becomes prime suspect. Furthermore, Wycliffe finds himself immersed in a sea of dark and murky secrets from the past...
19192960	/m/04yl1zm	The Private Patient	P. D. James	2008	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In deepest Dorset, the once magnificent Cheverell Manor has been renovated and transformed into a plastic surgery clinic, run by the famous cosmetic practitioner George Chandler-Powell. Two days after Rhoda Gradwyn, an investigative journalist, arrives in the hope of having her lifelong facial scar removed, she's savagely murdered and Powell finds his surgery under scrutiny from Dalgliesh and his team, who are soon caught in a race against time when another body shows up...
19193089	/m/04lg0xc	Wycliffe and the Winsor Blue	W. J. Burley	1987		 Following the death of artist Edwin Garland from a heart attack, his family and friends gather for the funeral, and are duly shocked by the apparently motiveless shooting of the dead man's son. When Wycliffe yields no clues after the reading of the old man's mischievously contrived will, the only leads he's left with are the mysterious artist's pigment known as Winsor Blue, and the death of Gifford Tate, a fellow painter and friend of Edwin's, several years before...
19193173	/m/04lf93k	Wycliffe and the Dead Flautist				 When the body of amateur flautist Tony Mills is found shot dead by his own gun on the secluded estate of Lord and Lady Bottrell, everyone simply assumes suicide. However, closer inspection reveals some sinister inconsistencies and Wycliffe soon opens a murder investigation, unravelling as he does so the mystery of Mills's last days and the disappearance of Lizzie Biddick, a maid who worked for the Bottrells several years ago. Eventually, the case takes on a more urgent edge as another body shows up, the result of bitter family feuds and the exposure of illicit relationships...
19193449	/m/04lhxsb	The Road Home				 The story concerns with Lev who is a middle-aged immigrant and widowed. He leaves Auror, a village in an unspecified eastern European country, when the sawmill closes. Soon after, he travels to London to find work so he can make money that he can send to his mother, his daughter that is 5 years old, and his best friend. He finds his first job at a Muslim kebab-shop, before washing dishes at a five-star restaurant named GK Ashe. Lev also meets a translator from his home country named Lydia, a divorced Irish plumber named Christy, a young chef named Sophie, and a rich old woman named Ruby.
19195274	/m/04ljpw2	The Faerie Path		2007-02-06	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 On the eve of Anita's sixteenth birthday, boating with her boyfriend Evan, she is in an accident which sends her to the hospital. Upon awakening, she is frightened to find that Evan is not yet awake, although nothing is wrong with him. As the clock strikes midnight, Anita's parents give her one of her presents to brighten her mood. The present, wrapped in a postal envelope with no return address, is a very beautiful book, but the pages are blank. Anita's parents leave her to rest, but Anita cannot. She explores the book, which suddenly has a story written inside. The story tells about a lost princess, the seventh of seven daughters, who has become trapped in the Mortal World on her sixteenth birthday, the night before she was to marry Lord Gabriel Drake. Anita finds herself needing to check two bites on her back, and searches the hospital for a mirror. Once in the bathroom, her wings grow and she flies out of the window. She flies above London for a moment before it fades away, and all she can see now is the Thames river and Hampton Court. Suddenly, her wings wither away and she falls. Found in the hospital bathroom by a nurse, she is returned to her bed, still worried about Evan not waking. The nurse brings Anita a gift addressed to her, from Evan's belongings. The gift is a necklace that she quickly puts around her neck. She fell asleep, and when she woke up, Evan is gone. A ghostly image appears to Anita, the image of Gabriel Drake, calling her to follow him. Anita followed Lord Drake out onto a balcony where he urges her to focus strongly on him so that she can reach him. Anita tries her hardest to focus on him and suddenly their hands meet in the air. Lord Drake pulls Anita from the Mortal realm presents her to her father. She soon realized she is more than she seems.
19201402	/m/04ljr2m	Wycliffe and the Four Jacks				 The reclusive writer David Cleeve has been receiving mysterious warnings in the form of a single playing card; the Jack of Diamonds. When the card arrives torn in half one day, a murder is committed that same evening. Holidaying in the local area, Wycliffe finds himself drawn into the investigation and soon uncovers a sinister tale of double murder, arson attacks and a whole host of other crimes reverberating down the years.
19201500	/m/04lhc75	Wycliffe's Wild Goose Chase	W. J. Burley	1982	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 While taking a leisurely Sunday stroll along the West Country estuary, Wycliffe stumbles across a service revolver with one recently fired chamber. From these humble beginnings, he soon ends up embroiled in a world of shady art robberies, crooked dealers, a suspicious suicide and the hunt for a missing yacht...
19201556	/m/04lfhgr	Ladybug Girl	Jacky Davis	2008-03-13	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Lulu's family is busy and she has nothing to do. So she plays with her dog, Bingo. Lulu spends her time outside doing things such as saving ants from boulders, crossing puddles that could contain sharks, and building a fort for herself.
19201640	/m/04lggb8	Wycliffe and Death in a Salubrious Place				 In a remote corner of the Isles of Scilly, the murdered body of a young woman has been found, her skull and facial bones smashed. The locals, scared and angry, turn against the newcomer in their midst, Vince Peters, a famous pop star and teenage idol. However, Wycliffe is not so convinced of his guilt, and soon scratches away at the surface of this supposedly close-knit community, exposing an undercurrent of fear and hatred.
19201779	/m/04lgf4t	Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street				 In a sleazy cul-de-sac just off the main road of a sprawling West Country port, a prostitute has been found naked and strangled in her bed. While the local police pass it off as just another sex crime, Wycliffe isn't so sure, partly because the victim, Lily Painter, isn't a typical lady of the night; she enjoys Beethoven and has a variety of degrees to her name. Furthermore, when the detective begins unearthing her past he discovers shady connections with smugglers and property speculators. However, it will take a dangerous arson attack and another murder before he can wrap up this case...
19201917	/m/04lhxpy	Wycliffe and the Schoolgirls				 Two very different women, a nightclub singer and a nurse, have been strangled in their own homes, under the same efficient modus operandi, within the space of one week. Although the media and police are unanimous in the belief that these murders are the work of a psychopath, Wycliffe believes the solution may be a bit more complex. When another attack is suddenly aborted for no earthly reason, the detective feels his theory has been proved; this is no ordinary killing spree. But his colleagues are entirely uninterested, and he knows he will be on his own this time. In the course of his solo investigation he uncovers a connection with an old school trip, a youth hostel and a cruel practical joke played on a lonely student.
19202006	/m/04lh3ty	Wycliffe in Paul's Court	W. J. Burley			 The small community of Paul's Court is shattered by the violent deaths of Willy Goppel, a German doll house maker found hanging from a beam in his home, and Yvette Cole, a fifteen year old with a wild reputation, found strangled, half-naked and thrown callously over a churchyard hedge. With the help of a local detective, Wycliffe uncovers a dark string of anatgonisms weaving across Paul's court...
19203738	/m/04ljkj2	Colors Insulting to Nature	Cintra Wilson	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the early 1980s, Liza Normal goes on numerous theater and commercial auditions, at the behest of her mother Peppy, who costumes the child in a strapless evening gowns, heavy make-up, and false eyelashes. Humiliations repeat for Liza, as she and her family encounter endless degradation, after opening a dinner theater in Marin County, California. Throughout the first half of the novel, Liza is forced to perform in a dilapidated firehouse, which functions as the theater, as well as the family's home, attend school where she is constantly ridiculed and tormented, and at one point, raped. After this, Liza undergoes several phases, the first of which is a gravitation toward the punk rock aesthetic, specifically embracing and cultivating the look of Plasmatics performer, Wendy O. Williams. Liza eventually becomes involved with a drug pusher, and at one point becomes addicted herself during her stint at "Elf House," which Wilson describes as a commune of hippies who have a fetish with elves and speaking in "Quenya, the J.R.R. Tolkien version of High Elf language." It is during this time, that Liza, while working for Centaur Productions—a company that creates and distributes Slash fiction, that she concocts an "alter ego, Venal de Minus, into a phone sex phenomenon and Las Vegas stage act," achieving a new definition of success that is a spin-off of the earlier theater ambitions initially sought by her mother.
19207228	/m/04ljl_7	A Mind to Murder	P. D. James	1963	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In a psychiatric clinic late one night, the piercing scream of a dying woman shatters the calm, and Commander Dalgliesh is called away from his literary soiree to investigate. He soon finds the body of a clinic employee sprawled across the cold basement floor, a chisel driven mercilessly through her heart; and so marks the beginning of a deadly psychological battle with an intellectual, predatory killer who feels no remorse, no regret and no self-control over his darker impulses...
19210703	/m/04lj6vd	Monkey Puzzle	Julia Donaldson	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story revolves around a child monkey who has lost its mother in the jungle. The monkey is then assisted to find its mother by a butterfly, however the butterfly keeps suggesting incorrect animals as the monkey's mother. This book is known as "Where's my mom" in America.
19215443	/m/04lf_ys	The City & the City	China Miéville	2009-05-15	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Inspector Tyador Borlú, of the Extreme Crime Squad in the European city-state of Besźel, investigates the murder of Mahalia Geary, a foreign student found dead with her face disfigured in a Besźel street. He soon learns that Geary had been involved in the political and cultural turmoil involving Besźel and its "twin city" of Ul Qoma. His investigations start in his home city of Besźel, lead him to Ul Qoma to assist the Ul Qoman police in their work, and eventually result in an examination of the legend of Orciny, a rumoured third city existing in the spaces between Besźel and Ul Qoma.
19218923	/m/04lk1ly	Kenny & the Dragon				 Kenny Rabbit is a young bunny that lives in a village called Roundbrook and enjoys reading. He is informed from his father that a dragon has moved to the hill by his parents' farm. The dragon, Grahame, loves literature, enjoys reciting long poems over dinner, and only uses his fire-breathing abilities to torch crème brûlée through his left nostril and he is a rarity among dragons. At school, Kenny accidentally says that he saw a dragon. When the villagers hear of it, they panic. A retired knight (George), who is Kenny's best friend, has been hired to slay Grahame. Kenny wants to keep his two friends from fighting or killing each other, but no one will listen to him. Kenny quickly came up with a way to convince them that they would become best friends if they gotten to know each other.
19219703	/m/04lgkr7	Thank You, Mr. Moto	John P. Marquand		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 An expatriate American, Tom Nelson, has been living in Peking (modern day Beijing) for some time and believes that he understands the Oriental mind. When he meets Eleanor Joyce he thinks that she is getting involved in matters way over her head when she agrees to meet with Major Jamison Best, a British ex-Army officer who sells stolen Chinese artifacts and art treasures. After dinner with Best, Nelson tries to make sense of Best’s cryptic conversation concerning a Chinese bandit chief named Wu Lo Feng and the possibility of trouble brewing in Peking. On leaving dinner, he runs into Joyce whom he tries to persuade to not get involved in any scheme Best has going. She doesn’t listen to him but later he finds her wandering around outside of Best’s house, distraught. The next day Major Best is found dead, killed by a bolt from a Chinese crossbow. Mr. Moto is investigating the murder and he tells Nelson not to get involved with what is going on. Nelson doesn’t listen to him and goes to warn Joyce since she was the last to see Best alive. Nelson soon discovers that Moto has made Best’s murder seem like a suicide. When he returns home someone tries to kill Nelson with a Chinese crossbow. Moto arrives and Nelson thinks he is the murderer. Cool and calm despite having a gun pointed at him, Moto once again warns Nelson not to interfere and offers him a chance to escape Peking on the next steamer. When Moto leaves, Nelson discovers that Wu Lo Feng is there ready to kill him. After escaping, Nelson goes to Joyce’s hotel to convince her to leave. She refuses and Nelson sees that she has an ancient Chinese scroll that Best mentioned and that a curio dealer, Pu had offered to him. Nelson and Joyce take the scroll to Prince Tung, a friend of Nelson’s. Nelson discovers that Joyce is a museum buyer sent to Peking to buy a set of eight ancient scrolls. Tung is shocked to discover that someone has promised all eight scrolls to Joyce since seven of them are in his private vault. The situation becomes dire when Wu’s men arrive and kidnap Nelson, Joyce and Tung. Soon after they arrive at their prison, an abandoned temple, Mr. Moto is brought in as yet another prisoner. Moto explains the situation to them. A rival political party in Japan believes that their country is not advancing fast enough. These militant Japanese led by Mr. Takahara have hired Wu Lo Feng to cause a military disturbance in Peking. Major Best was to raise money for the campaign by selling the eight scrolls that were stolen from Prince Tung. Best double-crossed Wu by selling information to Mr. Moto, and so was killed. Wu Lo Feng arrives with Takahara to finalize their plans for Peking. Nelson, Tung and Moto are certain to be killed but are philosophical about their plight. However, Joyce makes an unexpected move and grabs Wu’s gun. They all escape after tying up Takahara and Wu. Moto organizes the Peking police to stop the uprising and they all retire to Nelson’s home. Tung admonishes Nelson for not killing Wu since he is sure to retaliate. When Moto arrives he admits that he liquidated both Takahara and Wu to guarantee everyone’s safety. They all profusely thank Mr. Moto.
19225941	/m/04ldshh	A Mirror for Witches	Esther Forbes			 Doll Bilby is a young girl, denounced by a relative as being a witch, and is then caught up in the hysteria of the Salem witch trials.
19225951	/m/04lfmyg	The Planet Savers	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1958	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a person with two personalities who seeks help from an alien race to save the planet Darkover.
19226192	/m/04ldxfn	The Sword of Aldones	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns involved intrigue on the planet Darkover.
19226832	/m/04lg05p	The Turquoise Shop				 Several months ago, Mona Brandon's artist husband disappeared, and his body has now surfaced deep in the heart of the nearby desert, pecked beyond recognition by a horde of odious turkey vultures. This event coincides with the mysterious arrival of Pat Abbott, a handsomely rugged private investigator from San Francisco with hopes of pursuing an art career, while the shallow and snobbish Mona finds herself ostracized by her small New Mexico community of Santa Maria, including Jean Holly, the owner of The Turquoise Shop, after she had her own beautiful teenager daughter incarcerated by police. However, Mona soon becomes the focus of local attention when murder strikes again at her luxurious mansion home, and the various creative talents assembled there soon fall under suspicion.
19227265	/m/04lfbn3	The Indigo Necklace				 While staying in an old New Orleans mansion, Pat Abbott overhears the disquieting sound of opening doors and stolen footsteps across the balcony outside his room, before discovering the ghostly white, robed body of a man in the adjoining courtyard. Against his will, he finds himself up against a serial murderer with experience in exotic poisons, and whose master plan somehow involves the titular Indigo necklace.
19230387	/m/04lhkt8	Permanence				 The novel tells the story of two characters, Rue Cassels and Michael Bequith, and their encounter with an alien spacecraft Rue has named Jentry's Envy. Schroeder uses the story as a venue for discussing the information economy and philosophy. Rue, on the run from her brother Jentry and out of money, files claim on an undiscovered comet. She expects to profit from the mineral rights, but it turns out that the "comet" is actually an interstellar cycler, a ship that travels in a light-years length orbit, at relativistic speeds (85% c) carrying cargo and passengers between the Halo Worlds, planets that orbit Brown dwarf stars. The discovery causes a sensation, since the ship is the first to approach the planet Erythrion in ten years. Eventually her claim is upheld, since the cycler is silent, and her mineral rights become salvage rights, making her potentially very wealthy. A rich cousin of hers, Max Cassels, sponsors an expedition to the ship so she can claim it. Intrigue happens on the trip as several factions also want to claim it, such as the planetary government. The cyclers were the centerpiece of the Cycler Compact, but have slowly fallen out of use since the discovery of FTL travel, only possible between "lit" worlds. When they reach the ship, they are surprised to discover that it is an alien cycler, an unknown because all known aliens use FTL ships. They explore the ship some and jump off as it passes a lit world, Chandaka. Michael Bequith, a NeoShinto monk and aide to Dr. Laurent Herat, an exobiologist are commandeered by Rear Admiral Crisler of the Rights Economy to join a joint expedition back to the Envy. The RE is interested, because the Envy appears to be a multi-species vessel, something previously unheard of. They are also interested because writing on the craft is the script of an alien species, the Lasa, who have supposedly been extinct for the last two billion years. Rue and her crew are also returning, since under Compact law she can only complete her claim if she can control the Envy. Before they can leave, the city suffers a rebel attack and one of their party, Dr Linda Ophir, is murdered. They travel in a ramscoop ship, the Banshee. When they arrive, they explore various areas of the ship before an explosion damages life support on the Banshee. Michael discovers that Dr. Ophir was murdered because she had discovered pictures of the writing on the Envy had been tampered with. Eventually they discover that part of the Envy is designed as a test to ascertain living conditions for visitors. Rue completes the process and the cycler builds them a new module and a set of controls. The expedition leaves the Envy for Oculus, a Halo world. Rue, now a Cycler Captain by law, is caught up in Compact politics over the course of the Envy. Michael and Dr. Herat arrange with representative of the alien Autotrophs to translate the writing on the Envy. The translation has grave consequences since it implies that the weapon of the Chicxulub, an ancient race that sent out waves of self-replicating machines to wipe out potential competitors, has survived. They realize that Crisler wants to use the weapon to wipe out the rebels. Rue learns from Max that Mallory, a Halo Worlder, wants to dissolve the Compact and join the RE. Rue goes to meet her crew gather to prepare to leave, but they are ambushed by Crisler and Max is killed. Rue, Michael, Dr Herat and Barents (a Rebel) escape in a submarine, but the attackers destroy the control computer just as they dive. They continue to do so for some hours, eventually getting caught by a cold current. They wind up at a secret undersea research base, where they are rescued by military police. They learn that Rue was believed dead along with her cousin and Crisler and Mallory have already departed for the Envy, having learned its point of origin, Apophis and Osiris, planetless binary brown dwarfs. They expect that he will arrive in sixteen months. The government has a secret way that will get them there, but only for citizens of the Compact. Dr. Herat elects to become a citizen of the compact, but Michael abstains. Michael passes preparation time for the trip by exploring abandoned ice tunnels on the planet with Barents. They discover that the Autotroph plans to leave the planet and warn its race about the weapon. Michel convinces them to let humans handle it. A message from a loyal member of the Envys crew arrives, stating that Crisler is planning a dangerous maneuver that will cut three months off his travel time. Rue takes drastic measures and shanghais Michael on the voyage, a new technology that allows a fleet of 15 small interceptor ships to enter FTL from inside the atmosphere of a brown dwarf. They arrive safely at the Twins (except for one ship) and discover that the Twins are ringed with power tethers that allow resources and power to be extracted. In the orbital center of the system is the construction shack that created the Envy. Her fleet is briefly attacked by the systems defenses, but she learns how to camouflage her ships. The Banshee was less successful and suffered a major hull breach. Rue and the soldiers sneak into the Banshee and free some of her original crew. The rest are in the construction shack, being used as explorers by Crisler. They leave for the construction shack, stealing an antimatter generator to use as cover. They enter the shack by way of burning a hole in the hull. Inside, Michael's team and Crisler's men are engaged in a firefight (literally, as the inside atmosphere is a hydrogen/oxygen mix). Michael shoots out a magnet block controlling the airlock and Crisler's marines are sucked out into space. However, Chrisler soon recaptures them. He reveals that the shack is not the true treasure, but the cycler mother seeds, one of which can regrow a complete cycler construction system. He plans to reverse engineer the technology and use it to wipe out the rebels and their worlds. Since the ships would be unable to distinguish between Rebel and alien worlds, this would amount to genocide on a universal scale. They also discover that the shack was not built by Lasa, but renegade Chicxulub, who embraced the Lasa philosophy. The Crysler's new cycler finishes and the shack launches it. Rue and company escape from Crisler by cutting loose a habitat. Barendts leaves with the seed and Michael pursues him. Rue leaves the habitat to get one of the interceptors and meets Michael, returning with the seed. Later, Rue and her crew watch as Crysler's cycler is launched from the system. The power tethers have redirected power back into one of the dwarfs to create a massive flare to use as an energy beam. On Erythrion, Rue announces her plan to revitalize the Cycler Compact, since the Lasa/Chicxulub technology means that the Halo worlds will at last be able to launch their own cyclers. Rue, however, is already planning her voyage to New Armstrong to reclaim the Envy and capture Crysler and Mallory.
19240437	/m/04ldr3v	The Bloody Sun	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1979	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jeff Kerwin, an orphan born on Darkover and raised on Earth, returns to his home planet Darkover as an adult. He brings with him a mysterious blue stone that he has treasured since the half-forgotten trauma of his early memories, and which proves to be the key to his true heritage and identity. The expanded rewrite retains the basic plot structure but is more closely connected to several other Darkover books, especially The Forbidden Tower. It also changes the identity of one of Kerwin's parents, although the later book Exile's Song uses his textually original parentage as background information.
19241297	/m/04lfksn	Star of Danger	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a hero who combats aliens to decide the fate of the Terrans on the planet Darkover.
19245509	/m/04lj9k0	Boys of Steel		2008-07-22		 Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster are meek, bespectacled teens in Depression-era Cleveland who seek escape in the worlds of science fiction and pulp magazine adventure tales. "In a crowded high school hallway, Jerry wishes he could be with his 'friends,' and a turn of the page reveals Tarzan, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Joe, 'lousy at sports and mousy around girls,' draws sci-fi heroes with a passion. In 1934, when both are 20, Jerry dreams up the Superman concept and Joe draws prototypes labeled 'S' for 'super.' And for 'Siegel' and 'Shuster.'" It is four more years before they convince a publisher to take a chance on their character in the new comic book format. "In June 1938, their creation launches in Action Comics. Nobleman details this achievement with a zest amplified by MacDonald's punchy illustrations, done in a classic litho palette of brassy gold, antique blue and fireplug red. MacDonald's Depression-era vignettes picture Siegel pondering his superhero's powers and the friends casting a single, caped shadow. A cautionary afterword chronicles their protracted financial struggles with DC Comics--when Siegel and Shuster sold their first Superman story, they also sold all rights to the character, for $130."
19248200	/m/04lh4sj	The White Tiger: A Novel	Aravind Adiga	2008-04-22	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The White Tiger takes place in modern day India. The novel’s protagonist, Balram Halwai is born in Laxmangarh, Bihar, a rural village in “the Darkness”. Balram narrates the novel as a letter, which he wrote in seven consecutive nights and addressed to the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. In his letter, Balram explains how he, the son of rickshaw puller, escaped a life of servitude to become a successful businessman, describing himself as a successful entrepreneur. Balram begins the novel by describing his life in Laxmangarh. There he lived with his grandmother, parents and brother and extended family. He is a smart child; however, he is forced to quit school in order to help pay for his cousin sister's dowry. He begins to work in a teashop with his brother in Dhanbad. While working in the teashop he begins to learn about India’s government and economy from the customers' conversations. Balram describes himself as a bad servant and decides that he wants to become a driver. Balram learns how to drive and gets a job driving Ashok, the son of the Stork, the local landlord. During a trip back to his village Balram disrespects his grandmother and tells the reader and the Chinese Premier that in the next eight months he intends to kill his boss. Balram moves to New Delhi with Ashok and his wife Ms Pinky Madam. Throughout their time in New Delhi, Balram is exposed to the extensive corruption of India’s society, including the government. In New Delhi the separation between poor and wealthy becomes even more evident by the juxtaposition of the wealthy with poor city dwellers. One night Pinky decides to drive the car by herself and hits something. She is worried that it was a child and the family eventually decides to frame Balram for the hit and run. The police, however, corrupt and lazy, tell them that no one reported a child missing so that luckily no further inquiry is done. Ashok becomes increasingly involved with the corrupt government itself. Balram then decides that the only way that he will be able to escape India’s "Rooster Coop" will be by killing and robbing Ashok. One raining day he murders Ashok by bludgeoning him with a broken liquor bottle. He then manages to flee to Bangalore with his young nephew. There he bribes the police in order to help start his own driving service. When one of his drivers kills a bike messenger Balram pays off the family and police. Balram explains that his family was almost certainly killed by the Stork as retribution for Ashok's murder. At the end of the novel Balram rationalizes his actions by saying that his freedom is worth the lives of Ashok and his family and the monetary success of his new taxi company.
19254563	/m/04ljc7p	Flood	Stephen Baxter	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The above effects are catastrophic, and exceed current estimates of climate change-related sea level rise. In the opening chapter, four main characters (former USAF Captain Lily Brooke, British military officer Piers Michaelmas, English tourist Helen Gray, and NASA scientist Gary Boyle) are liberated by a private megacorporation called AxysCorp from a Christian extremist Catalonian terrorist bunker in Barcelona in 2016, after five years of captivity. AxysCorp was hoping to save a fifth prisoner, John Foreshaw, but he was executed minutes before the rescue. Nonetheless, the corporation continues to look after the four hostages and search for Helen's daughter, Grace, who was conceived in captivity by the son of a Saudi royal and taken by his family. Helen befriends Foreign Office official Michael Thurley in the hopes of finding her daughter, and the four rescued hostages make a pact to keep in contact. At this point, sea level changes have already submerged Tuvalu, a low lying South Pacific island, whose inhabitants have been evacuated to New Zealand, and London and Sydney are prone to constant flooding. However, as a tidal surge hits London and Sydney, killing hundreds of thousands in both cities, scientists become aware that this cannot be explained solely by the consequences of climate change. American oceanographer Thandie Jones uncovers the truth – through deep sea diving missions to oceanic ridges and trenches reveal that the seabed has fragmented, and there is turbulence that can only be attributable to the infusion of vast subterranean reservoirs of hitherto hypothesised but undetected oceanic masses of water. Over the next three decades, ocean waters rise exponentially and inundate the whole world, as the main characters struggle for survival in a vast and continuously altering environment. Lily and her sister Amanda, as well as her children Benj and Kristie experience the flooding and abandonment of London. Amanda and her children settle into a refugee resettlement in Dartmoor, but the rising floodwaters make that only a temporary respite. In 2019, a tsunami obliterates western coastal cities in England, Scotland and Wales killing Helen Gray and tens of thousands of others. At the same time, New York is demolished by an Atlantic tidal wave (with hundreds of thousands killed in New York and the city leveled in the process), and Washington, D.C. is evacuated. For the next twenty years, Denver becomes the capital of the steadily diminishing United States, which fragments as individual states assert their own survival needs. By 2020, much of the eastern United States is underwater, as well as Sacramento, California, on its western coast. AxysCorp CEO Nathan Lammockson, the man who ordered the main characters' rescue and indirect friend of Lily, has a contingency plan for survival of an affluent western minority, which involves evacuation to the mountainous Peruvian Andes. Lily, Amanda with her children, and Piers tag along to the settlement, where Nathan discloses that he is aware of the extent of global inundation, which will not stop until all land on Earth is submerged, apart from the Greenland and eastern Antarctica ice sheets. As the United States is eroded away, a contingent of refugees which includes Gary, Thandie, and Grace, heads south to meet Lily. When they reach Nathan's 'Project City' in Peru, they are swept up in a revolt that tries to seize control of the former elite settlement which results in the deaths of Amanda, Benj, and Kristie's husband, Ollantay, a self-claimed Inca descendant who leads the revolt. Gary parts ways with Lily as he hands over Grace, so they, along with Piers and Kristie board Nathan's "Ark Three", a Queen Mary sized (and shaped) ocean vessel that sets sail in 2035. By then, little of Western Europe, Russia, the Americas, Oceania and Africa remain above the water. Ark Three sails the global ocean in search for trading and finding higher ground, despite running into skirmishes with pirates that lead to Lily falling overboard and staying on a submarine with Thandie for a year, the survivors head for Tibet. However, when they arrive, Nepal's Maoist rulers have devastating news – Tibet is ruled by a Khmer Rouge-like regime that practices human slavery and cannibalism. Ark Three heads back out to sea but has nowhere to go, given that the floods are now lapping around the Rocky Mountains. Seaborn piracy is rife from those refugee seaborn populations who have taken to scavenging the refuse from the posthumous remains of human civilization; and after a visit to coastal Colorado, the pirates ultimately board and destroy Ark Three. By this time, over five billion people have perished from the floods. By 2048, the Andes, Rocky Mountains and elsewhere have been submerged. Tibet's regime is no more, and Australia, North America, South America, Africa, and most of Asia except for the highest mountains in the Himalayas have been flooded. As Lily, Gary, and Thandie settle into life as sea-dwelling survivors; Piers, Nathan, and Kirstie die in staggered succession since the sinking of Ark Three. The novel ends in 2052, as a group of survivors watch the submergence of the peak of Mount Everest. Lily has survived, and wonders what the grandchildren of her late-sister's family and her old hostage comrades from three decades ago will make of post-deluge Earth, now at a new environmental equilibrium, with a vast global storm system that is reminiscent of those on Jupiter and Neptune. Civilization is virtually dead at the novel's end. Survivors continue to exist only on the rafts and some decrepit surviving former navy vessels. The children of the rafts, raised on the water, start building their own aquatic culture. By the end of the novel, extinction seems certain for humanity on Earth. However, we learn later in the book that Ark Three (the aforementioned ocean liner) was one of many projects created by AxysCorp and a few other groups. One of these (Ark One) was a starship project, which was taken over by the remnant government of the United States, and launched as Denver flooded in 2041; and at that time earlier in the novel, Lily had managed to get Grace aboard it just before it launched, and at the time she was unwillingly pregnant with the child of Nathan's snobbish and estranged son, Hammond. In 2044, a lunar eclipse occurs, just as a massive burst of light is sighted near Jupiter and the survivors realize it must be Ark One, and Grace's survival is thus ensured. As they prepare to leave the former site of Mount Everest Lily realizes something. She sailed on Ark Three, and Ark One is a starship. In closing, she asks "What is Ark Two?" The question ends the novel, and sets the scene for Baxter's sequel, Ark, in which it is resolved.
19254994	/m/04lg8md	The War Within: A Secret White House History	Bob Woodward	2008-09-08	{"/m/05qt0": "Politics"}	 The book states that President Bush "rarely leveled with the public to explain what he was doing and what should be expected... The president was rarely the voice of realism on the Iraq war." It also calls him "the nation’s most divisive figure" and described his foreign policy as a failure, saying "He had not rooted out terror wherever it existed... He had not achieved world peace. He had not attained victory in his two wars." At the same time, the book largely supports the 'surge' strategy and lauds the President for adopting it. The book describes Bush as largely leaving the management of the war to Generals George Casey and John Abizaid and deferring to their judgment based on Bush's perception of Lyndon Johnson's micromanagement during the Vietnam War. As the generals' strategy of drawing down U.S. forces and transferring control to the Iraqis begins to fail, the book argues, Bush grows more disillusioned and sought other ideas. The book alleges that, nevertheless, the President delayed serious investigation because of his fear that leaked reports would hurt the Republican Party's chances in the 2006 congressional elections. It states that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to consider resigning unless the Republicans lost control of either the House of Representatives or the Senate. After the Democratic Party's takeover of Congress, Bush allegedly delegated the responsibility for finding a new strategy almost solely to National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and deputy National Security Adviser Meghan L. O’Sullivan. Against the advice of the vast majority of his staff and other administration officials, Bush finally decided on the 'surge' strategy devised by retired General Jack Keane and General David H. Petraeus. The book describes deep in fighting within the administration.
19257723	/m/04lgl71	In the Days of the Comet	H. G. Wells	1906	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An unnamed narrator&nbsp;– by implication H. G. Wells himself&nbsp;– is the author of a prologue ("The Man Who Wrote in the Tower") and an epilogue ("The Window of the Tower"). In these short texts is depicted an encounter with a "happy, active-looking" old man who is none other than the protagonist and author of the first-person narrative that is the novel per se: now 72 years of age, he is writing the story of his life immediately before and after "the Change." This narrative is divided into three "books": Book I: The Comet; Book II: The Green Vapours; and Book III: The New World. Book I, which is remarkable for its close description of early 20th-century working-class living conditions in the English Midlands, recounts how William ("Willie") Leadford, "third in the office staff of Rawdon's pot-bank [a place where pottery is made] in Clayton," quits his job just as an economic recession caused by American dumping hits industrial Britain, and is unable to find another position. His emotional life is dominated by his love for Nettie Stuart, "the daughter of the head gardener of the rich Mr. Verrall's widow", who lives 17 miles away in a village called Checkshill Towers. Converted to the cause of socialism by his older, scientifically inclined friend, Parload, Leadford is a headstrong youth who blames class-based injustice for the squalid living conditions in which he and his mother live. The date of the action is unspecified, but evidently takes place in the near future. (At the end of Book I war has broken out between Great Britain and Germany, so the book has a certain prophetic character.) When Nettie jilts Leadford for the son and heir of the Verrall family he buys a revolver, intending to kill them both and then himself. As this plot matures, a comet with an "unprecedented band in the green" in its spectroscopy looms ever larger in the sky, eventually becoming brighter than the Moon. Leadford finds Nettie and Verrall in a little seaside bungalow village called Bone Cliff, near Shaphambury, as a naval battle is taking place off the coast. Just as he is about to execute his murderous plan the green comet enters the Earth's atmosphere, causing a green fog to envelop the planet that puts all animal life (except in the sea) to sleep for three hours. Book II opens with Leadford's awakening. He feels a great clarity of mind and experiences a total alteration in his relation to himself, to society, and to the world. No longer is he dominated by passion; he is acutely aware of the beauty in the world and his attitude toward others is one of generous fellow-feeling. The same effects occur in everyone around the world; they immediately concur in the necessity to "begin afresh" and remake human society. By chance, Leadford falls in with a Cabinet minister and briefly becomes his secretary, enabling him to observe how leaders, too, come to their senses and resolve to transform society by eliminating private ownership of land, etc. Book III begins with an intense discussion by Verrall, Leadford, and Nettie, about their future. Although Nettie wants to establish a ménage à trois, Leadford and Verrall reject the idea, and Leadford returns to devote himself to his mother, now in declining health. She dies toward the end of the Year of the Scaffolding (as the first year after the comet is called). Leadford marries Anna, who has been helping care for his mother, and they have a son, but soon thereafter Nettie contacts Leadford. They still love each other, but the felt necessity of sexual exclusivity has become a thing of the past. In the epilogue, the author expresses distate for this development, and the 72-year-old Leadford tells him that he and Nettie became lovers, and that he, Nettie, Verrall, and Anna were from then on "very close, you understand, we were friends, helpers, personal lovers in a world of lovers." The author is troubled "by my uneasy sense of profound moral differences."
19259028	/m/04lg40h	The Gift of Rain	Tan Twan Eng	2007		 It is set in Penang in the years leading up to and during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in World War II. It concerns Philip Hutton, of mixed Chinese-English heritage, and his relationship with Endo-San, a Japanese diplomat who teaches him aikido. As war looms and the Japanese invade, both Endo-San and Philip find themselves torn between their loyalty to each other and to their country and family respectively. Philip decides to assist the Japanese and Endo-San in administering the country in an attempt to keep his family safe, but wherever possible passes intelligence to the guerilla fighters of Force 136, which include his best friend Kon.
19259297	/m/04ljt37	Three to See the King	Magnus Mills	2001-06-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The nameless narrator lives in an isolated tin house situated on a windswept sandy plain, miles from his nearest neighbours whom he meets infrequently. He is quite happy in his lonely self sufficiency until unexpectedly a woman comes to live with him. Unsettled at first, the narrator gradually gets used to the companionship. Then news comes of a new community being established on the edge of the plain by a charismatic, yet enigmatic figure who is digging a canyon and gaining more and more followers to his revolutionary cause. One by one, his neighbours join the canyon project, moving their tin houses to the new community as the narrator feels under increasing pressure to join them...
19263397	/m/04lhgp5	Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America	Thomas L. Friedman	2008-09	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the book, Friedman addresses America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11 and the global environmental crisis. He advocates that global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the global middle class is leading to a convergence of hot, flat, and crowded. The solution to the environmental threat and the best way for America to renew its purpose is linked: take the lead in a worldwide effort to replace wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation. This means that the big economic opportunities have shifted from IT (Information Technology) in recent decades to ET (renewable Environmental Technologies). Friedman frequently uses 2050 as a marker for when it will be too late for our world to reverse the harmful effects of climate change. Friedman writes that the needed green revolution of the title would be more ambitious than any project so far undertaken: It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; and it will change everything from transportation to the utilities industry. This project is described in terms of nation-building. The book alleges we've gone from the "Cold War Era" to the "Energy-Climate Era", marked by five major problems: growing demand for scarcer supplies, massive transfer of wealth to petrodictators, disruptive climate change, poor have-nots falling behind, and an accelerating loss of biodiversity. A green strategy is not simply about generating electric power, it is a new way of generating national power. Many of the primary points of the book were built out of his New York Times Magazine essay "The Power of Green" and the "Foreign Policy" article "The First Law of Petropolitics"
19267645	/m/04ljbpt	Falcons of Narabedla	Marion Zimmer Bradley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a person who is transported into the future and an alien world where Terrans and Darkovans have meshed and become decadent.
19268529	/m/04lhhwd	White Dog	Peter Temple	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A Melbourne property developer is murdered and his artist ex-girlfriend is the prime suspect. Jack Irish, a lone private investigator, comes in to investigate.
19271367	/m/04y5k2_	The Serpent Bride	Sara Douglass	2007-05	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the tale of Kanubai, the first entity who invited Light and Water to be his companions. They co-existed peacefully for a while, until Light and Water merged creating Life. Kanubai was jealous of Life because he was not part of the union and tried to consume Life with chaos and darkness. Light and Water fought against Kanubai and sent him to the abyss. The story shifts to Ishbel Brunelle, an eight year old girl whose family was killed by the plague. She is driven to despair because the villagers outside will not let her leave her home. Eventually Ishbel tries to kill herself, but finds she cannot die from the plague. After some time, she is rescued by a man named Aziel, who turns out to be the arch-priest of the Coil, a group of people who worship a deity known only as the Great Serpent. Twenty years in the future and Ishbel is introduced as the arch-priestess of the Coil, and has a revelation; if she is to save the Outlands and Serpents Nest from destruction, she must marry the King of Escator, Maximillian Persimius.
19279045	/m/04ld29r	A Different Flesh	Harry Turtledove		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 1610: At Jamestown colony, Edward Wingfield must rescue his infant daughter from the tribe of wild sims who kidnapped her. 1661: The story is made up of a series of entries in Samuel Pepys's diary. Pepys owns several sims and contemplates the origin of the species. By watching these sims, as well as observing various other animals found in North America, Pepys develops the theory of evolution. Only one of the diary's entries in the story has a corresponding entry in the real diary Pepys kept. 1691: Thomas Kenton, a scout from Virginia and descendant of Edward Wingfield, and his sim companion, Charles, explore the interior of North America. Kenton is after the teeth of the spearfang cats that populate the area. He is captured by a group of wild sims, and must hope that Charles will rescue him. 1782: Steam-driven trains first appear, and a race is held with one of the hairy elephant-pulled trains they threaten to replace. 1804: A house-slave named Jeremiah goes on trial for running away, and his attorney presents the argument that with sims, there is no reason for human beings to enslave other human beings. They are successful and the court's decision leads to the emancipation of all human slaves. 1812: Henry Quick, a trapper in the Rockies, is wounded by a bear and is nursed back to health by sims. While there, he ends up impregnating one of the sims, resulting in a Sim-Human hybrid. 1988: A group of sim's rights activists, including a female descendant of Henry Quick, protesting experimentation on sims "rescue" Matt, a sim infected with HIV, from a medical lab but fail to take enough HIV inhibitor, which is medicine that suppresses the effects of HIV/AIDS. Eventually, this forces the activists to return Matt to the researchers.
19284931	/m/04lfqbl	The children of Niobe	Tasos Athanasiadis		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the twelve chapters of the first book, the life just before the Greek occupation in Anatolia is being described. In the twelve chapters of the second book, the life up to the destraction of İzmiris being. In the eight chapters of the third book (1st to 8th) and in the seven chapetrs of the fourth book (9th to 15th) of the novel,the displacement in Greece is being described.
19290390	/m/04ljr94	Death by Sheer Torture				 Police detective Perry Trethowan suffers a terminal embarrassment when his estranged, aristocratic father is found dead atop a Strappado-style torture device of his own design. Even more humiliating is the revelation that he was wearing spangled tights at the time, exacerbating Perry's fear that he'll be mocked about this case for the rest of his life. However, any hopes he may have had of fading quietly into the background are halted when his superior's force him to lead the investigation, and so he soon finds himself in search of a killer amongst the eccentric relatives he thought he'd left behind years ago…
19291777	/m/04lgtc1	Who Would Have Thought It?		1872		 The novel, written in chronological order, is divided into sixty chapters. The first ten occur during the attack on Fort Sumter (1857–1861), and flashbacks explain the acquisition of wealth of a New England family. The last fifty chapters occur during the Civil War (1861–1864). The novel opens with Dr. Norval's return to New England from a geological expedition in the Southwest, accompanied by a ten-year-old girl, Lola, and trunks of supposed geological specimens. He was appointed her guardian when he and his companions, Mr. Lebrun and Mr. Sinclair, rescued her from Indian captivity. Because her skin was dyed black by her captors, her arrival generates commotion among the abolitionist women in the household, especially Mrs. Norval. She is disgusted at the idea of Dr. Norval contaminating the racial purity of their home, despite his insistence that Lola is of pure Spanish descent and the dye will fade. Mrs. Norval demands that Lola work in order to pay for expenses; Dr. Norval objects and explains to her, through a flashback, how he encountered Lola's mother, Doña Theresa Medina. She had given him gold and precious gems she acquired as a captive of the Apache to finance Lola's care. Doña Theresa Medina asked him to rescue Lola so that she would be brought up Catholic. The Puritan Yankee Mrs. Norval is angered when she hears this but quickly reconciles her emotions when he shows her the trunks filled with Lola's fortune. During the Civil War, the novel narrates the rise and fall of Mrs. Norval which revolves around Lola's wealth. Her husband's absence from New England during the Civil War gives Mrs. Norval unguarded access to Lola's wealth. She plots with the hypocritical minister Mr. Hackwell to exploit Lola's fortune and in the process falls into an affair with him. When news arrives that Dr. Norval has been presumed dead, Mr. Hackwell sees this as an opportunity to enter into a clandestine marriage with Mrs. Norval. He is determined to keep the marriage a secret because he suspects that Dr. Norval might still be alive. Dr. Norval is absented from the novel through his self exile in order to avoid political persecution. After learning that he has been presumed dead, Dr. Norval returns to New England. When Mrs. Norval hears this, she shrieks and says "Who would have thought it?" before succumbing into brain fever.
19300183	/m/05p5hxr	Shanghai Girls	Lisa See	2009	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Shanghai Girls is divided into three parts: Fate, Fortune, and Destiny. It centers on the complex relationship between two sisters, Pearl and May, as they go through great pain and suffering in leaving war-torn Shanghai and try to adjust to the difficult roles of wives in arranged marriages and of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. Here See treats Chinese immigration from a personal view through Pearl's narration. In On Gold Mountain she objectively placed 100 years of her Chinese family history in the context of the daunting challenges Chinese immigrants faced in coming to American in search of Gold Mountain. America's mistreatment of Chinese immigrants is stressed in both memoir and novel. The sisters' story is interrelated with critical historical events, famous people, and important places—the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Battle of Shanghai, internment at Angel Island, Los Angeles Chinatown, Hollywood, World War II, the Chinese Exclusion Act, McCarthyism, etc. Historically significant people appearing in the novel include Madame Chiang Kai-shek, actress Anna May Wong, film personality Tom Gubbins, and Christine Sterling, the "Mother of Olvera Street." Snow Flower and the Secret Fan explores the complex relationship between two intimate friends. In Shanghai Girls See treats the loving yet conflicted relationship between two best friends who also happen to be sisters, especially in the context of their relationship to Pearl's daughter Joy. In speaking of Shanghai Girls, See has commented: "Your sister is the one person who should stick by you and love you no matter what, but she’s also the one person who knows exactly where to drive the knife to hurt you the most." That being said, in Shanghai Girls it is the love of Pearl and May for each other that survives. *Pearl Chin The protagonist in the story. Her Zodiac sign is the Dragon. The elder of two sisters, she always thought that she was less loved by their parents. She is in love with Z.G. Li, a painter/photographer who takes pictures of and paints Pearl and May. She later marries Sam Louie to help pay off her father's debt to the Louies. She and Sam raise Joy, May's child as their own daughter. Later on she becomes pregnant with Sam's baby. She carries the baby to term, but the child is a stillborn boy. *May Chin Younger sister of Pearl. Her Zodiac sign is the Sheep. Flirtatious and haughty, she is jealous of her sister who went to college and who she thought was favored by their parents. She has a secret romantic relationship with Z.G. Li. Later it is discovered that she became pregnant by him, resulting in a daughter, Joy. May gives Joy to Pearl to raise as her own daughter because on the night of her wedding to Vern, Sam's brother, she could not bring herself to sleep with him. Father Louie (Vern and Sam's father) suspects she may be pregnant by someone else, so both she and Pearl pretend that Pearl was the one pregnant all along.
19300257	/m/04lfkd8	The Fugitive from Corinth	Caroline Lawrence	2005	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Flavia and her friends have been travelling the Greek islands with other passengers aboard Lupus's ship, the Delphina, captained by Flavia's father. They have rescued kidnapped children in The Colossus of Rhodes and now they relax for a while in her tutor Aristo's home city of Corinth. But on the night before their departure, Aristo stabs Flavia's father in bed; feverish and suffering from amnesia, he falls into a deep coma. Helen witnessed Aristo's murder but has run off. Believing him guilty, Flavia, along with her friends and the sailor Atticus, sets off to catch him. They save a young beggar boy, Nikos, and he provides information and, when everyone they ask describes Aristo in two different ways, he says that Aristo's brother Dion could be trying to catch him too. They find out that Nikos is actually a girl who lives beside Aristo's house in Corinth. She loves Dion. After asking a Pythia's advice about how to catch Aristo, which Flavia believes to be useless, Lupus sneaks into the temple to ask which temple his mother is in but is surprised to find out that the Pythia is his mother. He decides to leave her to help his friends. Nubia finds Aristo, and she believes his innocence. They arrive in Athens and chase up the Acropolis in which they lose him. They meet a beggar boy called Socrates and Flavia discovers Nubia is trying to stop them from catching Aristo. Jonathan storms off, Atticus is nowhere to be seen, and the 'two Aristos' (Dion and Aristo) descend into the Cave of The Kindly Ones (Furies). Nubia and Flavia follow, and Flavia locks them in. As they are dying they forgive each other, then Jonathan, Lupus and a priest let them out. Flavia eventually forgives Dion and they go back to Corinth to find that her father is still in a coma. Flavia has already asked the Pythia how to wake him up but she does not understand and ends up crying over his body. He wakes up, cured of his amnesia, and they realise that the Pythia's prophecy had come true.
19304293	/m/04lfkxs	Conan the Guardian	Roland J. Green	1991	{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Conan the Guardian describes the employment of Conan and his band of mercenaries at the household of Lady Livia in Argos.
19304517	/m/04lg9g6	Princess of Gossip		2008-10-08	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Princess of Gossip tells the story of Avery Johnson, a fourteen year old high school freshman who just moved from Ohio to Southern California. While on MySpace, she is mistaken as a rising pop star's assistant. She scores an invite to a Hollywood Party and snaps a photo of a young starlet and her secret new beau. Finding this information too juicy to keep to herself, she starts a blog, the Princess of Gossip, and posts the story. Overnight, she becomes the newest go-to girl for gossip. Designers are sending her priceless dresses, and she's getting the inside scoop on all things celebrity. When Avery shows up at school in her exclusive fashion swag, even Cecilia, the most popular girl in their class, takes notice. She begins to get jelous. Then celebutante playboy Beckett Howard sees Avery wearing one of his father's designs and asks her out. The Princess of Gossip's true identity is still a secret, but when the paparazzi catch Avery and Beckett on a date, Cecilia gets even more jealous. There's only room for only one it girl at school. Can the Princess of Gossip hold onto her crown?
19309309	/m/04lj8ys	The Crisis	Winston Churchill		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in the author's home town of St. Louis, Missouri, the site of pivotal events in the western theater of the Civil War, with historically prominent citizens having both Northern and Southern sympathies. St. Louis was also the pre-war home of both Ulysses Grant and William T. Sherman, each of whom is depicted in the book. Romantic tension develops between the four main characters: one, Virginia Carvel, the fashionable daughter of Comyn Carvel, a southern gentleman of the old school; another, Clarence Maxwell Colfax, her n'er-do-well cousin who becomes a stalwart cavalier in the Southern cause in an effort to win Ginny's approval; the third, Stephen A. Brice, an earnest young lawyer from Boston who antagonizes Virginia by his zeal for Abraham Lincoln's cause; and the fourth, Eliphalet Hopper, a hard-working clerk with ambitions to advance himself both financially and socially. The crisis of the title is provoked by Abraham Lincoln's opposition to the extension of slavery, and the power of his personal integrity to win people to his cause, including the young lawyer Brice, who becomes a devoted admirer and proponent following a personal interview on the eve of the Freeport debate between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. This meeting depicts Lincoln's determination to advance the cause of freedom through the possible (and likely) sacrifice of his own political ambitions, and is related with a very believable combination of rustic humor and political acumen on Lincoln's part. The events prior to Lincoln’s nomination and his eventual election to the Presidency elicit different reactions among the citizens of St. Louis, from the determined antipathy of the Southern sympathizers, to the equally determined patriotism of the population of German immigrants who have fled from their homeland and whose devotion to liberty has caused them to transfer their allegiance to the ideal of American democracy. One of them is Stephen's fellow lawyer, Karl Richter, who bears the scar of a duel fought with broadswords between himself and an arrogant German noble; a duel based on an actual incident in Berlin. Although the personal rivalries follow an almost soap opera style formula, the overall events of the war from the perspective of St. Louis and the Western theater of war are dramatically depicted with well-researched authenticity, and both Grant and Sherman are depicted as having a personal involvement in the lives of the main characters. A pivotal moment in the heroine's life is presented through her transformation from being self-centered and self-absorbed to becoming self-sacrificing and dedicated to easing the suffering of those around her. This is represented as a Christian metaphor for the way that God uses challenges to mould a person's character. In the end, Virgina and the young lawyer find themselves meeting Lincoln together to try to save her cousin's life after Clarence is condemned as a Southern spy, and together they experience Lincoln's power to bring about a reconciliation between them, just before the national reconciliation which Lincoln proposed between the North and the South would be aborted by John Wilkes Booth's bullet. This novel is a story about Abraham Lincoln in the same sense that the novel Ben Hur is "a tale of the Christ," in that Lincoln only appears twice, for a total of about two dozen pages, but his philosophy is a dynamic presence throughout the story. The author portrays Lincoln as being the sacrifice America had to pay to redeem it from the sin of slavery. In his post-script, the author offers this justification for supporting Lincoln's point of view, "Lincoln loved both the South and the North".
19313116	/m/04lgmnf	Ten Green Bottles				 The book is told from the viewpoint of the author's mother and starts in 1921. Gerda Karpel (referred to always as Nini in the book) is a 5-year-old Jewish girl living in Vienna in 1921. She comes from an upper middle-class family. The book starts with the birth of Nini's brother, Willi, and chronicles the death of Nini's father shortly after the birth. The book then discusses day to day life from the viewpoint of a Jewish girl growing up in Vienna. It talks about the political instability caused after the assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss and the suppression of democracy after it. The Anschluss occurs, and Nini desperately tries to secure tickets to Shanghai. She receives help from Herr Berger, a Gentile Vienna lawyer, and obtains tickets for her family and for her friend's parents. The book then mentions the infamous Kristallnacht and the lead up to their departure. In Chapter 19, the Karpel family arrives in Shanghai. They struggle to survive through the poverty and violence that greets them on arrival and to the moving of most Jews into a ghetto in the Hongkou District. During that time, they purchase ownership in a bar owned by Marco, a Bulgarian Jew; this is where Nini heard the song "Ten Green Bottles". The book ends with the family leaving Shanghai for Richmond Hill, Canada.
19323640	/m/04lj_ln	The Indian Emperour	John Dryden			 In his play, Dryden presents the type of conflict between love and honor that is typical of his serious drama. Montezuma refuses a chance to save his kingdom from conquest, for personal reasons:But of my crown thou too much care dost take; That which I value more, my love's at stake. Cortez takes the opposite course, turning his back on his love for Cydaria to obey the orders of his king, even though he acknowledges that those orders are flawed. Montezuma gets the worst of their conflict; tortured by the Spaniards, he ends the play with his suicide. Dryden wanted to portray Cortez as high-minded and magnanimous; but he also wanted to show the Spaniards as cruel and oppressive. He managed this by the wildly ahistorical recourse of bringing Francisco Pizarro into the play as a subordinate of Cortez, and making Pizarro the villain. Modern critics have studied the play from feminist and anti-colonialist viewpoints. The Indian Emperor by John Dryden
19332301	/m/04n4x6b	The Cyborg from Earth	Charles Sheffield	1998-02-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 "Jefferson Kopal is a coward. He knows it, and if he doesn't do something about it soon, so will everyone else." This is the self evaluation of the primary protagonist of the novel. Jeff is about to take his final test before a Navy Review Board to see if he is fit for duty as an officer in the Space Navy. After failing the test most valiantly, Jeff is assigned to the Navy's Border Command, a seemingly exile from the solar system and prestigious Central Command, where all the great Kopals have served. Jeff is assigned to a ship that will take him into the Messina Dust Cloud, or Cyborg Territory, as it is called by the residents of the Solar System. After a confrontation with his Cousin, Jeff leaves Kopal Manor and heads into space. Adjustment to Naval life is at first hard on Jeff until he meets the two "'jinners" or engineers. He is at once at ease with them and is able to show his true interest, engineering. Unfortunately, Captain Dufferin, the Commanding Officer, feels that the Kopals are a plague on the Space Navy and intends to make Jeff suffer for his last name. Jeff is sent to the forward observation bubble prior to the jump to The Messina Dust Cloud. While contemplating his current situation, Jeff notices the formation of a "space sounder", a terrifying anomaly that has been know to destroy whole star ships coming directly for the ship. Jeff warns the Bridge and blacks out as the ship takes evasive action to avoid certain death. When Jeff awakes, he finds that he has been abandoned by Captain Dufferin and the majority of the crew. Mercy Hooglich, one of the 'jinners Jeff had befriended, explains how the captain and other officers had taken the runabout back to the Solar System, and are going to charge Jeff with dereliction of duty. Jeff also learns that his injuries were so extensive that to be saved, the medical technology of the Cloud, namely, nanotechnology, had to be used. The remainder of the story revolves around the "rebellion" of the Cloud Territory as well as Jeff fighting to restore his name and place in the family business. In the end, Jeff finds that he is not a coward and everyone else know that as well.
19335695	/m/04n6fxp	Sunnyside	Glen David Gold	2009-05-05	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The novel is about Charlie Chaplin and the rise of Hollywood and celebrity during 1918.
19337161	/m/04n3vkk	Romanno Bridge	Andrew Greig	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is a sequel to Greig's second novel, The Return of John MacNab. It reunites the main characters from the previous book, and teams them with a half-Maori rugby player and a busker from Oslo, in a quest for the Stone of Scone. The action takes place mainly in Scotland, but it also includes sections set in Norway and England. Like The Return of John MacNab, this novel is something of a homage to the stories of John Buchan, although the connection is not made explicit this time around.
19337888	/m/04mz1dp	Thunderspire Labyrinth				 Thunderspire Labyrinth can be run as either a loose sequel to Keep on the Shadowfell or as a standalone module. Players find themselves journeying to Thunderspire, a mountain beneath which lies the abandoned subterranean minotaur city of Saruun Khel. The module suggests many goals for players in Saruun Khel, the largest of which is to investigate a slave ring run by a group called the Bloodreavers and rescue a group of civilians recently enslaved by this organisation. (This may be as a result of events in Keep on the Shadowfell or through other, unconnected, plot hooks.) The players then proceed through a number of mini-dungeons; the Bloodreavers turn out to have sold the slaves to the duergar tribe known as Clan Grimmerzhul, who have then onsold a smaller subset of the slaves to a band of fiend-tainted gnolls. Finding and overcoming the gnolls reveals a sinister plan about to be enacted by a renegade wizard named Paldemar, who has designs on conquest of the Nentir Vale in which Thunderspire is located. Ultimately players confront and defeat Paldemar, which concludes the module.
19338961	/m/04mxl71	The Door Through Space	Marion Zimmer Bradley		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns an intelligence agent and a blood feud in the Dry Towns in the north of a world called Wolf.
19339130	/m/04n3vt3	The Acorn People		1976		 Jones looks forward to his summer at Camp Wiggin, where he will work as a camp counselor. Although he knows the children who attend Camp Wiggin are disabled, he assumes he will still be able to have fun enjoying the outdoors, hiking, swimming and boating at the camp. When he arrives and meets the children, however, he is at first appalled at how severely disabled they are. One of the children is known as "Spider." This is because he has no arms, or legs. Arid is another camper because he can not control his bladder. Then Jones meets his children—a group called "The Acorn People." They have given themselves this name because of the acorn necklaces they make at camp. Over time, they teach their counselor that despite their disabilities, they are just like everyone else on the inside and that they are capable of accomplishing much more than he previously understood. Jones comes to care for and love these children as much as the full-time staff at Camp Wiggin.
19343579	/m/09gnhry	Infinity Beach				 We are alone. That is the verdict, after centuries of SETI searches and space exploration. The only living things in the Universe are found on the Nine Worlds settled by Earthlings, and the starships that knit them together. No life has been found. No intelligent aliens, no strange ecologies, no awesome civilizations. Not even an amoeba, a lichen, a germ. The Universe is as sterile as a laboratory that was used only once. Or so it seems, until Dr. Kimberly Brandywine undertakes to find out what happened to her sister (and clone) Emily, who, after the final, unsuccessful manned SETI expedition, disappeared along with four others--one of them a famous war hero. But they were not the only ones to vanish: so did an entire village, destroyed by a still-unexplained explosion. Following a few ominous clues (including a model of a starship that never existed) Kim discovers that the log of the ill-fated Hunter was faked. Something happened, out there in the darkness between the stars. Someone was murdered--and something was brought back. Something that still leaves ghostly traces in the night. Kim is prepared to go to any length to find out the truth, even if it means giving up her career with Beacon, the most colossal--and controversial--of all the SETI projects. Even if it means stealing a starship. Even if it means giving up her only love. Kim is about to discover the answer to life's oldest question. And she's going to like the answer even less than she imagines. With his trademark ingenuity, scientific audacity, and narrative energy, Jack McDevitt has penned a mystery in which humankind is the detective--and the universe itself is the corpse. Infinity Beach takes usinto the strange, yet strangely familiar, civilization of our own far future--and into the heart of a bold woman whose search for her family's secret leads her to the greatest discovery of all time.
19348300	/m/04n6v4w	Resistance	Owen Sheers	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel features the German invasion of a small Welsh village near Abergavenny who have been instructed to locate and obtain an item for Himmler's collection. The novel begins detailing Sarah's awakening to find her husband gone, with only the indent of his body in their mattress remaining.
19350902	/m/04mz1gd	Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains	Laurel Snyder	2008-08		 Lucy lives in the land of Bewilderness, in a village called Thistle. She helps her family with the dairy farm and likes exploring the countryside with her best friend Wynston. Lucy makes up songs that fit with the situation which gives her courage and raises her spirits. She learned how to make up songs from her mother. Her mother vanished when she was two years old. Lucy and her sister never say anything about their mother, because their father gets sad. When Wynston turns twelve, his father thinks that he should practice being a prince which includes finding a princess. Wynston doesn't understand why he has to follow his father's rules; same with Lucy. When Wynston doesn't come to one of their berry-picking parties, she is sad and decides to go on an adventure. She is going to climb the Scratchy Mountains so that she can find her mother.
19354406	/m/04myr4x	Shadow of a Dark Queen	Raymond E. Feist	1994-06	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The prologue introduces the Saaur, warm-blooded humanoid reptiles, whose world is being overrun by demons from the Fifth Circle of Hell. The survivors allied themselves reluctantly with their cold-blooded cousins, the Pantathians, to escape to Midkemia in exchange for a generation of service. The novel starts by introducing best friends Erik Von Darkmoor, an apprentice blacksmith and bastard son of the local baron, and Roo Avery, a local trouble maker. Erik's half-brother Stefan Von Darkmoor, heir to his father's title, who resents Erik's claim to the Darkmoor name, rapes Erik's close friend Rosalyn in an attempt to force Erik into a fight. Erik and Roo find Stefan, and in a rage, Erik holds Stefan down while Roo delivers the killing blow, but Erik is injured during the fight. Now wanted for Stefan's murder, the two realize they must flee, and set out for Krondor. On the way, the boys narrowly escape detection when they happen upon the tent of a strange woman named Gert who aids them. They wake the next morning to find Gert gone and a mysterious woman named Miranda in her place, who helps and heals Erik. Further on their journey, they come to the aid of a man who is being ambushed by some brigands. The man, a merchant named Helmut Grindle, guides them the rest of the way to Krondor. On their journey, Roo befriends the man, questioning him on all matters commerce with the goal of starting a business of his own. When they arrive in Krondor there is a long line on the road into the city, due to the search for the two murderers as well as the rush to reach the city to attend the funeral of Prince Arutha. They hide in a nearby farm and then in a tavern where they are first kidnapped by local slavers, then caught by constables, and sentenced to hang. Their hanging is faked, though, along with several other condemned men, and the group is taken to a man named Robert de Loungville, where they are informed that their sentence has not been commuted, only delayed, and that they can only hope to gain freedom in exchange for service to the crown on an extremely dangerous mission. They are taken to a training camp where they are quickly trained as soldiers. There, they meet their mysterious captain for the first time, the half-elven Calis, as well as encountering Miranda again. They sail across the Endless Sea aboard the Trenchard's Revenge and the Freeport Ranger, to the continent of Novindus, where they must pose as a mercenary group known as "Calis' Crimson Eagles" and attempt to join the army of the Emerald Queen. Their mission is to gather information and assess the Queen's motives. Her army is slowly conquering the entire continent in a bloody campaign, city by city. Meanwhile, Miranda seeks the aid of Pug in the coming conflict, forming a close bond with the great magician. After meeting up with their allies among the natives, Calis and his band successfully infiltrate the army. They discover the Emerald Queen's plans to become a host for a Valheru spirit trapped within several ancient artifacts, then lead her army across the sea to invade the Kingdom of the Isles. When their ruse is discovered, the Crimson Eagles are pursued by the 9-foot-tall Saaur cavalry, only to flee into the secret lair of the Pantathian priests. At great cost, Calis finds his way to the inner chambers and manages to destroy the artifacts. The diminished crew manage to escape to a nearby city under siege by the Emerald Queen. They manage to destroy the shipyards, key to the Queen's plot, and while the invasion is not prevented completely, it is delayed significantly. The surviving members of the group are picked up by Prince Nicholas aboard the Freeport Ranger, and return to Krondor as free men.
19355199	/m/04n4pt5	Equal Affections	David Leavitt	1989	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Louise, an aging woman, is coming down with cancer. Her husband Nat is having an affair with another woman. Meanwhile, Walter, partner of Louise and Nat's son Danny, has cyber sex and phone sex with other men. April, Danny's sister, visits her brother in suburban New Jersey. With their mother's death looming, they all fly to California where their parents live. To avoid a funeral, Nat throws a lukewarm farewell party. April ends up fighting with her father over his cheating on her mother. Two months later, Nat is publicly seeing his mistress. Danny and Walter invite April and Nat to stay with them at a rented cottage on Long Island. The final part is an prolepsis to Louise's conversion at Catholicism although she is a Jew.
19355582	/m/069dxk3	I'll Take You There	Joyce Carol Oates	2002	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 A smart student, Anellia, joins a sorority in Syracuse, New York. Soon enough, she crumbles under the exorbitant debt she runs up. Finally, she pretends she indulges in irrational behavior to get out of the sorority and move into affordable accommodation elsewhere on campus. She falls for a black student who audits her philosophy lectures. After she stalks him for a while, they sleep together. Eventually, she learns that he is married and has left his wife and children. She drives to Crescent, Utah to meet her dying father. After his death, he bequeaths his money to her, but she decides to give it to his mistress. She buries him to Strykersville, New York, as he requested.
19356695	/m/04mxwrl	Mirror Mirror: a history of the human love affair with reflection				 Pendergrast attempts to cover the history of mirrors and other reflective, refractive or transparent materials and objects. He begins in antiquity, citing references as old as 6200 to 4500 BCE. He continues the thread to today, including space investigations, X-rays and kaleidoscopes.
19356854	/m/04mzgxy	The Kiss of Death	Marcus Sedgwick	2008	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Death comes in many forms, but in Venice death comes by water... It&#39;s the perfect place to hoard secrets. Here the Shadow Queen has her lair, and here she&#39;ll gather her forces for a final battle. Marko and Sorrel are unwitting players in her Last Act as they search for his father, and try to stop the madness claiming hers. In the dark alleyways, on silvery waterways slivers the light lance of the lagoon mist.
19357206	/m/04m_c6m	And Another Thing...	Eoin Colfer	2009-10-12	{"/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction"}	 And Another Thing... starts where Mostly Harmless ends, with Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Arthur and Trillian's daughter Random standing inside Club Beta, while the Earth is about to be destroyed by the Vogons. They are then rescued by Zaphod Beeblebrox in the Heart of Gold. Aboard the ship, they learn that Eddie the computer has been replaced by Zaphod's now detached second head, Left Brain. During a debate, Ford accidentally freezes Left Brain and it seems they are doomed, until an immortal named Wowbagger brings them to safety. Angered by Wowbagger's insults, Zaphod promises to get Wowbagger killed, an idea to which Wowbagger, tired of immortality, has no objection; and so the group sets off in search of Thor, to see if he can kill Wowbagger. Meanwhile, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, assigned to destroy all humans, hears rumours of a colony of Earthmen, and he sets off to destroy them, while Arthur attempts to get Wowbagger to stop the Vogons. On the Earth colony Nano, the excessively stereotypical Irish leader, Hillman Hunter, is seeking applicants to be the planet's god, who would keep Hillman in charge due to divine providence. Meanwhile, Prostetnic Jeltz's son, Constant Mown, is having rather "un-Vogonly" thoughts, including an enjoyment of poetry and sympathy for humans. Wowbagger and Random start arguing, and Wowbagger drugs and imprisons Random. Afterwards, Trillian and Wowbagger fight, but they share a kiss at the end of the argument. Random is less than impressed with her mother's and Wowbagger's actions, and complains about it to Ford. During this conversation, Random steals Ford's company credit card. Back on Asgard, Zaphod has managed to gain access to Valhalla and finds his old acquaintance Thor. After some negotiations, Thor agrees to help Zaphod by becoming Nano's god and killing Wowbagger. Things on Nano are not going as planned, and Hillman is struggling to find his god and keep order among his own populace, as well as trying to control the Magratheans who built the planet. Hillman recalls creating a cult for the rich, which preached of a coming apocalypse, only for the Grebulons to create such an apocalypse. Having received an offer from the otherworldly Zaphod, Hillman and his followers relocated to their "haven", the planet Nano. However, many of the staff abandoned their rich employers and several rival religious groups also settled on the planet, the most prominent of these being the cheese-worshiping Tyromancers, led by Aseed. The Tyromancers and the Nanites enter into a war, and during one of the war's battles, the Heart of Gold and Thor suddenly arrive. Wowbagger's ship lands on Nano and is met by the Tyromancers. Zaphod negotiates for Thor to be Nano's god and reveals that Aseed and Hillman are actually the same being from parallel universes, both of whom made deals with Zaphod. It is revealed that this is what brought him to Earth, saving Arthur and the rest. With Wowbagger representing the Tyromancers for show and Thor representing the Nanites, the two meet in battle. The battle begins, but Thor is unable to win because Wowbagger does not die, even when hit with the hammer Mjöllnir. A package for Random arrives through interstellar freight, containing the rubber bands involved in Wowbagger's becoming immortal, which Random believes may be able to hurt him. Using Mjöllnir, enhanced with the rubber bands, Thor sends Wowbagger into the air; when he lands, he is clearly mortal. Arthur persuades Thor to let Wowbagger live. For show, Wowbagger denounces the Cheese he was supposed to be fighting for, thus returning stability to Nano with Thor as the one god. Trillian and Wowbagger fly off in his ship to enjoy the time they both have left. The Vogons approach with the intent of destroying Nano. Thor is able to deflect the Vogon missiles, but is seemingly killed by an experimental weapon called QUEST. Constant Mown disables the Vogon gunner, and uses the argument that their orders are to kill Earthlings and not Nanites (legally two distinct groups, with the latter being taxpaying citizens). Prostetnic Jeltz agrees to his argument, and is proud of his son's ability to follow law and bureaucracy. Zaphod and Hillman tell the people that Thor is Nano's martyr and that all commands he will issue shall henceforth come from Hillman, only for Hillman to be sliced in two by a piece of bomb debris. Luckily, Hillman's death is short, as the Heart of Gold medical bay restores him to full health, with only one minor change – he now has hooves rather than feet. Even though he now has control over the populace, he grows displeased upon finding himself swamped with civic paperwork. Zaphod sets off with Left Brain to work on his re-election campaign, and Ford has decided to stay behind and sample the best Nano has to offer, so he can write material for the Guide. Up in space, a very much alive Thor is pleased to learn of his rise back to fame, and the success of his "martyrdom" trick. Arthur finds the beach from his construct, and it becomes his new home. To his displeasure, he finds that Vogons are going to destroy it.
19358363	/m/03cfsp9	The Crossing of Ingo	Helen Dunmore	2008-05-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Sapphire and Conor have been called to make the dangerous Crossing of Ingo, a journey to the bottom of the world, and it has been prophesied that if they complete it then Ingo and Air will start to heal. They have their Mer friends, Faro and Elvira, to help them, but their old enemy, Ervys, is determined to make sure they don't succeed. They have many adventures going around the world and Sapphire finds new abilities. ------------------ Sapphire, Conor and their Mer friends Faro and Elvira are ready to make the Crossing of Ingo- the most dangerous journey young Mer have to face. No human has ever been chosen to made the Crossing, and the future of Air and Ingo depends on their success. But Ervys, his followers and new recruits, the sharks are determined that Sapphire and Conor must be stopped - dead or alive.... The book starts out with Faro seeing Saldowr and Ervys blow the conch and start the Call. Then the book goes to Sapphire's house. Her mum and her boyfriend Roger are in Australia leaving Connor and Sapphire alone. They have moved back to their old house, but Rainbow and her stepbrother visit often. One day Sapphy and Connor hear the Call. They both realize that they must answer it. But then, a few days later, Connor notices seagulls nesting on their house. Later, Connor goes up on the roof and comes down with a fish egg. He wants to feed it to a neighbors cat, but Sapphire wants to throw it back in the ocean. A few days later, Sadie is attacked by the gulls. Connor and Sapphire take her to the vet's office. Then, Granny Carne, who knows the children must answer the Call, takes Sadie to her house. When Saphire and Connor go to their cove, they realize they can't go through. Saphire sees Faro, but she wonders why he is not helping them. After they swim free, Faro tells them that Ervys has made their home into a Porth Cas, making it extremely difficult for them to get through. However, they all go to the assembly chamber to answer the Call. They are all chosen with Elvira. They go outside the Chamber and leave right away. A shark sees them and injures Sapph, but dolphins save the day. The children leave the dolphins and head north instead of south. -Summary Unfinished-
19361162	/m/04n1h1n	Babouk	Guy Endore			 Babouk is a slave renowned by many tribes for his excellent storytelling abilities. He is captured by the French and taken to Saint Domingue to work on the sugar cane fields. Unaware of the reasons for his capture and hoping to be reunited with his lost love Niati, Babouk escapes his slave compound and wanders into the forest, only to meet some indigenous Americans. He is soon captured by Maroons (runaway slaves who agree to turn in other runaways on the condition that they are allowed their freedom) and returned to the compound, where his ear is cut off. Such a traumatic experience forces him to remain absolutely silent for several years, doing his labor without complaint but also without much energy. He eventually can maintain his silence no longer, and he re-establishes himself as a great storyteller. Unhappy with the way the slave masters treat him (although they claim otherwise), Babouk becomes the figurehead for a group of slaves that intend to revolt against their masters. Babouk and his group are initially successful in their endeavors, but are eventually held back by the combined might of the French and British military. Babouk's arm is severed after he tries to stop a cannon from firing by sticking his hand into it; he is then beheaded and his head is put on a pike as a warning to other slaves who might try to draw inspiration from Babouk. The novel ends with an impassioned statement from Endore that warns of the inevitability of a race war as the result of the white man's transgressions.
19363468	/m/0bwhl5w	Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer				 Wooden Leg was born in 1858 in the Black Hills. His father was previously known as Many Bullet Wounds. Warfare was common and the narrative is soon describing a conflict with the Crow. Wooden Leg took his own name from an admired uncle of the same name who was a tireless walker, an ability which Wooden Leg shared. The meaning is that his legs must be made of wood since they feel no pain no matter what the exertion. Many other conflicts, both with other Indian tribes, most especially the neighbouring Crows, but also the Shoshone, and US soldiers are documented in which Wooden Leg took part from a very young age. His elder brother was killed in the fight at Fort Phil Kearny during Red Cloud's attempt to clear the Bozeman Trail of US forts. The hardships of hunting in the snow as a boy with minimal clothing are described as are the unique Indian methods of transport during camp moves. In his young life Wooden Leg travelled all around the Black Hills region, and the Tongue and Powder Rivers. According to Wooden Leg, at the top of the tribal organisation were four "old men" tribal chiefs, and under these were forty "big chiefs". The Northern Cheyenne, along with other Plains Indian tribes, had a number of warrior societies; each of these was led by a warrior chief helped by nine little warrior chiefs. In Wooden Leg's time, there were three Northern Cheyenne warrior societies; the Elk, the Crazy Dog and the Fox. The tribal chiefs would delegate executive authority to one or the other of the warrior societies. These would put into action war, hunting expeditions, and camp moves as decided by the tribal chiefs. The currently designated warrior society also acted as police. Wooden Leg joined the Elk society at the age of 14, a big event in the young boy's life. By the rules of Cheyenne society, the currently "on duty" warrior society had sole prerogative in the task at hand. Nobody else was allowed to get in front of their scouts in a camp move, nor to approach the buffalo in a hunt. Of course, teenage boys are wont to push the boundaries and Wooden Leg was no exception. Several episodes are related where he and his friends are reprimanded and narrowly avoid serious punishment. Sport events and betting were usually between the warrior societies and there were a great many contests of all kinds. If the Cheyenne happened to be travelling with Sioux, then their warrior societies would take part also. Chief Little Wolf, who had been a great distance runner in his youth, was once jokingly challenged by an Ogallala Sioux when he was in his fifties. Little Wolf accepted this challenge and won by intelligent pacing of the distance despite being behind for most of the race. Many mythological or magical stories are found in the book. This includes a Cheyenne version of the great bear which is supposed to have put the claw marks in the side of Devils Tower, the feature later seen in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Much else of Cheyenne life is documented, a guide to arrow recognition, marriage customs, the entitlement to wear warbonnets amongst many others. Wooden Leg puts all this in perspective by comparison with other Plains tribes. In the process, the reader also learns much about other tribes, especially the Sioux. The Cheyenne deity is called by Wooden Leg The Great Medicine. A sacred tepee in the camp holds the tribal medicine object, in the case of The Northern Cheyenne, a Buffalo Head. Because of this, buffalo heads often appear in Cheyenne myths and ceremonies. After the Indians were driven out of the Black Hills, Wooden Leg's family chose not to live on the reservation, but instead took advantage of the Fort Laramie treaty provision of hunting grounds for the Indians between the Black Hills and the Bighorn River. They decided to live permanently in the hunting grounds, as far as possible staying out of contact with the white man. Other Cheyenne and Sioux also took this attitude, but most spent at least the winter on their reservations. When "reservation" Indians arrived in camp with rare goods such as tobacco and sugar it was a cause for celebration. In February 1876 they received news that the US intended to make war on all Indians who did not return to their reservations. In the subsequent fighting Wooden Leg took part in nearly every major engagement. The report was initially not believed; they were not fighting the white man and were only acting within the treaty. However, after similar information was brought by respected chiefs, the Cheyenne started keeping good lookouts and it was not long before Wooden Leg and his friends were in a skirmish with a party of soldiers. Towards the end of winter, the Cheyenne camp on Powder River was attacked and destroyed; however, most of the Indians escaped. Because they now had no possessions during winter, the Cheyenne moved to join their allies, the Ogallala Sioux led by Crazy Horse. Together, they moved North-East to join the Uncpapa Sioux led by Sitting Bull at Chalk Butte. then joined and then the Blackfeet Sioux. Small groups of other tribes also joined, such as the Waist and Skirt Indians, the Assiniboines and Burned Thigh Sioux. Even Chief Lame White Man was there with a small group of Southern Cheyenne. In Wooden Leg's mind, there is no doubt that this gathering of the tribes into one place was intended by the tribal chiefs for defence, not as a preparation for attack on the Whites, despite many of the young men being keen to do just that. towards their camp on the Rosebud River. Wooden Leg took part in the ensuing Battle of the Rosebud in which the soldiers were driven off. The Indians were not expecting further trouble from the soldiers; they were relaxing and recuperating. Wooden Leg was at an organised social dance the night before the Custer fight. On the day of the battle Wooden Leg was sleeping after bathing and was awoken by a commotion to find the camp in a panic because of an attack by soldiers. Wooden Leg was torn between the desire to join the battle quickly and the need to first put on his best clothes and paint his face (it was the Indian custom to always look one's best if there was any possibility of ending up in the afterlife) and was only stopped from oiling and braiding his hair as well at the urging of his father to hurry. The Indians drove back these Reno soldiers and had them pinned down, but they then spotted other soldiers making their way along the hills to the side of the Indian camps. Most of the Indians broke off the current fight at this point to engage this new threat from the Custer soldiers. Wooden Leg went back through the camp in the river valley rather than directly towards the soldiers. When there, his father tried to dissuade him from further fighting on the grounds that he had already done enough, but Wooden Leg would not hear of it, even persuading others to rejoin the fight. After the Custer fight Wooden Leg helped to save Little Wolf from being killed by Sioux who were angry that he had arrived after the fight and accusing him of coming to help the soldiers, though it was the actions of Little Wolf's small band that had provoked Custer into a premature attack. Wooden Leg, who was a good Sioux speaker, presented Little Wolf's case for him as he could not speak Sioux. Even though Custer's command had been wiped out, the Reno soldiers were still present. Wooden Leg returned to fight them that night, Wooden Leg describes many objects recovered from dead soldiers which the Indians did not understand, such as a compass and a pocketwatch. Wooden Leg himself threw away paper money, not realising its value; he also gave away coins which he did realise were of value, because he had no wish to trade with white men. When a new column of soldiers was observed approaching, the council of Chiefs decided not to fight these soldiers also. At this point the Indians disengaged and the entire camp was packed up and moved. The tribes travelled together for some weeks, camping at various locations in the Bighorn Valley, Rosebud and Tongue Rivers. After arriving back at the Cheyennes' starting point on Powder River it was decided to split up the tribes. It was becoming too difficult to hunt enough food to feed everyone and the danger seemed to be over. As winter approached, Wooden Leg joined a small war party on a raid into Crow territory. On the return journey they visited the site of the Little Bighorn battle, mainly looking for rifle cartridges but also whatever else they could scavenge. Wooden Leg remarks that there were a large number of soldier boot bottoms; this was because the tops had previously been taken by Indians, but they had no use for complete boots. As they came down the Tongue River valley, the group was surprised by the sight of the entire Northern Cheyenne tribe on the move. They had been attacked at the Powder River camp by soldiers and Pawnee Indians, the camp had been destroyed and they had lost all their possessions. The tribe was searching for the Ogallala Sioux under Crazy Horse, who they eventually found at Beaver Creek. The Ogallala welcomed them and together they journeyed to Tongue River. At Hanging Woman Creek, at the beginning of 1877, they had decided to separate as the Cheyenne had now replenished sufficiently, but while they were in the process of doing so, they were attacked by soldiers. Wooden Leg's sister was captured in this engagement. Wooden Leg rode to attempt a rescue but was driven back by fire from the soldiers. Most of the Indians escaped down Tongue River; the soldiers did not follow and the Cheyenne hunted peacefully for several months. As spring approached, the Cheyenne received envoys from Bear Coat inviting them to surrender. They received encouraging reports from released prisoners that they were being treated well. The chiefs decide to move the tribe nearer to Fort Keogh at the mouth of Tongue River without yet committing to a surrender. At Powder River they stopped and waited for the result of negotiations with a delegation of chiefs sent to the fort. While negotiations were proceeding, Wooden Leg heard of the suicide of his sister, Crooked Nose, who was still a prisoner in the fort. After some time in discussion, the tribal chiefs decided they would go to their agency and surrender there instead, which was the same agency as their friends the Ogallalas. Most of the tribe followed the chiefs, but everyone was left free to make their own decision. A few chose not to surrender at either place, and Wooden Leg and his brother, Yellow Hair, joined one such group led by the Fox warrior society chief Last Bull even though the rest of his family had gone to surrender at the agency. The small band, however, were not hunting sufficient food and slowly became weaker. Eventually, they too travelled to the agency to surrender. At first, they were satisfied with their situation, but then came the shocking news that they were to be moved south to Oklahoma. Wooden Leg, along with many others, was extremely angry about this. They had all expected to be able to continue to live on their homeland. However, there was nothing that could be done since they had all given up their guns and horses on entering the agency. {|align="right" |- | | |} The journey to Oklahoma began in May 1877 and took 70 days. A few Indians fled the agency when the news was announced, amongst them Wooden Leg's brother Yellow Hair. While in Oklahoma he received news that Yellow Hair had been killed by white men while out hunting. Wooden Leg hunted on the reservation, but there was no large game to be had and the Indians were not allowed to go off. Nor were they being fed as promised and there was much sickness. Little Wolf campaigned for action. Finally, he and Dull Knife led a great part of the tribe off the reservation and fought their way back North. Wooden Leg and his father stayed on the reservation hoping that food would eventually be provided. Wooden Leg had much contact with the Southern Cheyenne during this time. He learnt from them who Custer was (the Southern Cheyenne were familiar with him since he had previously fought a campaign against them) and of their attempt to come north to join them in the summer fighting of 1876. Finally, Wooden Leg took a wife from amongst the Southern Cheyennes. After six years in the South, the Northern Cheyenne were given permission to leave, either to join Little Wolf or to go to the Pine Ridge agency (formerly White River agency). Wooden Leg's father had died in the South but he and the rest of his family went first to Pine Ridge and later to the Tongue River country where the main part of the tribe were living. There were many changes in the North. Cheyennes were now acting as scouts for the US Army in the same way as previously had been done by the hated Pawnees, Crows and Shoshones. Little Wolf had had his chiefship revoked after a drunken killing. In 1889, at the age of 31, Wooden Leg himself joined the army scouts at Fort Keogh. There was not much to do; he spent most of his time learning to drink whisky. The following year the Cheyenne scouts were involved in a campaign against rebellious Sioux. Wooden Leg was present at Wounded Knee. The Cheyenne scouts had prepared themselves to fight (on the US side) but were not called upon to do so. Wooden Leg befriended the exiled Little Wolf towards the end of that great chief's life. Wooden Leg says that no-one had bad hearts against Little Wolf; even the dead man's brother, Bald Eagle, said "Little Wolf did not kill my brother, it was the white man whisky that did it". Little Wolf was interred standing upright in a pile of stones overlooking the Rosebud valley. Wooden Leg attended a "peace feast" at the Little Bighorn to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the battle. Some Cheyenne veterans would not go, fearful of retribution from the soldiers present. As late as 1926 there were still Cheyennes who would not go to the 50th anniversary. Wooden Leg himself did not attend the 50th anniversary, not out of fear, but because the site was now on Crow land, to whom he still felt much animosity. He resolved "never again to go to any place where I might be called upon to shake hands with a Crow". This was very different to his attitude to other former enemies, the Shoshones for instance, to whom he travelled on a friendly visit. In 1913 Wooden Leg was part of a Cheyenne delegation to Washington. He also visited New York and Philadelphia during this trip. Around 1908 he was baptised a Christian. However, he still privately prayed to the Great Medicine, feeling more comfortable praying this way. From 1927, the Cheyenne were again allowed to hold their annual Great Medicine dance. Other customs were still forbidden: practising Indian medicine could end in jail. Wooden Leg was appointed a judge on the agency by Washington. In this capacity he was obliged to enforce a ruling against multiple wives. He found this difficult, not least because he had two wives himself and felt obliged to set an example by being the first to send away a wife. After ten years, clearly struggling with his conscience, Wooden Leg resigned the post, but was later persuaded to take it on again by a new Indian agent. Wooden Leg had two daughters and had hopes that they would have a more comfortable life than his own. The younger, however, died unexpectedly of an illness. Later the other also died. Wooden Leg then adopted his grand nephew, Joseph White Wolf, and brought him up as his own. The story ends with Wooden Leg an old man becoming increasingly unable to farm his land, but still well off in relation to most Cheyennes as he had a pension from his scouting days and his pay as a judge.
19368435	/m/04myhfm	The Forbidden Tower	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns two men and two women who challenge the matrix guardians, fanatics who strive to keep Darkover from falling under the influence of the Terrans.
19376135	/m/04n1pr3	The Wind Boy			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is about a boy named Kay and a girl named Gentian who are foreign children and somewhat of outcasts in their village. They live with their mother and wait for their father to come to them from their home country. At the beginning of the book, a mysterious girl named Nan appears in their village, responding to a woman's advertisement requesting a "general housework girl". Nan is able to bring the children into the Clear Land, a world that mirrors their own. In the Clear Land, they each purchase a pair of Clear Land sandals and meet The Wind Boy, a handsome boy with purple wings. They learn that The Wind Boy once owned a horrible mask, but now it's in the hands of someone else. Now that person is going around scaring children. Until The Wind Boy is able to find and destroy the mask, he cannot have shoes of his own and is the outcast of the Clear Land. Only Gentian, who feels sorry for him, is friends with The Wind Boy. Kay and Gentian's mother Detra is a sculptor who is trying to make a statuette of The Wind Boy. She visits the Clear Land herself without really knowing it, where she is seen through a clear pool of water. While there, she tells The Wind Boy stories, so that he can smile and she can perfect the statuette. After seeing a starry cloak that Nan has, Gentian is allowed to visit the Clear Land to make her own. The children continue visit the Clear Land quite a few times, once during a punishment in school. The house next door to the children's home belongs to a famous Artist and his granddaughter, Rosemarie. Rosemarie is very pretty and Kay wishes that he could play with her, however Rosemarie is home-schooled and constantly in the charge of a strict governess. Kay eventually finds out the masked person is actually Rosemarie, who was lonely and used the mask to disguise herself while she explored the village. Kay tells Rosemarie about The Wind Boy and she agrees to leave the mask for him to destroy (Rosemarie had no idea that she had frightened people so much with the mask). Shortly after, a police officer catches Kay with the mask and assumes that he was the one wearing it. Nan throws the mask into the air where The Wind Boy destroys it. She then visits Rosemarie in the middle of the night and persuades the girl to confess to her grandfather about wearing the mask. Rosemarie does so and her grandfather decides to send her to the village school so that she will have friends. Rosemarie quickly befriends Kay and Gentian in the school and the children's mother is able to finish The Wind Boy statuette. The Artist likes it so much that he purchases it from her and arranges to have a larger bronze version constructed. Gentian is sad because she is unable to reach The Wind Boy and fears that now that he is no longer an outcast he would not wish to be her friend. She finally realizes that The Wind Boy would never abandon her and finds him again. He tells her that he could not see her when she didn't believe in him as a friend and the two leave to explore the Clear Land. At the end of the story, Nan announces that she is going to return to her home in the mountains. The children are sad, but Nan explains to them that if she doesn't go home, they can't possibly come to visit her. As Nan leaves, Kay and Gentian's father returns.
19381951	/m/03tt2	Iliad	Homer		{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 Note: Book numbers are in parentheses and come before the synopsis of the book. () After an invocation to the Muses, the story launches in medias res (Into the middle of things) towards the end of the Trojan War between the Trojans and the besieging Greeks. Chryses, a Trojan priest of Apollo, offers the Greeks wealth for the return of his daughter Chryseis, a captive of Agamemnon, the Greek leader. Although most of the Greek army is in favour of the offer, Agamemnon refuses. Chryses prays for Apollo's help, and Apollo causes a plague throughout the Greek army. After nine days of plague, Achilles, the leader of the Myrmidon contingent, calls an assembly to solve the plague problem. Under pressure, Agamemnon agrees to return Chryseis to her father, but also decides to take Achilles's captive, Briseis, as compensation. Angered, Achilles declares that he and his men will no longer fight for Agamemnon, but will go home. Odysseus takes a ship and brings Chryseis to her father, whereupon Apollo ends the plague. In the meantime, Agamemnon's messengers take Briseis away, and Achilles asks his mother, Thetis, to ask Zeus that the Greeks be brought to the breaking point by the Trojans, so Agamemnon will realize how much the Greeks need Achilles. Thetis does so, Zeus agrees, () and sends a dream to Agamemnon, urging him to attack the city. Agamemnon heeds the dream but decides to first test the morale of the Greek army by telling them to go home. The plan backfires, and only the intervention of Odysseus, inspired by Athena, stops a rout. Odysseus confronts and beats Thersites, a common soldier who voices discontent at fighting Agamemnon's war. After a meal, the Greeks deploy in companies upon the Trojan plain. The poet takes the opportunity to describe the provenance of each Greek contingent. When news of the Greek deployment reaches king Priam, the Trojans too sortie upon the plain. In a similar list to that for the Greeks, the poet describes the Trojans and their allies. () The armies approach each other on the plain, but before they meet, Paris offers to end the war by fighting a duel with Menelaus, urged by his brother and head of the Trojan army, Hector. While Helen tells Priam about the Greek commanders from the walls of Troy, both sides swear a truce and promise to abide by the outcome of the duel. Paris is beaten, but Aphrodite rescues him and leads him to bed with Helen before Menelaus could kill him. () Pressured by Hera's hatred of Troy, Zeus arranges for the Trojan Pandaros to break the truce by wounding Menelaus with an arrow. Agamemnon rouses the Greeks, and battle is joined. () In the fighting, Diomedes kills many Trojans and defeats Aeneas, whom again Aphrodite rescues, but Diomedes attacks and wounds the goddess. Apollo faces Diomedes, and warns him against warring with gods. Many heroes and commanders join in, including Hector, and the gods supporting each side try to influence the battle. Emboldened by Athena, Diomedes wounds Ares and puts him out of action. () Hector rallies the Trojans and stops a rout; the Greek Diomedes and the Trojan Glaukos find common ground and exchange unequal gifts. Hector enters the city, urges prayers and sacrifices, incites Paris to battle, bids his wife Andromache and son Astyanax farewell on the city walls, and rejoins the battle. () Hector duels with Ajax, but nightfall interrupts the fight and both sides retire. The Greeks agree to burn their dead and build a wall to protect their ships and camp, while the Trojans quarrel about returning Helen. Paris offers to return the treasure he took, and give further wealth as compensation, but without returning Helen, and the offer is refused. A day's truce is agreed for burning the dead, during which the Greeks also build their wall and trench. () The next morning, Zeus prohibits the gods from interfering, and fighting begins anew. The Trojans prevail and force the Greeks back to their wall while Hera and Athena are forbidden from helping. Night falls before the Trojans can assail the Greek wall. They camp in the field to attack at first light, and their watchfires light the plain like stars. () Meanwhile, the Greeks are desperate. Agamemnon admits his error, and sends an embassy composed of Odysseus, Ajax, Phoenix, and two heralds to offer Briseis and extensive gifts to Achilles, who has been camped next to his ships throughout, if only he would return to the fighting. Achilles and his companion Patroclus receive the embassy well, but Achilles angrily refuses Agamemnon's offer, and declares that he would only return to battle if the Trojans reach his ships and threaten them with fire. The embassy returns empty-handed. () Later that night, Odysseus and Diomedes venture out to the Trojan lines, killing the Trojan Dolon and wreaking havoc in the camps of some Thracian allies of Troy. () In the morning, the fighting is fierce and Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Odysseus are all wounded. Achilles sends Patroclus from his camp to inquire about the Greek casualties, and while there Patroclus is moved to pity by a speech of Nestor. () The Trojans assault the Greek wall on foot. Hector, ignoring an omen, leads the terrible fighting. The Greeks are overwhelmed in rout, the wall's gate is broken, and Hector charges in. () Many fall on both sides. The Trojan seer Polydamas urges Hector to fall back and warns him about Achilles, but is ignored. () Hera seduces Zeus and lures him to sleep, allowing Poseidon to help the Greeks, and the Trojans are driven back onto the plain. () Zeus awakes and is enraged by Poseidon's intervention. Against the mounting discontent of the Greek-supporting gods, Zeus sends Apollo to aid the Trojans, who once again breach the wall, and the battle reaches the ships. () Patroclus can stand to watch no longer, and begs Achilles to be allowed to defend the ships. Achilles relents, and lends Patroclus his armor, but sends him off with a stern admonition to not pursue the Trojans, lest he take Achilles's glory. Patroclus leads the Myrmidons to battle and arrives as the Trojans set fire to the first ships. The Trojans are routed by the sudden onslaught. Patroclus, ignoring Achilles's command, pursues and reaches the gates of Troy, where Apollo himself stops him. Patroclus is set upon by Apollo and Euphorbos, and is finally killed by Hector. () Hector takes Achilles's armor from the fallen Patroclus, but fighting develops around Patroclus' body. () Achilles is mad with grief when he hears of Patroclus's death, and vows to take vengeance on Hector; his mother Thetis grieves, too, knowing that Achilles is fated to die young if he kills Hector. Achilles is urged to help retrieve Patroclus' body, but has no armour. Made brilliant by Athena, Achilles stands next to the Greek wall and roars in rage. The Trojans are dismayed by his appearance and the Greeks manage to bear Patroclus' body away. Again Polydamas urges Hector to withdraw into the city, again Hector refuses, and the Trojans camp in the plain at nightfall. Patroclus is mourned, and meanwhile, at Thetis' request, Hephaistos fashions a new set of armor for Achilles, among which is a magnificently wrought shield. () In the morning, Agamemnon gives Achilles all the promised gifts, including Briseis, but he is indifferent to them. Achilles fasts while the Greeks take their meal, and straps on his new armor, and heaves his great spear. His horse Xanthos prophesies to Achilles his death. Achilles drives his chariot into battle. () Zeus lifts the ban on the gods' interference, and the gods freely intervene on both sides. The onslaught of Achilles, burning with rage and grief, is terrible, and he slays many. () Driving the Trojans before him, Achilles cuts off half in the river Skamandros and proceeds to slaughter them and fills the river with the dead. The river, angry at the killing, confronts Achilles, but is beaten back by Hephaestus' firestorm. The gods fight among themselves. The great gates of the city are opened to receive the fleeing Trojans, and Apollo leads Achilles away from the city by pretending to be a Trojan. () When Apollo reveals himself to Achilles, the Trojans had retreated into the city, all except for Hector, who, having twice ignored the counsels of Polydamas, feels the shame of rout and resolves to face Achilles, in spite of the pleas of Priam and Hecuba, his parents. When Achilles approaches, Hector's will fails him, and he is chased around the city by Achilles. Finally, Athena tricks him to stop running, and he turns to face his opponent. After a brief duel, Achilles stabs Hector through the neck. Before dying, Hector reminds Achilles that he is fated to die in the war as well. Achilles takes Hector's body and dishonours it. () The ghost of Patroclus comes to Achilles in a dream and urges the burial of his body. The Greeks hold a day of funeral games, and Achilles gives out the prizes. () Dismayed by Achilles' continued abuse of Hector's body, Zeus decides that it must be returned to Priam. Led by Hermes, Priam takes a wagon out of Troy, across the plains, and enters the Greek camp unnoticed. He grasps Achilles by the knees and begs to have his son's body. Achilles is moved to tears, and the two lament their losses in the war. After a meal, Priam carries Hector's body back into Troy. Hector is buried, and the city mourns.
19388758	/m/04n13hl	The Wrong Doyle	Robert Girardi	2002	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Tim Doyle returns to the Eastern Shore after the death of his Uncle Buck. As pressure rises for him to sell out quick, his suspicions rise, and his investigations escalate. He meets the keeper of Uncle Buck's inheritance, Maggie Peach, at Doyle's Pirate Island putt putt golf course and motel.
19389262	/m/04n1z_2	Belchamber	Howard Sturgis	1904	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story follows Sainty, an aristocratic heir who likes knitting and dislikes sports. He gets married after much goading from his mother, though his wife, Cissy, turns out to find him repugnant. She has an illegitimate son with someone else, who dies shortly after.
19390852	/m/04n26hc	Girls in Love	Jacqueline Wilson	1997		 The novel is narrated by Eleanor Allard, a.k.a. Ellie. The book opens with Ellie's Family holiday to Wales where she meets a nerdy boy named Dan, Dan falls for Ellie and asks her out but his feelings are not reciprocated and Ellie turns him down. Ellie arrives back at school after the summer holidays to find her best friend, Nadine, has a new boyfriend named Liam, her other friend, Magda, soon asks a boy named Greg out as well. Feeling left out, Ellie lies to her friends about dating Dan and describes him falsely as cool, handsome and 15 years old. Magda and Ellie begin to worry about the pressure Liam is putting on Nadine about sex, but Nadine dismisses their worries and after a fight begins refuses to speak to them. One night the three girls sneak out to a night club called "Seventh Heaven" and it is revealed that Liam was only using Nadine for sex when they meet some other girls that had been Liam's victims. Liam had planned to break up with her after she 'put out' or, had sex with him. At a friend's party Dan turns up unannounced, and Ellie is mortified. Soon the truth about Dan is revealed to Ellie's friends; however, when gatecrashers arrive at the party and cause trouble, Dan intervenes and saves the day. To Ellie's surprise, this impresses Magda and Nadine and causes Ellie to rethink her first impressions of Dan. The book ends with Ellie and Dan's first kiss.
19399390	/m/04n1d0c	The Jolly Postman			{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Jolly Postman follows an unnamed mail carrier as he delivers letters by bicycle to characters from traditional children's stories that are well-known in Britain. Following each sheet of narrative verse and illustration, there is one shaped like an envelope and containing one of the postman's deliveries. Each envelope is be opened and its enclosure read at that point in the story. WorldCat gives the entire description: "A Jolly Postman delivers letters to several famous fairy-tale characters such as the Big Bad Wolf, Cinderella, and the Three Bears. Twelve of the pages have been made into six envelopes and contain eight letters and cards. Each letter may be removed from its envelope page and read separately."
19400679	/m/04n20h6	Random Acts of Heroic Love		2007	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 *Moritz Daniecki is a young Jewish Pole born in 1896 in the village of Ulanów on the banks of River San, on the fringes of the great Austro-Hungarian Empire bordering Russia. He meets and falls in love with Lotte, but is subsequently conscripted into the army and fights on the Eastern Front in Galicia and the Carpathian Mountains before surrendering to the Russians in 1915 and being imprisoned in a prisoner of war camp in Srentensk, Siberia. Two years later he begins a hazardous escape journey back to Europe with former comrade Frantz Király, and returns to Europe in 1920 to claim Lotte's hand in marriage. In the novel Moritz is an older man dying of consumption in his home in Berlin (which he caught on his travels and never recovered from) and is recounting his experiences on his deathbed to his son Fischel, whom we later discover to be Frank Deakin. *Lotte Steinberg, the daughter of an affluent Jewish furrier in Ulanów, is Moritz Daniecki's lover. Her parents disapprove of her enduring affection for him however and attempt to arrange a marriage between her and a wealthy lawyer in Vienna whilst Moritz is away from home. *Jerzy Ingwer is Moritz's best and childhood friend. They serve together in the Austo-Hungarian Army but Jerzy freezes to death during the Austrian winter campaign in the Carpathian Mountains. *Frantz Király is a cynical, pessimistic and ever-complaining Hungarian in Moritz's unit whose selfish mannerisms lead to his capture along with Moritz by the Russian Army. Despite their differences however, the two form a grudging friendship and together the escape across the Siberian wilderness until Király's deteriorating condition means he decides to stay behind, in Irkutsk. *Leo Deakin is an English PhD zoology student at University College London. He was the boyfriend of the late Eleni, who died in a bus crush near Latacunga, Ecuador. He blames on his own rash misjudgment. He is a rational, intense character, whose loss drives him to depression, delusion and obsessive compulsive tendencies as well as comfort in the quirks of quantam physics. Ultimately he finds solace in his enduring friend and confidante, Hannah. *Eleni was Leo's girlfriend of two years, whose preceding death initiates the emotional journey that Leo goes through during the book. They had met in Camden whilst Eleni was a fresher at UCL. Eleni was a compassionate and carefree character, shown by her work for Amnesty. She was Greek and from the island of Kithos; her parents Georgios and Alexandria are divorced. *Frank Deakin is Leo's father. Orphaned at a young age, Frank is a reclusive, sensitive character whose childhood experiences have a profound effect upon him and his relationship with others. After the death of Eleni, watching the change in his son's personality prompts him to be more open about himself. Later we discover that he lived in Berlin as a child just before the Second World War and that he used to be called Fischel Daniecki. He was sent to England by his mother Lotte via the kindertransport and was bullied by his peers for being German. After the war, upon hearing that the rest of his family had been murdered in the Holocaust, he took on a new identity as an Englishman in an attempt to escape his traumatic past. *Hannah Johnson is one of Leo's best friends. They met on their first day of university and gradually forged a dogged friendship. She is a lively character whose extroverted personality hides her own grief from the loss of her mother to cancer at the age of ten. Hannah stands by Leo during his mourning and remains supportive despite consequent problems and strains in their relationship. Later in the book she becomes an orphan when her father passes away, and her emotions are reciprocated by Leo's father Frank who went through a similar experience. In the end Leo and Hannah grow to love one another in respect of their personal bereavements. *Roberto Panconesi is a young Italian man who works as a lecturer in the philosophy of physics. He is popular, especially with female students, and noted for his eccentric theories and individual teaching style. A liberal and open-minded character, his opinion and description of quantam physics awes and inspires the grieving Leo, who finds a way of seeing and understanding love and the world around him through Roberto's words. Roberto also suggests that Leo writes down anything remarkable and personally relevant to him in a notebook. The novel is interspersed with a collaboration of quotes, scribbles and images on love and life depicting this notebook.
19401625	/m/04my3st	Thendara House	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns the dwelling of the Darkovan Order of the Renunciates. It also concerns Magda, a Terran, who goes to Thendara House in exchange for the Free Amazon Jaelle who has become the wife of an Earthman.
19402679	/m/04n62y_	The Forged Coupon	Leo Tolstoy	1911	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Young Mitya is in desperate need of money to repay a debt, but his father angrily denies him assistance. Dejected, Mitya simply changes a $2.50 note to read $12.50, but this one evil deed sets off a chain of events that affects the lives of dozens of others, when his one falsehood indirectly causes a man to murder a woman at the end of Part I, and then seek redemption through religion in Part II. Having written the novella in his dying years, after his excommunication, Tolstoy relishes the chance to unveil the "pseudo-piety and hypocrisy of organized religion." Yet, he maintains an unwavering belief in man's capacity to find truth, so the story remains hopeful. or "The Counterfeit Note" or "The Forged Banknote."
19406821	/m/04n18j3	The Killing Star	Charles R. Pellegrino	1995	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The late 21st century seems like a good time to be alive. Earth is at peace. Humans now command self-replicating machines that create engineering marvels on enormous scales. Artificial habitats dot the solar system. Anti-matter driven Valkyrie rockets carry explorers to the stars at nearly the speed of light. All seems well. Then, from the uncaring black of space come swarms of relativistic missiles. Though they are merely boulder-sized hunks of metal, they move fast enough to hit with the force of many nuclear arsenals. They are impossible to track and impossible to stop. Humanity is all but wiped out by the horrific bombardment. (To read a discussion of relativistic weapons and an excerpt of the attack, see Atomic Rockets: Relativistic Weapons). A handful of survivors desperately struggle to escape the alien mop-up fleet. They hide close to the sun, inside asteroids, beneath the crusts of moons, within ice rings, and in the fathomless depths of interstellar space. But most are hunted down and slaughtered. The last man and woman on Earth are captured as zoo specimens. In the belly of an alien starship, a squid-like being relates to them the pitiless logic behind human-kind's execution: the moment we learned to travel at relativistic speeds was the moment we had the power to do to them what they did to us first. The attack was nothing personal. Humanity was simply too dangerous a neighbor to have around.
19412482	/m/0glnp98	Empress Bianca	Lady Colin Campbell			 Bianca Barrett, the protagonist and daughter of a Welsh Surveyor and his Palestinian wife, becomes an "ambitious and mercenary" social climber and double murderess. Charming and well educated, Bianca marries four times and advances in wealth and social influence. With Bernardo, her first husband, Bianca has three children; they lose their son in a tragic car accident. After a divorce, she marries the rich Fredie whose family owns the Piedraplata commercial empire. Before it comes to a divorce, the second husband is shot and killed by a hitman who makes it look like a suicide. The killing is arranged by her lover, Phillipe Mahfud, and Bianca becomes the financial beneficiary. After a brief marriage to husband number three, - she had married him only to make Mahfud jealous-, she lastly marries Mahfud, a superrich Iraqi businessman and banker. When their relationship sours, the banker dies with his nurse in a mysterious fire in his apartment in the tax haven of Andorra. Bianca's lawyers pay off the police and investigators, and the only justice that remains is in the court of public opinion.
19412541	/m/04mzh6x	Worlds of the Imperium	Keith Laumer		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Brion Bayard, an American diplomat on assignment in Stockholm, Sweden, attempts to evade men he believes to be Soviet agents, only to find himself kidnapped by agents of the Imperium from a parallel world. Taken to the home world of the Imperium, he is introduced to the aristocratic members of the government, which rules most of the civilized world from London, having been formed by the union of the British Empire, which included America, and the German and Austro-Hungarian empires of Europe. He is impressed by the commitment to duty of the Imperial officials he meets and drawn to a particularly noble lady. The main reason for his abduction, however, is that the Imperium is under attack from another parallel world. The Maxoni-Cocini drive, which is the technology for traveling between worlds, is extremely dangerous. Almost all worlds where its development is attempted are destroyed in bizarre and horrible ways. The collection of time lines where this occurs is known as the Blight, and the rare ones where the Earth survives are known as Blight Insulars, or BI's. BI-1 is the Imperium, and BI-3 is Bayard's home world, where the technology never developed. The raids are coming from BI-2, a chaotic world where war has swept the planet for generations, and which was not believed to have the Maxoni-Cocini drive. That version of Earth is currently ruled by a dictator, who happens to be Brion Bayard. Bayard undergoes extensive training to substitute for his double, presumably after killing him, and take over the other government, shutting off the raids. The plan falls through almost as soon as he arrives in the new world. For some reason, nobody believes in his impersonation. The reason becomes apparent when he meets the other Bayard, who lost both legs in a battle years before, but who has concealed that fact from the public. However, this other Bayard is not the evil dictator he is portrayed to be. He greets his double as a brother, and tells him how he became dictator to pacify his world. He knows nothing of the raids on the Imperium. The two Bayards talk over a gourmet meal and discover they have much in common, including similar histories. Bayard the dictator is abruptly assassinated by the real conspirators, who are working for power-hungry factions in the Imperium itself, using stolen technology. Bayard himself is scheduled for a showy execution, after suitable amputation surgery, to allow the conspiracy to consolidate its hold on their world by publicly eliminating the dictator. Eventually he is able to escape back to the Imperium and expose the conspirators. Offered a chance to return to his Earth, or become a high-ranking Imperium officer, he looks at the noble lady who has become so important to him, and declares, "Home is where the heart is."
19413975	/m/04n60dj	The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School		2007-08-14		 The book is about the naughty fourth grade class at Aesop Elementary School. Each chapter (which is also a story) ends with one of Aesop's Fables's morals such as when Calvin Tallywong wishes that he was back in Kindergarten.
19416474	/m/04n0b1d	City of Sorcery	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns the quest of Magdalen Lorne, the chief Terran operative on Darkover.
19416805	/m/04n2kwk	The Scaredy Cats				 The Scaredy Cat parents wakes up in the morning, they can't function because they are scared of things that could possibly happen. The Scaredy Cats live through a day of fear.
19416875	/m/04mzqm2	The Bourne Deception	Eric Van Lustbader	2009-06-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The Bourne Deception picks up where The Bourne Sanction left off. Jason Bourne's nemesis, Arkadin, is still hot on his trail and the two continue their struggle, reversing roles of hunter and hunted. When Bourne is ambushed and badly wounded, he fakes his death and goes into hiding. In safety, he takes on a new identity, and begins a mission to find out who tried to assassinate him. Jason begins to question who he really is, how much of him is tied up in the Bourne identity, and what he would become if that was suddenly taken away from him. Shortly after, an American passenger airliner is shot down over Egypt by an Iranian missile. A global investigative team, led by Soraya Moore, is assembled to get at the truth of the situation before it can escalate into an international scandal. The trail to Bourne's leads him to Seville. On the way there, he meets Tracy Atherton, who tells him that she is going to Seville to buy the 14th Black Painting. In Seville, Bourne is attacked in a bullfighting arena by a killer named The Torturer. Later on, search for the man who shot him intersects with the search for the people that brought down the airliner, leading Bourne into one of the most deadly and challenging situations he has ever encountered. With the threat of a new world war brewing, Bourne finds himself in a race against time to uncover the truth and find the person behind his assault, all the while stalked by his unknown nemesis.
19419630	/m/04mzd7b	Ender in Flight	Orson Scott Card			 Ender and Valentine Wiggin are on their way to the new human colony planet Shakespeare where Ender is to become the governor. Most of the passengers on board have decided to be put in stasis for the two year duration of the flight. Alessandra and Dorabella Toscano are among the colonists who chose to stay awake. During the trip they befriend Ender because Dorabella wants Ender to fall in love with and marry her daughter. The captain of the ship, Admiral Quincy Morgan, has a power struggle with Ender who he considers to be nothing more than a spoiled teenager. However, as soon as the ship lands the captain is reminded by Ender, and his superiors from the International Fleet, that Ender is his superior officer on the planet and that he has to return to Earth.
19419928	/m/04n1zwn	The Taking of Lungtungpen				 The story is about one of Kipling's three private soldiers, Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris, whose adventures are further related in his collection of short stories Soldiers Three: Terence Mulvaney. This story tells "how Privit Mulvaney tuk the town av Lungtungpen", in his own words (Kipling represents him conventionally as an Irish speaker of English). Mulvaney, who continually blots his copybook (and loses promotions and goods conduct badges from his habit of "wan big dhrink a month") is nevertheless a fine soldier. When he is patrolling Burmah against dacoits with 24 young recruits under Lieutenant Brazenose, they capture a suspect. Mulvaney, with an interpreter, takes the prisoner aside and "trates him tinderly" [='treats him tenderly'] with a cleaning rod. This example of army brutality extracts the information that there is a town called Lungtungpen, a haunt of dacoits, 9 miles away, 'across the river'. Mulvaney persuades the Lieutenant not to await reinforcements, but to "visit" Lungtungpen that night. Mulvaney is in the lead when they come to the river, and tells the four men with him to strip and swim across. Two of them can't swim, but they use a tree trunk for flotation and cross the river - despite their discovery that "That shtrame [= stream] was miles woide!" When they reach the other side, in the dark they have landed on the river wall of Lungtungpen, and a fierce fight ensued - fortunately for the British, they are so close under the wall that, in the dark, the Burmese fire passes harmlessly over their heads. The British – still naked from their swim – go in with bayonets and the butts of their rifles, as well as their ammunition. They kill 75 Burmese. They then hold "the most ondasint p'rade [= 'indecent parade'] I iver tuk a hand in", with only eight men having even belt and pouches on; the rest are "as naked as Venus". While half of them dress, the other half patrol the town, with the women laughing at them.
19422909	/m/04n4cb8	Piggie Pie				 Gritch the Witch wants to make some piggie pie, but her pantry has no pigs. So she searches for pigs to make into a pie. She goes to Old McDonald's farm, but she sees no pigs which makes her wonder where they are at.
19424598	/m/04n1tn7	Paris France				 Paris France is a memoir written in a “stream of consciousness” style. It is interpreted as Gertrude Stein’s personal view of France as a country, and the French people. She observes the French eating, drinking, crossing the street, and carrying out their day in no other way that deviates from their "french-ness". The word "French" quickly becomes a state of being or state of existence. A noun and an adjective. Throughout the novel, the idea of being French in France is communicated to the reader in a raw, confident, matter of fact way. Because of this, some critics believe the novel was not meant to be written as a completely accurate view of the French culture. Stein refers often to fashion, autonomy, logic, tradition and civilization as crucial parts of the French state of being, any straying of which would be straying from being French, regardless of actual nationality. Stein places the state of France within the context of past wars and the possible impending war and the war’s effect on the “Frenchness” of the French, as well as the ideal/real French reaction to war. Stein nonchalantly recalls anecdotes she deems relevant to the topic at hand, each bringing reference to other anecdotal stories having a purpose and place within the progression of the novel. Stein freely follows the tangents of thoughts and life stories (or stories from others’ lives) but always returns to the driving purpose of the novel, identifying the French qualities and paying homage to England and France.
19427213	/m/04m_7kd	Chitralekha		1994		 The story starts with a dialogue between the great hermit Ratnambar and his disciples, Shwetank and Vishaldev about the sin that humans usually do in life; is nothing, though he or she (human) becomes the victims and slave of circumstances. So, according to Ratnambar - "there is no such sin and virtue". Since everyone does according to the circumstances and fell in different parts of the life span. The luxurious life by a great feudal and young soldier, Bijgupta (Pradeep Kumar in the film), who serves under the Maurya Empire and the king Chandragupta Maurya ( 340 BCE – 298 BCE) and a beautiful dancer and young widow, Chitralekha (Meena Kumari in the film) - actually they are the main characters of this novel. However, another secondary character is Kumargiri (Ashok Kumar in the film), who too was a hermit and fell in love with Chitralekha and becomes the victim of life and time. Shwetank and Vishaldev have to find the truth of life and sin as suggested by their guru, Ratnambar. They become the slaves of the surroundings too, as well as Bijgupta, who too fell in the serious circumstances created by the 'time'. The other characters are Yashodhara, the princess, and his father, the aged Mritunjay. The character, Chanakya, has been brought to make the novel interesting. The novel, Chitralekha is about the debates over the life and love. It has twenty two sections.
19428769	/m/04n40vf	Deep Dish	Mary Kay Andrews		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Gina is a 30 year old chef obsessed with health. Her cooking show is cancelled when a big sponsor pulls out after seeing the show's producer in bed with the sponsor's wife. This cancellation creates an opportunity for a new show on the Cooking Channel. The producers are also interested in a local cooking show called Vittles, hosted by Tate Moody. The producers decide to turn the competition between Gina and Tate into a reality show.
19433109	/m/04n2tm1	Vaporetto 13: A Novel	Robert Girardi	1997	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Jack Squire is a Currency Trader on assignment to Venice where he discovers both the light and dark of the city. Major characters include Jack Squire, currency trader from Washington, D.C. and Caterina, is the girl from Venice who haunts Jack Squire.
19444696	/m/04n2jzb	What Will Fat Cat Sit On?				 Fat Cat wonders what to sit on. The animals are relieved that the cat won't sit on them, but they wonder about what the cat will have for lunch. The animals run off in terror.
19445619	/m/04n5rkl	The Littlest Hitler	Ryan Boudinot	2006-09-04		 The book has characters who are things such as drugstore workers and pharmacists. The short stories have things such a cannabalistic mother, serial killers, zombies and terrorists. The last story is called "The Newholy" which has to do with immigration.
19447756	/m/04n27x3	Dark Horse				 The book is set in an unknown election year in the near future (dialogue suggests that it is either the 2016 or 2020 election). It begins at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, where there has been an extremely tight race for the nomination over California Governor Robert W. Long and Senate Majority Leader Salmon Stanley, and there has been much controversy over the Virginia delegation for both candidates, and which one was legitimate under Primary Rules. Because of a last minute betrayal by Long supporter Tennessee Governor Terry Tinford to Stanley (under the impression he would be "seriously considered" as the VP nominee), Stanley is able to win the nomination with a razor thin margin 2,221 delegates to Long's 2,117. After an outraged Long rejects Stanley's proposal to be his running mate, he selects Governor of Pennsylvania Betsy Hafer as his running mate (much to Tinford's disgust). A stressed out Jay Noble (the campaign manager of Long) takes a vacation to Mexico, where he meets a very attractive Nicole Dearborn, a democratic activist. After spending several days in Mexico, he gets a call from Long, saying to meet him at the campaign headquarters because he is considering running as an Independent. Meanwhile, the Stanley campaign is suffering crippling blows by an FBI investigation over an alleged payment by the campaign to give favorable testimony to the credential committee regarding the Virginia delegation by campaign manager Michael Kaplan. Hafer also makes repeated gaffes on the campaign trail, much to Stanley's embarrassment. As this is going on, the Republican National Convention is set to get underway in Miami. Vice President Harris Flaherty is the nominee for the Republican Party, and he is debating whom to choose as his running mate. The President (who is never named) encourages Flaherty to make a smart decision for VP. Evangelical radio host Andy Stanton is meeting with top officials of the Flaherty campaign, attempting to encourage Flaherty not to pick Secretary of State David Petty as the VP, on the grounds that he is a pro-choice moderate who would infuriate the Evangelical vote. He then has a hostile meeting with Petty, only furthering his distaste for him. He is assured by campaign manager Bill Diamond that Petty will not be chosen. Stanton is satisfied, and waits for the announcement. Flaherty surprises everyone when he picks Petty, and an infuriated Stanton releases a statement criticizing Petty on certain issues the day he is set to make his acceptance speech. As the convention is set to get underway, Long officially announces his Independent candidacy, as succeeds in getting on the ballot in California. Because of this split within the Democratic party, Flahery has a 15 point lead over Stanley going into the convention, all but ensuring a landslide victory for the republicans. After the convention, a confident republican ticket emerges expecting victory going into the election. Unknown to either parties, Rassem El Zafarshan, an Iranian terrorist, is planning an assassination attempt on both members of the republican ticket. He succeeds in shooting down Marine Two and killing Flaherty, but Petty is in a bulletproof limousine at the time of the shooting. Zafarshan escapes the U.S., all but one terrorist is killed (the one is taken into custody), and the President debates on whether or not to invade Iran. As the nation mourns, a deeply divided republican party is split on whether or not to elevate Petty to the Presidency nomination. Senator Tom Reynolds, a deeply convicted conservative, originally emerges as the candidate for conservatives, but withdraws because of his desires to be selected as the running mate. Petty is nominated easily, but liberal Senator Ed Bell of Colorado is nominated as VP, and the conservatives walk out on Petty, stating that voting for Long is a serious possibility. The President appoints Petty as the Vice President. Meanwhile, Long sues the Texas Supreme Court for ballot access unsuccessfully, but is able to win in the Court of Appeals, effectively getting him on the ballot in all 50 states. In order to win the Evangelical vote, Long announces political veteran and Catholic Jonny Whitehead as his running mate, and changes his position to pro-life on abortion. After a phenomenal performance in the debates, Long wins the most electors, but does not win enough to win the election, so the election is forced to the United States House of Representatives. After the President chooses not to interfere in the House Vote, Long convinces West Virginia and Pennsylvania to cast their vote for him, giving him the Presidency. The Senate then gives the Vice Presidency to Whitehead over Ed Bell. Jay Noble decides not to want a job in the administration, and becomes an outside supporter. The book ends 14 days prior to Long's inauguration.
19449504	/m/04n5g9q	City at the End of Time	Greg Bear	2008-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 City at the End of Time is about the Kalpa, the last city on Earth, one hundred trillion years in the future. The novel's back-story describes how the aging universe continued expanding and its spacetime fabric weakened. With the galaxies burnt out, humanity dispersed across the cosmos, where they encountered the Typhon, an inexplicable entity that was destroying the decaying universe. It consumed matter and replaced space-time with emptiness and inconsistencies beyond the laws of physics. The resulting Chaos spread rapidly, driving some humans back to ancient Earth with its rekindled sun. In an attempt to fend off the approaching Typhon, leaders of the dying Earth sent for Polybiblios, a human living with the Shen, an ancient alien race. Polybiblios returned to Earth with his adopted daughter, Ishanaxade, a being he had constructed from "fate-logs" of intelligent species collected by the Shen. After the Shen system fell, and the Chaos surrounded Earth, its leaders instructed everybody to convert themselves from primordial (real) matter to noötic (virtual) mass. As each city fell, its inhabitants retreated to the last remaining cities, the Kalpa and Nataraja. Using knowledge he had gleaned from the Shen, Polybiblios build reality generators to protect the Kalpa. Nataraja, which had rebelled the instruction to convert to noötic matter, was left to fend for itself. The novel alternates between the Kalpa and present-day Seattle, where three drifters, Ginny, Jack and Daniel are in possession of sum-runners, small stone-like talismans that give them "fate-shifting" abilities, whereby they can jump between fate-lines (world lines in a multiverse). Ginny and Jack also have disturbing dreams of the Kalpa, and are inexplicably connected to Jebrassy and Taidba, two "breeds" living in the future city. Fate-shifters and their sum-runners are hunted by "collectors" working for the Chalk Princess, an entity controlled by the Typhon from the future. These hunters place adverts in local newspapers inviting "dreamers" to contact them for "help". In the future the Typhon is destroying history and world-lines are being broken, merging the past and the present. With the Chaos closing in on the Kalpa, the inhabitants (all noötic) are unable to venture outside the city walls. Under Ishanaxade's instructions they create "breeds", copies of ancient humans, using primordial matter. They send them in groups into the Chaos to find out if Nataraja still stands, but none return. Ishanaxade herself ventures out, but is not heard from again. As the Typhon starts breaching the Kalpa, the last batch of breeds, including Jebrassy and Taidba, leave the city in search of help. Armed with portable reality generators, they slowly progress through the "unreal" landscape in search of the rebel city. Meanwhile the Chaos has reached all the way back to the present-day, and an event called the Terminus hits Seattle: the past, present and future collides and world-lines are severed. Ginny, Jack and Daniel, having evaded the hunters, trek across a degenerating Seattle. Protected by their sum-runners, they are drawn to the Nataraja, where Ishanaxade is waiting. While still in the Kalpa, Ishanaxade had instructed Polybiblios to create the sum-runners containing "fragmented Babels", and in the Chaos she had sent them back to the "beginning of time". The sum-runners were programmed to lead the bearers to Ishanaxade when the expected Terminus occurred. The breeds, programmed to see Ishanaxade as their "mother", are also drawn to Nataraja, and Jebrassy and Taidba find their counterparts Jack and Ginny in the ruined city. The Kalpa falls to the Chaos, but in Nataraja, the sum-runners and their Babel fragments are united and a new history is created causing the Typhon, now a failed god, to implode.
19456530	/m/04n1_cg	Festering Season				 After the owner of an East Village botanicas is killed in a bizarre police shooting, her daughter, Rene Duboise is summoned back to New York from Haiti, interrupting her Vodou training. Upon her return, Rene realizes that she is being watched and that there is something more sinister going on in the city. At the same time, Paul Whythe, a cultural anthropology professor at New York University is asked to consult with the NYPD’s Cult Related Task Force on dead body unearthed in Brooklyn Heights. He recognizes the ritualized nature of the burial to be related to the religion of Palo, but becomes suspicious of the East Village shooting’s relationship with the similar religion of Vodou. Rene realizes that a drug smuggler by the name of Gangleos is behind a series of ritualistic crimes, including her mother’s death, after a confrontation with Isabelle Desanto, whose brother had also been murdered after seeking counsel with Rene’s mother. After a meeting with Paul shortly thereafter, Rene is able to piece together a far greater threat being orchestrated against the entire city. However the extent and purpose of which remain a mystery until near the end of the story.
19458146	/m/04m_px_	The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers	Lilian Jackson Braun	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Old Hulk, being developed for a senior center, mysteriously burns to the ground. Meanwhile, a young woman dies from a bee sting—or could it have been murder? Qwill's lady friend, Polly Duncan, goes to Paris and decides to stay there. Later, Qwill's apple barn residence is burned by fire.
19458447	/m/04m_f9_	The Story of Edgar Sawtelle	David Wroblewski	2008	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 === What Hands Do Chequamegon Poison ===
19464493	/m/04mydjf	The Fern Tattoo	David Brooks	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Benedict's mother has recently died; after the funeral he receives a phone call from Mrs. Darling, a friend of his mother's. Benedict visits the old woman in the countryside where she tells him various tales that involve three generations of families. He spends the next several years visiting Mrs. Darling, rearranging his personal plans so he can visit her more often. One day he receives a phone call that Mrs. Darling is dying. He finally learns that the stories she has been telling him have been about his own family.
19465764	/m/04mw_51	Other Bells for Us to Ring	Robert Cormier	1990	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Eleven-year-old Darcy Webster never had a best friend until her father joined the army, bringing his family to Frenchtown in Monument, near Fort Delta, Massachusetts. There she became friends with Kathleen Mary O'Hara. Darcy had always been a Unitarian. That is until Kathleen Mary sprinkled her with holy water declaring, "Now you're a Catholic, Darcy Webster. Forever and ever, world without end, Amen." Darcy never had a chance to ask Kathleen Mary if she was joking, because Kathleen Mary's father went on a rampage, sending him to jail, and splitting up the O'Hara family. Darcy struggled with her religion, whether a little bit of holy water and a declaration by an eleven-year-old could turn her Catholic, and what to do, how to pray, and whether God really exists or not. Things became more complicated when a letter came home to Darcy and her mother stating that Mr. Webster was missing in action.
19467792	/m/04n0f2b	Mistborn: The Hero of Ages	Brandon Sanderson	2008-10-14	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Vin, after taking the power of the Well of Ascension at the end of the previous book, released it into the world instead of saving Elend. Elend, however, survived by consuming a bead of metal which made him an extremely powerful Mistborn. However, the entirety of the Terrismen prophecies were shown to have been changed by the god, Ruin, in order to trick Vin into freeing it from the Well. Now Ruin has been released and is beginning to destroy the world. The Lord Ruler, in preparation of such an event, created storage caches containing valuables such as food and water in cave complexes beneath certain cities, each one providing directions to the next. As Vin and Elend struggle from cache to cache, looking for the atium stash, the world itself begins to crumble, ash spewing forth in greater quantities and the mists claiming more and more people. Meanwhile, Sazed continues to struggle with his faith, trying and failing to find a religion that makes sense while he, along with Breeze, try to help Elend take over the rebel city Urteau, where Spook has developed strange abilities and started a new revolution. TenSoon, on the other hand, is imprisoned and trying to convince the kandra that the world is ending, and that they must work together with the humans to save the world. As the book progresses, Vin and Elend try to conquer the city of Fadrex City and discover more about how their world works. They discover patterns in the numbers of people dying after being exposed to the mists, as well as secrets regarding the koloss, kandra, and Inquisitors, but fearing that Ruin will discover their plans, are unable to discuss their plans with each other. As the days grow hotter and the mists stronger, Vin and Elend encounter more and more dangers. Yomen, the King of Fadrex City, captures Vin, who escapes and battles with Ruin, who has been fooling them into leading him to his body, which turns out to be the atium stash.
19469134	/m/04myt5j	Unseen Academicals				 Unseen Academicals tells the story of the faculty of Unseen University being forced to choose between (only) three meals a day and playing a game of football, as tradition mandates the game in exchange for their large financial endowment by a wealthy family. The wizards soon learn that the local version of football (similar to the actual game of mob football) is very violent and deaths are common. Thus, in collaboration with the city's tyrant Lord Vetinari, they set out to make new 'official' football rules, which includes forbidding the use of hands and the use of official footballs as opposed to the makeshift balls the street games use. The book includes a satirisation of the Mallard ceremony performed at All Souls College, Oxford Parallel to this, the book tells the story of four young people. A candle dribbler named Mr. Nutt discovers that he is not what he thinks he is and must overcome the fear of his race, both by humans and by himself. He is also chosen to train the university's team for the big match. Trev Likely, who is Mr. Nutt's coworker and best friend, is the son of the Ankh-Morpork's most famous deceased footballer, but has promised his dear old mum he won't play. Glenda is a friend of Mr. Nutt and Trev, runs the Unseen University Night Kitchen, and bakes the Disc's best pies. Juliet works for Glenda, has a crush on Trev, is simple and beautiful, and daydreams about fashion. The four of them end up advising the wizards on their football endeavour, which culminates in an intense game between the Wizards and the former street footballers.
19470280	/m/04m_6c_	The Bone Garden				 The book delves into Boston's past (1830), with Maura Isles playing a cameo role in present-day Boston. In the present, recently divorced 38-year-old Julia Hamill, trying to plant a garden to her newly purchased rural Massachusetts home finds a female skull buried in the rocky soil. She contacts medical examiner Maura Isles who finds it scarred with the marks of murder but can discover no more due to the skull's age. In the past, Boston in 1830, Norris Marshall, a talented but poor student at Boston Medical College attempts to pay his college tuition by being a "resurrectionist" - one who plunders graveyards to sell the corpses on the black market. When two nurses are found murdered (one on the hospital grounds) as well as a respected doctor, Norris is considered as the prime suspect; he has had a glimpse of the killer at the second murder scene. Norris, attempting to clear himself, attempts to track down the only other witness to have caught a glimpse (at the first murder scene), a beautiful 17 year old Irish immigrant seamstress named Rose Conolly who fears she may be the next victim, exacerbated by the need to protect her newborn niece Meggie. Rose, Norris and his classmate Oliver Wendell Holmes comb the city, from its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and power centers, to track down the killer. Central to the plot is the condition of maternity wards at the time: doctors would often walk in from the autopsy area to the "lying-in" wards, and handle the women without using even gloves (let alone antisepsis, which Holmes later suggested) putting the women at higher risk of childbirth deaths than if they had given birth attended by midwives, or even unattended. Julia and 89 year old Henry Page, a descendant of one of Boston's first female doctors, Margaret Tate Page (Meggie as an adult), piece through letters written by Holmes to Dr. Page about the case to find out more about the murders and piece together the facts. For Julia, the driving question is if the victim is Rose, Holmes' final letter to Dr. Page, posted at the book's end, reveals that her aunt Rose survived the events, and never married.
19473305	/m/04n34yh	Splat the Cat		2008-07-01		 Splat is so scared of his first day of Cat School that his tail moves with worry. He needs a friend so he takes his pet, a mouse named Seymour, with him to school. Mrs. Wimpydimple covers lots of topics such as self-esteem and nature. When Seymour gets out of Splat's lunchbox, the cats chase after him. The teacher saves Seymour. By day two, Splat's tail moves with excitement.
19474002	/m/04m_fly	Uprising				 Bella, newly arrived in New York from Italy, gets a job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. There, along with hundreds of other immigrants, she works long hours at a grueling job under terrible conditions. Yetta, a coworker from Russia, has been crusading for a union. When factory conditions worsen, workers rise up in a strike. Wealthy Jane learns of the workers and becomes involved with their cause. Bella and Yetta are at work and Jane is visiting the factory on March 25, 1911, when a spark ignites some cloth and the building is engulfed in fire, leading to one of the worst workplace disasters in history (the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire) In the end, only one of the girls lives to tell of the story of her friends and the terrible occurrences of March 25, 1911. The story is based on the true events that happened in 1911 at the Triangle Shirt Waist factory.
19475922	/m/04n12t7	Kung Fu High School			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jen, a teenage girl, and her brother Kyuzo, or Cue as she calls him, attend Martin Luther King High School. However due to the notorious Ridley's drug trafficking through the school, it has become a run down war zone for both his workers, and those who despise him. The only thing things these students at Kung Fu have in common are their ability to fight, or rather survive, and the fact that they've all been "kicked in". A welcoming practice at Kung Fu where you are beaten by everyone in order to teach you you're in the school. The story starts off with Jen living an already irregular life, having to literally put on armor before going to school. One day Jen's long lost cousin arrives at her front door, sent by her late mother's sister. He dies.
19479302	/m/04n3ngj	Without Warning	John Birmingham	2008	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 14 March 2003, the bulk of the United States' population (along with the bulk of the populations of Canada, Mexico, and Cuba) disappears as the result of a large energy field that becomes known as The Wave. Without Warning deals with the international consequences of the disappearance of the world's last super power on the eve of war.
19483567	/m/04myjmz	Body Double	Tess Gerritsen		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Returning to Boston from a business trip in Paris, Maura Isles encounters delays at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and finds upon landing in Boston that the airline has lost her luggage. When she finally makes it home, she finds her house taped off as a crime scene—and is surprised to see Jane Rizzoli (now about 8-months-pregnant) and Rizzoli's partner Barry Frost there. Rizzoli does a double-take on seeing Maura, and directs her attention to a white Ford Taurus in her driveway. There, Maura finds the body of a woman who looks identical to her—and also shares the same birthday. When the body is taken in to the medical examiner's office, Maura takes a tissue sample from the dead woman, and one from herself and asks Rizzoli to take them for DNA testing. The woman is found to have been killed by a 'Black Talon' bullet. Meanwhile, Matilda Hayes, the almost-9-months-pregnant wife of a BMW dealership manager, visits the dealership after an OB-GYN appointment—and is belittled by her husband (who she had married when she was two months pregnant) for ruining the tires. When she goes home, she finds she is not alone—and is struck unconscious when thinking the other to be her husband, she calls his name. Newton police detective Rick Ballard tells Maura that he believes that a CEO of a pharmaceutical company is the murderer, due to the latter's obsessive lust over the deceased woman, Anna Leoni (on her driver's license, the name was recorded as Jessup). Maura's curiosity is aroused further when Rizzoli hands her DNA results showing that the deceased is her identical-twin sister. The trail then leads to Maine, where the remains of several murder victims (mostly pregnant women, but including some men) are found. A check of the FBI database over forty years reveals a possible pattern circumnavigating the US. Maura eventually finds that her mother, Amalathea Lank, has been jailed for two murders, one of a 9-months-pregnant woman. Eventually, she also traces that Amalathea and her cousin Elijah (whom she eventually married) had been killing women who were just about to deliver and then taking out the babies and selling them. She also finds that Ballard was in love with Anna, and that he also likes her very much (Maura is also attracted to him). Matilda wakes up in a coffin-like box, and tries to plead with the kidnapper to release her—only to realise that he is not interested in the money. She plans her escape, saving torch batteries for use as a weapon. Eventually, when the kidnapper gets close, Mattie stuns him with the batteries (which she has wrapped into a sock) and flees into a toolshed; when the kidnapper pursues, she hits him again with the battery-filled sock and stabs him with a screwdriver. The stress of the pursuit, however, brings on labour and the police later find her nursing her daughter and take both to hospital. The killer is revealed to be Maura's younger brother Samuel (their father, Elijah, had died prior to the murders for which Amalathea was caught—due to a gas station's security video). However, the investigation of Anna Leoni's murder appears to have hit a dead-end, as no firearm was found on Samuel. Rizzoli then finds an old police report on a previous slaying involving 'Black Talons'--and seeing the endnotes, summons Frost to help protect Maura. Meeting Rick in her car, Maura is about to kiss him when he is murdered by his ex-wife Carmen. Carmen confesses to having killed Anna and shoots Maura, wounding her. After Carmen shoots Maura, she is fatally shot by a parking-lot security guard and the Rizzoli.
19486073	/m/04n1k39	Gone to the Dogs		2003-12-23	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Piggy is the reincarnation of a blonde girl named Lydia Keane. She suffers from a diet started by her new owner, Nell Jordan. Piggy searches for morsels of food to eat. When Piggy inherits a fortune from an old man, that she visited as a therapy dog, she must protect her owner from P.I. Dan Travis. Dan Travis is the grandson of Piggy's benefactor. At a request from his mother, he investigates Piggy and her owner, and also falls for Nell Jordan. Nell has the secret that a villain wants to kidnap Piggy. Gone to the dogs
19488801	/m/04mzgpq	Lulu Atlantis and the Quest for True Blue Love		2008-01-08		 Lulu Lantis lives in Sweet Pea Lane. She has a baby brother and a dad that is busy trying to save endangered animals. Lulu tells her troubles to her best friend, a spider named Harry. Harry is a talking spider that offers good advice. The spider says in order for her to find true blue love, she will have to go farther than her backyard. The four stories, that are linked together, makes her realize that she is loved.
19493069	/m/04n5tww	A Cool Head	Ian Rankin	2009	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gravy works in a graveyard. One day his friend turns up in a car he doesn't recognise. His friend has a bullet in his chest. Gravy is asked to hide the gun and the body. In the back of the car is blood, and a bag full of money. Soon Gravy is caught up in a bank job gone wrong and is pursued by some mysterious men.
19493270	/m/04n251_	Zen Shorts	Jon J. Muth	2005-03-01	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 3 kids, Karl, Michael and Addy, encounter a panda named Stillwater. The panda carries a red umbrella and he also speaks in a "slight panda accent". For the next three days, the three kids visit Stillwater. The panda rewards each with instructive anecdotes.
19507748	/m/04mzx10	Tomorrow, When the the War Began	John Marsden	1993	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Ellie Linton goes out camping in the bush for a week with her friends Homer Yannos, Lee Takkam, Kevin Holmes, Corrie Mackenzie, Robyn Mathers, and Fiona Maxwell. They find a way into a large, vegetated sinkhole in a remote area of bush the locals have dubbed "Hell", and camp there. During this time they see large numbers of planes flying through the night without lights, and though it is mentioned in conversation the following morning, they think little of it, dismissing it as military planes heading back from a demonstration. When they return to their home town of Wirrawee, they find that all the people are missing and their pets and livestock are dead or dying. Fearing the worst, they break into three groups to investigate Wirrawee's situation. They confirm that Wirrawee was captured as a beachhead for an invasion of Australia by an unidentified force; local citizens are being held captive by the occupiers. Ellie's group is discovered and, in order to escape, use the fuel tank of a ride-on lawnmower to create an improvised explosive. However, on returning to the nearby meeting point, they discover Robyn and Lee missing. Homer and Ellie search for them and they are met by Robyn, and they discover that Lee has been shot in the leg and hiding out in the main street of Wirrawee, the centre of the enemy's activity. Ellie and Homer confer with the others and Ellie decides that they should attempt to rescue Lee, using a front-end loader to move and protect him. After a protracted chase that sees several soldiers killed, Lee is successfully rescued and returned to the safety of Hell. While hiding out in Hell, a romantic relationship forms between Ellie and Lee, Homer falls in love with Fi, while Kevin and Corrie continue a romantic relationship started a few months before the invasion. The teens decide to raid nearby farmhouses, searching for food and other supplies, and then retreat to Hell to establish a base camp for themselves. The group eventually moves toward waging a guerrilla war against the invaders. Ellie, Fi, Lee, and Homer steal a petrol tanker and use it to blow up the main bridge out of Wirrawee. While the raid is occurring, Corrie is shot while she and Kevin are gathering supplies. Kevin takes her to the occupied town hospital, and turns himself in, in exchange for medical assistance.
19514287	/m/04n4xv8	Jennie Gerhardt	Theodore Dreiser	1911	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jennie Gerhardt is a destitute young woman. While working in a hotel in Columbus, Ohio, Jennie meets Senator George Brander, who becomes infatuated with her. He helps her family and declares his wish to marry her. Jennie, grateful for his benevolence, agrees to sleep with him, but ill fortune intercedes and the Senator dies, leaving her pregnant. She gives birth to a daughter, Vesta, and moves to Cleveland where she finds work as a lady's maid to a prominent family. Consequently, she meets Lester Kane, a prosperous manufacturer's son. Jennie falls in love with him, impressed by his strong will and generosity. She leaves her daughter behind and they visit New York together. Kane, unaware that Jennie has a child, wishes to marry her, but, anticipating his family's disapproval, decides instead that she shall become his mistress. They live together successfully in Chicago, even through Jennie's revelation after three years that Vesta is her daughter. Kane does not yield to his family's pressure to leave Jennie, but after his father's death discovers that he will not inherit a substantial part of the family business unless he discards her. They visit Europe together, where Kane's attention shifts from Jennie to a woman of his own class, Letty Gerald. On hearing the will's terms, it is Jennie who demands that they separate. Kane, after providing for her, marries Letty and resumes his former social status. Jennie loses her daughter to typhoid and adopts two orphans, but through it all, continues to love him. Kane becomes ill. He tells Jennie he still loves her, and she tends him until his death, mourning secretly at his funeral.
19516886	/m/04n139d	The Glitch in Sleep		2007-09-18	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the beginning, the Village of Covas, Minho, Portugal is experiencing a severe drought. In reality however, a Rain Tower where water is stored in The Seems, another world that controls our World, had been blocked for an unknown reason. Anytime a problem occurs in The Seems, a special team is called in consisting of one Briefer and one Fixer. They are both highly trained professionals at Fixing any problems. To get the Rain back, Fixer Cassiopeia (Casey) Lake and Briefer Becker Drane are called in. For his exceptional Fix, Briefer Drane is promoted to Fixer #37. Five weeks later, Becker, receives his first mission as Fixer at night and his Mission is to catch a Glitch destroying the Department of Sleep. Glitches are one of the most destructive problems within the Seems and were thought to have been wiped out during a Missions called the "Clean Sweep". Glitches have three hands which can easily pull wires and destroy items. They are known for being destructive and unpredictable. Quickly, Becker arrives at the Department of Sleep and meets up with his Briefer Simly Frye and they are given aware of the situation. The Glitch is causing no one in The World to get a wink of sleep due to the destruction of many of the ingredients to make a Good Night's Sleep. Soon, many Chain of Events start slipping; The Chain of Events are a complicated series of events trying to give a person the best life they can. However, with a Glitch not allowing anyone to get any sleep, a Ripple Effect could occur which would cause mass destruction to The World. Becker, Simly and fellow Fixer Casey Lake finally find and trap the Glitch in the Master Bedroom. Using his own invention, the Helping Hand, Becker is finally able to catch the Glitch. During the battle Simly finds his 7th sense, a set of chills that were sent down from his arms to his toes that told him where the Glitch was hiding even though it is thought that Seemsian's can not develop a 7th sense. After fixing up whatever destruction the Glitch caused in the Master Bedroom, everyone hopes that the Good Night Sleeps have been sent on time. However, the team might have been too late, with a warning that the Chain of Events are dissembling and the Ripple Effect about to commence in thirty seconds. With 3 seconds left, the Ripple Effect was successful reverted with enough Good Night Sleeps getting out. In the epilogue a few Fixers have gathered together and are celebrating the successful Fix of the Glitch when Casey arrives with bad news. Someone has just stolen 50 trays of Frozen Moments, ice cubes made up of one period of one person's life. Although this alone is not to panic, if the Frozen moments are combined with Fertilizer from the Department of Nature and a Second, a Time Bomb could be made.
19522268	/m/04n1z6p	The Apprentice	Tess Gerritsen		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When Rizzoli investigates a murder where cutting techniques similar to those of imprisoned Warren Hoyt but involving necrophilia (as determined by medical examiner Maura Isles), she is called by FBI Agent Gabriel Dean to Washington, D.C. Dean shows her a list of similar crimes committed in Bosnia, and terms the suspect "The Dominator". Hoyt escapes from prison after reading about "The Dominator's" murders which copy many of his techniques, and plots with him to trap Rizzoli. Eventually, "The Dominator" kidnaps Rizzoli as she returns to Boston, and takes her into the countryside. While trying to kill Rizzoli, Rizzoli fights back and kills "The Dominator" and severely wounds Hoyt, making him a quadriplegic. Rizzoli then takes a long-overdue vacation, claiming sick-time, with Dean.
19535522	/m/04m_nh8	Striking and Picturesque Delineations of the Grand, Beautiful, Wonderful, and Interesting Scenery Around Loch-Earn		1815		 The book begins with a dedication to the Earl of Breadalbane (presumably John Campbell, the fourth Earl, as the book was first published in 1815). Its "grovelling and abject" tone was unusual by that time. An anonymous preface recounts how an unnamed "Gentleman", on a grouse-shooting visit to the earl's estate in the Lochearnhead region, met Angus McDiarmid, a ground-officer (or ghillie, a gamekeeper and hunting-guide) of the earl's. Struck by McDiarmid's eloquent descriptions of the scenery and associated legends, the gentleman learned that McDiarmid had written a manuscript, which McDiarmid entrusted to him to be published. The preface assures the reader that visitors to Lochearnhead could confirm McDiarmid's existence and his sole authorship of the book. It then praises the "unparalleled sublimity" of the book's style, which it connects with the rugged Highland landscape and offers as the reason that McDiarmid's sentences "overleap the mounds and impediments of grammar". The main text is 28 pages about the region near Lochearnhead. There are three sections: *"Sketch of the Scenery at Loch-Earn" describes the cataract at Edinample; Edinample Castle; two trees knocked down by the wind that later grew straight (the trees were gone by the time the book was written, but the place could still be seen); unusual concave landforms in a moor and on a mountain opposite the castle; Glen Ogle; and Loch Earn with two of its islands, one a crannog or prehistoric artificial island; *"Sketch of the Following Descriptions" describes the nearby mountains of Ben Vorlich, Craig-na-Gaur, Stùc a' Chroin, and Ben Each; some wild animals of the hills; the sheep and black cattle formerly pastured in Glen Ample; the Glen of the Piper, named after a bagpiper who warned the local people of an approaching band of marauders; the beauty of Glen Beich with its cataract; a lake in Glen Ogle where legend says a kelpie killed nine children; one robber who saved another from an arrow wound; some kind of earthquake in the Grampian Mountains; and Edinchip, named after a Roman soldier's hiding from a battle there; *"Sketch of an Ancient History Deserves To Be Inserted" describes a cattle-raid on the region and the defense by a local man, Major Roy of Hens; a sheep-robber; a strong man named Envie; a wolf that entered a cottage; and a remarkable bull attacked by two remarkable wolves. McDiarmid's dedication is in grammatical English, but the main text is not, and is full of obscure and misused words. The paragraph about the earthquake may give an idea: :It merits the trouble to exhibit a description of a part of Glenogle's Grampian mountains, disjointed in the time of the generations past ; which event happen about the twilight, that the dread of the horrible sight seized the beholders with fear, ultera the comprehension of the individual, discernible to their sight. The pillars of fire rising from the parting of the rock, where there was a cement, the stones forcibly dashing one against another, that the melancholy sight was similar to a corner of mountain set wholly on fire, also overhearing such a loud noise of the stones break at juncture ; which vociferous might reach the ears of the people living at great distant. This place perceptible to view of the beholders that passes by.
19542277	/m/04y5h5d	Dark Calling	Darren Shan	2009-05-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Since rebuilding his eyes, Kernel has been able to see new lights that he cannot move, and which seem to be whispering to the Disciples, manipulating them. However Kernel realizes that he is unable to tell anyone of his concerns as no-one else can see the lights. When the whispering lights lead them to a ship where the group meet their most terrifying foe yet, 'The Shadow', Kernel guards the portal and is approached by a ball made up of the whispering lights, which tells him to leave his friends and follow it. Kernel is unwilling but is forced through the window by the sphere of lights. The sphere takes the shape of Art (Artery) - the boy Kernel once thought was his brother - to gain Kernel's trust, and reveals itself to be one of the Old Creatures. "Art" then tells Kernel that he is needed to save the universe and is taken to the point where the Demonata's and humanity’s universe meet. Kernel is told that both universes were once a single, chess board shaped cosmos, the white squares belonging to the demons and the black belonging to the Old Creatures, the sections separated by the Kah-Gash. However a war between the two groups broke down the Kah-Gash and its soul split into three pieces. He also learns that the Kah-Gash will not destroy a single universe, but will instead bring both back to their original state. The demons and Old Creatures (being creatures of the original universe) will continue to exist thereafter, but every other living thing will be wiped out. Having learnt this, Kernel tries to escape, but "Art" is killed and another light sphere appears, taking the form of Raz, another dead Disciple. He tells Kernel that the boy has been chosen to be 'Noah' and protect 'the Ark', a planet to which the Old Creatures have brought the best of numerous intelligent species from this universe for protection from the demons. Kernel chooses to go back and help Grubbs and Bec beat "The Shadow" (now revealed to be Death). However before Raz leaves he warns Kernel that Bec's piece of the Kah-Gash may have been corrupted by Lord Loss' possession of it (Bec’s piece was stolen from Lord Loss in the fourth book of the series) and to beware of her. Kernel returns in the midst of a huge battle between the Disciples (including Bec and Grubbs) and an army of the Demonata. He is initially frightened of Grubbs' newly wolfen form, but soon grows used to it. Everyone exchanges stories, but Kernel senses that Grubbs is hiding something. The band of fighters and mages successfully attempt to use the Kah-Gash to defeat the oncoming hordes of demons. Bec and Grubbs begin to disagree over whether or not to search for Beranabus' soul, and when Kernel thinks of Beranabus some lights begin to pulse - indicating that his soul can be found. Grubbs is still not happy about the idea, but when Bec reveals that Bill-E Spleen may be trapped in the same place as Beranabus, Grubbs jumps at the opportunity to save his brother. Kernel begins opening a window, but also catches a glimpse of a world where Lord Loss is talking to millions of demons. He shrugs this off and continues to build the window which leads them to a world engulfed in shadow, which they discover is in fact the 'body' of Death. The Disciples realise that their magic works differently in this place, and although sound does not travel, they can communicate telepathically thanks to Bec. Kernel can see differences in all the shadows, which then turn out to be the spirits of people, all of which seem to have gone insane, all screaming "free me!" Kernel locates Beranabus, and they talk about how to defeat Death. They are told by the ancient magician that it is impossible, after which Bec has a private discussion with Beranabus, making Grubbs and Kernel wary of her. Beranabus tells them how to set the spirits free, thus unravelling death's physical form, but says that it will come back stronger. When Grubbs asks Kernel where Bill-E is and if Kernel could lead him to him, when Beranabus tells them quite flatly that it has taken all his effort for him not to go mad in Death and it is impossible for someone with such a weak mind to stay sane. Death then becomes aware of their presence inside it and begins to attack them, after which the group run to a side of death and begin to claw and attack it. Its body unravels and the spirits trapped inside quickly escape including Beranabus and what's left of Bill-E. The shadows disappear and the heroes fall into the world Kernel had seen before. They are surrounded by demons, with little hope of escape. Bec, Grubbs and Kernel join to form the Kah-Gash, and create a shield, however Grubbs refuses to give it more power as it would mean he was no longer in control of it. Most of the group fight the demons while Kernel begins working on forming the window back to their universe, defended by Dervish as he does so. Meera Flame is fatally wounded but as her final act, kills herself and Juni Swan, who now has no hope of return as Death is incapacitated. Kernel opens the window and calls to everyone to follow, however Bec is in the clutches of Lord Loss and tells them to leave her. Before they escape Kernel notices that Bec and the demon master are not fighting as violently as before, and suspects Bec of betrayal. When the remaining warriors return Dervish is in very bad shape, and asks to be taken outside to die. Kernel tells Grubbs he is returning to the ark. Grubbs says he understands and asks if Kernel would save the world "regardless of the consequences", Kernel agrees. Grubbs tells Kernel that he will hate him for what he is about to do, and then destroys Kernel's magically formed eyes and tells him that he needs him to stay. Kernel begins to warn Grubbs about Bec, but Grubbs has taken his uncle outside. The story ends with Kernel blind and alone, imagining Beranabus telling him that this is the end of the universe.
19544257	/m/04mx_gr	The Tin Roof Blowdown: A Dave Robicheaux Novel	James Lee Burke	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After Hurricane Katrina devastates his beloved city of New Orleans, Dave Robicheaux is drawn into the fatal shooting of two young black looters, and the subsequent torture murder of a third. Soon several suspects, including an insurance salesman whose daughter may have been brutally raped by the men, and a sadistic gangster whose house they raided, start emerging from the woodwork. However, the investigation becomes much more personal for Dave when his own family comes under threat from an evil sociopath, and he finds himself drowning in a sea of violence, degeneracy and corruption, juxtaposed against the terrible suffering he sees everyday as a result of the hurricane.
19550892	/m/04n1s54	Into the Looking Glass	John Ringo		{"/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The novel begins in Florida. A serious explosion occurs at the University of Central Florida's science department, destroying the University and everything within a mile of it. Despite the indications of a nuclear weapon, from the devastation to the mushroom cloud, military personnel and emergency responders find no traces of radiation or EMP. Hovering right over the center of the resulting crater is a strange, black metallic sphere. As the survivors around it stand in awe, a huge 'bug' steps out of it and dies. Meanwhile the President and his advisors rush to respond to the disaster. They had an apparent nuclear detonation at an important university in a populated area, with a high probability of casualties. They need answers, so they grab the first person with a physics degree and Top Secret clearance in arm's reach, Dr. William Weaver. Weaver quickly explains that Ray Chen, a physicist at the university, was working on changing the laws of physics within a small space to allow him to create a Higgs Boson, essentially a particle containing its own universe. Whether or not he succeeded is unknown, however they have other problems as more of these, "Looking Glasses" begin to open around the country, then around the world. Weaver is sent down to Florida to investigate into the explosion. While on the site, a little girl named Mimi comes walking out of rubble a few blocks from the explosion, carrying a giant spider on her shoulder. They realize that something must have happened to her that allowed her to survive the explosion. They also discover that the spider on her shoulder is an incredibly intelligent being that seems to have formed a telepathic link with Mimi, as he is able to communicate thoughts to her without speaking. Less than a day later, they discover that gate isn't their only problem as a deadly new species begins to thunder through the various gates, killing people and spreading a fungus that seems to do anything but die. Weaver and SEAL Command Master Chief Miller are among the response to a panicked call about 'demons'. A gate is discovered nearby. A team is sent through and triggers a fierce alien counterattack that the human defenses barely manage to contain. Later, a second wave comes though this and other gates. However it appears not all of the aliens are bad. Mankind makes friendly contact with a felinoid species, the Mree. The Mree representative explains that the hostile aliens, the T!Ch!R! in the Mree language, are a pest that seem to go with the gates. Humans pronounce the word as Titcher. They meet with the Mree Emperor, and begin to discuss explorations into each others' cultures. In one of first spots the Titcher came through, their alien forces are continually breaking through the Human's lines of defense. Wanting to lower the daily body count, the president authorizes nuke strikes at the gates to give them some breathing room. After they start getting new activity at the gate, Weaver, accompanied by a SEAL team, takes a look at Titcher forces on the other side of a gate. Once through they discover that the Titcher are actually a race of one organism that produces these fighting creatures, their equivalent of antibodies, to spread through the gates and take over other worlds. As they spot an oncoming Titcher nuke for retaliation against airstrikes, they shoot to stop it. The nuke goes off, tearing open Weaver's suit and killing several SEALs. However they are able to set the bomb off and get through the gate, destabilizing it and the Mree gate temporarily. Another race is contacted through yet another gate. The Adar are ahead of humans in technological development. The Adar are friendly with humans upon first contact. They have had trouble with the Titcher, which they call the Dreen because of the howl of one of the fighting units. Humans soon adopt this name. The Dreen have begun to overwhelm human defenses at every gate. The Adar provide humans with a weapon that can close the Dreen looking glasses, but if it goes off on the earth side, it will destroy the planet. After the Mree prove to be a Dreen feint, the U.S. army attacks Mree forces near that looking glass to draw them away. Weaver and a SEAL team in temperamental powered combat armor suits deploy the Adar bomb through the unguarded gate. It and the other Dreen looking glasses close. Military forces eventually overwhelm remaining Dreen forces. A few Mree and members of another Dreen slave race are taken prisoner. There is no food on earth that can provide the nutrients they need. The Mree choose suicide over starvation. The Adar give Weaver a small black box that has an interesting effect when exposed to electricity - having the properties of exponentially increasing the output of energy based on the energy provided to it. Its other properties are explored in sequels.
19562676	/m/04mymrg	The Bottle Factory Outing	Beryl Bainbridge	1974	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It concerns Freda and Brenda who by night share a dismal bedsit, and by day work in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory in London. Freda hopes the works outing will provide opportunity for her to capture the heart of Vittorio; Brenda just aims to avoid the clutches of the lecherous Rossi. But the outing ends in tragedy.
19562706	/m/04n25_x	The Split Second		2008-09-30	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The second book follows Becker Drane on another mission. At the end of the first book, The Glitch in Sleep, it was revealed 50 trays of Frozen Moments were stolen. With that, a Time Bomb could be constructed causing great damage to The World. When news show the Time Bomb has been found in the Department of Time, Lucien Chiappa is sent in to Fix it, until the bomb explodes and Becker is called in to repair the mess by bringing the two parts of the bomb together so no Essence (liquid that everything to age much faster) can enter the World. To Fix the Second, Becker must bring both halves of the Second together again to prevent any more Essence from dripping out. The first is found in a basement and the second is found to be trapped by the Tide, the organization who created the bomb and wants to overthrow the current order of the Seems and create a new world. A legendary Fixer thought to be dead, Tom Jackal arrives to help Becker and manages to capture the Second and put it together, but the Essence has soaked through their Sleeves (lightweight bodysuits) and causes him to age. Tom dies from overexposure, but saves the World. At the end, Becker breaks the Golden Rule which prevents him from meeting with Jenifer Kaley, whose Case File (documents on her private life) was given to Becker after the Mission. However, in the epilogue, the Time Being, a powerful founder of the Seems agrees to join The Tide.
19566821	/m/04n4yfj	Cruel Zinc Melodies	Glen Cook	2008-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It's winter in TunFaire, and life has slowed down for Garrett (meaning work seldom intrudes to interrupt his beer drinking and lounging about), until a parade of lovely ladies led by his favorite fiery red-head makes its way through his door. The red-head in question is none other than Tinnie Tate, Garrett's girlfriend, and she's accompanied by Alyx Weider, sultry temptress and daughter of the local beer baron, and several other friends. It turns out the girls have aspirations to become an acting troupe for a new theater that Alyx's father, Max Weider, is building to keep his youngest daughter happy and to have a new vehicle for moving more of his product. The trouble is that Max needs some help. It seems that construction of his theater, The World, is beset by ghosts, bugs, and break-ins. Garrett figures that this is pretty much a security job, and ends up bringing in some of the usual crew including Saucerhead Tharpe and even Winger. Right off the bat, Garrett wraps up the break-in problem, as it seems that a gang of kids was trying their hand at the racketeering business. The ghosts and bugs present a bit more of a problem. It turns out that the bugs are of sorcerous origin and the result of some sorcerous experimentation by a group of kids from the Hill, led by Kip Prose. Worse yet, the bugs have been disturbing the sleep of a large entity from a bygone age that has been slumbering for eons beneath the ground that The World is being built upon. With Garrett's knack for finding trouble, he ends up attracting attention from the Guard, Prince Rupert, and several nasty sorcerous types from The Hill. In the end, with the help of the The Dead Man, John Stretch and his telepathically controlled rats, and a smoldering hot sorceress called the Windwalker Furious Tide of Light, Garrett eliminates the bugs and makes contact with the dormant creature (through the ghostly form of Eleanor), convincing it to be careful of the humans and creatures living above it.
19567193	/m/04n1src	The Assembly of Gods	John Lydgate			 The Assembly of Gods is composed of 301 seven line stanzas which have the standard ababbcc rhyme pattern of the rhyme royal. The meter, as critics have noted, is irregular. It can be broken into five main sections: an introduction, three distinct but connected narrative episodes and a conclusion. In the introduction, the poet establishes the setting using conventional astrological and geographical references which place the poem within the traditional framework of a dream poem and introduces the dreamer who sits “all solytary alone besyde a lake,/ Musyng on a maner how that I myght make/ Reason & Sensualyte in oon to acorde” (1). But, before he can think through his puzzle he is overcome by sleep. Morpheus comes and escorts him to the court of Minos which is being held at the estate of Pluto. There the dreamer watches as Diana and Neptune accuse Aeolus of flouting their authority and discrediting them in the eyes of their worshippers. Before the trial can be concluded a messenger comes from Apollo, asking Minos to hold off on the judgement and inviting all the gods to his palace for a banquet. In Apollo’s palace, Diana’s complaint is resolved and the dreamer describes each of the gods and goddesses as they sit down to eat. The gods won’t allow Discord into their feast, but as she is leaving she meets with Atropos and sends him to stir things up. Atropos goes to the gods and complains that while the gods claim to have given him power to bring death to any who disobeyed or despised them, there is one person who has escaped his power. He threatens to leave their employ if they don’t make good on their promise to him and give him power over this person. All the gods agree that they will bring down this one who defies Atropos. They quickly resolve the dispute between Neptune and Aeolus to ensure that the offender will not be able to escape in the sea or air and then ask who it is that has defied them. When Atropos tells them that it is Virtue, Pluto says he knows him well and the only thing that can harm Virtue is Vice, Pluto’s bastard son. Vice is called for, and he assembles his host for battle. Morpheus warns Virtue of the impending battle and Virtue prepares his host and heads to the field of Microcosm, hoping to arrive before Vice and thus have the advantage. The descriptions of the assembly of these armies are made up long lists of characters representing various vices and virtues and types of people under the influence of Vice and Virtue. The second narrative episode of the poem is a psychomachian battle between the hosts of Virtue and Vice for the field of Microcosm, which is possessed by Freewill. As the battle heats up, Freewill joins forces with Vice and they begin to drive Virtue and his host from the field. Perseverance comes and rallies Virtue’s troops, defeats Vice and wins the field. Freewill goes through a process of cleansing and is made a vassal of Virtue. Reason and Sadness are given control of Microcosm and set about cleansing it of the weeds planted there by Sensuality. A disgusted Atropos determines to leave the service of the “counterfete” gods saying, “For oo God ther ys that can euery dell / Turne as hym lyst, bothe dry & whete, / In to whos seruyce I shall assay to gete” (39). He goes in search of the Lord of Light and is told by Righteousness that the Lord of Light has been his master all along. Atropos’ name is changed to Death and he is sent to Microcosm. Priesthood and the sacraments are sent to the field to prepare it for the coming of Death who causes the grass to wither and shuts the gates on the field. The third episode of the poem takes place in the arbor of Doctrine where the dreamer is taken to be instructed in the meaning of the vision he has seen. The walls of the arbor are painted with images of people from the history of the world which Doctrine uses to explain the meaning of the dream and the genesis of the pagan deities and to encourage the dreamer in the right way of life. When she is done, the dreamer remembers his question about the accord of reason and sensuality and he asks her to “determyne that doute” (56). She is surprised that he has not figured it out yet, and with that, Death appears. As the dreamer hides in fear of Death, Reason and Sensuality appear and agree that people should fear death. After Doctrine explains this accord to the dreamer he is taken back to his spot by the lake. He awakens and writes his dream, exhorting those who read it, hear it read or see it to learn from it and asking the blessings of heaven on those who do.
19567308	/m/04mx7b0	The Lions of Lucerne	Brad Thor	2002-01	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The work is Thor's first novel with the character of Scot Harvath, an ex-Navy SEAL and current U.S. Secret Service agent. Harvath survives an attack which leaves 30 of his fellow agents dead and the president of the United States kidnapped. He begins a search for those responsible and attempts to rescue the president.
19573390	/m/04n3tts	Master of Whitestorm	Janny Wurts	1992-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Korendir is the Master of Whitestorm, a man driven to uncover both his past and his destiny in a character driven fantasy world. The novel starts with Korendir bounded on Mhurgai slave ship, he is a sullen character who engineers an impossible escape, taking his partner on the oar, Haldeth, with him. Korendir becomes a mercenary for hire, achieving many impossible feats and quests in order to win his wealth and secure his home in the headland of Whitestorm. Korendir battles were-leopards, weather elementals, demons and witches in his battles. The story is told mostly from a third person perspective, whereby the reader is shown what Korendir does but no explanations from Korendor as to the why of what he does. A hallmark of Janny Wurts' writing style, the reader must interpret his actions and reasons for themselves. This story is a character study of the enigmatic Korendir, his impact on those around him and his drive to outgrow his past and establish his own future.
19577021	/m/04n68zw	Drottningens juvelsmycke				 The novel is set in 1792 and weaves the story of the beautiful but sexless androgyne Tintomara around the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden, commonly nicknamed 'The Theatre King', on the stage of Stockholm's Royal Swedish Opera at a masked ball in 1792. Tintomara is employed by the Royal Swedish Ballet to function as the centrepiece of their lavish spectacles. Tintomara's true gender is never made clear, but Tintomara is referred to by the pronomen "She". She is described as beautiful and is often the object of passion for both men and women. Tintomara is portrayed as the secret half sibling to the underage King, Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden. Her father was Count Adolf Fredrik Munck af Fulkila, and her mother was the actress Clara: Count Adolf Fredrik Munck af Fulkila was said to be the biological father of the king and lover of the Queen, Sophia Magdalena of Denmark. Passing as a girl, Tintomara is involved in the notorious assassination of the King. On the same night, she steals the Queen's tiara in order to show it to her mother. Tintomara is then taken under the protection of a Baroness, who hides her on her country estate, where Tintomara passes as a boy. In the country, she becomes the love object of two women, Amanda and Adolfine, the daughters of the Baroness; and two men, the nobles Ferdinand and Clas-Henrik, who earlier courted the sisters and who are now concealing their involvement in the assassination. Tintomara is killed by Ferdinand during a performance planned as a spectacular entertainment for the court which ends in disaster. The novel's most famous line is spoken by Tintomara's dying mother, Clara: "Tintomara, two things are white - Innocence and Arsenic." She continues "You have the Innocence - I have the Arsenic".
19577235	/m/04m_6bm	The Painted Man			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel follows three POV characters in their passage from childhood to maturity. They are inhabitants of a world plagued by the attacks of demons known as corelings, which rise from the planet's core each night to feast upon humans. The ongoing attrition of these attacks have reduced humanity from an advanced state of technology to a 'dark age'. The only defense against the corelings are wards (magical runes) that can be drawn, painted, or inscribed to form protective barriers around human settlements. These are, however, fragile and prone to failure unless properly maintained. As the novel progresses, the protagonists each embark upon their own "hero's journey" in an effort to save humanity. In writing the tale, Brett was keen to move beyond a simple adventure story, to present a fantasy novel about fear and its impact. He was particularly interested in the effect of fear "causing some to freeze up and others to leap into action".
19577386	/m/04n0_xf	Stranglers' Moon	Stephen Goldin	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jules and Yvette D'Alembert are a brother and sister team of aerialists in the D'Alembert family Circus of the Empire. But they are also legendary agents "Wombat" and "Periwinkle" in SOTE, "The Service of The Empire", the imperial intelligence agency, sent to investigate the disappearance of a planetary economist and his wife on a moon devoted to recreation: seemingly a vacationers' paradise... The plot is based in part on Thuggee.
19582332	/m/04n0k3f	Degrees of Connection	Jon Cleary	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Scobie Malone as been promoted from inspector to superintendent, while Russ Clements is now head of Homicide. He investigates the murder of the personal assistant to Natalie Shipwood, the CEO of development company Orlando. Malone's son, Tom, seems to have impregnated a girlfriend who is subsequently murdered and his daughter Maureen is an ABC journalist covering the Securities Commission investigation into Orlando.
19584811	/m/04n6c8g	The Sound of One Hand Clapping	Richard Flanagan	1997	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book focuses the relationship between a woman, Sonja Buloh, and her father Bojan. Bojan is a European immigrant from the post-World War II period who came to work on the Tasmanian Hydroelectric Schemes, and a drunkard. While working on a remote construction camp in the central highlands in the winter of 1954, when Sonja was just three, Bojan's wife walked into a blizzard never to be seen again and leaving Bojan to raise his daughter. When Sonja returns to visit Tasmania and her father in 1989 as a balanced middle-aged woman, the past begins to intrude, changing both their lives forever.
19586494	/m/04n40z6	The Gone-Away World	Nick Harkaway	2008-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is primarily a science-fiction fantasy/comedy/epic that focuses on the events of the unnamed main character and his best friend Gonzo Lubitsch. The book starts with the characters in the "Nameless Bar," a title that is a reference to the main character's namelessness. They are in a world that is profoundly different from our own, with constant references to "the go-away war" and the "reification." They are all shocked when there are power failures and a news report shows that the Jorgmund pipe is on fire. The pipe is referred to as being the back bone of the world, the characters all thinking that this is the end of the world. The Haulage & HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company is hired by Jorgmund, which seems to be half corporation, half government body. As the company sets off, the unnamed protagonist starts thinking about his past, from the day he first met Gonzo. It then goes from this to a recount of a war between all of the world's factions with "go-away bombs," which remove information from matter, making it disappear entirely. The unnamed country that the protagonist is from uses these bombs in a mysterious foreign war, thinking that it is a revolutionary secret weapon. This sparks a war between all of the worlds factions using these go-away bombs, reducing the worlds population to 2 billion. The bomb that was supposed to be the cleanest weapon ever has an unexpected side effect in that the matter left over, referred to as "stuff," remains, floating around the world in great storms. Because it has no information, however, when ever it comes into contact with the noosphere it takes the form of whatever that person is thinking about. This causes horrific apparitions and creates people out of nothing who become known as "new." However, there is a way to stop this "stuff": the material that comes out of the Jorgmund pipe, known as FOX, which allows for a small strip of the world to become livable. In this way it is similar to nuclear holocaust fiction, as the world is completely different from what we know today.
19589142	/m/04n5klx	The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage				 The novel centres on the mystery of who could have set fire to Mr Hick’s cottage. The five children, Larry and Daisy Daykin, Pip and Bets Hilton, and newcomer Frederick Algernon Trotteville (later nicknamed Fatty from his initials), meet at the scene of the fire and end up solving the mystery together. Their suspects include an old tramp, a dismissed servant, a hostile colleague, and the housekeeper. They find certain clues: Broken-down nettles in a ditch, a footprint in a grassy field, jet planes (by Mr. Hick’s seeing). The children realise that as Mr Hick claims to have been in the London train when the cottage was burnt, but by his own report he saw the planes which flew over the village at the same time, he is contradicting himself. Fatty finds out that the cottage and the burnt papers Mr Hick describes as 'most important' were insured. The children deduce that Mr Hick burnt his own cottage for the insurance money.
19591210	/m/04n0k87	Corduroy Mansions	Alexander McCall Smith	2009	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in a fictional housing unit in London nicknamed Corduroy Mansions, and details the lives of the inhabitants of the large Pimlico house and others. The main characters are Barbara Ragg, Basil Wickramsinghe, Berthea Snark, Caroline Jarvis, Dee Binder, Eddie French, Freddie de la Hay, Jenny Hedge, Jo Partlin, Marcia Light, Oedipus Snark, Terence Moongrove, and William French. Book two in the award winning Corduroy Mansions series, "The Dog Who Came in from the Cold" ran from 21 Sept 2009 until 19 Dec 2009. Book three in the series, "A Conspiracy of Friends" ran from 13 Sept 2010 until 17 Dec 2010.
19594756	/m/04n3bg5	Kandide and the Secret of the Mists		2008	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As the beginning of the story, all is well in the Kingdom of Calabiyau. King Toeyad, ruler of the Fée, a race of fairies, is benevolent and just, and the twelve clans of fairies live in relative peace. When the king dies, his teenage daughter, Kandide, is expected to ascend to the throne. While preparing for her coronation, one of Kandide’s wings is crushed. The Fée value beauty above all else and so, to prevent the disgrace of having an “Imperfect” take the throne, Kandide’s mother banishes her to the Veil of the Mists, a land to the East populated by treacherous creatures and imperfect Fée. Without a clear heir to the throne, Calabiyau is thrown into turmoil. Kandide’s mother is put in mortal danger and cruel Lady Aron threatens to take the throne. Kandide’s younger sister, Tara, and brother, Teren, are sent to find Kandide and bring her home in hopes that she can set everything right.
19600770	/m/04n1xwc	The Dream Millennium	James White	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 John Devlin, a 26-year-old medical doctor, is the captain of a sleeper ship built to colonize planets in other solar systems. The spacecraft's trajectory is such that it will make passes of eleven stars thought to have a good chance of supporting habitable planets, over the course of about a thousand years. Most of the starship's systems are automated, so Devlin does not have to do much maintenance, but he is required to look at potential planets for colonization and solve problems as they arise. Except for being awoken at long intervals to eat, exercise, and perform his duties as captain, Devlin spends all of his time in hibernation, during which he dreams the entire lives of people and other creatures that lived and died on Earth in the past. The story switches back and forth between Devlin's life and dreams on the starship and his life on Earth before the starship's launch. On the starship, Devlin's dreams during hibernation are the lives of creatures of the prehistoric past, then as men, moving closer to the present day with each dream. Most of the lives he dreams are unpleasant, with painful deaths. He dreams of being: * a microorganism floating in the primordial ocean * a trilobite forced to take greater and greater risks to find more and more food as he grows, until his luck runs out * a vegetarian dinosaur, who survives an attack by a predator only to die later of gangrene when the wounds the predator inflicted become infected * the runt of a litter of small, primitive mammals * a medieval king, who wins a glorious battle in his youth but is compelled to turn to deceit as he ages to keep his kingdom in order * in the modern era, a smooth-talking salesman who dies in an automobile accident * a soldier killed in action during urban warfare * an airline pilot killed during a hijacking * a schoolteacher who becomes an early casualty of a nuclear war * Devlin's own father In the first half of the starship's voyage, Devlin finds only two planets that had any potential for human colonization, and found both unsuitable. One planet was entering Roche's limit and would not remain habitable for much longer, and the other was already inhabited by hostile aliens whose planet was in even worse shape than the Earth he had left behind. Devlin's life on Earth had been unpleasant. Although Earth's economy was strong, the abundance of food, consumer goods, and leisure time did not make people happy. Pollution and overcrowding reduced quality of life, and boredom led inevitably to crime and violence. This, in turn, led to the formation of rival bands of vigilantes, who turned on each other when they had stamped out crime. The government had abandoned its efforts to intervene in the violence, instead using the police force only to contain it when it broke out. People had become very thin-skinned and sensitive to any perceived slight, and disputes were usually settled by duelling. Guns and military-grade weapons were available to most civilians, making the violence very bloody indeed, and keeping the doctor busy treating gunshot wounds of those lucky enough not to be killed. Men were considered full citizens only if they were armed. Those who chose to go unarmed became second class citizens. Unarmed sheep, as they were called, were prohibited from duelling and could not be called out, but they were always considered to be in the wrong in a dispute. Women were chattel. Certain men, Devlin among them, were legally considered full citizens even though unarmed, because of their professions (in Devlin's case, a doctor). In practice, though, these technical citizens got little respect from regular citizens, many of whom were little more than thugs and bullies. Immersed in this decaying society, Devlin realizes that to make even his own life tolerable will be a daunting task, but he goes about it the best he can, until he meets a pastor, Brother Howard, who believes that the decay of society will accelerate into a final collapse when population growth and exhaustion of natural resources bring down the only remaining healthy human institution, the economy. If mankind is to survive, he says, it must colonize the stars. Brother Howard wants to recruit Devlin and his girl friend, Patricia Morley, for the starship. After their encounter with the aliens, Devlin makes several unsettling discoveries. One is that everyone on board the ship is having the same, or almost the same, dreams during hibernation. Another is that the dreams are slowly driving him insane, along with everyone else on the ship, driving one colonist to suicide. With Morley's help, he solves these problems, only to be presented with a new problem. The starship's electronic and electromechanical systems are failing as the starship ages. Only one more potentially habitable world can be reached before the life support systems begin to fail en masse, and Devlin and Morley discover to their horror that the world is inhabited by the same species of alien that attacked the ship during the flyby of one of the earlier star systems. Faced with the alternative of dying with the starship as it travels forever as a derelict hulk, they decide to land on the world anyway and take their chances with the aliens. Once in orbit around the planet, preparing to land, Devlin and Morley find that the aliens fled their home world for the same reason they themselves fled Earth, to escape from the pollution and violence of their home world to found their own space colony, a possibility that neither Devlin nor Morley had thought of. These aliens are happy to coexist with humans, and welcome them to their new home.
19602768	/m/04mxk94	It Had to Be You				 The Windy City isn't quite ready for Phoebe Somerville-the outrageous, curvaceous New York knockout who has just inherited the Chicago Stars football team. And Phoebe is definitely not ready for the Stars' head coach, former grid iron legend Dan Calebow, a sexist jock taskmaster with a one-track mind. Calebow is everything Phoebe abhors. And the sexy new boss is everything Dan despises-a meddling bimbo who doesn't know a pigskin from a pitcher's mound. So why is Dan drawn to the shameless sexpot like a heat-seeking missile? And why does the coach's good ol' boy charm leave cosmopolitan Phoebe feeling awkward, tongue-tied...and ready to fight?
19604029	/m/04n3cgh	The Longest Memory	Fred D'Aguiar	1994	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A young slave, Chapel, falls in love with the daughter of the plantation owner. He attempts to run away and join his lover in the north. However his father, Whitechapel, betrays his whereabouts, fearing that his son will die if he is not captured and returned home to the plantation. Chapel is captured and brought back to the plantation where he is whipped by Sanders Junior, the overseer. Chapel catches a fever after the whipping and dies, due to his weak state. Everybody blames Whitechapel for Chapel's death. Mr. Whitechapel, the owner of the plantation was away from the plantation that day, and was unaware of the occurrences taking place. He had given specific instructions to hold the slave until he returned, which were not carried out by Sanders Jr. Mr Whitechapel is angered when he finds out that Sanders Jr. whipped his half brother to death. Then the book goes back in time to the diary of Sanders Senior, the memories of Cook and Lydia. It is then finished with extacts from the Virginian local newspaper of the year 1810 having direct connections with the events of the story.
19608482	/m/04mzvst	Whispers in the Graveyard	Theresa Breslin	1994-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Solomon is a Scottish boy in the last year of primary school who is considered to be stupid and lazy, though he is actually dyslexic. He is bullied by his form teacher at school, and at home his father, who it is revealed is also dyslexic, drinks all the time and neglects him. Solomon often goes to the local graveyard for refuge. Overhearing a discussion between a council official and Professor Miller, he is upset to hear that his special place is to become a construction site. When the graveyard's protective rowan tree is uprooted by workmen, he has bad dreams and hears mysterious whispers. Driven by his father's behaviour to spend the night in the graveyard, he witnesses one of the workmen being swallowed up by the ground after unearthing a mysterious chest marked with the word "Malefice". He later discovers that the word means "witchcraft", and that a victim of the Scottish witch hunt is buried there. It seems she has awoken and is intent on vengeance. Amy Miller, the professor's young daughter, who has struck up a friendship with him, is drawn to the graveyard. Solomon follows to protect her from the evil presence which tries to possess her. With his father's help, he manages to rescue her and save himself. With the encouragement of Ms Talmur, one of the teachers from school who has helped him throughout the book but leaves to get a promotion at the end, he begins to change his life, although he knows it will be an uphill struggle. His father agrees to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous class to perhaps change his life also.
19609702	/m/04n6tcq	The Last Temptation				 Across northern Europe a sadistic serial killer has been gruesomely drowning experimental psychologists, and the case takes on a rare personal aspect for Tony Hill when one of his friends falls victim. Teaming up in Germany with old sidekick Carol Jordan, who's undercover on the trail of some very dangerous crime kingpins, he finds himself drawn into a complex web of Nazi atrocities, child abuse and retribution...
19611313	/m/04n3xrp	Why I Will Never Ever Ever Ever Have Enough Time to Read This Book				 A busy girl tries to find time to read, but something always stops her. By nightfall, she hasn't managed to read her book.
19614202	/m/04h3p	Lolita	Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov	1955	{"/m/0q9mp": "Tragicomedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's fictional "Foreword" states that Humbert Humbert dies of coronary thrombosis upon finishing his manuscript, the events of the novel. It also states Mrs. Richard Schiller dies giving birth to a stillborn girl on Christmas Day, 1952. Humbert Humbert, a literary scholar, has harbored a long-time obsession with young girls, or "nymphets". He suggests that this was caused by the premature death of a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh. After an unsuccessful marriage, Humbert moves to the small New England town of Ramsdale to write. He rents a room in the house of Charlotte Haze, a widow. While Charlotte shows him around the house, Humbert meets her 11-year-old daughter, Dolores, affectionately known as "Lo", "Lola", or "Dolly" with whom he immediately becomes infatuated, partly due to her uncanny resemblance to Annabel, and privately nicknames her "Lolita". Humbert stays at the house only to remain near her. While he is obsessed with Dolores, he disdains her crassness and preoccupation with contemporary American popular culture, such as teen movies and comic books. While Dolores is away at summer camp, Charlotte, who has fallen in love with Humbert, tells him that he must either marry her or move out. Humbert agrees to marry Charlotte in order to continue living near Lolita. Charlotte is oblivious to Humbert's distaste for her, as well as his lust for Lolita, until she reads his diary. Learning of Humbert's true feelings and intentions, Charlotte plans to flee with Lolita and threatens to expose Humbert as a "detestable, abominable, criminal fraud." However, fate intervenes on Humbert's behalf, for as she runs across the street in a state of shock, Charlotte is struck and killed by a passing car. Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, pretending that Charlotte has been hospitalized. Rather than return to Charlotte's home, Humbert takes Lolita to a hotel, where he gives her sleeping pills. As he waits for the pills to take effect, he wanders through the hotel and meets a man who seems to know who he is. Humbert excuses himself from the strange conversation and returns to the room. There, he tries molesting Lolita but finds that the sedative is too mild. Instead, she initiates sex the next morning, having slept with a boy at camp. Later, Humbert reveals to Lolita that Charlotte is dead, giving her no choice but to accept her stepfather into her life on his terms or face foster care. Lolita and Humbert drive around the country, moving from state to state and motel to motel. Humbert sees the necessity of maintaining a common base of guilt to keep their relations secret, and wants denial to become second nature for Lolita. He tells her if he is arrested, she will become a ward of the state and lose all her clothes and belongings. He also bribes her for sexual favors, though he knows that she does not reciprocate his love and shares none of his interests. After a year touring North America, the two settle down in another New England town, where Lolita is enrolled in a girls school. Humbert becomes very possessive and strict, forbidding Lolita to take part in after-school activities or to associate with boys. However, most of the townspeople see this as the action of a loving and concerned, though old-fashioned, parent. Lolita begs to be allowed to take part in the school play, and Humbert reluctantly grants his permission in exchange for more sexual favors. The play is written by Clare Quilty. He is said to have attended a rehearsal and been impressed by Lolita's acting. Just before opening night, Lolita and Humbert have a ferocious argument, and Lolita runs away while Humbert assures the neighbors everything is fine. He searches frantically until he finds her exiting a phone booth. She is in a bright, pleasant mood, saying that she tried to reach him at home and that a "great decision has been made." They go to buy drinks and Lolita tells Humbert she doesn't care about the play, rather, wants to leave town and resume their travels. As Lolita and Humbert drive westward again, Humbert gets the feeling that their car is being tailed and becomes increasingly paranoid, suspecting that Lolita is conspiring with others in order to escape. She falls ill and must convalesce in a hospital while Humbert stays in a nearby motel, without Lolita for the first time in years. One night, Lolita disappears from the hospital, with the staff telling Humbert that her "uncle" checked her out. Humbert embarks upon a frantic search to find Lolita and her abductor, but eventually gives up. During this time, Humbert has a two year relationship (ending in 1952) with an adult named Rita, who he describes as a "kind, good sport." She "solemnly approve[s]" of his search for Lolita. Rita figuratively dies when Humbert receives a letter from Lolita, now 17, who tells him that she is married, pregnant, and in desperate need of money. Humbert goes to see Lolita, giving her money in exchange for the name of the man who abducted her. She reveals the truth: Clare Quilty, an acquaintance of Charlotte's, the writer of the school play, and the man Lolita claims to have loved, checked her out of the hospital after following them throughout their travels and tried making her star in one of his pornographic films. When she refused, he threw her out. She worked odd jobs before meeting and marrying her husband, who knows nothing about her past. Humbert asks Lolita to leave her husband, Dick, and live with him, to which she refuses. He gives her a large sum of money anyway, which secures her future. As he leaves she smiles and shouts goodbye in a "sweet, American" way. Humbert finds Quilty, whom he intends to kill, at his mansion. Before doing so, he first wants Quilty to understand why he must die, for he took advantage of Humbert, a sinner, and he took advantage of a disadvantage. Eventually, Humbert shoots him several times (throughout which Quilty is bargaining for his life in a witty, though bizarre, manner). Once Quilty has died, Humbert exits the house. Shortly after, he is arrested for driving on the wrong side of the road and swerving. The narrative closes with Humbert's final words to Lolita in which he wishes her well, and reveals the novel in its metafiction to be the memoirs of his life, only to be published after he and Lolita have both died.
19622378	/m/04n424c	The Cat Who Talked Turkey	Lilian Jackson Braun	2004	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A gentleman gets shot and dies in the woods on Qwill's property, Koko howls his "death howl" at the exact time of the murder. The death is almost neglected because of the excitement about the neighboring town of Brr's bicentennial celebration. In order to write a story for the celebration, he interviews Edythe Carroll, who is a wealthy widow. Edythe, who now lives in Ittibittiwasse Estates, doesn't know that that her granddaughter Lish(Alicia) and her "driver"(Lush) trashed her mansion while they stayed in it. After Qwill convinces Mrs. Carroll to turn her historic mansion into a museum, "Lish & Lush" are evicted from the house. Gary Pratt (owner of the Hotel Booze) suggests Alicia to handle sound effect on Qwill's new one man show "The Great Storm". After Qwill hires her to research Koko's ancestry in Milwaukee, she is unable to assist with the show and is replaced by Maxine Pratt (Gary's wife and owner/operator of the marina in Brr). Alicia finds out "facts" about Koko's heritage (which are made up stories) and charges him an outrageous fee for the "research". After the dedication of the Carroll Museum, Edythe and Qwill return to Edythe's home to discover "Lish" has burglarized the place. She stole many valuable miniature porcelain shoes her grandmother had collected. Later it is revealed that she dies in a car accident, but the porcelain shoes are all fine, because they were wrapped in thick towels and in suitcases in the car. In the end "Lish & Lush" are revealed as the shooters of the man in the woods. Lush visits Qwill's barn, not knowing "Lish" was killed in an accident. After revealing that he was her "shooter" and learning he would be arrested, put on trial, etc. for the crimes they committed, he ends up shooting and killing himself in Qwill's gazebo. Koko "talks turkey" and begins attracting wild turkeys back to Moose County after a long absence.
19625933	/m/04m__bl	For Rent One Grammy One Gramps	Ivy Duffy Doherty	1982	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When the Barnes family come across a for a grammy and gramps for rent, the twins and their parents can't believe it, but respond anyway and become involved in a rewarding adventure they couldn't have imagined. .
19626252	/m/04n4tg7	The Garden of the Gods	Gerald Durrell			 This book is a humorous description of events that took place on the Greek island of Corfu between the years 1935 and 1939. The author was just ten years of age when he moved to Corfu with his family: his mother, Louisa Florence Durrell, his brothers Lawrence Durrell and Leslie Durrell, and his sister, Margaret Durrell (referred-to in the book as Margo). As in the first two volumes of the Corfu trilogy, the book is filled with amusing and atmospheric descriptions of the author's exploits catching, and making pets of, many of the local fauna, and the subsequent effects on his family who again feature as major characters. Other characters from the prequels also reappear here, such as Spiro (their Greek friend and chauffeur), Theodore Stephanides (family friend, doctor, poet and naturalist) and Mr Kralefsky (Gerald's one-time tutor in Corfu). Humour is also brought in the form of several new and colourful characters, including Lumis Bean, Harry Bunny, Prince Jeejeebuoy, and Count Rossignol. The Garden of the Gods was first published in 1978 by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, and simultaneously in America by Simon and Schuster (ISBN 0-671-24729-8). gl:The Garden of the Gods
19630554	/m/04mxl82	Satan from the 7th grade			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Adam Cisowski, a precocious and "devilishly clever" high school pupil (the "satan" of the title) spends a summer holiday at a run-down country house, presided over by "The Professor" - an aristocratic, eccentric mathematician who is friendly and affable but completely improvident. Suddenly, treasure hunting is launched by the discovery that an officer of Napoleon's Grand Army, who was taken care of by the Professor's ancestors in the aftermath of the disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia, may have left to his benefactors a hidden treasure (which would be very great help for their impoverished present-day descendants). However, the subtle trail of hints left by the French officer defy all minds but that of the "devilish" Adam. Adam energetically takes up the challenge, seeking to help his hosts - and in particular, win the heart of Wanda, the Professor's beautiful daughter. Throughout the book, he follows the perplexing trail, clue after clue, using hints from such sources as Dante's Inferno. Adam must, moreover, play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a nasty gang of criminals, who also got the scent and who are very determined to lay their own hands on the treasure. At a certain moment the search looks like having gotten to a dead end - a vital hint had been written on the door of an outbuilding, but the door is not there any more. It turns out, however, that the door in question was used as an improvised stretcher on which a wounded rebel was carried to a neighbouring village during the Polish 1863 uprising against Russian rule - and that after this use, the door had been installed at the village church, where Adam duly finds it and writes down the clue. Finally, Adam finds the treasure - not before providing the criminals which he knows to be following him with a red herring and letting them "rob" from him a heavy old cask full of worthless scrap iron. They open the cask with much trouble, suspect each other of cheating, get into a violent quarrel, and get arrested by the police. The true treasure, meanwhile found hidden in a stork's nest, is more lightweight - a small sack full of jewellery which the French officer presumably looted in Russia, and whose worth is more than enough to provide for the Professor and his family. In the book's final sentence, Adam looks from the glittering jewels to Wanda's eyes, and finds them "more precious than all treasures in the world". Israeli reviewer Aryeh Klein noted that in retrospect, the book assumes an unintended wilfulness: "The present-day reader knows, as the writer could not, that this is 1937 and that the horrors of Nazi occupation are just two years ahead for all these sympathetic characters in their pastoral countryside. In order to survive, Adam would all too soon need to outwit enemies far more brutal and ruthless than the book's rather clumsy gang of criminals". fr:Satan de la septième classe pl:Szatan z siódmej klasy
19631573	/m/05_5y4m	Kingdom Keepers II: Disney at Dawn	Ridley Pearson	2008-08-26	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with DHI (Disney Host Interactive, or Daylight Hologram Imaging) day at the Magic Kingdom. Finn and the other DHIs are riding on a float when Philby (a DHI) notices a gray balloon on the castle. Due to the growing thunderstorm, however, it disappears in the crowd. The kids also notice that Chernabog, a character supposed to be on one of the floats, has gone missing. As the parade continues, Finn sees his old friend Amanda, and her sister Jez (Jess). We learn in this book that the characters have begun to be called Kingdom Keepers because of an adopted name given from a local newspaper. Amanda is trying to warn Finn about something when Charlene notices a pair of monkey-like creatures following the float in the crowd. Jez slows, and Amanda (still trying to warn Finn) puts a green leaf to her cheek. Realizing what she means, Finn knows that Maleficent is in the castle. Together with Philby, the boys go to Escher's Keep and make it to the apartment Wayne (an old Imagineer) had shown them months before. A Dapper Dan, (who Finn immediately guesses as Security) follows the boys up the stairs, Finn trying to trick him by crossing over to his DHI state. Meanwhile the boys are trying to find out what's going on in the castle, Maybeck, Charlene, and Willa go to meet up with Amanda. Amanda realizes that Jez is a matter of fact a DHI, and doesn't know where her real sister went. Philby and Finn find Maleficent in the castle, who was moved there from the jail-cell from under Pirates of the Caribbean. Maleficent conjures her powers and breaks the bars on the window using the lightning storm, and she flies down the Tinkerbell rope from "Wishes" and flies off to the Animal Kingdom. Finn and Philby rescue the Tinkerbell actress and fly down the rope to Tomorrowland. That night, as they await to meet up online, Finn receives an IM from Wayne. Wayne tells him to meet him on a website, DGamer, a private place where VMK is still open (being that VMK closed in the book and in real life.) Wayne talks to Finn on a webcam, and Finn tells him about the nights events. Wayne tells Finn that the Overtakers have managed to clone one of the original, messed-up DHI servers from the first book and hide it somewhere in the Animal Kingdom. The Overtakers are using it to make DHIs out of animals as their army, and if any of the Kingdom Keepers (or Wayne) fall asleep, they will become their DHIs, controlled by the Overtakers' server, and can be put into permanent comas, similar to what happened to Maybeck in the first book. Wayne tells Finn that he and the other Kingdom Keepers must find Jez and destroy the second server in the Animal Kingdom, before they fall asleep and are at the Overtakers control, and must get to the Animal Kingdom at dawn, before opening, to get into the park. Finn warns the others, and they decide to use their Nintendo DS systems to chat using DGamer and meet up at the Animal Kingdom at dawn. Finn sneaks out of his house at 1 AM, and uses his bike to get to Amanda's house. He discovers that they live alone in an abandoned church. She tells him that she and Jez, who are not really sisters, are Fairlies, which means they are 'fairly human'. They have special powers, but Jez's powers are much more powerful, even more so than Maleficent's, which is why the Overtakers kidnapped her. Finn believes her, promises not to tell, and Amanda also shares that she and Jez grew up in the same orphanage, and both ran away, being that both of their parents died or disappeared. She also tells Finn that Jez had dreams before, about the future. She drew dreams in the diary, on a page filled with monkeys, a castle being struck by lightning, a sticker, a mountain, other drawings, and the words "CHANGE ROB" written over and over. Finn takes the page, being that it will help them, since the castle being struck by lightning happened the night before. While in the church, Finn and Amanda spy a large bat, suspiciously watching them. Later, at 4 in the morning, Finn sneaks back into his house and tells his mom he's going to the skate park and it is six in the morning. She believes him, and 'winning the rest of the day' tells her he will probably go to Blizzard Beach later with his friends. He and the DHIs, along with Amanda, meet up at the Animal Kingdom an hour later. They go into a type of warehouse, and discover that the Dapper Dan who chased Finn and Philby in Escher's Keep is in fact with Wayne. They change into cast members' clothing, Charlene notably dressing up as DeVine, a costumed vine character on stilts. Charlene and Willa discover a bat in the girls' room the size of a bowling pin, the same bat who was at Amanda's apartment. Maybeck catches it, and puts it in a pillowcase. The DHIs set out into the empty park, each as a different person. With Cast Member ID badges, they are free to go anywhere backstage as long as they aren't found out. In Animal Kingdom, Willa sets out into the jungle, she attempts to go to a feeding place disguised as a stump on the savanna. She is chased and nearly eaten by a dragon-type creature, but is safe once she enters the stump and zebras scare the dragon away. Willa notices that Jez is gone, and 'Change Rob' is written on the wall, just as in Jez's diary. Once the coast is clear, she goes back to the actual park to find Finn. Maybeck has orders from Finn to put the bat-hostage in the bat enclosure. However, he is attacked by thousands of birds who were stalking him all over. He isn't hurt by them, but the bat is taken away by a monkey. He desperately chases the monkey, following it into the monkey enclosure. However, Maleficent is in the enclosure and stops him and Maybeck is sent running for his life back to Finn. Philby, at the Convervation Station, has talked to Wayne on VMK and found out how to rig the cameras there and give him security camera access to all the cameras around the park. Charlene, who is posing as the DeVine character, is unseen by everyone, therefore giving her an advantage. She offers to watch the bat enclosure, because Amanda (who is at the Conservation Station) is watching all the cameras she can. Finn listens to Willa and Maybeck's stories, but all are equally puzzled. At this point, the park has opened to guests, and suddenly, the song "Under the Sea" (covered by Raven-Symoné) begins playing on the radios around the park. Amanda is in shock- this is Jez(Jess)'s favorite song, its on her iPod, and this song has never played anywhere in the Animal Kingdom—it's all out of area. Finn and Amanda deduce that Jez(Jess) must be playing this song from her iPod, and that this must be a clue about something. Willa and Finn each decide to check out this mystery by following the song's clue to other parks. Finn goes to Disney's Hollywood Studios and heads to the Voyage of the Little Mermaid theater show. While walking in the park, he notices a broomstick character from Fantasia is following him. Finn manages to hide in the show and watch, only to notice the broomstick character stop and study the show. Finn is confused. Meanwhile, Willa has gone to the Magic Kingdom to Ariel's Grotto, a picture station themed to The Little Mermaid. While there, she seems to cause a fuss by asking to open a fake treasure chest in the area, thinking it might contain something. It is revealed to be empty, and Willa is pushed away by a cast member, who remarks that a Captain Hook costumed character had also tried to do the same thing earlier. Willa eventually falls asleep at Mickey's Philharmagic and is taken away by the Overtakers, to be put in a hotel room with sleeping Philby. After following a clue, Finn and Amanda go to the vetrinary clinic and are confronted by Maleficent. Finn crosses over and Amanda uses her abilities to counter Maleficent's attacks. However, Finn's DHI begins to fail after seeing Maleficent show signs retreat and Amanda takes a blow. Enraged by this, Finn attacks Maleficent and demands for her to release Amanda. After she fulfills this, Finn knocks her down and he and Amanda escape. Jez is eventually found inside the Animal Kingdom's tiger enclosure, was found using the "Under the Sea" music clue. According to Google Earth, she was literally under the C in the ladn. Finn, Jez and Charlene have a near-death experience escaping from the tigers. The Keepers, Amanda, and Jez meet up and discover that Maleficent is going to free Chernabog at Expedition Everest, due to the fact Maleficent can only stand the cold. By the time they get to the attraction, the park has closed to guests, and the kids scale into the empty climactic end of the attraction. However, they are too late as Maleficent releases Chernabog from his trapped form as the animatronic ride Yeti. Chernabog tries to kill Finn, when Amanda saves him and the kids escape in an oncoming ride car. In the end, the Kingdom Keepers have failed to stop the Overtakers, who have reportedly hid away in Disney's Hollywood Studios in the back of an ice truck. The kids decide they must quickly find the stonecutter's quill if they want to regain leverage against the Overtakers, who have most likely been the cause of Wayne's sudden and mysterious disappearance. Amanda and Jez are now Kingdom Keepers. *Jez's real name is Jessica. It was only changed to Jez after Maleficent put a spell on her. * In the first book, it is not mentioned that Finn has a sister, but in this book, Finn tells us that his sister loves Stitch, and Amanda uses Finn's sister's DS (Username: panda) for communication with the others.
19638358	/m/04n02yr	The Cat Who Brought Down the House	Lilian Jackson Braun	2003	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A native of Moose County, Thelma Thackeray, is returning to die. She is 82, has fame and fortune, and owns a vacant opera house downtown. She wants to have fun before she dies. Everyone is curious about her. Local historians say that her twin brother, Thurston, had died from an accidental fall near Lockmaster. His son, Richard, has now moved in with Thelma. When Thelma decides to turn the opera house into a film club, Dick is offered the job of manager. The first public event is a fund-raiser, with wealthy citizens and their cats. That is when Koko brings down the house.
19645490	/m/04n0yxh	The Third Option	Vince Flynn	2000-10-31		 Mitch Rapp is sent on a highly sensitive mission in northern Germany to assassinate Count Heinrich Hagenmiller V, a powerful arms dealer that has been selling weapons to Saddam Hussein and other enemies of the United States. Rapp successfully slays Hagenmiller, only to be betrayed by his mission companions "Jane and Tom Hoffman", who attempt to kill Rapp by shooting him twice in the chest, not knowing he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Jane (the one that shot him) quickly stages the scene to implicate Rapp and then flees the location with Tom. A shocked Rapp eventually awakes. His injury has left a small pool of his blood on the floor. Not wanting to leave the forensic evidence behind, he sets the room on fire and quickly escapes. Back in Washington D.C., the situation in Germany quickly becomes known to politicians and officials, with a few trying to use the situation to their own advantage. Democratic Congressman Albert Rudin is not fooled by the CIA's denial of involvement, and argues that it is further proof that the CIA is bad for America and the world, and should be shut down. Henry "Hank" Clark, who is a corrupt, ambitious, and calculating Republican U.S. senator with his eye on the Presidency, is the one that ordered the hit on Rapp, hoping that his dead body would embarrass President Robert Xavier Hayes, and ruin the career of CTC Director, Dr. Irene Kennedy. Clark, along with Rudin and Secretary of State Charles Middleton, are in an alliance to stop Dr. Kennedy from succeeding the dying Thomas Stansfield as Director. Unbeknownst to Rudin and Middleton, Clark dispatches a group of contract killers led by "Professor" Peter Cameron, to initiate a widespread blood-purge that will eliminate any person that can leave a paper trail back to him. Rapp hides in France and gathers his thoughts. He believes it is possible that his boss, Dr. Irene Kennedy, the Director of the Counter Terrorism Center and "friend", ordered the Hoffmans to assassinate him in order to cover the situation up. Rapp eventually returns to Washington and confronts her and her boss, the CIA Director, Thomas Stansfield at his house. Also found in the room was retired SEAL Team Six Commander, Scott Coleman. With gun drawn, Rapp demands answers; after a brief discourse between him and his bosses, Rapp comes to realize that they had nothing to do with the attempt on his life. Rapp learns that many of his colleagues are being killed and that his girlfriend Anna Reilly has been kidnapped by the assassins. They kidnapped her in order to set a death trap for Rapp. The Hoffmans, (AKA The Jansens) are assassinated outside their home by Cameron. Rapp, along with Coleman and a few other agents, eventually rescue Anna, killing all of Cameron's men in the process. Cameron, who was talking to one of his men on the phone while the assault was executed, quickly learns that all has failed. Rapp contacts Cameron and pledges to kill him unless he confesses the identity of his employer. Cameron refuses to answer and quickly makes plans to leave the country. However, only moments before Rapp reaches Cameron, he is killed by an Italian assassin named Donatella Rahn, who was hired by Clark. The president soon learns about the coup d’état against him, and summons two of the main movers of the conspiracy, Rudin and Middleton. The president lambastes them in two separate meetings for betraying their party. He then demands them to tell him everything they know, so he may find out who ordered the hit on Rapp. Both of the men do not give the president any useful answers. Rudin is left without power within the Democratic Congressional caucus and Middleton is told he will be fired as Secretary of State. Shortly afterward Middleton is found dead in his apartment, ruled a suicide. It was Clark that ordered the hit, but pretends to know now nothing about it, even to his close friend Jonathan Brown, the Deputy Director of the CIA who hates both Stansfield and Dr. Kennedy. Clark announces to a shocked Brown that he is backing Dr. Kennedy's nomination, but assures him that Kennedy "will never make it through the confirmation process."
19646550	/m/04m_hsq	The Story of Egmo	Ben Cormack	2006-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist, 'Egmo' is an ill-fated anti hero whose many eccentricities put him firmly out of step with the world and everyone in it. When he unearths the global domination plans of local would-be-criminal-mastermind Krapodkin he sets out on a fantastical mission to restore relative normality.
19646972	/m/04n5y4q	The Ambassador's Mission		2010-05	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Twenty years after the "Ichani Invasion" the Guild has witnessed some major changes. Talented children from all social ranks are now accepted into the Guild even though tensions arise between the various groups. Upon learning the secrets of Black Magic the Rank of Black Magician was created. However, there are some restrictions since the guild is afraid a Black Magician might abuse his or her power. Sonea and the second Black Magician, Kallen, are thus supposed to control each other. Sonea now runs the Hospices which offer free healing to all (as seen at the end of "The High Lord"). Her son Lorkin has graduated and does not yet know what to do with his life. He is intrigued when reading Dannyl's records of old, forgotten magic. Dannyl however wants to visit Sachaka as the Guild's Ambassador and so Lorkin decides to join him which brings tensions to the Guild, some of the members fearing that sending the son of the man who killed so many Sachakans may be seen as an insult. After long discussions Lorkin is allowed to leave with Dannyl. Meanwhile the Thieves have broken their truce and no longer work together leading to a greater rivalry than before. Even worse, someone starts killing off Thieves; one after the other. When Ceryni's family is killed while he is at a meeting with Faren's successor Skellin, he takes a personal interest in finding the culprit. Upon learning that the "Thief Hunter" uses magic he informs Sonea of the rogue. They decide that if Cery can find her Sonea will trap her and bring her back to the Guild for investigation. They also decide not to inform the Guild fearing a similar unsuccessful manhunt as seen in "The Magicians' Guild". In Sachaka, Lord Lorkin and Ambassador Dannyl have difficulties adjusting to the fact that there are only slaves and no servants. Lorkin tries to befriend a female slave called Tyvara to learn from her. The Advisor to the King Ashaki Achati introduces them to many important people, some of whom have a lot of information about the history of magic, the Guild and the Sachakan war (which are of great interest to Dannyl and Lorkin). One night, Lorkin wakes up to a woman bedding him and thinking it is Tyvara (to whom he has struck a liking) lets her be. The woman is then surprised and killed (with Black Magic) by Tyvara. Lorkin finds out that there is a mighty rebel organization called “The Traitors” (of which Tyvara is a scout) who are led by women. Fearing further assassination attempts they decide to flee to the “Sanctuary,” the Traitors' headquarter in the Sachakan Mountains to the North. During their travels Lorkin finds out there are two factions of the Traitors which do not agree what to do with him. Twenty-five years previously, Akkarin had learned Black Magic from the Traitors and promised to teach them healing magic (of which the Sachakans have no knowledge). After killing Dakova he fled and thus broke his promise, which led to the death of the Queen’s daughter. This was the reason for one faction wanting to punish Lorkin for his father’s actions, the other wanting to learn healing magic from him. Dannyl, thinking that Lorkin has been kidnapped, decides to follow him and learns a lot about Sachakan culture from his companion Ashaki Achati. Meanwhile in Imardin Cery has informed his estranged daughter Anyi (from his first marriage) that she might be in danger and has taken her as his bodyguard, so that he can keep an eye upon her without anyone knowing of their relationship. He finds the traitor who to his surprise is a woman of the same race as Skellin. He informs Skellin of his progress and receives a tip on where the woman might be. After informing Sonea and Regin (with whom Sonea is now on speaking terms) they set out to capture the woman, only to realize she is not the rogue they originally discovered. Anyi, who watches the action from a distance, observes the original rogue and informs Sonea who (with the help of two other magicians) manages to capture her. After reading both womens' minds, Sonea discovers that the real traitor is Skellin’s mother and the Thief Hunter. The other woman was blackmailed and set up to be caught by Cery. At the hearing, Anyi and Cery were also questioned and Anyi recognizes Black Magician Kallen to be an accomplice of Skellin’s, setting a new mystery to be investigated in “The Rogue”. In Sachaka, Tyvara and Lorkin meet Speaker Savara and travel to Sanctuary with her. Dannyl and a group of Sachakan Ashaki gain on the Traitors. Dannyl gets deliberately separated from the group and talks to Lorkin, who convinces him to give up since the Traitors would otherwise kill Dannyl. Lorkin then continues on to Sanctuary, where he speaks upon Tyvara’s behalf in the trial held against her for murder. Thanks to Lorkin she is found as not guilty but is confined to Sanctuary. Lorkin, as an outsider, is also confined but is committed to help in some way. As a twist of fate they send him to the sick houses to heal. Lorkin hopes to arrange a deal with the Traitors involving trading some old forgotten magic (like Storestones) for healing magic.
19648835	/m/04mww8x	Necessary Heartbreak	M. J. Sullivan	2008-09-29	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Michael Stewart is a single dad in modern-day New York struggling to raise his feisty 13 year-old daughter, Elizabeth. Feeling beaten down by life, he shuts out new relationships but fate, or perhaps something more divine, has other plans. When they stumble upon a root-cellar door in a church basement, they discover a portal leading back to first-century Jerusalem during the tumultuous last week of Christ’s life. There they encounter Leah, a grieving widow, and a menacing soldier, determined to take Elizabeth as his own. Trapped in the past - both literally and figuratively - Michael comes face to face with some of his most limiting beliefs, and realizes he must open himself up to the possibility of a deeper faith in God, people, himself, and love if he is to find his way home.
19653545	/m/04n4n3h	A Darker Domain	Val McDermid	2008	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 During the infamous UK miners' strike, a wealthy young heiress and her infant son are kidnapped in Fife, before a botched payoff leaves her dead and the child missing. Twenty-two years later, DI Karen Pirie, an expert on cold cases, interviews a journalist who may have found a clue to the enigma while on vacation in Tuscany. However, she soon becomes preoccupied with another missing persons case from about the same time. Fellow mine workers and even his own wife believed that Mick Prentice notoriously broke ranks and left to join a group of 'scab' strike breakers far south in Nottingham, but recent evidence suggests that his disappearance might not have been as simple as that. Moreover, Mick's grown daughter Misha desperately needs to find her estranged father for critical reasons of her own. DI Pirie soon finds herself stumbling through a darker domain of violence, greed, secrets and betrayal. The novel jumps back and forth between the time of the key events of both cases during the miners' strike and the current day. The flashbacks provide scattered, nonsequential background for the facts in the order that Pirie and present-day others discover them or relate them. This structure allows the author to present intricate plotlines and reveal facts in a manner that sustains the suspense. Because the plot is convoluted, however, and McDermid didn't offer the readers graphics to help them orient themselves in the local landscape, readers may want to glance at maps of the Fife area and Tuscan countryside where the plot locations are noted.
19657369	/m/0hht24f	Absolution	Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson			 When he died, Peter Peterson left behind the trappings of a seemingly charmed life: a vast fortune, two children, and a stately Park Avenue address. But he left something else behind: a sheaf of confessions about a dark period of his youth. In pages written weeks before his death, he reveals a crime of passion, committed in the throes of unrequited love, that has burdened him for his entire life. Yet as he finishes his story, he encounters a surprise that will shake the very foundation of his past. Spanning a boyhood in Iceland to the Nazi occupation of Denmark to a cunning business career in modern-day Manhattan, Absolution echoes Dostoevsky and Ibsen as it masterfully plumbs the darkest corners of a sinister mind and a wounded heart.
19661209	/m/04mxtg8	Expiration Date	Tim Powers		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 There are two main protagonists and two main antagonists. The protagonists are Koot Hoomie "Kootie" Parganas and Pete "Teet" Sullivan. Kootie is an eleven-year old boy and Sullivan is a man in his early 40's. The novel takes place mostly in Los Angeles in the year 1992, and there are references to the United States presidential election. The main antagonists are Sherman Oaks and Loretta deLarava. As in Last Call, the previous novel of Tim Powers' Fault Line series, a prominent theme is the quest for immortality. Oaks' age is unknown, deLarava's age is 76 (but she often appears to be younger); both have been prolonging their lives by ingesting ghosts. There is a magical system surrounding these ghosts - their behavior, how they are ingested, how to catch them so that they may be ingested, and even a mysterious market where the bottled ghosts are bought and sold. In their ready-to-be digested state, they are known as "smokes" or "cigars". The narrative is propelled by this chase for ghosts. Koot Hoomie Parganas has unwittingly ingested the ghost of Thomas Edison. However, because Kootie hasn't yet reached puberty, he isn't able to digest it. In its undigested state, the ghost of Edison functions as a helper to Kootie. Because of Edison's powerful personality, this ghost is particularly sought after by both antagonists who wish to ingest it themselves. In addition, Loretta deLarava is pursuing the ghost of Pete Sullivan's father. If Loretta deLarava manages to capture Pete Sullivan, it will help her to locate Pete Sullivan's father's ghost, Arthur Patrick "Apie" Sullivan. Pete Sullivan has his own helper, a former psychiatrist named Angelica Anthem Elizalde. Loretta deLarava also pursues Solomon Shadroe. Shadroe is the former Nicky Bradshaw. Shadroe/Bradshaw is also a son of Arthur Patrick "Apie" Sullivan, albeit a godson. Shadroe/Bradshaw played "Spooky" in a fictional situation comedy called "Ghost of a Chance".
19664438	/m/0g565qz	Before I Die	Jenny Downham	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tessa is diagnosed with leukemia. Despite her four-year devotion to chemotherapy she has discovered that her cancer is terminal and her doctors don't give her very long to live. Tessa with the help of her best friend Zoey comes up with a list of things she wants to do before she dies, including some risky behaviors that she deems necessary to have "lived". Tessa's dad is resistant to Tessa's behavior from the start but realizes he has little influence and can only enjoy the time they have left. Best friend Zoey is excited and supportive of the outrageous bucket list until an unplanned pregnancy test comes up positive. Tessa's parents are divorced and have very different views on her desire to experience the dangerous side of life before she passes. Her mother is loving and joking about the situation and seems supportive whereas her father is timid and just wants to spend time with his daughter. Her father's main mechanism for coping is denial. She mentions that he spends hours on the computer looking up possible treatments for her even after the doctors have told her that the cancer has consumed her body. Tessa's brother Cal is a brutally honest individual that has mixed feelings throughout the novel ranging from lack of care to jealousy to sadness. In the beginning of the novel Cal says to his sister "I'm gonna miss you" during a joking situation. One of Tessa's last wishes is to find love, of which she thinks she has with her neighbor Adam. Adam is shy and his main priority is taking care of his sickly mother after their father died. The book, written in first person from Tessa's point of view, follows her last few months of life, explores her relationships with her loved ones, and her personal feelings about being trapped in a failing body. At the end of the novel Tessa does pass away.
19669163	/m/07kg1qp	Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys	H. A. Rey	1939	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story follows the exploits of Cecily Giraffe, or simply "Cecily G." for short. She is saddened by the loss of her fellow jungle animals and family, all of whom had been captured and placed in a zoo. In another section of the jungle lived a female monkey named Mother Pamplemoose. She and her eight offspring were left homeless by the loss of all the trees in their forest due to woodcutters. It is here the character of Curious George is introduced, who declares that it is time for the family to pack their belongings and move on. Eventually, the monkeys can go no further due to a deep ravine. It is baby Jinny, the youngest monkey, who notices the dejected Cecily G. on the other side of the ravine. Cecily G. notices the monkeys as well, immediately stops crying and asks the monkeys if they would like to cross. To assist them in crossing, Cecily G. leaps forward across the divide, bridging it with her body. Curious George is the first monkey to cross and introduces the family to their rescuer. When each learns of the other's plight, Cecily invites the monkeys to stay and live with her. The climax occurs when a fire breaks out in the upper floors of Cecily's tall, giraffe-shaped house. The monkeys work as a team with Cecily; two of the strongest monkeys work an emergency water pump while the remaining six guide the hose to the top of Cecily's neck, using her height to reach the fire. That incident cements the bond of friendship, so much so that James, one of the young monkeys, composes a song in Cecily's honor. The final page of the book features the lyrics and musical notation of the song with the monkeys serving as notes and Cecily as the treble clef.
19674575	/m/04n40zk	Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream		1910		 Although Minor Tactics begins in the forward with thanks and appreciation to F. M. Halford for his Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice published in 1889 as the last word on chalk stream fishing for trout, the book marks Skues' long campaign to restore the wet fly to its rightful place on the chalk streams of England from which the wet fly had been banished during the dogmatic dry fly period of the last 19th century. From the Foreword: Rising from the perusal of "Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice" on its publication by F. M. Halford in 1889, I think I was at one with most anglers of the day in feeling that the last word had been written on the art of chalk-stream fishing—so sane, so clear, so comprehensive, is it ; so just and so in accord with one's own experience. Twenty years have gone by since then without my having had either occasion or inclination to go back at all upon this view of that, the greatest work, in my opinion, which has ever seen the light on the subject of angling for trout and grayling; and it is still, as regards that side of the subject with which it deals, all that I then believed it. But one result of the triumph of the dry fly, of which that work was the crown and consummation, was the obliteration from the minds of men, in much less than a generation, of all the wet-fly lore which had served many generations of chalk stream anglers well. The effect was stunning, hypnotic, submerging; and in these days, if one excepts a few eccentrics who have been nurtured on the wet fly on other waters, and have little experience of chalk streams, one would find few with any notion that anything but the dry fly could be effectively used upon Hampshire rivers, or that the wet fly was ever used there. I was for years myself under the spell, and it is the purpose of the ensuing pages to tell, for the benefit of the angling community, by what processes, by what stages, I have been led into a sustained effort to recover for this generation, and to transmute into forms suited to the modern conditions of sport on the chalk stream, the old wet-fly art, to be used as a supplement to, and in no sense to supplant or rival, the beautiful art of which Mr. F. M. Halford is the prophet. How far my effort has been successful I must leave my readers to judge. I myself feel that in making it I have widened my angling horizon, and that I have added enormously to the interest and charm of my angling days as well as to my chances of success, and that, too, by the use of no methods which the most rigid purist could rightly condemn, but by a difficult, delicate, fascinating, and entirely legitimate form of the art, well worthy of the naturalist sportsman. In the course of my too rare excursions to the river-side, I have elaborated some devices, methods of attack and handling, which I have found of service, some applicable to wet-fly, some to dry-fly fishing, or to both. In the hope that these may be of interest or service, I have included papers upon them.
19679217	/m/04n35hq	The Perfect Pumpkin Pie				 On Halloween, Mrs. Wikinson bakes a perfect pie for her grouchy husband and reminds him that when they die, there will be no pie. After she said that, her husband yells that he isn't going then. Soon after, he falls dead into his pumpkin pie. The widow buries him in the yard and moves away. Jack and his grandmother moves in and they bake a pie. The husband returns as a ghost to eat some pumpkin pie. He rejects the first, but he eats the third one and then goes underground... He comes back above the ground when he smells apple pie.
19679622	/m/04n4jkb	January		1998		 The book is divided into four parts, the Prologue, Part I that contains chapters one through five, Part II that contains chapters six through twelve, and Part III that contains chapters thirteen through fifteen. The series starts on January 1, 1999 in a Russian military installation north of the Arctic Circle, five minutes before the countdown to the year 1999 in the Pacific Time Zone. In the midst of a toast inside, the base is suddenly attacked by a very mysterious group of female teenagers. With the stationed soldiers dead, secret weapons contained in the base are launched. The series starts with a Prologue on January 1, 1999 in a Russian military installation north of the Arctic Circle, five minutes before the countdown to the year 1999 in the Pacific Time Zone. In the midst of a toast inside, the base is suddenly attacked by a very mysterious group of female teenagers. With the stationed soldiers dead, secret weapons contained in the base are launched. The first chapter introduces seventeen year old Ariel Collins, Jezebel Howe, Brian Landau, and Trevor Collins in Washington, USA. Just two seconds before the end of 1998, a solar flare occurs, resulting in a power outage. The plot then moves to New York City, introducing characters Julia Morrison and her boyfriend Luke at a nightclub. At 3:01 AM, about a minute after the secret weapons are launched, Julia, in the midst of watching her boyfriend dancing with someone else finds that the music abruptly stops and the lights turn off. Strange things begin happening, and Julie receives a mysterious vision. She wakes up to find that the person next to her has disappeared and has left a puddle of what seemed to be wet putty. Moving on, the book introduces twenty year old Dr. Harold Wurf in a hospital in Austin, Texas, where he is on a New Year's thirty-two hour shift. Seven minutes after the launch of the weapons, the hospital, University of Texas Hospital still has power. He decides to check up on an attractive patient he's forgotten about. After a tedious conversation, the patient tells him that she feels very hot and needs some water and suddenly develops strange symptoms. But soon enough, she melts into a black puddle before his eyes. Harold Wurf is consumed by terror, and runs out of the room only to find out that absolutely everyone has vanished, leaving articles of clothes and thick black puddles. At last the plot moves to Jerusalem, Israel, introducing eighteen year old atheist Sarah Levy who decided to study in Israel and her brother Joshua Levy on a bus with their granduncle Elijah. Ten minutes after the launch, and after learning about the sudden blackouts of major cities around the world, Sarah is left with a bus filled with silent prayer. A radio reports that there has apparently been a massive solar flare. Elijah suddenly begins babbling about a prophecy on a scroll but becomes ill and sure enough, disintegrates into a black puddle. With everyone except for Sarah and her brother reduced to piles of blood, pus, blackness and clothing, the bus becomes out of control. Meanwhile, back in Washington, fifteen minutes into the new year, as the four teenagers begin suspecting the launch of a nuclear war caused the outages, Ariel's ill tempered father comes back to their house early. Entering, he finds a large supply of empty beers and four drunk teens. He begins to throw a fit when he suddenly collapses. Sure enough, he melts into a puddle. After nearly twenty-four hours of unconsciousness, Sarah wakes up in a crash yard, nearby the bus she was on, with her brother taking care of her. Josh believes the world is falling apart, but Sarah have a very hard time believing him. Chapter seven introduces punk-like George Porter and very obese Eight Ball, two sixteen-year-olds jailed for hot-wiring a car on New Year's Eve. Three days after any adult over twenty disintegrates, the two are found starving and thirsty in a jail cell, on the verge of cannibalistic ideas. Out of anger, George kicks the hard metal cell door, cracking a few bones in his right foot and loosening a screw. While in immense pain, Eight Ball manages to knock out the screw from its place and squeeze through the door. But instead of helping George through the door, Eight Ball runs off. In the midst of a fight between Julia and her drunk boyfriend in their New York City apartment, Julia acts on impulse and runs away from him. She only makes it to the bottom floor when she is confronted with three 'love' searching thugs. Luke manages to catch up to her with a bottle of booze. After a negative conversation, Luke fatally bashes one of the three with the bottle. He then decides that they should leave the city and go west, where Julie wanted to go anyway, even though Luke thinks her visions are 'pretty wild.' Back in Texas, Harold finds himself extremely overloaded with teenage medical issues, barely having received more than a trinkle of sleep over the past week. After a few quickly solved cases, the teenagers start believing he has the magical power to heal. Harold realizes that there isn't much he can do to make them believe otherwise, so he just goes with it.
19680452	/m/04n43z5	The Charioteer of Delphi	Caroline Lawrence	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 September, A.D. 80: Flavia, Jonathan, Nubia, and Lupus are celebrating Nubia's birthday with their families and their friend Porcius, when a teenaged boy named Scopas arrives from Delphi with a message from Lupus’s mother, Melissa. She sends her love to her son, and asks, as a favor, that he help Scopas find a job with one of the chariot racing factions in Rome. He has already won races in Greece, despite being barely 13 years old. Though Scopas is awkward and strange in his manner, Flavia agrees to help him, and sends him to Rome with a letter asking her uncle and avid racing fan, Senator Cornix, to arrange an introduction. A few weeks later, Scopas sends a letter to Ostia, saying that he has been taken on by the Green faction at the Circus Maximus, which is facing a crisis: their prize racing horse, Sagitta, has disappeared, and the Greens are offering a 100,000 sestercii reward for his safe return before the start of the next games. Flavia and the others arrange a trip to Rome when Flavia's father has to commission some repair work on their home, and leave on another voyage. Arriving in Rome with Aristo, they are taken to the Greens’ stables to meet Scopas, who works as a groom. The lead trainer, Urbanus, says Scopas is the best groom he has ever known, but the other grooms despise him for his strange behavior (and possibly out of jealousy). Among the Greens' recently acquired horses, Nubia recognizes a stallion named Pegasus, who was previously owned by Publius Pollius Felix (in The Sirens of Surrentum). Nubia confides that she has been having nightmares about being trapped in a burning tent; showing a surprising empathy with the horses, she believes that both she and Pegasus have terrible memories of losing family members to fire when they were very young. As the children leave the stables to begin looking for Sagitta, a one-legged beggar says he knows exactly where to find the horse. Flavia is skeptical, but Nubia gives him a coin, and to everyone's amazement, the horse is indeed waiting right where the beggar said he would be. The horse is healthy, though there are signs that his legs have been burned. They lead the horse back to the stables in triumph, earning the reward, free entry permits to the stables, and a complimentary ride in the team's chariots during one of their practice runs. When Flavia and Co. attend the first day of the races with Senator Cornix and his family, things begin to go wrong for the Greens. Inexplicably, the horses being driven by the most prestigious charioteers go berserk on the track, throwing their riders and causing terrible, often fatal, crashes. In the stables, the four friends find other examples of sabotage, including stealing the charioteers' personal votive statuettes, and replacing the pins of the chariots with wax replicas. Flavia theorizes that someone has a grudge against the Greens, or else is trying to fix the race to win at gambling. She suspects Urbanus, who is strangely ambivalent about their success in exposing several of the sabotage tricks. But her theory seems to fail when two charioteers from the Red faction are also put out of action. Lupus scouts out the track during the next race, and sees a boy, disguised as one of the Greens’ stable boys, hiding near the track with a bone whistle. Flavia realizes that several of the Greens' star horses have been abducted, and then returned, after being tortured with fire and conditioned to fear burning when they hear a high-pitched sound. Urbanus is skeptical, until Nubia blows a note on her flute and Sagitta goes berserk inside his stall. Urbanus panics, realizing that without Sagitta, he does not have a team ready to run in the next day’s race. Scopas steps forward, volunteering to drive a team with Pegasus in Sagitta's place. Urbanus grudgingly agrees. Flavia realizes that all of the targeted charioteers were drivers for the Greens in the previous year, including the two who now race for the Reds. The only one left is a man named Hierax, who they are told retired after being maimed in a crash a year ago. The friends return to their seats with Senator Cornix, to watch the remainder of the races. But when they get up to leave, Flavia realizes that Nubia and Lupus are gone. Running back to the stables, they see that Pegasus is also gone. It turns out that the one-legged beggar who helped them before has convinced Nubia to lead Pegasus away from the stables, rather than risk him being hurt in the races. Nubia has come to love the horse, and seizes on the chance to take him to a better place. The beggar leads them to a supposedly abandoned house in Rome, which has a stable outfitted to receive Pegasus. But Nubia realizes that the house isn't abandoned at all, it belongs to the “beggar” who reveals himself to her at the same time Flavia and the others learn his true identity: he is Hierax, the former charioteer. After losing his celebrity and his leg after the chariot accident, he has become bitter and vengeful; in his paranoia, he now believes that the crash and everything that came after was a conspiracy by Urbanus and the Greens to get rid of him. He has arranged the whole series of accidents to get his revenge on the Greens. But as he steps forward to tie Nubia up, Pegasus rears and knocks over a lamp, setting the stable on fire. Lupus has followed Nubia as far as the house, and runs back to the Circus to fetch reinforcements. Urbanus, Flavia, Jonathan, and Senator Cornix rush to the house as it begins to burn. Inside, Nubia douses herself and Pegasus with water and then mounts him, whispering that the only way to save their lives is for Pegasus to brave his fears and jump through the flames. He does so, and they escape the house. But Urbanus has already run inside to see if there are any others, and is trapped by falling debris. Remembering the other victims of the great fire in Rome, that he blames on himself, Jonathan rushes inside and drags Urbanus to safety, suffering a near-fatal asthma attack as a result of smoke inhalation. Everyone recovers, and Hierax and his accomplices are caught. The next day, Scopas convinces Nubia that, although chariot racing may be very dangerous, both he and Pegasus truly love it. Nubia senses through her bond with Pegasus that this is true. She gives Pegasus her blessing before he runs his first race. To everyone's great amazement, Scopas wins the race, something unheard of for a novice charioteer in his first run. The children's friend, Senator Cornix's slave Sisyphus, wins his freedom on a bet from Senator Cornix, and makes a small fortune betting his savings on Scopas. Scopas receives his victory crown from the Emperor himself, and as he takes his triumphal ride around the track, he invites Nubia to join him, calling it her victory as well as his. Senator Cornix's two young children, yelling Scopas’s name, say “Scorpus” by mistake, and the crowd takes up the chant with enthusiasm. Scopus says he doesn't mind. “It can be my new name for my new life.”
19689835	/m/04n37c5	The Way of a Trout with the Fly		1921		 The of Way of a Trout was originally intended to be a treatise on the theory and practice of dressing trout flies but, by Skues's own admission, does not do a very good job of it. The book does include a number of original and interesting chapters on fly dressing and Skues's theories on the vision of trout. Additionally, the Minor Tactics section expands on Skues's exploration of nymph fishing for trout.
19692008	/m/04mz9dq	The Sky Is Falling	Kit Pearson	1989	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Norah and Gavin Stoakes live in a peaceful English village until WWII causes them to be evacuated to Toronto. Norah, an independent ten year old, is angry with the evacuation and resents having to care for Gavin. Five-year-old Gavin does not understand the evacuation and is confused and frightened. When they arrive in Canada, Norah and Gavin are placed with Florence Ogilvie, a bossy and cold widow and her timid spinster daughter, Mary. The Ogilvies only wanted Gavin but were convinced to take Norah as well. Norah is acutely aware of their preference toward Gavin, rather than her. While Gavin quickly settles into his new home where he is spoilt and coddled by Florence, Norah cannot settle. She dislikes Florence, is bored in her strict new home, is unpopular at her new school, begins to wet the bed (something she was very angry at Gavin for doing on the boat), and constantly worries about what is happening to her family in England. As weeks go by, Norah’s resentment of Florence increases. Although she begins to make new friends, her misery increases as she realizes she cannot return to England for much longer than she originally thought. After Florence and Norah have an argument, Norah decides to run away and return to England on her own. She originally leaves without Gavin but decides she cannot leave him to be spoilt by Florence in a foreign country. She takes him with her but they only get as far as the train station before Norah realizes her plan is impossible. They return to the Ogilvies, expecting punishment but find that Florence and Mary have been very worried. Florence apologizes for ignoring Norah in the past months and asks if they can begin again. Norah accepts the offer and attempts to try live happily in Canada. Life begins to improve and Norah accepts Canada as her temporary home for the duration of the war.
19695807	/m/04mz1q9	Fire Study	Maria V. Snyder	2008-03	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Yelena and friends set off to capture Cahil and Ferde, the soul stealer, only to find that they are not the biggest threat to Sitia anymore. A clan of magicians using Blood magic is trying to take over the Citadel and they will kill anybody that stands in their way. But with the possibility of someone close to her being a traitor and the added stress of finding out what it means to be a Soul finder, Yelena may not be able to stop the Fire Warper from taking control of Sitia. Especially when her loyalty is tested and she may have to pick a side with the possibility of a war between Sitia and Ixia on the horizon.
19712795	/m/04n54z2	The Secrets of Harry Bright	Joseph Wambaugh	1985	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Paco Pedroza is chief of police in Mineral Springs, California, a small nondescript desert town near Palm Springs. The Los Angeles Police Department informs him that they have developed a new lead in a notorious, unsolved Palm Springs homicide in which the body was found in Solitaire Canyon, a notorious biker hangout within Mineral Springs. While Paco unenthusiastically prepares for a visit by an LAPD homicide team, desert rat drunkard Beavertail Bigelow, the object of a prank by one of Paco's cops, stumbles across an antique ukelele in the desert that will become a key piece of evidence in the renewed investigation. On election day 1984 in Los Angeles, LAPD Sgt. Sidney Blackpool is invited to the corporate office of high tech industrialist Victor Watson, who son Jack was the victim in the Palm Springs homicide. Over drinks, Watson tells Blackpool he pulled strings with LAPD to arrange for Blackpool to investigate a new lead that tenuously ties the case to Blackpool's jurisdiction in Hollywood. Blackpool suspects that the lead is a pretext to draw in the resources of LAPD after both Palm Springs and the Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to solve the case. Watson knows that Blackpool's son died at approximately the same time, and using that to engage his sympathies, persuades Blackpool to work the case as part of an expenses-paid golf vacation for himself and his partner, Otto Stringer, in Palm Springs. His inducement is a suggested promise of a retirement job for Blackpool as head of security for Watson Industries. During the search for the missing Jack Watson, Officer O.A. Jones of Mineral Springs PD became lost in the desert, where he accidentally became a witness in the investigation, and in finding the lost O.A. Jones, other officers found the victim's body in a burned out car. While O.A. Jones tries to unravel his delerium recollections of a song he overhead being sung at the crime scene, other officers confiscate the ukelele, which Bigelow has sold to another desert rat, as the weapon used in a domestic violence case. Blackpool and Stringer check into a posh Palm Springs hotel with $10,000 in $500 bills ("President McKinleys") as expense money. Their investigation starts slowly, as both are more interested in vacation amenities than work. After a visit to the Watson house, where they interview the live-in "houseboy", Harlan Penrod, and then a phone call to the Palm Springs PD, the investigation picks up speed as both conclude that a kidnapping was highly unlikely and try to figure out why Jack Watson would have gone to Solitaire Canyon. Harlan provides a photo of Jack with a possible suspect. The investigation, with rounds of golf sandwiched in between, takes them to the Mineral Springs PD, the Eleven Ninety-nine Club (a cop bar in Mineral Springs), a gay bar in Palm Springs, a biker's shack in Solitaire Canyon, the Thunderbird Country Club, and a nursing home in Indio. The ukelele and the LAPD cops intersect at the cop bar, where Blackpool makes the connection linking it to O.A. Jones's memory. As suspects are investigated and eliminated as possibilities, Sidney Blackpool and Otto are forced to confront the possibility that either of two sergeants of the Mineral Springs PD, Harry Bright or Coy Brickman, might be Jack Watson's killer. A tryst with Harry Bright's ex-wife provides the final clues for Sidney Blackpool, who confronts Paco Pedroza with his suspicions. After a heated confrontation, Pedroza agrees to cooperate in arranging ballistics tests of his officers' pistols but before that can take place, fate intervenes. Blackpool and Otto confront Coy Brickman, who reveals a hypothetical solution to the case to avoid implicating himself, tying off all loose ends raised by the investigation. Blackpool demands to see for himself proof of Harry Bright's invalid condition, which is far worse than he had considered. Afterwards, Otto washes his hands of the case and returns to Los Angeles without Sidney Blackpool, who takes the information to Victor Watson. When the interview shatters Blackpool, Sidney returns to Mineral Springs and finally discovers Harry Bright's secret.
19713686	/m/04n01q6	Omega	Jack McDevitt		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A world of strikingly humanoid beings is discovered to be in the path of an Omega cloud, which attack and destroy anything with a sharp corner. The beings' civilization is strikingly similar to the early Greeks. Hutch is part of an expedition to save them if possible, using a new discovery.
19715969	/m/04n5hg4	A History of Fly Fishing for Trout		1921		 A History of Fly Fishing for Trout is the first book to trace the history of fly fishing from its very beginning, with chapters on Early Sporting Literature, Early Fly Fishing in France, and identifying all the artificial flies mentioned by early writers. With a useful bibliography.
19719262	/m/04n33wt	Désert	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio	1980-05-06	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Two stories are interwoven. The shorter, which begins and ends the book, is specifically set in 1910–1912 and tells of the last uprising of the desert tribes against the French protectorate of Morocco, mostly as observed by a small boy, Nour. The longer, the story of Lalla, is set in an indefinite time, but obviously after the Second World War. It describes her early life in a Shanty "city" on the edge of an unnamed Moroccan coastal town, and particularly her friendship with "the Hartani" who, like her, originates from the desert tribes. It narrates the time she spends in Marseilles and her eventual return to the shanty city, where she gives birth to the Hartani's child.
19720176	/m/04myxhr	Mother Warriors	Jenny McCarthy	2008-09		 The book shares the personal stories of several families fighting autism. These stories focus on alternative autism therapies that they try to heal their children, as well as McCarthy's own reminiscing about her autistic child and her outspoken and contentious activism. The book includes the daughter of the founder of Autism Speaks, who claims to have changed her son's diet and improved his autism despite conspiratorial resistance from the organization, which, the book claims, until recently, rejected research into biomedical treatments; a mother who is claimed "healed" her son of his autism while taking on breast cancer; a father whose son was officially undiagnosed after allegedly under-going treatment for a laundry list of debilitating autism symptoms and regressions; and a sixty-year-old woman who made attempts to fight to save her son (now thirty) in the 1980s, the book exclaims that she paved the way for the parents of today. The book also features a list of controversial autism resources and a directory of DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!) doctors who are sympathetic to the widely discredited theory that autism is caused by mercury in vaccines.
19723244	/m/04n2gch	Minnie and Moo: The Night of the Living Bed				 After having a nightmare about a giant mouse eating the last piece of chocolate in the world, Minnie grabs Moo and the two cows fall out of the bed which causes the bed to start rolling away. They run after it and then they jump on, grabbing other animals on the way down a hill. When they finally come to a stop in town, Moo realizes that it is Halloween night. The animals do lots of tricks so that they can get chocolate. When Minnie goes home, the cow is contented and ready to sleep.
19723388	/m/04my81d	Mademoiselle de Scuderi	E.T.A. Hoffmann	1819		 The action takes place in Paris during the reign of King Louis XIV of France. The city is under siege by what is presumed to be an organized band of thieves whose members rob citizens of costly jewelry in their homes or on the street. Some of the street victims are simply rendered unconscious by a blow to the head, but most are killed instantly by a deliberate dagger thrust to the heart. The murder victims are mostly wealthy lovers who are on their way to meet their mistresses with gifts of fine jewelry. These are not the only terrible crimes plaguing Paris (a series of bizarre poisonings is described in detail), and to combat them the King establishes a special court, the Chambre ardente, whose sole purpose is to investigate them and punish their perpetrators. The president of the Chambre, La Régnie, however, is consistently thwarted in his attempts to stop the evildoing, and in his blind zeal and frustration he is seduced to commit acts of terror and brutality. Because of his failures and cruelty, he quickly earns the hatred of those he was appointed to protect. In a poem exalting the King, the lovers of Paris exhort him to do something for their safety. Mademoiselle de Scudéri (the historical Madeleine de Scudéry), who is present when this appeal is presented, counters jokingly with the following verse: Un amant, qui craint les voleurs, N'est point digne d'amour. [A lover who is afraid of thieves Is not worthy of love.] The elderly de Scudéri is a well-known poetess who lives in a modest house in Paris on the rue Saint Honoré by the grace of King Louis and his lover, the Marquise de Maintenon (the historical Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon). One night, a young man bangs on the door of de Scudéri&#39;s house and pleads urgently with her maid to be granted entrance. The maid finally lets him in but denies him access to her mistress, whose life she fears is in danger. The young man eventually flees at the sound of the approach of the mounted police, but leaves behind, a small jewelry box, which he begs the maid to deliver to the Mademoiselle. The next morning, de Scudéri opens the box and finds exquisite jewelry and a note in which the band of jewel thieves thanks her for her support in the form of the verse quoted above. Mademoiselle de Scudéri is distraught by the contents of the jewelry box and seeks the advice of her friend de Maintenon. The Marquise immediately recognizes the jewelry as the work of the goldsmith René Cardillac. Cardillac is known not only in Paris but around the world as the best artist in his field. He is also famous, however, for a strange attribute: he creates the most beautiful pieces of jewelry but then does not want to part with them. Only after much delay does he finally deliver a piece to the customer who commissioned it, and then only under (sometimes violent) protest. Several months later, Mademoiselle de Scudéri is riding in a glass coach over the Pont Neuf when a young man forces his way through the crowd and throws a letter into the coach. The letter adjures the Mademoiselle to find whatever pretense necessary but to return the jewelry to Cardillac at once. If she does not, the letter warns, her life is in danger. She is overcome by feelings that she is surrounded by &#34;strange events and dark mysteries&#34; but decides to heed the letter writer&#39;s appeal. Two days later, she travels to the goldsmith&#39;s house, only to arrive just as his corpse is being carried away. Cardillac has been murdered, and Olivier Brusson, Cardillac&#39;s assistant, has been arrested for the crime. Cardillac&#39;s daughter Madelon, who is betrothed to Olivier, protests his innocence. Because of Madelon&#39;s suffering and utter despair, Mademoiselle de Scudéri takes pity on her and takes her to her house to look after her. Touched by and believing Madelon&#39;s avowals of Olivier&#39;s innocence, the Mademoiselle tries to intercede on his behalf with La Régnie. He receives her graciously but is unmoved and presents her with circumstantial evidence that in his view proves that Olivier is the murderer. The Mademoiselle hears the evidence but cannot convince herself of the young man&#39;s guilt. La Régnie grants her permission to speak with Olivier, but when she meets him in prison she recognizes the young man who had thrown the warning letter into her coach and falls to the ground unconscious. She now is uncertain of Olivier&#39;s innocence and is torn inwardly. She curses the destiny that had made her believe in truth and virtue but now has destroyed the beautiful image she had made for her life. In the hope that Olivier will confess, Desgrais, de Scudéri&#39;s friend and an officer in the mounted police, offers to arrange for a meeting with Olivier in her house. The mademoiselle is filled with foreboding but nevertheless decides to obey the higher powers that had marked her for the solution of some terrible mystery. Olivier is brought to her house, and while guards wait outside he falls on his knees and tells her his story: Olivier tells the mademoiselle that he is the son of the impoverished young woman, Anne, whom de Scudéri had lovingly raised as her own daughter and from whom she has not heard since she married an industrious and skilled young watchmaker who took her and Olivier to Geneva to seek their fortune. Because of the jealousy of others in his profession, Olivier relates, his father was not able to establish himself in Geneva, and both he and his wife later died there in poverty. Olivier, who had apprenticed himself to a goldsmith, eventually became so skilled in his profession that he was hired as an assistant by René Cardillac in Paris. All went well, Olivier tells the Mademoiselle, until Cardillac threw him out of the house because he and Cardillac&#39;s daughter, Madelon, had fallen in love. In his desperation and longing, Olivier went one night to Cardillac&#39;s house in the hope of catching a glimpse of his beloved. Instead, he saw Cardillac slip out of the house through a secret entrance and not far away attack and kill a man by thrusting a dagger into his heart. Cardillac, who knows that Olivier has seen the murder, invites him to return to his workshop and offers him his daughter in marriage. Olivier&#39;s silence had been bought, he confesses to de Scudéri, but he relates how from then on he lived with intense pangs of guilt. One evening, Olivier tells de Scudéri, Cardillac told Olivier his own story. (The plot here becomes a story within a story within a story.) Cardillac tells Olivier how an experience involving a sumptuous diamond necklace (the necklace was worn by a Spanish actor with whom she later had an adulterous affair) that his mother had while she was pregnant with him had marked him for life with a love of fine jewelry. This love caused him to steal jewelry as a child and later led him to become a goldsmith. An &#34;inborn drive,&#34; Cardillac told Olivier, forced him to create his renowned works but led him also again and again to take them back from his customers in thefts that often involved murder. Olivier tells de Scudéri that Cardillac stored the retrieved pieces, which were labeled with the names of their rightful owners, in a secret, locked chamber in his house. Eventually, Olivier informs the mademoiselle, Cardillac decided to give Mademoiselle de Scudéri some of his best work in thanks for the verse that she had quoted to the King in response to the appeal from the threatened lovers. He asked Olivier to present the gift, and Olivier saw in the request a chance to re-establish contact with the woman who had loved and cared for him when he was a child and to reveal to her his unfortunate situation. He was able to deliver the jewel box but was not able to meet with the Mademoiselle. Some time later, Cardillac again was overcome by his evil star, and it is clear to Olivier that he wanted to retrieve by force the jewelry that he had given to the Mademoiselle. To prevent this, Olivier relates, he threw the letter into de Scudéri&#39;s coach, imploring her to return the jewelry as soon as possible. Two days later, because he was afraid that his master was about to attack Mademoiselle de Scudéri, Olivier secretly followed him when he left the house under cover of darkness. Instead of the mademoiselle, Cardillac attacked an officer, who stabbed Cardillac with his dagger and then fled. Olivier brought Cardillac and the murder weapon back to his house, where the master died of his injuries. Olivier was arrested and charged with the murder. His intention, he states, is to die for the murder if he must in order to spare his beloved Madelon the sorrow of learning the truth about her father. With this, Olivier ends his story and is returned to prison. Because he continues to refuse to confess, an order for his torture is issued. Mademoiselle de Scudéri makes a number of attempts to save Olivier, including writing a letter to La Régnie, but she is unsuccessful. She even wants to plead his case before the King himself, but a famous lawyer by the name of d&#39;Andilly, whom she has consulted, convinces her that at this stage in his case this would not be in the young man&#39;s best interest. Unexpectedly, an officer in the King&#39;s Guard by the name of Miossens visits her and reveals that he is the person who, in self-defense, stabbed and killed Cardillac. The astonished Mademoiselle says to him &#34;And you have said nothing? You have not made a statement to the authorities regarding what happened?&#34; Miossens defends himself by stating &#34;Allow me to remark that such a statement, even if it did not cause my ruin, would at least involve me in a most loathsome trial. Would La Régnie, who scents crime everywhere, immediately believe me if I accused the honest Cardillac, the very embodiment of complete piety and virtue, of attempted murderer?&#34; Miossens refuses to consider Olivier innocent, accusing him instead of being Cardillac&#39;s accomplice. Under a pledge of secrecy, Miossens repeats his testimony to d&#39;Andilly, and with this information the lawyer is able to have Olivier&#39;s torture postponed. Subsequently, de Scudéri is successful in getting the King to review the case once again. After a month of uncertainty, he reveals to the Mademoiselle that Olivier has been freed, that he will be allowed to marry his beloved Madelon, and that he will receive 1,000 louis d&#39;or as a dowery under the condition that they leave Paris. Olivier and Madelon move to Geneva, where they live happily. The jewelry stolen by Cardillac is returned to the rightful owners who still are living. The rest becomes the property of the Church of St. Eustace.
19732457	/m/04n4tj_	Minnie and Moo: The Attack of the Easter Bunnies				 Minnie hears the farmer saying that he is too old to be the Easter Bunny. The cows try to find a substitute because the grandchildren are expecting an egg hunt. When all the animals turn them down, the job goes to Minnie and Moo, but the other animals soon join them.
19740466	/m/04n26_j	American Beauty	Edna Ferber	1931		 True Baldwin, a millionaire, unnerved by the stock market crash of 1929 is advised to return to the Connecticut farm of his youth in order to buy land to till for his health. After discovering that the home of his childhood is currently owned by Polish immigrants, he and his daughter Candace, an architect, find what she calls "the most beautiful house in America." True says it is the home of the Oakes family, built by Captain Orrange Oakes in the early 18th century. The house and the land are passed along from generation to generation and are eventually inherited by Judith Oakes. Through time, the mansion, the property and the family have degenerated. Following the death of her mother, Judith's niece Tamar Pring arrives at the Oakes home. Temmie's wily personality and vigor resemble that of her namesake, Tamar Oakes, the daughter of Captain Oakes. Finding the house in a state of disarray, Temmie assumes the responsibility of cleaning it; Judith seems incapable of helping her with household chores. Temmie takes on the name of Oakes and eventually marries Ondia Olszak, a Polish immigrant who works her family's tobacco farm. By the time True and Candace arrive, Orrange Olszak, Temmie's son, operates what is left of the farm. He is being forced to sell it, however, because of the greed of his half brother and sister.
19740538	/m/04n21hj	The Whole Truth	David Baldacci	2008-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The head of a major arms vendor plots to restore the great power confrontations like those of the cold war, along with the long term stability of mutually assured destruction. To this end, he foments hostility between Russia and China, by means of a disinformation campaign (perception management) augmented with selected murders. A secret agent, aggrieved by his fiancée's murder, joins forces with an alcoholic reporter to foil these evil plans. nl:Niets dan de waarheid (boek)
19747199	/m/04mxh54	A Life of Contrasts	Diana Mitford		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 In the autobiography, the British aristocrat recounts her colourful past. Such as her marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, her association with Nazi figures and her subsequent three year internment under Defence Regulation 18B. She also recounts her frienships with leading literary figures sich as Evelyn Waugh, Harold Acton, John Betjeman and Lytton Strachey. In the 2002 edition, she describes several events which occurred following the original 1977 publication. Such as the grief she experienced after her husband's death, her brain tumour as well as her reaction to international events and public figures. She also writes about her "secret" missions to Germany before war broke out, when she helped set up a radio station to raise funds for the BUF.
19747669	/m/04yc7x8	The Dragon Lord			{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery"}	 In sixth century Britain, King Arthur desires a dragon to harass the Saxon invaders. Merlin tells Arthur that the skull of a lake monster is required. From a batch of new mercenary recruits to Arthur's army, Gawain selects an Irishman called Mael and a Dane called Starkad after Mael defeats Lancelot in a demonstration duel in front of the recruits. Arthur sends Mael to Ireland to retrieve the skull and keeps Mael's friend Starkad as hostage to ensure his return. In Ireland, Mael is escorted to a road where he meets Veleda, a pagan witch who foresaw Mael's coming. The two travel together for three days and arrive at Lough Ree where a pagan shrine has been converted to a chapel manned by a priest and a large, mentally-retarded student, Fergus. During the night Mael steals the monster skull which was on display in the chapel but Fergus catches him. The ensuing fight spills out onto the lake pier that breaks apart as Fergus fights with a mace. Veleda helps Mael back to land but Fergus drowns and a lake monster drags the priest away. On their way back to Britain, Mael and Veleda are attacked on a ship but escape as Veleda summons a purple fire that burns their attackers. With the skull Merlin creates a small dragon (a wyvern) which he hopes to grow and teach to be obedient. Mael is re-united with Starkad and they consider whether to stay in Arthur's camp. Veleda has a vision and implores they to retrieve the spear and shield of the Saxon Biargram Ironhand. Mael and Starkad leave on the pretext that Starkad must go settle a blood feud with Biargram. Arthur detains Veleda as insurance of their return. Traveling to the Saxon territories, they walk to a drought-stricken village where desperate villagers are attempting to sacrifice a girl. Mael and Starkad interrupt and kidnap the girl. They flee to a house where an old woman, a witch, was expecting them. The sacrificial girl cuts Starkad's legs in the night and escapes. Mael continues on without Starkad and reaches Biargram's homestead, where he learns Biargram has recently died. Biargram's son throws Mael into Biargram's crypt as a sacrifice. A curse was placed on Biargram that makes him return to life every night. Mael fights off the re-animated corpse and is saved by Starkad who interrupts grave-robbers. They carry off Biargram's spear and shield. Once back at Arthur's camp Mael and Starkad are reunited with Veleda. Arthur claims Biargram's spear for himself. Mael and Starkad take their places in Arthur's army and are marched northwards to the walled town of Leicester. They spend the night there, meet with a wounded Dane veteran and defeat two Herulians after they killed a family while pillaging. The next day at the battle front they are positioned against Aelle’s forces. The Saxon forces ford the Dubglas River and attack the Britons who slow the Saxon advance using horse archers and caltrops. In the midst of battle Aelle nearly kills a dismounted Arthur but is foiled and killed by Mael. Victorious, Arthur immediately sends Mael and Starkad away to tell Merlin to release his dragon. Merlin trapped the dragon in a cave but had lost control of it. Veleda insists that dragon must be killed because it is too powerful and uncontrollable. In battle with the dragon Mael uses Biargram's shield against its fire breath, and they are able to kill it. The three flee Britain to escape Arthur's retribution for killing his dragon.
19749788	/m/04n30fg	Oceanic	Greg Egan	1998-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story follows Martin, a Freelander living on the oceans of Covenant. As a boy he has a religious experience that shapes his life for years to come. As he grows into manhood his experiences and studies begin to conflict with his deep rooted faith. Eventually he joins a small circle of scholars studying the effects of one of Covenant’s most abundant microbes as his views of life change dramatically.
19751238	/m/04n5v8y	The Eldorado Network				 Set mainly in Madrid and Lisbon in 1940 and 1941, it concerns the young Spaniard Luis Cabrillo, who witnesses the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, and later joins the Abwehr, or German intelligence service. He is enthusiastic and resourceful, and after completing his training he is sent to London to spy on the British -- codename: Eldorado. However, he only gets as far as Lisbon, where he rents an office, buys an almanac and a guidebook, and begins concocting misinformation to mail back to his superiors in Madrid. The Abwehr pays him for each report and for each agent he recruits, and before long Luis has established a network of spies from all over the British isles. While inspired by fact, and carefully researched, the novel is rich with Robinson's trademark black humour and verbal wit.
19765075	/m/04q0xrs	Minnie and Moo: Will You Be My Valentine?				 Moo decides to create "love poems for the needy". So Minnie and Moo dress up as cupids. The cows have just the right outfits in the barn. Dressed up as cupids, they use Moo's poems to bring love to the barnyard. The poems do not always end up in the right hands, claws, or hooves. Farmer John thinks that the cows was the one sending the poetry. His wife replied that cows can't write.
19766029	/m/04q6nbk	Click, Clack, Quackity-Quack: An Alphabetical Adventure	Doreen Cronin	2005-09-27	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book has phrases that start with each letter of the alphabet. It tells the story of a duck led summer outing that includes the cows from Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type. When the duck rides his wagon, the readers go through the ABCs. The animals stop at a good place to have a picnic.
19767896	/m/04q2ygh	Jewels from the Moon	Eleanor Cameron	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Chuck and David have two further adventures. This volume collects two short stories in the Mushroom Planet series, but is very rarely mentioned. The book was published in 1964 by the American Book Company; it is 64 pages. It was designed as a school reading book, and each story has several discussion questions after it. The stories add more detail about David, Chuck, Mr. Bass, Mr. Brumblydge, etc. In the first, the boys meet a mysterious but kindly old lady (apparently a Mycetian like Mr. Bass) who takes them on a spectacular dream journey. In the second, they accompany Prewytt Brumblydge on an expedition to recover portions of a brumblium meteorite.
19770038	/m/04q3q9w	The Line	Martin Flanagan	2005	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 A short history of Arch's childhood growing up in rural Tasmania Most of the memoir is composed of these sections which contain various situations that Arch remembers from his time in the war. A tribute written by Arch in memory of Edward (Weary) Dunlop. A short work of fiction written by Arch.
19771967	/m/04q3mf7	In Arabian Nights	Tahir Shah	2008	{"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 Shah frequents the Café Mabrook, which becomes for him the "gateway into the clandestine world of Moroccan men" and is told "if you really want to get to know us, then root out the raconteurs". He also hears of the Berber tradition that each person searches for the story within their heart. Events at home are interwoven with Shah's journeys across Morocco, and he sees how the Kingdom of Morocco has a substratum of oral tradition that is almost unchanged in a thousand years, a culture in which tales, as well as entertaining, are a matrix through which values, ideas and information are transmitted. Shah listens to anyone who has a tale to tell. He encounters professional storytellers, a junk merchant who sells his wares for nothing, but insists on a high payment for the tale attached to each item and a door to door salesman who can obtain anything, including, when Shah requests it the first "Benares" edition of A Thousand and One Nights by Richard Burton, a translation that the author's father Idries Shah had once given away. As he makes his way through the labyrinthine medinas of Fez and Marrakech, traverses the Sahara sands, and tastes the hospitality of ordinary Moroccans, he collects a treasury of stories, gleaned from the heritage of A Thousand and One Nights. The tales, recounted by a vivid cast of characters, reveal fragments of wisdom and an oriental way of thinking. Weaving in and out of the narrative are Shah's recollection of his family's first visits to Morocco and his father's storytelling and insistence that traditional tales contain vastly undervalued resources; "We are a family of storytellers. Don't forget it. We have a gift. Protect it and it will protect you." As a father himself Shah now passes the baton on to his own children.
19774504	/m/04q3s8f	Into the Silence				 A body in a church hall is found with its vocal cords missing and a metallic figure is seen hiding in the shadows. With the amateur operatic contest getting under way, Ianto Jones joins a male voice choir to track it down. <!-
19774558	/m/04qbnhv	Bay of the Dead				 The city of Cardiff is sealed off by unknown forces. The living dead shamble through the streets, eating anything they can get their hands on. It's up to Torchwood to save the city but...apparently they don't even believe in zombies. <!-
19774610	/m/04q2zs2	The House that Jack Built				 The house that Jack lived in in 1906, Jackson Leaves, has new tenants. However, the rooms don't stay in one place, there's a man in the airing cupboard and there are ghostly apparitions, all of which draw the attention of Torchwood. <!-
19775607	/m/04q7r43	Face Value			{"/m/05wkw": "Photography"}	 The book is a selection of interviews and photographs of public figures from various fields such as entertainment, sport, business, art and politics. Allan also contributed a column-style introduction to each chapter. Andrzej Sawa provided the photographs of the interviewees. Five of the interviewees (Sol Kerzner, Danie Craven, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Walter Battiss and Taubie Kushlick) were featured in the They shaped our century survey, a top 100 list published about which people had the greatest influence on South Africa during the twentieth century. "I do not think that for one moment that in a brief interview I can write an accurate-every-time character-revealing piece. But my aim has always been to convey as honestly as I can my first impressions on FACE VALUE, with no 'Ums', 'Ers' or retakes."
19779318	/m/04q7d58	Click, Clack, Splish, Splash: A Counting Adventure	Doreen Cronin	2006-01-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 While the farmer sleeps on the couch close to the fishing tank, Duck and the barnyard animals sneak into the house on a quiet mission that involves "3 buckets piled high" outside the window and "4 chickens standing by". At the end of the book, the reader finds out that Duck's plan was the liberate the farmer's fish.
19779959	/m/04q8bft	Wiggle				 The book is about wiggling. For instance, "First wiggle where your tail would be. Then wiggle all your hair. Feeling extra silly? Wiggle in your underwear!"
19779998	/m/04q6j2r	Onitsha	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio	1991	{"/m/01j1n2": "Coming of age", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Onitsha tells the story of Fintan, a young European boy who travels from Bordeaux to the port of Marseilles to sail along the coast of Africa to the mouth of the Niger River to Onitsha in colonial Nigeria with his Italian mother (nicknamed Maou) in the year 1948.Warren Motte wrote a review in World Literature Today to note that, like many of Le Clézio's writings Onitsha is a novel of apprenticeship. He mentions that the very first words of the novel inscribe the theme of the journey and announce that it will occupy the foreground of the tale and he quotes a passage from Ontisha to exemplify Fintan's reluctance to embark upon that journey It was a long journey as Le Clézio wrote: They were intending to meet Geoffroy Allen (Fintan's English father an oil company executive who is obsessed with uncovering the area's ancient history by tracking down myths and legends) whom Fintan has never met. Onitsha depicts childhood, because it is written semi-autobiographically, but seen through the eyes of Fintan and to lesser extent his father, and his mother, who is not able to fit in with the colonial society of the town of Onitsha with its casual acceptance of 'native' slave labour. Le Clézio wrote: Eventually, Fintan's father loses his job with the United Africa Company and moves the family first to London, then to the south of France. Sabine Rhodes, another British National, already a miscast in the colony recognises the inevitable The novel ends on a note of rebellion against the white rulers and points towards the coming of the neocolonialism of conglomerates which would finally begin another form of economic exploitation of a country rich in oil.
19781082	/m/04q9hxm	Diary of a Spider				 The book is a diary written by a spider. The diary has things such as pictures of Spider's family, a picture of his favorite book, a discovery of a sculpture, and a playbill from the school's production of "Itsy Bitsy Spider". There is also a slight storyline about Spider's friendship with Fly and Grampa hating bugs with six legs. The worm from Diary of a Worm makes occasional appearances.
19782194	/m/04q9zmj	Things That Are	Andrew Clements	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is about 17 year old Alicia, Bobby's friend who the reader learned about earlier in the series. The main plot centers around her journey of self reassurance and courage. The story also includes short exchanges between Alicia and her "brain fairy" in which they argue over a present topic.The "brain fairy" always annoys Alicia and calls her names. The story starts out with Bobby coming home from New York to Chicago to visit Alicia. He was unknowningly followed by the invisible man, William. The FBI start to intervene because of an arrest warrant on William. Alicia and Bobby then help William use an electric blanket to return him to his previous state. William then returns to his wife and daughter in Montreal.
19782454	/m/04q367q	Point of Origin	Patricia Cornwell	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Dr Kay Scarpetta, Virginia Chief Medical Examiner and consulting pathologist for the federal law enforcement agency ATF, is called out to a farmhouse in Virginia that has been destroyed by fire. In the ruins of the house she finds a body that tells a story of a violent and grisly murder. The fire has come at the same time as Carrie Grethen, a killer who nearly destroyed the lives of Scarpetta and those closest to her, has escaped from a forensic psychiatric hospital. Her whereabouts is unknown, but her ultimate destination is not, for Carrie has begun to communicate with Scarpetta, conveying her deadly—if cryptic—plans for revenge. Carrie has linked up with a new companion, willing to end his life of sadistic slayings for her pursuit of Scarpetta.
19789501	/m/04q0gsp	A Concise Treatise on the Art of Angling		1787		 Although the first part of A Concise Treatise is a general angling work that provided little new information when it was published, the second part of the book--The Complete Fly-Fisher was one of the earliest how-to books on the subject of fly fishing and artificial fly making. The book proved to be extremely popular and useful, being issued in thirteen editions from 1787 to 1846.
19790245	/m/04q6phb	Between Two Rivers	Nicholas Rinaldi	2004-06		 It consists of several intertwining stories concerning the residents of Echo Park, a fictitious Battery Park condominium and its Romanian concierge, Farro Fescu. Residents include a quilter commissioned by the United Nations, an undertaker, an ex-Luftwaffe pilot, a plastic surgeon specialising in sex change operations, and the story involves the complex interactions between them, including love affairs, rape, suicide and poisoning. It also includes the impact on the residents of both the 1993 bombing and 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center.
19793289	/m/04q2s4p	The Presence: A Ghost Story	Eve Bunting	2003-09-22		 The spirit of a 17 year old boy that died 120 years ago stands on the stairs of a church in Pasadena California, waiting for 17 year old Catherine, who is spending Christmas with her grandmother while her parents are traveling in Europe. The ghost, Noah, who calls himself The Presence, is searching for a soul mate and thinks that Catherine is the one. Catherine has grief and guilt about her best friend Kristy's death and Catherine is shocked when Noah tells her that he has talked to Kristy and can arrange a time for her to talk to her friend. The ghost and Catherine tell the story and their narratives show details of the ghost's past as well as the accident that claimed Kristy's life.
19793753	/m/04q3bcd	The Glass Cell				 A dark and disturbing novel about the effects of wrongful imprisonment, the story sees Philip Carter, a sweet natured and naïve young man sentenced to six years in jail for fraud, a crime he did not commit. Upon his release, those who knew him best are shocked by the complete change in his personality; the gentle man they once knew has become a violent, drug-abusing depressive, so much so that restoring his faith in humanity could prove a struggle.
19797571	/m/04q84br	The Whiskey Rebels	David Liss	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Despite the title, the novel's action does not include the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794; it is set mainly in the preceding years from 1788 to 1792. Two main fictional characters, Ethan Saunders and Joan Maycott, offer first-person narratives that begin separately, in alternating chapters, and gradually come together for the climactic scenes. The reader first meets Ethan Saunders in 1792 Philadelphia, the temporary capital of the newly formed United States of America. Saunders is a disgraced former spy for General Washington during The American Revolution, now a drunkard and scoundrel but still seeking redemption. Joan Maycott's autobiography begins at the age of seventeen near Albany, New York in 1781. Her life takes her to New York City and out to the frontier town of Pittsburgh, in Western Pennsylvania. After many travails, she returns to New York City and on to Philadelphia, where she eventually meets Saunders. Along the way, we learn about the duplicity of speculators like William Duer, the hardships of life in the western wilderness and the use of whiskey as a form of frontier currency. We learn why the western pioneers hated the Bank of the United States, the Whiskey tax, and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, creator of both. This hatred gives birth to an audacious secret plan to (as Joan sees it) free the new nation from the corrupting influence of the financiers and speculators of the cities, and return to the republican purity intended by the founders. The climactic events take place against the historical backdrop of Duer's attempt to take over the national bank, which led to the Panic of 1792. The fictional Ethan and Joan meet many historical characters in addition to Duer and Hamilton, including frontier champion Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Jeffersonian journalist Philip Freneau, wealthy socialite Anne Bingham, Hamilton blackmailer James Reynolds, his seductive wife Maria and Senator (at that time) Aaron Burr.
19801226	/m/04q0pzn	The Slaves of Solitude	Patrick Hamilton	1947	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in 1943 in the fictional town of Thames Lockden (based on Henley-on-Thames), and largely follows the experiences of Miss Roach who lives in the Rosamund Tea Rooms, a guest house, having left London during the Blitz. Also residing at the guest house are Mr Thwaites (described as the 'President in Hell'), Miss Steele, Miss Barrett (both aging spinsters) and Mr Prest (a retired comedian). Miss Roach works at a publishing firm, 'as a secretary and in other capacities' in London. The opening sequence describes London as a great monster respiring, drawing workers into the city through its lungs in the morning and expelling them in the evening. It then follows Miss Roach to the Rosamund Tea Rooms and she is presented as leading a dull and uncomplicated life. She is, however, oppressed by Mr Thwaites who takes every opportunity to mock her at meal times. Mr Thwaites, revealed to be a Nazi Sympathiser, insists that Miss Roach is a 'friend of the Russians', is shown to be overbearing and a bore and forces the shared meals the guests partake in to be conducted in an oppressive atmosphere. Soon after this, two American servicemen appear at dinner. Miss Roach becomes romantically involved with one of them, Lieutenant Pike, beginning a relationship centred around the local pub and kissing on a bench. This relationship becomes disrupted by the arrival of Miss Roach's German friend Vicki Kugelman, who soon becomes Miss Roach's love rival. Miss Kugelman moves into the Rosamund Tea Rooms, charms Mr Thwaites and there soon begins a sort emotional struggle between the two spinsters.
19801849	/m/04q76hh	Those Who Walk Away	Patricia Highsmith		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When Ray Garrett's new wife kills herself on their honeymoon, he persuades the initially suspicious Rome police that he's innocent of any wrongdoing over the death. However, his father-in-law, the brutish Ed Coleman, is convinced Ray killed her and shoots Ray, leaving him for dead. He survives and, desperate to prove himself, follows Coleman to Venice, where a deadly game of cat-and-mouse ensues, with Coleman still seeking justice and Garrett a clear conscience.
19803818	/m/04q318j	The Last Egyptian	L. Frank Baum	1907	{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The extensive diacritical marks appear in the novel as published by Stern. The novel focuses on three main characters, and is written in a third person limited point of view, which subtly shifts among the three characters, the narrator speaking with each character's very different prejudices as each becomes the temporary main focus. These three characters, in order of appearance, are Gerald Winston Bey, an English Egyptologist; an Egyptian, Kāra, and a dragoman named Tadros. Kāra, being white-skinned, is mistaken by Bey for a Copt, though he is no Christian, and he has no respect for Arab Muslims, either. Kāra claims to be a descendent of Ahtka-Rā, High Priest of Ămen, whom he says ruled Rameses II as his puppet, including hiding the latter's death for two years--archaeology says Rameses reigned 67 years, but according to Kāra, he ruled only 65. All of this Kāra has learned since he was a child from his grandmother, Princess Hatacha, who had come to England when she was 17 and created a stir, ultimately marrying a Lord Roane, Kāra's grandfather. Hatatcha is a cruel and vindictive old woman, but as she is dying, she gives him information about the large treasure cache that they have been living on, including many hieroglyphic papyri from which she educated him as a child that will prove to the world that he is of royal lineage and avenge her against Lord Roane for leaving her in poverty. It is within the cliff that their home is built in that the treasure is kept, behind a wall built over an opening of a cavern too deep to use as a shelter. Tadros and the Bey compete to acquire these papyri from him to sell, and Kāra nearly kills the former for stealing one, but he stops, knowing he can use him. He allows him to have that one in exchange for the girl Nepthys, whose principal interest is cigarette smoking, whom Tadros is set to acquire for another's harem. After Hatatcha's funeral, Kāra steals the donkey of Nikko, an old blind man, for the elderly black-skinned dwarf embalmer, Sebbet, to transport her remains for mummification. He meets Winston on his dahabeah and accompany him to Cairo. In Cairo, Kāra seeks to have his gems recut in the modern style, but instead sells them for cash, and takes his steps toward revenge on Lord Roane. Charles Consinor, 9th Earl of Roane, is now elderly and of poor reputation, while his son, Viscount Roger Consinor is a professional gambler. Kāra manipulates things to get Charles (Lord Roane) a diplomatic post in Cairo. There, he catches Roger cheating with marked cards and loaded dice at the club, puts Nepthys in his personal harem, and then proceeds to make moves on Lord Roane's granddaughter, Aneth Consinor, who has been sent back to the family from school on account of unpaid tuition. He falls in love with Aneth (as does Winston), causing him to send Nepthys back home, but when she refuses to marry him, considering him a friend and herself unready for marriage, he quickly returns to his desire for his grandmother's revenge. Winston tells Kāra that thee latter cannot marry her because they are cousins, but Kāra cares not, stating that Egyptian kings married their sisters, so marrying a cousin is nothing. Lord Roane has embezzled money via McFarland, a contractor on a sham embankment project. Kāra is aware of this and tries to blackmail Lord Roane into forcing Aneth into marriage with him. Roane refuses, saying his granddaughter should not hurt for his misdeeds, calling Kāra an "infamous nigger," to which Kāra "redden[s] at the epithet." Kāra then approaches Aneth with the proposition, and she agrees to marry him out of filial duty, to which he responds by giving her forged documents for her to destroy, while he retains the incriminating documents. Winston, upon learning that Kāra's accusation is true, conspires with Aneth's companion, Mrs. Lola Everingham, (wife of an engineer known for his work in Asia) to woo her into marriage with himself. This causes the dutiful girl more pain if anything, creating a longing for something she will not let herself have. Paying off Tadros to help them instead of Kāra, Winston and the Consinors plan to abduct Aneth to Winston's dahabeah. When this is accomplished, they tell her that Kāra has decided he does not want to marry her, Lord Roane again referring to him as a "rascally nigger." They have learned this, in effect, is true: he has hired a wiley Copt named Mykel into his employ, to whom he has provided the garments of a Coptic priest, and a Coptic Bible from which to conduct a ceremony. Mykel being a false priest, Aneth would not be legally married, and thus shamed and unmarriageable. Tadros and Viscount Consinor leave the vessel at Fedah, expecting Kāra to return soon for more treasure, as he has secured the help of his brother-in-spirit, Sheik Antar, a large Arab who dyes his grey beard black, and his Muslim followers, who also live in a small town on the Nile inhospitable to strangers. Tadros is aware that Kāra has been buying on credit, and will be forced to soon return for more gemstones, including to pay Antar. Kāra attacks the dahabeah with Antar, but Antar refuses to dirty his sword more than once, and only after receiving payment. Unable to find Tadros, whom he wishes thrown overboard, and shot at by Mrs. Everingham, he returns to Fedah, where Tadros has had Roger hide under the rushes that Hatatcha used as a bed. Tadros asks him if he is "comfortable"—to which he replies "not very"—but he clarifies enough to remain still for several hours. From there he is able to see what Kāra presses in the wall to enter into the secret passage. Kāra places the Talisman of Ahkta-Rā on his finger, believing it will give him his ancestor's power if he uses it only temporarily, in spite of the curse upon it, but as he is trying to lug two sacks full of gems, a statue of Isis, which had fallen the last time he was in the tomb, falls again, knocking it off his hand, and when he stumbles, a lamp he as tied to the button of his shirt is knocked out. In the darkness, he sees the Talisman return to its spot, or at least he is confusing it with the candle Consinor is using that was left for him by Tadros. Kāra attacks Roger, but Roger is a skilled wrestler and manages to get on top of him as Kāra tries to asphyxiate him. He is able to knock Kāra's head to the ground long enough that he loses consciousness, allowing Roger to flee. Kāra, though, has inadvertently removed the dagger that keeps open the vault door, which Hatatcha informed him cannot be opened from the inside, and even as Roger can hear him regain consciousness and get up, he is unaware that Kāra is quite trapped and continues to run. Mistaking Roger for Kāra, Nepthys stabs him fatally. When Winston's dahabeah arrives at Fedah, Tadros tells Antar that the police have come and taken Kāra and will also arrest Antar and his men if caught. Although he must work to convince Antar he has nothing to do with the police, eventually he gets them to flee northward. Not knowing what has happened to Kāra, and not wishing Nepthys to be punished for the death of Roger Consinor, he gives the same story to Winston and the Cosninors, and is triumphantly hired to be their dragoman as they go on to Luxor for the wedding of Aneth Consinor to Gerald Winston.
19806349	/m/04q27j9	The Brass Verdict: A Novel	Michael Connelly	2008-10	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Since the events of the previous novel, attorney Mickey Haller has spent a year recuperating from his wounds and a subsequent addiction to painkillers. He is called back to the practice of law when an old acquaintance, defense attorney Jerry Vincent, is murdered. Haller inherits Vincent's caseload, which includes the high-profile trial of Walter Elliott, a Hollywood mogul accused of murdering his wife Mitzi and her German lover. Haller secures this "franchise" case, persuading the mogul to keep him on as counsel by promising not to seek a postponement of the trial, which is due to start in nine days. Meanwhile, maverick LAPD detective Harry Bosch, the main character in several earlier novels written by Connelly, is investigating Vincent's murder. Bosch, warning that Vincent's killer may come after Haller next, persuades the reluctant lawyer to cooperate in the ongoing murder investigation. Meanwhile, Haller shakes off the rust, and lingering self-doubts, as he prepares for the double-murder trial. Among the cases Haller takes on is that of a former surfing champion, Patrick, who, while addicted to painkillers after a surfing accident, has stolen a diamond necklace while at the home of a friend. Haller feels sorry for Patrick because of his own history of addiction, and employs the young man to drive his Lincoln. He manages to get Patrick off the charges against him by playing on a hunch that the stolen diamonds were not genuine. Assisted by his investigator, Cisco, and his office assistant, Lorna (who is one of Haller's two ex-wives), Haller works out a strategy to defend his client, based on the fact that the gunshot residue found on Elliott's hands is the result of having travelled in a police car used earlier in the day to transport another prisoner. He also becomes suspicious of three German men, relatives of Mitzi Elliott's lover, and throws doubt as to whether the couple's murderer was actually after Mitzi or her lover. In the meantime, Walter admits that he is involved with the Mafia and that he believes they murdered both his wife and the lawyer Jerry Vincent. On the strength of information from Bosch, Haller becomes suspicious that Vincent has bribed someone in the legal process to plant a jury member who would help obtain an acquittal for Walter Elliott, regardless of the evidence. On investigation, he finds that one of the jurors has stolen someone else's identity, and he ensures that this information becomes known to the judge in the Elliott case, resulting in the trial being brought to a halt just as it begins to go Haller's way. Elliott, however, confesses to Haller that he actually did kill Mitzi and her lover, and Haller is left pondering on the outcome of the case. During the evening he receives a call from the police, asking him to help a former client. When he arrives on the scene, he is attacked by a man who attempts to push him over a precipice. Bosch and his team, who have been observing Haller, arrive on the scene just in time to prevent the murder, and the attacker is discovered to be the planted juryman. Haller figures out that the person behind the corruption is in fact a senior judge, and confronts her with his evidence, leading to her arrest by the FBI. When he learns that Walter Elliott and his secretary have also been murdered, he assumes she is behind that murder, but it turns out that justice has been dispensed by Mitzi lover's family before their return to Germany. Unknown to Haller, but revealed in previous Connelly novels, is the fact that Bosch is Haller's half-brother. Haller works out the puzzle by the end of the book, going mainly on the resemblances between Bosch and his own father (himself a lawyer) but at this point no arrangement is made for the two men to meet again.
19807360	/m/04q9yv9	Terra Amata	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio	1969	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Terra Amata is about a man named Chancelade, and his detailed view of an otherwise ordinary life, from his early childhood to his grave. Terra Amata is an archaeological site near the French town of Nice.
19809558	/m/04q3fty	Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn	Paul Watkins	1989		 The story is set on and off the Rhode Island coast where James Pfeiffer, age 20 and just expelled from college starts working on a broken down scallop trawler against the wishes of his family. He follows in the footsteps of his father Russ, who now has an unexplained fear of the sea. James comes to learn the very real dangers that exist in the present and truth about his fathers past...
19809744	/m/04q32mb	A Piece of Cake: A Memoir				 This novel provides a first-person account of Cupcake Brown's triumph over adversity. She largely adopts a colloquial writing style which makes the book a very approachable work for readers. She also has a tendency to end various chapters with sentences which direct the reader to imminent events in her life. For example, she concludes one of the chapters in her biography with: 'Little did I know, I really was leaving Lancaster for good.' The story begins in January 1976 when the female protagonist gives a short account of why her mother named her Cupcake. Cupcake Brown's mother died in 1976, when Cupcake was 11. Since her biological father only acquired custody because he wanted to receive social security checks, she and her brother were placed in an abusive stranger's foster home, along with several other children. Their foster mother, Diane, forced them to clean her entire house every day and beat them if she wasn't satisfied. Diane's daughter, Connie, was also slightly sadistic in terms of the way she derived pleasure from tormenting Cupcake and the other children who resided in the foster home. For example, she is quick to point out to Cupcake that she is the real child of Diane as opposed to being a foster child. In Connie's mind, she believes that her 'status' entitles her to cause trouble for the foster children in any way that her cruel mind will allow. Within days of arriving, Cupcake is raped by her foster mother's nephew, Pete. Cupcake provides a frank account of how Pete thrusts a glass of rum and coke into her hand, tells her to drink it and how everything happened so fast afterwards. Although the drink makes Cupcake feel very good at first, she proceeds to relate what she describes as being a nightmare. She also decides that since God took her mother away from her as well as allowing the rape to happen to her, then He must not like Cupcake very much. She then decides that she hates God. After months of unrelenting abuse, Cupcake runs away and ends up meeting a prostitute, Candy, who teaches her about life on the streets, how to smoke marijuana, and charge for sex as a prostitute. Cupcake 'turns her first trick' at the age of eleven. Her next foster father, under the guise of "cheerleading practice" traded her LSD and cocaine for oral sex. She moved in with her great aunt in South Central Los Angeles, where she joined a gang. She narrowly survived a shooting when she was barely 16, and she left the gang. Her boyfriend taught her how to freebase and introduced her to crack. Soon, she was a "trash-can junkie," indulging in as many drugs as she could find. When she woke up behind a dumpster one morning, scarcely dressed and more than near death, she admitted that she needed help. She then attends an addiction clinic, where she embarks upon her road to recovery.
19812271	/m/04q0_5c	Darwin's Children	Greg Bear		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A human endogenous retrovirus called SHEVA begins to spread, attaching to people's chromosomes. As it becomes active, it causes the birth of millions of genetically altered children. To the government, this represents a deadly threat to public health and safety, so they take the mutated children from their parents and place them in concentration camps. The children communicate by using complex verbal tricks, enhanced facial expressions, and psychoactive chemical scents made from their own bodies. They also form stable groups that minimize conflict and maximize cooperation. Mitch Rafelson and his wife, Kaye Lang, have a SHEVA daughter named Stella Nova that they try to shield from the government's Emergency Action forces, but the child is captured and sent to a camp. A government virus researcher, Christopher Dicken, makes significant discoveries, as does Kaye.
19817624	/m/04q75vj	Floating Flies and How to Dress Them		1886-04		 Floating Flies and How to Dress Them provides an in-depth study of nearly 100 duns and spinners in the English chalk streams of Hampshire County. The books contains detailed drawings and instructions on how to create hand-made artificial flies. Included is information on types of hooks and implements to use plus tips on dyeing materials and how to dress the flies on eyed-hooks. The book contains ten colorplates and many black and white line drawings used to illustrate specific techniques.
19825468	/m/04q6sbg	Weaver	Stephen Baxter		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In this timeline, Hitler decided to launch Operation Sea Lion (a projected Nazi invasion of Great Britain) in 1940, shortly after a more devastating version of Dunkirk resulted in a shortage of British Army soldiers. However, due to Winston Churchill's lobbying of President Franklin Roosevelt and his Congress, there is some US military assistance provided. As with France during the First World War, there is only partial occupation of southeastern England, and a Nazi "Protectorate of Albion" (similar to Vichy France) is established. The Nazis occupy a band of territory that stretches from Portsmouth in the southwest, including communities like Tunbridge Wells, Horsham, Hastings, Pevensey, Dover, Folkestone and Gravesend. They establish a puppet regime in Canterbury led by renegade English Nazi collaborator Lord Haw Haw, and while London remains unoccupied, the adjacent occupation results in the evacuation of senior governmental personnel, politicians, George VI and his royal family to elsewhere in Northern England. Baxter traces the effects of the occupation on several protagonists. Ben Kamen is Jewish, gay and a latent telepath, while Mary Wooler, and her son Gary, and daughter-in-law Hilda, work on covert projects for the British Army, endeaviouring to discover how to dislodge the Nazi presence from the "Protectorate of Albion" in the southeast. Ernst Keiser, a relatively kindly officer, lodges with a rural family, whose female members, Irma and Viv, collaborate intentionally with the military, while Alfie is made to serve in a forced labour unit later in the war. As in "our" timeline, Hitler still launches Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, but there are other divergences, as the Japanese Empire has sufficient manpower to invade Australia in this timeline as well, although no other details are forthcoming. Ben's identity is discovered, but he is spared from the ravages of an expanded version of the Holocaust due to his latent telepathic abilities. Julia Fiveash, another English Nazi collaborator, is involved in the Ahnenerbe, an SS occult warfare division. In 1943, the tide of war has turned, and the British and US armed forces launch "Operation Walrus" to recover the territory of the former "Protectorate." However, they stumble on Ahnenerbe plans to use Kamen to alter the course of history so that either William the Conqueror lost the Battle of Hastings to Harold II in 1066, or Christopher Columbus turned east, reviving Crusader hostility against the Islamic world during the sixteen century, instead of his discovery of the Americas. In the ensuing battle, Fiveash kills Gary, and Mary is able to prevent any further historical change through influencing Kamen's choice of telepathic transmissions. However, the novel ends with Kamen once more entering a dream state, and hints that our timeline is the result of his broadcasting a telepathic message to one of Hitler's advisors at the time of the Dunkirk Evacuation.
19828934	/m/04q0xbc	Catch Me if You Can	Frank Abagnale	1980		 :The movie plot is available at Catch Me If You Can. The book is the semi-autobiography of Frank Abagnale Jr., who was one of the most famous con-artists in the 20th Century. It is written in the first person and describes how he cashed $2.5 million worth of bad checks. He assumed various jobs, such as pretending to be a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, a teacher, and an attorney. Abagnale was eventually caught by the FBI Agents, who had been chasing him the whole way, while living in France and then served around 5 years in prison - 6 months in France, 6 months in Sweden, followed by four years in the United States. The book ends with Abagnale running away from the FBI.
19832313	/m/04q0k_3	Tim the Tiny Horse At Large		2008-09-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Tim is still small yet his responsibilities are growing larger. Whilst continuing to live in his matchbox stable, he falls in love with Fly's sister Chenille, is Best Horse at Fly's wedding, babysits for Mr and Mrs Fly's baby, and buys a loft style apartment cigarette box using a five pound cheque. Then, Tim goes to buy a pet greenfly, George, and has to face up to the responsibilities and tragedies of being a pet owner.
19836320	/m/04q9s1x	The Sufis	Idries Shah	1964		 Eschewing a purely academic approach, Shah gave an overview of Sufi concepts, with potted biographies of some of the most important Sufis over the ages, including Rumi and Ibn al-Arabi, while simultaneously presenting the reader with Sufi teaching materials, such as traditional stories or the jokes from the Mullah Nasrudin corpus. The book also gave details of previously unsuspected Sufic influences on Western culture. According to Shah, the Freemasons, Cervantes, Western chivalry, alchemy and Saint Francis of Assisi, amongst others, were all influenced directly or indirectly by Sufis and Sufi ideas, often as a result of contact between East and West in the Middle Ages in places such as Spain or Sicily.
19837964	/m/04q8h3y	Flush!: The Scoop on Poop throughout the Ages		2007-03-07	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book contains two-page chapters with rhyming text, color illustration, and factual side-bars. Published for school children between grades 2 and 4, the book uses humor to describe the history of human waste. As well as the development of the toilet, chapters include various trivia including the uses of urine, Louis XIV's habit of holding meetings on a toilet that was shaped like a throne, and Elizabeth I's rejection of the first mechanical toilet.
19839221	/m/04q0f5g	Juliet Dove, Queen of Love				 Juliet Dove, a middle school girl, gets lured into a shop and is given an amulet. The amulet can't come off and she realizes that she is in a story. In order for her to be free, she has to complete it. The amulet makes the person that wears it attractive to the opposite gender. With the help of two rats that can talk, who are friends of the shop owner, she finds out the amulet was given to her by Eris, the goddess of discord. She is embarrassed by the group of boys that follow her. She manages to solve the mystery and reunite two mythological lovers, Cupid and Psyche.
19839902	/m/04q250k	The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things	Carolyn Mackler	2003	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Virginia "Ginny" Shreves is an overweight, self-conscious sophomore at a private high school in Manhattan. She has a make out buddy, Froggy Welsh the Fourth, and she doesn't want him (or anyone, for that matter) to see her fat. She hides her fat by wearing baggy clothing. Early in the novel, she doesn't really know how she feels about Froggy, but later she starts to see herself in a new light and realizes that she actually likes this guy she has been fooling around with. Her mother, Dr. Phyllis Shreves, is an adolescent psychologist who is obsessed with her daughter's weight, while her father is always complimenting skinny girls and making her feel unsatisfactory. Her older sister, Anais, joined the Peace Corps and moved to Africa in order to escape her mother, whom she calls The Queen of Denial. Her older brother, Byron, whom she idolizes, was suspended from Columbia University for committing date rape. This event forced her to completely reevaluate her opinion of her big brother. Virginia finally stands up to her mother and gains control of her life. She goes to Seattle to see her best friend Shannon, and buys the ticket without telling her mom. Towards the end, she becomes rebellious; she dyes her hair purple and gets her eyebrow pierced. She also makes new friends, realizes what she wants to become and sees the value in herself as a person. She also realizes that she must understand who she is on the inside and that this is much more important than external appearances. She takes up kickboxing, and realizes that it is fine to change the way one looks on the outside, as long as this is done for the right reasons and the changes have a positive impact on a person physically and emotionally.
19845340	/m/04qbqh8	Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod	Gary Paulsen	1994-03-01	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Winterdance tells the story of how Gary Paulsen came to compete in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The story begins with a poverty stricken Gary Paulsen (and his wife Ruth) living in a cabin in the woods of Minnesota, where he uses a team of dogs to pull a sled as he checks his trap lines. As Gary Paulsen's relationship with the dogs grows, he begins taking the team on longer and longer runs, sometimes staying out for several days at a time. Paulsen returns home from a particularly lengthy trip and settles the dogs down in their kennel. However, he discovers that he is unable to enter the cabin. When his wife, Ruth, comes outside she finds him sitting quietly with the dogs, and Paulsen confesses to Ruth that when he is out with the dogs that he doesn't want to come back. Although they had talked about the Iditarod prior to this point, and wondered at the insanity of the Mushers who competed in it, it is at this moment, with this confession, that Ruth knows Paulsen will compete. Having only ever run a small team of dogs Paulsen is severely lacking in experience. In order to run the Iditarod, he will need a team of fifteen or sixteen dogs, and he doesn't own even half that many. He purchases some Canadian sled dogs, Devil, Ortho, and Murphy, and on the drive back home quickly realizes the difference between family pets and Eskimo sled dogs. Before they have gone several miles Devil and Ortho have chewed their way out of their travel kennels and are destroying the back of the truck, and Paulsen says to Ruth that someone will have to ride in the back with the dogs and keep them in. Ruth replies that as Paulsen is the one running the Iditarod that it should be him, and that it will give him a chance to get to know the dogs. Paulsen reluctantly agrees and climbs into the back of the truck. As soon as Ruth starts the truck the dogs leap on Paulsen and he is forced to defend himself. By the time they arrive home, Paulsen's own transformation has begun. Still lacking experience, Paulsen hitches his team up and goes on several more runs, resulting in numerous wrecks, some of which result in Paulsen losing his team and walking home by himself. (The dogs not only find their own way home, but return long before Paulsen.) After one particular late night run where Paulsen and his team encounter several skunks, with the expected results, Paulsen is relegated to sleeping in the kennel. He finds that sharing sleeping quarters with the dogs increases his bond with them, and even after the smell has worn off he continues to sleep outside. When word gets around that Paulsen plans to compete in the Iditarod, the local community rallies behind him by donating money, food, and essential gear. One neighbor even donates his truck and drives Paulsen and the dogs up to Anchorage for the race. When they start to run out of money this neighbor dips into his own savings account to help fund the remainder of the trip and keep Paulsen's dream alive. Paulsen arrives in Anchorage two months before the race, and quickly realizes just how little he still knows about running the Iditarod. As he prepares himself for the 1,100-mile race, Paulsen constantly asks questions and seeks to learn from the officials and the other, more experienced Mushers. Paulsen's inexperience causes problems right from the first day, when he takes a wrong turn that adds 120-miles to his run. On this detour, Paulsen encounters a moose which, despite being repeatedly shot by a Musher traveling behind him, fatally wounds the lead dog of that team. During the 17 and a half days it takes Paulsen to complete the race he experiences sleep deprivation and hallucinations, freezing temperatures and bitingly cold winds, stunning views, and tragic disasters. He also re-evaluates his life and decides that a simple life is better than the pursuit of money and material objects. At the end of the story, Paulsen is diagnosed with coronary disease and is told that he will be able to live a normal life. Before returning home a devastated Paulsen calls a family friend and asks him to take all of his dogs except for Cookie, the dog who led his Iditarod team.
19846912	/m/04q3g2w	Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth	Margaret Atwood	2008-10	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The content is divided into five parts. The first part, Ancient Balances, considers psychological and historical aspects of debt. Atwood calls debt an imaginative human construct derived from a sense of need or greed and a sense of fairness in reciprocity and equivalent values. She cites a study by Frans de Waal that suggests a sense of fairness may be a genetic trait shared with other primates, and a study by Robert Axelrod which illustrates, given a level playing field, that the tit-for-tat strategy (or 'Do unto others as they have done onto you' strategy) was the most superior strategy in game theory. Debt and borrowing mechanisms from ancient and biblical societies are compared, including provisions from the Code of Hammurabi, Ancient Egyptians, and the Greco-Roman mythologies. The second part, Debt and Sin, explores the theological side, including moral or ethical characteristics attributed to debtors and creditors by society and religion. Debt, like certain vices, such as cigarette-smoking, have experienced times when it was considered sinful, and other times fashionable. Biblical references, like the Book of Deuteronomy, the Lord's Prayer, and sin-eating, are examined. The growth of debt is linked to the growth of the written media with the relationship symbolized by the Faustian contract with the devil. The third part, Debt as Plot, examines the "Debtor" game from Eric Berne's Games People Play and its derivative "Try and Collect". Debt as a motif and theme is explained, especially in 19th century literature, with examples from "The Devil and Tom Walker", Wuthering Heights, Vanity Fair, Madame Bovary, House of Mirth, and The Mill on the Floss. Atwood posits a theory that Charles Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge is the reverse character of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; although Scrooge is rich, he is unwilling to spend his money and is living miserably before he is saved., while Doctor Faustus is rich, happy, and generous but ends in hell. The fourth part, The Shadow Side, looks at what happens to debtors and creditors when debts are not re-paid. Some debts that are a matter of honour to which the debtor must repay by an equivalent value or creditor must either forgive or extract revenge. Debts to society, after committing crimes, are paid through vengeance-based imprisonment. The United Kingdom had debtors' prison for those who could not pay, but this was abolished for economic reasons as it prevented labourers from working and had a burdensome cost of operation. Other societies used the services of their family members or themselves as collateral. Sometimes the debtors overthrew the creditors, like King Philip IV of France against the Knights Templar, or the Ugandans against the Asians. Atwood applies the trickle-down economics to debt and examines the psychology side through the Jungian Shadow. In the final part, titled Payback, Atwood examines ecological debt. She recounts the journey of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol but placed in a modern setting. The modern-day Scrooge is visited by the spirits of Earth Day. In the past Scrooge witnesses debts to nature being repaid through animal and human sacrifices and through pestilence in over-crowded or unsustainable populations. In the present Scrooge witnesses current unsustainable practices, over-fishing and deforestation, creating a debt to nature being repaid through effects on the climate and impacts on people. Finally, in the future, Scrooge is shown two versions: one, an eco-friendly human society balanced with environmental systems, and the other, a dystopian future with a disaster affecting the fuel or food resources in such a way that hyperinflation sets in and renders money useless.
19847287	/m/04qbcnb	Searching for Anne Frank: Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa	Susan Goldman Rubin			 In 1939, a ten-year old girl named Juanita Wagner was the pen pal of Anne Frank and she only sent two letters. Juanita lived in Danville, Iowa. Juanita and her older sister, Betty (the pen pal of Margot), wondered what had happened to the Franks in the war. After the production of a 1955 Broadway show called The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway the sisters realized who their pen pals were. The book tells the story of Anne Frank's life and Juanita Wagner's life.
19850190	/m/04q2hd8	The Way of the Sufi	Idries Shah	1968		 As in The Sufis, Shah gave potted biographies of some of the best known Sufis of the ages, while adding brief descriptions of four of the major Sufi orders, or Tariqas: the Chisti Order, Qadiri Order, Suhrawardi Order and Naqshbandi Order. In addition there were a number of Sufi teaching stories as well as question-and-answer sessions with Sufi teachers. Continuing a theme from the previous book, Shah argued that Sufism had greatly influenced Western civilisation over the centuries, but that this had largely gone unrecognised, citing examples such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, the William Tell legend, the former United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjoeld and the works of Sir Richard Burton amongst others. In the East, he also said that Sufism had influenced certain aspects of Hinduism as well as Zen Buddhism.
19850420	/m/04q6zvs	The Sandman	Ralph Fletcher	2008-05-27		 Tor is an inches tall man who can not fall asleep no matter what he tries. He discovers a dragon scale while walking in the woods. He learns that the powder made by grinding the scale induces sleep. He then travels sprinkling the sand into the eyes of sleepless children.
19852798	/m/04q6z1p	The Winds of Darkover	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1970	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel concerns Brynat Scarface, a bandit who has seized control of the ancestral castle of the Storn family.
19854536	/m/04q6g2b	The World Wreckers	Marion Zimmer Bradley	1971	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel concerns a group of entrepreneurs who are hired to sabotage the ecology of Darkover so that the planet will be dependant on imports.
19858554	/m/04q7v0r	Apartment 255	Bunty Avieson	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 'Apartment 255' is the story of two best friends since school - Sarah and Ginny - who are, at the time of the book's telling, adults. Things are depicted as much better for Sarah - who has a boyfriend Tom with whom she shares a stunning inner-city apartment. But things have not worked out so well for Ginny who wanted Tom, and didn't get him. She wants what Sarah has, and moves into an apartment overlooking Sarah and Tom's flat to stalk them.
19858565	/m/04q97j5	The One O'Clock Chop	Ralph Fletcher	2007-08-07	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Matt a fourteen your old boy living on Long Island in 1973 takes a job with Dan a clam digger so that he can earn enough money to buy a used Boston Whaler. Jazzy, Matt's cousin from Hawaii arrives to spend the summer with Matt and his mother. Jazzy and Matt become kissing cousins until Jazzy becomes interested in another boy. They eventually become friends again and Matt learns to stand up for himself. The One O'Clock Chop is a daily breeze that suddenly moves across the bay where Matt lives roughening up the smooth surface. Dan says "the old salts say you can set your watch by it."
19862015	/m/04q74xz	A Game for the Living				 Ramon, a devoutly Catholic furniture repairman from Mexico City, meets Theodore, a wealthy German atheist. An unlikely friendship develops, until Lelia, a woman they had both slept with and cared for, is found brutally raped, murdered and mutilated, leaving each man in suspicion of the other.
19862183	/m/04q0jsm	The Two Faces of January	Patricia Highsmith	1961	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The book revolves around American characters, but is set in Athens, Crete, and Paris. It involves a con artist, Chester MacFarland, who accidentally kills a Greek policeman who is investigating him. MacFarland's wife, Collette, and an American student, Rydal Keener, become involved in covering up the death and fleeing the country.
19864414	/m/04q0hpx	Grandpa Never Lies	Ralph Fletcher	2000-10		 A young girl describes her special relationship with her grandfather over four seasons. The Grandfather tells imaginative tales in response to her questions. Each tale is followed by her refrain of "And Grandpa never lies, so I know it's so". Then Grandma suddenly dies and the little girl and her grandfather mourn together.
19866247	/m/04q3p3c	Cockroach Cooties	Laurence Yep			 Two brothers, Teddy and Bobby, try to defend themselves from a school bully named Arnie. The brothers discover that the bully is afraid of cockroaches. Bobby finds a cockroach and names it Hercules. Bobby uses cookies with strange ingredients to trick Arnie into a peace treaty. With the help of Hercules, the boys figure out what is happening to the bully.
19866757	/m/04qb0s0	Tomorrow Wendy		1998	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Cary's head is such a mess, which is why she keeps it hidden under her floppy Audrey Hepburn hat. Her best friend Rad &mdash; who only she can see &mdash; speaks to her in only song lyrics. Not even her boyfriend Danny knows what kind of things go through her head. He especially is oblivious to the fact that Cary has strong feelings for a girl named Wendy. Wendy has bright green hair and "hard-candy sadness in her eyes". Cary thinks that this sexy and mysterious girl could love her just as much as her boyfriend Danny does. The only problem, is that Wendy happens to be Cary's boyfriend Danny's twin sister.
19868200	/m/04q0zqp	The Goliath Bone				 Hammer is forced to put off retirement and his marriage to his longtime love interest and secretary, Velda, after he falls into the middle of an international crisis. Hammer saves a couple of archaeologists from unknown muggers somewhere in New York. Lo and behold, the archaeologists are the target of Al Qaeda agents who believe they possess a thigh bone that belonged to the Biblical character, Goliath. Hammer now finds himself going against Islamic terrorists, including a 7-foot agent code named, of course, Goliath. Will Hammer hold up against the new enemies of the US?
19873605	/m/04qbgpt	Heartland				 The narrative follows the coming-of-age story of Wing Seng, a young ethnic Chinese at the threshold of adulthood. The novel starts when he is eighteen years old, in his second year of his junior college and facing enlistment into national service. Wing Seng has two good friends in junior college: Sham, an Indian, and Audrey, a female friend. He starts a relationship with schoolmate and environmentalist, Chloe, but finds her upper middle class background clashes with his more modest one. Eventually he is enlisted and undergoes the gruelling three-month Basic Military Training at Pulau Tekong. He makes friend with Yong, a lower middle-class boy who speaks only Singlish, and befriends his younger sister May Lin. Wing also learns harsh truths about his own family along the way.
19874173	/m/04q1s8m	The Circus Surprise	Ralph Fletcher	2001-03-19		 Nick is taken to the circus as a surprise for his birthday. While at the circus he follows his nose looking for the cotton candy, and when he turns around his parents are gone. A clown on stilts comes to his rescue and puts him on his shoulders and they locating his parents. While they are searching for Nick's parents the clown has Nick in a small pouch and as they travel he tells Nick to look out at the circus and makes Nick laugh by saying that the lions are kittens and the people were ants.
19874382	/m/04q0ynn	A Suspension of Mercy				 Television scriptwriter Sidney Bartleby, who specialises in murder mysteries, daydreams about killing his wife, Alicia, as a way of drawing inspiration for his stories. However, when she unexpectedly takes a long holiday away from him, he begins wondering whether he could ever put his plan into action.
19874544	/m/04q95_y	The Tremor of Forgery				 American author Howard Ingham arrives in the sweltering heat of Tunisia, so he can draw inspiration for a new movie script he's been commissioned to write. However, when the director he's working with doesn't show, he begins hearing stories from back home about infidelity and suicide. Rather than abandon the project and leave, Howard stays in the country and starts work on a novel instead. He gets to know Francis J. Adams, an aging American propagandist and Danish homosexual painter Anders Jensen. While waiting for a letter from his New York girlfriend Ina, the plot of his projected novel comes together. It's the story of a banker who forges documents to steal money he then gives to poor people. One night, Ingham finds someone breaking into his apartment and throws his typewriter at the intruder, who is then dragged away by others. Ingham struggles to keep this possible murder secret from his acquaintances while at the same time questioning western morality and its worth in a country where he is a stranger.
19874683	/m/04q85j6	A Dog's Ransom		1972		 One day, publishing house executive Ed Reynolds finds a disturbing ransom note in the Manhattan apartment he shares with his wife: "Dear sir: I have your dog, Lisa. She is well and happy... I gather she is important to you? We'll see." As the couple slowly realise the predicament they're in, it becomes painfully clear that an ambitious kidnapper really has hit them where it hurts...
19874945	/m/04q35_t	Edith's Diary				 When Edith Howland's husband abandons her for a younger woman, leaving her with their alcoholic son and his senile uncle, she begins recording details of an imaginary, much more successful life where she has friends and grandchildren. However, this diversion soon grows unhealthy when she becomes slowly convinced that the fantasies are real…
19880583	/m/04q311n	All His Engines				 With a plague of comas seizing the world, John Constantine and his best friend Chas Chandler travel from the UK to Los Angeles to try to discern its origin. They unwittingly step into a war between gods, most notably Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec deity of death, who resents Constantine's intrusion into his business. Beroul, a demon who behaves as if he were a Hollywood movie executive, holds hostage the soul of Chas' granddaughter Trish. Constantine can get her back, if he disposes of Beroul's enemies, which he eventually does by enlisting the help of Mictlantecuhtli. Constantine is able to trick his way out of the bargain, however. The story begins on a dark night in Liverpool in August 1961. As the clouds in the sky begin to take strange forms, we see that the shapes are transpiring above the home of a young John Constantine. He is awake in his bed and believes the noises coming from outside his window to be from his sister, Cheryl, breaking in after curfew. Suddenly, however, an enormous skeleton-like creature manifests itself on Constantine's bed and demands that he hand over something better than his own immortal soul. The frieghtened Constantine screams at the sight of the monster and it disappears. However, John's father comes into the room and, despite his pleads that a ghost had been in his room, scolds John for waking him up at such an hour. A confused Constantine is left staring out his bedroom window. The focus of the story then shifts to the home of Geraldine Chandler, Chas' daughter in the fall of 2004. Her ex-husband is screaming at her to see his divorced daughter, Tricia, as she apparently should be ready to leave with him. Finally, he storms into the house to force his daughter out with him. However, when he and Geraldine enter her bedroom they are shocked to find Tricia motionless and unresponsive on her bedroom floor. Following a trip to the hospital, the entire Chandler family, Chas included, is seated in the waiting room of the hospital, discussing Tricia's condition. As tensions arise between Chas and Geraldine's ex, Constantine arrives to the hospital to offer his hand in helping Tricia. Immediately, however, Chas' wife, Renee rejects his help and demands that he not go anywhere near Tricia. Following this outburst, Chas explains to John that his granddaughter is in critical condition and that the doctors are clueless as to why. Desperate for an answer, Chas called on Constantine for help, fearing the possible cause to be supernatural. John agrees, but warns Chas that things might get very difficult as he goes deeper into this mystery and that he will need a driver. Chas agrees and the two leave the hospital to seek answers. The first place that the two visit is the home of an old friend of Constantine's named Fennel. On the way there, Constantine suffers a flashback in which he is arm wrestling a supposed friend of his. After taking the man's concentration away from the armwrestling match they are having, John ends up the winner. The man is furious with him and prepares to stab him when Chas interviens and the pair end up against every other man in the room. Suddenly, all the men in the room save for John and Chas begin to wither away and die. Once again, the same enormous skeleton-like being appears in the house and once more demands something from Constantine. Back in Chas' car, John begins to strain himself as he refuses to believe the events of the flashback actually happened. Once inside Fennel's house, John wisecracks his way into getting his friend to help him. Fennel is apparently a powerful psychic, which John intends to exploit for his own gain. The two set up the necessary environment and begin a seance of sorts in order to contact Tricia. When Fennel finally reaches her, she reveals that she is in chains and that the only one who she's seen so far is the 'nasty man'. Before revealing who this man is, he forces his control onto Fennel and tells Constantine that what's his is his. Unfortunately, the stress is too much for Fennel's body and he explodes in a storm of fire, leaving only a burning address in the floor of Fennel's home. This address is one that exists in Los Angeles, where Chas and Constantine prepare to go. Following a troubling flight for Chas, the two arrive at the Los Angeles airport, intent on seeking the address. After acquiring a vehicle, Chas drives Constantine to the address they seek. At this address, a large mansion sits atop a hill and is adorned with many tacky lawn ornaments.
19883277	/m/04q2ml1	The Go-Giver		2008	{"/m/012lzc": "Self-help"}	 The Go-Giver as the authors tell, revolves around the story of a young professional (Joe) who is striving for success. Joe is ambitious, however lately it seems like his hard work and efforts are not paying off in terms of results. Following a disappointing quarter - in terms of sales results - he inadvertently seeks the mentorship of The Chairman. Joe then embarks on a learning journey by meeting Go-Givers - friends of The Chairman. Through these interactions he learns of the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success: 1- The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. 2- The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. 3- The Law of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first. 4- The Law of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. 5- The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.
19890785	/m/04q820m	Favorite Flies and Their Histories		1892		 Favorite Flies is a unique volume that compiles the stories and images of popular American artificial flies of the late 19th century. It is one of the earliest works to use chromolithography color plates. Today, the original flies used to create the color plates are preserved in the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vermont. The stories for each fly described in the volume were obtained through correspondence with fly fisherman and fly tiers throughout the U.S. and Canada. The following is a typical story about the Professor, a popular wet-fly of time: No. 192. The Professor was named after the much-loved Professor John Wilson (Christopher North), and the story of the fly is, that one time, when this famous angler Was fishing, he ran short of flies, and, to create something of a flylike appearance, he fastened the petals of buttercups on his hook, adding bits of leaves or grass to imitate the wings of a fly. This arrangement was so successful that it led to the making of the fly with a yellow silk body, since then was widely known as the Professor Professor. - A prime favorite; use it on almost all casts when I see more than one fly. When using a black tail fly, I use a brown fly and a Professor for droppers; find it a good fly under general conditions, when using a Miller for tail fly; then use Professor for droppers. From a letter from W. David Tomlin ("Norman") Duluth, Minn as favorite flies for trout in Michigan streams. Favorite Flies contains plates and stories for Bass Flies, Trout Flies, Hackles, Salmon Flies, and Lake Flies
19891466	/m/04q9bvn	Caine Black Knife	Matthew Stover	2008-10-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is split between the adventure that made Caine a star (Retreat from the Boedecken) and events in the present day. Both events take place in the same area, and both involve the Ogrillo Black Knife clan who roam the Boedecken Wastes. A twenty-five-year gap separates the two timelines. The arc was completed in Caine's Law (earlier working title: "His Father's Fist"), released April 2012.
19898280	/m/04q9ddj	The Clay Marble	Minfong Ho	1991		 After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, 12-year-old Dara, her older brother Sarun, and their mother journey to the Thai border in search of food. Here they meet the remnants of another Cambodian family, one of whose members, Jantu, becomes Dara's friend; another, Nea, falls in love with Sarun. Life is going along well until in fighting among neighboring guerrilla groups forces the families to flee again. In the confusion, Dara and Jantu become separated from the main group. After many incidents, they are reunited with their families, although Jantu is shot in the process and dies soon after. Sarun, once a proud farmer, wants to join the military. Dara courageously stands up to him, and convinces him to return home with the family. The title comes from Jantu's effervescence and manual dexterity, the combination of which impresses Dara as magic. She believes a clay marble, having been invested with Jantu's magic, gives her the courage to get through her ordeals.
19902738	/m/04q9qdx	Sea of Poppies	Amitav Ghosh	2008-10-14	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with Deeti, a simple, pious lady, caring mother and an efficient housewife. Married to Hukam Singh, a crippled worker in the Ghazipur Opium Factory, the unfortunate Deeti figures out that on her wedding night, she was drugged with opium by her mother-in-law, so that her brother-in-law could consummate the marriage in place of her infertile husband. This brother-in-law is the real father of Deeti's daughter Kabutri. When her husband dies, Deeti sends Kabutri to stay with relatives. Deeti looks almost certain to meet her doom when she chooses to go through with the sati ritual (immolation on her husband's funeral pyre), but then Kalua, the ox man from the neighbouring village, comes to her rescue. The couple flee and unite. This is not acceptable to their fellow villagers. In order to escape Deeti's in-laws, she and Kalua become indentured servants on the Ibis. Zachary Reid, an American sailor born to a slave mother and a white father, receives a lot of attention. He has been on the Ibis since the schooner started her arduous journey, and hopes to die with it. He maintains that in his lifetime he has never seen a more admirable article than the Ibis and it is no less than a mother to him, supporting him in his dark hours and rejoicing with him in his happiness. With the support of the head of the lascars, Serang Ali, he becomes the second in command of the ship, when it was refitted to carry indentured labour to the island of Mareech or Mauritius instead of the tradable opium. Neel Rattan Halder, a wealthy rajah whose dynasty has been ruling the zemindary of Rakshali for centuries, is confronted by Mr. Burnham with the need to sell off his estates in order to pay for the debt he had incurred when trading opium with China at the height of the opium trade. But now that the opium trade has come to a standstill, as a result of the resistance shown by the Chinese authorities, he is left with no money to clear his loan. When Mr. Burnham proposes to settle the load for Halders zamindary, Halder refueses the deal as the zamindary is his familys ancestral property and selling it would mean turning his back on his many dependents living in his household and zamindary. He is tried for forgery, but it is a sham trial orchestrated by Burnham and his cronies. The court punishes him by sentencing him to work as an indentured labourer for seven years in Mauritius. It is then that he meets Ah Fatt, a half-Chinese, half-Parsi opium addict from Canton, his sole companion in prison since the two will eventually be transported together on the Ibis. The book also features Paulette, a French orphan, who has also grown up in India. Her father was an eccentric but kind botanist, and her mother died in childbirth. Mr. and Mrs. Burnham take Paulette into their home after her father's death. She becomes determined to run away because Mr. Burnham has behaved in a disturbing way with her in private. Also, he is trying to get her married to his friend, the stern, elderly Justice Kendalbushe. As it happens, Paulette had met Zachary Reid, the American sailor, at a dinner at the Burnhams'; she was instantly drawn to him, and he to her. She has resolved to travel to Mauritius, as her great-aunt did, in the hope of finding a better future. Along with Jodu, her childhood friend (or brother, as both Jodu and Paulette are brought up under the care of Jodu's mother following the death of Paulette's mother at childbirth), she boards the Ibis, unaware of her destiny. Paulette easily disguises herself as an Indian woman, using her fluent Bengali, which she learned in childhood growing up at close proximity with Jodu and his mother. Paulette's upbringing in India has also made her feel more at ease with Indian manners, food, and clothing than with Western ones. As the stories merge, each carrying its share of joys and sorrows, the Ibis becomes a shelter to those in destitution. After much strife and bloodshed on board the vessel, Neel, Ah Fatt, Jodu, Serang Ali and Kalua manage to escape, unaware of the destination the sea waves will carry them to.
19902875	/m/04q6l1b	The Lucky One	Nicholas Sparks	2008-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 U.S. Marine Logan Thibault finds a photograph of a smiling young woman half-buried in the dirt during his first tour of duty in Iraq. He carries the photo in his pocket and soon wins a streak of poker games, then survives a battle that kills two of his closest buddies. His best friend, Victor, seems to have an explanation for his good fortune: the photograph, his lucky charm. Back home in Colorado, Thibault begins to believe that the woman in the photo somehow holds the key to his destiny. He sets out on a journey across the country with his dog Zeus to find her and eventually encounters Elizabeth Green, a divorced mother with a young son Ben, in North Carolina. Caught off guard by the attraction he feels, Thibault keeps the story of the photo and his luck a secret. He and Elizabeth begin a passionate love affair, but the secret of the photo will soon threaten to tear them apart—destroying not only their deep and true passionate love, but also their very lives.
19903269	/m/04q3rdy	Fool	Christopher Moore	2009-02-10	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 Pocket is the royal fool at the court of King Lear of Britain. To prevent Lear from marrying off his daughter Cordelia, a girl Pocket is especially fond of, he schemes with Edmund of Gloucester. Pocket advises the bastard (i.e., illegitimate) Edmund how to get the land of his legitimate brother Edgar, while Edmund is to prevent the marriage of Cordelia. Edmund somehow gets Lear to ask each of his three daughters – Goneril, Regan and Cordelia – how much they love him. While Goneril and Regan please the old king with their exaggerations, Cordelia enraged him with her famous laconic “I love thee, according to my bond.” Lear disinherits Cordelia and divides his kingdom among Goneril and Regan. Notwithstanding, the prince of France marries Cordelia and takes her with him. Deprived of his adored Cordelia and angry with Lear because of the way he treated her, Pocket – advised by the ghost of a girl who turns out to have been not only his deceased lover but also the former queen of Lear and mother of Cordelia – starts his own vendetta: He encourages Goneril and Regan to strip Lear of his remaining power (especially his train of 100 knights, one of the conditions on which Lear passed the kingdom to his daughters) and tries to drive the older sisters into war against each other. Lear finally realizes his mistake and goes temporarily mad. To estrange the sisters he makes both believe that they are in an affair with Edmund of Gloucester. While successful in this, Pocket fails to incite civil war, simply because Cordelia – now a veritable warrior queen – invades Britain with her army from France. Lear, and later on Pocket, end in the dungeon of the castle now ruled by Edmund, now Earl of Gloucester. The two elder sisters are in the same castle and ally against Cordelia, but poison each other out of jealousy nonetheless. Edmund confronts Lear and Pocket, and Pocket kills him with his throwing knives. Shortly after, Lear dies. Cordelia invades the castle and becomes queen of Britain. Pocket, who has been told by witches that he is the son of Lear’s brother, marries Cordelia and becomes king.
19905772	/m/04q6_py	Escape to the Hills		1947	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book chronicles the Chapmans of Silliman University experiences as they escape to the hills and lived as fugitives in the mountains of Negros Oriental during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, as well as, their experiences when they were kept in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp.
19908137	/m/04q20lk	The Salmon Fly		1895		 In The Salmon Fly, George Kelson boldly and confidently distilled a lifetime of salmon fishing wisdom into this privately published work. The book contains 510 pages of text and 46 pages of illustrations plus 8 coloured plates showing 52 flies. Many of the black & white illustrations are of fly-fishing contemporaries of Kelson—to include Mr. A.V. Wells-Ridley J.P; Major J.P. Traherne; Mr. Barclay Field. The first part of the book is devoted to the techniques of tying the salmon fly as well as patterns for individual flies. Here's a typical pattern write-up: *JOCK SCOTT. G.S.- (John Scott.) **TAG. Silver twist and yellow silk. **TAIL. A topping and Indian Crow. **BUTT. Black herl. **BODY. In two equal sections : No. 1, of yellow silk (butter-cup colour) ribbed with narrow silver tinsel, and butted with Toucan above and below, and black herl : No. 2, black silk, ribbed with broad silver tinsel. **HACKLE. A natural black hackle, from centre. **THROAT. Gallina. **WINGS. Two strips of black Turkey with white tips, Golden Pheasant tail, Bustard, grey Mallard, Peacock (sword feather) Swan dyed blue and yellow, red Macaw, Mallard, and a topping. **SIDES. Jungle. **CHEEKS. Chatterer. **HORNS. Blue Macaw. **HEAD. Black herl. It is only just possible to find a river or a catch, be it in pools, streams, rapids, or flats, shaded or exposed to the light of day, in which a "Jock Scott," when dressed properly, has not made for itself a splendid reputation. The second part of the book is devoted to the practical aspects of fishing for salmon with the fly—locating fish, casting techniques, catching and landing fish and various accessories and equipment. The Salmon Fly also includes 46 full page black and white advertisements for mostly angling and sporting pursuits.
19909346	/m/04q2946	Magnus				 Easily Mackay Brown's most religious novel - written after he was received into the Roman Catholic Church - it is seen principally from the perspective of outsiders (peasants, mercenaries, schoolfriends, tinkers) which Mackay Brown interleaves with the Christian tradition of the Seamless robe of Jesus. The narrative implies that Magnus's life is a preordained quest for the garment as a manifested object. It moves swiftly from Magnus's conception to his boyhood at the monastery on Birsay, his non-violent participation at the Battle of Menai Strait (depicted in the Orkneyinga Saga) to the political manoeuvring and outright conflict between Magnus and his cousin Earl Hakon Paulsson. The narrative also reflects on the damage this inflicted on the inhabitants of the islands. At the pivotal moment of Magnus's execution by Hakon, the narrative switches to Flossenbürg concentration camp during World War II . Magnus's unwitting executioner Lifolf becomes a cook at the camp, co-opted into the hanging of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer by the camp's drunk Nazi commanding officers. The story returns to twelfth century Orkney, and concludes with the tinkers, Jock and Mary (present since the outset of the tale). Jock prays to the tomb of the (as yet uncanonised) 'Saint' Magnus, but is reprimanded by Brother Colomb, Magnus's former teacher. However not long after, Mary, hitherto blinded by cataracts, suddenly has her sight restored. Throughout the novel, Mackay Brown contrasts the inevitable nature of Magnus's fate with the symbolic significance of pre-Christian ritual, including human sacrifice. Despite this, critics have noted the deeply meditative nature of the work despite the bloody events it depicts and the harshness of existence in twelfth century Orkney.
19913524	/m/04q2dmy	A Purple Place for Dying	John D. MacDonald	1964	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 McGee is drawn away from his usual haunt of Florida by a job offer from Mona Yeoman, who suspects that her estranged husband has stolen from her considerable trust fund. Before the investigation begins, Mona is murdered before McGee's eyes by an unseen gunman. By the time he summons the police to the scene, her body has disappeared. McGee then sets out to solve her murder.
19914550	/m/04q7g0w	Their Dogs Came with Them	Helena Maria Viramontes		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Their Dogs Came With Them follows the lives of 4 Mexican American young women living in East Los Angeles during the 1960s. Each character’s story is told in individual chapters while their lives often intermingle. Additionally, her narration style changes from past to present, giving the reader a glimpse into their childhoods to show how their upbringings has an effect on the present. They grow up in an urban landscape, intensified by freeway construction that displaced homes, while the Quarantine Authority uses roadblocks to keep residents in East Los Angeles, “supposedly” protecting them from rabid animals. Turtle, a girl so desperate to belong, acts like a boy to please her gang member brother, Luis Lil Lizard, who is resentful about having a girl for a sibling. After growing up in an abusive home environment, she too joins the McBride Homeboys and then lives on the streets when her brother goes to fight in Vietnam. Ermila, orphaned after her parents ran away, lives with her grandparents who do not understand the rapidly changing times and the younger generation. Her close group of school friends becomes her family, and together they experience the Chicano power movement as well as serious family and relationship problems. Tranquilina, the daughter of missionaries, is optimistic about religion despite witnessing horrible atrocities, like the cruel and revengeful murder of Ermila’s cousin Nacho, committed by the McBride Boys. And last there is Ben, who gets a scholarship to USC and has a chance of getting ahead, but is gravely depressed. As a child he loses his mother, and then he accidentally leads another boy in front of a truck, killing the boy. Witnesses falsely claim that Ben tried to save the boy, and thus Ben leads a life of guilt. Together, these characters, their environments, and their families, emotionally depict the struggles of being low-class section in Los Angeles during the 1960s.
19914967	/m/04qbn4m	Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius	Kevin J. Anderson	2002-01-02	{"/m/02twf_": "Fictional crossover", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel follows Verne and André Nemo from their childhoods. Verne is depicted as being a sheltered, almost neurotic individual who is incapable of taking risks, while Nemo is adventurous and resourceful, especially after the death of his father (a dock worker). Both lust after the independent-minded Caroline Arronax. The two boys attempt to apprentice themselves to a ship captain named Grant, but Verne's stern father finds him and forces him to come home and study to become an attorney. However, Nemo joins the crew, and after an attack by pirates, is stranded on a mysterious island. Meanwhile, Caroline is forced to marry an explorer, Captain Hatteras. Eventually Nemo manages to escape through a fantastic underground world. Returning as a hero, Nemo proposes to spend five weeks in a new balloon design exploring Africa. Caroline joins him, but Verne, fearing what might happen, refuses. Nemo volunteers to fight in the Crimean War. While there, he is taken captive by one of his supposed allies, an Ottoman commander named Robur. Robur is engaged in a power-struggle with a rival official, Barbicane. Nemo is forced to design a submarine for use in the Ottoman navy; after many difficulties, it is finally launched, and christened the Nautilus. Nemo and his fellow slaves use it to kill Robur, but not before their families&nbsp;— including the Turkish wife Nemo had taken and their son&nbsp;— have been killed. Grief-stricken, he turns to piracy, destroying the warships of the world he encounters. Meanwhile, back in France, the Franco-Prussian War has begun, and Caroline's husband Hatteras has long been missing. However, she rebukes Verne's romantic advances, as by now she only loves Nemo. For Nemo, however, the destructive lashing out begins to lose its appeal, and after sinking a passenger ship, he rescues one of its occupants&nbsp;— a man named Phileas Fogg, who is more concerned with winning a bet of his than the fantastic Nautilus. Nemo decides to bring him to his destination, and then returns home to France. There, he retrieves Caroline from the Siege of Paris by bringing the Nautilus up the Seine; he takes her to beneath the Arctic ice pack to see the wreckage of her husband's ship. Now free to be together, they return to find Verne, who finally works up the courage to join his friends on their last journey together before Nemo and Caroline retreat beneath the waves together: Nemo brings the Nautilus to Atlantis. In addition to the fictional characters and members of Verne's family, several other historical individuals appear, specifically: Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Baron Haussmann, Napoleon III, Said bin Sultan, the Earl of Cardigan, Florence Nightingale, and Pierre-Jules Hetzel.
19915021	/m/04q9mgr	Yaprak Dökümü	Reşat Nuri Güntekin	1939		 The novel revolves around a middle class Turkish family (the Tekins) in the 1930s. The main characters are Ali Riza Tekin (head of the Tekin family), his wife Hayriye, their young daughters: Fikret (the oldest daughter), Leyla (the second daughter), Necla (the third daughter), Ayşe (their youngest daughter), their only son Şevket (who is between Fikret and Leyla) and his bride Ferhunde (who is also the principal antagonist).
19918116	/m/04p_yd2	The Children's Bach	Helen Garner	1984	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel, set in Melbourne, concerns a couple, Athena and Dexter, who lead a self-sufficient life with their two sons, one of whom is severely disabled. Their apparently "comfortable rut is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth, a tough nut from Dexter's past." Elizabeth brings with her her sister Vicki, Vicki's sometime lover Philip, and Philip prepubescent daughter, Poppy. Through them, Athena and Dexter are drawn into a world whose ideas and values test the foundations of their relationship.
19918431	/m/04q7_2c	A Walk to Remember	Nicholas Sparks	1999-10	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story starts with a prologue from Landon Carter at age 57. The remainder of the story takes place when Landon is a 17-year-old high school senior. Landon lives in the small, religious town of Beaufort, North Carolina. His father is a genial, charismatic congressman. His father is not around very much, as he lives in Washington, D.C. Landon is more reclusive, which causes some tension in their relationship. Landon's father pressures him into running for class president. His best friend, Eric Hunter, who is the most popular boy in school, helps him and, to his surprise, Landon wins the election. As student body president, Landon is required to attend the school dance with a date. Since nobody else seems to be available, Landon reluctantly asks Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of Hegbert Sullivan, the Beaufort church minister, who accepts his invitation. While Jamie is very religious and carries a Bible with her wherever she goes, Landon (one of the popular students) is reluctant to go to the dance with someone like her. When Landon is threatened by Lew, Jamie comes to Landon's aid, to his appreciation. At the end of the night, he admits she was the best date possible. A few days later, Jamie asks Landon to participate in the school's production of The Christmas Angel. While Landon is not very enthusiastic about participating, he agrees to it anyway. Jamie, on the other hand, could not be happier about her new cast mate. Landon knows that if his friends learn about his role in the play, he will be teased relentlessly. One day at rehearsal, Jamie asks if Landon will walk her home, after which it becomes routine. A couple of days later, Eric mocks the couple during their walk home and Landon becomes truly embarrassed to be with Jamie. Meanwhile, Landon continues to learn about all the people and organizations Jamie spends her time helping, including an orphanage. Landon and Jamie visit the orphanage one day to discuss a possible showing of The Christmas Angel, but their proposal is quickly rejected by Mr. Jenkins. When Jamie and Landon were waiting to meet Mr. Jenkins, she tells Landon that all she wants in the future is to get married in a church full of people and to have her father walk her down the aisle. While Landon thinks this is a strange wish, he accepts it. In truth, he is beginning to enjoy his time with her. One day, while they are walking home, Landon yells at Jamie and he tells her that he is not friends with her. The next day at the first show of The Christmas Angel, Jamie enters the stage dressed as the angel, making Landon simply utter his line, "You're beautiful," meaning it for the first time. Following that, Jamie asks Landon if he would go around town and retrieve the jars containing money collected for the orphans' Christmas presents. When Landon collects the jars, there is only $55.73, but when he gives the money to Jamie, there is $247. Jamie buys gifts for the orphanage, and Landon and Jamie spend Christmas Eve there. Jamie's Christmas gift to Landon is her deceased mother's Bible. As they get in the car to go home, Landon realizes his true feelings for her. "All I could do is wonder how I'd ever fallen in love with a girl like Jamie Sullivan." He invites her to his house for Christmas dinner. The next day Landon visits Jamie at her house, where they share their first kiss on her porch. Afterward, Landon asks Hegbert if they can go to Flavin's, a local restaurant, on New Year's Eve. While Hegbert initially refuses, after Landon declares his love for Jamie, Hegbert allows it. On New Year's Jamie and Landon go to dinner, where they share their first dance. A couple of weeks later, Landon tells Jamie that he is in love with her. To his surprise, Jamie replies by insisting that he can't be. In response, Landon demands an explanation, and Jamie reveals that she is dying of leukemia. The following Sunday, Hegbert announces to his congregation that his daughter is dying. Jamie does not return to school the following Monday and that it is eventually learned that she is too ill and will never return to school. While they are having dinner at Landon's house, Jamie tells Landon, "I love you, too," for the first time. A couple weeks later, Eric and Margaret visit Jamie's house, where they apologize for ever being rude to her. Eric gives Jamie the $400 that he collected for the orphanage. Jamie refuses to stay at the hospital, because she wants to die at home. In turn, Landon's father helps to provide Jamie the best equipment and doctors so she can spend the rest of her life at home. This gesture helps to mend the gap between father and son. One day, while sitting next to Jamie while she sleeps, Landon comes up with an idea. He runs to the church to find Hegbert and asks him for permission to marry Jamie. While Hegbert is reluctant, his refusal to deny Landon's request is seen by Landon as approval. Landon runs back to Jamie's side and asks, "Will you marry me?" Landon and Jamie are married in a church full of people with Hegbert walking Jamie down the aisle. When they reach the front of the church, Hegbert says, "I can no more give Jamie away than I can give away my heart. But what I can do is let another share in the joy that she has always given me." Hegbert has had to experience so much pain in his life, first losing his wife, now knowing his only child will soon be gone, too. The book ends with Landon 40 years later at age 57. He still loves Jamie and wears her ring. He finishes the story by saying, "I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen."
19926339	/m/04q2hhq	The Shadow Speaker	Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu	2007-10-02	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ejimafor "Ejii" Ugabe is a fourteen year-old Muslim half Wodaabe half Igbo girl. She lives in the Nigerian village of Kwàmfa. Her father was once the hated dictator-like chief. She lives in the year 2070. The whole world is falling apart after a nuclear fall out in , quote, “the early twenty-first century”.
19929708	/m/04q9tc6	If We Dream Too Long				 The book follows the life of Kwang Meng, a young, 18-year-old working adult who has just graduated from secondary school. He currently works as a clerk, a job which he finds drab and monotonous. Two of his secondary school friends, Hock Lai and Nadarajah (nicknamed Portia), follow different career paths in their diverging lives. Hock Lai becomes a white-collared worker, determined to climb the corporate ladder, while Portia intends to further his studies in the UK. Kwang Meng meets and strikes up a relationship with a local bar girl, Lucy, at Paradise Bar. Unfortunately, owing to their very different social backgrounds, the couple has to break up (initiated by Lucy). Hock Lai tries to matchmake Kwang Meng with one of his female acquaintances Anne. Kwang Meng meets Boon Teik and Mei-I, neighbours who are both teachers, and whom Kwang Meng finds an ideal couple. Hock Lai himself gets married with Cecilia, whose father is one of the rich tycoons of Singapore. Throughout all this, Kwang Meng comes across as a rather passive figure, preferring merely to observe and seek solace through activities like sea swimming, smoking and drinking in bars. At the novel's end, Kwang Meng's father suffers a stroke, which destined him to take up the burden of supporting his family.
19931129	/m/04yc6b1	Nights in Rodanthe	Nicholas Sparks	2002-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story begins in 2002 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Adrienne Willis, a part-time librarian and divorced mother of three, is helping her daughter, Amanda, cope with depression. Amanda is having problems coping with the loss of her husband and is having difficulties raising her two children. In an effort to show that life goes on despite trying times, Adrienne tells her daughter the story of her relationship with Paul Flanner, whom she met in 1988. Adrienne was abandoned for a younger woman by her husband. She parented their children alone and took care of her sick father. This had worn her down. So when an opportunity comes along to tend an inn in the small coastal town of Rodanthe, North Carolina for a friend, Adrienne decides to do it. As soon as she arrives, a major storm is forecast. Meanwhile, Paul, a fifty-four-year-old father, arrives in Rodanthe. He has sold his home and practice, and now wishes to travel to an isolated place where he can seek relief from his shattered life. A successful surgeon, he has recently divorced from his wife, and has had a patient die. While the storm looms, the two characters, the only people at the inn, find compassion in one another and fall in love. After a few days, Adrienne and Paul slowly realize that once they leave, they must return to their separate lives. Paul explains a promise to join his estranged son in a medical clinic in Ecuador; eventually, he and Adrienne part. Adrienne returns to Rocky Mount. Paul heads for Ecuador. They communicate through letters, further fortifying their love. Paul, however, dies in Ecuador.
19943070	/m/04y7lrk	The Great Ghost Rescue	Eva Ibbotson	1975	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Humphrey the Horrible is a pleasant, friendly ghost - quite unlike his frightful, ghastly and loathsome family: his mother, a Hag; his father, a Scottish ghost killed fighting in the Battle of Otterburn in which he lost both his legs, and was run through by a sword; his brother George, a screaming skull; and his sister, Winifred, a wailing ghost covered in bloodstains. The little family are turned out of their castle home when humans plan to redevelop the castle into a holiday resort. They travel with across England, accompanied by their headless Aunt Hortensia and their pet Shuk, and come to Norton Castle School, mistaking it for an empty castle. Here, they meet Rick, a student quite unafraid of ghosts. Rick plans to take the ghosts to the Prime Minister for peace talks concerning the large numbers of ghosts being turned out of their homes. The ghosts and Rick head to London, and pick up an assortment of hangers-on along the way: Walter the Wet, a ghost haunting a polluted river; Cousin Susie and her vampire bat brood; and the Mad Monk, whose church was destroyed to make way for a motorway. In London, Rick seeks out his member of parliament, Clarence Wilks, but the ignorant politician dismisses Rick's story as a fanciful pretense. Rick and the ghosts, furious at Wilks' disbelief, haunt his house and ruin a dinner party with several prominent guests. Wilks takes the ghosts to meet with the Prime Minister in exchange for leaving him be. The Prime Minister is shaken though sensible, and cannot promise the ghosts land for their own. However, a Lord Bullhaven, present throughout the whole conversation, allows the ghosts to settle in his land in northern Scotland, a place called Insleyfarne. The ghosts are thrilled, and settle in Insleyfarne. Rick returns to Norton Castle School, saddened to leave his friends behind. Lord Bullhaven, however, is revealed to be "the sort of person who couldn't bear anything to be even the least bit unusual or out of the ordinary", and had gathered the ghosts of England at Insleyfarne to exorcise them. He recruits several clergymen and takes them to Insleyfarne in a bid to exorcise the ghosts. Humphrey manages to escape and, weakened, travels to Norton Castle School to warn Rick. Rick, his friend Barbara (daughter of the school cook) and new boy Peter Thorne, travel to Insleyfarne by plane to save the ghosts. They are helped by Mr Wallance, one of the clergymen who agreed to exorcise the ghosts for enough money to feed his starving family, but regrets his decision to help Bullhaven. Rick, Barbara and Peter find the Hag, close to death, and she instructs them on supernatural remedies to save the other ghosts, such as saying Latin curses backwards and using dried wormwood to cure the Shuk's tail. The ghosts hold a party to celebrate their survival and victory over Bullhaven. They rename Humphrey "HUMPHREY THE HEROIC" and pronounce Rick as "RICK THE RESCUER". The party is interrupted by Bullhaven, who in his anger, crashed his car into a stone wall, and has returned to Insleyfarne as a ghost. Rick implores the other ghosts to offer him sanctuary. Rick, Barbara and Peter return to their school and Rick is thoughtful and quiet. Barbara tells him about the plight of the polar bears about Alaska, and Rick begins forming plans for yet another adventure.
19946027	/m/04yccwv	Storm Catchers	Tim Bowler	2001-06-30	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A storm is breaking, and it's going to change everything.... "She was simply crying. Crying as the rain drove into her face, crying as the gate opened before her. Crying as he took her away." Tap.Tap.Tap. Fin has gone to check out Billy's new computer, and leaves his brother and sister, Sam and Ella, at home. Little does he know that something devastating is about to take place. In the middle of this coastal storm, Ella has been stolen away by a mysterious kidnapper at night. The Parnell family is shocked-and is being torn apart by Ella's kidnapping. The kidnapper is showing no sign of relenting, giving any information on Ella's state, and saying what he really wants. Until one day, he reveals his plans, and tells the Parnell family what he wants with Ella. On the other hand, Sam has been frequently running towards the old Pengrig lighthouse to catch the Storm. Sam has been talking to himself. When asked, he simply replies, "It's a secret." As time goes on, the Parnell family is forced to unravel their past, full of their deepest, darkest secrets. Maybe getting Ella back wasn't as easy as they thought.
19951018	/m/04yb8qg	The Mass Psychology of Fascism		1933-09		 The question at the heart of Reich's book was this: Why did the masses turn to authoritarianism which is clearly against their interests? Reich set out to analyze "the economic and ideological structure of German society between 1928 and 1933" in this book. In it, he calls communism "red fascism" and groups it in the same category as Nazism, and this led to him being kicked out of the Communist Party. Reich argued that the reason Nazism was chosen over fascism was sexual repression. As a child, a member of the proletariat had learned from his or her parents to suppress sexual desire. Hence, in the adult, rebellious and sexual impulses caused anxiety. Fear of revolt, as well as fear of sexuality, were thus "anchored" in the character of the masses. This influenced the irrationality of the people, Reich would argue. As Reich put it: Suppression of the natural sexuality in the child, particularly of its genital sexuality, makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good and adjusted in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. At first the child has to submit to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family; this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system. The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and anxiety. Reich noted that the symbolism of the swastika, evoking the fantasy of the primal scene, showed in spectacular fashion how Nazism systematically manipulated the unconscious. A repressive family, a baneful religion, a sadistic educational system, the terrorism of the party, and economic violence all operated in and through individuals&#39; unconscious psychology of emotions, traumatic experiences, fantasies, libidinal economies, and so on, and Nazi political ideology and practice exacerbated and exploited these tendencies. For Reich, fighting fascism meant first of all studying it scientifically, which was to say, using the methods of psychoanalysis. Reason, alone able to check the forces of irrationality and loosen the grip of mysticism, is also capable of playing its own part in developing original modes of political action, building on a deep respect for life, and promoting a harmonious channeling of libido and orgastic potency. Reich proposed &#34;work democracy,&#34; a self-managing form of social organization that would preserve the individual&#39;s freedom, independence, and responsibility and base itself on them.
19951071	/m/04y68p1	Pale Gray for Guilt	John D. MacDonald	1968	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 When McGee visits Tush Bannon, his wife Janine and their children at their motel/marina, he finds the business in trouble. Tush explains that the local authorities are making life difficult for him by such means as introducing roadworks on the only access road. Pressure is being put on the Bannons by a well-connected local businessman, Preston LaFrance, to sell to a large corporation that wants to develop the land for industrial use. Most of the income they have left is from a few houseboats, one of which is rented to Arlie Denn and her husband, hippies who make a small living selling handicrafts. The next time McGee sees Tush, they bump into one another at a bar, where Tush is in conversation with a smart young woman named Mary Smith. He tells McGee that Smith is an agent for an entrepreneur named Gary Santo, who wants to acquire the whole parcel of land. Tush has appealed to both LaFrance and Santo without success; they are not interested in his personal circumstances and are prepared to put him out of business to get what they want. Tush cannot afford to sell his land at the deflated price now being offered. All he can do now is to resume his old job as a salesman. When McGee next goes to call on the Bannons, he finds the motel and marina closed down, and learns that Tush was found dead on the premises the previous day, apparently having committed suicide by releasing a heavy hoist onto his own head. Suspecting foul play, McGee investigates further and learns that Tush's wife Janine, having been forced to leave the property by bailiffs, has gone to stay with an old friend, Connie Alvarez, and is not yet aware of her husband's death. Satisfied that Tush did not kill himself, McGee begins a campaign to help Janine and her children financially whilst seeking revenge on those whom he holds responsible. With help from his friend Meyer, McGee builds up an elaborate scam. They con LaFrance into buying the Bannon land at an inflated price and the profits are used to buy Janine shares in Fletchers, a company whose stocks Meyer knows to be over-priced. McGee then obtains an introduction to Gary Santo through Mary Smith, avoiding the latter's sexual advances by pretending to be away setting up a deal. He persuades Santo to invest heavily in Fletchers, thus artificially boosting the share price, selling off Janine's shares when the market peaks. McGee's girlfriend, Puss Killian, also plays a part in the scam, but then disappears, leaving a mysterious note of apology, saying that their affair is at an end. In the meantime, McGee has been arrested by the local sheriff on suspicion of involvement in Tush Bannon's murder. Testifying against him is Arlie Denn, who witnessed the murder and has been bought off by the murderer, Freddy Hazzard, a junior deputy related to LaFrance. Hazzard, who had set up the suicide scenario after accidentally killing Tush by an over-enthusiastic beating, goes on the run when Arlie changes her story, but reappears later on McGee's boat, The Busted Flush, where he takes Janine hostage and subjects her and McGee to an ordeal of several hours imprisonment, his plan being to sink the boat with them in it and get away on its small speedboat. McGee manages to get free, but is shot in the shoulder by Hazzard, who is then killed by Janine with a blow from a fire extinguisher. Wishing to avoid publicity, McGee and Janine agree to bury Hazzard at sea and they spend some time together on a fake holiday before returning to base, where McGee is confronted by Santo and Smith. Learning how he has been stung, Santo fires Smith, but she quickly loses interest in McGee. A message of explanation from Puss Killian makes him resolve to stay away from women for the foreseeable future, and he is left alone with Meyer to resume his usual way of life.
19954140	/m/04yh64s	Loving Frank	Nancy Horan	2007-08-07	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel"}	 The book opens to notes written by Mamah Borthwick, reminiscing on her life and expressing her longing to tell her views of what happened. The story begins with an account of Mamah’s attendance, with great trepidation, at a public talk given by Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect of the School of Chicago. The author tells us that some years earlier, Wright had designed Mamah's house at the insistence of her husband Edwin Cheney. We learn of the already tumultuous and intermittent affair between Wright and Mamah, which began with their working together on the architectural plans for the house. The novel is an intricate analysis of Mamah's emotional torments as an intellectual in her own right, wife, mother, friend, and member of society. It also touches on the human aspects of Wright in addition to his artistic talent and eccentricities. Throughout the novel, Mamah explains the artistic or philosophical underpinnings of Wright's extravagant views. We experience the poignancy of both of their family situations and internal conflicts. The novel allows the reader to see Wright through the prism of Mamah’s deep admiration. The Swedish feminist Ellen Key rightfully unnerves the female protagonist when she declares that Mamah may have cowardly followed Wright in order to bask in his brilliance rather than accomplishing anything she can claim her own. A talented writer and novelist, Nancy Horan spins an intricate web of themes in her novel. One of the main themes is that of guilt and judgment of others and society in general. Another is the role of the artist in society. The novel also explores the development of the feminist movement in the United States and Europe. We are told that in America, the focus is on the woman’s right to vote and equal pay whereas the European woman is more concerned about her right to live her life free from the ties of marriage. Mamah’s and Wright’s travels in Europe are described as a form of escape from the constraints experienced at home. They soon realize, however, that the fantasy is short lived and they are inevitably called back to face reality. It is the more conformist and more guilt ridden Mamah who stands her ground and resists the urge to return to her family obligations. She struggles between the ties to her family and her invisible bond to Wright. She chooses the latter but inevitably realizes that her passion for Wright often brings her to abandon her own intellectual aspirations. Even Wright, the self proclaimed free spirit, succumbs to some of society’s pressures in the end. The novel also explores some deeper aspects of love. It is the intellectual inclinations and natural independence of Mamah which piqued Wright’s interest. Yet, while the two travel through Europe together where they can pass as husband and wife, Wright vehemently asks that Mamah play the role of the traditional woman expected to give up her pursuits to follow him where his career takes him. Mamah keenly reminds him that his views are contradictory, which Wright concedes reluctantly. The novel depicts some very positive aspects to the relationship between Mamah and Wright. Although Mamah is recorded to have said that she was not Wright’s muse and that nature was, it is obvious that she and Wright inspired each other. They had a deep understanding of each other’s needs and longings, which brought their lives together to another level. Their inherent idiosyncrasies since childhood had isolated both from many of their contemporaries. The feeling of loneliness is evident in the case of Mamah particularly. Their story ends tragically. Frank Lloyd Wright eventually decides to rebuild Taliesin (studio) located in Wisconsin.
19954468	/m/04y78j5	Miracle in the Rain				 In New York City in 1942, secretary Ruth Wood lives quietly with her ailing mother Agnes. Ruth's co-workers at Excelsior Shoe Manufacturing Co. are Grace Ullman and Millie Kranz, a young blonde who is having an affair with her married boss, Stephen Jalonik. Also in the office is Monty, a young shipping clerk classified by the draft as 4-F, who monitors the war's campaigns on a world map pinned to the wall. One evening after work, when a cloudburst forces Ruth and other pedestrians to take shelter in the vestibule of an office building, Arthur Hugenon, a cheerful, talkative G.I. stationed in the area, surprises the shy Ruth by starting a conversation. When he invites her to dinner, she declines, saying that her housebound mother is expecting her. Undeterred, Art buys food for three at a delicatessen and accompanies Ruth home. Agnes, who has distrusted men since her husband Harry left her for another woman ten years earlier, receives Art with little enthusiasm. During the meal, Art, who grew up on a Tennessee farm, captivates Ruth with his stories and afterward entertains them by playing the piano. Upon finding the manuscript of an unfinished song Harry composed, Art asks permission to take it back to camp, where he and an Army buddy will write lyrics for it. On the weekend, Art takes Ruth and Grace to a matinee. On their way to a restaurant, they stop at an auction and Ruth impulsively bids on an antique Roman coin, which she gives to Art for good luck. At the Café Normandy, where they have dinner, Ruth is unaware that the piano player is her father, whom she has not seen since he left Agnes. However, Harry recognizes Ruth and confides to the bartender that he has been too ashamed to return to his family. Later, Ruth tells Art that Agnes tried to kill herself after Harry left and still hopes for his return. Sunday on their next date Art arrives late, but brings the lyrics he and his friend have written for Harry's song, entitled "I'll Always Believe in You," which they sing together, before Art takes Ruth out. As Ruth and Art walk through Central Park, Ruth voices her fears about the war and Art tells her she must have faith. They then encounter Sgt. Gil Parker, while he takes snapshots of his new bride, Arleene Witchy, who works as a striptease dancer. Gil asks Art to take their picture and then offers to photograph Art and Ruth. In private, Gil warns Art that his division will soon be shipped overseas, but Art refuses to believe the rumor. At the lagoon, where children are sailing toy boats, Art recognizes the name of an elderly man, Commodore Eli B. Windgate. "Windy," as he is now called, is a former yacht owner who owned many of the surrounding buildings before losing his fortune. Art, who hopes to be a reporter after the war, senses a good story and interviews Windy on the spot. He then takes Ruth to the New York Times Building and convinces the city editor to let him write the human interest story. Instead of taking payment, Art asks to be considered for a reporting job after the war. On their next date, Art arrives late riding on a truck filled with other soldiers. Having only a few minutes before he will be shipped out, he asks Ruth to marry him when he returns and, to allay her fears, says he still has the lucky Roman coin. For three months, Ruth writes Art every day, but receives no letters in return. Finally, a specially delivered letter arrives, informing her that Art died on the battlefield and that his dying wish was that she be told he still loves her. Ruth despairs, although her friends and co-workers try to console her. Millie, moved by Ruth's misfortune, drops Jalonik as her lover and takes another job. Grace finds Ruth mourning in Central Park and takes her to St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Ruth lights candles under the statue of St. Andrew. Jalonik, hoping Ruth will fill the void left by Millie in his personal life, takes her to the Café Normandy to cheer her up, but Ruth is too grief-stricken to pay him any attention. Art's friend Dixie publishes Harry's song under his own name, and when Harry hears it on the radio, he calls Agnes to ask her what happened to his manuscript. When Agnes answers the phone, he loses his nerve and hangs up. Although he has written several letters to Agnes, Harry always loses courage and tears them up. Ruth returns often to the statue of St. Andrew and talks to the young priest there. Losing interest in life, she ignores a cold, which turns into pneumonia. Mrs. Hammer, the upstairs neighbor who has often helped Ruth care for Agnes, now helps Agnes nurse Ruth. One rainy night, the feverish Ruth leaves the apartment while her mother dozes off, just before Harry, having mustered his courage, goes there to apologize to Agnes for leaving. Ruth's parents realize Ruth is missing just as Grace telephones. Hearing the Ruth has gone, Graces realizes that Ruth must have gone to the cathedral. Ruth is climbing the cathedral steps when she hears Art calling to her. In her delirium, she sees Art come to her and tell her that love never dies. Because he no longer needs the Roman coin, Art gives it to Ruth. Soon after, the priest finds Ruth passed out on the steps. Graces arrives a moment later. When the priest finds the coin clasped in Ruth's hand, he shows it to Grace, who recognizes it and realizes that, for a brief time, Art returned to Ruth.
19955080	/m/04yg_2m	What Every Woman Knows	J. M. Barrie			 The Wylies, a well-to-do but uneducated Scottish family, are concerned about their daughter, Maggie, a plain young woman who they fear, will remain a spinster. One night the Wylies discover that a serious young university student, John Shand, has been breaking into their home so that he can read books from their large library. Shand is penniless and cannot afford to buy books for his law school education. Maggie Wylie and John Shand come to an understanding: that her family will fund his education if, at the end of five years, he agrees to marry her. John honours his commitment to Maggie, marrying her although he does not love her. Recognising her husband's ambition to become a Member of Parliament, Maggie quietly uses her intelligence and her connections behind the scenes to get John elected. She continues to foster his career, never allowing him to see that she is the power behind his rise to fame. Eventually John begins to believe that his wife is too plain for a man of his stature and position, and he takes up with Lady Sybil Lazenby, a beautiful, refined and high-born young Englishwoman. Maggie is prepared to let her husband go, if Sybil can help him more than she herself can. However, when Shand is preparing a speech that will make or break his career, he finds that Sybil is no help to him, and he realises that Maggie is his inspiration.
19955124	/m/04y9s6l	The Elegance of the Hedgehog	Muriel Barbery	2006-08	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story revolves mainly around the characters of Renée Michel and Paloma Josse, residents of an upper-middle class Left Bank apartment building at 7 Rue de Grenelle – one of the most elegant streets in Paris. Divided into eight luxury apartments, all occupied by distinctly bourgeois families, the building has a courtyard and private garden. The widow Renée is a concierge who has supervised the building for 27 years. She is an autodidact in literature and philosophy, but conceals it to keep her job and, she believes, to avoid the condemnation of the building's tenants. Likewise, she wants to be alone to avoid her tenants' curiosity. She effects this by pretending to indulge in concierge-type food and low-quality television, while in her back room she actually enjoys high-quality food, listens to opera, and reads works by Leo Tolstoy and Edmund Husserl. Her perspective is that "[t]o be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one, in our society, to a dark and disillusioned life, a condition one ought to accept at an early age". Twelve-year-old Paloma lives on the fifth floor with her parents and sister whom she considers snobs. A precocious girl, she hides her intelligence to avoid exclusion at school. Dismayed by the privileged people around her, she decides that life is meaningless, and that unless she can find something worth living for, beyond the "vacuousness of bourgeois existence", she will commit suicide on June 16, her thirteenth birthday. Planning to burn down the apartment before dying, she also steals her mother's pills. For the time being she journals her observations of the outside world, including her perceptions of Renée. Paloma is the only tenant who suspects Renée's refinement, and for most of the novel, the two "cross each other but don’t see each other", in the words of Time Out reviewer Elisabeth Vincentelli. Although they share interests in philosophy and literature, nothing happens between them until the death of a celebrated restaurant critic who had been living upstairs. A cultured Japanese businessman named Kakuro Ozu, whom Renée and Paloma befriend, then takes a room in the same apartment building. Ozu comes to share Paloma's fascination with Renée: that the concierge has the "same simple refinement as the hedgehog". Towards the end of the novel, Renée comes out of her internal seclusion, teaching young Paloma that not all adults pursue vanity at the expense of their intelligence and humanity. However, only shortly after Renée realizes that the beauty of life and her connections with the world makes life worth living, she dies in the same way as Roland Barthes; she is struck down by a laundry van. This leaves Paloma and Ozu devastated but leads Paloma not to commit suicide.
19958800	/m/04ydt60	Come Clean			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Justine Ziegler is taken, against her will, to 'Come Clean Drug Rehabilitation Center', the same rehabilitation center her twin brother Joshua Ziegler attended. After an interview with the program director in which most of her answers are twisted out of context to make her seem like a drug addict, Justine is admitted to Come Clean for what is supposedly a three day observation. First she is subjected to a strip search by a senior member, before being taken to the main hall, where the members of the program are "motivating" as part of their rehabilitation. The head of the program, Hilary Navarre, asks the group if anyone knows her, and a boy called Earl admits to taking marijuana with her. Justine denies this, until pages of her diary are read out and the twisted truth comes out. Justine's twin, Joshua, was admitted to the program because he was an addict. One night, Justine woke up, and saw Joshua sneaking out to go out with his friends. Justine asks to come along and eventually Joshua agrees. When they reach their destination, Joshua and the driver go for a walk. Justine is in the back of a car with Earl, and another boy. They are both smoking marijuana, and hand it to Justine, but before she raises it to her lips Joshua reappears and shouts at her to never do it again. After several events like this, the twins' parents admit Joshua to Come Clean. Throughout the book, there are chapters with memoirs of the twins' childhood. There are such events as just playing, and starting school. Every one of these chapters is written in a style which Justine is speaking to Joshua. The final memoir chapter documents Joshua's death. It was New Year's Eve, and Justine is home alone with Joshua. When Justine goes to answer the door, Joshua sneaks outside and jumps off a diving board into an empty pool, committing suicide. The reason for this is apparent late in the book. During Justine's imprisonment in Come Clean, she comes to the attention of a senior staff member, Dwight. It is revealed Dwight raped Joshua during his time in Come Clean and drove him to his suicide. Dwight also forces Justine to do a special pennance alone so he can also rape Justine, Which due to her being on her period, she is forced to perform fellatio on him. A new member is admitted to the program, Toby Sheridan, and he and Justine take an instant liking to each other. Toby was about to graduate from high school, but was admitted to the program. During a weekly meeting, where the families of the admitted come to discuss their progress, Toby's little sister does not believe he is an addict so enlists his football friends to help him escape. The next meeting, fireworks go off, and everyone is evacuated outside. Members of Toby's football team are causing chaos and assaulting staff members. Toby escapes, and Justine takes refuge in her parents' car, and she is forced to return inside to the program. The senior member who strip searched Justine when she was admitted, Gwen, found notes that were passed between Justine and Toby which detailed the escape. Justine is in for a severe punishment, but as it is late everybody is sent home. Justine is sent home with a senior member called Moira. During the drive home, a van crashes into Moira's car, and several people bang on the windows chanting Justine's name. Justine escapes into the van where Toby is waiting for her. Toby and Justine catch a bus to Kansas, where Justine's grandmother lives. They live happily until Justine's mother turns up on the door, having separated from Justine's father. Later that month, Justine is watching television when Dwight sneaks into the house and catches her. He and Hilary have been granted permission from Justine's father to readmit her. When Justine, her grandmother and mother, Hilary and Dwight are discussing this, Toby returns from a jog. Upon seeing Dwight, he charges him but is knocked out. Hilary took the precaution of contacting the local police before she arrived, and they arrive on the doorstep. In a last-ditch attempt to prevent re-admittance, Justine explains how Dwight raped and emotionally tortured her. Hilary listens to this and at the end, instructs the police officers to arrest Dwight.
19958874	/m/04y8p69	Kanikōsen				 A crab fishing ship goes to the open sea off Kamchatka (now in Russia but then in the Soviet Union). The crew do not favour their prospects; one crewman declares "We're going to Hell!" The crew revolt against their sadistic captain and foreman, form a union and take over the ship. However the new order on board is suppressed by soldiers. The book expresses its pessimism from the beginning, not only in the opening remark but in the description of the harbour of Hakodate being filled with rubbish, and the smaller boats being compared to insects.
19959644	/m/04ybgsm	A Book on Angling		1867		 A Book on Angling is best described by the author himself in the preface to the first edition: When first infected with the fever of Angling, more years ago than I care to count up, my ambition was to catch every species of freshwater fish, from the minnow up to the salmon, which inhabits our British waters. That satisfied, my next desire was to write a work, which should contain within one volume (as far as might be possible) the fullest and most varied information upon Angling generally, in every branch of the art, which had ever been published; and with this resolve I commenced collecting the matter for the present work nearly twenty years ago. Taken up and laid aside from time to time, little by little it has steadily progressed towards completion. In the course of that twenty years I took occasion to visit and to fish nearly every river of note in the kingdom, my connection with 'The Field' affording me peculiar facilities for obtaining permission to fish very many waters which are closely locked against the general public; and I have roamed England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland over to gather fresh knowledge, and to put it into a practical and concentrated form for the use of my readers. In inducting the tyro into the mysteries of the art, I have endeavored to make every direction and information as clear and practicable as possible. This work is intended to be a useful and not merely a decorative one: thus, the plates are not for the sake of ornamentation, but for direction, and as an aid to the student of tackle-making and fly-tying. Each illustration of tackle is really needed, and the flies shown are not a mere selection of gorgeous and pretty subjects, or I should have chosen very differently; but each fly is a specimen of some separate class of flies, in which a special peculiarity of manufacture is evident. I have to thank many kind friends for assistance in lending tackle and flies as subjects for the engravings, and also for description, as will be found in the body of the work. I have given much time to this book, but I have given it willingly, for it was indeed and in truth a labour of love. Whether the Angling public, to whom I dedicate it (desiring no more potent patron), will appreciate my labours remains to be seen; and so, without further apology if an attempt to supply a long-felt and obvious want, the existence of which few persons have been in a position to know and feel so well as myself, be thought to require an apology into their hands I commit it. FRANCIS FRANCIS. THE FIRS, TWICKENHAM : 1867
19966909	/m/04ycs32	The Turkey: An American Story	Andrew Smith	2006-11	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book reveals that turkeys can tell us about cultural issues and reveal something about being American. The book is about the history of turkeys and it has turkey recipes. The history of the bird has to do with such things as turkey bones found in 3700 BC and the domestication of turkeys into Europe by explorers of the New World. The recipes are from the 16th through the 19th century. The book also talks about the efforts to stop the wild turkey from becoming extinct.
19969253	/m/04yfr1t	The Silent House	Orhan Pamuk	1983		 Behcet Necatigil summarizes the plot of the novel: One of the five narrators of The Silent House, historian Faruk does some research on Ottoman History in an archive in Gebze which is a small town near Istanbul. :::*The novel starts in an old, big and silent house in Cennethisar which is a part of Gebze. The owner of the house is an old, lonely and depressed woman. Fatma Hanim is also called as grandmother and Buyukhanim in the novel. Recep who is a manikin is responsible for everything related to the house such as feeding Buyukhanim, taking her to and from bed, cleaning the house, washing the dishes, doing the shopping for the house are all his job. The three grandchildren of Buyukhanim will come to visit her for a week the next day. All the preparation for their arrival has been made. :::* Fatma Hanim thinks about her grandchildren in her bed at night. She plans how and what she is going to talk to them when they arrive. Then she starts to think of the past. He remembers her late husband Selahattin Bey. Dr. Selahattin Bey is a man of free mind. He does not like the government of Committee of Union and Progress which is a political party. Therefore he is forced to go to an exile in Gebze leaving Istanbul behind. The house where Fatma Hanim lives now has been made in those days in exile. :::*The grandchildren arrives on the day they are supposed to come. The eldest one is Faruk who is a historian. He works as an associate professor at the university. Nilgun is a student of sociology. She is a revolutionist. Metin is a high school student. He dreams of going to America and getting rich there. While they talk, Recep prepares the dinner table. After the dinner, Faruk and Nilgun start a long conversation. Metin goes out and finds his friend Vedat. They join in a group of rich youths. Metin falls in love with a girl in this group whose name is Ceylan. :::*Next morning Fatma Hanima nd her grandchildren go to Selahattin Bey's grave. They pray. Fatma Hanim can't help crying. She is offended by her grandchildren's insensitivity. Faruk starts to do some research in the archive of Gebze District. He starts to examine old newspapers, magazines and court files. He really enjoys it. He aims to shed light on the past of the town. In the evening, they talk about the documents he has worked on during the day. Metin has a lot of fun everyday. Once when he is drunk he tells Ceylan that he loves her but she does not care. :::*After finishing her work at home, Recep goes out at night to walk around. He looks around on the streets by himself. He is concerned about young people's making fun of his being very short. Recep's cousin, Hasan is a right-wing terrorist. He puts on display posters on the walls of the streets with his friends at night. They write slogans defaming communism and socialism. During the day, they exact money from town's artisans. Hasan is a childhood friend of Nilgun and he likes her. Nilgun realizes this but she does not encourage him. She goes to the beach every morning with a book in her hands. She buys a Republican Newspaper on ehr way back home. Hasan follows her and realizes that she is a leftist. he tells about it to his friends. They does not approve Hasan's feeling an interest for such a girl and get angry with him. They make a plan to do something bad to her. Hasan appears in front of Nilgun suddenly while she is going back home to tell her about the plan that his friends make for her. However, Nilgun does not listen to him. She cries out "You, fascist!". Hasan gets very angry with this behavior and beats Nilgun badly on the street and runs away. Recep and the woman from the pharmacy takes Nilgun home. the pharmacy lady tells her that she needs to go to a hospital but she does not want to go. She has bruise all over her body and face. :::* Faruk, Metin and Nilgun talk about what has happened. They decide to go back to Istanbul in the morning. Recep tells their decision to Fatma Hanim in the morning. They will go to say goodbye to her after the breakfast. However, after the breakfast, Nilgun does not feel well and she goes to her room to lie down. She gets worse after a while. Then she dies from cerebral hemorrhage. her brothers are in shock. They don't know what to do. meanwhile, Fatma Hanim waits for them to come upstairs and say goodbye to her. She calls recep but he does not go to upstairs, either. She tries to go downstairs but can't. She lies down on her bed and pulls her cover on her head. The house is in complete silence. Hasan goes to the station and reads the newspaper with fear and curiosity. He checks if there is any news about Nilgun. He leaves from Cennethisar taking a train.
19970565	/m/04y7yqh	Feludar Goendagiri	Satyajit Ray	1970	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Feluda, Topshe and Topshe's father visit Darjeeling as tourists for a few days. There, Feluda and Topshe meet Rajen Majumdar who was an established advocate based out of Kolkata, but after retirement had settled in Darjeeling. After retirement, Rajen-babu has developed an interest in antiques, and has built quite a formidable collection in a span of a few months. Rajen-babu has been threatened by a letter posted to him, which mentions that he will be punished soon for misdeeds of his past. Rajen-babu panicks and agrees to have Feluda investigate the matter. Feluda and Topshe also meet Tinkori Mukhopadhyay, who is staying at Rajen-babu's house as a paying guest for a few days and Abani Ghoshal, an antique property dealer. Tinkori-babu is a renowned writer of Bengali detective fiction, and he writes fiction under the name Guptochor (i.e. spy). Feluda mentions that Tinkori-babu is one of his favourite writers of detective stories in Bengali. Abani Ghoshal is interested in buying a bell, supposed to belong to the head-Lama of a nearby monastery, that is in Rajen-babu's possession. Amongst other things, Feluda notices that the letter that was mailed to Rajen-babu is created out of words cut out from a newspaper. Tinkori Mukhopadhyay helps Feluda in his investigation, by suggesting that the cuttings are from Anandabazar Patrika, recognizing the unique font used in that newspaper. Later, Feluda also meets Prabir Majumdar, Rajen Majumdar's estranged son. He was thrown out of the house by Rajen-babu for trying to steal money. Feluda also gives a visit to Dr. Phani Mitter, Rajen-babu's physician. A second incident happens a following night. A man wearing a ghostly mask had entered Rajen-babu's room at night. Rajen-babu is extremely scared and agrees to Feluda and Topshe staying the night over at their place the next day. Later, by a process of elimination, Feluda gets to the root of the problem. And his inference is confirmed by the smell of cheroots in one of the masks in Rajen-babu's collection of Antiques. The only person in the vicinity who smoked the specific brand and smell of cheroots is Tinkori-babu. Tinkori-babu, though, had left for Kolkata a day ago. It is later confirmed that it is indeed Tinkori-babu who is the real culprit. Tinkori-babu has left a letter to Rajen-babu, referring to him as Raju, apparently Rajen-babu's nickname. Tinkori-babu was Rajen-babu's classmate in Bankura Missionary school, and was unlawfully, and seriously injured by Rajen-babu during a 100-yard race at the school's annual sports festival. Since Rajen-babu had left Bankura after the incident, Tinkori-babu never got a chance to avenge the incident then. After arriving at Darjeeling, Tinkori-babu could identify his old adversary from school from an old photograph, and decided to avenge that old incident by putting Rajen-babu under some discomfort. Thus, he sent the threatening letter, and also scared Rajen-babu at midnight in Rajen-babu's bedroom wearing the mask.
19972376	/m/04yd74r	The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract				 The central theme is that the notion of a contract based on consent (or a "meeting of minds") was almost entirely absent before 1800 in the law. Instead it was based on reliance or the receipt of a benefit. You could revoke a promise, and the concept of an executory contract was unknown. Moreover, courts were more concerned with the fairness of an exchange, and not concerned merely to uphold promises or the parties' will. Damages reflected that, only being for the value of exchange, not the loss of a bargain. Then, after 1800, the concept of contractual freedom "rose". Promises and the "intentions" of parties "became the paradigm of contract theory." Atiyah argues that it began with the notion of freedom of property, summed up in the phrase of Sir Edward Coke in Semayne's case that every man's home is his castle. Following that was the transition from a property to a contract based society. After 1900, however, freedom of contract had had its heyday. Atiyah illustrates how the growth of consumer protection, rent and employment legislation has moved contract back into smaller confines, based on general notions of fairness.
19973365	/m/04yc7zp	Blue Moon Rising	Simon Green			 Rupert's quest is to slay a dragon, proving his worth to the kingdom; however Rupert knows he has been sent to die. He stubbornly refuses to run away and proceeds with the undertaking. Rupert seeks out the notorious Night Witch who, upon finding out he is the grandson of her long dead lover provides him with a map to find a dragon. To get to his destination Rupert must pass through the Darkwood, an area in the forest where no light ever penetrates, where nothing lives except demons. Passing through the endless night Rupert is attacked by countless demons which appear to be hunting in packs though demons have never hunted in packs before. After reaching the other side of the Darkwood Rupert discovers a dragon in a cave at the top of a mountain and upon challenging him is surprised to find that not only does the dragon not have any interest in killing him, it collects butterflies. Also in the cave is Princess Julia, a seventh daughter from the Hillsdown province who was sent to the dragon as a sacrifice but which the dragon does "not have the heart" to kill. Rupert, his Unicorn, Princess Julia and the Dragon set out back towards the Forest Castle but have to pass through the Darkwood again. Rupert can hardly bring himself to face the endless night of that experience again but knowing he must, they press on. Near the completion of this second passing of the Darkwood the group are attacked by hordes of demons. The dragon offers some of the last of his strength to enable Rupert to obtain the Rainbow Sword which banishes the darkness from them and heals their wounds. The group are able to make it back to Forest Castle only to find that the Darkwood is spreading and the castle guard has been vastly depleted in defending the outlying towns and villages from the encroaching Darkwood. Rupert is sent back out with a company of guards to travel through the Darkwood again in search of the High Warlock.
19974527	/m/04yfspf	Back	Henry Green	1946	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel tells the story of Charley Summers, a young Englishman who comes back from Germany, where he was detained as a POW for three years after having been wounded in combat in France (possibly in 1939-1940). Summers is repatriated because, due to his wound, his leg had to be amputated. While he was prisoner, Rose, the woman he loved, died, and this adds to the shock Charley suffered because of the mutilation. Moroever, Rose was married to another man, so Charley cannot even express his bereavement for fear of scandal. After having visited the grave of Rose and met her husband James there, Charley calls on Rose's father, Mr Grant, who encourages him to make acquantance with a young widow. Charley ignores the suggestion at first, but after some days he goes to the widow's flat and he is astonished at the uncanny resemblance between the woman, whose name is Nancy Whitmore, and Rose. He soon finds out that there is a very simple explanation for this: Nancy is the illegitimate daughter of Mr Grant, who sent Charley to her thinking he might console her of the death of her husband (an RAF pilot killed in action in Egypt). The rest of the novel describes the complex and troubled relation between Charley and Nancy, as it unfolds against the background of a war-torn Britain.
19975292	/m/04y8swf	The Sable Quean	Brian Jacques	2010	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This book contains the second instance of a creature other than a badger succumbing to the Blood Wrath, the first instance being in the book Mattimeo when Matthias is rescuing his son, Mattimeo. Buckler Kordyne, a Long Patrol hare, has a discussion with Brang Forgefire, Badger Lord of Salamandastron. Buckler is bored with mountain life, so Brang suggests that he visits Redwall Abbey to deliver some new bellropes to the Abbess (Brang had accidentally broken the ropes last time he was there); while Buckler visits the Abbey, he can also visit his brother on his farm, which is nearby. Buckler agrees, taking along with him his gluttonous friend, Subaltern Diggs. At Redwall, a music contest for Bard of Redwall is being organized, however two Dibbuns disappear in the process. The duo, a molebabe and a squirrelmaid, had wandered outside to the woodlands to picnic, but a waiting band of vermin Ravagers bound, gagged, and carried them off before anyone could notice their absence. One of the Ravagers, Globby, is overcome by the temptation of Redwall food and attempts to break inside the kitchens; however, he is captured by Skipper Ruark, who punishes the miscreant by forcing him to clean up the mess he had made by his burglary. In the hue and cry raised when the two Dibbuns were discovered missing, Globby escapes the kitchens and flees to the attics, using a pilfered kitchen knife as a weapon. In the attempt to recapture and interrogate him, both he and Brother Tollum are slain. In Mossflower Woods, Buckler and Diggs hear two vermin from the Ravager horde trying to capture a shrewmaid. Diggs knocks the vermin unconscious, and the two hares sit down to eat, ignoring the shrew because of her ingratitude. After she finally relents, and shares food with them, Buckler deals with the two vermin, who have been making protests. Not heeding his advice, they return later with some of their Ravager buddies to spy on the group. Flib, Diggs, and Buckler join forces with a musical traveling group of Hedgehogs, voles, and moles, who are also on their way to Redwall. When Flib and two of the younger hedgehogs sleep outside the performing company's raft, on the riverbank, they are captured by the Ravagers. As it turns out, many young ones have been captured by the Ravagers, led by Zwilt the Shade and Vilaya, both evil sables. They are keeping the hostages in the remains of Brockhall, which they have renamed Althier, and are planning to use the captives to force Redwall to surrender to their demands. Several of the captive young ones, led by Flandor the otter, Tura the squirrel, and Flib's sister Midda, try without success to figure out a workable escape plan. Many of the young ones are in despair, and would rather concentrate on where their next meal is coming from than ways to get out. Meeting up with the Guosim, led by Flib's father Jango Bigboat, the two hares and the performing company proceed to Redwall. Abbess Marjoram discusses the position with Buckler and several others, who agree to lead a force into Mossflower to search for the young ones. The first search attempt yields the Redwallers with one Ravager captive, and Buckler's badly wounded and almost delirious sister-in-law Clarinna. She informs Buckler that his brother Clerun was brutally slain by Zwilt the Shade, and that his nephew and niece have been taken by the Ravagers. Before Buckler and his searchers can set out again, the Ravagers, led by Vilaya and Zwilt, show up in force at Redwall, and make their demands for surrender. Diggs attempts to use his vermin captive, Gripchun, as a hostage to turn the tables, but Zwilt merely has the unfortunate shot with arrows. The Ravagers then retreat, saying they will return, and that the Redwallers should prepare to surrender to them. Meanwhile, in Vilaya and Zwilt's absence, Flib has roused the captive Dibbuns and young ones into digging an escape tunnel in secret. She and the two inexperienced moles helping her to dig cause a cave in, which collapses part of the prison chamber and traps the trio in the landslide. Fortunately for Flib, Gurchen, and Guffy, a warrior mole called Axtel happens across the remains of their tunnel and digs them out. After hearing Flib recount the position the other babes are in, Axtel leaves her a spear and instructs her to watch over the two molebabes, while he digs back into Althier to get the rest. Soon after he leaves, Flib encounters two fox Ravagers, but slays one with the spear and runs the other off with a whip. A kind watervole, Mumzy, who has been watching and knows there are other Ravagers about, moves the trio of young ones from Axtel's campsite to her concealed bankside home nearby. By now, Vilaya has returned, and ordered the young ones to be moved to another prison cave on the other side of Althier; this one has rock walls instead of dirt, and cannot be dug out of easily. She tries to torture an infant squirrel into revealing the information about the tunnel, but soon finds herself badly beaten by Flandor, who damages her eye with his rudder. In rage, the Sable Quean stabs the young otter with a poisoned blade she wears in a phial about her neck, slaying him. She then sends Zwilt and some Ravagers out to hunt for the escapees, and the prison guards, who have deserted. Axtel, digging his way into Althier, barges into the new prison cave, taking Tassy and Borti with him. The Ravagers, stopping the other babes from escaping, wound the warrior mole badly by stabbing him through the footpaw, but he manages to limp away with the two babes, blocking his escape route with a boulder so as not to be followed. Tassy tries to help heal his footpaw. Upon emerging into the woodlands, the trio find Buckler and the search party from Redwall, who have set out again. They also meet up with Mumzy, who leads them to her home and the other three escaped young ones. Back in Althier, an infant mouse quite accidentally discovers a hidden rift in the rock, which leads to a natural cave system behind the wall. Seizing the opportunity, the entire pack of young ones, now led by Midda and Tura, flee down the tunnel, blocking the rift with soil and rocks behind them. Vilaya soon discovers the absence of her prisoners; killing the stoat who was supposed to be on guard duty, she orders the Ravagers to unblock the rift and get after the young ones. Zwilt returns to Althier then, and demands to know what is going on. The ensuing argument causes a rift between the two sables, who split forces when they manage to enter the caves; Zwilt takes a group in one direction, while Vilaya takes hers in the other. Vilaya, now knowing she cannot trust Zwilt, sends her old rat confidant to spy on him. Zwilt, however, has other plans; he orders one of his biggest soldiers to strangle the helpless rat before she can report back to Vilaya. This action, once Vilaya hears of it, causes the two sables to become deadly enemies. Buckler, meanwhile, has taken the entire Guosim force and most of the able-bodied creatures from Redwall, planning to storm Althier, as they now know its location thanks to Axtel. Unfortunately, by the time they get there, both the young ones and the Ravagers have gotten far down the tunnels, leaving no sign as to where they have gone. The group searches Althier from end to end with no success; During the search, Diggs becomes separated from the rest and is soon lost in Mossflower. Vilaya and her force catch up with Zwilt's, who have not succeeded in finding the runaways. The two sables battle, and Zwilt stabs Vilaya with his broadsword; she falls unconscious with the pain. Thinking Vilaya is dead, Zwilt prepares to cut off her head as a warning to other vermin, but one of the Ravager stoats urges him not to, saying it would be a bad omen. As the other Ravagers march off to make war on Redwall, Gliv is left behind with instructions to bury Vilaya; however, knowing that the Sable Quean is still alive, she nurses her back to health, and instructs her to follow Zwilt and slay him. Vilaya cruelly repays her rescuer by slaying her with the poisoned dagger, deciding that she can better do the job alone. The escapees by now have reached the surface; but their freedom is short-lived, as the insane hedghog Triggut Frap imprisons them on his pike-surrounded watermeadow island, intending to use them as slaves to build him a proper house. Fortunately for the captives, Diggs arrives, along with a huge badger lady Ambrevina Rockflash that met up with him on the way. Ambrevina was a friend of the young otter Flandor, and is seeking his whereabouts. When Midda informs her of his murder by Vilaya, the badger swears to avenge him. Leaving the young ones in Mumzy's care, Diggs and Ambrevina return to Redwall, as Buckler and the other group did upon hearing that Zwilt and the Ravagers were headed there. They join in the battle against the Ravagers' battering ram at the front gate, not knowing that Zwilt and four of his soldiers are attempting to force a secret entrance from the back. After the battering ram plot is foiled, a prolonged siege ensues. Diggs, relieved of guard duty, heads off to the kitchens to find a bite to eat. What he ends up finding is Zwilt, who has just managed to get in. Badly wounding the young hare, and causing Diggs to lose his ear and his memory in the process, the sable flees into Great Hall, but encounters Abbess Marjoram, Clarinna, and several other Abbey females. Before he and his four soldiers can do any harm, Buckler appears on the scene. In the fantastic sword duel that ensues, Zwilt realizes he has finally met a beast who is more than his match. Taking a nearby Dibbun hostage, he commands the young hare to surrender; offering to give his life for the babe, Buckler does. Having his soldiers pin the young hare to the stairs, Zwilt attempts to behead him. However Clarinna comes up behind him and runs him through with the Sword of Martin, which had been hanging on the wall nearby. Clarinna tells Buckler when he offered to give his life he did something far braver than slaying Zwilt. The four soldiers flee, but do not escape, as a Bloodwrath-possessed Axtel takes care of them once and for all. Meanwhile, outside the Abbey walls, Vilaya has resumed control of the Ravagers; the Redwallers, however, with the aid of Ambrevina and the Guosim, soundly rout the vermin, forcing the remainder into a scattered retreat. Vilaya flees, alone, but Ambrevina follows her, intent on avenging Flandor. Just as she catches up with Vilaya, the sable trips the badger with her cloak, hoping to throw her off. This proves to be her undoing, as Ambrevina falls right on top of the Sable Quean; the force causes the poison phial necklace to break, the shards piercing Vilaya and slaying her. Weeping for Flandor, Ambrevina returns to Redwall. Diggs, who has completely forgotten who he is and now believes himself to be a captain in the Long Patrol, wanders away from the Abbey, but returns in company with Mumzy and the freed captives. After having his memory restored by a friend's hitting him hard on the head, Diggs, in company with Buckler and Ambrevina, returns to Salamandastron. The two young hares then report to Lord Brang the adventurous outcome of their little 'visit' to Redwall.
19976444	/m/04y8xkg	Icarus at the Edge of Time	Brian Greene	2008-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book is a science fiction retelling of Icarus' tale. It is about a young man who runs away from his traveling, deep-space home to explore a black hole.
19979767	/m/04y6g21	The Odd Egg				 An odd duck finds an old egg. He is jealous of mother birds having eggs. So he adopts the big egg that has green spots that matches his feathers. The other birds make fun of him about it. When each egg breaks open, only the odd duck's egg remains. The egg hatches later and it is an alligator. The alligator acts like a duck.
19983631	/m/04y68df	Cathedral of the sea	Ildefonso Falcones	2006	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book is set in Barcelona and its main character is Arnau Estanyol, the son of a fugitive serf who obtains freedom and eventually achieves a high status.
19988517	/m/04ycr4t	Blacker's Art of Fly Making		1842		 Blacker's Art Fly Making is best described by the author himself in the preface to the second edition (1855): I know not how to apologise for submitting a Second Edition of this little Book to the notice of the Angling few, after the appearance of so many by clever writers, except the many calls I had for It, and a sincere desire of improving farther upon a craft that has not hitherto been clearly promulgated by a real practitioner; consequently my great object is to benefit and amuse my readers, by giving them something practical, which at the present time may be particularly wanted by those who love to make their own flies, whose wants, without doubt, will be found sufficiently supplied in this book; the tyro will appreciate it as valuable to him, and the senior angler who may, perchance, be in possession of it, and who may be singularly fond of making his flies, and amusing himself dyeing the hackles and colours, &c., will, I am persuaded, consider it a treasure. My endeavours have been unceasing for many years past, in striving to please the great Salmon Fishers and Trout Fishers of this Country, and I must confess that my labours have not been in vain; they have generously conferred upon me their very kind patronage and good will, benefits for which I hold them in very great estimation. Under these circumstances, I have taken much pains to write the book in a befitting manner to suit their tastes and purposes, although my inability in many instances has been an obstacle, nevertheless with all my faults I claim the title of Fisherman, an humble and unimportuned name which no reasonable dispensation can deprive me of. From my boyhood, I took great delight in ranging along the banks of the beautiful and romantic streams of my native land, Ireland; and having also been for many years a skilful Fly Fisher of no little commendation, in both Great Britain and Hibernia, it is my desire to impart to the world, plainly and easily, the knowledge I have acquired, that all those who wish to become masters of the art, may, by patience and practice, and a close adherence to the instructions I shall lay down, derive the fullest benefit from my experience. I have endeavoured in the following treatise on Fly-making, to divest the subject, as far as possible, of all technicalities and superfluities; at the same time, I have entered into such full details in the construction of the Fly, that by adopting the process I have pointed out, and following the instructions I have given, the aspirants to the art of Fly-making may speedily become proficients. In this little book there will be found nothing imaginary, but it is purely written from the practice of angling, so that I may without scruple, justly entitle it The Art of Fly-making, Angling, and Dyeing of Colours. It is also interspersed with many useful remarks that will no doubt agreeably entertain my readers. No man has taken such pains to improve upon the angler's craft as I; on every article in the whole range of fishing tackle I have made some improvement on rods, flies, lines, reels, and tackle of every sort; and in these pages have left a lasting memorial of my handicraft to the fly-fisher, from whom I have hidden nothing that might retard him in his progress, and who will appreciate it for the great deal of matter propounded in little compass to prevent incumbrance; that the lovers of fly fishing, which has superior claims, may have an opportunity of keeping it in their side pocket,—to be convenient and handy when on their piscatory excursions, the exercise and variety of which will be found advantageous to the health, and the calming of the mind—things not to be purchased; enjoying at the same time the harmonious notes of the warblers of the grove, and musing upon the diversity of the prospects around, while straying along the beautiful streams and vallies of this delightful country. The list of flies I have given, will be found very valuable, and the tyro will take great delight in imitating these flies necessary for use, and suiting the colours exactly to each, keeping to their symmetrical forms as they appear with his light materials. This beautiful branch of fly-making, peculiarly my own, cannot fail to perfect the angler who is scientific and ingenious, the result of which will be never-failing success. I have added to the art of fly-making full instructions, and the most approved receipts for dyeing mohair, pighair, feathers, and other materials most useful and appropriate for imitating the natural flies and stuffs the most killing for Trout and Salmon; and which will retain their brilliancy through all the vicissitudes to which they may be exposed. To bring the Engravings of the flies to the greatest perfection, I have stood at the elbow of the artist who executed this part of the work, that they might be turned out exact to my own models, which renders them and the descriptions more intelligible, as the shade in the fibre of each feather is shown in the plate, in the clearest and finest manner imaginable, that it may be properly seen how these artificial flies are constructed,—the resemblance of those beautiful ones, the productions of the Great Author of Nature, that Trout and Salmon do love to feed upon. I have also given the principal rivers of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, with the flies best adapted to each, which will enable the fisher to have all things in readiness on his arrival at their localities, and sally out on the finny tribe fearless of disappointment; and for the younger branch of anglers, I have shown the various sorts of fish, with the tackle and baits best adapted to catch them. The catechism of fly making which I have introduced will be found very curious and instructive to the young beginner, and will afford him every opportunity of retaining the whole process, that when rehearsed in the mind, and perfectly understood, he may apply, with more certain facility, the hand to both material and hook. Published by the Author, WILLIAM BLACKER, At 54, Dean Street Soho, 1855.
19990652	/m/04yb3mx	Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food				 At the beginning of the book the author says, "I used to eat chicken without much thought about where it came from, or how and by whom it was raised and processed. Life was much easier then." The book examines the chicken industry of the United States. The book is divided into two parts. The first part talks about the production and consumption of chicken. The second part talks about the workers participation in the production. The chicken industry has grown since World War II. The chicken industry is competitive and has disturbing labor strategies.
19995005	/m/04y951v	Mister Johnson	Joyce Cary	1939	{"/m/0q9mp": "Tragicomedy"}	 Johnson, a young African, is assigned as clerk at a British district office in Fada, Nigeria. He is from a different district and is regarded as a foreigner by those native to the area. Johnson works his way into local society, marrying there, but never really fitting in. At the same time, he has difficulties in adjusting to the regulations and mechanism of the district office and his official duties. The district officer, Rudbeck, meanwhile, is dissatisfied with his work in the service and his life in Africa. Rudbeck conceives the notion that a road linking Fada to the main highway and larger population centers will be of great benefit to the region. Johnson, as Rudbeck's clerk, also becomes enthused about this project. Johnson is one of Cary's joy-filled characters, possessor of a great energy that infects all around him. People are drawn to Johnson and follow him without realizing that they are being led. Indeed, Johnson has no clear idea of where he is going. His delight is in seeing those around him happy. His mood infects Rudbeck and, when Johnson suggests how the books may be fiddled to support Rudbeck's road project, the colonial officer is seduced. But Rudbeck's swindle is uncovered and he returns to England to be with his wife. Johnson now goes to work for Gollup, a retired British sergeant who has married a native woman and runs the local store. Gollup is an abusive drunk given to racist epithets, but he admires Johnson's good-humored courage in facing up to his words and blows. Johnson, in turn, enjoys the compliment to his courage and, when Gollup next attacks him, retaliates. Gollup does not take this kind of violence seriously and thinks no less of Johnson, but he cannot have an employee who has struck him in public. Johnson is let go and leaves Fada. Meanwhile, a shortage of political officers means that Rudbeck must return. He immediately recommences his road-building. Rudbeck and his superior work out the extent to which he can finagle road-building funds from the accounts, but the older man warns Rudbeck that another scandal will destroy his career. The road-building brings Johnson back to Fada. Rudbeck hires him again and Johnson's infectious enthusiasm makes the road-building successful. But Rudbeck discovers that Johnson has been engaged in petty graft and dismisses him. Johnson turns to theft from the store to support his lifestyle and, when Gollup discovers him, kills the storekeeper. Now Rudbeck must try Johnson for murder. The trial brings Rudbeck to the breaking point. Johnson is found guilty and begs Rudbeck to keep him from the gallows by killing him. Rudbeck follows his heart rather than the rules and does so, though the act will destroy his career and possibly have other ramifications, legal and personal, that lie beyond the close of the novel.
19997885	/m/04y7fbm	The Zoya Factor			{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit"}	 Zoya Solanki is a client service rep with an advertising agency, who loves everything about her job especially the brand she has been put in charge of&nbsp;– Zing Cola (Pepsi in a fictional avatar). But when she’s made to leave an ad film shoot, featuring none other than Shah Rukh Khan, and has to go to Dhaka to shoot an add with the Indian cricket team she begins to experience her first pangs of irritation towards the brand(Zing). Making matters somewhat worse, the team captain Nikhil Khoda insists on discipline as a norm and cuts her important shoot short. This causes her to stay back a few more days than anticipated and miss the Shah Rukh Khan film shoot. When the men in blue realise that Zoya was born at the very moment India won the first and the only cricket World Cup in 1983, they are appaled. What intrigues them more was when they realised that having breakfast with her is followed by victories on the field, and when not eating with her results in defeat. They decide she is a lucky charm. As luck would have it, the rag tag team had a sudden spurt of victories and soon the cricket-crazy nation declares her a goddess. Soon, Zoya is invited by the eccentric IBCC (stands for Indian Board of Cricket Control, and is a spoof on BCCI, Board of Control for Cricket in India) president to accompany the team to the ICC World Cup in Australia. Pursued by international cricket boards on the one hand, wooed by cola majors on the other, Zoya struggles to stay grounded in the thick of the World Cup action. And it doesn't help that she keeps clashing with the erratically brilliant new Indian skipper, who tells her flatly that he doesn't believe in luck. What follows is a love-hate relationship; attraction and antagonism. Zoya is luck personified and she never ceases to be the lucky charm for the men-in-blue.
19998458	/m/04y6923	The Unforgiving Wind	John Harris	1963-01-01	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 An expedition is planned by Commander Adams across the Arctic. While in the Arctic, a storm wreaks havoc in the expedition. Most of the equipment including the radio is damaged. The team is finally able to find a base to stay with limited supplies. Storm, snow, ice, subzero temperatures all make living difficult. The team has to winter in the base with limited supplies. The winter is one long night that is 6 months long. Rescuers were not able to reach them because of ice formed in the sea during winter. Since the team lost contact everybody in mainland believes them to be dead because nobody will be able to survive a winter in the Arctic unsheltered. The team manages to survive because they were able to find a shelter, however they are half starved and health and sanity is on the fall. The team strongly believes Tom Fife will come with a search party to rescue them, however this is next to impossible for Tom Fife because everybody believes that all the team are dead. He is the only one who hopes to find them alive. He has to undertake tremendous personal strain, including losing his job, to force people to undertake the rescue mission. There is only a small window to do this rescue, as the ice will solidify making rescue impossible after summer. The team will not be able to survive another winter in the Arctic.
20000436	/m/04yd_wk	The Aesthetic Dimension	Herbert Marcuse	1977		 The Aesthetic Dimension (not to be confused with a chapter from Marcuse's Eros and Civilization of the same name) is a response to previous writings within critical theory on the subject of art, notably those of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. Marcuse rejects Benjamin's call in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" for the politicization (i.e., a literal reflection of perceived political realities) of modern, reproducible art to both reflect the state of a society and incite change. Like both Benjamin and Adorno, Marcuse feels that art promises resistance to societal repression, and that a cultural revolution is necessarily connected to a political and/or social revolution. Adorno (as represented mainly by his posthumous Aesthetic Theory) and Marcuse agree that this possibility must be realized through artistic detachment and symbolism, but Marcuse offers a more inclusive and less radical suggestion for modern art's source of power than does Adorno, who believes the works of high culture to be the sole source of potential artistic emancipation. Marcuse instead points to what he perceives to be the successes of high culture and translates these to all areas of art. For Marcuse, art's promise of transcendence can only be fulfilled via a conceptual independence from society, but this independence is accessible through a host of media. The successful artist will attain truth in his work through detachment that results in symbolic representation. This successful art must necessarily invoke a longing for something utopian and the promise of ultimate happiness represented by beauty. This symbolic longing for fulfillment will awaken us from complacency. Marcuse states in the book's introduction that he considers literature the primary source of his influence for this system, but feels that the ideas would apply to music and plastic arts as well.
20001642	/m/04y9ml7	The Man-Eater	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1955	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jefferson Scott, Jr. and Robert Gordon, hunters in the Belgian Congo, are thrown together with missionaries Sangamon and Mary Morton and their daughter Ruth. Scott marries Ruth, and Gordon is entrusted with stock certificates to be taken back to Scott's father in America. Later Scott and the elder Mortons are killed by the native Wakandas; Ruth and her daughter Virginia are saved by Belgian forces and afterwards return to America to live with Scott's father. The stock certificates, meanwhile, have gone astray, with only a single sheet of paper having been delivered to the elder Scott. Nineteen years pass. On the death of Jefferson Scott, Sr., Virginia Scott is to inherit the estate, but the will cannot be located, and Scott Taylor, her grandfather’s disinherited nephew, appears to claim a half share. Proposing to Virginia in an effort to obtain it all, he is rebuffed, whereupon he disputes her right to any of the estate, pretending she is illegitimate. Ruth attempts to prove her marriage to Virginia's father by writing to Robert Gordon, who witnessed the ceremony, but he is now deceased. Her appeal reaches his son Dick Gordon instead. Moved but unable to provide the desired proof, Gordon writes back of his intention to sail to Africa to seek documentation of the marriage there. Taylor intercepts the letter and follows him with the intention of murder. Discovering this, Virginia also sets out for Africa. Gordon reaches the ruins of the old mission and finds there a sealed envelope, with which he begins his trek back to the coast. Taylor and his confederates Kelley and Gootch await him in ambush in a native village. They kill a lioness, whose mate the natives take captive in a pit trap. Virginia arrives at the village and is imprisoned by the villains. Meanwhile, Gordon discovers and frees the captured lion, which then returns to the village seeking the killers of its mate. The lion arrives just as the villains are about to rape and kill Virginia, and kills Gootch while others flee. Virginia escapes but is stalked by a hyena. Gordon, who happens to be nearby, hears her scream and shoots the beast. She warns him against Taylor, who then appears with Kelley, seeking her. Seizing Gordon’s gun, she wounds Taylor and drives the villains off. They return to America and separate, Gordon somehow neglecting to give her the envelope. Meanwhile, the lion has been captured by hunters and sold to an itinerant American circus, in which he is billed as "Ben, King of Beasts, the Man-Eating Lion." Realizing his omission, Gordon visits the Scott home to deliver the envelope to Virginia and Ruth, unaware that Taylor and Kelley have returned from Africa and still plan to kill him. He finds the Scotts absent from home, their return delayed by a train wreck. Ben, who was also on the train, is freed by the wreck and turns up at the house, where he detects the scents of both his rescuer Gordon and the two villains. Encountering the latter, he kills Kelley and pursues Taylor to Gordons room. There Taylor struggles with Gordon and overcomes him, taking the envelope before fleeing from Ben. The lion follows, overtaking and killing Taylor within sight of the returning Scott's. Gordon, pursuing Taylor, recognizes Ben and protects him from the armed party that arrives to kill the escaped lion. He buys Ben from the circus, intending to give him a new home in a zoo. The mysterious envelope, finally opened, proves to contain the long lost stocks, not the hoped for marriage certificate. The latter turns up, together with the missing will, in a cupboard in the Scott house, having been secreted there by Jefferson Scott, Sr. The certificate was evidently the paper Gordon's father had delivered to the elder Scott instead of the stocks. Dick Gordon and Virginia Scott declare their love for each other and decide to marry.
20004308	/m/04y8clv	The Dreadful Lemon Sky	John D. MacDonald	1975	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Carrie, an old friend of the hero, Travis McGee, arrives at his houseboat, the Busted Flush. She has a suitcase full of suspicious money. Carrie asks Travis to keep it safe for her for two weeks and to send it to her sister if she does not return in two weeks. For his troubles, McGee can keep 10,000 worth. A fortnight passes and Carrie doesn't return. McGee investigates and learns she died in a traffic accident but he believes she has been murdered. His investigation leads him to an apartment complex full of singles presided over by a landlord called 'Big Daddy'. He also meets the newly widowed 'Cindy Birdsong', who becomes his new romantic interest.
20005113	/m/04yc1kf	The Test	Mary Tappan Wright	1904		 The story takes place in the college town of Genoa in the Middle West. The heroine, Alice Lindell, secretary to Senator Winchester, is engaged to the senator's son Tom. She attempts to wean Tom away from his weakness for liquor by prematurely giving in to his desire for her, with disastrous results; Tom backslides, and while drunk falls victim to the wiles of another admirer, the unscrupulous Harriet, who marries him. Repenting his folly, he resolves to leave Harriet and run away with Alice, but is persuaded by the latter to fulfill his marriage vows and henceforth conduct himself honorably. Alice courageously faces the shame of bearing and rearing their illegitimate daughter Anna alone. This ordeal is the test of the title—of herself, her family, and her community. Her story is paralleled in a subplot involving Sallie, a sinner of a lower sort. Over the years Alice is supported by some, notably the senator, but vilified by most of the small-minded townsfolk, including her own mother. Her sister Gertrude, engaged to the priggish clergyman John Prescott, also suffers, her intended suddenly developing cold feet at the news of Alice's indiscretion. Perhaps the height of Alice's suffering is reached when Harriet, having lost her own child, importunes her to let her have Anna instead; persuaded it would be in the best interest of her daughter, Alice finally complies. In time her enduring patience effects her moral recovery in the eyes of the town, and her example succeeds in inspiring Tom to complete his own personal regeneration. In the conclusion Harriet's death frees them to marry each other, and the two depart Genoa to begin a new life together.
20005322	/m/04y8dq8	The Cow Who Clucked				 A cow loses her moo and clucks after she dreams that she was a mother hen. So she spends the day searching for her missing moo. When the cow asks each farm animal if they have seen her moo, the animals response varies such as "maa, maa" and "quack quack".
20007123	/m/04y5m9q	The Last Olympian	Rick Riordan	2009	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In order to try to head off Kronos' approach by sea, Percy and Beckendorf attempt to destroy his ship, the Princess Andromeda. However, Kronos, still possessing Luke Castellan, is not caught off guard, and Beckendorf sacrifices his life to destroy the ship, while Percy dives overboard and passes out from contact with Kronos' scythe when battling him on the ship. Percy is awakened by his half-brother Tyson, the cyclops. He finds that he is in his father Poseidon's underwater palace, which is under siege by the forces of the Titan Oceanus. Percy wants to stay and help fight with his father, but Poseidon sends Percy back to Camp Half-Blood. At Camp Half-Blood, Chiron decides it is time for Percy to hear the "Great Prophecy." Percy informs the camp that there is a spy among them, someone who has been informing the Titans for years, but they put it aside until the bigger issues at hand are dealt with, such as the impending war against Kronos. Soon after arriving, Percy leaves again with Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, to find out Nico's plan for Percy to survive the battle, as mentioned at the end of The Battle of the Labyrinth. After visiting Luke's mother in Westport, Connecticut, and talking with Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home, Percy procures a blessing from his mother, which will allow him to descend into the Underworld for the second time. Here, Nico betrays Percy for information on his past, but then helps Percy to escape from confinement. The two boys then follow through with the original plan, which was for Percy to bathe in the River Styx and gain Achilles' power. Percy emerges from the Underworld in New York City, leaving Nico behind. Percy calls Annabeth and tells her it's time for the battle to begin. The campers, alongside Chiron, arrive and Percy organizes them (minus the Ares cabin, who refused to fight), and prepares them for an urban battle. They enter Olympus through the Empire State Building to prepare and meet Hermes, who is furious with Annabeth. He believes that she could have stopped the war by helping Luke before he was possessed, saying he would have listened to her. Before the battle begins, New York City is silenced by way of a powerful sleeping spell from Morpheus, the god of dreams, that puts all mortals to sleep. Despite being joined by the Hunters of Artemis; satyrs; naiads; dryads and other tree nymphs; Chiron's centaur cousins the Party Ponies, automatons fashioned by the late Daedalus; and the hellhound Mrs. O'Leary; Percy's forces are consistently forced back by sheer numbers. Kronos is not without losses, as Percy buffets the Titan Lord's brother, Hyperion, into submission, from where Grover's nature powers encase the Titan of the East in a massive maple tree. Annabeth is badly injured when she saves Percy from a blade thrown by Ethan, son of Nemesis, that would have hit Percy in his Achilles point and would have most likely been a fatal injury. Percy tells Annabeth this, informing her that his weak spot is the small of his back. Upon falling asleep, Percy has dreams of Kronos questioning Ethan about where Percy's Achilles spot was, but Ethan doesn't know. Rachel, a mortal who can see through the Mist, flies from a family island vacation to New York to tell Percy that he is not the hero of the Great Prophecy, and that it will influence his choice when he turns 16. More than that, she doesn't know who the hero mentioned in the Great Prophecy is. She also informs Percy that the Titans have a monster on their side that only a child of Ares could destroy, but the Ares cabin remains at camp. The monster arrives, and the campers learn that it is a drakon, a monster similar to, but more destructive than, a dragon. Right when all hope seems lost, an unknown camper posing as Clarisse tries to slaughter it but is badly wounded. The real Clarisse arrives on a flying chariot and kills the drakon by herself. The campers find out that the first "Clarisse" was Silena. She admits that she pretended to be Clarisse because that was the only way she could convince the rest of the Ares cabin to come and fight. With her last few breaths, Silena confesses she was the spy all along. She dies a hero, and not a traitor. Driven back to the blocks surrounding the Empire State building, Percy and his friends fight in a last stand to protect Mount Olympus from the massive army Kronos has amassed. Even when Hades arrives with his army, Kronos still manages to break through and enter Olympus. Percy and Kronos, in Luke's body, battle in the throne room of Olympus, without either side gaining a significant advantage. Ethan rebels against Kronos at the last minute, trying to kill him, but his sword ricochets back into his stomach. With his dying breath, he tells Percy that minor gods deserve better before falling into a fissure created by Kronos. Luke is shocked back into his non-evil self when Annabeth helps him remember his promise of family to her when he brutally smashes her across the throne room. The Great Prophecy hinges on Percy's decision to give Luke Annabeth's dagger rather than attempt to kill Luke himself. Luke injures himself at his mortal point (under his left armpit) and uses all his power in one strike on Kronos. With his dying breaths, Luke tells Percy that the minor gods should also have cabins at Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth tells Luke that she loved him as a brother, but Percy was the one she had always and truly loved. Luke sacrifices himself for Olympus and becomes the hero of the prophecy. Percy becomes the half-blood of the prophecy that would "reach sixteen against all odds," ending the war on the dawn of his 16th birthday. With Poseidon ambushing Typhon at the Hudson River, the Olympians manage to defeat him. Returning to the throne room, they grant Percy, Grover, Annabeth, Thalia, and Tyson rewards at the conclusion of their various quests. Percy, refusing godhood for himself, forces the gods to swear on the River Styx that they will recognize all of their children by the time they turn thirteen, Luke's dying wish. At camp, new cabins are built for every god, including Hades and all the minor gods. Rachel Elizabeth Dare becomes the new Oracle and speaks the next Great Prophecy- Seven half-bloods shall answer the call. To storm or fire, the world must fall. An oath to keep with the final breath, and foes bear arms to the Doors of Death Athena promises Annabeth that she will be the architect that redesigns a decimated Mount Olympus. Grover becomes a Lord of the Wild and a member of the Council of the Cloven Elders. Tyson is rewarded as well, by becoming general of the Cyclopes&#39; army and being given a &#34;stick&#34; (i.e. a new club). Percy is given the choice to become immortal, and a god, but he refuses. Afterward, Annabeth wishes Percy happy birthday and then kisses him. Percy gets the feeling that &#34;my brain was melting through my body&#34;. The other campers spy on them and dumps them in the canoe lake. Percy and Annabeth kiss underwater, and from there, start a relationship. Soon after, they immediately start work on the new cabins, rejecting the &#34;horseshoe&#34; style arrangement of the twelve Olympian god&#39;s cabins and instead adding more and more. Chiron praises Percy towards the end of camp, and Annabeth and the other campers cheer him on. Percy silently meets again with Hestia, and she gives him a smile and a wink, showing that she is proud of her young nephew. Percy and Annabeth run into the mortal world with Percy narrating, &#34;For once, I didn&#39;t look back.&#34;
20007878	/m/04y84sk	The Burger and the Hot Dog		2001-10-01		 Several poems have to with behavior and dessert. There are characters such as cheeses named Woodrow and Wanda and eggs named Yack and Yimmy.
20008950	/m/04ygjwl	The Wicked Witch of Oz	Rachel Cosgrove Payes	1993	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The title character is Singra, the Wicked Witch of the South. She awakens after sleeping for a century; her Magical Musical Snuffbox informs her of all the events she has missed in the last hundred years. Armed with this knowledge, Singra sets out to brew a spell of revenge against Dorothy Gale, the main agent of unwelcome change. Singra waylays the Scarecrow, and tricks the girl she thinks is Dorothy into drinking her potion. Singra, however, has blundered: she has mistaken Trot for Dorothy, turning the little girl into a piece of green cheese. Dorothy sets out to rescue Trot, while Singra continues to seek her vengeance. Dorothy is aided by Percy, a giant talking white rat &mdash; a character that Cosgrove Payes introduced in The Hidden Valley of Oz. In their efforts, they encounter a rubber band (that is, a band of rubber musicians), and an animated neon man named Leon &mdash; Leon the Neon. The trio of Dorothy, Percy, and Leon confront a giant beehive, and Dorothy and Percy take flight on hummingbird wings. Singra enchants Dorothy into a statue, but her friends, Ozma, the Wizard, Jellia Jamb, and the rest, manage to unravel Singra's scheme. Singra drinks from the Forbidden Fountain, and is purged of her malicious intent along with her memory. Good triumphs in the end.
20010469	/m/04yffz7	The Secret Supper				 It is set while Leonardo DaVinci is painting The Last Supper. The story is told in Agostino Leyre's words, as mysterious letters come in to Rome. He is a chief inquisitor, and so he decides to investigate who had sent these mysterious letters, hinting at heresy. He goes to Santa Maria delle Grazie, where he meets various monks, priests and nuns. But while he is there, various suspicious deaths and rumours takes him into a search for truth- the meaning of The Last Supper. Intrigued, he finds yet another mystery - a blue leather-bound book, portrayed in tarot cards left by the killer of several pilgrims, known as 'The Soothsayer'.
20010981	/m/04yfs8c	The Rundelstone of Oz	Eloise McGraw	2001	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Troopadours are travelling entertainers &mdash; not human ones, but living marionettes. When they reach the village of Whitherwood in the Gillikin Country, they are enchanted by a malicious magician called Slyddwyn. Most are transformed into inanimate objects &mdash; though Slyddwyn leaves the humblest member of the troupe, Pocotristi Sostenuto, free to serve as a menial servant in his castle. (This plot device, of magically turning "people" into inanimate ornaments, reaches back to Baum's third Oz book, Ozma of Oz.) To work his transformations, Slyddwyn uses the Rundelstone, a fist-sized rock with a "rundel" (a rhyming riddle, in this case also an enchantment) carved on it in "flarns" (runes). Puppet protagonist Poco must figure out what has happened to his companions, then obtain the Rundelstone and learn to work its magic. With the help of a young boy named Rolly, and eventually with the aid of Dorothy Gale, Princess Ozma and other familiar denizens of Oz, Poco succeeds in restoring his friends, defeating the villain, and ensuring that Good triumphs.
20012627	/m/04ybslr	Wittgenstein's Nephew	Thomas Bernhard	1982	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The author narrates moments of his friendship with Paul Wittgenstein, "nephew" (actually son of a first cousin) of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (not to be confused with the latter's brother, the pianist Paul Wittgenstein). The title is a reference to Diderot's Rameau's Nephew who also deals with the eccentric nephew of a preeminent cultural figure. A very sensitive man, unsuitable for the world, obsessed by an exclusive and cruel passion for music as well as for race cars and sailing, Paul Wittgenstein dissipated his whole fortune and ultimately died poor. The friendship strengthened whilst recovering in a hospital, Bernhard from a lung ailment, Paul from a bout of madness. The latter in fact will die alone in an asylum, a victim of an incurable conflict with the world; whereas the former will succeed in controlling his own madness, emblem of that very conflict, and making it a lever for his sense of social living. Through the narration of symptomatic episodes, Bernhard unravels the emptiness of Austrian society, its parasitic and vain aspects, spending its time to self-congratulate on fake recognitions and futile prizes with the same rhythm used to blather and drink coffee in the best Viennese cafés. Finally, the author gives some interesting advice about the importance of literary prizes as the determining factor of artistic worth: "a prize is invariably only awarded by incompetent people who want to piss on your head and who do copiously piss on your head if you accept their prize."
20013780	/m/04ycm12	Blood on the Forge	William Attaway	1941	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 ;Part One The novel opens in Kentucky, in the year 1919; sharecropping half-brothers Big Mat, Chinatown, and Melody Moss are in dire straits. After their mule dragged their mother to her death, Big Mat killed the animal in a fit of rage. Now without a mule, the brothers are unable to work their land, and are likely to starve. The landowner, Mr. Johnston, agrees to give the brothers another mule. When Big Mat goes to Mr. Johnston’s riding boss to collect the mule he had been promised, the riding boss refuses to give him the mule, and makes a racist comment about the departed Mrs. Moss. Big Mat's anger again overcomes him and he attacks and possibly kills the riding boss. Earlier that day, Chinatown and Melody are visited by a white man on horseback who gives them a ten-dollar bill, promising much more if the brothers leave that night on a train that would take them North, to work. When Big Mat returns that evening and Melody and Chinatown tell him what the stranger said, Big Mat decides that he and his brothers will head North that very evening. ;Part Two Part Two, the shortest of the novel, chronicles the inhumane conditions of the train in which the Moss brothers are shipped north to Pennsylvania. ;Part Three The Moss brothers arrive at a mill town near Pittsburgh, where they get work in the steel mill and live together in a bunkhouse with the other workers of the mill. On their time off Chinatown and Melody go to a Mexican madam named Sugar Mama where they meet Sugar Mama’s niece Anna, whom Melody becomes infatuated with. Chinatown and Melody convince Big Mat to come with them to a dog fight. When Anna rushes into the ring to prevent the death of one of the dogs, she is hit by the dog’s owner. Big Mat responds by punching the man, which leads to a riot. After the fight breaks up, Anna rushes up to Big Mat and kisses him before running away again. Big Mat takes Anna away from Sugar Mamma and sets up house with her in a small shack. Melody brings a letter from Big Mat's wife Hattie to the shack only to find Anna there alone. When he tells Anna about the letter she tries to snatch it from him; the two wrestle over the letter. The struggle culminates in Melody and Anna having sex. There is a catastrophic accident at the mill that kills 14 men and blinds Chinatown. After this tragedy, the labor union becomes very active and gains many new members. The atmosphere of the town becomes increasingly hostile as the foreign mill workers come to resent the African American workers, who are the only group that refuse to join the union. Big Mat is recruited by the sheriff, who is impressed with Big Mat's strength, to be a deputy and help combat the growing union. Once deputized, Mat is told that he is a boss in the town; after a lifetime of oppression, this new feeling of authority goes to Big Mat’s head like fresh whiskey. Melody decides to cheer Chinatown up after his accident by taking him to visit some prostitutes. Once at the brothel, Melody finds out that Anna has been working there. Melody returns home and tries to convince Anna to run away with him. When Big Mat overhears them, he once again is overpowered by his rage and beats Anna with his brass-studded belt. Later that night Big Mat, along with the Sheriff and his deputies, raid the union headquarters. In the midst of the action, Big Mat is repeatedly hit on the back of the head with a pickaxe handle by a young Slavic union member. Big Mat is killed by the blows. The book ends with Melody and Chinatown leaving the mill town as they take a train to Pittsburgh, where they plan to rebuild their lives.
20013818	/m/04y9zxn	The Lonely Voyage	John Harris	1951	{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 This novel is about a boy, Jess Ferigo, who winds up on a voyage of poaching along with Pat Fee and Old Boxer. The story is about his journey into manhood.
20014026	/m/04yd0km	Frost	Thomas Bernhard	1963	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Strauch, mad painter, isolates himself from the world by retreating to the hamlet of Weng near Schwarzach im Pongau. His surgeon brother has Strauch watched by his young medical assistant, who narrates the book. The inn where Strauch resides is managed by a woman with a husband in prison and an endless sequence of lovers. The story includes a significant amount of violence and murder.
20015272	/m/04y6dlq	Correction	Thomas Bernhard	1979	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Austrian main character Roithamer, lecturer at Cambridge, after years of paroxystic projects, builds for his sister, the only person he ever loved, a house in the shape of a cone, right in the geometrically precise middle of the Kobernausser forest. Her answer to the present is death, her traumatic death on entering the Cone. This cone (see it as you will -- a multitude of symbols, such as a refuge, a mausoleum, a phallic icon, the perfect mathematical centre of existence and thought, etc.) is then destined to disappear, absorbed by an invading Nature, eternal nemesis. A typical Bernhardian maniacal character, Roithamer corrects his building project ad infinitum, and ultimately corrects it to its extreme self-correction: suicide. Correction unravels between love and spite, humanity and degradation, hypocrisy and violence, sickness and death, in a crescendo that brings madness to a dramatic threshold of absolute lucidity.
20018206	/m/04yg8xv	First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War	George Weller	2006-12	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The Occupation authorities declared Nagasaki (and Hiroshima) off-limits to reporters. Weller reports that he was the first outside observer to reach Nagasaki, on September 6, 1945, four weeks following the U.S. atomic bombing of the city. He spent a total of three weeks in Nagasaki and in the nearby Allied P.O.W. camps — some of which he "opened", and revisits the series of news reports he published at the time about his experiences. The first dispatches by non-Japanese reporters were filed by Associated Press correspondent Vern Haugland and New York Times Lawrence who visited Nagasaki September 9, 1945. Captain Joe Snyder, press officer with MacArthur headquarters, in his book Para(graph) Trooper For MacArthur: From the Horse Cavalry to the USS Missouri 1997 Chapter 16 "Nagasaki Inferno" pp199–209 describes "boarding a transport plane packed with reporters headed for Nagasaki.[for example: photographers 1. see Google image search Nagasaki Bernard Hoffman (LIFE Magazine) 2. Bettmann/CORBIS September 13, 1945 Stanley Troutman (Acme war pool) 3. Nagasaki and verso ]Other officers and correspondents headed for Hiroshima about the same time, so the world would soon know more than it was prepared to digest about the horrors of the atomic bomb. ... I toured the city with the AP's Jim Hutcheson, among others. He and I had become good friends since our narrow escape on Corregidor. ... There were thousands of stories in Nagasaki and our group saw many pitiful sights of people with radiation burns who, in dreadful agony, were slowly dying. The first thing Japanese doctors asked was if American doctors had a cure for the bomb's effects on the human body. ... We received a report from GHQ that American doctors were coming to Nagasaki soon...." Snyder acknowledges what he calls Wilfrid Burchett's "ingenuity" in successfully reporting from Hiroshima. Snyder does not mention George Weller or any dispatches of George Weller's from Nagasaki. Joe Snyder [1983; owner and editor of the North Missourian] and Walter Cronkite [1964; CBS] are both recipients of the Missouri School of Journalism Honor Medal. From the first days of the Occupation reporters were cleared to cover freeing and rescue operations on behalf of these prisoners. Weller comments: "What the command wanted covered was the prison camps of northern Japan. The dam was to be opened to one last orgy of home town stories, more mindless and more alike than the slow molasses drippings of four years of sloppy, apolitical, dear-mom war....I did not feel that the right way to end this war was to...chew more fodder about what-beasts-the-Japs-are and Jimmy-looks-skinnier-today." The U.S. military in Tokyo censored approximately 55,000 words of his dispatches, along with more than 100 photographs. However, Weller does not refer to governmental censorship of any photographs of his related to Nagasaki. On 07/01/2009 the Telegraph.co.uk published Nagasaki photographs dated September 5, 1945: "After we asked readers for stories and photographs relating to Britain at War, we received these fascinating photographs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima from Cecil A. Creber, who took them less than a month [Nagasaki = September 5, 1945] after the atom bombs were dropped on both cities [August 6 and 9 1945]." The Linlithgow Gazette 28 November 2008 "Amazing atomic aftermath pics set for key war archives" features a photo of Creber captioned "Life through a lens: Cecil with his faithful Ensign box camera." On 02/13/2010 Mainichi published "New color footage of Nagasaki A-bomb devastation shows need for greater research resources" plus a 01/05/2010 Photo Special [film circa September 11, 1945 found at the United States National Archives in Washington D.C. by Professor Burke-Gaffney]. Weller writes these correspondents "looked like yacht passengers who have stopped to buy basketry on an island." He writes that Colonel McCrary "offered to take carbons of my stories and file them when airborne." The reporters under McCrary's leadership were not subject to censorship, making their dispatches especially valuable. Weller writes: "I refused." "How could I close up my atomic laboratory, with the work only half finished?"...and concludes with the explanation that his refusal is because he wanted to write "something free, big and formal....something ample, leisurely and magnificent." [First into Nagasaki page 19-20] Haugland of The Associated Press states: "We offered Weller a ride back to Tokyo with us,...."[see Haugland infra p.&nbsp;20] Weller describes a feeling of "hopelessness" about his dispatches because the Kempeitai to whom he claims to have entrusted the stories had "returned to Nagasaki, but they had no message for me."[First into Nagasaki page 21] Weller, although working as a reporter for a daily publication, chose to refuse an offered opportunity either to timely send his Nagasaki dispatches uncensored from the aircraft or alternatively to confront the Occupation censorship directly by filing in Tokyo, despite writing: "I wanted to be prepared to defend every line. If the stories were blocked as reprisal against me, I intended to take the case to MacArthur himself."[First into Nagasaki page 18] Weller traveled to Nagasaki from Kanoya airbase with Sergeant Gilbert Harrison. Harrison's career later included: Chairman of the American Veterans Committee; Editor and Publisher of the The New Republic magazine; author of several books. In Harrison's memoir [Parts of a Past iUniverse June 2009 pages 81–2] he describes carrying George Weller's Nagasaki reporting from an airstrip outside Nagasaki to the Chicago Daily News in Tokyo: A Boston Globe article by Gerald R. Thorp of the Chicago Daily News "TOKYO, Sept. 10(CDN) 'New Brand of Jap to Him!'" indicates that Harrison was by September 10, 1945 accompanying correspondents in Tokyo. The first dispatch presented in First into Nagasaki (see page 25 and photos on cover and back inside endpaper) is datelined Nagasaki September 6 and reads: ..."After a 24-hour trip on what seemed like dozens of trains, the writer arrived here this afternoon as the first visitor from the outside Allied world." On September 6 the Chicago Daily News printed a dispatch under Weller's byline datelined Kanoya, which begins: The remainder of Weller's dispatch consists of a series of direct quotations from men of this medical corps with names, addresses, and photographs (these last are not from in Japan but are formal military portraits). Samples: After the September 6 dispatch from Kanoya, Weller's next dispatch was printed on September 12 with an "Ōmuta, Kyushu" dateline (Omuta was a prisoner of war camp approximately 100 miles by railroad from Nagasaki and twice that from Kanoya. Headlined "New Saga of Boldness For Wermuth as Captive" it is an account of the famous "One-Man-Army" Captain Arthur W. Wermuth continuing his leadership as a POW on a Hellship carrying prisoners to Japan. The photograph in First into Nagasaki facing the Introduction by Anthony Weller xv is captioned "George Weller (r.) with Admiral Chester Nimitz on board the U.S.S. Missouri for the treaty signing, Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945." This caption is incorrect since the figure on the left of the picture is not Fleet Admiral Nimitz, the signer as United States Representative of the proceedings' documents. In all still images and moving pictures of the Japanese surrender ceremony Nimitz is seen wearing Navy cap with full "scrambled eggs" denoting his five-star rank. The personage in the photograph appears to be John Knight, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, who was in attendance on the USS Missouri as a guest of the Secretary of the Navy. With reference to this photograph supra presented in First into Nagasaki, the Battleship Missouri Memorial at Pearl Harbor: "can confirm that the individual pictured to the left in the photograph is not Fleet Admiral Nimitz." http://www.ussmissouri.org George Weller was actually photographed with a prominent naval figure Hiram Cassidy[sic] by the Associated Press on March 25, 1943 AP Images ID 4303250106. The picture was taken just before Weller's letter to the Foreign Editor of the Chicago Daily News quoted in Weller's War pp355–6. At left is Commander Hiram Cassedy[correct spelling], then Captain of Searaven, hero of several submarine engagements in South-west Pacific (Submarine Operations in World War II US Naval Institute Eight Printing December 1965 pages 104,193-4,233,463). At right is George Weller wearing British-type tropical uniform of shorts and knee socks. Cassedy (later Admiral) commanding Tigrone went on to lead a submarine group "Hiram's Hecklers" and also to hold the Pacific record for "lifeguard" duty (with 31 rescues; Ibid. pp 471–3). The Chicago Daily News September 8, 1945 printed prominently two photographs credited 'Associated Press Wirephoto' showing one American foreign correspondent amidst an obliterated surrounding former city. These photographs feature in the background what has become the widely recognized symbol for the atom bombs dropped on Japan, the shell of a pre-war structure which has been preserved as it looked then. Now commonly referred to as "A-Bomb Dome" it is on the UNESCO World Heritage List registered as "Hiroshima Peace Memorial." The CDN 1945 captions read: #"An Allied war correspondent looks over the twisted steel and masonry in what was the city of Hiroshima before it was struck by an atomic bomb." #"No show tonight. An Allied war correspondent stands in a sea of rubble, looking at the remains of what once was a Hiroshima movie theatre." [Nagasaki photographs (Associated Press: Stanley Troutman; creation date September 13, 1945) in database AP Images (available through libraries).] Photographs of Nagasaki had already been printed September 1, 1945. Caption: "Nagasaki Today - Japanese workers (foreground) carry away debris in a devastated area of atom-bombed Nagasaki. Smokestacks and a lone building stand in the background. This picture is from Domei, official Jap news agency." Transmission credit is to Associated Press Wirephoto. Photographs published in First into Nagasaki in 2006 already had appeared in the Chicago Daily News in 1945. [emphasis added] *Exhibit A: subject: George Weller and Logan Kay; source + locator: First into Nagasaki page 146 (example #1), book jacket front cover (example #2), jacket spine (example #3) = Chicago Daily News October 18, 1945 'Part II - Wake Ghosts' Diary: Navy's Return Raises False Hopes ships shell and leave, so 'Crusoes' give up' Caption: Memento of Terror—Logan "Scotty" Kay, Clearlake Park, Calif., one of the "ghosts" of Wake Island, who hid from the Japs for 77 days, shows George Weller (left) of the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service, a helmet bearing the names of many men who died on Wake and at a prison camp in Japan. / *Exhibit B: subject: George Weller and James Jordan; source + locator: First into Nagasaki between pages 176 and 177 (14 of 18) = example #1: Chicago Daily News November 20, 1945 'Chapter Ten Death Cruise: Thirst Kills Yanks' Caption: 'He Could Take It—Thirty-three years in the Marines made Sgt.Maj. James J. Jordan (right) tough enough to survive the "cruise of death" to Japan. Here he is telling his story to George Weller of the Daily News Foreign Service. Asked for his home address the veteran said "the Halls of Montezuma, or, for an alternative, "the Shores of Tripoli."' [punctuation sic] example #2: Chicago Daily News April 10, 1964 Caption: 'Correspondent Weller chats with a released PW in camp near Nagasaki in 1945.'
20020397	/m/04ycyxb	Penelope and the Humongous Burp				 Penelope can't control her burping after she drinks a few glasses of grape soda to quickly.
20021390	/m/04y6y5d	The Emperor Lays an Egg				 An Emperor Penguin father has to protect his egg for two months while the mother is off searching for food. The book has information about the birth cycle of Emperor Penguins and it has a story of a mother and father caring for their egg.
20025404	/m/04yby9k	Bat Loves the Night				 The book tells the story about a bat and the book also has info about bats with illustrations that show bats flying, hanging, and walking. It also talks about the different kinds of bats in the world.
20027710	/m/04ycdz6	Miss Ranskill Comes Home				 The novel tells the story of a woman who returns to England after being stranded on a desert island during the Second World War.
20027839	/m/04y8474	For Boys Only: The Biggest, Baddest Book Ever				 The book has 100 short articles that appeals to boys such as biting spiders, Easter Island, invisibility cloaks, and fake blood. It also includes a set of 39 codes for the reader to solve, which vary in difficulty.
20029480	/m/04ydqxs	Deaf People in Hitler's Europe				 The Nazi campaign against the handicapped began on July 14, 1933 with the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. The Nazis sterilized people with disabilities such as mental illness, retardation, blindness, and deaf people. It was justified by scientists and the doctors who certified patients conditions as hereditary in order to prevent such handicapped people from bearing children. Teachers and others were involved in the certification process. 375,000 people were sterilized by force and an estimated 17,000 of the people sterilized were deaf. Later Action T4 killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination" from 1939-41 officially and up to 1945 unofficially.
20030313	/m/04ydtx0	Mōryō no Hako			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Police detective Kiba finds himself investigating a very strange case involving a girl hit by a train, her actress sister, and a sinister hospital shaped like a box. As the girl's friend's mother becomes obsessed with Mōryō, the police begin finding young girls' limbs strewn around the countryside in boxes.
20031459	/m/04ygvl8	Onions in the Stew	Betty MacDonald			 The book covers the period from 1942 to 1954. The book opens just after Pearl Harbor, divorced mother Betty was living with her two children, Anne (12) and Joan (11) in her mother's home, while working in the office of a building contractor. She met and married Donald MacDonald and they began searching for a home. Not being able to find a suitable house in Seattle or the mainland suburbs as a result of the wartime influx of population, they tried the local islands, finally finding a property on Vashon Island. The early part describes the problems of commuting from a home without a road. The children have the choice of the beach if the tide is low, or walk to a neighbours (who do have a road) to catch the school bus. The adults have to follow a muddy trail to catch a ferry, which is usually done at a rush. Their house was intended as a summer home, so as a result is cold in the winter, so priorities change. "Creosote logs" on the beach are highly prized. Stormy weather brings a "bark tide" of firewood which must be quickly gathered. Various neighbours provide help, hindrance or confusion. At the same time, there are quite poetic pieces on some of the joys of getting food from the sea and land, and domestic scenes of the girls going through adolescence.
20031830	/m/04ygr0n	The Blood Confession			{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy"}	 The book follows the character of Countess Erzebet, a young noblewoman held prisoner while being charged with murder. As the book unfolds, Erzebet tells her life's story, from her ill-omened birth to the crimes she's charged with.
20034519	/m/04y6pcn	Harriet's Halloween Candy		1984-08	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Harriet doesn't want to share her Halloween candy with her little brother. She is running out of places to hide her candy so she tries to think of a solution.
20034995	/m/04y9thq	Paradox in Oz	Edward Einhorn	1999	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As the novel opens, inhabitants of Oz are suddenly noticing unusual signs of aging. Omby Amby finds a white hair in his luxurious green beard, and common citizens confront wrinkles and back problems. Ozma and her advisers realize that the magic anti-aging spell, which has prevailed in Oz throughout her reign, has now stopped working. In their attempt to figure out why, Ozma and Glinda consult the Great Book of Records, but find cryptic references to the "Man Who Lives Backwards." (This person is actually living in Glinda's palace at the moment; but since he lives backwards, he is a baby in the present time, and cannot explain himself to them.) In trying to puzzle out the problem, Ozma and Glinda confront a Parrot-Ox &mdash; a large magic creature, half parrot and half ox. "Its front half was covered with red, blue, and green plumage, and out from among its feathers proudly emerged a bright yellow beak. Two large, orange wings rested against its body, which was a speckled brown, and it had a long black tail with a feathered end. It stood upon four hooved feet, and its dark eyes darted nervously around the room, dismayed at being discovered." They learn that these creatures, normally invisible, are amazingly common; they co-exist with us in our everyday lives. A Parrot-Ox is "capable of doing nothing at all, unless it is impossible." This particular Parrot-Ox calls himself Tempus. To resolve the mystery of the aging of Oz, Ozma rides Tempus back in time, to meet her predecessor King Oz in the forest surrounding the Forbidden Fountain. She encounters a curious person called Dr. Majestico, and she accidentally changes the past so that Oz becomes an evil place, ruled by a tyrannical Wizard from an Obsidian City, a negative-image of her own Emerald City. She must deal with altered versions of her familiar friends: the beautiful Glinda is old and worn, while the Tin Woodman is a human and very malevolent headsman, Nick Chopper. In her efforts to remedy the situation, Ozma takes more and more trips into the past; the woods around the Forbidden Fountain are soon filled with Ozmas from different times. Ozma must confront Tip, her own earlier male self, and take a journey to Absurd City to find the Man Who Lives Backwards; she must face mind-boggling confusions, and numerous Parrot-Oxes, before she can restore the familiar world she knows and loves.
20035660	/m/04y8ydr	The Holocaust Kid				 The book has fifteen stories that is loosely based on the life of author Sonia Pilcer. Zosha Palovsky, who prefers to call herself Zoe, was born in Europe in a camp for DPs. She moved to New York with her parents, Genia and Heniek, when she was a toddler. Zoe reconciles her dreams with her parents' experiences. The first story called Do You Deserve To Lie is narrated by Zoe who works for a movie magazine and does things that her parents doesn't appreciate. Two stories tell about how Genia was saved from the gas chambers and how she met Heniek after the war. In another story, it talks about how Heniek escaped from Auschwitz. Other stories have to do with Zoe appreciating her parents more, marrying, and going on vacation with her parents.
20038301	/m/04yc_hl	A Fish Out Of Water	Helen Palmer Geisel	1961-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is about a boy who buys a fish, named Otto, from a pet shop. The pet shop owner, Mr. Carp, gives the boy instructions on how to care for the fish, including strict feeding instructions: "Never feed him a lot. Never more than a spot! Or something may happen. You never know what." When the boy ignores these instructions out of compassion for his new pet, Otto begins to outgrow his fishbowl. This leads the boy to move him into several different vases and a bathtub until the house fills up with water. The boy requests help from a police officer and the fire department, who help him take Otto down to the local pool. There, they drop the fish in, causing it to expand to the size of the pool and scare off all of the swimmers. Unsure of what to do, the boy calls Mr. Carp. Mr. Carp is not surprised as boys always ignore his feeding instructions, and he comes as quickly as possible. Mr. Carp dives into the pool and pulls Otto below. Eventually, Mr. Carp brings the fish back up to the surface returned to its normal size. He refuses to say how he did it, but tells the boy to never overfeed Otto again. So, the boy decides after the adventures he had that day that he will never overfeed his fish again.
20046106	/m/04ybmtz	Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday				 Otto, now using the name Waldo, has returned to Earth from Mars after ten years. Now nearly 30, he adjusts to life in mid-1990s, and gets a boring job as a telemarketer. When Waldo receives a call offering a free Hawaiian vacation, he makes taking the trip his goal, but his efforts are repeatedly thwarted by bureaucracy. It is eventually revealed that these difficulties are intentional, and that Los Angeles is actually an experimental self-maintaining prison constructed by Martians to contain humans. Waldo returns to his job and never goes on vacation.
20051062	/m/04yb819	Policeman Bluejay	L. Frank Baum	1907	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the story's start, Twinkle and Chubbins are lost in a "great forest." They encounter a "tuxix" &mdash; a creature that looks like a spiny turtle, but is in reality "a magician, a sorcerer, a wizard, and a witch all rolled into one...and you can imagine what a dreadful thing that would be." The evil tuxix casts a spell on the children, transforming them into little bird-like beings, with their own heads but the bodies of skylarks. (They resemble the human-headed, bird-bodied sirins, alkonosts, and gamayuns of Russian folklore.) Policeman Bluejay, the force of order in the avian world of the forest, leads the two child-larks on a flight through the sky; he esconces them in an abandoned thrush's nest in a maple tree, and with the help of a friendly eagle he retrieves their picnic basket (so that they don't have to eat bugs, worms, and grubs). Twinkle and Chubbins learn of their new maple-tree neighbors, a squirrel, an owl, and an o'possum; and Policeman Bluejay introduces them to the community of birds. The children see that the world of living beings in the forest has structure, relationships, and conflict. They hear stories of human cruelty to animals &mdash; and soon they witness it firsthand, when hunters enter the forest. The hunters kill Mrs. 'Possum and Mrs. Hootaway and Wisk the squirrel; Twinkle tries to protest, but she can only make a skylark's chirp. The hunters' dog almost catches Twinkle &mdash; but she and Chubbins are rescued by their friend the eagle, who swoops down, kills the dog, and leads them to safety. Or relative safety, at least: the eagle takes the two lark-children up to his eyrie, where his hungry hatchlings want to eat them for breakfast. (Baum acknowledges that animals, to survive, have to prey upon each other. Yet he maintains that "love" is the Grand Law of the forest.) Policeman Bluejay escorts the children to a safer location. Soon he takes them to the Paradise of Birds, where the contentions and violence of the forest never penetrate. The children are given a tour of its splendors, and meet the King Bird of Paradise. In the "suburbs" of Paradise, the child-larks are introduced to the community of bees, and meet the Queen Bee; and they witness a spectacular flight of butterflies. Beyond Paradise, in "the coarse, outer world," there is trouble in birdland; Policeman Bluejay must cope with a rebellion among the rooks, who would make the other birds their slaves. By uniting, the smaller birds beat the rooks in a battle. The King Bird of Paradise and his Royal Necromancer have told the children that they can restore themselves to human form by eating a fruit called "tingle-berries." They do so, and return to their normal bodies &mdash; though Chubbins almost gets stuck halfway. Their adventure done, the children make their way home in the waning light of evening.
20051111	/m/04yh1nb	Resistance: The Gathering Storm	William C. Dietz	2009-04-28	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel primarily focus on a presidential conspiracy through the actions of President Noah Grace, who realized the inevitable that his nation will fall to the Chimera, announced to his Cabinet of implementing a compromise known as Project Omega which calls for a negotiation between the United States and the Chimera - through the former human being Jordan Shepherd, known as Daedalus. Grace reasoned his decision as a necessary option in having the United States to be spared in the Chimeran War at the expense of the world (as Grace planned to withdraw America's forces from other theaters of conflict). Furthermore, Grace, privately, intended the negotiations to save himself, and only himself. This decision is met with disgust and outrage from Grace's Secretary of War Henry Walker, who recognized this as treason and secretly records Grace's plans. After Project Omega was overall accepted by Grace's cabinet, Walker fled with his wife to the resistance group Freedom First in Chimera-occupied Chicago in order to expose Project Omega; however, while en-route to the city the Walkers are captured by the Chimera and taken to a mining pit in Wisconsin alongside with the other human prisoners that is being used as a conversion center. Henry Walker's absence became aware by Grace who ordered a manhunt on Walker either dead or alive. In which the search for Walker was led by Chief of Staff William Dentweiler, who is also in charged of Daedalus's capture. Meanwhile, Nathan Hale returned to his adopted home in South Dakota, now under Gray Territory, to learn the fate of his foster family. Unfortunately, he soon discovered that his entire family were killed during the invasion save for his foster sister, Susan Farley, who had escaped the slaughter. Following his fore-naught search, Hale and his unit Echo Team were ordered by Dentweiler to find Walker on the basis that the former Secretary of War is betraying his species to the Chimera. Following a lead in Chicago after contacting Freedom First, they only to learn that Walker hadn't came to Freedom First. Still unaware of Walker's capture by the Chimera, SRPA sent Hale to infiltrate a Freedom First training camp in Montana to learn of Walker's whereabouts but only to be outed when reunited with Susan, who had joined Freedom First. Hale is released on good relations for previously fighting alongside Freedom First in Chicago, and came out empty handed on Walker. Susan also refuses to come with Hale as she had decided to remain with Freedom First due to her disillusionment with the Grace administration and it's increasingly totalitarian nature. By December, William Dentweiler successfully captured Daedalus after luring him to rescue his wife Hannah, who was apprehended against her will, from torture by government agents, and then being brought to a military base near Sheridan, Wyoming while threatened under electrocution to prevent his escape and establish his cooperation. The news of Daedalus's capture enlightened President Grace to carry out a "Victory Tour" in the American heartland from the nation's temporarily capital in Denver (after Washington, D.C. was struck by a Spire attack). At this moment, Susan and another Freedom First rebel plot to take advantage of the Victory Tour to assassinate the president. As Grace prepares a speech in front of Denver's Capitol, Susan prepares to kill Grace by sniper fire but only to be spotted by Hale, who was assigned as leader of a Sentinel security detachment for the president, foil the assassination and leading to Susan's immediate arrest. In Wisconsin, Henry Walker - who had lost his wife - and the other prisoners made an escape attempt through building escape tunnels. Only a few prisoners made out of the pit, among them Harley Burl, who was befriended by Walker, was able to escape to American territory and informed SRPA of Walker's location. A Sentinel strike force is deployed to the mining pit. Hale joins the strike force alongside with Burl and William Dentweiler, who the latter had insisted to come along to ensure Walker's death. After rescuing the prisoners, Burl learned from them that Walker had been taken and converted. He then informs to Hale about what he learned from Walker about Project Omega and the recordings he possessed. Hale detained Dentweiler and ordered his Sentinels to search for Walker; however, they are set upon by more Chimeran forces in which during the battle Dentweiler escaped and had fled inside the conversion center. Hale and several Sentinels enters the center and find the Chief of Staff having been cocooned and nearly converted into a Chimera. Dentweiler is then euthanized and Walker's recordings are salvaged. After learning the full disclosure of Project Omega through Walker's recording, Hale traveled to Sheridan where Grace had arrived to negotiate the terms with Daedalus. Hale, as head of the SRPA Sentinel detachment of the president's security team, easily accesses the chamber Grace is interrogating Shepherd in and, instead of killing Daedalus when he has the chance, he shoots Grace in the head with his rifle, killing him. Daedalus then immediately take advantage of Grace's death and breaks free of his confinement by sending out a mental blast and paralyzed every human being within the vicinity, as he escaped to an awaiting Chimeran battlecruiser. Shortly thereafter, Daedalus is blamed on Grace's death and the entire events of Omega is covered up to the general population. Hale's superior Major Richard Blake plans on notifying Vice President Harvey McCullen of his sudden succession.
20053980	/m/04ybfp6	Scarlett				 Scarlett is a 12 year old girl from London, is sent to live with her father and his new family in southern Ireland after being expelled from school. There, after escaping from her new school after just one day, she meets a mysterious boy called Kian who gradually reveals there is more to him than meets the eye. She slowly begins to drop her bad girl image under his influence. But when Kian leaves and her pregnant step mum Clare doesnt no what to do Scarlett is a troubled 12 year old girl who acts out and has attended five schools. She had a brilliant life up until she was 10 years old when her father left them to go live in Ireland with his new partner Clare and her nine year old daughter Holly. This affects Scarlett deeply and with encouragement from her mother, grows very angry at her dad, tearing up birthday cards and various other presents given to her from him. Scarlett acts out a lot in school and after her third suspension from Greenhall Academy, she is permanently excluded, due to her causing a riot in the school cafeteria, insulting dinner ladies and throwing food around. Her mother is extremely disappointed and tells her she has no other choice but to send her to live with her father. Scarlett protests, throws things, shouts, but her mother stands her ground and sends her away. Scarlett is determined to be as bad as possible when she gets there, to scare them and show her dad she has changed big time and how much his leaving has affected her. Her mother asks her not to tell her dad that she got her tongue pierced but Scarlett shows every intention of doing so. Her father collects her from Knock Airport and she is set on not talking to him at all but in the car, breaks this silence accidentally. Her father persists in talking to her, being friendly and apologizing but Scarlett will not accept any of what he is saying. When they get to the cottage, Scarlett discovers something very unexpected - Clare, her stepmother, is pregnant. Clare's daughter, Holly - Scarlett's stepsister - is a very bubbly and friendly nine year old, chatting to Scarlett, although she does not exactly get a very enthusiastic response. For school the next day, Scarlett avoids it by pretending she forgot her pencil case and purposefully missing the bus she was supposed to take with Holly. Her father catches her in the house, however, and drives her to the school, very disappointed in her. Scarlett gets upset doing an Irish worksheet about "Mo Chlann", or "My Family". She climbs out of the window and walks for miles, eventually being rescued by Kian, a boy of about 13 or 14, on a black horse named Midnight. Scarlett's father tells her she is going to be home schooled, at least for the time being. She enjoys this as she gets to study at the lough, talking to Kian, drawing the different plants and naming them in different languages. She is progressing well and settling in with her new family. Kian's father and uncle come looking for him but Scarlett tells them she doesn't know Kian. She tells Kian and apologises and he accepts but says he will have to go back - he ran away after his mother died of cancer. They arrange to say goodbye at one o`clock down at the lough. The summer holidays have started and Holly asks Scarlett to pierce her nose. Scarlett refuses but when she blackmailed by Holly (Holly says she will tell Scarlett's father about the real reason why she went down to the lough so often - Kian) she agrees. Holly jumps at the last minute and the pin they were using slips, piercing a hole in Holly's lip by mistake. Holly is taken to hospital and gets stitches and the adults are very disappointed in Scarlett although for once, she apologizes for her actions. The next day, Holly and Chris, Scarlett's dad, head up to Galway for a dentist's appointment and to deliver handmade soap that Clare makes for a living. Scarlett helps Clare with her soap while Holly and Chris are gone and then Scarlett offers to contribute something towards Clare's quilt that she is making for the new baby - all the family put in a piece of their own clothing to stitch in. They go up to the attic and Scarlett discovers her father kept all her old dresses and toys although he was meant to throw them away. Meanwhile, a lightning storm has started up and thunderous noises make them go back downstairs. On the way down the ladder, there is a blackout and Clare screams and falls down. After waking her up, Scarlett discovers Clare is in labour. She runs to the lough for Kian's help as it is just approaching the time they had set to say goodbye - one o`clock. He is nowhere to be seen but on her way back to the cottage she finds two American tourists who drive them to the hospital and let Scarlett use their mobile phone to call Scarlett's father and inform him of the recent events. Clare has a long labour and the baby is premature so is put in an incubator, to be on the safe side. They decide on a baby name: Hazel. Scarlett decides that she should go back home to London and is happy there at last.
20054080	/m/04ydlbz	Crab Moon				 A young child, David, follows his mother to the summer rental and is amazed at horseshoe crabs that emerge to lay their eggs. The next morning, he finds an upended crab and he rights her.
20054155	/m/04yc350	The Loser	Thomas Bernhard	1983	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Mozarteum in Salzburg in 1953 the main characters met a young Canadian prodigy who played the Goldberg Variations miraculously and who, they quickly came to realize, was a greater pianist than even their teacher -- indeed, "the most important piano virtuoso of the century," as the narrator puts it in the novel's opening sentence. The encounter with Gould affects both characters decisively for almost three decades, as they experience an endless series of personal and intellectual travails. In fact, Gould’s talent triggers the suicidal tendencies of his two colleagues: so great is the impact of Gould's genius on the other two that, even as it nourishes them, it destroys them: they realize that Gould represents an artistic ideal to which they cannot hope to aspire. So the narrator eventually decides to give up the piano in favour of philosophy, and spends much of his subsequent time composing a rambling, never-completed essay entitled "About Glenn Gould". Wertheimer, who had been a very promising virtuoso himself, follows suit, abandoning music and moving into the "human sciences", the meaning of which is left vague. Eventually, Wertheimer behaviour becomes more and more erratic and self-destructive; he alienates all his friends, and tyrannises his devoted sister. It was Gould who, with his "ruthless and open, yet healthy American-Canadian manner" first called Wertheimer, to his face, "The Loser" ("Der Untergeher" -- a much more evocative word, lit. "the one who goes under"). As Wertheimer comes to see the accuracy of this epithet, he gradually loses his grip on life.
20056848	/m/04ycytl	Shadow Wave	Robert Muchamore	2010-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Shadow Wave begins with James Adams working undercover with MI5 as a Brigands Motorcycle Club biker, trying to bring down its leader Ralph "The Führer" Donnington (continuing from the eleventh CHERUB book - Brigands M.C.). His girlfriend Kerry Chang is also working with him as an interpreter in a set-up weapons deal. The police surround them and the Führer tries to escape and ends up falling down a cliff and seriously damaging his leg. He is taken into police custody. James returns to CHERUB campus to a wedding between some CHERUB staff and meets a lot of his old friends, as well as, staff, including his former girlfriend Dana Smith who retired the previous year, and retired agent Kyle Blueman. Kyle finds a mission briefing for James to act as the son of David Secombe, an important figure in the British Government who is negotiating a weapons deal with Malaysian Defence Minister Tan Abdullah when he comes to the UK. Kyle tells James about how, when he was assisting in a CHERUB intensive training course in Malaysia in 2004, he met a young boy named Aizat Rakyat, who told him how Abdullah is demolishing native villages to make way for luxurious hotels. When the Boxing Day tsunami struck he used the disaster to "evacuate" the villagers and therefore built more hotels. James, disgusted, quits the mission and joins Kyle in a scheme to embarrass Abdullah. James' sister, Lauren Adams, and a younger agent Kevin Sumner are also going on the mission. James sneaks into Lauren's room in the early morning and installs a tracking device in her cellphone. He is then about to leave when his friend Bruce Norris (who has broken up with his girlfriend Bethany Parker) agrees to join them. Together, they go and meet Helena Bayliss, runner of charity Guilt Trips and journalist Hugh Verhoeven. Lauren and Kevin go on a shopping trip with the daughter and son of Tan Abdullah, and James, using the tracking device in Lauren's phone, invites paparazzi to their locations, embarrassing Tan Abdullah's family. Eventually, James leaves for Stanford University in California. When James returns to London to visit Kerry and Lauren, they visit Gwen Choke's grave, and clean the headstone up. The three of them leave after Kerry tells them that Gwen, if she could see them now, would be very proud of them. In the epilogue of the book it is said that Bethany Parker is expelled from CHERUB because she breached security by continuing to have a relationship with someone she met outside campus on a mission. Kerry leaves CHERUB campus and joins James in Stanford University. Even though Kerry was suspicious that James cheated on her during his first year of college, he did not. Meatball is also revealed to have become a father of three puppies. Ron died from throat cancer shortly after being released from prison and James meets his dad after seeing his name on one of his school textbooks.
20059367	/m/04y960s	Couldn't Keep it to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters	Wally Lamb	2003	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 For several years, Wally Lamb taught writing skills to inmates at the York Correctional Institution, a women's prison in Niantic, Connecticut. The book contains personal stories written by the inmates dealing with their lives. Most were sexually, physically, or mentally abused, and came from impoverished backgrounds.
20062830	/m/04y7y70	The Believers	Zoë Heller	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1962, at a party in London, 18 year-old Audrey Howard meets Joel Litvinoff, a prominent leftist lawyer involved with the civil rights movement who is on a short visit from the United States. Although Litvinoff is a complete stranger and fourteen years her senior, the two feel a mutual attraction, and when Litvinoff, after they have had sex, half-seriously suggests that Audrey follow him to the United States and become his wife, she takes him up on his offer without hesitation as she feels her chance has come to break away from her unexciting life as a typist in suburban London. Both Joel and Audrey are Jewish but were raised in non-observant families. When they start their own family in Greenwich Village, they pride themselves on being atheists and thus having to fear nothing from death or life thereafter. Audrey bears two girls, Karla and Rosa, and the couple also adopt Lenny, whose mother, a left-wing radical, is serving a long-term prison sentence. Underneath the liberal veneer, however, the Litvinoffs display many of the characteristics of a traditional family: Audrey dedicates her existence to supporting her husband's legal career, turns a blind eye to his many extra-marital affairs, and does not oppose the patriarchal attitudes and behaviour that he exhibits at home. For four decades, their family life develops according to their chosen socialist agenda, which has its foundation in the ambition to fight injustice, help the weak, and, generally, make the world a better place to live. In 2002, at age 72, Joel is still active as a successful and charismatic defense lawyer, in his current case representing, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, an Arab American man accused of being a terrorist. Rosa, a rather attractive young woman, is a disillusioned revolutionary whose four-year stay in Castro's Cuba has alienated her from her socialist principles and has recently made her turn to Orthodox Judaism for an answer to the fundamental questions of life. She now works with disadvantaged children, although she thoroughly hates this job. Single, she shares a small flat with another young woman who has a more glamorous job and a more carefree outlook on life. Her sister Karla, who has had to fight obesity since childhood, is a social worker at a hospital&mdash;when she was young she was not encouraged by her parents to be a lawyer like her father&mdash;whose marriage to Mike, a labor union activist, has turned sour and remained childless in spite of her ongoing efforts to become pregnant. Joel and Audrey's adopted son Lenny has a history of drug abuse and a girlfriend called Tanya but no other assets to speak of; the family suspect that he might be using drugs again. During a court session, Joel has a stroke from which he will never recover. Unconscious at first, he is hospitalised and falls into a coma. All the family members gather around the patient but there is nothing they can do to improve his condition. After several months have passed, Audrey is approached by the doctors who inform her that now would be the appropriate time to turn off all life-sustaining equipment. Audrey is furious and does not give her consent although at the same time she realizes her hypocrisy: terminating his life would be in accordance with a mutual agreement they made long before his stroke. Eventually, a few weeks after her refusal, Joel contracts an infection and dies. Shortly after Joel's hospitalisation, Audrey meets Berenice Mason, a young, unattractive African American freelance photographer and visual artist who claims that Joel is the father of her four year-old son Jamil. Audrey is incredulous at first but after seeing written proof realizes the woman is telling the truth. For Audrey, this revelation is more distressing than her husband's illness as it occurs to her how little their relationship has been based on mutual trust and honesty: While their father is dying the Litvinoff children try to pursue their own happiness. When Lenny collapses during a family gathering and admits to taking drugs again, he is sent to the country for the summer, far away from the lure of substance abuse, to stay with a friend of Audrey. Meanwhile, Rosa tries to satisfy her newfound curiosity about Orthodox Judaism by spending a weekend with a rabbi's family in Monsey. Uncertain about her future, at around the same time she also has a date with a former colleague from university. Although it is soon obvious to her that the man has become a self-obsessed bore, she has sex with him, only never to see him again. At the close of the novel, after her father's death, Rosa is preparing her departure for Jerusalem, to study the Torah at a yeshiva. Unbeknownst to her husband Mike, Karla's dead-end marriage will not last much longer. While outwardly complying with her spouse's wish to adopt a child, Karla starts an on-and-off affair with the overweight Arab American owner of the newspaper shop at the hospital where she works. At the end of the novel she prematurely leaves the post-memorial reception held in honour of her father to meet her lover and possibly to remain with him.
20067619	/m/04y6ty1	A Case of Exploding Mangoes	Mohammed Hanif	2008-05-20	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The central theme of the book is a fictitious story behind the real life plane crash which killed General Zia, president of Pakistan from 1977 to 1988, about which there are many conspiracy theories. After witnessing a tank parade in Bahawalpur, Zia left the small Punjabi town in the C-130 Hercules aircraft designated 'Pak One'. Shortly after a smooth take-off, the control tower loses contact with the aircraft. Witnesses who saw the plane in the air later claimed it was flying erratically, before nosediving and exploding on impact, killing General Zia and several other senior army generals, in addition to Arnold Raphel, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, and General Herbert M. Wassom, the head of the U.S. Military aid mission to Pakistan. Zia had ruled Pakistan for 11 years prior to his death. The book develops through the eyes of the narrator, Ali Shigri, a Junior Officer in the Pakistani Air Force who seeks revenge for the death of his father, which he is convinced, although apparently a suicide, was orchestrated by General Zia himself.
20070388	/m/04ydzl_	Adored	Cecily von Ziegesar	2009-06-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Brett Messerschmidt is organizing Waverly Academy's annual holiday ball and secret gift exchange. But when some enterprising students decide that playing Secret Satan is infinitely more fun than playing Secret Santa, the entire school starts acting naughty. All Brett wants is a successful party-and a goodnight kiss from unexpected crush Sebastian Valenti. Too bad Callie Vernon also has her eye on the newly made-over Sebastian after breaking up with Easy Walsh. Contradicting, she also seems to still have feelings for her ex... . Everybody at Waverly is getting into the giving spirit. The only present Tinsley Carmichael wants to unwrap is her new boyfriend, Julian McCafferty. But what happens when she uncovers a shady secret from his past instead-that he has already lost his virginity. When did he lose it? Bigger question: Whom did he lose it to? Looks like Jenny Humphrey, Waverly's newest small-screen star, after being chosen to star in a documentary about popular girls, is about to land on Tinsley's hit list. Again. With raucous get-togethers and secret admirers, theres never a dull day in the life of an It Girl. But no one ever said being adored was easy. . .
20078038	/m/04y6km6	The Giant Garden of Oz	Eric Shanower		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Temporally, Shanower places his novel at the end of the twentieth century; he takes up the story of Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, the surrogate parents of Dorothy Gale. In his sixth Oz book, The Emerald City of Oz, Baum had brought the two characters from the mundane world of Kansas to the Emerald City, where they enjoyed a blissful retirement. At the start of The Giant Garden of Oz, the couple, "after eighty-some years of a life of luxury," have decided to return to farming. (Inhabitants of Oz do not age, unless they want to.) They have acquired a small farm in the Munchkin Country; with magical aids designed by the Wizard of Oz, their farm labor is much less demanding than in the Kansas of their past. Dorothy comes to pay her first visit to the new farm &mdash; but encounters an unprecedented problem. Overnight, the couple's vegetable garden grows to enormous size, with giant beets, broccoli, peppers, and watermelons, and heads of cabbage twenty feet high. The farmhouse is hemmed in by a vegetable wall. Dorothy sets out for the Emerald City, climbing a landscape of mountainous produce. Outside the garden, she crosses the Munchkin Country and meets new friends, principally a white-and-purple cow named Imogene, who gives varying dairy products depending upon her mood: :"When I'm content I give regular plain old milk. When I'm thinking hard and get into a brown study I give chocolate milk. When I'm sad and blue I give skim milk. When I get excited, which doesn't happen often, I give butter. And when I get real angry, sour cream." In a crisis, Imogene can yield a healing golden milk; and in the course of the tale, she gives whipped cream and ice cream too. (Imogene the cow originated in The Wizard of Oz, the 1902 stage adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.) Imogene talks Dorothy into accepting her companionship (the cow wants to see the Emerald City). With the help of the Wizard, Dorothy begins to unravel the mystery of the giant garden, and to follow the trail of a would-be witch called Old Magda who is its cause. The task isn't easy; the trio endure a thunderstorm and a near-crash-landing during a balloon flight. Magda created a giantism potion to make her gardening more productive and her life easier &mdash; but lost control of it; giant moles, eating the giant vegetables, become a pest to all and sundry. Dorothy falls prey to giantism herself and endures a subterranean ordeal before she, the Wizard, and Princess Ozma resolve the problem and restore the normal order of Oz. In the end, Dorothy and her friends face a choice. They rescue Old Magda and Imogene the cow from being buried alive; then they learn that they can revive one or the other, but not both. Saving the old witch can lead to the antidote for Dorothy's giantism; but Dorothy finds she cannot allow her bovine companion to die. Once recovered, however, Imogene supplies the golden milk that restores Magda too. The antidote is obtained, and Dorothy is restored to her normal size. Old Magda reforms, and Imogene gets her tour of the Emerald City.
20080910	/m/04y9fh9	Woodcutters	Thomas Bernhard	1984	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It’s eleven thirty at night in an elegant Viennese home in the 80s. A group of people are awaiting – with some impatience and increasing appetite – the arrival of a famous dramatic actor, guest of honour, in order to start eating the sophisticated dinner, in fact the "artistic dinner", as the hosts love to state. The place is that of the Auersbergers, a married couple whom the narrator hasn’t seen for twenty years: she’s a singer, he’s a "composer in the wake of Webern", both "idiosyncratically consumed". The play just performed by the awaited actor is one of Ibsen’s: The Wild Duck at the Burgtheater. The whole novel is an account of what the narrator sees and hears while sitting on a chair with a glass of champagne in his hand and, subsequently, at the table during dinner. Bernhard devastates with the axe of his prose (just like a wood cutter) the world of pretentiousness and intellectual inconsistence, not only related to a certain Viennese scene, but also to all that surrounds us: he’s implacable, ferociously comic, inexhaustible in the variations and returns to theme. The scene develops and the "artistic dinner" unravels in all its hypocritical farce, whilst the narrator relives the last two decades, his connections and affective ties with the various guests, his relationship with the woman (Joana) who united in friendship all of them and finally committed suicide. In closing, the novel reaches momentum through the actor’s indignant outburst against one of the guests (Billroth) who had been offensive to him and malignant to all the whole night. He then becomes sad and reflective and allows, in a maudlin and romanticized scene, that he often believes he would have been better off to lived a rural life and to have been a woodcutter. The marvellous play on the word which allows both the romanticism of this world of the native savage, and yet refers to the super sophisticated and bitter criticism of the social cynic is a stroke of Bernhardian genius. When the elderly actor is so openly wounded by Billroth, the narrator turns from derogatory to sympathetic, and virtually shifts his view of the Burgtheater actor and even the Burgtheater into praising.
20082212	/m/04yh84r	The Lime Works	Thomas Bernhard	1973	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story opens with a description of a woman’s brains scattered across the floor of an abandoned lime works, and a half-frozen man crouching on the ground nearby, covered in manure. From this first grotesque scene, Bernhard begins his story, a compelling tale of two people insidiously bound to each other, told through a hypnotic wave of voices – the people of the small Austrian town nearby (Sicking), the officials, the salesmen, the chimney sweeps, the local gossips, the couple themselves. The man, Konrad, is consumed with his work – a book that is to be both visionary and definitive, the ultimate treatise on the subject of hearing. His wife, a cripple, is the victim of his obsessive experiments: he whispers one phrase in her ear, over and over, hundreds of times, demanding from her impossible degrees of aural discrimination. She has no way of knowing, or no strength to tell herself, whether he is a deluded madman or a genius. For three decades, he has been waiting for the ideal moment, the perfect constellation of circumstances, to arise, so that he may begin writing down his conclusions. But he never begins, and he is now an old man. We watch as he compulsively invites his own ruin. We feel him creep from one moment to the next, terrified of failure. Suppose he started writing and then caught a cold? Suppose he finished and his tome was judged worthless? Or his wife destroyed it? Even amidst the total isolation of the lime works, where they live, he is continually distracted. He hallucinates about prowlers. He hoards bits of food for dreaded visitors. And she torments him. He must feed her, read to her, bring her cider from the deep cellar (one glass at the time), maintain her voluminous correspondence with servants he has long ago forgotten, try on a mitten she has been knitting and unravelling for years, tend the earaches she develops from constant experiments... until the monotony and heartlessness of their life together shatters in a bloodbath.
20084607	/m/04y6xvr	The Duchess of Windsor	Diana Mitford		{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The American divorcée (Simpson) attracted media attention when she married Edward VIII of the United Kingdom. Due to the divisive political issue of the proposed marriage, the king was forced to abdicate the throne in order to pursue marriage with Simpson. The author (Mosley) was a confidante and neighbour of the Duchess.
20087547	/m/04yczf5	Castle Storm	Garry Kilworth		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After discovering the second clue to the whereabouts of the humans lies at the famed Castle Storm, the outlaw weasels journey to the south of Welkin, where the castle lies, to discover more about the mysterious human evacuation. However, a cascade of rats is swarming down from the marshes in the north of the island to seize power from Prince Poynt.
20093314	/m/04y930h	Gargoyles	Thomas Bernhard	1967	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The German title translates something like Confusion or Disturbance, but the American publisher chose Gargoyles, perhaps in order to render the array of human freaks the novel depicts to its very end. In fact, this is a singular, surreal study of the nature of humanity. One morning a doctor takes his son—an idealistic student of science and rationality—on his daily rounds through the grim mountainous Austrian countryside. They observe the rural grotesques they encounter -- from an innkeeper whose wife has been murdered to a crippled musical prodigy kept in a cage -- coping with physical misery, madness, and the brutality of the austere landscape. But when they meet the insomniac Prince Saurau in his castle at Hochgobernitz, his solitary, stationary mind takes over the rest of the novel in an uninterrupted obsessive paragraph. It's a hundred-page monologue by an eccentric, paranoid man, a relentlessly flowing cascade of words that is classic Bernhard: the furious logorrhea is a mesmeric rant, completing the stylistic formation of his art of exaggeration, where he uses metaphors of physical and mental illness to explore the decay of his homeland.
20096290	/m/04y9cyg	Extinction	Thomas Bernhard	1986	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Extinction takes the form of the autobiographical testimony of Franz-Josef Murau, the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family. Murau lives in Rome in self-exile, obsessed and angry with his identity as an Austrian, and resolves never to return to the family estate of Wolfsegg. He is surrounded by a group of artistic and intellectual friends, and intends to continue living what he calls the Italianate way. When he hears of his parents' deaths, he finds himself master of Wolfsegg and must decide its fate. Murau has cut himself off from his family and sought to establish an intellectual life as a tutor in Rome. In the first half of the novel, he reflects on the spiritual, intellectual, and moral impoverishment of his family to his Roman student Gambetti. He only has respect for his Uncle Georg, who similarly cut himself off from the family and helped Murau to save himself. In the second section, he returns to his family’s estate, Wolfsegg, for the funeral, as well as to determine the disposal of the estate, which is now in his hands. Throughout the novel, Murau talks about the void that he has created for himself via exaggeration combined with understatement. Murau then incriminates all of art in this role of unjustified absolution. To Gambetti, the "great" of "great art" was just that; when he thinks on his villa in Wolfsegg, "great" comes to mean something new: criminal art that has the power to make people pardon themselves for mortal sins. Gambetti is Murau’s collaborator. His presence provides the mirror to the society of his parents, and reveals that Murau too has established an audience for himself that unknowingly endorses his obscure tactics. He stops speaking to Gambetti in the second half of the novel because Gambetti has been an agent in Murau’s self-deception. This in turn allows Murau to write his Extinction.
20098374	/m/04y8dqm	Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Odyssey	Isaac Asimov	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A young man awakens in an emergency escape pod finding himself on the surface of an asteroid and having no memory of his identity or how he ended up in this situation. He adopts the name 'Derec' from the name on his space suit, which he later finds out is only the suit's manufacturer. He is soon rescued by a colony of robots who are mining the asteroid in search of something hidden there. Their mission is surrounded in the utmost secrecy such that Derec is not told what they searching for nor allowed to communicate with the outside world. However, the robots send a message to their commander asking what to do and continue their work. Derec has limited freedom to explore the subterranean operation and is amazed at the level of engineering design in the robots and their operation. Likewise, he begins to realize that he himself is well trained in robotics, both technically and psychologically (pertaining to the Three Laws of Robotics). Eventually, a passing alien pirate ship receives the robot's signal and attacks the colony. Due to the secrecy of the robot's mission, their orders dictate they must destroy themselves upon discovery. However, doing that would jeopardize Derec's life and thus the robots would be failing to obey the First Law of Robotics. Derec escapes to the surface of the asteroid using a modified 'augment' (augmented worksuit) and attempts to board the alien ship. While the alien ship bombards the asteroids' surface, the robots below are destroying themselves in the incinerator, but one robot is attempting to "save" Derec. Just before the robot is destroyed by the alien blasters, it finds the object of their search on the surface and bequeaths it to Derec, though Derec knows nothing of its function or importance. Derec is then captured by the aliens. On the alien ship, which is a compilation of smaller ships pieced together, he meets its captain, a ruthless humanoid named Aranimas, who is on a mission to procure robots for his own use. He apparently has little knowledge of robotics. In a trade for his life, Derec must build a robot for Aranimas, but is only supplied with random robototic parts that Aranimass has collected through his piracy, including the arm of the destroyed robot who gave Derec the object. Surmising the object's importance, Derec decides he must get it back from Aranimas and escape. During the construction of the robot, whom he names 'Alpha', Derec discovers and befriends another servant of Aranimass, a small, furry canine-like alien who he names 'Wolruf', since he cannot pronounce the real name. Together, they plan to mutiny against Aranimas with the help of Alpha by taking advantage of the fact that Alpha is bound by the Three Laws of Robotics and Aranimas is ignorant of that fact. They subdue Aranimas and gain access to the room where the object is hidden. While looking for it, Derec encounters another prisoner and is surprised to find that she is a human female who apparently knows him. But before she can tell him anything, he trips a booby trap protecting the object and falls unconscious. Derec awakens in a medical facility on a remote space station that is entirely operated by robots. Beside him is the female, Katherine. Derec is told they were the only two found and is remorseful that Wolruf has been left behind. Anxious to return to society, they learn through the Rockliffe Station manager, an off-station human, that the ship they arrived in (the part of Aranimas's monstrosity in which was the booby trapped room) has been seized to cover the cost of their medical bills and that the next supply ship to take them back to civilization is weeks away. Wanting to find the object, they venture out into the station looking for the hangar containing their ship. Upon finding the ship in an abandoned section, they discover the robots have removed the object. There they also discover Wolruf, who has been hiding on the station since their arrival and is starving due to the absence of food on a robotic installation. She informs Katherine and Derec that the object they are looking for is called the "Key of Perihelion" and is under heavy robot guard. It is a highly valuable object, but Aranimas could not get it to work. Using a First Law farce to draw the guards away from the Key, Derec steals it and escapes into an empty section of the station. Katherine and Wolruf meet him, with robots following close on their heels. Just as the door opens, Derec actives the Key and he and Katherine disappear into thin air, leaving Wolruf behind again with Alpha, who had opened the door. Katherine and Derec reappear on the top of a pyramid shaped building in the center of an expansive city. They descend the building's surface, hiding the Key in one of the holes they find as they climb down. It is immediately apparent that the city has peculiar properties in that buildings appear and disappear overnight and the entire population is composed of robots. However, the robots had been aware of one other human in the city, and that person had recently been murdered. Because of the First Law, the robots concluded that one or other of the only other humans in the city, Derec and Katherine, must have committed the murder. The story ends with both of them being murder suspects and the series continues in Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Suspicion.
20098454	/m/04yfks8	Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Suspicion	Isaac Asimov	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Derec, who has amnesia, and Katherine have been transported to mysterious planet containing an experimental city entirely populated by robots. The only other human that had resided in the city was murdered several days before their arrival, which was by transport using a mysterious device called the Key of Perihelion. Because they wish to keep secret how they arrived in Robot City, the robots assume either Derec or Katherine committed the murder. Of course, a robot couldn't do so due to the First Law. Thus, Derec and Katherine must clear their names. Meanwhile, the city is growing and changed at an alarming rate. Buildings literally change right before their eyes. Derec learns the material the robots and the city itself is made of is the same highly advanced material that the robots of the asteroid he woke up on were made of, therefore connecting the two. The city is also plagued with nightly thunderstorms which produce a tremendous amount of rain. The city's reservoir is about to overflow, which would destroy the city. While investigating the murder, they find a room at the top of the Compass Tower, the building on which they appeared when using the Key. The room is clearly used by the creator of Robot City to watch over the city without interfering or even being noticed by the rest of the city. While searching the Central Core's data with a security-free computer terminal in the room Derec secretly learns Katherine's name is an assumed name and is angered at her deceit. He also learns that the Central Core refers to him as David 1 while referring to the dead man as David 2, adding to his theory that none of his experiences since he woke up are merely coincidence. Derec begins to believe the death of David, the rain, and the city's grown are interconnected. Derec and Katherine decide to split up to speed up their investigations. Derec learns that the mining of building material is causing tremendous amounts of dust and that the building and changing of the city is creating tremendous amounts of heat and water vapor. Together, they are causing the rains, which will soon destroy the city. However, the city has perceived an alien presence and is in a heightened security mode, which is the cause of the rapid growth of the city. Since the presence was registered by the Central Core at the time David was murdered, they must solve the murder and convince it there is no alien presence to get the city to shut down, thus saving it. Katherine finds the body of David still in the enclosed room formed when he died and has a utility robot cut a hole into it. She goes in to find that David looks exactly like Derec and faints. When she wakes back in their quarters she complains of a headache, but is willing to return to the body's location with Derec. When they arrive it has been removed, assumingly by the clean up robots, and the room is empty. Derec theorizes it was pathogens in human blood (from a mundane cut on David's shoeless foot) that the Central Core was interpreting as an alien presence because of its lack of data on normal human blood borne pathogens. To test it, he cuts himself on the jagged edge of the hole in the wall and lets the blood drip on the floor. As expected, the wall responds and seals them in as it did David. While they wait to be cut out, Katherine explains her real name is Ariel and she is the daughter of a wealthy family from Aurora (planet). Her mother was funding the research of a Dr. Avery and this city is most likely his experiment. Also, she has an incurable disease (contracted from a spacer) and was disowned by her family and banished from the planet. She was searching for a cure when she met Derec in passing (she had earlier revealed to Derec his real name is David). Later, she was captured by Aranimass. No explanation is given to why she lied about her identity or kept this knowledge secret. The robots arrive and begin cutting them out. Derec quickly realizes the cutting process is releasing the carbon monoxide in the building material and stops the cutting. He explains the murder wasn't really a murder and that David had died of carbon monoxide poisoning from being cut out when he was trapped. Also, Katherine's headache was also caused by the carbon monoxide when the hole was cut for her to see the body. The robots realize this and agree Derec and Katherine, now Ariel, are innocent. Derec rushes off to tell the Central Core about pathogens to stop the out of control growth and, upset at her conversation with Derec, Ariel rushes to the Compass Tower to retrieve the Key. As the rain starts falling, Ariel climbs down from the top to where Derec hid the Key only to find it gone. A robot climbs up from the bottom to protect her from falling and the rain by clamping itself to the structure around her. Meanwhile, Derec helps the robots figure out a way to divert that night's rain runoff so it won't destroy the city. The next morning he informs the Central Core about the pathogens and the city drops its security level, thus stopping the cycle of rain-causing dust and heat. Ariel recovers from her night in the rain and tells Derec that the Key is missing. Without the Key, Derec and Ariel are stranded in Robot City with no hope of rescue.
20098461	/m/04ygq4t	Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Cyborg	Isaac Asimov	1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Derec and Ariel are stranded on a mystery planet in an experimental city entirely populated by robots. Because Robot City has no spaceport, space ships or any way to radio for help, their only hope is to find the Key of Perihelion, an advanced transporting device that brought them to Robot City, and use it to transport elsewhere. While searching the city for clues, they learn the robots have taken the Key to a large building, but they cannot gain access into the building. Ariel distracts the security robot while Derec sneaks in to and learns the robots have dismantled the original Key in order produce more. Derec is caught trying to steal one of the newly manufactured Keys and is taken to the supervisor robot. However, he was still able to hide one on his person. They learn a Key only works with the being (robot, human, or alien) who has initialized it and the robots are initializing all the Keys for robots. In searching the Central Core for other options of self-rescue, they discover there are now three other unknown beings on the planet. Through interviewing random robots near sightings, they determine two of the three are a robot and a child, who is most likely starving due to the absence of food in an all robot city. They begin using their food replicator to produce food smells in hopes to attract the hungry visitor. It also involves a First Law priority to get the robots to help them search for the other inhabitants. The third being is Jeff, a human who is the only survivor of a passenger ship that was attempting an emergency landing on the planet. Robot City's medical robots, who have advanced medical knowledge but erroneously lack basic human anatomy knowledge, weren't able to save Jeff's body. First Law dictated they save his brain by transplanting it into a robot body, thus creating a cyborg. They then froze his body to repair it when they get the human anatomy data they need. When Jeff wakes up and is made aware of this fact, he panics and escapes without the medical team being able to finish their tests. Jeff quickly begins displaying psychological problems such as paranoia and anger impulses. He determines he is going to take over and rule Robot City with his superior strength, due to his robot body, yet no obligation to follow the Three Laws of Robotics. The medical team organizes a city wide search for Jeff, but his outward appearance makes it easy for him to blend anonymously into the robot crowd. While exploring the city, Jeff's robot nose smells Derec and Ariel's food and follows the smells to them. In a fit of paranoid rage, he strikes them. Other robots, unaware of the robot being a "human," see this attack as a malfunctioning robot breaking the First Law and attempt to seize him, but Jeff escapes. Derec and Ariel are then involved in the capture of Jeff for their safety. They fear Jeff is in danger due to a chemical imbalance his brains life support system which increases the city's robots priority in searching for Jeff. Later, Jeff happens across the other pair of beings in the city who is Alpha and Wolruf. As Derec and Ariel surmised, Wolruf is starving. Jeff takes sympathy on the non-human and orders a city robot to feed Wolruf, but to not to report it is doing so. Also, Jeff calls Derec and Ariel and attempts to convince Ariel that she and Derec should do the transplant as well. This strikes a chord with Ariel due to her fatal disease. Jeff escapes detection several other times, but the medical team's search net is closing in. Jeff is finally caught and identified by his lack of a radio comlink and his failure to accurately reproduce the behavior of a robot following the Three Laws. It is confirmed a hormone imbalance due to the robot's naivety of human chemistry has caused his erratic behavior. By scanning Derec's body, the medical robots are able to repair Jeff's human body and re-transplant his brain back into it. Because of Alpha's lack of a radio comlink, he was also singled out during the search for Jeff. This brings Alpha back in contact with Derec and Ariel, who then learn of Wolruf's presence on the planet as well. Alpha also informs Derec that during Jeff's capture, he has been renamed to Mandelbrot when his special arm, which came from a robot similar to those in Robot City, became fully functional. Alpha, now Mandelbrot, informs them that the two arrived in a small ship taken from the Rockliffe Space Station and used it to follow the radio signal left by the Key. Thus, there is a working ship they can use to escape. They are disappointed to find the ship is a one person escape pod. They decide Jeff is the one who should use it to leave once his body has recuperated, despite Ariel's impending mortality. By now Derec and Ariel infer they have feelings for each other, but do not discuss it. Jeff leaves Robot City promising to send a rescue team when he reaches civilization. Again, Derec and Ariel are stranded in Robot City.
20098467	/m/04ygbs6	Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Prodigy	Isaac Asimov	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Derec, Ariel, their alien companion Wolruf, and Derec's robot Mandelbrot are still stranded on a mystery planet in an experimental city entirely populated by uniquely designed robots. Robot City has no spaceport, space ships or any way to radio for help, and the Keys of Perihelion being produced by the robots will only work with robots, not humans or aliens. Thus, they have all exhausted their options of escape and are searching for other methods to get off the otherwise uninhabited planet. Though the city is designed by the robots to support a human population, its design had been merely functional and utilitarian, until a building suddenly appears on the horizon that starkly contrasts the city's mundane architecture. It is a brightly light, tetragonal pyramid and seemly serves no purpose other than an artistic one. This is exceptionally odd since neither of the humans designed it and robots are logically incapable of the abstract thinking needed for producing art. Derec, Ariel, Wolruf, and Mandelbrot rush to see it up close to find almost every other robot in the city has done the same. This fact produces a double conundrum as robots are also incapable of appreciating art or being emotionally moved by it, yet there they are. Being a robotist, Derec is very interested in talking to the robot designer to learn why it created the building the way it did. On the way, Derec interacts with several of the robots in the crowd to find they, too, are showing signs of illogical thoughts. Robots are beginning to adopt names like Harry and Benny instead of M334. They are also beginning to take interest in learning about human artist concepts such as humor and music. Furthermore, they are beginning to interact with each other that could be viewed as hostile, such as Harry informing a utility robot as being fat due to its large size. Derec requests to run diagnostics on Harry to further learn about its state of mind. Derec finds this all extremely odd and begins to theorize this is the natural trend of intelligent beings within a civilization. Normally robots in all other human worlds are treated as objects and slaves for working purposes only. The Three Laws of Robotics underscore such a human-robot relationship. In Robot City, there are no humans to keep the robotic mentality at the slave level, so their minds are expanding as one would expect an intelligent being to do. Derec eventually finds and speaks to the building's designer, a robot named Lucius, who is speaking with the supervisor robot Canute. Canute informs Lucius that the building is hindering the city's efficiency and that it will be removed immediately. Obviously Canute has not been affected by the mental renaissance of the robots. Derec demands the building stays and dismisses Canute's opinions. Derec learns that Lucius's mental state was sparked during the city's previous replication crisis. He made the connection that the other robots were mindlessly performing their duties to the city, which was in turn producing effects that were going to destroy the city. They were not able to realize if they stopped their duties whose purpose was to save the city that they would, then, actually save the city. This abstract-thought break-through led to him designing his building. Derec requested to run diagnostics on Lucius as well. Ariel's disease has been progressing and is beginning to affect her mind. Wolruf attempts to console her as she goes through hallucinations, but the urgency to get off the planet to medical attention increases. Later that night, during a hallucination, she jumps into the reservoir and finds Lucius's body, which has been smashed up and its logic circuits removed, effectively a robot murder. Distraught, Derec believes it was Canute who disabled Lucius. Though the Three Laws of Robotics don't specifically forbid a robot destroying another robot (in fact, it would be required it in some scenarios), it is illogical that a robot would do so when it wasn't required by the First or Second Laws. Derec feels that he can teach Canute a lesson if he can get Canute to confess rather than directly asking if it destroyed Lucius (which Canute would not be able to lie about to a human). Derec devises a plan to trick Canute into confessing using the city's new interest in human art forms and the budding "emotional" state of its robots. He hopes that in reproducing the Shakespeare play Hamlet and casting Canute as the part of the uncle, they can "guilt" Canute into confessing as the uncle is quilted into confessing in the play itself. A theater is built and many robots show up to watch the play. However, the plan does not work and at the end production, Canute does not confess anything. Furthermore, Canute states the play was a failure due the robot audience's inability to provide the proper positive feedback (clapping). However, when one robot learns clapping is the proper response, the rest follow suit. At this point another human arrives in the theater and is very irate. He demands the identification of the non-natives and why they interfering with his experience. They realize he is Dr. Avery, the city's creator. A man obsessed with his work and slightly paranoid, he has little interest in their plight and informs them they will be subjected to drug induced questioning to ascertain their secrets. He remotely disables Mandelbrot so it cannot help, but Derec, Ariel and Wolruf escape anyway. They are quickly caught and taken to Dr. Avery's lab. Derec has an enlightening dream and when he wakes, he is strapped to a table and Dr. Avery, seeming satisfied with the truth of their story, begins speaking to him. However, Dr. Avery explains he has no interest of helping them get off the planet or Ariel to medical help. In fact, he seems to have some other plans for them. Derec is able to conclude Dr. Avery arrived via spaceship, thus a means of escape is available. Canute is in the laboratory with them and when Dr. Avery leaves for a while, he orders Canute not to release him unless Dr. Avery is in the room. Derec begins talking to Canute about his dream and its relation to the events of Lucius. He finally strikes a chord and Canute confesses and learns its lesson. Ariel and Wolruf wake up and they convince Canute to release Ariel through a technicality in Dr. Avery's order only to not release Derec. They are able to turn Mandelbrot back on. Canute informs them where the ship is and they all escape to it. Once in space, they find there are no navigational charts on the ship so they decide to retrace the ship's last hyperspace hop to a nearby star, Kappa Whale, which is merely a hyperspace relay hop location. Once there they discover hyper wave radio isn't working properly. However, due to the way they space travel and hyperspace hops work, another ship is expected to make a relay hop to that star and they would be able to get navigation charts from it. Then they would be on their way after having to wait only a few days. Wolruf then opts for some food. Upon opening the food replicator, out falls a Key of Perihelion.
20098475	/m/04y8yly	Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Refuge	Isaac Asimov	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Derec, Ariel, their alien companion Wolruf, and Derec's robot Mandelbrot are still waiting in Dr. Avery's ship at the hyperspace relay star, Kappa Whale. Several weeks have passed since they arrived and no ship has shown up from which they could obtain navigation charts. Attempts to fix the hyperwave radio have proven futile due the lack of knowledge of its workings. Boredom is setting in as well as an increased severity of Ariel's sickness. Something must be done. Wolruf and Mandelbrot both agree Derec and Ariel should use the Key of Perihelion found on the ship to transport off the ship. Though, they don't know where they will be transported to, they assume back to Robot City. Upon activating the Key, they are transported to a small 2-room apartment, obviously not in Robot City. An old model robot in the apartment explains they are on Earth. Since Spacers aren't generally accepted on Earth, they immediately decide to make their way to a spaceport and leave for a Spacer world and medical care for Ariel. However, the nearest spaceport is in another city. R. David, the robot who was left there by Dr. Avery, proceeds to prepare them identification and ration tags so they can move about the massive enclosed Earth city with relative anonymity. He also explains a few of the social cultures they will experience while on Earth. Derec and Ariel leave the apartment to explore ways to get to the spaceport and immediately begin to experience the differences in culture between Spacer worlds and Earth, primarily the population density which far exceeds that of Spacer worlds and their comfort levels. Almost immediately, they begin to feel claustrophobic in the completely enclosed city. When they eat at the community kitchen, which holds upwards of 10,000 hungry Earthers at once, they truly begin to grasp Earth's population and are in awe of the incredible systems needed to feed, house, and cloth it. On the transport system, they ask for directions to the train station and their Spacer accents earn them a warning to avoid the yeast farmers. They continued to ride the transport system and eventually arrive in Yeast Town where they again ask for directions. This time their accents gain them attention of several yeast farmers who begin to chase them with anger in their voices. Derec and Ariel flee, but get cornered. In desperation, Derec activates the Key of Perihelion and they transport back to the apartment. They venture back out and, with directions from R. David, reach the train station. There they see that the train is completely enclosed (Earthers prefer not knowing they are in wide-open spaces) and decide they couldn't handle being in a small car with no windows for 12 hours. The next day they go to the library to research other methods and discover transport trucks which drive on roads in the open between cities. They figure they could learn to drive a truck and steal one fairly easily since Earthers wouldn't expect that sort of crime from the population. They go to driving school where they are successful in learning to drive due their skills as space ship operators. Then they make their way to the docks scope out how to steal a truck, but are discovered and chased off. Though they escape, they are very tired and retire to the apartment. The more of Earth's culture they experience, the more they begin to appreciate the Earth people and how they live. They begin seeing similarities in Earth and Spacer culture and begin to accept that aspects of Earth's culture even exceed that of Spacer culture. Areil's disease has finally climaxed. Her lack of appetite, fatigue, and lack of concentration are worse than ever. Upon their return to the apartment, R. David immediately notices her health as drastically changed and urges that it take her to the hospital due to its First Law obligation. They submit to the notion they will not get off Earth to a Spacer world in time and decide to go to an Earth hospital. The hospital staff is suspicious of their story and Spacer accents, but help Ariel anyway. They eventually diagnose Ariel with Amnemonic Plague and begin treating her. It is a disease that, once it has infected the mind, is very hard to cure. They tell Derec that as advanced as it has progressed that it's not 100% she will make it, but there is hope. Because of their being Spacers, the medical staff insists on testing Derec for diseases that would be benign to Earthers but fatal to Spacers. Despite the prophylactic given to them by R. David (designed by Dr. Avery), he submits to the test. Derec is again impressed with Earth and is ashamed that he assumed they would need to get to a Spacer world for proper medical help. The reality is Earth hospitals deal with much more disease and injury than any Spacer hospital. The test results show he is healthy, but indicate he had once suffered from Amnemonic Plague, too, explaining his memory loss. In efforts to replace Ariel's memory once she recovers, Derec begins encoding everything he remembers about her. Those encodings, along with encodings done by the medical robots, are used to kick start her memories when she wakes up. While Ariel is recovering, Derec is questioned by the Terrestrial Bureau of Investigation about what two Spacers were doing on Earth. Derec is able to convince the agent they were students studying human behavior patterns and their anonymity was important since Earthers would have treated the Spacers differently if they knew. They both agree that now "their cover was blown," Derec and Ariel would leave Earth. As Ariel recovers, Derec begins to fall ill. Nightmares of Robot City, lack of appetite, and fatigue cause him to lose weight and strength. He eventually becomes aware of the Chemfets in him, which are microscopic circuit boards Dr. Avery injected him with and they are multiplying in his blood. Also, an implant in his brain has been trying to communicate with them. He realizes all of this at the point the implant and the Chemfets first are able to communication. When Ariel is well enough to move, they request to visit the outside and are granted the odd request due to the fact they are Spacers and would be physiologically benefited by such a venture (as opposed to an Earther who would essentially go crazy). Outside, accompanied by a medical robot, Derec goes into a seizure and the robot runs for help. The seizure subsides and Derec explains they must return to Robot City and get Dr. Avery to reverse the process. They use the Key to return to the apartment. Once there, R. David tells them Dr. Avery has a spaceship at the spaceport in New York and they can fly there fairly easily They choose this method and escape Earth with no problems. Once in space, they prepare to return to Kappa Whale to join Wolruf and Mandelbrot again and to continue to Robot City along the trajectory they took from Robot City to the relay spot. Once away from Earth's space, they are attacked by a ship that turns out to be Aranimass. He was able to follow the radio signature produced when a Key fires. Derec and Ariel decide to ram Aranimass' ship then use the Key to escape to Earth. A third ship enters the scuffle which turns out to be Wolruf and Mandelbrot who had followed the same radio signature. They eventually destroys Aranimass' ship, but there is severe damage to the other two ships rendering all three almost useless. Aranimass escapes in the command part of his ship. While scouting the wreckage of Aranimass' ship, they find a Robot City robot holding a Double Key of Perihelion. Unlike all of the Keys Derek and Ariel have used thus far, it seems that one of the Double Keys can have its ending location programmed. This means this Double Key would be used to go somewhere and then return, probably to Robot City, using the second of the set. Since a robot had it, the Key is coded to be used only by a robot. Thus, Mandelbrot takes the Key and secures Wolruf, Derec, and Ariel with his special arm and activates the key. They arrive back on top of the Compass Tower overlooking Robot City.
20098501	/m/04y8p4y	Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Perihelion	Isaac Asimov	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Derec, Ariel, their alien companion Wolruf, and Derec's robot Mandelbrot have returned to Robot City to convince Dr. Avery to remove the Chemfets he injected into Derec's blood while they were in his custody. From the top the Compass Tower they descend into the apartment on the uppermost floor. There they use the computer terminal to begin their search for the location of Dr. Avery, but have no luck. Derec's condition is worsening quickly, so it is decided that Mandelbrot and Wolruf will enter the city and try to gain useful information. Wolruf being non-human and Mandelbrot being a robot allows them a bit of anonymity since Derek and Ariel would most certainly be noticed and reported. Mandelbrot obtains a work assignment from the Central Computer and learns that all work is being automated to the point where it can be performed by "function robots", robots without positronic brains, after which only a skeleton crew of robots would be needed. All positronic robots have also been programmed with "Migration Programming" which is executed upon completion of their tasks, but Mandelbrot is unable to learn what Migration Programming is. While Mandelbrot and Wolruf are away, Derec gets even worse, and Ariel decides they can't wait for Mandelbrot and Wolruf's return and must leave the apartment now. Moving around seems to ease some of Derec's symptoms. As the descend into the Compass Tower, they run into Euler, a robot they met the first time they were in Robot City. He acts in an odd way and attempts to restrain them, but they get away. As they exit Compass Tower, they are immediately captured by Hunter Robots and placed on a truck for transport. Mandelbrot arrives and convinces the driver to let him drive instead. Mandelbrot swerves several times putting the Hunters off balance allowing Derec and Ariel to push them out of the vehicle. They escape with the truck and find a hiding spot. Soon afterwards, Jeff returns in a spacecraft to make good in his offer to help Derek and Ariel escape. He lands near the Compass Tower, but is immediately taken into custody by a Hunter. Mandelbrot, seeing the landing, arrives in time to save Jeff from the Hunter and the two make their getaway. After meeting with Derek and Ariel and being updated on the situation, they decide to board Jeff's ship and search for Dr. Avery from orbit. Despite the Hunters having anticipated this move, they are able to avoid capture and make it to orbit. From orbit they see that Robot City now covers the entire planet. They find a small group of farm fields, however, and assume that is food being grown for Dr. Avery, currently the only human inhabitant, and that his lair must be near them. Upon landing, Mandelbrot and Wolruf debark while Jeff take the three humans back into orbit to wait. Mandelbrot and Wolruf, find the city all but abandoned in the area. Apparently, almost the entire robot population has executed their Migration Programming and left. Wolruf makes it to the woods near the fields, but is being pursued by Hunters. Mandelbrot fakes a defect and allows itself to be taken to a repair facility. Upon leaving the facility, a rogue robot general alert is raised, so Hunters are back on its trail. While waiting in orbit, Derec's condition continues to deteriorate and Jeff and Ariel decide to land and find Dr. Avery for themselves. They land near the field and exit quickly. Once in the field, they decide the best way to interrupt the Migration Programming of the city's robots is to commit a crime since the robots have clearly shown they have difficulty dealing with them. They stop a robot and use Derec's condition to convince it that the robot had harmed him. The robot shuts down due to its belief it had broken the first of the Three Laws of Robotics, the harming of a human. Deceiving this robot only buys them time and soon the Hunters are on them again. Jeff makes a break for it alone attempting to distract them since Derec has deteriorated to the point where he can't run or even move. Derek and Ariel attempt to hide in the field and find what looks like a vent leading down into the ground. At the risk of being caught, the jump into it and slide down, apparently into Dr. Avery's lair. Once at the bottom, Derec can no longer continue, so Ariel does on her own. As she continues, she enters a bizarre maze filled with likenesses of Derec and others she has encountered during her time in Robot City. She makes her way through the maze and eventually enters a chamber reminiscent of a medieval king's dining hall. There she finds Dr. Avery. Though she doesn't remember Dr. Avery, it is clear they have met before. Soon, the others are brought to the chamber by Hunters; Jeff, Derec, Wolruf, and Mandelbrot. It is revealed that Derec real name is actually David Avery, Dr. Avery's son. Ariel and David (Derec) had once had a relationship which Dr. Avery didn't approve of. Dr. Avery had inflicted them both with Amnemonic Plague and split them up in order to end the relationship. A plan that obviously didn't work. Furthermore, he injected Derec with the Chemfets so he would become the eventual ruler of the Robot City robots, but not only the robots in Robot City, but the robots of all of the Robot Cities. It turns out the Migration Programming is sending all of the robots in Robot City to other planets via the "Keys of Perihelion" to begin building Robot Cities everywhere, invading and colonizing every planet they can find. During this conversation, the Chemfets finally finish their process within Derec. Not only is he physically normal again, he finds that he has complete control of all of the robots of Robot City. With this power he easily halts the Migration Programming process and recalls the robots. This enrages Dr. Avery and before Derec can order a Hunter to subdue him, he produces a "Key of Perihelion" from his pocket and disappears. Tired and happy, their adventure over, Derec finally kisses Ariel.
20100579	/m/04y9c9n	The Ant and the Elephant	Bill Peet			 A stranded ant is having trouble finding help because other animals refuse to help him. An elephant notices the ant and helps him. After that, the elephant helps more animals. The ant is the only animal that said thanks to the elephant. When the elephant has helped out everyone, he falls into a ravine and he can't get out. When he is ready to give up and die, a horde of ants carry him to safety.
20105725	/m/04y6t9g	The Crimson Labyrinth	Yusuke Kishi	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Crimson Labyrinth is a thriller about nine strangers who find themselves as actors in an elaborate snuff film from which only one is permitted to emerge alive.
20108825	/m/04y9qll	Yes	Thomas Bernhard	1978	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 :;Characters: :1. The narrator, a scientist :2. Moritz, an estate agent, and his family :3. A Swiss engineer :4. His wife, a Persian born in Shiraz This novel is about suicide, a topic that permeates overtly or covertly all of Bernhard’s work. A Persian woman is the central character of narration, and the narrator prepares for her suicide by his own preoccupation with suicide. This motif of the surrogate victim is clearly established in the novel's opening sentence (see excerpt below), where the narrator describes himself as in the process of "dumping" his problems on his friend Moritz. Later, he will persist in making these revelations even though he recognizes that they have "wounded" Moritz. Similarly, he will underline the Persian woman's role as a surrogate victim when he refers to her as the ideal "sacrificial mechanism". One could easily perceive that the woman fascinates the narrator, who finds in her a suitable companion in his solitary walks into the nearby forest, where he obsesses her with interminable disquisitions and philosophical rants. She is "an utterly regenerating person, that is an utterly regenerating walking and thinking and talking and philosophising partner such as I had not had for years". Gradually the narrator goes back in time and recollects his first meetings with the Persian woman, uncovering a universe of loneliness where the only existential act left is confession. However, self-exposure not always engenders a benefit. Whilst the narrator undergoes a positive reaction, becoming once again attached to life and thus discarding suicide, the Persian woman is unable to unravel the knots of her painful social isolation and says a definitive "yes" to annihilation. Literally, the woman arrived in this comically benighted corner of Upper Austria because her companion, a Swiss engineer, had chosen it as the ideal location in which to build his new house, right in the middle of a nearby thick forest. But the reader recognizes this realistic motivation as simply a pretext for arranging the sacrificial death that Bernhard intends for her. We glimpse this archetypal pattern from the very beginning of his narrative, when the narrator describes the woman as "regenerating" and perceives the arrival of the couple as signifying his "redemption". While the narrator himself has never been able to act on his own suicidal impulses, it was his insinuating words, as we learn in the novel's closing sentence, that provoked the woman's suicide. After she has committed suicide (by throwing herself in front of a cement truck), he remembers discussing the frequent suicide of young people and asking her if she would kill herself one day, to which she replies, in the novel's closing word, "Yes".
20110462	/m/04y6y73	American Sandwich: Great Eats from All 50 States				 Mercuri said, "I first look for a sandwich for which the state is known. The second thing I do is look for a product that's used in sandwiches, a product for which the state is known. And the third criteria I use -- and this is what happened with Kansas -- is I look for historical events that tie into an interesting restaurant". The book has famous sandwich recipes from all over the United States. It is illustrated with historic postcards, license plates, and photographs. Some of the sandwiches included are Colorado's Denver sandwich, Florida's Cuban sandwich, Louisiana's Muffuletta, Montana's Buffalo burgers, Arizona's Navajo taco, and New York's New York Reuben.
20110871	/m/04yft7q	The Mardi Gras Mystery	Carolyn Keene	1988		 In The Mardi Gras Mystery, Nancy's boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, is invited to spend the vacation with Brian Seaton, an Emerson College friend. On their way to the Seaton Mansion, Brian stops at Warren Tyler's house to pick up his father, Bartholomew Seaton, and at the same time shows Ned a portrait of his late mother, Danielle Seaton, by the famous artist Lucien Beaulieu. The painting is in the possession of Mr. Tyler since he found it in a barn he bought. The friends leave for Seaton Mansion or "The Bat Hallow". They wear fancy dress for the Mardi Gras celebration. Later that evening they go to the Silver Yacht Club. That night the portrait is stolen. The prime suspect is Mr. Seaton, who is supposed to have wanted his wife's portrait. All the evidence points to him: he was wearing a bat costume, like the thief, and he was missing at the crucial time, around 10:00 p.m. Nancy cannot resist the challenge of the mystery. Her investigation leads to the French Quarter where she sees a woman who looks like Danielle except that her face is scarred. She is shocked and hypothesizes that Danielle could have survived the sailboat accident. Later she finds out the woman is Mariel Devereaux, whose father Max is an art forger. Nancy concludes that Max used his daughter as a model for the painting because of her almost perfect resemblance to Danielle. He purposely left it in the barn so that it would be found by Mr. Tyler, Danielle's suitor and Bartholomew's rival. His plan was to steal his own painting and ransom it for a million dollars. The money was to pay for his daughter's plastic surgery.
20111367	/m/04y6zgw	Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues	Michael Crichton	1970		 In order to hook-up with his new California girlfriend, a Harvard graduate involves her in an ill-fated plan to smuggle a suitcase full of marijuana bricks from Berkeley to Boston.
20111642	/m/04y661n	Carrot Cake Murder: A Hannah Swensen Mystery				 It is summer in Lake Eden, Minnesota and everyone is very excited with the family reunion that Hannah's partner Lisa has prepared coming up shortly. Lisa's Uncle Gus has made an unexpected return after a 30 year absence with expensive jewelry, clothes and a new car. Uncle Gus is immediately the center of attention at the reunion with no doubt. It is up to Hannah Swensen, the owner of The Cookie Jar bakery, to provide the treats. Hannah bakes one of her specialties, her carrot cake which is a big hit. Gus is impressed with Hannah's cake and asks her for another platter, but the next day as the pictures for the family reunion are being taken, everyone notices that there is one person missing. As Hannah goes out to search for Gus, she finds him over by the bar at the pavilion with two pieces of Hannah's carrot cake by his side, dead stabbed with an ice pick! It is up to Hannah to solve the mystery of the murder. It seems like Grandpa Jack might be blamed for killing Gus because of his Alzheimer's. Hannah thinks that he is not responsible for the murder, so she tries to prove that he is innocent. The book also has recipes.
20112638	/m/04yf17c	Woundlicker				 The story is narrated by a disagreeable misfit and heavy drinker called Fletcher Fee who works in a car wash at the Stormont government building. Some days after witnessing the violent abuse of an 18-year-old called Molly Duddy, Fee finds a listening device secreted in one of the government's black Mercedes cars which he is cleaning. He begins defining his character to the device, informing it and the reader that he is the product of a violent marriage between a Catholic father and a Protestant mother. Ultimately, Fee explains, he plans to break free from the shackles of a divided society. He develops a mild obsession with Molly, whom he refers to as Wee Blondie, as well as a plan to befriend her. During a protest, overzealous police shoot Fee's only friend, a Muslim colleague called Karim. The killing, which gets second place in a news media obsessed with Northern Ireland politics, spurs 25-year-old Fee towards a dangerous and violent form of revenge. His targets are politicians and paramilitaries from both traditions in Northern Ireland, Loyalist and Republican. The police, as well as both sides of the polarised community, are soon baffled as to who is carrying out these murders because they do not fit the traditional template of killing in Northern Ireland. After each murder, Fee returns to work and gets back in to the car. There he describes what he has done and attempts to explain why he did it. After a savage and public double-killing which follows Fee's first sexually-charged meeting with Molly, he flees as the police try and fail miserably to track him down. The final chapter contains an official government response denying that it or any of its agents were aware of Fee or of his activities before his final act. It also contains a denial, aimed at a suspicious Press, insisting that the government played no part in facilitating Fee's escape. Rumours from Stormont had suggested that unscrupulous powers had viewed his attacks as a way of getting both sides to refocus on the issue at hand, by way of a common enemy. However the reader is already aware that all of Fee's words are a transcription from secret government recordings in which the protagonist is codenamed Woundlicker. In a follow up police operation, a letter from Fee is found in Molly's house suggesting that she join him as he begins to make a new life for himself. Molly, like Fee, is nowhere to be found.
20113349	/m/04y91kr	Five Go Off to Camp	Enid Blyton	1948	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timothy the dog (the Famous Five) are planning to go camping in a moor with the absent minded and insect loving Mr. Luffy, a teacher at Julian and Dick's school. When they arrive at camp they find that their camping site is close to a farm, and that several old train tracks run under the moors, some of them are unused. They soon make friends with a boy named Jock, who lives at the farm with his mother and stepfather, the farm owners. While exploring the moor, the Five find a railway yard and a tunnel that are apparently abandoned. A watchman called woden leg Sam tells them that "Spook trains" travel along those tracks before chasing them away. The children visit the farm the next day and tell Jock about the spook trains. They are surprised to find that most of the farm labourers are not working properly although Jock's stepfather, Mr. Andrews, has supplied the farm with a lot of expensive equipment and vehicles. When Mr. Andrews hears about the spook trains, he warns the children to stay away from the railway yard, and tries to prevent Jock from meeting the Five over the next few days. Julian and Dick secretly set off with Jock the next two nights to watch for the spook train, leaving the girls behind. They find that there is indeed a mysterious train coming from and back into the tunnel. George is infuriated when she finds that the boys have left them behind and goes off with Timothy, but accidentally falls inside the tunnel through a ventilation shaft and finds the train there. Meanwhile, the boys explore the tunnel while Anne waits outside, but are captured by some men led by Mr. Andrews. Anne runs off to find Mr. Luffy. George, who had been hiding inside the train, rescues the boys, and realising that the train is used for smuggling, they try to find a way out of the tunnel. They are recaptured, but Anne arrives with Mr. Luffy and the police to free them. The criminals are arrested, and the Famous Five return to the farm, while Jock is delighted at the adventure.
20113453	/m/04yhd_5	Five on a Secret Trail	Enid Blyton	1956	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 George is worried as her dog, Timmy, has hurt his ear. She pays a visit to the vet, and he tells her to place a round cardboard collar on Timmy to prevent him from scratching the bad ear. George is annoyed when everyone starts teasing Timmy because of the collar, and she goes to the end of Carters Lane on the common to camp alone, free from people who laughed at Timmy. She also leaves a note telling her family where she had gone, and tells them to send her cousin Anne to the place if she was willing to come. When Anne comes to Kirrin Cottage and asks for George, Aunt Fanny tells her about Timmy wearing the collar and George being annoyed. So she leaves for the common. She goes there, only to find nobody. Then suddenly George signals to her. They both discuss about the camp. Anne asks her where the camp is, and George says that she planned it near a cold spring and an old cottage. Next, when George asks Anne about Julian and Dick, who were very adventurous as usual, she replies that they have some kind of an educational tour. George is very disappointed. George and Anne meet a boy who is the son of an archaeologist. He has a small, black and white, one-eyed, adorable mongrel called Jet. They ask him why he was there and he tells them that the area he was digging was an old Roman camp. He shows them some of his interesting finds. He asks them to promise that they wouldn't be disturbing him again. They promise him but on the condition that he shouldn't be wandering into their own camp too. Then they have their meals and start to sleep, but Anne is woken up by pangs of thirst. She goes to the spring to have a drink, but she is lost and goes towards the old ruined cottage. She hears some sinister voices and sees some lights from the cottage. She comes back with the help of Timmy and tells George about what she saw in the morning. George is surprised and excited. The next day they see the boy in their camp. George asks him why he had broken his promise. The boy tells her that he had made no promise. The girls are most annoyed. That night they face a storm and have no choice other than taking shelter in the old cottage. They lie down with Timmy and in the middle of the night Anne sees three or four figures outlined in the lightning. She tells George but George tells her that they were just trees. But when the next streak of lightning came, they saw a figure of a man which had come close to the cottage, looking through the window. After the storm the girls reach their camp and the next morning they are fresh and happy. They later get the news of Julian and Dick coming to Kirrin Cottage. George is most happy. When they reach the camp, George informs them about the cottage and also the boy. The Five walk off together and they see the boy beside a bush reading. The girls inquire of Jet and the boy replies Jet was never with him. Then Julian and Dick search the cottage but they find nothing unusual. They decide to visit the cottage during the night and hide and watch whether there was anything queer about the cottage. They also find that the strange behavior of the "boy" was because there were twins, Guy and Harry Lawdler. But Julian and Dick discover that the cottage is not abandoned after all...
20113467	/m/04yh0d2	Five Go to Billycock Hill	Enid Blyton	1957	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Camping again, this time on Billycock Hill, near the farm of Toby, a boy from Julian and Dick's school. Toby was very proud of Jeff, his cousin and thought he was a hero.When Toby's Cousin Jeff, a British Air Force pilot, flies off late in a stormy night with the newest aircraft made by British army which is full of secrets. The five are stunned. The media tells that the Jeff has flown away and people in the world too think Jeff is a traitor.Could Jeff really be a spy? But the five and Toby don't think he is a traitor. Will the famous five solve this mystery?
20113500	/m/04y8rn7	Five on Finniston Farm	Enid Blyton	1960	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In this novel, the five children (Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy), visit Finniston farm, where they discover ancient ruins of a medieval castle. Whilst they solve this mystery, they are helped by two twins called the two Harries (Henry and Harriet), who are known by their ability to speak in unison, and held up by a family of arrogant, rude and rich Americans, Mr Henning and his spoilt son Junior, one of which an angry Grandfather threatens with a sword.
20116937	/m/04y6wt1	Fat Chance	Lesléa Newman	1994	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Judi Liebowitz wants to be the thinnest girl in eighth grade and have a boyfriend. She's convinced that if only she had "creamy thighs and amazing cheekbones that look like I'm always sipping through a straw" her best friend Monica wouldn't have stolen the boy she had a crush on. When Judi meets glamorous, thin as a stick (tiny as) Nancy Pratt, she thinks her life will turn around and she'll be gorgeous. Nancy teaches Judi the secret she uses to staying thin, binge-purge. Judi is thrilled she can "have her cake and eat it, too and she won't gain weight." But then, something dreadful happens to Nancy Pratt because of her eating disorder and she ends up in intensive care. Judi really doesn't want the same thing to happen to her but she just can't control her disorder and the worst part is, she can't or doesn't want to tell anyone, not even her own mother. This is no easy thing to cure and it's no joke for Nancy or Judi, it's a matter of Life or Death.
20117394	/m/04y67s9	Alina				 Henry Sender discovers that a website he has inherited is an outlet for eastern European webcam operatives, selling themselves live online to customers around the world. As he begins to explore his potentially new career as a webmaster, he "meets" one of his clients, Alina, who rents time on the portal and has a string of disconcerting customers. As an email relationship builds, she suddenly stops communicating and no longer appears online. She had told Henry earlier that she was planning to meet one of her customers in real life. Suffering from a bi-polar disorder and bouts of paranoia, timid Henry hires a bodyguard, Shuff Sheridan, to travel with him to Romania in order to track down Alina. As Sheridan loosens up along the way, he begins to engineer violent episodes as the men travel from Belfast to London, and from Bucharest to Iaşi. Hard drinking Sheridan picks violent fights with random strangers while consistently consoling a panic stricken Henry by telling him that he is his Protector. Meanwhile, Alina meets her customer, Gadaka, in the flesh and he takes her to an apartment he has hired in the city of Iaşi. He explains that he will pay her the large and agreed sum, but that she will have to be his sex slave for eight days. As Alina begins what she hopes will be her final sordid encounter, it appears that Sheridan and Sender simultaenously embark on a night out in the same town during which a Russian mafia enforcer is killed. Back home in Belfast, elderly Francis Cleary is dying while locked inside a steel box. Unable to escape, he thinks back on his times as a maverick philosophy lecturer and how Sheridan was his most eager student. After escaping a brutal confrontation in Iaşi, Sheridan and Sender make it to Alina's home address. They find her hanging, having committed suicide some days before. An unsent file on her computer reveals that she had wanted to send a suicide note to Henry. The message suggests that Alina had been unable to live with the shame after what she had been through. Gadaka had cheated her out of the money he had promised to give her. While searching through her PC, Henry finds that Gadaka is trying to communicate with him. Gadaka outlines what he had done to Alina as he watches Henry seated beside her corpse on Alina's webcam. As their conversation tumbles into depravity, Henry tricks Gadaka out of a fortune in minute-per-minute webcam fees before challenging Sheridan, who has just returned, bloodied, from another bar. As Henry learns news of the now deceased Francis' fate back home, and that Sheridan is wanted for imprisoning the old man in an empty oil tank, he comes close to shooting his bodyguard. Ultimately he allows Sheridan to sleep, instead choosing to carry Alina to an historic nearby cathedral. He leaves her at the feet of St Paraskevi, Protector of Iaşi. Henry leaves Romania soon after, resolute that he has been somewhere close to Hell and that he must begin an escape from his past personality and his recent life. As Sheridan awakes and makes his way back home, he is arrested in London and imprisoned for life for the murder of philosopher Francis Cleary.
20119002	/m/04ygkcd	Joshua Son of None	Nancy Freedman			 Dr. Thor Bitterbaum is in Dallas in November 1963 when the mortally wounded President of the United States (strongly implied to be, but never named as, John F. Kennedy) is brought to the hospital at which he works. Bitterbaum, recalling recent research in cloning, saves some of the President's tissue. He arranges for its cloning and the implantation of an embryo into a surrogate mother, and the adoption of the infant by a wealthy businessman, Gerald K. Kellogg. Bitterbaum and Kellogg arrange for the child, Joshua Francis Kellogg, to have formative experiences similar to those of the late President so that he will develop a similar character and perhaps, in time, rise to leadership of the country. Eventually the clone learns of his origins and, after considerable soul-searching, decides to pursue his destiny. The plot is similar to, but obviously more benign than, Ira Levin's The Boys from Brazil, published three years later.
20127427	/m/04y6rnm	Hospital Sketches	Louisa May Alcott			 Tribulaton Periwinkle opens the story by complaining, "I want something to do." She dismisses suggestions to write a book, teach, get married, or start acting. When her younger brother suggests she "go nurse the soldiers", she immediately responds, "I will!" After substantial hardship in trying to obtain a spot, she has further difficulty finding a place on the train. She then describes her travel through New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Immediately after her arrival, Periwinkle must attend to the wounded from the Battle of Fredericksburg. Her first assignment is washing them before putting them to bed. She converses with the various wounded soldiers, including an Irishman and a Virginia blacksmith. The blacksmith's death in particular touches her deeply.
20128213	/m/04ydtzf	The Hunger Games	Suzanne Collins	2008-09-14	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The Hunger Games takes place in a nation known as Panem, established in North America after the destruction of the continent's civilization by an unknown apocalyptic event. The nation consists of the wealthy Capitol and twelve surrounding, poorer districts united under the Capitol's control. District&nbsp;12, where the book begins, is located in the coal-rich region that was formerly known as Appalachia. As punishment for a past rebellion against the Capitol, in which a 13th district was destroyed, one boy and one girl between the ages of 12&nbsp;and 18&nbsp;from each district are selected by an annual lottery to participate in the Hunger Games, an event in which the participants (or "tributes") must fight to the death in an outdoor arena controlled by the Capitol, until only one individual remains. The story is narrated by 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, a girl from District&nbsp;12 who volunteers for the 74th annual Hunger Games in place of her younger sister, Primrose. The male tribute chosen from District&nbsp;12 is Peeta Mellark, a former schoolmate of Katniss who once gave her bread from his family's bakery when her family was starving. Katniss and Peeta are taken to the Capitol, where their drunken mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, victor of the 50th Hunger Games, instructs them to watch and determine the strengths and weaknesses of the other tributes. "Stylists" are employed to make each tribute look his or her best; Katniss's stylist, Cinna, is the only person at the Capitol with whom she feels a degree of understanding. The tributes are publicly displayed to the Capitol audience in an interview with television host Caesar Flickerman, and have to attempt to appeal to the television audience in order to obtain "sponsors". During this time, Peeta reveals on-air his longtime unrequited love for Katniss. Katniss believes this to be a ploy to gain sponsors, who can be critical to survival because of their ability to send gifts such as food, medicine, and tools to favored tributes during the Games. While nearly half the tributes are killed in the first day of the Games, Katniss relies on her well-practiced hunting and survival skills to remain unharmed and concealed from the other tributes. A few days into the games, Katniss develops an alliance with Rue, a 12-year-old girl from the agricultural District&nbsp;11 who reminds Katniss of her own sister. In the meantime, Peeta appears to have joined forces with the tributes from the richer districts. However, when he has the opportunity to kill Katniss, he instead saves her from the others. Katniss's alliance with Rue is brought to an abrupt end when Rue is killed by another tribute, whom Katniss then kills with an arrow. Katniss sings to Rue until she dies, and spreads flowers over her body as a sign of respect for Rue and disgust towards the Capitol. Apparently because of Katniss and Peeta's image in the minds of the audience as "star-crossed lovers", a rule change is announced midway through the Games, allowing two tributes from the same district to win the Hunger Games as a couple. Upon hearing this, Katniss begins searching for Peeta. She eventually finds him, wounded and in hiding. As she nurses him back to health, she acts the part of a young girl falling in love to gain more favor with the audience and, consequently, gifts from her sponsors. When the couple remain as the last two surviving tributes, the Gamemakers reverse the rule change in an attempt to force them into a dramatic finale, where one must kill the other to win. Katniss, knowing that the Gamemakers would rather have two victors than none, retrieves highly poisonous berries known as "nightlock" from her pouch and offers some to Peeta. Realizing that Katniss and Peeta intend to commit suicide, the Gamemakers announce that both will be the victors of the 74th Hunger Games. Although she survives the ordeal in the arena and is treated to a hero's welcome in the Capitol, Katniss is warned by Haymitch that she has now become a political target after defying her society's authoritarian leaders so publicly. Afterwards, Peeta is heartbroken when he learns that Katniss's actions in the arena were part of a calculated ploy to earn sympathy from the audience. However, Katniss is unsure of her own feelings and realizes that she is dreading the moment when she and Peeta will go their separate ways.
20146216	/m/04y9myy	Cavedweller				 Delia Byrd is a native of Cayro, Georgia and a recovering alcoholic who lives in Los Angeles with her surly ten-year-old daughter, Cissy. The former lead singer of the obscure blues-rock band Mud Dog, Delia is supported primarily by Randall Pritchard, Cissy's father and a member of Mud Dog. The novel opens with Randall being killed in a motorcycle accident. Grief-stricken, nearly penniless, and desperate to reconcile with the daughters she left behind in Georgia, Delia packs up her daughter and drives nearly non-stop cross-country. When she arrives in Cayro, she is confronted by townspeople who think she is a "hussy" for having left her two daughters despite being aware of the fact that Delia's husband was often abusive toward her. After a disappointing reunion with the grandfather who raised her, Delia enrolls Cissy at the local school, gets a job as a cleaning woman and sinks into a deep depression. After emerging from the depression, Delia embarks on a quest to regain custody of her now-pubescent daughters, Amanda and Dede, from their hateful and puritanical paternal grandmother. She enlists the aid of the preacher at her mother-in-law's church. Despite the fact that the minister is able to convince the grandmother to consent to visits, Grandma Windsor does not keep her side of the bargain. Desperate, Delia approaches the girls' father, Clint, and makes a deal with him. Clint, who is gravely ill with cancer, agrees to transfer legal custody of the girls to Delia if she moves into his house and cares for him as he is unwilling to spend his last days in a hospital. After thoroughly cleaning the house, Delia moves all three girls in. Things between Delia and her daughters are tense at first. Fourteen-year-old Amanda is as rigid and religion obsessed as her grandmother, frequently telling Cissy that she is going to hell. Dede is a sexually precocious twelve-year-old who likes to smoke cigarettes. They initially ignore their younger sister and her mother. The two older girls also hate their father, remembering the times that he assaulted his parents. Cissy, unable to get along with any of her female relatives, takes pity on the bedridden Clint. She begins reading to him. Eventually, Clint begins to tell her about the early days of his marriage to Delia, expressing remorse about the violence he subjected her to. After Clint dies, Cissy and Dede form a tight bond. However, Amanda remains intractable, frequently arguing with her mother and sisters. Amanda goes on to marry an aspiring preacher and gives birth to two sons in short order. After undergoing a procedure to remove gallstones, Amanda suffers a minor nervous collapse and begins rethinking her previous religiosity. Cissy, who has had problems fitting in at school, develops an abiding friendship with Nolan, a classmate who shares her passion for science fiction novels. Nolan eventually introduces Cissy to spelunking and falls madly in love with Dede, who scorns his advances. Dede, who has several brushes with the law and briefly battles drug addiction, eventually gets a job managing the convenience store. After Nolan rescues Dede from a gun-toting ex-boyfriend, the two embark on a passionate love affair. Cissy begins making plans to return to Los Angeles to study at UCLA. This leaves the forty-something Delia at loose ends as the two older girls have already left home. She has broken up with Cayro's deputy sheriff and has no romantic prospects. Delia then resolves to begin a new chapter of her life by becoming more involved with her young grandsons.
20152798	/m/04yb5sc	Swallowing Darkness	Laurell K. Hamilton	2008-11-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Swallowing Darkness follows the further adventures of Princess Meredith "Merry Gentry" NicEssus. Merry has finally succeeded in getting pregnant. Having done so before her cousin Cel could impregnate one of his women, she will be able to claim the Unseelie throne from her aunt Andais as long as she successfully carries her twin babies to term and gives birth. This news makes her a target for many of the fae who are unhappy with the idea of Merry gaining the throne, forcing Merry's royal guard to become more cautious about her security. Meanwhile Merry is still reeling from the sexual attack from her uncle Taranis, King of the Seelie court, as well as with the loss of her lover Frost. To make matters worse, Taranis claims that he was the one who impregnated Merry.
20155772	/m/04yfmhz	Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?	Bill Martin, Jr.	2006-07-11		 A bunch of animals answer the question "What do you see?" and the answers are what animal they see. The text is in rhyme.
20159054	/m/04y9_c2	Black Cocktail	Jonathan Carroll	1990	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The novel follows the activities of Ingram York, a disc-jockey in Los Angeles. The book deals with the Platonian concept that everyone was originally joined to another human being and spends their lives searching for their missing half.
20166689	/m/04ydkml	Darkhouse			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel kicks off in New York City with the abduction of a wealthy couple's young daughter. The girl's mother Elise Gray is being tailed by Detective Joe Lucchesi, his partner Danny Markey and two FBI agents. The kidnapper Donnie Riggs calls Elise and directs her to a park. He lets the girl, Hayley, out of his car and she runs to her mother. Elise discovers that Hayley is strapped with explosives as she embraces her, but she is too late as Riggs presses the detonator, killing them both. Joe pursues the kidnapper and guns him down. Two days later, in a Nevada prison, inmate Duke Rawlins is distraught to learn of the death of Donnie, his childhood friend. One year passes and Joe Lucchesi has relocated to Ireland with his interior designer wife Anna and sixteen-year-old son Shaun. Joe has taken temporary retirement from the force, Anna is renovating an old lighthouse and Shaun is dating a local girl called Katie Lawson. At first it seems that their family life is idyllic but Anna has a dark secret. She had a secret affair with local drunk John Miller, a man now embittered at his wife having moved to Australia with his children. Joe's turbulent relationship with his father, Giulio, is highlighted as he travels over to the States to attend his second marriage. Giulio clashes with Joe over his career choice and moving his family to Ireland. To make matters worse, Katie disappears from the area leaving Shaun deeply upset. Meanwhile, in a parallel subplot, Duke Rawlins has been travelling around Ireland and has reached Mountbatton. An investigation is launched in Mountbatton into Katie's mysterious disappearance. Her devastated mother Martha insists that her daughter was a happy-go-lucky teenager with many friends and a caring boyfriend; she had no reason to go missing. Shaun comes under suspicion as he was the last person to see her; Joe himself cannot help but think that his son is hiding something and even looks for some sort of clues in his bedroom. Shaun becomes indignant at his father taking on the role of investigator and suspecting him of withholding information. Joe finds himself seeing red herrings everywhere in the community. He questions Shaun's friend Robert Harrington about a scratch on his hand, much to Shaun's annoyance. He also sees John Miller as a possible suspect. Anna in the meantime has to deal with Joe asking her awkward questions about her involvement with Miller. The locals conduct a search of the surrounding area to no avail. Local Sergeant Frank Deegan, hotshot D.I. Myles O' Connor and fiery garda Richie Bates question Mae Miller, the elderly mother of John Miller and mentally challenged school caretaker Petey Grant amongst others but come no closer to the truth. Joe does his own investigating, retracing routes that Katie may have taken and asks questions, however, his theories are dismissed by Richie who tells him to stay out of the case. After a number of weeks, Katie's decomposing body is discovered in the forest near Shore's Rock, the lighthouse where the Lucchesis live. The post mortem results reveal that Katie had been strangled and beaten with a blunt instrument. With the community baffled by the brutal murder of such a popular teenager, the Lucchesi family begin to fall apart. Shaun is inconsolable over his girlfriend's death and Anna becomes increasingly paranoid about what Joe knows. She confesses to him that she had been seeing John Miller while they were engaged which makes Joe furious. Meanwhile, the authorities are told to pay particular attention to Shaun and also to Joe who had been seen removing evidence from the murder scene. The night after Katie's funeral, one of the locals has an altercation with Duke Rawlins outside the bar and finds a hawk gold pin after Duke flees. He shows it to a shocked Joe who recognises it as being the same pin that Donnie Riggs had in his hand when he shot him. Flashbacks to Donnie and Duke's childhood in Texas run concurrent to the main murder plot. They both grow up in Stinger's Creek and are inseparable. Duke is very close to his kindly Uncle Bill but has to deal with a lot of hardship in his life in the form of a drug addicted, promiscuous mother and the unwanted attentions of a paedophile. Donnie also has domestic strife as his father is a negligent alcoholic, while Duke's negative surroundings are moulding him into a deeply disturbed boy with a penchant for violence. At the age of fifteen the two boys make a chilling blood pact to remain loyal to one another until the end, a precursor to their later dastardly actions. With Joe now convinced that Duke Rawlins is after him with revenge on his mind, he once again clashes with Richie Bates when he takes Petey Grant in for questioning over the murder. However, Petey reveals that he met Katie on the night of her death and that she had had a fight with Shaun, something which Shaun had earlier disputed. When he is interrogated by Richie and Frank Deegan he admits that a failed attempt at sexual intercourse had caused Katie to become upset and run away from him. Frank is shocked to discover, in the meantime, that his phone number was the last that Katie had dialed on the fateful night. While researching Duke Rawlins, Joe discovers that Ogden Parnum, a former Police Chief from Stinger's Creek has committed suicide. Joe is intrigued to find that he was head of the unsolved Crosscut Killer investigation, an infamous serial killer who raped and murdered nine young women in Texas. Across the Atlantic, Danny Markey questions the cellmate of Duke Rawlins, who reveals that Donnie was getting the ransom money for Duke upon his release from jail. Back in Mountbatton, Joe is now convinced that Duke and Donnie are connected to the Crosscut Killer mystery and is liaising with American Detective Victor Nicotero on the theory. Anna is horrified as she discovers that Joe is planning on being reinstated with the force, while Joe clashes with his father again as he has bought Shaun a ticket to New York to stay with him. Anna is subsequently kidnapped by Duke when he poses as a replacement gardener for a photoshoot she is doing. Joe saves a desperate Shaun from a drunken suicide attempt, only to then discover that Anna is missing... Additional flashback sequences to Texas, show how Duke and Donnie embarked upon their sadistic rampage of rape and murder as they callously slayed a succession of innocent young women, proving that they were behind the Crosscut killings. State pathologist Lara McClatchie contacts Frank Deegan telling him that were no similarities in the deaths of the Crosscut victims to Katie's murder but the recent murder of a young Limerick woman bear the same hallmarks. Frank now realises that Joe's theory about Duke Rawlins being in Ireland is true. Still in under the belief that Anna has walked out on him and Shaun, Joe receives a call from Duke who is holding Anna in a remote cottage. He threatens to kill her unless Joe complies with his wishes. He discovers that Duke has a missing Tipperary woman, Siobhan Fallon, in his clutches too. As Duke taunts him on the phone about Anna, Joe turns the tables on the kidnapper by telling Duke about how his wife, Sammi, has been unfaithful to him. He informs Duke that she had been having an affair with Donnie while he was in prison and that she has gone to the police in Stinger's Creek confessing that her husband is the Crosscut Killer. The ransom money hadn't been for Duke, it was for Donnie and Sammi to have a fresh start with. While Joe is on the phone to Duke, Shaun overhears and is furious that Joe won't go to the Gardaí. Meanwhile, in Texas, Victor Nicotero visits Ogden Parnum's widow on the pretense of investigating her husband's suicide. She tells Victor that Marcy Winbaum, a DA, who worked with Ogden some years previously came to visit him shortly before his death. Parnum's widow was suspicious over a heated conversation that Marcy had with her husband. It is revealed in a flashback to 1992, that Marcy had uncovered evidence linking Duke Rawlins to the Crosscut murders. Ogden questions Duke, who blackmails his interrogator as he was the paedophile who abused him as a child. Ogden provided Duke with an alibi, which allowed him to get away with his heinous crimes. Duke brutally murders Siobhan in front of captive Anna who then tries to escape. Joe discovers Siobhan's body before finding a badly wounded Anna, who Duke had fired an arrow at. Duke then grabs Shaun and holds him over the edge of the lighthouse balcony in a precarious stand-off with Joe. With both Shaun and Anna's lives in jeopardy, Joe is issued with an ultimatum, call 999 for medical assistance for Anna or Shaun plummets to his death. Joe chooses to save Shaun and Duke escapes as an ambulance arrives at the lighthouse for Anna. Richie and Joe pursue Duke but lose him. In a fresh twist, a drug dealer reveals that Richie had murdered Katie as she had witnessed him tipping off the criminal. Richie is arrested for Katie's murder while Duke escapes the country. In the novel's epilogue, Joe and Shaun are back in New York with Giulio with a traumatised Anna recuperating in her native Paris. It seems that the Lucchesis' marriage has broken down until Shaun receives a call from Anna saying that she is coming home to them.
20172828	/m/04y9knx	Flute's Journey: The Life of a Wood Thrush				 The book tells the first year of a wood thrush's life starting from it hatching in a forest that is in Maryland. Two children see the bird when it is young and calls it Flute. The children wait for Flute to return from migration and watch him and his mate build a nest and raise their young. In Flute's travels, he encounters many dangers. The eggs and nestlings are at more of a risk.
20175785	/m/04y8b74	Through Black Spruce	Joseph Boyden	2008-09-09		 Through Black Spruce is set in Moosonee, Ontario and is narrated by Will Bird and his niece Annie Bird with the narration switching between chapters. Will, a former bush pilot, is in a coma. Over the course of the novel Will recounts the events of the previous year which led to him being in a coma to his nieces, Annie and Suzanne. Meanwhile, in the present day, Annie recounts the previous year of her life and her sojourns to Toronto, Montreal and New York City to a comatose Will in an attempt to help to revive him from his coma.
20180569	/m/04ygv56	A House is Built	M. Barnard Eldershaw	1929	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centres around James Hyde and his family. A former Royal Navy quartermaster, in 1837 Hyde sets up a business in early Sydney. He brings his family to Australia and would have his sons and grandsons continue his business. They are either disinclined to take up the business or more interested in the Australian gold-fields. His daughter Fanny has all the qualities needed to continue the family business. Constricted by gender stereotypes, Hyde, his business, and his family fall into tragedy.
20185771	/m/04yc80r	Return of the Brute	Liam O'Flaherty	1929	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Based on the author's experience as an Irish Guardsman in World War I, this short novel tells the story of a squad of British soldiers in an unidentified area of the Western Front. The squad is led by Corporal Williams, an obtuse NCO, and consists of nine infantrymen, one of whom, William Gunn, is plagued by PTS and mentally unbalanced. The novel focuses on the last hours of this group of doomed individuals, which will be killed or wounded in a fruitless attempt to occupy a section of the enemy front line. Gunn will go crazy, turning into the Brute of the title, and will kill the other two surviving soldiers in the bleak ending of the novel.
20188760	/m/04ydcw_	The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher	Molly Bang	1980	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A grey lady buys strawberries from the market and heads home to her family with them. A long fingered blue creature follows her and tries to steal the strawberries, but she escapes through various means--catching a bus, swinging from a vine, and simply by blending into the grey swamp but for her face and hands. When he gets frustrated, he finds blackberries and eats them instead.
20189491	/m/04y6_89	The Amityville Horror Part II		1982	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The Lutz family barely escapes 112 Ocean Ave. While fleeing Amityville, they are attacked, but got away. They arrive at Kathy's mother's house, where they think they are safe. Soon after, George is awoken by a supernatural force. George and Kathy realize that they are being followed. Over the next few days, Kathy and her mother spot Missy playing with Jodie. Events plague the family. They get The Amityville Horror published and have to deal not only with the supernatural, but skeptics and a never ending line of press.
20192361	/m/04ydvp3	Krondor: The Betrayal	Raymond E. Feist	1998-11-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A moredhel known as Gorath has brought news of deadly forces stirring on the horizon. The Nighthawks have begun murdering again, and a group of six magicians known as The Six are at the root of it all. Tsurani gem smugglers led by The Crawler and traitors to the crown are all plotting the fall of the Kingdom of the Isles.Squires James and Locklear must fend off the reunited moredhel while Gorath and his newly gained friend Owyn seek to aid the magician Pug and the kingdom.
20194488	/m/04y7414	Stover at Yale	Owen Johnson	1912		 The story opens with a picture of Stover seating himself on a train bound for New Haven. We get a very short recap of Stover's background from his Lawrenceville days (recounted in The Varmint) where Stover overcame a poor start to distinguish himself on the gridiron and became a class leader. While Stover is poised in dress and bearing (Johnson a bit pokes fun at Stover's self-awareness of that), around him his classmates are more eager and juvenile. Stover listens to them talk around him and learns of the secret society system, which will be the main drama of the plot. Later, the tap ceremony for the Yale senior society Skull and Bones is vividly described. While on the train, Stover also meets Tom Regan, an older, physically imposing and more open classmate of his, as well as LeBaron, a leading sophomore who is already taking Stover under his wing. Arriving at his campus lodgings, Stover meets several more characters who will play parts in the following chapters. With Tough McCarty, his rival became friend from Lawrenceville days, Stover has a joyous roughhouse. He also meets McNabb, who is the "partier" of the freshman class. With Hunter, who is reserved and poised for leadership, Stover instantly feels rivalry. A sophomore, Reynolds, "an undersized nervous fellow" but first in his class to "make the News", stops by to check on the Andover freshmen in the house. He evaluates each man and advises him on what to go after in terms of extracurriculars. Some comic relief is afforded when Rogers, a junior stops by, and the tone changes to Reynolds deferring while Rogers leads the group in antagonizing a group of sophomores by turning lights on and off. The chapter concludes with Stover's dinner with LeBaron. LeBaron counsels Stover on the importance of winning election to a secret society. Stover is troubled by the seriousness of this social positioning. Back with Tough, Stover then tells Tough to "go slow" about making new friendships, nixing Tough's plan for a dining group to put the two of them with a more select bunch, but has a hard time explaining his motivation. The action then shifts to the gridiron. Stover performs well at basic drills, but gets no praise and is not called on to scrimmage. Tompkins, one of the coaches, cautions him, “Stover, just one word for your good. You come up with a big prep school reputation. Don't make an ass of yourself." Later, Stover meets Gimbal, who openly proclaims a plan to fight the society system. Gimbal is also open about looking for political leadership with his anti-society stance. The two shake hands, but Stover is uncertain what to make of Gimbal. In the evening, Stover and his class take part in wrestling contests against the sophomores. When no one from his class will stand in as the middleweight, Stover volunteers, though he knows no wrestling. Stover uses his football tackling power to beat his opponent, despite the other man's better knowledge of wrestling. Dana, the football captain, and Tompkins, the coach, see Stover's incredible tackling power and recognize him for it, enthusiastically and sparingly. Stover is borne home by his classmates, having established himself as a name in the class. Stover reconnects with Regan, who had avoided the wrestling match and the first week of practice, despite his huge size, preferring to concentrate on personal affairs and school. Stover also meets other members of the class: Bob Story, son of an influential judge, as well as Joe Hungerford, a "name known across the world for power in finance." Stover, with Hungerford's encouragement, persuades Regan to become the waiter for their dining club. In football practice, Stover at first is disappointed that his wrestling heroics do not suddenly win him a place on the team, but eventually he gets placed as the end on the scrub team. He battles a senior, Bangs, who is the starting end, and outplays him dramatically. Bangs resents Stover's presence as threatening a position that he spent three years building toward.
20195316	/m/04y65w3	Book of the Black Bass	James A. Henshall	1881		 Henshall's Book of Black Bass is really three books in one. There are nearly 180 pages devoted to the biology of the Black Basses known at the time. A slightly lesser number of pages in Part Second are focused on the fishing tackle necessary for successful Black Bass fishing. Henshall himself was a leading reel collector when his book was published and his chapters on fishing reels and their development are often quoted and valued by tackle collectors today. The Part Third as Henshall named it is focused on the various fishing techniques to be used in Black Bass fishing to include fly fishing. Henshall published a companion book entitled More About the Black Bass is 1889 and in 1904 published Book of the Black Bass in a revised 2nd edition that included much of the writings in More About the Black Bass. In the 1881 Preface, Henshall introduces the book thus: This book owes its origin to a long-cherished desire on the part of the author, to give to the Black Bass its proper place among game fishes, and to create among anglers, and the public generally, an interest in a fish that has never been so fully appreciated as its merits deserve, because of the want of suitable tackle for its capture, on the one hand, and a lack of information regarding its habits and economic value on the other. The Book of the Black Bass is of an entirely practical nature, both as regards its subject-matter and its illustrations. It has been written more with a view to instruct, than to amuse or entertain the reader; he will, therefore, look in vain, between its covers, for those rhetorical flights, poetic descriptions or entertaining accounts and pleasing illustrations of the pleasures and vicissitudes of angling, which are usually found in works of this character. Nor is it to be regarded, on the other hand, as a book of a purely scientific nature—far from it—for the author has written as an angler rather than as a naturalist. With these apologies, I trust the reader will not be disappointed in its perusal.
20201297	/m/04ygk56	Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure	Paul A. Offit	2008-09-05	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Offit describes the origins and development of claims regarding the MMR vaccine and the vaccine preservative thiomersal, as well as subsequent scientific evidence which has disproved a link with autism. The book discusses possible explanations for the persistence of these claims in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary, as well as the proliferation of potentially risky and unproven treatments for autism. The author takes a critical view of several advocates of a vaccine–autism link, including Andrew Wakefield, David Kirby, Mark Geier, and Boyd Haley, raising scientific and, in some cases, ethical and legal concerns. The book also explores divisions within the autism community on the topic of vaccines, as some parents consider the ongoing narrow focus on vaccines a distraction from more scientifically promising avenues of research. In this vein, Offit interviews Kathleen Seidel, a mother of an autistic child who has published investigations critical of those who profit from promoting vaccine–autism claims. Offit also touches on the heated and bitter debate surrounding vaccine claims. He describes receiving death threats, hate mail, and threats against his children as a result of his advocacy for vaccine safety. Offit declined to do a book tour for Autism's False Prophets, citing concerns about his physical safety and comparing the intensity of hatred and threats directed at him to that experienced by abortion providers. Author's royalties from the book are being donated to the Center for Autism Research at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
20204099	/m/04y7x_g	Archform: Beauty	L. E. Modesitt, Jr.	2002	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Archform: Beauty is set in 24th century Earth.
20205559	/m/04yct1b	Sum	David Eagleman	2009-02-10		 As a short story cycle, the book presents forty mutually exclusive stories staged in a wide variety of possible afterlives. The author has stated that none of the stories is meant to be taken as serious theological proposals but, instead, that the message of the book is the importance of exploring new ideas beyond the ones that have been traditionally passed down. The title word "Sum" refers to the Latin for "I am," as in Cogito ergo sum. Like Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Sum does not fall cleanly under the traditional category of a novel. It has been called "philosofiction", an "experimental novel", and "a collection of thought experiments".NPR's Books We Like, by Oscar Villalon, The Afterlife? Not Quite What We Were Expecting Most of the stories are understood to "posit the afterlife as mirroring life on Earth" The New York Times Book Review called Sum a "delightful, thought-provoking little collection [which] belongs to that category of strange, unclassifiable books that will haunt the reader long after the last page has been turned". Sum was chosen by Time Magazine for their 2009 Summer Reading list, with the acclaim "Eagleman is a true original. Read Sum and be amazed. Reread Sum and be reamazed.". Sum was selected as Book of the Week by both The Guardian and The Week, and was the featured subject on the cover of two magazines in 2009, The Big Issue and Humanitie. On September 10, 2009, Sum was ranked by Amazon as the #2 bestselling book in the United Kingdom. The book received accolades from non-religious reviewers as well as from the religious community. The recommendations of Stephen Fry, Philip Pullman, Brian Greene, Brian Eno, and others appear on the cover, and Sum was named as one of the Best Spiritual Books of 2009.
20212420	/m/04ydl9y	Death of a Cad	Marion Chesney	1987-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 When Captain Bartlett, one of the house guests at Trommel Castle, dies, the police are quick to call it an accident. Only Hamish Macbeth remains convinced it was murder, and it is Hamish who solves the crime.
20212712	/m/04y8qhk	Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death	Marion Chesney	1992-12	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Agatha Raisin retires from her profitable position as a PR agent in London, she moves to the Cotswolds expecting a peaceful country life. She enters a local baking contest with a quiche she bought in London; not only does she not win, but her quiche kills one of the judges. Desperate to prove her innocence, Agatha begins investigating the crime herself.
20216422	/m/04y69bc	The Kings of Clonmel	John Flanagan	2008-11-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 While at the annual Rangers' Gathering, Will is informed by Crowley that Halt will not be able to attend as he is investigating things in the west of the country. A mysterious group of people are going around, recruiting people and stealing gold in an unlikely fashion. Meanwhile, Halt is watching the group, who are acting in a small village called Selsey, in Araluen, although not governed by any fief. He manages to stop them burning the boats, which they put as an "omen" to their god of gold, Alseiass. He finds that the plot to build a golden temple is fake, they are stealing the gold, and making the temple out of wood, coated in gold. He manages to capture their leader, and expel the group from the village. Halt is puzzled, as when the leader sees him, he says, "What are you doing here?". Halt is sure he and the man never met before. Back at the rangers Annual Gathering, two Ranger apprentices graduate at a ceremony, where Crowley asks Will to take care of three more apprentices for a while. He does this, and Crowley tells him that he has been moved to Redmont fief to share half of it with Halt. It is where he grew up, and where Alyss, (the girl he has a romantic relationship with) lives. Halt's wife, Pauline also lives there. Will rides to the fief, where he is greeted by a feast made by his childhood friend, Jenny. He greets Pauline, and Crowley, then Halt arrives. Crowley assigns Will, Halt, and Horace (Will's current best friend, and a knight) to investigate Clonmel. Halt tells them he knows the king, and when they ask how, he tells them he is the King's brother. They go around, investigating the Outsiders (the group who are stealing gold). When Halt's brother tells them he made a deal with the Outsiders, he is knocked out by Horace, and Halt takes the king's place (they are twins). The Outsiders' leader, Tennyson, is angry, and challenges Horace to duel his two giant bodyguards. Horace accepts. Will meanwhile, is investigating a camp, and he sees that Tennyson has recruited three Genovesans (foreigners; assassins). He tells Horace and Halt this, and Halt is expecting treachery from Tennyson. The duel proceeds, with Horace barely winning against the chain and ball used by the first giant. Horace is then drugged by the assassins, causing his eyes to waver a lot, and he is unable to see clearly. Will shoots the second giant in the arm, after which he manages to accuse Tennyson. Tennyson escapes, though not before killing Halt's brother. Halt abdicates the throne to his nephew, Sean, a warrior and worthy king. They begin to follow Tennyson's trail to Picta, thus ending the book.
20217955	/m/04ydk1b	Conquerors from the Darkness	Robert Silverberg		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 A thousand years in the future, the earth has been conquered by an alien race and covered by a single sea. Dovirr Stargan, who is disgusted with the servility of his life on the floating city of Vythain, longs to become one of the Sea-Lords, who roam the sea as powerful protectors of the cities. Dovirr gets his wish, but the return of the alien race brings unexpected and critically dangerous crises to his new life as he learns the real, sometimes terrible, significance of power.
20219138	/m/04y6k09	The Princess	Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson	1847		 As with many of Tennyson's works, The Princess has an outer setting to the main narrative, consisting of a Prologue and a Conclusion that take place at a Victorian era summer fete. The characters in the Prologue agree to participate in a storytelling game about a heroic princess in days of old, based on an ancient family chronicle. The main narrative follows, given in seven lengthy "Cantos", with the prince as narrator. In the main narrative, a prince has been betrothed since infancy to a princess, Ida, from a neighbouring land. The princess has grown to become beautiful and accomplished and has founded a university of maidens in a remote retreat. Her father, King Gama, explains that she refuses to have anything to do with the world of men and is influenced by other women, Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche, who have all resolved never to wed a man. The prince and two friends, Cyril and Florian, decide to infiltrate the university to try to win the princess's return. They disguise themselves as women and ride into the university asking to enrol as students. Florian is Lady Psyche's brother and hopes to influence her. The "new students" are taken to see the princess, who tells them that they must "cast and fling the tricks, which make us toys of men", so that they may become equal with men. The men are impressed by the princess and debate the merits of women's equality. They move around the university, listening and learning. Their tutors, Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche, discover the men's subterfuge, but hide their knowledge for reasons of their own. Blanche and Psyche are intellectual and political rivals at the university, and Blanche vows to force Psyche out. Ida and the prince walk together, and, still posing as a woman student, he tells her news of the prince and his court, and they discuss the marriage contract between Ida and the prince. He tells her how the prince loves her from afar. She speaks of her ideals of equality. The prince touches hands with Ida on the path. At a picnic, Ida invites the prince to sing a song from her [his] homeland. He sings of love, but Ida mocks it and talks of the inequality of love between men and women. She invites another song about the women of her [his] land. Cyril sings a drunken tavern song, and chaos breaks out as the men's identities become obvious to all. In the confusion, Ida falls into the river, and the prince saves her from drowning. The men flee (and Psyche flees with Cyril, leaving her child behind in the castle), but the prince and Florian are recaptured. Letters arrives from the prince's father (the king) and Ida's father (Gama). Gama tells how he started to come to Ida to plead for the prince but was taken hostage by the king. The king tells Ida not to harm the prince and to free him, or the king's army will storm the castle. The prince declares his love for Ida, saying, "except you slay me here according to your bitter statute-book, I cannot cease to follow you... but half without you; with you, whole; and of those halves you worthiest". Word comes that the king has arrived to storm the castle. Ida gives a stirring speech, saying that she will lead the maidens into battle. Though Ida appears to be forming an interest in the prince, she renounces her marriage contract. The prince and Florian are freed and pushed out of the castle. Psyche is distraught at having betrayed Ida and her cause, and having lost her child. The king wants to make war, but the prince wants to win Ida's love. He says, "wild natures need wise curbs... not war: lest I lose all". Gama and the prince have developed a warm relationship, and Gama supports the prince's cause, but Ida's brothers support their sister at all costs. The prince and his friends offer to fight Ida's brother and to let the battle decide whether Ida must keep her contract. Ida's brother Arac sends word of this proposal to Ida, who rants against the harm done to women, but confident of her brothers' victory, she agrees to abide by the contest. Meanwhile, Ida has been growing to love Psyche's child. In the battle, Ida's brothers defeat and wound the prince and his friends. The prince acknowledges defeat and pleads with Ida to let Psyche reclaim her child, but he falls into a coma. Ida rants against Psyche's betrayal. The king says that he cannot let such a hard woman tend his son. Ida relents and asks the king to let her tend the prince's injuries, and to let the ladies tend to Cyril and Florian. This shows her willingness to bend her own laws. By ministering to the men, the ladies of the university become more fair, and Ida finds peace. Love blossoms between the nurses and the nursed. Ida eventually comes to love the prince. As he regains consciousness at times, they discuss their ideas of love, and she discovers that they agree on the equality of love; not, as she had always feared, women's servitude in love – he has been well-schooled in this by his mother. The prince envisages a future where "The man may be more of woman, she of man". He says "my hopes and thine are one" and asks her to place her trust in him. In the Conclusion, the narrator reflects on how to tell the long story, noting that the events are "Too comic for the solemn things they are, / Too solemn for the comic touches in them."
20222362	/m/04ycr3s	Petals of Blood	Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o	1977	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins by describing the four main characters - Munira, Karega, Wanja, and Abdulla - just after the revelation that three prominent Kenyans, two businessmen and one educator, have been killed in a fire. The next chapter moves back in the novel's timeline, focusing on Munira's move to Ilmorog, to begin work as a teacher. He is initially met with suspicion and poor classroom attendance, as the villagers think he will give up on the village soon, in much the same way previous teachers have done. However, Munira stays and, with the friendship of Abdullah, another immigrant to Ilmorog who owns a small shop and bar, carves out a life as a teacher. Soon Wanja arrives, the granddaughter of the town's oldest and most revered lady. She is an attractive, experienced barmaid who Munira begins to fall in love with, despite the fact he is already married. She too is escaping the city, and begins to work for Abdullah, quickly reshaping his shop, and expanding its bar. Karega arrives in Ilmorog to seek Munira to question him about their old school Siriana. After a brief relationship with Munira, Wanja once again grows disillusioned and leaves Ilmorog. The year of her departure is not good for the village as the weather is harsh and no rains come, making for a poor harvest. In an attempt to enact changes, the villagers are inspired by Karega to journey to Nairobi in order to talk to their MP. The journey is very arduous and Joseph, a boy that Abdullah had taken in as his brother and who had worked in his shop, becomes ill. When they arrive in Nairobi, the villagers seek help from every quarter. They are turned away by a reverend who thinks they are merely beggars, despite their pleas of help for the sick child. Trying at another house, some of the villagers are rounded up and forced into the building where they are questioned by Kimeria, a ruthless businessman who reveals that he and their MP are in league with one another. He blackmails Wanja, and subsequently rapes her. Upon arriving in Nairobi and speaking to their MP, the villagers realise that nothing will change, as he is little more than a demagogue. However, they do meet a lawyer who wishes to help them and others in the same predicament and through a court case highlights Ilmorog's plight. This draws attention from national press and donations and charities pour into Ilmorog. Finally, the rains comes, and the villagers celebrate with ancient rituals and dances. During this time, Karega starts a correspondence with the lawyer that he met in Nairobi, wishing to educate himself further. To celebrate the rain's coming, Nyakinyua brews a drink from the Thang'eta plant, which all of the villagers drink. Karega tells the story the love between him and Mukami, the older sister of Munira. Mukami's father looked down on Karega because of his brother's involvement with the Mau Mau. Forced to separate, Mariamu and Karega do not see each other again, and Mukami later commits suicide by jumping into a quarry. This is the first time Munira hears the story. Later, an unknown plane crashes in the village; the only victim is Abdulla's donkey. Wanja notices that there are several large groups of people who come to survey the wreckage, and suggests to Abdulla that they begin to sell the Thang'eta drink in Abdulla's bar. The drink attracts notoriety, and many people come to the bar in order to sample it. Out of fury for Karega's connection to his family and jealousy of his relationship with Wanja, Munira schemes to have Karega fired from his teaching post with the school. Karega then leaves Ilmorog. Development arrives in Ilmorog as the government begin to build the Trans-Africa road through the village, which brings an increase in trade. Karega returns to Ilmorog, telling of his slow spiral into alcoholism before finally securing work in a factory. After getting fired from the factory, he returns to Ilmorog. The change in Ilmorog is rapid, and the villages changes into the town of New Ilmorog. The farmers are told that they should fence off their land and mortgage parts of it to ensure that they own a finite area. They are offered loans which are linked to their harvest turnout to pay for this expense. Nyakinyua dies and the banks move to take her land. To prevent this Wanja sells her business and buys Nyakinyua's land. She opens up a successful brothel in the town, and is herself one of the prostitutes. Munira goes to see her to attempt to rekindle their romance, but is met with only a demand for money. He pays, and the couple have sex. Karega goes to see Wanja who both still have strong feelings for each other, but after disagreeing about how to live he leaves. Wanja plans to separate herself finally from the men who have exploited her during her life, wanting to bring them to her brothel with all of her prostitutes sent away so that she could present the downtrodden but noble Abdulla as her chosen partner. Meanwhile, Munira is watching the brothel, and sees Karega arrive, and then leave. In a religious fervour, he pours petrol on the brothel, sets it alight, and retreats to a hill to watch it burn. Wanja escapes but is hospitalized due to smoke inhalation; the other men Wanja had invited died in the fire. Munira is sentenced with arson; later, Karega learns that the corrupt local MP was gunned down in his car whilst waiting for his chauffeur in Nairobi. The title Petals of Blood is derived from a line of Derek Walcott's poem 'The Swamp'. The poem suggests that there is a deadly power within nature that must be respected despite attempts to suggest by humans that they live harmoniously with it. Originally called 'Ballad of a Barmaid', it is unclear why Ngugi changed the title before release. The phrase "petals of blood" appears several times throughout the novel, with varying associations and meanings. Initially, "petals of blood" is first used by a pupil in Munira's class to describe a flower. Munira quickly chastises the boy, saying that 'there is no colour called blood'. Later, the phrase is used to describe flames, as well relating to virginity during one of Munira's sexual fantasies.
20222367	/m/04y8xlh	Shakes versus Shav	George Bernard Shaw			 Shakespeare challenges Shaw as an upstart, quoting lines from his own plays. Shaw claims that Macbeth has been bettered by Scott's novel Rob Roy, and "proves" the point by staging a fight between the ghosts of the two Scots, which Rob Roy wins. Shaw then asserts that Adam Lindsay Gordon has outdone Shakespeare's verse, quoting the lines "The beetle booms adown the glooms/And bumps among the clumps" (in fact a garbled version of lines by James Whitcomb Riley). Shakespeare laughs at this. He tells Shaw that he could never have written Hamlet or King Lear. Shaw replies that Shakespeare could not have written Heartbreak House, and creates a pastiche of his own play with the characters posed in imitation of Millais's painting The North-West Passage. Shakespeare defends the emotional power of his work. Shaw defends the practical value of his. Shaw ends by quoting Shakespeare's own words and bringing into being a small light to symbolise his own reputation. Shakespeare puts out the light and the play ends.
20224043	/m/04yb57j	The Frog Princess		2002-09-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Emeralda, aka Emma, is the only princess in Greater Greensward. But she is clumsy with everything, including the magic touch she inherited from the first Green Witch centuries back. One of her most distinct traits is her unique laugh, which sounds like a foghorn. When her mother says she has to marry the stuck-up Prince Jorge from East Aradia, her worst enemy, she runs off to the swamp where she meets Prince Eadric of Upper Montevista. The only problem is that he has been turned into a frog by the witch Mudine. Emma kisses him and tries to reverse the spell, and instead, she turns into a frog herself; something which changes her whole life. Emma and Eadric set off to find the witch that turned him into a frog and ask her to change them back. With what little magic Emma has learned from her Aunt Grassina, the current Green Witch, Emma tries to save Eadric and herself.
20228292	/m/04ygjmp	Murder in Amityville		1979	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The plot tries to explain why Ronald Defeo Jr. killed his family at 112 Ocean Ave. It revolves around Ronald Jr. as he experiences strange events in the house up until he kills his entire family on November 13, 1974. It goes on to explain that he was possessed and that he did not want to kill his family. It introduces controversial events. It is also based on Defeo's explanation of why he says he killed his family.
20229169	/m/04y68l8	The Gown of Glory	Agnes Sligh Turnbull	1952	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins in 1881 when the Reverend David Lyall brings his new wife from the city to his rural manse expecting to stay only a year. Twenty-five years and three grown children later, David is still the spiritual leader of the Calvinist congregation. The plot explores the small joys and quiet griefs of a minister's life as well as what happens when a wealthy young man falls in love with the minister's daughter.
20230427	/m/04y8lr4	Outliers: The Story of Success	Malcolm Gladwell	2008-11	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 ==Style== Outliers has been described as a form of autobiography, as Gladwell mixes in elements from his own life into the book to give it a more personal touch. Lev Grossman, writing in Time magazine, called Outliers a "more personal book than its predecessors", noting, "If you hold it up to the light, at the right angle, you can read it as a coded autobiography: a successful man trying to figure out his own context, how success happened to him and what it means." He also surmised that Gladwell feels guilty about his success and believes that Christopher Langan should have experienced the same success that he had.
20233999	/m/04zwd4p	Around The World With Auntie Mame				 Narrator "Patrick" is seventeen, and has left his private prep school. His Auntie Mame takes him with her on an extended tour of Europe, which becomes a round-the-world tour before his enrollment in college. They have adventures in Paris, London, Biarritz, Venice, Austria, Russia, Lebanon, and the high seas, meeting and dealing with British nobles, con men, embarrassing relatives, Nazis, and gunrunners before they arrive home again. Much of the action is a slyly satirical commentary on such things as the practice of "presenting at Court," fashionable political activism, the naivete of some Americans abroad, and the ways in which small communities of expatriates often end up behaving. The main story is encased in a "frame" narrative, in which Patrick, now grown and married, tries to placate his wife with highly edited tales from his travels with his aunt. This takes up where the original novel, Auntie Mame, left off, with Patrick's son Michael going off to India with Mame promising to have him home by Labor Day. Two years have passed, with no word beyond a few random post cards. Each chapter begins with Patrick's reassuring, off-hand comments about his journeys with Mame, and then continues with him narrating what really happened.
20241629	/m/04zvmqp	Final Curtain	Ngaio Marsh	1947	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Agatha Troy Alleyn is waiting for the return of her husband Roderick Alleyn after a long separation during World War II. (The preceding two books in the series, Colour Scheme and Died in the Wool, concern Alleyn's work during the war.) While waiting, she accepts a commission to paint the celebrated actor Sir Henry Ancred at his home Ancreton Manor. While there, she witnesses the bitter family dynamics between Sir Henry, his children and grandchildren, which are complicated by the presence of his young mistress, Sonia Orrincourt. Soon after the portrait is finished, Sir Henry, who has been in poor health, dies seemingly of natural causes. Troy returns home and is reunited with her husband. Alleyn is soon assigned to investigate the death, and the case is quickly complicated by another murder.
20242250	/m/04zxmv0	The Nursing Home Murder	Ngaio Marsh	1935	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The British Home Secretary, Sir Derek O'Callaghan MP, has received several death threats from anarchists affiliated with Stalinist Communism - and a pleading letter threatening suicide from Jane Harden, a nurse he had a short affair with some months earlier. Shortly after receiving the letter his old friend and family physician, Sir John Phillips, visits him to ask him about O'Callaghan's relationship with Jane, who is also Phillips's scrub nurse and who he has loved from afar for years. After O'Callaghan brutally informs Phillips that Jane is "easy" and not worth his regard, he and Phillips almost come to blows before Phillips threatens his life in front of a servant. One week later, O'Callaghan is introducing a bill in the House of Commons to deal with anarchism when he doubles over, incapacitated by acute appendicitis. His wife, unaware of the fight or of Phillips's threats, has her husband moved to Phillips's private hospital ("nursing home" in contemporary usage) and begs Phillips to operate immediately. He does so against his own wishes, as assisted by Dr. Roberts, the anaesthetist; Dr. Thoms, the assistant surgeon; Sister Marigold, the matron; Nurse Banks, the circulating nurse; and Jane Harden, the scrub nurse. The operation goes well, but O'Callaghan weakens near the end of the operation and dies one hour later, apparently of peritonitis. The next day, Lady O'Callaghan is going through her late husband's papers and finds both the death threats from anarchists and Jane Harden's letter. Convinced that her husband has been murdered, she calls in Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard. It turns out that O'Callaghan has died of an overdose of hyoscine, a drug used in anaesthesia. Suspicion rests not just on Phillips and Harden but also on Nurse Banks, an outspoken Communist whose constant vicious insults toward O'Callaghan during the operation have led to her dismissal. Alleyn's digging reveals that it would have been possible for any member of the surgical team to have committed the crime. He learns that Harden loved O'Callaghan to the point that even after his death she was unable to return Phillips's feelings; that Banks is a member of an anarchist society almost completely controlled by the authorities (and which has more bark than bite, as Alleyn finds out when he attends a meeting in disguise with his amanuensis, Nigel Bathgate); that O'Callaghan's sister, an unbalanced, shrill, unintelligent hysteric, has been bullying her brother into taking quack medicine produced by an avowed Communist; and that Dr. Roberts the anaesthetist is a firm believer in eugenics to the point that he is unable to prevent himself from expounding on the topic for hours. Frustrated, Alleyn finally arranges for a re-enactment of the operation. During the re-enactment Sister Marigold brushes by Roberts's anaesthetic cart during a weak moment and Roberts erupts in rage, screaming that the nurse could have blown up the entire building had his cart (which carries ether) fallen over. Alleyn has Roberts removed from the room and quickly checks the cart and finds that one of the "bolts" holding the cart together is actually the top of a syringe. Hours later, he and Fox visit Roberts at his home and charge him with murder. Roberts admits to having injected O'Callaghan with hyoscine, but claims that he was justified: O'Callaghan's family had a "hereditary taint" (as shown by his sister), and it was his duty to remove such "tainted" persons from society. At the end, Alleyn points out that Roberts himself is insane and has committed dozens of similar murders, as testified to by the notches on his stethoscope. In the epilogue Alleyn expresses doubt that Phillips and Harden will ever get together, and remarks that such things only happen in the "movie-mind".
20244642	/m/02rq1rl	Adventures in Blackmoor				 Adventures in Blackmoor is a scenario set in the land of Blackmoor, 3000 years before other D&D scenarios by TSR. The player characters are transported from their "modern" time to the time of Blackmoor and must rescue King Uther from The Prison Out of Time. The adventure takes place in three parts inside an inn. The first part of the adventure takes place in a dungeon setting. Clues found in the inn lead to the second part of the adventure. The inn shifts between dimensions for the second part of the adventure, which concerns itself with certain changes taking place inside the inn as it shifts. In the third and final part of the adventure, the inn shifts to another dungeon. The final 20 pages of the adventure give a description of Blackmoor, and detail 38 prominent NPCs from the setting. The module includes campaign setting material on Blackmoor and the Thonian Empire.
20245161	/m/04zx_11	The Phoenix Unchained	Mercedes Lackey	2007-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Harrier Gillain is the youngest of four brothers and born in a family that has held the Harbor Master position in Armathelieh for centuries. As the youngest, he must follow in his father's footsteps to become the next Harbor Master. He is good friends with Tiercel Rolfort, the eldest of 6 children and born and into minor Nobility. The begins during Festival Sennight in the city and Harrier's naming day falls on the first day. He receives a book called A Compendium of Ancient Myth and Legend, Compiled from the Histories of the City from his frequently travelling uncle, Alfrin. Having no desire to read the book, he hands it to Tiercel to read who is fond of reading and is actually interested in the book. A couple of days later Tiercel begins reading the book and his interests are piqued when he comes across topics he has not heard of before, among them are: High Mages, High Magick, and the Third War against the Light. The only magic he, or anyone he knows has ever heard of was Wild Magic, his curiosity got the better of him. Tiercel goes off to the Great Library to look for a book titled A History of the City in Six Volumes. Working in the city harbor, Harrier stumbles upon a ship that is wrecked, the captain of the vessel claims that it is a kraken that attacked the ship, but krakens were presumably destroyed along with all the Endarkend at the conclusion of the Third War against the Light. Harrier showed Tiercel the ship and its damage and explained to him the story the captain is giving on the damage's origin. Tiercel felt sympathetic to the captain's losses and was determined to see if High Magick can discover the truth of the matter. Having discovered a spell from one of the books in the Great Library called a Knowing Spell, Tiercel decides to attempt to cast it on a piece of the ship so he can know the truth of the captain's tale. Tiercel attempts to cast the spell at home not following the instructions verbatim but nothing happens, he gets tired and falls asleep. During his sleep he starts to dream about a beautiful lady within a lake of fire. She is waiting for something and he knows that if she gets her hands on whatever it is, its going to be trouble. Although the dream's imagery is not scary, the feeling that he gets frightens him greatly—more so because he feels that it is so real. Tiercel then wakes up amidst a fire in his room, the fire is snuffed out by his servants and he reports to his parents that he was trying to read during the night. He realizes that he must have messed up on the spell, having to improvise on a few things. He remembers from his readings that the simplest High Magick spell that can be cast is fire. Unknowingly, Tiercel has become the first High Mage in more than a thousand years.
20248326	/m/04zy6lf	Field Notes from a Catastrophe	Elizabeth Kolbert	2006	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Kolbert visits Shishmaref and Fairbanks, Alaska, to speak with both the townspeople and scientists about the effect global warming is having in Alaska. In Shishmaref, towns are being forced off of the coastal regions because ice that had once protected these towns from storms and large waves, have melted. In Fairbanks Kolbert met with scientist Vladimir Romanovsky to study how global warming is affecting the permafrost levels in Alaska. Romanovsky’s research shows that as permafrost melts it releases carbon dioxide, which has been trapped in the permafrost for thousands of years and is harmful to the environment. Kolbert also discusses the spectrometer used by Donald Perovich on the expedition, Des Groseilliers. The spectrometer was used to measure the light reflected off of the ice and snow. The discovery that the snow reflected more than the ocean is important because the ocean is being heated by global warming and melting the ice which is making the water levels rise. This section explains the history of researchers exploring human influence on climate change. At the beginning, it states that global warming is not a fad because it has been researched since the mid-19th century. John Tyndall was the first to research global warming; he did this by creating the first Spectrophotometer. This is an instrument used to measure the absorptive properties of gases. Through his research of gases, he discovered what is today called “The Greenhouse Effect.” The Greenhouse effect is the absorption and retention of heat from radiation. After the death of John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius took over his position as the main researcher of global warming. He was the first to connect industrialization to climate change and even today NASA scientists credit him with insightful predictions: “His understanding of the role of carbon dioxide in heating Earth, even at that early date, led him to predict that if atmospheric carbon dioxide doubled, Earth would become several degrees warmer.” After the death of Arrhenius, most scientists believed that if levels were rising at all, they were rising very slowly. In the mid-1950s, Charles David Keeling found a more precise way to record levels and began recording the data. He brought us the Keeling Curve which shows the steady rise of levels since 1958. Kolbert travels to a research station in Greenland called Swiss Camp that was set up in 1990 and built into the ice floes. Kolbert meets Konrad Steffan, the director of Swiss Camp, who studies the meteorological conditions on the ice sheets at the equilibrium line (the point at which winter snow and summer snow melt are supposed to be exactly in balance). Steffan’s research shows that the glaciers have been melting faster (at a rate of 12 cubic miles per year), creating much more flooding in the area during the warmer months. These glaciers contain vast amounts of fresh water, which, when melted into the salt water of the oceans, begins to change ocean current patterns, thus resulting in some places around the world becoming colder and some becoming warmer. From obtaining ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet, it has been found that the average temperatures have risen twenty degrees within the past ten years thus resulting in the beginning of the disintegration of the entire Greenland ice sheet, which will be impossible to stop. It has also been found that rapid warming has occurred in the past, which then proceeded to fall into ice age conditions. In November 2004, there was a study presented in Reykjavik, Iceland, that explained how the Arctic climate is warming and the U.S. responded by stating they would effectively take action to combat the problem but would not make it an obligation. The scientists studying the situation have seen how humans have become the dominating factor in influencing climate change; in the professional world, global warming is not necessarily thought to be a natural process. This chapter describes Kolbert's interviews with scientists from around the world who have conducted experiments to prove that climate change inevitably affects many organisms' genetic structures and habitats. Kolbert attempts to reveal that global warming is the cause for these events. She interviews three biologists, Chris Thomas, William Bradshaw and Christina Holzapfel, and one paleoecologist, Thomas Web III. Kolbert follows scientific observations based upon the studies of the Comma Butterfly, the mosquito Wyeomyia smithii, the Golden Toad and pollen grains, among many other studies. Kolbert is concerned with the frightening reality that if species are being genetically changed and on the verge of extinction that the availability of our natural resources for future will be in jeopardy. Kolbert visits GISS, a former branch of NASA, which analyzes and produces various geographic models to demonstrate the behavior of the atmosphere, land surfaces, and ice sheets. According to GISS, more and more droughts are being triggered, which we aren’t able to adapt to with our way of living. This problem also arose in ancient civilizations, such as with the Mayans and in the city of Shekhna, when they reached their technological peak. The ancient city of Shekhna in present-day Syria has shown evidence that the culture died from drought. Kolbert cites scientific evidence based on geological models that chart the geographic downfall of other ancient civilizations that have experienced climate change. During ancient times, however, the technology had yet to be developed and they did not have the proper scientific abilities to adapt to extreme changes like massive drought. Kolbert argues that we may be technologically advanced, but as we continue to progress, we are becoming more and more destructive to the environment as well. In chapter six, Kolbert visits the Netherlands where the Dutch have made many provisions to prevent the increasing problem of widespread flooding. Water-ministry official Eelke Turkstra predicts that the Nieuwe Merwede canal will rise several feet above the local dikes around 2100 due to the flooding. The two main problems are caused by warming water that leads to expansion and raises the sea level, another is due to precipitation changes produced by a warming Earth. Turkstra believes that instead of building more dikes, the existing dikes should be dismantled to make room for the rising water. He wants to buy polders (land that has been laboriously reclaimed from the water) from farmers and lower surrounding dikes around them to create more area for the rising water. Then, Kolbert talks to Dura Vermeer who creates amphibious homes which will float on the water if a flood were to occur. Kolbert interviews Robert Socolow, the co-director for the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, about BAU or “business as usual”, which is a future in which current emissions trends continue without being checked. Socolow came up with a plan to help keep carbon emissions down but in order for his plans to work they must start taking effect as soon as possible. Socolow’s plan consisted of a fifteen point system where each point, known as a “stabilization wedge”, would reduce carbon emission by one billion metric tons a year. The wedges consisted of finding alternative fuel sources such as wind, solar and nuclear power, along with developing new technology and upgrading current technology to reduce carbon emission. Socolow argues that the government needs to get involved in order help motivate people to lower carbon emissions. Kolbert also interviews Marty Hoffert, Professor of physics at New York University. Hoffert believes that in order to fight global warming, people have to come up with new ways to generate power without producing carbon. This can be achieved, as he proposes, through satellite solar power (SSP). SSP means collecting solar energy using orbiting satellites which beam the power to ground using microwaves for collection by a rectenna. Energy can be transferred to Earth 24 hours a day without interference from clouds or nightfall. Hoffert also argues that we must change our view on global warming and divert from the BAU or else our civilization will not last. The Kyoto Protocol, active as of February 16, 2005, is a worldwide effort between nations to control greenhouse gas emissions. It began in 1992 and was supported by the U.S. president George H.W. Bush, who attended the U.N. Framework Convention where the U.S. agreed, along with other Annex 1 countries (China, Canada, Japan and nations of Europe included), to “return their emissions to 1990 levels,” or below. Clinton, succeeding president to Bush, also supported the protocol, but emission levels kept rising and not much was accomplished during his term. The Bush administration pulled the U.S. out of Kyoto in 2001 (it was one of only two nations to do so), where George W. Bush, who once promised solutions for controlling CO2 emissions during his campaign, now took a different stand that no longer supported Kyoto because, as he said to the public, the “state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change”, are “incomplete”. Greenhouse gases are increasing rapidly (20% since 1990) and the US accounts for 34% of Annex 1 emissions. Since 2000, the Bush administration began using a “greenhouse gas intensity system”, which measures the ratio of emissions to economic output as a way of measuring emissions as a whole. Kolbert argues that the system is misleading and favors industrial development because while greenhouse gas levels are actually rising, according to this system they are supposedly falling. According to Kolbert, the improper feed of information to the public is also supplement by books and web groups funded by huge corporations such as Exxon Mobil and General Motors, who are giving out information contradicting proven and alarming scientific evidence about global warming. Articles produced are falsely stating, among many things, that weather can’t be predicted ahead of time, global warming isn’t real and hasn’t been proven, or that a warming climate is something to celebrate. Kolbert writes about Burlington, Vermont’s largest city. Years ago, the citizens decided to stand up to global warming by using less power instead of buying more. The mayor of Burlington, Peter Clavelle, who has been mayor since 1989, came up with a program that encourages contractors to engage not in demolition but in “deconstruction”. This helps the city save energy by reducing waste and cutting down the need for new materials. Burlington’s electric department (BED) has a wind turbine that provided enough power for thirty homes and gets half of its energy from renewable sources, such as its 50 megawatt power plant that runs off of wood chips. The BED also leases compact fluorescent light bulbs for twenty cents a month because a family who uses these bulbs can cut their electricity bill by 10 percent. The city of Burlington estimates that their energy saving projects over the course of this lifetime will prevent the release of 175,000 tons of carbon. Burlington residents also eat locally and have turned old waste sites into an assortment of community gardens and cooperatives, the waste from these gardens is taken to a composting factory, and turned back into soil, making this process a “closed loop”. Clavelle’s plan has begun to pick up across America beginning with Greg Nickles, the mayor of Seattle, who created a set of principles called the “US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement”. This agreement has been signed by over a hundred and seventy mayors, representing about thirty – six million people. This agreement is trying to prove how much can be done at the local level and Clavelle hopes that more cities will adopt this plan. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California later issued an executive order to drastically reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions. Kolbert wraps up the book's main ideas by introducing a few new ideas and themes about climate change that had not been previously mentioned. The chapter starts out saying that modern humans are one of the primary influences on our environment and that we are entering an era aptly named the “Anthropocene” — the age of Homo sapiens. Kolbert also discusses the impacts and discovery of chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs. Most of what she discusses about CFCs in this chapter is based around the discovery of their negative impact on our ozone layer and the fact that this discovery only came about by accident. Kolbert also writes that we as a species can either come together to survive, or protect our self-interests as Earth’s climate continues to spiral out of our control. As Kolbert points out at the end of the chapter, if nothing changes in the way society looks at climate change, the world will tear itself apart. There is proof of this today, as entire countries evacuate due to severe weather changes, or others fight to control major resources such as food, water, and shelter. As people living in developed countries, we often take these basic needs for granted and do not realize how precious they really are.
20255900	/m/04zy2v2	The Sword of the Lady	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Rudi Mackenzie and Edain Aylward Mackenzie head out through post-Change Illinois on a mission given to them by the Bossman of Iowa to recover Ingolf Vogeler's wagons that he abandoned there. They break up an ambush by Knifers and save three Southside Freedom Fighters (Southsiders), descendants of survivors from Chicago, including their leader Jake. Rudi adopts the tribe and they help him bring Ingolf's wagons back to Iowa. Along the way, Rudi and Edain teach them how to make bows and arrows, then train them as military archers. Southsiders listen to them sing and add the songs to their culture. Soon the Southsiders consider themselves part of Clan Mackenzie. Meanwhile, Mary and Ritva Havel are trying to find a way to break Ingolf out of the Bossman's prison. Then Captain Denson of the Iowa State Police has a conversation with Ingolf and offers to release him from prison if he lures the CUT troops from Des Moines. When Ingolf agrees, Denson takes him out while his men kill the other prisoners who witnessed the conversation. When Rudi reaches the Mississippi, Denson meets them on the east side of the river. He brings Ingolf with him. They cross the river and meet the Bossman and the rest of Rudi's party in Dubuque. Meanwhile, the Corvallis Meeting is fighting CUT and Boise invaders. The Prophet's troops are converging on the Meeting lands from several directions. While the Meeting nations can slow the invasion down, they have been unable to drive the invaders back. News that the Portland Protective Association are losing castles due to the strange abilities of the CUT High Seekers causes morale to drop. Back in Iowa, the Major Graber and his CUT forces attempt to kill Rudi and his allies. Though Rudi survives the CUT manage to assassinate the Bossman of Iowa. Thanks to Mathilda Arminger's efforts, however, she manages to encourage the Bossman's wife to take power as Regent, creating a new ally for Rudi and his group. Rudi and his group leave Iowa heading north along the Mississippi River. While en route, Rudi's companions swear loyalty to him as the High King of "Montival", the new name the group has chosen for the Pacific Northwest. Rudi reluctantly accepts. Rudi and his group arrive in the nation of Richland, Ingolf's home. While there Ingolf makes amends with his estranged brother, a local sheriff, who agrees to help Ingolf and his friends reach Nantucket. Heading north around the Great Lakes using skis to move over the snow, the party is attacked once again by CUT forces who are allied with French-speaking savages. Though they succeed in driving off the CUT forces, Jake is killed in the battle. Arriving in Maine, Rudi and his followers are taken in by survivors who have adopted a Viking-like culture. They agree to help Rudi reach Nantucket, but upon arriving at a coastal town, they discover it under siege by Major Graber and Muslim Corsairs. Rudi and his forces succeed in lifting the siege and capture one of the pirate leaders, but Odard Liu is killed during the battle. Rudi convinces the pirate captain to take him and his followers to Nantucket. They are chased there by Major Graber who has commandeered another pirate vessel. As both ships arrive at Nantucket, reality begins to change as alternate versions of Nantucket begin to appear at random. Rudi and his followers fight their way onto Nantucket. There Rudi is transported into the presence of Maiden, Mother, and Crone who have taken the form of Rudi's mother (Juniper Mackenzie) and Marion Alston and Swindapa from the Nantucket series. They explain the reason behind the Change, alluding at the humanity's importance (the Fermi paradox) and that certain forces saw the need for humanity to mature more before it self-destructed due to abuse of technology. They also explain the powers that are aiding CUT as a result of a disagreement between those forces on how best to guide the changed humanity. Rudi is last seen removing the Sword of the Lady from its sheath. Back in Montival, Juniper calls on the help of the gods against the CUT in a ceremony (Cone of power). During the ceremony light emanates from Juniper's hands and she proclaims the coming of the High King.
20258594	/m/04zwxmp	Death of an Outsider	Marion Chesney	1988-11	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 While Hamish Macbeth is on duty temporarily in Cnothan, William Mainwaring, the most disliked man in town, is murdered. No one wants to solve the crime, including Macbeth's superiors who want to keep the strange manner of Mainwaring's death hushed up.
20260694	/m/04_13y6	Mr. Monk is Miserable	Lee Goldberg	2008-12-02	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Natalie wants a break so she blackmails Monk in going to Paris, France. While in Paris, Monk surprises Natalie by telling her he wants to check out the sewers because the underground maze of tunnels and pipes is famous for keeping Paris sanitary. While traveling the mazes of the sewers, the two stumble upon the catacombs, which are filled with aging skulls and bones. When Monk spots a skull that is not so old that shows evidence of murder, the pair's vacation plans are once again put aside so Monk can conduct a murder investigation.
20261732	/m/04zwthp	By Night In Chile	Roberto Bolaño	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is narrated entirely in the first person by the sick and aging Father Urrutia. Taking place over the course of a single evening, and written mostly in a single paragraph, the book is the macabre, feverish monologue of a flawed man and a failed priest. Persistently hallucinatory and defensive, the story ranges from Opus Dei to falconry to private lessons on Marxism for Pinochet and his generals directed at the unspecified reproaches of "the wizened youth." The story begins with the lines "I am dying now, but I still have many things to say", and proceeds to describe, after a brief mention of joining the priesthood, how Father Urrutia entered the Chilean literary world under the wing of a famous, albeit fictitious, tacitly homosexual literary critic by the name of Farewell. At Farewell's estate he encounters the critic's close friend Pablo Neruda and later begins to publish literary criticism and poetry. Not surprisingly, Urrutia's criticism is met with more applaud than his poetry (written under a pen-name) and there is little if any mention of Urrutia attending to matters of the church until two individuals from a shipping company (likely undercover government operatives) send him on a trip through Europe, where he meets priest after priest engaged in falconry, where we see his one act of rebellion, when he releases a caged falcon after the priest that owned him died. The story is also deeply political though not always overtly, and Father Urrutia seems to stand as a kind of pitiable villain for the author himself. Urrutia is chosen to teach Augusto Pinochet and his top generals about Marxism after the coup and death of President Allende. Bolaño was well known for his brazenly radical left-wing politics and was briefly jailed by Pinochet for dissent on returning to Chile in 1973, "To help build the revolution." Indeed, the wizened youth who Urrutia is forever lashing against and defending himself from, seems to be yet another trace of Roberto Bolaño inscribing himself into his stories, while also serving as a younger Urrutia who has not compromised himself as the current narrator himself has, suggesting that Urrutia has understood since his first words to the reader that he is compromised. By the end of the story, Urrutia seems to be making a last apology directed to himself, understanding that the reason by which he has led his life is flawed. Unlike other fantastical deathbed rants such as William Gaddis's Agapē Agape the writing style is remarkably accessible despite itself and the story of his life intact as it is woven into Chile's political history despite progressively more delirious and compromised powers of recollection. Francisco Goldman describes it as "Sublime lunacy, Goya darkness, poignant wizardly writing--the elegantly streaming consciousness of Bolaño's dying literary priest merges one Chilean's personal memories with Chilean literature and history, and ends up confronting us with devastating questions that anyone, anywhere, might, should, be asking of themselves 'right now.'" The novella, a satire, marks the beginning of its author's criticism of artists who retreat into art, using aestheticism as a way of blocking out the harsh realities of existence. According to Ben Richards, writing in The Guardian, "Bolaño uses this to illustrate the supine nature of the Chilean literary establishment under the dictatorship."
20261924	/m/04zytt6	Kairo-kō	Soseki Natsume	1905	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kairo-kō consists of a short introduction and five sections. The first section, "The Dream" recounts a conversation between Guinevere and Lancelot in which she describes her dream of a snake that coils around the pair and binds them together; it ends with Lancelot heading to a tournament. The second section, "The Mirror", relates a scene based on Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott": the Lady can view the world only through a mirror's reflection or else she will die, but when she sees Lancelot she turns to look upon him. Her action kills her, but not before she places a death curse on Lancelot. The section "The Sleeve" relates the famous episode in which Elaine of Astolat convinces Lancelot to wear her sleeve on his shield as a token in a joust. Guinevere finds out about Lancelot's relationship with Elaine in the next section, "The Transgression"; Mordred condemns her for her infidelity against King Arthur with Lancelot. The final section, "The Boat", concerns the death of Elaine; grieving over the loss of Lancelot, she dies and is placed in a boat along with a letter proclaiming her love, and is sent downriver to Camelot.
20262138	/m/04z_rwh	The Gladiators from Capua	Caroline Lawrence	2004	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel follows on from events in The Enemies of Jupiter, at the end of which Jonathan goes missing and is believed to have died in the fire in Rome. Unknown to the other characters, he accidentally started the fire and out of guilt signed up as a child gladiator for the games at the new amphitheatre. He is also tortured by the supposed death of his mother. The short story "Jonathan vs Ira" in Trimalchio's Feast and other mini-mysteries gives an account of his troubled state of mind during training. The Gladiators from Capua opens with a brief scene set some years earlier – a slave in training as a gladiator refuses to kill his beaten opponent, turning his back on a promising career. The themes of combat, bloodshed and mercy are thus established from the start. The story proper starts the month after the fire. Flavia and Nubia are holding a memorial for Jonathan when Lupus arrives full of a rumour he has heard: a boy with dark curly hair who is believed to have started the fire is hiding on Potsherd Mountain in Rome. Jonathan could be alive! Flavia finagles an invitation from her uncle the senator to visit Rome for the Inaugural Games at the new Flavian Amphitheatre. Flavia, Nubia and Lupus travel to Rome with Jonathan's dog Tigris and the doorkeeper Caudex as their bodyguard. They discover that the curly-haired boy has been taken from Potsherd Mountain to the amphitheatre and is to be "thrown to the beasts". At the amphitheatre, they split up to look for Jonathan. Nubia meets an old friend, Mnason the animal trainer. Tigris spots Jonathan among the gladiators, but the others fail to interpret his barking correctly. The next three days are the start of the hundred days of games decreed by Titus to celebrate the new amphitheatre – and to take people's minds off the disastrous events of his reign thus far. For each day a programme of events is given: beginning with acrobats or dancers, then exotic beasts and the fancifully-staged execution of criminals, and in the afternoon the popular gladiatorial contests. The first day, the children are stuck on the top tier with the senator's family watching the displays at a distance, alternately fascinated and horrified at the drama, the ferocity and the bloodshed. On the second day, with the relations safely out of town, they resume their search for Jonathan. Flavia poses as an orphan to get taken on as a "nymph" – only to discover that she is part of a water pageant intended to end in the killing of all the nymphs by hippos and crocodiles. Only Nubia's quick thinking and the intervention of the emperor's brother Domitian saves her. The two girls are invited to join him in the Imperial Box to watch the rest of the show. They recognize Jonathan among the child gladiators, but unfortunately when Titus finds out, he orders Jonathan's arrest, believing him guilty of causing the fire. On the third day, Jonathan's execution is averted by Mnason, Nubia and Caudex who arrange a spectacular escape which wins the crowd's approval. Titus is glad to spare the boy, especially when he learns the truth about the fire, but he insists the children return home to Ostia, out of harm's way.
20268197	/m/02q4b3c	Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth				 Author Ben Peek recounts his past relationships, musings, and life events through various alphabetical blog posts, categorised like an encyclopaedia. Whilst many of the posts interconnect to form one event stretched out over time, many are stand alone passages about seemingly random topics. However, a large contingent of the posts are about other authors who have committed plagiarism, fraud, or somehow faked their writing. Since the novel does not have a traditional linear storyline, many of the plots are fragmented and need to be pieced together, or require rereading past entires. Other sub plots of the novel include his former relationship with "R" and the abortion R gets, his past (from the school-age death of his father to recent jobs), the death of "G" in a car accident, and other friends and acquaintances he meets in his life.
20273321	/m/04zy7hb	The Blank Page	Carl Kosak	1974	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mario Balzic is the protagonist, an atypical detective for the genre, a Serbo-Italian American cop, middle-aged, unpretentious, a family man who asks questions and uses more sense than force. As the novel opens, it is a record-hot Memorial Day when Miss Cynthia Summer calls Police Chief Mario Balzic to say that she hadn't seen one of her student roomers. Balzic discovers Janet Pisula's body on the floor of her room, a blank sheet of typing paper on her stomach..... It is the third book in the 17-volume Rocksburg series.
20277439	/m/04_057y	Nazi Literature in the Americas	Roberto Bolaño	1996	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as an encyclopedia of right-wing writers. The book is composed of short biographies of imaginary Pan-American authors. The literary Nazis—fascists and ultra-right sympathizers and zealots, most from South America, a few from North America, portrayed in that book are a gallery of self-deluded mediocrities, snobs, opportunists, narcissists, and criminals. About Nazi Literature in the Americas, Bolaño told an interviewer: :(Its) focus is on the world of the ultra right, but much of the time, in reality, I'm talking about the left.... When I'm talking about Nazi writers in the Americas, in reality I'm talking about the world, sometimes heroic but much more often despicable, of literature in general. Although the writers are invented, they are all carefully situated in real literary worlds: Bolaño's characters rebuff Allen Ginsberg’s advances in Greenwich Village, encounter Octavio Paz in Mexico City, and quarrel with José Lezama Lima in Cuba. Forerunners to this type of fictional writer biographies can be seen in the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, particularly "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" and "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain".
20279608	/m/04zykll	Distant Star	Roberto Bolaño	1996	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is narrated from a distance by Arturo B. (probably Belano, Bolaño's frequent stand-in) and tells the story of Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an aviator who exploits the 1973 Chilean coup d'état to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry: a multi-media enterprise involving sky-writing, torture, photography, murder, and verse. The narrator first encounters him in a college poetry workshop, where Ruiz-Tagle only has eyes for the beautiful Garmendia twins, Veronica and Angelica. As the novel progresses it becomes clear that Ruiz-Tagle is far more and far less than a mere poet through progressively darker and ironic twists and turns. The next sighting comes as the narrator stands in prison camp for political undesirables, gazing up at a WWII Messerchmitt skywriting over the Andes. The aviator is none other than Ruiz-Tagle, now serving in the Chilean force under his actual name, Carlos Wieder, and writing nationalist slogans in the sky. The narrator becomes obsessed with Ruiz-Tagle, suspecting that he is behind every evil act in Pinochet’s regime. After his release the narrator struggles to survive and make sense of his situation, but his destiny is eventually reconnected with that of Ruiz-Tagle/Wieder when a Chilean private detective seeks his help in tracking Wieder down by trying to identify the airforce pilot's hand behind various articles printed in neo-fascist publications.
20279894	/m/04zxxs_	Last Evenings on Earth	Roberto Bolaño	1997	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 Set amid the diaspora of Chilean exiles in Latin America and Europe, the fourteen stories in Last Evenings on Earth are peopled by Bolaño's beloved "failed generation" and demonstrate the complexities of and Latin American identity and history. The narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and often unlucky) quests, speaking in the first person as if giving a deposition—like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living at the margins. Other stories find themselves narrated in the third person by the author "B.", which is one of many cases of Bolaño writing himself into his own fiction.
20280310	/m/05259hw	Multiculturalism without Culture		2007-05-21	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the book, Phillips elaborates on the idea of a multiculturalism without culture. In this model, the conception of culture as unchanging and domineering (A view that Phillips argues is held by many governments and people alike) is disposed in favor of the idea that culture is fluid and that the individual in the culture, not the culture group itself, has rights and is the most important element. A central part of her theory rests on the idea that people in minority cultures have autonomy. Her discussion weighs many different perspectives on multiculturalism provided by an array of modern writers on the subject. She consistently keeps feminist theory as a primary foundation from which she structures her arguments. The book ends with her vouching for the increasing of consultative services for minority groups and increase of dialogue between them and governments.
20283807	/m/04zzjkg	The Kingdom of Shadow	Richard A. Knaak	2002-07-30	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After three years, Quov Tsin has calculated and collected the research left behind by Gregus Mazi to open the pathway to the lost city of Ureh. Tsin hires Kentril Dumon and his group of mercenaries to protect him on his journey in exchange for the lost riches left behind. Zayl attempts to scare away the mercenaries, but fails and becomes a captive to Kentril’s group as Ureh is reborn. While looking for treasure, the group is attacked by the ghosts of Ureh and led to the palace of Juris Khan. The mercenaries learn from Ureh’s leader of the city’s trapped existence and the betrayal of Gregus Mazi. Juris Khan requests the aid of Kentril and his group to help restore the city and complete their original goal. After the first task of Ureh’s restoration is accomplished, the nightmare of Ureh begins as one by one the mercenaries learn of Ureh’s dark secrets.
20286009	/m/04z_q9m	The Brides of March		2007-04-19	{"/m/01ng1k": "Creative nonfiction"}	 The Brides of March is a bride’s eye view of same-sex marriage at a moment’s notice, with a bevy of brides, their coterie of children, donuts, newspaper reporters, screaming protesters, mothers of the brides who never thought they’d see the day, white wedding cake, and a houseful of happy heterosexuals toasting the marriage! But that was only the beginning as these private declarations of love became public fodder, fueling social commentary, letters to the editor, and the fires of political debate, when all The Brides of March wanted was the opportunity to say, “I do,” in this candid, poignant and frequently funny tale of lesbian moms getting to the church on time in Multnomah County.
20286688	/m/04z_fp9	The Sign of the Chrysanthemum	Katherine Paterson	1973	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Muna has never seen his father, and only knows that he is a samurai with a chrysanthemum tattoo on his shoulder. He meets a likable ronin named Takanobu on a ship which Muna was hiding on. Later on, after Muna and Takanobu have gotten off the ship, they are in the city and go exploring. Muna loses track of where Takanobu goes, and eventually gets lost. At night, Muna still isn't able to find Takanobu and is wandering around when a girl finds him and invites Muna in for supper. Later on Muna learns that the girl's name is Akiko and is the daughter of a sandal-maker. After supper, Muna stays the night. Finally, Muna finds Takanobu asleep next to a fence. As Takanobu takes care of Muna, he finds him a job cleaning stables. But one New Years a fire occurs at the Red Dog where Takanobu met Muna and sent him to do an errand. On the errand, he is told by someone that a man named "Plum Face" is dead, who was a person Muna knew. He is also told that Takanobu is "dead." Muna faints from the noxious fumes of the fire and is badly burnt, unable to wake up. Later on, Muna is found by a man named Fukuji, who is the master swordsmith of the capital. Muna stays with Fukuji, doing house chores and other "women's work". One day when Muna was outside, he saw a man dressed as a monk who seemed to be following exactly what he did. When Muna pulls a trick on the man, he finds out that he is Takanobu. Takanobu is happy to see Muna again, and asks him to do one favor. Takanobu wants Muna to steal a sword from Fukuji and give it to him. He convinces Muna to give him the sword by saying that he is Muna's father. But when Muna brings the sword to Takanobu, he says he wouldn't give it to Takanobu unless he said he was Muna's father. When Takanobu didn't answer, Muna attacked. Muna runs away to the woods, and eventually buries the sword in front of a neglected shrine. At the same time, Fukuji, who woke up, wonders where Muna has gone. Suddenly, a visitor comes to Fukuji and tells him that he is Muna's father. Fukuji realizes that the visitor is Takanobu. When Takanobu who never died claims that he is Muna's father, Muna must choose between fulfilling his "father's" wishes or proving his loyalty to Fukuji.
20287251	/m/04zxxhc	Amityville: The Final Chapter		1985-01-01	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 It started in Amityville. It followed them 3000 miles. Now for the Lutz family, the forces of 112 Ocean Ave. have followed them around the world. Now it doesn't matter where they go, it will be there and the Lutzes must find a way to escape.
20292469	/m/04zyyx1	Black Man with a Horn				 In the story, an author—whose literary career has been in the shadow of H. P. Lovecraft and modeled after Lovecraft Circle member Frank Belknap Long--becomes involved in a mystery after a chance encounter with a missionary while traveling. The missionary, traveling in disguise, is fleeing something he encountered while in Malaysia, and refers to the Chaucha. Later, while visiting a museum, the author comes across a reference to the Chaucha. The narrator realizes that the Chaucha are actually the Tcho-Tcho, which he had previously thought to be fictional construct of Lovecraft. Slowly, the narrator becomes threatened by a being the Tcho-Tcho worship: a black, fishlike humanoid demon—the Shogoran—with an appendage that resembles a horn attached to its face.
20294090	/m/04zvzhd	A Heart So White	Javier Marías	1992	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 With unnerving insistence A Heart So White chronicles the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he considers the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy - its possible convenience, its price, an even its civility - permeates the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows - and reckons the costs of ambivalence. ('My hands are of your colour; but I shame/To wear a heart so white" - Macbeth.)
20294367	/m/04zzvnk	Dark Back of Time	Javier Marías	1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Called by its author a "false novel," Dark Back of Time begins with the tale of the odd effects of publishing All Souls, is witty and sardonic 1989 Oxford novel. All Souls is a book Marías swears to be fiction, but which its "characters"- the real-life dons and professors and bookshop owners who have "recognized themselves'- fiercely maintain to be a roman a clef. With the sleepy world of Oxford set into fretful motion by a world that never "existed," Marías further stirs things up by weaving together autobiography (the brother who died as a child; the loss of his mother), a legendary kingdom, strange ghostly literary figures, maps and photographs, halls of mirrors, a one-eyed pilot, a bullet lost in Mexico, and a curse in Havana.
20294465	/m/04zvt9y	The Marvellous Land of Snergs				 The Marvellous Land of Snergs is set on a fictional island somewhere on Earth, but difficult to reach. On the island is a colony of children (rescued from neglect by the redoubtable Miss Watkyns), the crew of the Flying Dutchman, and the Snergs, a race of short, thick-set, helpful people. Unfortunately Golithos, a not-so-friendly giant, and Mother Meldrum, a wicked witch also live there. When Sylvia and Joe run away for a big adventure their lives are in deadly peril when they fall into the clutches of these two evil characters. Gorbo the Snerg and Baldry the court jester come to the rescue.
20294973	/m/04zyc6n	The Master Puppeteer	Katherine Paterson	1975	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Master Puppeteer is set in Osaka, Japan, during a period of famine in the 18th century. A young boy named Jiro takes a job at a theater run by the puppeteer Yoshida, who proves to be a demanding employer. However, Jiro discovers there is a connection between the theater and a local thief who has been stealing rice from the municipal authorities and merchants and giving it away to the starving poor.
20295667	/m/04zwjzk	Your Face Tomorrow Volume 1: Fever and Spear	Javier Marías	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At a dinner at the home of his friend, retired Oxford professor Sir Peter Wheeler, he is introduced to Mr. Tupra. Months later he is working for Tupra, giving his interpretations and analysis of the behavior and motivations of wide ranges of people. A flashback to the morning after the dinner reveals that Wheeler worked for M16 during WWII as a psychic, and Tupra does similar work. In their conversation Wheeler tells Deza that he (Deza) shows evidence of being one of the greatest and most perceptive psychics of their kind.
20296419	/m/04zyry1	Hello, Harvest Moon	Ralph Fletcher	2003-09-22		 The moon rises and shines through a girl's bedroom window. It then shines on a silent street, corn and wheat fields and autumn trees. A young girl and her cat play a game by its light, a pilot flies a plane using its light. The moon sets in the daylight as the young girl and her cat say goodnight.
20297155	/m/04zxt3s	Blackthorn Winter	Kathryn Reiss	2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Juliana, a fifteen-year old girl, moves with her mother to the artists' colony of Blackthorn, England from the United States while her parents are undergoing a separation. She begins to investigate a murder of one of the artists living at the colony.
20298378	/m/04z_x8m	The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters	Diana Mitford	2007-11	{"/m/01tz3c": "Anthology", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Carefree, revelatory and intimate, this selection of unpublished letters between the legendary Mitford sisters dances with wit, passion and heartbreak. The letters not only chronicle the idiosyncrasies of the twentieth century, but chart the stormy relationship between six uniquely gifted women. There's Nancy, the scalding wit and best selling novelist; Pamela, who craved a quiet country life; Diana, the fascist jailed during the Second World War; Unity, whose obsession with Hitler led to her demise, Jessica, the runaway communist; and Deborah, the socialite who became Duchess of Devonshire.
20298986	/m/04zy2nl	Abomination				 Martha is a 12 year old girl. She leads a life that is anything but normal. Martha and her parents belong to a strict religious group called the Righteous. The Righteous is a religion that believes in the God that was portrayed in the Old Testament, the God who killed, the God who brought disease. Martha hates this religion. Because of its rules Martha is not allowed any trendy clothes, no television and no computer or fancy gadgets...and no friends. Martha wants to have all of these things but she cannot. Martha instead lives with homemade clothes for school and for home. Her school life is worse than her home life. She is chased home every night by Simon Pritchard (the school bully) and his gang. While they chase her they are all chanting "Raggedy-Ann, Raggedy-Ann we'll scrag you if we can". The only electrical item she owns is a radio, which she only has the odd listen to. Because Martha has none of these privileges, she has no friends. However, Martha's luck changes when a new boy Scott arrives and smiles at her, which in Martha's case is a huge hope that they could be friends. Because of a simple gesture of lending her a ruler, a big friendship is born. But to Martha's disappointment she is chased home by him with Simon and the rest of his gang. Later on though, Scott sees Martha looking in her bag for something. He asked her what she is looking for, she tells him she has forgotten her ruler. Scott lends Martha his ruler but when he gets it back one of Simon's gang tells him that he should burn it but he ignores her. As Scott becomes closer to Martha, his best friend Simon starts to notice, so he starts bullying Scott as well as Martha. Scott's and Martha's relationship grows stronger and Martha eventually has the courage to tell Scott about abomination, her nephew. She also reveals about her father beating her and how he kicked out her older sister Mary for having a child before marriage. However, upon her discovery of her family's moving, Martha rebels against it, and is sent to her room for days. However, she manages to send Scott a message, not to Scott himself, but pinned to a fence outside her house, taking a large risk of being caught by her parents. The note tells Scott not to knock, but instead to wait for Mary until Monday. She waits for days but without reply. At the same time, Scott actually receives a reply, however Mary calls him sick. Scott decides to talk like Martha would, mentioning the way Mary calls Martha "Marfa", like her best friend Annette, and mentions a fountain in Birmingham, where her last postcard was sent from. Scott tries calling, however he knew Martha's father would not listen, so he repeats the same message three times so that her father would memorize it and angrily shouts it in front of Martha, knowing the message is from Scott. Eventually Scott decides to go to see Martha, but is discouraged when he sees Martha in a car; however it was Mary and Annette's car - Mary rescued Abomination after all. In the last chapter it is revealed that the child is now called Jim and that Martha actually buys her own clothes now; it is also stated that when she learns to use the Internet, she will e-mail Scott. Martha and Scott become best friends forever.
20306503	/m/04z_yrc	Regenesis	C. J. Cherryh	2009-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ariane Emory is the eighteen-year-old clone of an extraordinary woman who was both a preeminent research scientist and the leader of the Expansionist Party, which has controlled Union since its inception. Her predecessor had some very powerful friends and enemies. However, inasmuch as her genemother had died under suspicious circumstances before she was even born, Emory is unsure who they are. She is not without resources though. A breakthrough experiment in "psychogenesis" has recreated in her the genius of her parent. Everyone knows that she will one day follow in her mother's footsteps and take charge of Reseune, a sovereign Administrative Territory and the premier azi research facility in Union, one of the three spacefaring factions of humanity. In the meantime, she takes measures to protect herself, assembling a trusted staff with the assistance of her azi bodyguards and companions, Florian and Catlin. When she discovers that her new azi security chief has been tampered with, her list of possible enemies grows to include key men inside Reseune itself: Yanni Schwartz, the Director, and Adam Hicks, the head of security. Adding to the discord is the return of a bitter Jordan Warrick from a twenty year exile at an isolated research facility. He had been pressured into confessing to killing the original Emory. The murder of Dr. Sandur Patil, a top scientist recruited by Schwartz to head up the terraforming of a planet, turns out to be but one step in a plot by Emory's unknown enemy that shakes Union to its core. As she struggles to deal with the escalating situation, she also unravels the decades-old mystery of her genemother's death.
20309163	/m/04_0qlm	Park's Quest	Katherine Paterson	1988-04-28	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Park's full name is Parkington Waddell Broughton V. He knows he has ancestors who have distinguished themselves and the name he shares with four generations of them. But his father, a U.S. Marine Corps pilot, died in Vietnam when Park was three, and he has never met his father's family. Though he is nearly twelve, his mother still avoids answering any questions about his father. Finally, to satisfy his curiosity, Park gets on a bus for the short ride from his home to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC. There he finds his father's name. There he also resolves to get some of his questions answered. After a painful conversation, his mother puts him on a bus for a two-week vacation in south-western Virginia where his grandfather and uncle maintain the farm on which his father grew up. His grandfather has had a stroke and is now inarticulate, able to communicate in only the most rudimentary ways. His uncle has a Vietnamese wife, and shares his home with a Vietnamese girl about Park's age whose origin and status is not clear to Park until he discovers, after a number of uncomfortable encounters, that she is his half-sister, and that because of his father's infidelity, his mother divorced him before his second, and fatal, term in Vietnam. Park, whose fantasies about his father's past and his own future have been highly romanticized, does some important growing up in the short visit that puts him in touch with a more complex idea of family, grief, forgiveness, and acceptance than he has ever before had to develop.
20316146	/m/04z_hx5	The Messenger				 When the laptop of a terrorist mastermind falls into the possession of the Office, Gabriel Allon suspects an imminent attack upon the Pope. He warns his friend Luigi Donati, the Pope’s personal secretary, in time to tighten security and personally investigate likely terrorist suspects among the Vatican’s staff. However, the Pope ignores Gabriel’s suggestion that a large outdoor ceremony be moved into an enclosed—and more secure—structure. That disregard proves fatal when three suicide bombers cause more than 700 deaths among worshipers. Gabriel rescues the Pope just as more terrorists arrive to shoot missiles at the Basilica. As the Vatican later researches the disaster, it discovers that its council for improving relations with the Muslim world was little more than a front for inside terrorism. When the Office places the blame on a powerful terrorist network, terrorists respond by bombing the vehicle of Ari Shamron, the head of the Office and Gabriel’s close friend. As Shamron fights for his life, Gabriel joins a member of the CIA in a secret scheme to infiltrate the vast network of “Zizi,” a terrorism financier linked to both the bombing and the attack on Shamron’s life. They select Sarah Bancroft, an American art curator with a wealthy European upbringing, to penetrate Zizi’s organization. When she and art dealer Julian Isherwood sell Zizi, an art aficionado, an undiscovered Van Gogh, Zizi takes the bait and hires Sarah as his personal art director. He introduces her to his “family” by inviting her on an idyllic cruise in the Caribbean. Gabriel and his team tail Sarah with the hope that she’ll be able to identify Ahmed bin Shafiq, the man who orchestrates the many terrorist activities that Zizi funds. However, Gabriel’s team shows too much interest in Sarah, and they quickly arouse the suspicion of Zizi’s professional security team. On the night that Gabriel plans to assassinate bin Shafiq, Zizi’s party preempts his move and takes Sarah hostage. Sarah is secreted away to Switzerland, where she is heavily drugged with truth serum and forced to reveal the identities of Gabriel’s colleagues. In a desperate race against time, Gabriel’s team locates Sarah, kills her captors, and frees her. She in turn reveals that bin Shafiq, believing her death to be imminent, taunted her by stating that he was on his way to yet another terror operation at the Vatican. This shred of information sends Gabriel rushing back to Rome on the very day that the President of the United States is scheduled for a historic visit with the Pope. The target of the attack—the President—seems obvious, but Gabriel struggles to identify the operative. In an almost imperceptible move, a member of the elite Swiss Guard shoots two bullets at the President. Donati throws himself in front of the President and sustains critical injuries. Donati’s sudden movement alerts Gabriel, who kills the renegade guardsman before more shots are fired. Luigi Donati later recovers from the shooting, Ari Shamron survives the bombing and returns to the Office, Julian Isherwood retires, Sarah Bancroft receives a new life and identity from the CIA, Uzi Navot takes over the directorship of the Office’s special operations, and Gabriel Allon rekindles his romance with Chiara Zolli. Although the elaborate art plot failed, the book ends with two briefly recounted successes: Allon and his team locate and kill both Ahmed bin Shafiq and Zizi.
20316269	/m/04mx8k6	The Five Greatest Warriors	Matthew Reilly		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The story starts with Jack's fall from the Vertex under Table Mountain with the suicidal Marine Switchblade, and his escape with the aid of Switchblade's Maghook, a staple of many of Reilly's works. He quickly reunites with the rest of his team at Little McDonald Island. The dates for the placement of the six pillars sees a three-month window between the second and third placements. Jack and Zoe use the interim period to help Pooh Bear in the rescue of Stretch from the Israeli Mossad. In a Roman ruin located under Israel's most secret facility, they find Stretch subjected to a hellish treatment: kept alive in a tank of formaldehyde by General Muniz, a Mossad spymaster. Stretch was to be the latest addition in Muniz's private collection of "living trophies", a practice pioneered by a former KGB operative. Stretch is subsequently liberated and the party makes their escape. Jack learns of The Five Greatest Warriors from Diane Cassidy, five key members of history who would influence the sacred stones and their whereabouts. They set about locating the third pillar and its matching Vertex. Following a connection to Genghis Khan, the party sets out for Mongolia. They locate the Khan's tomb under a false mound that covered a meteor crater. In the bowels of the fortress, they find a petrified dinosaur egg painted with images of the six temples that house the Verticies. The Japanese Blood Brotherhood attempt to stop Jack and Wolf from finding the next temple by destroying the egg, and Wizard is killed by Wolf in their escape. Realising that Genghis's shield also carries the images carved on the egg, Jack and his team race to the northern tip of Hokkaido. Japan attempts to stop them from entering the temple - which can only be done so in the middle of a tsunami - but Jack and his father form an uneasy truce and agree to place the third pillar together. Negotiating a maze set above a lake of lava, they successfully place the pillar. Several Japanese snipers very nearly kill them, and in the firefight, Jack and his father receive a vision of Jack's death from the pillar: what appears to be a fiery accident involving a falling aircraft. Wolf decides to let Jack go free after Jack saves his life. Unfortunately, all involved are captured by a group of Russians. At the same time, Jack's friends are picked up from their various assignments around the world. Everyone is taken to a dam in far eastern Siberia, where they meet Carnivore, General Muniz's friend and the creator of the "living tombs". Carnivore is the last of the House of Romanov, and the leader of the coalition of royal houses in Europe. Diane Cassidy is also revealed to be one of his agents. After forcing Jack to fight his half-brother to the death, the Carnivore subjects Jack's friends to his hellish prison cells to encourage him to place the fourth and fifth pillars. Without a choice, Jack agrees. The Carnivore makes a similar arrangement with Mao Gongli, Scimitar and Vulture, holding their loved ones hostage and sending them out to find the sixth and final pillar. The fourth and fifth pillars must be placed simultaneously. Jack, Lily and Iolanthe make for Diego Garcia while Pooh Bear, Stretch and the Adamson twins go to Lundy Island. Shortly after they place their pillars, Carnivore and Cassidy abandon their Siberian base and their victims, leaving them to die. Wolf escapes and gives pursuit, heading for Easter Island. Meanwhile, Jack, Lily and Iolanthe return to Israel, where they locate the (occupied) Tomb of Jesus Christ, the bearer of the sixth and final pillar, in a salt mine near Ein Aradhim. After Pooh Bear is forced to kill Scimitar and Vulture, Jack himself makes for Easter Island aboard a heavily damaged Halicarnassus. Meanwhile, the Dark Sun enters the edge of the solar system and planet earth is subjected to extreme weather conditions. Unable to land his plane, Jack crash-lands in the entrance to the Easter Island shrine. Unable to catch either Wolf or the Carnivore in the ten minutes remaining until the final pillar must be placed, Jack uses the remains of the Halicarnassus to cover the ground between himself and Carnivore. Jack kills the former KGB operative with the plane's sole remaining gun, which literally blasts him to nothingness. Lily, the only person Jack trusts - not least of all because she is the only one who can read the Word of Thoth - carries out the final placement. The reward for the sixth pillar is power, the ability to make one's thoughts a reality. Imbued with the power of the pillar, Lily goes on a murderous rampage, killing Cassidy and Mao Gongli in a grotesque fashion before Jack is able to stop her. As the Great Machine activates and the world is saved from the Dark Sun, Jack kicks the pillar into the void beneath the Vertex. Wolf gives chase, but the Halicarnassus causes the balcony overlooking the void to collapse, and he falls to his death as he chases the pillar. We learn that because it was Wolf's blood and not Jack's on the third pillar in Hokkaido, it was a vision of Wolf's death that Jack saw. Jack and Lily leave Easter Island, returning to Siberia in time to free their friends and the Carnivore's victims from the fomaldehyde tanks. The epilogue sees Jack and Zoe married and living in Australia with Lily. The five surviving pillars remain hidden, with Jack reporting that they had been lost or destroyed over the course of their mission. Zoe discerns that the fifth Greatest Warrior - whose identity had gone unknown because of his role to play in the potential apocalypse - was actually Jack, and the story ends.
20317528	/m/04_0w8f	The Kill Artist	Daniel Silva	2002-06-20	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Israel’s Prime Minister reinstates Ari Shamron as its director. Shortly thereafter, Israel’s ambassador is murdered in Paris. The crime has all of the markings of Tariq al-Hourani, a terrorist mastermind. Gabriel spearheaded a team that located and killed the operatives in the “Munich Massacre.” Seventeen years later, Tariq took vengeance upon Gabriel—family member for family member—by planting a bomb under the Allons’ car in Vienna. Gabriel witnessed his family’s horrifying destruction. His son Dani died instantly, while his wife Leah was left with a shattered mind and body. Nine years later, Gabriel has cut ties with the Office, secreted himself in Southern England, and poured himself into his other profession as an art restorer. Ari Shamron shows up on his doorstep. Shamron explains that he wants to assassinate Tariq but lacks support from the departmental directors at the Office. As a result, he urges Gabriel to spearhead a secret assassination operation. He accepts Shamron’s plan and begins surveillance of Yusef, a member of Tariq’s closely knit organization. Gabriel decides that he needs to set Yusef up with a female operative. He handpicks Jacqueline Delacroix (née Sarah Halévy), a French supermodel. Jacqueline has previously assisted three Office operations; in one of these, she worked closely with Gabriel and the two had an affair. Gabriel is careful to keep his interactions with Jacqueline to a mere professional familiarity. Jacqueline discovers that Gabriel still grieves over their affair, for its unmasking made Leah decide to accompany Gabriel on the fateful operation to Vienna. Realizing that her modeling career is declining and unfulfilling, Jacqueline accepts Gabriel’s role for her and seduces Yusef. Although this allows Gabriel to bug Yusef’s apartment, it likewise blows Jacqueline’s cover, for Yusef finds her making imprints of his keys and later sees Gabriel in his building. Gabriel is very concerned with Jacqueline’s safety and therefore tries to pull her from the operation. Shamron, however, insists that her identity as Dominique Bonard is secure and insists that Gabriel continue the plan. Meanwhile, Yusef warns Tariq that Gabriel is searching for him. Tariq designs a plan where Jacqueline must prove her professed love for Yusef by accompanying Tariq on a supposedly diplomatic mission to the United States. Indeed, Tariq recognizes Jacqueline from previous Office operations and suspects that he can use her as bait to lure Gabriel to his death. A conspiratorial relationship between Tariq and Uzi Navot, a major agent for the Office in Europe, also becomes apparent. Navot is one of the few Office operatives who knows about Shamron’s secret plot. Shortly after Jacqueline begins this ‘diplomatic’ trip, she realizes that her identity and security have been compromised. Gabriel believes that he has the upper hand in the arrangement until Tariq consistency eludes him and then disappears. Tariq smuggles Jacqueline through Québec and into New York City, where he intends to make his last stand. The new PM of Israel and Yasser Arafat are in NYC that weekend to celebrate a momentous step towards creating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Too late, Gabriel realizes that Tariq’s target is Arafat and not Israel’s PM; Gabriel hastily alerts Arafat by phone just as the disguised Tariq zones in on the kill. Arafat the diplomat calmly recounts his love for Tariq, a former associate, and urges the assassin to abandon his design. Tariq decides to let Arafat live just as Gabriel and the escaped Jacqueline arrive on the scene. Tariq shoots Gabriel in the chest, but Jacqueline pursues and kills the would-be assassin. Gabriel recovers from his wound in Israel, where Jacqueline has been forced to relocate due to media coverage of the event. One day, Gabriel spots Yusef in a local market and questions him at gunpoint. Yusef admits that he was working for Shamron as a double agent, and that Shamron had concocted the whole plot so Gabriel could finish off Tariq. When an angry Gabriel confronts Shamron, the wizened director is unapologetic and insists that it was both necessary to kill Tariq and just to have the killer be Gabriel. Once his recovery is complete, Gabriel returns to his life in southern England as an art restorer.
20319300	/m/04zwx24	Amityville: The Horror Returns		1989	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A regular fine and dry day in southern California. George Lutz works on his new home while Kathy's sons Greg and Matt cause trouble inside. Kathy Lutz yells at them but it takes two parents to get them outside. George sits down to eat breakfast. A house fly comes out of nowhere and lands on his food. He goes to kill it but finds himself unable to move or speak. George then realizes the presence has found the Lutzes yet again. A fire monster is then led by the fly towards George Lutz after he manages to break free. Kathy wakes him up and he finds out he was dreaming, but he won't let it go. Kathy starts to cry. Her daughter Amy is about to comfort her mother when she hears a noise in the living room. She goes into the living room. She gets very happy and says "Jodie, you came back!". Still unaware of the presence in the house. George and Kathy go on a business trip to Portland, Oregon leaving the kids at home with the sitter, Nancy. George and Kathy are stalked by the presence to Oregon where they encounter a little girl on a golf course. Things are much worse at home though. George and Kathy while on their way home are attacked by the presence on the plane. When George and Kathy reach the airport the presence does everything it can to prevent them from reaching the house where the kids and the sitter are. When they find the car they race onto the Los Angeles freeway, where their car is wrecked (similar to Father Mancuso's car in The Amityville Horror). The cars on the freeway disappear and George loses control of the car. George and Kathy jump out just before the car runs off a cliff and becomes a piece of twisted metal. An Indian finds them and gives them his truck. George and Kathy take the truck and race towards the house. The Indian man walks over to the Lutzes destroyed car and destroys the evil cloud which took control of the car. The Car then disappears. George and Kathy turn onto their street and rush up to the end of the street to find their house is gone. In its place: A -story Dutch colonial house. Better known as 112 Ocean Ave. (or as it is called in the book The Amityville House.) George and Kathy stunned that their old house is in front of them and their children inside try not to panic. As they get out of the car the house "greets" them. The lights start going on and off in one room at a time and slowly. Then they go off at the same time and even faster. Until every light goes out for a moment. Then very slowly an orange light illuminates the eye windows. The street then turns into Ocean Ave. George tells Kathy that they must go in together and save the children and sitter. Shawna races to the house and sees George and Kathy entering the house. She races faster and slams into an invisible force field. George hears the crash but it sounds far away to him. George realizes the boat house is missing and is replaced by moving shadows. George goes to open the door to the house but finds it is locked. He tries using his key but it does not open. The door then opens. Inside is a demonic figure welcoming them into the house. Shawna, becomes able to escape her wrecked vehicle however she then realizes the house is gone. The Lutz family's regular house is back. She realizes it's artificial though and realizes she can't get to the house. Inside, the house (which is now a living thing) begins to talk to them. Using doors, windows, boilers it speaks to them. The house is in the condition it was in when they left it; Christmas decorations are still up, gifts are lying around. George, who is now filled with anger, decides to fight back. He starts banging the wall hard with his fist. The activity stops for a few moments. George tells Kathy to go find the kids and Nancy. Kathy runs up the stairs looking for the kids. She finds them. The house which has now "upgraded" the items the Lutz family left in the house. Kathy enters Amy's old room. Greg and Matt are sitting on the bed. Kathy tries to communicate with them but they give her no response. Kathy realizes Amy is dancing to music that is coming from nowhere. She then realizes Jodie is dancing with Amy. Every time Amy dances into a cabinet it moves, only she is not strong enough to move it. George downstairs is still fighting the creature. He then demands to know where Nancy is. The creature stops. Then says "Nan-cy?". George realizes the creature is Nancy. The creature then melts. Kathy upstairs is trying to find a way to make Jodie release the children without harming them. The dancing starts getting wilder and violent. Shawna who still has not gotten into the house is outside. Using Indian powers she breaks the invisible wall. Exposing the Amityville house. In the living room the creature reforms. It is now pure white with no face. It grabs the "upgraded" shot gun, which shoots supernatural powers instead of bullets. George then demands the house to tell him where everyone is. It responds by telling him in the basement. He starts moving towards the basement. Then he realizes that's where the red room is. He turns around and unexpectedly attacks the demonic figure. Upstairs Kathy yells at Jodie which makes matters worse. She then yells at Amy to stop dancing. Amy drops to the ground. Greg and Matt then begin clapping. Shawna who is now walking up to the house just dodges rifle fire from inside the house. George is still fighting for the gun in the living room. It then gets worse when the figure gains the upper hand. Shawna bursts in the house to draw the attention to her. Leaving a knocked out George on the floor. Kathy who now has to push the kids to walk gets them to the stairs when she hears a creaking noise. She sees the rocking chair moving. Amy then asks if Jodie could go with them. Kathy denies and the trio works the way down the stairs. In the dining room Shawna is being burnt alive by demonic powers. She manages to use some Indian powers to counter but continues to fail. Kathy realizes what is happening downstairs and goes to get the kids out of the house and come back.
20322883	/m/0bbxfpx	Eyo		2009	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the story an illiterate ten-year-old girl, Eyo, is trafficked to the United Kingdom by her father with promises of work, an education and a fortune. And thus begins her five-year ordeal, first as a domestic servant and then as a child sex slave. Eventually, she is rescued from slavery by a Catholic priest and nun and sent back home to Nigeria with a view to rebuilding her life. However, she finds out that even in freedom, society demands an exacting price from those it should protect. In the first of the four parts of the book titled ‘African Flower’, the story opens with Eyo and her young brother, Lanre, eking out a living by selling iced water in Ajegunle, a sprawling slum in Lagos, Nigeria. Christened Jungle City by its residents, life is harsh and brutal, both day and night. One must have nerves of steel to survive. Eyo finds herself warding off petty thieves and molesters in the streets, and an amorous landlord at home. But it is her father, Wale, who sexually harasses her with the full knowledge of her mother. She’s willing to play her father’s sex toy as long as he does not touch her five-year-old sister Sade. Plagued by financial problems, Wale approaches his old friend, Femi, to take Eyo away from Jungle City. Uncle Femi, a human trafficker and once a resident of Jungle City, has grown wealthy from illicit trade. He agrees to take Eyo to London where she would get an education and thereafter a good job and with it a fortune. She would be sending money and other things home to help her siblings. Perhaps when she’s settled she’d send for her siblings and they too would get an education and a job. Upon arrival in London, she’s taken to a couple who have ‘bought’ her to take care of their children. She’s ‘imprisoned’ in the house where she’s forced to do household work from early in the morning till late in the night. She not only works forcefully, but she’s also assaulted physically at the slightest provocation. Soon, Sam, the man of the house, starts to sexually assault her and, having discovered her skills, which were learned from her experiences with Wale her father, begins to play pimp. It is only when she miscarries that the couple gets rid of her by ‘selling’ her to another pimp, Big Mama. At Big Mama’s, Eyo performs well, thanks to her experience at Jungle City. She becomes Big Mama’s favourite sex provider and income earner. In this second part of the book titled “African Lolita”, Eyo comes face to face with the harsh reality of commercial sex and worst of all sex slavery. Despite the earnings she brings to Big Mama through clients’ fees and other compliments, she does not get anything better than rationed food. She has to satisfy clients whatever and whenever Big Mama desires. Fearing that Eyo might gain her freedom through her clients, Big Madam passes on the ‘sex slave’ to another pimp named Johnny. Johnny is both crude and violent constantly unleashing terror on Eyo whenever she fails to comply with his orders. He also makes pornography using her. Now having given up on the earlier promises, she sinks into helplessness and is no longer sure that she’s human anymore. She refuses to be called Eyo again and adopts the name ‘Jungle Girl’, the title of the third part of the book. While with Johnny, who also doubles up as her boyfriend, Eyo encounters the tireless Father Stephen and Sister Mary who have devoted their lives to rescuing girls like Eyo from the streets. After numerous attempts by the duo to get to Eyo, they only managed when Eyo sought asylum at the Sanctuary. It is here that Eyo rediscovers herself and, with the help of Nike, a human rights lawyer, starts the road to recovery. Nike is also determined to bring the perpetrators of this inhuman practice to book. But to her surprise, the underground network that runs the trade is so deep-rooted that it is difficult to uproot.
20324086	/m/04zwgsx	Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées	Honoré de Balzac	1842		 The story concerns two young French women, Louise de Chaulieu (1805–1835) and Renée de Maucombe (born 1807), who become close friends during their novitiate at the Carmelite convent of Blois. When they leave the convent, however, their lives follow two very different paths. Louise chooses a life of romance, whereas Renée takes a much more pragmatic approach; but their friendship is preserved through their correspondence, which continues for a dozen years from 1823 through 1835. Louise is expected to sacrifice herself for her two brothers and take the veil, but the young girl refuses to submit to such a fate. Her dying grandmother intercedes on her behalf and bequeaths her her fortune, thereby rescuing her from the enclosed life of a Carmelite nun and leaving her financially independent. Free to assist her brothers financially without having to sacrifice her own ambitions, Louise settles in Paris and throws herself into a life of Italian operas, masqued balls and romantic intrigues. She falls in love with an unbecoming but noble Spaniard, Felipe Hénarez, Baron de Macumer. Banished from Spain, he lives incognito in Paris where he is forced to support himself by teaching Spanish. When he regains his fortune and noble standing, he woos Louise with a romantic fervour that finally wins her over. The pair are married in March 1825. They live a life of carefree happiness, but Louise's jealousy embitters him and leads to his physical break-down. He dies in 1829, leaving a grieving widow of twenty-four. Renée de Maucombe's attitude to love and life are in marked contrast to those of Louise. When she leaves the convent at Blois Renée moves to Provence, where she marries an older man of little wealth or standing whom she can hardly be said to love. She bears Louis de L'Estorade three children, and over the course of the next decade she devotes herself body and soul to the happiness of her family. Gradually she grows to love her husband in her own way, and with her encouragement he makes a career for himself in local politics, which culminates in his becoming a peer of France and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour. During this time Renée is quite scathing in her criticisms of Louise, whom she sees as a selfish and self-indulgent coquette. True happiness for a woman lies in motherhood and devotion to her family. Meanwhile, four years after the death of Felipe, Louise falls in love again. This time the object of her love is a poor poet and playwright Marie Gaston, who is several years younger than she is. As though taking a leaf out of Renée's book, Louise sells her Parisian property, moves to a chalet in Ville d'Avray (a small village near Paris) and lives a life of seclusion with her new husband. But Renée is not fooled by this masquerade. Louise, she warns, is still living a life devoted to selfishness and self-indulgence, while true happiness lies only in self-sacrifice to one's husband and children - Louise remains childless. After a few years of apparent bliss, Louise detects a change in her husband. He becomes solicitous about the financial success of his plays, and a large sum of money goes missing. Suspecting him of having an expensive mistress, Louise makes enquiries and comes to the shocking conclusion that he has another family in Paris – an Englishwoman known by the name Madame Gaston, and two children, who look remarkably like Marie. Louise confides her feelings of despair to Renée and announces her determination to commit suicide rather than to submit to such a fate. Renée's husband makes enquiries and discovers the truth of the situation. Madame Gaston is the widow of Marie's brother. The death of her husband has left her financially destitute and Marie has taken it upon himself to assist her and his two nephews, but he is ashamed to ask his wife for money. Reneé writes to Louise to inform her of the truth and rushes to the chalet, but she is too late. Louise has contracted consumption by lying out in the dew overnight and she dies a few days later.
20325406	/m/04_0f1s	The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives		2008	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Nick Turse explores how the industrial complex of the United States military has pervaded the everyday lives of Americans. Turse investigates the relationship between the Pentagon and the Hollywood entertainment industry, military actions in the civilian sphere, and joint projects between the U.S. military and companies including NASCAR and Marvel Comics. Turse describes how military tacticians and flyers were outfitted with Apple PowerBooks. He illustrates how the military has attempted innovative methods to reach out to and recruit contemporary youth, including making "friends" on MySpace. Turse notes that the research and development budget of the military, and its spending in the private sector, has increased dramatically over the last few years. The book posits that many changes have occurred since President Dwight D. Eisenhower's military-industrial complex, and relates the changes to the present day.
20328787	/m/04zz6n9	The City of Love		2007		 The City of Love begins with the siege of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1510. Fernando Almenara is a Castilian trader captured in the abortive first siege of Malacca. Fernando has a secret: he is fleeing the Inquisition in Florence for his involvement with a Cabalist group there, and the invasion of Florence by the Holy Alliance in 1509 meant death to him and his friends. During the siege he is kidnapped by Daud Suleiman ibn Shams al Basri, a sharp young Arab physician and pirate based in Chittagong. Fernando joins Daud’s ship, the Shaan-e-Dariya, crewed by fugitives and renegades from all over the known world, and comes to their home port. Chandu Sadashiva is the son of a Shaiva priest exiled from Gaur, West Bengal to the wilds of rural Chittagong. His father Bhairavdas is determined to turn him into a powerful Tantric warrior against the foreign polluters of his land, but Chandu has other ideas. He forms a secret attachment with Bajja, a tribal girl eight years older than he is, who becomes his secret role model and ideal. Things fall apart when Bajja asks Chandu’s father to initiate her into the Tantra but he tries to seduce her and she escapes. Bitterly disappointed, she vows to find enlightenment or die by fasting at the cremation ground. Desperately ill from weeks of starvation, she is rescued by the wise woman Dhumavati who undertakes to train her. At first Fernando’s band of pirates does well from their excellent piratical harbour, but then the Portuguese come to Chittagong and change the rules with their cannon and brutal ways. The pirate band breaks up, Fernando runs from agents of the Inquisition and falls in love with Bajja deep in the forest. Bajja is being taught the Sahajiya Buddhist Tantra by Dhumavati, while Fernando has training in the Christian Cabala, and together he and Bajja teach each other about love and the lore. Meanwhile thirteen-year-old Chandu and his father have set out for Gaur to begin Chandu’s formal training, but they are ambushed on the way, Bhairavdas is killed and Chandu wounded in the throat and sold into slavery. Daud, who is travelling with a wandering Sufi, rescues and heals him. Chandu, temporarily speechless, is apprenticed to a blacksmith and takes the name Kalketu, having lost his Brahminical heritage. He becomes an accomplished Sufi qawwal or devotional singer. Bajja is now wandering the countryside, teaching other Tantrics her wisdom in secret places, but she is becoming disillusioned with the way Dhumavati treats their followers. Finally Dhumavati persuades her to take part in a Tantric ritual which involves killing a child, and in disgust she gives up the life of a guru and disappears to seek her own truth. Fernando is crushed, and he returns to Chittagong where he agrees to return to Amsterdam with an old shipmate and join the Family of Love. In the background of Sher Shah Suri’s and Humayun’s invasions of Bengal (1538–1540), Chandu sets off to look for Bajja and finds her herding pigs on top of a desolate mountain in Assam. They speak of all that has befallen them, lie down and make love. The first part of the book is set against the spice trade from Antwerp to Indonesia, the greatest network of goods and ideas the world has ever known, and the struggle for supremacy in Chittagong between Bengal, Tripura and Arakan, and the Portuguese empire. In this cultural cauldron, established Hindu and Buddhist Tantric, Vaishnav and tribal traditions meet the three-centuries-old incursion of Islam and the dawning of contact with the West.
20331757	/m/04zx33q	Amulet	Roberto Bolaño	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Amulet embodies in one woman’s voice the melancholy and violent history of Latin America. It begins: “This is going to be a horror story.” The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, known as the “Mother of Mexican Poetry”. Tall, thin, and blonde, she becomes famous as the sole person who resists the army’s 1968 invasion of the university during the now infamous Tlatelolco massacre—she hides in a women's toilet for twelve days. As she tries to outlast the occupiers and grows ever hungrier, Auxilio recalls her life, her lost teeth, her beloved friends and poets, and she soon moves on to strange landscapes: ice-bound mountains, seedy bars in “the dark night of the soul of Mexico City,” a terrifying chasm, and a bathroom where moonlight shines, moving slowly from tile to tile. Auxilio is also featured in The Savage Detectives, where she narrates her stay in the restroom of the besieged university. However, as Francisco Goldman has noted, Amulet "sings an enthralling and haunting ode to youth, life on the margins, poetry and poets, and Mexico City. Much more than a companion piece to The Savage Detectives - it shares some of the same characters - Amulet may be Bolaño's most autobiographical book. Formally and verbally, it also represents some of his most innovative and thrilling writing."
20336759	/m/04z_c7m	The Last Holiday Concert	Andrew Clements	2004	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Hart Evans was the most popular kid at Collins Elementary School and is on his way to owning that title again at Palmer Intermediate. So when he unintentionally shoots a rubber band at his chorus teacher one afternoon, he expects it to be laughed off. After all, it was an accident. Mr. Meinert, the chorus teacher, is wound so tight that he blows up at Hart and the entire class. In a huff, he announces that he is stepping down, and they are now responsible for planning their entire holiday concert themselves. The whole class is surprised, and elects Hart as the new Chorus director. He declares Music Class as a free period, until Mr. Meinert tells him that they've got a full 35 minutes for their show. Hart then, realizes they need to get down to work. After assembling committees and coming up with lists of songs, Hart finally thinks he has everything running on track. But then his classmates get mad. Why is Hart, their friend, acting like a teacher? It takes a heart-to-heart with Mr. Meinert to learn what it takes to be a friendly and fair, yet strict, chorus director.
20339264	/m/04zydzv	Fair Play	Tove Jansson	1989		 The novel portrays the close friendship between two women doing artistic work, Jonna and Mari, who live in separate apartments in the same house. They are in many ways quite different, but maybe because of this they are able to complete each other. It is about give and take, compromises and communication, and how the relationship survives even if it changes when the people do. Many chapters in the book are written such that they can be read stand-alone, and a few have been republished in the short story collection A Winter Book. sv:Rent spel
20347453	/m/04_0_b0	The Other Side of Truth	Beverley Naidoo	2000-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Although this novel is written in the third person, it presents the perspective of a 12-year-old girl, Sade Solaja. Her father, Folarin Solaja, is a journalist, one of the most critical of the corrupt regime. The book opens with her memory of hearing the two shots which ended her mother's life, a memory which recurs throughout the novel in her thoughts and dreams. Her memories of Nigeria are often set in contrast to her experiences of an alien England, while her mother's remembered words of wisdom give her comfort and strength. The concentration on Sade's point of view makes many events seem obscure and confusing, just as she experiences them. After the shooting, Sade's Uncle Tunde urges her father to send her and her 10-year-old brother Femi to safety in England. They are forced to pack and leave suddenly and secretly. They fly to London posing as the children of a stranger, Mrs Bankole, so they can travel on her passport. When their Uncle Dele fails to collect them at the airport, Mrs Bankole abandons them at Victoria Station. Moneyless and friendless, they wander the streets looking for the art college where their uncle works. They find refuge in a video store, but the owner calls the police, believing them to be vandals. Thus they come to the attention of the authorities. Worried to tell the truth in case it endangers their father, Sade takes refuge in silence and later in half-truths. The children are fostered first by Mrs Graham and later by the Kings, a Jamaican couple whose called Auntie Gracie and Uncle Roy(From Sade's point of view) whose children have grown up and left. They are sent to different schools. Sade is sent to Avon School where she meets a girl from Somalia, called Mariam whose story is similar to Sade's. Marcia, Donna and Kevin (Mrs Graham's son) are bullies and treat Sade very badly at school, putting pressure on her to steal a turquoise lighter from Mariam's uncle's store. Femi goes to Greenslades Primary School. They lose contact...... It later emerges that her worried father has entered England illegally to look for them but has been arrested. There is a chance that he will be deported to face certain death in Nigeria, especially as the Nigerian police claim he is wanted for his wife's murder. Although Iyawo Jenny and Mr Nathan try their hardest to help Sade's father, things are not working out. Sade braves the freezing night to speak to "Mr. Seven O'Clock", the newscaster she has seen on television, to bring her father's story to the attention of the British public. The story ends with her father's release for Christmas, though asylum has yet to be granted. They hope one day they can return safely to Nigeria. Sade misses her grandmother and her former life. To end the book, Beverly Naidoo used Sade's letter to her grandmother which is very touching.
20348924	/m/04z_7zs	Helen				 Helen tells the story of a young orphan, Helen Stanley, whose guardian, Dean Stanley, has squandered his fortune and left Helen without means of support. She is forced to take up residence with the local vicar, whose wife is astonished that none of the Stanleys' aristocratic friends have offered a refuge to her. Eventually, however, the Davenant family returns from abroad and invite Helen to their daughter's new home, Clarendon Park. (Cecilia Davenant has just married General Clarendon.) Helen journeys to join her dear friend Cecilia, and the first half of the novel describes Helen's experiences among the most fortunate of Britain's elite under the tutelage of Lady Davenant, who in some ways favors Helen over her own daughter Cecilia. In the second and more dramatic half of the novel, Lady Davenant departs with her husband, who has been named ambassador at the Court of St. Petersburg, Russia. Helen is left to the care of General Clarendon and Cecilia. By this time she is engaged to Granville Beauclerc, a young and handsome man who is another of Lady Davenant's favorites. All does not run smoothly for Helen, however. Before her marriage, Cecilia has carried on an amorous correspondence with Colonel d'Aubigny, a worthless roué who has since died. These letters reappear in a packet addressed to Cecilia's husband. Cecilia implores Helen to act as if the letters were addressed to her rather than to Cecilia. Helen, from misguided devotion to her friend and gratitude for Cecilia's kind hospitality, agrees to the deception. This first step leads to more and more serious consequences, until finally Helen's reputation is in tatters. Beauclerc is forced to fight a duel in defense of his fiancée, after which he must flee from England. Cecilia still refuses to recognize the letters as hers, out of fear of losing her own husband if she admits to the correspondence. The General is convinced that Helen is faithless. She refuses to stay where she is not respected and chooses exile in Wales with the General's sister, where she becomes dangerously ill. Even the birth of Cecilia's first child, a son, does not encourage her to confess to her husband, and Helen gives up all hope of exoneration. The dénouement comes when Lady Davenant, also dangerously ill, returns to London at the same time as the General finally discovers his wife's deception and vows to separate from Cecilia for life. Helen's character is redeemed, Beauclerc returns to England when his adversary recovers from his wounds, and the novel ends happily for all the protagonists with Lady Davenant saying that she is "now, and not till now, happy--perfectly happy in Love and Truth!"
20352660	/m/04zwhvg	Semper Mars	William H. Keith, Jr.		{"/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The United States and Russia have set up habitats on Mars, and are researching ruins of an alien civilization near the Face on Mars. The facilities and research are being shared with UN observers. When the UN sends troops up to Mars, the US sends the Marine Mars Expeditionary Force, a 30-man weapons platoon, to protect American civilians and interests on Mars. The United States Marine Corps has been threatened with being disbanded and it hopes that this mission will breathe some life into the organization. Back on Earth, tensions increase between the UN and the US when the US Embassy in Mexico City is stormed by militants backed by the Mexican government and the Marines stationed there are forced to open fire. The US is able to evacuate the personnel there, but not before the diplomatic damage was done. It is the events on Mars, however, which cause war to begin between the United States and the UN. American scientists discover human remains inside one of the alien structures. From evidence discovered at the site it appears that these aliens not only were in contact with humans in the past, but may have even been responsible for the creation of the human race itself. The Americans want to release the information at once but the UN forces think differently, afraid that the world could not handle information of this magnitude. The UN forces take over the Mars station, imprisoning the Marines and the scientists, while contacting their superiors about what was found. At the same time UN forces capture the International Space Station, to control any and all launches to Mars, while the UN leadership increases diplomatic pressure on the American government. This act kicks off hostilities on Earth. The official reason, according to the UN, is to support the independence of the Aztlan nation, among other reasons, but secretly the UN wants to stop the US from monopolizing alien technology and releasing the controversial findings. The United States finds itself under bombardment from cruise missiles launched from Cuba as well as French, German and Manchurian arsenal ships. Simultaneously forces from Mexico and Quebec cross the border to invade. At the same time Russia, one of America's few remaining allies, is attacked all along its southern border by Manchuria. Morale is low and the President is considering surrendering to the UN. Meanwhile US Marines recapture the ISS with the help of Shepard Station, an experimental laser armed space station. The UN orders the reluctant Japanese to attack Shepard Station. Though they succeed in disabling it, the Japanese lose all of their fighters and decide to join the Americans and their allies against the UN. Back on Mars, the Marines are able to escape their imprisonment, but are forced to march across hundreds of miles of Martian desert to reach the UN base. The Marines defeat the UN force at Mars Prime with a surprise attack. They go on to capture Cydonia and defeat the remaining UN troops using smuggled cans of beer as an improvised weapon. The march across Mars soon becomes a famous piece of Marine Corps history. On Earth the fighting is beginning to turn to the United States’ favor.
20353074	/m/04zykgt	Up in the Air	Walter Kirn	2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ryan Bingham is a 35-year-old career transition counselor for a Denver-based management consulting company, Integrated Strategic Management (ISM). He flies around the country firing and then counseling recently laid-off people and counseling them for reentering the job market. Bingham is trying to get to one million frequent flyer miles, a number only reached by nine other people in the same mileage club (from the fictional airline "Great West") before his boss returns from vacation, finds his letter of resignation and cancels his company credit card. Bingham is positioning himself to be hired by MythTech, a shadowy company based in Omaha. He is divorced and his disturbed younger sister is about to embark on yet another disastrous relationship. Bingham inhabits a world of Palm Pilots, rental cars, salted almonds, Kevlar luggage and nameless suite hotels where e-mail and voice mail are the communication norm. He takes a lot of pills and spends time with women in Las Vegas. Bingham fears that someone may be furtively cashing in his precious miles, which would be tantamount to stealing his soul.
20353998	/m/04zybyc	Long Lost	Harlan Coben		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Myron Bolitar receives a phone call from an ex-lover, Terese, who asks him to come to Paris immediately. Upon arriving, Myron is informed by French police that Terese’s ex-husband, Rick, has been murdered and Terese is the prime suspect. Terese is soon cleared of the charges. At the crime scene of the murder, blood was found that matched that of Rick’s daughter. Terese informs Myron that ten years previously, her only daughter with Rick, Miriam, was killed in a car accident that led to Terese and Rick’s divorce. After nearly being kidnapped, Myron catches a glimpse of a teenage blonde girl who resembles Terese and wonders if perhaps Miriam’s death was faked. Myron sees the same girl again and follows her into a house in London. There, he is ambushed by terrorists who kill Rick’s second wife. After murdering the lead terrorist, Myron is taken to a “black site,” a secret interrogation facility maintained by the United States government to torture suspected terrorists. When his innocence is realized, he is released but does not recall anything that happened while incarcerated. Meanwhile, back in the United States, DNA samples taken from Miriam’s grave prove that she is in fact dead. Myron suspects that Terese’s frozen embryos were used illegally to create a second daughter, the elusive blonde girl he has been seeking. Myron and his accomplice Win investigate the charity “Save the Angels,” which promotes adoption over stem-cell research and is run by right-wing conservative Christians. Rick had been investigating the charity shortly before being murdered. Myron and the French detective Berleand track the teenage blonde girl to a home that was pictured on the “Save the Angels” website. There, they are ambushed by a terrorist cell and Berleand is killed. Upon entering the home, Myron discovers a group of blonde, blue-eyed children who have been raised from stolen embyos by terrorists in the hopes of training them for suicide missions. The terrorist cell is wiped out by law enforcement and the brainwashed children are taken into custody. Myron tracks down Terese to Angola, where she has been hiding with her long lost daughter since the ambush in London. It is implied at the end of the book that law enforcement failed to track down all of the terrorists: a blonde, blue-eyed teenage boy with a heavy backpack is seen stepping from a bus and walking into a crowded area of tourists.
20354312	/m/04zwhhg	Hold Tight	Harlan Coben	2008-04-15	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 The story is introduced with the characters Marianne, Nash and Pietra. Pietra tricks Marianne by drugging her which leads to Nash brutally beating Marianne to death, his last words to her being: "Tell Cassandra I love her." They remove her clothes then dress her to look like a prostitute and toss her body in a dumpster (skip). The action switches to Tia and Mike Baye who never imagined they'd become spying, overprotective parent. But their sixteen-year-old son, Adam Baye has been unusually distant and aloof lately, and after the recent suicide of his classmate and closed friend, Spencer Hill, who taking vodka and tablets on his school's roof in the night to death, they can't help but worry. They install a spy program on Adam's computer and within days they are jolted by a strange message to their son from a correspondent known only as CeeJay8115: "Just stay quiet and all safe." The detective investigating Marianne's murder, Loren Muse, realizes that Marianne is not a prostitute and that someone has gone to great lengths to try to fool the authorities. However, the face of Marianne has been so badly mutilated it is impossible for anyone to identify her. Susan and Dante Loriman meet with their son's (Lucas) doctor (Mike Baye) only to be told Lucas needs a kidney transplant urgently. Neither parent is a suitable match and with some investigating, Mike finds out that Dante is not the biological father to Lucas. Meanwhile, browsing through an online memorial for her son, Betsy Hill is struck by one photo in particular that appears to have been taken on the night of Spencer's death and that he wasn't alone. She thinks it's Adam Baye standing just outside the camera's range. She confronts him and asks about the photo, but he runs away. The daughter of Marianne and Guy, Yasmin is being bullied at school because her teacher (Joe Lewiston) commented on her facial hair in front of the class. Yasmin shows her only friend Jill Baye (Mike and Tia's daughter) her father's (Guy) gun, which is already loaded and hidden in a drawer in their house. She tells Jill how she dreams of getting revenge on Mr Lewiston. Worried about the safety of their son, Mike tells Adam he must attend a hockey game with Mike's friend Mo. This is a diversion to try to avoid the party referred to in an email Mike and Tia found on their son's computer a few days earlier, the party claims that there will be alcohol and drugs served. Adam is not around when his father comes to pick him up to attend the hockey game, and Mo tells Mike how to use the GPS on Adam's phone to track him. Mike ends up following him into a very bad part of the Bronx. He starts to chase after what looks to be one of Adam's friends, but is then confronted and severely beaten by an unknown group. He winds up in hospital and still hasn't found his son. Reba Cordova is Nash's next victim, and she is likewise beaten to death, for reasons still unknown to the reader. Before killing her he also told her the same thing Nash told Marianne: "Tell Cassandra I love her." We find out Cassandra died a few years ago due to cancer, and was deeply loved by Nash. Cassandra is the sister of Joe Lewiston, and had another brother named Curtis, who was murdered in an assumed robbery. Mike's professional partner, Ilene Goldfarb, confronts Susan to find the real father of Lucas, as he could be a potential kidney donor. Susan tells her that she was raped, and that it was impossible for her to contact him to ask if he could be tested as a potential donor. Later the readers find out that the reason that her rapist cannot be contacted is because Susan had killed her attacker. She then confides that the murder was set up to make officials think the cause of the murder was most likely a robbery, this leads the reader to believe that Curtis Lewiston is the rapist. The events start to come together by the end of the book as the connections of the murders, Adam's disappearance, Spencer's apparent suicide, and the need for a good donor for Susan's son are explained, and the origin of all of the mayhem is revealed.
20359864	/m/04_10h4	Hell's Heroes	Darren Shan	2009	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel begins with Grubbs and Dervish talking in a cave. The wounded Dervish is awaiting his imminent death, but he and Grubbs take it in their normal humorous stride. Grubbs reflects on how Dervish has always been there for him and begins to recall memories of his time with his uncle. Dervish dies during Grubbs' reflections. Grubbs takes his body into the open air and begins the slow, painful process of digging his uncle's grave. The story then moves on by a month. Grubbs has been fighting wave after wave of demons that are breaking through all over the globe. He has gathered another group of werewolves but is slowly being worn down. He has been having a recurring dream of Lord Loss's kingdom, but one night it changes and he sees Lord Loss and Bec’s souls go into the Earth’s first chessboard. When they reappear it seems that Bec has made a deal with Lord Loss, and this assures Grubbs that Bec has betrayed them. This spurs him, Kernel and Kirilli Kovacs to action (even though Kernel would rather not); in the dream it seems that Bec is going to show Lord Loss the locations of lodestones so that they can create a tunnel between universes. Therefore, they decide to destroy as many lodestones as they can before Bec can get to them, and go to the only lodestone whose location they know, the one at Carcery Vale. When they get there, they walk around Dervish's old mansion for a while, and then reopen the tunnel to the lodestone in the forest. Grubbs smashes the stone against the wall, so that it cannot be used. As they are about to leave Shark (an ex-soldier and Disciple) and Timas Brauss (a slightly weird computer genius) come in. After quite a brief conversation they decide that they should go to face Lord Loss and Bec on their home turf, but Grubbs says that Kernel can leave if he wants. Grubbs is able to open a window to a world that they know is safe, and Kernel starts to rebuild his eyes. Before he finishes, another window opens. Demons pour through and reawaken the demon master in that world, forcing them through the window to Lord Loss's realm. They free Lord loss's prisoners(one of the prisoners being Bo Kooniart, a girl in Slawter). They confront and battle the demon master and Bec, and their former ally reveals that she has indeed decided to work with Lord Loss. When they have stopped fighting Lord Loss reveals thousands of humans in the rooms around them whose souls have been trapped in the original chessboard. As they watch, Bec kills everyone in the board and releases Death who shares its body with Bec. Kernel completes a window and the others follow narrowly escaping the new Deathly-Bec. Kernel realises that now that Death is back on the scene there is no hope for the Earth, so he decides to go back to the 'Ark' to save a small part of the life from this universe. Kirilli has the idea to get the Old Creatures to help protect the Earth, so Grubbs agrees to the plan. When Kernel has opened a window, they decide that only Grubbs and Kernel should go to meet the Raz(the Old Creature that Kernel has met before). Grubbs begins to make the request to Raz, but, having read his mind, Raz states that the Old Creatures will not help. As Grubbs is about to go home, another window opens and Deathly-Bec comes through, explaining that she can go anywhere Kernel has been, and that she knows where the 'Ark' is. She then attacks and kills Raz, but this drains some of Death’s power, and she regains enough control of herself to shout at Kernel and Grubs to get away before Death kills them and can reunite the Kah-Gash. They do as she suggests and return to the others, but Grubbs is now suspicious that Bec is not as evil and demonic as they thought. They resign themselves to the end of the world, but decide that they should try to kill as many demons as they can before the world falls. When they go back to Earth, the world is being besieged by demons, who have managed to open a tunnel. They decide that they might as well try to close the tunnel and forestall the annihilation of Earth. They fight with a new vigor (even Kernel, who did not like the fighting, has decided that there is nothing to lose anymore), make it to the tunnel entrance and destroy the lodestone, causing the demons to be sucked back to their realm. However, this is just the first of many tunnels that are going to open, so the team decide to just go for the tunnels that threaten the world as a whole, and leave the ones that can only cover a few hundred kilometres. After four days Kernel sees the lights going wild, the sign that a tunnel of great power is opening. A team fronted by Grubbs, Kernel, Kirilli, Shark and Timas go to the edge of a cliff where the tunnel is (this is the place that Bec and Drust travel to in the fourth book and where we see the Old Creatures for the first time). Grubbs uses the power coming through the forming tunnel to re-enact Moses and the parts the sea, and then creates steps down to the cave and tunnel. Timas stays on top, and he and Shark inform the others that they have arranged for nuclear devices all over the world to be detonated if the team fail, therefore causing the humans to be killed instantly, instead of waiting for the demons to torture them. On the way down the Kah-Gash informs Grubbs that it never wanted to manipulate them, and is not working for the demons or humans. This means that Grubbs can use the ancient weapon as much as he wants, and it will do whatever he wants. When they go in, they find the tunnel entrance and Lord Loss and Deathly-Bec waiting for them. While the tunnel is opening, a fight breaks out, and Grubbs manages to catch Lord Loss by surprise using his and Kernel's parts of the Kah-Gash, taking him out of action for a while. The pair begins to seal the tunnel again, but then Bec steps in. She diverts Kernel and Grubbs's power into herself, giving the masters in the tunnel the opportunity to burst through. This is when Grubbs realises that Lord Loss, who he has been afraid of since his parents and sister were slaughtered, was only one of the lesser demon masters, and that the ones that are pouring through at the moment are many times stronger than him. In the following fight Kirilli is decapitated then carved into many pieces, and Shark is melted along with most of the other werewolves and soldiers. In a last attempt Kernel and Grubbs grab Bec to try to blow her up in the tunnel to close it, but when they get her to the mouth of the tunnel and direct all their energy into her, nothing happens. Bec begins to control the weapon, and in a last attempt to stop her, Grubbs cuts the flow of energy to her, but then she winks at him. This catches him by surprise, and he quickly makes the decision that she was not trying to fool him, so instead of cutting the power to Bec, he increases it, directing all the power around them into the girl. The Kah-Gash becomes fully active, and starts a similar process as it did in the sixth book, but at much more advanced stage. They begin to rip everything in our universe and the Demonata’s to shreds, Bec then tells them to go to the Crux (the place where both universes expanded from), and reveals that she is following a plan devised by Beranabus. When they arrive at the Crux, they split into sixty four pieces, and slot all of the body of the Kah-Gash back together. The original universe is back in place, with the Demonata in the white zones and the Old Creatures in the black zones. Bec has restored the old universe, but now the Kah-Gash has the three teenagers as a mind. Bec explains that because she is the Kah-Gash’s memory she memorised everything as they destroyed it, so that now the three of them can rebuild the human universe exactly as it was. Grubbs believes that now that they have restored the old universe, everything will happen as it did before, the Kah-Gash will split, and everything will repeat itself if they recreate everything, but Kernel realises what the next part of the plan was. As they now hold the universe together, they hold everything inside together, including the demons. This means that they can easily undo those bonds and destroy the demons. However, Bec persuades them out of destroying every demon, and Kernel shows them a clip of the past where Beranabus tells Grubbs that most of the demons are not worth bothering about. This sways Grubbs into the others’ way of thinking, and the three decide to destroy all the demon masters who have the potential to cross, leaving only one. Having decided to kill Lord Loss personally, they reform their bodies and meet the last master. As they go to kill him, Bec stops them, revealing that she had made a deal with Lord Loss in the chess board: he would protect Bec if she would spare him. After an disagreement, they realise that Bec's other reason for sparing him was to let him be the necessary diabolical figure feared by the recreated beings of the universe. It is revealed that he will now be set to rule the Demonata, making sure that everything happens as it did before. It is also to be noted that Lord Loss admits that the universe(s) would be a better place without the stronger demon masters. The poem that Darren Shan wrote (which inspired this series and is in the front of Lord Loss) is repeated. The trio then leave Lord Loss, choose a black square at random and prepare to restart the human universe with the Big Bang therein, making sure that everything is as it was the first time. However, they decide that everything will not be exactly as it was before; to stop our world falling to the Demonata again, they will have to change history. Choosing a point just before Bec was born, they intervene to prevent the series of events which led to Death developing a consciousness. Grubbs also wishes to make a few more tweaks, such as letting his parents live and giving Dervish a stronger heart. The three decide that they will spend more time discussing how much they should change, and the extent of their alterations is therefore not explicitly stated. They also decide, to appease the Old Creatures, to retain the original universe alongside the new human universe. Since this time the Kah-Gash makes the conscious decision to create the Big-Bang, instead of a result of the demons crossing through the zones of the Old Universe, Grubbs, Kernel and Bec can retain the Old Universe and leave the Old Creatures to live in their zones. As the trigger of the Kah-Gash, Grubbs then has the job of starting the Big Bang. The series ends with Grubbs saying a slightly changed biblical quote: "In the beginning Grubbs created the Heavens and the Earth and everything was dark. Then Grubbs said 'Let there be light.' " And there was light. Grubbs then says:"Coolio!"
20361714	/m/04z_n5z	The Amityville Curse			{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The plot is entirely fictional and tells that the house at 112 Ocean Ave. was once a rectory and that one of the priests died there and the house became haunted.
20372445	/m/04zzlmn	A Bend in the Road		2001		 Miles Ryan's life seemed to end the day his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident two years ago. As deputy sheriff of New Bern, North Carolina, he not only grieves for her and worries about their young son Jonah but longs to bring the unknown driver to justice. Then Miles meets Sarah Andrews, Jonah's second grade teacher. A young woman recovering from a difficult divorce, Sarah moved to New Bern hoping to start over. Tentatively, Miles and Sarah reach out to each other... soon they are falling in love.But what neither realizes is that they are also bound together by a shocking secret, one that will force them to reexamine everything they believe in- including their love.
20376098	/m/04zvrl7	Blood or Mead				 The novel follows protagonist John Tran and his search for Ve and Vili, the brothers of Odin. The book's premise involves the rise of the Abrahamic deity Yahweh and his intention to bring about the end of days, as foretold in the Book of Revelations. A number of pagan gods, including Lucifer, Atlas, and Odin, form a loose coterie in opposition. Each chapter is book-ended with a brief dialogues in which the pagan gods tell the history of how the Abrahamic religions gained their supremacy on Earth. The novel borrows from the game Nethack. It includes characters loosely based around the Wizard of Yendor and the Oracle of Delphi. Tran, a recently deceased Ásatrú practitioner, has been deemed unfit to enter Valhalla because he did not die in battle. He has been offered a place in the warrior's heaven if he can track down Ve and Vili. Traveling through the alternate dimension in which the brothers reside, he eventually enlists their aid. This leads the novel to its climax, a final battle between the pagan pantheon and the Abrahamic deity.
20386013	/m/04_0r6x	Still I Rise: A Cartoon History of African Americans				 Still I Rise begins with an introduction by Charles Johnson about black cartoonists and the subjects they dealt with. The book uses two elderly narrators, one male and one female, to take the reader through time. The female narrator has a bit of black nationalism, while the male narrator has a more balanced view of America in terms of race relations. The book beings to depict African American history starting in 1618. Around this time, in an effort to stem the rising cost of European indentured servants, Africans willing to indenture themselves were starting to be imported. These African servants did very well for themselves because they were more skilled than their European counterparts. The success of the African Americans sparked resentment in white indentured servants and free whites, who disliked the idea of a black man ordering around a white man. Due to their success, Africans started to buy out their contracts, which prompted owners to illegally lengthen African contracts to ban the buy-out problem. The action of the owners angered the African American servants, causing many of them to try and resort to the legal system or simply running away. However, neither of these options worked, and those who ran away had their contracts extended indefinitely. Running out of options, the black servants resorted to rebellion in the form of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. However, the rebellion was put down, and by 1677 slavery was official in all the colonies, with brutal overseers being hired to keep the slaves in line. Still I Rise continues through the history of slavery, outlining ways in which the slaves coped (or didn't cope) with their lot, as well as the hard-won successes of free blacks such as Benjamin Banneker, who "built the first striking clock wholly of American-made parts.Rothschild, Aviva. The Comics Get Serious. 2001. 18 November 2008 http://www.rationalmagic.com/Comics/StillIRise.html From the beginning of the cartoon narrative, every major American black political movement, historical event, and organization is covered, as well as the achievements of African American inventors and businesspeople.
20387825	/m/04_0snm	Tunes for a Small Harmonica	Barbara Wersba	1977-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 J.F. receives a harmonica from friend for her birthday and ends up learning to play it. She becomes quite good and this skill becomes useful after she ends up falling in love with her poetry teacher and then decides to try to raise $1000 to help her teacher to be able to return to England to finish his Master's thesis.
20387925	/m/04zzwgp	The Immigrants	Howard Fast	1977	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Born on the voyage to America to his Italian father and French-born mother, Daniel Lavette grows up helping his father on a fishing boat. Tragedy strikes early one morning, however, when Dan wakes early to prepare the boat. The great San Francisco earthquake destroys vast swathes of the city including the small apartment where his parents where sleeping. Following a traumatic three days spent ferrying passengers across the bay to Oakland, he is taken in by friends of his father. The two immigrant families of Italian and Jewish origin use the money earned from the ferrying to start a financial empire and a bank, the Bank of Sonoma. Although Dan Lavette becomes quite rich, he does not stop. He wants to become multimillionaire and has many ideas in mind. He is an entrepreneur and seeks to find his place among the rich businessmen on Nob Hill. He asks for a loan from the larger Seldon Bank in San Francisco, but the owner declines it. During that meeting, Dan meets Jean, the exquisitely beautiful daughter of the owner, and both are smitten with each other. Soon after, they are married, against the will of Jean's mother, who is very segregationist and looks down on immigrants and those of poor pedigree. Dan Lavette grows increasingly wealthy, but his happiness is short-lived. After they have two children, Jean ceases to love him and grows cold to his advances. Dan hired a Chinese bookkeeper, Feng Wo, to assist him at the start of his business dealings, but only receives an invitation for dinner at Wo’s house after several years. Because Jean shares her mother’s distaste for other ethnicities, Dan attends alone. At the dinner, Dan enjoys the company of Wo’s daughter, May Ling, laughing and feeling more at ease than he had since his first days with Jean. After visiting her a few times at the library where she works, Dan falls in love with May Ling. They engage in an affair and they have a child together. So that she may have all of his energies to herself, May Ling wants him to divorce Jean. Dan broaches the idea to Jean, but is flatly declined as divorce is not something the Seldon family participates in. Even after she discovers the affair and has trysts of her own, she will not divorce him and holds onto the marriage as a ploy for leverage. The empire Dan started with his friend, Mark Levy, of the his fishing boats and Levy’s goods store, continues to grow. The Levy and Lavette Company (later L&L Shipping) get into the business of shipping bulk cargo and profit from assisting the Allied cause during the shipping explosion needed during World War I. Sensing the end of the war, Dan convinces Mark to sell the cargo ships. Doing so before the cargo market collapses, the company greatly profits and uses the money to start to a classy department store. Adding to this, the pair diversify by adding luxury cruise liners and building a hotel on Waikiki Beach. They also begin one of the first airlines of the west coast. Impressed with the raging stock market of the late 1920s, the duo issue shares to list their company on the exchange and begin playing the market on margin. This fiscal bubble soon bursts in the crash of 1929 that begins the Great Depression. Many banks close, including The Bank of Sonoma, started by his lifelong Italian friend with the proceeds of the earthquake ferry service. Unable to honor his deposits due to the bank run, his friend dies a heart attack. His Jewish compatriot and business partner, Levy, also dies soon after hearing of his daughters death. Following this tragic news, Dan grows sullen. When May Ling gives him an ultimatum to divorce Jean or lose her and his son, Dan cannot act and May Ling moves to Los Angeles. As the heir to and subsequent chairwoman of the Seldon Bank, Jean calls the loans that are keep Levy and Lavette afloat. Although Jean offers him a position as head of the remnant of the company, Dan cannot accept her handout and refuses. Jean grants his request for a divorce and he signs away his share of their communal assets. Bereft of all his money and torn inside by the emotional destruction of his world, Dan wanders the streets as a vagabond in search of work and even spends three months in prison after fighting off some muggers. When a former employee and boat owner gives him a meal and a job, Dan returns to his first love as a fisherman. Having finally grown up, Dan rises from the depths of his humiliation to seek out May Ling. Venturing to Los Angeles, he meets May Ling and they are finally married. At the close of the story, Dan and Jean’s daughter visits and begins rekindling a relationship with her father.
20390266	/m/02pl110	Flying Solo	Ralph Fletcher	1998-09-21	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Mr. Fabiano is a sixth-grade teacher that calls in sick on April 28. When his class arrives they discover that their substitute teacher has not shown up. The class decides that they will not report this to administration and decide to run the classroom by themselves. The students follow the instructions left by their teacher and all goes fairly smoothly. Or does it ?
20390299	/m/04zz9v3	Spider Boy	Ralph Fletcher	1997-04-14	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Bobby Ballenger is starting a new school a thousand miles from his old home. He moved from Illinois to New Paltz, New York and his interest in spiders has earned him the nickname of Spider Boy from Illinois given to him by the class bully. His pet tarantula has not eaten since the family moved. Bobby keeps a journal where he records interesting facts about spiders and then uses it to record his frustrations and realizations about his new school.
20392472	/m/04zyn63	La Bourse	Honoré de Balzac	1832		 The young painter Hippolyte Schinner falls from a step-ladder while working in his atelier and is knocked unconscious. The noise of his fall alerts two of his neighbours, Adélaïde Leseigneur and her mother Madame de Rouville, who occupy the apartment immediately below. The two women revive the young man and an acquaintance is struck up. Inevitably, the young painter falls in love with Adélaïde and over the following weeks he pays frequent visits to her apartment. There he is always warmly welcomed, but he cannot help noticing the unmistakable signs of poverty – a poverty that the two women are at obvious pains to hide. Hippolyte's suspicions are aroused. The mother and her daughter have different surnames; they are reluctant to reveal anything of their past; and what is Hippolyte to make of the two old friends of the mother, the Comte de Kergarouet and the Chevalier du Halga, who regularly visit her to play cards for money, but who always lose to her as though on purpose? Hippolyte discovers that Madame de Rouville's late husband was a naval captain who died at Batavia from wounds reveived in an engagement with an English vessel. The Comte de Kergarouet, it transpires, is a former comrade of Baron de Rouville. Hippolyte offers to draw a portrait of Monsieur de Rouville, a fading sketch of whom is hanging in the apartment. Two months later, when the finished portrait is hung in Madame de Rouville's apartment, the Comte de Kergarouet offers Hippolyte 500 pistoles to have his own portrait painted in a similar style. Hippolyte, however, suspects that the old man is offering him the price of both portraits while paying for his own, and he declines the offer. Despite his suspicions that the two women make are living in some mysterious and disreputable manner, Hippolyte continues his visits, for he is deeply in love with Adélaïde. One day, as he is leaving the apartment, he realizes that he has left his purse behind; but when he returns and inquires about it, Adélaïde brazenly insists that no such purse has been left in their apartment. The young man suspects he has been robbed by the women and he stops visiting them. Over the following week he pines away. His colleagues seem to confirm his worst suspicions – that Adélaïde is a prostitute and Madame de Rouville her procuress. Even his mother notices that he is out of sorts. But a chance meeting on the stairs outside Adélaïde's apartment is enough to dispel all Hippolyte's suspicions. He decides that he was wrong to ignore the promptings of his heart. That evening he calls on the two women. Madame de Rouville suggests a game of cards. Hippolyte loses, and when he reaches into his pocket for some money, he finds before him a purse which Adélaïde has slipped in front of him without his noticing it: "the poor child had the old one in her hand, and, to keep her countenance, was looking into it for the money to pay her mother. The blood rushed to Hippolyte's heart with such force that he was near fainting. The new purse, substituted for his own, and which contained his fifteen Louis d'or, was worked with gilt beads. The rings and tassels bore witness to Adélaïde's good taste, and she had no doubt spent all her little hoard in ornamenting this pretty piece of work. It was impossible to say with greater delicacy that the painter's gift could only be repaid by some proof of affection." There and then Hipployte asks for Adélaïde's hand in marriage. Meanwhile Hippolyte's mother, having made inquiries about her son's condition and having learned of the whole affair, informs the Comte de Kergarouet of the malicious rumours surrounding the two women. Outraged, he explains to Madame Schinner that he loses intentionally at cards to Madame de Rouville because the Baronne's pride has left him none but these ingenious means of assisting her and her daughter in their poverty. The Comte de Kergarouet and Madame Schinner go round to Madame de Rouville's, and arrive just in time to pronounce a benediction on the young lovers' engagement.
20403881	/m/04_0vls	Inherent Vice	Thomas Pynchon	2009-08-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The setting is Los Angeles during the winter of 1969 and summer of 1970; the arrest and trial of the Manson Family is featured throughout the novel as a current event. Larry "Doc" Sportello, private investigator and "pothead", receives a visit from his former girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth, now having an affair with the real-estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann. Shasta asks Doc to help foil a plot allegedly hatched by Mickey's wife Sloane and her lover, Riggs Warbling, to have Mickey admitted to a mental health institution. Soon afterwards Tariq Khalil asks Doc to find the whereabouts of Glen Charlock, one of Mickey's bodyguards - Tariq claims that Glen owes him money after their time spent together in prison. Doc visits one of Mickey's developments but is knocked unconscious, and awakes to find himself being questioned by his old LAPD nemesis, Detective Christian "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, who informs Doc that Glen Charlock has been shot dead and that Mickey has vanished. Later, Doc is visited by Hope Harlingen, the widow of a musician named Coy Harlingen, who wants Doc to investigate rumours that Coy is still alive. Doc finds Coy in a nightclub, but upon hearing that Doc is investigating Mickey, Coy tells Doc about the Golden Fang, an old schooner suspected of bringing mysterious goods into port, and upon which both Mickey and Shasta are rumoured to have departed. Doc learns that Coy has been working for the government as an informer and agent provocateur, but is allowed no contact with his family. He also discovers that one Puck Beaverton had switched shifts with Glen Charlock on the day of Glen's death, and that Mickey had been working at the time of his disappearance on a plan to atone for his sins as a ruthless entrepreneur. Doc pays a visit to the HQ of Golden Fang Enterprises where he meets Japonica Fenway, a young tearaway whom Doc had returned to her wealthy parents on a previous occasion. Japonica reveals that she has stayed at a clinic named the Chryskylodon Institute. Doc visits the Institute, where he again encounters Coy Harlingen, and deduces that Mickey has been apprehended by persons unknown. Doc is then told that the attack during which Glen Charlock was shot was carried out by a group of vigilantes who are said to do dirty work for the LAPD. Doc then discovers links between Puck Beaverton and a notorious loan shark named Adrian Prussia. After a visit from Trillium Fortnight, a female companion of Puck's, Doc travels to Las Vegas in search of Puck and Trillium 's "three-way" partner, Einar. In Vegas, Doc places a bet with the manager of the Kismet Lounge, one Fabian Fazzo, that Mickey did not fake his own disappearance. Later, Doc believes that he sees Mickey in the company of federal agents, and subsequently hears of Mickey's scheme for a philanthropic housing project in the desert. Doc visits the site and encounters Riggs Warbling, architect of the housing project, who fears that Mickey has been "reprogrammed" and that the development, already abandoned, will be destroyed. Back in Los Angeles, Doc learns that Puck Beaverton and Bigfoot's former policing partner, Vincent Indelicato, were sworn enemies. Adrian Prussia, who was used by the authorities as an unofficial assassin, effectively immune from the law, and who employed Puck, permitted Puck to murder Vincent. Doc visits Adrian, who claims that he is behind the Golden Fang organisation, while Puck contends that Glen was killed deliberately because he was supplying black-power groups with weapons. Doc is handcuffed and about to be given a lethal drug overdose, but escapes and kills both Puck and Adrian. Bigfoot, who has evidently been using Doc to investigate Vincent's death, picks Doc up, but sets him up with a huge quantity of stolen heroin. Doc performs a switch operation in order to hide the drugs and is later contacted by Crocker Fenway (father of Japonica) who acts as an intermediate for the Golden Fang. Doc arranges a handover, his only condition being that Coy is released from all of his obligations and allowed to return to his family. After the handover has taken place, Doc and his lawyer Sauncho hear that the Golden Fang schooner is leaving port. Along with the Coast Guard, they pursue the vessel, and watch as it is abandoned after encountering an enormous surf wave. Sauncho and Doc then decide to place a claim on the schooner. At the end of the novel, Doc receives a payment from Fabian Fazzo in settlement of his bet about Mickey. He also learns that Coy has been reunited with Hope and their child, Amethyst.
20407683	/m/04zy0h3	Fig Pudding	Ralph Fletcher	1995-04-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Cliff is eleven years old and the oldest of six children in his family who live in Ballingsford. As Christmas nears, Cliff's grandmother arrives for a visit. Cliff's baby brother is rushed to the hospital with a severe illness. While he is recovering in the hospital on Christmas Eve, his family finally figure out that the "yidda yadda" he has been asking Santa Claus for is a little ladder like the one used to climb up to the top of a bunk bed. The entire family work together to build Josh a ladder and deliver it on Christmas morning. Later, Cliff's first grade brother Brad, drives his bicycle into an ambulance and dies. The family spends the next Christmas at a resort trying to adjust to the loss of Brad but the trip does not seem to work. Their spirits rise during a New Year's party at Aunt Pat's house. When they arrive at the party Josh accidentally steps into Dad's special fig pudding that they were bringing. Dad removes the shoe, smooths down the pudding and swears the children to secrecy. They all keep a straight face until Uncle Eddie says that the fig pudding is the best ever and asks Dad if he has added some new ingredient. They all laugh when the real story of the shoe is told.
20416001	/m/04zvgsj	The Hour of the Star	Clarice Lispector		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn't seem to understand how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator - edge of despair to edge of despair - and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction, taking readers close to the true mystery of life.
20417182	/m/04_03wy	The World in Winter	Samuel Youd	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story involves a new ice age hitting Europe, British refugees fleeing to Nigeria, and what a later group find when they return. As the story opens, Andrew Leedon, a London-based television documentary producer, is given a new story to research: an Italian scientist, Fratellini, has proposed an imminent fall in solar radiation for the forthcoming few years which may lead to harsher winters. Leedon meets with David Cartwell, a Home Office civil servant and useful source, to see if he can find out more. Cartwell quickly becomes a close friend of Leedon, but also begins an affair with Leedon's wife, Carol. The winter of that year is, as predicted, long and harsh, but by January is it becoming clear to insiders that the solar downturn is worse than Fratellini had calculated and no upturn is in sight. By March, food stocks are becoming dangerously low, rationing has been imposed and the Government imposes martial law. Those in the know, including Andrew's estranged wife, sell up and move south to the tropics and countries such as Nigeria. Leedon stays behind, as inner London is finally cordoned off from the rest of the UK to protect the seat of power – an area called the London Pale – as the rest of the country is abandoned to starvation and barbarism. Finally Leedon is persuaded both by Carol and by David Cartwell to exit the country while safe passage is still possible. Taking with him Cartwell's wife Madeleine, he moves to Lagos in Nigeria, finding that the tables have now turned – white refugees fleeing from the ice-bound northern countries are living in slums, unemployed or with only menial jobs, and penniless, as African governments have withdrawn recognition of currencies such as Sterling and no longer recognize the British Government, with reason, as it no longer exercises sovereignty over its own land. A ray of hope arrives for Leedon as Abonitu, a young Nigerian whom Leedon had treated with kindness and generosity one evening in London, finds him and in turn helps him and Madeleine out of the slum. Abonitu plans a reconnaissance expedition back to Britain.
20419935	/m/05241w0	Uncle Daddy	Ralph Fletcher	2001-04-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Rivers's father abandoned his wife and son when the son is three years old, he goes out to get a pizza and does not come back. His mother's uncle moves in and becomes "Uncle Daddy". Rivers is living a fairly typical life for a nine year old boy when his father returns after a six year absence. The return of Rivers's father threatens to tear the family apart until Uncle Daddy suffers a near fatal heart attack. Rivers and his parents come together to support Uncle Daddy.
20424475	/m/04zvlqb	Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel				 The graphic novel leaps between the tale of a prince in the 9th century and another prince in the 13th century whose destinies are linked by a prophecy. The graphic novel begins with Guiv, a prince who had attempted to kill his brother Layth, fleeing the city of Marv after escaping death by drowning from Layth's guards. The story then jumps to a young woman, Shirin, who flees the city of Marv in the 13th century in an attempt to escape her father. She soon meets up with Ferdos, a young man who is connected to Guiv through a prophecy. What follows are two separate adventures which lead both princes to their destinies. fr:Prince of Persia (bande dessinée) pt:Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel
20426615	/m/04_0hs1	Came Back to Show You I Could Fly	Robin Klein	1991-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel begins with shy and lonely 11-year-old Seymour Kerley, staying at an acquaintance of his mother's for the summer holidays. Seymour's parents have broken up and arguing over custody of him. When Seymour was staying with his father, an alcoholic, the latter had drunkenly threatened to take Seymour away interstate. Although Seymour himself thought this was a shallow threat, as his father had little money and was often jobless, his mother took him away to stay at Victoria Road with Thelma. Thelma is a woman who Seymour's mother had formed a "casual and tenuous acquaintance". Thelma is meticulous and tart. At her house Seymour is bored and unhappy. During the day, while Thelma is at work, Seymour is not allowed to open the door, or leave the house, because of his mother's fear that his father might come and take him away. However, after a few days, Seymour climbs over the back gate and walks to the nearby shops. Seymour goes in a few shops then to the park. At the park a group of children tease him. Not knowing how to defend himself, Seymour runs away. The children chase him. Seymour gets lost, and can't find his back gate. He goes through a gate which he guesses is his, but it is not. Instead he meets a young girl: Angie. Angie is in her late teens, and Seymour describes her a beautiful angel. Seymour and Angie become friends, and Angie takes him on outings to the horse races, shops and a restaurant. Seymour has faint suspicions about Angie, but refuses to believe them. One day, Seymour finds Angie in her flat acting "peculiar" and looking sick. Seymour goes back to Thelma's house and calls Angie's sister, Lynne, whom he met previously. Lynne comes over and calls her father, who drives up to Angie's flat and takes Angie away. Several days later, Seymour decides to go to Angie's flat and clean it for when she comes home. However, Seymour finds that it has already been cleaned and almost everything is packed away. Lynne finds Seymour in the flat and tells Seymour Angie won't be coming back, and reveals that Angie has been taking drugs for nearly five years. Lynne describes how Angie has promised, many times, to her parents that she will go to rehab, and that Angie's boyfriend James, is in jail. Angie is going to Rankin House temporarily, a rehabilitation center nearby, then Lakeview, another center. While Angie is at Rankin House, Seymour decides to go see her to give her back her doll that that was left at the flat. Seymour gets to Rankin House and finds Angie, who desperately pretends she has been sick with Pleurisy and is going to be back soon. Angie and Seymour begin to fight, but Seymour, weary of her lies, gives her back her doll and leaves. The rest of the novel is a letter from Angie. In the letter Angie apologizes to Seymour and says that she is at Lakeview, pregnant and going to have her baby soon, and when she gets out she and the baby will live with her parents for a while. In the postscript there is a letter from Seymour in reply to Angie. He describes in the letter that he likes Carrucan, the place where he and his mother have moved to, and that his father came to visit him and got a job as a truck driver. Seymour says he has made a friend called Martin and is learning to swim, and that when Angie gets out of Lakeview and goes to live with her parents he suggests they go out to places with her baby.
20427915	/m/04_0xhm	Song of Kali	Dan Simmons			 Robert Luzcak is sent by the magazine he works for to Calcutta to locate recently written poetry alleged to have been written by a poet, M. Das, who has been thought dead for the last eight years. He travels there with his Indian wife and their infant child. On arriving, he is met by Krishna, a local intellectual who claims to have been asked to assist them by a mutual friend. The next day he meets with the local writers guild who were the source of the few bits of poetry that made their way to America. When he asks to meet Das, he is told that it is out of the question. Robert considers leaving Calcutta at this point, his duty done, but feels that something is missing and that he doesn't have enough material for an interesting article at this point. The night before he and his family are to leave, Krishna returns and takes Robert to a man who can provide him with information relevant to his story. The man tells how he and a friend had tried to join a religious secret society dedicated to Kali, a Hindu goddess associated with death and destruction. One of the prerequisites was for each initiate to bring a corpse to a secret temple, there to be laid at the feet of a statue of Kali. This man's corpse, bloated and decayed after being dredged from the river is chosen by Kali and vivified by her, becoming animated. The corpse is that of the poet, Das. Armed with this tale, Robert again insists on the writers guild allowing him to see Das. This time they agree. He is brought to the poet, who seems to be in the advanced stages of leprosy. Das seems to corroborate the story of his return from death, but Robert again refuses to believe it. Robert is given an extensive collection of Das's poetry, which is very different from his earlier work, describing dark, mystical, grotesque, and apocalyptic happenings. He is asked by Das to bring him books of poetry. Becoming concerned at the eerie, and sometimes frightening, events that he has experienced, Robert attempts to send his wife and child home, but they are unable to get a flight. Concealing a gun (given to him previously by Krishna) in one of the books he has bought for Das, he returns to the poet. He leaves the books and goes, but, as he exits the house, hears two gunshots. Das is dead. Robert is captured by guards and knocked unconscious. He awakens being taken somewhere in the back of a truck, but manages to escape, with Krishna's help. He returns to the hotel, to find that their child has been kidnapped. After a couple of days of dead-end leads, a couple is caught trying to smuggle jewels hidden within the child's body. With their child dead, Robert and his wife return to America. Robert decides to destroy the poetry, and, gradually, their relationship returns to normal. Whispers can still be heard, though, of the Song of Kali, the condition of humanity dominated by hatred and violence, perfectly embodied by the squalor and chaos of Calcutta.
20428844	/m/04z_mgn	An Indecent Obsession				 To the battle-broken soldiers in her care, nurse Honour Langtry is a precious, adored reminder of the world before the war. Then Michael Wilson arrives under a cloud of mystery and shame to change everything. A damaged and decorated hero, a man of secrets and silent pain, soon he alone possesses Honour's selfless heart&ndash;inciting tense and volatile passions that can only lead to jealousy, violence, and death.
20450621	/m/04zvgxn	The Missing Piece	Shel Silverstein	1976	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story centers on a circular animal-like creature that is missing a wedge-shaped piece of itself. It doesn’t like this, and sets out to find its missing piece, singing: Oh, I'm lookin' for my missin' piece I'm lookin' for my missin' piece Hi-dee-ho, here I go lookin' for my missin' piece It starts out on a grand adventure searching for the perfect piece to complete itself, while singing and enjoying the scenery. But after the circle finally finds the exact-sized wedge that fits it, it begins to realize that it can no longer do the things it used to enjoy doing, like singing or rolling slowly enough to enjoy the company of a worm or butterfly. It decides that it was happier when searching for the missing piece than actually having it. So it gently puts the piece down, and continues searching happily.
20455852	/m/0414zd9	Ming Lo Moves the Mountain				 A mountain towers over Ming Lo and his wife. Ming Lo's wife tells Ming Lo that he must move the mountain. When the Mings get further advice, they do a dance to move the mountain. After a few hours, the mountain moves.
20465247	/m/04zvxrq	Candyfloss				 Flora "Floss" Barnes' mother and father split up when she was little and she wishes they'd get back together because she doesn't like her stepfather, Steve, and her little half brother Tiger. The book opens on Floss's birthday, when her mum and stepfather take her to TGI Friday's, and tell her that they are going to Australia for six months because of Steve's job. Floss wants to go with them, but she doesn't want to leave her father, cheerful and fun Charlie, who runs his own cafe which is quickly going out of business. Floss convinces her mother that she can live with her dad, while they are in Australia. Floss has a tough time getting used to life without her mother since her dad is not used to taking care of Floss seven days a week and she is not used to his home seven days a week, either. Floss's school uniforms get dirtier as her father is not used to washing and ironing them, but her teacher, Mrs. Horsefield, helps her out, as Floss is one of her personal favorite students. The father and daughter learn to cope and meet Rose, a very caring woman who works at a fair. After she leaves (traveling with the fair), they keep an eye out for her fair. Meanwhile, a regular customer at the cafe (Billy the Chip) puts money on a horse that Floss selects and he wins money on the horse! After losing the cafe and the flat, Billy the Chip mentions he is going to Australia to visit his son for one month and needs Floss and her father to live in his house while Charlie works in Billy's chip van. However, one day, a group of "yobbos"(as charlie calls them) fight roses son saul and when he attempts to stop the fistfight, the van catches on fire with Floss is stuck inside. Charlie fights his way through the fire and rescues her, while in the process burning his hands. Floss also has a best friend, Rhianon who isn't acting much of a friend, making fun of her and her father and starting cruel rumors about her. Floss finds a new friend, Susan, who is interested in all her favorite things. When the fair comes back in town, Rose and Charlie consider dating, and Floss finds out both are interested in each other and get along great while Rose lets Floss help her in the candyfloss stall. Later, Susan goes to stay in her house in France and says farewell to Floss at the beginning of summer. The book closes with Floss dying her hair pink (like Candy Floss).
20468038	/m/04zxgg0	Compass in the Blood		2001	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It tells the story of Dee Armstrong, a freshman journalism student at the University of Pittsburgh, who is inspired to investigate one of the city's most notorious crimes. In 1902 Kate Soffel, the wife of the warden of the Allegheny County Jail, conducted an adulterous affair with a prisoner, Ed Biddle, and helped him and his brother Jack in a daring jailbreak.
20475905	/m/04_0cw8	Moscow Rules	Daniel Silva	2008	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 New terror calls Gabriel Allon away from his wife Chiara and blissful honeymoon in Italy. Boris Ostrovsky, editor of the independent Moskovsky Gazeta, claims to have exclusive information about imminent terror threats to the West and Israel but only dares entrust his knowledge with the now-famous Gabriel Allon. However, Ostrovsky’s sudden assassination cuts short his message and leaves intelligence officers within the Israeli-based Office to guess at the scope of the purported threat against their country. Ostrovsky’s death, accompanied by the recent murders of two other journalists from the Gazeta, seems to indicate that his message was both urgent and true. Gabriel’s drive to uncover this terror threat leads him to Russia, where he must play by a new set of rules that challenge even his abilities as Israel’s top intelligence fieldworker. His encounter with Olga Sukhova, also of the Gazeta, confirms his suspicions that a Russian arms dealer has begun trafficking with well-known terror groups. Olga reveals her source to be Elena Kharkov, the wife of alleged arms dealer Ivan Kharkov—an oligarch with strong ties to both the old and new Kremlin governments. Gabriel saves himself and Olga from an assassination attempt but, in so doing, arouses the suspicion of the FSB, Russia’s security department. Only the quick and heavy-handed negotiations of the Office secure Gabriel’s life and freedom. Gabriel, however, cannot be dissuaded from continuing his investigation. Upon learning of Elena Kharkov’s fondness for Mary Cassatt’s paintings, Gabriel enlists the help of art specialist and fieldworker Sarah Bancroft in arranging a meeting with Elena. He then forges a Cassatt painting and has Sarah represent it as a tender reflection of her childhood to Elena. After close inspection, Elena concludes that the painting is both a fraud and a pretence for meeting Sarah. The unexpected presence of Ivan prevents Elena from sharing her knowledge, and Gabriel’s team must then follow the Russian aristocrat to France. When Sarah surprises Elena at a chic San Tropez restaurant, Elena realizes that she must seize this opportunity to assuage her conscience and potentially save thousands of lives. She entrusts herself to Gabriel’s team, informs them of Ivan’s underhanded dealings, offers to turn over his business records, and asks for help in ‘defecting’ from both her husband and her country’s corruption. She then travels to Russia with Gabriel’s entourage and gathers the sensitive financial information required to prove her husband’s complicity to the arms trafficking. The task runs afoul, however, when Ivan’s chief of personal security, Arkady Medvedev interrupts the operation and takes Elena, and later Gabriel, hostage. At a vast countryside warehouse filled with weapons, Arkady proudly demonstrates the breadth and shamelessness of Ivan’s trafficking. Yet, he is frustrated in his ability to get either Elena or Gabriel to reveal the whereabouts of Ivan and Elena’s twin children. Arkady passes Gabriel on to Grigori Bulganov, an FSB intelligence director, with instructions for Gabriel’s murder. Gabriel is surprised to discover that Grigori was his interrogator in his previous detention with the FSB, and his astonishment grows as Grigori reveals his duplicity as both an agent for and, secretly, against Ivan Kharkov and the corruption that he represents. Grigori arms and then returns a supposedly conciliatory Gabriel to Arkady. When Arkady lets down his guard, Grigori and Gabriel kill him and his guards and then free Elena. The three quickly return to Moscow to once again retrieve Ivan’s financial documents and to rescue Olga; they then proceed to the Ukraine, freedom, and new lives. Because of the efforts of these four people, governments worldwide avert imminent terror attacks and freeze Ivan Kharkov’s business ventures. The U.S. government secrets away Elena and her children, while the UK shelters Olga Sukhova and Grigori Bulganov; the latter two collaborate upon and publish an exhaustive account of Ivan’s dealings. Their work overtly implicates the collusion of Russia’s government, which denies ties to Ivan while openly harboring him. Gabriel portends to his colleague Ari Shamron that Ivan’s days are numbered. However, a serious eye injury (a battle scar from his most recent trip to Russia) prevents Gabriel from pursuing Ivan any further. Indeed, Gabriel fears that his profession as an art restorer is impossible. Yet, time and skilled medical attention allow Gabriel the promise of full recovery—and continued work both as an artist and as a secret agent.
20476560	/m/04z_nh7	Skim				 Skim is a "not-slim" student at an all-girls catholic school. She is known as a goth, and practices Wicca. When popular girl Katie Matthews gets dumped by her athlete boyfriend, who days later kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. With the school counselors breathing down her neck and the popular clique (including Katie's best friend Julie Peters) forming a new club in its wake, Skim finds herself in the crosshairs, deepening her "depression". And if things cannot get more complicated, Skim starts to fall for an equally quirky teacher.
20483341	/m/04_04lz	The Keep	Jennifer Egan		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Danny is an aging hipster in New York City who has fallen on hard times. He doesn't have a real career and he has a habit of burning bridges with old friends. His cousin Howard presents him with an opportunity to come to eastern Europe and help convert an old castle into an alternative resort. Danny has a troubled relationship with Howard. Many years before, when they were children, he cruelly left Howard stranded deep in a cave for days, traumatizing him badly, and ruining much of his childhood. But Danny is desperate for money so he decides to work for Howard, and travels to the castle, severing his relationships with his New York world. He plunges himself into the strange environment of the castle and puts himself at the mercy of the cousin he betrayed many years before. It soon becomes clear that this castle is a deeply strange place with a dark history that isn't entirely finished. It has secret passages, bizarre inhabitants, and seems to operate by different rules from the outside world. Danny, cut off from his familiar New York world, is unsure whether the castle is haunted or his own perceptions are becoming increasingly distorted. He thinks that his cousin may be out to get him and the castle may be a giant trap. When Danny attempts to escape from the castle he encounters a series of mysterious roadblocks. No matter what he does, fate seems to be directing Danny back to the castle, and towards a final confrontation with his cousin Howard. Together, they end up trapped deep within the bowels of the castle, where they are forced to re-enact the traumas of childhood. Together they must figure out a way to escape and survive.
20483584	/m/04_0htf	Long Shadows	Erin Hunter	2008-11-25	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When Sol persuades almost all of ShadowClan to give up belief in StarClan, Tawnypelt takes her kits Flamepaw, Tigerpaw, and Dawnpaw to ThunderClan, hoping to find refuge there until Blackstar and ShadowClan see the light and return to believing in StarClan. In hope of helping ShadowClan, Raggedstar and Runningnose beg Jaypaw to help. Jaypaw, along with Tigerpaw, Flamepaw, Dawnpaw, Hollyleaf and Lionblaze, creates a fake sign from StarClan to show Blackstar StarClan is real. Blackstar is still not convinced until the fake sign turns real when Raggedstar and Runningnose come to tell Blackstar to get rid of Sol and to still believe in StarClan. Blackstar is convinced and tells his Clan. Soon Tawnypelt takes her kits back to ShadowClan, but greencough breaks out and Millie and Briarkit (one of Millie's and Graystripe's kits) are the first victims. Soon, the ThunderClan leader, Firestar, catches the sickness as well. The disease continues to spread through the Clan and Firestar comes up with the idea to temporarily shelter the sick cats in the abandoned Twoleg nest, then later loses his sixth life. The Clan is short of catmint: in the battle with WindClan, cats trampled and killed the supply. Jaypaw has a dream telling where there is a fresh supply: in WindClan territory. However, in one dream, he somehow goes back to the time of Fallen Leaves' tribe as a young sharpclaw (warrior) called Jay's Wing. The Tribe is being threatened by Twoleg expansion and votes to move to the mountains. Jaypaw suddenly realizes that this Tribe becomes the Tribe of Rushing Water and they originated from the Clan's current lake home. When he returns to the Clans, he asks Lionblaze to fetch the catmint. Lionblaze refuses because of dreams where he kills Heatherpaw in the tunnels, but as the greencough gets worse, he finally goes. Lionblaze gets the catmint and gives it to Jaypaw, but not without a tension-filled encounter with Heatherpaw, now called Heathertail. Soon the Clan is healed and Jaypaw finally receives his full medicine cat name, Jayfeather. Then, during a storm, the camp catches fire. Jayfeather, Lionblaze, Hollyleaf, and Squirrelflight are trapped. Squirrelflight makes it through the flames and drags a stick through in an attempt to save her kits, but needs some help. Ashfur leaps in and drags it all the way through. Just as Lionblaze leaps on, though, Ashfur blocks the way. Squirrelflight begs him to let them through, but Ashfur tells her and the other three that he never forgave her after she left him for Brambleclaw. He also reveals that he was the one who helped Hawkfrost set the trap for Firestar to show her the pain of losing a loved one as he had lost her. He said that he will now kill her kits in another attempt to hurt her. Squirrelflight then reveals a crucial secret: that he cannot hurt her that way because they are not her kits. She explains how she kept the secret from Brambleclaw and the whole of ThunderClan. Ashfur lets them live, but he threatens to tell her secret, and she is shocked that Ashfur would betray her like this. Knowing this, Jayfeather, Hollyleaf and Lionblaze realize they are not the Three since they are not the kin of Firestar. The fire burns out and all the cats help get the camp set up again. Three days before the Gathering, Ashfur asks Firestar if he can go. Hollyleaf Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Squirrelflight are worried that he is going to publicly announce their secret. Between then and the day of the Gathering, the three warn Ashfur that he will regret it if he reveals the secret. Although he is frightened, he refuses to listen to them. Right before the Gathering, the patrol of warriors going notices that both Ashfur and Squirrelflight are missing. Squirrelflight later shows up, wet and muddy, and explains that she was looking for herbs for Leafpool by the border near ShadowClan and fell into the stream. On the way to the Gathering, they see Ashfur's body lying in the WindClan stream as if he had drowned. They take him back to camp and set him for vigil. Leafpool notices a slit in his neck, suggesting he was murdered. After the Gathering, Firestar announces that Ashfur's death was unknown and suspects a cat from ThunderClan may have killed him, and the three see Squirrelflight looking scared and holding her breath. The three vow to keep the recent events involving them, Squirrelflight, and Ashfur a secret.
20487280	/m/04zykr1	Tommy Trouble and the Magic Marble	Ralph Fletcher	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Tommy who loves collecting needs ten dollars to buy a magic marble from another boy. He tries to pick flowers from his mother's prize rose garden to sell to a neighbor and he tries to trade his little brothers snake. Tommy finally decides that the magic marble is not worth the trouble.
20491389	/m/04zxvhs	Joker				 Jonny Frost, a low-level thug, is sent to Arkham Asylum to pick up the Joker. Joker immediately takes a liking to Frost, using him as a chauffeur. Frost drives the Joker to the lair of Killer Croc. The three go to the "Grin and Bare It" strip bar, which was formerly owned by the Joker. With the help of Harley Quinn, the Joker kills the new owner and asks the shocked audience if they are willing to help him take his city back. Next morning, the Joker robs a bank and coaxes the Penguin (mockingly referred to as "Abner") to invest the stolen money. The Joker embarks on a killing spree, murdering many thugs who stole his money, turf, and bizarre sense of reputation. Informed by the Penguin that Harvey Dent, a crime boss with a split personality, is evading a talk with him, the Joker trashes a phone, kills a goon, and then sets the "Grin and Bare It" on fire. Meanwhile, Frost is kidnapped by Dent, who warns Frost the Joker will kill him. Subsequently, Frost is late to the Joker's meeting with the Riddler, a disabled weapons dealer. They exchange a briefcase, and the Joker leaves. Once on the road, the Joker's crew is shot at by off-duty cops hired by Dent, and Frost saves the Joker's life in the scuffle. Joker embarks on a turf war against Dent, prompting him to meet with Joker. At the meeting, Joker brings the briefcase he got from the Riddler. Joker says he has learned Dent has two wives, and threatens to use the contents of the briefcase as leverage against him. The meeting becomes hostile, and Joker murders all of Dent's men. After helping Frost get his ex-wife back from Dent, Joker rapes her. He says this makes them even, since Frost "cheated" on the Joker by not revealing his own meeting with Dent. Later, Harvey paints a bat on a spotlight, and pleads with Batman to stop Joker. When Joker and Frost return to the apartment building they reside in, they find the window shattered and flee to Croc's lair. However, Batman has already subdued Croc and his gang. In a final attempt to escape, Joker and Frost flee to a nearby bridge. They find Batman in wait, and Joker, being provoked by Batman's tauntings, shoots Frost in the chin. Joker and Batman fight as Frost climbs over the edge of the bridge and falls.
20492634	/m/04zy9ph	Marshfield Dreams	Ralph Fletcher	2005-01-01		 Each short chapter tells of an incident growing up in a large family on Acorn Street in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Ralph was the oldest of nine children. Some of the stories told were Ralph being informed of his mother's pregnancy by a nosy classmate, his mother's game called "snuck up the rug" where the whole family got down and pulled dirt from the carpets. Other stories include his father bringing home a pet chicken for each child and his great-grandmother who buried the kids' old teeth in the garden.
20496234	/m/04_06dq	Camera Works: Photography and the Twentieth-Century Word	Michael North	2005		 The study is divided into three major sections. An introduction gives a brief history of the emergence of mechanically recorded media in the middle to late nineteenth century, advances in these technologies in the early twentieth century, and their formal and historical significance for modern writing of the same period. Focusing on photography, which North shows functions as a kind of "modern writing" itself, the author suggests that "perhaps the common beginning of modernism in literature and the arts is to be found in the recording technologies that brought the whole relationship of word, sound, and image into doubt." Three chapters on little magazines examine in more detail debates on the artistic status of both photography and early silent film, the representational status of the new media in general, and what North terms the "crisis of sound" beginning in 1927 with the introduction of sound technologies into the silent cinema. Four chapters on individual American authors with a conclusion apply certain concepts within these debates on the new media to particular works of literature both familiar and relatively obscure in order to, as North states, "pose a significant test for the ideas proposed" in his book. In Chapter One, North examines debates in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work regarding the early artistic status of photography, the influential role of Stieglitz himself in these debates, and a series of critical connections and inconsistencies represented by the magazine toward the new medium of photography through articles contributed by Roland Rood, Sadakichi Hartmann, and Stieglitz himself, among others. One of the more hotly contested questions debated between the contributors to Camera Work was whether photography was even art or documentary, and whether the photographic image itself should be considered realistic or representational. Reprinting photographs published in the magazine, North discusses Pablo Picasso's photography and its impact on the production of his paintings, most specifically in the case of The Reservoir (1909), and Marcel Duchamp's "readymades," which were considered by the artist to be a form of photography, or "snapshot." Finally, North concludes that Stieglitz and his magazine Camera Work only suggested some of the more fundamental questions regarding the new media and its impact on literature, while other magazines would carry out the full implications of those questions in the coming years. Chapter Two focuses on the avant-garde literary magazine transition, its founding editor Eugene Jolas, and early silent cinema in order to show the relationship between international modernism and the movies. 1927, when this magazine began publication, was also the year that sound was introduced into film technology, which North regards as a crisis for the avant-garde. Hostile to sound from the beginning, in fact, many argued with Antonin Artaud that it violated the artistic unity and autonomy of cinema as a purely visual medium. This "crisis of sound," and the anxiety of contamination it represents, played an important role in the aesthetic project of transition, and so North examines the experimental poetry of Jolas published in the magazine, particularly in terms of its "celebrated Revolution of the Word," along with the "reading machines" of Bob Brown in order to locate points where literature and poetry themselves were attempting to achieve a kind of visuality akin to cinema and photography, suggesting that boundaries between "word, sound, and image," and between the old and new media, were not nearly as definitive as some might have wanted to believe. In Chapter Three, North considers Close Up, the European film magazine published in Switzerland "with the more-or-less constant assistance of H.D." from 1927 to 1933. Noting the "considerable convergence of the literary world and the no longer quite so new medium of the movies" by 1927, North furthers his examination of international modernism's struggle with sound by pursuing the introduction of sound technology into silent cinema as a revealing moment in the history of globalization. Hollywood's attempts to cope with "the foreign problem," or the fact that 9/10ths of the world's population in 1927 did not speak English, often by shooting films in five different languages, are contrasted with utopian strategies advanced by the avant-garde that attempted to bring about an international film culture of the future based on global multilingualism or even Esperanto. In Chapter Two, North argued that sound came just as critics were raising silent film to the status of art, and here he shows how these two instances of perceived contamination, sound as intruder into the autonomous visuality of film and sound as divisive force in the international medium of the eye, often inflected or contradicted one another in the pages of the magazine. North concludes by stating: "Close Up registers an awareness in modernism of the strangeness opened up within ordinary experience by the new media, which, instead of establishing a new universal language, had exposed the inherent unfamiliarity of languages long in use." The third and final section of Camera Works extends North's general theoretical framework while applying it directly to several texts by select modernist American writers, examining ways in which F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, John Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy, W.E.B. Dubois's The Souls of Black Folk, James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and the novels, essays, and unpublished journalism of Ernest Hemingway negotiated visual elements stylistically and as subject of their narratives and, according to North, how these negotiations register a response to writing's confrontation with the new media, their technologies of mechanical recording and reproduction, and, finally, modernism's own crisis of representation. From Fitzgerald, spectatorship, and the movies to Johnson, lynchings, and the visual production of race, North argues that writers and artists responded to the new media with "mistrust," apprehension, and even a kind of "covert hatred," while simultaneously being inspired and challenged by them.
20505716	/m/04z_jyw	Royal Exile	Fiona McIntosh	2008-09-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Royal Exile begins with the capture of Barronel at the hands of Loethar, a barbarian warlord from the Likurian Steppes, who has his sights set on the illusive realm of Penraven. Fearful, now that its neighbours have been captured, King Brennus of Penraven sees to the birth of his daughter, to whom he declares deceased. Legate Regor De Vis, and his twin sons Corbel and Gavriel are called to bare witness to Brennus’ cunning plan. Choosing Corbel to whisk away his ‘deceased’ daughter, the task of protecting Brennus’ only ‘true’ son Leonel is given to Gavriel, who accepts with hesitance. With Loethar descending upon Penraven, both Regor De Vis and King Brennus are slain. Freath, Queen Iselda’s aide, betrays the Valisar family, and in turn is granted ownership of his Queen. Loethar takes a liking to Piven, the Valisar’s adopted son, likening him to an animal. Corbel meets with the mysterious Sergius, before he descends into the wonders of magic. His twin brother Gavriel finds solitude within the secret passageways within Penraven with the young heir at his side. Queen Iselda is forced to watch Loethar eat her husband’s remains, before she is later killed. Meanwhile, Loethar has been gathering the Vested, people marked with special abilities. Freath uses his newly gained position to claim two Vested, of which he chooses Clovis and Kirin. Loethar becomes engaged to Valya, much to his mother’s distaste, though he is quick to remind Dara Negev, that it was Valya’s brain which allowed him to capture Penraven. It is later revealed that Freath is working with Genrie, a household servant and unrequited love of Gavriel, in an attempt of stopping Loethar, and finding the mysterious Aegis, who is said to be bonded with the Valisar heir who is granted the power of coercion. Gavriel and Leo escape Penraven and find themselves in the aide of Lily and her father, who is suffering from leprosy. Later, Lily joins the pair as they search to seek out Kilt Faris, a highwayman and renegade, who had been given aide by Brennus in order of taking Leo under his wing if Penraven would ever fall. Gavriel is later separated from Leo and finds himself in the care of Elka, though it is clear that he has no memories of who he really is, stating his name to be that of his father’s, “Regor.” Genrie is later killed to prove that Freath is loyal to Loethar, and thus protecting her lover. Leo arrives at the Stone of Truth to pledge his vow to Cyrena, and learns the truth of his sister. Leo is granted the power he needs to stop Loethar for good.
20508008	/m/04zwsvc	Cover Up	John Feinstein	2007-08-14	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Stevie Thomas is a fourteen-year-old sports fanatic who has saved a player from blackmailing at the Final Four. He has also proved that a kidnapping was actually a hoax. After that, he and his partner, Susan Carol were hired by USTV to do a show. Three months later, he was fired because he “didn’t have enough sizzle”. This left Susan Carol furious. He flies to Indianapolis to work as a journalist for the Super Bowl. When he lands at the airport, he meets Sean McManus who hires him to work for CBS during the week. On Tuesday, he goes to the Hoosier Dome, which is a massive building. His story features the Ravens' equipment guy, Darin Kerns. Kerns used to play with the Dreams’ star quarterback Eddie Brennan in high school. Stevie also gets some one-on-one time with Brennan for the story of them playing together. While he is sleeping in his hotel room, he gets a call from Susan Carol saying that she wants to talk to him right now. She says that she was at a party and a doctor who worked with the Dreams came up to her and started talking to her. He was drunk and was trying to impress her. He tells her that five offensive linemen tested positive for HGH, or human growth hormone, and that it was being covered up so the players don’t get suspended. They decide that they have to try to write the story and alert the public about it. Stevie goes back to the Hoosier Dome the next morning. CBS decides to film his story and have Darin Kerns and Eddie Brennan talk about their experience together. After the interview, Stevie talks to Eddie about the drug tests but doesn’t get much information other than Eddie freaking out that he knew. After that, Bobby Kelleher, his mentor in journalism, sets him up with an interview with Steve Bisciotti, the Ravens owner. That night, there is a huge NFL party that everyone is going to attend. When he goes there he sees Bobby Kelleher arguing with Don Meeker, the Dreams owner. Later, Susan Carol pretends to admire him and gets his cell phone number. The next morning, they get a full conversation with Eddie, who tells them about the drug tests. He also tells them that Meeker is the one covering up the test results so the players don’t get suspended. Susan Carol calls Dr. Snow, the drunk doctor, and says she wants to talk. He said to go to a YMCA where they can talk. There, they try to blackmail him to get test results. He says that he will give them test results at a mall only if there are no adults around. Both Stevie and Susan Carol are suspicious of a trap. They go to the mall and Dr. Snow leads them past the empty theater where Don Meeker’s bodyguards grab them and hold them hostage. As Snow is about to leave, Darin Kerns and two security men rush in and save them. It turns out that Stevie had put his cell phone on speaker and on the other line was Eddie. He heard them and called Kerns. Eddie introduces Stevie and Susan Carol to Bob Arciero, an orthopedic surgeon for the Dreams. Arciero, unlike Dr. Snow, is honest and is not part of the cover up. He gets them the drug test documents. With the documents at hand, Stevie and Susan Carol write the story. They talk to the newspaper lawyers, who say they need comments from the Commissioner Goodell and Don Meeker. Godell and comments on launching an investigation and punishing anyone involved. Meeker, after hearing two paragraphs of the story, goes on a profane tirade. They send the quotes and the story and go out to eat. However, they don’t come back in time and are surrounded by cameras as soon as they step in the hotel. Don calls them the next day to tell them that he was pegged as the source and that he’s not starting. Meeker is about to go on CBS and USTV to lie and try to convince people he did nothing wrong. In the process, he slanders Susan Carol on USTV. After Meeker’s interview on USTV, he had to do another one on CBS. There, Jim Nantz doesn't let Meeker get away with his story. This angers Meeker, who decides to pick on Susan Carol again after the interview. The game starts, and the backup quarterback, instead of Brennan, is playing for the Dreams. Pretty soon the Dreams fall into a hole. Eddie starts the second half and steers his team to a comeback. While the game is going on, Tal Vincent lets it slip that Mike Shupe was the one who was feeding Meeker information. Jamie Whitsitt, who is a singer and was Stevie's replacement on USTV, leads them into the studio and gives them a tape. He had left it on record while Don Meeker and Mike Shupe were having their conversation. It has Meeker clearly saying that he bribed the doctors to keep quiet. After this, Eddie and the Dreams win the Super Bowl on a miracle play. Stevie proves that Don Meeker was covering up and that the owners could vote to force Meeker to sell the team.
20509867	/m/052147n	Into the Darkness	Harry Turtledove			 War breaks out in Derlavai a generation or two after the Six Years war. Most of the countries that declare war on Algarve do so only half-heartedly, allowing the Algarvians to use that reluctancy to their advantage. The Algarvians split Forthweg with Unkerlant and then overrun Valmiera, Jelgava, and Sibiu, while Unkerlant wrests away part of Zuwayza. Lagoas joins the war when Sibiu is taken. The book ends when the Algarvians "get the drop on" the Unkerlanters in Forthweg (who were plotting to attack them first). Kuusamo, meanwhile, tries to seize Obuda from Gyongyos but fails. Yanina succeeds in gaining control of the Land of the Ice People.
20509942	/m/0524qtp	Darkness Descending	Harry Turtledove			 Algarve starts killing Kaunians as their advance toward Cottbus starts to stall, which both causes Kuusamo to enter the war and Unkerlant to start killing its own peasants for magical power, and the Algarvians are halted by mud, winter, Unkerlanter behemoths with snowshoes, and logistics. Tealdo is killed in Thalfang, just outside of Cottbus, and Unkerlant pushes back into the northwest corner of Grelz. Kaunians are herded into ghettos in Forthweg's cities and larger towns. Pekka's first "divergent" series is interrupted by the Algarvian magical blitz on Yliharma. Gyongyos attacks Unkerlant in the west and pushes through the mountains through which the border passes. Lagoas invades the Land of the Ice People.
20510022	/m/05200r0	Through the Darkness	Harry Turtledove			 Algarve renews an assault in the south of Unkerlant toward the Mamming Hills, which is Unkerlant's source of cinnabar, leading to the mammoth Battle of Sulingen. Kaunian refugees begin showing up in Zuwayza, which takes them in; other Kaunians get away from a caravan in Valmiera and come to the attention of Skarnu and his friends (who had blown up the caravan to disrupt the Algarvians) or are set loose in a Lagoan raid on a camp in Valmiera. Leofsig is killed by Sidroc, who joins the Plegmund's Brigade. Istvan and his squad accidentally eat goat stew in a raid on a camp in Unkerlant's western forest and are purified by their captain. The Algarvians kill Kaunians in the Land of the Ice People in an attempt to use magic against the Lagoans, but the magic from the killed Kaunians slaughters the Algarvian army instead, and Algarve is forced to withdraw from the continent completely, leaving it to the Lagoans. The wear on the Algarvians is showing as they start to rely more on Sibians, Forthwegians, and the unreliable Yaninans to keep up the fight against Unkerlant. The Battle of Sulingen is won by the Unkerlanters that winter, with Trasone dying in the very last scene in the book. Algarve is on the way to losing the war. The Naantali Project starts, and the Kuusamans take Obuda.
20510101	/m/0520hsd	Rulers of the Darkness	Harry Turtledove			 Talsu spends a few months in a Jelgavan jail, and coupled with Skarnu's adventures, makes it clear that many Valmierans and Jelgavans support Algarve. Algarvians strike at the Naantali Project, killing Siuntio. Gyongyos loses more islands to Kuusamo and Istvan's unit is moved from Unkerlant to the island of Becsehely. Algarvians try to pinch off Unkerlanters in Durrwangen using everything they have, leading to the Battle of Durrwangen. Most surviving Kaunians in Forthweg now use Vanai's Forthwegian disguise, and Algarvians are unable to catch nearly as many as before. Algarvian progress in the summer against Durrwangen very slow, and Unkerlanters battle them to a standstill, then force them back into Grelz, ultimately overrunning the capital Herborn. Raniero, the puppet king of Grelz, is boiled in a pot by Swemmel. Sibiu liberated by Lagoas and Kuusamo, and Cornelu is poisoned by his wife, who is sentenced to beheading. Garivald finds his village and family annihilated by the fighting. Vanai ends up caught by the Algarvians.
20510174	/m/051xx29	Jaws of Darkness	Harry Turtledove			 Habakkuk, a dragon carrier carved out of an iceberg, is introduced, with Leino serving on board her. Vanai has been thrown into Eoforwic's Kaunian Quarter, and later escapes during an Unkerlanter bombing raid, and is found by Ealstan who had disguised himself as an Algarvian. Krasta has sex with Valnu and Lurcanio in the same day and gets pregnant from one of them but is not sure which. Algarve invents "guided eggs". Istvan and his friends are captured on Becsehely by Kuusamans and taken to Obuda. Valmierans finally allowed to fight for Algarve as invasion looms and troop shortages worsen. Kuusamans and Lagoans fool the Algarvians by massing ships and troops on the strait across from Valmiera, and pretending to send a fleet eastward toward Gyongyos, but instead using the latter fleet to invade Jelgava. At this time, Unkerlant launches a massive offensive which sweeps the Algarvians out of northern Unkerlant and back into Forthweg to the Twegen River, while consolidating their hold on Grelz. The Eoforwic Uprising starts when Unkerlanter armies are well into Forthweg. Unkerlant launches major offensive against Zuwayza, forcing it to surrender with severe conditions, although it keeps its independence. Yanina switches over to Unkerlant's side as soon as the fighting crosses its borders. Sidroc's mixed regiment has to do a fighting retreat through Yanina. The Algarvians abandon and withdraw from Valmiera, enabling Skarnu to return home. Algarvians pushed out of most of Jelgava. Istvan's regiment sacrifices itself to vainly attack the Kuusaman occupation on Obuda, although Istvan and Kun escape by inducing diarrhea. Eoforwic Uprising suppressed by Algarvians, although Unkerlanters have not made more than a halfhearted attempt to cross the Twegen.
20510326	/m/051yjxm	Out of the Darkness	Harry Turtledove			 Spinello is poisoned by Vanai. The southern front is in Yanina, which is in a bad position. The Unkerlanters use Yaninan forces as if they were penal battalions, while Algarvians start killing Yaninans for magical energy in retaliation for Yanina's switch to Unkerlant. In Jelgava, close to the Bratanu Mountains on the border with Algarve, Leino and Xavega are killed by an Algarvian magical trap. Puppet King Beornwulf installed in Forthweg, and Ealstan is drafted. Kuusamans and Lagoans occupy Valmiera. Unkerlanters push into Algarve, first on the southern front then the northern. Algarvians develop the superstick, first using it on Unkerlanters on the southern front. Ealstan in Unkerlanter army is having to reduce his own hometown, Gromheort, in which Algarvians were holed up. Algarvians come out with other desperate magics, some demonic, others new and unreliable, but appear to have given up killing Kaunians for the most part. Pekka destroys Becsehely in first test of divergent blast. Krasta has a baby boy, which she at first names Valnu (later Gainibu), but which turns out to be Lurcanio's; Merkela cuts all her hair off in punishment. Unkerlanters and Kuusamans meet at Torgavi on the Albi in the north of Algarve. Skarnu becomes marquis of Pavilosta. Lurcanio's army surrenders, followed by Gromheort. Ealstan is wounded, discharged from army, and stays in Gromheort with his family. Mezentio's palace falls, Algarve surrenders. Talsu released from prison (again) and expelled with his wife to Kuusamo. Lurcanio, who had been turned over to the Valmierans, is executed by firing squad. Ceorl is killed when he and Garivald escape from a mining camp. Garivald makes his way back to Obilot.
20510356	/m/0523c8z	Queen Ann in Oz			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At home in Oogaboo, a tiny principality in the northwestern corner of Oz, Queen Ann is restless for a new adventure; she decides to search for her lost parents, King Jol Jemkiph Soforth and Queen Dede Soforth. Her attempt to re-muster her army is a total failure; but four enterprising children are eager to join her search party. They are a girl and three boys, Jody Buttons, Jo Musket, Jo Fountainpen, and Jo Dragon (with his pet Moretomore). Ann also writes to the Shaggy Man, inviting him to meet them on their way. After receiving Ann's letter via mailbird, the Shaggy Man investigates the situation, but with limited success. Glinda's Great Book of Records is surprisingly unhelpful on the location of the missing royals. It follows their activities well enough, up to a point &mdash; then breaks off with a cryptic "forget it." Princess Ozma tries to find them in the Magic Picture, but it shows only a pink haze with the inscription "no data available." Shaggy meets Ann and her party; they travel to Sand City, ruled by King Lysander and Queen Cassandra. (Puns and word play on "sand" flow freely.) A patch of quicksand speeds them on their way. They encounter the overly eager practitioners of Barberville, and spend an idyllic interval at the Friendly Forest. Finally they reach a wall with a gate in it. The gate bears a strange warning: :::::::FORGETVILLE ::::::Beware the The wall surrounds a fog-shrouded village. When the members of the party enter, they lose their memories. Moretomore is immune from the spell, because he carries with him a fragment of his natal eggshell, which prevents him from ever forgetting anything. The little dragon is desperate to help his companions, but doesn't know what to do. Ozma, however, has been monitoring the Shaggy Man's progress, as she told him she would; and she sends Tik-Tok to help. The mechanical man brings the search party members out of Forgetville. The searchers learn to counter the memory spell with forget-me-nots, and they draw the inhabitants out too &mdash; including the lost King and Queen of Oogaboo. They also seek to end the spell on the town. They find and read the journal of Amnesia, the witch who cast the spell. They learn that they can bring the wall down with the "Ancient Traditional Wall Removal Method." Shaggy suspects that this is a reference to the story of Jericho. The searchers and townspeople re-enact the siege of Jericho; they march around the city seven times, Jo Musket plays his trumpet, and the multitude shouts at dawn. The wall falls and the spell is broken. Forgetville returns to being the town of Goldendale, as it was before. Ozma arrives with breakfast; together, the characters piece out the story of how Goldendale lost its memory, a tale that involves Jo Jemkiph, the witch Amnesia, and the Love Magnet (from The Road to Oz). Ozma uses the Magic Belt to bring the former Amnesia, now Amy, from Butterfield, Kansas, where the Shaggy Man knew her and stole the Love Magnet from her (closing a story loop with Baum's original books). In the process, the Shaggy Man's true name is revealed: he's Shagrick Mann (but Ozma agrees to keep this knowledge secret). Ann's reunion with her parents is a happy one. The people of Goldendale choose Jol Jemkiph and Dede Soforth as their rulers. Ann remains in power in Oogaboo.
20510400	/m/0522j6z	Blood and Memory	Fiona McIntosh	2004-05-26	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After seeing his best friend murdered, his sister imprisoned and the King of Morgravia turn his attention to the woman he loves, Wyl becomes desperate to return Valentyna and prevent her marrying the king. However is ends up being trapped by an enchantment and must track down the Manwitch first.
20515397	/m/051_wrw	I Am Wings	Ralph Fletcher	1994-03-01		 The book contains thirty-one free verse poems about love arranged into two sections, "Falling In" and "Falling Out". The poetic voice is that of a young male and the poems trace the development of a relationship from the beginning with the first poem "First Look" through its demise with the last poem "Seeds".
20522454	/m/051_36r	Fortunes for All				 The opening chapters of Fortunes for All set out Vash Young's credentials: the long, happy and rewarding life that he has enjoyed - his 'Fortune' - through taking his own advice and living by the rules he formulated as a young man. Vash then turns to his early life of hardship, poverty, hunger and deprivation and candidly reveals how he squandered early opportunities as a young man through self-doubt and moral weakness. Vash Young then describes the flash of insight the enabled him to re-invent himself. This was the defining point in his life when Vash the failure changed virtually overnight into Vash the success. The bulk of the book explains in detail the methods he used to give himself the mindset needed to find his Fortune. These lessons are amply illustrate by anecdotes taken from his own life and from those of people he encountered. Vash goes out of his way to show that what he did is relevant to anyone at any time or place. The title shows his intent: Fortunes for All is intended to be a handbook for everyone.
20525366	/m/051z2db	Unveiling a Parallel			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Jones and Merchant differed from some other feminist novelists of their generation (like Corbett and Lane, mentioned above) in that they made their fictional protagonist male instead of female. Their hero travels to the planet Mars in an "aeroplane." (That term had originated in France in 1879; this novel provided one of the earliest uses of the word in English.) The nameless traveller visits two different "Marsian" societies; in both, women possess greater equality with men. In one, Paleveria, women have adopted the negative characteristics of men; in Caskia, the other, gender equality "has made both sexes kind, loving, and generous." Since Jones and Merchant were primarily interested in crafting a satiric commentary of their own society, they made their Mars and Martians strongly similar to Earth and human beings. The technological level is comparable on both planets; the Martians rely on Martian horses for transport. The narrator first lands in the Martian country of Paleveria, which is a republican and capitalist state, with clear class divisions; the people are vegetarians, and dress in loose robes. Their homes (at least among the aristocrats) are classical and palatial, with marble floors and statuary, silk hangings, and frescoes on the walls. Women in Paleveria can vote, hold political office, and run businesses; they propose marriage to men, have sex with male prostitutes, and even participate in wrestling matches. The traveller stays with an astronomer named Severnius, in the city of Thursia; he studies diligently and learns the language. Severnius acts as his guide to Paleverian society &mdash; as does the astronomer's beautiful sister Elodia. The narrator soon falls in love with Elodia, but is shocked by her liberated traits and habits. Elodia is a banker by profession; she drinks alcohol and imbibes a Martian drug, has affairs with men, and eventually proves to have had an illegitimate child. Severnius, for his part, asks the narrator about Earth, and the traveller is hard put to provide logical and acceptable explanations for many Earthly customs, mainly involving the distinctions between the sexes. The narrator is appalled by women participating in martial arts &mdash; and Elodia condemns this too; but she also condemns men's boxing matches, which the traveller accepts as natural. The narrator is profoundly shocked when he learns of Elodia's illegitimate daughter; he leaves for a visit to Caskia. This northern country has a more co-operative and egalitarian social and economic order than Paleveria has; its people cultivate intellectual, artistic, and spiritual qualities. Caskia approaches the status of a Martian Utopia. In the city of Lunismar, the traveller meets another Martian woman, Ariadne, who is more traditionally feminine by conservative Earthly standards. He considers her "the highest and purest thing under heaven." He also meets a venerated teacher called The Master; the two have a long spiritual conversation. The narrator returns to Earth. Unveiling a Parallel has been reprinted in several modern editions.
20530177	/m/051wx0n	Ordinary Things	Ralph Fletcher	1997-04-01		 The book is a collection of thirty three poems divided into three sections titled "Walking", "Into the Woods" and "Looping Back". The reader is taken on a walk along a road, through the woods, over a stream and back.
20539334	/m/051_j5n	The Magic Dishpan of Oz			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The protagonists of The Magic Dishpan of Oz are two sisters, seven-year-old Rebecca and three-year-old Shoshanna. Natives of Oregon, the two girls are playing by a stream near their home one day, when they find an unusual frog. The animal seems to want to communicate with them, and Shoshanna thinks she can understand it. The frog (they come to call it "Froggie") also appears to want them to follow it; and when the girls do, Froggie leads them to a semi-submerged object, a gem-studded gold dishpan. The girls take their new treasure home. At one point, Rebecca says, "Oh, I just wish I knew where this dishpan came from!" The magic talisman obligingly transports the girls (and frog) to Oz. Familiar as they are with Oz from books, Rebecca and Shoshanna are unpleasantly surprised by the welcome they receive. Landing in the Winkie Country, they find that the locals are hostile and suspicious, so much so that the girls are locked in a barn overnight, so that they can be turned over to "our illustrious Magician" the next day. With the aid of some friendly talking sheep, girls escape with the dishpan. (And frog. They concluded that Froggie is under an enchantment, since he does not gain the ability to speak when he comes to Oz. At one point, Shoshanna impulsively tries to kiss the frog, but he evades her lips.) The children make their way toward the Emerald City along the yellow brick road. In an abandoned house, the girls find Scraps the Patchwork Girl, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman, disassembled. The three Oz inhabitants are quickly restored to normal. The children learn that Oz has been infiltrated by malignant magicians who have disrupted the normal order. The party (girls and Ozites) sets out for the palace of Glinda, but is quickly waylaid by a Magician and a hundred of his followers. The enchanter calls himself the Magician of Suspicion; he specializes in spreading distrust and ill-feeling. By sowing discord among their guards, the party manage to escape from their captors (with dishpan, and frog). They now turn toward the Gillikin Country to look for Planetty, the Silver Princess. After further adventures and conflicts, the girls and their Ozite friends unite with Planetty and her followers, and together they move toward Glinda's palace in the Quadling Country. Froggie pays court to Planetty with gifts of flowers; the Princess kisses him, and he turns into the Frogman from Lost Princess. The Frogman had been enchanted and sent out of Oz with the dishpan, by the Magician who has taken over the Emerald City. Glinda is not at her palace. The party consult her Great Book of Records to learn how to restore Oz. They discover that the main figures of Oz, Glinda, Princess Ozma, and the Wizard, have been turned into the emeralds and rubies that decorate the dishpan. As is fitting in a fairy tale, it is Shoshanna, the smallest and youngest member of the group, who restores the missing principals, just in time for Glinda to overcome the Magician of Ignorance and return Oz to its former state.
20539993	/m/051_szh	The Dragon Jousters series	Mercedes Lackey		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Joust follows the story of a young boy named Vetch. He is an Altan, and a serf: someone lower than a slave who is tied to the land they work on under their master. His Tian master, Khefti the Fat, is quite cruel, and Vetch is the last member of his family on the land, taking all of Khefti's beatings. Vetch's luck changes when Ari, one of the Tian Dragon Jousters, appears one day and takes him to be dragon-boy for Kashet, the dragon Ari raised since hatching (and thus unique in the jousters' ranks). Life in the dragon jousters' compound proves to be much more pleasant that slaving away in the fields, but Vetch's relationship with all the dragon jousters is tolerating at best, (though he likes the dragons,) as he sees them as a symbol of the Tian power that killed his father and put the rest of his family into serfdom. The one exception to this Ari, whom Vetch respects and even grows to liking. Among the myriad of other challenges that happen at the compound, Vetch gets his hands on a dragon egg of his own, which he raises to hatching in secret, calling the female Avatre. The novel culminates with he and Avatre escaping the compound by air, only to be caught by Ari and Kashet. Ari, though, has also grown to liking Vetch, and convinces the other Tian dragon jousters that Vetch died in the chase, then helps Vetch get to a nomadic people, known as the Bedu, who will help him complete his escape to Alta. It is revealed that, in the Atlan tradition, "Vetch" actually has two names, one for use during his childhood and one for adulthood, his "real" name. As the novel closes, he takes on his real name, Kiron, and flies on Avatre toward Alta. Alta begins as Kiron and Avatre transition from the nomad lands into Alta. Not far inside the Altan border, the two of them save a girl from one of the dangerous "water horses" (presumably a hippo). The girl is Aket-ten, daughter of Altan noble Lord Ya-tiren; she has magic abilities, including the ability to speak telepathically to animals. Lord Ya-tiren and the rest of Aket-ten's family take Kiron in temporarily to help him adjust to life in the City of Alta, central hub of Alta, a large city built on seven earthen rings separated by canals. Kiron and Avatre are accepted into the ranks of the Altan dragon jousters, and Kiron gets to start his own wing of jousters who are to raise their dragons from hatching, a new concept for the jousters. His wing of eight other boys includes Aket-ten's brother and one of the heirs to the Altan throne. Kiron's group of friends (his wing, Aket-ten, and others) eventually surmise (correctly) that the powerful Altan Magi are exercising more and more control over the country, to the detriment of its citizens. Aket-ten is one of the first people targeted, due to her magic abilities, and later the heir in Kiron's wing is murdered when he tries to speak up leading to Aket-ten joining the wing. As the first step in an unsure plan to remove the Magi from power, the group decides they must leave Alta and remove the jousters from both armies. After assuring that all the tala in both Tia and Alta will fail to control all dragons not raised from hatching, they fly into their first battle as Altan Jousters. With no tala, all the other dragons on both sides refuse to obey their riders, leaving an air battle between Ari and Kiron's wing. Ari is dislodged from Kashet, and only survives thanks to a trick Kiron had all the dragons in his wing learn based on what he had seen Kashet do while he was still a dragon-boy in Tia. Back on the ground and away from where the armies are fighting, Kiron's wing, along with his friends and members of the Bedu, convince Ari to join them in a new city apart from both Tia and Alta, the desert legend they now call Sanctuary. Sanctuary follows the inhabitants of Sanctuary as they try to make their city as functional as possible, having to deal with battling the harsh elements of the desert, growing the ranks of the New Dragon Jousters, and sustaining the city as refugees from both Alta and Tia constantly trickle in. Much of the first half of the novel follows Kiron as he tries to find his place the societal structure of Sanctuary, and his relationship with Aket-ten (and her family). Eventually, the Jousters of Sanctuary run one rescue mission in to Alta when new refugees tell of worsening situations there, coordinated with the help of members of Aket-ten's extended family who are still there. The failure of a second rescue mission sends the plot toward the climax, where the Jousters of Sanctuary, the Tian army, and the Altan Magi all meet over the city of Alta. Aerie follows the inhabitants of the combined Altan and Tian nation. After moving to the newly found city, renamed Aerie, the Jousters of the new country must find a purpose. At first that purpose is the securing of trade routes through the desert. That changes when out on patrol Kiron found a dead body coming in out of the desert. As the priests of Alta and Tia search for information concerning this mysterious body they uncover the truth about an old enemy, the Heyskin, creators of the Magi. With this information and tools given by the gods the people of Alta and Tia fight and defeat the Heyskin and there blood-born god of the Heyskin. After the battle the land is united under a new name Altian.
20541118	/m/0522dt9	There Goes the Neighborhood	William Julius Wilson	2006	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In this chapter, the authors talk about their choice in choosing the four neighborhoods. They chose neighborhoods that were of working and lower middle class in order to represent the ordinary Americans and explained that these neighborhoods were populated by different ethnic groups. One thing that they all had in common was the growing Latino population. Moreover, the investigation was carried on because they wanted to fully understand what produced or prevented the “tipping point” (a rapid ethnic turnover). The research depended on an ethnographic approach which consisted of a team of 9 graduate student research assistants at the University of Chicago. The study was done over a period of 3 years, from January 1993 to September 1995. The book mentions Albert O. Hirschman's theory of exit, voice and loyalty. It also provides statistics about the population by race and Hispanic origin from 1980-2000. This chapter talks about the change in racial history in Chicago and the cause of white flight early on (civil rights). The other chapters will focus on the resident’s perception of other races. (Written with the collaboration of Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas) Beltway was the destination for those whites who chose the exit method because their cities were experiencing ethnic turnover. The reason they moved to Beltway was because they wanted bigger houses for their families. Beltway was the furthest from downtown Chicago and the most isolated out of the other 3 cities. Chapter two focuses around the community of Beltway which is the farthest and most isolated from Chicago out of the four communities investigated in this book. Beltway residents felt that they were driven out of the main city by minorities and this neighborhood is one that portrays the right values and makeup. Beltway was predominantly white (95%) in 1980 but recently the Latino and African-American populations have begun to swell. This has led to racial riots and confrontation around the neighborhood. As a big picture the community of beltway seems to be incredibly racist but in actuality there is an internal conflict between the residents. The Beltway Civic League (BCL) is a committee made up of mostly older white residents who are trying to “preserve the ways of the past.” This group believes that minorities are ruining the fabric of the town and will drive all the whites away. On the other side is the Garland Parents Alliance (GPA) which is a group of younger people whose focus is not the minorities’ presence but the overall quality of education and services offered to all residents regardless of color. Through strong social organization the BCL has kept the neighborhood of Beltway from experiencing “white-flight” but a gradual exit of white residents is slowly occurring. (Written with the collaboration of Chenoa Flippen and Jolyon Wurr) The chapter begins about how the neighborhood of Dover was a very tight knit community. It was mainly people from Eastern Europe that had immigrated over that populated the community. The people spoke about how the children used to run around and play and the parents never had to worry about them because if they did anything wrong the parents would know before they even returned home because another parent would discipline them. The neighborhood began to change when large numbers of Hispanics moved in and started to overpopulate the community. The neighborhood began to experience higher crime rates and the school system began to go downhill with over populated classrooms. The school system decided to start busing students out to other neighborhoods that had the extra space. These were not very nice neighborhoods and were predominantly African American. The parents began to get extremely upset and held many PTA meetings to discuss how they could fix this situation. They asked for more schools to be built within the community but it was not within the budget. So they then asked that the local magnet school take students from Dover before taking students from other neighborhoods. An issue that became very significant to the original Dover community members was the issue of language. The current Dover residents had learned English when they immigrated over and thought that the new Hispanic residents should be doing the same. The new residents were in no hurry to learn the language and this caused great tension within the community. With the increasing crime rate and the population of the community drastically changing the community was experiencing major changes. The community groups that were there to hold events such as monthly meetings at local restaurants to discuss how to better the community was losing members and would eventually have to end the tradition. The original members of Dover were slowly moving or aging and the only people moving in were Hispanics. With the decline of the community traditions such as the award to who has the nicest yard and who is the most involved has led to great dislike from original Dover members. The residents did not like the disrespect they were getting from the new group of people moving in. Loud music and parties were becoming a common occurrence. Also graffiti and trash were being seen all over the city that once held great pride in how clean and safe it was. From the community dislike of the new neighbor’s people began to slowly move away and leave the neighborhood to continue to go downhill. (Written with the collaboration of Erin Augis, Jennifer L. Johnson, and Jennifer Pashup) In this chapter, it talks about how the city has drastically changed with the rise of Latinos. Mexicans began arriving in significant numbers in the 1970s. Archer Park now has shops specializing in Mexican Products and array of street vendors. Language proves as a barrier because Spanish is essentially their first language. The white residents who chose the exit method, felt bitter and lost because of the rise in Hispanic residents. Those who chose the loyalty method feel that the community is unsafe and (102). Mexicans come to Archer Park to make money with intentions of going back to Mexico but they end up making a living and not leaving causing a rise in the number of immigrants. As a result, the neighborhood is filled with litter and graffiti and there is a lack of community organizational life and leadership. The result showed that neighbors do not care about knowing each other. Just as in Dover, Mexicans expressed resentment towards black because they associated darker skin with poverty. Busing and competition for public recreational space were also issues that created conflicts between these two ethnic groups. Archer Park remains a strong Mexican Enclave and exclave due to the rapid and continuous number of immigrants. (Written with the collaboration of Reuben A. Buford May and Mary Pattillo) In this chapter, the authors talk about Groveland’s ethnic history. It used to be predominantly a white neighborhood but years later, whites became the minority in this city. This chapter talks about how blacks used to get beaten up and tortured by whites. Even so, Groveland’s violence rate was not as high as the other neighborhoods. After World War II, whites started to move out of Groveland and since it is located around 6 miles from the original Black Belt, blacks did not move in until 1960. The residents have demonstrated enthusiasm to keep the neighborhood clean and free from violence and so far they have proved to have done a great job. In this chapter, the authors talk about block clubs and social organizations that helped the community keep the status of the neighborhood; graffiti free and good sanitation. he statistics showed that in 1980, 59% of the population in Groveland was employed and that by 2000 the percentage had increased to 65.Groveland is different from the other cities previously mentioned because the number of citizens had decreased instead of increased. It also showed black identity and how they inspired and kept this concept going through schools. Groveland did not show any racial tensions, the residents were welcoming and accepting. The reason why Groveland did not experience racism was because it did not experience an “influx of other ethnic groups” (page 143) and blacks were therefore the only ones in control. Groveland was particular because the children were raised as "white people bring up kids" and the younger generation tried keeping racial boundary by rebelling against their parents. The blacks had a certain degree of resentment against the whites of the neighborhood. and it shows in the different comments gathered throughout the research. Moreover, within the group of friends, crossing boundaries was especially common with those who had jobs because language was an issue. One good example of racial boundaries is when one of the kids “crosses boundaries by using standard English at the office and black English at the park”.“The community’s unemployment rate rose from 4 to 12 percent from 1970 to 1990, and the proportion of families with incomes below the poverty line grew 5 to 12 percent.”> This showed that the http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/in-migration in migration of lower income families made Groveland more diverse but it also resulted in a higher rate of unemployment. However, Groveland is a good example of loyalty because most of the residents stayed together through thick and thin and worked on making the neighborhood a better place to be by including whites and white attitudes even though tensions among them were present. They portrayed voice rather than exit with the help of block clubs. Although people often refer to the America as a Melting pot, the data found in surveying the four different cities of Chicago suggest that neighborhoods in urban America have a very good chance of being segregated racially and culturally. In some groups, there is voluntary division even after contact is established and for other groups, the separation is forced. There is added friction between blacks and Latinos because the two groups often compete for the same resources. Problems in the communities extend beyond race into issues of Social class as well. For example, residents in Beltway felt that their white neighborhoods were becoming minority enclaves. However, Beltway has still practiced the loyalty method in contrast with the city of Dover who largely chose the exit option. For Archer Park, issues of loyalty don’t remain much of an issue because they expressed the least concern over ethnic change and distinguished themselves as a “stepping stone” community. Nonetheless, Groveland appeared the most loyal than any of the neighborhoods, in which only a few families chose the exit method. Consequently, the stronger the social organization of the neighborhood, the more likely it is that individuals will choose the voice option. On the other hand, neighbors who feel that the resources are insufficient with the ethnic change are more likely to choose the exit option and are more apt to reach the “tipping point” (rapid ethnic turnover) quicker. This book illuminates how the three methods; exit, voice, and loyalty can either make or break a community. Also, studies show that when people believe they need one another to overcome a situation, they are more likely to overcome their prejudices and join together. This book essentially comes to the conclusion that in order for integrated neighborhoods to become united, they need to start working towards coalition building.
20541181	/m/051y1y5	The Soldier's Return	Melvyn Bragg	2000		 Sam Richardson returns to the small Cumbrian town of Wigton after fighting in Burma during the Second World War. The war has given Sam’s wife Ellen a newfound confidence and Sam is a stranger to his son Joe. Sam is plagued by memories of the war and wants a new life, for himself, his wife and his son. The book won the WH Smith Literary Award in 2000, and was followed by three sequels.
20542932	/m/051z7zg	Last Battle of the Icemark	Stuart Hill	2008-07-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Two years have passed since The Icemark managed to defeat the Polypontian Empire in Blade of Fire. This has caused the Polypontians to break up and many civil wars have started to take their place. With the defeat of the Polypontians at the end of the second book, there is now another enemy of the Icemark. That settles on Erinor of Artemision and her dinosaur cavalry of Tri-horns, creatures described to look like warrior Triceratops, and Oskan's father Cronus, his Ice Demons and his granddaughter, Medea. Erinor's dinosaur cavalry move in on what remains of the Polypontian Empire, fully intending to move on to the Icemark afterward and to murder anyone that has a bloodline containing that of the northern Hypolitan. Responding to a plea for help from the Empire, a reluctant Thirrin leads her army into the heart of what was once enemy territory in order to prevent them from invading Icemark as well. Thirrin's strong prejudice against the Polypontians is transformed upon meeting their emperor, who is only a young boy, not yet in his teens, and she realizes that everything she hated about their Empire came from the Bellorum clan. However, by invading the Empire to confront Erinor, the Icemark is left open for an invasion from the Darkness (Cronus and his ice demons). While Icemark and their allies are gone, oblivious to the attack, the Vampire Queen defends Icemark in hopes of being given a soul, as her husband was for loving her. When the other vampires hear the undead may have souls, they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the Icemark, and therefore able to delay Medea and Cronus. Pious, an imp that has learned the power of friendship and love, is able to give Oskan and Thirrin the warning of the attack after they have defeated Erinor and her armies. Oskan, entrusted with the (until that point) secret knowledge that says that Dark Adepts cannot kill the ones they love without dying, defeats Cronus and Medea, though at the cost of his own life.
20545075	/m/051ymwb	Scarpetta	Patricia Cornwell	2008-12-02	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Dr. Kay Scarpetta is called in to examine a Bellevue Hospital patient in New York City. The patient, Oscar Bane, tells Scarpetta that he has been framed for a murder he did not commit by somebody who is stalking him.
20546495	/m/051vzd7	Clara Vaughan	R. D. Blackmore			- ~Plot outline description
20546576	/m/051wpnt	Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams	Catherynne M. Valente	2005-07-15	{"/m/05wkc": "Postmodernism", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After her village is destroyed, Ayako lives alone in the mountains. Weaving through Ayako's life are her dreams; she explores the mythologies of goddesses from around the world and receives lessons from the river, mountain, and animals, who speak to her while the people from the village below dare only to leave offerings for her. =Allusions= Ayako's dreams touch upon a variety of literary, mythological, and religious subjects, ranging from the Greek Sphinx to Isis' recreation of Osiris' body.
20550988	/m/051wyyh	The English Assassin	Daniel Silva		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Art restorer, Gabriel Allon, who also works part-time for 'The Office', a semi-official Israeli intelligence agency, accepts an assignment from an anonymous Zurich banker. Arriving at his villa, he finds the man’s murdered body. He flees the crime scene, but is arrested as he tries to leave the country. He is interrogated by Gerhardt Peterson, of Switzerland’s internal security department, who accuse him of the murder of the deceased banker, Augustus Rolfe. But news of Gabriel’s imprisonment has reached Israel, and Ari Shamron, Director of 'The Office', secures Gabriel’s release. He reveals that Rolfe had expressed the desire to personally meet an agent from The Office to give them important information. Gabriel travels to Portugal to meet Anna Rolfe, the estranged daughter of Augustus. She is a world-renowned violinist who lives in seclusion as she recovers from a major accident. She confesses that, unbeknownst to Swiss police, her father’s assassin also stole his private art collection. Although Anna staunchly defends the provenance of those valuable paintings, Gabriel suspects that they were underhandedly acquired during World War II. Anna further adds that the Rolfe family’s home and art collection were guarded by an elaborate security system designed by art dealer Werner Müller. Gabriel determines to meet Müller. It is revealed that Peterson takes orders from the 'Council of Rütli', a secretive elite group of Swiss businessmen and bankers determined to protect the reputation of Switzerland and its (often stolen) riches. Otto Gessler, the highly secretive leader of the Council (whom Peterson has never seen), instructs Peterson to cut all links to the case—and to begin by killing Rolfe’s art agent Werner Müller. Peterson contacts Don Orsati, a Corsican leader of organized crime, who assigns his best agent, the mysterious Englishman Christopher Keller, to fill Peterson’s order. Keller began his career in the SAS, and actually visited Israel, where he studied combat and intelligence techniques from members of the Office, including Allon. He was posted as ‘missing believed killed’ after a mission in Iraq, but in fact survived and became a freelance assassin, reaping a comfortable lifestyle. He lives in a Corsican village, becoming something of an adopted kinsman to the Orsati family and its self-proclaimed role as the arbitrators of justice. Keller is instructed to bomb Müller’s art store. Gabriel, who is visiting the store flees moments before the bomb detonates. He suffers substantial damage to his hands but escapes the crime scene unnoticed. Müller’s death confirms that the missing art collection is the key to understanding Rolfe’s murder. Gabriel returns to England to plumb art dealer Julian Isherwood’s extensive knowledge of the pillage of Jewish-owned art during the Second World War. Isherwood has first-hand knowledge of this topic since his father was an art dealer in Paris whose art works were also stolen. He warns that Swiss law protects its collectors who purportedly bought the art “in good faith” and have owned it for five years. Isherwood refers Gabriel to the exiled Swiss Emil Jacobi, a historian, writer, and 'whistle blower' who contests the morality of Switzerland’s acquisition and ownership of “looted” art. Jacobi confirms Isherwood's story and further accuses Rolfe of performing various services to the Nazi regime. He even conjectures that Rolfe allowed Jews to deposit their money in his bank and then turned over their information to the Gestapo. Jacobi relates that it was not uncommon for Nazi leaders to reward such informants with valuable property, including art. This seals Gabriel’s resolve to research the provenance of Rolfe’s art collection. Anna admits that the provenance documents are in her father’s desk. Gabriel returns to Zurich and discovers photographs of Rolfe with Nazi leaders Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and Adolf Hitler. Along with the pictures are bank account numbers and German names. He manages to escape with the documents and escapes with Anna. The latter now learns the truth about her father’s suspicious activities—as well as her mother’s suicide years earlier. They return to Zurich, and manage to locate the bank that holds the security boxes. With the account number, they access two boxes. One contains a letter from Rolfe, anticipating his murder and explaining his guilt and his wish to return each painting to its rightful owner. The second box contains sixteen additional paintings, which they return to London. It emerges that one painting belonged to Julian Isherwood’s father. Anna is determined to accept a ‘come-back’ engagement to play in Venice. Gabriel and a specialist team guard her in case of an assassination attempt. The Englishman manages to evade the guards, but then deliberately does not carry out his assignment. Gabriel’s team kidnaps Gerhardt Peterson, and Gabriel brutally questions him about the activities of the Council. It emerges that Peterson had coordinated both Gabriel and Anna’s planned murders, but Keller decided that he was killing for the wrong team. Gessler spearheaded the plan to murder Rolfe and steal his incriminating artwork. Gabriel determines to ask Gessler to exchange the confiscated art in return for its monetary value, but Peterson expresses scepticism that a wealthy man could be bribed with more money. The two journey to Gessler’s luxurious and highly secure property, where Peterson turns on and imprisons Gabriel. After sustained beatings, Gessler takes him on a tour of his own private art collection—a vast museum housing hundreds of great paintings. The collection is ironic in that Gessler is blind; his satisfaction does not come from admiring the artwork but rather from possessing it. Gessler tells Gabriel to give up his quest, for Swiss law will never expose its own citizens. As the Council contemplates Gabriel’s murder, Peterson cites his conscience and family’s honour as his motivation for helping him to escape. Several months later, Gabriel, still recovering from injuries sustained during his escape, has returned to his work at his home in Cornwall. Anna Rolfe has returned to her career as a violinist. Shamron decides that Gabriel should spend the next year as Anna’s security detail. Keller returns to Corsica to explain why he failed to assassinate Gabriel and Anna. He calls upon the Orsati family’s long-standing tradition of honour killing and states that justice demands the life of Otto Gessler, not Gabriel or Anna. Orsati worries that Keller will not enjoy Gabriel’s lucky escape, but Keller insists that he is now a better agent than Gabriel. Indeed, Keller does breach Gessler’s security, fatally stabs him, and departs unscathed. Peterson is also found dead as a result of an ‘accident’
20551578	/m/0524fr6	Arqtiq			{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The plot of Arqtiq involves a woman who invents an aircraft, a sort of hybrid of airplane and balloon. She decides to fly it to the North Pole, accompanied by her husband, father, and friends. After crossing the continent to New York, they travel northwards and reach the Pole. At first they perceive only a flat plain surrounded with icebergs; but the narrator detects a crystal city beneath the ice. The aeronauts land and meet the inhabitants, called the Arq. The Arq maintain a culture of gender equality and high technology. Communication is facilitated by the Arqs' telepathy; the narrator soon develops the same psychic ability. Despite their isolation, the Arq are devout Christians. Adolph's Arqtiq has been characterized as "An eccentric novel combining elements of science fiction and religious fundamentalism," and an "exuberantly incoherent" book that also touches upon the work of John Symmes, a lunar meteorite, and "lunar people who are tiny and nasty."
20556113	/m/0521nsp	The Road to Samarcand	Patrick O'Brian	1954	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 While structured with plot and subplots, and created with a cast of interesting characters, the novel draws its major appeal from O'Brian's great story-telling ability. The product of this ability can be seen as a series of adventures in exotic locales, the type of material designed to resonate in the imagination of a typical teenaged boy. There are neither female characters nor romance in The Road to Samarcand. The story begins during a voyage on the South China Sea, where almost at once Derrick's ship encounters a typhoon. Surviving this perilous experience, the ship under Captain Sullivan reaches shore and completes the rendezvous with Professor Ayrton. Subsequent adventures are set up by forming and equipping the party for the journey to the road to Samarcand, a route better known today as the Silk Road. Members of the party include his relatives, Cousin Ayrton and Uncle Sullivan; Derrick, himself; Sullivan's intrepid companion, Ross; the ship's Chinese cook, Li Han; and one of Captain Sullivan's seamen, Olaf Svenssen. Horses and Mongolian guides are engaged: during the course of the story Derrick becomes a skilled horseman and learns to speak Mongolian. The party must follow a circuitous route to the road to Samarcand in order both to travel in safety and to satisfy Professor Ayrton's archeological wishes. This circuitous route allows O'Brian to send the band to areas they would otherwise not have traveled and to reveal interesting aspects of the Chinese, Mongolian and Tibetan cultures. Some adventures are harmless, as when Derrick and his Mongolian companion ride out to hunt with a falcon and when the Professor acquires jade treasure; some involve danger. The latter includes imprisonment, escape, brushes with revolutionaries and bandits, and hand-to-hand fighting. The party becomes involved in deadly skirmishes at a time in history when the old skills of warfare are bowing to superior firepower. As this state-of-affairs turns dramatic, Professor Ayrton is forced to pass himself off as a Russian Army officer who specializes in armament. In reality he is anything but an expert and does not know how even to fire a gun when the expedition begins. Other adventures involve dangers crossing a glacier where the party must face both blizzard conditions and inimical monks masquerading as yeti, and the loss and eventual rediscovery of party-members, Ross, Li Han and Olaf. As the final adventure, in what can be described as a deus ex machina, the little group escapes disaster in a functioning helicopter, which has been abandoned near the monastery where the band has been virtually imprisoned. O'Brian skirted anachronism in creating this manner of escape. Although the technology was available in the late 1930's, existing helicopters were limited to scarce prototypes, and actual aircraft were not produced in large numbers until the 1940's. Be that as it may, there is spare gasoline in a can, and the party is flown away by Ross. He is completely inexperienced as a helicopter pilot; however, O'Brian has created him with qualities which stretch the improbable escape to the verge of credibility: mechanical prowess -- Ross is the only party member who succeeds in starting the engine -- bravery, and a history as the captain of a ship. Airborne and finally out of danger, the party sees below on the ground their goal, the road to Samarcand.
20560132	/m/0521rzs	Relatively Speaking	Ralph Fletcher	1999-03-01		 The youngest boy describes both his family and their life together through verse. Various scenes include how the family prepare corn on the cob, his other brothers accident, the family reunion, his seldom seen cousin and his uncle's funeral.
20560808	/m/051x5n9	Death of a Gentle Lady	Marion Chesney	2008-02-11	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 While the rest of the town is smitten by Mrs. Gentle, Hamish Macbeth distrusts and dislikes her. When she tries to close down his beloved station, he exacts his revenge and saves a beautiful woman from deportation at the same time by proposing to Gentle's maid Ayesha. By the time the wedding day arrives, Hamish is desperate to escape marriage; when Ayesha doesn't appear and Mrs. Gentle is found dead, he escapes one disaster only to be swept into another.
20563338	/m/051zn78	Kate Remembered	A. Scott Berg	2003-07-11	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Published within days of her death at 96, this life of Katharine Hepburn is able to take her to her final hours, following her career from her aristocratic, fresh-faced, and slightly audacious youth to her extreme old age. A. Scott Berg knew Hepburn for the last 20 years of her life, and his book is not only the biography of a beloved actress but a tribute to a dear friend—a friend to whom she told the truth about her life, including her great loves and pet hates, with an eye to its eventual publication.
20563850	/m/06ssh0d	River Rats	Franklin W. Dixon			 Frank and Joe Hardy head to the Big Bison River in Montana to experience its beauty and wonder, through the form of water sports. They are greeted by Owen Watson, a friend, and head off into the river, but witness a hitman killing Owen in broad daylight. The brothers then promise themselves to find the murderer, and avoid any obstacles, distractions, and firepower. They must find the culprit, end the environmental struggle, and bring him to justice, if they ever want to solve the case.
20564967	/m/0524lj5	Daughters of Destiny	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The American Construction Syndicate wants to build a railroad across Baluchistan, as part of their plans for global development. The company appoints a commission, headed by Colonel Piedmont Moore, to obtain the right of way from the Baluchi ruler. Moore chooses his personal friend and physician Dr. Warner as his second in command; and with commendable nepotism he selects his son Allison Moore as the commission's surveyor. Dr. Warner's ebullient daughter Bessie wants to come along, and solicits Moore's daughter Janet to come too; the young women will by chaperoned by Bessie's Aunt Lucy. (Col. Moore is secretly pleased that his daughter Janet will make the trip; she has been melancholy after an unhappy love affair, with a man the Colonel regards as a thief and scoundrel.) The Americans travel to Baluchistan, and promptly get themselves imbroiled in a succession conflict. The reigning Khan of the country is dying, and two cousins vie for the crown. One, Kasam, is masquerading as their guide. What follows is a complex but tightly-woven plot that involves subterfuge and conspiracy, poisonings and attempted assassinations, sword fights and a pursuit in the desert, a scheming femme fatale, disguises and false identities &mdash; all the ingredients of melodrama. In the end, Prince Kasam's rival Ahmed (or Hafiz) inherits the throne of Baluchistan &mdash; but he yields it to Kasam so he can return to the United States with the heroine, Janet Moore. It is revealed that Ahmed/Hafiz is actually Howard Osborne, the man Janet had previously loved (and secretly married, seven years before). Osborne had nobly but foolishly taken the blame for an embezzlement actually committed by Allison Moore, the Colonel's son and Janet's brother. Once all the secrets are out, the difficulties are resolved; and the requisite happy ending is achieved. And Bessie stays behind to marry Prince Kasam, and become the Khanum of Baluchistan. Notably, Ahmed/Hafiz/Osborne abdicates his throne in part for personal reasons, but also because he thinks it would be bad for the country to be ruled by someone deeply influenced by American culture. It is better, he thinks, for the people of Baluchistan to maintain their traditional way of life than to be thrust into the frenetic modern world &mdash; an interesting rejection, on the author's part, of imperialism and the idolatry of progress.
20567773	/m/05211cj	Out of Control				 Indianapolis is the place to be for the Indianapolis 500, the legendary race to end all races. Nancy Drew is on the scene, saving a fashion designer, and a crowd of supermodels, from their photo set. Nancy, in return, is invited to an exclusive party, only to find the fashionista arrested. Meanwhile, Robbie McDonnell, a local racecar driver, and his entire team is experiencing mishaps and mayhem, and the Hardy Boys investigate, facing all the odds.
20567880	/m/051_z56	Nightmare in New Orleans				 The Royal Creole, a restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana, is opened for business by Shelly and Remy Maspero. Nancy Drew heads up there to congratulate the pair, but ends up trying to figure out the strange mishaps that have arisen there. Meanwhile, the Hardys are there too, trying to uncover the facts behind a million-dollar heist in a riverboat casino, and the facts prove that Remy Maspero is the culprit. With time running out the threesome will have to solve the case.
20568107	/m/05243ch	The Book of Negroes	Lawrence Hill	2007-01-18	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Aminata Diallo, an 11-year-old child, is taken from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle — a string of slaves. Eventually, she arrives in South Carolina where she begins a new life as a slave. Due to circumstantial events in her life, Aminata develops certain advantages other slaves do not: she possesses the skills of a midwife and learns how to read and write. Years later, she finds freedom, serving the British in the American Revolutionary War and having her name entered in the historic "Book of Negroes." This book, an actual historical document, is an archive of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States in order to resettle in Nova Scotia, only to discover that this new place becomes one that is also oppressive and unyielding. Aminata eventually returns to Sierra Leone, passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America, but eventually finds herself crossing the ocean one more time to England to present the account of her life so that it may abolish the slave trade.
20569005	/m/051vr6m	Cross-Country Crime	Franklin W. Dixon	1995	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The Hardy brothers go for a vacation in the town of Evergreen. There, they meet a man suffering from amnesia who is a prime suspect for a bank robbery.
20571302	/m/0521dxq	The Enormous Radio	John Cheever			 Jim and Irene Westcott live contentedly on the 12th floor in an apartment building with their two children near Sutton Place (their city of residence is not mentioned, but Sutton Place is in New York City). Both Jim and Irene enjoy music very much, regularly attending concerts and spending a lot of time listening to music on their radio. However, the Westcotts kept their interest in music from their friends. When their old radio breaks down, Jim orders a new one, but when it arrives Irene is shocked at the complete and utter ugliness of the device that Jim has bought. The radio is described as a large gumwood cabinet with numerous dials and switches that light up with a green light when it is plugged in. Until the new radio arrived, the Westcotts hardly ever argued and seemed to have a happy marriage. One night, as Irene is sitting in the apartment listening to the radio she starts to hear interference in the form of a rustling noise over the music concert that is being broadcast. She tries to get the music back by flipping all of the switches and dials, but then begins to hear the sounds of people from other apartments in the building. She is so surprised by this that she shuts off the radio. Later that evening when Jim arrived home from work, he tried the radio to get some music. Instead of music, Jim hears elevator noises and doorbells.Believing that the electronics in the building are interfering with the signal he decides to turn off the radio and call the people who sold it to him and demand to have the radio repaired. The radio is examined and the problem apparently fixed, but the next day while Irene is listening to a Chopin prelude she hears a man and woman who seem to be arguing. Realizing that the conversation is coming from people who live in a nearby apartment, she flicks a switch, but next hears a woman's voice reading a children's story, which she recognizes as belonging to her neighbor's children's nanny. She flips the switch again, but each time she does so she becomes privy to the events in another apartment. Irene demands that Jim turn off the radio because she is afraid her neighbors will hear her and Jim, just as they can hear the others in the building. Over the next few days Irene listens in on the lives of her neighbors, and finds herself becoming both intrigued and horrified. Irene had become so obsessed with listening in on her neighbors, that she cut a luncheon short with a friend to go home and listen to the radio to hear what news would be revealed next in the lives of friends and neighbors. Jim noticed how strange Irene had become in her ways and conversations, especially at a dinner party the Wescott's attended. On the way home, Irene speaks of the stars like a little candle throwing its beam as to "shine a good deed in a naughty world." Irene became totally involved in the lives on the radio and became depressed herself. She has gone from a pleasant, rather plain woman, to a woman who doubts who she is and doubts her relationship with her husband Jim. Once more, Jim arranges for the radio to be examined and this time the repairs are successful. The repairs are expensive and a great deal more than Jim can afford. All he wanted was for Irene to get some enjoyment from the radio. Instead the radio brought the Westcotts' peaceful life to an end. Not only was the second repair of the radio more than Jim could afford, but he also found unpaid clothing bills on Irene's dressing table. Thus the beginning of the hidden truths coming to the surface; Jim worrying about money issues and Irene worrying about the radio hearing their argument and the past indiscretions of her life.
20578404	/m/052163t	The Fate of a Crown	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The novel's protagonist is a young American named Robert Harcliffe; a recent college graduate, he works for his family's mercantile business in New Orleans, run by his Uncle Nelson. Nelson Harcliffe receives a letter from an old client in Brazil, Dom Miguel de Pintra, a wealthy man who has retired from business to devote himself to politics &mdash; specifically to the republican cause that struggles to replace the Brazilian Empire. Dom Miguel has written to request a secretary; Robert, eager for adventure, agrees to take the job. Robert's attitude is devil-may-care at first, yet he quickly learns that he has entered into a dangerous enterprise. He cleverly evades a murderous spy on the voyage down to Rio de Janeiro; but as soon as he reaches the city he is arrested by the police. In the carriage taking him to the police station, the lieutenant in charge is murdered by his own sergeant, who is a republican sympathizer. The sergeant and other sympathizers guide Harcliffe to the city of Cuyaba in Matto Grosso state, and to Dom Miguel's plantation. There, Harcliffe quickly becomes a devoted admirer of de Pintra and a republican sympathizer himself. (Baum presents this as an American's natural preference, over the archaic, authoritarian, European imperial system.) Just as quickly, Robert learns that the circle around the republican leader is fraught with uncertainty. The man's daughter Izabel is cold and suspect, while his ward Lesba is an ardent republican, and a beauty with whom Harcliffe soon falls in love. Lesba's brother appears to be a republican too &mdash; yet he serves as the Emperor's minister of police. Harcliffe wrestles with question of who can be trusted, and who is playing a "double game." The mystery aspects of the story center on the massive steel vault, impregnated with nitro glycerin, that is hidden in a sub-basement of de Pintra's mansion. It holds the treasury and the incriminating records of the republican movement; it opens with an exotic key, a specially-cut emerald in Dom Miguel's ring. The ring is stolen, which leads Harcliffe on a challenging and puzzling chase. As the revolution starts, Dom Miguel, Harcliffe, and other supporters are captured and face a firing squad, only to be rescued (some of them at least) at the last minute, by Lesba and a troop of rebels. When the rebellion succeeds, Harcliffe marries Lesba and becomes the director of commerce in the new regime. The couple raise their children in a cosmopolitan style, wintering in New Orleans and spending the rest of the year in Brazil. ---- Baum's first adult novel was successful enough to justify a follow-up effort: a second Schuyler Staunton book, Daughters of Destiny, was issued in 1906. A third adult novel, The Last Egyptian, followed. The Fate of a Crown was reprinted in a paperback edition in 2008.
20578476	/m/0522f7r	The Game	Laurie R. King	2004	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Kimball O'Hara, the "Kim" of the famous Rudyard Kipling novel, has disappeared. Fearing a geopolitical crisis in the making, Mycroft Holmes sends his brother and Mary to India to uncover what happened. En route, they encounter the insufferable Tom Goodheart—a wealthy young American who has embraced Communism—traveling with his mother and sister to visit his maharaja friend, Jumalpandra ("Jimmy"), an impossibly rich and charming ruler of the (fictional) Indian state of Khanpur. With some local intelligence supplied by Geoffrey Nesbit, an English agent taught by Kim, and accompanied by Bindra, a resourceful orphan, the couple travel incognito as native magicians. Ultimately, their journey intersects with the paths of the Goodhearts, Jimmy, and the enigmatic Kim.
20578800	/m/051vtyl	Annabel	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Will Carden, the novel's protagonist, is fifteen years old at the start of the story. His family has "come down" in the world: though his late father had once owned a steel mill, Will and his mother and siblings now survive by growing vegetables on a two-acre plot of land. Will is popular with the local children, especially with the five Williams siblings who live in the big house in the town of Bingham. Of the five, Mary Louise is the beauty; her twelve-year-old sister Annabel is plain in comparison, with red hair and freckles and a "pug nose." Their father owns the steel mill that succeeded the Carden mill as the town's leading employer; their mother, the snobbish Mrs. Williams, wounds Will by telling her children to avoid the lowly "vegetable boy." Will, however, is a lad of fine character; he is encouraged by the local physician, Dr. Meigs, who joins the Carden family in a mushroom-growing business that relieves their poverty. Will saves Annabel's life when she falls through a frozen pond while ice-skating. Annabel and Will grow close as Annabel blossoms into young womanhood; Meigs encourages her steel-magnate father to acknowledge and encourage the boy. Meigs and Williams also become suspicious of Ezra Jordan, the man who manages Williams's mill and boards with the Cardens. Jordan was crucial in the Carden family's history; the doctor and steel-man realize that all knowledge of the death of Will's father has filtered through Jordan. Upon investigation, they learn that Jordan has cheated both Williams and the Cardens, by appropriating a valuable steel-making process developed by the elder Carden. It turns out that Mr. Carden is alive and well in Britain, where he has made his fortune. Jordan has worked a double fraud: he deceived the Cardens in Bingham into believing that their husband and father had died in a shipwreck &mdash; and he also tricked Carden in England into thinking that his family had perished in an epidemic. Jordan maintained his lodging with the family precisely to intercept any possible communications that would reveal his nefarious scheme. Once all of the facts are revealed, the Carden family is united in prosperity once more. Will and Annabel look forward to marriage and the prospect of a happy union. ---- Annabel was included in the sixth and final issue of the annual Oz-story Magazine in 2000, with the illustrations of both Hall and Nuyttens.
20579899	/m/051xdl0	Danger Down Under	Carolyn Keene			 Mick Devlin, an old "flame" of Nancy Drew's, asks for her support with Nellie Mabo, an Aboriginal local, who is desperate to locate a revered idol, a tjuringa board, and return it back to her clan. The Hardy boys join her in Australia, only to encounter a pair of proprietors keeping an opal mine, a blood-hungry poacher on the verge of creating a new endangered species, a rage fueled clan war over the land, the Australian outback, and a list of suspects.
20579994	/m/0524qmh	The Edwardians				 Sebastian, is the 19-year-old heir to the country estate of Chevron. Being at home from Oxford at the weekends he regularly attends the magnificent parties given by his widowed mother Lucy, where the guests indulge in food, drinks, games and affairs. At one of these parties he meets the adventurer Leonard Anquetil who grew up under humble circumstances but managed to become well-known and socially acknowledged due to his several successful expeditions. During a deep conversation on top of Chevron’s roof Anquetil tries to open Sebastian’s eyes displaying to him the artificiality and hypocrisy of his mother’s aristocratic society and to convince the young heir to leave his social obligations behind in order to accompany Anquetil on an expedition. However, Sebastian is not impressed enough by the predictions made by Anquetil (affairs, marriage, service to the crown, but never being completely content) to turn his back on his safe home. One of the reasons for that is the love affair he had just started with Sylvia Roehampton, a married friend of his mother. After Sylvia’s husband finds out about this relationship she, Lady Roehampton, leaves Sebastian and does not accept his offer to run away and start a new life together, since she does not want a public scandal and sticks to social conventions. Soon after, Sebastian plans to start an affair with Teresa Spedding, a doctor’s wife, but she eventually does not respond to Sebastian’s courtship. Yet coming from a middle class background she is extremely impressed by and interested in aristocratic society. Sebastian, being disappointed and never seeming to be content, attempts to distract himself by having two more affairs with women from different classes. During the coronation ceremony of George V, which he attends, he finally gives in to the expectations and obligations his family history imposes on him and plans to marry a decent young lady and to settle down in a career at the Court. It is just a few moments after that, that he meets Leonard Anquetil again, who informs him that he is going to marry Sebastian’s independent sister Viola, to whom the adventurer regularly wrote letters in the last years, and repeats his offer to join him on an expedition. Stunned by this possibility Sebastian agrees to accompany him.
20580006	/m/051wmhc	Buried Alive	Ralph Fletcher	1996-04		 This book is a collection thirty six free verse poems about teenage love divided into four elements: earth, water, air and fire.
20583069	/m/051xx59	Juma and the Magic Jinn			{"/m/016475": "Picture book"}	 On the seafaring Lamu Island, families traditionally keep a jinn jar at home. The jinn jar is a container that holds a supernatural being in Islam and Arabian mythology called a jinn (in English, a genie). The jinn jar is kept sealed because the owners do not know if their magic jinn is good or evil, which makes people of Lamu Island generally afraid of the jinns. The story opens with a young student named Juma daydreaming in a school instead of doing his mathematics. Since the young Juma concentrates more on his own directions of thought rather than the lessons being taught, the teacher sends Juma home. On the way home, he comes across his mother buying fish at the shore. His mother admonishes his daydreaming in school and suggests that Juma may be better off working with his father to cut mangrove poles. She instruction Juma to go home, but instructs Juma to not touch the jinn jar. At home, Juma disobeys his mother's prior instructions and removes the cork sealing the jinn jar and calls the jinn. Juma is skeptical about his efforts and does not believe in magic. The magic jinn grants some of Juma's wishes and is sent away from his home on what turns out to be misadventures. Eventually, Juma is able to get home again but arrives with new appreciation of his home and family and realization that learning can be exciting and fun.
20584552	/m/051wrfw	The Christopher Killer	Alane Ferguson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 So when she convinces her dad to give her the job of being his assistant, she is thrilled to finally get some hands-on experience in forensics. But Cammie is in for more than she bargained for when the second case that she attends turns out to be someone she knew; her friend—the latest victim of a serial killer, known as the Christopher Killer. And if dealing with that isn't enough, Cammie soon realizes that if she is not careful, she might wind up as the next victim.
20584645	/m/051wwt2	Portobello	Ruth Rendell	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The central character of the novel is Eugene Wren, a wealthy, middle-aged art dealer whose secretive personality jeopardizes both his sanity and his relationship with, and eventual engagement to, Ella Cotswold, an attractive general practitioner ten years his junior. Having in the past overcome various slight addictions to alcohol, nicotine, and food, Wren gets hooked on a special brand of sugar-free sweet, which he wants to conceal from his fiancée. When the couple decide that Ella should sell her flat and she moves in with him, he starts inventing excuses and lies so as to be alone just for the time it takes to suck a sweet and to get rid of the sweet smell on his breath afterwards. Extremely ashamed of his habit, he buys, hoards, and consumes the sweets secretly, and he establishes several caches in his antique-studded home. When Ella happens to find one of them, out of curiosity goes on to search the rest of the house, and finally confronts Wren with her find, he is so ashamed of himself that he sees no other way than to break off their engagement and move into a hotel.
20584657	/m/051vky3	The Birthday Present	Ruth Rendell	2002-06-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Robert, a city accountant narrates the story, with excerpts from one Jane Atherton's diary. He is married to Iris Tesham. Iris' brother Ivor is an up and coming Tory MP, who is having an affair with Hebe Furnal. Hebe uses Jane Atherton as her alibi for her trysts. Ivor Tesham arranges a mock abduction of Hebe as a birthday present for her, but it goes horribly wrong.
20584690	/m/0524jcs	The Girl Who Played with Fire	Stieg Larsson	2006	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel is formally divided into a prologue followed by four parts. The prologue of the book opens with a girl captured and restrained inside a dark room by an unidentified male. To cope with being captured, she mentally replays a past episode when she threw a milk carton filled with gasoline onto another man inside a car and tossed an ignited match onto him. Salander, after finishing the job on the Wennerström affair (described in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), disappeared from Sweden and traveled throughout Europe. The novel opens with Salander at the shores of the Caribbean in St. George's, the capital of Grenada. She has become interested in Fermat's Last Theorem and mathematics, an interest that resounds with the opening page of each Part in this novel. From within her room in her hotel she observes on several occasions that her neighbor, Dr. Forbes, an American tourist from Texas, physically abuses his wife next door to her room. She also befriends George Bland, an introverted sixteen year old student living in a small shack, and she begins tutoring him in mathematics. Salander finds Bland's company relaxing and enjoyable because Bland does not ask her personal questions, and the two develop a sexual relationship. Lisbeth Salander uses her connections among the hackers' network to investigate Dr. Forbes and learns that Reverend Robert Forbes was once accused of mishandling of funds in his faith-based foundation. Currently he has no assets, but his wife is the heir of a fortune worth $40 million. Due to concerns for safety, the residents at the hotel begin to enter the hotel cellar as a hurricane hits Grenada. Salander remembers Bland and braves the strong wind and rain to collect him. As the two reach the hotel entrance, Salander sees Dr. Forbes on the beach with his wife and realizes that he is attempting to kill her for her inheritance. Salander attacks Dr. Forbes with the leg of a chair, and abandons him to the elements. Salander, Bland and Mrs. Forbes retreat to the cellar and receive medical care; Dr. Forbes is later confirmed to have died during the night. Lisbeth Salander returns to Stockholm after more than a year away. Immediately before the Wennerström affair became public knowledge, Salander laundered a sum of three billion kronor into a disguised bank account. With this sum she purchases a new up-scale apartment outside of Mosebacke Torg and moves out of her old apartment in Lundagatan. Salander allows her current sex partner, Miriam Wu, to move into her old apartment, for the price of 1 krona and the condition that Wu forward all of Salander's mail. She also re-establishes contact with Dragan Armansky, her former boss at Milton Securities, and former legal guardian Holder Palmgren, who fell victim to a stroke during the events of Dragon Tattoo. Nils Bjurman, Palmgren's replacement, continues to brew a growing hatred for his ward after the events of Dragon Tattoo. His fury has caused him to diminish his practice down to a single client (Salander) and focus his attention on capturing her and destroying the CDs. He scrutinizes Salander's medical records, identifies an incident named "All the Evil" as well as a person from her past as his strongest ally. In the meantime, Mikael Blomkvist, the publisher of Millennium magazine, has lost all contact with Salander for over a year, as she has refused to even open his letters. His only contact with her at all is a physical intervention when, while he is walking past her apartment in the vain hope of running into her, she is cornered by a man from the Svavelsjö outlaw motorcycle club with a beer gut and a ponytail. Blomkvist swings in to help, to Salander's astonishment, and between their efforts she manages to elude her attacker. Millenium are approached by Dag Svensson, a young journalist, and Mia Johanssen, a doctoral candidate. They have together written a meticulously-researched report, ironically titled "From Russia with Love," about sex trafficking in Sweden and the abuse of underage girls by high-ranking figures, which will be her doctoral thesis and which Svensson now wants Millennium to publish as an exposé. While the research is mostly complete, Svensson, Johanssen and the Millenium staff are intrigued by reoccuring mentions of the name "Zala," a shadowy figure who evidently runs most of Sweden's sex-trafficking industry. Salander, hacking Mikael Blomkvist's computer, is taken aback by the mention of Zala and visits Svennson and Johanssen to ask questions. Later that night, Blomkvist, who had been invited to visit the couple, finds them both shot dead in their apartment. Salander's fingerprints are on the murder weapon. Blomkvist notifies Erika Berger, the editor in chief of Millennium and his occasional lover, of the double murder. The next morning, the magazine office holds an emergency meeting to work out the logistics of postponing the publication of Svensson's book and the associated magazine special. The staff decides to backtrack Svensson's research to ensure the accuracy of the material, and to comb through it for possible murder motives, while Blomkvist is tasked with finishing Svensson's mostly-completed book. Prosecutor Richard Ekström assembles an investigation team, led by Inspector Jan Bublanski, who demands that Sonja Modig be included in the team. The team identifies Salander's fingerprints on the murder weapon. Salander's formal record establishes her as a violent, unstable, psychotic woman with a history of prostitution, but Armansky, Blomkvist and Berger all vouch for her intelligence and moral fiber; neither Mikael nor Erika were even aware of her psychiatric history. While investigating her social circle, Modig finds Bjurman shot dead in his apartment by the same revolver that slew Svennson and Johanssen; Salander remains the prime suspect. In the light of this new evidence, Ekström holds a press conference and discloses Salander's name and psychiatric history to the press, describing her as a danger to others and herself. Blomkvist enlists the help of managing editor Malin Eriksson to investigate the murders, during which he realizes that Salander has hacked into his notebook computer. He leaves her notes on his desktop, and her replies point him to "Zala". He confronts Gunnar Björck, a policeman on sick leave and one of the johns identified by Dag and Mia, who agrees to disclose information about Zala if Blomkvist leaves him out of Millenium's exposé. On the other hand, Milton Security becomes involved in the investigation as Armansky decides to send two of his employees, Hedström and Bohman, to aid the formal police investigation. Miriam Wu returns from a Paris trip to find herself taken to the police station and confirms Salander's intelligence and moral character. However, Hedström leaks Wu's identity into the press, and the press publishes extensively about Wu's ownership of a Gay Pride Festival; both she and Salander are sensationalized in the media as members of a "lesbian Satanist gang." The press also publishes about Salander's past from childhood to 11, and from 14 onward. Part 3 closes with Salander wondering why the press's inside source has not chosen to publicize "All the Evil," the events which dominated the gap in her biography, as they would swing public opinion even further against her. Blomkvist is approached by Paolo Roberto, a boxing champion and Salander's former training master. Blomkvist suggests Roberto seek out Miriam Wu for conversation, as she has been avoiding all press, including Mikael himself. In the meantime, on Salander's suggestion Blomkvist focuses onto Zala as the key connection between the three murders and sex trafficking. As the police continue the investigation, Blomkvist's team also notices the three-year gap in Salander's biography. Blomkvist decides to confront Björck and trade his anonymity for information on Zala. Roberto, staking out Salander's former apartment in the hopes of catching Wu, witnesses her kidnapped into a van by a paunchy man with a ponytail (Salander's former attacker) and a blond giant. He follows the van out to a warehouse south of Nykvarn, where he attempts to rescue Wu by boxing with the blond giant. He finds his opponent unusually muscular and totally insensitive to pain, and only through applications of massive blunt trauma can he and Wu stun the giant enough to escape. The blond giant recovers and sets the warehouse on fire to remove all evidence. However, Roberto is able to direct the police to the site, where they find three buried and dismembered bodies there, presumably deposited by the blond giant. Visiting Bjurman's summer cabin, Salander finds a classified Swedish Security Service file written about "All The Evil," and begins to make the connection between Bjurman and Zala. According to the information, Zala's real name is Alexander Zalachenko. By sheer coincidence, two members of Svavelsjö MC, Carl-Magnus Lundin (the paunchy ponytail man) and Sonny Niemenen, have been dispatched to burn the place down, and Salander defeats them, leaving more suspects for Bublanski to find. She returns to her apartment and, having no choice, decides to find Zalachenko and kill him. Salander learns of the blond giant's identity ("Ronald Niedermann") and his connection to a post office box in Göteborg and goes there to find him and Zalachenko. In his apartment, Blomkvist finds Salander's old keys, which he gained during their joint fight with Lundin. He manages to find her new, up-scale apartment as well as Bjurman's DVD. Between Björck and Salander's former guardian, Holder Palmgren, Blomvkist is able to piece together the entire story: Zalachenko is a Russian defector under secret Swedish protection, whose very existence is kept classified by Säpo; Bjurman and Björck only know about him because they happened to be the junior officers on duty the day he marched into a police office and demanded political asylum. Zalachenko, a source of vital information on Russia's intelligence operations, began to traffic in sex slaves on the side, whilst simultaneously settling down with an 18-year-old girl who became pregnant with twins, one named Camilla and the other Lisbeth. He was physically and emotionally abusive to his partner, and while Camilla tended to repress all knowledge of the situation, Lisbeth attempted to defend her mother. One day, after he had beaten her into unconsciousness, Salander deliberately set his car alight with gasoline while he was in it. This is the event Salander refers to as "All the Evil," as the authorities, instead of listening to her pleas on behalf of her mother, imprisoned her and declared her insane. Salander's mother was left with the first of a series of brain aneurysms which consigned her to nursing homes until her death. Salander learned that the government would never listen to her, as acknowledging Zalachenko's crimes would require admitting his existence. Zalachenko was allowed to walk away; however, he suffered serious injuries and had to have his foot amputated. Svenssen and Johanssen were killed by Niedermann on Zalachenko's orders: when Salander visited them, she asked whether Bjurman had ever showed up as one of their johns, and they called him immediately after she left; Bjurman then called Zalachenko in a panic, leading not only to their deaths but his own. Blomkvist does not share all of his findings with Bublanski, in respect for Salander's privacy, but between his testimony, that of Palmgren and Armansky on her character, and the additional accomplices piling up, the police are forced to admit that their original estimation, of Salander as a psychotic murderer, is contradicted by the evidence. Milton Security are ejected from the investigation when it becomes clear that Hedstrom is the inside source who has been leaking sensational details to the press; however, Armansky is satisfied, as his true goal in aiding the investigation—ensuring Salander is not simply condemned as a murderer out of hand—has been achieved. Finally, Blomkvist finds the same Göteborg address that Salander did, and sets off for the farm where Niedermann and Zalachenko await. He has deduced that Salander has entered what Roberto and his boxing friends called "Terminator Mode," where she attacks without restraint to defend her life and those she cares about. Salander gets there first and is captured due to the motion detectors and cameras Zalachenko had installed. He tells Salander that Niedermann is her half-brother. When Salander attempts to escape, Zalachenko shoots her in the hip, shoulder and head, and Niedermann buries her corpse. Salander, still alive, digs herself out and again attempts to kill Zalachenko with an axe, noting that Zalachenko's use of a Browning .22 firearm is the only reason she survived. On his way to Göteborg, Blomkvist sees Niedermann trying to catch a ride with him. He captures Neiderman at gunpoint, tying him against a signpost by the road. The book ends as Blomkvist finds Salander and calls emergency services.
20585273	/m/051zl9r	Attack of the Mutant Underwear	Tom Birdseye	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Fifth-grader Cody Carson keeps a journal of his hopes for a fresh start in a town where nobody knows about his humiliating mistakes of the past, but before school even begins so does his embarrassment.As he goes through many things at his new life, he encounters many challenges,crushes,adventures and embarrassing moments.Will he be able to become a "New Me", without shattering into pieces?
20586146	/m/0521lht	Smurf Versus Smurf		1973		 From the moment they first appeared in La Flûte à six trous in 1958 it was established that the Smurfs talked in Smurf language, where the term "smurf" was used on an apparently random basis in their speeches: for instance, "It's smurfing a gale today". Now it is revealed that actual differences in the language exist in the otherwise very homogenous community of Smurfs: the Smurfs who live in the northern part of their village use the term "smurf" as a noun; while the Smurfs in the south use it as an adjective or verb. This difference of opinion is raised when Handy Smurf, a Southern Smurf who is the local inventor, asks a Northern Smurf to return his "smurf opener", but he fails to do so on the grounds that it should be called a "bottle smurfer". Instead of agreeing to disagree, they have an increasingly heated argument about which is the correct term to use. Papa Smurf is locked away in his laboratory, trying to complete a difficult chemical experiment, which keeps him out of the argument. Meanwhile other Smurfs start debating the linguistic issue. They part, returning to their own sides of the village, failing to agree on the subject, and as a result there is much tension in the air. One night, during a theatre performance of Little Smurf Riding Hood, the Northern part of the audience keeps interrupting the Southern actors over the use of language, claiming, among other things, that the title should be Little Red Riding Smurf. The arguing and interruptions continue to the point where the play erupts into an all-out fight. Papa Smurf breaks it up, pointing out the silliness of fighting over a matter of words. At first the Smurfs appear to think that he is right, but then start arguing again over whether they should "shake smurfs" or "smurf hands". The next day, Papa Smurf tries to lift the tension by insisting that they play ball together in a friendly manner. At first it appears to work, but then other Smurfs watching the game begin to divide along lingual lines and the arguments begin again. The tension returns, this time apparently to stay, with insults being traded and both sides trying to assert their indifference and superiority over the other. One Smurf eventually paints a demarcation line across the middle of the village to separate the two groups. This means that they have to stick to their own sides of the border. In one case, a Smurf finds his house marked in two by the straight demarcation line and goes almost crazy since he cannot figure out if he is of the North or the South: for instance, he cooks a "boiled smurf" on one side of his house and then consumes a "smurfed egg" on the other. All this time, Papa Smurf has been in his laboratory working on his experiment — the nature of which is never revealed — but when he finally succeeds and calls on the other Smurfs to celebrate, it is already too late: the fuse that was set long ago has exploded with both North and South finally coming to blows in an all-out battle. Papa Smurf's pleas for them to stop are in vain. In a desperate move to restore order, Papa Smurf turns to Gargamel, the evil sorcerer and sworn enemy of the Smurfs. Looking him in the eye, Papa Smurf pronounces a magic spell that immediately causes him and Gargamel to exchange their physical appearances: Gargamel becomes Papa Smurf and Papa Smurf becomes Gargamel. Gargamel's cat Azrael is taken aback when he hears the voice of his master coming from Papa Smurf's body and goes his own way, overwhelmed by confusion. Papa Smurf (as Gargamel) and Gargamel (as Papa Smurf) return to the Smurf village together where the battle is still ongoing. However, upon seeing Gargamel attack, the Smurfs on both sides reunite to fight against their common archenemy. Papa Smurf (as Gargamel) allows himself to be subdued and tied down. He hoped to teach them a lesson in being united ("smurf for all and all for smurf"), but they mock his claim to actually be Papa Smurf and refuse to release him. The real Gargamel, in Papa Smurf's body, breaks into the laboratory and finds the magic spell. He thus restores himself and Papa Smurf into their original bodies, freed from the bonds. Gargamel immediately takes the opportunity to chase and seize the Smurfs throughout the village and further into the woods. But then he and the Smurfs come across Azrael who attacks him, thinking that it's still Papa Smurf in Gargamel's body. All the Smurfs successfully escape from Gargamel's hands, while Gargamel (as usual) fails to find his way back to their village. At first it would seem as if peace has returned but then Papa Smurf overhears another argument about whether it should be a "smurf opener" or a "bottle smurfer". To prevent further clashes, he decrees that all the terms pronounced differently on the north and south sides of the village are now banned from use, so it should henceforth be "an object to unscrew bottles". However, the Smurfs find it very difficult to use this new politically correct language, since very complicated and descriptive forms of expression are now needed and are subject to different interpretations, meaning that the resolution of the linguistic issue is still a long way off.
20587941	/m/051wgm_	One False Note	Gordon Korman	2008-12-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Amy, Dan, and their au pair, Nellie Gomez, found music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the end of The Maze of Bones, leading them to Vienna, Austria, to learn about him and find a related clue. In Vienna, Amy and Dan discover that Mozart had an older sister: Maria Anna "Nannerl" Mozart. They go to a library to view her diary, only to realize Jonah Wizard, a fellow competitor in the search for The 39 Clues, stole it. They steal it from him, but then Nellie translates it and notices that three pages are missing. After finding the music from Mozart on the Internet, Amy and Dan notice that three lines are missing from it. They play the missing lines down in the lobby of the hotel they are staying in and realize that they are actually a whole different song that wasn't even written by Mozart. That song's name is "The Place Where I Was Born", so they go to the place where Mozart was born: Salzburg, Austria. There, they see Alistair Oh (yet another competitor), and follow him into the Salzburg Catacombs. They see the man in black (who is always around when bad things happen) and, shortly afterward, are trapped inside the Catacombs by and explosion that causes a cave-in. However, they find another way out through St. Peter's Archabbey and are chased by monks after finding a sheet of old parchment that supposedly had all 39 clues on it. They are devastated to find that it is just a recipe for Benedictine. Later, Nellie discovers that there is a homing device on the collar of their cat, Saladin. She, Amy, and Dan then find Alistair sleeping on a park bench and decide to plant it on him. Amy finds a secret compartment inside his cane and plants the homing device inside, in exchange taking what he found in the Catacombs, an eighteenth century concert poster starring Mozart in Venice, Italy. In Venice, Amy and Dan follow Jonah Wizard and find a secret passage from a music store called "Disco Volante" to a Janus stronghold. There, they find the missing diary pages and steal them from Jonah while he is examining them. They are chased by Janus agents but hide the pages on a boat called the Royal Saladin and come back to collect them once they lose the Janus. The pages say that Nannerl thought her brother was going crazy because he was buying large quantities of an expensive Japanese steel and getting himself into major debt. A name, Fidelio Racco, which was also found on the paper taken from Alistair Oh, appears in the diary, along with two notes from Grace: "The word that cost her life, minus the music" and "D>HIC". They figure out that "the word that cost her life" was referring to Marie Antoinette's famous quote, "Let them eat cake." Amy recalls from a conversation with Grace that Marie Antoinette used the most common French word for cake, gateau instead of brioche which is what she is usually quoted with. However, they do not know what Grace means by "minus the music" or "D>HIC", so they go to Fidelio Racco's mansion (which is now a museum) and hide until after it closes. They then sneak over to Fidelio Racco's harpsichord but are ambushed by the Kabras, who have been following them since Paris. Ian plays Mozart's music on the harpsichord but is unaware of the booby trapped D key, which Amy realizes is the meaning of D>HIC. She tries to knock Ian off the bench, but she is too late. His finger brushes the booby trapped key, and an explosion sends them both flying into the air. Amy manages to tuck and roll when she hits the ground, but Ian whacks his head on the marble floor and is knocked unconscious. Natalie is also knocked out after Dan stabs her with a dart from her tranquilizer dart gun. Most of the harpsichord is vaporized in the explosion, but the keyboard is still intact, so Amy plays "The Place Where I Was Born". A section of the floor drops down, revealing two Japanese swords and the second clue, tungsten. Amy figures out that gateau minus the music means that she needs to take out all of the letters that are musical notes, which leaves her with T-U, the chemical symbol for tungsten. Back at their hotel in Venice, Amy and Dan tell Nellie about the second clue, and she calls Japan Airlines to book three tickets to Tokyo. The book ends with Alistair Oh finding out who is owner of the tracking device that was placed on Saladin and himself. That person is Grace's lawyer and friend, William McIntyre.
20591986	/m/0521zk4	Mystery Train				 Nancy, Frank and Joe are all on the trail of the Comstock Diamond Case, an unsolved theft case, that has worked its way to the interests of a team of "professionals", with a "missing" reward of $25,000. The first step in solving the crime is to recreate the trail of the culprit, boarding a train from Chicago to San Francisco. But the case turns deadly when a shadowy suspect starts to sabotage the train. It is up to the trio to find suspects, solve the case, and bring the real cold-hearted criminal to justice. They face, a kidnapper, a thief, and a saboteur.
20597324	/m/0523gmq	Have You Been to the Beach Lately?	Ralph Fletcher	2001-04-01		 Thirty three first person poems that describe various moments during an eleven year old boy's day at the beach. He builds sand walls, he plays in the surf with his friends and teases his little brother.
20597996	/m/051z3z5	A Writing Kind of Day	Ralph Fletcher	2005-04		 A young writer's experiences are described in twenty seven mostly free verse poems. Topics included are roadkill, Venus Flytraps, a grandmothers senility. Others discuss snow angels, little brothers and "Ma".
20601018	/m/0520p94	Moving Day	Ralph Fletcher	2006-11		 Thirty-four short free verse poems that express the feelings of a twelve-year-old boy moving from Massachusetts to Ohio. Some of the topics include packing, the discovery of long-lost treasures, giving things away, and doing things one last time.
20601611	/m/051vpzc	Just Call Me Stupid	Tom Birdseye	1993	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Terrified of failing and believing that he is stupid, a fifth grader who has never learned to read begins to believe in himself with the help of an outgoing new girl next door.
20603188	/m/0522qcy	Keep on the Shadowfell	Bruce R. Cordell	2008-05	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The village of Winterhaven in the Nentir Vale is being menaced by kobold raiders. The players are ambushed by these kobolds on their way to Winterhaven; upon arrival at Winterhaven they are asked to clean out the kobold's nest. The players soon discover the kobolds are a pawn of Kalarel, a priest of Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath. Kalarel is lairing at a local ruined keep which contains a long-sealed rift to the Shadowfell, a plane of shadow and undeath; he plans to open this rift to connect the material world to Orcus' temple in the Shadowfell and thereby unleash an army of undead upon the unsuspecting region. The players journey to the keep and descend through its crypts, resulting in a final climactic confrontation with Kalarel.
20604294	/m/051y2rn	The Other Side of the Rainbow				 Brennan describes the experiences of growing up in an Irish speaking household and early interests in music through to her success recording with Clannad, Bono and finding her faith with help from her husband.
20610075	/m/05211v_	Monkey Grip	Helen Garner	1977	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in Melbourne in the mid 1970s. Nora is a single parent with a stable job as a teacher, but she lives in an inner-city shared house, part of a bohemia of students, musicians, and actors ...and junkies. Nora falls in love with Javo, an actor and a junkie. She drifts away from him, he drifts away from her. The harder they pull away from each other, the tighter the monkey grip.
20611803	/m/052203b	Hawksmoor	Peter Ackroyd	1985-09		 Set in the early 18th century, architect Nicholas Dyer is progressing work on several churches in London's East End. He is, however, involved in Satanic practices (something inculcated in him as an orphan), a fact which he must keep secret from all his associates, including his supervisor Sir Christopher Wren. This is all the more challenging since he indulges in human sacrifice as part of the construction of the buildings. Dyer's simmering contempt for Wren is brought closest to the surface in discussions they have concerning rationalism versus Dyer's own carefully disguised brand of mysticism. In the 20th century, DCS Nicholas Hawksmoor is called in to investigate a bizarre series of murders by strangulation that have occurred in and around the churches designed by Dyer. The murders are all the more mystifying since the murderer appeared to have left no identifying traces, not even fingerprints on the victims' necks. However the area is stalked by mysterious shadows, and it becomes clear that not only the weight of the investigation, but unseen forces from the past come to bear on Hawksmoor in a powerful, destructive manner.
20612661	/m/051ypl4	Tamsin	Peter S. Beagle	1999-10-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jenny Gluckstein moves with her mother to a 300-year-old farm in Dorset, England, to live with her new stepfather and stepbrothers, Julian and Tony. Initially lonely, Jenny befriends Tamsin Willoughby, the ghost of the original farm's owner's daughter.
20614663	/m/051x_8z	The Rozabal Line	Ashwin Sanghi		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 India Today, India's most widely read weekly news magazine ranked The Rozabal Line among the top five fiction bestsellers in India According to Tehelka, The Rozabal Line is "a thriller that inquires into the controversial claim that Jesus Christ travelled to India and was buried in Kashmir’s Roza Bal tomb". The Hindu, one of India's National dailies, says that "The book deals in greater depth with the issue of Christ’s union with Mary Magdalene touched upon by The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown as well as incorporating postulates of several other books including Jesus Lived in India: Life Before and After the Crucifixion by Holger Kersten and Jesus Died In Kashmir: Jesus, Moses and The Ten Lost Tribes Of Israel by Andreas Kaiser". The book also covers ground regarding the fact that Jesus sent St. Thomas, one of the 12 apostles to Kerala to preach there The Rozabal Line kicks off with the theory that Yesu (or Jesus) may have fled Judea to study under Buddhist masters in India (the three wise men were Buddhist elders searching for a reincarnation in the manner that Dalai Lamas are searched for). It then goes one step further by building on Holger Kersten’s theory that Jesus did not die on the cross and that he was spirited away to safety by Essene monks. This foundation is used to build the storyline which goes something like this: Jesus returned to his spiritual home, India, and possibly married. Fast-forward to the present day and we find a group of thirteen jihadis who are working under the protective umbrella of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Although never stated directly, there are enough similarities between this group in the present day and Jesus and his 12 apostles two thousand years ago. One keeps wondering whether this group could possibly be the present-day descendant Jesus bloodline. While this group is working towards Armageddon, there is another group that is assisting them and, surprisingly, this is a Opus Dei inspired group called the Crux Decussata Permuta. Apparently, the two largest religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, had found it easier to cooperate with one another rather than to fight each other. The logic for this is traced back to the first crusades in which Richard the Lionheart was defeated by Saladin the Great. Add to this cauldron, a Japanese assassin, America’s first woman President and a New York based Spiritual Healer, and you have the final twist in the tale, an unexpected ending that reveals the final answer at Vaishno Devi, one of the holiest shrines of the Hindus.
20618843	/m/0520yv2	Remix	Lawrence Lessig	2008		 In Remix Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and a respected voice in what he deems the "copyright wars", describes the disjuncture between the availability and relative simplicity of remix technologies and copyright law. Lessig insists that copyright law as it stands now is antiquated for digital media since every "time you use a creative work in a digital context, the technology is making a copy" (98). Thus, amateur use and appropriation of digital technology is under unprecedented control that previously extended only to professional use. Lessig insists that knowledge and manipulation of multi-media technologies is the current generation's form of "literacy"- what reading and writing was to the previous. It is the vernacular of today. The children growing up in a world where these technologies permeate their daily life are unable to comprehend why "remixing" is illegal. Lessig insists that amateur appropriation in the digital age cannot be stopped but only 'criminalized'. Thus most corrosive outcome of this tension is that generations of children are growing up doing what they know is "illegal" and that notion has societal implications that extend far beyond copyright wars. The book is now available as a free download under one of the Creative Commons' licenses.
20621558	/m/052146m	The Diothas			{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel begins with a scene in which the first-person narrator undergoes an episode of "mesmerism," or hypnosis, and wakes up in the far future; he has suddenly passed "from the nineteenth to the ninety-sixth century...." In the company of a friend and guide named Utis Estai, the narrator begins to learn the nature of this future world. He is introduced to the massive city of "Nuiore," the future development of New York City; and he travels with his guide to Utis's home in the suburbs. He learns from Utis and others about the structure and institutions of this future society. The book concentrates most of its attention on the social and technological advances of the ninety-sixth century; and some of Macnie's forecasts and predictions are notably prescient. The one most often cited in criticism and commentary is Macnie's prediction that the paved roads of the future will have white lines running down their centers to divide the traffic flow. Macnie also forecasts advances in communication, with a global telephone network, and recorded lectures by college professors, among other developments that have come to pass in the ensuing centuries. Some of Macnie's anticipations are more characteristic of the early twenty-first century, like electric cars, and rooftop gardens on public and private buildings (a feature of the modern "green building" movement). At one point in The Diothas, the narrator meets an elderly astronomer who has developed a "calculating machine" that can draw geometric figures, and can also begin with a geometric curve and then display the formula it represents&mdash;tasks done by modern computers and computer graphics. Macnie's future has progressive, egalitarian, and semi-socialist elements. The genders have fairly similar rights (though only males have to perform a type of national service). Some gender roles persist; all men are given some training in law, and all women in medicine. The majority of scientists are male, the majority of artists are female. Yet women inventors have been primarily responsible for the development of varzeo and lizeo ("far-seeing" and "live-seeing")&mdash;that is, television and motion pictures. Women do domestic laundry and cooking&mdash;but communally. The average work day is three hours long; people devote their abundant leisure time to the arts and sciences and to further education. A form of capitalism exists, though there are limits on inherited wealth. Workers in business enterprises are often shareholders also. Macnie does envision a significant element of Puritanism in his future society, with Prohibition of alcohol and laws against marital infidelity. The author's conservative opinions are partly represented by his future. He condemns the authors Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens as "maudlin sympathizers with crime...." He even includes in his future the old Roman practice in which "the father had unquestioned power of life and death over his children." There are personal aspects to the novel as well: the narrator meets and becomes enamored of a young woman named Reva Diotha. (She and her female relatives are "the Diothas" of the title). Cleverly, Macnie complicates the frame of his narrative: the narrator is, in his own perception, a time-traveller from the nineteenth century&mdash;but he is known by the other characters as a friend and relative named Ismar Thiusen who has developed a mental illness, and who has the delusion that he is a time-traveller from the nineteenth century. (The narrator arrives in the 96th century able to speak its altered English language, in which the name of West Point has devolved into "Uespa," St. Louis into "Salu," and Buffalo into "Falo.") Utis treats Thiusen rather like a psychiatric patient; Utis humors his friend's delusion and explains the features of their world, as a kind of therapy meant to restore Thiusen to his proper wits. Once Thiusen and Reva Diotha are matched as a couple, they interpret his situation in terms of reincarnation. In the end, however, Thiusen returns to the nineteenth century, after an accidental plunge over Niagara Falls. There, he is united with Edith Alston, the woman he loves.
20622273	/m/051zl9d	The Soldiers of Halla	D.J. MacHale		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Soldiers of Halla begins with the eleven Travelers, meeting in a crumbling wasteland of a city. They are immediately attacked by a helicopter, forcing them to seek refuge in the buildings. Bobby and Loor are trapped in a pit and watch as a colony of people are caught by the helicopters in a nearby building. When the helicopters leave, however, the Travelers gather back together. The first generation of Travelers quickly appear, such as Osa, Loor's mother, and Seegen, Kasha's father, and lead the other Travelers away. Bobby is met by his family again, who tell him that the wastleand was in fact the New York City zoo on Third Earth. His family leads Bobby to another place, that is filled with dark clouds and crumbling, gray earth. They confess that they know all that has transpired in Halla so far, including Bobby's murder of Alexander Naymeer on Second Earth. Moreover, they tell him that Solara is indeed the essence of Halla and thus the ten territories. Each victory and defeat inflicted by the Travelers and Saint Dane is reflected in the overall health of Solara. All of the souls of Halla are transferred to Solara after they pass on in Halla. As the exiles are in Eelong and the klees(cats that are the senitent species of the jungle like territory of Eelong) are going to attack them and the gars(humans that are not quite as intelligent as the klees.)The travelers defeat them and the travelers go back to Solara. Uncle Press then proposes that they should protect the exiles as they are the only positive energy that keeps Solara running. Bobby proposes that Uncle Press's plan would only delay defeat. He thinks they should make a portal and transport the travelers to the Ravinians and defeat them. Bobby gets into a fight with Saint Dane, and as he uses up all of his power, the foe dies. As the Travelers are victorious, all of Halla is saved from a fatal disaster.
20626238	/m/0520hqp	The Room	Hubert Selby, Jr.	1971	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel centers on a nameless petty criminal locked in a remand cell, and explores his feelings of impotence, hatred and rage, and fantasies of revenge.
20632872	/m/051vycl	The Snow Queen	Mercedes Lackey	2008	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Aleksia, Queen of the Northern Lights, is the Fairy Godmother of the land she rules. She is known to have a heart of ice, hence her title of the "Snow Queen." Her duty is to help characters like Kay and Gerda redeem themselves, their sweethearts, gain backbones, and become more sensible and less willing to follow their loves to the end of the earth. The story begins with the traditional Hans Christian Andersen tale, which continues through the first few chapters. When Aleksia is falsely accused of unleashing evil on nearby villages, she realizes there is an impostor out there far more heartless than she could ever be. Then a young man disappears, and Aleksia, his sweetheart, and his mother will have to join together to defeat this mysterious evil.
20636889	/m/0520qqw	Walking Trees	Ralph Fletcher	1990-10		 Walking Trees: Teaching Teachers in New York City Schools is the story of Ralph Fletcher's introduction to the New York City school system as a teacher trainer in a writing staff development program.
20649665	/m/05205tm	After the War	Carol Matas		{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 Shortly after the end of World War II, Ruth Mendenberg is released from a death camp in Buchenwald, one of Hitler’s concentration camps,Ruth returns to her hometown in Poland and is quick to learn that both her home and her family are gone. Only being 15 years old, she has lost faith, and lives with the guilt of being the only one surviving from her family. She is received by a young man named Saul from Eretz Israel, who encourages recently liberated Jews travel towards relative freedom in Mandate Palestine along with other Jewish refugees. She is housed along with other recently liberated Jews, which include men and women of all ages. Although Ruth believes there is no hope, but agrees to travel with the refugees. The house is attacked by an angry mob after a child accuses some of the refugees of kidnapping and murdering some of the children in the village. She is forced to hide, until the soldiers quiet the mob, and shortly after is forced to flee, along with 20 children. It is her job to lead them safely through Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy, and then to Mandate Palestine.
20650540	/m/052094j	Pariksha guru				 The novel tells a story of the extravagance of Hindu bankers and traders. Its theme is not to adopt Western culture. It cautioned young men of well to do families about the ill effects of bad company. It then shows how to live a practical life that preserves traditional values in honour and dignity. The characters in the novel are depicted using modern agricultural elements, and changing their way of speaking. Children are advised to read the newspaper. The author emphases that modernity should be embraced without giving up middle class values.
20663668	/m/09vzs0	Lost in the Barrens	Farley Mowat	1956-06	{"/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The parents of Jamie (the white boy) died in a car crash, thus he was under the care of his trapper uncle, Angus. Angus had supported Jamie's boarding-school fees for a long time, until the fur trade had declined. Angus could no longer support Jamie's school. Thus, Jamie left the boarding school to live with his uncle. Jamie made friends with the Cree Tribe's Chief's son, Awasin. Then the Chief thought a trader was cheating him, so he asked Angus and Jamie to go with him. Then, it was decided that Jamie would stay with Awasin for Angus' canoe could not hold three people and other things. Fortunately Jamie was fine with this and he even said that he would have more fun in the wilderness. Shortly after, Chipeweyans come to the Crees for help. The Chipeweyans were starving because the deer did not come at its usual time in the year. Awasin's mother was suspicious that the Chipeweyans may just be looking for a free handout, and so the boys agreed to go with them back to the Chipeweyan's camp to prove they needed the supplies. Jamie decides he wants to go too, so the two and the Chipeweyans who came (including Denikazi, their leader), canoes back to the Chipeweyan camp. There, Denikazi misunderstood for he thought Jamie and Awasin were going with them on the hunt for the deer. This is how Jamie and Awasin start their journey for the deer hunt out in the barrens. Soon, they go up to the North farther, but they do not find any 'deer' (in the book, deer means barrenland caribou). So, Denikazi orders Jamie and Awasin to stay with two young Chipeweyans at a certain point until they come back. He includes that they should run, and forget about the camp should they encounter Eskimos. In this book, the Chipeweyans and the Crees are deathly afraid of the Eskimos. The Chipeweyan Chief Denikazi described it this way: his people went and hunted as far north as they wanted to for deer, for they had guns and the Eskimos did not. Then, the Eskimos got guns and fought back. (Nowadays Eskimos are called 'Inuit' or 'Thule', but this was not the case when Mowat wrote his novel, or for decades afterward). Anyway, while staying with the two young Chipewyan hunters, Jamie decides he wants to take the chance and explore. He tricks Awasin into it, and later Awasin gives in. They go up to see the 'stone house' that one of the two Chipeweyans had told them about. There, they try to find it but unexpectedly meet a whirlpool and barely survive. Gathering what they can salvage from the water and their broken canoe, they have barely enough to survive. They cannot use the canoe anymore, they are stranded in the barrens. When the two young Chipeweyans found out that Awasin and Jamie were gone they went on searching for them. Their search is abruptly stopped when they catch a glance of an Eskimo kayak. As for Jamie and Awasin, they decide to go the way that Denikazi and the other hunters went, so they can join with them on the journey back. A problem occurs, for one of Denikazi's men sees what he believes is an Eskimo and they all flee quietly back. They unknowingly pass by Jamie and Awasin's camp during the night. Jamie and Awasin are then forced to overcome a series of obstacles including finding shelter and food, to wait until the summer when they can make the trek back to their home camp with the best chance of survival. They engage in a massive caribou hunt, and able to build a log cabin and make a comfortable home for themselves. On their attempted return trip, they both become afflicted by snow blindness and are forced to build an igloo to survive. They are discovered by an Eskimo boy named Peetyuk who offers to help and takes them to his camp, where they learn that the Eskimo do not hate the cree, and are only hostile because they are as afraid of the Cree as the Cree are of them. The boys are able to return home with the help of their new friends, and they make plans to return to their cabin the next summer with Jamie's uncle Angus.
20669313	/m/051_kx_	Riding for My Life	Julie Krone		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Julie Krone is the world's greatest ever female horse racing jockey. By age 25, Julie was the first woman ever to win a riding title at a major track, the first woman ever to win five races in one day at a New York track, and one of three jockeys ever to win six races on one card.http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=415718571 In 1993, she became the first female winner of a Triple Crown race, riding 14-to-1 long-shot Colonial Affair to victory in the Belmont Stakes—"showing the patience, intelligence and tactical savvy that have made her one of the nation's leading performers," wrote William Nack of Sports Illustrated.http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1138678/index.htmhttp://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CEEDB113DF935A35755C0A965958260 The Boys Club follows Julie's struggles in her tomboy childhood in rural Michigan and her early-career drug use, her battles with fellow jockeys and the media and her climb up the jockey success ladder, the horrific 1993 racetrack accident that crushed her leg and chest, and her painful determination to make a comeback - all part of her hard-hitting fight to become a female jockey in the male-dominated world of horse racing.http://www.amazon.com/Riding-My-Life-Julie-Krone/dp/0316504777 Despite a series of debilitating falls and challenges, by the time Julie retired in 1999, she had won 3,545 races and more than $81 million in purse earnings.http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/08/07/sports/main222526.shtml
20671893	/m/051yc_c	One Day of Life	Manlio Argueta	1980	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Guadalupe "Lupe" Guardado is a middle-aged Salvadoran woman who lives near Chalatenango, El Salvador. During the day she is required to do what she can to support her family, while her husband works for a wealthy landowner. Her husband José has become involved in rebellion against the economic conditions and became a leader in the Christian farmers organization. Fearing persecution for his opposition, José regularly stays "in the hills" after work and sees his family little. The Guardado's son Justino was killed by the "authorities" prior to the events in the novel, and their son-in-law Helio has "disappeared." Guadalupe's granddaughter Adolfina relays the protest at a cathedral, as well as a massacre of students on a bus. At the end of the novel, the authorities bring a beaten man to Guadalupe and Adolfina who had said the name "Adolfina" after being severely beaten. Adolfina does not recognize the man, but Guadalupe recognizes her husband José. On his previous advice, she denies knowing him, and he is taken away.
20672669	/m/051y63b	Holy Deadlock	A. P. Herbert	1934	{"/m/022444": "Polemic", "/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The novel's plot is very similar to that of "Not a Crime", expanded and presented with a tragic ending rather than the earlier deus ex machina. The protagonists are a faultless and honest young couple, with the everyman names of John Adam and Mary Eve, who married impetuously, are now amicably separated, and wish to divorce so that they can remarry; neither has committed adultery nor desired to. Because of the lack of legal provision, they are compelled to collude to present a fictional cause for divorce; Mary asks Adam to "act like a gentleman" and provide the pretext, as her fiancé, Martin Seal, cannot be named as a co-respondent without risking his job (he works as an announcer for the BBC). After his first attempt to obtain the necessary evidence, the maid refuses to identify him in court and the case collapses; at the second attempt, his "partner" develops measles and has to be supported in the hotel for several weeks at great expense. A decree nisi is granted but, during the waiting period, Mary spends the night with Seal and is reported by an acquaintance to the King's Proctor, who reports that the divorce should not be granted. She fights the case, but the judge refuses to exercise any discretion in her favour, and declines to grant a divorce. By the end of the book, Mary and Adam are separated but remain legally married. Seal has lost his position after being named in the final court case, but can choose to live with Mary without excessive social stigma. However, John is a broken man, legally unable to marry his lover—and, as she is a school headmistress, socially unable to continue associating with her. On the last page, he departs in the company of a prostitute, announcing that he intends to "behave like a gentleman—at last!"
20673824	/m/0523g91	The Great Romance			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The book's opening scene portrays the protagonist, John Hope, awakening from a sleep of 193 years. Hope had been a prominent mid-twentieth-century scientist, who had developed new power sources that enabled air travel and, eventually, space exploration. In the year 1950, Hope had taken a "sleeping draught" that put him into a long suspended animation, as part of a planned experiment. When he wakes in the year 2143, he is met by Alfred and Edith Weir, descendants of John Malcolm Weir, the chemist who had prepared the sleeping draft Hope had taken in 1950. Hope is shocked to find that the Weirs and their contemporaries have telepathic abilities. The development of telepathy as a general human talent has led to a vastly improved society. People can no longer conceal malevolent motives and plans, a fact that has inaugurated a new moral order. Those who have been unable or unwilling to adapt to this new social and ethical climate have left civilized society for more primitive lands, where the telepathic power is not dominant. Hope joins with Alfred Weir and another scientist, Charles Moxton, in a plan to fly a specially-equipped craft to the planet Venus. Moxton has developed his paranormal abilities to include telekinesis. The later chapters of the book describe their flight to Venus, and what they find on that planet. The Great Romance makes a special effort to attempt a realistic forecast of what space travel would be like, in terms of the absence of breathable atmosphere and gravity in space, and comparable factors. In these aspects, the book reflects the likely influence of Percy Greg's 1880 novel Across the Zodiac.
20675409	/m/0523yxw	Infinity and the Mind	Rudy Rucker	1982		 The book contains popular expositions (accessible to readers with no more than a high school mathematics background) on the mathematical theory of infinity, and a number of related topics. These include Gödel's incompleteness theorems and their relationship to concepts of artificial intelligence and the human mind, as well as the conceivability of some unconventional cosmological models. The material is approached from a variety of viewpoints, some more conventionally mathematical and others being nearly mystical. There is a brief account of the author's personal contact with Kurt Gödel. An appendix contains one of the few popular expositions on set theory research on what are known as "strong axioms of infinity."
20675558	/m/051yx6y	Alamat ng Gubat	Bob Ong	2003	{"/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Tong and his friends help find the banana heart in the forest. When Langgam won as the new leader of the forest, he got squashed by an animal. And also, they are being threatened by a gang of evil animals. So Tong, Pagong, Aso and Kuneho fight for the forest and are planning to save Tong's father. But when Tong's friends were eaten by Buwaya, Tong is left behind. Will Tong ever get the banana heart without killing the whole forest? Tong eventually got the banana heart with the help of an annoying but wise monkey. He has also not harmed the forest but saved it and made it a better place to live in. But of course, no one still knows what has happened to Leon and his gang.
20676940	/m/026vx_1	Wildwood Dancing	Juliet Marillier	2006-07-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 One winter, Jena's father sets out to the coast to recover from a serious illness that would kill him if he remained home for the winter. In his absence, he leaves his house, his younger daughters, and his half of the merchant business he and his cousin run in the hands of Jena, and her elder sister Tatiana (called 'Tati'). It is when Jena's father's brother Nicolae dies, that things begin to go wrong for Jena and her sisters: Cezar uses his newfound power of being master of his father's estate to take a firm control over the castle in which Jena and her sisters live. Every full moon, the sisters go to the Other Kingdom, where they meet and dance with various magical creatures. Eventually, Cezar becomes so bent on revenge for the death of his older brother Costi (who drowned ten years prior to the book) that he suggests felling the forest around both his and his cousins' estates. In distress, Jena attempts to dissuade him from doing so. She also attempts to prevent Tati from seeing her Sorrow, her sweetheart, who Jena believes to be one of the Night People. In an effort to persuade her sister that it is not meant to be, Jena enlists the help of Bogdana, Nicolae's widow, to organise a party to find suitable husbands at the next Full Moon. Jena and her younger sisters are all upset that they will miss the Full Moon dance, but none so much as Tati; she rapidly loses weight, and her personality fades into almost non-existence. Meanwhile, there was a killing in the village, which had all the markings of an attack of the Night people; reluctantly, Jena tells her sister of what Tadeusz had told her about Dark of the Moon at one of the Full Moon revels. Tati decides to use this portal at Dark of the Moon, where Jena discovers her with Tadeusz's sister, Anastasia. Frightened, the sisters are separated, and Anastasia takes Jena (unwillingly) to see Draguţsa's mirror. In the mirror, Jena learns of Sorrow's true heritage, as well as sees a vision of herself and a young man that she would come to love; the young man in this vision then changes into a horrible monster, turning on Jena's younger sisters. Frightened, Jena flees back to the lakeside, where she meets up with Tati and Sorrow. Sorrow then sends the girls over the frozen lake and back to their own world, where they decide to visit the Dancing Glade the next month to both warn the Queen of Cezar's intentions, and ask if she could help Sorrow, and the girl who was revealed to be his younger sister. After miserably failing to propose to (and being rejected by) Jena, Cezar works out that the entrance to the Other Kingdom is indeed in the bedchamber that Jena and her sisters share. Desperate for help, Jena sets out to the lake where Costi drowned, to seek out Dragutsa. She speaks to the old woman for a little, before she is given a powerful sleeping potion to put both the man and the chaperone to sleep on the night of the full moon. As Jena leaves, she gives Gogu a kiss on the nose; a bright flash throws both her and the frog apart. When she can see again, she finds a young man on the shore of the lake, whom she instantly knows to be Gogu; she also recognises him as the young man in the mirror, who turns into a monster. She realises that, despite knowing what he is, she loves him, and when he gives no answer, she runs away back home. As planned, the sisters drug the man and chaperone in their bedchamber, and seek the help of the faerie Queen. Ileana tells Tati that she has set Sorrow a quest, to be completed within one month; if he succeeds, they will be allowed to wed, and Tati to live in the Other Kingdom. Gogu is also there, and the faerie Queen reveals that he was bound by a spell of silence, giving him his voice back. Gogu then reveals to Jena that he is Costi, which she denies; however, Dragutsa later reveals that this is true. She had placed the boy under and enchantment to turn him into a frog. She then revealed that it was Jena's doubt that allowed Anastasia to manipulate the image in the mirror; Costi was not a monster, and Jena had broken his heart by claiming that he was, instead of trusting him. Costi returns the next day and takes over his father's estate, and Cezar disappears; however, Jena is too nervous and guilty to speak to Costi. Eventually, Tati convinces her to go visit him and, on the day of the Full Moon, she does. She and Costi work out their misunderstanding, and return to Jena's home, where they take Tati to an injured Sorrow to take to the Other Kingdom. Eventually, life returns to normal, though they miss Tati. Jena's father returns home, and Jena and Costi look forward to their impending marriage.
20678230	/m/05457lh	Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class	Robin D.G. Kelley	1994		 Kelley examines the methods of resistance adopted by black working class as well as the spaces where black working class congregated to form an emerging consciousness. Utilizing the theory of historian George Rawick that the only way to detect working-class resistance from the past is to have knowledge of the amount of damage caused to the employer by the employees, Kelley documents the organized and unorganized ways black workers expressed resentment for racist treatment, including slowdowns, theft, leaving work early, quitting, and various acts of sabotage. He also looks in depth at black resistance that took place in public space, namely Birmingham’s streetcars and buses during World War II. In spite of strict controls by mostly white American bus operators, black working-class riders had no other transportation options and offered fierce resistance—not just in publicly celebrated incidents of heroism of individuals such as Rosa Parks and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, but in every-day conflicts such as arguments and fights with authorities and other riders. According to Kelley, such incidents not only inspired the individuals involved but also galvanized onlookers to the effect that the governance of public transit became quite difficult, which slowly effected change. Incorporating the theories of Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, Kelley examines the social spaces utilized by black working class to escape the racism and humiliations they suffered at the hands of the authority, such as church and home. These spaces, though sometimes also disrupted by outsiders, allowed the community "dark" and hidden venues to discuss experiences, grievances, and dreams that helped to shape black working-class consciousness. Kelley spends part of the book investigating the embracing of alternative goals and lifestyles as a means of resisting poor and limited choices. Young black men during the World War II era were largely burdened by poor education and training that it made it difficult for them to find, much less maintain, employment. Rather than adopting the stereotype assigned poor, southern migrants, many working-class blacks embraced a new identity symbolized by the zoot suit. According to Kelley, many of the working-class blacks of the era felt that most of the jobs available to them were "slave labor", and they instead elected to become hustlers, pimps and gangsters to protest job discrimination and the lack of viable employment options. New identities afforded new opportunities to individuals such as Malcolm Little to study the psychology of white racism, though the choice of criminal life also brought extreme consequences. In more recent times, this alternate choice is demonstrated through "gangsta rap", which evolved out of the authority-challenging blues of the 19th century. Born from black working class in Los Angeles, the musical genre responds in part to the hard realities of poverty and declining unemployment. Kelley illustrates these facets by referencing the lyrics of Ice Cube, who in "A Bird in the Hand"—a track on 1991's Death Certificate—tells the story of a young man forced to sell crack to survive when the only job he can obtain after graduation is an underpaying one at McDonald's.
20684325	/m/051y196	Once in a Lifetime	Moss Hart			 The satirical comedy focuses on the effect talking pictures have on the entertainment industry. When the New York City vaudevillean team of Jerry Hyland, May Daniels, and George Lewis find themselves in a faltering vaudeville act, they decide to head west and present themselves as elocution experts in the hope someone will hire them to train actors unaccustomed to speaking on screen. On the train they meet gossip columnist Helen Hobart, who introduces them to megalomaniac film mogul Herman Glogauer when they arrive in Hollywood. The trio's misadventures include encounters with Lawrence Vail, a New York City playwright driven to distraction and eventually a sanatorium by studio bureaucracy and a lack of work to keep him busy; silent screen beauties Phyllis Fontaine and Florabel Leigh, whose voices sound like nails on a blackboard; two pages in 18th century dress who periodically arrive carrying placards with announcements about Glogauer's latest doings; a ditzy receptionist who wears an evening gown to work; and aspiring actress (and proverbial dumb blonde) Susan Walker and her chaperoning stage mother. Dimwitted George becomes a director who shoots the wrong script, forgets to turn on the soundstage lights, and audibly cracks nuts during filming, yet his movie is called a masterpiece and he's declared a genius by trend-conscious journalists who believe he's ahead of his time.
20686614	/m/0466qqj	No More Dead Dogs	Gordon Korman	2002	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Ever since Wallace Wallace (main character) was young, he has insisted on telling the truth. After scoring the winning touchdown for the Bedford Middle School football team in the championship Wallace Wallace, he becomes a popular guy. What the entire town and most of the football team don't realize is that Wallace is really a benchwarmer, whose winning touchdown was a fluke. His former best friend, football team captain Steve Cavanaugh, knows that the winning move was lucky and has cut ties with Wallace because of it. When Wallace is assigned to write a report on the book Old Shep, My Pal, he won't lie about his feelings. He dislikes the book and writes a negative review, which results in a detention handed down by his English teacher, Mr. Fogelman, until he writes a quality review. His detention is spent with the drama club, which is currently producing a play version of Old Shep, My Pal. Wallace is initially bored, but soon impresses the club members with his charisma and suggestions for improvement. When his detention is complete, he quits the football team to join the drama club. The student body does not take this lightly, as they view him as the hero of the team. Soon after Wallace joins the club, an unknown person vandalizes the play set and rehearsals. One club member, Rachel Turner, believes Wallace is the culprit. Everyone else initially regards him as a hero and refuses to believe her, but when one of Wallace's practice jerseys appears during the final sabotage attempt, they turn against him. Rachel changes her mind to believe that Wallace isn't the vandal. Wallace is eventually banned from the play entirely. Despite his ban, the drama club decides to use Wallace's ideas for the play, including having Shep live at the end. This decision results in disaster when the saboteur blows up the prop Shep during the performance—just as the actors praise his miraculous recovery. Meanwhile, Wallace figures out that the culprit is Rachel's brother Dylan, who wanted revenge because he felt the play had ruined the famous Wallace Wallace. Consequently, Wallace tells his first lie to spare Rachel's feelings. After her initial anger at Wallace, she realizes on her own that Dylan was behind the attacks. Wallace and Rachel recognize their mutual feelings of love, and plan to go on a date together. Furthermore, Cavanaugh and Wallace make up and are friends again.
20691876	/m/051xdkp	Every Day is Mother's Day	Hilary Mantel	1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It is a black comedy set in the mid 1970s and begins with the widowed spiritualist Evelyn Axon's discovery that her mentally handicapped daughter Muriel is pregnant. Isabel Field is the latest social worker to tackle the Axon's but Evelyn is determined not to let anyone interfere with Muriel, whose condition she blames on her daughter's recent weekly visits to a daycare centre. Isabel Field herself is having an affair with the brother of Evelyn's neighbour and the story of this relationship is interwoven with that of Evelyn and Muriel's and the birth of the baby... The story is continued in Hilary Mantel's next novel Vacant Possession.
20692213	/m/0524cc7	Moon of the Spider	Richard A. Knaak	2005-12-27	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Driven by nightmares to the ruins of a mysterious tomb, Lord Aldric Jitan hopes to awaken a terrible evil that has slept since the fall of Tristram. Drawn by the growing darkness in the land, the enigmatic Necromancer, Zayl, stumbles upon Jitan's plot -- unaware that one of his own brethren has set these dire events in motion. Now, as the celestial Moon of the Spider rises, the nefarious demon, Astrogha, prepares to unleash his minions upon the world of Sanctuary.
20699375	/m/05249tr	The Vodi				 Dick Corvey is suffering from advanced tuberculosis in a provincial sanitarium. While confined to bed 24 hours a day, he meditates on various events from his earlier life, his friendship with Tom, his relationships with women, especially his brief engagement with Lois who abandoned him when his virtually hopeless condition had become apparent. A recurring theme is that of the Vodi, a malevolent race of small creatures invented by Tom when at school. The chief concern of the Vodi is to persecute and destroy the unlucky: the good and harmless people who invite the wrath of the Vodi by these very qualities (while the undeserving minority can enjoy good fortune and all life's comforts unhampered). Among others, Dick is tended by Nurse Evelyn Mallaton, whose sympathy and strong sexual attraction eventually give him the energy to rally against the disease and recover. However, while attracted to Dick, Evelyn understands his lack of prospects in the world and becomes engaged to a local businessman. Here emerges the main theme of the book: what Dick perceived as the distinction between the undeserved good and bad luck may in fact be the difference between a strong will and the lack of it. The novel ends with Dick bravely leaving the sanitarium where he has been offered a safe nursing job, to try to establish himself in the world on his own and perhaps get Evelyn back.
20701014	/m/0521jxl	Hunter's Run	Gardner Dozois	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 On the colony planet of São Paulo, a man named Ramon Espejo kills a man in a fight outside a bar over a woman. It transpires the man was a diplomat, and Espejo decides to lie low in the wilderness in the north of the planet's major continent. Whilst in hiding he accidentally discovers an alien installation. The suspicious aliens capture him and render him unconscious. When Ramon wakes up, he learns that another man had followed him into the alien hideout, but has since escaped, presumably to reveal the existence of the aliens to the rest of the colony. The aliens do not want this and thereby enslave Ramon using highly advanced technology, deciding that since he is human, he can be used to track down and find the other intruder. Ramon at first tries to stall and help his "prey" but his plans are ruined by his captor Maneck, whom he eventually gets to know a little better, during their travels together. Ramon realizes that the aliens are not evil or fundamentally incomprehensible, only culturally different. He then learns a few things about the race and accordingly, begins to question some aspects of his own life. Eventually though, it is revealed to him that the man they are chasing after is actually the "real" Ramon and that he (the man who is kept prisoner by Maneck) is actually an artificial clone made by the aliens. There never was any other man who broke into the installation, it was Ramon who has escaped. Now disheartened, the clone-Ramon manages to escape by tricking his alien keeper and eventually meets up with his original. The original Ramon does not recognize him, since the clone is considerably younger and in better shape. After traveling together for some time, the clone realizes with a start that he does not actually like the person that he is (or was) very much: the original has never met Maneck or gotten to know the aliens and thus has never had time to ponder about some of the questions the clone has started to struggle with. After the real Ramon finally sees that he is traveling with a man who bears uncanny resemblance to him, the clone kills his original in an act of desperation and then, assuming his (former?) identity, takes up a new life as his old self in the capital. The novel ends with him deciding to go back, make peace and reach out to the aliens in an attempt to use their knowledge of the planet's mineral wealth to enrich him. The story ends before we learn their response to this offer.
20707158	/m/051zgbk	Earth Revisited			{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel delivers the story of Herbert Atheron in a first-person narrative. In 1892 he is a successful businessman, married, the father of a son and daughter. Though not yet 50 years old, he has contracted a fatal illness; at the start of the book, he is dying. He re-evaluates his life, to reach a grim conclusion: he feels that he has wasted his life by concentrating on business and neglecting the personal and familial matters that count most. He especially regrets the loss of his first love, a woman named Theresa, who died young after he abandoned her. On his deathbed, he feels himself "alone in the vast vacuity of space, a naked, shivering soul. A deep darkness of horror engulfed me. I could endure no more." When he regains consciousness, he finds himself in the body of a 27-year-old man named Harold Amesbury. He discovers that it is now a hundred years later; Amesbury has been ill and delirious for three months. His fiancée, Helen Newcome, is overjoyed at his recovery &mdash; but stunned when he reveals his identity as Atherton. Helen determines to nurse Herbert/Harold back to mental health. She leads him out into the world, where he confronts the vast changes of the intervening century, and beholds the "bewildering magnificence and beauty" &mdash; of Brooklyn in 1992. Helen Newcome brings the protagonist to her inventor father; together, the two Newcomes guide the confused time traveller in the realities of 1992. Society has enjoyed vast improvement in the intervening century: the city of Columbia, formerly New York, is cleaner, better organized, more peaceful, healthier, and generally better than before. Electrification and mechanization have brought widespread prosperity, and the extremes of wealth and poverty have been levelled. Government has assumed more responsibility: all land is owned by the state, and people lease the sites of their palatial houses. Newcome the inventor concentrates on improving food production; he receives a stipend from the state, and his inventions go to benefit society as a whole. Brooks does not dwell on the larger political organization of society, though he indicates the world is dominated by the United States of America and a "United States of Europe." War is a thing of the past. Brooks blends the technical and the spiritual: when Newcome shows the protagonist the new "harmonic telegraph," Atherton/Amesbury speculates about the possibilities of both radio and telepathy. The second half of the book is dominated by spiritual matters. The protagonist has a rough adjustment to his strange situation, and obsesses over his lost Theresa. Helen Newcome grows distressed at her limited ability to help her fiancé, and leaves for a trip abroad. Atherton/Amesbury boards with a widow and her children. The daughter of the house, Irene, was used as an experimental subject in hypnotism by her late physician father; she is a spontaneous medium and clairvoyant. Irene leads the protagonist on an aerial journey to the now-lush Sahara, where he is re-united with Helen. Through psychic visions, the two come to understand that Helen is the lost Theresa reincarnated. They are happily married in the end.
20708124	/m/0520r8d	Suicide Hill	James Ellroy	1987	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins a psychiatrist's assessment recommending that Hopkins be immediately retired from duty with a full pension. Hopkins eludes compulsory retirement with attachment as LAPD liaison officer to an FBI bank robbery investigation. Hopkins then manipulates his way into robbery/homicide investigations. The novel's story line and characters twist and turn.
20710665	/m/051_2c7	Beyond Thirty and The Man-Eater	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1957		 See the articles on the separate works.
20714180	/m/0522t0h	1969: The Year Everything Changed				 Divided into four parts that correspond with the four seasons of the year, the book chronicles the history of 1969 in American society and culture. The author delves into such events as the New York Jets' historic Super Bowl victory, Richard Nixon's inauguration, the birth of punk music and the first Led Zeppelin tour, the publication of The Godfather and release of Easy Rider, the Santa Barbara oil spill and the Cuyahoga River fire, the Battle of Hamburger Hill, the People's Park and Stonewall riots, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Chappaquiddick incident, the Woodstock Festival, the Manson Family and Zodiac Killer murders, the Miracle Mets' championship season, the peace movement and the birth of the Weathermen, the Days of Rage, the Occupation of Alcatraz, the murder of Fred Hampton, and the Altamont Free Concert.
20718964	/m/051y39p	Drift and Mastery	Walter Lippmann	1914		 The Themes of Muckraking Lippmann examines the trend of muckraking journalism as emblematic of the underlying social conditions in America. Lippmann argues the increasing scope of government and integration of society led to the proliferation of muckraking. According to Lippmann, corruption had always existed in politics, but social change and the expansion of government made it relevant and scandalous. He argues muckraking is therefore neither "progressive or reactionary", but simply a manifestation of the bewilderment of society at evolving social and economic arrangements. New Incentives Lippmann argues against commercial competition as the best incentive for industry. Opposing systematic anti-trust policies, he believes well-managed trusts can increase cooperation while minimizing waste. Lippmann advocates scientific experimentation to find the most efficient mode of business. Increased power for labor and the consumer he argues will lead to a new system of incentives. Lippmann also notes the development of school of business administration may encourage a scientific ethic to replace businesses' reliance on competition. The Magic of Property Lippmann asserts that old definitions of property are outmoded by the advanced of industrial capitalism, especially stock ownership in corporations. As a solution he proposes government ownership of some industry (steel, oil, coal, etc.) combined with the application of managerial skill. Lippmann further challenges the view that private ownership and especially stock ownership leads to efficiency. Citing the construction of the Panama Canal, he argues government can work efficiently when given the means. Caveat Emptor Lippmann addresses the concerns of consumers as part of the new economic order. He argues that because of lack of information and the misinformation of advertising current patterns of consumption were inefficient. Lippmann sees several ways of correcting this problem. According to Lippmann, centralization and conglomeration of business will create greater accountability to consumers by focusing their attention. Politically, Lippmann argues that voting rights for women, the primary household consumer, will increase the importance of the consumer in the political realm. Lippmann speculates that consumers are, "destined to be stronger than the interests either of labor or of capital." A Key to the Labor Movement Lippmann argues that labor unions form a necessary safeguard against tyrannical capitalism and bring to democracy to industry. As Lippmann states, "Without unions industrial democracy is unthinkable. Without democracy in industry, that is where it counts most, there is no such thing as democracy in America." Lippmann goes on to criticize radical unions such as the IWW, arguing they do not value tangible gains for their members. The Funds of Progress Lippmann addresses the question of how increased social programs can be paid for. He argues there is a social surplus that can be created by increasing efficiency using management and science. Lippmann argues that business when forced to account for the interest of the worker, the consumer and the government will refrain from "reducing wages or raising prices" and will instead focus on industrial efficiency. Science and management, he argues, will allow business to find the "funds of progress" by reducing waste, increasing cooperation and simply being industrially efficient. A Nation of "Villagers" Lippmann begins by examining the hostility to trusts. He argues that much hostility can be attributed not to trusts unethical actions, but to their relative newness. In this vein Lippmann criticizes politicians who appeal to a sense of outrage in trusts and new economic arrangements. He specifically mentions both William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, who he believes falsely idealize the small-scale agrarian past. Lippmann states this view quite succinctly at the end of the chapter writing, Those who cling to the village view of life may deflect the drift, may batter the trusts around a bit, but they will never dominate business, never humanize its machinery, and they will continue to be playthings of industrial change. At the bottom the issue is between those who are willing to enter upon effort for which there is no precedent, and those who aren't. A Big World and Little Men In this chapter Lippmann contrasts the complexity of societal problems with simplistic institutions. He argues just as a city dweller is unaccustomed to dealing with the countryside, our institutions are unable to deal with the &#34;big&#34; modern world. Lippmann therefore asserts institutions should, and in democracies already have, adapt themselves to these changed conditions. More personally, Lippmann claims this &#34;big world&#34; causes individual turmoil as, &#34;Those changes distract him so deeply that the more &#34;advanced&#34; he is, the more he flounders in the bogs of his own soul.&#34; Drift Lippmann begins by asserting that Wilson&#39;s New Freedom is flawed because it assumed an older form of democracy can be retrieved. This looking backwards for a golden age is fruitless and is essentially childish according to Lippmann. On similar grounds Lippmann goes on to criticize Marxian socialists who he sees as unrealistic in their assumptions. Lippmann ends by defining the challenge of &#34;Drift.&#34; He calls Drift a &#34;spiritual problem,&#34; which is caused by the combination of social/economic change and the freedom from the old order. The Rock of Ages In this chapter Lippmann criticizes the dogmatic clinging to tradition and further outlines the challenge of modern social and economic arrangements. Lippmann goes on to examine immigration and uses the metaphor of immigration to describe all people are immigrants in the rapidly changing modern world. A Note on the Women's Movement Lippmann cites the women&#39;s movement as a perfect example of how the &#34;rock of ages&#34; has given way to a modern dilemma where freedom must be exercised rationally. Women&#39;s rights he argues, are necessary simply because society has already moved past demarcated &#34;spheres.&#34; He emphasizes the movement towards women&#39;s rights and rationality in housework and child rearing will be especially dramatic because women have heretofore been irrational and conservative in their actions. Noticeably, Lippmann is not completely on board with a feminist agenda. He states plainly that female participation in the labor force is a societal ill that will hopefully come to an end. Bogeys Lippmann examines how, especially in an increasingly complex world, fear prevents society from addressing problems rationally. He argues that removing everyday concerns and fears will lead to greater rationality and boldness on the part of citizens. Invoking Freud, he argues that constructed fears unconsciously hold people and society back from achievement. Poverty, Chastity, Obedience Lippmann argues poverty, chastity and obedience are a more primitive and brutal means of controlling a society, compared with self-government. Notably, he argues that, &#34;To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.&#34; Lippmann extends the implications of this argument asserting that those afflicted by poverty are &#34;unfit for self-government.&#34; Similarly, Lippmann advocating moving beyond valuing chastity. Instead he argues, &#34;Our interest in sex is no longer to annihilate it, but to educate it, to find civilized opportunities for its expression.&#34; Summing up this line of argument, Lippmann asserts old virtues sought to restrain citizens whereas true democratic virtues should provide people with a rich life where they deal with life in all its complexity. Mastery Lippmann begins this chapter by citing the example of a primitive tribe who had traditionally chopped down trees with the ineffective method of straight cuts. When the more effective &#34;western&#34; method of using V-shaped cuts was introduced, Lippmann relates, the tribe insisted on the less effective method for the sake of tradition. Lippmann argues current society clinging to traditional methods and economic approach to are as irrational as tribesmen refusing to make V-shaped cuts. Lippmann goes on to define the scientific and rational application of new methods and approaches as mastery. Notably, he argues science is inextricably linked to democracy, that &#34;The scientific spirit is the discipline of democracy.&#34; Modern Communion Lippmann begins examining the individual implications of his societal framework. He argues that science, unlike socialism, provides a means for collective cooperation for the betterment of society. Science, according to Lippmann, allows people worldwide to approach problems within the same framework and come to similar conclusions. Spelling out his pragmatic understanding Lippmann argues science, &#34;distinguishes between fact and fancy, and works always with the implied resolution to make the best out of what is possible.&#34; Fact and Fancy In his final chapter, Lippmann fully takes on the impact of science. He notes that science may seem ill-suited to social concerns and generally impersonal. Lippmann differentiates the scientific viewpoint from a complete rejection of tradition. He argues that past, because of its variety of ways of life and societies, can be a source of inspiration. Instead of an &#34;abrupt break with the accumulated wisdom of the past,&#34; Lippmann favors taking what is rational and useful from tradition. Lippmann concludes by affirming the power of science to encompass the full range of human experience and materially improve upon it. He argues that science is the means to make &#34;reality bend to our purposes.&#34;
20730428	/m/054640m	You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again	Julia Phillips	1991-03-06		 The book begins by briefly introducing the reader to Phillips in 1989, before quickly travelling back to her childhood in 1940s Brooklyn. It then covers her early life and first successes in the film industry: she and Michael earned $100,000 from their debut feature, Steelyard Blues, moved to Malibu, California, and had a daughter, Kate. She also reveals the personal peccadillos and vices of the biggest Hollywood A-listers of the day, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Richard Dreyfuss, Goldie Hawn, and David Geffen. Many of these people were pivotal figures in the emergence of New Hollywood in the 1960s and '70s, but Phillips disparagingly refers to them as "a rogues' gallery of nerds". Later episodes in her life, including freebasing, and her abusive relationship with a violent drug addict which caused her to miss her own mother's funeral, are also discussed candidly. Most significant, from Phillips' own point of view, is her exposé of the "Boys' Club" in the higher echelons of Hollywood, where she claimed it was her gender that led to her ultimate ostracism. Mike Ovitz who headed the Creative Artists Agency were, in her eyes, responsible for a qualitative decline in standards and the increasing banality of movies since the 1970s.
20733244	/m/053wts6	The Bulwark	Theodore Dreiser	1946	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hannah and Rufus Barnes, both Quakers, move out of Maine to Trenton, New Jersey, where Hannah's widowed sister lives. Their son Solon, the protagonist, meets Benecia Wallin; although she is affluent and he is not, they get married. Solon works in a bank in Philadelphia, where his Quaker values are contrary to financial ethos. He summons a bank examiner from Washington DC to stop the corrupt practices of some chief executives. Eventually, he resigns. Meanwhile, two of his offspring, Etta and Stewart, repudiate their Quaker upbringing. While Orville gets married and Isobel works in a college, Etta moves to Wisconsin and then Greenwich Village under the influence of one of her friends, Volida La Porte. She has an affair with a painter, until he decides to go West to further his career. Moreover, Stewart accidentally kills one of his dates and commits suicide shortly after. Eventually, Benecia dies upon Etta's return; Solon dies of cancer as Etta watches over him.
20737906	/m/054dybx	Feathers	Jacqueline Woodson	2007-03-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Taking place in the 1970s, in an urban all African American school, this book highlights the hard topics of racism, faith, hope, and disabilities. A white boy comes to the school and is soon dubbed “Jesus Boy”. His entrance as the only white student causes tension and misunderstandings. Some of the students believe that he is Jesus and others simply hope he is. He is very quiet and doesn’t let Trevor, the class bully, hurt him. He just calmly talks to Trevor and never retaliates. Jesus Boy knows sign language which intrigues Frannie since she has known sign language her whole life. Frannie has grown up with a deaf older brother, and is very sensitive to how people treat and perceive him. She is hesitant about being friends with Jesus Boy because she does not understand him and wonders why he would cross over “the bridge” to their side. She is torn because she knows how difficult it can be to be the new kid, but she does not want to stand out. Frannie’s best friend Samantha believes that Jesus Boy truly is Jesus Christ and that he has come in this time of chaos and because of the war. During all that is going on Frannie onstantly thinks of the poem she read in class that said "Hope is the thing with feathers". Jesus Boy is subject to a lot of bullying by Trevor. Trevor picks on Jesus Boy because he is the only one who is lighter skinned than himself. Trevor has a white father who left his mother before Trevor was born. One day Trevor is swinging and decides to try to jump off and land on a fence because he wants to feel like he is flying. He falls short and breaks his arm. When he comes back to school he is even angrier at Jesus Boy and tries to fight him with one arm. Jesus Boy is about to fight him back when Trevor falls in the snow. The class realizes that Jesus Boy is just a boy because Jesus would never fight someone. The class also realizes that Trevor is also just a boy and that they shouldn’t be afraid of him anymore. Jesus Boy and Frannie immediately go and help Trevor up out of the snow. Later Samantha asks Frannie why she helped Trevor, and Frannie doesn’t know. Samantha then admits that she was wrong about Jesus Boy and says she doesn’t know what to believe in anymore. Frannie tries to comfort Samantha and says “Maybe there’s a little bit of Jesus inside of all of us. Maybe Jesus is just that something good or something sad or something... something that makes us do stuff like help Trevor up even when he is cursing us out. Or maybe... maybe Jesus is just that thing you had when the Jesus Boy got here, Samantha. Maybe Jesus is the hope that you were feeling” (p.&nbsp;109). At the end of the book Frannie reflects on all that has been happening in her life. She thinks of her mother’s baby, her brother, Samantha’s lose of faith, and, especially, Jesus Boy. She remembers the poem she read in class and decides “Each moment, I am thinking, is a thing with feathers” (p.&nbsp;118).
20742442	/m/055q5b0	Bhuswargo Bhayankar	Satyajit Ray	1987	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 In this case, Feluda and his team go to Srinagar in Kashmir where they find a spine chilling mystery.
20746136	/m/058q2d4	The Propitious Esculent	John Reader	2008		 Reader divides his exploration of the potato into three sections: South America, Europe, The World. The first section describes the environments, The Andes Mountains and the altiplano, in which the potato developed. In the past, at least 3,000 years ago, people living in these environments began to take advantage of a naturally occurring plant. Over time human interaction developed a flowering plant with a nutritionally valuable, and good tasting, tuber that then became an important component of the human diet. Reader spends several pages describing the way in which the Spanish set up colonies and an empire in South America to mine mineral resources and exploit available manpower. He lays out the time line of events and shows that it took several decades for the value of the potato to become obvious to any of the Europeans. Interspersed in this discussion, Reader describes current conditions of potato growing through the Andean region. In the second section of the book, Reader traces the potato’s path across the Atlantic Ocean. The many stops on Atlantic islands gave the plant time to adjust to different environments and day lengths. Reader devotes many pages to the process of determining who had the potato first and where they were growing it and for what scale of consumption. This seems like a Western concern rooted in basic competition. However, tracing this particular time line illustrates commodity chains, economic development, culture change (including scientific theory and method), and biological change. In Europe, the potato was not immediately well received. Reader discusses how it was accused of causing leprosy or other ailments and then how cultural groups’ perception of the potato flipped and it became something entirely healthful. The potato also is at the center of demographic and cultural change and this is most clear in the case of Ireland. Reader’s explanation of what happened during the great Potato Famine of 1845 to 1850 discusses the biosocial and biopolitical processes of the period. The Propitious Esculent proposes that the fate of Ireland was not solely the fault of a fungus but the result of a chain of governmental decisions that were set into motion because of the properties of the potato. In the final portion of the book, Reader outlines the worldwide spread of the potato and how people around the globe have set out to study the potato to protect its genetic health. The potato spread successfully in part due to the lessons learned after Irish Potato Famine in which biologists and farmers created methods to prevent fungus induced blight. The second point, protecting genetic health, is especially important since such a large part of the global population is dependent on the potato for a stable diet. Since there has been such a long period of human intervention in the development of the potato, it has genetic properties that have become rare as well as weaknesses in the genetic code that lead to defects in different parts of the plant. Pooling global knowledge and resources, biologists, ecologists, and anthropologists at CIP (International Potato Center) are securing the varieties of the potato.
20747323	/m/053z7nn	The Informer	Liam O'Flaherty			 Set in 1920's Dublin the novel centers on Gypo Nolan. Having disclosed the whereabouts of his friend Frankie McPhillip to the police, Gypo finds himself hunted by his revolutionary comrades for this betrayal. Using his muscle, and his empty intellect, he gets caught in his own lies and tries to escape. After the Irish Civil War, Gypo was in dire straights, living off the street and the occasional meal given to him out of pity, he does something terrible. He turns his friend in to the authorities for murder. He doesn't even realize he does it!
20751166	/m/0567lsv	A Jest of God	Margaret Laurence	1966	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows schoolteacher Rachel Cameron through a summer affair and its consequences on her life. Although Rachel is in her 30's, the book serves to document a second adolescence as she comes to recognize herself as the adult to her aging mother.
20762091	/m/057q0c6	The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity				 In the first chapter, “Modernity’s Consciousness of Time,” Habermas presents an outline of the “cultural self-understanding of modernity” as it emerged in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and attempts to retrieve the “historical context of Western rationalism” in which modernity or modernization (more narrowly conceived in terms of social and economic transformation) was originally understood as both a process of disenchantment and alienation as well as the “historical objectification of rational structures.” This presentation prepares the ground for the larger argument of the book, namely, that by losing sight of the “cultural impulse of modernity,” and abandoning the project of modernity as a whole, European intellectuals on both ends of the political spectrum have ignored the emancipatory dimension of the European Enlightenment, and thereby have renounced the only means of developing a consistent and immanent critique of modernity itself. Modernity is defined by Habermas as a set of problems related to the issue of time, problems produced by the transformation of European society in accordance with what Hegel called the “principle of subjectivity,” the notion of individual autonomy as the essence of man. This freedom from all forms of external authority, which includes nature as well as tradition, means that the subject “has to create its normativity out of itself;” because it is free, it cannot accept any value or law that it does not recognize as its own. Subjectivity, in other words, is defined by “the right to criticism: the principle of the modern world requires that what anyone is to recognize shall reveal itself to him as something entitled to recognition." Insofar as the subject wills only those laws that recognizes as rational, laws which are “self-proscribed and self-obligated,” the subject wills only itself, or, in Hegel terms, it “wills the Will:” “The Will is Free only when it does not will anything alien, extrinsic, foreign to itself (as long as it does so, it is dependent), but wills itself alone&nbsp;– wills the Will. This is the absolute Will&nbsp;– the volition to be free.” According to Habermas, Nietzsche undertakes a critique of “subject-centered reason,” of modern forms of knowledge and ethics, from a standpoint that only appears to be “genealogical,” that is, situated, historically, outside of modernity and Enlightenment thinking in an archaic, Dionysian era of myth, prior to the formation of modern subjectivity in the renunciation of instinct or “life.” According to Habermas, Nietzsche’s argument that all moral and cognitive claims (along with the rational subject) are the historical products of a power forced inward by its inability to discharge itself is not, in fact, based on a genealogy of modernity, but rather a critique of the modern cognitive and practical subject from the perspective of an equally modern aesthetics (which Nietzsche “transposes,” according to Habermas, “into the archaic”), elevating the “judgment of taste of the art critic into a model for value judgment.” Nietzsche's critique of subject, in other words, is based on a modern aesthetic experience&nbsp;– in particular, the “painful de-differentiation, a de-delimitation of the individual, a merging with amorphous nature within and without”&nbsp;– which presupposes the modern subject itself. What appears, then, in Nietzsche as the historical “other” reason is in fact a version of Kantian aesthetics shorn, of any claim of intersubjective validity.
20767082	/m/057dqw_	Blood Promise	Richelle Mead	2009-08-25	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 In Blood Promise, Rose leaves St. Vladimir's Academy to go after Dimitri, who has become Strigoi. The only clue she has is that he might be somewhere in Siberia. After meeting an Alchemist named Sydney, they travel to Siberia, where she eventually finds Dimitri’s family in the small town of Baia. While in Baia, she meets another "Shadow-Kissed" bonded pair, Oksana and Mark, and a mysterious Moroi man named Abe, who tries to force her to go back to St. Vladimir's. He eventually coerces her into leaving, and Rose agrees after a falling out with Dimitri's sister Viktoria. She then travels to Novosibirsk with other unpromised guardians to stake out Strigoi in the hopes of finding Dimitri. When she does meet him, she is too stunned by his Strigoi appearance to attempt to kill him, and ends up being held hostage by him. He refuses to kill her, and instead, says he will keep her until she decides to turn Strigoi to be with him. All the while, Rose keeps checking up with Lissa back at St. Vladimir's through the bond. Avery, a secret Spirit user, has been using compulsion to control Lissa. During a visit to Lissa's head, Rose gets pushed out by Avery. While held hostage by Dimitri, who has been feeding off her and thus weakening her, Rose eventually manages to escape, grabbing a stake on the way out. Dimitri catches up with her, and they eventually battle on a bridge, where Rose manages to plunge her stake into his chest. Exhausted, Rose ends up at the home of an Alchemist friend of Sydney's, where Oksana, Mark, and Abe are waiting. When she wakes up, she realizes Lissa is in danger with Avery, who wants to kill Lissa and then heal her back so that Lissa would be "shadow-kissed" and bonded to Avery. With help from Oksana, Rose manages to guide Lissa and Adrian through the fight against Avery and her brother, Reed, and Avery's guardian Simon. After saving Lissa, Rose asks Oksana and Mark whether there is a way a Strigoi can be restored to their former selves. Reluctantly, they tell her of a Spirit user they knew named Robert Doru, who claimed to have restored a Strigoi back to life. However, only Victor Dashkov, his half-brother, would have any idea where he currently was. Realizing the situation was hopeless because she already staked Dimitri, Rose goes back to St. Vladimir's Academy. Back at St. Vladimir's, Rose reunites with Lissa and shares what happened to her in Russia. Rose's mother, Janine, is also there, and reveals to Rose that Abe is actually her father. After agreeing to re-enroll in school to graduate, Rose goes back to her normal life at St. Vladmir's. However, she soon receives a package from Russia, enclosed with the stake she used on Dimitri, and a note from him saying he was not really staked properly, and was still alive, waiting for Rose to finish school to find him. Rose realizes that with Dimitri still a Strigoi, she has a chance to restore him to his former life, but only by finding Robert Doru.
20768681	/m/053_l87	The Nether World		1889		 The old Michael Snowdon returns from Australia to London after inheriting a substantial sum of money from his deceased son. Despite being able to live a comfortable, if not luxurious life, he spends only on necessities and lives like a poor man, keeping his fortune secret. In London he finds his granddaughter, Jane, a weak child whom he rescues from the tyranny of the Peckovers (mother and daughter), in whose house she is employed as a household drudge. Jane's father, Joseph, is another son of Michael's who disappeared a few years ago in search of work, leaving Jane with the Peckovers. Michael nurtures a plan to bestow his fortune on Jane after his death, but he wants Jane to spend this money on charity and social work rather than on her own needs. He engages Jane in charitable activities and everyday work even before he reveals the secret of his wealth to her, trying to inculcate to her the principles of benevolence. Joseph Snowdon returns suddenly to London. Formerly he argued with his father and is not on amiable terms with him. Joseph is preyed upon by the young Clem Peckover who marries him after she and her mother begin suspecting that Joseph's father is rich. Michael receives Joseph reservedly, without revealing intent of sharing the fortune with him. Joseph, pestered by his disappointed wife, also believes that Michael is rich, and tries to win his father's respect by improving relations with Jane. He also befriends Jane's older friend, Sidney Kirkwood. Sidney, an honest and sympathetic character, apparently intends to marry Jane in the future, unaware of Michael's fortune. Joseph, fearing that if Sidney, Michael's favorite, marries Jane, then Michael will leave most of the fortune to the young couple. Therefore, he develops a plan to make Clara Hewett, Sidney's former love, more fond of Sidney, and catalyze their marriage. Clara Hewett is a young attractive woman who left her poor family with an intention of becoming a famous actress and escaping poverty. Clara's brother Bob, a promising artist, chooses to remain in the same social class: he marries a poor and unfortunate girl Pennyloaf whom he does not love. When Clara was living with her family, she, proud and ambitious, scorned the attention of Sidney. Sidney is a friend of her father John and the two quarrel because of Clara after she left. John believes that the loss of his daughter is Sidney's fault. Later, when John's sickly wife dies, Sidney helps the struggling Hewett family with some of his savings, and John becomes contrite about his earlier misunderstanding of Sidney's nature. In search of fame and fortune Clara joins a traveling theatre and shows talent, but her plans are thwarted by a rival actress who, jealous of Clara's success, disfigures Clara's face with an acid. Clara is admitted to a hospital, and Joseph informs John anonymously of her whereabouts. Clara is taken home, but now that all her hopes for better life are ended, she starts re-evaluating her ungratefulness towards her father and Sidney, and also contemplates suicide. Meanwhile Michael reveals his secret separately to Jane and Sidney and emphasizes his plan for how the fortune should be spent. At first, Sidney seems to like the idea of life's work for charity, but later believes that Micheal's plan is futile and that the money should rather be spent on Jane's education and her enjoyment of life. Disagreeing with Michael's plans, and feeling that his dignity is compromised by Joseph's broaching the question of the old man's money, Sidney reduces his relationship with Jane and instead offers marriage to Clara who accepts it gratefully. Jane, heartbroken and uncertain of her firmness to carry out Michael's plan, becomes disfavored by the old man. After his explanation with Jane, Michael destroys his will, contemplates the matter, but before he can compose a new will he suffers a stroke and dies. In the absence of a will, the scheming Joseph inherits all the money. His wife is making plans to kill him, but Joseph escapes abroad with the money, content to leave Jane only a small pension. The novel has a tragic end for all its characters. Sidney and Clara have an unhappy marriage exacerbated by material wants. Jane rejects her father's pension after discovering his intrigues and declines an offer of marriage from a well-to-do business clerk, thus accepting a life of toil. Bob Hewett largely abandons his wife and children and dies fleeing arrest for forging coins. Clem is accused of trying to poison her mother and is tried in court. Joseph's fortune is squandered in the financial markets of the U.S.A., a misfortune that he cannot survive. 'The Nether World' opens near Clerkenwell Close in central London, and throughout the novel focusses on the Clerkenwell area, then largely working class and a centre of workshop and small factory trades. The novel is remarkable for its very strong sense of place.
20775154	/m/056_v_l	Tamburlaine Must Die	Louise Welsh	2004		 This novella is set in a plague-ridden London in 1593. Someone calling himself "Tamburlaine", the name of the hero in one of Marlowe's most famous plays, has written a libelous and heretical pamphlet in a style of writing similar to Marlowe's. Marlowe is called before the Privy Council which accuses him of writing the pamphlet; however, he protests his innocence. Marlowe is sentenced to death for this blasphemous writing and only has three days to figure out who really wrote the pamphlet and track that individual down. Marlowe becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, plots and counterplots before his eventual murder.
20776698	/m/02z729s	Breaking Dawn	Stephenie Meyer	2008-08	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Breaking Dawn is divided into three separate parts. The first part details Bella's marriage and honeymoon with Edward, which they spend on a private island owned by Carlisle who bought it for Esme, called Isle Esme, off the coast of Brazil. Two weeks into their honeymoon, Bella realizes that she is pregnant with a half-vampire, half-human child and that her condition is progressing at an unnaturally accelerated rate. After contacting Carlisle, who confirms her pregnancy, she and Edward immediately return home to Forks, Washington. The fetus continues to develop with unnatural rapidity, and Edward, concerned for Bella's life and convinced that the fetus is going to kill her, urges her to abort the pregnancy. However, Bella feels a connection with her unborn baby and refuses. The novel's second part is written from the perspective of shape-shifter Jacob Black, and lasts throughout Bella's pregnancy and childbirth. Jacob's Quileute wolf pack, not knowing what danger the unborn child may pose, plan to destroy it and kill Bella. Jacob vehemently protests this decision and leaves, forming his own pack with Seth and Leah Clearwater. The fetus in Bella's body grows swiftly and Bella soon gives birth. The baby breaks many of her bones, including her spine, and she loses massive amounts of blood. In order to save her life, Edward changes her into a vampire by injecting his venom into her heart. Jacob, thinking that Bella is dead, and blaming Bella's daughter Renesmee as the cause, tries to kill Renesmee. Instead, he "imprints"—an involuntary response in which a shape-shifter finds his soul mate—on her. The third section shifts back to Bella's perspective, describing Bella's painful transformation and finding herself changed into a vampire and enjoying her new life and abilities. However, the vampire Irina misidentifies Renesmee as an "immortal child", a child who has been turned into a vampire. Because "immortal children" are uncontrollable, creating them has been outlawed by the Volturi. After Irina presents her allegation to the Volturi, they plan to destroy Renesmee and the Cullens. In an attempt to survive, the Cullens gather other vampire clans from around the world to stand as witnesses and prove to the Volturi that Renesmee is not an immortal child. Upon confronting the gathered Cullen allies and witnesses, the Volturi discover that they have been misinformed and immediately execute Irina for her mistake. However, they remain undecided on whether Renesmee should be viewed as a threat to vampires' secret existence. At that time, Alice and Jasper, who had left prior to the confrontation, return with a Mapuche called Nahuel, a 150-year-old vampire-human crossbreed like Renesmee. Nahuel demonstrates that the crossbreeds pose no threat, and the Volturi leave. Edward, Bella, and Renesmee return to their home in peace.
20786427	/m/0563mrp	The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World	E. L. Konigsburg		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Amedeo Kaplan and his divorced mother Loretta Bevilacqua have moved from Epiphany, New York to St. Malo, Florida. He is a new boy at school for the first time, and does not yet have friends (September). He is happy to befriend the next-door neighbor Mrs. Zender, an opera singer on the European circuit in the fifties, who retired then retired with a European husband to her childhood mansion in St. Malo. Mrs. Zender is moving to Waldorf Court while she can still afford it and Amedeo volunteers to help liquidate most of her possessions. From his artist father Jake Kaplan, who lives back north, and many visits to the fine arts institutions of New York City, Amedeo is already a novice expert on paintings and drawings, at least. Working with classmate William Wilcox and his single mother, the professional appraiser and estate liquidator Mrs. Zender has engaged, he learns a lot more about the business, about people, and about Mrs. Zender who is in and out of every room they work. Amedeo's godfather Peter Vanderwaal, who directs an art center is preparing to host a traveling exhibition of Degenerate Art, a selection from the 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst in Munich, the heart of Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, Peter's father John has died in Epiphany and his mother Mrs. Vanderwaal has pressed upon him a box that contains his father's life story. Also in the meantime, Amedeo finds on a Zender bookshelf a small drawing signed "Modigliani" —apparently the modern artist Modigliani. From Peter, he learns that Modigliani died young (in 1920); his paintings and drawings were commonly forged in post-war Europe. On the one hand, Amedeo finally recalls that the drawing is familiar because he has seen it many times, within a family photo displayed at the Vanderwaal home. On the other hand, Amedeo and William come to suspect that Mrs. Zender planted the drawing for him to find. Peter never looked closely at John Vanderwaal's box before his mother repossessed it at the exhibition, but Mrs. Vanderwaal follows up a phone conversation with her son by driving her Winnebago to St. Malo and delivering the "life" directly to Amedeo and William. With John Vanderwaal in hand and Mrs. Zender at hand, Amedeo and William pursue the mystery.
20787429	/m/0564l54	The Wild Girls	Pat Murphy	2008		 The novel centers around a twelve-year-old girl by the name of Joan who has just moved from Connecticut to a town in California. She figures her time will be miserable until she meets a girl named Sarah, who prefers to be called "Fox" and who lives with her writer father in a rundown house in the middle of the woods. Joan and Sarah—Newt and Fox—spend all their spare time outside, talking and fooling around, and soon start writing stories together. When they win first place in a student fiction writing contest, they are recruited for a prestigious summer writing class taught by a free spirit named Verla Volante.
20792060	/m/057hqmt	We Murder Stella	Marlen Haushofer	1958	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 When Luise, Stella's mother, asks her old friend Anna if her family could put up her daughter for the duration of one schoolyear so that she can attend commercial school in the city, they unwillingly agree. Though a natural beauty, Stella is an unrefined country girl who wears neither make-up nor perfume and who dresses in nondescript clothes. Her diffident politeness does not endear her to her hosts and makes it easy for them not to integrate her into the family. Stella does not keep in touch with her mother either, who has gone to Italy on a months-long holiday spree with her lover. Anna has known for many years that her husband is a womanizer but has always felt unable to confront him or do anything about his love affairs. A successful lawyer whose office is in the city centre, and a respectable pillar of society, Richard seemingly takes every chance that offers itself to betray his wife. Careless about leaving traces, he often comes home late at night, allegedly after a long day at the office, when his wife is already in bed pretending to be asleep, and time and again she can smell other women's perfume or detect smears of lipstick on his shirt. Annette, their daughter, who is of primary school age, is the only one in the family who does not sense what is going on whereas 15 year-old Wolfgang, their son, does but understand the importance of not bringing up that taboo topic: if he did, he would be one of the likely targets of his father's revenge. It is Anna herself who triggers the subsequent events when she encourages Stella to wear trendier clothes and generally helps her metamorphose into a young lady. Only now seeing her beauty, Richard starts an affair with the sexually inexperienced young woman and, when she gets pregnant, procures an abortion for her performed by one of his old friends who is a gynaecologist. Mistaking sexual satisfaction for love, Stella keeps pursuing her lover long after she has been dropped by him, a situation complicated by the fact that, at least for the time being, both are living under the same roof. Eventually Stella realizes that Richard has embarked on yet another affair, and throws herself in front of a lorry. Her motives for committing suicide are never openly discussed; rather, the family say they suspect it must have been an accident.
20796420	/m/05554hq	The Year of the Angry Rabbit	Russell Braddon	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 From the hardcover jacket: "It looks as though Australia will be overrun by rabbits. Millions of them, immune now to the myxomatosis that decimated them in the nineteen hundred fifties and sixties, are teeming over the land. With an election imminent, Prime Minister Kevin Fitzgerald, known to his cronies as Ella, is forced to act. It is obviously an emergency. The rabbits must be wiped out. Scientists assemble; experiments begin. "The results are shattering. Australia suddenly becomes the most feared nation on earth: America and Russia hurriedly surrender to her their nuclear devices, as do the other powers; Fitzgerald becomes virtual dictator of the rest of the world. "The Commonwealth Government establishes peace on earth except for limited wars which are fought under strict supervision, according to rules laid down in Canberra. Only two nations are allowed to fight at one time, for example. "On the crest of this incredible wave of prosperity a tiny news flash is overlooked. It says: RABBIT AS BIG AS ALSATIAN SHOT BY SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHER THREE MILES NORTH OF MUDGEE...."
20797033	/m/058092k	Found	Margaret Haddix	2008-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the beginning of the story Jonah and his friend Chip Winston, who also learns that he is adopted, receive letters from an unknown person. The letters say “You are one of the missing” and “Beware! They are coming to get you”. At first they take it as some kind of joke but soon to wonder more and more about who are their birth parents and why they got these letters. They decide that the best way to figure out is to go into Chip’s parent's safe. There they find a phone number to an FBI agent named James Reardon. Soon Jonah asks his parents if they can call the adoption agency and ask who his birth parents really are. They only tell his dad to contact the FBI to talk to James Reardon. Jonah, his parents, and his sister Katherine meet James Reardon. Right before the meet, a janitor gives Jonah a bottle of Mountain Dew. When they finally meet with James Reardon, he tells them Jonah was illegally adopted from a foreign country and might be deported. He refuses to tell them the country's name, though. When Jonah goes to the bathroom to throw up thanks to the Mountain Dew, another, younger janitor appears out of nowhere in the bathroom and tells him a file would appear on the desk by the time he got back. He tells Jonah to memorize as many names as possible. Back in the room, he distracts the adults while Katherine takes pictures of the documents. It turns out to be the addresses and phone numbers of 36 teenagers, including Chip and Jonah. It also includes the names of several adults, including a woman named Angela DuPre. Chip and Katherine begin calling the numbers. The adults all hung up. Most of the kids turn out to live in the vicinity of Chip and Jonah. After a while they receive a letter from Angela DuPre, telling them to meet her at the library to talk about the things that are happening and get more information. At the library, Angela DuPre tells them that time travelers exist and that she had been researching. She tells them that she used to work at an airport, until an airplane, full of babies, appeared out of nowhere. After the babies were removed, the plane disappeared. She speculates that the babies on the plane were originally adults who were turned into babies by time traveling. Then a man breaks into the room and is promptly tackled by the "janitor" from the FBI who talked to Jonah in the bathroom. Chip, Jonah, and Katherine escape through a window, but Angela stays behind for more information. Later, when they're leaving the library, they see Angela, who disappears into thin air. When they get home, they find out the lists of names was deleted from Chip's computer. Shortly afterwards, Jonah's mom receives a flyer in the mail advertising an adoption conference for teen adoptees and their parents. Jonah persuades his parents to let him bring Katherine along, too. At the conference, all the adoptees are divided into two groups, with Jonah, Chip, and all the kids on the list in one group, and everyone else in another. Katherine pretends to be a girl named Daniella McCarthy to get into Jonah's group. The kids are led to a cave in the woods by two men name Gary and Mr. Hodge. Then the cave is transported to a place called a time hollow. The "janitor" from the FBI, whom Jonah, Chip, and Katherine have nicknamed JB, appears and attacks Gary and Mr. Hodge. Soon Angela arrives too. They find out that Gary and Hodge work for an organization called Interchronological Rescue, an organization dedicated to rescuing children from history, such as toddlers trapped in burning houses and people left for dead during the Bubonic Plague; taking them to the distant future; turning them into babies; and putting them up for adoption. The organization got greedy, however, and they started taking famous babies whose disappearances were noticed. Finally, when they were flying to the future with a load of babies, JB chased after the plane and caused it to crash in the twenty-first century. Gary and Hodge want to turn all the kids into babies and take them to the future, and JB wants to send them all back to die. Finally, JB sends Chip and another boy named Alex back to the fifteenth century , but Jonah and Katherine grab Chip's arms right before he disappears and find themselves falling backwards through time. On the way, Jonah manages to convince JB to let him and Katherine help Chip and Alex repair time so everyone can go home to the twenty-first century.
20797038	/m/054c7lr	Compelling Evidence				 Ben Potter is found dead; his wife, Talia, is indicted and arrested. She turns to brilliant criminal defense lawyer, Paul Madriani, her former lover, to defend her.
20797941	/m/055tqh1	The People of Kau		1976		 This is a photographic monograph on the life of the people of Kau. Leni Riefenstahl spent 16 weeks with the Nuba of Kau in 1975. These people, known as the "South East Nuba", live only 100 miles away from the Mesakin Nuba. Yet, they speak another language, follow different customs, and are very different in character and temperament. The knife-fights, dances of love and elaborately painted faces and bodies are photographed in the book.
20798854	/m/0544kg9	Handles	Jan Mark	1983-10-26	{"/m/026llv5": "Literary realism", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Erica Timperley, a city girl who loves motorcycles, is bored with her holiday in Norfolk where her Uncle and Aunt grow acres of vegetables. Then she sees a cat with false teeth and discovers Mercury Motor Cycles, an unusual motorcycle repair shop down an alley. There she meets the enigmatic young man "Elsie" Wainwright, who allows her the honour of helping out in the workshop. Apart from beginning to learn the trade, Erica learns a whole new arcane vocabulary and meets an array of curious characters including Bunny and Bill Birdcycle. Eventually she gets a "handle" of her own, and by the end of the summer is determined to become a mechanic.
20805713	/m/055d14y	Le Chercheur d'or	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio	1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Alexis L'Estang becomes obsessed with finding the treasure of the legendary Unknown Corsair on the island of Mauritius. The child recalls the sea around the island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean. The author situated the plot of this book in the village of Anse aux Anglais.
20805812	/m/0537_dw	Étoile errante	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio	1992	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the year 1944 in a mountainous area on the French-Italian border Esther and her mother and all the Jews in the village of Saint-Martin must cross from France to Italy to avoid the SS. After the war, she and her mother, Elizabeth, begin their long journey to France, to the sailing ship Sette Fratelli which will take them to Palestine. When Esther finally arrives in Jerusalem, she briefly meets and exchanges names with Nejma, a Palestinian, another wanderer, one who ends up, in the summer of 1948, in the Nour Chams Refugee Camp.
20806051	/m/053xggj	Ourania	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Le Clézio lived for fifteen years in a small village in Mexico called Valle de Bravo. Children invented an imaginary country and ideal, Ourania, and this book describes a near-Utopian society in Mexico. Two types of Utopias are compared to each other: a modest Utopia from the Jesuits and the other an ideal city called Santa Fe de la Laguna. The book mentions the transhumant movement Rainbows (1970–1980) and the Salvadoran revolution and its leader, Monsignor Romero. Failure was inevitable. Dreams are necessessary, even if reality isn't.
20806268	/m/053tn4t	Ritournelle de la faim	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio	2008-10-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in Paris in the 1930s, it tells the story of Ethel, a young woman who must save herself and her parents, torn by the age's politics and their hatred for each other.The story seems so simple. A narrator who is and is not the author tells the story of a young girl – Ethel Brown – who is and is not the mother of JMG Le Clézio. French language text sample from "Ritournelle de la faim" can be read online
20808837	/m/056k81b	Vanishing Africa		1982		 The pictures are evidence of Riefenstahl's passion for Africa and an attempt to capture the region's soul before it lost its innocence to the technical age.
20814896	/m/054nm42	The Gray Cloth			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set in the middle of the twentieth century, and opens in Chicago, where the protagonist Edgar Krug has designed an enormous colored-glass exhibition hall. An art exhibit is held there, accompanied by an organ concert. Krug, fiercely dedicated to his esthetic concepts, is unhappy that the bright colors of women's fashions clash with his architectural scheme. When he meets Clara Weber, the organist, he is struck by her gray dress with white lace trim; he finds it the perfect compliment to the color effect of his hall. Krug impulsively asks Clara to marry him &mdash; providing she agrees to wear the same style of clothing. Clara accepts Krug's terms, which are specified in their marriage contract. Once married, the couple leave for the Fiji Islands in Krug's private dirigible (it has a glass-walled cupola, and air conditioning). Though Clara accepts Krug's strange terms for their marriage, other women do not. Clara maintains a telegraphic correspondence with her American friend, Amanda Schmidt; and Amanda is highly critical of Clara's subservience in the arrangement. Later in the book, other women also protest its terms. Scheerbart provides portrayals of a number of strong female characters through the book, supporting its subtitle, "a Ladies' novel." Krug goes to Fiji because he has an ongoing project there, a retirement home for airship pilots. He clashes with the project's sponsor over how much colored glass the building will accommodate. From Fiji, Krug and Clara travel to other sites throughout the world, to visit other projects. Their first stop is "Makartland" at the South Pole, an artists' colony for twenty women artists. There, a seamstress makes outfits for Clara that arrange her gray-and-white wardrobe scheme in imaginative ways. Käte Bandel, one of the artists, joins the Krugs in their further travels; she debates artistic assumptions and values with Krug as they travel to Australia and then to Borneo. Bandel enrages Krug when she convinces Clara to wear a plaid scarf. Leaving Bandel behind, they fly to Japan; but Japanese women also react negatively to the gray and white. In the Himalayas and in Ceylon, Krug visits another projects; later the couple travel to an experimental station by the Aral Sea. They also visit Babylon and Egypt. Despite his enthusiasm for colored glass, Krug turns down an offer to build large glass obelisks atop the Pyramids of Giza. In the "Kurian Murian Islands" off the eastern coat of Arabia, Krug meets the tycoon Li-Tung, who commissions him to design houses suspended in mid-air (so that they don't scratch the majolica tiles with which the islands are paved). Li-Tung is passionate about color, and has Clara change into more varied silk outfits. Krug allows this. Their journey is not a parade of triumphs, however; in most places, Krug's ideas are resisted, criticized, and rejected to greater or lesser degrees. At Malta, though, a glass architecture museum in established. The Krugs end the novel at their glass house in Switzerland. At Babylon, Krug gives up on his determination about Clara's wardrobe, and agrees to strike the binding clause out of their marriage contract. By this time, though, Clara has become a convert to her husband's ideas about glass architecture, and maintains the gray fashion by her own choice.
20815127	/m/0572jtj	Along for the Ride	Sarah Dessen	2009-06-16	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It's been so long since Auden slept at night. Ever since her parent's divorce—or since the fighting started. Now she has the chance to spend a carefree summer with her dad and his new family in the charming beach town where they live. A job in a clothes boutique introduces Auden to the world of girls: their talk, their friendship, their crushes. She missed out on all that, too busy being the perfect daughter to her demanding mother. Then she meets Eli, an intriguing loner and a fellow insomniac who becomes her guide to the nocturnal world of the town. Together they embark on parallel quests: for Auden, to experience the carefree teenage life she’s been denied; for Eli, to come to terms with the guilt he feels for the death of a friend.
20819071	/m/0560r_7	A Crooked Kind of Perfect				 A normal girl in Michigan, Zoe Elias has dreams of becoming a pianist just like Vladimir Horowitz. Zoe's mom is obsessed with her work and her dad doesn't have a job, and doesn't like to interact with others. When her father brings home a Perfectone D60 Organ, Zoe is upset because she was hoping for a baby grand piano. The organ comes with free lessons and her teacher is Miss Person. After a lesson, Zoe disobeys Miss Person and instead of practicing with her tempo, she uses Ramba version. Miss Person realizes that Zoe has talent and decides that Zoe should enter the Perform-O-Rama. Zoe's mom misses her birthday and Zoe is very upset. After things go wrong, and her mother can no longer drive her to the Perform-O-Rama on the following day, she thinks that she won't make it to Perform-O-Rama. She takes out her anger on her dad, and Mr. Elias decides to take Zoe to the Perform-O-Rama, knowing she really wants to do it. Her first performance, at the Perform-O-Rama, doesn't go as well as she'd wanted. But during her second, she looks up in the audience and sees her mom, by her dad. Zoe gets motivated and later comes home with a 4th place trophy.
20819671	/m/0569c5l	Near to the Wild Heart	Clarice Lispector			 Near to the Wild Heart does not have a conventional narrative plot. It instead recounts flashes from the life of Joana, between her present, as a young woman, and her early childhood. These focus, like most of Lispector's works, on interior, emotional states. The book opens with a scene of the child Joana playing in the garden, making up poems for her father. Joana's wildness and barely suppressed violence, along with her linguistic creativity, are her most notable features. She is frequently compared to animals: over the course of the book Lispector describes her to a bird, a snake, a wildcat, a horse, and a dog. She commits transgressive acts—as a child she throws a book at an old man's head, for example, and as a married woman she leaves her husband, Otávio, and greets the news of his adultery—he has made another woman, his old friend Lídia, pregnant—with utter indifference. She is not so much immoral as she is amoral: “Evil is not living, and that’s it. Dying is already something else. Dying is different from good and evil.” In the book, she cites long passages from Spinoza, the longest quotes that appear anywhere in her novels; it seems that she felt an affinity with the Dutch philosopher's amoral conception of the world.
20820681	/m/053l9wr	Sent	Margaret Haddix	2008-04-22	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The children Jonah, Katherine, Chip, and another boy, Alex, have no preparation before they are sent back to 1483 at the Tower of London by way of time travel. JB promises them that they can return to the present if they can fix Time. Katherine gets time sickness from the dramatic time warp. Jonah and Chip help her to her feet while they are talking to JB through a futuristic machine called the Elucidator. They quickly discover that Chip and Alex’s true identities are the 12-year-old King Edward V and his 10-year-old brother, Richard, the Duke of York. Chip tells Katherine she can be his queen and Jonah becomes annoyed, replying that "she's my sister." In the Tower they find two ghostlike boys. JB explains that they are tracers, which show how time would have gone on if time travelers had not messed with them. Chip blends in with his tracer, and realizes he can think like King Edward V. He realizes that they are the princes and kings of London, that Richard III wants them dead, and that their mother has a plan for their escape. Soon, two men come to the room the tracers are in and throw the boys out the window. However, Jonah and Katherine pull Chip and Alex from their tracers. The group thinks that they succeeded in fixing time. However, the men search for their bodies and the group is forced to hide. Chip gets frustrated at JB and throws the Elucidator at the wall. Jonah picks it up and finds that the Elucidator is critically damaged. They reset it, and use one of its functions to become invisible. The next morning, the group leaves the Tower and joins the coronation of Richard III. Chip and Alex run off, angry after seeing their uncle take the throne. Jonah and Katherine go to a chapel where Richard III is praying, and they pretend to be angels. They tell him that the princes are in heaven, but that he will never be able to go there himself. However, the Elucidator finishes resetting and Jonah and Katherine become visible again. They run away and eventually find Chip and Alex, who are with their mother and their sisters. JB explains, through the Elucidator, that one of the two men who threw the boys out of the window was sent by the queen to protect them. He brings them out of time to tell them how and when to save Chip and Alex, and then drops them two years later in time. Katherine and Jonah meet Richard III again during the night, and tell him that if he gives the throne to Edward V/Chip, he will be forgiven and will go to Heaven. In the Battle of Bosworth Field, pitting Richard III against Henry VII of England. Jonah and Katherine try to get Alex and Chip out of their tracers so they can tell them they need to leave. When Jonah can't, Katherine gets Chip out by telling him she would be his girlfriend if he asked. Chip gets Alex out but then Richard III comes to Edward V/Chip and tells him that he will give Edward V back the throne after the battle. The battle ensues, and Richard III is killed. Jonah and Katherine pull Chip and Alex out just before they get killed in original history. JB makes them come back to the cave using the Elucidator. JB explains to the group that they succeeded - they did save Chip and Alex, yet managed to keep history the same because Richard III was dead, the princes were considered dead, and all the people who knew that Richard III planned to give back the throne were dead in the battle. When they are back in the present, JB asks Jonah and Katherine to "help" another kid. JB gives them another "traveling companion," a girl named Andrea, who is really Virginia Dare from the lost colony of Roanoke. JB tells Chip and Alex they have to stay in the present while Jonah and Katherine are gone. JB replies that it will seem they were gone for a few minutes, but Chip says he knows it will be longer. Chip and Alex are just about to resent but then Jonah and Katherine are sent back into time.
20829007	/m/055zdhc	Lullaby	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio	1980	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The adolescent Lullaby strolls the beaches, cliffs and caves on the outskirts of her home town (this is situated in an unnamed Mediterranean environment). Her getting in groove with the ocean and the elements is what gets her going, and finally she can return to the life she once knew as meaningless, only now adding a bit of meaning to it.
20830044	/m/053kt40	The Redeemer	Jo Nesbø	2005	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The Redeemer begins by describing an incident which took place a number of years in the past, in 1991, at a youth camp run by the Norwegian Salvation Army. A young, 14-year old girl – the daughter of a senior official in the Salvation Army – is raped in a public toilet on the site. Due to the Salvation Army's strict hierarchical setup, and also because revelation of the rape will severely damage the Salvation Army's reputation, she does not tell anyone about the ordeal. The name of the assailant is not given; the chapter includes mention of several young men who would play major roles in the later plot, and it could have been any of them. Another aspect of the past, scattered in numerous flashbacks throughout the book, are vivid reminiscences of the 1991 Battle of Vukovar during the Breakup of Yugoslavia, and of the atrocities committed in its aftermath by the victorious Serb militias. Similar to the flashbacks to the Second World War in "The Redbreast", these are integral to the book's plot - having formed the character of a young Vukovar Croat fighter who received the nickname "Little Redeemer", who would later become a professional hitman, carrying out contract killings in various European cities. The action moves to the present day (2003), and the Croat assassin – calling himself Stankic – arrives in Oslo and kills a Salvation Army officer during a Christmas street concert. The hitman has a facial anomaly known as hyperelasticity, wherein his facial muscles can be manipulated voluntarily to stop people from recognizing him. As such, despite the murder happening in a public place the Norwegian police get little useful information regarding the murderer. The reader already does know who pulled the trigger – however, the identity of the customer who paid for the killing and this customer's motives remain unknown, and are at the center of the mystery which must be unravelled. Meanwhile, the senior Police Inspector from the Oslo Police, Bjarne Møller, retires. As a parting gesture, he gives his three main officers, Jack Halvorsen (called Halvorsen by his colleagues), Beate Lønn – Halvorsen's girlfriend – and Harry Hole gifts. Harry's is a wristwatch which grows to annoy Harry due to the incessant ticking of the second-hand. At one point, he even throws it out of the window of his apartment, though later recovers it from the packed snow. Møller is replaced by Gunnar Hagen. Harry, Halvorsen and Beatte are assigned to the murder of the Salvation Army officer – a man called Robert Karlsen. When a murder attempt is made on Robert's brother, Jon Karlsen it is believed that the Karlsen family is being attacked. Harry's former girlfriend, Rakel, has now left him and is with another man, Matthias Lund-Helgesen (who is to become a major character in the next Harry Hole novel, The Snowman) and Harry meets up – and eventually begins a relationship – with Martine, the young woman who (unbeknownst to Harry) was raped at the start of the novel. Harry finds clues that lead him to Croatia and he makes contact with the hitman's minder who is revealed to be the Stankic's mother. He makes a deal with her to save her son's life, but upon returning to Norway discovers that a man wearing Stankic's clothes has been shot and killed by an armed police marksman. The dead man's face is all but obliterated and identification is near-impossible. There is a clue, however, in the dead man's DNA, after Halvorsen is fatally wounded outside Jon Karlsen's flat. The blood of the dead man does not match that of Stankic, whose blood was found at the scene of the attack on Halvorsen. Harry continues to follow Stankic, but now knows that Stankic was contracted to kill Jon Karlsen by Jon Karlsen himself. Jon switched places with his brother (the two looked very similar so Stankic did not notice the difference) in order for that murder of his brother could not be blamed on him. When in Croatia, setting up the hit, Jon had posed as Robert. Jon is also swindling the Salvation Army out of 5,000,000 krone for an apartment block. On the night of an indoor Christmas concert in a concert hall, Jon Karlsen stands up his girlfriend, Thea, claiming that his father – in Thailand – is ill and that he is going to fly out to him. Stankic and - later - Harry Hole both get the details from Thea that Jon is about to flee the country. Stankic catches up with Jon Karlsen in a toilet block some distance from the main airport terminal. Harry also catches up with the two of them there, and gets Jon Karlsen to give a full confession, stating that anything said with a gun (Stankic's) to his head is inadmissible in court. Jon tells everything, believing that he will be set free, but Harry instead tells Stankic that Jon's bag contains the 5,000,000 krone and walks away. Behind him a single shot is heard. In effect, Harry has become Accessory Before the Act to murder. Part of the confession includes that it was Jon Karlsen, not Stankic, who fatally wounded Halvorsen. Harry also knows that it was Jon who raped Martine some years earlier, and that he has been raping young girls regularly ever since. Jon is seen to have been an unreliable narrator, as numerous episodes told from his point of view in earlier parts of the book gave the impression of his being a honest, well-meaning person. Owing to the high valuation that an antique dealer puts on the watch given to him by Bjarne Møller, Harry also realises that his former boss was involved in the same group of corrupt police officers as his former nemesis, Tom Waaler. Harry goes to Bergen to speak with Møller but – after Møller describes that he was trying to do what was best for the Force, Harry elects not to arrest him.
20833947	/m/057yp90	Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War	Pat Buchanan	2008	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05qt0": "Politics"}	 Citing such historians as George F. Kennan, Andreas Hillgruber, Simon K. Newman, Niall Ferguson, Charles Tansill, Paul W. Schroeder, Alan Clark, Michael Stürmer, Norman Davies, John Lukacs, Frederick P. Veagle, Correlli Barnett, John Charmley, William Henry Chamberlin, David P. Calleo, Maurice Cowling, A. J. P. Taylor, and Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Buchanan argues that it was a great mistake on the part of Britain to fight Germany in both world wars. In Buchanan's opinion, the results of British involvement in both world wars were a disaster for Britain, Europe and the world. One of Buchanan's express purposes is to undermine what he describes as a "Churchill cult" amongst America's elite, and therefore he focuses particularly on the role of Sir Winston Churchill in involving Britain in wars with Germany in 1914 and again in 1939. Buchanan accuses Churchill, at that time First Lord of the Admiralty, of having a "lust for war" in 1914. Buchanan follows the conclusions of the American diplomat George F. Kennan in his 1984 book The Fateful Alliance that the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 was an act of Franco-Russian "encirclement" of Germany, and that German foreign policy after 1894 was defensive rather than aggressive. Buchanan described Germany during the Second Reich as a "satiated power" seeking only peace and prosperity threatened by a revanchist France obsessed with regaining the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, and calls Imperial Russia a highly "imperialist" power carrying out an aggressive policy in Eastern Europe that menaced Germany. Buchanan argues that Britain had no quarrel with Germany before 1914, however the great build-up of the German Navy spearheaded by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz was a "threat to Britain", which forced the British to bring back to European waters the bulk of her navy and to make alliances with Russia and France. He asserts that this was a disastrous policy of the Germans which "tied England to Europe" and which therefore created the conditions which led the British to involvement in World War I. On the other hand, Buchanan asserts that the greatest responsibility for the breakdown in Anglo-German relations was the "Germanophobia" and zeal for the Entente with France of the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey. In assessing responsibility for the course of events, Buchanan asserts that the British could have easily ended the Anglo-German naval race in 1912 by promising to remain neutral in the event of war between Germany and France. Buchanan writes that "Prussian militarism" was an anti-German Black Legend invented by British statesmen, and that the record of Imperial Germany supports the judgement that it was least militaristic of the European Powers. He writes that in the century between Waterloo (1815) and World War I (1914) Britain had fought ten wars and Germany three. Buchanan writes in defense of Kaiser Wilhelm II that he had not fought a war in his 25 year reign, and compares that unfavorably with Churchill's service in three wars prior to 1914 "Churchill had himself seen more war than almost any soldier in the German army." Buchanan claims that the Kaiser Wilhem was desperate to avoid a war in 1914, and accepts the German claim that it was Russian mobilization of July 31, 1914 that forced war on Germany . Buchanan accuses Churchill and Grey of illegally committing Britain to war in 1914 by making promises that Britain would defend France without the knowledge of either Cabinet or Parliament. Buchanan argues that United States should never had fought in World War I, and that the American people were "deceived and dragged" into war in 1917, and says that "Americans blamed the 'Merchants of Death' &ndash; the war profiteers &ndash; and the British propagandists" who created the myth of the Rape of Belgium. Buchanan called the British "hunger blockade" of Germany in World War I "criminal", and accepted the contention of the British economist John Maynard Keynes in his 1919 book The Economic Consequences of the Peace that the reparations imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles were "impossible" to pay. Buchanan argues that World War II could have been avoided if the Treaty of Versailles had not in his view been so harsh towards Germany. Buchanan views the Versailles treaty as monstrously unjust towards Germany, and argues that German efforts to revise Versailles were both moral and just. Buchanan calls those historians who blame Germany for the two world wars "court historians", who Buchanan argues have created a myth of sole German guilt for the world wars. By contrast to his opposition to Versailles, Buchanan wrote that by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Germany had merely applied to that "prison house of nations", the Russian Empire, the principle of self-determination, releasing from Russian rule Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Caucasus (largely modern Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan). Buchanan says that the Hungarians, who lost two thirds of their country by the Treaty of Trianon, considered it a "national crucifixion" and were embittered towards the Allies by it. Buchanan takes the view that Czechoslovakia should never had been created, describing it as "a living contradiction of the principle" of self-determination, with the Czechs ruling "Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, Poles, and Ruthenians" in a "multi-ethnic, multilingual, multicultural, Catholic-Protestant conglomeration that had never before existed.". Buchanan accuses the Czech leaders Benes and Masaryk of deceiving the Allies, particularly President Wilson, regarding the ethnic make-up of the regions which became Czechoslovakia. "Asked why he had consigned three million Germans to Czech rule, Wilson blurted, 'Why, Masaryk never told me that!'" As a result of their humiliation at Versailles, argues Buchanan, the German people became more nationalistic and ultimately were willing to put their confidence in Adolf Hitler. Buchanan writes that there was a "Great Civil War of the West" which comprised both world wars and which Buchanan contends that Britain should have stayed neutral in rather than upholding an unfair Treaty of Versailles. Buchanan damns successive British and French leaders for not offering to revise Versailles in Germany's favor in the 1920s while the Weimar Republic was still in existence, which Buchanan argues influenced the German people to turn to Adolf Hitler. Buchanan contends, citing historians Richard Lamb and Alan Bullock, that the attempt on the part of the German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning to found an Austro-German customs union in March 1931 was a project which could have prevented Hitler from coming to power. Buchanan criticises the Allies for opposing the Austro-German customs union, and quotes Bullock regarding their veto as not only helping "to precipitate the failure of the Austrian Kreditanstalt and the German financial crisis of the summer but forced the German Foreign Office to announce on September 3 that the project would be abandoned. The result was to inflict a sharp humiliation on the Bruning government and to inflame national resentment in Germany." In this way, Buchanan argues that Britain, France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia indirectly assisted Hitler's rise to power in 1933. In Buchanan's view, Weimar-era German leaders like Gustav Stresemann, Heinrich Brüning, and Friedrich Ebert were all responsible German statesmen working to revise Versailles in a manner that would not threaten the peace of Europe, and were undermined by the inability and unwillingness of Britain and France to co-operate. Buchanan follows the distinction made by the German historian Andreas Hillgruber between a Weimar foreign policy which sought to restore Germany to its pre-1918 position and wished for some territorial expansionism in Eastern Europe, and a Nazi foreign policy for which the achievement of Weimar-era foreign policy was only the first step towards a larger programme of seeking Lebensraum via war and genocide in Eastern Europe. Since Buchanan argues that was no moral difference between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, he maintains that Britain should have just allowed the German Nazis and the Soviet Communists to fight it out and destroy each other and await the course of events, whilst rapidly re-arming so as to be in a position to fight if necessary. Buchanan argues that the "guarantee" of Poland in 1939 was impossible to fulfill and only made the war inevitable. Buchanan calls Hitler's foreign policy programme more moderate than the war aims sought by the German Chancellor Dr. Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg in the Septemberprogramm in World War I because Buchanan contends that Hitler was only interested in expansionism in Eastern Europe and did not seek territory in Western Europe and Africa Moreover, Buchanan argues that once Hitler came to power in 1933, his foreign policy was not governed strictly by Nazi ideology, but rather was modified ad hoc by pragmatism. Buchanan writes that Benito Mussolini was committed to the Stresa Front of 1935, and it was an act of folly on the part of Britain to vote for League of Nations sanctions on Italy for invading Ethiopia, as it drove Fascist Italy into an alliance with Nazi Germany In Buchanan's view, the British were highly hypocritical in seeking sanctions against Italy for the Italo-Ethiopian war as he argues there was no moral difference between Italian imperialism against Ethiopia in 1935, and British imperialism against other African nations in the 19th century Buchanan draws unfavorable comparisons between the ready acceptance by France's Pierre Laval of Italy's right to conquer Ethiopia as the price of maintaining the Stresa Front, and what Buchanan calls the sanctimonious attitude of the British who voted for sanctions in defense of what Churchill, quoted by Buchanan, described as "a wild land of tyranny, slavery, and tribal war." Buchanan also quotes Churchill as arguing that "No one can keep up the pretence that Abyssinia is a fit, worthy, and equal member of the league of civilised nations." At the same time in early 1936, when the crisis over Ethiopia had pushed Britain and Italy to the brink of war, there occurred the Remilitarization of the Rhineland. Buchanan points out that Hitler regarded the Franco-Soviet Pact as an aggressive move directed at Germany and that it violated the Locarno Treaties, and he adds that Hitler had a strong case. Hitler employed this claimed violation of Locarno as a diplomatic weapon against which the French and the British had no answer, Buchanan argues. Buchanan argues that Hitler's public demands on Poland in 1938-39, namely the return of the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk) to the Reich, "extra-territorial" roads across the Polish Corridor, and Poland's adhesion to the Anti-Comintern Pact were a genuine attempt to build an anti-Soviet German-Polish alliance, especially since Buchanan argues that Germany and Poland shared a common enemy in the form of the Soviet Union. Buchanan contends that Hitler wanted Poland as an ally against the Soviet Union, and not an enemy. Citing the book March 1939 by the British historian Simon K. Newman, and Andrew Roberts, in his "The Holy Fox: The Life of Lord Halifax", Buchanan argues that the British "guarantee" of Polish independence in March 1939 was a deliberate ploy on the part of Foreign Minister Lord Halifax to cause a war with Germany in 1939 Buchanan calls Chamberlain's "guarantee" of Poland "rash" and the "fatal blunder" which caused the end of the British Empire Buchanan argues that Halifax and Chamberlain had different motives for the guarantee. Without deciding between the various theories regarding Chamberlain's motivation, Buchanan recites several, including those of Liddell Hart, Simon Newman, and Andrew Roberts. Buchanan favourably cites the remark of British historian E. H. Carr in April 1939 about the Polish "guarantee" that: "The use or threatened use of force to maintain the status quo may be morally more culpable than the use or threatened use of force to alter it". Buchanan maintains that Hitler did not want a war with Britain, and it was wrong on the part of Britain to declare war in 1939 on an Anglophile Hitler who only wanted to ally the Reich with Britain against their common enemy the Soviet Union. Buchanan accepts the picture drawn by the British historian A. J. P. Taylor in his 1961 book The Origins of the Second World War of the Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Józef Beck as a frivolous and irresponsible man incapable of understanding the magnitude of the crisis facing his country in 1939. Buchanan argues that rather than offering the "guarantee" of Poland that Britain could not fulfill, Chamberlain should have accepted it was impossible to save any Eastern European country from German aggression and instead set about re-arming Britain in order to be prepared for any future war with Germany, should it be necessary. Instead, Buchanan claims that the acceptance of Eastern Europe as Germany's sphere of influence as a pro quid quo for Germany staying out of Western Europe was a better alternative to World War II. Buchanan argues that it was a great blunder on the part of Chamberlain to declare war on Germany in 1939, and even greater blunder on the part of Churchill to refuse Hitler's peace offer of 1940, thus making World War II in Buchanan's opinion the "unnecessary war" of the title. The title of course was borrowed from Churchill, who stated in his memoirs, "One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once, "The Unnecessary War." There never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle." Buchanan writes, "For that war one man bears full moral responsibility: Hitler." He adds, "But this was not only Hitler's war. It was Chamberlain's war and Churchill's war...". In Buchanan's view, the "final offer" made by the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to the British Ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson on the night of August 30, 1939 was not a ploy as many historians argued, but instead a genuine German offer to avoid World War II. Likewise, Buchanan argues citing F.H. Hinsley, John Lukacs, and Alan Clark, Hitler's peace offers to Britain in the summer of 1940 were real, and Churchill was wrong to refuse them. Buchanan writes that the Morgenthau Plan of 1944 was a genocidal plan for the destruction of Germany promoted by the vengeful Henry Morgenthau and his deputy the Soviet agent Harry Dexter White as a way of ensuring Soviet domination of Europe, and that Churchill was amoral for accepting it. As part of his assault on Churchill's reputation, Buchanan claims a moral equivalence between Churchill and Hitler. Buchanan suggests that there is no moral difference between Churchill's support for the compulsory sterilisation and segregation of the mentally unfit before 1914, and the Nazi Action T4 program. Likewise, Buchanan argues that the views that Churchill expressed about Judo-Bolshevism in his 1920 article "Zionism and Bolshevism" seem not markedly different to Hitler's views about "Judo-Bolshevism" in Mein Kampf. Buchanan attacks Churchill as the man who brought in the Ten Year Rule in 1919, in which British defence spending was based on the assumption that there would be no major war for the next ten years, making Churchill the man who disarmed Britain in the 1920s. Buchanan attacks Churchill as a deeply inept military leader who caused successive military debacles such as the Siege of Antwerp in 1914, the Dardanelles campaign, the Norwegian Campaign of 1940, the fall of Singapore, and the Dieppe Raid of 1942. Buchanan claims that Hitler's ambitions were confined only to Eastern Europe, and citing such historians as Ian Kershaw, Andreas Hillgruber and Richard J. Evans, states that Hitler wanted an anti-Soviet alliance with Britain. Buchanan maintains that British leaders of the 1930s were influenced by "Germanophobia", leading them to suspect that Germany was out to conquer the world. Citing John Lukacs, Buchanan maintains that Operation Barbarossa was not part of any long-range master plan on the part of Hitler, but was instead an attempt by Hitler to force Britain to make peace by eliminating Britain's last hope of victory &ndash; bringing the Soviet Union into the war on the Allied side. Buchanan argues that the Holocaust only developed the scale it did because Hitler's invasion of Poland and then Russia meant that he had within his control most European Jews, which would not have been the case otherwise. Buchanan argues that if Churchill had accepted Hitler's peace offer of 1940, the severity of the Holocaust would have been immensely less. With respect to the debate about German foreign policy, Buchanan refutes Globalist historians, such as Gerhard Weinberg, who argue that Germany wanted to conquer the entire world, and instead contends that Nazi Germany was not a danger to the United States at any point, nor to Britain after Germany lost the Battle of Britain. Buchanan points out that the "master plan to conquer South and Central America" which Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly endorsed, was actually produced by British intelligence and that German archival sources reveal no evidence for this supposed plan. Buchanan called the British "area bombing" of German cities in World War II a policy of "barbarism" and quotes Churchill stating that its purpose was literally to terrorize the civilian population of Germany. In particular, Buchanan argues that the bombing of Dresden in 1945 was barbaric, a crime which he states that Churchill personally ordered, quoting Churchill himself and Air Marshall Arthur "Bomber" Harris as evidence. Buchanan wrote that Churchill was responsible in large part for "Western man's reversion to barbarism" in World War II, and expressed regret that generals of the American Army Air Force like Curtis LeMay in bombing Japan followed the example set by British Air Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris in using "terror bombing" as a method of war against Germany. He quotes LeMay, "We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo that night of March 9–10 than went up in the vapour of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." Buchanan's conclusion: "We and the British fought for moral ends. We did not always use moral means by any Christian definition." Endorsing the concept of Western betrayal, Buchanan accuses Churchill and Roosevelt of turning over Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union at the Tehran and Yalta conferences. Citing the Cuban-American lawyer Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Buchanan calls expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe, in which 2 million died, a crime against humanity "of historic dimensions", and contrasts the British prosecution of German leaders at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity whilst Churchill and other British leaders were approving of the expulsion of the ethnic German population from Eastern Europe Buchanan also writes that the United States should have remained non-interventionist with respect to the events of World War II. However, because the United States insisted the United Kingdom sever its alliance with Japan in 1921, this had the ultimate effect of leading to Japan to align itself with the Axis. Ultimately this led to the Japanese alliance with Germany and its attack on Pearl Harbor. Buchanan blames Churchill for insisting that the British Cabinet in 1921 give in to American pressure to end the alliance with Japan. Buchanan concludes that if World War II had not taken place, the British Empire would have continued through the twentieth century. Buchanan favorably cites the 1993 assessment of Alan Clark that World War II "went on far too long, and when Britain emerged the country was bust. Nothing remained of assets overseas. Without immense and punitive borrowings from the US we would have starved. The old social order had gone forever. The empire was terminally damaged. The Commonwealth countries had seen their trust betrayed and their soldiers wasted." Likewise, Buchanan blames British statesmen for bringing Britain into the war against Germany, which not only caused the economic ruin of Britain but also brought Eastern Europe into the Soviet sphere of influence and brought Communism to power in China in 1949, all of which would have been avoided if only Britain had not "guaranteed" Poland in 1939. Buchanan claims that for the most part American leaders in the Cold War followed the wise advice of George F. Kennan, who understood a strong Germany was needed as an American ally to keep the Soviet Union (Russia) out of Central Europe, and who did not rush into unnecessary wars with the Soviet Union, instead waiting patiently for the Soviet Union to fall apart of its own accord. Buchanan ends his book with an attack on George W. Bush, and argues that just as Churchill led the British Empire to ruin by causing unnecessary wars with Germany twice, so too will Bush lead the United States to ruin by following Churchill's example in involving the United States in an unnecessary war in Iraq, and passing out guarantees to scores of nations in which the USA has no vital interests, placing the USA in a position in which her resources are insufficient to fulfil her promises. Buchanan expresses the view that just as Chamberlain's "guarantee" of Poland in March 1939 caused an "unnecessary war" with Germany later that year, that the United States's current guarantees of Eastern European nations are equally unwise, given that they require a declaration of war with Russia if a hostile regime were to ascend to power in that country and attack any of those countries. This despite the fact that the USA has no vital interests in Eastern Europe. Finally, Buchanan highlights the symbolism of George W. Bush placing a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office as evidence that Bush's neoconservative foreign policy was influenced and inspired by Churchill.
20840271	/m/05769rg	High Hopes: The Amityville Murders				 The book is based on trial testimony of the 1974 murder of the DeFeo family and takes place from the prosecutor's point of view. Gerard Sullivan was the prosecutor in the case. The book tells of Ronnie's nine year stay at the house on Ocean Ave. It tells how Ronnie starts to get mentally unstable, using drugs, getting into fights. It goes up to how Ronnie killed his family. Then it goes to the aftermath and the court and eventually his conviction. The book does not deal with anything supernatural and is only about the DeFeos. It also talks about the insanity plea. A very controversial event is also mentioned in the book. The event which is now unverifiable, tells of a 1972 drowning that may have been caused by Ronald DeFeo, Jr. The only mention of the haunting is in a sentence at the end of the book.
20841003	/m/053zq_n	Things Could Be Worse	Lily Brett	1990	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Renia and Josl Bensky grow up in the Polish town of Łódź, Poland. Shortly after their marriage, they are forced to move to the Ghetto of Łódź, and soon, they are deported to the concentration camp of Auschwitz. After the downfall of the Third Reich, they meet again, and their first daughter Lola is born in a DP camp in 1946. In 1948, The Benskys move to Melbourne and try to start a new life, far away from the horrible crimes they had to endure during the Holocaust. They find good friends among fellow Jewish Immigrants, and with this tight group of friends, they try to live as normal a life as possible. Josl and Renia both try to live with their past; in this mixture of trying to forget and to commemorate, they raise Lola to be an Australian girl. Lola knows she will never understand her parents completely since she will never experience what they had to live through. She has her own problems. She has overweight, weird boyfriends and a first husband whom she does not love. When she turns 19, Lola starts to write for a rock magazine and gets to travel around the world to interview the stars of her time. Apart from her job, she raises her children and tries to figure out her life. Finally, she marries the artist Garth and moves to New York.
20842506	/m/076v572	The Wings of Merlin	T. A. Barron	2000	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As winter's long night approaches, Merlin is met with his most difficult challenge - unifying all of Fincayra against an evil invasion by Rhita Gawr. With time exceedingly short, how can one young man possibly bring them all - dwarves, canyon eagles, walking trees, and more - together? Added to this already huge task is the appearance of the mysterious slayer, who has been hunting down the children of Fincayra. As he struggles to unite the Fincayrans and save the children, Merlin must also find the secret of the long lost wings that will enable him - and his people - to choose their true destiny.
20843815	/m/058shjw	Pirate Freedom	Gene Wolfe	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The hero is named Christopher (Chris, Crisóforo, Christophe). He recounts his childhood and career as a pirate, interspersed with digressions about events in his later life, including the time when he is writing the book (as in The Book of the Short Sun). The following summarizes his story in the order in which he experiences it. Chris is a Sicilian-American. When he is ten, Communism ends in Cuba, and his father (apparently a "wiseguy") moves there with him to run a casino. Chris goes to school at a monastery, where he becomes a novice and helps a Brother Ignacio with the farm work. At one point, he notices that many of the people he knew are gone, Mass is in Latin, and no one wears a watch. Somewhat later, he walks away from the monastery. A farmer in a horse-drawn wagon picks him up and takes him to Havana&mdash;but the roads are unpaved and Havana is much smaller than he remembers. Chris lives by theft until he signs on to a Spanish brig bound for Veracruz, Mexico. He is raped twice by shipmates, but thereafter manages to avoid them, and he enjoys learning military seamanship. In Veracruz he meets an English captain, Abraham Burt. Then Chris's ship sails to Spain, where he becomes infatuated with Estrellita, the maid of a wealthy young married woman. Her master puts a stop to the relationship. He returns to his ship, but on the way back to Mexico they are captured by English pirates under Captain Burt, who takes him on to the pirate ship. They capture a Spanish slave ship, and Burt puts Chris in charge of taking it to Port Royal. When he returns, having freed a few of the slaves, he refuses to join in piracy and Burt abandons him on Hispaniola. There a French buccaneer (a settler in the wilderness) helps him survive. They and other buccaneers capture a small Spanish warship sent against them, and Chris assumes command. A "boy" on the ship reveals herself as a woman who Chris knew in Spain; Chris takes her to be the maid Estrellita, but calls her "Novia", meaning "sweetheart". They become lovers. After fights against the Spanish, Chris and his crew meet with Burt. An allied ship has captured a Spanish galley and its owner. The passengers had included one Jaime Guzmán and his wife. Chris deduces Señora Guzmán's hiding place and finds that she is Estrellita; Novia is Guzmán's real wife and Estrellita's former mistress. Guzmán had beaten Novia because&mdash;she says&mdash;she too was in love with Chris. Though Chris is angry with Novia for lying to him, she still loves him and they reconcile. Chris rejoins Burt, and their fleet engages in successful and unsuccessful piracy, sailing around South America. At Río Hato, Panama, they rob a mule train of Peruvian gold. That night one crew massacres the rest of the pirates and takes the gold. Chris escapes and finds the dying Burt, who gives him his maps to the treasure he has buried on the Pearl Islands. Chris and Novia marry in Veracruz. Chris runs into Brother Ignacio and hires him to take care of Novia while Chris reclaims Burt's treasure. He sets out single-handed, but is wrecked and on the last page of the book is rescued by Mexican fishermen who have a radio. He makes his way to the United States and enters a seminary, then becomes a priest. He resists the temptation to visit the home where his child self lives. The Cuban Communists fall, and Chris heads to Cuba. He has realized Brother Ignacio was his older self. Finishing his manuscript on a plane to Miami, he explains that he plans to enter his childhood monastery as a lay brother named Ignacio, follow young Chris out of the monastery into 17th-century Cuba, go to Veracruz to meet him and take care of Novia, and eventually take his place as her husband and recover Burt's treasure.
20846893	/m/05439s5	The Boy In The Dress	David Walliams	2008-10-01		 The story follows a boy named Dennis and his older brother John, whose parents got divorced when he was only 7 and his brother 9. The boys remain with their father, who resorts to comfort eating to cope after his wife leaves; Dennis finds comfort in his mother's left-behind clothes. Dennis buys a copy of Vogue magazine, but is caught by his horrified father; John calls him 'Denise'. At school that day Dennis is given detention, where he meets the glamorous Lisa James, who ultimately lends him a dress which he wears to school. This makes Dennis very embarrassed even though he fancies Lisa.
20851940	/m/053gqmx	Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The second book in the Aunt Jane's series picks up where the first left off. The eccentric and down-to-earth millionaire John Merrick decides to take his three beloved nieces &mdash; Patsy Doyle, Elizabeth de Graf, and Louise Merrick &mdash; on a tour of Europe. The parents of the three girls react variously, but don't oppose the trip; Mrs. Merrick, Louise's mother, wants to accompany them as chaperone, a prospect that Uncle John rejects out of hand. Still, Mrs. Merrick allows her daughter to go; she wants to separate Louise from Arthur Weldon, the young man who has been courting her. (The social-climbing Mrs. Merrick is desperate for Louise to land a rich husband. Weldon's father is a wealthy railroad magnate, but the father and son are in a clash of generations and the elder Weldon threatens to disown the younger). Uncle John and the three cousins embark for Europe, and make new acquaintances aboard ship. Among them is a somewhat sinister and mysterious man called Victor Valdi, who combines "refinement and barbarity" in his manner. Patsy goes out of her way to draw him out of his sullen silence, to "make him talk and 'be sociable'." The tourists reach Italy, where they witness an eruption by Vesuvius and cope with the public's fears and a layer of ash in the streets of Naples. They consider a detour, but decide to carry on intrepidly. They encounter a local aristocrat, the Count of Ferralti, who fancies Louise &mdash; though the clever Uncle John quickly realizes that he is only a pretend nobleman. John warns Louise of the young man's pretense, but otherwise allows the acquaintance, especially when Ferralti proves a courageous help in a near-disaster on the road. At Taormina, the travelers meet Victor Valdi again; he appears more sinister and mysterious than ever in his native element, where he is called "Il Duca." There is much talk of the danger of "brigands" in Sicily &mdash; though the local people cheerfully insist that "There are no brigands" in Sicily, an ironic refrain that winds through the book. Quickly enough, both Uncle John and Ferralti are waylaid by Valdi, who is the chief local brigand, and makes a living for his family and followers by kidnapping tourists and holding them for ransom. Uncle John learns the ways of Valdi's curious establishment, which includes his ruthless mother and his daughter Tato, who masquerades as a boy to serve as her father's henchman. After initial resistance, Uncle John reconciles himself to paying the ransom for his life and freedom; but his nieces and friends are unwilling to yield to bandits, and stage a bold and effective rescue of Uncle John and Ferralti. It is revealed that the false Count Ferralti is actually Arthur Weldon; he has come to Europe in disguise to be with Louise. Uncle John lets the two young people continue to see each other, as long as there is no talk of marriage yet. (News has arrived that Weldon's father has died in a railway accident, and that Arthur is now a wealthy heir.) The Americans are surprised a few days later, when Valdi and Tato appear at their hotel. While Tato was acting as the go-between in the ransom plot, the girl and Patsy had become something like friends; with typical generosity of spirit, Patsy does not blame the girl for the actions of her family. Now, Valdi asks the Americans to take Tato under their charge for a time; Valdi is trying to leave brigandage behind and take up an honest life. The cousins naively accept Tato, and enjoy dressing her in a new wardrobe and teaching her manners. They are surprised again when Tato absconds with the ransom cash ($50,000 of Uncle John's money and $30,000 of Weldon's); the girl leaves a cheerful but mocking letter behind her, explaining the ruse. Having learned their lesson, the travelers complete their tour through Italy, Switzerland, and France, and gratefully return home.
20854948	/m/0545z9_	Quofum	Alan Dean Foster	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Sent by the Humanx Commonwealth Science Council, a team of explorers manage to find the planet Quofum—which only occasionally appears on long range scans. Since the planet is outside of the Commonwealth territory their mission is deemed minor and unimportant. The team’s four scientists—two human males, one human female and one male thranx—initially discover four separate, unique sentient species. Combined with Quofum’s nine percent alcohol oceans, its unstable appearance is seemingly part of the nature of Quofum: every species on Quofum is seemingly unrelated—casting well-established scientific notions of evolution into doubt. When the team’s mechanic, Salvador Araza murders the ship’s captain—revealing himself to be a member of the assassin clan, the Qwarm—the scientific exploration nearly ends. Before stranding the scientists on Quofum, Araza kills one member of the team who tries to stop him from stealing the ship’s shuttle. Upon returning to the ship Araza leaves Quofum but quickly discovers he is not in any part of the known universe. Unknowingly he left the planet while it was in an alternate universe where it periodically hides. Upon realizing his mistake, Araza tries to re-locate Quofum, but fails—stranding himself in the alternate universe. The three remaining scientists fall into a survivor’s depression realizing their small expedition won’t be missed while also lacking a means to return home on their own. They continue to explore and document Quofum’s flora and fauna, documenting upwards of ten different sentient species of various degrees of technological development. Eventually they happen upon an entrance to the inner workings of the planet. The ancient race (unnamed, but obviously the Xunca) that once inhabited Quofum altered their planet when they realized the inter-galactic Great Evil was eventually coming to their corner of the universe. The main alternation was to give Quofum the ability to shift to a different universe to protect itself. They also started multiple experiments to create different diverse races in an attempt to find a species that could trigger the "Great Attractor device" they set up in the Norma cluster to fight the Great Evil. The solution to the problem, and the conclusion to the storyline is actually revealed in Flinx Transcendent.
20857540	/m/056ns0z	Curious George	Margret Rey	1941	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The man with the yellow hat captures a monkey called George in the jungle. They sail aboard a ship for a big city and George falls into the sea while imitating some birds. He is rescued and the ship finally puts into port. The man goes home with George but the monkey plays with the telephone and inadvertently calls the fire station, and is unfortunately taken to jail. Luckily, he escapes jail. Later, he tries to grab a balloon from a vendor, but takes the entire bunch and sails away high into the sky. The wind dies down and George descends, landing on a traffic signal. The man rescues him, buys all the balloons from the vendor, and takes George and the balloons to the zoo, George's new home.
20857690	/m/057cwtt	Curious George Takes a Job	H. A. Rey	1947	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book picks up where the first book ends. George is living in the zoo, but escapes. He enters a restaurant and eats a pot of spaghetti. The cook makes him wash the dishes. He does a splendid job and the cook takes him to a friend who gives him a job as a window washer at an apartment building. George discovers a room being painted and gives it a jungle theme but the painters chase him and he breaks his leg falling from a fire escape. He recovers in the hospital, but tampers with a bottle of ether and is overcome by the fumes. The man with the yellow hat and a nurse waken him with a cold shower. George's story is made into a movie and the book ends with George watching the film in a theater with his friends.
20857858	/m/0561895	The Eye of the Forest	Philip Kerr	2009-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Mrs. Gaunt will be going to go to a plastic surgeon djinn named Dr. Kowalski to make Mrs. Gaunt's body look just like her former one. However, djinn can no longer ride whirlwinds safely because of global warming, so she has to fly down to the doctor in Brazil on a regular airplane. Meanwhile, Mr. Gaunt is kidnapped while his wife is away by three black druids from near Stonehenge. John and Philippa were at Mr. Vodyannoy's other house when that happened. The west wing is safe but the east wing in not able to be navigated. The butler's sister is lost in the east wing. Also, no djinn power can be used in this Nightshakes house. John goes to see the talking boards there to try to contact Mr. Rakshasas' spirit, but he awakens an ancient Incan named Manco Capac instead. He escapes and regains his mummy from a museum. John brings Grace back to her brother and goes to the museum in his ethereal form. Another unrelated thief stole three sacred gold disks and broke somethings, and the news says a thief in Berlin stole an ancient Incan staff. The news then shows a picture of a door shaped like an eye in the Peruvian forests that leads to...nowhere. Nimrod says that it's the Eye of the Forest and leads to a place that could cause the end of the world. They fly down to Peru after consulting with Faustina, the Blue Djinn, and getting the one copy of the map to the Eye in the world. They bring Zadie Eloko with them. The tour guide is "Sicky," who has a tattoo on his stomach that acts like Medusa. His head is abnormally small due to an accident with enemy Indians when he was young. They are nearly killed several times by unusually large animals. John later discovers that Zadie is causing it. She was hypnotized by Virgil Macreeby. Zadie accidentally makes a wish that Pizarro would "teach a lesson" to the Indians chasing them. John and Nimrod reach the Eye - the news story was a hoax. The real door is rectangular and tied with a knotted string made from human hair. John leans against a lupuna tree and gains some of its knowledge. He unties the knot and rescues the others from mummified Indians. Nimrod awakens some Inca kings who go to fight Pizarro's army. Soon Virgil Macreeby, Dybbuk and Zadie arrive. They get the disks that Nimrod stole from Zadie. They are intent on using them to make an obviously fake ritual to remake Dybbuk's powers and turn lead to gold. The three go through the door, keeping back the others by showing them a video that their father is kidnapped. Nimrod connects the dots and realizes that the disks are really polonium, lithium, and steel. The staff has a rod made of pure uranium. These could cause a nuclear explosion. A piece of uranium the size of a baseball destroyed Hiroshima—But if it is bigger (namely the uranium the land is built on) the whole world could blow up. They decide to follow after sending Layla a message through djinnternal mail. The way to Paititi is guarded by enantodromia (i.e. a wish becomes its opposite). Layla flies to America in a jet at 1500&nbsp;mph and finds out where Mr. Gaunt is. She rescues him and turns the druids into rare animals. But she shared Edward's body-he is so scared that she renounces her powers(even though Nimrod said in book 2 that you can only renounce once). Meanwhile, Macreeby leaves Zadie entangled to a human hair bridge that absorbed her and goes on with Buck. John releases her and Nimrod dehypnotizes her. She follows them. While that happens, the other two cross through a row of vampire plants that want their blood. They get across but Macreeby had a concussion. They reach the temple but in the middle of the process realize Macreeby dropped the third gold disk near the plants (the polonium one). Macreeby gets it but Phil somehow apparates across. Then the plants disappear. Nimrod says her slippers are "gestalt" and that they make her desires come true. They follow to Paititi capturing Macreeby on the way. But just before they reach the city, their electronic devices stop working. Buck dropped the rod without the polonium - there will be no explosion, but only deadly radiation instead. Phil wishes up a bomb shelter with Hazmat suits. She goes up to Buck - he has split into 2 beings, one good, one bad. The bad one crushes the good one and Phil goes back to the others brokenhearted. They are "gestalted" back to the real world and Phil buries the slippers for fear of their power. Zadie stays behind in the forest to make a school for the Indians. The bad ones lost their bad chief to Pizarro and are good now. Sicky is their new chief. Macreeby's punishment is that he stays behind to help Zadie. Nimrod plants accelerated growth lupuna trees made by Faustina near the Eye and makes them invisible so loggers don't cut them. When they grow up tall in a few years (they grow 10 times as fast as other lupunas) whirlwind travel will be safe again. The team heads home to New York, with their family back to normal
20857999	/m/05667yl	Curious George Rides a Bike	H. A. Rey	1952	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The man with the yellow hat buys George a bicycle. He helps a newspaper boy with his route, but makes boats of the newspapers and sets them adrift in a stream. He runs into a rock, damaging the bike's front wheel. Workers with an animal show fix the wheel and George joins the show. He is given a bugle to play. He is told not to feed the ostrich but the bird gets the bugle lodged in his throat. The workers retrieve it, but George is fired. A baby bear escapes and climbs a tree. George rescues him by lowering him to the ground in the newspaper bag. For his heroism, George is reinstated in the show. He rides his bike and plays the bugle. He is a great success, and is allowed to keep the bugle.
20864019	/m/05h5pmx	Syren	Angie Sage	2009-09-29	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story picks up where Queste ended. Jenna, Nicko, Snorri, Ullr and Beetle are in the harbor known as the Trading Post, where Jenna encounters her father, Milo Banda, who persuades them to spend the night on his ship. Back in The Castle, Septimus gets a promotion to Senior Apprentice by Marcia Overstrand, for being the only apprentice wizard to complete the Queste. This enables him to head off on an adventure of his own. His escapade begins as he plans a simple flight on board his dragon, Spit Fyre, to retrieve his friends from the Trading Post. Around this time, Aunt Zelda sends Wolf Boy from the Marram Marshes. She is giving him a challenging test for becoming the first male Keeper. As soon as Wolf Boy leaves, Zelda retrieves a SafeCharm, which appears to be a tiny, pear-shaped gold bottle. She needs to deliver it to Septimus, however, by the time she arrives he has already left. Due to an unfortunate mix-up, the SafeCharm falls into the hands of Merrin Meredith who stole it believing it to be a rare perfume. When he takes the top off to sniff it, a jinnie comes out of it. "Jim Knee" as he is called by Merrin, sets off on his own adventure. Meanwhile, Wolf Boy bumps into Simon Heap in the Port; he was looking for his fiancee Lucy Gringe who had been missing. Wolf Boy approaches the House of the Port Witch Coven. There he reads Zelda's letter which tells him to feed a creature called Grim and cut-off its tentacle tip. The Port Witch takes him inside her kitchen and wakes the Grim, which is a giant octopus. The witches bring forth a captive Lucy to feed to the Grim. Under the pretense of feeding Lucy to the Grim, Wolf Boy and Lucy escape from the coven. They are chased by a senior witch, Linda, but they escape by riding straight into a leaving ship. While flying towards the Trading Post, Septimus sees a bunch of seven islands on the sea and hears a voice calling him. Ignoring the voice, Septimus continues his journey and reaches Milo's ship The Cerys. There Milo shows Jenna a big trunk which is full of tiny lead tubes and which he declares to be brought specially for Jenna's safety. Jenna, getting tired of Milo's hospitality decides to leave the ship and fly off home with Septimus and Beetle on Spit Fyre. But while flying home, they get caught in a raging storm. They try to find the Cattrokk Light, a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean, and fall onto a nearby island when Spit Fyre's tail gets struck by lightning. Septimus tries his best to cure the tail with Physik but his attempts fail. He is also perplexed by a voice calling his name continuously. One day Septimus sees a girl approaching him. The girl introduces herself as Syrah Syara; Septimus remembers meeting her when he went back in time 500 years, during the events from Physik. She fled from The Castle during the Queste and hid on the island. Syrah heals Spit Fyre's tail and reveals that she is under a terrible enchantment by the resident evil ghost of the island known as Syren. The Syren, a singing ghost who attracts sailors by her voice and leads them to their doom by possessing them, stays in a tower atop the hills of the island. Syrah takes Septimus there to show him an opened ice-tunnel latch beneath the island; she mentions that danger is approaching the Castle. Before Septimus can close the ice-tunnel, the Syren takes hold of Syrah while Septimus flees. Meanwhile Marcia goes to the Manuscriptorium vaults and finds that the ice tunnel latches, which pass from The Castle to the Seven Isles of Syren, through Cattrokk Light to the House of Foryx, are opened. Suspecting that the evil ghost Tertius Fume may be behind this, she returns to the Wizard Tower to find Zelda who informs Marcia about Septimus' danger. Together they find the jinnie and lock him in a sealed chamber in the Wizard Tower and devises a plan to help Septimus. Lucy and Wolf Boy continue their journey aboard the ship whose captain is a pirate. They reach Cattrokk light and there, the pirate's henchmen throw the lighthouse guard overboard. Lucy and Wolf Boy hide from them in one of the rooms of the Lighthouse. Surprisingly, they find that the lighthouse guard, Miarr, who is half-cat half-human, is still alive because cats have nine lives. The ship's captain and his henchmen take the light from the lighthouse and transport it to the island where Jenna and Beetle reside, and they see them coming. Miarr then leads Lucy and Wolf Boy to an underwater machine which allows them to approach the island unseen. While they are entering the underwater machine, it is hinted at that the Septimus Heap series takes place in the future. The Cerys travels towards The Castle under Nicko's steering. However, near Cattrokk Light, Nicko hears the Syren's song and believing mistakenly that the light on the island is coming from the lighthouse, he sails the ship onto the rocks. The pirate ship's captain and his henchmen then ambush Cerys' passengers, but Septimus and the others are able to lock them in the hold and save them all on board. The captain and his henchmen open the trunk, which contains thousands of bottles of jinnie and release them. To their horror, Septimus and the others find that the jinnie warriors come on board and address Tertius Fume as their master; he is on the island directing them towards the Syren tower ice tunnel. Meanwhile under Marcia's order, Septimus' jinnie finds him. Septimus and Beetle come to the conclusion that since Jim Knee was in a golden bottle, he has the power to overcome the warrior jinnie because gold is purer than lead. Septimus orders Jim Knee to go and freeze one of the warriors so that all the others will be simultaneously frozen. The front line of warriors had already reached through the ice-tunnel to the Wizard Tower, where just as they are about to kill Marcia under Fume's supervision, Jim Knee freezes the last jinnie; hence freezing all the other jinnie warriors. Marcia triumphs and informs a surprised Fume that she will see to it that his ghost is eradicated forever. Septimus and the others rejoice and Lucy and Wolf Boy help Miarr to put back the light atop Cattrokk. Septimus also orders Jim Knee to go and capture the Syren and force it into a small sealed bottle; hence Syrah is saved from her terrible enchantment. However, learning that more than 500 years have been passed since she arrived there and that Julius Pike is long dead, Syrah becomes comatose. The whole company returns to The Castle, where Marcia, Sarah and Silas Heap and Aunt Zelda meet them.
20864491	/m/0567lt5	Sam's Letters to Jennifer	James Patterson			 Jennifer, who is still mourning the death of her husband, is rushed to her grandmother "Sam"'s side when she goes into a coma, where Jennifer makes the shocking discovery of a packet of letters addressed to her from Sam. As Jennifer reads the letters, she follows the sad story of Sam, who married young to a Stanford man, only to find true love soon after with a man nicknamed "Doc". Jennifer is also beginning to find love with a friend from her childhood, Brendan, whom she later finds out is fighting for his life with a brain tumor that continues to grow. As the summer progresses Sam comes out of her coma and Brendan leaves Jennifer to have a dangerous and possibly life-ending surgery to remove the tumor. Jennifer tracks him down and is there for him when he has and lives through the surgery. Brendan gains his health back and "Doc" is revealed to be the family friend Reverend John. At the end of the book Sam dies, and at her service Jennifer announces that she is pregnant with Brendan's child, who they, no matter what sex, plan to name Sam. It is later revealed that the child is a daughter.
20864838	/m/056cgfn	Bare Bones	Kathy Reichs	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In the Charlotte summer heat, Dr Brennan has to identify a newborn skeleton in a wood stove that was probably born to the daughter of an acquaintance of her. Victims of a sports plane crash may be drug runners. And mixed animal-human bones in a derelict outhouse are a mystery discovered by her ex-husband's dog, Boyd. More puzzling, the drug runners and the animal (mostly bear) bones seem to be connected in a blatant CITES violation - the market for CITES animals and parts thereof being as hot as the drug market.
20865989	/m/057s7gd	The Poverty of Historicism	Karl Popper	1957		 The book is a treatise on scientific method in the social sciences. Popper defines historicism as: “an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principal aim…”. “The belief… that it is the task of the social sciences to lay bare the law of evolution of society in order to foretell its future… might be described as the central Historicist doctrine.”. He distinguishes two main strands of historicism, a “pro-naturalistic” approach which “favours the application of the methods of physics”, and the “anti-naturalistic” approach which opposes these methods. The first two parts of the book contain Popper's exposition of historicist views (both pro- and anti-naturalistic), and the second two to criticism of them. Popper concludes by contrasting the antiquity of historicism (which, for example, Plato is said to have espoused) with the claims of modernity made by its twentieth century adherents.
20865994	/m/058_2_f	Lost and Found	Andrew Clements	2008-07-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Grayson brothers have a hard time proving they're two separate people. Their parents named one Ray Jay and the other Jay Ray. And to complicate matters, they're identical twins. It's not that Ray and Jay (who only go by their first names to avoid confusion) mind it, exactly. They get along just fine. But they have always secretly wondered what it would be like to be a single person rather than always "one of the Grayson twins." When they move to a new town just in time to start sixth grade, they get that chance. Ray stays at home sick on the first day of school, so Jay gets to go alone. Jay adjusts well and makes some new friends right away. But there's something weird going on. No one wonders where his brother is, and Ray isn't on any attendance lists. It's as if he doesn't exist. Before Jay tells his teachers, he comes up with a plan. Now he and his brother can both see what it's like not to be known as a twin. They'll take turns going to school, each pretending to be Jay. They look exactly alike, so no one will know the difference. That is, until they start making friends and finding girls they like, and each has to memorize everything that the other did that day at school. They also need to figure out who's responsible for all the homework! What follows is a sometimes funny, sometimes heartfelt story about mistaken identities, making friends and understanding family ties. As it becomes tougher and tougher to keep their stories straight, Jay and Ray begin to get more annoyed with each other. As if that's not enough, their parents don't understand why the boys refuse to go out at the same time (obviously, they don't want to run into anyone from their school), and one of them keeps getting into trouble for not doing his homework. In the end, the principal and school nurse finally figures out that they were twins, but did not give them any consequences, thanks to the plead of their father.
20866931	/m/02ql8h_	Curious George Goes to the Hospital	H. A. Rey	1966	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 George and the man with the yellow hat assemble a jigsaw puzzle but George swallows a puzzle piece. At the hospital, George is taken to the operating room and the jigsaw piece is removed. George later has ice cream, and cheers the children in the ward with his antics. George takes a wild ride in a wheelchair, crashes into the meal cart, and is sent soaring into the air. A sad little girl in the children's ward laughs for the first time. George is discharged, and at home he opens a package sent by his nurse. It contains the puzzle piece. He puts it into the jigsaw puzzle and the picture is complete.
20874302	/m/0557lq8	Storm from the Shadows	David Weber	2009-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book begins with a retelling of several events that took place in At All Costs, from the point of view from main character Admiral Michelle Henke. As Honor Harrington's Eighth Fleet continues its devastating deep-strike raids into the territory of the Republic of Haven, Haven's technical wizard Admiral Shannon Foraker develops a defensive weapons system that she names Moriarty, after the malevolent archenemy of Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty, essentially a deep space station devoted entirely to missile fire control, enables Havenite planetary defenses to fire previously unmatched masses of missiles at invading forces. This system enables even Eighth Fleet, which has exceedingly capable anti-missile defense systems, to be attacked successfully, as not even Manticoran missile defense systems can stop tens of thousands of missiles targeted on the same ship. On one mission, Havenite Admiral Javier Giscard organizes an ambush in several systems expected to be attacked by Eighth Fleet. Three Havenite forces corner the Manticoran force when it arrives in one of the systems. After the Moriarty station fires a massive amount of missiles from pods in orbit around the system's planet, Eighth Fleet is heavily damaged. One of Harrington's super dreadnoughts is destroyed outright, and many more are damaged beyond repair. Henke's force of battlecruisers also takes heavy damage, to the point where her flagship HMS Ajax loses the capability to flee the system with Harrington. The ship's "boat bays" are also damaged to the point where shuttles cannot leave, trapping the crew aboard. All appears lost for Henke, but the ship's crew manages to repair the ship to the point where shuttles can be used to evacuate it. Henke orders the evacuation, and simultaneously plans a counter attack using all of the ship's remaining offensive capability. Originally intending to sacrifice herself to see the plan through, the ship's flag captain orders her and her staff off just before the attack begins. As the Havenite fleet approaches an apparently evacuated Ajax, the ship fires all remaining missile pods into them, catching them by surprise. Damage comparable to that suffered by Eighth Fleet is sustained by the Havenites, who quickly completely destroy Ajax and all else that remains of Henke's force with vengeful fire. Henke is presumed dead by the Manticorans, as it is believed she did not make it off Ajax before it was destroyed. In reality, however, she got aboard the last evacuating shuttle with two of her officers, and was heavily injured as her ship exploded around them. The persons on board the shuttle, including Henke, are then picked up by the Havenite fleet, and they become prisoners of war. Henke's injuries, which include a shattered right knee, are treated by the Havenites. Admiral Thomas Theisman, the Havenite Naval Commander in Chief and a longtime respected adversary of Manticore, has mandated that all prisoners of war in the renewed conflict between Manticore and Haven are to be treated as fairly and humanely as possible. Henke recovers in a comfortable military hospital, during which time she is visited in turn by Theisman and Eloise Pritchart, President of the Republic. At one point Theisman even invites her to a formal dinner with him and his staff. After she recovers, Henke takes command as the senior Manticoran Prisoner of War on an island on the planet Haven. Henke discovers, to her surprise, that Haven has adopted a completely unorthodox approach to handling PoWs. The Manticorans present on the island are essentially left to their own devices, under the watchful eye of one Havenite officer, who is responsible for providing what is needed to Henke and the other PoWs under her responsibility to live in relative comfort. Although it appears that any time the PoWs on the island could just build a boat and leave, the island is actually under round-the-clock surveillance from space and, if necessary, a team of Havenite Republican Marines are ready at all times to prevent an escape in less than fifteen minutes. This experience significantly changes Henke's view of Haven. She realizes that Theisman and Pritchart really have restored the honor of the Havenite military, which previously had been considerably less noble in its treatment of prisoners. Henke spends six months as commanding officer of the Manticoran PoWs. One day, the Havenite military sends an aircar to the island, and she is summoned once again to the company of Theisman and Pritchart. Henke is informed that she will be paroled by the Havenite military, a practice previously unheard of. In return, Pritchart asks Henke, a close relative of Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore, to petition the Manticoran leadership for a peace summit between the Star Kingdom and the Republic. There is one more stipulation: Henke must give her legally binding oath that she will not command a force against the Havenite military, or otherwise act against the interests of Haven. This she does, and Henke is sent back to Manticoran territory. Henke convinces a reluctant Queen Elizabeth to personally meet with Pritchart on the capitol planet of the neutral Kingdom of Torch, which had been established by a covert joint effort between Manticore and Haven in the book Crown of Slaves, during the truce that preceded the current conflict. In the meantime, Henke and Manticore are put in a dilemma: she cannot go back to war against Haven, or else violate her parole. Yet, she is one of Manticore's finest tacticians, and the Manticoran Bureau of Personnel recognizes that her talents should not be wasted. Thus, she is assigned to become second in command to Vice Admiral Khumalo, in the distant Talbott cluster, which, in The Shadow of Saganami, successfully petitioned via plebiscite to become annexed by the Star Kingdom. While Talbott on the surface seems to be a relatively quiet and peaceful place far away from the titanic conflict between Haven and Manticore, things are not as they seem. In Saganami, the malevolent interstellar slaver corporation known as Manpower Unlimited attempted to use a local nation known as Monica as a proxy to force the Star Kingdom from Talbott, and take control of the lucrative wormhole terminus located there. By convenient chance, Captain Aivars Terekhov, commander of the heavy cruiser HMS Hexapuma stationed in Talbott, uncovered the plot and in a daring assault on the Monica system, completely destroyed Monica's military, thus ending the threat it posed to Manticoran control of Talbott. Despite a loss that results in Monica becoming a vassal of the Star Kingdom, and the public embarrassment of all involved in the plot, including Manpower and the Solarian League's Office of Frontier Security, Manpower almost immediately launches another plan to force Manticore from Talbott, and cause a conflict between the Star Kingdom and the League to serve its own mysterious ends. Taking advantage of widespread arrogance in the OFS and the Solarian League Navy towards (apparently) "lesser" nations like Manticore, Manpower manipulates the only star nation of the Talbott cluster that declined to participate in the annexation, the New Tuscan Republic, to engineer a false conflict between itself and Manticore. Manpower operative Aldonna Anisimovna meets with the New Tuscan leadership, confesses her organization's involvement in the Monica incident, and persuades them to support a new plot that she tricks them into believing will help preserve New Tuscan sovereignty. After a series of deliberately provoked incidents between New Tuscan merchant ships and Manticoran forces charged with inspecting them as they enter Manticoran territory, a fleet of ships under the command of one Admiral Josef Byng, a viciously anti-Manticoran and incompetent Solarian League Naval Officer, is dispatched to Talbott by the League. That Byng himself is even in command of this force is the work of Manpower and the OFS, who expect that in one way or another Byng will act irrationally when dealing with Manticore, and start a conflict. Byng himself is completely oblivious to the plot, and honestly believes that his true purpose for being sent to Talbott is to check Manticoran aggression against New Tuscany. Henke encounters Byng and through a Manticoran Naval Intelligence dossier on the Solarian Admiral, and after rather frosty conversation with the man, discovers Byng's nature and arrogant attitude towards all things Manticoran. However, she is powerless to do anything about the Solarian presence in the area. In the wake of this crisis, the reader is taken through several mysterious interludes on the planet Mesa, the homeworld of Manpower Unlimited. The overall leader of Manpower (and Mesa), Albrecht Detweiler, is shown discussing Manpower (and Mesa's) plans with various persons, including his several "sons" (actually clones). In each interlude, more and more is revealed about Mesan plans to finally come out of the shadows and launch a direct attack on the Manticore system with a secret weapon; stealth ships that travel without an Impeller drive and thus are completely undetectable by conventional means. Furthermore, it is revealed that "Manpower Unlimited" is actually just a front for the Mesan star nation itself, the Mesan Alignment, which is run by Detweiler and a cadre of other genetically engineered oligarchs set on galactic domination. The Mesan plot involving New Tuscany and Admiral Byng comes to a head. In the system where most of the engineered diplomatic incidents between Manticore and New Tuscany have taken place, New Tuscany scuttles one of their merchant ships as a Manticoran vessel is approaching for boarding and inspection, in an attempt to frame Manticore for its destruction. It is blatantly obvious that the detonations which destroyed the freighter were caused internally, but Byng wastes no time upon hearing of the incident to protect them against further Manticoran "aggression". Admirals Khumalo and Henke, unaware of Byng's presence in the system, send a small fleet of three destroyers to New Tuscany to officially complain about their actions. As soon as the destroyers arrive, Anisimova, using a nuclear device, destroys the largest New Tuscan space station in orbit around the planet, killing tens of thousands of New Tuscans instantly. Admiral Byng automatically assumes that the Manticoran destroyers are responsible, and orders his forces to open fire upon them in retaliation. As the destroyers are completely unprepared for combat and do not have their defensive systems activated, they are quickly wiped out by Byng's large fleet. Manticore is thus propelled into a state of war with the Solarian League. For Manticore, the events could not have come at a worse time. As most of the book takes place simultaneously with At All Costs, at this time Lester Tourville's massive attack on the Manticore system itself takes place, prompting the Battle of Manticore and the near-complete elimination of the offensive capabilities of Manticore and Haven. Recognizing his huge opportunity, Detweiler orders the deployment of his secret weapon on Manticore far earlier than he had originally intended. Commanded by one of his son-clones, the new Mesan Alignment Navy embarks on the stealth ships for the Manticore system. Admiral Henke, via a distress signal that was sent back to the Talbott Quadrant, learns shortly afterward of the Manticoran ships' massacre at New Tuscany. She immediately assembles all of her ships and embarks for the system. Upon her arrival, she orders Byng to stand down, warning him that Manticoran naval capabilities far exceed that of the Solarians on a qualitative basis. Byng, who considers this warning a desperate bluff, as he believes that the Solarian Navy to be invincible, instead of vastly inferior on technical grounds as it really is, refuses. After reiterating her warning several times, and being ignored each time, Henke launches a mass of missiles at Byng's ship from far outside the engagement range of the Solarian forces, completely destroying it. Recognizing their complete tactical deficit, Byng's second in command complies with Henke's demands. The Solarian Navy is dealt its first defeat in centuries. On planet Manticore, Queen Elizabeth meets with her inner circle to discuss the events that have taken place. During this meeting, Honor Harrington remarks that she believes conflict with the Solarian League had been inevitable, and the only way Manticore is going to survive is going to be to destroy the League as it is and break it up into several successor star nations which Manticore can deal with individually. Elizabeth initially rejects this new approach, believing that Haven, in the wake of that nation's devastating assault on Manticore, must be dealt with to prevent further assaults of that nature. However, Honor through her status as an empath, reveals that she has discovered via an extensive investigation that the renewed conflict between Haven and Manticore was engineered by Mesa to keep the two sides, both enemies to Mesa, distracted. Using the evidence she has uncovered, Harrington convinces Elizabeth to see things her way and attempt to reconcile with Haven. Events come to a climax. The OFS administrator responsible for his organization's involvement for the new Mesan plot with New Tuscany meets with a Solarian officer who has a powerful fleet of capital ships stationed relatively near Talbott. Taking advantage of the Solarian Admiral's own prejudices towards "neo-barbarian" nations like Manticore, and her rage over the destruction of Admiral Byng's flagship, he surreptitiously convinces her to prepare to attack Manticore in the Talbott cluster. Simultaneously, The Mesan Alignment Navy's stealth ships arrive in the Manticore system, and deploy many missile pods before turning to leave. The commander of this force remarks that in a period of weeks, Manticore will be dealt a devastating blow. The book then suddenly ends on a cliffhanger.
20874611	/m/058l6ns	Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville picks up the story of the three cousins, Patsy Doyle, Beth De Graf, and Louise Merrick, soon after their return from Europe in Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad. As in that earlier book, their benign and eccentric millionaire Uncle John devotes much of his fortune to helping others &mdash; an effort managed by Patsy's father, Major Doyle. These efforts do not always yield fiscally sound results: in one case, Merrick and Doyle loaned a few thousand dollars to a young inventor named Joseph Wegg for a patent he was developing &mdash; but Wegg lost a patent lawsuit, and Merrick now owns the collateral on Wegg's loan, a farm in a remote region of upper New York State. In his capricious way, Merrick decides to take his nieces to the farm to escape the city's heat during the approaching summer; he arranges for a real-estate agent to get the farmhouse in good order and ships crates of furnishings to the place, sight unseen. Merrick and his three nieces come north, and find the farmhouse a surprisingly appealing place. The local inhabitants of a tiny village in the northern foothills of the Adirondack Mountains are naturally interested in the new residents; they call Merrick "the nabob." The girls quickly become fascinated by the family of the previous owner. Joe Wegg's father had been a retired sea captain, and something of a recluse; his close friend Will Thompson went mad when Captain Wegg died, and both of their fortunes mysteriously disappeared. The girls meet and become friends with Thompson's daughter Ethel, the local schoolteacher. Also, the cousins (with Louise in the lead; she takes a more prominent role in this book than in the previous volumes) decide that Captain Wegg was murdered and robbed, and set about in search of suspects. They pry into the local past with limited results; but matters begin to clear when Joe Wegg returns home to convalesce from a car accident. The girls are dispirited to learn that there was no murder and no robbery. It is Uncle John who unravels a genuine mystery, as to the fate to the Wegg and Thompson fortunes. He recovers a missing deed that ensures that Joe Wegg and Ethel Thompson can marry in comfort and security.
20877284	/m/056blm6	The White Road	Lynn Flewelling	2010-05-25	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Having escaped death and slavery in Plenimar, Alec and Seregil want nothing more than to go back to their nightrunning life in Rhíminee. Instead they find themselves saddled with Sebrahn, a strange, alchemically created creature—the prophesied “child of no woman”. Its moon-white skin and frightening powers make Sebrahn a danger to all whom Alec and Seregil come into contact with, leaving them no choice but to learn more about Sebrahn’s true nature. As Sebrahn will never be accepted in the Sarikali, Seregil and Alec travel over to the Bôkthersa clan to talk to a "dragon friend" for guidance. He presents them to his dragon, who immediately recognizes Sebrahn, and tells them that the Hâzadriëlfaie have dragon blood in their veins and that the alchemists hunt them to create a serum to prolong life. As a result to their problem he counsels that they must destroy Yhakobin's books. At the same time, Ulan's people find Ilar and bring him over to Virrése. He coaxes the story from him and takes Ilar over to Riga to recover the books. The Hâzadriëlfaie receive word of Sebrahn from the retha'noi and, realizing that Alec is still alive, send the Ebrados, a group of hunters, to retrieve him and Sebrahn, along with Tyrmari, a male witch, as a guide. They catch Alec, Seregil and Micum on Tamír's Road with the help of the local retha'noi and Seregil manages to strike a bargain with them. Their leader, Rieser goes with them over to Riga to get the books and Sebrahn remains as a hostage. They take board Green Lady and Thero creates a pair of brands for each of them, while Seregil forges warrants of ownership for Micum. On the port they recognize Ulan's Virrése ship and guess that he has come on the same errand. Unfortunately, he gets ahead of them and steals the books from Yhakobin's house the morning before the planned theft. Seregil spots Ilar and makes Alec remain outside while he ventures in Ulan's Riga house. Ilar spots him and begs him to forgive him, despite Ulan order that he turn Seregil in on sight. Instead he allows himself to be tricked into revealing the hiding place of the books before Seregil knocks him out. He meets Rieser, Micum and Alec and they all speed toward the port, hoping to elude the chase, which they do, for a while. When they find out they cannot burn the books, Seregil cuts them in two and each of them takes half. The soldiers find them again and they make a stand at a cottage near the shore. Seregil sneaks out and, after encountering captain Rhal, he returns to the cottage and they all break through, but Rieser catches an arrow in his collarbone. Back in Skala, Hâzadriën heals him and he announces that he will leave Alec alone as he doesn't believe he'll let himself be caught once again. This is received with anger by the retha'noi who resolve to destroy Sebrahn, which they call an abomination. He calls upon the owls, who blind the retha'noi archers while Sebrahn himself kills the witches. In the aftermath, Alec understands that he has to give up Sebrahn as he cannot care for him and he seems to need the presence of the other tayan'gil. They return to Rhíminee, and resume their Watcher lives.
20885304	/m/053yjr5	Dragonwyck	Anya Seton	1944	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story begins in May 1844 with Miranda Wells, daughter of a humble farmer in Greenwich, Connecticut. Miranda's mother receives a letter from Nicholas Van Ryn, a rich relative and Patroon of a large manor called Dragonwyck near Hudson, New York. In the letter Van Ryn invites one of the Wells girls to Dragonwyck, to act as company for his daughter Katrine. After initial doubts, Miranda's parents allow her to go to Dragonwyck, and Miranda is instantly attracted and intrigued by her rich and mysterious relative, Nicholas. However not everyone welcomes Miranda to Dragonwyck. Nicholas' corpulent and lazy wife Johanna sees Miranda as a threat, and tries to keep her from her husband Nicholas. Soon Miranda encounters Doctor Jeff Turner, a skilled physician, but a passionate anti-renter who believes that rich Patroons like the Van Ryns should give up their large estates. The pair initially dislike each other, and because of his views, Miranda is baffled when Nicholas asks Dr Turner to attend to his wife, who has a cold. However while Dr Turner is at Dragonwyck, Johanna becomes violently ill and dies. As Dr Turner leaves wondering what caused such a sudden death, Nicholas asks Miranda to marry him, and she accepts. However married life to Nicholas Van Ryn is far from what Miranda imagined. As the story moves on Nicholas's true mental state, and his thirst for power become evident. After their only child dies, the relationship between Miranda and her husband withers, and the bonds between Miranda and Dr Turner strengthen. Miranda and Dr Turner eventually discover that Nicholas poisoned his first wife Johanna with oleander. They confront him, and try to escape, but Nicholas catches up with Miranda on a steamboat travelling down the Hudson River. The steamboat gets caught up in a race, catches fire, and crashes. Miranda is saved by her husband Nicholas, but he dies trying to save other passengers from the steamboat. After the ordeal Miranda and Dr Turner marry, leaving the Hudson Valley area forever, for a new life in California.
20893451	/m/02phldq	The Cost of Discipleship	Dietrich Bonhoeffer			 One of the most quoted parts of the book deals with the distinction which Bonhoeffer makes between "cheap" and "costly" grace. But what is "cheap" grace? In Bonhoeffer's words: :"cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ." Or, even more clearly, it is to hear the gospel preached as follows: "Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness." The main defect of such a proclamation is that it contains no demand for discipleship. In contrast to this is costly grace: :"costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." " Bonhoeffer argues that as Christianity spread, the Church became more "secularised", accommodating the demands of obedience to Jesus to the requirements of society. In this way, "the world was Christianised, and grace became its common property." But the hazard of this was that the gospel was cheapened, and obedience to the living Christ was gradually lost beneath formula and ritual, so that in the end, grace could literally be sold for monetary gain. But all the time, within the church, there had been a living protest against this process: the monastic movement. This served as a "place where the older vision was kept alive." Unfortunately, "monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate"; the commandments of Jesus were limited to "a restricted group of specialists" and a double standard arose: "a maximum and a minimum standard of church obedience." Why was this dangerous? Bonhoeffer points out that whenever the church was accused of being too worldly, it could always point to monasticism as "the opportunity of a higher standard within the fold - and thus justify the other possibility of a lower standard for others." So the monastic movement, instead of serving as a pointer for all Christians, became a justification for the status quo. Bonhoeffer remarks how this was rectified by Luther at the Reformation, when he brought Christianity "out of the cloister". However, he thinks that subsequent generations have again cheapened the preaching of the forgiveness of sins, and this has seriously weakened the church: "The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organised church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptised, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving... But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard."
20898130	/m/05b5nds	A Crystal Age	William Henry Hudson		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The narrator "Smith" tells his story in the first person. A traveler and amateur naturalist, he regains consciousness "under a heap of earth and stones" and believes that he had been knocked unconscious in a fall&nbsp;– though his thoughts and recollections are confused. He is astounded to discover that he is entwined in the roots of plants, as though they have been growing around him. Extricating himself and surveying the scene, he sees a great house in the distance, and walks toward it to seek help and information. On his way, he encounters a funeral: a group of strangely yet strikingly dressed people, led by a majestic white-bearded old man, are interring a corpse in a grave. The narrator is especially struck by a beautiful girl who is overcome by grief. She appears to be about 14 years old; though, he soon learns that this world, and everyone in it are far older than they appear. He becomes enchanted by her, and falls in love. The funeral party see him, and express surprise at his presence and his odd uncouth clothes and boots; but they allow him to accompany them to the enormous mansion where they live. Enthralled with the girl (her name is Yoletta), and anxious to show his worth in their House, the narrator agrees to work for a year as a probationer in this community. He is constantly stumbling into misunderstandings with his new companions, for the world seems to have changed in so many extreme and incomprehensible ways. The most basic concepts of his society are unknown to these people. When he inquires about the nearest city, the old man who is "the Father of the House" thinks he is talking about a beehive. When the narrator notes that they share the English language, he is again not understood; the people of the house think they speak "the language of human beings&nbsp;– that is all." (Though their spoken language has changed little, the writing system is altered so much that the narrator cannot read the "Hebrew-like characters" in which their books are written.) It seems that the entire human race is now organized into communal houses like this one, with no other form of social structure, that they know of. The narrator struggles to adapt to this new society, as he pursues Yoletta. He is shocked to learn that all the people are much older than they appear; Yoletta is 31 years old, and the Father of the House is nearly 200. They are vegetarians, and have a strong rapport with the animals in their environment. The narrator is struck by their "rare physical beauty," their "crystal purity of heart," "ever contented and calmly glad". Yet he wonders why they have no romantic interests, and why there are no children in the community. He sometimes falls afoul of the strict rules, in which lying is a serious offense, punishable by solitary confinement. Yoletta comes to love him, but like a brother, without the heat of passion he feels for her. In time he meets the mysterious Mother of the House, and begins to comprehend the full strangeness and differentness of their way of life. The humans of this distant future have achieved their utopian state by abandoning sexuality and romantic love. Like a beehive, or a wolf pack, only the Queen, or Alpha Male and Female, or Father and Mother of the House, in this case, reproduce. The rest of the House live communally, as siblings. The narrator despairs when he realizes that his passion for Yoletta can never be consummated; and, wonders whether he can adapt to this mode of living. He does not realize that the Mother has begone the long process of grooming himself and Yoletta to become the new Father and Mother of the House. When he is in the library, he discovers an elaborately-carved bottle on a shelf; its inscription states that its contents provide a cure for the oppressions of "time and disease" and the thoughts or passions that "lead to madness." He takes a dose of the liquid, thinking it will cure his passion for Yoletta, which he doesn't realize she has begun to learn to reciprocate. It is only when his body grows stiff and cold that he realizes that the potion is a poison, and that the only relief from the pains of life it provides is death. This story, of a traveler who falls in love with a mysterious, beautiful young girl with an elderly protector, anticipates the plot of Hudson's later and more famous novel, Green Mansions.
20899493	/m/05b203p	Sunrise	Erin Hunter	2009-04-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Sunrise begins with Leafpool repeating a long-used ritual to send Ashfur to StarClan. During the process, she discovers a tuft of fur in Ashfur's claws, and she knows whose it is. ThunderClan discusses Ashfur's murder, and many think that a WindClan cat killed him since he was found on the WindClan border. To find out, Firestar sends a patrol to WindClan, but Onestar denies the possibility. As the patrol leaves, Ashfoot tells ThunderClan that she sighted Sol near the sight of Ashfur's dead body, and this leads to the thought that Sol killed Ashfur. Firestar sends Birchfall, Brambleclaw, Brackenfur, Hazeltail, Hollyleaf, and Lionblaze to the sun-drown-place to find Sol. The patrol finds Sol in the Twolegplace where Purdy lives. Brambleclaw persuades Purdy to live in the Clan as an elder. Both Sol and Purdy agree to go to ThunderClan. When the patrol returns to the Clan, Sol denies killing Ashfur and is kept under guard in the camp. Being the most curious of the Three, Jayfeather tries to find out who his true parents are. When asking around about his birth, Mousefur reveals that Leafpool accidentally put a strange herb in Mousefur's tansy soon after Jayfeather's birth. After looking through herbs in the medicine cat's den and with herbs sticking to his pelt, he goes to Mousefur to deliver some fresh-kill. Mousefur says that a certain herb sticking to his fur is the mystery herb, but Jayfeather does not know what it is. To find out, he asks Littlecloud when the medicine cats meet at the Moonpool. The ShadowClan medicine cat recognizes it as parsley, an herb that stops the milk of a cat whose kits die. Jayfeather remembers that while going back to the camp after birth, there is another cat with him besides Squirrelflight: Leafpool, Jayfeather's true mother. At the camp, Hollyleaf too learns that her mother is Leafpool by learning Leafpool came back to the camp the day Hollyleaf and her littermates were born. In response, Leafpool tells the truth: Hollyleaf killed Ashfur, and the tuft of fur found in Ashfur's paw belonged to Hollyleaf. Angered that StarClan is still keeping the father of the Three a secret, Yellowfang goes to Jayfeather in a dream, tells him, "The time for lies and secrets is over. The truth must come out. StarClan was wrong not to tell you who you were a long time ago," and leaves him a crow's feather, showing their father is Crowfeather of WindClan. At the Gathering, Hollyleaf reveals the secret about her and her brothers' parents. Crowfeather denies that he ever has any kits besides Breezepelt, and he states that Leafpool and their kits mean nothing to him. Breezepelt and Nightcloud are both outraged about never being informed. Although Hollyleaf feels proud of finally revealing the secret, Jayfeather and Lionblaze are both confused and angry. Seeing how everyone feels she did something wrong, Hollyleaf runs off into the tunnels which collapse. Jayfeather realizes that only he and Lionblaze are part of the prophecy's Three. However, as he watches Whitewing's kits walking in the clearing, he realizes that one of the kits will be the third, being the granddaughter of Cloudtail who is the nephew of Firestar.
20906393	/m/05b3hfp	The Chief Designer	Andy Duncan	2001-06		 The story follows Sergey Korolyov, an educated man who served as a slave laborer in Siberia but eventually ends up leading the Soviet Union’s space program in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Throughout his many years of service he becomes a very well respected hero in the USSR's space program. Along the way he implements several crucial designs, helps save the lives of many cosmonauts and struggles with constant political power plays.
20909788	/m/05b1bmh	The Island of Adventure	Enid Blyton	1944	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Something very sinister is happening on the mysterious Isle of Gloom, and Philip, Dinah, Lucy-Ann and Jack are determined to uncover the truth. But they are not prepared for the dangerous adventure waiting for them in the abandoned copper mines and tunnels under the sea.
20916981	/m/05b4494	The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine		2006	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 According to Ilan Pappé, the 1948 Palestinian exodus consisted of the forced relocation of close to 800,000 Palestinians. This was more than half of the Palestinian population at that time. It also involved the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages, and the emptying of 11 entire Palestinian urban neighborhoods. The event is referred to, by Palestinians, as the Nakba, the catastrophe. The thesis that Pappé presents is that the Nakba was a calculated and intentionally executed ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Zionist Israelis. He states, with emphasis, that there is no room for ambivalence in this matter. His references include Zionist quotations and writings, military and political archives, and the diaries of David Ben-Gurion. His intent is also to explore how the denial of the Nakba has been so successful for so long. His views are in direct opposition to mainstream Israeli versions of the relocation, which claim that the relocation was 'voluntary'. In his preface, Ilan Pappé says, 'such a painful journey into the past is the only way forward if we want to create a better future for us all.' Pappé states that the ethnic cleansing idea was first expressed in early Zionist writings. For example, in 1917, Leo Motzkin stated 'the colonization of Palestine has to go in two directions, Jewish settlement…and the resettlement of the Arabs.' In 1938 David Ben-Gurion stated, 'I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it.' Then in 1948, according to Ilan Pappé, the ethnic cleansing was implemented by David Ben-Gurion, Yigael Yadin, Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon, Yitzhak Sadeh, Moshe Kalman, Moshe Camel, Yitzak Rabin, Shimon Avidan, Rehavam Zeevi, Yitzhak Pundak, and others. The ideological drivers of the campaign were Ben-Gurion's close advisers whom Ilan Pappé calls the 'Consultancy group'. The implementers were officers who led attacks executed by the Haganah (an Israeli militia) and the Irgun (another Israeli militia), the Stern Gang (another Israeli militia), and the Israeli Defense Force. The details of the "ethnic cleansing strategy" are fully described in an Israeli military/government document entitled Plan Dalet. Plan Dalet, according to Pappé, spells out, in writing, the clear directives of the operation. It included 'bombarding villages…setting fire to homes, properties and goods, expulsion, demolition and planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning.' This chapter focuses on the definition of ethnic cleansing in terms of ethics and international law and international agreements. Pappé refers to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the United States Department of State, and the International Criminal Court for sources of discussion. He also describes the short-lived support that the U.S. gave to the Palestinians by endorsing United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, which calls for the return of the displaced Palestinian refugees. Pappé states that, 'Later on, the expelled are then erased from the country's official and popular history and excised from its collective memory.' He concludes that there is no denying that this alleged ethnic cleansing has been most successfully erased from conventional Israeli history. Pappé states in this chapter that a key ingredient in the Zionist creation of an Israeli state was such that it would be created exclusively for Jews. The Muslim control of Palestine had lasted for 1300 years prior to the British Mandate. Zionism emerged in the 1880s largely through the writings of Theodore Herzl. The Zionist movement had been growing steadily by the time that Britain took control of Palestine after World War I. On October 31, 1917 the Balfour Declaration occurred. 'Lord Balfour gave the Zionist movement his promise…to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine.' Palestinians made up 80–90 percent of the population of Palestine in the 1920s. As a result of the Balfour Declaration, Yosef Weitz began a remarkably thorough demographic study of the Palestinian villages. His study is called the Village Files. It was later used for key strategic information needed to implement the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. This chapter also includes a history of the impact of the British military operations in suppressing the Palestinian uprisings in 1929 and in 1937. The uprising in 1937 was particularly significant in that, according to Pappé, the British so thoroughly defeated the Palestinians that their future ability to fight for their rights to their homeland was strategically impacted. Britain provided key training for the Haganah and the Irgun. David Ben-Gurion stated, 'The Arabs will have to go.' Ben-Gurion's strategy for the creation of the Israeli State included very specific offensive military steps. They are described in Plans A, B, C, and D. 'The purpose of such actions would be to deter the Palestinian population from attacking Jewish settlements, and to retaliate for assaults on Jewish houses, roads, and traffic. Plan C spelled out clearly what punitive actions would entail, such as * Killing the Palestinian leadership. * Killing Palestinian inciters and their financial supporters. * Killing Palestinians who acted against Jews. * Killing senior Palestinian officers and officials. * Damaging Palestinian transportation. * Damaging the sources of Palestinian livelihoods: water wells, mills etc. Attacking nearby Palestinian villages likely to assist in future attacks. * Attacking Palestinian clubs, coffeehouses, meeting places, etc.' Plan Dalet (Plan D) called for the systematic and total expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. Here Pappé recalls that in 1947 the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine called for the creation of two states and the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 stating so. The Palestinians immediately rejected this. Then David Ben-Gurion's group of close advisors, that Pappé calls the Consultancy, began its planning to deal with the Palestinian resistance. Plan D (Plan Dalet) was adopted on March 10, 1948. It called for, amongst many things, the initial uprooting of 250,000 Palestinians. This initial uprooting represented the beginning of the actual execution of Plan Dalet. Key negotiations between Israel and Jordan had led to the Jordanian promise to not join any all-Arab military operations against the Jewish state. The agreement 'neutralized the strongest army in the Arab world.' The British departed Palestine on 15 May 1948. Haganah had 50,000 trained troops. The implementation of Plan Dalet continued in earnest. The Deir Yassin massacre occurred. In it, 93 Palestinians were killed. Soon after, four more villages were taken. They were Qalunya, Saris, Beit Surik, and Biddu. The United States offered a scheme to stop the bloodshed by first establishing a three-month cease-fire and then developing a trusteeship plan in five years. Both ideas were rejected by the Israelis. Ben-Gurion had stated "Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state" and that Palestinians 'can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them.' Pappé states that many Palestinian villages such as Dayr Ayyub, Beit Affa, and Khisas had virtually no defense mechanism of any kind. The attack on Balad al-Shaykh occurred leaving 60 Palestinians dead. The Hawassa neighborhood in Haifa was evacuated. The Sarraya house in Jaffa was bombed leaving 26 dead and the Samiramis Hotel in Qatamon was bombed leaving many others dead. Pappé refers to Yosef Weitz again, a member of the Consultancy. Weitz had stated, 'The only solution is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries. Not a single village or a single tribe must be left off.' In this chapter, Pappé describes various cities, and villages, and the operations to cleanse them. Operation Naschon was the first operation of Plan Dalet. It specifically called for the destruction of Palestinian villages in April 1948. It was the first time that the various Israeli militias would operate together as a unit and become the Israeli Defense Force. Pappé states 'the Arab governments did little beyond airing their inflammatory war rhetoric in all directions so as to hide their inaction and unwillingness to intervene on behalf of the Palestinians.' The United Nations plan had allocated Haifa, the only port of the country, to be granted Jewish control. Mordechai Maklef as the operation officer of the Carmeli Brigade, issued orders to 'Kill any Arab you encounter; torch all inflammable objects and force doors open with explosives'. Crowds of defenseless Palestinians ran down the streets of Haifa to the port to escape on any boat they could find. 'Many [boats] turned over and sank with all their passengers'. The next cities to fall were Acre, Nazareth and Safad. Pappé states that the Arab Liberation Army was never a match against the well organized Israeli forces. According to Pappé, there was never serious Arab Liberation Army strength, so 'the falsity of the myth of a Jewish David facing an Arab Goliath' was very clear. As Jerusalem was cleansed, 'British inaction was the rule.' In April 1948 the cleansing of Jerusalem began. 'All in all, eight Palestinian and thirty nine villages were ethnically cleansed in the Greater Jerusalem area.' After the battle was won by the Israeli Haganah, 50,000 Palestinians were forced to leave Jaffa. By 15 May 1948 200 Palestinian villages were occupied and their people expelled. This chapter discuses the dual nature of the 1948 conflict particularly during May 1948. On one hand there was the Arab Israeli war and on the other hand there was the ethnic cleansing. In a letter that David Ben-Gurion sent to the commanders of the Haganah brigades he stated, 'the cleansing of Palestine remained the prime objective of Plan Dalet.' Pappé states that the Arab war efforts were 'ineffective', and 'pathetic'. The most intensive Arab efforts occurred in the first three weeks of the war. Ethnic cleansing was conducted in at least 64 villages by the Israeli Alexandria brigade according to Pappé They were also part of the massacre at Tantura, per Ilan Pappé, on May 2, 1948. He quotes from various witnesses that as many as 230 were massacred there. Various other brigades such as the Golani Brigade, Carmeli Brigade, Kiryati Brigade, Harel Brigade, Bulgarian Brigade, Yiftach Brigade, and Givati Brigade also conducted cleansing operations. Pappé, in this chapter, discusses June through September 1948. The ethnic cleansing continued despite the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 217A(III) David Ben-Gurion's diary June 5, 1948 states, 'the cleansing operation continues.' Eliezer Kaplan, the minister of finance authorized the confiscation of all Palestinian properties already taken. Pappé states that numerous Palestinian villages had been peacefully occupied by Muslim, Druze, and Christians for centuries. On July 18, 1948 another truce was organized by the U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. Pappé states, 'In less than two weeks, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been expelled from their villages, towns, and cities.' Pappé begins this chapter with quotes from the Badil Resource Center. 'In 1948, 85% of the Palestinians living in the areas that became the state of Israel became refugees.' 'It is estimated that there were more than 7 million Palestinian displaced persons at the beginning of 2003.' He talks about Operation Hiram, War Crimes During the Operation, Mopping Up Operations, Israel's Anti-Reparation Policy, Final Cleansing of the South and the East, and The Massacre in Dawaymeh. Pappé states 'I have no illusion that it will take more than this book to reverse a reality that demonizes a people who have been colonized, expelled, and occupied, and glorifies the very people who colonized, expelled and occupied them.' Pappé starts this chapter with another set of quotes about ethnic cleansing, including, 'Since 1967, Israel has detained 670,000 Palestinians.' Sections of this chapter are entitled Inhuman Imprisonment, Abuses Under Occupation, Ghettoizing the Palestinians of Haifa, Rape, Dividing the Spoils, Desecration of Holy Sites, Entrenching the Occupation, and The Land Robbery: 1950–2000. This chapter, like others, starts with provocative quotes. 'Over 700,000 olive and orange trees have been destroyed by the Israelis. This is an act of sheer vandalism from a state that claims to practice conservation of the environment.' The sections of this chapter include; The Reinvention of Palestine, Virtual Colonialism and the J.N.F., The J.N.F. Parks In Israel, The Forest of Birya, The Ramat Menahse Park, and Greening of Jerusalem. Pappé states that 'the Israeli Land Authority, the army, the government and the Jewish National Fund' have all been 'involved in establishing new Jewish settlements on the lands of the destroyed Palestinian villages.' He goes on to state, 'The true mission of the J.N.F., in other words, has been to conceal these visible remnants of Palestine not only by the trees it has planted over them, but also by the narratives it has created to deny their existence.' As an example, Pappé refers to the Forest of Birya, which is the largest man made forest in Israel. It conceals the land of six Palestinian villages; Dishon, Alma,Israel, Qaddita, Amqa, Ayn al-Zaytun, and Biryya. Also the Ramat Menashe Park covers the ruins of Lajjun, Mansi, Kafrayan, Al-Butaymat, Hubeza, Daliyat al-Rawha, Sabbarin, Burayka, Al-Sindiyana, and Umm al-Zinat. The Jerusalem forest is another example. Here Pappé states that the creation of the United Nations Relief and Work Agency was not committed to the return of the refugees as resolution 194 was. There were one million Palestinian refugees and U.N.R.W.A. was created to meet their daily needs as refugees. He states that international peace brokers consistently sidelined the Palestinian cause and there 'was the categorical refusal of the Israelis to acknowledge the Nakba and their absolute unwillingness to be held accountable, legally, and morally, for the ethnic cleansing they committed in 1948.' For the following two decades there was a lull in international interest. Then, 'The June War (1967) ended with total Israeli control over all of ex-Mandatory Palestine.' As a response, for four decades, Yassar Arafat conducted a campaign to get the world to recognize that an ethnic cleansing had occurred in 1948. And according to Pappé, this task for the Palestinians continues to today. Pappé mentions that the Knesset had even gone to the extent of passing a law that prohibited Israeli negotiators from discussing the right of return. He also speculates that if Israelis were to acknowledge the Nakba that it would be akin to recognizing 'that they have become the mirror image of their own worst nightmare.' This chapter is about various measures Israel has taken to protect itself. As an example, Pappé starts this chapter by describing a law the Knesset passed on 31 July 2003. This law states that any Palestinian who marries an Israeli will not be granted Israeli citizenship, permanent residency, or temporary residency. He also discusses the advent of the Israeli West Bank barrier. He states, 'None of this is new.' because Theodore Herzl wrote in 1895, 'We shall endeavor to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed, procuring employment for it in the transit countries, but denying it any employment in our own country.' In 2003 Benyamin Netanyahu said, 'If the Arabs in Israel form 40% of the population, this is the end of the Jewish State. But 20% is also a problem. If the relationship with these 20% becomes problematic, the state is entitled to employ extreme measures.' Here, Pappé states that the Faculty Club of Tel Aviv University is called the Green House. It is built upon the remains of the Palestinian village, Shaykh Muwannis. It is the epitome of the denial of ethnic cleansing according to Pappé because there is no mention of its true history. Pappé goes on to say, furthermore, that the university does not have a record of looking into the Zionist history of ethnic cleansing whatsoever in any of its disciplines. He concludes by saying 'We end this book as we began: with the bewilderment that this crime was so utterly forgotten and erased from our minds and memories. But we now know the price: the ideology that enabled the depopulation of half of Palestine's native people in 1948 is still alive and continues to drive inexorable, sometimes indiscernible, cleansing of those Palestinians who live there today.'
20918853	/m/03hqjxr	The Confessor	Daniel Silva	2003	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gabriel Allon is tasked to investigate the murder of scholar Benjamin Stern in Munich. The lack of Stern's computer and other documents indicate that he was not killed for being a Jew — but rather for his current research. But Stern kept his research secret, so that Allon must solve a homicide with almost no clues. Meanwhile, the death of Pope John Paul II has led to a conclave at the Vatican. The new pope, Pietro Lucchesi, who calls himself Paul VII, immediately angers powerful members of the Vatican by announcing his desire to speak at the synagogue of Rome. Opponents, such as Cardinal Marco Brindisi suspect that Paul VII intends to unearth candid and potentially damaging information about the role of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust. Cardinal Brindisi is also the spiritual leader of a group called Crux Vera, a secret society established to defend the reputation and power of the Catholic Church at all costs. Roberto Pucci serves as the financial executive while Carlo Cassagrande, a former general within the Carabinieri, sees to security matters. The society enjoys considerable power within the Vatican. Because of their zealous commitment to the church, they vehemently oppose any policy that could darken the church’s reputation. Allon’s independent homicide investigation further complicates this dilemma, for the clues that he seeks will connect the Crux Vera to Stern's death. As a result, the brotherhood must eliminate everyone that might inform Allon of Stern's death and of the society’s existence. The search for a motive for Stern's death leads Allon to the village of Brenzone on Lake Garda in northern Italy. There he learns that Stern had visited the local Convent of the Sacred Heart and contacts its superior, Mother Vincenza. She affirms that Stern had met with her to research places where Jews sought refuge during the Holocaust and she shows Allon a basement where Jews purportedly stayed. However, an unidentified caller warns Allon that Mother Vincenza is lying and that the truth can only be found through Sister Regina and another person by the name of Martin Luther. Upon Allon’s departure, Mother Vincenza secretly informs Crux Vera of Allon’s visit. Stern’s murderer is a professional hitman from Switzerland named Eric ‘Leopard’ Lange, from whom Cassagrande commissions yet another murder. To Achille Bartoletti of the Italian police, Cassagrande paints Allon as a would-be papal assassin. Cassagrande thus gains control not only over the Vatican police but also over its Italian counterpart. Allon meets with Rabbi Zolli in Venice and encounters his daughter Chiara Zolli for the first time. Zolli explains that to his knowledge no Jews were harboured in the Brenzone abbey. In fact, evidence seems to suggest the opposite: that the church expedited the removal of Jews and later helped Nazi leaders escape judgement. Allon then travels to Vienna to inform his colleague Eli Lavon of his findings. Eli reveals that the Martin Luther in question was the Nazi director of the German Foreign Office, which collaborated with European governments to track down and remove Jews. According to Eli, the Nazis especially wished to maintain positive relations with the Vatican, for any denunciation of the Holocaust by a pope would have certainly made the Nazis’ work more difficult. Allon and Eli conclude that there must be some connection between Nazi leader Martin Luther and the Convent of the Sacred Heart. Upon discovering that Stern consulted with British journalist Peter Malone, Allon travels to London. Malone tells Allon that his recent book about Crux Vera had raised Stern's interest. Stern also hired Malone to track down two missing priests who were presumed dead and that the Roman police detective Alessio Rossi had been forced to close his files about their cases. Malone suggests that Crux Vera orchestrated Stern’s death to keep further details about the society’s identity and secrets from being published. Shortly after Allon leaves Malone, Eric Lange arrives and kills the journalist. As Lange leaves Malone’s flat, an Israeli surveillance technician gets a picture of the elusive Leopard, who soon consults with the professional terrorist Rashid Husseini, from whom he learns Allon’s true identity. Lange anticipates that Allon will seek out detective Alessio Rossi and hires Husseini to follow Rossi until Allon surfaces. Allon contacts Rossi in Rome, who surmises that the disappearance of the two missing priests points to a cover up within the Vatican. The arrival of a special police unit at Allon's hotel cuts short their discussion. Police shoot at the two fleeing men, killing Rossi and wounding Allon. Chiara Zolli rescues Allon and reveals that she also works for the Mossad and has been monitoring Allon throughout his investigation. The investigation of Stern’s death now comes to the attention of Shimon Pazner, the Mossad's katsa in Rome, who sees no other option but to deport him to Israel. However, Zolli feels that Allon must not abandon the investigation. They board Allon’s deportation boat, navigate to the Provence to meet with Antonia Huber, the daughter of Sister Regina Carcassi. The former delivers an account of a clandestine meeting between Nazi agents and members of the Vatican on the premises of the Brenzone abbey. In this meeting, members of the Curia assured the cooperation of the Vatican with Martin Luther’s removal of the Jews. Sister Regina, who witnessed the meeting, did not share her knowledge with anyone, but instead, wrote the account. Huber confides to Allon that she also gave a copy of the letter to Stern. The letter proves that the missing priests were present at the meeting, and Huber adds that her mother was later murdered. Allon feels certain that the series of disappearances and murders relates to the pact between Nazi and Curia elements. Back in Munich, Allon finds a Nazi document that links the Holy See to Martin Luther’s removal of the Jews. Both return to Vienna to meet with Eli and Shamron, Allon's superior at the Mossad. Shamron notifies Allon of the pope’s intention to speak at the synagogue of Rome and surmises that the pope’s mission and life is in danger from the same people that killed Stern. He urges Allon to personally share the documents with the pope and to safeguard the pope. Meanwhile Crux Vera has again hired hitman Eric Lange, this time with the purpose of killing the pope at the synagogue. Through his contacts in the art restoration community, Allon secures a private audience with Pope Paul VII. The pope attests to the verity of the documents and cites his own personal testimony, for he himself, like Sister Regina, had overheard the terrible meeting at the Convent of the Sacred Heart while living as an orphan in the abbey. The pope’s determination to speak at the synagogue stems from his conviction that the Catholic Church has many offenses to confess to the Jews. Paul VII ignores Allon’s admonition to cancel the appointment at the synagogue and instead suggests that Allon personally accompany him within the pope’s security team. Surprisingly, the pope’s speech at the synagogue proves uneventful. But at the very same time Cassagrande secretly renounces his role in the pope’s assassination and instead hires Lange to kill its instigator, Marco Brindisi. Cassagrande then commits suicide. Allon arrives a few seconds late at the crime scene but manages to pursue Lange on a motorbike. But in the narrow alleys of Trastevere Lange manages to escape, while Allon crashes on the street's pavement and tumbles hard. His wounds are critical and Paul VII himself provides him with the attention of the pope’s personal medical staff. When Allon recovers, it is clear that he and Chiara have developed romantic feelings for each other. Meanwhile, details of Brindisi and Cassagrande’s plot are leaked to the press. The story links Pucci to Crux Vera and eventually destroys his financial empire. Although the pope chooses to protect the church by denying the newspaper’s findings, he seizes the opportunity to rid the Curia of members of the Crux Vera. Shamron returns to Tel Aviv and creates Team Leopard, a task force devoted to identifying and killing Eric Lange. The story ends months later when Allon personally locates and kills Lange.
20930930	/m/05b39_r	Rumors: A Luxe Novel	Anna Godbersen	2008-08-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book begins with Elizabeth Holland in California with her runaway love, Will Keller. While Elizabeth is having a good time in California, her sister Diana is anything but happy. Diana is stuck in New York, being one of the only two people that knows that her sister's death is a hoax. The other person, Penelope Hayes, decides that she would like to marry the rich and famous Henry Schoonmaker, Elizabeth's ex-fiance. Throughout the book, Diana and Henry have a secret relationship and plan on somehow marrying. Meanwhile, Elizabeth hears of her family's worsening financial situation, and she decides that she has to help them somehow, seeing as the reason they remain having these troubles is that she did not marry rich Henry. Elizabeth and Will take a train to New York and reveal themselves to her mother and aunt. Henry's father, William Schoonmaker, decides that for reputation's sake it would be a good idea for Henry to marry Penelope, who has been proving herself to be a very worthy socialite. Meanwhile, Lina Broud, the Holland's ex-maid, running out of money that she got from dishing Holland family secrets to Penelope, decides to move up the social scale with the help of Tristan, a tailor from the Lord & Taylor clothing store. With Tristan's help, she not only learns to act and dress like an educated lady but also meets and becomes the protegee of incredibly rich Mr. Carey Lewis Longhorn. Mr. Longhorn changes her name to Carolina Broad and develops a story about being an orphaned western heiress, and takes her to various parties where she officially meets Penelope Hayes. As a bribe to Penelope, whom Carolina wants as a friend to gain social status, Carolina tells Penelope of how Henry and Diana had made love one night in Diana's own bedroom. Penelope uses this information to blackmail Henry into marrying her in order to protect Diana's reputation. The wedding happens so fast that Henry has no time to explain to Diana what happened so she is very depressed and angry. Also, a man named Snowden Cairns, a friend of the late Mr. Holland, comes and helps the Hollands out of some of their financial troubles. They all decide it is best if Elizabeth and Will are married and sent back to California to avoid scandal. Snowden marries Will and Elizabeth at the Holland Home. When they try to leave, at the train station, townspeople recognize the famous Elizabeth Holland and assume that Will has kidnapped her. They proceed to shoot Will, killing him, and returning Elizabeth to her home. The next day, it is all over society that Elizabeth Holland had been kidnapped by the old stable boy, and, conveniently, the Hollands decide to go with this story. The book ends with Henry and Penelope getting married, both Holland sisters heartbroken, and a promise to Diana from Elizabeth to get Henry back.
20936154	/m/05b66l6	Kinflicks	Lisa Alther	1976	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel starts with a first-person reflection on her life so far by the protagonist, Virginia "Ginny" Hull Babcock Bliss, as she catches a plane to look after her gravely ill mother. From then on, dated chapters in third person alternate with Ginny's non-linear first-person reminiscences of her childhood, her teenage years, her college years, her marriage, and beyond.
20937938	/m/059__cj	Death with Interruptions	José Saramago	2005		 The book, based in an unknown country and at a point in the unspecified past, opens with the end of death. Mysteriously, at the stroke of midnight of January 1st, no one in the country can die any more. Initially, the people of this country celebrate their apparent victory over mankind's longtime foe. Though the traditional sources for guidance on things like life and death endeavor to discover why people have stopped dying, religious authorities, philosophers and scholars alike can find no answers. The Catholic Church, in fact, feels quite threatened by this new turn of events, as the end of death would call into question one of the fundamental foundations of their dogma: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The common citizens, however, generally enjoy their newfound immortality. This joy is short-lived, though. It soon becomes apparent that the end of death presents unique demographic and financial challenges. The complete cessation of dying leads to a growing fear among healthcare workers that the system will collapse under its own weight: generations of incapacitated, but still living, people will populate care homes and hospitals for, presumably, all eternity. Funeral workers, on the other hand, fear the opposite problem: they will have no business, and will be forced to move to preparing animals for the afterlife. A means of finally killing people, and relieving families of the burden of their catatonic kin, is devised and implemented by an underground group known only as the Maphia (the 'ph' is chosen as to avoid any confusion with the more sinister Mafia) The incapacitated are brought over the borders of the country, where they instantly die, as death has not ceased working elsewhere. The industry develops so quickly that the government itself becomes beholden to the maphioso, even bringing it to the brink of war with its neighbors. Death reemerges not long thereafter, this time as a woman named death (the lowercase name is used to signify the difference between the one who ends the life of people, and the one will end all of the universe). She announces, through a missive sent to the media, that her experiment has ended, and people will begin dying again. However, in an effort to kill more kindly, death will now send a letter to those about to perish, giving them a week to prepare for their end. Naturally, the violet envelope encased letters create a frenzy in the country, as people are not just returned to dying, but also must face the spectre of receiving one of these letters, and having their fate sealed with it. From here, the story largely moves on to focus to death's relationship with an otherwise unextraordinary cellist who, amazingly, will not die. Every time death sends him his letter, it returns. Death discovers that, without reason, this man has mistakenly not been killed. Although originally intending merely to analyze this man, and discover why he is so unique, death eventually becomes infatuated with him , enough so that she takes human form to meet him. Upon visiting him, she plans to personally give him the letter; instead, she falls in love with him, and by doing so she takes on a human form, and, as the book originally started, there is no dying the next day.
20938141	/m/05b63kx	The Cartier Project				 An immigrant worker from Bosnia falls in love with the actress Nastassja Kinski. To be able to approach her, he has to become famous himself. That's why he sets off on a journey to fame in a black comedy with a twist in its tale.
20939453	/m/05b234g	Guarding Hanna				 He was born a freak. With above-average intelligence, which soon realises that a body bent on destruction cannot live among others. The only person who can help him is a Mafia don, who has enough money to isolate the monster. But nothing comes free. And now, the moment when the freak has to repay the favour has arrived. He has to come out of isolation and become a bodyguard of a woman named Hanna for a week.
20939542	/m/05b0142	The Crossroads	Chris Grabenstein	2008	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Zack Jennings, his dad, and his new stepmother have just moved back to his father’s hometown, at Connecticut, not knowing that their new house has a dark history. Fifty years ago, a crazed killer caused an accident at the nearby crossroads that took 40 innocent lives. He died when his car hit a tree, which is in Zack's backyard. Since then, his malevolent spirit has inhabited the tree. During a huge storm, a lightning hits the tree, releasing the spirit, and the spirit began looking for the descendants of those who cost him his life, starting with Zack, whose grandfather started it all.
20939604	/m/059_pnm	King of the Rattling Spirits	Miha Mazzini		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is first person narrative of twelve years old Egon who tries to become a normal teenager with normal teenage problems of growing up in a milieu of little industrial town in then Tito's Yugoslavia with open borders to the West that allowed free visits to the other side of iron curtain that was not so iron at the borders between now Slovenia and Italy, in times of record players and popular and less popular alternative music records. However this is not an easy task to have only normal problems since Egon has to deal with abuse at home and in school. At home he is exposed to nona's posttraumatic consequences of World War One because of which she keeps having halucinations of dead souls and she makes sure that Egon, too, keeps watching dreadful illustrations of martyrs from her little book of Catholic saints and apologize to dead souls for stepping on them accidentally, which only she can see. As well at home he is exposed to neglect and scapegoating by single mother, his mother who is in conflict with nona. As if that would not be enough (and too much) for a child, he gets sexually abused by teacher at school who keeps molesting also a beautiful girl who is also sexually abused by her own father at home and who because of that - as narrator tells at the and of novel - finds escape from nightmarish life in her death (suicide) at the end. Egon can only dream of having the kind of problems his teenage peers have, this would be sweet dreams for him. Egon survives in the novel, but has to pay a high price for the survival, a price paid by many survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Because the double life they are forced to live daily, they would need help from an adult who they could trust and who would understand them in order to integrate it, they have no other choice but to escape into new identity, which in contrast to their real child's self, who is helpless, becomes a king over the dark kingdom of nona, mother and school, as the king of (their) rattling ghosts.
20945705	/m/05b08fj	City of the Spider Queen			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 This 160-page book begins with an introduction on pages 3–9. According to the adventure background provided, drow priestesses are no longer receiving spells or guidance from their goddess, Lolth. While in most places, the drow have remained steadfast, the Underdark city of Maerimydra is in a state of unrest and has been invaded by a host of enemy creatures. Some of the desperate survivors have begun making raids on the surface world. The adventure outline provided states that the player characters will be investigating these raids, travelling through the Underdark and exploring the ruined city, fighting the creatures that have taken it over, ultimately fighting a priestess of the rival drow goddess Kiaransalee. Following the introduction is the four-chapter adventure scenario: Part 1: Spinning the Web, is on pages 10–44, Part 2: The Deep Wastes, is on pages 45–63, Part 3: Maerimydra", is on pages 64–101, and Part 4: The Undying Temple", is on pages 102-114. The book also features two appendices. Appendix 1: Monsters and Magic, on pages 115-130, features the statistics for several monsters used in the adventure, and also presents a number of spells and magic items. Appendix 2: Creature Statistics, on pages 131-160, contains a summary of the statistics for all the NPCs and monsters that appear throughout the adventure. Included in the back of the book are 16 one-page maps of various locations that the characters may explore as part of the adventure.
20947822	/m/05b1p87	Les Animaux dénaturés				 Anthropologists travel to Africa to search for the so-called missing link of human evolution. What they find is not a fossil, but an actual population of ape-like creatures, called Paranthropus greamiensis after the discoverer, and dubbed Tropis. A businessman named Vancruysen has the idea to use them as a cheap workforce without rights or pay. The scientists then realize they must come up with a definitive answer to the problem of whether or not the Tropis are human, something they have avoided doing on the grounds that fixing an arbitrary limit between human and non-human is akin to the sorites paradox. They try to use the criterion of interfertility, but it appears that Tropi females can be impregnated by sperm from both man and ape, making it impossible to decide before the offspring reach reproductive age. To force the authorities to reach a decision, thus giving legal protection of the Tropis whether as animals or citizens, one of the scientists deliberately kills the baby born from one Tropi female impregnated by his own sperm. The trial will then determine whether he committed murder, (making the Tropis human) or simply killed an animal.
20952962	/m/05b6179	Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John picks up the continuing story of the three cousins Patsy Doyle, Beth De Graf, and Louise Merrick, and their family; the plot of the book begins three days after the wedding of Louise and her fiancé Arthur Weldon, the event that concluded the fifth book in the series, Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society. The sixth novel begins, as per pattern, with the cousins' Uncle John getting an inspiration for a new adventure: in this case, the family will escape a cold New York City winter by taking a trip to southern California, the land of "sunshine and roses." Since Louise is away on her honeymoon, she is effectively left out of the story; her place is taken by Major Doyle, Patsy's father &mdash; the first time that the Major accompanies the young people on their escapades. (The Major is relieved that Uncle John has set his fancy merely on California, and not "Timbuktu or Yucatan...Ethiopia or Hindustan....") The four travelers (accompanied by Mumbles, Patsy's new puppy) reach Denver by train; along the way, they meet an appealing teenage girl (14 or 15 years old) named Myrtle Dean. Myrtle is a poor orphan; she was injured in an automobile accident, which inhibited her ability to walk. She had been living in Chicago with an aunt, and earned her living by sewing. But now, Myrtle has been sent West by her unsympathetic aunt to find a missing uncle named Anson Jones &mdash; though neither woman knows if the uncle is still in Leadville, Colorado, his last known address, or if he will be able to care for the girl if she finds him. Patsy and Beth are shocked at her situation; it is clear to them that the aunt has abandoned Myrtle to her own inadequate resources. Uncle John telegraphs ahead, and discovers that the mysterious uncle has left Leadville for parts unknown. Patsy and Beth then adopt Myrtle as their "protégé," and take her with them on their trip. They buy her new clothes, and she shares their hotels, meals, and adventures. (Baum cannot resist the fairy-tale viewpoint, and "Edith Van Dyne" gives a plug for the Oz books: Myrtle is "amazed and awed by the splendor of her new apparel, and could scarcely believe her good fortune. It seemed like a fairy tale to her, and she imagined herself a Cinderella with two fairy godmothers who were young and pretty girls possessing the purse of Fortunatus and the generosity of Glinda the Good.") Uncle John buys a large, seven-passenger touring car and outfits it for camping and cross-country travel. He also hires a chauffeur, a half-Indian Québécois named Wampus. The chauffeur provides some of the comic relief in the story, though he is also presented as highly competent, courageous, and principled, a "brave and true man." (Baum employs another comic chauffeur in the final book in the series, Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross.) The party sets off by car from Albuquerque; they visit the Grand Canyon and the Navaho and Hopi reservations. They witness a performance of the Hopi snake dance. In western Arizona they are waylaid by a riotous group of cowboys, who refuse to let them pass until the girls join them in a dance. In what grows into an ugly incident, the travelers are forced to acquiesce &mdash; at first; but Patsy and Beth, typically clever and resourceful, develop a plan to defeat their opponents and escape. The group reaches California, none the worse for wear; they are delighted with the change of scene. They make the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego their headquarters. (This is another bit of autobiographical writing for Baum; he stayed regularly at the Coronado during trips to California.) Myrtle Dean has proved a delightful and rewarding companion; her health has already shown signs of improvement with better diet, less anxiety, and the warmth of new friendships. Myrtle, however, has been the center of a series of curious events. At the Grand Canyon, the travelers saw a morose-looking man standing at the very lip of the canyon; Myrtle, fearing that he intended to jump, cried out to him, and the man turned away from the edge. At San Diego, they once again see the strange man, standing on a cliff over the ocean; Myrtle once again fears his suicide, and cries out to him. The man turns out to be staying at the Coronado; his name in C. B. Jones. Myrtle happens upon him a third time, and takes away the revolver he has been brooding over in his room. After the three incidents, the man becomes emotionally attached to, if not fixated upon, Myrtle. Uncle John's inquiries reveal that the man, Collanson Jones, is the "Anson" Jones who is Myrtle's missing uncle. The two are happy at this re-unification of their sundered family, and Jones's deep melancholy is relieved (the evil aunt who sent Myrtle away had told him the girl was dead). And since Jones has made his fortune in mining, Myrtle's financial future is secured.
20953071	/m/05b220v	Judicially Murdered				 The book opens with Sam Devin, and spends the first chapter introducing the reader to Devin and then Leschi. The reader is also caught up on the politics and way of the time. For example we learn about Stevens and it is here we first learn that Devin is a trapper. Devin eats dinner with Leschi and the other Indians and the chapter ends with Leschi learning that he has been appointed chief by Stevens, which is particularly odd since no one other than Stevens thinks Stevens has the power to do this. Stevens wants the Indians to sign the treaty called Medicine Creek. In this treaty the Indians will move north so the whites have more land and natural resources, but once they have moved north they are promised this land for good. This will also allow the whites to build their railroad. Leschi declines to sign the paper and refuses to move. This, in turn, angers Leschi and he decides to go to war with the whites. Devin decided to be neutral in this war. The two next chapters show the author’s extensive research on Pacific Northwest Native American culture, as they spend the bulk of the time discussing and describing the Indian way of life. Matters like Chinook Jargon and the War Chief Ceremony are described. Devin even witnesses the latter as Leschi officially becomes war chief. The second day of treaty-signing among Stevens and the Indian Chiefs commences. The day progresses with the American side urging for the immediate signing of the treaty that would settle everything, peacefully. Deceit emerges once again through the Americans as negotiator, Simmons, who continues to pursue unethical means of persuasion with the Indians with his constant badgering, sly promises, alcohol, and prominent threats. Meanwhile, Devin and Stevens sit down, and Stevens foreshadows just how much power he actually holds by confronting Devin about Devin’s secret meetings with the Indian Counsels for the past few nights. Stevens continues to shock readers with his racist comments on how the killing of Indians is no more than hunting animals; mocking them by calling them savages. Adding to the unfairness of the treaty Stevens has Simmons translate what the treaty says in the Chinook Jargon instead of the Salish Dialect on purpose in order to make the chiefs not see the dangers in which the treaty actually holds. To Stevens’ surprise, Leschi demands that the treaty be transcribed into their dialect and refuses to sign anything that he or his people put forward. While leaving the company Sam thinks of the horrors of which Stevens wants to unfold on the Indians. Stevens returns from a trip he has taken and orders his men to capture Devin to attain information about Leschi's war strategy and how many members are in his tribe. Meanwhile, Leschi disagrees with the reservation land so he request Steven to give Leschi people new land. Leschi is angry that Stevens ignored his request three times. He is also upset the white people are taking over the land and wasting up all of the resources, so he decides to attack Seattle. However, Stevens is warned ahead of time about the attack by Chief Patkanim of the Snoqualmie tribe, who are fighting with the whites, so the attack fails miserably. The chapter ends with Leschi writing a letter to President Franklin Pierce about the war and the treaty. The settlers also decide to write a letter to the President as well about their problems with the volunteer fighters and Stevens. Leschi brings together all the leaders to plan for the spring campaign. He also asks Devin to pick up James G. Swan—another real life character, one of the Northwest’s first authors—on Fox Island at night. Devin goes across the sound in pitch black freezing weather to pick up Swan. Meanwhile, Stevens and the Patkanim are looking for the Lake Washington Indian camp and instead find a boy fishing on the Green River. Patkanim scares the boy into telling him where the camp is then kills him anyways after. Stevens and Patkanim are ready to utilize their combined forces to successfully oppose Leschi. Patkanim, who has great geographical understanding of their surrounding area proposes that they attack Lake Washington. Stevens’ group, including Major Maxon and their interpreter Simmons generally agree to the proposal. After some argument, they decide that Leschi would foresee this attack, so they tell their troops that they’re going to attack the Duwamish in order to confuse the group of Leschi’s spies that may be among their numbers. Unfortunately, their diversion tactic is futile, because Leschi assumes that they’re trying to deceive him once he receives word of their attempts on the Duwamish, and moves his men away from Lake Washington in advance. Maxon gets himself nearly murdered by Patkanim in a frustrated dispute. Devin struggles with his life after getting hurt. Sam ends up getting shot by his chasers and lays hidden in the bushes. Mary (Leschi’s wife) finds him and they stay hidden in the bushes while they overhear Maxon and one of this men talking about their goals of finding Leschi and his brother. As soon as the coast is clear they leave the scene and travel back to the tribe. On the way there Mary tells Sam about an affair she had with his nephew Sluggia. In the second have part of the chapter, Green River is attacked, Leschi, Quiemuth, his brother and their tribes flee east to Yakima for there safety. Because of bad timing and weather, many of the unlucky travelers died from injuries or attacks by wild predators before they reached the settlements. The Yakima people greeted them warmly and offered them food and shelter. Ezra Meeker’s is on trial charged with helping the enemy during the previous war. The trial is eventually thrown out when it was found that Meeker and the rest of the Muck Creek Farmers were innocent for lack of conclusive evidence against them. After the trial, Meeker becomes enraged Governor Stevens, and rallies his friends and farmers who also were angered. Meeker had the intention to forcefully overthrow the governor and replace him. This is the first time in the book that Stevens’ quest for power takes a hit. Chief Leschi fishes on the Nisqually River, when he is approached by a couple of men. He soon realizes that they are Sluggia, and his friend Elikuka, and they have come to arrest him and take him into town. After he is taken to town, Chief Leschi is tried. The prosecution’s case is terrible, but during the deliberation, it seems as though most of the jurors had their minds made up before the case began. Everyone on the jury except for Meeker and William Kincaid, vote guilty, but since it is not a unanimous decision, the jury is hung, and a new trial is set for a later date in Olympia. Leschi is sent back to the jail house, where he stays until his next trial. During this time, Devin visits frequently to keep Leschi company. Leschi then learns that Quiemuth had been murdered. After a few months, the second trial convenes, and after a short deliberation by the jury, Leschi is found guilty of killing Moses Abraham, and sentenced to death by hanging. Leschi is still held in jail, awaiting his hanging. While the hanging sentence has been passed, the actual date of the hanging is constantly being pushed back, much to the joy of Leschi’s supporters. Devin, after much deliberation, rounds up the Leschi supporters to suggest an idea which would push the date of the hanging even further. They agree to go out with a the plan of setting up a fake trial accusing Sheriff Williams, who just happens to carry the papers required for the hanging, of selling alcohol to the Native American tribes around the area. Williams happily goes along with this plan, much to the resent of Stevens. The plan eventually fails as the final date of the hanging is changed to the exact date in which Stevens’ replacement should arrive, allowing Stevens to resume with the hanging. Leschi, in his last final moments, tells his people not to hinder and to be prosperous without his guidance. Stevens believes he is now in the clear for his railroad to be built, but the Congress has voted against it, frustrating him to spit on the corpse of Leschi and blame him for all of his efforts being wasted. Leschi is buried and grieved among his supporters.
20954524	/m/05b35r_	In Arabia We'd All Be Kings	Stephen Adly Guirgis			 Lenny is a recently released ex-convict. Despite his imposing size, he was gang raped repeatedly while incarcerated and struggles to find his manhood on the outside. Daisy, his alcoholic girlfriend, craves a “real” life with a “real” man and abandons him at a seedy pre-Giuliani Times Square bar in pursuit of some cheap Chinese takeout. At the bar is Skank, a former failed actor turned junkie, who is trying to outlast the rain storm and get a buyback from the long-missing Irish bartender as he begins to go through withdrawals. Also at the bar is Sammy, an old, dying guilt-ridden drunk who exists somewhere between reality and the afterlife. DeMaris, a seventeen-year-old gun-brandishing single mother, wants to learn to turn tricks. She enlists the aid of Chickie, Skank’s girlfriend, a young crackhead hooker who plays Go Fish with the simple-minded day bartender Charlie, who thinks he’s a Jedi warrior and who buys meals for Chickie because he loves her and because he lives for the day they can go out someday, “just as friends.” The owner of the bar is Jake. The place was his father’s before him, and after thirty years, he longs for the chance to leave “this sewer” for a re-invented life in Florida. The real-estate boom, “gentrification” and the emergence of Disney in Times Square affords him that opportunity. Unaware that their last piece of home is about to be pulled out from under them, the bar patrons struggle on. Their sense of humor, their misguided hopes and dreams, and their lack of self-pity are badges that are tattooed to their souls. They will all, before the end, demand and take the chance to face head on their complicated and sad truths.
20957046	/m/05b076m	The Deruga Case	Ricarda Huch			 The novel opens with the beginning of the trial, which takes place in pre-1914 Munich. Right from the start Deruga, who has not been taken into custody so far, attracts the attention of everyone present through his conspicuous behaviour, which ranges from seemingly unmotivated emotional outbursts to complete indifference as to what is going on in the courtroom&mdash;at one point he even seems to have fallen asleep. Part of his idiosyncratic demeanour is attributed to his Italian ancestry&mdash;Deruga was born and raised in poor circumstances in an Italian mountain village and only came to Germany and Austria to read medicine&mdash; but the rest is ascribed to his choleric temperament. As the trial proceeds, Deruga turns out to have been living a life somewhat outside the bourgeois society which would normally harbour people of his professional standing: he neglects his run-down practice, has debts not only with one of his colleagues but also with his restaurateur, tailor, and hairdresser, shuns the local medical society, and has frequent and irregular love affairs. While Deruga himself does not seem to care one way or another, there are clearly two opposing parties: one group, headed by the Baronin Truschkowitz, who feel strongly that a murderer must be brought to justice; and another, motley group of people who have crossed the defendant's path at some point in their lives and who, summoned to testify as character witnesses, insist that, despite his occasional rudeness, he has always been a witty, kind, sympathetic, helpful, even philanthropic, man whose lack of interest to accumulate money would never have induced him to kill his ex-wife on the sheer hope that he might be included in her will. They also point out his unblemished professional record, and therefore say that he must be acquitted. The discovery of a handwritten letter from Mingo Swieter to Deruga finally triggers a turn of events in Deruga's favour. It is found in the inside pocket of a man's suit which was carelessly thrown into a canal in Munich and retrieved by a poor woman who was going to sell it to a clothes peddler. In the letter, which is the first communication between the ex-spouses since their divorce, the dying woman appeals to Deruga to shorten her suffering by performing euthanasia on her. On the last day of the trial, Deruga at last explains how he received the letter, immediately took the train to Munich, disguised himself as a peddler, stole into Mingo Swieter's flat while her daily help was away on errands, talked to the dying woman, administered the poison, waited until she was dead, and travelled back to Prague, happy to have been able to assist his ex-wife in her hour of need. In the end Deruga is acquitted. The final chapters of the novel also throw some light on the individual characters' motives to act the way they do. Deruga's arch enemy, the Baronin Truschkowitz, who appears throughout the trial as an embittered and vengeful woman only out to get her cousin's inheritance, turns out to be a highly moral person trapped in a boring marriage who intended to use the money to buy her freedom from her dull husband now that their daughter Mingo has come of age. Neither her unfading beauty, which has not gone unnoticed by Deruga, nor her joie de vivre have ever tempted her to be unfaithful to her husband, but after her cousin's death she thought the time had come to divorce him. When she meets Deruga after the end of the trial, they are surprised to see that their attraction is mutual, and Deruga admits that she is the reason why he has decided to close down his practice and go abroad for good&mdash;as far away as humanly possible. Further complications arise when Mingo von Truschkowitz declares her love for Deruga, although he is 25 years her senior. The Baroness actually offers him her daughter's hand, but Deruga is too sensible to accept and sticks with his decision to move on.
20960717	/m/05b2fdp	The Sugar Syndrome	Lucy Prebble			 The play has four main characters: Dani, Tim, Lewis and Jan. At the beginning, Dani (short for Danielle), a girl of seventeen, has just come home after spending some time in a clinic for eating disorders. Her mother, Jan, is trying to cope with the problems of looking after Dani after separating from her husband. Dani starts talking to people in an internet chat room and gets to know Tim, a man in his thirties. Dani pretends to be an eleven-year-old boy, which Tim believes. Tim is a man in his thirties who has a taste for young boys and has spent some time in prison. He and Dani agree to meet in a park and subsequently become friends. Dani also meets a lonely young man called Lewis in the chat room. Lewis eventually becomes jealous of the friendship between Dani and Tim and threatens to expose Tim as a pedophile. Tim, anticipating a visit from the police, lends his laptop to Dani for safekeeping. Dani then finds a video on the laptop which appears to depict the rape of a young boy. The play climactically ends with the harrowing sound of the boy being raped...
20963422	/m/05b5r98	Babylon Babies	Maurice Georges Dantec	1999-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set in 2013, the main character, Hugo Cornelius Toorop (hero of The Red Siren), is a mercenary whose mission is to escort a young woman with schizophrenia, Marie Zorn, from Siberia to Quebec on behalf of a sect. It appears that the young woman is the surrogate mother of twins, representing the next stage of human evolution.
20964104	/m/05b24h5	Six-legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War	Jeffrey A. Lockwood	2008-10-10		 Six-Legged Soldiers gives detailed examples of entomological warfare: using buckets of scorpions during a fortress siege, catapulting beehives ("bee bombs") across a castle wall, civilians as human guinea pigs in an effort to weaponize the plague, bombarding civilians from the air with infection-bearing insects, and assassin bugs placed on prisoners to eat away their flesh. Lockwood also describes a domestic ecoterrorism example with the 1989 threat to release the Medfly (Ceratitis capitata) within California's crop belt. The last chapter highlights western nations' vulnerability to terrorist attacks. Interviewed about the book by BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the author describes how a terrorist with a suitcase could bring diseases into a country. "I think a small terrorist cell could very easily develop an insect-based weapon."
20964670	/m/05b0nb9	The Defector				 Much of the story is set in Russia, where Gabriel Allon tries to rescue Russian defector Grigori Bulganov, who wsa introduced in an earlier book in the series. Bulganov had been kidnapped, and Gabriel Allon must save him from the clutches of Ivan Kharkov, also from the previous book.
20967530	/m/05b3hd9	Doom 3: Maelstrom	Matthew J. Costello		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the year 2145, a space marine assigned to the Union Aerospace Corporation research centre on Mars is one of the few survivors of a massive interdimensional invasion - an overwhelming demonic force from the mouth of Hell itself. As he struggles to survive the chaos and horror while dealing his own shock and fear, he discovers more than he could ever bargain for - the truth behind the shadowy research taking place within the very facility he is desperately trying to escape...
20970270	/m/05b5_zp	Anesthesia: A Brief Reflection on Contemporary Aesthetics				 Anesthesia examines recent accounts of love in an attempt to suggest that the kind of romanticized understanding we have of love necessitates its own death. It begins with the musing of a graduating college student who is reflecting on the question of whether a young death, if it is a happy one, is a good death. Trajan (no last name is given), who is named after a Roman Emperor based on this emperor's persecution policy toward Christians, finds himself contemplating the murder of best friend (Brett) at the hands of a woman (Anna) whom both young men were smitten with. Anna, who functions as the tangible argument York is discussing, convinces Trajan that Brett's death was a good death because Brett had reached the apex of human fulfillment. He had fallen in love yet due to love's inability to be sustained (because they understand love to be defined as yearning), his life must come to an end as the love itself, inasmuch as it has reached satisfaction, must end. Brett's eventual pursuit of other loves would only call into question the each love prior to the next. Likewise, Anna requests an end to her own life based on her love for Trajan. She recognizes both the temporal yet eternal nature of love defined as yearning and wishes to be freed from it in order to die within it. Many themes are explored throughout the book. Anna takes on a personality akin to Joan of Arc and it is through this lens that York weaves a strong though tragic female character. Issues of sex, race and patriarchy are spread throughout, as well as critiques of pop culture, though remaining heavily indebted to pop culture. Most of his characters and places in the book are references to someone or something else. He includes a number of references to comic book characters, including Frank Castle (The Punisher) and X-Men character, Kitty Pryde. The book has been likened, in terms of style, to that of both Chuck Palahniuk and J.D. Salinger. Anesthesia was inspired by the song of the same name written by punk rock band Bad Religion. It may be that the character of Brett was named after the guitarist of Bad Religion, Brett Gurewitz, who wrong the song. Mr. Brett, as he often goes by, suggests that the song was a metaphor about the numbing effects of love although there are speculations that the song is really about drug addiction. York's fictitious first-person memoir plays with this notion of love as numbing, though he reverses it by connecting it to the ancient god of love Eros who was born of, by some accounts, the god of war Ares.
20971600	/m/05b2zvx	Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel carries forward the continuing story of the three cousins Louise Merrick, Beth De Graf, and Patsy Doyle, and their circle. The title is somewhat misleading; it could more accurately have been called Aunt Jane's Nieces in Politics. (Uncle John Merrick tells his nieces that politics is "work," which yields the title.) The story begins three days after the end of the previous book, Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville; the freckled and red-haired Patsy still sports a sunburn from her summer in the Adirondacks. She and Louise have received letters from their "cousin" Kenneth Forbes, the young man who inherited Aunt Jane's estate in the first book of the series. Kenneth has become involved in politics: he is running as the Republican candidate for the local seat in the New York State legislature, but thinks he is going to lose to his opponent. The family decide to go all out to help Kenneth win the election. The cousins and Uncle John go to the rural district where Forbes's estate, Elmhurst, is located. The multi-millionaire Uncle John, the three attractive girls, and their two motorcars (rare in the district) create a sensation. Patsy campaigns among the local businessmen, Beth writes newspaper articles and press releases, and Louise concentrates on visiting the local farmers' wives. (The women cannot vote &mdash; but they will "tell their husbands how to vote.") Uncle John spreads his cash around, even buying positive coverage for Forbes in the local paper. (The fee is $250, with another $500 if and when Kenneth wins.) Kenneth's mercenary and cynical Democrat opponent, Erastus Hopkins, fights back vigorously &mdash; but, provoked by the three cousins, he intemperately takes an anti-female line that works against him. In the end, Kenneth wins easily in the normally Republican district. Unlike most of the books in the series, Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work also possesses a significant subplot. Beth and Kenneth learn of a local girl named Lucy Rogers; after being falsely accused of theft, she suffered a mental breakdown and disappeared. Beth and Kenneth help to find the girl and get her effective psychological help. The subplot gives the book the emotional warmth, sentimentality, and human interest that is typical of the series, but somewhat lacking in the politics of the main plot.
20975319	/m/05b5r7k	The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún	Christopher Tolkien	2009-05-05	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After the creation of the Nine Worlds by the Aesir, the walls of Asgard are besieged by an army of jötunns and trolls. Wielding the hammer Mjöllnir, Thor succeeds in driving these "foes immortal," back to Jotunheim. However, there are new perils to come. A female seer prophesies the apocalyptic battle of Ragnarök and speaks of how Odin shall be slain by the wolf Fenrir and Thor by the Midgard serpent. There is but one chance for the doom of the nine worlds to be averted. If on the day of battle a mortal warrior, a slayer of serpents and descendant of Odin, fights alongside the gods, the forces of evil shall be defeated and the world shall be reborn. In response, Odin scatters his seed among mortals in hopes of birthing, "the world's chosen." Although many great heroes soon join him in Valhalla, the serpent slayer's coming continues to be awaited. Ages later, Odin, Loki, and Hoenir arrive at the cave of the dwarf Andvari. There, they encountered the demon Hreidmar's son Ótr and, thinking him to be merely a fishing otter, Loki slays him with a stone, removes his pelt, and steals his catch of salmon. Enraged, Hreidmar and his sons, Fafnir and Regin, bind the three gods in unbreakable chains and demand that Otr's pelt be covered with gold as weregild for his death. Seeking to pay the ransom, Loki seeks out the dwarf Andvari and extorts the gold ransom. Although Andvari attempts to conceal a golden ring, Loki seizes it as well. Enraged, Andvari vows that both the ring and the gold will be the death of all who possess them. Pleased, Loki returns and delivers the gold to Hreidmar and his sons. Although Loki gloatingly informs them of the curse, Hreidmar is unimpressed and boasts of the fortune he now possesses. On the coasts of the North, Rerir the sea lord, grandson of Odin, conducts raids in Viking longships. He is succeeded as King by his son Völsung. The latter, whom Odin favors, has been given a valkyrie as his wife. She bears twins, Sigmund and Signý, during her husband's reign. Years later, Siggeir, King of the Gauts sends an emissary and demands Signý's hand in marriage as the price of peace. Sigmund counsels his father to arrange the marriage, suggesting that the Gauts will prove valuable allies. At the wedding feast, Odin enters the hall under the veil of a hoary bearded elder under the name Grímnir. He drives a sword into the oak at the center of the hall and dares the men present to pull it out. After all others try and fail, Sigmund at last succeeds in pulling it from the oak. King Siggeir, coveting the sword, offers Sigmund a fortune in gold in exchange for it. Unmoved, Sigmund boasts that the sword was made for his hands and vows never to sell it. Enraged, Siggeir declares war on King Völsung, who is slain on a beach after cutting down many Gautish warriors. Although Signý pleads for the lives of her brothers, Siggeir orders them to be bound to trees in the forest and left for the wolves to eat. Although his nine brothers perish, Sigmund slays the she-wolf and escapes into an enchanted cave. There he mates with his sister, who has entered the cave in the guise of an elvish maiden. Nine months later, she bears a son, Sinfjötli. When Sinfjötli comes of age, he visits his father in the cave and delivers the sword of Grímnir. As the years pass, father and son range through Gautland as outlaws, slaying and plundering many men. Eventually, they infiltrate the hall of Siggeir, slay the watchmen, and vow that no one inside shall be spared. Although they ask Signý to leave with them, she refuses and elects to die at her husband's side. Laden with the pillaged loot of Siggeir's hall, Sigmund and Sinfjötli return by ship to the land of the Völsungs. Together they rule for many years, slaying seven kings and sacking cities far and near. Although he will live to regret it, Sigmund takes a queen from among the war captives. Loathing the man who slew her father, the Queen brews a poisoned brew of wine for Sinfjötli. Sigmund, suspecting that the wine has been tampered with, drains the cup in stead of Sinfjötli and remains unharmed. Enraged, the Queen brews a beaker of poisoned beer, which again is offered to Sinfjötli but drunk by his father with no harm. Still determined to slay Sinfjötli, the Queen also delivers him a beaker of poisoned ale. This time the cup is drunk by Sinfjötli himself, who to the horror of Sigmund falls dead. Sinfjötli is then welcomed in Valhalla by grandfather King Völsung, who comments that the serpent slayer is still awaited. As the years pass, Sigmund grows old, having lost both his son and his treacherous Queen. Eventually, however, he learns of the beauteous Princess Sigrlinn. Although seven young sons of kings are also asking for her hand, Sigrlinn marries Sigmund, preferring to be the mother of a mighty hero. Enraged at this slight, the seven sons of kings invade the land of Völsung. Sigmund vows that they will be greeted by the sword of Grímnir and slays many on the field of battle. However, he is soon confronted by a one-eyed warrior. As the warrior's spear clashes with Sigmund's sword, the blade of Grímnir breaks asunder. Severely wounded, Sigmund sinks to the ground. Although Sigrlinn vows to heal his wounds, Sigmund refuses to permit this, insisting that Odin summons him to Valhalla. He prophesies that her unborn child will be the serpent slayer and orders her to carefully preserve the fragments of Grímnir's gift. He dies and Sigrlinn is carried into slavery. However, when the parentage of her son is revealed, Sigrlinn is wed to the King of that land. Sigurd is sent to be fostered by Regin, the son of Hreidmar. Years later, Otr's ransom remains in the keeping of Regin's brother Fafnir, who has been transformed into a dragon. Coveting the gold hoard, Regin goads Sigurd into fighting Fafnir by accusing him of cowardice. When an enraged Sigurd demands to know the reason, Regin relates the story of Otr's murder by Loki and the weregild paid by the Aesir in recompense. According to Regin, Hreidmar refused to share the gold with his sons and was subsequently slain by Fafnir. Unimpressed, Sigurd asks Regin whether he desires his brother's death for justice or the gold hoard. Regin claims that he desires only to avenge his father. The gold and the glory, he adds, are for Sigurd to keep. Twice Regin attempts to forge a sword for Sigurd, only to see the latter effortlessly break them. At last, Sigurd goes to his mother Sigrlinn and requests the broken pieces of Grímnir. Regin takes these and forges the sword Gram. Although Sigurd wishes to slay Fafnir then and there, Regin tell him he must have a horse. In response, Sigurd buys the horse Grani, who was sired by Odin's eight-legged steed Sleipnir, and goes forth to kill Fafnir. Later, as the dragon returns from taking a drink of water, Sigurd hides in a subterranean hollow and stabs the fell beast in the heart. As Fafnir's black blood drains over Sigurd and hardens his flesh, the young warrior withdraws his sword and leaps into the dragon's eyesight. Although Fafnir warns him of the curse, Sigurd is unmoved, believing that the dragon wishes only to preserve his gold hoard. As the dragon belches out his last breath, Regin arrives and attempts to claim a share of the gold, commenting that he also had a role in the slaying and forged the sword. As Sigurd mocks his foster father's logic, Regin draws a knife and slices Fafnir's heart from his chest. Ordering Sigurd to roast it for him, Regin departs. Meanwhile, Sigurd fashions a spit and kindles a fire. After burning his finger on the roasting heart, Sigurd puts the finger in his mouth and suddenly understands the language of birds. As he listens to the birds speaking, Sigurd decides to eat the heart whole. Upon seeing Regin sneaking towards him with a drawn blade, Sigurd draws Gram and slays his foster father. He then loads the gold hoard onto Grani and departs, listening all the while to the birds singing of the valkyrie Brynhild, her quarrel with Odin, and the circle of fire which surrounds her sleeping form. After much riding on the back of Grani, Sigurd arrives at heights of Hindarfell. As they climb the mountainside, Grani leaps the ring of lightning and fire which surrounds Brynhild. As he reaches her side, Sigurd slices her corslet with Gram and awakens the sleeping valkyrie. Addressing Sigurd, Brynhild explains how Odin doomed her to mate a mortal man. Impetuously, Brynhild had vowed to wed but one, the serpent slayer prophesied by the seeress of Asgard. When Sigurd relates his descent from Odin and the slaying of Fafnir, Brynhild is overjoyed and explains that the gods await his coming in Valhalla. Immediately after, Brynhild and Sigurd plight their troth. There is one complication, however. Brynhild vows that she will only wed Sigurd when he has won a kingdom for himself. After cautioning her betrothed to avoid the abode of a witch-hearted woman, she returns to the height of Hindarfell and their ways sunder. Meanwhile, Sigurd rides toward the court of the Niflungs' at Worms. One morning, Princess Gudrun of the Niflungs approaches her mother, the witch-hearted Queen Grimhild, with a disturbing dream. The Niflungs were hunting a stag with a golden coat and towering horns which evaded their grasp. It was Gudrun who caught him, only to see him stung with a shaft by a spiteful woman. Her mother then gave Gudrun a wolf to ease her grief and the former bathed her in the blood of her brothers. Her mother counsels her that evil dreams are often a good omen. As they converse, Gudrun catches sight of a warrior riding toward the court arrayed for war. A short time later, Sigurd enters the court of the Niflungs, riding upon Grani. When her father Gjuki asks his name and parentage, he is overjoyed to learn that a Völsung warrior has arrived and summons a seat for Sigurd. As the evening wears on, Gudrun's brother Gunnar seizes a harp and sings a lay of the Niflungs' longstanding war against King Atli of the Huns. As soon as he has finished, Sigurd takes the harp and sings of Brynhild and the gold hoard. Impressed, Gunnar and Högni invite Sigurd to dwell among them as long as he desires. As time passes and Sigurd accompanies the Niflungs in war, the glory of the Burgundian lords spreads far and wide. Sigurd, however, continues to think of his father's lost kingdom and returns there by ship. There, as he looks upon the roofless remains of his father's mead hall, Odin appears and informs him that Gram is not destined to shine in the land of the Völsungs. As a result, Sigurd returns to Worms. At a feast thrown to celebrate Sigurd's return, Grimhild advises her sons to regularise their alliance with Sigurd by marrying him to Gudrun. As Sigurd ponders how he soon will depart to claim Brynhild, Grimhild gives him a love potion to drink. Shortly after, Gudrun enters the hall. Colored by the potion, Sigurd's mind is glamored and his mood confounded. Brynhild continues to await the coming of Sigurd, slaying almost every suitor who dares to call. Eventually, Odin arrives on horseback and armored as an ancient king. He prophesies that she shall wed a mortal king before two winters pass. As he departs, a ring of fire surrounds her hall and Brynhild ponders that one man only can reach her now. Meanwhile, a radiantly happy Sigurd weds Gudrun in a feast which lasts many days and nights in the mead hall of Worms. In addition, Sigurd and his in-laws swear a blood oath of eternal brotherhood. Although he and Gudrun are deeply happy in their marriage, a shadow remains in Sigurd's heart. As time passes, the news of Brynhild and the gold hoard reaches Grimhild's ears. Certain that such a Queen will bring glory to her son's court, Grimhild counsels King Gunnar that it is time for him to wed. Riding together, Sigurd, Högni, and Gunnar depart for Brynhild's mead hall. When they reach their destination, King Gunnar's horse shies away at the sight of the fire. Although the King smites the sides of his steed, Honi still refuses to go forward. With Sigurd's permission, Gunnar borrows Grani who, unfortunately, refuses to go forward under another rider. As a result, Sigurd springs to the rescue of his blood brother. Through a spell cast by Grimhild, Sigurd rides through the fire in Gunnar's likeness. Stunned that a different warrior has ridden through the fire, Brynhild demands to know whether, "Gunnar," is the masterless warrior she has vowed to wed. "Gunnar" reminds her that, as her oath has been fulfilled, she is doomed to wed him. That night, Brynhild and Sigurd sleep in the same bed with a drawn sword lying between them. As dawn arrives, Brynhild at last agrees to marry, "Gunnar." During the nuptial feast after Brynhild's wedding to Gunnar, the bride catches sight of Sigurd seated next to Gudrun. As the blood drains from her horrified face, Grimhild's spell dissipates and Sigurd at last recalls the solemn oaths he swore to Brynhild. Realizing he can no longer honorably fulfill them, he stands as cold and unsmiling as a carven stone. During a subsequent stag hunt, Brynhild and Gudrun bathe together in the Rhine River. Hautily, Brynhild comments that the water washing Gudrun will soon wash one far lovelier. Bristling, Gudrun snaps that she is far more queenly and is married to a better man, citing Sigurd's slaying of Fafnir. Unimpressed, Brynhild boasts of Gunnar's ride through the fire and lightning to claim her. With an icy laugh, Gudrun reveals that Sigurd rode through the fire and shows the ring of Brynhild on her own hand. Shocked and horrified, Brynhild departs the river and return to her bower, where she curses the Norns for framing her fate. As days pass, Brynhild refuses to eat, drink, or depart her bed. When Gunnar approaches her, she call him a coward and curses him for causing her to break her oath to marry Sigurd. Reluctantly, Sigurd agrees to speak with her and, raising her coverlet, awakens her as he once did on the heights of Hindarfell. Seething with hatred, Brynhild addresses him as, "cruel forswearer," and curses both him and Gudrun to an early death. Stunned, Sigurd speaks lovingly to her of the spell that was cast upon him and admits that his only comfort has been to see her in Gunnar's hall. Although deeply touched, Brynhild states that it is too late to avert the evil of her curse. The one comfort which she can offer is that Sigurd shall die an honorable death at the point of a sword. Deeply grieved, Sigurd and Brynhild prepare for their respective fates. Upon returning to Gudrun, Sigurd sadly tells her of the curse, saying, "Woe worth the words by women spoken!" When Gunnar later seeks his advice, Sigurd informs him that Brynhild's only doctor should be her husband. In response, Gunnar approaches his wife, offering her a hoard of gold and silver. Unmoved, Brynhild taunts him as, "a Völsung's squire, a vassal's servant." She adds that she will depart his mead hall and leave Gunnar in disgrace unless he slays his brother in law. Stunned, Gunnar insists that he has sworn a blood oath of eternal brotherhood with Sigurd and will never break it. Brynhild, however, insists that Sigurd has already broken the oath by seducing her in Gunnar's shape after riding through the fire. Devastated, Gunnar departs Brynhild's room and spends many days pondering over what to do. At last, he summons his brother Högni. Gunnar declares to Högni that Sigurd has broken the oath and must be slain. Shocked, Högni suggests that Brynhild is lying out of jealousy. Gunnar insists, however, that he loves and trusts Brynhild more than anyone in the world and adds that, by slaying Sigurd, they will be masters again of their kingdom and able to seize the gold hoard of Fafnir. Saddened, Högni declares that, in the future, the Niflungs will miss both Sigurd's prowess in war and the mighty nephews he could have sired. Knowing that he swore no oath, Gunnar and Högni approach their half brother Gotthorm and promise him both gold and lordship if he will kill Sigurd. Later, as Sigurd hunts with his falcon, Gutthorm accuses him of being a, "wife marrer," who wishes to usurp the Niflung throne. Enraged, Sigurd grips his sword hilt and orders Gutthorm to say no more if he values his life. Waiting for a more opportune moment, Gutthorm obeys. At dawn the following morning, Gutthorm enters Sigurd's room with a drawn sword and stabs the serpent slayer, impaling him to the mattress. Awakening, Sigurd brandishes Gram and slays his attacker on the spot. In anguish, Gudrun awakens and, in horror, cradles her dying husband. Sigurd, however, orders her not to weep and not to blame her brothers for his death. As the light drains from his eyes, Sigurd declares, :"Brynhild wrought this: :best she loved me, :worst she dealt me, :worst belied me. :I Gunnar never :grieved nor injured; :oaths I swore him, :all fulfilled them!" As Gudrun screams in anguish over Sigurd's body, Brynhild cackles in laughter. When Gunnar criticises her as a cold and "fell-hearted" woman, Brynhild curses the Niflungs for murdering their blood brother. She further reveals that Sigurd's seduction of her was a lie and that the sword Gram lay unsheathed between them. To the further horror of Gunnar, Brynhild announces that she is leaving him forever. In vain do Gunnar and his courtiers attempt to sway her from her purpose. Högni alone insists that she was born for evil and that they are all better off without her. Attiring herself in a golden corslet, Brynhild falls upon her sword. As she lies dying she requests that her corpse be burned in Sigurd's funeral pyre. She requests that Sigurd's hawks be laid at each side and his dog at their feet. Their horses are to be slain and laid beside them. The sword Gram is to lie unsheathed between them as on their only night together. Her wishes are obeyed and both Sigurd and Brynhild are carried to Valhalla in the flames of a Viking funeral. Later, Odin and the other Völsungs welcome the serpent slayer whose coming they have awaited for so long. On the day of Ragnarök, Brynhild will attire Sigurd for war and he shall stand deathless against the wolf Fenrir and the Midgard serpent. Although most of the Aesir gods shall die, the forces of darkness shall be struck down at Sigurd's hands. Then, under the rule of Baldur, the nine worlds shall be created anew. As the flames of the funeral pyre sink down and the ashes turn cold, a devastated Gudrun wanders through the forest witless. Despite loathing every moment of her life, she cannot bring herself to commit suicide. Meanwhile, King Atli's Hunnic Empire grows ever stronger. Although Atli has overthrown the Goths and seized many treasures, the gold hoard of Fafnir and the beauty of Gudrun have caught his interest. Determined to claim both as his own, Atli's Huns hasten westward. As the news reaches the Niflung court at Worms, Gunnar asks Högni whether Atli should be met with violent resistance or appeased with tribute. Högni comments that now they have further reason to mourn the passing of Sigurd, as Atli would never have grown so bold if the serpent slayer still lived. Despite the dangers, he advises Gunnar to meet Atli on the field of battle. Grimhild, however, has another idea and counsels that Atli's friendship can be bought via Gudrun's hand in marriage. It is this advice which the Niflungs choose to take. Gudrun they find in a forest hut where she has been weaving a tapestry which depicts the story of the gold hoard, the Völsungs, and the arrival of Sigurd into the court at Worms. Although they offer her a large payment of gold as weregild for her husband's death, Gudrun refuses to forgive her brothers or even acknowledge their presence. Only Grimhild is able to gain a response from the widow. Grimhild advises her daughter to mourn no longer, commenting that Brynhild is dead and that Gudrun is still beautiful. She explains that King Atli wishes her hand in marriage and speaks of the great respect which the Queen of Hunland will command. Gudrun, however, is unmoved. The widow speaks longingly of the days before Sigurd came, saying that then only nightmares vexed her. She speaks again of the dream she had before Sigurd's arrival, commenting that one half of it has already been fulfilled in Sigurd's death. Gudrun further declares that, although she now has little love for her brothers, she has no desire to see them slaughtered. Believing also that she will never again know happiness, Gudrun sees no point in remarrying. Grimhild retorts that Gudrun should not blame her brothers. Brynhild was responsible for Sigurd's death and the Niflungs are, quite sensibly, in grief for it. Grimhild continues urging Gudrun to marry, saying that a Queen's bed is better than one cold and empty. When Gudrun angrily orders her mother to leave, Grimhild threatens to curse her daughter to unimaginable torment if she will not obey. Intimidated, Gudrun caves in to her mother's demands. At their wedding feast, Atli blissfully drinks to Gudrun, moved both by her beauty and by dreams of the dragon hoard. After swearing oaths of kinship to the Niflungs, Atli takes Gudrun back with him to Hunland. As the years pass, Gudrun remains unmoved, both by the glories of Hunland and by the love which Atli feels for her. Meanwhile, Atli's lust for the dragon hoard remains unquenched. At long last, he sends his herald, Vingi, to summon the Niflungs to a feast in Hunland. In response to the summons, Gunnar asks Högni whether they are vassals of Atli that they must come when he calls them. Högni is troubled, commenting that Gudrun has sent him a ring with wolf's hair woven around it. He is certain, therefore that there is a trap waiting for them in Hunland. Gunnar, however, comments that Gudrun sent him a wooden slab graven with, "runes of healing." In response, he summons for wine to be brought to the herald of Atli. As the feast continues in Gunnar's mead hall, Grimhild arrives and gives her opinion of the runic tablet. The original runes, she says, have been shaven off the tablet but may still be read. Therefore, it is clear that the original message from Gudrun was a warning of danger. In response to his mother's advice, Gunnar informs the herald Vingi that he will not be coming to the feast in Hunland. Laughing in amusement, Vingi responds that, as Grimhild clearly rules the Niflung kingdom, there is no need for Gunnar to come. Atli, however, had only wished for their assistance. The King of the Huns is growing old and wished for his sons by Gudrun, Erp and Eitill, to have a strong protector after his death. Therefore, he had hoped that Gunnar and Högni would one day rule the Hunnic Empire in their names. Although Gunnar still suspects a trap, he agrees to come to the feast. Although he states that he will be accompanying his brother, Högni is troubled that they aren't taking their mother's counsel. Vingi, despite knowing exactly what Atli has in mind for his in-laws, swears that the gallows shall take him and that ravens shall devour his flesh if the runes are lying. Later, as the Niflungs depart for Hunland with Vingi, Grimhild watches as they disappear. Although silent, she is certain that she will never again look upon her sons. After a long journey in longship and on horseback, the Niflungs arrive in Hunland and sound their horns to announce their coming. To their surprise, they find the gates barred. Vingi at last reveals the real reason for the invitation: Atli has prepared a gallows where ravens will rend the flesh of the Niflungs. Although the lives of heralds are considered sacrosanct, Högni vows that the treacherous Vingi has forfeited his life. Dragging him to a nearby oak, the Niflungs hang Vingi within sight of the Huns. Seething with hatred, the Huns pour forth from the mead hall's gates and hurl themselves upon the Niflungs. To Atli's surprise, Gunnar and Högni drive the Huns back inside the mead hall. With frigid loathing, Atli comes forth and refers to the Niflungs as his vassals. He further demands Fafnir's gold hoard as the price of their lives. Gunnar, however, is unimpressed. He vows that Atli will never receive any gold from him at all. If the King of the Huns desires the Niflungs' lives, he will pay dearly in many dead lords and warriors. Changing tactic, Atli demands the gold as weregild for Sigurd, saying that he is entitled to it as Gudrun's husband. Gunnar, however, insists that these words are not his sister's. The lust for the gold is Atli's alone. Högni adds that, as the fighting has already begun, the time for atonement is over. Doors spring open and dozens of Hun warriors charge the Niflungs, who defend themselves until the mead hall is filled with carnage. Meanwhile, Gudrun sits listening to the battle below and ponders that her dream has finally been fulfilled. Devastated, she curses the hour of her birth. She calls upon her husband's Gothic vassals to defend her brothers from the Hunnic "troll people." Recalling their past wars against Atli and his Huns, the Goths turn against their lord and make common cause with the Niflungs. Högni sings of the great warriors of the past until his son Snaevar is slain before him. Unweeping, Högni continues hewing a pathway through the mead hall. Coming at last upon Gudrun, Gunnar and Högni declare that the Norns have fated them to always give her in marriage and then slay her husband. However, Gudrun pleads with them not to tempt fate and to spare Atli's life. In response, they mock Atli as unfit for a warrior's death and grudgingly allow him to slink forth from the bloodied mead hall. As he departs in shame and anguish, the Goths and Niflungs hurl the Hunnish corpses from the roof. Meanwhile, night falls as Atli rallies warriors throughout the countryside. Later, as the Goths and Niflungs begin nodding off to sleep, Högni notices a large column of fire moving toward the mead hall. Commenting that there are no dragons in Hunland, Gunnar rallies his men for the final battle. Declaring that Valhalla lies open to receive them, the defenders of the mead hall succeed in holding the doorways until dawn arrives. Five days later, the mead hall is still held by the Niflungs and Goths. Bewailing his fate, Atli declares that his power, wealth, vassals, and wife have all deserted him in the evening of his life. His counselor Beiti, however, declares that there is still another way. Deciding to take Beiti's advice, Atli orders the mead hall built by his father to be set afire. Just before the blazing ceiling of the mead hall falls upon them, the Goths and Niflungs charge forth and are set upon by Atli's minions. Although for weapons the former have only their fists, many Hunnic necks and knees are broken before the Niflung lords are taken. Casting his captives before Gudrun, Atli vows that he will avenge Sigurd by hurling her brothers into a pit of adders. Disgusted, Gudrun calls her husband evil and expresses hope that his death will be shameful. However, she also reminds Atli that the Niflungs are the uncles of their son Erp and Eitil. For this reason, she pleads for their lives. Atli vows that the only way he will release the Niflungs is if he is given the gold hoard that haunts his dreams. At last relenting, Gunnar agrees to give Atli the gold, but only if his brother Högni is first slain and the heart is delivered to him. Now frantic, Gudrun pleads with Atli to spare her brother Högni. Atli, however, vows that he will have the gold despite the tears of his wife. Atli's wise men, however, plead for caution. Fearing the queen, they persuade Atli to instead slay the thrall Hjalli. When the heart of Hjalli is delivered to him, Gunnar is unimpressed, having heard the thrall's screams. He declares that his brother's heart would never quake in such a manner. In response, the Huns visit Högni's dungeon and cut out his heart and the Niflung laughs in their faces. Upon seeing his brother's heart, Gunnar also laughs in the faces of the Huns. The gold, he declares, is long gone, having been cast into the Rhine after Sigurd's death. Gunnar curses Atli, calling him a gold-haunted murderer. Enraged and devastated at the loss of the gold, Atli orders Gunnar to be stripped naked and cast into the pit of adders. As her heart hardens in hatred for her husband, Gudrun orders a harp to be sent to her brother in the pit. Smiting the strings, Gunnar chants of Odin and the Aesir, of ancient kings, and the coming doom of Hunland. The whole palace listens in wonder and the snakes are stilled to sleep. At long last, an ancient adder stings Gunnar in the chest. Crying out in a loud voice, Gunnar topples over dead and the harp is stilled. Gudrun hears the cry as she sits aghast in her bower. At last realizing how to avenge her brothers, Gudrun summons her sons Erp and Eitil. Viking funerals are prepared for the Niflung lords and the champions of Hunland and a funeral feast is held in the remnants of Atli's palace. At long last, Gudrun appears and, presenting two goblets to her husband, she toasts his health. As he drinks deep from the goblets, Atli feels regret over the loss of the gold. However, he also feels satisfaction that Gunnar is dead. Gudrun then announces that, in vengeance for her brothers, she has slain their sons Erp and Eitil. The goblets were made from their skulls and have been filled with a mixture of their blood and honey. The remnants of their bodies have been fed to Atli's hounds. As the mead hall explodes in horror and anguish, Atli turns pale and falls into a swoon. As the horned moon rises, Atli is carried to his bed, as sick as one poisoned. Intending to wreak her final vengeance, Gudrun enters his chambers, wakes her husband, and drives a knife into Atli's breast. As his life drains away, Atli snarls that Gudrun deserves to be torn apart by hounds, stoned, branded, and then burned at the stake. Laughing, Gudrun taunts him with the news that his funeral pyre has already been kindled. Within moments, a blazing inferno consumes Atli's palace and the surrounding town. The night that has proven so fatal to so many at last ends in dawn. In the aftermath, Gudrun again wanders witless through the forest. At last, detesting her life, Gudrun casts herself into the sea, which refuses to take her. Sitting on the edge of the sea, Gudrun ponders her woes. At long last, she calls upon Sigurd and, reminding him of their wedding vows, she implores him to return to her. Again she casts herself into the sea, wherein her grief is finally drowned. :"Thus glory endeth, :and gold fadeth, :on noise and clamours :the night falleth. :Lift up your hearts, :lords and maidens, :for the song of sorrow :that was sung of old."
20982797	/m/05b3y0q	The Price of Murder	Bruce Cook	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Sir John and Jeremy are drawn deep into the notorious Seven Dials area of London, where they must contend with the most sordid inclinations of both the working class and the aristocracy. When the body of a young girl is pulled from the Thames, the search for the girl's mother takes Jeremy to the races.
20982877	/m/05b14tr	Rules of Engagement: A Sir John Fielding Mystery	Bruce Cook	2005-03	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Sir John and Jeremy are confronted with a series of bizarre deaths (including an unmotivated suicide) on the streets of Georgian London in a mystery that tests even Sir John's legendary skills of deduction. This book ends the series.
20985742	/m/05b4p1c	Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross	L. Frank Baum		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel opens on 7 September 1914; the continuing characters Patsy Doyle, Beth De Graf, and their uncle John Merrick are reading a newspaper account of the end of the Siege of Maubeuge and the German victory. Both of the girls are intensely concerned with the war news; Beth in particular is a partisan of the French cause. The protagonists are soon re-united with "Ajo" Jones and the movie star Maud Stanton, two characters from the previous book in the series, Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West. (Baum arrived at Maud Stanton's name by combining his wife's first name, Maud, with his mother's maiden name, Stanton.) Maud Stanton takes the place of the third of the trio of cousins, Louise Merrick, who does not appear in the final book. Both Maud and Ajo have come to New York; Maud is one her way to Europe to serve as a nurse. (She trained in nursing before becoming a film actress.) Patsy and Beth are struck with admiration for her action, and are eager to follow her example. When Uncle John finds that he cannot dissuade them, he resolves to back their effort; he uses his wealth and influence to form a connection with the American Red Cross. Jones, also enthusiastic for the cause, volunteers his ocean-going yacht, the Arabella, for conversion to a hospital ship. Uncle John pays for its refitting and for two ambulances to carry the wounded. Merrrick's money and the girls' enthusiasm work wonders; by the end of September the Arabella, painted with large red crosses, is in Dunkirk. Among their staff is a talented surgeon, Doctor Gys. He is "an eccentric, a character...erratic and whimsical," an adventurer who has been from the Arctic to the Yucatán, and in the process has been badly disfigured by various hard-luck accidents (involving icebergs and poisoned cacti). Gys calls himself a coward, but also sees death as a release from his disfigured body; he wonders what kind of death would be preferable, and has a morbid interest in confronting the violence of the War. The Americans also acquire a Belgian chauffeur named Maurie as an ambulance driver; he provides comic relief for the book, in somewhat the same way as the chauffeur Wampus does in Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John. The protagonists cope with military bureaucracies and confront the horrors of the battlefield &mdash; though Baum, "in keeping with his Van Dyne persona...kept his descriptions mild." Beth has previously had a year of nursing training; but Patsy is a neophyte who is shocked at the conditions she encounters. Doctor Gys reacts with paralyzing fear on his first exposure to combat, but his medical discipline soon takes over and he functions effectively. In the climax of the story, Patsy is injured but recovers, but Dr. Gys is killed on the battlefield. Though Gys had repeatedly proclaimed his cowardice, his death is heroic. The Americans lose the confidence of the French authorities at Dunkirk when a German prisoner they are treating escapes their custody; fewer wounded come to their ship as a result, and it appears that their usefulness is limited. After three months of service, the girls return to the United States. Uncle John tells them that "You have unselfishly devoted your lives for three strenuous months to the injured soldiers of a foreign war, and I hope you're satisfied that you've done your full duty."
20990348	/m/05b4h22	A Person of Interest	Susan Choi	2008	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel begins with a deadly explosion in the office of a successful mathematics professor at a midwestern university. The neighbouring office houses Lee, a tenured but near-retirement professor who, until the bomb, is slowly drifting into career obscurity. Tired and solitary after two divorces, Lee suddenly finds himself in the public eye. This draws Lee to the attention of the bomber who reveals in a letter to Lee that he was once a colleague. Although not supplying his identity, events in Lee's early career at graduate school furnish an obvious candidate, and one that reopens unhealed wounds in Lee's life. His first marriage, to the now long-dead Aileen, was actually her second. An affair with Lee broke up Aileen's first marriage to the evangelical Christian Gaither, with the repercussion that Aileen never saw her son again. Lee's indifference to this lost son ultimately cost him his marriage to Aileen, the realisation of which gradually dawns on Lee as his thoughts return to Gaither after the bombing. However, embarrassed by these events in his life, Lee withholds the letter from the police and, now lost in reflections on his early life with Aileen, Lee becomes an increasingly isolated figure, suspiciously so to the authorities. Consequently, when Lee's failure to disclose the letter comes to light, they identify him as a "person of interest", a label that attracts the unwelcome attention of both the press and his suspicious neighbours. Forced by twitchy administrators into a leave of absence from his university, Lee is increasingly viewed, de facto, as the bomber, just waiting for his status to switch to "suspect". Backed into a corner in large part by his own actions, Lee decides to track down Gaither by himself, determined to unmask him as the bomber and to lay to rest his ghosts from the past. Secretly journeying to a remote countryside cabin, Lee discovers that his hatred of Gaither has blinded him, and that a different colleague from the same period as Gaither is actually the bomber. Fortunately for Lee, his efforts to evade the authorities have been amateurish, and they too close in on the cabin and apprehend the bomber. The novel closes with Lee now more clearly aware and understanding of the mistakes he has made in his life.
20990370	/m/05b0vy0	The Jukebox Queen of Malta	Nicholas Rinaldi	1999-02		 It concerns Rocco Raven, an American radio operator posted to Malta to join a small intelligence unit during the Siege of Malta working closely with the British RAF who are defending the Island. Central to the novel is Rocco's affair with Melita, a Maltese woman who travels the island repairing jukeboxes. The story tells how the Maltese people and the military defence of the island react to the increasing privations caused by the siege, and the destruction caused by the German bombing raids...
20992955	/m/05b46rz	A Woman With No Clothes On				 The aristocratic Manet and the working-class Victorine Meurent narrate A Woman With No Clothes On. A chance meeting between the two leads to an intense relationship of painting and sexual tension. Manet creates a scandal when he exhibits Le déjeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia in which the naked model is a young Victorine. While critics and the general public dismiss the works, and label Victorine a common prostitute, she is determined to make her mark in the art world as a painter in her own right. Her bitter struggle to succeed is punctuated by the exchanges between Manet and his friend Baudelaire on the matter of modernism.
20995280	/m/05b0ssz	Le Système Ribadier	Georges Feydeau			 Eugène Ribadier is the second husband of Angèle, the widow of M. Robineau. In the wake of her first husband's deceits (he deceived her 365 times in 8 years!) Angele has developed a jealousy that borders on paranoia and she narrowly watches the activities of her second husband. Ribadier however possesses the gift of hypnotism — the eponymous system — and he profits from it by putting his wife to sleep at the time of his escapades. He wakes her on his return thanks to a trick he alone knows. Until the day that is, that he tactlessly reveals the trick to Aristide Thommereux, a friend of Robineau, who has returned from several years away in the East, hoping to renew his secret love for Angèle. While Ribadier is off on one of his escapades Thommereux uses the trick to wake Angèle to tell her again of his passion. She rejects him, but as he gets more insistent they hear a loud noise from below. It is Ribadier returning early, hotly pursued by Savinet, a wine merchant and husband of Ribadier's mistress. Thommereux escapes by the window and Angèle feigns a deep hypnotic sleep. She therefore overhears Ribadier admit his guilt to Savinet and bounds up furious as soon as the wine merchant departs. Ribadier tries various stratagems to recover his position including hypnotizing her again and trying to convince her she has dreamt what she heard. She however discovers the secret of the system and turns the tables by pretending that a lover has visited her every time she has been hypnotized. Thommereux thinks she means him, and abets Ribadier's outraged search for the unknown intruder. On the balcony they discover a button torn from a man's trousers. It turns out to belong to the amorous coachman Gusman who has been climbing up past the window to visit the maid Sophie. For a fee, Gusman readily admits that he has been climbing in to see a woman who received him eagerly; Ribadier and Thommereux are aghast and confront Angèle. Her denial convinces them, and Gusman relieves them all by telling them he was seeing Sophie and is dismissed with less than half his fee. Ribadier and Angèle are reconciled — Thommereux returns to the East disappointed.
21000003	/m/05b3n8_	Day of Reckoning	Jack Higgins			 Katherine Johnson, a New York journalist, befriends businessman Jack Fox in order to write an article on his business success. Fox learns that she plans to expose him as a Mafia member and nephew of a Mafia family, and he has her killed. Her ex-husband, Blake Johnson, an ex-FBI agent now heading a special unit in the White House learns of the death, and he vows to destroy Fox and all he represents. Armed with a Presidential mandate, he flies to London and contacts Brigadier Ferguson of the Ministry of Defence. Together with Hannah Bernstein, a Detective Superintendent with Special Branch and Sean Dillon, an ex-IRA gunman and mercenary now working for the British government on 'black' operations, he launches a series of operations to bring Fox down. Their first foray involves causing Fox's London casino to be caught using loaded dice; this has the effect of closing down the casino and Fox's other gambling interests. The next operation sees Johnson and Dillon join with a Mossad commando force to destroy a ship in Beirut harbour which is loaded with missiles destined to be used against Israel. Johnson is wounded in the action. Dillon recruits Billy Salter, a young but enthusiastic London gangster, for the next operation, in which they land commando-style on the coast on County Louth in Ireland to destroy a cache of weaponry in which Fox has a large financial interest. Finally, they foil a plot by gangsters working for Fox to steal several million pounds worth of diamonds from a London safe deposit. Johnson is captured by Fox's henchmen and taken to his mansion in Cornwall. Dillon and Billy plan a parachute landing and attack the mansion. Whilst Johnson is released, Fox is killed. His minders escape to London and report to Fox's uncle and patron Don Marco Solazzo, who comes himself to London for what he hopes will be a final showdown. Solazzo and his henchmen die in the ensuing fight on a boat in the Thames.
21000359	/m/05b39wm	Seekers of the Sky	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A renowned thief named Ilmar the Slick is captured and sent to a penal colony, sentenced to mine iron for the rest of his life on the Isles of Sorrow. On the prison ship, he meets a teenager named Mark. He soon discovers that Mark knows the Word and keeps a dagger on it, among other things. Using this knowledge, Ilmar comes up with an escape plan and puts it into motion when the ship arrives to its destination. However, they are unable to get off the island, as the local administration takes radical and over-the-top measures to catch the escapees, which makes Ilmar wonder what is really happening. Mark reveals that he is the reason, as he was sent to the mines by mistake; his true sins are much more serious (he refuses to explain further, although Ilmar realizes that the boy is of noble blood). Ilmar and Mark then sneak onto the island airstrip, as the only other way out is blocked by a State warship. They find only one glider on the strip. It belongs to Helen, who has brought a warrant for Mark's arrest to the island. Ilmar and Mark force Helen to fly them to the mainland. Helen does as she is told, but her glider crashes on landing. As both Ilmar and Helen are in worse condition than he is, Mark departs. However, before leaving, in return for rescuing him, Mark grants Ilmar the title of the Count of the Isles of Sorrow. After Mark's departure, Helen helps Ilmar recover by having sex with him (he is pretty much helpless at that point). After his recovery, Ilmar secretly arrives to Amsterdam. There he finds wanted posters of him and Mark, whose real name is Marcus. Marcus is a junior prince of the House (official title of the Possessor's bastard children). Ilmar is discovered and nearly caught by officer Arnold, but the thief manages to escape and hide in a church. There he discovers that the Church of the Sister is carrying out a separate investigation and search for Marcus. Ilmar, as a valuable witness, is sent to Urbis (possibly, Rome) to meet with the head of the Church to give his statement. He is escorted out of the cordoned off city by a paladin. Unfortunately, their stagecoach is intercepted by a party of clerics (headed by another paladin) from the Church of the Redeemer, whose orders are to kill Ilmar and Marcus. In the ensuing fight, both paladins kill each other, and Ilmar manages to slip away. Shortly after that, Ilmar accidentally encounters Jean, who recognizes Ilmar as the escaped thief, but lets him go, as he has fond memories of Marcus. Some time later, Helen finds Ilmar. She explains what is happening. Apparently, shortly before his escape, Marcus stole an ancient (two thousand years old) book from a restricted church archive. The highly-bureaucratic administrators of the archive had no idea about the true value of the book, but informed the heads of the Church just the same. They immediately ordered the immediate recovery of the book, but Marcus has disappeared along with it. The value of the book is the reason why the entire nation is out to get Marcus. However, Helen does not know why the book is so valuable. After discussing their situation, Ilmar and Helen decide that their only chance for survival is to find Marcus and convince him to return the book. After some investigative work, they manage to find the boy, who was hiding in a female monastery as a nun. The mother superior of the monastery, Sister Louisa, is a former lady of the court and hid the boy, as she believes that it is the will of God. Marcus and Sister Louisa meet with Ilmar and Helen. Marcus explains the true value of the book. The book was written by the Sister, one of the Redeemer's disciples, and contains in it the True Word. This information is extremely valuable, as the wielder of the True Word would have access to everything that anyone has ever placed into the Cold, including all the treasures of the world. After learning this, Ilmar and Helen realize that simply giving Marcus up will not spare them, as they will be executed for fear of knowing the True Word. They decide to run and hide. However, officer Arnold manages to find them and attempts to detain Marcus. Then Marcus, as the Redeemer had done in his own time, performs a wonder by putting all the weapons of the guards, including Arnold's revolver, into the Cold without touching them. This convinces Arnold to help the escapees, as he believes that the Redeemer has finally returned. Ilmar, Helen, Sister Louisa, Arnold, and Marcus attempt to leave the State, but they are found. Ilmar stays behind to delay the pursuers. Ilmar is captured by the Church. The head of the Church (analogous to the Pope) interrogates him, after which the thief is thrown into the dungeon of Urbis. Despite this, Ilmar manages to escape, along with Brother Jähns. They arrive to Jean's house, seeking his counsel on what they should do next. There they meet Antoine of Lyon. The four of them decide to search for Marcus together to find if he really is the next Redeemer or the Tempter (the Antichrist). They come to the conclusion that Marcus is going to attempt to reach Judea, the Holy Land. They split up into pairs: Jean with Brother Jähns and Ilmar with Antoine, and agree to meet at Aquincum. At a boarding house, Ilmar and Antoine encounter Bishop Gerard Lightbringer, who recognizes Ilmar. However, he also wants to find out which of the prophesied figures is Marcus, so he helps the escapees and joins their quest. In Aquincum, Bishop Gerard cures a Magyar boy named Peter, who wants to help the trio search for Marcus. While he initially does not know who exactly they are searching for, he soon manages to figure it out. During Bishop Gerard's stay in Aquincum, Baron Fahrid Komarov of the Russian Khanate asks him for an audience. While he claims to be a traveler and a négociant, in reality, he is a Russian spy, as his government has their own interest in Marcus. Eventually, Ilmar and Antoine locate Marcus and his companions. Together, they try to leave Aquincum, but the State's army surrounds the city. With Komarov's help, they use underground tunnels to escape the city and the State into the Ottoman Empire. There, they finally meet Jean and Jähns. Realizing where Marcus has escaped to, the State and the Khanate both demand that the Ottomans capture and extradite the escapees. However, the escapees make their way to an air field and capture two gliders, which they use to get to Judea. The State and the Khanate wish to capture Marcus and the True Word at any cost. They send their elite forces to Judea: the State sends the Grey Vests, an elite praetorian legion, while the Khanate sends the Semetskiy guard regiment. They chase the escapees to the top of Tel Megiddo, but, at the last moment, there is a conflict of interest between the two forces. The Grey Vests and the Semetskiy regiment are almost at each others' throats. However, before they can kill each other, Marcus, who has reached his full potential at the top of the hill, performs the greatest wonder of them all by pulling everything that has ever been stored in the Cold for the last two thousand years.
21004828	/m/05b1_dg	Dying to Live				 Dying to Live is told in the first person narrative and seen through the eyes of a middle aged survivor named Jonah. Jonah had been traveling alone in the apocalyptic world but soon meets a large group of others. The society of people trying to continue life in the zombie ridden hell of a world are led by an efficient military man called Jack and Milton a mysterious, quizzical prophet who holds a very special power over the dead.
21007236	/m/05b24dt	Son of Interflux			{"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Simon Irving has just moved to the town of Greenbush, New York with his parents. His father is the Senior Vice President of Interflux, a large corporation that makes only parts of things. He enters into Nassau County High School for Visual, Literary and Performing Arts, an arts school, in an attempt to become a painter and therefore avoid the business job that his father has planned for him. When he finds out that a major expansion is in the works and that the schools greenspace (a small wood and stream) will have be cut down to make way, Simon finds a way to get back at Interflux. He uses Student Council funds to purchase a crazily shaped strip of land that Interflux is not aware of and therefore does not own. Inventing the rival group "Antiflux", he convinces most of the schools 1500 students to go along with him. By blockading the land, Antiflux causes the expansion to grind to a halt. On top of this, Simon has to keep his grades up and keep the student body from finding out that he is the Son of Interflux.
21007574	/m/05b3mhp	Suck It Up				 After graduating from the International Vampire League, a scrawny teenage vampire named Morning McCobb is given the chance to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming a superhero when he embarks on a mission to become the first vampire to reveal his identity to humans and to demonstrate how peacefully-evolved, blood-substitute-drinking vampires can use their powers to help humanity. He ends up falling for Portia Dredful, a beautiful, strong willed girl. Things get harder, however, as he has to resist the temptation of sucking Portia's blood. The book is filled with many adventures and lots of almost death situations.
21011952	/m/05b19sp	Bad Monkeys				 The beginning of the book takes place in the mental disabilites wing of the Las Vegas Clark County Detention Center. A psychiatrist named Dr. Vale interviews Jane Charlotte, who is there for the murder of a man called Dixon. Jane claims that she works for a secret organization devoted to fighting evil and that she is the operative for the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, which is also known as Bad Monkeys. She also claims that her job is to eliminate individuals who are guilty of heinous crimes, but might elude normal channels of justice. Jane tells her story to Dr. Vale about her life working with Bad Monkeys.
21016158	/m/05b3ftr	Zanesville	Kris Saknussemm	2005-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story is set forty years into the future, in an America in which distinctions between government, religion, and corporations have vanished. The main character, Elijah Clearfather, is found by a resistance cell outside their camouflaged borders in Central Park, New York City. After the cell witnesses the Clearfather's powers, they learn a little about his true identity but decide, in the interests of everyone, to send him away, with the only safe clues to his identity they can provide: a bus pass marked with three important locations and a note written in disappearing ink. Clearfather is set on a journey of self-discovery pursued by murderous Vitessa Cultporation agents, and accompanied by Aretha Nightengale, once a lawyer, now a cross-dressing resistance leader; Dooley Duck and Ubba Dubba, hologram cartoon characters leading a sexual revolution; and the mysterious Kokomo.
21017151	/m/05b398_	Diana of Dobson's	Cicely Hamilton			 Diana is an under-paid worker in an Edwardian department store in Clapham and, when she inherits £300 unexpectedly, she spends it on a holiday at a holiday resort in Switzerland. Pretending to be a wealthy widow, she finds herself pursued by an impecunious ex-guardsman and his predatory aunt.
21020935	/m/05b3_t1	The Mystery of the Missing Necklace				 Together again in the summer holidays, the Five Find Outers are finding the hot summer rather dull - until they learn that Peterswood is apparently the headquarters of a gang of poachers who are carrying out burglaries outside of the village. It appears that the gang may be passing messages to each other in Peterswood. Fatty's voice has broken, and this allows him to use a wide range of new adult disguises. Fatty tries out various new disguises including that of an old balloon selling woman, and finally disguising himself as an old tramp who spends his afternoons sitting on a bench in the middle of the village. The children discover that the old man was being used by the gang to pass on messages. The children learn that the gang plan to meet at a waxworks hall, to discuss their next robbery. Fatty disguises himself as Napoleon so that he can listen in on the gang's meeting. Mr Goon, however, has the same idea and disguises himself as a policeman. Unfortunately, during the gang meeting, Mr.Goon sneezes, giving the game away - but Fatty is caught instead. The gang tie Fatty up and lock him in a cupboard before leaving to carry out their latest jewellery robbery. Mr. Goon leaves Fatty locked in the cupboard to teach him a lesson, but luckily Larry returns to the Town hall and frees him. The children believe that Mr Goon has solved the mystery before them, as the jewel thieves are arrested. However, a pearl necklace they stole is missing. The grand mystery has a grand ending, then.
21023020	/m/05b1dm2	Autonomy	Daniel Blythe		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Hyperville is 2013's top hi-tech, 24-hour entertainment complex - a sprawling palace of fun under one massive roof. A place to go shopping, or experience the excitement of Doomcastle, Winterland, or Wild West World. But things are about to get a lot more exciting - and dangerous. But what exactly is lurking on Level Zero of Hyperville? And what will happen when the entire complex goes over to Central Computer Control?
21026394	/m/05b1vfd	No Coins, Please			{"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Juniortours is an outfit that tours children around America during the summer months. When Group Ambulance's Artie Geller, a precocious 11-year-old con artist from Montreal signs on, Rob and Dennis find they have more than the usual summer job on their hands. From the streets of New York City to the casinos of Las Vegas, Artie proves as slippery as ever. First Scheme - New York City, NY. Artie sells grape jelly for $10 a jar under the title "Attack Jelly". Makes his first fortune. Second Scheme - Washington, DC. Artie buys a toy race track and convinces senators, congressman and other government officials to place bets on the toy cars. One Senator ends up losing all his money in the process. Third Scheme - Ogallala, NE. Artie convinces the other boys to help him run a "no-frills" milk store where he charges $1 a minute to milk a cow, usually resulting in less than a teaspoon of milk. Makes thousands of dollars. Fourth Scheme - Denver, CO. Artie disappears for several days. During this time he transforms an abandoned pretzel factory into a world-class discothèque visited by many prominent celebrities, then shuts it all down and flees with over $60,000. Fifth Scheme - Las Vegas, NV. Artie disguises himself as an old man and takes tens of thousands of dollars apiece from nine different casinos. The FBI catches him as he attempts to flee to Toronto with his winnings. They eventually agree to drop all criminal charges in exchange for payment of fines totaling $149,922.04 Final Scheme - Los Angeles, CA. Since Artie is now under FBI surveillance, he convinces the other boys to carry out his five previous schemes simultaneously.
21028092	/m/05b0y2t	Triptych	Wendy Coakley-Thompson		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Triptych opens in June 2004 in The Bahamas. Jonathan and Ally, both surgeons, celebrate their tenth anniversary at a party filled with friends and family. One of those family members is Jonathan’s second cousin Tim, a recent widower who lives in New Jersey. Tim and Ally had dated when he was seventeen, and she, fifteen. Jonathan collapses at the anniversary party. Tim and Ally rush him to the hospital. Doctors diagnose an inoperable brain tumor. Flash ahead to the summer of 2005. Jonathan is between cancer treatments. Tim has taken a teaching position in The Bahamas. He still feels as connected to Ally as when they first dated. Ally has taken a sabbatical from her medical career in order to care for Jonathan and their children. As Jonathan’s treatments have rendered him impotent, acute sexual frustration dogs her. Time passes; Ally’s feelings for Tim evolve into sexual attraction. Despite valiant efforts not to, Tim and Ally succumb. Jonathan senses the attraction between Tim and Ally. He makes an unorthodox proposition to his cousin, suggesting that Tim take care of Ally’s sexual needs. Tim’s instincts tell him to protect his heart. However, he cannot refuse his dying cousin. Tim and Ally begin a guilt-ridden affair. The rapid progression of Jonathan’s symptoms makes him realize that he is dying. He writes a series of letters to his loved ones, in which he expresses his feelings while he is still able. His doctors confirm his suspicions. Jonathan, wishing to die in peace, takes the family away to a second home in a place called Harbour Island. Ally watches helplessly as Jonathan suffers a fatal seizure. Almost a year passes. Ally feels comfortable enough to go on a first date with Tim. They make love with vigor and renewed affection. Afterwards, Tim suggests a vacation for two. Ally balks. Tim is frustrated and angry at what he views as rejection. After the disastrous date, Ally retreats to the Harbour Island home where Jonathan died. She removes her engagement, wedding, and remembrance rings. She revisits the hammock where he died, folds it up, and stores it away. Slowly, she makes her peace. Jonathan’s grown daughter Terri, visibly upset, appears at Tim’s office. The family has gone to Harbour Island without her. She feels guilt at how she treated her father in his last days. She begs Tim to come with her to the island. The thought of seeing Ally fills him with trepidation. Still, Tim agrees to go. Tim and Terri arrive in Harbour Island. Tim learns that Ally has gone to a party at a friend’s home, her so-called “coming out” after Jonathan’s death. Determined, Tim crashes the party in search of her. Ally is surprised and overjoyed to see him. They confess their love for each other.
21031129	/m/059_q4h	Chroniques du Pays des Mères	Élisabeth Vonarburg	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The action takes place several centuries after the events of Le Silence de la Cité. Large areas have been drowned by the rising sea and most of Europe is now a poisoned wasteland. Due to a genetic mutation, women now outnumber men by 70 to 1. The collapsed society described in Le Silence de la Cité has been slowly rebuilt. Post-collapse warlord states have evolved into patriarchal kingdoms - the Harems - before being overthrown by the hives, female-run city-states, every bit as warlike and tyrannical as their male-run predecessors. Those have in turn been replaced by a more peaceful female dominated society organized as a loose federation of local communities. The novel follows the life of Lisbeï, the daughter of the "mother" of the Betely community, in the province of Litale. Destined to succeed her she grows up with her sister and friend, Tula, her being barren prevents her from doing so. While exploring ruined tunnels she discovers documents which question everything her society thought it knew about its past.
21035059	/m/05b0sd6	Frozen Fire	Tim Bowler	2006-09-07	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins with Dusty, the main character, receiving a mysterious phone call from an anonymous boy who claims to be dying. He soon reveals to her over the phone that he has taken an overdose with the intention of killing himself and that he rang her phone so he would have someone to talk to as he slipped away. At first he gives himself the false name Josh, which is the name of Dusty's brother who went missing a few years previously, leading Dusty to believe that he knows something about his disappearance. Dusty leaves the house to find the dying boy and attempt to save him. She searches around the local park but cannot find him anywhere. Instead she gets chased down by three men with two dogs that eventually corner her and assault her. Dusty receives frequent phone calls from the strange boy. He constantly talks about how he is suffering and how he is unable to kill himself. People start to talk about seeing this odd boy around the town. He is described as having snow-white skin and wearing a duffel coat. Stories start to spread about the boy raping a girl in another town and keeping her prisoner and when Dusty asks the boy if this is true he replies by saying he does not know or remember. When the locals start to suspect that Dusty is harbouring the boy, angry mobs go to her house and vandalise her room. When a mob traps the boy and confronts him he takes off his clothes and reveals that he has no genitals, proving that he could not have possibly raped anyone. Eventually the boy drives into a lake and when it is searched the van he drove into the lake is found but his body is not. However, while they are searching the lake, they find the body of Dusty's missing brother Josh. It is also revealed that Josh was the pale boy who raped the girl from another town. Dusty Is thrown into turmoil but an observation from Silas, an old miser, reveals that the boy is not in fact, dead.
21046629	/m/05b0ss8	Roberto: The Insect Architect				 A termite named Roberto tries to fulfill his dream of becoming an architect. He moves to the city so that he can become an architect and when he is there, he is influenced by great architects. Roberto finds ways to help the community and use his talents.
21047655	/m/05b4kl8	The Krillitane Storm			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Doctor arrives in Worcester in 1139. There have been disappearances in last few months and people live in terror, afraid to leave their dwellings once the dark falls. When the Doctor meets with a Krillitane, he knows they have every reason to be afraid.
21048471	/m/05b1td1	Curtain Up	Noel Streatfeild	1944		 Curtain Up recounts the story of three siblings: Sorrel, Mark, and Holly Forbes. After their widowed father is reported missing during the war, and his father (their grandfather) dies, the children go to live in London with their grandmother on their mother's side, a retired actress. She sends them to the Children's Academy for Dancing and Stage Training, much against their will. However, it is clear that the stage is in their blood, as they discover talents they never knew they had: Sorrel shines at acting, Mark at singing, and Holly at dancing and impressions. The book also involves the Fossil sisters from Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes, as each Fossil girl provides each of the Forbes children with a scholarship to cover school expenses. Pauline sponsors Sorrel, Petrova, Mark, and Posy, Holly. The Fossil girls also exchange letters with the Forbes children, although when Miriam, the Forbes' cousin and another student at the school, shows herself to be an exceptionally talented dancer, Posy decides to sponsor her, as well, and to communicate with Miriam instead of with Holly. From these letters we learn that Pauline and Posy have made careers for themselves in Hollywood, after Posy and her teacher had to leave Czechoslovakia due to the war.
21049461	/m/05b1vht	Harriet Said...	Beryl Bainbridge	1972	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It concerns two schoolgirls spending their holiday in a run-down northern resort. Harriet is the older at 14. The 13-year-old unnamed narrator develops a crush on an unhappily married middle-aged man whom they call the Tsar. Led by Harriet they study his relationship with his wife, planning to humiliate him. Their plan quickly goes wrong, however, with tragic results.
21054799	/m/05b3gg0	The Siege of Trencher's Farm	Gordon Williams		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 George Magruder, an American professor of English, moves with his wife Louise and eight-year-old daughter Karen, to Trencher's Farm in Cornwall, England, so that George can finish a book he is writing. George accidentally hits a child killer with his car and takes him back to the farm, not knowing who he is. When the locals find out, they form to a mob to break into George's house and the professor has to fight them off and protect his family.
21062451	/m/05c510v	The Visitors			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story outlines contact between Earth and the title Visitors, a group of mysterious objects from deep space. The Visitors are simple black oblong boxes, as large as buildings, which approach from space and orbit the Earth before descending to the United States. The nature of the visitors is kept rather mysterious&nbsp;— it's not clear if they are vehicles or living things in their own right. They are apparently unable to communicate with humans in any meaningful way; on one occasion a human is taken inside a Visitor, only to be released after experiencing a jumble of confusing colored lights and smells which he didn't understand. The Visitors are composed largely of a dense form of cellulose, and they proceed to consume a quantity of trees and plant life in the US. Eventually they start producing vehicles, superficially resembling human cars but capable of flying using the same unknown principles as the Visitors themselves, and apparently incorporating some element of intelligence, or at least instinct, since they do not crash into things as they move. The humans assume that the Visitors have created these vehicles as a gift in return for the plant matter which the Visitors are consuming, and the novel touches on the disruption such well-meaning gifts might incur on the Earth's economic systems. Toward the end of the book the Visitors also start producing housing units for humans, and it is even implied that something living may be inside them&nbsp;— perhaps even a Visitor-produced version of humans themselves.
21062612	/m/05c1byz	The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution	Richard Dawkins	2009		 The book is divided into 13 chapters spanning over 400 pages, and includes an appendix called "The History-Deniers" in the end material. #Only a Theory? (Nature of scientific theory and fallibility) #Dogs, Cows and Cabbages (Artificial Selection) #The Primrose Path to Macro-Evolution #Silence and Slow Time (Discusses the Age of the Earth and the Geological Time Scale) #Before Our Very Eyes (Examples of Evolution Observed) #Missing link? What do you mean, 'Missing'? (the fossil record) #Missing persons? Missing no longer (Human Evolution) #You did it yourself in nine months (a statement attributed to J. B. S. Haldane; discusses developmental biology) #The ark of the continents (biogeography and plate tectonics) #The tree of cousinship (the tree of life, homology and analogy) #History written all over us (vestigiality and unintelligent design) #Arms races and 'evolutionary theodicy' (coevolution and evolutionary arms races) #There is grandeur in this view of life (based on the final passage of On the Origin of Species)
21068449	/m/05c1r6q	Ionia			{"/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 A London banker named David Musgrave dies prematurely in his mid-fifties, leaving a large fortune to his young wife and small son. The widow devotes her money, time, and energy to improving her home village in Surrey. She educates her son, Alexander Musgrave, to be generous and idealistic; when he comes into his majority and his own fortune, the younger Musgrave devotes himself to a philanthropic enterprise in a London parish. In the course of that work, he meets an impressive man named Jason Delphion, who seems to exist on a level of physical and intellectual development superior to average human beings. Delphion, an admirer of Musgrave's philanthropic efforts, tells the young Englishman about a hidden country in the remote Himalayas where an ideal and utopian society has evolved. Delphion invites Musgrave to visit the country, and Musgrave is eager to do so. They travel to northern India, and from there they fly, via Ionian aircraft, to the secret valley. Musgrave learns that the people are largely Greek in origin, descended from a cohort of seven thousand ancient Greek mercenaries who served the Persian Empire, and who fled eastward after the victories of Alexander the Great. The Greeks established themselves in their Himalayan valley, and for many generations lived as farmers, herders, and mercenaries in the armies of Indian princes. At the time of the Mughal Empire, a local prince named Timoleon travelled to Europe and brought back knowledge and technology; he led the Ionians in their development of an advanced and deliberately isolated culture. The travelers land at Iolkos, the Ionian capital, where the buildings are "palatial halls" with "towers and domes," constructed of marble in varying shades. The government is headquartered on an Acropolis, built on an island in the valley's main lake. (Craig's description of the Acropolis of Iolkos, with palaces divided by canals surrounding a "central basin" in which is set a great statue, recalls the Court of Honor at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the famous "White City.") The language of the Ionians remains Greek, and the country's main rivers are the Pharos and the Styx. The people are well-educated (university training is common for all), and rational in their dress, manners, and customs. Musgrave finds that the Ionians have created a technology based on electricity, drawn from windmills and from the Earth's magnetic field. Electricity powers their land vehicles and aircraft, and lights and heats their homes and cities. Their most common metal is aluminum. They irrigate their valley into a lush agricultural garden; all the land is owned by the state. Their government is a republic, under an elected archon; the state controls marriage and practices eugenics, and the people generally live to be one hundred years old. Inherited wealth is limited, and poverty is unknown. The Ionians run their commerce and manufacturing along highly rational and organized lines, with no debt or advertising; they control pollution and recycle waste. Musgrave is awed and amazed by life in Ionia, and quickly becomes a convert to its values. He leaves the country after a stay of several months, though; he is determined to bring Ionian advances to England and the rest of the world.
21072948	/m/05c3fk4	Snabba cash	Jens Lapidus	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 JW is a young man living in Stockholm, originally from the countryside. JW feigns the appearance of a Stekare (in Swedish parlance, a lifestyle based on flaunting one's apparent wealth; a jetsetter), actually leading a double life driving taxi illegally to finance his expensive life on Stureplan. Abdulkarim, who runs the taxi business, offers JW a job selling cocaine instead. JW accepts the offer and enters the criminal underground of Stockholm. Jorge Salinas Barrio is a Latino who has gone to prison after taking the blame for drug business in which the Yugoslav mafia was involved. He escapes from Österåker Prison with plans to flee the country. Mrado Slovovic is a Serbian henchman who runs errands for the Yugoslav mafia, but secretly he dreams of a normal life with his daughter Lovisa. The three characters unite in the book through their dreams about quick earnings. Once JW and Abdulkarim have the cocaine sales going they want to expand. Abdulkarim has heard of Jorge, the recent escapee. The word on the street is that Jorge got very knowledgeable about the cocaine trade while he was in prison and thus JW gets an assignment to hire him. Simultaneously Jorge has tried to blackmail the Yugoslav mafia boss. The hitman Mrado has been contracted to dissuade him. When JW finally finds Jorge he is laying beaten-up in a forest, courtesy of Mrado.
21075007	/m/05b_ns5	Murder Most Fab				 Still haunted by memories of his mentally ill mother and a doomed romance with a man called Timothy, rent boy Johnny Debonair moves on in the world when he breaks into the entertainment industry, eventually becoming 'Mr. Friday Night'. However, his path to fame is littered with corpses... Told in the style of a final confession, the story follows Debonair as he finds himself drawn towards serial murder so he can maintain his hold on the spotlight.
21075514	/m/05c2nxx	Colossus and the Crab	Dennis Feltham Jones	1977	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel begins where its predecessor, The Fall of Colossus leaves off, with the supercomputer immobilized and the Martians arriving on Earth. They appear before Charles Forbin and his friend Edward Blake in the form of two black spheres, and quickly demonstrate vast intellect and powers of transformation and telepathy. After immobilizing Blake, they explain to Forbin their purpose in immobilizing Colossus&nbsp;— their desire to take half of the Earth's oxygen, a process that will kill nearly a quarter of the human population. In order to proceed with construction of the "Collector" designed to harvest the oxygen, the Martians reactivate the parts of Colossus necessary to manage human society. Though having no other option but to agree to the Martians' plan, Forbin continues to search for an alternative. He discovers in conversation with the Martians that their need for the oxygen is driven by the threat of radiation emanating from the Crab Nebula, which will kill the Martians without the protection of an oxygenated atmosphere. As construction of the Collector proceeds, a humbled Blake proposes to Forbin that the old Colossus&nbsp;— the "parent" of the crippled system, be reactivated. With little other alternative, Forbin agrees. Construction equipment controlled by Colossus soon complete work on the Collector. An initial five-minute test of the device proves enormously destructive. With a second, final test imminent, Blake travels to Colorado with Angela, Forbin's private secretary. Racing against time, Blake and a small team of workers succeeds in penetrating the mountain where the old Colossus is located and re-activating the computer, only to discover that, once imputed with the facts of the situation, Colossus argues that the collection program is in the best interests of humans' long-term future and should move forward. Informed of the failure of their plan, Forbin watches the second test proceed. Upon its conclusion he embarks on a new plan. With his new secretary, a fervently devout woman named Joan, he flies to Portsmouth and takes command of the battleships stationed there for the Sea War Games. Yet doing so puts him out of contact with Blake and the old Colossus, who informs Blake that a solution might exist that is acceptable to both the Martians and humanity. Regaining control of the nuclear arsenal, Colossus contacts the Martians, who inform it of Forbin's attempt to use the battleships to destroy the Collector. Though the Martians attempt to destroy the fleet using their device, they underestimate the power of the battleships' guns, which succeed in destroying the Collector. Though the Martians are defeated Forbin dies in the process. He is buried by the reactivated Colossus, who reaches an agreement with the Martians. A smaller version of the Collector will extract the oxygen more gradually and sustainably; in return, humanity, with the guidance of Colossus, will retreat to Mars once the Sun has become a red giant and destroys the Earth.
21081019	/m/05c3vjd	We Couldn't Leave Dinah	Mary Treadgold	1941	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The setting is the summer holidays early in the Second World War. The Templetons are English residents on the fictional island of Clerinel in the English Channel. The children are all members of the local Pony Club. Caroline rides the spirited Dinah, Mick the more placid Punch, and their little brother the chubby Bellman. Meanwhile, there are rumours that the Germans who have occupied the nearby Channel Islands may be planning to take over Clerinel too. The location and topography of the island are ideally suited as a platform for launching an invasion of the South Coast. Mr. Templeton discusses leaving with the children, prompting Caroline's horrified response: "We couldn't leave Dinah". The Pony Club's chairman, Peter Beaumarchais, has surprisingly opted for a fancy-dress carnival as their Anniversary Day celebration in mid-September. Caroline decides to go as Elaine the Lily Maid of Astolat; Mick chooses to dress simply as a local fisherboy and borrows some clothes from Petit-Jean. During the celebration Caroline spots some unfamiliar riders in fancy dress. These riders turn out to be a party of German invaders taking advantage of the fancy dress to gain easy access to the Martello tower. The English residents hurriedly evacuate, but in the confusion Caroline and Mick are left behind. Their home having been requisitioned by the German general, they camp in some caves which have been fitted out as stables. With the help of Peter they manage to survive and stay hidden while planning their escape. After Mick stumbles across a hidden message and decodes it, they realize there are spies on the English side working on the island. Believing he can help discover some useful information, Mick volunteers to coach Nannerl, the German general's granddaughter, in riding. Nannerl joins the Pony Club, and when Caroline leaves the island she feels Dinah is safe with the German girl until they can return.
21081676	/m/05c15bk	Chronic City	Jonathan Lethem	2009-09-15	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lethem began work on Chronic City in early 2007, and has said that the novel is "set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it’s strongly influenced by Saul Bellow, Philip K. Dick, Charles Finney and Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and it concerns a circle of friends including a faded child-star actor, a cultural critic, a hack ghost-writer of autobiographies, and a city official."
21082701	/m/05c45x4	Alexandria	Lindsey Davis	2009-02-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story is set in AD 77, in Alexandria, Egypt, which was at that time part of the Roman Empire. Falco and his family travel to Egypt to see two of the seven wonders of the world, the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Great Pyramid of Giza, but are caught up in investigation into a mysterious death, and soon several deaths. The plot revolves around the Library of Alexandria, with reference to library management practice, corruption, illegal autopsies, a man-eating crocodile, and the legendary catoblepas. For the duration of their trip, Falco and his family have chosen to stay with his mother's brother, Fulvius, and his live-in partner Cassius who host a dinner party to which Falco's family and the Chief Librarian of the Serapaeion, Theon, are invited. When Theon is found dead later in mysterious circumstances, locked in his own private Chamber at the Serapaeion, Falco, Fulvius and the others fall under suspicion by the authorities, and it is up to Falco to clear everyone's names, eventually unravelling a web of corruption, deceit and even murder at the Library of Alexandria.
21086525	/m/05c22s5	Trading Faces		2008-12-30	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Identical twins, Payton and Emma Mills, are complete opposites. Payton is cool, fashionable, popular, caring, and optimistic, but not very book smart. where Emma is extremely intelligent, goes up in many competitions, but has nearly no friends (besides Payton), social or fashion smarts. Everyone, except those close to them, cannot tell them apart. Both twins are also embarrassed by each other, Payton because Emma is walking around always in hideous clothes, and Emma because Payton is always walking around with no intelligence. Payton and Emma have been going to an all girl private school up to sixth grade. They are finally going to a unisex public school, and both twins are very excited, but for different reasons. Payton is excited to make new friends, see cute boys, and to be cool. Emma wants to learn more, go in more competitions, and interact with people as intelligent as she is. On the first day of school, both twins realize that they have no classes together. At first they are upset, but then realize it won't be so bad. They will finally have their own identities. Prior to the story, over the summer, Payton spent all of summer at camp working for a wealthy girl, Ashlynn, for her cool clothes. She believes they will help her fit in better. She wears them every day for the first few days of school. In homeroom, Payton meets the most popular girl in school, Sydney Fish. They immediately strike up friendship, though Payton is worried that Sydney won't like her because she isn't cool enough. At lunch, though, Sydney invites Payton to sit with her and her friends, Cashmere, Quinn, and Priya. Emma, on the other hand, is not in the front row, center seat, as usual. That spot is taken by another extremely intelligent girl Jazmine James. Emma hopes she and Jazmine will become friends, so she can finally have an intellectual conversation with someone. Jazmine, however, turns out to be very snobby and mean. Jazmine also has two also very intelligent sidekicks, Hector and Tess. After the first day of school, their parents take them out to eat at a Chinese restaurant, as a family tradition. They each receive presents from their parents, an iPhone from their mother, and two matching bracelets with the first letter of their first name on them. Payton is doing wonderful with her social life, and loves school. Emma, on the other hand, isn't getting a good reputation with her teachers, unlike usual, where teachers love her. One day, Payton makes a fatal mistake, which ends up with Sydney being mad at her, after Payton yelled at Sydney and spilled her lunch all over the most popular guy in school, Ox. Emma tells Payton to switch places, so they do. While switching places, Emma, as Payton, redeems herself so Sydney won't be mad at Payton anymore. After switching places, the twins realize that they kind of like being each other, Emma liking being popular and having friends for one, and Payton liking being treated like a genius. So they decide to stay like the other twin for a little more. After school one day, Emma, still as Payton, goes to the mall with Sydney and her crew. Emma picks out some amazing outfits for her and Sydney's crew friends, showing her true inner fashionista. Emma bonds with Quinn, and really likes her, as she's definitely the nicest one in Sydney's group. Emma meets Ox at the mall, whom Sydney has a giant crush on, and bonds with him. They discover they really like each other, but are awkward around each other, too. Ox even invites Emma to sit at the pep rally with him, in the special seats reserved for football players. Payton, disguised as Emma, joins the crew for VOGS (Videocast Of Gecko Students), a live videocast which will air during the pep rally. Payton volunteers for Emma to be a reporter during VOGS. When Payton tells Emma this, she expects her to be thrilled, but to her dismay, Emma is furious, due to her phobia of being on camera, because she is afraid that she'll look stupid. Emma can't, however, back out anymore, because then Jazmine James will think she's a wimp. On the day of the pep rally, Emma makes a schedule for when the twins should switch. When the twins switch, they accidentally forget to switch their bracelets. While coming out of the janitor's closet, the twins' secret meeting place, Payton bumps into Jazmine, and accidentally drops the schedule, unbeknowest to her. At the pep rally, Sydney sits with Ox, but to her dismay, Ox asks her to leave for Emma. On the videocast, Jazmine points out to everyone the schedule that they dropped, revealing to everyone that they switched. Payton and Emma then have a huge fight, then after, realizing that Emma still had her mic on, and that the whole school heard their quarrel. They are punished severely. However, they learned their lesson. At the end of the book, Quinn, who both Payton and Emma both really like, despite being in Sydney's group, exchanges phone numbers with Emma, who she really likes. Tess then also exchanges phone numbers with Payton, who both twins agree is kind of nice, though Emma doesn't completely trust her, because she was one of Jazmine's sidekicks. Payton and Emma then begin to swear that they will never switch again, but decide not to, because "you never say never ."
21087743	/m/05b_zpz	To the Wedding				 The story begins as a narrative within a narrative from the point of view of a blind tamata peddler, who first encounters Ninon's father when he wants to buy a tamata for his daughter, Ninon, who is suffering 'everywhere'. The novel abruptly shifts its perspective to Ninon's story. Ninon, a young woman in her 20s, meets a man working at a restaurant who catches her fancy. Although reluctant at first, she allows herself to be seduced and they end up making love the same day. They part, and she visits the restaurant again the following day only to hear from the chef that the man was an escaped convict and had been arrested by the police. The narrative is splintered to include the journey of Ninon's father and mother to her wedding. Ninon travels around Europe and, on a visit to a museum, encounters Gino. They become devoted lovers, and in one memorable occasion break open a shack with their love-making. During the course of their relationship, Ninon notices sores on her lips and decides to see a doctor when they do not heal. To her shock, the doctor tells her that she has AIDS. She realizes that the man at the restaurant was the one who gave the disease to her and feels bitter and angry. She breaks off communication with Gino who is frantic to speak with her. Eventually, she explains to Gino that she has AIDS, expecting rebuke and disgust, but to her surprise, Gino proposes marriage. The lovers manage to create meaning in their lives in the face of approaching death.
21087829	/m/05c4ycb	Palamedes				 Palamedes is set in the days before Arthur's reign, and describes the adventures of the fathers of characters including Arthur, Palamedes, Erec, and Tristan. While the work is named for the Saracen knight Palamedes, and some manuscripts identify him explicitly as one of the central figures, Meliadus (Tristan's father) and his great friend Guiron le Courtois are by far the most important characters, and give their names to the two sections of the romance. The work uses the Tristan material as its source, and greatly expands it. The narrative is rambling and convoluted; Arthurian scholar Norris J. Lacy described it as consisting largely of "[a] series of abductions, battles, and seemingly random adventures". Many tales are told along the way, including the story of Meliadus' kidnapping of the Queen of Scotland and his subsequent battle with her husband in which Guiron must rescue him. Guiron's section steps farther away from the Tristan material and the exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, focusing instead on the adventures of the House of Brun, of which Guiron is the most prominent member. The work's lack of coherence did not affect its popularity, and it went on to influence, directly and indirectly, works in French, Italian, Spanish, and even Greek.
21097608	/m/05c42wv	Visitors from London	Kitty Barne	1940	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The setting is the Sussex countryside during the summer holidays of 1939. The four Farrar children are spending the holidays with their eccentric Aunt Myra. War seems far away, but is soon to impinge on their lives. Seventeen young Cockney evacuees who have never been out of London are coming to stay at Steadings, a nearby farmhouse which has been standing empty. The Farrars help with the preparations, finding staff and generally organizing everything. Then the evacuees arrive, and the Farrars find themselves out of their depth.
21101819	/m/05c1xpq	One Corpse Too Many	Edith Pargeter	1979	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In the summer of 1138, King Stephen is besieging rebels loyal to Empress Matilda in Shrewsbury Castle. Brother Cadfael welcomes the assistance of a young man called Godric, who has been brought to the Abbey by his "aunt". Cadfael soon recognises that "Godric" is actually a girl. She admits that she is actually Godith Adeney, daughter of Fulke Adeney, one of the rebel ringleaders inside the castle. Cadfael agrees to keep her secret, thus beginning 10 adventurous days in August. Aline Siward and Hugh Beringar enter King Stephen's camp to pledge their loyalty. Aline Siward is welcomed even though her elder brother, Giles, has declared for the Empress. Hugh Beringar is treated with more reserve, as he was formerly an associate of the rebel ringleaders and betrothed as a child to Godith. To prove his loyalty, he is instructed to find Godith and deliver her to the King. Two young men fall for Aline on first sight at the King's camp, Beringar and the man designated to be deputy sheriff once the castle falls, Adam Courcelle. The castle falls the next morning, but the ringleaders FitzAlan, made sheriff by King Stephen's appointment, and Adeney escape. Infuriated, King Stephen orders the ninety-four survivors of the turncoat garrison executed that very afternoon. Abbot Heribert of Shrewsbury Abbey asks that the men be given Christian burial. King Stephen assents, and Heribert delegates the task to Cadfael for the next morning. Counting the bodies, Cadfael realises that there are not ninety-four bodies, but ninety-five - one corpse too many. The extra corpse is unidentified. Aline is horrified to find the body of her brother Giles among the other ninety-four. Aline notes that a dagger has been stolen from Giles's body. Courcelle gave Aline her brother's cloak, found in the castle. She in turn gives her brother's clothing to Cadfael to distribute as alms. Godith identifies the murdered man as Nicholas Faintree, a young squire of the rebel leader FitzAlan. At her suggestion, Cadfael visits her old nurse, Petronella Flesher, and her husband Edric, the town butcher, to reassure them of Godith's safety. They reveal that FitzAlan ordered squires Faintree and Torold Blund to slip out of the castle and take his treasury from its hiding place in Frankwell to safety in Wales, then Normandy. They warn Cadfael that Beringar asked after Godith the day before the castle fell. Cadfael suspects that Beringar likely learned of the plan to move the treasury by eavesdropping. The murdered man Nicholas Faintree is buried in the Abbey church, a great honor. While aiding in the Abbey's corn harvest, Godric encounters a wounded man. She and Cadfael return to help him that evening and the next day, learning his story and his name. Torold Blund relates how he and Faintree tried to escape with FitzAlan's treasure. Faintree's horse was lamed by a caltrop, planted on a forested track by someone who knew their route in advance. Faintree waited at a forest hut near Frankwell while Blund found a fresh horse. When Blund returned he found Faintree dead, and was himself attacked by a stranger. Blund fought off his attacker and fled. He hid the treasure under the bridge near the castle, letting the horses go free. He was then pursued by the King's men and forced to jump into the river Severn. Cadfael went to the barn in Frankwell, the hut where the murder and the fight took place, and met the farmer who supplied the fresh horse to Blund, confirming every aspect of the story. In the hut, he found a jewel meant as decoration to a dagger, a yellow topaz, in the dirt floor. Cadfael sends Godric with food and medicine to Torold, who is much recovered. As they talk, Blund wrestles in jest with Godric, thus discovering that she is a girl named Godith. Cadfael returns to the mill, talks with the two young people. Cadfael agrees to help Torold and Godith escape to Wales with the treasure. He and Torold hear footsteps, so cut short their conversation. Cadfael and Godric walk to the Abbey, encountering Hugh Beringar. Godric is sent off to the herbarium. Knowing that the King is about to commandeer horses for his army, Beringar asks Cadfael if there is a place where he can conceal his two most valuable mounts. They take the horses to a grange belonging to the Abbey, south of Shrewsbury. The next day, Cadfael knows that Hugh Beringar has a spirit like his own as to the cause of justice and a clever mind for pursuing it. He spends the day testing his theory that Hugh is following him, dispatching Godric to other tasks. That night, Cadfael locates the treasure hidden in the river. He has a bundle matching it in appearance, which he carries to the grange, aware that Beringar is watching him. To Cadfael's alarm the next morning, Sheriff Prestcote began the raid of the Abbey before he woke. King Stephen needs supplies from Shrewsbury and is searching for Godith. Godith awoke early, made her own plan for action, ensuring her own safety and that of the treasure. Before the mid morning service, Aline Siward tells Cadfael that Godric is safe in her quarters. Though she is formally on Stephen's side, Aline has no interest in helping his men catch a young girl. Torold has been forced to flee from the mill as the King's men seize supplies. He fears that Beringar saw him, then decides he has been too fearful in a day of hiding on the run. He mentions this while reporting his day to Cadfael in the herbarium. That night, Cadfael, Torold and Godith walk to the grange with the treasure, so the pair can depart for Wales on Beringar's horses. Cadfael has them hide the treasure in a tree that will be on the road to Wales, then swing back to approach the grange from the usual path. At the grange, Beringar and his men stop them, taking control of the situation. Beringar's intentions are honourable; he has planned all along to aid Godith in her escape to safety, as his duty to her from past connections. He will, however, secure the treasure for the King. Godith and Torold depart for Wales on Beringar's horses, silently aware of Cadfael's success. Cadfael and Beringar speculate that the two will be married before they reach Godith's father. Cadfael and Beringar carry the saddlebags from the grange back to the abbey. On reaching Cadfael's workshop, Beringar is stunned to find them filled with stones Cadfael exchanged for the treasure. Beringar is mystified that the saddlebags also contain Faintree's old clothes and the jewel from the dagger. Cadfael is thus satisfied Beringar had no part in Faintree's murder. Beringar laughs that Cadfael won the game, keeping the treasure with Godith. Beringar recalls that Aline described a dagger decorated with jewel, a family heirloom that was lost when Giles was hanged. They wonder, who has the rest of the dagger? Cadfael and Beringar cooperate to determine the truth, both seeking proof for each supposition. Beringar is aided by Aline, who confirms the topaz. Cadfael is aided by the beggar who received the cloak once belonging to Giles. The night before the castle fell, Giles Siward slipped into the siege camp, seen by the beggar. Giles betrayed Fitz Alan's plan to the officer of the watch, Courcelle, in exchange for his life. Courcelle, rather than reporting the matter to the King, arranged for Giles to be hanged not saved. Then Courcelle laid a trap for Faintree and Blund, hoping to take the treasure for himself. Courcelle stole the dagger from Giles's corpse. He had it when he fought with Blund in the barn, where the jewel broke off and was pushed into the dirt floor. They still do not have the dagger or know its whereabouts, but Cadfael is certain that Courcelle is the guilty man, officer of the watch that night. Hugh Beringar is eager that Aline never learns the full extent of her brother's foul deed the night before he was hanged; Cadfael agrees. The only way to assure that is to silence the murderer, the only other person who knows of this perfidy. The last chance to present their evidence against Courcelle is during King Stephen's farewell banquet that evening. Cadfael attends the feast as servant to the Abbot. Leaving the banquet room to bring food to the beggar, he sees a kitchen boy eating his own meal with Giles' missing dagger, fished out of the Severn. Wholly trusting Cadfael's view, Beringar publicly accuses Courcelle of the murder of Faintree and the theft of the dagger, staking his own life in the charge. He tossed the yellow topaz on the table. Re-entering the room, Cadfael gives the dagger to the King, who then fits the two together, completing the proof. Courcelle denies all. The King is eager for justice for this crime, but impatient to move on as planned. He says, no time for a proper trial. He and Courcelle accept Beringar's suggestion that the matter be settled by trial by combat. Beringar and Courcelle fight with swords and then daggers outside the town the next day, watched by a large crowd. Aline arrives after the combat began, now knowing she loves Hugh Beringar. The two men are evenly matched; the contest lasts for hours. In close fighting, Courcelle falls on his own dagger blade and dies. With Beringar vindicated by fate, King Stephen appoints him Deputy Sheriff of Shropshire in Courcelle's place. He and Aline are betrothed. Cadfael, who by now is also his firm friend, gives him Giles's dagger, which has been restored by craftsmen at the Abbey. Cadfael concludes by resolving to pray both for Nicholas Faintree, "a clean young man of mind and life", and for Adam Courcelle, "dead in his guilt", because "every untimely death, every man cut down in his vigour and strength without time for repentance and reparation, is one corpse too many."
21104381	/m/05bzwzq	The Folklore of Discworld		2008		 The book is divided into 16 sections *The Cosmos: Gods, Demons and Things - Discusses the known gods on the Discworld and their relationships with the gods of Earth. *Dwarfs - Explores the customs of the dwarfs and the similarities between dwarf culture and mining cultures on Earth; also certain Earthly religious cultures. *Elves - Considers the elven race and what is known about them both on Earth and the Disc. *The Nac Mac Feegle - Discusses the Feegle and their 'Pictsies' equivalents on Earth. *Trolls - Documents the customs and thoughts of the silicon based lifeform and our beliefs regarding them on Earth. *Other Significant Races - Covers a variety of other races including Vampires and Igors and their equivalents on Earth. *Beasties - Dragons, chimeras, the sphinx, etc, including the Luggage. *The Witches of Lancre - Explores similarities and contrasts between the Lancre witches and the Wise Women and witches of Britain and Ireland. *The Land of Lancre - The landscape legends, customs and beliefs in lancre set alongside their counterparts on earth (mainly British). *The Witches of the Chalk - Compares material in the Tiffany trilogy with beliefs and customs of Earth. *The Chalk - Explores the similar customs and way of life between Tiffany's home and the sheep-rearing areas of Southern England in past generations. *Heroes! - Deals with the parallels of Mazda/Prometheus, Carrot as the Lost Heir, and Cohen in relation to Alexander the Great, Tamurlaine, the aged Ulysses, and heroic defiance. *Lore, Legends and Truth - Concentrates on 'folklore' as recalled by inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork; includes sections on rat-charming, sinking islands, and wizardry. *More Customs, Nautical Lore and Military Matters - More urban traditions, also ghost ships and female soldiers. *Kids Stuff... You know, about 'Orrid Murder and Blood - Children's lore (e.g. Frighteners, and the Tooth Fairy); comparison of the Hogfather with father Christmas/Santa Claus. *Death - Well, death, obviously.
21106378	/m/05c4sgf	Homunculus	James Blaylock	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A dirigible with a dead pilot has been passing over Victorian London in a decaying orbit for some years, arousing the interest of the Royal Society, as well as scientist-explorer Langdon St. Ives and the evangelist/counterfeiter Shiloh. Shiloh is convinced that the dirigible carries his father, a tiny space alien, but withholds this knowledge from vivisectionist Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, who he is paying to reanimate Shiloh's dead mother. Narbondo and the evil millionaire Kelso Drake have their own interest in the alien; Drake possesses its spacecraft, which he uses for perverse purposes in one of his chain of stop-and-go brothels. St. Ives and his friends of the Trismegistus Club are more concerned with the inheritance of Jack Owlesby, a fine young fellow affianced to Dorothy, the beautiful daughter of toymaker/inventor William Keeble, who builds jolly boxes for space aliens, oxygenators, and gigantic emeralds. Jack's late father bequeathed him just such a gem, but also left behind dark knowledge developed in association with the evil Narbondo. St. Ives and the heroic tobacconist Theophilus Goodall suspect that Narbondo and his assistant, the pimply Willis Pule, are using this knowledge to raise the dead, possibly for nefarious purposes. When poor Bill Kraken steals what everyone assumes to be Owlesby's emerald in a fit of alien-induced delirium tremens, the ambitions of Shiloh, Narbondo, Drake, and Pule collide with the heroism of St Ives and Goodall and the scientific greed of Parsons of the Royal Academy as Hampstead Heath turns into a carnival of flying skulls, crumbling ghouls, crashing spaceships, and the sparking perversity of the dreadful Marseilles Pinkle.
21108410	/m/05c17np	An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter	César Aira	2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter simultaneously navigates the territories of history, philosophy, and fantasy to offer less a biography of German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858) than a surreal account of his journeys through Latin America. At the prompting of explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, Rugendas travels to Argentina, Chile, and Mexico to paint their landscapes with a sense of what Humboldt calls "physiognomic totality," an understanding of each work as a portrait of the environment as a whole. In Argentina, Rugendas' adventure into the pampas almost costs him his life when he is struck by lightning while riding his horse and then dragged through the pampas as his horse flees. This leaves him horribly disfigured. As Rugendas struggles to recover physically he now sees the landscape with an altered vision. Aira's themes include the persistence of the artist and the sustaining power of his will to continue painting.
21110037	/m/05b_mh_	The Worry Website	Jacqueline Wilson		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 There is also one story called Lisa's Worry by a twelve year old girl called Lauren Roberts. It is illustrated by Nick Sharratt. There are seven stories about the children in a class taught by Mr Speed at Mapleton Juniors. The last story however, is about a girl called Natasha who talks through a machine, she doesn't actually go to Mapleton Juniors, she goes to a special school for disabled children. The Worry Website, a replacement of boring old Circle Time (according to Holly) is a website that is created by Mr Speed and you can only access it by Mr Speed's classroom computer. The synopsis of each character is shown below.
21111369	/m/05b_c7l	Ghosts	César Aira	1990	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ghosts takes place in an unfinished luxury apartment complex in Buenos Aires that is shared by a family of squatters and a cadre of ghosts that haunt its floors. While most of the construction workers and family members react to the ghosts with detachment, the family's teenage daughter becomes fixated on the specters. As the story weaves away and back again towards the date set for the opening of the apartment complex, the daughter's obsession with the ghosts becomes more complex and nefarious, and ultimately threatens her life.
21111494	/m/05b_099	How I Became a Nun	César Aira	1993	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 How I Became A Nun chronicles a year in the fantastic internal and external life of an introverted six-year-old called César, who sees herself as a girl but is referred to by the rest of the world as a boy. In the beginning of the novel, her family moves to a bigger town Rosario, where her father takes her for a promised Ice-cream. The child is horrified at the taste of the Strawberry ice-cream, which disappoints the father. He insists that she finish her ice-cream and stop being difficult. After tasting the ice-cream himself, he realizes it is contaminated and in an altercation ends up killing the ice-cream vendor. The child gets cyanide poisoning and spend his/her time in the hospital, often suffering from delusions. Once out of the hospital, she learns that her father has been sent to eight years of prison. She joins school, three months late into the class and finds herself disconnected from a class which has learned to read. Thus she gets drawn into her own world of make-believe and imagination. Her only friends are her mother and a boy named Arturo Carrera. In the end, she is kidnapped by the wife of the ice-cream vendor who was killed by her father. The wife, in an act of vengeance, throws Cesar into a drum of Strawberry ice-cream, which seems to have become the girl's biggest horror. The story as told by young César captures a child's sense of wonder and naivete, and blurs the categories of what is imagined and what is real.
21111597	/m/05c19vx	Island	Jane Rogers	1999		 Nikki Black, a disturbed and hate-filled young woman intent on punishing the mother who abandoned her at birth goes to the island with only one aim in mind: revenge. Her plans are confounded by the discovery that she has a brother, Calum: a brother strangely possessed by their mother; a brother with a terrifyingly violent streak; a brother whose dangerous love and strange way of seeing the world transform Nikki's life. The characters Calum and Phyllis are loosely based upon Caliban and Prospero.
21113559	/m/05c55mn	The Secret Magdalene	Ki Longfellow	2005-03	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins in the voice of the Jewess Mariamne as a child living a privileged life in her widowed father Josephus’ home in Jerusalem. Also living with them is her father’s ward, Salome, an Egyptian, the daughter of a deceased fellow merchant. Both girls are overseen by a body servant named Tata. Mariamne has only just recovered from a life-threatening illness during which it seems she might have experienced altered states of consciousness. When she revives, she is gifted (or cursed) with unexpected voiced divination. Raised like sisters and indulged by a fond father with books and lessons usually only accorded boys, Mariamne and Salome possess a thirst for knowledge, both secular and magical, that is forbidden to females. Through their devoted personal slave, they also learn worldly experience far beyond anything Josephus, a member of the elite Jewish Sanhedrin, would approve of them knowing. When Mariamne unwittingly exposes her gift of prophesy in front of her father and his houseguest, a merchant named Ananias, Josephus immediately sends Mariamne to her room, but Ananias is intrigued. That moment of exposure changes not only the life of Mariamne, but the lives of all involved. Within months, Josephus, misunderstanding an exchange he sees between Salome and his houseguest, banishes Salome and the houseguest from his home, and then, only hours later, Tata and Mariamne. His daughter is to go into her uncle’s strict Jewish household, where there are no books. Unable to bear the loss of Salome and then of her books, Mariamne takes her life into her own hands, as well as that of her slave Tata. She follows Salome into true banishment. Mariamne is only eleven years old, Salome is twelve. With Mariamne's choice, her quest begins. For both protection and ease of travel, Mariamne and Salome are disguised as boys, not unusual for the times, especially for girls who sought learning. Dressed as males, they are given male names. Salome is Simon. Mariamne is John. As John and Simon, they are taken by Ananias and his friends to the “Wilderness,” a hidden settlement on the northwest edge of the Dead Sea. Here they meet a man who will become Mariamne's mentor, the young philosopher Seth of Damascus, also a seeker of divine knowledge. They also meet John the Baptist, hiding with other zealots in the wilds of the Judean deserts. In the "Wilderness," they see a world they could not have imagined in the home of a rich Jew of the Law: the complex struggle for Jewish freedom from Rome, and the even more complex struggle for the Temple where Roman-backed priests practice rites of animal sacrifice that enrage zealots. They also see there is no one brand of zealotry, but many, and none agree with the others, though all await a Messiah to lead them. Salome comes quickly to believe John the Baptist is that Messiah in the form of an actual King of the Jews. Mariamne does not agree. Thus begins the rift between Mariamne and Salome, one that only grows wider when Mariamne meets John's cousin, a Galilean called Yeshua. In time it seems wise to send the young prophets away from the hotbed that is Roman-occupied Israel. With Seth, they travel to Alexandria, Egypt where Mariamne and Salome live in the Great Library, becoming learned in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, and, under the tutelage of Philo of Alexandria, the Egyptian mysteries, specifically the ancient Passion of the man-god Osiris. After seven years, Mariamne reluctantly returns to the Wilderness, but Salome is eager to go back in order to see John of the River again. Having lived as males, they remain males. Through John of the River, Mariamne (now called John the Less) meets his cousin, Yeshua of Galilee and his twin brother, Jude the Sicarii. Immediately sensing they are somehow important to each other, John the Less shares with Yeshua the knowledge she learned during her studies in Egypt. Deeply confused and disturbed by the violent actions of all those around him, and their expectations of a “King” prophesied to save them, Yeshua retreats deeper in the true wilderness of the Dead Sea region to undergo his own revelation, returning to share it with his increasingly beloved friend, John the Less. Mariamne, who had undergone her own experience of gnosis years earlier as a child close to death, would keep such knowledge to herself, but Yeshua is filled with a messianic fervor to have all others know what he “knows” and what his beloved companion knows - that all are divine, and no one needs "saving" if only they would awaken from the sleep of illusion. Aware of where such enthusiasm might lead (it has led John of the River to a terrible death at the hands of Herod Antipas and Salome/Simon to an even more terrible survival), still Mariamne (now John the Beloved Disciple) follows Yeshua as he teaches and heals, spreading his message of love and forgiveness to his followers, whose numbers continue to grow as his reputation as Messiah grows. Eventually, Yeshua’s resolute conviction leads him to the cross, and Mariamne to a cave in what is now the south of France, but was then called the Gallia Narbonensis by its Roman conquerors, where, dying, she tells her story to Seth of Damascus, her lifelong friend, who writes it all down for her.
21116901	/m/05b_5p5	River Boy	Tim Bowler	1997-10-09	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Fifteen-year-old Jess, a dedicated swimmer, dotes on her grandfather, a fiercely independent and cantankerous artist. When he falls ill, he insists on returning to the isolated valley where he lived as a child to finish his last painting, a haunting landscape called 'River Boy'. Jess is desperately trying to cope with the knowledge that her grandfather is dying, and she does her best to help him finish the painting that is so important to him. While exploring the valley, Jess feels a strange presence and sees a mysterious boy in the river, now there, now gone. When she eventually meets the boy, he gives her some surprising advice that leads to the painting being finished against everyone's expectations. In return, he challenges her to join him in swimming down the river from the source to the sea, over forty miles. Jess refuses, saying she must stay with her grandfather, and watches him dive from the waterfall into the river. Soon after, hearing about her grandfather as a boy, she has a sudden revelation, and she swims after the boy to the mouth of the river, where he is waiting for her before finally disappearing. Jess then learns that her grandfather has died peacefully, leaving her his painting of the 'River Boy', which she now realizes is both a landscape and a portrait of the boy she met – a self-portrait.
21117313	/m/05c18dh	Karmabhoomi	Munshi Premchand		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Amarkant is an intelligent and idealistic, though weak, young man who has grown up hating his father's business and adherence to the formalities of Hindu religion. He is married to Sukhada who is beautiful and intelligent, but dominates him through her logical and down-to-earth approach to life. Denied love at home and stifled by his wife, Amarkant is attracted to their watchman's granddaughter, the modest and courteous Sakina. When his father refuses to accept Sakina, Amarkant leaves home to wander from village to village. Finally settling in a village of Untouchables, he teaches children and help villagers in their fight for relief against land tax. Initially unable to comprehend her husband's sympathy for the poor, Sukhada is ultimately drawn into the movement when she sees the police firing on a non-violent demonstration for acceptance of the Untouchables inside temples. She instantaneously gains recognition and acceptance as a leader of city's poor and downtrodden. Impelled by the desire to gain similar recognition, Amarkant deviates from the path of non-violence in favour of direct confrontation that leads to many casualties among the farmers. He finally realizes that the Gandhian path was the better one, and returns to its fold.
21119142	/m/05c23h5	L’adolescent de sal				 A young man from Mallorca analyzes the crisis of bourgeois consciousness through the sparse writing of prose and poems that express repression, the desire for freedom, and the discovery of love and pleasure. The boy struggles with his inner contradictions to eliminate old prejudices and transform society. Both the work and the act of writing are presented as acts of rebellion against the establishment&nbsp;— Catholicism, police oppression, society based on the traditional family, and the traditional road to riches. The young man discovers gradually the culture that he had been denied him due to a punitive religious education. A narrator presents the work as one in which the teenager expresses his point of view, emotions, fears and insights. The idea is that the reader advances through the text in a dialectical way to come to his or her own conclusions. Cheska, the protagonist’s girlfriend who studies theater, will be on the receiving end of the adolescent’s literary efforts.
21122210	/m/05c3s7j	Pyramid of Shadows	Mike Mearls			 Pyramid of Shadows presents an adventure wherein players find their way to a multi-levelled extradimensional pyramid built by the gods as a prison for the power-mad Tiefling wizard Karavakos. Karavakos' power - and personality - has been fractured into multiple parts in order to keep him bound within the prison. In a plot to obtain his freedom, Karavakos tricks players into hunting down and killing several splinter versions of himself within the pyramid, in order that Karavakos might regain the power they hold and break free of the prison. However with the aid of the undying head of Karavakos' one time Eladrin lover Vyrellis, the players gain the opportunity to breach Karavakos' sanctum and defeat the wizard, which dissolves the pyramid and frees the players.
21123869	/m/05b_db_	Separation of Power	Vince Flynn	2001-10-01		 The novel is set shortly after the events of The Third Option. CIA Director Thomas Stansfield has succumbed to his terminal cancer, leaving many in Washington confused as to why his dying wish was to have the Director of the Counter Terrorism Center Dr. Irene Kennedy to succeed him. Henry "Hank" Clark, the corrupt and ambitious Republican U.S. senator from the previous book, who treats everyone like pieces on a Chess board, still has his eyes on the Presidency. Fortunately for Clark almost all people, including Rapp, are not aware of his true self. President Xavier Hayes and Kennedy summon Mitch Rapp and ask him to assemble a team to infiltrate Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons production facility.
21125507	/m/05c0f50	The Hacker and the Ants	Rudy Rucker		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jerzy Rugby is trying to create truly intelligent robots. While his actual life crumbles, Rugby toils in his virtual office, testing the robots online. Then, something goes wrong and zillions of computer virus ants invade the net. Rugby is the man wanted for the crime. He's been set up to take a fall for a giant cyberconspiracy and he needs to figure out who — or what — is sabotaging the system in order to clear his name. Plunging deep into the virtual worlds of Antland of Fnoor to find some answers, Rugby confronts both electronic and all-too-real perils, facing death itself in a battle for his freedom.
21126673	/m/05bzv9r	King of the Trollhaunt Warrens	Logan Bonner	2008	{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Set in and around the fictional coastal town of Moonstair, King of the Trollhaunt Warrens sees players combatting the menace of Skalmad, a self-declared king of the trolls who is able to repeatedly return from death through use of a magical cauldron. Players journey to Skalmad's warren in the Trollhaunt, return to Moonstair to repel an attack by Skalmad's troll army, and finally travel to the faerie realm of the Feywild to destroy the cauldron.
21128964	/m/05c33l1	House to House	David Bellavia			 House to House is an autobiography about the actions of Staff Sergeant David Bellavia during the second Battle of Fallujah. The book was released in 2007 and goes in-depth to describe the horrible conditions of battle and the feelings that he experiences when fighting for his life in hand-to-hand combat. Throughout much of the book Staff Sergeant Bellavia is torn between his family, and the armed forces. SSG Bellavia also speaks of how the Top Brass seemed to have been detached from the reality of the battle on the ground.
21139785	/m/05c36qk	Der Blindensturz	Gert Hofmann	1985		 The action of the story is concerned with the six blind men who are hired to be painted by an unnamed painter (whom the reader will come to realize is Bruegel) and their confused journey to the painter's house. After becoming lost, nearly drowned, and attacked by a dog, the men finally arrive at the painter's house where they are fed and warmed (and nearly burned by the fire). The blind men are then led to a bridge and are told to walk across it in a line, holding on to each other and screaming and eventually falling into the stream, repeatedly, while the painter paints them from inside his open window.
21151605	/m/05bzql4	The Great Wheel	Robert Lawson	1957-08-19	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story's protagonist is Irish-born Conn Kilroy, who leaves Ireland for the United States in the 1890s at the urging of his Uncle Michael. Before he leaves, his aunt predicts that he will ride the biggest wheel in the world. He travels to the United States by steamship. While on board, he meets an attractive German girl named Trudy, who is traveling to Wisconsin. Upon his arrival, he begins working for his uncle in New York City, but he is soon hired to work for the company commissioned to create the huge Ferris wheel for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. He works hard with his newfound friend Martin Brennan to build it. After the giant wheel is installed at the exposition, Conn fulfills his aunt's prophecy by riding on it. His uncle would like him to help build a bridge, but Conn refuses and stays. He takes a job as a guard at the fair, hoping that someday Trudy will visit the fair. She does visit, and the two reunite, eventually marrying and moving to Wisconsin.
21153139	/m/05b_tqt	Fabulous Histories				 Fabulous Histories tells the story of two families -- one robin and one human -- who learn to live together congenially. Most importantly, the children and the baby robins learn to adopt virtue and to shun vice. For Trimmer, practicing kindness to animals as a child would hopefully lead one to "universal benevolence" as an adult. According to Samuel Pickering, Jr., a scholar of eighteenth-century children's literature, “in its depiction of eighteenth-century attitudes toward animals, Mrs. Trimmer’s Fabulous Histories was the most representative children’s book of the period."
21153195	/m/05c0d_5	No One Thinks Of Greenland	John Griesemer	2003	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The book is set after the Korean War. The novel follows the misadventures of the character Rudy Spruance who has been mistaken for another soldier and inadvertently assigned to Greenland.
21155223	/m/05c2s0t	In Your Dreams				 Paul Carpenter is the protagonist of the book. The book is summarized in the next book in the series Earth, Air, Fire, and Custard where Paul tells his uncle about what happened to him. So Paul told him all about it: how he'd got a job as a junior clerk with a firm called J. W. Wells & Co in the City, without knowing what it was they actually did; how it'd come as rather a shock to him when he found out that they were one of the top six firms of family and commercial magicians in the UK, specialising in the entertainment and media, mining and mineral resources, construction, dispute resolution, applied sorcery and pest-control sectors; how he'd almost immediately tried to resign, and how he'd found out a little while later that the reason why they wouldn't let him was that his parents had financed their early retirement to Florida by selling him to the partners of JWW, who wanted him because the knack of doing magic ran in his family to such an extent that it was inevitable that he'd have it too; how he'd briefly found true love with Sophie, the other junior clerk, shortly before she was abducted by Contessa Judy di Castel Bianco, the firm's entertainments and PR partner and hereditary Queen of the Fey, who permanently erased Sophie's feelings for Paul from her mind; how he'd learned scrying for mineral deposits from Mr Tanner, who was half-goblin on his mother's side, and heroism and dragonslaying from Ricky Wurmtoter, the pest-control partner, and a bit of applied sorcery from the younger Mr Wells (before the elder Mr Wells turned him into a photocopier); and how he'd just started learning spatio-temporal displacement theory with Theodorus Van Spee, former professor of classical witchcraft at the University of Leiden and inventor of the portable folding parking-space; oh, and how he'd died, twice (only the second time was an accident) and been put on deposit for a while in the firm's account at the Bank of the Dead.
21156477	/m/05c2v8_	Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones	Brandon Sanderson		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones is the second novel in the Alcatraz series. Sanderson continues the series as Alcatraz goes to the Library of Alexandria and tries to rescue his Dad and Grandpa from the soul stealing library curators. Once he arrives he is immediately separated from the rest of the group consisting of Bastille and her mother Draulin, Alcatraz's uncle Kazan, and Alcatraz's cousin Australia. Alcatraz is travelling through the library alone and he is often pestered by the curators who ask him to take a book at the cost of his soul. The curators speak long forgotten languages which he can understand because of his Translator's Lenses. At one point Alcatraz finds Bastille caught in a net, and he breaks the ropes that bind her. After Bastille and Alcatraz continue to venture Kazan finds them by utilizing his talent of getting lost. He finds them because they are both abstractly lost. Soon after the three travel the library with Kazan's talent they activate another trip wire which encloses them in a hardened goo. Alcatraz escapes by biting through it, and his friends follow in his suit. Along the way he finds the tomb of Alcatraz the first who was the first wielder of the breaking talent. His tomb does not age because he broke time. At the tomb he also finds a note which informs him that his talent is more of a curse than a blessing. After activating yet a third trip wire Bastille and Alcatraz fall into a pit. After a lengthy (and awkward) discussion about responsibility, they escape using Windstormer's Lenses and proceed to fight the Scrivener's Bones—a sect of Dark Oculators. They defeat him by tricking him into checking out a book, then the curators take his soul. Later, they find Grandpa Smedry crying over a note. It is revealed that indeed, Attica Smedry (Alcatraz's father) has sold his soul for all the knowledge in the world. But, in claiming a note written before he was turned into a curator, Alcatraz learns of a way to turn him back.
21162721	/m/05b_dy6	The White Tiger		1987	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Lu Hong, a policeman in Beijing finds himself in trouble after the death in strange circumstances of his mentor, Sun Sheng. Sheng was a friend of Hong's parents, and originally met them during the Long March with Mao Zedong from 1935 to 1948. Hong suspects that something is hidden behind his mentor's sudden death. He begins to look for the true story of what happened forty years ago, when his parents, Sheng and the Three Tigers were in the city of Yan'an with Mao Zedong. However, the silence of people who know, and subsequent deaths, impede his investigation.
21164857	/m/05c41d1	Hell's Horizon	Darren Shan			 The story begins with Al Jeery, an African American soldier, going on a fishing trip with his best friend Bill Casey. He soon returned to the city and went to work as a soldier serving under the Troops, the personal guards of an extremely powerful man known as 'the Cardinal'. As soon as he returned, he was summoned by the latter, who asked him to investigate a weird murder case that occurred in the Skylight Hotel. Al became motivated to be involved as soon as he learnt that his girlfriend, Nicola Hornyak, was the victim of the murder and was brutally treated. As Al proceed with his investigations, he uncovered the truth behind his past as he slowly drifted into the world of madness.
21168728	/m/05b_8wz	O Presidente Negro	Monteiro Lobato		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Most of the action of the book takes place in the United States in 2228. In this world, racial intermingling is prohibited so that blacks and whites remain genetically pure. During the 2228 presidential election, the white male incumbent president, Kerlog, runs against a white feminist named Evelyn Astor. The black leader James Roy Wilde (Jim Roy) postpones his support for either candidate until one hour before the election, when he declares that he is a candidate. He wins in the 30-minute electronic voting, becoming the United States' 88th and first black president. However, the American whites plot to sterilize all blacks. Roy is found dead in his office, and then Kerlog wins in a re-election.
21174603	/m/05c2368	Paint It Black: A Novel	Janet Fitch	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 From the inside cover: Josie Tyrell, art model, teen runaway, and denizen of LA's rock scene, finds a chance at real love with art student Michael Faraday. A Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist, Michael introduces Josie to a world of sophistication she had never dreamed existed and to his spiritual quest for the beauty that shines through everyday experience. But when she receives a call from the Los Angeles County coroner, asking her to identify her lover's dead body, her bright dreams all turn to black. "What happens to a dream when the dreamer is gone?" This is the question Josie asks as she searches for the key to understanding Michael's death. And as she struggles to hold on to the true world he shared with her, she is both repelled by and attracted to Michael's pianist mother, Meredith, who holds Josie responsible for her son's torment. Joined by their grief, the two women are soon drawn into a twisted relationship that reflects equal parts distrust and blind need. Passionate, wounded, and fiercely alive, Josie Tyrell walks the brink of her own destruction as she fights to discover what is left of the brilliant vision of the future she and Michael once nurtured together. When the luxurious prose and fever-pitch intensity that are her hallmarks, Janet Fitch has written a spellbinding new novel about love, betrayal, and the possibility of transcendence.
21182118	/m/05c5x2h	Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations		2008-04-15		 In Do Hard Things, the Harris brothers attempt to "explode the myth of adolescence," and show that prior to the 20th century, a person was an adult or a child. The book challenges teenagers to go beyond their comfort zone, and, in essence, "do hard things." The foreword was contributed by Chuck Norris.
21182170	/m/05c388s	Fifth Planet		1963	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Another star is due to pass close to the sun, close enough for conventional spacecraft to reach it. The first planets observed are four gas-giants, but then an inner 'Fifth Planet' is found. It shows signs of life, and rival Russian and US expeditions are launched to visit it. (The world balance as it existed in 1963 is assumed to be still in place.)
21182202	/m/05c2l0g	Ossian's Ride		1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the 1970 of this story, Eire has become an authoritarian police state, made somewhat acceptable to the population by the vast wealth flowing from a secret and forbidden science zone occupying a large area of the South-West. Here is based the mysterious 'Industrial Corporation of Éire' which has produced a range of new technologies. Its enigmatic founders are not Irish: they settled there and resist all attempts to find out who they are. A young British scientist agrees to be sent as a spy to find out just what is going on. Although labelled as Science Fiction by the publisher, the bulk of the novel owes more to the thriller style of the John Buchan tradition, as the Cambridge hero battles across wild Irish landscapes fighting a series of murderous thugs and secret policemen. The science fiction denouement is confined almost to the last chapter and foreshadows the theme of Hoyle's later A for Andromeda, though in a far more cursory manner. Also of note is the way the young hero seems to come to accept the notion of an authoritarian society ruled by a few self-appointed "supermen". The link with the legendary Irish hero Ossian is peripheral to the plot and is explained near the end.
21183148	/m/05bzky6	The War Between the Tates	Alison Lurie	1974	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel takes place in 1969. Erica and Brian Tate are a seemingly happy and successful academic couple. At least, Brian Tate is successful: he is the holder of the endowed Sayles Chair of Political Science at Corinth University in upstate New York. As he reaches his mid-40s, he begins to undergo a mid-life crisis. He is an admirer and scholar of the work of George Kennan, the diplomat who devised President Harry Truman's policy of containment of the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War. Brian is depressed, however, because Kennan's reputation and influence are in abeyance, and he also realizes that his own ambition of writing a world-altering book will probably never be realized, and that in consequence, he will probably never be called to serve in Washington, D.C. His wife Erica, 40, is also not quite content with her lot. She has a degree from Radcliffe and has published some children’s books but has basically given up any ambition she may have had for a life of full-time motherhood and giving and attending faculty dinners. Now, as their children approach adolescence, Brian and Erica realize they can't stand their own offspring &mdash; their music, their rudeness, and their selfishness. Meanwhile, Brian Tate has been pursued and has gotten involved with a young grad student, Wendy, who to his gratification, admires him greatly. When Erica finds out, Brian breaks off with Wendy, but he soon resumes the affair and impregnates her. The despairing Wendy now considers suicide; an abortion (New York State legalized abortion in 1970, but it had become easier to get one immediately prior to this); or whether to raise the baby, the carrier of precious Tate genes, which, she feels, should be nurtured for the sake of humanity. She has the abortion, but then gets pregnant again and Brian is terrified he will have to marry her, but fortunately she goes off to live in a commune in California with a younger boyfriend. Erica’s situation is paralleled by that of her friend Danielle Zimmern&mdash;recently divorced from her husband Leonard, Danielle has become involved with Women’s Liberation. Erica embarks on an unsatisfying affair with an old friend&mdash;Zed, whom she once considered too homely to take seriously. He had pursued her when they were undergraduates at Harvard and now he runs a counter-cultural bookstore in the town. Zed invites her to participate in an LSD trip. Brian, meanwhile, ends up helping a group of young women&mdash;he is attracted in particular to one, the beautiful young student Jenny&mdash;who want to protest the sexist attitudes of Professor Dibble, a highly conservative colleague in Brian's Department. Brian ends up futilely attempting to support both sides in this battle, to his own discomfiture. We learn that in the war between men and women, as in other wars, when the two sides are extremely polarized, there can be no middle ground.
21188512	/m/03fm37	The Lost World	Michael Crichton	1995-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Six years after the disaster at Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm &mdash; who is revealed to have actually survived the events of the previous novel &mdash; teams up with wealthy paleontologist Richard Levine after learning about Site B, the secret "production facility" where the park's dinosaurs were hatched and grown; the site is located on Isla Sorna, an island adjacent to Isla Nublar. When Levine disappears, Malcolm fears that he might have discovered Site B's exact location and went there without his knowledge. Doc Thorne and Eddie Carr, who provided Levine with equipment, and R.B. "Arby" Benton and Kelly Curtis, two schoolchildren who assisted Levine, deduce the island's location. The adults organize a rescue operation and utilize an advanced fleet of field vehicles. Stowed away with them as they leave are Arby and Kelly, who plan to rescue Levine as well. At the same time, geneticist Lewis Dodgson and his underlings, Howard King and George Baselton, head to Isla Sorna in the hopes of stealing dinosaur eggs for Biosyn, the rival company of the now bankrupt InGen. Sarah Harding, a wildlife observer who had a previous relationship with Malcolm, accompanies them. However, Dodgson throws her off their boat and leaves her for dead. Once the team comes across the nest of a Tyranosaurus Rex, Dodgson forces King and Baselton to proceed with the mission. When trying to steal some eggs, King steps on a baby T-Rex's leg and breaks it. Baselton is too scared to enter the nest, causing Dodgson to grab one himself. In the process, the black box he has brought along is separated from its power supply and stops emitting the sound designed to keep the parent T-Rexes at bay. The T-Rexes eat Baselton and destroy Dodgson's SUV. Dodgson survives while King is eventually killed by Velociraptors. Coming across the baby T-Rex, Eddie brings it back to the base camp, where Malcolm and Sarah fix its broken leg. The absence of the infant is noted by its parents, who track their offspring to the camp by smell. Malcolm and Sarah are rescued by Thorne, but Malcolm's leg is injured, and he ends up spending most of the remainder of the story immobile and high on morphine. Meanwhile, the other team members are attacked by Velociraptors. Eddie is killed, but Arby manages to lock himself in a nearby cage. He is quickly abducted by the raptors, who bring him to their lair. Thorne and Levine rescue Arby, and the survivors take shelter in an abandoned InGen gas station. There, they encounter two Carnotaurus, but manage to scare them away with flashlights. Once daylight comes, Sarah attempts to retrieve the team's Ford Explorer. After evading a group of aggressive Pachycephalosaurus, she encounters and dispatches Dodgson. Dodgson is then taken by one of Tyrannosaurs to their nesting site, where his leg is broken and he is left for the babies to eat. After Sarah fails to reach the helicopter in time, Kelly locates an abandoned building with a functional boat inside. After making a quick getaway from a group of Velociraptors, the survivors are able to reach the boat and escape the island. While on the boat, Malcolm and Harding tell Levine, who was bitten by one of the animals, that some of the carnivores, including the Velociraptors and the Procompsognathus, are infected with prions due to InGen's decision to feed them contaminated sheep, and any animal bitten by them will be infected also. This means that all the dinosaurs on the island are fated to die due to the uncontrolled spread of the prions. Levine panics about the possibility of being infected with prions, but Malcolm states it shouldn't be harmful to humans. With that said, Thorne finally declares that is time for all of them to go home. As with the first book, the main conflicts the characters must face is fending off attacks from Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor and Procompsognathus. Throughout this second novel, Malcolm and Levine talk about various evolutionary and extinction theories, as well as the nature of modern science and the homogenizing and destructive nature of humanity. A particularly strong theme is the ethological and sociobiological concept of learned social behavior in animals (for example, Crichton's velociraptors, deprived of being reared among natural raptors with developed social pack behavior, instead show a tendency towards violent, antisocial behavior even amongst themselves). The book also discusses the role of prions in brain diseases, which has been at the root of concerns over Mad Cow Disease.
21194737	/m/05b_k27	Code to Zero	Ken Follett	2001-11-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 In America, 1958 a man wakes up in a men's room with no recollection of his past. His clothing, associates and surroundings suggest to him that he is an alcoholic derelict, however his behaviour, morals and instinct lead him to investigate and research his past. He establishes (by the simple method of going into a library and pulling books off shelves until he finds one that he understands,) that he is in fact Dr Lucas - a rocket scientist, and well known in his field. He further establishes that he is directly responsible for the design of a rocket due to be launched by America in an attempt to match the Soviet Sputnik, and bolster America's entry into what would become the Space Race. Several people from his past both help and hinder his progress, and the implication is made that he himself was a Soviet spy, and had his memory erased instead of being killed - although this theory is made suspect when his best friend reveals that he was once a soviet spy and subsequently turned (but not entirely forgiven) by Lucas. The actual spies (and saboteur) are revealed to be both his wife and another close friend, who plan on using the rocket's self-destruct mechanism to destroy the rocket as it is launched, either removing America from the Space Race, or putting their progress back so far that the Soviets will be hard to catch. The plot is foiled with seconds to spare, and his wife apparently commits suicide rather than being caught by driving her car into the sea. The second saboteur is shot and killed in a gun battle prior to Lucas' wife's suicide.
21196005	/m/05c29pc	The Black Robe	Wilkie Collins	1881	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel"}	 As the story begins, Romayne and his friend, Major Hynd, are in Bologne to visit Romayne's aunt, who is dying. While there, he attends a card game, where he has an argument with an opponent, who challenges him to a duel. Romayne accidentally kills his opponent, and the screams of the man's brother after the death come to haunt Romayne for the rest of his life. Romayne returns to his Yorkshire home, called Vange Abbey. Even in his own home, the Frenchman's younger brother's awful cries follow him. He finally leaves for London, to visit his old friend Lord Loring, who is the patriarch of a well-heeled Catholic family. While there, he meets Stella Eyrecourt, who falls in love with him. A Catholic priest named Father Benwell, who serves as a spiritual leader for the Lorings, determines that he will convert Romayne to the church, employing the services of young priest, Arthur Penrose, to this end. This is all done in an attempt to bring Romayne's family home, Vange, back to the church, who owned it before Romayne's family. Romayne, who is still haunted by the duel, sends Major Hynd to enquire about the family of the man he killed in hopes of assisting them monetarily. Additionally, he confides in Penrose who becomes a true friend to Romayne, despite his presumed ulterior motives. Father Benwell employs various tactics to undermine Romayne's marriage to Stella, finally culminating in a bigamous marriage, after Romayne becomes convinced of his wife's untimely death. Eventually, Romayne is promoted to an ecclesiastical post in Paris. However, knowing that he is dying, Romayne finally decides to see Stella and his son. Father Benwell brings Romayne's lawyer to his deathbed, trting to confirm the validity of the will in an attempt to ensure the church inherits Vange. But as he dies, Romayne acknowledges he loves his wife and child, and has the will destroyed. This causes Vange—and the entire inheritance—to pass to his family, foiling Benwell's plans.
21197683	/m/05b_g1_	The Man with a Thousand Names				 The main character is Steven Masters. A spoiled 23-year-old who happens to be the only son of the world's richest man. At a party he (while drunk) states that he wishes to go on a proposed space flight to a distant life bearing planet called Mittend. Mittend is 30 light years from Earth and is the closest life bearing planet. When he is told that he doesn't qualify, he gets indignant and sets upon a campaign to join in the expedition. Using his father's money he is able to get passage. Six weeks later he arrives on the planet. It turns out to be very similar to Earth, with a breathable atmosphere. Upon landing he wanders off from the main group and meets the natives. The natives turn out to be naked and primitive but have a powerful group mind named "Mother". The natives, upon seeing Steven, chase after him and when they catch him and touch him, his mind gets traded into the body of a 38-year-old bar waiter back on earth. The bar waiter's mind gets transferred to Steven's body on the other planet. It turns out that the bar waiter used to work for Steven as a butler. He blamed him for a crime he didn't commit and got him fired. Immediately after the transfer, he goes into psychological shock and the bar is forced to call an ambulance. They sedate him and he has to spend a few days in the hospital. His story (of being mind swapped) gets out and combined with the fact the expedition has gone missing, he becomes a sensation. While in the hospital, Masters Senior (his father) comes to visit him. He leaves stating that the person there is not Steven. Upon leaving the hospital, he gets picked up by the bartender who drives him to work. He works the day.
21212763	/m/05c30h2	Green Lantern: Willworld				 This story tells how a young Hal Jordan mastered his power ring. The story is set on a world formed entirely by the imagination of other Green Lanterns.
21213282	/m/05b_h29	Innocent, Her Fancy and His Fact	Marie Corelli	1914		 Raised on the prosperous farm of Hugo Jocelyn, descendant of a French knight, Innocent has always believed herself to be Jocelyn's illegitimate daughter by his fiancee before her death. She is an idealistic woman, inspired by the romanticism of the medieval French literature preserved by her ancestor; indeed, she feels she knows "Sieur Amadis" personally. As an infant, Innocent was dumped at the farm during a violent storm, by a stranger who explained he had to keep going but feared endangering the child. He promised to return, but never did, instead sending money every six months. Jocelyn reveals this in a deathbed confession. After his death, Innocent receives a visit from her birth mother, Lady Blythe. A shallow and pretentious noblewoman, she explains that Innocent was the result of a fling she'd had with artist Pierce Armitage. He was probably the one who left her at the farm. Innocent departs for London, planning to earn her living by writing and "make a name" for herself, since she has none by birthright. She has one book already written; it's wildly successful, and she writes another. In the usual Corellian coincidences, Innocent's landlady had had a serious relationship with Pierce Armitage, and Lord Blythe had been his friend at school. Lady Blythe confesses all, then dies. In Italy, Lord Blythe discovers Armitage alive and tells him of Innocent; Armitage at once prepares to claim his daughter legally. However, Innocent has been lured into a romance with a modern-day Amadis Jocelyn, descendant of her "Sieur Amadis"' brother. She mistakes his flirtations and romantic gestures for real love, but he thinks of it as a mere fling. When he casts her out, Innocent is heartbroken, and returns to her farm to die.
21226088	/m/05c28c9	Modernizing Tradition				 Amidst the massive upheavals that followed World War I, there was a pronounced emphasis in both nations to return to an idealized past of order and stability. The key to such recovery, according to popular thinking, was by reconstructing traditional gender roles, which had been thrown out of balance during the war. Such a nostalgized gender order could not be restored, however, without discursive modifications to account for the significant changes in society since 1914. Instead, a renewed emphasis on traditional gender norms required the provision of a degree of seeming empowerment to women by granting them discursive access to modernity. These connections between women and the modern were carefully constructed in order to ensure that women's involvement with items of modernity, such as technological consumer goods, did not necessarily involve an assertion of female independence or liberation. Women's association with modernity went only so far as such links could reinforce women's traditional roles or highlight their continued subservience to and dependence on masculine guidance, expertise, and authority. Using advertisements and related ideological tools of consumerism, this study examines those modernized constructions of traditional gender roles. In a broader context, the book documents the wide-ranging similarities between French and German conceptions of gender. The transnational nature of this study illustrates that French and German notions of gender and modernity were strikingly congruent, and suggests the possibility of a broader gender ideology common to larger segments of Europe as a whole. These gendered ideals were consistent across not only geographical boundaries, but also chronological and political ones as well. The interwar decades were an era of rapid and stark changes politically, economically, and socially, but gender imagery in popular discourse remained virtually identical over the duration of these years, regardless of political regimes in power or prevailing economic circumstances. One of the important contributions of this study is to note this continuity and consistency of definitions of masculinity and femininity in the interwar era. The ability of traditional gender ideologies to hold firm among disparate elements of the population, people at all points on the political spectrum, and highly differentiated political regimes should form in future scholarly endeavor a vital point for analysis and questioning of cultural attitudes about gender. The fact that gender conceptions remained relatively the same over the course of these two decades—years when virtually every other aspect of society and culture seemed in a constant state of flux—attests to the extraordinarily powerful constancy of these gender constructions in French and German society.
21234989	/m/05c2r2b	Jud Süß				 The novel tells the story of a Jewish businessman, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, who, because of his exceptional talent for finance and politics, becomes the top advisor for the Duke of Württemberg. Surrounded by jealous and hateful enemies, Süß helps the Duke create a corrupt state that involves them both in immense wealth and power. In the meantime, Süß discovers he is the illegitimate son of a respected nobleman, but decides to continue living as a Jew, as he is proud of having achieved such a position despite this. In the meantime, the Duke finds out about Süß’s hidden daughter and when trying to rape her accidentally kills her. Süß is devastated. He plans and executes his revenge. After he encourages and then exposes the Duke's plan to overthrow the Parliament, thus infuriating the Duke to death, Süß realizes nothing will bring back his daughter, and apathetically turns himself over. He is found innocent, but under the pressure of the public he is finally sentenced to death by hanging. Despite it being his last chance for reprieve, he never reveals his noble origins nor converts to Christianity, and dies reciting the Shema Yisrael, the most important prayer in Judaism.
21238422	/m/05c3m4l	There's a Girl in My Hammerlock	Jerry Spinelli	1991		 Maisie Potter tries out for the wrestling team in her junior high to get close to a boy she likes, but she soon finds out that what she really loves is the sport of wrestling. Maisie initially wants to be on the cheerleading squad, but she did not make the cut during tryouts. She in infatuated with a boy at her school, Eric Delong, and will do anything to be near him. Because he tries out for the wrestling team, Maisie decides to try out too. She makes the team but discovers that wrestling is a lot harder than she initially thought. She wins some of her matches but most of her opponents forfeit because they don't think it's right for a girl to wrestle a boy. She has to decide if she should do things that other people want her to do or things that she truly wants to do and is good at.
21238800	/m/05c0c0l	Dead Man's Ransom	Edith Pargeter	1984	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The story opens on 7 February 1141, a few days after the Battle of Lincoln. Brother Cadfael is a Benedictine monk at Shrewsbury Abbey, of Welsh origins and formerly a widely travelled soldier and seaman. England is in the grip of civil war, as King Stephen and the Empress Maud are contending for the throne. Shrewsbury and the county of Shropshire are loyal to King Stephen and a contingent from the county has gone to fight for him at Lincoln. Hugh Beringar, Deputy Sheriff for the county, returns with the survivors, bringing news of a disastrous defeat. Stephen has been captured, and the future of England is uncertain. Gilbert Prestcote, Sheriff of Shropshire, has also been taken prisoner by Welshmen allied to Empress Maud under Madog ap Maredudd, Lord of Powys in Mid Wales, and Cadwaladr ap Gruffydd, the brother of Owain Gwynedd, ruler of Gwynedd in North Wales. A few days later, Sister Magdalen, a friend of Cadfael who effectively runs the Benedictine convent at Godric's Ford a few miles from Shrewsbury, reports that some of the Welshmen returning from Lincoln tried to raid the convent but were easily driven off, leaving as a prisoner a young man who had fallen into a stream and nearly drowned. He pretends to speak no English, but Brother Cadfael, sent to treat his wounds, quickly sees through the deception. Chagrined, the prisoner identifies himself as Elis ap Cynan, a distant cousin of Owain Gwynedd. Hugh Beringar dispatches Cadfael into Wales to negotiate an exchange of prisoners; Elis for Gilbert Prestcote. Cadfael proceeds to Tregeiriog in Gwynedd close to the border with England, the holding of Owain's retainer Tudur ap Rhys and where Owain's court is temporarily established. He meets Tudur's daughter Cristina, who was betrothed in infancy to Elis, and Eliud, Elis's foster-brother. He overhears Cristina and Eliud arguing bitterly, and concludes that Cristina is jealous of the friendship between Eliud and Elis, which is making Elis neglect Cristina. While Cadfael is away in Wales, Elis has met Gilbert Prestcote's daughter Melicent, and they have fallen in love. Melicent believes that her father will never consent to their marriage. A party under Einon ab Ithel, one of Owain's captains, brings Prestcote from Wales. Eliud accompanies them, as Einon's groom and as the planned hostage to remain in Shrewsbury while Elis returns to Wales. Prestcote is ill and wounded, and is taken to the infirmary at Shrewsbury Abbey. While Einon dines with Abbot Radulfus and Hugh Beringar, Elis tells Eliud of his love for Melicent and his intention to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Eliud protests, but Elis goes to Prestcote's room, only to be ejected from the ward by Brother Edmund, the Infirmarer. As Einon prepares to leave, Eliud asks Cadfael to go with him to recover Einon's cloak, which had been left behind in Prestcote's room. They find that Prestcote is dead, smothered in his sleep. Einon has been in company throughout his visit to the Abbey and thus has an alibi, but Eliud and other Welshmen of his party must remain as suspects, as must Elis. After Einon departs for Wales, Melicent accuses Elis of murdering her father to remove the obstacle to their marriage. As Elis protests his innocence, Cadfael belatedly recalls that an ornate gold pin which had fastened Einon ab Ithel's cloak was missing when Prestcote was found dead. It had presumably been stolen from Prestcote's chamber by the murderer. Elis does not have it, but remains under suspicion, and under Melicent's contempt. He and Eliud are allowed to share a cell in Shrewsbury Castle under their parole of honour not to leave the castle. Melicent later departs for Godric's Ford with Sister Magdalen, with a half-formed intention of joining the convent. Cadfael examines the body of Prestcote carefully and recovers richly-dyed woollen threads and even some gold thread, which came from whatever was used to smother him. Neither Elis's clothing nor any other cloth within the Abbey matches them. Suspicion meanwhile falls on Anion ap Griffri, a half-Welsh lay servant of the Abbey who was in the infirmary with a leg injury at the time of Prestcote's death. It is known that his half-brother had been hanged by Prestcote for his part in a fatal brawl, he was heard by a blind monk in the infirmary (who recognised the tapping of his crutch) to enter Prestcote's chamber and he has fled, presumably into Wales. Reports reach Hugh Beringar of raids by Empress Maud's allies into the northern part of the county, and he has to take most of his armed men to join forces with Owain Gwynedd and deal with them. Elis and Eliud warn him that Welshmen from Powys are likely to seek revenge for their earlier failure and raid Godric's Ford in his absence. Elis in particular is anxious for Melicent's safety. As Elis and Eliud fear, the men of Powys gather for a raid. Cadfael meanwhile wonders whether Einon ab Ithel innocently took with him the rich cloth with which Prestcote was smothered. With Abbot Radulfus's permission, he takes news of the threatened raid to Tregeiriog, where Owain Gwynedd, Einon and Hugh Beringar are expected. There, Cristina asks him for news of Elis and Eliud. He realises that his first impression was mistaken. Cristina and Eliud are in love with each other but Eliud had refused to speak to anyone of his love, out of loyalty to his foster-brother. When Owain arrives later, a local man named Griffri ap Llywarch asks Owain to acknowledge his illegitimate child, Anion ap Griffri, as his heir. He is wearing Einon's gold pin stolen from Prestcote's chamber. Einon arrives at the same time and accuses Griffri of theft. Anion admits taking the pin, and Owain is prepared to convict him of Prestcote's murder also. Cadfael intercedes, and establishes that Anion mistakenly thought the pin was Prestcote's, and took it to give to his father in compensation for his hanged half-brother, under the Welsh tradition of paying a "blood price" for a death. Anion swears that Prestcote was alive, though asleep, when he removed the pin. Cadfael testifies that Anion never possessed the sumptuous cloth which was the murder weapon and that another, fit man was heard to enter Prescote's chamber after Anion left it. Anion is declared a free man. At dawn, before Owain and Einon can properly examine the threads from the cloth used to smother Prestcote, Hugh Beringar arrives in haste, with news that the raiders from Powys are nearing Godric's Ford. He obtains fresh horses and prepares to pursue them. In the bustle, Cadfael catches sight of Einon ab Ithel's ornate saddlecloth and realises it was the murder weapon. Now knowing who the murderer is, he asks Owain Gwynedd whether Prestcote's murder must be atoned for by another death, pleading that atonement by penitence would be preferable. Owain agrees that mere revenge is pointless but is otherwise noncommittal, and Cadfael does not yet reveal the murderer's identity. The news of the raid also reaches Shrewsbury Castle. Elis overhears the messenger and, frantic with worry for Melicent, he breaks his parole, leaves the castle, and makes his way to Godric's Ford on foot. Hugh Beringar's inexperienced lieutenant, Alan Herbard, sets out to intercept the raiders. He takes Eliud with him, under sentence of death if Elis proves false. As the raiders prepare to attack the convent, Elis confronts them, telling them they are shameful to attack innocent holy women. A Welshman looses an arrow at him, but Eliud throws himself in front of Elis and is badly wounded. Elis's intervention has given time for Beringar and Herbard to arrive, and the raiders are routed and flee into Powys. As Cadfael treats Eliud's wound, Eliud confesses to the murder of Prestcote. He confirms what Cadfael already knew; that Eliud, frantic to delay the return of Elis to Wales to wed Cristina, went to Prestcote's chamber to recover Einon ab Ithel's cloak while almost everyone else in the Abbey was at dinner. He was carrying Einon's saddlecloth and on the spur of the moment, he smothered Prestcote with it, as Elis could not be exchanged for a dead man. He left the cloak behind, and later asked Cadfael to accompany him to the room as a charade, to ensure that the death was discovered before Elis could leave the Abbey. Melicent, already convinced by Elis's actions of his innocence, overhears the confession. Hugh Beringar has no option but to try Eliud for Prestcote's murder, and almost certainly hang him, when he is fit to be tried. Elis has also been wounded, and Hugh sends the Welshmen of Einon ab Ithel's party who are still at Shrewsbury to carry him back to Wales. Cadfael, Sister Magdalene, Elis and Melicent conspire to substitute an unconscious Eliud for Elis, thus removing Eliud from Hugh's jurisdiction. Although exasperated, Beringar does not press any charge against Elis and Melicent, who are properly betrothed. Eliud and Cristina are presumably reunited in Wales, where justice lies with Owain Gwynedd. Cadfael observes to Hugh Beringar that even God, when He intends mercy, needs tools to His hand.
21243200	/m/046vw4w	Dead Until Dark	Charlaine Harris	2001	{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 Sookie lives with her grandmother, Adele, and has an older brother, Jason. Early in the book, Sookie falls in love with a vampire, a Civil War veteran named Bill Compton. After first meeting Bill, Sookie saves him from some "drainers", people who steal blood from vampires. Bill returns the favor several days later when the drainers attack Sookie. Several murders occur in Bon Temps, and Bill becomes a suspect because many of the bodies have fang marks. Sookie's brother Jason is romantically linked to two of the victims, prompting the Bon Temps police to arrest him. Wanting to help her brother, Sookie asks Bill to take her to a vampire bar called Fangtasia, which is owned by Eric Northman, a vampire sheriff much older and more powerful than Bill. Eric realizes that Sookie's telepathy can be useful and commands Bill to direct Sookie to use her ability to determine the identity of the one embezzling from Fangtasia. Once Sookie identifies Long Shadow, who is Eric's partner and also a vampire, a confrontation ensues that nearly kills Sookie. Eric saves Sookie's life by staking Long Shadow when he attacks her. Meanwhile in Bon Temps, Adele is murdered within the family kitchen. Bill, concerned with Eric's power over him and Sookie, decides to improve his own position within the vampire hierarchy. He asks Bubba, a dim-witted vampire, who was "the man from Memphis", to protect Sookie while he is gone. Sookie discovers that her boss, Sam, is a shape-shifter when she lets a stray dog sleep on her bed and finds a naked Sam in the morning. While Bill is gone, Sookie discovers that the murderer is her brother's friend Rene Lenier. He almost kills her, but she fights back. Badly injured, Sookie wakes up in the hospital and finds the police by her side, telling her Rene has confessed to the killings. Bill appears later that night and tells Sookie that he has become his area's investigator, working under Eric.
21244442	/m/05c4gv0	Risk Assessment				 Coffins fall through the rift. A big alien blob is eating Cardiff one thing at a time. If that wasn't bad enough, it's time for the Torchwood performance review; something so frightening it even scares Captain Jack.
21244515	/m/05c2pxt	The Undertaker's Gift				 A murderous energy being, an assassination attempt and staffing problems pale in comparison to the latest threat. Torchwood's being sued.
21251990	/m/05c374n	The Accidental Time Machine	Joe Haldeman	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Matthew Fuller, a research assistant at MIT, accidentally invents a time machine while attempting to construct a calibrator to measure the relationships between gravity and light. Unfortunately, it will only travel forward, to the future, in ever-increasing intervals of 12x. On the fifth jump, which sends him forward a few months, he gets arrested for the perceived murder of a drug dealer who actually had a heart attack when he witnessed Matt disappear in his time machine. He is shortly bailed out by someone who can only be from the future and is left a note urging him to depart in the time machine quickly. He continues forward in time 15 years and upon re-materializing finds that Professor Marsh, his tutor, has taken credit for the time travel invention and subsequently won the Nobel Prize. Finding no place in this new time, Matt jumps once again into the future and finds himself in a 23rd century theocracy. Upon arriving, Matt meets a woman named Martha who is assigned to be his servant in the future MIT. This theocracy is dominated by religious fervour and. Matt is discovered as being uncircumcised (something that is mandatory in this new and strictly Christian-like society - and ironically, Matt who is an assimilated Jew did not undergo it). He must flee with into the future once again, accompanied by the loyal Martha. Matt and Martha arrive several thousand years in the future, just outside of California, in a society where all of humanity is wealthy and satisfied to a point of complete apathy. It is here that they encounter an artificial intelligence that controls Los Angeles, called La. La is curious about her own mortality, and having learned about Matt’s time machine from historical records, wishes to join him on a journey to the end of time (heat death of the universe) to discover if she can die. At this point, Matt and Martha begin to receive subliminal messages from a being referring to itself as Jesus, but appearing as an alien being. He warns them of La’s willingness to sacrifice their lives in pursuit of her goal, and advises them to stall for time to allow Jesus and his group to catch up. Matt and Martha, accompanied by La in a spacecraft, begin to travel further and further into the future, discovering radically altered futures and entirely new species of intelligent life, including androgynous evolutions of humanity and a race of intelligent bears. After a confrontation where they narrowly avoid being killed by La, they eventually they reach a time when they meet the people who have been sending them subliminal messages, and these beings send Matt and Martha back in time, while allowing La to continue jumping forward in time. The beings can specify either the exact time or the exact location to which Matt and Martha will be sent, but not both. Worried about the couple materializing in the middle of the ocean or inside of a mountain, they opt to be specific about location and send them to MIT. When they arrive, they find that it is the late 19th century and the main MIT campus has not yet been built. Having no other option, they live in this society, where Matt studies and teaches physics, aided significantly by his advanced knowledge both of physics and historical events. Matt and Marta have several children, and the end of the book reveals that Professor Marsh (Matt's MIT professor in the mid-21st century) is actually Matt's own grandchild.
21254884	/m/05c4221	Two Hundred Years Together	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	2002		 In it, Solzhenitsyn emphatically denies that Jews were responsible for the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. At the end of chapter nine, Solzhenitsyn denounces "the superstitious faith in the historical potency of conspiracies" that leads some to blame the Russian revolutions on the Jews and to ignore the "Russian failings that determined our sad historical decline." Solzhenitsyn criticizes the "scandalous" weakness and "unpardonable inaction" that prevented the Russian imperial state from adequately protecting the lives and property of its Jewish subjects. But he claims that the pogroms were in almost every case organized from "below" and not by the Russian state authorities. He criticizes the "vexing," "scandalous", and "distressing" restrictions on the civil liberties of Jewish subjects during the final decades of the Russian old regime. On that score, in chapter ten of the work he expresses his admiration for the efforts of Pyotr Stolypin (Prime Minister of Russia from 1906 until 1911) to eliminate all legal disabilities against Jews in Russia. In the spirit of his classic 1974 essay "Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations", Solzhenitsyn calls for the Russians and Russian Jews alike to take responsibility for the "renegades" in both communities who supported a totalitarian and terrorist regime after 1917. At the end of chapter 15, he writes that Jews must answer for the "revolutionary cutthroats" in their ranks just as Russians must repent "for the pogroms, for...merciless arsonist peasants, for...crazed revolutionary soldiers." It is not, he adds, a matter of answering "before other peoples, but to oneself, to one's consciousness, and before God." Solzhenitsyn also takes the anti-Communist White movement to task for condoning violence against Jews and thus undermining "what would have been the chief benefit of a White victory" in the Russian Civil War: "a reasonable evolution of the Russian state."
21257320	/m/05b_mgz	Dark Fire	Chris D'Lacey		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Part 1 Arthur, Liz and Lucy are traveling to meet Rupert Steiner, a former colleague of Arthur's, who has been visited by Gadzooks. They discover and translate the message Gadzooks left (from dragon tongue) - Scuffenbury, the name of an ancient barrow which, legend has it, contains the body of a dragon. Meanwhile, at Wayward Crescent, David arrives to ask Zanna for more information about Gwilanna, as he has been charged with seeking her out and destroying the dark fire she possesses - the inverted remains of Gwillan's fire tear. Instead of helping him, Zanna transports herself to Gwilanna, charging David with Alexa's care in her absence. Zanna finds herself on Farlowe Island, where Gwilanna is attempting to use ichor from Gawain's isoscele and the threat of handing the dark fire to the Ix to coerce the Fain into illumining her to a dragon. She also planned to sacrifice David to underline her threat, but she decides to use Zanna in his place. However, rather than summoning the spirit of the dragon Ghislaine, Gwilanna summons a Darkling, which mutates a flock of ravens into semi-Darklings before being destroyed by Grockle, under the supervision of David, who then takes the obsidian which contains the darkfire. David and Zanna return home to discover that their neighbor, Henry Bacon, has suffered a stroke and is in the hospital. David is reunited with Liz and Lucy, and receives a message from the dragon G'Oreal, who dismisses David's suggestion that the dark fire could be transmuted and used to reanimate Gwillan. David then learns about Scuffenbury, and suggests that Lucy travel there with Tam Farrell. He also reads an extra journal, and suggests she post it online in dragontongue, as a message to other daughters of Guinevere. David goes with Liz to visit Henry in hospital, and Henry dies during their visit. After Henry dies, Gwilanna, the sybil attends the funeral and decides to warn David that she will do anything to get her hands on the obsidian and the dark fire. Gwilanna attends the funeral in order to try and deal with David, but he refuses her and she leaves. At the reading of the will, the group meet Henry's sister Agatha, a powerful sibyl. They also discover that Henry has left Liz and Lucy £50,000; David his collection of Arctic memorabilia and Zanna his house. The will also asks that the Arctic memorabilia be left in place, implying that Henry expected David and Zanna to marry. After this, Agatha gifts Zanna with healing knowledge, and suggests that she make her peace with David. Zanna goes into town with Alexa and Gretel to open her shop, but on the way the group are attacked by the semi-Darkling flock and are rescued by Tam, who destroys them with the spirit Kailar. Zanna is injured, but uses her new healing knowledge to mend the wound. Tam talks to David about Rupert Steiner, who has approached him with a story about translations of dragontongue found on the Hella glacier expedition. Lucy informs David that Sophie emailed her, trying to contact him, and David leaves for Africa. Lucy then receives a phone call from an old friend, Melanie Cartwright, who has seen footage of a Pennykettle dragon - presumably Gadzooks - moving on the television, and is concerned over her own 'special' dragon, Glade. David arrives in Africa to find Sophie's wildlife sanctuary in flames, which Grockle extinguishes. Sophie is already dead, and Grace is preparing to cry her Fire Tear. However, the semi-Darkling which began the fire is still present, planning on inverting Grace's tear to create dark fire. Pieter, Sophie's fiancee, tries to kill it, but it kills him instead. David then distracts the Darkling with the dark fire he already possesses, captures it and sends it back to the Ix with a warning to leave the Pennykettle dragons be. Mutu, one of Sophie's colleagues, tells David that he saw a woman dancing in the flames. David then leaves Africa, taking with him Grace's petrified body, and her Fire Tear, caught by Groyne during the struggle. When he returns home, David is greeted by Zanna, asking why Alexa has grown wings. David informs her that Alexa is a new species - an angel, a bridge between dragons and mankind - and when the dragons are revealed, people everywhere will aspire to be like her. He also tells her that the people, as the bears have already done, will travel to Ki:mera, the Fain's home world. In the Dragon's Den, David gathers the dragons in an attempt to transmute the dark fire and return it to Gwillan. Gollygosh will extract the dark fire from the obsidian, Groyne will mix it with Grace's Fire Tear and some icefire to neutralize it, and G'reth will wish for Gwillan and Grace to be reanimated. However, while David explains what will happen, Gollygosh is momentarily corrupted by the dark fire, and releases it early. The Dark Fire then enters Liz and she is knocked out. While Zanna tends to her, David reanimates Grace with Alexa's help. He then sends Lucy with Tam to Scuffenbury - not noticing that, in the Dragon's Den, Gwillan is draining Grace's auma into himself. Part 2 Lucy and Tam travel to Scuffenbury. On the way, Lucy reads the article describing the last meeting of dragons, describing how eleven of the last twelve dragons shed almost all of their fire tears, then went into stasis, while the twelfth, Gawaine, ingested all eleven tears and planned to use them to defeat the Ix. Lucy and Tam arrive at their guesthouse, which is run by Hannah and Clive, and has one other guest, Mrs Gee. They climb Glissington Tor - the dragon's burial site - that evening, and that night Lucy has a nightmare about a cat, which she encountered earlier in the day, bringing her a semi-darkling. In the Crescent, Liz is comatose, but seems unharmed, when Gwillan suddenly wakes up. Melanie Cartwright comes to visit with her mother, Rachel, and dragon, Glade, who can sense moods. Gretel puts the humans to sleep so they don't get in the way, and Glade goes upstairs to try and check on Liz and the baby. She finds that Liz is all right, but the baby's body is in stasis, and its auma has been transferred to Gwillan. The Cartwrights leave, and David contacts G'Oreal, informing him that Grockle is destroying the semi-Darklings. Early next morning, Tam and Lucy climb Scuffenbury Hill to see the unicorn. While they are there, cairn stones - the remains of a monument on Glissington Tor - begin to rise from the earth and rebuild the cairn, revealing more chalk carvings - a unicorn's horn. Mrs Gee, a sibyl, has rebuilt the cairn to try and wake the unicorn and the dragon, but Hannah, who claims to know all the Tor's secrets, warns her that this legend is false, and waking the dragon requires a red-haired girl, touched by the spirit of a dragon. She also explains that the dragon in stasis is Gawaine, who came to Scuffenbury seeking the unicorn Teramelle's healing to help her give birth, and offers to help Mrs Gee claim the dragon in return for one of its scales. Gwendolen, left in the hotel to watch for the mysterious cat, is shocked to discover that not only is the cat real, it can do magic, and communicate. It tells her it is truly a girl called Bella, who was turned into a cat by Mrs Gee. The TV news is showing pictures of dragons being freed all over the world, and Hannah tells Lucy that she can wake the dragon if she touches it and sings - and that there is a tunnel under the cairn which will let Lucy touch the dragon. At Wayward Crescent, Zanna is puzzled by e-mails Lucy is receiving, which David tells her are from other daughters of Guinevere. He also gives her Tam's article, telling her that Gawaine, the dragon in Scuffenbury and the one chosen to fight the Ix, was Gawain's mother, and her plan to destroy the Ix was to draw the Ix to her, then sacrifice herself in the Fire Eternal - a plan which the new Wearle has adopted. Tam and Lucy travel through the tunnels to wake Gawaine, but as the dragon stirs, Hannah betrays them. Tam is trapped underground, and Lucy captured by Mrs Gee, but Bella helps her escape. In the chaos of the dragon's awakening, Mrs Gee, Hannah and Clive are all killed and the hotel collapses. Meanwhile, Melanie and Rachel Cartwright are attacked by the last surviving semi-Darkling, who injures both of them before taking Glade. Glade sends a distress signal to the Pennykettles, which is intercepted by Gwillan. Lucy calls David for help, and he sends Grockle. With his help, Lucy places some of her tears in Glissington cairn, although Bella tries to stop her. The tears reflect moonlight onto the unicorn's horn, bringing it to life, and it frees Gawaine. However, as Zanna discovers through an email Bella sent Lucy, Gawaine was betrayed and one of her children murdered by a sibyl disguised as a red-haired maiden, and when she sees Lucy, she attacks. Grockle fails to defend Lucy, but, as Lucy is Gawaine's kin, the flames do not harm her, and Gawine is distracted for long enough that David can arrive to help. Meanwhile, the last surviving semi-Darkling ingests Lucy's auma from the tears she left at Glissington Cairn. It uses the power in the tears to renew itself, and call the Ix towards it, and a full Darkling is born, with the ability to self-replicate, which it does until there are four Darklings. Realizing the danger, David gives Lucy the narwhal tusk talisman which he thinks is Groyne so that she can be transported home, not realizing that the tusk is in fact Gwillan, who has taken Groyne's abilities, and Lucy has only been moved across the valley. Gawaine and G'lant - the combined force of David and Grockle - begin to fight the Darklings. One invades Gawaine's mind before she destroys it, but G'lant restores her before permanent injury can occur. One then distracts G'lant while the remaining two attack Gawaine. One destroys her wing and poisons her blood, although it is near-fatally injured in the attempt, and falls to the ground near Lucy, who has been joined by Bella. As it attempts to attack the girls, Tam emerges from the ground and destroys it. Agatha Bacon arrives at Wayward Crescent, and Zanna leaves for Scuffenbury after entrusting her with Liz's care. She arrives near Gawaine, who is gravely injured, and begins trying to heal her with Teramelle's help. The unicorn warns her to hurry, as Scuffenbury is the site of a portal to the Fire Eternal, and the portal will soon open. Meanwhile, 'Agatha Bacon' is in fact Gwilanna, who wishes to deliver Liz's child. She refuses to listen when Arthur explains that Gwillan now possesses the child's auma. She uses a spell to trap Arthur in an armoir and, with the use of Gawain's iscoscele, draws the dark fire out of Liz's forehead. The dark fire turns Gawain's isoscele black, then proceeds to kill Gwilanna before traveling to Scuffenbury. Alexa, who was locked outside by Gwilanna,grows full wings and is then taken by G'Oreal of the New Wearle to Scuffenbury. At Scuffenbury, G'lant continues to fight the two remaining Darklings. Gwillan traps one, purifying its auma and turning it into a dragon, which is no longer any threat. At the sight of Gwillan, the Ix lend all their power to the remaining Darkling, and it overpowers G'lant, but Gawaine drags it into the Fire Eternal, sacrificing herself to save G'lant and fulfill the task the Old Wearle entrusted her with - eradicating the Ix. Teramelle, invaded by the dark fire, follows her. In the chaos which the dark fire causes, David, Zanna, Alexa and Gadzooks come together, and Gadzooks begins writing a word. David reassures Zanna that everything will be all right, but things will be different. Then David, Lucy, Tam, Zanna, Bella and the assembled dragons disappear. The book ends with the word Gadzooks was writing: "sometimes".
21259978	/m/05c0_98	Kirinyaga		1998		 Prologue: One Perfect Morning, With Jackals is set in Kenya. A son argues with his father whether it is possible to adopt European conveniences and customs and still be a true Kikuyu, the dominate native tribe. The father will be the mundumugu (witch doctor) for the new Kikuyu society on a terraformed planetoid named Kirinyaga. On the way to the spaceport, they detour to see a pair of jackals hiding behind a bush in an area that will become a nature preserve. In Kirinyaga, Koriba kills a newborn child because traditional beliefs dictate that it is a demon. He must then convince Maintenance, the people who maintain the environment and regulate the orbit of the planetoid Kirinyaga, not to interfere with their traditions, no matter how much they dislike them. For I Have Touched the Sky -- A girl finds a falcon with a broken wing and asks the mundumugu to heal it. "Once a bird has touched the sky," Koriba explains, "he can never be content to spend his days on the ground." She persists. In the course of doing chores in exchange for help treating the bird, she discovers Koriba’s computer and the knowledge it can share. This creates conflict with the role held by women in the traditional Kikuyu society. In Bwana, Koinnage, the paramount chief, hires a hunter to reduce the hyena population. The hunter’s idea of utopia differs radically from Koriba’s. The mundumugu must demonstrate that, although the Kikuyu are a farming society, they are not powerless against predators. In The Manamouki, a married couple immigrate to Kiringaya. Although they try to assimilate, they bring modern ideas that conflict with traditional Kikuyu culture. Can a utopia evolve? Song of a Dry River -- A grandmother refuses to be cared for in the traditional manner and sets up residence near the mundumugu, who lives apart from the village. The mundumugu threatens a drought unless she follows tradition. In The Lotus and the Spear, three young men have died in unusual circumstances. The mundumugu must find and overcome the cause. In A Little Knowledge, Koriba is training Ndemi as his successor. Eventually he begins to instruct him on the use of the computer. But, as in the Garden of Eden, knowledge is a dangerous thing. When the Old Gods Die -- "It is said that from the moment of birth, even of conception, every living thing has embarked upon an inevitable trajectory that culminates in its death... Yet this knowledge does not lessen the pain of death." For a man intent on maintaining the traditional ways, cultural change may not represent life but the death of the old gods. Epilogue: The Land of Nod -- Koriba returns to Kenya. There, the old ways don’t mesh well with modern city living. When he visits a cloned elephant that is to be killed in a few days' time, Koriba realizes that they are both anachronisms, and that their fates are intertwined.
21261895	/m/05c165c	Kirakira				 The protagonists of Kirakira, Shikanosuke, Kirari, Sarina and Chie are the members of the at the Christian school Ohbi Gakuen. The club was set to be closed in next March so they try to set up a band they call the to save the club. Their performance at the subsequent school festival succeeds with flying colors. That performance was put on the Internet where one of the live houses in Nagoya offered the band to put on a performance in Nagoya. They honestly want to disband after the performance at the school festival because they had to study for entrance exams or look for jobs, but they were convinced to go on a live tour by Yagihara, the vocalist of Star Generation. Shikanosuke's band d2b begins its live tour across Japan in an old van.
21263858	/m/05f59pc	Chalice	Robin McKinley	2008		 The book is written about events in the life of the Chalice, describing her actions and emotions. It begins with the Chalice, and the rest of the Circle, welcoming a new Master. The Chalice must be the first to greet the new Master, and give him a special cup to drink. The reason for a new Master is that the old one, and the former Chalice, died in a fire, which was caused by some of their own actions, a few months earlier. The now-dead Master was concerned only with his own pleasure and power, and neglected his duties to his demesne. Seven years before the story begins, the Master sent his brother away, to join the priests of Fire. The brother had been concerned about the demesne, and opposed the Master's ways. When the older brother died, the Grand Seneschal sent for the younger brother, asking that he become the new Master. The brother is welcomed by the Circle, and the people of the demesne, but has changed, physically and mentally, so that he can hardly interact with the people of the demesne at all. Mirasol, the Chalice, was a peasant, living by herself in a cottage within walking distance of the House of the demesne, but having nothing to do with its inhabitants, until, to everyone's surprise, she was chosen as Chalice. She raises bees, left to her by her dead parents. The bees are special. For a period of time, they produced so much honey that Mirasol couldn't take care of it. They are larger than normal bees, they seem to understand the Chalice, and protect her, and they produce special types of honey. The Chalice has had no training for the job. She has read every manuscript she can find that tells her what a Chalice must do, and how, but there is a lot she doesn't know. She thinks that the rest of the Circle, especially the Grand Seneschal, believes that she was a bad choice. She performs her job as best she can, operating from what she has read, and from her intuition, in deciding what vessel to use, and what to put in it, for each occasion. She mixes honey with the various drinks she offers to people involved in ceremonies of the Circle, or to pour out. This use of honey is new. It has never been used this way before. The Chalice (and most of the people of the demesne) very much want the new Master to succeed—they need a competent Master. He wants to succeed, himself, for the sake of the demesne. That is why he left the training for the priesthood, an unprecedented act, to return. He knows that the demesne needs a competent Master, one from the demesne itself. The Chalice learns of this, and also learns that the Master believes that she should continue as Chalice. Eventually, the Chalice learns that the Grand Seneschal, also, wants her, and the new Master, to succeed. The Overlord does not want this. Since the Master has no heir, he appoints one, who will do his bidding, rather than act for the good of the demesne, if he becomes Master. The Overlord arranges things so that the Master seems to have insulted him, and orders the Master, and the heir, to hold a single combat. The Chalice comes to realize, with the help of the Grand Seneschal, that, should the Master be killed in combat, the heir will not only succeed to the Mastership, but will marry her. She does not want either of these things to happen. During the seven days between the supposed insult and the time of the combat, the Chalice repairs as many of the earthlines of the demesne as possible. (She later learns that the Master has been helping her in this.) On the day of the combat, she returns to the House, to see that the Master will be forced to fight with swords, and has decided that his demesne would be better off if he was killed. But the Chalice's amazing bees have something to say about this. They blanket the combatants, kill the heir, and transform the Master back to near normalcy. Many of the bees die in the process. The Overlord departs in defeat. Some of the Circle resign their positions, because they haven't supported the Master. By the end of the book, it is clear that the Chalice and the Master will marry, and everyone live happily every after.
21269019	/m/05f9k2_	Nostalgia	Mircea Cărtărescu	1989		 The first section, which is itself the prologue describes the world of a pre-war Bucharest, as narrated by an aging, potentially dying, author while focusing on the improbable and explicitly impossible story of a homeless young man who serves as the stubborn center of progressively more absurd games of Russian Roulette which become progressively more peopled by the wealthy upper-crust of the capital. The second section brings alive a universe of children through a magical realist writing style that focuses upon a prepubescent messiah who has begun to lose his magical powers while working wonders for his young followers. Which has a famous scene that makes the reader feel voyeur into the world of Proust when the main character falls into "unbearable nostalgia" by virtue of a bright pink lighter. The third section is a bizarre exploration of gender boundaries and youthful angst narrated by a crestfallen young man who cross-dresses and goes down the road of suicide at the same time while overwhelmed by the memories of a highschool girlfriend. The final part of the main portion of this book is centered around Nana, a middle aged woman engaged in an affair with a college student, as well as her memories of being 12 years old, when she was visited by a mother and son pair of gigantic skeletons. The last portion of this novel focuses on a man who becomes obsessed with his car horn, the repercussions of which spiral far beyond his control. The last part of the central portion of the book
21270123	/m/05f61zb	Poor Miss Finch	Wilkie Collins	1872	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Twenty-one-year-old Lucilla Finch, the independently wealthy daughter of the rector of Dimchurch, Sussex, has been blind since infancy. Shortly after the narrator, Madame Pratolungo, arrives to serve as her paid companion, Lucilla falls in love with Oscar Dubourg, her shy and reclusive neighbour, also wealthy, who devotes himself to craftsmanship in precious metals. After being attacked and knocked unconscious by robbers, Oscar is nursed by Lucilla and falls in love with her, and the couple become engaged. Their plans are jeopardized by Oscar's epilepsy, a result of the blow to his head. The only effective treatment, a silver compound, has the side-effect of turning his skin a permanent, dark blue-grey. Despite her blindness, Lucilla suffers a violent phobia of dark colours, including dark-complexioned people, and family and friends conceal Oscar's condition from her. Meanwhile, Oscar's twin brother, Nugent, returns from America, where he has dissipated his fortune pursuing a career as a painter. Oscar is devoted to his brother, who is as outgoing, confident and charming as Oscar is diffident and awkward. Knowing of Lucilla's blindness, Nugent has arranged for her to be examined by a famous German oculist, Herr Grosse. Herr Grosse and an English oculist each examine Lucilla but disagree on her prognosis. Lucilla elects to be operated on by Herr Grosse, who believes he can cure her. After the operation, but before the bandages are taken off, Madame Pratolungo pressures Oscar into telling Lucilla of his disfigurement, but his nerve fails and, instead, he tells her it is Nugent who has been disfigured. Nugent is secretly infatuated with Lucilla and now manipulates her into believing that he is Oscar. As Lucilla gradually regains her sight, Herr Grosse forbids family and friends from undeceiving her, since the shock might imperil her recovery. Oscar goes abroad, resigning his fiancee to his brother in despair. Madame Pratolungo intervenes decisively with Nugent, appealing to his conscience and threatening him with exposure if he continues with his plan to marry Lucilla under Oscar's name. He promises to go abroad to find his brother and return him home. Nugent soon returns to England and tracks Lucilla to the seaside, where, on Herr Grosse's orders, she is staying with her aunt, away from her immediate family. He pressures her to marry as soon as possible, without her family's knowledge, and works to poison her trust in Madame Pratolungo, who is away in Marseilles attending to her wayward father. Detecting but not understanding the change in her supposed fiance, Lucilla becomes distraught, over-strains her eyes and begins to lose her vision. In the novel's denouement, Madame Pratolungo locates Oscar with the help of a French detective. His experiences have revealed an unexpected strength of character, and she conceives a new respect for him. The two of them race home to England to stop the marriage while there is still time. Held virtually prisoner at a Debourg cousin's house, Lucilla is again totally blind. With the help of a kindly servant, she escapes to meet them, immediately recognizes the true Oscar, and is told the full story by Madame Pratolungo. A penitent Nugent returns to America, where he later dies on a polar expedition. Lucilla and Oscar settle in Dimchurch to raise a family, with Madame Pratolungo as her companion. Perfectly content in her blindness, she refuses Herr Grosse's offers to attempt another operation.
21276818	/m/05f733s	Galactic Odyssey	Keith Laumer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Down on his luck college dropout Billy Danger shelters from a sleet storm in what he thinks is a corn silo, but which turns out to be a spaceship containing a party of upper-class hunters from the planet Zeridajh, from half-way across the Milky Way. They take him on as a gun-bearer, and after landing on a desert world, the two men are both killed, and Billy is left alone with the beautiful Princess Raire. Since only the men knew the password to re-enter the spaceship they are effectively marooned. They signal for help via a radio they find in an abandoned spaceship that has crashed into a nearby ravine. Unfortunately some none-too-friendly aliens answer the call and kidnap the princess, and then, clumsily, try to kill Billy. He survives, and is nursed back to health by a giant tabby cat who survived from the derelict spaceship. A more friendly bunch of aliens arrive and give him a ride to another planet, where he sets out in his quest to find the princess. He has many adventures across the galaxy, including being captured on a spying mission, where he is forced to ransom his friends' lives by giving up his right eye. Eventually he finds the princess, but she has been enslaved. He buys her freedom, and that of another human, but the human slave kidnaps the princess and he is forced into slavery himself. He eventually escapes, revenges himself on his enemies, and flys away with the princess.
21276942	/m/05f8st7	The Last Decathlon		1980-05		 Chad Norris becomes the track and field star for the United States and appears at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, U.S.S.R.. Every time Norris gets interviewed by the popular press, he becomes suspicious and tells tall tales. When the opening ceremonies come about, he disappears and blends with the locals. This young athlete turns out to be Dale Richardson; who had his father wrongfully accused of working for an American spy network and serving time at Lubyanka Prison. The athlete/spy and the young Russian peasant try to elude the authorities and eventually arrive at their destination.
21278165	/m/05fb2m_	Paula Spencer	Roddy Doyle	2006	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is a sequel to Doyle's 1996 book The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, describing the life of alcoholic and battered wife Paula Spencer. The second book picks up her life ten years after the death of her husband.
21278693	/m/05f334d	Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon	David Michaels		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 In the first novelization of the Ghost Recon franchise by Ubisoft/Tom Clancy, the Ghosts infiltrate China's eastern coast to seek and destroy the Spring Tiger Group. The small band of renegade Chinese military leaders is poised to execute Operation Pouncing Dragon, a plot to seize Taiwan and trigger a battle for dominance in the Pacific. Led by Captain Scott Mitchell, the Ghosts wage war from the Southern Philippines, Northwest Waziristan, and Xiamen, China, coping with the impact of unforeseen tragedy, remembering lessons-learned, and treasuring camaraderie. But during Operation War Wrath in Xiamen, China, a decade-old tragedy resurfaces endangering the mission and the team. The Spring Tiger Group is aided by an old nemesis and for Mitchell; this war gets very personal.
21280863	/m/05f3sk2	Da Tang You Xia Zhuan	Liang Yusheng	1963-01-01	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The story is set in the Tianbao era of the Tang Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong. The emperor appoints the incompetent Yang Guozhong as chancellor out of nepotism because Yang's cousin, Yang Yuhuan, is the emperor's favourite concubine. The Tang government gradually sinks into corruption under Yang Guozhong's ineffective leadership and Yang's supporters dominate the political arena. The power hungry barbarian An Lushan wins the emperor's trust through flattery and the emperor promotes him to the rank of jiedushi of Fanyang. An Lushan wields great military power in his hands and secretly builds up his forces in preparation for a rebellion. In the jianghu, the outlaw leaders Dou Lingkan and Wang Botong compete fiercely with each other for the position of chief of the wulin (martial artists' community). Dou Lingkan and his brothers have the support of Duan Guizhang, a renowned swordsman who is also Dou's brother-in-law. On the other hand, Wang Botong cooperates with An Lushan to achieve his goal, while recruiting several pugilists to serve him and sending his children to be tutored by martial arts experts. Duan Guizhang maintains a close friendship with a former bureaucrat called Shi Yiru. Their wives give birth to a boy called Duan Keye and a girl named Shi Ruomei respectively. An Lushan sends his men to bring Duan Guizhang to meet him but Duan was not in then, so Shi Yiru went in place of him. Shi Yiru is held hostage in An Lushan's residence and Duan Guizhang and Dou Lingkan's godson Tie Mole go to rescue him. They fail and Shi Yiru dies while Duan Guizhang is severely wounded. They are saved from An Lushan's men by Nan Jiyun and Huangfu Song. Kongkong'er, one of Wang Botong's lackeys, shows up and steals the baby Duan Keye, in order to force Duan Guizhang not to side with Dou Lingkan. Dou Lingkan is later slain by Wang Botong's daughter Wang Yanyu in a fight and loses his title of chief of the wulin. Tie Mole escapes amidst the chaos with Nan Jiyun's help and vows to avenge his godfather. Duan Guizhang sends Tie Mole to learn martial arts from a reclusive master. Seven years later when Tie Mole has achieved a certain level of prowess in his skills, he returns to civilisation, only to find himself stranded in the chaotic scene of the An Shi Rebellion. Tie Mole has a series of adventures, including undermining An Lushan's rebel forces by capturing Wang Botong's stronghold and exposing the truth behind a 20-year old mystery and clearing Huangfu Song's name. Tie Mole finds himself entangled in a love triangle with Wang Yanyu and another maiden called Han Zhifen. He saves the emperor and flees with the imperial forces after the capital cities Luoyang and Chang'an fell to An Lushan's rebel forces. He is also involved in the historical incident at Mawei courier station, when discontented soldiers killed Yang Guozhong and demanded that Emperor Xuanzong put Yang Yuhuan to death. The Battle of Suiyang is also featured in the novel in the later chapters and many heroes sacrifice themselves in the battle. Tie Mole, Han Zhifen and others continue their heroic legacy by recruiting heroes to help in suppressing the rebellion.
21284829	/m/05f8q9c	Shroud				 Axel Vander, famous man of letters and recently widowed, travels to Turin to meet a young woman called Cass Cleave. Cleave is a literary researcher and she has unearthed two secrets about Vander's early years in Antwerp, the first being that in the years prior to World War Two Vander contributed some anti-Semitic articles to a right-wing newspaper, and secondly, that he is not Axel Vander at all. He is Vander's childhood friend and appropriated his name and identity after Vander disappeared and was presumed dead.
21285548	/m/05f4y25	The Quickie	James Patterson		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 NYPD Detective Lauren Stillwell is sitting in her car when she sees her husband Paul walk in to the St. Regis Hotel with a young and attractive blonde on his arm. Lauren and Paul are having marital problems so she assumes that Paul is having an affair. Enraged, Lauren goes to see her police partner Scott and they have sex. Their night is interrupted when Paul shows up and Scott goes out to confront him. From a window, Lauren sees Paul kill Scott and throw his body in his car and drive away. Several hours later, Lauren is called to a scene where a body has been found—Scott's body. Lauren and Scott's affair was a secret so no one suspects her involvement. She is, in fact, assigned as lead investigator. Through her investigation, Lauren discovers evidence of Paul's involvement in their home (gun, bloody clothing, etc.) and, in an attempt to protect Paul, Lauren tries to concoct a way to frame Scott's killing on someone else. Fortunately, Scott worked as an undercover drug cop and one of his cases was against two drug-trafficking brothers, Victor and Mark Ordonez. They quickly emerge as promising suspects, thanks to their extensive criminal histories. Lauren and her team track Victor to a night club where there is a foot pursuit. Lauren and her current partner Mike Ortiz track Victor to a train yard where Ortiz manages to kill Victor, but not before Victor wounds Lauren. During her recovery, Lauren decides to come clean with Paul about their respective affairs when Paul reveals a bombshell: he wasn't having an affair at all. Instead, the young blonde Lauren saw him with was a recruiter for a company looking to hire Paul. The new company pays Paul 3 times his current salary which allows Paul and Lauren to move to Connecticut from New York City. Even though Lauren is mortified that her affair and Scott's death resulted from a gigantic misunderstanding, she keeps it to herself. Over the next few weeks and months, Paul and Lauren's relationship strengthens and Lauren eventually discovers she is pregnant. Even though her plan to mask Paul's involvement in Scott's death seems to be working, Lauren is disgusted with the dishonesty of it and decides to resign from the NYPD. One evening while in Connecticut visiting their new home, Paul is knocked unconscious by Mark Ordonez—Victor's brother—who then kidnaps Lauren. Mark's plan is to fly Lauren in a small plane out over the Atlantic Ocean and then drop her in as retribution for her part in killing Victor. As Mark and Lauren are driving away, Paul intervenes by ramming his car into Mark's car. Mark stops to kick and beat Paul some more, but while walking back to his car, Mark is run over and killed by a passing truck carrying cars. At a retirement party thrown by her colleagues, Lauren learns from a cop friend that the tarp Scott's body was found wrapped in—a tarp belonging to Lauren and Paul—had a viable DNA sample on it. This DNA belongs to Paul and Lauren is scared it might spoil her otherwise perfect coverup. The cop friend says that while the sample has not been identified, it has been matched to a sample from an unsolved robbery in Washington DC 5 years earlier. The cop friend gives the evidence to Lauren since it was her case. Lauren struggles with whether to hide the evidence or pursue it, but ultimately decides to pursue it. In her mind, however, she already knows what the evidence says: Paul was involved in the Washington robbery. One day, Lauren follows Paul from his office in New York City. He goes on a secretive plane trip to Washington DC and Lauren follows him. Once in DC, Lauren sees Paul change his clothing and ditch the glasses he normally wears. She then sees him get picked up by a woman in black Range Rover SUV. Lauren uses her police contacts to find out who owns the SUV and she shows up at the woman's home. While there, she sees Paul and is shocked to discover him chaperoning a little girl (~4 years old) to school. Paul is a father. She confronts Paul there and discovers that he was in Washington 5 years ago for business and met the woman at the bar of the hotel he was staying at. An NCAA ticket conference is going on at the hotel and, after a bit of drinking, the woman convinces Paul that one of the men in the hotel swindled her out of a bunch of money. Inebriated Paul confronts the man and there is a struggle during which Paul is cut. He manages to get the woman's money back, but leaves a blood sample behind. Paul then got the woman pregnant, resulting in the 4 year old girl he was chaperoning around earlier. Since then, Paul has snuck down to Washington DC from New York periodically, concealing the trips in his normal travel schedule for work. Lauren is incensed, which only gets worse when she learns that the SUV-owning woman is pregnant. With Paul's twins. Lauren then arrests Paul. When she puts him in his car, Paul draws a gun from the glove compartment, throw Lauren out of the car, and speed off. In the course of the chase, Lauren sees Paul's car fall into a river. She dives in after him and they proceed to fight underwater. Lauren manages to knock Paul out, but he is still strapped in his car and drowns. The story ends with Lauren and her newborn son Thomas living in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she runs her own private investigation company.
21295018	/m/05f4s02	A Death in Vienna		2004-02-23		 An Israeli-run Holocaust research office in Vienna is bombed, resulting in the death of the two female staff and serious injury to the Director. Gabriel Allon, a former assassin for 'The Office' and working under a new identity as an art restorer in Venice, is requested by former director Ari Shamron to go to Vienna to investigate. He is approached by Max Klein, a Holocaust survivor who claims to have information about a man named Ludwig Vogel. After following up this information, Allon finds Klein has been murdered. Allon is apprehended by Austrian security police and expelled from the country. At the Yad Vashem, research reveals that Vogel is probably a Nazi war criminal and former SD officer named Erich Radek. Radek was the engineer behind Aktion 1005, a Nazi operation to conceal the atrocities of the Holocaust by exhuming mass graves and burning the bodies so that no trace of them ever existed. Radek visited half a dozen concentration camps as a part of Aktion 1005, and it is suggested that even he is unaware how many bodies were burned. Allon is disturbed by Radek's resemblance to a painting his mother made of one of her tormentors during the Death Marches. The trail to establish Vogel's true identity takes Allon to the Vatican, where he obtains information that the Vatican would rather not be known: that Radek was one of many escaping Nazis helped and sheltered by the Vatican. The trail further takes him to Argentina where Radek is supposedly buried. Finding the grave and headstone of 'Radek', Allon is nearly killed by an assassin who has been following him, a man known only as "the Clockmaker". He is rescued by CIA agents who have also been trailing him and the assassin escapes. In Langley the CIA admit that Radek was one of many Nazis recruited to set up an intelligence network in Germany in order to spy on the Soviet Union, laying a false trail through Italy, Syria and Argentina as misdirection. He is also the trustee of several billion dollars worth of investments, based on looted money and assets, which are now controlled by a Swiss banker. These assets were seeded throughout the Swiss and Austrian Alps by Nazi Party members fleeing the Allied invasion, where they were placed in escrow for a generation before National Socialism could be a viable political stance once more. Radek has since retired and is regarded by the CIA as 'disposable'. The CIA agree to cooperate in his kidnap by the Israelis. The Prime Minister of Israel reluctantly approves the operation. With the enforced assistance of the Swiss banker, who controls the secret bank accounts and investments, Radek is enticed into the hands of a kidnap team in Vienna. Drugged and hidden in a van, he is spirited across the border into the Czech Republic and thence into Poland. He is taken to the memorial on the site of the extermination camp at Treblinka, one of the sites he visited as part of Aktion 1005. Allon reveals that he knows Radek has a son, Peter Metzler, who is on the verge of being elected as Chacellor of Austria. Armed with the money from the Swiss bank, Metzler would be able to reintroduce Nazism to Austria unopposed. Allon uses this knowledge to convince Radek to surrender, or else his connection to Metzler will be revealed and Metzler's political career will be ruined. Radek is taken to Israel and placed in solitary confinment. In return for not being tried and executed, he is to prepare a detailed history of Aktion 1005, which he was heavily involved in. In Vienna, Metzler is duly elected. The knowledge that he is actually Radek's son is kept secret, knownn only to the CIA and The Office while Allon returns to his restoration work in Venice. In Vienna, the Clockmaker receives a parcel bomb and is killed.
21295073	/m/05fbl0k	Leaf In A Bitter Wind	Ting-Xing Ye	2000-06-01	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Ting-Xing Ye was the fourth daughter of a factory owner, and she and her siblings were branded as the children of capitalists and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. By the age of thirteen, both Ye's parents had died. The Cultural Revolution then tore the remaining family members apart. Along with millions of other Chinese youths, Ye was "sent down" from the city for labor reform on a prison farm, where she was subjected to humiliating psychological torture. Later, Ye was accepted into Beijing University where she studied English before being assigned to the Foreign Ministry as a translator for the delegations of such dignitaries as Queen Elizabeth II, Ronald Reagan and Imelda Marcos. Ye left China for good in 1987, when she defected to Canada. In addition to describing her life in Communist China before and during the Cultural Revolution, Ye also writes about the domestic abuse she suffered during her first marriage. Ye and her first husband had one daughter, as permitted by the Chinese One Child Policy. Later, Ye was forced to abort a second pregnancy as it was not permitted by government policy. Ye describes how her husband repeatedly beat her in front of her daughter, and insisted that a close male friend share their cramped living quarters. Ye became increasingly estranged from her husband and spent significant periods of time apart from him during her postgraduate studies in Beijing. During her studies, Ye fell in love with her Canadian English teacher, William E. Bell, and eventually defected to the West to be with him, gaining permission to leave China under the guise of a fully paid scholarship to a Canadian university. However, to do so, she had to leave her daughter in the custody of her husband. When it became clear that Ye did not intend to return permanently to China, her husband denied her access to her daughter, changing her name and moving to a new, secret address to avoid the possibility of contact with Ye. Ye ends her memoir with her descriptions of how, as a Canadian citizen, she continues to attempt to contact her daughter, hoping one day to take her to Canada.
21297128	/m/05yqwv	Foe	John Maxwell Coetzee	1986	{"/m/0fr3y1": "Parallel novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Susan Barton is on a quest to find her kidnapped daughter whom she knows has been taken to the New World. She is set adrift during a mutiny on a ship to Lisbon. When she comes ashore, she finds Friday and a Cruso who has grown complacent, content to forget his past and live his life on the island with Friday—tongueless by what Cruso claims to have been the act of former slave owners—in attendance. Arriving near the end of their residence, Barton is only on the island for a year before the trio is rescued, but the homesick Cruso does not survive the voyage to England. In England with Friday, Barton attempts to set her adventures on the island to paper, but she feels her efforts lack popular appeal. She tries to convince novelist Daniel Foe to help with her manuscript, but he does not agree on which of her adventures is interesting. Foe would prefer to write about her time in Bahia looking for her daughter, and when he does write on the story she wishes, fabulates about Cruso's adventures rather than relating her facts. Frustrating Barton's efforts further, Foe, who becomes her lover, is preoccupied with debt and has little time or energy to write about anything. Barton's story takes a twist with the return of someone claiming to be her missing daughter.
21298607	/m/05f6ls_	I'm the King of the Castle	Susan Hill	1970		 The book is set in a large house called Warings near the village of Derne. It was once a grand countryside mansion, but has since fallen into disrepair and decay. Joseph Hooper has inherited the house, and lives with his son Edmund Hooper. They have a cold, formal relationship which lacks compassion. Joseph announces that a housekeeper will be moving in, who will also bring her son who is of a similar age to Edmund. Mrs. Helena Kingshaw, and her son Charles Kingshaw arrive at Warings. Hooper becomes defensive of his house, and instantly takes a disliking to Kingshaw. He mocks him about his social class and father, and a small fight ensues where Kingshaw punches Hooper. Kingshaw then attempts to escape Warings, but is attacked by a vicious crow. The crow is thought to symbolize Hooper, who is very protective of his territory. Animalistic symbolism is used throughout the novel. Hooper proceeds to taunt and bully Kingshaw, who acts as the weak victim in their relationship. They venture to Hang Wood together, where Hooper's weaknesses become apparent and Kingshaw seems to retrieve some kind of power. However, it is apparent that Kingshaw does not have the capacity to be cruel. This pattern of cruelty continues throughout the book within the isolated setting of Warings. Both parents seem oblivious to their fights, and lack an understanding of their children's antics. They travel to Hang Wood on a few more occasions. It appears that Hooper is vulnerable in this setting, away from his home. The family decide to take a trip to Leydell Castle. Here, Kingshaw further exploits Hoopers fears as they climb the ancient monument. Hooper falls by accident, and badly injures himself. Even though Kingshaw tried to save him Hooper accuses Kingshaw of pushing him and is believed by the adults. Kingshaw is convinced that he has killed Hooper. As Hooper recovers, it appears that Kingshaw gains independence and meets a local boy by the name of Fielding. Fielding appears confident and well-rounded, and takes Kingshaw to his farm where he witnesses the birth of a calf. This is in stark contrast to Warings, which is full of death morbidity. Glass cabinets filled with moths are used to symbolize the decay of the Hooper dynasty. Fielding offers Kingshaw hope away from the manipulative clutches of Hooper. However, once Hooper returns to health, the normal regime of taunting resumes. Hooper's cruelty climaxes, and Kingshaw is devastated when he discovers that Helena and Joseph have agreed to marry, and that Hooper and Kingshaw will attend school together. The novel ends with Kingshaw committing suicide by drowning himself in a river in Hang Wood and Mrs. Kingshaw comforting Hooper who is described as feeling a sense of triumph.
21299797	/m/05f7kb9	The Officers' Ward	Marc Dugain		{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 Adrien Fournier, a handsome lieutenant in the Engineers, is wounded on a simple reconnaissance mission on the first day of French involvement in the Great War. He is hit by a stray shell, which kills his fellow officers and his horse, and tears a tunnel through the centre of Adrien's face. Devastated and permanently disfigured, he spends the rest of the war in a hospital, in a maxillofacial unit, with a small group of others who have similar injuries -- including a woman, Marguerite, who has been wounded while nursing at the Western Front. Adrien's palate and jaw are gradually reconstructed by pioneering plastic surgeons. The novel follows the experiences of the group in the aftermath of the war and their subsequent lives, right up to World War II and beyond. fr:La Chambre des officiers (roman)
21299880	/m/05f8754	Savvy	Ingrid Law	2008	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 For generations, the Beaumont family has harbored a magical secret. They each possess a "savvy"- a supernatural power that strikes when you turn thirteen. Grandpa Bomba moves mountains, her older brothers create hurricanes and spark electricity... and now it's the eve of Mibs big day. As if waiting wasn't hard enough, the family gets scary news two days before Mibs birthday: Poppa has been in a terrible accident. Mibs develops the singular mission to get to the hospital and prove that her new power can save her dad.So she sneaks on to a bible salesman's old bus... only to find the bus is heading the other direction.Suddenly Mibs finds herself on an unforgettable odyssey.
21303743	/m/05f375y	Green, Green My Valley Now				 Huw Morgan has become a successful businessman in Patagonia, establishing farming and civil contracting enterprises. But with political currents shifting in military-governed Argentina, he and his second wife Sûs decide to return to Wales. Now a rich man, Huw spares no expense to buy, restore and refurbish his wife's ancestral farmhouse in Mid-Wales and make it into a fine manor house. His apparently limitless wealth also allows him to buy property and land to try to restore the fortunes of the small local town. He becomes aware of nationalist feelings amongst the people, but makes no real attempt to understand them. As news of his arrival spreads, he meets his niece Blodwen, his sister Olwen's daughter, a piano student; he sponsors her to study in Germany. He learns that the descendants of his other siblings live in Australia, America, South Africa and New Zealand. Huw is visited by a woman claiming to be the granddaughter of his brother Davy from Melbourne; she brings Kiri, a French girl, with her. She is later revealed to be a fraud, and an IRA terrorist, seeking an isolated country hideout for bomb-making. Kiri is a Breton nationalist and also a bomb-maker. After his wife dies, Huw marries Teleri, also a descendant of Patagonian Welsh. The ceremony at the farm is disrupted by a would-be assassin, seeking revenge for Kiri's imprisonment, but the attack is foiled by his many friends. After the marriage, Huw and Teleri slip quietly away on honeymoon, planning to visit Patagonia. Before doing so, Huw finally visits his native valley, which he previously avoided, and is astonished to discover the coal tips gone and the area landscaped. Even fish have returned to the once-polluted river.
21304880	/m/05f78tt	DARLAH				 The book begins in 2012, after NASA has announced its intent to hold a contest for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. Three winners will be selected from all over the world, with the prize being a coveted spot on an upcoming mission to return to the moon. The stunt is believed to be a way of increasing both funding and public interest, but the real reason is that NASA intends to study a mystical phenomenon that was previously discovered during the original moon landing. This is the reason that NASA stopped sending people to the moon back in the seventies and that this phenomenon has a sinister edge to it. Three teenagers from Norway, Japan, and France are excited at the rare opportunity to see the moon firsthand as well as stay in the formerly secret lunar base DARLAH 2, but that excitement is short lived as they realize that this base might become their tomb.
21305693	/m/05f9vfl	Tuvalu	Andrew O'Connor	2006	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set mostly in Tokyo and tells the story of a young Australian teacher of English, and his relationship with two women, Tilly, another Australian English teacher, and Mami, a Japanese hotel heiress. It is told in first-person.
21311641	/m/05f3wwg	Deeper	Roderick Gordon	2008-05-05	{"/m/07fwvc": "Subterranean fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World"}	 Part 1: Breaking Cover The story opens with Sarah Jerome, Will's biological mother, dismounting from a bus and going on foot to a concealed chamber built into a bridge in a remote rural location. There she collects a letter that states her brother Tam is dead because Will betrayed him to the Styx. Sarah is filled with grief, and struggles to believe that her son is capable of this. Meanwhile, Will and Chester are overjoyed to be reunited once again as the Miners' Train travels down through the Earth on its way to the Deeps. Will's younger brother, Cal, is also with them. The train passes through a series of storm gates and, on the final approach to the Miners' Station, the three boys jump from it. Having escaped detection at the station, they travel further into the Deeps, where they are attacked by carnivorous bats and are forced to take shelter in an old, deserted house. Inside the house they find evidence that Will's stepfather, Dr Burrows, has already been there. Sarah adopts a disguise, allowing her to become a woman who has the authority to interview a deranged Mrs. Burrows, who currently is residing at Humphrey House. However, when her fear that Will actually killed Tam clouds her judgment, Mrs. Burrows quickly realizes the fake, forcing Sarah to flee. Soon, she is acquainted with a much skinnier, much weaker Bartleby, who takes her to a hiding place. There, a few days later, Rebecca and the Styx show up and make her believe for sure that Will killed Tam. Rebecca tells her that she knows where Will is, and that he is forcing Cal to come with him, and, if she didn't act soon, Will might kill him also. Also: Bartleby was Cal's hunter in the Colony, and now he is hers. Finally, they explain that Cal and Bartleby shared a strong bond, and, because of his love for Cal, Bartelby would be able to track him down anywhere... Finally, Dr. Burrows is shown as still alive. He has been accepted by a strange, gentle group of people called Coprolites. Sadly for them, a special detachment of the Styx called Limiters has been killing them. Having been left provisions by the Coprolites before they moved camp to a safer location, Dr. Burrows packs up and leaves, continuing further into the Deeps, keeping his notebook with him at all times. Part 2: The Homecoming Sarah is taken to see her mother, Grandma Macaulay, in her old home. Grandma Macaulay has been persuaded by the Styx that Will was responsible for Tam's demise, and she is full of vengeance and asks Sarah to exact revenge on the boy. Sarah is then escorted to the Styx Garrison where she rests, is given military training, and is also subjected to sermons from The Book of Catastrophes. Concerned that their food supplies are running low, Will and Chester follow Cal down into an opening of the floor of the Great Plain, where Cal enters a cavern filled with unidentified pipe-like organisms. As he stumbles, Cal touches one of these organisms, then collapses. Will and Chester discover that the boy isn't breathing, but they are forced to flee the cavern in order to save their own lives. Topsoil, it is dawn in England, and Rebecca and a squad of Styx are on the rooftop of Admiralty Arch, overlooking Trafalgar Square, with baskets of doves. Attached to the leg of each bird is a small metal ball which, when melted by the sun, will release a small amount of a non-deadly form of the virus that the Styx have been working on. The section ends with Rebecca cheering the doves on to "Fly, fly, fly!". Part 3: Drake and Elliott After his brother's death, Will is beside himself with grief, and Chester becomes increasingly concerned about the strange way he is acting. Shortly thereafter, they witness the execution of a group of Coprolites by a patrol of Styx Limiters. Will's abnormal behavior takes over again, and he asks for a piece of chewing gum. Before he unwraps it, knives are put at both boys' throats. A man speaks, telling them to bury the gum, and then to come with them. With no alternative but to do what they are told, Will and Chester comply with these demands. The two strangers introduce themselves as renegades, namely Drake and Elliott. Drake soon realizes it is important to keep Will alive because he thinks Will may be the cause of the increased Styx presence in the Deeps, and also because he discovers Will is Sarah Jerome's son. For the most part, Elliott maintains a hostile attitude towards the boys, except for Chester. Cal, who Will and Chester feared had perished in a "sugar trap", is resuscitated by Drake. Sarah persuades Joseph to allow her to leave the Styx Garrison so she can revisit the Rookeries, a place where the most deprived Colonists are left to rot, and where she and her brother Tam played as children. However, as she passes through the area, she is recognised and hailed as a hero. As she emerges from the Rookeries, she is met by Rebecca who tells her they are to leave for the Deeps on the Miners' Train. Topsoil, the virus created by the Styx scientists has been spread, and is wreaking havoc on England. The symptoms are some coughing, and swollen eyes, which make reading and looking at objects very hard. A grouchy Mrs. Burrows is visited by a man who has a distinguished voice and likes boiled eggs, hence Mrs. Burrows's nickname for him: "boiled-egg man". Boiled-egg Man tells her everything will be fine, when, in fact, it is steadily getting worse. Soon, a woman named Mrs. L dies, and not long after that, the laboratory that researches the virus is burned, and, when Boiled-egg Man appears on the news, claiming that there was no case of arson and that it was an experiment that blew the lab up, killing five scientists, Mrs. Burrows, who believes the opposite, becomes very angry. Part 4: The Island When they are attacked by Limiters, Will becomes separated from Drake, Elliott, Cal and Chester, and without any food or light, becomes completely lost in the lava tubes for several days. He eventually emerges from the lava tubes, and is reunited with Chester. Meanwhile, Drake and Elliott take Cal with them as they search the Great Plain for Will, and here they come to a place called the Bunker, which it appears was once used to breed Coprolites. One area in the Bunker is now being used to test the Dominion virus, which the Styx intend to use to decimate a large proportion of the Topsoil population. After a Styx ambush, Drake is captured outside the Bunker, while Elliott and Cal manage to escape. The two return to Will and Chester, and then Elliott leads them all to an island in a subterranean sea. Elliott takes Will to scout, and they discover that Drake is being tortured. Elliott decides to kill him to put him out of his misery. When they return to the camp, Elliott captures a "night crab" for a meal, which Will identifies as a relic species of Anomalocaris. Part 5: The Pore Dr. Burrows comes across a temple-like structure, built by a civilization that worships a sun. He discovers a hoard of large dust mites and then comes across a huge, mile-long hole, which he accidentally falls into. Elliott's initial plan is to take the boys to a place called the Wetlands, where they will allegedly be safe. She takes them through a tunnel, but before long, Bartleby appears, and Cal is delighted. Elliott shoots an advancing stranger, which turns out to be Sarah Jerome. Will assures her that he did not kill Tam, then he and the others continue on their way. At her insistence, because she is too badly injured and would only slow them down, Sarah stays behind. They eventually come across the huge hole; the same one Dr. Burrows fell into. It is identified as the Pore, which stretches even deeper into the Earth's surface. Before long, they are ambushed by Rebecca, and she reveals that there is not one but two of her; they are twins, and they have been alternatively living in Will's home, posing as his younger sister. They reveal their plot to kill all Topsoilers with a deadly virus called Dominion, which was extracted from the Eternal City by the Styx Division. The twins order the Limiters to open fire; Cal is killed as a result. Will, Elliott, Chester, and Bartleby are blown into the Pore by the Styx's heavy guns. The Rebecca twins presume that they have fallen to their death, and the Limiters cease fire. Sarah, who is close to death from her gunshot wounds, witnesses this. She draws upon her last remaining strength and, in a headlong rush at the Rebecca twins, takes them over the edge of the Pore with her. Several days later, Drake is shown Topsoil as he observes a Colonist who is, in turn, observing Mrs. Burrows. It is clear that he wants to exact his revenge on the Styx for the deaths of Elliott and the boys. The book ends when he dials a phone and waits for an answer.
21312739	/m/05f5d8h	I miss you, I miss you!				 Cilla and Tina are thirteen years old and identical twin sisters. As they hurry to catch the bus to school one day, Cilla is run over by a car and killed. Left behind is Tina, who now has to find her balance in life without her sister. The book follows the sisters during the months leading up to Cilla's death, and Tina's first year without her.
21315197	/m/046vw5t	Living Dead in Dallas	Charlaine Harris	2002-03	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Sookie Stackhouse likes living in Bon Temps, Louisiana, and she likes working as a cocktail waitress at Merlotte's. But she is having a streak of bad luck. First her co-worker is killed, and no one seems to care. Then she comes face-to-face with a beastly creature which gives her a painful and poisonous lashing. Vampires suck the poison from her veins, saving her life. When one of the vampires asks for a favor, she obliges, and soon Sookie is in Dallas using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire. She is supposed to interview certain humans involved, but she makes one condition: the vampires must promise to behave, and let the humans go unharmed. That is easier said than done, and all it takes is one delicious blonde and one small mistake for things to turn deadly.
21316627	/m/046vw57	Club Dead	Charlaine Harris	2003	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 The novel takes place in December. Bill, working on a secretive computer program, informs Sookie he has to travel away in order to complete the program. Days later, a werewolf targeting Sookie comes into her working spot, Merlotte's, but he is eliminated by Bubba, sent on Eric's orders, before he can harm Sookie. As night falls, Eric and his employees tell Sookie that Bill had actually been in Mississippi, where his former lover and maker Lorena had summoned him. They continue to tell Sookie that Bill has since then gone missing, and Eric speaks of his suspicions on Lorena's involvement. He also states that the vampire queen of Louisiana will need to receive Bill's secret project on its due date, if Eric wishes not to compromise his life. Since Eric is unable to interrogate humans or vampires in the territory of Mississippi vampire king Russell Edgington without provoking a war, he invites Sookie to come along to Mississippi and utilize her telepathy to locate Bill. Sookie agrees, but is shocked at Bill's possible betrayal of her. The next day, Sookie is introduced to Alcide Herveaux, a werewolf sent by Eric to help Sookie circulate in the supernatural community of Jackson, Mississippi. Sookie takes a liking to Alcide's physique and personality. In Jackson, Alcide escorts her to a local vampire bar, Josephine's, generally known as Club Dead. In this club, Sookie learns by telepathy that Bill is being held captive and that Russell Edgington is possibly involved. She meets Edgington when he aids her after a confrontation with a were patron angered at Sookie rebuffing his sexual advances. Edgington insists they come in the next night as well. In the same night, Sookie is confronted by Alcide's jealous ex-girlfriend Debbie Pelt, a shapeshifter who, despite being at her own engagement party, is furious with Sookie presenting herself as Alcide's escort. The next day, Sookie and Alcide discover in their closet the dead body of the Club Dead patron who had been making unwanted advances at Sookie. After disposing of the body, that is later revealed to have been an assailant aiming for Sookie killed by Bubba, the duo head out for another night in Club Dead, where Sookie meets her friend Tara Thornton as another vampire's escort. However, she discovers the Fellowship of the Sun, an anti-vampire organization prominently featured in Living Dead in Dallas, has come in Club Dead intent on killing vampires. While preventing the Fellowship from staking one of Russell Edgington's employees, she herself is staked, then rescued by Eric and taken to the King of Mississippi's compound and receives medical attention at Edgington's mansion. Sookie shares an intimate moment with Eric, but Bubba informs them Bill is being tortured in one of Edgington's poolhouses. At dawn, Sookie heads out to the poolhouse. She frees Bill and manages to stake Lorena as she attacks, but is locked into the trunk of her own car alongside the sleeping Bill when she returns to Alcide's apartment building. When Bill, deprived of blood and sleep for a week, wakes up, he feeds on Sookie and forces himself onto her sexually. Sookie asks Eric to drive her home, fed up with the whole ordeal. While on their way home, two robbers raid a gas station alongside their route looking for Sookie and Eric and in Sookie's home, several werewolves wait for her and attack her. Eric and Bill eliminate all werewolves, but Sookie angrily breaks up with Bill and rescinds both Bill and Eric's invitation to her house. The novel ends with Sookie realizing Bill's special project is inside her house, and no vampire will be physically able to retrieve it.
21319552	/m/05f8932	The Boy Who Dared	Susan Campbell Bartoletti	2008	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The majority of the story is told through flashbacks, as Helmuth Hübener, charged with treason, waits in a Berlin prison for his execution. Starting with his memories as a young boy, Helmuth recounts his childhood growing up in Nazi Germany with his mother, grandparents, two brothers, his b As a young boy, Helmuth plans to become a soldier and fight for Germany but that changes when he grows up, and Helmuth stands out as a very intelligent young man. He becomes very opinionated about the Nazi government when he sees his Jewish classmate's father mercilessly murdered by the SA. He begins to secretly listen to forbidden enemy radio broadcasts, and enlists the help of two of his closest friends in distributing anti-Nazi propaganda. Helmuth and his brothers fight very hard to keep their family together while they argue with Hugo about Germany's laws, rules, and restrictions on all people of Germany and the rights of the Jewish people in Germany. Later, a fellow apprentice of Helmuth's turns him in to the Gestapo, and he is jailed and is killed on October 27, 1942 in the guillotine.
21322333	/m/05f6kr8	Dogzilla	Dav Pilkey	1993	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 “It’s time for Mousopolis’s First Annual Barbecue Cook-Off. But just when the fun is about to begin, the irresistible aroma of barbecue sauce awakens the most frightening creature known to mousekind: the dreaded Dogzilla. As her horrible doggy breath fills the streets, the residents of Mousopolis must run for their lives. Can they get rid of that big stinky dog before it’s too late?”
21322522	/m/04ymqsh	The Secret Scripture	Sebastian Barry	2009-09-29	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character is a one-hundred-year-old woman, Roseanne McNulty, who now resides in the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital. Having been a patient for some fifty years or more, Roseanne decides to write an autobiography. She calls it "Roseanne's testimony of herself" and charts her life and that of her parents, living in Sligo at the turn of the 20th Century. She keeps her story hidden under the loose floorboard in her room, unsure as yet if she wants it to be found. The second narrative is the "commonplace book" of the current chief Psychiatrist of the hospital, Dr Grene. The hospital now faces imminent demolition. He must decide who of his patients are to be transferred, and who must be released into the community. He is particularly concerned about Roseanne, and begins tentatively to attempt to discover her history. It soon becomes apparent that both Roseanne and Dr Grene have differing stories as to her incarceration and her early life, but what is consistent in both narratives is that Roseanne fell victim to the religious and political upheavals in Ireland in the 1920s – 1930s.
21326740	/m/05fb3vl	For Love & Money: A Writing Life, 1968-1987	Jonathan Raban			 I - II Raban describes his development as a writer from his early youthful love for books to a university career lecturing on Literature to his final decision to become a full-time writer in London, starting out as a professional book reviewer for the London Magazine and the New Statesman. The first part is mainly composed of book reviews he wrote for various literary journals and his subjects include: living in London, the Romantic poet Byron, Thackeray, Henry Mayhew, a well-researched piece on Anthony Trollope (although it is a pity there is so little of the writer's thoughts on his great masterpiece The Way We Live Now), who still remains a highly under-rated Victorian novelist, and three penetrative pieces on Evelyn Waugh, of whom Raban is a great admirer. As he says of Waugh's diaries, there is no clear division from the youthful into the adult Waugh and this element of youthfulness always maintained a strong influence on his writing: 'This disconcerting, sometimes vengeful, sometimes pathetic, childishness gives all Waugh's writing an odd innocence, a kind of brazen incorruptibility. His cult of the noble (which was much more a dream of living in a Burne-Jonesish world of sunlit castles and pure chivalry than is was of toadying after titles), his fiercely traditionalist Catholicism, his horror of the urban proletariat, were too wide-eyed to be either dangerous or mean. His sensibility had the extravagance of a billiant child's: adult moderation never got in the say of clarity. When he admired he worshipped; when he disapproved, he was appalled. The bourgeois virtues of common sense and good manners (the besetting vices of so many modern English novelists) were totally foreign to him - not because he was a snob but because he never forgot what it was like to be a child.' He also includes a review of Anthony Powell, rightly criticizing the first part of his memoirs, Infants of the Spring, as being,"... a book so boring, reticent and formulaic that it would hardly be a creditable effort had it come from the hand of an idle brigadier jotting down his Notess of an Old Soldier or Tales of an Officer's Mess. Mr Powell begins by tracing his family tree back to Old King Cole and Rhys the Hoarse, constructs a complete stud book of Powells and Wells-Dymokes, then embarks, in a style of stultified discretion, on a rambling, much interrupted account of his own life." There is a very affectionate piece about Robert Lowell, the American poet who Raban knew for the last seven years of his life. As he says of Lowell&#39;s life,"It's a life lived in full conscience by a man of preternatural quickness and sensitivity and candour. We can all count ourselves lucky that Lowell happened to be around in our messy stretch of history; more than any other writer he got down on paper what it feels like to be normally alive in our particular snakepit." Unfortunately for Lowell he was plagued by bouts of temporary insanity that meant periods of forced incarceration in a mental hospital once a year during an attack of mania. Throughout his life Raban comments that he remained, in the deepest sense, an unknowable man and his poetry was written in order that he could at least attempt to come to terms with himself and his own character. III Just like the young aspiring writer in Cyril Connolly&#39;s Enemies of Promise, named Shelleyblake (a pun on the two Romantic poets) by Jonathan Raban, he too wanted to write plays. He states he first found a birth at Kestrel Films, a company set up by Tony Garnett, Ken Loach and Kenith Trodd. Raban wrote a play for Trodd after he moved over to Granada Television but it turned out to be a total failure dramatically. He went on to write seven plays for radio. of which six were produced by Richard Wortley but, as he states, there was a limited audience for plays of this kind - mostly the blind and &#34;a small coterie of radio listeners who are prepared, in effect, to blind themselves for the duration of the programme. But they are few and far between.&#34; He also wrote five more plays for television of which three were broadcast, but again they did not meet with much critical success. His last dramatic effort was a commissioned full-length stage play directed by Eric Thompson at the Bristol Old Vic, but the play closed after a month. In order to get playwriting out of his system, Raban took off to travel in Arabia to research his travelogue, Arabia Through the Looking Glass. IV This part deals with Raban&#39;s experiences with writing for &#39;the little magazines&#39;, mainly feature journalism. He was a book reviewer for the Review, edited by Ian Hamilton, and then later for the New Review, which was larger and glossier but which foundered just like its predecessor. He also did some work for the Radio Times, edited by Geoffrey Cannon, who was able to pay his reviewers considerably more than Hamilton out of the BBC coffers, and was also extremely liberal in terms of fitting in with his reviewers&#39; requirements, particularly if they were working on a book. It was the Radio Times that sent Raban on a sailing ship for three days (it was being used as a prop in The Onedin Line), which was to spark off two books and an obsession with sailing. There are also some short articles. &#39;Christmas in Bournemouth&#39; is an excellent and highly objective account of a group of OAPs spending their Christmas together at the Cliff Court Hotel, unwanted by their children: 'There were 59 of us. There was one real family party from Egham, complete with a trio of rather subdued children. But nearly everybody had come in a couple. There were childless couples in their 40s, and grandparents in their 50s and 60s whose grown-up children had somehow, inexplicably, failed to invite them for Christmas.' With his partner, Linda (who appears briefly in Coasting when she collects Raban from the London Docks), they take part in all the arranged festivities. The people are the first generation after the war who had extra money to spend, shown by the expensive electronic gadgetry they all possess. However, the downside is that they have lost the family closeness that existed in the pre-war years, and their children and grand-children prefer to be unencumbered with any elderly relatives who may embarrass their guests over Christmas. The whole experience at the hotel is a bitter-sweet one and Raban&#39;s last memory is of Frances, a lonely spinster hospital worker, waiting forlonly for her bus to &#39;take her back to her Christchurch maisonette and her job on the geriatric ward.&#39; Living on Capital describes Raban&#39;s early childhood, much of which is re-presented in his travelogue, Coasting. Living with Loose Ends is a rather rambling account of family life, but &#39;Freya Stark on the Euphrates&#39; and &#39;Fishing&#39; - describing the writer&#39;s long love affair with the rod and reel - are two well-crafted articles that have a strong merit in their own right. V The last part - and the one in which Raban really comes into his own - deals with travelling and the writing of the travel book and goes a long way to explaining Jonathan Raban&#39;s own wanderlust. As he says about travelling and writing, &#39;Simple wanderlust is relatively easy to fend off, but when it starts to get tangled up with literary motive it becomes irresistible; and literature and travel are anciently, inevitably tangled. Journeys suggest stories, stories take the form of journeys - odysseys, exoduses, pilgrims&#39; and rakes&#39; progresses. Any travelling writer, leaving home, must find it difficult to rid himself of the idea that he&#39;s embarking on some kind of real-life picaresque. Before him lie the education and adventures of a rolling stone. Pilgrim, Gulliver, Tom Jones, Mr Yorick have been here before.&#39; The author also gives some insights into his own method of writing about his travelling in such books as Hunting Mr Heartbreak, Old Glory - his journey in a skiff down the Mississippi - and Passage to Juneau, in which he sails from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska: &#39;Memory, not the notebook, holds the key. I try to keep a notebook when I&#39;m on the move (largely because writing it makes one feel that one&#39;s at work, despite all appearances to the contrary) but hardly ever find anything in the notebook that&#39;s worth using later...Memory, though, is always telling stories to itself, filing experience in narrative form. It feeds irrelevancies to the shredder, enlarges on crucial details, makes links and patterns, finds symbols, constructs plots. In memory, the journey takes shape and grows; in the notebook it merely languishes, with the notes themselves like a pile of cigarette butts confronted the morning after a party.&#39; And again, in &#39;Stevenson: Sailing towards marriage&#39; Raban gives us a description Robert Louis Stevenson&#39;s much-admired writing style in The Amateur Emigrant, about the latter taking passage for America and his fiancee in northern California, that could be a mirror image of his own: 'For Stevenson's temperament was instinctively skeptical and empirical. He hoarded detail for its own sake. He was immensely careful and sympathetic observer of other people's lives. When he came to deal with the physical conditions of the ship and the train, and with the characters of the emigrants, he was a scrupulous miniaturist. Every page of The Amateur Emigrant is dotted with the trifles of life - with smells, fragments of dialect speech, clothes, facial expressions. It has the dense and varied texture of a true record.' &#39;Belloc at Sea&#39; - about Belloc&#39;s The Cruise of the Nona - is in part recreated in Coasting, and &#39;Young&#39;s Slow Boats&#39; is interesting from the perspective of one travel writer writing about another. Raban gives his own thoughts on what has drawn so many writers, including himself, to the travel book: &#39;It is the supreme improvisatory form; one can play it by ear; it will happily accommodate all sorts of conditions of writing. At its occasional best it works like a constellation, with autobiography, essays, stories, reportage mingling together in a single controlled blaze. More often it has the casual freedom of the scrapbook, into which any old thing can be pasted at will; a lifelike form, certainly, with all of life&#39;s contingencies, dead ends, and artlessness.&#39; &#39;Florida&#39; is a remarkable article based on Raban&#39;s visit to Florida, attracted by the thrillers of John D. MacDonald, &#39;With their bodice-ripper covers and titles like Nightmare in Pink, A Deadly Shade of Gold and A Purple Place for Dying. For Raban, MacDonald (whom he meets three years before his death) created an extremely vivid portrait of a &#39;jungly Eden, spoilt and besmirched by human vanity and greed ... a lovely paradise that was being cut down to make room for shopping malls, condominium blocks, six-lane highways, giant billboards and pagoda-style Kingburger palaces. Taken together, the novels added up to a resounding &#34;No! Thunder!&#34; They protested against this violation of the innocence of America with shocked and angry vigour.&#39; Raban goes onto re-create this visit near the end of his later book, Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (1991), which describes his meandering journey across the U.S.A. and its eventual conclusion in Seattle, where he now permanently resides. The final article, &#39;Sea Room&#39;, makes a seamless transition from this book to his next one, Coasting (book), recording his circumnavigation of the British Isles. Raban describes his desire to purchase his own boat and take to the sea. He purchases a sextant from a junkshop, made for J.H.C. Minter R.N. and practices the determination of latitude and longitude from his home in St Quintin Avenue, London W.10. He then starts his search for a boat and ends up with the Gosfield Maid, stranded on a mudbank up a Cornish estuary, which is to be his home for the next few years.
21327456	/m/05f7p8c	Fathers and Forefathers	Slobodan Selenić			 The novel is set in Belgrade, just before World War II, and it covers over fifty years of Serbian history. It tells the story of a young Englishwoman, Elizabeth, and Steven, a Serb who meet at University in England and fall in love. They leave England to begin a new life together in Serbia. Through Elizabeth's letters home it is revealed that she is having difficulties adapting to Serbian culture, although Steven's narrative provides a very different take on events. Their son, Mihajlo, is ashamed of his mixed parentage and rebels radically against his English roots. On the eve of the war, the family's loyalties are tested and tragedy ensues. Although the novel is set in a time of many years ago, it deals with what many consider to be a very current theme---that of the clash, or at least the juxtaposition, of two cultures (in this case the culture clash between English culture and Serbian culture), and the subsequent alienation of the individuals involved. It has sold over 100,000 copies in Serbia.
21330916	/m/05f9zt5	The Princess and Curdie	George MacDonald			 It's been two years after the last book. Princess Irene and her father go to Gwyntystorm while Curdie, the princess's friend and a miner boy stayed home with his mother and father. As the years go by, Curdie begins to hunt for pleasure and slowly begins to doubt Irene's story of her great-great grandmother. One day, he shoots down a white pigeon. Curdie then remembers Irene's tale of her grandmother's pigeons and assumes the one he shot down was one of them and becomes aware of his folly. A light is seen at the roof of the castle, and Curdie follows it. There, Curdie meets the Grand Old Princess, who appeared small and withered, as opposed to the descriptions told by Irene. She gently tells Curdie of his wrong thinking and he confesses. As now he believes, the pigeon got well. Curdie was then told to keep his bow and arrows and use them for good instead of bad things. The Grand Princess then told Curdie to meet her again soon, whom he trusts.
21332334	/m/05f7ys5	Spindrift	Allen Steele	2007		 In 2288 A.D. Jared Ramirez is serving a life sentence on the moon for his role in an attempt to reduce the human population by one-third. A telescopic array that he designed and programmed has received a transmission that is clearly alien. John Shillinglaw, Associate Director of the European Space Agency arranges for him to be a member of the science team aboard the spaceship Galileo which will explore the source of the transmission, an object that has been dubbed "Spindrift". Ted Harker is the efficient, respected first officer of the Galileo. He serves under Ian Lawrence, the arrogant but politically minded and well connected Captain. Ted discovers that the Captain has taken surreptitious measures that may poison a potential first contact with an alien species. After surviving the trip to Spindrift, the captain seems almost too anxious for Ted to lead a group of four to explore Spindrift while the rest of the crew visit what looks like a hyperspace gate that is orbiting nearby. Harker's team makes amazing discoveries, witnesses the destruction of the Galileo, and meets an alien who makes a surprising suggestion for what humans could use for space trade.
21333614	/m/05f7yfj	Moving the Mountain	Charlotte Perkins Gilman		{"/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel opens with a brief scene written in the third person: at a remote location in Tibet, a man in local costume, backed by a group of native people, confronts a woman at the head of an exploratory expedition. There is a sudden sense of realization as the man and woman recognize each other as siblings; the man collapses, overcome by shock. The story then switches to a first-person account, written by John Robertson after his meeting with his sister Ellen. Thirty years earlier, at the age of 25, Robertson had been traveling through rural Tibet; wandering away from his party, he had gotten lost and had fallen over a precipice. He was nursed back to health by local villagers, but his memory was deeply impaired. It was only when his sister found him that he regained his recollection. He returns to the United States with her, to face a society that is vastly different from the one he knew in his youth. Around 1920, while Robertson was living obscurely in Tibet, America had adopted a system of economics described as being "beyond Socialism", a strain of nationalism that answered all the questions posed by socialism without actually being socialist, renovating its society and culture; and from there it had continued to develop into a more efficient nation, through "social evolution" and a vague "new religion." Robertson is surprised to learn that his sister is the president of a college &mdash; and is astounded to realize that she is a married college president. He meets his brother-in-law and nephew and niece, and is repeatedly challenged in his traditional attitudes. He is not a feminist; on the ship homeward he meets an attractive and vivacious young woman, and thinks of her, "My sister must have been mistaken about her being a civil engineer. She might be a college girl &mdash; but nothing worse." Most of the book consists of John Robertson being instructed, by his family members and others, in the new, rational, well-organized social order. Gilman's America of 1940 is a country with no poverty or prostitution, "no labor problem &mdash; no color problem &mdash; no sex problem &mdash; almost no disease &mdash; very little accident &mdash; practically no fires," a place in which "the only kind of prison left is called a quarantine," where problems of deforestation and soil erosion are being remedied, and in which "no one needs to work over two hours a day and most people work four...." The central chapters in the book deliver Gilman's program for reforming society. She concentrates on measures of rationality and efficiency that could be instituted in her own time, largely with greater social cooperation &mdash; equal education and treatment for girls and boys, day-care centers for working women, and other issues still relevant a century later. Yet Gilman also allows for technological progress: electric power is the motive force in industry and urban society, power generated largely by the tides (a technology that is only being developed in the early twenty-first century in the real world), plus "wind-mills, water mills," and "solar engines." And the sky is full of "airships." People now practice a "new humanitarianism." Vegetarianism is in fashion, hunting is out, and zoos are no more. (Gilman's concept of animal rights, however, provides for the elimination of predators, to save their prey.) Tobacco and alcohol are also out of fashion, because emancipated women condemn those habits. Robertson does not find it easy to accept the new social order; his sister gently mocks him as an example of "An Extinct Species of Mind," as exotic as a "Woolly Mammoth." He even longs for the noisy, dirty, crowded chaos of the cities of his youth, in preference to the clean, quiet, "beautiful" cities of 1940. In his discontent, Robertson travels to his home state of South Carolina to visit his Uncle Jake, an old farmer and a determined reactionary who rejects the radical improvements of the past thirty years. Uncle Jake still practices subsistence farming with his elderly wife and middle-aged spinster daughter Drusilla. Robertson remembers his cousin Drusilla, ten years his junior, as a darling child &mdash; and is shocked by the harsh and deprived life she lives. His "thirty years in Tibet," which had weighed heavily upon his thoughts, now seem like "a holiday compared to this thirty years on an upland farm in the Alleghanies of Carolina." He convinces Drusilla to marry him, to salve his own loneliness and to give her a better life &mdash; and in doing so Robertson comes to accept the superior modern world he had previously resisted.
21337264	/m/05f3g_g	Freefall	Roderick Gordon	2009-05-18	{"/m/07fwvc": "Subterranean fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World"}	 Closer, Further (Part 1) The opening chapter describes how Chester Rawls is the first to regain consciousness on a fungal shelf deep down in the Pore where he, Will Burrows, Elliott and Bartleby have crash landed. After Will has located his brother’s dead body and given him a burial of sorts, he and Chester carry the injured Elliott with them as they set about exploring this alien and frightening world. The task of moving through the passages with the burden of Elliott and their equipment is made easier thanks to the reduced gravity at this depth in the Earth. With the help of Bartleby’s tracking ability, they discover that there is someone else down there with them, but are attacked by giant carnivorous creatures called spider-monkeys. They are saved by the intervention of a new character called Martha. She takes them to where she lives, a shack evidently built by the survivors of a galleon which was sucked down the another of the giant holes like the Pore, so she can tend to Elliott and protect the two boys. Meanwhile, the Rebecca twins, who were pushed into the Pore by Sarah Jerome in her last dying act, are aware that Will is alive, and begin to plot against him with two Styx Special Forces soldiers, called Limiters. One of the Rebeccas and a Limiter approach Will's father, Dr Burrows, and attempt to bully him into finding them a way out of the Pore. Dr Burrows seems to have very little comprehension that the Styx are dangerous and capable of great cruelty and murder. Martha's Shack (Part 2) At Martha’s shack, Elliott’s condition deteriorates as she catches a voracious fever, and Martha warns Will and Chester that her son died after the same thing happened when he injured himself on an expedition two years previously. Much to Will’s surprise, the other Rebecca twin turns up alone the shack, and her life is only spared after Will stops Chester and Martha from killing her. The twin claims that she is innocent and has had to go along with her sister’s evil plans. Will appears to give her the benefit of the doubt, but Chester and Martha are highly skeptical. Will is further won over by the Rebecca twin as she gives him two phials, which purportedly contain the Dominion virus and its antidote. Elliott’s condition worsens, and Will and Chester discover that Martha has been less than honest with them, and that there may be a source of modern medicines to help the girl. Although Martha is reluctant for them to risk the long journey, she eventually leads them to a “metal ship” which her son had stumbled across. The Metal Ship (Part 3) When they get there, it turns out that the metal ship is actually a modern Russian nuclear submarine, and they are forced to shelter inside it while Elliott responds to the antibiotics. There is also the added risk that they may be attacked by “Brights”, giant moth like flying creatures. As they finally set off from the submarine, the second Rebecca twin makes her appearance with Dr Burrows and the two Limiters. Will realizes the twin who surrendered to him has been lying all the time, as she orders Bartleby to attack him – the Hunter has been conditioned to follow her orders after being Darklit in the Colony. One of the Limiters is killed by a "Bright", but the Rebeccas still have an edge. Just when it appears as if all is lost, Elliott reveals that she is half Styx, and saves the day by priming one of the explosives from her rucksack. In the subsequent explosion, Will and his father are separated from Chester, Elliott, Martha and Bartleby, while the Rebecca twins and the surviving Limiter seek refuge in the Russian submarine, which is knocked down the giant hole it was in, "Smoking Jean", by the explosion. The Underground Harbor (Part 4) Separated from his friends and not knowing whether they are alive or not, Will is persuaded by his father to travel upwards, and they stumble upon an underground harbour, a deep-level fallout shelter from the Cold War. After Will has helped himself to various weapons from the armoury in the shelter, they manage to get an outboard engine to work, and attach it to a launch. Then they travel up a subterranean river linking the fallout shelter to the surface, and emerge in Norfolk, from where they make their way back to Highfield, and are reunited with Drake. Highfield, Again (Part 5) Mrs Burrows, Will’s stepmother, has gone through a transformation after she manages to beat her TV addiction, and has returned to Highfield where she is kept under close surveillance by the Styx and their agents. At Dr Burrows’ insistence, Drake takes him to meet his wife, so revealing to the Styx that Dr Burrows and Will are back Topsoil. Then there follows a parting of the ways as Mrs Burrows remains on the surface with Drake, who has asked Will to return back into the Earth and make sure that the risk of the Dominion virus has been neutralised. Will is accompanied by his father as they retrace the their route to where the submarine was blasted from the ledge in "Smoking Jean, and he is reunited with Chester, Martha, and a fully recovered Elliott. Departure (Part 6) Drake, with help from a squad of former SAS soldiers, devises a plan to trap one of the leading Styx, the “old Styx”, using Mrs Burrows as bait. But the mission fails and Mrs Burrows is captured and taken to the Colony where she is Darklit. Meanwhile, Dr Burrows, in a literal leap of faith, throws himself into the pore, followed by his son, and eventually by Elliott and Bartleby. Dr Burrows’ assumption that the gravity further down the pore is progressively lower is proved to be correct, and after locating the submarine, they search for any surviving Styx. Dr Burrows, driven by his conviction that there is a world at the centre of the Earth, risks all their lives as he makes sure that they have no option but to continue towards it. They finally make it through to the “Garden of the Second Sun” - a hidden world at the centre of the Earth, complete with its own sun, mountains, oceans, and animals long since extinct on the surface. Assisted by Will, Dr Burrows begins to investigate one of three Mayan-type pyramids they find there, and it seems as though they are finally safe from the Styx until Elliott spots some footprints. She, Will and Bartleby follow the trail and discover that the Rebecca twins and a Limiter have also made it through to the hidden world. After Elliott sets an ambush to deal with the Styx for once and for all, Will disobeys her and sneaks in to retrieve the Dominion phials. He is discovered by one of the Rebecca twins, and in the firefight and explosion which follow, both the Rebecca twins and Limiter perish, while Will makes off with the phials. Far from being angry at his disobedience, Will’s reward is a kiss on the cheek from Elliott. It seems as though Will’s prayers have been answered as he embarks upon his new life in this idyllic world, with Elliott as his companion and working with his father to discover incredible secrets from the past, until one day Dr Burrows spots a WW2 German bomber, a Stuka, in the sky.
21338632	/m/05f35v5	Thirteenth City	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 An astronaut from Earth named Dima (short for Dmitry) crash-lands on the fourth planet of the star LK 43. The indigenous people, whose physical appearance is almost indistinguishable from human, live in the so-called Cities, enclosed and self-sufficient habitats, providing their tenants with all life's necessities. The Cities are ruled by the ruthless and authoritarian Watchers. The official ideology of the Cities promotes absolute equality and replaceability. The official honorific is "Equal". All individual qualities are considered to be atavistic and must be mercilessly eliminated to the point that most redheads are forced to dye their hair. The most dangerous atavisms are crying, hate, love, and friendship. These are eradicated in early childhood. The inhabitants of the Cities live in dormitories, while children live and study in boarding schools and know nothing about their parents. Each person's place of residency is chosen by the Watchers and are often relocated to another City. The Watchers also choose each person's job. Reproductive couples are chosen by the computer. The same computer also chooses a person's menu (exchanging food is forbidden). At the age of 60, all citizens are killed; moreover, the equal lifespan is seen as a great achievement of the planet's society. The total brainwashing that persists from childhood is extremely effective, as most Equals believe the official ideology, while crying, hate, love, and friendship are rare occurrences. Officially, the Watchers are not considered to be privileged, as they are seen as merely another job. Most public issues are resolved by the popular vote, although the fear of the Watchers, ingrained since childhood, leads to mostly unanimous votes (i.e. the Watchers still get their way). Those who are declared as incurable atavics or publicly promote ideologically incorrect views are publicly censured and are subjected to a mind-wipe procedure. At least, that is what the Watchers tell the populace. There are people who do not live in the Cities; they are called Outsiders. The Watchers make the Equals believe that all Outsiders are nothing more than bandits and villains. Even the word "outsider" is considered a profanity by the Equals. While the Outsiders are free from total control, they have their own problems. Long ago, there was a nuclear war on the planet, which turned most of the planetary surface into a scorching desert. Most of the survivors enclosed themselves in the Cities, while the rest chose to stay free. The Outsiders are unable to provide themselves with even the most basic necessities, so they are forced to steal from the City stores. Also, they are incapable of conceiving children and have to raid the Cities to replenish their numbers (teenagers, usually). Once the kidnapped Equals find out the truth about their lives, they usually choose to join the Outsiders, despite the harsh conditions. Unfortunately, the Outsiders usually lose more people during these raids than they kidnap, so their population is constantly decreasing. They are also aware that, should they choose to do so, the Watchers could eliminate all Outsiders. Dima finds out all this after meeting two Outsiders and a kidnapped Equal. He agrees to aid a group of Outsiders in infiltrating a nearby City to free all Equals from the totallitarian Watchers. As Earth technology is much more advanced than local technology, this plan has a chance to succeed. Dima kills three Watchers but is himself captured. He finds out that most Watchers live in the beautiful and idyllic Thirteenth City, which consists of houses in the only forest left on the planet. The existence of Thirteenth City is covered up, so that neither the Equals nor the Outsiders are aware of it. After getting to Thirteenth City, Dima discovers that the way of life in the Cities is the only viable one on the planet. Due to the nuclear war, there are very few habitable areas left. Besides the small forest, which fits only several thousand Watchers and the gully with a few hundred Outsiders, life is only possible in the Cities. Their population is in the millions, so overcrowding is inevitable. To avoid bloody conflicts and overall chaos, the Watchers are forced to combat love (to avoid jealousy), friendship (to avoid unions and political parties), and hate to create uniform goodwill among the Equals. The Equals, like the Outsiders, are suffering from genetic mutations, caused by radiation. That is the reason why all sexual partners must be selected by the computer. The Outsiders, unwilling to subject themselves to rule, simply kill their children in infancy. The set lifespan of 60 is the result of extremely low supplies, even the Watchers are not exempt from this rule. Also, only those with high IQ are chosen to be Watchers, as they can grasp the severity of the situation and make the necessary decisions. On behalf of Earth, Dima promises to help the people of this planet to remove the consequences of nuclear war. This will take years, but once it is done, the people will once again be able to live normal lives.
21341823	/m/05f43qv	The Way of Shadows	Brent Weeks		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Azoth is an orphan who lives in the Warrens of Cenaria City. He and his two friends, Jarl and Doll Girl, are members of the Black Dragon guild. They make their living stealing money to buy food and pay their guild dues to Rat, the Guild Fist, an enforcer who beats anyone who doesn't pay. One night while Azoth is underneath a local tavern scrounging for coins he overhears a confrontation between Durzo Blint, the best wetboy in the city, and several unknown assailants. After Durzo slaughters the assassins, he catches the escaping Azoth and tells him to not lose a word about that to anyone. One day Rat asks Azoth to be one of his "pretty boys". Azoth's rejection humiliates and angers Rat. Later that day Jarl shows Azoth a secret stash of coins that he has been saving for four years, which he gives Azoth so that he can apprentice to Durzo Blint. Blint is ambushed by the Black Dragon after fulfilling one of his contracts, but makes his way out by incapacitating Ja'laliel, the guild head, and scaring everyone else away. After that he is followed by Azoth as he leaves to make his report at the Sa'kagé headquarters. Although Azoth stays outside, Blint discovers his presence and declines Azoth's bid of being allowed to become Blint's apprentice. Azoth fails in following him when the wetboy leaves. The next day Azoth wakes up to find out that Rat has raped Jarl and made him "one of his girls". Rat wants to punish Azoth for pursuing Durzo but Ja'laliel forbids it. However, Ja'laliel is terminally ill, and Azoth is afraid that Rat will soon be the guild head. Azoth plans his revenge on Rat for Jarl's rape, trying to turn the guild against him, but Rat lets him play the hero. Elsewhere in Cenaria, eleven-year-old Logan Gyre watches his father, Duke Regnus Gyre, as he prepares to travel to a garrison, called Screaming Winds. Logan asks to go with his father, but Duke Gyre refuses and leaves his son as the Lord of House Gyre. Three months pass, during which time Azoth starts to get followers who also hate Rat. One of his followers steals a metal shiv and gives it to Azoth. One night in an alley Azoth encounters Durzo. Azoth insists on apprenticing with him, even going so far as to threaten Durzo's life. Durzo finally makes Azoth an offer; if he kills Rat in one week without any help and brings proof, Durzo will apprentice him. A travelling mage, Solon Tofusin, arrives at the Gyre estate. He is on a mission from the prophet Dorian to help Lord Gyre. When he finds out Duke Gyre has gone to Screaming Winds, he plans to head there immediately, but his plans are disrupted when he finds out that Logan has also been named Lord Gyre. Logan forces him to spar, and Solon humiliates him. He tells him that Logan's soldiers have been losing to him on purpose, which infuriates Logan. He tells his men to treat him as no more than an equal; he is soon going to join his father at Screaming Winds, and if they truly love him, they should be preparing him for the battles there. He apologizes to Solon, who is impressed with Logan and decides to stay with him, at least for now. Rat, meanwhile, has a secret meeting, where it is revealed that he is actually one of the sons of the Godking, who rules Khalidor, a vicious empire to the north, and that Rat was brought to the city in order to prepare it for invasion. A Vurdmeister, a powerful mage assigned to protect him called Neph Dada, shares with him a plan on how to truly destroy Azoth. Four days pass after Durzo gives Azoth his challenge and Rat is still not dead. Worried that Rat will begin to purge his followers, Azoth stays awake all night, but leaves briefly to urinate. While away, Rat and his men kill one of Azoth's followers and kidnap Doll Girl. In the morning, Azoth runs into Durzo, who grabs him and tells him that he will show Azoth the price of his hesitation. Solon is having dinner with the Gyres. They make small talk and not much else, until Solon offends Logan's mother. She tries to send Solon away, despite Logan's efforts, but Logan reminds her he is now Lord Gyre, and sends her away. Solon is even more impressed with Logan, and becomes less certain that Duke Gyre is the one he must serve. In his indecision, he heads out to a tavern. Rat has beaten Doll Girl almost to death, and given her terrible scars on her face. Durzo plans to leave Azoth, but he insists that he will kill Rat within the week, and pleads with Durzo to save Doll Girl. Despite his protests that life is empty and meaningless, Durzo finally concedes. He finds Solon drinking, poisons him, and takes him to Doll Girl. He tells Solon that he can have the antidote if he heals Doll Girl, which he does. Upstairs in a brothel, Durzo is meeting with Momma K. He tells her that Azoth has him worried; he doesn't think that Azoth has it in him to be a killer. At that very moment, however, Azoth is confronting Rat. Rat takes his shiv and tries to rape Azoth, who kills him and cuts off his ear to take to Durzo. He walks in right after Momma K tells Durzo why he needs Azoth. Durzo initially doesn't accept the ear as proof, so Azoth takes him to the river and shows him the body. Durzo offers him one more chance to get out, to apprentice in a clean trade, but Azoth refuses and goes with Durzo. Azoth begins his training with Durzo, which carries on for several years. Eventually, Azoth is sent to Count Rimbold Drake, an old friend of Durzo, who will give him a new name and life. On his way out with his new identity, a poor noble named Kylar Stern, Durzo see Solon Tofusin standing with the mountainous Logan Gyre. Durzo has Kylar run into Logan then start a fight so Durzo can get away. After being beaten senseless by Logan in front of Count Drake's daughter Serah, his crush, Logan insists upon forgiving Kylar. Durzo sends Kylar into Logan's house and they soon become great friends. A few years later, Durzo enters Kylar into a swordsman tournament sponsored by the local Blademasters. The winner will become the king's new bodyguard. Durzo tells Kylar that the Sa'kagé wants to stretch its arm and remind everyone who is in charge. The catch is no Talented, or magical, contestants. Kylar is confronted by a sister of the Chantry who tells him that his conduit for magic is broken while his glore vyrden, his magical store, is huge. There is nothing to be done. Upon facing the opponents, almost all of them should have given him a much harder challenge, he learns that the Sa'kagé has stacked the racks so Kylar could win. Kylar then faces Logan who Kylar beats easily, while wearing a mask so Logan cannot discover his identity. After the tournament Durzo seeks a way for Kylar to be able to use his talent. A kakari would be the perfect thing. With the rumored silver kakari supposedly close, Kylar is supposed to get into the party to get it. Dorian breaks into his herbalist shop and tells Kylar to "ask Momma K" and that "a square vase will give you hope." Momma K had told him that she had someone who may be able to get him in. When he goes to visit this person, it turns out to be Elene, A.K.A. Doll Girl. She denies him an invitation due to her obligation to her family. Kylar leaves and finds his own way into the party. Once there, he starts a fight with Logan as a distraction and then walks off to sneak up the stairs into the chambers to find the kakari. He gets into the room where it is supposed to be. Even after opening the secret area with the square vase, he finds nothing. The kakari isn't there. Soon after, a ruthless wetboy named Hu kills the entire Gyre family except for Logan and his father. Kylar then realizes that Elene must have the kakari. He went down to her room to find her wielding a weapon, but she inadvertently shows him where the silver kakari is hidden with her eyes. Kylar knocks Elene out, and Durzo arrives. The silver kakari ends up being a fake, however Kylar still ends up with a kakari, the black kakari, which he unknowingly steals from Durzo. The heir to the throne is killed that night. Durzo demands they leave. After they leave the death is blamed on a wetboy. While Kylar is in his room at Count Drakes house, Vi, dressed as a maid, attempts to first seduce him, and then kill him. She hesitates, and Count Drake bursts in. After that Royal guards show up and charge Logan with murder of the heir and take him to prison. The King arranges a marriage between Jenine, his daughter, and Logan to secure the line of succession and an heir in case of his own death. Kylar heads to the castle to kill the king. During the ceremony Durzo, who is working for Roth in order to preserve his daughter, poisons everyone in the King's court. During this time Roth and Neph attack the castle. Khalidorans arrive by sea with vurdmeisters but Kylar slows down the process by burning quite a few. Amidst attack, one of the king's advisors beheads him so that the remaining knights will focus on saving the new king, Logan, who is in his bed chambers preparing to consummate his marriage to Jenine. These knights are trapped and Roth shoots each one down through a spy hole while six Khalidoran archers hide behind the door to the chamber. After they all die Roth and Neph come into the room as the couple kills the Khalidorans. Roth apparently kills Jenine, but Neph secretly preserves her for the godking, who is on his way. Neph then orders Logan be castrated and fed to the howlers. Kylar, as the Night Angel, helps release some prisoners and tells them to rebel. After hearing of Logan's location he heads to the bedchamber. He finds the trapped dead people, and the six dead archers. In the bed chamber, there is nothing but blood and a torn up night gown. He is apparently too late. Kylar then battles with Durzo and finally kills him. As Logan is marched toward the hole, one of the guards kills the other and castrates him, leaving the organs as if they were Logan's and tossing the body into the hole. The guard reveals that he was hired by Jarl and tells Logan he can leave. By the time Logan is free from his magical bonds and able to move, it is too late. Several magicians are about to arrive. As a last resort, Logan takes a knife and jumps into the hole. Kylar encounters Roth, but he is surrounded by Vurdmeisters, who end up capturing Kylar. Roth reveals himself as Rat, who had survived the earlier attempt on his life. Solon arrives outside with Curoch and uses the powerful magical sword to slay a large group of vurdmeisters. Kylar breaks free of his captors' hold and kills everyone, including Roth, but is killed himself. Kylar meets the Wolf in death. He is given the choice of life or full death. He chooses Elene and life, then revives to find himself with Uly and Elene. They had dragged him out of the castle and back to Momma K and Jarl.
21342874	/m/05f88_9	The Last of the Immortals	Andrey Livadny		{"/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The story begins in the year 3870, with Galact-Captain Ivan Tamantsev of the Confederacy of Suns defending an unarmed convoy from a group of pirate ships. Despite managing to destroy four of the attacking ships, Tamantsev loses his wingman and is himself forced to eject, after his fighter sustains heavy damage. His escape pod is towed by the pirates to their homeworld of Ganio, settled by colonists of Middle Eastern descent. Tamantsev is brought before Faizullah of the Javgeth Clan, the man who ordered the raid on the convoy. He explains to the Captain his options: he can either agree to temporary employment by the Clans as a pilot, until he pays off the destruction of the four fighters and their AI modules (the fighters were unmanned), or Faizullah can let him go with the knowledge that Tamantsev will not survive long on the desert world. While Ivan agrees to fly missions for Faizullah (fully aware that the Ganian intends to go back on his word), he demands to personally inspect his fighter. Upon arriving to the hangar, he sees that it is an ancient Phantom-class aerospace fighter from the days of the First Galactic War with the Earth Alliance. While he shudders at the thought of flying this 1500-year old antique, Ivan knows that this is his best shot of escaping the planet. Faizullah's engineers agree to let him inside the fighter, as they have disabled all of the craft's AI functions. However, they underestimate the Confederate pilot training, and Tamantsev is able to restart the systems in service mode and launch the ship manually. Upon entering orbit, Ivan faces another problem, as the Phantom does not have enough fuel to jump to another system, and the old fighter is no match for the Ganio's orbital defenses. Ivan scans the local hypersphere force lines and determines that one of them is unmarked on all star charts (i.e. it does not lead anywhere). Realizing he has nothing to lose, Tamantsev transitions into hypersphere and uses the last of his fuel to maneuver the ship to intersect with the unmarked force line, remembering that 3 million years ago, none of the known races did not possess hyperdrives (it is an invention unique to humans). Instead, they used stationary portals which used the hypersphere force lines as conduits to rapidly send objects between planets. Ivan's theory turns out to be correct, and his fighter enters one such conduit and rapidly travels to another system far from Ganio. Unfortunately, the conduit throws his ship out into normal space into a planet's low orbit. Lacking fuel, Ivan is unable to slow down his descent and is forced to eject, while the Phantom crashes in the nearby woods. Before ejecting, Ivan notices a city protected by a giant wall not too far from the crash site. After getting out of his escape pod, Tamantsev decides to head towards the city, assuming it to be yet another lost colony, settled during the Great Exodus of the 23rd century. Following standard protocols, Ivan does not remove his spacesuit until he can determine that the air is safe to breathe and there are no harmful microorganisms in the planet's biosphere. However, after several days of walking, he runs out of air and is forced to crack the seal. Ivan finds that the air is safe to breathe but shortly succumbs to a strange ailment, which persists for several hours before going away just as suddenly as it appeared. He finds that he is able to sense living creatures without actually hearing or seeing them. His newfound empathic ability allows him to see any living thing's neural structure, which he uses to kill a local predator with a single shot to the brain (the largest neural mass). Some time later, he witnesses an ambush of a woman by a dozen shapeshifting creatures. He rescues her by using his empathic ability to determine the location of the creatures' brains before shooting them. After recovering, the woman reveals that her name is Flora Shodan, and that she is descended from the settlers who arrived aboard the colony ship Hope (they are aware that their ancestors came from Earth). After Ivan notices that Flora is able to literally turn invisible, she reveals that all of the arrivals underwent genetic mutation to varying degrees upon first breathing the planet's air. The mutations have created four distinct subspecies: Shadows, Metamorphs, Emglans, and Chosen. Flora was born a Shadow and is able to turn her body (not her clothes) invisible, has empathic abilities, and is able to heal by touch. Metamorphs are shapeshifters, capable of assuming any shape, including flawlessly imitating another person. Emglans are telepaths and are able to sense a person's general state of mind from miles away. The Chosen have remained mostly human. All of Doom's (name given to the planet by the colonists) inhabitants have one ability in common: they are immortal. The body of any person over 30 stops aging, so some of those who arrived aboard the Hope are still alive. However, the mutations also affects the birth rate. As such, no child has been born in over 200 years (Flora herself is only 302 and is viewed as a girl by many others). Many of the colonists have gone insane as the result of the changes and have fled to the wilderness. The survivors came across a giant wall built millions of years ago and built their City behind it. The human society consists of five castes called satts (named after the captain of the Hope, Satt Valtorn). The Shadow, Metamorph, Emglan, and Chosen Satts are all exclusively made up of their respective subspecies, while the Warrior Satt is made up of former members of the other satts who have chosen the life of danger and wish to protect the City from the wild metamorphs using antiquated equipment, salvaged from the Hope. After relaying all this information, Flora reveals that Ivan himself has become a Shadow. Ivan asks Flora why she was outside the City, and she replies that she was looking for a pair of invisible assailants, who have attacked a Chosen and stolen his car. The description of the attack leads Ivan to believe that he is not the only outsider on this world. He repairs her damaged vehicle, and they head back to the City, where Ivan is greeted with caution. Flora invites Ivan to be a guest at her house until he is given a place of his own (due to machines doing all menial work in the City, everybody's basic needs are satisfied (food, shelter, clothing, etc.), realizing that she was falling for the young stranger from the stars. The next day, Ivan and Flora head to the monthly Satt Council meeting, where Ivan hopes to convince the satts of the danger of the outside galaxy. However, Ivan's inexperience with his mental abilities causes a panic, and he is forced to wait outside. He overhears an argument between Flora and Derek Kelgan, the head of the Chosen Satt, who refuses to listen to her and the "infant" she brought with her and even threatens to kill her if she starts disturbing the peace. Fed up, Ivan assaults Kelgan and forces him to apologize to Flora. Upon returning to Flora's house, they realize that they have fallen in love and spend the night together. The next morning, Ivan decides to leave the City and join the Warrior Satt to both attempt to protect the colony and keep Flora safe from Kelgan's attempts at revenge. Flora refuses to listen to his reasons, only concerned with him leaving her. Upon arriving to the Boundary (the name given to the ancient wall protecting the city), Ivan is accepted into the Warrior Satt. Meanwhile, Flora calms down and realizes that Ivan was only trying to protect her. She remembers that he was trying to find out more about the colony's past and asks her friend Nicolai Lorgen, a Chosen, to retrieve the information from his satt's archives. In the attempt to please Flora, with whom he has long been enamored, Nick copies the data onto a service droid and sends it to Flora's house. However, he is caught by his father Richard Lorgen, who decides to punish his son and tells Kelgan about it. Kelgan sends droids to assassinate Flora and Ivan. Due to some quick thinking, Flora survives the attempt and uses the maintenance shafts running under the City to get to the Boundary, along with her friends Ryben (a Metamorph) and Nive (an Emglan) and the service droid. Ivan is out on nightly patrol of the Boundary when an assassin droid tries to kill him with a sniper rifle. Unlike the locals, Tamantsev trusts technology more than his senses, and that is what saves him. After destroying the droid, he reunited with Flora and asks Lymel, the head of the Warrior Satt to give him a vehicle for traveling outside the city. After examining the wreckage of the Phantom, Ivan confirms his suspicions that his entire escape from Ganio was orchestrated by someone who wants access to Doom. He reads through the data from the service droid and discovers that Satt Valtorn disappeared after departing on an expedition to a set of alien buildings not too far from the colony. They head to a complex of ancient structures on a plateau, nicknamed the Claw by the colonists. On the way there, Ivan experiences a set of visions, which are actually data implanted in his brain during his service in the Confederate special forces and activated by certain visual cues. He puts the pieces together and realizes that Doom is a site of an ancient bio-lab set up by the Harammins 3 million years ago to develop bio-weapons in their fight against the Insects. The planet Paradise, visited by humans earlier, was a test site for one of their experiments to create shapeshifters (see novel Paradise Lost). The research was abandoned following the isolation of the O'Hara cluster, although it did yield an unexpected side effect — the Harramin Holy Grail, immortality. Now, someone wants to learn the secret of immortality at any cost. Earlier, on Ganio, Gour, the last surviving member of the Harammin Immortal Quota, is watching his plan unfold. He had paid Faizullah to capture a Confederate pilot and orchestrated his entire escape, including the jump using a hypersphere conduit. The jump also activated an ancient Harammin portal on Ganio, long buried under the desert sand. Gour tricks Faizullah into digging out the portal and sending a strike force to eliminate the human inhabitants of Doom before sending out his own forces to kill the survivors, including the Ganians. Meanwhile, Ivan is setting up the defenses along the Boundary, expecting an attack, when Faizullah arrives with his troops and three Hoplite-class serv-machines, capable of reducing the giant wall and the City to rubble in a matter of minutes. Tamantsev contacts Faizullah and makes him realize that he has been betrayed. Faizullah, being a man of honor, agrees to join forces with the defenders and fight off Gour's forces. Ivan takes one of the Hoplites, while Faizullah takes another. They use the drain the batteries of the third one to send a message through hypersphere, calling in the Confederate fleet, knowing full well that the fleet will never get to Doom in time. Ivan asks Flora to go to the City and convince Kelgan to shut down the City's power grid, as the machines sent by Gour will interpret the City's power signatures as hostile targets and open fire on civilians. Flora calls Kelgan and explains the situation, but he refuses to listen, believing Flora and the Warrior Satt to be traitors for letting outsiders into the City. He orders Richard Lorgen to send a squad of droids to strike at the defenders from behind. Nive reveals to Flora that he used to be the Hopes chief engineer and knows the City's power grid inside-out. He goes to shut the grid down manually, while Flora and Ryben return to the Boundary to help the defenders. Unfortunately, Nive is too late, and the three attacking Phalanxer-class serv-machines launch high-yield missiles at key power signatures in the City, killing many civilians, including Kelgan himself. The defenders fight serv-machines and assault droids and, never having to face such enemies before, take heavy losses. The Ganians, true to their word, fight and die with them side-by-side. Despite the odds, Ivan and Faizullah manage to take out most of the enemy serv-machines, although they are heavily wounded and their Hoplites destroyed. Conquering their overwhelming fear of death, the defenders charge the assault droids, dying by the dozens but also taking out a large chunk of the enemy forces. Despite the arrival of Kelgan's droids, the defenders manage to win the day. Flora and Ivan are reunited. The wounded Faizullah understands that he has now become a mutant himself, along with two dozen of his men. Knowing that they can never go home (they would risk spreading the mutating agents to the galaxy), Faizullah decides to stay and declares the creation of the Ganio Satt. Gour, who arrives through the portal several hours later is captured by Ryben, who prevents the Harammin from cracking the seal of his helmet and breathing in Doom's air.
21343562	/m/05f5rrh	Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans	Charles R. Johnson	2009-02		 The book's plot centers around the fact that many African indentured servants, once in America, proved to be highly skilled - even more so than many of their European counterparts. The book tells the tale of how these servants went on to buy out their indenture contracts, creating a white backlash which resulted in lengthening those contracts. As tensions between Africans and Europeans grew, this ultimately led in 1676 to the Bacon's Rebellion, which caused slavery to become official law in all the colonies. The book then takes the reader from the end of American slavery, through Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement to the nomination of President Barack Obama. The central theme that is woven throughout the narrative is the resilience, creativity and fortitude of African Americans through virtually insurmountable obstacles.
21345627	/m/05f8jjs	The Winds of Dune	Brian Herbert	2009-08-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel opens with the Lady Jessica back on Arrakis following the disappearance of her son Emperor Paul-Muad'Dib, who according to Fremen custom has walked into the desert to die after he is blinded. The story of the friendship between Paul Atreides and Bronso Vernius is also told.
21347582	/m/04cxfqs	Headlong	Simon Ings	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Headlong is set England in the mid-21st century. There has been a civil war and reconstruction after a period of corporate excess. Advances in nanoelectronics and robotics have led to the hybridization of human and artificial intelligence (AI). These expensive interfaces have only been installed on a few architects to facilitate their direction of nanobots that are constructing beautiful cities on the Moon. However, a few years before the novel begins, the AIs take over the Moon and precipitate an economic collapse on Earth by subtle market manipulations. The novel's posthuman protagonist Christopher Yale and his wife Joanne have enhanced senses and are telepathically linked. When his interfaces are removed following the economic collapse, he struggles with Epistemic Appetite Imbalance (EAI), a disorder precipitated by the loss of his enhanced senses. Christopher and his wife divorce, and she is killed a few months later.
21350290	/m/05f93xm	Yes Man	Danny Wallace		{"/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Danny Wallace, a freelance radio producer for the BBC in London, takes three simple words uttered by a stranger on a bus—"Say yes more"—as a challenge and says "yes" to everything for a year. He says "yes" to pamphleteers on the street, the credit card offers stuffing his mailbox and solicitations on the Internet. He attends meetings with a group that believes aliens built the pyramids in Egypt, says "yes" to every invitation to go out on the town and furthers his career by saying "yes" in meetings with executives.
21364710	/m/05f847_	Horizon	Lois McMaster Bujold	2009-01-27	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 With Fawn's prompting, Dag seeks out a teacher. A powerful groundsetter at local New Moon Cutoff Camp could be the answer to his prayers, but conflicts arise between the insular Lakewalker traditions and Dag's determination to be a healer for farmers. Dag, Fawn, Arkady the groundsetter and others embark on a long journey by wagon. They are joined by several other characters, some Lakewalker, some farmer, including Fawn's brother, Whit, and his wife, Berry. On their way up the Trace, a long wagon road, they encounter a malice, an evil being with great power. A Lakewalker kills the malice with a sharing knife. Fawn guesses that this malice was fleeing something even more powerful. That turns out to be a second malice. That malice is killed by Whit, aided by Fawn and Berry, which is unprecedented—no farmer has ever killed a malice without Lakewalker aid before. At the end of the book, Dag and Fawn's vision of closer cooperation and understanding between Lakewalkers and farmers, as partners, is beginning to be achieved.
21364772	/m/05f5jcc	March Upcountry	John Ringo		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock is summoned before his mother, the Empress of Man, and his older half-brother Prince John, the heir-apparent, and is ordered to attend a flag-showing ceremony on the planet Leviathan, one of the Empire's more distant and backward member-worlds. Roger protests, but eventually accepts the assignment and stalks out of the room. Roger boards the assault transport Charles DeGlopper with Eleanora O'Casey and Kostas Matsugae where they are greeted by its skipper, Captain Vil Krasnitsky, who welcomes them aboard graciously but is put off by Roger's apathy, requiring O'Casey to repeatedly apologize and excuse Roger's juvenile behavior throughout the voyage. Shortly after the ship enters "Tunnel Space", Sergeant-Major Eva Kosutic goes out to check the status of the troops guarding the prince and discovers a sentry shot dead just outside engineering. She alerts Pahner to the security breach and proceeds to hunt down the suspected saboteur. She discovers that the saboteur has planted shaped charges on the ship's main plasma conduits. Pahner orders Captain Krasnitsky to shut down the conduits but Krasnitsky says that shutting down now could destroy the ship. Kosutic catches up with the saboteur who turns out to be the ship's logistics officer, Ensign Guha, and manages to shoot her in the neck and run for the exit just before the dead man's switch detonates the charges. Roger, who was forced into a spacesuit and then sat on by two marines (for his own safety), is eventually released and briefed on the attack. Ensign Guha had apparently been a toot-zombie and aside from planting explosives, she also planted computer viruses that crippled every major system. Pahner says their only option is to effect repairs and head for the nearest habitable star system which happens to be Marduk. Though the planet is nominally an Imperial world, it has only minimal landing facilities that are insufficient to repair the damage to DeGlopper. Also, the region is notorious for drug smuggling, piracy and "Saint" activity, all of which raises the risk to the DeGlopper and the prince. Upon entry into Marduk's star system, the DeGlopper detects the presence of an unidentified warship already in the system, indicating that Marduk is under hostile control. Being too deep inside the system's tunnel wall the DeGlopper is left no choice but to fight. Additionally, the enemy cruiser is not equipped with a tunnel drive which means it must have been dropped off by a carrier, which is much more heavily armed and which might still be in-system. The senior officers of the DeGlopper therefore plan for the impending attack against the enemy cruiser and Bronze Battalion is tasked with taking the space port on the planet. However, they soon detect a second ship and both are assumed to be Saint cruisers. The DeGlopper, so heavily damaged, has no chance of destroying both ships, and with a member of the royal family aboard, surrender is not an option. The battle plan, therefore, changes: The DeGlopper will engage the cruisers and attempt to destroy both by any means, while the shuttles carrying Prince Roger and his body guards will have to be launched from a much greater distance, then land on the far side of the planet and make their way on foot and then over sea to the space port, capture it and then capture a tunnel-drive starship. O'Casey briefs the company commanders and Roger on what to expect on Marduk though the information she has is very limited. Marduk is an incredibly hot and humid world with unfriendly wildlife and inhabitants. The Mardukans are at a pre-steam level of technology and some of the more advanced cultures have discovered gunpowder and are organized in city-states, small empires or in a state of barbarism. Pahner points out that they can eat the local foods but that they'll still need to carry dietary supplements for materials that simply don't exist in Mardukan biochemistry. He adds that crossing the planet on foot will take months. After loading the shuttles to capacity with all the necessary materials and fuel, the company awaits the battle in the shuttles. DeGlopper engages the first Saint cruiser and wins but, as expected, sustains heavy damage. The shuttles are launched and DeGlopper heads towards the second Saint cruiser. After engaging the second ship, DeGlopper is crippled and the Saint cruiser closes with it in order to board her. Eleonora O'Casey suddenly realizes that she forgot something extremely important on board - her copy of Encyclopedia Galactica. She requests a link to the ship to download the information knowing that the Saint could pick up the transmission. The Saint ship does detect the transmission but not soon enough, as DeGlopper self-destructs, taking the Saint cruiser with it. Aboard the shuttles, O'Casey gloomily reports that she only got a fraction of the data she needed. Kosutic however, isn't worried; the marines come from so many worlds with so many diverse backgrounds that they'll probably find someone there who knows something about primitive technologies such as those used by the Mardukans. As they approach the planet, the sensors pickup the presence of the Saint carrier that probably brought the cruisers into the system. Though undetected, the shuttles are forced to alter course and land even farther from the port than planned, with very little fuel for such a course correction. In the end they settle on what looks like salt-flats and barely manage a "dead stick" landing. After unloading their equipment, Bravo Company sets out in the sweltering heat on their long journey. After six hours on the salt flats, Bravo Company reaches the jungle and Roger notices strop marks on some of the trees indicating the territorial markings of a very large animal. The animal in question is soon spotted by the company - an elephant sized beast with horns and an armor ruff protecting its neck with a closer examination revealing a herbivore. Pahner orders everyone to check fire but Roger does not hear the command and guns it down. Pahner is furious and privately chastises Roger, without giving him a chance to explain his reasons for shooting the beast. Minutes later, a Mardukan native suddenly emerges from the treeline. After O'Casey works out a translation "kernel" she manages to figure out the native's purpose. He is D'Nall Cord, a shaman of the X'Intai people and he asks who killed the flar beast. When told it is Roger he tells him that they are brothers for life. When Roger tries to decline the honor Cord says he isn't all that happy about the situation either but that the laws of people demand it. Pahner is also unhappy about the situation, but thinks it might have some advantages, such as Cord being able to introduce them peacefully to his tribe and his knowledge of the area. As the company follows Cord to his village he urges them to hurry before nightfall as the yaden come out then. When asked what the yaden are, his response actually translates as "vampire". While inclined to dismiss this as superstition, Cord's description of the yaden is too specific for Roger and Pahner's peace of mind. When night comes and the company is forced to make camp in the "Valley of the Vampires", Pahner sets up the tightest perimeter he can. Sadly, this proves inadequate as one of the troops is found dead in the middle of the night with double-puncture marks over his body and drained of all his blood. The following day, another soldier is attacked by an arboreal worm-like creature that literally melts her to death. Cord identifies the creature as a yaden-cuol (christened a killer-pillar) and tells them to start paying more attention to the jungle if they wish to survive. The company finally arrives at Cord's village, where they are greeted by the tribal chief D'net Delkra, Cord's brother. Cord tells his brother of his asi bond with Roger and Delkra, while saddened at this news, orders the binding ceremony conducted and a feast to be held for Roger and his "clan". While in the village, Cord and Delkra consult with Roger, Pahner and O'Casey on a serious problem facing the tribe from the neighboring city-state of Q'Nkok. The city and the X'Intai have a treaty whereby the city dwellers are permitted to cut only certain trees in a specific area of the tribe's territory in return for certain goods like iron spearheads. In recent months the woodcutters have been cutting deeper into the jungle than permitted while the goods being paid in return have been of poor quality. As a result, Cord's nephew and protégé Deltan died when his spearhead shattered while attacked by an animal. To attack the woodcutters would mean war with the city while allowing further violations would condemn the tribe to a slow death by starvation as the jungle is depleted of trees and game. The tribe could launch a surprise attack on Q'Nkok and feast on their food stores, but such an attack would leave them seriously weakened and their rival tribes would destroy them. Pahner asks that they delay attacking Q'Nkok until after the company has gone there so that they can resupply and assess the situation there. Accompanied by Cord and several of his nephews, the company proceeds to Q'Nkok, where the tribesmen are not greeted well by the city dwellers (though a demonstration of the plasma rifle manages to stop the situation from devolving). They are brought before the King Xiya Kan and state their need for supplies in exchange for hi-tech tools while Cord notifies the king of Deltan's death and the continued treaty violations. The company arranges to eavesdrop on the king's council and hear him attack them for their continued misconduct. Believing that the king isn't involved in the plot, the company bugs all the great houses to discover who is. Meanwhile, the company roams the city and Kosutic stops by an arms merchant called T'Leen Targ and purchases a sword for the prince and hears from him the story of the destruction of Voitan and its sister cities by the barbarian Kranolta tribes. She tells this story to the company and points out that they need to cross their territory to get to the seacoast. After listening in on the great houses, the marines discover that three of the great houses are conspiring to topple the king by provoking Cord's tribe into attacking the city, so as to weaken the king's guard. Then a group of Kranolta mercenaries they have employed will be brought into the city to finish off the guard and sack the competing great houses and independent merchants. The king is astounded and infuriated by this, but is skeptical and asks how they discovered this. The marines are forced to tell him about there technological surveillance abilities which deeply impress the king. Pahner and O'Casey offer Bravo Company's services in breaking this conspiracy in return for a portion of the fines and seizures as funding for their mission. Roger however, points out that the plotters didn't invent the woodcutting crisis, but merely capitalized upon it and offers a possible solution: mining coal in the valley on the other side of the X'Intai territory. The king knows of the valley but fears that no one will want to go there because of the yaden. Roger then, very coldly, suggests that he send the plotters there. While the king is impressed by the elegance of the suggestion, Pahner is appalled and privately chastises him, telling him that he can't always go for a "bigger hammer". The marines and the king's guards assault the Great Houses' homes, while Roger, Pahner and several marines, take out the nobles' guards at a state dinner, allowing the king's guards to arrest them. The king then introduces the marines to D'Len Pah, the leader of a tribe of professional caravan drivers who own several pack animals called flar-ta. D'Len is impressed by the humans capabilities and agrees to join them, believing that they have the best chance of reopening the trade routs to Voitan. With their equipment and supplies loaded onto the pack beasts, Roger, Cord, his nephews Denat, Tratan and Cranla and the marines set forth into Kranolta territory. Marduk continues to take its toll on the company and its equipment as they journey towards Voitan. Sergeant Cobedra is mauled to death by a large six-legged creature called an atul (damnbeast). Julian's better-than-average hearing saves him from getting killed by group of yaden (vampire-moths). Bands of Kranolta hunters ambush the company repeatedly, and a malfunction in one of the plasma rifles - a result of poor quality control of its power pack and the damaging effect of Marduk's climate on the safety mechanisms - blows up an entire squad in a small nuclear explosion. After jury-rigging a tester and scanning all the power packs they find many are defective and Pahner orders all but a couple of the packs discarded and that all the plasma rifles be sealed in bags and not used (seriously reducing the company's firepower). They are forced to travel two days through an enormous swamp, face the enormous atul-grak (bigbeast) and cross a river infested in Mardukan crocodiles (damncrocs). The experience causes Roger to start growing up and to get to know his troops better and appreciate the sacrifices they are willing make for him. Meanwhile, the Kranolta assemble all of their tribes and decide to attack the human invaders. Their vanguard strikes the company just short of the ruins of Voitan and the company is forced to abandon several people trying to get to walls of the city. When they get there however, Pahner notices that Roger is missing and nearly explodes when he discovers that he lagged behind trying to help evacuate an injured marine. Roger soon finds himself facing several dozen Kranolta in one-on-one ritual combat and manages to kill every opponent. Pahner in the meantime orders the powered armor to be used to extract Roger, only to find that all but four of the suits aren't operational. When the armored marines do arrive, Roger calls out to the leader demanding safe passage in to the city and orders a demonstration of the plasma cannon. The leader consents but promises to return to finish them off. When Roger arrives in the city, Pahner explodes on him, telling him that he must survive at all costs, even if that means that none of the marines survive, because his family is the only thing holding the empire together these days and that he needs to understand his place in the company. Pahner also tells him that he takes no joy in abandoning his people to die but that he must do this if it means succeeding in the mission to protect him. Roger finally realizes that the fault lays with him and that Pahner is right. Pahner then asks Roger to take command of Third Platoon (filling in for its dead CO) and to familiarize himself with the defenses they are preparing for the expected attack. Come dawn the next day, the Kranolta approach the Citadel that the humans' have dug-in to in numbers far exceeding Pahner's estimate (18,000 instead of 5,000). The battle is fierce and lasts hours, with the Kranolta attempting to scale the walls and break open the gate, regardless of their casualties, while the marines and Roger rain plasma cannon fire, grenades and bead volleys at them. During the battle Roger and Cord are lightly wounded while the marines suffer serious casualties. Despite their incredible losses, the Kranolta are undeterred and continue to assault the Citadel. Suddenly, a new force emerges from the jungle and marines fear they are reinforcements for the Kranolta. However, the new forces raise the banners of fallen Voitan and of T'an K'tass and assault the Kranolta's remaining forces from the rear and pin them between them and the marines, leaving very few survivors. Pahner then negotiates a ceasefire, to allow the Kranolta to bury their dead and the marines to depart Voitan unmolested. The company stays in Voitan for three weeks to allow it to recover. O'Casey busies herself with assisting T'Kal Vlan, the last ruler of T'an K'tass, and T'Leen Targ whom the company met earlier at Q'Nkok, while Dobrescu makes a few discoveries. He tells the Voitanese that the secret of their famous "water steel" (Damascene steel) is a combination of the unique ore composition found in mines there and the techniques they used and predicts that they should be able to produce the best weapons-grade steel they have yet. He also discovers that the Mardukans' genders are reversed; the males are actually ovipositors while the females produce the sperm and carry the fetuses. However, it is merely a technical definition (which explains the problems with the translators) and Pahner decides that the marines should continue to refer to the "females" as males. The Marines also use the time to bury their dead in the city's catacombs (a sign of high honor from the Voitanese), to collect good weapons and train with them. The reduced company departs from Voitan and continues to march until they reach the Hadur region to a city called Marshad. They are soon intercepted by a tinker of some sort who also urges them to go to Marshad and acts as a sort of guide for the area. They arrive at the king's palace just in time to see him behead a hapless peasant and the Company is ordered to dress ranks to deter any idea of attack. Prince Roger addresses the king, presents his credentials and declares that Voitan has been restored. The king states that he has heard of their exploits, that a place has been prepared for them and that a feast shall be held in their honor. Though the locals seem friendly enough, Pahner, Roger, Kosutic, O'Casey and Cord all agree that King Radj is not to be trusted and need to consider the possibility that Radj will attempt to assassinate Roger or some of the marines. At the lavish dinner, the humans eat very little due to the presence of a foul-tasting herb. O'Casey keeps herself busy by conversing with Jedal Vel, the Pasulian envoy. Afterwards, the king asks Roger if his puissant warriors could kill all of his guards in the room. Roger says that they probably could and the king glances at his guard captain who promptly kills the Pasulian envoy sitting next to O'Casey. Roger remains unfazed by this, and with his usual speed pulls out a bead pistol and shoots the guard in question dead and immediately trains the weapon on the king himself. The king however never intended to kill them but to "motivate" to do his bidding which is to conquer Pasule for him. The humans at the dinner are then separated from the rest of their party. As the rest of the company settles in for the duration, Poertena and Cord's nephews continue their card games. However, a Mardukan female in the room hums a song that is actually a message regarding the prince and a way to save him. Poertena realizes that this is an intelligence contact and discreetly transfers the request for a meet to his commanders. Lt. Jasco, Kosutic, Julian, Poertena and Denat meet in the kitchen as requested and are soon startled when a wall behind the lieutenant opens up to reveal the female and Kheder Bijan. Kheder tells the humans that had they failed to follow him to Marshad, King Radj would've have sent his entire army to destroy them since they are his ticket to control of the Hadur region and that He will use them until they are all dead. Kosutic asks what the plan is and Kheder says that there are factions in Marshad in league with Pasule who desire a change in regime in Marshad. All the marines need to do is to turn upon the army of Marshad with their "lightning weapons" on the day of the battle. The female, Sena, is to be their conduit to Kheder. The troops consider the plan and decide to go along with it with some changes that anger Kheder but which he has no choice but to agree to. Denat is then sent out with Sena with a bomb that he is tasked to attach to the bridge the night before the attack. They arrive at her house, where Denat is introduced to her family. He explains his mission to them and they help with the details of the plan. They are then resolved to wait until the attack and share what little food they have with their guest, her father stating that "the House of T'Leen is not so fallen as to be unable to provide hospitality!". Upon hearing his name, Denat mentions that he knows a T'Leen Targ and Sena's father says he is his cousin T'Leen Sul. Happy to impart good news, Denat tells him about Targ and his role in recapturing Voitan and how the city is restored. Sul is overjoyed to hear this and resolves to return to Voitan with his wife. As Pahner, Roger and O'Casey finish their plans and turn in for the night, a casual remark by O'Casey about his father draws Roger's attention. He is surprised to hear that O'Casey is fully briefed on the story and he surprises her in turn, by saying he was never told the reasons for his father's expulsion from Court. O'Casey then tells him the story, how his Grandfather was an ineffectual emperor whose policies had weakened the empire's military and destabilized it politically, how his mother had fallen in love with the Earl of New Madrid and how she discovered his connections to certain treasonous factions and had him repudiated and how she chose not to abort Roger. Roger realizes that his strained relationship with his mother is the result of his similarity, both in appearance and behavior to his hated father and that no one told him this story, because they assumed that he already knew. Worse, they assumed that his behavior was a sign that he was siding with his father and not his mother. Roger is infuriated by his mother's distrust, and orders O'Casey and the marines out of the room, which he then proceeds to demolish with his sword. O'Casey then turns to Pahner to explain what happen and that they need to talk, while the marines fear that Roger has become treasonous. Roger finally emerges from his funk the next day to ask about the status of the company. He points out to Pahner that given their losses in life and ammunition to date, they are likely to run out of both before reaching the coast and suggests taking on Mardukan guards be it by loyalty oaths or cash. Pahner is forced to agree but is uncomfortable with the idea of hiring mercenaries. Meanwhile, Denat slips out of the city unnoticed and heads to the river, where he places the bomb under the bridge. Radj's new guard captain meets with Roger and demands that he draft orders to his troops to follow the guard captain's commands until they are reunited. After the exchange of threats, Roger complies. On the morning of the battle, Roger speaks over the radio to the marines, explaining why he'd been so angry at his mother and the reasons that they found themselves on Marduk, stating that he still loves her both as a mother and as an empress and pledging to get all of them back home to Earth and to discuss the matter with his mother. The marines, encouraged by this, set off to the battle field while Roger, Pahner and the rest of the guards are ordered to join Radj in viewing the battle from the palace balcony. As arranged, the plasma cannon team carries the weapon into range and fires it at the Pasulian guards on the other side, who jump at first sight of the weapon. Once the bridge is clear, the rest of the marines and the Marshadan army cross to the Pasulian side and begin the assault on the city while the plasma cannon is hauled to the top of a hill (followed by a group of soldiers Radj has sent to keep an eye on them). Soon after, the smaller Pasulian army is spotted coming out of the city. Just as the two forces are about to meet, the marines spring their trap. The plasma cannon is turned upon the Marshadan army while the forces guarding the marines manning the cannon are blown apart by directional mines and the bridge explodes, cutting off their line of retreat. Pahner takes the king down while Roger and his bodyguards quickly dispatch with the king's guards and use their bodies to block the door until their reinforcements in the barracks get there. Three days after the battle, Roger meets with Kheder Bijan, who is the new king of Marshad and inquires as to the delay in giving them the supplies and shields that were promised. Kheder refuses to give them what he promised and confidently tells Roger that he and his marines aren't going anywhere and threatens to withhold the antidote to the poison they consumed on their first night there if Roger fails to show him respect. Roger however, tells Kheder that he and the marines aren't from anywhere on his planet and therefore not vulnerable to the same poisons Mardukans are. When Kheder attempts to "renegotiate", Roger shoots him and orders T'Leen Sul to be brought in to replace him. With O'Casey's assistance T'Leen establishes a more rational regime, rearranging Marshad's resources and redistributing the land and dedicating more of it to food production rather than dianda. Soon after, numerous diplomatic delegations from the surrounding city-states arrive at Marshad to meet with the humans both to thank them for removing Radj Hoomas and to promise safe passage through their territory. As Roger conducts the various diplomatic handshakes, Pahner notes to O'Casey in private how much he's grown and thinks to himself that Bravo Company's loyalties are to the no-longer useless Prince. As the marines organize for departure, Kosutic notifies Roger and Pahner that they've pick up a fragment of a radio transmission: someone has spotted the shuttles. Pahner decides that Roger and O'Casey may have been right about telling their friends along the way the truth so as to cover their back trail. Roger then mounts the flar-ta Patty with a recovering Cord at his back and gives to order to continue the march towards the mountains.
21365995	/m/05f43vk	Girl Meets Boy	Ali Smith	2007-11-01		 A modern-day reinterpretation of the Ovid's myth of Iphis, it concerns two sisters, Anthea and Imogen (Midge) living in Inverness. Imogen works in the marketing department of a large company producing bottled water, Anthea is on work experience in the same department but then falls in love with Robin, a female eco-warrior. It also vividly portrays her sister Imogen and her joyful emergence from low self esteem. The text has one of the most remarkable sex scenes in modern fiction that includes no reference to body parts whatsoever.
21371954	/m/05f5qbj	Crocodile Tears	Anthony Horowitz		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 A nuclear technician in India plants a bomb on a pump in a nuclear power station in Jowada but is killed by the blast as hifrh paymasters didn't want to leave any witnesses. (which would later be revealed who). A cloud of nuclear steam slowly travels towards Jowada, and a charity called First Aid quickly reacts to the disaster. Meanwhile Alex Rider is spending New Year's with Sabina Pleasure and her family in Scotland. He goes to a New Year's Eve party hosted by the rich black businessman Desmond McCain, founder of the fictitious charity First Aid. As Alex, Sabina, and her father drive home, a sniper shoots the tire of their car, causing them to lose control and crash into a loch. Alex, Sabina, and her father barely escape from the vehicle. Their escape is helped by an Indian man who is unidentified and unknown to them at the time. Alex is later approached by a journalist named Harry Bulman who wants to publicise Alex's MI6 activities. Alex is forced to cooperate with MI6 on one last mission if they want Bulman to get out of his life. He is tasked with finding more information about a genetically modified foods research facility named Greenfields. He enters the facility while on a school trip and plugs in a USB drive to copy the contents of director Leonard Straik's computer. Straik (who is accompanied by McCain) discovers that the computer has been compromised and orders a massive manhunt to find the person responsible. Alex barely escapes the facility alive. McCain recognizes Alex, however, and contacts Bulman to learn more about him. After Bulman discloses all that he knows, McCain murders him to keep him silent. McCain kidnaps Alex and flies him into Kenya. McCain reveals that he created his charity, First Aid, to steal money from the general public, responding to disasters that he creates himself. Preparing his charity for these engineered disasters, First Aid arrives on the scene first and collects a large sum of money. McCain also explains that he asked Greenfields to engineer a poison called ricin for crops that would kill half the population of Africa. McCain says he will make hundreds of millions of pounds during the first few months of the plague and intends to steal the money before running away and assuming a new identity in South America (Switzerland in the American version). The Wheat would start producing the poison when given the biological trigger of a mold Alex found at Greenfields. McCain takes Alex to a nearby river and makes him hang from a pole above a river infested with hungry crocodiles, as they try to eat him. He is saved by the same Indian from the loch, and escapes into the forest. The Indian reveals his name as Rahim and states that he works for the Indian Secret Service which sent him to kill McCain. While Rahim tries to find a ride out of Africa, Alex makes a journey to the dam that is holding the water from the valley, all the while being pursued by McCain's men. Alex blows up the dam with a bomb, killing everybody except himself. He is rescued by Rahim in a plane. All the crops that were carrying the poison were destroyed in the flood. They touch down at a nearby airport to refuel, but McCain arrives and shoots Rahim, killing him. Alex jumps out of the plane, but injures his ankle in the process. Just when Alex is about to be killed, he rolls a barrel of fuel over to McCain and blows it up with an explosive gel pen Smithers gave him. Alex watches as McCain burns to death in a pillar of flame. A few weeks later Alex is back in London healing from his wounds. Jack comes in and sits with him, reminding him that his fifteenth birthday is coming soon. She also assures him that this was his last mission and that MI6 will leave him alone. Alex briefly smiles and rests for the day.
21377209	/m/05f9m8v	Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God	Francis Chan	2008		 Crazy Love deals with the idea of the average Christian's love of God and learning how to further develop those feelings into a "crazy, relentless, all-powerful love."
21384091	/m/05f6ggl	Notes From the Midnight Driver	Jordan Sonnenblick	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Alex Gregory is a 16-year-old boy. One night while his mom was on a date because his dad ran off with his third-grade teacher, he decided to get wasted and he took his mom's car to pay his father a visit. The next thing he knows is that he hit a $375 lawn gnome and puked on a police officer. To pay back the $375, plus an extra $125 for his mom's car, Alex has to do 100 hours of community service at a nursing home. He is assigned to an elderly man who has the ability to make a volunteer worker run home in tears. Alex is frustrated by Sol, but the judge will not change her assignment. Alex's best friend Laurie is a beautiful martial arts master. After meeting her, Sol thinks Alex should have sex with her. He constantly teases Alex by calling Laurie his wife several times throughout the book. Sol's comments about Laurie makes Alex realize his feelings for her. One day, Alex decides to play his guitar for Sol and they start to bond; everything is going great between them. Sol even teaches him some valuable lessons, for he was once a successful guitar player. Alex has benefit concerts with Steven and Annette (from Sonnenblick's first book Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie) to give the residents something to look forward to in their boring lives. When Alex attends his school dance, Sol is rushed to the hospital, and Alex goes to see him. Sol ends up dying in the hospital, but not before he gives Alex a vintage guitar of his. Toward the end of the book, it is learned that the judge is Sol's "big shot lawyer daughter." Alex's parents also end up getting back together. The book is rated a good read and should be a New York Times Best Seller.
21385752	/m/05f9ldq	Deadly, Unna?	Phillip Gwynne		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 As the novel opens, Blacky is worried about the imminent grand final and the responsibility he carries as the team’s new first ruck. His opponent will be the unstoppable ‘Thumper’. To protect himself, Blacky has devised the ‘Thumper tackle’ which is the ultimate defence of the coward: it looks like he is trying to tackle his opponent but is really an elaborate dodge. During the teams after-party however, the coaches son is given the honour of the Best On Ground award, which he believes should have been bestowed upon Dumby Red, the star player of the team. Soon after the news reports that Dumby and his two brothers have been shot dead while robbing a Public Bar, resulting in the breakdown of Blacky's emotional life. Blacky spends much of that winter dodging responsibility in a similar manner. By the end of the following summer, however, he understands the importance of making a stand and is able to do so. His brothers and sisters join him in his stand and the novel ends with Blacky at peace with himself, happy in his relationship with his siblings, and confident that he will be able to deal with the problems that will come with the morning.
21385964	/m/05f4gv6	Alien Secrets				 The story revolves around a human female character named Puck. After being expelled from a boarding school on earth, Puck is returned to her home planet, Aurora, where parents await her arrival. While aboard the spacecraft she unexpectedly befriends an alien named Hush. Hush is desperately searching for a sacred artifact that has been stolen from him. The relic is of great importance, not only to Hush; it is a valued item among his people. While aboard the spaceship, both Puck and Hush find themselves immersed in the mystery of lost objects and ghosts and murder. * Puck(Robin Goodfellow) - A headstrong, opinionated 13 year old human female. * Hush - A loveable, down-to-earth alien.
21387145	/m/05f690c	The Birthday Party		2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Marco Timoleon is born somewhere in Anatolia in 1903 to a railway engineer father and a schoolteacher mother. When he is one year old, his parents move to İzmir, where he spends his childhood and adolescence. A mediocre pupil, he drops out of high school at 18, only months before graduation, having already proven his business acumen at the age of 15 by buying a dilapidated boat, repairing it himself and then renting it out. One day his father walks out on his family, never to be seen, or heard of, again, and in 1921, during the Greco-Turkish War, Timoleon decides to seek his fortune in Argentina. Leaving his mother behind, he travels to Buenos Aires and starts working for a telephone company. It is in South America that he lays the foundation of his wealth, operating on both sides of the law and increasingly applying as yet unheard of business practices such as closing contracts to transport oil on tankers that have not been built yet. During that time he also makes the acquaintance of Dr Aristide Patrikios, a physician and fellow Greek who will become his only lifelong friend. As far as his private life is concerned, in his younger years it never occurs to Timoleon to get married, but he has countless love affairs, also with married women. In 1939, already a rich man, and&mdash;erroneously&mdash;known to business rivals and competitors as "The Turk," he moves his company headquarters to New York City, and during the Second World War his growing fleet services both the Allies and the Axis powers, resulting in even greater profit. All the time carrying on with his turbulent love life, only after his 40th birthday does Timoleon think the time has come for him to get married and have offspring. From a bourgeois background himself, he has always been in awe of old money and aristocracy and resentful of, and at the same time attracted by, the upper crust, so he starts courting the 16 year-old daughter of shipping tycoon Daniel Negri, Miranda, who is still attending prep school. In 1948, against her father's wish, the couple get married when Miranda is 19 and Timoleon is 44 years old. The Timoleons move to London, and Miranda gives birth to two children, Sofia (in 1950) and Daniel (in 1954). While Timoleon's business prospers in the wake of the Suez Crisis, making him one of the richest men in the world, his marriage soon disintegrates, and the children are left in the care of a nanny and a governess while the two spouses increasingly go their separate ways. Miranda Timoleon, unprepared for life's harsh realities due to an over-protective Catholic upbringing, seeks solace in tranquillizers but eventually tries to combat her husband's continued womanising by having love affairs herself. In 1964, at a point where the couple consider divorce and a legal battle over custody of the children is likely to break out, Miranda Timoleon, aged 35, dies of a drug overdose on the private island her husband has recently bought. A carefully planned suicide, her death nevertheless stirs rumours, notably in the yellow press, that Marco Timoleon may have killed his wife, either intentionally or unintentionally, and the tycoon himself feels no need ever to disperse them. As his children grow up, Timoleon tries to prepare them for adult life but soon realizes that there is little he can do to mould their characters and influence their decisions. He finds out that Sofia is more and more taking after him, especially as far as her voracious sexual appetite is concerned. Moving out of the family home, which is now in Paris, France, at the age of 18, she embarks on a life described by the narrator as a "permanent holiday": Sofia was interested in business even less than her brother was. She had struggled through boarding-school, graduating only thanks to a generous donation from Marco Timoleon and refusing to continue to university despite her father's pressure and the pleas of Miss Rees, whom Marco had asked to mediate knowing the retired governess still wielded influence over his daughter. These days Sofia passed her time travelling with an ever-growing group of friends, who depended on her generosity and agreed with everything that she said before she said it. They stayed at exclusive hotels where they demanded the best rooms without having made reservations. Marco Timoleon's reputation and money meant that foreign dignitaries in curlers, half-shaved ambassadors with lather on their cheeks and honeymooners in bathrobes were asked to vacate their suites with the excuse that a mistake had been made in allocating their rooms. [...] The world in the morning was an unknown planet to her: no matter when she went to bed, at midnight or at dawn, she woke up in late afternoon, usually with company, having inherited her father's sexual energy. She had lunch in bed, naked, letting her ephemeral lover feed her, and then took a long bath, not to cleanse herself of sin, for she believed neither in sin nor retribution, but to give the stranger time to dress and leave the room. Not caring about social class, she slept with waiters, bellboys and security guards as long as they had a nice face and a good body. [...] (Chapter 4) Daniel Timoleon, on the other hand, has developed into an inconspicuous introvert whose only passion is flying planes: he shows no interest whatsoever in his father&#39;s business and ignores each of the eligible young women presented to him by his father. The family is ripped further apart when, in 1969, Timoleon, now 66, meets 33 year-old American divorcee Olivia Andersen and in the following year decides to marry her. Sofia takes an instant dislike to her stepmother, and it only takes a few years for Timoleon&#39;s second marriage to show signs of failure, too, so much so that in the end Olivia, whose permanent residence is a penthouse apartment in New York City, is not allowed to enter her husband&#39;s island without his prior consent. In early 1973 Ian Forster, an eager British journalist, approaches Timoleon with the proposal to write his authorised biography. Timoleon agrees to the project and pays all of Forster&#39;s expenses although he soon turns out to be far less co-operative than Forster would have wished. Also, he has him sign a confidentiality agreement so that the young would-be author lives in constant fear of never being able to publish his extensively researched book. While interviewing everyone still alive who has ever been close to the shipping magnate, Forster also makes the acquaintance of Sofia Timoleon, who, without her knowledge, is being spied on by her father&#39;s private investigators. Probably out of boredom, Sofia adds Forster to her long list of lovers, but their unexpected mutual attraction leads to a longer love affair conducted in what they believe is absolute secrecy. In truth, however, Timoleon is informed about each and every move the two lovers make. Despite the 1973 oil crisis, which affects his business badly, the biggest blow to Timoleon&#39;s life is his son&#39;s death in a plane crash in the summer of 1974. While entertaining a married woman half his age in his earthly paradise for the weekend, Timoleon sees one of his old Piaggio seaplanes piloted by Daniel approaching the island in bad weather and actually becomes an eye-witness to his son&#39;s fatal accident when the plane is overturned during the landing procedure. Timoleon is shattered by the loss of his child, and his robust health slowly starts to deteriorate, the most obvious sign for the ageing tycoon being the realisation of his sudden impotence. Naturally, Timoleon turns his attention to his daughter as his last hope. When he is informed in the spring of 1975 that Sofia has seen her gynaecologist and he listens to a taped telephone conversation between her and Forster in which she informs her lover that she is pregnant, he feels the urgent need to do something about this uncalled for situation before it is too late. Intending to persuade Sofia to have an abortion right during her stay on the island, he has one of the many guest rooms of his villa converted into an operating theatre, hires Dr Patrikios and a nurse to perform the operation, and, to her great surprise, sends Sofia an invitation to a lavish birthday party in honour of her 25th birthday. On the day of the party, he arranges a private talk with Ian Forster during which he threateningly explains to him that he will be allowed to publish anything about his life on condition that he can persuade Sofia to have an abortion and that he subsequently vanish from her life forever. When Forster cautiously broaches the subject to Sofia, she realises how little her love for him is reciprocated. She tells Forster that she has never been pregnant, that she only wanted to put his loyalty to the test, and that he has failed that test as far as she is concerned. Then she breaks off their relationship and retires to her room while the party is still in full swing. There, having inherited her mother&#39;s melancholy disposition, Sofia swallows an overdose of pills. She survives her suicide attempt because on the following day she is rescued by Dr Patrikios and the nurse. Marco Timoleon dies two years later, aged 74.
21387495	/m/05fb2_1	Alphabet of Dreams	Susan Fletcher	2006-08-22	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Alphabet of Dreams is about a young boy named Babak, who has a power to dream the future. Mitra, his brave older sister, is sworn to protect him. For them to survive living on the streets, she must do what ever is necessary, including using her brother's talent for profit. When Babak is asked to dream for a powerful Magus, he receives a mysterious vision of two stars dancing in the night. Determined to solve this prophetic riddle, the Magus takes the boy and his sister on an arduous journey across the desert. What they discover will change the world in a way that no dream could ever predict...
21389528	/m/05f7ycy	To Venus in Five Seconds	Fred T. Jane		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The hero of Jane's story is a superb physical specimen of English manhood named Thomas Plummer. He is being sent to medical school by his father, a medical entrepreneur (pill manufacturer) &mdash; despite the fact that the younger Plummer is, well, not very bright. At medical school Plummer meets a young, dark-skinned woman called Miss Zumeena. The young woman invites him to tea, which takes place in her summer house (which is oddly full of machinery). A few seconds later, she informs the young Englishman that he is now on Venus. The machinery in Zumeena's gazbo operates a matter transmitter that allows almost instantaneous transport between the two planets. (This constitutes "One of the earliest uses of the matter transmitter for interplanetary travel" in science fiction. Jane does not spend much effort on explaining how a matter transmitter might actually work; the technology is merely a given, like the titular device in H. G. Wells's The Time Machine of 1895.) Closer to the Sun than Earth, Venus is hot and jungle-covered; the glare of the Sun both blinds the eyes and affects the mind. The planet is inhabited by two developed species, the human Sutenraa and the decidedly non-human Thotheen. Zumeena is a Sutenraa, a people from Central America via ancient Egypt, which are closely related in Jane's imaginary domain. (This incorporates another sub-genre of fantastic fiction of Jane's era, books on Egypt, the pyramids, and related matters.) These highly-advanced ancients developed a matter transmitter in their distant past, and used it to travel back and forth between the pyramids of Egypt and Central America; in the process they sometimes found themselves on Venus, apparently due to interference with the similar matter transmitter technology of the Thotheen. The latter are the dominant indigenous species of the planet; Jane both describes and draws Thotheen as a cross between a small elephant and a large horse-fly. Some of the Central-American/Egyptians settled on Venus to form a growing human community; they often served as physicians to the Thotheen. At the time of Plummer's arrival on Venus, the long co-existence between the two species is breaking down; Zumeena predicts that conflict will soon erupt between them, which the Thotheen will win due to their superior intelligence. Plummer also learns that he has been brought to Venus as a subject for vivisection, because of his excellent physique. Zumeena has taken a fancy to him, though; she makes romantic advances to him, which he spurns. She reluctantly consigns him to vivisection (though she allows him the option of anesthesia). Plummer meets two other English people on Venus, a young woman named Phyllis Alson and a clergyman. He and Phyllis quickly fall in love; the convenient clergyman marries them. War breaks out, first a civil war among the Thotheen and then the conflict between the Thotheen and Sutenraa anticipated by Zumeena. Plummer and Phyllis escape to Earth with Zumeena (the clergyman is by now dead) via matter transmitter; they land on the pinnacle of the Great Pyramid at Giza. There, Plummer finds one of his father's agents stenciling an advertisement in white paint. The young English couple return home, while Zumeena goes south to become a "goddess" for some primitive people. This is a reference to another popular sub-genre of Victorian fantastic fiction, the "lost world" or "lost race" stories like H. Rider Haggard's She (1886) and its many imitations. To Venus in Five Seconds has been called "The most readable and entertaining of Jane's books." Jane wrote other works of speculative fiction, notably The Incubated Girl (1896) and The Violet Flame (1899).
21412327	/m/05f661f	Granny Was a Buffer Girl	Berlie Doherty	1986-10-23	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In the first chapter the narrator is Jess, an 18-year-old girl who is about to leave home to study in France. Her extended family gathers for a celebration, partly to say goodbye, partly because it is the birthday of her brother Danny, who died when she was 8. Jess is troubled by a secret she has been harbouring. As the characters talk, they promise to reveal their own stories and secrets. The second chapter is set in the 1930s and concerns Jess's maternal grandparents, Bridie and Jack. Bridie comes from a large Catholic family and Jack's parents are deeply religious Protestants. They fall in love and marry secretly, knowing their prejudiced families will oppose their marriage. The third chapter centres on Dorothy, Jess's father's mother, the "buffer girl" of the title. It introduces Jess's great aunt Louie, Dorothy's elder sister, who gets Dorothy a job at a local buffing shop. At the Cutlers' Ball, 1931, Dorothy dances with the boss's handsome son, but when the next day he fails to recognize her in her grimy work clothes, she gives up her dream of escaping the narrow streets and grudgingly accepts the matter-of-fact proposal of her boy-next-door sweetheart, Albert, a young steelworker. In the next two chapters Jess's father Mike appears in his teenage years, as a rebellious would-be teddy boy, awkward around girls and nervous about his imminent National Service. As he leaves on the train he meets Josie, Jack and Bridie's daughter, whom he will marry several years later. The sixth chapter is about Danny, Mike and Josie's first child, born disabled, and in a wheelchair from the age of six. By this time, Mike has matured from a rebellious teenager into a stable, loyal and devoted husband and father. On his eighth birthday Danny asks his parents for a baby sister, so although already concerned about the responsibility of caring for Danny, they decide to take the risk, and John and Jess are born over the next two years. At Jess's birth the book switches back to first person narrative and from then on concerns Jess's memories of her family: Danny's death at the age of 17, her other brother John and his pigeons, her great-aunt Louie's fierce husband Gilbert, and Jess's own first romantic encounter, with an older man who unknown to her is married. The book ends as Jess departs for France, confident about the challenge of changing from a child to an independent adult after hearing her family's stories.
21412409	/m/05f7hm3	Wings of Wrath	Celia S. Friedman	2009-02-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story opens with Kamala returning to Ethanus, despite the usual unwillingness of Magisters to show weakness around others of their kind. He willingly protects her while she heals, but tells her that he will turn her over to the Magisters to face justice for her violation of their Law (although he tells her this only so that she will flee to safety). Meanwhile, Salvator returns to the High Kingdom after his mother offers him the throne. A great deal of the political intrigue of the novel centers around the fact that Salvator is a monk of a monotheistic religion at odds with that of his mother, and that he will have to give up his monastic vows to take the throne, with many believing he will cling to pacifism, and others believing he will turn from his religion - if he turns either way, his political enemies can celebrate victory. Rhys returns to Kierdwyn with evidence of an attack by a souleater, including some pieces of its armored hide and a tale of how quickly the beast disintegrated after its death. Fearing that a souleater south of the Wrath means that there must be a weak point along it, the Lord Protector sends Rhys and another guardian to look for the point where the Wrath may have become so damaged. On their way, Kamala watches them from high above as a bird, and seeks to find a way to join their company. Seeing a trap laid for them, she tries to return to human form, but the power of the Wrath is too great and she nearly dies, passing out until after they have fallen into the trap. Rhys is captured and his companion apparently killed. Kamala sets aside her power and manages to rescue him via subterfuge and a lot of luck, and they finally ride north together to investigate the Wrath. When they arrive, they discover that the Spears that make up the Wrath were not cast down by gods, as myth indicated, but rather were created by witches who built their own tombs around themselves, and slowly died within. Their sufferings provided the power for the Wrath to function. This drives Rhys into a great crises of faith, as there is suddenly no evidence of divine interaction and thus he believes there are no gods (or that they are not involved in the world). He does not share these thoughts with anyone other than Kamala. Returning to Kierdwyn, they share some information about the Wrath itself, and Kamala trades a handful of brick she had taken from the Spear to Ramirus in exchange for a promise of future aid. Meanwhile, Sideria has been approached with an offer from a mysterious stranger, claiming to be able to make her immortal. Intrigued, she accepts his offer and accompanies him far from her castle to a ravine, blocked at both ends, where a female souleater has been trapped. Sideria, already seeming to bond with the creature, is furious at those who brought her, and climbs down into the pit. The souleater accepts her, and they form a bond that gives Sideria access to the souleater's power, and thus seeming immortality. They can also communicate telepathically, and sometimes their psyches seem to be merging into one (with either one alternately the stronger personality in different situations) such as the case when a guest visits Sideria's palace, only to be killed later by Sideria, who was temporarily being taken over by the souleater queen. Colivar visits her shortly thereafter and takes note of an unusual smell, but cannot remember where he has encountered it previously. Ramirus helps translate a prophecy regarding the Lyr, and those present at the meeting in Kierdwyn (including Lazaroth, Kamala, Rhys, and Gwynofar) immediately recognize the need for a massive effort to be carried out. The ultimate goal will be finding a person with Lyr blood who has all seven Lyr clans equally represented, and having that person sit on an ancient throne that resides in a tower next to the keep Rhys had been imprisoned at. To achieve this, they coordinate a fake war with Salvator, bringing both Kierdwyn and High Kingdom forces to bear in a combined attack. While doing this, Gwynofar, Rhys, Kamala, and several others sneak to that tower and climb it. While inside, they discover enemies lying in wait, and have to fight. Gwynofar barely manages to reach the chair, and activates its power. Suddenly, all Lyr in the world are connected, and they all receive a shared vision (to varying degrees) that, among other things, leads them to the same truth that Rhys had discovered regarding the formation of the Wrath and the apparent inactivity of the gods. Gwynofar and Kamala are allowed to walk out quietly, as everyone on both sides of the battle is stunned by their discovery. Rhys, however, has fallen in battle. Colivar, having remembered what the unusual smell means (created by bonding with a souleater), takes Lazaroth, Ramirus, and one other Magister, return to Sideria's castle in an attempt to find her and confront her. They discover that most of the people in the castle have been killed or at least placed into a coma by souleater attack, and Sideria has gotten away.
21413588	/m/05f30vf	Best Foot Forward	John Cecil Holm			 High school comedy: Just for fun, young student Bud Hooper asks his idol, Hollywood actress Gale Joy, to come to Philadelphia to be his partner at a dance. His school is Winsocki Military Academy. Jack Haggerty, the actress' manager in Hollywood, sees an opportunity for special publicity and advises Gale to accept Bud's invitation. The appearance of the famous star at Winsocki is greeted with excitement, and Bud abandons his own girl Helen Schlessinger to accompany Gale to the ball. Out of jealousy, Helen damages Gale's sash while she is dancing, which causes a riot. Others begin to tear off pieces of Gale's clothes as well, but only to gain souvenirs from the famous star. As the school regards the incident as a scandal, Bud is now in danger of being expelled from school, as he has caused all this. Gale Joy and Jack Haggerty try to avoid furore and immediately go back to Hollywood. After Bud and Helen settle their arguments and any other problems are solved, everything at Winsocki goes back to normal.
21414337	/m/06n37_6	Realms of Horror	Lawrence Schick			 Realms of Horror contains four scenarios complied from modules S1 through S4, which have been slightly revised to form a connected campaign.
21426733	/m/05f7qk5	Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford		2006		 The book includes Mitford's letters between 1924 leading up to her death in 1996. It chronicles her escape from family life and elopement with Esmond Romilly. Following Romilly's premature death, the letters document her subsequent marriage to Robert Treuhaft and her activism in the Civil rights movement, the American Communist Party and her exposés of the American funeral industry. As with her previous biography, Hons and Rebels, the letters also concentrate on her relationship with her relations, including her sisters and friends in America and England.
21429984	/m/05f9h1k	Day of the Iguana				 Hank and his two best friends, Frankie and Ashley, perform magic tricks at Hank's 3-year-old cousin's birthday party. Performing at the party means that Frankie will have to miss The Mutant Moth that Ate Toledo, a movie he has been looking forward to, but Hank promises to record the movie for him. However, since Hank has dyslexia, he accidentally records the wrong channel, making Frankie very upset. Hank takes apart a cable box to see how it works for his school science project, but then his sister's pet iguana, Katherine, lays eggs in it. Afraid that his father will discover the cable box taken apart, Hank orders a new one. Tom, the new cable box installer, happens to be knowledgeable about iguanas. That night they witness 23 baby iguanas hatching. Tom agrees to give Hank a tape of The Mutant Moth that Ate Toledo in exchange for a baby iguana, and Hank and Frankie watch the movie together.
21431891	/m/05f6nxd	The New Paul and Virginia	William Hurrell Mallock		{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The novel opens with the introduction of its titular characters. The heroine is "the superb Virginia St. John," a celebrated beauty, famous for being famous. At the age of thirty she is the newlywed wife of an English bishop. The hero (the term has to be applied satirically) is Prof. Paul Darnley, a prominent intellectual: :"He had written three volumes on the origin of life, which he had spent seven years in looking for in hay and cheese; he had written five volumes on the entozoa of the pig, and two volumes of lectures, as a corollary to these, on the sublimity of human heroism and the whole duty of man. He was renowned all over Europe and America as a complete embodiment of enlightened modern thinking. He criticised everything; he took nothing on trust, except the unspeakable sublimity of the human race and its august terrestrial destinies." Both characters are traveling abroad the steamship Australasian, sailing from Melbourne to London; Virginia is on her way to Chausible Island to meet her new husband, while Paul is journeying home to his elderly wife, whom he has been avoiding for the past eighteen months. (Mrs. Prof. Darnley has an irrational determination to convince her atheist and materialist husband of the existence of Hell.) On the voyage, Paul lectures on his value system, which is essentially Comte's "Religion of Humanity," and manages to convince many passengers and crew of the truth of his outlook (though Virginia does not listen to him). An approaching storm inspires the crew to load the ship's cutter with survival supplies, including tinned meats and cases of champagne. The storm passes, but the ship's boiler suddenly explodes; the Australasian quickly sinks with the loss of almost all on board. Yet Paul and Virginia manage to reach a nearby island in the cutter. (Shipwreck on a deserted island, as a start for a new and better society, is a staple in the utopian genre &mdash; as in the Spensonia books of Thomas Spence, among other possible examples.) Paul finds a deserted house built from wreckage; it is a comfortable and neatly-furnished cottage, and the two survivors move in. Virginia is deeply distraught over their recent tragedy &mdash; but her state of mind improves when she realizes that the largest trunk in her luggage is on the cutter. The tinned meats and champagne also come in handy. Two other survivors appear: an English clergyman who has been converted to Positivism by Paul, and an elderly woman. The latter soon dies, giving Paul and the clergyman opportunity to debate the meaning of her death from the Positivist viewpoint. Paul keeps himself busy searching for the missing link. Liberated from the trammels of traditional culture and belief, Paul confidently expects instant attainment of the sublime happiness that is the natural state of free human beings. The clergyman proves to be an inconvenient convert, however; he spends his time getting drunk and trying to kiss Virginia, and Paul's intellectual arguments have little influence on him. Physical intimidation is more effective, since the clergyman is both a "coward" and a "weakling." When the drunken clergyman falls off a cliff, Paul meditates on the utilitarian aspects of his death. Paul eventually converts Virginia; she gives up her religious faith, and replaces it with a sexual desire for Paul &mdash; which the intellectual Paul finds very uncomfortable. In her new commitment to "glorious truth," Virginia snoops through all of Paul's private papers, and discovers his secret: he himself was once a clergyman. By the final chapter of the story, Paul is reduced to baying at the moon. His howls attract the notice of another couple. The woman turns out to be Paul's wife, who has come searching for her errant husband. And the man is Virginia's husband the Bishop. It happens that the island on which Paul and Virginia landed is none other than Chausible Island, her destination, and the cottage they've been occupying was prepared by the Bishop for Virginia. At the end of the book, Paul discovers that his wife has attained her goal, and that he now believes in Hell.
21438914	/m/05f76kc	Siebenkäs				 As the title suggests, the story concerns the life of Firmian Stanislaus Siebenkäs, and is told in a comedic style. Unhappily married, Siebenkäs goes to consult his friend Leibgeber, who is in reality his alter ego, or Doppelgänger (a word of Jean Paul's own invention). Leibgeber convinces Siebenkäs to fake his own death, in order to begin a new life. Siebenkäs takes the advice of his alter ego, and soon meets the beautiful Natalie. The two fall in love; hence the "wedding after death," as found in the title.
21453243	/m/05f633v	Beatles				 The main character and storyteller, Kim Karlsen (Paul), is writing the entire story in flashbacks from a sheltered and closed summer residence in the Nesodden area. He has recently escaped from the asylum of Gaustad in Oslo. He rewrites his story from the spring of 1965 to the present day (winter 1972-1973). Kim and his friends, Gunnar (John), Sebastian (George) and Ola (Ringo), played football together, collected Beatles records and stole attributes from cars. This last hobby was abandoned after an incident with an embassy car, and the entire collection was dumped in the fjord. Kim is known as a notorious liar, while Gunnar is the truth-seeker. Ola is the stuttering fat one, and Sebastian is a spiritualist. In time, Kim is the first to get a girlfriend, Nina, who is on and off over the years. The boys get involved in the Norwegian hippie movement in the late 1960s, experiment with drugs, and Sebastian gets so hooked the others have to look for him in Paris, where he lives the life of a junkie, but is saved by his friends (1968). Kim has a nervous breakdown and tells the end of his story from inside the asylum at the time of the Norwegian European Communities membership referendum, 1972. He escapes as the result is clear and retires to Nesodden for writing his story. The last we hear is from Nina, now pregnant with his child, before the book closes. The four boys mature during the political struggle of the 1960s, and end up as left-wings, inspired by people around them. The "upper class" mentality of the western Oslo society is evident, and Kim describes how his sentiments gradually go to the left. Three characters in the book seem to be propagating this view: * Gunnar's older brother, Stig. He presents them to "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan in the first chapter, making the boys conscious of the Vietnam War by telling them of the atrocities done by American soldiers (including information on napalm). Stig transcends during the book, ending as environmentalist with leaning towards anarchism. He and Seb seem to be close at some points in the book. * Henny, the young girlfriend of Kim´s uncle Hubert. She is an art student, informing Kim on Edvard Munch, and explains to him the assault on the Kjartan Slettemark Vietnam picture in the summer of 1965, to which Kim is a witness (The picture was attacked and demolished with and axe). Kim later has nightmares of the incident, dreaming the attacker uses his axe on innocent children. Henny is in Paris during the 1968 uprising, being attacked by the French police. The book tells how Kim sees her on television, being struck with batons. She even holds her hands around the head in the position of the Scream, to close the Munch metafor (Kim thinks the picture, which he "hears", is of the mother of one of the Vietnam napalm victims). The "scream" metaphor is a recurring motif in the book. * Fred Hansen, a working class boy who managed to get into the upper class school the other boys attend. He is mobbed down by the other boys, and even the teachers, who disrespect his East end dialect. Gunnar and the others protect Fred, and on visiting him and his mother, Kim and the others learn of the social differences in Oslo at the time. Fred drowns in the summer of 1966, despite being the best swimmer in class. The other keep his memory alive. Fred is apparently born outside marriage, not knowing who his father was. His mother earns her living by cleaning houses. The most notable historical inaccuracy in the original Beatles novel, is Kim Karlsen`s reaction and reflections around the picture of the Napalm Girl, mentioned as early as in the 1965 chapters, whereas the picture itself was taken in June 1972. To be charitable, the older Kim may have seen the picture that summer and blended it in with his adolescent memories, as the book closes in the spring of 1973.
21460789	/m/05f3187	The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms	Charles Darwin	1881-10		 Darwin writes that he has been interested in worms for a long time and has written on the subject before, but that his ideas have been criticized by others. Worms are found in many places, from the forest floor to mountains, and in many locations around the world. Though they are considered terrestrial animals, they are really semi-aquatic, like other annelids; they die quickly in air but survive for months in water. Though inactive during the day, they sometimes come out of their burrows at night. They are eaten by thrushes and other birds in large numbers because they lie close to the surface. They have well developed muscular, nervous, circulatory and digestive systems, the latter being quite unique. Though eyeless, they respond to the intensity and duration of light. They also slowly respond to temperature. They have no hearing, but are sensitive to vibrations. Their sense of smell is feeble, but they are able to find their preferred foods. Omnivorous animals, they swallow much earth and extract food from it. Worms live chiefly on half decayed leaves, partially digested by a pancreatic solution before ingestion. This extra-stomachal digestion is not unlike that which Darwin had previously described as occurring in Insectivorous Plants. The structure and physiology of the calciferous glands of earthworms are described. Many hypotheses had been advanced for their function; Darwin believed them to be primarily for excretion and secondarily a digestion aid. Thin leaves are seized with the mouth, while thick ones are dragged by creating a vacuum. Leaves and stones are used to plug up the burrow. This may deter predators, keep out water and/or keep out chilled air (the latter is Darwin's preferred function). Leaves are dragged in mostly by the tips, which is the easiest way of doing it, but when the base is narrower the worms change behaviour. They drag pine needle clusters in by the base. Petioles are used to plug up burrows, and for food. Worms drag experimental triangles of paper by the apex most of the time, and do not rely on trial and error. Worms excavate burrows by consuming material or, preferably, pushing it away. They mainly consume soil for nutrients. They are found down to six or more feet, especially in extreme conditions. Burrows are lined, which serve several functions, and terminate in a chamber lined with stones or seeds. Worms are found all over the planet, some on isolated islands; how they got there is a mystery. Darwin draws on correspondence with people from around the world such as Fritz Müller in Brazil. The amount of earth brought to the surface by worms can be estimated by the rate at which objects on the surface are buried and by weighing the earth brought up in a given time. Information from farmers on marl, cinders etc. sinking into the ground allowed Darwin to make calculations. He conducted a 29 year experiment on chalk at a field near his house. Objects of all sorts "work themselves downards" as farmers say. Large stones sink because worms fill up any hollows with castings, then eject them beyond the perimeter and the ground around them starts to rise. He visited Stonehenge and found some outer stones partly buried, the turf sloping up to meet them (see figure 7). Darwin weighed castings and had friends do so in other countries. He also weighed castings per unit area per year, then worked out how thick a layer castings would make, compared with rates of sinking. Additionally, he worked out casting weight per worm per year. Worms have preserved many ancient objects under the ground. Darwin describes an ancient Roman villa in Abinger, Surrey. Worms have penetrated the concrete walls and even mortar. Similar subsidence occurred at Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, with worms penetrating gaps between the tiles. His sons Francis and Horace visited Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire, while William reported on Brading Roman Villa, Isle of Wight. Darwin goes into some detail on the well preserved ruins of Silchester Roman Town, Hampshire, with the help of the Rev. J. G. Joyce. Finally he discusses the case of the Viroconium Roman town ruins at Wroxeter, Shropshire, with the help of Dr. H. Johnson, who made observations including depth of vegetable mould. He concludes that both worms and other causes, such as dust deposition and washing down of soil, have buried such ruins. Denudation (removal of matter to a lower level) is caused mainly by air and water movement. Humic acids generated by worms disintegrate rock; their burrowing behaviour speeds this up. But as the soil layer thickens, this process is slowed down. Worms swallow hard objects (e.g. stones) to aid digestion, which causes attrition to such objects. This has geological significance, especially for the smaller particles which otherwise are eroded very slowly. Rain causes castings to move down an incline; Darwin worked out the weight moving a certain distance in a given time. Some also roll down, and collect in drains etc., or get blown. There is a greater effect on casting movement in the tropics, because of increased rain. The finest earth is washed away. Ledges on hillsides, formerly believed to be caused by grazing mammals, are partly due to casting accumulations. High winds, especially gales, are almost as effective as the slope/rain in moving castings. Crowns and furrows of formerly ploughed lands slowly vanish when under pasture, due to worms, but more slowly when there is no incline. Fine earth is washed down from slopes, making a shallow layer. Dissolving of chalk supplies new earth. Darwin writes in the conclusion that worms "have played a more important part in the history of the world than most persons would at first suppose." They are important for many reasons, including their role in decomposition of rocks, gradual denudation of the land, preservation of archaeological remains, and improving soil conditions for plant growth. Despite their rudimentary sense organs, they show complex, flexible behaviour.
21466116	/m/05f4c2b	The Mandelbaum Gate	Muriel Spark	1965	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is set in Jerusalem in 1961 (with the backdrop of the Adolf Eichmann trial). Whilst on a pilgrimage to Holy Land, half Jewish Catholic-convert Barbara Vaughn is planning to meet her fiance Harry Clegg, an archeologist working in Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found). To do this she must pass through the Mandelbaum Gate into Jordanian held Jerusalem; due to her Jewish roots this is a dangerous operation and she enlists the help of Freddy Hamilton, a staid British diplomat and various Arab contacts who may or may not be sympathetic to her cause...
21474059	/m/05f5rvf	The Moscoviad				 Although the novel has one clearly defined plot of action, the narrative is sometimes interrupted by the hero's reminiscences as well as by his appeals to the fictitious Ukrainian king Olelko the Second. Other non-linear elements include alternative outcomes (endings) and multiple references to famous historical and cultural figures who do not appear directly in the novel. A condensed plot of action follows. The Ukrainian poet Otto von F. wakes up in his Moscow dormitory room. He comes down to take a shower in the basement where he makes love to an unknown Malagasy girl. Returning from the shower to his room, he discovers his three older friends (Yura Holitsyn, Arnold Horobets and Boris Roitman) who talk him into going to a bar with them. At the bar (bar-na-Fonvizina), a dirty disreputable hole teeming with alcoholics and sluts, the four friends consume a large quantity of low-quality beer. Otto pronounces a speech that calls for Ukraine's separation from Russia, to everyone's applause. Soon Otto departs because he has an appointment with his colleague Kyryl at Kyryl's apartment. But before seeing Kyryl he has to buy presents for his friends' children at the big superstore "Dytiachyi Svit". On the way to the store Otto decides to visit his girlfriend Halya, a snake tamer. At Halya's he consumes some vodka, makes love to her, and, after getting into fight with her, narrowly escapes, leaving his cloak and audio-cassette with Mike Oldfield's music behind. He stops by at a cheap and dirty restaurant and narrowly escapes unhurt as it explodes. At "Dytiachyi Svit" he visits a man's room where he walks past a middle-aged man of Southern or possibly Roma origin whom he at first takes for a homosexual and nicknames "the baron". Soon afterwards he discovers that his wallet has disappeared from his backpack and realizes that only the baron could possibly steal it. The wallet contains some money, but, most importantly, a plane ticket to Kiev which was very hard to obtain. Otto pursues the baron who has just disappeared behind one of the doors that leads to the storage rooms of "Dytiachyi Svit". The wild chase through a maze of basement corridors ends in a brief encounter between the two. The baron is victorious as Otto groans on the floor with an injured leg. The triumphant baron, however, falls through an open sewer hatch by oversight, thus leaving Otto alone in the basement. Otto realizes that the store must be closed by now and all the doors leading to the top must be locked. After some attempts he stumbles across a door that opens but when he steps inside he finds himself inside a tunnel of the Moscow subway. He is soon arrested by armed rat-catchers who promptly deliver him to the hands of KGB, still underground. Otto, himself formerly recruited by KGB, is locked in a cage but is unexpectedly presented to Halya who, as he learns, is another KGB spy. She helps him to get out, and after fooling security guards Otto enters a large hall where a banquet is taking place. This is a celebration of KGB and perhaps some other clandestine governmental organizations. He runs into his old acquaintance, the poet Yezhevikin who also seems to be a KGB agent. Some drinking ensues, and Yezhevikin procures a couple of prostitutes for himself and Otto. But the latter, under the influence of the mix of the alcoholic drinks consumed in the course of the day, is unable to contain himself and rushes to a bathroom where he throws up. In the bathroom he meets an old man who, after some admonition, assists Otto to attend a symposium of the dead. To get there, Otto must wear a mask and he chooses the mask of a clown. Once inside, he sees a number of masked figures who represent the powerful leaders from the Russian history&nbsp;– Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, Dzerzhinsky etc. A terrible plot is brewing. A mysterious figure in a black pantyhose pulled over its head announces a plan to amass the power of the Empire at the expense of subjugating other countries (Finland, France, Israel etc.) and turning its citizens into docile slaves. Otto faces a choice&nbsp;– either to sit back and let the plan go ahead, or to do something to defuse it. He borrows a gun from a KGB agent who is demoted as a consequence of Otto's escape, and shoots the Russian leaders, one by one. They tumble down as sacks stuffed with straw. Then Otto shoots himself. But later he reappears alive and boards a train to Kiev as Moscow is destroyed in a giant flood.
21479304	/m/05h2fpd	La Brière	Alphonse de Châteaubriant	1923		 Aoustin, a rough peat-cutter and "ranger" employed to protect the traditional rights of the people of Brière, comes into conflict with his wife and daughter. Having returned home to the ile de Fédrun after a long trip, he discovers that his wife, Nathalie, has sold the family linen to fund their estranged son who lives in Nantes. The domineering Aoustin had cursed his son for marrying a Nantes girl, rather than a local Brièronne. His daughter Théotiste now also wants to marry a lad from outside the region, from a despised village of basket weavers, who are traditionally looked down upon by the independent-minded fenlanders. Aoustin utterly refuses to give her hand in marriage to the youth, Jeanin. He leaves his wife and daughter, moving into his childhood cottage, rejoicing in his independence and the traditional ways of fenland life. Meanwhile, the local mayors are attempting to resist a drainage and modernisation project that threatens the independence of the Brièrons. Aoustin is given the task of finding a lost historical document signed by Louis XVI confirming the rights of the local people. He travels throughout the fens to find whether any of the locals possess it, eventually locating it in the home of Florence, a madwoman who lives inside an ancient dolmen. Théotiste seeks Aoustin out, telling him that she is pregnant by Jeanin, but he still refuses to assent to the marriage, insisting that he will curse the couple. The superstitious Théotiste takes this threat seriously since her brother's wife died after her father's curse. Aoustin also contrives to have Jeanin arrested for poaching ducks. Jeanin seeks revenge, and when Aoustin is sent to Nantes to deposit the document Jeanin shoots him during his return journey. Théotiste, anxiously seeking Jeanin, gets lost in the marshes, suffers a miscarriage, and spends the night sheltering in Florence's dolmen. Aoustin survives the shooting, but loses his hand. He refuses to give Jeanin up to the police, but seeks revenge himself. Théotiste is accused by a spiteful neighbour of having given birth and drowned her child in the marsh. She is arrested, but released through lack of evidence. Jeanin now refuses to marry her because of her "shame", and Théotiste is shunned by most of the community. Aoustin has a false wooden hand made to replace his loss. He kidnaps Jeanin, intending to kill him and bury him under his cottage, but news arrives that Théotiste has had a mental breakdown. He locks Jeanin up, and attempts to take the deranged Théotiste through the marshes to a hospital. He cannot control his boat adequately with his wooden hand, and gets lost in the freezing cold marsh. During the night Théotiste dies. In despair, Aoustin returns to his cottage but cannot bring himself to kill Jeanin. He lets him go.
21485855	/m/05h2v4x	Gone, But Not Forgotten	Phillip Margolin	1993-09-01		 Elizabeth "Betsy" Tannenbaum is a successful defense lawyer coming off a domestic violence case win when she is hired by reclusive and mysterious businessman Martin Darius to defend him against allegations that he murdered several women and a private investigator and dumped the bodies at a construction site. Unfortunately, Darius' past misdeeds are revealed and Betsy is in a race against time to find out who the real killer is before he&nbsp;— or she&nbsp;— strikes again.
21488496	/m/05h2ttx	Emmeline				 Emmeline is set in Pembroke, Wales and centers around the eponymous heroine. Her parents are both dead and she has been supported by her father’s brother, Lord Montreville, at Mowbray Castle. It is suggested at the beginning of the novel that Emmeline’s parents were not married when she was born, making her illegitimate; on these grounds, Lord Montreville has claimed Mowbray Castle for himself and his family. Emmeline has been left to be raised by servants, but through reading, she has become education accomplished and catches the eye of Lord Montreville’s son, Lord Delamere. Delamere falls in love with her and proposes but Emmeline refuses him because his father does not approve and she feels only sisterly affection for him. In order to escape Delamere’s protestations of love, Emmeline leaves Mowbray Castle and lives first with Mrs. Stafford and then Mrs. Ashwood, where Delamere continues to pursue her. Emmeline also rejects the suits of other rich men, confounding the people around her. The Croft family, lawyers who are trying to rise in society, have influence over and control Lord Montreville. The younger Croft son secretly marries the eldest Montreville daughter to secure a fortune—a most unfortunate match from Lord Montreville’s perspective. Delamere abducts Emmeline: he attempts to take her to Scotland and to force her to marry him. However, after falling ill of a fever, she convinces him to abandon his plans. When Delamere’s mother, Lady Montreville, becomes ill, he is compelled to visit his family. To help her recover, he promises not to see Emmeline for a year. If, after that period, he still loves her, his parents promise to allow him to marry her and she reluctantly agrees. Emmeline becomes friends with Augusta, Delamere’s sister. Augusta marries Lord Westhaven, who by happenstance, is the brother of Emmeline’s new acquaintance in the country—Adelina. Adelina left her dissipated husband for a lover who abandoned her with a child. She is so distraught that when she sees her brother, Lord Westhaven, she fears his chastisement so much that she briefly goes insane. Emmeline nurses her and her baby; while doing so, she meets Adelina's other brother, Godolphin. The Crofts circulate rumors of Emmeline’s infidelity to Delamere and when he visits her and sees her with Adelina’s child, he assumes the child is hers and abandons her. Emmeline then travels to France with Mrs. Stafford and Augusta, where she discovers her parents were actually married and that she deserves to inherit Mowbray Castle. Lord Montreville hands the estate over to her, after discovering he was duped by the Crofts. Delamere becomes ill upon discovering that Emmeline was never unfaithful to him. She nurses him, but refuses to marry him. His mother dies in her anxiety over his condition and he dies fighting a duel over his sister’s lover. In the end, Emmeline marries Godolphin.
21493798	/m/05c2w74	Skeletons at the feast				 The plot of the story centers around a young Prussian girl, Anna Emmerich, and the broken remnants of her family as they flee westward from the advancing Russian army. Along with them they bring the Scottish POW, Callum Finella, with whom Anna has embarked on a secret love affair. As Anna, her mother, her younger brother Theo, and Callum trek across the Third Reich, other stories run parallel to theirs, including the story of Uri Singer, a Jew that leapt off the train to Auschwitz and survives by assuming identities belonging to various German soldiers; and Cecile, a French Jew taken prisoner in a concentration camp and, along with her fellow prisoners, forced to march westward to outdistance the Russian advance. Eventually all three stories come together when Anna's party, joined by Uri, crosses paths with the sad march of Cecile and the other prisoners. Throughout the novel, Anna struggles with the ideas of the atrocities the Nazis have committed and how she can possibly bear the burden of blame by the rest of the world.
21505280	/m/05h4mh5	The Bandit of Hell's Bend	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1921-10-06	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction"}	 Elias Henders is the prosperous owner of a ranch and a gold mine. Competing for his daughter Diana, ranch hand Colby sabotages recovering alcoholic foreman Bull, and takes his job. The local stage is repeatedly robbed of gold bullion from the owner's mine, and Bull is suspected. The cowardly sheriff does not take action on the robberies. Rich Easterner Wainwright tries to buy the mine and ranch for a low price, but Henders refuses the offer and discusses the property's true value with Diana. She is intrigued by Wainwright's Eastern-educated son Jefferson, who proposes marriage. However, when they are attacked by Indians during the roundup, he runs rather than defend her. Henders is mortally wounded in the battle. Henders will bequeaths his property to his brother John back East so that he can take care of Diana, but John dies too. The Wainwrights pretend that Henders had agreed to a sale, but Diana knows better. Diana's Eastern cousin Lillian brings Corson, a lawyer, to try to seize the ranch and gold mine. They insist that the ranch and mine are nearly played out, and that they should sell the property, offering her a small amount. They show their ignorance about western ways. Bull encourages Diana that the property is worth more than they say, and advises her that the Wainwrights are often at the mine. The Eastern lawyer finally announces that Diana has no property rights due to the wills. As pressure from the opposing forces builds, a mob goes to hang Bull for the stage robberies, but Diana warns him in time. Bull discovers there are papers that will prove Diana's claim to the property, and that Lillian has seduced Colby to obtain his help. Bull actually does rob the stage, simply to obtain the papers supporting Diana. Diana recognizes him at the robbery, and is devastated because she is starting to have feelings for him. She orders the Wainwrights, Lillian and Corson off the property, and fires Colby. Bull has the Mexican Gregorio deliver the important papers to Diana, showing that Lillian is not related to John and thus not entitled to the property. The villains try to take over the ranch. Bull catches Colby robbing the bullion stage, and has him watched in town, but he is released by the sheriff and his friends. Colby kidnaps Diana and heads for Mexico. He claims to be rescuing her, but she knows that she does not love him. Bull follows her doggedly, and eventually rescues her. They return to town, stop the illegal title transfers and announce their impending marriage.
21507989	/m/05h1vqr	Nordy Bank	Sheena Porter	1964	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Six children plan a camping trip in the Easter holidays, deciding on Brown Clee Hill as it is out of the way of summer visitors. They set up camp on the top of the hill, which turns out to be the site of an Iron Age hill fort, Nordy Bank. Bronwen is particularly susceptible to the atmosphere of the place, and shows unexpected knowledge about its construction. Her personality begins to change, as from a quiet good-natured girl she becomes argumentative, then increasingly withdrawn and sullen. Bron is aware of the change and frightened by it. Her friend Margery believes she is possessed by the spirit of an Iron Age woman. Meanwhile an Alsatian dog of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps escapes while on his way to retraining by the National Canine Defence League after being retired due to partial deafness. Being muzzled, he is unable to hunt and becomes increasingly hungry. When the dog appears lurking round the camp, the dog-loving Bron reacts with fear and hostility, calling him a wolf. However, his forlorn state eventually rouses her true self and she befriends him.
21526083	/m/05h5dt8	Silent Thunder: Breaking Through Cultural, Racial, and Class Barriers in Motorsports		2004		 The book covers Miller’s interest in cars, which led him into the world of motor racing, beginning during the Great Depression. As Miller’s journey takes him through the eras of segregation, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and women’s rights, he manages to start driving as a drag racer, finding sanctuary and fair competition in a pure sports environment. Miller develops a team named Black American Racers, Inc. (BAR), which fields African American second-generation driver Benny Scott. The team endures corporate sponsorship rejection, due to prejudices and disbelief that a black team could be competitive in auto racing. After securing sponsorship from Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, BAR enters Formula Super Vee and Formula 5000 races on America’s road racing circuits. The team makes it to the Long Beach Grand Prix in the mid-1970s. Nevertheless, after two years, Brown & Williamson ends its sponsorship programs around the world in auto racing, and BAR is unable to replace the sponsorship. This leads Miller to field a team independently with African American driver Tommy Thompson, who lost his life in a race in 1978. Subsequently, Miller has continued to field teams in NASCAR. Challenges similar to those he faced during the civil rights eras have continued to resurface, and Miller describes these in the book. The story's uniqueness lies in the social challenges Miller encounters that directly affects events on the actual racetrack. He also weaves in intriguing references to his contact with the CIA, his service in the United States Army, aviation, motion pictures, celebrities, and sports icons. Leonard W. Miller was inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame, along with driver Benny Scott, in 1976.
21535610	/m/05h32zh	Go With Me	Castle Freeman	2008-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 This short novel of only 160 pages is set in backwoods Vermont where the local villain, Blackway, is making life hellish for Lillian, a young woman from outside the area. Her boyfriend has fled the state in fear, and local law enforcement can do nothing to protect her. She resolves to stand her ground, and to fight back. Lillian enlists the powerful brute Nate and the wily old-timer Lester to take the fight to her tormenter whilst an eccentric Greek chorus of locals ponders her likely fate.
21536272	/m/05h2fnq	Betrayal	Lois Tilton	1994-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Ambassadors from all over the Federation have assembled on Deep Space Nine for a conference that will determine the future of the planet Bajor. Keeping dozens of alien ambassadors happy is hard enough, but when hidden terrorists start blowing up the station, Commander Benjamin Sisko must track a hidden enemy who strikes at will. Then things get even worse: a new Cardassian commander arrives, demanding the return of Deep Space Nine to the Cardassian Empire. With Deep Space Nine now a dangerous minefield, Sisko must defuse a situation that threatens the very existence of the planet Bajor.
21539712	/m/05h37mx	The Third Millennium: A History of the World AD 2000-3000				 Some of the developments mentioned include: * Implementation of fusion power. * Genetic engineering, including Life Extension and Transhumanism as some humans become engineered to live in extreme environments such as cold, zero-g, and even water-breathing humans for aquatic communities. * Geopolitical events such as war, famine, pestilence, and terrorism (as well as the "Sinking of Japan" by an earthquake). * Bioengineered foods including whimiscal items such as the Jack Spratt Grass Chop, photosynthetic suits grafted to human skin meant to provide a means of sustinance without eating. * Self-driving automobiles (the "Tiger-Dream Machine" from Ford Autocar). * L5 (Lagrange Point) space colonies such as those proposed by Scientist Gerard K. O'Neill. * Asteroid mining (such as the "Cracking of Ceres"). * Artificial Intelligence. * Extreme cosmetic Body Modification such as skin with pockets, flashing irises, fur, claws, and fingernails which function as timepieces. * Sublight starships such as the Bussard Ramjet. * Terraforming. * Interstellar colonization, and eventual extraterrestrial contact. As this book was written in the 1980s, some predictions for the near future were off - for example, the Soviet Union was predicted to exist as late as the year 2800.
21546093	/m/05h44vn	Torikaebaya Monogatari				 The story tells of a Sadaijin (high-ranking courtier) who has two similar-looking children by different mothers, a boy called Wakagimi and a girl called Himegimi, but their mannerisms are those of the opposite sex. The title, "Torikaebaya", literally means "If only I could exchange them!", an exasperated cry by the father. The Sadaijin plans to have them join religious orders, but the news of the talents of the "son" spreads to the court. The children go through the coming of age ceremonies for the opposite sex, and the Sadaijin presents his daughter as a man to the court, and his son as a woman. The man disguised as a woman, now known as the rank of Naishi no Kami (head of the ceremonies committee), becomes the sheltered princess's confidante, whereas the woman disguised as a man becomes a Chūnagon (mid-ranking courtier). The siblings are worried that they will be exposed, and so Naishi no Kami is even shyer than most ladies of the court, and the Chūnagon more aloof than is seemly. Despite this, the Chūnagon has platonic affairs with the elder Yoshino princess and the Lady of the Reikeiden. Naishi no Kami is pursued by men — the Crown Prince falls in love with Naishi no Kami based on her reputation, and pursuing her relentlessly. The Chūnagon's best friend, Saishō Chūjō, attempts to seduce Naishi no Kami for a period of two nights and a day. The daughter marries a woman, Shi no Kimi (Fourth Daughter). Saishō attempts to educate the Chūnagon's wife that couples do more than hold hands and sleep next to each other all night. Naishi no Kami similarly avoids the pursuit of the Crown Prince. Saishō has an affair with Shi no Kimi, and then turns his attention to the Chūnagon, discovering in a grappling match the Chūnagon's true sex. He then begins to court the Chūnagon in the usual manner, and insists that she return to being a woman. The Chūnagon becomes pregnant and hides herself away from the court. Naishi no Kami has sex with the princess, and she becomes pregnant. Naishi no Kami dresses as a man and searches for the Chūnagon, and after the Chūnagon gives birth, the siblings swap places. The tengu who cursed the siblings in their previous lives to not be content with the sex they were born with has since become a Buddhist — Willig's translation mistakenly says that it's the siblings' father who has turned to the path. Because of the tengu's conversion to Buddhism, as the siblings resolve to swap roles and dress in the clothes of their physical sex, they become content. The former Naishi no Kami marries the sheltered princess, the elder Yoshino princess, and "remains" married to Shi no Kimi. He attains the rank of Sadaijin. The Crown Prince, now Emperor, has sex with the former Chūnagon, and is dismayed to find she is not a virgin, but marries her anyway. Saishō never learns what became of the former Chūnagon, the princess barely notices the change in her female companion, and the siblings live happily ever after and have many children with their new spouses.
21550053	/m/05h2p73	EarthWeb	Marc Stiegler		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 EarthWeb is set in a future where Earth is attacked roughly every five years by spaceships from an unknown extraterrestrial society. Named Shivas, after the Hindu Deity of the same name, the ships are very large, and become progressively more advanced. The ultimate goal of the ships seems to be the complete destruction of the Earth. A commando squad of highly trained soldiers, called Angels, work to destroy the ship, using information gathered by an extended, worldwide version of the internet.
21555256	/m/05mr8rx	The Temple Beau	Henry Fielding			 Wilding is a young law student who gives up his studies in order to seek pleasure. He is a rake who uses people and wishes to marry Bellaria simply for money. Unlike Love in Several Masques, Fielding cares more about revealing hypocrisy than with a discussion of love and lovers, but he portrays the hypocrites in a manner that emphasizes a comedic response instead of censure. Other characters want to have Bellaria, including the virtuous man Veromil and his foil Valentine who is unable to control his desires for Bellaria. Valentine eventually pairs with Clarissa, a character of little substance within the play, Veromil marries Bellaria, and Wilding does not marry.
21559095	/m/05h23d8	Winter	John Marsden	2000	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 For twelve years Winter has been haunted. Her past, her memories, her feelings, will not leave her alone. And now, at sixteen, the time has come for her to act. Every journey begins with a single step. If Winter is going to step into the future, she must first step into the past. Winter returns to her family estate of Warriewood, neglected since the death of her parents when she was four years old; she is determined to uncover the mystery behind their deaths.
21564872	/m/05h2ygl	The Trouble With Normal	Michael Warner	1999		 Chapter One, "The Ethics of Sexual Shame", criticizes the idea that there is some morally compelling aspect to "normality", arguing that the normal range is simply a statistical category to which there is no ethical obligation to correspond: "If normal just means within a common statistical range, there is no reason to be normal or not" (see also Hume's Guillotine). Warner uses the example of former US president Bill Clinton's impeachment after a sexual scandal to argue that public and political discourse uses shame disingenuously, to portray certain kinds of sexual behaviour as intolerable, when private morality generally recognises the compatibility of sex with dignity. The second chapter, titled "What's Wrong with Normal?", argues that as well as being a limited goal, less urgent than the elimination of violence and discrimination against queer people, same-sex marriage actively causes negative consequences both for queer and straight people, because in validating a single, prescribed type of relationship it devalues and makes more difficult other kinds of interpersonal relationship. Warner argues that the campaign for gay marriage threatens to turn the gay rights movement, previously a powerful force against the stigmatization of sex, into a tool for the normalization of queer life. In Chapter Three, "Beyond Gay Marriage", Warner proposes that by restricting its campaigning to demands for same-sex marriage, the gay rights movement has marginalized and ignored queer counterpublics that it would have served better by presenting a broad range of sexual lives as moral. In the fourth chapter, "Zoning Out Sex", Warner examines the history of zoning regulation changes in 1990s New York City. He argues that stricter regulation of the city's sex-related businesses represents a trend toward the repression of sex and the "erosion of queer publics." By removing problematic, visible, queer sex from public spaces, Warner argues, these policies relegated sexuality to a private sphere of presumed heterosexuality. The net effect was to heighten hypocrisy over the conduct of sexual relationships, supporting the impression that the best any sexuality campaigner can aspire to is admission to a limited sphere of normality that is politically sanctioned, but also deliberately placed outside the sphere of the politically debatable. In the final chapter, "The Politics of Shame and HIV Prevention", Warner challenges the assertion, made by gay authors like Larry Kramer, that sexual recklessness is to blame for continuing cases of HIV infection. Warner argues that, on the contrary, the political use of shame to stigmatize certain kinds of sexual activity actually puts more people at risk of contracting HIV and developing AIDS, by marginalizing those in at-risk communities and restricting access to condoms and safer sex advice. He also criticizes abstinence-only sex education as "an appalling insult to gay men and lesbians among others" and an inadequate response to the problems of public sexual health, asserting that "shame and stigma are often among the most intractable dimensions of risk."
21567795	/m/05h3fs1	The Prophet Murders	Mehmet Murat Somer		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The narrator sets out to investigate the mysterious death of two of the employees at the transvestite nightclub she runs, only two discover that they are part of a larger sequence of murders of transvestites named after the prophets.
21569418	/m/05h1r5r	Star Wars: Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil	Drew Karpyshyn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Twenty years have passed since Darth Bane, reigning Dark Lord of the Sith, demolished the ancient order devoted to the dark side and reinvented it as a circle of two: one Master to wield the power and pass on the wisdom, and one apprentice to learn, challenge, and ultimately usurp the Dark Lord in a duel to the death. But Bane's acolyte, Zannah, has yet to engage her Master in mortal combat and prove herself a worthy successor. Determined that the Sith dream of galactic domination will not die with him, Bane vows to learn the secret of a forgotten Dark Lord that will assure the Sith's immortality–and his own. A perfect opportunity arises when a Jedi emissary is assassinated on the troubled mining planet Doan, giving Bane an excuse to dispatch his apprentice on a fact-finding mission–while he himself sets out in secret to capture the ancient holocron of Darth Andeddu and its precious knowledge. But Zannah is no fool. She knows that her ruthless Master has begun to doubt her, and she senses that he is hiding something crucial to her future. If she is going to claim the power she craves, she must take action now. While Bane storms the remote stronghold of a fanatical Sith cult, Zannah prepares for her Master's downfall by choosing an apprentice of her own: a rogue Jedi cunning and cold-blooded enough to embrace the Sith way and to stand beside her when she at last wrests from Bane the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith. But Zannah is not the only one with the desire and power to destroy Darth Bane. Princess Serra of the Doan royal family is haunted by memories of the monstrous Sith soldier who murdered her father and tortured her when she was a child. Bent on retribution, she hires a merciless assassin to find her tormentor—and bring him back alive to taste her wrath. Only a Sith who has taken down her own Master can become Dark Lord of the Sith. So when Bane suddenly vanishes, Zannah must find him—possibly even rescue him—before she can kill him. And so she pursues her quarry from the grim depths of a ravaged world on the brink of catastrophe to the barren reaches of a desert outpost, where the future of the dark side's most powerful disciples will be decided, once and for all, by the final, fatal stroke of a lightsaber.
21571664	/m/05h2w4x	The River Why	David James Duncan	1983	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A coming of age story narrated by Gus Orviston, the oldest son in a fishing mad family. Frustrated with life in Portland and the constant bickering of his bait fishing mother and tweed wearing fly fishing father over the proper way to fish, Gus moves to a small cabin in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range. Once there he begins to follow an "ideal schedule" that has him doing nothing but eating, sleeping and fishing. In the course of doing nothing but what he loves to do he begins to notice the scars that humanity has inflicted on the river and woods he loves. As he wrestles with what to do he begins to relate with the people in his neighborhood, and discovers a beautiful fisherwoman that helps him discover that there is more to life than just fishing.
21575263	/m/05m_77f	The Dixon Cornbelt League and Other Baseball Stories				 These nine stories from Kinsella all have the same general themes, centering around baseball, human nature, and the mystical. The title story is about an undrafted college player's attempt to go pro. He catches on with a minor league team in a small Iowa town, where the atmosphere is light and the citizens welcoming. However, something isn't right about the new team... Other stories in the collection are more surreal. For example, in "Eggs," an old pitcher is kept in his in-laws' home by some mysterious force.
21580251	/m/05mrxyv	Angelology	Danielle Trussoni	2010-03-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story follows a nun in New York who unwittingly reignites an ancient war between Angelologists, a group who study angels, and a race of descendants of angels and humans called the Nephilim. The story blends ancient biblical pericopes, the myth of Orpheus, and the fall of rebel angels.
21580872	/m/05myh1n	Julia				 Julia Lofting has just purchased a large house in London as a means of escaping her overbearing husband, Magnus, and to start her life over following the death of her nine-year-old daughter, Kate. But she begins to suspect that she is not alone, and after a seance is held at her home she comes to fear that a malevolent supernatural presence is stalking her. bg:Джулия (роман)
21585491	/m/05ms_nc	Someone Named Eva			{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Milada Kralicek, a young Czechoslovakian girl, lives in the village of Lidice where lots of other people live. A month later, the Nazi soldiers come to their house, taking away Milada, her mother, her younger sister Anechka and her grandmother. Her father and her brother Jaro are separated from the rest of the family and taken away somewhere. Milada, her mother, grandmother and Anechka are held together with the rest of the female inhabitants of Lidice in a school building. With her perfect features and blonde hair, Milada fits the [the perfect German girl] ideal. She is sent to a center outside of Pucshkau, Poland, along with one of her classmates and several Polish girls. She is renamed Eva. The camp is brutal, and she works hard to remember her name. But as hard as she works to remember she forgets a little but catches the memory at the nick of time. She spends two years around other girls including Siegrid, Ilsa, Gerde,and Leise, and Franziska. The camp and its staff seem cheerful on the outside but appear to be hiding something unpleasant. Once judged sufficiently trained, she is adopted by a German family from Fürstenberg near Berlin. The Werner family is composed of Vater, (father in German) who is a high official at the Nazi government, Mutter (mother), and Elsbeth and Peter, her adoptive sister and brother. The only strange feature she notices is a horrible smell that penetrates the house nearly all the time. One day, as she is walking back to the house after a picnic with Elsbeth, Eva hears the Czech anthem being sung. Coming closer, she discovers a concentration camp with female prisoners singing in Czech. This brings back all the memories, enabling Milada to see clearly who she really is. Elsbeth explains to her that this is the Ravensbruck concentration camp and that her Vater is the head of the camp. Eva/Milada has some strange feelings that possibly her family could have been detained in this camp, meaning that all that time she could have been so close to her family. By April 1945, the Nazis are losing on all the war fronts and Berlin is encircled by the Russian troops. Vater and Peter decide to go hiding, while Mutter, Elsbeth and Eva move to a shelter made in the basement to protect themselves. In May, Soviet Red Army troops come and ask for the papers left by Vater in his office, but Mutter tells them that she is not aware of anything. They leave without causing any harm to the family, but having ruined the house. A few days later, Hitler is declared dead and the war is over. Some time after, an American female medic called Marci who works for the Red Cross Association comes to the house and announces that Milada's mother is alive and has launched a search after her daughter. Eva recognizes that she is the person they are looking for. At that moment Eva is Milada again. She is taken back to Czechoslovakia. She meets her mother in Prague, discovering that her mother was indeed detained in Ravensbruck, a few steps away from the Werner household. Milada also learns that sadly her father and brother Jaro along with all the other men and teenage boys were shot by the German Nazis near a barn and then buried in a massive grave the same day after they were separated and that her grandma died in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. She is also told that her sister Anechka was adopted into a German family and that the Red Cross are looking for her. As their house, as well as all other houses in Lidice, were completely devastated by the Germans, Milada and her mother live at the house of their cousin in Prague. Milada has to learn the Czech language nearly from scratch. Milada and her mother get closer again as they tell each other what happened during the horrific times of their separation. Finally, Milada manages to recover her true identity and pride.
21588569	/m/05my219	Fragile Eternity	Melissa Marr	2009-04-21	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel begins with Aislinn and Seth arguing over their relationship, as Seth's mortality, Aislinn's immortality, and her ties to Keenan as the summer queen make a normal relationship near impossible. During the book Seth is also bothered by the reality that even the weakest fae is stronger than he is. Meanwhile Bananach visits her twin sister, the High Queen Sorcha, telling her of Aislinn and Seth's relationship as well as predictions of impending war. Curious about Seth, Sorcha orders Devlin, her brother and advisor, to follow Seth to see if he is any threat to the balance of the Faery courts. Niall offers Seth the protection of the Dark Court, which means that threats or violence against Seth would be treated as a threat or violence against the court as a whole. Niall explains that this would protect him against any potential threat from Keenan in the event that the Faery king decided to dispose of him. Due to it being the summer season, Aislinn and Keenan are growing more physically attracted to each other as the king and queen of the summer fae. After one of the summer revelries the pair discusses how to better protect and strengthen the court, with Aislinn suggesting ways to make peace with the other courts. Because of the summer season's effects on him, Keenan kisses Aislinn. During this time Donia is growing increasingly unsatisfied with the relationship between herself and Keenan, telling him that his attraction to Aislinn must stop so that she can be the only one in his life. When Keenan cannot promise her this, Donia throws him out of the house, only for Keenan to reveal the events to Aislinn. Aislinn attempts to apologize for Keenan, but Donia grows mad at Aislinn and stabs her with ice. Aislinn walks out of the Winter Queen's home and topples over, then calls Keenan to rescue her. While trying to heal her, Keenan's touch arouses Aislinn. Seth discovers this and asks Aislinn for space in their relationship. Hurt, Aislinn lets Seth leave without following him. After leaving, Seth is abducted by Bananach, who takes him to Sorcha. Sorcha offers to make Seth a powerful faery capable of using her own powers as long as he stays with her for one month each year. During his time in Faerie, Seth develops a mother/son relationship with Sorcha, gaining great influence in her court as well as a strong connection with her. Seth, however, is unaware that one day in Faerie is six days in the mortal world and his long disappearance crushes Aislinn. Aislinn attempts to find him, not knowing that Keenan, Niall, and Donia are aware of where he is. Keenan chooses not to tell Aislinn because it would cause her to have conflicts with the High Court and breaks up with Donia in an unsuccessful attempt to woo Aislinn. Niall eventually goes to visit Seth, who is perfectly happy in Faerie, except for his longing for Aislinn. He then tells Niall of his deal with Sorcha, and tells him not to worry about him. Sorcha tells Niall not to tell Seth too much about what is going on in the outside world and especially not to tell Aislinn about his being there. At this point Seth has been missing for five months and believing him gone for good, Aislinn attempts to seduce Keenan but is rebuffed. Keenan tells Aislinn that he will only sleep with her once she really loves him. Upon his return from Faerie, Aislinn and Keenan are surprised to see that Seth has returned and that he is now a powerful faery with strong ties and influence in Sorcha's court. Keenan runs to Donia to beg for her forgiveness, but is rebuffed by her. Seth discovers that Aislinn has been dating Keenan and blames her for not having faith in their relationship. The novel ends with Seth getting permission to train with Gabriel's Hounds so he can hunt down Bananach.
21591234	/m/05mqrpn	Majya Jalmachi Chittarkatha		1984	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The autobiography Majya Jalmachi Chittarkatha by Dalit woman writer Shantabai Kamble, the protagonist of the story, Naja, bears the brunt of class, caste and gender. Naja is from the Mahar caste, one of the biggest Dalit communities in Maharashtra. Najabai Sakharam Babar (renamed Shantabai Krishnaji Kamble after her marriage), was the first dalit woman teacher in Solapur district. she began teaching at the Solapur District Board School in 1942. Ten year, in 1952, she completed two years of teacher training and served as an education extension officer in the 'Jat' taluka of Sangli district. She wrote Mazhya Jalmachi Chittarkatha ( The Kaleidoscopic Story of My Life) after she retire d from teaching in 1981. The autobiography was first serialised in Purva magazine in 1983 and was teleserialised as 'Najuka' on Mumbai Doordarshan in 1990. It has also been translated into French. The word Chittarkatha literally means a picture story but also indicates a sense of pieces of pictures being put together like a jigsaw puzzle.
21591580	/m/05mtf9r	Science Fair				 Grdankl the Strong, president of Krpshtskan, is plotting to take over the American government. Unfortunately, that is hard considering the fact that Kprshtskan is so poor its airplane motto is "If it is going up it is coming down in a different place." So he sends one of his sons, Prmkt, into America to try and bring it to its knees. Prmkt eventually devises a plan that requires top-secret military technology. To obtain this technology, he enters Hubble Middle School. A science fair is held each year in Hubble Middle School, with a cash prize for the winner, so Prmkt sends notes to the ME (Manor Estates) kids, saying that for a fee, he will give them blueprints to build technical items. However, the ME kids are unaware of who writes these notes or gives the blueprints. Also, considering the fact that some of them have an IQ that can be compared to that of a horsefly, they go to a certain store in the mall called the Science Nook, where the owner, Sternabite, builds their projects for a fee. These procedures are kept secret, otherwise their projects would be disqualified from the science fair. Many people, teachers and students alike, are suspicious of these things, but due to lack of evidence, and the fact that the ME kid's parents are very powerful and are rich, so the ME kids continue to win year after year. Toby Harbinger, an average, smart kid (as noted when he was put in the Gifted Class) has a problem. His problem is that he sold his dad's autographed Han Solo blaster prop to a guy named D. Arthur Vaderian who has a partner who wears polarized sunglasses. He used the $2,038 to buy a new gaming computer, to replace the old one. His father defeats Vaderian in a light-saber duel after Toby escapes from jail with his iPhone that makes him invisible unless someone is wearing polarized sunglasses. One of the funniest and most often repeated lines in the book is "Smerk?", which is used to repel wolves.
21594356	/m/05mydj1	Bradley McGogg, the very fine frog	J. Timothy Hunt	2009-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Bradley McGogg makes his home in the bog where there are plenty of yummy bugs for a frog to feed on. Upon finding his pantry bare one day, Bradley decides to meet his neighbors, in the hopes that they will share some of their favorite meals with him. But this “bog frog” soon finds that not all animals eat alike.
21598879	/m/05m_jt4	The Faithful Spy	Alex Berenson	2006	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins a few months after the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, with John Wells, an undercover CIA agent, in the middle of a battle in Afghanistan. Wells has been undercover with Al Qaeda for many years, fighting in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Pakistan. During the battle he and his crew of Al-Qaeda members are on a hillside where a group of United States Marines are stationed. The small Al-Qaeda band is planning to attack the Marines to help with a bigger battle that is raging below, and Wells decides to take out the terrorists himself so he can send a message to his CIA contact via the Marines: "No prior knowledge of 9/11. Say hi to Heather for me." Meanwhile, back in the United States, Jennifer Exley, his CIA handler, visits a prisoner of war being held on a Navy ship to try to get information on Wells, who has been incommunicado for two years. Al Qaeda detonates two truck bombs in LA, killing hundreds of people. John Wells is returned to the USA on a mission from Al Qaeda where he reconnects with the CIA. However due to the length of his absence he is accused of being “un-faithful” because he did not warn the US about Al Qaeda attacks. The accuser, Vinny Duto forces John to take a polygraph test. He proves himself to be innocent. Wells is put in a CIA safe house in Washington, DC but escapes in order to continue his Al Qaeda mission. He heads to Atlanta and spends several months hiding out before being given the task of killing a retired US Army general. After completing this task, and secretly killing his two fellow Al Qaeda members, he is given the task of collecting something from Canada. While in Canada, he meets with a Al-Qaeda member to collect a suitcase, really a scientist who has been working to grow the plague bacteria. Wells returns with the suitcase but has secretly been infected with the plague by the scientist. Wells then learns that Al Qaeda used the LA bombings as a distraction from an impending, much larger attack; several other Al Qaeda members have infected themselves with the plague and plan to spread it throughout the population, creating a pandemic within the United States. Wells, with the help of Exley, is able to kill the infected terrorists and take out their leader, Khadri, thwarting their plans.
21609151	/m/05mth5k	The Two Sisters	H. E. Bates	1926		 Jenny and her younger sister Tessie live in an isolated farmhouse with their recently widowed and tyrannical father Jacob and their two brothers Jim and Luke. Tessie seeks escape in the local dancehall. Jenny stays at home. Then an unexpected visitor Michael Winter breaks into their quiet lives; both sisters falling in love with him.
21611463	/m/05mrj0n	9 Dragons	Michael Connelly	2009-10-13	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Bosch and his partner Ignacio Ferras are called to investigate a murder at Fortune Liquors (which Bosch had visited during the race riots at the end of Angels Flight), located in the L.A. ghetto. The owner, Mr. Li, has been murdered, leaving behind a grieving widow who did not speak English and two children: a daughter Mia, who looked after her parents, and a son Robert, who ran the second Fortune Liquors store in an upscale area. The wife had found her husband's body, and the Asian Gangs Unit has been called, which leads to Asian-American Detective David Chu, who is fluent in several Chinese dialects, joining the investigation. Although the killer took the day's security camera disk, Bosch watches two saved disks from previous dates and finds that the owner made a $216 weekly payoff to a triad every week at about the time he was murdered. Chu locates the bagman for the triad, and he and Bosch arrest him just as he is about to flee to Hong Kong. The arrest is made on a Friday, so that the man can be held without bail until Monday morning. The victim had swallowed one of the casings ejected by the shooter's gun, and Bosch requests the forensics lab to run a special, experimental test on the brass casing to reveal any latent fingerprints. However, at that point, Bosch receives a phone threat and then a video message from his daughter Maddie, who lives in Hong Kong and whom he only sees twice a year. The message simply shows her held in a hotel room, kidnapped. His ex-wife Eleanor called the Hong Kong police, who told her that Maddie was probably a runaway and to call back Monday if she hadn't returned by then. Bosch flies from L.A. to Hong Kong Friday night/Saturday, and then plans to spend Sunday looking for Maddie, while flying back Sunday night to get in the office on Monday morning (due to the time differentials). Eleanor agrees to meet him at the airport. Eleanor, who is a star attraction at a Macau casino, has a personal security guard, Sun Yee, whom Harry learns is also her boyfriend. Although Hong Kong has strict gun control, Sun Yee arranges to get Harry a gun. A video technician at the L.A.P.D. traced the image of Maddy's kidnapping to a particular section of Kowloon, and Harry, Eleanor and Sun Yee follow the trail to a high-rise multi-ethnic flophouse (a likely referral to Chungking Mansions), which Eleanor refers to as a "post-modern Casablanca, all in one building." To get access to the room in which Maddie was being held, Harry recklessly overpays, despite Sun Yee's cautioning. On the elevator up, Harry and Eleanor are separated from Sun Yee, and Harry crashes into the room without waiting for him. They find evidence that Maddie had been blood typed there, which would be done only if her kidnapping were part of China's black market in organ trading. Upon leaving the room, Harry and Eleanor are approached by two armed men, and in the subsequent shoot-out, the men and Eleanor are all killed. Sun Yee informs Harry that the killers are not triad but were robbers out to steal the money that Harry showed at the desk. Harry then thrashes the desk clerk and takes his records of room rentals, managing to escape just ahead of the police. The room rental was done by "Quick", the older brother of one of Maddie's friends. He lived in Tuen Mun in the New Territories, according to the records, but Harry and Sun Yee find only three dead bodies—Quick, his sister and their mother—in his apartment, as well as Maddie's cell phone. The cell phone had been used to make one call to a Tuen Mun number before it was damaged, and Harry calls Chu back in L.A. to trace the number. Harry and Sun Yee launch their own attempt to track down the kidnappers and succeed in luring them into a meeting, then follow their car upon leaving. Chu manages to trace the phone call number to a triad-connected business called Northstar, and the kidnappers' car is headed in the same direction. Just before arriving at the business, the car turns, but Harry and Sun Yee continue to Northstar, where they find a guarded cargo ship. Subsequently, the car also arrives there. Figuring that Maddie was on board the ship, Harry charges it under cover and kills the kidnappers. Although Maddie is not on the boat, he finds Maddie in the trunk of the car. With Eleanor deceased, Harry takes Maddie back to L.A. Upon his arrival, Harry learns that nothing has happened in the Fortune Liquors case, in part because Ferras did not work over the weekend, and Harry tells Ferras that he will request a new partner. The bagman is released on bail and flees the U.S. Hong Kong police arrive with a demand for Bosch's extradition, and they have a confession signed by Sun Yee that has a number of inaccuracies in it, which makes it obvious to Bosch that Sun Yee is not cooperating and may have been tortured. Bosch comes to the meeting with them accompanied by his lawyer (and half-brother) Mickey Haller, who threatens to turn this into a front-page story about the dangers faced by Americans in Hong Kong, especially since the Hong Kong police were called about Maddie's kidnapping but refused to help. The Hong Kong police leave without pursuing charges and also agree to release Sun Yee. At the same time, the experimental test produces a fingerprint on the casing—but the fingerprint belongs to Hollywood screenwriter Henry Lau, not the triad bagman. When Bosch and Chu visit him, they find the gun used for the murder, which he keeps in his home. He tells them that he was in a script meeting the entire day of the shooting (and in a nod to Hollywood by Connelly, when asked who could vouch for him, Lau name-drops actor Matthew McConaughey, who portrays Haller in the film adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer). While escorting Lau out of the house, Bosch notices Lau's framed college diploma on the wall, from the same university and graduation year as the one hanging in Robert Li's office. Lau reveals that he and Robert were roommates in college, along with Li's assistant manager Eugene Lam, and that the threesome plays cards at Lau's house each week. Bosch and Chu arrest Lam, whom they believe to be the killer, while leaving Ferras to follow Robert Li. Lam reveals that the entire murder was a plot concocted by Mia to relieve her of the burden of her parents; Robert had come up with the idea of disguising it as a triad killing. When Bosch and Chu inform Ferras, he decides to single-handedly arrest Robert Li as an act of defiance against Bosch—but he is killed by Mia during the arrest. Mia then commits suicide. After Ferras' funeral, Maddie confesses to Harry that the "kidnapping" was originally a fake that she planned, to get her mother to agree to let her live with Harry. However, when presented with the opportunity, Quick turned it into a real kidnapping, making the deal with the triad from which Harry saved her. Maddie blames herself for the deaths, especially her mother, that followed. Harry consoles her, promising to show her how they can make up for their mistakes.
21614148	/m/05mrx8w	Other People	Martin Amis	1981	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mary, an amnesiac young woman, wakes and tries to piece together her previous life while using a new identity.
21624439	/m/05n03q2	Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse	Lee Goldberg	2006-01-03	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 A woman falls asleep while watching TV and a lit cigarette sets her house on fire. Minutes later, at a nearby firehouse, a firefighter is killed and Monk is blinded in a bizarre attack. Monk must use his other senses to find the killer.
21629798	/m/04jssd8	Dead to the World	Charlaine Harris	2004-05-04	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 This novel opens on New Year's Eve, three weeks after the events of Club Dead. Sookie Stackhouse finds Eric running down the road close to her home, but he seems to have lost his memory. Sookie, initially reluctant to get involved in vampire matters once again, takes Eric in. Eric's second in command, Pam, is relieved at Sookie finding Eric, and explains a coven of villainous witches, some of them also werewolves, has arrived in Shreveport, set on extorting money from Eric and taking over the local power he has. Hence, Pam believes the witches to be responsible for Eric's erased memory. After Sookie's brother Jason bargains on a financial settlement, Sookie agrees to keep Eric in her house and care for him, as the witches are on the lookout for Eric and might harm him. The next day, Jason is missing. Sookie oversees the slowly progressing police investigation of her brother's disappereance, but personally fears the witch coven might've gotten hold of him. Later on, Sookie informs werewolf Alcide Herveaux of the witch coven being in town. Alcide and his pack master fear that one of their pack members might have defected to the witches' side, but Sookie and Alcide then discover this particular woman's murdered body. Back in Bon Temps, Sookie's workplace is paid a visit to by the leaders of the witch coven, Marnie "Hallow" and Mark Stonebrook. Meanwhile, Sookie and Eric give in to their sexual interest in each other, while Sookie realizes she wouldn't have done so if Eric still had his memory. Pam suggests Alcide's werewolf pack, her area vampires and some local Wiccans unite to fight off the witch coven. They do so and with Sookie's assistance, brutally attack the witches' main gathering place, wiping out everyone present but Hallow, whom Pam captures and forces to lift Eric's amnesia. Sookie returns home dismayed at the loss of her "relationship" with the memory-free Eric, and finally retrieves Jason with Sam's help in Hotshot, a local were-panther community. In Hotshot, Felton Norris, romantically interested in Jason's one-time fling Crystal, also a werepanther, had contained Jason and purposefully bit him to change him into a werepanther, so that Crystal would lose her interest in Jason. This novel marked the death of three previously introduced characters; Fangtasia's human waitress Ginger was killed by a witch curse, Fangtasia's replacement bartender Chow was staked in the climactic battle, and Alcide Herveaux's jealous, shapeshifter ex-girlfriend Debbie Pelt was shot to death by Sookie after invading Sookie's house intending to kill her.
21638377	/m/05msww0	The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance	Margaret Mahy	1984-05-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Laura Chant has one of her "warnings", a premonition that something is about to happen, but is forced to ignore it and go to school as usual. On the way home, she and her younger brother Jacko encounter the sinister Carmody Braque, who 'playfully' stamps Jacko's hand, the stamp appearing as an image of his face. As Jacko becomes increasingly ill, Laura believes he has been possessed. She seeks the help of Sorensen "Sorry" Carlisle, recognized by her as a witch in hiding though to others he seems just a painfully well-behaved school prefect who photographs birds as a hobby. She learns that Braque is an ancient being who consumes the life force of others to keep himself alive. Sorry's grandmother Winter, one of a long line of witches, recommends that Laura should "changeover" from her normal life, becoming a witch or "woman of the moon" herself. As such she can trick the unwary Braque into putting himself in her power. Although warned that the changeover can be dangerous, Laura is determined to save her brother, now very near death. Laura experiences the changeover as a spirit journey through a dark forest, which is also at the same time Gardendale. The Carlisle witches help her through it, for their own reasons, and she emerges from the perilous passage with the power of nature and imagination awakened in her. Taking Sorensen along to mask her new power, Laura confronts Braque and succeeds in gaining power over him and breaking his hold on Jacko. At first intending to make the evil entity suffer, she rejects the dark temptation and instead ends his unnatural existence.
21642566	/m/05my09z	The Dressmaker	Beryl Bainbridge	1973	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 Set in Lancashire during World War II, a repressed dressmaker and her sister struggle looking after their 17-year-old niece, who is having a delusional affair with an American soldier.
21654663	/m/05mty_l	Gold	Dan Rhodes	2007		 Set in a coastal village in Pembrokeshire it concerns Miyuki Woodward a young Welsh-Japanese woman who spends a month every winter staying in a nearby cottage; away from her female partner Grindl (with whom she runs a decorating business) as a lesson in not taking each other for granted. Her appearance in the local pub is welcomed by all, but this year she becomes more involved in the local community than usual; the gold in the title referring to her impulsive gold spray-painting of a prominent boulder on a nearby beach, which soon attracts the attention of the local police...
21657493	/m/05mts36	The Collector Collector	Tibor Fischer	1997-03-17		 The narrator of the tale (and the collector of its collectors) is an ancient Sumerian bowl which finds itself in a South London flat of its new owner Rosa. The bowl not only acts as a repository for 5,000 years of human history but is also able to communicate with those who handle it; reading memories and imparting wisdom...
21661841	/m/05mydm4	The Dead and the Gone		2008-05-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Dead and the Gone follows 17-year-old Alex Morales and his sisters, Briana and Julie, in their struggle to survive after an asteroid hits the Moon and knocks it out of orbit, closer to Earth. Taking place in New York, they are plagued with volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and tidal waves, and earthquakes, along with famine caused by food shortages and disease that kill millions of people in the process. Alex is forced to take care of his sisters in the absence of his mother and father and to raid dead bodies for valuables to trade for food. He struggles with his religious faith while trying desperately to survive.
21662236	/m/05mt6nw	The Tragedy of Tragedies	Henry Fielding			 There is little difference between the general plot outline of Tom Thumb and The Tragedy of Tragedies, but Fielding does make significant changes. He completely removed a scene in which two doctors discuss Tom Thumb's death, and in doing so unified the type of satire that he was working on. He narrowed his critique to abuses of language produced only by individuals subconsciously, and not by frauds like the doctors. As for the rest of the play, Fielding expanded scenes, added characters, and turned the work into a three-act play. Merlin is added to the plot to prophesize Tom's end. In addition, Grizzle becomes Tom's rival for Huncamunca's heart, and a giantess named Glumdalca is added as a second love interest for both King Arthur and Tom. As the play progresses, Tom is not killed by Grizzle, but instead defeats him. The ghost of Tom in Tom Thumb is replaced by the ghost of Gaffar Thumb, Tom's father.
21671163	/m/05mstp7	Millions	Frank Cottrell Boyce	2004-02-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel is set in Widnes, England, in the near future, just as the euro is about to replace the pound sterling. Damian and Anthony Cunningham are brothers who have recently suffered the loss of their mother. Because of this tragedy, Damian becomes obsessed with saints and eventually hallucinates about them. When brothers Damian and Anthony unwittingly come into possession of the proceeds of a train robbery, they find themselves with millions of pounds to spend in the next 17 days. Damian believes the money comes from God and she like radishod, but Anthony has different ideas. Meanwhile, the robbers are looking for their money.
21675886	/m/05mr6mv	Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War	William Broad	2001-10-02	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book begins by recounting the 1984 salmonella poisoning in The Dalles, Oregon, caused by the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh spraying salmonella onto salad bars. There are several revelations, including how Moscow's scientists created an untraceable germ that could instruct the body to self destroy, and U.S. military plans of germ weaponry attacking Cuba in the 1960s. Germs ends with a review of the United States's ability to deter future bio-attack.
21676100	/m/05mzdyp	The Clown	Heinrich Böll			 Hans Schnier is the "Clown" of the novel's title. He is twenty-seven years old from a very wealthy family. At the beginning of the story he arrives in Bonn, Germany. As a clown, he had to travel across the country from city to city to perform as an artist. He always sees himself an artist. His home is in Bonn; therefore, he has to stay in different hotels when he is not in Bohn. The woman he has been living with, Marie, has left him to marry another man named Zupfner. Because of this, Hans has become depressed. He also has serious financial problems and he wants to get Marie back from Zupfner. He describes himself as a clown with no church affiliation. His parents, devout Protestants, sent him to a Catholic school. He met Marie in school and fell in love with her. Although Marie was a Catholic, she agreed to live with him. They never got legally married, largely because Hans would not agree to sign a paper agreeing to raise his children as Catholics. He did not even want to get a marriage license, because he thought that they were for people who did not go to church. While living together, they never had any children. Marie always stated that even though she was living in sin, she was still a Catholic. Once in high school, Hans saw her holding hands with Zupfner, but she told him that Zupfner was only a friend. Hans brought her along on every trip and took her everywhere he went. After five years, there was a Catholic conference near their hotel in a German city. Marie wanted to breathe some Catholic air and ask Hans to go there. Hans had a performance at the same time. When they arrived late at night, he fell asleep. The next morning, he discovered Marie was gone, but had had left a note. He never saw her again. The note read: “I must take the path that I must take.” Hans has a mystical peculiarity, as he can detect smells through the telephone. As he explains, he does not only suffer from depression, headaches, laziness and that mystical ability, but also he suffers from his disposition to monogamy. There is only one woman that he can live with: Marie. His reversal of values is clearly shown in his statement: "I believe that the living are dead, and that the dead live, not the way Protestants and Catholics believe it." When he goes to his home in the Bonn, the first person he meets is his millionaire father. He remembers all of his memories from the past. He had a sister named Henrietta. The family forced her to volunteer for anti-aircraft duty seventeen years ago and she never came back. He also has a brother named Leo. He recently converted to Catholicism and is studying theology in college. Hans tells his father about his financial problems. After his father offers him to work for him for a relatively low wage, Hans rejects the offer. He tells his father that he and his brother never benefited from the wealth of their family. War has affected the family. They were never given enough food or pocket money. Many things were regarded as extravagances. Thus, he has no good memory from his past and maybe it was a factor that drove him, at age 21, to leave home to become a clown. He calls many of his relatives in Bonn, but nobody can help him. He soon discovers that Marie is now in Rome on her honeymoon. This news only depresses him more. Finally, he calls his brother, Leo, who promises to bring him money the next day. But, in the middle of the conversation, Leo says that he has talked to Zupner about something and that they became friends. Because Leo has converted to Catholicism, his father no longer supports him. Therefore, Leo is not in a good position financially. In anger, Hans tells him not to come to bring the money. At the end, Hans takes his guitar to the train station and plays as people throw coins into his hat.
21677071	/m/05msbyx	Luckypenny	Bruce Marshall	1937	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Luckypenny, the title character, is married with two young adult children. Like the author himself, Luckypenny has lost a leg in World War I. He works as an accountant with an English arms firm. Discovering some financial irregularities he blackmails his way to promotion. He is sent to negotiate an arms sale to fascist Italy and becomes embroiled in a scheme to smuggle cash out of the country, arranged by his boss to get rid of him. He is caught, but escapes with the aid of a young woman, who, unbeknownst to Luckypenny, is an Italian espionage agent. The agent falls in love with Luckypenny and helps him to land a large contract for his company. Additional adventures involve Luckypenny’s children. His son, Tom, and the boss's daughter fall in love, but Tom is shattered when he discovers that she is not a virgin. Luckypenny’s daughter and his boss also begin a love affair. The novel ends in Fascist Spain, where Luckypenny’s fate depends upon the intervention of his Italian lover.
21677591	/m/05mqy98	Vespers in Vienna	Bruce Marshall	1947	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Shortly after the end of World War II, British Colonel Michael 'Hooky' Nicobar is assigned to the Displaced Persons Division in the British Zone of Vienna, Austria. Like the author himself, Nicobar has had a limb amputated. Marshall also served in the Displaced Persons Division in Austria. Nicobar's duty is to aid the Soviet authorities to repatriate citizens of the Soviet Union, many of whom prefer not to return to their home country. Billeted in the convent run by Mother Auxilia, Nicobar, and his military aides Major John 'Twingo' McPhimister and Audrey Quail, become involved in the plight of Maria, a young ballerina, who is trying to avoid being returned to Moscow. Nicobar's sense of duty is tested as he sees first hand the plight of the people he is forcing to return to the Soviet Union; his lack of religious faith is also shaken by his contact with the Mother Superior. The novel was the basis of the 1949 film The Red Danube starring Walter Pidgeon, Ethel Barrymore, Peter Lawford, Angela Lansbury and Janet Leigh. George Sidney directed. After the movie was released the novel was re-issued as The Red Danube.
21677813	/m/05m_3ht	The Fair Bride	Bruce Marshall	1953	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A priest finds himself on the run from the Spanish Republicans, who accuse priests of indoctrinating their followers against them. The priest slips into a cabaret to hide and meets a young girl, an entertainer in the club. His commitment to the priesthood is wavering due to the persecution he suffers and he begins to fall for her. Both of them wind up being arrested. Meanwhile, both sides are searching for a sacred relic that is believed to have miraculous powers - it is said to have helped defeat Napoleon. Each side wants it for its own reasons. The relic ends up in the priest’s possession.
21678182	/m/05mqfr1	Little Friend	Bruce Marshall	1929	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 James Garrett is the “Little Friend” of several young women. Whether or not this is a good thing for these ladies is the issue studied in this tragicomic novel. Garrett meets Effie while studying for the ministry at St. Andrews, a university in Scotland. He falls in love with Effie, the lovely daughter of a local pastor, only moments after meeting her. They are inseparable, until, just days before his graduation–ordination, and the day after their first sexual encounter, she is killed in a traffic accident. Despondent and disillusioned, he abandons his intended pastoral career and takes a job as an ad writer with Paloma, the American manufacturer of a very successful line of toothpaste. The company sends him to Paris where he meets Marjorie, a worldly, promiscuous and beautiful British expatriate. He quickly abandons her when his company assigns him to Barcelona. On the train to his new job, he meets an English family, the Nicholsons, also traveling to Barcelona. The daughter, Molly, becomes infatuated with Garrett. His feelings towards her are more ambiguous. The next player in this drama is Pepita. A fiery and lovely poor woman, Pepita works in a brothel since “I can’t keep body and soul together on what is paid by shoe stores.” Garrett meets her when he and his new coworkers end a drunken debauch by visiting her place of employment. Garrett is intrigued by both her attractiveness and the fact that, while she is willing to engage in a wide range of intimate sexual activities, she refuses to kiss him. Garrett shuffles between Molly and Pepita, keeping their existence a secret to the other. But Pepita also has another admirer, Miguelito, an up and coming young bullfighter. Pepita, however is frustrated by Miguelito’s many infidelities and eventually gives him up after he abandons and humiliates her for an assignation with Marjorie, who has come to Barcelona to attempt the consummation of her seduction of Garrett. After considerable reflection, Garrett offers to support Pepita if she will give up prostitution. She agrees and finds herself growing more committed and more in love with him. As her love for him grows, Pepita realizes that maintaining their unmarried sexual relationship is sinful and ends sexual activities with him. Garrett, however, has continued his flirtation with Molly all during his relationship with Pepita. Garrett now realizes that Molly is also hoping he will marry her. Weighing his two possibilities, Garrett decides that his chances of a happy life are higher with Molly, with whom he shares many cultural affinities, than with Pepita, whose habits and expectations are “foreign” to him. The novel ends with Pepita reentering the brothel. Garret has proven himself to be a “little” friend. His irresolute and selfish behavior has symbolically led to Effie’s death, Pepita’s return to immorality and Marjorie's continuation in a life of debauchery. The reader is left to contemplate what lies in wait for Molly.
21678387	/m/05mqgs1	The Stooping Venus	Bruce Marshall	1926	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lady Louise Eleanor Stromworth-Jenkins is “very much of the nineteen twenties.” The daughter of an English Baron and a French mother, Louise is young, wealthy, intelligent, well-educated and beautiful. An object of pursuit by many eligible young men in her London, England area, Louise feels herself not really capable of love. She meets Lord James Strathcrombie, a decorated war veteran and owner of Benhyter Motors, Limited, a successful automobile company. Eventually, despite her lack of deep love for James, they marry. While Strathcrombie is in Paris on a business trip, Louise travels to Roscoff, France to visit her good friend Veronica Ashley, who is staying there with her family and several friends. One of the friends is Robert Hewitt, a Scottish medical student and the author of one relatively unsuccessful novel. Although she believes in loyalty and is devoted to her husband, Louise feels an attraction to Robert which last through the visit. Soon all return to their respective endeavors. A few months later Louise travels to St. Andrews, Scotland to visit friends. There she encounters Robert again, this time just after he has published his second novel, The Silver Fleece, which has become a great success. Louse and Robert spend considerable time together and the encounters grow increasingly romantic. But again, nothing happens between them and soon they part. In London, the Strathcrombies entertain the Merrill family in their home. The family has two young daughters, Babs and Mavis. While talking with Louise the young women express their admiration for The Silver Fleece. Louise mentions that she knows the author and using their enthusiasm as an excuse, invites Robert for a visit. After meeting him, Babs also finds herself very attracted to Robert. During this visit, Louse and Robert discuss running off together. Louise still feels loyalty to James, but feels that this is her chance for love, a chance she did not believe was ever possible. Robert also expresses agreement with the idea, although he also feels an attraction to Babs. They determine to tell James, but he leaves on an emergency business trip before Louise can work up the courage to do so. They attempt to follow him to Bordeaux, France, but in route, while staying in a hotel, Robert encounters Babs. Desperate, Babs kisses Robert just as Louise, looking for him in the hotel, walks in on them. Realizing that Robert does not feel as deeply for her as she for him, she returns to James. After all this, Veronica tells Louse about a statue that she has. “A naked woman, stooping, groping for something, it seems. ‘The Stooping Venus’ I always call it. What she’s stooping for I can never quite make out. A philosophy, perhaps, or even a garment. And I’m sure that it’s something quite ordinary she wants to find: common sense if it’s a philosophy, a flannelette petticoat if it’s a garment. That’s you, Louise. Stooping to find—content, and motherhood, and lawful love.”
21683125	/m/05mz3gk	Terminal World	Alastair Reynolds		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot begins when an "angel", a posthuman from the Celestial levels at Spearpoint's peak, falls to Neon Heights, further down the spire. The clean-up crew that finds it delivers it to Quillon, one of the zone's pathologists. It is revealed that Quillon was part of a secret angel project to see if angels could be altered to survive in Spearpoint's lower levels. The dying angel tells Quillon that certain factions amongst the angels are searching for him to obtain further information about the results of this project. Quillon seeks advice from his old ally, Fray, who tells him that he needs to leave Spearpoint if he is to survive in the foreseeable future. He summons Meroka, one of his extraction specialists, to help Quillon out of the city. Quillon and Meroka escape the city, pursued by "Ghouls"- angels with similar, but less sophisticated, inter-zonal modifications that allow them to survive in lower state zones for short periods of time. They find out that the zones had rearranged themselves totally overnight in what is called a "zone storm". They look to Spearpoint and see that all the lights have gone out, indicating the entire city has been affected by the storm. They venture on and run into an overturned carriage with several bodies having been consumed by the vorgs, carnivorous cyborgs, that harvest brain tissue to feed on. Soon Quillon and Meroka run into a Skullboy caravan and find two prisoners who they release. The Skullboys take them all hostage, then the vorgs turn up and demand fresh meat in return for making drugs for the Skullboys. Meroka offers herself up to the vorgs but before she is harvested the vorg behind her is killed by members from Swarm. Swarm airmen kill off the remaining Skullboys and Vorg and pronounce Quillons group to be "clients of Swarm". They are taken aboard one of the hundred and fifty airships that make up the entity of Swarm. The gang get taken back to Swarm's HQ and are taken to see the leader Riccasso. Meroka finds out that Quillon is an angel and as she had a chequered past with the angels, no longer speaks to him. Ricasso tells Quillon about his research into finding a complete cure for zone sickness, which would allow people to cross zone boundaries at will. The two prisoners that Quillon and Meroka released are mother Kalis and daughter Nimcha who both bear the Tectomancer birthmark. However Kalis' birthmark upon closer inspection turns out to be a tattoo used to divert hatred and prejudice from her daughter onto herself. Quillon takes great measures to hide their identity from Swarm because they are as prejudiced as all the other outerland peoples about these "witches". Eventually Ricasso finds out and agrees to kept it from the rest of Swarm as it would cause unrest with the airmen. Quillon finds out that the serum that Ricasso had been preparing before serves as an effective anti-zonal medication. Quillon asks Ricasso and a few of his most trusted allies to head back to Spearpoint to help out the millions of needy and sick people still living there. After a tense discussion it is decided that the issue will be put to the flags to see who is for or against the idea. Surprisingly the majority say that they are behind the plans, even some of Ricasso's most staunch enemies. Preparations are made to head out to Spearpoint and the serum is prepared for dilution. When one of the scouts comes back after a successful battle with a Skullboy ship they bring back intelligence and maps that the previously dead land of the Bane has had a zone realignment and using the route could be a massive short cut. Ricasso decides that this is the best plan of action even though it is highly dangerous. In the vorg cage room where Ricasso's lab is Quillon is hard at work preparing the serum for dilution and he gets surprised by Spatha who has a gun aimed at Quillon's head. Spatha demands that Quillon release a vorg to make everyone think that bringing him aboard and letting him loose in the laboratory was a bad idea. However the vorg runs through the ship and causes mayhem, releases the other vorgs in the cages and manages to kill 4 people before Nimcha uses her powers to cause a small zone tremor so the ship is reverted to a lower state zone, killing off the highly advanced vorg. Spatha is arrested and sentenced to death by firing squad. The journey across the newly opened short cut over the Bane is uneventful at first, until they come across a metallic object in the distance. The Painted Lady, Curtana's ship on which Quillon and Meroka are living is instructed to scope out the object whilst the rest of Swarm carries on its normal course. The object turns out to be a plane, unusual because the Bane is supposedly uninhabitable by anything other than single celled organisms and dirt. Soon they come across more planes, then prop-planes then bi and tri planes until they get to gliders. Many of them are marked with a red rectangle with one large stars and four small stars. (This means nothing to them, but would be consistent with it being the flag of China in our own era.) After this they see on the horizon what appears to be a very similar object to Spearpoint, but with no signs that anyone ever lived on its surface. Ricasso and Quillon elect to take a closer look at the building in a balloon as normal airships can't reach the top of the object. They see that unlike Spearpoint this object was never colonised as thoroughly and is hollow which a hole at the top. Once they get close to Spearpoint they intercept semaphore lines that tell of zone changes on the boundary of their destination which are so low state it would inhibit powered flight. A plan is made to come in steep, nurse the engines as long as possible and finally glide into Spearpoint. The is complicated by the pockets of resistance put up by Skullboys in balloons. There is a fierce battle into which Quillon and Meroka are enlisted, many of the guns and engines fail as they cross into the lower state zones but eventually they triumph. They reach Spearpoint and land in the middle of a sea of people. They are met with Tulwar's militia force that escort Quillon and Meroka to the Red Dragon Bathhouse. They start to unload the crates of Serum-15 and a stray Skullboy rocket sets fire to the tail of the Painted Lady. Luckily most of the airmen and Curtana make it off the ship with little more than burns but some of the medicine was lost in the hurry to offload it. At the bathhouse Quillon, Meroka, Kalis, and Nimcha talk to Tulwar about the distribution of the serum and about getting Nimcha close to the Mire, inside of Spearpoint, which has been calling to her through her dreams and asking her to heal it. Tulwar agrees to let them travel to the nearest tunnel entrance and suggests that they stay the night to rest after their chaotic journey. The next day they head to the Pink Peacock and enter the tunnel system with Meroka leading them. She smells something amiss with Tulwar's plan and thinks that they are being set up so that Tulwar can remain in power of Spearpoint and prolong the chaos to reign supreme. She diverts from the planned path and they eventually get caught up by Kargas, Tulwar's head of militia, and get into a fire fight. At that point Fray and Malkin turn up with powerful guns and mow down the assailants. Tulwar had informed the party that Fray was dead but this is just another of his deceptions. After talking to Fray they get lead to meet with the Mad Machines, long thought to be an urban myth about the even more mythical tunnel systems by many living in Spearpoint. They meet with Juggernaught and plead Nimchas case and it agrees to take them to see the others. They travel along without Meroka and Malkin who leave to sort out Tulwar and meet with The Final One. She informs Nimcha that she must take a place in the chamber beside the other tectomancers so they can heal the Mire. After the party leaves Nimcha and Fray down in the chamber they decide to take revenge on Tulwar for his deceptions. They hide in crates of the serum and Meroka shoots Tulwar several times, disabling him by puncturing his steam pipes. Quillon talks to Tulwar about his deceptions then spits up blood and passes out. He has internal bleeding from a shot to his back and is on his death bed. He is informed that an angel was sent out to meet with the rest of Swarm, which had hung back before the zone boundaries, and has told them that they have allies in the celestial levels. Quillon realises that these are the same allies that warned him about his imminent execution and Curtana orders him to travel with Meroka to the Celestial Levels in hopes of saving his life and finding allies to take Spearpoint back from the Skullboys and the unallied angels. The book finishes with Curtana and Agraffe wonder what changes would befall the planet and Spearpoint after Nimcha has finished healing the mire and wonder what the Mad Machines were talking about when they mentioned Earthgate and going into the planet to reach the stars.
21684222	/m/05mzmcv	Father Malachy's Miracle	Bruce Marshall	1938	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Next to a church in a prosperous Scottish industrial town is the "Garden of Eden", a dance hall of dubious reputation. The "Garden of Eden" is a thorn in the side of the innocent and unworldly Catholic priest Father Malachy, who is praying to God that He will close the dance hall. During an argument with a Protestant minister, Father Malachy claims that God could miraculously remove the "Garden of Eden". The skeptical Protestant scoffs and Father Malachy inadvertently predicts that God will indeed remove the "Garden of Eden" on a specific date. The date comes and the building and all the people inside vanish and reappear on Bass Rock, a small island in the Firth of Forth. This apparent miracle draws the attention of the media, politicians and scientists, all trying to find rational explanations. The Catholic Church is reluctant to officially recognize this occurrence as a miracle, fearing either a loss of control in matters of faith, or a loss of face if the disappearance of the "Garden of Eden" should turn out to be a hoax or fabrication. Meanwhile, believers from all over the world come on pilgrimage to the former location of the dance hall. Soon the site becomes a fairground, with the town’s people, entrepreneurs and journalists trying to make a profit from the miracle and the resulting sudden influx of pilgrims. This includes the sale of holy water and miniature models of the "Garden of Eden". A young woman, who was in the dance hall during the night it vanished, becomes a media star. Financial investors are buying the island where the "Garden of Eden" reappeared, and construct a casino that soon attracts crowds of people. Father Malachy is confronted with interview requests from journalists, and pilgrims beleaguer the church, hoping to meet the miracle-working priest. As he has spent most of his life in the monastery, he feels helpless in the face of the excesses of modern society. He soon regrets that he asked God for the miracle. He travels to the island and prays for a second miracle that will end the frenzy, and is heard by God, who returns the "Garden of Eden" to its original location.
21694530	/m/05mrl2n	Mothstorm	Philip Reeve	2008-10	{"/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 A mysterious cloud starts moving through the Solar System. A British ship is sent to Georgium Sidum to investigate, and finds giant moths and blue lizards. Most of the group is captured, but Arthur is saved by Jack's crew. They rescue Captain Moonfield, and with him they warn the Jovian System. It is revealed the lizards, called the Snilth, are led by a Rogue Shaper called the Mothmaker. They are able to repulse the first attack, but the Mothstorm then goes to Earth. Mrs Mumby and Arthur are able to destroy the Mothmaker with a formula Shapers use to destroy themselves after creating a system. It is revealed Ssilla is descended from a Snilth Queen who rebelled against the Mothmaker long ago, but had her clan slaughtered. Ssilla then becomes the Queen of the Snilth, and their miniature Sun is towed into orbit around Hades (Neptune), which they inhabit. Meanwhile as a reward for Jack's services enough antidote is produced to turn back all the Venusian colonists.
21702994	/m/05mx627	Flutter in the Dovecote				 It's a comic tale of a Catholic Bishop who learns that a surrealist painting donated to a Mother Superior is in reality indecent. In some way Intelligence services of various countries become involved.
21703001	/m/05mqt7h	A Foot in the Grave	Bruce Marshall	1987	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When John Smith's garrulous South American wife was found dead in Buenos Aires, he is accused by the Argentinian police not only of her murder, but also of tax evasion, links with the British Intelligence Service and of conspiring to overthrow the Argentinian dictatorship.
21703007	/m/05mvqfg	Urban the Ninth	Bruce Marshall	1973	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Catholic thriller - In 1990, Urban the Ninth takes over the papacy after Pope Marx I (successor of Leo XIV and Pius XIII) dies in an air crash. Urban IX has to face the Third Secret of Fatima (which had not yet been revealed in 1973) and a mysterious woman: perhaps, Pope Marx's secret lover.
21703013	/m/05mz2w_	Father Hilary's Holiday	Bruce Marshall	1965	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After thirty years in the priesthood, Father Hilary seizes the opportunity to attend a religious congress in South America. Father Hilary's well earned holiday is to be spent at a sort of ecumenical conference convened by "el Libertator" the Generalissimo of Tomasia. The result is a witty, pointed tale of humble but outspoken Franciscan friar and his wondrous escapades in the boiling maelstrom of a mythical Latin American dictatorship.
21703018	/m/05msrgs	The Divided Lady	Bruce Marshall	1960	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The style of this book is unusual for a Marshall work. The first half of the book alternates present time with flashbacks from the central character's earlier life. James Childers, an accountant with a large London firm is sent to Rome to investigate a business deal. The Sisters of Ramoth-Gilead have invested a considerable sum with Morobito, a famous film producer, to make a movie about St. Joseph Benedict Cottolengo of Turin. The Sisters suspect they have been swindled. Childers, who served in Rome in the post-World War II era, quickly revisits old haunts. The chapters switch back and forth between events during his original tour in Rome and the current one. Post-World War II Childers worked for the British Army dealing with Displaced Persons, specifically their financial situations. In his spare time he pursued Phoebe & Sarah, beautiful, identical twins who are aides of the General Childers also works for. In the present time, while investigating the Sisters' case, Childers renews his acquaintanceship with Bice, the daughter of a wealthy Duke who was a teenager when he was last in Rome. Bice hopes to use this relationship to get a part in Morobito's film. But Childers also meets Mila, who is what the Italians call a "Divided Lady," meaning that she is separated from her husband and hoping to obtain an annulment from the Catholic Church.
21703024	/m/05mrsv5	Girl in May	Bruce Marshall	1956	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A romance set among a motley crowd of eccentrics of all ages who constitute the population of St. Andrews.
21703029	/m/05mrw_7	Thoughts of My Cats	Bruce Marshall	1954	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 It is the story of the cats who adopted the Marshalls' villa at Cap d'Antibes when their less loving owners departed at the end of the season minus their pets. The book has engaging photographs of the author and his feline family, and is a delightful and witty treatise on how to win --- and influence --- cats.
21703040	/m/05p2_n_	Children of This Earth	Bruce Marshall	1930	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 John Glenuff is the son of a wealthy Scottish family with deep and powerful religious feelings. He studies to become a minister and is assigned to a conservative Anglican church in London. He is troubled by the sin and lack of religious belief he sees and dreams of bringing all to Christ. A wealthy and beautiful young girl pursues him and he is distraught when he almost succumbs to her. Walking home through Leicester Square afterwards he is propositioned by Dorothy, an attractive young prostitute. On the spot he decides to marry her in order to “save her soul.” And, despite his superiors’ objections, he does so. Church officials transfer him to an Anglican parish in Paris to minimize scandal, but his religious fervor and grandiose plans soon alienate the congregation. His marriage also deteriorates as he finds Dorothy extremely resistant to his preaching. As the novel ends, Glenuff believes that he has developed stigmata and thinks that these will finally enable him to convert the world, but it turns out that he is the only one who can see the signs.
21704895	/m/05mtw66	To Every Man a Penny	Bruce Marshall	1949	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story of a young French priest, Gaston, who goes to war, World War I, in the trenches, is mutilated, modestly administers the sacraments, hears the confessions of dying men, aids the wounded, and becomes a good friend of a Communist, Louis Philippe Bessier. Both he and Bessier are wounded in the leg, which is amputated, and both limp through the rest of the book. When they return to Paris, no one is expecting them–neither the canons of Father Gaston’s parish nor Bessier’s employers. Gaston, who had always sustained himself with the idea that the great evil of the war could lead to good, is forced to change his mind. The world is moving away from the Church and the Church from the world. The little girl Armelle, his pupil in catechism class, of whom he is very fond and who had always written to him in the trenches, wants to become a model, and he gives her his permission, even if many of his fellow canons disapprove. Marshall masterfully recounts the Catholic Church in France between the two world wars. The more formal people are in approaching her, the more the ecclesiastical hierarchies appear closed in their moralisms, their formalisms, their solipsistic way of thinking. In the end, the Bishop sends Gaston to South America for a couple of years. When he returns, much has changed: Armelle’s mother has died and she has become a prostitute. Bessier is working for the French Communist Party. The canons of his parish barely tolerate him. During his absence, friars and priests have been forbidden to go to the barber because of some magazines there (considered risqué by the ecclesiastic authority). He doesn’t know this and goes to get his hair cut. Surprised by a fellow priest, the not very well-loved Fr Moune, he has a noisy argument with him in the street, attracting a small crowd. This time, too, he is punished by the Bishop. In the meantime, the World War II is drawing near: Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler have burst onto the European scene. Gaston receives another fierce blow, which is that his beloved Armelle dies giving birth to a baby girl, Michelle. But there is a place where our priest can take refuge: the convent of some nuns who appreciate his simplicity and faith. Michelle will grow up there, among countless economic hardships and countless little economies. During the German occupation, Gaston helps an English soldier, while the canons of the parish are hanging Marshal Philippe Pétain’s portrait on the walls. But at the moment of liberation, when everyone is on the side of the Resistance, our priest this time feels obligated to help a German soldier escape with his Jewish fiancée, whom he himself had earlier hidden from the Nazis. The three are caught on the way by men of the Communist Party who beat them and kill the two young people. Gaston is saved at the last minute by his friend Bessier, who miraculously appears and gets him out of prison. Gaston’s eyes never heal completely from this brutal beating. In the end, mysteriously, the destinies of the characters fall into place: Bessier’s son, who has in the meantime become a “heretic” within the Communist Party, marries the lovely Michelle, and finally Gaston becomes resident chaplain at the convent of the nuns.
21705179	/m/05msh0w	Charlie Brown's Super Book of Questions and Answers			{"/m/02jfw": "Encyclopedia"}	 The content is presented as a series of questions pertaining to the subject of the particular chapter of the books. Amid the questions, pictures and photographs, there are details from established comic strips and complete comic strips, occasionally with its dialogue adjusted to the chapter's theme. Encyclopedic facts about Animals. Encyclopedic facts about the Earth and the Solar System. Encyclopedic facts about motion and mechanics. TBA TBA
21705690	/m/05mt52b	The Judas Goat	Robert B. Parker	1978	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 A somewhat recluse millionaire, Hugh Dixon, hires Spenser to find the members of a terrorist group that bombed a London restaurant where he and his family were dining, resulting in the deaths of his two daughters, his wife and leaving him a paraplegic. He is promised USD$2500 a head for the apprehension of each of the nine terrorists responsible, dead or alive. Spenser heads to England to start his investigation. Running an ad for information in a large London newspaper, results in at least two assassination attempts on Spenser. Spenser detects them before they are successful, resulting in the death of two gunmen and the capture of another. Spenser enlists the help of Hawk, a powerful henchman. This novel marks the first paid cooperative effort of Hawk, who goes on to become one of Spenser's greatest allies and friends in the long-running series. Spenser tracks one of the members of the terrorist group, Liberty, and uses her as a Judas goat to lead him to other members. "Katherine," as Spenser calls her, knowing that it is probably just an alias, flees to Copenhagen, where Hawk and Spenser follow her. Spenser allows himself to be captured by Katherine's allies, just to be rescued by Hawk before they plan to kill him (for the third time). The rescue leads to the deaths of three more members of the group, but the escape of Kathie and the leader of the group, Paul. The group turns out to be a white-supremacist group trying to keep control of African countries away from the native Africans and in the hands of white countries and leaders. The bombing of the restaurant Dixon and his wife were in was more or less a random act of violence against England because of the backing of an African country. Tired of running from Spenser and Hawk, Paul leaves the last two members responsible for the bombing shot dead in Spenser and Hawk's hotel room. The last member, Kathie, is tied up on a bed. A note from Paul says these are the last members of the bombing, which was executed without his involvement. He couldn't kill Kathie because he had been intimate with her for some time. He says to stop chasing them now. Hawk and Spenser untie Kathie and interrogate her, but she doesn't know where Paul has fled. Upon further reflection, she recalls he may be at the Olympics in Montreal, Canada. That night Kathie, with her pulchritude, tries to seduce Spenser, but he resists. His obligations to Dixon completed, the three of them fly to Montreal and rent a duplex near the games. Spenser flies to Boston to tell Dixon what he is planning on doing, and to tell him he doesn't expect him to pay for it. Dixon insists on paying for it anyhow, as he has great wealth but, since his family died, nothing worthwhile to spend it on. He also arranges to get Spenser tickets to the Stadium games. Spenser spends the night with his lover, Susan Silverman, and flies back to Canada the next day. With little to go on, Hawk, Spenser and Kathie attend the games at the Stadium looking for Paul and a henchman who Kathie warns may be with him, Zachary. Spenser spots him within a few days and observes him setting up a snipers nest. The next day he observes him, accompanied by Zach, assembling a sniper's rifle. Hawk and Spenser decide to make their move. All four men are armed, but Hawk quickly knocks out Paul. Zachary, a huge bodybuilder standing six foot seven, attempts to shoot Spenser, but loses his gun in a scuffle. Trying to take down Zachary, the three remaining men all lose their weapons. Zachary flees the stadium, pursued by Hawk and Spenser. He is eventually beaten into unconsciousness by them after a difficult brawl a short distance from the stadium. The police arrive and take Spenser and Hawk to a hospital. Both have numerous scrapes and cuts, but Spenser also has a broken left arm and nose. They learn Kathie shot Paul "as he attempted to flee," but both suspect she shot him first chance she got for turning her over to them at the hotel. Dixon arrives in his wheelchair at the hospital and pays Spenser twice his promised fee, $50,000. Spenser offers half to Hawk, but he declines, just billing Spenser for his original fee. Spenser lies to Dixon, saying Kathie is not part of the original nine responsible for the bombing and gets Dixon to have her released from jail, where she is being held. The book concludes with Spenser and Susan vacationing together in London.
21705777	/m/05mqykj	Times of Contempt	Andrzej Sapkowski	1995	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A coup in the Mages Guild ends with the Guild being weakened, and Geralt being badly wounded. Ciri is teleported to a remote desert in Nilfgaard dominion. The war between Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms begins, resulting in a series of quick and stunning victories for Nilfgaard. Within weeks, Aedirn, Rivia and Lyria all fall to Nilfgaard, the Redanian king Visimir is killed, which removes Redania from the battlefield and Temeria and Kaedwen agree to an armistice with Nilfgaard.
21706040	/m/05mv1r6	The Spook Who Sat by the Door	Sam Greenlee	1969-03		 The novel takes place in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Chicago. The book opens with Senator Hennington, a white liberal senator with a tight re-election campaign, looking for ways to win the Negro vote. His wife suggests the senator accuse the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of racial discrimination in its hiring because the agency has no black officers. Because of Senator Hennington's investigation and subsequent comfortable re-election, the CIA has been required for political reasons to recruit African-Americans for training. Only Dan Freeman, secretly a black nationalist, successfully completes the training process. Freeman has both the highest grades and best athletic marks of his recruitment class. Stationed in Korea during the Korean War, Freeman is an expert in hand-to-hand combat, especially judo. Freeman also played football at Michigan State University. Freeman becomes the first black man in the agency and is given a desk job—Top Secret Reproduction Center Sections Chief. Freeman understands that he is the token black person in the CIA, and that the CIA defines his function as providing proof of the agency's supposed commitment to integration and progress. Freeman is often used as a model Negro, and when asked to appear or speak at various events, he tells exactly the story the audience wishes to hear. He has a complete distaste for the "snob-ridden" world of Washington DC and especially the city's black middle-class. Therefore, after completing his training in guerrilla warfare techniques, weaponry, communications and subversion, Freeman puts in just enough time to avoid raising any suspicions about his motives before he resigns from the CIA and returns to work in the social services in Chicago. Upon his return, Freeman makes contact with the Cobras, a gang that was previously immune to contact from social agencies. Immediately Freeman begins recruiting young black men living in the inner city of Chicago to become “Freedom Fighters” teaching them all of the guerrilla warfare tactics that he learned from the CIA. The Cobras' training includes a fight with the Comanches, a rival gang; the study and appreciation of black poetry, music, and revolutionary leaders; a bank robbery on 115th and Halstead; and the robbery of a National Guard Armory on Cottage Grove Avenue. They become a guerrilla group with Freeman as the secret leader. The Freedom Fighters set out to ensure that black people truly live freely within the United States by partaking in both violent and non-violent actions throughout Chicago. The “Freedom Fighters” of Chicago begin spreading the word about their guerrilla warfare tactics across the United States; as Freeman says, “What we got now is a colony, what we want is a new nation.” As revolt and a war of liberation continues in the inner city of Chicago, the National Guard and the police desperately try to stop the Freedom Fighters. Finding the gaps in the National Guard's "sloppily trained and ill-disciplined" unit, Freeman and the Freedom Fighters escalate their actions in Chicago. First, they blow up the mayor's office in the new city hall. Second, they paint a Negro alderman's car yellow and white. Third, they take over radio stations and broadcast propaganda from, among other names, "the Freedom Fighters, the Urban Underground of Black Chicago." Fourth, they kidnap Colonel "Bull" Evans, the commander of the National Guard unit, give him LSD, then release him. After the Freedom Fighters start their sniper attacks, killing multiple National Guardsmen, Freeman is visited by three old friends. After speaking with two female friends, Freeman's final guest is his friend and Chicago police officer Dawson. Sergeant Dawson entered Freeman's apartment on a suspicion and his suspicion is verified when he finds Freedom Fighter propaganda. After an argument, Freeman attacks Dawson and kills him. He calls in his top Freedom Fighters to dispose of the body. As the book closes, Freeman orders "Condition Red" to initiate attack teams in twelve cities across America.
21712242	/m/05mqpyg	All About Lulu	Jonathan Evison	2008-07-21		 In the wake of his mother's death, as his bodybuilding brethren pump themselves to Hulkish proportions, weak-eyed vegetarian Will Miller stops growing altogether—until the day his father remarries a relentlessly kind grief counselor, delivering Will a troubled stepsister who soon becomes his confessor, companion, and heart's only desire. But when Lulu returns from cheerleading camp the summer of her fourteenth year, she inexplicably begins to push Will away, forcing him to look elsewhere for meaning.
21712727	/m/05mrd_0	The Sport of the Gods	Paul Laurence Dunbar	1902	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Berry Hamilton, an emancipated black man, works as a butler for a wealthy white man Maurice Oakley. Berry lives in a small cottage a short distance away from the Oakley's place of residence. Berry lives with his wife, Fannie, and two children, Joe and Kitty. During a farewell dinner for Maurice's younger brother, Francis Oakley, it becomes known that a large sum of money has disappeared from Oakley residence. Maurice is soon convinced that Berry stole the money. A court finds Berry guilty of the theft and sentences him to ten years of hard labor. Maurice and his wife expel Fannie, Joe, and Kitty from the cottage. Unable to find work, Fannie and her children decide to move to New York. Once in New York, Joe begins work and starts regularly visiting the Banner Club. He begins dating an entertainer from the club named Hattie Sterling. To Fannie's disapproval, Hattie helps Kitty to find employment as a singer and actress. Joe's situation quickly declines and he becomes an alcoholic. Hattie breaks the relationship. Completely degraded, Joe strangles Hattie. Later, he confesses to the murder and finds himself in prison. With her husband and son in prison, Fannie is distraught. Kitty convinces Fannie to marry a man named Mr. Gibson. Francis Oakley, who left for Paris to become an artist, sends a message to Maurice Oakley. When Maurice receives the letter, he postulates that it could be a message informing him of the artistic successes of Francis. To his dismay, it describes how Francis stole the money and he wishes for Berry Hamilton to be released from prison. Maurice decides that he will not announce Berry's innocence in hopes of preserving the honor of his brother and himself. Mr. Skaggs, an acquaintance of Joe at the Banner Club, overhears the story of Berry Hamilton's conviction for theft. As a writer for New York's Universe, Mr. Skaggs postulates that if he can prove Berry's innocence, he will have a popular article for the publisher. He travels to the hometown of the Hamilton's to converse with Maurice Oakley. He first meets with a man named Colonel Saunders who tells him that he believes Berry is innocent, the money was simply lost, and to protect the secret, Maurice Oakley carries the money in his "secret" pocket at all times. To gain entry into the Oakley residence, Skaggs lies about having a letter from Francis. Mr. Skaggs forcibly removes Francis's letter from Maurice's secret pocket. With Francis letter, Mr. Skaggs is able to have Berry pardoned after five years in prison. Mr. Skaggs brings Berry to New York. Soon, Berry finds out about his son, daughter, and wife's new husband. Hopeless, Berry plans to murder his wife's suitor. To Berry's fortune, he finds that Mr. Gibson has been killed in a fight at a racetrack. Broken down by the hardships of the city, Fannie and Berry decide to move back to the cottage near the Oakley residence when the apologetic Mrs. Oakley begs them to return.
21716322	/m/05mytl_	Foreign Land	Jonathan Raban	1985	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens with Sheila Grey, George’s daughter and her partner, Tom, discussing the imminent return of her father from Bom Porto. In a letter, he tells her of his plans to retire to his parents’ house in St Cadix, Cornwall. The action then moves to Bom Porto, the capital of Montedor – an independent Marxist Republic - where we first meet George, who is the manager of a bunkering station. He plays a game of squash with Eduordo (Teddy) Duarte, the Minister of Communications, who informs him about the President’s plans to use Cubans to subjugate the mountaineous Wolofs, a tribe who have historically been hostile towards the coastal Creole population. George later settles his affairs and is given a surprise official send-off and eventually arrives in Britain, booking himself into a Post House Hotel at Heathrow rather than choosing to stay with Sheila. The scene then shifts to St Cadix and an annual Christmas drinks party held by George’s neighbours, the Walpoles. Most of the people there, like George, are retirees and spend their time talking about their past lives. It is here that George meets Diana Pym, who gives him a lift back to his house, Thalassa, where he discovers that she was the former singer, Julie Midnight. When down by the harbour, George is approached by a St Cadix resident and informed about a boat, the Calliope, that is for sale – it belongs to a Wing Commander and his wife who are in financially strained circumstances and they need to sell it. He reflects back on a time in Bom Porto when he was given some money by the President for previously attending a Pan-African shipping convention whilst a Portuguese patrol vessel was sabotaged during the PAIM revolution against its colonial masters. George refused the money but it was automatically transferred to a Geneva bank account, and it is this money that he uses to purchase Calliope. George travels to London to visit Sheila who, as S.V. Grey, is the authoress of a popular feminist book. During his visit he is presented with an old sextant that Tom had been planning to sell. George had learnt how to use one whilst studying at Pwllheli, under Commonader Prynne, an elderly navigation instructor and he is pleased to find out he has still retained his skills. As Tom gives him a lift down to Heathrow, from which George is flying to collect his money in Geneva, George tells him of his plans to sail round England. Back at Thalassa, six tea chests arrive from Africa containing all George’s worldly goods. He decides to totally overhaul and spring clean the boat before taking some of his possessions on board. Whilst having a Sunday drink at the Royal St Cadix Yacht Club, he is informed of an item in the news about Montedor and the suppression of a rising of Muslim wolf tribesmen. George is saddened by the news and writes a letter to Vera, his ex-lover in the capital, to try to find out more news from his former homeland. He is then visited on board Calliope by Diana Pym and arranges a return visit to her house. He is surprised by the natural beauty of her wild garden and finds out more about Diana’s life and her time spent in California. Whilst on board Calliope, George reflects back on his childhood and his parents, particularly his father, Denys Ferguson Grey, a Church of England Rector. They had a difficult relationship (as Raban did with his own father) and it was only when George entered the navy that the tables started to turn and he acquired some kind of ascendancy. Living at Thalassa, however, it seems to him that he is surprised by how he is steadily turning into his father: His parents were more alive, more real to him now, than he was to himself. They had some sort of knack, a staying power, that George had failed to inherit. Thalassa bulged with them, while he still tip-toed round it like a weekend guest. Their past was still intact (how did they manage it?) while George’s felt as if it was crumbling from under him so fast that he couldn’t even count its going. Sheila, whilst trying to work on her new book in London, receives a telephone call from her father saying he is coming to visit them in his boat and she is not pleased by his growing eccentricity: She was helpless. Everything about him grated on her now – the cracked gallantry, the old naval slang. She couldn’t deal with it at all. Not that she had ever got on with George; but the man she used to meet on his summer leaves hadn’t been like this. He’d been stiff, evasive, too polished by half, yet Sheila felt that if he only once relaxed his guard, she might find someone there whom she could talk to. Well, there was no talking to the ramshackle figure on the far end of the phone. Beginning his single-handed voyage to London, George again reflects back on his past life and his first meeting his ex-wife, the beautiful Angela Haigh, at a party also attended by Cyril Connolly, whom George manages to successfully snub. A virgin, he is overwhelmed by Angela’s attention after the incident and they indulge in a hasty sex session in a small storage room. He is later warmly welcomed by her family and the two are married in his father’s church after which the Haighs host a lavish reception. After fifteen months, Angela became pregnant and George took a job in Aden, arranged for him by her father. There, Angela plays the young social hostess but George finds himself becomingly increasingly lonely when she returns to England during the long, hot summers. Their marriage slowly starts to break down to the point where Angela openly detests him and returns home one day with a young bachelor lover, Bill Nesbit. Arriving in Lyme Regis, George encounters an old colleague from his navigation school, 'Midships' Marsland, who is now running a chandler’s store. However, Marsland at first fails to recognise him and then George realizes that he has actually taken his nickname from another pupil at Pwllheli which turns George against him. After leaving Lyme Regis, George successfully navigates Callipoe past the Race around Portland Bill, and in his elation decides to finally pour his thoughts out on a series of smutty postcards bought at Weymouth to Sheila. He also writes to Diana on the same cards. All the recipients are concerned about him – Tom tells Sheila that he will try and track George down and Diana also sets off in her car to do the same but for a different reason: There was nothing ambiguous in the cards; the double-entendres on one side only helped to underline the plainness of the statement on the other. They were a declaration, and an invitation ... It had been years since Diana had done anything much on impulse. The easiest answer to temptation was always to stay at home and get on with the gardening. However, it is at Rye that George makes the decision that it to change his life. Travelling to Dover to buy some Admiralty charts, a Q-flag and two red lamps, he returns to Rye and loads up his boat with provisions, helped by three unemployed youths. As the novel ends, he is steering his boat cautiously through a fleet of Spanish tunnymen somewhere northwest of Ushant.
21716402	/m/03cv6gb	Bold as Love	Gwyneth Jones	2001	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ax Preston, a mixed-race guitarist from Taunton, having survived a government-organised massacre of the official Green Party (under cover of a pop-culture reception à la "Cool Britannia" in Hyde Park), emerges from the ensuing chaos as the true leader England desperately needs. He and his friends, also Indie musicians, tackle an outrageous series of disasters, including a minor war with Islamic Separatists in Yorkshire, and a hippie President who turns out to be a murdering paedophile. In the background the whole of Europe is falling apart, in the foreground there are rock festivals, street-fighting; a rampage of "Green" destruction (led and moderated by Preston) leaving a trail of burned-out hypermarkets, wrecked fast food outlets, and vast expanses of napalmed intensive farming. Ax Preston’s triumph is that he brings his country through the crisis — by guile, self-sacrifice, stubborn goodwill and of course the power of the music — more or less intact. In England, the revolution never descends into a terror. By labelling the book "a near-future fantasy" Jones puzzled and divided the critics. Perhaps "a once and future fantasy" would have been more informative, because this is an Arthur story remapped for the Twenty-First Century. Instead of the cult of glory of mediaeval romance, the preoccupation is Utopian. How to build the Good State, in the grip of a global economic crash and an eco-revolution? Determined not to take over the government, Ax institutes free education to reclaim the illiterate children of the hippie hordes; the "Volunteer Initiative" that gets people cleaning hospital floors alongside the celebrities; and an ingenious system of "trading in surpluses", to feed the newly destitute. Ax is aware that what he’s attempting would be impossible, were it not for the spectre of bloody anarchy on one hand, and on the other the glamour and the orgiastic release of the great Crisis Management concerts. But "people will do any thing, no limit, if it’s seen to be normal, and the role-models say it's okay...". If he can keep his Utopian programme going, somehow, just for a few years, something will survive. Aside from the breakneck pace and a playful, audacious style, the novel's strength (as many critics have observed) is the characterisation of the principals: Ax Preston, Sage Pender, and especially Fiorinda (real name, Frances), the teenage "rock and roll princess" with a hideous past. These three, a triad straight from genre fantasy, are marvellously brought to life, illuminating a rather formal, fiercely intelligent novel with joyous power.
21717103	/m/05mwhl5	Celestina				 An orphaned Celestina is adopted from a convent in the south of France when she is a young girl by Mrs. Willoughby—nothing is known of her parentage. Celestina is raised along with Mrs. Willoughby’s own children, Matilda and George. The children grow up happily. Mrs. Willoughby dies early in the novel, urging George to marry her brother’s (Lord Castlenorth) daughter, Miss Fitz-Hayman, so that the family estate can be saved from financial ruin. Matilda marries Mr. Molyneux, becoming ambitious and haughty. She begins to despise Celestina and refuses her company. Celestina becomes friends with a servant named Jessy and helps reunite her with her lover, Cathcart, who is George Willoughby’s steward. Willoughby and Celestina discover that they love each other and decide to marry, despite the monetary impediments. Vavasour, Willoughby’s friend, also becomes enamored of Celestina; he flees before the wedding. Unfortunately, on the evening before the marriage, Willoughby suddenly takes off and it is unclear whether he will ever return – Celestina is devastated. Celestina moves in with the Thorolds, the local rector and his family, after Willoughby abandons her. Their son, Montague, develops an ardent attachment for her and she decides to leave to escape his overtures. Believing that Willoughby will eventually marry Miss Fitz-Hayman, Vavasour becomes an importunate suitor of Celestina, along with Montague. She is harassed. Willoughby reveals in a letter that Lady Castlenorth suggested to him and Celestina and he are brother and sister and therefore cannot marry. He has therefore determined to go to France and discover the truth. Celestina leaves the Thorods and tours Scotland with Mrs. Elphinstone, a relative of Cathcart and Jessy. Her life has been full of struggles. Her sister, Emily, became a “kept” woman and Mrs. Elphinstone was forced to accept money from her while she was poverty-stricken. Her husband dies in a tragic storm at sea while they are in Scotland. Montague pursues her Celestina to Scotland. Celestina flees Scotland for London, establishing herself at Lady Horatia’s. Lady Horatia encourages her to marry someone other than Willoughby. Willoughby returns to London, but because of miscommunication and interference of other parties, both he and Celestina believe the other is no longer interested. Willoughby agrees to marry Miss Fitz-Hayman in order to save his family’s estate, but at the last minute he decides not to go through with it and she marries someone else. In the meantime, Montague and Vavasour duel over Celestina. When Willougby travels to France to tell his uncle that he is no longer marrying Miss Fitz-Hayman, he discovers the secret of Celestina’s birth when he stays with some peasants. The two are now free to marry.
21719460	/m/05mts7b	The Old Debauchees	Henry Fielding			 Young Laroon plans to marry Isabel, but Father Martin manipulates Isabel's father, Jourdain, in order to seduce Isabel. However, other characters, including both of the Laroons, try to manipulate Jourdain for their own ends; they accomplish it through disguising themselves as priests and using his guilt to convince him of what they say. As Father Martin pursues Isabel, she is clever enough to realize what is happening and plans her own trap. After catching him and exposing his lust, Father Martin is set to be punished.
21719995	/m/05mry7g	The Covent Garden Tragedy	Henry Fielding			 The play deals with a love triangle in a brothel between two prostitutes, Kissinda and Stormandra, and Lovegirlo. Although the characters are portrayed satirically, they are imbued with sympathy as their relationship is developed. The plot is complicated when Captain Bilkum pursues Stormanda. Eventually, Bilkum is killed during a duel and Stormandra supposedly commits suicide, although this is later revealed not to be the case.
21721281	/m/05msnfv	All the Colours of Darkness	Peter Robinson	2008-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A beautiful June day in the Yorkshire Dales, and a group of children are spending the last of their half-term freedom swimming in the river near Hindswell Woods. But the idyll is shattered by their discovery of a man's body, hanging from a tree. DI Annie Cabott soon discovers he is Mark Hardcastle, the well-liked and successful set designer for the Eastvale Theatre's current production of Othello. Everything points to suicide, and Annie is mystified. Why would such a man want to take his own life? Then Annie's investigation leads to another shattering discovery, and DCI Alan Banks is called back from the idyllic weekend he had planned with his new girlfriend. Banks soon finds himself plunged into a shadow-world where nothing is what it seems, where secrets and deceit are the norm, and where murder is seen as the solution to a problem. The deeper he digs the more he discovers that the monster he has awakened will extend its deadly reach to his friends and family. Nobody is safe.
21721593	/m/05mscnl	The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith	Bruce Marshall	1945	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This is the fictional life story of a parish priest, a man of God “conscious of the indwelling of the Trinity,” living the life of grace in a drab industrial town, bringing the grace of God to weak human beings seduced by the devil’s ancient lures of the world and the flesh. It covers the activities of Father Thomas Edmund Smith in his urban Scottish parish from 1908 until his death in 1942. On this framework, the author hangs the glowing tapestry of Father Smith’s spiritual life, a life of sanctity, humility, and burning love of God. He interacts with a wide range of people, children, adults and other clerics. It also tracks the lives of two particular youths from their innocent childhood affections to their respectives lives as a priest and an actress. From the dust jacket: "This is the story of Father Smith, priest in a Scottish city - of his friends, the exiled French nuns, of the Bishop, of Monsignor O'Duffy who wages simple, violent war against simple sins, of Father Bonnyboat, the liturgical scholar, of all the people who come into the gentle orbit of Father Smith - from Lady Ippecacuanha, that tweedy convert, to the slut Annie who drives her husband to murder."
21722552	/m/05mw3fx	Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life	Wendy Mass	2008	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 One month before his thirteenth birthday, Jeremy Fink and his best friend Lizzy Muldoun are hanging out in his New York City apartment when the mailman delivers a package addressed to Jeremy's mom. Lizzy convinces him to open the package. Inside the package they discover a wooden box with four keyholes and the words, "THE MEANING OF LIFE: FOR JEREMY FINK TO OPEN ON HIS 13TH BIRTHDAY." Jeremy immediately recognizes the box as the work of his father, who died five years earlier in a car crash. An accompanying note explains that the friend taking care of the box lost all of the keys. Determined to open the box, Jeremy and Lizzy contact a locksmith who explains that he is unable to pick the locks or break the box open without destroying the box and possibly its contents. The two friends set a goal to find the keys by the end of the summer so Jeremy can still open the box on his thirteenth birthday. Lizzy's impulsiveness gets the duo into trouble for destroying property and they must spend the summer performing community service. Jeremy and Lizzy are assigned to work for Mr. Oswald, an antique dealer preparing to retire to Florida, who sends them to deliver some special antiques. Once the first house is reached, the children realize they are returning items to the original owners, people who pawned these items when only teenagers. Each item is being returned with the original letter stating why the owner chose to pawn the item. The people Jeremy meets help him learn important lessons about life by sharing their views. While doing community service they must find all of the keys they can, continuously worrying about the performance they must do at a fair due to losing a bet to Jeremy's grandmother. It is only in the end that Jeremy truly understands the meaning of life.
21724756	/m/05mw6dp	The Eighth Scroll	Laurence B. Brown		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nineteen hundred years after the Essene Jews hid their most precious scrolls in the caves at Qumran, a Catholic priest working on the Dead Sea Scrolls Project discovers a text that describes the final edict of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but hides it in fear of the heresy it contains. When prominent archeologist Frank Tones unearths a reference to the hidden scroll, he wonders if this scroll could be the long-lost Gospel of James, or even of Jesus himself. But before he can act, those who know of the scroll’s existence become mysteriously silent or dead, leaving only a father and son team to find the scroll and tell its secrets to the world.
21725345	/m/05mz598	The Magic Chalk				 A boy called Jon finds a piece of chalk, dropped by a witch, and uses it to draw a stick man on a fence, not knowing it's magic. The stick man becomes alive and claims his name is Sofus. Jon draws a door and together they enter a garden full of talking animals, some of whom they help out using the magic chalk. After being bothered by a pedagogic owl and doing some absurd mathematical problems, they leave and soon descend into a cave, wherein they meet a tiger and a little old lady who serves them cookies shaped like animals, one for each letter of the alphabet. After talking to the animals - which can only say words that begin with their letter, they leave the grandmother. After walking for a while, they encounter Kumle, a friendly troll. He offers to trade three wishes per person for the chalk, so Sofus asks for a violin, a wallet that always has money, and candy that makes one grow grass instead of hair; Jon wishes for Sofus to be waterproof and for candy that works as an antidote to Sofus's, saving the third wish for later. Their wishes are granted and they agree to meet again. They enter a kingdom and Sofus decides to go to the castle. He charms the king, queen, and princess with his violin playing and claims to be rich, showing them his wallet as proof. The princess steals the wallet and the violin, and as a revenge, Sofus gives her and her parents his candy. Once the grass starts growing, the king attempts to imprison them, but they escape successfully. The public assumes that the royal family's grass is a type of hat and it becomes a fad, but as Autumn comes, the grass begins to wilt. Jon and Sofus go to the castle, and Jon gives the royal family his candy. The grass starts turning back into hair, but before it's done, Jon takes Sofus by the hand and asks for his third wish: to go back home. They immediately appear in his kitchen, where his mother is making dinner, and they tell her about everything that's happened to them.
21730803	/m/05mwnvl	The Humbling	Philip Roth	2009-11-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Simon Axler is a famed sexagenarian stage actor who suddenly and inexplicably loses his gift. His weak attempts at portraying Prospero and Macbeth on stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington lead to poor reviews, sending Axler into a profound depression and cause him to give up acting and contemplate suicide with a shotgun he keeps in his attic. His wife, Victoria, a former ballerina, is unable to deal with Axler's depression and moves to California, where their son lives. Axler checks himself into a psychiatric hospital on the advice of his physician and stays there for 26 days. In the hospital, Axler meets another patient, Sybil Van Buren, who tells him about catching her second husband sexually abusing her young daughter. She expresses shame at not immediately reporting her husband or removing him from the home and admits to attempting suicide. Sybil asks Axler whether he would be willing to kill her husband and he tells her he fears he would "botch the job". Months after his stint in the hospital, Axler's agent, Jerry Oppenheim, visits him at his upstate New York home to tell him about an offer to play James Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night. Axler refuses, fearing another failure. In the fan mail Oppenheim brings, Axler finds a letter from Sybil, thanking him for listening to her problems in the hospital. She says she did not recognize him at the time but decided to write him after catching one of his old movies on TV. Pegeen Mike Stapleford, the 40-year-old daughter of two actors he performed with around the time she was born, pays Axler a visit at his house. Pegeen has just moved nearby to work as a professor at a Vermont women's college after ending a six-year relationship with a woman who decided to undergo sex reassignment surgery to become a man. Pegeen's job was secured after she slept with the school's "smitten" dean, Louise Renner. Simon and Pegeen begin an affair despite Pegeen's having lived as a lesbian for the previous 17 years. Louise is furious that Pegeen has broken off their relationship and begins stalking her. Months later, Louise calls Pegeen's parents in Lansing, Michigan, to tell them that their daughter is now sleeping with Axler. Pegeen is distressed that her parents have learned about the relationship she wanted kept secret. Her father, Asa, tells her he disapproves because of the age difference but Simon suspects he merely envies his professional success. Asa directs community theater in Michigan. Axler reads in the local newspaper that Sybil has shot and killed her estranged husband. He contacts Sybil's sister and offers to help with her murder defense. One night, Pegeen "offers" Axler a 19-year-old college student of her acquaintance named Lara. Lara becomes a fantasy of his and a character in Pegeen's sexual role-playing. Soon after, while Axler and Pegeen are dining out, he notices Tracy, a young woman getting drunk at the restaurant bar, and they take her home for a threesome. Afterward, Axler asks her why she agreed to go home with them, and she admits she recognized him as a famous actor. After this adventure, Axler feels rejuvenated and decides he wants to perform in Long Day's Journey after all. He also decides that he wants to father a child with Pegeen and visits a fertility specialist without telling her. Two weeks later, Pegeen ends their relationship, telling Axler she "made a mistake." He accuses her of leaving him to be with Tracy and believes Pegeen's parents have turned her against him. He calls her parents, shouting at them in an angry tirade. After the call, Axler kills himself with his shotgun.
21734059	/m/05mvgpv	Uncle Robin, in His Cabin in Virginia, and Tom Without One in Boston				 The novel features two black slaves from Virginia - Uncle Robin (the loyal slave), and Uncle Tom (the disloyal slave, and a reference to the main character of Uncle Tom's Cabin). Whereas Tom is convinced to run away from his plantation by a group of abolitionists, Robin remains loyal to his master, and remains on the plantation. As the novel progresses, Uncle Robin is shown to have become a well-fed and prosperous slave by remaining loyal and obedient; he is looked after well by his master. Uncle Tom, abused by the abolitionists he fled with, has since died, together with several other slaves who escaped to the North and found more oppression under the abolitionists than on the plantation.
21734080	/m/05myhj3	Mr. Wong Goes West				 Pursuing his passion for money, Feng Shui master CF Wong set up Harmoney Private Limited, a firm acting as middleman to potentially lucrative transactions. His first venture though ended in disaster when a supplier of highlighter failed to provide the product with a suitable ink colour. The buyer refused to complete the deal and withdrew payment, but the seller claims contractually, Harmoney was obliged to purchase the merchandise and demand full payment, with not-so-subtle hints of consequences if payment was not met. Desperate for a venture to produce quick cash, CF Wong reluctantly agreed to a special commission - to help ensure smooth promotional launch of the world's most luxurious office and business conference site on board the world's largest and most expensive aircraft, known as Skyparc. But when he learned members of the British Royal family were among the main investors of the project, his enthusiasm began to grow, overcoming his initial unwillingness to fly on the aircraft from Hong Kong to London. When they arrived in HK, his assistant, Joyce McQuinnie, was looking forward to enjoying the luxurious facilities but suddenly, a murder on the aircraft while it was undergoing finishing touches at the HK airport raised security alarms and another round of background checks on everyone who was supposed to join the promotional launch, and Joyce unexpectedly found herself blacklisted and taken out from the entourage. While CF Wong was tasked to ensure no "bad vibes" remained in the aircraft after the murder, Joyce decided to catch up with her friends based in HK, former schoolmates when she had been a student there before. To her surprise, she learned that the suspect in the murder case was none other than her former school mate with OCD, who was aloof in person but highly communicative over the internet. Events took a stranger turn when Joyce was approached by a mysterious man named Jackson, who wanted her to clear the suspect and even had high enough authority to enable Joyce to rejoin the junket. CF Wong and Joyce got busy investigating the murder during the flight to London, not realising a menace greater than a murderer on the loose threaten the aircraft.
21736268	/m/05mzsmj	The Stone Giant	James Blaylock	1989-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In a fit of pique Escargot eats a pie that his wife had been withholding to bribe him into attending a revival meeting. Unfortunately Stover, the revivalist, is also the local judge and has designs on Escargot's wealthy wife; Escargot winds up homeless and indigent. He becomes infatuated with Leta, Stover's barmaid, and is introduced to a dwarf he believes to be her uncle. Escargot had purchased a bag of odd marbles from a bunjo man (a kind of gypsy/hobo); the dwarf first swindles them from the hapless divorcé, then humiliates and terrifies him for laughs. After obtaining a settlement from his ex-wife, Escargot leaves for the coastal town of Seaside where he hopes to find Leta at the annual Harvest Festival. A series of misadventures leads him to the submarine of a piratical elf; winding up in sole possession of the vessel Escargot travels through an undersea passage into the land of Balumnia, a sort of siamese-twin world. Escargot's fortunes do not seem to improve as he is rapidly cheated out of money and goods, but he has a surprise encounter with the dwarf and resolves to pursue him. The dwarf attempts to eliminate Escargot but through a combination of persistence and improvisation Escargot survives and learns the dwarf's evil plan: sacrifice Leta and use the marbles to revive the stone giants, ancient enemies of the elves. With the assistance of an eccentric crew of sky-faring elves, Escargot seeks an opportunity to rescue Leta and redeem his many foibles.
21739167	/m/05mwhkh	The Running Man	Michael Gerard Bauer	2004-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Joseph Davidson is a quiet, self-conscious fourteen- year-old boy and a talented artist. His world changes, however, when he is asked to draw a portrait of his mysterious neighbour Tom Leyton, a Vietnam veteran who for thirty years has lived alone with his sister Caroline, raising his silkworms and hiding from prying eyes. Because of this he is the subject of ugly gossip and rumour, much of it led by neighbour Mrs Mossop, who views Leyton’s brief teaching career with suspicion. When Joseph finally meets his reclusive neighbour he discovers a cold, brooding man lost deep within his own cocoon of silence. He soon realises that in order to truly draw Tom Leyton, he must find the courage to unlock the man’s dark and perhaps dangerous secrets. But Joseph has his own secrets, including the pain of his damaged relationship with his absent father and his childhood fear of the Running Man – a local character whose wild appearance and strange manner of moving everywhere at a frantic pace terrified him when he was a small boy. These dreams suddenly return when Joseph is forced to face his fears and doubts regarding Tom Leyton. As Joseph moves deeper and deeper into his neighbour’s world he confronts not only Tom Leyton’s private hell, but also his own relationship with his father, and ultimately the dishevelled, lurching figure of the Running Man.
21743824	/m/05m_5hr	Gracey				 Gracey and her friend Angela are spending their last holidays in Cunningham. Gracey and Angela have been best friends ever since Gracey started attending Hamilton College in Brisbane on an athletics scholarship. She is a very talented runner and her family has a list of sporting achievements. For example, her brother (older), Raymond, is a star rugby player who has a contract with a club in Sydney. Dougy, Gracey's other (younger) brother, saved Gracey from losing her life in the floods that raided their town of Cunningham. Dougy and Gracey have a complicated relationship but mostly, Dougy loves his sister and Gracey is ever-thankful for Dougy when he saved her life. While playing in some trenches dug up for the building site which is building the new town hall, Dougy comes across some bones. He finds two arms and a skull. The bones appear to Dougy to be human bones. As a collector of many things, Dougy takes the bones with him in his billy cart to show his friends. He does not reveal to them where he found them as he does not want them to go looking for more. His friends are very interested and they tell Dougy not to take them to the police. Dougy was never thinking of such. When he takes the bones home and shows Gracey and Angela the next morning, they are horrified and disgusted. Gracey strongly sudgests that they take them to the police and Angela agrees with her. Dougy is hesitant of the idea and protests that they will take them away from him but Graceys tell Dougy that she and Angela will come with him to the police station. Dougy agrees to go and they take them to the police. The bones are taken away from him and after many arguments, Dougy admits that he found them at the building site. The police investigate and discover more and more bones. Cunningham instantly becomes the number one destination for the news crews, reporters and is on the front page of any media. Gracey is annoyed at Dougy's discovery and is egar to leave Cunningham and go back to Hamilton with Angela on the train Angela protests and is enjoying the whole discovery of the bones. As Gracey and Angela leave for Brisbane, Dougy is nowhere to be seen at the train station to wave them off and Gracey is very sad at the fact. She is glad to be back at Hamilton and escapes into the community of the white girls. Gracey's English teacher gives, upon request, a few books on aboriginal history and deaths. Gracey is, at first, not very interested in these books, or really, aboriginal history in general. All she wants is to fit in and be a "white girl". However, Gracey's perspective soon changes as she skips on of her special athletics trainings at QE II Stadium to go to a the Oxford Library to search for more information. She finds out that the bones were from a group of Australian Aborigines who were living in a small camp near the town of what is now Cunningham. These men had been shot by a man named Stan McNamara and his men. They shot these men as they had been "stealing" from them. They had buried the men in a pit and that was he bones that Dougy and the police had uncovered. She realised that Bert Mc Soon after Dougy finds them Gracey and Angela go back to Hamilton College in Brisbane. Gracey does some research and finds that a white man named Stan has killed the aboriginals. Gracey also finds out that Stan's son, Burt, still lives in Cunningham. Gracey also realised that Bert was the man who had been watching over the building site as it progressed, she thought that he must have know that the bodies were they and that there was a chance the builders would discover the bones. Gracey begins to be increasingly interested in the bones situation and she realises that she doesn't fit in with the other white girls and when news that Gracey's mother died, it pushes Gracey to leave Hamilton and return home to Cunningham. Raymond and Dougy are involved with the police when a violent outbreak occurs over a feud when information about Bert and his grandfather Stan murdering the Aboriginals results in both the men bought to the watch house. Raymond, confused and deeply depressed, hangs himself with a football sock, all that if left of Gracey's family is Dougy and herself. Gracey soon finds out that she is, in fact, Bert's great-granddaughter. Berts son was Dougy and Gracey's mothers' father. It turns out that Gracey and Dougy are half white, half aboriginal. The story ends with Gracey returning to Hamilton college to greet Angela and the others she left behind.
21749977	/m/05mshng	Nemesis	Philip Roth			 Nemesis explores the effect of a 1944 polio epidemic on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark Jewish community. The children are threatened with maiming, paralysis, lifelong disability, and death. At the center of Nemesis is a vigorous, dutiful, 23-year-old teacher and playground director Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges. Bucky feels guilty because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his close friends and contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor's dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground, Roth examines some of the central themes of pestilence: fear, panic, anger, guilt, bewilderment, suffering, and pain. Cantor also faces a spiritual crisis, asking himself why God would allow innocent children to die of polio. Finally, Cantor faces a romantic crisis, becoming engaged to his beloved girlfriend (a fellow teacher who is working as a counselor at a Jewish summer camp). Fearing that Cantor will get polio if he remains in Newark during the summer, she implores him to quit his job in Newark and to join her at her polio-free summer camp. He wants to be with his fiancee, but leaving the children of Newark adds to his feelings of guilt. With the inevitability of a Greek drama, polio eventually reaches the summer camp. One camper dies, several become ill, and Cantor himself is stricken. Cantor blames himself for having brought polio to the camp. The novel ends in 1971, when Cantor encounters one of the Newark playground children who contracted polio and survived. They catch up on the events in their lives since 1944. Cantor reveals that, after being crippled by polio, he insisted that his fiancee leave him and find a non-crippled husband. He never marries. The novel is written as the narrative of the playground child, based on what Cantor told him in 1971.
21760308	/m/05myp8r	Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism	Robert J. Shiller	2009		 The Preface recalls Keynes' use of the phrase animal spirits, which he used to describe the psychological forces that partly explain why the economy doesn't behave in the manner predicted by classical economics—a system of thought that expects economic actors to behave as unemotional rational beings. The authors assert that the Keynesian Revolution was emasculated as Keynesians progressively relegated the importance of animal spirits to accommodate the views of economists who preferred the simpler classical or neo-classical system. The preface goes on to describe how Keynes' ideas suggest the economy will function best with a moderately high level of government intervention, which they compare to a happy home where children thrive with parents that are neither too authoritarian (as in a Marxist economy) nor too permissive (as in a neoliberal economy). The authors state that recent research now supports the concept of animal spirits much more robustly than Keynes was able to, and they express the hope that fellow economists can be convinced of this, thus reducing the internecine disputes that prevent their discipline from providing the clear support that politicians need for the aggressive action required to fix the 2008–2009 economic crises. The five key animal spirits are treated here, each assigned their own chapter. Chapter 1 the authors discuss confidence, which they say is the most important animal spirit to know about if one wishes to understand the economy. Chapter 2 is about the desire for fairness, an emotional drive that can cause people to make decisions that aren’t in their economic best interests. Chapter 3 discusses corruption and bad faith, and how growing awareness of these practices can contribute to a recession, in addition to the direct harm the practices cause themselves. Chapter 4 presents evidence that, in contrast to monetarist theory, many people are at least partially under the money illusion, the tendency for people to ignore the effects of inflation. Workers for example will forgo a pay rise even when prices are rising, if they know that their firm is facing challenging conditions—but they are much less willing to accept a pay cut even when prices are falling. Chapter 5 is about the importance of stories in determining behaviour. Such as the repeatedly told story that house prices will always rise, which caused many additional people to invest in housing following the dot com bust of 2000. Here the authors discuss eight important questions about the economy, which they assert can only be satisfactorily answered by a theory that takes animal spirits into account. Each question has its own chapter. Chapter 6 is about why recessions happen. The authors assert that the business cycle can be explained by rising confidence in the upswing eventually leading investors to make rash decisions and ultimately encouraging corruption, until eventually panic appears and confidence evaporates, triggering a recession. There is a discussion about feedback loops between animal spirits and real returns available, which help explain the intensity of both the up and down swing of the cycle. Chapter 7 discusses why animal spirits make central banks a necessity, and there is a post script about how they can intervene to help with the current crises. Chapter 8 tackles the reasons for unemployment, which the authors say is partly due to animal spirits such as concerns for fairness and the money illusion. Chapter 9 is about why there is a trade off between unemployment and inflation. The authors show how effects of animal spirits refutes the monetarist theory that there is a natural rate of employment which it is not desirable to exceed. Chapter 10 is about why people don't consider the future rationally in their decisions about savings. Chapter 11 presents an explanation for why asset prices and investment flows are so volatile. Chapter 12 discusses why real estate markets go through cycles, with periods of often rapid price increase interspaced by falls. Chapter 13 suggests that animal spirits can be used to explain the persistence of poverty among ethnic minorities, describing how working class minorities have different stories about how the world works and their place in it, compared to working class white people. The authors argue that the effects of animal spirits make a strong case for affirmative action. Chapter 14 is a conclusion where the authors state that the cumulative evidence they have presented in the preceding chapters overwhelming shows that the neo classical view of the economy, which allows little or no role for animal spirits, is unreliable. They state that an effective response to the current economic crises must take into account the effects of animal spirits.
21760639	/m/05mqx_9	The Cinder Path				 In the English countryside of the early 20th Century the working-class main protagonist must deal with a cruel and tyrannical father and later with a romantic tangle and a problematic marriage, as well as with a dark secret which he must keep hidden at all costs. Later, he is taken into the British Army fighting on the Western Front of the First World War, where the shadows of his past pursue him and lead to a shattering climax.
21765732	/m/05mrfbq	What I Call Life				 Cal Lavender is perfectly happy living her anonymous life, even if she does have to play mother to her own mother a whole lot more than an eleven year old should have to do. But when Cal's mother has one of her “unfortunate episodes” in the middle of the public library, she is whisked off by the authorities, and Cal is escorted to a seat in the back of a police car. On “just a short, temporary detour from what I call life,” Cal finds herself in a group home with four other girls, watched over by a strange old woman that everyone refers to as the Knitting Lady. At first Cal can think of nothing but how to get out of this nuthouse. She knows she does not belong there. It turns out that all the girls, and even the Knitting Lady, may have a lot more in common that they could have imagined. Cal is constantly thinking that her mother is coming to get her quite soon, but, as it turns out, it takes quite a while for her mother to come and "free" Cal from the group home. The four other girls at the group home are: Amber- The quiet, and almost bald shy one who does not talk for the whole beginning of the book; Monica- The whiny, annoying one of the bunch; Fern- The one who laughs at almost anything Whitney says; and Whitney- the girl who has had so much done to her, she made a list. For example, # 14.: Got dropped on head by Santa at a group home party. Whitney is probably the most important girl living in the group home with Cal. The five of them go off to find Whitney's sister, but, in the end, Cal discovers that this "sister" doesn't exist at all, and the only other ones who know about it are Amber & Whitney herself. Whitney also has a pet pillbug named Ike Eisenhower the 5th, Whose brother Mike the 5th died already. Through the rest of the book, the Knitting Lady (whose name is revealed in the very end) tells them a story about Lillian as a young girl. Then, she finally tells them that Lillian grew up, and had Brenda; Brenda is dropped off at a group home, just like Cal. Eventually, Betty (Cal's mother) comes and takes Cal back home, And then, Cal never hears from Whitney, Amber, Monica, Fern nor the Knitting Lady again..
21766151	/m/05mt5xg	Home, and Other Big, Fat Lies				 Whitney has been in so many foster homes that she can give a complete rundown on the most common varieties of foster parents—from the look-on-the-bright-side types to those unfortunate examples of pure evil. But one thing she doesn’t know much about is trees. This means heading for Foster Home #12 (which is all the way at the top of the map of California, where there looks to be nothing but trees) has Whitney feeling a little nervous. She is pretty sure that the middle of nowhere is going to be just one more place where a hyper, loud-mouthed kid who is messy and small for her age won’t be welcome for long.
21770159	/m/05mqr5h	Waking the Dead	Scott Spencer	1986-04-12	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book is a love story about two passionate liberals with vastly different approaches to their ideologies: Fielding Pierce is a lawyer and aspiring politician, and Sarah Williams is a social activist who despises the political system. During a mission to assist Chilean refugees, Williams is killed by a terrorist car-bomb. Years later, Pierce is offered the Democratic candidacy for an Illinois congressional seat, but during the campaign Pierce becomes convinced he has seen and heard Williams on several occasions. As Pierce becomes obsessed with finding out if his lost lover is alive, he is pushed to the brink of insanity and begins to fear he has become fully absorbed and changed by the political system Williams so hated.
21772519	/m/05mxyt4	The Dip	Seth Godin		{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Godin introduces the book with a quote from Vince Lombardi: "Quitters never win and winners never quit." He follows this with "Bad advice. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time." Godin first makes the assertion that "being the best in the world is seriously underrated," although he defines the term 'best' as "best for them based on what they believe and what they know," and 'world' as "the world they have access to." He supports this by illustrating that vanilla ice cream is almost four times as popular as the next-most popular ice cream, further stating that this is seen in Zipf's Law. Godin's central thesis is that in order to be the best in the world, one must quit the wrong stuff and stick with the right stuff. In illustrating this, Godin introduces several curves: 'the dip,' 'the cul-de-sac,' and 'the cliff.' Godin gives examples of the dip, ways to recognize when an apparent dip is really a cul-de-sac, and presents strategies of when to quit, amongst other things. The book is also accompanied with cartoons from Hugh MacLeod, who publishes his cartoons on his blog gapingvoid and is the author of "How To Be Creative."
21772786	/m/05mt7td	The Missing Peace		2004	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 After beginning with an anecdote of Yasser Arafat coming to see President Clinton just days before the end of Clinton's second term in office, Ross returns to the period of the British Mandate and continues through the 1980s, giving a brief history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its roots. His own involvement begins in the run-up to the Gulf War and the 1991 Madrid Conference. The book then covers the negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, as well as the emergence of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Ross then moves on to the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty, the 1995 Interim Agreement, and the November 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. He proceeds to the diplomatic fallout from the assassination to the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, followed by several chapters dedicated to the negotiations on the 1997 Hebron Agreement. One year later, Netanyahu and Arafat agreed on the Wye River Memorandum. In 1998 Ehud Barak succeeded Netanyahu as prime minister and placed a priority on negotiations with Syria. After recounting the fall of that deal, Ross moves on to the 2000 Camp David Summit, and from that to the outbreak of the second intifada and the Taba Summit in January 2001.
21777525	/m/05mtzmj	Glass	Ellen Hopkins	2007-08-21	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kristina thinks that now she has a baby to care for and love, she can let go of the old addiction. But she finds herself searching for Robyn, her old contact for the "street crank". While over at her house she meets a boy named Trey and starts to crave for people to look like they want or need her. Once she gets home, she begins to work at a 7-Eleven to get the money to buy more crank. The manager there is a porn dealer and offers her a job as a prostitute, but she declines. After learning that her father is coming to her mother's home to be at the christening of her new baby, Hunter Seth, she begs her mother to let him come and she agrees, on the condition that Kristina has to be the one to tell her older sister. Once her father comes, he takes her to casinos for her eighteenth birthday party and they snort some lines while there. This causes Kristina to be almost late for Hunter's christening, but she manages to make it on time. Meanwhile, Kristina has started dating Trey and began smoking "glass", which is much more harmful than smoking crank because it is pure meth in rock size quantities. Kristina begins to smoke it every day, becoming skinnier and crashing more often. After crashing one day, her mother kicks her out of the house because she didn't even try to wake to save Hunter, who had rolled himself under a chair and couldn't get out. Kristina then moves in with Brad, Trey's cousin, while serving as the babysitter of Brad's two young daughters, Devon and LeTreya. She quits working at 7-Eleven by using blackmail and gets a call from Robyn. After finding out that Robyn now works at a "whorehouse", Kristina goes over and is able to sell the girls ice, instead of street crank, which was the only meth they'd had access to. Trey leaves for college and Kristina soon finds herself becoming attracted to Brad. After Trey comes home, she asks him why he hadn't been answering the phone and he responds with that he had been seeing a girl for sex only and that he still loved Kristina. She passes out and finds him gone. This saddens Kristina and she begins to have sex with Brad. When Trey comes home, he finds Kristina sleeping in the same bed as Brad but instead of getting mad at her, he starts having sex with her while Brad is sleeping. Brad's estranged wife Angela comes back because she wants another try to be together with Brad. So, Brad kicks Kristina out. Thus, Kristina is forced to move out and into a motel nearby. She is also able to meet the man that gives Brad the crystal meth, Cesar. Once Trey comes back, he confesses to Kristina that the girl he had been sleeping with was Angela until she came back to Brad. So, he was also forced to move out. She agrees to him moving in and they soon begin to live together. They then move to an apartment together. Kristina asks her mother if she can bring Hunter over to her apartment so Hunter could stay with his mother and stepfather. But Kristina gives him back when she finds Hunter on the ground after having fallen from his high chair. She realizes that her mother was right and that she is not ready to raise Hunter. Kristina, desperate for some money, steals most of her mother's jewelry and check books. When Kristina gets a court order because her mother thinks that Kristina is an unfit mother, she and Trey decide to make a run for it after a picture of her is put in the newspaper asking for people to turn her in. They soon arrive in California with only a few pairs of clothes, all their meth, and money. They fall asleep in the car after a meal at McDonalds and are awakened by a cop. He asks them to step outside and he finds the half pound of crystal meth. They are arrested and taken to jail. They have to stay the entire weekend and during this time Kristina detoxes from the meth. Because Kristina had a history in Nevada, she and Trey are put behind homestate bars. They are offered the chance of ratting on Cesar to shorten their jail sentence to six months which they agree to. During her checkup, Kristina finds out that she is pregnant with Trey's baby and hopes the baby is a girl so that Kristina will be able to love the baby like she should have done with Hunter. She hopes she can stay in touch with Trey and if not she knows she will with Quade. The novel ends with Kristina hoping that things will get better in her life even though she has no reason to be hopeful.
21781701	/m/0466h03	Your Heart Belongs to Me	Dean Koontz	2008	{"/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The central character, Ryan Perry, is the wealthy founder and owner of an online social networking site, Be2Do. Ryan is dating an author named Samantha, who had interviewed him for a magazine article. Although seemingly in good health and only 34 years old, Ryan begins to have seizures at random times of the day, and decides to seek the assistance of his doctor, Dr. Gupta. He is informed that he has a rare, inherited heart condition (cardiomyopathy) of which there is no cure. Ryan is only given one year to live unless he can receive a heart transplant, so he is put on a waiting list. Meanwhile, Samantha reveals to Ryan that her mother, assumed dead by Ryan, is in fact alive and living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ryan becomes temporarily suspicious of Samantha, and believes she may have something to do with his sudden decline in health. He makes a secret trip to Las Vegas to investigate Samantha’s mother and her boyfriend, Spencer Barguest. While searching the home of Barguest, Ryan discovers photographs of dead bodies with their eyes taped open. One of the photographs appears to be of Samantha’s identical twin sister, who was declared brain dead after a car accident and later died. This discovery leads Ryan to believe that Barguest is involved in assisted-suicide, or euthanasia. Still distrustful of those close to him, Ryan secretly switches doctors from Dr. Gupta to Dr. Hobb, who specializes in wealthy clients. He also replaces his household staff. Within a month, Ryan is informed that a heart donor has been found and successfully receives the transplant. After returning home, his relationship with Samantha ends for unknown reasons. One year later, a series of mysterious events unfolds at Ryan’s home. His personal handgun is stolen from his vault, and several heart-themed items appear in his room with the message ‘Be Mine.’ After reading her first novel, Ryan attempts to rekindle his relationship with Samantha. He meets with her outside a book store, but she tells him that she can no longer love him. An Asian woman standing nearby tries to offer lilies to Ryan, but he refuses. Later on, the same woman stabs him in his stomach while at a parking lot mall and tells him that she can kill him whenever she wants. After answering his cell phone later, the same woman tells him that his heart belongs to her and she wants him dead. Concerned for his safety, Ryan decides to investigate his anonymous heart donor. Through Dr. Hobb, he is able to obtain a photograph and first name of the donor, who was declared brain dead after a car accident and later died when her heart was removed. The young woman’s name was Lily, and she is identical to the woman who has threatened Ryan. After reviewing security footage from within his estate, Ryan discovers that Lily's twin sister looped the video to make her appear invisible to security cameras. This leads him to the belief that she is involved in a large conspiracy to kill him, but she later denies this and claims to be working alone. Ryan must once more fight to save his life – this time from a woman who claims his heart belongs to her.
21784736	/m/05msn5l	With Her in Ourland: Sequel to Herland	Charlotte Perkins Gilman		{"/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 With Her in Ourland begins where its predecessor Herland ends: Vandyck Jennings, his newlywed Herlandian wife Ellador, and the exiled Terry Nicholson proceed by airplane and motor launch away from Herland and back to the outside world. (Ourland is narrated by the Jennings character.) At an unnamed Eastern seaport, the three board a ship for the United States. Their craft is battered by a storm, however; the three travelers take alternative passage on a Swedish ship that is heading to Europe. This detour brings Van and Ellador into contact with World War I, then raging; and Ellador is devastated by the carnage and horrors of the conflict. This new dark knowledge inaugurates Ellador's education in the nature of the male-dominated world beyond Herland. Van praises the quality of her intellect &mdash; though he regularly finds himself discomfitted as Ellador's penetrating mind examines the logical lapses and the moral and ethical failures of human society. Ellador pursues a detailed understanding of the world, interviewing and studying with historians and other experts (while keeping the existence of her own society secret). Van and Ellador take a long journey on their way to Van's home in the United States; they travel through the Mediterranean to Egypt, and then eastward through Persia and India, China and Japan. On the way, Ellador examines the differing customs of the cultures they visit. By the middle of the book, Van and Ellador arrive in San Francisco, and Ellador begins her study of American conditions. Van is forced to confront and recognize many of the inadequacies and contradictions of American culture through Ellador's patient, objective, relentless scrutiny; in the process, Gilman can advocate her own feminist program of social reform. Van has to confront the fact that Ellador's view of America rattles his previously "unshaken inner conviction of our superiority." The novel concludes with the return of Ellador and Van to Herland; they settle there, and in time Ellador gives birth to a son.
21795969	/m/05msy4m	The Little Fur Family	Margaret Wise Brown	1946	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A little fur family (mother, father, and a child) live in a cozy house in a tree trunk. Secure in his cozy home, the fur child goes out to explore his world. He finds some creatures that are like him and others that are very different, including fish, a flying bug, and in one of the book's most memorable sequences, a tiny version of himself (which he kisses and sends it on its way). Even in the fur child's comfortable, familiar surroundings, there are just enough unfamiliar things to make his day interesting. At the end of the day, the child's parents and his dinner are waiting for him at home.
21796996	/m/05mzw73	Something Borrowed	Emily Giffin	2005-03-10	{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel centers around the protagonist and narrator, Rachel White, a thirty-year-old single woman who is a consummate good-girl. She and Darcy Rhone have been best friends since childhood, and hard-working Rachel is often in the shadow of flashy, sometimes selfish Darcy. Then, after a night of drinking on Rachel's thirtieth birthday, she sleeps with Darcy's fiance, Dex. After this turns into an affair, Rachel explores the meaning of friendship, true love,
21799350	/m/05mxvyz	Manga: The Complete Guide		2007-10-09	{"/m/02jfw": "Encyclopedia"}	 Each title has at least a one paragraph description that includes the demographic (shōjo, shōnen, seinen or josei), a rating out of four stars, and an age advisory, including a description of any objectionable content. Yaoi and "adult" manga each have their own section at the back of the book. In addition to covering individual titles, Manga: The Complete Guide includes information on the basics of the Japanese language and a glossary containing information on numerous anime and manga related terms,
21799886	/m/05mzt7l	Flight	Sherman Alexie	2007-03-28		 Flight begins with Zits waking up in a new foster home. Not liking his new family, he shoves his foster mom against the wall and runs out the door. Eventually Officer Dave catches up with him and takes him to jail. While in jail Zits meets Justice, a young white boy who takes Zits under his wing. When Zits is released from jail he finds Justice and they begin their training on how to shoot people. Once Justice believes Zits is ready to commit a real crime, he sends him off to a bank. After opening fire in the lobby, Zits perceives he has been shot in the head, ultimately sending him back in time. During his flashback, Zits transforms into many different historical characters. The first character he transforms into is FBI Agent Hank Storm. While in Hank's body Zits witnesses a meeting with two Indians involved with IRON. He watches his partner kill an innocent Indian and is forced to shoot the corpse in the chest. The next character he becomes is a mute Indian boy. He is thrown back into the time of General Custer's last stand. He gets to witness this historical battle and at the end is told by his father to slash a fallen soldier's throat as revenge for his own muteness. While trying to figure out what to do, Zits is taken into yet another character, Gus. Gus is known as "Indian Tracker" and has to lead the cavalry to an Indian camp. Gus is trained to hunt and track down Indians. Trying to take over Gus's actions, Zits forces himself to not attack the Indians. He helps Bow Boy and Small Saint escape from the advancing cavalry. Next, Zits becomes Jimmy, a pilot who teaches Abbad to fly a plane. He witnesses Jimmy's affair on his wife, and Abbad using the knowledge to carry out a terrorist attack, and Jimmy's suicide. Finally, Zits ends up as his own father. While in his father's body, he begins to understand why his father left his mother. He also begins to understand that his father does love him and that by leaving he was doing the best for his son. When Zits reinhabits his own body, he is standing in the bank staring at a small boy. Realizing that his crime could affect many more than just him, he walks out and takes himself to Officer Dave. Knowing he has to help this boy, Officer Dave brings Zits to his brother's house where Zits is offered to stay with them. Zits finally realizes that he can trust these people and for once in his life finally feels at home.
21801117	/m/05mr82l	Slaves of the Shinar	Justin Allen		{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/03dw_3": "Heroic fantasy"}	 The storied land of Shinar can be brutal and unforgiving. For two men making their way under its harsh sun, it is a land of fate, blood, and strife. Uruk is a nomadic thief from the jungles of sub-Saharan Africa. His destination is the fabled city of Ur, its temples swollen with riches. Ander has been a slave since youth. But when a chance at freedom presents itself, he strikes, vowing to destroy his captors by any means necessary. As these two men navigate the world they share - an ancient world, their stories converge in a tale of destiny, triumph, and death. Set against them are the legendary Niphilim, a race born for conquest and bred for killing. They are the world's greatest fighters, capable of nearly superhuman speed, strength, and endurance. As an army or thousands, led into war by a captain of unsurpassed cunning and strategic mastery, and armed with the world's first iron weapons, the Niphilim are a force of nature. Uruk and Ander must make their stand against this unstoppable juggernaut, or else be wiped from the face of history. Fortunately, Uruk and Ander are not alone. With them are a motley crew of warriors dredged from the bottom-most rungs of society: Barley, a half-blind farmer; Doran and Isin, two priests thrust into military duty; the Falcon, an old soldier whose best days are behind him; Jared, the King of Thieves; and an army composed of young boys. day-laborers, holy men, burglars, cooks, slaves, self-important politicians, the dirt-poor denizens of the Shinar's worst slums — and a vicious dog that Uruk rescued from starving to death in the desert. Slaves of the Shinar is the story of a land consumed by war, of a people trying to survive, and of two men in the middle of it all, redefining themselves and their futures. Set against the chaotic and bloody backdrop of the Middle East's first great war, this fantasy epic — part Genesis, part Gilgamesh — brings us into a gritty, realistic world where destiny is foretold by gods, and death is never more than a sword-stroke away.
21802138	/m/05mxvdf	For Lust of Knowing	Robert Graham Irwin	2006	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 While For Lust of Knowing is a riposte to Said's Orientalism, much of the book is taken up with a general history of Orientalism as an academic discipline. Unlike Said's work, it does not examine fiction, painting or other art forms. It focuses mainly in the work of British, French and German Orientalists and contrasts their different approaches and occasional idiosyncrasies. When Irwin does mention Said, it is usually to point out an error or inconsistency in Said's analysis. For example, one of the few Orientalists Said professes to admire is Louis Massignon. Irwin points out that Said "fail[ed] to note Massignon's anti-Semitism" and "his decidedly patronising attitude to Arabs", as well as Massignon's debt to Ernest Renan, one of the villains of Orientalism. In the chapter that specifically focuses on Said's Orientalism, Irwin highlights Said's inconsistent melding of the work of Foucault and Gramsci.
21802271	/m/05pbjhl	Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom				 This is an approximate summary of the content of the Freiheitsschrift using page numbering as appears in Schelling's Works. There is no division except into paragraphs. *336-8 There is a traditional view that system excludes individual freedom; but on the contrary it does have "a place in the universe". This is a problem to solve. *338-343 Reformulation as the issue of pantheism and fatalism. *343-8 Spinoza and Leibniz. *348 German idealism versus French atheistic mechanism; Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. *349-352 It is a mistake to believe that idealism has simply displaced pantheism. *352-355 The real conception of freedom is the possibility of good and evil. *356-357 Critique of the abstract conception of God; Naturphilosophie. *357-358 Ground of God and light. *359-366 Critique of immanence. *366-373 Conception of evil according to Baader. *373-376 Evil is necessary for God's revelation; exegesis of "matter" in Plato. *376-7 The irrational element in organic beings; disjunction of light and darkness. *379 Golden Age. *382-3 Formal conception of freedom; Buridan's Ass. *383 Idealism defines freedom. *385 Man's being is his own deed. *387 Predestination. *389-394 General possibility of evil and inversion of selfhood's place. *394 God's freedom. *396 Leibniz on laws of nature. *399 God is not a system, but a life; finite life in man. *402 God brought forward order from chaos. *403 History is incomprehensible without a concept of a humanly suffering God. *406 Primal ground (Ungrund) is before all antitheses; groundlessness self-divides. *409 Evil is a parody. *412 Revelation and reason. *413 Paganism and Christianity. *413 Personality rests on a dark foundation, which is also the foundation of knowledge. *414 Dialectical philosophy. *415 Historical foundation of philosophy. *416 Nature as revelation, and its archetypes. Promise of further treatises.
21805631	/m/05pbqqm	The Skating Rink				 Set in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink is told by three male narrators, revolving around a beautiful figure-skating champion, Nuria Martí. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a pompous but besotted civil servant secretly builds a skating rink in a local ruin of a mansion, using public funds. But Nuria has affairs, provokes jealousy, and the skating rink becomes a crime scene.
21806967	/m/05pbcx1	Monsieur Pain				 The novel is set in Paris and narrated by the Mesmerist Pierre Pain. In April 1938 Pain is approached by Madame Reynaud, whose late husband he had failed to help, to assist the Peruvian poet César Vallejo who is in the hospital, afflicted with an undiagnosed illness and unable to stop hiccuping. Pain's attempts to reach and treat Vallejo are thwarted by skeptical doctors and two mysterious Spanish men who bribe him not to treat Vallejo. Though he accepts the bribe, Pain attempts to treat the poet but is barred from the hospital and loses contact with Madame Reynaud. He has several run-ins with friends, strangers, and old acquaintances, and finds himself lost in the hospital and later in a warehouse, chasing strangers through the rain, and watching ambiguous events unfold, but he is unable to make sense of any of these events. The novel ends with an "epilogue for voices" which offers brief biographical reminiscences, or perhaps obituaries, of the novel's main characters, which still fails to offer a resolution to the mystery.
21807706	/m/05p7pzc	Crime	Irvine Welsh	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Detective Inspector Ray Lennox is recovering from a mental breakdown induced by stress and taking drugs, and a child murder case back home in Edinburgh. On vacation in Florida his fiancée, Trudi, is only interested in planning their wedding and, after an argument, abandons Lennox in a bar. He meets two women in a bar and goes back to their place to have a cocaine binge, but they are interrupted by two strangers. After a fight Lennox is left in the apartment with Tianna, the 10-year-old daughter of one of the women. Lennox takes her across the state to an exclusive marina where he walks right into a hornets' nest of paeodophiles, just like the one that had haunted him on a similar case in Edinburgh. Now he must protect the girl from them at all costs.
21809761	/m/05p57p9	Beric the Briton, A Story of the Roman Invasion	G. A. Henty	1893	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character is Beric, a young Briton under Roman subjugation. After he is raised to the rank of chief among his tribe, known as the Iceni, he and his tribe rise up against Roman rule under Queen Boudica. The strong but untrained Britons have success for a short time, but are quickly conquered again by the well-trained legionaries. Beric and a small band of men fight to the last from the swamps, conducting a sort of guerrilla warfare. At last he and his men are captured, and Beric is sent to Rome as a gladiator. While in Rome, he becomes friends with some who belong to the rising sect of Christians. When a Christian girl is given to the lions in the Roman amphitheatre, Beric dashes to the rescue and kills a lion single-handedly. Taken as a guard to Nero, the mighty emperor, Beric is horrified at the drunken revelry which takes place, and escapes from the palace. At last he is enabled to go back to Britain, though not after many more adventures.
21811766	/m/05p9bxw	City of Ashes	Cassandra Clare	2008-03-25	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Because her mother is still in the hospital and has yet to wake up, Clary is now living at Luke's house. Her emotions are further tangled when Simon abruptly kisses her one day at his house and begins calling her his girlfriend. Jace has been exiled from the Institute under suspicions of being a spy for Valentine. He heads to a bar, having nowhere to live now, only to discover that a were child was slain nearby and that the pack wants his help. Jace refuses to help and is attacked by the pack, only to be saved by Luke. After some prompting by Luke, Jace goes to the Institute to confront Alec and Isabelle's mother who had kicked him out, who reveals that the Inquisitor was coming and she was only trying to spare him. Clary returns to Luke's home and receives a text message from Isabelle; Jace has angered the Inquisitor and has been imprisoned in the Silent City. While sitting in his cell, Jace hears something attacking everyone and discovers that Valentine has killed the Silent Brothers to get the second Mortal Instrument, the Soul-Sword. Clary, Isabelle, and Alec respond to a distress call from the Silent City, only to discover the slaying of the Silent Brothers. Clary frees Jace, only for the Inquisitor to appear and accuse Jace of going along with Valentine, as the sword was the only way to prove his guilt or innocence. Magnus Bane offers to keep Jace as a prisoner in his apartment, where he and the others try to figure out Valentine's potential plans. In order to prove Jace's innocence they go to the Fairy Realm. However, Clary is tricked into consuming fairy food, and is only allowed to leave by kissing "whom she most desires", at first Simon offers to kiss her, however Clary instead kisses Jace in order to gain her freedom. This angers Simon, who storms off after they return to their realm. Clary later argues with Jace over their obvious feelings for each other despite being siblings. Jace suggests keeping the relationship a secret, to which Clary replies that it would eventually be discovered anyway and is unwilling to lie to their friends and family. Later Raphael shows up with Simon, who has been almost completely drained of blood and fed vampire blood. As the only way left to save him, Simon is transformed into a vampire, which causes Clary to ignore Jace as a result of her guilt over his death and transformation. While discussing how to potentially tell Simon's mother about his new undead status, Maia is brought into the house with wounds too severe for Luke to treat. Magnus is brought to heal Maia while Jace, Simon, and Clary battle demons outside the house. Jace and Clary later go after the demons to finish them off, where Valentine offers protection if Jace joins him and comes back to Idris. Jace refuses and the next morning the Inquisitor appears with claims that Jace was with Valentine and threatens to kill Jace if Valentine doesn't return the Mortal Instruments. The Inquisitor once again imprisons Jace, planning to have a trade with Valentine; Jace's life for the Mortal Instruments. Jace tries to tell her that it won't work, which the Inquisitor refuses to believe. During this time Maia is attacked by the Demon of Fear while traveling to see Simon, after which Valentine kidnaps her. Clary and the others discover Maia's kidnapping and rescue her, but not before Valentine kills the newborn Simon. Jace manages to restore life to Simon by feeding him his blood, after which the Inquisitor appears. After seeing Jace's star shaped scar, she suddenly kills a demon that was attacking him. She dies during the process, leaving Jace confused at her sudden change. Meanwhile Clary confronts Valentine on the boat after being kidnapped by one of his demons and brought to him, where she falls in the water and is saved by nixies the Fairy Queen sent to help. The group escapes by truck, where Simon discovers that Jace's blood has made him a "Daylighter" that can tolerate the sun. After a talk with Luke about love and his regrets of not telling Clary's mother how he felt about her, Clary attempts to tell Jace of her love for him and sudden change of mind to start a relationship needless of its consequences. However, before she can say anything, he tells her that he will only act as her brother from then on, breaking her heart. As Clary reels from this, she's then informed by a woman named Madeline that she knows how to wake her mother.
21813150	/m/05p3zzz	The Magician's Apprentice	Trudi Canavan	2009-02-23	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the remote village of Mandryn in Kyralia, Tessia serves as assistant to her father, the village Healer - much to the frustration of her mother, who would rather she found a husband. Despite knowing that women aren’t readily accepted by the Guild of Healers, Tessia is determined to follow in her father’s footsteps. Kyralia and the neighbouring country Sachaka have been at a certain "peace" for centuries, though the countries dislike each other, for Kyralia was once part of the Sachakan Empire. Lord Dakon is housing a visiting Sachakan Lord and Magician (Takado), much to his dislike. Dakon is a kind man with noble intentions. He is wary of Takado and dislikes the Sachakans for not abolishing slavery, especially when Takado beats his slave (Hanara) to near death. Tessia and her father are called to heal him. One day when Tessia comes by herself to Lord Dakon's mansion to re-apply bandages to Hanara, Takado tries to force himself upon her, holding her body still with magic. Tessia removes the magical influence on her mind with magic of her own, which she had no idea she had (blowing apart the corner of the room in the process), discovering she is a natural. She becomes the second apprentice of Lord Dakon, and Takado leaves the premises. There are long hours of study and self-discipline, and Lord Dakon's other apprentice, Jayan, makes clear his dislike of her, Tessia’s new life also offers more opportunities than she had ever hoped for, and an exciting new world opens up to her. There are fine clothes and servants, and - she is delighted to learn - regular trips to the great city of Imardin. While staying in Imardin her home town is attacked. A "mental" call is produced from another magician who is in the ley (town) closest to Dakon's. Tessia is able to hear this while she is out shopping with her fellow female magicians, who all hear the same thing. Upon arriving at the ley they find that Takado has slaughtered the entire village except for some children and deserters. Tessia is then distressed to find graves marked for her parents. Upon this discovery, Tessia is hurt by the fact she never got to tell her father about visiting the healer's guild (in which their family are now somewhat respected in the guild through their grandfather), or about visiting a dissection at which she found a friend, Kendaria. Tessia then sets out to be a healer. During the process, Jayan and Tessia become friends. The Kyralian magicians then come together and decide to attack the Sachakan 'Ichani' (people branded as outcasts in Sachakan society) as they realise a plot to take their country. Meanwhile Takado has gathered an army of his own. In the "first fight", the Kyralian magicians use a technique of sharing magical energy, allowing them to send magic to another without harming them and so enabling them to attack in groups. None fall on the Kyralian side but the Sachakans lose many. Tessia treats many people and soon develops a way to stop pain with magic, something never before achieved as Magicians never become healers. A subplot revolves around Stara, a mixed race woman born to an Ashaki (Sachakan magician of high social standing) and an Elyne woman, Elyne being a neighbouring country to both Kyralia and Sachaka. Living in Arvice (the Sachakan capital) Stara is forced to marry against her will, yet when she shows her father her magic, which she has kept secret for years, her father is forced to decide another, Karicho. Stara must bed Karicho in order to heir a son, or her sister-in-law, being infertile, will be killed by her father. Yet there is one problem: Karicho is a "lad" (a male homosexual). Stara becomes friends with other wives, and they invite her into a group made up of wives and slaves called the "Traitors", who secretly declare themselves a neutral third party in the Kyralian-Sachakan conflict. Unintentionally, Stara becomes the leader with her natural beauty, magic and leadership skills. She and her slave, who is also her best friend, set out to find a way to get the "Traitors" away from Arvice before the invading Kyralians kill any of them. The invading Kyralians take Arvice, but Jayan and Tessia are separated from them. Jayan is badly wounded, but Tessia figures out how to heal with magic, and saves him. While she is healing him, he confesses his love for her, and she him. They hide in a house and fall asleep. The next morning, they hear horses, and go outside to see it is their allies. They join up with the rest of the army, and Dakon is relieved to see his ex-apprentice (Jayan is now a full magician) and his apprentice are safe. However, Dakon is staying behind to help rule Sachaka, so Lady Avaria takes over Tessia's apprenticeship, and Jayan, Avaria and Tessia return to Kyralia together. Jayan founds the Magician's Guild and Tessia teaches her healing magic to others. Stara and the Traitors escape Arvice and find a refuge in the mountains. There are ruins of a house there, filled with jewels. A river is nearby and the land is fertile. The Traitor society has begun. 10 years later Narvelan, one of Sachaka's rulers, is forced to retire by the king, taking his loyal servant, Hanara, with him. He breaks the storestone, a stone filled with magic, which kills him and Hanara and renders acres of Sachakan land infertile. It is revealed Dakon was assassinated. Jayan and his friend Prinan come to look at the land. Jayan reflects on the establishment of the Magician's Guild and that Tessia is just about to give birth to his son. Tessia is now famous for her discovery of healing magic, and is the best healing magician in the world.
21820531	/m/05msbz7	Cold Hands, Warm Heart				 Fifteen-year-old Dani was born with her heart on the wrong side of her body, a condition called dextrocardia. Fourteen-year-old Amanda puts her heart and soul into competitive gymnastics. One girl lives a life of x-rays, tests, and endless hospital visits while the other is on the fast-track to the national championship. During a brilliant gymnastic routine, Amanda slips and a young life with so much potential comes to an end. With Amanda's death, Dani, in desperate need of a heart transplant, gets a second chance.
21825427	/m/0ch3ccn	The Lost Train of Thought			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The third and final book on The Seems begin with Becker Drane on trial against his breaking the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule forbids any employee that has had access a person's Case File to communicate with them. At the end of The Split Second, Becker Drane came in contact with Jenifer Kaley who he got her Case File in The Glitch in Sleep. When tried, he was found guilty on all counts. He was suspended from duty for one year, unremembered of Jenifer Kaley and has his Seems Credit Card revoked. Jenifer Kaley and Benjamin Drane will also be unremembered of all they know about The Seems. When about to tell Jenifer about his punishment, Simly, Becker's favorite Briefer calls Becker in for a Mission. He along with the Octogenarian, Shahzad Hassan and Jelani Blaque are called in as a second team to find a missing train of Thought that was supposed to supply The World with enough Thought for the next six weeks. When Thought was first discovered, it was debated on how it should be used. Some felt the Raw Thought should be given directly to the people of the World while others felt it should be processed first. It was decided for Raw Thought to be given to people in The World so they can think for themselves. However, without Thought to keep emotions such as Jealousy and Anger in, the Unthinkable could occur causing mass destruction to The World. The first team consisted of Li Po, Casey Lake, Lisa Simms and Greg the Journeyman, but they went missing when a sudden bright light appeared. The second team go into The Middle of Nowhere in hope of finding the Train and if possible, rescuing the missing Fixers of the first team. The team first makes a pit stop at Seemsberia, the prison in The Seems where Blaque asks Thibadeau, a previous member of the Tide a few questions. The Tide is an organization trying to overthrow the current order of The Seems. In the journey to Meanwhile the team manages to find Lisa Simms and Greg the Journeyman, but Li Po and Casey Lake are still missing. Meanwhile, in The Seems, The Tide has taken over many major departments of The Seems and even Seemsberia. To rescue The Seems, Freck reveals he is a double agent for The Seems and gets the help of the Glitches in exchange for a place to live. The Glitches succeed in destroying The Tide and recapture The Seems, but the Unthinkable is about to occur. All the extra Thought was used during the siege to The Seems. In the Middle of Nowhere, the team along with Casey Lake has found the lost Train of Thought. However, the natives of the Middle of Nowhere have trapped all the Fixers except Becker who is trying to get the train back to The Seems. With the so little time left before the Unthinkable occurs, Becker has no choice to use the In-Betweener, an automated freight line previously used to pile wares. Becker succeeds, but is lost when the Train crashes into the entrance of the In-Betweener. With the Thought delivered and The Tide defeated, the Unthinkable does not occur. Two days later, Freck is cleared of all charges by the new Second in Command, Samuel Hightower, who is also Triton, leader of The Tide. Despite wanting to recreate The World, he now feels that The World will now grow into a new place after all that happened in the last few days. In the epilogue, Becker finds himself swimming through an ocean and finally arriving on a beach. On the beach, he meets Li Po, the only Fixer in the first team never to be found. Po talks although his Vow of Silence prevented him before. Becker suddenly realizes he is in A Better Place, where people go when they die.
21829284	/m/05pbwlf	The Universe Maker	A. E. van Vogt	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Morton Cargill, Korean War soldier, accidentally kills a girl named Marie while driving drunk. He runs from the scene. A year later, he gets a letter from the girl asking to meet him. But this is not Marie, but a remote descendant from the future, who is suffering an inherited form of neurosis which time travelers, called 'The Shadows', have traced back to his negligent crime. The only therapy to cure her is if she witnesses him being murdered. He then wakes 400 years into the future, to the Shadow City to be executed. He escapes, with help from Ann Reece, who represents a group called 'Tweeners', who are organized by a Shadow named Grannis. Grannis is apparently a traitor to the Shadows and wishes the Tweeners to attack and destroy the Shadow City. Cargill is overcome by suspicions against the Tweeners, so during his rescue he escapes into the woods where he is immediately captured. His captors this time are futuristic nomads or 'trailer trash' called 'Planiacs' who live in floating airships. The Planiacs have rejected civilization and its intolerable psychological pressures. Their airships are stocked and repaired by the Shadows, and they live utterly purposeless lives floating from place to place, occasionally stopping to fish. Grannis the Shadow shows up among the Planiacs, apparently to seize Cargill. Cargill escapes by seducing his jailer's daughter, Lela Bouvey, and stealing an airship. He spends several months as a nomad, and begins to organize a political revolution among them, but is recaptured by the Shadows, and sent back in time to the same night he escaped. Ann Reece, the Tweener agent, again frees him, brings him to their city, where he is hypnotically programmed. He has no choice but to carry out his mission, to enter the Shadow city and shut off its defensive energy field, so that an air raid might destroy the Shadows. The Tweeners are those Planiacs who attempted to join the Shadows, but could not pass their tests. They plan to destroy the Shadows and force the Planiacs out of their nomadic existence and back to earthbound labor. Cargill has several dreams where is encounters beings from previous or future eons, which convinces him that the fate of the universe hangs in the success or failure of the Shadow-Tweener war. As a delaying tactic, he advises the Tweeners how to reorganize their air force to make a successful raid, he again seduces his jailer (which this time is Ann Reece), and he again begins to organize a political revolt among his captors, hoping an uprising of peacelovers among the Tweeners will stop the coming attack. Now firmly convinced that the Shadows are innocent, and that the planned Tweener attack is wrong, Cargill is unable to halt or even hinder the hypnotic programming that forces him to enter the Shadow City. The Shadows are superhumans able to travel through time, walk through walls, and revive the dead. Once in the city, Cargill is given the Shadow training, which consists of a single lecture hypnotically imprinted on his brain. Now armed with all their powers and abilities, Cargill emerges from the training session to witness a celebration of the election results: the Shadows elect their leaders retroactively through time, voting only after the leader's term of office is up, and reporting it back through time to themselves on election day. To his surprise and dread, Cargill finds he is the new leader. The leader of the Shadows is Grannis; Cargill himself is Grannis. He spends the last chapter of the book traveling back through time to organize the various pointless conspiracies among the Tweeners and Planiacs which brought him here. While being killed and raised from the dead, he recalls that he and all other participants in the life-force of the cosmos created the universe as a game, and became bound to it, and to its tragedies, due to their psychological limitations: greed creates time, the desire for revenge creates death, and so on. Cargill-Grannis discovers he is innocent of the original death of Marie, but now he must arrange that death in order to prevent a time paradox which would otherwise destroy the universe.
21833244	/m/05p5vl8	Seiken no Blacksmith			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 44 years ago, a great war known as the Valbanill War ravaged the land. One of the war's most dangerous weapons was the Demon Contract, where humans sacrifice their bodies to become powerful demons. Realizing the damage the contracts have caused the land, the surviving nations made peace and banned the use of the Demon contracts. Cecily Cambell is a 3rd generation Knight from Housman, one of the cities of the Independent Trade Cities, a democratic federation of cities. As her grandfather was one of the founders of the Independent Trade Cities, she is proud of her heritage and wishes to protect her city as a knight, like her father and grandfather before her. One day, she fights a mad veteran of the war causing trouble in the market, and, inexperienced and outmatched, faces defeat. But she is saved by a mysterious blacksmith named Luke Ainsworth. Cecily is impressed by Luke's katana, a weapon she has never seen before, and asks him to make one for her. Her involvement with Luke will bring her to an adventure she never expected.
21844678	/m/05p44rk	Smaller and Smaller Circles				 Its main protagonists are Gus Saenz and Jerome Lucero, Jesuit priests who also perform forensic work. The mystery revolves around the murders of young boys in a poor region of Payatas, Philippines.
21860889	/m/05nzv6d	Loved Ones	Diana Mitford	1985	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The book includes pen portraits of leading figures that featured prominently in Mitford's life. These include Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington, former neighbours and friends of hers. Violet Hammersley, an author, close friend of her mother's and prominent figure in childhood. The writer, Evelyn Waugh a close personal friend. Professor Derek Jackson, a leading physicist and her former brother-in-law. Lord Berners, a close personal friend she stayed with often at Faringdon House. Prince and Princess Clary, close friends of hers after the Second World War. The final portrait is of her second husband, Sir. Oswald Mosley. The book also features several photographs of the selected subjects.
21860941	/m/05p5567	Our Southern Highlanders				 The bulk of Our Southern Highlanders is based on observations Kephart made while at Hazel Creek (1904–1907), although several chapters added in 1922 were based on events that occurred later when Kephart lived in Bryson City. Chapters 9 ("The Snake-Stick Man") and 10 ("A Raid Into the Sugarlands") were based on events that occurred in 1919. Chapter 11 ("The Killing of Hol Rose") was based on events that occurred in late 1920. *Chapter I, "Something Hidden; Go and Find It," discusses the remoteness and ruggedness of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, the lack of realistic literature regarding its inhabitants, and gives a brief history of the region. *Chapter II, "The Back of Beyond," gives a description of Medlin and discusses how the mountaineers have adapted to their environment, the difficulties in farming the rugged terrain, and grazing in the highland meadows. *Chapter III, "The Great Smoky Mountains," discusses the topography, geology, wildlife and plant life of the Great Smokies range. Kephart also relates a story by a "Mr. and Mrs. Ferris" who ventured across the nearly-impassable crest of the central and eastern Smokies to Mount Guyot in search of plant specimens. He also discusses the harshness of the highland meadows, and recounts a story of 17 cattle freezing to death at Silers Meadow. *Chapter IV, "A Bear Hunt In the Smokies," recounts a bear hunt undertaken by Kephart and several Hazel Creek natives. The party includes Granville Calhoun, a Bone Valley resident named Bill Cope ("the hunchback"), John Baker "Little John" Cable, Jr. (1855–1939), Matt Hyde, and Andrew Jackson "Doc" Jones (1851–1935). The chapter begins at Hall cabin amidst a windstorm and ends with the successful killing of a bear. This chapter contains one of the earliest references to the Appalachian folk song Cumberland Gap. *Chapter V, "Moonshine Land," discusses Kephart's initial curiosity about moonshining, and recount's one mountaineer's justification for the practice. *Chapter VI, "Ways That Are Dark," continues Kephart's discussion of moonshining, particularly how it is made in Southern Appalachia, the typical size and settings of stills, etc. *Chapter VII, "A Leaf from the Past," traces the roots of moonshining to the British Isles, and explains how the practice made its way to Southern Appalachia. *Chapter VIII, "Blockaders and the Revenue," discusses the ongoing conflict between moonshiners and federal revenue agents. *Chapter IX, "The Snake-Stick Man," tells the story of a federal revenue agent whom Kephart calls "Mr. Quick" (an alias). Quick, who has a hobby of carving sticks into the form of snakes, has a polymathic expertise that Kephart finds most impressive. He is in the area to investigate illegal liquor sales at the nearby Cherokee Reservation. *Chapter X, "A Raid Into the Sugarlands," recounts a manhunt led by "Mr. Quick" into the Sugarlands, a remote valley south of Gatlinburg on the Tennessee side of the Smokies. The chapter includes an anachronistic story about a mountaineer named "Jasper Fenn" (based on a real-life Sugarlander named Davis Bracken, who lived near what is now the Chimneys Campground) who claimed to have read a copy of Our Southern Highlanders given to him by the Pi Beta Phi settlement school in Gatlinburg. *Chapter XI, "The Killing of Hol Rose," recounts the killing of revenuer James Holland "Hol" Rose by J.E. "Babe" Burnett and Burnett's subsequent trial. *Chapter XII, "The Outlander and the Native," discusses the mountaineers' attitudes toward outsiders. *Chapter XIII, "The People of the Hills," describes the mountaineers' typical physical traits, work ethic, their ability to endure harsh conditions, and their general preference for mountain life over urban life. *Chapter XIV, "The Land of Do Without," discusses the mountaineers' homelife, their manner of dress, the prevalence of poverty and the mountaineers' scorn of charity. *Chapter XV, "Home Folks and Neighbor People," discusses gender and family roles, religion and funerary rights, music and dancing, and Christmas and New Years Day customs among the mountain people. *Chapter XVI, "The Mountain Dialect," discusses mountain speech. Kephart's observations in this chapter mark one of the first serious analyses of the Southern Appalachian dialect, and one of the first to label it a distinct dialect rather than merely the speech habits of the uneducated. While Kephart overemphasizes archaic "Elizabethan" traits in the dialect, linguists acknowledge his keen observations and painstaking scholarship in this analysis. *Chapter XVII, "The Law of the Wilderness," discusses the mountaineers' penchant for self-reliance and individualism, the importance of family bonds, and attitudes toward government. *Chapter XVIII, "The Blood-Feud," discusses Appalachian clan feuding, its typical causes, and how it compares to other cultural clan feuds, such as Corsican vendettas. *Chapter XIV, "Who Are the Mountaineers?", traces the Scotch-Irish roots and migration patterns of the Southern Appalachian mountaineers, and emphasizes that the Appalachian culture is a distinct culture spread across the highlands of several states. *Chapter XX, "When the Sleeper Awakes," discusses how encroaching commercialism and modernity, brought to the region by logging firms and other corporations, threatened to erode the mountain culture.
21864751	/m/05pcp8c	Wings		2009-05-05	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Fifteen-year-old Laurel has lived her whole life on her family's land near Orick, California and the Redwood National and State Parks, where she was homeschooled by her hippie parents, Sarah and Mark. So when she moves to Crescent City, California to attend public school at Del Norte High School, Laurel has some adjustments to make. The reason for them to move is because of her father buying a bookstore, which was always a dream for the both of her parents. While she misses being outdoors all the time, she's getting along pretty well at her new school and soon befriends David, a handsome and sweet boy who understands Laurel and her strict vegan diet. Things are looking up until a bump between Laurel's shoulders sprouts into a giant flower on her back. Hesitant to confide her recent affliction to her parents, Laurel seeks help from David, and together they investigate the strange phenomenon of her "wings" or blossom. Their only clue is that when she was about three years old, she was found on her parents' doorstep in a basket, with no knowledge of where she came from. It turns out that Laurel is actually a more advanced evolution of a plant; more or less a faerie. The two soon discover that Laurel's whole body is of plant cells and that she is a plant. On a trip back to the family home, Laurel's world is forever changed when she encounters Tamani. Laurel finds herself inexplicably drawn to him, and he provides many of the answers she has been seeking. It turns out she’s not even human; like Tamani, she’s a faerie. As a scion, a faerie sent to the humans, she was sent to her parents to inherit their land, which holds something very important to the fae. This plan is nearly thwarted when Laurel’s family moves and puts the land up for sale. The gate to Avalon, which the faeries have protected for ages, is now threatened, and Laurel must help save the faeries' secret, protect her family, sort out her confused feelings for David and Tamani, and figure out her own identity—and her place in both worlds.
21876356	/m/05p17xy	Tea Time for the Traditionally Built	Alexander McCall Smith	2009	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi agree that there are things that men know and ladies do not, and vice versa. The glamorous Violet Sephotho sets her sights on Mma Makutsi's unsuspecting fiance and it becomes clear that some men do not know how to recognise a ruthless Jezebel even when she is bouncing up and down on the best bed in the Double Comfort Furniture Shop. In her attempt to foster understanding between the sexes and find the traitor on Mr Football's team, Mma Ramotswe ventures into new territory, with the help of an observant small boy.
21877038	/m/05p44m2	It's Just a Plant	Ricardo Cortés			 The main character is a little girl named Jackie. She is awakened one night in her bedroom by an unusual smell in the air, and she sets out to find its source. She goes to her parents' room and discovers her parents smoking marijuana. When she asks what they're doing, they tell her they are smoking marijuana. Her parents decide to teach her the facts about marijuana. They travel to the farm where the family buys vegetables. The farmer shows her the variety of crops he grows, including some marijuana plants. He tells her about the history of marijuana, and remarks that many people use the drug, including doctors, teachers, and politicians. Following the trip to the farm, they visit their family doctor. The doctor tells Jackie that marijuana has many medicinal uses, and that it can ease pain and help people relax. She emphasizes that only adults should use it, and that it is not for children. Shortly afterward, Jackie sees a group of people smoking marijuana on the street. Two police officers appear and promptly arrest them, to Jackie's bewilderment. The police officers explain that smoking marijuana is against the law, and that's why they are arresting the marijuana smokers. One of the officers tells her that “a small but powerful group decided to make a law against marijuana.” She comes to the conclusion that she wants to vote for the legalization of marijuana when she is older.
21880683	/m/02vwtxt	Cross my heart and hope to spy	Ally Carter	2007	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When Cammie returns to school, she and the other girls are frustrated because the East Wing is off-limits. Fumes from the chemistry lab have supposedly contaminated the area making the girls have to walk around the wing adding ten minutes to their walk back to their rooms. The next day on a CoveOps mission at the National Mall the class must get to the ruby slippers exhibit by five o'clock practicing counter-surveillance. Only one girl in the class succeeds in the mission. Cammie fails when Zach, whom Cammie believes to be a teenage boy, follows her from the elevator. After the failed mission fifteen boys, Zach being one of them, and their teacher Dr. Steve from the Blackthorne Institute, come to the Gallagher Academy and they take up residence in the East Wing. Cammie meets Josh again during an exercise in Roseville, VA and finds out that he is dating DeeDee. For Cammie the incident confirms her mother gave Josh the special memory wiping tea. During a CoveOps/Culture and Assimilation cumulative exam Cammie and Zach dance together. Cammie has a slight wardrobe malfunction and she tries to leave via a passageway where Zach is waiting. A Code Black occurs,meaning the school's secret is in danger of being released,and Cammie gets blamed when Zach mysteriously disappears. Cammie, Liz, Bex, and Macey decide to investigate the Blackthorne boys, but the covert listening devices in the boys rooms, and the tracking systems/trackers in their shoes, don't give them any information. Then Cammie goes on a study date with Zach. On a Saturday trip into Roseville, Cammie and Zach are walking around town together, and Zach tries to kiss Cammie while knowing that Josh and DeeDee were watching. Cammie suddenly becomes aware of this and seeing that she hurt Josh, doesn't let Zach kiss her. On the same trip, the Gallagher girls have to come back early when Zach lies about seeing a trailer before. The girls arrive at the mansion to a massive security breach – a disk containing the information about all the alumni of the Gallagher Academy has been stolen. Using a secret passage, the girls get out of the mansion and follow trackers that Bex and Liz planted on the Blackthorne boys. Macey comes across them outside in a Gallagher Academy van she "commandeered" and they follow the tracking devices. They meet up with the boys outside an abandoned manufacturing plant owned by the school. Zach convinces Cammie that he and the boys are innocent and they team up to get the alumni disk back from Dr. Steve, who stole it. They succeed in stopping Dr Steve from getting away when Bex puts him in a choke hold, and it is revealed that the recovery of the disk was a test to see if the girls could accomplish the mission with the boys. At the end the Blackthorne boys have to leave and Zach kisses Cammie telling her "I always finish what I start" referring to the Saturday trip to Roseville.
21882517	/m/05p5vm9	Great Olympic Encyclopedia		2006	{"/m/02jfw": "Encyclopedia"}	 The encyclopedia has only one author Valeri Shteinbakh, and contains 10,070 entries about the history of the Ancient Olympic Games, the results of the Summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games, the sports included or not in the Olympic program, biographies of the sportspersons and other stuff.
21882526	/m/05p495y	Gaia's Toys	Rebecca Ore	1995	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Willie Hunsucker is a veteran on the dole, taking a monthly trip to Roanoke so the government can use his brain power for whatever purposes it deems appropriate. Willie is starting to remember bits and pieces of this time. He has an unusually large praying mantis that soothes him when he flashes back to his war service. He doesn't know it but the mantis's pheromes are increasing his memories and his initiative. Dorcas Rae is a gene technician and mistress to the lab supervisor. On the sly, she created the mantises that have become so popular with people on the dole. The government wants to find who did this. She has also created a wasp that will sting when it senses aggressiveness in people. Allison is an eco-terrorist. She delivers a car to an oil refinery but her contact doesn't arrive. Just after she's captured by government agents, the car explodes a nuclear device that damages much of the oil refining capacity of the southern U.S. She agrees to cooperate and become an undercover agent—donating brain time to help with Dorca's research. After Willie's house is robbed, he falls in with a group of people who've each suffered from environmental or nanotechnological damage. As a result of an assignment he'd had while on the dole, they become aware of Allison and Dorcas and determine to rescue Dorcas from the government net that's about to close around her. The chase is on. In a world where nanotechnology can alter one's appearance in a few hours and brain images can be tracked if one uses the net to ask for any information, the chase is an intriguing combination of high and low tech.
21889843	/m/05p1tmf	Antifanaticism: A Tale of the South				 The story takes place somewhere in Virginia, and depicts a group of white plantation owners who put charity towards their black slaves before the harvesting and selling of the cotton on their own plantations, as well as successfully converting several troublesome abolitionists into friendly socialites through a process referred to throughout the novel as "Southern hospitality".
21891532	/m/05p433_	The Slab Boys Trilogy	John Byrne			 The Slab Boys is set in the Slab Room of A. F. Stobo & Co. Carpet Manufactures. This story focuses on a handful of young people who have to grow up fast in the tough working-class culture of 1950s industrial Scotland. It is a semi autobiographical work. The play is set in 1957, the year Byrne worked in Stoddard's carpet factory as a slab boy, and the year Byrne applied to Glasgow Art School. In 1958 he was accepted to the Art School, unlike the character Phil McCann, whose application was refused. He described the factory as a ‘technicolour hell hole’.. Byrne was raised in Ferguslie Park, Paisley not far from the carpet factory. The opening scene introduces the three incumbent slab boys bantering away on a Friday morning. Phil and Spanky are the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid of the slab room and Hector is the target and source of most of their humour. Enter, Mr. Curry, the boss, who is always trying to shame Phil and Spanky into doing some actual work. Unfortunately, Phil and Spanky are far too clever to fall for that old ruse. In comes Jack Hogg. He used to be a slab boy, but has come up in the world and is now a designer. This is not as grand as it sounds – he is only one step further up the ladder and Phil and Spanky never let him forget it. Jack brings with him Alan Downie – an obviously better off youngster whose father knows the boss, and who is going to work in the company for a while before going off to University. This does not endear him to Phil or Spanky. Once some of the early hilarity subsides, we learn that Phil's mother has been yet-again incarcerated in a ward for the mentally unstable. We also find out the real reason for Phil being late this morning: he was presenting his portfolio at the Glasgow School of Art. He is now waiting on a phone call that will tell him how he got on. Eventually, Sadie, the world-weary tea-lady, wanders in. She is wise to Phil and Spanky, but is charmed by Alan's superior manners. Sadie is also selling tickets for the Staff Dance that takes place that night. To everyone's amazement Hector buys two, and reveals that his mystery date is Lucille – a beautiful young woman who clearly has herself set on someone better looking, and probably more importantly, richer, than Hector. Finally, in strolls Lucille. Phil and Spanky badger her for details about Hector's courtship and it transpires that it is only in Hector's fantasy-world that she is going with him. The two turn on Hector but end up feeling rather sorry for him and resolve to help him win the fair dame. How they do this is by crudely tailoring his already crudely-tailored clothing and attempting to give him a haircut but succeed only in injuring his scalp with the scissors. After the lunch-break (which provides the interval in the play), the Slab Boys re-assemble. Lucille appears and Phil starts to broach the subject of Hector – he's going to ask Lucille out on Hector's behalf. Before he can reach the punch line, Hector's bloodied face appears at the window and terrifies her. They are hiding him while his clothes are being "altered". There thus ensues some typical farce as Hector is hidden during various walk-ons by Jack, Lucille and Mr. Curry. Sadie re-appears for the afternoon tea-break and bemoans her useless husband. It appears that, following a recent mastectomy, he even threw out her prosthetic breast, believing it to be a burst football. She advises Lucille to avoid men and the trouble they cause. At last Phil gets round to asking Lucille about the Staffie. Thinking he is asking on his own behalf, she agrees to go with him. Phil points out he was actually asking on the behalf of Hector. Lucille bluntly refuses. The wages come round while Phil is out and Spanky is perturbed to find that Phil's and Hector's are missing – they will come round later having been specially made up. This suggests that they are going to be sacked. This is indeed the case for Phil, but then Hector comes in looking rather shocked and Phil and Spanky assume he has also been sacked. However, to their surprise, is actually getting promoted to the design room. Alan then enters and delivers Phil another piece of bad news. He has just taken a phone call for Phil, and curtly tells him that he did not get in to the Art School. While he is digesting this a note arrives that his mother, who had briefly escaped from the asylum, is back in custody. Finally, Curry appears. Phil blows off at him over the sacking but Curry retorts that he actually stood up for Phil. Spanky knuckles under and gets back to grinding the paste as Phil, all his hopes gone, leaves the stage.
21891914	/m/05p5y46	They Burn the Thistles	Yaşar Kemal	1969		 The plot of "They Burn the Thistles" is much the same as in the first novel "Memed, My Hawk", where Memed, a young boy from a village in Anatolia is abused and beaten by the villainous Abdi Agha, the local landowner. Having endured great cruelty towards himself and his mother, he finally escapes with his beloved, a girl named Hatche. Abdi Agha catches up with the young couple, but only manages to capture Hatche, while Memed is able to avoid his pursuers and runs into the mountains whereupon he joins a band of brigands and exacts revenge against his old adversary.
21898197	/m/05p2rx3	The American People				 Chapter One, Ancient Americas and Africa: Includes the history of the peoples of America before Columbus, Africa on the eve of contact, Europe on the eve of contact, and a conclusion on the approach of a new global age. Chapter Two, Europeans and Africans Reach the Americas: Includes the breaching of the Atlantic, the Spanish conquest of America, England looking west, African bondage, and a conclusion on converging worlds. Chapter Three, Colonizing a Continent in the Seventeenth Century: Includes the history of Chesapeake tobacco coast, Massachusetts and its offspring, the French in Canada, proprietary Carolina, the Quakers and their "peaceable kingdom," New Spain and its northern frontier, the Era of Instability, and a conclusion on the achievement of new societies. Chapter Four, The Maturíng of Colonial Society: Includes the history of the Northern and Southern colonies, conflict in the New World, the urban world of commerce and ideas, the Great Awakening, political life in the colonies, and a conclusion on America in 1750. Chapter Five, The Strains of Empire: Includes the climatic Seven Years' War, the crisis with England, the ideology of Revolutionary Republicanism, the turmoil of a rebellious people, and a conclusion on the time where the colonies were on the brink of revolution. Chapter Six, A People in Revolution: Includes the bursting of the colonial bonds, the American War for Independence, the experiences of war, the ferment of revolutionary politics, and a conclusion on the crucible of revolution. Chapter Seven, Consolidating the Revolution: Includes the struggle of a peacetime agenda, sources of political conflict, the political tumult in the states, the movement toward a new national government, and a conclusion on completing the revolution. Chapter Eight, Creating a Nation: Includes the launching of the national republic, the republic in a threatening world, how the political crisis deepened, the restoration of American liberty, the building of an agrarian nation, foreign policy of the new nation, and a conclusion on the period of trial and transition. Chapter Nine, Society and Politics in the Early Republic: Includes how America was a nation of regions, Indian-White relations in the early republic, the end of Neo-Colonialism, how America was knitted together, how politics were in transition, and a conclusion on the passing of an era. Chapter Ten, Economic Transformations in the Northeast and the Old Northwest: Chapter Eleven, Slavery and the Old South: Chapter Twelve, Shaping America in the Antebellum Age: Chapter Thirteen, Moving West: Chapter Fourteen, The Union in Peril: Chapter Fifteen, The Union Severed: Chapter Sixteen, The Union Reconstructed: Chapter Seventeen, Rural America; The West and the New South: Chapter Eighteen, The Rise of Smokestack America: Chapter Nineteen, Politics and Reform: Chapter Twenty, Becoming a World Power: Chapter Twenty-One, The Progressives Confront Industrial Capitalism: Chapter Twenty-Two, The Great War: Chapter Twenty-Three, Affluence and Anxiety: Chapter Twenty-Four, The Great Depression and the New Deal: Chapter Twenty-Five, Wold War Two: Chapter Twenty-Six, Postwar America at Home, 1945-1960: Chapter Twenty-Seven, Chills and Fever During the Cold War, 1945-1960: Chapter Twenty-Eight, Reform and Rebellion in the Turbulent Sixties, 1960-1969: Chapter Twenty-Nine, Disorder and Discontent, 1969-1980: Chapter Thirty, The Revival of Conservatism, 1980-1992: Chapter Thirty-One, The Post-Cold War World, 1992-2002: Includes the Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States of America, chart of United States presidential elections, States of the United States, chart of the Population of the United States. Sixty-two pages covering the entire text.
21899586	/m/05p3w6_	The Immortals	Chris Riddell	2009-02-05	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is set approximately 500 years after Freeglader. The Edge is much different from previous novels, with the advent of the Third Age of Flight, using stormphrax crystals as a source of power (stormphrax is highly volatile, gaining weight when in darkness and becoming unstable when in light. Twilight is the level of light needed for neutrality.). Three main settlements have arisen in the Deepwoods: Great Glade, Hive, and Riverrise. The protagonist is Nate Quarter, a lowly miner of phraxcrystals. Nate's father was the past mine sergeant before he died in a suspicious accident involving Grint Grayle, the present mine sergeant. Grayle is corrupt and only thinks about lining his own pockets. He doesn't care whether the people in his mine live or die. Late in the day after a hard day's work, Nate and his friend Rudd, a cloddertrog, leave the mine and go to a tavern which is made out of two skewered sky ships. It is a very friendly establishment. Nate and his friends are enjoying the evening drinking when suddenly the owner of the mine bursts in and tries to kill Nate. He has been trying to do this for three years. He does not succeed; instead Nate's friend Rudd is killed with a phraxpistol. Then some of the mining guards chase Nate into the woods and he hides there for a while. After this Nate returns to the mine and wakes his friend Slip, a gray goblin who sweeps the mine. Nate asks him to collect a few things from his dormitory while he goes to sort a few things out. While the goblin goes off, Nate sneaks into the mine building. He discovers a secret passage and uncovers a vast amount of wealth which the mine sergeant has built up over the three years. Nate gets discovered by the mine sergeant, secretly adjusts a light and leaves the building. When he meets up with the goblin they hide in a cart and the mine HQ blows up. Nate had planned this. They get on a steamer and buy passage to Great Glade on a ship called the Deadbolt Vulpoon. About a week later they arrive in Great Glade. Not much happens on the journey except that Nate makes friends with a man called "The Professor" because he calls history out to the people in the boxes in the gaming room for money. When they dock in Great Glade (formerly called the Free Glades but now split into 12 districts) they borrow a prowlgrin and set off to find work, finding the owner of the mine they used to work in. They arrive at the house of the mine owner, Galston Prade, and try to speak to him. Instead they speak to his secretary, the dishonest Felftis Brack, because he refuses to see them. The secretary appears to be shocked at what Nate tells him and says that the mine owner will be told as soon as possible. They leave, still feeling a little anxious. They proceed to travel to Cloud Quarter which houses the academies. Nate tries to speak to his dead mother's uncle, the High Professor of Flight, to persuade him to lend money or find him a place to work, but he is obnoxious and hostile, so Nate leaves angrily. They travel to a posting pole (like the ones in old Undertown, but they don't post up places on Sky Ships, they post up work around the 12 districts). They find one in a stilt shop and travel to it. When they are let through the doors a heavily coated figure opens the gate and lets them in. This figure is later revealed to be a banderbear, Weelum. Nate and the grey goblin go up and talk to the secretary of the man who runs the workshop, asking him for work, but because they have no experience working in stilt shops, he turns them away. Disappointed, they turn around, but the owner sees them and asks Nate to fix a lantern on his desk. He obliges, and the owner is pleased and rewards them by offering them both a job, accommodation and 60 gladers each per month, which they both gladly accept. Six months pass. Nate has become close friends with Galston's daughter, Eudoxia Prade. She was originally friends with Branxford Drew, the son of the stilt shop owner, but she came to dislike him because he stole from his father and was obnoxious and spoiled. She and Nate become good, close friends. Earlier when Nate was at the Lake Landing Academy, he came across a picture of Rook and made a connection between Rook and himself. On the evening before the thousand stick match, Nate is called to Friston Drew's office and is given an offer which he finds hard to believe. Friston Drew offers the inheritance of the company to Nate, as well as Nate being his junior partner in the business. On the day of the thousand stick match, Nate is enjoying the game, when suddenly a noise like thunder ripples across the sky, coming from the Copperwood district. Nate is about to win the game, when Drew's son throws him off the pole after confessing that he set up the plot to kill his father, after hearing the father's offer to him. Nate wakes up in the grey goblin's garden shed. They are hiding from the city's watch. They determine what happened and decide to leave Great Glade and travel to Hive, where the "Professor's" brother used to attend the Sumpwood Bridge Academy. They travel to the man who is going to take them to Midwood Decks, a settlement where they can charter a ship to Hive. As they leave the Great Glade they are shot down and are forced to continue the journey on foot. On the journey the Banderbear makes a shelter for them every night, but during their journey they are attacked by Wig Wigs. Nate manages to fight them off by using sky crystals to scare the Wig Wigs away. They then reach Midwood Docks where they meet a pilot that drives a sumpwood vehicle called the Varis Lodd. The vehicle is reminiscent of the flight machines in the second age of flight. They witness a pro hiver murder another citizen and escape as quickly as they can. When they reach Hive they go to the Sumpwood Academy and stay there, while trying to find Eudoxia's father. In this period they find out that he has been captured by the Gyle goblins and their Gross Mother. To rescue him they steal some military outfits but during the escape they are seen by a drill sergeant and are drafted into the military, where they are trained for the battle with the Great Glade. When they reach Midwood Docks they fight the Great Glade army, while the Hive army is all but wiped out and Eudoxia had been shot above the ear. After Nate is knocked out at Midwood Decks, he wakes up on a sky ship heading to Riverrise, because it is the only place that can heal Eudoxia's wound as it is slowly killing her. On the journey the ship is described and landmarks are pointed out and Keris, Twig's daughter, is mentioned as they go over the lake where she met the Great Blueshell Clam, as she is the only being other than the Webfoot Goblins to meet with it. They get to the Thorn Gate and the librarian scholar leaves them to tell Eudoxia's father of her fate. Nate and a waif guide travel to the city of Riverrise where they meet two gabtrolls and travel together. When they get to Riverrise it is revealed that the two gabtrolls work for Golderayce, the absolute ruler of Riverrise. A doctor comes and gets the bullet out of Eudoxia's head but needs to give her medicine which, after a couple of weeks, doesn't work. Nate decides to break into the keep to get pure Riverrise water instead of the less powerful stuff that they have to live with. Nate breaks in with the gabtrolls' help but Goldrayce finds out and pursues him. Just as he is about to kill Nate with a dart, a caterbird knocks the dart back which kills Goldrayce. Nate reaches the spring where he sees a gravestone for Maugin the stone pilot, and meets up with Twig Verginix and Rook Barkwater. It is revealed that Twig was flown back to Riverrise by the Caterbird after being mortally wounded during the battle with the Tower of Night. Upon his arrival he saw his former Stone Pilot, Maugin - but jealous of his love for her, Golderayce killed her just before they were reunited. He then goaded Twig with the fact that they would never be together again. Years later Rook traveled to Riverrise to see if Twig was waiting for him, and was ambushed. He managed to shoot Golderayce, hence leaving him the way he looks. Twig and Rook lived there for years, waiting for Nate to reach them. When he did, a great storm came that picked up both Twig and Rook and there, waiting for them, was the young Quintinius Verginix. Nate managed to escape, and released the healing waters of Riverrise. Eudoxia is healed, as well as Galston Prade who was dying of phraxlung, a cough contracted in the phraxmines, where Galston once worked. They return home where they meet their friends, and they travel towards the Edge where Old Undertown used to be. Along the way they meet two Shrykes, which tell them they are heading to a city of shiny spires. It turns out to be Sanctaphrax, which had blown back to where it was after Twig cut the Anchor Chain. It looked exactly as it did before, and the group are eager to explore it. When they reach the landing, they are greeted by Linius Pallitax the former Most High Academe, which worries the Professor, as he knows that Linius Pallitax had died after the fire in his Palace. The Professor visits the library where he meets his brother. They then discover that all the people on the rock are gloamglozers, created by the original which hunted Twig, and while the Professor's brother describes it, he is killed. The original gloamglozer plans to kill Nate when he realizes that Nate is related to Quint, whom he swore to destroy, and releases him. The gloamglozer reveals his illusion; Sanctaphrax is actually in an advanced state of ruin. The Caterbird saves Nate and takes the old painting of Quint. Shortly afterward, three golden objects fall down which the gloamglozers are attracted to, and it is then that Quint, Twig and Rook emerge. Quint, Rook and Twig kill the gloamglozers. Nate then talks to Quint, Twig and Rook. They explain that none of them had a proper death; Quint disappeared into a storm, Twig and Rook lived as immortals. Gloamglozers were attracted to them because of the years of pain they'd had. Shortly afterward they disappear again, after telling Nate that their stories were over, but his is just beginning. It is revealed that the Edge has always been seeded with life, by glisters. The first glister became the Sanctaphrax rock. The second became the great Blueshell clam. The third became the Caterbird. All life began this way, except the gloamglozer, and with its creation came the disease affecting flight rocks, known as stone sickness. Nate and the Professor both decide to go over the Edge. The others stay in the ruins of Sanctaphrax and build the city again as it always should have been. When the city is restored they will bring back its population, and the new Phraxdocks, which are located where Old Undertown used to be. fr:La Guerre du phrax
21909903	/m/05p6hh0	Catching Fire	Suzanne Collins	2009-09-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 After winning the 74th Hunger Games in the previous novel, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark return home to District 12, the poorest sector in the country of Panem. On the day that Katniss and Peeta are to start a "Victory Tour" of the country, she is visited by President Snow. After agreeing not to lie to each other, President Snow explains that he is angry with her for breaking the rules at the end of the last Hunger Games, which permitted them both to win. President Snow tells Katniss that when she defied the Capitol, she inspired rebellion in the districts. The first stop on the Victory Tour is District 11, the home of Katniss's friend and ally in the Hunger Games, Rue, before she died. During the ceremony, Katniss delivers a quick speech to the people of District 11, thanking them for their tributes. When she is done, an old man whistles a tune that Katniss used in the arena to tell Rue that she was safe. The song acts as a signal and everyone salutes Katniss using the same gesture that she used to say farewell to Rue. Katniss and Peeta then proceed to travel to all of the twelve districts and the Capitol. During an interview, Peeta proposes to Katniss publicly, hoping to settle the dispute between Katniss and President Snow. Despite this, Katniss learns that their attempts of subduing rebellion in the districts have failed. Shortly after returning to District 12, Katniss encounters two runaways from District 8. They explain a theory that District 13 was not wiped out by the Capitol, due to its residents going underground, and that stock footage of 13 is played instead of new film on television. Later, it is announced that, for the 75th Hunger Games, 24 victors from previous years will be forced to compete once again. This is in honor of the "Quarter Quell": an event that occurs every 25th year of the Games and allows the Capitol to introduce a twist. Knowing that she and Peeta will both be competing in the Games a second time, Katniss decides that she will devote herself to protecting Peeta. However, Peeta is devoted to protecting her. During the Games, Katniss and Peeta join up with two other previous victors, Finnick Odair: a 24-year-old man who successfully survived the Games at the age of 14 and Mags: Finnick's 80-year-old mentor, both from District 4. After Mags's death, Katniss, Peeta and Finnick join forces with Johanna Mason, a sarcastic and often cruel victor from District 7, and Beetee and Wiress, an older couple from District 3 who are said to be "exceptionally smart". Wiress soon proves her genius by revealing to Katniss that the arena is arranged like a clock, with all of the arena's disasters occurring on a timed chart. After Wiress is killed, Katniss learns of Beetee's plan to harness lightning in order to supposedly electrocute two other contenders. In the final chapters, Katniss directs the lightning at the force field that contains the arena, thereby destroying the arena and resulting in her temporary paralysis. When she wakes up, she is being transported to District 13: a place that is widely thought to no longer exist. She is joined by Finnick, Beetee, and Haymitch but learns that Peeta and Johanna have been captured by the Capitol. Katniss is informed that there had been a plan among most of the contestants to break out of the arena and that Beetee had been attempting to destroy the force field in the same way that she did. The book ends when Katniss's best friend, Gale, comes to visit her and informs her that, though he got her family out in time, District 12 has been bombed and destroyed.
21910218	/m/05n03pb	A Civil Action	Jonathan Harr	1996-08-27	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After finding that her child is diagnosed with leukemia, Anne Anderson notices a high incidence of leukemia, a relatively rare disease, in her city. Eventually she gathers other families and seeks a lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, to consider their options. Schlichtmann originally decides not to take the case due to both the lack of evidence and a clear defendant. Later picking up the case, Schlichtmann finds evidence suggesting trichloroethylene (TCE) contamination of the town's water supply by Riley Tannery, a subsidiary of Beatrice Foods; a chemical company, W.R. Grace; and another company named Unifirst. In the course of the lawsuit Schlichtmann gets other attorneys to assist him. He spends lavishly as he had in his prior lawsuits, but the length of the discovery process and trial stretch all of their assets to their limit. Though Unifirst settles for a little over $1 million, the money immediately is invested in the case against Grace and Beatrice. The plaintiffs' case against Grace is far stronger for two reasons: (1) Schlichtmann has personal testimony of a former employee of Grace who had witnessed dumping, and (2) a river between Beatrice's tannery and the contaminated wells make their contribution to the contamination less plausible. The case against Beatrice is dismissed by Judge Skinner. Though Schlichtmann's firm anticipates a much higher settlement, the dire state of its finances forces it to accept settlement from W.R. Grace for $8 million. Schlichtmann disburses the settlement to the families, excluding expenses and attorney's fees (which resulted in approx. $375,000 per family). When some families think Schlichtmann had overbilled expenses, he acquiesces and surrenders more of his fee. Schlichtmann later files for bankruptcy after losing his condo and car; he lives in his office for a time. Schlichtmann eventually practices environmental, civil and personal injury law. A report from the Environmental Protection Agency (which later filed its own lawsuits against the companies based on new evidence) concludes that both companies had contaminated the wells from sludge removed from the site. In 1988 Schlichtmann attempts to reraise the case against Beatrice, but the judge dismisses the case, citing testimony from Beatrice's soil chemist. However, due to the lawsuits brought forward by the Environmental Protection Agency W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods are eventually forced to pay for the largest chemical clean up in the history of the Northeastern United States which cost about $64 million.
21910578	/m/05p0xt3	Canyons	Gary Paulsen	1990-08-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Canyons is a book about two boys. One boy is named Coyote Runs (age 14) and the other boy is Brennan Cole (age 15). The story starts with Brennan making a short narrative about his life and switches back and forth from Brennan and Coyote Runs. Later in the story, the switching ends when Coyote Runs gets shot in the head during his first raid that would, if successful, will make him a man among his Apache tribe. However, he is shot by American soldiers and dies instantly. Nearly two hundred years later, Brennan finds his skull with a bullet hole in its forehead, and becomes obsessive of it. From that point on in the novel, a mystical link connects Brennan's mind with Coyote Runs' spirit. After talking to his old biology teacher, he runs sixty miles in a day and a night to retrieve the skull to the top of a canyon - a place Coyote Runs calls his “medicine place." After a grueling run and chased by so-called rescuers, he gets Coyote Runs' skull back to his medicine place ending the bond and the novel.
21917517	/m/05p574g	Giving Is Living		2009-02-24		 Giving is Living presents a clear, practical guide to making generosity a part of our everyday lives. It shows us how small efforts to reach out to help those in need can make a real difference. Authors (and sisters) Marnie Howard and Tisha Howard write that to function in a world of limited resources and burgeoning demands, we need provide aid to each other. Through the book, the authors explain that generosity does not have to be about giving money, but can freely and easily extend into our everyday lives.
21919680	/m/05p0lnm	Irish Thoroughbred	Nora Roberts	1981-01	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel follows the relationship between Irishwoman Adelia "Dee" Cunnane and American Travis Grant. As the story begins, the young and penniless Dee emigrates to the United States to live with her uncle, Paddy, who works on a large horse farm. Dee's love for animals is evident, and she is given a job working alongside her uncle. Dee has a fiery temper and often argues with Travis, the wealthy farm owner; many of their arguments lead to passionate embraces. Travis later rescues Dee from an attempted rape. When Paddy suffers a heart attack, he becomes very concerned about his mortality and Dee's future. He becomes overwrought and insists that Travis take care of Dee. After privately agreeing to a temporary marriage of convenience, Travis and Dee exchange vows in Paddy's hospital room. As the story progresses, the protagonists become increasingly unhappy, with neither willing to admit their love for the other. Although still unwilling to vocalize their feelings, Dee and Travis appear more confident in their relationship after they finally consummate their marriage. Soon, however, Dee's insecurities are exploited by Travis's sophisticated former girlfriend, Margot, who has returned to the area to win him back. Dee runs away. Travis follows, and the two confess their love and resolve to make their marriage work.
21919854	/m/05p5rjn	Carazamba			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The novel is a narrative describing Guatemala in the 1940s. The book takes the reader to different parts of the country, from the port city of Livingston, Izabal, to the jungle region of Petén, where much of the action occurs. The novel tells the story of the misfortunes of the nameless narrator and his butler Pedro, who come to know Carazamba and her secrets. This book, apart from containing much action and romance, is told in an emotional style and with the sense of the position towards the military government in power in Guatemala in the 1940s.
21923196	/m/05p58t0	Gingersnaps	Cathy Cassidy	2008		 The story starts with Ginger, an overweight child with no friends and red hair. Then the book forwards to when she's 12, popular and confident, having lost weight, found make-up, and hair-straighteners, and with a best friend, Shannon. Ginger is happy, until she and Shannon befriend a lonely girl from Ginger's old school, Emily Croft. Ginger finds that Shannon likes Emily more than her, making her upset, and breaking their friendship. Meanwhile, Ginger meets Sam, a boy at her school that doesn't wear uniform and ditches class often. Shannon doesn't like him and thinks he's weird (Ginger later says that Shannon doesn't like him because he's the only boy that doesn't fall to her feet) but Ginger starts to, and they are secretly together. Mr. Hunter, their English teacher (who everyone likes but Sam, and Shannon has a crush on) announces that they will make a school magazine (S'cool). Shannon is the Editor. After the magazine is completed, the students throw a release party which falls on Shannon's 13th birthday. Shannon's parents aren't home at the party, so some of her friends bring in beer, and soon everyone starts to get drunk except Emily and Ginger. Mr. Hunter arrives and tries to calm things down, but it doesn't work. Sam also comes and Shannon tells him to get lost, and says that Ginger thinks he's weird and is too nice to tell him. Ginger is shocked and Sam gets hurt and leaves. Ginger ends up crying. Shannon gets rejected by Mr. Hunter and then becomes upset. Soon a fight starts up when the student photographer, Jas Kapoor, starts taking pictures of the party (part of his idea for the next issue of the magazine, The truth behind teen parties) and he takes a picture of Andy Collins drinking and smoking with Shannon on his leg and also a picture of ginger and Sam about to kiss under the staircase. Soon a neighbour calls the police, and Ginger calls Shannon's parents. Back at school, Ginger gets called to the principal's office. Her parents are called in too. She doesn't know what she is in trouble for. The principal brings out a picture from the party with Mr.Hunter and his arm over her shoulder (which was just Mr. Hunter trying to comfort her after everything started to go wrong)and they ask her many questions but when Jas Kapoor was called in he said that the picture was edited and this never happened. Soon Shannon starts telling everyone lies about Mr.Hunter that he was after herself and Ginger, and parents get worried about having Mr.Hunter teaching their children. Soon Mr.Hunter leaves, even though he didn't do anything. Six weeks after the party, Shannon talks to Ginger saying that she should come hang out with her again (Ginger has become friends with people Shannon call 'freaks', Sam and Ginger and has now started dating openly) but Ginger refuses, and later thinks that Shannon is the one at loss. Afterward, Shannon gets a new 'friend' Nisha Choudhury, which in Ginger's words, is 'an experiment, like Emily, and me.' But Ginger is happy with her new boyfriend and the band all of them started.
21925888	/m/05pcrbf	M or F?	Lisa Papademetriou	2005	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Frannie Falconer has a crush on someone. For once, it's on someone who doesn't look like a Museum of Natural History exhibit- hot vegetarian volunteer Jeffrey Osbourne, who even her gay best friend and 'brain twin' Marcus Beauregard can't find anything to laugh about. She's chronically shy around him, though, so Marcus suggests that she chat with him online, as it takes away some of the nausea of face-to-face conversation. Even that doesn't work, so Marcus decides to 'help out' a little- by taking over the keyboard and writing the conversations for her. At first, this works out perfectly, because Frannie's hovering over his shoulder making sure he doesn't do anything stupid. Later, however, Marcus becomes tempted to continue on these conversations when Frannie's not around using her screen name--and it becomes unclear exactly who Jeffrey likes- Marcus or Frannie. Meanwhile, Frannie and Jeffrey's so-called 'relationship' is suffering—as chronicled with such madcap adventures as Marcus signing Frannie up for the school carnival's "Shoot the Freak" booth while he's online talking to Jeffrey. Frannie begins to worry that Marcus may be jealous of her spending so much time with Jeffrey and his group, especially after Jeffrey's best friend Glenn makes a somewhat nasty homophobic joke. Eventually, however, Frannie finds out that Marcus has been posing as her online, and they get into a huge fight. She calls Jenn, one of her other friends, and they realize that Jeffrey wasn't falling for Frannie at all, but actually for Marcus, who he thought was Frannie. This leads them to believe that Jeffrey might be gay. Frannie decides to find out by trying to seduce Jeffrey by wearing a negligee and serving him ginseng-laced hot cacao, but when he throws up, she decides he must be gay. Marcus and Frannie reconcile, and she tells him of her suspicions of Jeffrey's sexuality. They decide to take Jeffrey to a meeting of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance, but this doesn't give them any information. Marcus decides to try and hook up with Jeffrey. The next day, Frannie is waiting outside of the Lincoln Park Cinema, waiting for Marcus to arrive so they can see a special showing of King Kong. To her surprise, Glenn, Jeffrey's best friend, shows up, telling her that Marcus told him to go there. Marcus calls, telling Frannie he has a flat and will be 'unable to make it,' and Frannie realizes what Marcus is going to do—and that he's trying to set her and Glenn up. She tells Glenn about it, and he reveals to her that he's gay, denying the fact that Jeffrey is. Frannie puts two and two together and realizes that Marcus is about to make the 'most humiliating mistake of his life' by trying to hit on Jeffrey. They rush over to Buckingham Fountain, where Marcus is just about to kiss Jeffrey. Everything gets sorted out, and Jeffrey confesses that he needed help with the online conversations as well, so Glenn helped him, and eventually the same thing that happened with Marcus and Frannie happened with them as well. Jeffrey and Frannie walk off, while Glenn talks to Marcus and eventually kisses him. Meanwhile, Frannie tells Jeffrey that they would be better off as friends. In the end, Glenn ends up with Marcus, the German girl Astrid is still hitting on Jeffrey, and Frannie ends up with a freaky quasi-cowboy she met at a line-dancing place Marcus's grandmother made them go.
21927965	/m/05p8q66	Just David	Eleanor H. Porter	1916	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 David is a ten-year old boy who plays the violin and does not know his last name. He leads an idyllic life in the mountains with his father, until his father becomes gravely ill, forcing them to go down into the valley. With his father's health worsening, they spend the night in a barn. Just before he dies, the father gives David a large number of gold coins, telling him to hide them until they are needed. David plays the violin to soothe his "sleeping father" and is found by Simeon Holly and his wife. Realizing the man is dead, they try to figure out who David is, but all he can tell them is that he is "just David." David is unable to tell them his last name, his father's name, or if he has any relatives. They find some letters on the dead man, but the signature on it is illegible. The couple reluctantly let him stay with them as he reminds them of their own son, John, whom they no longer speak with. David learns to adjust to live in the village, taking one of his two violins with him wherever he goes and "playing" the world around him, such as playing "the sunset" and "the flowers," and using his music to express his feelings. His innocence and musical skills charm the villagers and change several of their lives, uniting in marriage two childhood sweethearts who had grown apart. He also changes the Hollys, healing Simeon's heart enough that he reconnects with his son and allows him to come visit with his new wife and child. During the visit, they learn that David's violins are quite valuable. His own is an Amati and his father's, which he had loaned to a blind friend, a Stradivarius. Reading the old letter from David's father, John recognizes the signature and realizes that David's father was a world-famous violinist who had disappeared with his son after his wife's death. David is sent to be reunited with his relatives and to study the violin. He becomes famous and wealthy, but continues to visit the Hollys every year to play for them.
21936778	/m/05p89by	The Colour	Rose Tremain	2003	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Joseph and Harriet Blackstone, and Joseph's mother Lilian, are immigrants from England on the SS Albert into the South Island of New Zealand in 1860s. After settling the two women into accommodation in Christchurch, Joseph travels to the foothills near the Okuku river to build their Cob House. Joseph returns to Christchurch once the house has been built and the three of them set off to start their new lives on their farm. The harsh first winter brings with it problems which threaten the viability of their farm, but Joseph's chance finding of gold in the nearby creek changes the situation. Not telling Harriet about the find, Joseph abandons the farm and travels by boat to Hokitika on the West Coast of the South Island where major gold strikes have occurred. After Lilian's death, Harriet also travels to Hokitika and delivers that news to Joseph. The search for gold, the 'colour', goes on in difficult conditions. Joseph's encounters with Will Sefton, a young man whom he met on the boat bringing them to the West Coast, and Pao Yi, a Chinese gardener befriended by Harriet, add flavour to the dynamics of the searching couple's relationship which has become distant and strained. Joseph's guilt surrounding events in England prior to their emigration impact on this separation.
21939411	/m/05p3z0c	A Fringe of Leaves	Patrick White	1976	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 {| cellpadding="5" style="width:40%; float:right; font-size:85%;border-collapse:collapse; background:transparent; border-style:none;" |- | width="20" valign=top | | align="left" |... she fell back upon the dust, amongst intimations of the nightmare which threatened to re-shape itself around her. Her trembling only gradually subsided as she lay fingering the ring threaded into her fringe of leaves... |- | colspan="3" | A Fringe of Leaves, p 223 |}A young Cornish woman, Mrs Ellen Roxburgh, travels to the Australian colonies in the early 1830s with her much older husband, Austin, to visit the &#34;black sheep&#34; of the family, Austin&#39;s brother Garnet Roxburgh. After witnessing the brutalities of Van Diemens Land, the Roxburghs embark on their return trip to England on The Bristol Maid. However, the ship runs aground on the coral reef off Fraser Island on the coast of what is now Queensland. Ellen is the only survivor from the leaky vessel in which the passengers and crew travel to the shore. She is rescued by the aboriginal people of the island, and she later meets Jack Chance, a convict who has escaped from Moreton Bay (now Brisbane), the brutal penal settlement to the south. It is Chance who escorts her through the dangerous coastal territory south to the outskirts of the settlement, but who refuses to accompany her further and returns to his exile. She returns to &#34;civilisation&#34; transformed and tormented by her experience with Garnet in Van Diemen&#39;s Land, with the aboriginal people, and with Chance. The novel sets in sharp relief the distinctions between men and women, whites and blacks, the convicts and the free, and English colonists and Australian settlers. The contrast between Ellen&#39;s rural Cornish background and the English middle-class she has married into is also highlighted.
21941565	/m/05p36qk	Bluebeard's Egg				 In this collection, Atwood explores the politics of sex and heterosexual relationships, examining the emotions, betrayals, and casualties of such relationships. Four of the stories in the collection depart from this theme to instead present presumably autobiographic ruminations on the narrator’s childhood influences. The majority of these stories are set in downtown Toronto.
21942254	/m/05p55gh	A Girl from Lübeck	Bruce Marshall	1962	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Versory, a literary lecturer engaged in spreading English culture (“From Beowulf to Dylan Thomas”) throughout Germany, needs a ride after delivering a talk to a group of matrons. Imagine his surprise when his driver is the gorgeous Hannelore, a girl in a thousand. Her blond beauty and charming personality ensnare his heart and imagination. They arrange to meet again in Paris, to attend a meeting of literary lecturers from other countries. It is in Paris that Versory’s suspicions are aroused. How does she afford her expensive clothes and other habits? Hannelore claims that there is no way to contact her, that she will get in touch with him. Even though she contacts him regularly and her affection for him is obvious, he wonders if Hannelore is what she seems. And for that matter, Versory himself is not what he appears to be, his career as a lecturer is actually just a convenient cover for other activities. In fact, in this fast-moving and paradoxical story, few people are what they seem to be, even to themselves. Is the lecturer from Russia interested only in stimulating an appreciation of Russian literature? And what is his connection with the gentleman from South America? What is Hannelore doing in the elegant establishment of Mme. Putiphar? Where is Vesory’s chief taking her in the sports car -- and why? Does she really love Versory or is she only using him? The answers to these questions are revealed as "A Girl from Lübeck" unfolds. It is a story with several levels: it is a romance, a tale of suspense and intrigue, a lighthearted satire, but it is also a parable. For in the end, the mystery surrounding the girl from Lübeck is cleared away and the meaning of Faith and Grace is revealed.
21950317	/m/05pcb34	The Slap	Christos Tsiolkas	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At a barbecue in suburban Melbourne, a man slaps a three year old boy across the face. The child, Hugo, has been misbehaving without any intervention by his parents, "the steely-eyed Rosie and the wimpish Gary". The slapper is Harry, cousin of the barbecue host and adulterous businessman whose slightly older son, Rocco, is being threatened by Hugo. This event sends the other characters "into a spiral, agonising and arguing over the notion that striking a child can ever be justified. Some believe a naughty boy should be taught some discipline, others maintain the police ought to be brought in to investigate a common assault" with a range of positions in between.
21955993	/m/05p1304	Riven				 Brady Darby's Story Sixteen-year-old Brady Wayne Darby and his eight-year-old brother Peter live in Touhy Avenue Trailer-Park with their alcoholic chain-smoking mother Erlene; Erlene's husband had abandoned her shortly after Peter's birth. Brady, who dreams of buying a car and fleeing the trailer-park, has obtained a part-time job sweeping up the local laundrette—from which he often takes a share of the coins in the machines' boxes to supplement his wages. At school, he is on the Football Team; however, he generally does not perform well academically, which causes him to be cut from the athletic squad—with a suggestion from the coach to try the Drama Club. Thomas Carey's Story Fortysix-year-old Thomas Carey, a pastor who has never been long at one church, finds a posting in Georgia. While going there, he and his wife Grace visit their twentyfour-year-old daughter Ravinia, a law student at Emory University of whose spiritual position they have great concern. The Careys are eventually driven out of this posting by the Selection Board chairman, who has decided hypocritically (as his own five sons have a combined-total of eight marriages) that Thomas Carey is a poor example of a Christian, having not raised Ravinia properly. They eventually move to Adamsville, OH where Carey is appointed as the chaplain of the Adamsville State Prison, a super-maximum-security facility which houses a death row. ASP's warden, Frank "Yanno" (so nicknamed due to his oft starting sentences with "yeah, no"--a nickname he dislikes to hear) LeRoy allows inmates condemned to death to choose their method of execution, assuming they will choose between: * hanging (he boasts to Carey that ASP is one of the few prisons to still have a gallows) * electrocution * gas-chamber * lethal-injection When they reach Adamsville, Grace Carey is diagnosed as having a severe form of leukemia, for which inducing remission is possible for short-term, but not permanently. Brady Darby's Conversion After Brady, now 30, is convicted of the horrific murder of twentythree-year-old Katie North (whom he believed to be in love with him), he is sentenced to death speedily—and though there is a mandatory appeals process which can take several (at least three) years, he informs his lawyer that he will be uncooperative so that his execution will be guaranteed. He is taken to ASP in Adamsville. After his 90-day administrative-break-in period, Brady asks for a meeting with Carey, and is mailed a literature packet (which includes The Romans Road and a modern-English translation of the New Testament). Within a month, he asks for a personal visit from Carey so that he can "confess Christ with his mouth". About six months into his time at ASP, Brady chooses the method of his execution—crucifixion, complete with thorn-crown and spear-pierce of his side after his death—which surprises not only Carey and Ravinia, but even Yanno who initially reacts that Brady must choose from the four methods he has in-situ. Ravinia is, however, able to persuade Yanno on this, as Brady's idea is to show exactly how ugly and cruel that first-century Roman punishment was. As Ohio's Director Of Corrections and its Governor argue against the appeals—successfully—and anti-death-penalty activists protest against the planned execution, the Government Of Israel donates a cross specifying it as "roughly of original Roman dimensions". Eventually, Brady's request to be crucified is granted—but his requests for thorn-crown and post-mortem piercing are denied. As the date draws closer, Brady sees his mother claim on TV that she "had raised him to know Jesus" and that she is "glad he is coming back to his faith", and then wailing that she cannot fly from her current address in Florida to visit her son. The International Cable Network, which is covering the execution and its leadup, flies her to Adamsville for a visit. Brady, meanwhile, reads the Bible aloud for other inmates, hoping that some of them will also convert.
21956305	/m/05pbp5g	Shangri-La			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the mid-21st century, the international committee decided to forcefully reduce CO2 emission levels to mitigate the global warming crisis. As a result, the economic market was transferred mainly into the trade of carbon. A great earthquake destroys much of Japan, yet the carbon tax placed on the country is not lifted, so Tokyo is turned into the world’s largest "jungle-polis" that absorbs carbon dioxide. Project Atlas is commenced to plan the rebuilding of Tokyo and oversee the government organization, which the Metal Age group opposes due to its oppressive nature. However, Atlas is only built with enough room for 3,500,000 people and most people are not allowed to migrate into the city. The disparity between the elite within Atlas and the refugees living in the jungles outside of its walls set up the background of the story.
21958341	/m/05p8ksh	Typewriter in the Sky	L. Ron Hubbard		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character, Mike de Wolf, is a struggling pianist in New York. His friend, Horace Hackett, is an author and popular pulp fiction writer, who writes about Mike as the villain in his book, Mike enters the bathroom of Hackett's apartment, and hears the sound of someone typing on a typewriter. Mike learns he is regarded in this world as the villain, Spanish Admiral Miguel de Lobo, a "pirate potboiler". He knows that the villains in stories written by Hackett often do not come to a favorable end, and is therefore eager to safely leave the realm to which he was transported. The story takes place on the high seas in the Caribbean during the 17th century with a conflict among colonists. Hackett writes under pressure, as he is facing a deadline. He falls in love with a woman in the story, but grows frustrated after realizing that she is just another of Hackett's fictional creations. Mike looks up into the sky in search of this mystical device or its controller, "Abruptly Mike de Wolfe stopped. His jaw slackened a trifle and his hand went up to his mouth to cover it. His eyes were fixed upon the fleecy clouds which scurried across the moon. Up there &ndash; God? In a dirty bathrobe?"
21961539	/m/05p09w5	The Mistletoe Mystery				 This story begins when Nancy and George go to meet Nancy's friend and George's cousin, Bess who has been hired by Special Effects to decorate Albemarle's Department store for the Christmas holidays. The three girls, there then meet Bess' old conselor at camp when she was 10 whose name was Ali Marie. She is at first thrilled that Ali Marie is working at Albemarle's. But then some Ellen-Louise dresses are swiped. Ali is accused of the theft, since she was the last person to see them. Bess is sure of Ali's innocence, so she calls for Nancy's help to find the thief. They have many suspects and many misleading clues.
21961901	/m/05p8p2s	The Riding Club Crime	Carolyn Keene	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Nancy, George and Elsa are enjoying a horse ride, when Nancy's horse falls into a hole while attempting a jump over a post-and-rail, four-foot jump. Elsa is a counselor at Green Spring Pony Club summer camp. The camp has been vandalised by unknown persons. The owner, Mrs Rogers, is getting worried. Nancy, disguised as a counselor, tries to figure out who the culprit is. As more incidents happen, the more Nancy realizes she has to work quickly. Will Nancy and her friends be able to keep the Green Spring Farm going?
21962103	/m/05n_87n	Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock	H. R. F. Keating	1968-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Inspector Ghote is tasked by his Superintendent to attend the London police conference and present a prepared speech. On arrival at London airport Inspector Ghote is met by his cousins, Mr and Mrs Datta, who run a London restaurant. Their niece, 17 year old Ranee, known as the Peacock for her brightness, has disappeared. The family suspect her boyfriend, 35 year old pop music star Johnny Bull. An interview with the girl's friends reveals that they believe she has been killed but do not know who by. Ghote visits the singer in his flat where he is told that Johnny has not seen the Peacock since she disappeared and that Johnny has taken up with another girl, Susan. Johnny is a self-confessed opium user and informs Ghote that the Peacock herself was a drug user who acquired her drugs from a local public house known as the "Robin's Nest". At the "Robin's Nest", Ghote extracts a confession from the owner of having supplied opium to Peacock. He learns of a protection racket being run by the Smith brothers and is surprised to find that the Peacock's uncle, Vidur Datta, is an opium user. Later, Ghote manages to confront the Smith brothers at their home (where they live with their mother), only to find himself in immediate danger. He is rescued by a passing policeman who advises Ghote against interfering in an investigation being conducted by the British Police and suggests in a patronising manner that Ghote should stay in busy well-lit streets. Ghote decides to take up the matter with the local police station where he encounters a prejudiced desk sergeant. Believing he has reached a dead end to his enquiries, Ghote decides to drop the case. The Peacock's aunt, Mrs Datta, quickly changes his mind by making it an issue of professional pride. Ghote keeps watch on the Smith bother's home the following night and gains access while they are out. While talking to their mother he learns they were in police custody before and after the disappearance of the Peacock. Returning to the "Robin's Nest" Ghote accuses the owner of lying and attempting to steer him into harm's way. Ghote satisfies himself that the man could not have murdered the Peacock however. Ghote attempts to interview Johnny Bull again, but fails to get past Susan. He learns that Johnny will be at a particular recording studio that afternoon. He returns to the conference where he listens to a superb presentation and learns that his own presentation must follow it the next day. He begins to become nervous about addressing a crowd. At the recording studio, Ghote conceals himself and overhears enough from Susan to realise that Johnny Bull could not have kidnapped or murdered the Peacock. When he returns to his cousins he informs them of his findings so far and is promptly scolded for spending so much time finding out who has not kidnapped or murdered the girl. The next day Ghote has developed a cold as a result of the British climate. He finds the conference has moved into a much larger and grander room for the last day. His speech will be the last of the conference and he becomes increasingly nervous as the time for him to speak. However, the man who is to introduce Ghote is twenty minutes late, leaving him in a state of consternation. Finally Ghote gives his presentation and makes an appalling job of it. Frustrated and angry at everything that has happened, he adds what he has learned about Johnny Bull using opium and walks out. That evening at his cousin's restaurant, Ghote realises he has solved the mystery of the Peacock's disappearance. Ghote accuses his cousin, Vidur Datta, of murdering Ranee "The Peacock" Datta because she was blackmailing him with his secret opium habit. The body is concealed under the restaurant's rubbish. No sooner has Ghote made the accusation and secured a confession than the British Police arrive, eager to congratulate him on the information he supplied about Johnny Bull. Johnny has been arrested and confessed to smuggling drugs in the Indian harmonium he has been using in his latest songs.
21979357	/m/05p77d2	The Scarlet Empire			{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 John Walker is a young American socialist, active and dedicated. Yet his personal poverty, and the slow progress of his cause, leave him despondent. In a fit of depression he decides on suicide by drowning: he hurls himself off "the long pier...called the Suicides' Promenade" at Coney Island. He loses consciousness&mdash;but is revived by a man in a strange diving suit; Walker at first mistakes him for a kind of fish/man. In fact, the man is a surgeon engaged in research; he explains to Walker that they are in Atlantis, at the bottom of the sea, and gives the American a cursory explanation of the nature of Atlantean society. (He cannot say much; Atlanteans are limited to a thousand words of speech per day, as measured by the "verbometers" they wear.) Socialist literature found in Walker's pockets suggests to the Atlantean authorities that Walker might be acceptable to their regime. (A few other Americans have penetrated to Atlantis in the past, though no one from the Earth's surface is there when Walker arrives.) The American is assigned to a barracks; the doctor who serves it is appointed his guide in all things Atlantean (and is given a dispensation to speak more than 1000 words per day). Together, the surgeon and the doctor become Walker's closest companions in his new life. The people of the domed city dress in red; their buildings, and even the cigars they smoke, are of the same color, giving their society its nickname, the Scarlet Empire. At first, Walker (or Citizen No. 489 ADG, as he is designated) is delighted to have awakened in a socialist state; but his enthusiasm quickly fades as he experiences the capricious irrationality and the privations of life in a dictatorship of the proletariat. He soon learns that his guide, the doctor, shares his repulsion from Atlantean life. Walker meets, and quickly falls in love with, a beautiful young woman, No. 7891 OCD; since she has no name, he comes to call her Astraea&mdash;"the last goddess of heaven to visit the earth". Yet he is shocked to learn that his new love is condemned as an "atavar" (from "atavism"), a reactionary individualist, a dissenter who cannot or will not conform to the dictates of society. As such, she is confined to an insane asylum (another anticipation of Soviet times). Atavars are given chances to conform; the recalcitrant ones are fed to a kraken outside the dome of Atlantis, in a ceremony reminiscent of the Christian sacrifices in the Colosseum of ancient Rome. The plot quickly resolves into Walker's struggle to rescue Astraea and escape back to the surface. The Atlanteans keep all they recover from the surface world in their Hall of Curiosities; its contents include everything from ships' figureheads and waterlogged books to enormous heaps of jewels and gold coins. In his research work, the surgeon comes into possession of a sunken miniature submarine; Walker and the doctor decide to use the vessel to escape. Their plan reaches a crisis when Walker is caught consorting with the imprisoned Astraea; the two are sentenced to be devoured by the kraken. Yet the hero and his friends manage a suspenseful getaway from the Atlanteans. Walker, Astraea, the doctor and the surgeon depart in their (treasure-laden) submarine; in a confrontation with the attacking kraken, they fire a torpedo, which kills the monster and also punctures the dome of Atlantis, destroying the city. Walker and friends reach dry land. With the advantage of enormous wealth (the appropriated Atlantean treasure), they manage to make their way through the individualistic capitalist world. The surgeon and doctor distinguish themselves in science and medicine; Astraea and Walker enjoy a long happy marriage. After her eventual death, Walker writes the story of their adventure.
21981536	/m/05p4rxx	The Liquidator				 In Paris in 1944 Tank Corps Sergeant Boysie Oakes kills two Germans attempting to assassinate an Intelligence Corps officer named Mostyn. Twenty years later Mostyn's memories have transformed Oakes (who is in reality cowardly and hedonistic) into a fearless master assassin though nothing could be further from the truth. Mostyn recruits Oakes into the Secret Service where after a training course he is given an enviable lifestyle. Oakes' function is to "liquidate" security risks for the State. Oakes hires a mild mannered professional assassin to do his dirty work for him. Going for a "dirty weekend" leads to Boysie being captured by enemy agents who involve him in an assassination plot.
21981642	/m/05p1gqj	Falling from Grace		2006	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In this dramatic tale of a girl gone missing, Harry's multilayered novel explores familial relationships and the nature of truth. This award-winning Australian writer opens her story with sisters Annie and Grace squeezing in one last game of "Tracking" with their dad at the seashore, the beach by Point Nepean. There is a storm coming and it is getting dark. Annie, younger by eleven months and more agile than her sister, Grace, scrambles up the side of a steep hill while Grace struggles when suddenly the ground falls away. Hampered by bad weather, the search is further thwarted by the police's conviction that the young man who found Grace's backpack on the beach may have had something to do with her disappearance.
21984280	/m/05p3g_7	Glubbslyme	Jacqueline Wilson	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A girl called Rebecca has just had a row with her best friend Sarah. Then Sarah goes off with another girl. After that, Rebecca comes across a witches' pond and meets a toad called Glubbslyme. Glubbslyme is not just a normal toad, he is magic from his late master. They embark on a magical adventure together and try and get Sarah and Rebecca back together.
21986477	/m/05p2q7w	A Spell of Winter				 Abandoned by their parents and brought up by the servants on their grandfather's estate, Catherine and Rob have no one but each other. However, as their love for each other oversteps boundaries, the siblings' relationship becomes chaotic as the state of the outside world heading for World War I. As the world around Catherine changes dramatically, will she find the will to break the spell of winter and leave her isolated world?
21988157	/m/05p1jrv	When Red Is Black	Qiu Xiaolong	2004-07	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is taking a vacation, in part because he is annoyed at his boss, the Party Secretary Li, but also because a triad-connected businessman has made him an offer he can not refuse. For what seems to be a fortune and with no apparent strings attached (like a laptop or medical care for his mother) he is asked to translate into English a business proposal for the New World, a complex of shops and restaurants to be built in Central Shanghai evoking nostalgia for the "glitter and glamour" of the '30s. A murder is reported: Chen is reluctant to shorten his working holiday, so Sergeant Yu is forced to take charge of the investigation. A novelist has been murdered in her room. At first it seems that only a neighbor could have committed the crime, but when someone else confesses, Detective Yu cannot believe that he is really the murderer. It is only when Chen returns and starts to investigate the past that he finds answers. And Chen also discovers how the triad has played him. This is the third critically acclaimed Inspector Chen mystery set in post-Cultural Revolution China.
21990161	/m/05p6z21	A Case of Two Cities				 Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is assigned a high-profile anti-corruption case, one in which the principal figure has long since fled to the United States and beyond the reach of the Chinese government. But he left behind the organization and his partners-in-crime, and Inspector Chen is charged to uncover those responsible and act as necessary to end the corruption ring though he is not sure whether he's actually being set up to fail. The investigation takes him from Shanghai all the way to the U.S. where he meets his colleague and counterpart from the U.S. Marshall's Service, Inspector Catherine Rhon.
21993904	/m/05pbwpw	The Great Eight		2009-01-06	{"/m/012lzc": "Self-help"}	 Gold Medal Olympian and Hall of Fame figure skater, Scott Hamilton has overcome overcome multiple life-threatening challenges and disappointments in his life In this autobiographical book, Hamilton uses stories from his life to illustrate the principles that have shaped his life. Hamilton lists eight principles that he states will help readers live happier lives: * Fall, Get Up, and Land Your First Jumps * Trust Your Almighty Coach * Make Your Losses Your Wins * Keep the Ice Clear * Think Positive, Laugh, and Smile Like Kristi Yamaguchi * Win by Going Last * Learn a New Routine * Stand in the Spotlight
22004824	/m/05pbx2y	The Broken Anchor	Carolyn Keene		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Nancy receives an invitation to the Sweet Spring Resort on Anchor island, Bahamas.
22006354	/m/05p9dmt	The Car	Gary Paulsen	1994-03-30	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Terry Anders is a fourteen year old boy who lives in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents are constantly fighting and arguing. One day, his mom calls saying she has left his dad. During the evening of the same day, his dad calls saying he has left his mom. Therefore, Terry was left alone. Terry then built a car that his dad got from his job being a mechanic to drive to Oregon to live with an uncle. After his first day of driving, he comes upon a man named Waylon Jackson who was a Vietnam war veteran. Together they set out to Omaha to visit Waylon's friend, Wayne Holtz. When they arrive in Omaha, Wayne installs a turbocharger into the kit-car and he joins the journey on a Harley-Davidson he named Baby. They then travel to South Dakota to visit their friend, Samuel. Samuel is a very old man who speaks about random historical facts. While they were there, he talks about the Civil War and General Custer. Their next stop takes them to a small town, still in South Dakota. There, Waylon plays poker and wins $6,000 or $7,000. He then gives $6,000 each to Wayne and Terry. The threesome continues to travel west. In a fast-food place in Wyoming, they come upon four cocky cow boys. After taunting Waylon, he beats one of them up and rushes out to the car with Wayne and Terry. They continue west being chased by the bullriders. Eventually, they stop and proceed to beat the rest of them up. However, the police were on their trail so Terry escaped, because Wayne and Waylon said that they can handle business, and Terry should get away from the police due to being underage. Heading west for a little while, the novel ends as Terry turns around and decides to help out Waylon and Wayne.
22006659	/m/05pc023	Timoleon Vieta Come Home	Dan Rhodes	2003		 The novel centres around Timoleon Vieta, a little mongrel dog with black and white patches of fur and eyes as pretty as a girl's. Timoleon lives with Cockcroft, a retired, gay composer, who lives in a run-down farmhouse in Umbria financed by the occasional royalties he receives from the theme tunes he wrote. He reminisces on his failed career and former lovers, but is surprised when a man claiming to be a Bosnian shows up at his door with a business card he says Cockcroft gave him in a bar in Florence; Cockcroft often has such drunken weekends when he attempts to pick up men. In return for the occasional odd job and weekly fellatio Cockcroft puts him up, but Timoleon Vieta, who is a good judge of character, takes against the Bosnian, and the dislike is reciprocated. Cockcroft is forced to choose between them and agrees to abandon the dog in Rome. The remainder of the novel is about Timoleon Vieta's journey back home, and the people he briefly comes into contact with, as he tries to make his way back to his beloved Cockcroft.
22008504	/m/05p2thb	Action	Carolyn Keene			 Nancy was playing the part Esther Rackham, the sister of the Rackham brothers, who pulled off a big heist at the Mahoney Anvil Company. This heist put Nancy's hometown River Heights on the map. In the 5th volume of the Nancy Drew series Lights, Camera... a producer came to make a television movie from it named "Stealing Thunder". The production is set back many times. Nancy solved this case and is now ready to play the part of Esther, however, when the cameras start rolling a huge fire breaks out on the set which sets the production back again. Will she be able to solve this mystery before the director says "cut"?
22012816	/m/05p59z3	Videssos cycle	Harry Turtledove			 During an encounter with a Celtic force, a Roman legion is magically transported to another world when the two opposing leader’s swords touch. The Roman force and Celtic leader find themselves in an empire called Videssos. This empire hires them as a mercenary force to help defend their lands from an enemy nation, Yezd. It quickly becomes apparent to the leader of the legionaries, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, that the Empire is rife with political intrigue. With steadfast loyalty to the Emperor and a certain bull-headedness, Marcus manages to safely navigate the particularly dangerous political landscape and advance the place of himself and his men. At a party to celebrate the arrival of the Romans held by the Emperor Mavrikios, Marcus, slightly inebriated, slips on the floor and bumps into the emissary of Yezd, Avshar. He tries to apologize, but is rebuffed and a duel results. Marcus wins, but chooses to spare Avshar rather than kill a helpless man. Avshar then sends an assassin after Marcus, but the assassin fails and the Emperor uses this attack as an excuse to declare war upon Yezd. Avshar leads the enemy army of Yezd nomad warriors against Mavrikios' Videssos soldiers and mercenary forces. When Avshar casts a magic spell at the commander of the left wing, Ortaias Sphrantzes, the entire wing of the army is set into chaos as Ortaias turns his horse and flees at full speed. Only the quick actions of Gaius Philippus, the sub-commander of the legion and the aid of a clever ally Laon Pakhymer kept them from falling to the nomad forces. Mavrikios, seeing his grand army destroyed, led a charge of his personal bodyguards directly at Avshar, hoping that he could at least take the life of this one great enemy. He fails and is struck down. His brother Thorisin, leader of the right wing of the army is forced to flee and Yezd has won the battle. Both Ortaias and Thorisin declare they are emperor of Videssos after the battle, but Ortaias, with the help of his Uncle, controls Videssos the City. Civil war erupts. Eventually, Thorisin emerges victorious as the citizens inside Videssos the City turn on Ortaias and open the gates for Thorisin's troops. It is revealed that the leader of the city guards put in place by Ortaias was none other than Avshar in disguise. Avshar manages to escape the city. In an attempt to bolster his forces, Thorisin sends emissaries of his own to other countries to recruit more mercenaries for his Empire. Unfortunately, before he can organize any such force, a group of his own mercenaries turn on him and declare the western half of the empire their own. Thorisin sends a force, including the Legionaries, to the west to put down the rebelling mercenaries while he dealt with threats to the east. Half the western army turns in favor of the usurping forces and Marcus is forced to take over and do the best that he can to follow Thorisin's orders. He engages in guerrilla tactics that eventually bring down the mercenary usurpers. As he is bringing the leaders of the rebellion back to Thorisin in Videssos the City, he is betrayed by his wife who frees her brother and the rest of the prisoners. He returns to Videssos in shame. While suffering through the betrayal of his wife, Marcus begins a relationship with Alypia, the Emperor Thorisins niece. When discovered, he is hauled to jail to await his fate. Thorisin sentences him to death, but commutes the sentence provided that Marcus, alone, remove from power a heretic to the west. Marcus agrees on the condition that he can openly suit Alypia. Thorisin agrees and sets Marcus on a boat to his destination. After successfully defeating the heretic, Marcus flees the city in front of an advancing barbarian army (his own Legion coming to rescue him.) He signs up with a caravan train and ends up going to Mashiz, capitol of Yezd. There he witnesses the overthrow of the King of Yezd by Avshar. Fleeing Avshar, Marcus manages to escape in the company of an army of Nomads who have come to seek revenge upon the Yezd. Together they flee to the east to find Thorisin and plan a campaign against Avshar and the Yezd. At the final battle, Avshar kills the Videssian Patriarch and seems on the edge of total victory when Marcus and Viridovix touch their blades to one another again and the released magic transports Avshar to another world, apparently Skotos' hell. These acts lead to Marcus being granted title and significant position in the empire and his marriage to Alypia.
22017142	/m/05p6bn_	Don't Judge A Girl By Her Cover	Ally Carter	2009	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When Cammie "The Chameleon" Morgan visits her roommate Macey in Boston, she thinks she's in for an exciting end to her summer break. After all, she's there to watch Macey's father accept the nomination for Vice President of the United States. But because she goes to the world's "best" school (for spies), 'exciting' and 'deadly' are never far apart. Cammie and Macey soon find themselves trapped in a kidnappers' plot, with only their espionage skills to save them. As her junior year begins, Cammie can't shake the memory of what happened in Boston, and even the Gallagher Academy for Young Women doesn't feel like the safe haven it once did. Deep secrets and old boyfriends seem to lurk all around the mansion, as Cammie and her friends struggle to answer the questions: Who is after Macey? and, How can the Gallagher Girls keep her safe? Soon Cammie is joining Bex and Liz as Macey's private security team on the campaign trail. The girls must use their spy training at every turn as the stakes are raised, and Cammie gets closer and closer to the unexpected truth.
22019808	/m/05p70tq	My Life at First Try	Mark Budman			 My Life at First Try follows the character of Alex, who was born in 1950s Soviet Union. Alex hopes for a future where two things come to pass: he becomes a writer and meets his American cousin Annie. He also wants to overcome the bleakness of the Soviet Union and become someone a carefree foreigner akin to some tourists he saw as a child. However as he grows the institutionalized nature of his surroundings dims these dreams. When he and his family moves to America in the 80s, Alex finally gets to fulfill his wish of being a foreigner, only to discover that rather than being carefree, his new life feels alien to him and it's up to him to try to find his own self-fulfillment.
22027244	/m/05p5qxc	The Victim of Prejudice	Mary Hays	1799	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main character, Mary, is brought up by her guardian Mr. Raymond in a loving environment, separate from the prejudiced and patriarchal society of Britain. This unsullied childhood begins to shift, when at the age of 11, two brothers, William and Edmund Pelham, come to live with and be educated by Mr. Raymond. Mary develops a close friendship with William, and as the two grow older, Mr. Raymond sees that he must separate them in order to maintain his promise to the boys' father; that he should keep them from any acquaintance that might negatively affect their future as men of fashion and wealth. The rest of the novel details the trials that Mary encounters upon the death of her benevolent guardian Mr. Raymond, and her subsequent reliance on the charity of those around her.
22029296	/m/04n357t	Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl Adventure!				 A young boy, Hareta, and his friends are trying to find Dialga. Hareta was allowed to live in the woods with Pokémon, which helps him bond with newly captured Pokémon. In book one, Hareta meets Mitsumi, Professor Rowan's helper, and a boy named Jun. Professor Rowan gives Hareta his first Pokémon, a Piplup. In this book, Hareta wins the Coal Badge and meets Team Galactic for the first time. He bites one of Team Galactic's Members as well. Hareta catches a Shinx as well. In book two, Hareta enters his first contest. Later, Mitsumi enters and nearly wins. Hareta then meets Team Galactic again in Celestic Town. Hareta picks a fight with Cyrus, and Cyrus tries to get Hareta to join him. After losing to Cyrus, Hareta lays afloat, only to be rescued by Byron. Hareta challenges Byron and loses. Hareta is then instructed to go to Iron Island to train. There, Hareta meets Riley who gives him an egg. Riley and Hareta then have to beat Team Galactic yet again and Hareta's egg hatches in Riolu. Hareta trains for a month then comes out with an Onix, a Geodude, and a Zubat. Book three contains a large fight between Team Galactic and Hareta over the Legendary Azelf. Hareta once again, with help from all the Gym leaders, defeats Team Galactic. He wins by having Azelf power him with willpower. In book four, Hareta meets gym leader Candice. Hareta wins the battle and capture the legendary Pokémon Regigigas. Then Bryon, Hareta, and other gym leaders try to attack Galactic head quarters, but all except Bryon and Hareta went in to jail. Hareta realized that his best friend Mitsumi joined team Galactic. Hareta fights her and the end of the battle continues in book five. in the end Hareta defeats Mitsumi and goes on to face Cryus but at that time Cryus has collected all three legendary Pokémon and is starting to make the red chain the only object to call Dialga and control him.
22029408	/m/05p4p6v	Amnesia	Douglas Anthony Cooper	1992	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The book is dictated by an unknown narrator and follows Izzy Darlow, a mental hospital employee that volunteers his time in order to make amends for a robbery committed during his youth. It is there that he falls for the mute Katie, a patient at the hospital that had been subjected to extreme sexual abuse.
22029588	/m/04f57xv	Lizzie Zipmouth	Jacqueline Wilson	2000	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Lizzie Zipmouth is about a young girl named Lizzie who moves into a new home with her mother after her once-single mother finds a new boyfriend, Sam. Disgruntled and unhappy about the way these proceedings are going, she doesn't try make friends with Sam's two sons, Rory and Jake, and keeps to herself by not saying a word. Soon, Jake nicknames her 'Lizzie Zipmouth' because of her obvious silence to everyone. It is only when she meets her scary step-great-grandmother that she begins to find a connection with her new family, bonding with Great-Gran over their love of dolls. However, Great-Gran has a bad stroke, and the family is unsure of the outcome. Lizzie, using her Great-Gran's phrases and back-chats, manages to snap Great-Gran out of her ill trance. Soon, Great-Gran is making a full recovery and Lizzie is not so zipmouthed anymore.
22030700	/m/05pcskz	Dragon's Honor				 Captain Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise are sent on a diplomatic mission to complete a treaty for Federation membership with an intriguing world whose government is based on the rule of Imperial China at the height of its ancestral monarchies.
22033194	/m/05p1c1b	Lion of Senet	Jennifer Fallon	2002-10-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This is the first book in the Second Sons Trilogy. The novel is set in the fantasy world of Ranadon, where there is no night time. Two suns orbit the earth and bathe it in light constantly. A religious sect known as the Shadowdancers claim this is the work of the Goddess, a both benign and at times merciless deity whom most in the world believe in. The back story is that many years ago the second sun mysteriously vanished and left Ranadon in the Age of Shadows. At the insistence of the self-appointed High Priestess of the Shadow dancers, Belegren, the lion of Senet, a powerful and devout man named Antonov, sacrificed his baby son Gunta, after which the second sun returned and so it has been ever since. Dirk Provin, the second son of the Duke Wallin Provin of Elcast, saves a wounded sailor from a shipwreck, brought about by a volcanic eruption and consequent earthquake. Through the course of the man's recovery it is revealed that he is in fact, Johan Thorn, the exiled King of Dhevyn who was utterly defeated by Antonov during the Age of Shadows, and is now the most wanted man in Ranadon. News of this reaches the Lion of Senet himself, who arrives with Belegren the High Priestess, on Elcast, and the secret web of lies which had been built up around Dirk and everything he ever knew begins to slowly unravel, as the apprentice physician comes to realise that others are slowly drawing their own plans around him.
22033273	/m/05p4zr_	Eye of the Labyrinth	Jennifer Fallon		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This novel picks up two years after the events of the previous one, with Dirk fleeing Avacas a wanted man and seeking sanctuary in the Baenlands. Obsessed with Dirk's capture Antonov arrests Morna Provin at her husband's funeral and announces that he will have her burned at the stake come Landfall. Despite the best efforts of Tia and Reithan Dirk still finds out and demands that they attempt to save her. The other major plot follows the domestic quarrels of Alenor and Kirsh, who is still besotted with the acrobat Marquel. At Dirk's suggestion, Alenor invites Marquel to Kalarada willingly in the hope that keeping Kirsh distracted will give her some measure of control over her kingdom. Arriving on Elcast too late, Dirk has only time to beg Tia to end his mother's suffering. She refuses at first, but forced to listen to Morna's screams, Tia relents and shoots the former duchess through the eye, ending her pain. The two escape with Master Helgrin and row back to the Wanderer, watching as Reithan Seranov's diversion burns Antonov's flagship to the waterline in retribution. Tired of running, Dirk announces that night that he is going to Omaxin in an attempt to break through the labyrinth and discover the truth that sent Neris Veran into madness. The strain of her husband openly flaunting a mistress takes its toll on Alenor and her relationship with Kirsh grows fractious. She eventually begins an affair with the captain of her guard.
22035282	/m/05p37nt	Escape from Genopolis				 Arlo, a ten-year old orphan boy, lives in Genopolis, in a university called the Inn of Court, where he is looked after by his mentor, Doctor Ignatius. One day Arlo makes a horrifying discovery. Instead of being a Citizen, he is actually one of the hated Naturals, who had been abandoned by his Natural parents when he was born and taken into the care of Doctor Ignatius, ostensibly to research emotions and pain for scientific purposes. However, Ignatius is also leader of a secret resistance circle against the Rulers of Genopolis, and plans to destroy Genopolis by bringing back pain to its Citizens. However, Ignatius’s plans – and Arlo – are now in danger because a new Ruler of Genopolis has been appointed who is opposed to any research that could bring back the past. From the moment that Arlo first sets eyes on the new Regis, he feels a powerful connection, and knows that if he falls into the hands of the Regis then his life will be forfeit. Meanwhile, Usha, an eleven-year old slave-girl, lives in drudgery, serving her ninety-nine year-old Citizen mistress who she calls Auntie. Usha is a Gemini, a member of a clone-class who have been bred in the pharms, and whose orders are only to obey her superiors. However, Usha soon becomes aware that Auntie’s intention is to use her to clone her own dying body. Waking up in panic on the operating table, Usha escapes, but with the whole of Genopolis on her tail, with nowhere that she can run to. Wandering through the sewers, the underworld of Genopolis, Usha falls in with a gang of abandoned children, who have been thrown out of society because of becoming disabled through accidents or illness. Their ringleader, Ozzie, inducts Usha into his gang, and for a time they live by pilfering from the warehouses by the port where the food is delivered from the pharms. After a botched robbery, Usha is kidnapped by smugglers and sold to the Circus, a semi-illegal underworld gladiatorial arena, where criminal Citizens, escaped Gemini and the occasional captured Natural fight against themselves, and against genetically-engineered monsters. The laboratories of the pharms have created hybrid animals along the lines of classical monsters using genetic fusion technology; the Minotaur, the Gorgon, the Cockatrice and the Sphinx.
22044061	/m/05n_4fy	The Sword Thief	Peter Lerangis	2009-03-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book starts with Dan and Amy in a Venice airport. There, Ian and Natalie Kabra steal their plane tickets and board a plane with their au pair, Nellie Gomez, who is already on the plane. Amy and Dan are then forced to team up with Alistair Oh, their uncle, and fly with him on his private plane to Tokyo, Japan. Together they learn about Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the greatest warrior in the history of Japan, and the son of the first Tomas. The Holts kidnap Amy, Dan, and Alistair and threatened them into helping them find the next clue. They are pulled into a room by Alistair after nearly being killed by the train. In this room, they find a haiku, which tells them to use geometry to find Hideyoshi's treasure. Later, they find some geometric shapes, but are chased by the Yakuza and are once again nearly killed. They are rescued by Nellie, who has struck a deal, and is accompanied by, the Kabras. When the Kabras give Amy and Dan a small coin of importance to the search, the two Cahills agree to join forces with the Kabras. They decode another message in the shapes. The message tells them to go to Korea. In other parts of the story after they meet the Kabras once again, Amy falling for Ian is introduced in this book. The author's writing also gives a little hint away: Ian may admire Amy, and Dan suspects it as well. In Korea, everyone goes to Alistair's house. There, they look at old books about the Cahill family in Alistair's secret library. By reading one of them, Amy and Dan figure out that the secret of the 39 Clues is the ability to make gold out of lead. They also figure out that they should go to a mountain called Pukhansan. On the mountain, they find an entrance, and open it with the coin they have. Inside, they find all of Hideyoshi's treasure, and the third clue, gold. The Kabras have a plan, but little do they know that Dan also has a plan. He discovers an anagram and says the next location is Lake Tash, Kyrgyzstan. The Kabras then betray them and block them inside the cave. Dan then tells Amy that he tricked the Kabras into thinking that Lake Tash was the next location, and the two figure out that it's actually an anagram for the words, Al Sakhet and Alkahest, the alchemical word for the philosopher's stone. Dan and Amy make it out but Alistair appears to be crushed under falling rocks. They also see Bae Oh talking about this with The Man in Black. Upon returning to Alistair's estate, Dan sees Alistair's gloves (which he was wearing before the cave in), and realizes that he isn't dead. They also figure out that the next clue is in Egypt. The adventure continues in Beyond the Grave. This is where they will find the fourth clue. The book ends with Bae Oh, sitting his office. He pages his secretary but Alistair answers instead. Alistair threatens his uncle, and when Bae looks in his receiving room, no one is there.
22050686	/m/05p08jt	The Asti Spumante Code			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0gf28": "Parody"}	 Due to the detailed nature of the overall story within the novel, the plot has been divided into Backstory and Modern Day respectively in order to provide a more coherent timeline for the events depicted in the novel. In the 13th century, there once existed a circle of authors and playwrights known as the Order of Psion (a parody of the Knights Templar), most of whom were females writing under male pseudonyms, who once predicted the coming of "the ultimate book" that would render publishers obsolete. The formula for the making of the ultimate book - known as the Asti Spumante Code - is contained within the Mure de Paume (French: "The Blackberry of the Palm"), otherwise known as "the legendary keystone". Fearing the consequences of the ultimate book, a group of publishers named The English Book Guild was established in Stevenage, England to try to counteract the progresses made by the Order. The book itself focuses on American Prof. James Crack - a professor of "Paraliteral Metasymbolist studies" - and Belgian Emily Raquin, a "bibliotechnical cryptologist", as they discover a set of clues left by the deceased Grand Master of the Order of Psion that will ultimately lead to the discovery of the Asti Spumante Code. However, the two are hindered by the efforts of Uxbridge Road Group, a fanatical off-shoot of the English Book Guild situated in Brussels, whose members encourage Sadomasochism and segregate works of fiction by gender stereotyping (e.g.: men read only adventure fiction, women read only romance novels), who wish to destroy the Asti Spumante Code before it can be put to use by anyone.
22053108	/m/05p4ghv	Four Steps to Death	John Wilson	2005	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Four Steps to Death is told mainly through Sergei Ilyich Andropov, a seventy-year-old police officer who has been called to investigate the case of two mysterious bodies found in the cellar of a building that is being excavated in the present-day Russian city of Volgograd. This discovery brings about a series of flashbacks to when Sergei was a child in Stalingrad, as Volgograd was then known. Four Steps to Death is the story of five individuals during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. Vasily is a 17-year-old patriotic machine gunner whose biggest dream is to become a hero of the Soviet Union by casting away the large Nazi army that has advanced all the way to his homeland. Vasily quickly becomes attached to a famous Russian sniper, a woman named Yelena Pavlova. Although he and his fellow comrades have pledged allegiance to their homeland, Vasily is soon confused at the lack of patriotism expressed by Yelena and many of the other troops. This makes Vasily think of home. At first he feels guilty about defying his government but good and evil become entangled and soon, Vasily cannot tell why they are at war in the first place. Conrad is an 18-year-old patriotic German tank leader commanding his Panzer division through the Russian steppe and into Stalingrad (which he believes will end the war). With the "Ivans" (Russians) defeated, Conrad believes that he and his older brother, Josef, will be able to come back home to Germany as war heroes and be able to celebrate Christmas with the mother. Their father was a WWI veteran and an Iron Cross recipient for bravery in the Battle of Verdun who recently died from his wounds. Although Conrad is proud of his father, he sometimes wishes that his father was still alive. As the story progresses, his dream of spending Christmas with his family in Germany slips further and further away. In the middle of the conflict is eight-year-old Sergei. He lives in Stalingrad in the cellar of his former apartment, scavenging among the ruins of his hometown while the Germans and Russians wage war on one another. Thousands of bodies litter the streets, and yet, Sergei is not bothered by any of this, being hardened by the horrors that he faces every day. He dreams of being a famous sniper one day and ridding his homeland of the "Fascists".
22053472	/m/05pcn04	Inspector Ghote's First Case	H. R. F. Keating	2008-05-26		 It's the early 1960s and Inspector Ghote is on leave from the Bombay police before taking up a post in crime branch. His wife, Protima, is heavily pregnant with their first child. The former police commissioner, now retired, Sir Rustom Engineer requests that as a favour Ghote investigate the motiveless suicide of Iris Dawkins. Mr Robert Dawkins is an old friend of Sir Rustom's from before Indian independence and has written a letter asking for help. Ghote arrives at the remote town where the tragedy occurred and finds that Iris Dawkins apparently committed suicide by shooting herself in the head with a shotgun without leaving a note. Afterwards the Dawkin's man servant telephoned Mr Dawkins at the nearby golf club and asked to him return home as there had been a "nasty accident". At the local police station Ghote finds a rival from police training college, Inspector Darrani, has already investigated the case and has a closed mind on the subject. Ghote gets the name of an old friend of Mrs Dawkins from an old letter: Pansy, who married a Forrest Officer named Peter Watson. Forrest Officers move from one place to another every few months, however, and Ghote has to use his initiative to find her. Shinto, the young boy who takes care of the Dawkin's garden, tells Ghote that a young man apparently visited Mrs Dawkins on the morning of her suicide. From the same boy Ghote learns that the gun was in the wrong position for a left-handed person to have committed suicide with. From Pansy Watson Ghote learns that Iris Dawkins was the daughter of Sir Ronald and Lady Mountford. Sir Ronald was an ICS Advisor to a Maharaja before independence. Her parents were killed by a rampaging elephant while touring a remote area when Iris was a child. Iris stayed in India with the family of the British Resident until roughly the age of twelve or thirteen, when she was seduced by the son of a Maharaja (who was the same age) and became pregnant. She was then sent to stay with the nuns at St Agnes Convent in Poona until her child was delivered and then the child, a boy, was sent to the Raja's palace. Iris Dawkins was then sent home to England where she was cared for by poor relations of her own family and adopted their name, Petersham. When she came of age Iris Petersham found a job in London and saved up until she could return to India after independence. She then came to stay with the Watsons until she met Robert Dawkins, who was a friend of Peter Watson, and married him. Ghote learns that Iris Dawkins was left-handed and that her left eye had a green fleck from a picture taken by a local photographer. The fact that she was left-handed is relevant to the position of the shotgun she supposedly committed suicide with. The fact that her eyes, described by her husband as "violet", were in fact blue with a fleck of green shows Ghote that her husband, Robert Dawkins, held many cherished illusions about his wife. When Ghote reports his findings to Mr Dawkins Inspector Darrani intervenes and persuades Mr Dawkins to put the matter behind him. Afterwards Ghote resolves to ask Inspector Darrani about the young man who was seen visiting Mrs Dawkins on the morning of her death. Ghote also realises, belatedly, that the phrase "a nasty accident" was specifically used in the telephone message that alerted Mr Dawkins to his wife's death and that such a phrase is more typical of a man like Mr Dawkins than the manservant who would have made the call. Investigating at the golf club, Ghote learns that at the relevant time of day the club is nearly empty and that Mr Dawkins may have been the only person present. His alibi is therefore unsound. Interviewing Shinto the gardener boy at the boy's home he learns that the Dawkins' manservant has threatened the boy to make him keep silent. Ghote decides to return to the Dawkins residence and interview the manservant about the morning of Mrs Dawkins' death. After interviewing the manservant, Ghote realises that the man must be blackmailing his employer, Robert Dawkins, and re-assesses what he knows about Mr Dawkin's character. Carefully considering the case, Ghote comes to the conclusion that the young man who visited Mrs Dawkins was in fact her long lost son who she would have immediately recognised from the green flecks in one eye, a genetic trait inherited from her. Robert Dawkins returned home from the club unexpectedly having forgotten his spectacles and found them embracing. Misunderstanding the situation, Robert Dawkins fetched the shotgun from his gun cabinet and killed Iris Dawkins, her son having already escaped at her urging. The Dawkins' manservant then moved the body out of the room where the crime had taken place into the living room, while Dawkins himself returned to the club. The club being nearly deserted at that hour, no one had noticed his absence and it was there the message, phrased using words he had given to the manservant, was delivered to him. Before Ghote can act on his conclusions, an urgent message comes for him telling him is wife, Protima, is about to give premature birth. Ghote hurries back to his wife only to discover the message is a hoax by his wife, who has been missing him. Ghote forgives his wife and after an hour, returns to the scene of the crime. Ghote conducts another search of the Dawkins home and re-enacts the crime in an effort to prove his theory. He challenges the manservant with the knowledge that Iris Dawkins was killed in the sewing room, not the living room. The manservant confirms this and explains he was looking for a fragment of a letter written by the Maharaja to Mrs Iris Dawkins, which her son had dropped before fleeing the scene. The manservant also confirms that Inspector Darrani had quickly discovered that Iris Dawkins long lost son had visited her. The young man is now the surviving heir to the Maharaja, who has been searching for him. In hope of securing a large reward from the Maharaja, Inspector Darrani has concealed the young man's whereabouts and attempted close the books on Mrs Dawkins death quickly, with the minimum of investigation. Ghote telephones Inspector Darrani and forces him to come to the house to arrest the manservant as an accessory after the fact. Robert Dawkins overhears Inspector Ghote put his case to Inspector Darrani and, after fetching the shotgun, commits suicide in the room where his wife died.
22055693	/m/05p4fhw	Chicka, Chicka, 1, 2, 3	Bill Martin, Jr.	2004-07-06	{"/m/016475": "Picture book"}	 0 wants to go in the Apple Tree but lots of numbers come before her. After all the numbers except 0 are up the Apple Tree, bumble bees come and say that its their tree. The bees fly around them causing every number (Except 10 who is hiding) to fall down. 0 now knows where she should be in the Apple Tree and 0 joins with 10 to make the number 100 and all of the numbers come back out and cheer for 10 & 0.
22057693	/m/05p1vxp	The Iron Tree	Cecilia Dart-Thornton	2004-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins in a small desert town of R'shael in the kingdom of Asqualeth. Jarred and his friends set off on an adventure to explore the world of The Four Kingdoms of Tir. On the way they are ambushed by Marauders, mountain folk that are deformed and spend their lives pillaging villages and unwary travelers. Jarred is found out by his friends to be invulnerable however one of their part is injured and they are forced to take refuge in Marsh Town in the kingdom of Slievmordhu. There Jarred falls in love at first sight with a Marsh daughter Lilith. When the party are to depart Jarred decides to stay and start a family with Lilith; it is soon learned however a terrible curse runs in the family of Lilith and Jarred must try to find the cure before it devours Lilith. Little do they know, they will find Jarred's gift and Lilith's curse stem from a past that intertwines them.
22057814	/m/05p6bpb	Scat	Carl Hiaasen	2009-01-13		 Nick Waters, the protagonist, is in Bunny Starch's biology class, and she is the most feared teacher in his school: Truman School. At the beginning, Duane "Smoke" Scrod Jr. chomps on Mrs. Starch's pencil, which she finds amusing. She gives him an assignment of 500 humorous words on pimples.She later reports the incident with a poor view on the boy's behavior. Word gets out about Smoke's previous arsons.Therefore, most students believe it was Smoke who started the forest fire on a field trip to the Black Vine Swamp. (Later in the book, it turns out that the Red Diamond Energy Corporation set a controlled fire to prevent the students and teachers from discovering an illegal pirate well on the State of Florida's land.) Mrs. Starch goes back into the swamp to retrieve an asthma inhaler for Libby, a student of Mrs.Starch, while the bus returns the rest of the kids to school. Everyone expects that Mrs. Starch will return in her car, but she doesn't come back. While Mrs. Starch is missing, her class gets a strange substitute teacher named Wendell Waxmo, who teaches specific pages on specific days. Dr. Dressler, the school's headmaster, hired him in the hope that when Mrs. Starch hears about who is teaching her classes, she will come back. Dr. Dressler decides to go to Mrs. Starch's house to see if she is there; she is not. In Mrs. Starch's mailbox, Dr. Dressler finds a letter saying that she has been called to a "family emergency." Dr. Dressler checks Mrs. Starch's file and finds no reference to any known family members that are alive. Nick and Marta just don't buy this "family emergency" excuse, so they decide to go to Mrs. Starch's house—located well off the beaten path—to investigate. They find the house filled with taxidermied endangered animals. Soon they are discovered by a mysterious man in his early thirties named Twilly Spree. He takes them away from the house and leaves them to meet Marta's mom. Meanwhile, Duane Scrod Jr., known by his nickname "Smoke", is also missing from class. The oil company, having found out that arson investigators believed Duane to be responsible for the fire, have stolen Duane's backpack and placed a lighter in it. When Duane returns, he is mistakenly accused of setting the fire in Black Vine Swamp. This is stressful to the headmaster of Truman school, Dr. Dressler, who has to face the board of directors and worry about the school's public image. When Detective Marshall comes to arrest the supposed arsonist, Duane dodges out of the office and ran away, causing even more worries for Dr. Dressler. While Detective Marshall is waiting outside Duane's house for him to return, the detective grows bored and decides to do some research about the torch. He finds that only two stores sell that model, and since one of them is too far away, only one store is left to investigate. Detective Marshall goes to the store and takes the video recording of the torch purchase to the arson investigator, who immediately realizes that Duane was framed by the Oil Company. All charges against Duane are dropped, except for that of evading arrest. Nick and Marta can't stop worrying about their biology teacher and Smoke's trouble. They think that Twilly may know something about it. They find the car Twilly was driving and jump into the back seat waiting for the man to return. Twilly takes them to see Mrs. Starch. They discover that she has been caring for a baby panther whose mother was scared off by the oil company with a gunshot. Duane was also in on the secret and Twilly was tracking the mother panther. He knew she was close because fresh scat was always on the ground. In the end, they are roused by Duane to come help find the mother because Twilly found fresh panther poop. They find the panther but the oil company tries to shoot the panther and hits Mrs.Starch. Nick climbs up a tree to give back the lost panther cub and Nick falls twenty feet to the ground. So in the end, the mother panther and baby panther are reunited and Mrs. Starch comes back to teaching(injured) with a great respect for Duane, who spends two weeks in jail for running away from the Detective (who also thinks two weeks is too harsh.) They all find out that Bunny Starch was just rescuing a baby panther and that she is a good person after all. After Nick helps the panther get back to its mother,the story gets out.Everyone sees Nick,Marta,Smoke,and even "mean old" Mrs.Starch in a whole new light. Carl Hiaasen is the author of other notable children's fiction novels including Flush, in over 2,500 libraries, and Hoot, in over 3,200 libraries. it is amazing
22058425	/m/05p8qgt	Alhazred				 The book is written as an autobiographical account of the life of Abdul Alhazred, the author of the legendary grimoire known as the Necronomicon. The book does not draw on any previous accounts of Alhazred's life, but portrays him instead as a tragic antihero. The book begins with a short narrative describing how Alhazred was tortured as a young man by the ruthless king of his home city, which is explained in gruesome detail. The tortures endured by Alhazred (and his subsequent banishment from his home) contribute to his violent attitude as an adult, which leads him to commit, among other acts, cannibalism, the murder of innocent children, and assisting a cult of ghouls in their war against a rival clan. Throughout his travels, Alhazred learns to use his abilities (lack of empathy, uncanny agility, and the ability to communicate with the dead) to survive, often in gratuitously self-serving ways. He accumulates an array of grim survival tools, such as an obsidian blade and mysterious spiders which, when eaten, grant him the ability to see in the dark and amplified hearing. He also encounters many beings and characters from the Cthulhu Mythos in which his adventures take place.
22059736	/m/05pcpsw	The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe	Gale Stokes			 Beginning with the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and culminating in the 1989-1991 revolutions, The Walls Came Tumbling Down is a narrative of the gradual collapse of Eastern European communism. Focusing on the decades of unrest that precipitated 1989's tulmultuous events, Stokes provides a history of the various communist regimes and the opposition movements that brought them down, including the "March Days" and Solidarity, the 1975 Helsinki Accords, Czechoslovakia's Charter 77 opposition movement, and the autocratic policies of Romania's Nicolae Ceauşescu that precipitated the 1989 Revolution. Stokes examines the first tottering steps in 1990-1991 toward pluralist government, from the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev to the bloody partioning of war-torn Yugoslavia.
22068438	/m/05p3n3_	The Boxer and the Spy				 In a quiet New England town, the body of shy teenager Jason Green washes up on the shore, and the police soon claim that the death was a suicide induced by steroid addiction. However, Terry Novak, a fifteen-year-old aspiring boxer, is not so sure, especially considering that Jason was an artistic person who had no interest in sports, and thus was not the type to be taking such drugs. Assisted by his friend Abby, he begins an investigation of his own, and soon learns that asking too many questions can lead him into serious danger.
22072658	/m/05p1pyw	The Life Before Us	Romain Gary			 Momo, a Muslim orphan boy, lives under the care of an old Jewish women named Madame Rosa. The young boy tells the story of his life in the orphanage and of his relationship with Madame Rosa as she becomes increasingly sick.
22077902	/m/05p70b7	Do Good Design	David Berman	2009-01	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is divided into three sections, ending with a call for all professionals to sign the online Do Good Pledge, which has been signed by notable designers, including Ken Garland.
22079171	/m/05p9gt6	Mummy Laid an Egg	Babette Cole	1994		 The book is a sex education book for young children, and Publishers Weeklys reviewer said that Cole "unleashes her endearingly loony sense of humor on the subject of the birds and the bees, and the result is, as expected, hilarious." In the book a couple of parents attempt to explain the facts of life to their two children, who respond to their apparently ignorant parents by explaining matters to them, with stick-figure illustrations.
22082383	/m/05_5n__	Elephant Run	Roland Smith	2007-09-25		 Nicholas Gillis Freestone is sent to Burma after his mother's apartment is destroyed in the Battle of Britain. He meets Nang the foreman, his daughter Mya, and his son Indaw, a mahout. At the time of Nick's arrival, there is much talk about the recent Japanese bombing of Rangoon, predicting the British defenses in Burma will soon fall. The next day Nick is at the village and Hannibal, a koongyi (timber elephant) with a grudge against tigers, attacks Nick and his ribs are cracked. Out of embarrassment, Nick keeps the incident to himself until his father hears of the accident from Hilltop (Taung Baw in Burmese), a monk who was one of the two original mahouts to come with the Sergeant Major, who founded Hawk's Nest. Hilltop is Mya & Indaw's great-grandfather, who some people rumor is over 100 years old. Hilltop is said to know the secret language of the elephants. Rumor says he lives in the forest, and disappeared for sixty years before returning to the Freestone Plantation. On Christmas, Nick, his father, Nang, and his family are travelling to the nearby Freestone Island when the Japanese invade. Japanese soldiers soon overrun and capture the Freestones' camp, taking into custody all its inhabitants while Nick and the elephants go into hiding. Not long after, though, Nick is captured by an amiable soldier, Sergeant Sonji, whom Nick initially takes to be crazy. Nick is returned to the elephant village by the sergeant, at which point the brutal extent to which the Japanese are taking in their conquest becomes clear. Under the newly erected Japanese flag lie the corpses of Nang, who has been beaten to death, and Captain Josephs, a British officer who has been decapitated. His father and Indaw have been taken as POWs (prisoners of war), and Nick is taken hostage at Hawk's Nest. He remains there for ten months as a servant of sorts to Colonel Nagayoshi, the Japanese commander of Hawk's Nest. While there, Nick is routinely beaten by a crippled elderly Japanese sympathizer named Bukong, but is otherwise left unscathed by the Japanese. Later, Nick gets a letter from his father saying he was transported from a camp for British and Australian prisoners in Singapore to one in Burma. One night Hilltop shows a secret passage that was in the house to Nick and Mya. Everyone later believes that they escaped when they were actually in the tunnel. From then on Hilltop shows the passages that link to Hawk's Nest. On their escape day, Nick and Mya disguise themselves as novice monks and escape the Hawk's nest with Hilltop and Hannibal. In a nearby village, they are trapped by Captain Moto who wants to find and catch the infamous thief Kya Lei (Tiger's Breath), a Burmese Robin Hood. The next day Hilltop writes a letter saying that he was at the prison camp and would be back. Kya Lei helps Nick and Mya to get to the first camp. Each day, they progress closer to Jackson and Indaw. When Hilltop returns he tells Nick and Mya that he talked to Indaw while he was at the prison camp and planned an escape. The day of his escape was on festival day, a day where the Japanese soldiers buy goods for themselves. Because the guards were distracted by the festival, Indaw was able to escape. A couple days later, Jackson faked his death and was able to escape.
22090568	/m/05p5n51	Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship				 The story opens with three men – Lu Decheng, Yu Dongyue, and Yu Zhijian – who have just defaced Mao Zedong’s portrait in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Decheng, Dongyue, and Zhijian are three friends from Southern China who have traveled to Beijing to express their sentiment towards the Chinese Communist Party. The leading character, Decheng, is the activist on which this book is inspired upon. As the story unfolds, discontent and frustration are shown through Decheng’s life and the people surrounding him – from the education reforms of the Cultural Revolution to the Protest of 1989. Decheng’s friend, Zhijan, a fellow activist who took part in defacing the portrait, express the reasons why the three vandalized the portrait: “to motivate the student leadership to question the legitimacy of the Communist regime itself, and therefore its very authority to impose a state of martial law.” Throughout the book, Chong reveals events in Decheng’s life that lead up his decision – from his refusal to cry on cue with his classmates after Mao’s death to hearing about the brutality of the Chinese Communist Party from his grandmother. After the activists’ act of vandalism, the three are sentenced to prison. During his imprisonment, Decheng’s wife divorces him. Years later, upon his return to Liuyang, Hunan, he remarries. The story has alternating chapters, shifting through periods of Decheng’s life, from his time in prison to memories earlier in his adolescent years. The book ends with the moments leading up to the defacing of Mao’s portrait.
22091971	/m/05p4647	Superstitious	R. L. Stine	1995-09-14	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Sara Morgan, a graduate student who has left an abusive relationship with Chip, starts a new relationship with a handsome professor named Liam O'Connor. Liam is extremely superstitious and lives with his sister Margaret, to whom he is very close. Sara does not mind these quirks and marries Liam. Shortly, people start dying in grisly ways, and it turns out the professor knew all of them. Sara begins to wonder if her husband might be the killer, while Liam's superstitious behavior increases. One day, after Sara discovers Margaret and Liam in bed together naked, she smashes the mirror out of protest and runs out of the house. She returns later to retrieve her keys only to find Margaret dead; she leaves afterwards in search of her boss' house. There, she spots her boss dead and Liam glaring at her. He explains to her that Margaret was his wife and that he needs Sara to bear their child so that the demons of superstition living inside of him can pass to the child. He went on to explain that when the demons slip away, they kill someone he knows; when Sara broke the mirror, the demons slipped out, murdering Margaret. Sara, in an attempt to show Liam that there are no demons, shatters one of the mirrors in the house. The demons slip outside of him and kill him; knocking Sara out afterwards. Sara awakens in the hospital to find out she is going to have a baby.
22093154	/m/05p0hhn	Historical Atlas of World Mythology	Joseph Campbell			 This series was to build on Campbell’s idea, first presented in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, that myth evolves over time through four stages: *The Way of the Animal Powers -- the myths of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers which focus on shamanism and animal totems. This volume was covered in two parts: Mythologies of the Primitive Hunter-Gathers and Mythologies of the Great Hunt. *The Way of the Seeded Earth -- the myths of Neolithic, agrarian cultures which focus upon a mother goddess and associated fertility rites. This volume was to be covered in five parts, of which three were completed: The Sacrifice, Mythologies of the Primitive Planters: The Northern Americas, and Mythologies of the Primitive Planters: The Middle and Southern Americas. Two additional parts were planned: Mythologies of the Primitive Planters: Africa and South-western Asia and Mythologies of the Primitive Planters: Southern Asia. *The Way of the Celestial Lights -- the myths of Bronze Age city-states with pantheons of gods ruling from the heavens, led by a masculine god-king. *The Way of Man -- religion and philosophy as it developed after the Axial Age (c. 6th century BC), in which the mythic imagery of previous eras was made consciously metaphorical, reinterpreted as referring to psycho-spiritual, not literal-historical, matters. This transition is evidenced in the East by Buddhism, Vedanta, and philosophical Taoism; and in the West by the Mystery Cults, Platonism, Christianity and Gnosticism.
22094421	/m/05p6thz	Torch of Freedom	Eric Flint	2009-11-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 While Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat were working undercover on Mesa, Mesa launches an attack at Torch. Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat escape Mesa amidst general mayhem together with a defected leading scientist. The attack against Torch is thwarted by Rear Admiral Luiz Rozsak of the Solarian League Navy, who had amassed a fleet in the interest of the Maya Sector. Queen Berry becomes romantically involved with Hugh Arai, who after being freed from slavery by Jeremy X from the Audubon Ballroom worked as a commando for the Beowulf Biological Survey Corps (BSC), and was assigned by Jeremy X as Berry's bodyguard.
22094476	/m/05p318x	Mission of Honor	David Weber	2010-06-22	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The book begins in January 1922 P.D. The Star Empire of Manticore remains at war with the Republic of Haven, despite their mutual losses during the Battle of Manticore. Now, the Star Empire is in danger of entering an entirely new conflict with the Solarian League, a galactic superstate with a population numbering several trillion. Though Manticore possesses a decisive tactical and technological edge over the Solarians with their anti-ship missiles and missile defense systems, the Solarians boast a fleet of over ten thousand capital ships. The planet Mesa and its shadow government continue to fan the flames of the increasingly hostile Manticoran-Solarian relationship for its own nefarious ends. At the same time, Mesa has launched a potentially devastating strike against the Manticore Home System itself, which has gone completely undetected by Manticore. Meanwhile, Admiral Duchess Honor Alexander-Harrington of Manticore is dispatched on a diplomatic mission to the Republic of Haven, having convinced Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore that the Haven issue cannot be left unresolved in the wake of an increasingly likely confrontation with the Solarian League. Traveling to the Haven System itself in her civilian yacht, but escorted by her own 8th Fleet, she offers the Republic a chance to conclude their war diplomatically rather than face sure annihilation due to Manticore's unmatchable tactical advantage. Despite getting off to a good start, the negotiations become stalled when Havenite politicians obstruct the talks for personal political gain. Alexander-Harrington initially tolerates this effort in the interest of good diplomacy, but eventually publicly calls out the leader of the opposition politicians, forcing him to back down. However, the talks are suspended when word reaches Haven that a sneak attack, by seemingly unknown forces, has wrought havoc on the Manticore Home System's infrastructure. While Alexander-Harrington is trying for a negotiated peace settlement with Haven, the Royal Manticoran Navy's 10th fleet led by Vice Admiral Michelle Henke is attacked by a Solarian task force at the Spindle System in the newly incorporated Talbott Quadrant. Admiral Sandra Crandall, commander of the Solarian Force, acting on her own desire for vengeance and Mesan manipulations and bribes demands the surrender of 10th Fleet and arrest of Henke. Baroness Medusa, Governor-General of the Talbott Quadrant, refuses to honor Crandall's demands. The Solarian forces begin their attack run, but are ambushed by 10th Fleet in a lopsided victory, despite the fact that Henke has only a few dozen cruiser-sized ships to defend against 73 ships of wall and screening elements. After the destruction of the Solarian flagship and a third of the task force, Crandall's third in command assumes control and surrenders the survivors. Shortly afterward, Mesa's secret Operation Oyster Bay is launched. Covert operations ships using a radically new drive technology have been operating in the Manticore System undetected and placed several stealthed missile pods aimed at the three inhabited planets in the Manticore System. In a coordinated attack, the pods fire several volleys of new missile systems which proceed to destroy all of the important orbital infrastructure around Manticore, Sphinx, and Gryphon. Several million Manticoran civilians and naval personnel are killed. The Star Empire completely loses the space stations Hephaestus, Vulcan, and Weyland. With their loss, the ability to construct new shipping and missiles. Grayson, Manticore's loyal ally, was similarly attacked. This is all happening at the same time that Manticore is facing a full-scale conflict with the Solarian League. Alexander-Harrington is recalled from the peace negotiations with Haven in the wake of the assault. She returns to discover that after station debris reentered the atmosphere of and impacted her homeworld of Sphinx, many of her closest relatives have died. The Solarian League's leadership learns of both events in quick succession. The incompetent League military leadership, finally realizing the true scale of disparity between their ships and weapon systems and Manticore's, decides to go forward with a plan to invade the Manticore System itself with a force of 400 super-dreadnoughts, believing that the aftermath of the (Mesan) strike will leave Manticore possibly unprotected and unwilling to fight a protracted war, even if they successfully defend against this initial invasion. This idea that Manticore's system defenses have also been wrecked has been secretly purported by Mesa, which desires a situation in which the League is severely bloodied by just such a hapless invasion attempt. Meanwhile Manticore is informed of the impending Solarian offensive through a covert channel on Beowulf. Manticoran leadership is confident of their ability to repel any Solarian attempts to invade the Home System, but at the cost of expending great amounts of ammunition, which is now a precious commodity. The situation appears in crisis until Captain Anton Zilwicki of Manticore, who had been thought dead, and Special Officer Victor Cachat of Haven finally arrive in the Haven System with a Mesan defector. They inform President Eloise Pritchart of the truth behind the nuclear attacks on Mesa, and also of Mesa's long term goals as an organization called the Mesan Alignment. The defector also gives background information on the new technology which was used to attack Manticore. Pritchart decides that the information is too important to ignore and personally embarks with several important members of her administration for Trevor's Star, along with Zilwicki's party. She eventually meets with Queen Elizabeth and Admiral Alexander-Harrington, and the true threat posed by Mesa becomes clear to all. Both sides realize that they have been manipulated over the past several decades by Mesa to fight each other, so that they should not pose a threat to Mesa's masterplan for galactic domination. Despite ongoing diplomatic problems between them, and the certainty that many political factions in both Haven and Manticore will strongly disapprove of cooperation in the wake of such a long and bloody conflict, Elizabeth and Pritchart agree to both end the war for good and tentatively form a military alliance against Mesa and their Solarian pawns as the Star Empire and its armed forces await the arrival of the Solarian attack.
22094583	/m/05p9sgk	The Cleft	Doris Lessing		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is narrated by a Roman historian, during the time of the Emperor Nero. He tells the story as a secret history of humanity's beginnings, as pieced together from scraps of documents and oral histories, passed down through the ages. Humanity was made up, in the beginning, of solely females who reproduced asexually. These females were a calm race and had few problems. They lived by the sea and were partially aquatic. They called themselves "Clefts" - after The Cleft - a fissure in a rock which the females deemed sacred, and which had a resemblance to the female vagina. One day, a cleft gave birth to a male child - to what the clefts dubbed a "Monster". This caused such a fright that the boy was killed by the clefts. But more "monsters" were born, and the clefts left them on a rock to die. Eagles, which lived nearby, saw the dying babies and swooped down and carried them off, to deposit them in a nearby valley where they were then suckled by beneficent deer. The children gradually grew older and able to fend for themselves. Soon, as more boys were brought by the eagles, a tribe emerged. One day, a female wandered over to the valley and was raped by the now adult men. She fled and gave birth to a new, mixed child nine months later. When she told her story to the rest of the clefts, the two tribes soon came into contact with each other. The matriarchs of the clefts, however, feared the "monsters" and decided to try to kill them off.
22097258	/m/05pc2bn	Shadow's Edge	Brent Weeks		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kylar Stern has rejected the assassin's life. In the wake of the Godking's violent coup, both his master and his closest friend are dead. His friend was Logan Gyre, heir to Cenaria's throne, but few of the ruling class survive to mourn his loss. So Kylar is starting over: new city, new companions, and new profession. But when he learns that Logan might be alive, trapped and in hiding, Kylar faces an impossible choice: he could give up the way of shadows forever, and find peace with his young family. Or he could succumb to his flair for destruction, the years of training, to save his friend and his country - and lose all he holds precious. Godking Garoth Ursuul has assumed power in Cenaria and is manipulating the futures and destinies of all who live there. Many nobles, led by self proclaimed Queen Terah Graesin, have left the city in ruins to the Khalidorans. Attempting to leave behind the life of shadows that ruined his master, Kylar flees to Caernarvon and an idealic life with Elene. But darkness finds Kylar along the road to the light as friends return for one last job and Kylar learns more about who Durzo and ultimately Kylar are. Kylar has become a titanic force with a foot in the light and in the dark, but which will our twilight hero choose?
22097772	/m/05pb7_8	Raising Atlantis		2005-07-26	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins when an earthquake in Antarctica uncovers ancient man-made remains beneath the ice. The US military powers in the area ignore international law and take over without reporting the discovery to any other countries at work on the continent. The general in charge, Griffin Yeats, calls in his son Conrad and the only woman Conrad ever truly loved (yet could never be with), Australian linguist and ex-nun Serena Seghetti. While each has their own reasons for being there, they both invite trouble when they discover that what they've uncovered at the bottom of the chasm is the top of a pyramid. When they find their way inside, they accidentally set off a trap meant to periodically destroy civilization in order to keep human beings in check and stop them from destroying themselves for good. As they race across the newly-revealed Atlantis, trying to find a way to set things right, they end up in the middle of multiple government and terrorist bids to seize control of the site. Many secrets of the past of not just humanity, but of the main character, Conrad, are revealed. The novel ends with Atlantis being once again lost beneath the ice, along with all of its information, technology, and proof of its existence. Conrad just barely survives the re-burial and wakes up being treated in the Australian-owned McMurdo Station with Serena nearby. Serena tries to convince him that nothing happened, while Conrad tries, unsuccessfully, to hit on her. Serena goes back to the Vatican to report to the Pope and deliver her evidence of Atlantis, only to discover that Conrad had been toying with her. He had tricked a nurse into switching her thermos (in which she had concealed the information) with an empty one. Unfortunately for Conrad, the information is inconclusive and offers no real proof of what he found in Antarctica. The Pope then proceeds to beg her to return to the church, not just for religion's sake, but to use the information and connections within to save Conrad's life. While the situation is, in the end, resolved, this story is a cliffhanger and leads into the next novel of the four, The Atlantis Prophecy.
22097773	/m/05pccmm	The Atlantis Prophecy		2008-04-15	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Three years after the events of the first book, a funeral is finally carried out for Conrad's missing father, Griffin Yeats, & there is an internal uproar over the symbols chosen for Griffin's headstone (the choices made by Griffin himself) & while trying to figure out what the symbols mean, Conrad stumbles into a race to find a missing artifact that contains Atlantean information buried somewhere under Washington DC- but before he can get far, an ancient terrorist organization known as the Alignment, who have secretly infiltrated the ranks of every government, religious organization & secret society on the planet, send an assassin after him, sparking a murder investigation, which is twisted into an attempt to assassinate the president- Now Conrad must avoid his own government & discover the globe, with or without Serena's help, before the Alignment can launch a global pandemic which will be set loose on the Fourth of July & wipe out almost all of humanity- allowing the Alignment to rise to power... and, he only has one week to accomplish all this!
22098034	/m/05p4k5f	Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to Mecca				 As punishment for plagiarizing the classical Syrian satirist Lucian, Father Reynardine Bombo is commanded by an apparition of the "famous prophet Mahomet" to "take a long and tedious Journey to Mecca" on foot. To atone, Bombo must also convert to "Mahometanism," become a zealous devotee, and don a "Turkish habit and particularly that of a Pilgrim." His forced religious conversion does not prevent Bombo from frequently indulging in alcohol and pork during his pilgrimage. Headed for the harbor of New York, Bombo sets off from his New Jersey "castle" (the fictional stand-in for the college's Nassau Hall) clothed in a turban and a "Turkish vest". Seeking quarter in inns, houses of ill fame, and at his father's castle on Long Island, Bombo initiates a series of angry disputes when the characters he encounters fail to show the respect and deference that is his due as a pilgrim. These episodes often devolve into gross-out humor and violent slapstick pratfalls, of which Bombo is the usual victim despite his great size and pugnaciousness. While sailing across the Atlantic, Bombo is tied to the ship's yard-arm for propositioning the captain's wife and instigating a mutiny, abducted by French then Irish privateers, and finally set adrift in a barrel. Washing ashore on the Irish coast, Bombo tries his hand at teaching and panhandling. Bombo's trek across the Middle East and arrival in Mecca are hastily detailed in the book's final chapter. In Mecca, Bombo visits the mosque that purportedly contains the tomb of Mahomet, wherein he deposits dictionaries "in one of the most sacred closets of the place" in order to complete his penance and "pacify the Ghost of Lucian." Bombo returns safely to his castle in New Jersey, a refined and more responsible scholar, and eventually retires to a country estate in the vicinity to live out his days.
22105170	/m/0b6gqwj	Tempted	Kristin Cast	2009-10-23	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Tempted starts immediately after the end of events in the 5th book, Hunted, and is told from the point of view of six characters: Zoey, Stevie Rae, Aphrodite, Rephaim, Heath and Stark. In the aftermath Zoey gathers her allies and starts organizing them. Stevie Rae notices she's very tired and takes over, leaving Zoey to take care of a wounded Stark and her grandmother. Having recovered from her accident, she tells Zoey that she is A-ya's reincarnation and that A-ya was made to love Kalona, so that's why she cannot help being uncontrollably attracted to Kalona, as it's in her soul. In the end she's so stressed that when Erik finds her, demanding a share of her time, they quarrel and she dumps him for being overly jealous and possessive, taking her down to two love interests (whilst Erik forms a relationship with Venus, Aphrodite's ex- roommate). She rooms in with Aphrodite and has a dream with Kalona at the same time she has a vision that links to several elements from the dream. Alerted by Zoey's panic, Stark climbs up to her room and sleeps there to guard her from further intrusions. Aphrodite leaves and takes Darius to Stark's abandoned room. While they talk, she realizes she's come to love him and is afraid she is incapable of returning his feelings. He soothes her and pledges his Warrior's Oath to her. The kids return to the House of Night. They find Anastasia Lankford, a professor at the House of Night, dead at Rephaim's hands, and Dragon grieving her loss. Jack stays with Dragon to comfort him and coax him through his pain while Zoey goes to assess the mood of the school. Through Aphrodite's visions, Zoey's dreams of Kalona and Kramisha's prophetic poems they find that Kalona and Neferet plan on getting back the old ways of the vampyres. Following the rumors on Twitter, Jack finds Kalona and Neferet in Venice, on the isle of San Clemente with the Vampyre Council. Another vision brings a new warning: if Zoey is with Kalona the world will end as they know it, and if she chooses love and Nyx he will "die" and the world will be safe. On the other hand, Zoey can't completely reject him, as she believes he can be saved. In an effort to gain her favor, Kalona shows her his past as Nyx's Warrior and promises to change his ways if she will have him. Zoey and her friends go to Venice to have their say in the Council, but Stevie Rae stays behind, arguing that it's her responsibility as a High Priestess to take care of the rogues. Upon arriving, they learn that Neferet claims to be Nyx Incarnate and Kalona claims to be Erebus. It is revealed that Zoey's destiny is to face Kalona alone, meaning that only she can save the world. The Council declares Aphrodite a Prophetess of the vampyres, but is otherwise distrusting of Zoey, mainly because of her age. After the Council session is over Heath and Zoey talk about the stresses of everything going on Zoey sends Heath to find Stark. He discovers Neferet and Kalona in a secret conversation; Kalona finds Heath. Heath uses the Imprint to call Zoey and she arrives to see Kalona kill him. In her anguish she throws Spirit at Kalona, but her soul shatters and goes to the Otherworld. While sweeping the Benedictine Abbey grounds, Stevie Rae finds an injured Raven Mocker named Rephaim (the favored son of Kalona) and helps him to safety against her better judgement. She binds his wounds and sends him through the tunnels. Back at the House of Night she's horrified to learn that he was actually the one to kill Dragon's mate, Anastasia Lankford. In the tunnels Rephaim is found by the rougue red fledglings, and their leader, Nicole, uses her gift to peer into his mind and learns that Stevie Rae saved him. They use him as bait and catch Stevie Rae, leaving her alongside him in a cage on the roof to be burned down by the sun. Rephaim helps her and the two get in the ground at the last minute. To repay her for nursing him back to healt, he offers her his immortal blood to heal her burns. Unexpectedly, the two Imprint and Stevie Rae loses hers with Aphrodite. Alerted by Aphrodite's going into painful convulsions, Zoey calls at the House of Night and Erik and Lenobia rush to find and save Stevie Rae. With the last of her powers, Stevie Rae hides Rephaim from their eyes as they get her out.
22110180	/m/05p86g_	Crown of Ancient Glory				 In Crown of Ancient Glory, the player characters must find the heir to the kingdom of Vestland and retrieve the magical Sonora Crown to unite the country before the Ethengar Khanate invades. The module includes plans for a longship. The player characters assist the kingdom of Vestland, whose High King has recently died. They must also recover the missing holy Sonora Crown, which is also a powerful artifact. The heir to the kingdom was lost at birth, and the players must determind the identity and location of the lawful heir of Vestland. The characters must deal with traitors and spies from within, and invadors from the forces of the Ethengar Khanate, massing on the borders to take advantage of Vestland's plight.
22115208	/m/05p7gsb	Koo Kam				 Set in 1939, the early days of World War II in Siam, to Angsumalin meeting one last time with her childhood friend, a young Thai man named Vanus. He is leaving for England for his studies and hopes that Angsumalin will wait for him and marry him when he returns. Shortly thereafter, Thailand is invaded by Japanese military forces. In Thonburi, opposite Bangkok on the Chaophraya River, the Imperial Japanese Navy establishes itself at a base. The forces there are led by Kobori, an idealistic young captain. One day he sees Angsumalin swimming in the river and falls for her. She, being a proudly nationalistic Thai woman, despises him because he is a foreigner. Nonetheless, Kobori persists at seeing her and a courtship develops. Angsumalin found that Kobori is a real nice gentleman and start falling for him but she kept her feelings in secret because of the war. Then, for political reasons, Angsumalin's father - who is the Leader of Free Thai resistance, insists that she marry Kobori. Understanding that Angsumalin is not marrying him out of love, Kobori promises not to touch her, but he breaks that vow after the wedding. Despite this, Angsumalin develops tender feelings for Kobori, but is still torn by her feelings for her nation and feel quilty to Vanus, who returns to set in motion a conflict between the two men.
22119663	/m/05c37mt	Hunted	P. C. Cast	2009-09-03	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Zoey and her friends help Stevie Rae heal after the events at the end of Untamed - the arrow did not kill her, but took most of her lifeblood, so Kalona could be freed from the earth. Zoey and Stevie Rae reconcile, and the latter introduces Zoey's group to some of the red vampyre fledglings. Aphrodite lets Stevie Rae feed on her to heal, which forms an Imprint between them. When Erik follows Zoey on her way to her room they kiss, but then Erik gets too rough and scares her. Erik and Zoey get back together, though Zoey's not entirely sure due to Erik's possessiveness. Kalona starts getting into Zoey's dreams to seduce her, and calls her A-ya. Kramisha, a red fledgling, is revealed to also express prophecies through her poetry, and Zoey gives her the title of Poet Laureate. This is how they find their first clue. One of Kramisha's poems states that Kalona and Neferet will be banished when Night, Humanity, Blood, Spirit and Earth come together, but Zoey doesn't know who will represent these elements. Heath arrives at the tunnels, and Zoey goes outside to talk to him, much to Erik's anger. Heath tries to reconcile with her, but to no avail. A Raven Mocker attacks them and critically wounds Zoey. She drinks from Heath to heal and they Imprint again, but she is still weakened. Kramisha gets exited and loses her control a little when she sees Heath (a human), leading Zoey to realize that the red fledglings may still have problems with their self-control. Darius finally declares that Zoey needs exposure to more adult vampyres to survive, and she is forced to return to the House of Night, much to Neferet's pleasure. She finds out that Kalona's presence has caused the fledglings and the vampyres to turn their backs on Nyx. Kalona's favorite son, Rephaim, and Darius get into a fight. Kalona intercedes and gives Darius a huge scar which upsets Aphrodite. Zoey successfully persuades Stark to turn back to the good side. He becomes the second red vampyre when he pledges his Warrior's Oath to Zoey and she accepts. Zoey discusses the situation with Lenobia and, upon analyzing Kramisha's poem again, finds out that she is Night, Blood is Stevie Rae, Humanity is Aphrodite, Sister Mary Angela is Spirit, and Grandma Redbird is Earth. Zoey and her friends set fire to the school as a diversion and escape on horseback to the Benedictine Abbey. Zoey and the other people mentioned in the poem open a circle and send everyone else inside. Neferet, Kalona and Stark arrive quickly afterwards in an SUV, followed by the Raven Mockers. Neferet and Kalona take turns at threatening and cajoling Zoey but she finally accepts the truth: that although A-ya is a part of her, she will choose her own destiny. She rejects Kalona. Neferet orders Stark to shoot Zoey but he says that Zoey is his heart and aims at her while thinking of himself. Realizing what will happen, Zoey uses the elements to stop the arrow and knocks him out in the process. Night, Humanity, Blood, Spirit, and Earth complete the spell and banish Neferet and Kalona. Zoey's Mark spreads to across her scar. She is deeply in pain because she had to say goodbye to Kalona, and knows that the fight isn't over yet.
22124869	/m/05p4gqc	The Underneath	Kathi Appelt	2008-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Underneath is underneath the ramshackle house. Ranger can go there, but not much further, as he is chained, and never released, since his leg has been shot accidentally by his evil owner, Gar Face. He meets a calico cat who has kittens, and he names the kittens "Sabine" and "Puck". When Puck breaks the rule of going outside the underneath, bad things happen. There are important events going on beyond the house, in the bayou and swamps nearby, near the Texas-Louisiana border. Those events are related to others that happened a thousand years ago, when Grandmother, a cottonmouth water moccasin, and also a lamia, lost her only daughter to Hawk Man, another being who is part animal and part human, who became her daughter's husband. Grandmother was trapped in a clay jar because Hawk Man trapped her there, and has been thinking about that loss ever since. The Alligator King, who has grown to a hundred feet in length, has been around, thinking about these matters, for that seven thousand years, too. When storms release Grandmother, she decides to do something unexpected. She sees the love between the kittens and the hound, and frees Ranger. Although the kittens and the hound are now free, the calico cat had been drowned by Gar Face, who, himself, meets a bad end. The book also mentions the Caddo native Americans, who used to live in the area.
22129357	/m/05_5t44	Generation A	Douglas Coupland		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Coupland's website has a synopsis of the novel:
22130830	/m/05p9xfd	The Boy Detective Fails				 In the twilight of a childhood full of wonder, Billy Argo, Boy detective, is brokenhearted to find his young sister and crime-solving partner, Caroline, has committed suicide. Ten years later, Billy, age thirty, returns from an extended stay at Shady Glens Facility for Mental Incompetence to discover a world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete their evil schemes. Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy finds the companionship of two lonely children, Effie and Gus Mumford—one a science fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten bravery, Billy confronts the monotony of his job in telephone sales, the awkward beauty of a desperate pickpocket named Penny Maple, and the seemingly impossible solution to the mystery of his sister's death. Along a path laden with hidden clues and codes that dare to be deciphered, the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity of the unknown.
22131533	/m/05p879t	Tender as Hellfire				 Dough and Pill are brothers bound by more than blood. The anguish of their past, the terror of their present, and the uncertainty of their future all underscore the only truth that is within their grasp: each other. For beneath the cruel surface of their trailer park community lies a menagerie of odd characters, each one strange yet somehow beautiful, including Val, the blowsy bottle-blonde who shows surprising maternal instincts when the boys need it most, and El Rey del Perdito, the "Undisputed King of the Tango," a widower who dances nightly, imagining his wife in his arms, as Dough peers through the window contemplating a love that seems not to die. Surrounded by the strange and displaced, Dough and Pill must navigate through a world of constant pain and confusion. Finding beauty in unexpected places and maintaining reverence for hard-won scars, these two brothers learn, finally, that even broken things can be perfect.
22131770	/m/05p91ph	How the Hula Girl Sings				 A young ex-con in a small Illinois town. A lonely giant with a haunted past. A beautiful girl with a troubled heart. Strange and darkly magical, How the Hula Girl Sings begins exactly where most pulp fiction usually ends, with the vivid episode of the terrible crime itself. Three years later, Luce Lemay, out on parole for the awful tragedy, does his best to find hope: in a new job at the local Gas-N-Go; in his companion and fellow ex-con, Junior Breen, who spells out puzzling messages to the unquiet ghosts of his past; and finally, in the arms of the lovely but reckless Charlene. How the Hula Girl Sings is a suspenseful exploration of a country bright with the far-off stars of forgiveness and dark with the still-looming shadow of the death penalty.
22133333	/m/05p8b5d	Air and Angels	Susan Hill	1991-03-25	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first half of the book comprises two separate narratives in set in Edwardian India and Cambridge. In Cambridge the Revd Thomas Cavendish, a celibate and irreproachable university don in his mid-fities appears destined to become master of the college. He lives with his sister and is a confirmed batchelor, spurning the attentions of his sister's friend Florence who is determined to wed him. His enthusiasm is birds; spending his leisure time either on the Fens birdwatching, or in his indoor aviary. In India, 15-year old Kitty is becoming bored with ex-colonial life, and at the same time repelled by the poverty she sees nearby; and longs to return to the England she left as a young child. Eventually her parents relenting and after a long sea voyage she arrives at her cousin Florence's house in Cambridge. The second half of the book concerns Thomas Cavendish's growing obsession with Kitty after he sees her from his window, as she stands on a bridge over the river. Through his contacts with Florence he becomes her tutor with disastrous results...
22133556	/m/05p8ggy	Bluebirds Used to Croon the Choir: Stories				 Meno ensures from the first that readers are in odd territory, starting off with "The Use of Medicine," about a pair of kids using an old bottle of belladonna and a hypodermic they find among their father's medical supplies to drug little animals. Surreality rears its head in "In the Arms of Someone You Love," set in revolutionary Cuba, where a man worries about losing his wife to a dashing magician. The city erupts in violence, and the man makes a devilish barter for the sake of love, a move that takes this tale out of the realm of magical realism and into that of high romantic fantasy. More mundane matters prevail in such stories as "Mr. Song," which portrays a cad who pays the aged crooner in the apartment next door to sing ballads through the thin walls as a way of setting the mood, and "I'll Be Your Sailor," in which a schlemiel carries on a benighted affair with a woman in his apartment building who works at a themed fast-food restaurant and has a hockey-loving brute for an uncaring husband. The collection's highlight is the hilarious "A Trip to Greek Mythology Camp," a painfully comic scenario about a summer camp full of socially awkward kids who assume that in numbers they will find acceptance. Musical tales of love and loss with hardly a word wasted.
22139851	/m/05p1hzd	Romiette and Julio	Sharon Draper	2001		 Waking up 3 a.m. on the last night of Christmas vacation, Romiette has had another drowning dream. To relax herself, she starts to write in her diary. The next morning is Julio's first day at Romiette's school. After having trouble with gangs in Corpus Christi, Texas, Julio follows his father's new job to Cincinnati. On his first day of school, he hits a classmate, Ben, hard enough to make his nose bleed. When Ben covers for Julio, telling the principal that he had tripped and fell, Julio and Ben become friends, after Ben calls Julio. When Julio gets home that afternoon, he logs into a chatroom with the screen name "spanishlover" and starts to chat anonymously with "afroqueen," who he later finds is Romiette Romiette invites Destiny over to her house to watch a movie. After the film is over, Romiette excitedly tells Destiny about her online chat with "spanishlover." However, Destiny warns Romiette about dangerous people on the internet. Later at school, Julio is threatened by The Devildogs, a gang that assumes he belonged to a rival gang in Texas. Once home, Julio calls his friend Diego to groan about how much he hates Cincinnati. As soon as Diego hangs up, Ben calls and Julio asks him about The Family. Again, Julio and Romiette chat online, but this time they arrange to meet at lunch. Julio tells Ben about the lunch date. After school, Romiette writes in her journal about the lunch date, writing that the first thing she thought when she saw him was how good looking he was, that he hates Cincinnati and loves Texas, and concluding by vowing to call Destiny about it. At that moment, Destiny calls Romiette and they talk about the lunch date. For fun, Romiette only says that she had lunch with the person she chatted with, leaving Destiny to think she had lunch with a grown man. Romiette chats with Julio online, asking what sign he is for Destiny. At this point, Julio's father Luis mentions that he disapproves of his son's interactions with black classmates because of previous experiences with gang troubles. Unaware of the mounting family conflict, Romeitte continues to write in her journal about Julio, confessing that she is starting to like him more and more. When Julio talks to Ben, he, too, realizes how much he is beginning to like Romeitte. He says that she makes him feel alive. A couple of days later, at her mother's store Romiette is threatened by Makala, a member of The Devil Dogs, who disapprove of their relationship. Romiette and Julio face how to cope with the gang pressures, while continuing to fall deeply in love. Romiette had the same dream that she is drowning and, again, she hears a male voice at the end. During lunch, Romi runs into Malaka, who warns Romiette again about the Devil Dogs and how they don't like her hanging out with Julio. When Julio tells his parents about Romiette, his mother Maria approves, as long as he takes his time. Luis, on the other hand, cannot accept that Romi is black, telling his son the story of how his first love was killed by African American gang members. When Destiny spends the night at Romiette's, they try out the "Scientific Soul Mate System", which is supposed to find the man of their dreams. On Sunday morning Romiette finds she has dreamed about Julio and looks forward to seeing him later that afternoon. After a relaxing afternoon at Romiette's house, they walk to Julio's home through London Woods. Soon, they see a car following them. The Devil Dogs pull up and threaten Romi and Julio at gunpoint to end their relationship. On Monday at lunch Ben, Julio, Romiette, and Destiny all sit at their lunch table and talk about what to do about the gang problem, eventually agreeing on a plan to stop them. On Monday evening at five o'clock, they put their plan in action and head towards London Woods At six o’ clock Romiette and Julio start kissing and hugging to draw attention to themselves, as Ben and Destiny follow in a car. To their horror, the car breaks down, leaving them to push it the rest of the way. Now left vulnerable without backup, Romi and Julio are soon kidnapped by The Devil Dogs. When Romiette's parents Lady and Cornell come home from work, they see that Romi is not home. Lady then calls Malaka and asks her if she knows where Romi is at. Malaka denies any knowledge of her whereabouts. Soon, Destiny and Ben arrive at the Cappelle home to explain what happened to Romi and Julio. Meanwhile, at the Montague’s, Luis thinks it is Romiette's fault that his son is missing. Malaka finally tells the police something about where Romiette and Julio are, also getting charged for possession of a firearm, while Ben and Destiny help to find their missing friends. Romi and Julio are stranded at the bottom of a boat in London Woods Lake. When lightning strikes, they are separated. Having fallen into the lake, unable to swim, Romi blacks out and experiences once again her recurring dream. When Julio finds her floating face down, he pulls her to land and finds she is not breathing. As Julio tries to wake her, Romi recognizes the voice in her dream as Julio's. Meanwhile, Officer Blazar finds the minicam Julio had in his pocket and Destiny spots Romi's shoe. The officers and the parents decide to dredge the lake, as newscasters announce Romi and Julio's disappearance. Soon, Nannette Norris, a local newscaster, arrives to interview people around the London Woods. Looking together at the other end of the lake, the Cappelle and Montague fathers find Romiette and Julio under a log. The news cameraman gets a shot of the fathers bringing back Romi and Julio, and follows them to the hospital for interviews. The entire Cappelle and Montague families go on air to tell the community what happened. The novel ends with Romiette and Julio calling each other to laugh at the whole thing.
22142901	/m/05n_4th	Little Eva: The Flower of the South			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Little Eva tells a simple tale of Eva, a young girl and the daughter of a plantation owner, who is well-behaved, polite, and intelligent. Eva, due to her kind-heartedness, teaches the child-slaves on the plantation how to read and write, and because of her kindness, the slaves, when they are set free, prefer to remain on the plantation with Eva as her friends.
22143642	/m/05q95cx	Daughter of Venice	Donna Jo Napoli	2002	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This story follows Donata, daughter of a wealthy noble in 1592. VENICE, ITALY 1592. Donata Mocenigo, daughter to one of the city's noble families, leads a life of wealthy privilege. But constrained by the strict rules of etiquette a young noblewoman must observe, she longs to throw off her veil and wander freely around the vibrant city she can see only from her balcony. So Donata comes up with a daring plan to escape the palazzo and explore - a plan that will change her own and her family's lives for ever. Donata Mocenigo is the daughter of a wealthy Venetian noble family; but chages at her lack of freedom. Eventually she and her sisters conspire to let her dress up as a poor boy, and wander the city freely - her twin sister, Laura, taking her place around the household. On her first visit outside her palazzo, she injures her foot, wanders into the Jewish Ghetto, and meets a young man called Noé, who helps her and gives her a pair of shoes, in return for her working off the debt for him at a printers' workshop, copying out handbills. Donata does so for a month, getting closer to Noé. Meanwhile, at home, she and Laura persuade their father to allow them to join their brothers in tutorials - Donata begins learning to read and write, and about architecture, business and history. Laura, however, is less interested, and quits tutorials after a short time. As Donata and Laura are the second and third daughters in their family, and only the first (and sometimes second) daughter normally marries, both of them hope to find husbands instead of being sent to convents like their younger sisters, Maria and Paolina. However, during a dinnertime discussion, Donata's father announces that he has found not one, but two husbands - one for their older sister Andriana, and one for Donata, who has been selected partly because of being so hardworking. However, since it is Laura who has been working hard in her stead while she wanders around Venice, she feels horribly guilty and decides that she cannot get married - partly from loyalty to Laura, and partly because she is falling in love with Noé. Eventually, she comes up with a plan: she writes a denunciation of herself, claiming that she has converted to Judaism, so that she will be embroiled in a scandal, withdrawn from the betrothal, and Laura can take her place. In the process her family discover that she has been leaving the palazzo, alone, but eventually the plan does succeed. Donata has no idea what her future will hold, but eventually her father reveals that her tutor, Messer Zonico, has gone to the University of Padua to persuade them to allow her to take up the doctorate course in philosophy. Donata is overjoyed, and hope to become a tutor like the one she admires someday, to other noble girls.
22154606	/m/05q488x	Close to Home	Deborah Moggach	1979		 The book is set in the long hot summer of 1976 in a suburban London street and concerns the occupants of two adjacent houses. In one lives Kate Cooper who struggles with her two young children and the domestic chores whilst keeping up appearances for her high-flying husband who works as a eurocrat in Brussels, spending little time at home. In the other lives Sam Green is struggling to write a novel whilst his wife goes out to work running a psychiatric practice and his angst-ridden teenage daughter binge eats in her bedroom. Kate and Sam are drawn together whilst their families are seemingly unaware...
22154722	/m/05q5d4z	The Grange at High Force	Philip Turner	1965	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel opens in All Saints' church in Darnley Mills. Some time ago, Peter constructed a Roman ballista and accidentally broke a window in the church while testing it. Two pigeons, taking advantage of the broken window, built a nest in the nave. "Operation Bird's Nest" is now underway, with Arthur climbing up to remove the nest. The gathered crowd below are (quite unnecessarily) concerned for his safety, except for Miss Cadell-Twitten, who is still seething about the ejection of the birds from the church. Arthur poses in an empty niche, which Mr Pritchard explains once held a statue of the Virgin Mary. The same day, the three friends set off to explore High Force on the moors, to see the waterfall and the tiny abandoned church of Little St. Mary's. Peter has an accident with his bicycle, aptly named the Yellow Peril. Seeking help at the Grange, they meet the Admiral and Guns, and are fascinated by the ancient ship's cannon on the Grange terrace and the workshop in the cellar where a mill wheel is being constructed to provide reliable electricity. The Admiral is in turn interested to hear about the ballista, and proposes that both weapons should be fired at targets to test their accuracy. They all go together to look at the church, and find it has been invaded by dozens of birds. It needs re-roofing, and thorough cleaning. They set about the various tasks with energy and enthusiasm, also stumbling on a mystery concerning the statue. Miss Cadell-Twitten hints that she knows the answer, but refuses to tell them because they accidentally frightened her bird Augustus. Plans to fire the cannon are scotched by the police sergeant, until an opportunity arrives just before Christmas, when they succeed in sinking a makeshift raft. Immediately afterwards, a blizzard starts and they help Mr Ramsgill gather in his scattered flock. A exceptionally heavy snowfall cuts off the moor, and even with a snow plough it is a struggle to return to the Grange through the deep drifts. David, the only one who can manage the snowshoes, checks on Bird Cottage and finds Miss Cadell-Twitten suffering from exposure. Grateful for her rescue, she tells them where to find the statue, which is recovered and returned to All Saints. The novel ends with a two-gun salute, as the Admiral and Guns set off in the spring in their new boat to explore the coastline of the British Isles.
22155410	/m/05q8p8s	Beyond the Grave	Judy Blundell	2009-06-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Amy and Dan head for Egypt, with their au pair Nellie Gomez, to find a clue, hidden by Ekaterina founder, Katherine Cahill. They were tailed by Irina Spasky, but escape to a store with an Egyptian goddess statue, the Sakhet. There, a man, Theo Cotter, shows up and convinces them it's a fake. Discouraged, they go back to Nellie. They go to the Hotel Excelsior and find the Ekaterina stronghold. They find three Sakhets and get trapped by Bae Oh, who is the hotel's owner. As they escape, one of Grace's friends, Hilary Vale, takes them to her house. She gives them items from Grace and they find out Theo is Hilary's grandson. They head for an Egyptian temple and get trapped by Irina and Theo. After Amy and Dan had escaped, they are trapped again by Jonah Wizard, who leaves them on a deserted island on the Nile. After Jonah left them, they are chased by a crocodile across the island, but are saved by a local fisherman. They find out Theo and Hilary Cotter tricked them to get their hands on the Sakhet that Grace left for Amy and Dan. After an unsuccessful attempt to find the clues under the Nile river with Alistair, Amy and Dan find something leading them back to Cairo. After arriving, they find a store which Grace once visited. The store owner, Sami, gives them a Senet board. After opening the puzzle, they identified their clue, Myrrh. It ends with the stronghold getting destroyed, and Amy and Dan finding a mysterious cloth with letter Ms in a pattern, indicating that it must have been the Madrigals.
22158327	/m/05q6kxc	The Fire Kimono	Laura Joh Rowland	2008-11	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In the prologue, a Shinto priest passing by discovered remains of a human unearthed when strong winds toppled an oak tree near the Inari Shrine. Since his return from Ezogashima, there had been increased in attacks against Sano and against Matsudaira, the attackers wearing insignias from each other's houses. Just as Sano confronted Matsudaira about the latest attack on Sano's wife, Reiko, which Matsudaira flatly denied, both men were summoned by the Shogun. The shogun informed them that the skeleton of his long lost cousin, Tokugawa Tadatoshi, who was thought to have perished during the Great Fire of Meireki, and charged Sano with the investigation. Sano barely had time to plan his investigation when his mother, Etsuko, was arrested by Matsudaira's men as the suspect for murdering Tadatoshi. The witness was a Colonel Doi Naokatsu in the service of Matsudaira. Doi was also apparently once Tadatoshi's bodyguard, and Etsuko was a lady-in-waiting to Tadatoshi's household women. Sano was shocked that his mother was not a humble commoner as he had thought, but a scion of the Kumazawa clan, a respected hereditary Tokugawa vassal. Doi claimed to have heard Etsuko plotting with Egen against Tadatoshi, Egen being a monk and Tadatoshi's tutor. Sano was able to convinced the shogun to allow him bring Etsuko home to facilitate the investigation, but he was dismayed to find his mother less than cooperative. As more and more of the past were uncovered, his mother's position became more and more unfavourable. Meanwhile, confined to the security of the house due to danger of attacks, Reiko was at last able to help in the investigation by trying to get more information from Etsuko, and from Etsuko's loyal longtime maid, Hana. Reiko was also struggling to win back her young daughter, Akiko, who became alienated from Reiko when Reiko left her behind to go to Ezogashima to rescue her son, Masahiro, as told in the previous novel. Hirata too had returned from an even longer absence to find that his wife and children had become strangers to him. Amidst the investigation, Yanagisawa plotted with his son Yoritomo to bring down both Sano and Matsudaira.
22158874	/m/05q4hth	The Takeover	Muriel Spark	1976		 Three large villas overlooking Lake Nemi are owned by the wealthy, glamorous American Maggie Radcliffe. One is occupied by her son and daughter-in-law. A second is leased by an Italian doctor and his two children. The third is occupied by the eccentric Hubert Mallindaine, who believes himself to be the descendant of the offspring of the Emperor Caligula's mythical liaison with Diana. Once a trusted friend of Maggie Radcliffe, Hubert is now an unwelcome house-sitter whom she wants evicted as quickly as possible. Hubert is not so easily removed, however, and his intransigence and liquidation of Maggie's assets in the house (including a Cezanne) is mirrored in the loss of much of Maggie's wealth, from burglary to outright embezzlement of her entire estate. Events conspire however to cause both to review what they consider important.
22159774	/m/05q5gk3	Sir Nobonk and the Terrible Dreadful Awful Naughty Nasty Dragon	Spike Milligan		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The story takes place in the mythical Kingdom of Rotten Custard, a kingdom that exists within Cornwall, where knights are constantly at war with the Dragons. Among the knights is a 60-year-old knight named Sir Nobonk, who becomes a dragon-catcher in order to save the dragons from extinction. Setting forth into the nearby forest, Sir Nobonk successfully captures the last living dragon, and convinces the king to open a zoo to help dragons to repopulate. The plan becomes successful, and also helps humans and dragons to co-exist peacefully within the kingdom. However, the prosperity of the kingdom invokes a giant named Blackmangle to attack the kingdom along with his servant Witch-Way, leaving it to Sir Nobonk to face the new foes and to save the kingdom.
22163028	/m/05q5xvz	Prayer for the Living	Bruce Marshall	1934	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A witty, engrossing, unique novel about the life of masters and boys in a Scottish prep school. One way of describing this novel is to say that it is a story of life in a prep school in Scotland during World War I: and that, so far as the bare facts go, is an accurate description. But it is no way at all of conveying to the reader the devilish wit and cutting satire with which Mr. Marshall heightens and brightens the scene, or the pathos surrounding schoolboys who will overnight be turned into soldiers, or the moving idyl of love between the headmaster's daughter and a young student about to leave for the Front.
22163786	/m/05q8byp	An Account of Capers	Bruce Marshall	1988	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set against the background of an Italy poised on the brink of war with Abyssinia in 1935, the story focuses on chartered accountant Arthur Waters. He is sent to Milan to audit the books of an Italian firm. His seemingly straightforward mission becomes somewhat hampered when he becomes involved with the beautiful Emma and the treacherous Bazzini. But his problems really begin when he is mistaken for a British spy and prevented from leaving the country.
22182859	/m/05q838b	Fadeout	Joseph Hansen	1970		 Following the discovery of his car, destroyed beneath a narrow wooden bridge, police assume that Fox Olson, once beloved pop star, died in a road accident, despite there being no sign of a body. When Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator and no-nonsense gumshoe, arrives on the scene, he soon begins collecting evidence that indicates otherwise. For instance, what lies behind the seemingly innocent friendship between Fox's wife and his manager? And just why has an old boyhood friend of his suddenly shown up after twenty years?
22191858	/m/05q6nby	White Acre vs. Black Acre			{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The story follows the history of the United States from its time as a British province to the beginning of tensions between north and south in the 1850s. It is presented as though the story were being recounted by a retired barrister from Lincolnshire in England to a reporter from the United States. The story takes place in the county of Shropshire in England, where capitalist Mr. Bull is undergoing a difficult transaction with a large quantity of land his firm has since acquired from various lucrative business deals. His main rival is Don Armado, who owns land near his own, and seeks to steal Bull's land from him. When Don Armado is placated, Mr. Bull takes his business elsewhere, and the land prospers. However, the two farmers tilling the land are suddenly split over the question of whether the land ought to be tilled by ordinary, ineffective farmhands or by loyal, hardworking slaves. The land is thus split between the two farmers. The pro-slavery segment becomes the Black Acre Farm, whilst the anti-slavery land becomes the White Acre Farm, with both competing to see which side will be the most prosperous.
22192000	/m/076z0h4	Fablehaven: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary	Brandon Mull		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kendra is being held captive by the Society of the Evening Star, and her brother Seth Sorenson is depressed at his sister's sudden death. With the help of an anonymous person, Kendra uses a knapsack to escape along with a victim of her captor lectoblix Torina. An undercover agent of the Society of the Evening Star had explained that a lectoblix sucked the youth out of victims previously. Reading Patton Burgess' Journal of Secrets, Kendra learns the location of the key to the Translocator, one of the keys to the demon prison. But in order to recover it, the Knights of the Dawn must take on their biggest and most dangerous task: to enter a dragon sanctuary closed to human interference, a death trap called Wyrmroost. In order to retrieve the key to the Translocator's vault, the team must brave the forbidden Dragon Temple, which brings challenges more dangerous than any before. Gavin's true identity is revealed as Navarog, the evil dragon that was the original occupant of the Quiet Box at Fablehaven. Gavin intends to eat Kendra before Raxtus devoured him. Meanwhile, Kendra returns home in despair of betrayals to hear shocking news.
22192134	/m/05q560f	The Black Gauntlet: A Tale of Plantation Life in South Carolina				 Unlike other anti-Tom novels, The Black Gauntlet does not have a discernible narrative. It is essentially a collection of speeches by characters who argue in favor of American slavery as an institution. Some of the speeches were created by Schoolcraft. In other cases, she refers to quotations from other published works, including the Bible and Uncle Tom's Cabin.
22197397	/m/05q4058	Currency Wars		2007	{"/m/02j62": "Economics"}	 According to the book, the western countries in general and the US in particular are controlled by a clique of international bankers, which use currency manipulation (hence the title) to gain wealth by first loaning money in USD to developing nations and then shorting their currency. The Japanese Lost decade, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the Latin American financial crisis and others are attributed to this cause. It also claims that the Rothschild Family has the wealth of 5 trillion dollars whereas Bill Gates only has 40 billion dollars. Song also is of the opinion that the famous U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, is not a department of state functions, but several private banks operated by the private sector, and that these private banks are loyal to the ubiquitous Rothschild family. On June 4, 1963, President Kennedy signed an executive order, which, as an amendment to Executive Order 10289, delegated the authority to issue silver certificates (notes convertible to silver on demand) to the Secretary of the Treasury. Song says the direct consequence was that the Federal Reserve lost its monopoly to control money. The book looks back at history and argues that fiat currency itself is a conspiracy; it sees in the abolition of representative currency and the installment of fiat currency a struggle between the "banking clique" and the governments of the western nations, ending in the victory of the former. It advises the Chinese government to keep a vigilant eye on China's currency and instate a representative currency. The book, published in 2007, also correctly described and warned of the various forms of derivative speculation used by Wall Street which eventually became the causes of massive margin call sell offs and stock market crash in late 2008..
22203984	/m/05q53g_	Midnight	Jacqueline Wilson	2003	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Violet is a dreamy girl who is often away in her own world, filled with fairies designed by her favourite author, Caspar Dream. She lives with her mother, father and her brother Will, who she loves very much despite the fact he can be controlling and sometimes frightens her. At Christmas, Violet finds out that Will was adopted. One night, Will forces Violet to play a game of 'Blind Man's Buff'. Violet hates the game, but plays anyway because since Will discovered he was adopted he had become reclusive and rarely played with her. Consequently, she has a scary experience with bats in the attic of an empty house. Violet later makes a resolution that she will not let Will order her around. Soon, a new girl, Jasmine, comes to Violet's school and chooses her as a friend. Violet is thrilled because Jasmine is pretty and rich, although she is not sure if Jasmine truly wants to be her friend or just wants to get closer to Will. Will and Violet play 'Truth and Dare' and Will asks Violet that, if she could have a love affair with anyone, who would it be? Violet says Caspar Dream. Violet asks the same question to Will but before he can answer, Jasmine calls and asks for help with her homework. Much to Violet's surprise, Will invites Jasmine over. They work for a while and then play Truth and Dare again, where Will asks Violet who she likes better, him or Jasmine. When Violet fails to come up with a reply, Will dares her to spend 10 minutes in the attic. Violet reluctantly agrees. In the attic, Violet finds out that she used to have another brother named Will but he died when he was less than one year old, so her parents tried to replace him with her adopted brother. She leaves the attic and finds Will and Jasmine kissing. Not realising she is within earshot, Jasmine and Will make fun of Violet and the fairies she has hanging from the ceiling. When they see her, Violet runs away and goes to see Caspar Dream's old house. There she finds Caspar Dream himself and they become friends. When she returns home, Jasmine is apologetic and regretful. She forgives both Jasmine and Will. Afterwards, she confronts her parents about the first Will. They eventually tell her and Will the truth and soon things begin to become better for Violet.
22204257	/m/05q4hbg	Dirty Weekend		1991	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Bella, a solitary young woman with a dubious past, has just arrived in Brighton. Having recently been dumped by her boyfriend, all she wants is some peace and quiet in her newly rented small flat near Brunswick Square. Tim, a young man living in one of the houses across her backyard, takes a fancy to the new arrival and soon starts watching and eventually molesting her. He accosts her in the park and torments her with obscene phone calls. The police are not really helpful, but Bella is scared. On a stroll through the Lanes, she sees a sign advertising sessions with a clairvoyant and, on the spur of the moment, she visits him. Her meeting with Nimrod serves as both an eye-opener and a catalyst. When Bella leaves Nimrod that Friday afternoon, her self-confidence has been restored, her mind is set, and she is ready for action: She has "had enough". A few hours later Tim makes his last obscene phone call to Bella. At night she enters his flat through a window and batters the sleeping man's head with a hammer. On Saturday morning she goes to a gunshop, but all they are prepared to sell her is an airgun. When she leaves the shop she is followed by "Mr Brown", who does sell her an illegal weapon. On Saturday night, dressed to kill, she enters the lobby of one of the large seafront hotels and only has to wait for a few minutes until she is chatted up. Her unsuspecting victim is Norman, a clinical psychologist with a weight problem. Norman, who is attending a congress in Brighton, can easily persuade her to join him upstairs in his hotel room. Once there, he cannot get an erection and asks Bella if he can be her slave. Bella takes the opportunity and, while Norman is bound and gagged, puts a plastic bag over his head. On Sunday morning she finds a dentist who is willing to treat her for her toothache. After he has fixed her tooth, the dentist offers to give her a lift home. Instead, he drives into an empty multi-storey car park and forces Bella to perform oral sex on him ("open wide"). As a result, Bella kills him with his own Jaguar XJ-S. She steals the car and soon afterwards comes to the rescue of an old tramp called Liverpool Mary who is biding her time in a cul-de-sac near Brighton station. She shoots three yuppie-style young men who, drunk and angry, are threatening to set fire to the bag lady. On the same night, at 4 a.m., while walking along the beach near the deserted West Pier, she realizes that she is being watched. The man watching her, a serial killer, thinks he has found his next victim, but when he attacks Bella she stabs him with a flick-knife.
22206052	/m/05q4ncn	Life at the South; or, \\"Uncle Tom's Cabin\\" As It Is				 Smith's novel begins on a plantation in Virginia, owned by the benevolent and kindly Mr. Erskine. Among his slaves is Uncle Tom (Smith's version of Stowe's character), who is convinced to run away by an abolitionist schoolteacher from the North. The teacher is portrayed as envious of the prosperity of Erskine and seeks to ruin him by convincing his slaves to desert the plantation. As Tom's journey continues, the man realizes that the abolitionists who are "helping" him wish to enslave him for their own ends. After being abused and mistreated in Buffalo, Illinois after attempting to return home, Tom finally ends up in Canada. Erskine is waiting there to "rescue" Tom from his freedom and to take him back to "good old Virginia".
22207737	/m/05q9c24	The North and the South; or, Slavery and Its Contrasts				 The story centres on the wealthy and prosperous Harley family, consisting of: Frank (the father), Gazella (the mother), and their nine children. After a series of bad investments results in bankruptcy, the Harleys are forced into destitution, which in turn leads to Frank's untimely death from excessive drinking. Gazella continues life as a seamstress in order to provide for her children, two of which have since left home to live on a plantation in Mississippi and are now regaining their wealth. As a working-class woman, Gazella suffers all forms of abuse from those who had once been her equals. The North wanted the slaves to be free and equal. The South wanted slavery for the need in money for crops.
22207872	/m/05q7gxy	The Real Cool Killers	Chester Himes	1959	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 The book's plot concerns the murder of Ulysses Galen, who was found dead in one of the streets of Harlem. Detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson must investigate the murder and follow up various leads as to who might have had a reason to kill Galen.
22212708	/m/05q5ynw	Monsieur Lecoq	Émile Gaboriau		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 L'enquête Policemen on patrol in a dangerous area of Paris hear a cry coming from the Poivrière bar and go to investigate. There is evidence of a struggle. Two dead men are lying next to the fireplace, another is lying in the middle of the room. A wounded man, who is certainly the murderer, stands in a doorway. Gévrol, the inspector, tells him to give himself up, and he protests his innocence, claiming self-defence. He tries to escape, and when he is caught he cries, “Lost…It is the Prussians who are coming.” The third man, who is wounded, blames Jean Lacheneur for leading him to this place, and vows revenge. He dies shortly afterwards. Gévrol, judging from the man’s attire, concludes that he was a soldier, and the name and number of his regiment are written on the buttons of his great coat. His young colleague, Monsieur Lecoq, remarks that the man cannot be a soldier because his hair is too long. Gévrol disagrees. The inspector thinks that the case is straightforward – a pub brawl that ended in murder, whereas Lecoq thinks that there is more to the affair than meets the eye, and asks the inspector if he can stay behind to investigate further, and chooses an older officer, Père Absinthe, to stay with him. Lecoq expounds his interpretation of the case to him, stating that the vagabond they had arrested is in fact an upper class man. He comments that the criminal’s remark about the Prussians was an allusion to the battle of Waterloo, and reasons that he was waiting for accomplices. He finds footprints in the snow outside the back exit to the bar, revealing the presence of two women, who were helped to escape by an accomplice. An examination of the body of the supposed soldier leads to the discovery of a note, which reveals that his name was Gustave. Nothing is found on the bodies of the other two men which gives a clue to their identities. The judge, Maurice d’Escoval, arrives and commends Lecoq for the meticulousness of his investigation. After a brief interview with the suspect, the judge leaves suddenly, apparently moved, leaving Lecoq to his own devices. The suspect later tries to commit suicide in his cell. Lecoq continues his investigations the next day, following leads on the two women, but when he goes to report to M. d’Escorval he discovers that he has broken his leg and will be replaced by M. Segmuller. Under interrogation, the suspect maintains that he is an acrobat named Mai, and that he only arrived in Paris on Sunday. He states that he went for a drink in the Poivrière, was mistaken for a police informant, attacked, and defended himself with the revolver he was carrying. After making further enquiries, including observing the prisoner from above his cell, fail to produce any information, Lecoq decides to take drastic measures. He convinces M. Segmuller to allow him to set a trap by letting the prisoner escape, so that he can follow him. Mai wanders in the streets, followed by Lecoq and Absinthe in disguise, and eventually comes out of a seedy bar with a suspicious-looking man. In the evening, they stop outside a town house, which belongs to the Duke of Sairmeuse and Mai scales the wall, eluding his followers. They arrest his accomplice and search the house and its grounds, but the suspect has vanished. Lecoq goes to amateur detective, Père Tabaret for advice. Tabaret states that M. d’Escorval’s fall and Mai’s attempted suicide were not a coincidence, and that the two are enemies. By his reasoning it appears impossible for Mai to be the Duke of Sairmeuse, therefore Mai and the Duke of Sairmeuse are one and the same. Through consultation of biographies of the Duke of Sairmeuse and M. d’Escoval’s fathers, he reveals the hatred that exists between the royalist Sairmeuses and the Republican Escorvals. He says that the prisoner tried to kill himself because he thought his identity would be exposed and that this would bring shame on his family name. L’Honneur du nom 1815. The Duke of Sairmeuse returns from exile to claim possession of his lands, the majority of which are now in the possession of Lachneur, a bourgeois widower who live with his beautiful daughter, Marie-Anne. He claims that he had been charged with their guardianship until the return of the Sairmeuses, but the Duke treats him like a servant and accuses him of profiting from them. In their misfortune, one of their friends, the Baron of Escorval, under police surveillance as a former supporter of the Empire, asks Lacheneur for Marie-Anne’s hand in marriage for his son, Maurice, who is in love with and loved by her. He refuses because he is planning an uprising against the Sairmeuses, and does not want Maurice to get caught up in it. Maurice becomes involved in the plans to be closer to Marie-Anne, joining Lacheneur’s son, Jean, and Chalouineau, who is secretly in love with Marie-Anne. Stopping at nothing that could help him succeed, Lachenur is even welcoming to Martial, the marquis de Sairmeuse, who is enamoured with Marie-Anne and hopes to make her his mistress. His fiancé, Blanche, the daughter of the marquis of Courtomieu, is furious and vows revenge on the woman she wrongly considers as her rival. The uprising fails and the Baron d’Escorval is arrested as the head of the plot, despite having tried to dissuade the rebels from their course of action. He is condemned to death, along with Chalouineau, in a trial presided over by the Duke of Sairmeuse. The baron is saved by Chalouineau, who trades a compromising letter written by the Marquis de Sairmeuse for the chance for the baron to escape. The Duke and Courtomieu accept, but cut the cord that was to help the baron escape as soon as they get hold of the letter. The baron is badly wounded but carried away and cared for by the village curate, father Midon. Chalouineau is executed and leaves all his property to Marie-Anne. Maurice and Marie-Anne reach Piémont, where a priest marries them in secret. The go to Turin, but Marie-Anne decides to return to France when she learns of her father’s arrest and execution. Maurice, unaware that Martial was not involved in the treachery against his father, writes a letter to him denouncing him. Martial, outraged by Courtomieu’s bad faith, reads the letter at the wedding evening, causing a scandal. He vows to live apart from his wife. Marie-Anne takes possession of Chalouineau’s house, and conceals the birth of her son, that a Piedmontese peasant takes away to his land in secret. Blanche, still desiring vengeance against Marie-Anne, gets Chupin to spy on her and slips into her house when she is away and puts poison in a bowl of soup that Marie-Anne drinks on her return. She dies in agony, but sees Blanche who did not have a chance to escape. She pardons her on the condition that she takes care of the son she had with Maurice. Chupin is a witness, but later dies from a stab wound from one of his enemies, but not before revealing Blanche’s crime to his oldest son. Martial vows to avenge Marie-Anne, but no-one suspects that Blanche is the murderer. They move to Paris and live separately under the same roof. They soon learn that the Duke is killed when he went out riding on his horse, probably by Jean Lacheneur, who is in hiding. Chupin’s eldest son turns up in Paris and blackmails Blanche. She fails to find Marie-Anne’s son. Years pass, Maurice’s parents die, and he becomes a judge in Paris. Chupin’s eldest son dies, Blanche believes that she is free from the blackmail, but Jean Lacheneur arrives in Paris, aware of who killed his daughter, and decides to exact vengeance on her by using her husband. He makes Chupin’s widow begin the blackmail again, and sends an anonymous letter to the duke to draw attention to her movements. Martial is stunned when he sees the seedy bar that his wife has been going to, but glimpses the truth when he finds out that it is owned by Chupin’s widow. He finds a compromising letter that Blanche kept and realises that she murdered Marie-Anne. Martial follows Blanche one night when she goes to the Poivrière to meet Chupin’s widow with her chamber maid. Jean Lacheneur has set a trap, in which he intends to lead Martial and Blanche to a notorious place and provoke a scene in which they will find themselves compromised. However, the three criminals he enlists in this scheme let greed take over and try to steal Blanche’s diamond earrings. Martial intervenes and has to combat three foes. He promises Chupin’s widow a reward if she keeps quiet. The women manage to escape. This takes the reader to the beginning of the affair. Having found out that Blanche has committed suicide and that M. d’Escorval has been reunited with his son, Lecoq decides to confront the Duke of Sairmeuse, having put together all the pieces of the mystery. One day a red-haired man goes to the Duke’s house and gives him an urgent letter from M. d’Escorval, asking him, as a gesture of his gratitude for not revealing his identity, to lend him a large sum of money that he needs. Martial replies with a letter that tells him that his fortune and his life belong to his old enemy, whose generosity have saved him from dishonour. He hands this back to the messenger, who drops his beard and wig: it is Lecoq, who had forged M. d’Escorval’s handwriting. The case against the Duke is dismissed, his innocence having been proven, and Lecoq is appointed in the post that he sought.
22214018	/m/05q7wbg	Necromancer				 Necromancer follows the fortunes of Paul Formaine, a mining engineer in the late 21st Century who endures several accidents. His quest for self discovery, and recovery from losing his arm, leads him to embrace the Chantry Guild. The Guild embraces a philosophy of destruction with the hope of making space for the rise of a new evolutionary form of humanity. The instrument in their goals is the somewhat melodramatically named Alternate Laws or Alternate Forces. Formaine is led to the Chantry Guild after encountering Destruct, a book written by Walter Blunt, the Guild's leader. Formaine enlists under the mastery of Necromancer Jason Warren and the ethereal influence of musical vocalist Kantele Maki. His initial goal in joining the guild is the regeneration of his lost arm. The story is punctuated by Formaine's epiphany moments. First, he realizes the inadequacy of psychology in his self exploration. He slowly realizes his own savant power over the Alternative Forces. He is taken aback by his growing hyper awareness of the world around him, specifically the inter-related isolation of all individuals. This isolation is dramatically symbolized by Formaine's own singularity. He has a final epiphany near the end of the book that clarifies for him his own identity and potential ... and much more. The book is divided into three sub-books: Isolate, Set, and Pattern. In each book, Formaine realizes the function of each mathematical collective in the flow of objective history and subjective reality. As with many Science Fiction novels, the philosophical underpinnings of evolution require a decidedly unscientific leap in the reader's understanding of what constitutes science to rally the punctuation that brings about the next stage of human evolution.
22216108	/m/05q5wjz	City of Glass	Cassandra Clare	2009-03-24	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Just before Jace and Clary are to leave for the city of Alicante, Jace lies to Clary in the hopes of tricking her into staying for the sake of her own safety. He asks Simon to meet him at the Institute to back him up, only for Clary to end up through the portal after an attack by the Forsaken. The group lands in the Lake Lyn, causing Clary to accidentally swallow some of the water and to hallucinate. She remains behind with Luke's sister Amatis while the others are introduced to Aline Penhallow and her cousin Sebastian Verlac. Jace flirts with Aline to Simon's anger. They are then introduced to the new Inquisitor, who wants Simon to lie about the Lightwoods in order to incriminate them of being in league with Valentine. Simon refuses and is thrown in jail. Clary sneaks away to find the others, only to find Jace and Aline kissing. This causes a fight between the two where Jace insults Clary in order to drive her away and cause her to return home. Clary leaves, heartbroken over his harsh words, and Sebastian later catches up with her to help her with her plan to help her mother. The two go to Ragnor's house the next day, where Clary is shocked to discover that Ragnor has been killed and that Magnus was there in his place. He informs Clary that she must gain a spellbook disguised as a cookbook in the Wayland country home. She then travels to the ruins of Fairchild manor, where she and Sebastian share a kiss that she breaks due to it not feeling right. A projection of Raphael then appears and informs her that Simon is in jail. Clary returns to Amatis's house where Jace is waiting for her. He apologizes to her for his harsh words to her, only for the two to fight once again about him not telling her about Simon being in jail to which Clary even throws glass plates and dishes at him in anger (which he easily avoids). After the two manage to calm down from their fight, they then eventually travel to Wayland manor, only to discover the remains of an experiment Valentine had been running on a half-dead angel. They then learn through the angel that Jace has demon blood. The two barely make it out of the house alive when it begins to explode and while lying on the ground together afterward, end up passionately kissing in the heat of the moment and share a brief moment of passionate romance. Clary stops the two of them when things begin to go too far, accusing Jace of using her so he can hate himself when he says he blames his demon blood for his incesterous feelings for her. The two return to find Alicante in flames and to see Aline grabbed by a demon. Alec goes out to search for Aline, only to run into Magnus and resolve their relationship. Jace and Clary eventually find the spellbook, which she gives to Magnus, angering Sebastian when he asks her for it. Jace, Clary, and Alec leave for the jail where Simon is kept and breaks both him and Samuel out, only to discover that Samuel is actually Hodge, the previous keeper of the Institute. He informs them that the mirror, the last of the Mortal Instruments, is actually the Lake Lyn. Hodge is then killed by Sebastian, who claims that he did it to keep them out of danger. This causes the three to realize that Sebastian is a spy for Valentine, who then flees after a battle with them. They return to the Hall, only to horrifically discover that Sebastian has killed Max. After Max's funeral, Jace sneaks into Clary's bedroom and tells her he loves her and always will. The two then fall asleep on her bed together, holding hands. The following morning, Jace leaves a note behind for Clary to find (along with his family's ring telling her in the note that he wants her to keep it) and sneaks off to find Sebastian. Clary manages to convince the Clave to fight with the Downworlders and teaches them a binding rune that the dying angel showed her. It is during this time that she discovers after talking with her mother, who had finally awaken from her coma by Mangus through the spell book, that she had received angel’s blood while in her mother’s womb and that Jace is actually the son of Stephen Herondale, son of the last Inquisitor, meaning they are not siblings after all. Clary then marks Simon with the Mark of Cain, a powerful protection spell, with the intent of saving him from Raphael, who plans to kill him for being a Daylighter. This causes Raphael to fight the Clave, as this was against what he had asked for. Meanwhile, Jace finds Sebastian talking to Valentine, who intends to use Lake Lyn to summon Raziel to destroy all the Shadowhunters not bound to him. After Valentine leaves Jace to battle Sebastian, who informs him that he (Sebastian) is actually Clary’s brother and the one with demon blood, not Jace (who actually has angel's blood instead of demon). Clary portals to Lake Lyn to stop Valentine from summoning Raziel, only for Valentine to capture her before using a spell to paralyze her body and voice. He then reveals to her his intent of using her as a sacrifice to complete his plan. When Jace arrives to rescue her moments before Valentine is about to slash Clary's throat, Valentine instead uses Jace's blood for the sacrifice, fatally stabbing him, and successfully summons Raziel. However, due to Valentine’s selfish plans and because Clary managed to put her name on the Binding runes instead of her father's, Raziel sees through Valentine's schemes and kills him. When Raziel offers to grant Clary one wish, Clary asks for Jace to come back to life. Raziel then fulfills Clary’s wish, bringing Jace back to life. Afterwards in the epilogue, taking place three days later, the two finally meet up after Jace leaves the infirmary for his wounds. The two then kiss, now finally able to be together, while watching the fireworks alongside their friends in celebration of the successful battle with nothing to keep them apart.
22217794	/m/05q5brt	Frank Freeman's Barber Shop				 The story focusses on a slave named Frank (later Frank Freeman), who is convinced to run away from his peaceful life on a southern plantation by "philanthropists" (Hall's term for abolitionists), having been promised that freedom would also bring a prestigious career. When Frank comes to the end of his journey, however, he realises that he has been deceived: his prestigious career is nothing more than running a seedy barber shop frequented by his new abolitionist masters, and is paid meagre wages for his work. However, Frank is soon discovered by members of the American Colonization Society, who rescue Frank from his predicament, and pay for his passage back to Liberia, his homeland, where he can finally live in peace.
22218319	/m/05q5h2w	Pride and Prejudice and Zombies		2009-04-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02psyd2": "Zombies in popular culture", "/m/03nhxh": "Social commentary", "/m/0crjhv8": "Mashup", "/m/03xwcv": "Regency romance", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel"}	 The story follows the plot of Pride and Prejudice, but places the novel in an alternative universe version of Regency-era England where zombies (and indeed skunks and chipmunks) roam the English countryside. Described as the "stricken", "sorry stricken", "undead", "unmentionables", or just "zombies", the deceased ancestors of England are generally viewed by the characters as a troublesome, albeit deadly, nuisance. Their presence alters the original plot of the story in both subtle and significant ways: Messages between houses are sometimes lost when the couriers are captured and eaten; characters openly discuss and judge the zombie-fighting abilities of others; women weigh the pros and cons of carrying a musket (it provides safety but is considered "unladylike"). Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters live on a countryside estate with their parents. Mr. Bennet guides his daughters in martial arts and weapons training, molding them into a fearsome zombie-fighting army; meanwhile, Mrs. Bennet endeavours to marry the girls off to wealthy suitors. When the wealthy and single Mr. Bingley purchases a nearby house, Mrs. Bennet spies an opportunity and sends the girls to the first ball where Bingley is expected to appear. The girls defend the party from a zombie attack, and attraction sparks between Mr. Bingley and the eldest daughter Jane Bennet. Elizabeth, however, clashes with Bingley's friend, the haughty monster-hunter Fitzwilliam Darcy. The Bennets are shaken when Bingley and his companions suddenly abandon his country home and return to the walled fortress city of London with little explanation. When the local militia arrives in town to exhume and destroy dead bodies, Elizabeth becomes friendly with one of the soldiers, George Wickham, who tells Elizabeth that Darcy cheated Wickham out of an inheritance. Elizabeth's dislike of Darcy turns into full-blown hatred when she learns that Darcy plotted to separate Bingley from her sister Jane. Elizabeth vows to avenge the slight to her family by killing Darcy. Later that evening, she is afforded that opportunity when he appears unannounced at the cottage where she is visiting her newlywed friend Charlotte (who has been secretly bitten by a zombie and is slowly turning into one herself). Before Elizabeth can fetch her katana and behead him, Darcy surprises her again by proposing marriage. The scene culminates in a vicious verbal and physical fight, in which Darcy is wounded. He eventually escapes with his life and writes a long letter to Elizabeth in which he explains his actions. He broke up Jane and Bingley out of fear that Jane had contracted the "mysterious plague" and was about to turn into a zombie. With regard to the allegedly wronged soldier Wickham, Darcy explains that Wickham had attempted to elope with Darcy's younger sister in an attempt to get his hands on her considerable fortune – this was the "inheritance" that Darcy had cheated the man out of. Elizabeth realizes that she has judged Darcy too harshly, and is humbled. Darcy, meanwhile, realizes that his arrogant nature encourages people to believe the rumors about him, and resolves to act more appropriately. Elizabeth embarks on a trip around the country with her aunt and uncle, fighting zombies along the way. At Pemberley she runs into Darcy, who helps her to defeat a rampaging horde of zombies. Darcy's new attitude and mannerisms impress Elizabeth and lead her to consider reconciling their relationship; unfortunately, all hopes are dashed when it is discovered that her younger sister Lydia has eloped to London with Wickham. The Bennet family fears the worst, but eventually receive word that Wickham and Lydia have married, following an "accident" that has rendered Wickham an incontinent quadriplegic. After visiting the Bennets, the couple adjourns to Ireland. Elizabeth discovers that it was Darcy who engineered the union, thus saving the Bennet family from ruin. Meanwhile, Mr. Collins has married the secretly-stricken Charlotte Lucas. When he finds out that she has been turned into a zombie, he kills himself, but not before allowing Lady Catherine to behead Charlotte. Darcy and Bingley return to the countryside, and Bingley resumes courting Jane. Elizabeth hopes to renew her relationship with Darcy, but his aunt, the Lady Catherine, interferes, insisting that her daughter Anne is a better match for her nephew. Lady Catherine challenges Elizabeth to a fight to the death, intent on eliminating the competition, but Elizabeth defeats Catherine and her cadre of ninjas. She spares Catherine's life. Darcy is touched by this gesture, and he returns to Elizabeth. The two cheerfully wipe out a field of zombies (their first battle as a couple) and begin a long and happy future together, insofar as the ever-present threat of zombie apocalypse permits it.
22223704	/m/05q7w7y	Nemesis				 The story, set in Latium in AD 77, opens with the deaths of Falco's newborn son (posthumously named Justinianus), and Marcus Didius Geminus, alias Favonius, Falco's estranged father. Following the funeral, Falco is astounded to discover that his father has left him and the rest of the Didii family a sizeable fortune, but with one problem: before Geminus died, he impregnated Falco's friend Thalia and as a result, he is now forced to share Geminus' inheritance with Thalia's yet unborn child. While auditing his father's business contacts, debtors and creditors, it transpires that a debt owed was never paid because the creditor in question, Julius Modestus, has disappeared. Falco travels to the towns south of Rome with his adopted daughter Albia (who is unhappy that Falco's brother-in-law Aulus has married someone else) and pays off the debt owed to Modestus' nephew, Sextus Silanus (and to investigate the disappearance of Silanus' uncle), while his friend Lucius Petronius Longus, the captain of the vigiles in Rome's Twelfth District, finally discovers Modestus, who has been brutally murdered and eviscerated. A clan of Imperial freedmen in the Pontine Marshes, the Claudii (consisting of four siblings named Nobilis, Probus, Virtus and Pius; and their wives and female siblings) are implicated in Modestus' grisly murder but as Falco and Petronius investigate further, they attract the interest of the Imperial Chief Spy, Anacrites &mdash; who, as usual, takes the case away from them. Meanwhile, however, another courier is found murdered and mutilated in the same manner as Modestus, while Anacrites' behaviour begins to become more erratic (and suspect) even as Falco and Petronius (covertly) investigate the murders further, eventually discovering more victims and the murderers themselves too, who are none other than the four Claudii brothers. It is thus discovered that Modestus may have been killed by the Claudii for attempting to speak out against them. Pius is abducted by Falco and Petronius to be taken away as a slave in a mine, Virtus and Probus are finally apprehended while Nobilis dies by falling upon the swords of Falco and his friends. Yet, even after the Claudii are wiped out, it is revealed that the Claudii may have had a fifth brother who could be a co-prepetrator. The identity of this fifth brother and his connections to Falco, his friends, and the imperial government are finally deduced; however, the Didii, Camilli (Falco's in-laws) and Petronii families realise that they know too much and that their lives (and possibly even the ruling Flavians) are now potentially threatened by this same person. Forced to make a difficult decision, Falco and Petronius finally decide to take matters into their hands, conspiring to "send Nemesis to deal with him" once and for all, ending the novel and the series so far in a cliffhanger.
22223906	/m/05q9flk	Rebels and Traitors				 The story follows the experiences of two main protagonists: Gideon Jukes, a printer from London who joins the New Model Army, and Juliana Calill, who, as a result of her marriage to the Royalist Orlando Lovell, experiences many vicissitudes. Their stories are linked through the activities of other characters, including the ne'er-do-well Kinchin Tew, the innocent and upright Edmund Treves, and real-life political figures such as Edward Sexby and Thomas Rainborough.
22224632	/m/05q9n8_	The Greenhouse		1988		 The story is told from the point of view of a greenhouse which tells of the family living in the house to which it belongs; most notably Vanessa a girl who grows up alone in the house and garden and is who spent much of her time in the greenhouse until their peace was shattered by a stranger who rapes her. Things can never be the same again for Vanessa as her son is born and inherits his character from his father...
22227502	/m/05q3_8x	Dear Nobody	Doherty	1991-11-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is split between two points of view, a first-person narrative presenting the events as Chris recalls them in retrospect, interspersed with a series of letters from Helen to their unborn child (Nobody), telling her side of the story as she experiences it. The framing sequence is set in autumn as Chris is on the verge of leaving for Newcastle University. A parcel of letters is delivered for him, and he recognizes Helen's handwriting. He begins to read the letters, all addressed to "Dear Nobody", and they remind him of the past nine months. The subsequent chapter headings are all the names of months, beginning with January. Helen and Chris make love for the first, and only, time. Chris is prompted to ask his father about his marriage breakdown, and decides to get in touch with his mother. Shortly afterwards Helen begins to fear she is pregnant. Chris is disturbed by her distant behaviour. In late February she finally tells him her suspicions, and writes her first letter to "Dear Nobody": "You're only a shadow. You're only a whisper... Leave me alone. Go away. Go away. Please, please, go away." Later when a pregnancy test proves positive, she tries to abort the pregnancy by going riding, risking her life in a wild gallop, to no avail. In April, Helen's mother finds out, and arranges for her to go to an abortion clinic. However, Helen decides to keep the baby. Mrs Garton refuses to have Chris in the house, but he and Helen continue to see each other. They visit Chris's mother in Carlisle. In June, Helen and Chris sit their A-levels. After they are over Helen tells Chris she has decided they should break up, believing it is best for both of them. Chris is bewildered, and feels bereft. To get away from all the memories in Sheffield, he goes to France with Tom. He meets a girl called Bryn, but cannot forget Helen. In September, Helen learns her mother's greatest secret – that she is illegitimate, a great disgrace when she was growing up – and finally begins to understand her. When her contractions start, she has a sudden impulse to send her "Dear Nobody" letters to Chris. Chris finishes reading the letters, realizes the baby is coming and rushes to the hospital, where he meets his newborn daughter, Amy.
22229489	/m/05q4r3w	The Legend of Deathwalker	David Gemmell	1996-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03dw_3": "Heroic fantasy"}	 The novel begins during the events in the book Legend, During the defense of the fortress Dros Delnoch from the Nadir, Druss begins to tell a young warrior a story from his past. He tells how he and his friend Sieben travelled to the land of the Gothir and how he became involved in the political affairs there. Due to a prophecy that the King made Druss must lose a tournament, when he refuses to do this men are hired to kill him. In the course of the attempt on his life his friend Klay is shot in the spine with a crossbow leaving him paralyzed and mortally wounded. To help him Druss travels to the land of the Nadir where a mystic has told him there are gems that can heal any wound. As he travels to the shrine of Nadir hero Oshikai, the Gothir send a force of 2,000 men to destroy it. Druss arrives at the shrine hoping to find the jewels but is unable to before the Gothir arrive and so helps 4 Nadir tribes to defend the shrine under the guidance of a Gothir trained Nadir soldier called Talisman. Talisman is on a quest to find "The Uniter", a man with blazing violet eyes called Ulric, who will unite the Nadir tribes after centuries of warfare. During the defense of the shrine the spirit of Oshikai's wife Shul-sen is released from captivity with the help of Druss and Talisman, the spirit unleashes a storm on the Gothir army and those that are not killed are ordered to withdraw. Druss's friend Sieben reveals that he has found the jewels which the Nadir call "The Eyes of Alchazzar". He takes them back to Gothir where they find that Klay had died a few days after they left. However, they heal many of the sick in the hospice before returning the jewels to the Nadir. Talisman then calls a meeting of the Nadir tribes in which he smashes the jewels to return the magic and life of the Nadir land. In doing this the energy flows through him turning his eyes a blazing purple; he then claims his name as Ulric. The book then comes back to the present day where we learn that Druss has fallen in combat in the defense of Dros Delnoch. Ulric/Talisman is saddened to learn of this, even though they were on opposing sides he considered Druss a great warrior.
22232696	/m/05q8671	Jack and Jill: A Village Story	Louisa May Alcott	1879	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jack Minot and Janey Pecq are best friends who live next door to each other. They are always seen together, so Janey gets the nickname of Jill, to mimic the old rhyme. The two do go up a hill one winter day— and then suffer a terrible accident. Seriously injured in a sledding accident, they recover from their physical injuries, while learning life lessons along with their many friends. They are helped along their journey to recovery by various activities created by their mothers.
22236960	/m/05q4s86	The Haunted Woman	David Lindsay		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Isabel Loment, engaged to the ordinary and unexceptional Marshall Stokes, leads a peripatetic existence as the ward of her aunt, Ann Moor. Their travels take them to the downlands of Sussex, to Runhill Court, an ancient home owned by Henry Judge. There Isabel discovers a strange staircase few can see, which leads upwards to three doors. She chooses one, which opens onto a room that appears to exist only part of the time; what might lie behind the other doors remains a mystery. In the room she reencounters Judge. There they find new insights and are able to express themselves in new ways, but are unable to recall what has transpired there when they leave. They develop a disturbing parallel relationship in the mysterious room, which ultimately culminates in the death of Judge and the rupture of Isabel from Marshall.
22242531	/m/05q4619	The Mum Minder	Jacqueline Wilson	1993	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It all begins when nine year old Sadie's mother, who is a childminder, gets ill. Sadie now has to look after all the children her mum is meant to look after, but eventually the other children's mothers take turns to look after all the children at their workplaces, i.e. at a police station, in an office and at a chocolate shop. The book is written through Sadie's perspective. It is a hilarious tale of how younger children are taken to work with their parents and explains all about child minders and their jobs. It is also an ebook.
22243313	/m/05q9dsj	Injury Time	Beryl Bainbridge	1977		 Edward is married to Helen but having an affair with Binny. Tonight the lovers are holding their first dinner party, although Edward has promised his wife that he will not be home late. Unfortunately things don't go to plan and the dinner party is gate-crashed by desperate bank-robbers wielding sawn-off shotguns and seeking hostages...
22244618	/m/05qb9wk	The Kite Fighters			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Set in Seoul, Korea, in 1473, the novel depicts the relationship of two brothers in a tradition-bound family. Lee Young-sup is acutely aware of the difference in his status being a younger brother, but he finds a true talent the first time he flies a kite. First-born son Kee-sup is under pressure from his father, a rice merchant, to advance the family honour by becoming a court official; he spends much of his time studying for the position, though it is not his true life goal. Young-sup's growing expertise in flying kites and Kee-sup's craft in making them draw the attention of the boy-king of Korea, modeled after King Songjong, and they become friends with the king outside of the ancient protocol and secretly represent him for the kite-fighting competition during the New Year's festival. It is the tension between traditional duties and individual needs that strengthens the bond of the two brothers.
22251143	/m/05q65_7	Shibumi				 Nicholaï Hel is an assassin, born in Shanghai in the 1930s and raised in a cosmopolitan fashion by his mother, a deposed member of the Russian aristocracy, and a general in the Japanese Imperial Army who has been billeted in Nicholaï's mansion. Under the general, Hel is introduced to the concept of shibumi and the game Go, eventually being sent to Japan, where he trains under a famous master of the game and becomes 'culturally Japanese'. The master of this school discovers Nicholai's ability to mentally escape from reality and come back rested and refreshed. When Japan surrenders in 1945, Hel, after long months of hunger, finds (thanks to his knowledge of many languages) a job as an interpreter in the US Occupation Army and becomes a decoder agent in United States Intelligence. Hel learns that the general who raised him is being held as a prisoner of war by the Russians and faces an ignominious show-trial for war crimes, and decides that the only way he can show his gratitude for the man's raising him in Shanghai is to kill him and help him avoid the embarrassment of the trial. He achieves this through his skills at the art of "Naked/Kill", a martial discipline that trains in the use of ordinary items as instruments of death. Hel is then tortured by the Americans and held in solitary confinement without trial, Hel being a citizen of no country. In prison, his physical and mental discipline, along with studying the Basque language from some old books abandoned by a missionary, help him to retain his sanity, although, due to the torture and drugs used in his interrogation, he is no longer able to fully escape mentally and reach his state of peaceful ecstasy. He even develops, in his solitude, a "proximity sense" through which he is aware of any being drawing near (along with its amicable or hostile intentions), and which also allows him to find his way in complete darkness. After three years, Hel is recruited out of his cell by the US Intelligence Service. It is in desperate need of an agent able to cause severe discord between Russia and China. It needs someone who has nothing to lose, who has European features, and who can speak fluent Chinese and Russian. Hel succeeds in his mission, taking for payment the names and locations of those who tortured him, and goes on to become one of the highest-paid and most skillful assassins in the world. The novel begins with Hel, retired in his late fifties in a small castle overlooking a village of the Haute-Soule, in the mountainous Northern Basque Country. He is an honorary member of the local Basque population, and his best friend among them is Beñat Le Cagot, a truculent Basque nationalist and bard, with whom he shares an immense love for freedom and an addiction to spelunking. Hel thinks he is now allowed to enjoy life in a shibui way (mingling discreet epicureanism with fatalism and detachment) and he slowly improves his Japanese garden, enjoys restrictive gastronomy, and practices highly esoteric sex with his concubine. Hel's shibumi existence is interrupted by the arrival of the niece of a man who saved Hel's life many years ago, herself the only survivor of a Jewish commando unit that took up arms to terminate the last of the Black September terrorists, the rest of the small unit having been gunned down in an Italian airport by CIA agents. She begs Hel to help her finish her mission and eliminate the terrorists, and gain revenge on the Mother Company.
22253689	/m/05q5wf6	The Prophet from Ephesus	Caroline Lawrence	2009	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins in Egypt where Flavia, Nubia, Jonathan and Lupus, still wanted by the Roman authorities, are hiding in Chryses's house. They are delighted to be visited by Aristo, but he brings bad news – not only are they all accused of treason, but one of Jonathan's twin nephews has disappeared, apparently taken by the slavers who have resumed their kidnapping of Roman children. Flavia's father has pursued them, and still does not know that Flavia and the others are alive after the shipwreck. Aristo, their tutor, comes to find them. He is their guardian for most of the book and he helps them get to a great many places. Delighted to find the children alive, he is shown as being the happiest since his love Miriam's death. They embark for Halicarnassus in Roman Asia, where they encounter several old acquaintances: the slave trader Magnus and his giant bodyguard, last seen in The Colossus of Rhodes, the magistrate Bato and the poet Flaccus. Jonathan is having prophetic visions he cannot make sense of, and is still plagued with guilt over the fire in Rome in The Enemies of Jupiter. Flavia is shocked to discover that Flaccus, whose proposal she had decided to accept, is already engaged to someone else. The countryside is full of prophets who are reported to heal the sick and cure the lame, giving Lupus hope that his muteness can be cured. Nubia is still love-sick over Aristo, whose own feelings are obscure. In the end it is revealed that the "eye-witness" to Philadelphius' (Jonathan's nephew) and his wet-nurse's kidnapping was bribed by Lydia, the wet nurse; her child had died and she kidnapped him to compensate for her loss.
22254795	/m/05q9h_3	When the Birds Fly South	Stanton A. Coblentz		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dan Prescott, an American adventurer, discovers the hidden valley of Sobul in a mountainous region of Afghanistan, inhabited by a strange race of winged people known as the "Ibandru". He falls in love with one of them, Yasma, and they marry in a scene of general celebration. When fall comes, however, the Ibandru abandon their valley to fly south with the birds for the winter. Unable to bear the loss of Yasma, Prescott pleads with her to remain with him rather than participate in the traditional migration, with tragic consequences for his marriage.
22263856	/m/05q8xq6	The Cabin and Parlor; or, Slaves and Masters	Charles J Peterson			 The story begins with the sudden death of a wealthy Virginia landowner, Mr. Courtenay, a kindly plantation owner who has died before being given the opportunity to pay off his debts, leaving his family in debt and facing destitution. In an effort to pay off the debts, the family sell their slaves, among whom is the kindly Uncle Peter, who takes a liking to Courtenay's daughter, Isabel, and vows to help her in any way possible in thanks for the kindness shown to him by the Courtenays. The money earned is nominal, leaving it to Isabel and her brother Horace to acquire jobs in order to pay the remaining bills and to support their ailing mother. Isabel finds a job as a schoolteacher, whilst Horace heads to an unidentified city in the north (inferred to be Philadelphia), where he becomes a "Northern slave" (i.e. a clerk) to the malevolent Mr. Sharpe, a ruthless capitalist who works Horace like as though he were a white slave. As the Courtenays continue to struggle, Isabel eventually finds comfort in a young slaveowner named Walworth, the son of an old Virginia family, who travels back and forth between north and south. When Horace dies of exhaustion in the north, Walworth comforts him in his final hours, and delivers his final requests to his sister in the south. Whilst travelling together, Walworth and Isabel are caught in the midst of an anti-Black riot, from which Walworth is able to save Isabel from harm. Isabel, eternally grateful, begins to have romantic feelings for Walworth, and they eventually marry. The marriage, by a twist of fate, allows Isabel to reclaim her wealth and property - including her slaves - and is finally reinstated at Courtenay Hall.
22267389	/m/05q73gy	Street Gang		2008		 Prologue: A description of the funeral of Muppet creator Jim Henson in New York City in 1990, from the viewpoint of Joan Ganz Cooney, one of the creators of Sesame Street. Chapters 1&mdash;12: The origins and development of the show and the creation of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW). Sesame Street was created after a dinner party hosted by Cooney and her husband in early 1966, attended by Carnegie Foundation vice-president Lloyd Morrisett and Cooney's boss at New York City educational television station WNDT, Lewis Freedman. The discussion inspired them to create a children's television program, different than what was offered at the time, that could "master the addictive qualities of television" and help young children, especially from low-income families, learn and prepare for school. Davis includes the biographies of key players in the show's development: Cooney, Morrisett, Jon Stone, Sam Gibbon, Tom Whedon, Jim Henson, Carroll Spinney, Gerald S. Lesser, Edward Palmer, Joe Raposo, Loretta Long, Bob McGrath, Will Lee, and Matt Robinson. There is also a discussion of the history of early children's television; specifically, Captain Kangaroo and The Howdy Doody Show. Davis emphasizes the coincidence that many involved with the show had first names that started with the letter J: Joan Cooney, Jon Stone, Jim Henson, Jerry Nelson, and Joe Raposo. Chapter 13 ("Intermission"): A description of the first episode of Sesame Street, which debuted on PBS on November 10, 1969. As Davis states, "To see that first episode today&mdash;and the four succeeding ones in Sesame's first week&mdash;is to be transported back to 1969". The first show was sponsored by the letters W, S, and E and by the numbers 2 and 3. Chapter 14: The influence of Sesame Street during its first season, and a description of its success and critics. Chapter 15&mdash;16: The 1970s. These chapters include a description of the production team, the cast who joined the show, and the Muppets that were created during this time. The biographies that Davis depicts are of producer Dulcy Singer, Chris Cerf, Sonia Manzano, Northern Calloway, Emilio Delgado, Linda Bove, Richard Hunt, and Fran Brill. The Muppet characters Cookie Monster and Roosevelt Franklin were also created during these years. Davis describes the music of Sesame Street, Jim Henson's struggle with fame, the end of Cooney's marriage, and CTW's funding difficulties. Chapter 17: The late 70s and 1980s. Davis describes the production of the show's first special (Christmas Eve on Sesame Street), the decompensation and death of Northern Calloway, the death of Will Lee and the groundbreaking way Sesame Street dealt with it, the creation of Elmo and biography of his portrayer, Kevin Clash, and the wedding of Maria and Luis. Davis calls the show's depiction of Mr. Hooper's death and the wedding "the poles that held up the canvas tent that was Sesame Street in the 1980s, a reflection of the sometimes silly, sometimes sad, always surprising, relentlessly spinning cyclical circus of life". The biography of Alison Bartlett-O'Reilly is also described. Chapter 18: The 1990s and 2000s. This chapter describes the cast's responses to the deaths of Northern Calloway, Jim Henson, Joe Raposo, Dave Connell and Jon Stone. It discusses Henson's business dealings with Disney in 1990, a few months before Henson's death, and Sesame Street's ratings decrease. In 1993, the show went through substantial changes in response to the show's decline ("Around the Corner"); the only thing that ultimately survived this restructuring of the show was the Muppet character Zoe, performed by Fran Brill. There were also attempts to include more female Muppet characters. Davis discusses the "Tickle Me Elmo" phenomenon of Christmas 1996, Avenue Q, "Elmo's World", and the character Mr. Noodle. Epilogue: Davis ends his book as he begins it, focusing on Joan Ganz Cooney, during her retirement years. He also discusses the development of Sesame Street's newest character, Abby Cadabby, and the show's international influence.
22268131	/m/05q6cw3	The Ultimate	K. A. Applegate	2001		 The book begins with the Animorphs and the rest of the inhabitants of the Hork-Bajir valley drilling and preparing for a surprise Yeerk attack. It is clear they are not ready for attack; the parents, particularly Rachel's mother, are having trouble adjusting, and the Animorphs are in disarray. Jake remains cold and distant to everyone; he no longer wants to be the one to make decisions and no longer has a clear idea about what is wrong and right. Cassie tells everyone that Jake wants a camp meeting and tells him about it mere minutes before the meeting is set to begin; Jake reluctantly agrees to have the meeting. Some of the parents express doubt about the Animorphs' actions and fail to realize the necessity of the war. The Animorphs argue that they know best, and they have experience with the Yeerks. They argue that war is the only way, and that everyone should agree to follow Jake's orders. In the end the whole camp agrees that Jake is to be the leader. Jake reluctantly accepts the burden of leader once again, seeing it as his duty because he is the only one who is capable of leading the Earth resistance. The next morning Jake calls a meeting of just the six Animorphs and they agree that something needs to be done to increase the protection of the camp, and increase the overall size of the resistance. They are no longer in contact with the Yeerk resistance and they don't know how strong the organization is, and the information coming from the Chee seems to be very slow. They recognize that they need more than intelligence; they need a larger force and manpower. They begin discussing the possibility of adding more Animorphs, but none of them has forgotten David, the disastrous last attempt to add a member to the group. However they feel they don't have much of a choice, as the war is clearly shifting to a more open battle, and the Animorphs need more numbers. They agree to use the morphing cube to create Animorphs from disabled teenagers about their age. They decide that it would be best to use kids because they would be more likely to accept the story and are less grounded in reality, and that they ought to use disabled teenagers because the Yeerks would see them as useless host bodies and there is little chance that any of them are Controllers. Cassie, Marco, and Jake go to a hospital to begin the recruiting. They find a ward full of candidates and it is quickly determined that a boy named James, a wheelchair user, is the leader. They convince James to join the fight and he assembles his own team of kids that he thinks would be best. Thus the auxiliary Animorphs are formed. The original Animorphs take them to the Gardens to acquire battle morphs. The Animorphs and James continue to recruit more kids from the ward and after three nights of initiation the auxiliary Animorphs numbers 17. James and two of the others are healed of their affliction by the morphing power, but many more still remain disabled. Those healed agree to pretend to remain disabled for the duration of the war, so as not to alert the Yeerks. James proves to be a natural leader. Cassie wonders how it will work that James is now in charge of a majority of the Animorphs, but Jake is in charge overall. James chooses a male lion as his battle morph, the very same morph of the ill-fated David who challenged Jake's leadership. Jake, however, is not disturbed by this coincidence. Cassie's father overhears a conversation discussing what they have done and confronts the group about the morality of their actions. Cassie recognizes the voice as the echo of her once naive self, and flies away from her father. She realizes more than ever how much she has changed, and how much all of the Animorphs have changed. She realizes they will never be children again and haven't been children for a long time. During a separate recruiting session at a school for the blind, the Escafil device is used to give a blind girl the morphing power. The Animorphs fail to realize that the room is under video surveillance and the Yeerks are alerted of their presence. Tom Berenson (under control of a Yeerk) arrives with a battalion of Hork-Bajir and claims the Escafil device. Cassie is able to slip away and she goes to get James and the other new Animorphs at their hospital. They arrive and go to battle to save the original Animorphs. There are several close calls and one of the new Animorphs has to demorph in order to avoid dying. Visser One arrives and morphs a monstrous tentacle creature and goes after Jake. The other Animorphs try to save him but cannot get close enough. Once the Controller Hork-Bajir frees Jake from Visser One's grasp, this proves that the Yeerk resistance movement is not dead. There are still Yeerks fighting from the inside. Jake orders the Animorphs' retreat, and Tom slips into the forest with the Escafil device and with Jake in pursuit. Cassie follows Jake. There is a confrontation between Jake and Tom in the woods, and Cassie realizes that Jake is actually prepared to kill Tom. Cassie knows that if Tom kills Jake or if Jake kills Tom she will lose Jake either way. If she lets him go through with it he will never forgive himself, and the Jake she has come to love will be gone forever. This leads to Cassie's "betrayal"; she physically stops Jake from lunging toward Tom, thereby enabling Tom's escape with the device rather that have Jake kill him and get the morphing cube back. James and the others arrive back safely. James reports that all of his Animorphs were calm during battle, no-one was seriously injured, nobody was screaming to get out, and nobody was threatening to give up their secret. Cassie reflects that even if Jake and the rest of the original Animorphs go down, at least the resistance would go on. The book ends with Cassie questioning whether the original six Animorphs are still a team, and whether or not they can continue to endure. She remarks that they have been back at the camp twelve hours and Jake has not so much as looked at her. As the book closes she confronts Jake, and he is furious at her. She remains convinced that letting Tom get away with the morphing cube was the right thing to do.
22268688	/m/05q5v0f	Red Moon and Black Mountain	Joy Chant	1970	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story involves three children of our own world transported to the world of Vandarei and there separated; the older boy Oliver is adopted by horse-lords, and in a peculiar time-dilation effect grows to adulthood among them, forgetting his origins, while his younger siblings, taken in by the princess In'serinna, remain children and pursue their own quest. All their adventures are part of a larger effort to defeat Satan.
22272970	/m/05q6w9v	Killer's Payoff	Evan Hunter	1958	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Sy Kramer, a blackmailer, is shot dead in a 1937-style drive-by execution. But it is 1958 and Cotton Hawes and Steve Carella have to find out who killed him. It could have been Lucy Mencken, a rich and respectable lady with a past that included some very unrespectable photographic portraits, or it could have been Edward Schlesser, a manufacturer of soda pop. Or perhaps it was one of the members of a hunting party that went very wrong.
22286122	/m/05q4vyz	Heroes of Tobruk		2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story follows Peter Fullerton and Tony Cantonelli's teen life as they illegally join the Australian army and are shipped off to the Siege of Tobruk. They soon become men as they experience heartfelt moments and feel much hurt throughout the story.
22293029	/m/05t0m0n	St. Irvyne	Percy Bysshe Shelley	1811		 The novel opens amidst a raging thunderstorm. Wolfstein is a wanderer in the Swiss Alps who seeks cover from the storm. He is a disillusioned outcast from society who seeks to kill himself. A procession of monks runs into him and saves his life. Bandits attack them and take Wolfstein to an underground hideout. He meets Megalena, whom the bandits have abducted after killing her father in an ambush. Wolfstein manages to poison the leader of the bandits, Cavigni, and to escape with Megalena. Ginotti, a member of the bandits, befriends Wolfstein. Wolfstein and Megalena flee to Genoa where they live together. Olympia, a woman of the town, seduces Wolfstein. Megalena, enraged by the relationship, demands that Wolfstein kill Olympia. Wolfstein is unable to kill her. Olympia kills herself. Ginotti follows Wolfstein. Ginotti is a member of the Rosicrucian, or Rose Cross, Order. He is an alchemist who seeks the secret of immortality. He tells Wolfstein that he will give him the secret to immortality if he will renounce his faith and join the sect. Eloise de St. Irvyne is the sister of Wolfstein who lives in Geneva, Switzerland. Ginotti, under his new identity of Frederic Nempere, travels to Geneva and seeks to seduce her. Ginotti reveals his experiments in his lifelong quest to find the secret of eternal life: "From my earliest youth, before it was quenched by complete satiation, curiosity, and a desire of unveiling the latent mysteries of nature, was the passion by which all the other emotions of my mind were intellectually organized. ... Natural philosophy at last became the peculiar science to which I directed my eager enquiries.". He has studied science and the laws of nature to ascertain the mysteries of life and of being: "I thought of death---... I cannot die.---'Will not this nature---will not the matter of which it is composed---exist to all eternity? Ah! I know it will; and, by the exertions of the energies with which nature has gifted me, well I know it shall.'" Ginotti tells Wolfstein that he will reveal the "secret of immortal life" to him if he will take certain prescribed ingredients and "mix them according to the directions which this book will communicate to you" and meet him in the abbey at St. Irvyne. In the final scene, which takes place at the abbey of St. Irvyne in France, Wolfstein finds the corpse of Megalena in the vaults. An emaciated Ginotti confronts Wolfstein. Wolfstein is asked if he will deny his Creator. Wolfstein refuses to renounce his faith. Lightning strikes the vaults as thunder and a sulphurous windstorm blast the abbey. Both men are struck dead. This is the penalty they pay for "the delusion of the passions", for tampering with forces that they neither can control nor understand in seeking "endless life".
22293380	/m/05_61g7	Graceling	Kristin Cashore		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel Graceling by Kristin Cashore follows the life of the 18-year-old Katsa. She is a Graceling, a person with a greatly advanced skill. (People with Graces are noted to have two different colored eyes.) Katsa has one green eye, and one blue eye, which are described to be very beautiful. Because Katsa's Grace is thought to be killing, her cruel uncle, King Randa, uses her as a weapon to punish those who displease him. The king's cruelty causes her to be feared by many in the seven kingdoms; almost everybody believes Katsa to be a savage monster who thirsts for blood. Katsa, disgusted with herself for allowing herself to be controlled by a terrible king, retaliates by making a secret organization called the Council to help all who are being wronged by corrupt kings all over the seven kingdoms. While on a mission with her friends Giddon and Oll for the Council - to rescue the kidnapped father of the king of Lienid - Katsa meets another Graceling. To her surprise, he is able to match her as they fight, but she knocks him out after he says that he trusts her. Not long afterwards, he visits Randa's court and is introduced to Katsa as a Lienid prince, named Greening Grandemalion. He tells her to call him Po, after a tree in Lienid, and they strike up a friendship. Po remains at Randa's court to spar and train with Katsa, while also secretly researching reasons as to why anyone would kidnap the father of the King of Lienid, or Po's grandfather. After a refused marriage proposal from Giddon and some odd words, Katsa realizes that Po's Grace is not fighting, but mind reading. She confronts him, and he tells her that his Grace is sensing things, and he can only hear thoughts if they are about him. Katsa is furious and storms off, scared of how he can get into her head. Po later comes to apologize and she forgives him. During their talk, she realizes that she is in control of herself, and she doesn't have to follow Randa's orders. She stands up to Randa and refuses to do his bidding anymore. Katsa then leaves court. Katsa and Po attempt to find who kidnapped Po's grandfather. She is uncomfortable with him now that she knows he can sense any thoughts she thinks about him. They begin to gather information about the kidnapping, and Po starts to suspect that the King of Monsea, Leck, is the one to blame from kidnapping Po's grandfather. There are very strange stories, but yet nobody suspects him. He has the reputation of a very benevolent king. Po thinks that he might be Graced, although it is impossible to tell because Leck is missing one eye. Along the journey, Katsa realizes she is in love with Po, but she refuses to acknowledge her feelings because she has sworn never to marry. As their feelings grow stronger, they come up with a compromise for Katsa's sake, and become passionate lovers. Katsa and Po continue on their journey to Monsea. While traveling through the forest they see King Leck murder his wife. Despite her promises to believe Po, Katsa still falters when Leck bursts into tears and mourns his wife's accidental death. When she refuses to shoot the supposedly innocent Leck, Po urges them to retreat, knowing that he is the only one who is able to see through his Grace. Katsa and Po search for and find Princess Bitterblue, who escaped from her father, King Leck and earn her trust in order to protect her. Po later tries to assassinate Leck, who is protected by only graced guards, but is chased off after he kills one of the guards. Po is injured by a fall into an icy lake as well as shot with an arrow, making him unable to ride a horse and therefore unable to escape from Leck. After Po's urging, Katsa takes the princess Bitterblue - Leck's daughter, and Po's cousin - to Po's castle in Lienid. While traveling, Katsa realizes that the only way to go is through Grella's pass. Grella's pass is named after Grella, who died while making the journey. The only thing wrong with that is this, no one has ever gotten through the pass alive. Leck arrives at Po's castle before Katsa and Bitterblue, where he has charmed the entire Lienid royal family. Although initially confused, Katsa realizes that Leck is about to tell Po's secret. She then pulls her dagger out of it's hilt and throws it straight through Leck's mouth and drives it through his neck and into his chair. The fog from Leck's Grace still remains, but Katsa eventually goes back for Po, and discovers that the fall has blinded him. However, his Grace allows him to sense the world around him, letting him see where his eyes cannot. The two return to Monsea for Bitterblue's coronation.
22295610	/m/05szck5	The Black Circle	Patrick Carman	2009-08-11	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 After the Madrigals attack the Ekaterina stronghold, Amy, Dan, and their au pair, Nellie, move to a different hotel and are given a mysterious telegram from a person known only as NRR. The telegram includes an airport locker number, and some of the letters in Dan and Amy's names are underlined. Nellie is still asleep, so they take her cell phone and leave her a note saying that they went to buy some doughnuts. But on the way to the Cairo International Airport, they are chased by Ian and Natalie Kabra, competitors in the race to find the 39 clues hidden around the world. However, they eventually lose the Kabras and find what they are looking for: the locker mentioned in the telegram. They find a glass paperweight with a key in the bottom, and it is holding down a piece of parchment with scrambled letters. They also find a box with disguises and two passports showing them with the disguises on, plus a Russian guide book with two tickets to Volgograd, Russia. After boarding their plane, Amy and Dan unscramble the words on the parchment by adding the underlined letters in their names and find out that information about the next clue is in the following Russian cities: Volgograd, Moscow, Yekaterinburg, St. Petersburg and the following Siberian cities: Magadan and Omsk. The Clue seems to follow the murder of the last Russian Royal family, the Romanovs. After arriving at Volgograd, Amy and Dan meet and work with the Holts, climbing the inside of The Motherland Calls to discover a hint to the clue around Rasputin, Anastasia Romanov (who supposedly didn't die, being the only one of the royal family remaining), and Alexei Romanov. They check out the cities on the list they found by the eye of the statue, leading them to the place Rasputin died. During an attack by the Kabras, the Holts alert them of a location code which guides them to a Lucian base. There, they discover who the mysterious NRR is. Nataliya Ruslanovna Radova, the only daughter of Anastasia. They also find the clue in the Amber Room, located by Nataliya. In the Amber Room, they found fake Australian passports of their parents, meaning they went on the hunt for the Clues but never finished. They run into Irina and the man in black. Amy and Dan hide in a coffin while he lures Irina and two Lucian agents out of the church in an attempt to help them escape. They safely make it out of the Church on the Blood, and with Nellie on her way, Dan calls Hamilton and gives him the clue, 1 gram of melted amber. The book ends with the Holts ending their alliance with Amy and Dan.
22296159	/m/05szng5	Womenomics	Claire Shipman	2009-06-02		 In Womenomics, Shipman and Kay explore the theory that trends in the current business world have allowed women to leverage their value in order to redefine success. To support this idea, the authors collect evidence showing a concurrent increase in value to companies of female management and increase in priority to women of workplace flexibility. According to the authors, the book functions both to present these findings and to provide "advice, guidance, and fact-based support that proves you don’t have to do it all to have it all." Based on findings from the research done for the book, Shipman and Kay are expanding Womenomics conceptually to include a website incorporating analysis from guest bloggers and news coverage on the shifting roles of women in the workplace.
22296615	/m/05szs0d	Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism	Augustin Barruel			 In his "Preliminary Discourse", Barruel defines the three forms of conspiracy as the "conspiracy of impiety" against God and Christianity, the "conspiracy of rebellion" against kings and monarchs, and "the conspiracy of anarchy" against society in general. He sees the end of the 18th century as "one continuous chain of cunning, art, and seduction" intended to bring about the "overthrow of the altar, the ruin of the throne, and the dissolution of all civil society". The first volume examines the anti-Christian conspiracy that was begun by Voltaire in 1728 when Barruel claimed that Voltaire "consecrated his life to the annihilation of Christianity". Barruel returned to the principal texts of the Enlightenment and found reasons to draw close links between the philosophism of the time and the anti-Christian campaigns of the Revolution. Here he found that the philosophes had created an age of pretend philosophy which they used in their battle with Christianity. Their commitment to liberty and equality were really commitments of "pride and revolt". Barruel claimed that the proponents of the Enlightenment led people into illusion and error and refers to the philosophes as "Writers of this species, so far from enlightening the people, only contribute to lead them into the path of error". He alleged that Voltaire, dAlembert, and Frederick II, the King of Prussia, planned the course of events that lead to the French Revolution. They began with an attack on the Church where a "subterranean warfare of illusion, error, and darkness waged by the Sect" attempted to destroy Christianity. The influence of the philosophes could not be underrated according to Barruel. They created the intellectual framework that put the conspiracy in motion and controlled the ideology of the secret societies. Barruel appears to have read the work of the philosophes and his direct and extensive quotes shows a deep knowledge of their beliefs. This is unusual among the enemies of the Enlightenment, who rarely distracted themselves by reading the works and authors they were attacking. Barruel believed the philosophes were important as the original villains that seduced the population and made Enlightenment, and subsequently revolutionary, ideals favorable. The second volume focuses on the anti-monarchical conspiracy that was led by Jean Jacques Rousseau and Baron de Montesquieu. These conspirators sought to destroy the established monarchies under the guise of "Independence and Liberty". Barruel analyses and criticizes Montesquieus The Spirit of Laws and Rousseaus Social Contract because the application of the ideas expressed in these books had "given birth to that disquieted spirit which fought to investigate the rights of sovereignty, the extent of their authority, the pretended rights of the free man, and without which every subject is branded for a slave - and every king a despot". He believed that the influence of these two writers was a necessary factor in the enactment of the French Revolution. He agreed with the revolutionaries as they themselves placed the remains of Voltaire and Rousseau in the Pantheon to pay homage to the "fathers of the revolution". Barruel believed that the philosophes had created a lasting influence as their spirit survived through their writings and continued to promote anti-monarchical feelings within the Jacobins and the revolutionaries. The destruction of monarchies in Europe led to the triumph of the Jacobins as they trampled "underfoot the altars and the thrones in the name of that equality and that liberty which summon the peoples to the disasters of revolution and the horrors of anarchy". Barruel equated the rejection on monarchy with a rejection of any type of order and government. As a result, the principles of equality and liberty and their attacks against the monarchy were attacks against all governments and civil society. He presented a choice to his readers between monarchy and the "reign of anarchy and absolute independence". Barruels third volume addresses the antisocial conspiracy that was the objective of the Freemasons and the Order of the Illuminati. The philosophes and their attacks against the church and the throne paved the way for the conspiracy that was led by these secret societies. These groups were believed to have constituted a single sect that numbered over 300,000 members who were "all zealous for the Revolution, and all ready to rise at the first signal and to impart the shock to all others classes of the people". Barruel surveyed the history of Masonry and maintained that its higher mysteries had always been of an atheist and republican cast. He believed the Freemasons kept their words and aims secret for many years but on August 12, 1792, two days after the fall of the French monarchy, they ran though the streets openly announcing their secrets. The secret words were "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" and the secret aim was the overthrow of the French monarchy and the establishment of the republic. Barruel claimed he heard them speak these words in France but that in other countries the Masons still kept their secrets. A division of the group into numerous lodges ensured that if the secrets of one lodge were discovered, the rest would remain hidden. He believed that it was his job to warn all governments and people of the goals of the Freemasons. Barruel described in detail how this system worked in the case of the Illuminati. Even after Johann Adam Weishaupt, the leader of the sect, was discovered and tried in court, the proceedings could not uncover the universal influence of the Illuminati and no steps were taken against the group. The majority of the secret societies could always survive and carry on their activities because of the organization of the group. The Illuminati, as a whole, functioned to radicalize the movement against the throne and altar and influenced more members of the population to subscribe to their hidden principles. They refined the secret structure that had been provided by the Masons basic framework. For Barruel, the final designs of the coalition of the philosophes, the Freemasons and the Illuminati were achieved by the Jacobins. These clubs were formed by "the adepts of impiety, the adepts of rebellion, and the adepts of anarchy" working together to implement their radical agenda. Their guiding philosophy and actions were the culmination of the conspiracy as they directly wanted to end the monarchy and the church. Barruel believed that the only difference between the Jacobins and their precursors was that the Jacobins actually brought down the church and the throne and were able to institute their basic beliefs and goals while their precursors only desired to do these things without much success. According to Barruel, the first major assault on the Enlightenment came during the French Revolution. In the minds of many, the Enlightenment was inextricably connected to the Revolution that followed. This presumed link resulted in an explosion of literature that was hostile to the Enlightenment. When the leaders of the Revolution canonized Voltaire and Rousseau and made the Enlightenment themes of reason, progress, anti-clericalism and emancipation central to their own revolutionary vocabulary, it created a link that meant any backlash against the Revolution would increase opposition to the Enlightenment. The advent of what Graeme Garrard has called the "continuity thesis" between the Enlightenment and the Revolution – the belief that they were connected in some intrinsic way, as cause and effect- proved damaging to the Enlightenment. For Barruel, the Revolution was not a spontaneous popular uprising expressing a long-suppressed general will. It was instead the consequence of a united minority group who used force, subterfuge and terror to impose their will on an innocent and unsuspecting population. Barruel believed that the Revolution was caused by Voltaire, Rousseau and the other philosophes who conspired with secret societies to destroy Catholicism and the monarchy in France. He argued that the writings of the philosophes had a great influence on those who would lead the Revolution and that Voltaire and his followers were responsible for the training of revolutionaries. It was from the followers of the philosophes "that the revolutionary ministers Necker and Turgot started up; from this class arose those grand revolutionary agents, the Mirabeaux, Sieyes, Laclos, Condorcets; these revolutionary trumps, the Brissots, Champforts, Garats, Cheniers; those revolutionary butchers, the Carras, Frerons, Marats". Within the Memoirs, Barruel alleged that Diderots Encyclopédie was a Masonic project. He believed that the written works of the philosophes penetrated all aspects of society and that this massive collection was of particular significance. The Encyclopédie was only the first step in philosophizing mankind and was necessary to spread the impious and anti-monarchical writings. This created a mass movement against the church and society. Barruel believed that the conspirators attempt to "imbue the minds of the people with the spirit of insurrection and revolt" and to promote radicalism within all members of society. This was believed to be the main reason behind the Encyclopédie as it was "a vast emporium of all the sophisms, errors, or calumnies which had ever been invented against religion". It contained "the most profligate and impious productions of Voltaire, Diderot, Boulanger, La Mettrie, and of other Deists or Atheists of the age, and this under the specious pretence of enlightening ignorance". Barruel believed the volumes of the Encyclopédie were valuable in controlling the minds of intellectuals and in creating a public opinion against Christianity and monarchy. Philosophism was a term used by Barruel within the Memoirs to refer to the pretend philosophy that the philosophes practiced. It was originally coined by Catholic opponents of the philosophes but was popularized by Barruel. It referred to the principles that were shared by philosophes, Freemasons, and Illuminati. Barruel defined philosophism as "the error of every man who, judging of all things by the standard of his own reason, rejects in religious matters every authority that is not derived from the light of nature. It is the error of every man who denies the possibility of any mystery beyond the limits of reason if everyone who, discarding revelation in defence of the pretended rights of reason, Equality, and Liberty, seeks to subvert the whole fabric of the Christian religion". The term had a lasting influence as by the end of the 18th century it had become a popular term of abuse used by conservative journals to refer to supporters of the Revolution. These journals accused those who practiced philosophism as having no principles or respect for authority. They were skeptics who failed to believe in the monarchy and the church and thus, had no principles. The use of the term became pervasive in the Anti-Jacobin Review and contributed to the belief in a connection between the Enlightenment and the Revolution and its supporters. Philosophism became a powerful tool of anti-revolutionary and anti-Jacobin rhetoric. Barruel identified a number of individuals who he believed played direct roles in the Enlightenment and the conspiracy against Christianity and the state. He identified Voltaire as the "chief", d’Alembert as the "most subtle agent", Frederick II as the "protector and adviser", and Diderot as its "forlorn hope". Voltaire was at the head of the conspiracy because he spent his time with the highest levels of European society. His attention and efforts were directed at kings and high ranking ministers. DAlembert worked behind the scenes and inside the more common areas of French society. He employed his skill in the cafes and academies and attempted to bring more followers to the conspiracy. Barruel takes a close look at the correspondence between Voltaire and dAlembert and uses this as evidence of their plot to overthrow society. He is deeply concerned with the fact that those he identifies as the leaders of the plot had secret names for one another in their private correspondence. Voltaire was "Raton", dAlembert was "Protagoras", Frederick was "Luc", and Diderot was known as "Plato". Barruel also argued that the conspiracy extended far beyond this small group of philosophes. He believed that the court of Louis XV was a "Voltairean ministry" of powerful men. This group involved Marquis dArgenson who "formed the plan for the destruction of all religious orders in France", the Duc de Choiseul who was "the most impious and most despotic of ministers", the "friend and confidant of dAlembert", Archbishop de Briennes, and Malesherbes, "protector of the conspiracy". According to Barruel, this group of influential leaders worked together with a number of adepts who supported the conspiracy. The most important adept that Barruel identifies is Condorcet. Barruel claimed that Condorcet was a Freemason and leading member of the Society of 1789 who was elected to the Legislative Assembly and was "the most resolute atheist". Condorcet was important because he embodied everything that Barruel claimed the conspiracy was. He was a Freemason that associated with the philospohes and who would become an influential member of the revolution process. Barruel also lists the Baron dHolbach, Buffon, La Mettrie, Raynal, Abbé Yvon, Abbé de Prades, Abbé Morrelet, La Harpe, Marmontel, Bergier and Duclos among the members of the "synagogue of impiety".
22300328	/m/05sxns8	Where the Streets Had a Name	Randa Abdel-Fattah	2008	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 This book is in the point of view of 13-year-old Hayaat, who is on a mission. She believes a handful of soil from her grandmother's ancestral home in Jerusalem will save her beloved Sitti Zeynab's life. The only problem is the impenetrable wall that divides the West Bank, as well as the checkpoints, the curfews, the permit system, and Hayaat's best friend Samy, who is mainly interested in football and the latest elimination on X Factor, yet always manages to attract trouble. But luck is on their side. Hayaat and Samy have a curfew-free day to travel to Jerusalem. However, while their journey is only a few kilometres long, it may take a lifetime to complete.
22302719	/m/05sytx7	Skulduggery Pleasant: The Faceless Ones	Derek Landy	2009-04-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Valkyrie Cain and Skulduggery Pleasant are investigating the murders of four Teleporters. After discovering the recent murders may have been linked to a Teleporter murder 50 years ago, Skulduggery and Valkyrie talk to the Sea Hag in the lake and they discover that a man named Batu killed the Teleporter. They discover that the Isthmus Anchor and a Teleporter can open a gateway to the Faceless Ones. With China Sorrows's help they locate a teenage boy named Fletcher Renn, who is an unskilled Teleporter, and save him from Billy-Ray Sanguine who is working for the Diablerie. Batu, the head of the Diablerie, wants to use Fletcher to open the portal. Tanith Low is guarding another Teleporter, but is distracted with a phone call, and she finds him dead in his apartment. Tanith is ambushed, but escapes with a few injuries. Skulduggery and Valkyrie go to Finbar, a Sensitive, who tells them the location of the gate where the Faceless Ones can enter earth. They then meet with a Necromancer, Solomon Wreath who offers the help of himself and three other Necromancers. The Grotesquery is the Isthmus Anchor, which is the part of the Grotesquery that belonged to the Faceless Ones. Skulduggery and Valkyrie go to the Sanctuary to steal the Grotesquery, but are attacked by Remus Crux. The Diablerie use Sanguine to steal the Grotesquery, unintentionally framing Skulduggery and Valkyrie. Skulduggery and Valkyrie use an emergency exit to avoid being captured by the Sanctuary. Remus wants China's help and reveals he knows something about China's involvement on how Skulduggery came back to life. Ghastly Bespoke wakes up at Kenspeckle’s after being a statue for two years and Tanith, Skulduggery and Valkyrie go to Bespoke Tailors, Ghastly's shop, and Ghastly is informed of current news. Ghastly makes Valkyrie new clothes and tells her about his mother, a Sensitive, who had a vision of Valkyrie dying and screaming in pain. In an effort he tries to make Valkyrie quit magic and return to normal teenage life. The owner of the farm where the gate will open, Paddy, learns about magic, and Fletcher locates the exact point where the gate will open. Skulduggery and Valkyrie retrieve the Sceptre of the Ancients and find another black crystal, which powers the sceptre. Batu goes and enlists the Sea Hag's help in exchange for transporting her to the sea. Skulduggery and Valkyrie go to Gordon’s house and Valkyrie is able to take a large black crystal from the cave under his house. Valkyrie goes home to say goodbye to her parents who are leaving to Paris on their anniversary. She is then chased and arrested by Remus Crux. Crux puts her in a cell with Vaurien Scapegrace. Scapegrace tries to kill Valkyrie but she defeats him. Crux attempts to arrest China but Jaron Gallow shows up. Thinking they are working together, Crux jumps through a window to escape and China refuses Jaron’s offer to lead the Diablerie and escapes as he tries to kill her. At the trade on the bridge, Fletcher and Thurid Guild walk towards each other crossing at the center of the bridge and Sanguine tells Skulduggery that there is a bomb in Guild's jacket. Skulduggery shoots Guild in the leg to stop him from coming closer and tells Fletcher to stay near Guild as Jaron won’t risk killing Fletcher. Both sides begin fighting, and the necromancers show up to help. In the end, Tanith believes they have won, then the Sea Hag, on Batu's request, jumps out of the water and takes Fletcher. Valkyrie tricks a security guard into letting her out of her cell and she knocks him out and takes Scapegrace with her as a distraction. Valkyrie sees the new Administrator, the traitor, attempt to kill Mr. Bliss. The Administrator pins her up against a wall and Scapegrace runs into the room chased by Cleavers. The Cleavers look at the situation with Mr Bliss in a circle of blue light that is killing him, Valkyrie suspended on the roof by the Administrator and the Administrator standing there, and advance on the Administrator. The Administrator tries to run, letting Valkyrie fall to the ground. Valkyrie trips her causing her to fall into the blue light, killing herself not Bliss. Valkyrie then runs out of the Sanctuary and Skulduggery drives her to the farm. Tanith, Ghastly, Skulduggery and Valkyrie hide with Paddy in his farmhouse. The Diablerie begin to open the Gateway. Hollow Men ambush Valkyrie and the rest of her team. Paddy persuades Valkyrie to put on the ring he was going to give to the woman he married. China, a dozen Cleavers, and the Necromancers appear and start killing the Hollow Men. Fletcher involuntarily opens the Gateway. Tanith is injured and goes in the house. Bliss arrives and starts fighting Krav. While Valkyrie and Paddy are looking for First Aid supplies for Tanith, Sanguine arrives and attacks Tanith. Paddy tries to shoot Sanguine with his shotgun but is knocked out. Valkyrie then slashes open Sanguine's stomach with Tanith’s sword. Three Faceless Ones come through the gate and Fletcher manages to escape. A Faceless Ones takes over Krav’s body and makes Mr. Bliss explode, killing him. Paddy hits Valkyrie with the Sceptre, reveals himself to be Batu, and knocks Tanith out. Valkyrie realizes that the ring Batu gave her prevents her from using magic, and removes it. They fight, and Batu escapes, taking the Sceptre and hiding it. The Faceless Ones kill many Cleavers and Murder Rose is taken over by another Faceless One. Skulduggery battles the Faceless One and a Necromancer is killed. Jaron panics because he realises that the mark on his arm allows the Faceless Ones to track him down. So he finds a dead Cleaver's scythe and chops off his own arm in hope of repelling the Faceless One. China finds Crux with the Sceptre and persuades him to give it to her. She gives it to Valkyrie who raises the sceptre and fires black lightning twice into the Faceless One that had consumed Krav, killing it. Another Faceless One attacks them. Fletcher teleports Valkyrie out of the way. The Faceless One shatters the Sceptre, destroying itself. Skulduggery decides to get the last Faceless One which had taken control of Batu's body, to chase Valkyrie and go back through the portal. Fletcher opens the portal and Solomon gives Valkyrie his cane to knock the Faceless One back, which destroys the cane. The Faceless One shoots out tentacles made of Batu's organs to save itself, grabbing Skulduggery and pulling him through the portal along with it, as the portal closes. Later, Solomon Wreath approaches Valkyrie and she informs him that Guild is claiming full credit for stopping the Faceless Ones. Solomon tells Valkyrie that there is another Isthmus Anchor, Skulduggery's real skull. Solomon says that after seeing her use his cane, he has determined that she may have a gift for necromancy, and she will need more power than she has now to save Skulduggery, in hopes that she will choose to become a Necromancer.
22303216	/m/05sy_16	The Lofty and the Lowly, or Good in All and None All Good				 The novel takes place along the Georgia coastline in 1837, where the prosperous Montrose plantation continues to yield a rich harvest of cotton each year, which is gathered by the slaves of the plantation. The elderly owner of the plantation, Colonel Montrose, has died of old age, leaving his son to manage the plantation and tend to his slaves. However, with the onset of the Panic of 1837, Young Montrose faces bankruptcy unless he is able to maintain the plantation efficiently and keep it working properly. With the aid of his Christianized slave Daddy Cato, Young Montrose sets to work on getting the plantation back up to speed, but his efforts come under the scrutiny of a usurer named Uriah Goldwire, who is employed by a group of devious capitalists from the North who wish to see the Montrose plantation ruined in order to keep their own pockets filled. Montrose and Cato eventually begin to fight against the efforts of Goldwire to sabotage their work, even going so far as to quell a pro-abolitionist riot intended to force the Montrose slaves into running away from their homes in Georgia to the North.
22305105	/m/05t08fc	Merlin's Ring	H. Warner Munn	1974-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is a continuation of the story in The Ship From Atlantis, telling of Prince Gwalchmai's star-crossed love for Princess Corenice of Atlantis in her various reincarnations, along with his centuries-delayed quest to secure aid and settlers to shore up the faltering empire established by his father and refugees from the fallen kingdom of Arthur in the New World. The story opens with Gwalchmai's reawakening after centuries in suspended animation. The Britain he finally reaches is a prostrated land transformed into England by its Saxon conquerors, with his father's exile long forgotten and his countrymen incapable of undertaking any sort of colonization project. Guided by his reincarnated lover, he seeks aid unsuccessfully, his travels taking him from Viking-age Europe to the far-eastern empires of the Chinese and Japanese, and ultimately back to Europe again as it approaches the Renaissance. He is abetted down through the centuries by the magical ring of his godfather Merlin, responsible for his longevity, and by Corenice. Highlights include the hero's visit to Faerie, his service as a companion to Joan of Arc, and his final revelation in Iceland of the secret of the New World to a Genoan, merchant, Christopher Columbus.
22306768	/m/05t0j34	The London Eye Mystery	Siobhan Dowd	2007	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story of The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd begins when Aunt Gloria visits Ted's family home with her son Salim, a half-Indian boy who is roughly a year older than Ted, a boy with Asperger syndrome. Many people with Asperger syndrome have interests of intense focus. Ted has a fascination with the weather, while Salim appears to have a similar condition, involving a fascination with large buildings, although it is never confirmed whether Salim also has Asperger syndrome. Salim says that he "loves the large structures in London" and seems especially captivated by the old Barracks building, which is on the same street as Ted's home. The next day, Salim, Ted and his older sister Kat decide to take a ride on the London Eye, bemoaning the hour-long queues. When a stranger approaches them with a ticket for the Eye, claiming that he is afraid of small spaces and cannot ride on the Eye, they decide to give the ticket to Salim as he has never had a ride on the Eye before. Salim climbs into the Eye at 11:32, waving at his cousins as the Eye ascends. Half an hour later, Salim's capsule lands. Kat and Ted start forward to collect Salim, but cannot find him. When Aunt Gloria and Ted's mother find out, they are extremely angry at Kat for allowing Salim to take a ticket from a stranger. That evening, the two siblings examine Salim's camera and decide to have it developed in case the photographs hold clues. Then the family receives a phone call from the police, saying that a boy of Salim's age and description has been found dead. Ted's father travels to the hospital morgue to see the body, but reports that is not Salim. The next day, Kat, Ted and their father (who works with a demolition company) visit the chemist's to have the photographs developed. They then ride on the London Eye to see if there was any way that Salim could have hidden in the capsule or avoided getting out. They uncover no clues, but line up for the souvenir photograph at the end of the journey anyway. When they arrive home, Ted and Kat examine the newly developed photographs and gain only one clue; the stranger who gave them the ticket is in the background of one of the photographs, wearing a t-shirt with writing on it. The writing says "ONTLI ECUR", which they soon work out that some letters are missed off and it is saying 'FRONTLINE SECURITY' a security company which is currently at work within a local motorbike exhibition. Kat goes to attend the exhibition, and Ted soon works out where she has gone and follows her. They soon find the stranger who sold them the ticket, but he simply avoids their questions, denying any connection with Salim's disappearance. Ted then figures out how Salim managed to leave the London Eye without being noticed and calls the police. The police arrive with Marcus, a friend of Salim's, who confesses to helping Salim to escape. Marcus had bought two tickets for the same capsule, using one himself and convincing his brother to pose as a claustrophobic man who would give his ticket to Salim, pretending not to know him. Salim, who knew the plan, pretended not to know Marcus' brother and entered the same capsule as Marcus, who was dressed as a teenage girl. When the others in the capsule lined up for the souvenir photo, Salim and Marcus swapped outfits; however, there was a coat jacket sleeve in one of the pictures and that was how Ted worked out that the girl who left the pod was in fact Salim now dressed as a female. Once they left the capsule, Salim and Marcus spent the day together and separated at Euston Underground station. That was the last time that Marcus saw Salim. Ted then deduces that Salim is in the old Barracks, because he showed such a fascination with it the day that he arrived. Eventually they find Salim in the old Barracks Building, which is going to be demolished the next day. Salim eventually agrees to fly to New York with his mother, Aunt Gloria, to try it out for 6 months.
22314123	/m/05sxmgz	Mr. Frank, the Underground Mail-Agent	Vidi		{"/m/0gf28": "Parody"}	 The novel centres on Mr. Frank, a kindhearted but empty-headed worker for the Underground Railroad, where he works to help runaway slaves from the South flee to the Northern United States and then onto Canada. Originally, Mr. Frank is an abolitionist at heart, but comes to believe that slavery is a necessary evil, for while it is wrong, the slaves themselves are better off under their Southern masters than they are in the North. As time passes, Mr. Frank also learns of the corruption within the Underground Railroad itself, discovering that the abolitionists he works with are nothing more than hopeful slaveowners, convincing slaves from the South to run away from their original masters with promises of freedom, only to be enslaved once more.
22315131	/m/05t0kly	Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta				 Lady Fiammetta recounts her tragic love affair with Panfilo, offering it as a warning to other women. Lady Fiammetta and Panfilo quickly fall in love and have an affair, only to have it end when Panfilo returns to Florence. Although he promises to return to Naples, she eventually realizes that he has another lover in Florence. The narrative revolves around Fiammetta's jealousy and despair caused by the affair, rather than the development of her relationship with Panfilo. She eventually considers suicide, but her nurse stops her. Her hopes in the end are bolstered by the news that Panfilo may be coming back to Naples after all.
22319257	/m/05szjql	Are U 4 Real?			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Ida is exactly the opposite of the girls Sandor usually talks to in real life. She is an attractive girl from Stockholm who likes to party, while he is a shy boy from Gothenburg who likes to dance ballet. The two first meet in an Internet chat room, where they share their feelings and become close friends. Sandor and Ida eventually fall in love with each other. However, everything goes wrong when Sandor decides to visit Ida in Stockholm.
22321861	/m/05t04pd	Faserland				 The novel tells the story of a journey. The unnamed narrator is in his late twenties and is the son of a wealthy family, and travels south from the northern-most tip of Germany down to the Bodensee and onwards to Zürich. He is more an involuntary observer than participant in the events that unfold. He begins in Sylt and heads through Hamburg, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Munich, Meersburg, and finally Zürich. In each of these places he has experiences with decadent excesses in the form of alcohol, drugs, and sexual encounters. These excesses are not enjoyed by the participants, but are more an expression of their hopelessness. The protagonist sees the downfall of his generation – a close friend commits suicide – and experiences his own downfall. He also reflects on unhappy memories of youth. His odyssey, which can be interpreted as either a search for meaning or a long goodbye, ends on Lake Zürich: the references to Greek mythology (Charon, Obolus, and Hades) suggest the narrator's suicide in the middle of the lake. Another interpretation sees the crossing to the other shore as a sign of the homosexuality of the narrator. Neither has been confirmed by Kracht. The ending is left open.
22326480	/m/05s_74q	The Productions of Time	John Brunner	1967		 The plot follows Murray Douglas as he joins a theatre production with a group of dysfunctional actors. The play is an avant-garde one where the actors make up the script during rehearsal, and rehearsals take place in an isolated country house. It emerges that the author is feeding each participant's vices, in service of the prurient interests of decadent time travellers.
22327821	/m/05sz15c	The Coachman Rat	David Henry Wilson		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale"}	 The narrative follows the life of Robert, the rat that was transformed into the coachman on that fateful night when Amadea (Cinderella) fell in love with Prince Charming. The majority of the novel is an account of the aftermath of that night, as Robert was transformed back into a rat at midnight of that night—yet retained the ability to speak; he then began a quest to find Mara, the "woman of light" (or Fairy Godmother) in order to become permanently human.
22328973	/m/05syytb	Green Grass, Running Water	Thomas King	1993-03-04	{"/m/05wkc": "Postmodernism"}	 Green Grass, Running Water opens with an unknown narrator explaining "the beginning," in which the trickster-god Coyote is present as well as the unknown narrator. Coyote has a dream which takes form and wakes Coyote up from his sleep. The dream thinks that it is very smart; indeed the dream thinks that it is god, but Coyote is only amused, labeling the dream as Dog, who gets everything backwards. Dog asks why there is water everywhere, surrounding the unknown narrator, Coyote, and him. At this, the unknown narrator begins to explain the escape of four Native American elders from a mental institution who are named Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye. The elders are each connected with a female character from native tradition: First Woman and the Lone Ranger, Changing Woman and Ishmael, Thought Woman and Robinson Crusoe, and Old Woman and Hawkeye. The book then divides into four main sections: each of these sections is the narration by one of the four elders. In addition to these four explaining the "ordinary" events, they also tell a creation story that accounts for why there is so much water; in each creation story, the four encounter a figure from the Bible, as well as the western literary figure from whom each derive his name. There are four major plot lines in the book. One of these follows the escape and travels of the elders and coyote who are out to fix the world. Dr Joseph Hovaugh and Babo, his assistant, try to track down the elders. Dr. Hovaugh keeps track of every time the elders have gone missing and he attributes major events like the eruption of Mount St Helens to their disappearances. The second plot line follows Lionel Red Dog, Charlie Looking Bear and Alberta. The third plot line follows Eli Stands Alone, Lionel's uncle, who lives in his mother's house in the spillway of the Balene Dam. The fourth plot line involves characters from Christian and Native American creation myths and traditions as well as literary and historical figures including Ahdamn, First Woman, the Young Man Who Walks on Water, Robinson Crusoe, Nasty Bumpo and so on. As the climax of the novel approaches, so does the traditional Blackfoot ceremony of the Sun Dance. Ultimately, the dam breaks due to an earthquake caused by Coyote's singing and dancing. The flooding of water destroys Eli's house, but also returning the waterway to its natural course. The novel concludes much as it began. The trickster-god Coyote and the unknown narrator are in an argument about what existed in the beginning. Coyote says nothing, but the unknown narrator says that there was water. Once again Coyote asks why there is water everywhere, and the unknown narrator says he will explain how it happened.
22332758	/m/05sypqw	Assegai	Wilbur A. Smith			 After a fallout with his father, Leon Courtney leaves home and joins the army with a little help from his uncle - General Penrod Ballantyne. Leon Courtney rises to become a second lieutenant in the King's African Rifles regiment based in Nairobi, and early in the story narrowly avoids being court-martialled by a vindictive superior officer. Despite his acquittal Leon's duties do nothing to improve his falling morale and he considers quitting the army. General Penrod Ballantyne then recruits Leon to spy on movements of man and machine in German East Africa, suspecting the Kaiser of preparing for war. Leon is placed as apprentice to professional hunter - Percy Phillips. Leon's aptitude for the vocation and learning new languages makes him suitable for the job. His contacts in the local population, specially the Maasai tribe with whom he forges a strong bond, make him adept at espionage. Among Leon and Percy's colourful clients are Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit, and a fifty-two year old dominatrix German princess. The first half of the story establishes Leon's credentials as the protagonist. Like many of Wilbur Smith's heroes, Leon is a hunter and marksman, comfortable in the wild, and respectful and adaptable to local people and customs. The antagonist Graf Otto von Meerbach appears in the second half, along with his mistress Eva von Wellbreg. Leon is forewarned by Ballantyne that Meerbach is closely linked with the German war effort and that Leon should keep an eye on his new client. Eva however complicates the matter as Leon falls in love with her at first sight. Meerbach's prowess as a hunter is revealed, along with his true intentions. And in the end Leon is left alone to take down the larger than life enemy. The major parts of the story are set in the wild outside Nairobi, with rich descriptions of hunters' strategies, local Maasai customs, big game hunting and lion hunting.
22333799	/m/05szggd	Bribery, Corruption Also	H. R. F. Keating	1999-01-22	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Inspector Ghote's wife Protima has inherited a fortune and a mansion in Calcutta. Ghote is not pleased because it means he must leave his native Mumbai and give up being a policeman. No sooner have they landed in Calcutta than they discover the house is crumbling and inhabited by hostile squatters. Also a housing development is planned in the wetlands behind the house, which has the only access to the proposed construction project. The solicitor in charge of the administering the will, A. K. Dutt-Daster, advises them to sell promptly and return home, but Ghote suspects corruption. As Ghote investigates he uncovers a web of corruption that leads inexorably higher and higher in Calcutta's social and political hierarchy. On the way he encounters the easily bribed solicitor's clerk, who is soon murdered for obtaining incriminating documents from Dutt-Daster's files, he is assaulted under The Great Banyan tree in the Indian Botanical Gardens, meets a crusading newspaper editor who chooses his crusades very carefully, a cynical and corrupt Police Inspector and a powerful businessman who doesn't believe corruption is a bad thing. Powerful forces are aligned against the elderly couple and ultimately they cannot be overcome. Finally Ghote finds himself obliged to pay a handsome bribe simply so the couple can escape from Calcutta with their freedom and lives. Corruption and bribery will always be a part of life no matter how much people fight against it, Ghote reflects on the way home, but that is not a valid reason to give in to such things.
22334594	/m/05s_ksg	The Mugger	Evan Hunter	1956	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A mugger is attacking women in Isola. Carella is on his honeymoon, and the case is being handled by Detective Hal Willis. A second plot involves Bert Kling, a patrolman hunting a killer.
22335323	/m/05sy999	Into the Slave Nebula	John Brunner	1968		 Earth is a stable, prosperous, hedonistic society. The death of an android by brutal murder shocks Derry Horn, and he undertakes a dangerous interstellar mission. He is imprisoned by ruthless slavers and discovers the origin of the androids.
22345853	/m/05sydtx	The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn	Fuyumi Ono	1994-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After a year of depending on her ministers to govern the kingdom of Kei, Yoko follows Keiki's advice and descends the mountain to live among her people, eager to learn how to be a better leader from the village's wise-man, Enho. However, when Enho is kidnapped, Yoko finds herself thrust into an all-out war between the kingdoms. Friendships and alliances are put to the test during the Battle of Wa Province. Can Yoko summon the strength to take up her responsibilities as king?
22346298	/m/05sxd7m	Ordered to die: a history of the Ottoman army in the First World War	Edward J. Erickson	2001	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Edward Erickson has produced the first fully researched account of the Ottoman army in the First World War. There simply has not been a similar complete account, apart from an earlier work in French. In order to achieve this task, Erickson relied heavily on non-published official histories that were not open to non-Turkish historian in the Ottoman Archives until late 1980s and Turkish general staff archives, which have very limited access as of 2008. He also used of a limited number of Ottoman Arabic documents. Erickson's book is almost entirely on the strategic and operational level of the Ottoman Army, which has not been previously described. This book, uniqely different from previous publications, includes discussions of such things as tactics, social issues and the humanitarian dimensions of the Ottoman Army's engagements. Ordered to die presents sets of data on subjects such as the Ottoman army organisation, the structure of the General Staff and headquarters, German military assistance and Ottoman casualty figures. All this information is difficult to find, and published in very different sources that are not available to general audience. Erickson’s figures for the Ottoman casualties are very systematic, and unlike previous publications, which only present two thirds of the campaign histories (presented by campaign bases rather than a holistic approach), covers every branch, year by year, even down to single engagements. The overall conclusion, all things considered, is that the Ottoman army’s record in World War I was an astounding achievement. The book claims it was a "saga of fortitude and resilience". The book presents ample evidence to support this conclusion.
22346498	/m/05sz59s	Dead as a Doornail	Charlaine Harris	2005-05-03	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 It's the first full moon since Jason was bitten by the werepanther Felton Norris (in Dead to the World). Calvin Norris comes to watch over him and help him, and Jason turns into a half man/half panther. Then Sam is shot in the leg and is therefore unable to run the bar. He asks Sookie to go to Fangtasia to ask Eric to lend him a bartender while he is out. Eric sends their new bartender, Charles Twining. Calvin Norris is also shot and seriously wounded, and Sookie learns that other shifters and were-animals are being shot throughout Louisiana. Calvin suspects Jason, based on the theory that Jason is angry at weres for turning him into a werepanther. Known for dispensing their own kind of justice, the real shooter needs to be found before the werepanthers turn on Jason. Colonel Flood, leader of the Long Tooth pack of Shreveport, is hit by a car and dies, so the pack needs a new leader. Alcide's father throws his hat into the ring, and Alcide manipulates Sookie into helping his father by reading the minds of others in the pack. Bill begins to date Selah Pumphrey, a real estate agent, from the nearby town of Clarice. Someone tries to burn down Sookie's house, but she is saved by her fairy godmother, Claudine. A dead man (killed by Charles Twining during the fire) is found outside her house, covered in gasoline, with a Fellowship of the Sun card in his wallet, so he is blamed for the arson. Sookie is then shot while leaving the library, presumably because she associates with shifters. Ballistics says that her bullet matches the bullets of all the others who were shot, except Sam's. Later, Sookie is in an alley with Sam (in his dog form) trying to find the killer, when Sweetie Des Arts, Merlotte's cook, comes at her with a gun. Sweetie explains that she was bitten by a werewolf, and has become part shifter. As an act of revenge, she now kills any shifter she comes in contact with. Tray Dawson, a werewolf who was sent to protect Sookie by Calvin Norris, is shot in this confrontation, and Sweetie is shot and killed by Andy Bellefleur, when he arrives on the scene. Thinking that the problem has been solved, Sookie returns to work at Merlotte's. The befuddled Bubba shows up at the back door to tell Sookie Eric has been trying to reach her, and adds he sent him over to tell Sookie that someone is a hit man. She is then attacked by Charles Twining. It is revealed that Charles was sent by Hot Rain, Longshadow's "maker", to hurt Eric, who had killed Longshadow (Dead Until Dark). Although Eric had paid restitution for the killing, Hot Rain felt that Eric's penalty was not sufficient, and wanted to take something Eric held dear, and therefore chooses Sookie. It becomes apparent that Twining is the one who shot Sam, knowing that Sookie would come looking for a replacement bartender, and that he is also the one who set fire to Sookie's house, then framed an innocent man for it. In a subplot, Tara Thorton has been dumped by vampire Franklin Mott, whom she dated in Club Dead, and is now under the thumb of one of Franklin's associates, the vampire Mickey. It turns out that Franklin Mott gave her to Mickey as part of a debt payment. It was once common for vampires to trade around their groupies, draining them to death when they grew bored. Sookie appeals to Eric, who arranges to have Mickey free Tara. Mickey becomes enraged, attacks Tara, wounds Eric, and tries to kill Sookie. In exchange for his help, Sookie must tell Eric what happened during the days he cannot remember (in Dead to the World). Sookie tells him about their passionate sexual relationship, as well as how she killed Debbie Pelt. The competition for wolfpack leader takes place and there are different rounds to test the werewolves' strength. Sookie discovers that Patrick is cheating in the endurance test. She tells everyone, and as punishment the judges make the final test one that must be done until grievous injury or death. Patrick wins, and after he is declared victor, kills Alcide's father regardless. It is at this event that Sookie makes her first acquaintance with the were tiger, Quinn.
22346664	/m/05syjf1	Definitely Dead	Charlaine Harris	2006-05-02	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 After surviving a Were attack while attending a play in Shreveport with her new boyfriend John Quinn, Sookie Stackhouse goes to New Orleans to sort out the affairs of her cousin Hadley, a vampire who was murdered. When she arrives, she finds Hadley's apartment under a stasis spell that was placed there by the talented and helpful young witch Amelia Broadway, Hadley's landlady. When the spell is removed, Sookie and Amelia are attacked by a newly turned vampire (later revealed to be a Were named Jake Purifoy) whose rising was delayed due to Amelia's stasis spell. Sookie and Amelia are taken to the emergency room after this attack and it is here that Bill, due to Eric interfering, tells Sookie the truth behind his move to Bon Temps. The following night, Sookie calls on the Queen of Louisiana, Sophie-Anne Leclerq, and her new husband, the vampire king of Arkansas, Peter Threadgill. Their conversation eventually leads to the revelation that Amelia and some of her peers plan to magically reconstruct the events of the night of Jake Purifoy's turning. Sophie-Anne decides that this is something she would like to see, so she, her entourage, and Sookie go back to Hadley's together where they find the witches ready to perform the ectoplasmic reconstruction spell. Once the spell runs its course, Sophie-Anne, Andre, and Sookie go into Hadley's apartment for a private conversation where, among other things (such as Sookie being told that she has fairy blood and therefore attracts supernaturals), Sophie-Anne asks Sookie to look carefully through Hadley's things and locate a missing diamond bracelet that was given to the queen by Threadgill; the discovery that this bracelet is missing would mean political disaster for Sophie-Anne. Quinn is also in New Orleans on business, and so the couple is together when a group of Weres break into Hadley's apartment to kidnap Sookie and transport her to the Pelt family. With cunning on their part, and help from Eric and the vampire Rasul, Sookie is able to resolve her differences with the Pelts. Sookie and Quinn attend the party Sophie-Anne and Peter throw in celebration of their new union. The night ends in violence. Events that take place once the fighting breaks out directly influence the events of the seventh book, "All Together Dead." Sookie and a wounded Quinn make it back to Hadley's apartment. The next day, Sookie, Amelia, Bob the cat, and Everett (the young man Mr. Cataliades sends to help Sookie with Hadley's apartment) make their way back to Bon Temps.
22346845	/m/05syrfw	Bones	Jonathan Kellerman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The anonymous caller has an ominous tone and an unnerving message about something “real dead . . . buried in your marsh.” The eco-volunteer on the other end of the phone thinks it’s a prank, but when a young woman’s body turns up in Los Angeles’s Bird Marsh preserve no one’s laughing. And when the bones of more victims surface, homicide detective Milo Sturgis realizes the city’s under siege to an insidious killer. Milo’s first move is calling in psychologist Alex Delaware. The murdered women are prostitutes–except the most recent victim; a brilliant young musician from the East Coast, employed by a wealthy family to tutor a musical prodigy, Selena Bass seems out of place in the marsh’s grim tableau. Conveniently–perhaps ominously–Selena’s blueblood employers are nowhere to be found, and their estate’s jittery caretaker raises hackles. But Milo’s instincts and Alex’s insight are too well-honed to settle for easy answers, even given the dark secrets in this troubled man’s past. Their investigation unearths disturbing layers–about victims, potential victims, and suspects alike–plunging even deeper into the murky marsh’s enigmatic depths. Bizarre details of the crimes suggest a devilish serial killer prowling Los Angeles’s gritty streets. But when a new murder deviates from the pattern, derailing a possible profile, Alex and Milo must look beyond the suspicion of madness and consider an even more sinister mind at work. Answers don’t come easy, but the darkest of drives and desires may fuel the most devious of foes.
22347072	/m/05s_d26	A Cold Heart	Jonathan Kellerman	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 After the events of "The Murder Book", Robin and Alex have separated. Robin moved out and quickly fell in with a man named Tim, who was a vocal coach she met out tour. Meanwhile, Alex has started a serious relationship with a fellow psychologist, Allison Gwynn, who appeared in The Murder Book for the first time. While the two have broken their relationship, the two remain in contact during the course of the book, which suggest that some unresolved feelings still remain. At the same time, Alex Delaware is pulled into a case in which several "young, up-and-coming" artists are murdered, some of which Alex had met during his time with Robin. Towards the end of the novel Alex and Allison's relationship seems to be going strong, but there are some unresolved issues between Alex and Robin that have yet to play out.
22347115	/m/05sygt4	Therapy	Jonathan Kellerman	2004	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In Los Angeles, Gavin Quick and his girlfriend are shot dead inside their car, whilst the unidentified woman is also impaled on a metal spike. As he investigates, psychologist Alex Delaware comes up against Dr. Mary Lou Koppel, a celebrity therapist who once treated Gavin and now guards his personal files with fearsome intensity.
22347223	/m/05szjj1	Obsession	Jonathan Kellerman	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Tanya Bigelow, a former patient, comes to Alex requesting help. She wants him and his friend Milo to investigate something her mother said on her death bed. Her mother told her that she did something terrible. No one believes that Tanya's mother Patty, who worked with Milo's partner at the hospital as a nurse, could have done anything terrible, but as the reader learns her past, it contains dark secrets. Alex has a new dog, Blanche, that Robin bought him after Spike died. Robin is living with Alex again.
22351844	/m/05t08q_	Wake	Lisa McMann	2008	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins with multiple flashbacks,all leading to Janie’s extraordinary powers and where she stands in the present day. Janie Hannagan is an independent, 17-year-old senior at Fieldridge High School, living at home with her alcoholic mother and trying to find ways to fund her future college education. What makes Janie so different from her peers is that she has the involuntary ability to witness others' dreams. Janie discovered this ability at 8 years old, when she was able to witness a businessman’s dream of him giving a presentation in his underwear. From that day on, she is somewhat cursed by the long struggle and suffering of being part of others’ dreams and nightmares. By taking part in others’ dreams, she can see their fears and/or desires. This leads to Janie finding out the secrets of the people around her, but she cannot reveal them because they might think she is crazy. Whenever someone falls asleep within a certain distance of Janie, she automatically becomes paralyzed and blinded, and is sucked into the other person’s dream. People within the dream she enters usually ask her for help, but she is unable to know what to do. All these incidents become a problem for Janie, especially towards her junior and senior years, because most of the time she cannot control the situation. Her peers, especially Cabel, become suspicious of her strange behavior. While most of her classmates have dreams typical of adolescent anxieties, Cabel,a mysterious loner, has frighteningly morbid dreams that Janie cannot come to terms with. After several encounters, Janie and Cabel fall for each other on a class trip to Canada, during which time Cabel becomes aware of Janie's strange powers. Although Cabel helps Janie protect her secret, they are unable to maintain a close relationship due to peer pressures, secrecy, and Cabel's growing reputation as a drug dealer to the wealthy.. Even as Janie and Cabel grow apart, their desire for each other increases. As Cabel seems to fall away from Janie and into the drug trade, Janie realizes things are not always as they seem, and she can learn to use her powers to help others and even serve the community. With the help of Miss Stubin at the Heather Home, Janie discovers that she is a dream catcher and has the power to help others resolve the dreams which are haunting them. The climax of the story comes as Cabel, along with a number of other Fieldridge students and parents, are imprisoned on narcotics charges. Janie witnesses a dream that helps the police and allows her to free her friends.
22357290	/m/05sz3sm	All Together Dead	Charlaine Harris	2007-05-01	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The summit, which has attracted undead power players from all over the central United States, is sure to be tense, due partly to the ramping up of protests by the conservative, anti-vampire Fellowship of the Sun. Accused of murdering her husband, the King of Arkansas, Sophie-Anne is set to stand trial at the convention. The Queen is already in a precarious position, her power base weakened by the damage to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, and there are some vampires who would like to finish what nature started. Sophie-Anne's main accuser is Jennifer Cater, a vampire who had been training to be the king's lieutenant at the time of his death. Jennifer is determined to see Sophie-Anne staked in the sun for murdering the king, although Sookie knows the Queen is innocent of the crime. Sophie-Anne plans to put Sookie's gift to good use, having her "listen in" on the thoughts of the humans working for the other vampires at the convention as well as for the hotel, as alliances are formed and allegiances tested in what can only be described as a political power struggle of potentially deadly implications. The story opens with Sookie entering Fangtasia to talk to Eric and those who pay him fealty, as they discuss the accusations against Sophie-Anne. Sookie agrees to work for Sophie-Anne, despite the warnings of her fairy godmother, Claudine, that being at the convention will forever tie Sookie to vampire politics in the mind of all of the attendees, in a very public way. Meanwhile, her relationship with Quinn heats up. At the convention, Sookie meets Barry "Bellboy" Horowitz, the only other telepath she knows. Soon after they arrive, Jennifer Cater and most of the Arkansas entourage are brutally murdered, which simplifies the trial for the Queen. Sookie soon proves invaluable to the Queen as she makes the great suggestion that the Queen appoint her closest friend and "child," Andre, to be King of Arkansas, and then to marry him. Sookie also finds a bomb planted outside of the Louisiana suite, and saves the Queen. She also uncovers something shocking about Quinn&mdash;as a teen, he killed a group of men who were raping his mother, and then became indebted to some local vampires in order to cover up the crime. He had to work as a weretiger/gladiator in a ring for three years, and in the process became a fearsome fighter. At the Queen's trial, Sookie saves the queen yet again as, being the only witness, she applies logic to prove that the queen is innocent and that her accusers are being manipulated. In response, one of the main accusers is staked right in the courtroom. Impressed with her usefulness, Andre accosts Sookie and begins to force her to exchange blood with him, to tie her permanently and closely to the queen. She escapes this violation only by the intercession of Eric, who has her exchange more blood with him. This third, major blood exhange with Eric causes Sookie to become more powerful, and frighteningly vampiric, even though she is still human. She can feel Eric very powerfully, and he now has the power to turn her into a vampire at any time. Sookie realizes with dread that she will never be free of Eric's control. Sookie and Barry the Bellboy then put together a number of clues they have had throughout the convention and realize that multiple bombs have been planted throughout the hotel by the Fellowship of the Sun, and they are set to go off during the daytime when the vampires will all be asleep and helpless. She and Barry's quick thinking enable some vampires and some humans to get free, and Barry and Sookie team up to use their telepathy to find injured humans. Sookie finds Andre, who has only minor injuries, and watches impassively as Quinn stakes him in order to free her from his control. Queen Sophie-Anne escapes, but loses her legs. Sookie rescues Eric and Pam, and they and Bill escape with minor injuries, but the death toll for humans and vampires is very high.
22357422	/m/05sykvf	From Dead to Worse	Charlaine Harris	2008-05-06	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the man-made horror of the explosion at the vampire Summit, Sookie Stackhouse is safe but dazed, yearning for things to get back to normal. But her boyfriend, the weretiger Quinn, is missing. She then learns that she is descended from fairies, and is 1/8 fairy herself. Her beloved grandmother had an affair with a half-fairy, and had two children with him. While her grandfather is dead, her fairy great-grandfather, Niall Brigant, is alive and seeks to meet her. Sookie is soon drawn into investigating several mysterious deaths among the local Were community. Her telepathy and status as a 'friend of the pack' forces her to mediate between two warring factions, whereupon she discovers that a pack displaced by Hurricane Katrina has been killing the Shreveport Weres in order to take their place. There is a brief "war" between the two packs, with the Shreveport pack emerging victorious, Alcide now in charge. At the same time, Felipe de Castro, King of Nevada, begins a violent campaign to wrest control of the kingdoms of Louisiana and Arkansas from the injured Queen Sophie-Anne Leclerq. The King's men kill the Queen and all of the sheriffs of Louisiana except for Eric, who surrenders in exchange for his life and the lives of all under his protection. Meanwhile, Sookie is upset to learn that she now has a very close blood bond with Eric, and can detect his feelings and know his location, and that she craves his company. She learns that Quinn has been absent because his mother escaped from a were sanatorium where the mentally unstable weretiger was being held. In exchange for help in recapturing her, Quinn became the prisoner of the King of Nevada. She decides that given Quinn's familial responsibilities, she does not wish to have a romantic relationship with him. Instead she renews her relationship with Eric Northman. She also has an upsetting encounter with the werepanthers of Hot Shot. Her sister-in-law, Crystal, is unfaithful to her brother, which means that, based on the particular traditions of Hot Shot, Sookie is required to break the hand of Crystal's uncle and Sookie's friend, Calvin Norris. This causes a rupture in her relationship with Jason, and she stops talking to him. Sookie rescues King Felipe de Castro, Eric, and Sam Merlotte from the murderous intentions of Sigebert, earning her the King's gratitude. She then goes to visit her late cousin Hadley's child, whom she's never met and didn't know existed, and finds out he is a telepath like her. The book ends as she promises the boy and his father she'll be there to help whenever they need it.
22357464	/m/05s_4b9	Dead and Gone	Charlaine Harris	2009-05-05	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In this novel, the weres and shifters make their presence known, following the example of the vampires. At the same time, the King of Nevada, who now leads Louisiana as well, begins consolidating his power, which has a number of repercussions. The revelation of the existence of weres and shifters causes some problems. Sookie's boss, Sam Merlotte, reveals to the community that he is a shifter, and Tray Dawson reveals he is a Were, with both men changing into their animal forms at Merlotte's Bar on the evening of the announcement. Most residents of Bon Temps take the new revelation fairly well; Merlotte's initially sees some business slowdown, but then it returns to normal. However, Merlotte's waitress Arlene, who has been dating a member of the anti-vampire Fellowship of the Sun (FoS), takes the revelation badly and quits her job in a fury. Sam's mother, who is also a shifter, is shot by Sam's step-father, and Sam's non-shifter siblings, who did not know their parents and brother were shifters, have some troubles related to the announcement. Sam leaves Bon Temps to help his mother and leaves Sookie in temporary charge of the bar. Meanwhile, the King of Nevada, Felipe de Castro, consolidates his power in Louisiana. Eric, as the only Louisiana Sheriff to survive the defeat of Queen Sophie-Anne's reign, is in a tenuous position and struggles with Victor Madden, the king's representative. Eric fears the king will try to acquire Sookie to use in his Nevada business dealings, so Eric tricks Sookie, who is unfamiliar with vampire marriage protocols, into marrying him. She is not happy about it, but there is little she can do. However, the marriage is only recognized by vampires. The FBI comes to speak with her about her role in finding people during the collapse of the Pyramid of Gizeh. Then, the mutilated and crucified body of Jason's pregnant werepanther wife is found in the parking lot of Merlotte's, leading Sookie to think it is a hate crime against the recently revealed Weres. When Arlene invites Sookie to her home, Sookie arrives only to discover, through observation and her mind-reading abilities, that Arlene's Fellowship of the Sun friends intend to crucify Sookie, with Arlene leading Sookie into the trap. Sookie calls the authorities and confronts Arlene. In the shoot-out that follows, one of the FoS men is killed and an FBI agent is wounded, and Arlene is arrested along with the surviving would-be murderer. However, Sookie realizes that despite their attempt to use her as an example, they did not crucify Crystal Stackhouse. They intended to commit a copycat crime. Sookie learns that her fairy great-grandfather, Niall, is engaged in a deadly fairy war, with Sookie stuck in the middle. Two psychotic fairies, Lochlan and Neave, are killing all humans with partial Fairy blood because they believe mixing with humans is the reason for the declining prominence of full-bloodied fae. Those same fairies killed Sookie's parents, since her father was a quarter fae. It is later revealed that the bloodthirsty duo crucified Jason Stackhouse's wife just for fun. Later, they kidnap Sookie and torture her in order to get her great-grandfather to surrender. Sookie is rescued by Bill and Niall, but not before being greatly traumatized and possibly mortally wounded. Eric gives her more of his blood, but can't spare enough for her to heal completely since she has very serious injuries and Eric himself needs his stength in the forthcoming battle. In a final battle at the supernatural hospital Sookie's fairy godmother, Claudine (who is pregnant), is killed, as is Tray Dawson, Sookie's were bodyguard and boyfriend of Sookie's witch roommate Amelia Broadway. Sookie is saved by Eric and Bill, who kill Breandan. Niall then decides to seal off Faery, and bids Sookie farewell.
22361419	/m/0642vyl	The Gathering Storm	Brandon Sanderson	2009-11-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As Rand's story begins he is restoring order in the nation of Arad Doman while searching for Graendal, one of the Dark One's favored servants known as the Forsaken. The Aes Sedai work with Rand to interrogate Semirhage, another Forsaken captured at the end of Knife of Dreams. After being freed by her allies, Semirhage is given a Domination Band, an item used to control male channelers, and locks it around Rand's neck. She and Black Ajah sister Elza Penfell use it to make him torture and attempt to kill his lover, Min Farshaw. Unable to channel, he reaches out and inexplicably accesses the True Power, a different power normally only granted by the Dark One, using it to free himself and kill Semirhage and Elza. After this, he resolves to make himself harder and emotionless. He banishes his adviser Cadsuane Melaidhrin for not securing the Domination Band, promising to kill her if he sees her face again. Rand meets with the Seanchan, a civilization that invaded the continent earlier in the series. Their leader Tuon rejects Rand's offer of a truce after sensing a dark aura that emanated from Rand after he channeled the True Power. Following the meeting, Tuon declares herself Empress and prepares a surprise attack against the White Tower. Graendal's hiding place is traced to a remote palace. Confirming her presence, Rand uses the Choedan Kal, a powerful magical artifact, to eliminate the entire building with balefire, a magic that wipes the target from time. This horrifies Min and Nynaeve al'Meara and they turn to Cadsuane for help. Giving up on saving Arad Doman from the Seanchan and starvation, Rand returns to the city of Tear. Nynaeve, under the instruction of Cadsuane, locates Tam al'Thor, Rand's father, who meets with Rand in an attempt to break his emotional isolation. Rand becomes angry when he learns that Tam was sent by Cadsuane, nearly killing his father before fleeing in horror at what he had almost done. Rand Travels to the Seanchan-held city of Ebou Dar, intending to destroy their entire army, but he becomes reluctant to act after seeing how peaceful the city is. Nearly mad with rage and grief, he Travels to the top of Dragonmount, the location where he killed himself in a past life. Angry at the futility of life bound to the Wheel, he uses the Choedan Kal to draw enough power to destroy the world. Lews Therin, a voice in Rand's head from his past life, suggests that by being reborn one has the opportunity to do things right. Agreeing, Rand turns the power of the Choedan Kal against itself, destroying it. Rand is finally able to laugh again. The second main plot thread follows Egwene al'Vere, leader of the rebel faction of Aes Sedai. After her capture by the White Tower in the previous book, Egwene works to undermine Elaida a'Roihan's rule and mend the strife it is causing in the White Tower. She is initially granted freedom of the tower as novice, but after publicly denouncing Elaida, Elaida names her a follower of the Dark One, and orders her imprisonment. When Elaida fails to prove her accusation, Egwene is released. Egwene returns to her room to find Verin Mathwin, who announces that she is of the Black Ajah. Taking advantage of a loophole in the oath Verin had sworn that she could not betray them "until the hour of my death", she fatally poisons herself, allowing her to use her last hour to reveal everything she has learned to Egwene. Verin explains that although she was forced to swear to them or face death, she used the position to research the Ajah. She gives Egwene a journal detailing the group's structure and nearly every member before succumbing to the poison. When the Seanchan attack the White Tower, its fractured state prevents an effective defense. Many Aes Sedai are captured or killed until Egwene, leading a group of novices, succeeds in driving them off. Siuan Sanche, Gawyn Trakand, and Gareth Bryne mount a rescue of Egwene. They find her so exhausted that she cannot protest when they extract her against her orders. After awakening in the camp, she argues that they may have ruined her chances to gain credit in the Tower for the defeat of the Seanchan. Egwene begins to expose the Black Ajah among the rebels, requiring every sister to re-swear her allegiances. Fifty sisters are exposed and executed, while twenty are able to escape. Taking advantage of the weakened White Tower defenses following the Seanchan raid, the rebels prepare an immediate attack. Just before the attack is mounted, the Tower Aes Sedai announce that Elaida was captured in the Seanchan raid, and that they would have Egwene as their leader, the Amyrlin Seat. The rebels return and they begin rebuilding the Tower.
22371104	/m/05sxyyh	The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World		2007-04		 The book argues that the British Empire was evil, and responsible for the Irish famine, the atrocities committed by the Black and tans during the Irish War of Independence, Racism, the Scramble for Africa, the Iraq War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global warming, world poverty, the Great Plague, Islamofascism, the 19th century Opium Wars against China, the First World War and the Vietnam War. Other events the book places blame on the British Empire for include the Second World War, the fathering of the United States and the drug trade. Other arguments made in the book involve the popularity of homosexuality among the British nobility, that the King James Bible was a deliberate act of heresy, and that the Piltdown Man hoax was a deliberate attempt by British academia to prove that they were a superior race.
22371708	/m/05sy5lb	Spawn	Shaun Hutson			 A child named Harold Pierce is playing a game which involves burning insects, when he accidentally sets fire to his home, killing his mother and his baby brother Gordon and doing severe permanent damage to his face. He is then considered insane and spends the next thirty-five years of his life incarcerated in a mental asylum where he is haunted by his dreadful mistake years earlier. However, when the asylum is set to be demolished, and all the patients are set to be moved to a new one, the doctors believe that Pierce's condition is stable, so they decide to release him. They manage to find him a job working as a porter in a hospital. Meanwhile, Paul Harvey, a killer imprisoned for two murders, escapes. The prison warden informs the chief of police of Exham that he believes that Harvey will return there, as it is his home town, to kill again. He orders a thorough search for Harvey, although he is not found. Pierce slowly settles into his new job and befriends fellow porter Greives. However, one of the aspects of his job involves burning aborted foetuses in a fire, which brings back painful memories. He eventually decides that it would be wrong to burn the foetuses, so he instead decides to sneak them out when nobody is looking and bury them in a nearby field. Shorty after, there is a powerful storm which fells an electricity pylon near the site of the grave. Pierce is paranoid that the workmen repairing the pylon will discover the grave, but they do not. He later returns to inspect the grave in fear that the rain may have washed it up, and he discovers, to his horror, that three of the foetuses are still alive. In Exham, the police continue to search for Paul Harvey. They are now even move determined to catch him as two headless corpses have been found, and they believe Harvey was the murderer. They are also convinced that he is in Exham, as a shopkeeper caught him eating food from the shelves before chasing him out with a shotgun. Meanwhile, Pierce begins to lose his sanity and continues to hear voices in his head, telling him what to do with the foetuses. They order him to cut open his chest and let the foetuses drink his blood, which he does. Greives decides to investigate Pierce's small hut near the hospital, as he can tell something is not right with Pierce. He is horrified to discover that Pierce has passed out due to blood loss, causing him to run from the hut towards the hospital. The shock of what he has discovered, combined stress of sprinting back to the hospital, causes him to die of a heart attack. Later on, Pierce discovers Greives' replacement attempting to burn a foetus, and tries to stop him. But he is too slow, and the foetus is thrown into the fire. Pierce collapses. He is later inspected by a female doctor called Maggie who cannot understand his obsession with not burning the foetuses, or how he received the cuts on his chest, as he will not tell her. Meanwhile, a family are driving near the hospital, when the two children declare that they need to urinate. The father parks near a field and lets then out of the car to urinate. However they are shocked to discover the open grave where five of the foetuses are still buried. They scream, causing their father to rush to them, and when he sees the decomposing foetuses, he vomits violently. He then informs the hospital, who burn the foetuses and then dismiss Pierce, as they realise that he is responsible for the burials. Maggie is surprised to discover that two women have died of what looked like giving birth, although they were not pregnant as they had both had abortions. In the meantime Harold returns to his old, now deserted asylum. Randall witnesses an autopsy of another headless corpse in the hospital where Pierce worked, again believing Harvey to be the murderer. Upon exiting, he encounters Maggie, who informs him that Pierce may be the killer and she tells him of Pierce's past and his actions when he worked in the hospital. Randall then visits the new asylum where Pierce's doctors work, where we learn that Pierce has never been violent or dangerous. He tells Maggie of this, and the two fall in love. He visits her flat, where they passionately have sex. He tells her that he has not been in a relationship since his wife and daughter died in a car accident. In the meantime, several other policemen who work for Randall search an abandoned farm house, where they find Harvey. He attacks one of then with a sickle, killing him, before the others are able to subdue him. They call Randall and he makes sure that Harvey is properly restrained, before giving him a severe beating and sending him back to prison. On the journey one of the guards in the ambulance transporting Harvey undoes his straps to turn him around, as he fears he may drown in his own spit. This proves to be a mistake as Harvey knocks him and the other guards unconscious before escaping. Randall is furious at this news and orders that the police return to hunting Harvey. Another headless corpse is soon discovered, and the police initially believe that Harvey again was the murderer, although after a DNA test they are horrified to discover that the corpse is Harvey. A witness claims to have seen the murder. Randall questions him and the witness describes that the killer had a burnt face. Realising that the killer is in fact Pierce, and not Harvey, he and Maggie rush to the abandoned asylum, where they figure Pierce is. Randall tells Maggie to wait as he enters the derelict building, and he and Pierce meet and fight, Randall is stabbed in the shoulder before he stabs Pierce in the stomach. Randall then searches the asylum and is horrified to discover the foetuses. Pierce, who survived, attacks Maggie outside in her car. She tries to radio for help but the radio runs out of power. Pierce breaks the glass and attempts to stab her, leaving her no choice but to ran the car repeatedly into a tree, with Pierce in between, before the petrol begins to leak and the car catches fire. Maggie is able to escape but Pierce is trapped between the car and the tree, and burns to death. She regroups with Randall in the abandoned asylum, where he shows her the foetuses. It is revealed that the three foetuses have mind controlling powers and that two of them caused their mothers to die; and that they manipulated Pierce into killing all his victims. Randall then tries to kill the foetuses with a knife, but they try to stop him by using their mind control powers to disguise themselves as his deceased daughter. This causes him to momentarily drop the knife, before he sees through their disguise and kills all three of the foetuses. Finally, it is revealed, that the final foetus he killed was merely an illusion, and that Maggie intends to raise the final surviving, evil foetus as her own child.
22376662	/m/05s_20d	Pirate Latitudes	Michael Crichton	2009-11-24	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 In 1665, Captain Charles Hunter is hired by the Governor of Jamaica, Sir James Almont, to lead an expedition to the island fortress of Matanceros. It is there that a galleon, supposedly containing treasures untold, is awaiting protection across the Atlantic for safe travel back to Spain. Almont is excited about the possibility of reward in this venture, though his secretary Mr. Robert Hacklett is less than enthusiastic, calling Hunter a pirate. Hunter gathers his crew in Port Royal and sets sail to capture the ship in its own harbor. Mere days into the journey, their ship, the Cassandra is captured by a Spanish Warship commanded by none other than Cazalla, the infamous Spaniard who commands Matanceros. After a daring escape from their cell, Hunter and his crew reboard their ship and continue on their way before Cazalla can retaliate. Upon their arrival at Matanceros, Hunter, Black Eye, Lazue, Sanson, and the Moor all make their way behind the fortress. Traversing up skyward cliffs, rough jungle foliage, and deadly animals, the crew comes to see that Cazalla has docked under the suspicion that Hunter is still on his way to the island. The privateers manage to make their way around the village and soldiers occupying it long enough to set their traps. After a short duel between Hunter and Cazalla, the traps are sprung, and a slice to the throat kills Cazalla. The Cassandra appears and the crew takes their captain, his mates, and the galleon out to sea. After a few days, the treasure inside the galleon, El Trinidad, is accounted and split between the two ships. Soon afterward, Hunter discovers he is being pursued by the warship commanded by Bosquet, Cazalla's second-in-command. He is chased to Monkey Bay, where he narrowly evades capture with the aide of Lazue's eyesight. The warship is unable to follow due to the sun's glare on the ocean. Here Hunter waits until a few days later, the crew notices the signs of a terrible storm: a hurricane. Using the genius of Don Diego, their cannons are armed and aimed for a mere two defensive shots. Upon their departure, however, the warship has disappeared. Celebrating their surprise escape, a few miles out to sea, the warship is seen coming on their stern quickly. With Hunter aboard El Trinidad, the ship took massive damage from cannon fire until the two were in perfect alignment. The aimed cannons fired upon the warship, merely damaging it with the first shot and seeming to miss entirely on the second. However, after a moment of inactivity, Hunter realizes that the second shot actually landed a devastating blow and the attacking ship explodes with geysers of water shooting into the air. Moments later, there is little evidence of the warship. Victory evades the two ships, however, as it begins to rain and storm. The El Trinidad and the Cassandra, helmed by Sanson, are separated by fierce winds and strong currents. After the storm abates, Hunter finds the El Trinidad beached on a strange island. A few hours later, they see the island is inhabited by cannibalistic natives, who nearly capture the niece of Governor Almont. On their way back to Port Royal, the crew suffers yet another misfortune when their ship is attacked by a Kraken. After it had killed many and damaged the ship, Hunter manages to mortally injure the beast. Their path is finally clear to Port Royal. Upon their arrival, a courier gives message that Almont is gravely sick and Hacklett has taken charge as Governor. Hunter is arrested and put to trial, with Sanson betraying his captain and lying for the court. Hunter is sentenced to be hanged and placed in prison. With the aid of the sickly James Almont, Hunter is sprung from prison and kills the men who sentenced him, save for the judge himself who gives Hunter a pardon. Hacklett is shot in the groin, and Sanson sends word that he alone knows where the other half of the treasure is. Hunter turns the man's own crossbow against him and kills Sanson and throws his body overboard letting the sharks eat his body, yet is never able to find Sanson's treasure.
22385442	/m/05szvy_	The White Giraffe		2007-05-10		 Martine is left an orphan after her parents die in a fire in England; she is shipped off from England to live at an animal reserve in South Africa with her grandmother Gwyn Thomas, whom she has never met before. There she meets Tendai, a local worker on the game reserve with Martine's grandmother. Tendai takes Martine to his aunt named Grace, and she tells Martine that she has "the gift." When Martine has started to get used to her new home, she hears a local legend about a mythical white giraffe. Although no one sees it, the giraffe is rumored to leave footprints where it visits at night. Gwyn Thomas insists that the white giraffe is nothing more than a creature of legend, even though everyone else believes in it. Martine is startled, one stormy night, to see the white giraffe outside Gwyn's home. After some time, Martine feels courageous enough to start looking for the white giraffe at midnight. When Martine is almost bitten by a deadly cape cobra in her search, the white giraffe, who she calls Jemmy, saves her. A few nights later Martine is with Jemmy in the wildlife reserve and hears two poachers discussing the giraffe. One of them spots her, and Martine, for the first time, rides on Jemmy to get away. Several nights later, she decides to go back to Jemmy’s secret cave. Inside, she meets Grace. Grace is a sangoma, a woman skilled at healing, and she tells Martine the full story about the ancient cave. Grace also gave Martine a bag of vials, which are used for healing. The next morning, Gwyn Thomas tells Martine that the white giraffe has been stolen by poachers. They suspect that Jemmy is on a ship, and race to the docks to try and find him. While searching for Jemmy, Martine meets Ben, a (mostly) silent boyfrom her class. She quickly explains to him what happened, and he agrees to help. Ben thinks that Jemmy is held captive in the cargo hold of the ship his father is captain of. They find Jemmy wounded in the cargo hold, and Martine heals him with Grace's medicines. Then they ride off back to the game reserve, where the police capture the poachers.
22393128	/m/05zzlq6	A Perfumed Scorpion	Idries Shah	1978		 The book contains the substance of lectures given by the author at various universities in the United States of America under the aegis of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge and the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Fairleigh Dickinson University. The ‘perfuming of a scorpion’ is a reference to a symbol used by Hadrat Bahaudin Naqshband of Bukhara when he taught about the ubiquitous problem of hypocrisy and self-deception in both individuals and institutions: “Whoever might perfume a scorpion will not thereby escape its sting”. The seven sections of the book deal in depth with this issue under headings such as Education, The Nature of Sufi Knowledge, The Path and the Duties and the Techniques, Teaching Stories, A framework for New Knowledge and Involvement in Sufi Study. Each section contains numerous illustrative anecdotes from contemporary life but is nevertheless rooted in the teaching patterns of Rumi, Hafiz, Jami, and other great Oriental sages who dealt with the need for, and the path to, knowledge and information before real progress can be made.
22394370	/m/05szh19	The Saxon Shore	Jack Whyte	1998	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Preface explains this style as Merlyn writing his memoir of how he met Arthur and came to raise him. ;Cornwall: Saxon Shore begins with Merlyn and the infant Arthur stranded in a small boat on the southern most extreme of the Irish Sea. An Irish pirate ship captained by Connor, a prince of Eire, captures the boat. The Celts then throw the child overboard. Disregarding his life, Merlyn kills one of the pirates and jumps in after Arthur. The pirates recapture Merlyn and the floating child and return them to the ship. The captain greets Merlyn and the child, revealing the origin of the crew, Eire, and tries to understand the reasons why Merlyn would sacrifice his life for the child. In the conversation, the captain comes to realize that his brother, Donuil is Merlyn's captive at Camulod, so he releases Merlyn in the agreement that the child will be returned if his brother returns to Eire. Merlyn then proceeds home, where he quickly becomes embroiled in factions politics that have arisen in the Camulodian council. By using his military authority and appealing to the older council, Merlyn disbands the parties. Ironhair, one of the faction leaders, becomes enraged by this and makes an assassination attempt on Merlyn's life. Meanwhile Donuil returns to Camolud with Merlyn's nearly identical half-brother Ambrose. Once Donuil returns, Merlyn creates a party which is to escort Donuil back to Eire. On the trip to Eire the party has encounters with a leper colony, where Lucanus, a physician and Merlyn's longtime friend, leaves the party to deliver a wagon-load of supplies to the impoverished lepers. A crew of marauders was harvesting marble from a Roman temple in Glevum when the party arrives there. Merlyn decides that they will be unable to gain passage on any ships there, after a brief skirmish with the locals. ;Eire: After the encounter with the scavengers, a group of Scots sent by Donuil's father to ensure his safe return find the party. Soon the two galleys of the Scots are hauling a barge to Eire where the barge capsizes south of Athol's kingdom. The Comuludian knights travel through the Irish wilderness under threat of barbaric peoples, but only encounter a boar larger than any other ever hunted by the Scots. Within several weeks of leaving Comulud the party arrives in the capital of Athol's kingdom. The party stays at the stronghold and Merlyn, in conversation with Athol, reveals that he was married to one of Athol's daughters, Deirdre. Athol accepts Merlyn into his family. During the same conversation Merlyn also reveals the identity of the child, Arthur, and Athol pledges himself as an ally to Merlyn and his Grandson. While staying in the stronghold of the Scots, Merlyn and his men demonstrate the use of cavalry to the Scots who had previously never seen its use in battle. During the exhibition a bear enters the clearing and attacks. Merlyn uses his memory of Alexander the Great's bodyguard using Sarissa, heavy lances, to charge troops, acquiring a spear from infantry that were to be part of the demonstration and charging the bear. One Evening, a member of the community disappears and, while searching for said man, Donuil feels that someone was watching in the woods. Merlyn's retinue and Athol's warriors are put on alert, and in the morning an army attacks the walls. The strength of the cavalry successfully routes the attacking army in two charges. The attack of the wild men of the south is an unruly advance force of the eminent attack by the MacNyalls, Sons of Condran, and Sons of Garn. Athol decides that Merlyn, Arthur, Donuil and their company must return to Briton to avoid this attack and ensure Arthur's safety. ;The Saxon Shore: The party of Merlyn returns to Camulod without Donuil, who returns to Eire in order to stave off the events of one of Merlyn's dreams. While traveling back to Camolud the party encounters a group of marauding Berbers. Upon returning to Camolud, Merlyn discovers his half brother Ambrose has integrated the infantry and cavalry in order to reduce enmity between the two military branches. A group of Cambrian raid an outlying farm of the colony, however before the military can follow a heavy winter sets in that kills the oldest members of the community. In the spring a large contingent of the military, 500 foot soldiers and 500 cavalry, leave Camolud to take revenge for the raid which killed 50 of their comrades. Led by Merlyn, the force travels near the leper colony that was visited with Lucanus and the whole colony is found dead. The military force also clears the Berbers from their pirate outpost in Glevum. The army enters Cambria and soon find the men who had stolen the horses dead, they then encounter a force of Dergyll's archers, however Merlyn tactfully avoids any confrontation. The two leaders agree to an alliance and in proof of their loyalty to the alliance, they exchange a small contingent of auxiliary forces. While discussing this Merlyn discovers that Ironhair, who had led one of the political parties in Camolud, was now supporting a contender for the Pendragon throne. Merlyn and the forces return to Camolud and years of peace ensue. Merlyn and Ambrose make a trip to Northumberland and discover that the alliance between Briton-Romans and the Norse that had maintained the strength of the kingdom is failing. They return to Britain and begin the education of Arthur, along with the other family and friends of Merlyn. An attempt is made on Arthur's life by a group of men loyal to Ironhair, and the council of friends which had come to surround Merlyn decided that in order to protect this future king he must live outside of the community which knows of his existence. Merlyn decides to settle Arthur in Ravenglass south of Hadrian's Wall. ;Epilogue: Arthur and Merlyn travel to Ravenglass aboard Connor's galley and are welcomed by the Ravenglass King Derek.
22395040	/m/05sy_mf	Blanca Olmedo	Lucila Gamero de Medina	1908	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In this love story, Blanca Olmedo, a young women of a good family, has lost all her property thanks to the evil actions of a corrupt lawyer (Elodie Purslane/Elodio Verdolaga). This circumstance requires her to work as a governess in the house of the Moreno family, which is where she meets the love of her life, Gustavo Moreno. Three people are opposed to their love, including the evil lawyer who punishes her further from seeing Gustavo. A further barrier is created when Gustavo goes away to fight in the war. Blanca, meanwhile falls ill with being separated from Gustavo and dies dreaming of Gustavo. When he returns to find her dead, and learns of the evil conspiracy against their relationship. He commits suicide, without either of them consummating their love. Then in guilt of what they have done, one of the conspirators Doña Micaela established an orphan asylum after his death for victims of those who feel sadness and desperation and have lost the will to live.
22395824	/m/05sxsnc	Young Samurai: The Way of the Sword	Chris Bradford	2009-07-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After a vicious ninja attack left him orphaned and stranded in Japan, Jack Fletcher managed to complete his first year of samurai school. Still, his troubles are far from over. The prejudice of his Japanese classmates has gained him dangerous enemies within his school, and Dragon Eye -- the ninja who killed his father -- is still after him. Jack's only hope of defeating them lies in surviving the Circle of Three: an ancient ritual that tests a samurai's courage, skill, and spirit to the limit. For most, gaining entry into the Circle means honor and glory, but for Jack it's a matter of life or death. The winner will be trained in the Two Heavens -- the formidable sword technique of the great samurai, Masamoto. Learning this secret is the only hope Jack has of protecting his father's rutter -- the invaluable navigation guide of the world's uncharted oceans -- from Dragon Eye. Forced into a deadly battle, Jack's going to have to master the Way of the Sword. And his time is running out.
22405231	/m/05t0cp5	Nightmare Academy: Monster Revenge	Dean Lorey			 The beginning of the novel takes place with Charlie and friends getting ready for their final exams in the hope of grading and becoming Addys. They are sent by Rex, Tabitha and Pinch to Bungalow C, a place in a rather droopy area owned by Dora [eight years old] and her father Barry. Dora is not old enough to train at the Nightmare Academy yet, and so has not been informed of her ability to portal in Nethercreatures through her Nightmares. Using a Gremlin Attracter, the three friends find and begin to Banish three Gremlins, but not before a Class 2 Darkling from under Dora's bed reaches out and eats them. Still not satisfied, it reaches out to take Theodore, but is only just stopped, saving the skinny boys life. Violet begins closing the portal to the first ring of the Nether she was going to Banish the gremlins with when a Class 4 Netherleaper, Rex calls them 'Dangeroos' captures Violet. Charlie and Rex save Violet, and begin wondering why a class 4 was found on the first ring of the Nether, when Violet informs them the Netherleaper was taking her to 'the Guardian'. Hearing this, Rex, Tabitha, Pinch, Charlie, Theodore and Violet portal to the Nightmare Division and tell the Headmaster. She explains that remaining two Named, Slagguron and Tyrannus, was trying to poison the Guardian, the strange creature whose aura protects the Nightmare Academy. The touch of a child is enough to kill it. Suddenly, they are called to the Nightmare Division by the Director, Drake. He informs the Headmaster, Rex, Tabitha,Pinch and Charlie and his friends that he remembers what they did to him in the first book. He had regained his memories. They take him back to the Hags of the Void,where they form a truce not to steal his memories in return for him being civilised towards Charlie and friends. Outside a window, they hear the screeching voice of Tyrannus saying they have killed the Guardian.The Guardian guards a place called the Anomaly, a weak spot between the Nether and Earth which Slagguron and Tyrannus wish to escape through. Brook takes Charlie and friends into the Anomaly to check on the Guardian and the Headmaster who had already left. They realize the Guardian has been poisoned, and that the only cure is the milk from a female Hydra. The only problem is that there is only one in existence. The Headmaster also informs that they are qualified Addys and are allowed to upgrade their weapons. Charlie chooses another rapier and Violet chooses a double sided axe. Charlie retrieves the Hydra's milk and takes it back to the Nightmare Academy. In a fit of greed, Pinch without warning drinks some of the content of the milk. He turns back into a teenager and receives all his powers back. Pinch portals them to the 5th Ring, as close as they can get to the Anomaly, and find it is swarming with monsters. The group, finding a frightened boy, rescue him and take him back to the Academy without delay. They were tricked. The boy was Slagguron. Slagguron is a Changling. Changling can change forms for a short time. Charlie revives the Guardian but fails in stopping Tyrannus from coming through to Earth. They decide on a new plan. Charlie takes the Guardian to the Named's new base, disabling all the Nethercreatures who stand in their way. But in an act of cruelty, Director Drake kills the Guardian. Meanwhile, Pinch killed Verminion, but is shunned away as they blame him for the Guardians death. In a fit of rage and sorrow, Pinch takes Verminion's place and helps the other Named summon the Fifth. The Fifth is a giant female Nethercreature. She kills all of the Named, but leaves Pinch alive. He joins the enemy. Charlie and friends narrowly escape with their lives, but they have failed. The Fifth is free. The War of the Nether has truly begun. This book was before the book 3 in the Nightmare Academy series, Monster Revenge. Monster Revenge is also known in the U.S.A as Monster War.
22407780	/m/05szr46	Yōgisha X no Kenshin	Keigo Higashino	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story begins with Tetsuya Ishigami and Yasuko Hanaoka doing their daily routine.
22411477	/m/05sys1g	The Story of the Daughters of Quchan				 This story is an example of one of the many unjust acts by both the provincial governments and the national Qajar Regime which led to the Constitutional Revolution. In the province of Quchan, the provincial governor, Asaf al-Dawlah, set a flat tax for all of the people, regardless of their income. The poor could not afford to pay this tax, due to a bad harvest, and the only way they could raise the money was to sell their daughters to the elite Turkmen or to nomads. Turkmen also began raiding the village and capturing the women. When the citizens begged for payment postponement, they were shot and killed by provincial government officials. About two hundred and fifty girls had been sold and they became known as “The Daughters of Quchan”. This incident portrays Iranian women as being “objects of traffic” and clearly speaks to the issue of poverty and the social injustice people faced under this government. The people of Quchan went to the central government to protest and ask for help. Finally an investigator was sent to Quchan, who was bribed by the provincial governor, and did not report the inequality to the central government. The citizens went back to the central government again to protest and eventually the issue was resolved. This story was published in newspapers all over Iran and caused a public outcry for social justice and a parliamentary government. Muhammad Husayn Tabataba’i, one of the most prominent philosophers of the time, was particularly irate and argued that the government was not addressing the needs of the people: "Have you not heard the tale of Quchan where they had a bad harvest last year? Each Quchani Muslim had to pay three dozen kilos of wheat in lieu of taxes. They did not have it and nobody helped them out. Instead of wheat, the local ruler took three hundred Muslim daughters, counted each daughter for three dozen kilos of wheat, and sold them to the Turkmens. Some of the daughters were separated from their mothers while they were asleep, because the poor souls would not consent to be separated. Now tell me in all fairness! Can you imagine a worse oppression? Every place is in ruins."(88) It also showed how effective newspapers were at relaying information across the country as many Iranians sympathized for those in Quchan and would join the cause in protesting for a constitutional government. Asaf al-Dawlah and many of his high-ranking officials were put on trial under the new regime in 1906 and there were multiple efforts made to get the girls back from the Turkmens. While some girls were rescued and brought back to their paternal families, the majority of girls were not found. “The Daughters of Quchan” is one of many events which were instrumental to promoting the Constitutional Revolution as the Iranian citizens began to realize that they were tired of living under an oppressive government.
22415280	/m/05sxmfy	Rose	Martin Cruz Smith			 Jonathan Blair, a mining engineer, returns from Africa's Gold Coast and, on finding his native England utterly depressing, falls into melancholy and alcoholism. Blair wishes desperately to return to Africa, so, in exchange, he agrees to investigate the disappearance of a local curate engaged to marry the daughter of Blair's patron. With the unexpected assistance of Rose, a Wigan 'pit brow girl', Blair solves the mystery and, in the process, finds himself as well.
22415897	/m/05synbw	Sold				 Set in the Melbourne property industry, SOLD provides an insight into the inner machinations of one real estate agency. It is based around three real estate agents and their dealings as they scheme and deceive to outdo one another and struggle to ultimately come out on top. Will Pittman, a former (and failed) AFL Sydney Swan footballer, is new to the business and struggling to keep his head above the water. He is mentored by Harry "The Fox" Osborne, an ex-car dealer from New Zealand in real estate to pay his kids school fees. New to the agency too, is Dally Love, the conquering hero who wants and has it all. Morally bankrupt, this world of intricacy pulls these characters into its web of chaos. Also there is Gerard, mentally disabled, easily influenced and somewhat destructive - friend of Will and squatting in the convent marked by Dally for development.
22422379	/m/05zm8lk	Hussein, An Entertainment	Patrick O'Brian	1938	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Hussein's mother dies in childbirth, and he is reared in the mahout trade by his father and grandfather. He learns the hathi-tongue, which is the private language mahouts use to bid their elephants, and grows up among a group of mahouts employed by the Indian Government's Public Works Department. A cholera epidemic strikes down his father and grandfather, and Hussein goes to live with his uncle Mustapha, his wife and three sons. Also in the mahout trade, Hussein's uncle is devoted to Islamic scriptures. He teaches Hussein to read, which places him in a select few among his class. Having traveled with his uncle and family to Rajkot, Hussein is recommended as a mahout to carry Gill, the "Stant Sahib," on the back of his uncle's elephant for a hunting expedition. The three are attacked and chased by a ferocious pack of wild dogs in what the Times Literary Supplement called the best adventure in the book. In finally escaping, they burst into a thieves' village. Gill, who is the chief of police, captures and returns to justice a notorious band of thieves with Hussein's help. That evening Gill overhears Hussein bragging of the feat to his family and friends, changing details to bring himself credit, and kindly allows the youth his moments of glory. Hussein's aunt and uncle die young, and Hussein must survive on his own. About 16 years old and still in the mahout trade, he inherits his uncle's responsibility for the elephant named Jehangir Bahadur in the town of Haiderabad. At this time in his life Hussein falls in love with a well-off young woman named Sashiya, which embroils him with a rival, Kadir Baksh. Hussein pays a fakir to place a curse upon Kadir Baksh, which causes the young man to die; and his family swears vengeance upon Hussein. This danger forces the young man to flee. After promising the elephant Jehangir he will return, Hussein sets out to live by his wits. Eased in this direction by the fakir he becomes an assistant to Feroze Khan, a man who practices the arts of snake charming and storytelling. Feroze Khan earns a living by following regiments and entertaining them. His tour de force involves display of a white cobra. Unknown to Hussein, he also gathers secret intelligence. Eventually the young man becomes suspicious of his movements when it becomes apparent that Feroze Khan has friends wherever they travel. Spying leads to Feroze Khan's murder in Peshawar, and Hussein resolves to put into practice the lessons he has learned about storytelling and snake charming. Succeeding in both pursuits, Hussein enhances his snake charming by buying additional snakes and a mongoose from an acquaintance of Feroze Khan's whom he accidentally meets. He learns to perform a scam for seeming to rid a house of dangerous snakes by bribing the houseservants and employing his mongoose. When he follows another regiment in the rainy season, the leaders must send for elephants to pull their cannons from the mud. One of the elephants which arrives is his beloved Jehangir. Hussein has alienated the chief mahout and is forbidden to rejoin the service. His attempts to regain his relationship with Jehangir lead to a severe beating for Hussein. Jehangir lifts the sleeping youth onto his back, bursts his shackles, and deserts the service. Failing to dissuade Jehangir from this course, Hussein accepts the desertion and determines to hide. When it is safe to do so, he plans to wander as a private mahout with an elephant and perform odd jobs which come their way. After adventures, Hussein and Jehangir reach the village of Laghat. Here Hussein buys fields with a tumbledown house. His dream is to prosper as a farmer, then send for Sashiya. He works hard in his fields, coming into contact with wild boars and a man-eating tiger. When the crops fail because of drought, he is forced to borrow money from the local bunnia. This man, Purun Dass, resents Hussein because of his ability to read. Realizing the young man's ability does not extend to Latin, the bunnia sets the loan to accrue "per mensa" (per month) instead of "per annum" (per year). Thus, the loans are crippling when Purun Dass applies for repayment. Hussein becomes drunk and attacks the bunnia in his temple, leaving the priest, he believes, beaten to death. Again Hussein flees on the back of Jehangir. When buying food in a village he encounters a man named Narain Ram, whom he had seen formerly when he worked for Feroze Khan. Hussein denies to Ram Narain that they have met. He sees Ram Narain again in another village, and the latter insists they dine. Here the Ram Narain presses Hussein for information about Feroze Khan and threatens to expose him to Kadir Baksh's family if he fails to comply. In the end Hussein accepts money from Narain Ram and agrees to become his ally, accepting an arranged position in Kappilavatthu working for the Rajah. Traveling to that locale, he leaves Jehangir with the Rajah's mahouts and becomes a leopard keeper. His responsibility is tending a young cheetah named Shaitan. Although ignorant of his task, he learns the practice from an older leopard keeper. This man, Yussuf, is the only other Mohammedan among the animal tenders, religious divisions being significant in the culture. Hussein distinguishes himself in the first hunt of the season, though he is injured. In gratitude, the Rajah gives him a ruby ring and orders his treasurer to fill Hussein's mouth with gold. Hussein lies on his back with his mouth open, but the resentful treasurer fills his mouth with mostly copper coins. While Hussein is recuperating from wounds suffered on the first hunt, Ram Narain arranges for his responsibilities to be transferred to the position of mahout for Jehangir. Amid episodes of intrigue, the Rajah's tiger hunt commences. Hussein carries the Rajah in a howdah on Jehangir's back. In the evening, Ram Narain confesses to Hussein that he works for a prince who is wholly for the Sirkar. This tiger hunt is the opportunity he and his allies have been waiting for, and Ram Narain and Hussein are able to observe the Rajah entering into a compact with another native party. The treaty is signed in exchange for a fortune in gold. Hussein, who has overheard the Rajah plot with his master of horse to kill the youth, aids Ram Narain in the frustration of the Rajah's party and capture of the newly signed treaty. All of the gold is contained in a pad bag which Hussein and Ram Narain place over Jehangir's back. Both Hussein and Ram Narain covet the gold, but their priority is escape. They travel through the night and with drama, ford a river seeking to reach British territory. Safety is not yet assured, and they must obtain food in villages along their route, disguised as storytellers. Hussein demonstrates his bona fides in this line, especially with a tale of a prince in Kathiawar. His performance convinces a suspicious a pair of men who are tracking the Rahjah of Kappilavatthu's enemies in the recent episode, and they leave the pair in peace. Hussein and Ram Narain reach Puniat safely with Jehangir. Before telegraphing his superiors, Ram Narain shares his wish to leave out any reference to the gold. He also informs Hussein that Purun Dass did not die of his beating. Ram Narain's superiors are very pleased with the result of the intrigue in Kapplilavatthu. After they have departed, Hussein and Ram Narain split the gold. Hussein hires a lawyer to deal with the affair of Purun Dass's grievance, and the fine is paid by an unknown party, in other words, by Ram Narain's grateful superiors. Influenced by his success with tales, Hussein conceives his own tale, which involves a happy ending with Sashiya. After extensive bargaining, he buys a costly necklace of rubies for her and sets into train the construction of a rich house on his farm in Laghat. With Jehangir dressed in grandeur he returns to Haiderabad and occupies the best accommodations. Then, disguised in poverty, he calls on Sashiya. The circumstance of poverty is no impediment to her love, and Hussein drapes the rubies about her neck. Revealing his true status of wealth, he carries her away—just as the Prince of Kathiawar carries away his beloved in Hussein's tale, her name being, by no coincidence, Sashiya.
22427941	/m/05zmw9r	Pretty Like Us				 Beauty McElwrath dreads going back to school this year. She has no friends to speak of and her teacher is also her mother’s boyfriend. She dreads it even more when she meets Alane Shriver, who suffers from an aging disease. Beauty ends up making fun of her, just like people have made fun of Beauty in the past, in order to try to gain friends. She runs away from school twice to forget some of the mean things that she is willing to do in hopes of gaining friendship. Her mother, grandmother and teacher all encourage her to make friends with Alane, but Beauty fears the disapproval of her classmates. She must realize that she wants to be friends with Alane on her own. She eventually makes friends with Alane through an illegal midnight drive to the beach and an incident with a wild pig running into Beauty’s mother’s prized car. However, Beauty is embarrassed by being friends with Alane when they are at school and says she is sorry about her actions in front of the entire classroom in order to regain Alane's friendship. Beauty’s mother starts a restaurant, her dream for quite some time. Beauty works as a waitress to help out and gain some pocket money. Meanwhile, Alane gets sick and Beauty finds out that not only does Alane look very old, her body itself is very old and she is slowly dying. Beauty both finds and learns how to deal with losing her best friend; and Alane finally found a friend and fulfills her own dream by the end of the both, with a little help.
22440481	/m/05zynkp	Amityville - The Nightmare Continues		1991	{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Amityville, New York. Once the Dutch Colonial house on Ocean Avenue had been the scene of a gruesome possession that sent its owners fleeing for their sanity and their lives. For years, it had remained abandoned, without any sign of disturbance. Then 11-year-old Kooch Webster dared his buddy Lester to sneak into the house. They only wanted to steal some junk to make a little pocket money. But something terrible still lurked within the crumbling walls—a monstrous evil that threatened to destroy not only the boys, but anyone who came in contact with them. Insidiously, the evil within the house spread into the community; a pawnbroker who bought the boys' stolen goods was found brutally slain, a priest disappeared mysteriously after visiting the house, and soon Kooch, Lester and their families were caught in an unrelenting web of terror for which there was no rational explanation, and no possible escape.
22441124	/m/05z_5dt	River God	Wilbur A. Smith	1994	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 River God follows the fate of the Egyptian Kingdom through the eyes of Taita, a multi-talented and highly skilled eunuch slave. Taita is owned by Lord Intef and primarily looks after his daughter, Lostris, but also plays a large role in the day to day running of Lord Intef's estate. The Pharaoh of Egypt is without a male heir, and Taita inadvertently causes Pharaoh to take an interest in Lostris. Lostris meanwhile is in love with the soldier Tanus, who unbeknownst to her is hated by her father. Eventually Pharaoh marries Lostris and her father, Lord Intef, reluctantly gives Taita to her as a wedding gift. Meanwhile, Tanus has angered Pharaoh by speaking bluntly about the troubles Egypt is in&nbsp;— most prominently the growing bandit threat which terrorizes all who travel outside of the major cities. Pharaoh condemns him to death for his actions, but is convinced to allow Tanus to redeem himself by attempting to eliminate all the bandits from Egypt within two years. Since his sentence is revealed on the last day of the festival of Osiris, he is to return on that day of the next festival with his task complete or face death by strangulation. Tanus, with the help of Taita, hunts down and captures the leaders of the Shrike bandits. On presenting them to Pharaoh, it is revealed that their leader is Lord Intef. Tanus has his death sentence lifted, but Intef manages to escape before he can be punished for his crimes. After the sentence is announced a storm sweeps through allowing Lostris and Tanus time to be secretly alone together. During this time Lostris conceives Tanus' first born, and before the secret can be discovered Taita arranges for her to resume her wifely duties to Pharaoh. When the child is born he is named Memnon and claimed by the Pharaoh as his own, and his true paternity is known only to Lostris, Taita, and Tanus. A new threat to the kingdom emerges&nbsp;— the warlike Hyksos. Equipped with the horse and chariot, as well as a superior recurved bow, their technological superiority is far greater than the Egyptian army's. The Pharaoh is killed, forcing a majority of the Egyptian nobility (including Lostris, Tanus, and Taita) to flee Egypt by heading up the Nile with the remaining army. During their exile Lostris gives birth to two more of Tanus' children, both daughters, but as their relationship has been a secret Taita creates a cover story where the ghost of Pharaoh sires the child. During their period in exile, they regain their technical superiority&nbsp;— Taita replicates and improves both the chariots and bows he has seen used to such great effect on the battlefield. While searching for a suitable burying place for Pharaoh's body, Taita is taken captive by one of the Ethiopian chieftains of the area&nbsp;— the brutal Arkoun. While in captivity, Taita becomes close friends with Masara, a fellow captive and the daughter of one of the rival chieftains. Taita eventually escapes captivity due to a freak flooding, finds the father of Masara, and strikes a deal with him to rescue Masara. With the help of Tanus, Memnon, and the Egyptian army, Arkoun is defeated. Tanus is mortally wounded during the battle and dies. Masara and Memnon fall in love and become married, with a wedding gift of several thousand horses which further boost the Egyptian army. Led by their new Pharaoh Tamose (formerly Prince Memnon), they return to Egypt. With their new-found weaponry and tactics, they defeat the Hyksos invaders and regain the upper kingdom of Egypt from Elephantine to Thebes.
22443499	/m/05zx4qg	An Excellent Mystery	Edith Pargeter	1985-06-20	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 August 1141 is sunny, hot, without rain in Shropshire. Half of southern England is cut off from the Abbey of St Peter and St Paul by the civil war between the imprisoned King Stephen and the besieged Empress Maud. Empress Maud is hoping to regain the support of Henry of Blois, but most doubt the canny bishop will side with her again after the failure of his legatine council. Rather he is building up his own stores at Wolvesey Castle in Winchester in case he is besieged, and rebuilding his alliance with his brother's wife Queen Matilda, now leading King Stephen's armies. Handing Brother Oswin to his term at the leper house at Saint Giles, Cadfael hears the first hints of the troubles at Winchester, meeting it in person on his way back to the Abbey. The Abbey of Hyde-Mead in Winchester has been laid waste by the fighting, scattering the surviving monks across the country. Brother Humilis and the mute, young Brother Fidelis are welcomed by the Abbey of Shrewsbury as refugees. Humilis tells the Abbot that he was born near Shrewsbury and wishes to see the old estates of his father. Cadfael recalls a nobleman called Godfrid Marescot, who joined the crusades sixteen years ago, taking men from his manor, and gained a reputation for great valour. He realizes that Humilis is Godfrid returned. Hugh Beringar notes that the man is clearly ill and likely not long for this world. Fidelis seems impressed with Humilis, dedicated to his care. One day Cadfael finds Humilis unable to move from pain. While treating Humilis, Cadfael discovers the severity of the wound from the Crusades, which has rendered him incapable of fathering children and likely to die soon. Cadfael learns that Fidelis joined the monastery when Humilis had just graduated from being a novice. Fidelis brought with him a written explanation of his desire to serve God and a small amount of money. Brother Urien, who recently joined the monastery after a failed marriage, makes a sexual advance towards the young novice Rhun, but is rejected. Rhun is thus aware of the troubled Brother Urien. Two days later, Rhun takes his vows as a novice monk, with a tonsure. Nicholas Harnage arrives on leave from the Queen's army (King Stephen's Queen, under FitzRobert) at Andover, where they have burnt the town, and the siege is at stalemate for the moment. He asks Brother Humilis for permission to propose marriage to Humphrey Cruce's daughter. Julian Cruce was betrothed to Humilis/Godfrid by arranged marriage when Godfrid left for the Crusades; she was but 5 years old, the last time he saw her. Nicholas was dispatched to tell her family that she was released from the engagement upon Godfrid's return from the Crusades, the only time Nicholas has met her. Humilis gladly gives his consent to Nicholas who leaves for the Cruce manor in the north of the shire to make his proposal of marriage three years after once meeting her. Julian's older brother, Reginald, tells Nicholas that Julian left to become a nun about a month after her engagement to Humilis was broken, and one month before her father died. She went to the convent at Wherwell, but Reginald has had no communication with her since she left. Disappointed, Nicholas returns to Shrewsbury Abbey with his news. In early September, a wool merchant brings word to Hugh Beringar that the Empress's forces made an attempt to open a supply line to Winchester but were put down by William of Ypres's forces. The Empress's men took refuge in Wherwell Abbey, which was fired in the fighting, soldiers and nuns both inside. Hugh informs Cadfael early the next morning; he rushes the news to Nicholas, who leaves quickly to learn if Julian is safe. Soon after this Brother Urien makes an advance towards Brother Fidelis. Fidelis rejects him. Nicholas fails to find Julian at Wherwell. He continues his search to Romsey Abbey, where the Prioress of Wherwell escaped. She informs him that Julian Cruce has never asked to enter the nunnery at Wherwell. Reeling from this news, Nicholas returns to Winchester, where he finds a battle underway. The Empress and her forces have broken out of the siege, marching out at dawn along the Stockbridge road, now pursued by the Queen's army. Three days later Nicholas reached Shrewsbury Abbey. He recounts his findings to Brother Humilis, and shares what he saw at Winchester, including news of the taking of Robert of Gloucester. The disappearance of Julian is the more mysterious since she was escorted to Wherwell by four trustworthy and well-armed servants who returned home safely afterwards. Nicholas again visits the manor at Lai to meet three of the men who escorted Julian to Wherwell. The three men reveal that on the last leg of the journey only one man, the forester Adam Heriet, since sent on military service, accompanied Julian. Reginald vows there will be restitution for whatever ill has befallen Julian, as his honor is now touched. A list of the valuables Julian took with her into the cloister is given to Nicholas to aid in his search. At the Abbey Nicholas and Reginald find Hugh and Cadfael discussing the war news brought by Nicholas. Fortunes turned at the rout of Winchester with the taking of the Empress's strongest ally by the Queen's army. The imprisoned King Stephen may yet be exchanged for Robert of Gloucester taken by the King's allies at Stockbridge, held in Rochester. In the rout, the Empress escaped with her life and her forces were scattered. Nicholas and Reginald ask Hugh to assist them as Sheriff. Hugh agrees to pursue Heriet, the last man to have seen Julian. Nicholas leaves to seek trace of the valuables, while Reginald heads home. Hugh finds Heriet at his brother in law's home and questions him. Heriet claims to have travelled with Julian to within a mile of the convent, but let her travel the last mile on her own at her own request. He has no knowledge of her in the three years since. Hugh returns to Shrewsbury with Heriet, who asks repeatedly for news of Julian. Heriet does recall Julian's happy expectation of her marriage to Godfrid, in her youth. Brother Humilis is very ill and has been taken to the infirmary where Brother Cadfael tends him. Hugh tells Humilis what he has learned and Heriet recounts his story. Heriet's story clashes with that of the other three men on the point of time: Heriet returned to them at sunset. Heriet claims to have used the extra hours to explore the city of Winchester. Heriet denies robbing and killing Julian, allowing himself to be taken into the sheriff's custody. Alone with Cadfael and Hugh, Brother Humilis asks about the valuables that disappeared with Julian. Hugh describes them in detail, with his word perfect memory. Brother Urien overhears part of their conversation and thinks that one of the items Hugh described, the cross sized for a neck chain, may be in the possession of Brother Fidelis who wears something on a chain around his neck. Brother Fidelis sturdily rejects Brother Urien's advances. Angered, Urien then pulls the chain to see what hangs on it. Urien gives Fidelis three days to reconsider, threatening to tell all if Fidelis does not do so, and leaves. Rhun is witness to Fidelis in distress. Rhun then suggests to Brother Edmund that Fidelis be allowed to have a cot in Brother Humilis's room. That night, Humilis wakes to discover his friend on the cot. Using a lamp to study his friend's face, he sees more than he expected. Visible on the pillow was an old ring on the chain around his neck. Thus did Brother Humilis learn the truth about his faithful companion. Humilis and Cadfael talk alone. Humilis asks Cadfael to protect Brother Fidelis after Humilis dies, to which Cadfael agrees. Cadfael says he guesses at what might Humilis must know, but will do his best. Humilis then asks that he and Fidelis visit the nearby manor where he, Humilis, was born. It is a risky journey by land, so Cadfael suggests the river, guided by a local expert. Cadfael gains the Abbott's approval for this scheme. Charged to arrange the journey, Cadfael visits at Beringar's town home, enlisting the assistance of Aline for his future plans, playing with his godson. When Hugh returns, Cadfael tells of the plan for Humilis. Then Cadfael recruits Madog and his skiff for the journey next day to Godfrid's manor, now held by his cousin, tenanted by longtime neighbors. Nicholas visits the Bishop of Winchester to seek some trace of the valuables that disappeared with the lady Julian. The Bishop lends his authority to help Nicholas question the churches, abbeys and merchantmen of the city. A merchant and his wife remember Adam Heriet well and describe him clearly as having sold them Julian's jewellery. Heriet claimed at the time that he was acting as a servant under orders and that the lady who owned the jewellery was dead. The jeweller's wife saw Heriet meet someone after the transaction, she thought a young, slim man. The wife of the jeweller received Julian's distinctive ring as a birthday gift and loans it to Nicholas to use to confront Adam Heriet. Humilis and Fidelis meet Madog for the journey to the manor where Humilis grew up. At the manor, Humilis speaks warmly to Fidelis of his gratitude and love for all the care in his last years. A storm threatens, and Humilis makes the choice to return rather than wait out the storm. The storm is furious and intense, ripping up a huge willow, setting it afire from lightning, falling to knock their skiff to pieces. Fidelis comes up for air, sees Humilis, holds him up. Madog takes Humilis to shore, tries to revive him, as Fidelis washes up alive at the same place. Realising there will be no reviving, Fidelis keens in deep pain. Nicholas reaches Shrewsbury as the storm breaks. He seeks out Hugh Beringar first at his home, then in the still heavy rain to the castle, and tells his news from Winchester. Madog arrives in Shrewsbury. He finds Cadfael alone at the mill. Relating how Humilis died in the river, he asks Cadfael how to deal with the fact uncovered in the disaster, surprising to Madog but not to Cadfael. Cadfael tells him that if anything has to be said, it should be that Fidelis died in the river with Humilis. Cadfael proceeds to Aline, who lets him know that Nicholas is returned. They proceed along the river with horses, Cadfael the more pressed wondering what news Nicholas has spread. Hugh and Nicholas question Adam Heriet with the evidence of the ring. They formally accuse Heriet of the lady Julian's murder. Heriet denies everything, when the news of river deaths interrupts the interrogation. Hugh and Nicholas leave to verify the news and offer what assistance they can. In the streets of Shrewsbury they see Brother Humilis's body being carried to the Abbey. At the Abbey Madog recounts the accident to Abbott Radulfus, who sorrowfully accepts all he says, including a promise to search for the other monk. Hugh Beringar notes Cadfael is absent from the scene. Returning home, Hugh is approached by his wife Aline with a story for him alone. Cadfael is finishing up the important business, and Hugh ought to relieve Heriet of the mistaken news said in front of him. Brother Humilis's funeral in Shrewsbury Abbey drew many, fitting for a man to be laid to rest in the Abbey transept. Reginald Cruce recalls another ring that meant more to his sister, the gift of Godfrid at the time of the engagement, a very old ring from his family. She wore it on a chain around her neck. None knew that this ring is what Godfrid saw just before his death, that told him the secret of Fidelis, who had not accepted his rejection three years earlier. Just after the ceremony, Sister Magdalene of Godric's Ford Benedictine cell arrives with a letter addressed to the Lord Sheriff, Hugh Beringar. Hugh reads the letter publicly, which is from the Lady Julian who says she is now at the nunnery at Polesworth. The letter says she had lived at Sopwell Priory by Saint Albans without taking vows, regrets the pain of the fears she was 'done to death for gain,' and asks that escort be sent to fetch her to Shrewsbury. Reginald is joyous at the news that his sister is alive and repentant of having wronged Adam Heriet, an honest man. Nicholas is stunned and pleased. Grieving his friend Fidelis, Brother Rhun visits the river side and finds Brother Urien in the same sorrow yet in despair. Urien speaks of making confession and facing retribution for what he did, but Rhun persuades him to keep Fidelis's secret between the two of them for the sake of Fidelis. Rhun has realised that Fidelis was in fact Julian Cruce, in many ways back from the dead. Two days later, lady Julian arrives for the Mass to be said in honor of the lost brothers, walking past the men she had lived among for weeks, unrecognized by them. Nicholas and Julian meet; in one glance, Nicholas recognises her as Fidelis, as do Rhun and Urien, though they tell no one else. Understanding the depth of her commitment to Brother Humilis, Nicholas decides to postpone his romantic pursuit of her until she has had time to mourn. Julian asks him to visit her at her brother's manor, it would be a kindness. She wore that very old ring on her finger, and was dressed just right by Aline and Sister Magdalene to hide the tonsure. Cadfael reflects on how scandalous it would have been to the order had the truth come out, and the damage spared Julian. Hugh reflects on Heriet's motives, devotion and actions, and Cadfael recalls his journey to Sister Magdalene's priory with Fidelis/Julian. Sister Magdalene notes that the letter she wrote was had no lies, if a few deceptions, and praises the wisdom of Julian's decision to pretend muteness, as one who cannot speak, cannot lie. The novel concludes by quoting from the solemnization of matrimony, taken from the Book of Common Prayer.
22444932	/m/05zkt2j	The Suicide Collectors		2008-12		 The Suicide Collectors is set in a near future version of North America. A mysterious plague called the Despair has ravaged the earth, causing roughly 90% of its population to commit suicide. The Collectors appear after each suicide to collect the bodies. The story centers on Norman who leaves Florida on a journey to Seattle where a doctor may have a cure for the Despair.
22449968	/m/05zjvwl	Prodigal Summer: A Novel	Barbara Kingsolver	2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Prodigal Summer tells the story of a small town in Appalachia during a single, humid summer, when three interweaving stories of love, loss and family unfold against the backdrop of the lush wildness of Kentucky mountains. The narrative follows Deanna, a solitary woman working as a park ranger, Lusa, a widowed farmwife at odds with her late husband's tight-knit family, and Garnett, an old man who dreams of restoring the lineage of the extinct American Chestnut tree. Kingsolver's extensive education in biology is on display in this book, laden with ecological concepts and biological facts. Her writing also exhibits her knowledge of rural Virginia, where she grew up. In the acknowledgments Kingsolver thanks her Virginia friends and neighbors, as well as Fred Herbard of the American Chestnut Foundation.
22451076	/m/05zj12j	Jewels	Danielle Steel	1992	{"/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 Born in 1916 in a well-to-do family in America, Sarah Thompson married Freddie, a man who had time for everything except her. He drank all night and mingled with prostitutes. Sarah became pregnant, but miscarried. She got a divorce and moped around all day. Her concerned parents dragged her to Europe where well-meaning friends and family forced their nephews, sons and grandsons on her. She met William Whitfield, the Duke of Whitfield, 13th in line for succession to the British throne. Captivated by him, she finally became his companion in London. He cast aside her fears of a public scandal and finally convinced Sarah to marry him. On their honeymoon France, Sarah and William happened upon Chateau de la Meuze. According to Sarah's wishes, William bought the Chateau as a Christmas present. They worked hard to restore the estate, but it was mainly Sarah's work that did the job. The world was in for a bad time. World War II had begun. Reluctantly, after the birth of their first child Phillip, William left to join the RAF when England declared war on Germany. The Germans took possession of France, and German troops, led by the courtly commandant Joachim von Mannheim, seized the chateau to establish a care center for the wounded and dying soldiers, removing Sarah and Phillip to the caretaker's cottage. Joachim fell in love with Sarah, but Sarah was still faithful to William. She discovered she was pregnant, and gave birth to a daughter Elizabeth, who died soon of a fever, due to few medical supplies. Soon, Joachim had to leave, and William returned from the war, but he had lost the use of his legs. In later years, Sarah went on to have more kids - Julian, Isabelle, Xavier. William died on the night of Xavier's first birthday. After William's funeral, Joachim returned, only to find that Sarah had no place in her heart for another man. The book then goes on to tell us of how Sarah spends the rest of her days till her 75th birthday, busy with her kids and her jewelry store - Whitfield Jewelers - jewelers to the Crown. Steel paints a portrait of a family, imperfect as they may be, and the powerful matriarch who reminds them of the bond that transcends titles, money, and borders.
22451328	/m/05zrhrl	The AdSense Code	Joel Comm	2006-04		 In the book Comm details the techniques that he used to raise the earnings generated by the AdSense units on his websites from $3 per day to more than $600 per day. Comm's system is based on the principle that ads blended into a Web page to look like content generate more clicks and hence more revenue than those that stand out. Comm stresses that good content is still vital to success but that good optimization – a combination of clever placement, keyword targeting and careful blending – can produce high income from advertisers. He also explains how to follow stats and test strategies to discover the best approach for each website.
22459634	/m/05zqlw5	Unwind	Neal Shusterman	2007	{"/m/03t3dt": "Biopunk", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story centers around three youths who have been scheduled to be unwound, Connor, a sixteen year old whose family believes he'd gotten into too many fights, Risa, a ward of the state who doesn't make it in the continuing program because of budget cuts, and Lev, a tithe whose rich parents had him specifically to be unwound, as he is the tenth child and 10% of everything they have should be given to God. Connor discovers his unwind orders and decides to "kick AWOL" or run away, and tries to convince his friend Ariana to go with him. She agrees but later backs out, and he runs off alone with the help of a trucker. However, his cell phone tracker gets him caught. Connor resists arrest and flees the police, running into traffic and snatching a tithe (Lev) from a car to use as a hostage and human shield. This causes a bus full of State Home wards (StaHo kids) on their way to the harvest camp to overturn, and provides Risa with the perfect opportunity to escape. Risa, Connor, and Lev flee into the woods, and are pursued briefly by a JuveyCop, who Connor shoots with the cop's own tranquilizer after Risa baits him. The next morning, while gathering supplies, the three come across a storked baby waiting on a doorstep. Because of an experience in his past, Connor can't just pass by, and puts them all at risk by picking up the baby in plain view of a cop car cruising nearby. The three get on a school bus to blend in and hide out in the school bathroom with the baby. Lev takes his chance to escape, because as a tithe, he believes that it is an honor to be unwound, and he goes to the school office to turn in the others. He calls his pastor after he's done so, who tells him he helped keep their faces out of the paper so Lev could be free. Astonished by this sudden change, Lev pulls the fire alarm to help Connor and Risa escape from the incoming cops. Connor, Risa and the baby attempt to hide, but are discovered by a teacher, Hannah, who helps them to escape the school and tells them to go to an antique store and ask for Sonia, who will help them. The store is a safe house, where they stay for a few days before the Ice Cream man comes to pick them up and shuttle them to another house in the chain. Before they leave, Sonia has them and the other kids, one of whom is a bully named Roland, write letters to their loved ones about how they felt about being ordered to be unwound and said she would mail them if they didn't come to collect it a year after their eighteenth birthdays, when they would be safe from unwinding. Hannah comes to say goodbye, and to take the baby, who she and her husband have decided to adopt and claim as a storked baby. The ecaped children are eventually taken to a holding area, a big warehouse by an airport. Lev, in the meantime, has also managed to escape and has met up with a kid named CyFi who claims not to be a runaway, but is headed to Joplin because 1/8 of his mind, which he got from a single unwound youth instead of bits and parts like was usually done, would take over his mind at times and he needed peace. CyFi teaches Lev some street smarts along the way, and Lev helps him and the unwound kid inside him get closure. At the warehouse, Risa begins to understand the power games Roland is playing in breaking up any groups of kids that might be a threat to him. She tries to make Connor understand and stay calm, as a fight between the two of them is looming as Connor appears to be the next biggest threat to Roland. Connor takes her words to heart and isn't baited by Roland when he attempts to rape Risa in the bathroom. Shortly after, they are all taken to the Graveyard, an aircraft graveyard, their final destination and where they will remain until they reach the age of eighteen and are safe. A former admiral is in charge of the airplane graveyard and assigns the children to work detail where they can best be used. Connor becomes a mechanic and Risa becomes a medic, while Roland learns to fly a helicopter from Cleaver, the only other adult who knows about the kids. Roland starts up his trouble anew, spreading stories about the Admiral to sow dissent and to make himself the new leader. Connor ends up on the Admiral's side as a spy, and when a number of the higher up kids are killed, he investigates, believing Roland to be responsible. A short time in, Lev arrives, tougher than before, and joins a secret group that wants to damage Unwind facilities rather than just live out to age eighteen and then leave the camp. The Admiral has a heart attack during a riot caused by doubts sown by Roland, even though he is not there to direct it and take over. Connor brings things under control, but gets Roland and Risa to come with him to fly the Admiral to a hospital, even knowing they will likely be caught. They are taken away to a harvest camp, where Risa unwillingly joins the band which plays at the unwinding and death of each child. Lev is at the camp as well, having turned himself in after becoming a clapper, a suicide bomber who has been injected with a liquid explosive triggered by clapping hard enough. Roland is unwound due to his blood type being high on demand. Just as Connor is about to be unwound, the other two clappers who are at the camp with Lev detonate their explosives at his request. He intends to join them, but at the last minute changes his mind, determined to pull out unwound youth from the wreckage and save Connor. He does so, and confesses himself to the police. Back at the hospital, Connor and Risa unite again, having begun a relationship while at the harvest camp. Connor's injuries made him the unwilling recipient of a new eye and arm, which formerly belonged to Roland, which he can tell from the shark tattoo on the arm. The nurse gives him a fake ID from a guard killed in the explosion to save him from unwinding. Risa refuses treatment despite being paralyzed from the waist down, and saves herself that way as well, as cripples cannot be unwound. Lev is saved by the explosive fluid in him, which is slowly being removed from his bloodstream. Risa and Connor return to the Graveyard to run it because the Admiral is too weak, having refused to take a new heart from an Unwind. They promise to begin fighting against harvesting. The story ends with a party at the Admiral's house, celebrating the birthday of his son, who he and his wife unwittingly had unwound. All the people who received parts from his son attend, bringing him entirely there. Risa and Connor go back to the Graveyard.
22473609	/m/05zmydn	The Green Child	Herbert Read	1935	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The first and last parts of the story are told as a third-person narrative, but the middle part is written in the first person. The story begins in 1861 with the faked death of President Olivero, dictator of the South American Republic of Roncador, who has staged his own assassination. He returns to his native England, to the village where he was born and raised. On the evening of his arrival Olivero notices that the stream running through the village appears to be flowing backwards, and he decides to follow the water upstream to discover the cause. The stream's course leads Olivero to a mill, where through a lighted window he sees a woman tied to a chair, forced by the miller to drink the blood of a freshly slaughtered lamb. Instinctively, Olivero hurls himself through the open window, his "leap into the world of fantasy". The miller initially offers no resistance and allows Olivero to release the woman, whom he recognises by the colour of her skin to be Sally, one of the two green children who had mysteriously arrived in the village on the day he left, 30&nbsp;years earlier; Olivero also recognises the miller as Kneeshaw, an ex-pupil at the village school where he had once taught. During a struggle between the two men Kneeshaw is accidentally drowned in the mill pond. The next morning Olivero and Sally continue on Olivero's quest to find the stream's destination, a pool in the moors high above the village. Paddling in its water, Sally begins to sink into the silvery sand covering its bed. Olivero rushes to her, and hand in hand they sink beneath the water of the pool. The book's second part recounts the events between Oliver leaving the village as its young schoolmaster and his return as ex-President Olivero. He travels to London initially, hoping to find employment as a writer, but after three years spent working as a bookkeeper in a tailor's shop he takes passage on a ship which lands him in Cádiz, Spain. Unable to speak the language, and in possession of a book by Voltaire, he is arrested as a suspected revolutionary. Held captive for two years, he learns Spanish from his fellow prisoners and determines to travel to one of the liberated American colonies he has learned of, where the possibility exists to establish a new world "free from the oppression and injustice of the old world". Freed in an amnesty following the death of King Ferdinand of Spain, Oliver makes his way to Buenos Aires. There he is mistaken for a revolutionary agent and taken to meet General Santos of the Roncador Army. Together they hatch a plot to seize the country's capital city and assassinate its dictator. The plot is successful and "Don Olivero" finds himself leader of the Assembly, making him the country's new dictator, a position he holds for 25&nbsp;years. Eventually he realises that his style of government is leading the country into stagnation and "moral flaccidity"; he begins to feel nostalgia for the English village where he was brought up, and resolves to escape. Wishing to avoid any suspicion that he is deserting Roncador, Olivero fakes his own assassination. The final part of the book continues the story from when Olivero and Sally disappear under the water. A large bubble forms around them, transporting them to the centre of the pool and ascending into a large grotto, from where they proceed on foot through a series of adjoining caverns. Sally tells Olivero that this is the country she and her brother left 30&nbsp;years ago. Soon they encounter her people, to whom Sally, or Siloēn as she is properly known, explains that many years ago she wandered off and became lost, but that she has now returned with one who "was lost too, and now wishes to dwell among us". Olivero and Siloēn are welcomed into the community, where life is ordered around a progression from lower to upper ledges: the first ledge teaches the pleasures of youth; on the second ledge the pleasure of manual work is learned; on the third of opinion and argument; and finally, on the upper ledge, the "highest pleasure", of solitary thought. Olivero soon tires of the first ledge, and leaving Siloēn behind he moves to the second, where he learns to cut and polish crystals, the most sacred of objects in this subterranean world. Eventually he is allowed to move to the highest ledge of all, "the final stage of life". There he is taught the "basic principles of the universe", that there is only Order and Disorder. "Order&nbsp;... [is] the space-filling Mass about them&nbsp;... Disorder is empty space". Olivero selects a grotto in which to spend what remains of his life alone, contemplating the "natural and absolute beauty" of the crystals he accepts from the crystal-cutters. Food and water is brought regularly, and he settles to the task of preparing his body for "the perfection of death", which when it comes he meets with a "peculiar joy". Removing Olivero's body from the grotto the attendants encounter another group carrying Siloēn, who died at the same time as Olivero. The pair are laid together in a petrifying trough, to "become part of the same crystal harmony", as is customary when any of the Green people die.
22473661	/m/05zyg46	Pencil of Doom!	Andy Griffiths	2008-04-01		 Henry has a green pencil with a skull eraser. He discovers that everything he writes or draws with it becomes true! But if he draws good things, a bad thing will unexpectedly happen. He tries to destroy the pencil in many ways, and gives his friend Jack Japes amnesia in the process by tripping him down a hill . He throws it into a rubbish bin, hoping it will never be seen again, but it turns up again in Lost Property. He wedges it under the sports teacher's Hummer's wheel, but instead it sticks into it, and the Hummer collides with Mrs Cross' small green hatchback. He also attempts to crush it in Mr Spade's compactor, but not knowing how to use it, it blows up and the pencil is left intact. He attempts to draw a picture of the pencil itself disappearing, but because of how wishes don't always come true in the way people expect, it gets stolen by Clive, who use it to draw a picture of Henry and his friends being crushed under an avalanche. Luckily (or unluckily), they get crushed by an avalanche... of books. The combined weight of the books also crushes the pencil. The characters are saved by the librarian, Mr Shush, who digs them out. The story ends here with the usual paragraph.
22473684	/m/05zmzf5	Mascot Madness!	Andy Griffiths	2008-04-01		 Mr Brainfright dresses in a banana mascot suit to support Northwest Southeast Central School, also getting extremely obsessed with bananas and boring the class - unusual for him! Mr Brainfright also teaches the class to visualise all the events in the Northwest Interschool Sports Event, while Mr Grunt, their sports teacher, tortures them cruelly and gives 50 laps around the oval as punishment to those who fail. Finally the event DOES come, and it is neck and neck between the two schools until Henry McThrottle has to replace Mr Brainfright in his banana suit, being scared of it because he used to mascot for the Banana Emporium, and caused a car crash into the Emporium. Fiona tells him it wasn't his fault - he wasn't in the official police report. However, Northwest West Academy's mascot, a real pit bull terrier, attacks Henry and he starts running in the decathlon in desperation, also being caught up by Chomp occasionally. They beat the speed record for all the events in the decathlon! One judge ruled that Chomp added weight to Henry during the pole vaulting sport, therefore, Northwest Southeast win by one point! This ruined West's winning streak. Mr Brainfright no longer has mascot madness, due to the absence of his banana-suit. Mr Grunt becomes the sports teacher for Northwest West Academy, ensuring that Northwest West Academy do not win next year with Mr Brainfright replacing his job. Fred and Clive, who told Mr Constrictor (NWW Academy's principal) about the banana-suit, do NOT get expelled. The story ends with the chapter, with Mr Brainfright's Guide to Banana Mascotting.
22474409	/m/05zr232	The Master: An Adventure Story	T. H. White	1957	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 It involves two children, Judy and Nicky, and their dog Jokey, who are stranded on Rockall, an extremely small, uninhabited, remote rocky islet in the North Atlantic Ocean. They find that it is hollow and inhabited by a mysterious person who aims to take over the world. Rockall actually exists, though the persons depicted in the book are entirely fictional.
22478941	/m/05z_j42	The Grifters				 Roy Dillon is a 25-year-old con artist living in Los Angeles. At the start of the novel, he gets hit in the stomach with a baseball bat when a simple con goes wrong. He seems to be well but when Lilly - his mother - visits him for the first time in almost eight years, he starts to deteriorate. She calls for a doctor, who informs her that he is internally hemorrhaging. Roy is taken to hospital, where he begins to recover after several days. While at the hospital, his mother meets Moira Langtry, the woman that Roy is currently involved with. They take an instant dislike to each other. Lilly hires a nurse, Carol Roberg, in the hope that Roy will give up Moira for Carol. Roy then leaves the hospital and stays at Lilly's apartment where Carol looks after him. When they are about to have an affair, Roy discovers that Carol was in a concentration camp when she was younger. In the meantime Lilly is at the race track working for an organization headed by gangster Bobo Justus. He comes to meet her and he takes her back to his apartment. He proceeds to beat her for a serious mistake she made several months back. In the process, the back of her hand is burned badly. She goes back to her apartment where she has a fight with Roy, and tells him to give up grifting. Roy goes back to work for the day and meets his new boss Perk Kraggs who takes a liking to him. He offers him a job as a sales manager. Roy is unsure if he should take it or not. He goes away with Moira to La Jolla for the weekend. She realizes that he is a con man when she sees him conning a group of people on the train. She tells him that they should work together but he refuses. She gets into a fury and he slaps her. He leaves, thinking that it is the end of the relationship. He later decides to take the sales job and to quit grifting. He is then contacted by the police and he is informed that his mother has committed suicide. He presumes that Moira killed her. However, when he goes out to see the body, he notices that the burn on her hand is not there. He realizes that the body is Moira's and that his mother is still alive. In the meantime, his mother has broken into his apartment and is stealing all his money. He comes back and catches her in the act, and tells her that he won't let her take it for her own good; he wants her to quit grifting as well. In desperation, Lilly attempts to seduce Roy, who recoils in disgust. When he is taking a drink, she hits him with her purse. Unintentionally, she breaks the glass which cuts his neck, causing him to bleed to death. She briefly breaks down after realizing she has killed her own son, but regains her composure and takes the money.
22481783	/m/05zvb1v	Trying to Grow				 Trying to Grow features a young boy, born in Bombay, with brittle bones, who would never grow taller than four feet. His mother, an Anglophile enamoured with everything English (stockpiling Quality Street to Marmite), names her little boy Brit, after his brittle bones and because it was short for her favourite Britain. Brit turns out to be a spiky, opinionated and naughty - he knows his small size allows people to assume his is a safe and innocent haven for their secrets. He prefers sex to Shakespeare, although he gets to be good at both as he grows older. He's schooled at home, so he knows more about Charles I than the boys next door - until, that is, puberty arrives, with a sexy new boy next door. A relationship with a woman also follows. All through is the tenderness and heartbreak of a young man experiencing love and desire - having his heart broken and mended, which is far more intense than the pain of his broken bones. The characters are semi-autobiographical and set in the Parsee community in India. How to Increase Height After 25
22485719	/m/05zp3wx	Two Lives	William Trevor	1991-01-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Reading Turgenev deals with the life of Mary Louise Dallon, a farm girl from southeastern Ireland who marries an older draper named Elmer Quarry. Her marriage remains unconsummated, in part due to the growing alcoholism of her husband. She falls in love with her invalid cousin Robert, who introduces her to the works of great Russian writers (including Ivan Turgenev). She eventually goes mad and structures her life around preserving the existence of Robert to the finest detail possible, including re-creating his room and possessions in her attic. In My House in Umbria, the first-person narrator, a retired prostitute and madam, now a writer of romantic novels, recollects a brief period when she sheltered in her Umbrian retirement villa three fellow survivors of a terrorist attack on an Italian passenger train. The novella has been made in to a made-for-television film, also entitled My House in Umbria, which departs substantially from the somber plot of the original.
22487426	/m/05zw0yj	Dexter is Delicious	Jeff Lindsay		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The book begins nine months after the end of Dexter by Design with the birth of Lily Anne Morgan, the daughter of Dexter and Rita Morgan. His daughter's birth has brought remarkable changes in Dexter; apart from feeling genuine love and emotions for the first time he also does not feel his Dark Passenger's compulsion to kill and vows to swear off his dark hobby in order to be a better father for his daughter. Soon after Dexter is called to a crime scene by his sister Deb, who is in the middle of a jurisdictional fight with the FBI who claim that a kidnapping has taken place. Dexter believes that the large quantity of blood found there was planted, and that the missing girl in question is faking her disappearance in order to get money from her parents. Dexter runs tests and discovers that the blood type does not match the missing girl, Samantha Aldovar. Deb and Dex go to the private school Samantha attends and talk to her principal, who at first is reluctant to divulge any information. This changes when the principal discovers that Tyler Spanos, a wild child and Samantha's friend, is also missing. Subsequent interviews with their friends indicate that they were both befriended by a young man with teeth filed down like fangs, and that only a few dentists in Miami offered such a service. Their prime suspect is Bobby Acosta, the son of Joe Acosta, a wealthy and city official, whose influence has already rescued Bobby from felony prosecutions. Dexter receives a surprise one day bringing Cody and Astor home from school; waiting for him is his brother Brian, whom Dexter last saw at the end of Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Brian quickly ingratiates himself with Dexter's family, who rapidly start to adore him much to Dexter's dismay. Dex soon receives another call from his sister, and arrive at a crime scene where someone was apparently cooked and eaten. DNA from the gnawed bones matches that of Tyler Spanos. One of the detectives working under Deb uses his contacts and arrests two Haitian men who swear that they saw Bobby Acosta leaving Tyler's car at a known chop shop. Deb and Dex arrest Victor Chapin, another young man with artificial fangs, but are forced to release him when a public defender shows up. Dexter, in a fit of overprotective fury over his daughter, stalks Chapin and kills him. Just before dying, Chapin admits to having taken part in eating Tyler Spanos. Things get worse when the remains of Deke, Deb's obnoxious partner, are found partially eaten. Rummaging through a nearby trash bin, Dexter finds Deke's blood sodden shirt and a chip from a local goth nightclub called "Fang." Dex and Deb force their way into the club, but shortly after finding Bobby Acosta they are thrown out by the club's irate manager. Deb resolves to wait until everyone leaves, and makes Dexter break in to search for Samantha. While searching, Dexter remembers that he had previously considered the manager of Fang as a potential "playmate" (victim), because of a large number of migrants who vanished after working at the club. Dexter eventually finds Samantha in a large refrigerator; but, rather than follow Dexter to freedom, Samantha locks them both inside. Samantha then reveals that she desires to be eaten, and that she and Tyler shared the same fetish and volunteered to let the cannibals cook and eat them. Dex and Samantha are then taken to a trailer in the Everglades, where they are left with only a jug of water. While drinking the water Dexter and Samantha become euphoric and eventually have sex multiple times, despite recognizing that the water is laced with MDMA ("Ecstasy"). Shortly afterward Deb and the Miami PD arrive (thanks to a tracer Deb's boyfriend Chutsky placed on the vans leaving the club) and arrest the cannibals, except for the club manager, who is killed. Samantha, irate at being rescued, issues a thinly-veiled threat to Dexter: as revenge for ruining her fantasy, she will say Dexter raped her. The next day Deb approaches Dexter and tells him that Samantha has run off again. She and Dexter approach Joe Acosta and urge him to get Bobby to turn himself in, so that Samantha can be recovered – even though it will likely mean Bobby will avoid prison time. Bobby's father refuses to turn his son in, but his trophy wife Alana, Bobby's stepmother, privately reveals that he is at an abandoned amusement park that his father owns. Deb, Dex and Chutsky arrive at the park and begin searching it; eventually the three are caught and the leader of the cannibal "coven" is revealed to be Alana Acosta. Deb and Chutsky are taken away leaving Dexter to watch Alana cook pieces of a still-conscious Samantha. As Alana approaches Dexter to begin cutting and cooking him, one of Alana's guards guns her down as well as two other guards. Dexter's savior is revealed to be Brian, who had started working for the cannibals a few weeks prior. He cuts Dexter loose and reluctantly helps him rescue Deb and Chutsky; while leaving they check on Samantha, who has since died of her wounds. Chutsky decides to leave Deb because he failed her and nearly got her killed; upon waking up on the way to the hospital Deb reveals that she is pregnant. The book ends with Deb preparing to give birth despite Chutsky vanishing, and Dexter deciding that even though he now feels emotions like normal people, he can't stand by and let people be preyed upon when he can do something about it. He decides that the best he can do for his sister right now is to honor an earlier request of hers, and "take care" of Bobby Acosta.
22487809	/m/05zjjhz	Click Here :	Denise Vega	2005	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Erin Swift is a seventh grader with big feet who keeps a private website, on which she writes all her feelings and what's happening in her life. Erin and her best friend, Jilly, were about to attend an Intermediate School by the name of Molly Brown. Unfortunately, they are separated by tracks. Erin is on A track, while Jilly is on C track. At first, Erin wants to be with Jilly more than anything, but when she met "Cute Boy", a.k.a. Mark Sacks, she changes her mind. On her first day, she receives three days of detention because she punches a childhood enemy, Serena, on the nose for calling Jilly her master puppeteer. Her elder brother, Chris, becomes annoyed over the incident, because he loves Serena's older sister. After the "puppet incident", Jilly signs herself and Erin up for the Thanksgiving Day play. Jilly gets the role of Goody Stanton, the main character, while Erin receives the part of an Ear of Corn, a moment of great ire for her. Erin also signed up for the school Intranet Club (the school's Internet) without Jilly, which is very significant because it's the first time she breaks away from her friend's hold and does anything on her own. There, she meets Tyler, whom her new friend Rosie said had been crushing on Erin. Meanwhile, Erin tries not to let Mark meet Jilly and vice-versa, because she knows if they meet each other, they'll fall in teenage love, effectively ruining Erin's chances at Mark. Eventually, though, they bump into each other, and Jilly becomes Mark's girlfriend. Erin is (teenage) heartbroken, and thinks lowly of Mark and his actions. Later on, Jilly wants to break up with Mark because she thinks he is "losing interest" in her, and asks Erin to choose between Mark's friendship or hers. Erin chooses "not to choose", instigating a dispute. Erin writes mean things about Jilly in her private blog. Through this time, Erin has written about how she practices kissing on a pillow for Mark, made a Hate-O-Rama page for Serena, and has talked about her suspicion of Tyler leaving notes in her locker - notes that smell like his hair gel. She also comments that he is a bit geeky. Life goes on, and it comes time for the Thanksgiving Play. Once the play ended, Tyler and Erin went to her locker to retrieve the disc for the school Intranet, but unfortunately, Serena accidentally rams into Erin, while she (Erin) is still in her Corn Suit. Because of the immobility the costume causes, her arm is pinned under her body, resulting in a fractured arm and a trip to the hospital. Tyler holds onto the disc while Erin is being checked by the doctor. Because of the broken arm, she misses the Intranet launch. Little did she know, the disc that she brought was, in fact, not the school Intranet disc. Instead, her private blog is put on the Intranet, and is revealed to the entire school. Erin receives many messages after the intranet is launched. Some are nice, agreeing that what she wrote was correct, but much more common were the mean notes. Rosie still supports her, her family along with her. Unfortunately, many other people do not, Jilly especially. Erin agrees that she did write some pretty horrible things about her, including Jilly's bruises from her bedframe that result from her fear of monsters in the night. Jilly thinks Erin released the blog to get even with her, and is embarrassed, enraged, and hurt. In the end, Erin does a public apology through "walking spam", with more personal apologies to those most deeply affected by her blog - Jilly, Serena, Tyler, and Mark. Erin and Jilly gain a better understanding of each other, while Serena becomes more friendly. Tyler eventually does forgive her, although Erin suspects he likes another girl now. Mark decides to forgive her as well, giving her a pillow and kissing her. They decide to be just friends, with Erin deciding that a good friend was better than a boyfriend.
22498886	/m/05zqjvb	Fortunate Son	Walter Mosley		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After her husband, Elton Trueblood, abandons her after she refuses an abortion, Branwyn Beerman gives birth to her child, whom she later names Thomas. Thomas is born with a hole in his lung, and is given a dire prognosis by the hospital's head paediatrician. While Thomas is in the hospital, she falls in love with a white heart surgeon, Dr. Minas Nolan, whose wife had died due to complications giving birth to an abnormally large and strong "Nordic Adonis" named Eric. Branwyn takes Thomas home in defiance of the hospital, but Thomas survives, living with Eric under one roof, and, while different in every respect, they build a strong friendship as children. They are both cared for by a Vietnamese nanny, Ahn. Their pleasant state of affairs takes a turn for the worse after Elton returns. Branwyn perishes soon after, leaving Thomas in Elton's hands due to her unmarried status. While Thomas is forced to eke out an existence in the slums, dealing drugs and being sent to jail, Eric goes to college and has no trouble attracting women. However, Eric is also faced with problems as he confronts the consequences of his actions. After years apart, they later reunite and solve their problems together.
22499043	/m/05zl8w2	Undead and Unworthy	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Betsy Taylor, back to rule the nights as Vampire Queen––and survive the days as a new suburban bride. But it’s not all marital bliss. Betsy’s husband, Sinclair, has been perusing The Book of the Dead, Betsy’s being hounded by a ghost who’s even more insufferable in death than in life, and a pack of formerly feral vampires has decided to pay an unwelcome visit…
22499325	/m/05zph6x	Undead and Unwelcome	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Betsy Taylor has problems that only a vampire queen/suburban wife could possibly understand. Such as taking the body of her werewolf friend Antonia—who died in her service—to Cape Cod, where she's not sure if the Wyndham werewolves will welcome her with fangs or friendship. Meanwhile, her posse back in St. Paul is sending frantic e-mails alerting Betsy to her half-sister's increasingly erratic behavior. Looks like the devil's daughter is coming into her own—and raising hell.
22499385	/m/05zyyln	Sag Harbor: A Novel	Colson Whitehead	2009-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 School is over and summer begins and the return to Sag Harbor is finally in full swing. Teenagers Benji and Reggie Cooper escape their majority white preparatory academy in Manhattan. Still clad in Brooks Brothers polos and salmon colored pants, the pair remeet all of their friends. Like most well-to-do kids at their family's beach houses during the summer, most of the teens in Sag Harbor go the entire summer with very little contact with their parents besides a weekend visit or two. The lack of authority allows for plenty of interesting run-ins. Benji constantly remakes himself to become the coolest in town.
22500310	/m/05zlchr	Genesis		2006	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The entirety of the novel consists of Anaximander, a new candidate for The Academy, participating in a grueling five-hour auditory entrance exam. The Academy consists of the most elite class in society and plays an influential role in the lives of all living on the island Republic. Therefore, it is little wonder that Anaximander would be enthusiastic over such an opportunity and consequently spend large amounts of time preparing with her tutor Pericles. Her chosen area of expertise, which she will be questioned over, is on the life of her long-dead hero Adam Forde. As the exam progresses, the reader is granted much insight into the history of the Republic, information that is integral to understanding the significance of Adam Forde’s life. Anaximander explains how, beginning in 2030, early attempts at genetic engineering created widespread fear throughout the world. The United States entered a war with the Middle East that could not be won in an attempt to spread democratic ideals that fit poorly with the native culture of the country. Europe at this time was viewed as having lost its morality, and China’s rise in power led to a fear that a global conflict loomed. In the midst of such global turmoil, a worldwide plague developed, and the island Republic formed, isolating citizens completely from outside contact. All living on the island were consequently safe but not free. Adam Forde is the first to act against the extensive security measures. He spots a young girl in a small battered boat that narrowly avoids the explosives placed in the surrounding ocean and, in an act of compassion, rescues and protects her against assassination. He is consequently thrown in prison and is sentenced to participate in an experiment involving artificial intelligence developed by a respected leader of the Republic, Philosopher William. William wished that the android’s education be furthered after his death, and Adam complied knowing that it was his only opportunity to avoid a public execution. Anaximander gives an extremely detailed account of the interactions between Adam and Art, the android. The conversations she recites illustrate Adam’s reluctance to develop and converse with artificial intelligence, as he believes it lacks personhood. Anaximander encounters numerous Socratic lectures in which she arrives at a greater understanding of the reasoning behind Adam’s actions and the true extent of Art’s intelligence and being. In the end, The Final Dilemma, accurately revealed by the examiners, answers Adam’s question of Art’s identity far better than any of Anaximander’s well-developed speculations. A never before released hologram shows Art acting upon free will to self-replicate and kill a conscious being, Adam. As Anaximander is experiencing history redefining itself through these explanations, the reader learns that the examiners, Pericles, and Anaximander herself are all replications of Art’s orangutan being. The examiners sadly reveal that The Academy never accepts new applicants, and that the examination is a way to control the “virus” that Anaximander is subject to. The virus is found in all candidates that find a particular interest in Adam Forde’s life and allows the infected orangs, another name for Art–like androids, the ability to understand the extent of free will these mechanical beings possess. In a final act to control the virus, Pericles enters the examination rooms and breaks Anaximander’s neck, disconnecting her for the final time.
22508454	/m/05zqf2x	Amanda Morgan				 In both "Amanda Morgan" and the later portion of Tactics of Mistake, Dow de Castres unites Earth forces and galvanizes Earth opinion against the Splinter Cultures of the colonized worlds and against Cletus Grahame who leads the bid for independence of those cultures. As de Castres arrives at The Dorsai's Foralie District, local residents, under Amanda Morgan, enact a pre-arranged plan of defending their home against the invading troops with the power of the disabled, the elderly, and the children. The plan is predicated on the principle of inevitable and acceptable losses in the face of unavoidable conflict. As a science fiction story, it employs a subtle and clever, nearly passive form of chemical warfare as a military action. The theme is given its central power when the disabled, the elderly, and the children overcome the seasoned and better equipped Earth troops in the cause of their culture's independence from Earth control. The subplot of the naming of Betta Hasegawa's child, Amanda's great-great grandchild, treats Amanda Morgan's age with sympathy and grace. However, it may be noted that Dickson did not foresee the direct involvement of women in combat to the extent that it seems likely to develop over the course of the next century. When he was writing these stories, United States women were still not in active combatant positions, though other nations had already passed that barrier. Nevertheless, Amanda Morgan is a strong and able commander and a flawed, elderly woman of pride and wisdom. Both her strengths and weaknesses are treated with literary integrity. Morgan's identity in the inner struggle over the use of her name, is as important as the idea of cultural identity to the development of the over all Cycle theme.
22510655	/m/05zldgl	The Enemy	Charlie Higson	2009-09-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 The book begins a year after a worldwide sickness has infected all the adults, turning them into zombie-like creatures. The surviving children have formed a number of groups throughout London in order to better combat the threat posed by the adults and to increase their odds of survival. A young survivor named Small Sam is kidnapped by infected adults and taken away. He and several other children have made a base within the confines of a Waitrose supermarket. The other children led by a boy named Arran and his second-in-command, Maxie, have increasingly grown tired of the children being killed one-by-one. The adults are becoming smarter and as a consequence the children are being picked off more frequently. A scavenger party, composed of Arran and several other boys Achilleus, Ollie, Freak and Deke, explore a building with a swimming pool and they find a vending machine, but it turns out to be a trap. During the battle, Deke is killed and Arran is bitten by an adult woman. He becomes sick from the bite, and they only just manage to escape. Later that night a boy in a patchwork coat named Jester arrives at the gates of the building and asks for the group's help. He tells the group he has come from Buckingham Palace, where a group of kids are based in a safe environment. He claims that if they travel there, they will all be safe as well. The majority of the group like the idea and soon set off through Camden to the palace, along with another group of kids from a Morrisons supermarket who share the same feeling. A loner named Callum decides to stay behind on his own, afraid to leave to confines of his base. Meanwhile, Small Sam awakes in a grown-up base made at Arsenal Stadium. He escapes and heads back to Waitrose to find only Callum, as the other children have left. Callum explains that the other children are headed for Buckingham Palace, and Sam sets off to catch up with them. Sam is unable to catch up with the other kids and is chased by adults into the London Underground and gets as far as King's Cross when an older, uninfected man named Nick appears with a sawed-off shotgun and saves him. Nick has been living in the tunnels inside a train with his wife, Rachael. The couple aids Sam, but appear to have sinister motives behind it. Later Sam discovers he is chained up with 3 other children whom the couple have found, and it seems the couple are cannibals. With the help of a young boy known only as "the Kid" Sam escapes. However, Nick chases them outside but then gets infected and dies. Sam and the Kid go on, eventually making it to safety at the Tower of London, where another group of kids have taken shelter. As the Waitrose and Morrison's group travels to Buckingham Palace they are attacked by a pack of grown-ups, led by one wearing a St. George's Cross shirt. The children win the fight, but Arran has gone out of control because of his bite wound, and gets carried away with killing the adults. As a result he is mistaken for an adult and becomes fatally wounded by an arrow, which was shot by a girl named Sophie from another surviving group of kids. Maxie comes to Arran's aid but he dies in her arms. The group teams up with Sophie's group and after a few more skirmishes they eventually manage to find Buckingham Palace. The group of kids meet David King, the leader of the kids at Buckingham Palace who seems to have things well worked-out, but turns out to be hiding the truth of his plans. The Waitrose and Morrison's group are pressured into going to a park opposite the palace to peacefully talk with a group of kids, called the "squatters," about joining them at Buckingham Palace. However, after their leader, Just John, refuses, fight breaks out. After a tough fight in which Freak dies, they capture John and take him back to the palace. John and David come to an agreement: Achilleus and Just John fight to the death over the territorial ownership of the park. They fight, and Achilleus wins and spares Just John's life. Callum becomes overly upset at his loneliness, despite having stashed things like a music player which he hid from other kids, and becomes upset when he remembers having to kill his own mother after the epidemic. He loses hope slowly as adults led by the Saint George zombie break into the store and kill him Maxie and Ollie find that they don't trust David because of how he acts, and his obsession with taking over London. Maxie expresses her concerns to the rest of the group and they decide to escape. David and Jester attempt to stop them, but they all manage to escape, with a girl named Brooke, who leads them to the British Museum, where there is another group of kids. Meanwhile, the Saint George zombie continues to grow smarter and to lead his army of adults through London, searching out more kids. He craves more power and destruction, and wants to kill and eat every last child he can find...
22511881	/m/05zw_v3	The Hundred Tales of Wisdom		1978		 The tales, anecdotes and narratives in this collection are used in Sufi schools for the development of insights beyond ordinary perceptions. Although the number 100 is used in the title, in Idries Shah’s presentation there are 159 tales beginning with a brief description of Rumi’s childhood and youth.
22514161	/m/05ztjx8	Don't Care High		1985	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Paul Abrams has just moved to New York City with his parents. He starts at tenth grade in a new high school, Don Carey High School. When he finds out that no one at his new school cares much about much of anything, he tries to shake things up by nominating Mike Otis, a reclusive man of mystery, for Student council president. Mike runs unopposed and is soon elected and soon forgotten. Sheldon then begins to care and starts to talk up Mike and attributes a wave of needed repairs to Mike. As the students begin to care, the teachers sense that something is going on. They take it to the next level by publishing a short newsletter entitled The Otis Report, which criticizes school staff and praises Mike to the heavens. They distribute it on roller skates, wearing masks. As a result, Mike is dismissed as student body president. The pair react with a campaign to restore him and the students begin to care about something. Mike's address in his permanent file is on the eleventh floor of a ten-story building. The pair track him and locate his real address. Eavesdropping, they discover that he is about to fail a course. They seize on the chance to increase student participation even more, as a large part of the student body now idolize him. They collaborate to produce a project for him. The project is of such quality that it is entered in a science fair. It is disqualified when the judges discover that the work is not his. The students react badly, resulting in the schools banning from the event. Next they turn to sports. An announcement that Mike likes basketball results in full-on participation in the game. They play an away game and win (63-62). This results in a joyous riot and much destruction. Eventually, the staff gives in and confirms Mike as student body president. Paul and Sheldon are ecstatic at this news, feeling that the sky is now the limit. However, Mike soon announces that he is leaving. The students are surprised, but plan a party to "send Mike off in the style he deserves."
22514840	/m/05zp70w	The Pollyanna Principles		2009	{"/m/02jfc": "Education", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Gottlieb discusses in the book the effects of time and expectation in regards to the community benefit sector, and how past events have encouraged a 'Culture of Can't' amongst community benefits organizations. This concept is typified by a "litany of seemingly reasonable reasons why something cannot be done", and therefore thwarts efforts to make changes within communities. One of the principal issues discussed in the "Pollyanna Principles" is notion of board accountability on the means versus the ends (discussed below). Gottlieb the responsibilities of the board of a community benefit organization into two groups: the means and the ends. The means is defined, by Gottlieb, as that which is inherent to the day to day operation of the organization. For example, securing funding, office purchases, and managing employees and volunteers are all responsibilities that fall under the category of "means". It is also, according to Gottlieb, what most organizations spend the majority of their time and resources finding solutions for. Where more energy ought to be focused, says Gottlieb, are the ends. The "ends" in this case is the mission of the organization and the vision for the community they serve. The book also contains methods which Gottlieb refers to as the titular Pollyanna Principles, divided into two sections: The Ends and The Means. These principles define what should be concentrated on for the duration of all processes in regards to community benefit. 1. We accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for. The book describes this first principle as such: "There are four basic functions of a board that relate to its ultimate accountability: leadership (the "ends"), legal oversight, operational oversight, and board mechanics (the "means"). Boards generally regard their accountability in a way completely asymmetrical in emphasis on the "means". A by-product of a "means" emphasis on "keeping the organization out of trouble" (legal and operational oversight) is a fear-based risk management system as a result, the actual vision of the organization remains unfulfilled." 2. Each and every one of us is creating the future, every day, whether we do so consciously or not. Gottlieb offers this explanation for the second principle: "Community benefit organizations aim to solve problems; however, the 'problems' that many organizations attempt to fix are often symptoms of a larger problem that have been misdiagnosed as individual maladies. The vast majority of contemporary efforts to create better communities myopically focus on the "problems of today" and ignore the future that is shaped with every decision. Focusing on the future allows for a greater context by which to measure "success"; it allows an organization to focus on the contemporary situation and what lies beyond it." 3. Everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not. According to the book, the third principle can be explained in this way: "The assumptions the sector currently holds about interdependence are actually quite the opposite: competition and independence are the keys to success. Most grant processes, even the ones designed to encourage "collaboration" within the sector, are competitive by nature and resource centers ground their educational approaches in the "dog-eat-dog" mentality. If this competitive mindset were working, we would see amazing communities and amazing results from organizational efforts to improve them, but we do not." 4. Being the change we want to see means walking the talk of our values. On the fourth principle, the books provides this account: "The inclination to rationalize often allows an organization to unwittingly stray from its mission or even behave completely opposite from their ideology. 'Walking the talk' is at the root of the word 'integrity', however few organizations implement systems to ensure their values are upheld. 'Walking the talk' requires that systems are in place so that decisions that may lead to rationalization are solved before they even arise, even while survival-driven concerns can complicate even the simplest choices." 5. Strength builds upon our strengths, not our weaknesses. Gottlieb illustrates the fifth principle accordingly: "Community strength is built on the strength of the organizations that serve it, however most of the work being done by community benefit organizations is being done with an attitude of scarcity and weakness. This scarcity assumption yields a focus on what will bring in money and what aspects of the organization are in a crisis state. When the scarcity assumption is replaced with an assumption of strength, the whole world changes: 'can't' becomes 'possibility'." 6. Individuals will go where systems lead them. The book constructs the sixth principle along these lines: "None of the standard systems used by this sector – planning, governance, development etc. - are aimed at potential. These systems primarily focus on reactive or incremental change vs. creating a proactive, extraordinary future for our communities. Individuals and groups will go where the systems point them. What is needed are systems that set high expectations and inspire decisions that aim towards those expectations."
22516896	/m/05zt9z0	1635: The Dreeson Incident	Virginia DeMarce	2008-12-16	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel takes place after the events of 1635: The Cannon Law, in which French Huguenot extremist Michel Ducos came close to assassinating Pope Urban VIII and forced to flee with his followers from Rome. The leaders of the French Huguenot group under Ducos settled in Scotland making plans to embarrass Cardinal Richelieu. Michel also has left strict instructions for several of his followers, led by Guillaume Locquifier, in Frankfurt to do nothing until he gives them new orders. Meanwhile, Duke Henri de Rohan, the highest ranking Huguenot, has his own group of agents monitoring events throughout Europe. He also would like to see Richelieu removed from office, but he views the radical actions of Ducos as self-defeating. After having learning the events in Rome, Henri writes letters to his agents in Grantville, Frankfurt and elsewhere warning of the escape of Ducos and ordering them to notify him if Ducos appears. Rohan has two double agents working within the Ducos operation. Jacques-Pierre Dumais is one of the double agents working for the Duke, who works in Grantville as a garbage collector while secretly examining 20th century knowledge that are discarded by the American residents. Spymaster Francisco Nasi has also been trying to track down Ducos. His agents and others have been sending reports on activities in Grantville and elsewhere within the State of Thuringia-Franconia. In the midst, the United States of Europe elections are taking place which incumbent Prime Minister Mike Stearns is sure that his political party will lose these. But he figures that his opponent William Wettin will overextend himself and his respective Crown Loyalists party. Ducos' Huguenots in Frankfurt plans a demonstration and action in Grantville to vilify Richelieu by making assassinations on Grantville's powerful figures: Mayor Henry Dreeson and Methodist Enoch Wiley (as attempts on individuals such as Mike Stearns and Gustavus Adolphus remain impossible to do). The assassinations are successfully carried out during several manipulated demonstrations against vaccination and autopsies through down-timers and an anti-Semitic incident at Grantville's synagogue as covers for the assassination. In the aftermath, the results did not came out as the Huguenots had planned: Nasi, Stearns, and several others figured out the cause for the assassinations. Although, they and other like-minded are shocked by the provocative actions of the anti-Semites and decided to use the incident as a result of antisemitic influences to justify the total eradication of all antisemitic forces in the area controlled by Grantville's allies.
22523507	/m/05z_598	Monk's Hood	Edith Pargeter	1980	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The book is set in the late autumn and winter of 1138. After a tumultuous year (described in One Corpse Too Many), Abbot Heribert of Shrewsbury Abbey announces to the distress of many of the monks that he has been summoned to attend a Legatine Council and that his authority is in abeyance. Although much of the Abbey's business must also be suspended, one transaction proceeds assuming that it will be completed once Heribert is confirmed in authority or another Abbot is appointed. Gervase Bonel, the lord of a manor in late middle age, has ceded his manorial estate at Mallilie to the Abbey in return for a small house near the Abbey where his needs in retirement will be provided for. The ambitious Prior Robert is left in charge of the Abbey while Heribert is away. Some days later, he sends a small gift, part of a roasted partridge, to Bonel. Bonel is taken ill immediately after eating it. Brother Cadfael, who is skilled in herbs and medicines, and Brother Edmund the Infirmarer try to aid him but are too late, and can only ease his last moments. To Cadfael's alarm, he recognises Bonel's widow as Richildis Vaughan, to whom he was informally betrothed many years previously, before he went on Crusade. He also realises that the sauce in which the partridge was served was poisoned, by a rubbing oil he himself has made to treat muscular pains. Its active ingredient is monkshood (Wolfsbane), and many people around the Abbey are aware of its dangerous nature. The murder is reported to the authorities in Shrewsbury Castle. Cadfael's friend, Deputy Sheriff Hugh Beringar, is away so the unsubtle Sergeant Will Warden investigates. Since Prior Robert ate the other half of the partridge without any ill effects, suspicion immediately falls on Bonel's household. The servant, Aelfric, who carried the dishes from the kitchen, bears a grudge as Bonel deprived him of free status and made him a villein. The maid, Aldith, has no apparent motive and Richildis herself was never alone with the partridge. There was one other present in the house when Bonel died; Meurig, an illegitimate son of Bonel by a Welsh maidservant, who had been apprenticed to master carpenter Martin Bellecote in Shrewsbury and who was paying court to Aldith. He was on good terms with Bonel and appears not to benefit by his death. However, Warden quickly finds that Edwin Gurney, Richildis's son from her first marriage to a Shrewsbury craftsman, was present at the meal but stormed out after a quarrel before Bonel ate the partridge. He and Meurig had just come separately from the Abbey's infirmary, where the monkshood oil was often used, and his motive for murdering Bonel appears to be plain, as Bonel (who had no lawful issue) had planned to make him heir to his estate, before he granted the estate to Shrewsbury Abbey. Since the agreement with the Abbey is not completed, Edwin remains the heir apparent. Richildis refuses to believe her son capable of murder. Edwin has presumably taken refuge with her daughter Sybil, wife of Martin Bellecote, although Warden has failed to find him. At Richildis's urging, Cadfael goes to Sybil to offer comfort and help. That night Edwin and his equally youthful nephew, Sybil's son Edwy, meet Cadfael in his workshop in the Abbey grounds. By pretending that Bonel was attacked with a sword or dagger, Cadfael establishes that Edwin did not know how Bonel died and is innocent of poisoning him. He disguises Edwin in a monk's habit and conceals him in one of the Abbey's barns. He then investigates the possibility that someone in the Abbey intended the poisoned dish to be eaten by the unpopular Prior Robert, but finds this to be unlikely. The next day, Sergeant Warden questions Cadfael about the source of the oil. Cadfael cannot say whether it was stolen from his workshop or the Abbey's infirmary, but he suggests that Warden search for the bottle which the murderer used to carry it. Warden smugly replies that Edwin was seen to throw it into the River Severn. Momentarily shaken, Cadfael questions Edwin, who says that he actually threw a carved wooden reliquary, a gift intended for Bonel, into the river after their quarrel. That night, Cadfael again visits Richildis, and asks what is to become of the estate should Edwin be convicted of Bonel's murder and hanged. The distracted Richildis does not know, and in distress refers to her former relations with Cadfael. Brother Jerome, Prior Robert's sanctimonious clerk, is eavesdropping outside the door. At Chapter the next morning, Jerome betrays Cadfael's and Richildis's former relationship. Prior Robert forbids Cadfael to have any further contact with the widow, or even to leave the Abbey's precincts. Bound by his vow of obedience, Cadfael has no choice but to comply. The same morning, Edwin is discovered in the barn by Abbey servants, and flees on horseback. He is captured after a chase lasting all day. When Cadfael is summoned to give spiritual comfort to him, he finds that the pursuers have actually caught Edwy Bellecote, who distracted the authorities while Edwin escaped. Hugh Beringar has returned to Shrewsbury, and allows Edwy to return to his family on parole. Although Cadfael may not leave the Abbey, he sends his assistant, Brother Mark, to search around Bonel's house for any bottle which might have held the poison. Mark does indeed find it, in a position to which Edwin Gurney could not have thrown it, further proving his innocence in Cadfael's eyes. Before Cadfael can report Mark's find to anyone, the Abbey's steward at Mallilie sends word that a brother at a remote sheepfold at Rhydycroesau in Wales belonging to the Abbey has fallen ill. Prior Robert seizes the chance to send Cadfael as far from Shrewsbury as possible to attend the sick brother. Cadfael realises for the first time that Mallilie's location near to or even within Wales alters some people's motives. In the Abbey's infirmary, he questions the aged Brother Rhys, a distant relation of Meurig's mother, about local relationships and customs around Mallilie, before departing. He tries to report his errand to Hugh Beringar at the Castle, but Beringar is absent, searching for the reliquary which Edwin threw into the river, and Cadfael does not confide his discoveries to the sceptical Sergeant Warden. At Rhydycroesau, the ailing brother is soon recovering. Cadfael visits the manor at Mallilie and then takes Brother Rhys's greetings to his surviving kinfolk in the district. At the house of Rhys's widowed brother in law, Ifor ap Morgan, he discovers Edwin in hiding. Sergeant Warden has followed Cadfael, and takes Edwin into custody. Cadfael now has only one chance to prove Edwin's innocence, at the Commote court at Llansilin the next day. Cadfael attends the court unobtrusively. Towards the end of the day's business, Meurig bursts in, producing written proof of his paternity, and lays claim to Mallilie. The manor lies within Wales, and under Welsh law (the code of Hywel Dda) any son, even an illegitimate son, has an overriding claim to his father's property. Cadfael intervenes, stating that Meurig cannot inherit as he murdered Bonel. He produces the small bottle which Brother Mark found, and challenges Meurig to display his scrip (purse or carrying pouch) to prove that the bottle did not leak the strongly scented oil into it. Meurig instead flees. Cadfael asks the court to send word of Meurig's guilt to Shrewsbury and returns to Rhydycroesau. Meurig is waiting for him, armed with a knife. At the last minute, Meurig does not take his revenge on Cadfael, but instead confesses to Bonel's murder. He knew from an early age that he would inherit Mallilie under Welsh law, but Bonel's agreement to hand it to Shrewsbury Abbey would put it out of reach. Frantic to gain the manor before the agreement was completed, he purloined some of Cadfael's rubbing oil (which he had used to ease Brother Rhys's aches, and which Brother Edmund had warned him was fatal to ingest) from the infirmary, and having overheard Aldith say that the partridge was a gift for Bonel, added the oil to the sauce while briefly alone in the kitchen of Bonel's house. After Warden left the house to search for Edwin, he threw the bottle out of the window of the house. Having heard Meurig's confession, Cadfael tells him his penance is to live a long life, doing as much good as he can. He then allows Meurig to escape on one of the Abbey's horses. Soon after the new year, he returns to Shrewsbury to find the monks eagerly awaiting Abbot Heribert's return. When Heribert arrives, he admits he is no longer their Abbot, but has returned as a humble brother to end his days. He then dashes Prior Robert's hopes of succeeding him by introducing Radulfus, their new Abbot appointed by the Legatine Council. Though legal problems still abound, it appears that Edwin will inherit Mallilie under Bonel's earlier will. Although Cadfael has the opportunity to rekindle his relationship with Richildis, he is content to remain within the Abbey.
22526427	/m/05zzh74	A Push and a Shove: A Novel	Christopher Kelly	2007-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Benjamin Reilly, a high school English-teacher in Staten Island, N.Y., witnesses a fight between two students. This brings him back to childhood years of bullying by Terrence O'Connell, a popular jock he had a crush on at the time. Reilly decides to quit his job, track down his bully and wreak revenge on him. He visits his parents in Indiana, where he also engages in unsafe sex with a Hispanic man. In Manhattan, he meets with Terrence and they become friends. While on holiday in Vail, Colorado, he takes an HIV test - by the end of the novel, he learns he doesn't have AIDS. Terrence breaks up with his girlfriend and slowly admits to being gay, though he won't let Benjamin kiss him. Out of anger, Benjamin pushes Terrence down a mountaintop, sending him off to hospital for several weeks. Terrence proves to be understanding, and they both decide they are now even. Benjamin learns about the circumstances surrounding his sister's death and his brother's runaway streak as a teenager. Finally, Benjamin is invited to Terrence's same-sex marriage with an investment banker in Massachusetts.
22527619	/m/05zxxf9	Inspector Ghote Goes by Train	H. R. F. Keating	1971-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel opens with an article in The Times of India, which names Ghote as the officer to escort fraudster A. K. Bhattacharya from Calcutta to Mumbai. Bhattacharya made a fortune selling wax fakes of ancient Indian statues as the real thing. An American professor exposed him with a cigar lighter but Bhattacharya escaped. He has never been photographed and only his description is known. On the train Ghote finds himself in a compartment with a well dressed, charming Bengali. Ghote is reluctant to talk about his mission and his travelling companion begins trying to guess Ghote's profession and reason for travel; his guesses are ridiculous, possibly even insulting. Eventually he guesses that Ghote is the Inspector escorting Bhattacharya to trial. Ghote notes the initials on his companion's luggage are A. K. B. and suspects the man may, in fact, be A. K. Bhattacharya. The stranger reveals that he had read the newspaper article about Ghote and introduces himself as A. K. Bannerjee. The next day Ghote and Bannerjee are joined in their compartment by a pair of young backpackers travelling with an Indian Guru. The boy, Red, is British and the girl, Mary Jane, is an American. They are hippies. Ghote argues their right to be in the compartment without tickets, but the train moves off and it is impossible for the trio to disembark. Although Red is antagonistic towards Ghote, Mary Jane charms the inspector. The next morning a telegram informs Ghote the prisoner in Calcutta is actually A. K. Biswas, wanted in Mumbai for gambling offences, not Bhattacharya. Bannerjee discovers Red has used J. R. Kipling's novel "Kim" as the source for much of his journey across India. Ghote persuades Red to take Mr Bannerjee's photograph. Bannerjee convinces Red to wait until the next day. The next morning Bannerjee oversleeps, then claims his unshaven face is unsuitable for photography. All the film proves to be missing from the camera and the luggage. Bannerjee blames thieves at the last station. Red suspects Bannerjee but can prove nothing. At the next stop a Mr Ramaswami joins them. He explains his job consists of visiting each station on the railway to see that railway stationary and forms are only used for official purposes. Bannerjee suggests that Ramaswami falsifies his returns to save travelling so much. Shortly thereafter Bannerjee questions the ethics of Ghote condemning a person to jail. Ghote insists that would be the job of the magistrates and judges. Bannerjee seeks to enlist the guru as a moral ally in his cause. The guru is unhelpful, saying that a man lives his life regardless of his surroundings and brings to everyone's attention Mr Bannerjee's use of hair dye. Bannerjee claims he dyes his hair from simple vanity, though he jokingly calls it a disguise. Mr Ramaswami notices the initials on Bannerjee's suitcase and accuses Bannerjee of being A. K. Bhattacharya but relents, as it seems too far-fetched. At the last stop before Calcutta, Bannerjee persuades Ghote to get a shave from one of the local barbers. The barber Bannerjee selects speaks no language Ghote knows. The barber is deliberately very slow. The train pulls out and Ghote has to run and jump to get on board. Ghote accuses Bannerjee of engineering the incident so that Ghote would be left behind. In a dialect that the backpackers do not speak Bannerjee blames Red and Mary Jane, claiming that they feared Ghote would denounce them for not having visas. The train approaches Calcutta and Bannerjee notes that he feels as if A. K. Bhattacharya were on the train with them. He praises Bhattacharya at length and suggests that he is akin to the hippies, Red and Mary Jane, in that he breaks down the barriers of society that have become too rigid. In so doing Bannerjee inadvertently incites those present to break the law, which gives Ghote the opportunity to arrest him. As the train draws up to the platform "Bannerjee" refers to Bhattacharya's scheme being exposed with a cigar lighter, which is not public knowledge. Ghote exposes and arrests Bhattacharya. Ghote travels in a private carriage on the return journey. He has been ordered to get a confession from Bhattacharya, since the authorities wish to avoid the expense of a full trial. Ghote must also escort Mr Biswas, the card sharp, back to Mumbai for trail. At the last minute, Red and Mary Jane board the carriage, claiming to be concerned for Bhattacharya's well being. Bhattacharya states his intention to escape during the journey and claims he has accomplices who will help him. Ghote suspects the backpackers of being Bhattacharya's accomplices. As night falls, Ghote works on getting Bhattacharya to confess. Mary Jane argues that Bhattacharya is a force for good in society, as he boasted on the outward journey. Mary Jane believes this should be his courtroom defence. Ghote sees Mr Ramaswami at a station and invites him to join the party in the private carriage. Bhattacharya tries to frighten Mr Ramaswami by claiming to be friends with Thuggee cultists, who murder travellers. Ghote rebuffs this and indicates that Bhattacharya can expect a thirty-year prison sentence. The length of the sentence horrifies Ghote's travelling companions and Ghote goes to sleep resolving to use a sympathetic approach to draw Bhattacharya into a confession. The next day Ghote suggests the charges could be reduced if Bhattacharya pleas guilty. Bhattacharya in turn offers Ghote a partnership in exchange for the charges being reduced to a single, minor item. Ghote rejects this. At lunch Red abruptly insists on taking Ghote's photograph. The train enters a dark tunnel and no one can see anything. Ghote finds the meal bitter and unpleasant but has a second helping to please the cook and notices the second helping tastes different. Ghote realises that he has been drugged. He forces himself to get up and vomit in the toilet, then collapses. Waking, he overhears Mary Jane arguing with Bhattacharya. He asks for tea, which Mary Jane helps him to drink. By the time the train reaches the next station Ghote is well again. He decides to take no action against Red, who he is sure is responsible for the poisoning, out of respect for Mary Jane. At the next station an old lady, Mrs Chiplanka, insists in joining their carriage. She claims to be a respectable pillar of the community who once worked with Mahatma Gandhi to achieve independence from the British. Ghote notes her spectacles are fitted with ordinary window glass. He searches her luggage but finds nothing. Although Ghote suspects her of being Bhattacharya's accomplice, he can do nothing without evidence. That afternoon Ghote makes little progress in obtaining a confession, so he decides to wear down Bhattacharya by depriving him of sleep. Mrs Chiplanka objects to this as it is a form of torture. Angered, Ghote accuses her of being Bhattacharya's accomplice. Mrs Chiplanka, embarrassed, admits that she wears the glasses for show. Many years ago Gandhi told her to wear spectacles when he saw her leaning close to her work. Rather than correct the great man's mistake or worry him, Mrs Chiplanka began wearing false glasses much like his own. After this, Ghote realises there never were any accomplices and Bhattacharya says he will plea guilty. He makes a full statement, which Ghote takes down. Red seems disillusioned by Bhattacharya's confession. Mary Jane comforts Red, who agrees to go with her to the United States of America. Bhattacharya signs the statement, which is witnessed by Ramaswami. Tired from the long night, Ghote accepts Ramaswami's offer to guard Bhattacharya while Ghote sleeps. An hour later Ghote is woken. Bhattacharya has escaped. Ghote gives chase. The train is in motion and Ghote searches the other carriages then climbs onto the roof. He finds Bhattacharya in the driver's compartment and takes him into custody. Moments later the train arrives in Mumbai and the novel ends.
22530606	/m/05zvssz	Creature of the Night	Kate Thompson	2008-06-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Bobby, the fourteen-year-old narrator, is a thief and a hooligan. When his mother moves him and his young brother to a cottage in rural Ireland his only thought is how to get back to a life of crime in Dublin. Eventually he steals a Skoda car and goes back, only to find things have changed and he has no place there. He reluctantly returns to the cottage and is given work by a local farmer. The cottage they are living in is on a path between two fairy forts. The family are warned by the farmer’s wife to put out a bowl of milk every night, but they consider this a mere superstition. Being deprived of the milk, a little old fairy woman comes through the dog flap into the kitchen. Dennis, Bobby's brother, sees and accepts her, but for Bobby it is a baffling and rather frightening mystery.
22531768	/m/05z_pp0	Twilight	Meg Cabot	2004-12	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0fdjb": "Supernatural"}	 In the final installment of The Mediator series, Suze finds herself fighting for the love of her life, Jesse. When Paul reveals he has found a way to time travel, another gift all Mediators share, he tells Suze he plans on going back to Jesse's time and save him from his murder. Thus altering time so that Suze and Jesse will have never met nor fell in love and meaning Paul is able to have Suze to himself. Desperately trying to stop him, Suze struggles to prevent Paul from doing so, but in the progress finds herself torn between meeting her one true love or letting him live the life he deserves. On the night when Paul "shifts" and travels through the forth dimension (time travel) Suze accidentally travels as well back to Jesse's time when he was alive and meets up with Paul and hides out in the O'Neil's barn (friends of the De Silvas back then). After she goes to the outhouse and Paul finds her, he bounds and gags her before going to go to find Felix Diego, Jesse's murderer. Just when she gives up and convinces herself Jesse deserves to live, the Alive Jesse - who unties her - stumbles upon her in the barn and Suze tries to convince him that she is a Mediator from the future and that he is in great danger; telling him that Felix Diego is out to kill him and how they met 150 years into the future. At first, he thinks she is delusional and is angered by her accusations about Maria and Diego out to kill him. However, he is finally convinced when Suze tells him how he wants to become a doctor, but can't because of his parents; something that he never told anyone, including Maria. Suze then tells him he must go, but Alive Jesse refuses to. He then asks her why she traveled back into time to save him and, although she wants to say because of her love for him, she instead says because it isn't right what had happened to him. Paul comes back and finds out Alive Jesse knows about everything. Paul attempts to convince Jesse that Diego was too dangerous and that he should just leave, but Alive Jesse firmly insists that he will stop Diego, prompting Paul to literally doze off. Meanwhile after this, Alive Jesse once again asks Suze why she is helping him, to which she responds, "Because it's what I do." Alive Jesse then asks if she does this for all who die before their time to which her answer is no, but that his is a "special" case. Alive Jesse then goes on to admire her for her bravery, even though Suze disagrees, she smiles at Jesse before Diego shows up. Jesse and Diego fight and battle. Suze, worried, demands for Paul to help Jesse. But as Paul insists everything was under control, Diego grabs Suze and holds a knife to her throat, threatening to kill her causing Jesse to drop his knife. Diego using this chance to throw Suze to the side and lunge at him, however, Jesse manages to throw Diego off the ledge, snapping his neck. Suze ends up landing on a lantern during her fall, breaking it and starting a fire and soon becomes trapped in a circle of fire. Jesse jumps through the flames to Suze despite Paul's protests, and kicks floorboards and tells her they have to jump to safety. Paul yells to Suze that he will meet her "on the other side" and is going to shift back to present time. While Jesse and Suze jump, in midair she shifts and due to holding Jesse's hand brings him back to present times along with her, causing him to slip into a coma and slowly die. This causes Paul to finally realize that Suze was right; some events in time just aren't to be messed with. While Jesse's body is in a hospital Father D shows up and Paul and Suze explain what happened. Father D tells Paul to make amends with his grandfather (who Paul tricked into giving him information on how to use his gifts to time travel for his own selfish wanting) and tells Suze not to be too hard on Paul saying how he thought he was doing "good" to which she replies saying, "He thought he was robbing me of Jesse," and he says back, "In the end, Susannah, that might have actually been kinder, don't you think? Kinder than this, anyway". Also stating that Jesse would have had to have left her one day anyway since he was a ghost. This causes Suze to blame herself for the mess. Father D leaves and Suze begins to sob before Ghost Jesse comes to her in the room. Once seeing his coma state body, he asks what she had done. She explains how she went back into time to save him and prevented his murder, but she accidentally brought him back to present times and that this meant "goodbye." Just as Ghost Jesse leans in to give her a final kiss, his hand brushes against his body's leg (the one in the coma) and for Ghost Jesse to glow brighter than ever before being sucked into the body like "smoke pulled into a fan," before being gone altogether. Suze believes Jesse is now gone forever and sobs harder. Father D shows up to comfort her when he suddenly gets teary eyed, causing her to look at Jesse's body. She notices his hand tightening around her own and sees color in his skin and more alive looking "like back at the O'Neils barn," and breathing and had a pulse. His eyelids open and he removes the oxygen mask and says, "Querida." Suze then goes to her winter formal with Jesse (whose spirit had returned to his body in the hospital and remembered everything about his past life on Earth, in the afterlife and his relationship with Suze) who is now living a normal life and having a real relationship with Suze now that he is alive and no longer a ghost and adapting to the 21st century. Paul apologizes to Suze for all his trouble and says she was right about everything, including about him and her and how she and Jesse really were meant to be together, now finally convinced. They make peace. Jesse shows up and makes an awkward hello to Paul before walking off with Suze. He asks her if things with Paul were okay and she tells him everything was finally okay before they share a slow dance. Suze's father's ghost comes and Suze and him make their final goodbyes before he vanishes; forever crossing over. Jesse asks her if Suze's father was now "gone", shocking Suze. She asks him if he saw her father to which he replies that he saw their whole conversation, revealing that he is not only just alive now, but also a Mediator. As Jesse and Suze continue to dance, he says how he just doesn't understand why her father took so long to cross over. Suze says, "Do you really not know?" Causing him to shake his head, smiling as Suze smiles back feeling that her heart "might burst with joy."
22538496	/m/05zq9wl	Driven to Distraction		1994-03-15		 The authors discuss ADHD from a medical perspective, describing it as a genetic neurological disorder. They discuss the diagnostic criteria of the disorder as listed in the DSM-IV and distinguish symptoms of ADHD, such as impulsivity and difficulty focusing on tasks, from personality flaws such as laziness or self-indulgence. According to the authors, ADHD symptoms are caused by neurological differences and cannot be changed at will or "cured," although they can be managed through coping strategies and medications. The authors describe the biological mechanisms thought to underlie ADHD symptoms and also describe a variety of subtypes of ADHD. The authors discuss the effects that ADHD can have on the sufferer's life, including: * Underperformance at school as a child; * Underperformance at work as an adult; * Interpersonal difficulties, including short temper, impulsive behavior, and perceived irresponsibility; * Compulsive behavior and low self-esteem The authors then discuss strategies for treating and coping with ADHD, including obtaining a diagnosis by a qualified professional, treatment with medication and cognitive-behavioral therapy, symptom management through diet and exercise, and coping strategies.
22541155	/m/05zhk7h	Forgotten Fire				 It's about a young early teen boy Vahan Kenderian, who must resort to a variety of measures to survive the Armenian genocide. Having lived a privileged life as the youngest son of one Armenia's richest men, Vahan witnesses the deaths of family members - often through execution. One of his sisters commits suicide with poison to avoid suffering rape. While surviving the war and genocide, Vahan aims to reach Constantinople where refugees are taken into safety. From there on Vahan felt relieved because of the end to his suffering. His only relative to survive the genocide is his sister Oskina, who is separated from early in the novel but later reunites with her as read.
22546137	/m/05zlvys	Orosa-Nakpil, Malate	Louie Mar Gangcuangco	2006	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Orosa-Nakpil Malate is a gay themed story that revolves around a University of the Philippines, Manila Intarmed freshman by the name of John David “Dave” de Jesus who looked for fun but found love and life in the liberated world of Orosa-Nakpil streets in Malate, Manila. Dana, his Intarmed classmate and his best friend, served as his “fairy godmother” while he goes on his sexcapades in Malate. She kept him strong at and stayed at his side during his toughest times at school and in love and turned him from an innocent rural gay into an outgoing urban gay hottie. In Orosa-Nakpil, Malate, he met not only the men who spent steamy nights with him in the dark room on the second floor of Barn bar, but also the men who changed his life forever. The complexity of the story started from a high school rivalry between Dave and Michael that turned into a bitter revenge against the former. He fell in love with a guy, who turned out to be part of the big plan against him and broke his heart - big time. Another guy, who he thought he could trust, destroyed his dignity in the dark premises of a campus comfort room and was framed as the sinner - the unfaithful cock sucker. Then he met Ross, the guy who made him fall in love like he never did. He never felt more special. But then, a painful event took them apart. Ross gave him a stethoscope before he bid goodbye. Dave then, slowly and surely but not completely, moved on and became successful in his studies. He graduated with flying colors and became a doctor. Then an unexpected encounter presented shocking revelations to Dave that made everything clear to him. Why he was raped, why Ross left, why a hundred crumpled fliers containing libelous information flew towards Dave at the Barn bar 6 years ago, why Ross did something Dave never thought he could. He knew why - he knew that it was because of revenge, HIV-AIDS, and Ross’ incomparable love for Dave. Orosa-Nakpil Malate, is a story of love, hate and hope; of family, friendship and rivalry, sending great awareness about HIV-AIDS, how brutal and merciless but life-changing it is, and most especially, how to prevent yourself from being infected.
22549683	/m/05zjbp7	Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas	Maya Angelou		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Singin' and Swingin opens shortly after Angelou's previous autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Marguerite, or Maya, a single mother with a young son, is in her early twenties, struggling to make a living. Angelou writes in this book, like her previous works, about the full range of her own experiences. As scholar Dolly McPherson states, "When one encounters Maya Angelou in her story, one encounters the humor, the pain, the exuberance, the honesty, and the determination of a human being who has experienced life fully and retained her strong sense of self". Many people around Angelou influence her growth and—as critic Lyman B. Hagen states—"propel Angelou ever forward". Maya is offered a job as a salesgirl in a record shop on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. At first she greets her boss' offers of generosity and friendship with suspicion, but after two months of searching for evidence of racism, Maya begins to "relax and enjoy a world of music". The job allows her to move back into her mother's house and to spend more time with her son. While working in the store, Maya meets Tosh Angelos, a Greek sailor. They fall in love, and he is especially fond of her son. Against her mother's wishes, Maya marries Tosh in 1952. At first, the marriage is satisfying, and it seems that Maya has fulfilled her dream of being a housewife, writing "My life began to resemble a Good Housekeeping advertisement". Eventually, Maya begins to resent Tosh's demands that she stay at home; she is also bothered by her friends' negative reaction to her interracial marriage. Maya is disturbed by Tosh's atheism and his control of her life, but does little to challenge his authority. After Tosh tells her son Clyde that there is no God, Maya rebels by secretly attending Black churches. After three years the marriage disintegrates when Tosh announces to Maya that he is "tired of being married". She goes into the hospital for an appendectomy, and after the operation, she announces her desire to return to her grandmother in Stamps, but Tosh informs her that Annie died the day of Maya's operation. A single mother once again, Maya begins to find success as a performer. She gets a job dancing and singing at The Purple Onion, a popular nightclub in San Francisco, and—on the recommendation of the club's owners—she changes her name from Marguerite Johnson to the "more exotic" "Maya Angelou". She gains the attention of talent scouts, who offer her a role in Porgy and Bess; she turns down the part, however, because of her obligations to The Purple Onion. When her contract expires, Maya goes to New York City to audition for a part opposite Pearl Bailey, but she turns it down to join a European tour of Porgy and Bess. Leaving Clyde with her mother, Maya travels to 22 countries with the touring company in 1954 and 1955, expressing her impressions about her travels. She writes the following about Verona: "I was really in Italy. Not Maya Angelou, the person of pretensions and ambitions, but me, Marguerite Johnson, who had read about Verona and the sad lovers while growing up in a dusty Southern village poorer and more tragic than the historic town in which I now stood." Despite Maya's success with Porgy and Bess, she is racked with guilt and regret about leaving her son behind. After receiving bad news about Clyde's health, she quits the tour and returns to San Francisco. Both Clyde and Maya heal from the physical and emotional toll caused by their separation, and she promises never to leave him again. Clyde also announces that he wants to be called "Guy". As Angelou writes: "It took him only one month to train us. He became Guy and we could hardly remember ever calling him anything else". Maya is true to her promise; she accepts a job performing in Hawaii, and he goes with her. At the close of the book, mother and son express pride in each other. When he praises her singing, she writes: "Although I was not a great singer I was his mother, and he was my wonderful, dependently independent son".
22561858	/m/05zskx4	Inspector Ghote Plays a Joker	H. R. F. Keating			 Ghote is summoned by the Deputy Superintendent of Police and charged to protect a flamingo presented to Bombay Zoological Gardens by the American Consulate. The bird is one of four and the other three have already been shot. At the zoo the inspector interviews a senior zoo official who informs him that the Director of the zoo has ordered that the bird be left on display in order to trap the perpetrator. During the interview the bird is shot. Ghote believes the marksman is in a clock tower, which he searches. He does not find the marksman but does note the smell of fine tobacco. The next day Ghote arrives at the office to find Sergeant Desai has been allocated to his investigation of the shooting. This does not please Ghote, as Desai has a reputation for hilarious incompetence. Desai tells Ghote that a donkey was substituted for the favourite racehorse in the derby three months earlier and Ghote realises they are dealing with a rich and cruel practical joker. Ghote's investigation is interrupted by a phone call from Mister Ram Kundah, deputy to the Minister for Police Affairs and the Arts. Kundah wants to liaise with Ghote on the investigation. Ghote and Desai go to the records department to check for other incidents that resemble practical jokes. Here Ghote first hears of the guru who intends to attempt to walk on water and finds a complaint from Professor Rustom Engineer. Professor Rustom Engineer was a well-respected a scientist until he presented a new desalination machine to the media. A reporter discovered that, without the Professor's knowledge, someone had installed a small pump into the machine to remove the salt water and replace it with ordinary tap water. The next day Ghote goes to the racecourse to interview the owner of the racehorse that was replaced by a donkey, Mr Bedekar. Here Ghote meets Jack Cooper, an English alcoholic follower of horse racing, and "Bunny" Bender, who has inherited the title of Raja but appears to have only modest financial means. Bedekar is unenthusiastic about renewed police interest into the incident, but Bender seems more interested in helping. In order to educate Ghote in the subject of horse racing, Bender persuades Ghote to place a bet of 50 Rupees on a horse called "Cream of the Jest". Unexpectedly the horse finishes first, but a steward's inquiry seems to rob Ghote of his winnings. Only when Ghote finds Desai does he learn that the objection to "Cream of the Jest" was overturned and that he has indeed won enough money for a good air-conditioner. As Ghote collects his winnings he again encounters Bender, who offers to use his connections to obtain Ghote an interview with Professor Rustom Engineer. At the professor's house Sir Rustom talks of the prank that was played on him very reluctantly. He admits to taking his work very seriously and only revisits the memory when Ghote reminds him that there have been other victims. Rustom Engineer tells Ghote that he had two trusted assistants (no longer with him) who had worked for him for many years. Rustom often showed friends and visitors the workshop and the machine he was working on. He shows Ghote the machine he showed to the press, complete with the pump that was used to fool him. The next day Ghote is telephoned by Raja Bender, who wants Ghote to accompany him to see the yogi Lal Das attempt to walk on water. Ghote is alarmed to learn that tickets are being sold for up to 500 rupees and strongly suspects that another prank is about to be played. Raja Bender has also invited Rustom Engineer, Jack Cooper and Ram Kundar to witness the attempt. Lal Das begins his attempt to walk on water and immediately fails. Ghote becomes concerned when the yogi does not emerge from the tank and is forced to dive into the tank to rescue him. The yogi survives and Ghote resolves to interview Lal Das to learn who convinced him that he could walk on water. Ghote deduces that a heavy sheet of glass placed below the surface of the water must have been used to fool the yogi. A brief search locates the glass sheet at the back of the temple. The next day Ghote is in a meeting with Ram Kundar when Raja Bender calls him unexpectedly. Ghote accuses Bender of being the prankster and Bender invites him to see him in his summer home so they can talk about it. Ghote accepts and at the summer home a Sikh servant shows Ghote into to see Raja Bender. Bender is certain that no charges will be brought against him because of his privileged social position, because of the ridiculous nature of the charges themselves and because of the lack of material evidence. Bender persuades Ghote to play cards and bet the money he won at the horse race against an assurance the Raja will play no more practical jokes. At a loss for any better idea, Ghote agrees to the game and the wager. Raja Bender wins the game easily, possibly cheating, as well as a second round played for double or quits. Ghote is given until the next day to pay the debt then sent away by the Raja, who carelessly says that the rifle used to shoot the flamingos has been stolen. Ghote is forced to borrow to meet his gambling debt. That evening he plays with his son, Ved. While playing, Ghote decides to play a joke on Ved by hiding behind a bush. Ved is terrified by this prank and Ghote is instantly remorseful. Later Ghote calls the office and orders Desai to ask Rustom Engineer if the Raja had left the rifle at the professor's home. When Desai does not report back Ghote must visit the professor's home to search for the sergeant. The professor denies any knowledge of the sergeant's visit or the theft of the Raja's rifle. Later, Ghote receives a telephone call telling him that the Raja, "Bunny" Bender, has been shot dead at his summer home. Ghote is ordered to go and take charge of the investigation. At the scene he meets Inspector Gadgil, who has arrested the Sikh servant, Mr Singh. Ghote interviews the suspect but quickly clears him. Singh says no one wanted to kill Bender, which surprises Ghote, until Singh explains that "Bunny" Bender did not care enough about anyone to kill them and therefore everyone he knew felt the same about him. Ghote tells Singh of the Raja's practical jokes, which Singh has trouble believing. The next day Ghote visits and interviews Mr Bedekar. Bedekar confirms that at the time his horse was replaced by a donkey, costing him a winning place in the derby, he would have killed the person responsible. Bedekar claims he still does not know who was responsible for this. The interview ends when Sergeant Desai is caught attempting to obtain inside information for gambling on horse races. Afterwards Ghote goes to interview Lal Das, the yogi. Lal Das is quite mild mannered and unperturbed by his recent disgrace. He freely admits that he was made to look a fool, but is philosophical about it. He tells Ghote that he was persuaded to walk on the water in a specially made tank only to prove that he could not do it, yet found he was able to do so. He could not explain this and it puzzled him greatly. When he tried again in front of the crowd he failed. Yogi Lal Das thanks Ghote for saving him, though the yogi's spiritual beliefs mean that he considers his life to be of little importance. After interviewing the yogi, Ghote is summoned to an interview with Ram Kundah. At first Ghote suspects he is about to be rebuked but it emerges that Kundah only wants to learn the details of Ghote's investigation. Ghote again interviews Rustom Engineer. The interview proves difficult and Rustom admits being deeply affected by joke that was played on him, but claims to have spent the evening of the murder at home with his brother. After the interview with Rustom Engineer, Ghote receives a telephone call that informs him that Lal Das has been arrested by Inspector Gadgil. Lal Das was found occupying the garden shed of the late Raja "Bunny" Bender's summer home. Ghote is told by Lal Das that the street urchins tormented him until he was forced to leave the spot where he meditated. He knew the house was empty from Ghote's earlier interview and went there for peace and quiet. Inspector Gadgil is disappointed that Lal Das is not the murderer. Before Ghote can leave two constables bring Jack Cooper in for being drunk and disorderly. Cooper tries to wheedle Ghote into having him released and in the process mentions that Bedekar had "Bunny" Bender investigated by a private detective. Ghote revisits Bedekar who claims that before the Raja was shot he discovered one of his racehorses was of good enough quality to win the next derby, which means he has no motive for the murder. By a process of elimination Ghote realises that Professor Rustom Engineer is the only suspect left. He visits the professor's home again and interviews the professor's brother. The professor's brother denies the professor's alibi but also undermines the professor's motive. The professor's research had gone down a blind alley decades ago and he was too old to start again, so secretly the professor welcomed the excuse to abandon his work. Ghote returns to the police station and catches Sergeant Desai playing cards with a joker in the pack. This inspires Ghote and he goes to visit Ram Kundah. Ghote notes that Kundah devotes himself to his job twenty-four hours a day, every day with complete single-mindedness. Ghote characterises Kundah as "totally serious". Kundah accepts this because he sees nothing wrong with the description. Ghote explains that when he is looking for a murderer, he is looking for someone who was at least totally serious at the time of the crime. He observes that Kundah has several times stressed that he did not know that "Bunny" Bender was the prankster, even though Ghote was with Kundah during the telephone call in which Ghote first accused Bender of committing the pranks. Kundah attempts to flee but is overpowered by Ghote and Sergeant Desai. Back at the police station the Deputy Superintendent of Police, who has not yet heard the news of the arrest, tells Ghote that Kundah has contacted him with news of a vacancy for a security officer in the ministry. He intends to recommend Sergeant Desai for the role.
22563666	/m/05zrn4z	Vampirates:Black Heart	Justin Somper	2009	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 There's a new ship of vampirates roaming the seas, leaving a trail of fear and devastation in its wake, led by Sidorio. When a high-profile pirate is slain, the Pirate Federation takes decisive action and dedicates Cheng Li's ship to be the first of many ships to be vampirate assasians. Amongst the dynamic crew is young pirate prodigy Connor Tempest and two of his academy friends. Meanwhile, Connor's twin sister Grace enjoys a bittersweet reunion with their mother, Sally, who has some important and shocking news for her daughter. As Grace uncovers the truth about her family's past, she realizes that she and Connor face a daunting and uncertain future, because Grace and Connor are half vampires and half human. Alas, Sally dies, and Connor then "kills" Lady Lola Lockwood by beheading her with a special sword. Sidoro then tries to kill him but then Cheng Li tells him that Connor is his son. On hearing this shocking piece of news, he brings him on board his ship. He tracks down Grace and keeps her on his ship too and refuses to let the twins leave.
22563916	/m/07s49lp	Windsor Castle	William Harrison Ainsworth		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The focus of the novels is on the events surrounding Henry VIII's replacing Catherine of Aragon with Anne Boleyn as his wife. During Henry's pursuit of Boleyn, the novel describes other couples, including the Earl of Surrey and Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a match Henry does not support. However, some of the individuals oppose Henry and his desires for Boleyn, including Thomas Wyat who wants her for himself and Cardinal Wolsey, who uses his own daughter, Mabel Lyndwood, to lure Henry away from Boleyn. Eventually, Wolsey turns to outting Wyat's desires for Boleyn to the Court, which almost results in Wyat's execution but is stopped before that point. Wolsey is then kicked out of the court and is executed himself. Intertwined with the Court is the story of Herne the Hunter, a spirit of Windsor Forest. He is an evil force that seeks to take the souls of various individuals, and Henry tries to stop him, but is never able to do so. Eventually, Wyat and Lyndwood are captured by Herne. The two fall in love and try to escape, but Mabel drowns. As the main plot progresses, Catherine accepts her fate but also warns Boleyn that Henry will treat her in the same way. It is revealed that Boleyn was involved with Henry Norris, and Henry uses this as evidence to have Boleyn executed. The story ends with Boleyn being replaced by Jane Seymour. The illustrations for Windsor Castle dominate the text. They were started by Tony Johannot, a French illustrator. After producing four illustrations for the Ainsworth's Magazine, he was replaced by Cruikshank as the illustrator for the rest of the work. Cruikshank, during the beginning of the publication of Windsor Castle was busy producing illustrations for Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter. In terms of style, Cruikshank's illustrations are similar to those of Remebrandt. In addition to the two illustrators, W. Alfred Delamotte worked on the novel. Ainsworth told Delamotte exactly what he wanted for his work, and, in a letter written with these orders, said, "I shall be glad to see you to a family dinner at half-past three o'clock to-morrow-Sunday. Bring your sketch-books with you [...] Remind Mr. Costello, when you see him, to get the order from Lady Mary Fox for her apartments at Windsor. You had better go down to Hampton Court and sketch Will Sommers, and some of the other figures in the old pictures of Henry the Eight's time, carefully." Delamotte created 87 woodcut illustrations that focused on trees or architectural features. He also added three images that depicted a plan for Windsor Great Park, of 1529, and two for Windsor Castle, of 1530 and 1843.
22565417	/m/05h92cy	The Sunless Citadel			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 This 32-page book begins with a two-page introduction. According to the adventure background provided, the plot involves a fortress that became buried in the earth ages ago, and became known as the Sunless Citadel. In the citadel's core grows the terrible Gulthias Tree, shepherded by the twisted druid, Belak the Outcast. The Tree spawns magical life giving (and life stealing) fruit, as well as evil creatures known as twig blights. The adventure starts with player characters hearing rumors about the citadel while staying in the nearby small town of Oakhurst. The majority of the adventure then focuses on the characters exploring the citadel and encountering the malign creatures that have taken up residence within, such as kobolds and goblins. The characters eventually come upon the Twilight Grove and its blighted foliage, where they find the Gulthias Tree and encounter the druid Belak. He explains that the tree grew from a yet-green wooden stake that had been used to kill a vampire on that very spot, and the tree accepts humanoids bound to its bole as "supplicants", making the victims completely subservient to its will. A three-page appendix at the back of the book features statistics for all of the creatures encountered in the adventure, as well as three new magic items and the twig blights.
22565698	/m/05h91xw	Lord of the Iron Fortress			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 This 48-page book begins with a two-page introduction. According to the adventure background provided, the plot involves the Blade of Fiery Might once wielded by the sultan of the efreet, which was destroyed and scattered across the planes. Imperagon, a half-duergar/half-dragon and ruler of the Iron Fortress of Zandikar on the plane of Acheron, has been reforging the sword using the trapped spirits of the greatest forgemasters of history as slave labor. Imperagon intends to wield the ancient blade at the head of a great army to conquer and build a kingdom on the Material Plane, with allies among the drow, the illithids, and fellow natives of the evil Outer Planes. The adventure begins when the player characters investigate events involving local craftsmen, following the trail of clues to the city of Rigus, which leads into the plane of Acheron. Once there, the characters encounter formian settlers from Mechanus, whose hive can serve as a base of operations while preparing an assault on the Iron Fortress. If successful in defeating the golems and steel predators that guard the fortress, the characters may breach its walls and destroy Imperagon's works. The book contains four appendices. Appendix I contains the statistics for the non-player characters encountered throughout the adventure. Appendix II contains statistics for new monsters, including the axiomatic creatures template, the bladeling, and the steel predator. Appendix III contains statistics for two new spells and four new magic items (including the Blade of Fiery Might). Appendix IV contains statistics for four pregenerated player characters, recommended for use in case the players require extra player characters.
22567283	/m/05zhtdv	Give Me Back My Legions!	Harry Turtledove		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Publius Quinctilius Varus, formerly the governor of Syria, is appointed to the governorship of Germany, a hold-out full of what the Romans thought of as barbarians. During a brief assignment to the Legions in Dalmatia, Varus befriends the Germani auxiliary commander Arminius, unaware that the latter has plans of his own for the Romans occupying Germany.
22567547	/m/07s6r9s	Jack Sheppard				 The story is divided into three parts, called "epochs". The "Jonathan Wild" epoch comes first. The events of the story begins with the notorious criminal and thief-catcher Jonathan Wild encouraging Jack Sheppard's father to a life of crime. Wild, who once pursues Sheppard's mother, eventually turns Sheppard's father into the authorities and he is soon after executed. Sheppard's mother is left to raise Sheppard, a mere infant at the time, alone. Paralleling these events is the story of Thames Darrell. On 26 November 1703, the date of the first section, Darrell is removed separated from his immoral uncle, Sir Rowland Trenchard, and is given to Mr. Wood to be raised. The third epoch takes place in 1724 and spans six months. Sheppard is a thief that spends his time robbing various people. While he and Blueskin rob the Wood's household, Blueskin murders Mrs. Woods. This upsets Sheppard and results in his separation from Wild's group. Sheppard befriends Thames again and spends his time trying to correct Blueskin's wrong. * Jack Sheppard * Jonathan Wild * Thames Darrell * Mr. Wood * Mrs. Wood * Winifred Wood * Blueskin – Joseph Blake * Thomas Sheppard
22567549	/m/07s6xq2	Guy Fawkes				 The story of Guy Fawkes starts in summer 1605, when a plot to blow up Parliament was underway. The first book of the story begins with the execution of Catholic priests in Manchester. During the execution, Elizabeth Orton madly raves before being chased by an officer overseeing the execution. In order to avoid capture, she leaps into the River Irwell. She is pulled up by Humphrey Chetham, a Protestant member of the nobility, and Guy Fawkes, a Catholic. After she is brought out of the water, she predicts that both men will be executed before she dies. The novel transitions to Lancashire and the Radcliffe family. William Radcliffe is a supporter of the plot, and his daughter, Viviana Radcliffe, is revealed to love both Chetham and Fawkes. Fawkes travels to John Dee, an alchemist, who is able to call forth the ghost of Orton. The ghost warns Fawkes again. This is not the only time Fawkes is warned, as he receives a vision from God that the plot will end in disaster. During this time, the Radcliffe family is exposed as hiding two priests, which provokes the destruction of the home by the British Army. Having lost their home, the conspirators in the plot travel to London. In the second book, Fawkes and Viviana Radcliffe marry, and she tries to convince her new husband not to continue with the plot. Fawkes argues that he is bound to follow through with events. The book ends when the conspiracy to blow up Parliament fails on 5&nbsp;November 1605 and Fawkes is arrested. The third book deals with the trial of Fawkes and the other plotters. They are all held in the Tower of London, and Viviana, who is by then dying, convinces Fawkes to repent. Eventually, he does so as she dies, following which he is executed. The book ends with the execution of the last of the plotters, Father Garnet.
22567550	/m/07s8x8q	The Tower of London	William Harrison Ainsworth	1840		 The plot begins with Lady Jane Grey, wife of Guilford Dudley and daughter-in-law to the Duke of Northumberland, as she enters the Tower of London on 10&nbsp;July 1553. Prior to her entrance into the Tower, she ruled as Queen of England for nine days after she and her husband were put on the throne by the Duke of Northumberland. Soon after, Mary I was able to take control of England and sent the Duke to be executed. Dudley, in order to gain back the kingdom, formed a rebellion, which results in failure and the imprisonment of both himself and his wife. After the imprisonment, Simon Renard, the Spanish Ambassador to England, arranges a marriage between Mary and Philip of Spain in order to bring a Catholic take over of England. The events of the book alternate between historical background and the plot of Lady Jane. In Book II, incidents throughout the history of England from William the Conqueror to the 1820 Cato Street conspiracy are mentioned. The novel returns to Lady Jane busying herself with prayer as she awaits her execution with her only hope for freedom is to become a Catholic. * Lady Jane Grey * Guilford Dudley * John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland * Mary I * Philip of Spain * Xit (Sir Narcissus Le Grand) * Og, Gog and Magog * Winwike * Cuthbert Cholmondeley * Mistress Cicely * Nightgall * Elizabeth The novel is illustrated with 40 engravings and 58 woodcuts by Cruikshank. The illustrations depict moments from the story while the woodcuts show off architectural features related to the Tower. Ainsworth was grateful for the illustrations to the novel, and he wrote in the preface that "it was no slight satisfaction to him, that circumstances at length enabled him to carry into effect his favourite project, in conjunction with the inimitable artist whose designs accompany the work."
22567553	/m/07s9580	St. James's				 Of all of Ainsworth's novels, the plot of St. James's is almost non-existent. The story takes place during the end of Queen Anne's reign. She was friends with the Duchess of Marlborough, and two Tories, Robert Harley and Henry St John, want to separate the Duchess and the queen. After plotting, they are finally able to separate the two, which allows them to remove the Duke of Marlborough from the queen's favour. Without the Duke around, Harley is made Earl of Oxford and St. John made Viscount of Bolingbroke. When Queen Anne dies, Harley and St. John turn against each other and soon lose their status at court. * Queen Anne * John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough * Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough * Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer * Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke The Ainsworth's Magazine edition of St. James's included 14 illustrations by Cruikshank. However, only 7 appeared in the three volume book edition of the work. Two of the illustrations not carried over in the book edition were of Cruikshank's best depictions: one titled "The Double Duel" and another titled "Sergeant Scales's Drum". A rift developed between Cruikshank and Ainsworth, and St. James's was the last work of Ainsworth that Cruikshank illustrated. It is possible that the rift came as Ainsworth was giving up his ownership of the Ainsworth's Magazine, but the cause is unknown. It is also possible that the dropping of illustrations from the three volume edition was either a cause or an effect of the rift.
22568839	/m/05zzydd	Haunted	Meg Cabot	2004-12-28	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In this book we return to Susannah (Suze) Simon's life. Suze is going back to high school and on the first day, she meets Paul Slater from book 4, The Darkest Hour, whom she met during the summer. At home, Suze meets Neil Jankow, a friend of Jake's, and also meets Neil's brother's ghost, Craig Jankow. Suze learns that Craig died from a catamaran accident and that Craig strongly believes that Neil should have been the one who dies. Afterwards, Paul tells Suze to come to his house by telling her about that they were more than just a mediator. At his house, Suze learns that they are "shifters" but soon afterwards, Paul abruptly kisses her. Suze runs away mad and finds Neil. Neil drives her home but during the trip, Craig takes over the wheel nearly killing Neil and Suze. Back at school, Suze learns from Father Dominic that Jesse, Suze's crush, will be leaving her and will be going to the rectory. After Suze learns this, she becomes extremely mad at Jesse and believes that he never loved her. Later during the week, Suze's stepbrother, Brad, hosts a hot-tub party at the house. During the party, Jesse learns that Paul had kissed Suze and tries to kill him. In order to end the fight, Suze drags Paul and unknowingly takes Craig to the spirit world. At the spirit world, Craig opens a door and disappears going to his "future." After Craig leaves, Paul tries to make a deal to Suze stating that he tell her about being more than a mediator and not hurting Jesse if Suze agrees to spend time with him. Suze agrees to what Paul makes, so she can protect Jesse. After they revisit the party, Paul goes to the hospital after being beat up by Jesse. At the feast of Father Serra, Dr. Slaski, the grandfather of Paul, visits Suze and tells her not to listen to what Paul tells her. After hearing this, Suze runs to the mission's cemetery and there, she meets Jesse once again. Soon afterwards, she learns that Jesse truly is in love with her and always has been. The story ends with Suze overjoyed with happiness and kissing Jesse.
22576268	/m/05zk1hh	Love, etc	Julian Barnes	2000		 Love, etc was written some ten years after Talking it Over and is set ten years later. In the intervening period Stuart, the protagonist, has emigrated to America, remarried, opened a restaurant, got divorced and returned to England where he has set up a successful organic food business. Meanwhile Oliver and Gillian and their two daughters live in a small flat in north-east London, Oliver still seeks success as a writer supported by Gillian's picture restoration. Stuart appears to have forgiven Oliver for stealing his wife and offers him a job as a driver...
22579412	/m/0dtc6_	Spellfire	Ed Greenwood	1989-05-25	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book follows the journey of an orphaned girl named Shandril who later leaves her home and embarks on a journey, thus discovering love, and of course Spellfire.
22583904	/m/03nv30j	Bloodhound	Tamora Pierce	2009-04-14	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Beka's story continues when she gets sloppy with her reports to Ahuda, and she decides to practice again by starting a new journal. Now a first year Dog, Beka works the Evening Watch with her loathsome partner, Silsbee. His attitude of letting Day Watch catch the criminals they see annoys Beka to no end. Silsbee eventually dumps her as a partner, and she is partnered with Clara Goodwin and Matthias Tunstall, her former trainers. Beka learns of the existence of coles, or counterfeit coins, from her friend Tansy. As she and her partners investigate, they get word of a thin harvest, which bodes ill for the poor of the Lower City. Beka and Pounce--a speaking constellation in the form of a cat--find Achoo, a bloodhound, being hurt by her handler. When Beka steps in to stop the abuse, she takes Achoo as her scent-hound. Meanwhile, due to the thin harvest, bread prices go up and a riot starts in the city. Beka, Goodwin and Tunstall get caught up in the fight, and Tunstall gets both of his legs broken. After the riot, Lord Gershom, the Lord Provost, sends Beka, Goodwin and Achoo to Port Caynn to further investigate the coles while Tunstall recovers. Pounce, for once, cannot go with her as he is actually a constellation and he must deal with some troublesome stars. They depart and on board the ship are reacquainted with Dale Rowan, a banker who helped them during the Bread Riot. Together Goodwin and Beka make friends and try to pry information, pretending to be corrupt, or "loose." Beka's romance with Dale blossoms, and Goodwin too flirts playfully, though she never forgets her husband Tomlan back home. When Goodwin returns to Corus to deliver reports to Lord Gershom, Beka comes across several pieces of evidence that point to Pearl Skinner, the Port Caynn Rogue, as the colemonger. She goes to Sir Lionel of Trebond, the Deputy Provost, but Sir Lionel's fear of Pearl (who had previously murdered his children) prevents him from acting. Beka loses her temper with him, and Sir Lionel orders her sent to Rattery Prison. With the help of one of the loyal Dogs, Beka is able to escape and goes to Pearl for shelter. Through use of a gift, flattery and an amusing tale degrading Sir Lionel, Beka is able to convince Pearl to let her stay for now. However, one of Lionel's men goes to Pearl and tells her that Beka has evidence that Pearl is the one behind the coles, and Beka is forced to flee once more. This time, Beka goes to Nestor Haryse, Lord Gershom's younger cousin, and his transgender lover, Okha Soyan (Amber Orchid). With Nestor's help, Gershom is able to bring in a large squad of Dogs to arrest Pearl and her conspirators. Pearl and her bodyguards escape, but Beka follows them down into the city's sewers, where, with Achoo and Goodwin's help, she manages to arrest Pearl. They suffer numerous wounds, and when Beka wakes, she must face the sad reality that she and Dale must part; they live too far apart, and their jobs leave no time for each other. When they return to Corus, Goodwin tells Beka that the Evening Watch Sergeant, Ahuda, was offered a position in Corus's Flash District, and that Goodwin was going to take Ahuda's place, leaving Beka with Tunstall as a partner. She says that she is tired of being a street dog, and that desk sergeant will be the perfect position for her. The novel ends at Beka and Goodwin's welcome home party, as Beka and Tunstall agree to stay partners. She gains a new nickname, Bloodhound, from the public and her friends.
22587954	/m/05zwtbn	Koolaids: The Art of War	Rabih Alameddine	1998-04-15	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel deals with issues such as the AIDS epidemic, sex, the Lebanese civil war, death, and the meaning of life. It is a postmodern novel told from the point of view of numerous narrators. Koolaids breaks from the traditional novel style in that the whole book is a non-linear narrative. Koolaids is written in a creative style, with short paragraphs and sentences that have deep meanings. In fact, the whole novel is a series of short sections, or vignettes. Each vignette is part of a stream of consciousness from one of the multiple narrators. The different types of vignettes include diary entries, e-mails, newspaper articles, holy texts/prayers, and dialogues to name a few. Also, there is a multitude of characters who make quick appearances in different spots throughout the novel. The randomness and fragments of thought add to the overall theme of chaos, and the meaninglessness of everything in life. The main sub-themes of the novel are death, AIDS, war, art, and violence. The novel also offers narratives on the inadequate representation of the realities of AIDS and the Lebanon civil war in the mass media. Alameddine achieves this by citing fictional examples told from the first person point of view on the exploitation of the sick and the disregard for human life in war. These examples help reflect the insufficiency of monolithic narratives of AIDS and war. Often, people's harrowing personal experiences are not accounted for in the news or in history books. Alameddine's central purpose for this novel is to portray the meaninglessness of life and to show that the only thing that is certain in life is death.
22589078	/m/05zld20	Black Bird				 Grandfather Desouche, a pessimistic old French Montrealer, makes a living by digging bodies out of their graves and selling the embalmed corpses to a doctor who uses them for medical experiments. When the winter comes, the frozen ground forces Grandfather and Uncle to retire for the season. Grandfather, after his wife's death, has taken to hating his neighbors and indulging in food and drink. Grandfather decides to marry Aline Souris, a spinster who cares for her widower father. She becomes the woman of the house, caring for the house and for Grandfather. Aline realizes that Grandfather tricked her into marrying him in order to have someone to take care of him. Granddaughter Marie Desouche, a leading member of the Front de libération du Québec, is abhorred by her family's Anglo-ism. Her boyfriend Hubert is the leader of their cell. Her brother Jean-Baptiste, a quiet romantic poet, opposes his sister's burning idealism, and spends most of his time reading and writing. One night, after planting a bomb next to a crowded restaurant, Marie comes home to find a police car outside her house and is immediately alarmed. She forces her brother to be her alibi, insinuating that they were having sex. It turns out the police were there to inform their Mother of the death of her father, Angus, who was killed by Marie's bomb. Mother is destroyed by this news, and enters a coma-like state. Marie leaves to live with Hubert. Recognizing her marriage to Grandfather as a sham, Aline moves into Marie's vacated room. She becomes attached to his pet crow, which she names "Grace". Grandfather gradually comes to hate the crow as his wife gains affection for it. Eventually Grace attacks Grandfather and scratchs out one of his eyes. Dr. Hyde becomes depressed at his mother's condition. Her friends, Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Pangloss, come every week to visit hoping she will recover. She, however, cannot hear a word they are saying when they try to speak to her. Grandfather becomes increasingly frustrated with his new handicap, a missing eye, but realizes that it is an excuse to be bed-ridden and have Aline wait on him hand and foot. At Christmas, the Desouches gather, and Marie gives Jean-Baptiste a blank book, a statement of her dislike of empty words but instead he choses to write a play. Meanhwile, Hubert has a drunken disagreement with his own father and wanders off very drunk. He gets hit by a car while shouting separatist manifestos into the night air. Ironically, he gets hit by a personal hero of his and is killed in the accident. The local police do not want the premier's reputation, so take the corpse to Grandfather to be disposed of. Grandfather charges a high price for the body. Marie becomes the head of her FLQ division. Meanwhile, Jean-Baptiste becomes a political paraiah over the summer, thanks to the play he wrote about his family, creating a sensation. He is arrested by the police when Marie sneaks felquiste pamphlets into his possessions. Hoping to free her brother, Marie kidnaps a British government official and holds him hostage. Meanwhile, Dr. Hyde experiments on Hubert's corpse, trying to revive him. He offers Grandfather and Uncle a pretty sum if they extract the bleeding heart of Frere Andre from the Cathedral so he can insert the heart into Hubert's corpse, and thus find out where the human soul dwells. On Hallowe'en, he revives Hubert, Marie strangles the British diplomat, and Jean-Baptiste is finally let out of jail. Hubert comes back to the Desouche house, looking like a Zombie made of different body parts from different corpses. When he sees Mother sleeping it becomes apparent that it is not Hubert at all but Angus dwelling in the mangled body. Mother is revived upon seeing him, and a gas leak explosion destroys the house. Aline flies out the window with Grace. After the explosion, Jean-Baptiste sees his family from a distance, Grandfather and Marie, Mother and Father, Uncle and the ruined house. He realizes that he has lost all of his writing, but understands that he can now start again. And so the book ends as it begins "Montreal, an island..."
22589752	/m/05zz49k	The Boys on the Rock	John Fox			 Set in the Bronx against the historical backdrop of United States Senator Eugene McCarthy's unsuccessful bid to become the Democratic presidential candidate for the 1968 elections, the novel focuses on Connors's "rocky relationship that fared no better than McCarthy's campaign", in the words of critic Wayne Hoffman (author of the novel Hard), who described it in The Washington Post as a "classic".
22597068	/m/05z_90t	Incidents	Roland Barthes	1987		 In the first essay, La Lumiere du Sud-Ouest, first published in L'Humanité in 1977,, Roland Barthes reflects on the South West of France, the Adour and Bayonne. The second essay, Incidents, written in 1969, details Barthes's holiday in Morocco, where he pays men for sex. In Au Palace Ce Soir, the third essay, first published in issue 10 of Vogue-Hommes in May 1978, Barthes describes Le Palace, a fashionable theatre-house in Paris. The fourth essay, Soirées de Paris, is a diary from August to September 1979, where Roland Barthes admits to using male escorts as all his relationships have been disappointing to him.
22598897	/m/05zmm4v	The Fourth World				 Santee St. John is a reporter for NewsReal, a shock site for which he records video via a virtual “interface” allowing viewers to actually experience his recordings on the World Wide Web. He is sent to record a massacre of indigenous people being attacked at Chiapas, Mexico without warning by landowners working for capitalist corporations. However, due to a business deal with Mexico’s government, NewsReal decides not to show the story, prompting Santee to take a sabbatical. While on sabbatical, he meets Margaret Mayfield, a rebel Zapatista with whom he is swayed to travel with and, eventually, fall in love with and decide to fight against the capitalist elite. St. John and Mayfield decide to join a group called Intrepid Explorers, working for the corporations, in order to find a strong group of Zapatistas to join. They are met by an individual claiming to be Subcomandante Marcos, the first revolutionary to use cyberspace, who helped Santee and Margaret establish a plan: to give the rebel victims of the capitalists’ massacres interfaces, which will allow the entire world to experience their sufferings via the World Wide Web by actually taking on all sense perceptions of that person through a completely realistic virtual reality simulator. Margaret Mayfield went on her part of the mission with Webster Webfoot, who used to be one of the most highly rated internet stars but became a “webkicker” and now tries to avoid using an interface whenever possible. However, once there, she is told that Santee is dead and that the funeral will be held the very next day; she and Webster travel to Chiapas, where the funeral is to be held, and discover that Santee is not actually dead, but that someone has faked his demise. Margaret abandons Webster, leaving him some cash for travel, and travels with a hotel owner named Zack Hayman who seems to have an inside connection with the conspirators. In Chiapas, Margaret discovers that Santee left her a personalized interface, which cannot be activated until Santee is actually present. At the same time, Webster’s girlfriend on the internet, Starchilde or “Starr” for short, discovers through her work on a space station that there exists oil on Mars, which means that biological extraterrestrial life must have existed on the planet at some point, as well as that Mexican rebels are being shipped to Mars in order to harvest the oil. Back on Earth, Zack, the hotel manager whom Margaret is with, discovered that the rebels are being sent to Mars in part so that the rich landowners can take their land without resistance. Santee and Margaret believed that they were setting up the victims with interfaces so that they would be able to show their sufferings to others outside of Mexico, but in fact the interfaces were going to make them think that they were receiving messages from Santee, while they were actually going to be tricked to going to Mars as slave labor. On the ship near Mars, Starr discovers that the slaves are to be sent to Mars in order to live there for a time and scout out any biological hazards or chemical hazards. Starr meets an intelligent AI, called Alice Irene, who serves as a literal deus ex machine. Starr convinces Alice Irene to join the cause of the rebels by having her examine the entire Internet and come to her own conclusions about the corruption of the current capitalist regime. Starr was given control of the ship, and the Zapatistas took control with the assistance of Alice Irene. The revolutionaries were given the option to stay on Earth or go to Mars, but as a form of utopian paradise rather than as slave labor. Santee St. John and Margaret Mayfield chose to stay on earth, while the remaining main characters chose life on Mars.
22598929	/m/05zlv5q	God Drug		2004	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 God Drug is the story of one large acid trip that literally alters the reality and changes the lives of several college students and drug users. The basic plot of the novel centers on the effects of the use of a form of LSD that the military tested out on some its marines during Vietnam as a means of making its soldiers better in combat. The intent of the drug was to enable the soldiers to be able to communicate telepathically and thus be able to work together more effectively during battles. Unfortunately, the experiment did not go according to plan, and the LSD caused more warfare in an alternate reality than it was able to solve in actual reality. This powerful drug left only one survivor, Jovah. Jovah is never seen in the book, only referred to by the other characters. Jovah’s reality was drastically altered by the use of the LSD and caused all of his thoughts to become realities. These realities were constant nightmares and wars within the users’ minds that actually became real. Anything that he believed to happen in his mind would actually take place. Therefore, Jovah had to be locked away in a sensory deprived room, secluded, and deemed insane and not allowed nor able to exist in normal society. The remnant personalities of Jovah’s realities and those of the other soldiers that he was telepathically linked to have now been set free and are roaming around in the real world. Jovah wishes to be God-like by consuming all of the realities and personalities that make him up so that he can be completely whole. He attempts to do this by means of the LSD trips. These characters consist of the war veteran known as the General and the beauty Hanna. These people are not actually real but become real when one has experienced the use of this form of LSD. The story takes place in Gainesville, FL at the University of Florida where a drug dealer named Galactic Bill sells some of the LSD to college students, Tom and Sparrow who live in what can be seen as a contemporary counter culture of hippies. Tom, Sparrow, and some of their friends find their lives intermingled with Hanna and the General as they become linked with their minds and thoughts by the use of the LSD. The central struggle of the novel takes place as Hanna, Tom, and Sparrow try to fight off the General as he strives to consume all of Jovah’s personalities in order to make Jovah whole once again. However, the General and the rest of the crew also fight a common enemy known as the heli-dragon, which is in true reality a helicopter that is transformed to a dragon in the reality of the LSD. As the story takes place, the induced realities of the LSD actually become true realities in the lives of Tom, Sparrow, and Hanna. The group of friends begins encountering increasingly more strange phenomena as the novel progresses, including flying. The group perceives these occurrences to be results of the LSD, but are they really only just that? The epic war between the General, the students, and the heli-dragon ends when Hanna, Tom, and Sparrow are able to erase the war reality and transform the old into a new reality. They are now able to start their lives over and create their world as they would like it to. The novel contains very graphic war and sex scenes, and it is also accompanied by intense artwork and drawings done by Andy Lee which adds to the overall effect of the acid trip.
22600582	/m/05qcj5z	The Modular Man	Roger MacBride Allen	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07g8l": "Transhumanism"}	 The novel concerns the issue of personhood and what it takes to be considered a member of the moral universe. There are three main characters: Herbert the vacuum cleaner, who is modified by his owner, David Jantille, a scientist who specializes in figuring out how to "mindload". Mindloading is the act of a human downloading their mind into a machine. A successful mindload entailss the death of the human. It is a way for humans to become immortal, if only in the form of vacuum cleaner. The book begins with the arrest of Herbert, the vacuum cleaner, for David's murder . David's wife, Suzanne Jantille, is a trial attorney who is a quadriplegic as a result of a car crash that also paralyzed her husband. She lives through a "Remote person" who has all human senses except for the ability to feel by touch. She can guide the remote person through a helmet attached to her "bio body", and retrieves all "video and audio" signals through the remote. She can function as a whole human being, but the outside world notices that she is a remote, does not approve. Suzanne defends Herbie, with the help of an astute journalist and a police officer who has access to documents that she wouldn't otherwise. The book ends with a recognition of David’s humanity due to the ultimate confusion in the courtroom. It also ends with the death of Suzanne’s bio-body, and in turn, her ultimate death.
22604227	/m/05zr5yl	Bad Faith		2008	{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The book begins with the death of Cass’s grandmother, whom she calls Bunty. Seemingly simple, the story starts to show the attitudes of the people around her, and is an introduction to the characters themselves. At the beginning of chapter one, the family is back in their home, going about their normal routine, when Cass mentions to her brother that Bishop Todd, Bishop of the One Church, is missing. Griffin, or Griff, being a seventeen year old cynic, shrugs it off, ignoring his little sister and continuing to play black market video games. Later, when they go to deal with their family, Griff creates a spark. The family argues and the father admits to more than he wants known publicly, leading to everyone going about their own ways. Cassandra decides to meet up with her boyfriend, Ming, despite the fact that she has homework due, but first overhears a revealing conversation between her parents. Things start to fall into place in her mind at that point. She hurries off to meet her boyfriend, and they discover a body. Neither wishes to be involved, so they do not report it. They hide the body in a cave, where they hope it will not be found. Ming makes a reference to Orpheus and Eurydice, begging her not to look back, but she does. The story continues with Cassandra's father leading a church service, also making a reference to Orpheus and Eurydice. Cass asks for an explanation. She and her family then end up back at their home, with Ming appearing shortly. After seeing a press conference with Ma Baxter, they are all disgusted, but manage to go eat. The children end up parting ways after a run-in with an unpleasant acquaintance. Cassandra is mad at Ming because he has been using her as a pawn, as she describes it, in his little twisted games with Jeremiah. Cass ends up in the vestry searching around for things, where her brother finds her not long after she arrived. They then find their Aunt Abby, who has it in for Cass and is determined to give her a lesson in love.
22604797	/m/05zv96f	Marooned on Mars	Lester del Rey		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Chuck Svenson, a seventeen year old living on the Moon, is chosen to be one of six crewmembers of the first spaceship to travel to Mars. His juvenile status keeps him from being allowed to take the position, once his age is discovered. He boards as a stowaway, and is accepted by the other crew upon discovery. The Mars landing is a disaster, damaging the ship. While attempting to repair the ship, the crew encounter aliens, who abduct Chuck without harming him. The crew learns that the aliens are friendly, and want the crew to be able to return to the Moon.
22606722	/m/05p5q0j	Yellow Tapers for Paris	Bruce Marshall	1943	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The crushing 1940 defeat of France (an event the author lived through) is the subject of this novel. Marshall implies that France lost its soul and was itself more responsible for its defeat than Germany. We meet Bigou, the protagonist, in 1934. He is an honest, hard-working, but irreligious and immoral accountant, employed by a successful industrial firm in Paris. He is mildly troubled that his firm expends considerable effort conniving to avoid paying its legitimate taxes. Conversations with accountants and employees of other companies lead Bigou to realize that most of the business enterprises of the time in France are behaving similarly, The novel gives us a picture of Bigou’s life. The reader is introduced to his family, sulky, plucky daughter Odette and sickly wife Marie, friends, his coworkers and other people he meets in his business life. The author endeavors to show that money and pleasure were the main goals sought with any sincerity. Even religion, when it did exist, wasn’t much more than an outward display. Bigou does come to believe that the local priest is one of the few people he knows who exhibits integrity. The “petit bourgeois” in the novel are shabby and bewildered as they assist helplessly at their nation’s funeral, but they stand in brilliant contrast to the insatiable greed and craftiness of the wealthy. Marshall clearly believes that France lost its virtue, especially among its elites. He even implies that the leaders of the Church were more interested in status and materialism than spirituality. The novel indicates that the common people, deprived of the just rewards of their labor, and without worthy spiritual direction, became trapped in immorality, and were spiritually and physically impoverished.
22606861	/m/05zr280	Sea Dragon Heir	Storm Constantine	2001-02-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It starts of with Pharinet describing her life as a young girl, playing in the gardens with her best friends Ellony and Khaster, and thinking about her brother's future. Valraven and Pharinet engage in twincest leaving Pharinet pregnant with her brother's child. Valraven attends a military academy where he meets a brash and sexually extrovert young man. Pharinet visits a soothsayer who predicts the miscarriage of her child. The prediction is realised a few days after she leaves. Valraven returns with his lover who takes an interest in Pharinet culminating in them having sex. He empties his seed into her saying the immortal lines: "Now I have been in both of you." Ellony is possessed by the Sea Dragon's singing, so allured by the melody that she runs into the sea and drowns.
22613589	/m/05zjjdt	The Howling III: Echoes	Gary Brandner		{"/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 A year after the Californian mountain village of Drago was destroyed by fire, sinister murders begin to occur in the neighboring town of Pinyon. A teenage boy named Malcolm is found living in the woods, and is one of the survivors of the Drago fire. Also surviving the fire is Derak, the former leader of the Drago community and a werewolf, responsible for the recent deaths. Derak wants to bring Malcolm back to his people, the other survivors of Drago, so that he can learn about his true heritage; Malcolm is also a werewolf. Malcolm is hospitalized and placed under the care of resident psychiatric specialist Dr Holly Lang, who becomes Malcolm's friend. However, an ambitious and unscrupulous doctor, Wayne Pastory, abducts Malcolm so that he can experiment on him and learn more about werewolves. At a secret clinic, Malcolm is tortured as Pastory conducts cruel experiments on him, but as he is so young, Malcolm is only partially able to transform into a werewolf. Holly discovers the whereabouts of the clinic and tries to rescue Malcolm but she is attacked by Pastory's henchman. Just as he is about to rape her, Derak - in werewolf form - bursts in and kills the henchman. Malcolm is freed by Holly, who is subsequently rescued herself by the Pinyon sheriff, Gavin Ramsay. However, Malcolm runs away before they (or Derak) can take him back to Pinyon. Over the course of the next year, Malcolm lives as a drifter, wandering throughout California. He eventually meets a man named Bateman Styles who works for a travelling carnival. Seeing that Malcolm has certain abilities (he continues to partially transform into a werewolf), Styles offers him a job working in the carnival freak show as "Grolo - The Animal Boy". Malcolm, without money or a place to live, accepts and the show becomes a minor success. However, publicity leads to Malcolm's picture being published in the press, which is seen by Holly and she travels to see him. She offers Malcolm the choice of returning to Pinyon with her, which Malcolm accepts. However, the publicity has also attracted the attention of Dr Wayne Pastory, who has been dismissed from the Pinyon Hospital over his dubious activities, but is still keen to resume his experiments. He travels to the carnival and tries to make a deal with Styles, who refuses. Pastory tries to strangle Styles, who then has a heart attack and dies. Malcolm, who is hiding nearby, transforms partially into a werewolf and kills Pastory. However, he is surprised to find that Derak has also tracked him down and still wants him to join their people. In order to persuade him, Derak has kidnapped Holly. This prompts Sheriff Ramsay from Pinyon to travel to the carnival to find her. He learns from a female Drago survivor named Lupe that Derak is holding Holly hostage in the mountains until Malcolm joins them. Ramsay makes Lupe take him to where they are hiding, though she begins to transform into a werewolf on the way and Ramsay shoots her with a silver bullet. In the mountain lair, Malcolm arrives and fights with Derak (who reveals himself to be Malcolm's father) for Holly. The two change into werewolves, but end up killing each other just as Ramsay arrives and rescues Holly and the other members of Derak's group from Drago head off into the forest, now without their leader.
22618743	/m/05zv26_	The Troubled Man	Henning Mankell	2009-08-18	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A highly-decorated Swedish naval officer, Håkan von Enke, disappears during his daily walk. For Kurt Wallander this becomes a very personal case as Von Enke is Linda Wallander's father-in-law. The clues lead back in time to the Cold War and hired killers from Eastern Europe. Inspector Wallander suspects he has traced a big secret. This could be the worst spy scandal in Swedish history. At the same time, evidence suggests that Wallander is losing his memory.
22619486	/m/05zqdlr	Thomas the Rhymer	Ellen Kushner	1990-01-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Thomas, a harper from court, befriends a humble farmer and his wife. As he begins a relationship with Elspeth, their neighbor, he is whisked to Elfland, ensnared by the Fairy Queen. After seven years he returns to Gavin and Elspeth with a parting gift from the Queen: He can only speak the truth.
22628310	/m/05zwxtk	The Last Dickens	Matthew Pearl	2009	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in the US, England, and India in 1867 and 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James R. Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await Dickens’s unfinished last novel – The Mystery of Edwin Drood. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer. Danger and intrigue abound on the journey, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s older sister, to help clear her brother’s name and achieve their singular mission. As they attempt to uncover Dickens’s final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of the inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens’s lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind. The novel also includes interspersed sections about Charles Dickens's 1867 reading tour of the United States and Francis Dickens's role as a mounted policeman in Bengal, India. Critics Say: "Rollicking entertainment." —Washington Post "Well-executed and tightly controlled." —Los Angeles Times "A plot packed full of incident, coincidences, devious twists and dramatic set pieces ensures excitement." —Daily Mail (London)
22629455	/m/05zlb2g	The Lost Fleet: Relentless	John G. Hemry	2009	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The plot of Relentless picks up in Dilawa. Jack Geary, commander of the fleet, after much deliberation, mostly due to struggling with potential losses regardless of his decision, sets the fleet on a course to Heradao, a system that is holding many Alliance POW's. After a fleet engagement and a lengthy land battle, during which the Syndicate system planets all rebel and plunge into a civil war, Geary manages to free many of the prisoners, despite suicidal attack attempts, including nuclear strikes against the camp. After recovering the prisoners and available supplies, Geary sets course for Padronis, only after learning of a massive "reserve flotilla" fleet of Syndicate ships that the Syndicate had held in reserve to fight off the still unseen alien race. Shortly after arriving at Padronis, another sabotage attempt is made, this time claiming heavy cruiser Lorica and nearly battle cruiser Dauntless herself. After receiving vital information from Commander Gaes, Geary unmasks the traitor during a fleet conference, as well as the identity of a second participant, and despite attempts by Captain Kila to silence her collaborators, Geary manages to capture several of the main saboteurs, though the leading dissenter, Captain Kila, herself manages to commit suicide rather than face a trial of her peers. Arriving at the Atalia star system, Geary comes across the aftermath of a fleet action between the reserve flotilla and a fleet of Alliance warships. Continuing to be true to his word, Geary accepts the pseudo-defection of a Syndicate commander, who informs him that the hypernet gate at Kalixa, the system where her ship had initially been stationed, spontaneously exploded, utterly destroying all human life in the system, though the Syndicate officer believes the Alliance to be responsible for purposefully using the gate as a weapon of mass destruction. Finally jumping to Varandal, Geary leads a successful attack against the Syndicate fleet, managing to prevent them from making a retaliatory strike using the Alliance hypernet gate. This is the moment he unites with his grandniece Jane Geary, captain of Dreadnaught. Dreadnaught plays an important part in holding of the Syndic attack on the hypernet gate. After the Syndicate fleet flees, Geary puts his fleet, at this point nearly completely out of munitions, fuel, and overloaded with rescued POWs, in for refitting and repair.
22631017	/m/05zvgyz	The Seventh Secret				 British historian Harrison Ashcroft is told by an informant of information which "proves" Hitler survived the end of World War II, rather than (the popular version) committing suicide. When he journeys to West Berlin to investigate, he is killed by a heavy Mercedes lorry and his murder is made to resemble an accident—and described as such by West Berlin's police chief Wolfgang Schmidt. Ashcroft's death draws the following people to Berlin to investigate: * Ashcroft's daughter Emily. She worked with her father on a biography of Hitler. * California architect Rex Foster * Mossad agent Tovah Levine, for whom "the very mention of Hitler or Nazis, is grist to the mill" * Mr. Kirvov, collector of Hitler's Art. Emily is working to finish her biography of Hitler that she started with her father. She visits one of Hitler's dentists and he shows her two things, a dental chart and a drawing of a necklace. He says that Hitler always wore a necklace with a picture of Fredrick the Great for good luck, yet the Russians had never found it. He also told Emily that he had put another dental crown on his teeth during the last days of the war, yet the Russians never found that either. This prompts Emily to dig at the bunker where Hitler supposedly lived his last days. While she ventures on this quest to find the truth to Hitler's story she meets Levine and Foster. Emily has an instant connection with Foster and unwillingly tells him information that she was supposed to keeps as a secret. After Foster saves her life from a murderous intruder and admits his love for her; she ends up spending the night with him while drunk with scotch. Emily along with Kirvov, Foster and Levine all used their combined power which leads them the unbelievable truth. Kirvov finds out about the painting that he has that is supposed to be an authentic painting by Hitler that the real Adolf Hitler might still be alive. The painting that depicted a Nazi building showed the image of a renovated building that had an additional element that was constructed in 1952. How could this painting which is supposed to be an authentic Hitler painting still have the designs of the building that were added in 1952 which was 7 years after his supposed death? Levine helps the four of them by discovering that Hitler and Eva Braun(his wife) had legitimate duplicates who normally attended functions in their place and who resembled Hitler very closely. Could the Hitler and Eva doubles have been the one who died in the bunker instead of the actual two people? Foster helped the group significantly and he discovered through a former Nazi bunker architect that Hitler had seven bunkers even though only six were known to other people. Foster discovers that the seventh Bunker is right next to the bunker that Hitler supposedly died in and he goes and investigates to find a secret passage that leads from the Hitler and Eva's personal bedroom to a seventh bunker in a hidden passage route which was previously build by Jewish slaves (who were later killed to silence by Hitler himself). As Foster goes through this passage he find out that it certainly leads to another unknown bunker where he find that his love, Emily Ashcroft, is hidden after her sudden disappearance in the Cafe Wolf(this bunker happens to be right beneath this cafe which Eva Braun first used as her photo studio and later turned into a cafe to not attract too much attention. He also finds that Eva Braun is still alive and sleeping is the adjacent room! He let Emily escape and he later drugged Eva(who went by the name Evelyn Hoffman to not attract too much attention)with the truth drug which made her spit out the facts! Braun admits that she and Hitler used their doubles when they claimed their death and were alive and living in this bunker the entire time which completely escaped the eyes of the Soviets when they raided the bunker. She claimed that the real Hitler died on the same day as JFK did and ever since that, she has been at the head of the Nazis. She said that over fifty Nazis were in the secret bunker at the moment and that they would rise once more when Nazis were strong enough and when the Americans and Soviets destroyed each other with their missiles! Eva Braun also revealed one of the most ghastly secrets which was that she and Hitler had a child before he died! The daughter that they had was kept a secret from the rest of the world. Hitler did not want his daughter to rot in the bunker so he arranged for their previous maid to take care of the daughter as her own in exchange of a great bribe. The daughter's name is Klara Feigbig who is already married and pregnant with Hitler's grandchild but she has no idea about her actual parentage and she lives a peaceful life. Eva also revealed that the police chief, Wolfgang Scmitct, who the whole town trusted as an anti-Nazi was actually one of Hitler secret SS guards and was to take over as leader when the new Nazi Germany was established once again!
22638439	/m/05zqz1s	The Cardinal Sins				 Lifelong friends and occasional rivals, Kevin Brennan and Patrick Donahue enter seminary together, but their lives soon diverge dramatically. Brennan achieves success as a scholar but often finds himself at odds with his superiors in the Church. By contrast, the ambitious Donahue rises steadily through the Church hierarchy, only to fall prey to the temptations of lust and power.
22639596	/m/05z_3ph	Papa Sartre				 The novel opens with two charlatans commissioning a biographical novel. A starving academic is hired to write the life story of an Existential philosopher who died in the late 1960s and was acclaimed as the (Sartre of Baghdad). Father Hanna and his sexy consort, Nunu Bihar, are pragmatic and clear from the very beginning: philosophy is a business and the narrator’s assignment is to create a larger than life Iraqi equivalent of the original Jean Paul Sartre. The would-be narrator is introduced to a third party; the project’s funding supreme, Sadeq Zadeh, whose remit is to approve the version of the philosopher’s death. He is then handed dossiers of documents, photographs, diaries, letters and assigned a dubious research assistant, who looks more like a pickpocket, to accompany him on interviews with the remaining few friends of the late philosopher. The charlatans demonstrate an amorality that fascinates the narrator, with their wide latitude for unconstrained heckling, irreverence and recklessness along with factual discrepancies. Not to mention the scandalously seductive nature of Nunu Bihar’s overt sexuality. A biography can, then, depicts a life with all its flaws, weaknesses and baseness, thinks the narrator. This proves difficult for him at first with collective memory being subject to strict cultural variables. He finds there were those who admired all the dead: servants overlooked and forgave mistakes, hesitated at admitting domestic scandals, attributing superhuman qualities in hagiographic proportions to those no longer living. The philosopher’s friends, on the other hand, told another story, accurate but equally flawed. They decked him out like a Christmas tree. Glossing over a sense of shame, they assigned to themselves important roles, their talk of the 1960s sounded like an elegy for a lost Paradise that had expelled its most prominent philosopher with no recognition. A solipsistic gaze constructed the only life worth living. Existentialist of Al-sadriyah Documents prove similarly discouraging for the narrator: "All spoke a single character, a unique and towering figure, one that summarized for an entire society a tragic world and symbolized for an entire notion tragic anomie" Overriding these methodological obstacles, the narrator eventually succeeds in producing a candid account of the life of Abdel Rahman Sartre’s, the Existentialist of al-Sadriyah. One day, as on many other days, the Sartre of Baghdad woke up feeling nauseous. He picked up a gilt-framed photograph of Sartre and admired the physical resemblance between them. But adoration turned to feelings of inadequacy. He glanced at the philosopher’s bad eye. "Abdel Rahman had immense faith in the philosophical bad eye, he understood its value and greatness while appreciating how difficult a condition it was attain. It was the defect of the impossible, a metaphysical defect like that of god. He experienced despair…as if something was missing in his existence…(a shortcoming) remained a heavy load on his heart, a cruel destructive feeling that he felt when he was in Paris. The reality of Abdul Rahman Sartre student days in Paris was dismal. His linguistic proficiency was such that he was unable to approach, let alone conducts a conversation with, the giant of existentialism. Incapable of learning French, he never completed his degree, his rapturous audience back in Baghdad would lovingly support Abdul Rahman , "was Sartre a philosopher because of his degree or because of his philosophy?" True. He assumed the role of witness, the man who had seen Sartre and had arrived from Paris to tell them all about him. Unable to write in either French or Arabic and incapable of concentrating for long hours or of thinking with any systematic logic, he owned the complete works of Sartre from which he would read a few lines and swoon into day-dreaming. Our philosopher despised writing as an act of estrangement ; it resembled masturbation in that it was an act of identification with words –images of nothingness-and not with nothingness itself. Speech, on the other hand represented the moment, the emotion-it was as cathartic as it was euphoric. Oral discourse was integral to the culture of the coffee house of the early 1960s in Baghdad . Most of the intellectuals of his generation pontificated endlessly over dominoes in the morning and regrouped in the local bars at night. Their knowledge of philosophy was limited to books titles and short summaries found in newspapers and literary magazines. Existentialism legitimized a way of life. "There was no reality, no reality to be understood". Abdel Rahman Sartre’s identity was locked into that world. His aristocratic background shielded his self-image; he never saw the need to work for a living, always believing that he was a speaker not a writer, a philosopher not charlatan. One of the outstanding characters in Papa Sartre is Ismael Hadoub, he first appears selling pornographic photographs in Baghdad in the mid-1950s, his most enthusiastic customer being a rich Jewish merchant, Saul, who owns a store in al Sadriyah and bargains tirelessly over prices. Saul takes on Ismail and transforms him into an obedient and grateful acolyte.
22644015	/m/05zmmr3	The Scarecrow	Michael Connelly	2009-05-12	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story begins with Jack McEvoy's termination by the Los Angeles Times due to the newspaper's financial crisis. He is given two weeks to train his replacement, Angela Cook, on the "cop beat" and decides that he wants to write one more major story before his last day. Jack focuses on the case of 16-year-old drug dealer Alonzo Winslow, who confessed that he brutally raped one of his clients, then stuffed her body in the trunk with a plastic bag over her head, tied shut with a length of rope around her neck. Angela, a beautiful and ambitious young reporter, maneuvers to get herself a part of the story. However, after Jack is given access to the defense files, he learns that Alonzo only confessed to stealing the car containing the body, not to the rape-murder. In researching trunk murders on the Internet, Angela unwittingly finds evidence of a similar crime in Las Vegas. However, Angela's research also took her to a "trap" site set up by the real murderer: Wesley Carver, an MIT graduate who is the chief security officer of a "server farm" (colocation and backup services) near Phoenix, referred to by everyone as the "scarecrow" of the farm. Carver cracks her e-mail password at the Times and learns that Jack is headed to Vegas. He promptly creates a fake data emergency so that his company will send him to L.A. The next day, Jack finds that none of his credit cards nor his cell phone work, so he buys a throwaway phone. He shows the evidence of the identical L.A. murder to the attorney for the convicted Vegas murderer, who gives Jack a letter permitting him to meet his client, imprisoned in a remote location in Nevada. During the lengthy drive on the "loneliest road in America", Jack calls FBI agent Rachel Walling, his former girlfriend to whom he hasn't spoken in years, to report the "under the radar" serial killer and also tells her about his bad luck that day. When he arrives at the prison, he is told that he cannot see the prisoner until the next day and books a room in a local hotel. A cowboy with long sideburns plays slots next to him. When Jack heads to his room, he sees "Sideburns" coming directly toward him in the hallway as his door opens ... to find Rachel inside his room. "Sideburns" passes by. Rachel had taken a private FBI plane to the prison after she concluded that Jack's discoveries and his electronic problems were linked but that she had no way to warn him. Rachel and Jack learn that "Sideburns" was not staying at the hotel and surmise that he must be the killer. When calling the Times, Jack learns that Angela has disappeared. Rachel and Jack promptly take the FBI jet back to L.A., during which Rachel examines the evidence and notes that the murdered women were both exotic dancers with similar body types ("giraffes"), and that both were put in leg braces ("iron maidens") while being sexually abused before death, a perversion known as abasiophilia. On arrival, Rachel admits that her recent relationship with a police detective ended in part because she still had feelings for Jack, but they then find Angela's dead body under Jack's bed, killed in the same style as the other victims. Because of Rachel's testimony, Jack is cleared of Angela's murder, and the evidence causes both Alonzo and the Vegas convict to be freed. The FBI links the trap site to Bill Denslow, a fake name used by an online client of Carver's server farm. Jack is a featured guest on CNN to discuss the case, but Rachel is summoned to a disciplinary hearing and forced to resign from the FBI under threat of a theft prosecution for "stealing" the gasoline in the FBI plane during the round trip to Nevada. Carver has his assistant, whom he gave the pseudonym "Freddie Stone", help him murder and bury the server farm's CEO and then quit. Jack deduces that the serial killer knew non-public legal information about his victims and finds that all of them were represented by law firms whose sites were handled through Carver's server farm, just like the trap site. He persuades Rachel to join him there, where they pose as potential clients and talk to Carver, who doesn't reveal that he knows their real identities. Following a trail laid by Carver, they find Stone's house, identify him as "Sideburns", and uncover evidence concerning the killings. They call in the FBI, and Rachel is able to use her role in finding the killer to regain her job. Jack agrees to return to L.A. and goes to Rachel's hotel room to say goodbye—but finds that she has just been kidnapped by Stone. He intercepts Stone, rescues an unconscious Rachel from a laundry bin, and then chases and kills Stone in a battle on the top floor. Rachel tells Jack that the FBI believes there were two killers: Stone and Angela's murderer. With Carver's help, Rachel and the FBI team find evidence that Stone and the missing CEO committed all of the murders. Jack's high profile causes the Times to rescind his termination, even though Jack's role as a participant means that he cannot write the story of the Arizona events. Jack turns it down and accepts a two-book deal to write about this case. However, Jack then sees a picture from The Wizard of Oz in his editor's office and realizes that the method used to suffocate the victims looks like the classic head of a scarecrow, except using a plastic bag instead of a burlap sack. He immediately heads to Arizona to warn a disbelieving Rachel, including the links to the real Fred Stone and Bill Denslow, but unfortunately meets her in a coffee shop near the server farm with a full-time Webcam in it. Jack deduces that they are being watched by 'The Scarecrow' over the webcam. Carver watches their discussion, then ambushes the other FBI agents. Carver's plan to kill the agents and fake his own death is foiled when Jack figures it out, and Rachel shoots Carver in the head when he tries to ambush them, leaving Carver in a seemingly permanent comatose state. In a brief epilogue, Jack's research has revealed that Carver's mother was an exotic dancer similar in appearance to the victims who needed to wear leg braces when not performing. The story closes with Carver in medical lockdown, deep in a coma, alone with his thoughts.
22644725	/m/05ztfs5	Zoeken naar Eileen W	Leon de Winter	1995-03		 A young man has just lost his young girlfriend, and becomes depressed. But then he meets a woman which resembles his late girlfriend a lot. Their meeting is brief, but the main character knows enough to know that he only wants her from that moment on. The only thing he knows of her, is that she speaks English, that she is from Northern Ireland and that she is called Eileen.
22645213	/m/05zkv_b	Hasamba				 A group of girls and boys set up a secret society called "Hasamba"; their adventures take place, first during the British Mandate and the struggle for statehood of Israel, and then as they battle their country's enemies: infiltrators, spies, criminals and other offenders. The group has taken active part in the wars of Israel during the period the series has been written (until 1994). Though suspenseful, the writing is entertaining, with humor, as well as with related science, history, and trivia information, provided by knowledgeable participating characters. It emphasizes kindness, good behavior, loyalty, friendship, dedication, courage, and love to Israel. Yaron Zahavi (the handsome guy) and his deputy, Tamar (the pretty girl), are the first leaders of Hasamba. In later books (where they are supposed to be much older) they are replaced by the younger Yoav Tzur and his deputy, Rachel. The other heroes are replaced as well. Years later Yaron and Tamar get married, and their son Uri joins Hasamba in book number 25. In the books they face dangerous and smart enemies. They fight them, occasionally become captives, but outsmart the enemies and get free, sometimes with help of allies, and finally win. But not always a happy end: Two of the first-generation heroes, Eliahu Hermon and Refael Kaduri die, sacrificing their lives for important causes. Their secret meeting place is a real location in Tel Aviv, known as "The Electric Cave", which upon returning from a long stay abroad, the author discovered to be destroyed for the sake of building the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel. High-tech inventions, sometimes preceding the technology available when written about, plays role in the stories. This includes the Electric cave, an intelligent robot, "Zagloba," that helps the group in some adventures, a laser rifle, and more (Yigal Mossinson himself was the inventor of patents).
22645856	/m/05zx7kk	Young Pioneers	Rose Wilder Lane	1932	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 Newlyweds Molly and David are only sixteen and eighteen years old when they pack up their wagon and head west across the plains in search of a new homestead. At first their new life is full of promise: The wheat is high, the dugout is warm and cozy, and a new baby is born to share in their happiness. Then disaster strikes, and David must go east for the winter to find work. Molly is left alone with the baby&nbsp;— with nothing but her own courage to face the dangers of the harsh prairie winter. Under Lane's original title Let the Hurricane Roar, the two characters are named "Charles" and "Caroline" which were the actual names of Lane's maternal grandparents - they were changed to "Molly" and "David" for the re-issue of the book as Young Pioneers.
22647105	/m/05zt6k8	Flowers in the Mirror	Li Ju-chen			 Flowers in the Mirror is set in the reign of the Empress Wu Zetian (Wu Tse-tien) who reigned from 684 to 705 in the Tang Dynasty. She took the throne from her own son, Emperor Zhongzong of Tang (Emperor Chung-tsung of Tang). Empress Wu lets the power she is given go to her head, and demands that all of the flowers on the earth be in bloom by the next morning. The flower-spirits fear her and follow her orders, but are then punished by the gods for doing so. Their punishment is to live on earth. Once their penance is complete, they will be allowed to go back to heaven again. Tang Ao is the father of the incarnation of the Fairy of a Hundred Flowers. The Empress suspects him of having had a part in plotting rebellion against her and so she takes away his high scholarly rank and leaves him with the lowest rank that one can obtain. Tang Ao responds to this by freeing himself from the coil of the mortal strife which binds the soul to the body and resolves to become an immortal by cultivating Tao. Then Tang Ao is told by a dream spirit that his destiny lies in foreign parts and so he decides to go overseas by junk, with his brother-in-law, Merchant Lin. Tang Ao finds twelve of the incarnated flower-spirits during his journey, and helps them all with the difficulties that they are having. Doing so enables him to become an immortal, and at the fair mountain of Little Penglai he disappears. During his journey, Tang Ao travels to the Country of Gentlemen, the Country of Women, the Country of Intestineless People, the Country of Sexless People, and the Country of Two-faced People, as well as many other countries. In the second half of the book Tang Ao’s daughter goes to Little Penglai to look for him after his disappearance. Also, the incarnated flower-spirits take part in the "Imperial Examinations for Women", and along with their husbands and brothers they rise up and overthrow Empress Wu’s rule, so restoring Emperor Tang Chung-tsung to the throne.
22647220	/m/05zyxdq	Engaging the Muslim World	Juan Cole	2009-03-17	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Cole makes five central points. First, he states that Al-Qaeda is better thought of as a small cult rather than a true mass movement like fascism or communism in the early 20th century. Second, he states that the Muslim world contains large sections of people who can be potential allies to the U.S. Third, he states that American energy independence cannot really happen. Fourth, he states that Iran is not an implacable enemy of the U.S. and should be engaged with. Fifth, he states that coalition forces in Iraq should undergo a careful, deliberate military disengagement rather than an immediate withdrawal or an extended military presence. Cole makes an analogy between Islamists and what he sees as similar American groups. He views Salafi jihadists as fundamentalist vigilantes similar to Timothy McVeigh while Wahabis can been seen similar to the Amish. Cole argues that a distinction should be made between al-Qaeda and non-violent, compromising political Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood the same way far right militas in the U.S. are distinguished from the center-right Republican Party.
22650228	/m/05zrhvp	Deadtime Stories				 Deadtime Stories is a children's horror fiction series, following the same genre of writing as Goosebumps. The subjects of the series vary from hauntings to monsters and other weird happenings which are encountered by normal kids who are directly or indirectly involved in them.
22661662	/m/05zkj1b	Envy: A Luxe Novel	Anna Godbersen	2009-02-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Henry Schoonmaker, the handsome son of a wealthy tycoon, is now married to Penelope Hayes, due to her scheming. Henry refuses to even sleep in the same room as his new wife, as he remains infatuated with Diana Holland. Diana Holland is heartbroken about the marriage, but she acts to appear genuine and gay at the many balls and parties she is obligated to attend to, in order to preserve her family's reputation. She continues to avoid any confrontations with Henry. Her sister, Elizabeth Holland, grieves over the loss of her true love, while growing weaker and more fragile every day. Carolina Broad, a maid turned socialite, is content befriending a wealthy elderly gentleman, Mr.Carey Lewis Longhorn, who continues to provide for her financially. The characters' paths once again intertwine when Henry plans a fishing trip to Florida with his good friend, Teddy Cutting. However, Penelope invites herself along, and offers Carolina Broad the invitation, as well. At a luncheon hosted by the Hollands, Penelope extends the invitation once more to her once good friend, Elizabeth Holland. Meanwhile, Henry confronts Diana on the Holland porch, and explains his piteous situation with Penelope. He then asks her to find a way to secretly meet him in Florida, where they may possibly be together. When Diana returns to the luncheon, Elizabeth presses Penelope to allow her sister to join them, as well. The group of socialites, along with Penelope's older brother, Grayson Hayes, and another member of New York's ellite, Leland Bouchard, travel south to Florida, where they vacation on the beach. Before they arrive, Penelope pulls her brother aside and asks him to play a bit with the younger Holland's heart strings. She then claims the reason for the trouble is mere amusement, but her hidden intentions become clear when she suspects Henry and Diana have planned the trip for their own romantic affairs. However, Penelope's scheme backfires when her brother begins to legitimately fall in love with Diana. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Teddy rekindle their lost friendship, and Teddy proposes for the third time to Elizabeth. However, when Elizabeth begins to feel a certain attraction to her friend, she is overwhelmed with guilt, due to her past love. Romance blooms further after Carolina discovers she has grown a bit too fond of Leland. Still, it seems Leland has taken a liking to her, as well. At the peak of their romantic expedition, Carolina receives news that Mr. Longhorn has passed on. She then returns to New York to attend his funeral, where she makes the miraculous discovery that he has left all of his estates and wealth to her. She shares this joyous reason with her good friend and part-time lover, Tristan Wrigley. Back in Florida, Henry and Penelope continue to bicker and Penelope threatens Diana's reputation several times when the papers report of Penelope's marital insecurities. Nevertheless, Henry and Diana continue to meet secretly, and express their undying love to each other. Diana, however, feels as if Henry has seduced her into becoming his mistress, and before she has a chance to fully dismiss him, he quickly promises to leave Penelope. Later, Teddy informs Henry that he plans on joining the army and will be shipped to the Philippines. A more worldly Henry then joins Grayson in the bar, where his brother-in-law expresses his love for Diana. Henry feels a ridiculous amount of pride for having claimed her heart, and returns to his hotel room in a drunken state to find Penelope bawling on the balcony. After making a futile attempt at comforting her, Penelope decides that she wants more, and Henry easily gives in to her seduction and they have sex. Diana sees the enviable couple half-naked on their balcony, and assumes that Henry has deceived her. Heartbroken, Diana runs off into the early morning. Later, Henry tells Penelope that their love making was a mistake and he that never should have committed the act. He goes after Diana, who then confronts him, claiming that she no longer loves him. Henry is distraught. After returning to New York, Penelope informs the guests at a Schoonmaker dinner party that she and Henry are expecting a child. Hearing this, a dejected Diana invites Grayson along for a walk through the mansion, where he professes his sincere love to her. He allows her to seduce him and they make love, accidentally witnessed by a horrified Henry. Meanwhile, Elizabeth discovers that she is pregnant with Will's child. When her mother demands she get an abortion, Elizabeth refuses, and plans to proceed with the pregnancy. Snowden, Mr. Holland's former business partner, is told of this and he proposes to her. Elizabeth accepts in order to avoid any scandal. Later, Henry enlists in the army. He notifies a brutally shocked Penelope of this, and accuses her of her false pregnancy. He then sends Diana a long letter, professing his love to her and his apologies. In response, a determined Diana cuts her hair to pass as a man, and runs away to join the army in search of her love.
22662420	/m/05zk3v5	Unbowed: A Memoir	Wangari Maathai	2006-10-03		 Maathai discusses her life from childhood until she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. She discusses her childhood, education in the United States and her return to Kenya, moving on to her life as an environmentalist and political activist, culminating with the victory of the opposition in the 2002 elections against the ruling KANU party and her election to parliament, followed shortly after by the Nobel Prize. Maathai stresses the connection between environmental conservation and good governance.
22664248	/m/05zzy84	Tales of the Dervishes	Idries Shah	1967		 Tales of the Dervishes is a collection of stories, parables, legends and fables gathered from classical Sufi texts and oral sources spanning a period from the 7th to the 20th centuries. It introduced a 'genre' – the teaching story – to a contemporary readership familiar with the entertainment or moralistic values of such tales but unfamiliar with certain instrumental functions claimed for them. An author's postscript to each story offers a brief account of its provenance, use and place in Sufi tradition.
22664567	/m/05zxp5p	Thinkers of the East – Studies in Experientialism	Idries Shah	1971		 Thinkers of the East consists of a series of anecdotes and brief recorded conversations between thinkers and questioners, mingled with occasional extracts, stories and legends (including "The Legend of Nasrudin"). The preface asserts that the book’s contents are "arranged in a manner commanded by the tradition and not by superficialist obsessional arranging." As the book's subtitle Studies in Experientialism suggests, these illustrate Sufi thinking in action, rather than in theory. On the principle that it is for the reader to dwell, not the author, the narratives are related with a deliberate economy: enough detail to provoke thought, but too little to flood it.
22667032	/m/05zw3jz	Eighth Grade Bites	Heather Brewer		{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Life is not easy for any thirteen-year-old, but when your mother was a human and your father was a vampire, and they were both killed in a fire, it's especially hard. The school bullies harass Vlad, the principal seems to have it in for him, and his dream girl, Meredith, seems to prefer his friend, Henry. Vlad's mother's long-time friend, Nelly, is raising him, and she understands his problems and helps him to hide the fact that he is a vampire and must have blood to survive. Vlad's best friend, Henry is the only other person who knows his secret, and Vlad bit Henry once when they were eight years old, making Henry his drudge (someone who is forced to the will of a vampire). Vladimir has real rapport with one teacher, but that teacher has disappeared and no one knows where he is. Vlad and Henry are determined to find out what happened to him. But the substitute teacher begins to question Vlad too closely ... and there is just something strange about Mr. Otis. Vlad worries that Otis might suspect the truth. Then when Otis assigns Vampires as Vlad's research project, and the teacher scribbles "I know your secret" across the bottom of his essay, he is really frightened. Vlad discovers his father's journal and is learning about the reality of being a vampire and the powers that he may possess. He also becomes convinced that there is a Vampire slayer in town, and that he is searching for Vlad. Things go from bad to worse when Nelly invites Otis to dinner and he confronts Vlad with what he knows.
22667411	/m/05zxkzb	The Four Seasons of Mary Azarian	Lilias MacBean Hart			 The Four Seasons of Mary Azarian has carvings of all four seasons, depicting activities and sights which may occur in each of them. For each season, there are short stories of inspiration by seasonal changes, or of stories that Mary has experienced in those seasons.
22668436	/m/05zq4ts	Hearts Grown Brutal	Roger Cohen	1998-08-25	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Cohen follows the story of a man named Sead who had been searching for his lost father. Cohen goes on to describe the lives of three other families, one Muslim-Serb, one Muslim, and one Serb-Croat. He details the history of Yugoslavia from the end of World War I onward and then shows how the Yugoslav Wars affected the daily lives of ordinary people. He states that, in general, "This was a war of intimate betrayals". He blasts leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic, whom he calls "a craven, clever bully", Franjo Tuđman, whom he says played a "macabre dance", and Radovan Karadžić. He writes with outrage against the United States and the United Nations for what he sees as their moral cowardice in the wake of genocide.
22671464	/m/05zv491	Wanting	Richard Flanagan	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Wanting cuts between two stories based on real historical figures under the central theme of 'wanting', and is set in both nineteenth century Tasmania and Britain. One tells the tale of an Aboriginal child, Mathinna, adopted by then governor of Van Diemens Land, Sir John Franklin, and his wife Lady Jane; the other of Charles Dickens love affair with Ellen Ternan after one of his daughters dies.,
22672849	/m/05zzpp_	Soldiers and Slaves	Roger Cohen	2005-04-26	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Cohen details how the prisoners, many of whom were accused by their Nazi captors of being Jewish, were mixed in with victims of the Holocaust and sent to a concentration camp in Berga.
22680525	/m/05zr4kk	The Exeter Blitz	David Rees	1978	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens in Colin Lockwood's school during a history lesson, the night after an air raid. Colin has fallen asleep, provoking sarcasm from the teacher, Mr Kitchen. At home, Colin irritates his mother and older sister Mary, and so decides to go to see his father, who is working at Exeter Cathedral. At the cathedral Colin notes down an inscription carved by one of his ancestors, for his history homework. As Mr Lockwood has to check on the fire-fighting arrangements, Colin climbs to the top of the south tower for the first time, and is impressed by the extensive view of the city. He accidentally leaves his jacket up there, with his homework in the pocket. When Colin gets home, his mother recruits him to hand out sherry and snacks at the fashion show in Nimrod's that evening. Colin finds he quite enjoys his duties, and he is surprised when Mr Kitchen and his wife join the party. He gets a fit of giggles when he listens to the speaker, Mrs Wimbleball, describing the new collection in glowing terms, and is sent out by his mother. He decides to retrieve his jacket from the cathedral tower, and climbs to the roof. At this point the sirens start, and the planes arrive unusually soon afterwards. Colin sees the bombing start and is thrilled and fascinated until he realizes his danger. During a lull in the bombardment, he runs down the steps to an air raid shelter. On the way he narrowly escapes being hit by machine-gun fire. Mr Lockwood and his younger daughter June are at home where they shelter under the stairs. A bomb falls on the house, destroying half of it. When the all-clear sounds they are able to crawl through the rubble to the street. At Nimrod's, some people are trapped in the lift when the power station is hit. When a bomb hits the shop, Mrs Lockwood is injured, Mrs Wimbleball is paralyzed and the Kitchens are killed outright. Mary and her boyfriend Lars are at the cinema, and leave immediately for the nearest shelter. Mary, a nurse, badly wants to get to the hospital, but Lars makes her wait until the all clear sounds. Later at the hospital, Mary sees her mother brought in unconscious. Colin meets his Cockney schoolmate Terry at the shelter, and although they have been at odds before, the common experience brings them closer. As their fish shop has been destroyed, Colin invites Terry back to his house to sleep, not knowing it has also been bombed. Instead, they camp out in the fields. The next day, it is clear that despite devastating damage to the city centre, the cathedral has been largely spared, raising morale. Colin and Terry decide to use some of the no-longer frozen fish from the shop to provide free food for their neighbours. They cook all day and win praise for their efforts. It is the beginning of a new phase of life for Colin, more independent and adult. The other family members do not fare so well, although they find a new home. Mr Lockwood is overwhelmed at work, Mrs Lockwood recovers, but misses her home, Mary is depressed and haunted by the injuries she has seen, and June mourns for all her beloved books and toys.
22680827	/m/05zlmzp	Skeleton Key: The Graphic Novel	Antony Johnston	2009-09-07		 The plot is based around the book of the same name: "Reluctant teenage superspy Alex Rider is useful to MI6 in ways an adult could never be. Now they need his help once again. But a routine reconnaissance mission at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships sets off a terrifying chain of events for Alex that sees him on the run from a murderous Chinese triad gang. Forced to hide out, Alex is sent to Cayo Esqueleto – Skeleton Key – an island near Cuba. Waiting for him there is General Alexei Sarov – a coldly insane Russian with explosive plans to rewrite history. Alex faces his most dangerous challenge yet. Alone, and equipped only with a handful of gadgets, Alex must outwit Sarov as the seconds tick away towards the end of the world..."
22681634	/m/05zrxvb	Transformers: The Veiled Threat	Alan Dean Foster	2009-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Present-day, Megatron lies dead, at the bottom of the sea. Cut to the Gulf of Aden where pirates attack a freighter which just so happens to be ferrying Epps, Lennox, Ironhide, Ratchet, and other NEST (Networked Elements: Supporters and Transformers) members to their base on Diego Garcia. Ironhide soon transforms to robot mode and scares the pirates off. Arriving at Diego Garcia, the boys meet up with cybernetics expert Kaminari Ishihara, who has been swimming in the lagoon with the newly arrived Autobot veteran Longarm serving as lifeguard. Everyone enters a briefing where a sighting of Starscream in Zambia is discussed and a plan is hatched with Optimus Prime to confront him. Meanwhile, we find that Agent Simmons is now, with the disbanding of Sector Seven, working in his mother’s deli in New York. He’s also tinkering with Frenzy’s disembodied head in his basement. In Africa, we learn that Starscream is not only in the area, he’s gaining control over local rebel groups by using his internal synthesizers to create gold coins. He is also accompanied by three other Decepticons: Dropkick, Macerator, and Payload. They soon attack a local dam construction site, making short work of the security forces, and proceed to steal mass quantities of explosives. The NEST team soon arrives in Africa with Prime, Ironhide, and Ratchet as well as new arrivals: Salvage and Beachbreak. The Autobots soon engage Dropkick, Macerator, and Payload in battle in the Zambezi River. This is all part of Starscream’s brilliant plan, however, as the Autobots soon discover that the current is pushing them towards Victoria Falls. Everyone but Prime and Macerator gets out in time, as the dueling pair going over the side. Starscream swoops in to save Macerator while Prime dangles helplessly. Eventually the NEST team manages to haul Prime up using Beachbreak’s tow-cable, but the celebration is short lived as Starscream swoops in and knocks the diminutive Beachbreak off the waterfalls and to his death. The Autobots and their human allies soon realize that Starscream may try and destroy a series of dams along the Zambezi and head off after the fleeing Decepticons. At one of the dams, the ground-based Decepticons attack. Payload heads to the valley floor to try to crack the dam with repeated blasts while Dropkick and Macerator fend off the arriving Autobots. After a short scuffle, Prime manages to knock Macerator over the side of the dam before dispatching his dangling foe with his built-in sword. Ratchet takes repeated hits from Payload while trying to melt the fissures in the cracking dam back together. Both Ratchet and the dam are ultimately saved when the humans enter the dam and open the flood gates, knocking Payload downriver. A damaged Dropkick escapes and everyone returns to Diego Garcia. Again, we cut back to Simmons in his basement, experimenting on Frenzy and brooding that that ("punk kid") Sam Witwicky has a "hot girlfriend" and is going to Princeton University. Frenzy suddenly comes to life and tries to subvert the building’s electrical system. And after a little chaos, Simmons decides he needs to move the Decepticon head to a space beneath his mother’s deli. Back at NEST headquarters, two more Decepticon presences are detected and a pair of teams is readied to head out and take care of them. Epps and Russian scientist Petr Andronov accompany Longarm and the impetuous young motorcycle Knockout to Peru to find the Decepticons that have been detected in the deep jungles. On a steep mountain pass, the party is attacked by Decepticons Ruination and Blademaster. Despite inexperienced and risky behavior by Knockout, both are severely damaged and driven off. Simultaneously, Lennox, Ishihara, Prime, Ironhide, and Salvage arrive in the Western Australian Outback and begin searching for Decepticons. Lennox soon realizes that the ‘Cons are attacking sites with energy reserves; oil and coal in Peru; and uranium in Australia. The team decides that there is a second group of Decepticons not under Starscream’s command, harvesting massive amounts of energy in an attempt to revive Megatron. Arriving at a uranium mining site, the NEST team discovers a trio of construction vehicles which, naturally, turn out to be Decepticons. The leader, Kickback, takes Prime on and is quickly run through with the Autobot leader’s sword. The other two, Tread and Trample, are quickly killed through the combined efforts of the rest of the team. Back at Diego Garcia, a small crab-like Decepticon infiltrates the base and hacks into the NEST computers before sneaking back into the sea and rendezvous with an unknown accomplice. Despite the break-in, the NEST team continues their usual business; discussing different ways the Decepticons could draw massive quantities of power to revive Megatron. In Italy, Starscream enters into a deal with an Italian criminal named Bruno Carrera to help destroy Optimus Prime in exchange for dominion over Europe when the Decepticons triumph. A plan is hatched and Swindle and Deadend begin ripping through the streets of Rome causing general chaos and trying to draw the Autobots out. After an extended chase where Knockout proves he has what it takes, and Starscream challenges Prime to single combat inside Rome's Colosseum. Prime and the Autobots enter the ancient structure, and Prime promptly falls through a trap door to a subway tunnel extension and into a strong set of restraints arranged by Carrera. Starscream then proceeds to attack the remaining Autobots while a helpless Prime is confronted by a vengeful Barricade. Before the Decepticon can dispatch Prime, the humans attack Barricade and Prime manages to work himself free. He easily defeats Barricade returns to the surface where Starscream has fled. On his way to whatever scheme he has come up next, Starscream takes the time to visit Carrera at this villa, where he pays him back for his “failure”. Finally, Epps and Lennox are relaxing on the beach back at Diego Garcia when Knockout approached and informs them that something significant is happening, mentioning how he is unfamiliar with the term “shanghaied”.
22682097	/m/05p8zhq	The White Rabbit	Bruce Marshall	1953	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas was the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent, "The White Rabbit" of World War II. He was given responsibilities by the British government in Occupied and Vichy France because he had lived in France during the interwar years and was fluent in French. An assignment required Yeo-Thomas to be parachuted into France. Shortly after his arrival he was betrayed and captured by the Gestapo at the Passy metro station in Paris. The Gestapo took him to their headquarters in the Avenue Foch, and he was subjected to brutal torture, including beatings, electrical shocks to the genitals, psychological gameplaying, sleep deprivation, and repeated submersion in ice-cold water — to the point that artificial respiration was sometimes required After the interrogations and torture, he was moved to Fresnes prison. After he made two failed attempts to escape he was transferred first to Compiègne prison and then to Buchenwald concentration camp. Within these various detention camps he attempted to organize resistance. Late in the war, he briefly escaped from Buchenwald and, on his recapture, was able to pass himself off as a French national and sent to Marienburg, Stalag XX-B, a "better" camp, where the Nazis sent enlisted Frenchmen, instead of back to Buchenwald. It is reasonable to conclude that his chances of surviving the remainder of the war at Buchenwald were low. After the war he resumed his life in France.
22686057	/m/05p0wth	A Thread of Scarlet	Bruce Marshall	1959	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The hero, as often in Marshall's novels, is a Scottish priest. The novel tracks the life of Father Campbell, a convert to Catholicism from a wealthy family, from his ordination to the priesthood just before the First World War until his death many years later, as a Cardinal. In his first parish assignment, Father Campbell found himself pitted against his Rector, a canon, in a kind of running conflict the first of a series of minor entanglements and setbacks which lay in the path of his vocation like boulders. World War I sees him sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force as a Chaplain. The experiences there hardened him some, but his essential faith is unshaken. After the war he returns to his parish, still a very serious, but unsophisticated young priest. He seeks a miracle for an Army companion who he has helped lead back to the faith. They go to Lourdes. Scotland, which had never been granted such a miracle, watched hopefully. The outcome was a surprise to everyone, and causes Father Campbell a good deal of bother. Father Campbell was patient and humble; but in his early years his essential characteristic was a rebellious intelligence, challenged by Catholic discipline and eventually mellowed by the experiences which befell him after he had been created Cardinal. A study of the complex problems facing the world and the church, the book presents a dramatic and absorbing reality to subjects the layman rarely sees and often feels kept from. The priest's rise through the church hierarchy allows him to travel widely and as he observes the actions of the people, both lay and clerical, he himself remains unspotted by the world. A famous writer has said that only the truly good can understand evil and Father Campbell is a man for whom the glory of God and the truth of the Church are the ultimate realities. The result is a heart-warmingly human story of richness and depth in which faith and intelligence triumph – as does charity. The story ends when the old Canon, having grown fond of the Cardinal, relents at last, bequeaths his excellent wine cellar, and his collection of soap scraps, to him.
22691036	/m/05zjvcl	Maigret and the Hotel Majestic				 Maigret is called to the high-class Hotel Majestic to investigate the body. The wife of a wealthy American has been killed - but to Maigret's surprise she has a gun in her purse. He begins to follow up the handful of clues that could explain her secret life and her demise.
22693980	/m/05zxwyg	Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade	H. R. F. Keating	1966-06		 The novel begins just after Inspector Ghote has been given the task of investigating Frank Master's murder. At the Masters Foundation for the Care of Juvenile Vagrants Ghote meets two urchins who answer to names which they have chosen for themselves from American movies: "Edward G. Robinson" and "Tarzan". Inside, Ghote meats Dr Diana Uplea, who tells him that death was the result of arsenic poisoning. The cook tells him that Frank Masters ate the same food as the orphans, which was of poor quality except for a beef curry prepared under Doctor Diana Uplea's supervision. Ghote asks to see the dishes the meal was served in and the cook reveals that he is an unreliable witness by first claiming the dishes are washed then offering an "unwashed dish" which is actually a clean dish with leftovers from the dustbin added. The interview ends when Fraulein Glucklick enters the room, interrupting Ghote. Glucklick informs Ghote that a Swami was giving a talk at the time of the murder. She also tells Ghote that Dr Diana Uplea caused no end of trouble when Masters visited Tibetan refugees in the Punjab and left Dr Uplea in charge. At this time Dr Upleigh discovered the notorious criminal Amahred Singh was hanging around the foundation and threatened him with the police. Lastly Fraulein Glucklick tells Ghote that the windows of the staff dining room are left open and on several occasions people have reached in to steal food (the implication is that someone could reach in to add poison). The next day Ghote interviews Sonny Carstairs, an Anglo-Indian dispensing chemist at the foundation. Carstairs notes that the preparation used to treat the skin disease of "Edward G. Robinson" contains arsenic. On investigation the preparation bottle is lighter than it should be. Ghote tries to take the bottle as evidence but Carstairs drops it. Under threat of arrest for destroying evidence Carstairs tells Ghote that he dropped the bottle out of shock, having realised that the only key for the dispensary is in his charge. After the interview Ghote encounters Dr Uplea who tells him Carstairs is not normally so clumsy and confirms there is only one key to the dispensary. Dr Uplea also reveals that she had "Edward G." and "Tarzan" watch on the dispensary as her car was nearby and had been recently vandalised. Ghote interrogates "Edward G." by playing along with the boy's obsession with movies. The boy tells him that he saw a man enter the dispensary with a key. Using a ride in a police wagon as a bribe, Ghote discovers that the man was Amahred Singh, who has a gold smuggling racket which the boys help with. Masters apparently found some of the gold and locked it in the dispensary. "Edward G." promises to arrange a meeting between the inspector and Singh. Ghote calls the fingerprint department and learns that Singh's fingerprints were found in the dispensary. A new interview of Sonny Carstairs, with intimidation, confirms that Carstairs gave Singh the key to dispensary because Singh threatened him. Later the same evening Chatterjee Krishna blackmailed Carstairs for the key with the knowledge that Carstairs used ether as a recreational drug. Chatterjee admits borrowing the dispensary key but then flees. Ghote gives chase and captures Chatterjee who admits entering the dispensary but denies killing Frank Masters. Ghote reluctantly accepts this. "Edward G." keeps his promise: Singh arrives and begins to answer Ghote's questions in a good-natured way. He charmingly acknowledges that he is a criminal and that the police want to hang him. Ghote tries to obtain a confession that Singh entered the dispensary. Singh refuses to give an explanation of why he was in the dispensary and notes that even he is a little afraid of Doctor Diana Uplea. The following day Ghote has an interview with the Deputy Superintendent of Police. Ghote is ordered to have Singh arrested, with false evidence if necessary, and to suppress evidence that implicates Chatterjee. The D. S. P. leaves Ghote with a warning not to be too clever. Instead of following orders, Ghote interviews Dr Uplea again. Frank Masters' visit to the Punjab is mentioned. Masters himself is described as a man of action rather than an armchair charity worker and as a man who had his eyes wide open to the evils of the world and was prepared to oppose them where he could. Threatened with arrest, "Edward G." offers to supply false evidence in return for a fee. Ghote is painfully aware that this would be acceptable to his superiors and is faced with a difficult dilemma when "Edward G." claims to have seen Singh take poison from the jar in the dispensary. Ghote resists the temptation to accept the boy's offer immediately, and hopes to use the threat of eyewitness testimony to extract information from Amahred Singh. He searches for Singh in one of the more dangerous parts of Bombay where he is attacked by one of Singh's associates and knocked unconscious. Ghote awakes to find himself in Singh's hideout in the presence of Singh himself. Singh acknowledges that he is a gold smuggler and admits entering the dispensary looking for gold that Masters had discovered and confiscated from the boys. He claims he found no gold, denies taking the poison and reveals that he knows Chatterjee also entered the dispensary. The next day Ghote visits Chatterjee and obtains the address of "Tarzan's" family. Ghote has deduced that the boy's family are a link in Singh's Gold smuggling pipeline as they are fishermen and have a boat. Ghote visits the family, posing as a social worker. After his visit he keeps them under surveillance but his search fails to find any gold when they return to shore. Feeling defeated, Ghote has Chatterjee brought to the police station for interrogation. Chatterjee describes Frank Masters as at times overgenerous which caused trouble at the foundation. On such occasions Masters responded with further acts of generosity, but often failed to follow through with his good works. The following evening Ghote has a row with his wife. It ends with Ghote revealing that he has saved 500 rupees for a refrigerator, which will cost over 1100 rupees. He agrees to buy the refrigerator tomorrow and borrow the outstanding amount. The next day, after getting the money out of his savings account, Ghote again visits "Tarzan's" family and discovers Singh keeping watch on them. He accuses Singh of murdering Masters, Singh denies it and claims ignorance of where the poison was kept. Singh tries to bribe Ghote then berates Masters acts of charity as acts of vanity. Ghote resolves to give his refrigerator money to the fisher family and soon after does so. Returning to the foundation Ghote again encounters "Edward G." who also mocks Masters charity as mere egotism. Ghote realises that he has heard variations of this opinion from several people and that it must be true. Doctor Diana Uplea is the only person who has contradicted this view of Frank Masters. Ghote finds Dr Uplea, who tells him that Masters was a bad administrator who would not accept advice and a poor judge of character who allowed himself to be fooled by Amahred Singh. Hearing this causes Ghote to regret giving his refrigerator money to the fisher family and he hurries away in hope of retrieving it. At their home Ghote discovers that the stepmother spent every penny on funding the village's holy day fiesta. Despairing, Ghote chances upon Singh digging something up. Singh flees but Ghote chases and arrests him. Inspector Patel of Indian Customs and Excise meets Ghote at the Bombay railway station. Patel takes Singh into his own custody, noting that Ghote had no authority to arrest Singh for a smuggling offence. Ghote tells his wife he has given his money to the poor. His wife, Protima, is furious. The argument ends when Ghote tells Protima that the family used the money to celebrate the village's holy day and they both begin laughing. Ghote recounts the important details of the case to his wife, who remarks that a person can become sick without poison. Ghote has a revelation and solves the case. At the foundation Ghote finds Dr Uplea about to fire the cook which she claims she has the authority to do now Frank Masters is dead. Chatterjee tries to make peace but Carstairs agrees the cook is terrible and that Dr Uplea is in charge. Ghote announces he knows the identity of the murderer. Dr Uplea invites Ghote to arrest Chatterjee but Ghote declines, explaining that neither Chatterjee nor Singh committed the crime. Ghote explains that "Edward G." told Chatterjee that Frank Masters had lost his money and was smuggling gold to support the foundation. Chatterjee believed this lie and tried to protect Masters' reputation, inadvertently implicating himself. Ghote reveals that Frank Masters became sick because of an ordinary emetic which allowed Dr Uplea to access the dispensary legitimately and administer the poison instead of a cure. Dr Uplea confesses that this is the truth and that she killed Masters because he intended to abandon the foundation and give his money to Tibetan refugees instead. After Dr Uplea has been taken away, Ghote finds himself alone with "Edward G." who reveals that the boys knew the truth all along. "Edward G." stresses that street children need to know what is going on around them, as it is a survival skill, and praises Ghote's cleverness in catching Dr Uplea. Ghote at first accepts this praise, telling the boy that the police are not always stupid, then concedes that at least some policemen have wives who cannot be tricked.
22694754	/m/05zwxcf	Computer One			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel describes a near utopia in which almost everything is automated by Computer One, with humanity's primary struggle being what to do with all its leisure time when there is very little work to be done. Though analogous to the Internet, the Computer One of the novel assumes a far greater unity of purpose and truth. Whereas the content of sites on the World Wide Web varies greatly and typically reflects the views of individual authors, Computer One provides a singe authoritative source of information with no ambiguity.
22700085	/m/05zmkxl	Only Fade Away	Bruce Marshall	1954	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A change of pace for Marshall, this book is only peripherally concerned with matters of faith and religion. Strang Methuen is an old soldier, a stiff-necked Scot who serves in the British Army in two world wars. Methuen is able to show more courage in the face of enemy fire than when dealing with friends and family—those he loves and hates. Methuen has been bullied since his school days by Hermiston. For nearly 40 years, every time he thinks he has escaped or defeated the bully, a quirk of fate makes Methuen the goat again. The very qualities that keep him from winning, integrity and personal honor, also make him a sympathetic and interesting character. A revelation about his beloved daughter almost crushes Methuen, but he recovers. The story ends when Methuen, now a Brigadier General fighting in World War II Italy, uses his experience and wiles to perform a vital military maneuver, preventing a major defeat. Unfortunately Hermiston, in an attempt to finally put things right, makes a confession which puts Methuen's achievement in a bad light. He is demoted and leaves the service in disgrace.
22700168	/m/05zjvv0	The Bishop	Bruce Marshall	1970	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This novel is a sort of 'inside look" at the workings of a fictional Roman Catholic Bishop's headquarters in the United Kingdom. The central characters are Bishop Bede Jenkins; Father Spyers, a young, recently ordained priest who serves as the Bishop's secretary; Monsignor Basil Powell, the Vicar General, who was once a Major in the Grenadier Guards; and Monsignor Finbar O'Flaherty, the administrator of the pro-Cathedral. The story opens as Father Spyers opens a new encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which prohibits Catholics the use of chemical birth control methods (physical methods had long been banned). The process of implementing perhaps the most controversial papal bull released during the Church's second millennium supplies most of the activities of the story. Marshall introduces us to the discussions and arguments within the Catholic community during this time. The Bishop finds himself embroiled in fights with his superiors over his methods of implementing the decree. Father Spyers spends time in the hospital after being struck down by an angry husband. Subplots include Monsignor Powell's counseling of a nun who wishes to leave the convent, problems that the Bishop's friend, an Anglican Bishop, experiences and the irreligious attitude of modern Englishmen. The novel touches on modern literature, the treatment of animals, modern art, cultural differences and Father Spyers' daydreams of his future papacy (interestingly he chooses Benedict XVI as his title).
22715537	/m/05zk3yp	The Death Guard			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In its tale of a chemist who creates an army of bloodthirsty plant-based humanoids out of a desire to abolish war once and for all (the rationale being that no country would attack England if it were known she possessed such a defense), the book foreshadowed the rise of nuclear weapons and Cold War politics. Continental Europe forms an alliance and invades Britain. The book is divided into three parts. In the first part of this novel we meet the inventors of the artificial life. We follow their story from their first meeting through the time when they relocate their lab to the Congo for its more conducive weather conditions. The first we hear of the matured Death Guard (nicknamed Pugs) is via a radio broadcast that is ended prematurely by the hideous death of the announcer. The next part is a tour of the process of making and growing the "pugs", as the protagonist "enlists" in one of factories and gets a firsthand look at what his uncle and grandfather had wrought. The third section recounts the war with continental Europe and the breakdown of infrastructure. Involving poisonous electric gas, "humanite" bombs (atomic bombs), and the unfeeling march of the Death Guard across the very land they were designed to protect. Later the Death Guard continues to wander unchecked across the broken landscape even after all the enemy has been killed. The resulting carnage reduces whole cities and towns in Britain to smoking rubble.
22717384	/m/05z_c6f	Landscape for a Good Woman	Carolyn Steedman			 Landscape for a Good Woman is an autobiographical class analysis which looks at the working class upbringing of famed sociologist Carolyn Steedman in 1950s London. “It is about the centrality of some narratives and the essential marginality of others, and about the stories we tell ourselves to explain our lives. Her writings emphasize and analyze the differences between her and her mother, who didn’t represent the traditional model of mother-child relationship.
22718116	/m/05zksfm	Saffy's Angel	Hilary McKay			 The novel begins with Saffron searching through the colour chart pinned up in her house, looking for her name. The characters are introduced. While Saffron searches, the health visitor is checking up on Rose, her new sister. The health visitor then discovers Rose has been sucking Caddy's paint tubes. The health visitor threatens to take Rose to Casualty. Saffron finds out that she was adopted by Bill and Eve, after Saffron's mother, who is Eve's sister, is killed in a car crash and becomes deeply upset, despite being comforted by her family. The story fast forwards to when Rose is 6 years old. Rose starts school (a year late according to the health visitor) and draws her first picture, which her teacher pastes to the wall. Rose is very upset and persuades Indigo to steal her picture and Caddy to draw an identical one to go up on the wall instead. Rose, Indigo, Saffron and Caddy's grandfather visits and Caddy has another disastrous driving lesson and tells her driving instructor, Michael about failing all her exams. Soon after their grandfather visits, he dies and leaves something to each of the children. For Cadmium, his property in Wales. For Indigo, his car. For Saffron, his angel in the garden. And for Rose, his money. After the will is read, Bill heads back down to London and while running after him, Saffron meets Sarah. Caddy has another lesson, meanwhile Saffron goes round to Sarah's house and meets her mother, Mrs Warbeck, the headmistress of the private school. Sarah begins the idea of visiting Siena, where Saffron believes the stone angel is. Sarah persuades her mother and father to take her to Siena during the term, and Sarah's mother begins to trust the two friends, and lets them go into town together. They meet up with some girls their age who all have their noses pierced. Sarah wants one too and persuades Saffron to get one done. When Sarah's mother finds out Sarah is in lots of trouble, but Saffron's nose ring is admired by her family. Soon after, Caddy scatters her revision books across the house, in order to revise everywhere and to beat her driving instructor's talented (made-up) girlfriend. Sarah perfects her plan to smuggle Saffron into Siena in her car and Saffron is forced to agree by her sisters and brother. Caddy passes her written driving test and Saffron heads off to Siena with Sarah's family. When they arrive at Siena, Sarah's family having found out three-quarters of the way there, Mrs Warbeck, Sarah and Saffron set off to find the stone angel. They discover a locked door and go back very disappointed. Sarah's father starts up a rude game marking Italians' bottoms out of ten. Saffron makes a call home and talks to her mother. Caddy is still revising to beat Michael's girlfriend, Rose is doing her art and Indigo is conquering more fears of his. Saffron and Sarah try again and again, until on the last day they find Saffron's forgotten neighbour. The neighbour tells Saffron that her grandfather took the stone angel away long ago, when he took Saffron. Meanwhile, Caddy takes her driving test. Rose and Indigo decide to look in the Banana House for Saffy's angel. Caddy is very disappointed to find she passed her driving test, because she can't have driving lessons with Michael anymore. However, Indigo and Rose persuade Caddy to drive to Wales to find Saffy's angel, Indigo's car and Caddy's house after Indigo has a brainwave. On the way there, Rose holds up lots of signs to make up for Caddy's nervous driving. When they arrive in Wales, they find barbed wire around Caddy's house with a large 'Keep Out' sign plastered on. But, they climb over and find Indigo's wrecked car with a chest in the back, nailed tightly shut. They return home to find Saffy and Sarah back from Siena. Bill also has arrived home, and has to have everything explained to him by Saffron and the rest of the family. Bill opens the box and finds Saffy's stone angel in pieces. Saffron is delighted to have found the box. Caddy is going to university in London, after passing all of her exams. Before Caddy goes, however, Caddy finds the perfect resin and paint, to stick Saffy's angel back together right before she leaves. Saffy finds out that she belongs in the casson family and there is no place like home.
22721326	/m/05zk2lf	The Seer	David Stahler, Jr.	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After leaving Harmony, Jacob is following the trail to find Delaney Carrow, a girl presumed dead. By homing in on her sounder, he meets Xander, an ex-mercenary for the Mixel corporation. Xander initially gives Jacob a hard time, but as the weeks pass, he warms to the kid he calls "blinder". Jacob, once again homing in on Delaney's sounder, discovers that Xander has it. When he confronts Xander (using a kitchen knife of all things) he discovers that Xander had given Delaney a ride, and left her on the doorsteps of Mixel. In desperation, Jacob begs Xander to take him to Melville, to see if he can find Delaney. Xander is against it at first, but he eventually caves in and takes him to Mixel tower, where they discover that Delaney has become a pop-star, and has also been changed; given artificial eyes so that she can see. But Delaney is not happy. In truth, she is a prisoner in Mixel tower, and Jacob hatches a plan with Xander to free her from Mixel. Later, Jacob starts having visions, first about Delaney and Harmony, but later on, bits and pieces of these visions come true and he realizes that he is starting to be able to see future events. With this new power, he is able to get his companions out of difficult situations. One night, he has a vision of a boy telling him that there are people like him out there, Blinders turned Seers. However, the message garbles before Jacob can hear the location of the colony, so Jacob decides to revisit Harmony to seek answers. Upon returning to Harmony, Jacob and Delaney pay a visit to the high councilor's house where Delaney tells her father of her return. The high councilor tries to strangle his daughter, but is presumably killed by Jacob, and she escapes while Jacob heads to the ghostbox. He begins asking the ghostbox if there are other people like him out there. The ghostbox then tells Jacob that there are others like him, people who were born blind and have gained the ability to see (called "abominations" by the ghostbox), who were supposed to be killed rather than simply having their sight taken away as Jacob believed before. Jacob then proceeds to ask the ghostbox where the other escaped Seers might be, and discovers from the machine that they could on the colony of Tieresias. Eventually, he is detected by listeners who chase him throughout Harmony. They fail to catch him and he and his companions make a hasty escape away from the colony.
22725549	/m/05zznpx	Tell All	Chuck Palahniuk	2010		 The novel, an homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood, is narrated by Hazel "Hazie" Coogan, a lifelong employee and caretaker of aging actress Katherine "Miss Kathie" Kenton. When a suitor named Webster Carlton Westward III manages to weasel his way into Miss Kathie’s heart (and bed), Hazie is suspicious. Upon discovering that Westward has already written a celebrity tell-all memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman–penned musical extravaganza, Hazie worries that Westward's intentions may be less than honorable, and may even be deadly.
22730982	/m/05zrzmj	Free Land	Rose Wilder Lane	1938	{"/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 It is 1880s - David Beaton and his bride come to Dakota to claim three hundred acres of grassland. But they have to struggle to survive. The young couple experience cyclones, droughts, and blizzards that isolate them for days from the rest of the world.
22738336	/m/05zvzj6	My Life Starring Mum				 The novel is written in diary form. It starts with Hollywood at her Convent School. The Reverend Mother tells Holly she has received a call from her mother, asking her to come back to London to live with her because Kandhi is worried about security. Hollywood returns to New York to find her new deluxe home halfway through renovation. Meanwhile her mum is filming a new movie, and when she announces she is going to be married to her British co-star, Hollywood is not happy.
22739340	/m/05zthjd	The Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark	Ridley Pearson	2005	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 For many nights, Finn has been appearing in Disney parks as a DHI ("Disney Host Interactive") and a hologram, while he is asleep. Finn realizes that these are no dreams, and are actually happening. While in the empty park one night, he meets Wayne, an elderly cast member and original Imagineer. Wayne tells Finn that he must find the other kid hosts and arrive at the park at the same time or else Disney is in danger. There is a mysterious group called The Overtakers, who plan to take over the parks and maybe the world. Finn doesn't believe Wayne, and Wayne sends Finn back to his real body by pressing a red button on a black fob. The next night he finds himself back in the empty dark park as his DHI. This time, he sees two of the other DHIs Charlene and Philby, and to make matters scarier, a group of pirate Audio-animatronics from Pirates of the Caribbean ride around in cars from Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, and they shoot lasers at Finn. Finn wakes up and sees the laser burns on his real body, his mom asks him what happened so he lies and says that a bully burnt him with a cigarette. During the day Finn and his strange new friend, Amanda track down the other four hosts Willa, Philby, Maybeck and Charlene. Finn tells them they're not alone in appearing to the park at night. He said they must all go to sleep at night at the same time and appear in the park at the same time. Finn and Amanda also decide to do investigating of their own, and head to the Magic Kingdom in the afternoon. Security guards see the real Finn and Finn's DHI so they decide to chase after him. After Finn and Amanda reunite at The Haunted Mansion, the two decide something is wrong in the park. That night, the 5 DHIs unite at the park and meet up with Wayne. Here they discover that the park comes to life after hours, and Wayne explains to them that something is going wrong in the parks- rides closing, costumes disappearing, Audio-animatronics coming to life, and padlocks stolen. Wayne takes them into the Country Bear Jamboree, where he tells them how Magic Kingdom and the world outside its walls are endangered by the Overtakers. After showing the kids a secret passageway through Cinderella's Castle called Escher's Keep that is a secret apartment to escape the DHI world. Wayne explains that the DHI system was created especially for this purpose, as they needed 5 teenagers to unravel an old fable by Walt Disney himself- The Stonecutters Quill. The fable concerns a stonecutter, who wishes to be: the sun, the clouds, the wind, and the mountains. Along with the fable came a quote- "I have plans to put this place in a different perspective". Realizing that all four subjects of the matter are in multiple attractions around the park, and must be what Walt meant, the five kids decide to set out to find clues to stop the Overtakers around the park. The plot unfolds as the group searches through the park's attractions for clues as to what can stop the Overtakers. The kids look up information about Walt Disney, the parks, and research DHI technology. In the day time, the kids keep in touch through the online game VMK, and at night they meet up in the park as their DHIs and search. Unfortunately, as they search, they hit some road blocks; they can't find anything in the attractions, no matter how hard they look. Another problem is the Overtakers getting in the way- the kids ride in its a small world, and the animatronic dolls come to life and attack and bite at the kids. The ride ends up broken at the end of the night and closed. Another problem is the suspiciousness around Finn's friend Amanda. She follows Finn around, begging to know whats going on, and appears out of nowhere. Finn notes that when she runs, she seems to float. Another problem following the kids is one of the Overtakers, the evil fairy Maleficent from "Sleeping Beauty" (1959 film). Maleficent seems to have powers over cold- she can blast ice, freeze people, and create ice wherever she goes and whatever she touches. The kids seem to get colder than normal when she appears. The kids also (coincidentally) play separate sports at the Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex. At the sports games, Finn meets a girl named Jez-(she says it's short for Jezebel). She seems to take a liking to Finn and follows him around, and she and Amanda seem not to like each other. Meanwhile, Finn deciphers the quote from Walt Disney in the 50s, and realizes by "different perspective", he meant things being in 3D, as they were wildly popular in the 50s. Supposing that Walt planned this whole thing out, Finn gets 3D glasses, and the teens go around the attractions across various nights, looking for clues and letters: *Finn and Philby float through the water of Splash Mountain, only to have Maleficent activate the ride. They go over the final drop and almost get killed, but manage to climb into an upcoming log and, using the 3D glasses, find letters on the walls in the cloud reference at the end of the ride. *Charlene and Willa visit the park during the day and ride The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh for the wind reference. Maleficent gets their honey pot car alone in a scene, locks the doors, and sets off the water system, almost drowning and suffocating the girls to the ceiling. The two break the door foundation, and escape, but getting the clues on the ride along the way. *At night, the girls and Maybeck recheck It's a Small World for the sun reference and find the letters. *Finally, Finn and Philby, looking for the mountain reference, climb the tracks of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. However, Maleficent brings the attraction to life, bringing to life a giant skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. While gaining the clues, the two boys outrun the dinosaur on the track and the skeleton breaks apart over the attraction. Another problem in their journey occurs when Maybeck's DHI never returns one night. In real life, Maybeck is trapped asleep, as his DHI is still in the Magic Kingdom. Finn and Philby (as DHIs) realize that the Overtakers must've put Maybeck in a dark place where his screams cannot be heard - Space Mountain. Finn and Philby use a rope from Wayne's apartment over the Main Street Firestation to climb the building and scale the catwalks and tracks until they find him tied up in a closet. Using their DHI powers, Finn becomes light and rescues Maybeck. Maybeck reveals that it was Maleficent and Jez; he had agreed to meet Jez on a date, but she was really Maleficent's evil slave. This scare seems to make the kids stop coming back at night for very long, and the five resume their normal lives. While riding bikes with Amanda days later, Finn catches a glimpse of Maleficent on a motorcycle, going after them. Riding through a skate park to escape, Amanda seems to create some sort of magic to help Finn escape, and leaves him speechless. Eventually, the five kids return to the park at night again to get the rest of the letters on the attractions, which seem to spell out "MY FIRST PEN". They soon learn that the secret weapon they need is Walt Disney's first pen, which is kept at the One Man's Dream exhibit at Disney's Hollywood Studios (Disney-MGM). Finn infiltrates the exhibit after closing to get the pen. However, he grabs a whole handful of pens and pencils and tries to escape, when he hears security coming, and realizes he's been ratted out. However, before he escapes, Maleficent steals Walt's original plans and designs for the parks. Finn escapes and discovers that it was Amanda. Finn thinks Amanda is an Overtaker and has been setting him up. Finn leaves her in anger. On an evening school field trip to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, where everyone is in a costume, Finn (who brought the pens and pencils from the One Man's Dream display) meets up with the other four DHIs. While meeting up at the party, Amanda and Charlene suddenly faint at the same time. Finn spies Maleficent and Jez descending into Pirates of the Caribbean. Finn, Maybeck, and Philby follow the two into the corridors and underground passageways of the attraction and discover large jail cells, with brand new padlocks, reported to have been stolen only recently. The three realize that the witches must be planning to lock all the Cast Members in the cells below the ride. The three continue, only to be cornered by Maleficent and Jez, who purposely led the three down below. Using Walt's pen, Finn realizes it has some sort of powers, and stuns the witch and electrifies her with it. Maleficent faints and Jez is forced to revive Amanda and Charlene. Now knowing Maleficents plans and what must be done, the kids and Wayne realize they must catch her and retrieve the stolen plans. However, when the kids and Wayne meet the next morning at the Transportation and Ticket Center, Wayne has brought along Amanda. Wayne has the five kids dress up as costumed cast members found around the park, and sends them into the utilidors for cast members beneath the park. While the two girls (and Amanda) man the park overhead, the three guys head for the coldest room of all in the utilidors- the computer room, seeing how Maleficent is all about cold. Luring her out of the computer room by pretending to give her the pen, Finn electrifies the witch again, grabs the plans, and the 3 boys rush off into the park with the plans and the pen, and Maleficent after them. Philby and Maybeck meet up with Charlene and Willa and escape back to Wayne. In a battle outside Tomorrowland (which is believed to be a show by park guests), Finn becomes his DHI (during the day!) and knocks over the witch and he steps into Jez, nothing but light. She tries to step out of him, but he knows her every move. In an effort to try to rid herself of him, she spins extremely fast, and now they are one: spinning and glowing. While she is spinning she is slowly transforming into a brighter girl, a girl almost identical to Amanda. Finn realizes the two are twins, twin witches, and Jez had been under a spell by Maleficent. Her real name is Jess. The two joyfully reunite and thank Finn, who escapes down a garbage chute with the plans and the pens, and Maleficent giving chase. Finn ends up in a large bin of trash and escapes, while Maleficent lands in a giant net, closed and captured by the Disney Imagineers. Finally, the witch has been caught and peace restores. Hours later, Maleficent is locked up in her own jail cell in the queue of Pirates of the Caribbean, and the kids rejoice in the Cinderella Castle apartment because Amanda and Jess have reunited, the riddle has been solved, Walt's first pen has been found, and everything has been restored to normal around Walt Disney World. Finn touches Walt's first magical pen to the recovered plans of the park, causing the Magic Kingdom to illuminate, and the park becomes more magical as the rides magically become fixed, everything returns to tip-top shape, and the most elaborate fireworks the park had ever seen go off in the night sky. The five kids watch the park light up in the same path as they did on the map, and the plans illuminate as they celebrate a happy end. Wayne then returns to his desk, picks up the black remote and presses the button.
22739473	/m/05znvr_	Looking for JJ	Anne Cassidy	2004	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book centers around Alice Tully, a 16 year old waitress who is living in Croydon. She has a boyfriend called Frankie, and lives with a carer called Rosie. She killed her friend, Michelle, when she was 10 years old, as Jennifer Jones, and had been released from jail 6 months previously. The book follows certain parts of the story such as Alice now, Jennifer and the killing, and her new identity when the press expose her at the end of the book. There are four sections in the book: the first is in the mindset of Alice Tully, the second of Jennifer Jones (going into details of her childhood, showing her mother's descent into prostitution and the build up to the crime), the third of Alice Tully (as her identity is revealed) and the last of Kat Rickan (Jennifer's new identity).
22748367	/m/05zkvx6	Changes	Jim Butcher	2010-04-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Susan Rodriguez contacts Dresden to tell him they have a daughter, Margaret Angelica, who was born after the events of Death Masks. Dresden's daughter has been kidnapped by the Red Court. After Susan and Martin arrive, Susan explains the circumstances of Maggie's birth. Now determined to track down his daughter, and struggling with rage, guilt and other emotions over Maggie's birth, Dresden attempts to track her down by infiltrating a nearby Red Court outpost. The attempt is complicated by the fact that the outpost is Dresden's office building, which has been purchased by the Red Court. The attempt is further derailed by the arrival of a team of Red Court vampires. Dresden battles them, and the trio escapes. The building is detonated by the Red Court moments later. The information Susan and Martin managed to harvest, however, implicates that Duchess Arianna, the widow of a Red Court duke that Dresden killed several years earlier, is behind the kidnapping. Dresden goes to Edinburgh to seek help from the Council. However, upon his arrival, he discovers Arianna is there, hosting a peace conference with the rest of the Council. Dresden openly challenges Arianna to a duel to the death over his daughter's kidnapping, but is prevented from carrying it through by the other members of the Council. Infuriated, Dresden returns home. Dresden learns from Karrin Murphy that Rudolph, who used to work in Special Investigations, is now implicating him in the explosion, and that he is being pushed to do so by someone. Due to Rudolph's accusation, the FBI and a SWAT team arrive at Dresden's apartment to arrest and interrogate him. Dresden flees to the Nevernever with any items that could be considered "illegal" (including Bob and the two Knights of the Cross swords in his possession, but is forced to return after barely escaping a fight with an enormous centipede with his life (leaving behind his items buried for safe keeping), and is arrested. Because the FBI lack evidence and charges, and because of the level-headedness of Special Agent Tilly, Dresden is released, but not before wasting valuable time. Returning to his home, he discovers that Leanansidhe has immobilized Susan and Martin assuming they're intruders. After realizing that his Mother left him something, he asks the Leanansidhe if his mother left her anything to safeguard for him. He receives a magical ruby representing the summary of his mother's considerable knowledge of the Ways, which are safe passages through the hazardous Nevernever. Dresden is obliquely directed to Johnnie Marcone, who, in turn, directs Dresden to Ms. Gard, his supernatural consultant. Ms. Gard transports Dresden to the headquarters of her employer, Monoc Securities. She introduces Dresden to the CEO, Donar Vadderung, who Dresden realizes is actually Odin. Odin freely gives Dresden the truth of the matter. The Red Court is going to use Margaret for a powerful rite of Death Magic at Chichén Itzá, which is a conjunction of a number of Ley Lines, powerful rivers of magical energy. If successful, the blood curse will kill everyone who shares a relation to Maggy, including Dresden himself. Dresden decides to investigate Rudolph, the FBI agent who implicated him in the office explosion, realizing that he must have implicated Dresden because of pressure coming from the Red Court. Knowing the Red Court will now want Rudolph dead since his usefulness has run out, Dresden hopes to get information from the Red Court's assassins. It turns out that the same husband-wife pair of vampires who coordinated the Office operation, Esmerelda and Estaban, are the ones pressuring Rudolph and bring along a Mayan demon, known as a Devourer, to assist. With the aid of Mouse, Molly and Thomas, who Harry enlists in the rescue effort, the Eebs are beaten and flee. However, when Thomas nearly feeds on Molly because of his injuries, a disgusted and angry Dresden orders him to leave until he can control himself. The Eebs, later firebomb his apartment; after waking his elderly landlady, Dresden attempts to save the other occupants of the building, but breaks his spine after falling off of a ladder. He is taken to Father Forthill's Church. After asking the archangel Uriel for help, Dresden realizes that he can no longer refuse power on moral grounds alone; to save his daughter, he calls upon Mab, the Winter Queen, and takes on the mantle of the Winter Knight. Healed of his injuries, Harry survives an assassination attempt by a local hitman, but is shocked to learn that it was apparently Susan who placed the hit on him (though he realizes that it could have be Esmerelda using her abilities to create masks to look like Susan). When he attempts to find her, however, he discovers that Susan has been arrested for questioning, having also been implicated in the Office explosion; Harry goes to the office building to free her. However, the Eebs bring a host of Red Court vampires, and the Devourer, in a direct assault on the FBI office building to kill Harry, Martin and Susan. Special Agent Tilly allies himself with the three to escape the ambush. They manage to get the remaining agents out of harm's way - Murphy and Tilly escape through a back door, but the vampires continue to hound Dresden and Susan, who attempt to escape the ambush into the Nevernever. The Eebs pursue him, along with their vampire host and the Devourer; however, the corresponding location in the Nevernever is the home of the Erlking, a powerful fairy who holds a grudge against Dresden. Dresden, who is now at the center of the Erlking's power, manages to impress him with his quick wit, but the Eebs accuse Dresden of orchestrating the move into the Erlking's realm to bring him into the war between the Vampire Courts and the White Council. The Erlking orders them to duel to determine who is telling the truth; Harry and Susan face and finally kill the Devourer, plus a minor vampire. The Eebs and their hosts are taken away to be tortured by the Erlking and his minions, and Harry and Susan are allowed to leave. The Leanansidhe, who has been assigned by Mab to ensure Harry's final quest is successful so he can take on the duties of the Winter Knight, transports Harry, Molly, Susan, Martin, Thomas and herself to the location where Harry can open the first of a set of Ways to get to Chichen Itza. Along the way, she enchants the clothes and weapons of Dresden and Susan to protect them and allow Susan to disappear completely. Lea also brings Dresden his bag of goodies that he had buried in the Nevernever including the two swords and Bob. Harry convinces Susan to take up Ammorachius, the sword of Love, and Murphy to take up Fidelacchius, the sword of Faith. Included in the bag is a sending stone he uses to communicate with Ebenezar, who has been trying to reach him. Eb had already told him that the Grey Council couldn't help with his quest to save the girl, but Dresden finally tells Eb that the girl is his daughter, causing Eb to encourage Dresden to continue. Using his mother's gem, Dresden opens a series of Ways to arrive at Chichén Itzá. However, the jungle is too thick, and they cannot reach the main temple in time. However, the Leanansidhe turns Dresden and his cohorts into hounds, allowing them to easily race through the dense jungle to the Main Temple. Confronting the Red Court, the Red King grants Harry an audience. Speaking through an interpreter, the Red King agrees to allow Dresden to duel Arianna in exchange for Maggie's life. After a protracted battle with Arianna, Dresden finally kills her. However, the Red King refuses to honor their agreement, claiming that because he never spoke a word to Dresden, the agreement was void. He orders Maggie's immediate sacrifice. Susan, Sanya and Murphy effectively wield the Swords against the most ancient vampires, the Lords of the Outer Night. The Lords have become much more than vampires thanks to the worship of the ancient Mayans, to whom they had posed as gods. Harry's group finally cuts its way to the temple. At a signal from the Leanansidhe, the Grey Council appears at Chichen Itza through a Way, and joins the battle. At the battle's climax, Dresden rushes into the Sacrificial Room to stop the ritual. Susan (invisible thanks to Lea's illusions) holds Ammorachius forth over Maggie, causing a holy glow of unknown source, which causes the vampires to hesitate. Martin appears and destroys the illusion, betraying Susan, before calmly explaining to Susan and Dresden that he has always been a Red Court spy in the Fellowship of Saint Giles. After he reveals that he betrayed Maggie's location to the Red King, Susan goes berserk and tears out Martin's throat. Drinking his blood completes her transformation into a Red Court vampire. As Martin dies, he and Dresden soulgaze. Dresden learns that all of Martin's actions have been a 200-year-long con run on the Red Court with the end goal of putting someone in a position to destroy the entire Red Court in one blow. Betraying Maggie to Arianna was the only way to ensure that Dresden would be in such a position. The distraction of Susan killing Martin allows Harry and Lea to destroy Harry's prison, and Harry is able to overpower the Red King in a brief struggle. Dresden carries her to the altar and cuts her throat, unleashing the Bloodline Curse upon the red court and killing every last one since Susan is now the youngest vampire of the Red Court. The few half vampires who are not killed by the removal of their vampire halves, as well as the Red King's Mortal followers, are almost all destroyed by the angered captives the Red Court planned to murder. Exhausted and in shock, Dresden holds Maggie on the temple steps. He speaks with Ebenezar, who explains how the Red Court must have found out about their family ties (Dresden realized during the battle that Ebenezar is his grandfather, but Eb never told anyone for fear that they would use it against Ebenezar. Arianna had figured it out years before when she saw Dresden's mother and Ebenezar fighting like family. The point of the blood curse was to kill Ebenezar who was the most powerful wizard alive, along with Dresden). Dresden realizes he can never provide the sort of home for Maggie he wants her to have and asks that she be placed in the safest possible place. Sometime later, having no apartment to return to, Dresden is on the Water Beetle, recovering. He showers and changes in preparation for a potentially romantic interlude with Karrin Murphy, who is depressed after learning her job as a police officer will be lost due to Rudolph's machinations. Tense and nervous, Dresden goes onto the deck to get some air, only to be shot and fall over the boat's edge into the cold waters of Lake Michigan.
22748513	/m/05zr7tl	The Fort at River's Bend	Jack Whyte	1999	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Party of Merlyn and Arthur arrive at Ravenglass and are welcomed by King Derek. Upon their arrival they find out that the commander of the Sons of Condran's navy, Liam, is also in the port. The crews are both unarmed, because Derek maintains the port of Ravenglass as a neutral, weapons-free zone, but Liam has hostile intentions for his visit. After Merlyn arrives, Liam attempts to capture Ravenglass in order to turn it into his own kingdom. Shelagh, however, is able to kill Liam before his crew captures the king. They slaughter the crews of the ships in port but find out that the rest of his fleet is supposed to land to help take the city. Merlyn and his party arrange the defenses of Ravenglass and, along with the help of the local people, are able to repel and intimidate the fleet into flight. Merlyn had originally approached Ravenglass in order to find a place to safely raise Arthur away from enemies at home. Originally Derek had refused Merlyn sanctuary. However, since they helped in the defense of his kingdom, he agrees for Merlyn to move his people to a Roman fort Mediabogdum, a Roman fort on the edge of Ravenglass's lands. The party moves to the fort and Dedalus is able to rebuild the baths, while the rest of the party works on rebuilding several of the barracks. The Party remains at Mediobogdum for several years after. While there Merlyn commissions duplicates of the sword cast by Publius Varrus from the Lady of the Lake statue. They are used, along with a method developed using wooden Roman practice swords, to train Arthur and his friends how to fight. Before the end of this book, a raiding party from the Sons of Chondran try to attack the city but are cast upon the shore by a violent storm. Merlyn uses this event to teach Arthur of the value of human lives. By the end of the chapter, Merlyn has become romantically involved with a woman from Ravenglass who, along with forty others from the town, have been brought to settle in the fort to help maintain its productivity. On a previous visit Merlyn and Ambrosius had decided that a garrison should support Merlyn's party, and that expedition arrives at the beginning of the book. The party continues to live at Mediobogdum, and Arthur shows his prowess as a leader, deciding to begin training some of his other friends from Ravenglass in the combat style that Merlyn designed for him. A winter has many negative events: Lucanus dies, Rufio, one of Merlyn warrior companions, is attacked by a bear and loses the use of his right arm and news of Ironhair causing political problems in Cambria reaches Merlyn via a letter from Ambrosius. Because of the letter, Merlyn decides that it would be best to return to Camulod to assist in the military campaign soon to ensue.
22752263	/m/05zzkcm	The Iciest Sin	H. R. F. Keating		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Senior government official, Mr Mistry, requests Ghote's assistance on a "private matter". Mr Mistry's neighbour, Miss Daruwala, is blackmailing a Mr Pipewalla. Ghote is told to break into Daruwala's flat, spy on her then use what he sees to force her to leave India. Ghote considers this housebreaking and blackmail but cannot refuse. At home Ghote's son, Ved, attempts to blackmail Ghote into buying a computer by threatening to tell Protima, Ghote's wife, their television was bought on the black market. The next day Ghote blackmails a locksmith to get keys to Miss Daruwala's apartment, which Ghote's searches until she returns with Dr Edul Commissariat, a famous scientist. Ghote hides overhears that Commissariat submitted someone else's thesis as own work. Miss Daruwala demands "one lakh in cash" (100,000 rupees). Commissariat murders Miss Daruwala with a swordstick and burns the documents that incriminate her victims. Afterwards, Ghote leaves his hiding place. He did not arrest Commissariat because the Doctor is a humanitarian and Miss Daruwala's was a blackmailer. Feeling responsible Dr Commissariat's fate, Ghote tells Mr Mistry that Daruwala is dead but not who murdered her. Inspector Arjun Singh of Crime Branch investigates the murder, reported by Ghote's anonymous phone call. Ghote's is assigned to a blackmail case. Tabloid newspaper, Gup Shup, has blackmailed people into paying for an entry in Indians of Merit and Distinction. Freddy Kersasp is the ringleader but the evidence points to his office manager, Shiv Chand. Ghote arranges a sting operation, in which two people witness the payment. Ghote returns home and finds Mr Ranchod, Mr Mistry's servant, waiting. Ranchod believes Ghote is blackmailing the murderer. Unwilling to tell Ranchod the truth, Ghote pays him one hundred rupees. Ghote's sting operation goes well and Shiv Chand is arrested. Chand refuses to testify against Freddy Kersasp who is in the USA. Days pass. Inspector Singh's investigation makes no progress. Ranchod demands more money. Kersasp returns and fires Chand. Chand tells Ghote everything, but Kersasp's blackmail victims refuse to testify. Ghote learns that Kersasp was the prime suspect in a robbery and murder thirty-seven years ago. Enquiries in England reveal that Kersasp did not raise the funds to start his newspaper by running a magazine there, as he claimed. There is insufficient evidence to convict Kersasp, but Ghote is ordered to blackmail him into leaving the country. Ghote does so. Ghote refuses to pay Ranchod when they next meet and several weeks go by. Then Inspector Singh is transferred to the Vigilance Branch of Bombay Police (Internal Affairs) and the Daruwala murder case abandoned. The next morning a notorious gangster, Mama Chiplunkar, approaches Ghtoe. Ranchod has spoken to Chiplunkar who intends to blackmail Ghote for confidential information. The following day Chiplunkar repeats his demand and Ghote gives in. In court Shiv Chand is found guilty. Ghote plans to push Chiplunkar under a train and arranges a meeting with Chiplunkar at Grant Road Station, using information about a raid as bait. A perfect opportunity to kill Chiplunkar arises but Ghote cannot bring himself to do it. Ghote rejects Chiplunkar's blackmail attempt and escapes on a train. Ghote considers suicide, as he believes Chiplunkar will soon expose and disgrace him. He waits two days then learns Chiplunkar has fled to Ahmedabad. Ghote is called to the assistant commissioners office where he learns Chiplunkar has purchased Daruwala's flat as a hideout. Ghote deduces that Ranchod is hidden there, waiting for Chiplunkar's order to testify against Ghote. In spite of this, Ghote assists the search team in entering the property. Inside they find Ranchod dead from an overdose of narcotics. Chiplunkar returns home and is arrested for drug possession. Anything Chiplunkar says about Ghote will be ignored without Ranchod. Ghote goes home and tells Ved that he can have the computer.
22753864	/m/05zl1mt	Being Nikki	Meg Cabot	2009-05-05	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel begins with us meeting Emerson Watts as she is on a model shoot in St. Johns, clinging onto a rock cliff over a group of nurse sharks, for a commercial for Stark Brand deodorant. She suddenly falls into the water and is rescued by her on-and-off "boyfriend" Brandon Stark (the son of her boss Robert Stark, C.E.O of mega-corporation "Stark Enterprises"). Later on at the hotel, Em gets a call from her apartment man saying a man keeps coming to her door. Em finds out the man that keeps coming to the door was Nikki's brother, Steven, there giving her the news that their mother (i.e. Nikki'and Steven's mother) has gone missing. Em tries to convince Steven she doesn't know anything, but barely gets him to believe her "amnesia" story. Lulu, attracted Steven, asks him to stay with them at the loft. During his time at the loft, Em notices that they have been bugged and begins to watch what she says and does there and in other places around the house. Shortly after all this drama, Em decided to go see her real family (who are being bugged too), and comes to the realization that she can't really go back to her old life after she realizes that she couldn't see her grandmother that Christmas. As she left her family's apartment in tears and was greeted by Christopher, who asked her to come up to his apartment (which was also being bugged) and began to talk with her about his plans to take down Stark Enterprises for "killing" Em. Em also considers that Christopher must have loved Em after she sees a picture of her in his bedroom. He also says that he can help her find Nikki's mother if Em can get him an account name and password for a Stark Employee. Em reluctantly agrees to help. Em and several other models from Stark Enterprises are having a rehearsal for the Stark Angels fashion show for the upcoming New Year's Eve. While the models in their pairs of wings are lining up in a queue to get on stage, a model named Veronica who was standing in front of Em in the queue warns Em to stop sending romantic emails to her boyfriend Justin Bay. Em tells her that she has not been emailing to Justin, saying that it was another girl using her name, but Veronica doesn't believe her. As Em completes her run and heads for the end of the catwalk, she trips over a pile of feathers seemingly ripped off a pair of Stark Angel wings, believing that it was Veronica who set it up. After the accident Em was taken to Dr Higgins' office and had a discussion about parts of her body that are in pain. Em says she is fine but while the doctor was typing her user name and password on a Stark Employee login site, Em sees it to give both the user name and password to Christopher. After that, at the annual party that Nikki and Lulu hold, Christopher turns up unexpectedly and asks to speak to Nikki (Em) in private. They then go into her room, where Christopher then starts kissing her. Between a kiss, he mutters the word "Em". When it finally dawns on Em what he just said, she asks him and he says that he knows its really her as he saw her document when he was hacking into the Stark mainframe. He also confesses that he had always loved her and is regretful that it took her death for him to finally see it. Brandon bursts into the room and sees Christopher with Em but tells Em that her sister Frida (who wasn't invited but eventually invites herself to the party wearing inappropriate clothing)is vomiting and had been lied to by Justin Bay about alcohol being in the fruit punch; Gabriel Luna is trying to help her. Em comes up to Justin and asks for his cellphone but Justin refuses to. With some help from Gabriel, Christopher chokes Justin so he will give his cellphone to Em. Em and Christopher go through Justin's messages and finds Nikki Howard's romantic message, asking Felix to track down the person who wrote this. Felix tracks the message to the house of Dr. Jonathan Fong, a Stark neurosurgeon who lives in Westchester using Brandon's car. After they go there, they realize that Nikki's mom and Nikki herself (but in another person's body) is alive. Dr. Fong then explains why he did all those things and even says that he has been hiding Nikki and her mom there otherwise Stark will kill all the 3 of them. Soon, Brandon enters the house, after being asleep in the car. He threatens Em and tells her she must now be his girlfriend, and must help him destroy his fathers career, while telling Em to break up with Christopher. She unwillingly does so, and he takes Em, Nikki, and Mrs. Howard to his summer house, where they will be safe from Stark.
22756099	/m/05zzpkg	Like	Ali Smith	1997		 The novel is told in two parts: the first is set in present-day Scotland where Amy Shone, a seemingly itinerant and illiterate drifter has just found work as the caretaker of a caravan site and camping ground. She lives with her nearly eight-year old daughter, Kate, and their patchwork lives are thrown into relief with glimpses of Amy's more glamorous past, when she was a Cambridge scholar. When a random phone call for an interview brings mention of her one-time friendship with a young actress named Aisling (Ash) McCarthy, the mysteries of Amy's unraveled life begin to settle. The second half of the book is a journal, written by Amy's old friend and actress, Aisling McCarthy, found in a box of Amy's old journals that her daughter Kate has read. Ash's journal is a headlong rush through her relationship with Amy from its dizzy beginning to its fiery end. Ash's journal highlights a tale of opposites - with twin desires as well as a subtle metaphor of Scotland and England themselves: two countries forever connected and forever apart.
22757474	/m/05zwg0s	Wednesday Is Indigo Blue	Richard Cytowic	2009-04		 The introduction likens the "cross-talk" occurring in the brain producing synesthetic experiences to weather patterns in coastal regions where there are no barriers and all of the elements interact. Normally communication in the brain is like weather in the Rocky Mountain regions, where weather can be isolated in one spot independent of weather systems close by. Chapter 1, "What color is Tuesday?", describes some of the early and still common resistance to the existence and study of synesthesia, and explains the fundamental characteristics necessary to "diagnose" synesthesia. The authors advocate the usefulness of introspective reports as they can later be useful in developing third-party tests for such purposes. Form constants are introduced as part of a framework to study visual synesthetic concurrents (the involuntary response in another sense). Chapter 2 builds on Chapter 1, discussing the types of synesthesia and the methods used to make a synesthesia diagnosis such as variations on stroop tests. The potential benefits of synesthesia are expanded on, including its correlation with eidetic memory and experience of a wider ranger of color. Chapter 3 discusses grapheme-color synesthesia in detail and describes the case of Solomon Shereshevsky.
22765663	/m/05zlyvm	The Gallifrey Chronicles	Lance Parkin			 The Eighth Doctor accompanied by Fitz Kreiner and Trix MacMillan, overthrows the tyrant Mondova on an alien world, prevents a time travelling alien from interfering in Ancient Roman history and stops a Dalek (never named as such, but heavily implied) invasion of Mars. Against this backdrop, Fitz and Trix have begun a relationship and decide to leave the TARDIS. The Doctor returns to Earth in 2005, materialising at the grave of Sam Jones. When the Doctor claims not to remember his former companion, Fitz becomes angry and leaves with Trix. As the pair attempt to readjust to normal life, it is revealed that Trix has been secretly passing information gain on their travels to another former companion Anji Kapoor who has used the information to manipulate the stock market and thus built up a considerable fortune. The Doctor discovers that another Time Lord, Marnal, had also survived the destruction of Gallifrey and has been living for the past hundred years as a human science-fiction writer (whose books are actually the history of the Time Lords and their homeworld). Marnal, who also claims to be the original owner of the Doctor's TARDIS, blames the Doctor for the cataclysm, and takes him and the TARDIS captive while the insectoid alien Vore invade the Earth. The Vore attack leaves millions dead or missing, including Fitz who apparently dies trying to save Trix. After a cold fusion explosion guts the interior of the TARDIS, the Doctor discovers that K-9 Mark II has been aboard ever since Gallifrey's destruction, hidden behind a false wall, with orders from Lady President Romana of Gallifrey to kill him. However, K-9 pauses once it scans the Doctor's mind and discovers the reason why the Doctor had lost his memory. It transpires that, just prior to destroying Gallifrey, the Doctor (with the help of his former companion Compassion) had downloaded the entire contents of the Gallifreyan Matrix — the massive computer network containing the mental traces of every Time Lord living and dead, more than 140,000 Time Lords — into his brain, with his own memories suppressed to make room for the data. Gallifrey had not actually been erased from history, but an event horizon in relative time prevented anyone from Gallifrey's past from travelling beyond Gallifrey's destruction, and vice versa. Both the planet and the Time Lords could be restored, along with the Doctor's memory, if a sufficiently sophisticated computer could be found to reconstruct them. Before that could be done, however, the problem of the Vore must be dealt with. Marnal is wounded while fighting the Vore, and being on his last regeneration, he dies. The Doctor tells him that he is his hero, and Marnal dies in peace, confident that the Time Lords will be reborn. The Doctor reveals that the Vore have not actually killed their victims, but sprayed them with a chemical that makes them invisible to humans; Fitz is still alive and the Doctor brings him back for Trix, claiming he brought the dead back to life on his first day on the job. The Doctor, Fitz, Trix and his allies travel to Africa with a Royal Navy Battle Group to confront the threat of the Vore. The novel and the Eighth Doctor Adventures end uncertainly, as the Doctor leaps into the very heart of the Vore hive.
22769097	/m/05ztdvl	View from Mount Diablo				 The poem narrates the life of a white Jamaican, Adam Cole, born sometime in the 1930s and so growing up during World War II, during which his uncle Johann, of German extraction, is interned in the same camp as future national leader Alexander Bustamante. Adam has a close friend, Nathan, a poor black boy who is a gardener and groom, but education forces them apart. After taking a degree at Oxford University in the 1950s Adam returns to Jamaica to work as a journalist on the Daily Tribune (a version of The Daily Gleaner) and marries a Jamaican Chinese, Amber Lee. They have a daughter, Chantal, but when she is 15 (sometime in the early 1970s) she is raped in the grounds of her school, and the marriage subsequently breaks up, Amber and Chantal emigrating to Canada while Adam stays in Kingston and becomes ever more committed to crusading journalism. A parallel historical narrative charts Jamaica's progress from Crown Colony to full independence, and its subsequent descent into serious civil violence. Corruption, veniality, sectarianism, and other elements forming what Rastafarians call the 'politricks' of Jamaica are noted, but the principal force for evil is squarely diagnosed as the international cocaine trade, in its facilitation of material corruption, in the morally deadening toleration of violence it promotes, and in the appalling opportunity cost it imposes on national infrastructrure, education, and business. From this history a series of vignettes emerge, of profits turned, of a needless death on the operating table caused by a substandard generator, of extrajudicial killing by a special police squad, and of events in the life of a principal cocaine baron—Adam's sometime friend, Nathan. Eventually an enforcer named Blaka, spurred by religious conversion, becomes an informer for Adam, whose journalism begins to expose too many secrets of the 'runnings', or details of shipments and transactions. Adam also hears the dying confession of a white middleman, Tony 'the Frog' Blake, who knows of Nathan's involvement, and so becomes an unacceptable threat to the cocaine trader—and as Blaka observes, "Blood / cheaper than drugs" (946-7). Blaka is found murdered on Mount Diablo (a central Jamaican height), "stuffed in a handcart, head severed, torso turned / to the mountain, blank eyes staring down the valley [...] the word Judas, warning intaglio, / carved with a switchblade into the transom" (955-9); another body is floating in the harbour; and Adam himself is confronted at home, and after a brief struggle shot dead, by Nathan. Formally, View from Mount Diablo uses a tragic (i.e. failed, abortive) Bildungsroman structure to support a state-of-the-nation novel; additional topoi and tropes concerning the drug trades and policing are drawn both from real Jamaican life and from popular cinematic and print fictions of crime. Technically, the verse novel is written in loosely heroic single-rhymed quatrains—i.e. the metre consistently approximates iambic pentameter, and the four-line stanzas rhyme abcb. It is structured in a prologue and 12 chapters, and has 1,048 lines.
22769681	/m/063__34	Push	Sapphire	1996-06-11	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The school has decided to send her to an alternative school because she is pregnant. Precious is furious, but the counselor later visits Precious's home and convinces her to enter an alternative school called Each One Teach One. Despite her mother's insistence that she apply for welfare, Precious enrolls in the school. She meets her teacher, Ms. Blue Rain, and fellow students Rhonda, Jermaine, Rita, Jo Ann, and Consuelo. All of the girls come from troubled backgrounds. Ms. Rain's class is a pre-GED class for young women who are below an eighth-grade level in reading and writing and therefore are unprepared for high school-level courses. They start off by learning the basics of phonics and vocabulary building. Despite their academic and personal deficits, Ms. Rain strives to ignite a passion in her students for literature and writing. She believes that the only way to learn to write is to write every day. Each girl is required to keep a journal. Ms. Rain reads their entries and provides feedback and advice. By the time the novel ends, the women have created an anthology of autobiographical stories called "LIFE STORIES – Our Class Book" appended to the book. The works of classic African-American writers like Audre Lorde, Alice Walker and Langston Hughes are inspirational for the students. Precious is particularly moved by The Color Purple. While in the hospital for the birth of her second child, a boy she names Abdul Jamal Louis Jones, Precious tells a social worker that her first child is living with her grandmother. The confession leads to Precious' mother having her welfare taken away. When Precious returns home with her newborn baby, her mother is enraged and chases her out of the house. Homeless and alone, she first passes a night at the armory, then turns to Ms. Rain who uses all of her resources to get Precious into a halfway house with childcare. Her new environment provides her with the stability and support to continue with school. The narrative prose, which is told from Precious' voice, continually improves in terms of grammar and spelling, and is even peppered with imagery and similes. Precious has taken up poetry. She's also eventually awarded the Mayor's office's literacy award for outstanding progress. This accomplishment boosts her spirits. With her attitude changing and her confidence growing, Precious finds herself thinking about having a boyfriend, a real relationship with someone near her age, with someone who attracts her interest. Her only sexual experience thus far has been the rape and sexual abuse by her father and, to a lesser extent, her mother. Although she tries to move beyond the trauma of her childhood and distance herself from her parents, an unwelcome visit from Precious' mother reveals that her father has died from AIDS. Testing verifies that Precious is HIV positive, but both her children are not. Her classmate Rita encourages Precious to join an incest support group, as well as an HIV positive group. The meetings provide source of support and friendship for Precious as well as the revelation that her color and socio-economic background weren't necessarily the cause of her abuse. Women of all ages and backgrounds attend the meetings. The book concludes with no specific fate outlined for Precious, with the author leaving her future undetermined.
22772229	/m/05zvcrh	The Stronghold	Mollie Hunter	1974-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel opens on the day when over seven hundred Men of the Boar from many islands gather together, summoned by the chief Nectan. Nectan puts forth the proposal that the warriors should no longer fight the Roman raiders, but retreat when they approach, as the tribe's very existence is threatened by their losses. The Chief Druid strongly opposes the idea, saying they must continue to fight; he declares it a matter of faith, and therefore his domain, directly challenging Nectan's leadership. Coll is convinced that his idea of a high circular drystone stronghold, designed to be impregnable, is a third way. He has been developing the idea, drawing plans and building models, since he was five, when a Roman raider killed his father, abducted his mother and shattered Coll's leg, crippling him. However, none of the elders will listen to him. Taran arrives, introducing himself as a member of the tribe who was seized for a slave when he was twelve, and recently escaped by killing his master. He is welcomed, but it soon appears that he has a desire for power, seeking first to ingratiate himself with the chief's daughter, and then plotting with the Druids and the chiefs of the Raven and the Deer. Coll's brother Bran, who lives with the Druids, is torn between the two camps. The struggle between Nectan and Domnall for mastery of the tribe culminates in Domnall choosing Nectan's daughter Fand for a human sacrifice. Coll, who loves Fand, takes the advice of Bran on how to stop the sacrifice, believing that he will die in her place. In fact it is Bran who dies, fulfilling the prophecy made about him when he was a baby, and devastating Domnall who loved him like a son. In the wake of these events, Coll is given leave to build his Stronghold. The whole tribe works long and hard to build the 8-storey structure, and it is ready just before the first raid of the summer. The warriors prepare to defend it while the other tribespeople go into hiding. The first assault is repulsed, though Domnall is downed while shouting curses in Latin at the Romans. Taran, who also knows Latin, takes his place, but though pretending to curse, actually advises the Romans to make a second attack overland. When Taran's treachery is exposed, Coll devises a plan to trap the Romans which is extremely successful. His Stronghold is vindicated and plans are made to build more, all over the islands.
22773997	/m/05zmn5q	Space Demons		1985	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The main four characters in the book are Andrew Hayford, Ben Challis, Elaine Taylor and Mario Ferrone. The plot starts when Andrew's dad brings him an exciting prototype video game from Japan. Andrew, who is a video game enthusiast, shows it to his best friend Ben Challis, who agrees to play the game with him. Later, two other players are introduced to the game: Mario Ferrone and Elaine Taylor. It is later revealed that it is possible to get transported into the game by means of a special gun, which only works when a strong beam of hate is directed at someone. Later on, the four get trapped inside the game and gradually work out the only way to escape and thus win the game is if they conquer their hate.
22779689	/m/05zm3s5	American Gothic				 Inspired by the case of real life serial killer H. H. Holmes, the story follows maniacal surgeon G. Gordon Gregg, who preys on young beautiful women and, luring them into his labyrinthine castle, kills them in the most precise, painless way possible, thus orchestrating the perfect series of crimes. However, an ambitious journalist called Crystal becomes suspicious of Gregg, a feeling made much more complicated by her growing attraction to him and vice versa. Bloch also wrote a 40,000 word essay based on his research for the novel, "Dr Holmes' Murder Castle" (first published in Reader's Digest Tales of the Uncanny, 1977; since reprinted in Crimes and Punishments: The Lost Bloch, Vol 3, 2002).
22781124	/m/05zt40y	The Little White Car	Dan Rhodes	2004		 The book is set in Paris where Veronique after having just split up with her boyfriend is driving home in her 'little white car' when whilst passing through a tunnel in central Paris is approached at high speed from behind by a large car. She is determined not to let it pass; but it collides with the back of her car and crashes. On seeing the news next morning Veronique realises "Oh shit, I killed the princess". The remainder of the book tells of Veronique's life and loves before the fateful day, and the efforts to conceal her involvement afterwards.
22793168	/m/05zzjfn	Overkill				 When the body of a young mother is found washed up on the banks of the Mataura River, a small rural community is rocked by her tragic suicide. But all is not what it seems. Sam Shephard, sole-charge police constable in Mataura soon discovers the death was no suicide, and has to face the realisation that there is a killer in town. To complicate things the murdered woman was the wife of her former lover. When Sam finds herself on the list of suspects and suspended from duties she must cast aside her personal feelings and take matters into her own hands to find the murderer and clear her own name.
22793463	/m/05zw7d2	Enchanted, Inc.	Shanna Swendson	2005-05-31	{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Kathleen "Katie" Chandler has been living and working in New York City for about a year, but originates from Texas. She has a job under a boss named Mimi, but she hates it. She is soon offered a mysterious job. When she looks into the job, it turns out that she is one of the 1% in the world who are immune to magic, and that the company offering her the job is a magic company called MSI Inc, which stands for Magic, Spells, and Illusions Inc. It soon becomes apparent that the world is in trouble from the evil wizard Phelan Idris and it is up to Katie and her friends to save it.
22796625	/m/0640zr4	Ark	Stephen Baxter	2009-08-20	{"/m/03lrw": "Hard science fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 2031, the rising sea levels have inundated most of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America and the flood waters have risen as far north as Kentucky, causing an influx of internally displaced persons. For the moment, Denver and most of Colorado are safe from harm, and has become the new capital of the United States. Although civil war is brewing with separatist Utah over control of untainted fresh water supplies and former Interstate Highway System roads. Affluent inhabitants of the United States and remaining elements of NASA have funded a desperate and far-fetched get-away plan called 'Nimrod'; to ensure the continued survival of the human race, they construct a massive interstellar spacecraft from conjoined and modified Ares rockets, Saturn hardware, and Space shuttle components that is capable of superluminal travel using the Alcubierre drive, and is christened as 'Ark One'. The plan is that the children and descendants of those who built the ship will travel to a neighboring earth-like exosolar planet to start civilization anew, given that shortly before the onset of the Flood, SETI technology had advanced to the point where it could detect potentially habitable worlds in other planetary systems. The main character, Holle Groundwater, is the daughter of one affluent man, Patrick, who were first introduced to the project by Jerzy Glemp, a former Polish millionaire; his shy but intellectually gifted son, Zane, becomes Holly's best friend as he helps her progress through the project's elite scientific education program to become a candidate for one of the ship's many specific functions each person must contribute, with her specializing in spacecraft life support and Zane as the Ark's warp drive specialist. Other candidates are introduced and excluded due to the brutal training regime of the project, for the candidates in question are required to have specialized fields of knowledge for either the ship's function and/or for preservation of mankind's history, knowledge, and culture; and to create a secular-minded crew with a diverse gene pool to breed. Kelly Kenzie becomes the designated mission leader during the first phases of the mission, Wilson Argent is her sometime partner who succeeds her as mission commander later in the book; and with Venus Jenning is the Ark's celestial navigator. As noted above, there is some overlap between the earlier novel in this trilogy and its successor - aging astronaut Gordo Alonzo and Thandie Jones, the bisexual oceanographer from Flood, appear as influential characters, and Grace Gray is also a pivotal character, as is her daughter Helen, who is born on the Ark en route to its initial interstellar destination. During the 2030s, President Linda Vasquez serves four terms of office under the crisis conditions and the remnants of the federal government and armed forces take over control of the Nimrod Project. During that time, experimental use of antimatter propulsion results in several tragedies and triumphs, all the while the floodwaters rise inexorably. By 2041, the Ark is ready to be launched, although a relentless selection process has reduced the number of potential candidates to eighty in number. On the day of the launch, desperate civilians and military personnel escaping the approaching floodwaters attempt to storm the Ark, resulting in a hurried evacuation of the candidates to the starship in question. The chaotic launch is successful, but causes fatal irradiation of the surrounding area, owing to the use of nuclear fission– powered thruster technology (derived from Project Orion (nuclear propulsion) of the 1960s). Once the Ark has left Earth orbit to get under way, the crew find that they have inadvertently left some prior designated candidates behind, and some of the security personnel make a failed attempt at mutiny to find a new life shipboard. In addition, some of the female candidates are pregnant and give birth to children who become a shipboard generation. By 2042, they have harvested enough antimatter from Jupiter's magnetosphere to propel their warp drive starship to 82 Eridani's planetary system, twenty-one light-years from the Sol System, which is reached nine years later. By that time, most of Earth now lies underwater and Mount Everest is calculated to become submerged in 2052. However, problems arise, due to the nature of the targeted planet, designated "Earth II." Although 82 Eridani is a yellow G5 star, it turns out that the 'earthlike' world in question is on the fringe of its planetary system ecosphere and the prospects of prolonged extremes of temperature are further worsened by a high axial tilt relative to the system's ecliptic (rather like that of Uranus in our own solar system). (This planetary configuration, called "Urania", is used by Baxter in his story "Grey Earth". It is ultimately derived from a book called What If the Moon Didn't Exist?.) There is debate and in-fighting over what to do next, but the crew come to an agreement as Zane proposes to split the ship and crew up. One colonizes Earth II, while another led by Kelly travels back to Earth in one of Ark One's twin hulls, Seba, making planetfall in 2059. A third faction with Holly, Wilson, Grace, Venus, and Zane takes the ship's other hull, Halivah, and takes a further thirty years to travel outward to an (unnamed) M6 red dwarf star and its super-earth terrestrial world, designated "Earth III" and situated 111 light years from Earth, within Lepus (constellation). Unfortunately, generational tensions arise between the rebellious youth born on the ship and the original crew, with Wilson forming a gang-like leadership breeding with the majority of the females on board. Things are further worsened by Zane's dissociative identity disorder which he slowly developed from sexual and psychological abuse earlier in the book from his overbearing father; his fragmented pessimist personalities preach to the younger crew and make them disillusioned of the idea that they are all enclosed and observed from the 'outside world' in a simulated bio-sphere environment as a social experiment. Eventually this all leads to further mutiny as the younger crew try to break out of the ship, which consequently results in ship-wide explosive decompression that inflicts a large loss of life and causes the destruction of one of the onboard shuttle-based landing craft. Once recovering from the incident, Holle forcibly takes command by reluctantly forming a dictatorship under her rule, using threats to shut off life support for those who do not partake in the maintenance of the ship's systems to keep order except for those who are too vital for the ship, as done with Zane as she orders him to be isolated and kept alive only for the purposes of keeping the warp drive functional. This act shatters the friendships of the original crew, and with no hope to help his deteriorating state of mind and being kept alone, unloved, and alive as merely a tool as he had for most of his life, Zane commits suicide. While this is occurring, the floodwaters inundate Denver, and Kelly's ex-husband Don, Gordo, and Mel, ex-Candidate and Holle's former lover make a last stand at Alma, Colorado, which was the nearest habitable area near the former starship launch site and Mission Control for the Ark before it departed from Jupiter. In the ensuing melee, Don is killed. In 2061, when Seba returns to Earth, Lily Brooke (Floods principal protagonist) has been dead for the last three years. Thandie Jones continues to survive and has links to 'Ark Two', which turns out to be a (new) and expansive seafloor settlement which taps the geothermal energy from the submerged former Yellowstone National Park's supercaldera. Kelly meets her aged father, Edward Kenzie, and her estranged son Dexter, whom she voluntarily abandoned for a place on board. Mel has also survived, but Gordo Alonzo died defending Ark Two from ID interlopers before the rising floodwaters made further interference impossible. Human genetic engineering is postulated to assist the descendants of Ark Two to adapt to their new and arduous environmental conditions. This idea ("pantropy"), used by James Blish in his story suite The Seedling Stars, is a powerful theme in almost all of Baxter's fictional series. Two years before Halivah arrives at Earth III, Venus intercepted a strong, brief signal of unknown origin, which was not repeated (similar to the Wow! signal), and it is speculated to be extraterrestrial. She keeps the knowledge of the signal to herself. In 2081, the ship arrives at Earth III which turns out to be in a close proximity to its parent star, its surface is active with volcanoes and its climate frigidly cold from the weak solar heating of the red dwarf along with one side permanently facing away from the star, but the planet is nonetheless habitable enough to support photosynthetic life and by extension, human life. With only one landing craft left after the mutiny years earlier, Holle is forced to halve the crew through a careful selection of those to colonize the planet, specifically young children who are as diverse as possible to eliminate the risk of inbreeding. Wilson is selected to go for he is the only one who could fly the shuttle despite his age, and finally Helen is selected to go to educate the young colonists for the process of building a functional colony to prosper. After a painful goodbye to her mother Grace, and to her own children, Helen and the settlers disembark. However, Holle and Venus resolve to explore the star system's other planets using small warp-jumps. The novel is left open-ended: Wilson, Helen, and the forty children on board the shuttle craft successfully land on Earth III, set foot on its surface and begin planning for rebuilding human civilization while they see the Ark for the last time before it disappears into the cosmos, suggesting that the starship has effectively become a generation ship until the rebuilt civilization of Earth III, that may not rise for decades, centuries, or even millennia to become spaceflight capable, can reunite with the descendants of the Ark. Two pendant stories have been published since in Asimov's Science Fiction: "Earth II" and "Earth III"; each deals with characters struggling with the legacy of Ark One's colonization of their world in the face of military consolidation of the planets. These seem to be the conclusions of the Flood storyline, since Baxter has written no more material in this continuity.
22800332	/m/063y_60	Child of the Wolves		1996	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Granite is born on a snowy April day in Alaska. For the first weeks of his life, he lives in the kennels, playing with his siblings Digger, Cricket, and Nugget. Even though their mother Seppala gets sick, life is good there. His owners, Tim and Kate, take good care of him. Granite differs from the other pups. He is not eager to train to be a sled dog. One day, when the pups are ten-weeks-old, a man shows up to buy Granite and his sister Cricket. Even though Cricket is bought and does not mind going to a new home, Granite does not want to leave his mother and runs away from where he grew up. He runs away into the Alaskan wilderness. After days wandering alone, hungry and injured, the Siberian husky puppy meets a wolf pack, led by a black wolf named Ebony and his mate, Snowdrift the white wolf, whose pups were kidnapped weeks before. She takes Granite in. Snowdrift raises the dog as a foster son and teaches him to hunt mice. That seems to help her get over some pain in losing her pups. It is mentioned that her pups were stolen by humans who wanted to breed young wolves to huskies, for wolfdogs are worth a lot of money. Even though he protects Granite, Ebony does not like him, and neither do Strider (Ebony's brother, Granite's chief tormentor), Roamer (Ebony and Snowdrift's two-year-old son), and Breeze (a female wolf who came to them from a pack in the west). The other wolf who likes Granite is Snowdrift's yearling son, Climber. Granite and Climber become fast friends. Granite is less afraid of Climber because the young wolf had a "husky face", and Climber was pleased to have a younger member (so his rank rises) regardless of Granite being a dog. Another reason the pair play together is that Climber is still young, and was a pup not a long time ago. Ebony pretends the dog is not there, and Breeze feeds Granite only to humor Ebony. Roamer and Strider feed him just to show Snowdrift. When she is not there, they take back what they fed Granite. Strider, later on, pretends to give Granite a lesson and lures the young dog into attacking a porcupine. Granite got tricked and a face full of quills. Granite hopes to please Ebony by trying to catch a fox but nearly loses his life. He nearly runs into a trap, but Breeze stops him just in time. He is, again, scorned by the others for his lousiness. However, later on, Climber is killed during a moose hunt, and Granite must try to earn his place in the pack, while dodging Roamer and Strider and other dangers of the Alaskan wilderness. Granite then runs away, overwhelmed by the torments from Roamer and Strider. Granite proves to be no longer a puppy who cannot fill his own stomach. He does fine save for the dark cloud of loneliness that grows bigger each day. He meets another pack of wolves when he intrudes into their territory. They welcome the dog with slashing teeth. Granite returns to Ebony's country, and the black wolf, though angry, lets him rejoin the pack. Meanwhile, Snowdrift attempts to search for her lost pups but is shot by hunters. The rest of the pack finds her, though she is blind and wounded. While Snowdrift recovers, Breeze is almost kind to the dog and teaches him how to hunt salmon. In the fall, Granite kills a marmot, but Roamer tries to take it away. Granite fights the young black wolf and wins, and Roamer dares not to challenge him again. In the end, Granite saves Snowdrift's life. Ebony lets the dog hunt alongside him, making Granite's dream come true. Even Strider is friendly and no longer challenges the dog. Granite, now more than two years old, realizes that he is home.
22804464	/m/0641sx0	Absolutely, Positively Not		2005-06		 Steven DeNarsky, a 16-year-old Superman fan, starts to develop sexual feelings for his substitute homeroom teacher, Mr. Bowman. Steven tries to reassure himself by buying such magazines like Playboy and the Victoria's Secret catalog, and dating attractive girls. Unable to bottle his emotions any longer, he confesses to his friend, Rachel, that he is gay. To his surprise, Rachel and her entire family had previously assumed that Steven was gay. Rachel urges Steven to create a Gay/Lesbian Alliance club at their High School, but Steven is not optimistic about completely "Coming Out of the Closet". Steven later does reveal that he is gay to both his parents, who don't think much of it. Steven eventually accepts his homosexuality by attending a teen Gay/Lesbian club, but mistakenly goes when it is specifically a Lesbian meeting. Despite this, he has a good time and decides to embrace his homosexuality.
22805766	/m/063z35d	The Fox Cub Bold	Colin Dann	1983	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Having left White Deer Park after the defeat of Scarface Bold is exploring his new surroundings which he refers to as "the real world". He sees a magpie which criticises him for being out during the daytime and feeding off scraps that many smaller animals would be grateful for, instead of hunting for his own food. Next he encounters a carrion crow who warns him that humans could be about. Bold ignores this warning as he sees nothing to fear from humans and in the following days he encounters several humans who do no harm to him at all, which increases his confidence. A few weeks later Bold discovers a game wood on some farmland and develops a taste for game birds (mainly partridges and pheasants). He sleeps in a badger set, but its owner soon arrives and wakes him up. Bold is friendly towards this female badger and she warns him about the humans in the area. Bold ignores this warning too and upon coming across a collection of animals killed by the gamekeeper kills and eats a bird in front of it as an act of defiance. However a few days later he discovers the female badger in a snare. Though he manages to save her by biting through a wire this wire snaps back and injures his eye. The badger is grateful and offers to help Bold whenever he may need her. One day Bold hears the sound of gunfire and discovers he has been caught in a pheasant shoot. When a dog comes towards him to get a dead pheasant he tries to run away but runs towards the hunters because his bad eye prevents hime seeing them. One of the hunters then shoots him through the leg. Bold limps across the field with his injured leg dragging along the ground and eventually reaches a ditch where he is out of sight. Bold sees a dormouse nearby and tries to catch it, but is no longer nimble enough. Bold is unable to move far from the ditch and his diet consists mainly of slugs and insects he can find nearby. Unfortunately these don't provide enough sustance and Bold becomes very weak. He is found by the crow he met previously and Bold asks the bird for help, but the crow refuses until Bold tells him that his father is the famous Farthing Wood Fox. After this the crow agrees to help him and heads off to find the badger that Bold helped. She eventually arrives with three of her kin and they feed Bold. One of the badger's offspring suggests that Bold should return to their set until he recovers. A few days later Bold prepares to travel back to the game wood with the female badger, whom he has decided to call Shadow because she constantly watches over him. Due to Bold's injury they travel very slowly and when Shadow goes hunting Bold decides to leave as he doesn't want to be dependent on others. He finds an abandoned earth containing the remains of another fox's catches, which he gratefully devours. The next day he tries to catch a vole but has no success. He then resolves to live by raiding the food supplies of humans as revenge for his injuries. The next day Bold travels to a nearby farm and comes across a pair of bantams which have been allowed to make their nest in the open. They notice the young fox and escape, but Bold is able to eat the eggs that they have abandoned in their nest. He returns to the farm a few days later and catches one of the bantams (it rans towards him after being startled). While taking it back to his earth he meets Shadow again in a Swede field. Bold doesn't want to talk to her as he doesn't want to share the bantam but Shadows see him. Despite offering part of the bantam Shadow incists that Bold has all of it. Bold returns to the farm the next evening but the remaining bantam has been locked away and the farm dog sees him, forcing Bold to escape. Two humans use their terrier to track down Bold and dig up his earth, but when they see his weakened state they assume he cannot be the culprit and that his mate must have killed the bantam. Assuming Bold will not survive the winter they leave him alone. Bold meets the crow again, who suggests that he scavenge for food in a nearby town. It takes Bold several days to arrive, but when he does the two friends agree to collect food for each other in their scavenging. The crow is the first to look for food and after telling Bold that he has eaten some food left out for a dog or cat Bold decides to call him Robber. As Bold is injured he cannot jump over fences meaning he cannot get into most gardens, so his scavenging is limited. One evening while scavenging Bold sees a vixen in one of the gardens, but she completely ignores him and Bold feels humiliated. Several days later Bold sees the vixen in the garden once more and tries to dig his way in but she comes out to greet him. She tell Bold she moved into this town during the winter because food is more plentiful and offers to help him hunt but Bold's pride causes him to reject her offer. The vixen sees Bold again a month later and tells him she wants to hunt with him, and this time Bold does not refuse. Together they catch some rats and Bold calls her Whisper because of her stealth. Whisper offers to let Bold stay in her earth, but he goes back to his usual home to give one of the rats to Robber. When Bold tells Robber about Whisper, the crow insists that his friend forget their agreement and go to live in the vixen's earth, which Bold does the following night. Bold is unable to jump the wall to get in, but they find a hole through which he can enter. In the earth Whisper mistakes Bold for a much older fox and asks where he was born. Bold tells her he was born in White Deer Park and that his father is the famous Farthing Wood Fox, and Whisper makes a plan which Bold knows nothing of. A few days later they come across a large dog who barks loudly outside their earth. One day Bold cannot get back into the earth because the wall has been mended and the dog pursues him, so Bold hastily tries to make a new hole but gets stuck. Robber comes to his rescue but the dog turns out to be friendly and he helps Bold to make the hole in the wall big enough for him to get through. The dog, a mastiff, tells them his name is Rollo and that he is very lonely during the day as his master has left him nothing to play with. He visits the foxes frequently during the day in the ensuing weeks, even though the foxes are trying to sleep during the day. As mating season arrives the two foxes mate and Whisper is soon carrying Bold's cubs. Whisper tells Bold that she choose him as her mate because he was a cub of the Farthing Fox and she wants their cubs to be born in White Deer Park. Bold is crushed by this but he reluctantly agrees to lead her there. The foxes are fed for their last few days in the town by Rollo, and they head off back towards the country. Heavy snow makes travelling difficult for Bold, so their pace is very slow. Whisper wants to speed up but traveling through the slush exhausts Bold and he collapses on open land. He insists that Whisper go to find cover while he rests. Robber, who has been tracking their journey, discovers Bold on the ground and promises to bring Bold some food. Robber heads back to Rollo who agrees to bring a bone he has buried to Bold and Whisper. While waiting Bold digs himself into the snow to hide himself. However two men with two greyhounds are chasing a hare. One greyhound kills the hare, the other chases Bold. Fortunately Robber arrives and distracts the greyhound until Rollo gets there. Rollo then grabs the greyhound by the neck, shakes it, and casts it away. Rollo brings the foxes his bone and the hare killed by the other greyhound before heading back home to his master. As the foxes approach White Deer Park, Bold leaves Whisper while she is sleeping and hides himself away, forcing her to finish the journey alone. She arrives at the reserve and meets Charmer, who immediately tells her family of Bold's return. Meanwhile Robber has noticed Bold go into hiding and offers to feed him, but the injured fox wants to wait for his death. Robber notices Fox and Friendly searching outside the park and leads them to Bold, joining up with Vixen and Charmer along the way. The foxes arrive and Fox tells Bold how proud he is, before the young fox departs the real world for good.
22806917	/m/0642cjg	The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma	Trenton Lee Stewart	2009-10-14	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the third installment of the Mysterious Benedict Society series, Reynie, Sticky, Kate, Constance, and various loved ones find themselves holed up in Mr. Benedict's house, which is teeming with security. The evil Mr. Curtain is at large and hunting for the Whisperer—now in Mr. Benedict's possession—so he can try again to control minds from afar. When a shady businessman shows up with false records claiming that he is Constance's father, Mr. Benedict is compelled to use the Whisperer to uncover her short past. Distraught and confused after all is revealed, Constance runs away, with the whole household after her—just the distraction Mr. Curtain and his men need to steal the Whisperer and set his evil plans in motion. Of course, the rest of the Mysterious Benedict Society soon find themselves on his trail.http://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/mysterious-benedict-society-and-prisoners-dilemma Soon, Reynie receives messages telling him a code number. He realizes it is a library code number, and Sticky tells them that that book's only copy is located in a library. They find Constance and an apparent clue to where the Whisperer is, but it turns out to be a trap. They are captured by Mr. Curtain. Kate makes several aptempts to escape but none prevail. Finally, their various loved ones come to the rescue, particually Milligan, who throws himself at McCracken, leader of Mr. Curtain's team of "Ten Men". Mr. Curtain and S.Q. escape but S.Q. prevents him out of love. In the end Mr. Curtain is arrested and sent to prison. Milligan retires, Constance is adopted by Mr. Benedict, and the families settle in the second floor of Mr. Benedict's bedroom (Or in Sticky's case, across the street. The Whisperer was disabled by Mr. Benedict. His narcolepsy is cured by Constance.
22809177	/m/0641w3v	Covering Islam				 Said postulates that, if knowledge is power, those who control the modern Western media (visual and print) are most powerful because they are able to determine what people like or dislike, what they wear and how they wear it, and what they should know and must not know about themselves. A man's intellect enables him to think, ponder, contemplate and question. His intellect is, according to Islam, what makes him unique as an individual. Man, by nature, is a rational being, but the western media wants him to be irrational—in the sense of accepting or agreeing to an idea without verifying, thinking about or questioning it. In other words, says Said, irrationalism means to let one person think and decide for another—to let one person control others. Said refers to the media's ability to control and filter information as an 'invisible screen', releasing what it wants people to know and blacking out what it does not want them to know. In the age of information, Said argues, it is the media that interprets and filters information—and Said claims that the media has determined very selectively what Westerners should and should not know about Islam and the Muslim world. Islam is portrayed as oppressive (women in Hijab); outmoded (hanging, beheading and stoning to death); anti-intellectualist (book burning); restrictive (bans on post- and extramarital affairs, alcohol and gambling); extremist (focusing on Algeria, Lebanon and of course Egypt); backward (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Sudan); the cause of worldwide conflict (Palestine, Kashmir and Indonesia); and dangerous (Turkey and Iran). The modern Western media, says Said, does not want people to know that in Islam both men and women are equal; that Islam is tough on crime and the causes of crime; that Islam is a religion of knowledge par excellence; that Islam is a religion of strong ethical principles and a firm moral code; that socially Islam stands for equality and brotherhood; that politically Islam stands for unity and humane governance; that economically Islam stands for justice and fairness; and that Islam is at once a profoundly spiritual and a very practical religion. Said claims that untruth and falsehood about Islam and the Muslim world are consistently propagated in the media, in the name of objectivity, liberalism, freedom, democracy and ‘progress’.
22811754	/m/05zvjqb	The Poet of Tolstoy Park		2005	{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel"}	 The book begins in Nampa, Idaho, with Henry Stuart having just learned that he has one to two years to live because he has non-contagious tuberculosis. Told he will be more comfortable in a warmer climate, Stuart leaves his two grown sons to relocate to Fairhope, Alabama. When he arrives, he finds that the land he has purchased sight unseen hosts only a barn. He decides to build a house, on property he names "Tolstoy Park" in honor of Leo Tolstoy, who had himself become a wandering ascetic in the months before his death. An amateur poet and an eccentric, Stuart sheds his materialism for a life of contemplation, one which extends much longer than Stuart expected.
22812078	/m/063zw9k	The Siege of White Deer Park	Colin Dann	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Of the Farthing Wood animals Kestrel has moved away from White Deer Park to hunt without the risk of killing his friends, Hare and Rabbit have died of old age, and as original Farthing Wood smaller animals have and have so many descendents with the animals native to White Deer Park the oath no longer applies to them. The Farthing Wood animals' third winter in White Deer Park has come to an end. As spring arrives there is an influx of animals from outside the park. Fox suspects that something outside the park is driving these animals to take shelter in the park, so Tawny Owl and Whistler search outside the park for clues. They find nothing, but word starts to spread of a fierce beast making raids in the park during the night. As it is able to attack animals on the ground and in nests some animals believe that the Beast can fly. After searching the reserve and finding no sightings of the Beast Tawny Owl takes refuge in a tree in a small area of woodland within the park to rest. Before dawn he is awakened by the thought he is being watched. Looking down he sees the head of a large creature with bright eyes looking at him in a menacing way. Knowing this is what he is looking for, Owl flies further up the tree out of reach, then notices the strange creature has disappeared in an instant. Owl then flies off to warn Fox and the others of his sighting just as the sun rises. Tawny Owl gives Fox a description of what he saw. Adder also hears of these developments. Though Adder says nothing Fox thinks Adder is hiding something. Later Adder finds Toad and asks him about some large paw prints he has found near the now deserted Ediable Frog's pond. Adder explains that as he doesn't have paws he can't judge whether they're from a toad or not. Toad tells him these prints are too big for a toad. A meeting is called and Toad informs the animals of the footprints seen by himself and Adder. Badger states that the graceful nature of this animal reminds him of the Warden's cat and suggests that the animal might be a giant cat. Tawny Owl pooh-poohs this suggestion. Not long afterwards meeting the Beast kills one of the white deer herd and Friendly discovers the carcass, then talks to some of his younger relatives about his plan to track the creature down. The Beast kills a white deer fawn and leaves few remains as evidence, so Friendly and the other foxes do not notice what has happened. The Warden does notice the losses and regularly patrols the area with a gun, but the Beast is not discovered. While fishing Whistler spots the Beast when it drinks from the stream, and sees that it is a very large cat. He tells Adder, who notices that the footprints are the same ones that he had seen before, and he decides to pursue the cat with the idea of poisoning it. However the Beast traps Adder with its paw and toys with him, eventually knocking him into the stream which allows him to escape. Whistler tells Fox and Vixen of the creature he has seen and Weasel heads off to tell Badger the news. He arrives at Badger's set and discovers Badger talking to a young mole named Mossy, who is trying to tell Badger that Mole is his father. As Badger is unable to accept that Mole is dead Weasel asks Mossy to pretend to be Mole for Badger's sake. He then tells the other animals, who agree to go along with this idea. As the vixens are looking after their cubs Friendly gathers a group of male foxes - made up of Pace (Friendly's son), Husky (Bold's son), Ranger (Charmer's mate), Rusty (Ranger's son), and Trip (Ranger's son) - to join him on an expedition to search out the Beast. They head to the stream where the creature was seen by Whistler and follow its trail into an area of woodland. Friendly notices something stir in the undergrowth and heads off after it, but he is unable to stay on its trail. Initially the foxes wait for the Beast to return but Friendly lets the young foxes look for food, and they come across another young deer which was killed by the Beast. They feed off the remains of the carcass and head back, but the Beast watches them from a tree as they do so. Meanwhile Adder comes across a female adder and tries to impress her with the story of his attack by the Beast, but she shows no interest in him and Adder slides away from her. Adder later tries to find the female adder but is unable to. The next day Whistler discovers that the Warden is setting up a pen by the perimeter of the reserve, and when Tawny Owl tells the animals that the deer are being rounded up they realise that the humans have decided to watch over them to keep them safe. The Beast also realises what the Warden is doing and decides to bide its time so the Warden will think it has left the Park. That evening Friendly and his group of foxes go in search of the Beast again, and its trail leads them to a small copse. Ranger thinks it's a trap but Friendly insists they go on. They enter cautiously but the Beast leaps down from a tree and grabs Husky in its jaws, before leaping back up carrying the young fox. The other foxes realise they are powerless against such a huge animal and leave to fetch help. Once they're gone the Beast drops Husky to the ground. Friendly and the young foxes look for Fox and Vixen, but they find Badger instead and tell him what has happened. Fox and Vixen soon return and Badger decides to offer himself to the Beast in exchange for Husky. He heads off but the foxes leave soon afterwards and reach the copse before him, only to discover that Husky is dead, and the Beast is long gone. Fox comes up with a plan and instructs the other animals to spread the word across the park that every inhabitant of the reserve must keep a lookout for clues and report anything they see immediately. The Warden realises that his attempt to lure the Beast has been unsuccessful and releases the deer back into the reserve. Later Adder comes across the female adder again, and she tells him that she has seen the Beast use a large hole in the bank by the stream. Adder finds this hole, then finds Whistler and tells him this information. Whistler immediately flies away to inform Fox, who decides to gather all the park's inhabitants together and try to trap the Beast in its lair. That evening all the animals have gathered together and they head towards the stream. They find the hole and Toad volunteers to search it for the Beast. He goes inside and discovers the creature sleeping inside, and Fox looks on the other side for another exit. However the Beast wakes up and leaves its lair, causing the group of animals to pull back in terror and watch as the cat washes itself, showing no interest at all in its audience. Eventually the cat takes a few laps from the stream and bounds away out of sight, as the animals can only watch, powerless to stop it. Most of the animals disperse, but Tawny Owl pursues the Beast through the air, eventually finding the large cat in a ditch near the perimeter of the reserve. The Beast asks about Tawny Owl's interest in it, and Owl tells it how terrified all the park's inhabitants are of it. He asks the cat whether it could hunt somewhere else instead and it refuses, but it makes a pledge that no animal will ever see it again although it will still be around, and promises to leave the park if any creature should set eyes on it and tell it so. Tawny Owl decides to go tell all the animals about how he has spoken to the Beast but being very tired he decides to sleep first. Now that the deer are back the Beast kills two more deer and stores them until the park's inhabitants have let their guard down. The Warden lays traps for the Beast, but it does not go near them and the Warden eventually decides to remove them. Needing to restock its larder the Beast then goes on a rampage in Farthing Wood territory, killing several of the smaller creatures and nearly killing Leveret, but he escapes and his mate is killed instead. Adder meets the female adder again and she tells him that she would like to be known as Sinuous. They sunbathe together and Sinuous suggests that the Beast may be living underground. Adder immediately tells Badger and Fox about this theory, and all the foxes, badgers, weasels and rabbits in the park are asked whether they know of a large underground lair, but none do. Badger tells Mossy about the theory and Mossy informs him of a large underground chamber that Mirthful had come across before she died. Badger asks Mossy to find the chamber and inform him if the Beast is living there so that Badger can spot the cat and force it to leave. Mossy starts his search, but he gets distracted by worms and loses focus. However he eventually falls into a large chamber and discovers that the Beast is sleeping inside. He tries to leave quickly but the Beast wakes up and pursues him. Mossy digs underground but the Beast digs after him until Tawny Owl shouts out that he has seen the cat and asks him to yield. The cat roars loudly and Badger arrives, asking the Beast to take him instead of Mossy. The Beast tells the animals he could easily slay them all, but just then they all hear the loud cry of another cat in the distance. The two cats call to each other and the Beast rushes out of the park to join the female that was calling to him. The animals realise that spring must be the mating season for the Beast and celebrate that the Beast has finally left the park.
22812258	/m/0641z3r	In the Path of the Storm	Colin Dann	1989	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The death of the Great Stag, leader of the deer of White Deer Park, leaves its inhabitants at the mercy of his successor Trey, a strong and fearsome stag who believes there is no room for the smaller animals in the nature reserve. Meanwhile, Tawny Owl grows tired of bachelorhood and leaves the park in search of a mate.
22812401	/m/063z0k_	Battle for the Park	Colin Dann	1992	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The inhabitants of White Deer Park face a new danger as a pack of town rats arrives at the nature reserve, intent on taking it over for themselves. Meanwhile, many of the animals in the park go missing and the others take it upon themselves to find out where they have gone.
22815721	/m/06408gr	Rise of a Merchant Prince	Raymond E. Feist	1995	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Erik von Darkmoor and Rupert Avery (Roo), have returned to Krondor after serving in Calis special unit that was sent down to the continent of Novindus. Erik plans on staying in the army as a corporal in the coming war, and Roo states that he plans on becoming a rich trader. After being pardoned of their crimes by Borric, King of the Kingdom of the Isles, Erik and Roo begin a journey to visit their family in the town of Ravensburg. In an inn along the way, they meet one of Roo's cousins, Duncan, who decides to travel with Roo on the promise of becoming rich. Once in Ravensburg, Erik visits his mother, who faints on the sight of him, as they were told that Erik and Roo were hanged. After a quick explanation, Erik learns from his childhood friend, Rosalyn, that Stefan von Darkmoor, who raped her, is the father of her young child. Roo meets up with his father while buying a wagon, and it is quickly apparent that Roo's father cannot bully him around anymore, and rents out his services as a teamster to Roo. The plot centers primarily on the rise of Roo as an important merchant in Krondor. In the background we see a little of the progression of the war: Erik leaves with a group of special forces to re-infiltrate the den of the Pantathian Serpent Priests, Duke James follows Roo's rise from the sidelines, and steps in from time to time to help. Roo eventually becomes possibly the richest man in the Western Realm. Near the end of the book, we follow the war more closely, as Miranda, Calis, Erik, and their squad find the there is a "third player" at work—someone is already slaughtering the Pantathians. It turns out to be a demon. This greatly aids their quest, as it is a tremendous distraction to the Serpents. As they delve deeper into the mountain they find that the Pantathians have used thousands of human sacrifices to infuse life force into a gem as a "key" to open the Lifestone. But Calis discovers something unexpected—the Key is not what it appears. Nor are the Dragon Lord artifacts they find. Something has contaminated them. Miranda brings the Key and a Dragon Lord helmet to Elvandar, where Pug, Tomas, and the Spellweavers attempt to discern its use. Erik tosses the rest of the artifacts into lava, which releases tremendous energy. He, Calis, and a small squad escape the mountains, but their way home is lost. They are eventually rescued by Nakor and Roo, who decided to sail to Novindus to save them. The book ends with many unanswered questions: who is the "third party" at work? how were the artifacts corrupted and why? is another force after the Lifestone? are demons somehow involved, fooling the Pantathians? bg:Възходът на търговеца принц fr:L'Ascension d'un prince marchand nl:De macht van een koopmansprins
22829346	/m/0640qkw	Werewolf versus Dragon	Matthew Morgan	2009-04-28	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ulf is a young werewolf who lives at Farraway Hall, where he and hundreds of other endangered beasts are protected by the RSPCB (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Beasts). When Professor Farraway, the founder of the RSPCB, died, he left his fortune and estate to the society. His son, Baron Marackai, believed he deserved the contents of his father's will and he's made it his life's ambition to take revenge on the RSPCB. A man named Inspector Black shows up at Farraway hall claiming to be investigating the murder of a baby dragon. He believes that the culprit shot the baby dragon in order to lure the mother dragon into a trap. The killer was planning to erect a Ring of Horrors where two endangered beasts battled to the death before a crowd of spectators. But Ulf sees through Inspector Black's facade. Ulf believes he has too much information about the dragon killer's intentions to for an innocent investigator. Inspector Black has his hand in these dirty dealings, and it's up to Ulf to prove it.
22832822	/m/063_m7r	Simon	Rosemary Sutcliff	1953	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins on the eve of the English Civil War in 1642. Simon Carey is the school age son of John and Anne Carey, of Lovacott Farm, near Great Torrington in Devon. He has a sister, christened Marjory, whom he always calls "Mouse". One day he is the house of his best friend Amias Hannaford with whom he does his schoolwork, when Amias's father Doctor Hannaford announces that the king has raised his standard at Nottingham, and calls for a toast to the king. Simon refuses, because he and his family support Parliament. This leads to a falling out between the families. Simon's father goes off to fight for Parliament but orders Simon to finish school first. One day while Simon is getting his horse Scarlet reshoed in town, a rider falls down in front of him after being pursued and almost run over by the following horses. He and the smith rescue the young rider. Through his knowledge of the area and the introduction of the rescued man Barnaby Colbourne, a Parliament man, he manages to lead retreating Parliament troops under Colonel Ireton past a Royalist stronghold to safety. A few months later, after finishing his education, Simon goes to Windsor to join the New Model Army. He is fortunate to fall in again with Lieutenant Colebourne who recommends him to General Thomas Fairfax. Simon is commissioned as cornet to Colbourne in the Fairfax Horse. One of his subordinates is the devout Corporal, former Ironside 'Zeal-for-the-Lord' Relf. He first sees action in the decisive Battle of Naseby. After the battle Corporal Relf deserts, having learned that his neighbour has stolen all his money from him. He is recaptured and sentenced to the Pioneer regiment, one of the harshest of units, but escapes. Simon's troop heads west and is ordered to capture a house at Okeham Paine, near Exeter, which is held by the Royalists. When they break through he finds himself fighting Amias, who is with the Royalists. Simon is knocked unconscious by a musket butt and is tended by the formidable lady of the house, Mistress Killigrew. He meets and falls in love with her daughter Susanna. After his recovery he is ordered to go to Lovacott to act as a go-between for messages from Parliament spies in the area under Royalist control. One turns out to be Corporal Relf, now called Ishmael Watts, who is hiding with another spy, Podbury, in the tower of Torrington Church above the powder store. While Simon is at home, a Royalist search party led by Amias turns the house upside down, Simon's sister describes him "not quite 'zactly", i.e., not quite right after his head injury, and Amias chooses to believe this to stop further enquiry from his subordinates. It is then that Simon realises their friendship is still alive. When he hears the Parliament army is in Torrington, he rejoins them for the battle there. The Royalists are defeated and 200 prisoners are put in the church. When a huge explosion blows up the church, suspicion falls upon a red-headed man whom Simon recognizes as Amias, because he used a phrase they used as children. He finds him outside the town and brings his doctor father to him. Amias said it wasn't he who blew up the church. Simon is unaware he is being followed by Cornet Wainwright, who has disliked him since Simon took his coveted position as cornet. He and Amias are arrested. Amias is cleared when the dying Ishmael Watts (Corporal Relf) tells the chaplain Joshua Sprigg and General Fairfax that the explosion was an accident. The General forgives Simon, comparing his actions to those of the Biblical Jonathan who protected his friend David. The story ends four years later at Lovacott in April 1649. Simon resigned from the army at the same time as General Fairfax, because both disagreed with the decision to execute the king, although they otherwise approve of the Commonwealth. A ghost from the past, Podbury, reappears and the mystery of the blast that killed 200 Royalists seems to be solved. Simon and Amias are fast friends again and look set to marry Susanna Killigrew and 'Mouse' respectively.
22838641	/m/063zg90	Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel	James Patterson	2010-03-15	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel begins with the Flock traveling to Chad in Africa. They are there to help the residents as part of the Coalition to Stop the Madness project, but are attacked by local rebels who are opposed to receiving help from outsiders. After beating the rebels, the Flock proceed to do volunteer work, such as distributing rice. On the second night, Angel reveals that 'Fang will be the first to die', causing an upset in the Flock, before Dr. Hans, a former Itex worker, interrupts. He invites Max and Angel to breakfast where introduces them to his new experiment, Dylan, a bird kid like them but someone who cannot fly well. At breakfast, it is revealed that Dr. Hans plans on forcing the human race to evolve by using the Flock as evolutionary templates. He tries to enlist Max's help by showing her the advancements he has currently made, the most extreme being cutting off and regrowing his own finger. She, however, refuses to help, and quickly returns to the Flock where she instructs them to wait. Back in America, in the E house on the cliff of a canyon—where the Flock resided at the beginning of Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment—the members of the Flock are safe. Total is back with them after staying with Max's mother, and Max and Angel still have not spoken. Max, after deliberation, blackmails the Flock into a self taught home school, because they need to learn things in order to understand the enemy. This leads to a trip to an unnamed museum where Iggy voices his wish that he was not blind. Returning home, the Flock fight, and Max suddenly decides that tomorrow will be her birthday. She asks if anyone else wants to turn a year older, and so a party is planned for all of them the following day. While exchanging gifts, Jeb arrives with Dylan in a black four wheel drive Jeep as it is revealed that Dylan is unable to fly well. Max then teaches him how to fly starting with pushing him off of the roof. Afterwards, the rest of the Flock are still mad at Max. Angry at Jeb, Max flies away, and Fang goes after her. During this time, the others are attacked by Erasers, who were supposedly extinguished in Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports. It is also revealed that Dylan has been trained to fight, and can self-heal his own wounds. When Max and Fang return, the Flock vote Max out because she and Fang were not there to help them fight the Erasers, and they both leave for Las Vegas. Meanwhile, the water supply to the house is tainted with a genetic accelerator that induces mutations. Angel replaces Max as Flock leader, and takes the new group to a celebrity party in Hollywood. They are attacked when Max and Fang find them, and are suffering from the side effects of the genetic accelerator. Jeb is shot while protecting the Flock, but survives. After recovering, Angel leaves to join Dr. Hans as Max resumes leadership. Later, a vague letter from Fang warns Max not to follow him. Fang finds Angel and Dr. Hans, but is shot with a tranquilizer dart, and he passes out. When Fang comes to, he is badly beaten and restrained to a bed. Dr. Hans plans to experiment on Fang with his genetic accelerator drug and injects Fang with it. However, the drug ends up causing him to die. Angel tells(through her mind) Max to come to rescue him, but when the Flock arrives, they are too late. Max desperately tries to bring Fang around, but to no avail. She finally stabs a needle of adrenaline into his chest and after a few moments, Fang is brought back to life. Then Dylan tries to kill Dr. Hans with a needle he finds, but when he realizes it is against the Flock's way to kill in cold blood he stabs himself with it in a suicide attempt, but lives. In the epilogue Total marries Akila. Fang leaves the reception early, and when the Flock arrives back home after the reception, Max goes to look for Fang, but instead finds a letter addressed to her. Max reads the letter aloud to the rest of the Flock. In the letter, Fang tells Max that he loves her more than anything, but it is because of their love that he is leaving the Flock. He tells Max that everyone was right about them starting to only care about themselves and that it puts the others in danger he also calls Max sweetheart which surprises everyone. The rest of the Flock still needs her to be a leader and she can't do that with him around. He also tells her that he knows where he is going and to please not look for him. At the end of the letter, Fang makes a promise to Max. He says that if in 20 years, if both of them are still alive, and the world is still in one piece, then he will meet her at the top of the cliff where they learned to fly like the hawks in Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment. After the epilogue, Max goes through Fang's files on an old laptop since Nudge is using the new one. The first thing Max sees is Fang's MaxProCon.doc showing the pros and cons of Max, such as, "She's a good leader, but a drill sergeant." In the next file, Fang is describing what happened in Africa. Then, he has his "giftlist" for everyone's birthday, and describes Max's gift. In the next file he talks about when he and Max were in Las Vegas. The file after that contains a letter to Dylan where he writes that he hates Dylan more than anyone because he likes Max and Dylan is trying to be with her. After this, a long string of questions is shown, written by a fan called "Jessie." Jessie (whose gender is not confirmed) asks such unusual questions as "Do you smoke apples?" "Would you tell us if you were gay?" "Has Angel ever read your mind when you were having dirty thoughts about Max and gone 'OMG' and you were like 'D:'?" Fang's responses range from "Uhhhh...." to "hahahahahahaha" to "I could never be as Fangalicious as you'd want me to be." He ends it by saying that he has been by Max's side forever but he now cannot be around anymore because his anger towards Dylan is "clouding my decisions" and that he does not "know what the right thing to do" is.
22841705	/m/0642bh3	How We Decide	Jonah Lehrer	2009-02-09	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Sections/chapters of the book are titled as follows: * Introduction * The Quarterback in the Pocket * The Predictions of Dopamine * Fooled by a Feeling * The Uses of Reason * Choking on Thought * The Moral Mind * The Brain Is an Argument * The Poker Hand * Coda
22844502	/m/0642gh_	Journeys to the End of the World	Clive Algar	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Psychology student Vicky Watts travels from Cape Town to Plettenberg Bay hoping to discover what happened to her enigmatic great-grandfather, Dan Butler, who returned from the trenches of the Western Front in 1918 suffering from shell-shock. Like the archaeologists working in the Letterbox Cave (a pivotal location in the story) the novel gradually brushes through layers of the past, revealing not only Dan’s harrowing story of war, guilt and love but reaching back to the foundations of modern South African society when a young Khoi flees the brutality of his trekboer master. The mysterious cave, near Plettenberg Bay, connects the lives of the major characters and it is near this archaeological site that Vicky experiences her own life-altering crisis.
22844537	/m/06424fh	The Lump of Coal	Daniel Handler	2008-09-30		 It is Christmastime. A living lump of coal falls off a barbecue grill. He wishes for a miracle to happen. The lump of coal is artistic and wants to be an artist. He goes in search of something. First, he finds an art gallery that, he believes, shows art by lumps of coal. But when he comes in, he sadly discovers the art is by humans who use lumps of coal. He then finds a Korean restaurant called Mr. Wong's Korean Restaurant and Secretarial School, but he goes in and discovers that all things used must be 100% Korean (although the owner does not use a Korean name or proper Korean spices). The lump of coal continues down the street and runs into a man dressed like Santa Claus. The lump of coal tells the man about his problem, and the man gets an idea. He suggests he put the lump of coal in Jasper (his bratty son)'s stocking. The son finds it and is ecstatic; he has wanted to make art with coal. So he makes portraits and he and the lump of coal become rich. They move to Korea and open an actual genuine Korean restaurant and have a gallery of their art.
22849170	/m/063zmpn	Succubus Blues	Richelle Mead	2007	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0fq56vk": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy"}	 We first meet Georgina Kincaid when she is asked by her friend Hugh the imp to sleep with a virgin who has bargained to give up his soul in exchange for a hot and heavy fantasy encounter with a demoness. So as a favor to her friend she agrees to shape shift into a demonic outfit complete with wings and a tail and sleep with the 34 year old man. We are then told that she is a succubus who takes the life force from men through sex, in order to survive. The better character the man has, the more energy she gets from him - and conversely, she gets less energy from a more immoral man. After sex with the man she goes to her car where she is accosted by a vampire named Duane who tries to force himself on her. When she fights back, he is angered, but when a car is driven by it allows her a distraction to get away. She gets a call from her demon boss Jerome who got a call from Duane saying she attacked him and threatened him, which she did in self-defense. We then learn that she works at a book store and has a crush on the writer of her favorite series who is going to have a book signing at the store. While working we meet her co assistant manager Doug and a man who she flirts with while working and talking to him about the book signing for Seth Mortensen. She tells him that she thinks they should come up with new and exciting questions for the author because he probably always gets the same questions and wants to impale himself when he always has to answer them. She assures him that she is an avid fan who would agree to be his sex slave if she was able to get advance copies of his book. After work she gets home to find that her boss Jerome and his angel friend Carter are at her house and they think she killed Duane. When she assures them she didn’t and Carter agrees that she is telling the truth they tell her to be careful because someone is killing local immortals. She returns to the store for the book signing to find the man she was flirting with earlier and she finds his nervousness and awkwardness adorable and starts to flirt with him again only to be interrupted by Paige her boss when she comes looking for Seth Mortensen and grabs the man. Georgina is embarrassed so she tries to avoid and ignore Seth because of her earlier flirting and comments but Paige volunteers her to show Seth around the city the next day. The same night the owner of the store wants to have sex with her in his office but she refuses due to a ‘date’. She then beckons a stranger over to her and passes him off as her date. They walk out of the store together and the stranger, named Roman, asks her out while he walks her home. She is attracted to him. But since she doesn’t like corrupting good men she refuses. When her friend Hugh is beat up during the day time she goes to try to do research on who could be killing immortals she looks for a psychic Erik at another book store but they tell her that he has left and opened his own store. However she has a run in with the store’s manager Helena who is trying to sell the ideas of new age crystals and psychic knowledge. When an angel is killed and Georgina finds that the killer is leaving her notes she goes to Erik again. He gives her the idea of Nephilim. However she gets attacked by an invisible immortal and she is saved by Carter the angel but they don’t find the Nephilim. So Carter stays with her because the Nephilim has some kind of obsession with her and they think she is still in danger. Meanwhile Roman is still persistent and she agrees to go on a date. One date at a time she finds that she is really drawn to him and has a hard time keeping her self-control with him. They go on several dates and she really likes him and they both enjoy dancing. Meanwhile she is also growing fond of Seth the writer although he isn’t very good at expressing himself through speech but they bond over emails which Georgina finds great because it’s like reading books he wrote just to her. However it all comes to a turning point when she gets drunk on a date with Roman at a concert for Doug’s band. The bookstore workers are there along with Seth who has become their in store writer. In a moment of weak self-control and intoxication she allows herself to kiss Roman. When he says that he felt something weird she realizes she just took some of his life force so she runs off but is followed by Seth who takes her back to his house. He helps hold her hair while throwing up and breaking down and nursing her hangover the next morning. In light of her low self-control she breaks up with Roman and tells him to stay away from her. He is hurt and confused and she is hurt because she really likes him so she turns to Seth for comfort and they become even more tender towards each other. Then Georgina finds out that the Nephilim is the child of Jerome from a human. She also find out that the Nephilim is sending notes to Jerome as well and that the killing of lesser immortals was just the beginning. They think this means that Jerome is the next target. So Carter goes to stay with Jerome and leaves her. She gets a note from the Nephilim at work saying that she must prove she really care for her mortal friends and that they are not just an entertainment in her life. If she can take care of her boyfriend and keep him safe until the end of her shift then they will be allowed to live if not then the Nephilim will kill him. But Georgina does know what guy the Nephilim is talking about so she tries to get in touch with Roman through a phone call because she doesn’t know where he works, she also takes Seth with her to check on the safety of Doug and tell him to stay with a crowd and cover her night shift. She then checks to make sure that Warren will be in meetings until the end of the day. When she thinks everyone is safe she goes home and finds Roman at her door. He is touched that she cares about him but is confused by her off and on vibes. He goes to kiss her and when she tries to reject him he tells her that she won’t do anything bad to him she can. Then she realizes that he is the Nephilim he tells her that he loves her and her fight against the demonic system she belongs to. He is taken with her and loves that she is a succubus that doesn’t want to take people's life force. He tells her that he killed the immortals that hurt her and stopped himself from killing Hugh. She then wants to know why hurt her but she finds out that he has a twin sister and that she was the one who attacked Georgina. He tells her that after he kills Carter the high Angel in the area they can run off and be together. She considers it and really wants to but when he won’t agree to leave before he kills Carter she decides that she can’t be with him and sit back while Carter dies so she tricks him into believing that she has agreed and they make love over and over all night. In the morning she tells him that she needs to call in sick to work but instead calls in her immortal friends and bosses. But then Roman tells her that he has decided she is all he needs and they can leave together now and he won’t kill Carter but it is too late because Seth shows up with coffee and doughnuts for her day off and Roman realizes that she called her bosses not her store job. So he calls his sister who ends up being Helena who already hates Georgina and a battle of power starts, one that sucks away all Georgina’s life energy. As she is dying Carter and Jerome show up and battle Roman and Helena. Georgina tries to save Seth but in her weakened state she kisses Seth and drains almost all his life while she sees the thoughts in his head and she realizes that Seth loves her in a worshiping wonderful way and she realizes she really cares for him. All their feelings flash by as she drains him but when she and he are pulled apart she realizes what she did and feels awful for almost killing him so when Jerome tries to wipe his memory of all he saw including knowing Georgina she makes a deal with Jerome to be his number one employee if he lets Seth keep his memories. The angel and the demon killed Helena but Roman got away injured. When Seth has recovered a week later she tells him everything about her immortal life and those around her. He is to shocked and stunned to say anything so she leaves and cries into Carter's shoulder because she realizes how deeply she cares for Seth and she doesn’t want him to hate her. She arrives to work to find that Seth has written her a note in a copy of his book. It says ... “To Thetis, Long overdue, I know, but very often the things we most desire come only after much patience and struggle. That is a human truth, I think. Even Peleus knew that. – Seth “ After finding out that the story of Thetis and Peleus was one where a mortal loved a shape shifting sea nymph so much he tamed her and they lived together and loved one another eventually leading to the birth of Achilles she finds that he has hope for the future.
22851218	/m/0641ltm	The Inferior	Peadar Ó Guilín	2007-09-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Stopmouth is a member of the Human tribe, which is on the verge of extinction. There is a vast variety of different species of sentient creatures, all of whom either have made alliances with the humans, or hunt them as a source of food. In return, in order to survive in this barbaric world, the humans hunt other species and "trade flesh", a tradition that has the humans trade the weakest and most useless members of their tribe to other species as a source of food. In the book, this is known as "volunteering", and it is considered shameful to attempt to resist being volunteered for the good of your tribe. Stopmouth himself (who is said to be around 5,000 days old, around 13 years old) is constantly overlooked and overshadowed because of both his stuttering speech impediment and his more popular brother, Wallbreaker. One day Stopmouth meets a woman named Indrani. Indrani fell from the sky when one of the mysterious globes that fly across the 'Roof' (the Human tribe's name for the sky, basically) explodes, and she is expelled from it. Indrani seems to be more civilzed than Stopmouth's tribe, and is disdainful of them. The Human tribe believes her to be 'slow', or stupid, because she cannot speak their language, and their experience has been that there is only one Human tribe. She was going to be volunteered, but Wallbreaker took her as a wife (partly because of her beauty, and partly because one's status is raised when one has more than one wife), protecting her from being traded. Eventually, a great war ensues over a piece of technology known to the barbarians as 'the talker'. It allows different species to communicate with each other, thus making them easier to coordinate alliances with. It eventually gets to the point where most of the species opposing the Humans are destroyed, and Wallbreaker (having been elected chief by this point) takes possession of the talker, which becomes a coveted artifact. Stopmouth, who has come to love Indrani and resent Wallbreaker for taking her before he did, steals Indrani from him and, at her request, the talker. He is pursued across the land by his tribe until they eventually lose their pursuers. Stopmouth (having travelled to a distant part of the land) eventually becomes the surrogate chief of a tribe of religious humans who are on the verge of being wiped out by a strange race of creatures. With his help, they learn to fend for themselves. Indrani reveals toward the end of the book that she comes from a tribe of Humans who live in the Roof, and actually watch the Humans below fight for their lives as a form of entertainment. Stopmouth is devastated by this, but eventually they reconcile, as Indrani has come to a different view of his people, and now holds a degree of respect for them where there had only been disdain before. The book ends when Varaha—a member of Stopmouth's new tribe of humans and a secret member of Indrani's old Roof tribe—confronts Stopmouth while Indrani is being reclaimed by her 'civilized' people. Stopmouth manages to kill Varaha, but Indrani is returned to the Roof.
22863545	/m/063y_p0	The Wall-to-Wall Trap				 Ted is a publicity department executive at the Manhattan office of Above All Pictures, a movie production company in the mid-1950s. His high salary affords him a nice car and furnishes his large apartment, where he lives with his wife, Roxy, and their two children. Although Ted has experience in the specious marketing game played between publicists, actors, directors, producers, and tabloid journalists, he feels trapped in office politics after a rumor is started that he is about to be fired by his new boss, Larry. Larry takes a Machivellian approach to management, even convincing Ted to shed crocodile tears over his potentially destitute family during a business dinner with a magazine editor. Ted hopes to secure a headlining article to back up a publicity stunt for Above All's latest movie. Without the article, Ted's stunt will backfire, the movie may flop, and Ted is certain to be fired. Ted's former boss, Willie — who had left Above All to be a television executive in Chicago, Illinois — had a more lenient management approach. Willie is virtually blind to incompetence and seeks unconditional loyalty. He surrounds himself with yes men and rewards those that let Willie all but run their lives for them. Ted perceives it as security through fealty. Before Ted leaves Above All for Chicago, he and Willie have a falling out. Ted now strives to prove himself to Larry and the other executives at Above All, to thwart the rumor of his imminent firing. Ted acknowledges Larry's cutthroat methods, but prefers the stress over sucking up to Willie. Ted's wife wants him to reconcile with Willie and take a cushy, stress-free job in Chicago. Ted contemplates leaving the industry altogether, knowing it will mean sacrificing his lavish lifestyle and his socializing with the well-to-dos in the movie industry.
22866269	/m/063_3k1	Story of a Girl	Sara Zarr		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story centers around Deanna Lambert, a teen troubled by social exile and branding rumors. When she was thirteen, her father caught her and her brother's friend, seventeen-year-old Tommy Webber, having unprotected sex in the back of Tommy's Buick. Word gets around by Tommy, and Deanna is named the 'school slut'. Her father becomes distant and cold towards her, never showing any affection after what he witnessed. Three years later, Deanna still lives in her small hometown of Pacifica, California. Her affair with Tommy Webber is still a popular gossip topic and her older brother, Darren, and his girlfriend, Stacy, now live in their basement with their illegitimate child, April. Keeping a fantasy of moving out of the house with Darren and Stacy in her mind and coming to a happy home, Deanna gets a summer job at a ratty pizza parlor, Picasso's Pizza, while also dealing with inhibited feelings of affection for her best friend, Jason, who is dating her other friend, Lee. As the summer progresses, Deanna's secret love of Jason deepens. She begins to become more and more envious of Lee, especially of Lee's happy home and inner peace. One day, Deanna finds that Stacy fled the house,leaving April behind, and does not return. At the same time, she develops a friendship with her boss at Picasso's, Michael, while working alongside Tommy Webber. One evening, Michael gives Deanna a ride home from work and Deanna's father grows suspicious of Michael's motives. Deanna then lashes out at her father for never again trusting her after he caught Deanna and Tommy in the car, which causes her father to temporarily leave. At the end of the story Deanna reconciles with Lee and Jason, Stacy suddenly arrives home ( it is revealed that she left only intending to party before returning to motherhood ), and Deanna decides to truly move on from the affair she had so long ago. Coincidentally, her father also returns to his family and moves on from the past.
22867325	/m/06424vg	The Girls Get Even				 The girls plan to play a dirty trick on the boys. When the boys find out, both sides make a deal, that who ever makes the best Halloween costume will get to boss the other team around for a whole month. At the Halloween carnival the boys sabotage the girls' costume and the girls sabotage the boys’ costume. The boys are so upset they plan a trick on the girls; they make a fake party invitation saying go to the cemetery and follow the clues they see, and at the end of the clues the boys would pour worms and pasta all over them. But the girls tricked the boys by emptying the bucket of worms and pasta. The boys missed their chance of getting candy, when they got home the girls were waiting and ready for a party.
22868778	/m/0640cxk	Cavern of the Fear	Jennifer Rowe	2002	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In Deltora, a land of magic and monsters, the Shadow Lord's evil tyranny has finally ended after three unlikely heroes Lief, Jasmine, and Barda defeated him. He and the creatures of his sorcery have been driven out of Deltora. But thousands of Deltorans are still enslaved in the Shadowlands, the Shadow Lord's terrifying and mysterious domain. To rescue them, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine, heroes of the quest for the Belt of Deltora, must find the Pirran Pipe, the only weapon the Shadow Lord fears. They embark on the dangerous quest and finds the first broken piece of the Pipe. There they encounter The Fear, a giant squid, whom they defeat.
22888014	/m/063yktd	Coco & Igor	Chris Greenhalgh	2002-07-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring has its Paris premiere on 29 May 1913. Coco is mesmerized by the power of Igor’s composition, but the audience is scandalized by its discordant, rhythmic music and Nijinsky's primitive choreography. Coco finally meets Igor seven years later, at a dinner hosted by Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes. Igor has been forced to flee Russia – with his wife and four children – following the Russian Revolution. Coco invites him to bring his family to stay with her at her villa in Garches – 'Bel Respiro'. Couturière and composer soon begin an affair. Both experience a surge of creativity; while Coco creates Chanel No. 5 (with perfumer Ernest Beaux), Igor’s compositions display a new, liberated style. But Igor’s wife, Katerina, becomes ill with consumption and an unbearable tension takes hold of 'Bel Respiro' and its occupants.
22894949	/m/063zfps	Heaven and Earth	Ian Plimer	2009-05		 In the book, Plimer likens the concept of human-induced climate change to creationism and asserts that it is a "fundamentalist religion adopted by urban atheists looking to fill a yawning spiritual gap plaguing the West". Environmental groups are claimed to have filled this gap by having a romantic view of a less developed past. The book is critical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which he claims has allowed "little or no geological, archeological or historical input" in its analyses. If it had, the book asserts, the IPCC would know cold times lead to dwindling populations, social disruption, extinction, disease and catastrophic droughts, while warm times lead to life blossoming and economic booms – suggesting that global warming, whether or not caused by humans, should be welcomed. The book is critical of political efforts to address climate change and argues that extreme environmental changes are inevitable and unavoidable. the book claims, and they have narrowed the climate change debate to the atmosphere, whereas the truth is more complex. Money would be better directed to dealing with problems as they occur rather than making expensive and futile attempts to prevent climate change. The book differs from the scientific consensus in contending that the Great Barrier Reef will benefit from rising seas, that there is no correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature, and that 98% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour. In the book, Plimer asserts that the current theory of human-induced global warming is not in accord with history, archaeology, geology or astronomy and must be rejected, that promotion of this theory as science is fraudulent, and that the current alarm over climate change is the result of bad science. He argues that climate models focus too strongly on the effects of carbon dioxide, rather than factoring in other issues such as solar variation, the effect of clouds, and unreliable temperature measurements.
22903660	/m/0640h0q	Wagon Train to the Stars	Diane Carey	2000-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Guarding a colony expedition becomes much more difficult when an ancient feud between two alien races threatens everyone.
22903838	/m/0641cvw	Belle Terre	Dean Wesley Smith	2000-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Enterprise is leading thirty-thousand colonists on a six month trip to establish a strategically important colony. Just after they make their first attempts at settling in, Spock discovers a nearby moon has two important features. It is made of a very valuable ore and is also unstable. If it blows, all the colonists will be killed.
22903948	/m/063__rf	Rough Trails	Julia Ecklar	2000-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A vital colony, needed to support the eventual expansion of the Federation, is suffering problems. The home planet is ravaged by natural disasters. Alien threats endanger the lives of everyone due to greed for the mineral rights. As the Enterprise patrols the system, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov find that the colonists have outright decided they don't want the help of Starfleet anymore.
22904127	/m/063_lvb	The Flaming Arrow	Kathy Oltion	2000-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Belle Terre is a new human colony set up on a vitally strategic new planet. It is to be a much-needed stop-over point for human expansion. Unfortunately there is months of distance between this section of space and the Federation, the exact reason for the colony in the first place. The Enterprise and James Kirk have been dealing with a series of threats to Belle Terre, the latest is an alien race armed with a 'superweapon' that is determined to kill every last human; the mineral rights are just too valuable.
22914208	/m/063zr2v	Batman: Haunted Knight				 During the story "Fears", Batman is hunting down and trying to capture Scarecrow. As the title suggests, fear plays a large part in the story, with Batman nearly dying of fear while trapped in a large, poisonous, thorn maze. "Madness" tells the story of James Gordon's daughter, Babara, being kidnapped by Mad Hatter and forced to be in a twisted tea party with other kidnapped children. Batman and Gordon finally save Babara and bring down Mad Hatter. "Ghosts" is basically a Batman universe version of A Christmas Carol, with Bruce's father taking the place of Marley, and the three spirits being Poison Ivy, Joker, and a Grim Reaper figure who turns out to be Batman's ghost. The message from the spirits is that Bruce should not let Batman take over his entire life.
22932306	/m/063z622	Gilda Joyce: The Ghost Sonata	Jennifer Allison	2007-08		 Wendy Choy, Gilda's best friend, gets to go to Oxford, England for a piano competition. When Gilda finds this out, she embarks on the trip with Wendy as an official page turner. But when Gilda thinks that there are ghosts haunting Oxford, she gets excited. Mysterious Tarot cards are placed in the guests' bedrooms which gives Gilda even more reason to believe that there are hauntings in Oxford. Gilda is a self-proclaimed psychic investigator who believes that she can speak with her late father. She tries to solve the problem why this ghost is haunting them.
22946609	/m/064p0yr	Wait Till Helen Comes: A Ghost Story	Mary Downing Hahn		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book starts with Molly and Michael (brother and sister) arguing with their mom because they found out that they are moving to the country. The house used to be a church and has a graveyard located near it. Heather, a 7-year-old girl, still does not trust Molly (stepsister), Michael (stepbrother), and their mother, Jean (stepmother). She tends to stay close with her daddy, Dave. When Molly hears of Heather having a ghostly friend, she immediately watches her every move, causing later arguments to occur. While Molly tries to have a sisterly relationship with Heather, Heather continues to deny the trust given to her. Heather threatens Molly later on that if she continues to bother and "spy" on her and Helen, "Wait Till Helen Comes". Helen comes while Heather, Jean, and Dave are gone and destroys Molly, Michael, and Jean's room. Molly sees Helen, but no one believes her. Helen gives Heather a locket, and later while Jean and Dave are gone, Heather sneaks out to see helen. Molly follows Heather and Helen, while Helen tries to lure Heather into a pond and drown her, but Molly saves Heather. While Molly gives Heather CPR, Helen comes back to get Heather. Molly takes the locket and throws it at Helen. She runs after it. Molly tries to escape, dragging Heather behind, and falls into a hole where they found Helens parent's bones. Molly finds out that Helen had killed her parents by accidentally setting a fire, just like how Heather accidentally played with the stove that started a fire that killed her mother when she was three. Once Molly and Heather are found and rescued, the parents' bones are removed and buried with their daughter. Helen is finally at rest and Molly comes to love and care for her stepsister.
22950159	/m/063_hl9	The Prince of Tides	Pat Conroy	1986		 Tom travels to New York City to discuss his sister's problems with Dr. Susan Lowenstein, her psychiatrist. Starting in her childhood, Savannah experienced schizophrenic hallucinations involving bloody figures and dogs which tell her to kill herself. Savannah moves to New York and becomes an emerging writer of poetry, writing about her past as a way to escape from it. After many years, Savannah attempts suicide and nearly succeeds, the hallucinations still haunting her. In flashbacks which take up most of the novel, Tom relates incidents from his childhood to Lowenstein, who hopes that by finding out what pushed Savannah into her latest suicide attempt she and Tom can discover how to save her life. We learn that Tom and his siblings were the offspring of an abusive father and uncaring mother. The father, Henry, a WWII bomber crewman who survived being shot down and managed to evade capture by the Nazis, thought that the best way to raise a family was by beating them, and did so regularly. He was a shrimp boat operator and, despite being successful at that profession, spent all of his money on frivolous business pursuits. One business attempt was a gas station that he advertised with a live tiger (that became the family pet, Caesar). These attempts leave the family in poverty. Their overly proud, status-hungry mother was only concerned for the family's public image, and would not let her children say a word about their father's abuse. Eventually, Tom reveals the most traumatic event of their childhood, which ultimately caused the first of several of Savannah's suicide attempts. A man the children nickname "Callanwolde", who they first encounter in a wood next to their grandmother's home in Atlanta, escapes from prison with two other men and goes to the Wingo's home on Melrose Island, South Carolina. They rape Tom, Savannah (they were just 18 years old), and Lila (their mother). Luke, who was working outside, comes to the house, sees the men through the window, and releases the family's pet tiger, Caesar, who kills the men raping Lila and Savannah; Tom kills the man who raped him. The mother and the children dispose of the men's bodies and she made them promise that they would never tell a soul about what happened. After the revelation of the rape, Lowenstein feels that she is even closer to helping Savannah. Tom then tells the story of how their brother, Luke, died. Lila ends up divorcing Henry many years later, and marries Reese Newbury, a prominent landowner in the city of Colleton and former husband of a childhood rival, next to Melrose Island. Lila had gained the land in the settlement, and sells it to Reese. Reese sells all of the land in Colleton county and the Atomic Energy Commission begins the construction of production plants there. Luke, an ex-Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam, decides to fight for his land and the city, using guerrilla tactics to destroy bridges and building equipment, becoming a wanted man. He is tracked down by Savannah and Tom who try to persuade him to give up instead of being killed by the FBI. Luke is finally persuaded to surrender himself at a time and place of his choosing, but en route to the meeting, is shot and killed. Luke's death was the driving force behind Savannah's latest suicide attempt, and Lowenstein and Tom figure out that in order to save Savannah, she would have to write poetry about Luke's life the way she wrote about her childhood. As the novel concludes, Savannah is making her recovery and Tom becomes closer to his wife and children. Henry, after being released from prison for drug trafficking, is confronted by Tom about his abuse, but does not remember ever hurting his family. Although Savannah and Tom can never completely forgive him for the damage that he did, they look forward to getting to know their father better, who acts like a changed man. By the end of the novel, they had not completely repaired their relationship with their mother, despite an earlier apologetic conversation between Lila and Tom. Tom's meetings with Lowenstein also helped him better understand himself and save his marriage. Tom ended up as emotionally detached as his father and mother were, and because of this he never learned how to love his family. Sallie cheats on Tom, and the two nearly divorce. Tom falls in love with Lowenstein through the course of the novel, but realizes that he still loves Sallie. Lowenstein and Tom part ways after saving Savannah, and Tom returns to his family to become the father that he never was.
22951256	/m/0641lxq	The Snowman	Jo Nesbø	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The book begins with a scene in 1980 - 24 years before the main plot. A married woman has sex with a lover in the middle of the day, while her adolescent son waits in a car outside; their lovemaking is disturbed when they think somebody is looking at them from outside the window, but it turns out to have been only a snowman built outside. The significance of the scene only becomes clear near the end of the book, where - as with other flashbacks in the Harry Hole books - it provides a clue to the identity of the book's real villain. The main plot is set in 2004, when Norwegian detective, Harry Hole investigates a number of recent murders of women around Oslo. His experiences on a training course with the FBI lead him to search for links between the cases, and finds two – each victim is a married mother and after each murder a snowman is found at the murder scene. On looking back through previous murders going back some years, Hole comes to realise that he is on the case of Norway's first official serial killer, as he discovers more women who have disappeared and are believed to have been abducted or murdered in a similar pattern. Almost all of the victims vanish after the first snowfall of winter and a snowman is found near the scene, although this is usually ignored as not being indicative during the original investigation. Further investigation leads Harry and his team – including newcomer to the Department, Katrine Bratt, recently transferred from the Police Department in Bergen, to suspect that paternity issues with the children of the victims may be a motive for the murders. They discover that all of the victims' children have different fathers to the men they believe to be their father. Following DNA Testing results leads the investigation down a few wrong routes and several murder suspects are eliminated from the enquiry. Within a short time, Harry and Katrine are drawn together - personally as well as professionally. In the past Harry avoided having affairs with female colleagues, but he is now tempted. During a departamental party, Katrine makes bold advances - and though rejecting her, Harry afterwards has vivid sexual fantasies about her. It is, however, far more than a sexual attraction. He recognizes in her a kindred spirit - a brillant detective able to notice the smallest of details and form them into patterns. Moreover, she has the same kind of obsessive dedication to the job which Harry himself has - the obsessive dedication which had earlier caused Harry's girlfriend, Rakel, to break their relationship. To complicate matters further, during the investigation, Harry continues to meet, clandestinely, with Rakel, despite the fact that Rakel has a new boyfriend, the doctor Matthias Lund-Helgesen. Eventually, however, suspicion falls of Katrine Bratt being herself "The Snowman", after she attempts to force a confession out of one of the strongest suspects, who eventually turns out to be innocent. Harry chases her across Norway and finally catches up with her at a previously discovered murder site. She is apprehended and committed to a psychiatric unit. After initially seeming to be unresponsive, she eventually informs the psychiatrist of the reasons for her behaviour. At the same time, Harry's superior officers decide that the scandal of allowing a long-time serial killer to work on the murder case will be damaging and determine that they require a scapegoat to appease the press. Due to his previous issues with alcoholism and consequent reputation within the police department, Harry is put forward in absentia. Harry comes to realise that the murderer is still at large when another victim is discovered. Purely due to a random thought triggered by a comment from Matthias, Harry makes a vital connection that ultimately leads him to the true perpetrator. His success in finally apprehending the killer prevents any need for a scapegoat and Katrine Bratt, following further mental stability checks is sent back to Bergen Police Department. A background theme to the book's plot is the centuries-old rivalry between Oslo and Bergen, repeatedly referred to in (often ironic or facetious) remarks by various characters. In one passage Katrine tells Harry that "Bergensians don't think of Oslo as the capital".
22951656	/m/063zcrx	T3: Terminator Hunt	Aaron Allston			 Skynet, the most advanced artificial intelligence ever developed, has long since outstripped its human creators in deviousness, duplicity, and sheer ruthlessness. In 2029, as the human Resistance inexorably pushes toward a victory over the machines, Skynet has a card to play that the Resistance can’t counter. It can use one of the Resistance to betray all humanity. Skynet kidnaps Resistance agent Paul Keeley, drugs him into a hazy, receptive state, and subjects him to an uncannily realistic VR simulation in which a beautiful woman is trying to rescue him from the living hell of the future. Unfortunately, that woman is a seductive, deadly Terminatrix. If Paul believes what his virtual “savior” tells him, he may inadvertently reveal vital Resistance secrets that could cause mankind’s destruction. The Resistance must find the key to unlock Paul’s memory and hunt down the answers that will defeat the Terminatrix, the T-X, Skynet’s most powerful weapon of all.
22951744	/m/0641550	T3: Terminator Dreams	Aaron Allston			 Despite the sacrifice of a T-850 and the heroic efforts of John Connor and Kate Brewster, Skynet became operational. It is now 2029 AD, and the war between the human Resistance and Skynet rages on. With small guerrilla forces, John and Kate continue to sabotage and destroy Skynet forces . . . but it's not enough. Before Judgment Day, Danny Avila helped program what became Skynet and was plagued by nightmares of Terminators destroying cities and decimating mankind. He disappeared two days before Judgment Day, and didn't resurface until Kate and John discovered him years later. Danny still can't remember what happened to him just before Skynet attacked. He has the nagging feeling that he has forgotten something very important. Despite this memory lapse, he has become a vital member of the Resistance. Horrible dreams have begun to haunt him again. Could these dreams be a psychic link to his past self? John Connor has an idea: if Danny past and Danny present can communicate, perhaps they can help the Resistance gain an edge and defeat Skynet. But to accomplish such a connection would place Danny at tremendous physical and emotional risk. It's a dangerous experiment, but one that might prove the salvation of mankind's future... and the death of Danny.
22965219	/m/063y7g7	Thin Air	Dean Wesley Smith	2000-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Federation has established the colony of Belle Terre, vitally important to their continued expansion. However, the planet they have chosen has unexpected mineral riches, desired by nearby aliens. Due to sheer distance, the only starship to guard them is the Enterprise. The planet is now under attack by biological weapons; Captain Kirk decides to take the fight to the aliens threatening Belle Terre.
22967551	/m/0640hmm	Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go		2008-07-22		 One day, the nerdy Milton Fauster and his kleptomaniac sister Marlo are in the Grizzly Mall of Generica, Kansas. They go into a store and Milton unwittingly steals some lip gloss. As Marlo and Milton are running through the mall with the security guard chasing them, Milton realizes Marlo tricked him into stealing lip gloss.They take a brake for a moment and they stop in front of a giant marshmallow model of a Grizzly Bear, and Milton sees Damian Ruffino, his extremely unhygienic tormentor and bully at school. He is sticking some dynamite in the marshmallow Grizzly Bear Statue's you-know-where. Before the mall security guards can catch up with them, the marshmallow Grizzly Bear explodes and Milton and Marlo both die. Damian also dies. The last thing they see is flaming marshmallow all over the mall. Now, Milton and Marlo are holding hands and plummeting downward and Milton feels a slight sting. He and Marlo land, and they found themselves in a terrible school in Limbo where the principal Bea "Elsa" Bubb torments them with things they wish they could have. But, Damian is getting the special treatment. The teachers are rude, mean, and disgusting. The children are terrified. They now find themselves in Limbo, the waiting area for the Nine Circles of Heck, which include Rapacia, Blimpo, Precocia, Sadia, Snivel, Fibble, Lipptor, and Dupli-City. When Milton meets Virgil, his new and now only best friend, they and Marlo plan an escape to return to Earth, instead of spending the rest of their lives tormented in Heck. Each book in the series deals with a realm of the afterlife of Heck. "" Circles of Heck"" Limbo : First place where kids arrive after they die, where their souls are weighed and assessed. Rapacia : Where the greedy kids go. Blimpo : Where the fat kids go. Fibble : Where the lying kids go. Snivel : Where the whiny kids go. Precocia : Where the smarty-pants kids that grow up too fast go. Lipptor : Where the kids who sass back go. Sadia : Where the bullies go. Dupli-City : Where the back-stabbing kids go. Honors Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck was nominated for an Oregon Book Award. Other Books Released in the Series Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck was released in July, 2009. Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck was released in May, 2010. Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck was released May, 2011. Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck was released on May 22, 2012. Precocia: The Sixth Circle of Heck will be released in February 2013.
22967905	/m/0641pt_	Winter Rose	Patricia A. McKillip	1996-07-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Rois Melior, the wild daughter of a widowed father, first sees Corbet Lynn step from the woods, she is attracted to him despite a sense that he isn't what he appears to be. As he rebuilds his family's decaying estate, Rose and her sister Laurel both befriend and eventually fall in love with Corbet. The seasons progress as calm, sensible Laurel begins to change, forgetting her earlier betrothal and becoming obsessed with Corbet. In the winter, Corbet mysteriously disappears and Laurel begins to waste away, much like her mother did. The town believes that the curse that Corbet's grandfather lay upon his descendants has claimed him. Only Rois, who has been able to slip in and out of the woods since she was a child, is able to chase after Corbet and save him and her sister. But the power of the fey is a tricky magic, and even as Rois untangles him from his past, she is in constant danger of being ensnared herself.
22978157	/m/064mjkp	The Million Dollar Putt	Dan Gutman	2006		 Edward Bogard ("Bogie" for short) is a 13 year old blind boy who lives in Hawaii with his widowed father. Though blind, he rides a bike, parasails, and plays guitar. When he decides to take up golf he has to enlist the aid of his neighbor, a young girl named Birdie. As their friendship develops, it turns out that Bogie also has the driving touch of a professional golfer. Someone anonymously enters him into a golf tournament and the two join forces to try to win the million dollar prize.
22980796	/m/064jx46	December 7, 1941: A Different Path		1995	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The novel begins with a Japanese air strike on the port of Vladivostok, the prelude to a Japanese invasion of western Siberia. Simultaneously, Japanese forces strike southward, bypassing the American colony in the Philippines and taking Australia and the European colonies in southeast Asia. Facing invasion on two fronts, the Soviet Union soon collapses, as Joseph Stalin and his entourage are massacred by escapees from a gulag during their evacuation from Moscow. Though President Franklin D. Roosevelt endeavors to prepare the United States for war against Germany, he faces renewed isolationist opinion. A proposal to begin work on an atomic bomb is rejected because of the cost and uncertainty that it will work. Facing a resurgent Germany, Winston Churchill has little choice but to surrender. Adolf Hitler uses his dominance to complete the extermination of the Jews in Europe and expands his program to the Middle East. German scientists also complete work on an atomic bomb, which Hitler uses to destroy New York City and force the United States to surrender. When the Germans learn of the harsh Japanese treatment of the Australians, they force the Japanese to abandon their conquest of the continent on pain of atomic destruction. Though Germany now dominates the world, cracks start to appear in their empire. The puppet regime in the United States encounters resistance when they attempt to implement the "Final Solution" in America. News of the growing difficulties exposes the extent of the Holocaust to Albert Speer.
22981328	/m/064lb_y	Ramage and the Drumbeat	Dudley Pope	1967	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book follows Lt. Nicholas Lord Ramage and his experiences commanding the cutter HMS Kathleen. Dispatched by Commodore Horatio Nelson to carry messages to Gibraltar while transporting the Italians refugees rescued in Ramage. During the voyage, the Marchesa and Ramage exchange rings through a faked shooting competition. Soon the Kathleen encounters the crippled Spanish frigate, La Sabina. Deciding that it would be imprudent to leave the hulk drifting at sea, he forces the ship to surrender to his far inferior armed ship by a faked attempt at blowing the stern off the ship. He takes La Sabina in tow. Soon after, two British frigates encounter the Kathleen and remove the prisoners from the hulk in tow. The Captain of one of the ships also takes charge of the Marchesa, to the great reluctance of Ramage and herself. Soon after, Ramage and the hulk drift into a Spanish fleet returning to the port of Cartagena. Though the Kathleen is captured, Ramage, with the help of Jackson, passes himself off as an American sailor pressed by the British, and receives liberty from the Spanish. While in Cartegena (with other foreign and non-foreign refugees from the Kathleen who had fake protections) Ramage spies on the Spanish admiral José de Córdoba, stealing several official documents from his house. From these Ramage learns that the Spanish fleet will soon sail for the Atlantic. Realizing the danger of the situation, he steals a xebec and returns to Gibraltar, where he finds the recaptured Kathleen. The Commissioner of the port then sends Ramage to find Sir John Jervis and warn him of the battle. After a squall, he encounters the fleet, which quickly proceeds to Cape St. Vincent where they fight the Spanish fleet on 14 February 1797, the Kathleen acting as a support ship for Lord Nelson. Entangled in the battle, Ramage and the Kathleen become integral in the fouling of the San Nicholas aboard the San Jose, allowing Nelson in the to come into battle. The British fleet is victorious, capturing 4 ships, and Ramage nearly dies from a wound which knocks him into the sea. However, he is rescued by several of his sailors, but gains no credit for his role in the battle.
22981589	/m/064l8_4	First Term at Malory Towers				 Darrell is sent to boarding school for the first time. When she arrives, she is sent to the head, Miss Grayling, with some other new girls, who tells them that "successes" are girls who become dependable.Darrell soon learns the names of the girls in her dormy. Jean is a sensible Scots girl. Irene is a scatter brain but loves music and maths.Mary-Lou is a quiet and timid little girl. Alicia is a cunning, smart and funny girl. Gwendoline is a selfish girl. Sally is a closed up girl and keeps herself to herself. Catherine is the head girl and is good at it. Emily is a quiet girl who's only real interest is elaborate embroidery and sewing. Violet is another girl in the form and doesn't feature in the books much.Darrell herself was the tenth girl in the dormitory. Darrell wants to be a success, but is distracted by Alicia Johns, falling lower in her place in class and playing tricks on the staff. However, things are still going all right for Darrell, which is not the same story for the other new girls, Gwendoline Mary Lacey and Sally Hope. Gwen is spoilt and not liked, while Sally is withdrawn and unfriendly. Darrell tells Sally that their mothers know each other, and isn't Sally's new baby sister lovely? But strangely Sally angrily states she has no baby sister, and she wouldn't want one either. A few chapters in we see Darrel's temper rise against Gwen. Mary-Lou, a girl scared of everything, is held down in the water cruelly by Gwen, because Gwen is angry at being teased all the time. Darrell hits Gwen because she is in a temper. Darrell regrets her lose of temper and makes amends so the girls like her again, but Gwen is reluctant to apologise to Mary-Lou. Gwen is becoming more unpopular, and is jealous of Darrell. Mary-Lou suddenly springs up a complete adoration of Darrell, as she truly believed that she had been drowning. She follows her around everywhere and desperately tries to befriend her. Unfortunately However, this only ends up in annoying Darrell, Darrell wanted to take Mary-Lou out for half-term but she was going with Gwendoline and was too scared to tell Gwen that she wanted to go with Darrell. Next Darrell asks Sally if she would like to go out but she refuses. At half-term Darrell takes out the quiet Emily who's only real interest is sewing. Darrell sees Sally later that night. She says that Sally does have a baby sister, as her mother has just told her. Sally again denies it, the girls row, and Darrell pushes Sally so hard she flies across the room. The next morning Sally is in the San, seriously ill. Darrell is very worried as she thinks her push caused her illness. Things are sorted out when Darrell's father comes to operate on Sally and says it was not Darrell's push that made Sally ill. She had, in fact, appendicitis and had to get her appendix removed. Sally admits to Darrell she does have a sister but only pretended because she was jealous. Sally's mother comes to visit Sally and Sally is no longer jealous. Darrell and Sally become friends. Darrell visits Sally almost every day and decide, to boost Mary-Lou's confidence they would be nice to her and think up a plot to help her. Alicia said it wouldn't work and tried to point out flaws in the plan,Darrell thought they were good points but Sally ignored them-much to Alicia's annoyance. Darrell was supposed to pretend to have difficulties in the water so Mary-Lou would throw in the float, the problem was, the float was off to be mended. So Mary-Lou, an awful swimmer who was generally scared of everything jumped in to save her fully clothed. Meanwhile, Gwen is still jealous of Darrell and when Darrell and Sally think of a plan to boost Mary-Lou's confidence Gwen becomes spiteful and smashes Mary-Lou's pen. Darrell is accused of this, but Mary-Lou comes to the rescue, finding out that it was really Gwen, because she is fond of Darrell and Sally. The term ends with Darrell and Sally best friends and Mary-Lou ever more confident .
22982754	/m/064pt0b	Set in Stone	Linda Newbery	2006	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Samuel Godwin, an aspiring artist, is forced to drop out of art school following his father's death. Without any qualifications he contemplates what to do for work. Wealthy businessman Ernest Farrow advertises for an art tutor for his two daughters, and Godwin successfully applies for the position. He moves into Farrow's mansion, Fourwinds, with adequate time to pursue his own art. Godwin becomes infatuated with Farrow's youngest daughter, Marianne, but questions remain unanswered. Marianne wanders the grounds at night, while her sister, Juliana, is always quiet and sad. Godwin discovers the previous art tutor, a talented sculptor, was sent away from Fourwinds before he finished his masterpiece.
22989300	/m/064mjv8	The Assignment	Friedrich Dürrenmatt	1986	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Tina von Lambert, wife of psychiatrist Otto von Lambert, has fled to an unnamed North African country (referred to as M.), where she is found raped and murdered in the [desert]. Otto hires F., a filmmaker, to travel to M. and reconstruct his wife's murder. The Chief of Police appears to be cooperative, however, after a police-escorted visit to the Al-Hakim ruins where the body was found, F.'s cameraman reveals that his footage has been replaced. The police then allow F. to question a number of foreign agents being held and tortured at the police ministry, all of whom tell her the same vague, inconclusive story, none confessing to the crime. Later, F. is taken to observe the execution of a Scandinavian spy in the central courtyard of the police compound; the Chief of Police claims that the spy has confessed to the crime and that the case is solved. They are shown the video of their investigation, which includes none of their footage; instead it has been turned into a propaganda film featuring the police. In despair, F. leaves her crew and walks alone through the marketplace, where she comes across the distinctive red fur coat she knows belonged to Tina von Lambert. She purchases the coat and wears it back to her hotel. At the hotel F.'s cameraman tells her that his footage has again been taken, this time that of the execution, and that aeroplane tickets out of the country have been booked for them for early the following morning. In her room, F. finds the Head of the Secret Service, who congratulates her on her work and explains that he will use her confiscated footage to expose the corruption, weakness, and incompetence of the Chief of Police, who is planning a coup against the state government. The Head of the Secret Service asks that she continue her investigation under his protection and without the knowledge of the Chief of Police. He offers a new crew, and provides a body double, complete with a red fur coat, to travel home with the old crew in F.'s place. F. is relocated to a derelict hotel, inhabited by a lone, aged maid. Björn Olsen, the cameraman hired by the secret service to assist F., arrives at the hotel and mistakes her for Jytte Sørensen, a Danish journalist; when he realizes his mistake, for F. speaks no Danish, he flees in a panic. Later, the Head of the Secret Police shows F. a gossip magazine with an article titled "Return from the Dead", featuring a photograph of Tina von Lambert reunited with her husband; he explains to her that the murdered woman was in fact Sörensen, a friend of Tina's, to whom Tina had given her red fur coat and passport. The reason for the murder, however, remains a mystery. Determined to find the truth, F. leaves the hotel and heads toward the desert. On the way she finds Olsen's dead body next to his exploded Volkswagen van, and while she examines the disaster she meets the cameraman Polypheme, who is filming her. Polypheme tells F. that he has video footage of Sørensen, who was on the trail of a secret before her death, and offers to show it to F. if she allows him to make a film portrait of her. Despite his dishevelled appearance and apparent drunkenness, she agrees. Polypheme takes F out in to the desert in his Land Rover, and eventually they arrive at a secret subterranean compound. The compound is a vast underground labyrinth, obviously built at great expense, though it appears to be uninhabited by anyone other than Polypheme. F. is taken to a grotesque room and left alone, and there, to her horror, she discovers a series of still frames of Olsen's death. Later in the evening she leaves her room and explores the compound, trying to track down the source of a mysterious hammering sound, which she traces to a locked door with a key in the keyhole. Out of fear she does not go inside. She finds the Land Rover and contemplates fleeing, but again is dissuaded by fear. Unable to locate her original quarters, she finds an empty room and falls asleep. In the morning, F. is found by Polypheme, now clean and sober, and over breakfast he explains the country's political situation. The primary source of revenue for the country is a meaningless war with a neighbouring country over the empty, largely uninhabited desert in which the compound is located. The already ten-year-long war is continued to serve as a testing ground for the military products of weapons-exporting nations, from tanks to intercontinental ballistic missiles. The compound was built to measure the effects of the weapons; at one time it was staffed by human observers, many of whom were eventually replaced by observational machines. Eventually a satellite was put in orbit directly above the compound, followed by a second satellite to observe the first. The satellites made the compound redundant, and the last of the people, excepting Polypheme, left. The power was cut, and the compound was running only on battery reserves which would soon be depleted and force even Polypheme to leave. Polypheme explains that he has taken shelter in the compound and military employment because his habit of collecting sensitive and potentially ruinous photographic documentation of criminals, police, and political figures makes him a target from all sides. Polypheme, when asked how he got his name, explains to F. that it was given to him by a man named Achilles, a bomber pilot and professor of Greek, who named him after the cyclops Polyphemus. He and Achilles were sent on a night raid of Hanoi from the USS Kitty Hawk, and Achilles lands their damaged plane despite sustaining serious head injuries, saving Polypheme in the process. From his wounds Achilles becomes criminally insane and is locked in a cell in a military hospital because of his tendency to rape and murder women. The hammering behind the locked door in the compound is revealed to be Achilles and truth about Jytte Sørensen's rape and murder comes out; Polypheme, indebted to Achilles, provided Sørensen as a sacrifice to the violent beast's only remaining desires. Polypheme shows his film portrait of Sørensen's rape and murder, and explains that F. will be the next victim. F. is taken out in to the desert wearing the red coat, forced to walk in front of the Land Rover carrying Polypheme and Achilles. The setting of Sørensen's portrait was flawed, and this time Polypheme chosen the perfect location out among the ruins of the tanks. F. has accepted her ultimate demise; however, when Achilles is almost upon she is struck by a powerful will to live. At the last possible moment the Chief of Police, his officers, and film crew come out of the tanks, and Achilles is shot repeatedly until he dies. Polypheme races off in the vehicle, but is killed soon after in an explosion, likely from a missile test. F. returns home and her film is rejected without explanation by the television studios. She reads that the Chief of Police and the Head of the Secret Service have been executed by order of the Head of State for high treason and attempting to overthrow the government. The Head of State denies rumours that the desert is being used as a missile test ground. On the opposite page of the newspaper F. reads that a baby boy has been born to Tina and Otto von Lambert.
22994333	/m/064kjnb	The Book of Atrix Wolfe	Patricia A. McKillip		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 For twenty years, Atrix Wolfe has turned his back on his magic to live with the wolves in the mountains. Once a powerful mage, Atrix Wolfe nearly caused the destruction of the kingdom of Pelucir when one of his creations, meant to force an invading army threatening his homeland to retreat, massacred not only the invaders, but the Pelucir forces defending their homeland as well. The daughter of the Queen of the Wood was another victim of Atrix's Hunter; during the creation of the Hunter, Saro disappeared when the fairyworld was torn asunder by Atrix Wolfe's magic. Talis, the prince of Pelucir, calls Atrix back to the human world to explain a spellbook written by a mysterious mage shortly after the massacre of Hunter's Field that the aspiring mage was studying. In the kitchens of the castle, a mysterious scullery maid named Sorrow works silently, interacting more with the pots and pans than other people. The three characters are connected by the Queen of the Woods's desire to find her daughter, but it is only when they uncover the truth of what happened twenty years earlier that they are able to find her as well as solve the mysteries of the spell book. Atrix Wolfe eventually discovers that the terrible Hunter was made, in part, from Ilyos, the consort of the Queen of the Wood and Saro's father. Talis delivers Saro back to her mother, thinking that he will never see her again, as the Wood is a magical realm, which humans cannot reach by normal means. Saro regains the power of speech after being returned to the fairy world. Atrix Wolfe un-makes the Hunter. Ilyos, however, has been through so much that he cannot return to his life as the Queen's consort. In order to protect the Queen's world, he turns himself into one of the trees of the Wood. Talis is surprised when Saro returns to Pelucir, and they begin to become acquainted. She says that he was the only person she knew, for twenty years, who was kind to her.
22999045	/m/05v6yw3	Columbine	Dave Cullen	2009-04	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/0g6p2": "Popular culture", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 Columbine has two main storylines, told in alternating chapters: the 'before' story of the killers' evolution toward murder, and the 'after' story of the survivors. There are shorter 'during' accounts of the attack, dispersed through the book. The 'before' story focuses primarily on the killers' high school years. According to the experts cited here, Eric Harris was a textbook psychopath, and Dylan Klebold was an angry depressive. The 'after' chapters are composed of eight major substories, focused on individuals who played a key role in the aftermath, including Principal Frank DeAngelis, alleged Christian martyr Cassie Bernall (another myth, according to the book), "the boy in the window" Patrick Ireland, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier, the families of victim Danny Rohrbough and heroic teacher Dave Sanders, who died saving students from the gunmen. The Evangelical Christian community's feverish response is also chronicled. Columbine begins four days before the massacre, at a school assembly hosted by Principal DeAngelis just before Prom weekend. Scenes from the massacre are depicted graphically in the early chapters, and later through flashbacks. The book is formally composed of five parts: "Part One: Female Down," "Part Two: After and Before," "Part Three: The Downward Spiral," "Part Four: Take Back the School," and "Part Five: Judgment Day." The book contains fifty-three chapters, a timeline, twenty-six pages of detailed endnotes and a fifteen-page bibliography organized into topics like, "Psychopathy," "Government Reports," "Lawsuits," "Christians," "Evidence," "Hostages and Terrorists," "Survivors," "Media Accounts," "Police Ethics and Response Protocols," etc.
22999858	/m/064nmqw	Liberia; or, Mr. Peyton's Experiments	Sarah Josepha Hale			 The story follows Mr. Peyton, the eponymous slaveowner who wishes to free all the slaves on his plantation. However, before he can do so, Peyton wishes to make certain that the slaves in his charge will be happy in their new-found freedom, and so decides to conduct three separate "experiments" to test this. In turn, Peyton sends his slaves to a farm in the Southern United States, an industrial town in the Northern United States, and finally to Canada. In all three cases, the slaves end up being even worse off than they had been under slavery, having been bullied by white supremacists who occupy all three places and dislike the presence of coloured people. However, a despairing Peyton is approached by members of the American Colonization Society, who convince Peyton to send his slaves to their native home in Liberia, where they can be happy and free. Peyton and the slaves agree, and the freed slaves in Peyton's charge are sent back to Africa, where they can finally prosper and be free from discrimination.
23001397	/m/064kf48	Windswept House: A Vatican Novel	Malachi Martin	1998-07-13	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Windswept House describes a satanic ritual - the enthronement of Lucifer - taking place at Saint-Paul's Chapel inside Vatican City, on June 29, 1963. The book gives a scary depiction of high ranking churchmen, cardinals, archbishops and prelatees of the Roman curia, taking oaths signed with their own blood, plotting to destroy the Church from within. It tells the story of an international organized attempt by these Vatican insiders and secular internationalists to force a pope of the Catholic Church to abdicate, so that a successor may be chosen that will fundamentally change orthodox faith and establish a New World Order.
23002371	/m/064lj24	Manhattan Is My Beat	Jeffery Deaver	1988	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Rune is a street-wise twenty year old, not long arrived in New York City, but she's already found herself a squat in an empty loft. She's also landed a job in a video store, Washington Square Video, that lets her pursue her interest in old movies; it's also where she meets Mr. Kelly, a lonely old man who rents the same tape over and over: a crime film based on a true story called Manhattan Is My Beat. When Rune goes to visit him for a routine tape collection and finds him dead, the police suspect a robbery. However, Rune is convinced that the true answer to the mystery lies with the tape of Manhattan Is My Beat. This conviction draws her into a dangerous adventure against those who will stop at nothing to hide the truth and don't believe in Hollywood endings. =Other media= Manhattan Is My Beat has been optioned by Double B Productions. The novel is being adapted by Double B Partners, John and Lisa Bishop..
23005467	/m/064mlct	The Demon's Lexicon	Sarah Rees Brennan	2009	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story follows two brothers with a sordid past, Nick and Alan Ryves, who fight demons and monsters. They are on the run from a magician, from whom their mother supposedly stole an amulet, when they meet Mae and Jamie, troubled teenagers who come to them for help. Throughout the book they face horror, evil, and people who just generally want to kill them, while in the meantime, long kept secrets are threatening to unravel. In the lore of the book, humans can either be born with magical powers, or can make pacts with demons who will grant them power or use their own magic. Very early on, Mae expresses the thought that she may have once had magical powers, but that they went away. Nick chastises her for this, saying that if you have magical powers, they never leave you.
23008930	/m/064pgb7	1Q84	Haruki Murakami		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The events of 1Q84 take place in Tokyo during a fictionalized 1984, with the first volume set between April and June, the second between July and September, and the third between October and December. The book opens with Aomame as she catches a taxi in Tokyo on her way to a work assignment, noticing Janáček's Sinfonietta playing on the radio. When the taxi gets stuck in a traffic jam, the driver suggests that she get out of the car and climb down an emergency escape in order to make her important meeting, though he warns her that doing so might change the very nature of reality. Aomame makes her way to a hotel in Shibuya, where she poses as a hotel attendant to kill a hotel guest. She performs the murder with a tool that leaves almost no trace on its victim, leading investigators to conclude that he died a natural death from a heart failure. Aomame starts to have bizarre experiences, noticing new details about the world that are subtly different. For example, she notices that the Tokyo policemen are carrying semiautomatic pistols now, and she always remembered them carrying revolvers. Aomame checks her memories against the archives of major newspapers and finds that there were several recent major news stories of which she has no recollection. One of these stories concerned a group of extremists who were engaged in a standoff with police in the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture. Upon reading these articles, she concludes that she must be living in an alternate reality, which she calls "1Q84," and suspects that she entered it about the time she heard Sinfonietta on the taxi radio. The character of Tengo is introduced, whose editor and mentor Komatsu asks him to rewrite an awkwardly written but otherwise promising manuscript that had been entered in a literary contest. Komatsu wants to submit the novel to a prestigious literary agency and promote its author as a new literary prodigy. Tengo has reservations about rewriting another author's work, especially that of a high school student. He agrees to do so only if he can meet with the original writer, who goes by the strange pen name "Fuka-Eri", and ask for her permission. Fuka-Eri, however, tells Tengo to do as he likes with the manuscript. Soon it becomes clear that Fuka-Eri, who is dyslexic, neither wrote the manuscript on her own, nor submitted it to the contest herself. Tengo's discomfort with the project deepens upon finding out other people must be involved. To address his concerns of her past, Fuka-Eri takes Tengo to meet her current guardian, a man called Professor Ebisuno-sensei (), or simply "Sensei" to Fuka-Eri. Tengo learns that Fuka-Eri's parents were members of a commune called "Takashima" (). Her father, Tamotsu Fukada () was Ebisuno's friend and colleague, but they did not see eye-to-eye on their subject. Fukada thought of Takashima as a utopia; Ebisuno described the commune as a place where people were turned into unthinking robots. Fuka-Eri, whom Ebisuno-sensei nicknames "Eri" (), was only a small child at the time. In 1974, Fukada and 30 members founded a new commune called "Sakigake" (). The young members of the commune worked hard under Fukada's leadership, but eventually disagreements split the commune into two factions, and the more radical side formed a new commune called "Akebono" (), which eventually has a gunfight with police near Lake Motosu () in Yamanashi Prefecture. One day, Fuka-Eri appears on Ebisuno-sensei's doorstep. She does not speak and will not explain what happened to her. When Ebisuno attempts to contact Fukada at Sakigake, he is told that he is unavailable. Ebisuno thereby becomes Fuka-Eri's guardian, and by the time of 1Q84s present, they have not heard from her parents for seven years, leading Ebisuno to fear the worst. It is while living with Ebisuno that Fuka-Eri composes her story, Air Chrysalis (). Unable to write it herself, she tells it to Azami (), Ebisuno's blood daughter. Fuka-Eri's story is about a girl's life in a commune, where she met a group of mystical beings, whom Fuka-Eri refers to as "Little People" (). Over time, Tengo begins to suspect that the mystical events described in Fuka-Eri's novel actually happened. Meanwhile, Aomame recovers psychologically from her recent assignment to kill the hotel guest. It is revealed that she has a personal and professional relationship with an older wealthy woman referred to as "the Dowager" (). The Dowager occasionally asks Aomame to kill men who have been viciously abusive to women, and it becomes clear that both Aomame and the Dowager have personal pasts that fuel their actions. They see their organized murders as one way of fighting back against severe domestic abuse. Aomame tends to be sexually promiscuous; after the recent killing, she releases stress by going to single bars and picking up older men. During these outings, she meets Ayumi, a policewoman who also has sex to relieve stress. They start to combine their efforts, which works well. Aomame's close friendship to Ayumi makes her recall an earlier friend of hers who was the victim of domestic abuse and committed suicide because of it. Aomame and Ayumi remain friends until one day when Aomame reads in the newspaper that Ayumi had been strangled to death in a hotel. The Dowager introduces Aomame to a 10-year-old girl named Tsubasa. Tsubasa and her parents have been involved with Sakigake. Tsubasa has been forcefully abused by the cult leader named only as "The Leader". As Tsubasa sleeps in the safe house owned by the Dowager, the "Little People" which are mentioned in Fuka-Eri's novel, Air Chrysalis, appear from Tsubasa's mouth and create an air chrysalis, a type of cocoon made from strands pulled straight out of the air. The Dowager had lost her own daughter to domestic abuse and now wants to adopt Tsubasa. However, Tsubasa mysteriously disappears from the safehouse, never to return. The Dowager researches Sakigake and finds that there is widespread evidence of abuse. In addition to Tsubasa, other prepubescent girls had been sexually abused there. The Dowager asks Aomame to murder the religious head of Sakigake, the Leader, who is reported to have been the abuser. Aomame meets up with Leader, who turns out to be a physically enormous person with muscle problems. He reveals that he is the father of Fuka-Eri and has special powers like telekinesis. He is also the one in Sakigake who can hear the religious voices speaking to him. Leader, knowing that Aomame was sent to him to kill him, finally strikes a deal with her: she will kill him and he will protect Tengo from harm. After a long conversation with Leader, Aomame finally kills him and goes into hiding at a prearranged location set up by the Dowager and Tamaru, her bodyguard. Aomame and Tengo's parallel worlds begin to draw ever closer. Tengo is pursued by a private investigator, Ushikawa, who was hired by Sakigake. He follows Tengo in order to gather information on Air Chrysalis. Following Leader's murder, Ushikawa is also ordered by Sakigake to determine the whereabouts of Aomame, who had arranged a therapeutic massage session with Leader only to kill him during it. The novel begins to follow Ushikawa in volume three — he was once a lawyer who made a good living representing professional criminals. He got into legal trouble and had to abandon his career. His wife and two daughters left him, and ever since he has been a detective. He's an ugly creature who repels everyone he meets, but he's intelligent and capable at gathering facts and using logic and deductive reasoning. Ushikawa focuses on Tengo, Aomame, and the Dowager as suspects in his investigation. Since the Dowager's house is guarded well and since Aomame has disappeared without a trace, Ushikawa decides to stake out Tengo's apartment to see if he can find any information related to Aomame. He rents out a room in Tengo's apartment building and sets up a camera to take pictures of the residents. He witnesses Fuka-Eri, who has been hiding out at Tengo's apartment, coming and going from the building. Fuka-Eri seems to realize Ushikawa's presence, as she leaves a note for Tengo and takes off. Ushikawa later sees Tengo return home after a visit to see his dying father. Finally, Ushikawa spots Aomame leaving the building after she herself followed Ushikawa there in order to find Tengo. After Ushikawa spots Aomame, but before he can report this to Sakigake, Tamaru sneaks into Ushikawa's room while he's asleep and interrogates the detective on his knowledge of Tengo and Aomame. Tamaru finds out that Ushikawa knows too much and is a liability to the safety of Aomame, the Dowager, and himself, and he ends up killing Ushikawa without leaving any marks or indications of how it was done. Tamaru then phones Ushikawa's contact at Sagikake and has them remove the detective's body from the apartment building. Aomame and Tengo eventually find each other via Ushikawa's investigation and with Tamaru's help. They were once childhood classmates, though they had no relationship outside of a single classroom moment where Aomame tightly grasped Tengo's hand when no other children were around. That moment signified a turning point in both Aomame's and Tengo's lives, and they retained a fundamental love for each other despite all the time that had passed. After 20 years, Aomame and Tengo meet again, both pursued by Ushikawa and Sakigake. They manage to make it out of the strange world of "1Q84", which has two visible moons, into a new reality that they assume is their original world, though there are small indications that it is not. The novel ends with them standing in a hotel room, holding hands, looking at the one bright moon in the sky.
23012121	/m/064pv09	The Ghost Drum	Susan Price	1987-01-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is represented as a tale told by the "most learned of all cats". At the beginning and at the head of each chapter, the cat introduces the scenes and the characters. At the end, the cat asks the hearer/reader to pass on the tale so that it may "make its own way back to me, riding on another's tongue." A slave woman gives her new-born daughter to an old witch to be raised as a "Woman of Power". The witch teaches the girl, Chingis, all her arcane wisdom, including the use of the shamanic ghost drum. With the drum she can enter many other worlds including the ghost-world, the land of the dead. When Chingis's apprenticeship is complete, witches come from all around to congratulate her, but the shaman Kuzma envies and fears her potential for greatness. The Czar Guidon, the latest in a long line of ruthless rulers, has married by the counsel of his advisers, but he is deathly afraid of being overthrown by his son. He imprisons his pregnant wife, Farida, in a windowless room at the top of the tallest tower in the palace, and when she dies in childbirth he orders that his son, the Czarevich Safa, should never leave the room. Marien, Safa's nurse, raises him there. When he becomes restless at his imprisonment, she dares to speak to the Czar about him and is summarily executed. The Czarevich spends many years alone before his psychic cries of distress reach Chingis, and then, with the help of the ghost drum, she finds and secretly spirits him away. He is filled with astonishment and wonder at the world he has never seen so much as a glimpse of before. Meanwhile the Czar dies, and fighting breaks out in the palace; Margaretta ascends to the throne and determines to find her nephew, intending to kill him. Kuzma, arriving in the form of a polar bear, offers to help her. Using his shamanic knowledge against Chingis, Kuzma succeeds in killing her and capturing Safa. However, in the ghost world, Chingis enlists the help of her mentor and of Marien and Farida, to return to her body and defeat Kuzma. The four spirits take over Kuzma's body and confront Margaretta before returning to the ghost world to await rebirth.
23013576	/m/064mk92	Devious	Cecily von Ziegesar	2009-11-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It's January and everyone is back from break. Waverly gets a new dean, Dr. Dresden, and two new students, Isla and Isaac Dresden. Instead of a new semester commencing, Jan Plan takes effect. It is a four-week course where students work on their own independent projects. Junior's and Seniors tend to work on solo projects while everyone else are encouraged to work together. With permission from the dean (via help from Issac) Jenny starts an independent art project based on the two art classes she took the previous semester. Her goal is to experiment with motion, drawing people instead of taking a picture of them with a manual camera. She spends most of her time in the cafe drawing people coming and going. Heath and Brandon's project is based on Man vs. Wild. Heath plans to live outside for three-weeks on basic essentials and camping skills. No tent, basic sleeping bags, no electricity, not contact with the outside world, hunting their own food, gathering fire wood, and taking notes. They take up camp in Waverly's woods. Bradon leaves after a few days, and Heath stays until the night of the party when he is unexpectedly found by Easy. Brandon did not exactly agree to Heath's project. He was conned into it having just returned from Switzerland. During his break, which was paid for by Heath, he visited his girlfriend Hellie Dunderdorf with whom he lost his virginity. After quitting Heath's project he ends up working with Callie due to no other options. Callie and Brandon's project looks into the psychology of love. Callie selected this project to find more information about true love. Is there such a thing? Do you get over your first love? Can you love again? They do research and take a video survey with some of the Waverly girls. During the project Callie finds herself becoming attracted to Brandon (along with most of the other girls), who has more of a sexy unshaven look going on. At one point they end up kissing in his dorm room. Unfortunately, Brandon's webcam was on. Hellie saw the whole thing and promptly breaks up with him. Brett's project, like Brandon's, changes. Originally she was going to intern at Vogue thanks to her sister, Brianna. However, Leslie ends up not needing a new intern due to a promotion to Italian Vogue.She ends up returning to Waverly and joining Sebastian's "friend" Christine Bosley's Jan Plan project.
23013725	/m/064lh3b	Death of a Blue Movie Star	Jeffery Deaver	1990	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Rune, now working as an underpaid production assistant while pursuing a career as an independent film-maker, finds herself facing danger again as she starts work on her first film project. She seems to have found the perfect subject following the bombing of an adult movie theatre, seen through the ideas of Shelly Lowe, the porn star whose film was playing when the bomb went off. However, just hours after Rune does her first sit-down interview with her, a second bomb claims Shellys life and Rune starts to wonder she was the intended target all along. Rune's debut may also be her last, as she comes up against someone who wants to bury her film -and the truth- forever.
23017093	/m/09cxx7x	I, Alex Cross	James Patterson	2009	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Detective Alex Cross is enjoying a birthday party with his family when he receives a call from his bosses informing him that Caroline, the 24-year old only daughter of his late brother Blake, has been found murdered in Virginia. Cross and his girlfriend Briana Stone rush to Richmond, Virginia, and are shocked to discover that Caroline's body was found dismembered (most likely by a wood chipper) in the trunk of a car driven by someone with connections to organized crime. Cross takes the case and one of his first stops is Caroline's apartment. Cross is shocked to discover she only lived a few miles from him and yet never contacted him. He is further shocked to discover that based on the apartment's locale and the extensive lingerie wardrobe inside, Caroline was a high-end escort. Further investigation reveals that several other young people with connections to high-end prostitution have also either been murdered or disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Further investigation reveals that Caroline's escorting activities took her to a secretive club in Culpeper, Virginia, called Blacksmith Farms where she may have met an ultrasecretive character named Zeus who wears a mask at all times. During the course of his investigation, Cross is thwarted by various people in Washington, D.C.—including the Secret Service and the President of the United States—who all want Cross to hand over his investigation to them. Cross refuses and is almost forced to give up his investigative efforts when his old FBI friend Ned Mahoney recommends Cross follow up on a lead provided by a country farmer. The lead turns out to be an escort who met Zeus and saw him without his mask on. All escorts—like Cross' niece Caroline—who saw Zeus without his mask were quickly killed and their bodies dismembered. This escort, however, managed to escape, but not before being shot in the back. The farmer just happened to come upon the escort and managed to nurse her back to health. The escort reveals that Zeus is actually Theodore Vance, husband to current US President Maggie Vance. Theodore Vance has a compulsion for young escorts and is able to indulge his compulsion with the help of various people (like his Secret Service detail) who want to keep it quiet to protect the current Presidential administration. Cross goes to a party at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. to question Theodore Vance about his connection to Zeus. Sensing that President Vance's administration is about to be brought down by Theodore Vance's arrest, Thedore Vance's personal Secret Service agent (Dan Cormorant), in a final act of loyalty to his country, shoots and kills Theodore Vance. Cormorant is immediately killed by other Secret Service agents. By killing Vance, Cormorant has allowed the Vance presidential administration to survive and spared the country the embarrassment of a sex scandal. Instead, Theodore Vance will be remembered as a Presidential spouse who was tragically and inexplicably killed by a rogue Secret Service agent.
23021582	/m/064lwtq	The Haunted Woods				 The main protagonist, Kyle Nathaniel Harper, is a senior in high school, fairly vapid on the surface, but intuitive to the evilness in his surroundings. As he and the town prepare for the fall festivities, which include four nights of "The Haunted Woods," Kyle starts to be introduced to the true nature of his parents, friends, and the rest of the town. Set up as a frame-narrative, the story moves back and forth from nightmare sequence to actual reality, which is meant to throw the reader off as well develop questions about the inner psyche of the main character. Kyle and his friends have the same qualities as well as insecurities of normal teenagers, but when Kyle finds out that it's not only his father's adultery that caused his parents to divorce, he begins to be haunted with thoughts of becoming a monster or dying a victim.
23023205	/m/064qhsn	Pippi Longstocking	Astrid Lindgren		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book focuses on the experiences of Pippi Longstocking, a nine-year-old pigtailed redhead whose father, a sea captain, has seemingly vanished at sea, so she moves into a big house known as "Villa Villekulla", located in a little Swedish village, with her pet monkey Mr. Nilsson, a suitcase filled with pieces of gold, and her unnamed pet horse. Gifted with superhuman strength and countless other eccentricities, Pippi is soon befriended by two local siblings named Annika and Tommy Settergren, who admire her and enjoy her company. Having spent her entire life at sea, Pippi's limited knowledge of common courtesy and average childhood behaviour adds humour to the story when she attempts to enroll at Tommy and Annika's school, attends a circus, and attends a coffee party hosted by Mrs. Settergren.
23023982	/m/064lpyc	Show of Evil				 Ten years after saving Aaron Stampler from the death penalty, Martin Vail &mdash; now a district attorney &mdash; is plagued by his client-turned-archnemesis once again when a series of murder victims turn up with mysterious ties to the erstwhile serial killer.
23024079	/m/064qn4p	Reign in Hell				 Martin Vail, now a U.S. Attorney, is assigned a case in which he must go up against a survivalist militia &mdash; and unexpectantly encounters his archnemesis, Aaron Stampler, seemingly back from the dead and posing as a blind Baptist preacher.
23026171	/m/064mbxw	Final Draft	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story of the novel begins several hours after the end of Rough Draft, after Kirill Maximov, a regular man who was turned into a functional, escapes from Arkan (or Earth 1), fights his friend and curator of our world (Earth 2 or Demos) Kotya, and kills his midwife-functional Natalia Ivanova. It turns out that the life of an ex-functional after abandoning his function is not safe at all. Especially for a special functional like Kirill. Kirill takes a train to Kharkiv to find his Nirvana (Earth 22) "neighbor" Vasilisa, another customs officer-functional. However, the train is intercepted in Oryol by Arkan's security forces. Kirill is able to escape them and make it to Kharkiv by hitchhiking. Unfortunately, the Arkanians are somehow able to track him, so Vasilisa convinces Kirill to attempt a desperate move — a twenty-kilometer trek through the lifeless frozen world of Janus (Earth 14) during a snow storm. Barely making it to another tower, that of the customs officer-functional Martha, Kirill gets to the Polish city of Elbląg. He is caught by three police officers-functionals, but he is rescued by his friend Kotya, who opens a portal to his Tibetan residence (or rather, the residence of the current curator). Kirill, Kotya, and Kotya's girlfriend Illan (an ex-functional from Veroz, Earth 3) come up with a plan for freeing our Earth from Arkan influence, although Kirill begins to suspect that Arkan may not be the true puppet master behind the functionals. To that end, Kirill travels to a technologically-backward religious world of Tverd (Earth 8), the people of which managed to eliminate functional influence in their world's affairs through the use of highly-advanced biotechnology. However, the Arkanians find him even there and attack this world, even though Tverd is ready to repel such an assault with their all-female Swiss Guards, killer Yorkshire Terriers, and flying gargoyles. Kirill kills the attacking agents but is forced to escape Tverd using his newfound curator abilities. He finds himself in a world, which he believes to be the functional homeworld (Earth 16), most of which is covered by a radioactive wasteland. The only habitable island features a strange-looking skyscraper at its mountain peak, obviously of functional design, as only some people are able to see it. However, upon reaching it, Kirill discovers that the structure is not the functional headquarters but merely their museum, protected by a functional who looks like an angel. After fighting and defeating the angel, Kirill begins to understand the truth behind all worlds influenced by the functionals, most of it has to do with quantum physics. He returns to Elbląg, where a mailman-functional delivers him a letter from Kotya, whose abilities are disappearing, in which he formally challenges Kirill to a duel. The victor (and survivor) would become the next curator. Kirill returns to Moscow and arrives to the location chosen for the duel and defeats Kotya. However, instead of finishing him off, Kirill makes a decision to stop being a functional and return to his previous life, knowing that, due to his special nature, the functionals will not risk trying to kill him. ru:Чистовик (роман)
23034356	/m/064lgh1	The Strain	Chuck Hogan	2009-06-02		 A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Ephraim "Eph" Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold. In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing. So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city - a city that includes his wife and son - before it is too late.
23043557	/m/0m70f	How the Grinch Stole Christmas!	Dr. Seuss	1957-11-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Grinch, a bitter, grouchy, cave-dwelling creature with a heart "two sizes too small", lives on snowy Mount Crumpit, a steep, high mountain just north of Whoville, home of the merry and warm-hearted Whos. His only companion is his faithful dog, Max. From his perch high atop Mount Crumpit, the Grinch can hear the noisy Christmas festivities that take place in Whoville. Annoyed and unable to understand the Whos' happiness, he makes plans to descend on the town and deprive them of their Christmas presents, Roast Beast, Who-hash and decorations and thus "prevent Christmas from coming." However, he learns in the end that despite his success in taking away all the Christmas presents and decorations from the Whos, Christmas comes just the same. He then realizes that Christmas is more than just gifts and presents. Touched by this, his heart grows three sizes larger; he returns all the presents and trimmings and is warmly welcomed into the community of the Whos.
23049860	/m/064l1_x	Le Rosier de Madame Husson				 Madame Husson, the model of virtue in Gisors, is promoting chastity in her town by seeking to crown a rosière (i.e. Rose Queen, a girl of unimpeachable virtue). However, no girl can stand up to the investigations that take place, and Madame Husson crowns the village idiot, Isidore, as the 'rosier' (Rose King). He uses his reward to "slum it" in Paris.
23065095	/m/064m3dv	The General Danced at Dawn	George MacDonald Fraser	1970		 Monsoon selection board follows Corporal MacNeill is his efforts to become an officer, and his examination by an officer selection board in India in the final stages of World War II. Despite performing badly in every task, often trying to answer cleverly and failing miserably, he is approved and commissioned due to his apparent dogged determination to complete the assault course. He perseveres in his futile attempts to cross a mud filled ditch, although the examining officers advise him to 'call it a day' and climb out. In reality he was unwilling to finish or turn back, as he had lost his trousers while floundering in the mud, and had resolved to stay in the water to avoid embarrassment. Silence in the Ranks finds subaltern MacNeill joining an unidentified Highland regiment as a platoon commander, and finding it difficult to fit into the regiment's family atmosphere, or to identify with the men under him. At the end of the chapter he is assigned as Duty Officer (CQ) and must remain in barracks on Hogmanay, while the other officers celebrate elsewhere, and is joined in his quarters by some soldiers of his platoon for drinks and conversation. At the close of the evening, he learns that 'Darkie', whom he hears his men talking about, is in fact his own nickname. Play Up, Play Up and Get Tore In follows Dand as he takes the battalion football team on tour on a British-controlled island in the Mediterranean (presumably Malta). Despite the machinations of an opportunistic naval officer, Lieutenant Samuels, who attempts to pass the Highlanders off as members of his own crew, the tour is a success, and the team win every match they play, even against 'The Fleet' in a match organised by the over-enthusiastic Governor, who fails to recognise the disparity in resources between a small regiment and an entire armed service. Lt. Samuels almost gambles away the teams' paychest on this match, but the money is saved by the unwitting Private McAuslan. Wee Wullie is about a soldier known only as 'Wee Wullie', who is frequently drunk and violent, and often ends up being arrested by the military police. The colonel is strangely tolerant of Wullie, however, and it emerges that during the war he showed great heroism, carrying a wounded German for days across the desert until they were both rescued. He received no accolades for this act of heroism, as while in hospital recuperating he got drunk and climbed onto the hospital roof, where he was yet again arrested by the military police. The General Danced at Dawn. The regiment's colonel is soon to retire, and the regiment is eager to put on a good show in an upcoming inspection before he does. The inspection is going badly, 'anything that could go wrong, seemed to go wrong' until the inspecting General watches a display of the regiment's officers performing Highland dancing. He joins in, becoming more and more enthusiastic and recruiting more and more passers by to join in, until by dawn the next morning, the entire regiment and most of the local populace are dancing 'a one hundred and twenty-eightsome reel'. The General's inspection report 'congratulated the battalion, and highly commended the pipe-sergeant on the standard of the officers' dancing.' Night Run to Palestine. MacNeill, on detached service in Egypt, misses his flight to return to the Battalion. While he waits for the next flight, he is put in command of an overnight troop train to Jerusalem. As well as keeping watch for Zionist saboteurs and snipers, he has to deal with an interfering Lt. Colonel, a group of innocent young ATS, a padre deeply concerned for their moral safety,and a soldier who locks himself in the lavatory, amongst other things. He gets the train to Jerusalem in one piece, despite the effort of the Lt. Colonel, before returning to Egypt and a farcical court of inquiry which determines at great length that he missed his original flight out of Egypt, hence his presence in Egypt, and that he must therefore get the next flight.
23068004	/m/064l9h9	Six Suspects	Vikas Swarup		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Seven years ago, Vivek “Vicky” Rai, the playboy son of the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, murdered bartender Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New Delhi, simply because she refused to serve him a drink. The opening murder committed by Vicky Rai is similar to the Jessica Lal murder case in which the killer was Manu Sharma. Now Vicky Rai has been killed at the party he was throwing to celebrate his acquittal. The police recover six guests with guns in their possession: a corrupt bureaucrat who claims to have become Mahatma Gandhi; an American tourist infatuated with an Indian actress; a Stone Age tribesman on a quest to recover a sacred stone; a Bollywood sex symbol with a guilty secret; a mobile-phone thief who dreams big; and an ambitious politician prepared to stoop low. Swarup unravels the lives and motives of the six suspects.
23070434	/m/064phdh	Hammer of God				 Empress Hekat hears the voice of the god, and it wants the world. In Ethrea, Queen Rhian is finally on the throne, she must convince her counterparts of surrounding nations that Mijak is a very real threat. Should she trust Zandakar, the exiled son of Mijak's Empress?
23070506	/m/064lrhz	Vita Sancti Wilfrithi				 The Vita narrates the life and career of Wilfrid, from his boyhood until his death, with brief digressions into the other affairs of Wilfrid's two main monasteries, Ripon and Hexham. It details his boyhood decision to become a churchman, his quarrels with Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, and various secular figures, his travels back and forth between England and Rome, his participation in church synods, and eventually his death. The text devotes over one third of its contents to Wilfrid's "Northumbrian achievements", but Stephen devotes almost no space to Wilfrid's second period in office as Bishop of York (686&ndash;691), and little space to his activity in Mercia. The Vita Wilfrithi, in common with many hagiographies written close to the death of their subject, records very few miracles, but like Bede and Eusebius of Caesarea, incorporates full documents relevant to its story.
23079673	/m/064qbdw	Pit Pony				 In Pit Pony, Barkhouse describes life in a coal-mining town in turn-of-the-century Cape Breton, but also deals with importance of education itself. It is the story of Willie and Gem. Willie is an eleven-year-old boy forced by family circumstances to work as a trapper in a Cape Breton coal mine, and Gem is a Sable Island mare working as a "pit pony". As they work together, a strong bond develops between boy and horse. The book describes the grim realities of life for a young miner - cold, exhaustion, fear - discomforts and dangers that also affected the horses. When Willie and Gem are trapped in the mine during a "bump" - with falling rock and timber, and choking dust - Willie must choose between escaping with Gem or saving the life of another young miner. Willie's choice to save the young miner's life over Gem's life sets Willie free - free to leave the mines and to pursue his education. As it turns out however, Gem had been pregnant, and her foal is saved.
23080134	/m/064ndm7	Kiss Mommy Goodbye				 This novel concerns kidnappings by parents who did not get custody of their children. Donna Cressy loves her husband Victor but the love soon turns to hate when Victor starts mentally harassing her. This causes her to behave oddly owing to her trauma, and during the divorce proceedings a number of people testify that she had been behaving unusually since she married Victor. However, she manages to get custody of their children Adam and Sharon. Victor is allowed weekend visits. Donna moves in with her boyfriend Dr. Segal and his daughter Annie. One day Victor arrives and on the pretext of a weekend visit, he takes Adam and Sharon away. Donna spirals into depression and begins to behave oddly again. Just when she's given up hope, she gets a telephone call from Victor, which she traces to California. When she finally finds the children, Victor almost kills them. However, with the help of Dr. Segal, she is able to get her children back and survive.
23085447	/m/064pn0r	Cloak	S. D. Perry	2001-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Captain Kirk learns the cloaking device he stole from the Romulan Star Empire months ago is being used for sinister purposes. He also learns about Section 31, a group of Starfleet officers who answer to no one and are willing to kill anyone to protect their secrets.
23088082	/m/064pkwd	Click	Ruth Ozeki	2007		 In Keane's will he leaves his granddaughter, Margaret, a box containing seven lettered boxes and a message saying "throw them all back". Each lettered box contains a shell. She discovers that each letter on each box represents the continent that the shell came from, and that her grandfather intends her to put them back where they came from over her lifetime. Meanwhile, Jason, Margaret's brother, is left with a camera and uses it to construct multiple photo albums, one of which consisted of a girl doing ordinary things throughout the day, only she is holding a large piece of glass. The last chapter of the book depicts Margaret as an elder living in the future with her great-niece, watching a documentary about her grandfather, her brother, and herself.
23094273	/m/064mgys	Desertion				 The novel is narrated by Rashid in all but one of the ten chapters, which exception is drawn from the notebooks of his brother Amin. Rashid is the youngest child of teaching parents: he is two years younger than Amin, who is in turn two years younger than Farida, their sister. The children are brought up in Zanzibar in the late in 1950s, during a time of heady transition from colonialism to independence. Rashid spins two tales: one is in part his own, and largely contingent on the other, set some fifty years thence on the outskirts of a small town in colonial Kenya, along the east African coast north of Mombasa, when early one morning in 1899 an Englishman stumbles out of the desert and collapses before a local shopkeeper outside his mosque. The latter, Hassanali, takes him back home and, amidst the considerable kerfuffle, and with some help from family and local professionals, begins nursing the man back to health. Hassanali is a nervous, superstitious, cowardly man. On first being approached by the almost lifeless Pearce, he mistakes him for a ghoulish genie come to spirit his soul away. Before long, an English district officer, one Frederick Turner, arrives on the scene. He accuses Hassanali of having stolen whatever goods the Englishman brought with him, and promptly conveys him back to the residency. The traveller's name, as it turns out, is Martin Pearce, a man of liberal thought and broad linguistic knowledge, and something of an "Orientalist". During his convalescence with Turner, he begins quickly to feel guilty about the harsh treatment and false accusations levelled at his original saviours, for he genuinely arrived with almost nothing but the clothes on his back: the only item he seems to have lost is his notebook. On visiting the shopkeeper to apologise, he sees Rehana, Hassanali's sister, and falls for her immediately. Rehana's father was an Indian trader who settled in Mombasa and married a local woman, but the family is now part of the "Arabised minority" in a town still fresh with the memory of its years of slavery under the sultan. The subsequent relationship between Rehana and Pearce is, of course, a scandal. Rashid in his narrative admits that it is difficult to say how it came about, if less so to figure out how it was discovered. The upshot is that Rehana is forced to vacate the town and take up lodgings elsewhere with Pearce. Half a century later, Amin, Rashid and Farida are growing up and receiving a typical colonial education in pre-independent Zanzibar. Amin, like his parents, is to train to become a schoolteacher; Rashid is studying for Oxbridge; and Farida, an academic failure, becomes the family housekeep and small-business dressmaker to the young women of the town. One of her clients is a beautiful woman named Jamila, granddaughter of Rehana and Pearce. Despite her lowly repute "as a divorced woman whose grandmother slept with mzungus ", Amin falls in love with her, and she with him. His parents are outraged on discovering the secret and refuse to brook it: Do you know who she is? Do you know what kind of people they are? Her grandmother was a chotara, a child of sin by an Indian man, a bastard. When she grew into a woman, she was the mistress of an Englishman for many years, and before that another mzungu gave her a child of sin too, her own bastard. That was her life, living dirty with European men [.... T]hey are a rich family so they don't care what anybody thinks. They've always done as they wished. This woman that you say you love, she is like her grandmother, living a life of secrets and sin. She has been married and divorced already. No one knows where she comes and where she goes, or who she goes to see. They are not our kind of people. Amin is made to promise never to see her again, and he never really does. He fears for the rest of his life that she thinks he has deserted her. In the case of Rashid, meanwhile, it is his passionate book-learning that results in his desertion first of his home and eventually &#34;of the entire culture&#34;: &#34;The place was stifling him, he said: the social obsequiousness, the medieval religiosity, the historical mendacities.&#34; After independence and the subsequent revolution, life for all the characters is altered completely. Rashid misses the socio-political turmoil back home in his isolation as a university student in England; in fact, he never sees his ailing, tragic family again. Although he keeps up a steady stream of correspondence, this becomes increasingly strained with the preterition of time and the need for caution engendered of a brutal and dictatorial government. His only knowledge of the situation is gleaned from the letters and a few allusive snippets of news. Both Ma and Amin loose their sight, and the former&#39;s death is celebrated as having put her out of her mounting misery. Years later, Rashid is able to piece the story together using Amin&#39;s notebooks, his own memory and a chance encounter with another of Pearce&#39;s descendants.
23094715	/m/064ms77	Butterfly	Sonya Hartnett	2009-04-02	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 ==Characters in "Butterfly
23096195	/m/064m_qp	The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane	Katherine Howe	2009-06-09	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie’s grandmother’s abandoned home near Salem, she can’t refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance (Hazeltine) Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest—to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge. As the pieces of Deliverance’s harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem’s dark past then she could have ever imagined .
23099870	/m/064kxv9	The Sower	Kemble Scott	2009-05-18		 Oil worker Bill Soileau is a reckless hedonist based in San Francisco and well acquainted with the city’s notorious sexual underground. He long ago contracted HIV but seems unconcerned about exposing his partners. On assignment at what appears to be an oil refinery abandoned by Soviet occupiers in a remote part of modern day Armenia, Soileau meet Dr. Quif Melikian. She’s conducting a health safety inspection of the plant and has discovered a hidden laboratory. An accident in the mysterious lab infects Bill with a manmade virus, later identified as a mutated form of phage. It instantly cures Bill’s HIV, unbeknownst to anyone. Eventually the doctor and oil worker discover the existence of the phage and learn it’s a type of miraculous retrovirus that rewrites diseased cells back to their original configurations, a potential cure for all diseases. The two also learn the phage cure can only be passed to others via sex. This sets in motion a plot to destroy or control the phage and Bill Soileau.
23100506	/m/064kv__	Ninth Grade Slays			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In this, the second book in the Vladimir Tod series, Vlad is just starting High School. In the beginning of the novel Henry (Vlad's best friend and human slave) and Vlad (the half vampire/half human protagonist of the story) welcome Henry's cousin, Joss, to Bathory. As they work their way through their Freshman year of high school Joss and Vlad become close friends. Joss develops a crush on Meredith Brookstone, the girl Vlad is in love with, but does not date her at this point because of his and Vlad's friendship. When winter break rolls around Otis Otis, fellow vampire and Vlad's uncle, takes Vlad on a trip to Siberia when Vlad meets Vikas, both his uncle's and his father's teacher and friend. Vlad tells Vikas of his father's death and they hold a Pyre, a vampire funeral. Vikas then begins teaching Vlad to use his powers and tells him the story of the Pravus, the fabled half human/half vampire that would rule of Vampire kind and enslave the human race. Otis shows Vlad memories of Vlad's father and consents to teach Vlad to use his powers due to his disapproval of Vikas's teaching methods. Shortly after returning from Siberia and to school, Joss decides to let Vlad in on his secret, that he is a Slayer and has been sent to Bathory to kill a vampire. At this point Joss still believes Vlad is human and asks that they search for the vampire together. D'Ablo, the vampire antagonist of the first book who was assumed dead, returns to attempt to kill Vlad. Vlad tells Joss about this and the agree to look for the vampire that attacked Vlad together. When they meet in the clearing in the woods D'Ablo is there and Joss finds out that Vlad is a vampire, the vampire he was sent to kill. On top of that, it was D'Ablo who sent Joss and was controlling his mind to prevent him from realizing that D'Ablo was a vampire. Joss stakes Vlad and Vlad almost dies, but is saved by Otis and taken to the hospital. While Vlad is in the hospital Joss visits him and tells him that their friendship is over and leaves. When Vlad gets back to school he finds a note on his locker from Joss confirming that they are no longer friends.
23109693	/m/064n_2h	Veitikka	Veikko Huovinen			 The novel begins with the birth of Adolf Hitler and his early childhood. Huovinen describes the young Adolf as a rebellious child with a weak constitution, but with an intimidating gaze and vulgar speech. Also, his uncanny ability with a rifle is commented upon. Adolf eventually ends up as a vagrant in the streets of Vienna, selling mediocre watercolor paintings. The novel suggests that during this time Hitler met Joseph Goebbels, with whom he had an instant rapport with his vulgarities and anti-semitism - the first radical departure from actual history. The novel swiftly moves to the First World War, and describes Hitler's exploits as a behind-the-lines scout sniper - who, in his spare time, criticizes the General HQ and tells jokes so disgusting that even hardened soldiers stay silent. Also his foul-smelling flatulence is commented upon. While following Hitler's rise to power from the Great Depression to the Second World War, the novel makes its most outrageous claim; Hitler and Goebbels jointly conceived the Second World War in order to "teach the pompous German nation a lesson" with two distinct operations. The first, "Operation Ulex" has the goal of starting a war and reaching decisive victories in the short term - while making strategic mistakes that will hurt in the long run. The second, "Operation Saublöder Arsch" involves deliberately losing the war, while prolonging it to the bitter end with as much bloodletting and destruction as possible. When all is lost, Hitler and Goebbels leave the corpses of look-alikes behind, escaping the siege of Berlin with guns blazing and board a Fw-200 Condor bound for South America. When enroute, they express their disgust for the servile, obedient Germans and fantasize about Latin women.
23112275	/m/064njgw	The Manny Files	Christian Burch	2006	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Keats Dalinger, a shy young boy, learns how to be more outgoing and self-confident after his family hires a new "manny" (male nanny). Keats is a small boy who has many troubles at school. He often watches late night TV with his uncle Max and often asks awkward questions or makes sarcastic remarks from the shows to his teacher and his classmates. He most of the time gets sent to the principal for it. The manny is homosexual, it turns out at the end of the novel, when he and Keats' Uncle Max share a kiss.
23116366	/m/04y7tr7	Ardiente paciencia	Antonio Skármeta	1985	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/02w06c6": "Historical romance"}	 The story opens in June, 1969 in the little village of Isla Negra, off the coast of Chile. Mario Jiménez, a timid teenager, rejects the profession of his father, a fisherman, and instead takes a job as the local postman. Despite the entire village being illiterate, he does have one local to deliver to—the poet, Pablo Neruda, who is living in exile. Mario worships Neruda as a hero and buys a volume of his poetry, timidly waiting for the moment to have it autographed. After some time, Mario garners enough courage to strike up a conversation with Neruda, who is waiting for word about his candidacy for the Nobel Prize for literature, and despite an awkward beginning, the two become good friends. Neruda fuels Mario's interest in poetry by teaching him the value of a metaphor, and the young postman begins practicing this technique. In the village, Mario meets Beatriz González, the daughter of the local barkeep, Rosa. Beatriz is curt and distant from Mario, and the young man finds his tongue tied whenever he tries to speak to her. With Neruda's help as a poet and an influential countryman, Mario overcomes his shy nature and he and Beatriz fall in love, much to the dismay of Rosa, who banishes Beatriz from seeing Mario. Neruda's matters are complicated when he is nominated for candidacy as the president of the Chilean Communist Party, but returns to the island when the nomination turns to Salvador Allende. Neruda tries in vain to deter Rosa's negative attitude towards Mario. Months later, when a clandestine meeting between Beatriz and Mario turns to intercourse, Beatriz discovers she is pregnant and the two are married, much to the dismay of Rosa. Neruda leaves to become the ambassador to France, and as he leaves, he gives Mario a leather-bound volume of his entire works. National workers enter the village to install electricity, and Rosa's bar becomes a restaurant for the workers. As Neruda is gone, Mario is no longer needed as the postman, but takes on a job as the cook in the restaurant. Some months pass and Mario receives a package from Neruda containing a Sony tape recorder. Neruda is homesick (and it is implied otherwise ill), and asks his friend to record the sounds of his homeland to send back to him. Among other things, Mario records the tiny heartbeat of his yet unborn child. Secretly, Mario has saved enough money to purchase a ticket to visit Neruda in France, but matters change when his son is born and the money is spent on the child as he grows. It is announced that Neruda has won the Nobel Prize and Mario celebrates with the rest of the village by throwing a party at Rosa's restaurant. Neruda returns some time later, quite ill. Mario considers sending a poem into a contest for the cultural magazine, La Quinta Rueda, and seeks Neruda's help with the work. Neruda, unbeknownst to Mario, however, is on his death bed. Unable to see Neruda, Mario decides to send in a pencil sketch of his son. The revolution reaches Isla Negra, and Mario takes up his job as postman in order to see Neruda. As helicopters circle the area, Mario sneaks into to Neruda's house, to find the poet dying in his bed. Mario reads to Neruda telegrams that he has received offering the poet sanctuary, but it is too late—Neruda knows he is dying and gives his last words, a poem, to Mario. Neruda is taken away in an ambulance and dies in the hospital several days later. Shortly after Neruda's death, Mario is approached by Labbé, the local right-wing general. The general asks Mario to come with him for some routine questioning. As Mario gets into the car, he overhears on the radio that several subversive magazines have been taken over by coup forces, including La Quinta Rueda. In an epilogue, the author talks to one of the editors of La Quinta Rueda. The editor remembers who the winner would have been—a poem by Jorge Teillier. When the author asks about Mario's sketch, the editor has no memory of it. The author ends the story by sipping a cup of bitter coffee.
23118454	/m/064lv4w	The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud	Ben Sherwood		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Charlie St. Cloud (age 15) and Sam (12) are two brothers with a love so strong, no force can separate them. When their mom leaves Charlie to babysit Sam, they decide to go to watch a 1991 Red Sox baseball game in Boston against the New York Yankees with their pet beagle, Oscar. They "borrow" their neighbor Mrs. Pung's Ford Country Squire. On the way there they cannot decide which CD to listen to. As they cross the General Edwards bridge on the Saugus River, on the way home, Charlie decides to take a look at the moon to see if Sam was right about the moon being larger that night. Charlie does not see an 18-wheeler truck come and they end up tumbling twice crushing Sam along the way. When they are dead, they find themselves close to the cemetery in Marblehead, the town where they live. Sam is scared and Charlie makes a promise that they will never abandon each other. However, Charlie gets resuscitated in an ambulance by a religious paramedic, Florio Ferrente and carries on living. Thirteen years later, Charlie has grown up and is working at the Marblehead cemetery. Every evening at dusk he goes to a nearby forest where he plays with Sam. Charlie has the gift of seeing ghosts. This serves him well as an undertaker, as he can talk with ghosts. In the town lives Tess Carroll, a yachtswoman who wants to make a round the world trip. A week prior to her departure, she directs her yacht in to a storm to test it, not listening to her shipsman Tink Weatherbee, who told her not to go into the storm. The storm sucks Tess into its grasp and the ship flips, leaving Tess hanging on upside down. Tess appears at the cemetery where her dad is buried. While regarding her father's memorial, she hears a loud clanging noise, which is Charlie scaring away the geese with his methods of banging trash can covers together. She remembers Charlie from high school and wonders if he remembers her. They both talk and Charlie ends up asking Tess to come over for dinner that night. Both are not entirely sure of this arrangement for different reasons. Tess is concerned with the fact that she never really was a true believer in love, and Charlie is worried that this could come in between his promise to him and Sam. The next day while taking a walk with her dog, Bobo, Tess realizes that people ignore her when Bobo comes off his leash and nobody hears her saying to stop him. She then looks into the water and realizes that her reflection is not there. What is more, she can see Sam St. Cloud, the boy who died 13 years ago. While at lunch the next day after their date, an officer comes in and states that Tess's boat, the Querencia, has gone missing and parts of the ship have been found. Charlie is shocked at the thought that Tess could be dead. He had heard of "middle ground" where spirits would stay until they were ready to pass over to the next level. He had seen many come and go quickly and others who liked to stay like his brother. In the meantime everyone in the town in possession of a boat, including Charlie, explores the harbor in order to look for Tess's body. Charlie questions his sanity because the night they shared together was so real and Tess was full of life. There was no way she could possibly be gone. Everyone gives up the search, but then Charlie feels that there is one place he has to go. With Sam's help he finds Tess's body. Tess is transported to a hospital where the doctors stabilize her in a deep coma. A few months later, Charlie decides to quit his job and move on, bidding a final farewell to Sam, now 25 years old from crossing over. Charlie is now a paramedic at Engine 2 on Franklin Street. During his last visit at the hospital Tess wakes up. Charlie remembers how they met, and Charlie tells her the story of how they met and fell in love at Marblehead Cemetery. The afterword of the novel is narrated by the ghost of Florio Ferrente, the paramedic who saved Charlie's life. He reveals that Tess and Charlie fall in love again and eventually marry and have two sons.
23121428	/m/0b6hyc0	Thérèse Desqueyroux		1927		 The novel is set in the Landes, a sparsely populated area of south-west France covered largely with pine forests. As it opens, a court case is being dismissed. The narrator, the titular Thérèse, has been tried for poisoning her husband Bernard by overdosing him with Fowler's Solution, a medicine containing arsenic. Despite strong evidence against her, including prescriptions she forged, the case has been dropped; the family closed ranks to prevent scandal and Bernard himself testified in her defence. On the journey home from court Thérèse reflects at length on her life so far, trying to understand what brought her to continue poisoning her husband after she observed him taking an accidental overdose. She suggests that her actions were part of an "imperceptible slope", caused in part by the pressures of motherhood and marriage and the stifling life of a Catholic landowner's wife in 1920s rural France. However, neither Thérèse, nor the narrator himself, provide a clear explanation for her behaviour. Thérèse assumes that she will be able to leave her husband quietly now the case is over. Instead, Bernard announces that she is to live at his family house, Argelouse, in an isolated spot in the pine forest. He effectively confines her there, giving out that she suffers from a nervous complaint, and making the occasional public appearance with her to quell any gossip. His concern is that the forthcoming marriage of his younger sister Anne, to a suitor approved by the family, is not prevented by any scandal. He allows Thérèse no company other than unsympathetic servants, keeps their daughter away from her, and threatens to send her to prison for the poisoning if she does not cooperate. Thérèse lives mainly on wine and cigarettes, falls into a passive stupor and takes to her bed. When she is ordered to attend a dinner party for Anne, her fiancé and his family, she does so, but her emaciated appearance shocks the guests. Bernard decides that the scandal will never be fully forgotten unless Thérèse is allowed to disappear without controversy. He promises she can leave after Anne's wedding, and moves back to Argelouse to supervise her recovery. The wedding over, he takes Thérèse to Paris and bids her farewell. There will be no official separation and no divorce, and he will make her an allowance to live on. She is free to go.
23122208	/m/064p2cg	Kazan				 The book starts out with Kazan, who is 1/4 wolf and 3/4 dog, going up north to the Canadian wilderness with his owner Thorpe where he is greeted by a man known as McCready. From the evidence in the beginning, we are shown that McCready used to own Kazan, then known as "Pedro," and that the former was abusive to the latter. When McCready attacks Thorpes wife Kazan kills him then runs off not returning fearing harsh punishment from knowing he had killed human life. Kazan later joins a wolf pack and hunts with them in the Canadian wilderness. cs:Vlčák Kazan pl:Szara Wilczyca
23123026	/m/064qc10	A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag	Gordon Korman	1987-08		 The plot of the novel revolves around Jardine bringing Sean Delancey, his English poetry project partner, into various schemes to ensure their arrival at Theamelpos for the summer. Along the way they encounter Ashley, a beautiful model who becomes the third member of their poetry project, and Cementhead (Steve Semenski), the luckiest student in the school, and help Sean's grandfather impersonate an 88-year-old deceased Canadian poet, Gavin Gunhold. A sub-plot revolves around SACGEN (Solar Air Current GENerator), a government project that is supposed to power the school, using only wind power and solar energy. The school's central core was gutted to house the control room and the storage batteries. Since the project works poorly or not at all, causing frequent blackouts, the students refer to it as "The Windmill."
23127570	/m/064kzvc	Ellen; or, The Fanatic's Daughter				 The story follows Ellen, the daughter of a Southern mother from Louisiana and a Northern father. Ellen's father quickly leaves his family shortly after the birth of his daughter, and it is discovered shortly afterward that he is an abolitionist. Ellen, now older and wishing to find her father, sets off into the Northern United States where she discovers numerous atrocities being committed by the Northerners that far outrank the South in terms of oppression and cruelty. All Northern women are portrayed as foul-tempered shrews who abuse their white servants worse than black slaves, and all men are portrayed as being scheming, greedy capitalists. It is during her travels that Ellen comes across Parson Blake, an evil abolitionist priest who encourages abolitionism more to steal Southern wealth rather than to aid runaway slaves. Blake attempts several sinister schemes to deter Ellen from returning home, but Ellen luckily escapes his clutches and returns home safely to Louisiana.
23129363	/m/064lxrm	Death of a Macho Man				 Randy Duggan is the macho man of the title of this work of fiction. He claims to be a professional wrestler and he becomes known in the small village of Lochdubh for his tall stories. When Randy is found murdered, Constable Hamish Macbeth hopes that the killer is not one of the villagers. However, there is enough local resentment against Randy, that someone in quiet, peaceful Lochdubh may have been driven to slaying this macho man.
23134216	/m/064p7df	Gifted	Nikita Lalwani	2007		 The novel is set in the 1980s Cardiff where maths prodigy Rumi Vasi grows up with her Hindu parents. Subjected to her father's strict tutoring he is determined that she be accepted by Oxford University at the age of only fifteen. But on starting University she finds it hard to adapt to her new-found freedom.
23135989	/m/064qc98	Hunter in the Dark	Monica Hughes	1982	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Mike Rankin is an athletic teenager from a wealthy family who is eager to obtain his big-game license to go deer hunting. When he suddenly collapses on the basketball court and is diagnosed with leukemia, he is determined not to be denied his dream hunting trip. He sets out on a journey which forces him to confront the fear which is overwhelming his life.
23140245	/m/064nmv9	Shadow	Kristine Kathryn Rusch	2001-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Section 31, an amoral, rogue branch of Starfleet, manages to affect the starship Voyager, lost on the other side of the galaxy. 'Seven', a new and trusted crewmember rescued from the Borg, is being targeted with a series of incidents. The crew, whom Janeway thought she trusted implicitly, is harboring a traitor.
23140420	/m/064qdjg	Abyss	Jeffrey Lang	2001-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Shortly after the Deep Space Nine series finale, Dr. Julian Bashir is once again confronted by Section 31. The group is Starfleet's 'black ops', answerable to no one. They convince Bashir to go take on Locken, a man who had taken over an enemy facility and wishes to re-start a new race of genetically enhanced super-beings. Both Bashir and Locken themselves are genetically enhanced.
23140622	/m/064p__x	Rogue	Andy Mangels	2001-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Section 31, Starfleet's rogue spy arm, involves the Starship Enterprise; this endangers a tumultous world they are visiting. The novel also focuses on Lieutenant Hawk, an openly gay helmesman.
23144090	/m/064k_s9	Lincoln Unmasked	Thomas DiLorenzo	2006-10-10	{"/m/05qt0": "Politics"}	 In his reappraisal of the famed president, DiLorenzo is highly critical of Lincoln. Within the book he argues that states within the union had the right at the time of the American Civil War to secede and that the more centralized government that emerged after the war was incompatible with democracy. DiLorenzo also claims that most scholars of the Civil War are biased in their approach to the history because, as DiLorenzo says, "in war the victors get to write the history". Dilorenzo also argues that Lincoln was opposed to racial equality, and that many abolitionists, including Lysander Spooner, bitterly hated him.
23145111	/m/064khsv	Road Dogs	Elmore Leonard			 Jack Foley is sent back to Glades prison and befriends Cundo Rey. Foley and Rey quickly become “road dogs” (inmates who watch each other’s back). Rey sets Foley up with an expensive lawyer who gets the kidnapping charge of Karen Sisko dismissed (event from Out of Sight) and also gets Foley’s bank robbery sentence significantly reduced. As a result, Foley is soon released, just a month ahead of Rey’s upcoming release. Rey arranges for Foley to fly out to Venice Beach and live in one of his houses. Foley soon meets up with Dawn Navarro, Rey’s common law wife living in another of Rey’s houses across the canal. Navarro tries to recruit Foley in her plot to steal Rey’s millions in earnings from various criminal businesses run by Jimmy Rios.
23168354	/m/064nqkd	Chartbreak				 A girl called Janis Finch, known as "Finch", leaves home due to tension between her and her stepfather, and meets an unsigned rock band called Kelp in the cafe of a motorway service station. She joins the band and they achieve chart success, including an appearance on Top of the Pops for their single "Face It". The lead singer of the band is Christie Joyce, and the other members are Job, Dave and Rollo.
23170242	/m/064pltw	Fell	David Clement-Davies	2007-01-09	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book starts with a pack of grey wolves walking through the snowy regions of Translyvania. One of the pups looks up at a hill and can see an outline of a black wolf. She tells her father, the Dragga, that it might be Fell, the ghost wolf that humans and Varg fear. Because, while Larka has become respected and loved among the Varg for the part she played in the death of Morgra, Fell became feared among them, and that he is a loner, which is unnatural to other Varg. Lost in his grief and guilt over the death of his sister, Larka, Fell rejects the gift of the Sight, and becomes a Kerl, which is the wolf name for a loner. The pack keeps the thoughts of curses out of their heads, and Fell watches them leave. He then goes to a pool and looks into it. His dead sister, Larka, appears to him, and she shows him a picture of a girl with a tattoo in the shape of an eagle on her arm. Larka then tells Fell to find and protect the girl. The girl who Fell saw is Alina Sculcavant, who is growing up in the care of Malduk, a shepherd whom rescued her from the snows. He forces her to dress as a boy and work hard for him. The other villagers believe Alina to be a changeling, and fear her for it. One day Alina finds a parchment that holds the true secret of her past, but Malduk and his wife, Ranna, who have tried to hide it from her for years, find out. They murder a villager and frame Alina, so that she is forced to flee into the mountains to discover who she truly is. Later Alina and Fell get trapped inside an ice cavern. While they are there, they discover that they can mentally communicate using the Sight, and Fell eventually decides to accompany Alina on her journey due to his vision of Larka. On their journey, Alina goes to find a man mentioned to her by Ivan, who was one of her few friends in Moldov. She eventually finds the man,a blacksmith named Lescu. Alina stays with Lescu and his son, Catalin, for a time, during which Lescu teaches Alina to use a sword and Fell spends some time out in the forest, where he meets his adopted brother, Kar, and a she-wolf named Tarlar. Later soldiers attack the house, killing Lescu. Catalin is forced to travel with Alina and Fell. Alina finds out that she has a real family and that the Lady Romana is her real mother and the supposedly dead Lord Dragomir is her real father. However, Alina doesn't know tha her father was murdered secretly by his best friend, Vladeran. Vladeran then had Alina taken away to be killed because she was the true heir to the throne, but Alina and her soldier escort befell an accident. The soldier was killed but Alina survived, and that was when Malduk found her. Meanwhile Vladeran took over as Lord of Castelu and married Dragomir's wife, the Lady Romana. Vladeran and Romana now have a seven-year-old son, Elu.
23180419	/m/064pf4s	You Just Don't Understand	Deborah Tannen	1990		 Tannen's chapters, broken up into short titled sections of two or three pages, start by distinguishing what men and women seek from conversations: independence and intimacy respectively. This leads to conversations at cross-purposes, since both parties may miss the other's metamessages, with attendant misunderstandings—for example, a woman complaining about the lingering effects of a medical procedure, who may merely be seeking empathy from female friends by doing so, becomes angry at her husband when he suggests a solution involving further surgery. Men and women both perceive the other gender as the more talkative, and they are both accurate, since studies show men speak more in public settings about public topics while women dominate private conversation within and about relationships. The latter is frequently derided as gossip by both genders, and Tannen devotes an entire chapter to exploring its social functions as a way of connecting speaker and listener to a larger group. Men often dominate conversations in public, even where they know less about a subject than a female interlocutor, because they use conversation to establish status. Women, on the other hand, often listen more because they have been socialized to be accommodating. These patterns, which begin in childhood, mean, for instance, that men are far more likely to interrupt another speaker, and not to take it personally when they are themselves interrupted, while women are more likely to finish each other's sentences. These patterns have paradoxical effects. Men use the language of conflict to create connections, and conversely women can use the language of connection to create conflict. "Women and men are inclined to understand each other in terms of their own styles because we assume we all live in the same world." If the genders would keep this in mind and adjust accordingly, Tannen believes, much discord between them could be averted.
23184549	/m/064kg2w	Ceremony	Robert B. Parker		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Spenser is hired by a successful insurance salesman to find his runaway 16 year-old daughter. He and his wife fear she has turned to prostitution.
23185953	/m/064n11b	The Godsend				 The story concerns the Marlowe family and an abandoned child named Bonnie, who they take into their home after being left with them by a mysterious woman they meet on a day out to a nearby lake. The story is told in first person by Alan Marlowe, the father of the family, who gradually starts to suspect that the subsequent tragic deaths of his children were caused by Bonnie.
23186026	/m/064ld21	Studies in African Music	Arthur Morris Jones	1959		 The work is divided into two volumes, with the first volume being an analysis of the music presented in Volume II, and the second being full-score reproductions of the pieces in question. # Introduction # Play-Songs and Fishing Songs # The Instruments of the Orchestra # The Nyayito Dance # Yeve Cult Music # Club Dances - The Adzida Dance # The Social Dance - Agbadza # A Comparison of Drumming # The Homogeneity of African Music # Tone and Tune # The Neo-Folk-Music # Play-Songs and Fishing Songs # The Nyayito Dance # Yeve Cult Music: (a) The Husago Dance, (b) The Sovu Dance, (c) The Sogba Dance # The Adzida Dance # The Agbadza Dance # The Icila Dance
23187149	/m/064p6nc	Man Gone Down	Michael Thomas	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel is about an African-American man estranged from his white wife and their children, and who must come up with a sum of money within four days to have them returned. It focuses on an attempt to achieve the American Dream. Thomas describes Man Gone Down as having a "gallows humour".
23187954	/m/064qkln	Five Alien Elves				 When aliens from the planet of Fixipuddle land in Hamlet, Vermont, on Christmas Eve, they believe that "Santa Claws" is an evil dictator who enslaves elves. So when the town's mayor, Tim Grass, dresses up as Santa, the aliens kidnap him. The kids of Hamlet sink their rivalries to save the mayor.
23189729	/m/064pr45	Who's Your City?	Richard Florida	2008-03	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Whos Your City? is divided into four parts with a total of 16 chapters. The first part presents data that suggests the world's population and economy are becoming increasingly geographically concentrated into few mega-regions, such as BosWash and the San Francisco Bay Area. Thomas Friedman's Flat World Theory, or his assertion that distance and place is becoming irrelevant, is countered by Florida with maps of population growth, economic activity, innovation (as demonstrated by patent registration), and scientific discovery (as demonstrated by residence of the most heavily cited scientists). Florida's maps show "spiky" concentrations in these mega-regions, although each region does not necessarily rank high in each category. For example, the Taiheiyō Belt ranks high in innovation but low in scientific discovery, and Indian and Pakistani cities show high population concentrations but low economic activity. Florida explains the existence of these geographical spikes by insisting that talented individuals tend to cluster to one another, creating a (non-linear) multiplier effect that attracts additional talented individuals to that geographical area. The second part of the book presents evidence that globalization is creating a new class divide: those who are able to move to a different community to take advantage of opportunity and those who are rooted. This mobile class of people are differentiating urban areas in terms of values, culture, economic specialization, and other factors, and businesses are following the most talented people to these cities despite high land prices and labor costs. Florida also insists that a disproportionate amount of wealth is being generated in those cities which have been successful in attracting the creative class. Finally, globalization has reduced the importance of resource extraction and manufacturing in the economy and increased the importance of fields in which the creative class participate. The third part of Who's Your City? examines the role of "where someone lives" as a factor of happiness. Florida's "Place and Happiness Survey", which he conducted with The Gallup Organization, shows that higher incomes and levels of education produces more community satisfaction, married people tend to be more satisfied with their community than singles, as older people as compared to younger people. In addition, renters are slightly more satisfied with their living arrangements than home owners, and people are generally satisfied with where they live. Adding psychological profiles to his previous work, Florida was able to find strong connections between the Big Five personality traits and regions in the United States. For example, neuroticism is concentrated in the New York metropolitan area and the ChiPitts area, agreeableness and conscientiousness in the eastern Sunbelt area, extraversion in the Chicago metropolitan area, the St. Louis/Nashville/Atlanta area, and the South Florida area. Openness seems to be concentrated in the BosWash and the San Francisco Bay Area. Florida explains the results by linking the dominant forms of employment in the areas with the personality traits: manufacturing regions require people who are agreeable (i.e., they follow rules) and conscientious (they work with dangerous machinery), areas with high immigrant populations require that their residents exhibit openness, and management and sales-related jobs need workers with extroversion. Florida was also able to find that his "Gay and Bohemian Index", which connects gay and artistic communities to high growth and wealth generation areas, is a proxy for regions with large concentrations of the openness personality trait. The final part of the book suggests that most people have three significant moves: when leaving their parents' home, when starting a family, and when retiring (or when their own adult children move out). When young people leave their home (or when they complete college), they tend to locate to areas that offer attractive job markets, cultural or recreational amenities, and rank high in quality of life factors. When they get married or have children, people choose areas that are perceived as safe and family-friendly. Florida suggests using a "Trick-or-Treater Index" to gauge if parents feel safe allowing their children to go door-to-door on Halloween. He also cites Catherine Austin Fitts' "Popsicle Index", which gauges how far are parents willing to allow their children to walk to buy a treat. Once retired, or when their adult children move away, people tend to gravitate towards similar areas as young people, if it is close to their grandchildren, but in quieter neighborhoods that provide opportunities for hobbies or for a second career.
23192663	/m/0660h95	The Ask and the Answer	Patrick Ness	2009	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel begins with Todd Hewitt recovering consciousness after surrendering to Mayor Prentiss in The Knife of Never Letting Go. He is physically hurt by the new heads of New Prentisstown, but his only concern is for Viola. Elsewhere, Viola wakes. Likewise her thoughts are for Todd’s welfare. She is in House of Healing for her gunshot wound. Here she meets Mistress Coyle, a renowned healer, who also has previous political and activist ties. Viola also meets the apprentices Madeleine (Maddy) and Corinne (Mistress Wyatt), among others, as she recovers. Meanwhile, President Prentiss psychologically manipulates the people of New Prentisstown into accepting his rule. Back at the House of Healing, Viola has finally recovered enough to help Mistress Coyle and begins an apprenticeship as a healer. Todd is told that Haven has indeed discovered a cure for Noise, but President Prentiss has confiscated the necessary pills for the sole use by leaders of New Prentisstown. Prentiss also separates the males and females and takes all domestic Spackle away to a farm. The President is intent on creating a new world so the settlers, when they arrive, are welcome to a literally "New" Prentisstown. Unhappy with these developments, Mistress Coyle leads a group of women out of New Prentisstown to form a resistance movement, reconvened from the time of the Spackle War, known as "The Answer" to carry out a series of bombings in the city. Todd has to work with Spackle alongside President Prentiss’ son, Davy. Todd hopes that by following the President’s orders, he is ensuring Viola’s health and safety, while the President hopes that Davy will become a better person with Todd's influence. However, uncivilised and arrogant, Davy scorns him, forcing Todd to undergo unethical practices such as branding the Spackle with metal bands without anaesthetic. Todd himself is shocked by the extent of Davy's inability to feel compassion. One of several large bombings happens. Todd, trying to redeem himself, saves a Spackle, 1017, who is ungrateful. Angered by the attacks, President Prentiss sets up a counter-intelligence unit called "The Ask". He promotes Todd and Davy into this unit, where Haven residents are captured and tortured for information on The Answer. Next morning, Viola wakes to find that the House of Healing is completely empty except for Corinne. The rest have gone to join the Answer, but Mistress Coyle returns to recruit Viola, who feels forced to join, knowing that President Prentiss has been torturing women and men alike. Todd realises that he must take sides, and is urged to do so by President Prentiss. At The Answer’s headquarters, Viola learns how to assemble and set off a bomb, which she does during an attack. An older teenager, Lee, befriends her. Lee is intent on avenging his family, who have been taken by The Ask. On his way back to his bell tower prison, Todd tells Davy about the Spackle bombing, and is surprised that they now share a kind of friendship. Meanwhile, Viola and Lee arrive in Haven to rescue Todd, knowing that otherwise Todd will die in an attack on New Prentisstown led by the Answer the next day. Viola notices that there is something darker to his personality, but still urges him to leave with them, warning that the attack will come from the east. Mayor Ledger turns up, explaining his loyalty to President Prentiss. Holding them at gunpoint he finds a self-arming bomb in Viola's bag that detonates on sensing a pulse. Too late, the Mayor attempts to throw it away, but it explodes. President Prentiss captures Viola and Lee. Viola is interrogated and tortured, with Todd watching from a soundproof room. The Answer are planning to attack New Prentisstown, and President Prentiss wishes to know from where. Unable to watch Viola in pain, Todd screams that the Answer is attacking from the East, ending the torture session. The President then tells Todd to meet him in the town Cathedral with Viola. Todd realises where his duty lies, and formulates a plan to stop the President, with the help of Ivan and other military personnel. The guards agree to help Todd rescue Lee and Viola. Smitten with Viola, Lee wants answers about her love for Todd. At the cathedral, the President disables the entire procession simply with his Noise and captures Viola while the rest of Todd’s group are incapacitated. The President still wants Todd to join him, despite his betrayal. Davy Prentiss arrives to tell his father that an army is coming, and requires orders. At this point a second scout ship, like the one Viola crashed in, lands. In desperation, Todd holds Davy at gunpoint, threatening to kill him if the President does not release Viola. Shockingly, the President drops Viola and fires his gun, quickly killing his own betrayed son. In anger, and quick to learn, Todd uses his own Noise as a weapon with Viola’s name to overcome the President and ties him up in the interrogation room. Todd sends Viola off on Davy's horse, to meet with the scout ship. No sooner than this is done, a horn sounds across New Prentisstown to warn of an army of Spackle marching towards the city. President Prentiss tells Todd that since he was the one who killed the Spackle, the army wants revenge. With no alternative, Todd releases President Prentiss to enlist help with the hopes that he is not making the biggest mistake of his life.
23193902	/m/065ynxw	Asking Questions	H. R. F. Keating			 The novel is prefaced by a section entitled "Questions", which consists of four passages numbered in Roman numerals. I Chandra Chagoo is threatened by Abdul Khan, who believes Chagoo has been asking questions in order to gather evidence for the police. II Dr Gauri Subbiah contemplates confronting Chagoo and demanding exactly what he knows about her past. She fears he knows everything. III Dr Ram Mahipal lectures a class of medical students about the importance of asking questions. Privately he contemplates imminent professional ruin for asking the wrong question. IV Professor Phaterpaker also contemplates professional ruin as a result of Ram Mahipal's question, the answer to which Chagoo already knows. The preface ends. The main body of the novel begins with the heading: Answer The Commissioner tells Ghote that a criminal named Abdul Khan has supplied Bombay film stars with drugs from the Mira Behn Institute. Ghote is ordered to find who stole drugs from the institute and arrest them under a false charge to prevent a scandal. Ghote tells the Commissioner that he recently caught an airline stewardess, Nicky D'Costa, smuggling drugs for Abdul Khan. The Commissioner says he will assign another officer to manage Nicky D'Costa as an informant and that it will take a better officer than Ghote to bring Abdul Khan to justice. Ghote questions Asha Rani, a movie star. Her "friend" Mr Ganguly took a sample of a medicine called A.C.E. and nearly died. Khan, who also supplied Mr Ganguly with cocaine, supplied the A.C.E. At the institute, Ghote interviews Professor Phaterpaker. The Professor says he will go to any lengths to protect the institute. The institution's work is largely concerned with making new medicines from the venom of poisonous snakes. Dr Subbiah immediately suspects Chandra Chagoo of having stolen the A.C.E. and leads Ghote to the reptile room. When the door is unlocked they find Chagoo dead with a Russell's viper loose in the room. The next day the Commissioner assigns Ghote to investigate Chagoo's death to prevent the scandal being exposed by another officer. Ghote realises that Chagoo did not have a key to lock the reptile room door and must have been murdered. Ghote interviews Dr Ram Mahipal, who left a reptile-room key in his old office at the institute when he suddenly quit his job. Ghote learns from the building manager that Mahipal returned in order to access his computer files on the night Chagoo died. Dr Subbiah, Professor Phaterpaker, Dr Mahipal and the building manager were all in the building at the time. Ghote suspects that the murder may be an employee at the nearby hospital. He enlists the inspector originally assigned to Chagoo's death to test this theory. On their next meeting Mahipal says he returned to teaching in hopes of instilling integrity in young medical students. Mahipal left the institute because he believed that Phaterpaker faked results, possibly on a regular basis. Phaterpaker takes the news that Chagoo was murdered calmly, remarking that Mahipal was slipshod and implying that he was dismissed for this. Ghote tries to determine exactly why Mahipal left, but Phaterpaker is vague. When Phaterpaker realises he himself is a suspect, he is affronted but admits "cutting corners" and acts like a man with something to hide. Ghote concludes that Phaterpaker is trying to use Mahipal as a scapegoat to protect the institute. Dr Subbiah reacts badly when asked about her relations with Chagoo, however Ghote concludes she is not the killer. Ghote discovers that Dr Mahipal's father works as a cook at the medical school and is a Brahmin, whereas Mahipal claims to be a member of the Dalit caste. Ghote deduces that Mahipal misrepresented himself in order to get a university scholarship reserved for the lower classes. Mahipal confesses this is so. Ghote suggests Chagoo came to learn Mahipal's secret and was murdered because of this. Mahipal denies this and reveals that he left the institute because Phaterpaker was removing lab animals that gave undesirable results. At the police station, Ghote is dismayed when the inspector he is working with points out one of the three scientists must surely hang for the crime and expresses a preference that it be Dr Subbiah. At the institute Ghote accuses Phaterpaker of falsifying test results. Phaterpaker confesses his results are fake. He became aware that Chagoo was stealing drugs from the institute but was forced to agree to a truce because Chagoo knew Phaterpaker was removing lab animals. Ghote considers the reptile room and realises wooden stool must have been used to break the glass, so he decides to have it dusted for fingerprints. At the police station Ghote learns that Nicky D'Costa has murdered, her throat slit after asking too many questions of Abdul Khan. Ghote is angry enough to confront the commissioner, but learns Khan had arranged to be in hospital during the murder. The forensic tests do not find a match between any fingerprints on the stool and Ghote's three suspects. Nor can they prove it was used to break the glass of the viper's cage. Ghote goes home and argues with his wife, then inspiration strikes and he returns to the institute. There he searches the grounds for evidence someone could gain access by night. The security guard catches Ghote and he must call his fellow inspector to rescue him. Afterwards Ghote chances upon Dr Subbiah. Ghote deduces that Phaterpaker persuaded her to "anticipate" the results of her experiments, as Phaterpaker himself was once persuaded. The conversation between Ghote and Subbiah is interrupted when, by chance, they pass the funeral of Nicky D'Costa. Ghote tells Subbiah how Nicky D'Costa was murdered and proceeds to question her about her test results. Subbiah remarks that Abdul Khan was a patient at the teaching hospital recently. Ghote asks whether she anticipated her results before completing the actual experiment. She admits faking her results. Ghote now believes that Subbiah is the murderer. He accuses her and she reacts in amazement, saying that Chagoo was clearly strangled. Ghote realises that he only saw the body laying face down, and the inspector originally assigned to the case never forwarded the medical examiner's report. Ghote realises that Chagoo could not have been strangled by Subbiah or Phaterpaker because neither of them have the necessary strength. Dr Mahipal has a withered arm, eliminating him as a suspect. Returning to the police station, Ghote talks to the forensic expert who examined the stool from the institute reptile room. The expert admits he only compared the fingerprints on the stool to the three suspects Ghote named; Subbiah, Phaterpaker and Mahipal. Without Khan's file in front of him, he could not identify the fingerprints. Khan's file is retrieved and his fingerprints are a perfect match. Ghote realises he can arrest and charge Khan with murder and recalls, with satisfaction, the words used by Commissioner's at the start of the case: "Frankly, Inspector, it will take a better man than you to put paid to Abdul Khan".
23194988	/m/065z319	The Anti-Pamela; or Feign’d Innocence Detected	Eliza Haywood		{"/m/0gf28": "Parody"}	 Haywood's novel follows the life of a Pamela-esque character, who attempts to use her seemingly innocent nature to become a prosperous noblewoman at the expense of her empty-headed master. However, the innocence of Haywood's Pamela is simply a mask for her devious cunning and deceit.
23198300	/m/065yzpf	Lunatic	Ted Dekker	2009	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Lunatic picks up where Chaos left off. Johnis, Silvie, and Darsal have returned from the other earth, having claimed all of the lost books of history only to lose them again. More importantly, the world that they have returned to has changed completely. Their home is overrun by their enemies and the healing water of Elyon no longer heals. Much as the first four books of the series make a set, Lunatic and Elyon are a whole story of their own. One difference is that in the first four books, each had an individual story that would be followed through to completion before leaving the main story to be continued. Lunatic and Elyon are one story, completely incomplete without each other.
23204211	/m/065_w2y	The Red Room				 Kit Quinn is a psychologist who ends up scarred after meeting a troubled arrested man. When she goes back to work after the incident she is asked to review a case for the police, in which the man who scarred her is the main suspect. Against everyone else's suggestions she decides to defend this man, at least until more evidence is found. Her suspicions end up proven and in the end she solves the case in the manner of the most experienced detective (which she is not).
23206142	/m/065_s2z	The Green and the Gray				 A young couple, still sorting out life together, are given custody of a girl at gunpoint. As they grow in their desire to help and protect the girl, they find themselves in an increasingly complex and dangerous situation. Who - or what - are the Greens and the Grays?
23210674	/m/065y2ln	Exposure	Mal Peet	2008-10-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Set in South America, Bush, a car-cleaning boy, greets Paul Faustino when he sees him. When he goes to his shed in the slums, Felicia tells him that his sister, Bianca, is missing. He soon finds her watching the night entertainment at an alley. Meanwhile, Otello becomes contracted to the Rialto football team. He is taken to a party at Brabanta's house and he meets Desmerelda there. After the party, Desmerelda asks him to marry her. Despite Brabanta's disapproval of their relationship, Otello and Desmeralda live a life under the scrutiny of the media. In an attempt to stop "wolf men" from looking at Bianca, Bush makes her wear an oversized sweatshirt. After a failed hold up targeted at Desmerelda, Brabanta pulls some strings to prevent his and his daughter's name from newspaper articles mentioning the hold up. Otello assigns Michael to look after Desmerelda. However, when Michael is involved in a nightclub brawl, Desmerelda gets Otello to take Michael back. Meanwhile, Felicia and Bush discuss how to look after Bianca. Felicia forces her breasts against him and goes away just immediately, leaving Bush in a state of emotional confusion. At the same time, Desmerelda discovers that she is pregnant. In response to other racist and defaming sport articles about Otello's first season in Rialto, Paul lists Otello's achievements in the first season of his Rialto career. To promote Otello's product range, the "Paff!" label was developed. Targeted at teenagers, the main theme of the label was rebellion so they used slum kids. Bianca was the most photogenic child at the photoshoot, with the all the advertisements of the "Paff!" label featuring her. With Bianca missing for three days, Bush and Felicia go to Paul for help. They find her dead with new clothes on her body and 100 dollars in her bra. Bush and Felicia are overwhelmed by her death. Meanwhile, Otello is accused of looking at child pornography. In the aftermath, Desmeralda leaves Otello and employs Felicia to look after her son and Bush to learn from her gardener.
23216803	/m/065_b45	Dragon and Thief	Timothy Zahn	2003-02	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After two years in space, the advance team of Shontine and K'da reach Iota Klestis, the world they have bought to flee from their war with their enemies, the Valaghua. The ships that meet them use the Valaghua's weapon, known as the Death, to kill everyone on board the three other refugee ships. Draycos' ship, the Havenseeker, dodges too far and ends up crashing into the planet, where everyone on board except him dies. Jack, who is hiding on Iota Klestis to escape the police, sees the crash and goes to investigate. When he arrives, he finds Draycos, who starts to explain when a soldier comes in and starts interrogating Jack as to why he is there. Draycos, who is on Jack's skin, stuns the soldier with a weapon and they escape by climbing to the top of the ship and down a nearby tree. On their way back to the Essenay, Jack is captured by another soldier, whom Draycos also stuns. Draycos talks Jack into dragging him onto a tree so the soil, which is hot from the ship's impact, won't burn him. Then they continue to the ship. They start to leave when two fighter ships start to pursue them, but with a maneuver of Draycos', they escape and go into hyperspace. While in hyperspace Draycos explains that he is part of an advance team of refugees fleeing from a war with the Valaghua, and Jack tells him he can't help because an arrest warrant is out for him, and also explains he lives on the ship alone, and Uncle Virge is a computer. He and Uncle Virge suggest Draycos go to an official agency for help, but Draycos points out he can't trust anyone, as he doesn't know who set up the ambush. Until he finds out he has to remain in hiding, so Jack is the only one who can help him, but first they have to clear Jack's name. They agree to go back to Vagran, where Jack picked up the cargo he supposedly stole, to see if there are any clues to the real thief. They arrive where Jack picked up the cargo and find one box with a Braxton Universis logo left as a trap. Draycos can't figure out what it is by leaning over the box's side, so Jack breaks into it and finds a deep freezer. They realize the cargo Jack was carrying was a freezer full of dry ice, which evaporated during the journey, making the crates lighter than when they were picked up. They also realize someone put a tripwire on the crate, so they make a run for it into the spaceport. Draycos jumps with Jack onto a second story balcony, where they hide as Lieutenant Raven, Drabs, and a nameless alien go past, looking for them. As they are about to leave, they are surprised by a Wistawk, one of the local aliens, who is drunk and mistakes them as being there for the party. He calls another Wistawk, and Jack realizes they've crashed a Wistawki version of a wedding. He pretends that he and Draycos are magicians sent to entertain them, and they perform magic tricks for the next couple of hours. Once they leave, however, they are ambushed by Lieutenant Raven and company, who frame Jack for murder by killing two Wistawki. Draycos is unable to stop them because they are too far apart for him to attack without being shot. Jack is drugged and Draycos is forced to stay on his skin for several days as they transport Jack somewhere else. Draycos sees them carry Jack onto a ship whose name he can't read, so he memorizes the symbols. On board the ship, Jack is woken up to speak to a mysterious figure behind bright lights with the same voice he heard on the comm link of the soldier on Iota Klestis. At first he thinks he's been caught, then he realizes the person wants his uncle to do a job for him: switch two data tubes in a ship's vault. He promises to get in contact with his uncle once he's on the ship the job is to be done on, and he is put aboard. On board the cruise liner, Draycos reveals the name of the mysterious person's ship, the Advocatus Diaboli, and Jack does a reconnaissance of the ship's vault. He leans against the wall inside the vault while talking to the manager about renting boxes, and Draycos leans over to find the safe deposit box with the data tube identical to the one Raven gave them. Once he knows which box it's in, Jack comes up with a plan and Draycos convinces him to go to the tube's owner and tell them what's going on after the data tubes have been switched. Five minutes before closing, Jack goes into the vault and puts something in the box he rented, and as the manager swings the door closed, he distracts him and Draycos jumps off his arm into the vault as the door closes. Jack sets off a smoke bomb in the ventilation to the security cameras for the vault, and puts a knife through the electrical box for the cameras. Then he goes back to the vault, where Draycos opens it from the inside with a safety lever designed in case someone gets locked inside. He breaks open the box, switches the data tubes, and they leave. They return forty minutes later to see a crowd of people gathered outside the purser's office, demanding to check their deposit boxes, since they had heard the alarm. Jack watches who checks the box they robbed and follows him to the most luxurious part of the ship, and decides to visit the cylinder's owner in the morning. Draycos points out it would be better to hide the cylinder somewhere so the owner doesn't just have them thrown in the brig when they try to return it, and Jack hides it in an elevator, behind the emergency call box, while they go down to vehicle storage. To make sure they don't confuse the two tubes, Draycos scratches a symbol in the metal at the bottom. When they get there, Jack has a short conversation with the guard, so the people watching him will think he handed the data tube off to his uncle down there, and they return to their room. The next morning, Jack goes up to the suite's door, and is stopped by two security guards. He insists to them he needs to talk to their employer, and he is let in, where the secretary tries to get Jack to just tell him. The owner arrives and Jack tells him Cornelius Braxton is trying to take him down by having Jack switch cylinders. He doesn't believe Jack, and Jack belatedly realizes the man is Cornelius Braxton. Jack mentions the Advocatus Diaboli, and the secretary panics and calls Raven and a couple guards, who take Jack and Braxton prisoner. Raven yells at Harper for panicking, saying they could have gotten away with it if he'd stayed calm, and decides to dump Jack and Braxton out of an airlock and tell Braxton's wife that the man got off at the ship's next stop, which is a couple of hours away. Jack drops some hints that his uncle will come for him, and that makes the men nervous enough to stay far apart, and Draycos can't get to them. They go down to a cargo bay, where there are piles of boxes in a grid. Jack pretends to run for it, and manages to get behind some boxes long enough to let Draycos escape before he is caught. Draycos runs along the tops of the piles of boxes, cutting the power to the lights, and reaches the airlock just as Raven and company are about to throw Jack and Braxton out of it. Draycos takes out the lights and jumps down to knock out the bodyguards, while Jack pulls Braxton to the floor, putting his arm over Braxton's eyes so he can't see Draycos. Draycos evades the men's guns and kills Raven as justice for killing the Wistawki. Later the Braxtons invite Jack for tea and thank him, also telling him the Vagran police found a witness to say Raven killed the Wistawki, so Jack's name is cleared. Once Jack leaves, Braxton orders an investigation into Jack and Uncle Virge, as well as how the symbol on his cylinder was carved on it. 2003, United States, Tor, Pub date February 2003, Hardback and Softcover
23217116	/m/065xyrk	The Example				 Two people meet on Flinders Street Station in Melbourne and are confronted by an unattended briefcase. What follows is an examination of the nature of racism, suspicion and fear.
23224732	/m/06601s1	Days between stations	Steve Erickson			 Lauren falls in love with Jason as a girl, living in the Kansas fields, but when they move to San Francisco and later Los Angeles, she learns that they have much different ideas about how to be in love. Jason is a cyclist, training for the Olympics, and when he is away, as he is frequently, he sleeps with other women, many of whom call Lauren, and Jason asks her to brush them off. Although they have a son, Lauren enters a dissociative fugue one night, and blames herself when their child later dies. In Los Angeles, they meet a mysterious man, with an amnesia of his own, who calls himself either Adrien or Michel, depending on which eye he covers with an eyepatch. He believes he sees differently from his two eyes, much to the consternation of his uncle, a film producer in Hollywood. Although never explicitly stated, Lauren and Adrien-Michel met before, when he raped her while she was lost in the fugue state. Adrien-Michel eventually falls in love with Lauren, and saves her from the sandstorms that engulf Los Angeles. The two travel to Europe, where Jason is set to compete in a bicycle race in Venice. The focus then shifts to tell the story behind The Death of Marat, and the story of its director, Adolphe Sarre. Adolphe was born with a twin, although the two were separated at birth, and Adolphe was raised by his adoptive mother, a prostitute, in a secret room inside her brothel. Eventually, his adoptive mother gives birth to a daughter, who Adolphe falls in love with. He eventually must leave the brothel when he is discovered by the owner's son, and Adolphe tries to kill him by throwing him out the window. He begins working for Pathe Studios, and becomes a prodigal talent. Adolphe eventually is allowed to work on his own project, set during the French Revolution, titled The Death of Marat. He goes to a tiny French village named Wyndeaux, and brings his lover from Paris to live with him. Eventually, he is told that she must return, by the brothel owner's son, who is still very alive. Adolphe tries to keep her as long as possible, by continuing to work on the film, even after the crew senses that their work is finished, but eventually, she is taken. The loss crushes Adolphe, and his masterpiece is never released. Years later, the son of an artist, Graham, discovers that his father's greatest masterpiece has been plagiarized from a frame of this film. He searches for Adolphe Sarre, and finds him in Paris. Eventually, he discovers that Adolphe has completed the film, but cannot stand to show it, due to his feelings of guilt. Graham takes what he thinks is the final reel of The Death of Marat from Adolphe, only to learn that it is a student film by the filmmaker's grandnephew, Adrien-Michel. Graham eventually learns that this student film is as important to Adrien-Michel as completing The Death of Marat has become to him. They trade reels, and Graham arranges for his premier. The novel returns to Jason, Lauren, and Adrien-Michel, who at this point has told Lauren that he has always been Michel. Jason knows that Lauren has come to Paris with Michel, and despite his many dalliances, he feels hurt that she would ever leave him. He asks her to come to Venice, where he is racing, and she agrees. They have to leave Paris, since riots start at the premier of The Death of Marat. Lauren takes a boat, piloted by the lost twin brother of Adolphe Sarre, who dies along the way, but eventually, Lauren gets to Italy. Michel instead takes a train, and becomes trapped in a seeming loop of time, where the other passengers have disappeared, and he keeps entering and leaving the train station in Wyndeaux. In Venice, Lauren, Jason, and Michel negotiate about the future. The bicycle race starts before they come to a conclusion, and during the race, the riders are lost. The canals are empty, due to the retreat of the sea, and after days of searching, the riders are finally found. After Jason returns, Lauren asks for time to make a decision. Lauren tells them that despite being in love with Michel, she has to stay with Jason, and so Michel leaves, heartbroken. Michel returns to Wyndeaux, where he grew up as a child. He gets some of the men in the village to help him dig two coffins up, where he thinks his twin brothers are buried. The coffins are empty. The novel ends with Lauren having returned to Kansas, where she works with foster children. She and Jason lived together for a while, until he was killed in an accident. One of the foster children believes that she was in love with Jason, but hears her calling to Michel one night.
23228408	/m/0660_4x	Elsie Venner	Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.	1861		 The novel is told from the perspective of an unnamed medical professor. He tells the story of a student named Bernard Langdon, who has to take some time away from his studies to earn money as a teacher. Langdon spends a short time teaching at a school in the village of Pigwacket Centre where he earns respect after taking on the school bully, Abner Briggs. After only a month, however, Langdon leaves to work at the Apollinean Female Institute in the town of Rockland. The owner of the institute is the profit-focused Silas Peckham and the schoolmistress is Miss Helen Darley, who is literally working herself to death. One of his students is the 17-year old Elsie Venner, who purposely sits apart from the other students. She is known for being strange and quick to anger. She is only close to her father Dudley Venner, who she calls by his first name, and her governess, Old Sophy. She also has a friendship with the town physician Dr. Kittredge, to whom she reveals that she ran away from home to hide on the other side of the mountain, where the other town residents are afraid to go. Elsie's half-Spanish cousin Richard "Dick" Venner pays a visit at the Venner estate. Like Elsie, his mother died when he was a child and the two cousins were playmates in their childhood. Elsie, however, was rough on her cousin and once bit him hard enough that he still has scars from it. Dick has since become a skilled horse-rider and a bit of a trouble-maker, though stories of his escapades are unclear. Rumors abound that Dick has come to town to ask his cousin Elsie to marry him; in fact, he intends to marry her so that he can inherit his uncle's estate. Langdon is surprised to find a gift stuck in the pages of a book by Virgil on his desk at school. Pressed inside is an exotic-looking flower, known to be the type Elsie collects. Frightened yet intrigued that the girl has taken an interest in him, he resolves to climb the mountain and find her secret hiding-place. Climbing up several precipitous rock formations, Langdon finds the source of the exotic flower Elsie presented him. Investigating a cavern where he thinks Elsie hides out, Langdon is instead overtaken by a rattlesnake poised to strike. Just at that moment, however, Elsie appears and calms the snake merely by looking at it. Intrigued, Langdon researches snakes, poisons, and the "evil eye". He cages a couple snakes and contacts his old professor for information. Doctor Kittredge recognizes the mutual interest between Langdon and Elsie, and recommends the former begin practicing with a pistol. In the meantime, Dick Venner subtly pursues a relationship with Elsie in order to become heir to the ample Venner estate but is jealous of Langdon and worries Elsie's father might marry Miss Darley. One night, Dick attacks Langdon with his lasso. Langdon shoots his pistol and kills Dick's horse but is injured. Dr. Kittredge's assistant appears, having been ordered to follow Dick and, after exposing the incident, Dick is run out of town. Soon, Elsie admits her interest in Langdon. Though he admits he is concerned about her as a friend, she is devastated and becomes sick. During her illness, she calls for Miss Darley to attend to her. Miss Darley finally asks Old Sophy how Elsie's mother died, and it is implied that she was poisoned by a snake bite shortly before Elsie was born. Elsie slowly loses her mysterious nature and softens enough to tell her father she loves him. She dies shortly after.
23230997	/m/0660byz	Sir Harold of Zodanga	L. Sprague de Camp	1995	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dimension hopping Harold Shea, having returned home to his psychological practice, is visited by the malevolent enchanter Malambroso, an enemy of Shea and his partner Reed Chalmers who has also discovered the secret of transdimensional travel. Having been thwarted in his attempt to steal Chalmers' wife Florimel in previous adventures, the enchanter attempts to subvert Shea into aiding him. Rebuffed, he threatens vengeance, which he shortly puts into practice by kidnapping Voglinda, the young daughter of Shea and his wife Belphebe of Faerie. In their search for their daughter, Harold and Belphebe find Malambroso has been residing in their world for some time, and from reading material discovered in his abandoned dwelling discover that he had become a fan of the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Reasoning that it is this alternate vision of Mars to which their foe has fled with the girl, they determine to travel there themselves by means of the symbolic logic formulas originally devised by Chalmers. Accordingly, they outfit themselves for the journey, or rather, de-outfit themselves, much to Belphebe's embarrassment; Burroughs' Barsoomians go about largely naked. Arriving on Barsoom, the Sheas seek out the aid of the royal family of the city-state of Helium, which includes Burroughs' protagonist, the transplanted earthman John Carter. Carter is not present, but they manage to obtain an audience with his father-in-law, Mors Kajak, jed (king) of Lesser Helium. Kajak turns out to be somewhat sour on earthmen, including his own son-in-law, presenting a picture of them very different from that of Burroughs. He regards Carter as something of a blowhard, claiming impossible prowess in battle, and Ulysses Paxton, the other earthman resident on Barsoom, as a rabble-rouser, advocating Terran ideas of equality and freedom unwelcome to the heirarchical, slave-owning Martians. Kajak suggests they seek guidance from Paxton's old mentor Ras Thavas, the so-called "master-mind of Mars," formerly villainous and still somewhat amoral. Thavas consents to aid the couple in return for some professional help from psychologist Shea; having previously had Paxton transplant his brain from his original aged body into a young and virile one, he has had difficulty adjusting to changed societal expectations, not to mention the youthful urges of his new form. With his assistance it is discovered that Malambroso has sought refuge in the one Barsoomian city-state that has shown itself receptive to Paxton's ideas – Zodanga, the traditional foe of Helium. Together, the Sheas and Thavas succeed in tracking down Malambroso, first on thoat-back to Zodanga, and then by flier to the Great Toonoolian Marshes, with a stopover in Ptarth when their flier is damaged in an air skirmish. Over the course of their journey, Shea counsels the irascible genius successfully. Barsoom is found to be somewhat divergent from the romantic world written of by Burroughs. While the beasts are generally multi-legged, as described, the number of their limbs tend to be fewer than reported. Aside from in the medical area, the superior technology of the Martians has likewise been exaggerated, more comparable to that of Earth's nineteenth century than the futuristic vision portrayed in the novels. And as for Barsoomian honor, vaunted as much by Thavas as it had been by Carter, they are quickly disillusioned when a Zodangan makes a crude pass at Belphebe. On the other hand, Thavas provides something of a corrective to the jaundiced Kajak's view of Carter, who in his experience is a genuinely charismatic leader who can exact pledges of a defeated foe and make them stick. He attributes his own reform to Carter's influence. The final battle is between Harold and an assassin hired by the enchanter to do his dirty work; they prove fairly evenly matched swordsmen until Thavas, with his superior mental powers, makes the hired killer believe he is confronting six Harolds rather than one. The assassin then abandons the conflict, and Belphebe shoots Malambroso with her bow. Voglinda is safe, as the villain had grown somewhat fond of and paternal toward his captive while on the lam from the Sheas. Thavas uses his medical skills to save the life of the enchanter to keep Belphebe out of trouble with the law (a sword duel is considered a fair fight by Barsoomians, while a shooting death is murder). The recovering Malambroso abandons his vendetta; having become smitten by his Barsoomian nurse, he forswears his previous infatuation with Florimel. Satisfied, the Sheas depart, though not (immediately) to their home dimension; their pursuit has been costly, and they need to return their rented flier to Zodanga to recover their deposit on it, and resell the purchased thoats they had left there.
23232654	/m/066081v	Heist Society	Ally Carter	2010-02-09	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Tired of her lifelong involvement in her family's illicit dealings, teenager Katarina Bishop enrolls herself in a prestigious boarding school. Then after a mere three months there, 16-year-old billionaire Hale arranges for her to get expelled. Following her expulsion,he informs her that five paintings have been stolen from the menacing Arturo Taccone and that her father is the prime suspect. Determined to save him by locating the real thief and stealing the paintings back, Kat gathers a team of larcenous friends to pull off the heist before the two-week deadline. However, her resolve falters when she learns that the paintings are Nazi war spoils. She negotiates complicated relationships in an action-packed plot, and the unknown identity of the thief suggests a sequel.
23236264	/m/065ym11	Stargazer	Claudia Gray	2009-03-24	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Evernight Academy is an exclusive boarding school for the most beautiful, dangerous students of all—vampires. Bianca, born to two vampires, has always been told her destiny is to become one of them. But Bianca fell in love with Lucas—a vampire hunter sworn to destroy her kind. They were torn apart when his true identity was revealed, forcing him to flee the school. Although they may be separated Bianca and Lucas will not give each other up. She will risk anything for the chance to see him again, even if it means coming face-to-face with the vampire hunters of Black Cross—or deceiving the powerful vampires of Evernight. Bianca's secrets will force her to live a life of lies. Yet Bianca is not the only one with secrets. When Evernight is attacked by an evil force that seems to target her, she discovers the truth she thought she knew is only the beginning. Bianca breaks into Mrs Bethany's carriage house in an attempt to discover what Lucas wanted to know; why humans are allowed at Evernight. She discovers nothing and heads back to Evernight, disappointed. She sees someone in the hall, but decides that it was just her own reflection. Orientation day sees Bianca sharing a room with Raquel, as Patrice has left Evernight for a few decades. Raquel's parents forced her to return to Evernight, despite her having told them that she was stalked by Erich. Bianca catches up with Vic, who gives her a letter from Lucas. Bianca's mail is being searched for this exact reason, so they cannot keep in contact. The letter tells Bianca to meet Lucas in October at the Amherst train station. As Bianca leaves her room to drink blood (she is the only vampire sharing with a human), she sees a blue light and thinks that there is a person on the stairs. This time, she is more curious, but is interrupted before she can investigate further. Bianca tells everyone there is a meteor shower so that she can camp out on the grounds to watch it. Really she is going to see Lucas. She hitches a ride in the laundry truck into Amherst and is walking along to find Lucas when a young vampire girl joins her in her walk. She is afraid of someone following her, and Bianca thinks she looks so lonely and innocent that she cannot refuse. The girl says she once went to Evernight, but did not get along with Mrs Bethany and ran away. They arrive at the train station and Lucas follows shortly after. He sees the girl with Bianca and thinks she is going to harm her. It turns out that Lucas had been the one following the vampire girl and she is very frightened. She attacks Lucas and wants to kill him, but Bianca stops her in time. Lucas calls for the rest of the Black Cross to come, so Bianca tells the girl to run away. She escapes before the Black Cross arrives, and Bianca and Lucas share the weekend at the Base Camp, as Black Cross does not know she is a vampire. When she sneaks back, Balthazar catches her. In an attempt to reason with Balthazar and make sure he does not tell Mrs. Bethany about her visit, she mentions the vampire girl who turns out to be Balthazar's sister. Soon Bianca and Balthazar make an arrangement; they pretend to be dating so Balthazar could get her off campus, since he is a trusted student, so she could meet Lucas while in return Bianca and Lucas help Balthazar find his sister, Charity, which they do. She is now part of a clan and blames Balthazar for killing her. After Courtney finds out about Bianca and Balthazar leaving school she stakes her and then decapitates her before leaving. An attack on the school by Charity and her clan while an attack by Black Cross is taking place leads Bianca, Lucas and Raquel to leave the school and head to Black Cross HQ. On their way out of the school they meets Charity who they think will kill them but as they prepare to run she is pushed against a tree and staked by a sharp branch. Although Lucas wants to finish her off he cannot find anything to destroy her with so agrees to leave her. When at Black Cross HQ Raquel volunteers to join and Bianca later agrees to join.
23236842	/m/06618d6	The Everafter War	Michael Buckley	2009-05	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Goldilocks kisses awake Henry Grimm, Sabrina and Daphne's father, from his sleeping spell. Henry has a hard time realizing that his daughters have grown up. He is very uncomfortable with their familiarity with magic, remembering how it got his father killed. He decides to disconnect Sabrina and Daphne from Ferryport Landing, forcing them to pack and get ready to return to New York City. Before they can leave, though, the Scarlet Hand surrounds the house and shoots Uncle Jake in the shoulder. Knowing he needs medical care, Granny sends everyone into the Hall of Wonders, to the Room of Reflections, which contains a number of magic mirrors. They enter what turns out to be a rebel fort, headed by Charming, to fight the Scarlet Hand. Uncle Jake asks the girls' help in rescuing his love, Briar Rose(sleeping beauty), whom he'd bought an engagement ring for. After Uncle Jake is knocked out and Daphne accidentally turns Sabrina into a goose, Briar is rescued, but dragons are sent after the group and Briar dies in the fighting. Sabrina accidentally reveals to Puck they get married in the future: they get in a big fight. Realizing it is time to take a side, the Grimm family, with the exception of Henry, agrees to let Charming's army use various magical weapons in the Hall of Wonders. Nevertheless, the army suffers a grim defeat due to a spy in the camp. Charming sets a trap and discovers Pinocchio is the spy; he was promised he could grow up and become a man. The girls eavesdrop and discover their mother was pregnant when she was put under the sleeping spell. However, the baby was born and was stolen by the Scarlet Hand. The camp is attacked by the Scarlet Hand and dragons, and everyone retreats into the Hall of Wonders, then leaves to fight again. Left in the house, the Grimms discover that Pinocchio's marionettes are running loose. Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck follow them into the Hall of Wonders where they discover the marionettes have opened a number of rooms in the Hall of Wonders. They lead to the Master, who is their friend, Mirror. Mirror explains that he wants to be a real person, not just a mirror creature. Taking the girls' baby brother, he goes into a secret room that can only be opened by a Grimm and forces Sabrina to open the door. Mirror goes into the Book of Everafter, to rewrite a story and take the baby's body for himself. The girls follow him, only to end up in the Land of Oz, and realize that they have been separated from Puck, Pinocchio, and their brother.
23245472	/m/065y_nd	The Politics of Lust	John Ince			 The book explores the three distinct forces that Ince believes fuel erotophobia: "antisexualism," an irrational negative response to harmless sexual expression; "nasty sex," which includes rape and violent pornography; and "rigidity," the inability to enjoy "playful and spontaneous" sex. Ince argues that, while we are drawn to sex, it also secretly disturbs us. He claims that powerful anxieties lurk in our attitudes to every type of erotic expression, and that these negative attitudes affect our lives by stunting sexual passion, inhibiting frank and honest talk about sex, and generating shame about sexual organs. Ince believes that our attitudes to sex also influence the non-sexual parts of our lives, such as political affiliations.
23247015	/m/065yxy5	After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away	Joyce Carol Oates	2006-08-22	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jenna Abbott nearly dies in the car wreck on the bridge that took her mother's life. Broken in body and spirit, she feels lost and alone. She longs for the peace of the "blue" - the drug-filled haze she experienced in hospital - and steals drugs from her uncle's medicine cabinet, setting off on a self-destructive path. Her classmate, the mysterious biker Crow, is the one person she can confide in about her misery and guilt.
23247641	/m/065_sgn	Landslide	Desmond Bagley	1967	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This story revolves around the protagonist, Bob Boyd, who is a geologist and works in British Columbia timber country. He has no memory of his past following a terrible auto accident. At the start of the novel he arrives in a small town - Fort Farrell, located in the northeastern British Columbia to perform a small job for the Matterson Corporation. By chance he happens to see the name of the square in the town – Trinavant Square, which brings back some memories to him. After consulting the town newspaper he confirms that this is the place where John Trinavant used to live. He learns from a local reporter, McDougall (Mac) that John Trinavant used to be a big businessman in Fort Farrell about ten years ago with the elder Matterson – ‘Bull’ Matterson. However at that time John Trinavant had died in an auto crash along with his son (Frank) and wife. There was a fourth person found in the car driven by the Trinavants – Robert B. Grant who has presumed to be a hitchhiker travelling with them. After meeting with the head of the Matterson Corporation, Howard Matterson (son of Bull Matterson), Bob plans to start a survey of the land owned by the Matterson Corporation in the nearby forest where the Mattersons were planning to build a dam and wanted to get their land surveyed for any precious minerals. Bob starts the survey and comes across a Miss Clare Trinavant who insists that he stays out of her land. After completing the survey he reports back to Howard that nothing of value lied below their land, and collects his pay-check and leaves. But before he leaves he is confronted by Mac to reveal his interest in the Trinavants. Although he refuses to tell Mac anything he is forced to reconsider his decision. Bob thinks about his past. It is revealed that Bob Boyd is indeed none other than Robert Grant who was riding with the Trinavants when the car crashed and the other 3 occupants died. Although he survived the crash his body was badly burned and as a result he lost his memory. He is told by the doctor and the psychiatrist (Susskind) that he is Robert Grant and survived the crash. Susskind urges him to forget about his past and focus on the future. But Bob insists on knowing about his past and so Susskind tells him that he used to be a college student and had a broken family and criminal history. He had no family now and was sought by police for drug and other charges. Susskind tells him that he must forget all that and study and complete his university exams because he was a new person now. Susskind helps him get a new face by plastic surgery and they decide to give him a new name – Bob Boyd. After a little time Bob is able to go back to normal life and works in the northern Canadian territories as a prospector. Back in the present time, Bob Boyd receives news that Susskind had died and feels that he has lost all touch with his past except for Fort Farrell and decided to go back there and investigate. He goes back and meets Mac and tells him everything about his past after which Mac feels sorry for having reprimanded him previously. They decide that to stick together and investigate the Mattersons interest and involvement in Trinavant property especially since after the death of the Trinavant family the Mattersons had gained a lot of wealth. They also decide to contact Clare Trinavant, who is a distant niece of John Trinavant and inform her about Bob’s past. At this time Mac asks Bob how he knows he is Robert Grant, in other words couldn’t he also be Frank Trinavant. Mac reveals to Bob that both Bob and John were boys of same age and a mistake could have been made. If Bob were actually Frank Trinavant he would stand to gain a lot of wealth and this would upset the Mattersons a lot. After hearing this Bob starts to spread the word in Fort Farrell that he is the survivor of the crash in which the Trinavant family died to see the reaction of the Mattersons. Immediately he is called by the elder Matterson (Bull) and accused of blackmail. Bull inform him that he knows Bob is actually Robert Grant and could get him thrown in jail because of his past criminal record. Bull warns Bob to leave town immediately and not create any trouble, but Bob ignores him and tells him he can do nothing. Meanwhile Bob asks Clare her if he can survey her share of the land adjoining the Matterson’s dam because it would be flooded soon. They both go there together and survey the land. While camping together they develop a romantic interest and decide to get married sometime in the future. When they return back from the survey Bob decides to create some more panic for the Mattersons. He decides to visit the dam they are building and starts to poke around in order to provoke them. He also collects some soil samples near the dam and finds they contain quick clay. He tries to warn the Mattersons to stop building the dam lest it gets toppled due to the quick clay; instead, the Mattersons threaten him. Eventually he confronts Bull Matterson and tells him that he could also be John Trinavant. Bull is unable to hear this shocking news and gets a heart-attack. His son, Howard, spreads the rumor that Bob had hit Bull, and gets all his employees to hunt down Bob. Bob quickly learns of Howard’s plan and escapes in the woods. They all follow him in the woods and Howard also captures Clare and Mac and locks them in his cellar. Bob knows that he must quickly escape his hunters and try to free Clare and Mac. He tries several maneuvers in the forest and on one occasion tells one of Howard’s men that he did not hit Bull Matterson. Eventually, Bob is able to escape and reach the Matterson home where Bull is recuperating from his heart attack. Bull tells Bob that five years ago his son and daughter had taken his car and run down John Trinavant’s car with the intent to kill him and his family. They did not want to see the more successful Frank be the successor of the Matterson-Trinavant business. A little time later Bob learns from the police that Howard is killed by police gunshots in the forest after he had killed one of the police officers. They also are able to free Clare and Mac from the cellar. Bob races towards the Matterson dam and orders everyone to evacuate due to the danger of quick clay. In the ensuing evacuation the dam collapses and a few people die, but most of them are able to escape. At the end Bob and Clare get together and look forward to a new life together. After all, he could capture me and take ne back to Fort Farrell, and then the whole story would blow up in his face. He had to get rid of me and the only way was by another killing. I shivered slightly. I had led a pretty tough life but I had never been pursued with deadly intention before. This was quite a new experience and likely to be my last. Of course, it was still possible for me to quit. I could head further west and then southwest to the coast, hitting it at Stewart or Prince Rupert; I could then get lost and never see Fort Farrell again. Bit I knew I would not do that because of Mac and Clare - especially Clare. I dug a blanket from my pack and wrapped it round me. I was dead beat and in no fit condition to make important decisions. It would be time enough in daylight to worry about what to do next. I dropped to sleep with Mac's words echoing in my ears: Keep fighting; give them another slug whole they're off balance. - from back cover of 1967 edition
23248451	/m/065zs0b	The Snow Tiger	Desmond Bagley	1975	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 This story revolves around the protagonist, Ian Ballard, who works as a mine manager. He is the grandson of Ben Ballard, owner of the Ballard Holdings Limited, a giant financial group based in London specialising in mining operations around the world. Ben had four sons including Ian’s father. Ian’s father and Ben had fallen apart when Ian’s father left him to settle in the town of Hukahoronui (a.k.a. Huka) located in the South Island of New Zealand in the late 1930s. Ian was born in 1939 and his father died very shortly afterwards in an avalanche there. After his father’s death Ian and his mother continued to live in Huka until he is 16 years old. During this time he develops enmity with a local boy, Charlie Peterson, who is of his age group. It is revealed later in the story that when Ian was about 12 years old Charlie’s twin brother Alec had drowned in the town river. Since Ian was present at the riverside Charlie held Ian responsible for Alec’s death, even though in reality Ian was innocent. At the start of the story Ian is about 35 years old and is injured when he gets trapped in a small avalanche while skiing in Switzerland along with his friend Mike McGill (who is an expert in the study of snow). Ian injures a leg during that accident. While recuperating in London at his mother’s home he is visited by his grandfather, Ben, who offers him the job of managing director of a gold mine located in Huka which is indirectly controlled by Ballard Holdings. Although Ian’s initial reaction is to decline the offer (due to his history at Huka with the Petersons), eventually he decides to take up the offer keeping in mind that Ben had supported him during all his education. The story from this point onwards is told in a flashback format hinged around a courtroom government inquiry into the cause of an avalanche that took place in Huka. This avalanche occurred in July of the year Ian had arrived in Huka, and the courtroom proceedings take place in December of the same year. Witnesses are called in this inquiry who recall their experience before, during and after the avalanche and the story is presented through these explanations, at the same time alternating between June/July and December. Ian arrived in Huka in June and discovers that the gold mine was barely making profit. Moreover he was confronted by the Peterson brothers (John, Eric and Charlie) who have grown up with the small town and now own a big supermarket and hotel and are quite influential in the town council. Ian noticed that Huka had changed a lot since he last visited this place – the town had grown bigger and the mountain slopes near the town were stripped of the tree cover and now lay bare covered completely with snow. Finding himself alone in this place Ian invites Mike McGill (who is planning to go to Antarctica soon) to visit him in Huka for a little time. As soon as McGill arrives in Huka he is extremely worried by several things and feels that the town is in imminent danger of being destroyed by an avalanche. However both the mine management (who distrust Ian due to his age) and the town council (which is controlled by the Peterson brothers and they too distrust Ian) refuse to believe anything that Ian and McGill tell them about the danger from an avalanche. In spite of this, McGill takes samples of snow from the nearby mountain slopes and concludes that the danger is very real and imminent. As soon as he tries to convey this to the outside (New Zealand authorities in Christchurch) the town is cut off from the outside when the road to the town is blocked by snow and the electricity and telephone wires are cut off by a very minor avalanche. After witnessing these events John and Eric Peterson begin to believe what McGill told them and start to mobilise the town resources to prepare for an avalanche. While the whole town is making preparations the avalanche hits them and about 50 people die as a result. During the government inquiry some surprising evidence is presented which shows that Charlie Peterson had actually deliberately started the avalanche by skiing very aggressively at the top of the mountain slopes. His motive was to destroy the gold mine ad extract revenge on Ian. He is immediately arrested and faces charges for the deaths of several people (including his brother John) in the avalanche. Also, during the hearings in December Ian receives the news that his grandfather (Ben) had died and had left the control of Ballard Holdings in Ian’s hand which makes him a very rich person. Also, he had been romantically linked to Liz Peterson (sister of the Petersons) and marries her at the end, once she learns of Charlie’s behaviour.
23248533	/m/065y4d8	High Citadel	Desmond Bagley	1965	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A small, passenger plane is hijacked by its co-pilot over a mountain range in South America causing a crash landing in which the hijacker dies. Unbenknownst to the pilot and other passengers, among their number is Senor Aguilla, the former president of the country, and his niece, who were returning to the country under a pseudonym. Aguilla had been deposed by a military coup, and now a communist faction wants him dead since they fear he will be a problem for a communist takeover of the country. The hi-jacker′s associates soon arrive at the isolated area, but are separated from Aguilla and the other survivors of the crash by a gorge. There is a damaged bridge between the two sides, which the villains are prevented from crossing by the passengers. As the plot unfolds, the majority of the passengers remain nearby to maintain the stand-off while two set off to cross the mountain range to reach divisions of the country's air force loyal to Aguilla and bring help. The ‘citadel′ at which the siege is maintained becomes increasingly threatened as reinforcements for the villains arrive with prefabricated materials to repair the bridge and storm the position with vehicles. A medieval historian and an engineer manufacture a variety of weapons to prolong the siege as the novel reaches its gripping climax. ja:高い砦
23248597	/m/0660wdy	The Tightrope Men	Desmond Bagley	1973	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Giles Denison's life is turned upside down when he awakes to find himself in a luxurious hotel in Oslo and, peering into the bathroom mirror, discovers the face of another man. He has been kidnapped from his flat in London and transformed into the likeness of a Finnish scientist, Dr Harold Feltham Meyrick. Compelled to adjust to his new persona (including meeting his daughter) and to play out the role assigned to him by his captors, the group embark on a dangerous escapade from Norway to Finland and across the border into Soviet Russia.
23248861	/m/065znyl	The Spoilers	Desmond Bagley	1969	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When film tycoon, Sir Robert Hellier, loses his daughter to heroin, he declares war on the drug peddlers. London drug treatment specialist, Nicholas Warren MD, is called in to organise an expedition to the Middle East in an attempt to track down the big-time dope runners, inveigle themselves into their confidence and make them an offer they can't refuse. No expense is spared in the plans for their capture, but with a hundred million dollars worth of heroin at stake, the 'spoilers' must use methods as ruthless as their prey.
23249033	/m/065zbk5	The Freedom Trap	Desmond Bagley	1971	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An agent of the British Government is sent on a new and deadly assignment - to snare The Scarperers (a notorious gang of criminals who organise gaol-breaking for long-term prisoners) and Slade, a notorious Russian double agent whom they have recently liberated. The trail leads him to Malta, where he comes face-to-face with these ruthless killers and must outwit them to save his own life.
23249119	/m/065yv_3	Juggernaut	Desmond Bagley	1985	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 American narrator Neil Mannix is the corporate troubleshooter for multinational British Electric. Nyala, a former British colony newly rich with oil, hopes to prop up its shaky democracy and economy with a new power station near its oil fields. The Nyalans insist that British Electric must dispatch a 300-ton transformer for display to the populace, and Mannix is sent to supervise the travels of "the rig" on a huge flatbed. Civil war breaks out, and Mannix is bullied by a local doctor and an Irish nun into using the rig as a traveling hospital. He must deal with opposing armies, possibly unsafe roads and bridges, some untrustworthy crew members and Nyalans who trek after the machinery, which has taken on symbolic, even mythic meaning.
23249193	/m/0661bdp	Night of Error	Desmond Bagley	1984	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After receiving news that his brother Mark has died in suspicious circumstances in the Pacific, marine biologist Mike Trevelyan discovers that Mark′s latest research may have discovered a lucrative source of manganese beneath the sea. With only two clues — a notebook in code and a lump of deep–sea rock — Mike's investigations trigger the start of a hazardous marine expedition and a violent confrontation far from civilisation.
23251826	/m/06604z4	Jatta		2009-06	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/017ssy": "Juvenile fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy"}	 Princess Jatta wakes on her bedroom floor after a night’s carnage she cannot remember, suffering a guilt she cannot explain. Piece by piece she uncovers two frightening truths: she is a werewolf; Dartith’s King Brackensith has claimed her as bride for his son. Any protection her father’s kingdom of Alteeda has offered Jatta crumbles when, on her fourteenth birthday, Brackensith invades. Jatta and her brother Arthmael escape to seek help from Sorcerer Redd. They leave him, taking the orb. This purple, plum-sized magical ball creates vivid illusions of sight, sound, smell and taste so convincingly that only the sense of touch can expose them. With Jatta’s own prodigious imagination she soon masters the orb. Its illusions provide almost limitless possibilities for deception, entertainment and escape. However, Jatta cannot escape the sinister werewolf episodes she now suffers. As Brackensith’s grip tightens on Alteeda, Jatta realises that only her surrender will save her kingdom. Her journey with Arthmael to Dartith’s dark isle is fraught with dangers. They are kidnapped, thrown to dragons, and trapped with lost souls inside an enchanted fire. Jatta is forced into a betrothal to the dangerously unbalanced Prince Riz. On Dartith, where night stretches for sixteen of every twenty-four hours, Jatta and Arthmael meet and befriend Princess Noriglade, Brackensith’s Undead daughter. Noriglade also despises what she is. Though the Undead rarely kill, they do kidnap their victim’s soul as they drink, a torturous experience for the victim and a corrupting one for the Undead. Noriglade and Arthmael yearn to escape to Alteeda. Jatta resigns herself to staying, fearing her wolf is invading her personality. When mad Prince Riz stages a coup, the three young Royals are caught up in the massacre. It is Jatta’ unique powers that save them, and Jatta, Arthmael and Noriglade return to Alteeda.
23254147	/m/065zmrs	The Honour of the Knights	Stephen J Sweeney		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In 2617AD, the remains of Mitikas Imperium's naval forces are making a last stand against an unstoppable enemy force known only as the Pandorans who have driven them to the brink of destruction. A pilot by the name of Jacques Chalmers witnesses the final destruction of their forces at the hands of Admiral Zackaria before his own death. The story moves to Earth, on the other side of the galaxy, where Simon Dodds is awoken by a man named Patrick Dean who has mysteriously found his way to his parents' house. Though Dodds attempts to save his life, the man has suffered fatal gunshot wounds and dies of respiratory failure. The Confederation Stellar Navy arrive the next morning to take Dean's body away, telling Dodds to deny his existence. Two weeks later they request he return to naval service. Meeting Admiral Turner, Commodore Parks and Commodore Hawke, Dodds is once again reminded to deny Dean's existence and is then told that he is to spend the next 3 weeks participating in the ATAF project, a newly developed starfighter with superior capabilities to anything else in military history. Dodds is reunited with his old team mates (the White Knights), discovering during his absence that the Confederacy's flagship, a battleship known as Dragon, has been hijacked and has not been seen for nearly 6 months. Commodore Hawke was the only surviving crew member. He has, however, been unable to accurately describe what happened to him during that time. Whilst attending a presentation on the ATAF, Dodds begins to question the starfighter the navy has constructed, feeling the design is not an evolutionary step, but more of a reaction to something more serious. His team mates, however, dismiss his concern. The White Knights spend several weeks participating in simulated tests involving the ATAFs, bidding to become the real test pilots. They are, however, outperformed by another team (The Red Devils) and are transferred to the Confederacy border system of Temper, stationed at a planet called Spirit. Whilst patrolling the system, the group witness a research vessel come under attack by a raiding party. A single raider escapes with a dump of the vessel's databanks and flees into Imperial space. Later, whilst drinking in the naval base's Officer's Club, Dodds hears a series of rumours that explain that the purported Imperial civil war is a fabrication and the empire was wiped out months ago. The rumourmonger tells him that all that is left are a number of refugees and that Dragon, with its 50,000 strong crew, couldn't have been hijacked by anything more than a sizeable opponent. Dodds, Enrique and Chaz discuss the rumours and continue to drink neat whiskey for most of the night, becoming more and more drunk as the evening goes on. The next day the naval base is awoken to the news that Dragon has been located and the CSN plan to intercept and take back the vessel. A secondary goal of the operation is to also capture and arrest Admiral Zackaria, for his believed part in the on-going trouble in Imperial space and the theft of the battleship. Although they are at first assigned to take part in the offensive run against enemy targets, the White Knights are relegated to secondary defence after Commodore Parks discovers that Dodds and Enrique are still drunk. The CSN sends its three major carriers, Griffin, Ifrit and Leviathan to Aster to intercept and bring Dragon home, commanded by Commodore Parks, Commodore Hawke, and Captain Meyers respectively. The start of the operation is disastrous, with Dragon's operators luring the allied forces into a false sense of security by complying with a remote shutdown request and then eliminating all the approaching vessels. It then turns its main cannon on UNF Grendel, destroying it with a single shot. With the allied forces completely outmatched by the enemy starfighter pilots, who many begin to believe are not being piloted by Imperials, Parks orders an immediate retreat. Before they can do so, however, they are attacked by enemy reinforcements and Griffin is left dead in the water. With the original pilots dead and with no means to launch fighters, the White Knights are left to pilot the ATAFs and use them to drive back the enemy forces. Dodds once again begins to question the power of the starfighter, feeling that something is not right about it. After the enemy forces have fled the system, the allies attempt to return home. Griffin, however, suffers a mis-jump and becomes stranded in Imperial space. Whilst the carrier's crew affect repairs and await rescue, Admiral Turner contacts Parks and tells him that the raider who stole the ATAF plans is currently in the same star system attempting to sell them on. He orders Parks to send the White Knights to Arlos starport to meet a government agent (Clare Barber) who has been tasked with retrieving them. Arriving at the starport, Dodds comes to realise that the rumours he had heard the previous nights are, in fact, 100% true and the starport is full of refugees. After hours of searching the starport the team discovers that Barber is dead and they head to the starport's hospital's morgue to search her for the stolen data card. It transpires that the woman has swallowed the card, leaving the team with no choice but to cut her open to get it. As they do so, a detachment of Pandoran soldiers arrive at the starport and begin to slaughter the refugees. The Knights attempt to fight one of the soldiers who has come to the morgue, searching for survivors, but discover the man is not only exceptionally strong, but also possesses incredible healing abilities. The team eventually manage to defeat the soldier and then fight their way out of the starport, heading back to Griffin. Arriving in the vicinity of the carrier, they discover that it has come under attack by Commodore Hawke, who has turned control of CSN Ifrit over to Admiral Zackaria, in service of the Imperial Senate and "The Mission". The Knights once again fight back against the enemy forces, before Dodds attacks Ifrit directly and spaces Hawke and Zackaria. Following this, the enemy forces cease their attack on Griffin and leave. The Knights return home to a heroes' welcome, but are left with a great number of questions on their minds.
23265858	/m/0660lbt	In Vivo	Mildred Savage	1964	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1946, young, idealistic scientist Tom Cable steers the fiscally conservative Enright Drug and Chemical Company into dangerous financial waters by committing an increasing number of company resources to the research and development of a new broad-spectrum antibiotic. Supporting Cable in his search for a new broad-spectrum antibiotic are Ade Hale (president), Will Caroline (vice-president for research), Maxwell Strong, and Dr. Mills. Opposing them are Claude Morrissey (director of biochemistry) and Gil Brainard (vice-president for production). The story line is linear with traditional character arcs. The heroes and villains are archetypal with the heroes often possessing trope-like names (e.g. Max Strong, Constance, Hope, etc.) and generally embodying all that is good while the villains back-stab, bicker and descend into abject immorality.
23266533	/m/02nq7xl	The Eagle's Prey	Simon Scarrow	2005-05-23	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This novel is set in AD 44 during the Roman invasion of Britain. During the second year of their campaign against the British tribes, the Roman legions are under great pressure to complete their mission. However, at a crucial juncture in battle, Macro and Cato's superior, Centurion Maximius, loses his nerve and allows the Britons, including the enemy leader Caratacus, to escape. Cato and his men are forced into hiding to avoid retribution from the empire and capture by the Britons.
23267733	/m/065zqz9	Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit			{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 McCarthy, the son of two college professors, was born in North Carolina but moved to Orlando, Florida at a young age when his parents took jobs at the University of Central Florida. A left-handed pitcher, McCarthy played for Bishop Moore High School in Orlando, and subsequently played for Yale University. McCarthy was drafted by the Anaheim Angels in the 21st round of the 2002 Major League Baseball Draft. He participated in the Angels' minor league Spring Training and was assigned to the rookie-level Provo Angels of the Pioneer League. McCarthy spent the 2002 season going back and forth between the starting rotation and the bullpen. Much of the book describes his life off the field during that season, such as long bus rides to away games, living in a hotel and subsequently with a Mormon family, altercations with teammates, and acclimating to life in predominantly Mormon Provo. He also describes several games from his own perspective on the mound or in the dugout, as well as a different perspective on games such as Joe Saunders' first start for Provo, as well as a game where Larry King was the guest of honor. The next spring, McCarthy returned to Spring Training. He was placed on three different minor league squads, including the Triple-A squad, but was released before Spring Training ended. After his release, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School, and did work in Cameroon and Malaysia. He was a medical intern at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center at the time the book was published.
23286530	/m/0660rtf	The Story of Cirrus Flux				 The story takes place in 18th century London, and follows an orphan boy named Cirrus Flux. When he was born, his explorer father, James Flux, left him at an orphanage while he carried out his duties to the Guild of Empirical Sciences. He set sail hoping to find more of a brilliant and mysterious light known as the Breath of God. But he did not return from his journey. Now the only known place where the light can allegedly be found is inside a token left for Cirrus Flux by his father. Now, 12 years later, Cirrus is on the run from his orphanage, where a member of the Guild of Empirical Sciences has come seeking him and his token.
23289444	/m/065xz04	Bog Child	Siobhan Dowd	2008-09-09	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is set in the 1980s. Fergus McCann and Uncle Tally find a bog body of a small girl near the Ireland-UK border. At the same time, Fergus is studying for his A-Level physics. He makes friends with Owain, one of the border guards, during one of his morning runs across the border. He opens many coversations with Owain. When he goes back to the site of the bog child, Fergus meets Cora and Felicity O'Brien, a girl his age and her archaeologist mother. Fergus named the bog body "Mel". He goes to Long Kesh prison with his mother to meet his brother, Joe, who has been incarcerated as a political prisoner because of his involvement with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He has joined his friends on a hunger strike in protest to free Ireland from The Troubles. After lifting Mel's body from the site, the excavation team, including Fergus and Cora, find that Mel has a noose around her neck. A flashback shows Mel and her family struggling to meet loan repayments. Fergus was asked by Michael Rafters to ferry packets across the border in an attempt to end his brother's hunger strike. Fergus and Cora share their accidental first kiss but begin dating afterwards. After his final A-level exam, physics, Fergus and his family visit his brother in prison to find him gaunt-looking. He gets drunk and dreams about Mel talking to Rur, her love interest. When he wakes up, Cora informs him that Mel was a dwarf. Fergus allows Cora and her mother to stay over at his place due to an appointment with a professor about Mel. Radiocarbon dating reveals that Mel lived around AD 80. After a bombing is shown on the news, Fergus begins to suspect the packets he has been ferrying. He opens them in front of Owain to see condoms and contraceptive pills. Joe falls into a coma after 50 days of fasting. After a heated argument between Fergus and his parents they agree to put him on the drip. Through a series of dreams, Fergus sees the events leading to Mel's death with Rur stabbing her at her request because she did not want to "feel the noose" around her neck. It is also found out at the end that Fergus' Uncle Tally actually is a local bomb-maker, nicknamed Deus, meaning god.
23292780	/m/0660xk0	The Girl from Hollywood	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1923-08-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story alternates between the all-American Pennington family on their remote California ranch and a young Hollywood actress. The Penningtons have a beautiful estate, and affectionate relationships with their children, Custer and Eva. Custer has had an "understanding" with neighbor and childhood friend Grace Evans for a long time, but she finally confides that she wants to try being an actress before she agrees to settle down on the ranch. Her brother Guy is an aspiring writer. He has just purchased some bootleg booze, and shares it with Custer, although both Grace and Custer's mother have observed that he has a drinking problem. Bit-part actress Shannon Burke, known on the screen as Gaza de Lure, remembers her Hollywood history. She had come for fame. She refused to trade sexual favors for work, and found that she could not get better roles. Actor-director Wilson Crumb was the first to behave decently to her, as a gentleman. He got her a contract with his company, and gradually increased his attentions to her. Finally, he gave her powder, saying it was aspirin, and over several days intentionally got her hooked on cocaine. To keep her drug supply steady she angrily agreed to visit him during the day, but refused to live with him, going home each night to her own place. Eventually, she began selling cocaine, morphine and heroin for him. Guy Evans is in love with Custer's sister Eva Pennington, but does not have an income to support her. Slick Allen, briefly employed by the Pennington ranch, asks Guy to help with his bootleg operation. After he threatens the Penningtons, Guy rejects the proposal … and Allen threatens to frame him for the entire bootleg business. Lured by the money, Guy decides to cooperate, arranging to store and transfer illegal goods each week in a remote section of the ranch. Meantime, Grace has had no luck in Hollywood, finding it difficult to get any work at all. Sent to Wilson Crumb, he diffidently offers her a semi-nude part requiring a nude audition, and in a weak moment, she accepts. The other side of Slick Allen's smuggling operation is drugs … sold through Wilson Crumb in Hollywood. Shannon witnesses Allen demanding payment from Crumb. Crumb has been putting him off, and finally arranges for Allen to be arrested for possession of drugs. By insisting on a share of the profits, Shannon has saved enough to buy a home for her mother in the country, near a big ranch - coincidentally, the Pennington's. Shannon's mother gets sick and they send for her. She carefully brings enough drugs to last a week. Her mother is dead when she arrives, so the Penningtons take her in. With decent people, fresh air and exercise, she weans herself from the drug and then entirely kicks her secret habit. She also falls in love with Custer. In Hollywood, Wilson Crumb follows his previously successful method to hook Grace on drugs as well. The folks at home hear from her less often. When Shannon learns about Grace, knowing what Hollywood can be like for a girl with no family to care, she insists someone should go see her. Custer has become aware of mysterious traffic on the ranch, and plans to catch them. Shannon recognises Slick Allen's voice from his meeting with Wilson Crumb, and fears for Custer's safety. She approaches the bootleggers to try to prevent a confrontation, but only makes matters worse. The government finds Custer with the booze, and he is arrested. Although he learns of Guy's involvement, he chooses to accept six months in prison rather than let his sister be disillusioned with Guy. Custer tries to see Grace but she throws him out, pretending she dislikes him. The next day, Guy arrives too late; Grace dies of injuries from domestic abuse, an out of wedlock pregnancy, and drug abuse. A photo on her dresser is Guy's only clue to the guilty man. As months go by, the families recover from losing Grace. Eva arranges for a movie company to shoot some scenes at the ranch, at the request of … Wilson Crumb. Shannon is appalled. On the ranch, Crumb confronts Shannon, insisting she come back to him. Custer overhears their conversation, and gets drunk. Crumb tries to lure Eva out for an "audition", but she is horrified when he makes a pass. Angry, he tells her that Guy was the guilty bootlegger, who let her innocent brother go to jail for it. The next morning, Shannon is seen sweeping away tracks on the trail. Within hours, Crumb is found dead. Shannon claims responsibility but has no gun. Custer had a gun, but was passed out drunk and doesn't remember getting up, let alone killing him. Eva shoots herself over Crumb's allegations about Guy, and is found barely alive. Guy becomes so upset and disoriented when he learns about Eva's suicide attempt that he is taken to a sanatorium (mental hospital). Custer and Shannon are both arrested. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence against Custer. Shannon's sordid Hollywood past comes out during the trial. Custer is found guilty and sentenced to death. Shannon is found innocent due to inability to produce a murder weapon. The Penningtons do not hold Shannon's past against her. Eva recovers, and the family frequently visits Custer. On the fatal day, the governor grants a stay of execution. Shannon had been working with Guy at the hospital every day, and he finally recovered his memory. Guy confessed to killing Crumb himself in revenge for Grace's death. Additionally, Slick Allen explained that he planted some of the circumstantial evidence against Custer, but decided to admit it after he realised that Shannon is his long-lost daughter.
23302449	/m/065_7mb	Mindplayers	Pat Cadigan	1987-07-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A dare goes awry when Ali tries on a stolen madcap and is afflicted with psychotic delusions that will not go away. "Cured" by a mindplayer, Ali is soon forced to become one herself or face a prison sentence as a "mind criminal."
23307938	/m/065_b3v	Modeste Mignon	Honoré de Balzac	1844		 The first part of Modeste Mignon is based on a traditional species of folktale known as La fille mal gardée ("The Ill-Watched Girl"), in which a young woman takes a lover despite the close attentions of her guardians, who are determined to preserve her chastity for a more suitable match. Modeste Mignon, a young provincial woman of romantic temperament, imagines herself to be in love with the famous Parisian poet Melchior de Canalis, whose works have filled her with passion. She corresponds with him, but he is unmoved by her attentions. Canalis invites his secretary Ernest de la Brière to deal with the matter. Ernest replies to Modeste in Canalis' name; a dangerous intrigue ensues, which sees Ernest appear in Modeste's home town of Ingouville (near Le Havre) disguised as Canalis. The plot is complicated by the interference of Modeste's family and friends, who suspect that she has secretly taken a lover. The wily dwarf Butscha, who loves Modeste as a medieval knight might have loved a lady far above his station, is determined to unmask the man. Things come to a head when Ernest discovers that Modeste's father Charles Mignon has returned from his long exile a very wealthy man: Modeste is no longer a poor provincial girl but a rich heiress with six million francs to her name. Ernest reveals his true identity, but Modeste feels humiliated and casts him off. When Modeste's true worth becomes generally known, Canalis takes a renewed interest in her and believes that his poetic ardour will enable him to win her heart. But his secretary is no longer his only rival: a local wealthy potentate the Duc d'Hérouville now regards the nouveau-riche Modeste Mignon as a suitable match and throws his hat into the ring. The second part of the novel is also based on a traditional story-type, The Rival Suitors. Ernest, Canalis and the Duc d'Hérouville are invited to Ingouville to compete for the hand of Modeste. Still smarting from the trick played on her by Ernest, Modeste is determined to choose between the passionate advances of the poet and the prospect of becoming a duchess should she accept Hérouville. Butscha, however, who realizes that Ernest is the one who truly loves her, is equally determined to expose the pretensions of Canalis and promote Ernest's suit. Thanks to Butscha's intrigues and her father's good sense, Modeste chooses Ernest and the two are married.
23310350	/m/065_m4v	Bitter Fruit				 Silas Ali is a Johannesburg lawyer approaching 50 who has risen to prominence during Nelson Mandela's presidency. A high-ranking civil servant occasionally even seen on television next to Mandela, he is employed as a liaison officer assigned to coordinate governmental activities with those of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. While his attractive wife Lydia works as a nurse, their only child, 18 year-old Michael reads Literature at Wits University. The past catches up with Silas Ali one Sunday morning at a shopping mall when he sees, and recognizes, François du Boise, an Afrikaner policeman who, in 1978, raped Lydia somewhere in the veld while Silas was made to listen to her screams from inside a police van&mdash;an act of brutality obviously triggered by Silas's involvement with the MK. For almost twenty years, Silas and Lydia have kept quiet about the crime, both to each other and towards the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Lydia has never shared her terrible suspicion that du Boise is Michael's natural father with anyone other than her secret diary. Trapped in an unpromising, sexless marriage, and more than ten years younger than her husband, Lydia copes badly with Silas's sudden revelation about du Boise and the additional information that the now retired policeman has applied for amnesty for a number of sexual assaults, including the one on her. In an act of self-injury, she dances on broken glass and has to be hospitalised under the pretence of having suffered a freak accident. In the long run, however, all their attempts at keeping up appearances cannot disguise the fact that, for a multitude of reasons, their marriage is failing, and that they have also lost touch with their son, that they have no idea about where, and how, he is actually spending his time. They find out too late that, while performing brilliantly at university, he has turned into a seducer of older women&mdash;he has had affairs with one of his father's former "comrades in arms", who is rich, white, and bisexual, and also with one of his literature professors&mdash;and that he has started to investigate his own roots by contacting his paternal grandfather's relatives, who are Muslims (although his father Silas, an illegitimate child, is not). Also, they do not realise that he has recently read Lydia's diary. A birthday party thrown in Silas's honour is the last event where the Alis are seen together. By that time, Silas is toying with the idea of going abroad, preferably to Europe, to make a fresh start there, especially now that President Mandela is about to resign and he may lose his prestigious government job; Lydia has stopped working as a nurse and is planning to leave her husband for good; and Michael has acquired a gun and lets himself be influenced by fundamentalist Islamic circles. In the end it is Michael Ali who takes the most drastic actions. Reinventing himself as a Muslim and planning to go into hiding and eventually to India, where his grandfather was born, he goes on a killing spree, shooting first the white father who for many years has had an incestuous relationship with his daughter&mdash;who is a friend of Michael's&mdash;,and then du Boise.
23311004	/m/065y42n	August	Judith Perelman Rossner	1983		 The novel focuses on the relationship between a psychoanalyst, Dr. Lulu Shinefield, and a young troubled woman, Dawn Henley, from the beginning of their therapy together through to its termination.
23311054	/m/065z4b6	August				 Set from the mid-1950s till 1971, the book tells the story of the Jones family, who leave their home in London for a camping holiday in Wales every August.
23312080	/m/065_0sq	Under a Monsoon Cloud	H. R. F. Keating	1986-01-30	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Inspector Ghote is temporarily assigned to a badly run hill station at Vigatpour. Additional Deputy Inspector General "Tiger" Kelkar, a man Ghote once investigated and cleared of suspected corruption, arrives to inspect the station. The situation is worsened by Sergeant Desai, a comically inept and lazy sergeant previously assigned to Ghote in Inspector Ghote Plays a Joker. During the inspection the monsoon storm breaks. Desai, after making a string of irritating blunders, spills ink over Kelkar's uniform and Kelkar, in a fit of temper, throws the brass ink well at Desai. The inkwell strikes Desai on the head and kills him. Owing to the late hour Ghote is the only other officer in the station at the time. Kelkar orders Ghote to arrest him but Ghote persuades Kelkar to cover up the death. Since Desai regularly tried to bet people he could swim the nearby lake in under two hours they take the body to the lake and submerge it. The next day Kelkar completes his inspection and the station's original inspector returns from sick leave, allowing Ghote to go home. Months pass, then Ghote is summoned to the Assistant Commissioner's office where he is introduced to Sergeant Desai's sister in law. Mrs Desai is suspicious because Desai was a good swimmer and the medical officer's report indicates no signs of asphyxia by drowning. Mrs Desai threatens to involve the newspapers and so the Assistant Commissioner agrees to an inquiry. Days later Ghote meets the inspector assigned to inquiry and mentions the untidy state of the lost property room at the hill station. The investigating inspector realises this may be where Desai's missing clothes are to be found and goes off to look. Ghote realises the inspector will find Desai's blood stained uniform jacket. He warns Kelkar who commits suicide. The Assistant Commissioner sends Ghote a memo demanding an account of the events at the hill station. Ghote fears imminent ruin. He weighs the value of the truth against that of his career and finds his career wanting. At home he is moody and silent with his wife and child. Finally he confesses everything to his wife, Protima. The least Ghote expects is demotion but dismissal or even a criminal charge is more likely. Protima urges him to lie to protect his family. Ghote resists, but agrees to see a Hindu priest at the temple. The priest says anger leads to bewilderment, which leads to a wandering mind, which leads to the destruction of the soul. The priest warns Ghote that he is in the third phase of this cycle and asks Ghote what his skills as a policeman are worth if he cannot use them. After this Ghote submits a false statement saying he left duty before the death and cannot shed any light on those events. He is suspended pending a board of inquiry. In court, Ghote watches as a case he worked on collapses under the fierce defence of Mrs Achmed. He realises she will be a fine defence attorney for his own case. He engages her, but tells her he is innocent. The inquiry hearing begins. Ghote is dismayed to learn that the prosecution will be handled by a man with a fierce reputation for cross examination. Kalkar's suicide note, which does not mention Ghote's involvement, is read into evidence. When the inquiry adjourns Ghote accompanies Mrs Achmed to a jail and assists her in gaining access to her clients. Mrs Achmed remarks that if her clients were as outraged as they were entitled to be, the police would spend all their time suppressing riots. She tells Ghote that she campaigns for civil rights because her younger brother was diagnosed with leprosy and sent away. She was angry about this injustice and when she visited her brother near the foothills of the Himalayas she found he was a beggar. From that day on she determined that she would fight for the poor and downtrodden. The next day the inquiry reconvenes. To the surprise of Ghote and Mrs Achmed, the prosecutor then calls Ghote to the stand. Since the board of inquiry is not a true court of law, Ghote is obliged to take the stand where he is questioned about his investigation of Kelkar for corruption. The next day a junior officer is called as a witness and Ghote fears he will be exposed. However the prosecutor only obtains testimony that Inspector Ghote said it was midnight when he left the station. The inquiry again adjourns. Ghote stayed at a boarding house while working at the hill station and the next day the porter who works there is called to testify. The old man recalls that Ghote said it was before midnight, though it felt later. After this, the owner of the boarding house is called and is certain Ghote arrived at twenty to three by an antique clock. Mrs Achmed soon forces the man to admit that the clock was sold long ago and that his memory is playing tricks on him. The prosecutor calls the inspector assigned to the Desai case. The inspector considers Ghote's statement of the time he arrived to be a trick to mislead an ignorant and confused old man. The prosecutor then calls a man who earns his living doing washing for people in Ghote's neighbourhood. The man admits to receiving a police jacket with a missing button from Ghote's wife, Protima. The prosecutor concludes by saying tomorrow he will call a witness to testify that Ghote and Kelkar took Desai's body to the lake on a bicycle. Ghote's conscience, which has been troubling him over his lie to Mrs Achmed, now compels him to confess to her. However, she has a prior appointment and refuses to listen to him. Talking to his wife, Ghote is persuaded to postpone confessing until he has heard the prosecutor's witness. When the inquiry is ready to reconvene Mrs Achmed is late, so Ghote cannot confess to her beforehand. The prosecutor presents his witness but as his testimony unfolds Ghote realises the man is a professional thief. Mrs Achmed deftly exposes the witness's background and the inquiry board send the witness packing. The inquiry now adjourns for the weekend. During the weekend Protima invites Ram, one of Ghote's childhood friends, to visit. Ram, once a fierce and angry young man, has grown into cheerful and successful, if legally and morally dubious, businessman. Protima has confided everything to Ram, who gently teases Ghote about his conscience and suggests bribery as a solution. Ghote angrily rejects this, but in so doing Ram points out that he has proven that he is a policeman to the very bone. Ghote realises this is true and resolves to continue with his lie. When the inquiry reconvenes Ghote decides he cannot continue to deceive Mrs Achmed because she is a dedicated campaigner for truth and justice. Mrs Achmed asks if he intends to confess to the inquiry board and Ghote replies he will not because he has, apart from this incident, been an honest and good policeman and wishes to remain one. Mrs Achmed declares that she believes this and will remain present, but will call no witnesses and speak no more in his defence. Ghote is called to the stand and tripped up by the weather, which varied over the night in question. He barely manages to recover. The inquiry adjourns and on the way out of the building Ghote encounters the inspector who built the case against him. The inspector accuses Ghote of bare faced lying, of which Ghote is guilty, and Ghote responds angrily. The next day the Chairman reads Kelkar's favourable inspection assessment of Ghote's time at the hill station. The inspector then brings out a "first information report" which he claims dates from Ghote's time at the hill station, but in fact dates from some time before. This report shows that an investigation was mishandled. The prosecution alleges that Ghote is responsible and that Kelkar gave Ghote a favourable assessment in return for covering up the death of Sergeant Desai. Ghote denounces the latest piece of evidence and persuades the inquiry chairman to examine the document more closely. The Chairman discovers the date on the book has been altered to implicate Ghote and orders the inspector responsible taken into custody. Asked if he wishes to continue his statement, Ghote seizes this final chance to tell the truth and does so, confessing everything. The chairman finds Ghote guilty and says the board of inquiry will recommend Ghote's dismissal. When the room empties, Ghote realises that the "show cause notice" form has not been filled in. This procedural error will nullify the entire inquiry. The shorthand stenographer rushes the form to the chairman, who deliberately ignores him and walks away, cementing Ghote's suspicion that the error was deliberate. To celebrate Ghote's family visits the beach. Ghote reflects that while anger is sometimes justified it is best contained until an occasion when anger is truly needed.
23312296	/m/06610j6	Geography of a Horse Dreamer	Sam Shepard			 The play is in two acts. In the first act(entitled "The Slump"), which takes place in a sleazy hotel room, apparently in the United States, Cody is chained to a bed, where he is being watched by two gangsters, Beaujo and Santee. A radio announces the action at a local race track for horses. Cody keeps begging the gangsters to unlock him from the bed, but they refuse because they're afraid he'll try to escape. The audience learns that Cody was kidnapped by the gangsters because he has the ability to predict the winners of races in his dreams – they refer to him as a "dreamer." Cody finally talks them into unlocking him for a short time, and some attempted escapes take place, but Cody is stopped. The gangsters complain that Cody has lost his ability to predict winners, and they keep wondering what their bosses are going to do to him. By the end of the first act, the pressure has mounted on Cody, and he begins to regain his ability to predict winners, although they are in dog races. The second act (entitled "The Hump") takes place in a much fancier hotel room, apparently in England. The gangsters are still watching Cody, but he is unchained from his bed. Although Cody picked a long series of winners in dog races, bringing in a lot of money for the gangsters and their bosses, he has since cooled down, and he is again being threatened. The gangsters' boss, Fingers, shows up with the Doctor. They are about to perform surgery on Cody, cutting the "dreamer bone" out of his neck, which allows him to dream winners – this will kill Cody, but the Doctor says that the bone can be inserted in someone else's neck, and that person will become a "dreamer." Just as they are about to cut Cody apart, the hotel room is invaded by Cody's two brothers, Jasper and Jason, who shoot all of the gangsters with shotguns. The two brothers are dressed as farmers. They rescue Cody and leave with him. Once they are gone, a Waiter comes in to see if anyone wants to order food. He hardly seems concerned that the gangsters are lying wounded on the floor. One of them asks the Waiter to play a record, which had been Cody's favorite, and which he was always asking the gangsters to play on a record player, but they wouldn't. The Waiter puts on the record, a zydeco tune (Shepard names a specific record in the script), and it plays, as the play ends.
23313589	/m/065z02g	Tit for Tat				 The novel follows Totty, a young urchin living in poverty in Victorian-era London. Totty is stolen from his family whilst young, and forced to work as the apprentice of a sadistic chimney sweep. Totty's suffering is ignored by the philanthropists, who are so concerned with the welfare of black slaves in America that they fail to notice that they have simply replaced their own slavery with child labour.
23316398	/m/065z9v4	The Indigo King	James A. Owen	2008-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After John (J.R.R. Tolkien), Jack (C.S. Lewis), and Charles (Charles Williams) return from their last adventure in the Archipelago, they spend five years in the Summer Country, our world. The Caretakers form a group at Oxford, including two close friends, Hugo Dyson and Owen Barfield. Hugo has become so close a friend that John and Jack consider making him an apprentice Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica and the Archipelago. Soon after they show Hugo the Geographica, he shows them a book sent to him from Charles, who is in France. The book has a mysterious foreword supposedly written by Hugo in his own blood. They decide to take a walk to take a break from all the confusion. Hugo enters a door in the wood and disappears somewhere in time. Hugo believes that he is being pranked by his companions, but eventually realizes this is not the case. John and Jack meet the Royal Animal Rescue Team, a group of badgers led by Uncas - the son of Tummeler - and his son Fred. They inform the men that fourteen years ago they were ordered to save John, Jack and Charles from an unknown event in the near future. Preparing to leave, Uncas unknowingly shuts the mysterious door, the remainder of the rescue team and the surrounding Oxford area to vanish. Noting the new desiccated land that lies before them called Albion, the group sets out to discover what has become of their world. After they escape from giants contained in a tower, the group is rescued from a Wicker Man by a man called Chaz. Resembling Charles, the two men and badgers realize that "Chaz" is not the Charles they know. Chaz is rough, scared and distrustful from his many years of surviving but the party is sure that Chaz is Charles, just from a different timeline in which Mordred, the Winter King, rules and the Archipelago is destroyed. Chaz leads the group to Bert, who gives John a skull of the deceased Jules Verne, a map, and the Serendipity Box which provides the opener with the thing he needs most. Mordred appears, courtesy of the traitorous Chaz and binds the men and badgers using their true names and departs. Uncas releases the men, who with the help of Bert, who uses a scarab brooch given to him by the Serendipity Box, creates an ocean and the Red Dragon that the companions leave on, except for Bert, who stays behind. On an island, the party discovers a time machine created by Jules Verne left for them in order to fix the problem that Hugo created, that led to the creation of Albion. The time machine runs like a projector, and the first slide is of Ancient Greece, where the companions meet two twins, Myrddyn and Madoc. They deduce that one is the Cartographer of Lost Places and the other is Mordred. In the next slide, the companions visit the Library of Alexandria and find Meridian(Myrddyn), the twin who becomes the Cartographer. They discover that the Holy Grail is being held in this library, and that Madoc, the twin who becomes Mordred, has been sleeping with her. Meridian binds Madoc and when they try to escape, Chaz unknowingly uses his fire balls and causes the fire that destroyed the Library of Alexandria. In the third slide, the companions meet Hugo. They witness the Tournament of Champions, held to determine the next ruler of Meridian's Precinct, modern-day Britain. The three main entrants in this tournament are Merlin, who is the Cartographer, Mordred and Thorn, a young boy who is destined to become the Arthur, or High King. During the fight between Merlin and Mordred, Hugo throws a dagger at Mordred to prevent him from becoming King. Hugo disqualifies both Merlin and Mordred, letting Thorn become Arthur. However, Arthur does not command the loyalty of the people as he would if the fight continued normally. In the fourth slide, the companions fight in a civil war against Arthur, as Merlin has united with the local rulers to gain the crown. Mordred has allied with Arthur. However, Arthur tries reason with Mordred, and so Mordred kills Arthur. The companions learn that Arthur can be resurrected by the Holy Grail. They journey to Avalon, where they encounter the priestess that slept with Mordred, and bring back her daughter. They are forced to leave Chaz, who becomes the first Guardian of Avalon, or the Green Knight. The companions leave Chaz the Lance of Longinus. The daughter of the priestess, named Rose, revives Arthur, who cuts off Mordred's hand when he attempts to kill Merlin. Mordred disappears. Arthur summons the dragons, uniting the fiefdoms and ending the civil war. Merlin departs to become the Cartographer. In the fifth slide, the companions meet Geoffrey of Monmouth, and journey to the Keep of Time, where they talk with the Cartographer. He gives them a key that lets them access the top room of the Keep of Time, the future. The party emerges from the door they first entered, and are summoned to talk with Richard Burton. He tells them that he caused Hugo to travel into the past with the backing of the Imperial Cartological Society. He intended to show the Caretakers that Mordred was merely a victim of fate. He did not know about the creation of Albion when Hugo violated the contest. He also could not see Rose, addressing Hugo, Bert, John, Jack and Charles as though they were the only ones present. In a pre-World War II setting, it is hinted that Mordred has rediscovered the Lance of Longinus, and is ready to begin another assault.
23316639	/m/065_z_0	The Shadow Dragons	James A. Owen	2009-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In 1942, John (J.R.R. Tolkien), Jack (C.S. Lewis), and Charles (Charles Williams) return to the Archipelago of Dreams as the last stones of the Keep of Time fall, dangerously approaching the Cartographer (Merlin)'s study as well as the ever-out-of-reach "future" door. As the second World War rages in the Summer Country, the Imperial Cartological Society - led by writer/explorer Sir Richard Burton - rebuilds it at the request of the Archipelago's terrible foe, the shadow of the Winter King, who wields a weapon of such power it can take the soul of anyone it touches - even the ancient and terrifyingly powerful dragons. To defeat the King's shadow, the three Caretakers band together with past Caretakers (the Caretakers Emeritis) found at Tamerlane House, built by Edgar Allan Poe in the Nameless Isles of the Archipelago. Rose Dyson, the Grail Child, Don Quixote, Archimedes, and Stellan Sigurdsson are sent to retrieve and repair the sword Caliburn. In the meantime, the Caretakers are betrayed by Rudyard Kipling and Daniel Defoe, but their cause is bolstered when Burton, Doyle, and Houdini defect from the Imperial Cartological Society, which had allied itself with the Shadow King. Charles and Fred, Tummeler's grandson, chase Defoe through a Trump, and burn down a reproduction of the Keep of Time by the Shadow King. When Rose, Archimedes, and Quixote return, the Nameless Isles are under siege from the armada of children created by the Shadow King in 1926. They were brought by the Chancellor Murdoch, who is a fusion of the Red King from the Clockwork Parliament made by the animals in 1914 and of Mordred's shadow. He wields the Lance of Longinus, which can command the shadows of the Dragons, using their true names. The Dragons' true names, all except for Samaranth's, were found in the Last Book stolen by Defoe. The children are pushed back by the Tin Man (Roger Bacon), and the shadows of the Dragons are prevented from entering into the Nameless Isles by the carvorite deposits in the bases of the islands. The Shadow King, however, crosses and kills Artus, the King of the Silver Throne and descendant of Arthur Pendragon. Kipling reveals himself as a triple agent for the Caretakers, Rose Dyson binds the Chancellor, and Stephen, Aven's son, kills him with Caliburn. Finally, Rose frees each of the dragons, leaving Samaranth the last dragon alive. Stephen becomes the new King of the Archipelago, and the Dragonships, now soulless, are no longer allowed to pass the Frontier. John, Jack, and Charles are returned to Oxford and to their own time, and they forge a full alliance, to be implemented in seven years, with Burton and the Imperial Cartological Society.
23327221	/m/065zj7c	The End of Energy Obesity				 Like the author’s bestseller A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World (2006), The End of Energy Obesity examines the energy industry by tracing the historical relationship between technological innovation and societal response. Tertzakian coined the term "break point" to describe both the pressures that force the displacement of an incumbent energy source and the subsequent “rebalancing” around a new energy paradigm. An important catalyst for The End of Energy Obesity appears to be the author’s conviction that the world is currently in the midst of a break point of prodigious significance where oil, "the gold standard of energy utility" (p.&nbsp;101), will see its market preeminence undermined. Signs of break point pressures are legion and include: the triple digit crude oil prices reached in 2008, accelerated economic growth in the populous BRIC countries, widening prevalence of legislative and fiscal measures to address assumed anthropogenic climate change, energy independence policymaking in support of renewable energy and the energy-price influenced global recession. Historical analogues to the current break point are the shift from wood to coal with the industrial revolution and from coal to oil during the World War I. The current rebalancing of the energy mix is substantively different from historical precedents. With the possible exception of natural gas, there are still no other energy sources with adequate utility to take significant market share from oil, let alone supplant it. The rebalancing underway will be effected only in part by an increase of supply from alternative sources. Tertzakian believes that the cross-fertilization of information, communication and energy technologies promises dramatic improvement in conservation practices and energy efficiency. He cites telepresence technology, smart grid networks, Skype telephony and virtualization software as potential "break point innovations" that could dramatically change energy needs by reconfiguring the ways people live, work and play.
23328624	/m/09k7b62	Wild Geese	Martha Ostenso	1925	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Lind Archer, a teacher from the city, has come to the Gare farm to stay while she teaches in the nearby school. As she continues to learn about life in the country, she begins to realize the plight of the family she is staying with. The strict Caleb Gare uses blackmail and punishment to get what he wants, but how secure is his position? When the young Mark Jordan, the son of his wife with another man, arrives, he tries even harder to retain control over the family. With all of his machinations failing around him, Caleb is quickly losing control over his family and consequently, over his farm.
23329574	/m/06w67dl	A Conspiracy of Kings	Megan Whalen Turner	2010-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Sophos, Magus's once studious protégé, finds himself much out of his element as he and his family are ambushed in his villa. Surprising both his attackers and himself, Sophos at first succeeds in evading his attackers and hiding his mother and sisters, but is soon betrayed by his servants. Mistakenly sold into slavery, he finds himself content with manual labor and forms an unlikely camaraderie with the other slaves and workhands. However, eventually, when faced with a choice between a life of contentment or one of influence, capable of making changes much needed by Sounis, he chooses the latter, all the while wondering "if people always choose what will make them unhappy." Soon after a harrowing escape from the Baron who enslaved him, Sophos unexpectedly finds himself the King of Sounis. The state he has inherited is far from ideal. Not only is Sounis deadlocked in war with Attolia, it is also being torn from the inside by internal discontent and a civil war. With neither the monetary resources nor the man power to properly secure his throne, he is faced with several options, each with heavy consequences. Aided by the Magus, Sophos decides to turn to his old friend: Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, with whom Sophos traveled years before and who is now the King of Attolia.
23334206	/m/065zbr0	Breaking Point	Alex Flinn		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Paul has moved to Miami with his mother Laura, 47 years old. They moved there, to a small apartment, following his parents' divorce. Paul's father has a new family now, and his name is Greg. Paul attends a new school where his mother is a secretary. Paul must suffer as a social outcast in the rich kid's private school Gate. Coming in as a sophomore, he is branded as a loser. Though the life of a social outcast is a perilous, tough life, he meets one friend: Belinda (Binky) Lopez-Nande. She is similar to him in the social tree: a lowly outcast. The two manage to live, but just barely. Meanwhile, the fact that his father left him with his mother still stings, and while he never returns his calls, Paul persists in trying. Then, on one miraculous day, the popular, star athlete rich kids, led by the famous Charlie Good, invite him on a mailbox bash. Charlie and his followers, Gray St. John and Randy Meade (St. John and Meat) allow Paul a shot at joining them. Paul agrees and goes with them, and though he respects his neighbors, he decides to bash some boxes. The next day, at school Paul waves to Charlie, but receives nothing in return. Charlie continues to ask Paul to do worse and worse things in order to retain his friendship, leading to the dramatic conclusion - bombing the school.
23344986	/m/06w4qwq	Evermore	Alyson Noel		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ever Bloom is a girl that has psychic abilities. Ever since her parents and little sister Riley died in an accident long ago, she has been able to see people's auras, read thoughts, and even know the contents of a book with a touch, along with a person's history. She is known as a freak throughout her school, until Damen Auguste transfers from New Mexico. He's gorgeous, sweet and can do things a normal person cannot. But that's not what attracts her. What attracts her is that Damen has no visible aura, and she cannot read his thoughts.
23346803	/m/06w507p	Skin Tight	Carl Hiaasen	1989	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Dr. Rudy Graveline, M.D., the director of the prestigious "Whispering Palms" Surgery Center in Bal Harbour, Florida, is in fact a complete fraud. Apart from the fact that he has never been trained or certified in cosmetic surgery, he is a dangerously clumsy and inept surgeon. He has built his reputation through social connections and by taking credit for the work of his more-competent associates. On the rare occasions when Graveline himself performs surgery, the results are inevitably disastrous. He has weathered numerous malpractice complaints and investigations by the state, through bribery and intimidation. However, there is at least one mistake in Rudy's past that no amount of money or prestige could fix: the accidental killing of a college coed named Victoria Barletta, during a botched nose job. So, when Rudy's former surgical nurse, Maggie Gonzalez, tells Rudy that Mick Stranahan, a retired investigator for the Florida State Attorney's office, is looking into the case again, Rudy decides to have Stranahan killed. In reality, Maggie is the whistleblower. After promising to repeat the story on live television, for the sensationalist talk show "In Your Face!", Maggie has pointed to Stranahan to misdirect Rudy. Stranahan is eating breakfast on his stilt house in Biscayne Bay, when a hit man from the mob appears at his front door with a gun. Mick ambushes the man, impaling him through the chest with the sword of a stuffed marlin head, then pushes the body out to sea and decides to find out who wants him dead. He meets the obnoxious host of "In Your Face!", Reynaldo Flemm, and his producer, Christina Marks, who have come to Miami looking for Maggie after she left New York City without warning. Mick has no time for Reynaldo, but finds himself attracted to Christina (and vice-versa). After the mob hitman's failure, Graveline has tried going with "local talent": a disfigured felon nicknamed "Chemo" who agrees to kill Stranahan in exchange for a discount on his dermabrasion treatments. Chemo locates Stranahan the same way that Christina did: through his vengeful ex-wife, Chloe. When Chemo says he's out to "get" Stranahan, she shows him the way to the stilt house, and eagerly comes along to watch. But when she realizes that Chemo means to kill Stranahan, not just scare him, she objects, since she is still receiving alimony. They begin to argue, and she makes the mistake of insulting his face, to which he responds by drowning her in the Bay. Fortunately for Mick, Chloe's directions were wrong, and Chemo burns down an abandoned stilt house instead of Mick's. The next day, homicide detective Al Garcia and Marine Patrol Officer Luis Cordova visit Mick on his stilt house, and inform him that Chloe's body has been found, and he's the prime suspect in her murder. When Stranahan tells them that someone is trying to kill him, they advise him to lie low. Instead of doing so, Mick visits Dr. Graveline outside his clinic, advises him in the strongest terms to abandon his plans to murder Mick, and emphasizes his point by blowing up the doctor's Jaguar. Mick returns to his stilt house, where Christina visits him. She said that she interviewed Mick's old partner, Timmy Gavigan, at the hospital. Before Timmy died, he told her that he'd remembered a detail from the Barletta case: Graveline's brother, George, is a tree trimmer by profession. She isn't sure what that means, but Stranahan is: most trimmers use a wood chipper, an ideal device for disposing of a body in a hurry. Then Chemo appears on the house with a submachine gun, having been told by Graveline that Mick is still alive. In the ensuing shootout, Mick is wounded in the shoulder, and Chemo dives off the house to avoid a shotgun blast. Swimming around the ocean, his hand is bitten off by a strike from a Great Barracuda. Making his way back to Graveline, he opts to attach a portable weed whacker to the stump of his arm instead of a conventional prosthesis. Graveline gives Chemo another job: to go to New York City and eliminate Maggie Gonzalez. But when Chemo finds her in New York, she mentions being a nurse by training, and tells him the truth about Rudy's incompetence. Mortified that he has entrusted his face to such a dangerous hack, Chemo decides to form a partnership with Maggie, to blackmail Rudy with the knowledge about Victoria Barletta's death. Maggie has created a videotaped confession for security, but Stranahan and Christina have gotten hold of a copy. Returning to Miami, Stranahan delivers the video to Al Garcia, before surviving another murder attempt: this time, a pair of corrupt Miami detectives (former cronies of the judge Stranahan shot), are hired by one of Rudy's buddies, a corrupt county commissioner, to kill Stranahan. Yet again, Stranahan outfoxes them and lures them into a fatal booby trap. Stranahan also turns up the heat on Graveline by recruiting his brother-in-law, a shyster personal injury lawyer named Kipper Garth, to sue Graveline for malpractice, yet again. He then confronts George Graveline, the tree trimmer, who tries to kill Stranahan rather than talk, and is shot dead by Al Garcia. Chemo and Maggie kidnap Christina, holding her hostage in exchange for Mick's copy of the videotape. Meanwhile, Reynaldo Flemm, jealous of Christina's growing attraction to Mick, comes up with his own plan to break the Barletta case: he schedules a nose job and abdominoplasty with Rudy, planning to conduct an ambush interview once the nose job is done. His "brilliant" plan quickly goes awry when Rudy announces that he plans to do the abdominoplasty first, and puts Reynaldo under general anesthesia. When Reynaldo's cameraman bursts into the operating room to start the interview, Rudy panics and accidentally stabs the unconscious Reynaldo through the heart with a liposuction cannula. Fleeing the clinic with Reynaldo's body, Rudy calls George, only to be told that he is dead. Now realizing that he has no option left except to flee the country, Rudy returns home, only to find he can't go: his girlfriend, Hollywood actress Heather Chappell, has been kidnapped by Stranahan. Realizing they'll never get paid until Stranahan is no longer a threat to Rudy, Chemo and Maggie join Rudy to confront Stranahan at the stilt house, taking Christina with them. During the confrontation, Stranahan knocks out Chemo and Rudy, and sends Christina, Maggie and Heather back to the mainland. Stranahan then attempts to "jog" Rudy's memory of Victoria Barletta's death by "recreating" the circumstances of the botched nose job. Scared, Rudy confesses: he killed Vicki (purely by accident), then got George to get rid of the body. He also confesses to hiring Chemo to kill Stranahan; Chemo is so alarmed (or embarrassed) at Stranahan learning that Chemo agreed to kill him in exchange for a discount on surgery, that he kills Graveline. Stranahan ties Chemo up, calls the police, and swims away. Garcia arrives, and Chemo is arrested. Various plot threads are resolved by the epilogue: *Chemo is convicted of murdering Chloe Stranahan, and Rudy Graveline, and sentenced to life in prison; *Maggie Gonzalez is convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, and sentenced to community service; *Victoria Barletta's parents receive a suitcase full of money, supposedly a gift from Rudy's estate; *"In Your Face!" is canceled after Reynaldo Flemm's mysterious disappearance, and Christina takes a newspaper job in Miami Florida, and purchases a second-hand fishing boat.
23352955	/m/06w4zg7	The Little Grey Men	Denys Watkins-Pitchford	1942	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The last four gnomes in Great Britain live beside Folly Brook in Warwickshire; they are named after the flowers Baldmoney, Sneezewort, Dodder and Cloudberry. After Cloudberry goes exploring one day and does not return, the others make the tremendous decision to build a boat and set out to find him. This is the story of the gnomes' epic journey, set against the background of the English countryside, beginning in spring, continuing through summer, and concluding in autumn, when the first frosts are starting to arrive.
23357661	/m/06wbsww	Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes				 The novel opens on July 25, 2004 - Judgment Day. USMC Sergeant Justo Orozco and his men of the USMC Eleventh Marine Expeditionary Unit are running a drug-interdiction exercise with the Mexican Army in Baja California. It is here they witness the rise of Skynet - they suddenly see the opening shots of the War Against The Machines when Skynet's nuclear missiles hit the nearby cities of San Diego, Twentynine Palms and Hermosillo. Upon seeing the end of their old lives, the men, shell-shocked and frozen with fear, ask Orozco for new orders. Orozco takes the lead and assures them "We'll be all right. We'll survive, because we're Marines, and that's what Marines do. " The story jumps forward to post-Judgment Day in Los Angeles, where John Connor, serving as commander and leader of an independent organized Resistance cell group stationed in the area. Though Connor is destined to lead humanity to ultimate victory, at this time he is still just a common soldier. The cell is effective in operations against Skynet's local presence, but is continuously and dangerously short on supplies and Resistance command is hesitant to adopt Connor's cell on a permanent basis. Despite this, all of the men and women under Connor's command have much respect for him, especially Barnes, John's right-hand-man, and Blair Williams, one of the cell's few pilots. While the cell is away on an operation that destroys most of Skynet's local radar towers, Skynet forces launch an attack on the cell's makeshift base. Upon returning, John's team finds the base's lookout dead, having been taken out by a long-range sniper, and Barnes spots eight T-600's moving in on the base. Barnes delays Skynet's assault by destroying a support beam of a nearby building, which collapses on the approaching Terminators. Not long after, the Resistance soldiers, ready for battle, evacuate the base, which is now under attack by multiple T-600's, T-1 tanks, and HK-Aerial's. Blair and Yoshi, the cell's two pilots, are ordered by John to get to their planes and get out as the rest of the personnel escape through an underground tunnel. As the cell escapes, Blair and Yoshi engage and destroy several of the HK's, but Yoshi runs out of ammo and has to rendezvous with the others at the fall-back base. Blair destroys the remaining HK's and heads towards the base as well - but as she does so she observes a concealed Skynet Neighborhood-Sweep Area. Skynet has cordoned off this area and is methodically exterminating all humans within it's border. Upon rendezvousing at their fall-back base, John contacts an unnamed General at Command who, while sympathetic and thankful they escaped with minimal casualties, once again refuses to aid John's cell. Command then wishes them luck and disconnects to take another call. In response to Command's abandonment of their group, John re-invigorates his troops by declaring they will carry out a mission so spectacular and ground-breaking, everyone (i. e. Command, other local Resistance groups and Skynet itself) will take notice. After receiving Blair's report on what she saw while in the air, the other senior members of the cell opt to destroy the Staging Area to get Command's attention. John's goes a step further, however, by convincing the group to capture the Staging Area intact. Meanwhile, Kate Connor asks John to be allowed on field missions, insisting she could be of more use to them. John denies her request and claims it is because she is more useful in a support role, although secretly it is because he does not want to risk her life. John's cell quickly organizes their assault - when Skynet sends its Terminators out for the culling operation, the group's force of soldiers will be divided into two groups; one will make its stand in the neighborhood to keep the Terminators pinned down and destroy them before they can attack the local civilian survivor settlements, and the other will attack the Staging Area itself while it is relatively undefended. Both groups will have continuous air support from Blair and Yoshi. A side-objective of the mission is to recruit new members for the Resistance from the local settlements. Preparations for the assault begins with Kate and Barnes leading a force into the local settlements to gain recruits. The most significant settlement is "Moldering Lost Ashes", where several hundred survivors are sheltering, living and working. Their head of security is Orozco, the only remaining survivor from the Eleventh Marine Expeditionary Unit. Life at Ashes is difficult for Orozco for many reasons; he is the person most aware of the dangers surrounding them, and he is treated with a lack of respect from most of the population. The leader of the group, Chief Grimaldi, is a pompous and unreasonable man who, having previously been a CEO of a corporation that made him rich and powerful before Judgment Day, is obsessed with his belief that Ashes is destined to be a thriving community once again. Grimaldi is an ineffective leader who has left Ashes seriously endangered from the imminent Skynet assault. He is in denial about the deadliness of Skynet and its forces, and believes that keeping a low profile and staying out of Skynet's way is the only means of survival. Orozco's only true friends are 16-year old Kyle Reese and his mute companion, Star. Kyle greatly respects Orozco and learns from Orozco's combat experience. Orozco, in turn, looks after Kyle and Star and admits that they are his two best friends in what's left of the world. The Resistance group is greeted warmly by Orozco, who immediately forms a silent bond with Barnes, but receive a hostile welcome from Grimaldi. Grimaldi resents their attempts to recruit what he considers "his" people. When the handful of recruits leave with the Resistance group, Orozco opts to stay and defend those he's sworn to protect. Skynet steps up its plan of attack, and so forces the Resistance to mobilize sooner than expected. Skynet's forces are dispatched to attack the neighborhood. When the Terminators arrive at the Ashes, Grimaldi, having previously denied the idea of an attack, completely falls apart when he realizes Orozco and the Resistance itself was right all along. Grimaldi passes leadership of the Ashes to Orozco, who proceeds to mobilize the Ashes' defenders for battle. The initial assault is met and beaten back by a coordinated effort from the Ashes defenders and the cell's first group of soldiers, personally led by John himself. Skynet then sends out it's reserve of Terminators to shrink the cordon and attack Ashes. Several Resistance soldiers and many Ashes defenders are killed in the battle, and Skynet soon overruns the entire settlement. Meanwhile, Kyle and Star, having been hunted by the Terminators at the cordon, successfully destroy the Terminator hunting them and proceed to escape the area. Meanwhile, Kate secretly joins Barnes' group against her husband's wishes. They raid the staging area and meet minimal Skynet forces inside. However, Blair finds another force of Terminators moving to reinforce the compromised Staging Area. Just when it seems the operation will fail, more Resistance fighters arrive to turn the tide. Squadron Five, the helicopter squadron under the personal command of General Olsen, arrives to support and reinforce John's cell. Soon Skynet's presence in the area is wiped out. After the battle, Olsen reports that Command has agreed to adopt John's group. John will receive a full slot in the Resistance structure, complete with a brand new base safely away from the local wasteland of Los Angeles. Olsen reveals John's victory is bigger than even he imagined - the Staging Area was also a Skynet Maintenance Center (thus explaining why Skynet was so determined to defend the facility). A massive amount of experimental and prototype Skynet weapons and other technologies are confiscated from the center to be reverse-engineered and used against Skynet. Meanwhile, a badly injured Orozco is retrieved from the ruins of the Ashes and treated by Kate. Orozco surprises her by refusing to join the Resistance. Orozco has grown tired of authority and the need to protect others, and feels that the generals and admirals leading the Resistance are basically the same as those who caused Judgment Day. He vows never to serve them again, and plans to enter self-imposed exile. However, Orozco soon discovers 8 child refugees from Ashes. Regaining his sense of duty, Orozco takes charge of the children and leads them off to survive in the ruins, because "He was a Marine, and that's what Marines do". The story ends as John's cell settles into its new base. Kate reveals to John she is pregnant, leaving him speechless.
23361892	/m/06w2qrp	Amnesiascope	Steve Erickson	1996		 The main character lives in a converted hotel in Hollywood, where he works as the film critic for a weekly newspaper. The story is told in an oneiric fashion, without a clear explanation of all the strange elements of a partly real, partly imaginary Los Angeles. Amnesiascope focuses mostly on the protagonist's relationship with Viv, a sexually adventurous yet committed artist, with whom the narrator works on the making of an avantgarde erotic short film. The narrator also has to deal with different factions at the paper, the various time zones he experiences driving through LA, the complexities of making a pornographic film, and his feelings of guilt after writing for his paper a review of The Death of Marat, a non-existent film by Adolphe Sarre, a non-existent director, which takes on a life of its own. The non-linear story is often interrupted by descriptions of dreams that the protagonist or other characters have had. Moreover, events told have a dream-like quality, inasmuch as what seems to have actually happened is subsequently dealt with as if it were a dream or fantasy (cf. the first meeting with Justine, who subsequently doesn't seem to remember having met the protagonist). At the end of the novel, the narrating I has lost his job at the paper and Viv, yet he has gained back a sense of himself.
23364579	/m/06w3dc5	The Hoopster	Alan Lawrence Sitomer	2005	{"/m/084s13": "Urban fiction"}	 The book is about a black teenager named Andre Anderson, who loves to play basketball with his white best friend Shawn and his cousin Cedric. Andre has a dream of becoming a journalist, so he tries to secure a summer job working at a magazine. Shawn thinks that Andre spends too much time on work and not enough on his social life, so he introduces Andre to a Latino girl named Gwen. Andre's boss at the magazine asks him to write an article on racism. While working on the article, Andre's life seems to be perfect until he is violently attacked by a gang of racists and is sent to hospital. His friends and family are left wondering whether or not he will ever recover from the attacks.
23379698	/m/06w5g4q	The Charioteer	Mary Renault	1953		 This romance novel is set in the period of World War II at a military hospital during nightly blackouts and bomb raids. The story's young male protagonist, Laurie Odell, is a wounded soldier from the Dunkirk evacuation (Renault herself worked as a nurse treating Dunkirk evacuees during the war), who must decide if his affections lie with a conscientious objector or a naval officer. The conscientious objector, a Quaker, has not come to terms with his own homosexuality, whereas the naval officer, a friend of Laurie's from school, is sexually experienced and established in the homosexual subculture of the British military. Laurie's confused romantic feelings for the two very different young men are compounded by his own discomfort with the gay lifestyle (dramatized in an extended scene at a gay party, regarded by some critics as a literary tour de force). Through this conflict, Renault explored her own ambivalence about whether homosexuals truly constituted what would come to be seen as a gay and lesbian community. She also explored a religious theme, contrasting the pacifist Christianity of the young conscientious objector with the "exalted paganism" (as one character describes it) of ancient Greece. The novel derives its title from the Chariot Allegory employed by Plato in his dialogue Phaedrus; Renault also alludes to Plato's Symposium, in which a character philosophizes about an army composed of male lovers. The story's wartime setting is crucial to the ethical issues the novel explores. In a sense, The Charioteer is a warm-up for Renault's historical novels. By turning away from the 20th century and focusing on stories about male lovers in the warrior societies of ancient Greece, Renault no longer had to deal with homosexuality and antigay prejudice as social "problems"; instead she was free to focus on larger ethical and philosophical concerns while examining the nature of love and leadership.
23382358	/m/06w8rhc	Hip Hop High School	Alan Lawrence Sitomer	2006	{"/m/084s13": "Urban fiction"}	 The book takes place about five years after the events in The Hoopster. It is a story about Andre's younger sister, Theresa Anderson. Theresa begins her sophomore year at a ghetto high school. Her best friend, Cee-Saw, is constantly getting her into trouble, and due to the events of the prequel, Theresa's mother doubts Cee-Saw's potential and expects her to fail. While in school, Theresa faces many challenges, such as her teacher, Mr. Wardin, and her friends dropping out of school due to poor grades, and family issues. During the summer, she does a report on Malcolm X that changes how she thinks about school. Theresa is then forced to makes new friends, such as Devon, a tough but intelligent guy that everyone respects. A few weeks before school starts, however, Devon is attacked by a gang, which leaves Theresa to fill out all of his college applications.
23386706	/m/06w9sjz	The Court of the Air	Stephen Hunt	2007	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 When streetwise Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has recently been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to run back to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was the real target of the attack. For Molly is a special little girl, and she carries a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the state. Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered existence in the backwater home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder, he is forced to flee for his life, accompanied by an agent of the mysterious Court of the Air. Chased across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves, outlaws, and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that has blighted his life. Soon Molly and Oliver will find themselves battling a grave threat to civilization, an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago. Their enemies are ruthless and myriad, but the two orphans are also aided by indomitable friends.
23389559	/m/06wbdf_	Fancy Nancy	Jane O'Connor	2005-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Fancy Nancy is a young girl with a larger than life personality, who adores all things fancy. She always dresses extravagantly, wearing boas, tutus, ruby slippers, fairy wings, and fuzzy slippers. Nancy loves using big fancy words such as "iridescent", "ecstatic", and "extraordinary" and anything in French. She has redecorated her bedroom with everyday items, such as feather boas, Christmas lights, paper flowers, and hats. Her favorite doll is named Marabelle Lavinia Chandelier. In Nancy's opinion, her family is ordinary and dresses rather plainly, so Nancy decides to hold a class in the art of fanciness for her family. They oblige, and Nancy helps to dress them in bows, ornaments, top hats, and gaudy scarves. "Ooo-la-la!" Nancy cries in delight. "My family is posh! That's a fancy word for fancy."
23390752	/m/06w1wss	The Orchard on Fire	Shena Mackay			 Set in the 1950s it tells the story of the Harlencys who abandon their Streatham pub for the "Copper Kettle Tearoom" in rural Kent. The story centres on their young daughter April and her friendship with the fiery Ruby; and with her attempts to frustrate the unhealthy attentions of Mr Greenidge...
23401458	/m/06wbg6w	Professor Shonku	Satyajit Ray		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The introduction to the first story, Byomjaatrir Diary, goes: Professor Shonku is a reputed scientist, who has not been heard of for a while. Some say that he has died while attempting a scientific experiment. Others say that he has gone incognito, and is continuing his scientific researches and experiments at some unknown corner of the earth. He will reappear in due time. The first of Professor Shonku’s diaries come to light through a certain Tarak Chatterjee, an amateur (and rather poor) writer, who has a fascination for tiger stories. On hearing that a large meteor had hit the Matharia areas of the Sunderbans, he had visited the location in search of tiger-skin. Failing to find them, he had looked around to find a red notebook (which turned out to be the first of Professor Shonku’s diaries). This he hands to the narrator of the story, who then replicates the journal entries in the diary, and that constitute the first story, Byomjaatrir Diary. The diary, even though apparently made of a material which is inextinguishable and cannot be torn or cut, is eventually destroyed by a bunch of red ants, who somehow manage to eat in to entirety. However, the narrator then visits Professor Shonku’s laboratory in Giridih, and locates 21 other diaries and replicates them periodically, each as a story. After the first few stories, the narrator does not reappear, with the stories starting with the journal entries
23404033	/m/06w9j6n	The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest	Stieg Larsson	2007	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The book begins as Lisbeth Salander is flown to Sahlgrenska Hospital. It picks up where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off. After surgery, Salander is moved to an intensive care ward under guard, accessible only to police, doctors, nurses, and her lawyer, Annika Giannini (who is also Mikael Blomkvist's sister). Zalachenko, whom Salander injured with an axe, is two rooms away. Niedermann, thanks to botched responses from the local law enforcement, is on the run after murdering a police officer and carjacking and kidnapping a woman during his escape. Niedermann seeks help from his old friends at the outlaw Svavelsjö Motorcycle Club, kills the treasurer and steals 800,000 kronor before disappearing. These events prompt immediate action from "the Section," a secret division of Swedish Security Service (Säpo) created for purposes of counterintelligence and responsible for Zalachenko's asylum and supervision. Evert Gullberg, founder and former chief of the Section, asks former Section associate Frederik Clinton to become acting head of the Section and plots to deflect attention away from the Section by silencing Salander, Blomkvist and Zalachenko. They form a working alliance with the unsuspecting prosecutor of Salander's case, Richard Ekström. Dr. Peter Teleborian, the psychiatrist who supervised Salander when she was previously institutionalized on the Section's orders, provides Ekstrom with a false psychiatric examination and recommends that she be reinstitutionalized, preferably without a trial. Gullberg, who has terminal cancer, murders Zalachenko in his hospital bed and then commits suicide. Section operatives stage a suicide for Gunnar Björck, the junior Säpo officer who had handled Zalachenko after the latter's defection, and who was Blomkvist's source of information about the Section. Other Section operatives burgle Blomkvist's apartment and mug Annika Giannini, specifically making off with copies of the classified Säpo file that contains Zalachenko's identity, and plant bugs in the homes and phones of Millennium staff. Undeterred by these events, or perhaps even motivated by the fact that they all occurred on the same day, Blomkvist continues to investigate the Section for a Millennium exposé. Blomkvist hires Dragan Armansky's Milton Security to handle countersurveillance. Armansky, on his own initiative, informs Säpo Constitutional Protection Director Torsten Edklinth about the constitutional violations. Edklinth, along with his assistant Monica Figuerola, begins a clandestine investigation into the Section. After Figuerola confirms the allegations, Edklinth contacts the Justice Minister and the Prime Minister who approve a full investigation by Constitutional Protection, and later invite Blomkvist to a confidential meeting in which they are to share information. They agree to Blomkvist's deadline—he intends to publish his findings about the state's manipulation of Salander's constitutional rights on July 15, the third day of her trial, and the government agree to arrest any identified ringleaders of the Section at the same time. Meanwhile, Figuerola and Blomkvist have an affair. Blomkvist convinces Salander's doctor, Dr. Anders Jonasson, to return her handheld computer. Blomkvist arranges to have a cellular phone placed in a duct leading to Salander's room, granting her Internet access through the resulting hotspot. Jonasson also helps her fake complications from her surgery, so that she can remain in the hospital's custody (and out of the police's). Meanwhile, Blomkvist, Armansky, Edklinth and their network of allies continue their joint counter-surveillance, feeding them a disinformation campaign and turning up nine central players in the Section. Whilst all of the above is going on, Erika Berger leaves Millennium to be editor-in-chief at Sweden's largest daily paper, the (fictional) Svenska Morgon-Posten (S.M.P.). Meanwhile, Henry Cortez, junior Millennium reporter, uncovers a story about a Swedish toilet-manufacturing company that engages child labour in Vietnam. His research reveals that the boss of said firm is Magnus Borgsjö, who is CEO and major shareholder at S.M.P. and hired Berger for her new position. Blomkvist gives a copy of the story to Berger, agreeing to delay its publication until August while she confronts Borgsjö and convinces him to resign gracefully. Berger begins receiving graphic e-mails and threats from an anonymous source, most of them calling her a "whore;" a junior reporter at S.M.P. also receives sexual propositions purportedly from Berger. Erika asks her staff to remain on alert, but matters escalate when the stalker breaks into Berger's home and steals scandalous private materials, such as high school love letters, a sex tape made with her husband Gregor Beckman, and her copy of Cortez's story. Berger engages Milton Security to help secure her home, and Armansky sends over former police officer Susanne Linder to provide protection, as Beckman is abroad on business. Salander, while preparing her own statements and legal defense in the safety of the hospital, discovers Berger's plight and mobilizes the "Hacker Nation," an elite and international group of computer wizards, to assist. They determine that Peter Fredriksson, S.M.P. employee and former high school classmate of Berger, is the culprit. Linder steps outside the law to confront Fredriksson and recovers Berger's things. However, Fredriksson has already passed Millenium's exposé on to Borgsjö. Borgsjö orders Berger to suppress the story at Millennium or lose her job at S.M.P. Berger instead runs the story in that day's issue of S.M.P. (under Cortez's byline) and then resigns in protest. Borgsjö and Fredriksson are both forced out. Berger, meanwhile, is accepted back at Millenium with open arms. As Salander's trial approaches, the Section abruptly realize that Blomkvist's and Millenium's seeming lack of preparation are simply a cover story for their (successful, if now detected) campaign of misinformation. Clinton, having no idea what Blomkvist knows or plans to publish, arranges to plant cocaine in Blomkvist's apartment and simultaneously hire two members of the Yugoslav mafia to murder him; their intention is to frame him as a drug dealer and thus destroy his credibility. The former is easily undermined by the security cameras installed by Milton Security, which capture the plant; the latter requires the intervention of Figuerola, Andersson, Modig and several others from both Säpo and Milton. Blomkvist and Berger are spirited off to a Milton safehouse, allowing Säpo to further the misdirection by claiming that the two hitmen simply had the bad luck to stop for a meal at the same restaurant as their police officers. Berger, meanwhile, intuits Figuerola's and Blomkvist's affair, and promises Figuerola to stay clear of Blomkvist as long as they are together. The first two days of Salander's trial, on various counts of aggravated violence, proceed with relative calm. However, on the third day, Millenium's dual book-and-magazine exposé is published, the officers of the Section are arrested, Channel TV4 runs an hour-long program on the Section using (pre-recorded) interviews and material from Blomkvist, and Giannini systematically destroys Teleborian's testimony, proving: that the Section and Teleborian had conspired to commit Salander at age 12 to protect Zalachenko, that Salander's rights had been repeatedly violated, and that they were once again conspiring against her. Blomkvist and Edklinth provide evidence proving that Teleborian's recent "psychiatric assessment" of Salander was fabricated and that he was working with the Section to silence her. Teleborian is then arrested for possession of child pornography, which was found on his computer by Salander and her hacker friends, Plague and Trinity. Ekström, in over his head, withdraws charges against Salander, and her declaration of incompetence is rescinded. With the evidence and credibility of the prosecution shattered, the prosecutor drops all charges against Salander. Freed, Salander embarks on an overseas trip to forget the events. She spends several months at Gibraltar, among other things to pay a visit to the man managing the billions she had stolen from Hans-Erik Wennerström in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She also tracks down Miriam Wu, who is studying at a university in Paris, and apologizes for putting her life in danger. Salander soon discovers that being a "legally responsible citizen," as Giannini puts it, involves its share of toil and drudgery. As Zalachenko's daughter, Salander is obliged to inherit half of his properties and wealth,; the other half goes to her twin sister Camilla, whom no one has heard from in more than a decade. (Author Stieg Larsson's notes indicate that her whereabouts were to be the subject of his next novel.) Suspicious about an abandoned factory in her father's estate, she goes there to investigate and finds two dead women and Niedermann, who had been hiding there from the police. After a brief struggle and chase, Salander outwits Niedermann by nailing his feet to the plank floor with a nail gun. She is tempted to kill him herself, but instead reports his location to the Sonny Niemenen, head of the Svavelsjö biker gang, and then reports the entire brawl to the police. She leaves before the standoff concludes, satisfied that both Niedermann and the Svavelsjö bikers have been brought to justice. (Niedermann is killed by the bikers, and Niemenen shot by the police while resisting arrest.) Back at her apartment in Stockholm, Salander receives a visit from Blomkvist. The story, as well as the Millennium trilogy, ends with the two finally reconciling.
23404431	/m/06wbqw6	The Devouring				 When dark creeps in and eats the light,Bury your fears on Sorry Night,For in the winter's blackest hours,Comes the feasting of the Vours,No one can see it, the life they stole,Your body's here but not your soul... The story follows Reggie and her best friend Aaron, two horror buffs who discover an old, anonymous journal written by a woman believed to be crazy. The entries refer to demonic creatures called Vours who steal people&#39;s souls on the night of the Winter Solstice, known in the book as Sorry Night. Reggie and Aaron think that Vours are just a silly legend so they try to summon them on the Winter Solstice. To summon them, they decide to face their worst fears not realizing the bravery drives the Vours away. Reggie lets a spider crawl over her body and Aaron stays underwater for a period of time. However, neither one of them becomes a Vour. Discouraged, the teens forget about the Vours until Reggie&#39;s little brother Henry starts acting strange. Once a happy-go-lucky kid, Henry becomes violent and rude, destroying his favorite stuffed animal and drowning his pet hamster.He becomes super-sensitive to the cold and spends his time in front of the fireplace, something very out of character for him. When he&#39;s hit by a snowball, black marks spread across his skin like a rash. He even attempts to murder Aaron in cold blood. Realizing what&#39;s happened to Henry, Reggie tries to learn more about the Vours and somehow rescue Henry. In the process, she must face all of her worst fears, along with all of Henry&#39;s.
23405127	/m/06w8lmw	Palimpsest	Catherynne M. Valente	2009-03	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel follows four travelers: Oleg, a New York City locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They've all lost something important in their life: a wife, lover, sister, or direction. They find themselves in Palimpsest after each spend a night with a stranger who has a tattooed map of a section of the city on his or her body.
23411241	/m/06w95y8	Tours of the Black Clock	Steve Erickson	1989		 The novel follows a seemingly relativistic plot, where time and space disappear as absolutes. The first part concerns Marc, the son of a small-town prostitute who becomes the boatman, ferrying tourists from the mainland to Davenhall, the small island in the river where he grew up. Marc leaves town the night he sees a strange man die at his mother's feet, and spends fifteen years on the boat, never setting foot in town, until one day, when he meets a girl in a blue dress, who never returns with the other tourists. Marc goes onto the island to look for her, and sees his mother. Their meeting conjures up the ghost of the man who died fifteen years before, and his story takes over the novel. The ghost tells his story in first person. His name was Banning Jainlight, and he begins by recounting his birth. He has the ability to look through the windows of his bedroom and see his time, as if looking at the Zeitgeist. After killing a brother and burning down the ranch house where he grew up, Jainlight moves to a city, where he becomes the writer of pornographic stories. These stories are eventually being bought by a single customer, an eccentric German named Client X. Jainlight writes stories about a fantasy woman who he is in love with, and she is also an expression of a woman that Client X was once in love with, who later died. The stories alter the course of history, as they change Hitler's mind about how to conduct the war. England falls. Russia and Germany have a tense peace. The Germans decide that they are finished with Jainlight, and they kill his wife and daughter to silence him. He lives for a long time in a prison. Eventually, he hears his stories, broadcast over the radio as propaganda. He comes up with an escape plan, after finding Adolf Hitler in the same prison, now a senile old man. Jainlight and Hitler escape to America, to chase the ghost of the woman they both love. Hitler dies in New York City. Jainlight finds his way to Davenhall, where he lives for seventeen years in the hotel with Marc and his mother, trying to summon up the courage to ask for forgiveness. On the night Marc leaves town, he knows his life is slipping away, and he staggers down the hall, hoping to have time, but he doesn't. The custom in town is to hang the dead in a tree until they say their name. When Marc's mother claims to know the name of the dead man in the tree, she is accused of lying. Somehow, the 20th century heals itself, the two timelines, the one we know, and Banning's timeline of a German victory, come back together. Marc's mother passes away shortly after her son returns to the island. After her death, Marc goes to chase after the girl in the blue dress, after the 20th century, and winds up traveling through time, going from the end of the century back to its beginning.
23411668	/m/06w5w_g	The Oldest Confession	Richard Condon			 The dozens of great masterpieces that Condon had glimpsed hanging in the darkness of the Escorial became, in The Oldest Confession, paintings hanging in the main residence of Doña Blanca Conchita Hombria y Arias de Ochoa y Acebal, Marquesa de Vidal, Condesa de Ocho Pinas, Vizcondesa Ferri, Duquesa de Dos Cortes, a 29-year-old beauty who was married to an aged degenerate and becomes the wealthiest woman in Spain upon his death. The long-forgotten paintings are coveted by an American criminal named James Bourne, who lives in a hotel in Madrid and has stolen numerous other valuable paintings from across Spain. His method is simple, though arduous and dangerous: he replaces the original paintings with undetectable forgeries executed by Jean Marie Calvert, a Parisian artist who is the world's greatest copyist. Painted in Paris, the reproductions are brought into Spain by Bourne's wife, an upper-class young American girl named Eve Lewis, who loves Bourne in spite of his criminality. In the first few dozen pages of the book Bourne successfully steals, with no twinges of remorse, three masterpieces from the castle of his supposed friend, the Duchess of Dos Cortes, and arranges for his wife to smuggle them to Paris for a highly profitable sale. When she arrives in Paris, however, she discovers that the mailing tube in which the paintings were being carried is now empty. The rest of the book is the narrative of their downhill path, as well as that of most of those people unlucky enough to have found themselves in their orbit. Although Bourne has always fancied himself a master criminal, he is tracked by other criminals who are equally intelligent. The downhill path for all of the book's characters begins when Bourne is coerced into accepting a seemingly impossible task: to steal one of the world's most famous masterpieces, the Dos de Mayo, or Second of May or Charge of the Marmelukes, by Francisco de Goya, from its tightly guarded quarters in the national museum of Spain, the Prado. Adding to the difficulty of the task is the sheer size of the painting: it measures eight feet high by 11 feet wide. By the last page of what begun as a light-hearted caper story, all of the principal characters, and some of the minor ones, are either dead, among the walking dead, or incarcerated for life. The very last words of the book are an apt summation: "His ruined face stared. She screamed. She screamed again. She could not stop screaming."
23417738	/m/06w7x58	On the Water		1998		 On the Water is an intensely told tale of adolescent passion, narrated by Anton, a shy, uncomfortable outsider who harbours a yearning for a different kind of life that becomes symbolized in the river and in rowing. He joins the club, crossing the metaphorical and actual line which divides the town he lives in and forms an unlikely partnership with the calm, ironical David. Together they become a successful coxless pair, coached by an enigmatic German, Schneiderhahn. The story revels in descriptions of the physical exertion and emotional connection as it recreates pre-war Amsterdam. Telling the story in flashbacks, Anton now stands alone on a wintry evening facing a derelict and abandoned boathouse, recalling the long, hot summer of 1939 and mourning a lost world.
23425085	/m/06w79nc	The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat	Enid Blyton			 Luke, a friend of the Five Find-Outers is working in the garden when Lady Candling's valuable cat is stolen. The Five Find-Outers and Dog work to solve the case.
23425314	/m/06w42dy	The Mystery of the Secret Room				 Fatty is made the leader of the Five Find Outers, as he explains that he has been studying how to The Five have fun with Fatty's new techniques, particularly disguises. Pip disguises himself with a wig and some sticking out teeth and attracts the attention of Mr Goon, who chases him across the village. In an attempt to escape Mr Goon, Pip runs into the grounds of an empty house and climbs a tree. He is very surprised to see a fully furnished room at the top of an otherwise empty and apparently abandoned house. The Find Outers get to work to discover who owns Milton House, and why there is an apparently secret room. Who uses it and why? The children trace the owner of the house to the blandly named "John Henry Smith", who lives an a distant town. Fatty telephones Mr Smith and alerts him to the fact that someone knows about the secret room. Expecting the mysterious Mr Smith to come to Peterswood and check out what is happening at Milton House, Fatty disguises himself with his wig and teeth and goes to the house at midnight. He manages to get inside and discovers a notebook written in code in the secret room. However, he is captured by the men - who are foreigners - and forced to write a letter to the other children, to try to trap them inside the house. Fatty writes a note, but he writes another, secret note in invisible ink, warning the children and telling them to call the police. Luckily, Bets notices that Fatty's note smells of oranges - orange juice was used as the secret ink - and the others realise the danger Fatty is in, and telephone their favourite policeman, Inspector Jenks. Meanwhile, Fatty escapes from a locked room and manages to meet Inspector Jenks outside the house and hand him the code book. The police round up the villains - international thieves - and all is well.
23425470	/m/06w9_4j	The Mystery of the Hidden House				 Pip, Bets, Larry and Daisy have been banned from solving any mysteries because of Ernest "Ern" Goon, Clear-Orf's nephew. However, when Ern goes missing on the road to "Harry's Folly", the Five Find-Outers and Dog investigate.
23425631	/m/06w974w	The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat				 The safe of a theatre is stolen. The main suspect is the Pantomime cat. Or would it be his friend Zoe? The five find-outers along with the dog are on the track. PC Pippin, who is in charge of Mr Goon's duty helps the Find-Outers solve the case.
23425795	/m/06w8q85	The Mystery of the Missing Man				 The thirteenth book in the series introduces Mr Tolling, an old school friend of Fatty's father who comes to spend a week with the Trottevilles so he can attend the coleopterists' conference at a fair in Peterswood. Coleopterists are of course beetle-lovers, and not (as the gang joke) owners of collie dogs, growers of cauliflowers, or sufferers from colly-wobbles. Mr Tolling is rather like a beetle himself, a small man with a huge black beard, large glasses and always wearing a dark suit. He's very likeable, even if he is a little boring, always going on about beetles and how fascinating they are. He's extremely eager to get along to the coleopterist meetings, which are being held at Petersood's Town Hall. But Mr Tolling—or Mr Belling as Fatty mistakenly calls him at first—pales into insignificance compared to his daughter Eunice, who has come along to stay with the Trottevilles as well. Fatty is supposed to entertain her during her stay, and she's ready and willing to join in with whatever Fatty and his friends are doing, but she's domineering, and her highly efficient, extremely helpful attitude for some reason rubs Fatty and the others up the wrong way. In short, she's "simply awful." When Fatty mistakenly called her father Mr Belling (because bells toll), she responds by suggesting she call him Frederick Canterville instead. Throughout the book she is smart and witty, but Fatty doesn't want her overbearing company and politely escapes wherever possible. The mystery starts when Fatty dresses up as a tramp in an effort to shake off Eunice. He puts on his disguise and then hides out in his shed—and Eunice peers in through the window and screams at the sight of "an intruder in Fatty's shed!". Mr Goon is nearby and comes to the rescue, demanding that the tramp show himself, so poor Fatty bursts out of the shed and takes off with Buster, who is barking excitedly around his feet. Naturally Mr Goon makes out afterwards that the tramp was strong, very strong, and Buster must have taken large chunks out of the tramp's ankles as he tried to escape. Chief Inspector Jenks (more on his apparent demotion in a moment) visits Goon and tells him to be on the lookout for a dangerous escaped criminal, who has a nasty scar above his lip but is a master of disguise so can hide it pretty well with a beard. There's a moment that made me laugh out loud, when an astonished Mr Goon realizes the tramp might be the man they're after. "I saw this man yesterday!" he said excitedly, and actually poked the Chief in the chest. I don't know why, but the vision of Goon's excited expression and his poking the stern Chief in the chest struck me as hilarious. It wouldn't have been so funny if Blyton hadn't used the word "actually" to get across that people like Goon do NOT poke Chief Inspectors in the chest. Speaking of which...Jenks was promoted two books ago, and was Superintendent throughout The Mystery of Holly Lane and The Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage. Now he's back down to Chief Inspector, and I've already checked and confirmed that in the next book, The Mystery of the Strange Bundle, he's back up to Superintendent again. So why this sudden lapse? I can think of only two reasons: either Enid Blyton made a huge gaff and forgot Jenks was a Superintendent, OR she wrote this earlier than we think but it got put aside for a few years. If you go by Jenks' rank alone, this book had to have been written sometime after Invisible Thief (the last book he was a mere Inspector) and before Holly Lane (when he's a Superintendent). Or, as I say, Blyton just messed up. The mystery in this book is: Where is the criminal? Is he in disguise, and if so, who is he? Sadly I guessed who the missing man was disguised as very early on, and the evidence was in Blyton's avoidance in mentioning a certain someone as a possible suspect. The Find-Outers went around the fair looking for someone of medium height with knobbly hands, a scar above their lip, and a love of cats and insects. Curiously they latch on to a brother and sister, the Fangios, who actually look like the criminal, are of the same height and build, have a cat, and run a flea circus. The Fangios, however, clearly have no scars...but without giving the ending away to those who haven't read the book, it seemed pretty obvious to me who the criminal was and the ending was, therefore, a case of the reader grumbling, "Yes, I already knew that!" Okay, so I'm not exactly the right age for the intended audience, but I remember guessing this one when I read it at age seven or eight. The clues in this book are actually pretty good, suitably puzzling, but somehow Blyton failed to conceal the twist. I can now appreciate just how good Burnt Cottage, Disappearing Cat, and Invisible Thief are for delivering that startling resolution at the end. And unlike those earlier stories, in Missing Man Fatty doesn't even get that "final clue" or "innocent comment by Bets" to provide that final flash of inspiration. Here his flash of inspiration comes along right at the opportune time, but for apparently no reason.
23432647	/m/06w4xtw	The Mystery of the Vanished Prince				 The book starts off when Larry, Daisy, Fatty, Pip and Bets are having fun with new disguises that Fatty brought back from Morocco. While all the Find-Outers, except for Fatty are dressed up, Ern and his two brothers, Sid and Perce, come to visit the Find-Outers. He is shocked when he sees four foreign-looking people with Fatty. Fatty tells the three brothers that they are visiting and are related to/friends of Prince Bongahwah, a Prince who is staying at the same camp as Sid, Perce and Ern for the summer, and that Bets is Princess Bongawee. The "foreigners" speak broken English and their own whimsical made-up "language" (especially Bets). Mr Goon, the village bobby (otherwise known as 'Clear Orf') happens to see all of them when they go for a walk (Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bets still in disguise) and believes the same story Fatty has told to Sid, Pece and Ern about the four 'foreigners'. Later in the Story, Prince Bongahwah is kidnapped and Goon tells Inspector Jenks that he has met relatives of Prince Bongahwah to help with the case, in Particular the prince's sister, 'Princess Bongawee' (Bets in disguise) but finds out he has been fooled by Fatty. Fatty gets into trouble; however, he is still allowed to look into the case. Soon Sid has an unusual discovery - as he is mad (or 'dippy' according to Ern) about babies, he pushes a pram with twins in it and finds the bottom of it false, below it a person with a dark face which Sid is very sure is the Prince. After finding a button in the Prince's sleeping bag, a few interviews and some false trails, the gang find themselves at another dead end. After a few bits of luck, they find a baby show for twins at a fair, hoping to track down the twins in question. They also bump into Mr Goon who is also at the fair for the same reason. Him and the gang look at the all the twins in the show (Mr Goon however making all the babies cry) but couldn't find the right twins. After their disappointment, Fatty manages to bribe one of the fair people to wind up Mr Goon and manage to get him on an animal roundabout where he gets spun round and round, dizzy in front of the watching (and laughing) crowd. On the bicycle ride home Pip sees a shirt hanging to dry on a washing line of one of the parked caravans with buttons identical to the one they found in the Prince's sleeping bag. They piece up that the people living in that caravan would know the whereabouts of the Prince and Fatty (disguised as a peddler called Jack Smith) goes there later to find out that one of the people living in the caravan pretended to be the Prince; in the first place and they switched him and the real prince before camp started so he was impersonating the prince the whole time through summer and sneaked out the night before it was reported that the Prince had been 'kidnapped' while the Prince had been gone the whole time taken hostage by the boys uncle. He also finds out where the real prince is and decides to go off to the place the next day. Fatty soon goes home, bumping into Mr Goon who suspects that Fatty (still in disguise) is a tramp with a stolen bike. He runs off, leaving his bike with Mr Goon who reports it. Fatty gets it back after calling Mr Goon who exaggerates the truth and leaves Goon giving the Princes whereabouts which Goon doesn't believe until he hears a report from the nearby police station confirming that Fatty's information wasn't made up. Hearing this, Mr Goon decides to go rescue the Prince before Fatty and the others do and is reported the next day that he disappeared. Fatty hears the news from Inspector Jenks and decides to go find him along with the gang and Ern (as Perce has to go get rope for the tent and Sid switches from buying toffee to buying nougat). They soon get locked up in a room beyond the marshes and is therefore trapped but sees a room with barred windows at the other side of the building. Fatty uses his 'how to get out of a locked room' trick and slips out to the other room and finds the real Prince inside and drags him back to the room with the other five. The men soon find out that the Prince has supposedly escaped and think that the find-outers helped him so they do a search of the room, finding the prince in a cupboard. Straight after the Prince is found, a squad of police officers surround the building, including Inspector Jenks who arrests the men and rescues the Find-outers, Ern and the Prince who tries and tells his story. When they think that the whole mystery is closed they realise that Goon is still missing and didn't see him in the building. An officer comes up to them and says there has been weird noises coming from a shed not far off the building. Goon comes out of the building mad at the fact that he was locked up and beaten again by the gang. Fatty however sticks up for him and it's a rare moment when Goon thinks that Fatty isn't so bad after all.
23435590	/m/06w2fyq	Hush Little Baby	Caroline B. Cooney	1999-01-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Kit is a high school student living with her mother and her stepfather. As she retrieves her sweatshirt from her father's house, she is approached by her disheveled ex-stepmother, Dusty Innes. Kit is stunned when Dusty hands Kit a newborn baby and a diaper bag before driving away, not even bothering to tell Kit his name. To the best of her ability, Kit tries to care for the baby, who she names Sam. After putting Sam down the doorbell rings. She opens the door, only to find a shabby looking man standing before her, looking for Dusty. Kit denies any knowledge of Dusty's baby and claims that she hasn't seen Dusty in a while, since she is no longer her stepmother. Kit shuts the door but suspects that the man is trying to look into the windows. Feeling threatened, she grabs one of her dad's disposable cameras and takes a picture of his license plate. Finding nothing, the man leaves. Kit has decided to bring Sam back to her mother's house when Rowen Mason, Kit's potential boyfriend, arrives in tow with his 9 year old sister, Muffin. Kit then receives a call from a lady called Cynthia, who explains the whole situation. Apparently, Cinda and her husband, Burt, were supposed to adopt Dusty's baby, and that the man who came to Kit's house earlier was, in fact, Dusty's cousin. Kit is reassured by Cinda and promises to deliver Sam to her. Cinda and Burt's house is located in a wooded area, with no neighbors. Burt tries to grab the camera out of Kit's hand when she starts taking pictures. Meanwhile, Muffin has to go to the bathroom really badly. With all the adults so preoccupied with baby Sam, she ventures into the house and is shocked to find the house in a mess, with pizza boxes on the floor and no soap in the bathroom. Muffin accuses Cinda of not knowing how to properly care for a baby. Kit also senses that something isn't right and, taking Sam from Cynthia, she tells them that they should all wait for Dusty to get back before doing anything. Kit, at her father's house, leaves a voice message for her father about Dusty. Dusty and her cousin, Ed, enter the house and agree to spend a night here before sorting things out in the morning. As Kit runs upstairs to grab a flannel blanket, Dusty and her cousin run out with Sam. Rowen and Muffin follow their car. Dusty and her cousin both stop at a house, and Muffin tries to rescue Sam. Ed catches Muffin and instructs Rowen to throw his car keys into the woods. He then takes off with Muffin and Sam. In the meantime, Kit unknowingly opens the door to Burt and Cynthia, who imitated Muffin's high-pitch voice. At home, the answering machine goes off with Kit's father telling her that he called the police. Burt and Cynthia freak out at the mention of the police and Cynthia grabs a kitchen knife. They put Kit in a car, where Cinda tells Kit of her mastermind plan. She, Burt, Dusty, and Ed were part of an ATM scam. They would use fake ATMs to collect the bank card numbers, and then Dusty would redraw money from the bank accounts. Kit is rescued by a policeman, but Cynthia refuses to tell them where Sam is. Rowen, without his car, runs to the nearest truck and tells them everything. Muffin, stuck in the car with Ed, carefully uses Morse code to signal SOS to the other car. In the end, Dusty, Burt, Ed, and Cynthia are all under arrest, and Sam is put under foster care.
23439757	/m/06w2tm3	The Mystery of the Strange Messages				 When Mr. Goon, the local policeman, starts receiving anonymous letters, he blames Fatty, the leader of the Five Find-Outers. Although he realises his mistake, it is too late to stop the children investigating. Mr. Goon's nephew Ern plays a vital role in solving the mystery.
23449682	/m/06w2v38	Henry and the Paper Route	Beverly Cleary	1957	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book opens with Henry desiring to do "something important." His older friend Scooter McCarthy rides by on his paper route, and he asks Henry if he knows of any boys who might be interested in delivering papers. Henry eagerly volunteers, but Scooter points out that all paper boys must be 11 years old. Henry is close, but not close enough. Henry decides to visit Mr. Capper, the manager of the local paper routes, and ask him for a job. On the way, he stops at a rummage sale and ends up buying some kittens. These cause him some embarrassment when he visits Mr. Capper, who tells him he's not old enough for a route. In an attempt to impress Mr. Capper and get the job, Henry decides to sell subscriptions to the newspaper. He offers the kittens as free gifts to new subscribers. This idea doesn't work out, and he gives the kittens to the local pet store. Henry ends up buying back one of the kittens - with his father's permission - and names it Nosy. Henry is worried how his dog Ribsy will react, but Ribsy actually takes to Nosy quite well. During the school's paper drive, Scooter asks Henry to take over his route for an afternoon. Henry uses Scooter's newspapers to advertise for the paper drive. Scooter, enraged at Henry's stewardship of his route, makes it into a competition. However, Henry, with his friends' help, wins the Paper Drive for the school. Unfortunately, it's a bit too successful for Henry's taste, and he vows not to advertise the following year. Henry soon turns eleven years old, and later discovers that Scooter has the chicken pox. Scooter once again asks him to take over his route; as a result, he and Henry become friends again. Henry then learns that one of the older boys will be giving up his route soon, and Henry hopes to take it over. In the meantime, he meets a new neighbor named Murph, whom he suspects is a genius. Henry is later dismayed to learn that he doesn't get to take over the older boy's route; it's been given to Murph instead. Eventually, though, Murph gives up the route because he doesn't know to handle Ramona Quimby, who is taking the papers off of each customer's lawn and throwing them onto random lawns. Murphy lets Henry have the route, and at first Henry is worried that he might lose it because of Ramona's antics. He eventually outsmarts Ramona, though, and continues with his new route.
23454544	/m/0bdc4	As You Like It	William Shakespeare	1623		 The play is set in a duchy in France, but most of the action takes place in a location called the Forest of Arden, which may be intended for the Ardennes in France, but is sometimes identified with Arden, Warwickshire, near Shakespeare's home town. Frederick has usurped the Duchy and exiled his older brother, Duke Senior. The Duke's daughter Rosalind has been permitted to remain at court because she is the closest friend and cousin of Frederick's only child, Celia. Orlando, a young gentleman of the kingdom who has fallen in love at first sight with Rosalind, is forced to flee his home after being persecuted by his older brother, Oliver. Frederick becomes angry and banishes Rosalind from court. Celia and Rosalind decide to flee together accompanied by the jester Touchstone, with Rosalind disguised as a young man and Celia disguised as a poor lady. Rosalind, now disguised as Ganymede ("Jove's own page"), and Celia, now disguised as Aliena (Latin for "stranger"), arrive in the Arcadian Forest of Arden, where the exiled Duke now lives with some supporters, including "the melancholy Jaques," a malcontent figure, who is introduced to us weeping over the slaughter of a deer. "Ganymede" and "Aliena" do not immediately encounter the Duke and his companions, as they meet up with Corin, an impoverished tenant, and offer to buy his master's rude cottage. Orlando and his servant Adam (a role possibly played by Shakespeare himself, though this story is said to be apocryphal), meanwhile, find the Duke and his men and are soon living with them and posting simplistic love poems for Rosalind on the trees. Rosalind, also in love with Orlando, meets him as Ganymede and pretends to counsel him to cure him of being in love. Ganymede says "he" will take Rosalind's place and "he" and Orlando can act out their relationship. The shepherdess Phebe, with whom Silvius is in love, has fallen in love with Ganymede (actually Rosalind), though "Ganymede" continually shows that "he" is not interested in Phebe. Touchstone, meanwhile, has fallen in love with the dull-witted shepherdess Audrey, and tries to woo her, but eventually is forced to be married first. William, another shepherd, attempts to marry Audrey as well, but is stopped by Touchstone, who threatens to kill him "a hundred and fifty ways". Finally, Silvius, Phebe, Ganymede, and Orlando are brought together in an argument with each other over who will get whom. Ganymede says he will solve the problem, having Orlando promise to marry Rosalind, and Phebe promise to marry Silvius if she cannot marry Ganymede. Orlando sees Oliver in the forest and rescues him from a lioness, causing Oliver to repent for mistreating Orlando. Oliver meets Aliena (Celia's false identity) and falls in love with her, and they agree to marry. Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia, Silvius and Phebe, and Touchstone and Audrey all are married in the final scene, after which they discover that Frederick has also repented his faults, deciding to restore his legitimate brother to the dukedom and adopt a religious life. Jaques, ever melancholy, declines their invitation to return to the court preferring to stay in the forest and to adopt a religious life as well. Rosalind speaks an epilogue to the audience, commending the play to both men and women in the audience.
23454753	/m/0lz9s	Nineteen Eighty-Four	George Orwell	1949	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/06m9m8": "Social science fiction"}	 The story of Winston Smith presents the world in the year 1984, after a global atomic war, via his perception of life in Airstrip One (England or Britain), a province of Oceania, one of the world's three superstates; his intellectual rebellion against the Party and illicit romance with Julia; and his consequent imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and re-education by the Thinkpol in the Miniluv. Winston Smith is an intellectual, a member of the Outer Party (middle class), who lives in the ruins of London, and who grew up in some long post-World War II England, during the revolution and the civil war after which the Party assumed power. At some point his parents and sister disappeared, and he was placed in an orphanage for training and subsequent employment as an Outer Party civil servant. He lives an austere existence in a one-room flat on a subsistence diet of black bread and synthetic meals washed down with Victory-brand gin. He keeps a journal of negative thoughts and opinions about the Party and Big Brother, which, if uncovered by the Thought Police, would warrant death. The flat has an alcove, beside the telescreen, where he apparently cannot be seen, and thus believes he has some privacy, while writing in his journal: "Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death." The telescreens (in every public area, and the quarters of the Party's members), have hidden microphones and cameras. These devices, alongside informers, permit the Thought Police to spy upon everyone and so identify anyone who might endanger the Party's régime; children, most of all, are indoctrinated to spy and inform on suspected thought-criminals – especially their parents. At the Minitrue, Winston is an editor responsible for historical revisionism, concording the past to the Party's ever-changing official version of the past; thus making the government of Oceania seem omniscient. As such, he perpetually rewrites records and alters photographs, rendering the deleted people as "unpersons"; the original documents are incinerated in a "memory hole." Despite enjoying the intellectual challenges of historical revisionism, he becomes increasingly fascinated by the true past and tries to learn more about it. One day, at the Minitrue, as Winston assists a woman who has fallen down, she surreptitiously hands him a folded paper note; later, at his desk he covertly reads the message: I LOVE YOU. The woman is "Julia," a young dark haired mechanic who repairs the Minitrue novel-writing machines. Before that occasion, Winston had loathed the sight of her, since women tended to be the most fanatical supporters of Ingsoc. He particularly loathed her because of her membership in the fanatical Junior Anti-Sex League. Winston fantasizes about her but he would want to kill her at the moment of climax. Additionally, Julia was the type of woman he believed he could not attract: young and puritanical. Nonetheless, his hostility towards her vanishes upon reading the message. As it turns out, Julia is a thoughtcriminal too, and hates the Party as much as he does. Cautiously, Winston and Julia begin a love affair, at first meeting in the country, at a clearing in the woods, then at the belfry of a ruined church, and afterwards in a rented room atop an antiques shop in a proletarian neighbourhood of London. There, they think themselves safe and unobserved, because the rented bedroom has no apparent telescreen, but, unknown to Winston and Julia, the Thought Police were aware of their love affair. Later, when the Inner Party member O'Brien approaches him, Winston believes he is an agent of the Brotherhood, a secret, counter-revolutionary organisation meant to destroy The Party. The approach opens a secret communication between them; and, on pretext of giving him a copy of the latest edition of the Dictionary of Newspeak, O'Brien gives Winston The Book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, the infamous and publicly reviled leader of the Brotherhood. The Book explains the concept of perpetual war, the true meanings of the slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and how the régime of The Party can be overthrown by means of the political awareness of the Proles. The Thought Police capture Winston and Julia in their bedroom and deliver them to the Ministry of Love for interrogation. Charrington, the shop keeper who rented the room to them, reveals himself as an officer of the Thought Police. O'Brien also reveals himself to be a Thought Police leader, and admits to luring Winston and Julia into a false flag operation used by the Thought Police to root out suspected thoughtcriminals. After a prolonged regimen of systematic beatings and psychologically draining interrogation, O'Brien, now Smith's inquisitor, tortures Winston with electroshock, showing him how, through controlled manipulation of perception (e.g.: seeing whatever number of fingers held up that the Party demands one should see, whatever the "apparent" reality, i.e. 2+2=5), Winston can "cure" himself of his "insanity" — his manifest hatred for the Party. In long, complex conversations, he explains the Inner Party's motivation: complete and absolute power, mocking Winston's assumption that it was somehow altruistic and "for the greater good." Asked if the Brotherhood exists, O'Brien replies that this is something Winston will never know; it will remain an unsolvable quandary in his mind. During a torture session, his imprisonment in the Ministry of Love is explained: "There are three stages in your reintegration . . . There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance," i.e. of the Party's assertion of reality. In the first stage of political re-education, Winston Smith admits to and confesses to crimes he did and did not commit, implicating anyone and everyone, including Julia. In the second stage, O'Brien makes Winston understand that he is rotting away; by this time he is little more than skin and bones. Winston counters that: "I have not betrayed Julia"; O'Brien agrees, Winston had not betrayed Julia because he "had not stopped loving her; his feelings toward her had remained the same." One night, in his cell, Winston awakens, screaming: "Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!" O'Brien rushes in to the cell and sends him to Room 101, the most feared room in the Ministry of Love, where resides each prisoner's worst fear, which is forced upon him or her. In Room 101 is Acceptance, the final stage of the political re-education of Winston Smith, whose primal fear of rats is invoked when a wire cage holding hungry rats is fitted onto his face. As the rats are about to reach Winston’s face, he shouts: "Do it to Julia!" thus betraying her, and relinquishing his love for her. At torture’s end, upon accepting the doctrine of The Party, Winston now loves Big Brother and is reintegrated into Oceania society. Shortly after being restored to orthodox thought, Winston encounters Julia in a park. It turns out that Julia has endured a similar ordeal to Winston, and has also been restored to her former state as a mindlessly loyal "comrade." Each admits betraying the other: "I betrayed you," she said baldly. "I betrayed you," he said. She gave him another quick look of dislike. "Sometimes," she said, "they threaten you with something – something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself." "All you care about is yourself," he echoed. "And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer." "No," he said, "you don't feel the same." Throughout, a song recurs in Winston&#39;s mind: Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me— The lyrics are an adaptation of ‘Go no more a-rushing’, a popular English campfire song from the 1920s, that was a popular success for Glenn Miller in 1939. An alcoholic Smith sits by himself in the Chestnut Tree Cafe, still troubled by false memories that he realizes are indeed false. He tries to put them out of his mind when suddenly a news bulletin announces Oceania&#39;s decisive victory over Eurasia for control of Africa. A raucous celebration begins outside, and Smith imagines himself a part of it. As he looks up in admiration at a portrait of Big Brother, Smith realizes that &#34;the final, indispensable, healing change&#34; within his own mind had only been completed at just that moment. He engages in a &#34;blissful dream&#34; in which he offers a full, public confession of his crimes and is executed. He feels that all is well now that he has at last achieved a victory over himself, ending his previous &#34;stubborn, self-willed exile&#34; from the love of Big Brother — a love Smith now happily returns.
23455129	/m/06w4cth	Under Two Flags			{"/m/01j6zc": "Foreign legion"}	 The novel is about The Hon. Bertie Cecil (nicknamed Beauty of the Brigades). At the beginning of the novel, Bertie has strong homoerotic ties to his best friend and servant. He exiles himself to Algeria where he joins the Chasseurs d'Afrique, a regiment comprising soldiers from various countries, rather like the French Foreign Legion. Bertie's "inconvenient" admirers are erased, with the result that Bertie is converted to a person whose identity is socially acceptable.Schaffer, Talia. "Under Two Flags". The Literary Encyclopedia. 24 January 2002. accessed 1 July 2009.
23456152	/m/06w9q7k	WWE Encyclopedia		2008	{"/m/02jfw": "Encyclopedia"}	 The WWE Encyclopedia contains profiles for past and present WWE personalities, as well as event and title histories. While providing information primarily about the personalities career in WWE, information is also present about their careers in other companies. People who portrayed separate characters are often given separate profiles for each character. Even people who left the company on bad terms were given favorable profiles, including Alundra Blayze and The Ultimate Warrior.
23456154	/m/06w2dlr	The Coming Insurrection		2008	{"/m/02t97": "Essay"}	 The book is divided into two parts. The first attempts a complete diagnosis of the totality of modern capitalist civilization, moving through what the Invisible Committee identify as the "seven circles" of alienation: "self, social relations, work, the economy, urbanity, the environment, and to close civilization". The latter part of the book begins to offer a prescription for revolutionary struggle based on the formation of communes, or affinity group-style units, in an underground network that will build its forces outside of mainstream politics, and attack in moments of crisis – political, social, environmental – to push towards anti-capitalist revolution. The insurrection envisioned by the Invisible Committee will revolve around "the local appropriation of power by the people, of the physical blocking of the economy and of the annihilation of police forces". The book points to the late 2000s financial crisis, and environmental degradation as symptoms of capitalism's decline. Also discussed are the Argentine economic crisis (1999-2002) and the piquetero movement which emerged from it, the 2005 riots and 2006 student protests in France, the 2006 Oaxaca protests and the grassroots relief work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as examples of breakdown in the modern social order which can give rise to partial insurrectionary situations.
23465152	/m/06w7j4j	Dragon Keeper	Robin Hobb		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the beginning of each chapter, there are letters between pigeon keepers in different cities, including Trehaug, Cassarick, and Bingtown. They may involve some information about what is currently happening in the storyline, without any important information added. The book opens as a group of sea serpents are nearly finished their long journey upriver to encase themselves so that they might hatch into dragons. It is late in the year and the serpents are older than is normal to make the journey. The last known dragon, Tintaglia, is overseeing this journey in the hopes that dragons will be reintroduced to the world; the Rain Wilds Council has agreed to help in exchange for her helping the Rain Wilds people in their war against Chalced. Sisarqua, a queen (female) struggles to finish her casing, and is assisted by Tintaglia. The captain of the Tarman, Leftrin, comes across a piece of wizardwood, an encased dragon that has been washed away by the river. At first he thinks to sell it for an immense profit, but then decides to use it for his ship to protect it against the acidic river. Thymara, an 11-year-old girl with claws and scaling, consistent with Rain Wilds defects from birth, goes with her father to watch the hatching of the dragons. She is shocked to find that the new hatchlings are weak and malformed. She communicates with one when her father is almost killed and eaten. Sisarqua has turned into a dragon, naming herself Sintara, and is distraught to realize that her proportions are all wrong and she is not what she should be, and will likely never fly. Alise Kincarrion is a plain, freckled young woman, past the prime age for marriage and suspecting spinsterhood. Most of her time is consumed by her passion for dragons and her studies thereof. She is unsure of the attention she is getting from a handsome local Trader, Hest Finbok. When finally confronting him, he admits that he is not in love with her, but is wishing for a marriage of convenience for both of them. If she can provide him with an heir, he will fund her fancies, including her research of dragons, including a trip to study the hatchling dragons since he had caused her to miss a trip she had already planned to watch them hatch. Agreeing, Alise begins to hope for a real marriage to her handsome suitor, but is desperately disappointed on her wedding night. She learns that the marriage was suggested by her childhood friend, Sedric. She ultimately decides that if she sold herself, she would demand a high price, and begins to use Hest's money freely to pursue her studies of dragons and Elderlings. With some time having passed on the Tarman, the work with the wizardwood is finished. Captain Leftrin wants to give a lifetime contract to all of the workers to protect the secret of their illegal use of the forbidden substance. The only remaining man to sign is Swarge, who admits that he is betrothed and does not want to be separated from his new wife-to-be. Leftrin agrees to give a contract to Swarge's wife so that they may be together and Swarge signs the contract. Some time later, Captain Leftrin is blackmailed by a Chalcedean man, Sinad Arich, for passage to Trehaug. Leftrin hopes that he will never hear from the man again. Meanwhile, Alise has given up on all efforts to make Hest attracted, or even interested in her, as they have all been met with failure or worse. Hest is displeased with Alise's inability to produce an heir and comes for another one of his unpleasant attempts to impregnate her. When she is unwilling, he takes her forcefully. After the shame of this event, she accuses him of being unfaithful to her, in the hopes of ending their marriage contract, and provides proof in certain things she has noted, such as his luxurious perfumes and a second house that he rents. Hest is furious and demands that Sedric, his secretary and constant companion, confirm his fidelity. Sedric confirms, though it is later revealed to be a lie, as Sedric is, in fact, Hest's lover. Four years have passed since the hatching and Sintara is sad and tormented by the dragon memories that she is filled with. The dragons are weak and unable to feed themselves, relying on hunters to provide them with a limited amount of food. As the more feeble dragons die off, the stronger ones consume them to claim their ancestral memories. Tintaglia has gone missing, not having been seen in ages. It is rumored that she has found a mate and no one, including the young dragons, believes that she will return. The dragons begin to yearn to find their way to the lost Elderling city of Kelsingra, or die trying. Mercor, who lacks in size what he makes up in wisdom, makes a plan to convince the Rain Wilds Council that it is their idea to transport the dragons toward the lost city using their ancestral memories as a guide. Alise confronts Hest about the promise he made on their marriage contract that she would be allowed to go on a trip to study the newly hatched dragons. Hest is furious but when she threatens to spread the fact that he has put very little effort into conceiving a child on her, thus damaging his reputation, he agrees. in his anger, he sends Sedric with her, furious that Sedric took her side in the argument. Alise and Sedric travel to Trehaug on the liveship Paragon, a ship made of wizardwood that has gained sentience due to the wizardwood from which it was made. She learns about the truth of the malformed young dragons and how they are not like the dragons of old, and she begs Paragon to tell her of his dragon memories to make up for the disappointment. The liveship refuses, claiming that he has accepted his fate and that he does not want to recall those memories of what he could have been. Though she has questioning resolve, Alise decides to visit the dragons regardless, and arranges to go from Trehaug to Cassarick to arrange to speak with the dragons. She and Sedric, much to his chagrin, are taken aboard the Tarman and Captain Leftrin is immediately infatuated with Alise. She is surprised by his attention but finds him charming and enjoys his company. He is summoned to the Rain Wilds Council to be a part of the voyage, carrying supplies and providing a safe place for the keepers. Alise agrees to join the expedition as a dragon expert in the place of the Eldering, Malta, who is with child and unable to go herself. Alise is simultaneously thrilled and terrified by the idea. Captain Leftrin soon finds a message from Sinad Arich, terrified to realized that his blackmailer is not completely out of his life. The Trader tells him to keep an eye out for someone that he should recognize, and Leftrin hopes that it is not a hunter hired to help feed the dragons that he is acquainted with. As the dragons' plan succeeds, Thymara is offered a job as a dragon keeper, to select a dragon and tend to it and hunt for it on the journey towards Kelsingra. Her father, who loved her enough to save her from being abandoned as a child (as per the norm for disfigured infants), refuses to let her go. Thymara, with high hopes for adventure and a life of her own, convinces him to let her go. Her friend, Tats, a Tattooed slave who had moved to the Rain Wilds when they were freed, also joins the expedition. Thymara notes that he is the only one not bearing Rain Wilds taint, and that he was discouraged from going, leading her to believe that the trip will be dangerous and that the council is intending to risk the lives of only those who are unworthy of life in the Rain Wilds, others bearing extensive taint like herself. She signs the contract and says farewell to her father, giving him the first part of her payment in the hopes that he will use it if her family has any financial troubles. When they go to meet the dragons, she selects Sintara as the dragon she wants to look after, though their introduction does not seem to go as smoothly as everyone elses'. It is hinted that Thymara is possibly immune to the dragon's glamour. Though Thymara is initially thrilled by the new companionship in the group of keepers, Greft tries to assert himself as leader, leading her to distrust him and his strange advances. Tensions continue to build as Thymara kills an elk and Greft claims part of it for himself and two others. As the first few days pass, Sedric's attempts to convince Alise to give up her journey and go back fall on deaf ears. She continues to find herself more and more infatuated with Leftrin, despite his differences from the posh traders she has grown up around. She tries to speak to Sintara, who basks in her compliments and enjoys making Thymara fight to get her attention away from Alise. Alise finds it hard to get any real information from her. Two of the weaker dragons don't have keepers. Thymara, Tats, and a young girl named Sylve, try tending to the wounds on the weak silver dragon's tail. Sedric comes to help with the hopes of getting some valuable dragon items, keeping some pieces of festering flesh. He thinks back on how Hest slowly took over his life. He befriends Thymara so that she will translate for him when Alise speaks to the dragons, as he cannot understand them when they speak. Later on he sneaks out at night to take some scales from a copper dragon, near death, and gets some blood from it as well, which he tastes. When the keepers realize that the dragon will not last much longer, there is an argument as to what should be done with it, where Greft thinks that they can use the dragon. Mercor arrives to tell them that dragons belong only to dragons and he will watch over the copper with Sylve until it dies. It is uncertain at this point if they realize that Sedric had stolen body parts from it. Sedric goes on to tell Alise that they must leave because he fears that the obvious attraction between her and Captain Leftrin will make her unfaithful. The book closes with the last letter between the pigeon keepers, revealing Alise's father's concern about her agreement to travel up the Rain Wilds River with the expedition.
23465294	/m/06w2trl	The Halo Effect		2007		 The book is critical of a genre of business books including In Search of Excellence, Good to Great, What Really Works and Built to Last. It finds similar faults with a swathe of business journalism. # The Halo Effect of the book's title refers to the cognitive bias in which the perception of one quality is contaminated by a more readily available quality (for example good-looking people being rated as more intelligent). In the context of business, observers think they are making judgements of a company's customer-focus, quality of leadership or other virtues, but their judgement is contaminated by indicators of company performance such as share price or profitability. Correlations of, for example, customer-focus with business success then become meaningless, because success was the basis for the measure of customer focus. # The Delusion of Correlation and Causality: mistakenly thinking that correlation is causation. # The Delusion of Single Explanations: arguments that factor X improves performance by 40% and factor Y improves by another 40%, so both at once will result in an 80% improvement. The fallacy is that X and Y might be very strongly correlated. E.g. X might improve performance by causing Y. # The Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots: looking only at successful companies and finding their common features, without comparing them against unsuccessful companies. # The Delusion of Rigorous Research: Some authors boast of the amount of data that they have collected, as though that in itself made the conclusions of the research valid. # The Delusion of Lasting Success: the "secrets of success" books imply that lasting success is achievable, if only managers will follow their recommended approach. Rosenzweig argues that truly lasting success (outperforming the market for more than a generation) never happens in business. # The Delusion of Absolute Performance: market performance is down to what competitors do as well as what the company itself does. A company can do everything right and yet still fall behind. # The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick: getting cause the wrong way round. E.g. successful companies have a Corporate Social Responsibility policy. Should we infer that CSR contributes to success, or that profitable companies have money to spend on CSR? # The Delusion of Organisational Physics: the idea that business performance is non-chaotically determined by discoverable factors, so that there are rules for success out there if only we can find them.
23469570	/m/07kfhqg	March to the Sea	John Ringo	2002-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 After the events in Marshad (at the end of the previous book) Roger and his marines manage to cross the Hadur region with little incident and begin ascending the mountains dividing the continent seeking a way through them. They awaken one morning to discover that the temperature has dropped to a pleasant 23 degrees and that the air is no longer humid. While the humans revel in the pleasant weather (for them) and brake out the coffee, the Mardukans are found to be nearly comatose. After they warm up, Pahner convenes a council of war to determine how to proceed. Cord, being honor-bound to Roger, must continue and can survive with the use of dinshon exercises (which he can teach to his partially trained nephews). D'Len Pah and his tribe of mahouts, however, are not so trained and cannot continue. This poses a problem for the marines since the flar-ta pack beasts are owned by the mahouts. After some negotiations the marines decide to buy all but one of the beasts from D'Len Pah and his clansmen, who part ways with the marines and return to the lowlands with one Cord's nephews. Shortly afterward, the marines spot a large city in a mountain valley, but are attacked by a herd of wild flar-ka before getting there. While they manage to kill the herd, casualties are high and Pahner decides, upon reaching the city (called Ran Tai) that it's time for a respite. Having bought the pack-beasts from the D'Len Pah, the marines are seriously strapped for cash and Roger offers to take a squad of marines and look for some relatively low-risk but high-paying job. While Pahner is appalled at the idea of turning his troops into mercenaries, he reluctantly agrees that they have little choice if they hope to reach the coastline with enough money to charter or build a ship. Roger soon finds a high-paying job: a local mine-owner has had his mining operation taken over by "barbarian" squatters from the lowlands and offers a month of output in gold to whoever manages to evict them. At night, Julian leads a team up the mountain behind the mine (an area too cold for the Mardukans to survive in) and scales down the mountain face, straight into to camp around the mine and manages to subdue the few guards with zero casualties for either side. Roger then awakens the leader of the squatters, Rastar Comas T'Norton, at gun point, telling him to pack up and leave, a "request" Rastar reluctantly agrees to. However, when asked where the gold from the mine is (being the payoff the marines were supposed to receive), Rastar laughs and tells them they found no gold either. After a search of the mines yields nothing, Roger and his squad return disheartened to Pahner, who orders them to get a drink at the local taverns. Kosutic realizes the Captain is up to something and follows him to the mine, where they find the previous foreman of the mine pumping out a flooded shaft where he had hidden the gold, prior to the squatters' arrival. Though he tries to buy off Pahner and Kosutic, Pahner refuses to let leave with the gold and Kosutic is forced to shoot him dead when he pulls out a pistol. As they pack up their gold, Pahner wonders how to tell Roger that his mission wasn't a failure after all and Kosutic advises him not to tell Roger just yet (as part of his learning experience). The time Ran Tai, turns out to be profitable in other ways as well. Doc Dobrescu discovers that a local fruit called targhas (dubbed an Apsimon) contains a Vitamin C analogue that could be converted by the marines' and Roger's nanites. Pahner, realizing that the original survey of the planet was woefully incomplete, orders to Dobrescu to test every food they encounter for their other trace dietary needs. Pahner also discovers the Bisti root, a spicey plant that is chewed by the locals, which replaces the chewing gum he's run out of. The down time also allows several romances to flourish (strictly against regulations), most significantly between Julian and Kosutic and between Roger and Nimashet. Unfortunately, Roger, being very drunk after the raid on the mine, mangles an attempt to tell Nimashet that he doesn't "fool around", insulting her in the process and souring the atmosphere between them. The humans eventually depart Ran Tai at the head of a large caravan headed to Diaspra and are soon attacked by the Boman tribesmen. While the Mardukan guards caravan fall apart in the attack, the marines manage to hold their own with a wall of shields and swords, but not manage to break the attack. Help however, comes from an unexpected source, when the troops they kicked out of Ran Tai charge to their rescue. After the attackers are routed and killed, Rastar approaches Captain Pahner with an offer: his troops will join the caravan as guards in exchange for payment in gold and food for the troops and civilians. After some haggling an agreement is reached and the Vasin join the humans in defending the caravan against additional attacks by the outriders of the Boman invasion. The Vasin turn out to be well-organized troops who are used to fighting in groups on civan backs and they integrate well with the humans. They eventually manage to arrive at Diaspra, fighting their way to the city gates and being greeted quite well by the locals, who are entirely too happy to see them. At Diaspra, Rastar finds several thousand Vasin cavalrymen who are pitifully happy to see him and their families and who immediately transfer their loyalty to him, giving him a seat on the ruling council. However, that is all the good news to be had as Gratar, the Priest-King of Diaspra, tells them that the Wespar tribe of the Boman has encircled the city, preventing any to approach to the barley-rice fields. Even worse (from the marines' perspective), the main Boman horde is between them and the sea, making the journey there all but impossible. At the council meeting, emotions run high between the Vasin commanders and the Diaspran members of the council, over past grievances and the current situation, forcing Pahner to intervene and tells them that they must decide whether or not they wish to survive. When Gratar expresses their desire to survive, Pahner says that to achieve this, they will have to make many uncomfortable decisions and forget the niceties of normal business. To that end, he instructs the council to set guards on the city's privately owned granaries, dole out food at fixed quantities and prices, begin training local forces and conscripts in the new techniques of the humans and force an engagement with the Wespar at a time and place of their choosing. The council members are skeptical of the humans' promises that their techniques can win this war but eventually agree and General Bogess, Diaspra's military commander, requests that the Laborers of God be drafted as soldiers. Many on the council, including Gratar, are not happy with this request since it would mean no one will be available to maintain Diaspra's flood defenses just as the seasonal Hompag Rains are about to begin. Roger, in turn, points out that in such evil times, Diaspra will have to choose between greater and lesser evils and that although maintaining the "Works of God" is important, the damage to them can be repaired, but only if the city survives. Gratar relents and releases the Laborers of God to Bogess. The marines immediately begin training the new recruits, first in how to be soldiers and finally in pike and shield combat techniques. At the same time, the Vasin cavalry train with the Diaspran regulars while the Marines ride roughshod on the Diaspran artisans and businesses to produce the materials and weapons they need for the battle to come. However, the marines find their efforts to fight the Boman threatened by certain political factions who are trying to get back to "business as usual" by placating the Boman. Grath Chain, representing these groups, petitions the priest-king to offer the Boman some of the wealth of Diaspra so that they might leave to city alone. Roger, who is caught unprepared by this challenge at the petition ceremony, manages to answer nonetheless by stating that "once you pay the Danegeld, you will never be rid of the Dane". If Diaspra chooses to buy off the Boman, they might just decide to stay, demanding more and more gold until none is left, at which point they'll finish the city off anyway. Fearing that internal political problems could endanger the whole war effort, the marines decide to bug the city's council members. What they discover points to a long existing conspiracy, whose members all answer to "the creator" and who are very security conscious and secretive, all of which hampers the marines ability to discover their agenda. As the day of battle draws nearer, Roger is summoned to Gratar, who is seriously conflicted over which course of action to take regarding the Boman. Looking over that torrential Hompag Rains and the immense power of nature, Gratar is unsure which enemy to placate: the God of the Torrent or the Boman. Roger repeats what he stated at the audience about buying off the Boman and further points out that even if they were left alone by the Boman, they would lack the funds to pay for the repairs to the Works of God. He then tells Gratar of the ancient city of Angkor Wat, who was also ruled by priests, who had failed to lead the city against barbarian invaders. Roger tells him that those priests had failed to accept the reality that their world had change and that they needed to change with it and in doing so, failed in their responsibility as rulers of their people. A heavy-hearted Gratar tells Roger that he will announce his decision at the traditional "Drying Ceremony" at the end of the Hompag Rains. The marines, who continue their surveillance efforts, discover a message at a dead drop which states that the cabal will attempt to approach the marines and gain their support. Shortly before the ceremony however, Roger is approached by Rus From who offers to arrange a meeting with "the creator". Roger agrees, after notifying the two marines with him who in turn, notify Pahner, who orders the meeting be monitored. As the marines set up the equipment Roger and his guards are led underground where they are told to remove their helmets and pass through a waterfall so as to defeat any listening devices (though From is unaware of the Toots and their transmission capability). Roger and his guards comply and pass under the waterfall, finding themselves in a cavern on the other side. There they find several hooded Mardukans who From identifies as the "dark mirror" of the council. The hooded figures and From explain that they desire a change in the direction Diaspra's going because they fear Gratar is leading them into ruin. With his single-minded focus of the Works of God, less and less young Diasprans are inclined to become artisans. In addition, the group already feared that other city-state were eying them greedily and would have attacked had the Boman not moved in first. From also feels frustrated as a "creator" of things, since all he can build are pumps, pumps and more pumps. As such, the group wants the humans to turn the "New Model Army" into the city after the battle and take the temple. The marines, who have monitored the conversation, manage to identify every hooded figure who speaks and find that most of the council and several prominent merchant are members of the cabal (O'Casey commenting that it is "Quorum of the Senate of Rome"). Roger tips his hand and tells the cabal that he knows who they are, that it's not their objective to fix every problem in their society and that they need to win the battle at hand and not start off a civil war. He further points out that they need to get to the drying ceremony quickly or else their absence will not go unnoticed. As the rains subside and the Drying Ceremony begins, the marines suit up and prepare to use all their operational suits (despite the fact that it would mean using up their last spare parts for them) and listen to Gratar's speech in rapt anticipation. However, their worries are for naught: Gratar opts to fight the Boman. It is then that the recon teams report that the Boman are on the move. The New Model Army and the Wespar tribe meet each other outside the city and the Boman begin posturing to dishearten the city defenders. Though the Diasprans manage to hold their calm, Roger loses his composure and, ignoring Pahner's furious calls to him, marches Patty across the No Mans Land between the two forces and meets the Wespar chieftain, Spear Mot, one-on-one. Despite the risk, Roger quickly manages to defeat and kill the chieftain, which disheartens the Boman, but raises the moral of the Diasprans who begin chanting Roger's name. Some minutes later, the Boman manage to regain their balance and march towards the Diaspran line. Despite their numerical disadvantage, the Diasprans hold the line for hours while many of the Boman die upon their pikes. The stalemate continues until the marines' recon team uses their advanced weaponry to hit the Boman from the rear. As the Boman in the rear turn to face this new threat, the preassure upon the Diaspran line eases, and Pahner orders a general advance. Yet the Boman front ranks still manages to hold, and Pahner orders Julian's armored squad to hit the Boman flank. The Boman line finally breaks and Vasin cavalry - along with Roger riding on Patty - pursue the Boman mercilessly, leaving very few survivors. After the battle, Pahner is summoned before Gratar, who tells him that Grath Chain (who is present as well) has informed him of the plot against him and that the humans knew about it. Pahner admits this and that the marines would have supported the coup had he Gratar opted to appease the Boman. Gratar is both saddened and angered by this and says he will have the heads of the conspirators, yet Pahner points out that most of the council, including the now-victorious war leaders, were in on it. He further points out that most of the conspirators (not including Grath) were motivated, not by hatred of Gratar or the God, but by their opposition to the redundant Works of God and the stagnation of the city. He then advises Gratar on how to deal with all the changes and challenges he now faces in the wake of this battle and the conspiracy. The Laborers of God who desire to return to their old jobs should be allowed to return while those who have developed a taste for warfare should be allowed to remain in the army. The New Model Army should be sent off to K'Vaern's Cove as a relief force, to convince Diaspra's neighbor that they intend to be helpful neighbors in these troubled times and to remove it from the equation as Gratar grapples with the internal problems he faces. Pahner also suggests that he send Bogess and From along with them, not as a reward, but as exile from Diaspra, thus removing the two most prominent wartime leaders without whom the rest of the conspirators on the council will lose all legitimacy and attack each other as they are given the task of dealing with the displaced Laborers of God. But it is Pahner's advice about reducing the Works of God entailed in losing so many of the Laborers of God that most disturbs Gratar as he fears the Wrath. Yet Pahner points out that much of the canals and dikes are redundant. Finally, Pahner advises him to use Grath as agent to destabilize any city-state that might threaten Diaspra and that for his service in exposing the conspiracy he should be given "30 pieces of silver". The Marines depart Diaspra with the relief force and the Vasin cavalry and head to the Nashtor Hills, where they quietly seize control of the mines (as a precaution), purchise all the wrought iron the miners have there with From guaranteeing payment by Gratar (a parting shot on From's part), and notify the foreman that some of the troops wil stay behind to protect them. From there they travel to the K'Vaern's Cove, where they are greeted at the outer gates by the enormous Bistem Kar and his deputy Tor Flain, who are astounded to see Rastar and the Vasin alive, happy for all the iron brought by the column and very curious about the humans. On their way into the city proper, Kar reveals that the situation in the city is not as sanguine as Rastar had initially believed: the war with the Boman caught them by surprise like everybody (so they hadn't stocked up), that they too had been sabotaged by the Tyrant of Sindi and that they have been burdened with caring for all the refugees from the fallen city-states in the region. Kar also inquires into the humans' involvement in this war and Roger tells him their intention to cross the ocean to get a continent on the other side to get back home. When he hears this Kar tells that none who attempted to cross the ocean have returned while a single shipwreck with a lone, crazed survivor arrived from the other side, claiming that his ship was ripped apart by some sea monster. The humans and the Diasprans are brought before the K'Vaernian Ruling Council to give an account of the Battle of Diaspra and to present their intentions. General Bogess' account of the battle is met initially with stunned silence and then derision and disbelief. From then addresses the council and the citizens in the gallery, chastising them for being so close-minded, when their city was known for its acceptance of new ideas and concepts and offering the council assistance of their troops as training cadre and the iron for weapon-manufacturing. Finally, Roger speaks for the humans, stating that they need to get back home within a limited time frame, by crossing the ocean. He offers the K'Vaernians advancements in seafaring technology (piquing the interest of local shipping mogul Wes Til), their institutional knowledge in tactics and designs for new weapons for the war against the Boman. The council is still somewhat skeptical of all this, telling Roger that such a voyage would be both risky and costly. In a meeting afterwards, Portena returns with the bad news: the K'Vaernians' ships are unsuitable for deep-water travel which means they'd have to design new ships from scratch which will take time. Kostas then delivers his bad news: they only have enough dietary supplements for another four and a half months at most, even with the Apsimon fruits, leaving them with no margin for error. The meeting is interrupted by the arrival of many messengers from various powerful or influential Mardukans in the city with various dinner invitations for the Prince. Rastar informs them that securing the necessary political support will depend more on the success of these dinner parties than on anything else. While O'Casey tries to decide which dinner invitation are the most important and who to send to them, Roger dumps the job of getting the necessary clothes for all the marines attending on Costas with barely a day's notice. In retaliation, Kostas asks to join O'Casey to dinner she plans to attend, which leaves Roger with Nimashet as his escort. Roger, despite the discomfort of being around a very well-dressed Nimashet and the Mardukans' questions about human sexuality and his relationship with her, manages to conduct himself well at the dinner with Wes Til and Tor Flain. O'Casey and Kostas also have a successful dinner engagement with Fullea Li'it and Sam Tre, who press for the humans' support for the retaking of D'Sley and are eager to here O'Casey's opinions on how to secure the necessary capital to rebuild and reorganize a new government. After all the dinners are concluded, the marines and their Mardukan allies meet to decide on how to proceed. Everyone agrees that they need to help K'Vaern's Cove fight the Boman to secure the necessary political capital and physical materials to build the ships they need. It also becomes clear that being on condition red for several months now is wearing down the troops. Despite this, everyone is in favor for fighting the Boman for different reasons and Pahner decides to lend their assistance to the K'Varenians in exchange for building the ships they need as quickly as possible. After the meeting is concluded, Pahner asks to speak to Roger in private for a 'professional development' counseling session. He points out to Roger that while he has all the traits of a good leader (caring for the troops, not undercutting his NCOs and leading from the front), both to the marines and the Mardukans, he personally cannot put himself out on a limb since everybody will be trying to protect him as he does so. He also points out that his pursuit of barbarians gains little and risks too much and that he needs to let others do it. Roger understands this and reluctantly agrees. Wes Til and Turl Kam meet to discuss the humans' terms and agree to them, bringing the rest of the council around and the city is thrown into frantic preparations for war. O'Casey begins her propaganda campaign by sending Mardukans into the local taverns to spread around silver and tales of loot from the Battle of Diaspra (to encourage the K'Vaernians to sign on) and generally causing fights (mostly by accident). Rus From teams up with Dell Mir to design and produce the necessary weapons and equipment the marines have sketched out while Julian, Krindi, Erkum and their squads keep an eye on the manufacturers to ensure decent quality (and threatening some of them when necessary). Kar teams up with Bogess to introduce the New Model Army's combat techniques (fighting with some conservative officers along the way) while some of the marines are sent off on reconnaissance missions against the Boman and others are sent to start training the K'Vaernians on the new weapons as they come out and oversee their production. Portena completes his "technology demonstrator" ship and awes the local shipwrights with its performance and begins construction of the actual ships needed for their voyage and recruits locals for the voyages. As the troops prepare to ship out, Turl Kam voices his innermost concerns to Pahner about the upcoming campaign and Pahner does his best to allay those concerns. Finally, when all is ready, the troops, with the assistance of Fullea Li'it and her organized sealift, embark on boats towards D'Sley and set up camp there and begin transferring the timber and ore still left in the city back to K'Vaern's Cove. The command staff assembles for the last time before moving out to discuss the latest intel regarding the Boman, the next stages of the operation and the role Roger's reserve force will play. Finally, Pahner orders them all to get as much sleep as possible since "there won't be much from here on out". The operation begins with a group of several hundred Vasin arriving at the gates of Sindi, who begin to taunt the Boman to come out after them. While the Boman Supreme Leader, Kny Camsan, smells a trap and wishes to ignore them, his most trusted ally, Mnb Trag, points out that if he fails to deal with them himself, the other Boman warriors will believe him to be weak and likely kill him before replacing him. Nor can Trag go out himself since without him, Camsan is unlikely to survive. Camsan relents and takes out a force of over 32,000 warriors to chase the Vasin. As he predicted, the several hundred Vasin they chase join up with 4,000 other Vasin who are all equipped with the new pistols and some of the new rifles, all of which fire far better and reliably in a Mardukan downpour. The front rank of the Boman quickly disintegrates under the Vasin's fire, with the survivors either fleeing or getting cut down by lances. The Vasin then turn tail and retreat through a narrow jungle track and are pursued by the Boman. The track, however, has been lined with crude claymores and directional mines that are detonated once the Boman are inside. Over six hundred die in a single instant and the Boman charge falters. The shock of the explosions causes the warriors to question Camsan's decision to pursue the Vasin, but Camsan kills the one chieftain who truly challenges his authority then chastises the other Boman for their timidity in the face of mere cleverness and after they had "whined" for months that they should go after the K'Vaernians. Camsan then orders messengers to summon all the other Boman clans and orders a general chase after the Vasin. The allied forces then move in on Sindi, assembling outside the city's walls and setting up wagons loaded with 12,000 crude rockets, which are then fired into the city. The confused defenders, who've never seen such weapons and therefore continued to stand in the open, are decimated by exploding fragmentation warheads and blast weapons, including Mnb Trag. Then Julian's armored squad moves in and starts blasting their way into the city with plasma fire, opening it to the rest of the army. Kar, who is stunned by the power of the marine's weapons, asks Pahner why hasn't ordered their use to clear out the city, since they're likely take losses clearing out the city. Pahner comes clean about their ultimate objective and their need to preserve as much of their limited supply of ammunition for a battle against their enemies, who are equipped with similar weapons (a concept that terrifies Bogess). From's engineering teams then start repairing the D'Sley-Sindi road in order to better transport the truly enormous amounts of loot that the Boman had horded in Sindi (including desperately needed food). The Vasin continue to evade the Boman chasing them by continually splitting off into smaller groups in the jungle, which makes Camsan even more suspicious. Roger briefs his forces near a stream, who are awaiting orders to move out. However, tragedy strikes when Matsugae, who is filling up Roger's camel bag in the stream, fails to pay attention to the water and is subsequently attacked by a damncroc. Roger's troops manage to kill the creature but not in time to save Matsugae's life. As Roger prepares to conduct a short ceremony over Costas' body, Pahner comms in and orders his troops to move further down South. Roger scraps the ceremony reluctantly and orders Costas' body cremated. Roger's forces return to the Sindi-D'Sley road to assist in securing the laborers working there, but Roger himself isn't paying attention to anything because of Matsugae's death and simply turns over command to one of his subordinates. Upon hearing about this, Pahner decides to violate every regulation in the book to get Roger to function properly and sends Nimashet to speak to him. While Roger initially doesn't want to speak to anyone, he eventually opens up to Nimashet. He admits that his initial rejection of her was due to his awareness of his position in the succession and his determination not to bring into the world a bastard just like him, so he never "fooled around" (and hasn't had sex in over 10 years) and that only Costas had guessed why he acted this way and that he feels responsible for his death and the death of all the other marines he fell along the way. He also confesses his love for Nimashet. Nimashet, who knows she loves Roger as well, tells him that they are willing to die for him, now more than ever because they all knew the risks when they signed on. She also makes him promise to have sex with her when they aren't in the middle of a battle for their lives, but Roger instead promises to marry her when they get home. With Roger tracking again, Pahner orders him and his units to stay put and secure the rear while the Vasin continue to draw out the Boman in pursuit as they head back for Sindi. The city and its surrounding areas are made ready for the final stage of the operation. The Boman eventually manage to cut off the Vasin's escape route and Pahner sends out skirmishers to retrieve them. Down to the South, Roger's battalion finds itself under attack by waves of Boman. Krindi Fain finds himself promoted to an officer when his company commander displays a serious lack of leadership. He then goes on to lead one of the teams of skirmishers sent into the jungles. The Vasin manage to retreat towards Sindi, with Kar's troops forming square around them and holding off the Boman's advances. Roger and his troops, despite being outnumbered, manage to defeat wave after wave of Boman. They too eventually retreat to Sindi, and the stage is finally set for the last phase of the operation. As the Boman assemble in sight of Sindi, they are astounded to find the Sindi under the control of their enemies. Kny Camsan opts to decides to assemble all of the Boman's troops and besiege the city, but his decision is challenged by Tar Tin, who believe that the only way to defeat the enemy (and retrieve their women and children) is to storm the city through the gaps left in the walls. Camsan fears this approach after witnessing the effectiveness of the weapons that were used by the Vasin, the losses they've already suffered and the thought of what could've made those holes in the walls to begin with. Tin, however, is not willing to try any more of Camsan's "better ways", challenges him for the leadership position and kills him. He then orders an immediate charge to overwhelm the city and its defenders. The Boman enter the city amid heavy rifle fire that slows their approach. The defenders then begin a well-prepared retreat south towards the Great Bridge of the city until finally most of the Allied forces are on the southern bank in the houses surrounding a large plaza specifically broadened so as to lure as many Boman into it. As Tin orders his troops across the bridge, another series of claymore mines is detonated while 400 riflemen and 300 cavalrymen open fire leaving no boman alive or unwounded on the bridge. Then another explosion rocks the bridge and for a moment Tin believes that they have managed to destroy the bridge, but as the smoke clears he sees that the bridge stands firm and orders his troops across again. The explosion however, allows the Allies rearguard to disengage from the enemy for enough time to retreat behind the gates of the bastion set up when the plaza was enlarged. Once the Boman fill the plaza, Eva orders the artillery to open fire and the riflemen and cavalrymen all open fire as well. Within minutes thousands of his warriors die under the onslaught and the Boman attempt to retreat across the bridge. Unfortunately for them, Julian's armored squad, which managed to evade them while staying on the other side of the bridge, opens fire into the retreating forces. The tidal wave of flechettes, cannon beads and plasma bolts finally breaks the back of the Boman's morale. Tar Tin, realizing the gross mistake he committed and the massive defeat suffered because it, commits suicide by throwing himself and his ax of office into the Tam River. The Allies return victoriously to K'Vaern's Cove and the humans prepare for their transoceanic journey. However, the marines pick up on some radio chatter that might indicate that someone has gone in to investigate their abandoned shuttles. O'Casey and Cord manage to translate the log found aboard the shipwreck, which only confirms what Kar had told them about the ship being torn asunder by some sea monster. As the K'Vaernians celebrate the victory and the human's impending departure, Roger sits on the docks watching the sunset and scatters some of Costas' ash into the sea, before being called back by Nimashet.
23469586	/m/07k5t0d	March to the Stars	John Ringo	2004-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story opens in the restored city of Voitan, where a human search & rescue team (really an assassination squad) is examining the remains of the marines who were interred there after the battle against the Kranolta. Temu Jin, a Commo-Tech serving as translator for the team, repeatedly questions the local leaders as to the marines' purpose and fate, who in turn repeatedly state that all the marines died during the battle or shortly afterwards. While Dara, the team's leader is content with their story, Jin remains privately suspicious because of several glaring clues that Dara, in his stupidity, has failed to notice. Between the physical evidence (pointing to people with marine nano-packs), the reticence of the king of Q'Nkok (who allowed only limited questioning and always while under supervision), the inconsistencies in T'Leen Targ's story (that the Kranolta took all the marines' weapons and gear), the Mardukans' atypical body-language of nods, open-mouthed smiles and handshakes (all indicating acculturation to humans) and the fact that the bodies were all stripped of clothing, jewelry and even tattoos (making their identification impossible without a DNA database), Jin becomes convinced that the locals are covering for the marines who are headed almost certainly, to the spaceport. As he's about the finish his scans, Jin notices a bronze earring with the word "BARBARIANS" on it. Deftly snatching it without Dara's noticing, he then passes it on to T'Leen in a handshake, and tells him that he might want to melt it down "so nobody else finds it". Upon the Western Ocean from K'Vaern's Cove, a flotilla of 7 ships carries Prince Roger, his marine body guards and around 300 Diaspran riflemen and Vashin cavalrymen who have sworn their allegiance to him and the Empire of Man. The long voyage across the ocean towards the far sub-continent has given the troops time to wind down after the intense battle against the Boman, train upon their new gun-powder rifles and for Roger to mourn the loss of his valet and friend, Costas. However, the idyllic journey is violently disrupted by the sudden arrival of a giant sea creature which proceeds to bite off half a ship before being gunned down by a well-placed shot of Roger's, an extremely lucky shot from Sgt. Erkum Pol, several harpoon shots and many depth charges. The fish turns out to be a giant coll fish and its attack ends up costing them a whole ship, half its passengers and three marines and the troops gleefully feed most of it to the civan and Dogzard. To avoid similar attacks, Krindi Fain recommends mounting a cannon at the rear to fire at any other sea creatures that might show up and Pahner orders that all their radios be shut off to avoid detection as they are nearing the space port. He also orders the troops to begin practicing on entry tactics in preparation for their assault on the port, which they and Roger do together. Shortly afterwards, the flotilla spots a series of volcanic islands, and then, the sails of one ship being pursued by 6 other pirate ships. Roger and Pahner decide to risk contacting the ship under pursuit, despite their ignorance of what is going on, and Roger is sent across (against Pahner's better judgment) with Cord, Despreaux, Kosutic and Poertena. They make contact with the captain of Rain Daughter, Tob Kerr, who is initially taken aback by Roger's use of the "High Krath" language, used by the Fire Priests whom all fear but who permits them to come aboard. After managing to get a hold on the language, they are told that Rain Daughter was part of a Guard convoy from the mainland (called Krath) headed to the Island of Strem, but who were jumped by Lemmaran raiders. Roger also tells Kerr their cover story of travelling across the ocean to the Krath to establish trade relations. Kerr advises them to head for Strem but Roger states they are headed for the mainland of Krath and contemptuously snorts at the possible risk the Lemmaran ships might pose to their flotilla. Returning to their ship, Roger and the command staff discuss the problem and, despite all the unknown variables, decide to engage the 6 pirate ships. Pahner admits that he does not have any experience in a sea battle and turns effective cammand of the engagement over to Roger (though still keeping an eye on him), who orders 5 of their remaining 6 ships (the heaviest and least maneuverable is left behind to guard Rain Daughter) to engage the pirates by crossing between the pirates 6 ships. The pirate commander, Cred Cies, while confident of his numerical advantage is still suspicious about the ships that are so conveniently coming right at him. A sudden deluge conceals all of the ships from each other and when it clears the K'Vaernian ships, though scattered, are upwind of the pirates' formation and closing fast. Despite this, Cies is still confident that they can close in on them and rake their decks with swivel guns. This turns out to be a mistake as the K'Vaernian artillery mounted on the sides of the ships and are capable of far heavier broadsides then Cies guesses. The pirates manage to score a few shots on a single K'Vaernian ship, causing it to lose its foremast and then the K'Vaernians open fire. The massive roll of gunfire decimates the pirates while sharpshooters take out many of the Lemmaran gun grews on deck and the marines off-world weapons add to the carnage. The end result of the engagement is that one Lemmaran ship is sunk (thanks to a plasma cannon shot), three others get boarded and most of another single ship's crew dead and completely dismasted. Only Cred Cies' vessel manages to retain enough rigging to escape the initial engagement and Roger's ship closes with it so as to board it. Despite his immense losses, Cies still refuses to surrender and the Ima Hooker eventually closes upon it and launches a boarding action. Krindi Fain's company leads the assault on the Lemmaran vessel and quickly manages to overwhelm them. However, Cord notices that the Lemmar are attempting to kill their helpless prisoners who are chained to the deck and leaps across to save them. Roger, astounded that his asi would abandon him at a time like this leaps onto the Lemmaran ship after him followed by Dogzard. Between the three of them, the surviving prisoners are protected from the Lemmar trying to kill them. Pahner, however, is furious that Roger broke his promise not to put himself out on a limb and boards the Lemmaran ship to castigate him while Denat does the same for Cord. Roger, after shouting down everybody yelling at him first demands that Cord explain why he jumped over in the first place. Cord explains that just as his life was saved by Roger, he is obligated to help others in need and that Roger should not have followed him at all to the pirate ship. Roger suddenly finds himself put upon by the irony of the situation while Pahner and the other commanders are hard pressed to laugh. Roger then proceeds to the cut the chains binding the prisoners when the first prisoner, a female who had killed 2 guards during the battle while being chained to the deck, tries to kick him when he pulls out his monomachete. She is stopped by Pahner and once Roger conveys his intentions to her in a hash of the local languages, she relents and allows him to free her and the other two surviving captives. It soon becomes apparent to Roger, that the female prisoner, who has been trained as a warrior, is also in charge of the other captives, two things that come as a surprise to him since they had rarely encountered any Mardukan societies where women enjoyed any status or had been warriors. She soon approaches Roger and Cord, to speak of "the Way of Honor, of the Way of the Warrior" and declares that she is now bonded to Cord as a benan for saving her life (much like Cord is bonded to Roger). Her statement leaves Cord seriously discomfited and perplexed (since only his people recognize such bonds). Back aboard the Ima Hooker, O'Casey explains that there's a great deal in common between Pedi's people, the "Shin" and Cord's people, the X'Intai, as can be seen in many linguistic similarities between their two languages. She surmises that both peoples originated from the Krath sub-continent but that the X'Intai had somehow managed to travel eastward towards the large continent. O'Casey then states that it would be highly beneficial to recapture the other ships of the convoy and return them to the Krath, so as to get started on the right foot with the locals. Julian then proceeds to brief the command staff about Pedi's people and the local political conditions that might affect the marine's journey to the spaceport. O'Casey then elaborates upon the political conditions among the main polity, the Krath, and points out that is a highly regimented theocracy that is slavery based. Julian then points out that the reason the Shin and the Krath do not get along is that the Krath see the Shin a source for more slaves. Roger points out that since Cord is obligated to follow and protect Roger and Pedi is now obligated to follow and protect Cord, they need to find some way to conceal her Shin identity. They decide, that Pedi will be dressed as a Shadem female, who are always heavily clothed (with their faces covered as well) - a decision Pedi finds repulsive. The rest of the Mardukan troops will also have to be found clothes, since the cultures of the sub-continent have strong body modesty taboos, a concept Cord finds equally repulsive. They then decide on a battle plan to take the other prize ships. They flotilla then goes after each of the captured ships in turn, sending over a boat with Rastar, Roger (despite Pahner's extreme displeasure) and 2 others who under the pretense of wishing to trade goods, manage to surprise each crew and retake the ship. They then proceed to Kirsti, the main port of the sub-continent. As they approach the enormous city of Kirsti, Roger and Pahner are both uneasy since they both realize they and their troops are seriously outnumbered by the locals who might be in contact with the spaceport. The latter concern is confirmed when they are met by a delegation from the local government, led unofficially by Sor Teb who has encountered humans before, and who is greatly interested in the purpose of these new and unusual humans. The marines and their Mardukan troops are granted permission to enter Kirsti, though the locals impose many restrictions upon them and isolating them to a limited area of the docks. While the ships' captains begin seeking out local trade partners and resupplying their ships, the humans await the local leadership's decision on whether or not they can leave the city and continue their trek to the spaceport. Julian, Portena and Denat go around about town, teaching the locals Canasta (it being a card game Portena inflicts on those he does not like), looking for supplies to purchase and gathering intel on local conditions. They report their findings along with O'Casey at a staff meeting held later and the situation is not good. Sor Teb, who was previously believed to be a minor functionary, turns out to be one of three members of the satrapy's military high council and the one most likely to succeed the dying high priest, and it becomes clear that they will not be permitted to leave Kirsti without his say-so. Pahner decides to try to recruit Teb and his slave raiding forces for the humans' objectives but should that not work out within a week, to prepare for a forceful exit. He orders Julian to prepare a battle plan on the local forces in and outside of the city and, upon hearing Portena's report on the high price of food in the markets, to find local storage facilities that could be raided for supplies. Roger is surprised by this and Pahner admits that the locals' passive hostility is making him nervous. Kosutic mentions her own concerns about something else: the Krath religion. The locals have been remarkably secretive about it and she wonders what exactly they are trying to hide. While Pahner feels they still have a week or two to sort things out, O'Casey mentions the possibility that the Krath might get word to the port sooner than that with teams of runners. Her concern turn out to be well founded (though she is not aware of it yet) since the Krath have sent word to the space port about the Human's presence. However, Temu Jin, after returning from the aborted "rescue mission", arranges things at the port so that he will receive any communiques from the Krath satraps to the Imperial Governor first and switches out the message about Roger's presence with a bogus message. As the days go by for Roger and his company in Kirsti, Cord and Pedi finally manage to go shopping for weapons and other items Pedi requires. Cord discovers that those other are clothes and cosmetics which make Pedi look entirely too attractive. After a training session with Pedi, Cord senses certain "parts" of him surging and he fears the coming of his biannual "season". Denat also grows increasingly ill-tempered (for the same reason), causing Portena and Julian to be concerned about his strange behavior. Things begin to change when the local volcano erupts and the entire city suddenly shuts down as the priesthood sees the eruption as a bad omen. The humans suddenly receive a message from the High Priest indicating that he's willing to meet with Roger. Along with O'Casey, Pahner orders that Roger be accompanied by Kostutic, Despreaux, a fire team from her squad (who are all to be armed with bead rifles) plus a squad of Mardukan infantry and cavalry. He decides that they be ready to leave at a moment's notice and schedules an inspection to coincide with the time of the audience. Roger meets the High Priest who is accompanied by Sor Teb and many guards at the High Temple of Kirsti, located near the city walls. He presents himself as Seran Chang, Baron of Washinghome (one of his minor titles) to the aged High Priest and asks about their petition to travel to the space port. The High Priest however wishes to speak about a far more important "needs of the God" and states that the humans have "avoided Service to the Fire Lord" for too long. Roger infers that the Krath are requiring a "Servant of God" from among the humans and begins to consult with the others. While Roger and the other humans are willing to leave a volunteer behind (provided that they be treated properly) Pedi is emphatically against it but her explanation as to why is lost upon them. They conclude that there must be a problem with their translation of Krath language and request a recess to discuss the matter with their colleagues but Sor Teb politely refuses, stating that the Servant must be gathered now. His response causes the entire human company to tense and Roger decides to dump the translation of Krath from his "toot", loads Cord's language as a baseline and orders Pedi to speak in Shin. It soon becomes clear that a "Servent of God" is really a sacrifice to the God who will then be eaten by the body of the Fire God's worshippers. Sor Teb confirms this, and when Roger asks to decline this invitation, Teb points out that he has more guards than he does and that they can either choose to hand over a single human sacrifice or that all of them will be sacrificed as he intends to make sure all Krath know that it was he who finally brought the humans to the God. It is then that Roger and company open fire on the guards and Pedi immediately tosses off her robes and goes for the High Priest whom she decapitates. Unfortunately, Sor Teb manages to escape the carnage. Roger and Kosutic risk a com signal to Pahner and notify him quickly about what transpired with Roger ordering him to make for the gates (which is where they are headed to as well). After killing the few Krath guards who attempt to storm the camp at the docks and ordering the ships to head back to K'Vaern's Cove, Pahner orders the troops to head for the gates. Outside of the spaceport, Temu Jin meets with a Shin chieftain with whom he's been in contact and tells him about the humans who arrived at Kirsti. While the chieftain is somewhat reluctant to assist him any further because of mounting preassure from his tribe's warriors, he is intrigued when Jin mentions that some of the humans are marines and agrees to help. Back in Kirsti, Roger and his guards manage to shake off any pursuit by the Krath guards and end up in the nave of the temple where they witness the horrific site of "Servents" being dragged to an alter and then killed and butchered by richly-clad priests while the upper-class of Kirsti chant in the background. The guard in the nave notice and begin to advance and Roger orders a single volley and then cold steel. After dispatching the guards, the priests and a handful a brave worshippers, Roger allows for 3 minutes of looting and then orders the troops to move out. In the streets, Pahner and the troops manage to reach the city gates but find that they were closed ahead of time. Roger and his guards continue to fight their way towards the gates, incurring serious casualties in process, including Cord who is seriously wounded when he interposes himself between Roger and a spear that had been thrown at him. They eventually manage to make it to the gatehouse and take out its armaments, allowing the Vasin and Portena to storm the gatehouse. Portena places a satchel charge blowing the doors for the gatehouse allowing the Vasin in, find the gate room, raise the gate and jam the controls. Roger and company then exit the city and manage to disengage from the Krath guards pressing upon them by dumping the oil in the gatehouse into the passage and then throwing a couple of white phosphorus grenades that sets the Krath guards aflame and much of the temple district on fire. The humans and their allies then head for the hills. In Kirsti, Sor Teb finds himself in the proverbial doghouse when his colleagues on the military high council, Werd Ras and Lorak Tral, chastise him for his idiocy in endangering the High Priest, doing so with too few guards and then abandoning him to be killed by a Shin. Teb is informed that a quorum of the full council has granted plenipotentiary authority to Lorak to bring the humans to ground and, if necessary, the Shin as well, should they decide to aid them. Sor is skeptical about Lorak's forces being able to contend with the Shin (as they haven't had much luck in the past) but Lorak is confident because he intends to guard his line of supply, something that wasn't done in previous punitive expeditions. Werd supports Lorak's plan, particularly in light of the evidence that nothing short of a prepared assault will be enough to contend with the humans. Sor is then told that with the exception of a few Scourge personnel who will serve as guides for the army, he and his forces are confined to their barracks. Meanwhile, Roger and Pahner, after discussing the matter with Pedi, decide to take the Shesul Pass towards Pedi's hometown of Mudh Hemh, rather than the easier path through the Valley of the Krath, which would entail dealing with two fortifications. They also receive Dobrescu's report of the casualties: most of the injured have either expired or else will survive, with Cord by far, the most heavily wounded and who is still not out of the woods. The convoy first arrives at the town of Srem, where Rastar subtly threatens the mayor into resupplying them and providing them with some intel on the Shesul Pass. They then head into the pass, where the climb becomes impossible with all the carts they're carrying, and they are forced to double up the turom on every cart and abandon half their supplies midway. Scouting parties of Vasin manage to reach the curtail wall that Pedi told them about and discover a very large fortress. They set up a hidden camp in front of the fortress and await the rest of convoy and report the difficulty of taking such a fortress, but Roger has a plan. He sends Julian, Gronningen and Macek to approach the fortress from the adjacent mountain ledge. They are surprised when they encounter no resistance upon the walls and proceed cautiously into the fortress. They are even more surprised when they find all the Krath guardsmen huddled around a fire in the semi-hibernation torpidity that extreme cold induces in their species. After tying up the sleeping guards, they open the gates for the rest of their party and Pahner decrees two days to recuperate, as the company is on its last legs. However, Julian finds an imperial Zuiko tri-cam in the Krath commander's office, indicating that the fortress has had contact with the port and then Gronningen finds a human locked up in one of the cells in the fortress. The human, Harvard Mansul, turns out to be a member of the Imperial Astrographic Society and he astonished to see Roger and his marines alive at all and tells Roger and the marines about his circumstances. He had come to Marduk to write a story about the locals but his arrival at the spaceport was not viewed kindly by the governor who took him for an imperial spy and started to worry about getting killed in some "accident". It was then that he was contacted by someone in the port who offered to smuggle him out and into a small enclave of humans under the protection of a Shin warlord called Pedi Gastan, which the marines immediately identify as Pedi's father (making them wonder why Pedi had never seen humans before). Mansul also tells them that he was smuggled out through gaps in the security perimeter, a point that the marines find very interesting. It is then that Portena arrives and tells them that he needs Doc Dobrescu because something is very wrong Denat who seems to be going crazy. When Dobrescu arrives, Denat eventually gets him to open up and he explains that he is "in season", a point that is then relayed to a bemused Pahner and Roger. When Pahner wonders about the rest of the Mardukan troops Dobrescu explains that being from different regions, those Mardukans will have different "seasons". But Roger then realizes that Cord is also from Denat's region, which Dobrescu believes is the reason for the strange readings he's been getting from him. Unbeknownst to them, Pedi recognizes the signs of the Season in Cord while tending to his wounds and decides to alleviate the strain on his body by mating with him. The marines depart the fort and head for Pedi's home at Mudh Hemm, where they see the Krath present in strength and the Shin gathering for battle. They are brought before the Gastan, Pedi's crafty father, who is none too pleased to hear his daughter as a benan or see the humans after the events in Kirsti. Though initially hostile towards them because of the loss of his only son Thertik along with 400 of his warriors and telling his daughter that she has fallen into the company of ragged mercenaries and thieves, he quickly changes his tone when Roger abandons his pretense and tells him who he truly is and relies to him what the Krath had demanded of him in Kirsti. He takes the head of the dead High Priest of Kirsti from his daughter, climbs to the walls of the citadel and mounts it on a pike, telling the Krath arrayed outside the fort his "answer" to their demand of the humans by spitting on the High Priest's head. He then tells Roger and Pahner that his daughter's allies are now his but that he expects them to help him out of "this mess". The Gastan reveals to Roger and Company that he has been in contact with an undercover IBI agent at the port and tells them what they already guessed, that the governor has "sold his soul" to the Saints who are frequenty in the system. The governor has allied himself with the Krath and has already assisted the Son of the Fire near the spaceport. Since it is only a matter of time before the he will assist the Krath in destroying the Shin, the Gaston has chosen to assist Temu Jin by helping Roger, in the slim hope of defeating the Governor. Roger states that once the Governor's are brought to the Empire's attention, they would have to intervene to stop him. He also pledges upon the honor of his house to end the Krath depredations. But the Gastan then drops a "bombshell" on Roger and his Marines: there was a coup attempt against his mother. While his mother survived the attempt, his brother John and John's children did not while his sister Alexandra was killed when her ship was destroyed in an ambush. The Gastan also reveals that the Empress has laid the blame for the attempt against the throne on none other than her youngest son, Roger. Roger and the marine command group meet privately to discuss these dire developments. With so many of the Empress' loyalists in the fleet and IBI dead (along with the entire Empress' Own, save the few who are with Roger) and replaced with individuals whose loyalty is far more questionable coupled with the fact that the Empress has been seen in public accompanied by Prince Jackson Adoula and Roger's father the Earl of New Madrid, it seems obvious that all is not well in the empire. Julian concludes that the "coup attempt" actually succeeded and that the Empress is now under the control of Prince Jackson, and that Roger's father and General Gianetto, the new High Commander for Fleet Forces (and a long acquaintance of Pahner's) are in on it. But it is also clear that the conspirators' control over the empire is not complete, as at least one sensitive position in Home Fleet has been filled by a person whose loyalty to the Empress is unquestionable. What's more, there's no way the conspirators can continue to control the Empress indefinitely without being discovered and Roger and Pahner conclude that the conspirators have a legitimate heir gestating in a uterine replicator. Once the child is born and confirmed to be of the Empress' own genetics, she'll be killed and Jackson will we named regent for the child, placing him in de facto control of the empire. As the coup occurred 2 months before, they only have 7 more months to attempt a rescue of the Empress and only after dealing with their own immediate problems. As Roger and his troops contemplate various ways to defeat the Krath (with Mansul avidly recording every meeting) and Cord recovers from his wounds, Julian and O'Casey go over the intelligence provided by Temu Jin. It soon becomes clear that the defenses of the spaceport have been severely compromised and Julian is unsure whether the governor is a "complete and total idiot... or else subtly brilliant". But when he mentions that his name is Ymyr Brown, the Earl of Mountmarch, O'Casey can barely contain her laughter as she explains the depth of his incompetence and how he probably ended up on Marduk. Taking the port is deemed to be a "cakewalk" but what the marines can do afterwards is far more problematic, as it seems obvious that the conspirators have managed to convince the public that what they're saying is true while anyone claiming that the Empress is being controlled is obviously a crank who believes in conspiracy theories. Roger's troops launch a number of spoiler raids in an attempt to break the Krath's will to fight but are unsuccessful due the Krath army's sheer size. Roger's commanders and the Gastan lean towards a prolonged battle of attrition to break the Krath's will to fight but Roger says they need a decisive battle. As he contemplates the Shin Valley's geology, he's struck with a moment of inspiration on how to defeat the Krath outright and humiliate them in the process. In a command conference held that night in the Gastan's primary bathhouse, Roger explains that the Valley of the Shin had once been blocked at one end, creating a lake at the valley's end. Roger proposes to use heavy explosives from the spaceport (to be acquired by Temu Jin) to blow off a large chunk of the adjacent mountain and dam up the valley, recreating the lake that used to be right where the Krath army is camped out. The rising waters will force them out into the open and surrender or remain up to their groins in cold water. The Shin chieftains agree to the plan. After the conference ends, Roger and his people, along with the Gastan, remain in the bathhouse to discuss their concerns over the war. The Gastan fears that with so many warriors killed, the Shin population will decline severely (for the same reasons the Kranolta were on the decline). Krindi suggests co-opting the Krath to move to the Shin Valley to solve this problem and to require them to renounce Mardukan sacrifice. Kosutic is perplexed over this, since Mansul noted that the sacrifices had to be a recent change in the theology and the humans reason out that it is the result of deliberate cultural contamination by the Saint presence. Roger and Despreaux are eventually left alone in the hot tub and have a discussion about their relationship. Despreaux, having seen too much intense combat on Marduk, feels that she can't continue with Roger. There's a big fight looming on the horizon to save the Empress and Despreaux has seen too much death already. Even if their successful, Roger will become emperor now that he is his mother's only remaining child, and Despreaux doesn't want to be Empress, or worse, relegated to a royal concubine because of dynastic calculations. Roger tries to plead with her stay with him but she only agrees to stay on until they reach Earth and rescue his mother and that they'll discuss the matter then. Temu Jin comes through on the high yield explosives the marines ask for, along with some additional ammunition and spare parts for their off-world weaponry. Despreaux, along with Julian and his team, set up the charges and return to Mudh Hemh. The Krath however, do not remain idle at seeing the humans up to something on the mountainside and launch another large scale attack on Nopet Nujam. They begin a full-court press just as the charges are detonated and, as predicted, the river begins to rise rapidly, flooding the Krath encampment. However, just as the Krath begin to get off the walls of Nopet Nujam, a second attack by Krath and Shadem raiders, led by Sor Teb, attacks Mudh Hemh. Roger, in full battle armor and armed with a bead cannon, goes out to "remonstrate" with Teb and point out the foolishness of the attack. Teb, aware of Roger's true identity, is unfazed by Roger's threats, as his position in Kirsti has become untenable. He simply intended to kill as many Shin in Mudh Hemh as he can and escape to the Shadem. He then surprises Roger with a "one-shot" (an off-world, anti-armor weapon, designed to kill the person inside it by a ricocheting scab) which he throws at Roger. The Scourge raiding party then storms the battlements and Teb himself fights against an enraged Pedi. Teb succeeds in injuring Pedi's shoulder who then drops to one knee and impales Teb on two of her swords while Dogzard finishes him off by ripping his throat out. Fearing for Pedi's life, Cord professes his feelings for Pedi and begs her to hold on for him until Dobrescu can arrive while Pedi admits that she is pregnant with his children and feels the same way about him. Roger is found to be alive, having managed to twist just enough so that the one-shot failed to lock onto his armor properly, with only a few broken ribs and bruises to show for it. Pahner personally brings him up to speed both about the Krath surrender and the situation between Cord and Pedi (much to Roger's gleeful delight). With Temu Jin's information and assistance on the inside, Roger, his marines, his Mardukan retainers and 2,000 Shin warriors manage to storm and take control of the spaceport with few casualties and Pahner personally (and with immense satisfaction) locates Governor Mountmarch (who's found with a naked 10-year-old boy in his quarters) and places him under arrest for treason and pedophilia. Roger and his marines then begin preparations for seizing a ship. All the marines trade in all their chameleon suits for newer (and less torn up) suits and replace all of their weapon from the port armory (Portena forcing them all to first clean out all their old weapons). Julian and Kosutic begin fitting out the Basik's Own with their own chameleon suits and weapons (even though it is agreed that they and Roger will only be used to back up the marines and only if there's no other choice) while O'Casey takes, Mansul, Denat, Cord, Pedi and a squad of marines and Mardukans on a shuttle trip to back trace their trek across the planet, visiting every place they'd been to assess the impact the marines visit had on the population and to cover up any evidence they may have left behind. Denat is left in Marshad while Cord is taken back to his village where he introduces his soon-to-be wife to his family. They then reach their long abandoned shuttles and, having refueled them, fly back to the port, picking up Denat along the way with T'Leen Sena who has accepted his marriage proposal. In the meantime, Temu Jin assists the marines in gaining access to Mountmarch's private files where they discover a wealth of evidence against him, indicating his treason began long before his exile to Marduk. The Mardukans practice with their new weapons and are given brief course in shipboard combat as they await the arrival of a ship they can safely commandeer. Once such a ship arrives, Pahner orders all weapons-training to cease to avoid detection and to get their "war faces" on. As they await the ships entry into orbit Roger arranges a huge banquet for the troops, complete with various "awards" being handed to every member of his party (such as a silver pitchfork for Kosutic, a set of 4 bronzed bead-pistols for Raster and "little pocking wrench" for Portena) and gives Pahner the Order of the Bronze Shield while Pahner in turn gives Rogar the Combat Infantryman's Badge for having "walked into the fire again and again, and come out not unscathed, but at least, thank God, alive". As the dinner winds down, Despreaux propositions Roger again but he turns her down because she still won't marry him. As the Emerald Dawn enters into orbit, Temu Jin asks to conduct a customs inspection as a cover for the shuttle carrying the marines but the ship captain is suspicious since this is the first time such an inspection is conducted (despite Temu Jin's assurances that it is because of an upcoming inspection on them). He sends Commander Amanda Beach and two highly dangerous crewmen to greet Temu Jin at the airlock. As Temu Jin meets with Beach and her goons he drops to the ground as the Marines blast through the airlock behind him, but it becomes clear that the battle plan is a bust almost immediately as Beach and one of her guards manage to escape the marines initial attack with the ship's crew resisting far more forcefully than the crew of any tramp freighter. The marines begin to sustain fatalities as the crew counterattacks with plasma rifles while Jin's hacking of the ship's computers reveals, to everyone's horror, that they are aboard a Saint special ops insertion ship and are up against a full company of highly dangerous commandos, commanded by the infamous Colonel Fiorello Giovannuci, a real Saint fanatic. Pahner is forced to call in Roger and the Mardukans to get his marines out, while the Saint-John twins disable the ship's anti-ship defenses (at the cost of John's life). Roger (having identified himself to the ship in his demand that they surrender), Mansul, the navy pilots and the Mardukans arrive and begin spreading throughout the ship, causing serious damage to it in the process (the Mardukans, not being accustomed to ship-board combat, use far more firepower than necessary). The reinforcements turn the tide in the marines favor and Giovannuci decides to activate the ship's self-destruct rather than surrender and demands over the internal comm that they withdraw immediately. Realizing that he's serious and that they have no way to deactivate the self-destruct without the cooperation of at least one of the ship's command staff, Pahner immediately orders a withdrawal. Portena then reports that he's has Amanda Beach, the ship's executive officer, who does have the override codes for the self-destruct but who demands asylum from Roger who can grant it upon the Imperial family's honor. With his identity reveal and too few marines remaining, Roger agrees and manages to reach the bridge and breach its defenses. There he and Pahner find Giovannuci, the senior NCO and several other bridge personnel who refuse to surrender and deactivate the self-destruct. Roger orders Beach be brought there and tells Giovannuci that they have his exec who is willing to cooperate. Giovannuci and the senior NCO then pull out from the back of their uniforms one-shots and hurl them at Roger who manages to kill the senior NCO and stop the one-shot he throws from activating but fails to stop the one Giovannuci uses. Pahner however, manages to shove him aside and place himself between Roger and the second one-shot, which manages to lock on and activate properly on Pahner's armor, critically wounding him. Roger furiously orders Giovanucci and everybody else removed from the bridge then goes to one knee next to the dying Pahner, swearing that he'll get the mission done and save his mother and bidding his chief body guard and father figure farewell as Pahner finally dies. The story concludes with Roger explaining the Beach their predicament as he is now a wanted traitor, a situation she has no choice but to accept. He also asks Nimashet to stay with them at least until they rescue his mother. She agrees, but she still refuses to marry him.
23472028	/m/06w4f81	The Nose From Jupiter	Richard Scrimger		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Thirteen-year-old Alan Dingwall wakes up from a light coma after drowning in a creek. Although he is not suffering from amnesia, Alan cannot seem to remember what exactly happened the day that he drowned. The reader is then taken back into time as Alan tries to recall his memories. Alan is mowing the lawn, despite the fact that he hates doing it. He laments the fact that he does not have the courage to stand up to the bullies of class 7L, the Cougars. When mowing the lawn, something flies up Alan's nose, which causes him to freak out. When Alan finally calms down, he discovers that an alien, whose name is Norbert, is living in his nose. As the book progresses, Alan and Norbert develop a friendship. Norbert's arrival does change things for Alan though. Norbert talks to Alan's crush, Miranda, and even livens up an entire science class. However, Norbert also draws some unwanted attention from the bullies during a soccer game between the Cougars and the Commodores. In the middle of a constellation presentation, Alan accidentally runs into the Cougars in the boys' washroom. Feeling humiliated after being mocked at the soccer game, the Cougars and Alan get into a fight. We are then taken to the day of Alan's accident. He suspects that he is being followed by one of the bullies, most likely Prudence. At this point in the story, Alan's memory gets foggy and unclear, and we are take back into the present. Alan is back at the hospital in Toronto. He is visited by two people: Miranda and, surprisingly, Prudence. Prudence tells Alan what happened the other day - how he tripped over a collie dog and how Prudence had a change of heart after rescuing him out of the water. She apologizes to Alan for the way that she treated him, and promises that the rest of the Cougars will stop bullying, with the exception of Mary and Gary. Following the aftermath of the accident, Alan is treated like a hero when he returns to school. As Mary and Gary try to intimidate Alan, Norbert flies out of his spaceship, scaring them both. The next time that Alan switches on the TV, he flips to a channel that is showing a country music special. k.d. lang is performing and is clearly bothered by an insect. The microphone screeches loudly, and even though she tries to continue, she is distracted. As the song ends, k.d. lang blows her nose in a handkerchief...
23472040	/m/05b2fnj	Ransom My Heart	Meg Cabot	2009-01-06	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When the feisty but beautiful maiden Finnula Crais kidnaps a knight on his way home, she has no idea that she has trapped new Earl of Stephensgate. But Hugo Fitzstephen is quite happy to be kidnapped, especially by such a spirited beauty. Before long Finnula realize she is out of her depth, since Hugo not only wants his freedom but also the possession of her body, soul and heart. Finnula isn't afraid of anything, well except maybe falling in love.
23479291	/m/06w950l	Land of Marvels	Barry Unsworth	2009	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 John Somerville, an archaeologist digging in Mesopotamia, is racing against time hoping he'll make an important discovery before the German built Baghdad Railway comes and claims the mound he is digging on. Hardly anyone realizes it, but World War I is looming against the backdrop. Almost by chance, Somerville stumbles on an important discovery from the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the urgency of his work increases. Meanwhile, an American geologist, in the pay of the British, the German bank Deutsche Bank, as well as an American oil company, disguised as an archaeologist, arrives at the dig hoping to find an oil field nearby. An English major who's not quite what he seems, a Swiss journalist who's neither Swiss, nor a journalist, and an Arab fixer who has dreams of acquiring a hundred gold coins for the hand of the love of his life add to the mix at the dig and lead to an ending that has been described as dramatic and richly symbolic, if rather abrupt
23483535	/m/06w79d3	Warbreaker	Brandon Sanderson		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Warbreaker tells the story of two princesses, Vivenna and Siri. Vivenna was contracted through treaty to marry the God-King of rival nation Hallendren. Instead Siri is sent to meet the treaty. Vivenna then follows to Hallendren in hopes of saving Siri from her fate. Both sisters become involved in intrigues relating to an imminent war between their home nation of Idris and Hallendren. The book uses a system of magic, "BioChromatic Breath", which allows mages to bring life to objects as well as provide benefits directly to the mages, such as perfect pitch, perfect color recognition, perfect life recognition, and agelessness. Use of BioChromancy drains the colors from surrounding objects and the less colorful an object is, the more difficult it is to apply BioChromancy to it. The system has been praised as a unique and original magical system.
23486677	/m/06w829z	Homeboyz	Alan Lawrence Sitomer	2007	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/084s13": "Urban fiction"}	 The events of Homeboyz takes place four to five years after the events in Hip Hop High School. The book's main character is 17-year-old Dixon Theodore Anderson, nicknamed Teddy. He is a smart teenager who is both a hacker and a bodybuilder. Teddy's entire neighborhood is overrun by gangsters and his sister, Tina Anderson, is killed in a crossfire. While the Anderson family mourns her death, Teddy goes to his car to seek vengeance. He is unsuccessful in getting revenge and is arrested. He then spends time in a California juvenile prison waiting for a judge to hear his case. During this time, Teddy is treated as if he was a gangster. He is set free, but is put under house arrest and is enrolled in a probation program. Teddy is forced to spend five days each week mentoring a kid named Micah. Teddy has difficulty tutoring Micah because he is wants to be a gangster. But through Micah, teddy is taught how to love someone and see how people can change. Also this book talks about when Teddy meets the person that killed his sister,and he wasn't from 0-1-0. He was a member of another rival gang. Teddy fought hard and he won but the guy was sent to jail and died there.
23487767	/m/0g1jf5	The Tempest	William Shakespeare	1623		 The magician Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, and his daughter, Miranda, have been stranded for twelve years on an island after Prospero's jealous brother Antonio (helped by Alonso, the King of Naples) deposed him and set him adrift with the then-3-year-old Miranda. Gonzalo, the King's counsellor, had secretly supplied their boat with plenty of food, water, clothes and the most-prized books from Prospero's library. Possessing magic powers due to his great learning, Prospero is reluctantly served by a spirit, Ariel, whom Prospero had rescued from a tree in which he had been trapped by the witch Sycorax. Prospero maintains Ariel's loyalty by repeatedly promising to release the "airy spirit" from servitude. Sycorax had been banished to the island, and had died before Prospero's arrival. Her son, Caliban, a deformed monster and the only non-spiritual inhabitant before the arrival of Prospero, was initially adopted and raised by him. He taught Prospero how to survive on the island, while Prospero and Miranda taught Caliban religion and their own language. Following Caliban's attempted rape of Miranda, he had been compelled by Prospero to serve as the magician's slave. In slavery, Caliban has come to view Prospero as a usurper and has grown to resent him and his daughter. Prospero and Miranda in turn view Caliban with contempt and disgust. The play opens as Prospero, having divined that his brother, Antonio, is on a ship passing close by the island, has raised a tempest which causes the ship to run aground. Also on the ship are Antonio's friend and fellow conspirator, King Alonso of Naples, Alonso's brother and son (Sebastian and Ferdinand), and Alonso's advisor, Gonzalo. All these passengers are returning from the wedding of Alonso's daughter Claribel with the King of Tunis. Prospero contrives to separate the shipwreck survivors into several groups by his spells, and so Alonso and Ferdinand are separated, each believing the other to be dead. Three plots then alternate through the play. In one, Caliban falls in with Stephano and Trinculo, two drunkards, whom he believes to have come from the moon. They attempt to raise a rebellion against Prospero, which ultimately fails. In another, Prospero works to establish a romantic relationship between Ferdinand and Miranda; the two fall immediately in love, but Prospero worries that "too light winning [may] make the prize light", and compels Ferdinand to become his servant, pretending that he regards him as a spy. In the third subplot, Antonio and Sebastian conspire to kill Alonso and Gonzalo so that Sebastian can become King. They are thwarted by Ariel, at Prospero's command. Ariel appears to the "three men of sin" (Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian) as a harpy, reprimanding them for their betrayal of Prospero. Prospero manipulates the course of his enemies' path through the island, drawing them closer and closer to him. In the conclusion, all the main characters are brought together before Prospero, who forgives Alonso. He also forgives Antonio and Sebastian, but warns them against further betrayal. Ariel is charged to prepare the proper sailing weather to guide Alonso and his entourage (including Prospero and Miranda) back to the Royal fleet and then to Naples, where Ferdinand and Miranda will be married. After discharging this task, Ariel will finally be free. Prospero pardons Caliban, who is sent to prepare Prospero's cell, to which Alonso and his party are invited for a final night before their departure. Prospero indicates that he intends to entertain them with the story of his life on the island. Prospero has resolved to break and bury his magic staff, and "drown" his book of magic, and in his epilogue, shorn of his magic powers, he invites the audience to set him free from the island with their applause.
23488469	/m/06wbs55	Groundswell		2008		 The groundswell is characterized by several tactics that guide companies into using social technologies strategically and effectively. Businesses should listen to their customers to understand what the market is looking for in their products. In order to do this, a company needs to find out if their customers are using social technologies and how they are using them. Instead of advertising to customers, marketing departments should find creative ways to connect with users about their experience with a product and their feelings about the brand. One common method is participation in social networks. Enthusiastic customers are part of the groundswell, and companies can recognize and appreciate these customers by creating online communities and social platforms where they can connect with the brand and provide reviews. Businesses can harness the support of their own employees by creating internal social applications for them to connect with the brand, also known as enterprise social software.
23503352	/m/06wb9v8	Rogue	Danielle Steel	2008-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Maxine Williams is a well-known and leading child psychiatrist, specializing in trauma and suicide, with three amazing children Daphne, Jack and Sam and a rich and glamorous ex-husband. Blake Williams, one of the richest men in the world has a glamorous life of globe travelling and dating beautiful women whilst Maxine stays in Manhattan looking after their children and pursuing the career she loves.Though divorced, both are extremely affectionate to each other. Blake soon meets the beautiful Arabella and falls deeply in love.Meanwhile Max also starts dating a doctor, Charles West.But Charles is a bit uncomfortable with the children and even starts showing his irritation by suggesting that the kids should be sent to a boarding school.The eldest one, Daphne starts becoming possessive of both her parents and behaves rudely to both Arabella and Charles. When a tragedy strikes in Morocco, Blake and Max join hands to help the victims and orphaned children. Blake transforms into a responsible man, much to Max's surprise.Blake throws Arabella out after she deceives him. Max and Charles plan to wed soon but Max finds herself happy only in Blake's company while Charles constantly hurts Blake by behaving rudely whenever he was around. After a series of hilarious events, Max and Blake marry again, much to the delight of their kids.
23503504	/m/06w6x40	Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America	Robert Charles Wilson		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In 2172 the United States of America has become a neo-Victorian oligarchy, with the introduction of feudal indenture, a rigid class-hierarchy, property-based representation in the federal United States Senate, presidential hereditary succession, establishment of the "Dominion of Jesus Christ" (premised on fundamentalist Christianity and organizationally based at Colorado Springs) and the abolition of the Supreme Court. With the evacuation of Washington DC due to an unspecified cataclysm, Manhattan, New York has become the national capital. The United States has also annexed most of Canada and comprises sixty states, but is fighting German-controlled Mitteleuropa ("the Dutch") in the contested territory of Labrador. Climate change and peak oil have caused technological reversion, exacerbated by the Dominion's repressive social policies. Deklan Comstock, the hereditary President, has already arranged the death of his brother Bryce. The latter's widow, Emily, sends her son Julian to the remote rural western boreal district of Athabaska, where the egalitarian and free-thinking young man befriends Adam Hazzard, a fledgling writer. The two travel east by railroad, but are press-ganged into the "Army of the Laurentians", and are sent to the campaigns in Labrador. Julian becomes a war hero and foils his uncle's machinations. During the celebrations in Manhattan that follow, his actual identity is disclosed. A coup d'etat deposes his uncle and Julian is appointed President. He proceeds to upset the status quo through liberalising censorship policy, rehabilitating the image of Charles Darwin (the authorities have suppressed the ideas of Darwinian evolution in this world) and reimposing separation of church and state as public policy. He also emerges as gay, falling for Magnus, a Unitarian-style minister. Unfortunately, the Dominion and the armed forces mutiny. Julian and Magnus catch "the Pox" and die alongside one another, but Adam and Calyxa, his equally free-thinking and feminist wife, escape to Mediterranean France, where Adam writes his friend's posthumous biography twenty years later, in 2192. Julian Comstock's life parallels that of Julian the Apostate, with the new America being modeled on Rome. The President is modeled on the Roman Emperor, with the military having significant power in the choice of President (as in the Roman Empire).
23507384	/m/06wbd62	The Accounting	Bruce Marshall	1958	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The scene of this novel is Paris, where the branch of a well-known London bank is being audited. A normally routine affair, this year's audit is different -- the auditors have reason to believe that there may be fraud or embezzlement at play. How do the auditors know this? A few indiscreet words overheard at a Paris nightclub. Our attention is turned to each player, some major and many minor, the bank officials and overseers of the audit of course, but mostly to the underpaid, unhappy junior and senior auditors, each a prisoner of his own private conflicts and aspirations, and each seeing the discovery and proving of the fraud as his chance for promotion. The novel makes the seemingly boring task of auditing understandable and delves into the hearts of those who make business their life's work.
23510217	/m/06w2zgr	Honor Thyself	Danielle Steel	2008-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 World famous actress Carole Barber has come to Paris to work on her new novel and to find herself. But on a cool November evening, her taxi speeds into a tunnel just past the Louvre, and into the fiery grasp of a terrible terrorist explosion causing her to be left unconscious and unidentified in a Paris emergency room for weeks. Carole’s friends and family begin to make inquiries into her disappearance only to find that Carole is far from home and fighting for her life. Carole' family and friends swarm to the hospital and pray for her recovery to find she has amnesia and doesn't remember her own family. Gradually, Carole slowly regains her memory, new friends and love along the way to begin to truly Honor herself in this tale of survival and hope.
23510337	/m/06w6vsq	A Good Woman	Danielle Steel	2008-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Annabelle Worthington was born into a life of privilege in the glamorous New York society set living on Fifth Avenue and in Newport, Rhode Island. But in April 1912, everything changed when the Titanic sank, taking away her family and glamorous life forever. Annabelle then pours herself into volunteer work, nursing the poor, igniting a passion for medicine that would shape the course of her life. More grief is around the corner with her first love and marriage. Betrayed by a scandal undeserved, Annabelle flees New York for war-ravaged France, to lose herself in a world of helping others in the First World War field hospital run by women. After the war, Annabelle become a Paris doctor and becomes a mother living happily until a coincidental meeting reminds her of her former life to which she returns stronger and braver than before, a new woman to fight against the overwhelming odds thrown against her in life.
23510411	/m/06w1tw0	King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table	Roger Lancelyn Green	1953	{"/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale"}	 After Uther Pendragon’s death, Merlin the druid forms a stone, and in it, a sword. On this sword, it is written that anyone who can pull it out of the stone will become the new king of England. After many years, the young Arthur, (secretly the son of Pendragon), pulls this magical sword out of the stone, and becomes king. Together with Merlin, he constructs a round table, where only the best knights of England may sit. More and more knights come to join the brotherhood of the Round Table, and each has his own adventures. After many years, The holy knight Sir Galahad, the son of Sir Lancelot, comes to the court of Arthur. With his coming, all knights ride throughout Europe for the search of the Holy Grail of Jesus Christ. Only four knights see the Grail: Sir Lancelot, Sir Percival, Sir Bors de Gaunnes and Sir Galahad. After the Grail is found, the last battle of the Round Table is close-at-hand. In this battle, many knights die and with them, King Arthur, his nephew Sir Gawain, and also, Mordred, the wicked son of King Arthur and his half-sister Morgana le Fay. King Arthur is buried at Avalon, the secret island of the druids and damsels.
23510530	/m/06w1hny	One Day at a Time	Danielle Steel	2009-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Coco Barrington, the wayward member of a family of Hollywood celebrities, agrees to dog-sit in her successful sister's house. There, she meets Leslie Baxter, a British actor hiding from a vindictive ex with his six year-old girl. Following that encounter, Coco finds love but also reconciliation with the rest of her family, healing old wounds One Day at a Time.
23512485	/m/06w2vfy	The Penny				 The main character in the story is Jenny, a 14 year-old girl. The book is religion based, and is about how Jenny comes to know Jesus through her best friend Aurelia. At the time the book is based, 1950, many people would have frowned upon Jenny, a white girl, becoming friends with a black skinned girl.
23513578	/m/06w2xdh	The Atlantia Talisman			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Deep in the forest behind Full Moon City, an evil man named the Baron is trying to steal a magical object from the city of Atlantia called the Atlantia Talisman. Elsewhere, two boys named David Rush and Speedy Rush are trying to find it to save the world. They get help from the mermaid-like Mer sisters (Shilly, Damu, and Kijin), the faun named Dimvir, and the good ghoul named Finny, and they face monsters like werewolves and vampires and zombies.
23517201	/m/06w9nt_	Zeitoun	Dave Eggers	2009	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Muslim who grew up in Syria. After a few years of apprenticeship in the Syrian port city of Jableh, Zeitoun spent twenty years working at sea as a muscleman, engineer and fisherman. During this time he traveled the world and eventually settled in the United States in 1988. There he met his wife, Kathy — a native of Baton Rouge who had converted to Islam — with whom he founded their business, Zeitoun Painting Contractors, LLC. In late August, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approached the city, Kathy and their four children left New Orleans for Baton Rouge. Zeitoun stayed behind to watch over their home, ongoing job sites and rental properties. Once the storm made landfall, their neighborhood (although miles from the nearest levees) was flooded up to the second floor of most houses. Zeitoun began to explore the city in a secondhand canoe, distributing what supplies he had, ferrying neighbors to higher ground, checking on his tenants, and caring for abandoned dogs. On September 14, Zeitoun and three companions were arrested at one of Zeitoun's rental houses by a mixed group of National Guardsmen, local police and police from out-of-state. Although the men were not immediately charged with any crimes, they were detained in a makeshift jail in a Greyhound bus station for three days time before being transferred to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in nearby St. Gabriel, Louisiana. Zeitoun was held at Hunt for 20 more days without having stood trial. During that time he was refused medical attention and the use of a phone to alert his family of his predicament. People often say hurricanes are one of the most destructive forces on the planet. They destroy poverty and devastate lives. However, there is another powerful and destructive force that can be equally frightening—intolerance. “Zeitoun”, written by Dave Eggers, tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American business owner who chose to ride out Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in order to watch over his home and business. What happened to Zeitoun in prison is a shameful experience that occurred when two destructive forces, Katrina and racism, collided with catastrophic results. The book says that when Zeitoun asked the guards to call Kathy, he was rejected. And when Kathy knew Zeitoun was in prison and the guards didn’t allow her to visit him. This worried Zeitoun’s brother “A Syrian in an American prison in 2005—this was not be trifled with. Abdulrahman had to be seen. He had to be freed immediately. The justice system should have allowed Zeitoun his phone call from the start, but he wrongly was never given one. Post 9/11 was an unfair time for people from the middle east. They were discriminated against and suspected for almost anything anywhere. The justice system would treat them unfairly like Zeitoun. Kathy was outraged she couldn't be told the location of the jail, but once she got the press involved they told her right away. However, they didn't allow her or anyone else testifying in the defense of Zeitoun in the court hearing. Innocent people can be thrown in jail. Moreover, the book also says that when Zeitoun was released, he and Kathy pursued information on the reasoning behind his arrest and the jail he stayed at. The government worried that "terrorists might target evacuation routes, creating 'mass panic' and 'loss of public confidence in the government'" That is to say, after 9/11, it seemed like the government, or at least George Bush's top priority, was terrorism. There are terrorists out there, but that doesn't mean government should put all of their resources toward finding them.
23519189	/m/07s40v8	Pool of Radiance	Jim Ward		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dragon described the novel's plot: "Five companions find themselves in the unenviable position of defending the soon-to-be ghost town against a rival possessing incredible power." Three companions, Shal Bal of Cormyr, Tarl Desanea, a cleric of Tyr, and Ren o' the Blade are brought together in Phlan by circumstance and encounter various threats as they work to purge the city of civilized Phlan, the restored part of the destroyed city of Old Phlan, culminating in a faceoff with the Lord of the Ruins, Tyranthraxus.
23519390	/m/06w652w	A Step From Heaven	An Na		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At age four, Young Ju moves with her parents from Korea to Southern California. While expecting an easy, blissful life in America, Young Ju sees the stress that the cultural adjustment puts on her family. She struggles with the language barrier at her new school, and her parents' relationship becomes inceasingly strained due to financial issues. Young Ju's brother, Joon, is born, and is given more freedom and choices due to his gender. Their father has a Jekyll and Hyde personality; sometimes a playful, loving parent, and all too often a violent alcoholic, eventually getting arrested for DUI and losing his drivers licence. As Young Ju matures and begins to enjoy friends and school, her parents fight constantly and Joon withdraws. When her father's brutality reaches a new peak (he nearly beats his wife to death), Young Ju steps in and calls the police to arrest him. When he is released from jail, he leaves the family without a word. Some time later, Young Ju is preparing to leave for college, and knows her mother and brother are finally starting a better life.
23519730	/m/02qtfsf	Secrets of the Clans	Erin Hunter	2007-05-29	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 There is no actual plot to the book, as it is a field guide, but it has several mini-stories within it as well as a tour around both the forest and lake camps of the Clans, guided by one of the warrior cats, and the ceremonies for different positions, as well as general guides. The beginning of the book tells the story of how the Clans came to be in the first place. This section describes that before the Clans it was every cat for themselves. Then the members of the dead come and visit the living cats, telling them to unite or die. Four cats named Thunder, Wind, River, and Shadow volunteered to be leaders of a single Clan, but they were so different that they became four different Clans. The tale forgets to mention a cat named Sky, but this was probably because Firestar's Quest hadn't been released yet. The section of the Cats in the Clans begins with the leader of the Clan at the time of publication saying something about their Clan, followed by a short fact file, a map and guided tour of both territories, a short story narrated by one of the cats, and the significant leaders and medicine cats of the Clan. In the case of StarClan, there is a brief guide as to what a cat must be to get into StarClan and the story of Snowfur, Bluestar's sister. For the groups that cannot be classified as Clans (SkyClan not included), there is little more than a fact file featuring Clan character, habitat, their version of leader and deputy, and notable history, as well as a short story about it. There is also a quick guide to all of the loners, rogues, and kittypets featured in the Warriors series. This group of sections features a quick guide to both the habitats (forest and lake) of the Warrior cats, as well as Fourtrees, Highstones, the Moonpool, the Island, sun-drown-place, and a story of how the Moonstone was discovered. This section features what happens in the ceremony to initiate a new cat of a certain position, using a specific cat as an example, including how they felt about becoming that position. It also features all of Firestar's nine lives and a guide to all of the medicine cat herbs. In this section, we learn that the Warriors have a small mythology featuring three Clans with wild cats: LionClan, TigerClan, and LeopardClan (actually cheetahs). There is the story of how LeopardClan won the river, how the snakes of Sunningrocks came to the forest, and how TigerClan got their stripes. There are general guides as well, such as a guide to the prophecies in the Warriors series and other, non-prey animals that inhabit their homes.
23519854	/m/06w9z4j	Code of the Clans	Erin Hunter	2009-06-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the introduction, it summarizes how the Clans (including SkyClan) was formed. It then cuts to Leafpool introducing the warrior code to us (as we are rogues visiting Leafpool to learn more of the code.) Each Code starts with Leafpool giving a hint about the story and how the code was formed. Sometimes there is an extra story after it. Code One tells the story of Cloudberry of RiverClan and Ryewhisker of WindClan. Cloudberry is expecting Ryewhisker's kits and Ryewhisker believes the kits will end the territorial dispute between the two clans. But instead, in a battle, Ryewhisker was killed when he was trying to defend Cloudberry from his Clanmates. This led the Clans to form the first code and start a gathering place. Code Two begins at the gathering when Brindlestar, leader of ShadowClan, complains to ThunderClan. ThunderClan accuses ShadowClan of stealing prey and a fight starts to break out. The fight was interrupted when a branch falls between the two Clans and no cats were hurt. It was a sign from StarClan that no Clan cat may cross the border and forms the next code. (In a mini-story, One-eye, known as White-eye and Dappletail wish to catch a fish to know why RiverClan like the prey so much.) Code Three tells the story of Splashheart of RiverClan and another battle with ThunderClan over the Sunningrocks. Splashheart is guided by a StarClan cat and RiverClan wins over the Sunningrocks and celebrate by feeding the elders and kits, and hints that Splashheart will become leader of RiverClan one day. (In a mini-story, Longtail and Darkstripe are going out hunting for the elders, but Darkstripe eats the fresh-kill intended for Poppydawn and Longtail could do nothing. Since they could not make it on time, Poppydawn dies from greencough and Longtail regrets deeply.) Code Four starts at ShadowClan territory when Driftkit and Fallowkit play with fresh-kill and were scolded by their leader, deputy and mother. An owl soon swoops in the camp and takes the fresh-kill away and Lilystar says its a sign from StarClan. Code Five begins with a worried WindClan queen named Daisytail, who worries that her son is too young to be in a battle against ShadowClan. She and a queen from ShadowClan stop the battle and tell their leaders that their apprentices should still be kits until they are at least six moons old. (In a mini-story, during the reign of Brokenstar and battle to drive out WindClan, Flintfang watches as his apprentice [who is three moons old] dies.) Code Six starts with the RiverClan's medicine cat, Meadowpelt, as he overhears some of the new warriors are going to jump the gorge on the full-moon. Meadowpelt goes to StarClan for answers and finds out the warriors must stand vigil during the next to think about being a warrior and the warriors save the nursery from a fox and learn the true importance of being a warrior. (Squirrelflight tells us what do at a vigil in a mini-story.) Code Seven tells the tale of Acorntail, as he is chosen deputy for WindClan. But he keeps messing up and tells Featherstar that she must choose a different deputy. Featherstar notices that Acorntail didn't learn how to lead and gain loyalty which is taught through an apprentice and Acorntail decides he must have an apprentice. Code Eight starts when Beechstar, leader of SkyClan, gives his leadership to his son Mothpelt. Mothpelt wishes to avenge his father's death and leads an attack to RiverClan. The river was over flown and Robinwing and Maplewhisker, the deputy, has to save the warriors from drowning. Mothpelt gives up his position to Maplewhisker and forms a new code. (In a mini-story, Tallstar talks to Bluestar about his last choice in making Onewhisker as deputy.) Code Nine begins when the Shadowclan deputy dies from greencough soon after their leader died. In order to decide a new leader, Jumpfoot and Mossfire fight to the death for the position. Redscar, the Clan's medicine cat, turns to StarClan for the answer. They tell him they must chose a new leader and the leader must chose a new deputy immediately. Redscar chooses Flowerstem because she watched her sister, Mossfire, die right in front of her and Flowerstem's only thoughts were to help the clan. Code Ten starts at a gathering and all four Clans were attacked by ShadowClan, led by Ripplestar. As Ripplestar attacks Finchstar, leader of ThunderClan, StarClan sends clouds over the moon and kills Ripplestar with a bolt of lightning - giving a sign to all Clans. Code Eleven begins when a SkyClan warrior named Poppycloud and her apprentice accidentally overstep the ThunderClan border and were caught. The leader of ThunderClan goes to the SkyClan leader and tells him what is going on. Poppycloud explains that they could not smell the border because it was not freshly made, which brings up the decision to remark their borders daily. (In a mini-story, Whitestorm teaches Firepaw, Graypaw, Ravenpaw, Sandpaw, and Dustpaw about border tactics.) Code Twelve begins when the RiverClan medicine cat, Graywing, and a couple of warriors see WindClan kits fall into the gorge. Graywing says that it is only WindClan's loss and there is nothing they can do. But the StarClan kits come to Graywing and tell her the importance of kits in a Clan and Graywing and the warriors get the kits' bodies out of the gorge. (In a mini-story, Tigerkit (Tigerstar as a kit) is saved by a couple of warriors from ShadowClan from a fox.) Code Thirteen starts at the gathering, where Darkstar, leader of SkyClan, gives a huge piece of territory to ThunderClan. Raincloud out loud tells him that he is wrong to do that, and Darkstar makes a new code so a leader won't be out staged by their warriors like that. (In a mini-story, Cloudstar talks about a broken promise.) Code Fourteen starts with the ShadowClan medicine cat, Mossheart, seeing her Clanmates die in a battle skirmish. She and the other Clan medicine cats go to Moonstone together and are both told that this unnecessary death must stop. It also initiates a place where all medicine cats are defined from clan skirmishes and a place where they all share tongues with StarClan. Code Fifteen starts with Lionpaw stalking Pinestar to the twoleg border. Pinestar tells Lionpaw that what he saw is absolutely secret and must not tell other cats. Soon Lionpaw finds out that Pinestar wishes to live with twolegs and Lionpaw pushes him to tell the Clan this. Pinestar thanks him and tells him that his future name will be Lionheart. (In a mini-story, Sandstorm tells about her thoughts on Fireheart.) In the end, Leafpool tells what was not included in the warrior code and says goodbye. The cover shows (from left to right) Blackstar, Firestar, Tallstar, and Leopardstar. Below them, they are surrounded by a group of cats, so the picture presumably depicts a Gathering.
23520015	/m/06w8h6p	The Rise of Scourge	Dan Jolley	2008-06-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins with close ups of Tiny, and his brother and sister, Socks and Ruby. Tiny, being the smallest of the litter, is often made fun of and teased. After several complaints from Tiny's siblings that they don't like to play with him, as well as the kit's first journey outside, Quince leaps onto a couch and reminisces over her litter's father. Quoted, "Strange that none of them have your ginger fur...". This is an important clue that Tiny is, in fact, Firestar's half-brother. Later on, when Quince takes her kits outside, Tiny notices a hole in the fence and wanders out. After looking around and playing, Tiny runs back to his family, where he then tells them he went into the forest. However, he greatly exaggerates things and is yet again ignored. Coming back inside, several Twoleg kits looking to adopt kittens come into the house, and before adopting Ruby and Socks, Ruby frightens Tiny by telling him that unwanted kits get thrown into the river. Believing his sister's lie, Tiny flees the house. Venturing into the forest, Tiny encounters a ThunderClan patrol composed of Tigerpaw, Bluefur, and Thistleclaw. Tigerpaw, as ordered by Thistleclaw, barrels into Tiny and nearly kills him, but he is stopped by Bluefur, who yowls at them to stop, and the patrol heads back into the forest. Tiny, consumed by fear and the need for revenge, flees to Twolegplace. Upon arriving, Tiny survives by accepting a share of chicken from an elderly she-cat. Wandering aimlessly, Tiny attempts to take off his collar, but end up impaling an old dog's tooth in it. Hungry, he finds a group of cats eating, and asks if he could join them. Being questioned about the tooth in his collar, he lies and says that he took it from a dog's mouth that he killed; the cats do not appear fully convinced, but allow him to feed. The next morning, however, his lie comes back to bite him, when he is visited by Bone and Brick who ask him if he will drive out a dog that is guarding a dumpster and cutting the cats off from access to food. Terrified of the dog, but realizing he will be exposed as a liar and driven off if he refuses to fight, he reluctantly enters the dog's premises. The dog seemingly prepares to attack, before it goes whimpering off, spooked by Tiny's enlarged shadow; Tiny is clever enough to manipulate the situation to make it appear he fought and drove off the dog. The onlooking cats are incredibly impressed. Before this point, no one has asked for his name; rather than telling them his name is Tiny, on the spot he comes up with a name that was once used in a sentence by Quince&nbsp;— Scourge. The other alley cats treat him with great deference and fear, and begin to seek his advice; he gradually becomes the de facto leader. Scourge realizes that he enjoys the power he holds, and perhaps more importantly, enjoys the fact that these cats fear him. Soon, a gang of rogue cats from the forest arrives and bullies the local cats (from the images, these cats appear to be Brokenstar and his followers, driven out from ShadowClan; as one of the cats is a tabby with a crooked tail&nbsp;— just like Brokenstar). Scourge's followers ask him to protect them. Scourge cannot trick or bluff these cats as he did the dog, and they openly mock his small size and threaten him, challenging his authority in front of his followers. Unwilling to back down in front of his followers and lose the power, respect and fear he has worked so hard to earn, Scourge reaches a turning point, violently killing one of the rogues in cold blood; this rallies his alley cat followers behind him, and the rogues flee. By now he has been completely consumed by hatred and a desire for revenge; in an internal monologue, he comments to himself that the chill in his blood grows, yet he welcomes it. After killing the rogue, Scourge begins tightening his hold over the alley cats, becoming more and more of a dictator. Later he is visited by his siblings, who say they were abandoned by their Twolegs; as dependent housecats, they never learned to take care of themselves. Scourge allows them to eat his food, and then banishes his own brother and sister from his territory. The book draws to a conclusion as Tigerstar, guided by Boulder, comes to Scourge and asks for his alliance (as seen in the Prologue to The Darkest Hour). Tigerstar clearly does not remember nearly killing Scourge as a kitten; Scourge sees an opportunity, and decides to play along with Tigerstar's offer for the moment, while waiting for the opportunity to take his revenge. Fast forward the amount of time before he leads BloodClan into the forest, Tigerstar and Scourge face off, and the book ends with Scourge standing triumphant after killing Tigerstar.
23523836	/m/06w9j3x	Escape from the Forest	Erin Hunter	2008-12-23	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book opens to Sasha refusing Tigerstar's offer to join ShadowClan. Shocked, Tigerstar tells her that the two of them would be feared, to which she replies that she would rather be loved. Their conversation turns into an argument, and Sasha insists that Tigerstar's plans go against the Warrior Code. When she sticks with her decision to not join ShadowClan, Tigerstar tells her that she will now always be nothing, and walks off into the forest. Back at her den, Sasha thinks about her heartbreak, and dreams of Ken coming, finding her, and taking her home. She makes her way out of the forest, realizing that she has no place there anymore. She bumps into Pine, and tells him that she is leaving. He acts very disappointed, but wishes her luck. Sasha returns to where she used to live with Ken and Jean, and is chased away by the Twolegs that is now living there. She explores all over Twolegplace, looking for Ken in stores and on the street. In a secondhand clothing store, Sasha catches Ken's scent and finds one of his coats. She begins to realize that something is very wrong with Ken. As she roams Twolegplace, Sasha meets up with two BloodClan warriors, and narrowly escapes. Wandering and wandering, she makes her way onto a tour boat, where she curls up and goes to sleep. When Sasha wakes up, the floor is shaking. She runs outside to jump off, only to find that the boat is surrounded by water. She is spotted by the tourists, who believe her to be a ship cat, and the captain shuts her in a cupboard. Let off the boat, she notices that the captain looks lonely and sad. When she sneaks back onto the boat, she begins to attract many customers to the boat service as "Brownie the Famous Ship's Cat." One night, she even prevents two saboteurs from burning the boat. Because she brings happiness to the captain, she keeps staying longer, even though she wants to go. One day when the boat is out, Sasha finds a bag with a very young cat inside it in the water. The captain takes him home and names him Patch, paying more attention to him than to Sasha. The spring thaw arrives, and the captain ties up the boat prepares to go elsewhere. Sasha decides not to go with the captain and Patch because she now knows that she is going to have kits, and wants them born in the forest. Patch is sad, but he understands. Snow starts to fall as Sasha walks away, symbolizing the start of leaf-bare. The cover features Tigerstar.
23523903	/m/06wbrmm	Return to the Clans	Erin Hunter	2009-06-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Sasha has gone back to the forest to raise her three kits, Hawk, Moth, and Tadpole. While hunting for her kits, she gets caught by a ShadowClan patrol. Afraid that they will take her kits, she lies and says they died from the cold. Afterwards, she lets her kits play outside, but when they go back in, she tells them about Ken. Later, she lets them outside again, but this time, Russetfur walks in on them. Russetfur guesses that Tigerstar is their father. But instead of forcing her to give them up to ShadowClan, she instead helps Sasha by giving her some fresh-kill, and warns her to leave as soon as possible. She also tells Sasha that Tigerstar is dead, killed by the BloodClan leader a few moons back. Later on, Sasha goes out hunting and the kits go out to find Ken because they want to make their mother happy. They go into Twolegplace and are confronted by BloodClan cats, whom they run from. Meanwhile, Sasha has come back to find her kits gone. She immediately goes out to look for them when she is joined by Shnuky, one of her old kittypet friends. The kits go into an abandoned-looking Twoleg nest (house). They go through a basement window, and the last kit pushes down what was holding up the window by accident, trapping them. Sasha, still trying to find the three, gets confronted by the same BloodClan warriors as before, but is able to trick them into fear by telling them she is a clan warrior out looking for revenge of Tigerstar's death, and the BloodClan cats end up pointing out the direction they saw the kits go. In the basement, a pipe blows and water leaks rapidly from it. Sasha rescues Hawk and Moth, but Tadpole drowns. That night, a devastated Sasha dreams of Tigerstar and asks if Tadpole is with him. Tigerstar says no, but confides that he is safe. Sasha later meets with Pine, a loner she had previously met, and he takes her and the kits to a barn where another she-cat lives. After Pine leaves, Sasha is attacked by the queen while Hawk and Moth are attacked by the she-cat's kits, but Sasha beats her. She leaves with the kits and decides to take them to RiverClan. In the outskirts of RiverClan territory, Sasha tells the kits who their father is and says that it is their secret. Eventually, they run into a RiverClan patrol. Sasha tells them that she and her kits wish to become warriors. At first, the patrol does not agree, but after a while, they allow them to join because their nursery is almost empty. When they get back to camp, the kits get their apprentice names, but Sasha refuses to take a warrior name. Not long into their apprenticeships, Hawkpaw and Mothpaw see other kits from the nursery pretending to be Tigerstar and kill everybody. They ask Sasha why they acted like that about him. Sasha tells them the truth about him and makes them promise again that that was their little secret. Later, Hawkpaw and Mothpaw discover the remnants of the Bonehill, a hill of bones that BloodClan created. Leopardstar then lectures them on how horrible Tigerstar was and how much pain they suffered because of him. In the end, Sasha decides Clan life is not for her, and she also realizes that her kits are far safer and happier here than with her, so she leaves, but her kits stay. The cover features Tigerstar and Sasha and their three kittens (Hawk, Moth, and Tadpole) at the bottom.
23527215	/m/06w5899	Widdershins	Charles de Lint		{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy"}	 Odawa enlists a gang of bogans (a type of fairy) to hunt down Grey, a cousin who accidentally blinded him many years earlier. Odawa has already killed Grey's wife and several of Grey's friends. But when the bogans murder Anwatan, the daughter of a cousin chief, it threatens the cold peace between fairies and cousins. Because Grey rescues an innocent bystander named Lizzie from the bogans, they assume--incorrectly--that she's romantically involved with him, and they begin stalking her, which leads her to talk to Jilly. The bogans attempt to kidnap Lizzie and Jilly, but through a series of accidents, the two end up in Jilly's croí baile or "heart home," a piece of the otherworld made up of people and places she unknowingly created out of her own memories. Mattie Finn, a physical manifestation of a character from a storybook Jilly read as a kid, hates Jilly because Jilly projected her child abuse experiences upon Mattie. This version of Mattie carries all the memories of Jilly's abuse as though they happened to her. Mattie summons up a version of Jilly's abusive brother Del and a priest who also molested her. The priest banishes Timony, a magical little man accompanying them, from the croí baile before he gets a chance to explain to Jilly that she can take control of the place as long as she believes she can. Del transforms Jilly and Lizzie into little girls, then picks Jilly up and takes her to a nearby house. With her martial arts skills, Lizzie beats up the priest. While traveling through the otherworld, Geordie loses his way and runs into Timony. Geordie realizes he needs Joe's help, so Timony asks him to focus his mind on Joe. Instead, Geordie begins thinking of Jilly, which causes him to be drawn into her croí baile. Del immediately kills him. He continues to exist as a ghost unseen by the others, and he and Jilly finally realize their love for each other. Joe finds the croí baile, and the pitbull accompanying him manages to enter. Immune to Del's powers, the dog kills Del, giving them all the opportunity to leave. They eventually rejoin Timony, who brings Geordie back to life. Jilly decides to return to the croí baile and confront Del again, realizing it is the only way she can put the wounds from her past behind her. She returns to the house where the dead Del is still lying, but he comes alive and transforms her, once again, into a child. In a moment of anger she manages to turn herself back into a full-grown woman and hit Del. He immediately changes her again into a little girl. But she realizes that in the moment when she hit him, she was focused, without uncertainty. With her newfound power, Jilly draws her sister Raylene into the croí baile. While surprised to be there, Raylene acts on instinct and beats up Del. Jilly changes herself into her adult form, then she explains to Raylene what is happening. The two sit down and discuss the different ways they have handled their experiences, and Jilly sends Raylene back home. Confronting Del again, Jilly declares that anytime he thinks a dirty thought, he will shrink to half his size. Predictably, he immediately shrinks until he disappears. Leaving the house, she is met by many friendly characters from her childhood, who inform her that she's become the Conjurer (the one with power over the croí baile) now that Del has been defeated. She coaxes Mattie to read a piece she has written on her abuse experiences and how she recast them on Mattie. She then makes Mattie the Conjurer, a risky move, but Mattie is no longer angry at her. After Jilly leaves the croí baile, the crow girls are able to repair her body at last. She and Geordie decide to get married, and she asks Raylene to be the maid of honor. An army of buffalo spirits is planning an attack on fairies, as vengeance for Anwatan's death. Grey seeks the help of Lucius Portsmouth, supposedly the Raven who created the world. Confronted by Odawa outside Lucius's place, Grey persuades him to postpone their feud to deal with the buffalo problem. As soon as Grey knocks on the door, however, a guard apprehends Odawa because it turns out that Grey's murdered wife was Lucius's goddaughter. Lucius agrees to talk to Minisino, the cousin instigating the rampage. The increasingly remorseful bogan Rabedy summons Anwatan's spirit, telling her that he was part of the gang that killed her, that he wants her help in talking Minisino out of the coming rampage, and that he intends to give himself up. She agrees to help, but doesn't believe he should sacrifice himself. Minisino does not listen to the pleas of Lucius, Anwatan, or any of the others. Only Christiana has an effect, by informing the buffalo warriors that they will have no power outside the spirit world because most of them are ghosts. Angered, Minisino kills Joe, and Lucius kills Minisino. Anwatan meets Joe in the afterlife and agrees to bring him back on the condition that he protect Rabedy from harm. On trial, Odawa faces either death or banishment. Grey proposes that he simply be freed on the condition that he will spend the rest of his days atoning for his crimes--and if he doesn't, he'll be hunted down. He accepts the offer.
23537523	/m/06w1l_k	STORM: The Infinity Code		2007	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story starts in a laboratory at Imperial College, London. Professor Vassily Baraban had developed an unknown, new type of weapon. He could barely settle down when two criminal/assassins, Sergei and Vladimir, ambush him. They demand for the professor to come with them. When Baraban refuses, they shoot him with electric bullets, rendering him unconscious, and take him away. In West London, 98 hours after the kidnapping, Will Knight--a 14-year-old boy and inventor of several cutting-edge gadgets--wakes up early to test his new invention. He arrives at a school, in which he successfully tests the ascension-speeding gadget. He then gives it the name "Rapid ascent". Gaia--a 14-year-old girl, witnesses Will testing his invention, and tells her friend, 14-year-old millionare Andrew. Will is then recruited for STORM. Meanwhile, Vassily Baraban sends an email to his son through the Faraday Cage he is trapped in.
23539638	/m/06w6kyl	By Heresies Distressed	David Weber	2009-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Following the events of By Schism Rent Asunder, Emperor Cayleb of Charis sails off with his fleet to begin his campaign against the League of Corisande, under the leadership of the ruthless, though popular, Prince Hektor Daykyn. At the same time, the Charisian naval units that arrived at Ferayd, after demolishing a significant portion of it as retribution for the Ferayd Massacre, manage to seize the Inquisition's records in the city which turn out to contain the orders their agents received from the "Group of Four" and their prideful reports about zealous execution of those orders. Admiral Rock Point, the commander of the Charisian task force, orders the execution of Father Styvyn Graivyr, the Inquisition's senior priest in Ferayd, along with 15 other priests directly involved with the massacre and has the evidence made public. While the Chief Inquisitor, Zhaspahr Clyntahn, is furious with Charis' actions in Ferayd and demands that Holy War be declared immediately, Chancellor Zahmsyn Trynair is furious at Clyntahn for lying about the orders he issued to his agents in Ferayd. Fearing both the resistance of the secular rulers for holy war, as well as the opposition they face within the Temple, Trynair forces him to accept the punishment of penance that an internal board of inquiry (whose findings are a foregone conclusion) will hand down due to this scandal. Emperor Cayleb first visits Chisholm, to meet his mother-in-law and his new subjects for the first time and to prepare his fleet for the voyage to Corisande. He then sets sails for Zebediah, a duchy that was conquered by Corisande, but whose duke has been in contact with Prince Nahrmahn (now Cayleb's vassal) and who has voiced a willingness to ally with Cayleb against Corinsande. Cayleb then sets sail to Corisande, where he lands troops in one of the bigger port cities of the island, and attempts to use his troops superior artillery and rifles to overwhelm the much-larger Corisandian army. While the Charisians weapons do force the Corisandians to retreat, they manage to bog down Cayleb's forces in a mountain pass which is the only way to the capital city of Manchyr. With Merlin's assistance (and the help of his advanced technology), Cayleb provides his elite rifleman with the positions of the Corisandian's lookout points along the coast which are supposed to alert the Corisandian army in case the Charisians attempt to outflank them. The Charisian scout-snipers manage to find all of the important lookout points and deal with the lookouts, allowing the Charisians to land troops behind the Corisandian army and trap them in the same mountain pass, leaving very few troops between Cayleb and Manchyr. However, Merlin, who is so focused on the protecting Cayleb and using his SNARCs for gathering intelligence for the campaign, fails to notice two things in time: that Prince Hektor is sending his daughter and younger son accompanied by Earl Coris aboard a ship bound for their relatives in Delferahk; and that there is a conspiracy to assassinate Empress Sharleyan while she is at a spiritual retreat in a monastery, a conspiracy involving Sharleyan's uncle and the Temple Loyalists in Charis. While he and Cayleb fail to come up with a way to notify the navy in time to do anything about Hektor's children (without blowing his cover), he manages to arrive barely in time to save Sharleyan's life. However, he is forced to reveal his true nature to her and her last surviving guardsman and promises to visit her again and to bring Cayleb along for a lengthier explanation. Once Sharleyan returns to the capital, Merlin flies to Charis with Cayleb aboard a recon skimmer and together they tell Sharleyan the truth, which she and her guardsman manages to accept. He also gives her and Cayleb a communicator so that they can stay in touch with each other and the rest of the "inner circle" who know the truth. Meanwhile, Hektor accepts that his position is hopeless and is prepared to treat with Cayleb for terms. But before he manages to meet with Cayleb, he and his eldest son and heir are assassinated by agents of the church, who do not want Hektor working willingly with Cayleb and who wish to strap Cayleb with the blame (which is indeed what happens). Cayleb, despite his victory over Corisande, imposes fairly generous terms on the vanquished princedom, and accepts the naming of Hektor's younger son as prince with a regency council made up of Hektor's most prominent military commanders and nobles (though he is unlikely to be able to claim his throne, being far away under the power of the church). In Zion, however, things are not peaceful, as the Group of Four realize that they've just wasted money building galleys which have become obsolete and order the construction of galleons. In addition, Trynair and Clyntahn and preparing public opinion and the vicarite for Holy War, with a fiery speech from the grand vicar (who is little more than a puppet of Trynair's). This in turn causes a great deal of consternation with a group of reformers within the Temple itself, who have been trying for years to combat the corruption that has infected the church. "The Circle" however is impotent to stop the impending disaster and is also betrayed to the Grand Inquisitor by one of its more fearful members. Upon hearing about these reformers who would dare challenge his power, Clyntahn decides to bide his time, waiting for the most opportune moment to move against them, while they in turn rush to save as many of their members and their families as quietly as possible. The story ends with the Group of Four deciding to leave Hektor's son alone for now since he is of little use to them at the moment.
23541471	/m/06w6qpn	Claim to Fame	Margaret Haddix			 It was a talent that came out of nowhere. One day, Lindsay Scott was on the top of the world, the child star of a hit TV show. The next day her fame had turned into torture. Every time anyone said anything about her, anywhere in the world, she heard it: praise, criticism, back-stabbing… Lindsay had what looked like a nervous breakdown and vanished from the public eye. Now she’s sixteen, and a tabloid newspaper claims that her own father is holding her hostage. The truth is much stranger, but that tabloid article sets off a chain of events that forces Lindsay to finally confront who she really is.
23541613	/m/06wb8c9	The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha	Lloyd Alexander	1978	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kasha spends his days playing pranks on the people of Zara-Petra and doing as little work as possible. After participating in a magic show, he finds himself transported to the strange world of Abadan. Upon his arrival to the royal city of Shirazan, he is proclaimed king. At first, Kasha enjoys being royalty, but soon discovers that there is more to being king than eating good food and enjoying his lavish surroundings. When Kasha attempts to take control of his kingdom's laws and policies, he meets with strong opposition from his Grand Vizier, Shugdad Mirza. Soon Kasha is forced to flee for his life and escapes the palace with the help of a slave girl and a public versifier.
23543379	/m/06w3wnj	Kit's Wilderness	David Almond	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Thirteen-year-old Kit and his family have moved back to Stoneygate to be with his grandfather, who is succumbing to Alzheimer’s Disease, after Kit's Grandmother dies. His grandfather, an ex-miner, tells him about the town's coal-mining days and the hardships and disasters that were part of his youth. Kit meets Allie Keenan, full of energy and life, but also shadowy John Askew and the dangerous 'game' he plays – a game called Death. Through playing the game, Kit comes to see the lost children of the mines and begins to connect his grandfather’s fading memories to his, his friends’ and Stoneygate’s history. The Watsons are known as one of the “Old families” because they have ancestors who worked in the mines before they were closed, such as Kit’s grandfather. Askew surrounds himself with characters that are from families who worked in the mines including Kit. Now that he is a part of Askew’s group, Kit is invited to play the game Death, in which they reenact the death of children in the mines. Once chosen for Death, Kit undergoes a change; snapping at Allie on multiple occasions. Noting this change, his teacher Miss. Bush follows him and uncovers the game. Askew is expelled from school for being the leader, and to escape his father, who is an alcoholic, runs away and lives in an abandoned mine shafts. Angry at Kit for ending the game and getting him expelled, Askew sends Bobby Carr, another character from the “Old families” group, to bring Kit to the cave where they confront each other in the book’s climax. After some initial arguments reveal Askew’s madness, Kit tells Askew a story he “wrote for you[Askew].” The story mirrors Askew’s life from the perspective of an early man named Lak, and while telling it they see ghosts from the story. When the tale concludes, the ghost takes a “part of me[Askew]” and he is no longer mad. Allie finds the two of them in the mine after getting their location from Bobby, and they go back to town. Askew is accepted back into school to take art classes, his father stops drinking, and at the end of the novel, Kit’s grandfather dies.
23543467	/m/06w1c1f	The White Darkness	Geraldine McCaughrean		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Shy teenager Symone ‘Sym’ Wates is taken to Antarctica by her domineering 'uncle', Victor Briggs, who after the death of her real parent has elected himself her surrogate father. An obsessive believer in the hollow earth theories of John Cleves Symmes, Jr., Briggs is convinced that in Antarctica he will find the entrance to the Inner World and its inhabitants. He is ready to sacrifice Sym and others to prove his theory, and increasingly puts her in danger until she finally sees the truth about him. She is then able to escape his plans for her. Briggs dies still pursuing his obsession while Sym returns to her own life with a new freedom.
23543514	/m/06w55tw	On the Jellicoe Road	Melina Marchetta		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is set around the life of Taylor Lily Markham, the 17-year-old leader of the boarding school on the Jellicoe Road (country NSW/ACT). Taylor was abandoned at the 7/11 on the Jellicoe Road by her mother when she was 11, and her only recollection of her father is a brief memory of standing on her father's shoulders, which were revealed to be Jude's shoulders later in the story. The only adult influence in her life is her mentor/guardian Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river, and writes stories about five kids who lived there in the 1980s and who has suddenly vanished into thin air at a time when Taylor really needs her. To top all of Taylor’s problems off, there is a territory war going on between the boarders, the Townies (kids from the Jellicoe Town) and the Cadets (Sydney boys who come for a six-week training exercise every year to Jellicoe). The leader of the cadets this year happens to be the very boy who Taylor ran away with when she was 14 in search of her mother. The one who betrayed her trust and she never wants to see again. Running parallel to Taylor's story is the story that Hannah writes, about the five kids in the 1980s. As Hannah has not yet complied it, the story is shown in pieces throughout the novel.
23551026	/m/06w7sc6	O Seminarista	Bernardo Guimarães	1872		 The book is set on the city of Itapecerica (then called Vila de Tamanduá), in Minas Gerais. Eugênio and Margarida are two childhood friends who love each other, but following orders of his father, Eugênio is sent to a seminary, in order to become a priest. However, he is not able to forget Margarida, and keeps on dilacerating himself between religiosity and the pleasures of flesh. Despite this he receives his ordination and becomes a priest. Returning to his hometown in order to celebrate his first mass, he discovers that Margarida is very sick and nearly dying. Unable to restrain himself, he and Margarida have amorous relations. Unbeknownst to him, she dies shortly after he leaves. Later on, Eugênio goes on celebrating his first mass — a requiem mass. However, when he discovers that the mass is being made in honor of a deceased Margarida, he has a mental breakdown, and taking off his priest vests, he runs away naked of the church, in a frenzy.
23553390	/m/06w8smv	Hidden Empire	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The war of words between right and left collapsed into a shooting war, and raged between the high-technology weapons on each side, devastating cities and overrunning the countryside. At the close of Empire, political scientist and government adviser Averell Torrent had maneuvered himself into the presidency of the United States. And now that he has complete power at home, he plans to expand American imperial power around the world. Opportunity comes quickly. There’s a deadly new plague in Africa, and it is devastating the countryside and cities. President Torrent declares American solidarity with the victims, but places all of Africa in quarantine until a vaccine is found or the disease burns itself out. And he sends Captain Bartholomew Coleman, Cole to his friends, to run the relief operations and protect the American scientists working on identifying the virus. If Cole and his team can avoid dying of the plague, or being cut down by the weapons of fearful African nations, they might do some good. Or they might be out of the way for good.
23556652	/m/06w4ccd	Relentless	Dean Koontz	2009	{"/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 Cullen "Cubby" Greenwich has just released his sixth novel, One O'Clock Jump which is generally well received in the literary community. However, Shearman Waxx, considered to be a preeminent literary critic, writes a scathing, albeit somewhat inaccurate review of Cubby's latest work. Against the advice of his wife, a children's book author in her own right, Cubby attempts to gather some information about his new nemesis. Cubby learns that he and the critic share a favorite dining locale. Accompanying Cubby to the restaurant is his six year old prodigy son, Milo. A chance encounter in the men's room foretells the ensuing chaos when Shearman Waxx simply utters "Doom." Receiving a fortuitous call from a fellow writer who had previously endured a similar slandering at the hands of Waxx, Cubby is told of the horrific manner in which the writer's family was murdered. The writer encourages Greenwich to abandon his home and flee. Set into motion are a series of violent events, beginning with the destruction of the Greenwich home. All members of the family, rescued pup Lassie included, flee to the presumed safety of a friend's real estate investment project. When their moves are quickly countered by the escalating psychopathy of their pursuer, it becomes evident they need to seek armament and information. The family seeks refuge with Penny Greenwich's apocalypse-fearing family who conveniently have fortified an underground bunker and stocked it with a cache of weapons. Not content being forced into the role of reclusive prey, the family embarks on a journey of discovery to determine who it is they're dealing with and what can be done to stop him. Their journey takes them to the hometown of two former artists in an attempt to digest the brutality with which they and their families were dispatched. Along the way, the family counters the rising tension and ever-present shadow of death with bits of sarcastic humor and Milo, by engrossing himself in his scientific projects. The story continues to follow the Greenwiches through a series of tense and suspenseful events as they search for clues into the past of their tormentor and seek to discover his hidden motives. After an encounter in which a former victim named Henry. Former Sheriff Truman is shot and killed by Waxx's associates, Waxx himself is captured by the family. They take him to his own house, and encounter his mother, Zazu, who reveals herself as the mastermind of an organization that seeks to control society by destroying those who create positive symbols of hope and happiness through their artwork. Zazu orders her grandson to make sure that Waxx is in the car. He stabs Waxx, killing him, and Zazu is enraged. She pulls out her gun which was hidden and kills her grandson, and then shoots Cubby. Cubby falls to the floor and dies. Then, suddenly, salt shakers which Milo had given them both previously activate. Time goes backwards and Cubby is saved, but Zazu dies. The novel ends with the family traveling back to the bunker, seeing it as an oasis of protection from Zazu's organization and the world they intend to create.
23558643	/m/06w29xq	Not That Sort of Girl	Mary Wesley	1987	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the age of 19 Rose is in love with the passionate but penniless Mylo Cooper, but agrees to marriage Ned Peel. She doesn't love Ned, but it's the safe thing to do. Ned has inherited a country house called Slepe from an uncle and the married couple moves in shortly after the wedding. Rose immediately falls in love with the house and its garden, if not with its owner. During the war Ned is away from the house a lot and her real love, Mylo, starts visiting her at Slepe. They go on meeting each other secretly throughout all 48 years of Rose's marriage until her husband dies.Shortly after her husband's death Rose leaves Slepe, her beloved home throughout half a century (now her son's and not so beloved daughter in law's), taking only a few things with her. Temporarily installed in a hotel room Rose starts looking back on her life. Her marriage has been a marriage of convenience; she has never been passionately in love with her husband. However, on their wedding night she promised him that she would never leave him - a promise she could never break. Now, at the age of 67 she is free - and don't know where she is going in life.
23562061	/m/06w8mc7	Lowell Park			{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set in 1990, Jenny Brix lives in Iowa City. She is a history buff. She even has a Ronald Reagan picture when he was in his 20's as a lifeguard! When she goes to a meeting, a very old professor has a heart attack. Panicking, she uses CPR on him, thus saving his life. After a few stops to the hospital, he asks her which US president she likes best. She answers Ronald Reagan. So then the professor tells her that she can go back in time and meet him. She is shocked, but the professor keeps telling her it's true. She finally believes him, sort of. The professor takes her to Dixon, Illinois, Reagan's childhood home. There professor tells her she has 80 hours to stay out of the timezone, or her body will be used to the other timezones and can't come back to present day (1990). When she goes into the time machine, it actually is set on 1832, instead of 1932 (where she was going). She then meets Abraham Lincoln (who develops a little crush on her), and Chief Black Hawk during the Black Hawk War. After all of that is straightened out, she goes to 1932 with less than half the time left she started with. Once she gets there she sees a young, handsome Ronald Reagan going past her to save a person from drowning. She then gets some friends, Scooter and Betsy. They say there is a dance at Dixon's run down, old high school. There she dances with Ronald and his brother. While dancing with Ronald, she falls down the steps with him. They then get a crush on each other. Afer going on a few dates, she has to go to her original timezone. Her and Ronald have a sad exchange (Ronald doesn't know about the time traveling) when she has to leave. Jenny then takes Scooter and Betsy to Lowell Park, where she shows them the time machine. She then leaves, leaving the others dumbfounded. Wen she comes back, professor says he is Scooter, and spent the rest of his life finding things about the time machine after she left until he finally made the time machine. In the epilogue, Reagan visits Dixon the final time. He goes back to Lowell Park, where he spent 6 years as a lifeguard at. He then sees a familiar face from the past (Jenny) near a tree. He shrugs it off and goes back visiting.
23563172	/m/05qg0y6	The Wise Man's Fear	Patrick Rothfuss	2011-03-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03dw_3": "Heroic fantasy"}	 The book begins with the dawn of a new day in Kote's inn. After breakfast, Kvothe continues his story beginning with the admissions for the next university term. On the day of his interview, Ambrose slips him an alchemical potion which removes the ingester's moral inhibitions. As a result, he has to take his interviews later. To pay for his tuition, Kvothe borrows money from the moneylender Devi. Master Elodin allows Kvothe to join his new class on naming and subsequently convinces Master Lorren to allow Kvothe back into the Archives. Denna reveals that Ambrose has a ring that belongs to her. Kvothe plans to please Denna by breaking into Ambrose's room and stealing the ring back. However, Ambrose returns early, forcing Kvothe to leave by rushing out the window before he is able to steal the ring. Kvothe begins to experience odd problems with his body and concludes that he is the target of malfeasance, an attack from another wizard, akin to Voodoo-Practics. Though he first blames Ambrose, his friends convince him that it is more likely to be Devi, who extracted his blood as security against the loan. He confronts Devi, but loses the subsequent sympathetic battle. He then concludes that Ambrose has his blood, attempts to make a defensive device against sympathy called a gram, and succeeds after some difficulties. He also destroys his blood sample by setting fire to Ambrose's rooms with the help of his friends. Kvothe is then arrested for the incident in The Name of the Wind where he inadvertently attacked Ambrose by calling the name of the wind and breaking his arm. Though he is later cleared of all charges, it is suggested to him by Elxa Dal, among others, that he should leave the University for a few months. Count Threpe persuades him to go to Severen, where the powerful Vintish noble Maer Alveron has need of a talented musician. In Severen, the Maer reveals that he needs Kvothe's help to woo the Lady Meluan Lackless. Kvothe finds out that the Maer is being poisoned by his resident arcanist, Caudicus. He learns that she hates the Ruh because her sister ran off with one. Kvothe also finds Denna during one of his excursions to Severen-Low. He uses his feelings for her to write letters, songs and poems he then dedicates to Meluan. The wooing proves successful and Kvothe rises higher in the Maer's favor. The Maer persuades Kvothe to lead a party of four mecenaries, to get rid of bandits who were waylaying the Maer's tax collectors. One of the mercenaries, named Tempi, is an Adem, famous warriors of unequaled skill. Kvothe persuades him to teach him Ketan (a series of combat moves, similar to T'ai chi ch'uan) and the Lethani, the philosophy all Adem follow. The group eventually finds the bandits and, although heavily outnumbered, manages to kill them due to Kvothe´s clever use of sympathy. Their leader, who seems familiar to Kvothe and is indifferent to arrow wounds, escapes. While returning, they encounter Felurian, the mythical Fae women known for seducing men and keeping them until they die. Kvothe chases after her while his companions flee. Kvothe is initially seduced by Felurian, but he regains control of his mind and matches wills with Felurian. He calls her true name (although he believes himself to be calling the name of the wind at the time) and is able to temporarily throw off her magic. He composes half a song about her, and convinces Felurian to release him, so that he will be able to spread the song he has written about her among humans. Felurian agrees to let him go, provided he promises to come back. She weaves him a cloak of shadow, called a shaed, to keep him safe. While staying with Felurian, Kvothe meets the Cthaeh, a malevolent, omniscient oracle whose influence is known by the Fae to bring about disaster. Kvothe eventually leaves Felurian and catches up to the rest of his group. Although to his friends and other humans he has only been gone three days, it is hinted that he was gone much longer. On the road back to Severen, Kvothe and Tempi encounter a group of Adem mercenaries, who become angry with Tempi for teaching Kvothe the Ketan and the Lethani. Kvothe agrees to travel back with him to help defend Tempi's choice to his superior, Shehyn. When Kvothe arrives in Ademre, Shehyn agrees to apprentice Kvothe after testing him and appoints the teacher Vashet to teach Kvothe. Kvothe finally passes two tests, calling the name of the wind to pass one of them, and proves himself a member of the Adem. He earns himself a new name, Maedre (meaning either The Flame, The Thunder, or The Broken Tree), and a two-thousand year old sword called Saicere (meaning 'the broken breath'), although Kvothe renames it Caesura (meaning a pause or break in a song or a line of a poem). He then leaves for Severen. On his way to Severen, he runs into a traveling troupe, claiming to be Edema Ruh, but their odd behaviour makes him suspicious. After finding out that they have kidnapped and raped two girls from a nearby town, Kvothe poisons their food and kills the sick troupers during the night. Kvothe leaves their leader mortally wounded but alive and interrogates him. He discovers that the Ruh impersonators were masquerading as a troupe for cover. Kvothe leads the two traumatized girls back to their town and then resumes his journey to Severen. In Severen, he shares his theory about the Amyr with the Maer, who has come to the same conclusion: that the Amyr still exist, but are in hiding, and to protect themselves are expunging any information about themselves in any records they can find. The Maer and Meluan (who have been married in the meantime) show Kvothe the Lackless heirloom which is shut in a chest. Kvothe then reveals to them his actions after leaving the Adem. Kvothe becomes enraged after Meluan rants about the Ruh, and Kvothe reveals that he is also of the Ruh and consequently insults her by seeming to have intuited that a Ruh trouper had seduced her as well. The Maer becomes angry and asks him to leave Severen. However, for the services Kvothe has rendered, the Maer pardons Kvothe for any wrongdoing in the slaughter of the Edema Ruh impersonators, grants him a writ (not a full writ of patronage) allowing him to perform anywhere in Vintas under the Maer's name, and agrees to pay Kvothe's tuition at the University indefinitely. Kvothe returns to the University, where he learns that he was presumed dead. He makes a deal with the University bursar (treasurer) to drive up his own tuitions in return for half the tuition above ten talents. He also starts earning compensation for sales of his Bloodless device, which is his invention that protects the bearer from fired arrows. As a result, he achieves financial stability. He reduces his work at the Fishery, and uses the time to further his naming studies. Stories about his time with Felurian, the Adem and Trebon have become famous even in Imre and the University. During a trip to Tarbean, he saves Denna from an inability to breathe by calling the name of the wind, similar to what Abenthy did for Kvothe in Book 1. They reconnect to some degree, yet Kvothe's new experiences make him desirous of a more solid romantic connection, causing Denna to withdraw. Only when he presents her with her lost ring does she temper her anger. The two part on uncertain terms as she heads north while Kvothe remains at the University. During the present day, people stop by occasionally to make use of Chronicler's writing abilities. During one of these interludes, Chronicler gets one of the locals to tell a story about Kvothe to try to influence him to share the story of his arrest and subsequent trial, arguing that this is the first and most notorious story ever spread of Kvothe in which he learned Tema in a single day, but Kvothe makes up a story about him back with Bast's help and the Chronicler gives in. During another interlude, when Bast goes off to Shep's wake, two soldiers enter the inn to rob it. Kvothe steps forward to fight them but is badly beaten. When Bast returns, he helps to heal him. In the end, Bast leaves the inn and confronts the two soldiers at their campfire, having staged the entire thing in an attempt to wake Kvothe from his fighting stupor and it having failed spectacularly.
23563531	/m/057j4z	The Little Red Hen			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the tale, The Little Red Hen finds a grain of wheat, and asks for help from the other farmyard animals to plant it. However, no animal will volunteer to help her. At each further stage (harvest, threshing, milling the wheat into flour, and baking the flour into bread), the hen again asks for help from the other animals, but again she gets no assistance. Finally, the hen has completed her task, and asks who will help her eat the bread. This time, all the previous non-participants eagerly volunteer. However, she declines their help, stating that no one aided her in the preparation work, and eats it with her chicks, leaving none for anyone else. The moral of this story is that those who show no willingness to contribute to an end product do not deserve to enjoy the end product: "if any man will not work, neither let him eat."
23565653	/m/06w1jsc	Wondrous Strange		2008		 Kelley Winslow is a teenage actress who lives in New York. When the lead actress in their production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream gets injured, Kelley goes from understudy to star in an instant. In her first rehearsal, she forgets a few lines, ending in her going to the Central Park to practice. Meanwhile, Sonny Flannery, a Janus guard protecting the mortal realm, is hunting the Fae that passed through The Gate, the only way through the Otherworld and ours. He sees her as a Firework and is merely curious in what she really is. He starts to follow her and in the end she becomes furious that he won't stop bugging her and she yells at him. During her ranting, however, Sonny is hurtled across the rad by her fist and sees her with light encircling her. He notices it is great power. When she is done she walks off, and another of the Janus guard appear. Sonny asks him if her saw the bright light and he replies uncomfortably "Might have...". Just when she thinks things couldn't get any worse, they do. Having lived all her life hidden in the mortal realm, she is unknown to the fact that she is actually a Faerie princess, stolen from the Faerie realm as an infant. When Sonny discovers her true identity,an interlinking chain of events threaten to destroy both the realms, mortal as well as Faerie.
23569208	/m/036vmv	Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture	Douglas Coupland	1991-03-15	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Generation X is a framed narrative, like Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron by Boccaccio. The framing story is that of three friends—Dag, Claire, and the narrator, Andy—living together in the Mojave Desert in California. The tales are told by the various characters in the novel, which is arranged into three parts. Each chapter is separately titled rather than numbered, with titles such as "I Am Not A Target Market" and "Adventure Without Risk Is Disneyland". The locations of the novel was set circa 1990 Southern California in the then rapidly-growing and economic booming-turned-into-depressed communities of Palm Springs and the Inland Empire (California) region. Some characters were born and raised in L.A. and suburban Orange County, California. The first part of the novel takes place over the course of a picnic. Andrew, Dag, and Claire tell each other stories—some personal, others imagined—over the course of the day. Through these tales, the reader glimpses the characters' motivations and personalities. The initial group of characters is expanded in this section, which introduces stories from additional characters: Claire's boyfriend Tobias, Claire's friend and Dag's love interest Elvissa, Andy's brother Tyler, and Andy's boss and neighbour and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. MacArthur. Each character represents a cultural type; Elvissa is constantly stuck in the past, Tobias is a "yuppie", Tyler is a "global teen", and the neighbours represent members of an older generation. The frame is muted here, as the narrative draws back to reveal more of the main characters, while allowing for other characters' stories to be heard. In this section, the novel continues to pull back its focus, as Andy and Claire travel away from California. Again, the frame is enlarged to include additional characters. Claire travels to New York, while Andy takes a dreaded trip to visit his family. Through the characters' personal and mental journeys, more tales are told and more of the characters' personal stories are revealed.
23569537	/m/06w1rrh	The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet		2009	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is told from the perspective of twelve-year-old T.S. Spivet, a mapmaking enthusiast living on a ranch near Divide, Montana, a small village near Butte, Montana, practically on the continental divide. T.S.'s mother, whom he he consistently refers to as "Dr. Clair," is an entomologist preoccupied - or so it seems - with the search for a possibly nonexistent species of insect, the "tiger monk beetle". His father, an equally emotionally detached rancher with no understanding for the world of scientific investigation, solely judges - or so it seems - T.S. for his nonexistent cowboy abilities. T.S.'s younger brother, Layton, who followed his father's cowboy lifestyle and interests, was killed in a joint brotherly experiment that involved the scientific investigation of gun shooting. His elder sister, Gracie, is in her teenage years, prone to "awful girl pop" and violent mood swings. T.S.'s love for scientific research leads to a friendship with his mother's partner, who unbeknownst to the Spivets has sent several of T.S.'s works into various magazines and societies. One day, T.S. receives a call from a man at the Smithsonian Institution who, believing T.S. to be an adult scientist, informs him that he has won the prestigious Baird Award and is invited to give a talk at the Institution's ceremonies. Without telling his family, T.S. decides to run away from home to attend the event, which he will travel to by freighthopping. Hiding himself in a Winnebago that is being shipped, T.S. settles down for a lengthy journey, imagining the Winnebago to be a conversational companion along the way. The middle section of the novel consists largely of text from one of his mother's notebooks, which he took with him on impulse. In a surprise departure from Dr. Claire's scientific fixations, the notebook is a semi-fictional account of a Spivet ancestor who was herself a great researcher and cartographer. This reveals a side to his mother T.S. had not been aware of, and a mystery begins to form as he rides the rails.
23571315	/m/06w78dg	The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl	Belle de Jour	2005	{"/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl begins with Belle de Jour introducing herself as a "whore", then further explaining that she does not mean it metaphorically, and that she literally is a "whore". After the prologue the book begins in a diary format, with Belle explaining the clients she meets and her personal complications that become entwined with her job as a call girl. The average diary entries last little longer than a page and are always titled with the date, which is written in French, for example, the first diary entry reads "Samedi, le 1 Novembre", which translates into Saturday, 1 November. Each chapter is broken apart by the month the diary entries were written in, for example "Novembre" (November).
23573794	/m/06w2_sf	I Am a Werewolf Cub				 Ulf was bitten in his leg when stealing apples. He read the Book of Werewolves and understands he turns into a werewolf at full moon. His family notices that the previously timid Ulf is now talking back and sneaks out at night. sv:Jag är en varulvsunge
23573940	/m/06wcfgl	I Love You, Beth Cooper	Larry Doyle	2007	{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel"}	 At his high school graduation, valedictorian Denis Cooverman states to the entire gymnasium that he's had a crush on cheerleader Beth Cooper for six years. During the speech, he singles out several members of the class including the class bully and a pretty but shallow party girl, and tells his movie-quoting best friend Rich to admit that he's gay. Denis' speech upsets everyone except Beth, who thinks it was "sweet", giving Denis the courage to invite her to a party at his house that night. After the speech, it is revealed that Beth in fact has a boyfriend, an off duty army soldier named Kevin who threatens Denis. After his declaration, Denis' mother and father leave him and Rich alone at the house for their party, which no one attends, as they are social outcasts. Beth shows up in her tiny blue car with her friends Cammy and Treece (the group of three is known as "The Trinity") at Denis' house that evening. Things are awkward and become worse when Kevin shows up with his army buddies, and Denis and Rich are assaulted and Denis' house (the kitchen) is trashed. Beth and the Trinity help Denis and Rich get away. Beth is meant to be a dream girl, but has glaring imperfections that shatter Denis' fantasy. Throughout the novel the real Beth shows that she is nowhere near the perfect girl that Denis has imagined. They then travel out to Old Tobacco Road where Denis and Beth drink and converse about their roles in high school and why exactly Denis fell for Beth; he admits it was because she was pretty and he always sat behind her. Cammy, Treece, and Rich try to tip over a cow but fail miserably. The girls then proceed to tell a scary story to get the boys entranced then floor it. They eventually crash into Denis' parents car where his parents were having sex. The group then heads to Valli Wooly's (the shallow rich party girl) party. Denis, feeling uninvited does not accompany the Trinity into the party but decides to enter in anyway later. After some mishaps involving getting macked on by a fat girl, meeting the ugly girl he once made out with, he is again confronted by Kevin. Kevin and his gang then proceed to beat Denis up in front of the entire party in the most humiliating fashion, pounding him to the beat of the song playing. Beth then crashes Kevin's Humvee into the house itself and the group escapes. The group heads back to the high school where Beth, Cammy, and Treece show off their cheer leading act. After the act, the girls head to the showers and Rich and Denis follow. Rich immediately proceeds to enter in the showers with the girls but as Denis is taking off his pants, he sees Beth get out the shower. Rich and Denis fight off Kevin for a bit by using their wet towels to thrash them with; this they learned to do after a brutal beating Rich had in freshman year. The group escapes in Beth's original car which Kevin used to drive down to the high school from the party. After escaping, Beth reveals to Denis that she only came to his party because it would be "funny", leaving Denis disappointed. Denis gets a nose bleed and Treece gives him tampons to stick up his nostrils to stop the bleeding. Next, Beth tells Denis his shirt smells and forces him to take it off. Beth takes his shirt and holds it out the window to "air it off"; the shirt then flies out the window. They stop the car and Denis, in his underwear, goes to find his shirt, which he finds in a puddle of mud being eaten by a pair of raccoons. Denis gives up his attempt at retrieval and returns to the car in only his "lucky" (meaning holey) underwear. Beth lends him a poncho. The gang arrives at Treece's father's cabin where they all share a drink. Beth goes out with Denis for a smoke and to watch the moon. They talk about their futures and the fact that Beth is resigned to the fact that her life after this is not going to get much better but that Denis has so many opportunities available to him. Back at the cabin Cammy and Treece imply that Rich is gay. He continues to deny he is. So they decide to test him. Cammy grabs a condom and they have sex, where it's revealed that he isn't gay but the two girls might be as the sex is mostly Cammy and Treece having sex with Rich just being a bystander. They all share what they plan to do once the summer's over realizing they are going to be in the same dorm with similar majors. Beth and Denis talk about their plans after summer, and they make out. Beth breaks off before they go too far and Kevin and his gang show up again. After beating up Denis a bit more they are confronted by Rich who has a rifle belonging to Treece's father. However before they can be driven off the rifle falls apart revealing that it was not functioning. Kevin then forces Denis to row a boat out to the middle of the lake. Denis hits Kevin with an oar knocking him out of the boat and unconscious. Denis, fearing for his college admittance, jumps over and rescues Kevin revealing that he is a champion swimmer. He pulls Kevin to shore and prepares to administer CPR. Kevin however, recovers and subdues him yet again. Before anything more happens, the police arrive. Fighting stereotypes of dumb teenagers Rich, Treece and Cammy had called the police. The police bring the whole group in. Kevin's father forgoes charging Beth with stealing his car if they don't charge Kevin with attempting to kill Denis. They are taken home. Beth is dropped off at an empty house. Beth and Denis share a moment where Denis promises to marry Beth if she isn't fat at their 10 year reunion. On the way home, Rich reveals that he thinks he might be gay. When they get home Denis's parents are there and inform him that he will have to be punished. After his mom goes in, Denis tells his dad it was worth it. His father tells him not to mention that to his mother. In the conclusion, Denis grew seven inches in the summer and gained 40 pounds. Rich tried being gay and didn't much like being homosexual either and is waiting for the next thing. Treece and Cammy decided they were just good friends and they shouldn't drink so much around each other. Beth and Denis see each other a week before he intends to go off to school.
23574939	/m/06w2px5	The Mist in the Mirror: A Ghost Story	Susan Hill	1992		 Sir James Monmouth has travelled all his life. After the death of his parents he was raised by his guardian. Later he began to travel and in the story he arrives in England. He sees a young, pale ghostlike boy upon his arrival at the Cross Keys Inn. Strangely, he happens to see this ghost more often in the following months that he is in England. His goal is to gain as much information as possible about the great traveller Conrad Vane.
23590731	/m/06zld1r	What Katy Did Next				 The book opens by reintroducing the Carr family and the widow Mrs. Ashe. Mrs. Ashe has her nephew, Walter, over for a visit and it is discovered that he has scarlet fever. Anxious that her only daughter Amy should not contract the disease, Amy is sent to live with the Carrs where she builds up a particular rapport with the eldest daughter Katy. Following Walter's recovery, Mrs. Ashe decides that she should have a vacation to Europe and asks that Katy be her travel companion. Initially reluctant due to familial obligations, Katy is persuaded by her father to go and is given $300 for the trip. Before she begins her travels, Katy stops in Boston to visit her old friend Rose Red Browne from Hillsover. It is discovered that she has since gotten married to a man named Deniston and had a child by him. Whilst both ladies are affectionate for the baby, they disagree over the natural world which the self confessed "Bostonian" Rose regards with disdain while Katy is enamored by all things natural. A reunion of the Hillsover girls is organised in Rose's house with Mary Silver, Esther Dearbon, Ellen Gray, and Alice Gibbons in attendance. The girls reminisce about their time at Hillsover and it is discovered that what has happened to previous characters; Miss Jane is still teaching, Lilly Page is in Europe while Bella is teaching in India. After they meet up, Katy departs on a steamer to England with the Ashes and following a journey where all three experience bouts of seasickness, they eventually come within view of the Irish Coast and start their trip in Europe. Katy's experience in England (Chapter 3 Story Book England) involve her being perplexed by English culture, such as when she discovers a "fine day" in England is any day it's not raining and the English muffins Dickens commended in his books are really tasteless. She also does some sight-seeing.
23592479	/m/06zqrr6	Winter Hawk	Craig Thomas		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 The events of Winter Hawk transpire over a few days in which the Soviet Union will launch into orbit the first in a series of laser battle stations, the existence of which they have kept a closely guarded secret. The launch is meant to coincide with the signing of a new and apparently groundbreaking treaty dramatically reducing nuclear weapons to be kept by both sides, but excluding space based weapons such as the one the Soviets will be launching, mostly because none are known to exist. The Americans know of the weapon because a Soviet technician named Philip Kedrov has been supplying them information, operating under the code-name “Cactus Plant”. The Soviet space weapon places the Americans in a painful dilemma: they can neither sign a treaty that will dramatically cede the balance of power to the Soviet Union, nor can they back out of the treaty lacking proof of the Soviet weapon. The only alternative is a deep cover extraction mission of Kedrov and his evidence from the Soviet’s space launch complex, the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The mission, involving two stolen Soviet Mil Mi-24 helicopters to be flown by CIA pilots — one of whom is CIA pilot Mitchell Gant — is codenamed “Winter Hawk”. The story, which then shifts to Baikonur, reveals competing agendas within the Soviet camp. The Soviet civilian leadership has allowed development of the laser weapon, whose launch is codenamed “Linchpin”, to placate a military antagonized by military spending cuts. Unbeknownst to Soviet leaders, the Soviet military has its own plans for the weapon, including a live fire test, codenamed “Lightning”, against the American Space Shuttle Atlantis. The novel suggests “Lightning” as a prelude to an army-backed coup to seize control over the Soviet Union, even as the laser weapon will make the Soviet Union the world’s leading super power. KGB Colonel Dmitri Priabin, introduced as a minor character in Firefox, elevated to a more central role in Firefox Down and now the ranking KGB officer in Baikonur, nurses a painful grudge against Mitchell Gant due to the tragic events of Firefox Down. Like the reader, Priabin quickly learns of the existence of “Lightning” but not the details. The military has kept its plans secret by arranging fatal “accidents” for any civilians they suspect have learned of “Lightning”. He has also learned of Kedrov's treachery, and keeps him under surveillance. Priabin investigates the murders as a pretext to learn details of “Lightning” itself, which he correctly concludes is an illegal military mission. He also surveils Kedrov, suspecting that the Americans will try extracting him before the launch of the laser weapon, although he has no way of knowing that the mission will be flown by Mitchell Gant. Gant’s mission proves ill-fated from the start. The C-5 cargo plane carrying the helicopters and their crew to their staging point, suffers a fuel-system malfunction requiring the jettisoning of the helicopters on a remote beach — nearly destroying both of them. The helicopters are made flight-ready and the mission commences, only for one of the helicopters to be shot down over Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Gant narrowly avoids destruction over Afghanistan only to be captured once he reaches Baikonur and tries to extract Kedrov, falling into the hands of KGB officers who had been surveilling the turncoat engineer. Barely keeping himself from killing Gant, Priabin instead takes him into custody, then continues his investigation into “Lightning”. Priabin soon learns the truth, but he is unable to warn Moscow because an Army-imposed, pre-launch security lockdown has cut Baikonur off from the rest of the world. Realizing that the army will soon eliminate him as it has other obstacles, Priabin is forced to save Gant in order for the American to fly them both out of Baikonur along with evidence of “Lightning”. Using the KGB’s Mil Mi-2 helicopter, the two of them manage to get evidence of the laser weapon, but not before their helicopter is severely damaged by fire from a group of the army’s Mil Mi-24 helicopters. Gant barely escapes the Army patrols before he crash lands outside of Baikonur. With evidence of the weapon, Gant escapes on foot. Priabin, weighing his hatred for Gant against the implications for "Lightning", chooses to be captured by the army. Gant steals an Antonov An-2 biplane used for crop dusting at a nearby collective farm. He narrowly escapes army helicopters sent to capture him, but not before the Soviets have successfully launched their shuttle carrying the laser weapon. General Rodin, the army’s ranking officer, decides against immediately killing Priabin. It was Rodin’s son who revealed to Priabin the details of “Lightning” before being killed by subordinate officers acting against the general’s orders. Led to believe that the KGB drove his son to suicide, but suspecting his other officers nonetheless, Rodin keeps Priabin in his own custody, even as he orders a massive hunt for Gant. Emotionally unhinged by his son’s death, and his wife’s suicide immediately following it, Rodin is unable to keep Priabin from escaping before the laser weapon has been successfully placed in orbit. With the help of Kedrov, Priabin finds the covert tracking station the army will use to control the laser satellite, and sabotages its orbital uplink. With his plane shot down by Soviet fighters near the Turkish border, Gant is forced to make the journey on foot while being chased by Soviet troops. Having sent his special code over the air before bailing out, Gant’s presence is now known to the Americans as well, who send their own helicopters across the border to save him. The novel closes with the signing of the new arms reduction treaty, which the Soviets have graciously amended to include space-based weapons.
23592927	/m/06zll1w	The Declaration	Gemma Malley	2008-05-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the year 2040 scientists created a drug (called Longevity) to prevent the aging process and stop dying. However, because people are still being born yet no one is dying, the Earth quickly becomes too crowded. Therefore, in the year 2080, anyone who wants to take Longevity is forced to sign The Declaration, agreeing that if they take Longevity, they will not have any children. Of course, there are people who resist, and refuse not to bear children. The children of those individuals are offensively referred to as "Surplus". In some countries, the Surpluses are killed the moment they are born, but in countries such as Britain, they are taken from their parents at birth to live in "Surplus Halls" where they are taught that their existence is a crime against Nature, and that they ought to work hard if they want to redeem for their parents' sins and become a "Valuable Asset", in which case they would be able to work for "The Legals" and be partially free. Surplus Anna is nearly 15 years old. She lives in Grange Hall (a surplus hall), and is a prefect. She was taken away from her parents at the age of two and now, in year 2140, she has learned to hate them for bringing her to this world. Anna has already worked for a legal lady for a month (Julia Sharpe), as a part of her pending process, by which she ought to become Valuable Asset the moment she comes of age. Mrs Sharpe has given her a small pink diary in which Anna writes every night, but is forced to hide it away in the bathroom, in order not to get in trouble with Mrs Pincent, the House Matron in charge of Grange Hall. Then one day, Peter arrives at Grange Hall, and Anna's world is turned upside down. Peter defies everything she believes in, insists upon calling her Anna Covey, and keeps telling her that he knows her parents, and they love her. Anna is at first annoyed with him, but soon she becomes intrigued by his bold attitude and bravery. When Peter offers for them to run away, to find her parents, Anna is torn between her curiosity and the rules she has been following her whole life. She then accepts Peters invitation to run away from Grange Hall, leading to a lot of trouble. They then have a close call with the Catchers and are helped by a lady named Julia Sharpe. The plot proceeds to Anna reuniting with her parents and later, them killing themselves to make her, and her brother Ben, legal. Meanwhile, Margaret Pincent kills Peter's father, making him legal as well. The two legals arouse a lot of suspicion leading to the next book, The Resistance.
23593383	/m/06zm3dv	The Resistance	Gemma Malley	2008-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book starts off with Peter sitting in a room talking to a counselor. This is to see how he is getting on in the outside world as a "Legal". He tells the counselor he has finally agreed to go work for his grandfather who makes Longetivity drugs which lets people live forever. The counselor is thrilled but Peter is only going to work there to help the Underground, an organization which believes that the Longevity drug is evil and is trying to destroy it.
23597272	/m/06zrv1v	Atala	François-René de Chateaubriand	1801	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The frame story: A young disillusioned Frenchman, René, has joined an Indian tribe and married a woman named Céluta. On a hunting expedition, one moonlit night, René asks Chactas, the old man who adopted him, to relate the story of his life. At the age of seventeen, the Natchez Chactas loses his father during a battle against the Muscogees. He flees to St Augustine, Florida, where he is raised in the household of the Spaniard Lopez. After 2½ years, he sets out for home, but is captured by the Muscogees and Seminoles. The chief Simagan sentences him to be burnt in their village. The women take pity on him during the weeks of travel, and each night bring him gifts. Atala, the half-caste Christian daughter of Simagan, tries in vain to help him escape. On arrival at Apalachucla, his bonds are loosed and he is saved from death by her intervention. They run away and roam the wilderness for 27 days before being caught in a huge storm. While they are sheltering, Atala tells Chactas that her father was Lopez, and he realises that she is the daughter of his erstwhile benefactor. Lightning strikes a tree close by, and they run at random before hearing a church bell. Encountering a dog, they are met by its owner, Père Aubry, and he leads them through the storm to his idyllic mission. Aubry's kindness and force of personality impress Chactas greatly. Atala falls in love with Chactas, but cannot marry him as she has taken a vow of chastity. In despair she takes poison. Aubry assumes that she is merely ill, but in the presence of Chactas she reveals what she has done, and Chactas is filled with anger until the missionary tells them that in fact Christianity permits the renunciation of vows. They tend her, but she dies, and the day after the funeral, Chactas takes Aubry's advice and leaves the mission. In an epilogue it is revealed that Aubry was later killed by Cherokees, and that, according to Chactas's granddaughter, neither René nor the aged Chactas survived a massacre during an uprising. The full account of Chactas's wanderings after Atala's death, in Les Natchez, gives a somewhat different version of their fates.
23599361	/m/06zr5yn	Dolores		1977		 From the cover: It is the intense, tragic story of Dolores Ryan, the beautiful and fashionable young widow of an assassinated American President. After his death, Dolores finds herself too poor to sustain her extravagant tastes and too lonely to be fulfilled as a woman. The novel details her quest for money and for men.
23601833	/m/06znxqx	One Second After	William R. Forstchen	2009-03-17	{"/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 John Matherson is a professor of history at the local Montreat Christian College. A retired U.S. Army Colonel, he had moved to Black Mountain with his late wife, a native of the town, when she was dying from cancer. The widowed father of two daughters and a collegiate professor, Matherson is well-respected within the community. At 4:50 p.m. (16:50) Eastern Standard Time, on the first day described in the book's narration, the phone lines in the town suddenly go dead along, with all the electrical appliances. Just a second before, everything worked; but now, just one second after, virtually nothing seems to work. Within hours it becomes clear that this is no ordinary blackout for the residents of Black Mountain, and they come to the realization that the power may remain off for a very long time. Every modern electrical device is disabled, destroyed by what Matherson is beginning to suspect is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States by unknown attackers. The contiguous United States has, in an instant, been thrown back into the 19th century. However, the narration in the book points out that 21st century people are not at all equipped to live under 19th century conditions. Later on, Matherson remarks that the survivors have the technology of the early 16th century. Matherson's immediate concern is his twelve year old daughter, who has Type 1 diabetes. Without a constant supply of insulin, which requires refrigeration, she will die. The story's focus shifts quickly to how the community, as a whole, reacts. Matherson is a respected outsider, his military experience, standing as collegiate professor, and his level-headedness are appreciated by the town's residents. There are hundreds of stranded motorists whose cars and trucks have simply rolled to a halt on the nearby Interstate highway. Those people make their way into town, where some of them are clearly unwanted by the locals. There is an immediate growing concern about food; the leaders of the community soon begin wondering how these several thousand people going to be fed for any appreciable length of time. No refrigerators or freezers are running. No trucks are bringing in fresh supplies every day. Concerns immediately arise about the nursing home in town where Matherson's elderly cancer-stricken father-in-law resides. The elderly and frail need refrigerated medicines, and many require constant nursing care. The EMP has disabled the nursing home's standby generator, which cannot be started. There are no AM/FM radio broadcasts, no television, no Internet, and thus, no communication with anyone outside the town is possible. However, two months later, a working antique telephone is set up to connect Black Mountain with the nearby town of Swannanoa, North Carolina. The family of Matherson's late wife are small-scale car collectors who happen to own a 1959 Ford Edsel, in addition to a Ford Mustang. The two cars are so old that the EMP did not affect them because they have no modern EMP-sensitive electronics, such as transistors. Another local resident owns a vintage airplane that later becomes very useful, as it too is so old that it has no vulnerable electronics. Without modern sanitation and supplies, diseases surge. Minor wounds become seriously infected, and the community has soon exhausted its supply of antibiotics. The social order in Black Mountain begins to break down. It is too late in the year to plant and harvest crops, which is a moot point as few people in the area know how to farm anyway. Suddenly, skills that haven't been needed in several generations have become critically necessary. The town must organize its young and able-bodied to defend itself against a marauding band of cannibals, who eventually attack the community, resulting in a violent and deadly battle. After a while, the extreme shortages of food require difficult choices regarding rationing; who gets how much food, and which people are to be deliberately underfed to the point of starvation. Increasingly, Matherson is forced by circumstances to assume a growing leadership role as the situation continues to deteriorate. Matherson, along with a few others, try their best to maintain a balance between the multiple necessities of rationing scarce resources, maintaining law and order in addition to individual freedom, as well as personal responsibility and moral behavior in the midst of deeply deteriorating physical and social conditions. One year later, the U.S. military arrives to rebuild and aid the town. It is revealed that the EMP that devastated the contiguous United States was generated by three nuclear missiles launched from offshore container ships. One was launched from the Gulf of Mexico and detonated in the upper atmosphere over Utah, Kansas, and Ohio. The container ship was sunk by an explosion immediately after the missile launch; no indication remained of who was directly responsible for the attacks. Another missile was fired from off the Icelandic coast and detonated over Russia. Another nuclear missile was detonated over Japan and South Korea. The U.S. government is said to have believed that an alliance between Iran and North Korea was responsible for the attacks, and that the United States attacked Iran and North Korea with nuclear weapons in retaliation. It was also mentioned that the U.S. withdrew all of its overseas military forces back to the United States to aid in rebuilding and humanitarian work. It is also revealed that the EMP attack brought down Air Force One, killing the U.S. President. One year after the EMP attack, the United States is described as having 30 million survivors, down ninety percent from an original pre-attack population of 300 million. The People's Republic of China is occupying the U.S. west coast with 500,000-strong occupation force, and Mexico has Texas and the American Southwest under military occupation, as a protectorate against China. The book also describes the increasingly intimate relationship Matherson develops with a single and child-less nurse, Makala Turner, who was stranded by the pulse. The book's premise sets the stage for a series of "die-offs". The first takes place within a week (those in hospitals and assisted living). After about 15 days, salmonella-induced typhoid fever and cholera set in from eating tainted food, drinking tainted water, and generally poor sanitation. Americans have lived in an environment of easy hygiene, sterilization, and antibiotics, making them prime targets for third-world diseases. The lack of bathing and poor diet will lead to rampant feminine hygiene infections; deep cuts, rusty nail punctures, and dog bites go untreated with antibiotics, tetanus shots, or rabies treatment as more die from common infections. Critical medical supply and food thieves and others are executed in public as enforcement of martial law. In 30 days, cardiac and other drug-dependent patients die off. In 60 or so days, the pacemaker and Type I diabetics patients begin to die off (although John's young daughter manages to survive until Day 163). The 5% of population having severe psychotic disorders that no longer have medication will re-create bedlam. Jury-rigged wood-burning stoves lead to carbon monoxide deaths and fires that cannot be controlled due to the lack of a fire department. Then, refugees from the cities show up looking for food and shelter and the fight over scarce resources leads to confrontation, home invasion, and more violence-related die-offs. The community becomes an inviting target for escaped prisoners and organized gangs and more violence-related die-off. Ration cards are issued to conserve the little remaining food; regardless, the community slowly starves, with the elderly the first to die off. Next, parents starve themselves to save their children. Throughout this period suicides are common. After a year, approximately 20% of the initial population has "survived". The "average" die-off for the country was 90% leaving 30 million surviving out of original 300 million US population. The food-rich Midwest had the highest survival rate with a 50% die-off. New York City and Florida had a 95% die-off from infighting among their large populations, low levels of cultivated land, high elderly population, a lack of air conditioning, rampant transmission of disease, and natural disasters such as hurricanes.
23602749	/m/06zjr38	Harnessing Peacocks	Mary Wesley	1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hebe lost her parents in an air crash when she was a baby and she was brought up by her grandparents. When she, to her surprise, learns that she is pregnant, her grandparents and older siblings arrange an abortion to eliminate the social nuisance. Hebe overhears their plans and flee her grandparents´ home for good. Twelve years later Hebe is living alone in a small town in the West Country and her son, Silas, is attending a posh private school. To make a living Hebe is working as a cook for elderly ladies and supplements the income by sleeping with their sons and sons-in-law. In the meantime forces are threatening her lucrative and well structured life. Silas's father (unknown to Hebe) is looking for her; Silas is on vacation with the sons of one of her clients; the local hatter falls in love with Hebe; Silas hates his school; one of her clients wants to marry her and begins stalking her and Hebe's grandparents get involved in a road accident.
23609547	/m/06zmzng	A Key to the Suite	John D. MacDonald			 We are introduced to Floyd Hubbard as his flight descends toward an airport in an unnamed, sunny and hot East coast beach city. Hubbard will be attending a convention as a representative of American General Machine (AGM). Fred “Freddy” Frick, local Assistant District Manager, is aware of Hubbard’s true reason for attending the convention. Frick decides to set up Hubbard in the hope that it will soften his report to the corporate office, and protect his job. Frick meets with Cory Barlund, an expensive and selective prostitute, and together they decide the best way to get to Hubbard would be for her to pose as a freelance writer doing a story on local conventions. She will seduce Hubbard, then “make some horribly slutty embarrassing scene in front of all the people he most wants not to know about his sneaky little romance,” and this, Frick hopes, will be enough to send Hubbard back to the corporate headquarters with his tail between his legs. Later, Hubbard circulates at the company hospitality suite and is introduced to Cory. Through many cocktail conversations, we learn that Hubbard is well-read, considerate, and uneasy with his administrative duties within the corporation, preferring to be the metallurgist he had been before. At dinner in the banquet hall, he spots Cory who appears to be fighting off the advances of various men from all sides. Eventually he rescues her, and they leave, exchanging stories about their lives. Hubbard is happily married with children, Cory is divorced, has one child “defective, institutionalized,” has money, and lives alone, “and [tries] to like it.” Before the night is over they kiss and the evening ends abruptly, Cory feigning guilt, Hubbard suffering the real thing. Cory does not want to go through with the plan to blackmail Hubbard, but is convinced by Alma, her madame, that she not only is having the same second-thoughts she usually does, but that she “wouldn’t want to have to send Ernie around to straighten [her] out again.” The threat works, and we see Cory for the first time not in control of her circumstances. She assures Alma she will go through with the plan. Back at the convention, Cory convinces Hubbard she needs to change some film for her camera in his room, and there she seduces him. Afterward, Cory is cruel to Hubbard, about his wife and about his fall from grace. Though Hubbard doesn’t know this, she had thought that he was different than other men and would not succumb to her charms. After they argue, she leaves, assuring him he’ll come back for more. The next day, she taunts Hubbard at a convention party at the pool, and he rebuffs her advances. Later that evening, Hubbard returns to his room and finds Cory there, nude and in his shower. He rebuffs her again, and now Cory softens. She tells Hubbard about Frick’s plan to employ “soft blackmail” to keep his reports positive, and explains what happened in her life to lead her to what she has become today. Hubbard leaves Cory in his room and proceeds to get visibly drunk among the rest of the conventioneers. Cory drifts off to sleep in Hubbard’s bed. Meanwhile, one of the men Cory had rejected earlier, Dave Daniels, has gotten very drunk and extracted Hubbard’s room key from him by force. Hubbard, drunk himself, passes out in a hallway. In Hubbard’s room, Daniels finds Cory, rapes and kills her. After sobering up some, he sets it up to look like she fell in the shower and attempts to make his escape via the balcony. He slips and falls eight stories to his death. Because the hotel is such a large part of the local economy, and because the police are unsympathetic to “one dead flooze” they decide to call both deaths accidental and unconnected. All involved are cleared of any wrongdoing. Later, Hubbard makes his report over the phone to the corporate honchos while Jesse Mulaney sits in the room listening. Mulaney has got to go, he’s “too limited for the job.” Mulaney accuses Hubbard of enjoying his job as hatchet man, and Hubbard suspects he might be right. On his flight home, Hubbard dreams of Cory pulling his heart from his chest, and despite his protestations to the contrary, he knows he has already lost it.
23616820	/m/06zktr5	Le Sang noir	Louis Guilloux	1935		 One day in 1917 an aging philosophy tutor, nicknamed Cripure, feels unable to give advice to a student who is departing for the front in World War I. Amidst the horror of the war, he feels increasing disgust at life. He remembers how, years ago, he lost his wife. He is now living alone, supported only by Maia, his lazy housekeeper. His youthful promise as a writer and thinker has long since evaporated, and his body is becoming disturbingly abnormal as his feet become excessively large due to an illness. He hates himself, his colleagues and his students. He takes a class at which the students play up. In the afternoon he consoles himself with drink. As the evening wears on he learns about disasters and local tragedies, deaths, robberies and betrayals which convince him of the irredeemable corruption of humanity. French soldiers are becoming mutinous as the war continues without hope of an end. Cripure becomes involved in an altercation at the railway station as disaffected soldiers riot. He hits a jingoistic "patriot" and is challenged to a duel, which he accepts. Convinced that he will be killed, he writes a will. To his surprise local people rally round to support him, including his housekeeper and old friends. Cripure's challenger is discovered to be a hypocrite and is forced to back off. Saved from death, Cripure is more disturbed by the new evidence of human solidarity than he was by the consolation of despair. Unable to imagine a new life, he shoots himself.
23636345	/m/06zq386	Fire				 A fundamentalist Christian US President, Paul Green, is unhinged by the accidental death of his wife while she is vacationing in the Soviet Union, and attempts to provoke a nuclear war and thus usher in Armageddon and the Rapture. The expected nuclear holocaust doesn't occur, due to massive malfunctioning in both US and Soviet arsenals, and the US Armed Forces mostly refusing to obey his commands. One bomb goes off in Kansas City. Meanwhile, a genetic engineering research facility has developed a strain of bacteria that can reanimate fossilized tissues from remaining DNA. Due to a bomb explosion at the facility, the bacteria is spread in the area around the facility, animating a dead dog. This occurs while ashes from a fossil trilobite that had been reanimated, then incinerated, by the head researcher, are also loose. He had left the facility with the vial containing the ashes, and died in a fire, with the ashes, having been poured on his body by an angry drug addict (mistaking the vial for drugs), spreading the bacterial infection from a second epicenter. The bacteria turns out to be immune to fire.
23640455	/m/06zlfq5	The Heart of a Distant Forest	Philip Lee Williams		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Retired junior college history professor Andrew Lachlan has returned to his family home on a lake in north central Georgia to spend the last year of his life. Diagnosed with a terminal disease, he has decided to forego life-extending treatments so he can focus on learning what he feels he does not yet know about the world. With strong interests in Native American history and the natural world, he begins a journal that chronicles his last year. He lives alone, his wife have died some time before, and he looks forward to solitude, but a young country boy, Willie Sullivan, comes into his life. Willie’s world is cramped and difficult, and he brings to Andrew a kind of learning he’s never had before. At the same time, Andrew begins to teach Willie about the life beyond Shadow Pond, where Andrew lives. Andrew also reconnects with Callie McKenzie, a woman he loved years earlier and who is now a widow herself. Each begins to see in the other reflections of the life they once led. As Andrew’s life draws toward its inevitable end, he begins to find the edge of a new transcendence and an understanding of how generations learn and pass on the best of what they know and feel.
23646456	/m/06zp6xq	Bangkok Haunts				 Detective Sonchai, of the Royal Thai Police, is a former accessory to murder, and a former Buddhist monk. A video is mailed to him anonymously.It is a snuff film of Damrong, a woman he once loved obsessively. It turns out Damrong has masterminded her own death, and the recording of it, with proceeds going to her brother, a Buddhist monk.
23648471	/m/06zkpd_	An Eye for an Eye	Anthony Trollope			 Fred Neville, a lieutenant of cavalry and heir to the earldom of Scroope, woos and then seduces the beautiful Kate O’Hara. Kate lives with her mother in genteel poverty in an isolated cottage near the cliffs of Moher in western Ireland. News of the romantic entanglement quickly reaches Scroope Manor, and Fred is summoned back to Dorsetshire where the earl extracts a firm undertaking that Fred will not marry Kate O’Hara under any circumstances, despite any promises he has made to the girl. Once back in Ireland, Fred is confronted at his barracks by Mrs. O’Hara, demanding to know when he intends to marry her daughter, who is carrying his baby. He is shamed into agreeing to visit Kate, but that evening word arrives that the old Earl has died, and that Fred is now the Earl of Scroope. Fred realizes that marriage to Kate O’Hara is out of the question as her background would make her quite unacceptable in society. He resolves to confront Mrs. O’Hara and her unfortunate daughter. The climax of the novel takes place between the young earl and Mrs. O’Hara on the cliffs above the cottage. Whilst acknowledging the promises he made to Kate, Fred steadfastly refuses to make her Countess of Scroope. A frenzied Mrs. O’Hara attacks the lord, driving him backwards over the cliff edge to his death. Realizing she has killed the man her daughter loves, she instantly falls insane. Fred Neville’s brother, Jack, inherits the earldom and pays for Mrs. O’Hara’s incarceration in an English mental asylum where she endlessly repeats the words “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Is it not the law?”
23648679	/m/06zsj54	The Book from Baden Dark				 Three years have passed since Marcel defeated Mortregis, the great dragon of war, and more than a year since the Battle of Cadell. One a mountainside in Elster, Bea, who has lived among the elves all this time, longs to see her human friends again. When strange creatures disturb the tranquility of the mountain forests her grandfather disappears, she calls for Marcel's help. Together with his cousin, Fergus, they travel into the forbidden underground world of Baden Dark on a rescue mission. But Marcel senses an ancient evil in Baden Dark and becomes determined to free all of Elster from its threat. Forever. The challenge will test his growing power as a sorcerer and even success may come at a terrible price. Bea is not convinced by his ambitions and when Marcel betrays her with his magic, he makes a decision that may keep them apart forever.
23650374	/m/06zn8qt	The Asylum Seeker	Arnon Grünberg	2003		 Christian Beck, a translator of technical manuals, has concluded that life consists of nothing but self-deception and illusions, and decides to devote his time to unmasking all illusions, false hopes, and high ideals. He denounces all deception in his friends and family and promises his own unmasking as a finale; swearing off all personal desire, he now dedicates his life to the happiness of his girlfriend, "Bird", a former prostitute. The couple lived for a time in Eilat, Israel, where Beck was a regular customer to the brothel and Bird was sleeping with ugly, deformed men. Back in Europe, it becomes clear that she is suffering from a fatal disease, and before she dies agrees to marry an asylum seeker from Algeria so he can attain permanent residence. Beck protests initially but later agrees to the marriage. The asylum seeker also gratifies Bird sexually, and a strange ménage à trois is the result.
23661021	/m/06zt7jt	The Blood of Others	Simone de Beauvoir			 In German-occupied France, Jean Blomart sits by a bed in which his lover Hélène lies dying. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about both characters and their relationship to each other. As a young man filled with guilt about his privileged middle-class life, Jean joins the Communist Party and breaks from his family, determined to make his own way in life. After the death of a friend in a political protest, for which he feels guilty, Jean leaves the Party and concentrates on trade union activities. Hélène is a young designer who works in her family's confectionary shop and is dissatisfied with her conventional romance with her fiancé Paul. She contrives to meet Jean and, though he initially rejects her, they form a relationship after she has had an abortion following a reckless liaison with another man. Caring for her happiness, Jean tells Hélène he loves her even though he believes that he does not. He proposes and she accepts. When France enter the Second World War, Jean, conceding the need for violent conflict to effect change, becomes a soldier. Hélène intervenes against his will to arrange a safe posting for him. Angry with her, Jean breaks their relationship. As the German forces advance towards Paris, Hélène flees and witnesses the suffering of other refugees. Returning to Paris, she briefly takes up with a German who could advance her career, but soon sees what her countrymen are suffering. She also witnesses the roundup of Jews. Securing the safety of her Jewish friend Yvonne leads Hélène back to Jean who has become a leader in a Résistance group. She is moved to join the group. Jean has reconnected with his father with the common goal to liberate France from Germany. His mother however is less impressed by the lives lost to the Resistance. Hélène is shot in a resistance activity and during Jean's night vigil at her side, he examines his love for Hélène and the wider consequences of his actions. As morning dawns, Hélène dies and Jean decides to continue with acts of resistance.
23664310	/m/06zmx5_	Bougainville	F. Springer	1981		 The narrator, Bo, is a middle-aged diplomat somewhat disenchanted with his life, who finds himself, stationed in Bangladesh in 1973, reconstructing the life of his childhood friend Tommie. After they got reacquainted at a class reunion, Tommie drowned himself in the Bay of Bengal and left Bo with a collection of papers which, beside autobiographical material by Bo, also contains the memoirs of his grandfather, a frustrated idealist who left by boat for the Dutch Indies in the early 1900s, and managed to bed Mata Hari on the way. The novel combines the three plotlines of Bo's account of his friendship with Tommie and his work in Bangladesh, which he perceives as futile; Tommie's account, a success story which ends in suicide; and the reflections of Tommie's grandfather.
23681604	/m/06zl3ly	Collision			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Ben Forsberg is an independent contractor who has buried himself in his work after the death of his wife. Everything changes when two government agents turn up on his door to question him for a murder involving a notorious assassin.
23681673	/m/06zjps4	Black Butterfly	Mark Gatiss		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It is 1953, shortly after the coronation of Elizabeth II. Box is now nearing retirement, and has also been left with an unexpected offspring, Christmas Box. However, he discovers that elderly pillars of the British establishment are meeting unexpected deaths through participation in reckless risk taking and accidents. He tracks the perpetrators to Istanbul, is assisted by Turkish-Geordie double agent Whitley Bey and meets Afro-Japanese gay agent Kingdom Kum, and also that the aforementioned figures were poisoned by a malignant chemical derived from the eponymous insect. From there, he travels to Kingston, Jamaica, where he meets the chief culprit behind his misadventures- the progeny of an old enemy, who is using a "New Scout Movement" to mask his mass poisoning schemes. With that resolved, Box is knighted, and renews the acquaintance of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, whom he once met at a party on Armistice Day 1918.
23698283	/m/06zr4_n	Looking for Rachel Wallace	Robert B. Parker	1980	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Spenser is hired to protect a lesbian, feminist activist, the eponymous Rachel Wallace. After his protecting gets in the way of her protesting, she fires him. Shortly afterwards, she is kidnapped. Though no longer officially employed to protect her, Spenser feels duty-bound to find her.
23698466	/m/06zmtlv	The Princess and the Unicorn				 This novel follows two separate characters: Princess Eleanor of England and a young fairy named Joyce. Joyce lives in Swinley Forest with a community of other fairies who rely on the forest's unicorn for survival. But one day, Joyce follows the unicorn to the edge of the forest and is spotted by Princess Eleanor. The Princess chases her inside and finds the unicorn, only to take home with her to Swinley Castle. Knowing it's her responsibility to retrieve the unicorn, Joyce sets out on a journey to bring the unicorn home. But things get a little more complicated when the Princess takes the unicorn with her to London. Meanwhile, the Princess isn't living the dream life like most little girls would assume. Instead she rarely gets to see her parents, who are too busy with their affairs to tuck her in at night. And her once lovable nanny is brewing a deceptive get-rich-quick scheme behind the Princess's back.
23713951	/m/07l1r	The Left Hand of Darkness	Ursula K. Le Guin	1969	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02_w8": "Feminist science fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Genly Ai, a native of the planet Terra (Earth), is an envoy from the Ekumen, an organization of more than eighty worlds, representing 3,000 countries, spanning one hundred light years from border to border, whose purpose is to develop commerce, communications, and, possibly, mystical unity. Ai's mission is to convince the country of Karhide on the distant planet called Gethen to join the Ekumen. His story of that mission consists mainly of his own observations with interpolated chapters of Karhide tales and myths, Ekumen data, sayings from Orgoreyn (Karhide's neighbor), and excerpts from the diary of Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, prime minister of Karhide to mad King Argaven XV. The planet Gethen is called Winter by the Ekumen because it is in the grip of an Ice Age. Ai is constantly challenged by the unrelenting cold, by the Karhide custom of shifgrethor (a nuanced system of dignity-preserving conversational tactics), and by the androgynous nature of all the people who populate Winter. Estraven's androgynous nature further obscures him to Ai. Although all of Winter's androgynes are referred to as "he," the fact is they are neither "he" nor "she" until they enter kemmer, a state of estrus lasting a few days a month, analogous to a menstrual cycle but with an unreasoning urge to mate. Then, depending on the chemistry between partners, one will develop as a male, the other as a female. The same person can be a child-bearing mother to some children and a father to others. Just as Ai struggles to comprehend the sexlessness of the Gethen, the Gethen regard Ai's fixed gender, and his claims of an entire civilization divided into male and female, as anomalous and disturbing; indeed, Ai is considered a "pervert" (a creature always in kemmer). Their androgynous biology, which eliminates male dominance, female dependency or childrearing, and sexual tension, is the underpinning for the culture and politics on Winter, a planet that has no word for war and no experience of it. Yet the two countries of Karhide and Orgoreyn seem to be on the brink of war over disputed territory. Estraven is exiled as a traitor when he is outmaneuvered by a more bellicose faction, and given three days to leave Karhide under pain of death. He flees to Orgoreyn, a Soviet-like bureaucracy where his lack of proper papers condemns him to the life of a factory worker. Finally he is discovered by some Commensals, politicians of high status somewhat like senators, and introduced into the socialist politics of Orgoreyn. Ai also travels to Orgoreyn. Since the King of Karhide has rejected his proposal to join the Ekumen, he thinks perhaps the neighboring country will be interested. Orgoreyn is considerably different from Karhide, a bureaucracy compared to a monarchy; Orgoreyn's Yomesh religion denies the dark yet is an offspring of Karhide's Handdara which espouses both light and dark for "[l]ight is The Left Hand of Darkness "; Orgoreyn's people are supposedly more progressive and yet they live under a corrupt political system with the darkness of secret police and concentration camp prisons and, on the whole, have less humane values than the people of Karhide. Although Estraven tries to warn Ai of the shifting politics, again Ai doesn't understand. He ends up being betrayed by a politician with ties to the secret police and is taken away in a truck with other unfortunates to a prison, cynically called a Voluntary Farm. All are naked, freezing, and hungry. Once imprisoned, Ai has little to look forward to until he is rescued through the daring of Estraven. Unfortunately, the road back to Karhide is over the Gobrin Ice. Ai and Estraven battle the snow and ice, glacier and crevasse, wind and night. Through cooperation, for Ai is physically superior to Estraven while Estraven has superior survival skills, the two become closer. Ai realizes that while Estraven is a forced exile, he himself has chosen to exile himself from his family, friends, and, in fact, several generations by being a space traveler. Ai was born on Earth 127 years ago, but because of timejumping is not quite 30. Ai teaches Estraven telepathy, or mindspeech. Estraven hears Ai's voice as that of his dead brother Arek to whom he swore kemmering. Although incest between siblings is not taboo, they are forbidden to swear allegiance for life. Ai begins to understand Estraven better. When Estraven goes into kemmer, although both avoid a sexual relationship, Ai sees the full womanly side of Estraven and finally understands his friend as a complete person, and, by extension, understands the androgynous people of Gethen. When the two return to Karhide, the exiled Estraven is discovered, and as he skis to the Orgoreyn border, he skis straight into the guards who shoot him, a seeming suicide. This too is a Karhide taboo. Estraven dies in Ai's arms, mindspeaking the name of his dead brother. Ai is successful in convincing the King to join the Ekumen, but when the crew from the spaceship alight, Ai is repulsed by their overt sexuality. In the final chapter he visits Estraven's family who are distraught because Estraven is still considered a traitor. Ai had not cleared his name as he promised, because he didn't want to jeopardize his mission, Gethen's entry into the Ekumen, a mission for which Estraven gave his life. However, Estraven's son Sorve by his now-dead brother shows the same kind of curiosity as his father, the kind which characterizes human progress: he asks Ai to tell him about other worlds and other lives he has seen.
23715515	/m/06zqb6s	The Last of the Vostiaks				 The central character is a Siberian native, which has been prisoner in a Gulag who speaks a language that has almost disappeared, one that keeps the last vestige of a vanished sound, the lateral fricative with labiovelar appendix. A Russian studious gets to understand him and wants to show him to a congress on Uralic languages in Helsinki. However, a purist Finnish professor attempts to prevent the innocent Siberian appearance as a living proof of the philological connection between the Finnish language and the American natives. The plot is complicated by a Lapon pimp, country cottages with sauna, vacation boats in the Baltic Sea, and sometimes the narration takes a rowdy tone with reminiscences of Wilt by Tom Sharpe. ca:L'últim dels vostiacs (novel·la) it:L'ultimo dei Vostiachi (eng: The Last of the Vostyachs)
23718309	/m/06zlm3s	The Looney: An Irish Fantasy	Spike Milligan	1987	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The principal protagonist of the novel is Mick Looney, an Irish construction worker from Kilburn, London, who comes to the conclusion that he is the rightful King of Ireland. The first portion of the novel is set in Kilburn as Looney's fantasy of royal descent takes hold. He purchases a second hand chair to be his royal throne while arranging his return to Ireland. There are a number of subplots featuring various eccentric people he has dealings with, the main one concerning two illegal immigrants from India who become Looney's tenants. The second, larger, portion of the novel is set in and around the fictional Irish village of Drool, where Looney goes to research his royal claim. While doing this he takes a job as a handyman at the local castle, from which a valuable racehorse is stolen. After a number of subplots concerning the eccentric residents of Drool and its castle, Looney recovers the racehorse and receives a large cash reward, much of which he accidentally burns and the remainder of which he spends in pub buying drinks for the villagers. Having reconnected with his Irish roots, but realising that his quest for wealth and status is futile, he returns to Kilburn and sells his "throne".
23722853	/m/06zng6z	Chasing the Bear	Robert B. Parker	2009	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Spenser, while relaxing at a park with his love interest, Susan Silverman, reflects on some experiences in his life as a youth, before becoming a detective. The narrative unfolds as a conversation between himself and Silverman. Spenser conveys that he grew up in an all-male household, his mother dying immediately before he was delivered by caesarean section. His household consisted of himself, his father, and his two maternal uncles. They were all uneducated, but eager to learn, worked in construction, and boxed from time to time to earn extra money. His uncles taught him to box from a very young age, three years old. They also read volumes of classic novels to him at night. The main narrative conveys Spenser's adventures with a girl, Jeannie Haden. Jeannie was about Spenser's age, but was just a friend. Her father was an abusive drunk. One day Spenser saw her in her father's car, mouthing the words "Help" over and over again. Spenser, along with his dog, Pearl, follows the car and, eventually, Jeannie's father's boat down a river. He locates her and her father on a small island in the river, next to a lean-to. After a brief encounter with her father, Luke, Spenser is able to rescue Jeannie some time later. They escape downriver on Spenser's rowboat, eventually leading Luke Haden to his death. Spenser's father and uncles tell him he "did good" and needn't report the death, or his role in it. But he does, but the local law enforcement doesn't charge Spenser with any crime. Spenser relates that Jeannie had a crush on him, but he didn't return her amore. But he managed to let her down and remain friends. As a favor to Jeannie, he goes on to protect a student of Mexican descent, Aurelio Lopez. Lopez was targeted by white classmates and beaten up on occasion. After Spenser's protection, he doesn't get bullied any longer. However, his relationship with Lopez alienates him somewhat from his white classmates, many of whom he had known since the first grade. At the end, Spenser is confronted by the entire white gang of about fifteen boys. Before any fighting convenes, Spenser's father and uncles arrive and mediate a fair fight between just Spenser and the leader of the gang, Leo Roemer. Because of his boxing training, Spenser quickly wins the fight. He doesn't have any trouble from the gang following the showdown. The recollection ends with Spenser going off to college in Boston on a football scholarship. After an injury his second year, he loses his scholarship and is unable to afford any further schooling and joins the police force, choosing to stay in Boston rather than returning to his home town.
23723204	/m/06zrzz3	A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World	Peter Tertzakian	2007		 The book draws attention to the numerical significance of the 2006 global oil production figure: of crude oil per day is equivalent to one thousand barrels per second. He believes the transcendence of this consumption threshold marks the beginning of a historically significant “energy break point” when oil’s dominant position as a primary energy source is no longer tenable. The book examines industrial society's "addiction" to oil in its past, present and future aspects. The history of humankind’s ongoing adoption and abandonment of energy sources – wood, coal, tallow, whale oil, kerosene, etc. – illustrates a “evolutionary energy cycle”. This cycle is evident today in the problems facing the oil industry. At the time of the book’s publication, various factors — ranging from unrest in the Middle East, a “demand shock” from India and China, exceptionally elevated energy commodity prices and climate change anxiety — weakened oil’s leadership amongst all primary energy sources. The author does not commit to the inevitability of any one particular future outcome, but paints various scenarios that could lead to a peaceful and profitable resolution of the break point.
23726218	/m/06zszfw	The Crucible				 Kang In-ho is a teacher forced to leave his family after the suicide of a former student he had been romantically involved with. He settles in Mujin (a fictional city) where he finds employment as a teacher at a school for the hearing impaired. On the first day of his new job, a young boy is struck and killed by a train, the latest of a series of accidents he soon discovers. He hears of a young girl who had recently committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. Kang soon suspects things are not as they seem and discovers that the students, (both boys and girls) are being abused by the principal (a powerful and highly respected member of the community), an administrative head and a dormitory superintendent. Kang's efforts to bring the crimes to the attention of the public are met with resistance by corrupt police, doctors and other business leaders. The defense lawyers further attempt to discredit Kang by bringing to light his past misdeeds, including the affair with his former student who committed suicide. Compounding all, the financially strapped parents agree to remain silent about the incident in exchange for money. In the end, the three accused are sentenced to probation and set free to return to the school. Kang, humiliated at having his personal failures publicized and frustrated by the lack of justice decides to leave Mujin and return to his family in Seoul.
23731462	/m/06zkkhb	Patsy of Paradise Place	Rosie Harris	2002	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 When Patsy Callaghan's father discovers that her mother, Maeve, neglects her, he stops goig to sea. John Callagan buys a horse and cart and sets up as a carrier at Liverpool Docks. Patsy loves going out on the carrier with her father and Billy Grant, the boy that helps him. When one day John Callaghan is killed in an accident, and Maeave goes out again drinking binges, Billy, who is deeply in love with Patsy, helps her continue the business. Patsy falls in love with Bruno Alvarez a handsome fairground showman, and believes he is going to marry her and will travel to Spain together. When Patsy brings him to meet Maeve, he stays for the night and the next morning, Patsy finds Bruno and Maeve in bed together. Billy comforts her and tries to calm her down, until they end up making love. But when Maeve finds out that Patsy is pregnant, she throws her out of the house. Patsy hides in the stables and Billy takes care of the baby, Liam, when he is born. While she is hiding in the stables, Billy has an accident and is crippled. Unable to find Bruno, Patsy lives with Billy's family. As Liam gets older, Patsy starts working as a nurse. When Liam develops tuberculosis, Patsy decides to find Bruno and discovers that he and her mother went off together. Eventually, Liam dies and Patsy is once more depressed. Billy comforts her again, and she realises how much she loves him. They decide to open a new business on their own and get married.
23731882	/m/06zq2vp	Faithless	Karin Slaughter	2005	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Sara and Jeffrey have finally started to click again when a phone call from the woman he was unfaithful with brings their affair back into sharp relief. He and Sara are arguing about this on a walk in the woods when they make a discovery: the corpse of a young woman who was buried alive in a wooden coffin. They assume her death was accidental, but the autopsy reveals that she was pregnant and had been murdered – while she was underground. The search for her identity leads Jeffrey and Lena to an organic soybean farming cooperative out in the sticks owned by a large, tightly knit, religious family, led by the charismatic oldest son. They import their labor force from the people that populate Atlanta's shelters and halfway houses, facilitated through the family church's outreach program. At one time or another the case involves strippers, the one-legged, one-eyed lawyer extraordinaire Buddy Conford, an abused woman Lena both identifies with and wants to save, and a search to find more buried coffins before it's too late. At the novel's conclusion, Sara finally agrees to remarry Jeffrey after at least four proposals, and Ethan pushes Lena so far that she decides it's time to escape. <!--
23732160	/m/06zq__l	A Faint Cold Fear	Karin Slaughter	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While at the Dairy Queen with her pregnant sister Tessa, Sara is called to meet Jeffrey at the scene of an apparent suicide on campus property, a suicide they both later agree seems suspicious though they can't quite put their fingers on why. Tessa asks to go along and Sara, against her better judgment, allows it. As Sara is examining the body, Tessa walks into the woods to relieve herself. Also on hand are Lena, who's quit the force and now works for campus security, and her new boss, steroidal creep Chuck Gaines. Chuck identifies the victim as the son of two campus professors, a development sure the complicate the case exponentially for Jeffrey. When Tessa doesn't come out of the woods, a search finds her stabbed repeatedly and barely alive; she's airlifted to Grady Hospital in Atlanta. While Sara and her parents wait tensely by Tessa's bedside, Jeffrey and Lena work the case while at each other's throats over Lena's decision to quit the force. Another suicide occurs, more suspicious than the last, and as Lena spirals farther out of control with alcohol and drugs, she makes a fateful and perhaps fatal connection with student Ethan Green, who is not what he appears to be.
23745492	/m/06zl90t	Triptych				 Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is on the trail of a serial rapist with a gruesome inclination when he comes into contact with Michael Ormewood, an Atlanta homicide detective with a past who caught the squeal on a case Will is interested in. Ormewood's past involves Angie Polaski, a vice cop who is the only woman Will has ever loved. John Shelley, who at fifteen was tried as an adult for the rape and murder of a neighbor girl and has just gotten out of prison after twenty years. John's trying to keep his nose clean and keep his parole officer happy when he discovers by accident that He's involved with the rapist, and if John doesn't take action fast he will end up back in prison. Will and Michael work to solve the case, mingling with the pimps and hookers of Atlanta's housing projects in the search for clues. Will and Angie resume their strange relationship after a two-year hiatus. Will continues his struggle to keep anyone from finding out about his dyslexia, a definite career-ender, and Will's career is the only thing that keeps the painful demons of his own past at bay.
23748317	/m/06zp0cg	On the Reliability of the Old Testament				 The book opens with an introductory chapter surveying the history with which it intends to deal, the continuous narrative in the Hebrew bible from the Genesis creation narrative to the return of the Jews to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile in the early days of the Persian empire in the 5th century BC. The author states his belief that this history was written at the same time as the events it describes in its various sections, and that this can be confirmed by comparing the Old Testament with non-biblical sources, both written and archaeological. The core of the book is eight chapters (chapters 2 to 9) surveying the biblical history and comparing it to the ages which with it deals, from the 3rd millennium (the period to which Kitchen traces the origins of the biblical stories of Noah's flood and other incidents from the opening chapters of Genesis) to the Babylonian exile and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. The author presents his conclusions in chapter 10.
23751235	/m/06zk08t	Fractured				 Six months ago, Atlanta homicide detective Faith Mitchell's police captain mother was the focus of an investigation that resulted in her retirement and the firing of six narcotics officers. It was a righteous bust, but the cops want to protect their own, and Faith, along with the entire Atlanta police force, simmers with rage at the man responsible, GBI agent Will Trent. Now Faith and Will are thrown together on a shocking murder/kidnapping case involving some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the city, and neither one of them is happy about the pairing. But Faith gradually discovers that not only is Will not the verminous heel she expected him to be, he is a sleuth par excellence, and Will must deal with a bully from his past who is now a victim and whose irrational hostility threatens the investigation. As the case begins to center on dyslexia, Will waits nervously to see if anyone will notice his own, and he and Faith race frantically from the dormitories of Georgia Tech to the halls of one of Atlanta's exclusive private academies to keep another corpse from surfacing.
23753552	/m/06zlpvv	Indelible				 The story goes back and forth in time, from the beginnings of Sara and Jeffrey’s relationship to a hostage situation at the Grant County Police Station. After dating for a few months, Sara and Jeffrey head for the beaches of Florida for a few days. On their way Jeffrey makes a detour to Sylacauga, Alabama, to show her where he grew up and introduce her to his childhood friends, Robert and Possum and their wives. They plan to spend the night in Jeffrey's old bedroom but Sara's first meeting with his mother upsets her so, she dashes out into the street. When Jeffrey finally catches up to her, they hear a scream and gunshots coming from Robert's house. Jeffrey kicks in the door and finds a wounded Robert and his wife with a dead man in their bedroom, and their stories are conflicting and shaky. Sara and Jeffrey assist in the ensuing investigation and when it's finally resolved, Jeffrey finds that some of those closest to him during his past were not who he thought they were, and some of his deepest secrets are revealed to Sara. But that's only half the book—fast forward to the present, where the Heartsdale Police Station is taken over in a murderous bloodbath by heavily armed gunmen, right in the middle of an elementary school field trip, and while Sara is there. A terrifying and tense hostage situation develops. Lena, back on the force now, on her birthday, and suspecting she's become pregnant by abusive boyfriend Ethan Green, is one of the few Grant County cops on the outside, not knowing who's dead and who's alive. What do the gunmen want? Who are they? Is this somehow related to the events in Sylacauga all those years ago?
23754800	/m/06zsfzw	Vulcan's Forge	Jack Du Brul	1998	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 During the Cold War, the Soviet Union launched a secret operation against the United States, detonating a nuclear bomb on the ocean floor and creating a volcano that would take decades to rise to the surface. Now, two hundred miles off Hawaii, an island is forming-an island that holds unimaginable wealthe and power for those who control it. As the fight to claim the island rages from the halls of power to the depths of the ocean, Philip Mercer must wage a battle against both man and nature to bring the world back from the edge of destruction.
23754870	/m/06znlp1	Charon's Landing	Jack Du Brul	1999	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In a bold decision, the President of the United States has decided to free America from its dependence on foreign oil by using Alaska's oil deposits and developing alternative energy sources. It is a move that threatens the oil-rich Middle East-and some will not tolerate such a course of action. Years ago, a secret Soviet strategy was created to strike a fatal blow to the U.S. by destroying the Alaskan oil pipeline. Now those plans have been stolen by the brilliant and treacherous former KGB agent Ivan kerikov, who joins forces with a powerful Arab oil minister to unleash Charon's Landing. But they didn't count on Philip Mercer-the one man who possesses the determination and daring to stop them cold.
23755130	/m/06zlglw	The Medusa Stone	Jack Du Brul		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Ten years ago, the spy satellite Medusa burned upon re-entry-but not before its sensors revealed a secret buried deep in the Earth hidden for thousands of years from the eyes of humanity. A priceless discovery that some would die to find - and kill to possess... With uncanny talent as a geologist and a quick intelligence matched by savvy and courage, Phillip Mercer is fast becoming a legend in powerful circles around the world. And at least two groups in those circles need his help. When one of them snatches and holds his oldest friend, Mercer is forced to act by the kidnappers...whose allegiance is a mystery, but whose viciousness is not. In a harsh and hostile land ravaged by violence, Mercer races to find the one thing that will save his friend. But the location of this ancient treasure is elusive. He is thwarted by brutal competing forces and, suddenly, he learns that there is much more at stake then either his life or the life of an old friend: the fate of thousands of innocent souls depends on him and him alone...
23756265	/m/06zl0mn	Rollback	Robert J. Sawyer		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel focuses around Don Halifax and his wife of sixty years, Sarah, an astronomer who translated the first transmission sent from an extraterrestrial source to Earth 38 years prior to the opening of the story. Sarah, now 87, is tasked to decode the second message sent from the unknown alien race - if she can live long enough to do so. A wealthy industrial billionaire, Cody McGavin, offers to put up billions of dollars to perform a "rollback" on not only Sarah, but her husband of 60 years, Don. This process, which reverts a person's body to a much younger state, is successfully performed on Don, but fails to work with Sarah. This leaves Sarah gradually creeping toward death while Don's life begins anew. Much of the story focuses on Don as he discovers the advantages and disadvantages of being young again, with periodic flashbacks to when Sarah translated the first alien message.
23756510	/m/06zp329	Pandora's Curse	Jack Du Brul		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 During World War II, at a secret Nazi submarine base, containers crafted entirely from looted wartime gold were hidden away. The treasure was not the solid-gold chests, but the cargo they carried - an artifact so lethal that whoever possessed "Pandora's Boxes" held the power to unleash hell upon earth.... In the unforgiving wastes of Greenland, geologist Philip Mercer uncovers a long - abandoned U.S. Army base buried under the ice - and a long-dead body still hot with radiation. Before Mercer and his colleague, the seductive Dr. Anika Klein, can investigate further, a flash fire engulfs the base, and they are ordered to evacuate. But their plane is forced to land when a bomb is discovered on board, and they must seek shelter from the murderous weather in a hidden ice cavern. That's where they learn the startling truth. A powerful German corporation has launched an operation to destroy evidence of its Nazi past. But one of the corporate mercenaries knows what's inside the Pandora boxes, and he plans to hold the entire world hostage - unless Mercer can find a way to stop him....
23757150	/m/06zr_qn	The Knight	Gene Wolfe		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story opens with an older narrator recounting a great adventure. He is left alone in a cabin in the wilderness by himself for a few days. He goes for a hike and ends up chasing a flying castle he sees in the sky until he is abducted by "a lot of people". He awakens to find himself at the mouth of a cave by the sea. He is greeted by a fortune teller who calls him Able of the High Heart and turns his walking stick into a bow. He soon after discovers his chivalrous destiny and embarks on a quest to travel this strange new land.
23773429	/m/06zk8p5	Ice Claw	David Gilman	2008-07-03		 Max Gordon is participating in an X-Treme sports challenge, where he witnesses the final moments of a mysterious Basque monk, who screams a cryptic clue before plummeting to his death. The clue is a prophecy that predicts an ecological catastrophe that will kill millions around Europe. When he is blamed for the monk's death, Max and his best friend Sayid follow the clues and discover betrayal and murder around every turn before meeting the man behind it all: the insane billionaire Tishenko.
23776343	/m/06zr0bh	The Lollipop Shoes	Joanne Harris	2007-05-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Living in a tiny chocolaterie in Montmartre, Paris, Vianne and her daughters Anouk and Rosette have forsaken magic and adventure for a stable, if unhappy life. Vianne has now become the widow Yanne Charbonneau, mother of 'Annie'. Hiding her magical nature, she feels she is doing the right thing by her daughters, but she herself is dissatisfied: there is friction with Anouk; money is short; there is pressure from her landlord, Thierry le Tresset, to marry him and she no longer has time to make hand-made, quality chocolate, but is forced to sell the ordinary, factory-made kind. Anouk is equally unhappy. She is bullied at school and made to feel like a freak; her mother seems to have changed beyond recognition and she hates living in Paris. She misses Roux, Rosette's father, with whom Vianne is still in love, but whom she left because of his inability to settle down. The situation seems hopeless and set to deteriorate. And then, on All Hallows' Eve, Zozie de l'Alba blows into their lives, bringing back magic and enchantment. She seems to be exactly what Vianne herself used to be; a benevolent force, a free spirit, helping people wherever she goes. But Zozie is a thief of identities, maybe even a collector of souls. She has her eye on Vianne's life, and begins to insinuate herself into the family. She is soon working at the chocolaterie, helping and understanding everyone as Vianne used to do. She helps Anouk to deal with the bullies who torment her at school. The shop begins to prosper under her guidance, much to Thierry's displeasure. When Roux, Vianne's former lover, re-appears on the scene, Zozie helps Vianne to decide between a stable life with Thierry and a loving relationship with the man she loves. But as Vianne's life begins to improve little by little under Zozie's influence, it becomes clear that all this must come at a terrible price. Finally, Vianne is forced to confront Zozie on her own ground, to reclaim her magic and her identity and to fight back - but is it too late?http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/v3site/books/lollipop/index.html
23784997	/m/06_wxmh	Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi		1991-01-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 After a brief flashback to 1920, with a glimpse of Indiana Jones as a college student in Chicago, the novel moves to its main setting. The year is 1922. Indy is a graduate student in Paris, studying linguistics and Greek archaeology. Although his greater talent currently seems to be for the former, he begins to wonder if he might be better suited for a different career after he receives a surprising invitation from his professor. Following an archaeology lecture to her class on the Greek city of Delphi, Professor Dorian Belecamus announces that she will be leaving the university for the rest of the semester in order to return to Delphi to oversee the recovery of an archaeological find, discovered recently in the wake of an earthquake in the region. After class, to Indy's surprise, she privately invites him to join her on the journey as her assistant, telling him that he is her best student and that she feels he could be very helpful on the expedition. After some consideration, Indy decides to accept the professor's offer in the hopes that assisting in such an exciting undertaking may very well lead him to a more intriguing and adventurous career than world of linguistics may have to offer. He, of course, has no idea exactly how true those ideas will prove to be as he embarks on a journey filled with mysterious figures, deceptive intentions and a lot more waiting for him Delphi than he ever expected.
23786037	/m/06_vf_w	The Greeks Have a Word For It	Barry Unsworth		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Two men arrive in Athens on the same boat. Kennedy an Englishman intends to make a living teaching English and devises a scam to make money fast. Mitsos is returning to Greece after many years away but finds it impossible to escape the memories of the brutal deaths of his parents at the hands of fellow Greeks during the war and an opportunity arises to take revenge. The two men meet briefly as they disembark the boat but their stories then diverge only to come together at the end of the book with fatal results.
23791541	/m/06_vg1_	Union Now				 Streit argued that, in a globalizing world, the trend towards growing domestic exposure to "external" problems had led many to embrace a reactive posture. In parts of Europe, this meant an increasingly belligerent nationalism that sacrificed freedom for security; in the United States, it meant an isolationism that sought to defend against global conflicts rather than working to prevent them. With freedom within nations and peace among them at risk, internationalist proposals such as the League of Nations fell short: in addition to lacking effective decision-making and enforcement mechanisms, they placed too much emphasis on sovereign governments, marginalizing the individuals they represented. Streit proposed a Union that, along the lines of American federalism, brought together the democracies of Europe, North America and the former parts of the British Empire under a single government with the power to grant citizenship and wage war; its membership would expand as more nations joined the democratic camp. This Union would honor individual rights while combining the economic and military power of the world’s democracies against autocratic regimes. Streit argued that the centralization of certain government services and the removal of tariffs would also increase economic efficiency. As a federalist, however, Streit also supported considerable autonomy and home rule for the formerly sovereign nation-states.
23795031	/m/06_t_jm	Brother Cadfael's Penance	Edith Pargeter	1994	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In the spring of 1145, Hugh Beringar receives an intelligence report from Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, that, at the urging of the Church, the two factions in the civil war have agreed to meet for a peace conference at Coventry. Privately, the Earl's hopes for the conference are not high, as recent events have led both sides to believe that they can be ultimately victorious. On the one hand, the Empress Maud has finally convinced her young husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, to bring his military forces to bear on Normandy, where many of Stephen's barons hold land. On the other, King Stephen has recently gained valuable allies in England: after much waffling between the two sides, the powerful Earl of Chester has joined Stephen, while in the Thames Valley, two of the Empress's castellans have defected to Stephen, bringing their castles and garrisons in Faringdon and Cricklade with them. One of them, surprisingly, is Phillip Fitz Robert, son of Robert of Gloucester, the Empress's right-hand man. Among the reports, Hugh finds a troubling piece of information: among the garrison of Faringdon were several knights who remained loyal to the Empress and were imprisoned. Some of them have been offered for ransom, while others are being held captive, but one's whereabouts are unknown: Olivier de Bretagne, whom Hugh knows is Cadfael's illegitimate son. Cadfael confesses to Abbot Radulfus that he feels it is his duty to find and rescue Olivier. Radulfus gives him permission to accompany Hugh to Coventry, but warns him that he must return to the Abbey afterward, or risk expulsion from the Order. In Coventry, Cadfael is surprised to recognize Yves Hugonin (last seen in The Virgin in the Ice), Olivier's brother-in-law. Barely have they exchanged greetings when Yves draws his sword and flies at another man in a rage: Brien de Soulis, the turncoat castellan of Faringdon. Order is restored by Bishop Roger de Clinton. Yves is called to a private audience with the Empress Maud, who, officially, rebukes him for disturbing the peace, but, privately, hints that she would be delighted if de Soulis were to be killed. As expected, the peace talks come to nothing. Maud is intractable in her claim to the throne, while Stephen is conscious of his superior position in England and is loath to surrender it. Before the talks end, Yves asks Stephen to reveal anything his men know about Olivier's whereabouts. De Soulis claims to know nothing. But that evening, as the two sides are exiting the chapel after mass, de Soulis's dead body is discovered on the chapel steps. Phillip Fitz Robert accuses Yves of murder, and takes him into custody. With permission from the Bishop, Cadfael examines de Soulis's body and belongings, and discovers several important clues: de Soulis was stabbed from the front with a dagger, not a sword - indicating his killer was someone he knew and trusted, and allowed to approach him. The other strange clue is that, in de Soulis's bag, Cadfael finds a seal ring that does not belong to him, though no one in Coventry can identify it. Now, Cadfael must decide whether to continue searching for Olivier, or return with Hugh to Shrewsbury. He chooses the former. Traveling to Faringdon, Cadfael meets a mason's assistant, lamed by a badly-broken leg, who says that he was a man-at-arms with the garrison. He identifies the seal as belonging to another captain of the garrison, Geoffrey FitzClare. FitzClare was the most popular captain in the garrison, and also the most steadfastly loyal to the Empress - yet de Soulis showed the men a document signed by him and the other captains, agreeing to surrender to the King. The day after the surrender, FitzClare was sent out on some errand, and later brought back dead, apparently killed by a fall from his horse. Armed with this knowledge, Cadfael tracks down Phillip Fitz Robert at his castle of La Musarderie in Greenhamsted, and manages to convince him that Yves is innocent: de Soulis must have murdered FitzClare and stolen his seal, in order to convince the remaining captains to agree to the surrender - which makes it more likely than not that plenty of other people wanted him dead, and Yves is ruled out by the fact that de Soulis allowed his killer to approach close enough to stab him. Repulsed by de Soulis's treacherous actions, of which he knew nothing, Phillip agrees to release Yves. Phillip also admits that he is holding Olivier in the castle. Cadfael pleads with Phillip to release him, going so far as to reveal that he is Olivier's father. Phillip is not unmoved, but refuses: he and Olivier were the closest of comrades, like brothers, but, ultimately, Olivier refused to follow his friend in defecting to Stephen - which, Cadfael realizes, Phillip did not out of any love for Stephen or enmity towards Maud, but in the hopes of breaking the stalemate between the two sides and allowing one to triumph, finally ending the war. Yves returns to the Empress's court in Gloucester and begs her to lay siege to La Musardarie to rescue Olivier, who has been imprisoned just for remaining loyal to her. She refuses, but instantly changes her mind when Yves mentions that Phillip himself is there - in other words, she would not lift a finger to rescue Olivier, but will move heaven and earth to capture Phillip and revenge herself on him for his disloyalty. Yves is dispirited at this, but he and several of the Empress's advisers become alarmed when she announces that she does not mean to just capture Phillip, but to execute him - thus driving a wedge between herself and many of her allies, especially Earl Robert. Dismissing all their warnings, the Empress assembles an enormous army and throws it at Phillip's castle. Phillip's garrison puts up a tough defense, but Phillip suffers a near fatal head wound from a missile thrown into the courtyard. Cadfael ministers to him, and Phillip, believing he is dying, gives his final orders: his deputy shall surrender the castle, and trade Phillip to the Empress for the best terms he can get; he also gives Cadfael the keys to Olivier's cell. Released, Olivier learns the truth of his parentage, and he and Cadfael arrange a plan to get Phillip out of the castle and save him from the Empress's vengeance. The chivalrous Olivier, bearing no grudge for his long imprisonment, throws himself into the effort to save the life of Phillip, whom he still considers his friend. The plan works, and Phillip recovers in the nearby Augustinian abbey of Cirencester. Earl Robert himself arrives at the abbey, reconciling with his son and placing his protection over him. Before leaving La Musardarie, Cadfael discovers who de Soulis's killer was: one of the Empress's ladies-in-waiting, who was Geoffrey FitzClare's mother (ironically, de Soulis had designs on the lady's young niece, and allowed her to approach him in the mistaken belief that she was that niece). Cadfael, recognizing in her a kindred spirit who had acted to avenge her son in much the same way as Cadfael had acted to save his own son, keeps her secret. Olivier asks Cadfael to return home with him, as his family would welcome him with open arms. Cadfael declines, saying he wants nothing more now than to return to Shrewsbury, even if there is a chance that he may not be allowed to. Returning to Shrewsbury, Cadfael spends the night lying on the floor of the chapel as a penitent. In the morning, when the rest of the monks enter, Abbot Radulfus informs him that word of his actions has reached the Abbey: that he has helped to solve another murder, exonerate Yves, release Olivier, and mend the rift between Phillip and Robert. He also informs Cadfael that Phillip has renounced both sides in the war and enlisted in the Second Crusade. He then declares "it is enough!" and invites Cadfael to take his old place among his brothers.
23806092	/m/06_wr58	LaBrava	Elmore Leonard	1983	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Joe LaBrava gets involved with former movie star Jean Shaw, whom he admired as a twelve year-old boy staring at a movie screen, when he discovers that she is being harassed by thug Richard Nobles and his partner Cundo Rey.
23810295	/m/06_x2vf	The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way	Peter Hitchens	2009-05-11		 In Chapter 1, "Guy Fawkes Gets a Blackberry", Hitchens claims that opinion polls are a device for influencing public opinion and not measuring it, and that political parties and newspapers are responsible for this manipulation, whose purpose is to "bring about the thing it claims is already happening". The author cites contemporary examples of the media attacking Gordon Brown and the expected win of the Conservative Party at the 2010 general election. Hitchens begins Chapter 2, "The Power of Lunch", by asserting, based on his time as a reporter at Westminster, that political journalists are uninterested in serious political debate; propagate received centre-left standpoints on issues; and consult with each other and politicians about media stories. Chapter 3, "Time for a Change", describes how a media reporting bias is attempting to facilitate a Tory general election win. Hitchens states one of his motivations in writing the book was to frustrate this exercise. Hitchens claims in Chapter 4, "Fear of Finding Something Worse", that Labour has reached "the most significant moment in its history – the complete acceptance of its programme by the Conservatives". The author invokes the closing image of George Orwell's Animal Farm to illustrate how close the two parties have become. Chapter 5, "The Great Landslide", discusses how a number of left-wing writers and newspapers have begun describing the Conservatives in favourable terms, and how this no longer constituted "a form of treason". Chapter 6, "Riding the Prague Tram", describes Hitchens's experience of travelling in Communist Bloc countries before the fall of the Soviet Union and how this, combined with the behaviour of certain left-wing organisations in the UK, led to his becoming disillusioned with the British Left. He also carries out a lengthy critique of the Western Left's apologist stance towards Soviet Communism, including views held by Fabian Society members Beatrice and Maurice Webb; the attempt to exonerate and romanticise Lenin and Trotsky; and intellectual resistance to the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Robert Conquest. In Chapter 7, "A Fire Burning Under Water", Hitchens describes the final stage in his becoming disenchanted with the British Left – the British Trades Union Congress's (TUC) failure to support the Gdansk shipyard workers challenging their communist government. Chapter 8, "Racism, Sexism and Homophobia", examines how the modern ideology of race and the term racist differ from the previous concept of "racialism", and how the sexual revolution represents "seeking the existing order's permission to pursue pleasure at all costs", which undermines Christian principles of marriage, and has its roots in events in 1968. In Chapter 9, "Sexism is Rational", Hitchens states that the Left's taking up feminist causes since the 1960s has led to the damage and exploitation of women, as well as a decline in marriage. Hitchens says this process is part of revolutionaries' seeking to "destroy and expunge the restraints placed on human selfishness by the Christian religion. The permanent married family is the greatest single obstacle to this". Hitchens concludes that in Britain there is an emerging citizenry "prepared for enslavement, ignorant of its origins, past, rights, traditions, and duties" and that "only in a wholly broken political system could there be such a need for reform, and no reformers ready to address it". In Chapter 10, "Equality or Tolerance", Hitchens examines how the Left have since the 1960s taken up the cause of equal rights for homosexuals. Hitchens says supporters of Leo Abse's 1967 law reform on homosexuality are now accused of intolerance if they do not support homosexual civil partnerships or discrimination on the grounds of homosexuality. Hitchens concludes by stating, "the atrophy of religion and patriotism in the Labour party, like the atrophy of the same things in the Tory Party, is the deep problem beneath all others". Chapter 11, "The Fall of the Meritocracy", examines falling standards in British education. Hitchens cites the abolition of grammar schools as one of the main causes, which has also resulted in a decline in social mobility. Hitchens claims egalitarians deny these consequences and that comprehensive education has failed. Hitchens also quotes a 2000 study, which asserted that "the general lowering of standards and rigour since the end of selection is one of the main reasons behind the current drive to devalue examinations". Hitchens asks why, "the educated, conscious servants of the state should seek to pretend that educational standards are rising when the opposite is true. The answer is that they have put equality before education". Chapter 12, "'The age of the train'," outlines how the Conservative and Labour parties facilitated the dismantling of much of Britain's rail network. Hitchens asserts this is evidence that the "Tory Party does not love Britain, any more than the Labour Party loves the poor". In Chapter 13, "A Comfortable Hotel on the Road to Damascus", Hitchens explores how since the 2001 September 11 attacks and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, certain commentators on the Left realigned with an American Neoconservative position, which, "delivers him [the leftist commentator] to another portion of the 'centre ground', one where foreign policy is the only thing worth discussing, and where former conservatives and former Leftists can mingle in happy communion", and allows "political conservatism to soothe its tribal base by appearing strong overseas, while failing to be anything of the kind at home". Hitchens asserts that political mismanagement, facilitated by an abandonment of the adversarial system, has resulted in an overall decline in British society. He identifies the end of the Cold War (which "made many of the old political positions meaningless overnight") as one cause of this, as well as the implementation of the ideas of Fabian social democracy and the ideology of the 1960s.
23814217	/m/025rxn7	Matari				 The story is set in 18th century Japan, and features a conflict between four very different characters - Oboko (nb, Obaku is a form of Zen), a poet of the wind and Buddhist monk; Izzi, court poet and extrovert; Lord Arishi, samurai and lord of the realm; and finally Matari, beautiful, intelligent, and on the run for her life. The story might be described as a love story - all three of the men are, in their own way, in love with Matari. Yet they each have their own outlook on life, and their own sense of honour and morality. While individually we might applaud them as good men and true, the meeting of the three results in tragedy. This is a comparatively traditional novel; the story runs in a linear fashion, and the plot is such as you might find in any other book. George Cockcroft uses his knowledge of Zen well, though, and the book gives an insight into the thinking of both Buddhist and Samurai thinking that feels well-rounded. Oboko survives the story and is later mentioned in The Book of the Die by the same author. The various ISBNs of the different editions are: * ISBN 0-246-10811-8 – January 1975 (Matari, hardcover) * ISBN 0-586-04116-8 – September 2, 1976 (Matari, paperback) * ISBN 1-4033-4796-4 – 27 November 2002 (White Wind, Black Rider, hardcover) * ISBN 1-4033-4795-6 – 27 November 2002 (White Wind, Black Rider, paperback)
23816063	/m/06_tw7m	Divine Misdemeanors	Laurell K. Hamilton	2009-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Divine Misdemeanors follows the character of Meredith NicEssus, princess of faerie, also known as Merry Gentry. Having succeeded in her goal to become pregnant before her cousin Cel, Merry has declined the Unseelie throne and is attempting to live peacefully with her men and court while dealing with continued court intrigue and the paparazzi. This is made more difficult when a series of brutal murders rips through the area, with the Grey Detective Agency being asked to take part in the investigations and to send Merry in particular. Meanwhile Merry is having to deal with the stress of leading a large group of fey outside of the Seelie and Unseelie courts.
23817576	/m/06_wgt6	The Last Song	Nicholas Sparks	2009-09-08	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Veronica “Ronnie” Miller’s life was turned upside down when her parents divorced and her father, Steve, moved to Wrightsville, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains distant from her parents, particularly Steve, until her mother decides it would be everyone’s best interest if she and her brother spent the summer with him. Resentful and rebellious, Ronnie rejects Steve’s attempts to reach out to her and threatens to return to New York before the summer’s end. But soon Ronnie meets Will, the last person she thought she’d ever be attracted to, and finds herself falling for him, opening herself up to the greatest happiness – and pain – that she has never known. Ronnie finds out that Steve has stomach cancer. She and her brother, Jonah, finish the window that Jonah started with Steve for the church. Jonah goes back to New York with their mother, but Ronnie stays back with Steve until his death. She completes the song on the piano that he began to write. She and Will part after the funeral and she believes that they will never meet properly again, she thought it was over, but after Christmas, he transfers and goes to college in New York, near where Ronnie goes to college, so he can spend more time with Ronnie.
23823553	/m/06_wtll	Kingdoms of the Wall	Robert Silverberg			 The story's protagonist is Poilar Crookleg, member of a humanoid race with a pastoral civilization at a level roughly corresponding to that of the Iron Age of human civilization. Only as the story develops it becomes apparent that these people are not humans; their hands have an additional opposing thumb, and they have limited shapeshifting abilities which allows them to loosen their joints, to adapt their skin and inner organs to environmental changes, and to extrude suction cups for climbing. Shapeshifting is also an intrinsic part of their sexuality, for in the absence of sexual arousal both sexes maintain a neuter form without overt gender characteristics. The planet is located in a binary star system where it seems to be in orbit around the major white and luminous component, Ekmelios (probably an F-type star) while reddish Marilemma (apparently an M-type red dwarf) is much more distant. As the plot takes off Poilar is a youngster in his village, Jespodar, which is situated at the rim of a lowland (extremely hot and humid with a very dense atmosphere by earthly standards, as can be deduced) immediately at the foothills of The Wall, a huge mountain range complex that rises to an unseen summit. The peoples' religion revolves around The Wall since thousands of planet-years ago the semi-mythical First Climber ascended to the summit where he met The Gods who introduced him to the basics of civilization. From this time onward, the people of Jespodar (as well as those of numerous other villages) pledged themselves to an annual pilgrimage of twenty men and twenty women who are supposed to re-enact the First Climber's achievement. The selection mechanisms for those aspiring to the pilgrimage are rigid and the three-year training is extremely challenging both physically and mentally; each team of forty pilgrims that sets out for The Wall is the best the community can muster. However, for times unknown only a very few stragglers have returned to Jespodar at irregular intervals and these Returned Ones are mentally disturbed or in any case would not tell coherent stories of their experiences on The Wall. All that can be deduced is that on the various levels and segments of the huge mountain range there are distinct domains (the "kingdoms") populated by beings of variegated and extreme strangeness. Although nothing useful has been brought back from The Wall for times beyond remembrance, the annual pilgrimages continue with religious fervor. Poilar, whose father and grandfather had been pilgrims who never returned, is also pledged to The Wall. Together with his friend Traiben, a penetrating intellectual and skeptic, he is selected for the pilgrim group as he reaches the proper age. When they set out for The Wall, Poilar is elected leader of his Forty. As the pilgrims ascend they find that the fabled kingdoms are dwellings of former pilgrims who, by account of their various character flaws, have abandoned their pledge for the summit and have succumbed to one or the other specific enticement created by the "Change-Fire" forces emanating from the mountain. These stimulate and de-regulate their shapeshifter ability, turning their victims into grossly distorted beings - "Transformed Ones." Each domain the pilgrim band traverses teaches them a personal lesson. As the pilgrims approach the last third of their journey they meet a totally exhausted alien being who - for all the strange set of his bodily frame, the fact that he has only one thumb on each five-fingered hand, and permanently extruded male genitals - does not seem to be a Transformed One. Speaking through a small translator box, he reveals that he has descended from the summit to reconnoiter; now he is in no physical shape to return to his colleagues, who in turn cannot retrieve him because of unspecified problems at the summit. When asked whether he has seen the gods who are supposed to reside there, the Earthman becomes very evasive. The human alien soon dies, and because Poilar had given his solemn promise to take him to the summit he orders the corpse to be eviscerated and preserved so that it can be carried onward. As the band proceeds, its members dwindle away fast. Immediately below the cloud sheath veiling the summit, Poilar and his tattered and decimated team stumble upon an Arcadia-like domain whose inhabitants are not transformed but ageless - they have discovered a Fountain of Youth. The local king turns out to be Poilar's grandfather who begs him not to proceed to the summit because there is only grief to be found there. He reveals that his own son (Poilar's father) did not heed this advice, and together with all his surviving companions had sought obliteration in the Fountain of Youth on the return trip. Indeed the kingdoms on the highest level of the mountain seem to be populated mostly by those who had been to the summit. Nevertheless Poilar takes the remainder of his team to the summit plateau, where the pilgrims break through the clouds to arrive under a strange sky (blue instead of the accustomed white), totally exhausted from physical exertion in what for them is air of unbearable coldness and almost too thin to support respiration, in spite of all shapeshifter adjustments they are capable of. Having achieved the sworn objective of their lives, they are utterly shattered by what they see: no palaces with gods blissfully ambling around, but a horde of ape-like savage creatures laying siege to three Earthmen in a small spaceship. The decayed ruins of another, much larger and very old, spaceship hull can be seen in the distance. In their despair and disgust, Poilar and his pilgrims decide to purge the summit; they throw every single one of the debased creatures into the abyss. The besieged humans then emerge from their spaceship and relate, in terms that Poilar and his people can comprehend, that they are a survey team from Earth that is charged with checking the status of human colonies with which contact has been lost. The members of the colony that had been established on the summit of The Wall (the only place on the planet where conditions seemed Earth-like) had been the gods whom the First Climber had met. Apparently, they degenerated quickly under the radiation of the planet's sun and the emanations from the mountain range to become the ape-like creatures Poilar's team has slaughtered. Having assured the pilgrims that no Earthmen would ever intrude on them again, the patrol ship takes off. Poilar and his team return to his village and relate the truth about their "gods" to their people, thereby ending all pilgrimages and putting their race on a new track of civilization that could ultimately make them into something like their gods of old: "It will be our task to build wagons to carry us between villages, and then sky-wagons, and then star-wagons, and then we will meet the gods again; but this time it will be as equals."
23823904	/m/06_v33t	Daniel X: Watch the Skies	James Patterson	2009-07-27	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Daniel X is a boy who is an alien hunter assigned to earth replacing his parents' duty after their death. Fresh after his defeat of the 6th top alien on the List of Alien Outlaws, Daniel X is now facing the 5th; An electric fish that is using a town full of people as characters for his own reality show and is making a army of mini number 5s through them by feeding them caviar. Daniel tracks him down with his powers and "imaginary" friends and destroys him with his own electrical medicine.
23825243	/m/06_v73h	Dangerous Girls	R. L. Stine		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 During summer break, at Camp Blue Moon, the vampire Lorenzo "Renz" Angelini sinks his fangs into the throat of sixteen-year-old Destiny Weller. Afterwards, she and her twin sister Livvy return home in Dark Springs with a craving for blood; they feed on a rabbit's blood and Destiny sucks blood from a package of liver. While at the house of a family friend, Coach Bauer, the sisters meet Marjory Bauer, another vampire. Marjory says she is undead and the Restorer can restore their life. At Dark Springs High School, in Renz's office, Destiny talks with him and decides he is the Restorer. She asks him if he will help her and her twin. He says that he will come and take care of her at the senior overnight. Back at her house, Destiny greets her friend Nakeisha Johnson, who tells her Renz was left out of the camp yearbook and there are no photos of him. From this, Destiny determines that Renz is actually a vampire and not the Restorer. During the senior overnight, Destiny meets Renz, shoves a wooden tent pole through his body and kills him. Her father appears, and tells her that he is the Restorer. He cures her, and they go and find Livvy and her friend Ross Starr at the edge of a grassy clearing. Livvy tells Destiny and her father that she has been immortal since camp, and that she and Ross exchanged blood. Livvy and Ross change into blackbirds, and fly off into the black sky.
23825955	/m/06_vycp	A Stranger to Command	Sherwood Smith	2008-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In this much-anticipated prequel to Crown Duel, Vidanric Renselaeus, fifteen-year-old Marquis of Shevraeth, finds himself sent across the continent to a military academy in Marloven Hess, a kingdom known for its violent history. Vidanric is used to civilized life in pleasant Remalna—except that the evidence is increasingly clear that the civilization is only on the surface. Too many young, smart heirs have suffered accidents of late, and the evidence is beginning to point to the king, Galdran, who has grandiose plans for expansion. In Marloven Hess, no one can pronounce his real names, and they assume his title is his name. He becomes Shevraeth—discovering that there are no marquises or dukes or barons in this kingdom, and no one has the slightest interest in Remalna. Or in foreigners. Until very recently, the academy was closed to outsiders. But the king—also fifteen, and recently come to his throne after a nasty civil war—wants him there. Learning about command turns out to be very different than Shevraeth had assumed, and the Marlovens, who are going through political and social change at all levels, are not at all what he expected. He makes friends as well as enemies; experiences terror and laughter as well as challenges on the field and off. He discovers friendship, loyalty—and love. All the while greater events in the world are moving inexorably toward conflagration, drawing the smartest of the young people into key positions—whether they want it or not. They're going to have to be ready.
23828507	/m/02qwy3v	On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God	Louise Rennison	2000-06-29	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the previous novel, Georgia has landed the "Sex God", her longtime crush Robbie Jennings, for a boyfriend. Georgia's dad has gone to New Zealand for a few months. While he is gone Libby is ill and Georgia's mother takes her to the doctors. When they return, "Gee's" mum has seen a new doctor and rather likes him; she begins finding any excuse she can to make an appointment with him. After a while, Georgia's mother announces that the family are off to New Zealand for a month, but Georgia feels she cannot possibly leave as she has just got the boy of her dreams and cannot leave him. Georgia does not leave for New Zealand, but Robbie says she is too young for him and leaves her. Georgia decides to use Dave the Laugh as a red herring to make Robbie jealous and come back to/for her. Georgia feels guilty for using Dave the Laugh and she breaks up with him. Georgia feels extremely awful about it, until she learns that Dave has started dating her friend Ellen (one of her best mates out of her "Ace Gang"). In the end Robbie admits he can't stop thinking about Georgia and really misses her. He asks her to be his girlfriend again. In a subplot, Georgia's cat Angus becomes interested in a pedigree cat named Naomi belonging to new neighbors across the road.
23834997	/m/06_w1tj	Ratha's Courage	Clare Bell	2008	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ratha and her clan, the Named, are sentient prehistoric big cats. In Ratha's Courage, the fifth book in the Named series, Ratha extends the use of the Red Tongue fire to a hunter tribe. One of the hunters ignites a blaze that sets off a devastating conflict between the two clans.
23837356	/m/06_vwp_	Heroes of the Valley	Jonathan Stroud	2009	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Halli loves to hear stories from the days when the valley was a wild and dangerous place, besieged by the bloodthirsty Trow. Now farming has taken over from fighting Trows, and to Halli's disappointment heroics seem a thing of the past. But when a practical joke rekindles an old blood feud, he sees a chance for a daring quest of his own. The Story starts with the Battle of the Rock being told to a child. This is where twelve heroes of the valley join together to fight the ruthless Trows (man eating monsters) that devastate the land. They form a battle plan and wait for the Trows to come. They take up positions on a large rock and are finally attacked by the Trows, which they fend off all night. In the morning, when the people check to see what happened all are dead, Trows and Heroes, including the main hero Svien. The heroes are buried under cairns along the borders of the valley with their swords, so that, even in death, they can guard the boundaries from the Trows. As long as no one crosses the cairn border, the legends say, no Trows can enter the Valley. Many years later Halli is born. He is a very short, stout, young, and headstrong boy who longs for the days of the Heroes, when a man could fight for what he wanted and take what he could win. He longs to leave the valley, which is now ruled by a Council of women who demand peace and equality in the land. They have outlawed swords and other weapons to discourage wars. Halli looks very much like his uncle, Brodir, whom he adores. He is the third and last child in his family. His family are Arnkel, his father and Arbiter of Svien's House, Astrid, his mother and Law-Giver of Svien's House, Lief, his older brother who is immediately in line for the Arbiter after Arnkel, Gudny, his sister and Brodir his uncle, who is the only member of his family that seems to get along with him. When his uncle is murdered by a rival house, the house of Hakon, Halli sets off to avenge his uncle. Finally, he thinks that he will have a hero's quest of his own. Along his journey, Halli realizes that he isn't the guiltless avenging murderer that he thought he could be. His interference and thirst for revenge leads two men to their deaths, and he becomes sick with guilt. He returns home to his relieved yet angry family, and his distrusting and fearful fellow villagers. His actions eventually lead to an attack on his house by the House of Hakon, and he alone can accept responsibility and take charge of his defenseless village. He proves that he is a great leader. When the enemy arrives, they have an obvious advantage... swords. Halli realizes that his people's only hope is if he leads the enemies obliviously past the cairn boundaries. He does so with the help of his friend and crush, Aud, and to his relief, it works. The Hakonssons are eaten by monsters in the moorlands. However, Halli and Aud come under attack from the unknown enemy. Much like the heroes of old, they take their last stand on a large rock and wait to discover the identity of the monsters. When the nature of the attackers becomes clear, Halli and Aud face something far worse than the Trows of legend... and they will be lucky to survive the night.
23839693	/m/06_w5pb	The Last Valley		1959	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The story opens with a man named Vogel, starving and exhausted, running from a burnt-out, plague-ridden village. After several days, he stumbles into the Valley. At its center, Vogel discovers a well-maintained, obviously inhabited village but with no people or domesticated animals. He falls asleep in an abandoned home but is awakened by the sound of horses and instinctively flies out of the home, only to be quickly tackled by two soldiers. The two prove to be of a company of mercenaries that arrived in The Valley while Vogel slept. Vogel is dragged to the leader of the group, a man identified as the Captain. It is the Captain's intention to pillage the Valley, burn the village to the ground, and return the plunder to the Protestant army of Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar for whom they are working. Vogel intuitively senses that the Captain is battle fatigued and hastily thinks-out a plan to save the Valley. Accompanied by a man named Korski, his main rival within the group, the Captain draws Vogel aside from the other mercenaries who have begun to break into the buildings. Vogel convinces the Captain to spare the Valley and guard its existence from other soldiers in order to survive the coming winter. "Live well," he tells him, "while other villages are trampled flat." The Captain quickly surmises the rationality of Vogel's suggestion and, with equal quickness, kills the unsuspecting Korski. He then proceeds to inform the company of the change in plans and arranges the elimination of several other troopers who might object (allies of Korski and those with women back at the army's encampment). Vogel insures his own survival in this arrangement by offering to be a type of buffer between the peasants and the soldiers as he is a member of neither group. Believing the mercenaries have departed, the villagers eventually return from their hiding place only to be surprised when the soldiers spring from their own places of concealment. Vogel discovers that the leader of the village is a man named Gruber who has yet to arrive. The Captain orders another peasant leader to take Vogel to Gruber to negotiate. Vogel accomplishes his mission: Gruber agrees- over the objection of the village priest, Fr. Wendt- that the soldiers are to be fed and quartered in return for their protecting the Valley. Sick and still suffering from his years of wandering the devastated countryside, Vogel promptly collapses. While recovering, Vogel and the Captain discuss the situation in the Valley- the internal rivalry between Gruber and Fr. Wendt, the status of the peasantry- and the outside world in general. Through a series of intellectual conversations- and arguments- the two slowly begin to form a bond of mutual respect and, by the end of the story, friendship. Vogel is quartered on Martin Hoffman, another leading peasant in the village whose young, strong-willed daughter, Inge, develops an attraction for him that he finds painful to resist. An immediate point of contention erupts when both Gruber and the Captain agree that the village's beloved shrine should be moved in order to prevent other roving patrols from finding the Valley. Fr. Wendt is diametrically opposed to this as a direct threat to the authority of the church. The peasantry are hostile to the idea believing that the shrine has protected the Valley exactly where it is. Even some of the Catholics among the mercenaries express misgivings, in particular, Pirelli, one of the Captains chief lieutenants who tells Gruber at one point: "Other villages have mountains. Mountains didn't save them. You have the shrine, and this village has been spared." To which Gruber retorts: "Other villages have shrines." The following day the shrine is moved. Vogel and Graf, the Captain's right-hand man, intercept Fr. Wendt who is on his way to see what has happened with the shrine, accompanied by a few peasants including a young hothead, Andreas Hoffmeyr. The confrontation turns physical as Andreas unsuccessfully attacks Graf. Vogel prevents Graf from killing the youngster who flees along with the others. During this fight, the raging Wendt is revealed as a former Calvinist minister. Vogel then must act quickly to prevent a massacre between a large group of peasants enroute to the shrine and the soldiers who have arrived to block their path. By relating a dream that he claimed he had but in actuality made-up on the spot, Vogel convinces them that the move had divine sanction. A disheartened and disillusioned Fr. Wendt storms off. With the peasantry mollified, the Captain, Vogel, and Graf go after Wendt but at that moment an attempted assassination of the Captain takes place by Svensen, a partisan of Korski. Svensen's shot goes awry and the priest is killed. As the Captain and Graf set off in pursuit, Vogel drags Wendt's body into a nearby barn. He is there confronted by a gleeful Gruber who believes Vogel has killed him- an action Gruber had himself earlier urged upon Vogel ostensibly to help maintain peace with the soldiers but in actuality to eliminate his own main rival in the Valley (Vogel, as an outsider, was the only person capable of committing the deed without arousing a general uprising against the soldiers or Gruber). Gruber tells Vogel that he must now flee to escape the wrath of the peasants, a suggestion that the Captain later regretfully backs although he knows the truth of the situation. During his flight from the Valley, Vogel comes across a wandering priest whose own village had been destroyed and immediately comes up with a new plan. He intends to take this priest back to the Valley to atone, in the eyes of the peasants, for the death of Fr. Wendt. "I owe the valley a priest for a priest," he reflects. However, back en route to the Valley, the pair encounter a patrol of 'Croats,' the irregular cavalry of the Imperialist forces. Realizing that the Croats would destroy the village despite being Catholic, Vogel instructs the priest to take his own horse, ride to the Imperialists, and lure them away to a nearby abandoned village while he goes back to warn the Captain. He is then to slip away and rejoin Vogel in the Valley. The priest hesitantly agrees. In the meantime, Vogel comes across Andreas, still in exile after his confrontation with Graf, and likewise urges him to act on behalf of the Valley, spy out the Croats, and report back. Vogel is then picked up by one the Captain's roving patrols and brought back to the Valley where he learns that the truth about Fr. Wendt's death is known to the peasants and that he is not a wanted man after all. He warns the Captain about the Imperialist patrol. The Croats still arrive at the Valley, but its inhabitants are waiting. Acting as the bait, Vogel lures the Imperialists into an ambush where they are entirely destroyed. Andreas, having been captured, bound, and tortured by the Croats, is recovered and forgiven his earlier transgression. Peace returns to the Valley and an admiring Captain makes Vogel a judge of all incidents between soldier and peasant- a position unwanted by Vogel. His first case, however, concerns the wandering priest who turns up in the Valley after the battle with the Croats. Vogel accepts the priest's story that he attempted to do as Vogel had suggested and had not betrayed the Valley. He becomes the new priest for the villagers after agreeing to remain apolitical. The Captain also agrees to Vogels suggestion of training some of the villagers as a type of militia to assist with protecting the Valley after the defection of Hansen, another of Korski's partisans, along with two other mercenaries. Tension begins rising again in the Valley and Vogel narrowly prevents the rape of Inge. Andreas tells Vogel that some of the militiamen are conspiring with Hansen and leads him to a place where they transact business. Instead, Andreas attempts to kill Vogel, jealous of Inge's infatuation with him and the general situation of the mercenaries presence in the Valley. At the last minute, however, he changes his mind, realizing the futility of his action, and saves Vogel. Vogel proceeds to inform the Captain of the plot only to discover that it is already known to him and that Graf has been feeding disinformation to the traitors. Based on what they perceive to be Hansen's plan, the Captain and Graf plan accordingly, assigning three mercenaries to Vogel to protect the villagers in a hidden hedge while the rest set an ambush. Hansen's attack is thwarted but several mercenaries are killed and many are wounded. Peace returns again to the Valley- the soldiers become more peasant-like, the peasants grow to accept the soldiers, and one mercenary marries a local girl. The reverie is interrupted by a travelling merchant who warns that the warring parties, Prince Bernard and Imperialist general Johann von Werth, are drawing closer to their location. Finally, a local man informs a patrol that the armies have arrived at the Rhine, two days away. Faced with impending doom, the Captain and Gruber agree that the company will leave the Valley and rejoin the Protestant army in order lure away other patrols and keep the Valley safe. Taking with him the remains of his original force as well as the bulk of the peasant militia, the Captain and company head off to the army encampment at Rheinfelden. He leaves behind Vogel and two wounded mercenaries to maintain order. Gruber immediately plots against the Captain's plans. He arranges the death of the two remaining soldiers, has Vogel confined, and, expecting his imminent return, sets up an ambush for the Captain after learning of the Protestant victory at Rheinfelden. Warned by Andreas via the new priest, Vogel escapes in the night in an attempt to warn the Captain but is shot and mortally wounded. As he lay dying, the Captain approaches alone, likewise mortally wounded, slips from his horse, and lies next to Vogel. The Captain reveals that in the confusion of the battle, his company had joined the wrong side in the conflict and had been wiped out, leaving him as the sole survivor. The two contemplate the final irony of the war in which Catholics and Protestants fought on both sides of the war, changing sides frequently, and the overall futility of warfare: "You might put it that in the confusion we joined the wrong army," the Captain says. "You might put it that one always does join the wrong army," Vogel replies. In the morning, the ambush party finds the two dead.
23839952	/m/06_wx2h	The Forest King	Paul B. Thompson		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After the trial of Vedvedsica, General Balif is sent on a mission to ascertain the true danger of a new race of small humanoids infiltrating the eastern boarders of Silvenesti. He travels east with an unlikely group. His two loyal servants, Lofotan and Artyrith, both formidable warriors, and Mathi, and Treskan unsure where their loyalties lie.
23843320	/m/06_xjxd	Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils		1991-11-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 After barely escaping an archaeological dig in Tikal, Guatemala with his life, Dr. Henry Jones Jr. makes his way back to New York. Upon his return, he learns of the recent discovery of the mysterious writings of a missing British explorer, Colonel Percy Fawcett. Though Colonel Fawcett himself still remains missing, his rediscovered work tells a story that could drastically change history and challenge several firmly held scientific beliefs. Within those pages, an incredible picture begins to take shape of a long lost city in the jungles of Brazil and the apparently true legend of a red-headed race, possibly descended from ancient Celtic Druids. Fascinated by such a prospect, and with the lovely Deidre Campbell at his side, Indiana Jones sets out for the Amazon. However, as usual, getting there will prove to be the true adventure. And if he does manage to survive the journey, who can tell what dangers await within the mythical city itself.
23847813	/m/06_wd6q	Kapitan Sino	Bob Ong	2009	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kapitan Sino is about an electrician, Rogelio Manglicmot, who has a special ability. Other characters include Bok-bok, Rogelio's best friend. He occasionally insults Rogelio, and Tessa, designer of Rogelio's suit. Though she is blind, she is quite talented and intelligent, and Rogelio cares for her. As the story progresses, Rogelio learns how to control his ability, and he then decides to become a hero. He was given the nickname "Kapitan Sino" by the people. He soon discovers the town Mayor's secret, and Rogelio defeats his son, who had become a giant worm-like monster which lives off human blood. Tessa is the monster's final victim, and after her death, Rogelio slowly begins to lose all reason to continue in becoming a hero. After the said event, an epidemic spreads, and everyone becomes desperate to find a cure. Rogelio, blamed for a crime he did not commit, is caught and imprisoned, along with his friend Bok-bok. Medics discover that Rogelio's blood may be a cure for the mysterious virus. In the end, Rogelio saves the people by donating his blood. They had tents outside the Church of Pelaez, where they had their medical mission, but things got out of control, so they decided to get some of Rogelio's blood in the Church. He was able to stand and walk out of the Church, looking for his parents, still not fully recovered from the blood donation. Outside, a man carrying a child asked him if his blood was the cure. The man stabbed him, and he fell to the ground, the man dipping his hand unto Rogelio's wound. After his death, Pelaez becomes peaceful, and Rogelio is given a commemoration.
23848373	/m/06_wclt	Audition	Ryu Murakami	2009		 Aoyama is a documentary maker who hasn't dated anyone since the death of his wife, Ryoko. He lives a placid existence with his teenage son, Shige, dreaming of remarrying. One day, his best friend Yoshikawa comes up with a plan to hold fake film auditions for young women looking for a breakout role. Of the thousands who apply, Aoyama only has eyes for the young, beautiful Yamasaki Asami - a shy, modest girl whose dreams of becoming a ballerina were cut short by an accident. Aoyama is infatuated by her and instigates several dates with her after the audition. Despite learning about her troubled past, which included consistent abuse as a child by her crippled step-father, Aoyama believes he is falling in love with her. He is given warnings by Yoshikawa that Asami may not be all that she seems, but Aoyama ignores him, seeing only the perfect woman he imagines Yamasaki Asami to be. It is only when it is possibly too late, that Aoyama discovers the horrifying truth about his new girlfriend...
23854860	/m/042h9p	Fight Club	Chuck Palahniuk	1996-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Fight Club centers on an anonymous Narrator, who works as a product recall specialist for an unnamed car company. Because of the stress of his job and the jet lag brought upon by frequent business trips, he begins to suffer from recurring insomnia. When he seeks treatment, the Narrator's doctor advises him to visit a support group for testicular cancer victims to "see what real suffering is like". The Narrator finds that sharing the problems of others -- despite not actually having testicular cancer himself -- alleviates his insomnia. The narrator's unique treatment works until he meets Marla Singer, another "tourist" who visits the support group under false pretenses. The possibly disturbed Marla reminds the Narrator that he is a faker who does not belong there. He begins to hate Marla for keeping him from crying, and, therefore, from sleeping. After a confrontation, the two agree to attend separate support group meetings to avoid each other. The truce is uneasy, however, and the Narrator's insomnia returns. Whilst on a nude beach, the Narrator meets Tyler Durden, a charismatic extremist of mysterious means. After an explosion destroys the narrator's condominium, he asks to stay at Tyler's house. Tyler agrees, but asks for something in return: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can." Both men find that they enjoy the ensuing fistfight. They subsequently move in together and establish a "fight club", drawing countless men with similar temperaments into bare-knuckle fighting matches, set to the following rules: Later in the book, a mechanic tells the Narrator about two new rules of the fight club: that nobody is the center of the fight club except for the two men fighting, and that the fight club will always be free. Marla, noticing that the Narrator hasn't recently attended his support groups, calls him to claim that she has overdosed on Xanax in a half-hearted suicide attempt. Tyler returns from work, picks up the phone to Marla's drug-induced rambling, and rescues her. Tyler and Marla embark on an uneasy affair that confounds the Narrator and confuses Marla. Throughout this affair, Marla is unaware both of fight club's existence and the interaction between Tyler and the Narrator. Because Tyler and Marla are never seen at the same time, the Narrator wonders if Tyler and Marla are the same person. As fight club attains a nationwide presence, Tyler uses it to spread his anti-consumerist ideas, recruiting fight club's members to participate in increasingly elaborate pranks on corporate America. He eventually gathers the most devoted fight club members and forms "Project Mayhem," a cult-like organization that trains itself as an army to bring down modern civilization. This organization, like fight club, is controlled by a set of rules: While initially a loyal participant in Project Mayhem, the Narrator becomes uncomfortable with the increasing destructiveness of its activities. He resolves to stop Tyler and his followers when Bob, a friend of his from the testicular cancer support group, is killed during one of Project Mayhem's sabotage operations. However, the Narrator learns that he himself is Tyler; Tyler is not a separate person, but a separate personality. As the Narrator's mental state deteriorated, his mind formed a new personality that was able to escape from the problems of his life. Marla inadvertently reveals to the Narrator that he and Tyler are the same person. Tyler's affair with Marla -- whom the Narrator professes to dislike -- was actually his own affair with Marla. The Narrator's bouts of insomnia had actually been Tyler's personality surfacing. Tyler would be active whenever the Narrator was "sleeping." The Tyler personality not only created fight club, but also blew up the Narrator's condo. Tyler plans to blow up a skyscraper using homemade bombs created by Project Mayhem; the actual target of the explosion, however, is the nearby national museum. Tyler plans to die as a martyr during this event, taking the Narrator's life as well. Realizing this, the Narrator sets out to stop Tyler, although Tyler is always thinking ahead of him. The Narrator makes his way to the roof of the building, where he is held at gunpoint by Tyler. However, when Marla comes to the roof with one of the support groups, Tyler vanishes, as he "was his hallucination, not hers." With Tyler gone, the Narrator waits for the bomb to explode and kill him. However, the bomb malfunctions because Tyler mixed paraffin into the explosives. Still alive and holding Tyler's gun, the narrator makes the first decision that is truly his own: he puts the gun in his mouth and shoots himself. Some time later, he awakens in a mental hospital, believing that he is in Heaven and imagines an argument with God over human nature. The book ends with the Narrator being approached by hospital employees who reveal themselves to be Project members. They tell him that their plans still continue, and that they are expecting Tyler to come back.
23855758	/m/06_w75s	The Forest of Hands and Teeth	Carrie Ryan	2009-03-10	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/089m7": "Zombie", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/02psyd2": "Zombies in popular culture"}	 Mary lives in a town ruled by the Sisterhood and the Guardians. The village is surrounded by fences; beyond lies only forest. There are only three ways through the fence: gates that open on paths that are themselves enclosed by fencing, expelling those who've been infected. Where the two paths lead, no one knows, for the Sisterhood says the village is the only human habitation left on Earth. Mary has been raised on stories passed down from her great-great-great-grandmother about life before the coming of zombies. She is especially fascinated by the ocean and believes if she could reach it, she would be free. Her adventure starts when there is a breaching in the fence. Mary must escape, find true love, and friendship while figuring out the mystery behind the other gates and fences.
23857044	/m/06_xfb7	Freedom	Jonathan Franzen	2010-08-31		 Freedom follows several members of an American family, the Berglunds, as well as their close friends and lovers, as complex and troubled relationships unfold over many years. The book follows them through the last decades of the twentieth century and concludes near the beginning of the Obama administration. Freedom opens with a short history of the Berglund family from the perspective of their nosy neighbors. The Berglunds are portrayed as a quintessential liberal middle-class family, and they are among the first families to move back into urban St. Paul, Minnesota, after years of white flight to the suburbs. Patty Berglund is an unusually young and pretty homemaker with a self-deprecating sense of humor; her husband Walter is a mild-mannered lawyer with strong environmentalist leanings. They have one daughter, Jessica, and a son, Joey, who early on displays an independent streak and an interest in making money. Joey becomes sexually involved with a neighborhood teen named Connie and begins to rebel against his mother, going so far as to move in with Connie, her mother, and her mother's boyfriend Blake, making Patty and Walter increasingly unstable. After several unhappy years the family relocates to Washington, D.C., abandoning the neighborhood and house they worked so hard to improve. Walter takes a job with an unorthodox environmental project, tied to big coal. The second portion of the book takes the form of an autobiography of Patty Berglund, composed at the suggestion of her therapist. The autobiography tells of Patty's youth as a star basketball player, and her increasing alienation from her artistically inclined parents and sisters. Instead of attending an East Coast elite college like her siblings, she gets a basketball scholarship to the University of Minnesota, and adopts the life of the athlete. She meets an attractive but unattainable indie rock musician named Richard Katz, and his nerdy but kind roommate, Walter Berglund. After her basketball career-ending knee injury, Patty suddenly becomes desperate for male affection, and after failing to woo Richard, she settles down with Walter, who has been patiently courting her for more than a year. We learn that Patty retained her desire for Richard and eventually had a brief affair with him at the Berglunds's lakeside cabin. The novel then jumps ahead to New York City in 2004 and shifts to the story of Walter and Patty's friend Richard, who has finally succeeded in becoming a minor indie rock star in his middle age. His hit album Nameless Lake tells the story of his brief love affair with Patty at the Berglund's lakeside cabin in Minnesota. Richard is uncomfortable with commercial success, throws away his new-found money, and returns to building roof decks for wealthy people in Manhattan. Walter calls him out of the blue to enlist his help as celebrity spokesman for an environmental campaign. Walter has taken a job in Washington, D.C. working for a coal mining magnate who wants to strip mine a section of West Virginia forest before turning it into a songbird preserve of future environmental value. Walter hopes to use some of this project's funding to hold a concert to combat overpopulation, the common factor behind all his environmental concerns, and he believes that Richard will be able to rally well known musicians to his cause. Meanwhile, Walter's marriage to Patty has been deteriorating steadily and his pretty young assistant Lalitha has fallen deeply in love with him. In parallel, the Berglunds's estranged, Republican son Joey attempts to finance his college life at the University of Virginia by taking on a dubious subcontract to provide spare parts for outdated supply trucks during the Iraq War. While at college, he marries his childhood sweetheart, but dare not tell his parents. After visiting his roommate's family in the DC suburbs, he also pursues his friend's beautiful sister Jenna and is exposed to her father's Zionist, neoconservative politics. After months of pursuing Jenna, when she finally wants him to have sex with her, he cannot maintain an erection. Later he becomes conflicted after making $850,000 selling defective truck parts to military suppliers in Iraq. In the end Joey gives away the excess proceeds of his profiteering, reconciles with his parents, settles down with Connie, and moves into a sustainable coffee business with the help of his father Walter. Now, Richard's re-appearance destroys Walter and Patty's weakening marriage. Richard tries to convince Patty to leave Walter, but she shows Richard the autobiography she wrote as "therapy", trying to convince him that she's still in love with Walter. Richard deliberately leaves the autobiography on Walter's desk, and Walter reads Patty's true thoughts. Walter kicks Patty out of the house and she moves to Jersey City to be with Richard, but the relationship only lasts six months. Later, she moves to Brooklyn alone and takes a job at a private school, discovering her skill for teaching younger children. When Patty leaves him, Walter has a catharsis on live television, revealing his contempt for the displaced West Virginian families and his various commercial backers. Local rednecks respond by dragging him from the platform and beating him up. He is promptly fired by the environmental trust, but his TV debacle makes him a viral video hero to radical youth across the nation. He and his assistant Lalitha become lovers and continue their plans to combat overpopulation through a concert to rally young people in the hills of West Virginia. Lalitha is killed in a suspicious car accident a few days before the concert is due to take place. Shattered, and having lost both of the women who loved him, Walter retreats to his family's lakeside vacation house back in Minnesota. He becomes known to a new street of neighbors as a cranky old recluse, obsessed with house cats killing birds nesting on his property. After a few years living in Brooklyn, Patty's father dies and she is forced to settle the fight that erupts within her family of spoiled bohemians as they attempt to split up the much-diminished family fortune. This experience helps Patty to mature. After a few years of living alone, she appraises the emptiness of her life and honestly faces her advancing age. She decides to hunt down Walter, the only man who had ever really loved her. She drives to the lakeside cabin in Minnesota, and despite his rage and confusion, he eventually agrees to take her back. The book ends in 2008 as they leave as a couple to return to Patty's job in New York City, after turning their old lakeside vacation home into a cat-proof fenced bird sanctuary, named in memory of Lalitha.
23859973	/m/076y23x	Uncle		1964		 The book introduces the main characters in the series; Uncle, his helpers, including the Old Monkey, Cloutman, Gubbins and the One-Armed Badger, and his enemies, the Badfort crowd, including Beaver Hateman, Sigismund Hateman, Nailrod Hateman, Filljug Hateman, Jellytussle, Hootman and Hitmouse.
23865290	/m/076wzzv	Bazaar-e-Husn	Munshi Premchand		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bazaar-e-Husn is a tale of an unhappy housewife who is beguiled away from the path of domestic virtue into becoming a courtesan but then reforms herself and atones by serving as the manager of an orphanage for the young daughters of courtesans, the seva-sadan of the Hindi title. While the Urdu title highlights the fall of the heroine, the Hindi title highlights her redemption, and it is tempting to see the two titles as widely symptomatic of their respective literary cultures.
23865562	/m/076v36c	Christina's Ghost		1985		 The book centers around 10-year old tomboy Christina who, to her displeasure, has to spend her summer with her grumpy uncle after her grandmother becomes ill. Uncle Ralph is house sitting for a friend in an old, spooky, and isolated lake-side Victorian mansion. Once she gets there she, finds a room that looks as if it had once belonged to a little boy. There she sees, for the first time, a little boy in a blue sailor suit, who disappears before Christina can talk to him. She also finds out that whatever she does, she cannot get inside the attic even though she hears noises coming from there. Christina decides she wants to know why the little boy is there. On a trip to the nearby city, Christina looks for old newspapers to see if she can find any information about the house. She finds a newspaper dated 30 years ago. It says that a murder took place in the house after a man stole some valuable stamps. The men whom he stole from found out where he was staying and went to kill him. The little boy was killed simply because he had witnessed the murder. One of the murderers confessed and said that they never found the stamps. When Christina gets back she finds the stamps inside an old comic book in the boy's room. Suddenly she hears something descending from the attic. Once again she sees the boy, but his time his expression is of terror, pointing at the attic door where the ghost of his sitter is about to come out. Christina and her uncle flee the house after the ghost of the sitter causes chaos. They manage to escape and spend the night in a nearby town. They turn the stamps in to the local sheriff's office the next morning. When they arrive back at the house, that morning, they find the doors and windows all open from the previous night. Upon further investigating, Christina concludes the ghost of the little boy is finally at peace now that the mystery surrounding his untimely death has been solved.
23867656	/m/076v5f6	Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters	Ben H. Winters	2009-09-15	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0crjhv8": "Mashup", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel"}	 The story follows the plot of Sense and Sensibility, but places the novel in an alternative universe version of Regency-era England where an event known as “The Alteration” has turned the creatures of the sea against mankind. In addition, this unexplained event spawns numerous “sea monsters,” including sea serpents, giant lobsters, and man-eating jellyfish. The wealthy Henry Dashwood lives on his estate, Norland Park, with his second wife and their three daughters - Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret. Dashwood embarks on a journey to discover the source of The Alteration, but is fatally mauled by a hammerhead shark. Upon his death the estate passes not to Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters but rather to Mr. Dashwood’s son John, the child of his first wife. Before expiring from his shark wounds, the elder Dashwood asks John to take care of his stepmother and half-sisters. John initially agrees to do so but is soon swayed by his greedy wife Fanny into giving the girls nothing at all. John and Fanny move into Norland, prompting the scorned Dashwood women to seek living space elsewhere. Mrs. Dashwood’s cousin Sir John Middleton invites her to stay at a cottage situated on an archipelago off the coast of Devonshire. Although Devonshire is considered to have England’s highest concentration of sea monsters, Mrs. Dashwood accepts the offer and the four women relocate to a windswept shanty known as Barton Cottage. Here they are treated kindly by Sir John, who invites them to dine at his heavily-fortified manor house on nearby Deadwind Island. They are soon introduced to Sir John’s family and friends, including his wife (a former island princess whom Sir John kidnapped and carried back to England and makes an escape attempt every couple of weeks), her mother (also kidnapped by Sir John and now calling herself “Mrs. Jennings”), and Colonel Brandon, a quiet and reserved gentleman who is also a part-man, part-squid mutant. The move to Barton Cottage serves to separate Elinor from Fanny’s brother Edward Ferrars. The unassuming and somewhat unremarkable Edward is clearly attracted to Elinor, and she to him, but Fanny makes it clear that their wealthy mother would never tolerate a marriage between Edward and the poor Elinor, insisting instead that he be married off to a woman of high rank and great wealth. Edward visits Elinor at Norland just before the move, and his reserved behavior makes her wonder if he is truly interested in her. His subsequent failure to visit her at her new island home only reinforces this suspicion. In contrast to Elinor’s woes, Marianne soon finds two suitors. Colonel Brandon is smitten with her, but she finds his age (35) and his tentacle-covered face to be repulsive. While out for a walk, Marianne falls into a rain-swollen creek and is attacked by an octopus. She is saved by the handsome John Willoughby, a dashing adventurer and deep-sea diver who has come to the archipelago to visit his aunt. The two of them are soon inseparable and Elinor begins to suspect that the two are planning on getting engaged. Unfortunately for Marianne, Willoughby is suddenly called away to the undersea city of Sub-Marine Station Beta, leaving her heartbroken and alone. Edward Ferrars finally pays a visit to the Dashwoods at Barton Cottage, but his continued unhappiness and reserved nature lead Elinor to decide that he no longer has feelings for her. Given her mother’s sorrow at being banished to the forlorn Devonshire coast and Marianne’s sorrow at being abandoned by Willoughby, Elinor decides that she must hide her own sorrow for the good of the family. Elinor is soon dealt a double shock when Lady Middleton’s cousins, Anne and Lucy Steele, come to visit. While out rowing, Elinor and Lucy are attacked by a fearsome sea serpent known as the Devonshire Fang-Beast, and the two barely escape with their lives. In the middle of the desperate struggle, Lucy informs Elinor that she has been engaged to Edward for more than four years. Elinor again hides her true feelings and wishes Lucy the best; secretly, she believes that Edward is only engaged to Lucy out of a sense of honor and duty and hopes for the two of them to somehow break the engagement. To cheer up the two elder Dashwood sisters, Mrs. Jennings offers to take them to Sub-Marine Station Beta. (There was an earlier Sub-Marine Station Alpha located in the Irish Sea, but it was destroyed by a treacherous merman.) The Station is a massive iron and glass undersea dome housing a large city, public gardens, shops, and a research laboratory where scientists plot new ways to defeat their aquatic enemies. Here Marianne attempts to renew her courtship with Willoughby, only to find him cold and unresponsive to her advances. When Willoughby leaves Marianne to fend for herself against an attack of giant lobsters, she demands an answer from him, and gets one: she learns that he is engaged to the very wealthy Miss Grey, news which leaves Marianne devastated. She admits to Elinor that she and Willoughby were never officially engaged, but his attentions towards her led her to believe that he loved her and would eventually marry her. Meanwhile, the truth about Willoughby's real character starts to emerge; Colonel Brandon tells Elinor that Willoughby had seduced Brandon's ward, fifteen-year-old Eliza Williams, and then abandoned her in a most cruel way - playfully burying her up to her neck in sand, then leaving her. Colonel Brandon was once in love with Miss Williams' mother, a woman who resembled Marianne and whose life was destroyed by an unhappy arranged marriage to the Colonel's brother. The Steele sisters arrive at Sub-Marine Station Beta along with John and Fanny Dashwood, Edward, and Edward’s mother. Lucy is overjoyed when Edward’s mother prefers her to Elinor, but her happiness is soon ruined when Anne lets it slip that Edward and Lucy are engaged. Edward is immediately disinherited and his fortune passes to his brother; however, Elinor and her friends respect Edward’s choice of love and honor over money. Colonel Brandon offers Edward a modest income as a lighthouse keeper to help him get started on a new life. The vacation at Sub-Marine Station Beta is abruptly ended when schools of swordfish begin ramming the glass dome in the hopes of breaking it. They eventually succeed with the help of a narwhal and other sea creatures; the Dashwood sisters and their friends barely manage to escape before the dome breaks and floods. While riding an emergency ferry to the surface, Elinor encounters Edward’s brother Robert and is disheartened to see that Robert cares more for his newfound inheritance than for the fate of his brother. The sisters and Mrs. Jennings retire to the Cleveland, a houseboat owned by Mrs. Jennings’ son-in-law (and Sir John’s fellow mercenary) Mr. Palmer. Soon after arriving, a depressed Marianne is attacked by mosquitoes and develops malaria. The Palmers leave for their own safety, and only after they are gone does Elinor realize the sudden danger they are in; the area around the Cleveland is home to the bloodthirsty Pirate Dreadbeard, and Dreadbeard’s friendship with Mr. Palmer is the only thing keeping them safe. Without Palmer, the Cleveland and the Dashwood sisters are at the mercy of the pirates. As Marianne is deathly ill and unable to move, Colonel Brandon volunteers to swim to Barton Cottage and return with Mrs. Dashwood. This leaves Elinor and Mrs. Jennings to defend the Cleveland. Hearing of Marianne’s illness, Willoughby journeys to the Cleveland and helps Elinor booby-trap the vessel; he also explains that when torn between love of Marianne and the lure of Miss Grey’s wealth, he chose the latter and was deeply regretful about it. Willoughby departs just as Pirate Dreadbeard and his men arrive. Elinor and Mrs. Jennings bravely defend their ship, and Elinor summons a swarm of octopi using a special whistle that she has obtained from Willoughby. Dreadbeard’s men are soon massacred by the tentacled monsters, while the Pirate himself is killed by the returning Colonel Brandon. Marianne recovers from her malaria. Elinor passes along Willoughby’s confession, and Marianne admits that she could never have been truly happy being married to such a selfish man. She points out that the combination of her wish for death and her deadly illness was morally equivalent to attempting suicide, and resolves to model herself after Elinor. A servant reports to the Dashwoods that Mr. Ferrars has married Lucy. Elinor is overcome by pain and visions of a five-pointed star; upon reflection, she realizes that the pain and visions have been with her (and always appear most forcefully) whenever Lucy is around. Sir John surmises that Lucy must be a sea witch - a monster that seduces human men and sucks the marrow from its victim’s bones. Before Elinor can form a plan to save Edward, he arrives at Barton Cottage. The Dashwoods learn that it was Robert Ferrars, not Edward, that married Lucy. They resolve to leave Robert to his terrible fate, feeling that he deserves it. The happy occasion is literally upended when the island upon which Barton Cottage rests suddenly rises from the ocean; it turns out to be not an island at all, but rather a monstrous sea-beast known as Leviathan, awakened from a long slumber and hungry for all sorts of marine life. The characters survive their sudden upheaval from their former island home. Edward reconciles with his mother and asks Elinor to marry him; and she agrees. The couple begin a simple new life tending to the lighthouse at Delaford. Marianne resolves to become a marine engineer so that she can design a new Sub-Marine Station Gamma dome. Despite herself, she comes to fall in love with Colonel Brandon, and the two eventually marry. Willoughby, somewhat to his dismay, is forgiven by his aunt for his treatment of Eliza and reclaims his inheritance. He realizes that had he married Marianne for love instead of Miss Grey for money, he would have eventually attained both love and money. Instead he is left to ponder what might have been.
23869776	/m/076v37f	Thirteen Reasons Why	Jay Asher		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Clay Jensen, a somewhat shy high school student, returns home from school one day to find an anonymously-sent package sitting on his doorstep. Upon opening it, he discovers that it is a shoebox containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by the late Hannah Baker, his classmate and emotionally damaged crush who recently committed suicide by taking a handful of pills. The tapes were initially mailed to one classmate with instructions to pass them from one student to another, in the style of a chain letter. On the tapes, Hannah explains to thirteen people how they played a role in her death, by giving thirteen reasons explaining why she took her life. Hannah has given a second set of tapes to one of their classmates, the identity of whom Clay later discovers, and warns the people on the tapes that if they do not pass them on, the second set will be leaked to the entire student body. This could lead to the public embarrassment and shame of certain people, while others could face physical harassment charges or jail time. Through the audio narrative, Hannah reveals her pain and suffering and her spiral into depression that ultimately leads to her death. She lists her first crush,a former friend, a peeping Tom, a liar, a goof who takes advantage of her, a hater, a thief who steals her poems, a member of the list that already passed, a cheerleader who crashes into a stop sign, a guy she had a sexual encounter with, the guidance counselor, and Clay himself. They all thought their actions were harmless, but they were wrong. Hannah's tapes will haunt them forever.
23869916	/m/076vkph	Green	Ted Dekker	2009	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book starts ten years after White, where, once again, Thomas' Circle is threatened not by the diseased Scabs inhabiting the forests, but from the inside. Thomas' son, Samuel, born of his first wife before Red, is trying to turn the Circle back to their war-making ways and lead them in a fight against the diseased ones. He forsakes Elyon's words to not fight, and denys that he even exists. When Thomas and others stand against his attempts to change them at one of their Gatherings, he challenges Vadal, who is betrothed to Thomas' daughter, Marie, in a fight to the death. He accepts, but Marie forces him down by offering herself as the fighter. They fight while Thomas watches, his reality unwinding with the thoughts that Elyon had forsaken them. The book shifts to the past, to our reality, where a man named Billy, who can read minds with eye connections by writing in the books of history years ago, is entering a Raison laboratory. He has an audience with Kara Hunter (Thomas' sister), and Monique De Raison, the newest operator of Raison Corporations. He slyly talks to them—they wearing glasses so he cannot connect eyes—and tries to get the sample of Thomas' blood, taken in White. They do not tell him much, but allow him to stay at the mansion as a guest until they can figure out what to do with him. Billy immediately places Monique's mid-twenties daughter, Janae, as a target for questioning. Kara and Monique then tell Janea that there was a blood sample, but it was destroyed when an Indonesian lab was destroyed, where it was sent for safekeeping. Back in Other Earth, the fight between Marie and Samuel is ended by Thomas, who decides to conduct his own challenge. He challenges Qurong and the power of Teleeh with the power of Elyon. They travel to Ba'al Bek, a crater of unknown origin outside the forest. Thomas, accompanied by Jamous, Mikil, and Samuel find themselves facing Qurong, the leader of the church, Ba'al, and a group of over 200 priests and forty soldiers. Thomas lets Ba'al choose the challenge. Ba'al forces Samuel to be used as a sacrifice to Teeleh and that Elyon may save him if he wishes. Two-hundred priests sacrifice themselves by blood-loss after cutting their wrists to bleed on the tied-down Samuel. Shaitaki fly overhead. Ba'al starts to do it himself when he is possessed by Marsuuv, Teeleh's queen. Marsuuv lets the Shaitaki feed, but they are stopped by a green mist lowered from the heavens, reminiscent to the green waters of Black. Samuel, dead by Marsuuv's sword, is brought back to life and they escape, leaving Qurong's forces in pursuit and the leader himself with words of his daughter still loving him (her father). While this is happening, Marie and Chelise are heading to save Thomas from Ba'al. They arrive when the challenge is finished and only the dead are left. Chelise, believing Thomas captured, decides to enter the forests and beg his release from Qurong. She sends Marie back to the Circle. Thomas and the others, though, have left the pursuit behind and stop to decide their next move. An argument between Thomas and Samuel begins and Samuel leaves them to join the Eramites, a group of "half-breeds," the forest people who became scabs and treated like lowers in a caste system, who fled the forests and went deep into the desert. On Earth, Janae and Billy decide to inject themselves with an evolution of the Raison Strain, Raison Strain B, which is not airborne, but only takes a day to kill instead of thirty, and a strong bit of knockout pills. They do so under the belief that Monique and Kara will save them with the vial of Thomas' blood (they also believe that it was not destroyed), which will send them to Other Earth. At first the two women decide not to save them, in fear that they may bring back information that could cause a global disaster, like Thomas did, or they may find the Books of History and change something drastically. But, a few hours later, they decide to call in the blood, which still exists, and try to save them—Janae, at least. Billy and Janae are injected with the blood and wake up as Ba'al and his lover respectively. Janae's inhabitant refers to Ba'al/Billy as Billos, meaning he was one of the Chosen in the Lost Book series, who's life was sold to Teeleh in Renegade. They don't get very far into their dreams before they are woken up. Thomas and Qurong travel to Earth with the books, though Qurong believes that Thomas is using magic to put visions in his head. Thomas wakes up the dreaming Billy and Janae, with Kara and Monique watching. Qurong, Billy, and Janae all turn against Thomas, but he is too fast and locks them in the room together with no escape. Janae looks at Qurong's skin under a microscope and finds that the disease is caused by millions of Shataiki larvae on their skin. Qurong breaks the door, Janae steals the vial of Thomas' blood and a vial of the Raison Strain B, which, she believes, will make the worms on infected skin act violently, but not those who have touched Thomas' blood, those who had drowned, or the half-breeds who used to bathe. They steal the Books of History and all three escape back to Other Earth, leaving Thomas. Janae and Billy arrive back in Ba'al's thrall and are captured. They break free of Ba'al's prison and pursue him to the Black Forest where one of Teeleh's twelve queens, Marsuuv, is waiting. They are accepted as lovers and Janae is given the task of seducing Samuel and helping end all humanity. Samuel and Eram are taken by Janae's words and accept her help. They and Eram's forces join the Circle and, with Janae showing the effects of the Raison Strain B—which she calls Teeleh's Breath—about 5000 Circle members join in to help fight a battle against Qurong and his forces. They leave just a few hours later to strike, after Janae beats Chelise in a challenge. Chelise wakes and journeys to find her father and try to have him drown once more. Billy meets Teeleh with Marsuuv, who gives him an objective. He takes his eyes and uses them to create a clone. He names the original Bill and the clone Billy. Billy is tasked with returning to Earth in the current time and be the anti-christ. Bill is tasked to travel to right before Thomas first dreamed and kill him—that is, in the beginning of Black. They both travel with the books and arrive at different times, where they need to be. Billy is the one left holding the books, and phases into the very room where Thomas is. Billy leaves with confused talk. Thomas and Kara take the books back to Other Earth. Chelise finds Qurong just after he decapitates Ba'al. The Shaitaki inferno above, now seen to all, has plummeted, devouring anybody, now that the Circle has broken, and Elyon's vow broken as well. She cries for him to drown for her, but he refuses again. Samuel, now infected with the disease and almost fully Horde after breaking Elyon's vow, decapitates her without realizing it was his half-mother. Qurong then kills Samuel. Thomas is met by the boy Elyon, who quickly shows him the battlefield, where the Horde are being dreadfully slaughtered with Teeleh's Breath affecting them, making it hard for them to move their joints. Elyon and Thomas jump through a lake and pop outside the Circle camp, where some 7000 still remain, including Mikil, Jamous, and Johan. They all travel, following the Warrior Elyon to the battlefield. Elyon creates a new lake, red with a green center, in the battlefield while Roush hold back the shataiki. All but Thomas dive, who is looking for Chelise and Samuel. He finds Qurong and asks where Chelise is, and he shows him Chelise's clothing, with no body. He asks for Samuel and is shown the Horde body that still exists. Thomas realizes that Samuel was not saved by Elyon (as was Chelise) and cries out for mercy. He disappears. Qurong, stricken, finally drowns, crying out for Elyon. Thomas is with Elyon. He is given a second chance on the terms that he will not know it and is placed at any place/time that Elyon chooses, and without knowledge of anything that happens after that. Thomas accepts and finds himself in a shower. Kara is just leaving their apartment. Thomas goes to work, leaves after closing, and the start of Black is repeated, ending with him getting shot in the side of the head by Billy, who then follows him into his dream. The final words say that Thomas dreamed and nothing would be the same, creating a Circle. The story continues in Black.
23871057	/m/0gfc_w0	Servant of the Dragon	David Drake	1999-08	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 In the introduction, seven wizards use a mummified reptilian creature to cast a spell to raise Yole from the depths. Meanwhile, the main characters are in Valles, where a magical blue bridge has appeared where there hasn’t been a bridge for hundreds of years. Upon seeing it Tenoctris ascertains that while it is dangerous, it is not associated with the evil Throne of Malkar. While investigating the bridge and the mysterious happenings associated with it, a massive bird appears, snatches up Sharina, and disappears with her. Cashel immediately determines to find Sharina and rescue her. Tenoctris uses her art and determines that whoever sent the bird to kidnap Sharina means her no harm. She sends Cashel to Landure, a wizard on another plane who can help him. Cashel arrives next to an ajar door; a beautiful woman rushes out, pursued by an angry wizard. Cashel fights the wizard, using his quarterstaff, and kills him. The woman, Colva, takes Cashel to Landure’s castle where she puts him into a drug-induced stupor through which he discovers that she is actually a demoness. When Cashel recovers, he returns to the body of the wizard, who was in actuality Landure. Cashel discovers that Landure’s sapphire ring contains a powerful demon, named Krias. Krias informs Cashel that he must take a small wafer from Landure’s body which can be used to animate a new body and bring Landure back—but he must travel through the Underworld to reach Landure’s extra bodies. Cashel takes Krias with him. Eventually Cashel reaches the entrance to the third level of the underworld where Colva originally stayed. While there, Cashel eats some of the fruit of the Tree of Life. At Krias' suggestion, Chashel puts one of the fruit in his satchel. Cashel comes to Landure's castle where he puts the wafer under the tongue of one of the paintings of Landure. Cashel gives Krias back to Landure. When Landure begins insulting Cashel, Krias refuses to serve him anymore, prompting Landure to give Krias back to Cashel. In exchange for his freedom from the sapphire, Krias helps Cashel to cross the Chasm and reach Sharina. Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris stay in Valles to deal with the problem of the bridge. Garric also faces possible rebellion from several lords and bickering among others. Hoping to kill two birds with one stone, Garric assigns Lord Tadai to be ambassador to Sandrakkan. Garric has several dreams about Klestis, a city destroyed at the same time Yole was, and the wizard, Ansalem. Ansalem possessed many objects of power, including a mummy of a reptilian creature, a foot-wide fossilized ammonite, and a powerful amphisbaena. King Carus reveals that he once sought Ansalem’s help in unifying the isles, but Ansalem refused. Ansalem had seven acolytes (the most dangerous of which was Purlio) who used the ammonite to imprison him while he was weak after rescuing Klestis from the destruction of Yole. Anselm reveals that he has nothing to do with the bridge, but if he can get his amphisbaena back, he can repair it. Tenoctris determines that she needs to visit a wizard named Alman and borrow his viewing crystal. Katchin the Miller, who raised Cashel, appears begging Garric for a job, but Garric turns him away (and he is later captured by Colva). Tenoctris takes them to the end of time. They find Alman in a ruined city and he discovers that his viewing crystal has been stolen from him. The group returns to their own time, leaving Alman in his solitude. After spending a few days tending to matters of state in Valles, Garric receives news that his uncle has helped someone to kidnap Tenoctris. Garric and some of the Blood Eagles cross through a portal to ancient Klestris, to retrieve her but are thwarted. Before returning to Valles, they rescue a woman who claims that she is Colva, wife of Landure, the Guardian, and warns them that seven necromancers intend to do battle with them. She opines that they have kidnapped Tenoctris in order to sacrifice her and increase their own magical powers. At midnight they cross the bridge which showed up at the beginning of the story, to attack the seven necromancers on Klestis. They are confronted with an army of undead under the control of three necromancers, whom they slay. They find Tenoctris unconscious in Ansalem's chambers. Purlio and another of the acolytes are casting spells on her. Purlio takes the fossil ammonite and merges it with himself, replacing his head with it. Armies of undead begin entering Klestis, coming across bridges similar to the one that first set these events in motion. Ilna determines that she can be of no further help in Valles, so she negotiates passage to Sandrakkan with Lord Tadai. Ilna reluctantly makes friends with Lord Tadai’s niece, Merota. The first night on the ship, Ilna and a tough-looking sailor named Chalcus, witness the beginnings of a mutiny. Ilna tries to warn the captain and Lord Tadai of the imminent mutiny, but they ignore her. The mutiny takes place, as Ilna had warned, and the sailors put everyone except Merota and Ilna ashore on an island. Eventually they arrive at Yole and put ashore. That night they are attacked by a monster. Frightened, the sailors put Ilna, Merota, and Chalcus ashore to reconnaissance. In the interior of the island they discover a harbor bordered by a polis full of reanimated dead people. As they watch, a swarm of Great Ones tow their now-empty ships into the harbor. As they make their way around the island, a creature called the Tall Thing (which was once Ansalemn's child) kidnaps Merota. While pursuing it, Ilna is captured by a wizard named Ewis (one of Ansalem's apprentices) who has the Lens of Rushila. In trying to escape, Ilna releases the Tall Thing which kills and eats Ewis. They meet back up with Chalcus and make their way to the harbor. There they discover that the crews of their ships have been murdered and then reanimated. They flee and spend the night in a cavern. They come to a chasm with a bridge which takes them to a frozen Klestis. There they find Purlio (with his ammonite head) performing incantations using the Dragon. A second necromancer attacks them with three ice beetles. Chalcus defeats the ice beetles while Ilna subdues the necromancer long enough for Merota to bash in his head with a rock. Then they attack Purlio. Sharina is carried by the bird through several planes of existence, including some which are disturbing and grotesque. Finally it deposits her on a beach next to a forest and promptly disappears. Inside a broken-down temple covered with images of serpents she meets a reptilian creature, the Dragon. He reveals that he has brought her back to the past to send her on a mission to recover his mummy which is being used to raise Yole and reanimate the dead. He gives her a snakeskin which she is to take with her back to her own time. Then she goes through a portal and finds herself centuries into the future. She hires a graceful, large bird-like being, named Dalar, as her bodyguard. The pass through several more portals. The last takes them to Klestis at the time when Ansalem was rescuing it during the destruction of Yole. They climb to Ansalem's chambers where they find his seven acolytes and the Dragon. Ansalem is bound and his son has been vivisected and is being transformed into the Tall Thing. Sharina and Dalar are locked out, but at that moment Cashel appears and uses his quarterstaff to punch open the door. When they come through, though, instead of the seven necromancers, they find Garric and Tenoctris. Purlio has escaped. Tenoctris casts a spell which takes them to the frozen time where they encounter Purlio as well as Ilna and her companions. Together they defeat Purlio, but he flees and takes refuge in the land of the dead. The companions are whisked back to Ansalem's chambers. There Sharina burns the mummy and gives the snakeskin to Tenoctris—it is from an amphisbaena. While everyone is distracted, Colva attacks and kills Garric. Liane then kills Colva. In the land of the dead, Garric encounters Purlio and severs his connection to the living world, thus killing him completely. Cashel revives Garric using the fruit from the Tree of Life in his satchel. Using the amphisbaena snakeskin, Tenoctris frees Ansalem from the cyst he was trapped in. Ansalem returns everyone to their homes—including Dalar—and then destroys the bridges that connect the different planes of existence. Garric—the Prince of Haft and future Lord of the Isles. His ancestor, King Carus, has taken up residence in his head and aids him in matters of sword and state. Sharina—Garric’s half-sister. The Dragon seeks her help in escaping bondage to seven necromancers. Cashel—a large, simple shepherd who would be content to be just a sheepherder. He is half human, half sprite. His power is manifest through his use of an iron-ferruled quarterstaff. Liane—a noblewoman who has some magical abilities and is romantically involved with Garric. Ilna—Cashel’s sister who doesn't feel she fits in with the others due to her past and her unrequited love for Garric. She is half human, half sprite. Her power is manifest through her use of thread and fabric. Tenoctris—a wizardess from King Carus’ day who accidentally sent herself forward in time when Yole was being sunk into the ocean. Her power comes not from strength in magic, but from careful study and exact execution of spells. She is an atheist. Alman—a wizard who prefers to live a life of solitude at the end of time Ansalem the Wise—a powerful wizard from the time of King Carus Lord Attaper—commander of the Blood Eagles Celondre—a historical poet, philosopher, and aristocrat (modeled after Horace) Chalcus—a chanteyman and former pirate who allies himself with Ilna Colva—a demoness who escapes the Underworld with Cashel’s unwitting help Dalar—a member of the Rokonar and Sharina’s bodyguard Elfin—a human boy kidnapped by the People and taken to the Underworld Ewis—one of Ansalem's apprentices Harn—a spider-like creature which guards a bridge on Yole Katchin—Cashel’s sycophantic, self-serving uncle Krias—a powerful demon imprisoned inside Landure’s sapphire ring Landure—a wizard on another plane, guardian of the Underworld Count Lerdoc—ruler of Blaise Merota—Lord Tadai’s niece Mykon—a prince who lived on Cordin before the sinking of Yole Purlio of Mnar—principle acolyte of Ansalem the Wise and a powerful wizard in his own right who surrenders himself to one of the Great Ones Reise—Garric's adoptive father Lord Royhas—Garric’s royal chancellor Lord Tadai—Garric’s Royal Treasurer and later Ambassador of the Prince to Sandrakkan Tiglath—the captain of a brothel-barge King Valence—current Lord of the Isles Vonculo—sailing master of The Terror and a mutineer Earl Wildulf—ruler of Sandrakkan * ammonites * demons * dragons—an ancient variety of reptilian humanoids which are apparently different from the Scaled Men of the previous novel * fauns * ghouls * harpies * hippogriffs * ice beetles * mammoths * man-eating trees/dryads * The People—a beautiful but conniving race which resembles some descriptions of elves * The Rokonar—bird people that live somewhere beyond the Isles and were destroyed at the end of the Third Age * Sea wolves—reptilian sea creatures whose description resembles that of a Mosasaur * zombies
23875083	/m/076xxc6	The Cater Street Hangman	Anne Perry		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In an upper class salon on Cater Street several women discuss, in oblique terms, the death of a local girl. Even though Susannah has recently been out of town and is unaware of the murder, it is bad form for proper women to talk about such matters and so they are careful not to say anything too direct about the way the daughter of a friend was garroted and cut open. Finally, tiring of the game, Charlotte comes out and tells her aunt what she has heard about the murder. Although the victim was of the upper class she quickly gains a reputation as having been a bad seed. A second death occurs, this time a servant. Again the idea that these women did something to deserve this end is easier to accept than the knowledge that it could happen to anyone else. Only when the third murder happens to a member of the Ellison household do they believe that these crimes might not be a simple case of robbery or jealousy. A young police inspector, Thomas Pitt, has been investigating these crimes and soon arrives to question the Ellison household. Pitt is the educated son of a gamekeeper and cook. His education and manners let him wander in upper-class circles, while his dress and impolite tactics keep them from becoming entirely comfortable with him. Although Pitt aspires to higher social standing, he requests that he be treated as a middle class working man. None of this endears the inspector to Caroline Ellison, the lady of the house and mother of Sarah, Emily and Charlotte Ellison. Pitt uses pointed questions and little tact to find the information he needs. He often knows the answers to questions before he speaks and so puts everyone off-guard as they attempt to keep their secrets hidden. Before long, every female suspects every male of being the hangman, much to the detriment of long standing marriages and relationships. As the investigation into who is killing the young women progresses, Thomas falls in love with the unconventional Charlotte. Outwardly, Charlotte is a model of Victorian society, but she does not wish to become one of the mindless women she sees everyday. Instead, she reads newspapers that are smuggled out of her father's sight and speaks her mind on all manner of subjects. She finds out more about the world beyond her door when she meets Thomas and finds that he will engage her in useful and interesting discussions. Anne Perry wrote The Cater Street Hangman as a single, stand alone, novel. She had not intended for it to become a series and so there are elements in this book which do not blend smoothly into the series.
23890224	/m/076t0wp	Tricks	Ellen Hopkins	2009-08-25	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the novel Tricks, the story begins with five teenagers, all residing in various parts of the United States. The first character, Eden Streit, lives with her father, mother, and younger sister, Eve. Being a daughter of a minister also comes with expectations, such as not dating until marriage and marrying men within the Christian faith. But for Eden, that doesn’t matter with Andrew, her boyfriend. Her only problem is trying to keep their relationship a secret from her parents. The second character, Seth Parnel, lives with his father after his mother dies from cancer a year and a half ago. Seth struggles with identifying his sexuality after he breaks up with his girlfriend, Janet Winkler. He meets Loren and is catapulted into a new kind of relationship. The third character, Cody Bennet, doesn’t know who his biological father is and spends his time with his step-father Jack. Jack hasn’t been feeling well, and Cody starts to drink. The fourth character, Whitney Lang, lives with her mother, while her father works and lives in another city nearby and her sister, Kyra, attends college. Whitney is disconnected with her mother and likes when her dad is home since she sees him as her hero. Whitney hooks up with Lucas at one of Kyra’s performances and they hit it off, but she still worries about committing to the relationship with him. The fifth character, Ginger Cordell, encounters rape from an early childhood and deals with keeping these secrets from her family. Ginger’s only friend is Alex, and she has begun questioning how she feels about her. Eden’s parents finds out about her relationship with Andrew, and assumes that she is being controlled by the devil, and so she is sent to Tears of Zion. There, she is being kept in captivity and forced to do work that would supposedly rid her of evil. She starts giving a worker named Jerome sex in exchange for food, shampoo, and other treats. She hopes that Jerome can be the key to her escape. Loren moves away and leaves Seth, and Seth’s dad finds out he is gay, so he kicks him out of the house. He goes to live with Carl, an older man he met at a bar, and moves with him to Vegas as his companion. Lucas leaves Whitney by dumping her after taking her virginity, and she turns to Bryn for support. She gives herself to him, and leaves her family to move with him to Vegas for his photography business. Ginger’s brother, Sandy, is run over by a motorcycle, and Gram goes with him to the hospital. Ginger is raped again by one of her mother’s boyfriends, and she finds out that Iris is charging them to have sex with her. She takes her mother’s money and leaves with her friend, Alex, and they go to stay with Alex’s aunt, Lydia, in Vegas. Cody’s step-father, Jack, dies from cancer, and Cody takes on the responsibility of paying for bills. He gets deep into online gambling, drifting away from Ronnie, whom he believes he loves. Eden manages to escape with the help of Jerome and decides to ditch him at a gas station. She succeeds, and gets rides from truck drivers to Vegas. She uses sex for money and means of survival until she finds a place that helps young people in similar situations. She finds Andrew’s mother’s e-mail, and sends her a message. Andrew’s mother replies, and Andrew sends a message shortly after. They both express relief that she is alive, and hope to see her again soon. Seth becomes attracted to Jared, a man he meets in the gym, and they have sex. Carl reveals that he had paid Jared to act as bait, and kicks Seth out. Seth goes online and looks for a new man to stay with. Bryn is revealed to have acted a certain way to get Whitney to fall in love with him. He cheats on Whitney, forces her to record their sex and have sex with other people, and gets her addicted to drugs. Toward the end of the book, the author seems to make Whitney to be losing more of herself. One night, she takes an overdose and ends up in the hospital with her family around her. Her mother cries for her and says that she wants them to have a better relationship now, and that she does care about her. Whitney’s father is angry, and her sister is said to be angry that Whitney stole all of the attention. Lydia sets up Alex and Ginger in the stripping business, and that becomes how they get money and a place to stay. Sex becomes less about love and more about surviving. They get arrested because they were discovered by Vegas Vice, and they are sent to a place that was supposed to help them get their life back together. Ginger calls Gram and finds out that Iris is dying from an STD. She decides to go back home and take care of her siblings. Alex stays. She is revealed to be pregnant, and she says that she will be a better mother to her child than Ginger or Alex’s mothers were to them. Cody gets into business with Lydia, partnering up with Misty occasionally in having sex with men. He does not believe himself to be gay, but he is described as feeling that he has to do anything to get money and support the rest of his family. His relationship with Ronnie becomes distant, and he hopes that she would find a better man who deserves her. On one of their “dates”, Misty’s boyfriend, Chris, finds them almost naked with their client. He is expressed as being very angry with Misty, and he attacks them, putting them in the hospital. Cody wakes up occasionally there, and Misty and their client are revealed to be dead. Cody hears voices while he is partially conscious. He hears his mother speaking to him, comforting him, and begging him not to leave her.
23896488	/m/076wx_0	Vampire Academy	Richelle Mead	2007-08-16	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}	 Guardian in training Rosemarie "Rose" Hathaway and Moroi princess Vasilisa "Lissa" Dragomir are brought back to their school, St. Vladimir's Academy, after running away two years previously. On returning, Guardian Dimitri Belikov, who was the leader of the team of guardians sent to retrieve the two, is assigned to be Lissa's guardian. He offers to mentor Rose in her guardian training as he feels she has potential and with training can make up for the years she has lost. He also believes Rose can be an excellent guardian to Lissa due to the presence of a rare one-sided psychic bond to Lissa which allows her to know the latter's emotions, thoughts, and whereabouts. Rose agrees, knowing this is the only way she will be allowed to remain, and on graduation be Lissa's guardian. Though they soon fall into the academy life, they find that Lissa has lost her social standing among the other Moroi royals owing to her running away. They decide to keep company with Lissa's "cousin" Natalie Dashkov, who is the daughter of sick and dying Victor Dashkov. On the very first day back they find that another Moroi student, Mia Rinaldi, who is dating Lissa's ex-boyfriend Aaron, holds a grudge against Lissa (and by default Rose). Mia finds every opportunity to insult Lissa and is in turn insulted and threatened by Rose. Lissa finds a friend, Christian Ozera, much to the ire of the ever protective Rose. Christian's parents had turned Strigoi (undead vampires) of their own will for immortality and had been killed by guardians. Rose mistrusts Christian because of his family history. It is also implied that she is jealous of Lissa's interest in him. Rose, in turn, starts falling for Dimitri. Things start getting worse when Lissa finds dead animals in her room along with threatening letters. Lissa starts going into depression and engages in self mutilation. It is revealed that though she has not specialized in any elemental magic (Air, Water, Fire, and Earth), she has a miraculous ability to heal, which was witnessed by Rose and their teacher Ms. Karp two years back. Rose finds out that this gift is shared by Ms. Karp, who is then taken to a mental institution. They find out that Lissa has affinity for Spirit, that might just be dangerous for her and Rose. This incident along with her increasing depression was what had caused Rose to run away with Lissa. While attending Sunday service, Rose hears that the Moroi saint St. Vladimir could heal people, and suffered from some form of depression. Also, he was protected by his loyal companion the "shadow kissed" Anna with whom he shared a bond. On returning from a shopping trip with Lissa, Victor, and Natalie, Rose has an accident and on waking up deduces from what Dimitri tells her (that she had a miraculous recovery) that Lissa had healed her. She reaches into her bond and finds that Lissa is lying on the attic of the Church bleeding from self-inflicted cuts. Her reporting this incident causes a slight break in their friendship. Somehow discovering this, Mia insults Lissa, calling her unstable, causing Rose to punch Mia and break her nose. Detained by teachers and guardians, Rose is unable to follow Lissa; she reaches through her bond while confined to her room and finds that Lissa is being kidnapped by some guardians who assault Christian when he tries to save her. Rose tries to go and warn Dimitri and instead ends up nearly having sex with him. They stop when Dimitri unclasps a locket gifted by Victor from her neck and he manages to throw it away. It is later revealed that Victor had charmed the locket with a lust charm which causes people to act on already existing attraction, letting go of inhibitions. Through the bond Rose finds out that Victor is the one who kidnapped Lissa and plans to use her to heal his genetic disease. He reveals that Natalie was the one who left the animals in Lissa's room to see her heal them after accidentally catching her doing so. He also reveals that Lissa had specialized in the rare fifth element Spirit, and that her bringing back Rose from the dead after the accident was what caused them to have a bond. Using Spirit is what was causing Lissa's depression. Though Lissa heals Victor for the time being, the school guardians are able to reach the place and rescue her. On returning, Victor convinces Natalie to turn Strigoi by killing while feeding and gets her to break him free. She injures Rose who was visiting Victor, but is killed by Dimitri. Dimitri reveals that he too feels for Rose but cannot have a relationship with her because of their age difference and because he won't be able to guard Lissa wholeheartedly if she is near him.
23898865	/m/076yk4v	The Business of Dying	Simon Kernick	2002		 It is 9:01 pm on a cold November night, Dennis Milne and his friend Danny are waiting at the Traveler's Rest Hotel car park to kill three unarmed men they think are drug dealers. A black Jeep Cherokee drives into the car park and comes to a halt. Dennis Milne goes up to the drivers side and shoots two of the men dead the third tries to get out the car and run, but does not make it. Dennis is then seen by a girl at the back door of the hotel, but Dennis just walks away. They drive away and when they are away from the scene they set the car on fire and go their separate ways. Dennis Milne then gets stopped at a road block by the police and he has to show his ID and it turns out he is a police officer. At home he acts normal and starts a new case on a murder of a prostitute. He then finds that he killed two customs officers and an accountant on the news. When he asks the guy who hired him to do the kill (Raymond Keen) he says they did something terrible and had to die for it, but does not say what it was. It gets worse when the police working on the hotel killing show a efit of Dennis. Danny then calls him to say he was being followed but Dennis does not think anything of it and says he should go on a holiday. While trying to question a woman on the prostitute case, thinking that it might be involved in what is going on, she runs away and he chases her but she gets away and he is left by himself, two people with hoodies walk up the street towards him and they have guns and try to kill him. After a chase, he kills one and hurts the other. He finds out who killed the hooker and wraps him up in a chair and tortures him to talk before setting him on fire. He goes up to Raymond Keen's house and kills his guards after almost being killed by them and shoots Raymond Keen and makes him talk. At the end of the book he is flying off to the Philippines with a fake passport and a different appearance.
23899393	/m/076w0nx	The Infinities	John Banville	2009-09-04	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book involves a reunion of the Godley family as the family patriarch, Adam, lies in a coma on his deathbed. The book takes place in an alternative reality with the world powered by cold fusion and steam trains are still in use. His family, consisting of Adam his son (and Adams wife Helen), his daughter Petra and his wife Ursula are present at this reunion. The story is narrated by the god Hermes, who dictates how the story will unfold along with his father Zeus and his mother Maia.
23900822	/m/076v5vq	The Millionaire Mind	Thomas J. Stanley	2000	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Following up the bestseller The Millionaire Next Door, The Millionaire Mind analyzes the common environmental and lifestyle factors that preceded and resulted in this researched segment's ability to accumulate wealth. The book raises the following questions: What success factors made them wealthy in one generation? What part did luck and school play? How do they find the courage to take financial risks? How did they find their ideal vocations? What are their spouses like and how did they choose them? How do they run their households? How do they buy and sell their homes? What are their favorite leisure activities? Dr. Stanley's research on how the average American millionaire attained financial success are based on in-depth surveys and interviews with more than 1,300 millionaires. Personal details from this research are shared in the book include memories from their school days, personal thoughts on being "the smart kid in the dumb row," making difficult financial decisions, selecting a vocation and spending habits.
23911242	/m/076wszg	This River Awakens	Steven Erikson	1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel starts in the spring of 1971 and ends a year later, with the changing seasons being used to illustrate changes in the themes of the novel. The novel is set in the fictional town of Middlecross, Canada, a small town not far from the city. Owen Brand and his family move to Middlecross in an attempt to escape poverty. Twelve-year-old Owen falls in with a gang of three boys and forms a strong bond with Jennifer, the rebellious daughter of a violent alcoholic. In the summer break from school, Owen and his friends find a body washed up on the riverbank. The discovery sends reverberations through the small community.
23917480	/m/076v1pd	A Dubious Legacy	Mary Wesley	1992	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While stationed abroad during World War II Henry Tillotson has married a complete stranger at his father's request. When the war is over, and his father has died, Henry brings his bride with him back to his estate, Cotteshaw, in the West Country. The first thing the bride does on their arrival is to give her husband a black eye and without a word march upstairs to her bedroom where she will reside for the best part of the rest of her life. Two young couples, Antonia and Matthew, and Barbara and James, begin to visit Cotteshaw frequently. Unwilling to admit it, the two young ladies are attracted to the fifteen years older Henry Tillotson, and fascinated and frightened by his mysterious wife, Margaret, who will endure their visits in her bedroom with bored superiority. Margaret Tillotson is beautiful - but mad. She likes to make up malicious stories about everyone at Cotteshaw and enjoys inflicting pain on everyone who comes into range, preferably without lifting her head from the pillow. Her husband reacts to her fancies with indulgence and nauseating kindness while he tries to be a host to his guests. The nature of his wife means that Henry Tillotson is in need of an heir, and Margaret refuses to divorce him. However, the two couples keep returning to Cotteshaw throughout the years, and every time Henry is the perfect and attentive host, especially to Antonia and Barbara.
23919155	/m/076vnjl	The Rehearsal	Eleanor Catton	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the aftermath of a local scandal involving a young female student, Victoria's affair with her music teacher Mr Saladin, the novel follows the effects on several different characters using a non linear plot. Isolde, Victoria's sister, tries to resume normal life at school and becomes intrigued by fellow student Julia who in the counselling sessions provided by the school deliberately provokes the counsellor by defending the affair. Isolde and Julia both are taught by a private Saxophone teacher who obsessively follows their lives while regretting her own failed love affair with her friend Patsy. Bridget a depressed and awkward teacher is also taught by the Saxophone teacher who openly declares Bridget her least favourite student. Consecutive with this story is local boy Stanley who enrols in the prestigious Institute (a drama school) and soon becomes obsessed with proving himself. Their final piece is to be improvised and the students decide to base their performance on the local scandal, unaware of Isolde's true identity Stanley and Isolde begin to develop a relationship. Bridget dies in a sudden car accident but she is swiftly forgotten when Victoria returns to school. The Saxophone teacher tries to sabotage Stanley and Isolde's relationship by informing the Institute who quickly make the connection between the final piece and Isolde's identity. The Head of Acting has to reveal to a horrified Stanley who Isolde really is but it is too late to stop the performance. Skipping out on her own saxophone recital and abandoning Julie, Isolde comes with her family to surprise Stanley on his first night. The novel ends with Victoria and Julia talking in their common room, and Victoria suspiciously questions Julia about what went on between her and Isolde, finishing by 'I'd be happy if you told me just enough of the facts so I could imagine it. So I could recreate it for myself. So I could imagine I was really there'.
23920142	/m/076tpdt	Second Fiddle	Mary Wesley	1988	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Twenty-three years old Claud Bannister has just failed his exam to be an accountant and is determined to give up his studies and become a writer. He is introduced to Laura Thornby at a concert. Laura is forty-five, single and a notorious meddler. When she hears about Claud's plans, and learns that he is living with his mother, Laura immediately starts rearranging his life. In no time Claud finds himself installed in a rented loft and making a living by selling antiques from a stall in the market. Laura becomes so interested in Claud's welfare, and her own, that she even ends up in bed with him. When Laura isn't visiting Claud in his loft, and he isn't working in the market, he is busy working on his novel, just as Laura had planned. But even Laura Thornby cannot foresee everything. Her affairs have always been brief and she has always been in total control, but with Claud she begins to lose control. When she sees what Claud has written, she realizes that he has a talent, and that she herself merely is playing second fiddle to his fictional characters.
23925203	/m/076v65d	Freddy Rides Again			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 John the fox is not frightened by new neighbors, the Margarines, holding foxhunts! So, still enjoying their Western roles from Freddy the Cowboy, wearing cowboy hats, neckerchiefs and boots, Freddy the pig and Jinx the cat saddle their mounts to follow the hunt. The fox leads it through a neighbor's house. It seems the fox's plan to anger neighbors about foxhunting will succeed until Mr. Margarine hands the neighbor a generous amount of money for damages. Riding with Mr. Margarine is his son Billy, who was rude to the animals as soon as he met them. But he was not a coward during the confrontation, prompting Freddy to speculate: :"I was just getting so I hated him, and then he has to go do something I admire him for. I wish people would be good all over or bad all over." The Margarines' cat takes refuge at the Bean Farm, suspiciously claiming he was not given enough food at home. Freddy and Jinx decide to observe his actions, and in the process discover a rattlesnake in the neighborhood. After hearing the snake's plans to eat his friends, Freddy seeks the help of the sarcastic and intelligent owl, Old Whibley. After gibes, Whibley advises the animals to stay away until he catches the snake during his usual hunting. However Freddy traps the snake with bait made of chewing gum. Billy comes to taunt the animals at the farm, but is driven off by their laughter. Later, Mr. Margarine appears, and the animals attempt to laugh him off, too. However Mr. Margarine hits Mr. Bean, enraging the animals, and they attack. Mr. Margarine has the sheriff issue an arrest warrant for Freddy and Charles the Rooster, so they go into hiding. From there they launch a series of raids on the local farms, intending to put the blame on the Margarines. As a result Mr. Margarine advertises for a detective. Freddy dons a disguise as the unsavory "Commanche Kid", and answers the ad. He is hired to track down himself! The news of Billy being driven from the Bean Farm spreads to the countryside, and animals laugh as he rides by. Wisely, he realizes that there are people who are liked for themselves, not what they own. He finds the Commanche Kid for advice, and Billy is coming to an appreciation of his situation when news reaches the farm that Mr. Margarine has taken a Bean cow, Mrs. Wiggins, captive. When the small farm animals discover they cannot free her from her stall, they instead scare Mrs. Margarine in with the cow. The two come to amicable terms: :"Mrs. Margarine looked angry; then she laughed. 'I daresay you're right. I can hardly imagine myself keeping a promise to a cow.' :'A cow or a man — what's the difference,' Mrs. Wiggins said. 'It's you that makes the promise.'" Freddy is now Billy's friend, and outfits him with similar cowboy clothes. A policeman arrests Billy, thinking it is Freddy. Freddy goes to the jail to correct the mistake, but while there, he and Billy are caught by Mr. Margarine, who threatens to shoot Freddy later on sight. After some time Freddy cannot bear living under threat, and challenges Mr. Margarine to a duel. However Freddy rigs it to make Mr. Margarine look a fool in front of witnesses, and Mr. Margarine finally admits defeat. The Bean animals throw their longest party. The next day, as Freddy and Billy ride off together, Billy announces that the Margarines have given up foxhunting.
23926622	/m/076ww8d	Death of a Hussy				 Maggie Baird, the hussy of the title, has decided she wants to get married again. She invites four of her previous lovers to her home in Lochdubh for a holiday and informs them that she will marry one of them. Maggie is forthright. She's rich and she has a serious heart condition and she will leave her money to the man she decides to marry. Maggie's death at first appears to be an unfortunate accident. But Hamish Macbeth, Lochdubh's local policeman has his doubts.
23926627	/m/076x6bk	Freddy and Mr Camphor			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Freddy needs a change from running the animal newspaper and the animal bank that he established in earlier books, and he sees an offer to work as a caretaker on a local estate. He meets the eccentric Jimson Camphor and his proper butler, Bannister, who, Camphor explains, is "dignified for both of us". They have a running game reciting proverbs to match a situation, then arguing about whose is more appropriate. After they leave Freddy settles comfortably into caretaking. Meals are served in the main house, while he lives on a luxury houseboat. The restful circumstances are interrupted by two sorts of trespassers, a gang of rats led by the malicious Simon, and a human criminal, Zebedee Winch, accompanied by his dirty-faced son. The rats are destroying everything that displeases them in Camphor's attic, while Zebedee and his son, finding that the cook is Zebedee’s runaway wife, take advantage by moving in to "visit" her. When Camphor returns for a weekend, Zebedee frames Freddy by stealing Camphor's things. Freddy is fired, and returns to the Bean Farm. The animals are undecided how to respond. Meanwhile, since the United States is fighting World War II, the President is encouraging people to grow food in their own Victory Gardens. The farm bugs and insects throw a party where they patriotically decide to stop eating farm vegetables. The party is dampened when the rooster Charles starts one of his long-winded speeches. After he is forced to stop, the horsefly Zero crashes the party, telling everyone the war is somebody else's problem. Freddy drives Zero away, but now he has another enemy threatening revenge. Mrs. Wiggins the Cow and Freddy are discussing Zebedee when they hear Jinx the Cat yowling. Instead of a problem, they discover the other animals playing Camphor and Bannister's game, but testing proverbs. Jinx, having tipped his milk dish over, howls until Mrs. Bean refills it, proving that it is useful to cry over spilt milk. Jinx tells the dog that "Any stick is good enough to beat a dog with". The dog replies that there are more ways than one way to skin a cat. Freddy joins the game, but attention soon turns to his problems. The animals decide that Freddy, Jinx and the mice will sneak into Camphor’s house to implicate the Winches as thieves. However they are trapped inside when a door locks shut behind them. Freddy disguises himself in human clothes, and manages to fool Bannister long enough for Jinx and the mice to arrange his escape. The Winches recognize Freddy, but by this point nobody believes them, and the sheriff is called. Zebedee Winch tries to escape, but the sheriff catches him when Freddy's friend eagle forces his car off the road. The sheriff drives to Zebedee's house, and discovering Camphor's stolen property, arrests him. To get Simon and his relatives out of their holes in Camphor's attic, Freddy employs fleas, but there still is a fight before he forces them to leave. Camphor forgives the Winches and allows them to work on his estate. Freddy goes to a patriotic bug meeting, where the horsefly Zero is allowed to debate Charles the Rooster. Losing the debate, he physically threatens Freddy, who has prepared by bringing friend toads; when the fly comes to sting, he is eaten. Having been forgiven by Camphor, and helped restore his damaged portraits, Freddy tells Camphor the whole truth about what has happened. When Camphor thinks Freddy should write a book about it, Bannister produces the proverb, "There's no friend like a good book".
23928790	/m/076tys9	Freddy and the Men from Mars			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Freddy reads an article announcing that Mr. Garble encountered a flying saucer and that Martians are displayed at Mr. Boomschmidt's circus. Since Garble is an old enemy, while Mr. Boom is a friend, Freddy visits the circus to warn him. Garble allows limited viewing of the Martians, so he must be lured away while Freddy's cohort Mrs. Peppercorn sneaks in. She finds the bearded Martians dressed in red costumes with gloves, and oddly "like a dog walking on its hind legs". The Martian introduces himself, spelling his name S-i-m-g-h-k (with a silent "i"). Inexplicably, Simghk is familiar with Freddy's poetry. He flatters Peppercorn, who eagerly explains she can do better: :"No, sir, my idea of poetry is something that everybody ain't done before. You don't use the old rhymes, like 'love' and 'dove' and 'eyes' and 'sighs.' You make words rhyme that nobody has ever rhymed before." She recites her several thousand line poem, starting, "Some stars are large, some stars are small / And some are quite invisiball". The Martians are bored asleep. Later, Freddy is successful investigating: in getting the "Martians" to agree that Mars is nearer the sun than the Earth, he realizes they must be fakes. However, as the reputation of Boom's circus would be at risk, Freddy does not tell the owner what they discovered. Willy, the circus boa constrictor, is sleeping over at Freddy's. They are awoken by the chickens Charles and Henrietta, who accuse the snake of abducting their chicks. This sends Freddy into detective mode. In confirming that the revolving chicken house door cannot be entered by the large snake, he is stuck, squeals loudly, and rouses the barnyard. Dogs, tracking rat smell, find a hole. Willy slithers in, retrieving Simon the rat, Freddy's longstanding foe. Shortly after they hold Simon captive, Garble announces that one of his Martians is missing. Garble reveals that he purchased the Grimsby property next to the Bean farm, and is demanding Uncle Ben Bean remove his space ship (built in Freddy and the Space Ship). Freddy deduces that Garble's false Martians are actually rats and threatens to reveal Garble's hoax unless the space ship is allowed to remain. Besides, they cannot expose the fake Martians without embarrassing the circus. However Freddy's philosophy is "When everything seems hopeless, the thing to do is stir it up good." Freddy devises a plan to use a rabbit to replace the fake Martian rat that was captured. The rats remaining in the circus are not fooled, but Jinx the cat remains in their cage, forcing them to cooperate. When the crowd does not notice the difference, Freddy has all the "Martian" rats replaced with his "Martian" rabbits. Freddy investigates the Grimsby property with the help of an ex-burglar, however they are confined by Garble in his cellar. Wholly unexpectedly, real Martians land, having come to examine the fake Martians, and to look at Uncle Ben's space ship. They are pear-shaped, have three eyes and four arms, and are entirely friendly. There are at an impasse communicating until it is discovered that spiders such as the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Webb can speak with them. Freddy discovers the missing chicks are in the Garble cellar. As a ruse, Freddy spreads strawberry jam on the burglar and shouts for help. The burglar escapes, believing Freddy has too. The Martians take the first of several joy rides, landing finally at the circus, where they are amused by the false Martians. After a time they realize Freddy still needs rescuing, so the sheriff, the Martians, and circus folk overwhelm Garble's house, freeing Freddy and the chicks. Garble escapes to join his confederates, the rats. Rats being difficult to dislodge, Freddy makes use of ten sacks of rotten onions to taint the food at the Garble place. The rats retaliate by invading the space ship, and eating the stores. The Bean farm animals surround the space ship, but the rats unintentionally cause it to lift off; the rats are rescued from space only much later, although Uncle Ben's space ship is lost. The Martians stay with the circus, giving saucer rides and enjoying themselves.
23929545	/m/076yhgg	The Virgin in the Ice	Edith Pargeter	1982	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In November 1139, the Empress's armies have attacked and pillaged Worcester. Among the many who fled the city were two noble children in the Benedictine Order's care: Yves Hugonin and his sister Ermina. A young nun, Sister Hilaria, who was Ermina's tutor, was with them. They have since vanished. The children's uncle, Laurence d'Angers, who has recently returned from the Holy Land to enter the Empress's service, seeks leave to enter the King's lands to search for them, but he is refused permission by the King's officer in Shrewsbury, Sheriff Gilbert Prestcote. Prestcote promises instead to find them and send them to safety. As the first snowstorms of winter sweep the countryside, Prior Leonard of the Benedictine Priory at Bromfield near Ludlow asks for Brother Cadfael of Shrewsbury Abbey, a worldly-wise monk who has been on Crusade and lived for years in Syria and who is a skilled physician and apothecary, to tend a monk who has been waylaid by robbers, beaten and stabbed and left for dead in the snow. At Bromfield, the injured man, Brother Elyas, babbles about a party of refugees which might well be those sought. Cadfael rides out into the snow-covered countryside to search for them and finds one of the children, thirteen year old Yves, sheltering with a forester. As they ride back to Bromfield through the evening, Yves tells Cadfael that he, Ermina and Sister Hilaria, had been staying at the smallholding of John Druel, a relative of Ermina's childhood nurse. The headstrong Ermina eloped with a lover some nights previously. When Yves tried to pursue them, he became lost in the woods. Sister Hilaria is presumably safe with Druel. Cadfael dismounts to lead the horse across a frozen stream, and sees the body of a young woman frozen into the ice. Fearing it is that of Ermina, he conceals his discovery from Yves. At Bromfield, Cadfael finds that his friend, Deputy Sheriff Hugh Beringar, has arrived to help search for the missing children, and reports his distressing find to him. The next morning, the body is retrieved from the ice and brought to the chapel at Bromfield. As the body thaws, Cadfael sees that it is not dark of hair and eye, as Ermina was described, but fair. There is blood on the corpse, from whoever presumably ravished and smothered her. Yves enters the chapel unexpectedly, and to his horror, recognises the corpse as that of Sister Hilaria. Cadfael and Beringar go to Druel's smallholding and find that it has been looted and burned by brigands, though Druel escaped to the nearby village of Cleeton. He relates that his place was attacked on the night of the first blizzards, but Sister Hilaria had left in Brother Elyas's company a few hours before. The villagers also tell Beringar that a stranger, dressed as a common woodsman but with a sword concealed under his cloak, later came to Cleeton, asking after the children and the nun. Beringar hears from Ludlow that on the night Druel's place was sacked, the brigands attacked other settlements, committing indiscriminate murder. Cadfael surmises that they met Elyas and Hilaria on their way, murdered Hilaria and left Elyas for dead. Yet another settlement which was attacked even before that night was the manor of Callowleas, which belonged to Evrard Boterel, Ermina's lover. Most of its inhabitants were killed, but Beringar finds evidence that Boterel and Ermina were able to escape to the manor of Ledwyche, which Boterel also holds. At Ledwyche, Boterel tells Beringar, Cadfael and Yves that after their flight from Callowleas, Ermina was frantic with worry for Yves and left Ledwyche in the snowstorm to search for him. Boterel rode out after her into the blizzard, but already had a knife wound in the shoulder and collapsed from the wound. That night, another snowstorm blows up. While Cadfael and the brothers of Bromfield are at Compline, Yves stays with Brother Elyas, who is recovering, although disoriented. When Yves tells him that Sister Hilaria is dead, Elyas becomes distressed and walks purposefully out of the priory, into the storm, wearing only his habit. Yves pursues him, but cannot turn him back. They reach a shepherd's hut, where Elyas appears to confess in a fit of grief to despoiling and murdering Hilaria. As dawn breaks, Yves hears noises nearby and goes to seek help, but runs into the arms of the brigands. As he is obviously noble and worth a ransom, they take him prisoner, tied by a halter to a pack horse laden with plunder from yet another village they have destroyed. Yves leaves a trail in the new-fallen snow for others to follow, by puncturing a skin full of red wine and letting it drip slowly. That same dawn, Ermina Hugonin arrives at Bromfield Priory, escorted by the handsome stranger, who vanishes before anyone but Cadfael sees him. Ermina quickly learns of Sister Hilaria's death, and is stricken with guilt that her reckless conduct led indirectly to it. Cadfael tells her that Hilaria's ravisher and murderer alone must bear the guilt and penalty of the act. Ermina recovers and also tells Cadfael that the stranger who helped her is Olivier de Bretagne, a Syrian-born squire in her uncle's service, masquerading as a local forester's son. She no longer loves Boterel, and is clearly smitten with Olivier. As the search for Yves and Elyas begins, Cadfael wonders what purpose Elyas had in mind when he walked into the blizzard, and asks to be taken to the spot where Elyas was first found injured. He then goes to where Sister Hilaria's body was found, more than a mile away, and is puzzled that anyone, least of all bandits who have left their other victims where they fell, should carry a corpse so far to conceal it. He finds the nearby hut, where there are signs that Yves and Elyas sheltered there during the night, but are now gone. Inside, concealed under a heap of straw, Cadfael also finds Hilaria's wimple and habit, which are stained with blood from her attacker, and Elyas's cloak. Casting about for Yves's or Elyas's tracks, he finds those of the brigands, marked by the trail of wine drops left by Yves. He follows the trail, and discovers that the brigands have built a rough fort on top of Titterstone Clee Hill. The next morning, Cadfael guides Hugh Beringar's armed men to the fort. They attack, but the brigands' leader, who is recognised as a mercenary named Alain le Gaucher, forces them to draw back by holding a knife to Yves's throat. Yves is left on top of the fort's tower. As night falls, Olivier de Bretagne makes his way to the tower by stealth and overcomes the brigand guarding Yves. When he and Yves try to escape, they are detected and forced to return to the tower. Yves realises that Beringar and Cadfael cannot be far away, and beats a helmet and sword together to alert them that he is no longer menaced by Le Gaucher. Beringar and his men attack again, and set fire to the fort. As the fire threatens Yves and Olivier, they try to break out, but Yves collides with le Gaucher and is taken hostage again. Brother Elyas wanders into the battle and confronts le Gaucher who, unnerved by the sight of a man he thought he had left dead, lets go of Yves. Olivier then kills le Gaucher in single combat before disappearing. Cadfael takes the wounded back to Bromfield. Yves tells him of Elyas's apparent confession. With his knowledge of men and the discovery of the hidden cloak, Cadfael establishes that when Elyas and Hilaria sheltered together in the hut, Elyas, tormented by desire, left her alone but with his cloak for warmth. He was himself attacked by le Gaucher's men a mile away. Elyas is now wracked with guilt for abandoning Hilaria to her fate, unable to fully protect her or to master himself. Evrard Boterel arrives at Bromfield to reclaim a stolen horse. Cadfael invites him into the chapel to pray for the dead. Inside, Ermina confronts him, dressed in Hilaria's wimple and habit, and frightens him into confessing to Hilaria's murder. She then tells Cadfael and Beringar that she turned against Boterel when he fled in terror from Callowleas rather than defend his people against the brigands. When Boterel then tried to take her by force rather than lose the lands she would bring him as a wife, she wounded him with a knife, and hid in the woods. She saw Boterel ride out to search for her and return, and now knows that it was he who came upon Sister Hilaria alone in the hut and raped and murdered her in a rage against Ermina herself. Her realization is confirmed by Cadfael's observations, matching the blood stains on Hilaria's body with Boterel's wound. Ermina has let Cadfael know that Olivier will come for her and Yves after Compline. When Olivier arrives, Cadfael suggests waiting until Matins, when they can leave undetected. While Cadfael and Olivier wait together, Olivier tells of his early years in Syria and of his mother, Mariam. Cadfael realises that Olivier is his own son. Elyas is recovering his peace of mind, Hilaria's murderer is in prison, the brigands are exterminated and Yves and Ermina are on their way to their uncle's care. With their respective tasks accomplished, Beringar and Cadfael return to Shrewsbury, with Cadfael in a daze.
23930762	/m/076yfbm	Undone				 Faith Mitchell is walking across the parking deck at the courthouse when she passes out. She wakes up in the emergency room of Atlanta’s Grady Hospital, where she was taken by her partner, Will Trent, who was with her when it happened. It turns out Faith has two serious medical conditions, one she knew about and one she didn’t; both could end her nascent career as a special agent with the GBI almost before it’s gotten started. At the hospital Faith and Will meet Sara Linton, the doctor who examines Faith. Sara’s moved to Atlanta to recover from the explosive ending of Beyond Reach and now works in Grady’s ER. Right after seeing Faith, Sara rushes to the aid of a woman who was hit by a car after wandering naked onto a highway out in the middle of nowhere, and is peeved to find Will trying to question the victim. Sara quickly becomes aware of the same thing that caused Will to involve himself— the woman has suffered abominably cruel torture at the hands of a sadistic man. Will and Faith take over the case and find themselves hobbled from the start by the local yokel law enforcement which seems more interested in grudge-bearing than in catching a deranged killer, and Sara eventually becomes involved by dint of her previous experience as one of the state’s top-notch coroners.
23934329	/m/076y7fs	Freddy the Magician			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When a storm damages Centerboro, the Bean farm animals volunteer to help Mr. Boomschmidt clean his circus grounds. Freddy is thrilled to meet Zingo, the circus magician — until Zingo is unnecessarily rude about Freddy's friends. When the magician's rabbit Presto is fired, Freddy takes him to the farm to learn his magic tricks. Though this seems to work well, and Freddy masters many tricks, sometimes the rabbit is rude, like his ex-master. The zoo lion Leo visits Freddy at the farm, his mane sheered on account of hopeless tangles after his last visit to a beauty parlor. He warns that Zingo has used Presto in shady deals, and relates that Zyngo is fired, and is staying at Mr. Groper's hotel. Freddy has become accomplished at simple tricks involving hidden pockets and wants to saw a girl in two. Jinx, the cat, suggests he and his sister do the trick, since it uses the front of one animal, and the back of the other. During the storm the magician's hat was lost; Zyngo will not let Presto back until it is found. Presto claims that, unlike the magician's other tricks, the hat is magical, and really does make him invisible. Freddy considers, and is both sure it does make the rabbit vanish, and sure that it does not. "It's funny how you can have two opinions in your head like that at the same time," he thinks. The hat is recovered, and placed into the animals' bank vault, where Freddy discovers its secret bottom. Yet Presto shows no hurry about returning to Zyngo. Freddy goes to town to rent the theater to present a magic show. He visits the jail, where the sheriff and the inmates are his friends. It is effectively a friendly country club. When Freddy finds a thief among the inmates the sheriff says "...he will have to go. Can't have a thief in my jail." Jinx's sister Minx arrives, as talkative and boastful as ever. While setting up the show, Freddy learns that Presto has been recently seen with Zyngo. The show opens, and without warning the rabbit Presto introduces an offer to pay five dollars to anyone if they can explain a trick. Zyngo is in the audience, and explains many. Luckily, some of Freddy's tricks are new and cannot be explained. Presto is captured by the Bean animals, and reveals that he only came to the farm to get the animals' help retrieving the magician's hat. In the process of being quizzed, the rabbit mistakenly gives Freddy the information needed to deduce that Zyngo stole Boomschmidt’s money and was fired for it. Minx believes the hat makes her invisible, so they play a pointed joke on her. They place her in the hat, then pretend she cannot be seen or heard. The farm animals are instructed to pretend she's not there, and also to make comments about how nice it is to have her gone. Convinced of her invisibility, she boldly eats food from the Bean's table; Mrs. Bean throws her off and drives her out of the house with a broom. Minx vows revenge. Zyngo announces his own magic show, which will challenge anyone to explain his tricks. When Freddy visits the sheriff, he learns that Zyngo is staying at the hotel, refusing to pay bills on account of bugs in his food (that he has obviously placed there, himself). Freddy determines to check into the hotel in disguise as Grouper's nephew, carrying with him a suitcase of mice, spiders and Jinx to spy on Grouper. In this way they watch the magician's activities, and learn that Minx will help Zyngo rob the animal bank. Well-warned, the animals trap Zyngo in the bank, but he shows his villainy by shooting his way out. Freddy's hotel role now makes Zyngo suspicious, and they play dirty tricks on one other. Zyngo frames Freddy in a department store by stuffing the pig's pockets with unpaid items. Zyngo's insistence that he will forgive Freddy only if he gets his hat back rouses suspicion; on examination Boomschmidt's money is found in it. Freddy and his team go into hiding in rooms under the stage where Zyngo will perform, and make modifications to his equipment. During the show, one trick after another goes wrong. Some that do not, Freddy exposes. They repeatedly make fools of each other, until Zyngo loses his temper and physically attacks. To settle their dispute on stage, Freddy challenges Zyngo to an ESP contest, guessing what objects assistants in the audience are holding. Freddy uses insects to bring accurate and detailed information. The audience decides that Freddy wins. ("'...you're three times the magician Zing is — I don’t know but four times, eh, Leo?' 'You work it out, chief,' said the lion, 'I was never any good at figures.'") Since the jail is too nice a place for him, to force Zyngo out of the hotel and out of town, they turn his dining room tricks against him. Friendly bugs appear in his food, and when Zyngo complains, disappear before others see them. Defeated, Zyngo goes to the bus station, where the citizens and animals force him to return the rest of the stolen money. Zyngo apologizes, but unlike most books, this time Freddy does not believe his adversary is really sorry. Grouper thanks Freddy at length for ridding his hotel of his problem.
23936874	/m/076zcp7	Bluestar's Prophecy	Cherith Baldry		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Bluestar's Prophecy tells the story of Bluekit, a blue-gray female she-cat born into ThunderClan along with her white sister, Snowkit. A few moons (months) after becoming an apprentice (with her name being changed to “Bluepaw”), ThunderClan attacks another Clan called WindClan on account of stolen food, and Bluepaw’s gray tabby mother, Moonflower, is killed during the raid. Later on, at a Gathering, Bluepaw meets a tabby apprentice named Crookedpaw (later Crookedjaw and then Crookedstar), an apprentice from RiverClan, and they quickly become friends. But their friendship doesn’t last long when the two angry Clans battle over territory, and Bluepaw defeats Crookedpaw. Bluepaw later goes on a hunting patrol with Snowpaw. Bluepaw chases a rabbit into a hole, along with Snowpaw (Snowkit), and they ended up at a place called Snakerocks, where a fox had already killed the rabbit. Bluepaw runs toward the camp with Snowpaw ahead of her, but realizes that she is leading the fox directly to her Clanmates. Bluepaw then faces the fox and was interrupted when a lightning bolt strikes a branch above her, which set it on fire. Goosefeather, the Clan's medicine cat, receives a prophecy about Bluepaw being a fire that blazes through the forest, but water may destroy her. Bluepaw and Snowpaw eventually receive their warrior names, Bluefur and Snowfur. Snowfur's relationship with her sister is later damaged when she falls in love with another warrior, a spiky-furred dark gray-and-white cat named Thistleclaw, whom Bluefur feels is arrogant and untrustworthy. Later, Thistleclaw and Snowfur have a son, Whitekit, later known as Whitepaw, and then Whitestorm. Bluefur later meets a famous RiverClan warrior named Oakheart, a handsome reddish brown tom; although she does not seem to like him at first, they eventually fall in love. Meanwhile, Pinestar, Bluefur's leader, leaves ThunderClan to become a kittypet (house cat). Sunfall, Pinestar’s deputy, takes his place as ThunderClan’s leader, and his name is changed to Sunstar. Not long after this, Snowfur is killed, hit by a speeding car while chasing ShadowClan intruders from their territory, leaving a heartbroken Bluefur to care for Whitekit. Many seasons pass, and a few days after Whitestorm receives his warrior name, Bluefur decides to meet with Oakheart one evening. They meet at the usual Clan Gathering place (“Fourtrees”), and have a lot of fun together, later deciding to spend the night there together, but agreed when it was over that they would never meet like this again, for the good of their Clans. One moon later, Bluefur is horrified to find out that she is expecting kits. Thrushpelt,a sandy gray ThunderClan warrior who has a crush on Bluefur, offers to help her take care of the kits, to which she accepts, allowing the rest of ThunderClan to believe that he is the father, since Bluefur was determined to keep the father's identity a secret. Sunstar tells Bluefur that he was planning to make her ThunderClan’s new deputy, on account of the current deputy deciding to retire, but since she was having kits, he was thinking about letting Thistleclaw become the deputy instead. Bluestar knew that allowing Thistleclaw to become deputy and then leader would be extremely deadly to the Clan (she saw him in a vision dripping with blood), Bluefur takes her three kits to Oakheart, where they would be raised in RiverClan, but on the way, one of them, Mosskit, a gray-and-white she-kit, dies because of the freezing snow. When she returns, she pretends that a starving predator had taken her kits. Bluefur is made deputy, and learns that Sunstar only received eight lives from StarClan because Pinestar had not died yet. After Sunstar loses his final life, she becomes leader, receiving her own nine lives and leader name (Bluestar). After successfully leading ThunderClan for several seasons, she receives another prophecy from the current ThunderClan medicine cat, Spottedleaf: “Fire alone can save our Clan.”, which puzzles Bluestar. She later goes on patrol with Whitestorm and her deputy, Redtail, and while nearing the twoleg (human) nests (houses), she catches sight of a bright ginger kittypet named Rusty, who she later invites to join the Clan, believing that he is the destined cat from Spottedleaf's prophecy, and invites him to the Clan and names him Firepaw, and eventually Fireheart. The story ends with Bluestar thanking StarClan for everything they had done, and happily picturing the gorgeous future of Fireheart one day "blazing through the forest", as Firestar, the next leader of ThunderClan. In the prologue it shows Bluestar, on her last life, watching as Fireheart leads a pack of vicious dogs to the gorge and hopefully off. She sees him in the clutches of the pack leader and knows he can't be the one to die. She attacks the dog who drops Fireheart and follows her off the gorge. Fireheart rescues her and with the help of her kits (Mistyfoot and Stonefur) is pulled a shore. In her dying moments her kits forgive her for giving them up to RiverClan.
23943721	/m/076tbjg	The Castle of Adventure	Enid Blyton	1946	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Jack, Lucy, Dinah and Phillip attempt to figure out what is behind the strange goings-on at a ruined castle near Spring Cottage in Scotland where they are on holiday with Dinah and Phillip's mother, Aunt Allie. The four youngsters make friends with Tassie, a mysterious gypsy living in the woods with her mother. Along with Bill Cunningham, who appears later in the book, the children manage to expose a ring of spies led by the threatening Scar-Neck who are working against the UK Military service.
23943737	/m/076wwmn	Matters of the Heart	Danielle Steel	2009-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hope Dunne lives in a chic SoHo loft, content with her life as a top photographer. So when she accepts a London assignment at Christmas to photograph a world famous writer, she never expected to fall in love. Finn O’Neill is taken aback with Hope and they have a windswept romance with Finn whisking her away to his palatial, Irish estate. Though divorced, Hope loves her ex-husband Paul very much. Paul, a retired surgeon,divorced her only because he didn't want to pull her along with him as he dies slowly from illness. Hope begins to fall in love but soon finds that Finn and his life are not what she expects. Hope is madly in love with Finn but he is also the source of her fears. Finn' lies and hurt begin to unnerve Hope and she becomes scared and alone miles away from home with no-one to support her as she tries to deal with all matters of the heart.
23946259	/m/076x09d	Underground to Canada				 A young, strong slave girl, Julilly, is sold from a plantation, the Hensen plantation in Virginia and taken to the Riley plantation Mississippi in the Deep South. There she meets Liza, another slave girl. Pursued by their master, the two girls and their friends, Lester and Adam, begin their escape from slavery. They make their way through the United States to Canada on the Underground Railroad with the help of Alexander Milton Ross, a Canadian abolitionist, eventually arriving safely, apart from Adam who dies of blood poisoning caused by his slave chains.
23948229	/m/076vdsv	Blue Moon	Alyson Noel	2009-07-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Just as Ever is learning everything she can about her new abilities as an immortal, initiated into the dark, seductive world by her beloved Damen, something terrible is happening to him. As Ever’s powers are increasing, Damen’s are fading—stricken by a mysterious illness that threatens his memory, his identity, his life. Desperate to save him, Ever travels to the mystical dimension of Summerland, uncovering not only the secrets of Damen’s past—the brutal, tortured history he hoped to keep hidden—but also an ancient text revealing the workings of time. With the approaching blue moon heralding her only window for travel, Ever is forced to decide between turning back the clock and saving her family from the accident that claimed them—or staying in the present and saving Damen, who grows weaker each day...
23950781	/m/076xh7n	Dragons of the Hourglass Mage	Margaret Weis		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dragons of the Hourglass Mage reveals the motivations behind Raistlin's aspirations to godhood. After Raistlin Majere became a wizard of the Black Robe, he travels to Neraka, the lord city of the Dark Queen, under the excuse of joining her forces, but in reality, he plots his own rise to power. When Takhisis discovers that the dragon orb has entered her city, she dispatches Draconians to find it and to destroy the wizard who protects it. However, Raistlin uncovers Takhisis' plot to seize control of all magic, and he moves to stop her. Meanwhile, Kitiara uth Matar, Raistlin's older sister, follows Takhisis' orders to set a trap for the Gods of Magic on the Night of the Eye.
23950863	/m/076wwr3	Love, Aubrey	Suzanne LaFleur	2009	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel tells the story about how an 11-year old girl named Aubrey Priestly recovers from losing her little sister (Savannah) and her father in a car crash. The first main event was when Aubrey’s mother runs away and leaves Aubrey alone in their house. Aubrey soon has to go shopping and buys a fish which she names Sammy. For a week, Aubrey lives on Spaghetti-Os and cheese and crackers. Eventually, Aubrey’s grandma shows up because Aubrey wasn’t answering the phone. Aubrey decides to lie to her grandma about her mother being missing, saying she would come for dinner, but Aubrey's grandma soon finds out that Aubrey's mother is missing. Grandma decides that she will take Aubrey with her to her house in Vermont. While in Vermont, Aubrey makes a new friend (Bridget) and has fun with her and her sister (Mabel). Mabel reminds Aubrey of Savannah and a few times Aubrey freaks out. When the school year begins, Aubrey has to go see the school counselor, Amy, who gives Aubrey an assignment to sit by someone new at lunch. She decides to sit by Marcus, another boy under Amy's guidance. At first he was kind of nervous. Then after a while he loosens up and they become friends. Aubrey’s mother finally arrived at night, waking Aubrey up by the sound of her voice in the house. At first she thought it was a dream, then she thinks it’s too clear to be a dream. She goes down stairs to see her mom and grandma arguing in the kitchen. For a while, Aubrey’s mother lives with Aubrey and her grandma, trying to recover from all she’s been through. After she gets better she goes back to her house in Virginia without Aubrey. After a few months, Aubrey’s mother decides that she is ready for Aubrey to come home. The choice of returning is left to Aubrey, who is very excited at first but realizes she has a difficult decision to make. She decided to stay with her grandmother and will visit during the summer. In conclusion Aubrey realises that it would be best if she stayed with her grandma as she would miss her too.
23952631	/m/076t7n7	A Catskill Eagle	Robert B. Parker	1985	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Spenser receives an enigmatic letter from his lover, Susan Silverman, who has relocated to the West Coast. His sometime friend, Hawk, is in prison and she believes that she too is in some sort of trouble.
23952636	/m/076tq06	Death Troopers		2009-10-13	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Imperial prison barge Purge, temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy's most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels and thieves, breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space. Its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer drifting nearby, derelict and seemingly abandoned. When a boarding party from the Purge is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back, bringing with them a contagion so lethal that within hours, almost all aboard the Purge are dead - the half-dozen survivors are two teenage brothers, Kale and Trig Longo, a ruthless captain of the guards, Jareth Sartoris, and the chief medical officer, Zahara Cody, all of whom seem to possess natural immunity. The Purge's onboard computer informs Cody that there are also two survivors in isolation, and Cody leaves the medibay to release them and administer an antidote synthesized from her blood by the incumbent 21B medical droid "Waste". The isolated prisoners are Han Solo and Chewbacca who initially are sceptical of the situation, however allow her to immunize them, and make their way back to medical. Upon returning to medical they find it empty, and Waste destroyed. The dead have become undead and begin to hunt the survivors who are forced to abandon Purge and take shelter in the Star Destroyer, unaware that the Destroyer is not the better place to be. All the survivors are separated: Sartoris faces the few living survivors who have become cannibalistic, and are hiding in an Imperial Assault shuttle previously captured by the Star Destroyers tractor beam. Solo & Chewbacca make their way to the bridge in an attempt to either fly the Destroyer, or at least turn off the tractor beam. Kale dies from an infected wound, returns to life as a zombie, and is subsequently killed again by Trig. Cody finds herself in the Destroyers medbay, and with the aid of the destroyers own 21B discovers the cause of the contagion: Codenamed Blackwing, it is an artificially created virus - intended to slow the onset of decay and rigor mortis, and increase the healing capacity of the human body prior to death. The Destroyer was taking it to an isolated outpost for testing. However, the contagion - characterised by a grey goo - leaked from its containers and infected the entire ship, converting its 8,000 crew into the undead. Cody observes from her vantage point that the remaining ships in the docking bay are being filled with the zombies - they are attempting to leave the Destroyer and spread their contagion throughout the galaxy. After escaping from the shuttle, Sartoris meets up with Solo, Chewbacca & Trig, then sacrifices himself to allow them to escape, after revealing he has been bitten by an undead and is himself turning into a zombie. They return to the shuttle and successfully leave the destroyer, but discover a zombie has made it aboard the shuttle, and has killed the two remaining original survivors. The zombie is shot by Cody - who they had previously thought killed when the shuttle ready room she was hiding in was destroyed by the zombies - and she points out that the rest of the escaped ships are no longer controlled - as they watch two infested Tie fighters collide with each other and explode. Cody theorises that Blackwing is only effective when in range of the original contagion source on the Destroyer, and that now removed from the source the zombies have again "died". The four survivors leave the Destroyer and now-derelict ships, and find a planet where they sell the shuttle to a pirate group. Solo and Chewbacca leave to re-buy their impounded ship, while Cody and Trig use their share of the sale to visit a distant planet - home to one of the dead prison guards, and deliver a note he was in the process of writing when Blackwing took him.
23958080	/m/0dqrz5	A Wizard of Mars	Diane Duane	2010	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Young Wizards Kit Rodriguez and Nita Callahan become part of an elite team investigating the mysterious, long-sought 'message in the bottle' that holds to the first clues to the long-lost inhabitants of Mars. But not even wizardry is enough to cope with the strange events that start to unfold when the 'bottle' is uncorked and life emerges once more to shake the Red Planet with its own perilous and baffling brand of magic. The good news is that the Martians seem friendly. The bad news is that now they're free to pick up where they left off on a long-dormant plan that can change the shape of more than one world... and they don't mind using their well-intentioned rescuers to achieve their goals. Kit's long-standing fascination with all things Martian unexpectedly enmeshes him in a terrible, age-old conflict—turning him into both a possible key to its solution, and a tool that in the wrong hands shortly threatens the whole human race. Only Kit has a shot of defusing the threat. But when he vanishes unexpectedly from Mars of here and now, his fellow wizards are left uncertain of where his true loyalties lie. Nita's determination to find the truth - and Kit - soon sends her into a battle against an implacable enemy who may not be conquerable except by violating wizardry's most basic tenets. As the shadow of interplanetary war stretches ever more darkly over both worlds, Kit and Nita must fight to understand and master the strange and ancient synergy binding them to Mars and its last inhabitants... or the history that left Mars lifeless will repeat itself on Earth.
23960586	/m/076tjmc	Blood Ties	Sophie McKenzie	2008	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Theo gives [his] bodyguard the slip once too often. Rachel receives a weird text from her father. So begins a highly dangerous search to unravel unanswered questions about their past. So together, Theo and Rachel go into an emotional rollercoaster, finding out things about their pasts, presents and future. But as they meet new people and lose contact with others they always know they have each other; especially because of their connections - Blood Ties. The book begins with Theo's narrative. He is running away from school and onto the high street in order to catch a movie, as he is tired of having his bodyguard, Roy, escorting him everywhere. His plan fails, and Roy brings him back home, where his mother is waiting for them. Theo and his mother have an argument, in which Theo accuses his mother of imagining a threat, which is why he has a bodyguard. Theo attempts - for the second time in the day - to run away, only to be stopped by Roy. His mother reluctantly agrees to tell him who is threatening his life. Meanwhile, Rachel Smith, after returning from another hard day at school, is reading a text from her father that says, "Goddess still safe in Heaven. Richard." She asks her parents about it at the dinner table, only to be brushed off. Rachel also notes how annoying her beauty-obsessed mother is, and how her mother is constantly comparing Rachel to her dead sister Rebecca, who was a star student and daughter. Back in Theo's house, Mrs. Glassman - Theo's mother - reveals to Theo that his father, whom she had previously told her son was dead, is actually alive and in hiding. With the information he received from his mother, Theo searches for his father - James Lawson - on the internet with the help of his best friend, Jake. He comes across an article that describes a bombing of a genetic research clinic, which is where Theo's father worked. The bombing was carried out by a highly aggressive group called RAGE (Righteous Army against Genetic Engineering). The article also mentions Elijah 'the Gene Genie' Lazio and Richard Smith. It said Richard Smith was at the birth of his daughter and saw the bombing from the hospital window. Theo and Jake are able to work out that Richard Smith had a daughter and that as the article was published fifteen years ago, his daughter would now be fifteen. They are able to work out which school she goes to and Theo decides to find Rachel and see if he can get any information from her father about his father. As Rachel leaves school the next day, a classmate of hers tells her that a boy is looking for her. Rachel thinks that it is some sort of setup and she makes for the other direction. But her classmate stops her in her tracks by saying "He's really fit." Rachel then decides to go have a look. As they near the bus stop, Rachel sees Theo and says that he is indeed fit. Theo approaches Rachel and asks her if her father is named Richard Smith. Rachel says that he is. Theo goes on to tell Rachel that her father may have worked with his father and then Theo lies and says that as his father is now dead, he would like to see if Richard knew him. Rachel feels sorry for him so they both go to Rachel's house, where he asks her father about the bombing of the research clinic and whether he knew anything about it. He denies it and looks terrified. After an awkward dinner, Theo gives Rachel his number and tells her to contact him if she gets anymore details. Later on, Rachel hears his parents talking and they are saying things like "we can't let Rachel find out" and "it was him. i could see it" and she wonders what is going on. As we switch back to Theo's point of view, he contacts his childhood-friend Max, who is a hacker and says she is happy to help if needed. Rachel, in the meantime, is cornered by a gang of girls who demand to know what relation she has to Theo. Rachel lies and says that he is her boyfriend. The leader of the pack, Jemima says that she expects to see him at the school dance as her date. Rachel realises that she has just gotten herself into even deeper trouble. Later on, Theo rings Rachel asking her if she can get hold of her dad's laptop. Theo's plan is to get Max to hack into her dad's email account and see if he sent any interesting emails lately. Rachel has fallen for Theo and is thrilled at the thought of seeing him again. She quickly takes the laptop and hides it in a backpack. She hastily says goodbye to her mother and goes to Max's house. When Rachel arrives at Max's house she gives Max her dad's laptop and Jake (who happened to be at Max's house) tries to flirt with her. Theo is embarrassed and tells Jake to back off. Max hacks into Rachel's dads' laptop and discovers an email sent to Rachel's dad from a certain Lewis. Later, the truth comes out and Rachel learns that Theo lied about his father's death. Rachel, feeling hurt and angry grabs the laptop and leaves. Theo is forced to apologise. Rachel accepts the apology and comes back to Max's house. The email that Max hacked talks about a business trip to Germany. Theo suspects that his father could possibly be there. He plans to go to Germany and find out. Rachel says that she will come with him as her dad is involved. They arrange to meet up at Rachel's school disco and leave together. Rachel then leaves. On the night of the disco as Rachel struggles to find a suitable outfit, she thinks about what she is about to do and whether she can trust Theo or not. Theo arrives at Rachel's school disco, and he reflects on how she looks nice. As Theo and Rachel stand together awkwardly, Rachel asks Theo to dance. Theo uncomfortably agrees, even though he doesn't seem to have any feelings for her. As they dance awkwardly, Jemima comes up to Theo and asks him why he's here with her. Rachel steps in and tugs on the neckline of her already extremely low shirt. Jemima screams and everyone gathers around to see what's going on. Rachel pulls Theo away and says that she had to make a diversion. As sneak out through a side door and start walking towards the train station, they are suddenly attacked by two men in masks and dark clothing. One man puts his hand over Rachel's mouth to muffle her screams and the other takes out a gun and aims at Theo's forehead. Just as Theo braces himself for death, the other man punches the man holding the gun and knocks him out. The man tells them that his name is Lewis and to back into the school and meet him in the headmistress's office. Theo takes a shaky Rachel to the office and Rachel sits down and sobs her heart out. Theo uncomfortably pats her back. Rachel wonders how he is so calm when he had just been so close to death. Lewis appears once more and he convinces them that he is safe by saying that he knew Theo's father. He bundles them into a car and they both sit on opposite ends of the backseat. Theo begins to start shaking violently as he remembers the feel of the cold gun against his head. Lewis looks over and tells him to let Rachel hold him as he will feel better. He shakily hugs Rachel and she strokes his hair as he "cries and cries and cries." After a little while Theo feels better yet slightly embarrassed as Rachel has witnessed his breakdown. He pulls away and asks where they are going. Lewis tells them that they are going to meet Theo's father. Theo wakes up in the car on the motorway to Scotland. He is covered with a blanket and has a pillow behind him. Rachel - who has been awake the entire journey - strokes Theo's face tenderly to wake him up. Lewis - the man who 'rescued' them - assures them they've got another hour in the car. When Theo groans he is hungry, Rachel hands him a ham-and-mayonnaise sandwich which he eats gratefully. Two hours later, they arrive at their destination. Theo and Rachel are offered beds for the night by Lewis' girlfriend and colleague, 32 year old Mel. Theo falls asleep and Rachel goes soon after. The next day, they are given clothes, magazines and bacon butties by Lewis, while Mel gives them some combat training. That evening, Theo is introduced to Elijah 'the Gene Genie' Lazio and Elijah explains everything. He explains how Theo and Rachel are both clones: Theo a clone of Elijah and Rachel a clone of her dead sister Rebecca. Elijah also does his best to comfort Theo whom he calls 'his son,' but later shows his true colours when he abducts Theo along with Mel and ties them up on a plane bound for America, leaving Rachel distraught and Lewis horrified. What will become of Theo, Mel and Elijah? Theo is sedated by Elijah after he witnesses him hit Mel. After spending a couple of months at Elijah's house in D.C, Lewis and Rachel arrive to rescue Theo and Mel. RAGE attack Elijah who kidnaps Theo, Rachel and a younger clone of himself, Daniel. Elijah holds them hostage in his now-deceased ex-wife's house. It is revealed that Elijah is in need of a heart transplant and intends to use Theo's heart because of him being a complete genetic match. Realizing they have to escape Theo who is locked in his room cuts himself so that Elijah will come in to help. Theo locks Elijah in his room and escapes the house with Rachel and Daniel. They meet Lewis and Mel in the town and Elijah turns up and captures them, holding them in an abandoned park. Elijah kills Mel, and shoots Lewis in the chest. Ambulance crew turn up and tend to Lewis and Rachel and Theo. The three are transported to hospital. Elijah abducts Daniel and goes on the run with him. Theo wakes up in hospital and his mother is distraught over her lies that led to her son being nearly killed. Mrs. Glassman convinces her son that he's safe and she will never, ever let him be in danger again. Theo refuses to listen until his mother shocks him by calling him 'sweetheart,' for the first time in his life. She later goes on to explain about the relocation and allows him to call Jake and Max to say goodbye. Theo comes to forgive his mother and after a reluctant moment, the two hug each other fiercely, ending with Theo breaking down in sobs and his mum comforts him and reassures him. Rachel eventually comes to - her father is delighted and does his best to comfort her - and her mother is angry. She refuses to accept Rachel's protests about Theo and blames her for running away. Her mother goes onto compare her to Rebecca, until Rachel stops her and shouts at her that she is not Rebecca. Her mother is shocked by her outburst and coldly tells her to get back into bed before convincing her husband to leave with her. Theo says his goodbyes to Rachel and her father - having left her mother to go home to London - and kisses Rachel softly before departing for a new life with his mum. Rachel and her father do the same and leave the hospital. Months later, Rachel comes home from a taster day at a new school and goes online to chat with Theo. They have a friendly conversation before ending telling each other the hope to see each other again...soon.
23961037	/m/076zsrq	Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars	Walter R. Brooks		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Freddy's ice skating with the animals on the Bean farm is interrupted by a request from Mr. Boomschmidt, the circus owner, to find a kidnapped Martian. "Mr. Boom", already anticipating that Freddy will solve the case with his detective skills, muses that the Martians could use a more interesting activity than being a circus sideshow. Since they are fast and accurate throwers, the pig suggests a baseball team. The immediate problem is finding the missing Martian, Squeak-squeak. A suspect is the criminal Anderson, whom Freddy has thwarted before, and who loiters around the circus. Since Freddy must remain unknown during his investigation, he dons the disguise of an old baseball coach with glasses, an overcoat and large beard, and moves to town. He cautiously lures Anderson into friendship. Freddy is puzzled when the Martians, at first eager for his help, now refuse to discuss Squeak-squeak. Mr. Boom is certain they are in trouble, and encourages Freddy to investigate, anyhow. The Martians are enthusiastic about baseball, especially after learning that the purpose of baseball is not, as they thought, to hit the batter and knock him unconscious. Practice begins on a muddy Bean farm field. There are four Martians; most of the rest of the team are circus animals. Freddy sets the robin Mr. J. J. Pomeroy, the head of the A.B.I. (Animal Bureau of Investigation), to watch the Martians and Anderson. Apparently unrelatedly, his rich friend Mrs. Church asks Freddy to investigate a burglary and a ghost in her house. Since the stolen necklace is costume jewelry worth only 25 cents, Freddy suggests a reward for "one third the value". The team practices for a month, and spectators watch. Freddy (in his disguise as the old man coach) tells the Martians to swing at every pitch, no matter how wild. Freddy will not explain, but apparently it is to do with the trick planned for the manager of the Tushville team, Kurtz, who used professionals the previous year in an amateur game. Somewhat frightened, Freddy and Jinx the cat stake out Mrs. Church's house at night to confront the ghost. The burglar ghost proves human, but it escapes. The first practice game draws many spectators, and Kurtz reckons that the game against his Tuskville team will get a thousand paying tickets. He offers Mr. Boom a deal where the winner takes two-thirds of the receipts. The strange Martian pitching proves effective, but at bat, Freddy has them swing at any pitch. The other team members do the hitting and scoring. Anderson returns the stolen necklace to Mrs. Church, claiming he is acting for another. As his house is watched by the A.B.I, Freddy knows there is not another person, that Anderson is the thief. When Freddy notices house paint on the Martian's flying saucer, he deduces that Anderson holds Squeak-squeak prisoner, and is forcing the Martians to help steal. An investigation of Anderson's house shows that Squeak-squeak was moved, probably to the house of accomplice Mr. Garble. Squeak-squeak is not there, but they find jewelry from recent robberies. The game with Tuskville starts reasonably, for example with an elephant sliding into third base ("...when an elephant slides, something has to go.") With the elephant on third, Freddy reveals his plan, telling the two-foot Martians not to swing at anything. With the strike zone reduced to eight inches, the Martians walk every time at bat. They take the lead until the crook Anderson whispers something to them. The Martians disobey coach Freddy, start swinging, and lose the game. Mrs. Peppercorn — from whom Freddy is renting in town — cheers him with her improved version of a Longfellow poem, for example changing: :"As a feather is wafted downward / From an eagle in his flight." to :"As a brick comes hurtling downward / From a rooftop, in a fight." The poet-pig is not enormously impressed, but is shaken out of his funk and soon realizes that coach Kuntz and crook Garble are the same. Anderson approaches Freddy in his coach disguise, asking to help with a burglary. Since then Freddy will have proof, he agrees. When the flying saucer drops Anderson in a wealthy home, Freddy leaves and calls the police. Knowing where to look for Squeak-squeak the Martian allows Freddy to infiltrate that house in yet another disguise, however the Martian is securely locked away. He is freed right in the middle of the next game. The Martians can now play ball without fear, and after a hard fight, the game is won.
23968534	/m/076w5pj	The Man from Pomegranate Street	Caroline Lawrence	2009-06-18	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The main story is introduced by a framing sequence set three years later, at the time of Flavia's wedding. Her friends Nubia and Pulchra and her stepmother help her to prepare, while she explains to Pulchra why she stopped being a 'detectrix'. Still under the shadow of the imperial edict, Flavia, Nubia and Lupus follow Jonathan to Italia, hoping to help him warn the Emperor Titus that his brother Domitian is trying to kill him, and to clear their names. In Rome the children and their tutor Aristo discover Titus has died of a headache and fever whilst on his way to his villa in the Sabine Hills, and that Domitian has been proclaimed emperor. The children meet Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, once betrothed to Flavia, with his new tutor, Hilario. Tranquillus helps them investigate Titus's death. On the road, they find some clues and Flavia contracts a fever. Flaccus arrives to tell them that Domitian has issued a decree saying he will give pardons to any who go and ask for his forgiveness. They go to Domitian's villa on Lake Albanus and obtain a pardon. They run into old acquaintance, Ascletario, Titus's Egyptian soothsayer. He tells them where to find Jonathan who has been starved and beaten by the emperor's blind torturer Messallinus, but a trap has been set and the children are captured. While Nubia is forced to recline beside Domitian, Flavia bravely stands up to him, fuelled by her anger at Flaccus's apparent indifference toward her. Aristo declares his love for Nubia but is led away to fight in the arena, while Nubia and the emperor watch. However, it is learned that the beast Aristo is supposed to fight is actually a small black rabbit. When he succeeds, Domitian gives him his reward: Nubia. The two marry in the arena that same day. Meanwhile, Flavia, Jonathan and Lupus disagree on whether the truth is always a good thing. When Jonathan confesses to Titus's murder, Flavia is stunned, but she soon guesses that the true culprit is Jonathan's father, Mordecai ben Ezra. Domitian overhears her declaration, and gives them all 24 hours to leave Italia never to return. After Jonathan runs away, disgusted that Domitian knows about his father whom he was trying to protect, Flaccus meets the group and offers them his assistance, driving them to Rome in an ox cart. He is shocked to hear they have been exiled, and explains to Flavia that although he loves her he cannot give up his family name, his wealth and status to join her. Heartbroken, Flavia returns with the others to Ostia. Flavia and the other three go to Jonathan's house after finding Flavia's house locked up. Susannah and Hephzibah are tending Jonathan who returned home, and Flavia finds out that her father has just married Diana Cartilia Poplicola. Titus's doctor, Pinchas ben Aruva, tells them that Titus actually died of a tumour in his brain, revealed by an autopsy, and that Mordecai is no longer being sought for his murder. On their final journey through Ostia to the Delphina, crowds of people whom the children have helped wish them farewell, including a coolly ironic Marcus Artorius Bato. As the Delphina sails out of the harbour, a boat approaches the ship with a man, his servant and a dog on it. Recognizing Flaccus, Flavia faints. Flaccus helps her up and he tells her that he has given up his name and his wealth to be with her, protecting his family from disgrace by feigning his own death. The novel's final chapter returns to the wedding preparations. It is revealed that Flavia, Nubia and Aristo are now living at the Villa Vinea in Ephesus, given to them in The Prophet from Ephesus. Lupus has joined a pantomime troupe for which he plays the drums and Jonathan is a practicing doctor in Ephesus, though taking time out to search for his missing nephew, Popo (Philadelphus). Flaccus remains a lawyer, helping the poor as well as the wealthy in Ephesus. Flavia tells Pulchra they have recently learned that although Mordecai did not actually kill the Emperor, he was about to when he saw a boy that looked exactly like Jonathan, and could not go through with it. So her deductions had not been completely wrong after all. As the groom's party approaches, Pulchra is surprised to see that Flavia's husband-to-be Jason is actually Gaius Valerius Flaccus whom all Rome believes died in a shipwreck. She promises not to reveal the secret, but asks Flavia in return to investigate a mystery in Samos.
23969036	/m/076znmb	Southern Lights	Danielle Steel	2009-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Alexa Hamilton left the South behind after her husband's betrayal and his family's cruelness. As an assistant D.A. in Manhattan, Alexa is a top prosecutor and a single mother to a teenage daughter. But when her latest case brings threatening letters to her seventeen-year-old daughter, Savannah, Alexa is certain that her client, Luke Quentin is behind it. Making the most painful decision of her life she sends her daughter back to her southern roots to protect her from harm. Savannah settles into the southern life, enjoying her father and family again as her mother battles in Manhattan. Alexa and Savannah come to heal old wounds and find love again under the southern lights.
23969096	/m/076zy8g	Amazing Grace	Danielle Steel	2007-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At a charity dinner in San Francisco, the Ritz-Carlton ballroom is ravaged by an earthquake. In the aftermath, four stranger's lives are entwined forever. Sarah Sloane's perfect life falls apart when her husband is exposed as a fraudster. Grammy winner Melanie Free realises what is important in life. Photographer Everett Carson finds a new purpose to live and nun Sister Maggie Kent, frantically works to rebuild the city and try to hide her feelings of love from her new friend. At a refugee camp, all four come together and become a support system for the others as life starts to resemble normality and the world blesses them with amazing grace.
23969709	/m/076z7ts	Bungalow 2	Danielle Steel	2007-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Writer Tanya Harris loves her life as a mother and wife living in Marin County but has always wanted the chance to write a major Hollywood screenplay. When the chance arises, although initially turning it down, her husband encourages her to take the once in a lifetime offer. Working in Hollywood with the Oscar winning producer Douglas Wayne is intoxicating for Tanya, especially when her sets his sights on her. Struggling to cope with the movie and her family, Tanya feels her family need her less and so as one opportunity after another leads her away from her old life and into this new world, Tanya finds life is full of twists and turns whilst at Bungalow 2.
23969789	/m/076xpcm	Sisters	Danielle Steel	2007-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Candy, the supermodel, Tammy, a successful TV producer, Sabrina, an ambitious lawyer and Annie, the artist are four sisters who leave their successful lives to care for one another and their father after their mother is killed in a car accident and Annie' sight is taken from her. The sisters move into a brownstone and try to rebuild their lives out of the ashes of a painful death. As each sister finds new purpose and new loves, they begin to learn that family is the most important thing in life and this revelation cements their bond forever.
23970185	/m/076wks5	H.R.H.	Danielle Steel	2006-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Princess Christianna, the only daughter of the Reigning Prince of a European nation has secure plans for Christianna's life, a burden almost unbearable. After years at Berkley in America, Christianna returns home and can not suffer the ravages of terrorism and disease in her country. With a purpose to change the ways of the world, she volunteers for the Red Cross in East Africa. At an international relief camp, she finds her calling and a new love in the form of Parker Williams, a doctor from Doctors Without Borders. As they work together, she tries to hide her feelings and identity from him until in one shocking moment, her life changes forever.
23970291	/m/076vrch	Coming Out	Danielle Steel	2006-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Olympia Crawford Rubinstein, lawyer, wife and mother to twin daughters, a son in college and one in kindergarten, Olympia' life is perfect. Until she opens an invitation for her daughters to attend the most exclusive coming-out ball in New York–and chaos erupts all around her. One twin is outraged whilst the other is ecstatic. Her husband is appalled and as her family is thrown into disarray, the ball turns out to be a blessing in disguise as old wounds are healed and the family learn acceptance and love are all they ever needed.
23970344	/m/076v2hh	The House	Danielle Steel	2006-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Overlooking San Francisco, a huge mansion in need of repair is viewed by Sarah Anderson, an estate lawyer, who has just inherited a huge fortune from a deceased client with the intention of spending it on something that she desires. Sarah restores the mansion, drawn to its grandeur and beauty with the help of architect Jeff Parker, who is as passionate about the house as she. As the two work together, they fall in love with the house and then each other as the house touches both of them and opens their hearts once more.
23970532	/m/076zjd_	Black and White				 The main story takes place in 2112 with five sections covering earlier events, starting ten years ago, and moving up to as five, with each year covering one of the school years at the academy. Iridium and Jet are two new students starting their first year at the academy, both having events in their past and being assigned to roommates together. The two eventually become friends, making enemies with Hornblower and Twilight Dawn, and friends with Frostbite, Samson, and some of the other students. Jet especially develops more of a relationship with one of their teachers, Night, and enemies with another, Lancer. Later on the two are assigned as partners to each other to work together. When Jet's boyfriend Samson is killed by The Everyman Society on what was supposed to be a safe training exercise, the two start to drift apart as Jet gains early sponsorship from New Chicago for her funeral speech and immerses herself in her school work. The two finally start to patch things up when Jet is sent to talk to Iridium who is upset because Frostbite has been sent to therapy for being a homosexual and in a relationship with his partner. During their final exam, where the teams have to collect gang flags from certain points through a town, Iridium falls from the vehicle and Jet is ordered back to fill the report in person. As Iridium starts to walk toward a place she can get back to the academy, she comes across a rapist attacking a prostitute who is off duty and refusing. Iridium interrupts, letting the prostitute escape, and is attacked by the rapist, who she kills, then turns the body over to the police. After Iridium's actions, it is decided that the young woman will be sent to therapy. Jet, hearing this, fears for what it will do to her friend and does not think she will survive it. She stops the people and makes a deal, having Iridium sent to Blackbird penetentary instead. Just before the transfer, Jet sneaks in to talk to Iridium, who attacks her friend, feeling Jet betrayed the friendship, and escapes. Iridium is labeled as a Rabid as she disappears, working toward her own goals in a section of New Chicago called Wrecked City. Jet graduates, becoming the official superhero of New Chicago. Five years later, Iridium is spotted after robbing a bank, and Jet goes after her. The two fight, ending in Iridium escaping with the money. Jet ends up fighting a street gang when her new runner, Bruce Hunter, arrives. Jet finds herself attracted to him and scolds herself some for thinking like that. After an embarrassing appearance on the Jack Goldwater show, Night contacts Jet and asks her to look for Lynda Kidder, as a favor, implies that Corp-Co may not want the reporter found, which Jet has a hard time believing. After dealing with a local gangster who is not playing by her rules, Iridium meets with the leader of a gang called the Undergoths and learns of a vigilante working in her area who she confronts. After fighting, she ends up concluding to partner with him as he seems to be of use in her plan to take down the Ops computer system. As Jet is led down into the underground to find Lynda Kidder, Irridium and the vigilante, Taser, enter the underground to find access to the building where the blueprints of The Academy would be kept. The pair come across Jet fighting Lynda who had been turned into a heavily muscled monster with a simple mind. After defeating the monstrous Lynda, Jet attacks Iridium, believing that the former friend was somehow involved in what had happened to the reporter. Iridium tries to talk sense into Jet, who won't listen, then ends up knocking the hero out and getting away. Jet is shortly found by Bruce and taken to a hospital. Her injuries are healed rapidly by a faith healer, but she is forced to spend two weeks having bed rest. A prospect she does not fully enjoy. Two days before she would be cleared, Jet is caught by Bruce at the window after stopping a purse snatching, and the two end up sleeping together. Jet tries to tell Night the truth about Iridium not being involved in what happened to Lynda, but the former mentor will not listen, and mentions that Corp-Co has a deal with the Everyman Society. Jet ends up realizing that somehow, Corp-Co has managed to brainwash her some without her knowing. After warning a friend of hers, Iridium, along with Taser, shuts down the back up power, then head to the headquarters for the superheroes. The two shut off the power, then head up to the Academy, working through until they reach Ops. They look at the computer a moment, notiicing a strange signal that's always broadcast, the shut down Ops and destroy the computer. When they finish, Taser knocks out Iridium. In her apartment, Jet worries when Bruce is late, then dons her costume. The power goes out and the heroine ends up being attacked by Taser, who sedates her. Jet wakes up in a small area with power inhibiting bonds next to Iridium. The two argue a moment before finally starting to talk and begin patching things up between them again. Iridium tells Jet her plan, who in turns tell about the brainwashing, which Iridium realizes is what the frequency on the Ops computer was sending through all the superhero ear pieces all along. After the two speak and start working things out, Taser enters, revealing that he is a mercenary who was hired to get close to them both, as well as that he is Bruce Hunter, much to Jet's shock and sadness. It turns out that Taser had been working for Night, who had been planning for years to have Jet blanket the world in absolute darkness. He had tried to have Iridium killed but when it did not work, Night has Jet draw the light power from Iridium to create shadows that will block out the sun. Taser overhears the plan and is not happy about the matter, attacking Night. Eventually Jet is stopped from draining Iridium, freed from the machine and Night is defeated. In a moment of insanity, Jet tries to kill Taser, but Iridium manages to stop her. The two leave, going their own ways some. Jet tells of the brainwashing to one of the other extrahumans, who works at ops and reports that when the computer went down, only three heroes stayed heroes, with the rest either turning rabid or just standing around. Iridium meanwhile is back her the area she has claimed as her own and believes that soon Jet will join their side.
23971133	/m/076tc2z	Toxic Bachelors	Danielle Steel	2005-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Charlie Harrington, a philanthropist with high expectations in women, Adam Weiss, a celebrity lawyer who likes young, fun women for short-term purposes and Gray Hawk, an artist who is drawn into troubled relationships. Every year they cruise the Mediterranean on Charlie's yacht together until they each find love. Charlie falls in love with a social worker who is far from his ideal woman. Adam gets involved with a young but smart woman whilst Gray falls for a businesswoman and mother. As their next cruise together approaches, each man finds himself in a position far from the previous year with new loves and events which will turn the toxic bachelors into loving, caring men forever.
23971209	/m/076y1rm	Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years	Sue Townsend		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Adrian Mole is 39 and a quarter. Unable to afford the mortgage on his riverside apartment, he has been forced to move into a semi-detached converted pigsty next door to his parents, George and Pauline. His ravishing wife Daisy loathes the countryside, longs for Dean Street and has yet to buy a pair of Wellingtons; they are both aware the passion has gone out of their marriage, but neither knows how to reignite the flame. To cap it all off, Adrian is leaving his bed numerous times a night to go to the lavatory and has other alarming symptoms, leading him to suspect prostate trouble. Meanwhile, his mother thinks that an appearance on the Jeremy Kyle show might solve the mystery of her daughter's paternity. Adrian also discovers that the assumption that he is George and Pauline's offspring might be a fallacy. To add to his misery,he is already impaired further with his prostate trouble. As Adrian's worries multiply, a phone call to his old flame Dr Pandora Braithwaite ignites memories of a shared passion and makes him wonder - is she the only one who can save him now?
23971233	/m/076xtl9	Miracle	Danielle Steel	2005-06	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On New Year’s Eve, a wild storm hits northern California. In San Francisco, amongst the chaos and damage, three people's worlds collide. Quinn Thompson will allow his barriers to fall, built so carefully following his wife’s death. Maggie Dartman finds friendship amongst the wreckage and for Jack Adams, a carpenter who repairs their homes, the chance to unburden his secrets. In the aftermath, Quinn builds a 180-foot yacht which he plans to sail around the world and escape the pain. But with his new friends beside him and the outlook on life brightening, Quinn begins to feel hope once more and that miracles really do happen in all different kinds of ways.
23971333	/m/076v6yg	Impossible	Danielle Steel	2005-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sasha's husband suddenly dies leaving her widowed without the man she loves. Liam's marriage is falling apart. Sasha has worked her father's art gallery into an intercontinental success, whilst Liam has become one of the most striking artists of his time. So when the two meet and fall in love, Sasha and Liam must protect one another’s reputations and hearts from getting hurt again. Sasha commutes from New York where her grown children Xavier and Tataina live, and Paris and her two thriving galleries. Then a family tragedy changes his life forever making him sacrifice his love for Sasha to help his family heal. But their love is so strong that they are drawn together once more into a love that seemed impossible.
23972063	/m/076zd92	Echoes	Danielle Steel	2004-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the summer of 1915, Beata Wittgenstein falls in love with a young Catholic French officer and follows her heart to be with him against the wishes of her Jewish Orthodox family and decides to live with him in Switzerland till World War 1 ends. After the war gets over, she goes back to Germany with her husband Antoine and her 2 year old daughter Amadea. They begin a peaceful life and after 8 years, she has her second daughter, Daphne. Antoine dies soon after his father's death and his fortune as a Count is passed on to Beata, allowing her to take care of her family for years. However, after the death of her husband, she drifts away from her daughters and it is only when Amadea decides to become a nun, that she realizes her duty. As the war threatens her daughters, Beata's views of the future change. She is not discovered as a Jewish-born, but when a woman from her past recognizes her, Beata and Daphne are arrested and die in a concentration camp. Amadea, a Carmelite nun is saved as she had stayed in the convent but is still forced into hiding as her friends disappear without a trace. She is sent to a concentration camp and escapes with the help of a German soldier. But, when he tries to rape her, she kills him and flees the country with the help of Partisans. As she flees and crosses the country ravaged by war, she decides to become an agent and falls for a British secret agent Rupert Montgomery. In love, Amadea begins to understand the ways of life and how love can echo through the generations.
23972217	/m/076w7q5	Oceans of Kansas				 In Oceans of Kansas Everhart discusses the state of the land during the Late Cretaceous and earlier, when the area was covered with water. The geologic record shows that ancient lifeforms such as marine reptiles, pteranodons, and toothed birds inhabited the general area both in and out of the water. Everhart also covers the discovery of the fossils and geographic records as well as the competition between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh to collect them.
23972245	/m/076w7qj	Ransom	Danielle Steel	2004-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Peter Morgan is released from a Californian prison after four years with plans to make up to the daughters he left behind. Carl Waters, a convicted murderer, is also freed at the same time. In San Francisco, a police detective Ted Lee arrives home to a wife he no longer loves. In the Pacific Heights neighbourhood, Felicia Barnes cries at the amount of debt her husband has left her and his children in after his death. Soon, all their lives are connected as Felicia' child is kidnapped and held for the ransom of a fortune that she does not have. As she and the police fight against time to get her child back safely, something happens that will change their lives forever when their lives are held for Ransom.
23972521	/m/076v_n4	Safe Harbour	Danielle Steel	2003-11	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At eleven, Pip Mackenzie has experienced such tragedy leaving her mother inconsolable. As she wanders the beach while her mother is shut up indoors, she stumbles upon Matt Bowles. An artist and divorcee, Pip reminds him of his daughter and they strike up an unusual friendship. Her mother,a French woman named Ophélie, is sceptical at first but soon discovers that Matt has lit up both of their lives. When the summer comes to an end, Ophélie and Pip leave for the city but find life without Matt painful. As Ophélie begins a volunteer job at a city outreach program for the homeless, she tries to begin the long process of healing. But as she is betrayed in the worst way, Matt appears and allows her to be herself and finally see a way through the mist of Safe Harbour. The novel ends with Matt and Ophélie's wedding in the beach with Pip as the witness at Safe Harbour.
23973234	/m/076wcl3	Grace and Truth	Jennifer Johnston	2005		 On returning to her home in Goatstown, Dublin after a successful European stage tour, actress Sally is shocked when her husband Charlie announces he is leaving her. Sally finds herself alone and determines to discover the truth about her family...
23973698	/m/076yb2c	The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing	Michael A. Martin	2009-10-20	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 At the start of the twenty-first century, unconditional war swept across Earth - a war that engulfed the great and the small, the rich and the poor, giving no quarter. Each side strove for unconditional victory, and as battle built upon battle, the living began to envy the dead. Chastised by the cataclysm that they had unleashed, the governments of Earth came together. Humanity vowed to put an end to war and to strive for the betterment of every living creature. A united Earth created Starfleet, an interstellar agency whose mission was to explore the cosmos, to come in peace for all mankind. It was a naïve wish that was battered by interstellar realities, yet man persists in the belief that peace is the way. Banding together with other powers to form a Coalition of Planets, humanity hopes that the strength each can offer the other will allow for peaceful exploration. However, the rise of the Coalition strikes dread within the Romulan Star Empire. They feel its growing reach will cut them off from what is rightfully theirs. The Romulans know that the alliance is fragile and that the correct strategy could turn allies into foes. Perfecting a way of remotely controlling Coalition ships and using them as weapons against one another, the Romulans hope to drive a wedge of suspicion and mistrust between these new allies. One Starfleet captain uncovers this insidious plot: Jonathan Archer of the Enterprise. Determined not to lose what they have gained, outmanned and outgunned, the captains of Starfleet stand tall, vowing to defend every inch of Coalition space until the tide begins to turn. The Romulans now plan to strike at what they see as the heart of their problem. With nothing left to lose, the Romulan Star Empire engages in all-out war against humanity, determined once and for all to stop the human menace from spreading across the galaxy.
23973935	/m/076v_pz	Kobayashi Maru	Michael A. Martin	2008-08	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 To protect the cargo ships essential to the continuing existence of the fledgling Coalition of Planets, the captains of the United Earth's Starfleet are ordered to interstellar picket duty, with little more to do than ask "Who goes there?" into the darkness of space. Captain Jonathan Archer of the Enterprise seethes with frustration, wondering if anyone else can see what he sees. A secret, closed, militaristic society, convinced that their survival hangs by a thread, who view their neighbors as a threat to their very existence -- the Spartans of ancient Greece, the Russians of the old Soviet Union, the Koreans under Kim Il-sung -- with only one goal: attain ultimate power, no matter the cost. The little-known, never-seen Romulans seem to live by these same principles. The captain realizes that the bond between the signers of the Coalition charter is fragile and likely to snap if pushed. But he knows that the Romulans are hostile, and he believes they are the force behind the cargo ship attacks. If asked, Archer can offer no proof without endangering his friend's life. To whom does he owe his loyalty: his friend, his world, the Coalition? And by choosing one, does he not risk losing all of them? What is the solution to a no-win scenario?
23974087	/m/076w9xx	The Good That Men Do	Michael A. Martin	2007-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Over two hundred years ago, Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker III died in the line of duty...or did he? It's now early in the 25th Century, Where an older Jake Sisko gets a friendly social call from Nog with a Holo-imager containing a story that goes against everything they were raised to believe about the Pre-Federation Coalition of Planets, and a possible conspiracy to re-write history.
23974303	/m/076vtpr	Broken Bow	Diane Carey		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book is a novelization of the pilot episode of the same name.
23974460	/m/076z3zx	Shockwave	Paul Ruditis		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Starship Enterprise NX-01 makes contact with the Paraagan deep-space colony. It is a matriarchal society with an unusually volatile gas. The Enterprise crew understands the danger and makes the precuation to their shuttle as they land, closing the plasma vents so nothing dangerous can escape. An explosion occurs, vaprozing thirty-six hundrec colonosts. The entire surface is destroyed. The Enterprise is recalled and Captain Archer must convince his superiors and the Vulcan high command that despite this incident, humans are still ready and able to explore space. And yet, this is not the events history records. The mysterious time traveling Enterprise crewman, Daniels, offers information suggestion the timeline is altered. Captain Archer sets out to do what he can to prove the Enterprise innocent.
23974545	/m/076ysj7	What Price Honor?		2002-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The second original novel to be based on the brand new Star Trek series Enterprise, currently wowing audiences on both Sky and Channel 4, poses a tense and gritty dilemma for one member of the crew. The Starship Enterprise NX-01 is Earth's flagship - the first vessel to embark on a systematic exploration of what lies beyond the fringes of known space. Led by Captain Jonathan Archer, eighty of Starfleet's best and brightest set forth to pave humanity's way to the stars. Tempered by a year of interstellar exploration, the crew has become a disciplined, cohesive, unit. And now, for the first time, they have lost one of their number. As they deal with the death, Archer, Reed and the rest of the crew find themselves caught squarely in the middle of another tense situation - a brutal war between two alien civilizations. But in the Alpha System nothing is what it seems.
23974620	/m/076xrg_	Surak's Soul	Jeanne Kalogridis	2003-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Illogical! The teachings of Surak emphasise the sacredness of life. Must they be abandoned when the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? T'Pol is forced to confront this dilemma: take a life to save her crewmates, or stay true to her Vulcan nature...From the successful new Star Trek franchise comes the story of its most popular character - the brilliant Vulcan science officer T'Pol. Pulled, once again, into one of Captain Jonathan Archer's headlong rushes for first contact, Sub-commander T'Pol believes her life -- and those of her colleagues -- is threatened. Instinctively she reacts, draws her phaser and kills. A simple act of self-defence. Or was it? As a Vulcan, an alien race under the strictest of self-imposed philosophical regimes, has T'Pol committed the ultimate act of self-betrayal? Has she forsaken the nonviolent teachings of Surak? Captain Archer, T'Pol's superior, believes her new-found pacifism is endangering the entire ship.
23974709	/m/076xmkr	The Expanse	Jeanne Kalogridis	2003-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 High above the planet Earth, an alien probe appears -- and in an unspeakably horrific instant, releases a deadly blast that strafes the planet's surface, leaving a miles-wide, smoldering crater of destruction in its wake. Millions die in Florida, Cuba, and Venezuela, their lives blotted out in a blazing millisecond. Just as swiftly, the probe implodes and crashes on the planet surface, but the remnants provide no clue as to its origin. Who are the attackers, and what provoked them? Aboard the Starship Enterprise, Captain Jonathan Archer learns of the destruction. His ship is called home; it is uncertain whether its mission of space exploration will continue. But before Enterprise reaches Earth, Archer is abruptly kidnaped from the bridge by the time-traveling enemies he has encountered before. He finds himself aboard a Suliban vessel, face-to-face with his old nemesis, Silik, a high-ranking individual in a battle known only as the Temporal Cold War. Silik leads him to his master, a mysterious humanoid from the far future. The humanoid claims that the attack on Earth was just a test; and the next attack will destroy Archer's home planet...unless he and the Enterprise crew stop it. To do so, they must enter a region of space called The Expanse - an area so dangerous that no ship has ever emerged from it unscathed. Vulcan crews were driven to bloodthirsty madness, Klingon crews were anatomically inverted, their internal organs exposed outside their bodies...while they still lived. Many vessels were lost, never to be heard from again. Archer faces the greatest crisis of his career: Should he believe Silik's time-traveling master, and expose his ship and crew to the perils of The Expanse, in hopes of saving Earth from destruction? And can he convince Starfleet Command and the Vulcan High Council to let Enterprise go to face her biggest challenge?
23974775	/m/076zlm2	Daedalus		2003-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 October 5, 2140. After a half-dozen years of research and testing, Starfleet prepares to launch its first warp 5 vessel -- Daedalus. Propelled by a radical new engine designed by Earth's most brilliant warp field theorist, Victor Brodesser, the new ship will at last put the stars within mankind's reach. But on the eve of her maiden voyage, a maintenance engineer, Ensign Charles Tucker III -- "Trip" to his friends -- discovers a flaw in Daedaluss design. When he confronts Brodesser, the scientist -- as charismatic as he is brilliant -- eases Trip's concerns. The ship launches on schedule, and as Trip watches in horror, it explodes in a catastrophic ion cascade reaction, killing all aboard. Thirteen years pass. Still haunted by memories of that disaster, Trip now serves as chief engineer aboard Enterprise. When a freak explosion cripples his vessel, leaving her helpless before a surprise attack, Trip is forced to abandon his ship -- and his shipmates. As he is on the verge of mounting a desperate rescue attempt, however, a shocking turn of events forces him to confront the ghosts of Daedalus one final time.
23974823	/m/076ynm5	Daedalus's Children		2003-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Crippled by a freak accident, Enterprise has crossed over into an alternate universe—and into the middle of a civil war set off by a brutal warlord who has used technology stolen from the Daedalus to enslave his people. Forcibly removed from their ship, imprisoned and brutalized by their captors, Captain Archer and crew soon find themselves confronting an even more immediate challenge than escape—subtle biochemical differences in this universe that make their continued survival an impossibility. Every hour they spend in this parallel continuum brings them closer to death. Yet Archer discovers that in order to recapture Enterprise, he may have to cripple his ship once again. And even if he manages to find a solution to that dilemma, one last survivor of the doomed flight of the Daedalus stands between Enterprise and her safe return home....
23974892	/m/076tzhy	Rosetta		2006-01-31	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Captain Jonathan Archer and the crew of the Starship Enterprise find their way forward blocked by a mysterious alien vessel, piloted by a race they will soon come to know as the Antianna. Unable to decipher the alien ship's transmissions, unwilling to risk a battle, Enterprise is forced to veer from its planned course. Almost immediately, they find themselves in the heart of space ruled by the Thelasian Trading Confederacy, who have also had dealings with the Antianna. The Thelasian leader, Governor Maxim Sen, is in fact in the middle of organising a war against the Antianna, to eliminate the threat they pose to the Confederacy's trading routes. Archer suspects Sen has other motives as well. He also suspects that there is a reason for the Antianna's seemingly hostile posture. But, with the assembled races of an entire sector against him, he needs more than just suspicions. He needs facts. And, only one woman can give them to him: Ensign Hoshi Sato. If she can translate the Antianna language, peace may just be possible. If not, war - a devastating sector-wide war - will soon result.
23977255	/m/076xhp0	Ursule Mirouët	Honoré de Balzac	1842	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ursule is the legitimate daughter of the widower Dr Denis Minoret’s deceased illegitimate brother-in-law by marriage, Joseph Mirouët; not only is she the doctor’s niece, she is also his goddaughter and ward. Fifteen years old when the novel begins, she has been brought up by the doctor. Dr Minoret, an atheist rather than an agnostic, and a devoted student of the Encyclopédie, has persisted in his rationalistic atheism for most of his eighty-three years. At the beginning of the novel he is, however, converted to Christianity – emotionally by the example of Ursule’s piety, and intellectually by his experience of animal magnetism, or the paranormal, and by his longstanding friendship with Abbé Chaperon. Dr Minoret is determined that Ursule shall inherit all the savings he has accumulated during his lifetime. He intends, on the other hand, to bequeath the remainder (approximately half) of his total fortune of about 1,500,000 francs to his “héritiers”, nephews and cousins of his own bloodline who are members of the Minoret, Crémière and Massin families. Discontented with their inheritance prospects, the “heirs” seek to grab the whole of their wealthy relative’s fortune, enlisting the help of the notary’s clerk Goupil. The doctor conceals a letter of testamentary intention in a legal volume in his library. This, together with three bearer bonds, is stolen by one of the doctor’s nephews, the postmaster François Minoret-Levrault, who, in the era before railways, owns and manages the carriage and postchaise services in and out of Nemours. The doctor dies, leaving Ursule much poorer than he had intended, for her inheritance would have become her dowry. Despite their best efforts – ransacking all the books in his library – the “heirs” (or “family”) cannot find the clue to the money. But remorse strikes Minoret-Levrault, and the doctor, appearing to him in a vision, instructs him to make good his theft. By an act of poetic justice the postmaster’s dandyish son Désiré Minoret-Levrault is killed in a stagecoach accident. Ursule marries the man of her dreams, the young Army officer Viscount Savinien de Portenduère.
23980844	/m/076xcsn	Hot Springs	Stephen Hunter	2000	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Right after the official ceremony of receiving the Medal of Honor in United States capital Washington, D.C., 1stSgt Earl Swagger (retired) is being approached by district attorney of Polk County Fred Becker and ex-FBI agent D. A. Parker. The two men propose him a new job in Hot Springs, Arkansas to fight against organized crime and finally end the gambling and corruption of the city. Swagger's mission is to train twelve young policemen into a "dream team" and instruct them during operations in city casinos. The mission is to close down all gambling places, preferably without hurting people. If violence becomes necessary, they are outfitted with custom .45 automatics, Thompson submachine guns, and Browning automatic rifles. Soon after accepting the new job, Earl finds out that his wife June is pregnant. She doesn't support Earl's idea to work in Hot Springs and is afraid of him being killed. One of the "dream team" members, a young policeman Frenchy Short (who also has a critical but unseen role in Black Light) is a smart young man, who feels that he can be above and better than the others in the team. Several times he tries to do something better than the others but in the end fails. That way he once killed two men during an assassination on the casino. Luckily for him, these two men were known bandits and Frenchy became sort of a hero. Next time, while supposedly on vacation, Frenchy finds the central office of the gambling network and reveals his research results to Swagger and Parker. This results in Becker firing him from the team because of illegal way of gathering evidence (as Frenchy, in fact, broke in to a telephone office to search the maps). An enraged Short promptly goes over to the other side. For a little favour, he informs the city boss Owney Maddox of everything related to the "dream team". On the other hand, during the holiday Short's "dream team" partner Carlo Henderson (later seen in Dirty White Boys) is asked by D. A. Parker to investigate Swagger's past and find out, how is Swagger so familiar with Hot Springs's landscape. Swagger has shown knowledge of the city for several times, pointing out important nuances during the operations, however claims that he's never been to Hot Springs before. Parker suggests that Swagger has the death instinct, because Swagger always tries to get into action himself, without wearing the bulletproof vest. During the investigation, Henderson finds out that Swagger's brother was beaten a lot by their father, Charles Swagger, former sheriff of Polk County. Carlo's investigation ultimately leads him to the belief that Earl was responsible for his father's death. When he finally questions him on the subject, Earl reveals that he did not kill his father, but found him dying in Hot Springs. He took him out of there and faked the robbery that supposedly got him killed to protect his father's reputation (and his own as well). Sam Vincent, who at the time is assistant of attorney in Garland, Arkansas. briefly assists Henderson with the investigation. Vincent also appears in other Hunter's novels, such as Point of Impact and Black Light. In the meanwhile, the governor of Arkansas orders Parker to confiscate all heavy weaponry and bulletproof vests from the team, leaving them only with their handguns. Several members decide to leave, leaving only seven men. Short suggests Maddox to make a trap for the "dream team", which results in seven of them dying, including old D. A. Parker. The sole survivors are Earl Swagger and Carlo Henderson. They are then being arrested by the police and later let go home, with no money paid and with the condition, that they never, ever return to Hot Springs. Soon after, Maddox is being arrested with the accusation of owning stolen artwork. He's freed from prison by the crew of assassins who killed his men, but Swagger finds them and kills all of them in a savage protracted gunfight, including Owney Maddox. Swagger also finds out that Owney was the actual murderer of his father. In the meantime, Earl's wife, June is in hospital giving birth to their son, which doesn't appear to be easy because of an unusual position of the baby. The local doctor can't rescue both, the mother and the child, so Earl brings another doctor with him, who is black. The locals in the town, outraged that a black doctor has entered a white hospital and is assisting a white patient, form a lynch mob and approach the hospital. Earl, carrying three loaded .45's, confronts them and warns them that if a fight occurs, a lot of them will die. The mob backs off. June survives, and successfully gives birth to their son, Bob Lee Swagger.
23982807	/m/05wzvh	Martian Time-Slip	Philip K. Dick	1964	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jack Bohlen is a repairman who emigrated to Mars to flee from his bouts of schizophrenia. He lives with a wife and a young son. His father Leo visits Mars to stake a claim to the seemingly worthless Franklin D. Roosevelt mountain range after receiving an insider tip that the United Nations plans to build a huge apartment complex there. The complex will be called "AM-WEB", a contraction of the German phrase "Alle Menschen werden Brüder" (All men become brothers) from Schiller's An die Freude (Ode to Joy). Bohlen has a chance encounter with Arnie Kott, the hard-nosed leader of the Water Worker’s Union, when both Bohlen’s and Kott’s helicopters are called to assist a group of critically dehydrated Bleekmen, the "original" inhabitants of Mars who are thought to be genetically similar to the African Bushmen of Earth. Bohlen rebukes Kott for his hesitance to help the Bleekmen, an act that angers Kott. After visiting with his ex-wife Anne Esterhazy about their own "anomalous" child, Kott hears of the theories of Dr. Milton Glaub, a psychotherapist at Camp Ben-Gurion, an institution for those afflicted with pervasive developmental disorders. Glaub believes that mental illnesses may be altered states of time perception. Kott becomes interested in Manfred Steiner, an autistic boy at Camp B-G in the hopes that the boy can predict the future - a skill Kott would find useful to his business ventures. Since Camp B-G is scheduled for closure, Kott offers to take Manfred off Glaub's hands. Manfred in turn is afraid of a future only he can see, in which Mars is derelict and the AM-WEB is a dumping ground for forgotten people like him, where he will eventually be confined as a decrepit old man to a bed on life-support. Kott leases Bohlen’s contract from his current employers and hires him to build a video device that can help Manfred perceive time at a regular pace (Kott is also ultimately intent on getting revenge on Bohlen). Bohlen takes a liking to Manfred but the assignment stresses him out because he fears that contact with the mentally ill may cause him to relapse. Bohlen also begins an affair with Kott’s mistress. One of Bohlen's regular jobs is to service the simulacra at the International School, where lessons are taught by robotic simulations of historical figures. These figures are deeply disturbing to Bohlen as they remind him of his own schizoid episodes where he perceived people around him as non-living mechanisms. When he takes Manfred to the school during an assignment, the simulacra begin acting strangely, as it seems Manfred is altering their reality. Eventually Bohlen is asked to take Manfred away. In light of other events it isn't entirely clear, however, whether Manfred is actually affecting the simulacra or whether he's merely influencing Jack Bohlen's perception of them. Only Heliogabalus, Kott's Bleekman servant, is able to connect with Manfred. From Manfred's point of view, humans are strange beings who live in a world of fractured time where they disappear from one place and reappear in another and otherwise move in a jerky, uncoordinated manner. Heliogabalus, to Manfred, moves smoothly and gracefully. He seems to talk to Manfred without words. The precipitating event of the story is the suicide of Manfred Steiner's father Norbert which has the effect of connecting Kott to Manfred and thereby depriving Otto Zitte, a colleague of Norbert's, of his livelihood. The crux of the story is a meeting between Kott, Bohlen and Kott's mistress, Doreen Anderton, at Kott's home, with Manfred in tow. This episode is previewed three times before it actually occurs, apparently through Manfred's eyes but with participation by Bohlen. Each time the events are more surreal, the perceptions more hallucinatory. When the events of the story finally reach the crucial point, which Bohlen fears after having foreseen the outcome, Bohlen himself does not experience it. His awareness stops as he and Doreen arrive at Kott's home and picks up after they leave. He only knows that he and Kott parted ways, superficially friends but actually enemies. Pressured by Kott, Heliogabalus reveals that the Bleekmen's sacred rock, "Dirty Knobby", can be used as a time travel portal that Manfred may be able to open. Kott centers his interest in altering the past on two goals: Revenge on Jack Bohlen and claiming the FDR mountains before Leo Bohlen does. Somewhat predictably, the scheme goes badly awry. Returned in time to the point where he first appeared in the novel, emerging from the sybaritic bath-house run by the Union, Arnie Kott finds himself repeating the actions which led him to meeting Bohlen while simultaneously dealing with perceptual distortions which seem to be emanating from Manfred's mind. He is unable to get to the FDR mountains to plant his stake, being compelled by law to go the aid of Bleekmen just as he did before. He encounters Bohlen, as he did originally, but in attempting to shoot him he is "killed" by a Bleekman's arrow. Waking from the vision, Kott realizes he has failed. He decides to give up on his schemes, abandon Doreen and let Bohlen get on with his life. He still desires to help Manfred who has wandered off during the purported "time-travel" episode. Leaving the cave in Dirty Knobby where they performed Heliogabalus's strange ritual, he encounters Otto Zitte. After the suicide of Norbert Steiner, Kott, his best customer, elected to take over Norbert's business. Zitte was competing, so Kott's men destroyed the smuggler's storage facility and the adjacent property, leaving a message that "Arnie Kott doesn't like what you stand for". Zitte has pursued Kott, following his helicopter to Dirty Knobby. He shoots Kott, who thinks he might still be stuck in another one of Manfred's hallucinations. Bohlen and Doreen land in Kott's own helicopter and take Kott back to Lewistown. Kott dies, believing to the last that he was only experiencing another hallucination. Bohlen returns to his wife, Silvia, who had been seduced by Zitte on his sales round. Despite both admitting to infidelity, Jack with Doreen and Silvia with Zitte, they decide to maintain their marriage. There is a disturbance in the Steiner home, and Steiner's widow runs screaming into the night. Barging in, Bohlen and his father see Manfred, old and in a wheelchair, festooned with tubes, accompanied by Bleekmen. Manfred joined a group of Bleekmen after leaving Dirty Knobby, and has saved himself from AM-WEB. He has come back through time to see his family and thank Bohlen for saving him. In a subdued final scene, Bohlen and his father are out searching for Steiner's widow in the darkness, with voices "business-like and competent and patient."
23982842	/m/076vrm8	Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders	Samuel R. Delany			 The novel begins in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 6, 2007, where we meet Eric Jeffers some six days before his seventeenth birthday. Eric is living with his adoptive father, Mike. The story follows Eric as he goes to live with his mother, Barbara, in the fictive "Runcible County" on the Georgia coast. There, living in the town of "Diamond Harbor", Eric learns that a black, gay philanthropist has established a utopian community for black gay men in a neighborhood called the Dump. Eric takes a job with the local garbage man, Dynamite, and his nineteen year old helper, Morgan. The two boys become life partners, and the novel follows them—through job changes (from garbage men, to managing a pornographic theater, to handymen), changes of friends, and changes of address (from a cabin in the Dump, to an apartment over the movie theater, to another cabin out on Gilead, a nearby island)—into the twilight of their years.
23983828	/m/076t2ht	The Art of Keeping Cool	Janet Taylor Lisle			 The Art of Keeping Cool deals with the difficulties of childhood during WWII. in 1942, making sense of his family is especially difficult for thirteen-year-old Robert, whose father has been deployed in Europe with the Royal Canadian Air Force for more than six months. After Pearl Harbor, Robert and his family moved from their farm in Ohio to live with his father's parents in Rhode Island. This living situation is strange to Robert, who has never met his grandparents or his cousin Elliot who also lives in Rhode Island. He finds it even more odd that neither his mother or his extended family ever discuss his father. Robert must search to find reason for the unexplainable family dynamic. With the help of Elliot and an exiled German painter named Abel Hoffman, Robert uncovers with the dark history of his father's family. After a little time elliot starts going to abel hoffman's house to sketch.One day when elliot didn't go to abel's Robert asks why.Elliot said abel was beat up by some people just because he was German. *Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, winner, 2001 *Riverbank Review Book of Distinction, winner, 2001 *ALA Notable Children's Book *Horn Book Fanfare *Junior Library Guild Selection *Scholastic Book Club Selection
23986473	/m/076xfxk	The Magicians	Lev Grossman	2009	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The book follows the adventures of Quentin Coldwater, a high-school graduate from Brooklyn with above-average intelligence and below-average social skills, as he is accepted to Brakebills Academy, an exclusive college for magicians. As he goes through the five years of schooling, he realizes that, just because his fantasy came true, it does not mean that all of his problems are solved. He is forced to deal with his own sullenness and anti-social behavior along with similar issues with the other students. Magic, it turns out, is boring and tedious to learn. Upon graduation, he discovers that Fillory, a fanciful land that is the setting of his favorite book series, is real.
23989793	/m/07k42rf	A Sensible Life	Mary Wesley	1990	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1926 Mr and Mrs Trevelyan from England are holidaying in Brittany with their ten-year-old daughter, Flora. The two parents openly despise and neglect the young girl, who is left to occupy herself whilst they prepare to depart for a life in colonial India without her. Left to herself Flora gradually befriends the locals and the other guests at the hotel, who show her more attention and kindness than she receives from her parents. Flora soon falls helplessly in love with no less than three young men (Cosmo, Blanco and Felix) who are also staying at the hotel, and she is crestfallen when the holidays are over and they have to leave. When her parents leave for India Flora is left at a boarding school in England where she will spend the following seven years. Only once is Flora invited to spend her holidays with the Leighs, whom she met in Brittany, and in the years that follow she is only in casual contact with the Leighs and Cosmo, Blanco and Felix. When Flora is seventeen she is supposed to go to India to meet her parents who then will find her a suitable husband, but Flora decides to get off the ship in Marseilles and return to England. Back in England she has to make a living on her own and becomes a housemaid for a family in London and later in the West Country. She begins to live an independent and sensible life.
23995269	/m/07k8c69	Six Months in a Convent				 Reed described the convent as a prison, where young girls were forced into Catholicism, with grotesque punishment for those who refused. This book, along with a growing number of propaganda magazines including the Christian Watchman and Boston Recorder, stoked the fires of anti-Catholicism in Boston and the surrounding area.
23999182	/m/07khcjv	César Birotteau	Honoré de Balzac	1837	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 César is a man of peasant origins from the Touraine region. At the start of the novel, in 1819, he owns a successful perfume shop, La Reine des Roses, he has been elected deputy mayor of his arrondissement in Paris, and he has been awarded the Legion of Honour. During the revolution he took part in the Royalist 13 Vendémiaire uprising against the Republic, at one stage confronting Napoleon Bonaparte himself, and he mentions this often in conversation. He is married to Constance and has a daughter Cesarine. He plans to throw a ball at his home, and make renovations to his home for the ball. He also becomes involved in property speculation with borrowed money, through his notary Roguin. He also plans to expand his business with a new hair oil product, with his assistant Anselme Popinot (who is in love with Cesarine) as his business partner. However all of these plans have caused him to run up large debts. What he does not realise is that Roguin has money problems of his own, and that César's former shop assistant Ferdinand du Tillet, now a banker, is manipulating Roguin in order to have revenge against César. His financial situation becomes a crisis when Roguin absconds and leaves César with debts that he is not able to pay. His attempts to get financial assistance from various bankers such as Nucingen, the Keller brothers and Gigonnet (all recurring characters in La Comédie humaine) fail, since all are friends of du Tillet and acting on his instructions. This leads him to declare bankruptcy, sell La Reine des Roses to his assistant Celestin Crevel and retire from business. Eventually César pays off all of his debts when his business venture with Popinot succeeds. He then dies suddenly, but happy that his honour has been restored.
23999627	/m/07kdyd6	That Old Cape Magic				 The story revolves around a past-middle-age former Hollywood screenwriter, Jack Griffin, who is presently teaching creative writing at a New England college. He loses both parents within a year of each other, and he travels considerable distance to attend two weddings during the same time. As he travels, and as he interacts both with his family and his in-laws, he ponders marital and family relationships. He is also mulling whether to remain in New England or return to the uncertainty of Hollywood.
24003869	/m/07kbnc_	Conan the Outcast	Leonard Carpenter		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The King of Sark calls in his High Priest Khumanos to talk about the drought situation. After the ritual sacrifice of many high priests, Anaximander decides that a larger offering to the god Voltantha is needed. He directs Khumanos to sacrifice Qjara, a more prosperous city to the north. To do this correctly, Khumanos seeks out Solon in the desert, to which he expresses doubts about the mission. Solon sees Khumanos' compassion as a weakness and shows him the Sword of Onothimanos, which is just a rusted hilt. Khumanos becomes emotionless and devoted to the mission. So much so that he kills Solon because he outlived his usefulness. Conan is on the outskirts of Qjara awaiting a caravan to Shadizar. He is invited into the carvan sector of the city by some local children. He settles down in a bar and meets Afriandra in disguise. She proves her precognitive ability by correctly predicting the death of a nearby patron. When Zaius comes to the bar looking for her, Conan provides a distraction by taunting him. Zaius says he is not worth the effort. Conan begins a romance with Afrianda, which offends Zaius. The two men have a quick fistfight which Conan is winning, which Afrianda implores him to stop. Conan demands a formal duel which Zaius rejects on the basis of Conan not being a citizen. After Conan defends Qjara's gates from a nomad attack, he becomes an honorary citizen and uses the opportunity to challenge Zaius to ritual combat. Zaius accepts. Meanwhile, King Anaximander begins a diplomatic mission to Qjara. He witnesses proof of what he thinks of as Qjara's debauchery and asks the king and queen for permission to set up a temple to Voltantha in the city. Qjara's royalty goes one better, proposing a "marriage" between the goddess Saditha and Voltantha. The deal is done, and Khumanos begins his work. Khumanos bids slaves to mine three veins of glowing green rock from a Sarkian mountain. Extended exposure to this rock causes sores and cancer and even death. Keeping the rocks of the three veins separate, the slaves refine it into three separate statues. These three statues are hoisted onto carts and sent by three different routes to Qjara, avoiding populated areas and going through the wastelands. Despite the heat and hard labor, Khumanos insists the carts be driven by human labor with limited breaks. In Qjara, Conan prepares for his duel. Zaius preens and postures for the crowd, angering Conan. When the duel begins, Zaius' first stroke cuts off his own head. Not recognizing this as a ritual suicide, Conan begins ridiculing Zaius for backing away from the fight. This angers the royalty and forces them to cast him out of the city.
24007868	/m/07k3_6y	A Troubled Peace			{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 World War II may be ending, but for 19-year-old bomber pilot, Henry Forester, the conflict still rages on. Shot down over France, Henry endured a dangerous trek to freedom, relying on civilians and French Resistance fighters to stay alive. But back home in Virginia, Henry is still reliving air battles with Hitler’s Luftwaffe and his torture by the Gestapo. Henry worries about the safety of those who helped him escape—especially the young French boy, Pierre, who may have lost everything in his efforts to save Henry. When Henry returns to France to find Pierre, he is stunned by the brutal aftermath of combat: widespread starvation, cities shattered by Allied bombing, and the return of survivors from the concentration camps. His efforts to find and secure the safety of Pierre help him to resolve the deep inner conflict he experiences at the beginning of the novel. He returns to Virginia with Pierre.
24015984	/m/07k4d3y	The Guardian	Nicholas Sparks	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Richard is a murderer, starting his career as a boy killing his father in a carefully planned "accident". He is extremely clever in creating false evidence; in one example, he hurts himself deliberately with a knife after beating two foster brothers so they will get in trouble for severely hurting him. He falls in love with a woman (Jessica) but leaves her no personal space to live. She tries to escape a few times, but he eventually finds and kills her. Then he takes over the identity of another man he has watched for some time before killing him. He meets Julie by chance and is stunned by her resemblance to his first wife. He wants to "own" Julie out of obsessive love. Julie had married her first husband, Jim, as he was the one and only man she ever loved. His sudden death drove her into despair. Before Jim's death, he made an arrangement with a friend to give Julie a Great Dane, a dog that Jim had always wanted to own. She names him Singer and he joins her life acting more and more human. After a while she starts to date men again but is still deeply unsatisfied by their behavior and character. Mike is good friends with Julie and was also friends with Jim but is like a brother who is not eligible for dating. He feels he cannot ask Julie out due to his previous relationship with their family. He dislikes and believes he cannot compete with Richard. Singer is the title character and the catalyst in the story. He pushes the relationship of Mike and Julie, sensing that Richard is not as he seems.
24018829	/m/07kctsc	Amber and Blood	Margaret Weis		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Mina, who had last appeared to Rhys as an adult woman, seems to retain no knowledge of her prior actions or that she is a god. She tells the monk that she has run away from home and needs his help to go back. When asked where she lived, the young Mina replies that she came from Godshome, the holy valley of the gods first introduced in Dragons of Spring Dawning. After Mina fully recovers from near drowning, she insists that she needs a gift for her mother Goldmoon who will be waiting at Godshome and whose forgiveness Mina seeks. A small sailboat appears on the beach, although Mina seems unaware she willed it into existence. Rhys, Nightshade, Atta and Mina sail to the newly raised Tower of High Sorcery, which sits on its own island in the sea. As the group sail closer, they realize the island is swarming with undead creatures known as the Beloved. They all swarm around Mina and her escorts, eager for her touch and her blessings. However, the six-year-old Mina is terrified of the Beloved. The group makes its way inside the tower where the Beloved cannot follow. Also in the tower are two black robed wizards who are trapped by the Beloved. Mina is still intent on finding a gift for her mother and travels to the chamber where holy artifacts of the gods were stored before the Cataclysm, the so-called Hall of Sacrilege. She chooses two items from within: a necklace from the altar of Takhisis and a crystal pyramid from the altar of Paladine. When Mina and her friends try to leave the tower, she is beset by the Beloved again. Faced with the evil she has created, Mina transforms into a vengeful, fire-breathing giant and destroys the Beloved in a rage, only to transform into a child again with seemingly no memory of what happened. Meanwhile, the evil gods Nuitari and Chemosh try to claim the artifacts in the Hall of Sacrilege for themselves, but the High God, creator of all the gods of Krynn, intervenes and sweeps away the Hall so none of the artifacts can be used in the fight between the lower gods. Rhys and his companions sail to the port city of Flotsam, from where they will continue to try to find Godshome on foot. On the road, both the god of death Chemosh and goddess of the sea Zeboim try to sway Mina to their cause, but she does not remember or trust either of them. Frustrated, they depart. Mina asks to see the map Nightshade has made for their journey and is upset by how far they still have to go before reaching Solace, where Rhys hopes to speak with monks of Majere. Using her godly powers, she speeds up the pace of their walking and the group reaches the city of Solace, far across the continent, in under a day. In Solace, Rhys and the others stay at the Inn of the Last Home where the owner Laura dotes on the young Mina, bathing her and brushing her hair just as Goldmoon used to do. Rhys finds the temple to his god Majere among the other temples in town and seeks out the Abbott of Majere. Temple Row, where the holy places are all located, is in an uproar as rival followers fought in the streets and attempted to set fire to one another's temples. Rhys speaks to the Abbott about finding Godshome. The Abbott counsels him that legend has it that Godshome is located near Neraka, formerly the seat of Takhisis's armies. However, it isn't clear whether mortals can find Godshome without the guidance of a god. Rhys thinks Valthonis, the mortal form of the former god Paladine, could help locate Godshome but the Abbott reminds him that after the War of Souls, Mina had vowed to kill Valthonis. Rhys leaves unsure about whether to seek out the fallen god. The next day, Rhys meets Mina, Nightshade and Atta at the temple of Majere, from where they will journey to Neraka. However, another riot breaks out among the religious temples, carefully orchestrated by the followers of Chemosh. Ausric Krell, the former death knight who has been restored to human form, uses the confusion to try to kill Rhys and Nightshade and to abduct Mina for his god. He almost succeeds but Rhys, along with the help of the red-robed archmage Jenna, manages to kill him. Mina, meanwhile, has fled, with Nightshade and Atta in pursuit. Nightshade and Atta catch up with Mina and head north, continuing toward Neraka. Rhys helps deal with the wounded and explains to the sheriff Gerard what has happened with Mina. Gerard's leg is wounded and as he is treated in the Inn of the Last Home, Rhys waits for word about Mina. Soon enough, he hears they travelled north and follows. Nightshade and Mina travel until it gets dark, at which point the dark forest seems frightening to them both. However, a light in the distance leads them to a lone house in the woods. A kind woman welcomes them inside and feeds them gingerbread, after which they both fall asleep. Rhys comes upon the same house and finds the woman gently rocking Mina, looking very sad. She invites Rhys in as well and he recognizes her as the goddess of healing Mishakal, Mina's godly mother. She again counsels Rhys to seek out Valthonis, for Paladine was Mina's father, and that he alone can reveal Godshome to her. Mishakal tells Rhys that Mina will have to choose whether to side with the gods of Good or the gods of Evil. The next day, Rhys, Nightshade, Atta and Mina awake to find themselves in Neraka, surrounded by remnants of the destroyed temple of Takhisis. Meanwhile Galdar, Mina's former minotaur lieutenant, escorts Valthonis into the valley of Neraka. When Mina sees Galdar, she changes into the 17-year-old woman who had led armies during the War of Souls and embraces her minotaur friend. However, she seems to believe the two of them are still fighting in that war. She then remembers the death of Takhisis and tries to kill Valthonis with Galdar's sword. He and Rhys explain that if she commits this murder, she will tip the balance in favour of the Evil gods and destroy Krynn. She is enraged and shifts her form again, this time to the person who had led Chemosh's followers. She beats Galdar and Rhys with godly force and kills Nightshade. At the kender's death, she becomes the little girl with pigtails again and feels remorse for his death. Finally, she accepts who she is and agrees to travel with Valthonis to Godshome. Mina and Valthonis find Godshome after following a steep trail through the mountains. Mina's feet hurt and she doesn't understand why she feels pain despite being a god. She accepts that though the gods "play at being mortal" none truly know what mortality is like except for her. The two finally enter enter the bowl-shaped valley that houses pillars to all the gods of Good, Evil and Balance. She holds the two artifacts she retrieved from the Hall of Sacrilege in each hand as the gods wait for her to decide. She drops both items and proclaims that she is "equal parts of darkness and of light" and refuses to join any side, that she will side with any one side as she sees fit. Her decision maintains the balance of power and she leaves the world to join the gods as the Goddess of Tears, coming to the aid of the hopeless and the grieving.
24019547	/m/07kjb4k	The Quest of Kadji	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kadji, young grandson to the aging warrior Zarouk, has been tasked by his grandfather with dethroning Prince Yakthodah, imposter to the throne of the Dragon Emperor. Crossing the Kylix sun scorched plains on Haral, his faithful black Feridoon pony, Kadji rides into the capital to vanquish his nemesis, knowing full well this will mean his own painful end.
24019757	/m/07k9cd7	Wyst: Alastor 1716	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jantiff Ravensroke, a restless young artist from the planet Zeck (Alastor 503), wins an art contest and receives a round-trip voucher and three hundred ozols to any planet of his choosing. Jantiff decides on Wyst, having read of its "glorious light, where every surface quivers with its true and just color." He arrives in the city of Uncibal in Arrabus and is assigned a room in Block 17-882, where his roommate is Skorlet, a middle-aged woman. He is introduced to her lover Esteban and their young daughter Tanzel, as well as the peculiarities of the Arrabin mindset. It is not long before Jantiff learns of the darker side of Arrabin culture. His camera, art supplies, and other belongings are stolen the first day, making him more equal to the other inhabitants. Soon after meeting the beautiful Kedidah, Jantiff is invited on a forage, an expedition into the Weirdlands for real food. However, the resident farmers combat the thievery of the Arrabins with traps and guard dogs, and Jantiff returns to the city empty-handed. Later, Esteban announces that he is arranging a bonterfest catered by Weirdland gypsies, but that each person must pay 500 tokens. Jantiff, Skorlet, Kedidah and Tanzel make tentative plans to attend. Skorlet gets Jantiff to pay for Tanzel by arranging for Kedidah's current roommate, an old man named Sarp, to switch with Jantiff. By chance, Jantiff overhears a conversation between Skorlet, Esteban, Sarp and an unknown individual about a mysterious plan; it is evident that this plan hinges somehow on Jantiff's drawings. The talking ends suddenly when Skorlet discovers Jantiff in the bedroom. Jantiff reports the suspicious conversation to the Cursar, the Connatic's representative on Wyst. The Cursar, without tangible proof, can only enjoin Jantiff to do all he can to uncover the plot. Upon switching rooms, Jantiff learns that Kedidah has become the sheirl (somewhat more than a mascot) for a hussade sports team. The team wins its first game, resulting in glory for Kedidah, but on the eve of the bonterfest, the team loses, resulting in Kedidah being publicly defiled by Claubus, a twelve-foot wooden effigy. She commits suicide at the Pier of Departure. Distraught but still wanting to uncover Skorlet's plot, Jantiff attends the bonterfest. As requested by Skorlet, he brings his camera, although he replaces the matrix (the film) with a newer one, putting the other in a safe location in his room. The bonterfest participants are flown to the Weirdlands by Booch, an aide to the Contractor Shubart. Oddly, when Esteban discovers that Jantiff has replaced the camera's matrix, he becomes agitated. Later, Jantiff notices Esteban talking to the gypsies. The meal is enjoyed by all, but after the gypsies depart, Skorlet becomes distraught when she discovers that Tanzel is missing. It is implied that the gypsies have kidnapped her to become an ingredient in their next bonterfest. Jantiff overhears Esteban lamenting the misunderstanding with the gypsies; he was the intended victim. Jantiff returns to Uncibal to retrieve the camera matrix, which he now realizes must contain an image of the mysterious fourth member of the cabal. After being intercepted and pursued by Esteban, Jantiff leaves the matrix for the Connatic's Cursar with the clerk, Clode Morre. Several days later, he returns to the Cursar's office and learns that the clerk has been murdered and the matrix is missing. At the current clerk's urging, Jantiff tries to reach the spaceport at Balad in the southern part of Wyst, hoping to return to Zeck. Jantiff attempts to stow away on a transporter, but is discovered. The conductor agrees to take him as far as the edge of Blale, though he learns that no passengers are taken on at the Balad spaceport. Jantiff makes his way to Balad on foot, encountering strange witches along the way. Lacking funds, Jantiff finds work at the Old Groar Inn. He meets Eubanq, Balad's port agent and an employee of Contractor Shubart. In return for 100 ozols, Eubanq would arrange a flight from Balad to Uncibal and its spaceport. Booch, the pilot who flew the bonterfesters to the Weirdlands, is also in residence at Balad, but fails initially to recognize Jantiff. Jantiff works diligently to earn the 100 ozols. He rescues a mute young witch woman, who he later names Glisten, from Booch, and nurses her back to health. At the Balad Fair some weeks later, Eubanq observes that Jantiff's hands have the "yellows", which are believed to be caused by eating witches' food, and hurries off to tell Booch. Jantiff returns to his hut and discovers that all his ozols have been stolen and Glisten is missing. Jantiff returns to town and confronts Eubanq, but the townspeople decide to punish Jantiff for exposing them to the yellows. Fleeing into Contractor Shubart's mansion, he discovers Skorlet, Esteban, and Sarp. The townspeople smash his "yellowed" fingers and blind him. Afterward, Booch comes looking for Jantiff's money and to kill him; he is interrupted by Ryl Schermatz, a high-ranking official sent by the Connatic. Booch tries a ruse to kill Schermatz, but is slain for his efforts. Jantiff tells Schermatz what he has deduced about the plot: Esteban noticed a physical similarity between himself, Skorlet, Sarp, and Contractor Shubart, and the current Whispers. The cabal disposed of the real Whispers and took their places, even journeying through space to meet with the Connatic. Schermatz returns to Balad with Jantiff, whose vision is somewhat restored, and arrests Eubanq. He reveals that a harmless, easily-cured fungus causes the yellows, and that the persecution of the witches is to end. Then, he and Jantiff return to Uncibal. At Uncibal, they learn that the false Whispers plan a Grand Rally to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of Arrabus. Jantiff realizes just barely in time that it is a scheme to eliminate everyone who knows the plotters. It comes too late to save the guests, who are blown up, but Schermatz and Jantiff survive. Schermatz has the four impostors arrested and sentenced to death. The original Whispers had recognized that Arrabus was falling apart economically and had intended to appeal to the Connatic for help. The fake Whispers had taken an entirely different tone with the Connatic, raising his suspicions and causing Schermatz (who may actually be the Connatic in disguise) to investigate. He intimates to Jantiff that the Arrabin society will have to change drastically. Jantiff returns to Zeck, where some months later, a cured, speaking Glisten arrives at his door.
24021324	/m/07kf76g	23 Hours	David Wellington			 Following her conviction at the end of Vampire Zero for stepping outside the law and torturing a convict for critical information she used to destroy her former mentor-turned-vampire, vampire hunter Laura Caxton is imprisoned in a maximum security penitentiary when it is invaded by Justinia Malvern, the world’s oldest vampire, intent on killing the former state police trooper. Malvern has used her vampiric skills to convert the prison's warden to her side, setting up the entire prison population to either accept her vampire's curse or become feeding stock for Malvern and her converts. Caxton must fight her way out of the prison and save her captured girlfriend as well.
24021398	/m/07k5tyc	Vampire Zero	David Wellington	2008		 After Pennsylvania State Trooper and vampire hunter Laura Caxton’s former mentor James Arkeley willingly took on the vampire curse to battle the regiment of undead Civil War-era soldiers when they were reanimated in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he promised to come back and let Laura kill him. When Arkeley reneges on his promise, Caxton is forced to hunt down the now undead U.S. Marshall. Because Arkeley was the world’s premiere vampire hunter, she finds it impossible to find any clues to his whereabouts until a wannabe vampire, Dylan Carboy—a boy with an unhealthy obsession with Caxton and vampires—tries to kill her. This chance encounter leads to a reunion of sorts at the Arkeley’s memorial service with his estranged family: his wife, Astarte; his daughter, Raleigh; his son, Simon; and his brother, Angus. When Caxton starts questioning the family, she quickly discovers that Arkeley is intent on offering them the vampire’s curse. When Astarte and Angus refuse the curse, Arkeley quickly dispatches them, leaving Simon and Raleigh. Taking his offspring into protective custody, Caxton is hindered by the Arkeleys’ family history, her new status as a deputized U.S. Marshal, and her new boss, Special Deputy Fetlock. Pushed to her limit of endurance when Arkeley kills his former ally and mystic Vesta Polder and turns her into a half-dead, Caxton takes Carboy out of custody and tortures him until he reveals enough of his hidden relationship with Arkeley for her to learn the location of his lair. Caxton tracks the vampire to an abandoned coal mine in Centralia, Pennsylvania, a former company town all but turned into a ghost town from the underground coal fire started in the 1960s. There she is captured by Raleigh, who has accepted the vampire curse and been reanimated, and taken to Arkeley’s den to be the first meal for Simon when he accepts the curse. Caxton is able to recapture her gun from Raleigh, shot and kill the vampire, and escape into the depths of the burning coal mine. Pursued by Arkeley and his half-deads, Caxton kills most of the minions but is all but crippled by Arkeley’s attack. Using her own blood as bait, Caxton lures the now blood-maddened Arkeley into a side-shaft of the mine and tricks him into falling down into the burning depths. When Caxton finds her way back to the surface, carrying Simon, the only surviving member of the Arkeley family, she is immediately arrested by Fetlock for violating Carboy’s constitutional rights.
24026069	/m/07k82_5	Competitors	Sergey Lukyanenko		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A Moscow freelance journalist named Valentin Saphonov finds an ad on a pole from the Stellar Time Agency, inviting people to sign up to become a pilot of a space fighter. Assuming this is an ad for a computer game, Valentin goes to the address specified in the ad and is greeted by an attractive woman named Inna. She warns him that everything that what he is about to do is for real. She explains that, upon his agreement, a copy of Valentin's body and consciousness will be created on a remote space station, where he will receive a spaceship and will be involved in a fight against aliens. After walking him through several rooms, Inna sends Valentin through the back door of the office, explaining that his alter ego is already on the station. Valentin, believing all this to be a prank, decides to conduct an investigation of Stellar Time. He soon finds the gaming website for the popular Russian MMORPG StarQuake. He registers under the nickname Katran ( — "spiny dogfish"), unaware that his alter ego has received exactly the same nickname. Eventually, Valentin realizes that his character lives his own life and that all this may be actually happening. Valentin's double quickly ends up being kidnapped by the Seekers, a sect of people who believe that all they are experiencing is a computer simulation, just like in the Matrix. Valentin (AKA Katran) and his instructor Lena (AKA Driver) end up on the icy planet Nigredo, where all water (in every form) is black-colored but normal otherwise. The planet contains the hidden base of the Seekers. Master reveals that they have managed to obtain the plans for building an ultimate WMD — a weapon capable of extinguishing a star in a matter of minutes. They plan to use the Extinguisher to force those who have sent them into space to either unplug them (if everything is indeed a simulation) or return them home. After purchasing a new ship from Roman, Valentin and Lena go back to the Platform, where they have to face a tribunal-like hearing (albeit much less formal). During the hearing, a massive fleet of aliens known as the "Bugs" attacks the Platform, and every pilot is mobilized to defend the station. Many pilots are lost in the battle, but they manage to destroy most of the enemy ships and force the rest to retreat. Meanwhile, on Earth, the original Valentin realizes that something strange is happening with his in-game character and decides to investigate further. He contacts Lena via ICQ and invites her over to discuss in-game events. However, he quickly realizes that someone is trying to prevent their meeting from occurring. Lena arrives to his apartment, where she confirms his suspicions that everything they have been told at the agency is true — there really are copies of them somewhere out there, flying spaceships and fighting. Valentin receives a call on a phone which he turned off the day before, where an unknown person threatens him to drop his investigation and just play the game. The unknown person turns out to be a sniper on a neighboring roof. Valentin and Lena barely manage to escape in her car. They drive to Oleg, an acquaintance of Valentin, who is intrigued by their story. At Oleg's apartment, Valentin decides that they must contact their doubles and get them to return to Earth in their ships to threaten the agency. He takes a screenshot of the game's 2D star map and sends it to a local astronomer. Surprisingly, the astronomer fairly quickly manages to determine the location of the Sun on the game's map. Lena logs into the game as her other character (whose ship is operated by a bot in space). In space, Valentin and Lena are tasked by the administration to fly to a faraway planet, which has an abundant supply of certain rare elements needed by the Seekers to complete the Extinguisher. It is there that Valentin receives a message from his other self. The message explains how to find the Sun on their star map (about 330 parsecs away). They realize too late that the Seekers have tricked them and have made off with a substantial amount of the necessary elements, giving them all they need to build the weapon. They return to the Platform, where Valentin decides to share the information about the location of the Sun with Vadim Reshetov, an administrator, only to be knocked out and imprisoned by him. On Earth, in the middle of the night, Valentin and Lena decide to go to the agency and demand answers. They arrive to find two dead bodies (the agency's security guard and a young Jewish boy), who seem to have shot each other. They find the original Inna and Reshetov there and force them to explain everything. Apparently, Reshetov was approached by a shapeshifting alien several years ago who offered to trade alien technology in return for Reshetov's agency sending people into space. Reshetov considers himself to be a businessman and a patriot, as he wishes to use the new technology to help raise Russia about everyone else. He does not know the identity or motives of his mysterious benefactors, and their emissary (the security guard) is now dead. He offers Valentin and Lena positions at his agency, and they accept, realizing that there is little they can do. They resolve to try to convince every visitor to leave, but their attempts are revealed to be futile, as people yearn for this sort of adventure. On the station, the other Reshetov receives a message from the original and makes a similar offer to the duplicate Valentin and Lena. However, Platform sensors then detect the Seeker fleet close to the system's star. Reshetov sends Valentin and Lena as negotiators, as they know some of the Seekers personally. After docking with the Seekers' flagship, they once again meet Roman and Master. However, Valentin then realizes that their ships have likely been rigged to explode by Reshetov in an attempt to stop the Seekers. The bomb on Valentin's ship is thrown into space, while a Seeker takes Lena's ship far from the fleet and sacrifices himself to save the others. After finding out the location of Earth, the Seekers decide to undertake the long journey home. However, at their first stop, they are ambushed by an enormous "Bug" fleet. Roman orders everyone to follow him, as he sets course straight for the system's star (a blue supergiant later revealed to be Rigel). As they get closer, being chased by the "Bugs", Roman launches the Extinguisher missile, which explodes in the upper photosphere. The weapon creates an enormous shockwave which destroys the alien fleet, at the same time leaving a small tunnel at the epicenter, allowing the Seekers to pass through the exploding star. They jump to the next system, only to find a massive "Bug" ship waiting for them. Instead of attacking, the aliens send a message to the fleet, revealing their agenda for sending people into space and attacking the Platform every so often. Apparently, they use the humans to fight their offspring to weed out those with genetic weaknesses, as only the strongest would survive. This is a form of population control. That is why they have built the station and made a deal with Reshetov (and, possibly, others). They explain that nobody is forcing humans to go into space — they make this choice freely, as the agency employees are supposed to explain the situation truthfully. The reason for human infertility is simple — the "Bugs" believe it would be cruel to allow humans to bring children into an environment where they are constantly threatened. The "Bugs" make it clear that the Seekers (or anyone else, for that matter) should not attempt to reach Earth using ships, under the pain of death. The Seekers realize that they have no choice and decide to go back to the Platform. Valentin and Lena follow them, hoping that humanity may one day rival the "Bugs".
24035579	/m/07kdp5s	The Depths of Time	Roger MacBride Allen	2000	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Humans have invented a way of traveling great distances by creating artificial wormholes that send ships several decades into the past. A wormhole would send a ship 70 years into the past. While the crew is in hibernation the ship would travel for 70 years, covering several light years, and wakening the crew when it reached its destination, arriving only a couple of months after leaving. These wormholes are guarded by a special organization - The Chronologic Patrol - in order to prevent unauthorized travel into the past and possible time-contaminations and paradoxes.
24036029	/m/07kbzlw	What Dreams May Come	Manly Wade Wellman	1983-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 While visiting London, John Thunstone hears strange stories concerning the nearby hamlet of Claines, regarding a pair of ancient pagan artifacts and the annual ritual that accompanies them. As the date of the ritual is only a few days away Thunstone decides to travel to Claines and witness the ritual for himself. While there he experiences strange visions of the distant past and gradually realizes their significance to the present.
24055016	/m/07kjbs9	Crusade	Elizabeth Laird	2007	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 For a year and a half, Acre is besieged by the Frankish army, while the Sultan's camp is close by. In an incredible twist of fate, Jennet's ship reappears and she arrives to Adam with baby Tibby, the daughter of Robert de Martel. By chance, Adam and Faithful stumble across Salim, who was watching Acre in a spell of homesickness. Adam becomes a serf for Sir Ivo, and works as a groom and later becomes a squire. Salim takes to watching the Frankish camp as often as possible until he gets caught by Saracen soldiers who believe him to be a spy for the franks, however when they return with him to Saladin's camp his identity is discovered. When Saladin realizes how much information Salim has learned about the Frankish army, he is told to continue to watch them as long as he doesn't get caught. The Mamluk Ismail uses Salim's information to plan an ambush on the soldiers nearest the edge of the camp. The Mamluks provoke the Martel soldiers by yelling insults while on horses. The knights immediately prepare for battle, eager to leave the camp. Sir Guy de Martel ignores advice from Sir Ivo, who believes they are going to ride straight into an ambush. All of the knights from the Martel army ride to battle, swiftly followed by their squires and other foot soldiers. Adam runs to Sir Ivo's help and Faithful tries to follow but gets ordered to return to the camp. However, Adam doesn't see Faithful start running with him again, instead of returning to the camp. When they arrive to the ambush, the knights are already fighting the Mamluks. Two Mamluks are attacking Sir Ivo, one of them is trying to make his horse, Grimbald, rear while the other is trying to attack him with a sword. Faithful bites the Mamluk trying to make Grimbald rear, which later turns out to be Ismail, while Sir Ivo kills the other. The Mamluks retreat with four Frankish prisoners of war. Faithful starts barking at Sir Guy de Martel's horse, Vigor, and Adam hurriedly pulls him away and sends him back to the camp. When he turns back he discovers Vigor has reared and Guy de Martel has fallen to the ground. In an act of chivalry, Saladin sends Dr. Musa and Salim to try to heal Sir Guy, who has a serious head injury and remains unconscious. One of the prisoners is sent with him with the threat that if he failed to return, or if he allowed Dr. Musa and Salim to be harmed, the other prisoners would be killed. Dr. Musa meets Dr. John, a Frankish doctor who lived all his life in the Holy Land, and Dr. Nicholas. Unlike Dr. John, Nicholas believes a demon has entered Sir Guy's body and that's why he remains unconscious, and the only way to save him is to let the demon from his body. Dr. John and Musa know he has no demon on his body and they eventually win the right to treat Sir Guy instead of Nicholas. They manage to repair the damage and, although Sir Guy survives, he isn't returned completely to normal. For a while, he only remained conscious for a small amount of time each day. It was in one of these brief moments that he told Adam he was really his father. Sir Robert de Martel refuses to believe he is related to Adam and believes Adam is a witch and has put a spell on Sir Guy. Eventually he is forced to accept it. A little while after the accident, Adam leaves morning mass early to talk to his father and admits it was his dog who caused Vigor to rear and Sir Guy sees it as punishment for his sins. Just a few days after Adam admits this, Sir Guy has a seizure and while Dr. John is in a different part of the army Dr. Nicholas, still certain a demon has entered Sir Guy's body and caused the fit, is left to do what he thinks will help. He cuts open Sir Guy's head to release the demon and Sir Guy dies rapidly. When Dr. Musa hears of the death he is furious at Dr. Nicholas' decision. Sir Ivo and Adam are grateful that Dr. Musa came to help Sir Guy, and they travel to the Saracen camp to ask them if there was anything they could do for them. Dr. Musa mentions that Salim's family is still in the castle of Acre and asks for a safe passage for them through the camp. Sir Ivo does as they asked but Ali, a part of the garrison of Acre, chooses to remain in the castle to help defend Acre against the Frankish army. When back in Saladin's camp, Salim's mother reveals her plans to go to Damascus where her brother lives, using money a friend gave her just before she left. Just days after the family escaped, Acre's walls fall and the army attacks the city. While waiting for the walls to finally fall, Adam and the rest of the army prepare to go inside siege towers. Jennet is nearby, handing out water to the stifling soldiers. While they are all waiting for the attack, one of the towers is hit by Greek Fire. Adam and the rest of the soldiers hurriedly got away from the tower before they were harmed, but it fell on Jennet and she quickly died. Adam helps in the attack when the walls finally fall, but he is hit by an object while climbing over the remnants of the crumbled wall. He is carried back to safety by Sir Ivo. He later wakes up in Acre's hospital but it is a few weeks before he is strong enough to leave the hospital. Here he discovers a woman called Joan is looking after Tibby since Jennet's death. He offers to pay her enough to leave her job and go to his own new estate, to which she agrees. A little while after this, Tibby goes missing and Adam searches for her everywhere, only to discover Jacques has sold her to slavers. Salim, Dr. Musa and their body guard and groom, Tewfik are told they can finally travel to Jerusalem. While they are leaving, Adam finds them and convinces them to help find Tibby. They give Adam a skullcap and Damascus tunic to help him pass as a Kurd while travelling to find the slavers in Jerusalem. He is told to pretend to be deaf and dumb so no one realises he is really a Frank. They never reach Jerusalem but they find Tibby and Adam narrowly escapes with her. When he returns he is jailed for abandoning Sir Ivo, who was badly wounded in his absence. Eventually, he is released and allowed to return to England. While waiting to board the ship, Adam tells everyone that Jacques is a cheat and he starts to chase Jacques along with several more people. He is then found by a messenger who gives him is bond of freedom to go to his new estate at Brockwood. At Dr. Musa's home in Jerusalem, a group of Mamluks including Ismail appear and say Saladin wants them to return. Dr. Musa refuses to return to the army, but tells the Mamluks Salim knows just as much as he does. Salim, who longs to return to the army, is given a turban by Dr. Musa which prompts Ismail to call him brother instead of little brother. With the Mamluks, Salim rides back to Saladin's army. Ten years on, Adam is the master of Brockwood, he manages his estate well with Tom Bate (Jennet's father), as his right-hand man, and he married a miller's daughter. They have three sons and Faithful has puppies. Sir Ivo is a frequent visitor. Adam never finds out Dr. Musa died quietly five years after Saladin saved Jerusalem, while reading a book in the courtyard of his home. Salim cried when he heard the news, and after years of training he is a well-respected doctor. He looks after his family and lives in a house in Damascus with his wife, Leila and two daughters. He keeps a Mamluk-trained horse in his stable and sometimes saddles it up for a ride to be on his own. Ismail is captain of his own Mamluk troop and often sends Salim greetings and news.
24055424	/m/07kbp6n	Un début dans la vie	Honoré de Balzac	1842		 Much of the action of this short novel takes place in the rickety old stage-coach — or coucou — of Pierrotin, which regularly carries passengers and goods between Paris and Val-d'Oise. On one such trip from Paris, Comte Hugret de Sérizy, a senator and wealthy aristocrat, is travelling incognito in order to investigate reports that Monsieur Moreau, the steward of his country estate at Presles, is being less than honest in his dealings on the count's behalf with a neighbouring landowner Margueron, a piece of whose land the count wishes to buy. Among the count's fellow passengers is Oscar Husson, a young good-for-nothing mummy's boy, who is being sent to a friend of his mother's Monsieur Moreau in the hope that a position can be found for him. Also travelling to L'Isle-Adam is Georges Marest, the second clerk of the count's Parisian notary Crottat; Joseph Bridau, a young artist, who is accompanied by his young colleague Léon Didas y Lora, nicknamed Mistigris. The final occupant of the coach is Père Léger, a rich farmer from Val-d'Oise who is leasing the land which the count wishes to buy from Margueron. Léger is hoping to buy it himself and then sell it piecemeal at a significant profit to the count. To pass the time Georges amuses himself by pretending to be Colonel Czerni-Georges, a young nobleman with a distinguished military career behind him; his fellow travellers are impressed, but the count sees through him and realizes his true identity. Not to be outdone by Marest, the young painter then passes himself off as the celebrated artist Heinrich Schinner. Things become interesting when Oscar joins in and pretends to be a close acquaintance of the Comte de Sérizy and his son. In the course of his boasting, he divulges several private and embarrassing details about the count - details which he could only have learnt from his godparents the Moreaus. On the journey the count also overhears a conversation in which Léger describes how he and Moreau are conspiring to buy the land the count wants from under his nose and sell it to him at an inflated price. When the count arrives at Presles he wastes little time dismissing Moreau - not so much for conspiring with Léger as for revealing personal details about the count and his wife to his godson. Oscar is forced to return to Paris and seek a living by some other means. In time Oscar obtains a license and becomes a clerk in the law office of Desroches in Paris, where he is trained by Godeschal. During this time he renews his acquaintance with Georges Marest, who is actually related to him. For some time Oscar defies everyone's expectations and applies himself diligently to both his studies and his clerkly duties. But Oscar spoils everything by another indiscretion, this one much more serious than the first. At the house of demimondaine Florentine Cabirolle, who was then maintained by Oscar's wealthy uncle Cardot, Oscar gambles away five hundred francs he was given to transact an important legal matter. His hopes ruined for a second time, Oscar is forced to abandon law and enter military service. Once again, he surprises everybody and becomes a successful soldier. He joins the cavalry regiment of the Duc de Maufrigneuse and the Vicomte de Sérizy, son of the Comte de Sérizy - the same young nobleman Oscar claimed to be acquainted with in the coach on the road to L'Isle-Adam. The interest of the dauphiness and of Abbé Gaudron obtain for him promotion and a decoration. He becomes in turn aide-de-camp to La Fayette, captain, officer of the Legion of Honor and lieutenant-colonel. A noteworthy deed made him famous on Algerian territory during the affair of La Macta; Husson lost his left arm rescuing the mortally wounded Vicomte de Sérizy from the battlefield. Although the vicomte dies shortly afterwards, the Comte de Sérizy is grateful and forgives Oscar for his earlier indiscretion. Put on half-pay, Oscar obtains the post of collector for Beaumont-sur-Oise. At the end of the novel, Oscar and his mother are taking the Pierrotin coach to L'Isle-Adam, en route to Beaumont-sur-Oise, and find themselves in the company of several witnesses or accomplices of Oscar's earlier indiscretions: Georges Marest has lost by debauchery a fortune worth thirty thousand francs a year, and is now a poor insurance-broker; Père Léger is now married to the daughter of the new steward of Presles Reybert; Joseph Bridau is now a celebrated artist and married to Léger's daughter; Moreau, whose daughter is riding in another part of the same coach, has risen to high political office. When Georges begins to blab about the Moreaus, Oscar - who is now the one travelling incognito - rebukes him, reminding him of the dangers of not holding one's tongue in a public conveyance. Georges recognizes him and renews his acquaintance. In 1838 Oscar becomes engaged to Georgette Pierrotin, daughter of the same Pierrotin who now owns the business that runs the stage-coaches between Paris and Val-d'Oise. At the close of the novel, Balzac draws the following moral: The adventure of the journey to Presles was a lesson to Oscar Husson in discretion; his disaster at Florentine's card-party strengthened him in honesty and uprightness; the hardships of his military career taught him to understand the social hierarchy and to yield obedience to his lot. Becoming wise and capable, he was happy. The Comte de Sérizy, before his death, obtained for him the collectorship at Pontoise. The influence of Monsieur Moreau de l'Oise and that of the Comtesse de Sérizy and the Baron de Canalis secured, in after years, a receiver-generalship for Monsieur Husson, in whom the Camusot family now recognize a relation.Oscar is a commonplace man, gentle, without assumption, modest, and always keeping, like his government, to a middle course. He excites neither envy nor contempt. In short, he is the modern bourgeois.
24068068	/m/07k8zm4	The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure				 The Three Investigators visit a local museum when it is the scene of a daring robbery. The priceless Golden Belt is stolen, and both the police and museum security are baffled as to who committed the crime and how they got away with the belt. Meanwhile, the Investigators are hired to investigate the bizarre case of an elderly woman who claims to be seeing gnomes in her yard at night. The boys soon learn that she is not imagining things, and their subsequent investigation leads them to discover a serious crime being perpetrated, as well as an unexpected connection to the Golden Belt case.
24069511	/m/07kg380	Smiles to Go	Jerry Spinelli	2008-04-29		 It is about a ninth grader name Will (short for William), who experiences love,frustration,and a tragedy. He has a famous (to him) twelve step plan: birth, grow up, school, college, career, wife, kids, house, car, retire, death, heaven. But then he learned that protons -the one thing he was sure of- could die. His best friend BT has just gone down a tremendous hill on his skateboard, which brings impact to his reputation. He also has very young sister going into the 1st grade. Towards the end of the book she is influenced by her brother's friend BT. She decides to go down the same tremendous hill he went down on her brother's skateboard, after not being allowed to go to her brother's chess match. Something terrible has happened to his sister.
24071931	/m/07k7vgr	My Heartbeat	Garret Weyr	2002	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ellen is a fourteen-year-old girl going into her freshman year of high school in New York City. She has been in love with her brother Link's best friend James for as long as he can remember. She is often invited to come along with Link and James to hang out and James says that when Ellen grows out of her crush on him, it will "break his heart." Ellen soon finds out that Link and James are a couple and is very surprised. Her mother is okay with her son being gay, but her father is not. Link denies being gay, but James tells Ellen that both of them are. James also reveals that he has slept with other men to make Link jealous. Link ignores Ellen and James for a while because he is embarrassed and in denial of his orientation and does not want to be confronted. In the meantime, James and Ellen begin dating, but then agree to break up before James goes off to college.
24073162	/m/07kcqc9	An Imaginative Experience	Mary Wesley	1994	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Julia Piper lives alone in her London apartment after having lost her son and husband in a car crash. Julia's relationship with her mother is not a loving one. Her mother blames Julia for the accident, and Julia blames herself. Unwilling and unable to confide in anyone about her feelings Julia keeps to herself and distances herself from her surroundings. Julia makes a living as a cleaning lady and one of her clients is Sylvester Wykes, publisher and divorcee. When they eventually meet, Sylvester immediately is fascinated by the young and unapproachable woman. But, haunted by guilt and self-reproach, Julia is not interested in entering into a relationship with Sylvester. Instead, unable to talk to anyone about her loss, Julia keeps her feelings to herself and becomes increasingly reserved and isolated. In addition to her grief, Julia is being stalked. Ever since the funeral she has been terrorized by a stranger who keeps following her and makes phone calls late at night, pushing her closer to the edge.
24085138	/m/07kjhwl	Three Dollars	Elliot Perlman	1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in Melbourne. The first-person narrator, Eddie Harnovey, is a Chemical Engineer, married to Tanya, an aspiring but ultimately uncontracted Political Science academic. Eddie is from middle class origins, his father being a clerk for a local council. His childhood friend Amanda, however, was a class above them. As a Chemical Engineer, her father wore starched cotton shirts while Eddie's father wore drip-dry poly-cotton shirts. Amanda's family banned Eddie from meeting her. Nevertheless, Eddie meets Amanda every nine and half years. The next time is as undergraduates, where Eddie notices her in a queue for more fashionable food than he is in the queue for. The next time is as fellow shoppers in a department store, as Eddie looks for formal wear for his marriage to Tanya. The next time he meets her is in much straitened circumstances. Downsized, jobless, and with only three dollars in his bank account, Eddie skips an appointment with Amanda - now an employment consultant - and ends up beaten unconscious protecting a friend of a now indigent man Eddie befriended while still solvent. Eddie's report on Amanda's father's smelter expansion was the reason Eddie was downsized. Amanda identifies Eddie from the appointment card he had in his shirt pocket.
24089712	/m/07k4_8h	Saint Peter's Fair	Edith Pargeter	1981-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0py65": "Historical whodunnit"}	 13 June 1139. The feast of Saint Peter is important for Shrewsbury Abbey. A meeting of the monks is interrupted by Geoffrey Corviser, the town provost, and a delegation from the town's merchant guilds. They appeal to Abbot Radulfus for a share of the money raised by the fair as the civil war has taken a heavy toll on the town, parts of which need rebuilding. Radulfus listens sympathetically but his responsibilities to the monastery force him to adhere to the exact terms of the fair's charter, granted to the Abbey by the crown. Cadfael meets Hugh Beringar and his wife, Aline, who is with child. They talk of the war. King Stephen has the advantage, the Empress Maud has strongholds in the west of England and is abroad building support for a renewed attempt on the throne. Hugh mentions Ranulf, Earl of Chester, married to a daughter of Robert of Gloucester. Robert of Gloucester is half brother to the Empress. Earl Ranulf is powerful in his own right, and has not yet chosen to stand with one or the other in this war for the crown of England. 31 July 1139. Traders arrive from far and wide for the fair. Cadfael is called to translate for Rhodri, a Welsh merchant who speaks no English. While discussing the civil war Rhodri points out a glover, Euan of Shotwick. Euan, Rhodri says, is an "intelligencer" working for Earl Ranulf. Soon afterwards a boat arrives carrying Thomas of Bristol, a wealthy and important wine merchant. Rhodri notes that Bristol is in the west country, that Thomas is in "good odour" with Robert of Gloucester. Young men from the town arrive to cause trouble with the visiting merchants. Philip Corviser tries to convince them to support the town's cause. Thomas of Bristol dismisses the young men of the town as rabble. Pursue the debate, Philip places his hand on Thomas's arm, and Thomas strikes him with a staff. A riot breaks out. Philip regains his senses after the blow. He sees Thomas's niece, Emma, and is smitten by her beauty on the spot. Philip and his friends flee. Thomas and Emma are endangered by some rolling barrels. Emma is saved by Ivo Corbière, with whom she immediately falls in love. Hugh Beringar complains about his lot in life; dragging silly but basically good young men to prison. Cadfael speaks in defence of Philip Corviser, noting that he came only to speak, never threaten. They are interrupted by Emma searching for her missing uncle, Thomas of Bristol. Hugh, Cadfael and Ivo Corbière search for Thomas of Bristol as it is too dark for Emma to be on the streets. Corbière stumbles across his drunken and unconscious archer, Turstan Fowler, and leaves the search to carry him back to the Abbey. The search ends when a boat arrives with the naked body of Thomas of Bristol, who has been murdered with a dagger. Hugh, Aline and Emma discuss Thomas's death. It appears he was killed and robbed by sneak thieves. The young men of the town did not commit this crime as most were already in prison. Emma decides to continue trading at the fair as she believes her uncle would have wanted. Cadfael is charged to investigate the death by Abbot Radulfus who fears his decision not to aid the town may have led to Thomas's murder. At the hearing, Emma, Cadfael and Turstan the drunken archer, give testimony about what they witnessed in the confrontation between the young men and Thomas of Bristol. Turstan claims Philip issued threats against Thomas after the riot. Philip is ignorant of the merchant's death until Cadfael specifically mentions it. Philip protests his innocence of murder, continuing as prisoner to Sheriff Prestcote. Cadfael accompanies Emma back to her boat, which has been broken into and searched by someone. Emma at first says nothing is missing, then says that several small items she did not at first notice as missing are gone from her boat. Thomas's expensive robes are found, making theft an unlikely motive. Thomas's stall is broken into. Warin the ineffective watchman is bound, blindfolded, and gagged, and the strongbox stolen. The day's takings are safe on Emma's boat; the strongbox contains Thomas's business papers. Cadfael deduces that the murderer seeks something they believe Thomas brought with him. Emma knows more than she is telling. Emma wants to visit Euan of Shotwick, but stays with Aline instead. She wants a pair of gloves but Cadfael thinks she has another reason. Corbière visits Emma, for whom he seems to have romantic feelings. Emma visits her uncle's coffin in the Abbey, placing a rose in full bloom with his body, before the coffin is sealed by the carpenter. That evening, Cadfael notices a petal on the floor from that rose. Someone has searched the coffin. Early in the morning, Emma seeks out Euan, for the gloves she desires. His stall is not open. Others succeed in opening it. Euan is found dead inside by Cadfael and Rhodri, his neck broken. Hugh investigates the scene, finding a dagger in Euan's hand. The blade yields clues. Cadfael and Hugh piece together the situation. Thomas of Bristol and Euan of Shotwick were partisans or compatriots who had come to the fair to conduct secret business, involving an item of great value. A third man arrives, killing both of them and searching in vain for the item. Cadfael considers Rhodri as a suspect but his lack of English makes the Welshman unlikely. Philip Corviser is released before noon. After his parents celebrate his return, he visits Emma to thank her for her honest witness on his behalf. She still wishes to see justice done for her uncle. Philip tells Cadfael that he intends to retrace his steps of the evening of the murder to see if anyone set him up as a scapegoat for the murder. Cadfael speaks with Brother Mark, who tells him of a man who received treatment for a knife wound to the arm. The wounded man is identified as Ewald, a groom in the employ of Ivo Corbière. Cadfael believes that Euan injured his killer in the fatal struggle the night before. Cadfael informs Hugh. Together with Sheriff Prestcote and Corbière they confront Ewald, who shows his neatly bandaged arm at Beringar's request. When asked to show his cotte, he throws it in their faces, jumps on Corbière's horse and tries to escape. Corbière orders Turstan, who gave evidence against Philip at the hearing, to loose an arrow at Ewald, who is killed. Corbière justifies his actions, saying that his villein Ewald was a murderer and as his master, he had the right to administer justice. Cadfael reports to the Abbot, confirming Ewald was a murderer but warning that he does not think Ewald acted alone. Later Cadfael comforts Brother Mark, who is sorely distressed that someone whose injuries he recently tended was killed so soon afterwards. Philip questions his friends seeking to learn what happened during the evening he cannot remember. After being with them, he went to Wat's Tavern. Wat, the proprietor, tells him that Turstan came twice to the tavern, first just to look at the patrons. Philip was among those patrons. On second visit, Turstan drank only a single measure of ale, purchased a large bottle of hard liquor to carry away, and was sober when he followed Philip out of the tavern. Further, he was dressed in his proper clothes. Philip recalls that this is not what Turstan claimed when he gave evidence at the hearing, and not how he appeared. Later, seeking the place where he passed out from drink, Philip stumbles across the scene of Thomas's murder. Philip tells Cadfael and Hugh about his discovery. They visit the scene of Thomas's murder. Ivo Corbière offers to provide Emma with transport to her home in Bristol, saying he will be escorting his sister to a convent near Bristol from their Shropshire manor. Emma accepts, with Aline's approval for the brief time when Emma will travel unescorted with this single man. At the riverbank, Cadfael makes sense of the events of the last four days: Thomas arrived bearing something for the glover Euan. Turstan the archer followed Philip; once ensuring that Philip had no alibi, murdered Thomas. He established his own alibi by dousing himself in strong liquor, feigning unconsciousness. They view the place where Turstan was found unconscious. Servants clearing up after the fair have found the empty flagon of strong liquor. Cadfael realises that Ewald and Turstan acted on the orders of Corbière. Turstan had overdone it with his liquor alibi. When Corbière learned Turstan failed, he sent Ewald to search Thomas's boat while everyone was at the hearing. That same night Ewald and Turstan broke into Thomas's booth, again finding nothing. The next night they tried Euan's booth, killing him when he defended himself. Cadfael and Hugh approach Corbière, telling him they have discovered Ewald's role in Euan's murder. They have figured out Corbière's scheme to fool Ewald and order Turstan to attack him. Cadfael and Hugh both believe Emma to be safe with Aline, but Philip knows that Corbière has been visiting her. He is so horrified by what he hears that he rushes off to protect her. Cadfael and Hugh realise Philip is right. By the time they arrive at the Foregate, Emma has left with Corbière and Philip has stolen a merchant's horse to give chase. Aline tells them he has three hours lead, and is concerned at her own error of judgment. At Stanton Cobbold manor Ivo Corbière locks Emma in a room while he searches her baggage. She hides in her hair the small packet hanging round her neck, feeling unsafe both by the locked door and the nonappearance of his sister. Corbière returns, locks them both in the room, pockets the key and instantly changes tone. He demands the letter Thomas intended to deliver to Euan of Shotwick, the glover and spy. He threatens to strip her naked, even to rape her, to find it. Stalling, Emma asks what letter? She never admits she knows of any letter, and keeps the braiser between the two of them. Then she asks, what could be so important in a letter? Corbière tells her the letter is from Robert of Gloucester to Earl Ranulf, urging him to support the Empress's cause and naming fifty nobles in Stephen's camp who secretly support her. Corbière hopes the letter is worth an earldom to him. That is the price he will charge the King in exchange for the list of traitors. In a tense scene, Emma carefully removes the letter from her hair, unseen by the lordling just in front of her, to destroy it by fire in the room's brazier. Her uncle told her nothing of the contents, only that if not delivered it must be returned, and failing that, destroyed. To assure it burns, she pushes it into the fire, with her coif net attached inadvertently, at the cost of burning her hand. The hair net took fire rapidly, then spread to the wax-sealed letter. Corbière fails to retrieve the letter. She knocks over the unstable brazier, setting fire to the tapestries. Emma moves to the door, doing what she can to keep the fire from reaching her. She knocks and shouts, but cannot escape, since the door is locked. She lowered herself to breathe the air coming in under the door,slowly losing consciousness. Philip arrives to finds Corbière's manor ablaze with no servant willing to attempt a rescue. Instead, they bring out what goods they can save. Using an antique battle axe from the walls of the manor, Philip breaks down the door and rescues Emma. Hugh and Cadfael arrive. Cadfael tends to Philip's and Emma's injuries. Hugh arrests Turstan. He had not fled, thinking no one knew his role in the murders. Corbière is killed by the fire, a satisfying end to such a viper. Philip takes Emma back to his parent's home in Shrewsbury. Emma has recognized the value of Philip, whose honest character is the opposite of the brutally selfish man whose good looks and good manners once charmed her. Further, she and he are both tradespeople. A man of Ivo Corbière's class would not have considered her seriously, she realizes in retrospect. Cadfael recounts the events to Abbot Radulfus. Radulfus summons the town provost, Philip's father, to the morning chapter meeting at the abbey. Radulfus notes that by adhering to the letter of the fair's charter he has secured the rights of future abbots, doing what he must. Now he is free to do what he will with the money earned by the abbey at the fair. He donates ten percent to the rebuilding of the town. Hugh Beringar and his wife return to their own manor. Cadfael continues to tend to Emma's burns. At one meeting, Emma confesses what she learned of the contents of the letter and asks whether she did the right thing. Cadfael tells her that if she has scars from these burns, she should "wear them like jewels" for the rest of her life". Emma asks Cadfael never to tell Philip the details behind the letter and her own actions, as she considers him too innocent to deal with such matters. Cadfael agrees and privately thinks Emma is correct in her assessment of Philip, and that this bodes well for their marriage. The novel concludes two months later with the news that on 30 September 1139, Empress Maud invaded England, establishing herself at Arundel Castle in West Sussex. Earl Ranulf of Chester did nothing to aid her cause.
24093007	/m/07k6rf7	Taking On the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era	Markos Moulitsas	2008-08-20		 Taking On the System is presented as a political primer for a new generation of progressive activists. The book is centered on the argument that in order to bring about change in the Information Age, activists will need to learn how to bypass traditional barriers to mass communication by effectively exploiting newly emerging media such as blogs, podcasts and video hosting services like YouTube. Moulitsas has cited Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals as a direct inspiration for Taking On the System, referring to his book as "sort of a Rules for Radicals for the digital age": It’s no secret that I have little love for the old-school street protest model of activism – not because I’m opposed to street theater, but because it’s simply not effective in today’s world. So how do you change the world in today’s world, with its fragmented media landscape, with democratizing technologies, with dramatic changes in how we interact with each other, and with a culture evolving at neck-breaking speeds? That’s what I’m trying to decipher.
24095373	/m/07kjnc3	Knight Crusader	Ronald Welch	1954	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is divided into three parts: the first part leads up to the Battle of Hattin; the second part, set four years later, shows Philip d'Aubigny's escape from captivity at the time of the Third Crusade, and the final part deals with Philip's reclaiming his ancestral lands in the Welsh Marches. At the beginning of the novel, Outremer has been in existence for nearly one hundred years since the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. However, the Emir Saladin is uniting the Islamic forces against the Crusader states. The great military orders of the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller are eager for the fray, but others are concerned that there are not enough Christian knights in Outremer to form a field army while continuing to garrison the castles that protect the Kingdom. Saladin invades Outremer and besieges Tiberias. The weak-willed King of Jerusalem is swayed by advisers to march to the relief of the besieged city across a waterless plain at the height of summer. Debilitated by the desert conditions before the battle even begins, the Christian army suffers a devastating defeat at Hattin. Most of the Christian held fortresses of Outremer fall to Saladin and Jerusalem falls to the Muslim armies. These events are shown through the experiences of Philip d'Aubigny, a young English nobleman who was born in Outremer. He befriends a Turk, Jusuf, whom he rescues from robbers, and later impresses the king by his superior swordsmanship in a duel, gaining his knighthood. Philip overhears much discussion about the political and military situation. He suffers on the desert march, sees his father die in battle and is taken prisoner. Philip has a relatively easy captivity in the household of Jusuf's father Usamah in Damascus, but chafes to be free. With Hospitaller help he and his friend Gilbert escape over the walls. They make their way to Krak, the great Hospitaller fortress, after an encounter with the Assassins. Philip commits himself to the service of Richard of England and during the campaigns of the Third Crusade becomes one of the most celebrated knights of Christendom. In the final chapters of the novel, Philip and his company of Crusaders arrive in Britain, where he takes part in a jousting tournament at Cardiff Castle. He learns from his squire's father that his family's castle at Llanstephan has been taken by an ally of Prince John's and leads a raiding party to win it back. A notable aspect of the book is the bringing into contrast of the refinements of the medieval Islamic civilization, which had been adopted by the Outremer noblemen, with the comparatively stark and crude European living conditions of the time, and the suggestion that the returning Crusaders brought Eastern standards of culture to the West.
24107193	/m/07k57z7	The Wizard of Linn	A. E. van Vogt	1962	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A war between humanity and an extraterrestrial race, known as the Riss had led to the decay of the solar system, and the mutated human genius Clane Linn had defeated the hordes of the barbarian chief Czinczar, as described in the prequel. Linn repudiated Czinczar's exhortation to usurp control of the Linn Empire. After realizing the technological retardation of humanity, he conceives a plan to go on an interstellar expedition in search of technological restoration, to eventually rescue humanity.
24111341	/m/07kgvs5	Of Walking In Ice	Werner Herzog		{"/m/02gsv": "Personal journal"}	 The book is the diary by Werner Herzog. It was written and takes place between November 23 and December 14, 1974. In the foreword Herzog says that he had a call from a friend in Paris, informing him that his close friend and film historian Lotte Eisner was ill, and was probably going to die. He sets off to Paris from Munich believing that he would save Eisner from death by arriving on foot. The book is the complete diary during his journey, only a few private remarks have been omitted.
24112752	/m/05zn_k2	Twitter Power	Joel Comm	2009-02		 Twitter Power begins with a review of social media and the rise of microblogging — the practice of posting very short messages for public view. The book then talks the user through the registration procedure; offers design suggestions for the profile page; offers advice on building a following; describes the messages themselves and how to write them; discusses ways to connect with customers and team members on Twitter; and describes how companies are using Twitter to build their brands and drive behavior.
24113599	/m/07s7ky9	FruITion				 The story opens with Ian and members of his IT management team reviewing the company’s IT Strategy in a hotel meeting room, something that anyone involved in this process will find familiar. Ian then takes the strategy paper they produce to Juliette, who reacts in a way Ian is not expecting. She pushes Ian to articulate the company’s strategy for IT in one sentence, which he is initially unable to do. When he does, she pulls it apart and then asks Ian to start again, mentored by Graham. She sets him a timescale of a week to come back with an entirely new strategy, squarely focused on how the company creates value by exploiting IT. This is the beginning of a journey of discovery and change for Ian, at the end of which he will either become one of Juliette’s inner-circle corporate strategists or, it seems, lose his job. He rapidly discovers, for example, that the company’s difficulties with creating value from IT are actually nothing to do with IT, but originate in the organization’s culture towards investing in change. This is one of the book’s central insights, and one which takes Ian time to understand and then apply. As well as formulating the new ‘corporate strategy for exploiting IT’, Ian is expected to say what his own future role in the organization will be. Ian’s discomfort with the personal implications of the strategy he has been asked to formulate begin to undermine the chances of success. As the story progresses, Ian formulates his strategy in a number of iterations, and has mainly one-to-one conversations with the other key characters. Underlining the theme of relationships, the implications of Ian’s history with each of these people, and feelings about them, are both explicit and implicit in his narrative. The climax of the story is Ian’s formal meeting with Juliette, Graham and James to propose the new strategy and his role in its success. In the aftermath of their decision, we learn what happens to the various parts of Ian’s old IT department and to the members of Ian’s senior team. The result, like the book’s original question, is unorthodox — yet by then somehow obvious.
24115065	/m/07k8v_q	Part of the Furniture	Mary Wesley	1997	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Seventeen-year-old Juno Marlowe is in love with Jonty and Francis and has just waved them off to war (World War II when the air raid sirens sound across London. Juno finds shelter in the house of a stranger, the frail Evelyn Copplestone. Juno spends the night with Evelyn and tells him the story of her life, and Evelyn decides to help her by writing her a letter of introduction to his family in the West Country. Evelyn, who is ill, dies of lungfailure due to gas in WWI during the night, and Juno flees the house. Reluctant to join her mother who has emigrated to Canada, and having nowhere else to go, Juno soon finds herself on her way to the West Country to see Evelyn's family at a farm named Copplestone. The owner of the farm, Robert Copplestone, Evelyn's father and only relative, is short of labour and hires Juno as a landgirl. Shortly after her arrival at Copplestone, Juno, to her surprise, finds out that she is pregnant. When her mother in Canada hears that Juno has given birth to a pair of illegitimate twins, the social embarrassment makes her break off any further contact with her daughter. Juno is left to fend for herself and the hard work at the farm helps her to blot out any unwelcome memories of her past. Gradually she learns to trust the other people at Copplestone, and the withdrawn and quiet Juno grows into an independent and determined woman, who is more than merely part of the furniture.
24118345	/m/07kbf6f	Insectivorous Plants	Charles Darwin	1875-07-02		 All page numbers refer to where the quotes can be found in the 1875, John Murray edition. From his initial observations in 1860 of Drosera rotundifolia, the common sundew, Darwin developed a series of experiments ultimately establishing how "excellently adapted" these plants are to catching insects (p. 3). Darwin knew that these plants flourish in nitrogen-limited environments, growing in bogs, poor peaty soil and moss (p. 18). Most plants receive nutrients from the soil by their roots, but these plants have poor root systems and have adapted to receive nutrients (primarily nitrogenous substances) from captured insects. Darwin noted that Drosera and other carnivorous plants also feed on seeds, thus also making them vegetable feeders (p. 134). His notable observations are (p. 3–4): 1. The sensitivity of the glands to slight pressure and to minute doses of nitrogenous substances. He noted that although there is extreme sensitivity it is wholly appropriate to the purpose of gaining sustenance, e.g. they do not respond to heavy rain falling on them nor to the wind blowing other leaves against them. They have adapted well to insects alighting upon them and this saves them from wasting energy through excess movement. 2. The power to digest nitrogenous substances by secreting digestive matter and then absorbing them. He noted that digestion follows a similar pattern to animal processes (p. 135) in that acid is added to ferment the nutrient source(equivalent to pepsin). How they adapted this process from already existing substances in their system is explored later on in the book (p. 361). 3. The changes which took place within the cells when the glands are excited in various ways. A major part of the book enumerates his experiments on Drosera rotundifolia. Darwin then turns his attention to other varieties of insectivorous plants and makes comparisons, noting that in some cases different parts of the leaf are used for digestion and others for absorption of decayed matter (p. 330–331). He conjectured that plants may become adapted exclusively to one of these functions by gradually losing the other over a period of time. This would explain how Pinguicula and Utricularia came to utilise different functions even though they belong to the same family; p. 331). Darwin wrote in his autobiography that "the fact that a plant should secrete, when properly excited, a fluid containing an acid and ferment, closely analogous to the digestive fluid of an animal, was certainly a remarkable discovery."
24120216	/m/07kbqhd	South of Broad	Pat Conroy	2009-08-11		 The story is divided into five parts. Part one focuses on introducing the reader to Leopold Bloom King (Leo), his family, and his set of friends who he meets on a fateful Bloomsday (June 16, 1969). Leo is the narrator of the story who gradually reveals his troubled childhood which was traumatized by the sudden and unforeseen suicide of his older brother Steve. He reveals himself to be a paper-boy for the South of Broad delivery area, thus introducing the reader to the Charleston neighborhood. Hints at a previous run-in with the law are given and he will exit his parole period that summer. He then introduces the reader to his loving father and strict mother and how their life stories shaped their characters. An influential Catholic priest named Monsignor Max is also introduced, and he proves to be lifelong companion to Leo's mother after Leo's father passes away. On Bloomsday, 1969, Leo performs a series of tasks that leads him to meet his soon-to-be friends. He bakes cookies for his new dramatic neighbors Sheba and Trevor Poe and their alcoholic mother. He then meets the two orphans Niles and Starla who he finds tied down to chairs and wins their confidence by untying them. He then appears with his mother at a gathering at the Charleston yacht club where he meets Chad, Molly, and Fraser; three affluent teens, two of whom were kicked out of their respective private schools. Lastly, he meets his new high school football coach (the coach is black and will coach the first ever integrated team at Peninsula High) and later will meet Ike, the coach's fiery and talented son who will co-captain the team with Leo. Eventually, all the characters (including Betty, another orphan) will meet each other and become friendly, despite the major differences and cultural struggles between black and white, city and country, and rich and poor. Part two of the story occurs twenty years later, when Leo (who is now a newspaper columnist) is interrupted from work by Sheba Poe, who is now a legendary actress who flew back to Charleston from Hollywood. After a series of embarrassing moments and behavior for Sheba during which time Leo's old high school friends unite together, Sheba reveals that she has lost contact with her brother Trevor, whom she suspects is dying of AIDS in San Francisco at the height of its outbreak among the gay community. Leo, who had since that time married and separated from a mentally-ill Starla reveals his love for Molly, who has grown apart from her philandering husband Chad. Part three is set in San Francisco, where Leo and his friends go to find Trevor. After volunteering with a food bank, the characters discover the shocking conditions of infected persons and the devastating effects the virus has on its victims. A tip from an unlikely source results in a daring rescue attempt to find Trevor, who is found close to death and trapped in a crumbling building in the Tenderloin area. The friends then return to Charleston with Trevor, but not after a frightening encounter with Trevor and Sheba's father, who terrorizes the friends with his mystery and his violent antics. Leo and Molly's relationship grows even tighter. Part four is a flashback to 1969 which follows the success of Peninsula High's football team and retraces Leo and his friends' ever-strengthening friendships. A series of incidents involving Chad's behavior stretches the friendships at times and reveals hints at future problems and character flaws for several characters. The histories of Sheba & Trevor and Niles & Starla are revealed and are emotionally damaging. Leo reveals a positive story from his life: his great luck when a lonely antique store shopkeeper he cared for during his parole died and left Leo with a home on Tradd Street and a great fortune from the inheritance. Part five returns to Charleston in 1989, where the friends' success in finding Trevor is darkened by increasing fears because of threats made by Sheba and Trevor's father through terrifying correspondence. Sheba informs Leo that she is seeking a normal life and begs Leo to propose to her. Meanwhile, Starla returns to Charleston and in a severe moment informs Leo that she had aborted two fetuses that would have been Leo's children. It is in that moment that Leo decides after years of steadily clinging to his marriage due to Catholic vows that he and Starla can no longer be a husband and wife. Leo later finds out from police that a pregnant Starla has committed suicide. In spite of increasing fears for her safety and security due to her father's threats, Sheba refuses to leave her teenage home and her dementia-crippled mother, though Leo convinces her to let Trevor live with him. Soon, Sheba is found murdered one morning with her mother appearing to be the assailant (it is later determined that her father was the murderer). Following a massive funeral, the friends must turn their attention to the menacing Hurricane Hugo which is headed for Charleston. Following the catastrophic storm, the friends soon discover the remains of a person who had been hiding out in a shed behind Niles and Betty's house. It is later discovered to be Sheba and Trevor's father, who had the intention of killing the group during the hurricane but wound up drowning due to the storm surge. As the city recovers and rebuilds, Leo and Molly go out to Sullivan's Island together to find Molly's grandmother's house in ruins, though they rescue a porpoise. During that moment, Leo and Molly reach the conclusion that they can never be together romantically and that their relationship would remain platonic. In the months following the hurricane, Leo continues to take care of Trevor, who seems healthy but continues to lose weight. Trevor reveals a desire to get back to San Francisco. Leo's mother decides to return to a nun's convent and Leo begins to experience a normalizing of relations between mother and son. Just as it appears Leo's life is coming together, Trevor reveals a most damaging revelation - in his pornographic video collection, Trevor finds an old tape inside a sealed case that shows a young Monsignor Max raping Steve around the time of his suicide. Enraged, Leo confronts a dying Monsignor Max the night before the priest passes away. After a week of tributes, Leo writes a shattering column detailing Max's criminality before entering a mental hospital at the recommendation of a psychiatrist. The story ends with a series of dreams Leo has about his deceased family and friends who encourage him to live his life, even if it must be an act of normalcy. He awakens from the dreams to befriend a female nurse as he prepares to leave the institution and the traumatic experiences of his life, looking boldly into the future.
24122810	/m/07kc92r	The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners	Jonathan Edwards	1734		 The main subject of the doctrinal part of Edwards sermon is the free grace of God in man's salvation, especially in regards to justification by faith alone. Edwards examines the context of Romans 3:19 in which the Apostle Paul chastises the Jewish people for their literal observance and interpretation of the Law and then proceeds to condemn them for it. Edwards affirms, and then elaborates upon, Paul's original assertion.
24124600	/m/07kg_ty	Knulp	Hermann Hesse		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first tale, titled "Early Spring", follows Knulp just after he had been discharged from a hospital due to his waning health. An old friend of his, a tanner named Emil Rothfuss, shelters him while Knulp spends his days aimlessly. During the tale he gains the affection of the tanner's wife, but resists her advances. Instead he attempts to court a girl named Barbra Flick who had recently arrived in the town as a household servant. The chapter culminates after Knulp convinces Barbra to abandon her post in the night and dance with him. In the last words of "Early Spring", Knulp decides to leave the town despite a commitment with the tanner and his wife scheduled the following day. The second tale, "My Recollections of Knulp", is told from the point of view of another vagrant who is not identified by name but could possibly be regarded be Hermann Hesse himself. The story focuses on his interactions with Knulp as they wander through the forests and meadows of Germany. The second half of the section takes place during a day which unfolded as joy-filled and carefree. It ends, however, on the following day when Knulp has abandoned the narrator. The narrator believes that Knulp left him out of disgust due to his excess celebration and drinking during the previous night. He is left alone and bitter, stating that the experience has never left him entirely. The Third tale, "The End", follows Knulp as he is taken in for a growing illness by Dr. Machold—an old friend of his from Latin school. Dr. Machold, now grown to be a respectable individual, nurses Knulp as he prepares to send him to a hospital in a nearby town. Instead, Knulp, knowing that he has little time left to live, requests that he be sent to a hospital in the town he grew up in. However, upon arriving, Knulp neglects to check himself in to be treated. He wanders his home town, attempting to locate the places he knew and friends he once had. He speaks with people from his past about matters of the present and memories of their times together before leaving the town. As he departs, he is greeted by a stone-breaker who, after recognizing Knulp from his childhood days, questions why he never put his gifts and abilities to good use. He mentions that Knulp will have to answer to God for wasting his life away. Towards the end of the novel a disillusioned and weak Knulp goes into the forest where he begins a conversation with God. In this conversation, Knulp asks God why he, Knulp, has not done anything of consequence in life. He states that he could have been a successful doctor or artist; he could have married and peacefully settled down. Knulp questions God and asks him about the purpose of his existence. During the conversation, Knulp begins to hear God's reply. God states that he did not make Knulp to be any of these things, rather that he wanted him to bring joy into the lives of people and make them feel a "homesickness for freedom." Upon receiving this answer from God, Knulp experiences a sense of peace. The novel ends with Knulp accepting his final passage from this world with a sense of purpose. de:Knulp it:Knulp pl:Trzy opowieści z życia Knulpa ckb:کنولپ
24126798	/m/07k800f	The Nature of True Virtue	Jonathan Edwards	1765		 In Virtue, Edwards describes his views on the different levels of virtue, specifically "common morality" and "true (saving) virtue." God, Edwards argues, had in mind as the end for his creation of the world His own glory and not human happiness. Thus, true virtue does not arise from self-love or from any earth-bound selflessness (these were two common views at the time) but from a desire to see God's glory displayed above all. Love of self, family, or nation is good only to the extent that it magnifies the glory of God.
24136532	/m/07kdldk	Farside Cannon	Roger MacBride Allen	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Relations between Settlement Worlds and Earth is a constant source of tension. A geologist, Garrison Morrow, discovers himself in the middle of the two parties when a series of peculiar events occur, thus leading him deeper and deeper into the delicate balance of political powers on the Moon and the rest of the Solar System.
24141584	/m/07k58n_	Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne	David Gaider	2009-03-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel opens with the country of Ferelden occupied by the neighbouring Orlesian Empire. Queen Moira, who sought to expel the Orlesians has been murdered by traitor nobles, but her son Maric has escaped. While attempting to flee the assassins who killed his mother, Maric encounters Loghain, who is part of a band of Fereldan outlaws. Having no real alternatives, Maric joins up with them. However Maric is not able to stay at the outlaw camp long, as an Orlesian army looking for Maric attacks. Yet, Loghain is able to lead Maric to safety by taking him to the Korcari Wilds, a region avoided by most due to its danger. Here they meet the mysterious Witch of the Wilds, who enables them to pass through the Wilds safely. She provides this help on the condition that Maric makes her a promise. What this promise unknown. She also warns Maric that Loghain will betray him if he keeps him close, and warns Maric a Blight will one day come to Ferelden. After escaping the Wilds, Maric and Loghain are led to the remaining rebel army by Maric's betrothed, Rowan Guerrin, just in time to defeat an Orlesian army about to attack them using Loghain's aptitude for strategy. The next few years see Maric, Loghain and Rowan become close friends as they strengthen the rebel army until it is in a position to take Gwaren, a Fereldan town. Katriel, an elf woman who claims to be a messenger, warns them of an impending attack on Gwaren and they are able to repel it. After this, Katriel and Maric begin a relationship. However, Katriel is a spy for Meghren, the Orlesian King of Ferelden. She provides Maric with false information that convinces him to attack the town of West Hill. This attack results in massive loss of life for the rebel army, and Maric, Loghain and Rowan being separated from the remainder of the army. Regretting her deception and developing real feelings for Maric, Katriel leads Maric, Loghain and Rowan to the Deep Roads, a series of underground tunnels, in order to return to Gwaren. After facing the dangers of the Deep Roads, including giant spiders and darkspawn, and escaping in the company of a dwarven warband, whom Maric convinces to join the rebellion. Once they return to Gwaren, they find the remnants of the rebel army and once again secure the town. By this time, Loghain and Rowan have formed a romantic bond (in part due to Maric abandoning Rowan for Katriel), but Loghain has also discovered Katriel’s betrayal and reveals it to Maric, omitting that Katriel had reneged on her orders out of love for Maric. After discovering her actions, Maric kills Katriel in blind rage, only to discover later that Katriel had been loyal out of love for him; Loghain wished to impress on Maric the importance of a king doing what has to be done, opposed to what he wants to do. Following her death, Loghain encourages Rowan to become Maric’s wife and queen, for Maric and Ferelden’s benefit. She agrees and with increased momentum and growing outrage at the continuing cruelty of the Orlesians, there is now widespread support for Maric and the rebel cause. Victory is all but assured for the rebels. Maric also exacts justice on the traitor nobles who murdered his mother, luring them to a meeting under the pretense of a truce, then killing them for their crimes, before Loghain and Rowan break the back of Meghren's armies at the Battle of River Dane, ensuring Meghren's downfall and the eventual defeat of the occupation. The novel closes with Mother Ailis, who once lived within the outlaw camp, telling Maric and Rowan’s son Cailan stories of his father; after three more years of war, Denerim fell to the rebels after a long siege, Meghren was executed for his crimes and Maric is crowned as king. Ailis tells that Maric has become a popular king, Loghain has become a powerful lord and has married and had a daughter, and that Rowan has died after a long illness. After relating this, Ailis hobbles after Cailan, who has run off into the distance.
24148307	/m/07khqm2	The Tomorrow People	Judith Merril	1960	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Only one man, Johnny Wendt, has returned from the first expedition to Mars. Efforts to determine what happened to the others are in vain; four pages of the ship's log are missing, and Johnny's companion, Doug Laughlin, apparently wandered off to die in the desert. Johnny's girlfriend, Lisa Trovi, and a psychiatrist named Phil Kutler try to cure Johnny by luring him to the Moon and getting him to grapple with whatever happened on Mars. Johnny reacts so badly that they return to Earth as quickly as possible.
24158561	/m/07kclvh	Last Night In Twisted River	John Irving	2009-10-27	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel opens in 1954 in the small logging settlement of Twisted River on the Androscoggin River in northern New Hampshire. A log driving accident on the river has just claimed the life of a young logger, Angel, who slipped and fell under the logs. Dominic Baciagalupo is the camp's Italian-American cook who lives above the kitchen with his 12-year old son, Daniel. Dominic lost his wife, Rosie, ten years previously when a drunk Dominic, Rosie and a logger and mutual friend, Ketchum, were dancing on the frozen river, and the ice broke and Rosie went under. Later another accident happens that changes the lives of Dominic, Daniel and Ketchum. "Injun Jane", the kitchen's dishwasher and girlfriend of the local law officer, Constable Carl, is having an affair with Dominic. One night, mistaking her for a bear attacking his father, Daniel kills her with an eight-inch cast-iron skillet. Dominic takes Jane's body and deposits it on the kitchen floor of Carl's house, knowing that Carl will be passed out drunk and will probably believe he killed her, as he often beat her up. Early the next morning Dominic and Daniel tell Ketchum what happened and flee Twisted River in case the bad-tempered Carl finds out what really happened. Dominic and Daniel head for a restaurant in the Italian North End of Boston to tell Angel's mother of her son's death. Dominic gets a job as a cook in the restaurant and changes his surname to Del Popolo (Angel's mother's surname) to hide from Carl. During this time Daniel attends Exeter, a private school in southern New Hampshire, followed by the University of New Hampshire. While at university Daniel starts writing his first novel. He also meets Katie Callahan, a radical art student, whom he agrees to marry. Katie has one mission in life: to make potential Vietnam War draftees fathers, thus enabling them to apply for paternity deferment. Men who qualified for this deferment became known as "Kennedy fathers". In April 1970 President Nixon put an end to the 3-A paternity deferment for new fathers.="SSS/> Men who qualified for this deferment became known as "Kennedy fathers". In April 1970 President Nixon put an end to the 3-A paternity deferment for new fathers." "nb"=""nb"" "paternity deferment"=""paternity deferment""/> Daniel and Katie have a son Joe, but when Joe is two, Katie leaves Daniel to find another young man to rescue from the war. Daniel moves to Iowa with Joe, where he enrolls in the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He also changes his name to Danny Angel to hide from Carl, and uses this nom de plume to publish his novels. After graduating from the Writers' Workshop in 1967, Danny and Joe move to Putney, Vermont. Ketchum keeps in touch with both Dominic and Danny via telephone and letters, and warns them that Carl is looking for them. On Ketchum's advice, Dominic leaves Boston to join Danny in Vermont. He changes his name to Tony Angel, father of the writer Danny Angel. While Danny teaches writing at Windham College, Tony opens and runs his own restaurant. After the publication of his fourth and most successful novel, Kennedy Fathers (based on Katie), Danny stops teaching and focuses on writing. Then in 1983, two of the sawmill's wives in Twisted River are passing through Vermont and stop for a meal at Tony's restaurant. They recognize Tony and later tell Carl where "Cookie" is. Again, on Ketchum's advice, the father and son are forced to flee, this time to Toronto. With their cover blown, Tony and Danny revert back to their original names. Dominic finds another restaurant to work in, while Danny continues writing, still under his pseudonym. Joe remains in the United States while at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Danny meets a Canadian screenwriter named Charlotte Turner, who is writing the screenplay of Danny's abortion novel East of Bangor. They decide to marry, but only after Joe graduates. When Joe dies in a car accident in 1987, Danny decides he cannot face the possibility of ever losing another child, and he and Charlotte part ways. He retains the right to a lonely cabin on an island in Georgian Bay at Pointe au Baril, owned by Charlotte, which he uses for his writing. In 2001, Ketchum gets careless and unwittingly leads Carl to Dominic and Danny's house in Toronto. Carl shoots and kills Dominic and Danny retaliates by shooting and killing Carl. Ketchum is devastated at having failed to protect his friends and takes his own life at Twisted River. Danny, who has now lost his mother, father, son and their friend, tries to focus on writing his next book, a follow-up to his previous eight semi-autobiographical novels. Then his last hope, Amy ("Lady Sky"), arrives on his doorstep. When Joe was two, Amy had parachuted naked onto a pig farm Danny and Joe were visiting. Danny rescued Amy from the pig pen and Joe, awe-struck by this event, called her "Lady Sky". Amy in turn offered to help Danny whenever he needed it. Having read all about the famous writer and his misfortunes, Amy tracks Danny down and moves in with him. Happy now, Danny finds the opening sentence of his new book: "The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long."
24164404	/m/07k590r	Freddy Goes Camping			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Camphor and his butler Bannister appear at the Bean farm, asking Freddy to send Camphor’s visiting aunts packing. Aunt Elmira is demanding, fat and gloomy. Aunt Minerva is bossy; she regularly burns her cooking. The aunts planned to stay at the hotel across the lake, but it is suddenly haunted. As before in Freddy and Mr. Camphor, Bannister and Camphor enjoy their game of reciting proverbs, then deciding if they are appropriate. Punning, Bannister says, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard." Freddy and the cow Mrs. Wiggins walk to the estate, deciding that resolving the hotel’s problems will in turn solve Camphor’s problems. Camphor suggests that as campers, they can observe the hotel free of suspicion. Freddy grapples with the challenges of camping, such as making his first flapjacks (pancakes). Since animals would know Freddy, he is in disguise. Their first night they talk loudly — to establish themselves as campers to anyone overhearing. Mischievously, Camphor pokes holes in Freddy’s cover story about studying with a witch doctor: :(Freddy) "'...you put them on and then wish for whatever you want.' :'And do you get your wish?' :'Sometimes. And sometimes not. All depending.' :'On what?' :'Oh, on general conditions. This and that.' :'Very clear,' said Mr. Camphor. 'From your description I feel that I could almost make one myself.'" (p. 54) There is a gunshot from the hotel. They find Mrs. Filmore, the owner, leaving the hotel on account of a ghost. They help her leave, but decide to remain themselves. Soon a lion-sized cat head smashes through a window, and they flee to camp. It is wrecked. On examination next morning, much of the hotel damage is caused by rats — probably Simon’s gang. Freddy goes to Camphor’s for supplies, then to the Bean farm to update the animals. He is told of a meeting between Simon and the mysterious Mr. Eha, where the rat describes plans to attack the Camphor estate after Eha controls the hotel. Freddy returns to spy on the hotel, and overhears Simon plotting with Eha. Eha dons a ghost costume, and leaves to scare the campers: Freddy slips into the hotel, leaving mothballs in Eha’s coat pocket, so as to track him by smell. Freddy hurries back to camp, but Eha escapes. Mr. Bean is at Camphor’s estate: to general surprise his is adeptly flattering Aunt Minerva. The mothball smell is tracked to a Mr. Anderson in town. Realizing that Anderson is "Eha", Freddy barges into his office disguised as a doctor. The pig’s doctoring routine is unconvincing, and Freddy flees. On a tip, the pig guesses that a tourist camp on the lake is a hideout. There, he finds his old adversary, Simon the rat. Simon is working with Anderson. Freddy uses the opportunity to slyly hint that the Bean farm will be undefended that night. Therefore everyone is actually prepared when Anderson and the rat gang come. Mrs. Bean calmly treats Anderson’s ghost disguise as the ghost of Mr. Bean’s grandfather. Anderson is routed by the animals’ own ghost versions, and the rats surrender after a shotgun blast. Kind treatment from Mr. Bean, Camphor and the animals brings a change in Camphor’s aunts. Minerva is pleasant, and proves to be a good cook. Gloomy Elmira is so taken with Freddy’s poem about a swamp she decides to vacation there immediately. A group returns to camp near the hotel. Anderson is there, renovating. When he visits, Bean spiders return with him, as spies. Knowing that Anderson has a terrible temper, insects are sent to bug him, especially to ruin his sleep. The fire department is called to a false alarm on the hotel property. Freddy sabotages Anderson’s car. When finally they confront the sleep-deprived Anderson, he is forced to return the hotel to Mrs. Filmore. Seeing they have lost, the rats leave. With all the problems resolved, the campers decide to continue enjoying their stay outdoors.
24169703	/m/06hz1q9	Master of the Desert Nomads	David "Zeb" Cook			 In this scenario, the adventurers follow a river and cross the desert to find an evil abbey. The adventure details a number of wilderness encounters. Tribes of nomad raiders from the Great Waste have begun sacking town, prompting the governor of the Republic to send out a call for help to fight these nomads. When the party joins the reserves to meet the main army at a recently-liberated village, they discover signs of the nomads and camp there for several days. At the beginning of the mission, the player characters must use stealth to find out more about the Master of these nomads, and report back to those who hired the party.
24170982	/m/07kf0nr	Sordello		1840-03		 The setting is northern Italy in the 1220s, dominated by the struggle between the Guelphs (partisans of the Pope) and the Ghibellines (partisans of the Holy Roman Emperor). Sordello is a Ghibelline, like his lord Ecelin II da Romano, and the soldier Taurello. Browning begins by summoning the shades of all dead poets to listen to the story he has to tell. The one who intimidates him most is the "pale face[d]" Shelley (whom he does not name). The citizens of Verona have just heard that their Guelph prince, Count Richard of St Boniface, has been captured by Taurello Salinguerra. Not long ago, Taurello had been lured away from Ferrara; in his absence, his palaces were burned by Guelphs. On his return, he takes vengeance, and Azzo and Richard flee. They come back and besiege Ferrara, but when Richard is invited to a parley, he is captured. In a castle at Verona, the Council of Twenty-Four discuss the city's predicament; in a distant room, the poet Sordello sits motionless, thinking about his love, Palma. Browning describes Sordello's childhood and youth as a orphaned page at the lonely castle of Goito, near Mantua. He spent nearly all his time wandering about the pine forest and marsh, and had little human company other than the elderly servants; what he knew about the world he knew by hearsay. Sometimes he would stare at a stone font in a vault of the castle, dreaming that the female statues who held it up were under a curse, and that he could plead with God for their pardon and release. At other times he would indulge in daydreams about himself as a great hero, in whom all virtues, skills and powers would combine — in other words, as a reinvention of Apollo. Browning comments that an aesthete can fail in life either through attempting nothing, or attempting too much. Sordello once heard that the lady Palma was being wooed by the Guelph, Count Richard, and she became another subject of his daydreams. Sordello is wandering through the wood towards Mantua, daydreaming about Palma, when he comes upon a crowd gathered by the city's wall. They are listening to the aged troubador Eglamor. Impatient with Eglamor's feeble efforts, Sordello interrupts him and continues his song so effectively that, to his own astonishment, he wins the prize, and Palma bestows upon him her scarf. Eglamor responds graciously to his defeat, but walks home alone and troubled, and dies the same night. At his funeral, Sordello praises him highly. Eglamor's jongleur, Naddo, becomes Sordello's jongleur. Sordello, long reluctant to do so, finally enquires about his birth and origins. He is told that he was the son of an archer who saved the lives of Adelaide and Palma when they were nearly killed by a fire set by Ecelin himself. Disappointed, Sordello then gives up the plan of becoming a "man of action", and devotes himself to minstrelsy, but quickly becomes bored and slapdash; he tries reinventing his language in order to express his visions more directly, but encounters public incomprehension and personal fatigue. Sordello is deeply divided between his conceptions of poet as profession and poet as destiny. The lady Adelaide dies suddenly; then the news comes that Ecelin II has resolved to retire to a monastery. Taurello confronts his lord on horseback, but is unable to make him change his mind. Taurello is thus forced to abandon his plan to join the Emperor on a new Crusade. He travels to Mantua, where Sordello is appointed to welcome him with song, but the baffled troubadour, lacking inspiration, wanders back to Goito. At Goito, Sordello re-immerses himself in his daydreams for a whole year, but he has lost his self-confidence, and he begins to wonder if he had thrown over all prospect of success as an ordinary human being, let alone as an Apollo. He concludes that he had been a narcissist, whose lack of devotion to anything outside of himself had been his ruin. His bitter musings are interrupted by Naddo, who brings news that he has been summoned to Verona to sing at Palma's wedding with Count Richard. But when Sordello arrives at Verona, Palma meets him and confesses her love for him. (At this point, the narrative returns to where it began at the start of Book I.) The death of Adelaide and the withdrawal of Ecelin has made it possible for her to confess her love to Sordello and ask him to marry her. This would make him the head of the House of Romano; in fact, Taurello approves strongly, as it would make an alliance with the Guelphs unnecessary. (Browning had written this much of the poem when in 1838 he travelled to Italy for the first time. With contemporary Venice as a background, the rest of Book III consists of a discussion of his own hopes for the future, and his reasons for writing Sordello.) Ferrara has been destroyed; envoys of the Lombard League arrive to negotiate a ransom for Count Richard. Sordello, too, arrives in Ferrara, making the long journey at the risk of his precarious health. He had planned to visit Azzo VII, camped outside the city, but first he goes to the palace of San Pietro to talk to Taurello Salinguerra. He is appalled by Taurello's explanation of the Ghibelline policy. He walks stunned through the city, and, on meeting the delegates from Verona, sings for them at their request; one of them turns out to be Palma in disguise. Back in the palace, Taurello ponders the events of his life (the theft of his first fiancée by Azzo VI, his plotting with Ecelin II to win back Ferrara, and the loss of his wife and child while fleeing from Vicenza), and briefly toys with the idea of taking Ecelin II's place. Sordello converses with Palma, and declares himself disgusted with both the Guelphs and the Ghibellines: both sides pursue selfish ends and exploit the common people. He conceives the idea of building a City of God in which Christendom can be reunited. At dawn he leaps up to meet the ordinary folk and to sketch the foundation of his plans in his mind. By sunset, Sordello has already concluded his dream is impracticable. Even if the Utopia could be brought into being overnight by a single genius, the ideal city would crumble instantly when transferred into the hands of ordinary sinners. But he then realizes his mistake: failure to accept that lasting progress can only be made one step at a time. He has already decided that the Guelphs represent the common people's interests more closely, because they subordinate, at least in principle, the momentary dominions procured by strength and cunning to the eternal dominion of God and His law. He concludes that his immediate duty is to convince Taurello to take up the Guelph cause and keep the Emperor away from Lombardy. Sordello goes to Taurello and Palma and delivers his pitch, but his curiosity to see what effect his speech is having on the soldier robs his long disused voice of emotion, and Taurello responds with puzzled amusement, and then with sarcasm. Sordello's pride is touched, and, realizing that this will be his last chance to express himself in any consequential way, he defends with eloquence the concept of poetry as a calling higher than any other. When he has finished, Taurello shrugs and admits that his own life's work, seemingly more substantial, has been demolished by Ecelin's abdication, and impulsively throws the Imperial baldric on Sordello's neck, declaring him head of the house of Romano. A strange intuition arises in both. It is then that Palma confesses what she has known for more than a year: Sordello is Taurello's son, the child he thought had perished at Vicenza. Sordello desires to be left alone; Taurello and Palma go downstairs, where Taurello, excited out of his wits, starts to unfold a mad project to ignore both Emperor and Pope and build a new centre of power on the house of Romano. Sordello debates with himself about his best course of action. Should he persist in his determination to throw in his lot with the Guelphs, or does his sudden elevation to the status of a Ghibelline leader imply that his destiny lies with them? Would the common people benefit from the triumph of the Guelphs? Can he expect to fulfil any of his hopes at all, or would it be wiser to see to his own happiness, even at the expense of his new subordinates? He concludes that his previous failures have been a result of the failure to accept the limitations inherent in being human, and his reluctance to devote himself to a single end, or to a single cherished person. He throws the Imperial emblem to the floor. The stress of this moment is too much, and when Taurello and Palma return, they find that he has collapsed and died. Taurello's hopes of rising in the world are dashed. He marries Sophia, a daughter of Ecelin II, and dwindles into an unremarkable old age, eventually being captured and exiled to Venice. The Ghibelline cause triumphs through the ruthlessness of Ecelin III and Alberic. Sordello's career is inflated by chroniclers and he is misremembered as a statesman and hero. Nothing authentic remains of his life, apart from a fragment of the Goito lay, his first and least remarkable song.
24172425	/m/07kd5gj	A Princess of Landover	Terry Brooks		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book began a prologue on the witch Nightshade still trapped in the form of a crow in a cage in Woodland Park Zoo, having been exiled from Landover for more than five years. Apart from having mysteriously appeared in the cage, her red eyes marked her different from other birds and elicited brief interest from animal experts. They gave up trying to study her after failing repeatedly to capture her, despite her being in a cage. The story proper began in the principal's office of the exclusive private school Carringon Women's Preparatory in New England where Mistaya "Misty" Holiday had been sent by Ben to "learn about places other than" Landover. The school was informed that her parents were away most of the time and all correspondence to be made via Miles Bennett, Ben's former law partner. The headmistress Harriet Appleton was with Misty, recounting the girl's previous visits to the same office. The first was when Misty organized a school protest and shut down classes for three days when the school tried to remove a two hundred year old tree from the school grounds. The second was when Misty formed an unapproved club for students to "engage in a bonding-with-nature program", the sticking point for the school authorities being ritualistic scarring for the members, which Misty thought would "convey the depth of commitment" and "reminder of the pain and suffering human ignorance fostered". Besides, Misty thought it should not be a problem as the "scarring was done in places that weren't normally exposed to the light of day". The third and current visit came about because Misty had done something to terrify fellow student Rhonda Masterson to the point of hysterics and had to be sedated by a nurse. Rhonda and other blue-blooded East Coast snots had been bullying Misty until the latter was pushed too far by being called a name Misty refused to repeat. In retaliation, Misty conjured up an image of Strabo, the last dragon of Landover. Though the headmistress could not be sure what Misty had done, she suspended Misty from school and indicated she would consider accepting Misty back if Misty agrees to be the type of student expected in Carringon. Misty was only too glad to leave and decided to do so immediately instead of waiting for the Christmas break. Taking a flight to Dulles, the Waynesboro, she returned to Landover through a portal located in George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, passable only by certain magic. As Misty arrived in Landover, thinking about resuming her study of magic with Questor, she was met unexpectedly by Strabo, who somehow knew and made it clear he did not appreciate his image being used by Misty. Her next encounter was much more pleasant, with the mud puppy Haltwhistle coming to greet her. The third encounter before she reached home was a tied-up G'home Gnome Poggwydd, whom she rescued. Once at home in Sterling Silver, Ben was informed to his dismay the reason of Misty's return. After a heated argument with Misty, Ben discussed with his advisors. Questor Thews and Abernathy Questor suggested for Misty to be sent to organize the Libiris, a royal library which was started by the last wise and dedicated king of Landover, to foster greater interest in reading for all subjects of Landover. The project stalled and the library fell into neglect. Questor proposed fixing the library and reopening it would be a worthwhile project for Misty. It was revealed that Questor and Abernathy also withheld something from Ben about the libiris. Before Ben could approach Mistaya about the project, he was presented with a proposal of marriage to his daughter from Laphroig, lord of the Rhyndweir, the largest of Greensward baronies. Personally repulsed, Ben diplomatically avoided giving a direct answer. However, Laphroig chose to interpret it as tacit approval to woo the girl, and sprung himself to Misty who had not been informed. Aghast, Misty rebelled and refused to accept Ben's explanation, nor his idea of her going to the Libiris. She chose to ran from home to her grandfather and enlisted the aid of Poggwydd to hide some of the packings she would need. Unfortunately, it also resulted in her becoming stuck with the Gnome as a travelling companion. In addition, she was joined by the mysterious cat Edgewood Dirk who seemed to be able to come and go as it pleases, and refused to talk or appear other than an ordinary cat except when alone with her. When Misty arrived at her grandfather's domain of the lake country, he allowed her to stay but refused to take her side against her father. Realising her grandfather was going to send her back, Misty took a chance when Edgewood Dirk offered her to escape. At Dirk's subtle proddings, Misty realised the only place she can go to escape from being found by her father or grandfather was the Libiris, the very place she was supposed to go in the first place. Convincing herself that she was going on her own accord, Misty presented herself as a peasant girl to the Libiris. Misty was almost turned away by the Libiris staff Rufus Pinch, had not his assistant Thom who intervened and pretended Misty was his sister Ellice. Together, they seemed to persuade Craswell Crabbit, the person in charge of Libiris, to allow Misty to stay and help with the work in organising the books. While Ben and the River King had been trying unsuccessfully to locate Misty, Laphroig deployed his spies to watch the royal castle, convinced he could take advantage of the situation. Questor and Abernathy discussed between themselves what would be the "last place" anyone would think of looking for Misty and came to a startling conclusion that the Libiris might be the place. Questor made a secret visit to the Libiris and contacted Misty. By then, Misty realised something strange was going on in the Libiris and was convinced Crabbit was up to something bad. She was determined to stay on to investigate while Questor was to return to Sterling Silver, ready to act as backup if necessary. Misty discovered some similarities between the Libiris and the sentient castle Sterling Silver. With Thom's help, she learned that books of magic were being passed to demons of Abaddon. And with some help from Edgewood Dirk, she was able to implement a temporary fix. Unfortunately, Misty's efforts were discovered by Craswell who had her and Thom captured. Apparently, Craswell had known all along her identity as Princess of Landover. Meanwhile, through his spies watching Sterling Silver, Laphroig learned the location of Mistaya and set forth there with a large group of armed men to demand Misty from Crabbit. Deciding to play off Laphroig and Ben against each other, Crabbit offered to help by inducing Misty to agree to marry Laphroig, using the threat of Thom's life in the process. Misty came up with a plan quickly and agreed to the ceremony, demanding it to be held outdoors, and promising not to escape. Once in place, she cast a spell to bring forth the image of Strabo again. Though the illusion was done correctly, the uproar it caused was short lived and she and Thom remained prisoners. However, that was only part of her plan - her goal was to incite the appearance of the real Strabo who promised to visit her if she ever invoke his image again. The arrival of the real Strabo was much more effective at disrupting the wedding, but Strabo soon got distracting chasing after the armoured men-at-arms which he considered delicacies. Misty was still faced with the armed Laphroig, Pinch who had a crossbow and Crabbit the magician. A stunning explosion occurred when Laphroig's thrown dagger, Pinch's crossbow bolt, and magic from Crabbit and Misty came together. When the explosion cleared and Misty recovered from being stunned, Laphroig had been turned to stone and there was no sign of Crabbit nor Pinch. Misty had no time to congratulate herself for the demons of Abaddon were breaking through within the Libiris. With Thom's help, Misty managed to seal the breach from Abaddon. The Libiris began to heal itself, being a creation from the materials taken from Sterling Silver. It was all over by the time Ben and the others from Sterling Silver arrived. Thom turned out to be the missing brother of Laphroig. Succeeding to the barony, he chose to give the land to the subjects of Rhyndweir in return for reasonable tax to the crown. Back in the Woodland Park Zoo, the strange crow with red eyes disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared before. And as mysteriously, two men in strange attire appeared in the same cage, ranting in an unknown language. After being taken away by security, the two ended up in custody of Homeland Security, which also could not understand them nor figure out where they came from.
24172983	/m/07k9wsr	Untouchable	Mulk Raj Anand	1935	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Untouchable’ is the story of a single day in the life of 18 year old untouchable boy named Bakha, who lives in pre-independence India. Bakha is described as `strong and able-bodied`, full of enthusiasm and dreams varying from to dressing like a ‘Tommie’ (Englishmen) in ‘fashun’ to playing hockey. However, his limited means and the fact that he belongs to the lowest caste even amongst untouchables, forces him to beg for food, to often face humiliation, and to be at the mercy of the whims of other, higher caste, Hindus. The day described in the story is a difficult one for Bakha. Over the course of the day, he is slapped in public for 'polluting' an upper caste Hindu through an accidental touch and has food thrown at him by another person after he cleans her gutters. His sister is molested by a priest, he is blamed for an injury received by a young boy following a melee after a hockey match, and he is thrown out of his house by his father. In the story, Mulk Raj Anand presents two choices, or ways in which Bakha in particular and untouchables in general can be liberated from the life they are born into. The first choice is that of Christianity, a religion that does not recognize the caste system. The second comes from the teachings of Gandhi who calls for the freeing of Harijans.
24175746	/m/07k5m3w	Freddy the Pilot			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Freddy is convincing Sniffy the skunk to read Robin Hood when Mr. Boomschmidt arrives at the Bean farm with Boomschmidt’s Stupendous and Unexcelled Circus (formerly Boomschmidt’s Colossal and Unparalleled Circus). He has a "snorter" of a dilemma, as he puts it. Mr. Boom invites the Bean animals to his small circus to observe. The show is interrupted by Mr. Condiment’s lawyer, who claims that performer Mademoiselle Rose is endangered by the circus animals. The Bean farm animals easily put the lie to that, but the show is interrupted again by a plane bombing with sacks of flour. The performance is ruined. Finally the truth comes from Mr. Boom who "pretended to be a lot more simple-minded than he was so as to mix people up": Condiment is behind the disruptions: forcing Rose to marry him. Freddy decides to learn to fly, and to chase the bomber. The flying instructor says he will be chasing a World War II fighter — faster than any plane Freddy can acquire. At any rate, Mr. Bean is so proud of Freddy he buys him a plane and turns Bean farmland into an airstrip. Reading of Freddy’s feat in the newspapers attracts inventor Uncle Ben to the farm to perfect his bombsite, but the device cannot be perfected before generals come to evaluate it. They leave, unsatisfied. In disguise as a woman, Freddy investigates Condiment. Condiment is pressuring the bookstore owner into carrying his comics, including Lorna, the Leopard Woman, In the Lair of the Great Serpent. The circus boa constrictor sneaks up on Condiment as a prank, suggesting, "Want a little hug?" He flees in terror, giving Freddy the idea to pose as Lorna. Using a phony Spanish accent, he visits Condiment, letting drop that he is the Leopard Woman. Uncle Ben considers undermining enemies by selling them his defective bombsite, until Freddy discovers by accident that it is good at finding lost change. (This eventually proves to be more interesting to the generals.) Freddy's is plane now freed from bombsite testing, he takes it up for a ride. He arrives at the circus in time to spot the mysterious plane. He gives chase, but is outdistanced. Back in his Leopard Woman disguise, Freddy lures Condiment into a dark circus trailer. He claims Condiment promised to marry him, and is enraged. The lights go off, and Freddy substitutes a live leopard for himself. When Condiment revives from fainting, Freddy is back, with Rose at his side. Condiment is convinced Freddy is the Leopard Woman, and cancels the comic. Freddy hopes Condiment is sufficiently frightened to leave Rose alone. For days, unseen, Freddy follows the mysterious plane, starting closer to its destination each time, and finally locating its secret airfield. He returns to discover the skunks have taken Robin Hood to heart, and sporting quarterstaffs and bows. This gives Freddy the notion to use them as spies, parachuted by umbrella onto the distant airfield. The pig encourages the unenthusiastic skunks appropriately: :"'Why, how now, lads?' he said. 'Ye tell me ye be bound for a life of adventure in the merry greenwood, and yet methinks ye hang back when ‘tis question of trading hard knocks with a stout foe.'" (p. 131) They protest they are not cowards like rabbits — which is overheard by one of the "Horrible Ten" gang of rabbits. This leads to two fracases, but the rabbits are appeased when allowed to join the mission. The team is successfully dropped on the airfield. After a couple days they tire of spying, and determine to destroy the plane. Without resources, they steal gunpowder from the criminals in a house by the airfield, and are highly pleased when they succeed in destroying it. Unaware, Freddy lands, and is discovered by Condiment not only to be a pig, but also the Leopard Woman. He is taken prisoner, but is soon freed by the skunks and rabbits. They easily convince Condiment he is about to be roasted and eaten for “People who read comics will believe almost anything”. Condiment is tied up, but later escapes, so the confrontation continues, until the gang escapes. Freddy’s detective partner, Mrs. Wiggins the cow, arrives in disguise, fooling him, and giving her the opportunity to say, "I know you! You’re the fat, lazy good-for-nothing pig that lives on poor old Mr. Bean." She disguises herself as the Demon Woman of Grisly Gulch — another character in Condiment’s comic books. Completely cowed, as it were, Condiment is forced to write a confession of his crimes. Back at the circus, Rose cries when she reads it. In the moment of emotion, Condiment realizes he has a bargaining chip: in exchange for dropping charges, he informs Mr. Boom that Rose wants to marry him. There is a wedding the next day, and for the first time since Freddy has known him, Mr. Boom mixes himself up.
24177496	/m/07khlnf	The Colour of a Dog Running Away				 The main character in the story is named Lucas. Lucas is a translator and former musician living in Barcelona, Spain. The story begins by Lucas finding a cryptic invitation to a local art gallery under his door. In turn, Lucas goes to this event and sets in motion a serious of unique events that not only disturb his daily routine, but will change his perspective forever. Lucas meets his first love, Nuria. Lucas and Nuria begin an intense love affair. Lucas meets other characters that occupy utilize his building. He meets mythic gypsies whom steal rabbits who have been raised on the roof of his building. However, shortly after Lucas and Nuria begin their relationship,they are kidnapped by a religious cult.
24179814	/m/07k5rwd	Child's Play	Kia Abdullah	2009-12-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A psychological crime thriller, Child's Play follows the story of 25-year-old Allegra Ashe who, after a chance encounter with an alluring stranger, is recruited into ‘Vokoban’, a covert government unit that uses a mysterious new law to chase and convict paedophiles. Allegra becomes deeply involved with the unit and so begins her descent into the darkness and depravity of the human mind. As her life spirals out of control, the reader becomes a voyeur in a world of lust, danger, deceit and revenge. The plot explores certain controversial themes such as rape and paedophilia. Having faced a degree a controversy over her first novel, Life, Love and Assimilation, Abdullah is unsure how her second novel will be received: "It's ultra violent and ultra sexual, and there are some morally ambiguous sex scenes in there, so I don't know how people will react to that," she says on her website. She adds:
24189366	/m/07kd9yz	A Failure of Capitalism				 The primary argument of the book is that we have gone from a recession into a depression (the "D" word, as one author calls it) The text is divided into a preface, a conclusion, and 11 chapters: # The Depression and its Proximate Causes # The Crisis in Banking # The Underlying Causes # Why a Depression Was Not Anticipated # The Government Responds # A Silver Lining? # What We Are Learning About Capitalism and Government # The Economics Profession Asleep at the Switch # Apportioning Blame # The Way Forward # The Future of Conservativism Some of the causes of the depression that Posner cites are the lack of enforceable usury laws, which would discourage risky loans, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and central banks taking risks, securitization of mortgages, illiquidity and insolvency of the banking system, the housing bubble, blindness to warning signs of a crisis, and the preconceptions of ideology. Posner wraps up the book with a chapter containing several suggestions, including eventual re-regulation of the banking industry, but warns that "this is not the time" to do so — a long-term solution after the economy recovers — that can "wait calmer days." He also suggests putting off reorganization of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve until a later time. In the meanwhile, he writes, "piecemeal reforms may be feasible and helpful." These include a halt on government marketing of home ownership, backloading of compensation, increasing marginal income tax rates on the highest incomes, and usury laws to discourage risky loans.
24194800	/m/07k4m6y	Stark Naked: A Paranomastic Odyssey	Norton Juster		{"/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Emotional Heights is a town where everybody's name is a play on words. The hero, Stark Naked, is a naked (except for a beret and a large 1930's-era motion picture camera) film-maker who wanders about the town seemingly amazed and perplexed by the unusual names of the townspeople. He walks in from the highway and makes his way past the town's distinguished and not so distinguished citizens. Some of the names are in lists, other names are illustrated by Roth, in a melancholy, yet humorous style. He marvels at the school ("Get High" with principal Martin Nett), the business district (home of Walter Wall Rugs) and the university (where he finds the intellectual Noel Lott). He finishes up at a restaurant (Chef Al Dente), the hospital (Carson Oma, M.D.) and finally the town cemetery (Last resting place of Dustin Toodust).
24205165	/m/07k99sz	The Monsters of Templeton	Lauren Groff	2008	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Willie Upton returns home to Templeton for the summer from her graduate studies in archaeology with several dark secrets. Her life seemingly in shambles, she moves back in with her mother for the summer. She never knew the identity of her real father and her mother gives her the shocking revelation that her real father is alive and living in Templeton, but it is up to Willie to dig up the deep dark secrets of the small town and thus discover his identity. She excavates data from the local archives and from ancient books and letters. She gradually pieces together her family tree. While all of this is going on, Willie is concerned in the present about a possible pregnancy, about her sick friend she left back in California, about her mother's relationship with a local preacher, about her old acquaintance Zeke and of course about Glimmey, the kindly but now dead lake monster. In the end she discovers the true identity of her father and that she was closer to him then she ever could have thought.
24215438	/m/07kdxfy	Last Shot	John Feinstein	2006-06-27	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Steven Thomas is one of 2 lucky winners of the USA Basketball Writer's Association's contest for aspiring journalists. His prize? A trip to New Orleans and a coveted press pass for the Final Four. It's a basketball junkie's dream come true! But the games going on behind the scenes between the coaches, the players, the media, the money-men, and the fans turn out to be even more fiercely competitive than those on the court. Steven and his fellow winner, Susan Carol Anderson, are nosing around the Superdome and overhear what sounds like a threat to throw the championship game. Now they have just 48 hours to figure out who is blackmailing one of MSU's star players . . . and why.
24218325	/m/07khbhq	How the Scots Invented the Modern World	Arthur Herman	2001	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is divided into two parts. The first part, Epiphany, consists of eight chapters and focuses on the roots, development, and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment on Scotland and Great Britain. The roots come from an appreciation for democracy and literacy that developed from the Scottish Reformation, when John Knox brought Calvinist Presbyterianism to Scotland. He preached that God ordained power into the people and that it was for the people to administer and enforce God's laws, not the monarchy. For common people to understand God's laws they had to be able to read the Bible so schools were built in every parish and literacy rates grew rapidly, creating a Scottish-oriented market for books and writers. Though they each resented one another, the English and Scots joined in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain; the English wanted the Scots controlled and the Scots realized they could not match English power. The Scots immediately benefited from a centralised government that paid little attention to it, for example, inexpensive imports reduced the impacts of famines and allowed a Scottish culture to flourish. Herman calls the Scottish Enlightenment "more robust and original" than the French Enlightenment and that the product of the "Scottish school" was that humans are creatures of their environment, constantly evolving and trying to understand itself via social sciences. The defeat of the 1745 Jacobite rising decimated the antiquated social structure based around clans lorded over by chieftains; this liberalized the Scottish way of life by allowing citizens to own land and keep the profits instead of giving all profits to the chieftains who owned all the land. Their literate foundation allowed the Scots to become economically literate and take advantage of trade. Edinburgh and Glasgow became epicenters of intellectual thought. There existed in Scotland a clergy who believed that a moral and religious foundation was required for, and compatible with, a free and open sophisticated culture moderated hardline conservatives. Herman presents biographies of Francis Hutcheson, Henry Home (Lord Kames), Robert Adam, Adam Smith, and others to illustrate the Scottish development. The second part, Diaspora, focuses on the impacts of Scots on events, the world, and industries. Most Scots immigrants in the American colonies sympathised with the British during the American Revolutionary War but those who did fight in the militias were the most capable because many were the same refugee families from the 1745 Jacobite rising. Herman claims that the Scottish School of Common Sense influenced much of the American declaration of independence and constitution. After Great Britain lost the American colonies, a second generation of Scottish intellectuals saved Britain from stagnation and reinforced a self-confidence that allowed the country to manage a world empire during the Victorian era. Scots in India, like James Mill, led the British idea of liberal imperialism, that they had to take over indigenous cultures and run their society for their own good, or "the white man's burden". Herman claims that Sir Walter Scott invented the historical novel giving modernity a "self-conscious antidote" and gave literature a "place as part of modern life". In science and industry Herman states that James Watt's steam engine "gave capitalism its modern face, which has persisted down to today". It permitted business to choose its location, like in cities close to inexpensive labour and it was Scots who rectified negative impacts industry had, i.e. public health movement. Scots' contribution to modern society is illustrated with biographies of Scots like Dugald Stewart, John Witherspoon, John McAdam, Thomas Telford, and John Pringle, among others.
24221558	/m/07k469p	Mind the Gap				 The book tells the story of Jazz, a teenage girl whose mother is murdered. Her mother's last message, written in her own blood, says "Jazz hide forever." So Jazz runs away from the mysterious Uncles who have both protected and terrified her mother. She ends up hiding in the London Underground, where she joins up with a group of runaways known as the United Kingdom. As she spends more time there, she learns that everything is connected and begins to uncover the secrets around her life and the death of her father.
24225333	/m/01t34x	The Primrose Ring	Ruth Sawyer	1915	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "In a children's hospital, a nurse relates the story of a giant ogre named Pain to the young patients." http://www.missinglinkclassichorror.co.uk/pi.htm
24225354	/m/01bj9t	Some Came Running	James Jones	1957		 Dave Hirsh is a cynical Army veteran who winds up in his hometown of Parkman after being put on a bus in Chicago while intoxicated. Ginny Moorehead, a woman of seemingly loose morals and poor education, has taken the same bus. Hirsh had left Parkman 16 years before when his older brother Frank placed him in a charity boarding school, and is still embittered. Frank has since married well, inherited a jewelry business from the father of his wife Agnes, and made their social status his highest priority. Dave's return threatens this, so Frank makes a fruitless stab at arranging respectability, introducing him to his friend Professor French and his daughter Gwen, a schoolteacher. Dave moves in different circles, however. He befriends Bama Dillert, a gambler who has serendipitously settled in Parkman. Two factors seem to offer Dave hope and redemption: he takes a fatherly interest in his niece, Frank's daughter Dawn, and falls in love with Gwen. Despite his somewhat notorious reputation, Dave is basically a good, honest man, well aware of his own shortcomings. His cynicism is often a mask to hide the pain of rejection. Though Ginny is not his social or intellectual match, he eventually sees the basic good in her and responds to her unconditional love. In the end, Ginny, stalked by her former boyfriend (a Chicago hoodlum), proves unequivocally the depth of her love for Dave by taking a fatal bullet for him. In the novel, however, it is Dave who is the innocent victim.
24227910	/m/07k4mm9	The Sending	Isobelle Carmody	2011-10-31	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/07lw0y": "Post-holocaust", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In a world where happiness and love are rare, Elspeth Gordie has found both. But in the midst of planning a trip to the Red Land, Elspeth at last receives her summons to leave the Land on her quest to stop the computermachine Sentinel from unleashing a second apocalypse. Though she has prepared for this day for years, nothing is as she imagined. She will go far from her desitination to those she thought lost forever. To toxic Blacklands to find a pack of mutant human-hating wolves, for only they can lead her to the forgotten Beforetime city which haunts her dreams. Accepting her mission will cost her dearly, but to refuse, or to fail, is to condemn the world to annihilation.
24230158	/m/07kjq5y	Names in Marble		1936		 The novel is divided in three parts. The main characters of the novel are two brothers, Henn and Juhan Ahas. In the first part, set at the beginning of the war, a group of students from Tartu join the Estonian Army (most students join immediately). In the beginning, Henn Ahas hesitates but after his hometown is attacked he joins the army. In the first part, the political and economic situation of the nation is described through the group of students. The second part contains autobiographical references and describes the situation at the war front, and the experiences of soldiers. The third part of the novel focuses on the final stage of the war and in particular the Treaty of Tartu, which recognised the independence of Estonia. The book ends with the group of students returning to their homes.
24233999	/m/07kjffg	Juliet, Naked	Nick Hornby	2009-09-29	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Duncan, an obsessive music fan, receives a CD of 'Juliet, Naked', an album of solo acoustic demos of the songs on the album 'Juliet' by his favorite artist, Tucker Crowe. Duncan's girlfriend Annie opens it first and listens to it on her own. Duncan is angry, especially when she expresses her dislike for it. He writes an enthusiastic review for the fan website he is a member of. Annie writes a passionate article criticising it and receives an email response from Tucker Crowe himself. Further email correspondence ensues, much of which consumes Annie's thoughts. Tucker Crowe is in Pennsylvania preparing for a visit from his daughter Lizzie, whom he has never met. He has five children from four relationships, and his youngest son Jackson and Jackson's mother Cat are the only ones he lives with. Lizzie reveals that she is visiting because she is pregnant. Duncan meets a new colleague called Gina, whom he sleeps with. He tells Annie of his affair and she insists he move out. The next day Annie talks to her judgmental therapist Malcolm. Duncan regrets leaving Annie but she refuses to take him back. Cat breaks up with Tucker but Tucker remains looking after Jackson. Annie places a photo of Tucker and Jackson on her fridge and invites Duncan round to make him see it, gleeful that he doesn't know the significance, and tells him she is in a relationship with him. She ponders the years she has wasted with Duncan and ends up going to the pub with her friend Ros, during which she meets Gav and Barnesy, two Northern Soul dancers. Barnesy comes back to her house and tells her he loves her, but leaves after she says she won't sleep with him. Annie discusses the incident the next day with Malcolm. Tucker discovers that Lizzie has lost the baby and Cat talks him into visiting Lizzie. On arrival in London, Tucker has a heart attack and is taken into the hospital. Lizzie invites all his children and ex-wives to visit for a family reunion. A mini-narrative describes the events which caused Tucker to end his career after hearing that he had a daughter, Grace from the relationship before/during Julie. Annie visits him in the hospital and he suggests staying at her house to avoid the family reunion. The next day Annie visits again and they do, though Annie discovers he had not yet met with Grace. Tucker tells her about Grace and Juliet and Annie insists he call his family. They discuss his work; Tucker sees it as inauthentic rubbish while Annie thinks it's deep and meaningful music while clarifying that while the music is good it doesn't mean that Tucker as a person is good. She also admits that she was in a relationship with Duncan, whom Tucker knows of from the website. Annie encourages Tucker to meet Duncan but he refuses. The next day they bump into Duncan. Tucker introduces himself but Duncan doesn't believe him. After considering it, Duncan comes over and Tucker shows Duncan his passport as proof. They have tea together and Tucker clarifies some of Duncan's beliefs about him, while Duncan expresses his love of his music. Grace calls Tucker. She says she understands how he and she can't be close because it would mean giving up 'Juliet'. An exhibition Annie has been working on opens at the Gooleness museum, where she works as a curator. She suggests that Tucker could open it but the councillor in charge says he's never heard of him and invites Gav and Barnsey (two local Northern Soul dancers) to do it instead. At the party Annie admits to Tucker that she likes him romantically and afterwards they have sex. Annie says she has used a contraceptive but didn't. Tucker and Jackson return to America. Annie tells Malcolm about it all and tells him that she would like to sell her house and move right away to America to join Tucker and Jackson. Malcolm's paternalistic comment lets her realize that she's cured. She can then leave him. In the epilogue, Duncan and other fans review on the fan website a new release from Tucker, which they think is terrible; one of them writes, 'Happiness Is Poison'. Only one new member says she and her husband love the new album, while they find 'Juliet' too gloomy for their liking.
24236729	/m/07kch4p	Delicate Edible Birds	Lauren Groff			 The anthology comprises nine dramatic stories, taken together, spanning a century. In each story, a slice of life of various American women is revealed. *"Lucky Chow Fun" takes place in the mythical Templeton (Cooperstown, New York), the setting of her first novel. In this tale, Seventeen-year-old Lollie hopes to leave for college without looking back, but sinister events end up causing her to fear for the safety of her little sister and the future of her once-safe little town. *"L. Debard and Aliette" is a crafty re-telling of the story of Abelard and Héloïse in New York amidst the 1918 flu pandemic. *"Majorette" is a story of a young woman's personal growth in Hershey, Pennsylvania and the events that make her more worldy and the father and grandfather that always hold their little girl in deep affection. *"Blythe" is the story of a bored, introverted Philadelphia attorney who has turned into a stay-at-home mom whose life changes when she takes a night class and meets an extroverted and eccentric woman who draws her out. *"The Wife of the Dictator" is a character study of a simple American girl who marries a Latin American Dictator. Her fate is inexorably bound up with his. *"Sir Fleeting" is a story where a Midwestern farm girl on her honeymoon in Argentina falls into lifelong lust for a French playboy. *"Watershed" is a tragedy, between a husband and a wife, which proves the maxim "don't say things you'll later regret". *"Delicate Edible Birds" takes place during the fall of France. A disparate, but close group of War correspondents are held against their will by an evil French Farmer who exacts a steep price in exchange for not turning them over to the Nazis.
24239951	/m/07kfsg_	The Stolen Lake	Joan Aiken		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After her adventures in Nightbirds On Nantucket, Dido Twite is travelling back to England on the HMS Thrush. En route, she befriends the ship's open-minded steward, Holystone. The ship changes course, landing on the coast of New Cumbria. Bound by ancient treaties between Britain and New Cumbria, they are given orders to assist Ginevra, the Queen. Travelling to Bath, the capital city, the crew learn that Ginevra wants them to help her recover a lake, which she claims has been stolen by New Cumbria's neighbour, Lyonesse. It seems that she is the same immortal Ginevra, or Guinevere, of myth and has waited centuries for the return of her king, Arthur. Unfortunately, she has attained immortality by cannibalistic vampirism, murdering and consuming local maidens. It then transpires that Holystone is an incarnation of Arthur, who for a thousand years had lain in suspended animation on an island in the missing lake. But this Arthur is not at all pleased at the monstrosity his ancient spouse has become.
24241526	/m/07k5snf	The Sanctuary Sparrow	Edith Pargeter	1983	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The story takes place over 7 days in May 1140. At the midnight services of Matins on a lovely May night, a boy speeds into the Abbey church just ahead of mob after him for theft and murder. The boy's name is Liliwin. He is a wandering jongleur and entertainer, most recently thrown out of a local goldsmith's wedding reception for breaking a wine jug during his routine. Abbot Radulfus, in his calm but forceful way, stops the mob, grants the victim's request for sanctuary and successfully orders the mob to return in quiet the next morning to discuss their charges. The next day, a sergeant under the absent Sheriff Prestcote visits the abbey to hear the charges against Liliwin. The boy is now accused of assault and robbery, the victim Walter Aurifaber being alive but unconscious since the attack. The boy's term of sanctuary will expire in forty days; if he leaves the grounds he will be taken – if lucky by the Sheriff's men, if not by the townspeople. Abbot Radulfus firmly asserts the rights of sanctuary for Lilliwin, who protests his innocence. The grandson of the Aurifaber house then requests Bother Cadfael to treat his grandmother at their home. Radulfus directs him to do so. Cadfael treats Dame Juliana, allowing him to interview several people in the house where the crime happened. He retrieves the juggling balls that Liliwin left behind. Dame Juliana is a greedy and controlling woman, a trait that affects the entire household. At the Abbey, Cadfael tells Liliwin that Walter the goldsmith will recover and be able to recount his experience. Cadfael takes his relief as a sign of Liliwin's innocence, expressing as much to Deputy Sheriff Hugh Beringar, returned from other duties in Shropshire. Liliwin's only tears fall for the loss of his rebec, which Cadfael finds on a walk back to the Abbey. When Liliwin hears that Rannilt has sympathy for him, he expresses sentiment for her also. Brother Anselm teaches him to read and write music, then adapts Liliwin's tunes for church music, and works to restore the rebec to condition. A weekend in the Abbey sees Liliwin begin to recover from his wounds in a true sanctuary. The routine is broken on Monday when Rannilt visits Liliwin with food from Susanna, and discarded men's clothing from Margery. The two fall deeply in love, then make love and fall asleep behind the chapel altar during Vespers. Liliwin's absence is noted; it is thought and hoped by Brother Prior that the young jongleur has abandoned his sanctuary. Liliwin and Rannilt wake at Compline having slept too long. Rannilt leaves unnoticed, escorted home by Liliwin, the pair walking past the guards on duty to watch for him. He risks his sanctuary for her safety. Prior Robert is most disappointed to see him the next morning. Liliwin saw Daniel leave the Aurifarber home that evening, which he reports to Brother Cadfael after Prime. That same night, Cadfael comes upon the body of Baldwin Peche the locksmith at the river's edge, the same person sought by Madog of the Dead-boat. Madog and Cadfael find clues of where his body was put in the river. They suspect Baldwin was killed at the time Liliwin was missed by Brother Prior. The townspeople accuse Liliwin of this crime immediately. Liliwin lies to Hugh Beringar, who saves him from the crowd. Later Liliwin confesses his real guilt to Cadfael. Daniel is a suspect in this murder, Margery realizes when Beringar interviews her and she lies to him. Margery realizes also that her new husband is seeing other women. She establishes her power with him and stops his wanderings, while removing the suspicion of murder from his head. Daniel's paramour has scorned him, upon being asked to say he was with her. Together Daniel and Margery confess the truth of Daniel's whereabouts the night of the murder to Hugh Beringar. At the goldsmith's house, Margery and sister-in-law Susanna fight for dominance. Susanna was not allowed a dowry by her father; she is the housekeeper for her father, brother and grandmother over 15 years. Margery wins, as decided by Dame Juliana to be effective the next morning, while Cadfael was present. Susanna puts her housekeeping accounts in order. Her grandmother hears her late in the evening at this task, and comes out to talk with her, giving a compliment on her granddaughter's management of the stores of oatmeal, which Rannilt overhears. Dame Juliana suffers a stroke in the stress of a sad realization. Her dying words to Cadfael are that she wishes she could have held her great-grandchild. The following evening Susanna quietly leaves for Wales with Iestyn and Rannilt. At a second meeting with Madog of the Dead-boat on the river, he and Cadfael find the place of Baldwin Peche's murder, where the Aurifaber property meets the Severn. Three plants grow there, found on his body. Further clues of rocks and a coin there point to the murderer, and the thief. Cadfael, Beringar and Liliwin realise that while Susanna could not have attacked Walter the goldsmith in his shop and stolen his wealth, an accomplice could have done so. Then Susanna could then have retrieved the treasure that was stolen from the well bucket and hidden it in that oatmeal bin. When Baldwin's servant boy found a coin in the well bucket, Baldwin deduced who held the stolen silver. Baldwin attempted to blackmail Susanna, a distinct mistake. She killed him by hitting him with a rock from behind and drowning him when he was unconscious, in the morning. She hid the body near the river where the laundry was dried, then gave Rannilt the day off so the body would not be seen where it fell. Cadfael deduces that Susanna is pregnant and wanted the money to elope to Wales with her lover, Iestyn, apprentice in her father's shop. They realize that Dame Juliana had figured all this out before she died, yet sought no outside help to resolve the problems in her family. Liliwin secures his freedom from Hugh Beringar, it being clear Liliwin had no role in these crimes. With Walter as a guide, Beringar, Cadfael, Liliwin and the sheriff's men pursue Susanna, Iestyn and Rannilt, who has been abducted as a witness. They corner the fugitives in the Aurifaber horse barn near the road to Wales and a hostage situation develops. Iestyn negotiates with Beringar for safe passage for Susanna, in exchange for release of Rannilt. Walter objects loudly to any bargain that risks his money, caring naught for his daughter. Beringar is patient. Liliwin the acrobat climbs to the air vent, quietly peels away the lattice wood and enters the hay loft in search of Rannilt. As dawn breaks, Rannilt slips toward the exit as Iestyn goes for Liliwin with a knife. At the same moment, Susanna runs to Iestyn and takes the arrow meant for him. Hugh Beringar climbs to the loft to take Iestyn from his dead lover. Walter runs about gathering his coins, spread across the ground by the sorrowing Iestyn. In the epilogue, Liliwin and Rannilt marry at the Abbey, and are compensated by the townsfolk for the hardship they experienced. Brother Anselm gave Liliwin his rebec, fully repaired. After the ceremony, Liliwin asks the fate of Ietsyn. Beringar will argue in his favor, as Ietsyn did not murder, what he stole is returned, and he acted at his lover's behest. Beringar sees a future for him. Liliwin and Rannilt set out on their new life.
24245696	/m/07s867y	A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World	Jonathan Edwards	1765		 Edwards argues against the people of his day that claimed that human happiness was the end for which God created the world. Edwards instead puts forth the idea that the reason for God's creation of the world was not human happiness, but the magnification of his own glory and name. Edwards then continues to argue that since true happiness comes from God alone, human happiness is an extension of God's glory, and that there are "ultimate" ends and "chief" ends, but they all end at the same conclusion. Edwards, like in Virtue, discusses how there is no true happiness without being happy in God.
24249832	/m/07s46q5	Creepers	David Morrell	2006		 Frank Balenger, a reporter, meets a group of four 'Creepers', urban explorers whose primary target in this case is the long abandoned Paragon Hotel. The Creepers introduce themselves as Rick, an athletic young man who is the husband of Cora, an intelligent and attractive young woman who is still longed for by Vinnie, another member of the group. They are led by Professor Conklin, who introduced them to 'Creeping' while they were students of his in College. The history of the Paragons owner, Morgan Carlisle, is told to the group by Conklin. Carlisle was a Hemophiliac ("The slightest bump or fall causes almost uncontrollable bleeding..."), who never left his Hotel until one morning he walked out to the beach the Hotel is next to and shot himself in the face with a shotgun. The five soon break into the Paragon through an underground sewer system which leads them to the pool area. They wander about, eyeing old pictures of the Hotel in its Glory, and walk up the aged stairs to some of the rooms, discovering, among other things, a decaying monkey in a suitcase left there years ago by the rooms occupant. Suddenly the floor gives and Vinnie almost falls through, though Balenger is able to assist him up and to safety. The group has a bathroom break by urinating into waterbottles (they refuse to leave any evidence of their presence behind), when something moves in the dark distance and Balenger takes out a handgun, though this is unnoticed by any of the others. They decide to leave but the stairs begin to sway and the Professor injures his leg. After the Professor is safe, Balenger and the others notice a sound in the distance, which to their horror they realize is whistling to a song Rick played earlier. Before they realize it they have been attacked and Balenger's gun is stolen. Three men tie the Creepers up and introduce themselves as Mack, JD, and Tod. JD throws Rick over the banister to fall three stories and likely to his death. Tod reveals that the reason they came was to steal from the seemingly mythical vault of a gangster named Carmine Danata, who was a frequent guest of the Hotel and was supposed to be a friend of Carlisle. Eventually they find Danata's suite. Vinnie and Balenger set the wounded Professor on a couch in the room and set off to find the Vault. They find it hidden behind a wall and in a long corridor that is in between the rooms. The vault is opened when to their shock they find a woman has been living inside the vault for an undetermined amount of time. She tells them her name is Amanda, and she reveals that she is under the capture of a mysterious man named Ronnie, who lives inside the hotel. Balenger, Tod, and Vinnie go back to the room only to find Conklin decapitated. It appears that Ronnie has killed him and disappeared. Tod, JD, and Mack decide to leave Balenger, Vinnie, Cora, and Amanda so that Ronnie may kill them as he wishes. The three leave the Creepers tied up, but Balenger is able to get out of the restraints and help the others out of theirs. Tod then returns to them, saying that JD and Mack ran into hidden piano wire and were killed by Ronnie. Balenger gets his gun back and the five try to go upstairs, Balenger remembering that Carlisle's suite had been there. They get to Carlisle's suite only to discover that Ronnie has made this his home, complete with an exercise studio, set of elevators, kitchen, and movie theatre. They discover that Ronnie has a video system all about the Paragon and has been spying on them all the time. Then Ronnie himself appears on the screen and waves to them while welding the door they got in from shut. Seemingly trapped, the elevator starts to come up. Balenger aims his gun at it, but when the doors open Rick steps out, still barely alive and impaled by a piece of furniture. An ecstatic Cora runs toward him, only for Rick to die again in her arms. She begins to cry, but is suddenly shot from under the floor. Ronnie has made a system under the floor and could hear Cora and shoot at her. Vinnie begins to weep for the now dead Cora but Balenger stops him, insisting that Ronnie can hear them from underneath. In the confusion, Tod disappears. Vinnie is injured in a shootout but Balenger and Amanda are able to help him to the roof. Unable to get all three of them down, Balenger decides the only thing to do is go back to the bottom floor. They are able to get there and find Tod, who says the door they came in from is indeed welded. Ronnie once again appears. Tod is killed, but the others manage to escape to the nearby beach. Amanda and Balenger bury an unconscious Vinnie, hoping to hide him and possibly save him if Ronnie comes out to find them. Sure enough he does, and Balenger has a scuffle which is ended when Amanda beats Ronnie over the head from behind with a wooden slat. The three make their way back to the Paragon, which is now surrounded by Policemen. When an officer asks what has happened, Balenger replies, "The Paragon Hotel."
24253813	/m/07kg1hw	2 States: The Story of My Marriage	Chetan Bhagat	2009-10-08	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Partly autobiographical, the story is about Krish and Ananya who hail from two different states of India, are deeply in love and want to get married. The story begins in the IIM Ahmedabad mess, where Krish, a Punjabi boy from Delhi sights a beautiful girl, Ananya, a Tamilian from Chennai, quarreling with the mess staff about the food. Ananya was tagged as the "Best girl of the fresher batch". They become friends within a few days and decide to study together every night. In mean time, they become romantically involved. They both get jobs, and have serious plans for their wedding. At first Krish tries to convince his girlfriend Ananya's parents and at last and convinces them by helping Ananya's father to do his first PowerPoint Presentation, her brother, Manju, by giving him tuition and later convinces her mom by asking her sing in a concert organised by Krish's office, i.e Citibank. She was convinced as she had her biggest dream of singing in a big concert comes to be true. She sang along with T.S Subramanium and Hariharan. Then they tried to convince Krish's mom the problem was Krish's mother's relatives who doesn't quite like this, they say that Krish should not marry a Madrasi but ends up agreeing with them when Ananya tries to help one of Krish's cousin to get married and succeeds to do so. Now as they have convinced both their parents they now try to make their parents meet each other to know each. They go to GOA. But this dream of theirs ends as Ananya's parents finds something fishy between Krish's mom and him. Ananya's family end up deciding that Krish and Ananya will not marry each other But at last Krish's father who was like an enemy for Krish helps Krish and Ananya to get married as he convinces Ananya's family well. They really do very hard to convince each other parents and finally make it. It is narrated in a first person point of view in a humorous tone, often taking digs at both Tamil and Punjabi cultures . The novel ends with Ananya giving birth to twin boys. They say that the babies belong to a state called 'India'; with a thought to end inequality. What is even more interesting is the continuation of character Hari of Five Point Someone in Krish.
24256116	/m/07s3ct0	61 Hours	Lee Child	2010-03-18	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in the town of Bolton, South Dakota, Reacher begins his latest adventure on a wrecked senior citizen tour bus after a near-miss with another motorist leaves the bus spinning on the icy road and trapped in a snowy bank. Immersed in a snowy, frozen landscape, Reacher works with local law enforcement to help the fragile victims. Hours later, Reacher learns Bolton is not like most towns. Beside its freezing, snowy climate, the town plays host to one of the largest prisons in the U.S., making the town and its law enforcement subject to the needs and demands of the gigantic correctional facility. At the same time, a band of outlaw bikers, settled outside the town, are on edge after their leader is arrested on drug charges. As the biker awaits trial, protecting Janet Salter, the only witness to the biker's drug transaction, becomes a top priority, and Reacher agrees to aid local law enforcement to help protect the elderly Salter. Throughout the story, brutal enemies, both foreign and domestic, are encountered. The foreign criminal from Mexico is named Plato, and the bad cop in Bolton is Chief Holland, who murders his deputy chief, Andrew Peterson; a crooked lawyer; and the witness Salter. Reacher finds help from one of his successors, Susan Turner, the current leader of the elite 110th Special Investigations Unit (Reacher's old command), while interesting new details of his past come to light, such as how a dent appeared in his desk (from injuring a corrupt general), and of how Reacher caught the attention of military command because of his childhood behavior patterns. The ending leaves the reader guessing as to the conclusion. We do not learn how Reacher manages to escape an underground facility filled with fuel by Plato's henchmen before it ignites. A brief description of how he survives the conflagration appears in the next Reacher novel, Worth Dying For.
24258515	/m/07sclf9	The Birds	Tarjei Vesaas			 The story revolves around the inner world of Matthew, who is mentally challenged and lives with his sister.
24263054	/m/07s5fs8	Freddy the Pied Piper			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 On a snowy February 14, Freddy learns his friend Mr. Boomschmidt ran out of money for his circus during the war years, when performances were restricted. The animals scattered a year previously to manage for themselves. Freddy gets an appeal to reassemble them and find a way to finance restarting the circus. Valentines and Jinx the cat’s painting aside, Freddy and Jinx go to Centerboro for advice. The bank will not loan money without collateral: “Chickens are off two cents, and lambs very weak. But rhinoceroses—not a very active market in them”. On a different matter, on Freddy’s advice, the bank puts out cheese so the mice will not eat the money. Freddy learns that the circus lion Leo is 200 miles away. He is lucky to catch his rich friend Mrs. Church driving that direction. She pays for a hotel while he and Jinx investigate. At Mrs. Guffin’s pet shop Freddy buys a canary that winks at him while he is questioning. The canary turns out to be a chickadee dyed yellow; he gives Freddy enough information about Leo to confront Mrs. Guffin. They manage to free him, but are now fugitives, since Mrs. Guffin claims she owns Leo. She tries to reclaim him, but is held captive until Mrs. Church arrives to take them home. Freddy’s plan to solve the bank’s mouse infestation attracted even more mice. Since the townspeople are also infested, he decides to go into business with cat acquaintances removing them. Soon they are earning good money toward restarting the circus, but Old Whibley the owl has a better plan: to rent a place for the town mice to stay the winter. The mice are won over. Freddy decides to stage a little theater, and the move into the new place is done in a parade with the pig leading as the Pied Piper. Freddy decides to take the money earned and travel with Jinx and the circus animals to Mr. Boomschmidt. They almost reach him when they come across a race track. Some animals join a race. The rhinoceroses carrying the money is waylaid by a man from the track, and the money is stolen. They arrive at Mr. Boomschmidt’s empty handed, but are welcomed just the same. While there, Freddy gets a tip from a buzzard they met on their journey, and the animals recover their money. To save Mr. Boomschmidt’s pride, Freddy concocts a séance reading where the money he earned is discovered as hidden treasure. Satisfied, but not fooled, Mr. Boomschmidt restarts the circus.
24265643	/m/07s3cwv	Rookwood	William Harrison Ainsworth			 The plot of the novel takes place in England, 1737. At a manor called Rookwood Place, there existed a legend claiming that a death would follow after a branch of an ancient tree would break. After a branch does fall from the tree, Piers Rookwood, the owner, dies. It is revealed to Luke Bradley that he was the son, and thus heir, of Piers Rookwood along with the fact that Piers Rookwood murdered Bradley's mother. This knowledge comes to Bradley while he stands near his mother's coffin, which falls and opens at the moment of revelation. During the fall, it is revealed that she was wearing a wedding ring, which proves that Bradley was not an illegitimate heir. However, the whole incident was put together by Peter Bradley, the boy's grandfather. At the same time, Rookwood's wife, Maud Rookwood, puts forth her own schemes to ensure that her son, Ranulph Rookwood, is able to claim the inheritance for himself. As the events unfold, Bradley falls in love with Eleanor Mowbray but she is in love with her cousin, Ranulph Rookwood. At his grandfather's promptings, Bradley ditches his love, a gypsy named Sybil Lovel, in order to pursue and try to force Mowbray into marriage. While this happens, the character Dick Turpin,a highwayman and thief, is introduced at the manor, under the pseudonym Palmer. While there, he makes a bet with one of the guests that he could capture himself. Eventually, Turpin is forced to escape upon his horse, Black Bess. The horse, though fast enough to keep ahead of all of the other horses, eventually collapses and dies under the stress of the escape. Later, Turpin reappears and tries to help Bradley attain Mowbray's hand in marriage, but Bradley is fooled into marrying Lovel instead, Mowbray having been taken by the gypsies. Soon afterwards, Lovel kills herself. In revenge for Lovel's death, Lovel's family poisons a lock of hair and gives it to Bradley, which soon results in his death. After the death of his grandson, Peter Bradley comes clean about his identity; he is the brother of Reginald Rookwood, father to Piers, and his real name is Alan Rookwood. Alan Rookwood confronts Maud Rookwood, and the two attack each other in the Rookwood family tomb. However, they activate some kind of machinery that causes the tomb to shut and imprison them together forever. In the end, the only surviving family members, Ranulph Rookwood and Eleanor Mowbray marry. * Piers Rookwood * Lady Maud Rookwood * Ranulph Rookwood * Luke Bradley * Susan Bradley * Peter Bradley/Alan Rookwood * Sybil Lovel * Elanor Mowbray * Dick Turpin
24269151	/m/07s3gx8	Dark Entries	Ian Rankin			 The plot of the novel involves John Constantine being convinced to enter a reality television program which has suffered several strange hauntings, a thinly veiled satire of British programmes Most Haunted and Big Brother. This turns out to be not a television programme made for humanity, but for the denizens of Hell, and John must work out a way to escape from this.
24277384	/m/07s3l5t	The Cry of the Halidon	Robert Ludlum			 The story concerns a geologist, Alex McAuliff, who is commissioned to undertake a survey in Jamaica. The survey must be carried out in secrecy. In common with other Ludlum novels the lead character discovers there is more to the deal than expected and McAuliff is enlisted by British Intelligence. The story develops as McAuliff's resources and abilities are tested eventually leading him to a secret organisation hidden in the Jamaican mountains. It too describes a secret organisation. fr:Le Secret Halidon
24277437	/m/09gpdjx	Tenth Grade Bleeds				 Vlad saves a small goth boy named Sprat, who was being bullied by Bill and Tom. Later on Sprat's group of friends (Goth kids that hang out front of the high school at night that Vlad was eager to talk to but afraid.) came to Vlad’s table at lunch to thank him for saving Sprat. Henry and Meredith, Vlad's girlfriend, disapproved of the goth kids so Vlad decided to go with them to the Crypt (Gothic club). Nelly tries giving the sex talk with Vlad, but he didn't want to listen. They both agreed that Otis will be the one to explain it to Vlad. Vlad has night terrors of a dark figure, and out of the shadow that surrounded it appear a silver blade. Moonlight glinted off its razor sharp surface, the man plunged the blade downward, ripping it through Vlad’s stomach. Later on he finds out that the dreams are from Otis who was captured by D’Ablo. Henry and Vlad end up separating from their friendship demanding Vlad undo the bond between them. When Vlad goes with them he meets a beautiful girl named Snow. After saving Snow from her abusive father He sinks his teeth into her neck sucking her almost dry making her drop to the ground and him leaving her there scared, wanting more of her blood. Later he calls Henry sobbing asking for help, Vlad and Henry end up friends and vampire/drudge again. Both going to face D’ablo and give the journal to him. While walking only ten steps Henry lets out a scream and Vlad turns to see Ignatius, the vampire who’d attacked him before, had Henry by a fistful of hair. A sharp, curved blade was pressed dangerously close to Henry’s throat. Later on finding out that Ignatius is none other than his own grandfather, who wants to kill Vlad and bring honor back to his family’s name. D'Ablo goes and ties Vlad up to a chair and gags him. Later than Vlad gets free. D’Ablo got away after Vlad burnt his hand off. Otis returns to Nelly’s house with Vlad and Henry waiting upon the letter from Vikas stating otherwise. At the freedom Fest Vlad breaks up with Meredith to save her from himself, and goes to the back ally where he once bit into Snow's neck and meets her there. Finally, Vlad bites into her neck because she is now his drudge. they meet frequently for some days. The book ends with a letter that Vlad was supposed to get awhile back containing Otis's teaching on writing in Elysian Code.
24277569	/m/09ggvjd	Eleventh Grade Burns	Heather Brewer	2010-02-09		 Joss returns to Bathory, to finish the job he started during freshman year. When Vlad finds out Joss is returning and talks to his uncle, Otis, about not killing Joss because he still thinks of Joss as a friend. On the last day of summer multiple vampires come to Vlad's house to celebrate Otis's life. That's when Vlad meets Cratus, Dorian and several other unnamed vampires. Vlad finds out that Dorian has a taste for vampire blood. During this event we learn that D'Ablo got on the council of elders. At the end of the first day of school Vlad learns from Otis that Vikas will teach Vlad all he knows about the Slayer Society and until Vlad is proficient and he is still required to do his homework. On the fifth day of school Eddie Poe pays the school bullies to bring Vlad to him after school. The bullies duct tape Vlad to a tree and Eddie puts a necklace of garlic around his neck. Eddie then cuts open his hand with a knife to see if Vlad is a vampire. Joss shows up, he takes the garlic off of Vlad's neck and Eddie nearly gets killed, except that Henry shows up and convinces Vlad to wait until not as many people can see them fighting. Vikas tells Vlad a story about how his best friend betrays him. Vlad finds out that Dorian knows everyone's secrets that he encounters, but he never shares those secrets . On October 31, Vlad and Henry go to the Crypt for a vampire Halloween party. Henry dresses up but Vlad does not, since he only plans on feeding from Snow. Vikas is poisoned by someone so Vlad doesn't have lessons that day . Vlad wrongly exacts revenge on Joss without killing him; he breaks Joss' arm and beats him up. Vlad also finds out that they have been invited to Thanksgiving dinner at the McMillan's. Vlad is nearly killed by D'Ablo but Vlad breaks the sacrificial blade that D'Ablo tried to kill him with, off in D'Ablo's body . Vlad goes to the winter dance with Snow. Vlad and Otis go to New York for Otis's pre-trial. The pre-trial and the trial are held in the secret room of The V-Bar. On December 31, Tristian is killed by someone who wants to get at the Vampires of Bathory. Eddie Poe ends up writing an article about Vlad being a vampire. After this Vlad skips school for several days with the intent of never going to school again. During Vlad's last lesson by Vikas he moves as Vikas and Otis have never seen any vampire move before. Dorian allows Vlad to ask several questions about the prophecy. He finds out that he will rule over Vampire kind out of necessity and he will enslave the Human race out of charity. Vlad and Otis go back to New York to have Otis's trial but it ends up that he is acquitted. Vlad is again put on trial for destroying D'Ablo's hand and for revealing his true nature to humans. Joss shows up at Vlad's house and kills Dorian by accident. Vlad starts to fight him off almost killing him with one last hit, but then somebody shows up at the fight and tells him to stop. The last word of the book is "Dad?".
24277574	/m/0g9v6y4	Twelfth Grade Kills	Heather Brewer		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 At the prologue of the book, D'Ablo is murdered by a mysterious man. He is described as familiar, but lacked further information because D'Ablo dies immediately afterward. Cutting back to the present, Vlad sees his father and doubts whether he really is there. He thinks he is going crazy from drinking Dorian's blood in the previous book. His dad then disappears, leaving Vlad with Dorian's corpse and a severely injured Joss lying on the ground. Henry later comes and is the one who calls the hospital for Joss. Vlad insists that he stays despite Henry's protests. Vlad and Henry then walk home to Nelly's while Vlad explains what happened during the night. When they reach Nelly's house, they are greeted by Em and Enrico. Em informs Vlad and his Uncle Otis that D'Ablo is dead. Vlad then negotiates with Em to let him go free if he gives her his father, who of which Vlad is still uncertain is alive. Em agrees and gives Vlad until the end of the year to hand over his father. She then tells Vlad that she is actually his great-grandmother. Vlad is immensely surprised, especially when Otis reassures him by saying it's true. After Em's visit, Vlad and Henry go to the hospital to visit Joss. Two cops confront Vlad about Joss and Vlad answers some of their questions. Joss's mother will not let Vlad anywhere near Joss. After the visit, two more cops confront Vlad outside the hospital. The four cops attack Vlad, revealing that they are Slayers. Vlad knocks them unconscious with his vampire abilities. Later that day, Vlad begins his search for his father all over town. Soon enough Henry, Otis and Vikas help him in the search. Finally, days later,Vlad decides to go to his hiding spot (the belfry) in the school. When he is there, he discovers his father, who greets him warmly and explains his motives for hiding. Vlad and his father finally make up go to their house as father and son. At the house Tomas says he was hiding from a secret vampire society that wants the Pravus to enslave vampire kind and that they were responsible for the fire and Mellina's death. Otis shows up soon after and gets angry at his half brother for making Vlad suffer for many years. At the end, Snow is turned into a vampire by Vlad to keep her from dying, and Tomas is revealed to be evil and a man who had Vlad just so Vlad could become the Pravus and then Tomas could take his powers. Tomas also killed Vlad's mom, and the man in the charred bed was Aidan, the son of Dorian. Nelly dies at the hand of Tomas, then later Vlad kills Tomas with Joss' stake. Vikas turned out to be Tomas' partner in crime and had helped Tomas kill Mellina, Vlad's mom. Vikas had opened the drapes to burn Aidan. Vikas is killed by the Lucis which slips from Vlad's hand- while on- and falls over the edge of a building, slicing an unsuspecting Vikas in half. Also, it is supposedly revealed that Snow's eyes turn iridescent green near the end, hinting something, that maybe life would finally go his way.
24280161	/m/07s4qfl	Not by Bread Alone				 Late in the Joseph Stalin era, a teacher of physics, Dimitri Lopatkin, invents a machine which revolutionizes the centrifugal casting of pipes, then a difficult and time-consuming operation. Lopatkin, a loyal communist, believes his invention will help the Soviet economy if it is used. Despite the virtue of the machine, it is rejected by bureaucrats. When Lopatkin gets a chance to have a demonstration model built at a Moscow institute, his opponents favor a rival machine, and then cancel Lopatkin's. Lopatkin is offered a chance to work on his machine for the military, which he accepts, but is soon arrested and accused of passing secrets to his lover, Nadia Drozdov, the estranged wife of one of the officials who opposes him. At trial, Lopatkin asks what secrets he is accused of betraying, and he is told by the judges that he is not allowed to know that, the identity of the secrets is itself secret. One of the judges, a young major named Badyin, sees the absurdity of the proceedings and defends Lopatkin. Nonetheless, the inventor is convicted and sentenced to eight years in a labor camp, with Badyin announcing he will write a dissenting opinion. While Lopatkin gains permission to have his papers turned over to Nadia, the papers are believed to be destroyed. A year and a half later, Lopatkin's case is reviewed, and he is released and returns. He finds that Nadia has been able to obtain his papers, that the designers who built the demonstration model have been able to replicate it, and that his machine is in operation in a factory in the Urals. An investigation is ordered into the officials who blocked Lopatkin, but they get off lightly and are later promoted. Lopatkin is now a respected inventor, earning a fine living. The officials, who form an invisible web that frustrate the individualists, suggest that he should buy a car, a television, or a dacha, and by implication become like them, but Lopatkin says, no, he will continue to fight them: "Man lives not by bread alone, if he is honest." Lopatkin realizes he will spend his life fighting the bureaucrats.
24300954	/m/080kny_	Veracity	Laura Bynum		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Harper Adams was six years old in 2012 when an act of viral terrorism wiped out one-half of the country's population. Out of the ashes rose a new government, the Confederation of the Willing, dedicated to maintaining order at any cost. The populace is controlled via government-sanctioned sex and drugs, a brutal police force known as the Blue Coats, and a device called the slate, a mandatory implant that monitors every word a person speaks. To utter a forbidden, Red-Listed word is to risk physical punishment, or even death. But there are those who resist. Guided by the fabled Book of Noah, they are determined to shake the people from their apathy and ignorance, and are prepared to start a war in the name of freedom. The newest member of this resistance is Harper—a woman driven by memories of a daughter lost, a daughter whose very name was erased by the Red List. And she possesses a power that could make her the underground warriors’ ultimate weapon—or the instrument of their destruction.
24301670	/m/07s3wl7	Tropic Moon	Georges Simenon	1933		 The story concerns Joseph Timar, a sensitive young Frenchman, who travels from La Rochelle to Libreville in Gabon to work at a job his uncle has arranged for him at SACOVA, a logging business. Upon arriving, he discovers the job is not available; unsure of what to do, he finds temporary residence at a local hotel where he ends up spending his time drinking and playing billiards with a group of hotel regulars: an assortment of loggers and minor government officials. After the first night of his stay, Timar awakens to an unexpected sexual encounter with Adèle, the proprietor's wife. Shortly thereafter, a black servant, Thomas, is found murdered and Adèle's ailing husband Eugène finally dies of snail fever. The night before Eugène's funeral, using the pretence of leaving Adèle alone to grieve, the regulars convince Timar to come with them on a late night jaunt to a native village. Here the group picks up African women, one of whom is married, but whose husband seems used to his wife being treated as a whore by the white colonials. The group drives to a clearing in woods and a drunken party ensues. Timar stands by while the others steal the women's clothing and drive off laughing. After the funeral, Adèle convinces Timar to use his uncle's influence to acquire a concession for the two of them for which she will provide the capital. Despite a growing suspicion that Adèle is being less than honest with him, Timar agrees. The details are worked out, and the two begin the journey by riverboat to their new territory. They pause at a village where Adèle inexplicably disappears into a native hut for a time before returning. Timar contracts dengue fever along the way, and spends the rest of the trip in a state of delirium.
24313606	/m/07s3zw2	Runt	Marion Dane Bauer	2002-10-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 One spring day in the forests of Minnesota, a litter of five is born into a wolf pack led by King and his mate Silver. Of the six, five pups are of regular size: Leader, Sniffer, Runner, Thinker and Helper and Hunter. The last pup looked much smaller than the others and his mother gave him the name Runt, much to King's disappointment. As Runt grows older, he still is smaller than the others but grows over time. At one point in Runt's life, he and Thinker leave the pack, a porcupine comes along and shoots them with quills. Runt was hit, and Thinker got hit in the eye, They tried to go home and when they did Thinker had died soon later. King was so angry and sad. He thought he would be renamed twice; one time he though he would be renamed "Brave One" when he howled at the humans, and the other time he thought he would be "Provider" when he brings back the tail of a cow. In the end he is named "Singer" for all the times he sang when he was happy, lonely or sad.
24321367	/m/07s5r49	The Sound of Fishsteps	Buket Uzuner			 Turkish prodigy Afife Piri, a descendent of Ottoman-Turkish cartographer Piri Reis, is invited, along with 87 other international selects, to take part in a UN sponsored retreat in an unnamed Scandinavian city. At the retreat she encounters a man claiming to be the French novelist Romain Gary, with whom she falls in love, and the descendents of other iconoclastic geniuses including Joan of Arc, Anaïs Nin, Nehru and Edvard Grieg. The mysterious director of the retreat, Dr. Gunnar, however, has a secret agenda that is slowly revealed.
24322212	/m/047m6rz	The Quest Begins	Cherith Baldry	2008-05-27	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel follows the adventure of four bears, Kallik (a polar bear), Lusa (a black bear), Toklo (a brown bear) and Ujurak (a shapeshifter who is usually a brown bear). The novel first follows Kallik who lives with her mother and brother. However, they are separated on ice when a group of killer whales attacks them and Kallik must survive by herself. On her own, Kallik decides to go to a gathering place for polar bears that her mom told her about. At the gathering, Kallik asks other polar bears if they have seen her brother, but no one has. Alone, Kallik meets a female bear Nanuk who helps Kallik around the area. However, Nanuk is killed by a helicopter crash shipping her and Kallik back to the wild and Nanuk tells Kallik about a place where the ice never melts. Hearing this, Kallik sets off to this place. Somewhere is the Rocky Mountains in southern Canada, Toklo's mom is bringing Toklo and his sickly brother to a river to teach them how to catch salmon. However, in insanity, Toklo's mom abandons Toklo after a mental break because his brother died. Now Toklo must survive on his own, just like Kallik. Wandering randomly, Toklo meets an injured human who requests Toklo to retrieve certain herbs, which he does. The human introduces himself as a Shapeshifter named Ujurak and the two travel together. Lusa is a pampered black bear living in the Bear Bowl, a zoo in Canada. Despite knowing that the wilderness is harsh, Lusa has dreams about one day escaping and living outside. Her father, King, once lived in the wild and is strongly against Lusa's idea. One day, Toklo's mom is brought into the Bear Bowl. She talks with Lusa about how much she regretted abandoning her cubs, but that it was too late and that she couldn't find them. Hearing this, Lusa decides to bring a message to Toklo about how sorry his mother is. Although Lusa succeeds in escaping, she realises the dangers of the wild. At the end of the story, Ujurak and Toklo meet up with Lusa.
24322624	/m/07sc7fq	Child of All Nations	Pramoedya Ananta Toer	1980	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story continues where This Earth of Mankind leaves off, shortly after Annelies has departed by ship to the Netherlands with Panji Darman secretly in tow. Having promised to watch over Annelies, Panji discovers her room on the ship, only to be recruited by the ship's crew in taking care of the severely ailing young woman. Panji continues to accompany her after arriving in the Netherlands where she unfortunately passes away after rapidly deteriorating. He relays this information back to Nyai and Minke through multiple letters. From this point, Minke attempts to continue on with his life by writing for Maarten Nijman and the Soerabaiaasch Nieuws, however he is challenged by his good friend Jean Marais, as well as Kommer later on, to write in Javanese or Malay. They argue that in doing so, he would be helping his people in their struggle to overcome the oppression laid down by the Dutch occupying their nation. At first, Minke refuses on the grounds that it would tarnish his rising, refutable position in his influential field. His opinion quickly changes after recording an interview between Nijman and a member of the Chinese Young Generation, Khouw Ah Soe. After being a part of the unique experience, Minke feels quite proud, as well as curious of Soe's position and beliefs. Soon after, he discovers the article he wrote was completely ignored, only to be replaced by Nijman's self-report of Soe being a Chinese radical, opposing old Chinese traditions, and generally being a trouble-maker. Minke feels hurt from the encounter, and decides to take Kommer up on his offer to visit the Sidoarjo region and discover who his people really are.
24330081	/m/07s6ymj	Search the Sky	Cyril M. Kornbluth	1954		 Halsey's Planet is in decline, and when a generation ship arrives, having failed to contact six other planets, Ross is sent to discover the state of the interstellar colonies. He is given a ship which can make the trip from colony to colony almost instantaneously. The technology used in the ship has been kept secret because it could give rise to interstellar war if one colony decided to conquer others. However, the isolated populations are also affected by genetic drift resulting in a decline in their societies. The first planet he visits has been completely destroyed, the second is a gerontocratic travesty of a democracy, and the third is a repressive matriarchy. On the way he picks up companions Helena and Bernie. The next planet they visit is supposed to be Earth, but it turns out not to be; not only are its planetary statistics different from Earth's, but it is populated by a race of almost-identical people called Joneses. This planet, also called Jones, is ruled by a cult of total conformity in all areas of life, including genetic phenotype. Ross discovers that the equation whose meaning he has been seeking refers to the loss of unfixed genes in a small population, which explains the degeneracy of the planets he has visited. Dr. Sam Jones learns that he has been worshiping an equation on genetic drift, and joins the little band. They sort out their navigational problem and finally make it to Earth, which is a civilisation of morons protected by a small minority of hidden geniuses, like the situation in "The Marching Morons". Ross realises that the problem with all the degenerate worlds is their isolation; luckily he has the FTL drive and so sets about rectifying the problem by bringing them together.
24336481	/m/07sbzmm	The Cream of the Jest	James Branch Cabell	1917		 The book begins with a chapter in which Richard Harrowby, a Virginian cosmetics manufacturer, promises to explain the sudden appearance of "genius" in his late neighbor, Felix Kennaston. His story will be based on his notes from a conversation with Kennaston. There follow the last six chapters of Kennaston's first draft. A clerk named Horvendile is in love with the heroine, Ettare, but sees her as the ideal woman who is in all desired women, not someone he can love with the disappointments of living with a flesh-and-blood person. He brings about the climactic confrontation between hero and villain. After the hero wins, Horvendile reveals to him and Ettare that they are characters in a book and that he is the Author's stand-in. He must return to his own, prosaic country. As safe-conduct back to Storisende, Ettare gives him half of a talisman she wears, the Sigil of Scoteia. Having composed this while walking in his garden, Kennaston realizes he has dropped a piece of lead: a broken half of a disk inscribed with indecipherable characters. He surmises he was unconsciously inspired by it to invent the sigil. That night he falls asleep looking at the gleaming metal and has a lucid dream of Ettare, who is also aware that she is dreaming. When he touches her, he wakes up. Kennaston writes a new ending for his novel. After a reviewer condemns it as indecent, it becomes a bestseller. When Kennaston sleeps facing light reflected from the mysterious sigil, he dreams that he as Horvendile meets Ettare in various times and places, but she is always untouchable. (He can set up the reflections conveniently because he sleeps in a separate room from his wife; their relations had long been friendly but mutually uncomprehending.) Fascinated by the sigil and mysterious clues he receives, by his dreams, and by the ironic philosophical speculations they lead him to, he loses interest in ordinary life apart from his next book. Just before that book is published, he enters his wife's dressing room in her absence and finds the other half of the sigil. He concludes that she was Ettare all along, and he remembers his former love for her. However, she ignores his tentative affection, and her only comment when he shows her the sigil is that their neighbor Harrowby might know something about it. She throws both pieces away. Without the inspiration of his dreams, Kennaston largely stops writing. His wife dies. As Harrowby is interested in the occult, Kennaston follows his wife's hint by showing him the sigil (found in her dressing room) and telling him about the dreams. Harrowby recognizes it as the mock-antique lid of his company's brand of cold cream. He does not disillusion Kennaston, but "gently" raises the possibility that the sigil might not be miraculous. Kennaston scornfully replies that such a possibility would not change what the sigil taught him: everything in life is miraculous. Cabell himself drew the book's image of the sigil, which looks like writing in a strange alphabet. When turned upside-down and looked at in a mirror, it reads, "James Branch Cabell made this book so that he who wills may read the story of man's eternally unsatisfied hunger in search of beauty. Ettare stays inaccessible always and her loveliness is his to look on only in his dreams".
24340683	/m/07s6p9x	The Little Stranger	Sarah Waters	2009-04	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Faraday, a country doctor with humble beginnings, is called to Hundreds Hall, an 18th century estate that has lived far beyond its former glory. He treats a young maid who dislikes the large, drafty emptiness of the house, but strikes a friendship with Caroline Ayres, the unmarried daughter of the family, her brother Roderick, who continues to heal physically and mentally from his experiences as a pilot in World War II, and their mother, the lady of the estate. He begins treating Roderick's lingering badly healed wounds and becomes a family friend, knowing them well enough to realise they are in dire financial straits and unable to keep the house in any comfortable condition without selling their lands or objects in the house. In an attempt to cheer up the family and possibly match Caroline to a potential husband, they throw a party for a few family friends when disaster strikes. A couple brings their young child who is mauled by Caroline's ancient and previously gentle Labrador retriever. Roderick begins to behave moodily and drink heavily. Faraday believes the strain of managing the estate is at fault. Roderick, however, divulges that something appeared in his room the night the dog attacked the girl. It was first in his room trying to harm him, and that he must keep the unseen force focused on him so as not to direct its attention to his sister or mother. Spots begin appearing on his walls looking like burns, and he is committed to a mental hospital after Caroline awakes in the middle of the night to find his room on fire though he is passed out in a drunken stupor. Faraday and Caroline waver between romance and confused platonic friendship. Other sounds in the house alarm Caroline and Mrs Ayres and their two maids. They find curious childish writing on the walls where these activities have taken place. The maids' bells sound without anyone calling them; the phone rings in the middle of the night with no one on the line. A 19th century tube communication device linking the abandoned nursery to the kitchen begins to sound, scaring the maids. When Mrs Ayres goes to investigate, she is locked in the nursery where Susan, her much-loved first daughter, died of diphtheria at eight years old. Experiencing shadows and indiscernible fluttering and frantic to escape, Mrs Ayres pounds the windows open, cutting her arms. After Caroline and the maids free her and she recovers, she comes to believe and take comfort that Susan is around her at all times, that Susan is impatient to be with her though she sometimes harms her. Caroline and the maid find one morning Mrs Ayres has hanged herself. The day of Mrs Ayres' funeral, Faraday and Caroline set plans to marry in six weeks' time. Caroline, however, is listless and uninterested in the wedding, eventually calling it off and making plans to sell Hundreds Hall. Faraday is unable to believe it and tries several times to talk Caroline out of it to no avail. On the night of their would-be wedding, Faraday has a call that keeps him out and comes home to learn that Caroline hurled herself off of the second floor onto a marble landing, killing herself. The maid reports at the inquest that she awoke to hear Caroline go upstairs to inspect a sound she heard in the darkened hall. She simply said "You!" then fell to her death. Three years later, Faraday continues to visit the abandoned mansion, unable to find what Caroline saw.
24342325	/m/07s70t2	Monsters of Men	Patrick Ness	2010	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book picks up where the previous one left off. A Spackle army marches on New Prentisstown from one direction, and the forces of the Answer from the other direction. Mayor Prentiss has been freed by Todd to help defend the city, whilst Viola is with the Answer and the scout ship, in hopes of acquiring additional aid. The Mayor assembles his army and orders attacks on the Spackle army at the waterfall near the city. The Spackle, however, while outgunned, are thousands in number, and their weaponry has evolved since the first war thirteen years prior. While keeping the bows and arrows, a new weapon that unleashes white 'sticky' fire is mounted on the back of their bullock -like creatures, labelled ‘battlemores’ by the settlers. This, along with another weapon - white sticks that shoot a mixture of organic chemicals - easily beat back the Mayor's first wave. Todd is nearly obliterated by the fire weapon, but uses his Noise in the same way he used it against the Mayor to incapacitate the rider of the battlemore. A second wave of soldiers, this time utilising artillery to cover them, are able to send the Spackle back in retreat. Meanwhile, Viola finds Mistress Coyle with the scout ship, which has landed at the base of the demolished communications tower. Two friends from the settler convoy, Simone and Bradley have been sent to look for Viola, and are shocked at the state she, and the settlement, is in. Mistress Coyle, at first surprised that Viola is alive, quickly recovers, and tries to explain her actions. But Viola silences her and warns Simone and Bradley not to trust the healer. Then, concerned with Todd’s safety, Viola asks Bradley to launch a survey probe to scope out the scene. After seeing the war and Spackle weaponry, and faced with the risk of losing Todd, Viola nearly launches one of the scout ship's point-to-point missiles at the battle. However, the Mayor’s secret artillery is fired first. Bradley and Simone accept Viola's decision that nobody is trustworthy, save for Todd, and send the probe to observe the Spackle encampment, revealing the enormous numbers they have. The narrative then switches to a Spackle in the midst of the Spackles’ camp. The spackle is 1017, called the Return, and exists as a separate entity to the Land, the Spackles. He is the only surviving Burden, and seeks revenge on the Clearing for killing his ‘one’. His viewpoint ends with Bradley's probe being shot down. The next day, Spackle dam off the river far down, blocking the water supply, and attack the Mayor's camp with a bow-launched burning boomerang that is capable of returning after hitting several targets and then being re-launched in a matter of seconds. Coyle attempts to manipulate Viola to launch a missile to save ‘her boy’, but Bradley is heavily against it. Todd, being watched by a new probe, becomes a stationary target when his horse, Angharrad, refuses to move and he refuses to leave her (he cannot do the same thing he did to Manchee). When Viola thinks she sees Todd getting hit by one boomerang, though it was actually the Mayor's horse, she launches the missile, which causes a catastrophic explosion. This kills all the Spackle archers and blocks the way up and down the hillside, separating the two armies. The Mayor then sends the thought ‘I am the circle and the circle is me’ into Todd, softly, though Todd objects and threatens to hurt him. Then he notices that this quietens his Noise, and pushes away the memories of war, and so he finds himself repeating it for comfort and power. Viola arrives at the town square, shaken that she caused a war for Todd. Todd tells her that he would have done the same, but she finds little comfort. She then notices that Todd’s Noise is quieter, and he sees that she is ill, but the two do not elaborate on either conditions. The narrative switches again to the Return, who is arguing with the Sky, the leader of the Spackle, and demands more action and attacks. The Sky refuses to do anything that will not be for the good of the Land, but asks the Return to trust him, and takes his to the Pathway’s End. He reveals ‘the Source’, a human captured before the war began. The Sky offers the Source to the Return if the two armies reach peace. The Return is unsure why such a person would be considered a reward until he recognises the Source as Ben, Todd's adoptive father. Meanwhile, refugees begin to pour in from the outskirts of New Prentisstown - most of the men joining the Mayor's forces in the town square, while most of the women joining Coyle's forces at the landing site. The Spackle begin attacking the town at random, destroying various targets and killing any scout parties the Mayor sends. The white stick weapons are realised to be some sort of ballistic weapon that shoot acid, which vaporizes on leaving the barrel, but keeps cohesion until it hits a target. Eventually, the water store is attacked, and nearly all of the remaining water is lost. During this time, the Mayor loses control over ordering soldiers with his Noise, and Todd hits him and takes over. The Mayor praises him for having such ability, but Todd is preoccupied with the discovery of James’ body (a soldier who feeds the horses, drowned in the water tank flood). He would not have been killed if Todd had not controlled him to go get extra water for Angharrd, and this causes Todd to regret having controlled him for his own desires. Now without water, and the Answer without food, the two parties are forced into a peace talk at the destroyed House of Healing. The Mayor and Todd meet Coyle, Simone, Bradley and Lee, and Todd and Viola quickly disclose the fact that they have brought additional soldiers who are in hiding. However, Todd doesn’t reveal why his Noise is becoming harder to hear, and Viola refuses to acknowledge that the infection from her arm band is starting to seriously affect her. After negotiations, a peace is reached and a transfer of food is made from New Prentisstown to Coyle's camp. Now that the two groups are working together, the Mayor lures Spackle out to fight them, and the Answer provides bombs to destroy the attacking Spackle. Bradley, nicknamed ‘the Humanitarian’, angrily convinces Todd and Viola to stop this. A Spackle is captured by the Mayor, and then sent back to the encampment with two messages. The Mayor sends one of absolute silence, and Todd tells them that they want peace. He hears the Spackle call him ‘the Knife’ before running away. Angry that the Mayor undermined her, Mistress Coyle sends a bomb into the Spackle stronghold. The Spackle respond by sending the same Spackle that was captured, telling them to send two people to meet the Sky on the hill tomorrow morning. Viola and Bradley, who has caught the Noise germ and will thus appear more trustworthy, are sent to talk. The Sky greets them, but one individual - 1017, the survivor of the Mayor's genocide, and the Spackle who had sworn vengeance on Todd when he was saved - recognizes Viola as Todd's ‘one’, and attempts to murder her. However, he stops when he sees the ID band that had been banned onto her wrist, and in his surprise is taken away by the Land. Hesitantly, the peace talks resume. That night, however, the Spackle launch a surprise attack on the Mayor and Todd. But the Mayor, who had read the Sky’s Noise through the messenger, knew of this plan beforehand and had already set up his artillery and soldiers. After killing the attacking Spackle, the Mayor grabs Todd’s comm and tells the Sky that he can read him and that he should forfeit. The Sky, shocked, agrees. The Return, meanwhile, has returned to the Pathway’s End to kill Ben as peace has now been reached. The Sky meets him there, and watches as the Return fails to murder Ben, unable to kill just like Todd. He resents this, but the Sky tells him he will need this knowledge when he becomes the Sky, and then wakes up Ben, ignoring the Return’s confusion at this statement. When Ben wakes, he can speak in the language of the Land. The next day, peace is reached, though negotiations are scheduled to continue. The Mayor strategically announces that they have beaten the Spackle to the hilltop campers, and that a cure for the ID band infection has been found. Mistress Coyle is outraged and convinced that the Mayor planned this, and takes to testing the cure, warning that audience that the Mayor is up to something. Her accusations are met with booing and anger, and she recedes in bitter anger. Soon, testing reveals that the cure uses an aggressive antibiotic mixed with an aloe the Mayor claims he found in Spackle weaponry, which allows the medicine to disperse ten to fifteen times faster. Viola asks Todd to decide if she should take the cure. At the town square, the Mayor teaches Todd how to read by giving his skill of reading through Noise. After reading his mother’s diary, Todd asks the Mayor if the cure is real, and the Mayor simply says it will. Convinced, Todd brings the bandages to Viola the next morning to treat her infection. A little later, Mistress Coyle delivers a speech on her intentions to resign and hand over leadership to the Mayor fully. However, it quickly turns out to be a plot to kill the Mayor using a bomb strapped to her own person. Todd, in an attempt to save Simone who is in front of Mistress Coyle, inadvertently saves the Mayor instead, foiling her plan and revealing that he can control people with his Noise (as he ordered Wilf to jump from his position near Mistress Coyle). The Mayor thanks Todd endlessly but Todd is horrified that he has saved the Mayor subconsciously and not Simone, as proven by the replay on nearby probes. Viola is similarly horrified, unsure of who Todd has become. She tells him that she hates his silence, and they fight, Todd convinced that the Mayor has changed and Viola accusing him of turning into the Mayor. She then tells him that she cannot trust him anymore; that he isn’t him anymore, causing his Noise to flare up in anger, shock and hurt. The Mayor interrupts before more can be said, intent on delivering another speech to show the citizens that he is okay. As the Mayor starts the speech, and asks Todd to be his son, Ben and the Return arrive. Todd, overwhelmed by happiness, launches himself at Ben and leaves the Mayor on stage, ordering people to get out of his way as he runs. The two embrace, and the Mayor is left feeling betrayed and unwanted. Now that Ben can speak the Spackle’s language, he prefers using his Noise to communicate, and, consequently, Todd’s noise opens up around Ben as they talk. After this, Todd asks Viola to leave New Prentisstown with him when the war is over, and declares that he doesn’t care about what will happen to everyone without his supervision. His Noise is audible once more, and he openly thinks about how beautiful Viola is and how he wants to hold her. He hastily apologises, but Viola kisses him, and thinks that it feels like ‘finally’. The present party splits to settle a peace immediately, leaving Todd and the Mayor alone. Angered that Todd no longer cares about him, and wishes to leave him the moment peace is established, the Mayor shoots Ivan and steals the scout ship, kidnapping Todd in the process. Learning how to operate the scout ship by stealing Bradley’s Noise, the mayor launches the missiles at the Spackle, where Bradley, Viola and Ben are still negotiating terms. However, the missiles and 'cluster bombs' later fired does not explode. The Mayor decides to try something different, remembering a trick Bradley’s grandfather had taught his grandson. He remixes the fuel and releases it. The fuel mixture is the same used by Viola's campfire box in 'The Knife of Never Letting Go' when only a few drops blew up the bridge between old Prentisstown and Farbranch. The fire kills many Spackles, including the Sky, and the Return becomes the new Sky. Todd attempts to call Viola, but is cut off by the mayor. However, Todd manages to convey that they are headed for the ocean. The new sky then releases the water as a retort. In this process, the town is swept away, and the army, previously controlled by the mayor, returns to self-control. Humans and the Sky then manages a ceasefire. The Mayor then lands at the ocean. The new Sky decides to attack the settlers, while the Mayor had ordered his remaining captains to attack the Answer and march into the town square to die. However, Lee, using a rifle with Wilf's help, kills Captain Tate and the soldiers join the remaining people. Wilf and Ben manage to dissuade the Sky from the attack, Wilf’s honest and open Noise showing the Sky how to listen to the Land, leaving the Mayor disappointed. Viola and Bradley now ride to the ocean in hopes of aiding Todd. However, Acorn, Viola's horse, dies from exhaustion, and she is forced to ride Angharrad while Bradley is left behind. At the ocean, the Mayor congratulates Todd, then says he will be a fine leader of New World - a world he doesn't want to be a part of, as the mayor is dying, by his 'too much knowledge'. The mayor then fights with Todd, using only their noises, and Todd wins. The mayor then commits suicide by walking into the sea, where the killer fish eats him. The Sky arrives on his battlemore with Ben. He sees Viola and Todd, but mistakes Todd for the Mayor and shoots him in the chest with the acid rifle. Todd’s Noise disappears, and he dies, driving Viola to threaten shooting the Sky back. The Sky, revealing that he shot despite knowing that it might have been Todd, realises how wrong he was to do so, and feels the regret Todd felt when killing a Spackle in book one. Viola stops short of killing him, realising that it would cause never-ending war, and that no one would remember Todd, and everything that he had done, after. She warns the Sky to get out of her sight, and returns to Todd. Ben suddenly asks if she can hear anything, swearing that he can hear Todd’s Noise. The Spackle attempt to cure Todd with their medicine, and house him in the Pathway’s End. The remedies are working, and his Noise returns in burst on and off. The main convoy is about to arrive to a large ceremony, one which Viola will not attend because she will not leave Todd’s side until he wakes up, though she knows that he will be changed, like Ben was. The Sky has promised not to take the cure for the band infection until Todd is cured, in an act of self-discipline, but Viola does not forgive him and will not let him enter to see Todd. Everyday, Viola continues to read Todd's mother's journal to him, hoping that he will hear and come back. The epilogue cycles through Todd's experiences in the coma. He is entering his old memories, at his school, at Farbranch, but also human and Spackle memories from all over New World. He searches for Viola, unsure who she is, who he is. Every now and then, he hears abstracts from his mother’s diary, and Viola, and he begs Viola to keep calling for him. The novel ends with hope that he’ll return, the last lines being "Keep calling for me Viola-, Cuz here I come".
24349475	/m/07s6085	Freddy and the Ignormus			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 :"'When you’re alone,' said Freddy firmly, 'and you hear or see something scares you, the thing to do is walk right up and find out what it is.'" (p. 9) In answer, the stuttering frog Theodore challenges him to visit the Big Woods. The Woods were owned by Mr. Grimsby, who attacked animals. After he left, the Woods' reputation worsened. Not for the first or last time, Freddy and Theodore find it is easier to be brave when not in the Woods. When startled, they flee outside, only to meet their enemy Simon the Rat, who has seen their flight. He warns about a mysterious, killer "Ignormus". Simon’s return prompts a general meeting of the F.A.R. (First Animal Republic), a group once organized to tend the farm while the Beans vacationed. Many do not believe that Freddy was in the Big Woods, including Charles the rooster. :"'Or is it, as some old legends tell, a bird with the head of a lion?...Is its name, as Simon says, the Ignormus? No one knows.' :'If you just got up to tell us that you don’t know anything,' said Old Whibley...'you can sit down again. We knew that before.'" (p. 51) Freddy dares Charles to go into the Big Woods with him. Charles is frightened, but his wife Henrietta bullies him. The rooster and Freddy arrive independently in the woods. Freddy’s imagination turns a sighting of the rooster into a creature with a long snout and tail feathers. Charles in turn mistakes the pig. After Charles brags widely, they discover that they only saw one other. The animal’s bank is robbed, the Ignormus is suspected. Freddy disguises himself as a hunter, borrowing Mr. Bean’s shotgun. While investigating the old Grismby house Freddy fires at what he thinks is a snake, knocking himself out. When he revives the shotgun is missing. At the farm, the practical cow, Mrs. Wiggins modestly questions why such a terrible Ignormus would not confront Freddy. "'I don’t know what I mean...I just say what I think. You’re smart. It’s up to you to figure out what I mean.'" (p.&nbsp;130) The Bean farm is robbed, and missing items are found in Freddy’s pigpen. Freddy gets a report that animals are being threatened in the name of the Ignormus. Investigating, an extortion letter in familiar handwriting is found. Jinx the cat is unimpressed with the pig’s deductions: :"'To the eye of the trained detective nothing is ever just what it seems to be.' :'What does that make you, then?' said the cat." (p. 160) Suspiciously, walking the Big Woods road, seeking the letter writer, they once again meet Simon. Then a huge white shape with horns floats from the woods, and they flee. Returning to the Grimsby house, the missing shotgun is pointed at Freddy and Theodore from a window. Retreating to the bridge where the animals are leaving goods extorted from them, they encounter Charles talking with the Ignormus’ small henchman. Hidden, Freddy mimics the henchman’s voice, insulting the rooster and sending him into a fighting fury. Charles wins the fight (and gains the reputation that follows him through the rest of the series). They discover that the henchman is Simon’s son just before he escapes. Frightened animals are starting to leave the farm when Freddy gives a speech pointing out that they are "deserting under fire". Animal patriotism and fighting spirit are roused. A beetle volunteers to climb up the shotgun barrels to gnaw out the gunshot. F.A.R. president Mrs. Wiggins organizes her troops. Charging the Grimsby house, they are halted by Simon. But he just has insults and seeks no compromise. The charge continues, the gun goes off, the gunpowder alone slightly injuring Freddy. The house is overrun, but they only find Simon and his gang. Old Whibley the owl reveals the final mystery, dropping on Freddy the weighted bedsheet used to allow the "Ignormus" to drift through air. Mrs. Bean is sympathetic about the rats' trials, and they accept her offer of hospitality, except Simon, "I don’t want kind words, and I don’t deserve them." (p.&nbsp;278) The rest of the animals throw a party. But at the end, Jinx observes that there will always be "Ignormuses".
24351089	/m/0crhd1c	The Other Lands	David Anthony Durham	2009-09-15	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Several years have passed since the demise of Hanish Mein. Corinn Akaran rules with an iron grip on the Known World's many races. She hones her skills in sorcery by studying The Book of Elenet, and she dotes on her young son, Aaden – Hanish's child – raising him to be her successor. Mena Akaran, still the warrior princess she became fighting the eagle god Maeben, has been battling the monsters released by the Santoth's corrupted magic. In her hunt she discovers a creature wholly unexpected, one that awakens emotions in her she has long suppressed. And Dariel Akaran, once a brigand of the Outer Isles, has devoted his labors to rebuilding the ravaged empire brick by brick. Each of the Akaran royals is finding their way in the post-war world. But the queen's peace is difficult to maintain, and things are about to change. When the League brings news of upheavals in the Other Lands, Corinn sends Dariel across the Grey Slopes as her emissary. From the moment he sets foot on that distant continent, he finds a chaotic swirl of treachery, ancient grudges, intrigue and exoticism. He comes face to face with the slaves his empire has long sold into bondage. His arrival ignites a firestorm that once more puts the Known World in threat of invasion. A massive invasion. One that dwarfs anything the Akarans have yet faced. <!--
24356808	/m/07s8ykc	A Grass Rope	William Mayne	1957	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Adam Forrest comes to re-paint the outside of the Unicorn Inn in Vendale he is determined to make sense of an old story told in the Dyson and Owland families. Long ago, it is said, Dyson the innkeeper desired to marry Gertrude Owland, the daughter of a knight, who lived on the other side of the ridge in Thoradale. She was willing, but the knight refused permission and trained a pack of hounds, together with a fierce unicorn brought from overseas, to defend her. Dyson used magic to entice the animals into the land of the fairies under the fell, while he eloped with Gertrude. However, he did not know that all the Owland fortune was in the collars of the animals, and he was later drowned by the fairies while trying to retrieve it. According to local legend, the hounds can sometimes still be heard hunting under the hill. Mary and Nan Owland live at Lew Farm, near the site of the old Owland house. Mary is young enough to believe in the fairies of the tale and to believe that the hounds and the unicorn are still alive under the fell, while her older sister Nan does not believe any of it. Adam thinks there is a common-sense explanation and, quite possibly, a treasure to find. While repainting the inn sign he finds an ancient hunting horn embedded in the frame. He guesses that Dyson used it to draw the hounds towards a steep black cliff between the dales known as Yowncorn Yat (local dialect for "Unicorn Gate"), the cliff having acted as an echo wall. One night Mary sneaks out to Yowncorn Yat and crawls through a tunnel under the hill which she thinks is an entrance to fairyland. She catches one of the hounds, except that it turns out to be a fox, and unknowingly picks up some silver treasure and a horned skull at the bottom of a mineshaft. Adam is sure he has worked it all out except that he cannot account for the skull which could only have belonged to a unicorn.
24359330	/m/07m_y	The Anome	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 It tells the story of a boy growing to manhood in the land of Shant, a society composed of many different, and wildly individual cantons, some of which are run by cults. Each adult wears an explosive torc which can be detonated by remote command, bringing about instant death by decapitation. The torcs are controlled by an anonymous dictator, the Anome, whose identity is literally unknown. Because those whose heads are exploded are selected primarily by the cantonal leaders, for violations of local law, the Anome is able to operate with only a handful of assistants, or 'Benevolences', who themselves do not know his identity.
24361097	/m/07scbr2	The Family Frying Pan				 Set initially in Tsarist Russia, the novel tells of Sara Moses, always known as 'Mrs Moses'. She is a sixteen year old servant girl who is the sole survivor of a pogrom in her shtetl. She manages to escape and is able to bring with her only a heavy frying pan found in the ruins of the Rabbi's house. She travels across Russia, hoping to find freedom and safety, utilising the pan to cook what food she is able to find. As she travels, she is joined by various fellow-escapees from Russia. Every night, around the cooking fire, each traveller tells a tale from his or her life. Mrs Moses eventually finds sanctuary in Australia and marries a fellow (non-Jewish) Russian refugee. Their great-granddaughter, the narrator, continues to cook fish every Friday evening for shabbat dinner, using the frying pan, which is possessed of a Russian Soul.
24366687	/m/07sbdw9	The Incendiary's Trail	James McCreet			 The book begins with the grisly murder of a conjoined (‘Siamese’) twin who is part of a travelling freak show. Investigating the crime is Sergeant George Williamson, a member of the newly formed Metropolitan Police Detective Force. However, when police regulations prevent Williamson from investigating the crime as freely as he might, a suspected criminal is recruited by the detective’s superior, Inspector Albert Newsome. The investigation leads the policeman and their new recruit to a blackmailer and arsonist (or ‘incendiary’ in the language of the time) who – unknown to the policemen – knows their unwilling ‘volunteer’ personally and has scores to settle. The story has a number of murders – one of them a classic ‘locked-room’ mystery – and also some large set pieces, including a public hanging, a masked ball and a balloon chase.
24386070	/m/07s59cj	The Pyramid. The Soviet Mafia		1990-09-27	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The 260 pages of the book are divided in 27 chapters. The first part describes the motives for the Soviet corruption. The second part shows how Soviet Intelligence finds out about so called Uzbek Affair. To the common Russians some names in this book became synonymous with corruption, nepotism and the Great Cotton Scandal of the late Brezhnev period. At last few episodes from life of Brezhnev's family (Galina Brezhneva and others).
24389759	/m/07s942f	Petrogypsies			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Henry Lee MacFarland is a big ugly man, a farmer who is so strong that he has to be gentle, whether he's dealing with livestock or with normal people. Sprocket is a hundred and twelve feet of healthy young male Driller, dark as a moonless night, with a spiked tongue that can bore four miles into the earth in his relentless quest for the thing he loves best—Texas heavy crude oil. Doc, Razer, Big Mac, and the others in Sprocket's crew are the roughest, rowdiest bunch in the oilpatch. They live inside of Sprocket's body and travel like gypsies from one drilling job to another. They work like animals. Party like 'em, too. Then there's Star, the stunning Casing gypsy who has a hankering for fine cigars, a killer instinct at poker, and a taste for big, ugly, strong men. Looking for adventure, Henry Lee leaves the farm behind and signs on with Sprocket's crew. He gets a lot more "adventure" - as in monsters, mayhem, and murder — than he bargained for.
24390007	/m/07s5kzr	You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas	Augusten Burroughs			 The book is a collection of autobiographical holiday stories recounted by the author.
24395786	/m/07s9tms	End the Fed	Ron Paul	2009-09-16	{"/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/05qt0": "Politics"}	 Paul argues that "in the post-meltdown world, it is irresponsible, ineffective, and ultimately useless to have a serious economic debate without considering and challenging the role of the Federal Reserve." In End the Fed, Paul draws on American history, economics, and anecdotes from his own political life to argue that the Fed is both corrupt and unconstitutional. He states that it is inflating currency today at nearly a Weimar or Zimbabwe level, which Paul asserts is a practice that threatens to put the United States into an inflationary depression where the US dollar, which is the reserve currency of the world, would suffer severe devaluation. A major theme throughout the work also revolves around the idea of inflation as a hidden tax making warfare much easier to wage. Because people will reject the notion of increasing direct taxes, inflation is then used to help service the overwhelming debts incurred through warfare. In turn the purchasing power of the masses is diminished, yet most are unaware. This has the biggest impact on low income individuals since it is a regressive tax. CPI presently does not include food and energy, yet this is where the majority of poor peoples' income is spent. He further maintains that most people are not aware that the Fed — created by the Morgans and Rockefellers at a private club off the coast of Georgia — is actually working against their own personal interests. Instead of protecting the people, the Fed now serves as a cartel where the name of the game is bailout or otherwise known as privatized profits but socialized losses. Paul also draws on the historical links between the creation of central banks and war, explaining how inflation and devaluations have been used as war financing tools in the past by many governments from monarchies to democracies.
24396567	/m/07s69y0	Freddy and the Dragon			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Back from a trip, Freddy is surprised that many in Centerboro want him arrested. Considerable property damage has been done by a gang including a pig looking like Freddy. Investigating, Freddy shows that damage done in one case could not have been done by him. He is still under suspicion, and is called for an unpleasant police questioning. He instructs the A.B.I. (Animal Bureau of Investigation) to search the countryside, and immediately discovers a bull who has been damaging farms and crops. Freddy’s perfume-filled water pistols turn the bull Percy into a smelly laughing stock. He is subdued and they capture him. The search for the gang continues. Most of Centerboro thinks Freddy is responsible for the crimes, but not the “solid” citizens. Since Freddy is the president of his animal bank, the town’s human banker vouches for him: :"'You think that because he is a banker, he is incapable of committing a crime?'... :'Sir,' said Mr. Weezer, 'when a banker commits a crime, it is a big crime, a first-class crime, a crime on a scale with his standing in the community.'" (p. 62) The Bean cow sisters discover that Percy is the father who abandoned them as calves; the bull is unmoved. He refuses to discuss his gang. Freddy had been asked for a suggestion to help a circus. Now Uncle Ben the inventor suggests creating a fire-breathing dragon. The gang begins demands for money. Freddy and Jinx the cat lie in ambush at the money drop site, but are terrified by the appearance along a dark road of a headless horseman. Once they have recovered, Freddy learns from the A.B.I. that many of the gang were seen in that area, including a scruffy pig. Freddy has Samuel Jackson the mole burrow under Percy, to pretend to be his conscience. The mole convinces Percy to behave well, and to reveal the gang’s hideout. Percy reforms his manners so successfully that he becomes popular. Freddy avoids arrest on a technicality. The spiders Mr. and Mrs. Webb are sent to explore the gang’s hideout. They discover a huge, complicated cave system, with many animals and people. Once Uncle Ben’s dragon is ready the animals stake out the cave. The dragon upsets the headless horseman’s activities, but the police are not convinced by the evidence. Scorning the cave map created by the spiders, they send in their own troops. Although Freddy is in disguise to avoid arrest, he and Jinx intercept a new member coming to join the gang. Breaking into his hotel room, they steal the snake doing robberies. The snake is released far away, and the discouraged owner leaves town. Some police troopers exploring the cave are missing. The police decide to use the spider’s map and the animal’s help. The gang is partly captured. The circus is held, and Samuel Jackson’s fake medium makes the animal’s enemy Mrs. Underdunk look foolish. The animals storm the cave, and with the help of Uncle Ben’s atomic station wagon, also trap the headless horseman. The extortion money proves to be in the house of Mr. Anderson — another longstanding enemy. As the series closes, he is finally sent to the penitentiary.
24402970	/m/07s4vsc	Kir Ianulea	Ion Luca Caragiale	1909		 The narrative opens with the rally of all devils, as ordered by "the Overlord of Hell" Dardarot. Probably a replica version of Astaroth, the latter confesses being intrigued by the large number of human victims who claim to have sinned only because of women, and indicates that he considers a method for verifying the truth in this claim. Dardarot decides to send "the little one", Aghiuţă ("Hell's Bells" or "Dickens"), into an extended investigation on Earth. Although received with displays of fatherly affection by Dardarot, the boy is reluctant to perform such tasks, since, as the narrator informs, he is not on his first mission among humans: previously, he had served an old woman, and forced by her to expend his energy on the futile task of straightening a curly hair. Unimpressed, Dardarot provides him with 100,000 gold coins (the bounty confiscated from a stingy mortal), with the indication that he is to marry and live with his human wife for ten years. Transformed into a handsome young mortal and evicted from Hell by his moody overlord, Aghiuţă decides to head for Bucharest, a city with "room for parties" and many business opportunities. He arrives in the Wallachian capital and books a room at Manuc's Inn, before renting a cluster of townhouses and gardens in Negustori area (the merchants' district, close to Colţea Hospital). The new guest intrigues Aghiuţă's new landlord, who sends the old and cunning housekeeper Marghioala to engage him in conversation and find out his story. Recommending himself as Ianulea "of Arvanite stock", the young man explains that he is from near Mount Athos (Sfântagora), in Ottoman Greece, the son of olive tree planters. He provides an elaborate story about his early years, claiming that both his parents died at sea, while taking him on pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—victims of bowel obstruction caused by eating beans after radishes. He recounts having been kept on as a servant and boy seaman by the brutal captain of the ship, and having survived a number of near shipwrecks, and then purchasing his own vessel. After further such adventures, Aghiuţă-Ianulea claims, he had been able to amass a fortune and settle in a peaceful country. He also boasts knowledge of several languages without access to formal studies, and claims that his knowledge of Romanian will put Wallachian locals to shame. In the end, Ianulea threatens Marghioala not to share his secret with anyone else, aware that such a warning will only entice her to spread the story around the neighborhood. Rumor spreads of Ianulea's fortune and the young man, referred to as a kir ("sir", from the Greek κύρ), becomes the center of interest in high society, being invited to events organized by boyars and merchants alike. The details of his account become well-known, his deeds magnified by popular imagination, and, as a consequence, the entire neighborhood is convinced that beans should never be eaten after radishes. Meanwhile, Ianulea begins courting Acriviţa, the daughter of unsuccessful trader Hagi Cănuţă, who is beautiful and well-proportioned, but has mild esotropia. Although she can offer him no dowry, he decides to marry her, and their wedding is an occasion for Ianulea to display his insatiable taste for luxury. The day after their union, Acriviţa (also referred to as Ianuloaia, "Ianulea's woman") undergoes a sudden change in character from "gentle and amendable" to "tougher and uppity", entitling herself master of the household and exercising control over her husband's affairs. She is also increasingly jealous, constantly spying on her husband and ordering her servants to do the same, but does not feel accountable for her own actions. She therefore hosts lavish parties and card game sessions in her husband's house, and irritates him by defaming her own friends. During one such gathering, she informs her guests that a female acquaintance of hers has been fornicating with one of the Wallachian Prince's sons, with a consul of the Russian Empire, and even, after being banished to Căldăruşani Monastery, with an Orthodox monk. Acriviţa also claims that the unnamed friend plots to "break" her household by committing adultery with Ianulea. This enrages Ianulea, and the couple begin shouting abuse at each other, while their stunned guests look on. The Ianuleas eventually reconcile and the kir is placated, addressing his wife as parigboria tu kosmu (παρηγοριά του κόσμου, "consolation of the world"). Unbeknown to him, Acriviţa has by then begun selling various objects of value in his property to feed her gambling habit. Tricking Ianulea with displays of her affection, she also persuades him to provide a dowry for her two unmarried sisters, as well as capital for her two brothers' respective businesses. Ianulea proceeds to service this and other whims ("had she asked for the Colţea Belfry on a silver platter, kir Ianulea would have brought it to her on a silver platter"). As a result, Ianule's fortune is steadily depleted, and he comes to rely on expected proceeds from his investment in the business of his brothers-in-law, while steadily falling into debt. While his credit rating crumbles, Acriviţa's itinerant siblings return with bad news: one has lost his ship in front of İzmir, the other has been robbed at the Leipzig Trade Fair. Ianulea's only option is to flee Bucharest in a haste and escape his creditors. As he rides past Cuţitul de Argint Church, he notices that he is being pursued by armed guards, sent by the Bucharest Aga to lock him into a debtors' prison. He abandons his horse and runs up a hill and into a vineyard, pleading with the keeper to provide him with shelter. The latter, who presents himself as Negoiţă, reluctantly accepts to do so when Ianulea assures him that his pursuers are not boyars. In exchange for his help, Ianulea lets him on his secret identity, and promises to reward him. He explains: "Whenever you hear that the devil's got into a woman, a wife, or a girl, whatever, no matter the place where they live and no matter what station in life they have, you should know it's about me that they're talking. You go right away to the respective house for I won't leave the woman until you chase me out... Naturally that seeing you cure their precious jewel they will offer you a reward". The devil leaves the vineyard, and the focus moves on Negoiţă. Catching rumor of a demonic possession in Colentina neighborhood, where a rich girl has come to speak in tongues, shouting and divulging all sorts of embarrassing secrets. The vineyard keeper promises to relieve her suffering in exchange for 100 gold coins, and Ianulea subsequently fulfills his promise. He scolds Negoiţă for accepting such a small amount, and informs that he should make his way for Craiova, where they are going to repeat their act with the daughter of a local administrator, the kaymakam. This happens exactly as predicted by the devil, who, upon exiting the girl's body, informs the peasant that he no longer considers himself indebted. As thanks for his service, Negoiţă is granted an Oltenian estate and assigned a boyar's title. His blissful relaxation is interrupted abruptly when the kaymakam orders him on mission to Bucharest, where the Phanariote prince's daughter is also being tormented by a demon. Although much troubled, the healer follows princely envoys, and is warmly greeted by the prince (who casually addresses him in Greek, unaware that Negoiţă is in reality a local peasant). Nevertheless, the princess strongly rejects the healer's presence, and asks instead for "my old man", a certain Captain Manoli Ghaiduri. The soldier is immediately sent for, and reveals himself to be the girl's secret love interest, a "splendid" Greek from the princely guard. While the princess persistently asks Manoli to mangle the intruding healer, the latter thinks of a ruse: suggesting that the girl's illness needs specialized help, he asks permission to consult with Acriviţa Ianulea, "the widow of the wretch", whom he recommends as a better doctor than he. His demand has an instant effect on the princess: instead of shrieking and shouting, she begins cluttering her teeth. Within three days, she is spontaneously relieved of her symptoms. Negoiţă does however proceed to Negustori, learning that Acriviţa was chased out of her home by the creditors and moved back in with her father. Once there, he claims to be a debtor of Ianulea's, presenting her with 100 gold coins and a deed to the Cuţitul de Argint vineyard. He manages to intrigue her by suggesting that, should she ever hear of a demon possessing a woman or girl, she is to walk up to the victim, call out parigboria tu kosmu, and recount her longing for Ianulea. She promises to follow his advice, and Negoiţă returns to court, before deciding to head out of the city for good. He receives yet more presents from the princely family, as well as emotional thanks from Manoli Ghaiduri. As Negoiţă rides out on his way to Oltenia, the devil takes control of another young lady, the daughter of Wallachia's Orthodox Metropolitan. This is Acriviţa's opportunity to follow Negoiţă's advice, and, as soon as she enters the room, the demon flees in panic. The story ends on Aghiuţă's return to Hell, where he requests from Dardarot not to ever accept either Negoiţă and Acriviţa into Hell, and assign them instead to Heaven: "let Saint Peter make up with them as best he can." He also demands and obtains a period of rest to last three centuries, as "those little affairs down on earth left me dog-tired."
24406362	/m/07scn5g	Dimiter	William Peter Blatty		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel begins in Albania, where a spy named Paul Dimiter is tortured by the authorities. Revealed as an 'Agent from hell', they try to get more from him, but before they know it, he escapes. The novel moves to Jerusalem one year later, where a half Arab-European policeman, Peter Meral, finds a murder victim who supposedly was from a mental hospital. Meral tries to find out if there is a connection between Jerusalem and Albania and the enigma of Dimiter.
24411037	/m/07s3tyw	Les clefs de babel		2009	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book takes place inside the tower of Babel in to which humanity took refuge 1,000 years ago, as so to take protection from a cloud that poisoned the earth. The group of humans entered the tower in five separate groups, each also separated their area of the tower off as so to prevent possible diseased persons entering. The plot begins in the highest most portion of the tower when the main character's father gives him a cat who he says can speak; the opposition leader who is also the main character's father is assassinated whilst attending an Opera. The boy (Liram) then flees and is told by an acquaintance of his father that he must delve into the lower reaches of the tower; taking his cat with him, Liram descends alone. On the next floor, he awakes in a hospital and they recognise him as not being a member of their society; their belief of staying clean requires the shaving of one's hair, and after a medical inspection, a barber comes to shave his hair. The barber had discovered several years before, a baby girl with a pentagonal tattoo on her left shoulder. The barber notices that after shaving the hair on the boy's head; that he also has a similar tattoo. The barber introduces the boy to the girl (Maïan) whom he discovered as a baby; and they inform him that he is a clef de Babel (a key of Babel), that there are five in total and that each of them has a specific power, Maïan is able to walk through objects and walls, Maïan then explains of a disc she saw in a temple which had a marking on that was very similar to their tattoos. They agree to steal the object, which they do. The monks discover who stole it and set out to hunt down and kill the culprits, thus forcing Maïan and Liram to venture further down the tower.
24412807	/m/07sbv0c	A Week in December				 The book begins with the elaborate seating plan of a dinner party. It ends once that dinner party has taken place. Sophie, the wife of a newly elected Member of Parliament, must decide whom to place where. Several of the protagonists are present at the dinner, and the storylines are, to a large extent, tied up as a result of what occurs there. In the course of the book the reader is introduced to John Veals, a hedge fund trader who is arguably the most important character. He is a ruthless businessman, whose immense fortune seems to have become meaningless. He is more interested in the chase, the challenge of acquiring more and more capital. As he embarks on one of the riskiest deals of his life, his family is about to be torn apart. But does he even care? An unsuccessful barrister is assigned to represent a young female tube driver; a Scottish Muslim is drawn into a radical group, while a postgraduate literature student looks on; a Polish footballer tries hard to adapt to life in a Premier League team, while his Russian model girlfriend adjusts to life in London. A pickle millionaire enlists the help of R. Tranter, novelist and critic, to prepare for his meeting with the Queen when he receives his OBE.
24412987	/m/07s4vyn	Keynes: The Return of the Master				 The book is divided into a preface, an introduction and three main parts which include a total of eight chapters. The preface introduces Skidelsky's broad themes. In addition to the relevance of Keynes's economics due to the crisis, the author talks about the newly energised questioning concerning wider issues such as the role of morality in 21st-century life and on how Keynes's philosophy and ethics might offer an answer. The introduction maps out the ground the book will cover - the rise of Keynesianism from the late 1930s; its fall in the 1970s; the subsequent rise of free-market-friendly economics, which Skidelsky considers suffers from a regressive over-reliance on maths; the discrediting of this form of economics by the late 2000s crises and the new relevance of Keynes. Chapter 1 includes a thumbnail sketch of the unfolding events that comprise the 2007-2009 crises, a brief discussion of the government response and an outline of the various causes, along with a summary of how they have been covered in the media. The crises is described as the deflation of the asset bubble once confidence was undermined in key underlying factors: American house prices and the credit worthiness of sub-prime mortgages. Following on from this was the liquidity crunch in the world of finance, with the knock-on effect on the real economy. Lord Skidelsky divides his discussion of the response into two sections, covering the bail-outs and the stimulus packages. He identifies the follow possible causes: financial innovation; lack of regulation; the behaviour of the bankers & hedge funds and the failings of both credit-rating agencies and governments. He finishes by asserting that all these actors are influenced by economic theories, and that it is recent trends in economics that are the real cause of the crises. Chapter 2 is about economics as its been practised in the years leading up to 2009. The author refers to Keynes's view that an over-reliance on maths is a mistake, because mathematical models will always depend on the validity of their underlying assumptions. Skidelsky says that modern mainstream macroeconomics has become closely integrated with maths, at the expense of other disciplines such as political economy and history, and that this is partly why it became so unreliable at making accurate predictions or offering good advice. Various schools of thought within modern economics are briefly discussed, such as rational expectations, real business cycle theory and efficient market theory. Chapter 3 has a brief biographical sketch of Keynes's life, especially as it relates to his economics. Attention is paid especially to Keynes's direct involvement with the markets as a private investor and consultant for others, his involvement with academic economics and his dealings with government policy-makers. Chapter 4 focuses on Keynes's economics, in particular in the evolution of his thinking and how he challenged mainstream thinking. There is emphasis on the high importance Keynes placed on the role of uncertainty; his central insight that demand, not supply, is the key factor governing unemployment; and Keynes's principal policy recommendation that the rate of interest be kept permanently low so that a high proportion of savings will be channelled into job-creating investment. Chapter 5 begins with a discussion of the displacement of Keynesian economics by rival theories promoted by Milton Friedman and others. The chapter goes on to compare the Golden Age of Capitalism (1951–1973), where Keynesian policy was widely followed by the world's governments, with the Washington Consensus (1980–2009) period. Skidelsky finds that the golden age benefited from considerably higher economic growth, lower unemployment and inequality, without significantly higher inflation. The author discusses various arguments concerning to what extent the exceptional global conditions of the golden age were due to Keynes's influence, and concludes that to a large degree the "old coach" was responsible. Chapter 6 concerns Keynes's philosophical and ethical views, and how they relate to our current conception and practice of capitalism. Skidelsky asserts that central to current thinking and praxis is Negative liberty - the idea that society and those who govern it ought not to make any judgement about what is desirable for people, but just leave individuals as free as possible to pursue their own aims, what ever those may be. With relation to the economy, the current mainstream view sees capitalism as an end in itself, the expression of a population's will relayed via the market. This is contrasted with Keynes's view that capitalism is a means rather than an end, and ought to aim at allowing populations the leisure to pursue the "good life" chiefly living ethically, and having time for the appreciation of beauty and the pleasures of human intercourse. Chapter 7 is about Keynes's political thinking. In particular it focuses on his doctrine of prudence, which follows on from Keynes's views on uncertainty. Keynes held that, as the long-term future is very hard to predict, it is very rarely justified for politicians to implement policies that cause short-term pain to their populations for possible long-term gains. Chapter 8 sums up Keynes's relevance to the current age as of 2009. The author suggests that Keynes would likely advise us to rethink macroeconomic policy, with a greater emphasis on balanced growth and with a somewhat large role for government in ensuring there is a smooth flow of investment to help protect the economy from unpredictable shocks. Macroeconomics should be reformed so that it again recognises the role of uncertainty and so it draws on other areas of knowledge such as history and International political economy, with a less central role for maths. The global savings glut needs to be addressed. Ethics should once again have a role in guiding capitalism, as should Keynes's vision of harmony, where differences are cherished rather than pressured to conform, as can be the case with current concepts of "social cohesion" and "consensus".
24415047	/m/07sbv22	The Stray Dog				 A family of four meets a stray dog while having a picnic in the park. The two kids name the dog Willy and ask their parents if they can keep him. Unfortunately, their parents say no. During the next week, every member of the family keeps on thinking about Willy. When Saturday comes, they decide to go on another picnic to see if the stray dog will appear again. When they see a dogcatcher chase after the dog, they try to save him. When they catch up to him, the dogcatcher says that the dog doesn't belong to anyone. The kids tell him that the dog does belong to them by saying that the boy's belt was the dog's collar and the girl's hair ribbon was his leash. The dogcatcher is satisfied and leaves.
24421632	/m/043kc0y	The Red Wolf Conspiracy		2008-02-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel begins with a special notice from the Etherhorde Mariner, announcing that the IMS Chathrand has mysteriously vanished at sea on a voyage to transport Thasha Isiq to a political wedding to bring peace to the two competing empires of northwest Alifros. Pazel Pathkendel is a young tarboy who is stranded in Etherhorde by a mysterious Dr. Chadfallow. He manages to find work on the Chathrand, but his special power to understand any language attracts the attention of several stowaway Ixchel. The Ixchel warn Pazel that if he tells anyone of their presence, they will kill him, because sailors hate Ixchel and have developed ways of smoking them out of ships. Thasha arrives on the Chathrand with her father and household. When Pazel has a fit due to the negative side effect of his power, he bumps into Thasha and she takes him to his cabin. There, Pazel meets Ramanchi, a wizard from another world, who grants Pazel three words of great power. However, when Pazel insults Thasha's father, who sacked Pazel's hometown, Pazel is expelled from the ship. As the voyage progresses, it becomes clear something is not right. Chadfallow had previously warned Pazel not to sail on the Chathrand, only to sail on it himself, the captain writes letters to his dead father, the Ixchel notice that several rats on board the ship have awakened and have declared a holy war against the captain, a man attacks Thasha's bodyguard only to be saved by the unassuming Mr. Kett, and Thasha feels that her father's mistress is not entirely trustworthy. There is also talk of someone trying to find the 'Red Wolf,' and the 'Nilstone.' It is revealed the voyage is merely a coverup so that Mr. Kett, who is really a sorcerer, can bring the Shaggat back to power. As the ship comes to the haunted coast Mr. Kett leads an expedition out to the coast to find the Red Wolf where the Nilstone is hidden. Pazel, who has made his way back to the Chathrand, is part of the expedition, as well as Thasha. Mr. Kett manages to raise the Nilstone from the depths, and returns to the ship to bring it to the Shaggat. However, Pazel uses one of his words to turn the Shaggat to stone, preventing Mr. Kett's plans from coming into fruition. Captain Nilius Rose declares that after Thasha's wedding the Chathrand will head out to sea, never to return.
24421723	/m/07s4w17	Freddy and the Bean Home News			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 On a cold March morning, Charles the rooster malingers about going outside to crow. His attempts to avoid work actually make him too sick to do work. Freddy convinces the Bean animals to join in the neighborhood scrap drive contest, finding unneeded metal to help win the war. Freddy takes news input to the newspaper offices of the Guardian to discover that his friend, the editor Mr. Dimsey, has been fired. The owner of the paper, Mrs. Underdunk, put her nephew Mr. Garble in charge. With Dimsey’s help, Freddy starts another paper The Bean Home News, for the animals. The Bean animals work on Dimsey’s farm to pay for his time. Unexpectedly, several people in town have subscribed. This prompts the pig to hire reporters to collect the news from town. The newspapers come into confrontation when Freddy is accidentally bumped into by Underdunk on the sidewalk. When the sheriff refuses to arrest the pig, Underdunk threatens to use her influence to put him out of office. She comes to the Bean farm, proclaiming that she will have Freddy shot. A joke meant for Charles backfires, further infuriating her. The city reporter for the Bean Home News is collecting great material: :"'Where in tunket did you get that item about Mr. Weezer and Miss Biles being engaged to be married? There wasn’t a soul in town knew about it. I ain’t even sure they knew about it themselves.'" (p. 88) The Guardian calls Freddy a ferocious wild pig. Freddy responds in his paper with the true version of events. Citizens believe Freddy, drawing more threats from Underdunk. Charles the rooster is infuriated, and meeting his reputation from an earlier book, single-handedly attacks Garble. That leads Underdunk to demand Freddy’s arrest as being the head of an animal gang. Freddy hides in his friend the sheriff’s jail, which proves lucky, since when they come to arrest him, the sheriff points out that the pig is already "in custody". When Freddy visits Old Whibley for advice, the owl determines to be Freddy’s lawyer. He instructs Freddy to demand a jury trial, so that his friends will be on the jury. The animals constantly interrupt Garble’s sleep, so that in the courtroom he is on the edge of falling asleep. Underdunk’s case is unconvincing: :"'Did he bite you?' :'No.'.... :'...you immediately called upon the sheriff to lock him up. Why?' :'...That pig cannot be trusted to behave himself." :'Why? Because he did not bite you?'" (p. 156) Garble falls soundly asleep, losing his chance to testify. The jury votes Freddy innocent. When Underdunk throws a gala party including a senator, the Bean animals cannot resist sneaking into the grounds to watch. When they are found, Freddy flees into the house just as a war blackout is called, and the house goes dark. Pretending to be the senator, Freddy announces that Underdunk is donating her prize lawn ornament to the Bean’s scrap drive. In the chaos that follows when the lights come on, Freddy is captured and imprisoned. However the animals find him, and the authorities are notified. The police, sheriff and judge and many from town arrive in a loud mob. :"'Another interruption of that kind,' said the judge severely, 'and I will have this barnyard cleared.'" (p. 208) Having been publicly caught, Underdunk and Garble agree to stop harassing Freddy. Her lawn ornament is given up, and the Bean animals win the scrap drive.
24422245	/m/07s74x3	Stuck In Neutral		2001-10-09		 The book follows Shawn McDaniel's first-person point of view. He is a 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, a brain condition. In Shawn's case, his entire body is affected; he has absolutely no control over any of his bodily functions. Shawn's condition is a major part of the story. In the first few chapters, Shawn McDaniel explains to the reader his condition. He includes what he feels to be positive sides of his condition, such as his perfect memory. Shawn remembers every experience, every sensation, and everything he's ever learned from school or television. Shawn introduces his family to the reader. His mother is his main caretaker and his father is a writer who has won a Pulitzer Prize for a poem about Shawn. The main story is about euthanasia. Shawn feels that his father, Sydney McDaniel, is trying to kill him. Sydney constantly talks about euthanasia. On an interview during a Jerry Springer-style show Sydney interviews a man who killed his son with a similar condition. Shawn frequently expresses that he dislikes being talked down to as if he were a baby. He stresses throughout the novel that he is just as intelligent, or more intelligent, than others around him.
24423536	/m/07s4w25	Fablehaven: Keys to the Demon Prison	Brandon Mull	2010-03-23	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kendra, Seth, and the Knights of the Dawn continue to take the last possible steps to safeguard the keys and locks placed on Zzyzx. Seth was taken captive to a preserve unknown to the world. However, as a result of a certain attempt, the Society gained all the keys to the demon prison. With this added worry, as Kendra finds out, comes some advantages previously unimaginable. Kendra gains two new allies and finds an old friend during her extremely short visit in the same cell as her brother had been. The three, Kendra, Warren, and Bracken, take the very last, final steps to prevent the demon horde from escaping. After retreating over the preserve's wall, the three race to beat the Society to the final locks that hold Zzyzx shut. Their problem: they would be trapped inside the preserve without outside help. Their troubles include a tempting yet lethal grove of trees, a roc parent, and some furious harpies. On his journey, Bracken finds an "old friend." Meanwhile, Seth is coping with a friend's death and a betrayal back at Fablehaven. Patton Burgess, in a gaseous form, suggests some truly desperate ideas to oppose the demon horde. Seth must call upon his loyalty, devotion, and his unique traits to gain a powerful weapon, a remnant from an age of wonders that may save the world. When all of the demon prison's locks were undone, the hour had arrived to unite. They all meet up at the place where the ship Lady Luck will take them to Shoreless Isle. They use the items to summon the Lady Luck. Seth uses force to convince the ghost of the Lady Luck to take them there. They find a Fairy Queen Shrine near Zzyzx. Kendra and Bracken speak once more to the Fairy Queen, who tells them that she has destroyed all of her other shrines, and they have one final secret plan that may just grant success. The astrids' dream comes true. Bracken needed the five artifacts, so Seth, some astrids, and the Sphinx transport into the dome and reclaim the artifacts. After a success on the battlefield, Kendra, Seth, and all creatures of Light must wait to see whether Bracken's plan would work and whether the world would live to see a dawning of a new age of security, when Kendra can finally find peace and joy and reclaim a life even better than the one that was stolen from her.
24425031	/m/07s3y62	Measle and the Dragodon		2004		 The novel is about a boy called Measle who has been recently reunited with his parents, Sam and Lee Stubbs. On a day out they visit the Isle of Smiles, a theme park, and from then on things take a turn for the worse. Lee is captured by wrathmonks (warlocks that have gone mad) and taken to the Isle of Smiles. Sam has his memory wiped, and Measle and his dog, Tinker, are left to their own devices to find and rescue their parents. Once Measle reaches the Isle of Smiles, the wrathmonks cast a spell that causes all the creatures in the theme park to come alive and attempt to kill him. After he has successfully run away from the creatures, the wrathmonks catch him and want to kill him, but their leader, a dragodon, orders them to take him to a ride which leads into the dragon's lair. After a fight with the dragon and the dragodon, Measle and his mother escape and get back to their house where after a short fight the wrathmonks are defeated.
24426569	/m/07s6bcr	Transition	Iain Banks	2009-09-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set between the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the 2008 financial crisis, Transition centres on a shadowy organisation called 'The Concern' (also known as 'L'Expédience'), and how the workings of this organisation affect the lives of the novel's multiple narrators and characters. Banks uses the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics theory to imagine "infinitudes" of parallel realities, between which The Concern's agents–known as Transitionaries–can "flit", intervening in events to produce what The Concern sees as beneficial outcomes for that world. Transitioning, or flitting, is only possible for people with a predisposed talent for such movement, who may only flit after ingesting a mysterious drug called 'septus'. When a Transitionary flits into another world, he or she temporarily takes control of the body of an existing inhabitant of that world, along with some of that body's residual idiosyncrasies (such as personality disorders and sexual preferences).
24448284	/m/0808hqr	Kangazang!		2010-08-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel"}	 After Jeff's break up with his fiancee he embarks on a journey with Ray, his barber- an alien that has been stranded on Earth and finally repaired his spacecraft, the 'Marshmallow Penguin', to leave the planet. The journey leads Jeff and Ray to a planet of amazonian women, simple minded men and living space hoppers where they are tasked with retrieving the 'Universal Remote', a device for altering the very fabric of the universe.
24461347	/m/080q45x	The Alabaster Staff			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A young street performer is drawn into a twisting plot of double-crossings and betrayals, at the center of which is the artifact of great power known as the Alabaster Staff.
24461375	/m/080q469	The Black Bouquet	Richard Lee Byers		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A rogue becomes involved in a game where he thought no one would get hurt, trusting a tanarukk bandit and hired for his still and cunning, but turns an entire city against him.
24461398	/m/080k2jq	The Crimson Gold			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This novel is set in Thay. A rogue wanted out, wanted a new life and a trophy worthy of a master thief - the source of the treasured crimson gold. She wanted to face an undead emperor on his home ground, and live to tell the tale.
24461415	/m/080fm6q	The Yellow Silk	Don Bassingthwaite	2004-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel follows the adventures of Kuang Li Chien, an easterner from the country of Shou Lung, and Tychoben Arisaenn, a minor bard who lives in the seedy port town of Spandeliyon, Altumbel. Li Chien arrives in Spandeliyon on an important family mission to find his eldest brother, Yu Mao, who disappeared when the Shou trading expedition he headed was attacked by the Sow, a notorious pirate ship. His only lead is the pirate ship's first mate, a cruel halfling by the name of Brin, who has retired in Spandeliyon. Seeking information about his whereabouts at a dockside tavern called the Wench's Ease, Li Chien meets Tycho, who is playing that night. The two clash immediately, but despite their differences, Tycho tries to warn Li Chien against inquiring too insistently about Brin. Ignoring his warnings, Li Chien leaves the tavern with a local man named Lander, who claims he can help him find the ex-pirate...
24464915	/m/07s6zyt	Missing Person	Patrick Modiano			 Guy Roland is a detective who, after the retirement of his boss, van Hutte, decides to leave in 1965 to find his own identity, which he lost after a mysterious accident fifteen years earlier that left him an amnesiac. Ascending the slopes of his tenuous past that seems to stop during the Second World War, he learns that he is called Jimmy Pedro Stern, a Greek Jew from Salonica living in Paris under an assumed name, Pedro McEvoy, and working for the legation of the Dominican Republic. This McEvoy Pedro was surrounded by friends: Denise Coudreuse a French model who shares his life, Freddie Howard Luz of Mauritius, Gay Orlov an American dancer of Russian origin, André Wildmer a former English jockey, who all decided in 1940 to get to Megeve to flee a Paris that had become more oppressive during the German occupation. Denise and Pedro had decided to flee to Switzerland, and paid a smuggler who abandoned them in the mountain, separating them and leaving them only lost in the snow. Guy Roland decides to leave France to try to trace Freddie, who went live in Polynesia after the war. When he arrives in Bora Bora, he learns that Freddie has disappeared, either lost at sea or by choice. The last link that remains for Guy Pedro Stern to track is an address that he held in 1930.
24476575	/m/080glzz	Vampirates: Empire of Night	Justin Somper	2010	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Sidorio, fuelled by grief and revenge, is intent on becoming King of the Vampirates and building a new empire to bring terror to the oceans. He faces growing opposition from both the Pirate Federation, including Vampirate Assassin Cheng Li, and the Nocturnals - the more benign vampirate realm - led by Mosh Zu and Lorcan Furey. Both the pecker and the Nocturnals are forced to raise their game in response to the new and urgent threat from Sidorio and the renegade Vampirates. Twins Grace and Connor Tempest, still ricocheting from the recent discovery of their true parenthood and its explosive implications, are thrust deep into the heart of the conflict. Old foes and allies are thrown together in unexpected ways and, as the stakes rise higher than ever before, Grace and Connor find their alliances shifting in ways no-one could ever have possibly foreseen…
24486605	/m/080bcw2	Alex Cross's Trial	James Patterson	2008	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 From his grandmother, Nana Mama, Alex Cross has been told the story of his great uncle Abraham and his struggle throughout the era of the Ku Klux Klan. Alex then recounts this tale to his children though his novel called Trial. A lawyer at the turn of the century, a man named Ben Corbett, represents the toughest cases. Many of his cases are opposing racism and oppression, and because of the cases he's fighting for, he risks the life of his wife and children. When President Roosevelt asks Ben personally to go to his hometown to investigate upon rumors of the Ku Klux Klan's resurgence, he cannot refuse. Upon entering Eudora, Mississippi, Corbett meets Abraham Cross and his enchanting granddaughter Moody. He enlists their help and the two Crosses introduce Corbett to the other side of the idyllic southern town. Lynchings have become commonplace in the town, and the black residents of the town live in constant fear. Ben aims to break the reign of terror, but finding out who is behind it all may break his heart.
24495338	/m/080nn5m	Dinosaur vs. Bedtime				 The plot of Dinosaur vs. Bedtime centers around a young dinosaur that takes on many challenges, including adults, brushing his teeth, taking a bath, and eating spaghetti. The dinosaur takes on all the challenges put before, defeating them all by roaring at them, until he comes up against his final (or "biggest") challenge, bedtime. In the end "bedtime wins" and the dinosaur goes to sleep. The dinosaur is used in the story to represent a stubborn child who does not want to go to bed. who utilized mixed media including crayon, paint and photography.
24501322	/m/04yg29	Ship of Destiny	Robin Hobb	2000-08-01	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Ship of Destiny continues where The Mad Ship left off and reveals some of the secrets that were hinted at in the first book and second books. The dragon, Tintaglia, released from her wizardwood coffin, flies high over the Rain Wild River, whilst below her, Reyn and Selden have been left to drown. Malta, the High Satrap of all Jamaillia and his servant attempt to navigate the acid flow of the dangerous river in a decomposing boat. Althea and Brashen are finally at sea together, sailing the liveship Paragon into pirate waters to rescue the Vestrit family liveship, Vivacia, stolen by the pirate king, Kennit; but there is mutiny brewing in their ragtag crew, and in the mind of the mad ship itself, and all the whilst the waters around the Vivacia are seething with giant serpents, following the liveship as it sails on to its destiny. ru:Корабль судьбы
24513201	/m/080ng3p	Os Velhos Marinheiros ou o Capitão de Longo Curso	Jorge Amado	1961	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Arriving in Periperi is Vasco Moscoso Aragão, Master Mariner. With his stories of the sea, distant and exotic ports and women both exotic and sensual, all the town's inhabitants become envious of the commander, with the sole exception of Chico Pacheco—who does not believe him, and thinks that he is a braggart. After some investigation in Salvador, Chico returns with his version of events: Vasco is a wealthy businessman who lived a bohemian life in his youth with a group of friends, and who then took the title of commander to satisfy his desire to have a title and not simply be known as "Mr. Vasco". The friends of Vasco give him the title of sea captain with the rank of commander, and even award him a medal, obtained illegally. Vasco identifies herself so strongly with his role that he starts to wear official uniforms complete with medals, smoking his pipe, and collecting sea objects. In old age he moves to Periperi. Now the two versions of Vasco's life, the commander's and Chico Pacheco's, divide the town into those who believe in the commander and those who believe him to be a boastful liar. Fate leads Vasco Moscoso to command a ship sailing from Salvador to Belém, stopping in various ports along the coast. The commander also decides to show his friends of Periperi that he is a real sea captain. The trip takes place without incident; in fact, Vasco leaves the management to the second officer. But upon arrival in the state of Parà in Belém, the second officer makes fun of the commander, asking him how many ropes are required to moor the vessel in port, saying it is a maritime tradition that the master decides how to moor the ship. Undecided, the commander says all the ropes, and laughter erupts on the ship in the port and across Belém. Realizing his mistake, Vasco takes refuge in a cheap boarding house, gets drunk on cachaça, and falls asleep deeply saddened and disappointed. But that night the city of Belem endures the most violent storm that anyone has ever seen, leaving roofless houses, corpses, destroyed plantations, and a ruined port. All ships are damaged or drifting except for the ship of Captain Vasco Moscoso Aragão, which remains intact and durable, just as it docked. The commander returns victorious to Periperi, honored by awards and acclaimed by all the newspapers; the citizens who had previously defamed him are now his most ardent fans. The dream of the commander can continue.
24518811	/m/080dvw8	Project 17		2007-12-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Danvers State Hospital. Located just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, the building was built in 1878, and condemned in 1992. It is rumored by locals to be the birthplace of the pre frontal Lobotomy. The novel begins at 7 AM, with Derik riding up to the Danvers State Hospital in his car. Looking at the crumbling brick building, he starts to think of the people that were locked up in there, the people who died after spending their lives there. The unmarked mass graves around the premises, the underground tunnels, and the messed up remnants of its former patients. He knows this is the place. The place where he'd make his movie. Derik is flunking out of school, and he decides to submit his film to a contest and save himself from a future of flipping burgers at his parents' diner. He gathers a cast of different backgrounds, and the eve before the hospitals' demolition, they break in. He gets more than he bargained for when the eerie experience changes his life. Forever.
24519812	/m/080mmpl	Fair Land, Fair Land	Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr.		{"/m/0hfjk": "Western"}	 Fair Land, Fair Land begins where The Way West ends, with Dick Summers riding away from the group of "wagon-train people" he has guided from Independence to Oregon, but Summers leaves without saying goodbye and while the settlers are still sleeping. As a mountain man traveling light, all Summers carries is his Hawken rifle, "his old Green River knife, some ammunition and a small sack of possibles." As he rides Summers remembers the events of The Big Sky of about fifteen years before when he was the hunter for a French trading expedition traveling up the Missouri in a keelboat to Blackfeet country, a trip that ended with the Blackfeet killing all the Frenchmen and only the three friends Summers, Boone Caudill, and Jim Deakins escaping. Summers meets and shares a jug with a man who mentions having encountered Boone Caudill, "The broodiest bastard I ever see. Turn on you for nothin'." Caudill admitted to the man that he killed his best friend, Jim Deakins, for fathering a child with Teal Eye, Caudill's Blackfoot "squaw." Dick Summers re-encounters a band of his settlers that had separated from the main group in order to drive their stock by land while the main group had finished by river. In the band is Hezekiah "Hig" Higgins. Hig idolizes Summers and Summers has seen throughout The Way West what a valuable man Hig is. Higgins and Summers join together and spend most of the rest of Fair Land, Fair Land together, first as nomadic mountain men in an idyllic type of life that is rapidly disappearing and then as relatively settled men living with Indian wives. Summers meets Teal Eye again, becomes her mate, and adopts her blind son, who in Indian fashion has been given a descriptive name, "Nocansee." Summers and Teal Eye have another son, Lije, and are ultimately able to have a white marriage ceremony, conducted by their friend Brother Potter. Nocansee was a red-headed baby, but was the natural son of Boone Caudill, who years before had killed his red-headed best friend, Jim Deakins, because Caudill wrongly thought Teal Eye had cheated on him with Deakins. Dick Summers and Teal Eye arrange for Hig to marry a Shoshone chief's granddaughter, Little Wing, and the ceremony is performed by Summers. The years pass. Hig and Little Wing never have children. Summers forces Lije to leave him and Teal Eye with Brother Potter because Summers sees the end coming for their native American way of life and that Lije must become educated in how to live in a white world. Higgins learns that Boone Caudill will be passing through the area on his way to hunt gold in California and tells Summers. When Summers meets Caudill on the trail and confronts him with the facts that Caudill unjustly killed his best friend, Caudill leaps on Summers and attempts to strangle him. Although he has his knife in his hand and will die if Caudill continues the throttling, Summers cannot bring himself to stab. He is losing consciousness when he hears a shot—Hig has killed Caudill and afterward says, "He didn't mean nothin' to me." A.B. Guthrie writes of the white destruction of the Eden of Montana. For example, greedy white men discover gold in Alder Gulch, resulting in despoiling of the area, corruption, and violence. Or, one afternoon Dick Summers hears a shot and discovers that a boy has gut-shot Summers's best horse, thinking he was shooting an elk or a deer. The horse is suffering, but having caused so much damage the foolish but sorry boy cannot bring himself to complete the job—"I couldn't ... not a horse." Summers is forced to shoot the horse. Higgins and Little Wing leave Summers and Teal Eye to return to Little Wing's Shoshone people. Dick Summers, Teal Eye, and Nocansee are living in the village of the Blackfoot chief Heavy Runner when the Indian agency orders all the Blackfeet chiefs to a meeting because of Indian horse stealing and a recent Indian killing of a white man. Heavy Runner asks Dick Summers to go with him to speak for the Indians. Running the meeting are two men: General Sully, the superintendent of Indian Affairs, and U.S. Marshal Wheeler. The only Blackfeet to have shown up are peaceful ones, and the band that committed the worst crimes, including the recent murder, doesn't appear. Summers is surprised to find his son Lije standing behind Sully and Wheeler, ill-at-ease as part of the Army and as their interpreter. The fruitless meeting concludes with General Sully telling the chiefs that they must surrender the killers of the white man and return the stolen stock. After the Army's time limit has passed with no surrender of murderers and no return of stock, officers plan "A secret mission, a stealing out to kill Blackfeet, a surprise attack." The meeting, at which Lije is deliberately degraded to be a servant pouring whiskey, is conducted by Major Baker, perhaps the most overtly evil person in the novel: "This time we show them that we mean business. No prisoners ... I swear this is the last time, so bear with me, gentlemen." As Major Baker plans the slaughter of the Blackfeet he acknowledges that in the dawn attack on the villages the January weather will be cold, but "Think of that other enemy, the Blackfeet, all huddled in camp against the cold. ... Sitting ducks." Lije calls him a fool for attacking such chiefs as Heavy Runner, who is friendly and "has a friendship paper" from the government. Major Baker has Lije put in the guardhouse, where, after having thought over his life, Lije reaches between the bars and breaks a window, the implication being that he is getting the glass in order to commit suicide. In the morning several days later, Dick Summers wakes up to someone shouting "Wrong camp" and from the flap of his tepee sees Heavy Runner trot out of his lodge "waving his friendship paper" and be immediately shot down. Summers makes Teal Eye escape through a hole in the rear of their tepee and then sits to await his fate. A soldier looks in and remarks that Summers is a white man. The soldier also sees the nonwhite Nocansee sitting quietly. When Summers tells him that Nocansee is blind, the soldier responds that then he need not waste a bullet and clubs Nocansee to death with the butt of his carbine. Summers shoots the soldier in the forehead with his Hawken, the rifle he has carried and relied upon throughout the trilogy. Two more soldiers come in and shoot Summers as "a turncoat son of a bitch" who "Killed his own kind." The novel ends with Summers drifting into unconsciousness and death, hearing the sounds of the soldiers destroying the village and "the wailing of squaws and the crying of children and the voices of soldiers proud of themselves."
24536329	/m/080fngh	Ordinary Thunderstorms	William Boyd		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Adam Kindred is a recently divorced climatologist who has moved back to England. After attending an interview for a Senior Research Fellowship position at Imperial College, London, he goes into an Italian restaurant in Chelsea and briefly encounters Dr Philip Wang, who accidentally leaves a file behind. Adam takes it to his hotel, only to discover that Wang has been murdered with a knife in his body. Before Wang dies, he asks Adam to remove it and so Adam becomes incriminated in his murder. Deciding to take refuge, he shelters in a small patch of gardens on London's Embankment to give himself time to think. He decides to go underground, cutting up all his cards and removing anything that could identify him. He soon leads the life of a tramp, searching in rubbish bins for food and only venturing out at night. In the meantime, he decides to try and find out from the file in his possession why Wang was murdered and if there is any connection to Calenture-Deutz, the pharmaceutical company Wang was working for. Calenture-Deutz is a company set up by Ingram Fryzer who is another of the novel's protagonists. Ingram is married with three children and is about to reap large profits from the introduction of a new anti-asthma drug, Zembla-4, that is just about to be launched onto the market after its clinical trials supervised by Dr Wang. To speed up the search for the killer, the company offers a £100,000 reward. Adam decides to visit St Botolph's hospital to find out more about what Wang was working on. However, he is viciously mugged near the Shaft, a sink estate in Rotherhithe, and is helped by Mhouse, a black prostitute, who gives him the address of the Church of John Christ. He decides to visit the church to get a decent meal and meets some fellow tramps there who are in the same dire situation. Meanwhile, Ingram is having his own troubles - Alfredo Rilke is a major shareholder in his company and he wants to launch Zembla-4 against Ingram's wishes, since he considers it too early. It turns out, unbeknown to Ingram, that Rilke has paid an assassin, Jonjo, to find Adam and the missing file which is vital to Rilke since it contains evidence that is damaging to the new drug. Whilst Adam begins his life as a beggar, posing as a blind man to obtain money from sympathetic people, Jonjo is getting closer to his quarry. He enquiries lead him to the Shaft and he pays to find out where Adam is. He learns where Adam was dropped off by Mhouse and her friend, Mohammed, and waits for Adam at his Embankment hideaway. Fortunately, Adam recognises him from an earlier encounter and decides to rent a room with Mhouse and her young son, Ly-on, paying Mhouse for sex from his begging money. His life becomes more stable until, one evening whilst walking with Ly-on, he passes Jonjo who does not recognise him with his beard and holding the young boy's hand. Adam tells Mhouse he has to leave for Scotland and shacks up with Vladimir, who dies the same night from too much 'monkey'. Adam decides to take on Vlad's fake identity and his new job as a hospital porter at Bethnal & Bow, before he gets a transfer to St Botolph. Here, he is able to establish why there were problems with the Zembla-4 drug. Bad news starts to surround Zembla-4 and Rilke eventually informs Ingram that his proposed takeover of Calenture-Deutz is now off. Ingram has also been feeling strangely ill and it turns out he has a brain tumour that he has removed. Jonjo, having failed to find Kindred, is sacked from his position as a 'security consultant' and is forced to leave the country after realizing that he will be made the fall guy for Philip Wang's murder and that the killers are now after him. Ingram Fryzer realizes that there is something strange about the drug but decides to fit in with Rilke's plans, knowing that he will financially benefit from them. However, he suspects that there is a plot to unseat him and tries to sort out a plan for fighting back. In the meantime, Adam has sorted out a plan for attacking Calenture-Deutz following the death of Mhouse at the hands of Jonjo. He also meets Rita, a policewoman, whilst identifying Mhouse's body and starts to see more of her. He puts his scheme into place and, as a result, Fryzer's comfortable life starts to collapse around him, particularly after a shareholder's meeting and the sale of shares by his bankrupt brother-in-law, Ivo Lord Redcastle, who is a director on the company's Board. And Adam Kindred, happily involved with Rita and Ly-on, decides to retain his identity of Primo Belem and to discard his former life as Adam Kindred and all his negative associations with it.
24545772	/m/080h0d_	The Boy from the Basement				 Charlie is a twelve-year-old boy that has been forced to live in his basement all of his life. He has no idea what the outside world is like. Charlie has to scavenge for food when his psychotic father goes to sleep, and he must go to the bathroom in the yard. His father brainwashed him into thinking that he deserves the abuse. When Charlie accidentally goes into the outside world, he collapses and wakes up in a hospital. He is then sent to a foster home. With the help of his foster family and a psychologist, he tries to get over his psychological trauma and get used to the outside world. Charlie eventually gets used to the outside world, but still in fear of his nightmares that his dad will one day take him from his foster family. During his time in the outside world Charlie makes a new friend, Aaron, and his foster mother has two new children. He eventually overcomes his fear of his dad coming to get him.
24553380	/m/080fgg1	A Child Is Born	Lennart Nilsson	1965		 The book proceeds along two "tracks": one series of photographs and accompanying text depict the development of the fetus from conception through to birth; the other shows a woman and her partner as her pregnancy progresses. Early images show sperm proceeding toward an ovum; cell division, implantation, and the development of the embryo are then illustrated. The text accompanying the photographs of the woman supplies some antenatal care advice.
24559363	/m/0806d5c	How Could You Do This To Me, Mum?		1996-04-04		 Chelsea's parents don't want their daughter to have a birthday party, because it will be too expensive. Chelsea becomes jealous of her siblings Geneva and Warwick, who receive more money from their parents. Chelsea befriends Bex in the Stomping Ground nightclub. A few weeks later, their friendship is cemented after Fee's friend Eddie tries to assault Chelsea, and Bex comes to her aid. Barry Gee buys his own restaurant, which will be called Gee Zone. Jemma wants to be an actress, but her parents aren't happy when she neglects her schoolwork to attend acting and dancing lessons. Jemma ignores them, and trusts Ms. Olivia Ockley, the owner of the acting school, who praises her talent. However, Jemma is annoyed when Alexa Browning receives a lead role instead of her. Jemma also dates Rob, which causes friction between her and Chelsea, although they reconcile after Chelsea's encounter with Eddie. Jon wants to date Sumitha, but she is no longer interested. Jon is annoyed by his parents, who have little time for him. However, after Laura is injured in front of him at one of his mother's animal rights demonstrations, he realises that he likes her and asks her out. Laura's mother is pregnant, and her boyfriend Melvyn objects to Laura spending time at demos with her neighbour Daniel. Laura's brother is born prematurely, and at Laura's suggestion is named Charlie. Sumitha becomes a swot when she develops a crush on her new science teacher, Paul Sharpe. At the end of the term she tells him about her feelings, but learns that Paul is engaged to Mrs. McConnell. Sumitha is dismissive when Sandeep asks her to come back home with him, and feels bad after learning that he is being bullied by Kevin and Matthew.
24560488	/m/080hf1s	Does Anyone Ever Listen?		1998-01-15		 Sumitha meets Seb, who is in a band called Paper Turkey. Although they both like each other, they do not officially date. Sumitha dances to Paper Turkey's music in Stomping Ground, but her father sees it and forbids her to see Seb again. Sumitha lies to her father in order to go to a music festival where Paper Turkey are playing in a competition, but the band is drunk and do not win. Sumitha's father wants to arrange a marriage for her, and his friend Sajjed comes to visit, along with his son Asim and wife Chhobi. Asim objects to having an arranged marriage, which gains him Sumitha's admiration. Laura wants to break up with Jon because she has met Simon Stagg, but she does not know how to tell him. On New Year's Ever, she leaves her celebrations with Jon to see Simon, upsetting Jon who still loves her. Laura is hurt and upset to learn that Simon is gay, and she eventually gets back together with Jon. Chelsea has difficulty writing a sociology essay about unemployment, but after her mother is fired she writes an excellent essay and decides to study harder in the future. Bex returns to Leehampton, because her brother, Ricky, is a victim of violence at school. Chelsea helps him. Jemma is angry, because her dad wants to move to Scotland. She also argues with her father because he objects to her starring in a commercial. Jemma attends casting anyway, but walks out after she realises that the commercial suggests that only slim people are valuable. Jon's dad wants to move to Cornwall, because he is tired of his work. Jon argues with him, and then feel guilty after his father has a heart attack, even though it happened while his father was jogging.
24564624	/m/08074wk	Oh. My. Gods.			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Phoebe is a perfectly happy senior at high school and headed for USC with her best friends after graduation. Everything changes when her Mom comes back to California announcing she is getting married to a Greek man and they have plans to move there. They move to a secret island where she is accepted to an exclusive academy for the descendants of Greek gods, which is run by Phoebe's new stepfather. Phoebe doesn't really fit in, partly because she believes she's not of holy descent. Her new step-sister and others easily torment her, but Phoebe ignores them. At the school, she quickly befriends Nicole and Troy. Phoebe makes it onto her cross country team, running is her natural talent. Soon after, she gets swept up in controversies including her, Griffin, Nicole, Troy, Stella, and her dead dad. At the very end of the book, Phoebe finds out the biggest secret of her life: Phoebe is a descendant of Nike, the goddess of Victory. She then proceeds to talk to Griffin, who tells her he was destined to be with a descendant of Nike. They start a relationship together. *Phoebe Castro, the main character in the book. Her mom gets married, and she has to move to Serfopoula, causing her world to be turned upside down. She has trouble adjusting to her new life. She is a descendant from Nike. *Nicole Matios, one of Phoebe's three friends. Nicole is hardcore and isn't afraid of anything. *Troy Travatas, a friend of Phoebe. He is the descendant from Asclepius. *Griffin Blake, a boy from Phoebe's school that she likes. Later on, he is her boyfriend. He is a descendant from Ares and Hercules from his father's side. *Valerie Petrolas, a therapist and Phoebe's mom. Her relationship with Phoebe went downhill after they moved out to Serfopoula. *Stella Petrolas, Phoebe's stepsister, who tries to make Phoebe's life miserable. Stella is part of the mean and popular clique at school. Likewise, she is a descendant from Hera. *Damian Petrolas, Phoebe's stepfather (marries Phoebe's mother near the beginning of the book) and Stella's father. He is also the headmaster of the school that Phoebe and Stella attend.
24564947	/m/080g1mj	Andromeda Klein	Dr. Frank		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Andromeda Klein is a teenage girl with many problems. She is unattractive, hard of hearing, her best friend and former magick partner Daisy recently died of cancer, "St. Steve" her boyfriend has gone missing, her mother is completely overbearing and her father is a paranoid conspiracist. She makes sense of the world through her complete immersion in the world of Magick and tarot, even taking on a job at her local library, which conveniently houses an impressive collection of esoteric books on just such subjects. When a list comes in, threatening to wipe the entire collection, Andromeda immediately enlists the help of all those she can find, and begins her battle with the "Friends of the Library". Meanwhile, Andromeda begins to receive a myriad of messages from Daisy, beyond the grave, and plies her younger brother with naked girl magazines (or "bagel worm agonies" as she mishears thanks to her partial deafness) in exchange for the remaining scraps of her dead best-friend's belongings. She then uses these as part of her witchcraft in an attempt to figure out just what Daisy is trying to tell her. Rosalie van Genuchten, and the rest of Andromeda's "afternoon tea" (alcohol and drugs) party friends, sick of her pining for St. Steve, attempt to set her up with various potential suitors who Andromeda dismisses on sight. However, in this process she picks up Byron, a short guy with unfortunate facial hair who nevertheless becomes a kind of apprentice to Andromeda's occultism, and confidant as new, exciting, but generally confusing text messages suddenly start coming in from St. Steve. The story gathers pace as Andromeda's tarot readings become increasingly literal and prophetic, sparking interest from fellow students, eager to know their futures, and more pressingly, who their boyfriends are cheating on them with. Andromeda's dreams start to feature a powerful new figure, called "The King of Sacremento", she begins to hear a voice in her head (that calls itself Huggy) and in a crescendo of increasingly elaborate and freaky spells, the mysteries of St. Steve, her tarot readings, and Daisy all become clear.
24570005	/m/08085gg	The Secrets of Love		2005-02-25		 The Dashwood sisters, Ellie, Abby and Georgie go to London to visit their father. After spending The Day in Dungeons, they go to father’s new flat, where He lives with Pandora. They meet Blake Goodman – Pandora’s nephew. Georgie gets a birthday present and the girls come back to Brighton. Abby goes to the XS club, but she pretends that, she’ll be in the hospital, because her boyfriend had an accident. Her mother discovers it and Abby can’t go out with friends for a month. Few days later, Blake calls Ellie and tells her that Max is in the hospital. Ellie, Abby and their mother, Julia, go to London to visit Mr. Dashwood. Unfortunately, he dies and Abby blames Pandora of killing her dad. Pandora blames Julia, but ladies explain everything and talk about funeral details. Georgie comes back Home (she was at the zorbing session, which was present from Tom)and she’s really upset. Few days later Max’s lawyer comes to Holly House and tells Julia that, she and her daughters have to move out, because the house is Pandora’s property. Davina - Julia's mother, arrives to Holly House and tells her daughter that, they can move to Norfolk to her grandma's house. Abby discovers that, in Norfolk there are no clubs, discos and cinemas. She meets Chloe at school and they become friends. Chloe brings Abby for a concert of local group and they meet Nick Mayes, who falls in love with Abby. Unfortunately, Chloe has a crush on Nick and Abby can't go out with him. One day, Abby meets Hunter Meade-Holman - son of local politician. She falls in love with him and they become couple after few days. Nick doesn't want to look at Abby kissing Hunter and tells her about it. She doesn't care about him. Once, Hunter takes Abby out and offers to go to his house. He wants to make love with her, but Abby doesn't agree. Hunter breaks up with her and Abby comes back home on foot. Luckily, Nick finds her and she tells him about everything. Ellie's private life is complicated, either. Blake's got girlfriend - Lucy, who's grandma is ill and he can't break up with her. But he doesn't see any problems with kissing Ellie, who doesn't like his games. Ellie doesn't want to hear Blake's explanations, but Davina makes things worse - she wants Ellie to meet Lucy. Georgie has a new friend - Adam. He seems to have a crush on Georgie. They are working together on a party - they're waiters. Before starting their work, Adam talks with Georgie about sailing. He has strange voice and Georgie starts to think about his health. But when he kisses her, every thought about his illness is gone. Ellie works at the bar. She overheard Blake's conversation with Piers, his friend. She treats Blake very cool, when he comes to the bar and tells him to go to his girlfriend and dance with her. Hunter comes back for a party and he brings his new girlfriend with him. Abby sees it and tells Fiona that she's Hunter's girlfriend. She's very angry and she hits Fiona with her bag and runs away to the parking. She's got Nick's keys and she decides to get into the car and go home. Abby can't handle driving a car. Suddenly, she sees bright light and she becomes unconscious. Her family and Nick go to the hospital. Next day, Abby talks to Nick, who tells her about his feelings and kisses her. Abby talks to Chloe, who has a boyfriend now - Ryan. Abby goes out with Nick. She can't walk, so the boy brings a wheel chair for her. They go to the harbour and they see Georgie and Tom, who came to Norfolk to visit his friend. Georgie tells her sister that, she and Tom will be important for each other forever. Ellie talks to Blake, who came back from Hong Kong (he was going to go to Australia with Lucy, but he came back). He kisses her and tells Ellie that, he loves her. Then, he shows her portrait of Dashwood family: Max, Julia, Ellie, Abby and Georgie and offers her to come to Holly House.
24570648	/m/080pgwy	What a Week to Risk it All		2006-05-26		 Jade has a boyfriend - Flynn, whom she met when she was going to her grandma's place in Brighton. She acts like a nurse, when she is with him and she only cares about he won't get hurt. Flynn doesn't like it, because he's preparing for running-on-a-wheel-chair competition (he had an accident and he can't walk). Once, Jade and Flynn go to a party in a club, but Jez and Tamsin go there, too. Jez wants to attack Flynn with a knife, but he hit Tansy in her head with his handful. Flynn also got hurt, but not as much as Tansy. He didn't start in competition, but he plays in school theatre. He makes few steps and he is surpsised, when Jade doesn't treat him like he was made of glass. Tansy's got problems with Andy's mother. She knows that Mrs. Richards was unfaithful to Mr. Richards and she tells about everything Holly. Unfortunately, Holly repeats it when Andy is near her and he shouts at Tansy that, she can't keep a secret. Tansy is very upset. She goes to a party, but she doesn't come in, because Andy isn't there yet. Suddenly, she sees Jez and Tamsin. She can also see that Jade and Flynn are outside the club and Jez wants to hurt Flynn. Tansy got hurt by hitting her head. She goes to the hospital and she can't see by one eye. Andy comes to visit her and he apologises her. She doesn't tell him that, everything he heard is true. Andy's brother and sister will be baptismed. Their godfather will be Gordon - a man, who is father of the babies, but Mrs. Richards doesn't tell anybody about it. Godmother of the babies will be Tansy's mother, Clarity. Holly is going out with Ben. Her family moved out of burnt house. She has other problems - her boyfriend wants her to make love with him, but she doesn't agree. She doesn't talk to him for some days, but he explains her everything and promises to keep his hands next to him. Holly forgives him. Holly makes a scenography for a play in school theatre. She didn't get hurt, when Jez attacked Flynn. Cleo's mother is going to be a director in school play. For Cleo it is a bit embarrassing, because her mother thinks that, if she was a great actress, everyone will want her to work. Luckily, people, who organise it know Diana Greenway and are very pleased to work with her. Cleo goes out with Ross, but she doesn't care about him. She's angry when he runs away instead of helping Tansy, who got hurt. He apologises her and she forgives. When girl are planning holidays, she doesn't include Ross in her plans, because Holly, Jade and Tansy want to go for holiday with Cleo only and without their boyfriends.
24571522	/m/08052hy	Summer of Secrets		2007-03-01		 Caitlin Morland wins an art scholarship to Mulberry Court school. There she meets Izzy Thorpe and Summer Tilney, whose parents are famous. She is a bit jealous of their fame and unlimited money. Caitlin cannot believe it when they say it is not fun having famous parents. Izzy Thorpe wants to visit Caitlin's home. After a lesson, when Caitlin was talking about Rubens' picture, Izzy visits her new friend. She is impressed with Caitlin's house and family, especially with her brother, Jamie. A few weeks before Izzy's birthday party, Izzy, Caitlin, Jamie and Tom go to a party in a club. Caitlin orders a juice. Summer talks to her, and then Bianca Joseph comes and takes Caitlin to chat with two boys. Caitlin tries to get there, but somebody hits her and the juice gets out of her glass. That's how she meets Ludo. He offers her something to drink and they talk about Summer. Tom comes and say he wants to take her to another club, but Caitlin declines. She tells Ludo that, Summer is in the bathroom. In the evening Caitlin draws a portrait of Ludo. Caitlin dresses herself as a Rose from "Titanic” for Izzy’s party. She waters herself during the party. Suddenly somebody knocks the door. They are journalists, who want to talk to Izzy’s dad, so the girl tell them that her parent are in Royal Pavillon. A few days later, Izzy goes to Caitlin’s place. Caitlin tells her parents that, she has been invited to spend two weeks in Casa Vernazza with Summer. Her parents agree and Jamie also joins them. During the flight to Italy, Caitlin reads some tabloids and Ludo notices it. He pretends to be interested in stars’ private life. He then reads a book and Caitlin starts to think that, he does not like her. Gabriella and Luigi come to take them from the airport. Ludo and Caitlin go with Gabriella. When she visits her friend, they talk about Summer. Soon they arrive at Casa Vernazza, Summer shows Caitlin her room and her own mother’s pictures. They go into town. Caitlin walks next to the church and she hears Summer’s voice. Her friend is talking with a man. She meets Ludo and his father. Ludo invites Caitlin to ride his yacht with him later on. During supper they discuss this and as a result Freddie, Izzy, Jamie, Gabriella and Summer go with them too. During the trip everybody goes swimming except Jamie. Summer and Caitlin abruptly set off to the local gallery. They pretend to be students, who are working on an article about Elena Cumani-Tilney’s pictures. But when Lorenzo brings one of them, Summer cries and he knows that, she is Elena’s daughter. Ludo calls Caitlin and tells her to come back. Summer will not talk to her because she thinks that Caitlin was after her, when they went to town. Luckily this does not lead to an argument. Caitlin decides to help Summer discover how her mother died. After some time she says that Sir Magnus and Gabriella must have murdered her mother, but she will not talk about it to Summer. In Elena’s paintings, Caitlin finds a pretty one called Abbey, July 2004. She finds it in the Internet and discovers that, it is a mental hospital. All of a sudden Summer runs away from home. Whilst everybody is searching for her somebody calls from hospital to inform that Freddie and Izzy had had an accident. Alex di Matteo comes to the Tilneys’ house. He talks to her about his trip to Milan with his grandma, but she had thought that he had another girlfriend. Summer calls Caitlin and everything is explained. Ludo takes her for a walk and tells that, he in fact loves her. A few days later they open a gallery of Elena Cumani-Tilney’s paintings in a house next to the Tilneys’. In the evening, they go for a ride on Ludo’s yacht. First, Ludo wants to know if Caitlin is going to send an article about his mother’s death to tabloid. She says that she is not but, that she has some titles in her head. Ludo tells Caitlin that he fell in love with her when he saw how seriously she treats those articles. However, Caitlin doesn't believe him in the beginning so he kisses her and all ends well.
24571596	/m/080dhnk	The German lesson	Siegfried Lenz	1968	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Siggi Jepsen (the first-person narrator), an inmate of a juvenile detention center, is forced to write an essay themed The Joy of Duty. In the essay, Siggi Jepsen describes his youth in Nazi Germany where his father, the "most northerly police officer in Germany" does his duty, even as his task is to debar an old childhood friend, the painter Max Nansen, from his profession. Siggi feels compelled by Nansen's paintings, "the green faces, the Mongol eyes, these deformed bodies ... " and, without the knowledge of his father, manages to hide some of the confiscated paintings. Following the end of WWII, Jepsen is interned for a short time and later reinstalled into his position. When his father then nonetheless continues to carry out his former orders, Siggi brings paintings that he believes to be in danger to safety. His father discovers his doings and dutifully turns him in for art theft. While forced to write the essay on "The Joy of Duty" during his term in the juvenile detention center in Hamburg, the memories of his childhood come to the surface and he goes far beyond the "duty" of writing his essay by filling several notebooks, the makings of this novel. * Siggi Jepsen * Jens Ole Jepsen : Siggi's father, a police officer * Max Nansen : a painter, pursued by the Nazis, whom Lenz based on the expressionist painter Emil Nolde * Gudrun Jepsen : Siggi's mother * Klaas : Siggi's brother * Hilke : Siggi's sister
24578141	/m/0805vk1	A Morbid Taste for Bones	Edith Pargeter	1977	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The book is set in 1137. Brother Cadfael is introduced, working in the herb gardens of Shrewsbury Abbey. A Welshman who has been on Crusade before joining the Order of Saint Benedict in middle life, he has far more worldly experience than most of his brother monks. He has two young monks to assist him in his work; John, who is practical and down-to-earth, and Columbanus, who is ambitious and sanctimonious. One morning, Columbanus is taken ill with what some take to be the "falling sickness" (epilepsy) but which Cadfael reckons to be a hysterical fit. Brother Jerome, clerk to the ambitious Prior Robert, prays over Columbanus during the night and announces the next day that a young woman appeared to him and told him to take Columbanus to St Winefride's Well in North Wales. When they return, Columbanus is recovered. He in turn says that Saint Winefride appeared to him and stated that her grave at Gwytherin in North Wales had long been neglected, and she desired to be interred somewhere more accessible to pilgrims. Neither Cadfael nor John believe the tales. Prior Robert is known to have been searching for some time for a suitable saint's relics to grace Shrewsbury Abbey. Robert, the lazy Sub-Prior Richard, Jerome and Columbanus prepare to journey to Wales to retrieve Winefride's remains. Cadfael induces Abbot Heribert to send him with them, as a fluent Welsh-speaker will be required, and John, to do the menial work. The Bishop of Bangor and Owain Gwynedd, prince of Gwynedd, give their assent, and the monks reach Gwytherin, a community stretching for several miles along the Cledwen River. The local priest, Father Huw, is hospitable, but objects to Winefride's remains being removed without first calling an assembly of the free men of the parish. When it is held the next morning, Rhisiart, the most influential landowner in the community, opposes the Saint's removal. Prior Robert makes a misguided attempt to bribe him. Rhisiart storms off, announcing that he is implacably opposed to Robert. The assembly breaks up, with every man agreeing with Rhisiart. Robert and Jerome take the view that Rhisiart is committing blasphemy, but Father Huw persuades Robert to appeal to Rhisiart for another meeting. At the house of Cai, Rhisiart's ploughman, John talks to Annest, the niece of Bened the blacksmith, and they quickly fall in love despite the difference in language. Rhisiart meanwhile does not change his views, but agrees to meet Prior Robert at Huw's house at noon the next day. The next morning Robert tells John to make himself useful to the servants and sends Jerome and Columbanus to pray at Winefride's chapel while he, Richard, Cadfael and Huw wait for Rhisiart. Rhisiart does not appear. When he has been missing for some hours, a search is mounted, and he is found dead in some dense woods, apparently shot from in front with a bow and arrow. The arrow bears the mark of Engelard, an Englishman who has fled into Wales to avoid punishment for poaching, and who is in love with Rhisiart's daughter Sioned. When Engelard appears, many locals insist that he had motive to kill Rhisiart. At Robert's insistence, they prepare to take him into custody. On the spur of the moment, Engelard flees, and Brother John impedes the only local man close enough to stop him. Robert furiously orders John to be held for breaking the law of Gwynedd and his own vow of obedience. Since he is to be held at Rhisiart's house, where he will have contact with Annest, John meekly complies. Cadfael meanwhile realises that Engelard's arrow did not kill Rhisiart. It had rained for an hour about noon. Rhisiart's back, on which he lay, is damp, while his front is dry. Rhisiart was stabbed from behind, by a dagger which penetrated through his body, and fell face down. Some time later, after it rained, someone turned him over and pushed the arrow into the wound from the front. For the moment, Cadfael can only speculate why anyone would do this. Although the monks from Shrewsbury all appear to have alibis for the time of Rhisiart's death, Columbanus confesses the next morning to sleeping rather than praying all the previous day, making Jerome a suspect. Father Huw tells Robert that his flock have taken Rhisiart's death as an omen and no longer oppose Winefride's removal. Robert declares that he will exhume the remains only after three nights' vigil and prayer. Cadfael takes advantage of the superstition that a corpse will bleed afresh if touched by the murderer (though he does not believe it himself, having seen men who died in battle being handled by those who killed them). At his suggestion, Sioned asks that after each night's prayer, the two who maintained the vigil place their hand upon Rhisiart's heart in token of forgiveness. On the first morning, Jerome appears to hesitate, but eventually does as Sioned asks. The next night, Robert excuses himself from the vigil on the pretext of relating the recent events to Prince Owain's bailiff. On the third night, Cadfael and Columbanus share the vigil, but Columbanus once again has a fit of religious ecstasy and is carried off unconscious in the morning. He recovers after Mass, and relates that Winefride appeared once again to him and said that Rhisiart should be buried in her grave when she is removed. They begin digging out Winefride's grave. Cadfael finds the body several feet down, and the monks carefully place it in the coffin brought from Shrewsbury. Prior Robert places wax seals on the coffin to prevent anyone from disturbing the contents. As they prepare to bury Rhisiart in her place, Sioned asks Peredur, another young man who has been in love with her, to place a jewelled cross on the body. Peredur refuses, terrified, and claims that Rhisiart cannot accuse him. He confesses that he found Rhisiart dead and pushed one of Engelard's arrows into the wound, thinking that Engelard would flee into England and thus remove himself as rival for Sioned's hand. Shocked by these revelations, Peredur's mother Branwen becomes hysterical. Cadfael had previously prepared a flask of a tranquilising syrup derived from poppies, in case of further hysterical fits by Columbanus. He retrieves it from Columbanus's belongings and finds most of it is gone, though enough remains to calm Branwen. He then recalls that on the day of Rhisiart's murder, Columbanus confessed to sleeping while at vigil, but only Jerome drank some of the wine provided for sustenance. Had it been laced with the syrup, Jerome would almost certainly have slept through the vigil, but would have been ashamed to admit it. Cadfael is distracted from this train of thought by the news that the Prince's bailiff is about to take John into custody. When the bailiff arrives at Sioned's dwelling, he is met by Cai, who is wearing a bloodstained bandage and says that John broke free after striking him with a board. Though Robert is displeased, the bailiff, Cai, Bened and Annest all seem rather complacent over the escape. On the last night before the monks depart, Columbanus, who Sioned and Cadfael reckon is taking the glory of the translation of the saint for himself, offers to mount another solitary vigil. As he believes himself to be unobserved, he composes himself to sleep. He is awakened by the vision of a young woman demanding to know why he murdered Rhisiart, her champion. Unnerved, Columbanus confesses and begs forgiveness from the saint, saying that the deed was for her glory. As she calls him a liar, Columbanus realises that the "saint" is actually Sioned, and slashes at her with a knife, inflicting only a graze, before fleeing. Cadfael and Engelard tackle him outside the chapel. Seeing Sioned bleeding from her wounds, an enraged Engelard hurls Columbanus to the ground hard enough to break his neck. Faced with this unexpected development, Cadfael recalls Sioned's inspired words about Rhisiart being her champion. He, Engelard, and Sioned quickly undress Columbanus, open St. Winifrede's coffin, replace the remains of the saint in her grave above Rhisiart's body, and place Columbanus's naked body in the coffin. Cadfael uses his knowledge of seals (and, more importantly, how to inconspicuously break them) to give the appearance that the coffin remained undisturbed. The three then prepare the chapel for discovery in the morning. The next morning, Columbanus's shirt and habit are found empty on the floor of the chapel. Hawthorn petals are scattered around them. Though some wonder whether Columbanus has gone mad and is wandering naked, Robert proclaims that Columbanus's prayers to be taken from the world into a state of grace have been answered. The villagers help load the saint's suspiciously heavy coffin aboard a cart without any outward sign that anything is wrong, yet Cadfael suspects that every one of them knows what happened during the night. As they leave Gwytherin, John can be seen (by Cadfael) bidding them farewell. Two years later, Bened, the smith from Gwytherin, calls at Shrewsbury Abbey while on a pilgrimage to Walsingham. He tells Cadfael that John and Annest are married, and John will become the smith after Bened. Sioned and Engelard are also married, and have christened their first child Cadfael. To Robert's chagrin, he relates that what Robert fondly imagines to be Saint Winefride's former resting place in Gwytherin is the scene of many pilgrimages and miraculous cures, when the ornate tomb in the Abbey is treated with indifference by pilgrims and apparently the saint herself. Cadfael is left musing that the saint is unlikely to object to sharing a grave with Rhisiart.
24579192	/m/0807clg	The Storyteller	Mario Vargas Llosa	1987		 The story is set in Peru of the 1950. Through the alternation of two narrators, the novel presents a story of Saul Zuratas, a man who decides to leave his past identity behind and go native in one of the indigenous tribes of Peru. Unlike the ethnographers and linguists who explore the aborigine tribes for professional or rational reasons, Saul’s motive is intimate and emotional. But his noble intention becomes questionable when the reader gradually finds out that the hero could not leave behind the western dominant discourses on which his entire life had been built. This novel deals with the problem that not only persists in Peru, but also in many other counties of Latin America: the coexistence of the modern society which is prepared to participate in the cultural, economical and political life of the Global World, and of the indigenous population, which is viewed by modern societies as archaic and primitive (Mario). The plot develops an extended argument of two sides of what to do with Peru's native Amazonian populations. One side argues that tribes should be left alone to live as they have for millennia, leaving them full access and use of their ancient lands. The other side posits that such ancient ways cannot survive the exploitation of economic interests. In order to save them, natives must be protected by modern intervention of missionaries and government agencies. Through the book, each character seeks ways to protect these groups. Odd chapters are narrated by Mario Vargas Llosa, both a character and the author of the text. These chapters are set in San Marcos University, the radio station where Mario is employed, and several pubs around the city. Even number chapters are narrated by Saúl Zaratas as the Storyteller for the Machiguenga and are devoted entirely to telling the history of the tribe and its methods of survival. Those chapters are set throughout the Amazon as the Storyteller travels from one group to another. The two characters meet only in the odd chapters from time to time, debating politics, university life, and occasionally the rights of the native tribes to either exist as they have or be saved by modernization. In the end, Mario (the character) creates a commentary for public television to shed light on the plight of the Machiguenga, with the hope of convincing himself that the tribe is in better shape for the interventions of modern civilization imposed upon them. Saúl, for his part, fully integrates into the tribe, donning his western ways and incorporating himself fulling as a historian and communication link for the disparate members across the Amazon.
24587879	/m/080b1t1	Meeting at the Milestone	Sigurd Hoel			 The novel starts with a short and mysterious prologue, Frontkjemperen (The eastern front volunteer), allegedly written in 1947. The narrator talks about "I", "he" who got eight years, "his father" who committed suicide, and "her" who "I" have not spoken with since 1945. Even though this is the fate of strangers, "I" will organise some personal notes. The first part of the book is written immediately after this, still in 1947. It talks about the time before 1943 when "I" wrote the second part of the book. He talks about the house that he has bought after lengthy negotiations with the master builder. He lost his family early during the occupation, and he was also imprisoned for a couple of weeks. By the resistance he was called "The spotless one", a nickname he quite appreciated. The leader of the resistance decided that his house was suitable for hiding people who needed to go into hiding. One day in 1943 a man named Indregaard came to the house. The spotless one knew of him already. Indregaard was depressed and needed to talk about his problems with The spotless one. The conversation soon got to a common acquaintance, Hans Berg, who was a Nazi. Indregaard thought that because of what happened in their youth he was responsible for Hans Berg's Nazism. The spotless one now starts writing about Hans Berg in order to find out why some people turn to Nazism. This part, which is written in 1943, starts with an analysis of Hans Berg's childhood and youth. The spotless one fails at his analysis. He then tries to analyse others of his fellow students who became Nazis, amongst them Carl Heidenreich, simply and superficially. Again he fails. It becomes evident that it is his own past he wants to analyse. He describes his childhood, his father, his time as a student in Kristiania, and his first erotic experiences. After a couple of brief relationships he meets "Kari". He stops mid-sentence as he reveals that "Kari" fell pregnant. The third part is written in Sweden in 1944. The spotless one had to flee after an assignment in the southern part of the country. He was assigned with tracing an informant in a small town. The informant turned out to be his own son by "Kari". She was married to Carl Heidenreich, and her real name was Maria. The spotless one let himself get captured by the Nazis, and was interrogated by Heidenreich. After the torture, or redemption, he experienced a 'vision' where he saw it all. He was rescued by Kari/Maria. He realised during the escape that he was responsible for the downfall of his family. The final part of the novel is written in 1947. The spotless one visited Maria when he came back to Norway. He was told that Carl Heidenreich had committed suicide, and that his son, Karsten, had been arrested. Finally he describes fragments of his 'vision'. no:Møte ved milepelen
24589142	/m/0805963	High Vacuum	Robert Wade		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The first manned moon ship, Alpha, runs out of fuel just before landing in the Mare Imbrium, and crashes, killing one of the four-man crew and marooning the rest. The novel follows the castaways as they struggle to survive and return to Earth.
24593043	/m/080m1wm	Freddy and Simon the Dictator	Walter R. Brooks		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The local rabbits have been much help to the Bean animals, so it is a surprise that some are vandalizing and stealing. Confronted, instead of apologizing, a rabbit criticizes Mrs. Bean, then gives ridiculous evidence that her husband was eaten by the Beans. Freddy and Jinx the cat investigate, discovering that the Grimby house in the woods next to the farm is used for political meetings. The speaker, inside a mechanical man that amplifies and distorts his voice, encourages the animal assembly to be "free" of humans. Freddy guesses their foe Mr. Garble is behind it. The A.B.I. (Animal Bureau of Investigation) is alerted to watch. Freddy’s friend Mr. Camphor is asked to run for governor. This does not suit him ("I could sound like a fine governor, if I didn’t have to do any governing." p.&nbsp;32). Camphor asks Freddy to visit the political meeting at his mansion, to say bad things about Camphor’s suitability. The pig, in his disguise as Dr. Hopper, invents faults, including that Camphor giggles in church and during speeches. But the political committee manages to see the bright side of these faults. Money was stolen, and Mr. Bean’s handkerchief found at the crime scene. Since Mr. Bean’s laundry was stolen by rabbits, Freddy suspects a plot to organize animals against humans, telling lies that might be eventually believed. Miss Anguish, Camphor’s sister, is one of the guests. Her thinking is spacey, but it may be an act. She states that Freddy is a Hollywood film director. (So now Freddy is dealing with three odd sorts of thinking at once.) Freddy tries convincing the committee again that Camphor is an unsuitable candidate: He proposes that all animals be given the right to vote! While the committee is deliberating, Freddy investigates the money theft. Before he can collect evidence, Mr. Bean is jailed. Camphor joins the local Indian tribe to hide. Jinx discovers Simon the rat has returned, and with Mr. Garble is encouraging all animals to revolt and take control of farms from humans. To infiltrate the group, Jinx determines to pretend he has joined the revolution. Freddy and Camphor’s butler, Bannister, are unable to convince Camphor to return; he has disguised himself as an Indian. The A.B.I. discovers the hideout where Garble is managing the revolution. They capture him, and smash the mechanical man used to make speeches. It is too late to stop the revolution, however. Farms are taken over, including the Bean farm, which is then run by Jinx. Since the Bean animals do not know Jinx is undercover, he takes considerable abuse. To strike at the revolution, Freddy gets the cooperation of the captured Garble by convincing him that the Indians will burn him at the stake. Then Freddy turns to Simon, and for a while follows Jinx’s lead — only to trick Simon into sitting a cage disguised as a throne. With Simon out of the way, Camphor decides to appeal directly to the animals of the revolution, promising them the right to vote — which will make them the equals of people. This strikes a chord, and the revolution falters. Employing the aid of the dogs, who have generally stay loyal to their human masters, the farms are gradually recovered. Garble escapes. He captures Freddy, Miss Anguish and Jinx, holding them for ransom. Miss Anguish tries to confuse their captors, but finally in desperation they set a fire to attract attention. Garble is recaptured and sent to prison. Simon and his criminal family are packed in a crate that is indefinitely shipped from place to place. The revolution fails. With the animal vote, Camphor becomes governor.
24593593	/m/04f_0fw	Septimus Heap: The Magykal Papers	Angie Sage	2009-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book is divided into four sections. The first section, "Papers from the Castle," opens with a bit of history. It tells about the background of how The Castle developed from a little village and how the Queen came to stay there and the arrival of the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. This is followed by Rupert Gringe's Around-the-Castle Boat Tour programme. Other tours are represented, such as the "Ask Sirius Walking Tour of the Castle and the Ramblings" and Silas Heap's ink-splotched "A Ramble through the Ramblings Walking Tour." After a restaurant guide, the biographies of the main characters start. Never before known facts facts about Sarah and Silas Heap, Jenna, Mr. and Mrs. Gringe, Marcia Overstrand, ghost Alther Mella, spy Linda Lane and the main protagonist Septimus Heap. One can delve even deeper into these personalities by way of the journals, letters, appointment diaries, and family trees. The second part, "Papers from the Wizard Tower" includes a brief history of the construction of the Wizard Tower and rules and regulations one should consider while visiting the Tower. It also includes Septimus' homeworks and its corrections by Marcia and a pamphlet by Alther Mella, on assisting recently turned ghosts in the afterlife. The third part, entitled "Papers from The Palace" describes the Palace as a whole and includes Jenna's private journals and a brief history of some notable queens. The last part talks about the Message Rat service and other locations of the Castle.
24596970	/m/080pvqc	Alinda of the Loch				 Alinda experiences a similar curse to the one cast on her mother; However, in this tale, the Shadow Fairy curses Alinda with a 500 year deep sleep. On her eighteenth birthday, Alinda falls asleep, and knowing that they will not be around when she is awakened, the King and Queen find a secure resting place for her and employ a young dragon named Nessie to keep watch of her for those five hundred years. The story takes an unsuspecting turn when Alinda wakes up staring out of her glass topped bed to a young man named Grant. From this point, Alinda is introduced to an unfamiliar modern world with airplanes, cars, rock music and very different clothing styles.
24600242	/m/09v6g1q	A Colossal Failure of Common Sense	Patrick Robinson	2009-07-21		 The book is highly critical of Richard Fuld, Henry Paulson, and the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, a 1999 act of Congress signed by former United States President Bill Clinton that repealed portions of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. The book contains an account of how McDonald, after attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst, selling pork chops, and self-teaching himself the material required to pass the General Securities Representative Exam, went on to develop the website ConvertBond.com, which was later purchased by Morgan Stanley. The author's stated expertise, in the convertible bond market, was what allowed him to create the website ConvertBond.com during the dot-com bubble, and successfully sell it to Morgan Stanley before the Internet bubble burst. It was while he was working at Morgan Stanley that McDonald was offered a job as vice-president at Lehman Brothers. The book characterizes Richard Fuld as being out of touch, smug, and a ruthless CEO with a short temper and a penchant for rage. The book sarcastically refers to Fuld as "his majesty," "god-like," and a "spiritual leader." McDonald believes that the United States government should have saved Lehman Brothers, and that Dick Fuld falsely believed that the United States government would save the company after having a meeting with Henry Paulson in the spring of 2008, which led him to engage in unnecessarily risky behavior and reject an offer of $18 per share from the Korea Development Bank as late as August 2008.
24602332	/m/080h189	Wolf: The Journey Home	'Asta Bowen	1997-01-13	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Marta, a black gray wolf, is alpha female in a small pack in Pleasant Valley, Montana, that consists of her mate, Calef, their three pups Rann, Sula, and Annie, and a seven-year-old wolf named Oldtooth. One morning Calef is killed by poachers, leaving Marta and Oldtooth to try to feed and raise the pups on their own. Though an experienced hunter, Oldtooth is unable to bring down large game as he lost most of his teeth chewing a steel leg trap off his leg years ago. Once the cubs are old enough to be left alone for short periods of time, Marta takes over the bulk of the hunting. Though it is difficult, the two adults successfully keep all three cubs alive and begin weaning them and teaching them the ways of the wolf. In the summer, traps begin appearing in the area as human populations increase. Annie and Sula are caught and are taken away by humans, but reappear a few days later, locked in cages. Marta tries to free her pups but is unsuccessful; however humans come regularly to keep them fed and ensure they have water. Oldtooth is later captured, while Marta is tranquilized from a helicopter. Rann escapes and is not seen again. The wolves are kept in a human facility for a couple of months to be examined, and a wound on Oldtooth's paw is treated. In early winter, the wolves are sedated again and awaken to find themselves in a strange high place with radio collars around their necks. Still groggy from the tranquilizer, the strangeness of the events and the smell of grizzly bear in the area triggers Marta's flight instincts and she runs blindly downward, leaving Oldtooth and the cubs behind. When Oldtooth awakens, he quietly abandons Annie and Sula, following Marta's trail, but at a much slower pace. Marta continues running in the direction she believes will lead back to Pleasant Valley, swimming across Middle Fork River, crossing the nearby highway and railroad tracks, and running through various woodlands in between. Pausing only to drink water and tend her paws, she crosses Pyramid Peak and swims across the Hungry Horse Reservoir, before a week without food and exhaustion cause her to collapse on the shore. After resting, she continues her run, though hunger now spurs her to pause to hunt when she can but she eventually collapses by Flathead Lake, where she remains unconscious for days. Meanwhile, unskilled at hunting and without the adults to teach them how to survive, Annie and Sula slowly starve to death. Oldtooth reaches Middle Fork Valley, where illness and his lame foot drive him to hunt local livestock. He is shot and killed by a human. When Marta recovers, her instincts to return home are dulled and she begins traveling more slowly. She makes her way through Swan Valley to cross the Swan Range and Mission Mountains. As winter settles in, she makes a winter home around Lindbergh Lake, where hunting is good and humans few. Near the end of winter, she meets another lone wolf, Greatfoot, a large male. Initially they maintain their distance from one another, until Greatfoot hunts the elk herd in Marta's range, specifically the aging leader that Marta favored and refused to hunt herself. She stops the other wolf's hunt, and after a brief skirmish they forget the elk and become friendly. They form a pack of two and leave the area, heading south. After mating, their travels become more urgent to find a home to raise young. They settle in Ninemile Valley, a large forested region that while inhabited by humans, has few roads and homes. Several weeks after they make their den, Marta gives birth to seven pups, though one dies shortly after birth. As spring arrives, the pups grow well under their parents care and begin making their first explorations outside of the den. In early summer, Marta leaves the den to hunt and is killed by a poacher. Greatfoot is left as the sole provider for the pups. Though they were not fully weaned, they soon learn to eat the meat their father provides and he slowly begins teaching them how to avoid humans and how to survive. The only human the pack ignores is a human scent they frequently find on their trails, as no human ever appears with it, only the occasional sound of a truck nearby. Near the end of summer, Greatfoot is run over and killed while crossing a freeway during a hunt. The pups begin hearing a strange wolf howl, but when they track it they find a fresh kill and the familiar human scent. New kills appear every few days as the young wolves grow larger and stronger. One night when they hear the unusual howl, they are closer than usual to it and reach the kill in time to meet their benefactor, a human male. The pack stares at the man, before disappearing back into the forest, ignoring his howl. As he goes to leave, however, the six return to the edge of the clearing and howl.
24607837	/m/080b861	Little King Matty...and the Desert Island	Janusz Korczak			 Little King Matty...and the Desert Island is a story about freedom, democracy, politics, travel, corruption, tyranny and reform. Matty becomes king after his father’s death: he then must learn about “etiquette” – what kings can do and what they cannot – he has to learn to interpret the lies of his adult political advisors – and diplomacy “all about telling fibs”. His efforts to bring about reform take him to war with three neighboring kingdoms who try to partition his country. He succeeds in vanquishing them and wins by treaty. However, because his country is bankrupt, the other European countries refuse to provide him with aid to build ships so that he can make his kingdom economically sustainable. So, he goes to the land of the cannibals and witch-doctors where the child king succeeds in making a treaty that saves his kingdom, much to the annoyance of some of his political advisors and two of his vanquished neighbours. The story is romantic; the daughter of the African king, Klu Klu, falls in love with Matty and smuggles herself into his kingdom. She kills a rabid wolf with her dagger, saving Matty’s life and the people of the capital and becomes the People’s Heroine. She becomes a role model for all women in Europe and Africa. She learns faster, hunts better and is Matty’s best warrior. Matty’s reforms anger his adult enemies, who secretly encourage anarchy and invade his country again. His African warriors and Princess bravely fight alongside Matty, but he is betrayed by some of his cowardly adult citizens. His three enemies partition his country and, in the manner of Napoleon, order the child King to be banished to a deserted Island. However, before this is implemented, Matty escapes from gaol and is rescued by his African Princess and her father who renegotiates Matty’s sentence. The European kings cheat and Klu Klu’s father declares war on the whites. During a few paragraphs, there are references to Europe’s colonial atrocities in Africa and how Europe relies on Africa for goods like chocolate. Matty chooses to go into exile to protect his country. However, he escapes when a swimming postal rat from Klu Klu reaches him with urgent messages; he is kidnapped by his worst and strongest enemy and hides in a maximum security prison where he is cared for and taught by the worst criminals. Later he hides his identity and goes to a school were peer pressure prevents him from doing better, until he loses his temper. He, the victim, nearly becomes a bully. It is here that he learns that this worst enemy wants to go to war against his kingdom for a third time. As anger turns to bitterness, self-analysis saves Matty; Matty uses and learns humour to prevent him becoming maudlin. Thus, he eventually regains his self-confidence and rescues his kingdom. The book ends with Matty first becoming disillusioned, then dying.
24611681	/m/0807ssp	Report to the Principal's Office	Jerry Spinelli	1991	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Hillary Kain and Sunny Wyler are best friends. They live across the street from each other. But when Hillary and Sunny find out they are going to separate middle schools, they are thrown into depression. Sunny vows to not change her shirt, not wash her hair, and never even smile until she gets into the same school as Hillary. School begins at brand-new Plumstead Middle School, and there are four sixth graders who, somehow, meet. Eddie Mott is a child who tries to fit in, yet still has a hard time (e.g. he gets beaten up on the morning bus). Salem Brownmiller, a girl who loves to write stories, enjoys this because she is writing a story about a sixth-grade boy's first day at middle school - and Eddie is the perfect fit. Dennis "Pickles" Johnson, a famous child inventor, somehow finds his way with the other three children. And on the first day, they are all sent to the principal's, Charles T. Brimlow,
24611820	/m/0808zkc	Thirteen Women Strong				 This book revolves around Northern Kentucky University's women's basketball team and their 2006-2007 season. In this book, Dr. Wallace reveals the internal and external struggles that these young ladies had to face as student athletes. This book delivers the success and hardships endured by young women on a journey towards more than just a national championship. Most would think this book is only about basketball, but this story conveys how Nancy Winstel facilitated the growth of players into professional women. She shows her players how basketball can not only teach you how to set goals but to achieve them, both on and off the court. These players balanced class, winning and losing games, injuries, their personal lives, Coach Winstel's attitude as well as opposing teams. The previous year they were knocked out of the playoffs by a team they knew they could beat, and decided a stand had to be made. This book is about their stand to win.
24612763	/m/080dj6v	Timeliner	Robert Wade		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Timeliner is a time travel story. A scientist working with "dimensional quadrature" is flung forward in time, to a period where his consciousness ousts that of another man. When that man dies, the protagonist leaps forward again, and so on. In each case, the personality he replaces belongs to a person who is close to a woman who resembles his wife.
24613572	/m/05gjshb	Forge of Fury	Richard Baker		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The Forge of Fury is a dungeon crawl, a site-based adventure describing the stronghold of Khundrukar. The great dwarven smith Durgeddin the Black founded the secret stronghold within a great underground cavern system two hundred years ago when he and his clan were driven from his home by a horde of orcs and trolls. The orcs discovered the location of Khundrukar a century ago when they captured one of Durgeddin's clansmen, and raised a great army that stormed the stronghold and slew the dwarves, allowing its five levels to fall into ruins as goblins, orcs, and other monsters used the place as a base. Legends tell of the extraordinary blades Durgeddin forged in anger, enticing the player characters to come to the ruins of Khundrukar in search of these weapons.
24617147	/m/080b896	Dead in the Family	Charlaine Harris	2010-05-04	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When the novel begins, Sookie Stackhouse is still recovering physically and emotionally from the torture she received at the hands of demented fairies Lochlan and Neave in the previous book (Dead and Gone). She has finally settled into a relationship with the Viking vampire Eric, and her errant brother Jason seems to have his life in order, too, with a solid new girlfriend, Michele. But all the other people in Sookie’s life&mdash;Eric himself, her former lover Bill, her friend and boss Sam&mdash;are having family problems. Eric’s maker, Appius Livius Ocella, shows up with Eric’s ‘brother’ in tow&mdash;he is Alexei Romanov, only son of the last Czar of Russia, who as an adolescent witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution, including the slaughter of his entire family. He developed emotional problems as a result. Appius has sought Eric out as a last resort, to see if Eric can help restore Alexei to sanity. Meanwhile, Bill is still suffering from the silver poisoning he got via the teeth of Neave when he rescued Sookie from her torturers. He is not getting better, and may only be able to be cured by the blood of a vampire made by Bill's maker, the dead Lorena, but Bill refuses to ask his sibling for help. The furor raised by the coming out of the two-natured continues, as Calvin Norris reveals himself to his co-workers and Sam's family deals with the news of having the two-natured in the family. Certain forces are agitating for a were registration system, and the weres suspect that they are under surveillance by the government. Sookie begins to recover from her torture at the hands of Lochlan and Neave, but still has post-traumatic stress and anxiety. She wants to kill Victor because she realizes he is a major threat to Eric, Pam, and Bill, wanting them dead. But Sookie struggles with the idea of killing Victor in cold blood, rather than in the heat of battle or in self-defense. Victor sends assassins to kill Sookie, Pam, and Bill, without success. Sookie's cousin Claude comes to live with her, claiming he suffers without the company of other fairies (his triplets, Claudine and Claudette, are now deceased). Sookie's mad half-fae uncle, Dermot, has been wandering the property for reasons unknown, as has another unidentified fairy. Sookie seeks out Bill's "sibling", Judith Vardamon, to ask for her help. She learns that Judith was made vampire by Lorena in an attempt to placate a sullen Bill, her reasoning being that having a companion who so resembled Bill's late wife would please him. However, Bill avoids contact with Judith, believing that she blames him for her vampiric state. Judith won't contact Bill because she fears and hates Lorena. Sookie contacts Judith for the sake of Bill's health. Upon learning of Lorena's death, Judith is overjoyed and happily anticipatory of her visit with Bill. Her blood serves to heal him, and the two seem to build a rapport quickly. Sookie is called upon to babysit her cousin Hadley's young son, Hunter, who is also telepathic. She helps him with the social nuances of being telepathic. Sookie attends a trial by the Shreveport pack, to learn why the body of Basim, a new were, was found buried on her property. She learns that Alcide's second is the bloodthirsty Jannalynn, who is dating Sam Merlotte. Sookie struggles to prevent the pack from killing any of their own. Ultimately, she learns that Colman, father of the baby Claudine was carrying, is seeking revenge on Sookie for the part he perceives she played in Claudine's death. He was going to kill her, but after seeing her mothering Hunter, he can't bear to kill her, and instead wants her to be arrested. Meanwhile, Alexei has been carelessly draining people and refusing to be controlled by Appius, and Eric struggles to control him. Ultimately, Alexei attacks and almost kills Pam and Eric, and kills Bobby Burnham (Eric's "day man"), and Felicia. The stories converge at Sookie's house, where Eric kills Alexei, Colman kills Appius Livius while attempting to kill Sookie, and Eric kills Colman. Sookie and Claude free Dermot from the spell that had made him mad.
24622505	/m/080n95v	Mystery				 In the 1960s, a young boy named Tom Pasmore views an article about a woman named Jeanine Thielman who was murdered and then dumped in a lake. In June not long afterwards, Tom takes a milk cart from his home to a street called Calle Burleigh. There he hears the crying of an animal and, searching for this animal, finds a teenaged boy slightly older than him named Jerry and his older sister Robyn. When Tom says that he wants to go home, Jerry attacks him. Tom escapes, but is followed by two boys, Robbie and Nappy, who threaten him with knives. They chase Tom into the street, where he is hit by a car and severely injured. He spends the summer at Shady Mount Hospital in Mill Walk where he lives. He is visited by the following people: Gloria and Victor Pasmore, his parents; Hattie Bascombe and Nancy Vetiver, two nurses; Dr. Bonaventure Milton, the head doctor; Sarah Spence, a classmate; Lamont von Heilich, an elderly neighbor; He leaves the hospital at the end of the summer, fully healed. For one year he stays home and reads while he recovers. He attends junior high and proves to be a rather awkward student. He becomes rather obsessed with recent homicides in Mill Walk and makes a scrapbook profiling each one. Gloria Pasmore finds the scrapbook and is disturbed. She asks Tom's favorite teacher, Dennis Handley, to speak to Tom on the subject of the notebook. Dennis takes Tom driving, and Tom, now seventeen years old, asks about the death of a woman named Marita, in full awareness of Dennis' motives for driving him around. Under Tom's orders, Dennis stumbles upon the car in which Marita was shot and killed. Tom sees Lamont von Heilich at the scene and then leaves. Tom writes a letter to Captain Fulton Bishop, a detective involved in the case of Marita's murder. Victor Pasmore warns Tom to stay away from Lamont, though Tom does not and visits Lamont's house that same day, mailing the letter on the way there. Lamont and Tom both share a passion for solving murders without the aid of policemen, and Tom correctly deduces that Friedrich Hasselgard, Marita's sister, was, in fact, Marita's murderer. Lamont then shares with Tom a case of his own- that of Jeanine Thielman, who Lamont believes was murdered by a man named Anton Goetz, her lover, when she refused to continue seeing him. After getting to know each other, Tom departs from Lamont's house, taking Lamont's journal with him. Using the journal, Tom finds out that Lamont has been following the careers of those involved with the Thielman case. Over the next few days, Gloria Pasmore begins to show signs of mental illness. Friedrich Hasselgard, Marita's never-suspected murderer, is lost at sea while boating. Foxhall Edwardes, a suspect in Marita's murder, is killed in a shootout with two police officers, Mendenhall and Klink, at almost the same time. Mendenhall and Klink are both seriously injured and are committed to Shady Mount. Tom then learns that his own grandfather, Glendenning Upshaw, heard the gunshots that killed Marita on the night it happened. Dennis Handley begins to show concern for Tom at school, and Tom begins to grow closer to Sarah Spence, the classmate who visited him in the hospital. However, she is dating Buddy Redwing, another student at the school. Tom and Gloria visit Glen at his house and are greeted by Glen and his two butlers, Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley. Dr. Bonaventure Milton is also there, though he departs soon after Tom and Gloria arrive, speaking of a problem at the hospital where he works concerning Nancy Vetiver, one of the nurses who used to visit Tom when he was incapacitated. Glen prompts Tom to go to Eagle Lake for the summer, where Jeanine was killed, as it is a beautiful camping site and tourist attraction. Tom agrees to go. Sarah Spence grows distant from her boyfriend Buddy. Tom learns that Lamont doesn't want him to go to Eagle Lake, but Tom doesn't listen to him. Sarah and Tom walk together, and Sarah acts oddly nervous in front of Tom. After the walk, Tom sees a commotion at the hospital and enters, finding out that Mendenhall, one of the officers injured by Foxhall, has died. Tom discusses his theories with Dr. Bonaventure Milton, who disregards them. Tom invites Sarah to go with him and speak to Hattie Bascombe, who he thinks might live at the old slave house across town. He and Sarah drive there, and on the way, he admits that he was the one who wrote the letter to Fulton Bishop. Tom and Sarah see Milton exit Hattie's home, and go inside to talk to her. She says that Milton was talking about Tom himself and telling her not to talk to him. Hattie takes the two of them to see Nancy a few blocks away, who says that she was fired from her job at Shady Mount because she wouldn't stay away from Mendenhall while he healed, as her nursing style involves a personal connection with one's patients. Sarah and Tom return home. At the Pasmore household, Tom becomes further detached from his parents. Tom hears on the news that Klink, the only surviving officer of the Foxhall Edwardes incident, was killed by a group of criminals when he tried to prevent them from robbing a bank. Tom visits Lamont and shares the recent events with him. Lamont informs him that he was there on Calle Burleigh the day Tom almost died. Sarah and Tom board a Redwing jet with Sarah's parents to go to Eagle Lake. After an awkward conversation between the four of them, Sarah and Tom go to the back of the plane and have sex. Tom and the Spences touch down in Grand Forks, a town near Eagle Lake. Their chauffeur is Jerry Hasek, the boy who attacked Tom when he was younger. Tom recognizes and outs him in front of the astonished Spences. The five of them drive into the lodge complex and meet up with Buddy Redwing and his friend Kip Carson. Tom is to stay in Glen's old house with a woman named Barbara Deane, who used to be a nurse at Shady Mount. Tom goes into town and looks at old news articles at the library, searching for more evidence on the Jeanine Thielman case he is working on. He meets a man named Joe Truehart, and gives him a letter for Lamont. Joe doesn't mail the letter, but in fact hands it to Lamont personally, as Lamont is staying nearby to keep an eye on Tom, who is oblivious to Lamont's presence. Tom is deliberately pushed off the sidewalk and into traffic and almost killed by a speeding car, though he does not catch his attacker. He goes back to the lodge complex, and Sarah tells him that she doesn't have feelings for Buddy anymore. The next day, Tom attends dinner with all lodge guests, including the following: Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Redwing; Buddy Redwing; Kip Carson; Mr. and Mrs. Neil Langenheim; Mr. and Mrs. Bill Spence; Sarah Spence; Roddy and Buzz (a gay couple); Kate Redwing; Kate is an elderly woman who Tom asks about Jeanine Thielman. Kate tells him that she can speak about Jeanine later, but refuses to say another word on the subject during dinner. That night, Tom sees somebody creeping around Lamont's lodge with a flashlight. Unbeknownst to Tom, this person is Lamont himself. The next morning, upon returning from his walk, Barbara Deane tells him that Ralph Redwing's bodyguards came by under Buddy's orders to deliver a message to Tom: Stay away from Sarah. Barbara drives Tom into town and tells him that Anton Goetz wasn't Jeanine's killer, because Anton has a limp. Gloria Pasmore saw a man running away from the scene the night Jeanine was killed, and the man she saw did not have a limp. While Tom is walking in town, Jerry, Robbie, and Nappy pick him up in their car. Jerry tells Tom not to mention the howling, crying dog he heard on the day Tom was hit by a car years ago. They bring Tom to Buddy, who warns him once more to stay away from Sarah. The two struggle, and Tom incapacitates Buddy before escaping. Tom talks to Sarah about Jerry and she is displeased. He then sends another letter to Lamont via Joe Truehart, and goes to see Kate Redwing at her lodge. Kate tells Tom that the man Gloria saw was not Anton Goetz, clearing Anton's name, though Tom remarks that it doesn't really matter- shortly after Jeanine's death, Anton was found hanging by his neck from a rafter in his house. Tom has dinner with the guests again, and they treat him coldly on account of the happenings between Tom and Buddy. At the lodge, Tom calls his grandfather, Glen, and their phone call is interrupted when a bullet smashes his window and nearly kills him. Glen and the investigating officer, Spychalla (the deputy chief of police), both agree that it was a wild shot from a hunter. The next day, Tim Truehart (the chief of police), rules out Buddy Redwing as the shooter, though Tim believes that the shot wasn't wild. The summer passes rather uneventfully after that. Kate, Roddy, Buzz, and Kip leave. Tom finds countless letters from Sarah in his mailbox, as her parents have forbidden her to speak to him. Tom tries to call Sarah but Mr. and Mrs. Spence hang up on him. Their next group dinner is stressful and awkward. Later, Tom's schoolyard friend, Fritz Redwing, arrives in Grand Forks. Tom talks with Fritz and tells him about his relationship with Sarah. Tom goes to Barbara's house. Entering to search for her, he finds several notes from Jeanine Thielman accusing the reader of murder: "I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE... YOU MUST BE STOPPED... YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR SIN." He also finds many newspapers accusing Barbara of several homicides over the past few years. Tom realizes that Barbara is the murderer- she killed Jeanine and then, when Anton confronted her after Lamont accused Anton of the crime, Barbara killed Anton as well and made it look like a suicide. Tom also believes that Barbara murdered Mendenhall by slipping him the wrong medication while she was on her shift at Shady Mount. Tom, Sarah, and Fritz drive to an out-of-business shed leased by the Redwings and find Nappy surrounded by many stolen items before returning anxiously back to the lodge complex. Tom is unable to reach Glen or Lamont by phone. He calls the police station about the stolen items and they turn him down. Lamont finally makes himself known to Tom at the end of the day, and he tells Tom that Tim Truehart arrested Nappy and returned the stolen items. He also reveals to Tom that Lamont is his father and Gloria Pasmore was his mother. Tom meets Sarah at his house after speaking with Lamont, and he tells her that she must keep his and Lamont's meeting a secret. That night, Tom and Sarah sleep together in the basement of Tom's lodge. When they wake up, the lodge is ablaze, and Tom saves Sarah from the blaze, however he is too late to save Barbara Deane, who burns to death in the inferno. He is committed to the hospital with severe burns. Lamont tells him that Sarah is okay, and that Ralph Redwing and his wife left for Venezuela, as well as that Jerry and Robbie had stolen a car and crashed it into a ditch before being arrested. Tom is discharged from the hospital but fakes his own death in the fire so that he's no longer under the control of Victor, Gloria, and Glen. Lamont tells Tom of a string of murders involving the words BLUE ROSE written near those killed. Attacked were 4 major characters: A prostitute, a gay piano player, a gay doctor, and a butcher. The doctor survived, and Tom is surprised to learn that the doctor is Buzz, Roddy's husband. The man who was investigating these cases killed himself soon after the butcher's death. In Tom and Lamont's hotel, Tom finds a newspaper detailing his own death. He realizes then that Glen Upshaw is the killer, not Barbara. He killed Jeanine after she threatened to expose his political corruption, and then Anton soon afterwards when Anton was blamed for the crime. Magda, Tom's grandmother, found out what a horrible person Glen was, and in a depressive state, waded into the lake and drowned herself. Tom and Lamont write I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE over and over on pieces of paper, copying Barbara Deane's notes, and mail them to Glen in order to "rattle his cage". Lamont lends Tom "The Divided Man", a novelization of the Blue Rose murders written by Timothy Underhill. Andres, Lamont's helper, drives Tom and Lamont to Glen's house and they watch his shocked expression as he opens their letters. They see him argue briefly with Fulton Bishop before they leave. The two learn that Jerry hired his friend, a man named Schilling, to shoot at Tom when he looked out the window. Tom calls Sarah and his parents, but he hangs up on the former and is disgusted with the latter when Dr. Bonaventure Milton answers the phone, suggesting that Gloria and Milton are having an affair. Lamont goes to meet Officer Natchez at a coffeeshop while Tom remains in the hotel room. When he doesn't return, Andres drives Tom to Lamont's house, where Tom finds a huge mess as well as Lamont's corpse. Tom and Andres smell cigars at the crime scene, proving that Glen was Lamont's killer. Tom and Andres speak with Natchez, who goes with them to Glen's house. The Kingsleys tell them that Glen departed after taking a call from Deputy Spychalla. It turns out that when Spychalla told Glen that they had caught the man who set Tom's lodge on fire, Glen believed he had nothing to hide from anymore and went to see Carmen Bishop, Fulton's sister, not far from where Nancy Vetiver lives. The three of them (Tom, Natchez, and Andres) travel to the Third Court in search of Glen, who they discover dated both Barbara Deane and Carmen Bishop to make himself blend in. His relationship with Carmen allowed him to corrupt Fulton and indirectly take control of the police force. In the Third Court, Natchez provokes Glen by shouting the text from Jeanine's notes. Glen fires at Tom with a pistol but misses. Natchez shoots Glen in the head, killing him as Carmen Bishop watches from the sidelines. Glen's body is taken back to his house. He had placed all filed evidence of his crimes at the house of Jerry Hasek. The three make Glen's death look like a suicide by placing his body in a position with the gun against his temple, where Natchez shot him. The Redwings travel to Switzerland and Ralph Redwing gives Fulton Bishop (who apparently escaped punishment) a job overseas. Buddy and Sarah are no longer together. The final scene of the book shows Tom and Sarah reuniting and beginning their relationship together.
24626241	/m/08053bs	Mach 1: A Story of Planet Ionus	Allen Adler		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 While testing an experimental warship, the "Mach 1", a human pilot and his companion are kidnapped into space by aliens from the planet Ionus, which turns out to be a moon of Saturn. There, they confront an oversized monster named Karkong who is menacing the Ionians. Karkong follows them back to Earth. Chaos ensues.
24629520	/m/0806_g8	New York Dead	Stuart Woods	1991-10		 New york spelled N-E-W Y-O-R-K. is a city in America. The location where the book is set is the empire state building, in which deaths of innocent peeps (black americans) lost their precious lives from staring at the tall, symbolic building. Their bodies were burried on the roof called "Imbediona" as a symbol of this occurance.
24629840	/m/080f8zp	Dead in the Water	Stuart Woods	1997-08		 On a short vacation to escape his now hectic life in New York City, Stone Barrington set his sight on a lovely and romantic getaway to the islands of St. Marks. His companion, Arrington Carter, all-round superstar was to join him the next day. Three events would ruin Stone's plans for a romantic boat cruise about the islands and leave him in the mist of a life or death trial. One was the New York weather, snowing in every airport available. Next was the sadden and fearsome ambition of his beau, Arrington Carter, high profile host and interviewer, who decided to track down another must-have editorial. Last was the sweet and gorgeous All-American girl standing trial for murdering her husband, where if convicted meant death, by hanging. Racing to prove the young widow innocent of any wrongdoing pits Stone against a determined protector standing on the verge of becoming the next King of St. Marks. With little time to worked the case, leaving the young woman's head in a balance, Stone, once a police officer, now an up-and-coming lawyer, will do what he does best, defend his client with every skill he had to offer. Stone just hoped he didn't lose the new love of his life for his own fearsome and sadden ambition.
24630374	/m/080pw10	The Gates of Firestorm Peak	Bruce R. Cordell		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 The Gates of Firestorm Peak begins in the Shirelands at the village of Longbridge, located in the foothills of the mountain range that contains Firestorm Peak. In prehistory, the Elder Elves thrived during a previous Age of the world, and created a magical laboratory under Firestorm Peak where they opened a gate to the Far Realm which opens every 27 years. Over time, the bizarre physical laws and alien madness of the other dimension began to warp the areas underneath the mountain. Three hundred years ago a colony of duergar settled nearby and became guardians of the corrupted area. Decades ago, the evil conjurer Madreus bypassed the duergar and gained mastery of the Far Realm creatures residing in the complex underneath Firestorm Peak. In the last five years, he gained control of the duergar, and his studies and experiments have begun to cause manifestations of warped behavior in nature and society to spread beyond the legendary mountain. If not stopped by the player characters, the gate will eventually provide Madreus with the energies and allies he needs to bring the Far Realm's madness to the rest of the world.
24633216	/m/080fpny	Wren Journeymage				 The first summer of peace brings Wren on her weekly visit to the young Queen Teressa, where she encounters the derisive, upsetting Hawk Rhiscarlan riding in! Wren races to warn Teressa, to discover he's expected, which causes the girls' first argument. Tyron gives Wren a chance to leave Meldreth by sending her on a new journeymage project--to find Connor, who had wandered off to the Summer Isles. When Wren vanishes, her scry stone abandoned, Teressa veers between regret over the argument, worry about Wren, and the beguilement of attraction as Hawk skillfully upsets her court. Wren has just made friends with some young sailors when they are captured and forced on board a shady smuggler, where Wren learns all about the sea. When pirates attack, Wren does magic, which leads her straight to another confrontation with the villain she hates most, aided by the boy she . . . what do you call these feelings? Once again the four--Wren, Teressa, Connor, and Tyron--find themselves deep in adventure, as they try to navigate the treacherous waters of growing up.
24638632	/m/04xdr30	Dead Gods	Monte Cook		{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dead Gods is composed of two adventures which revolve around the theme of death and resurrection of a god: "Out of the Darkness" and "Into the Light". Each adventure can be played separately, although the two plots can be woven together by the Dungeon Master. "Out of the Darkness" consists of nine chapters. Long ago, Orcus the tanar'ri lord of the undead had grown fat and inattentive towards his realm in the Abyss. The minor demipower Kiaransalee, drow goddess of vengeance, conspired against Orcus and slew him, supplanting his realm and position and even banishing his name across the planes. Orcus’ corpse lay dead on the Astral Plane for some time, until he began to stir in the not-so-distant past. His form changed to become thin, small and shadowy, but rather than being truly restored to life he had become an undead god much less powerful than before. Orcus eventually disappeared from the Astral and chose a new name for himself: Tenebrous. He sought to gain revenge on everyone in the multiverse, and raised his former demonic servants as undead called visages to gather information to aid in his vengeance. He returned to an old base of his, a fortress on the Negative Energy Plane, and on the plane of Arborea he found a magical force called the Last Word which was potent enough to slay even a god. Kiaransalee had sent two of her drow followers to bury his powerful artifact, the Wand of Orcus, in an unreachable vault of stone on the plane of Pandemonium. In his search for his Wand, Tenebrous used the Last Word to slay Primus, the lord of the modrons, and using Primus's form he began using the modrons to search for his Wand. When the modrons discovered the two drow who had buried the Wand, Tenebrous began making preparations to take back the Abyss. The player characters must follow the clues to discover Tenebrous's scheme and keep the Wand away from him long enough for the power of the Last Word to consume him; if they succeed, the characters must then stop one of Orcus's followers from reviving his corpse on the Astral Plane yet again, to conclude the adventure. "Into the Light" consists of three parts, and takes place in the city of Sigil. Many years ago, the last worshippers of a dead god brought the pieces of his body from the Astral Plane to Sigil and used the body to construct a monument of five standing stones. Some time later, when the significance of the monument had been forgotten, adherents of another religion built a temple around the standing stones; in time, this religion died out and was forgotten too. This church stood vacant for centuries until bought by a wealthy man named Cruigh Manathas, who ordered his workmen to tear it down. The workmen disappeared one day – unknown to all, they had been absorbed into the standing stones, as were those who came to investigate what happened to the workmen. Secretly, a fighter named Argesh Fiord has been in control of the situation and is using it in an attempt to foment a war between some of the city's factions in revenge for the death of his wife. The player characters must uncover Fiord's plot in order to resolve the matter and prevent the war.
24639856	/m/080f2q4	Bats in the Air, Bats in My Hair		2008	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The protagonist, Sally, visits her grandmother for a night and finds unsuspected visitors in the room she is sleeping in. She awakens in the middle of the night to find bats in the room. Sally and her grandmother remove the bats from the bedroom victoriously. Sally goes to sleep and dreams of the bats. She then returns home the next morning. However a bat is hanging onto the bumper of her parent's car.
24640076	/m/080nj4c	Valley of the Flame				 The year is 1985 and the location is somewhere in the vast, teeming jungles of the Amazon. Medical scientist Brian Raft and his two colleagues Dan Craddock and Bill Merriday are working at a small, newly-built health center, researching tropical diseases. They are the only white men in the vicinity and are the last outpost of civilization. Somewhere deeper in the jungle drums have been beating for days and Craddock seems convinced that they are not beating a message, rather that they have some other, more sinister purpose. Craddock, despite his medical training, is a superstitious man "with his Welsh ghosts and his shadow-people of the lost centuries", so Raft does not take much notice of him. But soon out of the unknown comes a canoe propelled by two men with paddles. They have been working themselves to the point of almost complete exhaustion. One of these newcomers, Thomas Da Fonseca, proves to be a pilot on a mapping expedition whose plane has crashed near the second man's property. This second man, Paulo da Costa Pereira, is of indeterminate origin; he speaks Portuguese, but in a faulty manner, and carries himself in a kind of confident, haughty, evasive way that annoys Raft. Da Fonseca is sick, with a temperature far below normal, and appears to have some tropical disease. Pereira, on the other hand, seems to recover remarkably quickly. Nevertheless, Raft insists, against Pereira's will, on taking a blood sample to be certain of his health. Pereira's blood seems to be strangely mutated. If anything, it works in a superior way to normal blood. Raft overhears Pereira talking to Craddock, then suddenly these two disappear. They are seen by Merriday departing in the Center's motorboat. Craddock seems to be under the hypnotic spell of Pereira. The next morning Raft, with five natives, sets out up the river in pursuit. Raft's journey will ultimately take him to the Valley of the Flame.
24641588	/m/080dbyw	The God Boy				 Jimmy Sullivan is an eleven-year-old boy who lives in the town of Raggleton, an every day small town community in New Zealand. Jimmy is not like other boys his age. The home that he lives in is filled with constant arguing and bitterness between his parents. He tries to ignore these events by using special protection tricks to isolate himself from his own situation. On Tuesday afternoon he breaks down and turns violent - abusing the elderly, smashing windows and throwing rocks at Bloody Jack. Eventually his home environment changes when his mother kills his father. He is sent to a Roman Catholic boarding school and leads a very uncertain life.
24641893	/m/080ctb0	Best Friends Together		1998-10-29		 New school year starts. Chloe's friend, Emma, left school and she feels lonely. Luckily she finds a new friend, Jasmin Johnson. Jasmin helps her with sending an e-mail to Jack Kempton - a boy, whom she met during holidays in Greece. Meanwhile, Sinéad meets her friends from Burnthedge - Bianca and Abby. The girls receive presents from Sinéad - a pearl and a bracelet. When they realise how much money Sinéad's family has, they start to make Sinéad spend it for their clothes and accessories. Sinéad does not see anything wrong in it, until she overhears Bianca's and Abby's conversation about her. She ends friendship with them and finds a new friend - Chloe, who was her enemy for a while. Nick starts new school, but he is very upset. He meets Sanjay Fraser, who is short and everybody from his class think he is a weirdo. Nick talks to him, but Sanjay is sad, because Nick is tall and he always knows, what to say. Luckily, he discovers that Nick is not as self-confident as he looks and they become friends. Sanjay is very pleased with Nick being nice to his sister, Rani. Chloe has a birthday party at Jasmin's parents' cafe. She invites Nick, Sanjay, Jasmin and Sinéad. Sanjay talks to Jasmin and he falls in love with her. Sinéad wants to impress Nick, but she knows that he's in love with Chloe and she can't change it.
24642459	/m/0808zy3	Best Friends Getting Sorted		1999-02-28		 Chloe receives an e-mail from Jack. He’s got a surprise for her. Soon, she meets him in shopping centre. They're going to go to a club with Chloe's friends. Unfortunately, she sees him kissing another girl. Chloe decides to talk to his sister, Natalie, who explains her that, Jack doesn't treat anyone seriously. Chloe asks Jack to go ice-skating with her on Christmas. During their conversation, she breaks up with him. Jasmin has a date with Sanjay in the museum. Unfortunately, her mother doesn't let her go there. Sanjay is upset and he thinks that, Jasmin doesn't like him. When they meet at schools, Jasmin tells him she loves him and they become a couple. Jasmin tells her mother that, she's going to be in football team at school. But she has dates with Sanjay then, and when Jasmin's mother discovers it, she isn't angry, because she knows that she was wrong about him. Nick is still in love with Chloe and he believes that, she'll change her opinion about Jack. Unfortunately, he arrives to Leeds. Nick's mother has got problems with debts, which are still growing. His grandmother blames Nick's dad and he has enough. He runs away from home and he meets Sinéad, who wants help with homework. Nick organises football team at Lockbridge. Sinéad is in it, too, because she wants to be closer to Nick. Sanjay's father still thinks that computer animation is stupid idea for his son's future. He still wants him to be a lawyer and he invites some of his own friends, who usually ask Sanjay about his future. Sanjay brings Rani for ice-skating with his friends. Sinéad is taking care of her and they're friends. Still in love with Nick, Sinéad tries to get closer to him. Chloe helps her with choosing new clothes. Unfortunately, he still loves Chloe, but when they're ice-skating, ho holds her hand. Suddenly Sinéad breaks her ankle. Nick offers her to organise cheerleaders for football team, because Sinéad won't train for several months.
24645336	/m/080678s	The Patron Saint of Butterflies				 Honey and Agnes are best friends growing up in Mount Blessing, a religious commune in Connecticut. Honey and Agnes could not be any more different, and the older they get the more they are growing apart. Honey was abandoned by her mother as a newborn, but she lived in the nursery with Agnes until she turned 7 years old; Honey lives with Winky and Agnes lives with her parents and her brother, Benny. Ever since Agnes got The Saints' Way (The Saints' Way is a book that everyone in Mount Blessing gets when they turn twelve; it is given by the leader Emmanuel), she has changed. Agnes now abides all the rules in Mount Blessing, and she goes by whatever Emmanuel says. Honey on the other hand, never listens to Emmanuel or Veronica, never follows the rules and hates living at Mount Blessing. Whenever they, or anyone, do something wrong they are sent to the "regulation room". There they get whipped by Emmanuel and Veronica. Everything stays this way until Nana Pete, Agnes' grandmother, shows up unexpectedly and finds out the truth behind Mount Blessing.
24646271	/m/0808dlx	Her Fearful Symmetry	Audrey Niffenegger	2009		 Elspeth, the aunt of two young identical twins (Julia and Valentina) dies of leukemia, leaving them her apartment which is located beside Highgate cemetery in London. The twins are Americans, having lived in Illinois with their mother, Edwina, who is Elspeth's twin sister. Edwina and Elspeth have not spoken for many years. The reason for the rift between them is a secret and is not explained to the girls. The girls have always done everything together with Julia being the more dominant twin. They move to London and take up residence in the flat. Valentina has asthma and has a heart valve that hasn't been properly formed, making her slightly ill. Robert, Elspeth's lover, lives in the apartment below and Martin, a man whose wife, Marijke, has left him because of his obsessive compulsive disorder lives in the apartment above. Robert works as a tour guide in the cemetery as a way of learning more to for his thesis on the cemetery. Valentina begins falling in love with Robert. Robert also falls in love with her mainly due to her similarity to Elspeth. Julia befriends Martin and secretly begins giving him Anafranil (a pill for OCD), pretending that it is a vitamin. Martin is aware that she is giving him the medication, but he lets her think he doesn't know. Unnoticeable to anybody for the first year, Elspeth is trapped in her apartment as a ghost; invisible and mute. However, Valentina finds that she is aware of Elspeth's moods and one day, Valentina begins to see Elspeth in the apartment. The twins find a white kitten near the cemetery and name it the little kitten of death. They attempt to trap it by leaving food and milk on the balcony, but the kitten refuses to come inside. Elspeth finally catches the kitten by enticing it to the apartment with string. Elspeth and Valentina are playing with the kitten one day and Valentina sees the kitten drop dead onto the floor. They figure out that the kitten's soul has been caught on Elspeth's hand. Elspeth puts the kitten's soul back into its body and bring it back to life. A recurring theme throughout the story is Valentina's discontent with being one half of a whole (her twinship with Julia). She is the weaker twin both physically and emotionally. Julia calls her "Mouse" because of her fearful attitude toward everything. As the story progresses, Valentina becomes stronger emotionally and decides that she must break away from Julia if she is ever to really be able to live her life. Valentina asks Elspeth to take out her soul so that everybody will think that she has died. She tells Robert of her plan and asks him to freeze and preserve her body and then for Elspeth to put her soul back into her body so that she will be free to live her life without Julia. Julia will assume she is dead and Valentina will go on with a new life minus Julia. Robert is aghast at the plan and refuses to participate. He decides to read the diaries and letters that Elspeth left him when she died. He finds out that there was no rift between Edie and Elspeth, but rather a secret they shared that made it impossible for them to be together again: The woman Robert knows as Elspeth is actually Edie and the woman everyone knows as Edie is actually Elspeth. The real Edie is the mother of Julia and Valentina. When Edie was engaged to Jack (an American working in London at the time), she was insecure about his love for her so she started pretending to be Elspeth and made advances toward Jack to test him. Jack knew that she was not Edie, but he played along. On April Fool's Day, Jack and Edie got drunk at a party and Jack slept with her and she became pregnant with the twins. Jack did not know he had slept with Edie because he was too drunk to remember it. Elspeth marries Jack, but it's Edie who moves to America with him, and has the twins - Julia and Valentina. When the girls are four months old, Edie brings them to London, and Elspeth and Edie switch places. They thought Jack didn't know about the deception, but he did. Later, Valentina, Robert, and Elspeth enact the plan to remove Valentina's soul from her body. Valentina's soul is removed and held by Elspeth. They make it look as if an asthma attack killed Valentina. Julia discovers the body and is devastated. Edie and Jack come to London from America and a funeral is held with Valentina's coffin being interred in the family mausoleum in Highgate Cemetery. In the late evening on the day of the funeral, Robert removes the body from the coffin and takes it to the flat so Elspeth can place Valentina's soul back into her body. Valentina's soul hovers over the body and Robert sees the body begin to move and life flow through it once more. He takes Valentina to his flat, and discovers that the soul inside Valentina is Elspeth. Elspeth tells Robert that Valentina wouldn't go back into her own body and just dispersed when she let her go. Elspeth decided to take over her the body after she realized Valentina wasn't going to go back inside it. Valentina becomes a ghost trapped inside the apartment, getting stronger day by day. Julia continues to live in the apartment in the hopes of being close to Valentina and one day seeing her as Valentina had seen Elspeth. Valentina and Julia do end up being able to communicate, and Valentina figures out how to leave the apartment (she has to go inside of a person's mouth and that person has to let her go). Julia takes Valentina's spirit into her mouth, goes outside, lets her out and weeps for her lost sister. Valentina goes to the mausoleum and sees that her coffin is empty. She then meets the ghost of a little girl from 19th-century England who takes her to meet other spirits. Large crows show up and the spirits shrink and get on the crows to ride them over the city as they fly. Valentina realizes that she is finally free and happy. Later, Julia goes upstairs because she hears footsteps; Martin had just left a few days ago to meet Marijke in Amsterdam and they live there now. When she goes into the apartment, she finds a handsome boy who introduces himself as Theo, Martin and Marijke's son. She asks for a ride on his motorcycle, and later it is made obvious that they are dating. One day soon after, Julia thinks she sees Valentina while out shopping. Julia grabs Valentina's arm and stares into her eyes. Julia isn't sure that this is her dead sister; however, she has suspicions. She sees that the girl she thinks is Valentina is pregnant. Elspeth (in Valentina's body) runs off and informs Robert that they need to move to Sussex so that she won't be recognized. Elspeth has always wanted to live in Sussex. Robert realizes that Elspeth is manipulative and always gets her way. They move to Sussex, where the relationship between Robert and Elspeth deteriorates with Robert ignoring her most of the time. She delivers a baby boy and one day, shortly after the child is born, Elspeth returns to their little cottage after a walk and discovers that Robert's thesis has been completed and is lying on the table. Robert is gone, never to return.
24648861	/m/080pw5j	The Land of Green Plums	Herta Müller	1993	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The first character introduced to the reader is a young girl named Lola, who shares a room with five other girls, including the narrator, in a college dormitory. Lola records her experiences in a diary, relating her efforts to escape from the totalitarian world of school and society by riding the buses at night and having brutish, anonymous sex with men returning home from factory work. She also has an affair with the gym teacher, and soon joins the Communist Party. This first part of the book ends when Lola is found hanging in the closet; she has left her diary in the narrator's suitcase. Having supposedly committed suicide and thus betrayed her country and her party, Lola is publicly denounced in a school ceremony. Soon after, the narrator shares Lola's diary with three male friends, Edgar, Georg, and Kurt; Lola's life becomes an escape for them as they attend college and engage in mildly subversive activities—"harbouring unsuitable German books, humming scraps of banned songs, writing to one another in crude code, taking photographs of the blacked-out buses which carry prisoners between the prison and the construction sites." in the well of a deserted summerhouse in town. Very quickly it becomes clear that an officer of the Securitate, Captain Pjele, is interested in the four and begins to subject them to regular interrogations. Their possessions are searched, their mail opened, and they are threatened by the captain and his dog. After graduation the four go their separate ways, but they remain in contact through letters and regular visits, although their letters are read by the Securitate. They take menial jobs: Kurt works in a slaughterhouse as a supervisor, for instance, and the narrator translates German manuals in a factory. A fifth member, Tereza, befriends the narrator even as it becomes clear that she is acting partly on Pjele's orders. The lives of all five become more miserable, and each conforms to the regime's demands even as they lose their jobs for apparently political reasons. They discuss fleeing the country, and Georg is the first to do so; weeks after he arrives in Germany, he commits suicide by jumping out the window of a Frankfurt hotel. The narrator and Edgar likewise acquire passports and go to Germany, still receiving death threats. Kurt remains in Romania, no longer working, and later found hanged. The novel ends with the same passage as it began: "When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves".
24650922	/m/080l9r4	The Unincorporated Man		2009	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A successful industrialist named Justin Cord, frozen in secret in the early twenty-first century, is discovered and resurrected in the 24th century. He is given health and a vigorous younger body, as well as the promise of wealth and fame. There's only one problem: He remains the only unincorporated man in the world. Justin cannot accept only part ownership of himself, even if that places him in conflict with a civilization that extends outside the solar system, to the Oort Cloud and beyond.
24651847	/m/080bg92	Best Friends in Love		1999-08-26		 Chloe realises that Nick loves her. She decides to be his girlfriend, but Sinéad is first. Ms. Sanderson tells her that Nick will get bored of her and break up. Chloe can't make her change her mind, so she gives up, because she's got other problems. Chloe's mother is still a victim of house violence. When she gets an offer to interview a famous actress, she disagrees, because new film is about wives, who are beat by their own husbands. In the end she decides to live Edward and move to London with Chloe. Jasmin still goes out with Sanjay. Unfortunately, when she discovers that, he's got a chance to move to Beckedon high school in London, she's upset, because they won't see each other for a long time. Even though, she tells him to go there and try to win the scholarship. When he makes it, she's very happy. They engage after the exams. Meanwhile, Jasmin's mother is meeting one man. The girl suspects that, it's a romance. Luckily, this man is from gospel choir and he talks to Josephine about being in it. Next to Nick’s house a mysterious man, Mike Lovell appears. The boy tells him that Bowens don’t live in Leeds, because he thinks that Lovell wants his money back. Some weeks later, Jenny Bowen invites him for a tea and he tells that he was Greg’s friend. He didn’t know about his Heath and He wanted to find his family. Thanks to Mike, Jenny could buy Josephine’s shares at the cafe. Meanwhile, Nick discovers that, he likes Sinéad much more. Once he invites her for pizza and then he kisses her. They become a couple. Sanjay’s father isn’t happy of son’s choice. But when Sanjay show him a brochure of Beckedon school, he tells his son to try to win the scholarship. He doesn’t like Jasmin’s reaction, because he suspected that she’ll cry and tell him to stay. Sinéad at last is Nick’s girlfriend. She’s very happy, but her family’s got another problem – Shaun Flaherty bought a pony, which doesn’t win any race. He stops to spend the money, when his workshop is arsoned. The Flahertys move to a smaller house. Sinéad meets her friends in a club, where everybody swears to keep their friendship forever.
24652833	/m/080b8p0	Life on Another Planet				 An artificial radio signal from Barnard's Star listing prime numbers (although the term "prime" is never used in the story) is received at the Mesa Radio Astronomy Observatory. One of the radio-astronomers is a Russian spy and tries to inform his superiors; however he is uncovered by his fellows and subsequently killed. The CIA hires James Bludd, a prominent astrophysicist, to try to understand what is going on. Several plotlines follow and intertwine, most of them centering around personal greed. News of the extraterrestrial message leaks to the outside world, with different consequences. A bum and a waitress build a cult, calling themselves the Star People, which seeks to find a new home on the Barnard's planet. Multinational, a corporation, decides to invest money into the cult, in order to have an easy to manipulate spaceship crew ready to take possession of the inhabited planet on behalf of the company. A dying biologist, Dr.Crowben, decides to push on the creation of plant-human hybrids biologically suited to the planet environment, which also this plan falls within the scope of the Multinational. Meanwhile, the two surviving astrophysicists have been abducted by the KGB, and Bludd learns that Russians plan to answer to the signal using neutrinos. The international situation further complicates when a small fictional African state, Sidiami, burdened by debts with other countries, decides to "secede from planet Earth" and declares itself a colony of the planet around Barnard. The "Star People" decide to relocate in Sidiami, and the Multinational starts plans to launch a probe towards the Barnard's planet from there. James Bludd finds himself implicated in the ongoing struggle between the USA, the Multinational and the "Star People" to get advantage of the situation. At the end, the space probe is launched towards the Barnard's planet. Bludd, convinced that humankind is not ready for contact with aliens, has sabotaged it and after a while makes it explode with the aid of a remote control. When later, in the observatory, a new possible artificial extraterrestrial signal is received from space, Bludd destroys all evidence of it with a smile.
24652943	/m/0808m2r	Total chaos	Jean-Claude Izzo	1995	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story takes place in Marseille during summer. Fabio Montale, a suburban-Marseille cop, sees his two closest childhood friends die one-by-one in violent circumstances. One was killed without anyone knowing why, the other was killed immediately after assassinating one of the leaders of the local underworld. Montale tries to understand what happened and gradually discovers a tangle of interests and power struggles within the Marseilles underworld and police.
24654706	/m/080fpy1	What a Week to Get Real		2005-06-24		 Jade is going to Paris with her grandmother. She meets a boy - Flynn Jackson - in the train to Brighton. They become friends. Flynn lives in Dunchester, so Jade can see him. They fall in love with each other quickly. Jade is trying to help Tansy with Andy, who doesn't talk to her. She sends text messages, which are supposed to be from Tansy. Cleo is still in love with Angus. But he only pretends to be interested with her. He shows his parents that he's normal by "going out" with Cleo. The girl sings with his and Kyle's band on the music festival. But they don't win the price. Cleo breaks up with Angus, because she is upset of being not exactly his girlfriend. She could also see that, Angus is more interested in Kyle. Holly's parents want to sell their house. The buyers are Walker family - Angus and his parents. Unfortunately, before selling a house there is a fire in it that burns the whole house. Holly saved her nephew from sthe burning house, but she had to stay at the hospital, because she had burns on her legs. She still is afraid of the fire and sometimes she has panic attack. Tansy's private life is complicated. Andy doesn't talk to her and she doesn't know why. Then she discovers that he went to a party and he got drunk. He also was kissing Melanie, who is Tansy's rival. Luckily, he explains her everything and they are together again.
24655354	/m/080bgc3	Frankensteins of Fraud				 Frankensteins of Fraud covers the following criminals and their activities: *Charles Ponzi, father of the Ponzi scheme who arrived in America with as little as $2.50 dollars in his pocket and soon grew to earn millions by conning thousands of working people. *Cassie Chadwick, the daughter of Andrew Carnegie who was supposed to inherit $400 million had her opportunities created for her by tons of banks agreeing to loan her big money for interest rates going off the roofs, little did they know they couldn't fool the most notorious woman of her time. *Ivar Kreuger made billions until he was destroyed by the stock market crash of 1929. *Phillip Musica, aka F. Donald Coster, M.D., Ph.D also the CEO of McKesson and Robbins Pharmaceuticals swindled millions of dollars from his own company. *Robert Vesco, whose handling of mutual funds led to the SEC making him a fugitive and sending him on a 30 year crime spree until he was caught. *Stanley Goldblum, most famous for his 2 billion dollar Equity Funding Insurance Scam. *John Bennett who used charitable organizations to come up with his very own Ponzi scheme along with "Crazy Eddie", Mark Whitacre and Michael Milken.
24655602	/m/0809q6s	The Letters				 While Sam and Hadley are thousands of miles apart, waiting for their divorce to come through, they begin to exchange letters. The letters start out with Sam and Hadley West trying to come to terms with the death of their only child and son Paul. Sam believes that going to Alaska and taking the dangerous trek by plane and dog sled to see the place where Paul died will help him come to terms with his son’s death. Hadley chose Monhegan because she felt like she needed to get away and she liked the idea that it was an artist’s colony in the summer.
24656738	/m/080b2h3	Montecore: en unik tiger				 In Montecore, the author Jonas Hassen Khemiri receives an e-mail from Kadir, a childhood friend of Jonas’ father. Kadir urges Jonas to write a book about the father, a famous photographer who has disappeared. Kadir’s letters are mixed with Jonas’ memories from his own childhood. Inspired by Kadir, he writes a story about coming to age in a country where tolerance and diversity are the bywords of the day, but where racism and xenophobia form part of everyday life.
24659157	/m/080kkrl	Meteor!				 The novel tells the story of Patricia, her brother Steve, and her cousin Steve spending the summer at their grandparents' farm in Union City, Michigan. Late one night while sitting in their cozy home, a bright light falls from the sky landing in the Gaw’s farm with a loud crash. Curiosity overcomes the family as they set foot outside to find a fallen star in their backyard. One line in the book reads, “Of all the places on earth a meteor could have fallen, it landed smack-dab in the middle of our yard, Gramma exclaimed.” This was such a huge deal for the residents of Mudsock Medow. Word gets around quickly, and before long there is a carnival at the Gaw farm. There is a band, a circus, a hot air balloon, and more. The entire town gathers to celebrate the meteor. Many residents touched the meteor claiming it was magical. It seemed like magic to all that the fallen star, which flew through the galaxy, had landed in Union City and brought such joy to all.
24661111	/m/080njdq	New York	Edward Rutherfurd	2009-09-03	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel chronicles the birth and growth of New York City, from the arrival of the first European colonists in the 17th century right up to the summer of 2009. As in previous Rutherfurd historical novels, the reader experiences the history of the place through the histories of fictional families who live there. In New York, these families represent the successive waves of immigrants who gave the city its multicultural character. The early Dutch founders of New Amsterdam are typified by the Van Dyck family, who prosper in trade with the Native Americans; both the local Algonquian tribes and the Mohawk who lived farther up the Hudson Valley. The Van Dycks soon unite with the English Master family. The Van Dyck-Masters remain in New York through the entire saga, providing one of the unifying narrative strands. We also meet Quash, an African slave and unwilling immigrant to New Amsterdam, whose descendants also become part of the New York cultural mix. As the history progresses through the years, we meet more fictional families: the Irish O'Donnells, the German Kellers, the Italian Carusos, the Jewish Adlers, the Puerto Rican Campos's. Their intertwining stories, which include looks at the family cultural traditions of the various groups and intercultural relations, play out against the historical backdrop of the great city. Because the main characters in New York are members of the fictional families, the story lines sometimes take the reader away from the city. One chapter takes place in Georgian London. Another follows Washington's army through Valley Forge to Yorktown. But most of the wanderers return home in the end. Rutherfurd breaks the narrative into sections by date, twenty-seven in all. Most dates comprise one chapter; a few dates continue through two or three chapters. A set of three well-drawn maps of Manhattan Island helps the reader follow the action as the city grows and evolves. A fourth map, of the New York City region, provides a larger geographical context.
24661219	/m/080g91f	The Sundowners	Jon Cleary	1952		 The story is set in the Australian Outback during the 1920's and deals with one year in the life of the Carmody family. Paddy Carmody, Australian-born son of Irish migrants, is an itinerant worker, travelling the country with his wife Ida and son Sean in a horse-drawn wagon. Whilst Ida longs to settle in a place of their own, Paddy is unwilling to abandon his way of life and continues to pick up work where he can. He takes cattle-droving jobs and also sheep-shearing - which he doesn't like, but pays well. At one point, he joins a shearing team with Sean as tarboy and Ida as the shearers cook. They meet various colourful outback characters, ranging from prosperous graziers to drunks, including Rupert Venneker, a well-educated Englishman in self-imposed exile. Along the way. Sean develops from boy into young man. Venneker marries and settles in a small town. And the Carmodys continue on their way.
24663538	/m/080j10h	Web mortem				 St Andrews in Scotland is the scene of several horrible murders. All the victims are people from the Middle East and without any legal papers. Hammond MacLeod, a young and distinguished dean at University of St Andrews, soon finds the body of his current mistress as well. Has he harbored a secret motive for killing her so atrociously? Why does he spend so much time on this online game? Soon, he realizes that he cannot deal with suspicion anymore. He runs away to New York, helped by Willow Owen, a young American reporter. But behind the web, the killer is lurking. In order to be cleared, Hammond must delve into the online game. This one, by featuring Mesopotamia's darkest and oldest history, asks online players to designate the next victim. And soon, Hammond and Willow are caught in the game. When they understand it is linked to the landscapes of ancient languages as well as to passionate but destructive human relationships, it is too late...
24664148	/m/05q8g20	Logicomix	Christos Papadimitriou			 Set between the late 19th century and present-day, the graphic novel Logicomix is based on the story of the so-called "foundational quest" in mathematics. Logicomix intertwines the philosophical struggles with the characters' own personal turmoil. These are in turn played out just upstage of the momentous historical events of the era and the ideological battles which gave rise to them. The narrator of the story is Bertrand Russell, who stands as an icon of many of these themes: a deeply sensitive and introspective man, Russell was not just a philosopher and pacifist, he was also one of the prominent figures in the foundational quest. Russell's life story, depicted by Logicomix, is itself a journey through the goals and struggles, and triumph and tragedy shared by many great thinkers of the 20th century: Georg Cantor, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Alfred North Whitehead, David Hilbert, Gottlob Frege, Henri Poincaré, Kurt Gödel, and Alan Turing. A parallel tale, set in present-day Athens, records the creators’ disagreement on the meaning of the story, thus setting in relief the foundational quest as a quintessentially modern adventure. It is on the one hand a tragedy of the hubris of rationalism, which descends inextricably on madness, and on the other an origin myth of the computer.
24664659	/m/0809jhj	Requiem for a Fish		2005-01-07	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The coelacanth is a very strange fish. On the one hand, this ancient species might have been the missing link between land and sea. On the other hand, everybody thought that it had disappeared long before dinosaurs' extinction. Yet, one day of 1938, a South African fisherman catches a specimen in its nets. But is the fish really the famous coelacanth? The world of science gets passionate and jealous around the beast. Who will be the first to trace the origins of mankind? Stealing, cheating, lying... murdering? And Why is Marie, this young pregnant Parisian, suddenly caught in this story? Between Africa and the Comoro Islands, the Comoro Islands and Sulawesi, London and Paris, the world of ichthyology turns to a gripping thriller.
24667353	/m/080j11j	A Brief History of Anxiety	Patricia Pearson			 The book consists of nine chapters and a section of endnotes. All of the chapters combine narrative, personal reflection, historiography, and social commentary. Pearson's style is evident in the beginning to the eighth chapter, "2001: A Drugs Odyssey": In this book, Pearson frequently challenges generally accepted layman views about mental health and mental health treatment. "The idea that people need antidepressants because they have a 'chemical imbalance' in their brains," she says at one point, "has evolved into a sort of urban legend." She states that "[t]he trouble with this soothing explanation...is that serotonin deficiency is an unsupportable claim." Pearson also challenges conventional medical wisdom: at one point, she states that, although some psychoactive medications target dopamine in the brain, over 85 percent of the body's dopamine is found outside the brain, and the medications' effect on those other tissues is almost completely unresearched. The Notes section contains 172 references ranging from scholarly articles to the poetry of William James and the philosophical writings of Søren Kierkegaard.
24667852	/m/080dcdr	This Book Is Not Good for You	Pseudonymous Bosch	2009		 The novel starts out with an African girl named Simone, who tastes a piece of chocolate for the Midnight Sun (as the book centers around the sense of taste, like the first novel, which centers around scent, and the second, which centers around the sense of sound). It is noted that she is a Supertaster, and is able to distinguish between almost any food, no matter how similar they are. Immediately after tasting the chocolate, she blacks out. Meanwhile, Max-Ernest and Cass, two members of the Terces Society and the two protagonists of the series, are searching for the box in which the letter was found when she was a baby, as she earlier found out she was adopted and wants to find out more about who she is. While they search, they find a box filled with magazines that was dropped off at the front door of Cass's grandfathers' old, abandoned fire station, where the grandfathers live. Max-Ernest points out a magazine with a picture of the Skelton Sisters on the cover, the teen pop stars who were known by the two collaborators as being members of the Midnight Sun. Knowing this, the kids become suspicious of what they are doing, and discover that they are with Ms. Mauvais, the French woman who is one of the most evil leaders of the Midnight Sun, and that they have established headquarters in the country Côte d'Ivoire in Africa, where they take care of orphans and work on a chocolate plantation. Cass and Max-Ernest head to the old circus, where the Terces Society (which consists of Pietro Bergamo, the retired magician whose brother, Luciano, otherwise known as Dr. L, was captured by Ms. Mauvais and is now one of the leaders of the Midnight Sun; Mr. Wallace, an accountant who works as the society's archivist; Lily Wei, a Chinese violinist who escaped the Midnight Sun and is now the head of physical defense and martial arts, and Owen, an actor who appears as many different people in the series and acts as somewhat like a spy for the society) to tell Pietro and the others where the Midnight Sun is hiding. Mr. Wallace tells them that he thinks the legendary Tuning Fork is involved in the spa's plan with chocolate. Later, Cass and her mother, Melanie, or "Mel" for short, sign up for a cooking class run by the famous blind chef, Señor Hugo. After bringing up the subject of the Tuning Fork, Cass is invited to Hugo's famous restaurant with her mother, Max-Ernest, and other friend, Yoji, or "Yo-Yoji." At the restaurant, the kids and Mel discover that it is extremely dark to the point where no one can see anything, since Hugo wants the diners' other senses, especially taste, to be heightened during their meal. After trying many different foods, Cass sees that her mother is gone. Outside, she reads the note given to her by the waiter from Señor Hugo, which demands the Tuning Fork in return for her mother. Later at the fire station, Cass and her friends search for the Tuning Fork, as they were told earlier by Mr. Wallace that by now the Fork, which was originally possessed by the Aztec boy "Caca Boy", would probably have ended up in a junk shop, and assumed that the junk shop he was talking about could only be Cass's grandfather's home. While searching, Cass finds the box in which she was dropped off by Mr. Wallace, and then sees on a television that the kids' principal, Mrs. Johnson, is in possession of the Tuning Fork. The kids head to her house and blackmail her into giving them the Fork. Cass then gives Señor Hugo the Fork at her house, finding out that he is in fact part of the Midnight Sun, and will not give her back her mother as she told her friends what he had done, when she had been told not to. Meanwhile, the girl, Simone, awakes from her faint and finds a woman named Melanie in her cell. Mel gives her comfort and tells her that she has a daughter like her, and gives Simone comfort, telling her that her parents must have loved her and thought it best to send her to the plantation. Mel is then called to the Tasting Room, and Simone warns her not to eat any chocolate. At Yo-Yoji's house, Cass, Max-Ernest, and Yo-Yoji investigate the pictures of the Midnight Sun at the plantation in the magazine, looking for clues. They discover that they are at a zoo, and are in fact not in Africa, but are located inside an artificial rainforest park somewhere in the United States (as the series is meant to be secret, the author states that he cannot identify the exact place in the country in which the park is located). After taking a train to the park, the kids camp out there and later journey through the rainforest, locating the plantation with the help of a Capuchin monkey. Hiding in the cacao trees on the plantation, the kids witness Ms. Mauvais herself talking to an elderly man, Itamar, who made a brief appearance in the first book, and dies a few days later. They also discover that Ms. Mauvais' first name is "Antoinette." The trio then find a building called the "Pavilion," where the Tasting Room is located (the very place in which Simone tasted chocolate for the Midnight Sun). The kids find three pieces of chocolate on a table, which is in fact a trap placed by the Midnight Sun. Cass and Yo-Yoji eat a piece each, though Max-Ernest refrains from eating due to his assumption of being allergic to chocolate. As Max-Ernest watches them fall into trances, Cass "dreams" about her and the Jester—a man from whom Cass is descended, and is the founder of the Terces Society—and their conversation about the Secret. When Cass wakes up, the three Midnight Sun members, Ms. Mauvais, Dr. L, and Señor Hugo demand her to tell them the Secret, as they believe the chocolate took her back in time to the Jester and was told the Secret. Cass truthfully admits that she does not remember the Secret, and they take her away to Simone's cell, which is right next to her mother's. Yo-Yoji, meanwhile, has disappeared, and Max-Ernest is the only one who can rescue the two kids. Max-Ernest eventually catches up with Yo-Yoji. Since Yo-Yoji fell into a trance that has him believing he is an ancient Samurai warrior, Max-Ernest was able to control him and command him to rescue Cass, her mother, and Simone. The kids go to get back the Tuning Fork from Hugo, rescue the orphans (who were really made slaves by the Midnight Sun), and finally escape the Midnight Sun. Later at Cass's house, Cass and Max-Ernest use the Tuning Fork to revive Yo-Yoji back to his normal self. The story ends with Cass being told by Pietro that she is the new Secret-Keeper,Max-Ernest tells Cass his parents are back together again and begins to like chocolate.Then eating the piece of chocolate Hugo had made for her, Cass falling into yet another trance. The story continues in the sequel, This Isn't What It Looks Like, with Cass in a coma as the piece of chocolate was exceptionally strong, and Max-Ernest trying to rescue her.
24668032	/m/080j120	In the Hand of Dante	Nick Tosches		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book interweaves two separate stories, one set in the 14th century in Italy and Sicily and featuring Dante Alighieri, and another set in the autumn of 2001 and featuring a fictionalized version of Nick Tosches as the protagonist. The historical and modern stories alternate as Dante tries to finish writing his magnum opus and goes on a journey for mystical knowledge in Sicily. Meanwhile Tosches, as something of a Dante expert, is called in by black market traders to attest to the authenticity of a manuscript of The Divine Comedy supposedly written by Dante himself. Included in the modern sections of the book are musings by Tosches on the state of modern publishing, the futility of excessively flowery poetry and prose, references to his own previous books (including a lengthy passage directly out of the introduction to The Nick Tosches Reader), the September 11th attacks, and the Rolling Stones. Louie Brunellesches, a small-time New York gangster who also appears in Tosches' novel Cut Numbers, returns in a smaller role, making this something of a sequel.
24674053	/m/080d601	Noir austral				 The book begins with a dive into the journey of an Aboriginal tribe which, in 70,000 BCE, crosses the straits of Sunda toward what will become Australia. It is a chaotic and cadaver-ridden course and a fight against climatic evolution. Through centuries, the odyssey reveals a challenging cohabitation with other species and soon a violent confrontation with white Caucasian newcomers. In an additional contemporary plot, Liz, a young Australian woman, moves to France in search of her lost origins. But behind its postcard appearance, the small Provence village where her mother had lived is not what it seems to be. Somebody tries to drown Liz into the pond near her new house, just before the young woman finds a dead body in this pond. Liz is still far from knowing what or who she will have to fight, what or who has followed her from Sydney, from a past that she did not even suspect. Besides the criminal aspects, the story is a novelistic presentation of the history of humankind, trying to make the reader look at the world differently and make them understand that differences are really relative.
24677037	/m/080nr3w	Point Omega	Don DeLillo	2010	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 According to the Scribner 2010 catalog made available on October 12, 2009, Point Omega concerns the following: In the middle of a desert "somewhere south of nowhere," to a forlorn house made of metal and clapboard, a secret war advisor has gone in search of space and time. Richard Elster, seventy-three, was a scholar - an outsider - when he was called to a meeting with government war planners. This was prompted by an article he wrote explicating and parsing the word "rendition". They asked Elster to conceptualize their efforts - to form an intellectual framework for their troop deployments, counterinsurgency, orders for rendition. For two years he read their classified documents and attended secret meetings. He was to map the reality these men were trying to create "Bulk and swagger," he called it. He was to conceptualize the war as a haiku. "I wanted a war in three lines..." At the end of his service, Elster retreats to the desert, where he is joined by a filmmaker intent on documenting his experience. Jim Finley wants to make a one-take film, Elster its single character - "Just a man against a wall." The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Finley makes the case for his film. Weeks go by. And then Elster's daughter Jessie visits - an "otherworldly" woman from New York - who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. Jessie is strange and detached but Elster adores her. Elster explains how she is of high intelligence and remarks that she can determine what people are saying in advance of hearing the words by reading lips. Jim is sexually drawn to her but nothing happens except his watching her as a voyeur would. After the most pointed of such behavior Jessie disappears without a trace. Line two of the haiku structure (see below) winds up with the disbelief and grieving over Jessie; there are attempts to find her; there are references to a boyfriend or acquaintance named (maybe) Dennis. Jessie's mother had sent her to the desert to get away from this man. In light of this devastating event, all the men's talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and connection, is thrown into question. What is left is loss, fierce and incomprehensible. The novel is structured like a haiku to provide the illusion of self-contained meaning. Lines one and three take place on September 3 and then September 4. The viewpoint is that of an anonymous man watching a work of conceptual art (24 Hour Psycho) that involves Psycho slowed down, broken down so that it takes 24 hours to play. The man mostly stands against a wall in the exhibition room and obsesses about the details and concepts of the work in hopes of willfully losing himself in Psycho (a kind of self-rendition). He attends the exhibition every day, all day. In Line one, Elster and Jim make a brief appearance. The man assumes they are academics, film critics and doesn't understand why they leave so quickly. In Line two, we meet Jim and Elster and the main "action" of the novel takes place (temporally after Lines one and three). Jim is a filmmaker obsessed with the medium. His one previous work was, as his estranged wife remarked, a film about an idea. It seems to involve a pastiche of Jerry Lewis in performance mode at his famous telethons. Only Jerry Lewis appears in the film; only Elster will appear in the film Jim proposes to him. Elster refuses to agree to the idea but strings Jim along out in the desert where he does reveal a little about his intellectual provenance including his study of Teilhard de Chardin (whose principle idea is of a universe moving toward greater complexity and consciousness). In Line three, Jessie goes to the Psycho exhibit and meets the man on the wall. She tells him her father recommended the exhibit. We already know that Jim recommended it to Elster and took him to the exhibit. The man on the wall tries to arrange a date with Jessie. He gets her phone number but not her name. Line three ends with the man returning to the exhibit. The direction of the novel is the opposite of movement toward greater complexity and consciousness. It is toward a self-contained, self-defining and blind will to power. That is the idea behind the government's notion of war as haiku. Elster's parsing of the word rendition is no different than Psycho in slo-mo: murder disassociated from its reality by clinical and abstract analysis. The novel's central metaphor is autism. The man on the wall (in either manifestation) and Jessie are obviously symptomatic. Jim and Elster are no better. The signs are there: Jerry Lewis, Psycho in slo-mo, war as haiku, the desert with Elster's solace in it as signifier for total annihilation, the word rendition. There are clear parallels to Thomas Pynchon especially in Gravity's Rainbow. In Pynchon the tension balances along the relationship between knowledge (greater complexity?) and a death instinct; capitalism or western civilization as a death cult. In Point Omega the movement toward annihilation (rendition) is symptomatic of a defect or disturbance in mental process. We are truly in the age of autism. In his review for Publishers Weekly, Dan Fesperman revealed that the Finley character is "...a middle-aged filmmaker who, in the words of his estranged wife, is too serious about art but not serious enough about life" and compares Elster to "a sort of Bush-era Dr. Strangelove without the accent or the comic props". Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Altar described the novel as "...a meditation on time, extinction, aging and death, subjects that Mr. DeLillo seldom explored in much depth as a younger writer."
24678991	/m/09k5cbm	Manxmouse				 A ceramicist who lives in the fictional city of Buntingdowndale in England specializes in making ceramic replicas of mice. One night he gets drunk at a party and comes home intending to make the best mouse figurine he has ever made. With his senses impaired, he inadvertently makes a mouse-like figure described as having a "fat little body like a opossum, hind feet like those of a kangaroo, the front paws of a monkey, and instead of delicate and transparent ears, these were long and much like those of a rabbit. And what is more, they were blue, too, and violently orange-colored on the inside. But the worst thing of all was that it had no tail." He is disappointed but finds that the statue has an endearing look, so he calls it a "Manx Mouse" and decides to keep it. That night while the ceramacist slept, the statue comes to life as a Manx Mouse. The Manx Mouse thinks for himself, and refers to himself by the name Manxmouse. He decides to leave the ceramacist's home and travel. He first meets a clutterbumph, which is a shapeshifting monster that takes the form of whatever those around it fear most. Manxmouse seems to have no fear, and thus the clutterbumph does not scare him, but tells him to "beware the Manx Cat". Manxmouse leaves that encounter and has a succession of encounters with other entities, including a billibird, House Cat mother, old One-Eye the cat, Captain Hawk, a fox named Joe Reynard, a fox-hunting pack of dogs led by General Hound and called the Bumbleton Hunt, Squire Ffuffer the huntsman, Nelly the Elephant, a little girl named Wendy H. Troy, a tiger named Burra Khan, a truck driver, Mr. Smeater the pet-shop proprietor, a semi-animate wax copy of himself at Madame Tussauds, and a policeman. In each encounter, Manxmouse behaves politely, helpfully, and bravely, and in almost all cases when he leaves one new friend that he has made, that friend warns him that he belongs to Manx Cat and that Manx Cat will eat him. Finally Manxmouse goes to the Isle of Man to meet Manx Cat. Surprisingly to Manx Mouse, Manx Cat is a proper British gentleman who invites him to tea in his home with his family. During tea, Manx Cat produces a document he calls a Doom, which he says is a prophecy written 1000 years ago specifying a date when the Manx Mouse would come to the Manx Cat to be eaten, and coincidentally Manxmouse has arrived at the specified time. Part of the document is missing, but it seems irrelevant to all parties involved at this time. Manxmouse and Manx Cat go to a stadium where they appear before a crowd including everyone that Manxmouse has met in his adventures. The policeman Manxmouse had already met mediates the event, saying that Manxmouse should be quickly and painlessly swallowed. But when the time comes for Manxmouse to be eaten, he takes a fighting posture and challenges Manx Cat to eat him. A representative from Madame Tussauds appears at this time and exhibits the other half of the Doom document. The other half says, "But if the aforesaid Manxmouse instead of yielding and being swallowed shall take a firm stand in his defense and bravely and gallantly show that he means to fight for his life, then the Doom shall become inoperative, null and void and canceled. Manxmouse and Manx Cat shall live in peace forever after." The crowd cheers, Manxmouse and Manx Cat both agree to live by these terms of the Doom, and years later they remain neighbors as Manx Mouse starts his own family with a local field mouse as a wife.
24687826	/m/080hpfk	Destry Rides Again	Frederick Schiller Faust	1930	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction"}	 Harrison Destry, broke and jobless, begins the novel by returning to his native town of Wham, in Texas. He is scorned by the many enemies he has made there, including rich rancher's daughter Charlotte Dangerfield. Only one of the men that Destry has previously beaten with his fists, Chester Bent, seems to bear him no ill-will; he stakes the penniless Destry to a hundred dollars. But Bent's generosity is a ploy. Bent has just robbed the Express, and knowing Destry's wasteful way with money, he expects that Destry's wild spending will make him a prime suspect for the robbery. Bent's plan works to perfection. Destry goes on a wild drinking spree at a local saloon, and is arrested for the robbery. Failing to comprehend how much trouble he is in, Destry neglects his defense and is stunned to be convicted by a jury stacked with his enemies and then sentenced to ten years for the robbery by a judge who considers him a proven troublemaker. Destry protests his innocence and swears to visit each of the twelve jurors when he is out of prison. Only Charlotte believes that Destry is not guilty. Six years later, Destry is released from prison early for good behavior. He sets about systematically ruining the lives of the twelve jurors. He does not murder any of them outright, although he kills some of them in self-defense. Destry explains that he is determined to stay within the law from now on (although some of his actions, such as trespassing and safe-cracking, are in fact of extremely dubious legality). His chief concern is to show that none of the "jury of his peers" is, in fact, his equal. Destry remains ignorant of Chester Bent's role in framing him; Bent is the only man in Wham who treats Destry kindly upon his release, and Destry comes to count Bent as his best friend. But Bent is secretly conspiring to have Destry killed, and helps the jurors organize to murder their nemesis. While on the run, Destry meets a boy named Willie Thornton, who adopts Destry as his hero. Thornton later secretly observes Bent murdering a creditor. Bent uses Destry's knife to kill his victim, in order to frame Destry again. Bent then spots Thornton and chases him; Thornton escapes only by diving into a raging river, from which he emerges weak and sick. Although feverish, Thornton steals a horse and makes a long, hard ride back to Wham to warn Destry of Bent's treachery. So warned, Destry fights his way out of a trap that Bent has laid for him. The sheriff of Wham, Ding Slater, deputizes Destry, and Destry tries to arrest Bent. But Bent outdraws Destry and shoots his Colt out of his hand; Destry is saved only by sheriff Slater's gunfire from the window. Bent flees, with Destry in pursuit. Overtaking Bent, Destry unhorses his enemy, but Bent then overpowers Destry and leaps onto Destry's horse, making a last mad dash for freedom. In a most uncharacteristic climax for a western, Destry shoots Bent in the back as the unarmed man flees. Returning to the devoted Charlotte Dangerfield, Destry announces that he will lay down his guns forever, acknowledging that he had found his peer in Bent.
24689702	/m/080680m	The Quiet War	Paul McAuley	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Quiet War is a space opera set in the 23rd Century. Some of the Earth's population has fled the planet due to war and catastrophic climate change. In the aftermath of climatic disaster and massive loss of life, humanity has consolidated into three superpowers that control the planet. The population that fled the planet initially colonized the Moon and Mars, but these colonies were destroyed by hostile forces from Earth. The pioneers—or "Outers" as they came to be known—eventually settled among the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The Outers have survived by using highly advanced genetic engineering and their pure determination for a free life. They've formed a loose form of democracy which over the course of centuries has been dominated by long-lived humans who still remember the events which caused them to flee Earth. The Earthly superpowers have struggled to rebuild the planet. The most powerful and aggressive superpower is Greater Brazil, a nation controlling both South and the remains of North America. North America has been devastated by climate change, which caused the destruction of civilization there, with few cities left populated. Greater Brazil has taken over this desert continent and forced the population to live by their "green" politics whereby the population lives in cities while the open land is being restored to a pristine natural state. Greater Brazil is a corrupt state run by a handful of powerful families; it is anti-democratic and culturally conservative. It is semi-feudal; people who are not related to the ruling families by blood or marriage are essentially property, like medieval serfs. Greater Brazil is threatened by the very existence of the democratic and technologically dynamic Outer colonies, while at the same time greedy for the benefits of Outer technology. Genetic engineering is a particularly touchy subject for Greater Brazil, which interprets extensive "cutting", as they call it, to be against their green political and religious philosophies. For all of these reasons, Greater Brazil wishes to subdue the Outers and bring them under their control. The novel follows the lives of a small set of individuals, all of them from Greater Brazil, who become caught up in the events set in motion by Greater Brazil's designs for the Outer colonies. These central characters include an arrogant but brilliant "gene wizard"; a space fighter pilot to whom the gene wizard gives extraordinary powers; a cloned assassin designed by the gene wizard to infiltrate the Outers; a soil biologist who is recruited for a joint Earth-Outer goodwill project; and an unprincipled, ambitious weasel of a man who does his superiors' dirty work. The events of the novel were followed up in 2009 with McAuley's Gardens of the Sun, sequel to The Quiet War.
24694031	/m/080nbjn	Touch the Dark		2006-06	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy"}	 Cassandra Palmer is a clairvoyant. She can see visions of the future as well as communicate with the spirits of the dead. These unusual gifts make her make her attractive to both the dead and the undead. Ghosts recognise that Cassandra is one of the rare people who can actually see them so they love to talk to her and all in all they are fairly harmless. However undead vampires are not so harmless. Ever since she was a child Cassie had been forced to work for Tony, a ruthless vampire Mafioso. She managed to escape from him three years ago but has been on the run ever since. When he finds her and sends his vampire thugs to kill her she is forced to turn to the Vampire senate for protection. Raised by vampires from childhood she knows that vampires are not motivated to act out of kindness. They will definitely want something in return but what will it be and is it something that she is willing to give? While she is meeting with the senate, a rogue vampire launches an assassination attempt on the senate's members and it becomes clear to Cassie that the vampires have problems of their own. In fact the whole magical world is on the brink of war with itself due to the Pythia (a powerful seer and the Guardian of Time) being on her deathbed and the official heir to her powers being mysteriously missing. Every faction of magical being, light or dark, appears to be jostling for position at this time of upheaval and every one wants control of the Pythia and her powers. As Cassie starts to have powerful visions of the past, it becomes apparent that her powers are changing. As one of the heirs to the Pythia she seems to be acquiring her new skills as power leaches out of the old Pythia. Cassie has enough knowledge of vampire ways to know that if she was attractive to them as a clairvoyant, as a potential Pythia they will never let her go…. In Touch the Dark, Cassandra "Cassie" Palmer is introduced as a powerful clairvoyant who has been on the run for three years from Antonio "Tony," a criminal vampire who raised her after her parents' death. It was Antonio's intention, as Cassie grew up, to use her increasing powers for his own purposes. As Antonio wished to keep the benefits of Cassie's powers to himself, he kept her isolated in his enclave. The only people Cassie got to see on a regular basis were her governess, Eugenie; Rafe, a servant vampire; and Mircea Basarab, Tony's master vampire. As well as the gift of clairvoyance, she is also able to talk to, and see, ghosts, some of whom she has made friends. One ghost in particular, Billy Joe, is her best friend. The story commences three years after her escape from Tony's clutches, after Cassie found out that he had her parents killed.
24694823	/m/0805pzk	Dreams of My Russian Summers	Andreï Makine		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens with the narrator leafing through photographs of relatives he doesn't know in his grandmother’s house in Saranza, a Russian town on the border of the steppe. His grandmother, Charlotte Lemonnier, comes in and starts talking about the photographs and her memories to the boy and his sister. The novel is characterized by stories like this: a collection of Charlotte’s memories and the narrator’s memories, intertwining so that the text moves seamlessly through their lives in a dreamlike fashion. The movement between Charlotte's French past and the Soviet present causes conflict in the boy's identity as the novel explores both sides of his heritage. Charlotte begins the novel by transporting her grandchildren to the French ‘Atlantis’ during the flooding of Paris in 1910. So begins the narrator’s desire to learn all about this mysterious French past. He describes the town of Saranza in-between these stories. It is a quiet town bordering the Russian steppe that is lined with the old izba, traditional Russian houses made of logs. The town is a strange mixture of these old relics and the new regime style that discards any excess or superfluous design, showcasing the theme of the clash between past and present. At the return of autumn, the boy narrator and his sister return to their hometown: and unnamed city on the banks of the Volga that is very industrial and Stalinist in its design. He quickly falls back into the pace of Russian life with its schooling and paramilitary exercise. The romantic image of the Tsar Nicholas II that his grandmother told him of and the image of “Nicholas the Bloody” taught in school confuse him over which story is the truth: the Russian or the French? The narration moves on to describe Charlotte’s early life. After the death of her husband, Norbert, Albertine becomes unstable and moves several times between Russia and France. It is the grave of her husband that keeps bringing her back to the Siberia town Boysark along with Charlotte. Young Charlotte, roughly age nine, begins to give French lessons to the Governor of Boysark's daughter. She becomes caretaker to her mother, who is revealed as a morphine addict. After several relapses, Albertine takes Charlotte with her back to France. But in July 1914, Albertine temporarily moves back to Siberia when Charlotte is eleven to put an end to her Siberian life. She never returns to France. Then war came and Charlotte’s only caretaker, her uncle Vincent, is killed in battle. Time jumps ahead to 1921 where Charlotte is chosen to go to Russia as a Red Cross nurse because she can speak both French and Russian. Years pass with only the description of wartime hardship and the images of the countless mutilated soldiers that fall under Charlotte’s care. Charlotte decides to return to the town of her childhood, Boysark, to see the fate of the izba where she and her mother once lived. She comes across an old grizzled woman living there only to find that it is her mother. When Charlotte tries to take her mother and leave Russia, the government of Boysark seizes her papers and refuses to return them. Mother and daughter barely survive through the winter living on dried plants. In May, fearing starvation, Albertine and Charlotte flee the town and begin working on a Siberian farm. Albertine dies two years later and soon after that Charlotte marries a Russian man named Fyodor and they settle in the town of Bukhara. Coming back to the present, the story moves into more of Charlotte’s dreamy stories of France through her “Siberian suitcase” filled with newspaper clippings. She talks of royalty, of President Félix Faure dying in the arms of his mistress, of restaurants, revolutions, etc. Back in his house, the narrator overhears his parents and other relatives talking of Charlotte. Because he is fourteen years old, they tolerate his presence as they plunge into the details of the arrest of Fyodor. Fyodor is dressed in the red outfit of Father Christmas to entertain his children on New Year's Eve when he is arrested. Although the reason is fuzzy, it is hinted at that the arrest is partially because of Charlotte’s “crime” of being French. Thus, Fyodor could be accused of being a French spy. He is away supposedly temporarily to be re initiated into the Party, however the next time he sees Charlotte is in four years, after the war. A short time after Fyodor’s arrest, Germans bomb the city where Charlotte and her son and daughter are living. They leave the house and escape to the railway, running away from the explosions and debris of the city. As Charlotte begins to fall asleep on the last train out of the city, she realizes that she brought the “Siberian suitcase” rather than the suitcase of warm clothes and food she had packed that morning. By chance, this suitcase becomes the last physical link between Charlotte and her life in France. She and the children settle in a town 100&nbsp;km away from the destroyed city where she works again as a nurse, caring for the wounded soldiers fourteen hours a day. In the midst of this constant presence of dying soldiers, Charlotte receives word of Fyodor’s death on the front. Soon after she receives a second note of death, and begins to hope that her husband is alive. Fyodor indeed returns to Saranza after Japan was defeated in September 1945. Less than a year later, he dies of his wounds. After returning from Saranza, the young narrator searches hungrily for all the information in his city about France. His obsession with France and the past alienates him from his classmates, making him a loner. After being taunted and teased by his peers, he meets another loner nicknamed Pashka, and the two become friends only on the basis that they understand each other’s isolation. The next summer, the narrator returns alone to Saranza because his sister is studying in Moscow. His fifteenth year marks the start of the deterioration of the relationship between him and Charlotte. He is no longer an innocent youth and longs to return to feeling the “magic” of Charlotte’s stories that he did when he was young. He becomes angry at Charlotte’s retelling of the past, confused between this past and the harsh Russia he lives in. At the very end of August, only a few days before his departure from Saranza, he mends his bond with Charlotte. All of a sudden he realized the beauty of this French past, and he and Charlotte understand each other again. Back in his hometown situated by the Volga, the narrator’s mother goes to the hospital for some tests. The narrator is reveling in the freedom of his mother’s absence when he overhears a classmate saying that his mother is dead. In February, only months after his mother dies, his father Nikolai dies of a heart attack. It is not his parents’ deaths but his aunt’s arrival that changes his outlook on life. His aunt is a tough, no-nonsense, resourceful woman who shoes him to love Russia. Through her, he sees the harshness, the violence, and the darkness of Russia, yet he loves it still. As he says on page 144, “The blacker the Russia I was discovering turned out to be, the more violent my attachment became.” As he moves closer to his Russian heritage, he pushes away the French. After the now fifteen-year old narrator accepts and loves Russia, he immediately becomes accepted by the peers that once scorned him. In fact, his “Frenchness” turns into a gift. He entertains his classmates with all the information he has learned about France, which makes him no longer a loner but alienates him from Pashka. In the cruel world of teenagers, he openly scorns Pashka to become accepted. It is on the Mountain of Joy, the mountain hideaway where all the teenagers go to dance and flirt, that the narrator has his first romantic encounter, his first experience of “physical love.” It is a very awkward encounter, and he is humiliated afterward when his classmates make fun of him for not knowing “how to make love” on page 170. It seems to the narrator that his “French implant” has made him an outcast, even among women. Without warning he takes a train to Saranza to put an end to this French nuisance. On the way to Saranza, the boy thinks of all the things he will yell at Charlotte for. He feels like his French sensibility has “split reality in two” (Makine, 174). But when he abruptly arrives, she is calm and acts undisturbed. While the narrator is leaning on the balcony, Charlotte leans beside him and starts talking of some of the things she saw during the war. They begin to walk out far past the town and end up at the Sumra, a small stream several miles away from Saranza. She addressed the narrator as “Alyosha” and tells him that even after all of her years in Russia, she still can’t seem to understand her adopted country; its harshness still seems foreign. Yet at the same time, she understands it more than the Russians, for she has seen the solitude of that country and its people. As the narrator walks back to Saranza with his grandmother, he feels as though the Russian and French within him now live in peace, put to rest by Charlotte's words. Charlotte and her grandson spend their last summer together in peace. They walk down to the banks of the Sumra every day and read underneath the shade, speaking in French, talking about everything. Charlotte tells him about when she was raped in her youth. She was in the desert when a young Uzbek man forced her down. When the rape was over, he tried to shoot her in the head, but it only grazed her temple. Left to die out in the desert, she explains to the narrator that is was a saiga, a desert antelope, which saved her. After following the saiga, she slept pressed up against it at night, and its body heat saved her from the desert cold. The next morning she wandered until she found a lake, where unknown travelers found her the next day. It was the rape that produced the narrator’s Uncle Sergei, but Charlotte explains that she and Fyodor loved and accepted him as their first born son. The rest of the summer passes like this until suddenly the narrator jumps ahead to ten years in the future. He is twenty-five and has not seen Charlotte since that last summer of his fifteenth year. He is about to study abroad to Europe and is telling Charlotte that she should come along to France with him. Despite France meaning the world to her, she calmly refuses. It is then, that the narrator understands “what France meant to her” (Makine, 204) Now it is twenty years past his summer in Saranza, and the narrator is roughly thirty-five. His career as a radio broadcaster in a German city is over, and he begins to wander aimlessly throughout Europe. As soon as he becomes used to the routine of a place: its sights, smells, and sounds, he leaves immediately. He begins to have fleeting thoughts of suicide, accepting it as a way out of routine. Amidst this mental distress he settles in a small apartment in Paris. It is unclear what happens in Paris, however he comes down with a fever and drifts in and out of reality, eventually making a temporary home inside a family tomb in a cemetery. After feverishly wondering like a madman in Paris, he collapses by the river and sees a plaque inscribes with the words “Flood Level. January 1910.” (Makine, 214) This plaque brings back a flood of memories of France and his Russian summers. But most importantly, it reminds him of Charlotte, his French grandmother. He is struck by the desire to write and begins writing a book titled Charlotte Lemonnier: Biographical Notes. The narrator begins to live on the hope of publishing this book and bringing Charlotte back to France. Three years later, his books are published; he has several of them in the nearby bookstore. His first books sit unsold in the corner shelf because he wrote them in French, which the critics rejected as a Russian man attempting to use their language. However, once he wrote in Russian and had them translated into French, the critics hailed his novels. Thus, the narrator has written himself out of poverty and is prepared to find Charlotte to bring her back to France. In order to accomplish this he hires Alex Bond, a Russian businessman, to travel to Saranza and see if Charlotte is even alive. Mr. Bond returns and tells him that his grandmother is alive and well. The only thing preventing him from traveling from Russia is his lack of a French passport. As soon as he submits his name for approval of a passport, he decides that in order to welcome Charlotte to France he must decorate his apartment with antiques that might make her feel more at home. He moves into a larger apartment imagining her surprise at the lovely view, and buys her books that may remind her of the Paris of the past. Soon he has overspent his income, yet he still decorates Charlotte’s future room in anticipation of her arrival. It is in the final days before he plans to leave for Saranza when the narrator receives a letter from the Prefecture de Police. The letter states that his request is unacceptable. He writes for an appeal, but the months slip by until it is August. By this time it has been a year since Alex Bond's trip to Saranza. A man named Val Grig travels to Paris to deliver a package to the narrator. He informs him that Charlotte Lemonnier has died, on September 9 of the previous year. His grandmother died only a few short weeks after Alex Bond had traveled to Saranza, making everything that the narrator did, everything he bought was in vain. Without knowing what else to do, the narrator opens the envelope that Charlotte intended for him. He sadly realizes that it was not the rejection of the passport that annulled his reunion with Charlotte, it was time. He begins reading the envelope, which is a manuscript written in Charlotte’s hand. It is a story he finds to be all too common: that of a woman of the Stalinist period who was accused of propaganda and placed in a woman’s camp. The woman is with child and her life is therefore saved. However, when the child is very young she is crushed by a tractor and dies in a hospital where Charlotte received permission to see her. Then, confused, the narrator reads the last sentence. Charlotte writes to him that this woman was his mother, Maria Stepanovna Dolina. This woman, the narrator’s biological mother, wanted to keep this secret from him for as long as possible. In two days time the narrator leaves his apartment, his payment being all of the items he had bought for Charlotte's room, still uninhabited. As he walks through the dusty Paris streets he thinks of another memory to add to his Notes. It is that of him and Charlotte wandering through a forest decorated with rusting weaponry. In the middle of a clearing grew a grapevine, which caused Charlotte unimaginable joy; it was a reminder of her France. The novel ends with the narrator looking at the picture of his real mother that Charlotte gave him. He tells himself that he must get used to the idea of her as his mother. His thoughts drift to Charlotte’s presence filling the streets of Paris as he searches for the words to tell her story.
24700635	/m/080hhc6	Le Fait du prince	Amélie Nothomb	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A man steals an unknown person's identity. «There is a moment, between fifteenth and sixteenth sip of champagne, where every man is an aristocrat». es:Ordeno y mando fr:Le Fait du prince
24702627	/m/0805k95	My Darling, My Hamburger	Paul Zindel	1969	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 As part one begins, the reader meets the story’s protagonist, Maggie Tobin. She is walking though the auditorium with her best friend Liz Carstensen. The two settle down into their seats while Pierre Jefferson, the grade president begins to speak. During the assembly, Maggie points out Sean Collins, the boy who Liz is currently seeing. Next to Sean is a scrawny boy by the name of Dennis Holowitz. Maggie thinks Dennis looks weird but eventually agrees to go on a date with him, Liz, and Sean. The date is atrocious, as Maggie hates both the movie and her company. Despite this, Maggie agrees to go on another date with Dennis. While on this double date, Liz and Sean travel down to the ocean to spend some intimate time together. Just as everything is becoming “heated up,” Liz backs away. It becomes apparent that the two constantly fight over sexual issues. Back in the car, Dennis moves closer and closer to Maggie, eventually beginning to make out with her. In order prevent the situation from heating up any further, a panicked Maggie recommends that the two go and get a hamburger. Not too long after their second date, Maggie is forced to break off a date with Dennis because Liz and Sean are in a fight. That night, Maggie and Liz set out for the Red Pub Inn. On the way, they are given a lift by Rod Gittens, an older boy who has dashingly good looks but a very poor reputation. While at the Red Pub Inn, Liz writes Sean a letter on the back of a place setting. She declares her love for him and speaks of how she needs him in her life. The letter is dropped off in Sean’s mailbox and Liz waits for a response. When Liz does not hear back from Sean, she decides to go to the winter dance with Rod Gittens. While at the dance, it becomes apparent that Liz is using Rod to try and get back at Sean for not responding to her letter. By the end of the night, Rod has Liz in a room alone, ready to rape her. The quick work of Maggie saves Liz from catastrophe as Sean is alerted about Rod and rushes over to the dance. Liz learns that Sean never received her letter and the two leave the dance together. Shortly after the dance, the reader learns that Liz is pregnant with Sean’s baby. Liz appeals to Maggie for help and states that she does not have enough money to pay for an abortion. Eventually, Liz tells Sean about the baby and the two decide to get married and move to California for a few years. Liz is elated but Sean is a little distressed with the situation. Sean asks his father for advice about “a friend” who got a girl pregnant. The reader learns that Sean’s father is a conservative man who likes his alcohol. Sean’s father tells his son that the “friend,” should get the girl out of his life as soon as possible. It is explained that the young man would likely be giving up his life if he kept his connections with the girl. Upon hearing this news, Sean realizes that he has too much ahead of him in life and decides to break everything off with Liz. Soon after Sean’s realization, he gives Liz $300 and tells her that they can no longer be together. A deeply saddened Liz is forced to miss out on her prom as she travels with Maggie and Rod to a doctor who can perform her abortion. When Liz finishes with doctor, she appears to be comfortable and in good spirits. Despite this positive sign, as the girls arrive at Liz’ house, Maggie realizes that her friend is bleeding and in grave condition. Maggie is deeply frightened by this and runs into Liz’ house to get her mother. At graduation, it's revealed that Liz will not be graduating with the rest of her class. Maggie has called Liz’s house numerous times in an attempt to speak with her but is told by Liz's mother that Liz never wishes to speak with her again. At graduation, Maggie contemplates the important milestone she is experiencing. She realizes that one’s present soon becomes their past. This past then stays with the person for the rest of their life. On this note, Maggie finds Dennis, wishes him the best of luck in life, and gives him a goodbye kiss. GSM
24706597	/m/080c1ms	Choke Creek				 Fifteen-year-old Evie Glauber is the great great-granddaughter of the man who founded the Rocky Mountain Sun. Her father, Jase Glauber, expects Evie to take over The Sun when she grows up, but all Evie likes to do is ride horses. One day she rides out to a ranch where she meets Eason Swale, the great-grandson of a cavalryman who fought in the famous Battle of Choke Creek. Eason becomes a soldier and goes off to fight in the Vietnam War. But Evie becomes increasingly convinced that there is more to the story of the Battle of Choke Creek than people say. As she struggles to uncover the truth, she discovers the past haunting her. And when Eason comes home unexpectedly from the war, Evie realizes that the key to saving him is to find out what really happened at Choke Creek. Choke Creek is based on the Sand Creek Massacre, which took place in Southeastern Colorado in 1864. Small's novel contains real documents from the era, including letters written by cavalrymen who witnessed the massacre and contemporary newspaper accounts.
24714702	/m/08087g2	Aladore	Henry Newbolt		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story takes the form of a quest exploring in allegorical fashion the qualities of youth, duty, self and heritage. Ywain, a knight bored with his administrative duties, abandons his estate to his younger brother and goes on a pilgrimage to seek his heart's desire. Following a will-o'-the-wisp resembling a child, he is led to a hermit dwelling in the wilderness, under whose instruction he lives for a time. Afterwards his quest takes him to the city of Paladore (also the subject of a separate poem by Newbolt) and the lady Aithne, half-fae enchantress and daughter to Sir Ogier of Kerioc and the Sidhe-descended Lady Ailinn of Ireland, whom he woos and encounters on various occasions. In the course of his adventures he intervenes in the strife of the two warring Companies of the Tower and of the Eagle, afterward feasting with both in Paladore; he undertakes the Three Adventures, of the Chess, the Castle of Maidens, and the Howling Beast; visits the City of the Saints and the Lost Lands of the South; sojourns with Fauns; and has a vision of Paladore’s counterpart, the city of Aladore, which he afterwards seeks. After revisiting the hermit and Paladore, he achieves his objective, and he and Aithne are wed there. In a subsequent return to Paladore Ywain finds he has wearied of it, is mishandled by the Great Ones of the city, and is “excommunicate after the Custom of Paladore.” Wondering at the likeness and contrast of the two cities, he and Aithne wonder which is the more enduring, and test the question by building two sand castles on the shore. Ywain’s, built with his hands as a stand-in for Paladore, is swept away by the tide, while Aithne’s, created from a song in representation of Aladore, is preserved. They then return to the mortal city, and appear to perish in a final battle.
24728177	/m/080bx0f	Breaking and Entering	H. R. F. Keating		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Ghote reflects on his misfortune in being assigned to a case of burglary instead of the murder of Anil Ajmani. By chance he encounters Axel Svensson, once an analyst for UNESCO who worked with Ghote in The Perfect Murder. Ghote immediately feels sorry for Axel, who is visiting India after the death of his wife. Ghote agrees, against his better judgement, to let Axel assist in his investigation. The next day Ghote rejoins Axel to learn the big Swedish man has been frightened by the urban legend of "The Kidney Heist". Together they visit and interview a victim of the cat burglar "Yeshwant". Axel is surprised by the deferential treatment Ghote gives to the victim and comments afterward that a witness would be handled differently in Sweden. The two argue. Later they meet Pinkie, the journalist who gave the cat burglar the nickname "Yeshwant", who is keen to get new information from Ghote. With Pinkie's assistance they interview a witness who is reluctant to let them look for clues in her bedroom. When they leave, Ghote wonders whether all the stolen jewellery came from "Pappubhai Chimanlal and Company". Ghote interviews the brother of the last victim, who owns a shop called Video Valley. Ghote concludes the man, while in financial trouble, is not in league with the cat burglar. Next Ghote interviews Mrs Masbahn, who had a diamond ring stolen. Mrs Masbahn says she bought the ring from Karamdas and Sons, at the urging of her lover, a drunken poet named Bottlewalla. Bottlewalla, however, remembers things differently. The couple quarrelled over where to buy the ring, with her favouring Karamdas and Sons and he Pappubhai Chimanlal and Company. Bottlewalla insists the ring was bought from Pappubhai Chimanlal. Mr Pappubhai Chimanlal is polite but does not allow Ghote to interview his employees, referring to his extensive staff vetting procedures and staff moral. Axel is furious with this lack of assistance. Mr Chimanlal tells them his secretary, Miss Cooper, is the only member of staff beside himself who knows the details of every transaction to take place in the store. Ghote presses to interview Miss Cooper but, in Axel's absence, Mr Chimanlal confides that Miss Cooper is a lonely, loveless woman, and to ensure her complete loyalty he seduced once her many years ago. Undeterred, Ghote and Axel seek out Miss Cooper. She denies providing information to the cat burglar. Ghote presses her but she continues to protest her innocence and eventually, Ghote relents and accepts her innocence. Outside, Axel deduces the only other person out who might know all the transactions carried out at the jewellers is Mr Pappubhai Chimanlal's wife. At interview Mrs Chimanlal tells them the Indian folk story of the sparrow and crow. The sparrow builds a nest of wax and the crow builds a nest of dung. The rains come and wash away the crow's nest. The crow begs the sparrow for shelter. When the crow insists on being let in, the sparrow admits the crow to her home, and invites the crow to dry herself on the stove. The crow does so and is burnt to death. This is Mrs Chimanlal's way of warning the detectives that her husband has influence and she can make life difficult for them. Ghote realises that she is wearing a necklace very like one described in the list of stolen items. He persuades Mrs Chimanlal to swing back on the swing seat she is sitting on and Axel takes a photo. As she does Ghote sees the necklace clearly and realises it is indeed stolen property. Ghote accuses her of being Yeshwant. Mrs Chimanlal admits she is Yeshwant, saying it was such fun to commit the crimes. Bartering for her freedom, she tells what she knows of Anil Ajmani's residence, which she surveyed for a robbery that never took place. Mrs Chimanlal promises that she will never again climb as Yeshwant and will return all the stolen items. Ghote is forced to content himself with this, as Mrs Chimanlal's money and political influence means Ghote cannot convict her. Ghote also instructs Yeshwant to anonymously call Pinkie Dinkarrao the journalist and provide a tip that the Yeshwant is out of business. Investigating the murder of Anil Ajmani without orders, Ghote requests Pinkie's assistance in trailing Mr Masters, the chief of security. Later Ghote realises that Ajmani's daughter is Mrs Patel, one of the victims of Veshwant. The next day Ghote finds Axel distraught after being tricked into parting with a large amount of money when a local lured him to the funeral of a local child. Together they go to interview Mr Masters, only to find that Pinkie has arrived first and accidentally alerted him, who has taken all his property and vacated his secret hideaway. Pinkie is unharmed, though shaken, and Ghote and Axel put her in a taxi and bid her goodbye. At a nearby restaurant Ghote extracts information from the owner, who says Masters claimed he was going to Andari. Ghote and Axel visit Ivy Cooper, whose father they hope may have information about a club they believe Masters belongs to. They find her embroiled in an argument with a neighbour over a clogged drain. Ghote is forced to repair the drain to restore calm before he can ask his questions. Miss Cooper's father returns and Ghote questions him to see what he knows about Mr Victor Masters. The old man identifies Victor Masters as Victor Hinks, who was sacked from the railway and denied membership to the retired rail workers club. Miss Cooper knows that Victor Hinks left his wife and children, who live near the railway station. The nearby school gives Ghote the family's address after some resistance. By interviewing Mrs Hinks Ghote learns that Victor's brother, Vincent Hinks, had a romantic attachment to Anil Ajmani's daughter. Anil Ajmani ordered Vincent's murder because of this. Ghote deduces that (unknown to Mrs Hinks) Victor Hinks took the alias of Victor Masters and became Ajmani's head of security so he could murder Ajmani in revenge for Vincent's death. Ghote presents his findings to the Deputy Commissioner, who is at first incredulous. Ghote suggests that they arrest Victor when he collects his last pay cheque from his job as Security Chief. The Deputy Commissioner leaves to make the arrest, promising Ghote a more important case as a reward.
24733819	/m/080pqrm	Pages Stained With Blood	Mamoni Raisom Goswami			 The story follows a young Assamese woman who teaches at the University of Delhi and is an author. She is busy writing a book on Delhi and regularly jots down anything that crosses her mind. The Operation Blue Star at the Golden Temple in Amritsar brings sudden twist to the novel and the protagonist plunges headlong into the crisis for most of the people she is close to are Sikhs. At last, her book is drenched in Santokh Singh's blood and she loses all her recorded material.
24734266	/m/080j293	The Man from Chinnamasta	Mamoni Raisom Goswami			 The novel follows the relationship of Dorothy Brown, a British woman in Assam, and her relationship with a tantric of the Kamakhya Temple in Assam. Ratnadhar and Bidhibala's -the child widow's- story runs parallel to this narrative. Ratnadhar organizes a signature campaign against the practice and faces many troubles in the process.
24745298	/m/080j2hb	Executive Power	Vince Flynn			 CIA field agent Mitch Rapp's cover has been blown following his last assignment, preventing Saddam Hussein from obtaining nuclear weapons. Rapp receives public acknowledgment by the president in response to the latest Congressional leak to the media. Though the praise is of the highest quality, the President might as well have placed a bulls-eye on Rapp's chest and that of his loved ones by singling him out as the most important person in the fight to counter terrorism. The spotlight makes the former covert operator an ideal international target for eradication by terrorists as the symbol he has become. Rapp moves from CIA operative duties to that of a counter-terrorism bureaucrat. As special advisor on counter-terrorism to CIA director Dr. Irene Kennedy, Rapp uncomfortably sits in an office. However, everything changes when radical Islamic terrorists ambush Navy SEALS on a top-secret rescue mission in the Philippines. The leak had to be in either the State Department or the Philippine diplomatic corps, but nobody knows for sure. However, worse yet is that someone is trying to cause a Jihad on a scale never before seen and that unknown invisible individual is close to achieving the goal with only a too visible Rapp in the way. Rapp leads a team to avenge that loss by defeating the Philippine terrorist network that killed two SEAL team members and rescuing the American hostages. In order to successfully accomplish this mission he must keep its existence from the turncoats who betrayed those who went before him. The coincidental plot-line has forces plotting to upset the tenuous balance in the Middle East's geopolitical situation. A flamboyant Saudi Prince, who is banished from the Kingdom, elicits the help of a Palestinian assassin to murder the leaders of Islamic terrorist cells as well as Saudi and Palestinian Ambassadors in the hopes of dissolving US support for Israel and the eventual establishment of an official Palestinian state.
24746606	/m/0807vd0	The Necromancer: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel	Michael Scott		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Nicholas Flamel,Pernelle Flamel, Sophie, and Josh return to San Francisco. The Flamels go to their book store while Josh and Sophie head for their Aunt Agnes' house. When they approach they see a limousine waiting outside and a stranger talking to their Aunt. They approach with caution but in the following scuffle on the doorstep Sophie is dragged into the car by a female looking exactly like their lost friend Scathach, but who is in fact her twin, Aoife. Josh races to the book store to alert Nicholas and Perry and together, they set out to rescue Sophie who has been taken to a houseboat in Sausalito owned by Aoife's companion, the Japanese immortal, Niten. Dr. Dee has been declared utlaga (a wanted man) for his failure to capture the missing pages of the Codex by his Dark Elder masters. Not wanting to experience their wrath, he flees. He makes his way across England from Salisbury Plain to his London office with the last two legendary swords, now fused together, in his possession. Once in London he enlists the help of an old acquaintance, Virginia Dare, and after an encounter with some cucubuth bounty hunters the pair escape to Dee's home in San Francisco, where he prepares to call back the Archon Coatlicue -Mother of the Gods- to help him with his plans to conquer planet Earth and take revenge on The Dark Elders that outlawed him. Joan of Arc and Scathach are joined in their exile by William Shakespeare, Palamedes and the Comte de Saint-Germain after they seek out Lord Tammuz's help. Shortly after they are re-united they are joined by the mysterious, hooded, hook-handed man who tells them that he has a pre-destined mission for them. He takes them through Xibalba and several other shadow realms to the Earth ten thousands over years ago, when Danu Talis still existed and they have to fight in the battle that meant its downfall. Niccolò Machiavelli and Billy the Kid get off the monster filled Alcatraz Island with the help of Billy's Dark Elder Master who sends the immortal Black Hawk to retrieve them and bring them both back to his house. After a fraught meeting with Billy's master they count themselves lucky to be alive as they had failed to accomplish the missions given to them by their masters: to kill Perenelle and loose the monsters trapped on the island onto San Francisco. The pair set out to return to Alcatraz and make amends by achieving what they were tasked with doing. After their initially tense meeting, Aoife, Niten, Josh, Sophie, Nicholas, and Perenelle agree to travel to Point Reyes so that Josh can be taught the magic of fire by Prometheus, the Master of Fire. Josh is separated from the others shortly after learning the magic of fire and finds himself walking into Dee's home, Sophie wakes up and realizes that Josh is missing. After alerting the others about his disappearance they track Josh to Dee's home. Sophie, Aoife and Niten race to stop him from unwittingly helping Dee complete his plan to summon the fearsome Coatlicue who Dee plans to turn loose on the Dark Elders, while Nicholas and Perenelle stay with Prometheus, following what they do. Josh, still under enchantment, turns against his sister and escapes with Dr. Dee and Virginia Dare, while Aoife pushes Coatlicue back into the shadowrealm it came from, but leaving herself trapped with it. This leaves the end of the book on a cliff hanger. The Flamels are very weak, the twins are divided, and the Dark Elders are gathering in anticipation of the Final Summoning at Litha, when they hope to return to power and dominate the world.
24750056	/m/080mr62	SuperFreakonomics	Steven D. Levitt	2009-10-20		 The explanatory note states that the theme of the book explores the concept that we all work for a particular reward. The introduction states we should look at problems economically. The examples given include the preference for sons in India and the hardships Indian women face, as well as the horse manure issue at the turn of the 20th century. The first chapter explores prostitution and pimps in South Chicago, one high class escort, and real estate brokers. The pimps and brokers are compared based on the idea that they are helping to sell one's services to the larger market. Inequalities in pay grades for men and women are also covered in the chapter. The second chapter is about patterns and details. Patterns in the ages of soccer players, health issues of children in the womb during Ramadan, and the upbringings of terrorists are observed. Next, the book discusses the skills of hospital doctors and how Azyxxi was created, and draws parallels to how terrorists in the UK were tracked down by banks. Altruism is discussed in the third chapter, and uses examples of the murder of Kitty Genovese, crime rates as affected by television, and economic experimental games such as Prisoner's dilemma, Ultimatum, and the work of John A. List. The fourth chapter is about unintended consequences and simple fixes. It goes into detail about Ignaz Semmelweis' work in hospitals, use of seatbelts and child seats, and the possibility of reducing hurricanes. The fifth chapter discusses externalities and global warming. It discusses how economics does not necessarily take environmental issues into account. Further, the authors posit an alternative way of solving global warming by adding sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere. The epilogue is about microeconomics, and discusses a study as to whether or not monkeys can be trained to use money.
24750187	/m/080dlng	Olivia		1997-03-13		 Olivia's parents are separated. Her father has a mistress, Rosalie, with who he lives now. Olivia's mother is upset because of it, but she doesn't want her husband to come back. At school, Olivia has a problem, because she was chosen to organise a school theatre. She doesn't like the idea and she tells the headmaster that she won't face the challenge. The same thing does Luke - Poppy's boyfriend. Once, Hayley, Livi's friend, invites her to the Stomping Ground night club. Before this, she goes to a dinner with her father and Rosalie. Livi changes her opinion about Rosalie, because she realises that she can have problems, too (Rosalie's mother makes problems, because she's got Alzheimer's disease). Once, while coming back from school, Olivia meets Ryan - a handsome boy, who lives with his mother on a boat in summer. She meets him at Stomping Ground, where they dance together. Livi starts to fall in love with him. But she can't invite him to come to her house, because her mother gets a new person to live with them - Leonora. Olivia doesn't like her, but few weeks later, Ryan tells her that Leo is his aunt. Some time later, Ryan invites his mother to go with him to Olivia's. Livi finds out that, Ryan is her elder brother. She's disappointed, but she falls in love with another boy from her school. Livi's parents are going to get divorced.
24750968	/m/0809d72	The 50th Law	Robert Greene	2009		 The central theme of the book is fearlessness. The back cover says nihil timendum est, meaning nothing is to be feared. Each of the 10 chapters in the book explains a factor of fearlessness and begins by telling how 50 learned this Fearless Philosophy in Southside Queens. The 50th Law illustrates universal laws by supplementing anecdotes from 50's life with historical examples from Malcolm X, Miles Davis, Sun Tzu, François de La Rochefoucauld, Machiavelli, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Thucydides, Dostoyevsky, Charlie Parker, and the Baron de Montesquieu. #See Things For What They Are (Intense Realism) #Make Everything Your Own (Self-Reliance) #Turn Shit Into Sugar (Opportunism) #Keep Moving (Calculated Momentum) #Know When To Be Bad (Aggression) #Lead From The Front (Authority) #Know Your Environment From The Inside Out (Connection) #Respect The Process (Mastery) #Push Beyond Your Limits (Self-Belief) #Confront Your Mortality (The Sublime)
24752826	/m/0805y29	From Anna	Jean Little	1972	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the mid 1930s in Germany, things are changing, people are moving away or disappearing. The new headmaster at the Solden's school forbids the singing of a song titled "My thoughts are free" (Die Gedanken sind frei) during an assembly, instead making the school sing the national anthem. Anna's father, disturbed by the changes in his country, promises Anna that she will be able to grow up in a place where her thoughts are free. When his brother Karl in Canada dies, leaving him his shop and the home he had purchased there, Ernst sees an opportunity to move to Canada. He announces to his family that they will be moving to Canada. The rest of the family comes on board slowly, but Anna, terrified, resists. In Germany she is nearly failing school, how will she manage in a new country and a new language? When they arrive in Toronto, they are greeted by a friend of their uncle's, Dr Schumacher, who helps them move in, and gives them check-ups before they start school. Anna is terrified to learn she will be starting school soon, but during her examination, a startling discovery is made; Anna can barely see. A prescription for glasses helps immensely, however even with the glasses, she has less than normal vision, and is put in a special multi-grade class for students with similar vision. Her teacher here is Miss Williams. Seeing the potential in Anna she sets out to slowly coach the girl out of her shell. She gives Anna A Child's Garden of Verses, and Anna discovers a love of reading. Her English improves with leaps and bounds, and soon she speaks only English at school and with the friends she has found there. However she continues to present her old prickly side to her family, remembering all the years when they didn't understand her. As the Solden's first Christmas in Canada approaches, the children are becoming more and more aware of the effects of the depression on their lives. Instead of keeping with tradition, and getting money from their parents to buy presents, the older children decide to come up with presents for their parents themselves. They struggle to include Anna, but in the end, decide she is "only a kid" and that their parents won't expect anything from her. At school the next day Anna is hurt and infuriated by this and she cannot keep her mood from her classmates. When she describes her problem to Miss Williams, a flood of similar stories come from her classmates. They all express a desire to give their parents a present that truly shows how much they are capable of. Miss Williams returns the next day with a plan. With money for supplies provided by her and Dr. Schumacher, the children are going to weave wastepaper baskets. Some children are dubious, but Anna takes to it right away, weaving a beautiful basket. On Christmas Eve, after her siblings have presented their gifts for Mama and Papa, Anna brings hers out. Her parents are amazed, and her siblings surprised, wondering how she could have made something so beautiful. Miss Williams and Dr Schumacher, invited by Anna to share in the family's celebrations, arrive. The novel closes with the whole group singing Silent Night, the children in English, and the adults (minus Miss Williams) in German.
24756137	/m/09gqbbl	The Help	Kathryn Stockett	2009-02-10	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The Help is set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, and told primarily from the first-person perspectives of three women: Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. Aibileen is an African-American maid who cleans houses and cares for the young children of various white families. Her first job since her own 24-year-old son, Treelore, died from an accident on his job is tending the Leefolt household and caring for their toddler, Mae Mobley. Minny is Aibileen's confrontational friend who frequently tells her employers what she thinks of them, resulting in having been fired from nineteen jobs. Minny's most recent employer was Mrs. Walters, mother of Hilly Holbrook. Hilly is the social leader of the community, and head of the Junior League. She is the nemesis of all three main characters. Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is the daughter of a prominent white family whose cotton farm employs many African-Americans in the fields, as well as in the household. Skeeter has just finished college and comes home with dreams of becoming a writer. Her mother's dream is for Skeeter to get married. Skeeter frequently wonders about the sudden disappearance of Constantine, the maid who raised her. She had been writing to Skeeter while she was away at college and her last letter promised a surprise upon her homecoming. Skeeter's family tells her that Constantine abruptly quit, then went to live with relatives in Chicago. Skeeter does not believe that Constantine would just leave and continually pursues anyone she thinks has information about her to come forth, but no one will discuss the former maid. The life that Constantine led while being the help to the Phelan family leads Skeeter to the realization that her friends' maids are treated very differently from how the white employees are treated. She decides (with the assistance of a publisher) that she wants to reveal the truth about being a colored maid in Mississippi. Skeeter struggles to communicate with the maids and gain their trust. The dangers of undertaking writing a book about African-Americans speaking out in the South during the early '60s hover constantly over the three women. Racial issues of overcoming long-standing barriers in customs and laws are experienced by all of the characters. The lives and morals of Southern socialites are also explored.
24757269	/m/080pq_9	Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India		2009		 Dalrymple's seventh book is about the lives of nine Indians, a Buddhist monk, a Jain nun, a lady from a middle-class family in Calcutta, a prison warden from Kerala, an illiterate goat herd from Rajasthan, and a devadasi among others, as seen during his Indian travels. The book explores the lives of nine such people, each of whom represent a different religious path in nine chapters. * The Nun's Tale: It's a story of a Jain Nun in the ancient pilgrimage town of Sravanabelagola, who after the death of her friend and co-Nun decides to take the ritual fast to death or 'Sallekhana' * The Dancer of Kannur: Story of Hari Das, a Dalit from Kerala, who works as a manual labourer during the weeks and a prison warder during the weekends for 9 months of the year.Only during the holy Theyyam season from December to February, he turns into a dancer possessed by Gods revered even by the high caste Brahmins. * The Daughter of Yellamma: Story of the Devadasi Rani bai from Belgaum,Karnataka who was dedicated by her parents at the age of 6. Of how one of the oldest professions of India has undergone changes and adaptations through centuries. And the story of Yellamma, the goddess who was rejected by all but gives strength to the Devadasi's. * The Singer of Epics: Story of Mohan Bhopa and his wife Batasi, the two of the last hereditary singers of a great Rajasthani medieval poem, The Epic of Pabuji. * The Red Fairy: Story of Lal Peri, a Hindu woman from the India state of Bihar who has made the Sufi Dargah of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Rural Sindh of Pakistan her home. Of the ongoing conflict of orthodox Islam with the more secular Sufism. * The Monks Tale: Story of Tashi Passang, originally from Tibet but now living in the Indian town of Dharamsala after the Chinese captured Tibet. Of how it was difficult for a Monk to take up arms with the Tibetian resistance against the Chinese attack. * The Maker of Idols: Story of Srikanda Stpaty, in the temple town of Swamimalai in Tamil Nadu who is the 23rd in the long hereditary line stretching back to the great bronze casters of the Chola empire. * The Lady Twilight: Story of Manisha Ma Bhairavi, who lives in the holy town of Tarapith in West Bengal and worships goddess Tara. Of the Tantric traditions in Tarapith and the practices of storing and drinking from Human skull. * The Song of the Blind Minstrel: Story of the wandering minstrels or Bauls, of Kanai Das and Debdas baul,of the singing Baul tradition and the annual baul festival at Kenduli in West Bengal. For the launch of the book in India some of the characters in the book performed for the audience, with one of character's Hari Das from Kerala leading the Theyyam troupe and Paban Das Baul from Bengal leading the Baul singers.
24764501	/m/080pxf3	The Shrinking Man	Richard Matheson			 While on holiday, the protagonist (Scott Carey) is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray shortly after he accidentally ingests insecticide. The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1/7 of an inch per day. A few weeks later, Carey can no longer deny the truth: not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was and deduces, to his dismay, that his body will continue to shrink. The abnormal size decrease of his body initially brings teases and taunting from local youths, then causes friction in his marriage and family life, because he loses the respect his family has for him because of his diminishing physical stature. Ultimately, as the shrinking continues, it begins to threaten Carey's life as well; at seven inches tall, he has a battle with the family cat that drives him outdoors, where he is attacked by a swallow in his garden; the conflict drives him through a window into the cellar of his house. Although he survives on the cheese left over in a mousetrap for a while, his size is eventually reduced to less than half an inch, at which point he is forced to engage in a victorious battle with a black widow spider that towers over him. As Carey continues shrinking, he realizes that his original fear that he would shrink into non-existence is incorrect; that he will continue to shrink, but will not disappear as he originally feared, and utters his famous closing line: "If nature existed on endless levels, so also might intelligence."
24767360	/m/0804_5n	The Infernal City	Gregory Keyes	2009-11-24	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Infernal City takes places in 4E 41 (40 years after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles.) Tamriel is a continent inhabited by many races, and is ruled by an imperial authority. A floating city known as Umbriel is devastating Tamriel. Any person caught beneath Umbriel dies, and is resurrected as undead. Annaïg Hoïnart, a seventeen-year-old Breton girl, and her Argonian friend Mere-Glim, escape from Black Marsh just ahead of Umbriel. They witnessed Umbriel moving toward the city, and after Glim is overcome by an urge to run back to the city, Annaïg During their journey, Sul and Attrebus met a group of Khajiit who joined them. Sul explained to Attrebus that he intended to short-cut through Oblivion to beat Umbriel to Vvardenfell. He explains that Umbriel was undoubtedly a product of Vuhon, the man who had engineered the ingenium, the device that had kept the Ministry of Truth in place in Vivec's absence. He killed Sul's love, Ilzheven, and caused the Ministry of Truth to crash into Vvardenfell, in turn causing Red Mountain to erupt and destroy the entire island. Sul and Vuhon both were thrown into Oblivion, and a being named Umbra took that opportunity of the barrier between worlds opening to throw a sword, also called Umbra, into Tamriel, preventing Clavicus Vile from imprisoning him in it again. Sul is looking for the sword to destroy Umbriel. After nearly being recaptured, Sul opens a portal to Oblivion and he, Treb, and the Khajiit entered the planes of Oblivion, traveling through different planes, noticing the differences through the pain of the transitions. The path was interrupted in Hircine's plane, and Sul guided the party through Oblivion as Hircine and his drivers hunted them. One of the Khajiit was killed during the chase, and those remaining stayed behind at the end of the course to delay Hircine from reaching Attrebus and Sul. Attrebus and Sul exited Oblivion directly into the ruined Vivec City. There, Sul explained that Azura told him he'd find Umbra here, and that it must be what Vuhon was after. He found that the place where Umbra should have been was gone, and spoke with the spirit of Ilzheven. He questioned her about Umbra, and she told him that Dunmer found it and took it north, toward the Sea of Ghosts. As Sul wandered the ruined city, Attrebus kept an eye out for Umbriel and opened Coo, finding Annaïg looking back at him. She told him that she couldn't wait for him, that she and Glim would use her flying potions and leave Umbriel. When she closed her locket, a few moments later Attrebus saw the bottom of Umbriel poking out from the bottom of the clouds, heading toward them and very close. Annaïg, working in Toel's kitchen on Umbriel, received a bucket of ingredients from a skraw that contained her locket, and inside it a message from Glim. She responded to Glim’s note and they met the following midnight, at the dock. They consumed flying potions Annaïg had made, and begin to fly away from Umbriel, only to find that they had become like the other residents of the city; if they traveled too far from Umbriel, they began to lose their substance. Though Colin had been pulled from the Attrebus investigation, he continued investigating. The last person Gulan had spoken to, Letine Arese, an assistant to the Prime Minister, made her way deep into the Market District and entered a building, and Colin climbed a nearby building in order to reach a third-story window. He entered a small empty bedroom and made his way downstairs until he heard the voices of Arese and a male. She seemed concerned that the "job" was not accomplished as it should have been. Colin learned that a courier brought news to the Emperor that the Prince lived. As their conversation escalated, among the screams of men it seemed that Arese changed form into a sort of beast. It moved past him, up the stairs, then a few moments later came back down and exited through the door. The building was burning, and Colin escaped through the window. Unable to search the house, he wondered why Arese wanted the Prince dead, and why she didn't accomplish the task herself. Sul was drawn back to Attrebus by his screams, to find Umbriel nearly upon them. They attempted to move back to their entry position, but were transported to Umbriel, suspended in a type of spiderweb-like net in front of Vuhon. As they spoke, Sul accused Vuhon of murdering his love, Ilzheven, and destroying Vvardenfell; Vuhon contested that it was actually Sul that did that. It was revealed that Ilzheven had a very special type of soul, and Vuhon was using her to power the ingenium, to hold the Ministry of Truth aloft over Vivec City. When Sul freed her, it sent the Ministry of Truth crashing into Vivec City, killing Ilzheven and throwing Sul and Vuhon into Oblivion. Vuhon also revealed that he had an ally inside the Imperial Palace, the person that was trying to have Attrebus killed. He said he'd need the Imperial City, specifically the White Gold Tower, and offered Attrebus the chance to convince his father to back down. Through his close relationship with Oblivion, Sul shattered Vuhon's glass world by summoning a monstrous daedra. While Vuhon was distracted, Attrebus tried to attack from behind, but was discovered by Vuhon and trapped once more. At the last moment, Sul sprang to the prince's side and said "Not now," before laying a hand on his shoulder and pulling them both into another part of Oblivion. The book ends with Glim and Annaïg back on Umbriel, defeated. They spent a few hours together before saying their goodbyes, and Annaïg headed back to the kitchen. She promised Glim that, while all they could do was continue to move forward, eventually they would be free. She then resolved to become stronger and more ambitious in order to survive.
24781497	/m/080h46j	In Too Deep	Judy Blundell	2009-11-03	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 14 year old Amy Cahill, her 11 year old brother Dan Cahill, and their older babysitter au pair Nellie Gomez head to Australia to discover what their mother and father knew about the clue hunt. There they meet their friendly surfer cousin Shep Trent, who helps them by transporting them where they need to go in his plane. Amy and Dan are on the trail of a mysterious criminal known only as Bob Troppo, and they also discover a secret expedition their parents went on around the world to look for clues. But following her parents' footsteps reminds Amy of the memories she had of the night her parents died. Memories so painful she can't even bear to share them with Dan. Amy and Dan have to decide how much they're willing to risk, and what they are. Ian and Natalie Kabra's mother, Isabel, joins the hunt, as she could not stand the mistakes her children have made. The Kabras send the Cahills an 'invitation' to a meeting at a dock in Australia. Amy can't decide which Lucian to trust - the cloying Isabel Kabra, or the serious, but deadly, Irina Spasky. Irina stops following Isabel and helps Amy with the clue hunt. She turned away from Isabel because she lost her boy, Nikolai, when she was on a mission. Amy's life is threatened by Isabel, but she escapes thanks to the Holt family, who helped her because of their previous alliance in The Black Circle. Amy and Dan are briefly distanced from each other when Irina talks about Amy and Dan`s parents being murdered in front of Dan (Amy had been too filled with grief to tell Dan that their parents were murdered) Amy and Dan continue their search to find out that Bob Troppo was actually Ekaterina agent Robert Cahill Henderson, who came devastatingly close to finding all 39 clues in his Indonesian lab. His work was destroyed by the Krakatoa eruption and he fled to Australia. Amy and Dan find a note written by him, a strange poem seemingly pointing to the clue. The Cahills discover the clue - water - with the help of Alistair Oh. However, Isabel Kabra sets the house they are staying in on fire, and Irina Spasky chooses to save Amy, Dan, and Alistair at the price of her own life. The book ends with Amy and Dan thinking that they now are doing the Clue hunt for their parents.
24785487	/m/080ktw_	The Bell at Sealey Head	Patricia A. McKillip		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The small ocean town of Sealey Head has long been haunted by a phantom bell that tolls as evening falls. The sound is so common that many of the town's inhabitants don't even notice it, let alone questions its existence. Ridley Dow, a scholar from the city, comes to investigate the mystery, and sets up residence at the old inn owned by a young man named Judd and his ailing father. To aid Ridley, Judd enlists the help of his friend and love-interest Gwyneth, a young woman who writes her own stories to explain the bell. On the other side of town is the ancient manor Aislinn House, whose owner, Lady Eglantine, lies dying. Emma, a servant in the house, is able to open doors that lead not into another room, but into another world. On the other side of Aislinn House's doors is castle where the princess Ysabo moves through her daily rituals, tasks that Ysabo hates and doesn't understand, but cannot question. While Emma and Ysabo are able to speak to one another, neither has ever tried to cross into the other's realm. When Lady Eglantine's heir Miranda Beryl comes to Aislinn House, Sealey Head's secrets begin to reveal themselves, sometimes with dangerous consequences. Miranda brings to Sealey Head an entourage of friends from the city, as well as a strange assistant. As the town gets pulled deeper into the strange magic that Ridley, Judd, Gwyneth, and Emma uncover, Ridley breaches the border between Aislinn House and Ysabo's world. It is only when the bell's location and owner are discovered that Aislinn House and all of Sealey Head are able to return to safety.
24787792	/m/080dsly	In the Forests of Serre	Patricia A. McKillip		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After the death of his wife and child, Prince Ronan falls into a depression so deep that even a fated encounter with the witch Brume leaves him unmoved. He gives Brume his heart, certain that he no longer needs whatever is left of it, and then wanders through the forests of his country, escaping from an arranged marriage that his parents hope to force him into. In the woods he becomes enchanted by a firebird and relentlessly pursues it, leaving behind his memories in his madness. As her betrothed runs wildly through the wilderness, Princess Sidonie reluctantly leaves her home of Dacia to travel Serre. Her father and his wizard Unciel realize that an alliance between Dacia and Serre will protect their country from war. To aid Sidonie and guard her from Serre's magic, Unciel arranges another wizard, Gyre, to escort her while Unciel, who is still weak from an earlier battle, and his scribe Euan Ash watch over the events from Dacia. Gyre agrees, but has his own motivation for undertaking the journey. Sidonie encounters the nearly delirious Ronan, though neither know who the other is; Gyre, aware of the prince's quest, takes advantage of the confused situation to steal Ronan's identity. With the help of Unciel, who gathers his strength to settle the unfinished business he has with Gyre, Sidonie brings Ronan back from his wanderings and brings peace to both Serre and Dacia.
24787810	/m/0809l92	Peter and the Sword of Mercy	Dave Barry	2009-10-13		 The story is set in 1902, 23 years after the events of Peter and the Secret of Rundoon. Molly Aster, now Molly Darling, is married to George and a mother of three: Wendy, John, and Michael. Her mother Louise has been deceased for a while and her father Leonard is very ill. One evening, she is visited by one of the original Lost Boys: James, who now works for Scotland Yard. He informs Molly about his suspicions with Baron von Schatten, an advisor to Prince Albert Edward. James thinks von Schatten is being controlled by Lord Ombra, but Molly brushes it off as foolishness, saying that Ombra was destroyed at Rundoon. Along with this, the Starcatchers have been few since the incident. James tells her he will come back the next night, giving her some time to think the whole thing over, as he has nowhere else to turn. Meanwhile, on Mollusk Island, four men known as McPherson, O'Neal, Kelly and DeWulf wash up on shore in a boat. They claim to have been lost at sea for a few weeks, but Chief Fighting Prawn becomes suspicious when he says that they look like they were out at sea for a few days. He and Peter keep a close eye on the four men, especially O'Neal. Back in London, Molly has waited three days, and James has still not returned. She starts to fear that he might be in real danger. Anxious to find out what is going on, Molly goes to the Scotland Yard, only to be told by his employer, Blake, that he is on vacation. Puzzled, Molly returns home and is almost grabbed by a bobby on the Underground. George is not too pleased when she tells him her story. He fears that he could lose his job due to a minor incident like this. Molly decides to talk to Wendy about the Starcatchers, knowing that her daughter is the only one who could understand. So, after Molly tells her daughter that she is actually in the Starcatchers, Molly sets off to her father's house, hoping to find some answers. But she, too, mysteriously disappears. Meanwhile, a hideous man-like monster named The Skeleton, one of the "Others" that can cause pain with but a mere touch, looks for the missing tip of the sword Curtana- a.k.a. the Sword of Mercy. He finds it in a church window, disguised as a bishop's miter. To keep his children safe, George sends them to stay in Cambridgeshire with Neville Plonk-Fenster, an inventor and their uncle. At Uncle Neville's place, Wendy is able to get an ornithopter, one of her uncle's inventions and uses it to find Peter. Before this, she visits her grandfather, Leonard Aster, who gives her a locket of starstuff and tells her to seek out Peter. Before he loses consciousness, he tells her to "confess". Wendy is confused, though, as she has no clue as to what he meant. In Molly's prison, she notices that men pass her prison every day. She believes they have been digging because of their dirty appearance. Wendy finally finds Peter on Mollusk Island with the help of some porpoises. She convinces him to come back to England with her to stop the "Others."
24787940	/m/080mryv	Castle Dor	Arthur Quiller-Couch	1961	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Castle Dor began life as the unfinished last novel by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, the celebrated 'Q', and was passed by his daughter to Daphne du Maurier. The story is based around the legend of Tristan and Iseult, but set in 19th century Cornwall. The main characters are a Breton onion seller, called Amyot Trestane, and the newly-wed Linnet Lewarne.
24795228	/m/0807w89	Memorial Day	Vince Flynn	2004-05		 Rapp, back in the field after a long stint on desk duty for insubordination, unearths the bomb plot during a daring commando raid on an al-Qaeda stronghold in Afghanistan. A U.S. strike force manages to intercept and disarm the nuke moments after it arrives by freighter in Charleston, S.C. Everyone, including series stalwart President Robert Hayes, congratulates themselves on a job well done, but Rapp isn't convinced; he believes al-Qaeda leader Mustafa al-Yamani has smuggled a second nuke into the country and plans to detonate it in Washington, D.C., during Memorial Day celebrations. Rapp, a ruthless terrorist pursuer by temperament and training, turns it up several notches this time around, following al-Yamani's scent with feverish abandon. Flynn trots out his usual assortment of characters to keep the action tense—wishy-washy cabinet members, political climbers, invective-spewing terrorists and a selected assortment of ice queens who use sex as a weapon. Yet his skillful use of converging plots, particularly the panic created by having a nuke on the loose, is enough to keep Flynn's growing fan base more than willing to overlook the formulaic components. WorldCat shows that the book is in over 1800 US and Canadian libraries
24797765	/m/0805rl6	Finding H.F.	Julia Watts	2001	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Abandoned by her teenage mother as a baby, 16-year old Heavenly Faith (H.F.) Simms has been raised by her loving but deeply conservative Baptist grandmother ('Memaw'). A tomboy and a closeted lesbian, she is an outcast at school in the small rural mining town of Morgan, in southeastern Kentucky. Her best and only friend is Bo, an effeminate gay boy who is the punching bag for the high school football team, as well as for his violent alcoholic father. H.F.'s first lesbian experience comes when the beautiful new girl at school, Wendy Cook, invites her to a sleepover, where they get drunk on wine and make love. The following morning though, Wendy coldly rejects H.F.s advances, breaking her heart. The same day, H.F. discovers a shocking secret about her mother. Unable to cope with the pain in their lives, H.F. and Bo decide to embark on a road trip during spring break across the South, from Kentucky to Florida.
24799503	/m/080hj_y	The Library Card	Jerry Spinelli	1997		 The book follows the adventures of four different characters named Mongoose, Brenda, Sonseray, and April as each child discovers a blue library card. The Library Card shows how libraries can affect the lives of each character in very different ways.
24802591	/m/080ms4h	The Blue Star	Fletcher Pratt		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is set in a parallel world in which the existence of psychic powers has permitted the development of witchcraft into a science; in contrast, that of the physical sciences has languished, resulting in a modern culture reminiscent of our eighteenth century. Witchcraft is hereditary but the ability to use it can be held by only one member of a family line at a time, being passed from mother to daughter at the daughter's loss of virginity. The daughter's lover then gains possession of her magical talisman, a jewel known as the blue star, which enables him to read the mind of anyone he looks in the eye. The catch is that he retains access to this power only so long as he keeps faith with his witch lover. The empire in which the action is set is comparable to the Austrian one in our own history. The government bans witchcraft, which merely serves to drive its practitioners underground, where they can fall prey to the use and abuse of unscrupulous powerful or ambitious individuals. The protagonists are Lalette Asterhax, a hereditary witch, and Rodvard Bergelin, an ordinary government clerk who has been recruited into the radical conspiracy of the Sons of the New Day. Rodvard, though attracted to the daughter of a baron, is commanded by his superiors to seduce Lalette instead to gain the use of her blue star in the furtherance of their revolutionary aims. The witch is no more truly enamored of him than he is of her, but both fall in with the scheme for their own reasons, unaware of how much they are simply pawns in the larger scheme of things. Everything soon goes bad, and the couple is forced to flee the empire. Various adventures and complications ensue as they stray into one cause or acquaintance after another, gradually growing beyond their shallow, selfish roots into a greater understanding.
24802777	/m/080c2z4	Barbary	Vonda McIntyre		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Barbary, a twelve-year-old girl, is an orphan who has lived in several group homes and foster families since the death of her mother. The novel opens with her waiting in a spaceport for a seat on a shuttle to Earth orbit, which will be the first step on a journey to the research space station Einstein, where she is to live with her new foster father, Yoshi, a poet and college friend of her mother's. Unfortunately, she has two difficulties: the shuttle is filled with dignitaries from Earth travelling to the station, so it's unlikely she will get a seat, and she is trying to smuggle her cat, Mickey, into space with her (pets are forbidden on the station). Barbary gets a seat on the shuttle with the help of the station's new administrator, a famous African-American woman astronaut, who tells her the reason so many VIPs are on the shuttle: an alien spacecraft has entered the solar system. It is not responding to communications or making any transmissions, nor is it making any powered maneuvers, but its course will bring it close to Einstein. Once she reaches orbit, Barbary spends several days on an orbital transfer ship before finally arriving at Einstein while managing to keep Mickey hidden. Once there, she meets Yoshi; Heather, her new sister, who is the first child born in space; and Thea, Yoshi's lover, an absent-minded astronomer. She hides Mickey in her and Heather's shared room, but has to reveal him to her fairly quickly. Heather agrees to help her keep Mickey hidden and fed while showing her around her new home and taking her on a trip outside the station in a vehicle called a "sled." Barbary asks Heather if she knows any private places on the station where Mickey can move about more freely so he won't be bored. Heather shows them a radiation shielding sublevel of the station on the outer edge of its rotating ring; it is filled with dirt made from lunar regolith tailings from the station's construction. While there, Mickey crawls into a mistakenly-open access panel to an elevator shaft and the girls lose him. They are reunited when the station administrator later summons Barbary to the station control center, where Mickey has emerged, to the delight of the technicians. Initially she wants to send Mickey back to Earth, but relents when a technician discovers a dead rat that Mickey has found and killed, proving he might be useful to the station as pest control. In the meantime, Thea has been constructing a telescope instrument in the family's quarters which is to be put on a sled and sent toward the alien craft, which has finally made a course change to bring it near Einstein and has sent transmissions in many human languages. When Heather and Barbary are elsewhere on the station, Mickey climbs inside the instrument package, and is not noticed when the package is installed on the sled and sent off into space. Barbary figures out he is not on the station when the station computer tells her it can't detect the radio tracking tag on his collar. She and Heather take Heather's sled out and begin chasing after Mickey's sled, but when they catch up, both sleds are grabbed by tractor beams and pulled aboard the alien ship. The girls learn that the friendly aliens, which look like mobile crystalline columns, have been traveling through the galaxy for a billion years, and have come to the solar system to inform humanity of the rules of galactic society before humanity finds it first. The novel ends with the aliens beginning to take the girls back to their home.
24803643	/m/0806pww	Od Magic	Patricia A. McKillip		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The wizard Od, a giantess who travels mysteriously, accompanied by numerous injured animals, which she heals, saved the city of Kelior, founded a school of magic there, then disappeared into the wilderness. Hundreds of years later, she appears at Brenden Vetch's small farm, inviting him to study at her school to perfect the magic he wields over plants, and finds in them. After he makes the long journey to the city, Brenden discovers that Kelior, instead of being a bastion for learning and exploration, is fearful of unfettered magic; the king and his wizard Valoren Greye outlaw any new type of magic, which they see as a threat to Kelior's order and safety. They want magic to be subservient to their rulership. As Brenden acclimates to his strange environment, Princess Sulys attempts to come to terms with her engagement to Valoren, a man she scarcely knows, which engagement was arranged by her father. But Valoren, and her father, take her for granted, and won't listen to her. Among other things, she wants Valoren to know that she has some magical power. Instead of preparing for her upcoming wedding, she prefers to converse with Ceta Thiel, a historian writing about Od. Her discoveries about the wizard puzzle her and her lover, Yar Ayrwood, who works at Od's school. Yar ventures out of the school and into the city to learn more, unintentionally involving his curious student Elver. The wizard Valoren is too preoccupied to help with his wedding arrangements: Not only is Brenden proving to be an enigma, but a new magic-user, Tyramin, and his daughter Mistral have brought a magic show to the Twilight Quarter of the city. Believing these magicians to be dangerous, Valoren commands that Tyramin and Mistral are to be investigated. As the warden for the Twilight Quarter, Arneth Pyt has to obey Valoren's order, even as he falls in love with the mysterious Mistral. When the king and Valoren try to suppress these new magics, an uprising that they could never foresee forces change upon the static kingdom. Mistral asks the king to allow Tyramin to perform for the king in the palace. (Actually, Tyramin has been dead for some time, but Mistral has presented him by illusion at performances. Sulys gets serious about magic, and stands up to her father during the performance, arguing that the king and Valoren have not been paying attention to her, and that Mistral should be allowed to practice her magic within Kelior. Yar and Valoren return from a search for Brenden, combined with an investigation of mysterious rock-like beings in the far north, and the beings, and Brenden, come with them. Elver turns out to be Od, in disguise. Od says that she wants the school to continue, but without the restraints imposed by the king, which she has experienced as Elver. The king agrees, and magic becomes an art again, rather than a trade.
24804922	/m/080dz_x	Gaston 19	André Franquin	1999		 The album contains some mini-récits, advertisements and drawings. * paint brush with tank and battery : brush so efficient that it paint also the user * electric roller skates : roller skates without brakes nor switch * miniature drill : highly efficient drill that can accidentally cause some damages * small ventilator: too efficient, it flies away * fan with motor: fan with battery to be placed on the wrist, it also allows someone to fly * electric cigar-cutter : this cigar-cutter not only cut cigars but also grind them * shaving brush with rotary hair: with too powerful batteries, it can have unexpected effects (Gaston 19) * bicycle on baterries: batteries are placed in the frame of the bike * heating soles: non-slip soles equipped with a heating system against black ice * miniature electric doll: doll of Prunelle * fire-extinger walkie-talkie: to communicate easily and avoiding being exposed * antifreeze : this antifreeze makes bubbles * radio-controlled bin
24808966	/m/080c9pb	Lad, A Dog	Albert Payson Terhune	1919-05	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 ;"His Mate" A rough collie named Lad lives at the Place with his Master, Mistress, and his mate, Lady. When Knave, a younger collie, is boarded at the Place, Lady begins ignoring Lad in favor of the newcomer. During a romp in the forest with Knave, Lady is caught in a leghold trap. Knave leaves her there and returns home but Lad finds her. Several days later, the still limping Lady accidentally gets locked in the library and is subsequently blamed for the destruction of the Master's beloved mounted bald eagle. The Master starts to whip her, but Lad intervenes and takes the whipping himself, knowing Knave was the culprit. Later, he attacks Knave for getting Lady in trouble, sending him fleeing from the Place. As the Master apologizes to Lad, Lady lovingly licks his wounds from the fight. ;"Quiet" On a cold October day, the Mistress falls into the lake and develops pneumonia. As the house must be kept quiet during her recovery, the dogs are sent to a boarding kennel, except Lad who is ordered to keep quiet. One night a thief breaks into the house, hoping to take advantage of the absence of the dogs. After he climbs through a window, Lad silently attacks him. During the ensuing fight Lad is cut with a knife before sending the man crashing back through the window. The noise wakes the humans of the house and the thief is arrested. After Lad's wound is treated, he enjoys praise from the Mistress then travels some distance from home to enjoy a lengthy session of barking. ;"A Miracle or Two" One spring, a relative of the Mistress brings her invalid toddler, Baby, to the Place in the hope that the weather will help her grow stronger. Lad immediately befriends the girl and becomes her constant companion. By summer, Baby is growing healthier, though she is still unable to walk. One afternoon, the mother sits the child near the lake, then leaves her to go meet the Master and Mistress, who are returning from town. Lad saves the baby from a copperhead snake, but the distraught mother only sees Lad throw her backwards and begins beating him. To protect her friend, Baby manages to shakily walk to her mother and explain what happened. While the humans fuss over the occurrence Lad sneaks off and spends four days buried in marsh mud to draw out the snake's poison. ;"His Little Son" Lady gives birth to three puppies, but after two die of unexplained causes, Lady lavishes all her attention on the surviving pup, Wolf. She later develops distemper and is taken away by the veterinarian, so Lad takes over the raising of his son, solemnly teaching him the Law of the Place. Wolf comes to love and respect his father and soon forgets his mother, though Lad continues to search for her daily. A month later, Wolf falls through the ice of the semi-frozen lake, and Lad nearly drowns while saving him. When Lad staggers to shore, he is ecstatically greeted by the recovered Lady. ;"For a Bit of Ribbon" The Master and Mistress enter Lad in the Westminster Dog Show in New York, much to Lad's abject misery as he dislikes the preparatory bathing and brushing. Dismayed to learn that Lad will have to stay chained to a small bench for all four days of the event, his owners begin to regret bringing him. To their joy, Lad wins the blue ribbon in both the Novice and Winner classes, and they decide not to subject him to the four-day stay. When they let Lad know he is going home, he joyfully perks up. ;"Lost!" Due to city regulations, the Master and Mistress are forced to muzzle Lad when they take him from the show. During the drive out of the city, Lad falls out of the car and is left behind. After he realizes he is lost, Lad starts towards home. Along the way he is chased by the police and a crowd of people, who presume he is rabid, but he escapes them by swimming across the Hudson River. Later he is attacked by a mongrel guard dog, but he refuses to run from the battle. He initially struggles to defend himself while muzzled, but then the other dog inadvertently bites through the strap holding the muzzle on, allowing Lad to quickly defeat him. When the Master and Mistress return from searching for Lad, they find him waiting on the porch. ;"The Throwback" Glure, a wealthy neighbor who considers himself gentry, stops at the Place for a night while on the way to a livestock show with a flock of expensive sheep. During the night, Glure's "Prussian sheep dog", Melisande, worries the sheep and they break free from the pen. Though Lad has never seen sheep, he instinctively herds them together while keeping Melisande under control. When the humans arrive to take the sheep home, Glure's herdsman apologizes for having earlier insulted Lad and Glure offers to trade Melisande for Lad. ;"The Golden Hat" Tired of his high-priced imported livestock losing in local shows, Glure concocts a dog show with a special gold cup event that is limited to collies that are both American Kennel Club blue ribbon winners and capable of completing the tasks of a British working sheep dog trial. Initially, it seems like the only dog who meets the requirements is Glure's recently purchased blue-merle champion, Lochinvar III; however, the Mistress is able to command Lad through the motions of the trial. Lochinvar works primarily by hand signal, so when Glure accidentally burns his fingers on his cigar while going through the trial, the dog stops working and waits for Glure's hand-shaking to be explained. The dog is disqualified and Lad is declared the winner. The Master and Mistress donate the gold cup to the Red Cross in his name. ;"Speaking of Utility" Glure tries to encourage the Master to support the "war effort" by killing his non-utilitarian animals, including his dogs. The Master quickly points out that Glure himself did not "sacrifice" his dogs but lost them to distemper. Pointing out that Lad had just chased off a trespasser from the Place, he fiercely argues that his dogs are his home's best protection. A few days later during a livestock show, Lad attacks Glure's new groom, recognizing him as the trespasser he chased away earlier. Lad's attack frees a vicious bull, which goes into homicidal rage. Lad abandons his attack of the groom to protect him from the bull. The bull chases Lad over the river and consequently gets stuck in the mud. The Master quickly determines why Lad attacked the man and Glure grudgingly thanks them. ;"The Killer" Lad is accused of killing eight sheep owned by a neighbor. When the Master refuses to believe the accusations, they are taken to court where the neighbor's farmhand testifies that he saw Lad kill two of the sheep. The Master successfully shows the improbability of a single dog carrying off six sheep in two nights and that the two dead sheep left behind were clearly cut with a knife, not teeth. After Lad is given a 24-hour parole, the Master asks the judge to accompany him to the neighbor's house that night, where they discover that the farmhand was actually stealing the sheep, then killing one from each batch to put the blame on Lad. ;"Wolf" Wolf, the companion and friend of the Boy, is highly intelligent and an excellent guard dog. The Boy is upset that he is not allowed to enter the dog shows, though he understands that Wolf does not meet the breed standards. While the family is at a dog show with Bruce and Lad, Wolf is poisoned by an intruder. Having only eaten part of the tainted meat, Wolf is still alive when the thief returns to the house that night and is shot twice while protecting the Place. The thief escapes, but is later apprehended by the police while being treated for his bites. Wolf recovers and is given a "Hero Cup" trophy, to the Boy's delight. ;"In the Day of Battle" On a cold, snowy day, thirteen-year-old Lad feels snubbed when the three-year-old Wolf does not invite him to join him and Rex, a five-year-old collie and bull terrier mix, for a run in the woods. Later, Lad goes for a walk, following their path. When he meets them on the trail, rather than letting Lad pass, Rex viciously attacks him. With his teeth dulled by old age, Lad is unable to really fight back. Refusing to just run, he defends himself as best he can while moving backwards towards home, half a mile away. Though Wolf betrays him and joins Rex in the life-or-death fight, Lad manages to get close enough to the house for Bruce to hear the battle and alert the Master and Mistress. The Master is forced to kill Rex after the crazed dog turns on him. After four weeks recovering from his wounds, Lad is able to go outside again and Wolf steps aside for him, acknowledging he is still the leader of the Place's dogs.
24813025	/m/080jh9w	The Virginians	William Makepeace Thackeray	1859	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 It tells the story of Henry Esmond's twin grandsons, George and Henry Warrington. Henry's romantic entanglements with an older woman lead up to his taking a commission in the British army and fighting under the command of General Wolfe at the capture of Quebec. On the outbreak of the American War of Independence he takes the revolutionary side. George, who is also a British officer, thereupon resigns his commission rather than take up arms against his brother.
24823518	/m/080kv9z	The Battle for God	Karen Armstrong	2000		 Armstrong's central case rests on the confusion between mythos and logos, using these in the technical sense suggested by Johannes Slok. Myth concerns "what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence...Myth was not concerned with practical matters but with meaning". By contrast "Logos was the rational, pragmatic and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world". In religion, logos appears in legal systems and practical action. By the eighteenth century, "people in Europe and America began to think that logos was the only means to truth and began to discount mythos as false and superstitious." Armstrong suggests that fundamentalists have turned their mythos into logos using the mindset of the modern scientific age. The first part of the book, "The Old World and the New", compares the progression of the three monotheistic faiths between 1492, when Columbus discovered America, and 1870, when "The Franco-Prussian War had revealed the hideous effects of modern weaponry, and there was a dawning realisation that science might also have a malignant dimension." It traces the way Jews and Muslims modernized during this period. This leads to the modern period described in part two, “Fundamentalism”, when there was a growing adoption of a literalist interpretation of scripture in the United States, which eventually gave rise to The Fundamentals, a series of 12 volumes refuting modern ideas published shortly before and during the World War I, of which 3 million copies were distributed to every pastor, professor and theological student across America by the largesse of oil millionaires. Though this led to a distinctive ideology, it was not till the 1980s that it emerged as a political force. In Judaism, the growth of Zionism was given its biggest boost by the Holocaust which led to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Although many traditional Jews migrated there, the most conservative rejected the secular interpretation of Zionism and it wasn't until the emergence of Gush Emunim after the Yom Kippur War in 1974 that fundamentalism emerged in Israel as a political force. In Islam, fundamentalism did not emerge until modernization had taken hold, first in Egypt with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood by Hasan al-Banna. Armstrong traces the development of Sunni fundamentalism under Sayyid Qutb and Shia fundamentalism under Ayatollah Khomeini.
24852484	/m/09gnwfr	Zettels Traum				 The novel is set in 1968 at 4 AM in the Lüneberg Heath in northeastern Lower Saxony in northern Germany. It follows the lives of Daniel Pagenstecher, visiting translators Paul Jacobi and his wife Wilma, and their teenage daughter Franziska. The story is concerned with the problems of translating Edgar Allan Poe into German.
24852536	/m/09glxwc	Krondor: The Assassins	Raymond E. Feist	1999-09-06	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Squire James of Krondor must find the cause for many unexplained murders plaguing Krondor. While a war is waged between the Mockers and agents of the Crawler a rival criminal with ties to Kesh. As a further complication eastern nobles arrive the Crown Prince of Roldem and the Duke of Olasko and his son and daughter. William the son of the magician Pug and Katala is commissioned as a Knight-Lieutenant and soon he is escorting the Duke on a hunt which turns out to be an ambush with two attempts on the nobles’ lives one by a group of magicians controlling panthers and another during the night by nighthawks William manages to keep them alive until aid arrives. Meanwhile James discovered something that will lead him to the main nest of the nighthawks with the help from Ethan Graves. James, William and a few soldiers disguise and approach the supposed location which used to be a Keshian outpost. They discover a back door and enter saving one of their captured scouts and causing havoc while they wait for Prince Arutha and his army. Jimmy is captured and is readied for a sacrifice in a demon summoning. He manages to upset the ritual and the demon is loosed on the nighthawks instead of the prince’s army. William and his squad force the demon to confront Arutha who in turn kills him with his magic imbued sword. The search of the nest results in some dark books, a sealed chest and documents. Arutha then orders a forced march to port Vikor and there he is met by Admiral Trask who takes them swiftly to Krondor. There they open the chest which turns out to be a magical assassin intended for Prince Vladik. The creature is defeated with help from a priest of Prandur but a lot of damage is caused to that wing of the palace. Further inspection and translation of the captured documents reveals that the Duke of Olasko is behind the attempted murder and Arutha sends the eastern nobles back to Roldem under escort. The Mockers are back in power as the Crawler's agents are defeated, Jimmy meets the unconfirmed Upright Man of the Mockers. It is further revealed that Sidi is behind the chaos.
24855144	/m/09gq49m	Earthseed				 Many years into the future, a last-ditch attempt to save humanity was created, a project known as Ship, an AI containing DNA of different Earth flora and fauna and sent into space to find a new planet. Also created are a group of children using genes from the leaders of the project, all raised by Ship, and of whom Zoheret is the main character. Now in their teens, the Zoheret and the others are subjected to their last test, a competition within the Ship's Hollow, a simulated Earth-like environment. The teens are moved into the Hollow, and told to live there so that they can gain the skills they will need to live and survive on their new planet. Very quickly, Ho and Manuel, two troublemakers, split off from the rest. Zoheret and the others are left make a farming community, with Zoheret's friend and roommate Lillka as the group's leader. All goes well until it is discovered that Ho's group has started to steal some of the main settlement's supplies. This upsets a great many of the main settlement's members, and they go out to find the smaller group's home base. The vengeful group ends up burning down the cabins of the other community. Angry and confused, Zoheret and her friend, Bonnie (accused of cooperating with Ho and Manuel's group) set off to plead with the Ship; however, Ship is unwilling to let them out of the Hollow. They finally get Ship to let them get food to take back to their settlement. Zoheret develops a relationship with Dmitri, another teen, while Lillka is slowly replaced as leader by another boy, Tonio. Things for the small community are made much worse when they awake to find their fields incinerated by Ho's group. The settlement leaves to hunt down Ho and Manuel's group, while Zoheret and Bonnie, still concerned over Ship's odd behavior, lead a small group back to Ship. Instead, they stumble across an older man, Aleksandr, who introduces himself as Dmitri's older brother, a remnant of Ship's previous attempt at the Project. He takes Zoheret and the others in her group out into Ship's corridors and introduces them to the other six members of his group, including Zoheret's own older brother, Yusef. They explain that Ship had created them years ago when it had found two planets suitable for life. However, neither turned out adequate (the first having a poisonous atmosphere, the second inhabited by intelligent life), and the group was given two options: live their lives out in the Hollow, without reproducing, or go into cryostasis. Most of the group goes into cryostasis and are now in the process of being revived. Armed with this knowledge, the younger group go back to their settlement and are immediately captured by Ho. Threatening her friends, he sends Zoheret over to get supplies. Upon reaching the settlement, Zoheret is treated to another shock: another group of adults have been revived. These are the leaders of the project, having put themselves secretly into cryostasis, and who have now taken over the settlement and shut down the Ship's systems. A war between the two groups start, forcing Zoheret to unite her community with Ho and Manuel's and to ally with the Aleksandr and his own group. Though the younger group eventually wins, after having turned Ship's systems back on, there are losses on both sides, with Zoheret losing an arm when her own genetic mother shoots her. They settle on Ship's new planet, the adults placed in cryostasis, having learned many lessons. Zoheret becomes the group's leader and Ship leaves, setting off to find a new planet to do the Project on.
24856410	/m/09gpzf4	The Leper of Saint Giles	Edith Pargeter	1981	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In October 1139, Brother Cadfael, a monk of Shrewsbury Abbey, skilled herbalist and physician, is restocking the salves and medicines at a leper colony at Saint Giles, maintained as a charity by the Abbey. Young Brother Mark has volunteered his turn to care for the lepers and enjoys caring for the sick. A wedding between two landed families is to take place in two days at the Abbey. Cadfael believes the bride to be a descendant of a renowned knight whom he knew on the First Crusade. The arrival of these wealthy people in their fine clothes draws out townspeople and those at St. Giles to watch them pass. First the groom, Huon de Domville, and his party arrive, headed for Bishop Roger de Clinton's house across the road from the Abbey. Cadfael is surprised how old the bridegroom is. As he passes, the baron lashes out with his whip at one of the lepers, an old man called Lazarus, a recent arrival who is slow to get off the road. Next, the bride and her party arrive, aiming to stay in the Abbey guest house. Iveta de Massard is a beautiful young woman, worth the wait for all the onlookers. With her are her legal guardians, Godfrid Picard and his wife Agnes. This marriage does not have the look of a love match; rather it is a contract between families for financial and social gain. From the Bishop's house, de Domville's three squires watch as Iveta's party passes his lodgings. Iveta secretly gives a sign to one of them, Joscelin Lucy. The other two, Simon Aguilon, de Domville's nephew and heir presumptive, and Guy Fitzjohn, know of Joscelin's hopeless love for Iveta. That night, after Vespers, Iveta absents herself to meet Joscelin in Cadfael's workshop in the Abbey grounds. They discuss how the marriage might be prevented, without much hope. Cadfael walks in to do some of his work, startling the pair. Hearing Agnes Picard approaching, he pretends that Joscelin and Iveta are seeking medicines. Civilities are preserved although Agnes is not fooled. After Agnes and Iveta depart, Joscelin tells Cadfael that he would commit murder to prevent Iveta's marriage to Huon de Domville. Cadfael scolds him for using such words lightly, when he suspects this boy (all young men are boys to Cadfael) would not act on his strong feelings so wrongly. The next morning, Joscelin bursts into the Abbey's grounds, as he has been dismissed by de Domville not for his own errors or faults, but at Picard's urging. He challenges Godfrid Picard to a duel for this smear to his honour. As Abbot Radulfus intervenes to prevent a brawl, de Domville himself arrives with Gilbert Prestcote, the Sheriff of Shropshire and accuses Joscelin of the theft of a gold and pearl necklace, a gift intended for Iveta. Joscelin's belongings are searched by Prior Robert. The necklace is found in the last object by interference of de Domville. Cadfael suspects that it was planted there. Joscelin is meekly led out of the Abbey by the Sheriff's men but at the bridge before the town, he breaks free of his guards and escapes by jumping into the River Severn, successfully avoiding arrows and pursuit. Simon later goes to find him in the woods, and conceals him in a shed within de Domville's lodgings at the Bishop's house. Later that day, Radulfus summons Cadfael to discuss the Picards' complaints at his interference. Cadfael states his concern that Iveta is being coerced into marriage, but when they question Iveta alone, she states she is willing to be wed to de Domville. Late that evening, rather than sleep, de Domville tells Simon that he fancies a night ride, and trots off towards Saint Giles. His progress and direction are noted by Lazarus, sleeping outdoors this night. Yet later that night after some sleep, Joscelin leaves his hiding place in pursuit of his ultimate goals, to stop the marriage and get Iveta to safety. He is heard by a patrol and is pursued along the same road. The leper Lazarus conceals him in a haystack. Surprising himself, Joscelin confides to Lazarus his crude plan to challenge de Domville to a duel to the death to thwart the wedding. Lazarus says that de Domville rode past Saint Giles a short while before, and must presumably come back the same way before the wedding later that morning. At ten o'clock, Iveta and the invited guests gather at the Abbey church for the wedding, but Huon de Domville does not appear. Searchers find him dead on a track far from his lodgings. Cadfael's careful search of the area shows rope marks on two nearby trees. De Domville had been toppled from his saddle by a rope stretched across the path, then strangled with bare hands as he lay stunned. Most assume that this is Joscelin Lucy's work. Cadfael determines from the dew under the body that de Domville died shortly after dawn. He also notes that the strangler wore a ring, the jewel of which cut into the flesh of de Domville's throat. Nobody recalls whether Joscelin wore such a ring. At the Abbey, Picard is vehement that Joscelin Lucy must be taken and hanged, as he is most certainly the guilty man. Iveta protests that Joscelin must be innocent, as he is in prison. When the Picards reveal the truth of his escape, she collapses. The Picards grudgingly allow Cadfael to take care of her. Once safely indoors, she tells him that she agreed to marry de Domville because the Picards had threatened that Joscelin would otherwise be hanged for theft, and begs Cadfael to help Joscelin. The Sheriff musters parties to search for Joscelin. At Saint Giles, Brother Mark is aware that from the hour of Prime, his flock has grown by one tall man, who is concealed behind a leper's veil. Because the lepers trust the newcomer, so does Brother Mark. That evening, the searchers return empty handed. Some of Prestcote's men have searched de Domville's lodgings, finding traces that a man had been there, but has left. Simon seems strangely disconcerted by the news. With Godfrid Picard, he attends the ceremony of placing de Domville in his coffin. About the same time Cadfael's assistant, Brother Oswin, notes that de Domville's hat is missing. Cadfael finds it near where he fell, with a very rare flower, blue creeping gromwell, wound around it. The next day, Cadfael searches the area for that rare flower. The locals tell him how to find de Domville's hunting lodge, where the flower grows in abundance. The caretakers invite him inside, where Cadfael notes a gentlewoman's perfume. As he leaves, he sees a fine horse suitable for a lady. He goes to the Bishop's House to question de Domville's servants. The servant Arnulf admits that de Domville had a favourite mistress, a former peasant girl named Avice of Thornbury, a place Cadfael knows how to find. Joscelin has confided in Lazarus his new plan to take Iveta to sanctuary at a Cistercian convent near Brewood until the courts can properly consider her case. He has befriended Bran, a young boy at Saint Giles. From Brother Mark, Bran obtains a strip of vellum on which Joscelin writes a message to Simon, asking him to tether his horse near the Abbey grounds and tell Iveta to be in Cadfael's herb garden after Vespers. Just before dawn on the next day, Joscelin sneaks into de Domville's lodging, leaving the message in the mane of Simon's horse. Shortly afterwards, Iveta is surprised when she overhears Simon and Godfrid Picard arguing furiously. Simon is admitted briefly to her room and passes on Joscelin's message, showing her the vellum, before being shown out by Picard. The Sheriff prepares to search for Joscelin for a third full day. He calls up every able-bodied man and horse, appearing to leave the Abbey unguarded. Towards evening, Joscelin prepares to leave Saint Giles for the last time. Before he departs, Lazarus asks him to describe Godfrid Picard. Meanwhile, Iveta has acted on Joscelin's message. She obtains a double dose of the syrup derived from poppies which Cadfael uses as a sleeping draught from Brother Oswin, and puts it into the drink of the maidservant left to watch over her. She then meets Joscelin in the grounds. They do not get far, as some of Sheriff's men find Joscelin's horse, and then trap the two of them at the Abbey. As Joscelin tries to break free and snatches a knife from one of the Sheriff's men, the service of Vespers ends and the monks stream out. Abbot Radulfus once again intervenes to prevent Joscelin being cut down. The Sheriff and his searchers arrive one by one as darkness falls, Simon and Guy with them. The Sheriff agrees that Joscelin is on Abbey grounds, where Radulfus is in charge, and allows him to question Joscelin. As Joscelin tells his story, Brother Mark appears, wet from having forded a stream as he followed Joscelin from Saint Giles. Cadfael enters this scene. He has traced Avice of Thornbury, who has entered the Benedictine convent at Godric's Ford nearby and has joined the order as a novice. Cadfael relates her evidence that de Domville left the hunting lodge as dawn broke on the morning he was murdered. Brother Mark confirms that at that time, Joscelin was already in cover at Saint Giles. He also states that he has been watching Joscelin all day, and can account for his every move. Cadfael then announces that he has found the body of Godfrid Picard, strangled as Huon de Domville was, as he returned from Godric's Ford. Agnes Picard instantly turns on Simon Aguilon and accuses him of the murder of both de Domville and her husband. She tells everyone that Simon had sought Iveta's hand as de Domville's heir. Godfrid Picard realised at the coffining ceremony for de Domville, from a pale mark on Simon's finger, that Simon had worn the ring which Cadfael noted had cut into de Domville's throat, but was no longer wearing it. Picard was nevertheless prepared to accept Simon as a suitor for Iveta, provided Joscelin was pronounced guilty of the murder and hanged. Cadfael tells the Sheriff that Simon was entrusted by de Domville to escort Avice of Thornbury to the hunting lodge, and alone of the household knew the route de Domville must take. Simon angrily protests his innocence, but is surrounded and forcibly searched. The ring is found on him. Finally, one of the Sheriff's men admits that it was Simon who alerted him to search for Joscelin at de Domville's lodging, and later to intercept him in the Abbey grounds. As Simon is dragged off to the castle, nobody questions whether he is guilty of the murder of Godfrid Picard, as well as that of his uncle. When he examines Picard's body closely, Cadfael has doubts, as whoever strangled Picard lacked several fingers. Cadfael walks with Mark to Saint Giles, where Cadfael tells Lazarus that he knows him to be the famous knight Guimar de Massard, who was believed to have died as a prisoner of the Fatimids after being captured at the Battle of Ascalon 30 years earlier. Lazarus reveals that he had been told of his malady by Fatimid doctors, who also treated him for it. He had them announce that he died of wounds received in battle, and lived as a hermit for years until he learned that his son had died and left an orphaned child. He returned to England after a trek of many years, arriving at just the right moment. He was outraged to find Iveta being exploited by the Picards and unwillingly forced into marriage. Her "honour" of 50 manors across four counties was not thriving. As Prestcote's searchers made their way back to Shrewsbury, he had waylaid Godfrid Picard, challenged him to mortal combat, and easily disarmed and strangled him. Cadfael urges de Massard to reveal himself to Iveta, who venerates his memory, and will also know him as Joscelin's good friend. He boldly suggests that there was another Lazarus who returned from the dead, to the joy of his family. Lazarus removes his veil to reveal features ravaged by disease and asks "And was this the face that made his sisters glad?" He assures Cadfael that all is well with him, and leaves Saint Giles that very night, never to be seen again.
24859444	/m/09g8gq2	A Shabby Genteel Story	William Makepeace Thackeray			 After a brief preliminary chapter outlining the early life of certain characters the story begins in England in the winter of 1835. A well-born but impoverished gentleman calling himself "George Brandon" is hiding from his creditors in the out-of-season seaside town of Margate. He finds cheap lodgings with a family consisting of James Gann, a bankrupted small businessman; his termagant and socially pretentious wife, Juliana; her two elder daughters by her first husband, Rosalind and Isabella Wellesley Macarty; and her downtrodden youngest daughter, Caroline Gann. Though he despises the entire family as ridiculously vulgar, the supercilious Brandon plans to amuse himself by seducing one or other of the elder girls, who are local belles; but though at first they find him attractive they soon realise he is mocking them and their social milieu. Thereafter they treat him with scorn, and so Brandon irritably switches his attentions to the youngest, Caroline. She responds by conceiving a passionate first love for him, and he begins a covert flirtation with her - in part to irritate another lodger who adores her. This is the handsome, vain, deluded young artist Andrew 'Andrea' Fitch. From being at first an amusement to Brandon however Caroline eventually becomes an obsession, for although desperately in love she makes it clear she will not sleep with him unless he offers marriage: and this Brandon cannot do, as his financial future depends on his making a good match with a wealthy wife. As he grows increasingly frustrated with Caroline he becomes more and more furious with her admirer, Fitch, who suspects his designs on the girl and thwarts them where he can. Brandon finally insults Fitch, who then grandiosely challenges him to a duel. With the help of two of Brandon's friends visiting from university (a dissipated young nobleman called Viscount Cinqbars and his toady, Rev. Thomas Tufthunt) the 'duel' takes place, though the pistols in fact are not loaded.(Thackeray uses a similar plot device in The Luck of Barry Lyndon). The "duel" is interrupted anyway by the arrival of a wealthy lady previously besotted with Fitch, who impetuously carries him off with her. Brandon by this time is so intent on having Caroline that he allows the Rev. Tufthunt to marry them, and they run away together. There the story ends. In his note to the earliest edition Thackeray hints at how the plot was to have developed: "Caroline was to have been disowned and deserted by her wicked husband: that abandoned man was to marry somebody else: hence, bitter trials and grief, patience and virtue, for poor little Caroline, and a melancholy ending - as how should it have been gay?"
24876440	/m/09g8g__	Falsehood in War-Time				 Falsehood in War-time identifies the role propaganda plays in World War I, in general and specific terms. Ponsonby states that the book was not written to blame nor expose any individual or authority over another; it was written to inform and disillusion the masses. General ideas of propaganda that nations used were: *Depicting the enemy in a negative light *Provoking patriotism *Exaggerating victories, concealment or minimization of defeats, and the continuous exposure of enemy atrocities in order keep up morale *Asserting that they (the nation) did not want war *Having the information come from “intellectuals and literary notables” Ponsonby lists over 20 different falsehoods that “pretty well cover the ground.” He doesn’t condemn lying during war-time, saying without lying there would be “no reason and no will for war,” and shows how it must (is) be used through his examples and explanations.
24883150	/m/09gbhxz	A Mind at Peace	Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar	1949	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is orchestrated into four parts named after the four main characters: “İhsan,” “Nuran,” “Suad,” and “Mümtaz”. At a young age, after his parents die during the Allied occupations of Ottoman territories after WWI, Mümtaz, goes to live with his much older cousin İhsan, an intellectual and history teacher at Galatasaray, the famous French lyceum in Istanbul. Their relationship is one of mentor and student. İhsan is a role model who has now fallen seriously ill, upsetting the spirit of the entire family. Parallel to the relationship between Mümtaz and İhsan is the love affair between Mümtaz and Nuran, the women who has recently left him. Mümtaz is devastated by İhsan’s sickness, by the fact that Nuran has recently made up with her ex-husband, and by the impending second world war. The fourth major character, and the darkest of them, is Suad, an admirer of Nuran who ultimately commits suicide in Mümtaz’s apartment, destroying Mümtaz’s relationship with Nuran. Psychologically, socially, nationally, and internationally, the developments in the novel are always pregnant with permanent change and uncertainty. Both the vital importance and the fragility of these relationships are highlighted through lyrical passages of modernist and symbolist prose. The influence of writers such as James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky can be felt in the prose. Part I (“İhsan”) and Part IV (“Mümtaz”) frame the novel and represent a tense and melancholy twenty-four hour period culminating in the announcement that World War II has begun in Europe. Part II (“Nuran”) and Part III (“Suad”) narrate the events of the preceding year. Part II delves into the halcyon relationship between Mümtaz and his beloved Nuran through the intertwining of aspects of Ottoman Turkish classical music, folk songs, theater, and the natural beauty of the Bosphorus – a body of water separating Europe and Asia. Part III is brooding in tone as it relates the dampening and growing sorrow surrounding this idyllic romance, through the complications presented by Suad. Part IV takes up the themes of the East/West “problematic” and problems of identity, focusing on the realization by those in Mümtaz’s circle that he is on the verge of mental and emotional collapse. A Mind at Peace is a novel about its opposite, tension and anxiety, and the challenges posed by war and self-destruction to relationships and aesthetics; all the while, Tanpınar contemplates the mystery, irony, and persistence of the observing eye and hybrid consciousness. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar is an author of modernist transfigurations. Revelations of the Turkish soul on the threshold of political and cultural change inflect his prose, and mark his language and aesthetics. A Mind at Peace, among other things, is the Turkish national anti-epic. It is a bildungsroman that doesn’t lead to maturity and the wisdom of experience, but to a spectrum of vulnerabilities from psychic instability to sacrifices of identity and history. Tanpınar represents the modernism of countries like Turkey that have experienced concentrated periods of reform and revolution, or even, countries with a history of colonization. His narrative point-of-view moves between a more traditional narrator and the poetic voice of an aesthete. His prose, in style and structure, is thereby a faithful narrative representation of the fraught cultural transition from the Ottoman Empire to the mid-century Turkish Republic. In A Mind at Peace, Tanpınar writes through a number of themes and tropes including the divided self, the melodic makam, the Ottoman legacy, the Sufi theme, material culture (objects and memory), and the unrequited mystic romance (of lover and beloved). Entering a vast symbolist world (of light and illumination, season and clime, lover and beloved, alchemy and transfiguration, Istanbul and the Bosphorus, etc.), the reader is never made to forget that he is accessing a world through the perspective of a voyeur, a flâneur, an ironist, a tourist of one’s native city, an aesthete, and one who has learned to see life from the outside through a self-Orientalizing gaze. Tanpınar treats language as an object around which memory coalesces. For lest it be forgotten, Tanpınar’s Turkish audience alone represents a readership estranged from its own immediate cultural heritage and history.
24884621	/m/09gf6zb	I Will Survive		2009-07	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 As the eldest son from a lower middle class household, Sunil Robert began his life in Hyderabad spending his childhood without any worries. His family, though poor, was well respected in the community. Robert was popular among his friends. Life came to a rapid halt after his father lost his job and could not find another one. Robert, still very young, was forced to change with circumstances, coming to terms with his new responsibilities and learning to live with the stigma of a life on borrowed money, food, clothes and books. As he struggled through his school and college days, he grew bitter and resentful towards his father, his extended family and the community which he lived in. Robert found himself getting involved with the local mob. However, before things got worse, Robert decided to take control of his life. With the help and support of his family and the local community, he got his life back on track. He got a job and decided never to venture back to those dark days again. Through the rest of the memoir, Robert summarises his rise as a corporate communicator at the technology giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and how he eventually dealt with his harsh feelings. He learned to forgive, raised his family responsibly and finally achieved what he has made of himself today.
24884677	/m/09g9f3c	A Web of Air	Philip Reeve		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The clever young engineer, Fever Crumb, is swept up in a race to build a flying machine. Her mysterious companion is a boy who talks to Angels. Powerful enemies will kill to possess their new technology-or to destroy it. A Web of Air is the sequel to Fever Crumb, the story set centuries before Mortal Engines that tells how great cities begin to build giant engines to make their first predatory journeys across the wastelands. It is set in Mayda, a city established in an atomic bomb crater off of mainland Portugal.
24887283	/m/09gdb56	Celandine		2006-08-22	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The book starts out with Celandine running away from the boarding school she was sent to by her parents to ‘pound all of the nonsense out of her’. It is her third escape attempt, after being sent back twice by her parents. She boards a train and meets a crippled soldier who appears to be no older than her brother Freddy, who died as a volunteer soldier. She aids him in lighting his cigarette. She also meets a nurse who upon Celandine's departure from their company exclaims “Do you know that extraordinary looking girl?” She returns to her home farm but does not enter not wishing for an angry confrontation with her father. She climbs the hill and hoots; a signal apparently. A small child Celandine calls Fin appears out of nowhere and jumps her; smothering her with love and affection, begging for cake. This is where the back-story begins. Celandine was 10 when she first saw the “little people”. She was resting under a tree where Fin finds her, soon followed by his Father/Guardian. Upon her return to her normal surroundings no one except Freddy believes her when she tells them what she saw. [The above comprises the first 1½ chapters.]
24888818	/m/09gm306	What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures	Malcolm Gladwell	2009-10-20	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 What the Dog Saw is a compilation of 19 articles by Malcolm Gladwell that were originally published in The New Yorker which are categorized into three parts. The first part, Obsessives, Pioneers, and other varieties of Minor Genius, describes people who are very good at what they do, but are not necessarily well-known. Part two, Theories, Predictions, and Diagnoses, describes the problems of prediction. This section covers problems such as intelligence failure, and the fall of Enron. The third section, Personality, Character, and Intelligence, discusses a wide variety of psychological and sociological topics ranging from the difference between early and late bloomers and criminal profiling.
24889603	/m/09gjq_1	A Fine and Private Place	Peter S. Beagle		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book takes its title from a verse from Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress": "The grave's a fine and private place, / But none, I think, do there embrace." The setting, accordingly, is the fictional Yorkchester Cemetery, where one Jonathan Rebeck, a homeless and bankrupt pharmacist who has dropped out of society, has been living, illegally and unobtrusively, for nearly two decades. He is maintained by a raven who, like the legendary ravens who fed Elijah in the wilderness, supplies him with food in the form of sandwiches thieved from nearby businesses. The protagonist exhibits the peculiar ability to converse with both the raven and the shades of the dead who haunt the cemetery. Beagle portrays ghosts as being bound to the vicinity of their burial, with their minds and memories slowly fading away as their mortal forms return to the dust. As the plot proceeds, Rebeck befriends two recently arrived spirits, those of teacher Michael Morgan, who died either from poisoning by his wife or suicide (he can't remember which), and of bookshop clerk Laura Durand, who was killed by a truck. The two ghosts fall in love, and each pledge themselves to each other "for as long as I can remember love." Rebeck soon finds himself subject to another's attentions as well, in the form of a widow, Mrs. Klapper, who discovers him while visiting her husband's mausoleum. The quiet existence of this unlikely quintet is diverted by philosophical conversation and the poisoning trial of Morgan's wife, word of which is regularly provided by the raven from the local newspapers. After she is ultimately found innocent and her husband's death ruled suicide, Morgan faces separation from Laura when his body is removed to unhallowed ground. Rebeck, under the encouragement of Mrs. Klapper, is driven to find a way to reunite them, and finally takes leave of his unusual abode.
24890550	/m/09gq4pr	The Traitor				 The story opens in 1986 when Amy Lockhart opens a letter from the British government about her father. Then there is a flashback to 1936 to the life a member of the British Union of Fascists, an organization of British men following Sir Oswald Mosley inciting a pogrom in a Jewish Ghetto in London. There are many other flashbacks about this person leaving the reader to guess whether it is really John Lockhart or someone else in the SS. The story of John Lockhart then opens in late 1943 off the coast of Crete. John Lockhart, an MI6 agent is about to infiltrate the island to join up with the Greek Resistance and one of its leaders Manoli Petaris. His mission is to help them create havoc for the Nazi occupation in Crete After reaching their hiding place, they plan an attack on an ammunition dump. The attack fails however and Lockhart and several other Andartes are captured and taken to a prison. There, the commandant of the prison Lockhart is held, an oberst named Dietrich interrogates him. Lockhart pretends to be a Greek and resists interrogation but fails and is discovered to be a spy. He later agrees to help the Nazis in exchange for news of his wife Anna who had been captured during the invasion of Holland. Later it is discovered that Anna is alive in another concentration camp. Dietrich offers his life and the life of his wife in exchange for helping the Nazis infiltrate the Greek resistance. He reluctantly agrees and is dropped off somewhere near the original hiding place. During this time there are flash backs to When Lockhart was an Oxford student working as an archaeologist in Crete. It is here that he meets Anna and it goes about to tell of their courtship and his friendship with Manoli and some of his classmates there. Unfortunately Lockhart discovers much of Crete has changed from the war. He comes across a village he remembered staying at in ruins, destroyed as retribution for killing an SS officer early on in the story. Lockhart Returns to the Andartes hiding place where he explains to Manoli how he plans to allow suspected collaborators to be captured in exchange for keeping himself and his wife alive while satisfying Dietrich. Unfortunately the camp is raided by Nazis and everyone except Lockhart is killed. Manoli chastises Lockhart as a traitor before dying. The book then goes to Berlin and follows the life of An SS Hauptsturmführer named Carl Strasser, a veteran of the Russian Front who now holds a desk job and is given orders to form an SS brigade made up of British Soldiers called the British Free Corps (BFC) to fight the Russians in the east. Strasser also is involved with a prostitute who is working undercover as an SD agent named Leni Steiner. We later learn that Leni is the daughter of a German woman and a Jewish Father who must work undercover for the SD in order to protect her family. Strasser reviews the soldiers that already joined The BFC, some of whom did so to escape punishment others because they were sympathetic to the Nazi cause, many of whom were BUF members before the war. One of them is Pugh, a BUF spokesmen with a port wine stain on his face who we soon learn is the character in the flashbacks from the BUF. Lockhart is to be the leader of this brigade. Lockhart initially refuses to join but while imprisoned in Berlin, he meets a Russian spy who was captured who learned about a plan by the Nazis to use sarin nerve gas to win the war. He tries to give the name of its location but is taken away to be executed. All Lockhart knows is that the name starts with MITT. Fearing that the Nazis could deploy the gas and fearing for the life of his wife he agrees to join. He later finds out that Andrew Worstead, a former classmate of his From Oxford and the Crete digs is one of the members of the BFC. He claims that he was an officer who was demoted to private for impregnating his CO's daughter and was captured at Dunkirk. Lockhart has orders to recruit POWs to join the BFC. Lockhart uses this opportunity to send a secret message to MI6 disguised as a POW letter to family members to warn the Allies of sarin and the BFC. He does this with the help of corporal Strafford who is forced to join as punishment for attacking Lockhart. The recruitment drive comes to a halt after he is stabbed by a prisoner in another camp, but because of his recruiting he is discovered and is denounced as a traitor. Because of this and unknown to everyone in the unit, his letter is ignored back home and sarin disregarded as a false rumour. Under Strasser and Lockhart BFC is slowly taking shape. Lockhart sees letters from his wife that are typed but does not believe they are real. He tries to make a deal with Strasser to see his wife but agrees only if the BFC meets training requirements for the Russian front. A deal he says he can break or change at any time. Meanwhile Lockhart presses Andrew Worstead about his joining the BFC and about whether or not Anna's letters are real or if she is dead or alive. Worstead claims that he joined the BFC to infiltrate and destroy the unit in order to become a hero back home. He also says that he suspects Pugh is collaborating with Strasser to forge the letters from Anna and keep an eye on the unit. Lockhart meets up with members of the SS and other Nazi party officials to try and learn the truth about sarin. He learns that the gas might be a project in the Ahnenerbe a German think tank that deals with race theory. With the help of Strafford (who had been a burglar before the war) Lockhart infiltrates an office in the Ahnenerbe and discovers a file of the A4 project. Later at a bar in Berlin he meets Pugh with Leni Steiner. Pugh reveals that he is no longer a fascist but is a Russian spy with Leni. He tells him that the story of Worstead being demoted and voluntarily joining is not true. In reality Worstead was a homosexual who's orientation was discovered in POW camp. He was shunned and later forced to join the BFC or be sent to a concentration camp. Worstead's orientation was later discovered by Pugh who blackmailed him. Worstead it turns out is the real spy for Strasser and that he was the one writing the letters from Anna. Lockhart confronts him and Worstead confirms most what Pugh had said but claims the letters were written by a British Nazi who is the son of the organist at John and Anna's wedding and that Anna was dead. He later kills himself. Lockhart is accused of murdering him and is arrested. Strasser initially refuses to release Lockhart saying that it was nearly impossible. But When dating Leni at a hotel, he is forced at gunpoint to release Lockhart. Leni reveals herself as a spy for the SD and tells him he must obey Lockhart and give him what he wants or she will inform the SD that Strasser is a traitor and have him beheaded. To make things worse, Lockhart claims that he knows that Anna is dead (which is not really true) which means Strasser has no way of blackmailing him. Meanwhile, The Allied Forces have invaded Europe in the D-Day operation and Lockhart fears that Germany will be desperate to use the nerve gas. The BFC is also demoralised by Germany's losses. Leni and Pugh grudgingly agree to help Lockhart destroy the factory where the gas is kept but they have doubts it can be done. Leni takes part by luring one of the Ahnenerbe's officials into her apartment to interrogate him. Lockhart forces him to reveal information about A4 which is in fact a rocket program. Gas was to be loaded on the V-2 rockets and launched at London in order to force the Allies to surrender. Before the location is given out however he dies of a heart-attack. To make things worse, the SD has been following him and bursts into the apartment to arrest Lockhart and Leni. Lockhart however manages to disarm and kill them. An air raid follows destroying the apartment and evidence of Leni's involvement. This gives them time to plan the attack on the factory. With the help of Russian Intelligence (GRU), Leni changes her identity and the two hide out in another apartment. There they are contacted by the Russians with information on the factory's location which is in Mittelbau and ordered to destroy it. The plans are held by another agent. Lockhart learns more about the location of Mittelbau and is shocked to learn that the adjoining camp used for slave labour in building the rockets is the same camp that his wife Anna is held in and that she is still alive. They collect the plans and then Lockhart forces Strasser to provide weaponry for the mission. By this time The BFC is completely demoralised and according to Pugh many want to return to POW camp. Lockhart uses this opportunity to convince them to join him in his mission which they all agree. Even Strasser who fears losing the war agrees to join. Lockhart goes to a POW camp to meet a former classmate about getting information about how to destroy the gas. He informs them to use a small drum or still to do so. The BFC with Strasser and Leni then go to Mittelbau underground factory to destroy the gas. With the help of Strasser they manage to get weapons, equipment and forged documents and get as far as the gate where they run into trouble. After the gate opens for a passing truck, they decide to Attack the guards and manage to drive into the factory where the gas is kept. They barely manage to seal the gas inside the still and blow it up with dynamite but not without taking heavy loses. John Lockhart and Leni try to make their escape when John sees Anna in the compound. He runs to her but is killed. Leni is the only one who escapes. Back in 1986, Amy is showing her mother the letter. Thanks to new openness in the USSR from perestroika, new information including Leni's testimony is released from the Russians. Captain John Lockhart's name is cleared and he is awarded a medal along with the other members of the BFC. Leni unfortunately was betrayed and taken to a concentration camp where she was executed. Anna then shows Amy the pine-cones John gave her before being shot in Mittelbau.
24890903	/m/09gh1b3	A World to Win				 Part One: Green Valley In the beginning of the story, we are introduced to Martha Darrell of Green Valley, who is a single woman who is “past her prime” for dating. She is awoken one night by her doorbell and finds Terry Hurley and his sick child Leo. Martha lets the two stay until the child is better but the relationship blossoms and soon Robert is born. Later in his childhood, Martha starts to become more religious as her and Terry grow apart. Leo starts seeing a girl named Anna and Robert accidentally spills the details to a bully named Dogface. Dogface tells his father, Preacher Epperson, who gets Martha involved, and she comes down on Leo pretty hard. He leaves and Anna shortly follows. Part Two: The Green Dragon In anticipation of college Robert goes to visit Boone University that his grandfather was a professor at and his mother was a student. On a train to campus, he meets Alan Vass and Sol Abraham, two returning college students. When Robert goes to the University himself, he adopts many of the same attitudes Alan does. While at school, Robert meets Nell, his first and only love who is also a writer. She follows him after he leaves school and they start living together, he working on his novel and she encouraging him and working at an office responsible for busting up protests. It is at this point that Robert is called back to Green Valley because his mother is ill. After her death, Terry opens up to Robert more and asks that they stay in better touch. Leo comes back into Robert's life and Leo gets Robert a job at his mill. Robert really does not like the work but he struggles through. Later, the workers of that mill go on strike and come after Leo because they know he is the one that told management about their union plans. After not being pummeled like expected, Leo promises not to go into the mill again. Part Three: Nothing to Lose Now out of a job, Leo finds out Anna is pregnant. They decide to go back to Green Valley where they are sure things will be better. Meanwhile, Robert's manuscript is turned down and he leaves Nell because he is tired of living off her. Anna and the baby are killed in a car accident at which time Leo decides to make the world feel sorry for what they have been through. Instead, he becomes a wanted man and Robert comes to his rescue, freeing him from the law and renewing their relationship.
24901407	/m/09gq4w9	Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days	Derek Landy	2010-04-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Valkyrie, Tanith, Fletcher and Ghastly are hunting down Skulduggery's original skull in order to rescue him from the Faceless Ones. They discover the skull was retrieved by Detective Marr, Skulduggery's replacement, and is in the Sanctuary. They break in to retrieve it, getting Ghastly and Tanith captured. After an unexpected kiss from Fletcher, Valkyrie goes through the portal alone, retrieves Skulduggery, who is initially convinced that he is hallucinating and flees back through the portal outrunning several Faceless Ones. While Valkyrie is in the alternate dimension, a Sanctuary agent attacks China and Fletcher, badly wounding China. Valkyrie has been learning necromancy from Solomon Wreath, which Skulduggery disapproves of. He forces Wreath to tell her about the necromancer's prediction that soon, a Death Bringer will be powerful to break down the walls between life and death forever. The last person they believed to be the Death Bringer was Lord Vile. Wreath strongly believes Valkyrie to be the Death Bringer, but the other necromancers do not agree and want proof. Skulduggery and Valkyrie also learn about a vision shared by many Sensitives, in which Skulduggery, Valkyrie and Valkyrie's parents are killed by an evil sorceress called Darquesse, apparently in only a few years time. Valkyrie is even more horrified at this when she learns her mother is pregnant. Vaurien Scapegrace, Dusk, Springheeled Jack, Remus Crux, Billy-Ray Sanguine and his father, Dreylan Scarab have formed a "Revenger's Club" which plans to destroy the Sanctuary and attack the characters who have wronged them in the past. They begin by attacking the Sanctuary with vampires, so that Scarab can get revenge on Thurid Guild for framing him and sending him to prison for 200 years. The attack allows Valkyrie, Skulduggery and Fletcher to rescue Tanith and Ghastly from prison. The Revenger's Club steal a bomb called the Desolation Engine, kidnap Kenspeckle Grouse and Tanith, and then use a horde of zombies - headed by Vaurien Scapegrace, who they murdered for lying to them – to break into the Midnight Hotel and free a remnant. They use the remnant to control Kenspeckle, forcing him to repair the Desolation Engine, and then allow the remnant in his body to torture Tanith by nailing her to a chair. Valkyrie and Skulduggery rescue Tanith, free Kenspeckle and recapture the Desolation Engine, but Tanith is left severely injured and afraid of Kenspeckle. Kenspeckle then deduces the Revenger's Club made him build a second Desolation Engine. The team track Scarab and the others to Croke Park stadium, and fight for the Desolation Engine. In the fight, Valkyrie is bitten by Dusk, but he reacts strangely to her blood and does not kill her. Scarab informs Thurid that his family will be killed unless he activates the Desolation Engine, and Thurid agrees to do so, but Fletcher teleports him away just before he is able to. Valkyrie goes after Billy-Ray and Thurid's house, but he refuses to attack her, saying that Dusk has decided that leaving her alive will be more chaotic and entertaining. Fletcher safely returns with Thurid, who the bomb was designed to spare, having left him in an isolated area to detonate the bomb safely. Realising she was horrified by the thought of Fletcher's death, Valkyrie kissed him before getting her bite treated, preventing her from becoming a vampire. After she has recovered, Valkyrie and Skulduggery go to transport Thurid to jail, as he has confessed to the crime he framed Scarab for. However, as they are leaving, Myron Stray detonates the Desolation Engine on Detective Marr's orders, destroying the Sanctuary and narrowly missing Thurid, Valkyrie and Skulduggery, burning the bottom of Thurid's legs off in the process. Valkyrie returns home, only to remember with horror the moment in the first book where she glimpsed her true name in the Book of Names, discovering that she is the evil sorceress that destroys the world. She is Darquesse.
24902004	/m/09g76wx	Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You	Peter Cameron	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 James Sveck is an isolated young adult caught in the summer before he is to begin college at Brown University. The only person in his life with whom he is able to successfully relate is his grandmother; otherwise, James prefers solitude. Cameron’s use of first person narration allows for the reader to create an intimate relationship with James as he works through his life and through the therapy sessions to which his parents have made him go. The reader learns about James’s present as he tells the events of his days, but the reader learns about his past when James’s reflects on his therapy sessions. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 play a key role in James' outlook and emotional state.
24903999	/m/09gj56r	The Well of the Unicorn	Fletcher Pratt	1948	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The land of Dalarna is under the heel of the Vulkings, whose heavy taxation is forcing the Dalecarl yeomen out of their holdings. The protagonist Airar Alvarson is one of the dispossessed. On the advice of his mentor, the magician Meliboë, he joins the underground Iron Ring resistance, only to face defeat and failure. Captured and enslaved by the free fishers on the Gentebbi Islands, he goes through a series of adventures in which he gradually rises from a homeless fugitive to a great war leader. During his quest Alvarson gives much thought to the issues of honor, war, justice and government. He finds admirable qualities even in his enemies, and problematic ones in some of his allies. Always questioning where the right lies and what principles should guide his course, he feels his way to his goals as best he can. He finds magic a poor tool for defeating enemies or winning battles, as the small enchantments of which he is capable make him ill and gain him little. The great Empire across the sea, to which all parties pay at least a nominally fealty, seems to offer at least a symbolic solution; it guards the legendary Well of the Unicorn, which brings peace to those who drink from it. But its panacea is a deceptive one; those who do drink tend to find the peace so gained offset by new difficulties. The long, hard road of forging armies, building alliances, and waging war, without any mystical short cuts, proves the only effectual path. At the end of the novel, with the assistance of the Star-Captains of Carrhoene, Alvarson has succeeded in overthrowing the Vulkings and freeing Dalarna, and won the emperor's daughter as his bride to boot. But it seems he will have no rest, as word comes that the heathens of Djik have invaded the isles of his allies, the free fishers. When his wife urges him to drink of the Well with the invaders, he declines such facile solutions, countering that "There is no peace but that interior to us."
24913120	/m/09g9tr9	Love, Lies and Lizzie		2009-01-25		 The plot of book is based on Jane Austen's book Pride and Prejudice. The protagonist is Lizzie Bennet, who has just dumped her boyfriend Toby. Lizzie's sister, Jane is surprised by it, because Toby is crazy about Lizzie. After that, Mrs Bennet tells her daughters that the family is moving to the new house at Priory Park. The five sisters do not feel good there at first, but soon they get involved in parties and James Darcy's life.
24913860	/m/09gghmb	Star Wars: Crosscurrent	Paul S. Kemp		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In 5000 BBY, the Sith Lord Saes Rrogan gathers up a Force-enhancing mineral from a world that his Sith fleet destroyed. On his heels are Jedi Master Relin Druur and his Padawan Drev Hassin. When they attempt to board Rrogan's ship, the Harbinger, Drev is killed, but Relin makes it aboard, killing and wounding several of Rrogan's subordinates before confronting the Sith himself. They have a brief duel which both escape severely wounded, and Relin manages to sabotage the hyperdrive core of the Harbinger in order to mess up its trajectory in returning with the rest of the Sith. This throws off the trajectory of the Harbingers sister ship, the Omen, which would have it crash land irreparably on the out-of-place world of Kesh. As for the Harbinger itself, its hyperdrive sabotage drives it more than 5000 years into the future, specifically in 41 ABY. In that time period, Jedi Knight Jaden Korr senses a disturbance in the Force emanating from the Unknown Regions. He travels there and lands on the world of Fhost, where he seeks the help of junk dealers Khedryn Faal and Marr Idi-Shael. They take him to a nameless moon where Jaden had felt the disturbance in the Force. They soon run into the Harbinger that had finally come out of hyperspace after more than 5000 years. They ally with Relin Druur to combat Saes Rrogan's forces even as those from the past realize in what time they're now in. Eventually, as Relin gathers the help of Marr to destroy the Harbinger, Jaden teams up with Khedryn to explore the mysterious moon. While all this happens, Jaden is being stalked by Kell Douro, an Anzati who drains people's lives away, and finds Jaden to be a delicious meal. On the moon, Jaden and Khedryn find a dead and deserted base. The two of them get separated, and Khedryn is nearly killed by Douro. But Douro decides not to quench his appetite with Khedryn, and remains ever-vigilant to consume Jaden's life. Jaden, meanwhile, finds the source of the dark side in the form of a deranged clone of Jedi Master Kam Solusar. Though Jaden loses most of his fingers in one hand, he kills the clone in combat, but is nearly killed by Douro. Douro, however, is killed himself when Khedryn shoots his brains out at point-blank range with his blaster. Despite the victory against the clone and Douro, Jaden senses through the Force that other deranged clones of other Force-users in the base have managed to escape. This is confirmed when Jaden and Khedryn see a ship fly away from the outside of the base. Aboard the Harbinger, Marr helps Relin with his mission as best he can, then escapes while Relin confronts Saes Rrogan in one final battle. Relin kills Rrogan, and then uses the Force-enhancing minerals around him to completely destroy the Harbinger. With that, Jaden, Khedryn, and Marr all decide to go home.
24914733	/m/09gcm9f	Attica	Garry Kilworth	2006-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 12-year-old Chloe and her brothers: Jordy, 12, and Alex, 10, have the adventure of a lifetime. Chloe and Alex's father died of a heart attack when they were just 8 and respectively, 6. Their mother, Dipa has been trying to find a new husband since her children's father died. When she does, the kids have a surprise: they are gonna have a new brother. Jordy, three months older than Chloe, is the exact opposite of Chloe and Alex, so they are not so happy when they find out their family enlarges to five members. Ben, Jordy's father and Chloe and Alex's stepfather is a paramedic and Dipa, a doctor, so the kids are used not having their parents at home. But when they move to Winchester to a rented apartment everything is going to change. Mr. John Grantham, the old man that rented them half of the house he lives in, tells Chloe about the girl he loved in the 1930s and 1940s. Susan married a much richer and older man. Though, Susan gave him a clock that sings Frère Jacques, a clock that he cannot find. Chloe offers to take her brothers and go in the attic and so the adventure begins. On their way, Chloe, Jordy and Alex discover all sorts of dark secrets of the attic, that they named "Attica", and all sorts of weird characters, such as Atticans, a weird race of creatures with bumps on their heads that think that all humans are ghosts and monsters of the Attic.
24915034	/m/04t2hst	The Indian Clerk	David Leavitt	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is inspired by the career of the self-taught mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, as seen mainly through the eyes of his mentor and collaborator G.H. Hardy, a British mathematics professor at Cambridge University. The narrative begins in January 1913, in Cambridge, England, where Hardy receives a letter filled with unorthodox but imaginative mathematics and asking for support and guidance.
24919033	/m/09gbpz8	The Cat Who Went Bananas	Lilian Jackson Braun	2005	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jim Qwilleran reviews the local play for the Moose County Something. Polly is busy with the grand opening of The Pirates Chest, a local bookstore funded by the K Fund. While going about with his daily life one of the cast members of The Importance of Being Ernest is killed during a car accident. Rumors circulate after it is discovered Ronnie Dickson had a large amount of alcohol in his system. Jim has a sneaky suspicion over newcomer Alden Wade, a notorious ladies man. In order to get closer to Alden, Qwill writes a book about the Hibbard House, run by an eccentric Violet Hibbard. It's up to Quill, Koko and Yum-Yum to solve the mystery.
24919777	/m/09gj5gf	Kraken	China Miéville	2010-05-07	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy"}	 An inexplicable event has occurred at the British Museum of Natural History — a forty foot specimen of giant squid in formalin has disappeared overnight. Additionally, a murder victim is found folded into a glass bottle. Various groups are interested in getting the squid back, including a naive staff member, a secret squad of London police, assorted religious cults, and various supernatural and mostly dead criminal elements. The wondrous squid represents deity to the Church of Kraken Almighty. Did they liberate their god, or could it have been stolen by a rival cult?
24920454	/m/09gf7c3	Mohana Silai			{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins with Idhayakumaran entering the city of Vanchi, the second capital of Cheras. He is stopped at the entrance by the guards who does not allow him to enter after knowing that he is from Chola country. But Idhayakumaran gallops in his horse into the city. He finds a beautiful ivory statue of a dancing female in the woods within the city. Just as he took the statue in his hand he hears the Chera princess Ranjani ordering her guards to arrest him for steeling the statue. Idhayakumaran escapes from the situation by taking the princess as his hostage. He later releases her and informs her that the secret of her birth will be revealed today in the place of the royal jeweler. The princess meets a stranger along with Achuthaperaiyar, the royal jeweler. Idhayakumaran meets them there along with the statue. Achuthaperaiyar introduces the stranger as Vijayalayan and he is her father. Vijayalayan calls her Kannazhagi. Vijayalayan also mentions that he has just captured Vanchi. He explains that the statue was made by Ilamcetcenni, the legendary Chola king. He also reveals that Achuthaperaiyar as his Chief Minister, and explains that her mother's name is Bhoodevi and he had married her when he was the king of the then tiny Chola country ruling the region around Uraiyur. Once when Vijayalayan was in Pandyan country with Achuthaperaiyar for a week, the Mutharayars of Kalabhras clan raided Uraiyur and tried to abduct Bhoodevi. But she stabbed and killed herself with a dagger. The raiders took with them the three year old Kannazhagi. When Vijayalaya Chola returned he vowed to destroy the clan of the raiders. A week later the Chola king went to Kanchi and met the Pallava king and made Cholas a feudal kingdom of the Pallavas. The Pallava king made him the Commander of Pallava army. Vijayalaya led many successful invasion into the Kalabhras country and started to look for you. When she was found (after fifteen years) in Vanchi, Vijayalayan sent Achuthaperaiyar there - which resulted in Vanchi being captured by the Cholas. Later Aditya and Idhakumaran infiltrates the Mutharayar strong hold Chandraleka (Senthalai), where they meet the king Perumpidugu Mutharayar, his son Maran Parameshwaran Mutharayar and daughter Devi (with whom Aditya falls in love). They then devise the plan for Chola invasion of Tanjore and Senthalai. The story ends with Cholas under Vijayala capturing Senthalai and Tanjore and Vijayalaya changing his capital from Uraiyur to Tanjore.
24921626	/m/09gpffz	To Have and To Hold	Deborah Moggach	1986		 Liberated Viv, happily married to Ollie, decides to bear a surrogate baby for her sterile sister Ann, but instead of artificial insemination conceives naturally with her brother-in-law Ken, who falls in love with her...
24928183	/m/09glkmc	Peter & Max: A Fables Novel	Bill Willingham	2009	{"/m/0134b1": "Contemporary fantasy"}	 The novel flips between telling the history of the main characters in Hesse, their homeland, and current events in the mundane world (what the Fables call our world). Peter Piper and his brother Max are sons of traveling minstrels. Although Peter is the younger son, his father bestows on him a magical flute, a family heirloom that has ability to avert danger. When the Piper family is visiting their long-time family friends, the Peep family, the empire's army attacks. The Pipers and Peeps escape to the Dark Forest. While the are asleep, Max — jealous of Peter because he was given the flute — kills his father while they are away from camp. Max then returns to camp claiming that the empire's troops have attacked. The announcement causes the families to flee in panic. Peter, Max and Bo Peep are separated. Peter winds up in Hamelin where he becomes a member of a thief's guild. Bo Peep becomes a member of an assassin's guild. Max meets Frau Totenkinder who gives him a magical pipe of his own which he learns to use for evil purposes. He goes to Hamelin where he becomes the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Eventually Peter and Bo Peep are reunited and marry. They are heading to Sanctuary when they meet Max who is still angry over being passed over by his father. He attacks Peter and Bo Peep usmagical pipe. Peter is able to avert the danger with his flute, but inadvertently passes the danger along to Bo Peep, ruining her legs and crippling her. In present day, Peter and Bo Peep have been settled in "the Farm", when they are advised that Max has emerged in the current world. Peter leaves New York to meet his brother in Hamelin, Germany. Peter is fully aware of his brother's power and intent to kill him, but idetermined to face his fate regardless. In their confrontation Peter is all but helpless in the face of his brother's magic; all of his weapons are useless due to Max's many magical wards. Peter triumphs in their confrontation by using his magical pipe as a weapon, shoving the sharp reeds through his brother's heart. This is only possible because his brother had desired to acquire the flute. Peter then claims his brother's flute for Fabletown, resolving to use it only to undo the spell that crippled his wife centuries before. This is partially successful. There is a brief epilogue, in which Beast, of Beauty and the Beast, tries to confiscate "Fire", the red flute of max's. but Peter refuses because the spell has only begun to be reversed. He promises to turn fire over when Bo's legs are restored.
24929476	/m/09ggb2r	Freddy the Politician	Walter R. Brooks		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 To encourage farmer Bean to go on his vacation, the animals decide to elect a president who can manage the farm while he is gone, and to start a bank to manage the farm money. :"'Yes, but how do you start a bank?' asked Eeny. :'Pooh! Nothing to it!' said the cat. 'You just—well, you just open it. Big sign over the door—"BANK." That’s all.' :'Oh,' said Eeny. 'So you call it a bank and then it’s a bank, hey?' :'Sure.' :'Oh,' said Eeny again. 'So then if I call you a big blowhard, what does that make you?'" (pp. 10-11) During a fierce storm, a lost and exhausted woodpecker finds shelter in the farmhouse. The animals realize that the name John Quincy would be impressive for a bank manager and offer him the job. Freddy gets the job of secretary. Vaults are dug under a shed. The bank is a success, and within a few days the vaults are full. Mr. Bean approves, but when he tells Mr. Weezer, the banker in Centerboro, they have an argument causing Mr. Bean to withdraw all his money and place it in the animal bank. When Jinx the cat proves uninterested in being a bank officer, John Quincy suggests bringing his father, Grover, from Washington. The woodpeckers proceed to hold a bank board meeting down a tunnel that is too small for Freddy. Since he cannot attend the meetings, control of the bank is taken from the Bean animals. The woodpeckers also have a plan for winning the election. Since all animals on the farm can vote, the woodpeckers visit the local birds to get their support. Then Simon the rat and his family — old enemies of the Bean animals — show up. The Bean animals realize they must select a popular candidate carefully to avoid the woodpeckers or Simon taking control of the farm. Mrs. Wiggins the cow is chosen for her common sense and public speaking experience. Mrs. Wiggins laughes during the campaigning: the opposition says laughter is out of place in government. Old Whibley the owl calls this balderdash. The woodpeckers challenge Whibley to a duel, but he apologizes. :"'You apologize?' said Grover. :'Certainly. You are a stuffed shirt, and you do talk balderdash, but I apologize for saying so.' :'But that’s no apology,' said John Quincy. :'What do you mean, it’s no apology?' said the owl. 'Either I apologize or I don’t apologize. If I do, it’s an apology, isn’t it?'" (p. 123) When Freddy comes for advice later about how to handle the woodpeckers, Whibley comments, "'He couldn’t do a ridiculous thing to save his life. That’s why he’s ridiculous all the time.'" (p.&nbsp;136) Whibley has the practical suggestion for Freddy to dig a hole into the boardroom large enough for him. This done, Freddy blocks the other entrances, and calls a board meeting. The woodpeckers cannot get in, and Freddy votes himself bank president. When the animals find out that Freddy tricked the woodpeckers using the same trick that had been used against him, votes start to shift from the woodpecker party. The animals are “on the whole a good-natured crowd" on election day, but the woodpeckers have schemed to have the votes for Mrs. Wiggins ("W") counted for a party they support "Marcus" ("M", an upsidedown "W"). Freddy retorts that their ballots were probably intended to be for one of other the farm animals with the same initial, too. Thwarted, Grover takes control of the powerful mechanical man (invented in an earlier book). The woodpeckers overthrow the animal government by force, taking Freddy prisoner. The woodpeckers launch a military campaign to expand their government to nearby farms and eventually the whole state. After they leave, Freddy escapes in disguise as an Irish woman, visiting the Centerboro bank manager to convince him the animal bank is no threat. Once he is on Freddy’s side, they snare Grover with a meeting in town. Grover is trapped in the mechanical man, removed, and replaced. Returning to the farm, the mechanical man instructs the woodpecker’s army to disperse. John Quincy and Grover, beaten on every front, leave the Bean farm peacefully.
24930961	/m/09g83_q	One in Three Hundred	J. T. McIntosh	1953	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set in the near future when a scientific principle has been discovered allowing exceptionally accurate predictions of solar flares and the occurrence of the Sun increasing its solar output. Applying this principle, worldwide consensus has determined which day, hour, and minute the Sun will brighten so much as to boil away the Earth's seas. Realizing that the heightened albedo will destroy life as we know it, the world's nations debate what to do when the Sun "goes off." Since the Earth's rotation continues at 360 degrees in 24 hours, it will take only one day to cause all of the Earth's oceans to boil away. Terrific hurricanes and tidal waves will also occur, causing all buildings to be destroyed. If there are any survivors, they will be in hardened bunkers deep underground, and they will only be able to last as long as their food lasts. The unavoidability of the impending doom has caused some technologically advanced countries to look for sanctuary on another planet, such as Mars. This is all scheduled to happen in a few years, and the exact minute and hour of the Sun's increase in radiance does not give the human race much time to devise a way of navigating space to an orbit as far away as Mars. Nevertheless, massive building programs are initiated, and hundreds of spaceships are raised, many of them unfit for flight. A series of national lotteries are established with grand prize being a ticket to ride a spaceship off the Earth, and possibly make it as far as Mars. Many spaceships, however, were built without landing gear. Although many ships were supposed to have shortwave radios to communicate with each other, many of the shortwave radios were simply empty cases as the tubes and wires had been left out. The protagonist of the story has been elected into a position of authority, and must choose which people to take with him to Mars. He has only a limited number of tickets, and knows there will come a time when people with guns will storm their way on board, rather than stand in line until the tickets are depleted. The book is titled "One in Three Hundred" because only one in three hundred people in the United States will get a ticket to leave the Earth, and there is still a question whether the spaceships will have enough air, or even be able to travel to Mars in time, and nobody is certain whether the atmosphere of Mars is breathable, or whether Mars will even be habitable when they get there.
24936955	/m/09g7762	How to Build a Robot Army	Daniel H. Wilson	2007-12-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel"}	 Daniel H. Wilson’s third book is obviously fiction, but contains a lot of useful information nonetheless. How to Build a Robot Army: Tips on Defending Planet Earth Against Alien Invaders, Ninjas, and Zombies not only deals with how to reprogram household robots to defend against aliens but literally every imaginable monster. From vampires to Godzilla Wilson has you covered. With section titles such as “How to Slay a Vampire Clan” and “How to Repel Godzilla” Even though there is a section in the book that deals specifically with that scenario, “How to Thwart an Alien Invasion”. Despite its apocalyptic aura the book is an easy read. The sections are all short and to the point with little to no flowery language but a lot of humor mixed in. Each section goes into describing what sort of attack you are facing and the monsters involved. Then looks at a typical personal robot that is available for reprogramming. The reprogramming goes in depth but again is easy to follow and stays on point to the hostile situation.
24939976	/m/09gnqh_	Whole Earth Discipline	Stewart Brand	2009		 Speaking on "Rethinking Green", Brand provided a short version of his book: The book challenges traditional environmentalist thinking around four major issues: *Cities are green. *Nuclear power is green. *Genetic engineering is green. *Geoengineering is probably necessary. And he summarized the book. Urbanization, or the move to cities, requires grid electricity, which one chapter discusses, in particular nuclear power. Another two chapters explain the need for genetic engineering. A "sermon" on science and large-scale geoengineering is a fourth chapter. Fifth is a chapter on restoration of natural infrastructure and benevolent ecosystem engineering. Finally, Brand concludes with humans' obligation to "learn planet craft", to enhance life and Earth like an earthworm.
24940694	/m/09g7dyx	Anima			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Megan hopes to be an actress, and goes to London for auditions and tryouts. Olive, on the other hand, is not particularly photogenic, and worries about remaining single for the rest of her life; she lost her father some years ago to suicide, and as the years have gone on, she now has arthritis and a stooped or crooked back, deformed as a result of a life threatening car accident prior to puberty. Nextdoor to Olive, a man and woman have moved into the building she used to live in, back when her father was alive. There is something suspicious about the new couple because the woman looks unusually young for her age, and has possibly stopped aging. When compared against photographs from years ago, the woman remains the same, but her husband has become much older. The differences are striking. Megan believes that the man had done away with his first wife, and replaced her with a new one. Megan sets out to prove there has been a replacement of some kind, quite possibly involving murder on the one hand, and immigration fraud on the other. The wife is described as having waxen features, pale and white. But since they moved in, Olive has become quite fond of the strange couple nextdoor. Although they generally keep to themselves, they threw a party in the summer, and convened a seance in a darkened room for the purpose of reaching out to the afterworld. The curtains were drawn and the room was black. After the seance was over, everybody said that Olive had spoken with the voice of a young child, commenting to her dad about a small bird that had died. What no one knew at the party, was that Olive's nickname was Livy - the name that was called out in the middle of the seance.
24941358	/m/09gfm8v	Songs My Mother Never Taught Me	Selçuk Altun		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel, described by the publisher as, “a remarkable thriller that takes us through the streets of Istanbul,” tells the story the privileged young Arda, who reflects the life of his murdered father, after the death of his overbearing mother, and ‘your humble servant’ Bedirhan, who has decided to pack in his ten-year career as an assassin, as their two lives become intrinsically bound, while, Selçuk Altun, a former family friend, provides Arda with clues to track down his father's killer.
24941563	/m/09gnbzc	Many and Many a Year Ago	Selçuk Altun		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of Kemal, a convalescing Turkish fighter pilot, who, after his friend mysteriously disappears, is left with a generous allowance and the use of his large house in Istanbul’s Taksim district. Kemal subsequently embarks on a mysterious mission following in the fictitious footsteps of American writer Edgar Allan Poe from Istanbul to Buenos Aires, and eventually to the Edgar Allan Poe museum in Boston where he decides to enter a writing competition with a novel called Many and Many a Year Ago. This novel is, according to the author, “a literary thriller like my other novels,” but, “can also be regarded an ‘experimental mystery’ book,” as it, “also includes eight short stories that overlap with the novel's plot,” “told with an outlook similar to that of Scheherazade, the narrator of One Thousand and One Nights.” “It is part literature and part travel book, a little bit of Paul Auster and Bruce Chatwin,” he states, “what I tried to do was imagine what the life of a post-modern, well-off Poe would have been like.” “Now, I can only wonder what Americans, should they get the chance to read it, will think of my Turkish interpretation of this American master.”
24942721	/m/09gq56w	Burned	P. C. Cast	2010-04-27	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Stark, Darius and Aphrodite follow the clues in Kramisha's prophetic poems and take Zoey's body to the Isle of Sgiach to find a way of getting Zoey back. They gain entrance because of Stark's being the blood relative of Seoras, the queen's Guardian(the "bridge of blood"). Together with Sgiach they decipher the rest of the poem and realize that Stark must become a Shaman to step into the Otherworld. Stark sacrifices on the altar of Seol ne Gigh and through pain he enters a trance where he kills the evil side of himself to become a Shaman. After the fight, the Black Bull leads him to the Otherworld. Zoey meets Heath in the Otherworld and refuses to be parted from him a second time. As time passes she becomes more and more erratic. Heath feels bad as he sees her fall apart, but is powerless to stop it as Zoey herself is too afraid to accept the lost parts of her soul back. When Stark arrives, he follows Aphrodite's advice and contacts Heath first, as Zoey wouldn't leave with Heath still in the Otherworld with her. Stark argues that Zoey might still accept her soul back and stay with Heath, but Neferet would win in the real world. Realizing that Stark speaks the truth and is not motivated by jealousy anymore, Heath speaks one more time with Zoey and disappears. While Zoey stays behind, crying, Stark comes and tries to get Zoey to come back, but she is too scared. To get her to act, Stark comes out of the enchanted meadow and faces Kalona in an arena. Terrified that Stark might die too, Zoey finally calls back the fragments of her soul. Stark is temporarily distracted, and Kalona kills him. Zoey calls air and fixes him on the wall of the arena. She calls in the debt he owns her for Heath's death to save Stark, and Nyx materializes and forces Kalona to share some of his immortality with Stark before banishing him from her realm. Zoey wakes Stark and gives him her blood to heal him and her tattoos return. She gets up, follows Spirit and jumps into the darkness along with Stark. After having nearly burned down on a roof, Stevie Rae recovers quickly due to Rephaim's Immortal blood and their Imprint. She learns of Zoey's soul shattering and has to balance the expectations of those who would expect her to step in Zoey's shoes. She escapes her friends to talk to Rephaim and the two make a pact to help each other until Zoey or Kalona returns to her or his body. Stevie Rae follows the clues in Kramisha's poems and decides to invoke Light, materialized as on of the bulls. By wrongly presuming that Light will materialize as the white Bull, she accidentally invokes Darkness, who nonetheless gives Stark access to the Otherworld. To reach her in time, Rephaim calls unto the immortal powers of his father to heal his wing, without realizing that it's actually Darkness too, that answers. He reaches her in time and takes on her debt to Darkness, allowing the Bull to feed on his pain. To save him, Stevie Rae calls the black Bull, Light and accepts to be forever bound to Rephaim's humanity in exchange for Light's saving him. The Bulls start fighting and disappear. Dallas appears and takes a wounded Stevie Rae home. When she heals she takes the red fledglings to conquer the tunnels. On the way, Dallas discovers an affinity for the New world, electricity, and leads them to the kitchens where the renegades are gathered. Five of them die in the ensuing confrontation, but none of Stevie Rae's, because of her Earth affinity and the others flee. Stevie Rae and Dallas remain behind to finish cleaning up. Dallas kisses Stevie Rae and they start having sex, when Rephaim finds them, alerted by the Imprint. Realizing that Stevie Rae has saved and sheltered him, Dallas lets himself be influenced by the residual Darkness left by the renegades and fights him. When Stevie Rae protects Rephaim, Dallas accepts Darkness and Changes and angrily rushes out, threatening to tell everyone at the House of Night the truth. When she finds out he has stolen her car, Stevie Rae lets Rephaim fly her to Gilcrease, where she goes to sleep. The next day, Stevie Rae calls Lenobia, to find that Dallas has never reached the House of Night, and Aphrodite, to learn that she has had a vision about her and Rephaim. Stevie Rae and Rephaim confess their feelings for each other and Nyx offers them a vision of a human Rephaim. As they look transfixed, Kalona returns to the real world, along with Zoey, and Rephaim leaves, confessing he can't turn his back on his father.
24951007	/m/09gjrkj	The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man	Marshall McLuhan	1951	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 McLuhan is concerned by the size and the intentions of the North American culture industry. "Ours is the first age in which many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have made it a full-time business to get inside the collective public mind," McLuhan writes in his preface to the book. He believes everyone is kept in a "helpless state endgendered by prolonged mental rutting is the effect of many ads and much entertainment alike." McLuhan hopes Bride can reverse this process. By using artefacts of popular culture as a means to enlighten the public, McLuhan hopes the public can consciously observe the effects of popular culture on them. McLuhan compares his method to the sailor in Edgar Allan Poe's short-story "A Descent into the Maelstrom." The sailor, McLuhan writes, saves himself by studying the whirlpool and by co-operating with it. Likewise, the book is not interested in attacking the strong currents of advertising, radio, and the press. The book argues anger and outrage are not the proper responses to the culture industry. "The time for anger...is in the early stages of a new process," McLuhan says, "the present stage is extremely advanced." Amusement is the proper strategy. This is why McLuhan uses punning questions that border on silly or absurd after each visual example. On the technique of amusement McLuhan quotes Poe's sailor, when he's locked into the whirlpool's walls looking at floating objects: :"I must have been delirious, for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents towards the foam below." [italics original] This amusement, McLuhan argues, born "of his rational detachment as a spectator of his own situation," saved the sailor's life. By adopting the position of Poe's sailor, readers of Bride can escape from the whirlpool of popular culture.
24951958	/m/09gdpvp	To Make My Bread				 The novel begins in the year 1900 with the McClure family, which consists of Emma, the mother, her father Granpap, and Emma’s children: Basil, Kirk, Bonnie, and John. They make their living in the Appalachian Mountains as farmers and bootleggers. The family is forced to live through a harsh winter with little food. It is apparent they must work hard for what they need. They are also poor, as they must take credit at the general store to buy food. As the family continues to barely subsist, the “outside” seems to be creeping closer to the isolated families of the Appalachian region. One day a peddler from the outside comes to visits the McClures. He tells the family about a new mill in town where they are hiring many people. Granpap quickly dismisses him because he does not like the outsider. The family struggles to make a living and challenging personal relationships often get in the way. Kirk is revealed to be a drunk and very poor at managing money. Kirk becomes involved with Minnie, and she is revealed to be pregnant, although it is unclear who the father is. Granpap is arrested for bootlegging and is sentenced to two years in jail. Basil decides to leave the family to gain an education. Kirk is killed, and it appears that Sam McEachern is the one who shot him. Basil returns later asking for money for books at his school, and with the death of Kirk and Granpap in jail, money is very tight. Granpap decided that his family would move to Leesville to work in the mill to make more money. When the families arrive at Leesville, they believe that working in the mill will provide them with more opportunities. Frank, Ora, and Emma begin their jobs at the mill. In the fall, John and Bonnie start school. However not long after that, Emma becomes ill and Bonnie and John are forced to begin working and leave school. John begins a friendship with John Stevens, a veteran mill worker and union supporter. As Bonnie and John grow up, Bonnie marries Jim Calhoun. Emma’s condition continues to worsen, and she dies. Later, Jim has and accident that precludes him from working, and he abandons his family. Granpap becomes ill and soon dies. Working at the mill is hard on families. One day one of Bonnie’s kids gets pneumonia while she is at work and dies. Mary Allen, an African American worker, is sympathetic and sends her daughter to care for Bonnie’s children. John and Bonnie continue to work in the mill but they are unhappy with their situation. Workers wages are cut and the number of positions reduced. As John has learned many things about unions he decides to unionize the workers and starts a strike. The workers picket outside the factory and are often jailed and beaten. Bonnie is also involved in the unionization of workers. Because of her relationship with Mary Allen, Bonnie helps to make the union integrated so African Americans do not scab. John and the other union leaders decide to hold a rally. During the rally Bonnie is shot and killed. In the aftermath, John Stevens tells John “this is just the beginning.”
24952944	/m/09gdjf7	The Awakening	Kelley Armstrong	2009-04-28	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The Awakening takes place directly after the events in The Summoning. Chloe has been recaptured by The Edison Group, a team of supernatural scientists responsible for manipulating her DNA, therefore enhancing her necromantic abilities. While there, she discovers that she, and other supernaturals are experimental subjects who were genetically modified at birth. Chloe and Tori (a witch) lead the Edison Group to a factory where they were supposed to meet Derek and Simon. Chloe and Tori escape with help from liz after struggling with Tori's mother, Diane (also a witch), but not before Diane hits Chloe's aunt Lauren with a seemingly fatal spell. The two girls run and hide. Chloe reads a letter her Aunt Lauren gave her which explains that she only ever wanted to help young supernaturals but it wasn't until her own niece was in danger that she realized how dangerous the Edison Group was. The next day, they meet up with Derek and Simon at the factory. The five of them decide to find Kit Bae, Simon and Derek's father, who will be able to help them all. On the bus to New York City, Chloe is woken by Derek who tells her that he feels another change coming on. She offers to go with him and asks Tori to tell Simon that if they don't make it back to the bus, they will meet up in New York City. They catch a bus heading to New York City where they find Tori and Simon, but their father's friend Andrew is missing. Suspecting that Andrew has been captured, they decide to leave in the morning. Before dawn, the Edison Group attacks them. While hiding, Chloe hears a voice that sounds like her Aunt Lauren's, guiding her to safety. She realizes with some panic that she wouldn't hear Lauren unless she was dead and wonders if The Edison Group has killed her Aunt. Chloe and Simon are approached by a man that Simon recognizes as Andrew Carson, the man they've been looking for. Andrew helps them to safety and Derek arrives with Tori. They all escape in a van and Andrew tells them that he's taking them to a safe house for supernaturals where they can rest up and eventually help take down The Edison Group.
24952979	/m/0bmbbpx	The Reckoning	Kelley Armstrong	2010-04-06	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Following on from the events in The Awakening, the story follows Chloe, Derek, Simon and Tori as they live in the Safe House, formally owned by an ex-employee of the Edison Group, with Simon and Derek's father's friend Andrew. Amongst other visiting supernaturals, the four find themselves racing to try and persuade the renegade group of supernaturals to save Chloe's Aunt, who may possibly be dead, and Rae, a former member of Lyle house. The Reckoning is the final book in the Darkest Powers trilogy. Chloe, Derek, Simon and Tori have made it to safety from the Edison group.. or so they think. After being on the run and having to rely on themselves in life threatening scenarios, our supernatural gang is back under the ruling of adults. Adjusting back to the way of a childhood seems to be easier said than done. Chloe and her group of souped up supernatural buddies are still finding their way as their extraordinary powers keep on developing and surpassing all the adult supernaturals around them. With so much power at their hands, this seems to scare even the best of people. Not before long does safety fly out the window and let in a whole new hot mess of problems. Chloe, Derek, Simon and Tori find themselves in all kinds of mishaps that seem be too much to blame on just pure bad luck. This leads them to think there's an Edison Group spy amongst them just waiting to help bring them back to their crazy scientist lab to poke and prod at them, and maybe even worse, to kill them. All the supernatural drama doesn't stop the mounting attraction between Chloe, Derek and Simon love triangle. The chemistry between Derek and Chloe is obvious to everyone but them - they're both inexplicably still blind to it. Simon is still in love with Chloe, whom he eventually shows his feelings for. In the end, they go on a "date" which turns out rather poorly. Simon, having never been hurt by a girl before, is unsure how to react and Chloe feels bad for all of this. But when Chloe, Simon, and Tori are handed over to the Edison group by one of the supernatural adults, it proves their suspicions of an Edison spy that killed Andrew and Gwen. Simon and Derek's Father comes on time with Derek to save them. During the fight Prof. and Tori's mother are killed and the building of the Edison Group was destroyed. Still on the run, they are able to reconcile with each other including the aunt of Chloe and excluding Rae who 'disappeared' before Chloe, Simon, and Tori were handed over.In the end, Chloe and Derek kiss.
24955709	/m/09g7f3w	Fossil				 On a medium-sized, low-gravity planet with a very slow rotational period, the side that is farthest from the sun is always a very hard mixture of frozen carbon dioxide, rock hard ammonia, and solid water ice, and the side that is closest, a sea of turbulent liquids and icebergs. The planet rotates so slowly that the part that is half ice and half ocean, is constantly beset with troubling weather conditions ranging from blizzards to unanticipated ice melts and earthquakes. It takes centuries if not thousands of years for the wobbling of the planet on the ecliptic to melt certain parts of the planet. Even still, it is possible for the planet to have become locked in orbit, so the farthest side never melts. The tidal locking of the planet may have occurred hundreds of millions of years ago, and seasons appear to be limited to the slight wobbling of the planet on the ecliptic. Far from being an uninteresting planet, the ecliptic along which the planet travels is also tilted. Most of the colonies are located along the "coast" - the place in a murky half-shadow of constant night and constant day. Scientific researchers from all kinds of alien species from all over the known universe have come to this planet to engage in an arduous archaeological expedition to unearth mysterious fossils from deep within the multi-kilometer thick icy crust. They have dug so deep that it is generally considered dangerous to dig any deeper. On some of the worlds around the galaxy, mysterious relics are found from an earlier civilization that no longer exists. Since the planet has almost no rock at its core, and enjoyed a rotational period for the first couple billion years of its existence, there is probably nothing to find here, short of fossils of earlier species once flourishing on the planet, but now extinct.
24957772	/m/09g8b3c	The Way of Kings	Brandon Sanderson		{"/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The world of The Way of Kings is one constantly assaulted by hurricanes, referred to in the book as highstorms. Flora and fauna have evolved to cope with this condition. In response to an attack by malevolent entities (known as Voidbringers), the "Almighty" fashions magical weapons and suits of armor, called Shardblades and Shardplates. The "Almighty" equips knights, known as Radiants, with these, and, eventually, the Radiants defeat the evil Voidbringers. Then, for unknown reasons, the Radiants turn against mankind, ignoring their cause and vanishing. They leave their Shardplates and Shardblades for all who want them, thus creating wars and strife. The book begins at a phase where warlords have, for many years, been gathering armies around Shardblade-wielding fighters. These armies fight over possession of the remaining Shardblades in an attempt to acquire a decisive advantage.
24972899	/m/09gll45	Invisible	Paul Auster	2009-10-27	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first section, titled "Spring" and told in first person, chronicles the entanglement of Columbia University student Adam Walker with French political science professor Rudolf Born, who meet in New York City in the spring of 1967 and who form an alliance to publish a literary magazine. Their friendship splinters as a result of a tense love triangle with Born's girlfriend Margot and as a result of a late night mugging that ends in violence. The second section, "Summer" describes the events in Adam's life later that summer in New York sharing an apartment with his older sister, Gwyn. This section of the story is told in second person. Adam's story of the summer of 1967 is also framed by his having sent his manuscript, written in 2007, to a new character, James, who we are told is a famous author. In the framing story, James tells us how he receives the manuscript from a dying Adam and they arrange to meet. In the third section, "Fall" we learn that Adam, in 2007, has died before he and James could meet, and has completed only notes of the third and final section of his memoir of 1967. James fleshes out the notes Adam has left in a third person account. "Fall" tells the story of Adam's trip to Paris, where he encounters Born and Margot, as well as other friends of Born's, a woman named Hélène and her daughter Cécile. Adam inserts himself into the lives of these women and contrives a scheme to atone for guilt he carries stemming from his actions following the mugging in New York. At the close of this section James contacts Gwyn, and it is revealed that James has changed every name and setting in the book in order to protect the identity of the author, "Adam." The final section takes place in 2007. James has been told by Gwyn that the major events of the second section of the book are entirely made-up, and James wonders whether any of the purported memoir is true. In searching for corroboration, James tracks down Cécile, now a distinguished literary scholar. She concludes the story by describing in her diary how she, in 2007, has a final strange contact with Rudolf Born, at his remote island home in the Caribbean.
24977554	/m/09ggpvj	Shadow Kiss	Richelle Mead	2008-11-13	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Rose, in shock over Mason's death, prepares with the rest of the novices for the Qualifying Exam, in which the novices protect the Moroi students from "attacks" by "Strigoi" (their Dhampir teachers). Rose is positive that she will be paired with Lissa, but instead is paired with Christian Ozera, while Eddie Castile (Mason's best friend) is paired with Lissa. Rose complains to her teachers, but ultimately resigns herself to guarding Christian. During the first attack on Christian, Rose sees Mason's ghost and freezes - and is accused of being a sore loser by her teachers. In a sudden twist, Christian is the only person who truly believes that Rose didn't screw up on purpose. Meanwhile, Rose learns from Dimitri that Victor Dashkov's trial is coming soon - and that she and Lissa aren't going to be called to testify. She begs Dimitri to find a way to get them into the trial, and he promises to see what he can do. Adrian and Lissa are growing closer (in a teacher-student sense) while practicing their Spirit use, making Christian jealous. After Rose settles a fight between Lissa and Christian, she begins to sense changes in herself - mainly feelings of intense anger (even more than is usual). Christian is also approached by Jesse Zeklos to join a secret "club" he and Ralf have started, though Christian turns them down. Rose becomes suspicious, and tries to learn more about this club, which she later learns is called "Mână". Although Dimitri attempts to get Rose and Lissa into court to testify, it is ultimately Adrian who gains them entry. On the plane ride to Court, Rose is struck with a horrible migraine, but shakes it off as they arrive at Court; Dimitri and Alberta accompany Rose, Lissa, Christian, Eddie, and Adrian. Dimitri and Rose go to visit Victor in jail, who is as maddeningly pleasant as ever, and threatens to reveal what really happened between Dimitri and Rose the night he kidnapped Lissa. Dimitri threatens to have him killed in jail, but Victor taunts them with his knowledge. The day of the trial, Victor does reveal that Rose and Dimitri almost slept together, but everyone in the courtroom automatically believe this to be another one of Victor's lies. He is sent to prison by the court. Lissa meets with Queen Tatiana to discuss her future; she agrees to go to a college close to Court, and voices her opinion on Moroi fighting with Dhamphirs. Rose goes in to meet with Tatiana next - who insists that Rose stop sleeping with Adrian and call off their "engagement". Rose is stunned, and listens to Tatiana call her everything but a whore. Tatiana then reveals that she has been planning a marriage between Adrian and Lissa, and that they don't need to be carrying any of her "emotional baggage" around with them. Rose shrugs off the queen's accusations and meets up with Lissa, lying to her about her conversation with the queen. Lissa takes Rose for a manicure, where Rose is treated by a young man, Ambrose, who turns out to be a Dhamphir and the queen's blood whore. He takes Lissa and Rose to a fortune teller, who gives Rose a rather boring reading. Dimitri finds them and agrees to have his fortune read. The fortune teller predicts that Dimitri will "lose that which he treasures most". On the plane ride back to the Academy, Rose gets another horrible migraine, this time drawing the attention of Alberta and Dimitri. When they are forced to make an unscheduled stop at a human airport to refuel during a snow storm, Rose's migraine becomes much worse, and when she steps off the plane, she sees the ghosts of Lissa's parents and brother, along with many others. When she comes to, she is in the infirmary back at the Academy. Rose is finally forced to come clean about seeing Mason's ghost, and she is ordered to see a counselor. Her "guardian time" with Christian is also limited. While back at school, her temper still increases, though she does successfully defeat Dimitri as a "Strigoi" while guarding Christian. Lissa is approached by Jesse and Ralf to join Mână, and she accepts their invitation as a chance to spy on them, without Rose's knowing. Lissa is led into the woods and attacked by Jesse and the other magic users. Rose senses something is terribly wrong and runs to Lissa's aid. She beats Lissa's torturers – fellow students — and Lissa tortures Jesse using Spirit. Rose realizes that whenever Lissa uses Spirit, dark emotions fill Lissa — which caused her to cut herself in the first book — and tells Lissa to let the dark emotion flow through their connection and into Rose - which is what has been causing Rose's mood swings and violent behavior. Lissa obeys, and Rose suddenly begins beating Jesse fiercely. Alberta and Dimitri appear, and Alberta has several guards take Jesse away, while ordering Dimitri to handle Rose, who is still in a manic state. Dimitri takes Rose to an old cabin that Tasha Ozera stayed in when she visited the Academy. Rose attempts to run to the infirmary, where she knows they would take Jesse, but Dimitri subdues her and forces her to let go of her anger. She collapses, terrified that she is going crazy. Dimitri listens to Rose's explanation and insists that he won't let Rose go crazy. They end up kissing and Rose loses her virginity to him and start to head back to the school when they are attacked by a Strigoi. Dimitri sends Rose back to the school to warn the guardians, while he stays behind to hold off the Strigoi. The guardians react quickly and send Rose back to her dormitory, where she and the other novices are told to stay put. Rose is sent to guard a small window, where she is finally given a silver stake. She senses immense fear from Lissa, and learns that Christian is in the church, where he was supposed to meet Lissa to talk about Jesse and Mana. Eddie and several other novices are guarding Lissa and the other Moroi, so Rose sneaks out the small window to go after Christian. She and Christian rush to the elementary school, where there would be much less security, and combine Rose's fighting skills and Strigoi sense with Christian's Fire magic to destroy many Strigoi. After the battle, Rose learns that this is one of the biggest groups of Strigoi - who are typically loners - to ever attack any Moroi or Dhamphirs. Along with many dead guardians and Moroi, several Dhamphirs and Moroi were captured by the retreating Strigoi — including Eddie. Rose's mother, Janine, comes to the aid of the guardians with reinforcements, and with Mason's help, Rose figures out where the Strigoi are holding the hostages. Before they leave, Dimitri tells Rose that he is going to ask to be placed with a different Moroi close to Court, so that he and Rose can be together. Janine, Dimitri, and Rose plan a counterattack, and reluctantly enlist the help of other Dhamphir novices and, surprisingly, several Moroi teachers to harness their power as a weapon. When the army reaches the caves the Strigoi are hiding in, Rose is forced to stay outside while Janine and Dimitri lead the attack inside. Once all the hostages are out, Rose goes into the caves to assist the retreat. Just as she thinks everyone she loves is safe, Dimitri is attacked and left behind as Janine forces Rose out of the caves. Rose later finds out that Dimitri's body wasn't found. Another team of guardians returns to the caves the next day, confirming that Dimitri was not killed, but was made Strigoi. Rose realizes that the fortune teller's prediction came true: "you will lose what you value most so treasure it while you can" - not herself, as Rose believed, but his soul. Rose decides to leave the Academy to go after Dimitri and kill him. After she files the necessary papers, Lissa meets her just before she leaves and reveals that she figured out Rose was in love with Dimitri. Lissa begs Rose to stay, even tries to use compulsion on her, but Rose snaps and tells Lissa that all her life she's been told that Lissa comes first. Rose says that she needs to do something for herself for once. Rose asks Adrian for money, which he willingly gives to her, and asks her if she will come back. Rose says she will eventually, and tells Adrian that she will give him a chance - go out with him - when she comes back. As she leaves the Academy, Rose says good bye to Mason, then heads off to Siberia, where she believes Dimitri would go first; back to his hometown.
24985318	/m/09rxtvg	The Worry Trap		2007		 Written for people dealing with chronic worry and anxiety, the book is based on the new principles in what is occasionally termed the Third Wave of Behavioral Therapy using acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) The author, a professor of psychology and a founding fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, uses simple examples and analogies to illustrate how accepting and identifying your thoughts "As just mere thoughts" can help you step back and separate yourself emotionally from your actual thoughts and live more in the present moment, thus decreasing worry and anxiety. An increased awareness of the separate nature of your self stated as context and your actual experience stated as content in the book, can reduce worry and stress on a person which can lead to beneficial health aspects as well. While worrying is a natural emotion for everyone excessive worrying can interfere with problem-solving and decision-making. The author uses a five-step model approach to guide the reader through learning the skills of acceptance and commitment therapy and applying them to the problem of worry. It starts off by discussing the "fight-or-flight" response and the normal impulse toward controlling thoughts and feelings. Finally, it guides you in taking actions directed by your values rather than by worry. The five steps are contained in the acronym LLAMP which is used throughout the book.New Harbinger Publications, Inc. An Interview with Chad LeJeune AtHealth.com-- *Label “anxious thoughts” *Let go of control *Accept and observe thoughts and feelings *Mindfulness of the present moment *Proceed in the right direction
24989546	/m/09ggx41	Rage: A Love Story	Julie Anne Peters	2009-09-08	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Johanna is a senior in high school living in the apartment above the home occupied her older sister Tessa. Both her parents have died and she has come out as a lesbian to her best friend Novak and her sister Tessa. A teacher ropes Johanna into tutoring Robbie, a boy with mild autism so he can graduate; Robbie happens to be the twin brother of Johanna’s secret crush, Reeve Hartt. As Johanna tries to get closer to Reeve, she begins to experience some of the physical abuse that is part of Reeve’s daily life, living with a mother who is a drug addict and a violent uncle. Because Johanna believes she is in love with Reeve, she suffers through the emotional, verbal and physical abuse of the girl she wants as her girlfriend.
24994453	/m/0gjdvwv	Death Note Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases	Ishin Nishio	2006-08-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Narrated by Mello it recounts the first time L worked with Naomi Misora, searching for clues and trying to prevent the next victim of a psychotic serial killer, who is able to make murders look like suicides. The plot also has an interesting backstory to the orphanage from which L came from, Wammy's House, and the relationship between Naomi Misora and Raye Penber. The serial killer just happens to be and old aquantance of L's, one of his original successors: B (Beyond Birthday),who ran away from Wammy's house shortly after A's (the first of L's succecers)suicide . This tragedy, along with B's shinigami eyes drove him over the edge and started committing murders. B became the most famous serial killer in L.A., and L's leading case. Hearing about the murders, L recruited Naomi Misora (a former F.B.I. employee and current friend of L) to help in the case. During the case, she meets a detective named Rue Ryuzaki (B posing as an alias of L) ,she keeps close contact with L during her time working with Ryuzaki.Since the first three murders have already occurred Ryuzaki and Misora study the scenes for any missing clues. They solved the various puzzles, which led them to the address of a victim or show them the name of the victim who was next. At Backyard Bottomslash's (the third victim's) house they found a clue to the next victim's whereabouts: a hotel in Pasedena. They deduced that the victim's initials would be B.B. again ,since the were two people in the hotel who had those initials (Blackberry Brown and Bluesharp Babysplit ). In rooms 1313 and 404, respectively. They paid off the patrons and put them up in very nice suites.They both went to the different rooms(Misora in 1313,and Ryuzaki in 404). Misora starts to think, she pieces everything together and realizes who Luxaky is and that he was using her for fun and testing her intelligence. She rushes down the stairs to find that Ryuzaki (BB/Rue) has lit himself on fire. He was barely alive, so she decided to turn him in. He went to the hospital and survived with ony mild burns. He was sent to prison, and some years later died of a heart attack, supposedly one of the criminals killed by Kira. Later, while waiting at a bus stop,s he saw a man than looked a little like BB, he leaned over to her, she thought he was going to hug her, instead he tried to attack her but she managed to kick him down the nearby subway stairs. She felt guilty and went to check on him. She helped him up and he shook her hand and held it for a few seconds. He walked away but looked back a little, sucking on his thumb. (it was obviously L ,although she didn't really notice)
25003228	/m/09ggbvl	This Misery of Boots	H. G. Wells	1907	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 This book is separated into five chapters. 1. The World as Boots and Superstructure Wells opens the narrative with a discussion that he had with a friend over the quality of boots worn by the working class. The two men discuss the poor quality of the ill-fitting boots and the permanent negative effect they have a person’s feet and gait. They both agree that the majority of boots are a constant source of “stress, giving pain and discomfort, causing trouble, causing anxiety.” The men order these effects of the poor quality boots into two classifications: *a. The Troubles of the New Boot. The new boots are ready made from unseasoned, poor quality material and poorly ventilated. The new boots permanently distort and disfigure the feet of children. *b. The Troubles of the Worn Boot. The worn boot is decrepit, misshapen and painful to wear. The wearer is constantly ashamed of his shabby appearance and his inability to escape their torment: “They have you always.” “It does not do,” Wells’ friend says, “to think about boots.” 2. People Whose Boots Don’t Hurt Them My purpose is served if I have shown that this misery of boots is not an unavoidable curse upon mankind. If one man can avoid it, others can. Wells believes that all miseries are preventable and lies in the power of men to cure. Wells cites a second friend as an example of his belief. His friend grew up in the lower working class with cracked, misshapen boots and raised himself up from poverty. The friend does not revel in his success and comfort, instead he suffers from guilt. He is angry at the thought of the statesmen who “ought to have forseen and prevented this”; all are “responsible people who have neither the heart, nor courage, nor capacity to change the state of mismanagement that gives us these things.” Wells argues that poverty is not the universal lot of mankind. The poor simply get the worse side of an ill-managed world.” 3. At This Point a Dispute Arises Wells explains the factors behind the pricing of manufactured items. Wells hypothesizes a “Free Booting expedition” to make affordable boots for British citizens. The expedition must travel to South America to obtain leather, but must pay exorbitant prices to purchase the cattle. The expedition must pay exorbitant prices to the owners of the transport companies to move the leather to England and pay high rental costs to landowners to store the raw materials and house the factory. The factory owners charge the expedition for the manufacture of the boots. In the end, the final price remains out of the reach of the average man and woman. Wells condemns the institution of Private Property as the source of this poverty. He claims that although there are plenty of resources, land and intelligence to manage the enterprise the obstructive claims of Private Property stand in the way. Wells liken the owners to “parasites upon [the] enterprise at its every stage. He further describes them as “leeches, taking much and giving nothing.” Wells ends the chapter by stating the State should “take away the land, and the railways, and the shipping and many great enterprises from their owners” and run them for service instead of profit. 4. Is Socialism Possible? Wells argues that Socialism is viable and the natural evolution of human society. He states that only the mean and unimaginative element of society would oppose the rise of Socialism. 5. Socialism Means Revolution Wells declares that Socialism inevitably means revolution, “a complete change, a break with history.” He argues that Socialism transcends class, ethnicity and classifications such as liberal or conservative. He urges Socialist to “confess our faith openly and frequently.”
25011028	/m/09g9ntn	Twenties Girl	Sophie Kinsella		{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Lara is a twenty-seven-year-old girl who has always had an overactive imagination. At the funeral of her great-aunt Sadie, she gets visited by her ghost, in form of a bold, demanding, Charleston-dancing girl. Sadie has one particular request: she can't rest without her precious dragonfly necklace, and demands that Lara is to find it for her. But Lara is besieged with problems of her own, such as her uncertain future as co-founder of her own headhunting agency, and the fact that she was recently dumped by Josh, the love of her life. Lara, coerced by Sadie, embarks upon an arduous journey to find said necklace, but in the process of doing so ends up accomplishing so much more. Unraveling the ugly truth behind her uncle's enormous success, inadvertently unearthing a long-lost love story enshrouded by the cobwebs of time, and even managing to get entangled in a love story of her own...
25012711	/m/09g7mc4	Sharp Teeth		2008		 Packs of werewolves struggle for power in the underbelly of Los Angeles.
25014312	/m/0cc6d6c	Love & Respect				 The book is built upon the theory that the "primary emotional needs" for men and women, respectively are that men need respect and women need love, like they need air to breathe. Dr. Eggerichs uses simple examples to illustrate real life situations in relationships and then often connects those situations to the verse in Ephesians and other passages in the Bible. The book is organized into three main sections. The Crazy Cycle first illustrates that "Without love, she reacts without respect and without respect, he reacts without love". Misunderstandings in communication is expressed using simple metaphors to illustrate that men often use blue sunglasses and women often use pink sunglasses during communication. Practical strategies are then discussed to stop the Crazy Cycle from spinning, including the use of scientific findings by John Gottman. The Energizing Cycle next outlines strategies for improving a relationship by showing that "his love motivates her respect and her respect motivates his love", using two acronyms C-O-U-P-L-E (Closeness, Openness, Understanding, Peacemaking, Loyalty, and Esteem) and C-H-A-I-R-S (Conquest, Hierarchy, Authority, Insight, Relationship, and Sexuality). The Rewarded Cycle lastly is demonstrated by example using Scripture that "His love blesses regardless of her respect and her respect blesses regardless of his love". Connecting obedience to Christ in the correlation to a greater outcome in the relationship is suggested.
25016089	/m/09g8bp8	Epitaphs for the Living: Words and Images in the Time of AIDS	Billy Howard	1989	{"/m/01tz3c": "Anthology"}	 Each page of the book can be viewed as an independent illness narrative. Howard, in letting his subjects speak for themselves, transcribes their stories in an intensely personal way. The photographs depict patients in their own surroundings, each one a visual narrative of the sick person's daily life. They use their own faces and bodies to convey the turmoil that lies within. Using photography as its principle medium, the book attempts to tell the story of AIDS from the patients' points of view. The introduction, by Lonnie D. Kliever, points out that many of the personal messages written by the portrait subjects indicate where they are on the journey toward accepting their mortality. Many other messages highlight illness as the main focus rather than impending death. A consensus among the patients is that dying from AIDS is bad, but living with AIDS is worse. Whether they last a few words or a long letter, each message represents that patient's personal story.
25019372	/m/0glpt4l	The Undomestic Goddess	Sophie Kinsella		{"/m/03h09f": "Chick lit", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Workaholic attorney Samantha Sweeting has just done the unthinkable. She’s made a mistake so huge, it’ll wreck any chance of a partnership. Going into utter meltdown, she walks out of her London office, gets on a train, and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big, beautiful house, she’s mistaken for an interviewee and finds herself being offered a job as housekeeper. Her employers have no idea they’ve hired a lawyer–and Samantha has no idea how to work the oven. She can’t sew on a button, bake a potato, or get the #@%# ironing board to open. How she takes a deep breath and begins to cope–and finds love–is a story as delicious as the bread she learns to bake. But will her old life ever catch up with her? And if it does…will she want it back?
25028254	/m/09ggjnj	All You Need Is Kill			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story is told from the perspective of Keiji Kiriya, the protagonist, a new recruit in the United Defense Force which fights against the mysterious 'Mimics' which have laid siege to Earth. Keiji is killed on his first sortie, but through some inexplicable phenomenon wakes up having returned to the day before the battle, only to find himself caught in a time loop as his death and resurrection repeats time and time again. Keiji's skill as a soldier grows as he passes through each time loop in a desperate attempt to change his fate.
25028595	/m/09ghgrt	The Gangster We Are All Looking For	Lê thi diem thúy			 The narrator, her father, Ba, and her four uncles to whom she was related by water, not by blood, floated across the South China Sea together in a U.S Navy ship often where they stayed in Singapore refugee camp. In 1978, all six immigrants got a sponsor in the name of the retired navy officer MR. Russel while they were in the refugee camp. While their papers were processed, Mr. Russell died. Before he died, he had a dream about flying birds and told his dream to his wife. Based on his dream, she decided to take care of the six immigrants and moved them into Mr. Russell’s son Melvin’s house. However, Mel was not happy and felt uncomfortable having them stay in his house. Because of his mother begging him, he was obligated to accept the duty. After a while, Mel hired Ba and the four uncles as his crew of house painters and maintenances workers. Even though it was so hard to communicate with them in English, Ba was a better speaker and knew many more words than the other men, so that he could translate for them. Mrs. Russell was a good, kind person to the narrator and Ba. She took them to the mountains one Sunday afternoon. At that time, Ba and the narrator took a picture together for the first time. In contrast, the four uncles were spending their Sundays afternoons with Vietnamese people at the pool hall. They started smoking cigarettes and learning to bet on football games. On the negative note, the narrator did not like American culture. She did not like to wear American dresses, and felt lonely because she was the only Vietnamese girl in her school. Melvin and Mrs. Russell owned a collection of miniature glass animals that belonged to the late MR. Russell, and put the glass cabinet at the corner of Mel’s small, crowded office. Mel warns the immigrants not to touch any of them. However, they did not understand what he said, and Ba did not interpret it for them. The narrator perceived that the butterfly inside the glass was alive and trapped in the glass, and she wished that it could to escape. Even though Mel told them not to touch anything, the narrator started playing with those forbidden glass sculptures often, but secretly. She would open the cabinet doors and let the animals get some air; also, she carried the animals and told them stories. She was especially curious by one of the objects that she noticed before - a paperweight with a butterfly inside. One day in December, the narrator attempted to make her dream a reality by throwing the glass butterfly at the cabinet, shattering that piece along with the rest of the collection. Ba and the four uncles ran into the room, at which point Ba said, "suh-top” when he arrived at the scene, indicating his limited English skills. He was meant to pronounce “Stop”. The mother of the narrators and wife of the father makes her way to America and is reunited with her daughter and husband. They live in an apartment complex with palm trees and a pool. The mother works as a seamstress. The mother accidentally crashes her Cadillac into the apartment gates. The boys of the apartment complex, on hot days, would jump from the second story into the pool. In response to this, the landlord has the pool emptied and filled with rocks and cement. A baby palm tree is planted on its surface. Following the change, Ba and Ma argue. At the abandoned home next door, the neighborhood children play and set up a large cardboard box they find. One summer, the narrator enters the box with a boy, who begins to touch her chest. The narrator continues to enter the box with the boy. One day, the narrator is sent to run an errand, and as she is returning home, she feels the terrifying presence of her brother who seems to have been left in Vietnam. This section begins with a description of a black and white photograph of the narrator's grandparents in Vietnam. Before the narrator's birth, when Ma, a Catholic schoolgirl, decided to marry Ba, a Buddhist gangster, Ma's parents were outraged and disowned their daughter. The narrator was born in Vietnam in an alley behind her grandparents' home. The narrator recalls her father's face at a military camp in South Vietnam. The family moves from the Red Apartment with the palm tree to the Green Apartment. Because the manager murdered a woman, family moves again to Linda Vista. Ma shaves her head because she is angry at Ba for gambling and drinking. After the arrival of the aforementioned photograph, Ma and Ba get into fights. Kids outside the apartment wonder what is happening, and the narrator goes outside, wildly dancing in front of the crowd. The family is ultimately evicted from their home. The Linda Vista home is ultimately demolished. When they leave, Ma remembers that she forgot the photograph of her parents in the apartment and frantically cries to return to her parents. The narrator runs away from home to the East Coast. The father finds a new occupation as someone who mows lawns and one day digs a trench in someone's lawn without being told to. When the narrator returns one night, Ba tells her that he is in trouble. In the final section of the novel, two narratives seem to run alongside one another, alternating every few paragraphs. The first narration takes place in America, where the father, in order to ignore the ringing phone, does various things to preoccupy himself. The mother works at a Vietnamese restaurant which overcharges their customers for foreign cuisine. There are rumors that their daughter has moved to the East Coast to become a writer. The other narration takes place twenty years ago, in Vietnam. The narrator's brother's body was pulled from the South China Sea. He is said to have been jumping from one boat to another when he suddenly slipped and fell. Ma's father brings the narrator's dead brother back home, where people say he has cursed the home with bad water. Ba is currently fighting in the war. In this chapter many events from the story are concluded, and many things are revealed. One event is that the narrator’s brother died 20 years when his body was pulled out from the sea. But before the author gives us this information there is lots of description of what the father was watching on TV while the phone was ringing. The author wants the reader to pay close attention to those descriptions. The girl’s father was watching the news. The phone was ringing, but he somehow did not want to pick it up. At some point, the reader knows that he gets nervous and he is resisting taking that call—he feels that something is not quite right. The author manages to give the reader a hint of what is happening, illustrated when the father changes channels. The first time he sees firemen, trying to hose down a flaming bank of trees. Firemen are always associated with danger, or moments in which someone is having troubles. Even though he is not picking up the phone, he is watching what could be happing: danger! The phone still ringing and the father changes the channel, so as to ignore the phone again. This time, he is watching footage of a flood in the middle of the country. A Flood symbolizes the conclusion of one phase or cycle; at the same time brings new things. It also symbolizes destruction and death. Moreover, the author again gives the reader a sign that danger is coming. After the flood, the father watches a boy and his father traveling on a canoe. This is very important because the images were a boy and his dad; it could have been a girl and her mom, but it wasn’t. This is a connection to the father and his son, and they were together in the water. Later on the chapter the author describes how her brother died; the women at her house whispered that the her brother died because he jumped between two boats and he hit his head and went straight down to the hole. We have seen images of firemen, flood and a boy with his dad in the canoe; all of these images have a connection with what was happening at Vietnam. The phone kept ringing and the father changed the channel and saw two politicians shaking hands, a woman standing at a field of green grass—pointing at it and shaking her head. This image is very important because the woman staring at the grass could be a sign of a buried body. When people die, they are buried in cemeteries in big green fields, because somehow nature gives a sense of peace. This could be a representation of how the girl’s mother was feeling. In the chapter she did not want to bury her son—moreover, the woman on the TV was shaking her head side to side saying no, she was also sad, as she was pointing to the grass. The phone is still ringing and father changes the channel to a baseball game—he fills a pot with water to water the plants and the dog he had found a week before came toward him—and the phone stopped ringing. If we make a connection between all these images, we understand that the author wanted to gives us information of what was happening in Vietnam. The flood was the catalyst, and the water was where the boy died. The canoe could be compared to the boats, and the women starring at the field, could be the place where he was going to be buried. The author uses these descriptions so we can interpret them and make conclusions of what might be happening.
25031018	/m/09g6rqc	Blu's Hanging	Lois-Ann Yamanaka	1997		 Blu's Hanging is a novel which introduces the very distressed life of the Ogata family. After suffering through the death of their mother, Eleanor, Ivah, Blu, and Maisie struggle to deal with life and the issues that ensue as a result of their loss. Their father, Poppy, struggles to parent them, barely making ends meet and not knowing how to care for his children after losing his wife. Ivah is left to fulfill the maternal role to her two younger siblings and is held to unrealistic expectations by her father. Even though Eleanor has died, her presence among the family remains. This has both positive and negative effects on the family. The Ogata's struggle to move on, specifically Poppy, who cannot come to grips with her death. He constantly speaks of Eleanor, with frequent references to Moon River. He becomes hardened and cold to his children as he struggles to grieve. The children are also deeply affected by Eleanor's seemingly constant presence within the family. As they still look to her for guidance and support in dealing with their issues, they are able to rely on her when in pain yet battle with being able to move on. Because of the fractured state their family is in, their wounded unit is easily torn apart by outer societal influences. Due to the lack of parenting, each child struggles to cope in unique ways. They are treated harshly by Poppy and are neglected of any true care or concern. As he is depressed himself, he turns to drugs bringing the family to a more desperate state, economically and emotionally. Certain events begin to unfold and proper judgment on behalf of the children is not used. They find themselves teetering with very dangerous situations to which Eleanor would've never approved of. As a result, Uncle Paulo, a neighbor of the family, rapes Blu, weakening the already fragile state of the Ogatas. Poppy, left feeling beside himself, blames Ivah for her abandonment of her younger siblings as she attempted to cross her first stepping stone to independence (i.e. going away to school). As the children have no real support system, and they are constantly combated with troublesome circumstances including racial angst and violence, they are left to feel like orphans as their place in society seems to diminish even further. Ultimately; Ivah, Blu and Maisie, who are still very attached to the presence of Eleanor, are able somewhat move on through the letting go of their dog, Ka-san. Poppy, still unable to cope with the loss of his wife, leaves as well. Although the children are conclusively alone, it seems as a small glimmer of hope in allowing them to reform as individuals.
25031239	/m/09gn61w	Shortcomings				 Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel Shortcomings is his only work that fully deals with themes of being a young Asian-American male in American society. Ben Tanaka, the story’s protagonist, lives in Berkeley, California with his politically active girlfriend Miko Hayashi. Ben is uninterested in Miko's participation in the Asian-American cultural community, but he possesses a wandering eyespecifically for Caucasian women. When Miko begins to resent what she interprets as a rejection of both her Asian heritage and of herself, she moves to New York, at which point Ben disastrously attempts to pursue the type of woman he feels he really wants. The title Shortcomings relates to the main theme of the graphic novel which revolves around the tragic shortcomings of the human condition. In Sandra Oh's essay "Sight Unseen: Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve and the Politics of Recognition"., published by The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), Oh writes that Tomine, like his character Ben Tanaka, is more or less "pessimistic about the possibility of escaping the limitations of socially inscribed identities." Throughout the novel we see this pessimism manifest in Ben's general rejection and resentment of things that attempt to, in Ben's words, "make some big 'statement' about race." At the same time, Shortcomings does deal with racial issues, but it attempts to do so without resorting to clichés.
25038749	/m/09gj6l1	The Viper's Nest	Peter Lerangis	2010-02-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Amy and Dan Cahill are staying inside a small cabin with their uncle, Alistair Oh. However, the evil Isabel Kabra starts a fire in the cabin. Surprisingly, former secret agent and murderer, Irina Spasky, brings them a pole to slide down to safety. Irina climbs to the top and helps them down, but the pole catches fire. Irina senses that the roof will collapse, reflects on her life and decides that she has lived long enough. The roof collapses under her, and she dies. The book begins the morning after the fire that killed Irina Spasky, who was an ex-KGB and Lucian spy. The two were shaken by what had happened, not believing that Irina was on their side, after attempting to kill them earlier in the series. Using their de-coding abilities, Dan and Amy figure that the last words Irina spoke were actually a song: "I'm with you and you're with me and so we are all together", which points them to Pretoria, South Africa. Here, they are given a postcard suggesting a connection with Shaka. As they unravel the history of Shaka, they find out that he was a member of the Tomas branch, and was connected to Winston Churchill. They find the clue, aloe, but are captured by the Kabras while leaving South Africa. Isabel Kabra offers Dan and Amy to join their family. When they decline, Isabel orders them to be tied in chairs, and chopped to pieces by a spinning propeller. They escape with the help of Professor Bardsley, together with the vial of green liquid that they thought was their lead to the second clue in The Maze of Bones, by flying Grace Cahill's old plane, The Flying Lemur. During the ride, Dan and Amy accidentally break the vial, spilling some of the contents onto Dan's arm. It turns out to be a Lucian poison. To get the antidote, they fly to Grace Cahill's home in Madagascar. While at Grace's Madagascar home, they find a page in her journal that says, ″I am feeling melancholy today, thinking about my dear A & H and missing them so. I cannot even bear to listen to my beloved di Lasso, because of the reminder...″, and on another page it says, ″I have written Deng Xiaoping, who has agreed to grant to visit to A & H when he discovered that they, like him, are "M." This, along with a piece of music by di Lasso, leads Dan to realize that his and Amy's family branch is the Madrigals.
25041199	/m/09gp953	Fire World	Chris D'Lacey		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It opens on the planet Co:pern:ica with Counsellor Strømberg (an auma counsellor) talking to Professor Harlan Merriman and his wife Eliza, and then their son David walks in. They talk about dreams that David has been having as they watch a video they had recorded while he was sleeping. On Co:pern:ica, they have commingled with Fain to make themselves higher beings, although there is a power called The Higher which governs those on Co:pern:ica. The dream is very strange and David has been visited by Firebirds (one of only the two creatures that live on Co:pern:ica) and they are seen blowing their special fire over him. It is later shown that a temporal rift had opened up and the fire birds came to close it up. Although Bernard Brotherton believes that David imagineered the fire birds, they come to the conclusion that someone, somewhere on another universe had been calling out to David. Eliza and Harlan travel back to their pod where they decide to commingle their fain and produce another child, a daughter for when David comes back. To be able to have a child on Co:pern:ica they must be assessed by an agent of the higher, one of the Aunts. They request the Aunt they had for David but she is otherwise engaged and are given Aunt Gwyneth. Whilst they are being assessed Harlan insults Gwyneth and she denies them to have a child, but says that Eliza could become an Aunt. Eliza reluctantly agrees and the next day she is taken to the Dead Lands and begins to learn more about the world they live on. Gwyneth also states that Eliza spent her childhood with her and that she was brought back into the system at the age of five. Whilst Harlan is at work at the Ragnar Institution of Phy:sics, he brings in data from the research on David and asks his partner Bernard to put the information into SETH, which we are led to believe is some sort of super computer. The equipment that they have set, is meant to open up a controlled rift and let someone pass through it almost like a tele:port. Strømberg suggests sending David to a librarium, which is a huge building going up past the clouds to be tutored by Charles Henry and have an 'adventure'. Eliza and Harlan drop David off there and they a meet a young girl called Rosa who says that the Librarium is hers. She tells Harlan and Eliza that they may leave and Rosa and Mr Henry will look after David. After a meeting with Mr Henry, they both tell David that to get around the Librarium they have to think of where to go and picture it in their heads. David practices by finding the toilet and a wardrobe where he dresses a little like Rosa. David enjoys his time with a Rosa, they become friends whilst cataloging the library for Mr Henry. Whilst they are cataloging they ask Mr Henry how to get to and above floor 43, because although they have searched for it they have never been able to reach it. Mr Henry says they must work hard to be able to access the secrets of the upper floors and it is revealed that there is a huge Firebird eyrie up there. One day David and Rosa are teasing each other about a book each wanting to put it into their own collection when Rosa challenges David that when she throws the book out of the window whoever reaches it first will be able to catalogue it. When Rosa throws the book it hits her Firebird Runcey and David rushed down to help him telling Rosa to fetch Mr Henry. When Rosa and Mr Henry reach David they find Runcey gone and David has entered a state of Melancholia, because a seemingly evil large, Red Firebird named Azkiar finds Runcey and David, and the Azkiar flies away with Runcey. Rosa finds a book about Dragons which she accidentally mispronounces as 'drargones', and fearing that Strømberg and Mr Henry will take the book from her, she runs for a place to hide. Rosa manages to find the door to floor 43 but the door is locked and there is no visible lock to the door. Gwyneth then appears and asks why she is trying to go up there and Rosa lies several times, Gwyneth asks about the dragon book and Rosa tells her. Gwyneth tells Rosa the correct pronunciation, but forbids her to read it. Then Gwyneth, who is visiting to check on David, demands to be taken to David and Mr Henry. At first Gwyneth wants David to be de:stroyed but Strømberg steps in and says they should assess David as he is a very special ec:centric. Back in the Dead Lands, it begins to rain as Eliza finds clay and begins to model with it, eventually making an egg. The rain then becomes very strange as it is driving Eliza away, although when the drops fall on the ground they recreate images of dragons (long since died out on Co:pern:ica). Eliza finds them beautiful and then they start to scare her until she shouts 'I AM ELIZA!' and they turn away. Then the lead dragon, described as bony and almost human like to Eliza breathes over her. Eliza collapses into a heap. Sometime later, a group of Firebirds find Eliza and they are trying to take care of her, when they discover the egg and wonder how one could have gotten out of the eyrie. Two days later, Harlan, Bernard and Strømberg are about to open up the rift when it cuts to Aunt Gwynteth in the Dead Lands. She finds a trail of stones leading towards some caves. Reaching the cave she sees that Eliza has created lots of clay dragons acting almost as guardians to the slope that they are on. Gwyneth furiously confronts Eliza about the heresy she has committed and Eliza shows that she has a baby daughter and cracked the family anomaly. Back at the Librarium, a fire bird named Aurielle, picks up the fire tear enclosed in one of David's own tears, a daisy chain that Rosa made for David earlier in the book and the egg that Eliza created. Aurielle thinks about these things as she flies back to her perch and looks at a woven tapestry that she likes, depicting the last scene of Dark Fire, where there are dragons, humans, the ix and darklings. Aurielle and the other fire birds know about the darklings which they call "the shadows of ix". The tapestry is apparently named Isenfire. As Aurielle is thinking about all of this another firebird comes along and warns them that a portal is opening somewhere and they need to be there. Rosa and Henry and the whole of Co:pern:ica feel the rift opening. Rosa has read and re-read the book about Dragons to David, after Strømberg overruled Aunt Gwyneth. Rosa manages to figure out how to read Dragontongue and believes she knows how to get up to the upper floors, just as Harlan switches on the machine. Suddenly Rosa passes out and then when she wakes up, she finds David waking up as well, and they have discovered that they have aged about eight years. David and Rosa try to find out what has happened to the two of them and whether it is just the people inside the librarium, or everyone. Rosa says that just before David woke up there was something like a time quake. They talk for a while before traveling to the door and Rosa tries and fails to open the door. David has a go and effectively speaks in Dragontongue saying "sometimes" and the door opens. When they get through the door they find that all books are already ordered. David and Rosa look around and David finds a book entitled Alicia in the Land of Wonder (alternative to Alice in Wonderland). They both then see Azkiar, and they run, but not before they find that he was sitting on a plaque entitled 'FICTION'. David tells Rosa to go and find Mr Henry, which she does, and David runs off down the corridors of shelves until he gets cornered by Azkiar. Fearing that he will have to throw books at it he prepares to do so, picking up a Steven Kinge novel. But Azkiar does not attack David and instead looks at him puzzled. David takes the opportunity and walks away, and commingles with the book's auma. David leaves the floor and goes to Mr Henry's office, where Rosa is kneeling on the floor, and discovers that Mr Henry is now dead. Harlan steps through the door and they both see that they have all aged. Harlan says that when he started his experiment, everyone connected to it aged and Mr Henry obviously died because of aging. The experiment failed and Harlan was devastated by what he had done. Knowing that he will be arrested and taken away by Re:movers he gives David a micro:pen, that he says has all the relevant information that he needs. The re:movers come in. They assess Mr Henry and conclude that he died of natural causes. Aunt Gwyneth comes in and they see that she too has aged slightly. Gwyneth sees that Harlan passed David something and when she demands to see it, David quickly imagineers it into a gold wedding ring and explains his father wanted him to give it back to his mother. She explains that she is taking Harlan away and that Eliza has called for David to be released and brought back, where she and his sister are waiting for him. Gwyneth explains that Rosa cannot go, because she can only leave the librarium if she is called. Because her parents have died from the time quake and she has been officially declared an orphan, no-one can call her. Gwyneth states that the Librarium is under the Aunts control for now whilst they complete an evaluation and get a new curator. She summons two Aunts; Primrose and Petunia. Whilst David is walking away Rosa calls that if he does not stay with her, she will never let him come back. David promises that he will return and changes the ring back to the micro:pen. Meanwhile up on floor 108 Azkiar has flown to Aurielle to tell her that he has seen humans on the upper floors. Aurielle asks whether it was Mr Henry and the answer is 'no', and Azkiar tells her it was David. This confirms that something has happened to everyone involved and connected to the experiment because even the fire birds feel and look different. After Azkiar has told Aurielle about the aging incident, Aurielle tells him she must meditate on the matter and Azkiar, angry with her, flies up to the tapestry. Looking at it he sees two humans and makes the connection that two of the humans are David and Rosa, and that they were the ones who had been found on floor 43. Back at pod 42, David is settling in with his mother and sister although they display some sibling rivalry. Eliza quells this by saying that she loves them both the same. Eliza warns David not to mention Harlan in front of her and tells David that Penny was born from an egg and that Eliza has brought clay back with her. Eliza says that she saw lots of things outside of the Great Design and that they were flawed like Boon. One of the dragons, the ugly one, guided her toward the cave. Eliza had taken the clay with her and that was how she had created an egg which she left outside the cave, and then a dragon came down and kindled it for her. When Gwyneth came back she destroyed all of the guardian dragons. Eliza only just managed to bring back a small bit of clay without Gwyneth noticing. David goes to Harlan's study and finds the com:puter wiped. Using the memory stick he manages to find out what his father discovered, and also that fire birds tried to close up the rift, but something else was coming through. David is interrupted by Penny, who tells him that she has found a black fire bird feather and both Eliza and David tell her that there are no black firebirds. Penny gets upset, and goes and gets ready for bed. When Penny is ready, David goes up and starts reading Alicia in the Land of Wonder to her, imagineering the story with her so that the characters come to life. But something goes wrong and they see a mirror of another world (Liz's mirror in her bedroom) in it are clay dragons and a unicorn.Størmberg carries him to bed. David wakes up two days later to find that Strømberg has gone and that he cannot stay in one place for too long, because he has gone into hiding. David tells his mother that to find the answers that he needs he either needs to go to the Dead Lands, which he knows she will not let him do, or go back to the Librarium. David prepares to go back to the Librarium when Penny walks in and tells him about the night he read to her. David begins to remember, and Penny shows David a picture that she drew of what the White Rabbit changed into. David knows that are no creatures like this on Co:pern:ica, and wonders how she could have gotten the detail so right for it. Eliza tells David, before he goes that he needs to meet up with Strømberg on Bushley Common in the evening. When David asks which evening, she replies any, and that he will know how to find David. David goes to the common and plays with a katt whilst he waits for Strømberg to arrive. Strømberg tells David that the society they are in is failing, and Aunts are plotting to overthrow the Higher and that the Higher resides in the Librarium. Strømberg and Mr Henry believed that the Higher operates through the firebirds. They talk some more and Strømberg is impressed that David and Rosa managed to get to the upper floors, whilst Stromberg and Mr Henry had tried for 20 years and failed. Before Strømberg leaves, he urgently tells David that he must go back to the Librarium and retrieve the Book of Agawin which he believes will tell the whole history of Co:pern:ica and of Dragons, and then contact him. David tells Strømberg of the story telling, and that his adopted imagineered character turned into a black fire bird. Strømberg is confused, and then David tells him that when he slowed the video down of the experiment, he believes something came through and infected a normal fire bird and turned it black. Stromberg tells David that if this is true, then he must get to the Librarium that night, if possible and find the book. As Strømberg walks off, David puts the katt down and walks off himself. The katt suddenly turns into Gwyneth, meaning that she has heard the whole conversation which was meant to be private. Meanwhile back in the Librarium, Rosa is not getting on well with the Aunts. They at first make her clean out a room for them and will not let her order any more books. This frustrates her greatly. One of the demands is the Rosa must block out the window and to do this she has to use books, which breaks her heart and the Librarium itself does not like it. After she has finished the task the Aunts come in and rip pages out of the books and stuff them in the gaps between them. This is too much for Rosa who leaves running. Rosa wants to return to floor 43 but does not dare because Gwyneth found her easily the previous time. Rosa finds herself missing Mr Henry. Whilst Rosa is asleep, deserted even by Runcey, the firebirds who are worried because they have not seen a fire bird since the time quake, including Runcey come down to examine her changes, and they conclude that the girl in the picture (Zanna) and Rosa do match, although Rosa does not have the Mark of Agawin (Oomera). Aurielle decides it is now time to consult the Higher about this situation and flies up over 100 floors to be able to speak to him. Aurielle reaches the roof and thinks that it does not matter how many physical floors one must climb or fly, it is how determined they are and how much they need to get there. She flies onto a balcony and hears the Higher's voice speaking to her. Aurielle flies into the sensory matrix of the Higher known as the IS and speaks to him. The Higher calms Aurielle down and tells that what will be, will be, and that they allowed the science experiment to take place. The Higher also tells her that where there is order in the Eyrie, there is order in the rest of the world. Aurielle asks about the Isenfire, and the reply is that she always knew it was David, and she knows this is true. Aurielle now knows what to do. She must drive out the Aunts and bring David back so that he may be the new curator, and protect the Higher itself. The Higher tells her that Isenfire is upon them all. Finally, Aurielle tells the Higher about the egg that Eliza made, and the Higher replies, 'Beware of the thread.' When she asks what the thread is, the reply is, 'The thread is time and She will come from an egg.' Aurielle has one final question it is 'What is the Higher?', and the Higher tells her that it is pure Fain. The Higher tells her that she must become like a piece of bone that she found on the roof, and although she feels upset that her part is over, the Higher explains she will be an agent of the universe. Aurielle asks to see it, and she sees what fire birds will become. Not larger birds, not dragons, but they would have paws. Rosa also does not like the situation she is in. The Librarium is despondent and desolate and the Aunts have locked themselves in their room with a big sign saying, 'KEEP OUT.' Rosa knows that she needs to find out what is going on and so comes up with a plan, after finding a book about mushrooms (because all Aunts like mushrooms), she makes a mushroom dish that is secretly drugged, and Rosa knocks on the door. 10 minutes later, Rosa gains entry to the room. There is a strange digi:pad on the floor, and she picks up a book reads the information. Then the pad scans the book and it tells her the books auma level. Flicking through the book, Rosa is furious and distraught to find that it has been wiped completely. Rosa tells the fire birds to tie up the Aunts and wait for them to wake up. When they have woken, Rosa gets one of the fire birds to torture Primrose's feet, knowing that they will both feel it as they are twins. Rosa questions the Aunts and finds out that the pad is an auma scanner, and that they have taken the auma from almost every book in the room. Rosa asks if it can be put back, but the energy can only be transferred and Gwyneth is the one who knows what she is going to do with it. They confirm that once the auma has been harnessed, the Aunts will attempt to take over Co:pern:ica. The Aunts distract Rosa by imagineering David and thus enabling them to break free One Aunt manages to accidentally brand Rosa with the mark of Agawin. They then create a fire, which the three firebirds present cannot put out on their own and Aurielle tells Aleron to go and get the other fire birds who are already aware that the building is on fire. The Aunts manage to get the digi:pad by using their fain to catch it when Rosa throws it at the bed which is burning. When they switch it on it releases the auma into the room and there is nothing they can do and the Aunts run, the released auma travels into Rosa, through the mark of Agawin (or Oomara). On the window sill, Aubrey appears (the one who is the black fire bird) and the other fire birds are pleased to see her but puzzled as to her colour and the blood around her neck. More firebirds arrive and manage to put out the fire. Then suddenly, David climbs through the window to take control of the Librarium. Harlan and Bernard are being taken to the Dead Lands where they know their fain will not work. The two of them wonder how they are going to survive once they have been dropped off. They watch the taxi disappear and then check their surroundings. They believe the can see lights in the distance and sure enough six people reach them holding lights. One of the men introduces themselves as Matthew LeFarr and explains that he was brought to the Dead Lands because he asked too many questions in the wrong places. The men give them clothes and they decide to travel to the Isle of Alavon where there is a settlement of twenty two people including Harlan and Bernard. Whilst they walk, Harlan and Matthew talk, and Harlan believes that if Matthew is not the leader of the group, then he should be, because he has leadership qualities. After some time, they manage to reach a hill, and looking over it they see the Isle of Alavon. Matthew explains that this was where they believed Agawin used to reside. The group see a fire bird flying over head and many people race to catch it and Harlan goes with them to see what will happen. An old man, Roderic, is told to take Bernard back to the settlement. Bernard believes that the men are going to kill the fire bird. However, he manages to catch it when it flies to him, and Matthew tells him to put it onto the ground and turn its head away. The fire bird then cries its fire tear and a field of corn grows in its spot. Matthew congratulates Bernard, and says that the field will be called 'Bernard's field'. The whole party then goes back to the settlement where they settle in. Harlan and Bernard know that life will be hard outside the controlled Central but believe they can get along. They learn that fire birds have brought them a great many gifts including cooking utensils and crops. Matthew tells them that there will be a big meeting for everyone to get to know each other. After the meeting, Harlan asks about the tower up on the crest of Alavon and wants to journey up to it. Matthew agrees to take him and Beranard up to it, although warns that many of the tribes have gone mad since returning from the tower. The journey is uneventful up until the point, near the crest, when Harlan is taken over and is told to be wary of the "shadow of the ix". Harlan is then thrown down and the rest of the party wonder what happened to him, as they help him into the building. Harlan tells them about what happened, and says that the dragons name was Gawain but the say they can not see "Gawain" so reviled he is a wandering spirit. They move to the central dais where there is a carving of a winged man and they manage to get the creator to show itself, appearing as a talon (like the one in Fire Star, The Fire Eternal and Dark Fire). The group then decide to come back down the hill to go back to the settlement, where Harlan tells everyone what happened up the hill. He shows everyone the Creator, and then a darkling shows up and demands the Creator from Harlan, who at first denies it, but when he begins to fight it, Harlan drops it accidentally, and the darkling takes it off of him, and flies back to Co:pern:ica central. Harlan reveals that he wrote Isenfier on the sheet of paper that LeFarr gave him and believes that is what brought the darkling upon them. The man who went up the hill with is called Colm Fellowes and Harlan asks him how to destroy the Re:movers, and he tells that it is water. Harlan then comes up with a plan to get everyone back to Co:pern:ica so that he can protect David, by turning the tower of Agawin into a massive beacon. Many of the group are sceptical and believe that the Re:movers will not come, but agree to go along with the plan. Meanwhile the darkling travels back to Co:pern:ica and sees the fire in the Librarium. Landing on the window sill, it prepares to take over Aurielle's body, but gets seen and the fire birds question whether it is really Aubrey. The darkling flies up a few more floors to an abandoned level and prepares to wait another day before getting a new body. On this floor Gwyneth appears, furious at Petunia and Primrose and their incompetence, and sees the darkling and manages to capture it, and takes the Creator, and knows it is from a dragon. Gwyneth talks to the darkling and agrees to commingle with it. The Ix try to take over her body but Gwyneth just manages to break it up, warning the Ix that if it tries to do anything like that again, she will destroy it piece by piece, and the two of them share information. The Ix tells her that they are all part of something, and three worlds are connected: Ki:mera, Co:pern:ica and a low plane world where Isenfier is taking place. Gwyneth asks what planet Isenfier world is called, and the answer is Earth. Gwyneth continues to interrogate the Ix while attempting to resist their attempts at a full control over her body (which she suppresses). The Ix share information about her concerning David Merriman. The Ix explain that David can alternate his auma through the three planes (Co:pern:ica, Ki:mera, and Earth). In basic words he lives an alternate reality on Earth different than on Co:pern:ica. In the conversation the Ix also explain to her about the power of the claw she took from the Ix, saying it acts as a creator that (as known from the previous novels) manipulates dark matter. It has the great power to bring upon whatever is written by the user. This proves true when Harlan managed to call upon the Black firebird possessed by the Ix by simply writing "Isenfier". The Ix also reveal that there are connections across the planes, one being a squirrel( presumably Conker from the previous Novels). The Ix then tell of Gwyneth being a connection as well to Gwilanna who died in the previous Novel before the Battle of Isenfier. Shortly afterward Eliza and Penny come to visit David and Rosa in the Librarium. Gwyneth is then caged up by an imaginereed cage when she starts to act unruly to their presence. After they are introduced to each other Eliza pulls out a clay Dragon that has a pencil and a pad to show to them. They commingle to bring it to life. The dragon comes to life and starts to write something on his pad. Before he is finished though a time rift suddenly appears and the Ix within Gwyneth (still posing as a cat) come to attack and attempt to kill David. David defends himself by somehow transforming into a bear where he attacks and defeats the Ix colony and seals the rift. After everyone settles themselves afterwards Aurielle (the cream-coloured firebird) upon seeing the Dragon on the table sees between it and the dragon that is on the Tapestry on floor 108 of the Librarium. Aurielle urgently tells David and Rosa to follow her with the clay Dragon to floor 108. Rosa is reluctant to bring David’s sister Penny along with them but she ends up tagging along. This leaves Eliza with a very bitter Aunt Gwyneth to guard. Having nothing else better to do Gwyneth starts up a conversation with Eliza. Gwyneth trys to convince her to look at the book that David was looking at on the way out of the room and at the same time try to convince her to release her from her cage. Eventually Eliza does look at the book David went to and reveals that David was trying to look up what the clay dragon was trying to spell before the Ix attacked him. It is revealed to be the dragon's name Gadzooks. Gwyneth also reveals that she is Eliza's mother. She explains to her that her Father was the almighty Agawin himself. However Gwyneth has no idea what has happened to him even up to when she was brought into Aunthood. During Aunthood Eliza was latter discovered to be eccentric but her Aunt Su:perior took pity on her and decided to put Eliza into stasis util it was time for Gwyneth to claim her. But that unfortunately never came and Gwyneth realized she would not need a mother so she decided to have her introduced into Co:pern:ica as an orphaned child. She would be simply watched over by Gwyneth. This explains why Eliza could not recall her memories of childhood clearly when asked to by Aunt Gwyneth. Gwyneth tries and tries to convince Eliza to free her. She also explains to her briefly about the Dragon claw found she found off of the Ix saying that she must go and claim it. She apparently hid it somehow without the Ix being aware. After a while she finally gets Eliza to open the cage and release her despite David's warnings not to listen to her. Meanwhile David and Rosa continue to climb up the floors of the Librarium making their way towards floor 108. Rosa sees the remains of the egg being guarded on the floor having already hatched. David is quick to try to get downstairs fearing for Penny and Eliza's safety from whatever hatched from the egg. However Rosa manages to convince David to stay on the floor long enough for them to find the tapestry on the large table in the room. David looks closely at the Dragon's notepad in the tapestry using a tele:scope. He finds on the notepad the three line mark of Oomara and a faint word written on it saying "sometimes". This is apparently referring to Gadzooks writing the word during the finale of Dark Fire when everyone disappears in the end. They then turn their attention towards the book of Agawin which has somehow found its way to floor 108. David was sent by Strømberg to read the book cover to cover to find out more secrets, possibly pointing towards the Librarium. The book is apparently split into several sections: The Flight of Gideon, The Battle of Isenfier, The Isle of Alavon, and The Ark of Co:pern:ica Eventually David and Rosa decide to proceed to the lower floors. They are then separated when the Librarium starts to undergo a strange transformation. All the books and everything on all the floors of the Librarium start to transform into and become consumed by woodlands, trees and vines that start to warp their way around the entire Librarium. In the process Rosa encounters a white horse. Its name is Terafonne. The reason for the transformation is revealed in the next chapter. While Rosa and David were up in floor 108 Penny is struggling to find the right book for herself down in floor 43 she catches a raindrop outside through the window while it is raining. The raindrop transforms into some sort of light and a girl younger than Penny appears and has wings. She calls herself Angel and it is obvious she is the parallel version of Alexa in Dark Fire. She offers to help her find a book and leads her to a point in the room and then disappears. The raindrop leads her to a shelf marked with the author that is David Rain from the previous books. There she pulls out his book Snigger and the Nutbeast, and when she opens it a squirrel jumps out of the book. At that moment Gwyneth appears behind Alexa holding Eliza captive within the cage that David imagineered. At that point the transformation of the Librarium begins. Gwyneth explains to Penny that she triggered the transformation by opening the book. She says that the Librarium is actually the infamous Ark of Co:pern:ica that is referred to in the Book of Agawin. The Ark was created during the Great Re:duction that formed the dead lands in order to protect all of the animals and wildlife of Co:pern:ica. As Gwyneth rambles on about the Ark and animals in it, Penny takes the chance to attack Aunt Gwyneth and take the cage holding Eliza with her. However Gwyneth uses her powers to summon forth a wooden spike through the floorboards to drop Penny dead in her tracks. Eliza urges her daughter not to resist her to prevent further harm to her. At that moment Penny tells Gwyneth of the winged girl she saw moments ago named Angel. Gwyneth is then introduced to Aurielle, Aleron and Azkair who have all transformed into small dragons. They attempt to burn Gwyneth with their fire but fail. The three of them cannot cause harm to the claw artifact that she holds and instead of harming Gwyneth they end up making her more powerful. She then uses the claw to knock back Azkair as he tries to attack her. Aurielle demands that Aleron keep Azkair put as she goes after Gwyneth, who has transformed herself into a Raven and has blended in with the flock circling the Ark that came with the influx of other animals that came into the Ark as a result of the transformation from the Librarium to the Ark. As the pursuit between them escalates into the higher floors of the Ark, Gwyneth finds herself in the sensory matrix Is; the domain of the Higher. When she arrives she arrives in a very icy world that looks somewhat like the works of the Arctic. Gwyneth lands next to a polar bear and transforms back to herself. Next to the polar bear are Angel and Rosa who is now riding Terafonne. The polar bear (apparently representing the Higher) says that all around her are flakes that are actually small fire stars. He encourages Gwyneth to take a fire star and join them. Angel apparently says she really wants Gwyneth to defect for them and to help them. However the Aunt has plans of her own. Her ambition to overthrow the Higher has completely suppressed any wishes for an Alliance with them. She threatens to destroy the bear with the claw that she holds. Little does she now that any malevolent intent with the claw will immediately cause it to turn against her. The Higher warn her of this but again her ambition to overthrow the Higher overrules his negotiations. As Gwyneth is about to strike the claw indeed turns against her and throws her off of IS into the ocean below. The ocean has formed as a result of the excessive raining that has caused a flood and then an ocean. Harlan, Bernard and Lefar are victorious in their struggle with the Re:movers and have imagineered a boat to adapt to the changes going on around them. Harlan has also suffered injuries from the battle including the loss of an eye which is now covered by an eye patch. They pull Gwyneth from the water onto the deck of their boat (who is at the moment still alive). She wakes up coughing up water. Harlan who immediately recognizes her demands they give her no help. However Lefar manages to convince him that even as bitter as she is she is still an Aunt and is to be respected. So with that they blanket her to keep her warm. In her dying breaths she says "My bo-dy is bro-ken but...nnn...my will...", revealing the fact she is indeed dying but has no intention of doing down in defeat just yet. With that she does something the shocks the three of them. She attempts to write something using the claw to try to save herself. As she writes Harlan becomes increasingly frustrated and takes a fishing hook and is about to impale Gwyneth with it when she is finally finished writing. In the end she wrote: "I, Gwyneth also known as Gwilanna live..." Gwyneth is boarded onto the Ark and placed into a casket. Despite having written something with the claw that should have brought her back to life her body remains lifeless. The Merriman family is reunited and they all gather around the casket along with Lefar and Bernard. It is then when Eliza reveals what she learned from Gwyneth, that Gwyneth is her mother. At that point Rosa walks in and is not pleased of seeing Gwyneth in the casket and demands that she be removed from the Ark. When she is told that Gwyneth may be still alive due to what she wrote on the boat with the claw before she died, Rosa proceeds to ensure her death by attempting to drive a wooden stake through her. David manages to stop her and Eliza explains that despite all the bad she has done she is still her mother and wishes for her body to stay on the Ark. Before leaving the area with Gwyneth's casket Harlan hands over the claw that he took from Gwyneth to David and tells David to meet him at the casket alone at some point to discuss a few things. Later on Rosa pulls David aside and has a private conversation with him. She claims that the Tapestry up on floor 108 is gone. It has somehow vanished when the Librarium was slowly transforming into the Ark of Co:pern:ica. Besides the loss of the Tapestry everything seems to be doing just fine in the Ark. Lefar starts helping Bernard satisfy his curiosity about the bees that colonized after the Ark came to be and everything seems to be doing just fine. Later on David goes to his meeting with Harlan. On his way he bumps into Angel who asks her to read her a part of the story Snigger and the nutbeast. He does so but before he can read more she gives him some sort of talisman ( possibly similar to the one that transforms into Groyne in the previous novels ) and then says she has to go. She thanks her for giving him the talisman and proceeds to meet with Harlan for their scheduled private meeting at Gwilanna's casket. It is also revealed ( if not now earlier in the novel ) that David and Rosa are the parents of Angel. She hatched from the egg in floor 108 guarded by the firebirds when they found it in the dead lands. It apparently fused with the chain of daisies that Rosa made for David before the time rift from Harlan's experiment and the tear that David shed when he saw the wounded Runcey. David arrives at the floor of the ark where his father Harlan is waiting for him. They take a moment to examine Gwyneth's body and to discuss the strangeness of her state. Harlan and David both agree it is strange that when Gwyneth wrote what she wrote on the ship that she is still in this condition. If the claw's purpose served true it would have brought Gwyneth back to life. They debate that this could possibly be because she might not have had her intent in check when she wrote so that's why it may not have worked. Then David proposes that due to the time nexus it has somehow delayed the effects. Later on after the scheduled meeting at Gwyneth's body at some point Harlan and David meet on the outside deck. At this point the large ship that is the Ark is setting coarse towards land. It is here when in great detail Harlan explains to David of the Battle in the Dead Lands between him, Bernard, Lefar and the rest of his tribe against the Re:movers. They were victorious as Harlan explains his story, however Abbot Hugo had to sacrifice himself when a Re:mover sunken in the marshes of the battlefield stuck its hand out in front of Harlan holding a bomb. Hugo protected Harlan by throwing himself onto the bomb to save Harlan's life. He also explained that he was burned in the eye by a scanner from one of the Re:movers which explains his eye wound. Angel then appears at Harlan's side. She tells Harlan that Hugo is very happy and cries, making his wounded eye heal. Rosa returns after riding Terafonne to some distant land. The Ark then stops at the Dead lands where all the animals inside are released. David and Rosa have a conversation with her afterwards primarily concerning the future of the Ark. David proposed that they should have the help of the firebird to distribute books to all the people of Co:pern:ica ( especially those uses boats to get close to the work of wonder ). Rosa refuses to simply give away all the books. However David explains it would not be so. Instead of keeping the books they would return them for a new one. Rosa then accepts and within days the firebirds are distributing books to numerous citizens of Co:pern:ica having many return with notes form those who borrowed them that requests new books. Many in their boats land them where the Ark itself also landed. They all then proceed to be shown to the Isle of Alavon. Lefar then declares that he shall be leaving soon and one by one he bids goodbye to the Merrimans and kisses Rosa's hand to bid her goodbye as well. However when it came to David he asks him to stay. He then calls his father Harlan aside and reveals his secret that he has yet to tell him. He tells him that Lefar is in the tapestry in floor 108. Harlan, a little flustered from not being told of this earlier manages to get Lefar to stay. The distribution and return of books from the Ark continues. One day Rosa is busy cataloging them when Lefar came in laughing. He claims that a note has been received for her that turns out to be a proposition of marriage to Rosa. Rosa turns him down because of David. Later on Strømberg makes an entrance into the Ark. Once invited inside, Strømberg states that everything seems to all well. At first he says that people thought that the Higher was angry and that the Ark was a symbol of their anger. However later on the find out otherwise. That it is actually a gift from the Higher for people to understand and co-exist more with the wildlife brought by the Ark. Eventually everyone in the Ark gather around a table on the deck where David intends to discuss and explain more about things that circle around the Tapestry on floor 108. Since the Tapestry has still yet to be recovered David uses his memory to imagineer a duplicate of the Tapestry to show to everyone. This scene is very important because if the reader was slightly confused before this is where all the pieces fall into place. While the grown-ups talk Eliza takes Penny for a walk so she wouldn't disturb the meeting. Once shown the replicate of the tapestry Lefar asks why they are in the Tapestry. Harlan being a scientist working for the Ragnar Institute explains the theory of time. He explains that present past and future are all united into one "now". That being said he explains that there are actually parallel dimensions out there with people who are the same as them but live different lifestyles in a completely different plane of existence. David then explains that the tapestry depicts a battle that he thinks was actually frozen in time. The dragon Gadzooks, who is also in tapestry with his pencil and pad, writes "sometimes" with his pencil and notepad. David says that Gadzooks basically froze the battle in a critical point when it apparently seemed to be swinging in the favour of the Ix. This explains why in the previous book everyone disappeared in battle near the end. After that he Gadzooks sending a distress beacon to other worlds for a request for help. The beacon apparently resonated with David in Co:pern:ica and the abnormal sleeping patterns David was having in the beginning of the book was really a response to the Ix tracking the beacon to Co:pern:ica and trying to get in via David. David also explains that there is a possibility that the Ix had a bigger ambition than to control the time nexus that they would use to unfreeze the battle. He explains that he believes that he is actually destined to go to the aid of those in the battle depicted in the tapestry and that is most likely why the Ix want him dead. Harlan then brings up an interesting point: Gwyneth actually wrote the name Gwilanna when writing herself back to life using the claw. The question is then raised of how Gwyneth would have known her name on the other world. They then figure out that the Ix actually gave her that information earlier while both were sharing information. As the conversation continues Rosa then shows up with two firebirds who have finally recovered the Tapestry. To the shock of everyone on the Ark the Tapestry is different then the one that David imagineered to replicate it. It is different in a sense that Gwyneth has apparently appeared on the Tapestry. There is then a shocking revelation. When Gwyneth wrote what she wrote on the boat the reason she didn't come back to life is because she never intended to come back to life in Co:pern:ica. Instead when she wrote herself to life she ended up surrendering herself to the time nexus and realigns it in the process. She referred to herself by her other name Gwilanna when she was writing herself back to life using the claw. Since she referred to the name given to her parallel self on Earth she was resurrected on Earth. If Gwyneth remained dead in the events of the Tapestry (which was the final battle in Dark Fire) the events of the Tapestry would be true. However this is not the case. Since she has brought herself back to life on Earth she has done so during the events of the Tapestry. David and Harlan reveal that this could completely change the events of the Tapestry if she were to be present while they occurred. Suddenly Aurielle gets snagged in the Tapestry and as she starts to struggle to move she starts to pull at the thread on the Tapestry slowly unraveling it. This then causes the picture of Gwyneth to appear(and a strange boy) on the Tapestry and David to slowly move towards the Shadow of the Ix. In the very end of the book the water around the ark turns to fire.
25041210	/m/09gj_49	The Bishop's Man	Linden MacIntyre	2009-08		 The story follows the life of a Catholic priest named Duncan MacAskill. In the 1970s MacAskill convinced a rural Nova Scotia priest who impregnated his own housekeeper to quickly move to Toronto and avoided what could have been a significant local controversy. MacAskill was subsequently called upon numerous times by the Catholic Church to quietly resolve numerous potential controversies. By the 1990s, MacAskill was the dean of a Nova Scotia Catholic university. He is soon sent to oversee a remote Cape Breton Island parish were he would have a low profile, deal with a new impending public controversy, and come to terms with the consequences of his past cover-ups.
25041708	/m/09g9gzc	Asphalt				 Racine, an expatriate DJ returns from an ill-fated stay in Paris to a war-torn New York City and finds himself lodging in a deteriorating civil war era brownstone in a Brooklyn neighborhood devastated by poverty and despair. Here he meets Manny, a cross dressing free spirit with a penchant for women and architectural history; Mawepi the stout bouncer and translator for the clairvoyant yet reclusive Holy Mother Lucinda and Couchette, an emotionally scarred lap dancer mired in denial regarding her famous jazz musician father's suicide (former owner of the house) and mother's unexpected death. Immediately Racine finds himself creating the sonic backdrop for intense parties, orgies and conversations while Manny and the other residents chase their dreams in a transitional New York. Couchette is the troubled spirit with whom Racine shares physically intimate and emotionally frustrating moments. The story weaves depictions of Racine's childhood, including his mother's death by fire when he was an infant; his experiences living with his brother, Frederick, in the custody of an uncle who is a disturbed religious zealot; Frederick's mysterious accidental death; Racine's eventual abandonment and years in foster care under the guardianship of a caring alcoholic; and the truth of his recent trip to France to visit a former schoolmate, Benoit, and his girlfriend. Rux infuses his tale with Greek mythology, mirroring Racine's tragic life experiences with that of Euripedes' Hippolytus who is physically dismembered by a monstrous force on his journey to redemption. The characters in Asphalt all employ different strategies for abandoning experiences that have consumed and distorted their views of reality and their conflict with memory and poses a rhetorical embedded question in abandoned buildings and the psychological after effects of war-torn cities as to how cultures and individuals handle suffering, loss and unresolved tragedy.
25043644	/m/09gkwhf	One Million Tomorrows				 In the 22nd century, no one had to die of old age any more. The pharmaceuticals division of a large corporation had devised a potion that bestowed immortality on a single application, without any need for follow up treatments. The immortality treatment did not and could not wear off. All it took, was a single dose and the human would become immortal. However, it had an unusual effect on males that drank it. It effectively neutered them, causing complete cessation of sexual desire, and the ability to perform sexually. In this kind of world, many men put off taking the immortality treatment for as long as possible. But the main character, Will Carewe, is not yet immortal, and wishes to involve his wife in questions as serious as this one. They have not yet had any children. He is a high ranking employee for a transnational corporation that one day approaches him with a confidential question relating to the discovery of an immortality potion that does the same thing that the current one does. But without the undesirable side-effect of turning off the sex drive in males. The desirability of patenting the process required the corporation to handle related matters under a cloak of secrecy. But somewhere someone has spilled the beans, and competitors will do anything for the magic recipe, especially if this can be done before the patent is filed in the US Patent Office. They will do anything, including bribery, extortion, and murder, to get the information out of the pharmaceuticals lab before the process is made public. The hero of the story, Will Carewe says he is willing to test the new chemical, even if it backfires and results in permanent sterility and complete loss of physical desire and physical ability. But it appears there is someone out there that is willing to do anything to kill him before he does.
25044267	/m/09gh912	206 Bones	Kathy Reichs	2009	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Tempe is still unsure whether to continue her romantic relationship with Andrew Ryan. Tempe and Ryan set out to Chicago to clear her name, where much to Tempe’s annoyance, Ryan bonds with Tempe’s estranged ex-husband’s family while waiting for his flight back to Montreal. In Montreal, Tempe is convinced that the recent deaths of three more old women are somehow connected with the death of the heiress. The informant who placed the call turns up dead and Tempe is once more at a dead end. Although she is usually very meticulous in handling her cases, it seems that she makes more and more mistakes. Is someone from inside sabotaging her, and why? Her alleged mistakes are made public; now not only her career is at risk – her life is in danger too.
25050773	/m/09glf17	The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy	Bill Simmons	2009	{"/m/01z02hx": "Sports"}	 From The Wall Street Journal: :"In what passes for structure, Mr. Simmons offers a brief (for him) history of the league. Then he "corrects" every mistaken MVP award the NBA ever handed out. Then he imagines every detail of a new and improved Basketball Hall of Fame, naming the 96 players who belong there and offering an analysis of each selection. Then he ranks the top 20 teams of all time. Finally, he conjures up the perfect 12-man roster to face a team of Martians with the fate of Earth on the line—with the 1985 version of Magic Johnson passing to a 1992 vintage of Mr. Jordan and the 2003 Tim Duncan rebounding."
25057345	/m/09g7_m8	The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole	Stephen King	2012-02	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel begins with Roland and his ka-tet arriving at a river on their journey to the Dark Tower. An elderly man who operates a ferry gets them across the river, and warns them that a severe storm (Starkblast) is coming, and that they can find shelter in a building a few miles ahead. They reach the shelter just in time, and while they wait out the storm, Roland spins a story to keep them occupied. The story he tells, called the "Skin-Man", depicts Roland as a young gunslinger. His father sends Roland and his ka mate Jamie De Curry west to the town of Debaria on a mission to capture the Skin-Man, an apparent shape shifter who terrorizes the town and surrounding areas by transforming into various animals at night and embarking on murderous rampages. Roland and Jamie take a train to Debaria, but it derails before arriving and they must finish their journey on horse. On their way, they pass through a town known as Serenity, a community of women where Roland's mother lived after suffering a mental breakdown following her affair with Marten. It is here that they learn of a woman attacked by the Skin-Man and hear her tale. Roland and Jamie arrive in Debaria, and with the help of the local Sheriff, Hugh Peavy, they determine that the Skin-Man is most likely a salt miner from a nearby village. The next morning, they discover that another brutal attack has occurred overnight on a local farm. They investigate the scene, and discover a single survivor, a small boy named Bill, who has lost his father in the attack. Roland and Jamie determine that the murderer left the scene on horseback, and Roland sends Jamie to the salt mines to round up every miner who has a horse or is able to ride one. While returning to Debaria with Bill, Roland performs his hypnotism trick (which Roland first used in his chronological life in Wizard and Glass) with one of his shells (a fifty-seven - the caliber of an apprentice's gun). While hypnotized, Bill relates what he saw of the Skin-man; Bill tells Roland that he saw the Skin-Man in his human form after the attack, but only glimpsed his feet. He stated that on one ankle the Skin-Man had a tattoo of a blue ring around his ankle. The tattoo indicates that the man spent time in the prison at a (now abandoned) military barracks further west of Debaria. That area had fallen to the chaos of John Farson, the Good Man, within the last generation. Back in town, Roland brings Bill to a cell in Sheriff's station. He plans to walk each suspect past Bill in the hopes the young boy can identify the Skin-Man, or that the Skin-Man will reveal himself by fleeing due to fear of being identified. While Roland and Bill wait for Jamie to round up the suspects, Roland tells Bill the story of The Wind Through the Keyhole. In this story (within a story), we meet Tim Ross, a young boy who lives in a forgotten village that fears the annual collection of property taxes by a man named The Covenant Man. Tim recently lost his father, who was killed by a dragon while in the woods chopping trees. After the death of his father, Tim's mother, no longer able to pay the taxes to keep their home, marries his fathers best friend and business partner Bern Kells, who moves in with them. Kells is a mean man prone to heavy drinking who does not treat Tim or his mother well. One day The Covenant Man comes to collect the taxes, and he secretly tells Tim to meet him later in the woods. During this meeting, The Covenant Man reveals to Tim that it was actually Bern Kells who killed his father, not a dragon and with help of a scrying bowl shows Tim, Kells beating his mother, causing her to go blind. Later, The Covenant Man sends Tim a vision telling him that if Tim again visits The Covenant Man in the woods, he will give Tim magic that will allow his mother to see again. Tim, armed with a gun given to him by his school teacher, journeys into the dangerous woods, and is led into a swamp by the evil fairy, Armaneeta. Here, Tim almost becomes victim to a dragon and other mysterious swamp creatures, but he is saved by his gun as well as a group of friendly swamp people, who mistake him for a gunslinger. The swamp people guide him to the far side of the swamp, and equip him with a small mechanical talking device from the 'Old People' that helps guide him on his journey. Eventually, Tim arrives at a Dogan where he finds a caged 'tyger', which wears the key to the Dogan around its neck. A Starkblast approaches, and Tim, realizing this is likely a trap set for him by The Covenant Man, befriends the tyger. Tim and the tyger ride out the storm under a magical protective blanket. The next morning, Tim discovers that the tyger is actually Maerlyn, a white magician, who had been trapped in the cage for years due to black magic. Mearlyn gives Tim a potion to cure his mother's blindness and sends him back to his mother on the flying magic blanket. Tim then cures his mother's blindness. Tim's mother then kills Bern Kells with an ax after Kells enters their home with the intention of killing them. This concludes the Wind Through The Keyhole story, and Jamie arrives back in Debaria with the salt mine suspects. Young Bill is able to identify the Skin-Man due to his ankle tattoo and an associated scar, at which time the Skin-Man transforms into a snake, and kills two people. Roland shoots the snake with a specially-crafted silver bullet (which he had made upon their arrival in town), killing it. Roland and Jamie travel back to Serenity, where the women agree to adopt young Bill, who is now an orphan. Roland is also given a note written long ago by his mother. In this note, his mother claims she forgives Roland for his act of accidentally killing her. This concludes the Skin-Man story and an adult Roland and his ka-tet have now successfully ridden out the Starkblast. They pack up, and continue on their journey to the Dark Tower.
25062376	/m/05zl6np	Fading Echoes	Kate Cary	2010-03-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the beginning, we see that the cats of the Dark Forest are training Breezepelt and other cats in the same way they trained Lionblaze. Hawkfrost begins to visit Ivypaw in her dreams and teaches her many battle moves, pretending he is from StarClan. Ivypaw, still jealous that Dovepaw is keeping secrets from her own kin, decides not to tell anyone about Hawkfrost's training. Leopardstar, leader of RiverClan, loses her last life, and Mistyfoot takes her place as leader of RiverClan. The three reveal to Firestar who they are; Firestar reveals that he suspected it all along, but had his doubts after Hollyleaf's death. Firestar tells the Three what he knows about them, and delivers a crucial piece of information: The prophecy is not from StarClan. After days of rain, Dovepaw senses a tree on the edge of the hollow about to fall. She warns Firestar and the Clan, and they manage to evacuate the camp before the tree falls. However, Mousefur stays behind, refusing to give up on a mouse that she was eating. Longtail goes back for the mouse, and Briarpaw goes back for Longtail. As a result, Briarpaw's hind legs are paralyzed, and Longtail is killed. With Leafpool's help, Jayfeather finds out that Littlecloud had the same problem with another cat. The cat's lack of exercise allowed a chest infection to make it harder for him to breathe, eventually killing him. Jayfeather vows not to let Briarpaw die, but near the end of the book Briarpaw starts to develop a perhaps deadly cough. Briarpaw, Bumblepaw, and Blossompaw get their warrior names: Briarlight, Blossomfall, and Bumblestripe. Tigerstar tells Ivypaw that giving a strip of land to ShadowClan has endangered ThunderClan. Ivypaw believes Tigerstar and tells Firestar that she had a dream from StarClan of ShadowClan invading, because they believe that Firestar is too weak to keep his own territory. Firestar and the senior warriors decide to attack ShadowClan before they can attack ThunderClan. During the battle Lionblaze kills Russetfur, but not before she deprives Firestar of his seventh life. Lionblaze then looks upon the misery and death that the battle has brought, and believes that it should have never occurred.
25066364	/m/09gql86	Flight from Rebirth				 Modern science has discovered a way to rejuvenate people. It is just like immortality, but the rejuvenation process causes the human brain to be "restarted"&ndash;effectively losing all its former memories so the recipient starts life anew, like a blank slate. The world has reached a stage where there is very little privacy, and the rigors of modern society invade just about every corner of life. Even still, there are outcasts in remote areas who find a way of surviving without being part of the wider society. The main character, Benny Rice, struggles to maintain a low profile, even going so far as to quit and change jobs when offered a promotion; his personal history mysteriously dates back to a series of dead ends. No matter what job he's had, he always quits before getting promoted. An amicable, friendly sort, he is in for quite a surprise when an unlikely friend, a multi-billionairess, is so taken with his gentleness and kindness that she decides to write him into her will as the principal co-beneficiary to her vast estate of billions. The "Trust" is a foundation that encourages the successful, the accomplished, and the intelligent&mdash;basically the cream of the crop&mdash;to undergo the rejuvenation process. However, her will requires the Rejuvenation Foundation give Benny exactly the same treatment reserved to the successful and rich. Public notoriety is exactly what Benny Rice does not want. He only wants to be left alone and allowed to go on with his quiet and peaceful life in a position in life that is least subject to public scrutiny.
25071025	/m/09gkbl_	The Divide			{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 A group of American Resistance fighters attempt to spark a revolution at a summit meeting between Hitler and Tōjō celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Axis victory in World War Two. The book begins on July 4, 1976. A Japanese general is visiting China Lake, California, the site of his victory over General George Patton during World War Two. A bomb planted on a horse explodes, killing the general, and a mysterious cowboy is seen in the area. The cowboy is Cooper, travelling with his adopted father Wayne Stubbs, and a young Native American woman named Chula. They travel to the hidden National Redoubt in the Rocky Mountains, where work on developing a nuclear bomb had been ongoing throughout the decades. However, General Buckwesson, comfortable in his fortress, has no intention of sparking a revolution despite the unique opportunity that has recently arisen. A senile Hitler and a retired Tojo are meeting in the geographic center of the now divided United States. Cooper and younger members of the resistance plan on attacking the event, and Lisa Blum, daughter of the last head of the Manhattan Project, suggests using the only atomic bomb in the world.
25071241	/m/09gf8xl	Heligoland	Shena Mackay	2003		 Rowena Snow, a woman of Scottish-Asian parentage but brought up as an orphan dreams of Heligoland, once mentioned in the Shipping Forecast but now apparently lost forever. She applies for a position as live in housekeeper at 'The Nautilus', a crumbling 1930s built spiral-shaped building in South London inhabited by an artistic community. Only two of its original inhabitants remain, Celeste Zylberstein and Francis Campion along with Gus Crabb, an antiques dealer. The story tells of Rowena coming to terms with her past and finding her place in the community...
25074939	/m/09g9w3k	Delirium				 Plot overview Delirium opens when Private Sub CommandButton3_Click() Dim n1 As Integer Dim n2 As Integer Dim Multiplicacion As String n1 = TextBox1 n2 = TextBox2 Multiplicacion = (n1 * n2) ListBox3.AddItem (Multiplicacion) End Sub Private Sub CommandButton4_Click() Dim n1 As Integer Dim n2 As Integer Dim Division As String n1 = TextBox1 n2 = TextBox2 Division = (n1 / n2) ListBox3.AddItem (Division) End Sub Private Sub CommandButton5_Click() ListBox3.Clear End Sub Private Sub CommandButton6_Click() MsgBox ("Terminar Programa") End End Sub Private Sub TextBox1_Change() End Sub Private Sub UserForm_Click() End Sub its main protagonist, an ex-English professor turned traveling Purina salesman named Aguilar, discovers that while away on a four-day business trip his wife Agustina endured an experience that provoked a severe dissolution of her sanity. The book chronicles Aguilar's search for answers and his efforts to rehabilitate his young, beautiful and admittedly singular wife through the use of alternating narrative styles that, as the novel progresses, shed further light on the mysterious events that took place during Aguilar's absence as well as the nature of Agustina's family and childhood, both of which precipitated Agustina's struggle with mental illness. Delirium is organized and constructed through the utilization of a narrative pattern that proceeds in the following order: Aguilar, Midas (Agustina's ex-lover), Agustina, Aguilar, third-person narration of Nicholas and Blanca Portulinus (Agustina's grandparents). This pattern is repeated throughout the majority of the novel and helps to streamline and isolate the progression of several distinctly different, albeit entirely connected, storylines that are never eager to lend the reader immediate access to their secrets. Plot: in depth Delirium begins when Aguilar returns home from a weekend business trip to find several messages on his answering machine asking him to come pick his wife up at a hotel in downtown Bogotá. Upon arriving at the hotel Aguilar finds Agustina in her room with a strange man, existing only as a bombed out shell of her former self. Once home Agustina remains incredibly distant, sometimes even hostile, too preoccupied with abnormal purification rituals and rantings about her dead father's impending visit, to the leave the apartment or even get dressed. Driven by his love for his wife, and aided by the unexpected arrival of Agustina's Aunt Sofi, Aguilar refuses to give up, however, and sets out to discover exactly what happened to Agustina. Aguilar cannot unravel the events of that weekend or resuscitate Agustina's sanity without help and thus he enlists the aid of an alluring hotel employee, named Anita, who lets Aguilar know that whoever his wife was with that weekend their behavior was in no way romantic and provides Aguilar with some of Agustina's belongings that she had left at the hotel. Even more integral to the success of Aguilar's investigation, however, is Aunt Sofi, who, in conjunction with Agustina's narratives about her childhood and the narrative depicting Nicholas Portulinus' own struggles with insanity, helps Aguilar to better understand Agustina's past, which helps to better explain her present behavior. The reader comes to discover Agustina's childhood was not a typical one. She grew up as the sole, attention-deprived daughter in an extremely wealthy Colombian family, the Londoños, and exhibited signs of mental instability (perhaps inherited from her Grandfather who one night, when under the supervision of Agustina's mother, Eugenia, wandered off and drowned in a nearby river) even as a child. Agustina believed that she possessed visionary powers, powers that allowed her to see the future, and in her youth Agustina and her little brother, Bichi, would often perform rituals, often in an attempt to spare her brother from the wrath of her father who would physically and emotionally harass Bichi for his effeminate tendencies. The source of Agustina's power, as she believed, were several photographs that Bichi and her used secretly during their rituals; photographs that would later come to tear her family apart. Running parallel to the rest of the novel Midas' rags to riches to rags storyline tells the tale of Midas, a high class Aerobics Center owner and money launderer for Pablo Escobar, and his equally well to do and similarly employed friends (one of which happens to be Agustina's brother Joaco). Midas' story initially focuses upon a friendly, albeit high stakes, bet that Midas could organize a sexual situation to arouse his newly paralyzed and consequently impotent friend, Spider. Midas' story soon takes a turn for worse when Spider's thugs, while in the process of attempting to arouse Spider via the means of sadomasochism, inadvertently kill a prostitute (Sara Luz) in Midas' gym. The authorities are soon called into investigate and although they find nothing, Midas has covered his tracks well, he nonetheless feels the need to get away for a relaxing weekend, accepting an invitation from Joaco to come spend the weekend with the Londoño family (minus Carlos Vincente Sr. who has since died) at their estate in Sasaima. Once there, however, Midas realizes that, due in large part to her mother's insistence on skirting the truth, Agustina has begun to slip precariously towards her madness, a madness that Midas, being Agustina's former lover, knows all too well. Before the delirium is able to fully set in, however, Midas puts Agustina on the back of his motorcycle and rushes her away from both her family and her own deteriorating mind. Midas' heroism does not last long, though, for he soon hatches a plan to save his reputation that inadvertently plunges Agustina into her debilitating dementia. Soon, however, it becomes clear (due to the information that the other narratives grant) that Agustina is already well on her way to recovery. The novel concludes positively when Aguilar returns home one night to find a note written by Agustina. "Professor Aguilar", it reads "if you still love me despite everything, wear a red tie tomorrow." Aguilar then, with a certain degree of romanticism, wakes up the next morning and dons the reddest tie he could find before heading down the stairs to breakfast.
25076000	/m/09gmjcn	The New Girl	R. L. Stine			 Corey falls in love with Anna, the new girl at school. The only problem is that he can't tell if she's real--most of his friends have never seen her on campus, and she's not listed in the school's files. When he calls her family's home they are strange and evasive. In desperation, Corey goes to Anna's house, located on Fear Street and there her brother tells Corey that Anna is dead. But a few nights later, Anna calls him and asks him to meet her. Anna's passionate kisses convince Corey that his love object is alive and kicking. Corey's friend Lisa finds a dead cat and a piece of paper on its neck. She suspects that this was done by Anna. Corey stays loyal and protests. During prom night,Corey goes to the prom with Lisa. She is pushed down by Anna's brother Brad. Anna is actually Willa, Anna's sister. Willa killed Anna out of jealousy.
25077104	/m/04w9km8	Blood Price	Tanya Huff	1991	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Vicki Nelson is a former Homicide detective. When her diagnosis of Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) ruined her night vision and forced her to leave the police force, she became a private investigator. After becoming a witness in a brutal murder of a young man, who was drained to death, his desperate girlfriend Coreen Fennel hires her to investigate his death and Vicki’s intense, strong, and curious nature does not allow her to stop searching for the killer. Vicki tries to get some information from her former partner, Detective - Sergeant Mike Cellucci, who is also investigating the case for the police. The two of them have always been competitors, which leads to their arguments over jurisdiction. Coreen informs her that she thinks that the murderer is a vampire, so she begins what she calls ″hunting″, although she does not believe in the supernatural. The killer is claiming more victims, and when she accidentally walks in on a crime scene, she sees the killer turning into the dark and disappearing. Because of her bad sight, she is sure that it was just an illusion, and when she turns to the body, she sees a man in black next to the body, and tries to scream, but he punches her in the head, rendering her unconscious. She wakes in an unknown apartment, while the same man is searching her purse for some ID. She talks to him, and discovers that he is not a killer, but is also searching for him. He tells her that the killer is a demon, that she actually did see him disappear. He has an ancient book, a grimoire, that should help them. She also finds out that the stranger is Henry Fitzroy: romance writer and 450-year-old vampire. Surprisingly, she believes him. The two make a deal to catch the demon and the man who is calling it up. Her RP makes her useless at night and Henry sleeps during the day, so they agree to hare the investigation. The two uncover that the murders are ritual, that each should call one of the demon’s names, and that he should give material goods to man who is calling him, for the price of blood. Henry tells her that he is the bastard son of Henry VIII, and thus the Duke of Richmond, who fell in love with the vampire Christina, who turned him. When Henry is attacked and the grimoire stolen, Vicki finds him almost dead in his apartment, and realises that he needs to feed to stay alive and heal, so she allows him to drink from her wrist. This makes a bond between them. While the investigation continues, Vicki discovers that the demon was called by a college student, Norman Birdwell, who is a new friend of Coreen's. Vicky tells Mike, but he does not believe her. When Coreen finds out what Norman is doing, she takes Vicki to his residence. He kidnaps the two of them, willing to sacrifice Vicki’s blood to call a new, more powerful demon, Astaroth, who wants to bring about a Hell on Earth. Henry arrives in time to save Vicki and Coreen. Meanwhile, another demon is trying to trick the group, to procure as servants. Together, the three defeat him, and Mike Cellucci, who has been looking for Vicki, arrives in time to see Henry’s vampire powers and the demon he fights with. Vicki, who almost bleeds to death, ends up in the hospital, receiving a blood transfusion. Mike comes to inform her about his police report, which leaves out the demon and Henry. Later, after dark, Henry comes to visit her, and the two agree to a date when she gets out.
25077655	/m/09gc3ff	Victim: The Other Side of Murder	Gary Kinder		{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Victim: The Other Side of Murder retells the events of the Hi-Fi Murders. On April 22, 1974, Dale Selby Pierre and William Andrews entered the Hi-Fi Shop in Ogden, Utah, as Keith Roberts waited outside the shop in a car. Pierre, Andrews, and Roberts were all United States Air Force airmen stationed at Hill Air Force Base, just south of Ogden. During an armed robbery of the shop, Pierre and Andrews took five people hostage, killed three of them, and left the two who survived with horrific injuries. Meanwhile, Roberts had assisted Pierre and Andrews in the robbery of the shop's expensive stereo and electronics equipment. The three murder victims were Stanley Walker (age 20), Michelle Ansley (age 19), and Carol Naisbitt (age 52). The two surviving victims were Cortney Naisbitt (age 16) and Orren Walker (age 43). Stanley Walker and Ansley were employees of the Hi-Fi Shop who were working at the time of the armed robbery. While the robbery was in progress, it was inadvertently interrupted on three separate occasions, with each occasion ensnaring an additional victim into the crime. On the first occasion, Cortney Naisbitt entered the shop in order to speak briefly with Stanley Walker. Sometime later, when Stanley Walker did not return home as expected, his father Orren Walker went to the Hi-Fi Shop to look for him. Similarly, Cortney Naisbitt's mother Carol Naisbitt later arrived at the shop to look for her son, who also had not returned home at the expected time. Each of the five victims was taken hostage, bound, forced to drink Drano, and later shot in the head. In addition, Ansley was raped by Pierre. Victim: The Other Side of Murder focuses particularly on Cortney Naisbitt and the Naisbitt family. In the aftermath of the brutal crime, the Naisbitt family struggled not only with the death of murdered victim Carol, but also with the physical and psychological recovery of surviving victim Cortney. This book was viewed by many as a pioneering work, because it was one of the first true crime books that focused on the victims of a violent crime rather than on the perpetrators.
25083656	/m/09gdr3z	Six Gates from Limbo				 On awakening in an idyllic tropical paradise, Rex is disoriented and possibly afflicted with amnesia. He knows his name, but the particulars are curiously missing. He spends his first week exploring, and discovers that his Eden-like paradise is surrounded by a huge unscalable wall 50 miles in circumference. Furthermore, there are six gateways at roughly equal intervals, but there is no way to climb up there and see where they go. After a significant amount of exploring, he finds a single house that may hold the answers to his missing memory. How he could have missed it on first waking, is beyond him. Maybe he was just pointed in the wrong direction, and he started wandering off randomly, and forgot to turn around. Inside, he discovers what appears to be three suspended animation tanks, one of which is labeled REX, another REGINA - both with their tops off - and on looking inside, mysteriously vacant. The other tank is labeled VENUS and holds a woman who is the most breathtakingly beautiful thing he has ever seen.
25085264	/m/09g9w7q	Harrington				 Harrington follows the protagonist of the same name who explores his memories to better understand his views on Jews. The novel begins with Harrington's early image of Jews, formed by stories told by his maid of Simon the Jew. Harrington says that the stories of Simon the Jew were " used upon every occasion to reduce me to passive obedience." His parents further strengthen this image by rewarding Harrington's antisemitism. Only after attending public school and meeting the bully Mowbray are Harrington's views on Jews changed. Mowbray's tormenting of the Jewish peddler Jacob causes this sudden shift in thinking. The story shifts to a romance novel with the introduction of Berenice Montenero, an American Jew who moved to England with her wealthy father. Harrington's family and friends are alarmed at his choice of a Jewish woman, a relationship further impeded by the advances of Harrington's old rival Mowbray. Seeking marriage into a wealthy family, Mowbray's attempts to court Berenice are denied. As revenge, Mowbray brings charges of insanity against Harrington, a situation further compounded by his family threatening to disown him. To marry Berenice, Harrington must overcome these obstacles and prove himself to Mr. Montenero. He is thus tested "by experiences designed to arouse his enthusiasm and fear." Mowbray is exposed as the culprit behind Harrington's supposed insanity and Harrington is deemed worthy of marriage to Berenice. This strange courtship is concluded with the revelation by Mr. Montenero, "I have tried you to the utmost, and am satisfied both of the steadiness of your principles and of the strength of your attachment to my daughter-Berenice is not a Jewess."
25088222	/m/09gq0y_	That Old Ace in the Hole	E. Annie Proulx	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Bob Dollar is sent by his employer, the multinational "Global Pork Rind Corporation", to scout for locations for intensive hog farming in the Texas Panhandle. Dollar goes about the work of meeting local down-on-their-luck farmers to manipulate them into selling out. He bases his search in the fictional town of Woolybucket, named after the real tree species, Sideroxylon lanuginosum. There he gets a job at Woolybucket's Old Dog restaurant, and moves into an old bunkhouse in local historian LaVon Fronk's ranch. The inhabitants of the town and the region's quirkiness and stubbornness work on the fundamentally decent Dollar. The ace in the hole of the title is Ace Crouch, who quietly leads Dollar to a "kind of small, quiet and personal redemption."
25089743	/m/09gmwqf	The Cup		2009		 The week before the 2002 Melbourne Cup, Jason Oliver, Damien’s older brother, was fatally injured in a training accident while riding an unraced horse at Ascot Racecourse in Perth. Taken to Royal Perth Hospital, Jason never regained consciousness and died after being taken off life support. In 1975, while competing in the Boulder Cup at Kalgoorlie, Ray Oliver, Damien and Jason’s father, was involved in a five-horse fall. Knocked unconscious, the jockey was flown from Kalgoorlie to Perth where he too was treated at Royal Perth Hospital. Ray Oliver never regained consciousness and died. His death left his widow, Pat, to look after their two sons: Jason, 5, and Damien, 3. Damien’s decision to return to Melbourne following Jason’s death and compete in the Melbourne Cup captured the attention of his fellow countrymen as well as racing enthusiasts around the world. He dedicated his victory in the 2002 Melbourne Cup to his brother. His winning ride has since been selected by Sport Australia Hall of Fame as one of the most memorable moments in the country’s sporting history. Australian director Simon Wincer wrote the book’s foreword. The first six chapters of The Cup introduce the individuals and the events leading up to the 2002 Melbourne Cup, including background on Dermot Weld (“The Irish Wizard”), Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum (“The Sheikh”), the race itself (“The Melbourne Cup”), legendary trainer Bart Cummings (“The Cups King”), Dermot Weld’s historic victory in the 1993 Melbourne Cup (“A Vintage Performance”), and the internationalization of the Melbourne Cup (“The World Comes Calling”). The final ten chapters of The Cup focus on the 2002 racing season, including the decision to race Media Puzzle (“The Dark Horse”), Damien Oliver’s background (“The West Australian”), the 2002 Geelong Cup (“A Theatrical Streak”), the great Australian Thoroughbred Northerly (“The Last Best Hope”), Jason Oliver’s accident (“Racing Home”), Jason Oliver’s death and its effects (“Solving the Puzzle”), Damien Oliver’s winless effort on Victoria Derby Day (“Derby Day”), Melbourne Cup Day (“The Boys From the Bush”), the 2002 Melbourne Cup (“The Race That Stopped the Nation”), and the burial of Jason Oliver (“Final Ride”). A brief epilogue follows the principal characters since 2002. Appendices include the Final Field of the 2002 Melbourne Cup, Damien Oliver’s 2002 Melbourne Cup Carnival Results, Melbourne Cup Statistics, and the Cast of Characters.
25090077	/m/09g99dy	Flirt	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Flirt follows Anita as she is asked to raise the wife of the wealthy and powerful Tony Bennington. After refusing his request for a reanimation, Anita's lovers come to visit and Bennington reveals that his wife was a fan of Guilty Pleasures. Weeks later Anita comes across the werelions-for-hire Jacob and Nicky, who threaten to kill Micah, Nathaniel, and Jason unless she agrees to use her necromancy for their client. Anita is left with no choice but to comply, even as her inner werelioness reacts to Jacob and Nicky. Anita soon discovers that Bennington is behind the kidnapping and threats, only for her inner lioness to react to the situation. In order to keep Bennington safe Jacob sequesters Anita, only for her lioness to further react to Jacob and Nicky. The two hit men end up giving into the natures of their were-beasts and battle for the chance to mate with Anita. Anita attempts to chase and attack Bennington, only to be stopped by a third member of Jacob's pride, Silas. She manages to wound Silas but Anita is ultimately re-captured and knocked unconscious. When she regains consciousness Anita manages to feed the ardeur off of Nicky, despite the initial attempts of Jacob and his pride's witch. The end result is that Anita's magic completely dominates Nicky, turning him into a "slave" with no free will outside of what she allows him. Anita is then brought to the grave of Bennington's wife and forced to use Silas as a "White Goat". Due to his supernatural nature Anita raises the entire cemetery, overwhelming the protection laid down by the pride witch. This enables Anita to psychically contact Jean-Claude, who swiftly captures Bennington's men. Jacob flees with his pride's witch, but only after watching Anita kill Bennington and leaving behind the now rolled Nicky. Anita takes in Nicky, worrying about her abilities and what his being so completely rolled might mean for her in the future.
25103966	/m/09gmqdc	Ars Magica				 Spain, early 17th century. A woman is found lifeless in Santesteban. All points to a murder committed by the Devil and its followers. The region is being scourged for months by the sorcerers, even if the precedent year eleven people were burned alive in a sorcery trial. The people are scared. To appease them the Santo Oficio decides to promote a grace edict to forgive those who admit their agreements with the Devil. The severe inquisitor Alonso de Salazar y Frías is in charge to apply the edict by covering the region. But what nobody knows is that Salazar doesn't't trust anymore in sorcery or spells and, even worst, he doesn't trust in the Devil any more, because he has lost his faith. To reveal the mystery of the witches, Salazar will use the anatomy studies from Leonardo da Vinci, forensic technics he learned in Rome, apothecary knowledge to analyse magical ointments... he finally will base his investigation on verifiable facts to establish factual truths instead of suppositions. Meanwhile, a young woman called Mayo from Labastide-d'Armagnac, who was, following her birth statements, the bastard daughter of the Devil and a mortal woman, travels selling spells. Mayo lost her female companion because this one was arrested during the last auto-da-fé, even if she wasn't condemned. To find her, Mayo decides to follow the steps of Salazar, whom she protects with her spells, even if he doesn't suspect anything about her beneficial actions. During their journey, both will face the diabolical powers which will obstruct their plans, the lack of faith and the death of those they love.
25105648	/m/09g9wgm	Delirium (Cooper novel)	Douglas Anthony Cooper	1998		 Delirium has Izzy Darlow in New York, investigating the architect Ariel Price in order to write a biography about the man. Price proves to be an unwilling subject, threatening to murder his biographer.
25106812	/m/09gjm72	Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help	Douglas Anthony Cooper	2007		 The book follows teenagers Milrose and Arabella, who can see the ghosts that inhabit their school. Some of the ghosts are friendly, others are not so much, but after Milrose and Arabella are both sent to the school psychologist to receive treatment the ghosts must find a way to help the two overcome their seemingly well-meaning captor.
25107948	/m/04q0yll	The Rifle	Gary Paulsen	1995	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The rifle is forged in 1768 by gunsmith Cornish McManus, who is inspired by a beautiful piece of maple stock. McManus crafts a unique weapon; its .40-caliber, 42-inch barrel is narrower than most rifles of the time, its rifling more severe, at one turn in thirty-five inches, and its butt less drooped than customary, to improve its accuracy. Upon completing the weapon, McManus discovers it to be astoundingly accurate – enough, in fact, to deliver three balls in a row to exactly the same hole at thirty yards. However, lacking money and engaged to be married, he is forced to sell the gun to a man named John Byam, who carries it with him into battle against the redcoats. The gun is passed down through the generations, being lost, rediscovered, and sold as an antique. The rifle ultimately comes to rest on the mantle of Harv, a mechanic. On Christmas Eve, 1994, Harv is poking at his fireplace when a spark ignites the rifle, causing it to go off. The bullet goes through the window and hits the neighbor boy, Richard, as he attempts to fix a light on his Christmas tree. The books ends with Harv throwing the rifle in a river only to be recovered by another man.
25117577	/m/09g67bn	The Life of an Amorous Woman	Ihara Saikaku	1686		 A man of the world who lives in the capital city of Kyoto travels to Saga-ken in Kyushu with some friends. They meet an old woman who lives in a grass hut and listen to the story of her life experiences. She was born as the daughter of a family of court nobles, but loses her privileged status, tumbling ever downward through a life mixed with pleasure and trouble in which she goes from being the mistress of a Daimyo, to Courtesan, and a streetwalker. At each stage, she tries to crawl up from the station in which she finds herself, but her own nature causes her to fail. The Mizoguchi Kenji film Life of Oharu is based upon this novel.
25120921	/m/09gfh9r	Jack the Hare and Mukuyu Forest				 The story is based on a variety of animals living together in a homestead, and it revolves around a hare called Jack, who works tirelessly to safeguard the wellbeing of his immediate family and that of the animal clan. There was very little contact and mistrust between the animals and human beings. Because much of Jack’s focus was on protecting the animals from humans, he was not prepared for an upheaval from within the animal clan. When that upheaval did come a power struggle resulted with Jack eventually becoming the king of the jungle.
25123229	/m/03gqt9r	Face	Benjamin Zephaniah	1999-07-09	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The protagonist, Martin Turner, is portrayed as a typical teenager from a fairly rough, multicultural area of Newham in east London. One evening, after leaving a rap club, he and his friends are offered a ride home by an acquaintance, which they accept. However, the car is stolen, and the driver's reaction on seeing a police car results in an accident in which Martin suffers severe burns to his face. Martin has to deal with the loss of his Girlfriend and Friends, ridicule at school and his isolation from his family, however he eventually overcomes his disfigurement, makes new friends and attains a level of personal acceptance.The book portrays the difficulties faced by people with facial disfigurements and how one minute they are leading a normal life and the next they are stared at and teased. It shows people with disfigurements are still humans and should be allowed to lead a normal life too.
25127332	/m/09g6z8m	Distant Waves				 A girl named Jane Taylor lives with her family of five sisters (her, Mimi, Amelie, Emma, and Blythe). Her mother, Maude, is a medium. They live in the late 19th century America. Jane's father has recently died due to a shot through the heart, and her mother is in grief. The book begins as Maude Taylor, Jane's mother, is trying to contact a woman named Mary Adelaide from the spirit world and "speaks" to her. Mary Adelaide's sisters believe her, but Mary Adelaide's husband believes that Maude is a fraud. Mimi believes their mother to be a fraud because sometimes, they see her scribbling under the table when the lights are turned off, then pretending the spirit wrote them. Jane is under the influence of Mimi and admires her, so she believes it too. Mary Adelaide's sisters suggest that they move to Spirit Vale, a place where many spiritualists live. Maude and Grandma Taylor don't get along well, so they plan to move out. One day, they go to a park to meditate, and Mimi & Jane go for a walk suddenly,the ground starts spitting apart and shaking. An earthquake starts, buildings start shaking and Mimi gets a bad headache. But a man named Nikola Tesla rescues them, and they watch him smash a small device. He explains that he has been destroying things and this earthquake machine is one of his ideas. He believes that everything vibrates and at different frequencies, you can travel between time and different worlds. They are amused. Tesla becomes Jane's ultimate role model and collects newspaper clippings about him over the years. Maude moves them to Spirit Vale, where they are going to stay at the inn for a bit. The in is already fully booked, but, Maude "contacts" the husband of the inn's owner, Aunty Lily, and she lets them stay. In 1911, Mimi and Jane run away to New York, where Jane falls in love with Thad who is Tesla's assistant. Mimi gets a job as an assistant to a wealthy French woman, Ninette, and she goes to travel with her to Europe. When Jane has to get back to Spirit Vale, Thad learns thaat Jane is only 16, which means she's 4 years younger than him. He doesn't write to Jane like he promised her. Jane gets very sad over Mimi's departure and Thad. Maude is devastated and blames Jane for running away with Mimi and her departure. After Mimi has been gone for a while, she finally contacts her family while they are in London, Canada for a spiritual convention for mediums, psychics, etc. It is there that it is proven that the twins, Amelie and Emma, have their mother's gift of being able to speak to the dead after having Queen Victoria speak to Conan Doyle. Mimi reveals that she is going to be sailing on the Titanic, and Blythe wants to go with her. After much convincing, she is allowed to go. Mimi is in first class, and Blythe is in second class. When a man predicts that the Titanic will sink and Mimi and Blythe are on it, Jane, Amelie, and Emma get on it to try to talk them into getting off. Jane bumps into Thad, who is on the ship with Tesla, after Emma fainted. He is overjoyed to see her, and he tells her he made a mistake in not being with her.Jane, Amelie, and Emma are convinced the ship won't sink, so they stay on. Mimi announces that she will be having her wedding on the Titanic to her mistress's butler. Just before the wedding, Thad asks Jane to marry him. She says yes, but they don't tell anyone because she doesn't want to take the night away from Mimi. During the wedding, Telsa wants to show off his newest invention. It's supposed to break ice. Jane recognizes it as the earthquake machine. When he used it, it malfunctioned and the ice berg hit the ship. They start telling people to get on life boats. They realize that Amelie is missing, so Mimi, Jane, Emma, and Thad go looking for her. Telsa tells Thad and Jane to follow him. He says he has an invention that could save everyone. It's a time machine. Mimi finds Jane in the bottom of the ship with Telsa and Thad. She tells her to get on the life boats, but she stays. Telsa's machine partly works and Jane finds herself in the water. She sees a floating chair and she gets on it. She finds Amelie and Emma in the water. Telsa helps them up onto the over-turned table he was on. Mrs. Brown's life boat spots them and they pulled Emma and Amelie on board. Emma dies of hypothermia. Amelie had two broken legs and frostbite on her toes. No body can find Mimi or Thad. Amelie goes to the hospital. She starts to talk, but says that Emma is talking. Jane recalls Emma saying "I won't leave", just before she dies. 2 years pass by. Mimi and Thad, though no bodies were found, are said to have sunk. Jane, now 19, gets a job as a reporter. She sees a picture on a newspaper of two people that survived the sinking of the Titanic in the water all these years. Jane thinks they look like Thad and Mimi. She begs her boss to let her do this story, and he lets her. She goes to them and finds that they are Mimi and Thad. When they were in the time machine, it didn't send them a couple minutes into the future, it sent them a couple of years. Although to everyone else, Mimi and Thad had been gone years, to them it only seems like a few minutes. They all get on a train, and Jane reluctantly tells Mimi that her husband is dead. Jane and Thad ride back home together, where the book ends.
25129376	/m/09g9hqx	More Things in Heaven				 A matter transmission machine seems to work properly when it sends things and people out. But when it brings them back, the astronauts have been changed unexpectedly. The machines might not be working properly. Or maybe they are working too well. it:Atterraggio proibito
25132285	/m/09gpph4	Caballero: A Historical Novel			{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02w06c6": "Historical romance"}	 The novel consists of a forward and thirty-six chapters. In chronological sequence, it interweaves both historical and fictional events that occurred near or in other ways impacted the Mexico-United States border in the late 1840s. The forward establishes the history of the Mendoza family's presence in Texas. This commences in 1748, when Don José Ramón de Mendoza y Robles, a Spanish explorer, receives permission from the viceroy in Mexico City to lead an expedition of wealthy landowners to the land between the Rio Grande and Nueces rivers. The land he claims for himself he names the Rancho La Palma de Cristo. Soon after, he marries the blonde and green-eyed Susanita Ulloa, who is his junior by many years, and they have one son who survives childhood, named Francisco. Francisco marries Amalia Soría, who bears him three children—Santiago, Dolores and Ramón—before she dies. Santiago, Dolores and Ramón are raised by their grandmother, Susanita, who instills in them their grandfather's greatness and the importance of upholding one's Catholic faith. Susanita, Francisco and Ramón have all died before the novel's proper beginning, leaving the Rancho La Palma completely under Don Santiago's care. Chapter One introduces us to Don Santiago, the uncontested patriarch of Rancho La Palma, and his family. He, like his father and grandfather before him, has also married a pureblooded Spanish woman, Doña María Petronilla, who is characterized by her simple and unprepossessing dresses. They have four children, all of whom are in their teenage years. Two of these are sons—Alvaro and Luis Gonzaga—and two are daughters—María de los Ángeles and Susanita. Susanita, like the grandmother whose name she shares, is blonde and green-eyed. She is described as Don Santiago's "dearest" child and as he watches her join the family for dinner, he glumly acknowledges that time has come to find her a husband. Dinner is interrupted by Don Gabriel del Lago, a friend of Don Santiago's and a neighboring Spanish-Mexican landowner, who brings news that Texas has been taken from Mexico by the Americans, and that American soldiers under the leadership of Zachary Taylor have infiltrated the territory and are busy establishing defensive outposts. Each of the characters responds differently to this turn of events: Don Santiago scoffs, refusing to consider Americans any threat to his way of life; Alvaro wants to know what military action can be undertaken to stave off the American forces; Luis Gonzaga contemplates whether or not Americans really are the uncultured hoodlums he has heard them to be; María de los Ángeles, under the assumption that Americans are not Catholic, assumes the invasion is punishment from God for Mexico's sins; and Susanita wonders what it would be like to dance with a tall white-skinned man. The narrative that unfolds tracks these characters, and others, as their suspicions about the invading forces are explored—sometimes confirmed, but more often reformed. A partial text version of Caballero is available at Google Books.
25135261	/m/09gcpkp	Breathers: A Zombie's Lament	S. G. Browne	2009	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/089m7": "Zombie", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Andy Warner is a zombie, having reanimated after a fatal car wreck that killed his wife, orphaned his daughter, and left Andy disfigured and unintelligible. Reviled and discriminated against by a society that no longer considers him human, Andy is an outcast. He spends his new existence watching cable television in his parents’ wine cellar and attending Undead Anonymous meetings with other zombies, where he finds kindred souls in Rita and Jerry. After they meet Ray, a rogue zombie who introduces them to the joys of consuming human flesh, Andy embarks on a journey of self-discovery that leads to a media-driven, class-action lawsuit on behalf of the rights of zombies everywhere.
25139850	/m/09gn1wf	Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection	Don Roff	2009-09		 A short prologue explains that the story, notes and images were those of Dr. Robert Twombly and were found in a remote cabin in the township of Churchill, Manitoba. The notes detail an individual account of survival and escape after a mass-scale (presumably global) zombie outbreak, referred to as a ‘Necrotic Infection’, beginning around January 7, 2012 and lasting for approximately one year. The purported importance of the journal comes from both Twombly’s artistry and his medical knowledge, which permitted him to document the zombie outbreak with a unique level of detail and candor. The author extensively utilizes a false document technique, mixing diary-style first person stream of consciousness narration, drawn and painted images detailing the world following an undead pandemic, as well as brief glimpses of ‘found’ objects such as newspaper clippings and official reports to generate the central narrative. Dr. Twombly, a haematology and oncology specialist in Seattle, Washington keeps a journal detailing events from January 5 until March 28, 2012. At first the diary appears to be used for sketches of birds, but an entry on January 12 describes a pandemic of unknown cause overwhelming the entire city and much of the world beyond. Before the internet shut down, headlines referring to a sudden, critical infection affecting thousands worldwide show the scale of the unfolding catastrophe, destroying commerce and limiting travel. His office is beleaguered by thousands, all showing identical symptoms of an unknown, seemingly undetectable pathogen. As the sick begin to die they quickly reanimate, walking slowly, attempting to devour those around them still alive, and – to varying extents – exhibiting some behavior of their previous existences (one bashes a vending machine as he did when he was alive, and later a married couple – now zombies – hold hands as they walk). While tests confirm that the reanimated ‘zombies’ are clinically-dead, Twombly talks at length about the limitations and strengths of the undead. Meeting other survivors, and after witnessing an infection and reanimation first-hand, Twombly makes his way northward. His initial suspicions relating to a new GM food additive made by chemical company Primodyne are explored, although evidence relating to its accumulated toxicity is inconclusive, although its sudden prevalence and bio-accumulative effect does provide a logical explanation for the speed of the global infection, as well as the infection occasionally affecting individuals who have not come into direct contact with the zombies. Twombly spends much time on a small, isolated bucolic inn called ‘the Farm’ with nineteen other survivors, although eventually he is forced to move even further northward after the Farm is overrun by zombies and burned down. Finally he finds the town of Churchill, Manitoba where nobody has had any interaction with the infected. His final entry indicates that the threat is apparently subsiding, with the town secure and partially fortified. The entry is, however, cut off mid-word with a slight spatter of blood.
25142768	/m/09gkccs	Snow White and the Giants			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A married insurance salesman finds himself getting rooked when a beautiful brunette ("Snow White") dazzles him, and her retinue of male hangers-on (standing six foot ten) invade his peaceful little hamlet in England and alter his entire life.
25146774	/m/09gfvv6	Tunnel Through Time	Lester del Rey	1966-05		 The novel tells the story of a boy named Bob Miller whose scientist father, Sam Miller, has invented a "time ring", a circular device that allows time travel. Bob, his friend and his friend's father ("Doc Tom", an archaeologist) travel through time in search of Bob's father, who has disappeared while traveling alone. Beginning in the Mesozoic Era (Sam's planned destination), the story depicts various adventures while the travelers jump from point to point in Earth's prehistory in search of the missing scientist.
25150938	/m/09gj7s0	The Monster Men	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1929	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Cornell University professor Arthur Maxon, who has been experimenting in the creation of artificial life, travels with his daughter Virginia to one of the remote Pamarung Islands in the East Indies to pursue his project. Their departure is noted with interest by a young man, Townsend J. Harper, Jr., who is quite taken with Virginia and determines to find out where they are going. In Singapore Maxon commissions Dr. Carl von Horn to take them the remainder of the way to their destination in his yacht the Ithaca, and then to assist him in his experiments. On the island the group fights off a pirate attack and builds a fort. Maxon and von Horn begin their experiments, growing several living creatures in chemical vats, humanoid but mindless and ugly. Maxon hopes Experiment Number Thirteen will result in a perfect human being, and in his fanatic obsession plans to wed Virginia to this ultimate creation. Von Horn retains a more realistic viewpoint and hopes to marry her himself, leading to friction. Meanwhile, locals including Budadreen, one of von Horn’s crewmen, and Muda Saffir, leader of the pirates, conspire against the scientists, who they believe are hiding treasure. They are watched closely by Chinese cook Sing Lee, who recognizes the pirate. Experiment Number Thirteen indeed appears to result in a physically perfect man, but as soon as the scientists discover this an emergency distracts them. Experiment Number One has escaped and abducted Virginia. Maxon, von Horn and Sing Lee pursue the monster, only to find it dead at the hands of Number Thirteen, also escaped from the lab in the wake of the scientists’ departure. Thinking Virginia still in danger, von Horn attacks the creature and is nearly killed himself, but is spared by Thirteen when Virginia pleads for his life. Ignorant of the handsome stranger’s origin, the girl finds herself attracted to him. Maxon and von Horn return Thirteen to the lab and begin educating him. Von Horn privately discloses to Virginia Maxon's plan to wed her to one of his creatures, while concealing it is her rescuer to whom she is to be wed. Separately, he informs Thirteen of his artificial origin. Both recipients of his confidences are horrified. Thirteen, or Jack, as he is now called, is convinced that he is a soulless monster and that Maxon must be stopped. Von Horn absconds with Virginia while Jack goes to confront Maxon, while Budadreen and six crewmen steal a chest they believe holds Maxon’s wealth. Muda Saffir’s pirates attack the compound and appropriate the chest. Jack, reconsidering his rage, defends Maxon and Sing Lee against the pirates. Virginia rebuff’s von Horn’s advances and falls in with Budadreen, who takes her captive and sails off in von Horn’s yacht. Von Horn, since his effort to turn Jack against Maxon has failed, releases the other eleven monsters against them. Jack overawes the creatures and gains control of them, but Maxon, apparently regaining his sanity, turns on him and drives him away. The Ithaca is wrecked in a gale, and Budadreen and his men swept overboard; later the drifting hulk is boarded by headhunters. Jack and the eleven monsters search for Virginia and find the yacht in the harbor, when it is boarded by Muda Saffir's pirates, the monsters attack them. Saffir takes Virginia and flees the battle in his prahu; the monsters, capturing another prahu, pursue them. Having witnessed these events from hiding, von Horn returns to Maxon, who offers him his fortune and Virginia if he can save her. Jack and his monsters overtake and fight the pirates in Borneo, resulting in six monsters and many of the pirates killed, but Saffir, still holding Virginia, escapes up river in his boat. The monsters join with Barunda and a crew of captive Dyaks and resume pursuit. Meanwhile Saffir has bungled a rape attempt against Virginia and been shoved overboard by her; his lieutenant Ninaka assumes command. He stops at a native village, hides the chest and Virginia, and when Jack arrives conspires with Barunda to have the natives lead him astray. He then recovers his contraband and continues up river; Virginia ultimately escapes by diving off the boat. Meanwhile Von Horn, Maxon and Sing Lee sail to Borneo, encounter the Ithaca, and enlist the Dyaks to take them to Muda Saffir. The latter, having survived his dip in the drink, flags them down. He and von Horn make a secret deal and continue up river without Maxon, who is stricken with fever. Jack's band, lost, encounters an orangutan band after fighting off more Dyaks. Finding one of them has captured Virginia, they fight the apes. Von Horn, Muda Saffir and a group of native warriors happen on the battle and spirit off the unconscious Virginia; Sing Lee, following, sees all. Von Horn's group and Sing Lee go back to Maxon, who is recovering. Von Horn presses his suit with Virginia. Ninaka and Barunda fall out; Barunda is murdered, but this drives Ninaka ashore. Ninaka buries the chest lest it encumber his escape. Von Horn and a couple Dyaks, returned from delivering Virginia to her father, witness this. Afterwards von Horn kills his companions to keep the secret of the treasure to himself and flees back down river, narrowly missing Muda Saffir heading the other way with two war prahus; Saffir has again abducted Virginia. She escapes again and falls in with Jack and his surviving monsters; spotted by the pirates, they flee, one of the monsters dying to cover the retreat while Jack carries Virginia to safety. Making his stand in a small canyon, he casts boulders down on their pursuers until they retreat. He promises the girl he will take her back to her father, but soon after is stricken with a fever. She tends him in his delirium. Maxon, von Horn, and Sing Lee search for Virginia, and come across the two just as Jack's fever breaks. Von Horn shoots Jack, but Sing Lee disarms him, stopping him from finishing him off. Von Horn finally reveals to Virginia that Jack is Number Thirteen, but she decides she loves Jack regardless. Then Sing Lee declares Jack is not a monster after all, but an amnesiac he had found drifting in a lifeboat and substituted for Maxon's failed experiment. He then exposes the crimes of von Horn, who flees into the jungle. An American naval vessel arrives; it turns out to be seeking von Horn, a deserter, to arrest him. The pursuit finally ends at the site of the buried "treasure," which von Horn has dug up; his headless body is found next to the opened chest. It had contained books, not treasure, and von Horn's native accomplices were evidently upset. The Maxons and Jack leave Borneo on the navy ship, and Jack's memory returns. He is conveniently revealed as Townsend Harper, the wealthy (and single) young man who took an interest in Virginia at the beginning of the book. Wedding bells are plainly not far off.
25159074	/m/09gb7sj	A Planet Called Utopia				 Except for radio and television signals, which are tightly screened, it has been over sixty years since the last visitor was allowed into Utopia, a world where everyone was immortal. So that the world's population would not outrun available surface area, marriage has been outlawed (because couples start to want to have a child), lifelong romances discouraged (for pretty much the same reason), and temporary personal relationships favored. Diseases are nonexistent, and cures have been found for all of them. Life involves pleasure and adventure (skiing, scuba diving, parachuting, automobile racing) all day long. The population nevertheless needs an occasional birth, so couples are allowed to have children according to a lottery system, such that the number of births is exactly equal to the number of accidental deaths in a year. The protagonist, Hardy Cronyn, is the first off-worlder to be allowed onto the planet in sixty years. A lot of diplomatic arm wrestling led to the planet's agreement to let him land. He promised to stay out of trouble, be responsible, and not make waves. Above all, stay out of the newspaper headlines. If he has to convene press conferences, they should be scripted, and he should not say anything off the cuff, or vaguely likely to make a disturbance. But one step off the spaceship and onto the tarmac, he does the unthinkable, and the government is suddenly plunged into damage control mode before it's too late.
25159906	/m/09gphsb	Spirit Walker	Michelle Paver	2005-09-30	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story takes place in Northern Europe, in an area inhabited by clans of humans named after different animals. These clans live a hunter-gatherer existence and adhere to a shamanic belief system. Six months after the events of Wolf Brother, Torak, the young male protagonist, is now living with the Raven Clan. One of the clan members, becomes sick and attempts to kill himself and his young nephew, but is stopped by the clan's leader. He is tied up and quarantined. Torak suspects that the sickness has been created by a group of renegade shamans known as the Soul-Eaters. Leaders from other Clans come to the Raven camp and tell them the sickness has been spreading through the forest. Torak realises that a small creature has been stalking him and trying to kill him, and when Oslak escapes and kills himself, Torak discovers that the creature was responsible. Torak sneaks out of the camp and goes into the forest seeking a cure. Wolf, Torak's companion from the previous novel, has been living with a pack in the High Mountains, but becomes unhappy with his life and he goes off to find Torak. Renn, the female protagonist, has encountered the creature at the Raven Camp and the clan's shaman, Sauenn, explains that a it is a Tokoroth: a child who has been stolen from their mother and abused by the Soul-Eaters until he or she does their bidding, the Soul-Eaters then put a demon inside the child. Renn sneaks out of the camp to find Torak and she and Wolf encounter each other. They then both go looking for him. At the seashore, Torak encounters and fights three boys from the Seal Clan: Bale, Detlan and Asrif, but is eventually overpowered. They believe that, by washing his hunting gear in the sea, he has dishonoured the Sea Mother and must be punished, so they take him by canoe to their home in the Seal Islands. Renn and Wolf meet up with some members of the Sea Eagle Clan, who take them both to the Seal Islands to help Torak. The Seal Clan's shaman, Tenris, initially wants to punish Torak until Torak informs him of the sickness. Tenris tells Torak that a cure can be made from a rare plant which grows at the top of a particular cliff: the plant must be gathered on midsummer night, which is only four days away. Torak quickly realises the Tokoroth has followed him to the island. He goes looking for it but is tricked into falling into a seal net, from which he is rescued by Wolf and Renn. They talk and establish that an orca has been killed, breaking a taboo. Only the teeth have been removed from the carcass. Renn informs Torak that she saw one of the Seal Clan near the orca's carcass, but she is unable to persuade Torak that any of the clan would break such a taboo. Torak goes with Bale, Detlan and Asrif to climb the cliff and gather the plant. Asrif climbs up but his climbing harness becomes snagged, and Torak follows him up. He has to unhook himself from his rope to rescue Deltan and to gather the plant. Unable to reach his harness, he realises that the only way back down is to dive into the sea. Under the water, he feels himself taking the form of a fish for a few moments and senses an angry orca approaching, before returning to his body. The boys rush into the water to save Torak as an orca attacks Detlan, causing him a crippling injury. When they return to the island, Torak talks with Tenris about the odd experience he had in the water. Tenris explains that Torak must be a Spirit Walker: a human with the rare ability to drift out of his own body and into the body of any other living creature. Renn is found by some of the Seal Clan and realises that Tenris was responsible for killing the orca, and that he must be a Soul-Eater. Tenris notices a scab on her hand and, mistaking it for a symptom of the sickness, tells Bale to lock her up so the sickness won't spread. On Midsummers night, Torak goes to the crag to make the cure with Tenris, but Tenris overpowers Torak with the help of two Tokoroth. Tenris admits that he is a Soul-Eater, and that he killed the orca. He reveals that he had created the rogue bear which killed Torak's father and, realizing that the bear's killer must be a powerful shaman, had sent the Tokoroth to poison the juniper berries of the forest, knowing that the epidemic will flush him out as he searches for a cure. Tenris intends to eat Torak's heart, in order to assimilate his powers and become the greatest Soul-Eater. Tenris also reveals that Torak's father was his own brother, and had been a Soul-Eater before seeing the error of his ways. Wolf appears and chases away the Tokoroth. Renn, who has persuades Bale to let her go, shoots Tenris through the hand with an arrow, giving Torak the opportunity to escape by diving off the crag. Tenris jumps after him, but the blood from his arrow-wound attracts an orca which has been seeking revenge for the killing of its mate. Before Tenris is killed by the orca, he tells Torak that his adopted father in the Raven Clan knows more about Torak's father. Torak swims to safety, and he, Renn, and Wolf, now armed with the information to save the Clans, return to the Forest.
25165996	/m/09g7hbm	Probuditi!	Chris Van Allsburg		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After seeing a show by magician Lomax the Magnificent, two friends, Calvin and Rodney, decide to use his hypnosis trick on Calvin's sister Trudy. The trick is achieved with a rotating spiral disc, and the spell is broken by saying "Probuditi!". It is Calvin's birthday and his mother asks him to watch his sister while she's away and when she returns she will make Calvin his favorite dinner, spaghetti. Calvin and Rodney are successful and Trudy soon believes she is a dog. Calvin and Rodney enjoy watching Trudy until they realize that Calvin's mom will come home soon, and they have forgotten the word to reverse the spell. They frantically try different methods to turn Trudy back to normal, but in the end it is Trudy who silently helps them to remember.
25167608	/m/09g7vz9	Soul Eater	Michelle Paver	2006	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Wolf is kidnapped and Torak and Renn set out to find him. During their journey, Torak takes a spirit journey, in the form of a raven, and discovers that the Soul Eaters have captured Wolf. They follow Wolf's kidnappers to the Far North, where they encounter Inuktiluk, a member of the White Fox Clan. They go with him to the White Fox Clan's camp, where the clan's mage (shaman) tells them of a vision she has had, in which Torak is about to hit Wolf with an axe. They continue their search for Wolf. Torak secretly changes places with a boy who is serving as an acolyte to the Soul Eaters. Torak goes into the cave, where he has to help the Soul Eaters in order to maintain his disguise. Renn goes into the cave and hides. While in the cave, Torak kills an owl, then takes a spirit journey into a bear and finds out where Wolf is. Torak and Renn find Wolf, who is distracted by an injury to his tail and doesn't recognise them. They have to use Renn's axe to cut off Wolf's tail, fulfilling the mage prophecy. They free all the animals which the Soul Eaters have been holding captive, but the Soul Eaters release demons. Renn takes the Fire Opal, a religious artifact belonging to the Soul Eaters, and as they flee, Torak and Renn become separated when Renn floats away on a piece of river ice. Meanwhile, Torak becomes snow blind and is captured by the Soul Eaters. Renn eventually makes it to the riverbank, and discovers that the Fire Opal can be destroyed by being buried under stone while a life is sacrificed. She intends to kill herself to get rid of the Fire Opal, but before she can do so, Torak and the Soul Eaters arrive. Torak takes the form of a spirit bear and attacks the Soul Eaters. Renn is about to jump but at the last minute, the Bat Mage sacrifices herself to atone for the fact that Torak's father once saved her life. Torak, Renn and Wolf are rescued by Fin-Kedinn and Inuktiluk. They return to the forest together.
25170748	/m/09gqm74	One Day	David Nicholls	2009-06-11		 Dexter and Emma spend the night together following their graduation from Edinburgh University in 1988. They talk about how they will be once they are 40. While they do not become romantically involved completely, this is the beginning of their friendship. The novel visits their lives and their relationship on July 15 in successive years in each chapter for 20 years. Emma wants to improve the world and begins writing and performing plays, which remain unsuccessful, while Dexter travels through the world, drinking and hooking up with women. Eventually both move to London where Emma becomes a waitress in Kentish Town at a Tex-Mex restaurant, while Dexter becomes a successful television presenter. While there are various attempts from both sides to start a relationship, coincidences stop Emma and Dexter from getting together and while they have relationships with other people, they stay best friends, both secretly longing for the other. They are drawn together closer through a holiday together and the death of Dexter's mother. Emma breaks up with her boyfriend, Ian, after realising she is creating a life with someone she doesn't love. During this time Emma is able to find a job as a teacher, after various years of struggle, despite a "double-first degree". Dexter meanwhile develops a drinking and drug problem and watches his career collapse. The friendship between Emma and Dexter grows more and more difficult, after Emma is constantly hurt by Dexter who attempts to hide his feelings for her from both her and himself. After being treated rudely by Dexter at a restaurant, Emma breaks up the friendship. At the wedding of Emma's former roommate, Emma and Dexter meet again. Emma admits that she wants Dexter back. At this point of time she has just ended an affair with her headmaster, Dexter has fallen in love with another woman, Sylvie, who is pregnant. At this reunion, Dexter invites Emma, who is disappointed by the situation, to his wedding. Emma tries to overcome her problems and begins to write, while Dexter is unemployed and overwhelmed by his role as a father. After realizing this, he and Emma for the first time have sex. They do not get together and Emma leaves to go to Paris in the hope of writing a successful novel. When Dexter visits her in Paris, he learns that she met someone and likes him and for the first time admits his feelings to her. After talking about their relationship, Emma chooses Dexter. Emma and Dexter get married and are happy together, however Emma wants a child. The couple finds themselves frustrated by the failing attempts to have a child. Dexter however is able to open a deli-cafe and finds himself suddenly successful again. Emma gets her book published and becomes a successful children's author. On the anniversary of the day they met after graduation and the day they got together, Emma and Dexter have an appointment to see a house. While travelling there, Emma has a bike accident and dies. After her death, Dexter finds himself in despair. He starts to drink again and provokes people in bars in order to get beaten. He is comforted through his ex-wife Sylvie, his father and his daughter. The upcoming year he travels together with his daughter to Edinburgh where he and Emma met and they climb the same mountain together that Emma and Dexter climbed 19 years ago. The book ends with a memory of what happened after that first night together in 1988 and Emma's and Dexter's first kiss and promise to stay in touch and their goodbye.
25172411	/m/09gq1x1	The Man Who Could Be Santa				 The story is told from the point of view of six and ¾ year old Abby who insists she will believe in Santa Claus even when she is in “the hundredth grade.” She and her cousins form a “spy club” to find out if the man who lives down the street with the long white beard, a "belly that shakes like jelly" and a bunch of reindeer in his front yard is the same person who slides down their chimneys every Christmas. The three young detectives find other clues: a Christmas tree farm down the road, a ham radio that receives messages from the North Pole and remote control model air planes which deliver toys to children all over the world.
25175070	/m/02y2lm	Burning Chrome	William Gibson	1982-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 "Burning Chrome" tells the story of two hackers who hack systems for profit. The two main characters are Bobby Quine who specializes in software and Automatic Jack whose field is hardware. A third character in the story is Rikki, a girl with whom Bobby becomes infatuated and for whom he wants to become wealthy. Automatic Jack acquires a piece of Russian hacking software that is very sophisticated and hard to trace. The rest of the story unfolds with Bobby deciding to break into the system of a notorious and vicious criminal called Chrome, who handles money transfers for organized crime, and Automatic Jack reluctantly agreeing to help. The break-in is ultimately successful, but Rikki decides to leave the group and go to Hollywood, to the grief of Quine and Jack who have grown to love her.
25179735	/m/09gqfr2	Flight of the Intruder	Stephen Coonts		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 Flight of the Intruder begins with a night attack mission flown by Jake Grafton and his navigator Morgan “Morg” McPherson from the USN aircraft carrier, USS Shiloh, striking a target in North Vietnam. Although there are many militarily valuable targets in North Vietnam, Grafton and other aviators are instead routinely ordered to hit worthless targets&mdash;typically “suspected truck parks”. The pilots are barred from hitting the more valuable targets because of restrictive “rules of engagement” imposed on American forces. Despite the minimal damage even a successful strike will inflict on the enemy (whom the aviators derisively refer to as “Gomers”), North Vietnamese airspace is heavily defended, making the missions extremely dangerous for the aviators. Grafton and Morg elude most of the defenses, but a stray shot fired by a lone farmer on the ground fatally wounds Morg. Traumatized by the loss of his good friend, Grafton begins to question whether his efforts have been worth it. He is eventually paired up with Virgil 'Tiger' Cole as his new navigator. Cole, an aggressive veteran with experience over the most heavily defended areas of North Vietnam, becomes aware of Grafton’s frustrations, and the two begin to plan an unauthorized mission against a Communist Party center in Hanoi, which will be a serious violation of the restrictive rules of engagement. With the help of one of the Shiloh’s intelligence officers, Cole and Grafton locate and plan the mission. Flying the mission nearly proves fatal due to problems with the A-6’s weapons system. Once completed, they don't even know if they successfully hit anything. Grafton’s superiors soon learn of the unauthorized strike&mdash;there is no way to hide the fact that Grafton’s plane was shot at by Surface to Air Missiles, yet no SAM sites were positioned near the target they were supposed to hit. Both Grafton and Cole are prosecuted by the Navy, with a conviction being certain. The charges are dropped however, as the Richard Nixon administration is about to authorize a massive new air war campaign against Hanoi, “Linebacker II”. The Navy decides that they can’t prosecute pilots for flying a mission against Hanoi when the President is about to order an escalation along the same lines. The remainder of the novel follows Grafton’s exploits in what became known as The Christmas Bombings. He also romances Callie, his future wife. He is shot down during the offensive, and is forced to confront the horror of war on the ground, and the story closes with Grafton being rescued.
25183182	/m/09gjn19	Robby Fights the World			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 As the battlefield on which so many adolescent wars are waged, high school can be hell. No one knows this better than Robby Meyers, who is forced to move to south Florida in the middle of his freshman year after his father’s dies in a motorcycle accident. His older brothers Pete and Gus have no trouble making new friends and carving out spots for themselves on various athletic teams. Robby, on the other hand, is small for his age and better known for picking fights than for finishing them. Not surprisingly, he quickly gets himself into trouble at his new school with teachers, bullies, and of course girls. But then Robby meets Danny Ramerez, and things begin to look up. Danny’s tough but fair, cool but loyal, and their friendship definitely improves Robby’s social status. He even garners the attention of several girls, including a bright, thoughtful young student named Lacy. But as time passes and the two boys become closer friends, Robby suspects that all is not as it seems with Danny. His parents, Danny tells him, are “not in the picture,” leaving him in the custody of his sinister uncle. When Danny hatches a plan to get out from under his uncle’s thumb, Robby must choose whether to risk his own neck to help him or to remain uninvolved. Robby Fights the World is a gripping coming-of-age novel about a boy who learns first-hand just how hard it can be to distinguish between right and wrong. As Robby struggles with friendship, honor, loss, and love, he is called on to make the hardest choice of his young life, the consequences of which will no doubt change him forever. Joel Christie’s young-adult novel offers a realistic (and surprisingly humorous) glimpse into the complex, gritty world of modern teens.
25184115	/m/09gk0s5	Shimmer				 Barnes has written the novel Shimmer (Unbridled Books, July 2009, ISBN 1-932961-67-4). A book about CEO Robbie Case, whose high tech company is built on a lie, Shimmer follows Robbie as he attempts to unwind the lie he has created. The fictional company, Core Communications, is a provider of high end networking services to mainframe computers. Along with his partner and cousin, Robbie has created an elaborate system that supposedly allows mainframe computers to communicate at impossibly fast speeds. However, the system does not work. It is actually built on a technical and financial Ponzi scheme that will fail if the company ever stops expanding.
25189629	/m/09gky30	Shark Girl				 Jane Arrowood, an aspiring high school artist, goes swimming at her local beach on June 21st. While in the water, she is attacked by a shark. Injuries due to this attack lead to doctors having to amputate her right arm. When she wakes from her coma, Jane sees her dreams of becoming a professional artist crushed. She spends nearly a month in the hospital, undergoing therapy, where she meets a young boy, Justin, who has had his leg amputated. The two become friends and Justin urges Jane to draw him a picture, though she declines. While she was attacked by the shark, a man took a video of her in the water. This video he then sold to the news, which gained her wide-spread attention. Flowers, cards, and "Pity Bears" arrive every day while she remains in the hospital. Her older brother, Michael, was credited with saving her life. He tied off her arm after he rescued her from the water. Finally, she gets out of the hospital. She returns home, struggling with the fact that she is to never use her right arm again. Jane also loved to cook, something she thinks she no longer can do. She also keeps on trying to draw, but never manages to have her left arm get the circles correct. The story goes on tell of her difficulties about fitting in, but by the end of the book, she accepts who she is. Also, around the end of the book, she finally manages to draw a face that "looks back" at her. These combined allow her to finally overcome her grief.
25195739	/m/09gkrt8	City of Light	Lauren Belfer	1999	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in the city of Buffalo, New York in 1901, as the Pan-American Exposition's planning and construction is under way. The main character and narrator, Louisa Barrett, is headmistress of the Macaulay School for Girls, inspired by The Buffalo Seminary and is a very influential woman in a time of male predominance. The first major event in the book is the death of Karl Speyer, an engineering hero that designed the generators for the hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls. This causes a chain of events that leads Louisa to become involved in the struggle of the city's hierarchy for control of Niagara. It was revealed in the novel that Louisa Barrett was sexually abused by the former president Grover Cleveland. She couldn't speak up because she feared the same fate as Maria Halpin—who had been sent to an asylum. Thomas Sinclair realizes that Grace looks a lot like Louisa Barrett - Grace's godmother and real mother. Louisa's enthusiasm for Grace reinforces this idea - she loves Grace because she is her real mom. Bates as a radical - always cites God, Nature. He seems to think that electricity is only for the rich and prefers primitive gas lamps etc. Has dramatic flair. In the name of God, misapplication of cause. Susanah Riley cried after the Speech, she is a big fan of Bates. Ms Mary Talbert (mother of Millicent) - a black woman seems to be protesting against the Pan-Am Exposition, because they portray the old plantation as a happy place where black laborers worked to raise family. However, conditions in plantations were inhumane and black were subject to physical and verbal abuse, and many more undesirable actions (treated like animals etc.) Beloved by Toni Morison. Louisa dreams of starting a life with Franklin Fisk for a brief moment, but later on Grace reveals to her suspicion about her father wanting to court her - tom courting Louisa. Louisa is shocked but would love the possibility. Franklin Fiske is an undercover writer for the World News - his alibi is that he is a photographer (capturing the scenic sites of Niagara). He believes Speyer's death was an act of murder and wants to investigate the issue more. He asks Louisa whether she knows anything that might potentially help him determine the murderer. After the death of the second plant manager FMr. Fitshugh, Peter Fronzyk, brother of Maddie Fronzcyk replaces him. Tom asks Louisa whether she wants to get married - seems like the logical choice - to ask someone he already knew. She quickly shows signs of interest but keeps calm - is gradually being more comforted by the idea of marriage. She could finally interact with Grace in ways she could have not, such as hugging her etc., more affectionate forms of love. Another death - the chief manager (something like that of the Niagara plant) - Louisa has her suspicions that the 2 deaths - Karl's and this guys (Fitzhugh) were no accident, but instead a series of murders. She wants to find out the syndicates. Tom and Louisa develop a deeper relationship, kiss, Luisa lies down on Tom's chest. Tom explains his use of Peter but Frederick Krakaeur - another Morgan man, overheard their conversation. Tom says his dream is to generate so much electricity so that he can give electricity out for free. Morgan and Tom - clash of goals. Tom found out Franklin Fiske's secret - that he was an undercover writer for the World magazine. Frustrated he confronted Louisa, since she was the only one he told. Apparently, Tom found out through other means. Tom invited Franklin to a grand lunch - He told me a complex tale about the bribery of water inspectors. He corroborated information I've found elsewhere, although he offered non-concrete proof. (398) Franklin then admits he loves Louisa and gives her an invitation for marriage. Louisa, while attracted to Franklin, realizes that her only path was towards Grace, with Tom. Louisa tries to seek out the help of Grover Cleveland, the father of her child by visiting his house. Grover Cleveland turns out to be so much different from what Louisa pictured him to be at the night at the Iroquois hotel. Louisa asks Cleveland about protecting Grace, through his connections with Francis Lyde Stenson - the chief attorney of Morgan - the one behind threats to Grace. Cleveland concludes that no man would place threats on an innocent girl and is helpless. Louisa returns home, where she sees Bates and Susanah get sent to jail (for bombing the power plant), receives a letter from Francesca requesting her to go to the hospital/ asylum. There she sees Susanah, who informs Louisa she lied about the male nude paintings and reveals to Louisa that she was the one who killed Karl Speyer and James Fithugh, the replacement engineer. She apparently seduced both of them and led them to their watery deaths in the Niagara Falls. She claims to have a full assistant who helped her commit the murders and threatens to reveal the assistant. (who was revealed to be Grace, she stole his father's papers because Susannah said that she would be a heroine) Dexter Rumsey revealed that he and a couple of other friends - Wilcox, Miss Love, knew Louisa's secret. Mr. Rumsey was the only one who knew for sure since he visited New York when Louisa was supposedly there. Krauker left the city under the influence of Rumsey. Tom was also influenced by Rumsey to leave to the west to work on the Arizona river - create a dam. Grace dies in Goat island because she was twirled and fell to hit her head on a rock. Louisa dreams of what would Grace would have been like, claiming that it lightens her spirit. Franklin Fiske still tries to court Louisa, but Louisa knows she won't get married.
25197875	/m/09gcjd0	Duncan and Dolores				 Dolores, a loud, boisterous little girl, acquires a pet cat named Duncan, and proceeds to dote on him. Duncan is terrified of her. Unfortunately, Dolores continues to treat him without much gentleness or respect. Duncan hides from her and also seems to prefer the company of Dolores' older sister Faye, which of course makes Dolores jealous. Dolores ignores Duncan for a while. Duncan misses her attentions and in the end acknowledges their friendship (only to be driven back under the furniture by Dolores' stentorian rejoicing).
25203353	/m/09g8drh	The Million Cities				 Sometime in the future when the Earth has become over-industrialized, and the entire surface has been covered with steel, it is on the verge of running out of natural resources. Nearly all of the Earth's resources have been used up; a single park in the Earth's equatorial region remains. The world's governments have built as far up and down as is possible. Billions upon billions of people live on the Earth, and the only place left to go is outer space. There is a society called Chartists that have the plans for building spaceships, and the maps of the heavens are in their sole custody. Gearing up for an all out massive development suitable an exodus, the government suddenly reverses itself, and issues an order to arrest all the Chartists, disassemble their ships and launchpads, and destroy all copies of the plans.
25203993	/m/09gnfw9	Grunts!			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story follows a group of orcs who always find themselves on the front lines of battle against the carefully prepared and always triumphant forces of good. The orcs decided to organize themselves and fight back. As a satire of high fantasy the novel mocks most of the conventions of the genre from using traditional villainous races, orcs, as the protagonists, to having the noble characters have much less than noble motivations and secrets. The opening of the book plays up the orc warleader sent to reclaim a weapons cache in preparation for the 'Last Battle' between good and evil, which is well on its way. They are assisted by a pair of halflings whose cute demeanor is contrasted with extremely violent acts. The orcs uncover a dragon's hoard of modern military weaponry, which is endowed with a geas that transforms their minds into replicas of the stereotypical United States Marine Corps mindset, during the Vietnam War. Gentle continues the storyline through the Last Battle and the orcs' integration into society, along with a military threat that rivals the orcs themselves.
25205151	/m/09glgsk	Night Whispers	Erin Hunter	2010-11-23	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Dovepaw continue to seek answers to the mysterious prophecy that binds them, they learn that another cat may play an essential role in defeating the Dark Forest.
25207441	/m/09gmx_7	Dracula the Un-dead				 Twenty-five years have passed since Dracula met his end at the hands of Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris. Though they were victorious in their quest, the band of heroes has now become a broken shadow of its former self; Jack Seward has become a morphine addict obsessed with stamping out the undead, Arthur Holmwood hides behind his loveless marriage and Jonathan Harker drowns his sorrows and insecurities in alcohol and prostitutes over Mina's remaining taint from Dracula, which has caused her to retain her youth. The novel begins with Seward tracking down Elizabeth Bathory, whom he believes is a vampire. After seeing her bathe in a young woman's blood, he tracks her to a theater in Paris. Quincey Harker, son to Jonathan and Mina, is in Paris having been forced to attend law school instead of pursuing a career in theater. Quincey learns that Basarab, a Romanian actor who is taking Europe by storm, is in town to perform in Richard III, and vows to see his performance no matter how it enrages his father, whom he has grown to despise. To his surprise, he is summoned by Basarb to his dressing room, where they strike up an unlikely friendship. However they are disturbed when Bathory's vampiric attendants attempt to attack Basarab, although they are thwarted by Seward. As Seward chases the vampires, he is struck and killed by a carriage in which Bathory and the vampires escape. Abraham Van Helsing, now a sickly old man, returns to London after hearing of Seward's death. He believes that Dracula has returned. Quincey, through Basarab's urgings, becomes involved with the Lyceum Theater where Bram Stoker is currently trying to put together a stage performance of his failed novel. Quincey is shocked to find his parents are characters in the novel, as are their former friends. Quincey fervently reads the novel and researches Dracula, whom he finds was a real-life Romanian prince nicknamed Vlad the Impaler. After the actor playing Dracula quits, he approaches Basarab about playing the role; Basarab grows angry with the portrayal of Dracula as a monster, and decides to accept the role if only to right what he sees as slander to a national hero. Soon after, Quincey learns in the newspaper that his father was murdered in Piccadilly after being impaled on a large wooden stake. While Quincey travels home, Mina is brought into the coroner's office to identify Jonathan's body. The detective, Cotford, insinuates that Van Helsing had orchestrated both Jonathan and Seward's death. Years ago, Cotford worked the Jack the Ripper case and had nearly caught him; his top suspect was Abraham Van Helsing because of the gross mutilations he performed on corpses that caused him to lose his medical license. Mina returns home to prepare for Jonathan's funeral and finds Quincey there and enraged; he had smashed open his father's off-limits safe and found inside the journals that he and his friends kept while on their quest to hunt down Dracula as well as his mother's affair with the Count. Consumed with grief over the misplaced anger toward his father and the betrayal that caused his father to become a drunkard, Quincey vows to hunt Dracula down and kill him himself. After leaving his mother behind, Quincey is accosted by Van Helsing, who threatens the boy to give up his thirst for vengeance or suffer for it. Late that same night, Bathory sneaks into Mina's room and rapes her, although Mina at first thought it was the spirit of Jonathan or Dracula. Mina also consumed some of Bathory's blood, giving her visions of her horrible past as an abused 15-year-old wife of a depraved despot, and shunned by her family because of her homosexual tendencies. Quincey pays a visit to Arthur Holmwood, who initially rebuff's Quincey's plea for help. Arthur changes his mind after a terrifying dream in which a skeletal Lucy attacks him. Unable to find Quincey, Arthur turns to Mina to help locate the boy before Dracula can get to him; Mina senses he has gone back to the Lyceum Theater in order to hopefully get Basarab to help him destroy the Count. During a dress rehearsal, Bathory confronts Basarab and the two duel in a back room of the theater. Bathory outmaneuvers Basarab and smashes an oil lantern at his feet, catching him and the theater on fire. Quincey arrives to find the theater in flames, and despite his best efforts he cannot find his friend and is forced to escape the theater. Outside Arthur and Mina, who feared Quincey dead, are overjoyed to see him alive although Arthur is suspicious to see that he is completely unharmed. Cotford, who received a message that the key to the Ripper murders would be at the theater, tries to arrest Arthur, Mina and Quincey but Arthur and Quincey manage to escape, while Mina is arrested for the murder of one of Bathory's vampires. After eluding the police, Quincey and Arthur break into Seward's place and find that he was in correspondence with Basarab, which puzzles Quincey. Arthur receives a message from Van Helsing, saying he has been attacked, and to meet him at a hotel where he is staying under Renfield's name. Luckily, Quincey and Arthur manage to get into the hotel because of Arthur's social status and are taken to Van Helsing's room. Van Helsing reveals that it was he who gave their story to Bram Stoker as a sort of guide to future generations who may encounter the undead, and asks that the two "join us". Van Helsing then drops a bombshell; Dracula's true name is Vladimir Basarab, the same man Quincey saw as a mentor. Arthur furiously shoves the old man away, and Van Helsing reveals himself as a newly turned vampire. During the struggle, Van Helsing manages to shoot Arthur, who collapses. Van Helsing gives Quincey one last chance to join their side, which he refuses. As Van Helsing is about to drink Quincey's blood, Arthur manages to shoot Van Helsing with a crossbow and in a rage over their former mentor allying himself with Dracula, tackles Van Helsing out a window, where they both fall to their deaths. As Cotford and a handful of officers take Mina back for questioning, they are overcome by an eerie red fog and one by one officers are picked off by Bathory, who is in the form of a gargoyle. Realizing that Van Helsing's earlier rants about the supernatural were real, Cotford attempts to save Mina by getting her on one of London's underground trains. He tries to fight the monster, stabbing it in the leg with a broken sword; Cotford is killed when the gargoyle's tail decapitates him. Mina manages to get on a train, where she is attacked by Bathory; just as Bathory is set to kill Mina Dracula appears. It is revealed that by marriage Dracula and Bathory are cousins but while both became vampires, Dracula still saw himself as a soldier of God, while Bathory spurned God and all those who worshiped him. The two fight, in which Dracula is overpowered and nearly killed; only Mina's quick thinking saves him by having Bathory yanked from the train via a loose cable. The sword in her leg makes contact with the tracks, causing Bathory to burst into flame. At Dracula's insistence, Mina takes him to Carfax Abbey to make a final stand against Bathory; during the trip, we learn that the real reason Dracula came to London 25 years ago was to hunt down Bathory, who was slaughtering women under the guise of Jack the Ripper, and though Dracula admits the heroes' acts were noble and chivalrous, they were hunting the wrong monster (The deaths on the Demeter — the ship that brought Dracula to England — were actually caused by a virus among the crew; Dracula was forced to feed on Lucy after his arrival in England simply because of starving after so long without blood). Quincey also makes for Carfax, hoping to kill Dracula before he gets to his mother. Dracula appeals to Mina to let him turn her into a vampire, so that even if Bathory kills him, Mina will be able to destroy her in her weakened state. Mina initially refuses, believing Dracula is the one who viciously murdered Jonathan and Seward; Dracula denies this, saying that he would never hurt them for a reason unspecified. However, her fear for Quincey's life forces her to give in, and Dracula finally turns Mina into a vampire; shockingly, to Dracula, consuming the tainted blood he put into Mina years ago heals him and renews his strength. Quincey arrives at Carfax, and is heartbroken to see his mother dead in a coffin. However, she awakens when blood from Quincey's wounds falls on her face, and she nearly attacks her son. Overcome with grief, Quincey spurs what his mother has become, and, despite her pleas, chases off after Dracula. Bathory and Dracula engage in a bloody duel, in which Bathory nearly kills Dracula with the same kukri blade that Jonathan used against him 25 years ago. However Dracula, the more skilled swordsman, outmaneuvers Bathory and impales her with his broken sword, stabbing her in the chest with the kukri blade. Bathory collapses and crumples to dust as Quincey confronts Dracula, who refuses to defend himself. Dracula's compassion is revealed with a thunderous revelation: that Quincey is truly Dracula's son and not Jonathan's, and though he loved him dearly, he would never harm Quincey or those who raised him. Mina confirms this fact, and suddenly the true reason behind the disintegration of his family and their friendships was laid bare. Refusing to become the monster that his father became, Quincey leaves both behind. Dracula takes solace that his son is safe and succumbs to his wounds, falling off a cliff and bursting into flames as the sun rises. Mina, forsaken by her son and cursed to live eternally, follows Dracula off of the cliff to be reunited with her two loves (Jonathan and Dracula). Some time later, Quincey manages to board an ocean liner by bribing one of the workers to let him on, hoping for a better life in America, and to be as far away from his family's past as possible. Unknown to him, boxes labeled as property of Vladimir Basarab are also loaded on board. The ocean liner is later revealed to be the RMS Titanic.
25213675	/m/09g7wkq	Handy Manny's Motorcycle Adventure				 Manny and the tools are heading off to their family reunion, when Abuelito, Pepe, Chico and Lola drop by to collect the movie projecter, so they can show old movies at the reunion. Manny's motorcycle is broken, he drops off at Kelly's to get the spare part and Pat finds his "cousin" on the front of the hardware catalogue. They set off, but then realise that the gas tank is low of gas. They spot a gas-station and spot the gas pump is broken. Manny fixes it and fills up. A big hardware truck comes and fills up. Pat spots it has his "cousin" on the front. He, Flicker and Squeeze travel into the delivery van and try to find his "cousin". They stay in there too long and are soon found travelling along the road! Manny comes out of the gas-station shop with snacks. They realise that three tools are missing. Pops, the gas-station owner says that the truck is heading for Big Town Hardware. Manny tries to get to the truck and takes the back way, which is the quickest. They reach a farm and some cows are on the road. Manny trys to overtake them but hit a rock and has blown tyre. To pass the time, Manny decides to round up the cows and put them in their field. He fixes the fence, so they can't get out any more. A farmer comes along and Manny tells him about the blown tyre. The farmer introduces his family of animals and fixes the tyre. Manny thanks the farmer and drives off. Meanwhile, in the delivery truck Pat and the other look to see if Manny is coming. They are not. They are travelling along, when a bridge that has been destroyed stops them. They try to jump over the lagoon. Manny and the tools cross the lagoon safely. They are on the road again and spot Big Town Hardware, where Pat and the others are Manny thinks they are the truck, but they are not. Pat and the others are searching for Pat's "cousin" inside. They spot a cardboard drawing of him, but don't see him for real. They wait in the truck, but Manny and the tools are inside the building. When Pat, Flicker and Squeeze are in the truck, it drives off. Manny comes out of the building, just in time and spots Pat and the others. He chases the truck on his motorcycle. A van is in front and will not let Manny pass. A few minutes later, the van turns out into another road and Manny can go faster. They see the truck and take a shortcut to get there. Manny is behind the delivery truck and Pat and the others see them. Manny tries to overtake the truck, but a car passes. Stretch leaps on the windscreen of the truck and gets the driver to stop. The driver stops and Manny gets the tools out of the delivery van. He thanks the driver to stop and heads off to his family reunion. He meets Uncle Tito, Grandma Pedro, Aunt Sonia, Aunt Lupe and Uncle Igre. The episode ends with the family singing Family Reunion.
25224782	/m/09gpjg_	Spin the Glass Web				 An eminently successful screenwriter finds himself mixed up in a murder. The police want him. Can he prove his innocence?
25229491	/m/09gfjs8	The Duplicated Man				 At war with Venus for decades, the Earth's military authority stood its ground. Missiles kept raining down on Earth with unpredictable regularity. Nobody knew where the next missile would hit. But conventional wisdom dictated that every attack be met with a counter-attack. However, a pacifist peace party sought to have a truce declared with Venus. Paul Danton, a member of a subversive political party, who believed in peace so be his answer to make peace was considered. It was a peculiar stroke of luck that he found a human duplication machine. It was an old machine, and it didn't work reliably after the first five copies were made. But if he could just duplicate the right world leaders, essentially make extra copies of them, maybe he would have a chance bringing peace to Earth and Venus.
25230784	/m/09g6tx8	The Miernik Dossier	Charles McCarry	1973	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The novel chiefly concerns several expatriates living in Geneva in 1959: American agent Paul Christopher, British agent Nigel Collins, Sudanese prince Kalash el Khatar, Hungarian concentration camp survivor Ilona Bentley, Polish UN official Tadeusz Miernik, as well as Miernik's sister Zofia, a Warsaw University student. When Miernik is reluctant to return to his native Poland despite orders to do so, Christopher suspects that Miernik may actually be a Communist spy working for the Soviets. Christopher is instructed to determine whether this is the case while he, Miernik, Collins, el Khatar, Bentley, and Zofia journey to Sudan to deliver a gift to el Khatar's powerful father, trying to avoid crossing paths with a rising Sudanese terrorist organization known as the Anointed Liberation Front (ALF) along the way.
25231794	/m/09glnvy	La Vendetta	Honoré de Balzac	1830		 La Vendetta is a short work relating the tragic fate of Ginevra Piombo, the daughter of proud Corsican immigrants, who has the misfortune of falling in love with another Corsican Luigi Porta. When it becomes known that Luigi is the sole survivor of a massacre in which the rest of his family were the victims of a bloody vendetta with Ginevra's family, Ginevra's father Bartolomeo is determined to complete the act of vengeance by having him killed. But Ginevra refuses to yield to her father's demands and she and Luigi are married. Over the following years the pair eke out a miserable existence, dogged by hunger and poverty, while Ginevra's wealthy father refuses to lift a hand to support her: it is as much as he can do to refrain from murdering Luigi. Ginevra gives birth to a child, but she and the child die on the very day that Monsieur Piombo finally relents and decides to assist the impoverished couple. Before he can act, however, Luigi visits him and gives him the tresses of his deceased daughter. "Dead! Our two families were doomed to exterminate each other. Here is all that remains of her," he says, laying Ginevra's long black hair upon the table. Ginevra's parents are shaken, as though a stroke of lightning has blasted them. Luigi departs. "He has spared me a shot, for he is dead," says Bartolomeo, slowly, gazing on the ground at his feet.
25235058	/m/09g68nf	The Tears of Autumn	Charles McCarry	1974	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 In November 1963, American intelligence officer Paul Christopher investigates the assassination of US President John F Kennedy. Believing that the Kennedy White House was behind the assassination of Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, Christopher deduces that Vietnamese leaders had Kennedy assassinated as revenge. When one of Kennedy's former advisers threatens Christopher not to discuss the matter with anyone else, Christopher quits the Agency and heads to Vietnam to find the truth.
25235526	/m/09glw5y	Transit			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The protagonist Richard Avery reaches down to touch an object, and is whisked 79 light years away from Earth where he finds himself and three other people in a battle-to-the-death situation against alien humanoids, the "Golden Ones", who have been deposited in the same place, and are equally confused why they are there. When the protagonist finally reaches the "Golden Ones", they are of the opinion that it is merely a game, with the killing of human beings the prime objective. In fact, the combat had been set up by transcendental elder aliens. Their objective was to pick the future rulers of the sector, by means of a small contest, sparing both races an inevitable long and bloody large scale war. Albeit the "Golden" seem stronger and swifter, the humans eventually prevail because they are able to show compassion.
25236328	/m/09g6tzq	The Unselfish Gene	Robert Douglas Burns	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 At the novel's beginning, Kristen Norman copes with an attack of clinical depression as she and a team of moon colonists await the start of a mission to return to plague-stricken Earth. The team's mission: to save the human race. All but a handful of Earth-bound humans have been killed or turned into zombie-like invalids by a mutated forms of bird flu known as Low-Path and High-Path. Isolated by politics and limited resources, the moon colony was spared infection, but the colonists have their own health problems. High levels of radiation have damaged the DNA of the limited gene pool. The same radiation has damaged Kristen's and others' minds as well, resulting in high instances of mental illness. The moon colony desperately needs resources to survive. The Earth, with nearly all the population dead or dying, is a large warehouse waiting to be raided. The moon needs genetic engineering equipment, pharmaceuticals, scientific equipment, seed stock, and, most of all, new human genetic material. They have been promised the later by a mysterious contact on Earth, one of the few surviving Earthbound humans, code-named "Deep Throat." Deep Throat, claims to have a large sperm and ova bank that she is willing to donate to the cause, but remains secretive as to his or her identity and extent of resource. The multiple levels of the name Deep Throat are not lost on the moon men and women. To get to the Earth and back, moon engineers have bankrupted the moon's resources to build a spaceship design resurrected from the 1950s , The Anita, an atomic-powered brute of a space ship. But the moon men have been too long in building the Anita. A rogue comet, named Kali, was recently discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. The planet-killing impact is less than two weeks away. The Anita's technology is unproven in a planetary atmosphere, and the ship was hastily completed in order to beat Kali to the punch. While Kristen copes with depression the old-fashioned way — with pharmaceuticals — her teammates Jimmy Olson, Jorge Blanca and Gayle Ring are also dealing with introspective mental states as they await the final stage of the Anita's approach to the Earth. All four are in currently in The Ark, a small tug-boat tender to the Anita, when the unthinkable happens. An explosion of mysterious origin depressurizes the Anita, killing nearly everyone aboard. With no time to re-staff the Anita, Jimmy, Kristen, Jorge and Gayle must conduct an abbreviated, hurried mission to Earth. The goal is to at least rescue the frozen sperm and ova and key genetic engineering and therapy equipment before Kali strikes. A rescue mission by Jimmy and Jorge finds only five aboard the Anita who survived the depressurization: Crystal Karen, Tisha Smith, Bobby Randel, Daniel Kaplan, and Abraham Badr. The Anita lands successfully, but as the mission on the surface proceeds it becomes obvious that explosion and the death of the crew was sabotage. Shortly before the Anita lands, Hannah Alman, seventeen years old and a survivor of the Low-Path plague, is taking refuge in the Dallas Zoo. Hannah is rebelling, out on her own, truant from a small commune of survivors living near Fair Park in the southern part of the city. She is not aware that her commune is about to be destroyed by the Anita's landing.
25237159	/m/09gcjyn	The Secret Lovers	Charles McCarry	1977	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Shortly after delivering an important manuscript to American agent Paul Christopher, a European agent is killed mysteriously by a hit-and-run driver. The novel seesaws back and forth between Christopher's investigation of the agent's death and Christopher's relationship with his unfaithful wife, Cathy. The story takes place in 1960, after The Miernik Dossier but before The Tears of Autumn.
25239384	/m/09g8t27	The Dark Goddess	Marvin Albert	1978	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Archaeologist Moira Rhalles is kidnapped by the KGB while she is on a dig in France. Her historian husband and her ex-boyfriend team up to try to rescue her. The title refers to the dark earth-mother goddess, of which a paleolithic statuette was made.
25249203	/m/09gfjyt	The Last Supper	Charles McCarry		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 The Last Supper fills a great deal of back story to the Paul Christopher saga. The first part of the novel details Christopher's parents' courtship and marriage in pre-WWII Germany, Christopher's childhood, and the mystery surrounding his mother's disappearance. The second part of the novel picks up right after The Tears of Autumn, with Christopher being imprisoned in China for espionage.
25253669	/m/09g8fbf	Stargonauts	David S. Garnett		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 The novel takes place sometime in the future, when the Earth is dominated by several wealthy and lucrative businesspeople. William Ewart - owner of Ewart Communications - is one of these, and is completely obsessed with maintaining his position as the wealthiest man on Earth. After a hostile takeover by another rival leaves him powerless, Ewart leaves Earth along with his henchman Grawl to marry his fourth wife, a princess of Algol. Along with a dysfunctional group of mercenaries and missionaries, the group proceeds to the pleasure-planet Hideaway, where Ewart hopes to make a quick comeback after his humiliating downfall on Earth.
25253895	/m/09gb34n	Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex	Eoin Colfer	2010-07-20	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 On Vatnajökull, a glacier in Iceland, Artemis unveils the Ice Cube, his invention to stop global warming (by shooting reflective nano wafers into the clouds, and having them rain down with the snow, and when they land, they reflect the suns light and insulate the icebergs), to Captain Holly Short, Foaly, and Wing Commander Vinyáya. During the presentation, Artemis counts his words, and Holly and Foaly conclude that he has Atlantis Complex, a psychological fairy disease with symptoms including OCD, paranoia, and split personality disorder. In the middle of the meeting, Artemis' scans pick up a UFO. Foaly confirms the scans, and Artemis suddenly mentally snaps, accusing Foaly of trying to steal his invention. Holly then tries mesmerising him, but they are attacked by a mysterious spacecraft that Foaly designed to search for life on Mars. The craft crash lands, hits a shuttle, and instantly kills Commander Vinyáya and all LEP backup, leaving Holly, Foaly and Artemis stranded on the glacier without communications, weapons, or Butler. Meanwhile, Artemis's bodyguard Butler is in Mexico. A paranoid Artemis tricked him into travelling to Cancun by telling him his sister Juliet, now a famous wrestler nicknamed "Jade Princess", was in danger. Coincidentally, Juliet and Butler barely escape a horde of zombie-like wrestling fans remotely mesmerised by Turnball Root, former commander Julius Root's reprobate brother. Despite losing his magic through committing crimes, Turnball restores his magic by eating a combination of mandrakes and rice wine. He escapes with several accomplices and reaches Leonor, his human wife. He kidnaps N°1 to reverse the ageing on his wife, but Orion, Artemis' alter ego who is not affected by the mind control, saves N°1 and Holly. When Leonor hears that Turnball has rigged a shuttle to explode Leonor decides that she does not want to be young again and that she wishes only to fly for one last time. Turnball can't bear the thought of life without her. She and Turnball ride deep into the ocean in the shuttle that then promptly explodes. In the epilogue, Artemis is his obsessive, compulsive self again and on a transport shuttle to the Argon clinic for therapy. Juliet is engaged in a wrestling match with a jumbo pixie guard, much to the entertainment of Mulch and the shuttle crew. Artemis and Foaly are teasing Holly about her recent date with Trouble Kelp. Butler calls Angeline Fowl, telling her that Artemis has a fairy disease similar to OCD. Angeline wants to visit him and is very worried and upset.
25257089	/m/09gpy15	Dhampire: Stillborn				 All his life, young Nicholas Gaunt has been tormented by visions of blood and evil, driving him to sadistic and suicidal acts. But when he learns that these violent thoughts stem from an unnatural mingling of human and undead blood before his birth, he must confront his true nature as a half-vampire, or Dhampire.
25258688	/m/09gkdpx	The Man in the Picture: A Ghost Story	Susan Hill	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A oil-painting of masked revellers at a Venetian carnival hangs in the room of Oliver's old professor in Cambridge, its story is revealed to Oliver one cold winter's night by the ageing don. The picture having the power to entrap and destroy those who cross its path.
25259898	/m/09ggm6f	The Infinite Man	Daniel F. Galouye	1973-04		 A research project, Project Genesis, searches for evidences confirming the Steady State Theory of continuous creation in the area within and surrounding an unnamed American Midwestern city, according to which, 125,000 "neoneutrons" (particles which decay into protons and neutrons) should be called into existence in an Earth-sized volume in a twenty-four-hour period. The monitored area is an equilateral triangle with thickness of and an area of which should, by a proportional estimate, register twenty-one neoneutronic creation signatures in that same period. Suddenly, not merely twenty-one, but millions of neoneutrons are called into existence in this monitoring area, fusing some of the sensor equipment. After replacing and refusing of the sensor elements, the locus of the phenomenon is traced to a rail-yard on the edge of the zone, and further, apparently emanating from a young drug-user and hobo, Milton Bradford. Five years later, Milton Bradford (or, "Brad" to his inner circle) has gone from drug-using poverty to the pinnacle of corporate power as the Chairman of Progress and Development Enterprises (P&D), a real-estate and industrial conglomerate who functioned as an important partner during the days of the Genesis Project. P&D was formerly headed by Gerstal B. Hedgemore, who had committed suicide in apparent shame when Bradford was confirmed as his illegitimate heir, consequently leaving him his worldly and corporate fortunes in his will. For the first two years of this time Bradford, now flush with wealth and time to spend it, lives the dream - even so far as to create a self-satirical rock group, Hocker's Mock Rockers, which is a wild success, providing even more income for P&D Enterprises. Five years in, however, Bradford is attempting to grow into his new role as powerful Chairman of a wealthy and powerful company. The reality is that P&D Enterprises, while a real company, is solely devoted to providing a safe and contented existence for Bradford. For, earlier on, psychological probing has revealed to Project Genesis' staff that the phenomenon that led them to Bradford is in fact the Creative Force that brought the Universe into being in the first place, and (while not immediately clear to the Project staff) the Creative Force has sought Bradford as a hiding place from a Universe that has become tiresomely overwhelmingly complex and the Destructive Force whom the Creative Force had originally brought into being a self-made opponent to stave off ennui. The Creative Force now seeks shelter amongst its favored beings. Hedgemore did not commit suicide, but willingly abdicated his top position and lives in cloistered seclusion within the P&D buildings, never meeting Bradford. In making a soft life for Bradford, the staff of P&D Enterprises hopes to keep the Creative Force somnolent, assuming that if the Force woke and was forced out of hiding physical laws would change to the point that the Universe might be annihilated. For those five years they were largely successful, however over this time Bradford has begun to put scattered parts together ... while P&D's work was very through, it was not complete, and at least clue that Hedgemore had been sterile for years before Bradford's birth eventually surfaces. Additionally, a cult worshipping Bradford has formed. Mixing elements of 1960s-style hippie movement, Buddhism, and rock and roll, it holds Bradford as the Messiah, the "Inverse Vessel" - instead of the Universe containing him, he contains the Universe. The sect, calling itself the Church of Topological Transformation, and led by a former member of a committee charged with oversight of Project Genesis, apply this reversal to everything they do, from dressing backwards as well as inside-out to reversing their names - the leader of the sect, Montague, is styled Eugatnom Tehporp - "Prophet Montague", reversed. Between the adoration of the cult, which its leader has increasing trouble restraining, and the staff of P&D, psychologically exhausted from years of maintaining the P&D fiction against the utter destruction of the Universe, the cracks in the cover story develop and widen, and the Creative Force arouses and begins to try to simplify the Universe in order to make it more manageable - though not uninhabitable for its chosen residents; from the original confirmatory nova of Proxima Centauri and destruction of Pluto, it deletes all quasars observable in the Universe; rationalizes pi at the 323rd decimal; halves the speed of light; and changes probability so that outcomes bracketing the mean become more likely than the mean itself. These revisions to physical reality typically happen after dreams; the quasars are seen in Bradford's dreams as "glowflies", as an example; and the halving of the speed of light is expressed as "half a sea". While these cause some upheaval in everyday life humanity still survives on Earth - until the final battle comes between the Creative Force, inhabiting Bradford, and the Destructive Force - who had, during all this time, been inhabiting and guiding Bradford's psychiatrist, Dr. Power, seeking to draw him out, and becoming his corporeal adversary in the end.
25260567	/m/09g6gw5	Kay the Left-Handed	Leslie Barringer	1935	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book is set in the area of York, England in the twelfth century, beginning with the 1189 massacre of the Jews in York, in which the protagonist, Kay FitzRomund, is a reluctant participant. Kay is an orphan seeking to better his lot, whose rise is aided by a glib facility with words and a prudent distrust of his fellow men and hampered by a soft heart and his own temper. Apprenticed to a scrivener, he loses his position through a tavern brawl; later, he fortuitously acquires a knowledge of buried treasure, whose location he trades to Prince John in return for preferment. He loses both his new status and his right hand when he kills Bertrand de Montfort, a personal enemy. Consigned to outlawry, he eventually succeeds in reestablishing his respectability under a new identity.
25261050	/m/09g8_fd	Sleepwalking Land	Mia Couto		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 Set in a war-torn Mozambique during the end of the civil war when the tension between rival political parties was at its highest point, Tuahir, an older man, and Muidinga, a boy recovering from illness, met at the refugee camp and fled. Together, they travel down a road that had been abandoned and encounter many signs of the war including a burnt bus and many corpses along the side of the road. Next to one of these bodies they find a set of notebooks written by a person named Kindzu. Muidinga and Tuahir take the notebooks with them into the scorched remnants of the bus that they use as a shelter. The narration alternates the conversations between Tuahir and Muidinga with the entries of the notebooks being read aloud by the latter. Kindzu manages to narrate the birth of an independent Mozambique and the struggle to keep stability right before the civil war. He also gives us a glimpse of the importance of family relationships and finding an identity, both personal and national.
25263029	/m/09gqn4x	The Ghost Belonged to Me	Richard Peck	1975	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 1913. Alexander Armsworth is a normal boy until he sees a ghost of a girl in his barn, warning him of an impending disaster. This leads to him to become a local hero, but when he explains that a ghost warned him. It unburies the story on how she came to rest on their property, far from her home in New Orleans, Louisiana. He takes it upon himself to take her body home to New Orleans.
25263748	/m/0c3yyvj	The Gangster of Love				 "Jimi Hendrix died the year that ship that brought us from Manila docked in San Francisco..." So begins The Gangster of Love, with the arrival of Rocky Rivera, her brother Voltaire and their mother Milagros at San Francisco. Barely just teenagers upon their arrival, the years pass as Rocky and Voltaire begin growing up, finishing school and discovering San Francisco of the 1970s while their mother brings money into the house through several ways from flirtations with several different men, including Zeke, their landlord to the beginning of her catering business, Lumpia X-Press. Rocky has grown into a quiet young woman more comfortable with listening to music and writing in her journals (of which she has several, kept under her mattress) than socializing. One night, Voltaire brings home Elvis Chang, a Chinese-American guitarist, with whom Rocky falls in love and moves in with one week later. Wondering around San Francisco, Rocky meets Keiko Van Heller, an artist who becomes Rocky's friend for life. Soon, Rocky, Elvis and Keiko decide to move to New York City. The journey begins with a side trip to Los Angeles however, where they encounter Sly and Marlon, Rocky's uncle. Eventually, they make it to New York City where the band grows and through the years they gain more experience in matters of fame, sex, drugs, and life in general, while Rocky's family on the West Coast remains a constant presence over the phone. Rocky's failed pregnancy (she miscarries) acts as the beginning of the end for Rocky and Elvis, a situation exacerbated when Keiko sleeps Elvis. Rocky then moves on to Jake, a Cuban-American sound engineer with whom she has a baby: Venus Rivera Montano. At this time on the West Coast, Voltaire has returned to the Philippines after several stints in the hospital while Milagros, her sister and her brother-in-law have decided to pay New York City a visit, in time for Imelda Marcos's hearing. Soon after however, Milagros's health begins deteriorating and Rocky spends months commuting between her family in New York and at her mother's bedside in San Francisco. When her mother dies, Rocky decides to take a trip to the motherland where she is reunited with her family, including her brother, her sister and her dying father. The plot is cyclical: the story begins with Rocky and her family leaving Manila and arriving in San Francisco, the narration interspersed with various memories of her life in the Philippines. Upon moving to New York City, Rocky reminisces about her life in San Francisco throughout her daily life. Her recollections increase until she returns to San Francisco to take care of her mother. Her decision to go back to the Philippines is made once in San Francisco, a rather natural choice considering her mother's recent death and the fact that her long-suffering father was finally dying. The Gangster of Love refers to the name of the band formed by several characters in the novel, including Rocky. The name was inspired by a dream Rocky had after taking acid: "A choir of fat, menacing angels wearing yellow satin robes sang this song by Johnny Guitar Watson called "Gangster of Love."" While written in English, Hagedorn includes some Tagalog (Filipino words), particularly in the dialogue and goes so far as to use the Filipino as a distinctive characteristic that sets the more Filipino characters apart from the Filipino-Americans. Though Rocky acts as the first-person narrator for most of the novel, Hagedorn, writes certain portions omniscient narration, once in a while giving the points of view of other characters without the use of first person narration. There are moments in which she even uses the mention of a certain character to introduce said-character's own narration, for instance, when Rocky and Elvis visit her uncle in Los Angeles: “Marlon studied Elvis Chang – his niece's lover, boyfriend, whatever. Tall and maybe a little too skinny, but pretty enough with that gold hoop in his ear. Elvis Chang, Marlon thought to himself, amused. Elvis Chang in the home of Marlon Rivera. Fucking ridiculous.” Ever the avant-garde, Hagedorn explores the use of poetry, music and playwriting throughout the novel. Once in a while, she makes use of poetry to depict the life, the surroundings of her characters, for example, a description of a ride on the B Train and playwriting; there are two dream-like scenes featuring Rocky, Elvis and Jimi Hendrix.
25268921	/m/09gmsh2	The Ghost-Seer	Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller			 The work is narrated in the first person by the 'Graf von O**' (Count of O**). It describes the story of a German prince visiting Venice at carnival time. Very stressed at the start of the work, ---> <!-- ===The State Inquisitio he exorcis he story of the magicia he Bucentaur secre hilosophical conversatio he beautiful woma he conversion to Catholicism===
25269534	/m/09gckbk	Fixer Chao				 William Paulinha is a gay, Filipino hustler living in New York City. One night, he meets Shem C, a failed Jewish writer, in a bar. They become fast friends and Shem tells William his life story. Once upon a time, Shem had been married to the daughter of an acclaimed Jewish novelist. However, Shem’s wife Marianna realized he was cheating on her and left him. Furious with his present situation, Shem wants to take revenge on the New York elite that cast him out. He convinces William to help him carry out his revenge plot by posing as William Chao, a master of the ancient Chinese art of feng shui. Their first victim is Lindsay S, an aspiring poet. Bolstered by the ease with which they con her, William and Shem work their way up to bigger and better targets while word of mouth enhances their social status. William meets Cardie Kerchpoff, the Jewish daughter of a cardiologist. He finds her so irritating that he purposely fills her apartment with bad karma. William and Shem attend a dinner party hosted by Suzy Yamada, where many of their past and future clients mingle. Brian Q meets a girl named Norma and discovers after sleeping with her that she has given him herpes. William encounters Max Brill Carlton, author of Primitives, who informs him that Preciosa had no lines in the play. A later conversation with Shem reveals that Suzy was one of the women he had an affair when married and that she will be their last victim. Shem also informs William that Cardie’s husband left her after it was revealed he was having an affair. For the first time, William feels guilty about the purposefully bad feng shui work he did for her, the cause of her sudden misfortune. Rowley P takes William aside in confidence and asks him to help him avenge his second wife’s death. According to Rowley, Suzy stole his wife’s position and company and is thus responsible for her death. In arranging Suzy’s apartment, William enlists the help of his neighbor Preciosa X. She pretends to be a woman named Walung, re-enacting her part in Primitives, speaking in tongues and twirling about to distract from the fact that they are stealing. Several days later, Rowley P dies, leaving his apartment to William. Rowley’s family is not happy with this turn of events, so William agrees to relinquish all claims to the apartment. Kendo, who has been stalking William for a while now, takes him out to dinner. Afterwards, the two get drinks at a bar and discuss each other’s criminal activities. At the end of the evening, William is left wondering if Kendo plans on scamming him the way William scammed his mother, Suzy. Neil tries to get William to give him more money but William refuses, leaving a cash-strapped Neil with a grudge against him. William runs into Brian Q in a shoe store and learns that he has completely turned his life around, even founding a charity to raise money for AIDS patients. Suzy confronts William with her growing suspicions that Walung is responsible for stealing several valuable objects from her home. Suzy discovers the truth about William’s criminal past and his life begins to unravel. Suzy eventually persuades Preciosa to tell her everything. She hires Neil to murder William but they are interrupted by Kendo. Neil accidentally stabs Kendo and he dies. William discovers that even when he thought he was performing feng shui correctly, it was still all wrong. Several authors race to be the first to release a book on the “Master” Chao but Shem C publishes his first, thus realizing at long last his potential as an author. William moves to Los Angeles and finally begins pursuing his lifelong dream of becoming a writer.
25282992	/m/09g8fp8	People of the Lakes		1995-06-01		 Clan fighting over a powerful totemic mask has brought the Mound Builder people of the Great Lakes region to the edge of destruction. It is up to Star Shell, daughter of a Hopewell chief, to rid her people of this curse. Along with her companions: Otter, a trader; Pearl, a runaway; and Green Spider, either prophet or madman, she braves the stormy waters of the lakes to reach the majestic waterfall known as Roaring Water. She is determined to banish the mask forever to a watery grave. But vengeful clan members are close on her heels, and they have a similar fate planned for her. <!--
25284904	/m/09gn3bg	Halt's Peril	John Flanagan	2010-10-05		 The book begins with Halt, Horace and Will discovering that Tennyson (the priest of the Outsider) and his followers have fled to Picta. The three follow their trail and discover that Tennyson is heading toward Araluen. Tennyson's plan is to travel to an outlying Araluen village where he has already established influence to reinvigorate his movement. Will and his companions are unaware of this however and continue to follow Tennyson through Picta, discovering and foiling some Pictan raiders en route. As the three catch up to Tennyson they engage with the remaining two Genovesans and Halt and Will successfully kill one, but the other injures Halt and escapes. After a while, the wound is discovered to be poisoned by a hallucinogen which is slowly killing Halt. In desperation Will decides to seek Malcolm - possibly the best healer in all of Araluen - and quickly brings him to help. Malcolm however explains that the poison has two possible sources with conflicting cures. Administrating the wrong cure will kill Halt. Will discovers the remaining Genovesan and forces the nature of the poison from him. The Genovesan is killed as he attempts to later escape. With Halt cured, the three along with Malcolm resume to trail Tennyson, who assumes that the three are now unimportant given that Halt is supposedly dead. Will and his companions discover Tennyson in Catacombs near a village where he is preaching to the followers of his religion. Halt successfully discredits him with Malcolm's help. However, during this attempt, Will has to use certain explosive devices developed by Malcolm which causes the cave system to collapse on top of the Outsiders (including Tennyson) and the villagers' gold. Halt, Will and Horace accompany Malcolm home where Trobar gifts to Will a puppy, Ebony. After separating from Malcolm, the three head home, with Will and Halt going to Redmont and reuniting with Pauline and Alyss while Horace heads to Castle Araluan. The book ends with Pauline thanking Will for saving Halt's life and telling him about the trust she has in him.
25294680	/m/09gf5mj	Ten obcy		1961		 The book is about teen love problems and the challenges of growing up. Major characters are four friends: Ula, Pestka (Pip), Julek and Marian. The action takes place in a small village called Olszyny, which is located about 150&nbsp;km from Warsaw. During the holidays children spent a lot of time on an island created after the spring floods. They create a hut and set the poles in order to make access to the island easier. One day on the island shows up a mysterious boy. It turns out that the boy is injured, so the group of friends decides to take care of him. At first the boy is a man of few words, but eventually begins to reveal his secrets.
25305042	/m/09gp673	The Devil's Novice	Edith Pargeter	1983	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In mid September of 1140, Meriet Aspley, the younger son of Leoric Aspley, the lord of a manor about four miles south of Shrewsbury, petitions Shrewsbury Abbey to become a monk. When he is informed that a novice must traditionally wait a year before taking full vows and joining the Benedictines, he is agitated, asking whether he cannot speed up the process. Abbot Radulfus urges him to be patient. Meriet becomes an unsettling presence in the abbey. While he performs all his studies and assigned duties with ardour, his solitary manner makes the other novices reluctant to approach him. In October, he begins saying nonsense names in his sleep, waking the entire dortoir. The superstitious other novices whisper that he is possessed, and nickname him "The Devil's Novice." Meriet has no awareness of his disruptive sleep until others tell him. Brother Paul, in charge of the novices, counsels patience. In October, Canon Eluard, an emissary of Henry of Blois, the Bishop of Winchester, comes to the Abbey inquiring after the whereabouts of Peter Clemence, a young cleric and one of the Bishop's favorite proteges. Clemence had been sent on a diplomatic mission to Northern England, but has disappeared. Eluard questions Meriet in particular, since Clemence was last seen as a guest at Aspley Manor before setting out on his journey. Meriet tells the story of that evening and the next morning, of the unexpected visit of a kinsman of his late mother. Meriet had tended the guest's horse. His father had ridden the first mile out with his guest the next morning, on his way to Whitchurch for his next night's lodging. Sheriff Prestcote is travelling with King Stephen, leaving Cadfael's friend, Deputy Sherriff Hugh Beringar in charge of the shire. Henry of Blois had convened a council earlier in the fall, endeavouring to bring the two factions together, to no avail. His brother, King Stephen, needed to strengthen his alliances by visiting lords in the north, with his own entourage. In particular, they met with the Earl of Chester and his brother, William of Roumare, the Earl of Lincoln. Armed with the description of the fine horse from Meriet, Beringar quickly finds Clemence's horse and returns with it, in sight of the brothers of the Abbey. That night, Meriet again sleeps badly, whistling and calling out a name, Barbary. The next morning, Beringar called for Meriet to recognize the horse, which he did, even knowing its name, Barbary. At the same time, those whose sleep was again disturbed grow more afraid, and in one case, officious. Brother Jerome, Prior Robert's clerk and confessor for the novices, searches Meriet's bed to find a lock of a woman's hair tied in a ribbon. Declaring that personal belongings are forbidden in the Abbey, Jerome burns the memento in front of Meriet. Meriet launches himself at Jerome and nearly strangles him, before Cadfael restrains him. Meriet is punished by being whipped and then kept alone in a punishment cell. Abbot Radulfus asks Cadfael to visit the boy's father to learn more. Cadfael first tends Meriet's wounds from the scourging, having a probing yet fatherly talk with the still-determined novice. Cadfael visits Aspley Manor, with its two adjoining manors of the Linde and Foriet families. He meets Meriet's extended family one by one: his elder brother, Nigel, tall, handsome, and clearly the apple of his father's eye; Nigel's fiancee, Roswitha Linde, stunningly beautiful and flirtatious, whose hair colour matches the lock in Meriet's bed; Roswitha's twin brother Janyn, an easygoing man and Nigel's best friend; and finally, Leoric's ward Isouda Foriet, a young heiress to two neighboring manors. The five grew up together from children. Leoric is a stiff and upright man of rigid morals, and refuses to discuss Meriet's choice. He insists that if his son is determined to become a monk, Leoric will not have him back. Nor can he suggest any reason for Meriet's choice in the first place. As Cadfael leaves, he encounters Isouda Foriet, a girl on the verge of womanhood. She reveals to Cadfael that she loves Meriet, and will have him for her own. Her account of the visit back in September adds useful details. Cadfael asks whether Meriet was in love with Roswitha. Isouda agrees, but knows it is a passing fancy for him. Roswitha loves Nigel and the two will be married before Christmas, then live at the manor farther north near Newark that Leoric Aspley holds. Cadfael suggests to Radulfus that Meriet be assigned to help Cadfael's former assistant, Brother Mark, at the lazar house maintained by the Abbey at St. Giles, once his ten days of confinement were ended. As this would separate Meriet from the other novices, Radulfus agrees. Cadfael visits Meriet to salve his wounds, share the greetings of his brother, and in course of conversation, shares his own secret of being a father himself. Soon after, Cadfael and Hugh Beringar plumb the psychology of this boy, knowing now his standing with his parents as the unneeded second son, seeking attention by contrariness. On one of the appointed days for seeking firewood in early December, Brother Mark and Meriet lead an outing of the lepers at St. Giles to the forest. Meriet suggests that they go to a clearing he knows that was used for making charcoal. In one of the wood stacks, they discover a charred skeleton. The remnants of jewellery and clothing near the corpse identify it as Clemence's. The remains are carefully brought to the Abbey. Soon after, the Sheriff's men take a half-starved man living wild in the forest, in possession of an ornate dagger that belonged to Clemence. The man is Harald, a runaway villein farrier from a manor near Gretton to the south. He says he found the dagger in the forest, and swears he did not kill Clemence. Serving two purposes, Beringar lets it be known that Harald is taken for the murder of Clemence. When Meriet hears rumours that Harald will be condemned for murdering Clemence, he again has a troubled night. He walks in his sleep, taking a serious fall when Brother Mark calls his name. When he wakes, Meriet insists the man taken in the forest is not guilty and confesses to the killing. Brother Mark asks Meriet to confess to his priest, but Meriet refuses this. Brother Mark does not believe this admission of guilt; he may lie to man, but not to God. Meriet repeats his claims to Hugh Beringar that he shot Clemence with an arrow after he left Aspley, because Clemence tried to take advantage of Roswitha. His father discovered him trying to hide the corpse, and gave him a choice: either admit his guilt and be executed, or else give up the rest of his life for penance as a monk, thus saving Leoric's family honour. However, there is a problem over the time of the murder. Meriet says it was done in the afternoon, but the visitor left early from the manor and was found less than an hour's ride away. Near Christmas, Leoric Aspley comes to the Abbey for a stay of several days, as his son Nigel will marry Roswitha. In private, Cadfael confronts Leoric, who admits to finding Meriet with Clemence's body that afternoon, as he was out hunting with his pack of dogs. Leoric was outraged and assumed his younger son was guilty of the murder. After Meriet agreed to join Shrewsbury Abbey, Leoric and his household staff drove the horse away and burned Clemence's body in the woodstack. Cadfael points out that both Leoric and Meriet must be mistaken. Meriet is incapable of cold-blooded murder, but if he has confessed he must be shielding someone else. Leoric refuses to believe that Nigel could be the murderer. However, Cadfael reminds Leoric that both he and Meriet have overlooked a crucial point; they both believe Clemence was killed in the afternoon, yet his body was found only a few miles from Aspley. They still do not know who killed Clemence. Isouda visits Meriet at his room in St. Giles, where he is mending from his fall. She is dressed in finery, not the kind of tomboy clothing in which he last saw her. She makes the point of her friendship and times her visit well. She rejoins Cadfael to return to the Abbey, discussing how to reveal the true murderer, to undercut Meriet's false confession. "'Girl,' said Cadfael, breathing in deeply, 'you terrify me like an act of God. And I do believe you will pull down the thunderbolt.'" Isouda and Roswitha share a room in the Abbey guesthouse where both can dress for the wedding next day. Looking for the best adornments for the bride, Isouda chances on a brooch in Roswitha's possession. Roswitha disdains the unique but antique brooch. Isouda recalls where she saw it once before, when she took Clemence's cloak at Aspley Manor. She meets Cadfael to report her thunderbolt to him; he realizes the importance of the brooch being intact, unburned. She arranges for two horses to bring Brother Mark and Meriet discreetly to the Abbey, to witness his brother's marriage. Isouda plants the brooch on Roswitha's cloak. After the couple are married, they walk out into the gateway. Canon Eluard instantly recognizes the brooch on the bride's cloak as a gift from the Bishop to his late clerk. When he demands to know where Roswitha got it, she first claims that Meriet gave it to her, a lie that appalls both Nigel and Leoric. Caught in a falsehood, she admits that her brother Janyn gave it to her. Janyn has already fled the Abbey on one of Isouda's horses. As Beringar and his men prepare to pursue him, a messenger from King Stephen arrives, ordering the local knight-service to muster immediately; the two most powerful barons in the northern counties, the Earls of Chester and Lincoln have declared their independence from either side in the civil war and have set up their own kingdom in the north. Barely has the Abbey time to react to this news, when Cadfael sees that Nigel has also fled the grounds, taking Isouda's other horse. Beringar's sergeants pursue the two men, knowing now where they are headed. In the woods near Stafford, Nigel catches up with Janyn, whose horse has been lamed. Blame is traded back and forth, but Nigel says he will not abandon Janyn, and offers to carry them both on his horse. Janyn has another plan; he stabs Nigel and steals his horse. The Sheriff's men come upon Nigel ten minutes later and bring him back to the Abbey. Nigel confesses that he and Janyn were offered castles and commands by William of Rumare on their summer visit to the northern manor. Clemence erred in sharing his mission with these distant relations. Had Clemence gone to the North, he would have stumbled on a meeting of the Earls and their allies. Nigel proposed to delay Clemence, but Janyn shot him down in the forest. When he told Nigel what he had done, Nigel went to the forest to bury the body. Meriet discovered him, and heard their father's hounds approaching. He told his brother to run, knowing that Leoric would be heartbroken if Nigel were blamed, but scarcely bothered if Meriet was. Nigel repents of his treason. Once healed, he will make amends as he can. Beringar expects him to join the King's army, marching north to confront the rebels. Meriet and the villein Harald are both absolved of guilt. Harald is found a farrier job in town, where he is safe if he stays a year and a day without being taken by his brutal former master. Leoric is ashamed at having valued his handsome but weak older son over his younger son, seeing only now how similar the younger son is to himself. He confesses his sins to Abbot Radulfus, and asks him for two additional favours: first, that Leoric be allowed to sponsor Brother Mark, who has been a true friend to Meriet in his time at the Abbey, in his studies for the priesthood; and second, that the Abbott witness a new will he will draft, leaving his manor to Meriet. With Janyn gone, Nigel will inherit the Linde manor through his wife, if he makes his amends. Leoric also begs Meriet's forgiveness, and the two men reconcile. Meriet, for his part, is chagrined for having ever loved Roswitha, wanting whatever his brother had. Her lies broke her charm for him. Isouda's efforts to be noticed by Meriet as a grown woman are successful, as his childhood friend becomes a woman he might love, out in the world beyond the Benedictine monastery. He parts from Brother Cadfael by explaining how the term 'Brother' came hard to his lips in their conversations, as he wished to call him father. Cadfael accepted that of son Meriet.
25306342	/m/09gq3b7	Machine Made				 A young woman with a stunted intellect, being the victim of brain damage from birth, is hired on to perform basic menial labor (such as janitorial services) in a facility dedicated to the operation and programming of a mainframe computer. In her free time, she is curious whether the machine can add and subtract some basic numbers when she types them in. She has checked the results when she goes home, and sometimes spends days adding and subtracting the numbers to see if the results are correct. When she is at work, she has a long day walking alone through the thousands of square feet of the facility, checking on metal casings and consoles in this facility, and dusting them as needed. She knows that typing things into the computer is forbidden for non-scientists. Therefore she chooses her time well, and organizes her day so no one will know she is submitting questions to the computer. She sits down at a console when she knows there is nobody around, and the computer begins to recognize her style of typing. She hunts and pecks rather slowly. She has tried this four times before, and is surprised on the fifth time when the computer starts to talk to her by spooling out information in paper form.
25309259	/m/09gprdb	All in the Mind	Alastair Campbell	2008-10-30	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set over a period of four days, the novel explores mental illness through its central character, Professor Martin Sturrock, described as ‘widely viewed as one of the best psychiatrists in the business’, and several of his patients. Among these are an alcoholic politician, a traumatised burns victim, a depressed manual worker, an adulterous barrister turned fitness fanatic and a Kosovan refugee who has been raped. Each patient tells his or her story in a consultation with Sturrock before they are later revisited in their individual subplots. Over the course of a weekend it becomes apparent that the brilliant but overworked Sturrock is as desperate for help as the people he is treating, and following an encounter in a seedy brothel the story ends tragically for the Professor on a busy London street.
25323656	/m/09g7c7s	Devi Chaudhurani	Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay	1884	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The very first line is a hilarious dialog &mdash; "Pi! O Pi! O Pipi! O Prafulla! O Porarmukhi (monkey-face)!" &mdash; where the middle-age mother of Prafulla (nickname Pipi) is looking for her 20-something daughter. They are a two-person family in a small village of Bengal, hardly making ends meet by doing odd jobs. Prafulla is married but is shunned by her wealthy father-in-law, Haraballabh, because of a spat between him and her father on the day of her wedding. By Hindu custom prevalent at that time, a girl, once married, could not be divorced or remarried. Heartbroken at the fate of his only child, her father died after a few years, leaving the family in penury. As the story progresses, we get to know that Prafulla's mother still loves her very much, but endless misery and hunger leaves her often distraught and ill. She soon takes to bed and, in absence of medical care, dies. Prafulla's neighbors, more compassionate in death than in living, helps her cremate her mother. Grief-stricken Prafulla is given shelter by her neighbor. But she soon overhears that they are planning to sell her to a pimp. We learn that Prafulla is very beautiful, and the neighbor is expecting a good price. Scared by the looming fate, Prafulla takes the drastic step to flee in the middle of the night to find the house of her in-laws whom she has never known, without any money, with knowledge of only the name of the village and name of her father-in-law. Benevolent people, surprised to see her traveling alone, help her on the way. This is consistent with the custom in Bengal that all unknown women were to be treated as one's own mother. Now the neighbor is in a fix, as villagers know that Prafulla was in her custody. She frames a story that Prafulla's mother's ghost appeared at night and took her daughter away with her; she whispers it to her neighbor and warns her not to tell anyone. Obviously, very soon the entire village knew of the story. The superstitious ones believed it, and others who did not had hardly any concern for the orphan. The news also reached Haraballabh's house, who couldn't care less. Much has changed in the house of Haraballabh since Prafulla's wedding. Haraballabh, adamant at making his point against Prafulla's father, got his son, Brajeswar (Braja), a single child, married twice more. (The British rule at that time permitted polygamy.) The second wife is Nayantara, and third wife is Sagarmani &mdash; they live at Haraballabh's at their rightful places. One day, a sobbing destitute girl arrives at the front porch but doesn't speak. A maid takes her to the ladies of the house who grant her temporary shelter. When they ask her where she is from, she doesn't answer. The ladies and maids from the neighboring houses troop in to see the newcomer, until one among them recognizes her as Prafulla. After much debate and disbelief, it's finally determined that she is indeed Prafulla. Since a daughter-in-law has arrived &mdash; that, too, she has stepped in the house for the first time &mdash; she has to be greeted in style. As per her mother-in-law's orders, the maids clean her up, dress her in bridal saree, makeup and ornaments. Her mother-in-law receives her with all the traditional ritual and fanfare. Funnily, as per custom then, a mother-in-law is supposed to find a fault with the bride. She looks at Prafulla, sighs and says, "Way too beautiful." Obviously, she has taken a liking to Prafulla. Nayantara, who comes from a wealthy family but lacks beauty, is cross at her. She is afraid that Prafulla may get the enviable position of the eldest daughter-in-law. Sagarmani (Sagar), young, pretty and childishly playful, comes from a well-to-do family, though not so wealthy as of Nayantara's, likes Prafulla as a playmate. Prafulla is taken to her bridal bed in the night, and Braja is trying to make small talk, overwhelmed by her beauty. Sagar locks them in, after silently showing them the lock and key. Bankim Chandra takes a bold step of describing a kiss between Braja and Prafulla, apologizing profusely to the readers for "offending" their sensibilities. It also turns out that Braja is very much afraid of his dictatorial father, which was again a common thing. The next day when her husband is at lunch, Braja's mother, while fanning her husband as per custom, informs him about Prafulla. Haraballabh is taken aback at first, but then orders that she be thrown out, turning down repeated requests from Braja's mother to allow Prafulla to stay. Disappointed, she then asks a question that will come back to haunt Haraballabh later in the plot, "How will she make ends meet?" &mdash; an implicit request for an allowance for the poor young woman. Haraballabh nonchalantly replies, "Let her be a thief or a dacoit." Prafulla, in anticipation that things will come to this, had requested her mother-in-law previously to ask this question. But her mother-in-law never had the heart of relaying that reply back to Prafulla. It was Nayantara who happily took the initiative to do that. Prafulla leaves everything behind, including the expensive dresses and ornaments. She keeps only the ring that Braja had given her previous night. She wanders from place to place, then enters the jungle in the suicidal hope that some wild animal will kill her. But, deep in the jungle, she comes across a clearing where stood a two-storied palatial house, next to a clear pond, empty and desolate. She strolls into the house to find a dying old man, gasping for his last drop of water. She quickly fetches some water from the pond. The old man, in his dying breath, gives her secret location of his treasure buried in a ground-floor room. Next morning, Prafulla digs up the place, and finds large brass vessels full of gold coins. She takes one coin and sets out looking for a way to the nearest village to buy some grocery, but she loses her way in the jungle. All of a sudden, a tall handsome Brahmin comes out of nowhere to block her way. In a baritone voice, the man demands her identity and purpose. On learning that Prafulla wants to buy grocery, he reveals that he indeed has a store if she has money. Prafulla shows him the gold coin. "It's too much," the man says, "Do you have small change?" Prafulla says, "No. Gold coins only." The man, looking at her poor appearance, says in surprise and disbelief, "All gold coins?" Then the man reveals that he is Bhabani Pathak. Prafulla is shocked, she trembles in fear, for Bhabani Pathak is the most powerful dacoit of all. Bhabani takes her to his store, lets her pick whatever she wants, but refuses to take the coin. "I don't have enough change," he says, "Come back anytime to take whatever you need, pay me when you owe me the price of a gold coin." He even arranges for a porter from among his men, and accompanies Prafulla back to the house. Now comes a defining moment of the story. Bhabani looks at the hoard of coins, surprised. He then tells Prafulla, "I won't touch your money, but I have to ask you this. You are now very very wealthy. What do you intend to do with all this money?" Prafulla says she has no idea. Bhabani tells her, "There are two ways from here - you can either spend this money for good of the people, or you can spend this for your own enjoyment." Prafulla tries to fathom the gravity of the question - she asks, "What if I want it all for myself?" Bhabani replies, "Then I'll have to escort you out of this jungle, for your presence will ruin many men from my group. But also consider this, the money will be gone one day, so will be your youth and beauty. And with it, the men will be gone as well." Prafulla says, "What if I spend it for people?" Bhabani says, "Then that is even harder path." She now understands, and unhesitatingly, chooses ascetism over materialism. Bankim Chandra here reaffirms his faith in Indian value system. Bhabani is very pleased, but he also tells her that she needs to learn a lot and have to undergo a rigorous education course for five years. For these five years, she has to trust & obey Bhabani completely, cannot meet anyone unless Bhabani sanctions it, cannot go out of the jungle. She readily agrees. On learning that Prafulla is illiterate (women illiteracy was a common social malady in India at that time), Bhabani tells her that her education will begin there. Bhabani arranges for two soulmates for her &mdash; two young woman of her age &mdash; Diba and Nishi. Diba (The Day) is very fair and very learned, while Nishi (The Night) is very dark, skilled, and illiterate. Prafulla learns everything from her alphabets to maths, philosophy, politics, music, dance from Diba and from the steady stream of teachers whom Bhabani appointed. Prafulla always kept behind purdah while in front of male teachers, till one day Bhabani told her she has to learn martial arts. She tonsures her head and learns freehand fighting, weapons and military tactics from male instructors. Bhabani tells Prafulla of the oppression of the British. Here Bankim Chandra describes British tyranny in such graphic terms that was never written before. Bhabani tells how British carry out tortures on poor farmers and their women. "She is stripped in public and raped. She is tied up, naked, to a pole in the open, whipped, her breasts chopped off, insects inserted into her private parts." Bhabani subjects Prafulla to another learning as well. In one year, Prafulla spent in comfort like in a well-to-do family. In another year, she lived as a queen, treated and pampered royally including everything from her bed, to her clothes to her food. In another year, she lived as a mendicant, slept on floor, wore coarse clothes, survived on meager diets. Prafulla smilingly took it all, and preferred the ascetic life. However, Prafulla never revealed to Bhabani that she is married. At the end, Prafulla emerges as a leader of people, a queen yet a saint, almost a goddess in her air, benevolence and wrath. Hence Bhabani calls her "Devi Chaudhurani" &mdash; The Goddess Queen. With Bhabani as her minister and adviser, Devi claims right over a vast area of southern Bengal. She holds moving royal courts at regular schedules and places, which are well known to people of the land, but kept secret from the British. In these courts, Devi appears dressed as a queen, wearing jewels, seated on a throne, Diba and Nishi fanning her from both sides. She listens to the problems of the people, delivers justice, helps the poor with money. Such courts are also recruiting grounds for Bhabani building up an army of Barkandaz &mdash; Queen's Guards. The guards are led by Bhabani's right hand - Rangalal. Devi warns tyrant lords to stop their repression and attacks them if they don't pay heed, but she also avoids bloodbath as much as she can. Soon she builds a reputation that is fearsome to the lords, ray of hope to the people, serious headache for the British. Royal Army combs the jungles and rivers in search of her, but Bhabani's spies are always one step ahead, and the Queen's Guards know the jungles much better. In a strange twist of destiny, Prafulla has now become a dacoit, just as Haraballabh asked her to be. Many years pass by. Haraballabh ends up losing money in bad investments and is now in the risk of defaulting on the whopping tax on his estate that the British extract. If he does not pay up by sunset of a particular day, he will lose his estate instantly. And Devi gets the news. Frantic, Haraballabh sends Braja for help from first Nayantara's and then Sagarmani's fathers, but they both refuse to help. A disappointed Braja is in Sagar's room at her father's house, preparing to leave. Sagar pleads with him to stay, but Braja has lost his cool and badmouths her father. Upset herself, Sagar screams, "If I am my father's daughter, then, then, ..." She searches for words, when someone from behind prompted her, "you will massage my feet." Sagar, in a fit a rage, repeats it verbatim. Giving foot massage to wife was considered ignominious and effeminate. Naturally, such a challenge enrages Braja even more, and he storms out. Sagar cries a lot, and only after some amount of time, it occurs to her to find out who prompted her. And it turns out that it was Devi herself. Sagar is surprised to know that her playmate Prafulla is now the all-powerful Devi. Devi assures Sagar of getting her revenge and outlines a plan. A word is secretly sent to Braja that Devi is willing to loan him the money and is instructed to meet her at her yacht at a particular place and time in night. Braja is now desperate to save the estate and readily agrees. When he arrives at the place, the guards take him inside the yacht, which is extraordinarily decorated, fit for an empress. Behind silk curtains, reclining on inches thick cushions, is Devi. She is dressed as a queen but is wearing a veil. She asks Braja to sit down and starts asking questions. He wonders why she is intentionally speaking in a hoarse voice. After managing to scare him enough, Devi demands that he massages her feet. He hesitates but the loan from Devi is the only ray of hope for him, so he agrees. Devi sticks out her legs through the curtain. When Braja starts massaging, she giggles and laughs out loud. He is now even more surprised. He cried, 'Sagar!' and opened up the curtain to see that it's actually Sagar who has been talking to him all the time! Sagar's sweet revenge has finally been fulfilled. Sagar now reveals to Braja how she ended up in Devi's yacht, but without revealing Devi's true identity. He is only too happy to get the money. Devi sets the condition that the loan has to be paid back after 3 months, at a particular place and time. Braja gratefully accepts the condition. Haraballabh is stunned when Braja tells him the money has been arranged. He also reveals how and where the loan has to be paid off. As the loan due date approaches, Braja repeatedly pleads to his father to give him the money so that he can personally pay it off. Haraballabh listens to it all, but has other plans. A day before the loan, Haraballabh goes to the Royal Army headquarters and gives them the location of Devi. The British, ever suspicious of natives, demand that he accompanies the army. Haraballabh now has no choice but to accede. On the other hand, Braja is apologetic that he could not keep his word, and sets off for Devi's place in the hope of pleading for some more time. It was a night of full moon. At the given location on a jungle river, Devi is on the roof of her yacht, intently playing an instrument called Veena. The yacht is dark, save for a few lights. The place is desolate except for Diba and Nishi. Not even her guards can be seen anywhere. Presently, Rangalal, the leader of the guards, appears out of the jungle and requests to meet Devi. In the conversation, Rangalal informs Devi that a large British troop contingent is headed this way for arresting her. It turns out that Devi already knows that, she intends to surrender and hence had sent the her guards away on a different purpose. She is now angry that Bhabani Pathak is coming back with the guards to save her. The Royal Army and Queen's Guards reach the yacht's location at almost the same time and the battle begins. It seems that Devi has chosen her location well: It was a shallow river, with deep jungles on either side, difficult for a traditional troop deployment. The Royal Army soldiers has to wade it through, which places the Guards at an advantage as they are much more adept to fighting in such conditions. Devi is unhappy about grim prospect of potentially large loss of lives. Notably, she counts potential losses on both sides to determine that so many deaths are unnecessary. She is standing on the roof, watching the battle, when she notices a spot of dark clouds gathering at the horizon. She smiles and asks Rangalal to carry a retreat message to Bhabani with the assurance that she is not going to surrender. She then goes inside. Bhabani looks at the cloud when Rangalal reaches him with the message, and understands Devi's plan. On Devi's orders, Diba now brings out Braja, who had arrived much earlier and was kept in a room, sticks a white flag in his hand, and asks him to wave it from the roof of the yacht. Braja is surprised to see a battle raging around, and starts waving the flag. The fighting stops as per protocol. Rangalal was not expecting it; he comes back to the yacht and challenges Braja. It turns out that Braja was unaware of the white-flag protocol, but refuses to step down. Rangalal snatches and throws away the flag. But the fighting does not resume, as Queen's Guards have started melting away into the forest. Royal Army surrounds the yacht, and the Major boards it with a few soldiers. A few rowers sit on the decks quietly, offering no resistance. Only three women and two men are found in the yacht &mdash; they all are quietly waiting for him in the royal room. Major is stunned by the opulence, but is unable to determine who the Devi is, as all of them were in simple clothes. Devi suggests in a meek voice that he should get his detective. Major likes the idea and sends for the detective. The "detective" is Haraballabh, who has never seen Devi up close, and does not know her true identity. But Haraballabh is afraid to admit that and makes quite a mess of it after he arrives at the yacht. The Major, frustrated, determines Diba to be the Devi as she was wearing a more expensive cloth. In the meantime, the dark clouds have now covered the entire sky and the wind has started to blow. And the storm hits. Here the Royal Army turns out to be merely occupants of Bengal, without an understanding of the people or the environment. The ferocious tropical storm and blinding rain take them by surprise. The sailors were quietly waiting for this moment. In an instant, they loosen the sails and cut the anchoring ropes. The yacht spins out of control, sending the people inside head over heels. Haraballabh ends up in the lap of Nishi, Major in the lap of Diba and Braja in the lap of Rangalal. Only Devi was anticipating this moment and has managed to balance herself. The sailors are too familiar with the abilities of the yacht and has handled such storms many times before. They adroitly steer it and use the full blast of the storm to complete effect. The Royal Army protection ring has shattered and the soldiers fall apart in disarray. The yacht runs over the rest of them and swiftly vanishes into the maze-like branches and tributaries of the river. When the men and women in the room recover, they are surrounded by a group of Queen's Guards who were quietly waiting disguised as sailors. In a single brilliant move, Devi has won the battle, captured the enemy leader, secured both her husband and father-in-law, and managed to do it with minimum loss of lives. The Major and other soldiers captured along with him are kept locked in. Devi now reveals her true identity to Braja and Haraballabh. Haraballabh asks Devi, "Why did you become a dacoit?" Devi, true to her education in Indian values, does not confront her father-in-law. Instead, she asks for forgiveness and pleads him to take her back as his daughter-in-law. Haraballabh is too scared to spurn her. The Royal Army soldiers are released unharmed near a village, and Braja and Haraballabh are released in another location. Devi also gives them money for their travel. Devi meets Bhabani Pathak and hands over the responsibility of carrying the freedom movement forward. Back in Haraballabh's house, a fake fourth marriage of Braja is arranged, and Prafulla is welcomed again. She kept such a long veil that neighbours could not see her face. In the last scene, Sagar is asking Prafulla at Haraballabh's house, "Can a queen become a mere daughter-in-law, an obedient wife, and a simple home maker?" Prafulla replies, "Yes, she can. That's where a woman truly finds her fulfilment. This is a station that is more difficult than being a queen or an ascetic."
25327456	/m/04w6pqg	The Heir of Redclyffe	Charlotte Mary Yonge		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The Heir of Redclyffe tells the story of the Byronic Guy Morville, heir to the Redclyffe baronetcy, and his cousin Philip Morville, a conceited hypocrite who enjoys an unwarrantedly high reputation. When Guy raises money to secretly pay off the debts of his blackguard uncle, Philip spreads the rumour that Guy is a reckless gambler. As a result Guy's proposed marriage to his guardian's daughter Amy is called off and he is disowned by his guardian. Guy bears the situation with a new-found Christian fortitude until the uncle clears his character, enabling him to marry Amy after all. They honeymoon in Italy, finding Philip there suffering from a life-threatening fever. Guy nurses him back to health, but catches the fever himself and dies. Philip, transformed by contrition, inherits Redclyffe.
25331692	/m/09g9z68	Boys Against Girls				 Caroline Malloy shivers happily when her on again, off again enemy Wally Hatford tells her that the remains of a strange animal known as the abaguchie have been spotted in their area. Wally swears Caroline to secrecy and warns her not to search by herself. But Caroline will do anything to find the secret of the bones and finds out the hard way that she should have listened.
25333921	/m/09gbgx6	Nudge		2008-04-08	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 One of the main justifications for Thaler's and Sunstein's endorsement of libertarian paternalism in Nudge draws on facts of human nature and psychology. The book is critical of the homo economicus view of human beings "that each of us thinks and chooses unfailingly well, and thus fits within the textbook picture of human beings offered by economists." They cite many examples of research which raise "serious questions about the rationality of many judgments and decisions that people make". They state that, unlike members of homo economicus, members of the species homo sapiens make predictable mistakes because of their use of heuristics, fallacies, and because of the way they are influenced by their social interactions. The book describes two systems that characterize human thought. Sunstein and Thaler refer to these as the "Reflective System" and the "Automatic System". The Automatic System is "rapid and is or feels instinctive, and it does not involve what we usually associate with the word thinking". Instances of the Automatic System at work include smiling upon seeing a puppy, getting nervous while experiencing air turbulence, and ducking when a ball is thrown at you. The other system of thought is the Reflective System. This system is deliberate and self-conscious. It is the one at work when people decide which college to attend, where to go on trips, and (under most circumstances) whether or not to get married. Because of these differences and conflicts between these systems, people are often subject to making mistakes that are the result of widely occurring biases, heuristics, and fallacies. These include: *Anchoring: a cognitive bias wherein one relies too heavily on one trait or piece of information. An example would be a resident of Chicago who is asked to guess the population of Milwaukee. Knowing that Milwaukee is a major city, but certainly not as large as Chicago, the person would take the population of Chicago (roughly 3 million) and divide it by, say, three (arriving at one million). A resident of Green Bay (which has a population of around 100,000) might know that Milwaukee is larger than Green Bay, and triple the population of their home city to arrive at a guess (of 300,000). The difference in guesses of people because of their geographical location is an instance of anchoring. The real population of Milwaukee is about 580,000. *Availability heuristic: when people predict the frequency of an event based on how easily an example can be brought to mind. The authors state that this could help explain why people think that homicides occur more than suicides, as examples of homicides are more readily available. The availability heuristic can have negative effects in business and politics, because people will overstate risks, resulting in people purchasing unnecessary insurance, or governments pursuing social goals at the expense of other more fruitful ones. *Representativeness heuristic: where people judge the probability or frequency of a hypothesis by considering how much the hypothesis resembles available data. An example would be perceiving meaningful patterns in information that is in fact random. These include false accounts of "cancer clusters" and the common belief in basketball that players can get "hot". Due to the number of shots taken, players are bound to have times when they score many shots in a row, but basketball fans wrongly believe that a player that has just made a series of shots is more likely to make their next shot. *Status quo bias: this is when people are very likely to continue a course of action since it has been traditionally the one pursued, even though this course of action may clearly not be in their best interest. An example of the status-quo bias at work would be when magazine companies offer trials of their magazines for free, but then, after the trial has ended, continue to send magazines and charge the customer until he or she actively ends the subscription. This leads to many people receiving and paying for magazines they do not read. *Herd mentality: people are heavily influenced by the actions of others. Sunstein and Thaler cite a famous study by Solomon Asch where people, due to peer pressure, answer certain questions in a way that was clearly false (such as saying that two lines are the same length, when they clearly are not). Libertarian paternalism is the union of two political notions that are commonly viewed as being at odds (to the point of oxymoron) libertarianism and paternalism. Sunstein and Thaler state that "the libertarian aspect of our strategies lies in the straightforward insistence that, in general, people should be free to do what they like-and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so". The paternalistic portion of the term "lies in the claim that it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better". Choice architecture describes the way in which decisions are influenced by how the choices are presented. It is in arranging the choice architecture in a certain way that individuals can be nudged in a certain way without taking away their freedom of choice. A simple example of a nudge would be placing healthy foods in a school cafeteria at eye level, while putting less healthy junk food in harder to reach places. Individuals are not prevented from eating whatever they want, but the arranging of the food choices in that way has the effect of decreasing consumption of junk food and increasing consumption of healthier foods. In theories of choice architecture however, it is not readily obvious the extent to which such "nudges" can influence behavior and still be considered libertarian. For example, if the government only allows junk food to be sold on the top of mountains, to what extent can such a policy truly be considered libertarian? The difference between only making junk food available on mountains and only making junk food available on shelves below eye level seems to be more a difference of degree rather than kind. Thaler and Sunstein discuss these issues in some portions of their book. At some point, this thing which does not seem like coercion, becomes a clear case of coercion. When the power used to gently nudge is absolute, no matter how slight the suggestion, its victim remains intimidated by the knowledge of the unlimited power behind it. Thus, because government necessarily sits in a position of almost unlimited power over the individual, any lifestyle suggestions they make are not compatible with Libertarian ideals. Sunstein and Thaler use their notions of nudges within the context of choice architecture to propose policy recommendations that they believe are in the spirit of libertarian paternalism. They have recommendations in the areas of finance, health, the environment, schools, and marriage. They believe these problems can at least be partially addressed by improving the choice architecture. Thaler and Sunstein point out that many Americans are not saving enough for retirement. They state that "in 2005 the personal savings rate for Americans was negative for the first time since 1932 and 1933 - the Great Depression years". One change they offer is creating better default plans for employees. Employees would be able to adopt any plan they like, but, if no action is taken, they would automatically be enrolled in an expertly designed program [such as social security]. They also propose what they refer to as the "Save More Tomorrow" plan. This is to address the issue of people having the desire to save more, yet procrastinating on actually doing so. This program would invite "participants to commit themselves, in advance, to a series of contribution increases timed to coincide with pay raises". The book contains an analysis of the Bush administration program Medicare Part D. Thaler and Sunstein state that "on some dimensions Bush was on the right track" with the plan, but that, "as a piece of choice architecture...it suffered from a cumbersome design that impeded good decision making". Specifically, they think that default choices for programs should not have been random, and that beneficiaries of the program were not given adequate resources to deal with the number of choices they were faced with. They think that seniors who did not sign up for a program should have one assigned to them, and that, yearly, they should be mailed an itemized list of all drugs they had used and all of the fees they incurred. This information would be freely available online, where beneficiaries could easily compare their programs with other similar ones. Sunstein and Thaler also propose a way to increase organ donation rates in the United States. They argue that a mandated choice program should be put in place, where, in order for someone to renew their drivers license, they must say whether or not they would like to be an organ donor. They also advocate the creation of websites which would suggest that the wide community supports organ donation in order to nudge people into becoming organ donors themselves.
25334800	/m/09gdgmt	A Flight of Pigeons	Ruskin Bond	2003-01	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The Novel starts with the death of the father of Ruth Labadoor in front of her eyes in a church. This murder is committed by the Indian rebels who are a part of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and who have decided to kill all the Britishers of the small town Shahjahanpur. It is then that Mariam Labadoor, who is the mother of the narrator, Ruth Labadoor comes into action. She takes their entire family of 6 to their trusted friend Lala Ramjimal who keeps them at his home and gives them the maximum security and shelter he can give. The Pathan leader Javed Khan comes to know that there are a few foreigners living in Lala's home and he suddenly comes into their house and forcefully takes away Ruth and Mariam Labadoor to his home. The rest of the book is followed by the various happening in the Labadoor family, who are very warmly welcomed by different family members of Javed Khan. But, Javed Khan himself is a cunning man and he pleads to marry Ruth Labadoor. Mariam saves her daughter many times as she does not want her to marry Javed Khan. She keeps a condition that if the British are able to take on the country once again, then she would not let him marry her daughter and if they lose from the rebels, then she would give her daughter to him. The British are able to take the hold of the country and Javed Khan is killed in one of the fights with the Britishers. With lots of help and support, the Labadoor family finally reach their relatives.
25337388	/m/09ggmvc	The Road to Memphis	Mildred Taylor	1992	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The novel, like its predecessors is narrated by a now 17-year-old African American girl named Cassie Logan, growing up in Mississippi in the year 1941. When her older brother Stacey comes home with his friends Little Willie and Moe in a used car, things seem good. That is until they come across Stacey's friend Clarence fighting with his girlfriend Sissy about him joining the army, and encounter Charlie Simms, a hateful old white man who forces Stacey and his friends to help him and his son get their truck out of a ditch using Stacey's brand new car. Later on, Cassie goes coon hunting, with Stacey, Christopher-John and Little Man, also her brothers, along with Little Willie, Harris, also Sissy's twin brother, Clarence, and Harris's dog. While going through the woods to find his dog, Cassie and Harris encounter Statler, Leon, and Troy Aames along with Jeremy who are also out hunting. The Aames brothers cause trouble with Harris, talking about his weight and how he would make a good "coon". Jeremy, who has a reputation of being nice to Stacey as well as with most of the people of color in the community, doesn't join in at first, but does later having been pressured by his cousins. The Aames's dogs chase Harris up a tree, and the tree, not being able to hold up his weight, collapses, bringing Harris down with it. Harris suffers a broken leg and is out unconscious. The brothers try to apologize, saying that it wasn't really their fault and leave while Jeremy remains. Cassie goes and gets her brothers, Little Willie, and Clarence and they rush over to help Harris. Later, Harris is struggling to hold on to life. Jeremy comes over to the Logan house and tries to apologize, but Stacey does not forgive him, thinking that Jeremy has changed just like his father and uncle have warned. Cassie leaves soon after to Jackson with Stacey and his friends, to the high school she attends there and things get back to normal. Then, in November, when they come back home for their preacher's funeral, along with their cousin Oliver, Little Man and Christopher-John inform them with the news that Sissy, Clarence's girlfriend is pregnant. Neither Sissy, nor Clarence want to own up that its Clarence's baby, Clarence because he is not ready to be a father and Sissy so that Clarence will feel bad and marry her. This is what Sissy tells Cassie not to tell anyone else because she doesn't want Clarence to be forced into marrying her. Cassie, who has just learned Moe has lost his job, feels that Sissy is just causing trouble. After she tries to explain this to her as she walks her home, Cassie is forced to walk back to the church alone. The Aames brothers pass by her on the road and start messing with her. Just in the nick of time, Cassie's father, David, rescues her from the white boys and walks with her a little while then turns back to go home. Cassie tells Clarence about Sissy's plan even though Sissy told her not to. Cassie tells Clarence before he goes over to Sissy's house not to tell Sissy. After they've said their goodbyes, Cassie, Oliver, Stacey, and his friends go to pick Clarence up and find him and Sissy arguing again. Despite what Cassie told him to do, Clarence tells Sissy about what Cassie told him and Sissy starts screaming at both her and Clarence. As they drive away, Clarence says how he has a headache, foreshadowing other events to come as the story progresses. Because of his headache, Clarence tells Stacey that he has to stop in the neighboring town of Strawberry to get some BC Powder for his head. Stacey has to go make his car payments to Wade Jamison anyways and they drive into town. As they do, Stacy notices that the left tire of his car seems low so Willie volunteers to go and get it fixed up for him. Clarence tells Willie to wait for him so he can get the medicine for his head and Moe goes with him. As they go into the store, the Aames brothers and Jeremy come out of the store. After Stacey goes into Mr. Jamison's office to pay for his car, Little Willie, Cassie and Oliver see Clarence coming out of the store without Moe. Statler Aames asks Clarence if he's forgotten his manners because of the soldier suit he's wearing and he says no and that he's sorry he hasn't greeted them. Statler, tells him that he should take off his cap when he's talking to him and as Clarence does Statler tells him to step over to where he is to see if he has a "big head". The old men who are on the steps and Statler's brothers are laughing. Jeremy is not and he leaves. Statler orders Clarence to bend his head so he can feel it and tells everyone else to do it too because it "brings good luck". Despite the humiliation, Clarence knows he can't do anything about it and takes it—that is until Moe comes out of the store and tells Clarence to go, oblivious to what is happening. Statler and the other men aren't very happy about being interrupted, and almost start something with Moe, when Mr. Jamison calls the two young men over. Saved, they go over to "talk" with the lawyer and Clarence ends up going into the office with Stacey. Moe tells Cassie, Oliver, and Little Willie they'll be out in a while, and they head over to the garage. At the garage, they see Harris's old truck coming down the road with Christopher-John, Little Man, Sissy and Harris inside. Sissy demands to know where Clarence is but before she is able to find out where, another truck comes toward the garage with Statler and his brothers in it. Harris, recognizing them as the men who had hurt him gets nervous and urges Sissy they need to leave. Statler and his brothers come over to them from Jeremy's truck and starts things with Moe saying he was "the boy who messed with our getting ourselves some good luck with that soldier boy". Statler orders Moe to too take his hat off and rubs his head as well. Statler keeps on saying Moe is mighty lucky to be courting someone like Cassie, which is what he infers from his constant looking back at her. All of Moe's anger is unleashed when Statler says by rubbing Moe's head he can get lucky with Cassie himself. Moe hauls off and hits Statler and his brothers with the crowbar he had in his hands, knocking them all to the ground. Moe, shocked by what he has just done, looks for somewhere to hide as they hear someone coming. Moe turns to Harris's truck, but Harris refuses and drives away, saying they'll get him just like that night they went hunting, leaving Sissy, Christopher-John, and Little Man. Moe gets the signal from Jeremy, who is just across the way to get into his truck just before the owner of the garage and Mr. Simms come over to see what has happened. Statler tells his uncle and the garage owner that it was Moe who had done this to him and that Harris had driven him away in his truck. While all this is going on, the sheriff comes, as well as Stacey and Clarence. Cassie tells them about what has happened, and they tell Jeremy to drop Moe off in Jackson. Jeremy is hesitant at first, but then decides to do it to make up for the going along with his cousins after Harris. When Cassie, her brother, Stacey, Clarence, Little Willie and Oliver get back to Jackson, they are surprised to find that neither Jeremy nor Moe is there. They get worried that Jeremy has turned him into the authorities. Stacey tells Cassie to stay to study at the local restaurant while he, Clarence, Willie and Oliver go look for Moe. As Cassie studies in the office of the restaurant, a man comes in looking for Jasper, the owner. Cassie recognizes him as the man who has come in with a woman in green. They get into a discussion about books, school, and Cassie's love life. Cassie finds herself attracted to this man who introduces himself as Solomon Bradley. He leaves soon after and Cassie goes out of the office to find her brother and his friends are back with no word about Moe. She decides to go with them to try and find Moe, leaving Clarence and Oliver behind. They find Moe with Jeremy and after they do, go to Mr. Jamison's house to find out what to do about Moe and his dire situation. He tells them he would probably be charged with criminal offenses and that's when they decide Moe has to leave Mississippi if he wants to survive. They decide to drive him to Memphis, Tennessee and make him catch a train to Chicago once they get him there. They pick up some food from Oliver and money and they are off to Memphis. On the way they encounter many obstacles. They get in trouble with white men at a rest stop and Cassie's pride is damaged when she tries to use the white only indoor restroom and is caught. She is pushed down by the rest stop owner and kicked at, as well as losing her purse in the process. They all speed away after the men talk about how uppity Stacey is with his nice car and all. They roll into the forest and their car breaks down. Stacey decides after they wait there in the darkness for a while to go see if the men are out there. He pulls out a gun and goes and finds out. When he comes back and reports he has seen nothing, they decide they should get some rest. While Cassie is trying to sleep, she feels queasy, jumps out the car and throws up. Stacey tells Moe to watch out for Cassie in the back, and then she falls asleep. When she wakes up, Stacey is mad about the damage done to his car that was caused by the men back at the rest stop. The car also is not starting up, so Stacey goes with Willie to try and find somewhere to get a part for the car. Cassie and Moe are left alone with sleeping Clarence. They decide to eat and as they do Moe kisses Cassie. Just as Moe is about to say something that he says he has been wanting to say for a while, men come and ask them what happened to their car. The men tell them they have parts after Cassie explains the situation and Moe goes with them to get them. Stacey and Willie come back and Cassie tells them where Moe went. Moe comes back with the piece and they are able to fix the car. Not long after, Clarence starts screaming about how much his head hurts and that its killing him. He knocks himself unconscious and after they fix the car they try to get Clarence admitted into the white hospital. They are refused but get some medicine from a black janitor. She directs them to a woman named Ma Dessie's place who gives them food and gives Clarence something for his head. She insists they leave. Before they do, Clarence tells Cassie he started writing the letter Cassie had told him to write to Sissy. They finish off their trip to Memphis and it is there that they learn what has happened at Pearl Harbor : the Japanese have bombed it. Unable to get a train for Moe to Chicago, and with the car acting up again, they go find the place of the man that Oliver told them about before they left which just happened to be the man who Cassie had met back in Mississippi. The man, who works for a newspaper, helps Stacey out by telling him about a place where he can get his car fixed. Cassie, who's embarrassed by her appearance, takes a bath and notices all the pictures of women Solomon has in his apartment. She helps Solomon out by proofreading an article for the newspaper and then she falls asleep. The next day after she takes another bath, Solomon comes in and dances with Cassie and kisses her. Moe sees and Cassie feels bad about it. She finds out the car got fixed and they have a ticket for Moe and they leave. At the station, Moe tells Cassie what he never got to tell her back in the woods: that he has loved her for a long time and he wanted to marry her after he got a better education. He kisses her again and then he's off to Chicago. They make their way back to pick up Clarence and when they get there, they find out he is dead. The woman gives them the letter that Clarence had written to Sissy saying that he wanted to marry her. They go back to Mississippi broken-hearted only to find more trouble. Harris is going to jail from the belief that he knows where Moe is. Jeremy knows he took Moe but doesn't say anything at first. Eventually, he does and Harris is let go. His father gets mad and hits him. He says he is dead to him and that he doesn't know why he is a "nigger lover". Later, they all try to tell Sissy that Clarence is dead but she doesn't believe them. When she finally does she screams and cries. Still later, Stacey and Cassie go home. Jeremy comes over and tells Stacey he's sorry about the time he chased Harris in the woods and that he's leaving Mississippi and joining the army. The next day, Stacey goes back to Jackson. The story closes with the fact that they never see Jeremy again.
25342827	/m/09gq9xv	A Mighty Fortress	David Weber	2010-04	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Following Charis' conquest of Corisande, the people of Corisande are becoming increasingly restive under the occupation (despite the fact that Charis is governing both wisely and compassionately) and 2 major resistance movements begin to coalesce - one in the capital city of Manchyr and one in the Northern aristocratic estates. Both conspiracies enjoin "Temple Loyalists", who view the Church of Charis as an abomination that must be destroyed, with secular leaders, who want to take back their nation from the foreign occupation and both seem to be getting very well organized. While Merlin uses his advanced technology to maintain a constant watch over these groups, he, Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan (who is now pregnant with her first child) decide not to move against them now and wait until they can crush all opposition in a single stroke. Meanwhile, in Talkyra - the capital city of Delferahk, where the surviving children of Corisandian Prince Hektor are now in exile - the Earl of Coris is summoned to Zion to consult with the church leadership. While Coris is loath to leave Princess Iris and Prince Daivyn alone and despite his suspicions regarding the Inquisition's involvement in their father's death, Coris has little choice but to comply with the Temple's demands. As Sharleyan's pregnancy progresses, Merlin takes her to Nimue's Cave under the Mountains of Light (taking her into space as part of the "scenic route" and impressing her with all the marvels in the cave) so that she can be examined by the medical computer there. He's forced to come clean about the fact that he injected both them and several other people with the nanotech designed to fight diseases and help heal injuries faster and explains that he was determined not to lose any of them to some germ. In Dohlar, the Earl of Thirsk is once again put in a naval command when it becomes clear to his superiors that his reports about the Charisians' ships were accurate. Yet he is still forced to contend with court politics since his former, incompetent predecessor had all too many allies who did not enjoy being proven wrong. Nonetheless, Thirsk turns out to be a shrewd operator, as he manages to get his crews trained very well while changing the general practices of the Dohlaran Fleet (such as forbidding the use of the lash for discipline and asking that sailors and their families be paid by the church on a monthly basis) which earns him even more enemies in Dohlar and in the Temple. In Tellesberg, Archbishop Staynair is preparing for his journey to Corisande and reluctantly tells Baron Wave Thunder about the trunkloads of reports Adorai Dynnys handed to him about corruption within the temple. While Wave Thunder is angry at him for not sharing such intelligence with him, Staynair states that it was given to him under the seal of the confessional so as to protect the source who has already risked her life to get it to them and Wave Thunder relents. In Corisande, Father Tymahn Hahskans begins to draw attention to himself in his sermons on the corruption within the church that he has noticed for a long time yet was forbidden from speaking of. His sermons begin to pose a threat to the Temple Loyalists who are attempting to encourage public unrest and civil disobedience in the capital. As a result, Hahskans is abducted from his home and then brutally tortured to death and left in a public place upon the orders of the former Intendent of Corisande (the representative of the Inquisition). Merlin, who is notified about the abduction by OWL too late to save Hahskans, moves against the conspiracy in Manchyr, sending an anonymous message to Sir Koryn Gahrvai the son of Earl of Anvil Rock, who proceeds to arrest the conspirators, among whom they find the former Intendent. He is later defroked from his post by the Church of Charis and tried for murder and conspiracy and consequently executed along with most of his fellow conspirators in Manchyr. Coris arrives at the temple in the dead of winter and meets with Traynair and Clyntahn to discuss possible ways to encourage a popular revolt in his homeland. Unbeknown to Coris, Clyntahn has managed to move a spy near him to report on his activities, and who gives a detailed report to his deputy, Rayno. In Chisholm, Prince Nahrmahn and his wife Olyvya are brought fully into the truth about Merlin, a revelation they manage to handle quite well, and both are issued communicators and given access to OWL. Merlin takes the opportunity of Sharleyan and Cayleb's stay in the palace during winter to go on another mission to Zion, where he disguises himself as a Silkiahan merchant by the name of Ahbraim Zhevons and makes contact with Madam Ahnzhelyk, The Circle's most prominent ally. He notifies her that Adorai Dynnys arrived safely at Charis and that it's time for her to pack up and leave. She in turn, arranges the smuggling out of over 200 people related to the circle as well as the families of several vicars, the Archbishop of Glacierheart and several other bishops, just as the Inquisition moves against The Circle. Rather than be taken alive, Hawuerd Wylsyn (one of The Circle's leaders), kills his brother Samyl and then fights the Inquisition's guards until he himself is killed. All told, Clyntahn arrests over 2000 people, including over 30 vicars (a tenth of the entire Council of Vicars), dozens of bishops and archbishops, along with all their families and associates, most of whom are brutally questioned and later executed with the full rigor of the "Punishment of Schueler". Earl Coris leaves Zion with extreme haste just as this happens. Vicar Duchairn, while horrified at Clyntahn's actions, is helpless to stop it, yet feels that he must do something to mitigate the damage caused by the High Inquisitor's reign of terror. He notifies Trynair that while he refuses to support Clyntahn's actions and will take no part in them, he will not oppose him, either. Rather, he will fund all the charitable orders so as to present a more gentle face for mother church to help those who will be hurt in the Holy War that has just been declared and Trynair agrees to support Duchairn's decision. Meanwhile, in Corisande, Maikel Staynair makes a pastoral visit accompanied by Merlin and in his own unique way, buys the hearts and minds of the Corisandians. Merlin, in turn, notifies the regency council about the Northern Conspiracy and how the Emperor and Empress have known about for some time, waiting for them to organize so as to decapitate the resistance in one fell swoop and snare the treasonous Grand Duke of Zebediah along with them. He also tells them that they and Viceroy Chermyn will be given the necessary information to move upon the conspirators by a network of "seijin" like himself who have been watching the princedom for some time and who are experts at unobtrusively collecting critical information. Soon afterwards, a traitor in the Imperial Charisian Army sends modern rifles to Corisande through Grand Duke Zebediah and the Regency Council moves in on the traitors, arresting them and the former bishop-executor of the Church in Corisande along with them. In Charis, Master Howsmyn and his researchers begin developing an exploding shell for the navies new iron cannons, while Earl Grey Harbor opens clandestine negotiations with King Gorjah of Tarot. Earl Lock Island uses additional units of the navy to apply even greater preassure on Gorjah, while Merlin, disguised yet again as Zhevons, infiltrates Gorjah bedchamber and convinces him (at dagger point) to agree to join the Charisian Empire. Sharleyan and Cayleb return to Charis just before she gives birth to the Crown Princess Alanah with Merlin supervising in disguise as a brother of the Order of Pasquale. In Dohlar, Earl Thirsk manages to force the Charisians to retreat from their forward base, inflicting serious losses on several of their units (though most manage to escape). This defeat, motivates Thirsk to plan an offensive against the Charisian empire. The Temple, having declared Holy War against Charis and with its new fleet ready, orders the ships to move out and join ships from other mainland fleets in Dohlar. Cayleb and Sharleyan, decide to meet the bulk of the Church's fleet with over 60 ships of their own, however, they discover too late, that the Church had managed to deceive them, sending their ships to the Desnairian Empire instead, by way of the Tarot Channel (as a reminder to Gorjah that they are still in charge). Caught with their most of their fleet badly out of position and unable to do anything about the Church's move on Tarot, Cayleb and Sharleyan decide to send Earl Lock Island (who has also been admitted into the Inner Circle of those who know the truth) and his 25 ships against over 120 galleons (though only 90 are armed at all). However, Howsmyn manages to complete his trials on the new shells and manages to provide some of Lock Islands ships with the new guns and a small amount of the new shells. Lock Island then leads a daring nighttime ambush against the Church's fleet and manages to catch it completely surprised, eliminating an entire column of ships before they can respond. Once his ships penetrate the Church's formation, Lock Island sends a signal flare into the air and the ships equipped with the new guns fire the new shells. The sudden destructiveness of the new weapons overwhelms the Church's fleet, shattering its cohesiveness and morale. Nearly half the ships surrender to the Charisians while only 9 manage to escape, with all the others sunk or burned. The cost to Charisians is high, as nearly half of their own galleons are destroyed. Emperor Cayleb's cousin, Bryahn Lock Island, is also killed in the battle. As Cayleb mourns his cousin's death, Merlin comforts him as best as he can, telling him that Bryahn only did his duty, as Cayleb would've done in his place. Privately, Merlin reflects that the church is likely to rebuild its fleet and try to destroy Charis again, despite this staggering loss, since it has no other choice.
25347351	/m/09gqp1l	Confessions of a Teenage Baboon	Paul Zindel	1977	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Chris Boyd, at fifteen, is an only child. The story is told from Chris' point of view as the son of Helen, his mother who works as a live-in practical nurse. His father left the family (by saying he was going out to buy a newspaper) when Chris was a young child, moving to Mexico and then dying there a short time later. Helen and Chris move into the Dipardi residence for Helen's most recent assignment, to care for Carmelita Dipardi, the mother of Lloyd Dipardi. Lloyd is described by Chris to be "about thirty years old with enough muscles to beat up anyone within a ten mile radius". There's also "Pops", Lloyd's father, who appears to suffer from dementia. Lloyd has hired Helen to care for his mother. Chris has held on to a relic of the past, a chesterfield trench coat that once belonged to his father, and which he hopes to someday grow into. Helen has her own issues, such as making Chris urinate in a milk bottle on assignments where they don't have their own private bathroom. Helen also takes household items and other goods from clients for her own use, often without asking, and this soon manifests in one of many confrontations between the hard-drinking and partying Lloyd and the more introverted Chris. Chris also befriends Harold, a boy about his own age with a physique similar to Lloyd's. Harold serves as a buffer between the rather tense relationship between Chris and Lloyd. Harold understands Chris' insecurities as a peer, but also defends Lloyd, as Lloyd has helped him develop his own body and become the picture of health he later became, as well as his confidence. Over the course of the assignment, Chris and Lloyd begin to learn from each other, and Lloyd helps Chris develop a workout regimen, and even helps him become confident enough to smash the milk bottle and stand up to his mother. The assignment ends with the death of Carmelita, and Chris and Helen move on. Then while on a bus, Chris learns that Helen has intentionally left behind his father's trench coat. Chris immediately runs off the bus and back to the Dipardi house to retrieve it, believing that Lloyd has shredded it for Helen literally cleaning them out. What Chris finds is nothing at all what he expected. He sympathizes with Lloyd's sadness over the loss of his mother. Likewise, Lloyd sympathizes with Chris, aware of his difficult home life. Nonetheless, both share a common bond...a difficult relationship with their mothers, that no matter what challenges exist, they will always cherish. It's a turning point in Chris' life. He returns to his mother, but leaves the coat behind, no longer feeling the need to have it.
25353123	/m/09gq3tw	The King of the Sea	Emilio Salgari		{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Malaysia, 1868. A mysterious figure has armed the Dyaks and led them into battle against Tremal-Naik. Yanez races to the rescue but soon learns that Sandokan and his Tigers are also under threat. Despite eleven years of peace, the new Rajah of Sarawak, James Brooke’s nephew, has ordered the pirates to leave their island home or face all out war. Is this the end for the Tigers of Mompracem?
25356018	/m/09gb409	Floating Down to Camelot				 When Bill, an impoverished Cambridge student, is even unable to pay for his mother's funeral, his thoughts turn to crime. However, a friend warns him that "To have no money is to join the aristocracy, Bill. When the day comes for you to have it, you will have left the aristocracy, never to return." Another central character, Helen, an undergraduate reading English literature, lacks stability in her life and finds her main solace in poetry and particularly in the romantic medieval work of Tennyson. Her obsession with The Lady of Shalott, and her identification with the lady of the poem, bring her to a fatal ending. Helen has been seduced by the medieval romances of the Victorian era but does not wish to be seduced by Bill. Lance, a scientist, hopes to save the world, but the effect of his experiments on Helen is less positive. Meanwhile, 'the Cambridge rapist' is at large. "This is the world of bedsitter girls, of Auden and Betjeman and Brian Patten." By buying a Donald Duck mask for bank robbing purposes, Bill unwittingly identifies himself with the rapist. In the course of a week during the University's Michaelmas term, the tensions and interplay between the leading characters lead not only to bank robbery, but also to ritual castration, transvestism, and a fatal car crash. "From the Whipple Museum to the University Arms Hotel, intellectuals and tourists turned pale. What could have caused it, this catastrophic sound?" The novel includes many quotations, not only from Tennyson but also from Thomas Hood, William Thackeray, and W. H. Auden.
25356957	/m/09gjq2d	The Case for God	Karen Armstrong	2009		 In the Introduction, Armstrong presents two forms of knowledge, mythos and logos. Since the 16th and 17th century, she says logos governed civilization, resulting in two phenomena: fundamentalism and atheism. Armstrong says that the "new" atheists have made some valid criticisms of religion but that they focused on fundamentalism. She says they "aren't radical enough" and finds their work "disappointingly shallow". Her study of religion during the prior twenty years gave her this book and something fresh to [bring to] the table".
25357392	/m/0gtt685	Dead Babies				 Amis's second novel—a parody of Agatha Christie's country-house mysteries—takes place over a single weekend at a manor called Appleseed Rectory.
25363289	/m/09g9sqn	Reef of Death		1998	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the story, 17-year-old Peter Collins McPhee (nicknamed P.C. because he loves playing computer games) is called by his Uncle Cliff to solve a mystery in Australia. The brother of a young Aboriginal girl named Maruul has gone suddenly missing while searching for their tribe's treasure, told of in a riddle. She says there was a terrible screeching sound, and a boat came near just as her brother disappeared. but P.C. finds that there is a killer creature living in the depths of the reef. The creature attacks and kills his uncle. The two kids go to Wally Wallygong, an Aboriginal fishing shop owner, who explains the riddle. Afterwards, they all go to the reef location of the creature and pretend to be attacked by snakes. The strange ship that has been passing by takes them on board. They attempt to escape and are almost killed. They find out that the captain of the ship, a geologist, has had the treasure—an encarved opal wall—all along, and was making the screeching noise mechanically, which signaled the creature to attack. She also plans to destroy the treasure. P.C. tricks the creature into eating the captain, and Maruul returns to her village with the treasure. The village buys long-needed resources with the treasure.
25364599	/m/09gjb3t	Tentacles	Roland Smith	2009-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tentacles begins as the protagonists from Cryptid Hunters board the Coelacanth, a presumably haunted ship, on a voyage led by Dr. Wolfe to capture a giant squid alive. During the voyage, there are Mokele-mbembe eggs (which Marty and Grace had found in the Congo in Cryptid Hunters) incubating in a laboratory restricted to most of the crew. Unbeknownst to Wolfe, Blackwood's thug, Butch is on board, planning on stealing the eggs and Grace for his boss. The book culminates in a showdown between Blackwood and Wolfe, ending in Ted Bronson, Wolfe's partner's, successful capture of a squid, though Blackwood, thinking Wolfe and the rest of the crew to be dead, escapes with the hatchlings, and Grace. Unbeknownst to Wolfe, Grace tricked Blackwood into taking her, with the dragonspy hidden on her, allowing her to be one step ahead of Blackwood.
25374965	/m/09k5lbl	The Land of Little Rain	Mary Hunter Austin	1903		 The Land of Little Rain is a collection of short stories and essays detailing the landscape and inhabitants of the American Southwest. A message of environmental conservation and a philosophy of cultural and sociopolitical regionalism loosely links the stories together. ;"The Land of Little Rain" The opening essay describes the "Country of Lost Borders," an area of land between Death Valley and the High Sierras. The image created of the land at the beginning of the story is one of almost unbearable heat and dryness, punctuated by violent storms. Despite the description of how inhospitable the landscape is, at the end Austin proposes that the costs the land imposes upon a man are worth it because it provides man with peace of mind and body that cannot be achieved any other way. ;"Water Trails of the Ceriso" The section's title refers to the trails made by wild animals moving towards sources of water. The essay provides descriptions of the many animals that travel along the trails, including coyotes, rabbits, and quails. Their ability to find water where there seems to be none is extolled by Austin, a skill which she believes no human is able to match. ;"The Scavengers" This essay describes the various animals that live in the desert that feed upon carrion&mdash;most notably, the buzzards and the carrion crows. This scavenging is portrayed as a natural part of the desert, with a multitude of the scavengers working together to find food. The end of the story criticizes the actions of man with regard to the desert. The unnatural trash he leaves cannot used by the scavengers in the story, and as such serves as a stark contrast to the desert's natural processes for recycling waste. ;"The Pocket Hunter" A pocket hunter is a type of miner who hunts for pockets of ore deposits. In the story, the pocket hunter described by Mary Austin lives off of the land with minimal interactions with the civilized world. This harmony with nature, Austin argues, is essential to the pocket hunter's simple happiness. Despite Austin's muted praise, the pocket hunter wants to strike it rich in order to move to Europe and mingle with the landed elite, a goal he accomplishes. However, by the end of the story, the pocket hunter returns to the desert since it is his "destiny". ;"Shoshone Land" "Shoshone Land" narrates the experiences of Winnenap', an American Indian medicine man originally from Shoshone Land who was captured by the Paiute tribe. The story initially revolves around Winnenap', but quickly changes to a detailed description of the environment and wildlife of Shoshone Land to form an intimate tie between Winnenap' and the land he formerly inhabited. ;"Jimville&mdash;a Bret Harte Town" In the beginning of the section, Jimville is touted as a better source of inspiration for Bret Harte than he found during his own travels. Jimville's inhabitants are likened to the fictional characters that were present in some of Harte's short stories. Austin portrays Jimville as a small town set in a harsh environment and inhabited by simple yet endearing toughs. Although the inhabitants endure many hardships, Austin claims that there is an almost unexplainable pull which keeps them in town and encourages new travelers to stay. ;"My Neighbor's Field" The story is about a plot of land which changes hands many times&mdash;Austin characterizes this plot of land as an ideal field. She criticizes the owners of the field, the Indians and shepherds, because their habits and lifestyle scar the land. At the end of the episode, it is revealed that the field is destined to develop into an urban area. Austin claims that while the field may at that point serve a greater human use, it will not be better for the land and all life. ;"The Mesa Trail" This section describes one of the trails that runs through the American Southwest. It contains several passages detailing the damage human activity has done to the land. She criticizes the "unsightly scars" left by the Paiute Indians in the form of abandoned campoodies and the damaged plant life left by domesticated animals such as sheep. ;"The Basket Maker" This story follows the life of Seyavi, a Paiute Indian who loses her mate, lives alone with her child, and sells baskets she weaves in order to survive. Austin claims that the Paiutes make the land itself their home, with the natural ridges of mountains as walls and the wild almond bloom as their furnishings. It is because of this that Austin argues that the Paiutes will always be homesick when in homes built by man, as man cannot replicate nature's walls and furnishings. ;"The Streets of the Mountains" This essay consists of long description of mountains and their respective trails. The section characterizes the beauty of the mountains and their inhabitants. The story also contains critiques people who dwell in man-made houses. The comfort provided by such houses, Austin argues, results in people not being able to truly understand the beauty and divinity of the mountains. ;"Water Borders" The essay revolves around the streams and lakes that can be found in the mountains, generally formed from the melting snow higher in the mountains. The particular mountain in the story is Oppapago, a mountain within the Sierras in a forest reserve. Austin contrasts the mountain landscape to a meadow outside a forest reserve, which lacks color and beauty because it is damaged by the grazing of sheep. ;"Other Water Borders" "Other Water Borders" is centered more on the plants affected by the water from the mountains, both wild and cultivated. The story begins with a depiction of a squabble between several locals over an irrigation ditch filled by water from the mountains. This is followed by a series of descriptions of the variety of plants that the irrigation ditch allows to thrive. Found within these depictions of plant life is Austin's lament of the complexities of civilization. Austin implies that with the advent of cities and manufactured objects people have lost an innate ability to know what natural remedies may be beneficial or detrimental to one's health. ;"Nurslings of the Sky" The "nurslings of the sky" are storms, formed in the hills and given almost human characteristics by Austin. The beginning of the story contains an account of the destruction of a town by floods and snow. The blame for the events is not placed on nature, but rather the people whose poorly placed town was destroyed. The story continues with descriptions of storms and their effects upon the wildlife of the area, pausing to explain how the land teaches people things. The story uses the example of a group of Native Americans who learn the use of smoke signals by observing the dust pillars formed by desert winds at the edges of mesas. The end of the story expresses Austin's discontent at how people have dealt with the weather by determining the best seasons to plant crops rather than by musing about the "eternal meanings of the skies". ;"The Little Town of the Grape Vines" "The Little Town of Grape Vines," or El Pueblo de Las Uvas, tells a story of a simple people living in peace with their environment. With houses made of mud, homemade wine, and gardens to provide the fruits, vegetables, and herbs, the townspeople live a simple life without the complex notions of wealth and class that Austin feels have corrupted much of society. Austin describes the lives of the people living in the town, lives which consist of little more than planting, harvesting, eating, making music, raising children, and dancing. The end of the story is a call back to the simple life exemplified in "The Little Town of the Grape Vines," criticizing those people who are overly obsessed with their own perceived importance in a world where their actions truly matter little.
25381398	/m/09k62_m	Mention My Name in Atlantis	John Jakes		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is told by the unreliable narrator Hoptor the Vintner, a fast-talking operator with all the right contacts who is convinced in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary that he can smooth over anything. "Mention my name" is his tagline, meant to assure his auditors that dropping it in various quarters is their ticket to getting whatever they want.
25389180	/m/0bmk0bk	Barbarian Princess		1982	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Correus Appius Julianus is the slave born son of retired Roman general Flavius Appius Julianus who is currently posted as a centurion to the Legio II Augusta in Western Britain under the command of provincial governor Sextus Julius Frontinus. The novel opens with Correus returning from a spying expedition to some of the local British tribes, one of which, the Silures, will provide the main antagonist in the person of their king Bendigeid. Upon returning to his legion, Correus loses his German mistress Freita to the knife of a Briton trying to kill the governor. He is subsequently involved in a battle against the tribe that killed his Freita and must also find time to rescue his half-brother Flavius Appius Julianus, his father's heir with whom he has an uneasy and somewhat adversarial relationship, from the Silures' allies. And Correus also must come to grips with his increasing interest in the governor's hostage - a young British princess named Ygerna who has been given into his care to Romanize. In the meantime, the tribes of western Britain try to survive the governor's attempt to tie them up into the Roman Empire.
25392986	/m/09k5zps	Strange Fruit				 Strange Fruit takes place in a Georgia town in the 1920s and focuses on the relationship between Tracy Deen, son of some prominent white townspeople, and Nonnie, a beautiful and intelligent young black woman that he once rescued from being attacked by a group of white boys. The two had been holding a secret affair, with Nonnie becoming pregnant with Tracy's child, only for Tracy to at one point plan for her to marry 'Big Henry', a man she despises. Tracy himself had originally planned to marry another white townsperson, but changed his mind after a conversation with one of the local preachers and intends on making his relationship with Nonnie public. He instead goes to Nonnie's house and tells her of his original intent to have her wed to Big Henry, having paid him money to do so. Despite this change of heart, Nonnie's brother overhears Big Henry telling of Tracy's payment and Big Henry's impending wedding to Nonnie and why. This prompts Nonnie's brother to go after Tracy and when Tracy's body is discovered later by Big Henry, Big Henry is accused of murdering a white man and is lynched.
25396861	/m/09k6n1h	Fever Dream	Lincoln Child	2010-05-11	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Special Agent Pendergast teams up with Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta to reveal the mystery surrounding his wife's murder. The wife was after a painting that turned out to be highly relevant to a neurological disease. With the help of her brother, she recruited a team of pharmaceuticals to study this disease, but when the secret project began to cut corners, she tried to back out. She was then killed for trying to expose the project to the general public. Pendergast tracks down most of the members involved.
25404567	/m/09k4s1x	Jesus Video	Andreas Eschbach			 During an archaeological dig in Israel, American college student Stephen Cornelius Foxx discovers the remains of a man who seemingly died about two thousand years ago. Among the dead man's belongings is a small linen bag that holds the user manual for a digital video camera. Foxx and his mentor, Professor Wilford-Smith, later find out that this particular model will not be released by its producer, Sony, for another three years. Soon they begin to speculate that the dead man may have been a time traveller from the future, who went back in time to film a significant event two millennia ago -- and of course, the most significant thing to film during that era was Jesus Christ. Media magnate John Kaun, the financier of the dig, initiates a search for the camera, which seems to be hidden at an unknown location. Stephen, however, wants to find it on his own, with help from fellow student Judith Menez and her brother, Yehoshuah. A race for the Jesus Video begins, and soon becomes more dangerous than anyone imagined, as the Roman Catholic Church is doing all in its power to keep the video from going public. Stephen and Judith eventually find the camera, which they discover has been guarded by a secret order of monks for centuries, but are unable to access its memory because the batteries are empty. As the military and the Vatican's agents follow them, they flee into the desert, where they eventually succumb to the heat. The two young people are saved by John Kaun and Professor Wilford-Smith, who treat them and reactivate the camera. However, at that moment Father Scarfaro and other agents of the Church show up, take the camera, and destroy it. Scarfaro explains that if Jesus had lived today, he would only have been a troublemaker, as he was in his own time, and it would be the Church allegedly founded on his teachings who would try him. Three years pass. Stephen gets a call from a video company that gets him very excited; he goes to meet with Professor Wilford-Smith and finally learns the truth: Wilford-Smith discovered two strange video cassettes back in 1947, but had no means to watch the footage on them as the technology had not been invented yet. Once enough time had passed for him to realize what they were, he began looking for the camera. Now, he has gotten his hands on a new Sony video player that can play the footage. Just then, an armed commando unit enters Wilford-Smith's home and demands the cassette. The professor has no problem with them taking it, as he has already distributed hundreds of copies all over the world. The video spreads, but reactions vary greatly: for some people, the humble man in the footage, and his message of love, are deeply touching, inspiring them to completely re-think their life and their values, while others only see a blurry video of a plain, uninteresting rabbi. Still, it sires a new sect of Christianity based on what its followers believe to be Christ's original teachings. Another two and a half years later: Stephen and Judith, who are now in a committed relationship, manage a motel together. They meet with Peter Eisenhardt, an author who was also part of John Kaun's team, and who, unlike them, still believes the video to be a fake. At this point, a young man named John enters in on the discussion. Before getting on his bus to the airport, he tells them that he will be going on a tourist trip to Israel -- and shows them his brand new Sony MR-01 digital video camera.
25406838	/m/09k65y3	How to Ditch Your Fairy	Justine Larbalestier	2008-03	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 How to Ditch Your Fairy is set in a world where a lot of people have their own personal fairy. These fairies bestow certain kinds of luck on the possessor: there are loose-change-finding fairies, good-hair fairies, clothes-shopping fairies, all-boys-will-like-you fairies, parking fairies, etc. Charlie (short for Charlotte) has a parking fairy; if she is in a car, a perfect parking spot is found on the first try. But Charlie is only 14 and she does not drive and hates exhaust, so she thinks she has been cursed. She wants a fairy like her best friend Rochelle has, a clothes-shopping fairy that makes everything look perfect on her, or like her frenemy Fiorenze has, an every-boy-will-like-you fairy. Charlie's attempts to starve her fairy away by walking everywhere collects her demerits for lateness at her school, New Avalon Sports High, where the focus is on sports. The water polo star, Danders Anders, virtually kidnaps her in his car for his illegal purposes and which drastically halts her attempt to remove the fairy. And when the pulchritudinous new boy, Steffi, on whom she has a crush appears to fall for Fiorenze, Charlie gets drastic. She and Fiorenze, who actually hates her fairy, join forces, with Charlie discovering that Fiorenze is not a bad person, and they hatch a plan to switch their fairies, and she learns to be careful about what she wishes for and how the grass is always greener. With the every-boy-will-like-you fairy, girls turn on Charlie, and she wonders whether Steffi likes her or if he is just responding to her fairy. The story is about Charlie’s quest to get rid of her fairy, get her first boyfriend, stay out of trouble at school, and get a new even better fairy to replace the old one.
25408738	/m/09k6tmk	Lothair	Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield	1870		 Lothair, a wealthy young orphaned Scottish nobleman (loosely based on the 3rd Marquess of Bute) has been brought up in the legal guardianship of his Presbyterian uncle Lord Culloden and of a Catholic convert, Cardinal Grandison (based on H. E. Manning). When he comes of age Lothair finds himself the centre of attention of three fascinating women, Lady Corisande, Clare Arundel, and Theodora Campion, representing the Church of England, the Roman Catholic church, and the Radical cause respectively. Wavering in his allegiances, he unsuccessfully proposes marriage to Lady Corisande, almost joins the Catholic church, and finally joins Theodora in Italy as a volunteer in the army of Garibaldi, which is fighting to take the Papal States for Italy. Theodora is killed at Viterbo, and Lothair is seriously wounded at the Battle of Mentana, but is nursed back to health by Clare Arundel, who tries to persuade him that he was saved by an apparition of the Virgin Mary. He takes refuge with the bohemian dandy Mr. Phoebus (a thinly disguised Frederic Leighton), who takes him to Syria, which, as the cradle of Christianity, seems the ideal place to reflect on the roots of the Faith. In Jerusalem he meets Paraclete, a mystic who teaches him that there is truth in many religions. Lothair decides in favour of the Church of England, resisting the attempts of Cardinal Grandison and other prelates, including Mgr Catesby (a thinly disguised Thomas Capel) to convert him to Catholicism, and returns to England where he marries Lady Corisande.
25418269	/m/09k6618	Montmorency	Eleanor Updale	2004-04-30	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 London, England, 1875. The story begins with a man falling through a glass roof while fleeing from the police, onto a grinding machine below. He would have died if not for the intervention of Doctor Robert Farcett. Farcett hopes to prove himself an accomplished doctor by working on the criminal's complex wounds, and continues to work on the thief after he is imprisoned and given the temporary name "Prisoner 493". He soon takes the name "Montmorency" because he was sentenced under the name "Montmorency" in the criminal record. This is due to the fact that the name "Montmorency" was on the bag he had with him when he fell through the glass roof. During his sentence Montmorency becomes a chief exhibit at the Scientific Society (as its name suggests, the Society was a place for medical and scientific gatherings). It is at one of these gatherings that Montmorency comes across Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who is the planner and supervisor of the ongoing London sewer project. From that moment on, this new system would make a drastic change in Montmorency's life. Montmorency realizes that the sewers are the perfect escape route for his daring robberies. However, Montmorency also has high hopes for living as a gentlemen, mainly by selling the expensive items he could steal via the sewers. Since rich people do not normally smell like sewer water or go about in ratty clothes, he finds himself in need of an accomplice—a fellow thief with knowledge, capability, and secrecy to accomplish any given tasks. He formulates a genius idea of having two different yet coequal identities—Scarper and Montmorency. That way no one will discover the true identity of the thief. Scarper, the thief, will pose as a servant to the extravagant and wealthy Montmorency. After three long years of waiting in prison, Montmorency is released from jail. It is notable at this point that all communications between Dr. Farcett and Montmorency ceases after his release from jail. Scarper accomplishes many robberies under the name 'Scarper' (including burgling Doctor Farcett), and is never caught. During this time, Scarper rents a room in the slums to stash the particularly valuable goods. The place he stays is run by Vi Evans (who later becomes one of Montmorency's close friends). Meanwhile, Montmorency rents a room out at the Marimion Hotel for his wealthier self. The robberies committed by Scarper make the papers. Eventually the police pick up a man named "Freakshow", a friend of Montmorency's from his prison days, and pin Scarper's thievery on him. He is hanged for Scarper's crimes, a great source of guilt for Montmorency from then on. Montmorency saves a man by the name of Fox-Selwyn from a carriage accident outside the Marimion. He and Fox-Selwyn hit it off immediately and they become friends, and after a bet forces him to put all of his criminal skills to good use breaking into the Mauramanian Embassy to spy for information - "I bet you I could get in!" Turning it into a gambling matter had finally gotten his companion's attention., Fox-Selwyn gives Montmorency a job as a spy for the British government. His first assignment is to break into the Mauramanian embassy and listen for information that could prevent European war, which earns him a permanent position in the British government. Eventually he frees himself from Scarper and returns all the stolen goods that remain in his possession, resolving to be an honest man.
25423833	/m/09k64s5	The Wicker Man	Robin Hardy	1978-05		 The Wicker Man novelisation follows the plot of the film closely, but also expands upon the original story, incorporating additional backstory and new material that would have been unable to fit in the film. Some of the novel's scenes were originally shot for the film, but were cut to reduce running time and have not been seen since the loss of the film negative. For example, the character of Lord Summerisle's gillie is restored, and the reader learns of Howie's interest in bird-watching. The novelisation reveals that Sergeant Neil Howie had originally attempted to become a priest, but that he was daunted by the prospect of preaching the minority faith of Episcopalianism in the staunchly Presbyterian Scottish Highlands. Howie's relationship with his fiancée, Mary Bannock, is explored in greater detail. Allan Brown writes that Howie's arguments with Lord Summerisle have more impact in the novel than they did in the film, as the casting of Christopher Lee, who is associated with many villainous roles, made it difficult for the film's audience to trust Lord Summerisle or consider his arguments seriously. In the novel, "the battle is more ambivalent, more unsettling – and, in the end, perhaps more in keeping with the treacherous moral landscape Shaffer initially envisioned." The novel expands upon the film's ending. The film ended with Howie being burnt to death as a sacrificial offering inside the Wicker Man; while the novel does include this scene, it also features an additional epilogue where Howie's seaplane is spotted on May Day, suggesting that he may have survived somehow.
25429278	/m/09k7416	The Evolutionary Void	Peter F. Hamilton	2010-08-24	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Exposed as the Second Dreamer, Araminta has become the target of a galaxy-wide search by government agent Paula Myo and the psychopath known as the Cat, along with others equally determined to prevent, or facilitate, the pilgrimage of the Living Dream cult into the heart of the Void. An indestructible microuniverse, the Void may contain paradise, as the cultists believe, but it is also a deadly threat. For the miraculous reality that exists inside its boundaries demands energy, energy drawn from everything outside those boundaries: from planets, stars, galaxies . . . from everything that lives, for the Pilgrimage will trigger a super-massive expansion of the Void. Meanwhile, the parallel story of Edeard, the Waterwalker, as told through a series of dreams communicated to the gaiafield via Inigo, the First Dreamer, continues to unfold. But the inspirational tale of this idealistic young man takes a darker and more troubling turn as he finds himself faced with powerful new enemies, and temptations more powerful still, to reach fulfillment in the end. Named a Silfen Friend like her ancestress Mellanie, Araminta chooses to face her unwanted responsibilities, with no guarantee of success or survival. She takes on the role of Second Dreamer to lead the first wave of Living Dream, 24 million people, into the Void, leaving everyone confused and lost by her actions. However, in actuality, she is playing a double game. Using her original body to lead the Living Dream as a diversion, she borrows one of her fiance's (Mr. Bovey) bodies to set out to destroy the Void. She is able to connect with a Skylord and travel the Silfen Paths. With time running out, a repentant Inigo decides to release Edeard's final dream: a dream whose message is scarcely less dangerous than the pilgrimage promises to be, where perfection is achieved, so that nothing else is left to strive for and the human race in the Void has started to devolve. He goes to the Spike to meet Ozzie and stays there to meet with Araminta, who is using one of her fiance's bodies, and Oscar. Third Dreamer Gore has a plan to reason with the Heart, the core of the Void. He secures the help of Delivery Man and travels to the Anomine homeworld to retrieve the mechanism that allowed them to go post-physical. He is able to connect with Justine, his daughter, who is currently in the Void, by way of Dreams. The monomaniacal Ilanthe, leader of the breakaway Accelerator Faction, seeks dominion in the Void. It is not Fusion with the Void to attain post-physical status that she wants, but to have control over everything. She has the ship, the most powerful starship ever built. Using Dark Fortress technology, she sets up a barrier around the Sol system which leaves ANA and the deterrence fleet trapped inside. It is this technology which she has equipped the ships traveling to the Void with, the ability to create a forcefield which the warrior Raiel cannot penetrate.
25438610	/m/09rsttq	The Emperor's Games		1984	{"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Correus Appius Julianus is the slave born son of retired Roman general Flavius Appius Julianus who is currently posted as a senior centurion to the Roman naval base of Misenum in modern-day Naples near Pompeii. The novel opens with Correus frustrated at serving in a peacetime establishment and requesting transfer to a more active post. After overseeing the new emperor Titus's games, including a naval fight, Correus' wish is granted as he is sent off to destroy some pirates while his young wife Ygerna has to remain behind to give birth to her baby. She also has to try to assert her authority as a stepmother over Correus' five-year old son, which provokes a family war with Correus' half-sister Julia, who has raised the boy for the past five years. Upon returning from his successful mission to destroy the pirates, Correus is caught up in the new emperor Domitian's determination to win a triumph at the expense of Correus' old adversaries on the German border. This is complicated by Correus' own off-again, on-again friendship with the German chief and his half-brother Flavius' romance with the widow of that same former chieftain. There is also a complicated subplot involving a truly nasty Senator who is attempting to orchestrate a plot to depose the emperor - a plot that the Julianus family ends up being intimately involved in through the actions of their brother-in-law Paulinus. The fast-paced conclusion ends with the defeat of the Germans, and the transfer of Correus to a new post in the Roman province of Dacia.
25438916	/m/09k7bzq	Sostiene Pereira	Antonio Tabucchi	1994		 The novel is set in Portugal in the summer of 1938, during Salazar's dictatorship. Pereira, an old journalist of a Portoguese newspaper - the Lisboa - who loves literature and pratically spends all his life for it, reads an essay written by a young man about death. He calls the young man, whose name is Monteiro Rossi, to ask him to write "advanced obituaries" about great writers who could die at any moment. Not having ever been much concerned with politics, Pereira's world is turned upside down when he begins to get to know the distracted and leftist youth. The articles he receives from Monteiro Rossi (and pays him for) have a definite leftist slant and are completely unpublishable, but something continues to attract Pereira to him, perhaps the fact that his wife died before he could have children of his own. His visit to a clinic to help his ailing heart puts him in contact with a doctor, with whom he becomes close friends and discusses the doubts he is beginning to have about his isolated and apolitical life. In the end fascist police visit Pereira and beat to death Monteiro Rossi. With the help of a phone call from his doctor friend, Pereira manages to slip an article about the murder and condemning the regime into the newspaper he works for.
25443579	/m/09k5wn3	The Efficiency Expert	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1921	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jimmy Torrance, football player, boxer, socialite, athlete and all-around Big Man On Campus, is nearly kicked out of university, but upon pleading for a second chance, he is granted one and successfully graduates. Spurning an offer from his father to come work for the family business, he determines to make something of himself first, and repairs to Chicago. However, nothing comes of his many attempts to find work, and he despairs. Friendship with a pickpocket known as "The Lizard" cheers him up and he reapplies himself, finally finding work in a department store. He also makes the acquaintance of a young lady of quality, one Elizabeth Compton. Torrance gains (and loses) a number of jobs in rapid succession, including ladies' hosiery clerk, waiter, boxer, and milkman, chancing to meet Elizabeth and her friend Harriet Holden in most of these occupations. During his stint as a waiter, he also wins the friendship of a prostitute with a heart of gold named Edith (Little Eva). Elizabeth's father runs a factory and is worried that he is losing money. He advertises for an "efficiency expert" to come help him turn things around. Edith sees the ad and encourages Torrance to apply, writing him fraudulent letters of recommendation to assist him. Torrance does indeed get the job, where he immediately begins to improve things while simultaneously beginning to suspect that someone at the factory is stealing. Elizabeth's fiancé Harold Bince, the factory's assistant manager&nbsp;&ndash; who is himself the embezzler in question, due to large gambling debts&nbsp;&ndash; tries to get Torrance fired, an effort in which Elizabeth herself eagerly assists. Torrance figures out the truth and has Mr. Compton engage an outside firm of accountants to prove his case, not wanting to deliver the bad news himself. In desperation, Bince tries to get rid of Torrance, leading up to a violent climax in which Elizabeth's father is murdered and Torrance is framed. The Lizard and Little Eva work to get him off, an effort that finally succeeds when The Lizard takes the stand and proves Torrance could not have committed the murder. Bince, who has persuaded Elizabeth to marry him, is exposed and commits suicide. A sadder and wiser Elizabeth asks Torrance to take over as manager of the factory.
25445159	/m/09k58d1	Book A Novel				 The story follows English professor Adam Snell as he realizes that someone is trying to kill both him and his book, Sovrana Sostrata, a book about truth. As a metafiction work the novel parodies literary forms—each chapter is told in a different style ranging from traditional linear drama, to newspaper reports, to a playwright’s script, to a carefully annotated scholarly work from the 19th century—to the point where the novel’s footnotes come alive and literally try to take over the narrative.
25446796	/m/09k5hbm	The Sunless City	J.E. Preston Muddock	1905	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story centres on the lead character, a prospector named Professor Josiah Flintabbaty Flonatin. Flonatin travels by submarine through a bottomless lake in the Rocky Mountains. While exploring the bottom of the (bottomless) lake he discovers a strange city. Within the city the local currency is tin, the streets are paved with gold, and the city is ruled by women. Flonatin, who is a bachelor, decides to escape the city, and does so by climbing out of a crater, which is actually an extinct volcano.
25448973	/m/04w6ls3	The Life of Josiah Henson	Josiah Henson	1849	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 This slave narrative, begins with an ‘Advertisement.’ In the case of this book, the use of the word Advertisement is not to introduce a paid announcement to publicize a type of good or enterprise. Instead, its function is that of a notice to the readers to the fact that the work is the authentic work of Josiah Henson. The advertisement discusses the fact that the memoir was written from a dictation given by Josiah Henson, and so, the substance of the work is his own while “little more than the structure of the sentences belongs to another.” Through the paragraph long passage, to further authenticate the work, it expressly says that the work is “not fiction, but fact.” (Henson, 1) The narrative begins with a description of Henson’s life growing up. He was born June 15, 1789 in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm belonging to Mr. Francis N. He was the youngest of six children. His mother was the property of Dr. Josiah McP., but was hired routinely to Mr. N, who owned his father. His earliest known memory was of his father bloody and beaten. Henson eventually found out that his father had been beaten because he had beaten a white man for assaulting Henson’s mother, which was punishable by Maryland law. His father’s right ear was cut off and he had received a hundred lashes as punishment. His father, from that point afterward became a “different man” and the Mr. N. Eventually sold him. Dr. McP stopped hiring out his mother afterward, but Josiah went to live with her for two or three years. He expresses that his time on Dr. McP’s plantation was some of his happiest. During this time he learned about God from his mother, who frequently recited the Lord's prayer. Not long after, Dr. McP died after falling from a horse and drowning. As a consequence, the doctor’s property, which included Henson and his family, was divided throughout the country. On the day this was happening after watching her other five children get sold off, his mother was bought by Mr. R. (Isaac Riley). At seeing that Henson would not be bought also, she went to Mr. R and begged at his feet. He kicked her away and ignored her. Henson was then sold to another master, but after seeing that Henson had falling sick, he was sold to Mr. Riley. As Henson was still young when he arrived at the plantation of Mr. R, he was initially responsible for small tasks, like taking the men at work buckets of water. Eventually, when he was “older and taller”, Henson went to work in the fields. Henson proceeds to describe the every day life of a slave: Meals were given twice a day and they consisted of items like corn meal and salt herrings, or vegetables that one might raise by themselves. Breakfast was served at 12 noon after laboring from daylight, and dinner when the work day was over. A single piece of coarse cloth was given to children, while the older individuals had a pair of pants or a gown, a hat once in two or three years, and possibly a jacket. They slept in log huts that could “not protect them from the dampness and cold, nor permit the existence of the common decencies of life.” By the age of 15, Henson states that he was a strong and athletic youth, filled with spirit and energy. He found that he could “run faster and father, wrestle longer, and jump higher” than anyone around him. He was also found to be smart and clever. Because of his obedience, loyalty and usefulness, when Henson asked Mr. R if he could attend a sermon he mother had suggested to him, he was allowed to go. While he was there he a learned a text that would change his life: Hebrews ii. 9; “The he, by the grace of God, should taste of death for every man.”Henson was incredibly impressed by the fact that Jesus cared about every man, including a slave like himself, as this was the first time he had ever heard anything of this sort. Henson also learned that Christ died for the salvation of the entire world, even the poor, even the enslaved. Henson looks back and remembers that day as his “Awakening to a new life.” After this, Henson shares an anecdote about his masters involvement in more secular affairs. His master, Mr. R, was routinely involved in drinking and gambling on Saturday and Sunday evenings. When he went, Mr. R. (as well as the other men in attendance) would usually bring a slave with them to help in the event that a fight broke out, or to get home because they were frequently too drunk to make it back or even get on their horses. On one such night, Mr. R fought with his brother’s overseer. Henson, in doing his duty grabbed him master and took him home. Mr. L (the overseer) found that Henson had been to rough with him, and on a day that followed, he ambushed Henson. Mr. L, along with two other slaves beat him (although with some difficulty, due to Henson’s youth and athleticism). As the fight carried on, Henson eventually lost the fight as well as full functioning in of his arms (Henson would never recover full range of movement). Henson’s master prosecuted Mr. L for beating and maiming his property, but Mr. L in response said that he was assaulted first and his master had to pay all of the costs of court. Henson worked as an overseer throughout the rest of his time on the plantation. As an overseer, the slaves he worked with received better food and treatment, while his master made a profit off of Henson’s skills. At age 22, he married a woman who was very “efficient and well-taught.” She belonged to a neighboring family. In the narrative, Henson expresses that in the 40 years they had been married they had twelve children, and he never had any reason to regret the union. Soon after in 1825, Mr. R fell on to economic hardship and was sued by a brother in law. Desperate, he begged Henson (with tears in his eyes) to promise to help him. Duty bound, Henson agreed. Mr. R then told him that he needed to take his 18 slaves to his brother in Kentucky by foot. During the trip, he and his companions stopped through the state of Ohio, which was a free state at the time. The people he encountered told him that he and those with him could be free if they wanted to be. Henson narrates that he never even though of running away because the only way that he believed was right for him to get his freedom would be to buy himself from his master. He reports that he had a sense of honor about the subject and that he would not violate this honor even for freedom. They arrived at Daviess Kentucky in the middle of April, 1825 at the plantation of Mr. Amos Riley. Henson was 36 at this time. The new plantation was larger, with 80 to 100 slaves, had an abundance of food, and more opportunities for Henson to attend religious events. From the years 1825 to 1828 he studied and eventually was made a preacher by a Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1828, his master decided to sell all of the slaves but Henson and his family. Not much later, in the summer of 1828, Henson met a Methodist preacher. The preacher found that Henson had too much capacity to remain a slave and came up with a way for Henson to gain the means to buy his freedom. The preacher instructed Henson to get permission to travel back to his master in Maryland, and that he would “try to put you in a way by which I think you may succeed in buying yourself.” So, in September 1828, Henson set out to return to Maryland. On the way he gave various lectures, for which he was paid. By the time he got back, he had 275 dollars, a good horse and clothes that were of better quality that than of his master in Maryland. After returning he began to set in motion his plans for freedom. He began by going to meet with Mr. Frank. Mr. Frank was the brother of his mistress in Maryland. The two had become good friends while Henson worked on Maryland plantation as an overseer. Often, Henson reports, Mr. Frank wouldn’t have enough food to eat and would eat at Hensons. Mr. Frank agreed to negotiate for Henson’s freedom. Eventually Mr. R agreed to give Henson his freedom papers for $450, with $350 in cash and the remainder in a note. Henson had enough to produce the cash, so all that was left was to pay the $100 note. On March 9, 1829, Henson received his papers and began to prepare to return to Kentucky. Upon leaving, his master stopped him. Mr. R asked Henson what he would do with the certificate and if he would show it if he were stopped on the road. Henson replied yes, for that was the entire point of the certificate. Mr. R replied by telling him that he may meet some “ruffian slave-purchaser” on the way who will steal the paper and destroy it, then thrown him into prison and then back into slavery somewhere else. Instead, Mr. R suggested that Henson travel on the pass given to him by Mr. Amos (which gave him permission to travel), and the freedom papers would be sent off to Mr. Amos. Taking the advice, Henson traveled on his pass. Upon arriving in Kentucky, Henson was made aware of his mistake of trusting his former master. Originally Henson only needed to pay an extra $100 by note. Mr. R, however, added an extra zero to the paper and changed the fee to $1000. Henson had been tricked and the only other person who could help, Mr. Frank, was miles away. He narrated that the trick had turned him into a “savage, morose, dangerous slave.” Instead of freedom, Henson continued to labor and was later taken on a work trip with Mr. Amos, in which he thought he would be killed or sold. While on the trip, Henson had the opportunity to kill Mr. Amos in his sleep with an axe. At the last moment, when he raised the axe up to strike, he stopped. A sudden thought came to him: “What! Commit murder! Are you a Christian?” Henson never committed the crime, and was arranged to be sold as he suspected. Just before the day he was to be sold would begin, Mr. Amos woke up sick and it soon became evident that he had river fever. While sick, he begged for Henson to help him, which Henson did. Henson attended to all of the tasks asked of him. Mr. Amos became so sick that Henson had to nurse him over the next twelve days it took to return home to Kentucky. Amos was unable to speak or even move throughout the entire ordeal. Eventually, Mr. Amos began to recover at home. As soon as he was able to speak, he told his family about how good Henson had been to him, and that if he had sold Henson, he would have died. He was acknowledged by the family for the work he had done, but Henson believed that they would still try to sell him again. Henson, as a result began to plot again to gain freedom for himself and his family. He was determined to escape to Canada. While it took convincing, eventually his wife agreed to the plans Henson had created to escape. He had her make a large knapsack that was big enough to hold the two smallest children on his back. In the days prior he would walk around with them on his back so that they could adjust to being in the sack and he could adjust to it. He planned for his wife to lead the second to oldest boy, and the oldest boy, Tom, to walk on his own as well as help him carry the necessary food. In the middle of September by 9pm they were ready and headed out together. A slave took them across the river to the India shore. Once they reached they traveled at night for a fortnight until they reached Cincinnati. Once there they were “kindly received and entertained for several days” and then headed north again. Low on provisions and in an unfamiliar, they continued on, traveling by night. While walking, they were confronted with a group of Native Americans. The Native Americans took one look at them and then ran away. Henson surmised that they had never met a black person. They came back with their chief. After the chief realized that the group were indeed human, they were received warmly- if not with some curiosity. They were given food resources and allowed them a wigwam to rest in. With the help of the Native Americans, they were able to find the rest of their way north through the woods. Before long they encountered a vessel with men working to load corn into. After being received by them, Henson spoke to the captain who received him warmly and agreed to take to Buffalo, which is where they were headed. Once in Buffalo, that captain who was a Scotsman paid for their ferry boat to Waterloo. On October 28, 1830 they reached Canada. Upon reaching the shore, Henson threw himself on the ground and rolled around in excitement. A man from the neighborhood thought that he was having a fit (probably a seizure) and, concerned, asked what was wrong. Henson jumped up and said that he was Free! Soon, he set about to find lodging and a way to live. Henson was pointed in the direction of Mr. Hibbard, who hired him and leased to him a shabby two story place that some pigs had taken to live in. After expelling the pigs, he spent the day cleaning it as best as he could. At the end of the day he brought the rest of his family to the house. “Though there was nothing but walls and floors we were all in a state of great delight, and my old woman laughed and acknowledged that it was worth while.” Over the next three years, they fell into a comfortable life in which Hibbard was happy with his labor and Mrs. Hibbard and Mrs. Henson became friends. Mr Hibbard gave Tom, the eldest son schooling, and the schoolmaster added more quarters out of kindness, so Tom lead to read and write well. Once Henson got back into the habit of preaching, he would enlist Toms to read him verses in private and at the pulpit. At one instance Tom asked Henson a question that Henson could not answer, and realized that his father could not read. So, Tom resolved to teach him. Within time, Henson began the efforts for which he became known for. He and some associates decided that they wanted to create a colony of sorts in which they would raise their own crops and food. Towards the head of Lake Erie, a piece of government land was found and it was decided that they would stay there. The land was owned by a Mr. McCormick, who had not complied with the conditions of his grant for the land. They decided to buy it from him and the government. Over the next six years blacks continued to move from the States.
25456679	/m/09k6ry1	Wolf Captured	Jane Lindskold	2004	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Firekeeper, Blind Seer and Darrien Carter are kidnapped by Baron Endbrook and brought to a southern country called Liglim. It was previously unknown to the majority of northerners in Hawk Haven and their neighboring countries. In Liglim the people worship five deities based on natural elements - Fire, Water, Air, Earth and Magic. They build elaborate temples to their deities and are aware of the existence of Royal animals, counting on the sentient creatures to help guide their religious lives. Firekeeper is highly valued by the citizens of Liglim because she can communicate with the Royal animals and they want Firekeeper to teach them this skill. However, Firekeeper is hesitant. She meets Truth, a Royal Jaguar seer who begins to shape Firekeeper's journey in the land of Liglim. Darrien Carter, meanwhile, meets and falls in love with a native woman of Liglim. She suspects Darrien has the power to transform into an animal, as old legends tell. He also begins to spend time with Royal Horses that live alongside common horses. Barren Endbrook works to create a trade agreement between Liglim and the north that will benefit himself. Firekeeper and Blind Seer travel to a large set of islands off Liglim's shores. The islands are Royal animal territory and humans only have a small settlement on the edge of the land. Firekeeper and Blind Seer travel deep into the heart of the islands and discover new Royal Wolf packs with unusual traditions that give Firekeeper hope that she could one day lead her own pack. Firekeeper also finds herself being courted by another male wolf, which threatens Blind Seer. Also on the islands is an ancient set of ruined towers that acts as the secret home to the survivors of blood magic. They are called the maimalodalum - humans who tried to acquire the power of shapeshifting into animals. But the unwilling animals fought back and the results were grotesque animal-human hybrids. One of the hybrids traveled north years ago and met and befriended the Hawk Haven settlers that Firekeeper was amongst as a child. After the fire destroyed the settlement and killed all but Firekeeper, he was responsible for the Royal Wolves adopting her. There is an attack on the towers and Firekeeper and other Royal animals defend the maimalodalum, but there are casualties. In the end of the book, Firekeeper, Blind Seer and Darrien Carter remain in Liglim for the time being.
25456686	/m/09k4dy2	Wolf Hunting	Jane Lindskold	2006	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Here, ancient magics reveal themselves. The whole group is smitten with querinalo, and Truth the jaguar comes out a little worse for the wear. At the end, they venture into a portal to the unknown.
25456709	/m/09k79y8	Wolf's Blood	Jane Lindskold	2007	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It is revealed here that Blind Seer is a Once Dead sorcerer himself, which explains his blue eyes. One of the twins is executed for treason, and The Meddler is rebuffed once and for all.
25459336	/m/09k6x9f	The Dead Father	Donald Barthelme		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The "Dead Father" is being hauled with a cable by some of his children, across lands and under all weather conditions, towards a goal of an emancipatory nature but that is left mysterious throughout most of the story, to be revealed, at the end of the novel, to be his burial spot. The story, in a genre typical of the author, does not follow a conventional plot structure, but evolves through a series of revelations, seemingly-unrelated stories, anecdotes, dialogues,descriptive figments, surreal snapshots of reality, personal rendering of the characters' impressions or recordings. The whole of chapter 22 is a stream of bizarre, deconstructed sentences, as if muttered by a narrator too imbued by the urgency of his thoughts to give attention to proper grammar, giving the impression of a deep penetration in the character's consciousness. The plot is thus, more than in other novels, a support for the themes explored. The text is also noted for its word play, irony, absurdist humor, that are abundant in the author's short stories.
25468126	/m/09rvpdz	The Magician's Elephant	Kate DiCamillo	2009	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The young orphan Peter Augustus Duchene has many questions, but there is one he wishes most answered: "Is his sister still alive? And if so, how can he find her?" The answer he finds from the fortuneteller in the market square of the city of Baltese is one he has to learn to believe. "An elephant! An elephant will lead him there!"
25471590	/m/09rs63z	STAR Academy		2009-09-15	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In her dull hometown of Downview, 11-year-old super-genius Amanda Forsythe is underestimated by teachers and classmates, considered an eccentric because of her advanced scientific theories. As the story begins, Amanda loses a science fair competition at her school because her photon sail spaceship exhibit is too complex for the dimwitted judges (her principal and home room teacher) to comprehend. They make fun of it and instead award the prize to two lame exhibits, one that tries to pass off a thinly disguised vacuum cleaner as a robot, and another that suggests solving the world’s hunger problem by re-engineering the genes of Third World children so that they can eat sticks, grass and dirt. Fortunately for Amanda, scouts from the new and prestigious Superior Thinking and Advanced Research (STAR) Academy, are in the audience. They recognize Amanda’s brilliance and give her a scholarship to live in residence amongst the 200 most intellectually “ultra-gifted” children on planet Earth. There, they are groomed to become Earth’s top scientists of the future, charged with solving humanity’s most pressing problems. Given unlimited funding by “anonymous philanthropists” and run by the enigmatic Headmistress Oppenheimer and Professor Leitspied, as well as George, a flighty but staggeringly intelligent engineer, the Academy is the perfect place in which a young super-genius can flourish. Amanda and her classmates, most of them former social outcasts because of their high intelligence, forge friendships with each other and, for the first time in their lives, are truly happy, recognized and appreciated by both faculty and peers. In addition to being able to do unlimited research on their own pet projects, the students are divided into intramural teams, then given identical research challenges, supposedly to encourage friendly competition to accelerate their scientific advancements. Chosen to head one of the intramural teams, Amanda distinguishes herself by leading her group to victory in their first assignment, to devise an electronic means to block bad memories. It isn’t a completely idyllic life for Amanda. She misses her family, and has drawn the ire of fellow student Eugenia Snootman, the vain and manipulative leader of the competing intramural team, and daughter of software magnate Bill Snootman, the richest man on Earth. Eugenia is terribly jealous of Amanda’s success, and one night, threatens to scuttle Amanda’s future career if she doesn’t hand over her scientific secrets for the next intramural assignment: how to transmit electricity through the air to remote underprivileged villages. Still, nothing can seriously detract from Amanda’s enjoyment of life at the Academy. That is, until the night Amanda and her three closest friends – Derek Murphy, Evelyn Chiu, and Sanjay Dosanjh - make a terrifying discovery: that the Academy is not what it seems. Their teachers are actually aliens from another planet, who were sent as goodwill ambassadors to Earth, but who, with the exception of George, have become drunk on power and want to take over the world. In their natural form, the aliens are hideous spider-like creatures with highly developed brains and strong, exoskeletal bodies. Amanda and her friends learn that Oppenheimer and Leitspied have been using them, that the technologies they have been developing in their intramural competitions are actually components of a larger mechanism the aliens have been devising. Their plan is to beam a signal to every human on earth to block their brain synapses, turning them into mindless slaves. Cut off from outside help, it’s up to Amanda, Derek, Evelyn, and Sanjay to outwit the aliens and save the planet.
25471704	/m/09rsqgj	Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game	Sidney Sheldon		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The novel opens with the wedding of Lexi Templeton, Kate Blackwell's great-granddaughter. Despite it being her wedding night, Lexi is obviously troubled and expecting the police to show up any moment. The story is told in a flashback similar to Master of the Game. The plot starts on the funeral day of Kate Blackwell, who has died at the age of ninety-two. During the funeral, while a pregnant Alexandra (Kate's granddaughter, Lexi's mother) is weeping with her husband Peter and son Robert "Robbie" Templeton, her twin sister Eve is secretly happy of her grandmother's death, as it was her powerful grandmother who has always protected the Templetons. It is implied that her husband, mousy plastic surgeon Keith Webster, hasn't fixed her grotesque face and is constantly aware of the photographers hiding outside to take a photo of her pregnant with a marred face. She plans to get rid of the Templetons and making her child the next heir of Kruger-Brent Limited. Later on, Alexandra gives birth before Eve but dies in childbirth. Peter and Robbie are in despair but Peter notes that the baby looks like Alexandra and names her Alexandra as well, but simply calls her "Lexi". A few days later, despite Keith's worries about Eve's pregnancy (Since Alexandra died of child birth, which is the same way Alexandra and Eve's mother Marianne died due to genetic heart problems), Eve lives to give birth to a boy, whom she names Max because she feels like that name means power. She believes that Max will be the one to take over the empire, not his cousins. Max grows in a different environment compared to Lexi. While she has a family that adores her, Eve channels her hatred and obsession to her son. Eve, furious that Keith marred her face so that she would never leave him, convinces her son to secretly loathe his father as well, and in the process, hate the Templetons as he grows up. Peter's life is in shambles. He left his job as a psychiatrist to join Kruger-Brent under Kate's implying that this is his job as Alexandra's husband. Robbie comes out as a homosexual after failing to become aroused when a classmate tries to seduce him for his money while offering him drugs and nearly getting arrested, causing a rift between the two. He nearly kills his kids with a gun but shoots the nanny's arm instead, causing him to have an epiphany and seek help. The nanny is paid to keep quiet and Peter and Robbie reconcile. However, eight-year old Lexi is taken by an unknown man (implied to be someone who knew the Blackwell twins long before Alexandra died) who plans to sell her to a human trafficker. Lexi is raped and kept hidden for many days in the USA, but she is managed to be located but it is a few seconds too late as a bomb goes off, causing her to lose her sense of hearing. Somewhere in Max's childhood, Eve wants to get rid of Keith, who is nothing more but a nuisance to her. Throughout Max's life, she is a bigger influence to Max than Keith is, but when it came to Max's classmates, she allowed him to have birthday parties, but stayed hidden. Max was annoyed by this, and in result, hated his friends because he assumed they all called his mother a monster. She convinces Max to go on a hiking expedition alone with Keith and push him off a part of the mountain that is known to have been accident-prone. Max pushes his father off, making it look like an accident. Eve is proud of him, but Max secretly begins having nightmares. Years pass, and Lexi is noted to have transformed from the innocent daughter of Alexandra Templeton to becoming a sex kitten, due to her puberty. However, she experiences social problems because she cannot act like a normal teenager because she always requires a person to translate for her, since she can read lips and speak, but cannot hear. Max, on the other hand, has become a playboy who feels power when he breaks their hearts. Peter and Eve grudgingly coordinate Lexi and Max's birthday in Cedar Hill, Kate's mansion, since they both have near birthdays. The event is star studded with both Lexi's friends, Max's friends, and the Kruger-Brent board members. Max is charismatic but mysterious, but more are interested in Lexi. Eve is jealous that, being Alexandra's twin, Lexi is an almost spitting image of Eve. Lexi attempts to have sex with a boy she likes during the party but her childhood trauma ceases her from enjoying it. Max tells her that she "smells like sex" and has no chance to rule the company, thus revealing his hatred for her family. Years pass, and despite Lexi never experiencing a normal life due to her hearing, she is still very determined to become a part of the company. Robbie, a piano prodigy since childhood, does not want to sell his soul to the company like his father and signs his share over to Lexi and becomes a famous gay pianist. Because Lexi, Robbie, and Max get a 1/3 share each, Lexi gets 2/3 of the company by the time she turns 25, making her the dominant owner. Eve tells Max that the best way to stop Lexi from taking over is to ruin Lexi's reputation in the company. Max seduces Lexi (an incestous relationship, as they are both first cousins) and they begin a not-so-secret relationship that not many approve of. Lexi makes her downfall when she reveals to Max the code to her safe. He steals a memory card from the safe which has wild, provocative, and almost naked pictures of her from her college years and exposes it to the public. The Kruger-Brent board believes that her reputation is ruined as a professional and demands that she resign from the board. She dramatically resigns, promising to return. The second part first focuses on Gabriel McGregor, a very distant cousin of Lexi. Lexi's great-great-grandfather, (Kate's father) Jaime McGregor, founder of Kruger-Brent, had a brother in the beginning of "Master of the Game" who sneered at Jaime's dreams to go to Africa to find diamonds. Jaime became famous and only sent money to his mother (the only one who supported his dream by secretly giving him her savings to travel), and when she died, didn't bother sending anything else to his family. The brother became bitter and thought Jaime as ungrateful, even though he was not supporting Jaime in the first place. His embitterment of Jaime's side of the McGregors passed down generations until it reached Gabriel McGregor, who, unlike his ancestors who complained, decided to create his own fortune in Africa. His story is quite similar to Jaime's: He arrived with little money, got scammed out of a good business (but ended up getting arrested because he was tricked to do an illegal business until he could clear his name), and with the help of an African friend, he managed to start his own company, Phoenix. He marries a doctor doing charity work, giving shelter and medicine to girls who became victims to rape and HIV. (In the book, she mentions that the natives believe that intercourse with a virgin cures HIV, and they also believe that "the younger, the better".) Lexi, five years after resigning, has a business called Templeton. Because Max showed her a doctor who could cure her deafness before he exposed her pictures, she continued therapy and manages to hear and speak properly again. She is a leader in American business, even ahead of Kruger-Brent. Eve is angry that Max is following Lexi's strategy like other companies instead of being one step ahead. She forces him to marry a woman of her choice and have kids. Meanwhile, Eve is growing old and demented and constantly sees hallucinations of Kate, Alexandra, and the rest of the dead people she hated trying to kill her. On the other hand, Max's nightmares of his fathers starts shortly after the birth of his first son. He also misses Lexi and regrets betraying her. Lexi decides to set up a business in Africa. She is considered competition by Gabriel and meets her and tells her that they are related. She notices he is very lively and loves his wife, but is not interested in destroying their marriage. However, a native who believes Gabriel's wife's charity work is a scam holds her and their kids hostage while Gabriel is out, but is sliced, along with the kids, to death. Gabriel goes into a depression, but Lexi helps him out and they eventually fall in love. After years, Lexi finally has a scheme to take back Kruger-Brent. Despite telling Gabriel that she is over losing the company, she secretly takes the money from his charities to fund her scheme. She buys all the loose businesses of Kruger-Brent through another person, and in the process pushing Kruger-Brent out of the stock market and making them bankrupt while gaining a new company called Cedar International. Max is so depressed about his mother's anger and the company's failing that he kills himself. Lexi buys back Kruger-Brent and gets her old reputation back, with the media claiming "all of us were like her in college". Meanwhile, she finds out she is pregnant with Gabriel's child and wants to have an abortion. Gabriel finds out about where she got the money and is furious with her. They have a falling out, resulting in them breaking up. However, she pays him back and sends him a note that she plans to abort their baby. Gabriel realizes that he still loves her no matter what and makes it to the abortion clinic just in time to convince her to keep the baby and to marry him. They marry after the birth of their daughter Maxine, however, her happiness is short lived. As Eve is about to die (which she claims she sees a healthy Kate suffocating her with a pillow), she makes a note to Lexi telling her that she knows how she took over Kruger-Brent and has sent the same copy to the police. Lexi sees the police by the gate and stalls before letting them in. The police arrive during the party, half-doubting Eve's letter but takes Lexi to the police station. However, Lexi manages to escape the station and leaves the country with Gabriel, Maxine, and the help of two of her trusted employees. She evades the FBI and Interpol to go to a private home in Maldives. She re-reads the letter and finally thinks to herself: "I haven't won the game. Not yet. But I'm still here. Still playing."
25474268	/m/09rvvt3	Danger Along the Ohio	Patricia Willis		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Traveling down the Ohio River in May 1793, thirteen-year-old Amos and his younger siblings Clara and Jonathan and their cow Queen Anne are separated from their father during a raid by the Shawnee Indians. The three children and their cow are swept down the river, and decide that they must make their way back through the wilderness in the direction of the Marietta, Ohio settlement, hoping to find their father there. They find an Indian in the Ohio River. They call him Red Moccasin. Red Moccasin mistrusts them and his condition slows them down, but Amos refuses to leave him behind to die. The children and they're cow continue their dangerous journey towards the Marietta Settlement on their own, but they get captured by Red Moccasin's grandfather. Amos is thinking about the Indian Chef Blue Jacket about how he got captured by Indians to stay if they left his siblings go. They finally get to Marietta, and they find their father there. [see notes]
25479097	/m/09rtl67	A Sport of Nature	Nadine Gordimer	1987	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 While still a secondary school student, Kim Capran decides to rename herself "Hillela". Hillela joins the ANC, she marries a black man from the congress and has a child with him. She travels to Dar es Salaam, Nairobi before returning to South Africa as one of the wives of a fictitious first President of South Africa.
25487639	/m/09rvhwd	The David Beckham Experiment	Grant Wahl	2009-07-14	{"/m/01z02hx": "Sports", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In January 2007, 31-year-old Beckham, one of the world's most famous soccer players, at the time playing with Real Madrid, shocked the sports world by signing a five year contract with MLS team LA Galaxy, effective from the end of La Liga 2006-07 season, which was in progress when the announcement was made. In addition to playing football, under the advisement of talent manager Simon Fuller and his company 19 Entertainment, Beckham set out to conquer the U.S. celebrity scene. At this time, Grant Wahl was given unprecedented access to the English player, his inner circle, and team to promote his arrival to the league. To 19 Management's dismay, Wahl would not relinquish control of his articles or methods of procuring information. As a result, Wahl was able to give a behind-the-scenes account of Beckham's impact on LA Galaxy. Initially, Beckham had a great financial impact on LA Galaxy drawing sold out crowds, additional owners, additional sponsors, and an increase in sold merchandise. Behind the scenes, Beckham's management was seeking control over the team and league. Beckham's designated player status as well as his overall stature and celebrity enabled him to seek preferential treatment including the captaincy, his own parking spot right next to the dressing room, and his own hotel room on road trips. This preferential treatment along with Beckham's salary (much higher than that of his teammates) greatly affected the team. Ripping the captaincy out of Donovan's hands had heavy consequences. Both years when Beckham was captain, the team failed to make it to the MLS playoffs. The book also delves into larger issues such as the MLS's failing structure.
25491508	/m/09rt534	The Maze Runner	James Dashner	2009-10-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Thomas, the main character, wakes up in a metal box with the memory of his past life wiped. He is welcomed into a large, concrete area called the Glade, populated by a group of sixty or so teenage boys called "Gladers". The Glade is surrounded by massive concrete walls, beyond which lie an enormous maze. All Gladers have arrived the same way as Thomas: one every month, with concrete memories wiped. The first Glader arrived approximately two years ago. Every week, essential supplies are delivered to the Glade. Thomas meets several Gladers including Alby (leader), Newt (second-in-command), Minho (head of group called the Runners that explore and chart the Maze daily), Gally (Thomas's rival), and Chuck (Thomas's good friend). Newt explains to Thomas that the large openings into the Maze on each wall close at night and the walls to the Maze shift during that time. If a Runner is trapped in there, they are most likely to be stung by Grievers, the Maze's half-animal, half-machine inhabitants. If a Runner is found stung, they must be injected with a serum that causes them to go through an extremely painful process called the Changing, where you temporarily regain memories of your past life. Those stung and injected by the Serum are still certain to survive. Victims of the Changing including Gally and a boy called Ben, both of whom claim they have seen Thomas in their memory as someone "bad". Despite the horrors of the Maze, Thomas feels a strange urge to be a Runner. The day after Thomas' arrival, a girl named Teresa is delivered to the Glade in the Box and questions her surroundings before falling into a deep coma. A message is found implying she is the last person to arrive at the Glade. Soon after, in the forest section of the Glade, Ben attacks Thomas and Alby comes to his rescue, firing an arrow at Ben's cheek and banishing him into the Maze at night when he survives. Due to an unfortunate series of events, Alby gets stung by a Griever in the Maze, and he and Minho cannot make it back to the Glade in time. Thomas impetuously breaks a rule and bolts out in the Maze just before the Doors close. Miraculously, he and Minho survive the night and figure out where the Grievers come from - an seemingly empty space off the edge of a cliff. They return with Alby the following morning, who is immediately taken in by Med-jacks - the closest things the Gladers have to doctors. However, since Thomas broke the Number One Rule and deliberately trapped himself in the Maze during night, The Glade leaders/Keepers have a meeting regarding Thomas' possible punishment or praise, Newt replacing Alby as leader because Alby is being treated by the Med-jacks. During the meeting, Newt points out that many out-of-the-ordinary events recently have started with Thomas or are centred on Thomas. Gally thinks that he is a spy from the Creators and he should hold a severe punishment. Minho surprises Thomas, nominating him to replace him as Keeper of the Runners. Minho and Gally get into an argument where Minho physically torments Gally, resulting in Gally storming out of the meeting and his thoughts of Thomas' wickedness resulting in him disappearing from the Glade. The leaders/Keepers come to the conclusion that Thomas should spend one day in the Slammer, their makeshift prison, but Thomas will begin his training as a Runner after his day in the Slammer. After the meeting, Thomas is called to speak to a sick Alby, who wishes to see him. Alby also claims he saw Thomas during the Changing, before going into a physical spasm. Afterwards, Thomas is asked by Newt to sit down next the girl, who is still in a coma, and see if he feels any memories regarding her lingering. The girl, revealing her name to be Teresa, speaks to him through telepathy and briefly explains that she and Thomas are the last Gladers and that they have to pass the Trials. She also says that "they" sent her as a trigger and that everything's going to change. Thomas panicks and bolts out of the room and into the Maze, eventually coming to his senses and re-entering the Glade. After his day in the Slammer, Minho begins training Thomas to become a Runner. Thomas is given a digital watch and a pair of running shoes and Minho shows him around to various rooms that hold objects essential to the Maze. First Thomas is shown a secret room where all weapons are kept. He is then shown the Map Room, where Runners keep maps of each section of the Maze to keep track of patterns. There are eight sections with a Runner to explore each section. After Thomas learns the basics, he and Minho venture out into the Maze for Minho to demonstrate a daily exploration. While they are out in the Maze, Thomas notices a sign that reads “World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department”. This is later revealed to be an organization that monitors the Glade through small insect-like robots called "beetle-blades." Thomas observes that each bettle-blade had "WICKED" stamped on their torso. The pair continue running all day and Thomas hears Teresa say telepathically to Tom, "I just triggered the Ending". The following morning, the Gladers wake up to find the sky is a dull grey, sunless and unchanging. They also discover that there are no weekly supplies from the Box and that Teresa is fully awake. She sends Thomas a telepathic message simply saying that the Maze is a code. A short while later, Teresa meets Thomas in the forest section of the Glade and explains what little she remembers from her coma. She shows him some writing that she jotted down on her arm that says "WICKED is good". This was one of her memories that she was afraid she might lose, therefore she jotted it down on her arm. That night, the Maze Doors don't close at night and Alby has Teresa dumped in the Slammer because they are all at risk of being attacked by Grievers in the night. Everyone boards up the doors and windows of the Homestead - the wooden living building in a top corner of the Glade - and Thomas has the Runners go to the Map Room to study the maps before nightfall. The Grievers then attack in the night and Gally makes an abrupt return, saying that the Grievers will take the life of one person each night until they all die. Gally then throws himself to a Griever, the monsters then retreating back into the Maze. It is later discovered that in the night all of the maps were burned. In the morning it is revealed that the maps that were burned were decoys, and they still have the original maps in place. Thomas then decodes the maze by tracing maps of each section of the Maze onto wax paper and layering the shapes on top of each other to form six words that make no sense to anyone, such as FLOAT, CATCH and BLEED. The six words make no sense to anyone so Thomas deliberately gets stung by a Griever the following night in order to regain his memory. After Thomas has recovered from the Changing, Thomas calls a Gathering and explains to the leaders/Keepers that they are supposedly more intelligent than most human beings and were given random nicknames to outline this (e.g. Thomas=Thomas Edison; Alby=Albert Einstein). He explains that WICKED placed them in the Maze to study their brain patterns and that he, Teresa, and two others were forced to help build the Maze and that the only way out is through the Griever Hole. Beyond the Griever hole lies a computer where they must type in the six code words, shutting down the Grievers and unconvering an exit out of the Maze. The majority of the Gladers agree to the plan and they head out into the Maze. Alby, however, decides he does not want to return to the world outside because he has memories of a disease called the Flare and a place that is far worse than the Glade. Alby then sacrifices himself to the Grievers, not only because he didn't want to return to the outside world but to give the others a chance to escape from the Grievers patrolling the area. When they reach the Cliff, Thomas, Teresa, and Chuck fight their way through a group of waiting Grievers, jump into the Griever hole, and type in the passwords. Minho enters afterwards and tells them that about half of the Gladers died fighting. When all the survivors come into the Hole, they head down a hallway, down a slide and find the Creators - the people who monitored them in the Maze - standing behind a glass wall in a lab. A lady then walks in with Gally, who actually survived, and was taken away to perform a final experiment. Gally tries to tell Thomas that they are controlling him before hurling a dagger at Thomas. Chuck leaps in front of Thomas and takes the dagger and dies in the hands of Thomas, who then attacks Gally before being pulled away. After this, a group of civilians enter, shoot down the woman and the Creators with guns and take the surviving Gladers in a bus where they why all these events have been occuring. Not long ago, there were massive sun flares that attacked earth, burned satellites and killed millions instantly, starting the terrible disease Alby implied called the Flare. The ecosystems on Earth fell apart and countless miles became wastelands. The woman explaining the events tells them they are a group fighting against WICKED, who takes innocent children and makes them suffer at their hands. Two hours later, the bus stops and they enter a large safe house in the form of a dormitory. The surviving Gladers, which now include Newt, Minho, Thomas, Frypan (the Gladers' previous cook), and Teresa all settle down into bed and Thomas has a casual telepathic discussion with her (as she is placed in a different room). The epilogue is a memo from a WICKED worker revealing that the rescue was staged and that another Maze exists.
25493839	/m/09rwkxq	Dr. Sleep	Stephen King	2013		 With Doctor Sleep, Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his previous novels, The Shining. The novel features the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the twelve-year-old girl, Abra Stone, that he must save from The True Knot. The True Knot are a group of almost immortal RV travelers who cross the country feeding off of children with the gift of "the shining." Dan drifted for decades in an attempt to escape his father's legacy, but eventually settled in a New Hampshire town and works in a nursing home, where his remnant mental abilities provide comfort to the dying. With the aid of a cat that can foresee the future, Dan becomes "Doctor Sleep." After meeting Abra Stone, an epic war between good and evil ensues.
25496585	/m/09rx2gv	Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls	Steve Hockensmith	2010-03-23	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0crjhv8": "Mashup", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 Set five years before the events described in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the novel takes place in an alternative universe version of Regency-era England where zombies are a well-known menace spawned by an event known as The Troubles. After attending a funeral in which a zombie rises from his coffin, Mr. Bennet decides that he must finally keep an old promise to train his five daughters in the art of zombie-killing. To this end, he turns the family's greenhouse into a dojo and hires young martial-arts expert Master Hawksworth to teach the girls. Meanwhile, a scientist named Dr. Keckilpenny arrives in the area with the dream of domesticating the zombies. As the zombie plague continues to spread across England, Hawksworth and Keckilpenny vie for Elizabeth's affections while Mrs. Bennet plots to find suitably wealthy suitors for both Elizabeth and her older sister Jane. In a bid to get reinforcements against the plague, Jane becomes the bodyguard of Lord Lumpley, a fat nobleman with low moral standards. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Keckilpenny capture a zombie for further research. Eventually, Hawksworth's incompetence as a warrior becomes obvious, as he never fights any zombies. When the zombies besiege Lord Lumpley's estate, Hawksworth feigns an injured knee, leaving the fighting to everyone else present. Soon, Master Hawksworth escapes the zombies by himself (with his usual grace, and without even drawing his katana), even leaving a young officer to be ripped to shreds. Keckilpenny gets bitten by his research subject, "Mr. Smith", and Elizabeth is forced to behead him. In the end, Captain Cannon, Lieutenant Tindall, Dr. Keckilpenny, and Ensign Pratt are all dead, but the others are saved by the reinforcements that Hawksworth managed to summon, despite his cowardice.
25496797	/m/0bmkdyf	Spirit Bound	Richelle Mead	2010-05-18	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The book starts off with Rose reading the last in a series of love letters/death threats from Dimitri. The final exams are set to start in short time and she resolves to stay focused and pass them to the best of her abilities and hope it will be enough for her to get assigned to Lissa. The teachers test her by having her trapped on a swinging bridge with Strigoi approaching on both sides, which she passes by cutting the bridge, then "killing" the opponents on her end. After Abe's network relayed a message from Victor Dashkov that there was nothing he could be bribed with while he was behind bars, Rose plots with Lissa and Eddie to break him out of his high security vampire prison. They successfully do so by disguising themselves as guardians bringing new feeders and relying heavily on Lissa's compulsion abilities. Victor agrees to lead them to his brother, Robert, a reclusive spirit user who is rumored to have once returned a strigoi to their original state. They travel to Las Vegas, where Adrian tracks Rose's credit cards and follows them. While not very pleased with Rose's continued endeavors to help Dimitri, he stays with them. Robert tells them that the Spirit user must infuse a stake with Spirit and kill the Strigoi on its own, but escapes when they are attacked by Dimitri and other Strigoi. They manage to escape and upon their arrival at court Eddie and Rose are punished for endangering the Moroi and sent to do physical labor. While they are occupied, Lissa and Christian are kidnapped by Dimitri as bait for Rose. Decided to kill him for good and eliminate a threat to Lissa, Rose leads a group of guardians to his hiding place. She fights her way over to him and is about to kill him when Christian encircles him in a ring of fire, effectively cutting all movement while Lissa stakes him. Dimitri is restored as a Dhampir and taken into custody. Traumatized and crushed by guilt, he pushes Rose away, saying that he is no longer able to love. Rose turns to Adrian for comfort. They have a very romantic moment and almost have sex, but neither of them has any protection. Instead, Rose offers her neck to Adrian who hesitates for a moment before biting her. The next morning at breakfast, Rose and Dimitri run into each other. Dimitri sees the bite marks and knows who they come from, he knew Rose is going to move on. In the middle of the discussion, a group of Guardians surround Rose and Dimitri instinctively fights to protect her, but she calms him down. The Guardians announce her that Queen Tatiana has been found murdered with Rose's stake and as such she is to come with them. At the ensuing hearing, it is decided that Rose must face an official hearing. If she is guilty, she will be sentenced to death. On the way to wait for the impending trial, Ambrose delivers a note to her from Tatiana saying that Lissa needs to have her voice heard in the Council and that there is a second living Dragomir, necessary for Lissa to have her quorum.
25504525	/m/09rx6b1	Vision in White	Nora Roberts	2009	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Childhood friends Parker, Emma, Laurel and Mac are the founders of Vows, one of Connecticut's premier wedding planning companies. Mackensie "Mac" Elliot is a single and happy photographer with a less than stellar family life while growing up. She meets Carter Maguire, a bride-to-be's brother, and all around nice guy and finds with the help of her friends that happily ever after is attainable.
25508269	/m/09rs4qx	Rides a Dread Legion	Raymond E. Feist		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ten years after the cataclysmic events of Wrath of a Mad God, Midkemia now faces a new danger thought buried in myth and antiquity. A lost race of elves, the taredhel or 'people of the stars', have found a way across the universe to reach Midkemia. On their current home world, these elves are hard pressed by a ravaging demon horde, and what was once a huge empire has been reduced to a handful of survivors. The cornerstone of taredhel lore is the tale of their lost origins in the world they call simply 'Home', a place lost in the mists of time. Now they are convinced that Midkemia is that place, and they are coming to reclaim it. Ruthless and arrogant, the taredhel intend to let nothing stand in their way; but before long, Pug and the Conclave realise that it's not necessarily the elves, but the demon horde pursuing them where the true danger lies. And hanging over Pug always is the prophecy that he will be doomed to watch everyone he loves die before him.
25513705	/m/09rvdny	The Master and His Emissary	Iain McGilchrist	2009-10-30	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/05b6c": "Neuroscience"}	 The 608 page book is divided into an introduction, two parts and a conclusion. In the introduction, McGilchrist states that "there is, literally, a world of difference between the [brain] hemispheres. Understanding quite what that is has involved a journey through many apparently unrelated areas: not just neurology and psychology, but philosophy, literature and the arts, and even, to some extent, archaeology and anthropology." In the first part, "The Divided Brain", McGilchrist describes the functioning of the left and right hemispheres of the brain and their respective and at times conflicting "world views". One of the core themes of the book is the importance of differentiation and integration, and of the integration of the two. In the second part, "How the Brain Has Shaped Our World", the author describes the evolution of Western culture, as influenced by hemispheric brain functioning, from the ancient world, through the Renaissance and Reformation; the Enlightenment; Romanticism and Industrial Revolution; to the modern and postmodern worlds which, to our detriment, are becoming increasingly dominated by the left brain.
25525356	/m/09rtbwc	Star Wars Imperial Commando: 501st	Karen Traviss		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Clone Wars are over, but for those with reason to run from the new galactic Empire, the battle to survive has only just begun.... The Jedi have been decimated in the Great Purge, and the Republic has fallen. Now the former Republic Commandos—the galaxy's finest special forces troops, cloned from Jango Fett—find themselves on opposing sides and in very different armor. Some have deserted and fled to Mandalore with the mercenaries, renegade clone troopers, and rogue Jedi who make up Kal Skirata's ragtag resistance to Imperial occupation. Others—including men from Delta and Omega squads—now serve as Imperial Commandos, a black ops unit within Vader's own 501st Legion, tasked to hunt down fugitive Jedi and clone deserters. For Darman, grieving for his Jedi wife and separated from his son, it's an agonizing test of loyalty. But he is not the only one who will be forced to test the ties of brotherhood. On Mandalore, clone deserters and the planet's own natives, who have no love for the Jedi, will have their most cherished beliefs challenged. In the savage new galactic order, old feuds may have to be set aside to unite against a far bigger threat, and nobody can take old loyalties for granted. The book starts off three weeks after the end of the Clone Wars and the declaration of the new Galactic Empire under the new Emperor Palpatine's rule. Darman and his brother Niner, who has healed from his spinal injury on the night of Order 66, are now under rule of Darth Vader's 501st Legion. The purpose of Vader's organization of clones remaining loyal to the Empire after the Clone Wars is to hunt down and kill any remaining Jedi, especially Masters and maybe Knights, but bring back Padawans for the Emperor's Hand to train as dark side users. Along with this Jedi hunting objective is to hunt down for any Jedi sympathizers and clone stragglers who have left Palpatine's rule, such as the clone members of Clan Skirata. Darman is having an inner struggle with himself as he tries to pull himself together from his wife Etain Tur-Mukan's death. Initially, the squad that Darman and Niner are recruited in incorporate two clones trained by Corellian sargeants, Bry and Ennen, and Bry is killed in the first mission in hunting Jedi. Bry is soon replaced by a Spaati-grown clone, Rede, and after Ennen terminates a thug suspected to be a Jedi, he commits suicide by pointing a blaster in his mouth. Not looking for any replacements on Ennen, the squad decides to be a three-man deal, and Rede is granted respect by Darman and Niner when he single-handedly kills a Jedi named Borik Yelgo aboard a space station somewhere in the Outer Rim. Meanwhile, Darman and Niner are introduced to Roly Melusar, who gains great respect by the clones in the 501st Legion, including Darman and Niner, for his no-nonsense attitude, his deep sympathy for the clones as people and soldiers and his deep hatred of not only Jedi, but all Force-users in general, including members of the Emperor's Hand (it is unknown if he knows if Palpatine is a Sith Lord, but it is most likely that he is aware of Darth Vader's power). Meanwhile, on the planet Mandalore, Kal Skirata sends most of his Null clone sons, Nyreen Vollen and Bardan Jusik, who Skirata just adopted as another son, to extract Darman and Niner from Imperial Center. However, just as Darman and Niner head down to meet with Ordo, Mereel, Prudii, Jaing, Vollen and Jusik, Darman has second thoughts as he thinks over that if one of the 501st Legion's purpose was to hunt down for members to be trained as a member of the Emperor's Hand, then his son Kad would be in danger. And seeing how he has the entire Clan Skirata watching over Kad, Darman decides to stay in the 501st Legion in order to monitor, and maybe even sabotage, certain activities within the Empire that might compromise Kad's safety. Being as one of Darman's closest brothers, Niner decides to stay, too, which brings Jusik, now recently adopted as one of Skirata's sons, Vollen and the Nulls back to Mandalore empty-handed. Nevertheless, Ordo has promised Niner to have comlinks installed both of his and Darman's helmets that allows them to communicate to Clan Skirata over on Mandalore. Jaing even manages to get some dirt on Melusar, and reveals that Meulsar came from a planet that was erased from the Republic star charts because it was ruled over by a Sith cult that killed his father, thus triggering Melusar's hatred of all Force-users. This hatred of all Force-users, including all of the members in the Emperor's Hand who serve as intelligence for the Empire, allows Melusar to have Darman and Niner, as well as Rede, skim around Imperial Intel to handle out anti-Jedi operations without the Emperor's Hand's knowledge. Skirata's plan to reverse the aging in his clone sons' DNA by Dr. Ovolot Qail Uthan is compromised when Uthan's homeplanet of Gibad is attacked by the Empire because of their reluctance to join the Imperials. What's worse is that most, if not all, of Gibad's citizens were exterminated by a toxin created by Uthan herself while the actual structures of the planet remain intact. Uthan decides to put a halt on the reverse-aging process for revenge on the Empire for what they've done to Gibad by developing another virus she plans to unleash to the Imperials on Imperial Center. Working with Mij Gilamar, who she has a budding romance with, Uthan receives the supplies she needs to create the virus from the clones, but first develops an antiviral that would render whoever would receive the antiviral immune to the virus Uthan is creating. Skirata, Gilamar, the clones and Jusik go into Keldabe to spread the antiviral around so that the citizens of Mandalore wouldn't be affected by Uthan's virus that she plans to unleash unto the Empire. During Clan Skirata's visit to Keldabe, they spot Dred Priest. Priest happens to be a hated Mandalorian who is an avid member of the Death Watch, a Mandalorian society that wants Mandalore to return to its old imperial days. Priest was also part of the Cuy'val Dar, and on Kamino, he set up a fight club that clones had been involved in, where they were either brutally wounded or killed. For what Priest did on Kamino, Gilamar and Ordo lead Priest down into an underground chasm where Gilamar kills Priest by stabbing him in a vital artery in the leg. Priest dies from severe blood loss and Gilamar and Ordo toss his corpse into a churning river. Also as part of Skirata's plan to reverse the clones' accelerated aging, Ny Vollen ships in the ancient Kaminoan Jedi Kina Ha, who was engineered by the ancient Kaminoans to cheat death via old age. With Kina Ha is Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy, or Scout for short. Kina Ha's gracious and pleasant persona happens to almost change Skirata's view of Kaminoans, and Scout shows Skirata that the late Etain Tur-Mukan or Bardan Jusik weren't the only "sensible" Jedi he felt good to be around. Unfortunately, Clan Skirata comes to struggle with an inner turmoil over what would happen after Kina Ha's genetic material was used to reverse the clones' acclerated aging. Since the Empire is hunting down for Jedi, keeping Kina Ha and Scout for any longer than is needed would compromise Clan Skirata's safety. One alternative is to simply kill the two Jedi so they wouldn't reveal any information about Clan Skirata's location, willingly or otherwise, or they trade them off with maverick Jedi Master Djinn Altis. The Jedi problem merely gets worse for Skirata when Jusik and Vollen pick up renegade clone trooper Maze, and he has Master Arligan Zey with him, whom Ordo believed to be dead under Maze's hands on the night of Order 66. Zey figures out about Kad's nature, his Force abilities and his parents, and Zey finds out about the Jedi Order's flaws, such as how they are viewed as child stealers. Nevertheless, Skirata, against his better judgement and Vau's logic to simply kill the Jedi, decides to deal with Djinn Altis to trade the three Jedi, as well as wiping out their memories of Clan Skirata's location in case the Empire ever caught them and interrogated them about Skirata and his clanmates. Darman realizes about the Jedi being under the same roof as Kad via Fi, and regrets his decision about not going with the Nulls, Jusik and Vollen back to Mandalore, believing Zey, Kina Ha and Scout a threat to Kad's wellbeing as a free Mandalorian instead of an orthodox Jedi under Yoda's rule. He also figures out about Skirata's deal with Djinn Altis, who is viewed as a threat to the Empire of reestablishing the Jedi Order, and Darman decides that he will hunt down and kill as many Jedi as possible, notably under Altis's rule, for Kad's sake, which would compromise Skirata's deal.
25525616	/m/09rw0tv	The Cat of Bubastes	G. A. Henty		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After his father, the king of the Rebu, is killed in battle with the Egyptian army and the Rebu nation is conquered by the Egyptians, the young prince Amuba is carried away as a captive to Egypt, along with his faithful charioteer, Jethro. In Thebes, Amuba becomes the servant and companion to Chebron, the son of Ameres, high priest of Osiris. The lads become involved in a mystery as they begin to uncover evidence of a murderous conspiracy within the ranks of the priesthood. However, before they are able to prevent it, they are forced to flee for their lives when they accidentally cause the death of the successor to the Cat of Bubastes, one of the most sacred animals in Egypt. With Jethro as their guide and protector, the boys make plans to escape from Egyptian territory and return to Amuba's homeland.
25527678	/m/06g0s3z	Beauchamp's Career	George Meredith	1875		 Nevil Beauchamp is a young naval officer with high ideals of honour and public service who, having been wounded in the Crimean War, recovers his health in Venice. He there falls in love with a brilliant and high-spirited French girl, Renée de Croisnel, with whom he hopes to elope. Renée marries an elderly French aristocrat instead, and Nevil takes up his naval career again. He falls under the influence of the republican and freethinking Dr. Shrapnel, thereby alienating his wealthy uncle Everard Romfrey, a staunchly Conservative peer. Nevil stands for Parliament as a Radical, but he is defeated. Everard horsewhips Dr. Shrapnel, and refuses when an outraged Nevil demands that he apologise. Renée now returns to claim Nevil, but he has meanwhile fallen in love with a beautiful Tory, Cecilia Halkett. Nevil reconciles Renée with her husband, but Cecilia refuses Nevil's proposal. With his love life in ruins Nevil falls ill and is thought to be at death's door. Uncle Everard repents of his quarrel with Nevil and Dr. Shrapnel, and apologises at last. On Nevil's recovery he marries Dr. Shrapnel's ward Jenny. The marriage is a happy one, in spite of Nevil's not being in love with her, but after a few months Nevil dies in an attempt to save a child from drowning.
25539681	/m/09ry3kq	Fat Cat		2009	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 “Cat, 17, is driven to succeed, especially in her science research class where her goal is to beat her long-time nemesis, Matt McKinney, at the science fair. Her idea of using herself as a test subject for an in-depth study of early hominids and their lifestyle leads to some interesting shifts in perspective, not only in how others see her, but in how she sees herself. As her project continues, her weight drops, her confidence increases, and Cat becomes “hot,” garnering male attention and a boyfriend for the first time. But she still can’t stop thinking about Matt. Cat is a believable, flawed character. Her odyssey from fat to hot and the slowly unfolding tale about why she and Matt, best friends since childhood, haven’t spoken since the seventh grade science fair, speaks volumes about her values and her self-esteem. Kirsten Potter’s top-notch narration of Robin Brande’s novel (Knopf, 2009) has a distinctive flair, and she gives each character a unique voice. A conversation with the author and activist/cooking instructor Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, including a discussion about vegetarianism and teens, rounds out the recording. A great selection for both public and school libraries.—Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, MI, School Library Journal Can an American teen survive 207 days without junk food and modern conveniences? Budding scientist Catherine (Cat) Locke finds out the answer after embarking on her most ambitious experiment yet: living the lifestyle of a primitive Homo erectus. Cat is determined to win a prize at the science fair and outshine her rival and former friend, Matt, “Mr. I’ve-Won-More Science-Fairs-Than-Any-of-You,” but that’s not her only motivation: she hopes that by following the diet of her ancestors, she’ll shed some unwanted pounds. Going without processed food, technology and motorized transportation isn’t easy (“A big fat Snickers and a slice of pizza would have made everything so much better”), but Cat learns much about herself and other members of the human species as she observes changes in her body and attitude, while noting how others react to her metamorphosis (namely, she’s suddenly juggling the attention of several boys).
25549400	/m/09rwqdq	The Shanghai Moon	S. J. Rozan	2009	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Another PI friend of Lydia's, Joel Pillarsky, hired her to help him find a number of antique gems, including potentially a brooch, the Shanghai Moon, which has become the stuff of legend. When Lydia finds this out, however, there has been a murder, she is fired from the case, and Bill Smith reappears, claiming to have heard of the gem while in the Navy.
25556087	/m/09rwv2t	China Marine	Eugene Sledge	2002-05-10	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Sledge's second book opens in 1945 with the First Marine Division remaining in Okinawa after the 82-day battle to clean up and prepare for their anticipated invasion of "Yokosuka Naval Base at the mouth of Tokyo Bay". None of the Marines expected to survive such an invasion. After the atomic bombings and Japan's precipitous surrender they did not celebrate, but rather were kept busy by a return to the intense manual labor of cleanup. In Sledge's words, "I think we were actually afraid to believe it was true...The memory of so many dead friends was still fresh in our minds." Life in Okinawa suddenly became more bearable as the bewildered and unbelieving Marines grasped the reality of their enormous good luck. So they filled in their free time with entertainment including movies, books and their perennial pastime of "'smokestacking' (fooling)" new replacement troops. Even otherwise dangerous events such as a typhoon (see 1945 Pacific typhoon season) which struck Okinawa were easily weathered. Sledge's battalion was shipped to Beijing (then known as Peiping), China instead of being sent home. Initially this was an exciting experience as Sledge and the others were exposed to the complexities of Chinese culture, enjoying the rich experience as well as the pastimes of garrison duty. "Smokestacking" was expanded to include the Chinese with practices such as gazing at nonexistent objects in the sky until they were surrounded by huge crowds of onlookers all straining to see. Sledge met a number of people who influenced his direction in life, in particular a Flemish priest, Father Marcel von Hemelryjck, and the family of Dr. Y.K. Soong. All was not tourism and fun during the China occupation and conditions worsened through the months. Sledge had a number of tense encounters while on guard duty and was witness to political events such as an incident at Lang Fang; stress rose as strife between Chinese factions grew. As morale continued to deteriorate the Marines were rotated home under the military demobilization point system. Sledge was sent back to Alabama for his discharge in early 1946 to start a prolonged process of adjustment to civilian life. In his words, "My adjustment to civilian life was not easy," and he marveled at such simple amenities as dry socks and the absence of fleas. He had emotional support from his mother, his brother who had been an officer in the European war and his father, who had been an Army physician during World War I. He describes how he retained his wry sense of humor but he remained disturbed at the lack of understanding expressed by civilians. His incident at Auburn University was typical. A young staff member at the registrar's office called on him to list his military training courses then asked him if the Marines had taught him anything important. She could not comprehend the relevance of his training until he explained the twin facts that the United States Marines had trained him specifically to kill enemy soldiers and that most of his own friends and associates had been killed or wounded by the enemy. Sledge's opinion was, "(W)ar to this lady meant John Wayne or the sweet musical South Pacific... I felt like some sort of alien, and I realized that this sort of thing would confront me the rest of my days." Sledge went on to college, married and embarked on a long career as a biologist and teacher. He did find healing of a sort in his parents' love, his marriage and his academic work but he never forgave the soldiers of the Empire of Japan. He denied regret for the men he had shot but regretted the ones he had missed. (This is in contrast to his earlier description of mixed emotions described when he killed a man face to face in the Battle of Peleliu, and to his description of empathy toward birds and animals to the point where he gave up his long term hobby of hunting.) He expressed concern over historical revisionism about the Pacific war and what he termed might have been a "Rape of Nanking" in American cities if the Japanese had not been defeated. This was his opinion as a man who tried to live with the Socratic ideal of self-knowledge: "There is no 'mellowing' for me - that would be to forgive all the atrocities the Japanese committed against millions of Asians and thousands of Americans. To 'mellow' is to forget."
25557162	/m/09rxv_d	Run for Your Life	Lionel Davidson	1966	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 An English boy, Woolcott, and his friend Szolda (whom he calls Soldier) are on the run because Szolda has overheard two men plotting a murder. Filmed as a TV series in 1974 using the US title Soldier and Me starring Gerry Sundquist as Woolcott and Richard Willis as Szolda. 9 30 minute episodes made by Granada Television.
25561064	/m/09rwv5k	Further Adventures of Lad	Albert Payson Terhune	1922	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 ;"The Coming of Lad" A couple, referred to only as the Master and Mistress, purchase a pure-bred rough collie named Lad to be the guard dog of their home, the Place. Though they are surprised when they receive a puppy instead of an adult dog, they decide to keep him and he quickly shows himself to be very intelligent and easily trainable. At first, Lad views all people as friends, including a burglar who robs the house one night. When the man climbs out the window with a bag of loot, Lad thinks he is playing a game and snatches the bag in play. The thief chases Lad, then shoots him to get back the bag. Lad realizes the man is not friendly and turns to attack him, but the thief falls into a ditch, knocking himself unconscious. Afterward, Lad no longer trusts strangers so easily and has become a true watchdog. ;"The Fetish" While in town with the Mistress, Lad saves her from an attack by a sick dog being chased by the police and other citizens, who believe it to be rabid. The dog is shot and the upset Mistress, who knew it was not really rabid, goes home. The next day, the town constable comes by boat to the Place to execute Lad under the notion that he is now rabid. The Master argues that the other dog was not rabid and refuses to allow Lad to be shot, ordering the officer off his property. As the man is leaving, his boat overturns. Unable to swim, he is in danger of drowning until Lad jumps in and brings him back to shore. The grateful officer states that he killed the dog he came to kill and Lad only looks a little like him. ;"No Trespassing!" Two young couples trespass on the Place's lake shore, only to be driven off by the Master and Lad. A week later, Lad is taken to compete in a dog show in Beauville. One of the men from the lake is there to show his boss' champion Lochaber King. He plots to dye Lad's coat red to embarrass the Master for the earlier incident, but accidentally dyes Lochaber King's coat instead, after the two dogs change locations. He is left having to answer for the dog's ruined coat while Lad wins the silver trophy. ;"Hero-Stuff" The Master and Mistress buy a female collie puppy named Lady to be Lad's companion and mate. Lad becomes her protector and slave, as she bullies him from his food and the best places to lie, and endures the flashes of nasty temper that lead her to bite his ears and paws. As she grows older, she becomes a generally well-behaved house dog, but when she is eight months old, she tries to attack a beloved mounted bald eagle belonging to the Master. He whips her and then locks her in a shed for the night as punishment; however, during the night it catches on fire. Lad desperately tries to break down the door to free her, then howls in agony, before jumping through its high window to join Lady inside. The Master, awakened by Lad's howl, arrives in time to free them both, though both have badly burned coats. ;"The Stowaway" When Lady returns from a fifteen-week hospital stay, she abandons Lad to play with their son Wolf, whom she no longer recognizes. The moping Lad takes to hiding in the car to beg for a ride, and accidentally becomes a stowaway when the Master and Mistress go to the Catskills to visit friends. As dogs are not allowed in the residential park where they are staying, they take Lad to a kennel, but he quickly escapes and returns to the park. While waiting for the Master and Mistress to wake up, he follows a strange scent through a neighbor's house, leading to his being blamed for destroying a room in that house. However, it's quickly discovered that the vandal was another neighbor's pet monkey, hidden by its owner who did not like the park's new "no pet" rules. When Lad returns home, Lady effusively greets her returned mate. ;"The Tracker" Cyril, an eleven-year-old with a nasty penchant for making trouble, comes to stay at the Place for three months. While there, he frequently lies, sneakily torments Lad, and plays such horrible pranks on the staff that two quit. After he is caught kicking Lad in plain sight, the Master loses his temper and scolds him. Cyril goes into a rage and runs away in a snowstorm. He gets lost and falls off a high cliff, landing on a small ledge. Lad finds him there, but has to jump down to the ledge to save the boy from a bobcat. Now trapped with the boy, Lad keeps him warm until a rescue party arrives. ;"The Juggernaut" Lad's mate Lady is run over and killed by a speeding driver who deliberately aimed his car at her. Lad and his owners both saw the crime, but were unable to catch up to the driver in time. Lad grieves terribly until they go to a local tennis tournament where he finds Lady's killer. He attacks the man to kill him, but the Master calls him off. The Mistress explains to the shocked crowd what the man had done, then takes a cured Lad home. They later learn that the crowd destroyed the man's expensive car and he was expelled from the club for killing Lady. ;"In Strange Company" The Master and Mistress take Lad on their annual fall camping trip to the mountains for two weeks. During the trip, Lad playfully teases a bear, leading to a fight, which the master ends by scaring off the bear. At the end of the trip, Lad is accidentally left tied to a tree at the camp site. While his owners are returning to find their missing dog, Lad is trapped by a forest fire. When the bear he fought earlier rushes past with singed fur, Lad chews through his rope and follows the other animals of the forest to sit in a nearby lake. When his owners arrive, he runs through the burning fire to join them, blistering his paws on some coals. ;"Old Dog; New Tricks" After 12-year-old Lad is praised for bringing the Mistress a lace parasol that he found on the road, he begins searching the road for more things to find, sometimes stealing them unintentionally from people who were nearby but not watching their items. As he had gotten more sensitive in his older age, his owners always praised him for the gifts, which ranged from a full picnic basket to roadkill. One night, he "finds" a baby, who was kidnapped from a wealthy household by a disgruntled former employee and his kin. The baby had been set in the grass by his two kidnappers while they changed a flat tire. The kidnappers eventually catch up to Lad, who is carrying the child home. He fights off the men when they attack him, eventually chasing them back to their car, and they escape. The baby is returned to his parents and the kidnappers arrested, but Lad is hurt that his present results in no praise, just a lot of activity around the house. ;"The Intruders" A large, cranky sow escapes from its herd and attacks the Mistress after she tries to shoo it out of her garden. Lad charges between them and battles the sow, but with his old age and blunt fangs he struggles with the fight and is badly injured. Bruce and Wolf return from a forest romp in time to aid him, and the younger dogs are able to easily drive her off. While fleeing, the pig runs directly into the path of one of the Place's cars, driven by a car thief who is knocked unconscious. Lad's feelings are hurt by the battle being finished by the other dogs and the Mistress' holding him back from joining them at the end, but he quickly forgives her. ;"The Guard" At 16, the aging Lad befriends Sonya, a seven-year-old girl whose father works at the Place. Her father forces her to assist him with his work, then brutally mistreats her if she is slow. The Master and the Place's superintendent try to quell the behavior, with no success. During a walk with the girl, Lad protects her from her father. The next day, while the Master and Mistress are at a show and the other workers are off on holiday, Sonya's father starts to beat her for accidentally dropping a heavy basket. Lad comes to her rescue and they retreat to the veranda where she pets him while he sleeps. When Sonya goes to the barn, her father is waiting for her and closes the door. Somehow she senses Lad beside her, which gives her the courage to stand up to her father. The man imagines he sees Lad beside her and runs away in fear. Unknown to both, Lad had died in his sleep and the Master and Mistress were crying over his body on the veranda.
25561798	/m/09rwsjm	Mars in Aries				 As Count Wallmoden, an Austrian World War I veteran and lieutenant of the reserve, readies himself for a four-week military exercise which is scheduled to start on August 15, 1939 he experiences the first of several derealization episodes. Later, during an idle evening spent in talk with his fellow officers, as the discussion touches on the topic of spiritism, his regimental commander half-jokingly promises Wallmoden that whenever they meet he would indicate whether he is still alive or already dead because that might not be immediately apparent to a living person. During a training attack near the village of Würmla Wallmoden has an apparition of naked ghosts swirling around him. He keeps this vision to himself until much later when he reports it to a military physician, who tells him that there is nothing necessarily wrong with him, as hallucinations in the sane are not uncommon as most people believe. While spending an off-duty evening in Vienna Wallmoden socially meets people who, as it eventually turns out, are not quite what they seem and might in fact be members of the Austrian resistance. Among them is a strange aristocratic lady, Baroness Pistohlkors who states that she is German by birth but lived in Sioux Falls as a child before coming to Austria. The two start an affair. Wallmoden promises to meet her again on September 16, the day his tour of military duty is over. Later, returning from another visit to Vienna, Wallmoden finds that his unit has been mobilized for war. Motorized night marches take them through Jedenspeigen (where Walmoden has a lucid dream of two young women bathing in the room he is sleeping in) and across Slovakia (at this time, a Nazi puppet state) to Trstená at the Slovak-Polish border. As the regiment prepares to attack Jabłonka at first morning light he witnesses an eastward migration of thousands of crabs, a phenomenon apparently not perceived or ignored by his comrades – and clearly a symbol for the German war machine. As Wallmoden's regiment approaches Hrubieszów by way of Tarnów on September 16, the invaders face the first serious Polish resistance. A fellow officer who had supposedly visited Baroness Pistohlkors in Vienna admits that he had deceived Wallmoden when he had conveyed her greetings to him earlier; actually his beloved died resisting apprehension by the Gestapo. On a country road he meets his regimental commander who—in keeping with his promise—had stated on all earlier occasions that he was "still in the flesh" but now almost proudly announces that "his status has changed." When the junior officer remarks that such a joke is in bad taste given the considerable number of recent casualties, the colonel angrily orders Wallmoden to stand aside near a group of trees. As Wallmoden complies he sees the corpse of his regimental commander being carried away. Before he can come to terms with the fact that he has talked to a ghost a minute ago, Polish aircraft appear and drop bombs on the grove Wallmoden had been ordered to by his dead commander. As he is hurled through the air by one of the explosions he briefly enters a dreamlike state from which he (apparently at least) awakes to find himself being transported in an ambulance car, although he does not seem to have suffered injuries. In Janówka their car breaks down and Wallmoden strays into a villa where he meets a woman whom he recognizes as his beloved although there is no outward resemblance. After they have made love she identifies herself as the true baroness Pistohlkors who had become a victim of identity theft after her passport had been stolen. As the two make their way back towards Germany the story terminates, without explicit ending, as they pass Niwiska. It is not clear whether the two continue on the factual plane of the story as living beings, or rather have rejoined in the Otherworld.
25563271	/m/09rxrft	The Memory Cathedral	Jack Dann	1995-12	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dann's major historical novel depicts a version of the Renaissance in which Leonardo da Vinci actually constructs a number of his inventions, such as a flying machine, whose designs are well-known from his surviving sketches. He later employs some of his military inventions during a battle in the Middle East, while in the service of a Syrian general - events which Dann projects into a year of da Vinci's life about which little is known. The novel also presents a detailed imagining of the life and character of the inventor and painter during this period, and includes his encounters with other historical characters residing in Florence including Machiavelli and Botticelli. The title refers to an ancient system of memory recall, or Mnemonics, in which a building, such as a cathedral, is constructed in the mind as a container for imagined objects - which are deliberately connected to particular memories. The building can later be mentally navigated to re-encounter those objects and retrieve the memories with which they are associated. Da Vinci's memory cathedral functions in the narrative as a device through which he reviews his experiences as death approaches.
25569879	/m/09rw4r5	Eve's Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History	Robert S. McElvaine	2001	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The following synopsis of some of the major points in Eve's Seed is based on information contained in the book's official website. *Because men cannot compete with women’s capabilities in the crucial realms of reproduction and nourishing offspring, McElvaine argues, men generally seek to avoid a single standard of human behavior and achievement. They create separate definitions of “manliness” which are based on a false opposition to “womanliness.” A “real man” has been seen in most cultures as “notawoman.” *Although this viewpoint actually begins with woman as the “standard” human and proceeds to define man by its supposed vast differences from that standard, people do not like to see themselves in negative terms, so men have generally sought ways to transform woman into a negative, thus making man positive. *Human life—and the situation of both sexes—was radically changed about 10,000 years ago by the invention of agriculture, which in all likelihood was accomplished by women. *In one of his most striking contentions, McElvaine says that the story of Adam and Eve in the third chapter of Book of Genesis is an allegory for the invention of agriculture by women (Eve’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge) and its long-term consequences (the loss of what seemed in distant retrospect to have been a pre-agricultural paradise in which people lived easily, without work, simply picking fruit from trees, and man having to go forth and till the soil to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow). The “Fall of Man” is a metaphor for an actual fall of men. *McElvaine says that the development of methods for the intentional production of food (animal herding as well as agriculture) substantially devalued what men had traditionally done. Hunting was no longer needed and defense against other species declined in importance as groups of humans settled in growing numbers in farming areas into which predators ventured less frequently than their paths had crossed those of human hunter-gatherers. *The loss of value in their traditional roles left men adrift, seeking new meaningful roles, and increasingly resentful of women. The result was what can accurately be seen as a Neolithic and early Bronze Age backlash or “masculinist movement.” *At this point, McElvaine argues, there arose an almost irresistible metaphor, the very widespread acceptance of which has misshaped human life through all of recorded history. The apparent analogy of a seed being planted in furrowed soil to a male’s “planting” of semen in the vulva of a female led to the conclusion that men provide the seed of new life and women constitute the soil in which that seed grows. This Seed Metaphor, which McElvaine calls "the Conception Misconception," has remained with us throughout history and it continues to mislead us in profound ways down to the present. *The woman-made world of agriculture had, paradoxically, become a man's world to a degree unprecedented in human existence. As McElvaine puts it: "Hell hath no fury like a man devalued." *The belief that men have procreative power led inevitably to the conclusion that the supreme Creative Power must also be male. The toxic fruit that grew from the Seed Metaphor, McElvaine says, was male monotheism. *The combination of the belief that God (or the god who is the ultimate creator) is male with the notion that humans are created in God's image yielded the inescapable conclusion that men are closer than women to godly perfection. Thus the line from the misconceptions about conception emanating from the seed metaphor to the belief, given its classic expressions by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Freud, that women are deformed or “incomplete” men is clear and direct. *Once the Seed Metaphor had sprouted into the idea that God is male and so women are inferior, the original “notawoman” definition of manhood took on new and more menacing implications. Now what had been an essentially horizontal division became a clearly vertical one: traits and values associated with women were not simply classified as improper for men, but as inferior. *The total subordination of women throughout recorded history, McElvaine argues, is but the first part of the devastating legacy of the Neolithic backlash and the Seed Metaphor. Equally important has been the concomitant suppression in men of all values, ideas, and characteristics associated with women and so defined as inferior. The rest, he says, is history—pretty much all of it—and, the gains of women in recent decades notwithstanding, these legacies from mistaken ideas in the Neolithic Age continue to have enormous effects on us today.
25572395	/m/09rv49c	Fallen	Lauren Kate	2009-12-08	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Suspected in the death of her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Lucinda is sent to a Savannah, Georgia, reform school where she meets two intriguing boys and learns the truth about the strange shadows that have always haunted her.
25577776	/m/09rxdkw	\\"U\\" Is for Undertow	Sue Grafton	2009-12-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In April 1988, Kinsey Millhone is hired by a young man named Michael Sutton to investigate a memory that he claims to have recovered of two people burying a body in the woods in the exclusive Horton Ravine neighborhood in 1967, when he turned six years old. He claims that the burial took place on his birthday, two days after a famous unsolved kidnapping of a four-year-old named Mary Claire in the neighborhood, in which the kidnappers requested $25,000 but never picked up the ransom after police were called. She was never found. Although Michael's memory is hazy, he and Kinsey manage to locate the spot of the burial, but a police dig uncovers only the body of a wolfdog named Ulf. One of the bystanders watching the dig, a banker named Walker McNally, who was a high school classmate of Kinsey, spends the entire weekend drinking and kills a young woman in a DUI on Sunday night. Kinsey learns that Sutton was involved in a past "recovered memory" event that proved false, while greatly disrupting his family. Bothered by this, Kinsey traces the dogtag back to the dog's owner, who told her that the dog had been euthanized around that time. No one has any idea how the remains ended up in Horton Ravine. Upon returning to Horton Ravine to talk to the neighbors, Kinsey learns that Rain, the four-year-old granddaughter/adopted daughter of the couple that formerly owned the lot, had been kidnapped in a similar fashion just before Mary Claire but was returned unharmed after her parents paid a ransom of $15,000 using marked bills, which also never turned up. A parallel story set in the 1960s is initially told from the viewpoint of Deborah Unruh, Rain's grandmother. Greg, the Unruhs' son, returned home with his pregnant girlfriend Shelly after dropping out of college in 1963. Five days after she gave birth to their daughter Rain, they left, leaving the baby behind. Two years later, the Unruhs formally adopted Rain. Two years after that, in 1967, Greg and Shelly (now calling themselves Creed and Destiny) returned to borrow $40,000 against Greg's trust, but the Unruhs refused to make such a loan. Greg and Shelly left unexpectedly not long thereafter. Almost immediately after they left, Rain was kidnapped. Kinsey talks to Deborah, who believes that Shelly was behind Rain's kidnapping because of the $40,000 total ransom. However, Kinsey learns that Greg and Shelly had hurredly fled the area because the Selective Service had been tipped off to draft dodger Greg's location, ruling them out as suspects. Michael's family finds evidence that the date Michael claimed to see the burial was a week earlier, making it prior to Mary Claire's kidnapping, discrediting Michael and leaving Kinsey at a dead end. In another set of flashbacks, the story of the successful writer Jon Corso, Walker's best friend in high school, is told. Walker and Jon became friends with Greg and Shelly during their second visit, and Jon started an intense sexual affair with Shelly. Shelly told Jon her plan to kidnap Rain for ransom, but Jon decided to implement the plan on his own so that he and Walker could afford their own apartment when they started college in the fall. Walker, in fact, was the person that tipped off the draft board about Greg. Jon and Walker buried the ransom money after realizing it was marked, but they moved the money and substituted the dog after being seen, to make their digging look harmless. Still needing money after burying Rain's ransom, they kidnapped Mary Claire, but she died from an allergic reaction to Valium, which they used to keep her sedated during her kidnapping. Back in the present, Michael Sutton sees Walker at an AA meeting (which Walker has attended since his DUI) and follows him, remembering him as one of the two diggers. Michael calls Kinsey to tell her, since no one else believes him any longer. Panicked by his role in two deaths (the "undertow" of the title), Walker calls Jon and says he is going to turn himself in for the kidnapping, despite the lack of evidence. Jon talks him into a small delay and then shoots and kills Michael. Since Walker has an airtight alibi for the time of the killing, Kinsey immediately suspects Jon due to their close friendship in high school. She heads to Jon's house, where she sees him leaving with suitcases, and follows him to a secluded meeting with Walker. Jon's plan to murder Walker and flee the country is foiled by Kinsey, who shoots him after he pulls a gun on her, and both Jon and Walker are arrested. Mary Claire's body and the marked money are both recovered on Jon's family's property. In a side story, Kinsey is invited to a family event (the first return to her family backstory since "Q" Is for Quarry). During the preparation for the event, which Kinsey resists attending, she is given letters from her grandmother that her Aunt Gin, who raised her, had refused. She learns that, far from ignoring her, her grandmother had wanted to adopt her after her parents' deaths and had even hired a private investigator to gain custody of her. In a final irony, she learns that Gin and the private investigator had had an affair, and that little Kinsey had gone on outings with them. In the end, she attends the family event, where her grandmother, who is increasingly senile, mistakes her for her late mother and tells her how happy she would be if Kinsey were to come visit her.
25582540	/m/09rtw2b	Bearers of the Black Staff				 As described by Cristina Donati of FantasyMagazine (translated),
25583540	/m/09rwsr7	The Two Pearls of Wisdom	Alison Goodman	2008-08-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Eon has been studying the ancient art of Dragon Magic for four years, hoping he'll be selected as apprentice to a dragoneye. Dragoneyes are the human links to the twelve dragons of good fortune, who provide energy to the earth. However, circumstance does not favour Eon; he is a cripple and despised by the trainers and other candidates for the ceremony. They believe his disability embodies bad luck and try to distance themselves, all except a boy named Dillon who is also bullied for his small size. Eon's master, Heuris Brannon, places all his hope and dwindling wealth into his pupil, who is able to see all twelve dragons in minds' sight. This feat is almost unheard of and they pray that the ascending dragon this cycle, who is the keeper of ambition, will be drawn by the enormous power demonstrated. However, Eon has a dark secret unbeknownst to all but himself and his master; he is actually Eona, a sixteen-year-old girl who has been living a lie in order for the chance to become a Dragoneye. It is forbidden for females to practice the Dragon Magic; this is due to common belief that the female eye, so practised in looking at itself, cannot see other things in life with true clarity. If discovered, 'Eon' faces a terrible death. The choosing day comes all too quickly and the corrupted Rat Dragoneye, Lord Ido, has seized dominance over the council. He revokes the current practise of ceremonial performances and instead brings back the combat of old. The bloodthirsty crowds approve, but this just adds to the mounting misfortune Eona has to bear. Not only is she given the unlucky number of death, 4, but she has to face off with the one trainer of the two that bears a grudge against her. Against the odds, the Rat Dragon chooses her friend Dillon, the smallest of the bunch. Here, it appears as though the protagonist has failed and her master's wealth is all lost; however, as the remaining candidates proceed to the arena to bow to the Emperor, the Mirror Dragon, which has been lost for five hundred years, returns. It chooses Eona, who becomes a Lord due to the absence of a current Mirror Dragoneye. Much to the fury of Lord Ido, all the dragons bow to the Mirror Dragon, including his. This is impossible because his is the ascendant dragon, but the message is clear; the Mirror Dragon, the Keeper of Truth, holds power over all other dragons. To discourage those who oppose him, Ido poisons Heuris Brannon, Eona's appointed proxy. Meanwhile, the country grows increasingly restless. A battle is about the break out between the Emperor and one of his brothers, High Lord Sethon, who wishes to make a claim for the throne. Lord Ido has allied himself with Sethon and as the Emperor ages, it is clear that the empire will soon be under civil war. The Emperor and his heir, Prince Kygo, attempt to use the return of the Mirror Dragon as a good omen for their reign. This throws Eona into the midst of their struggle for power. She panics, without knowledge as for who to trust except her close friend Lady Dela (born a man but who is a woman in spirit) and Dela's bodyguard, the islander Ryko. Tension mounts and soon the battle begins. Eona finds herself in trouble; Ido discovers her true gender and her dragon fades and then disappears altogether. When talking to Dillon she realises that she does not have her dragon's name and thus cannot communicate properly. She consults the palace professor/librarian, who cannot find the red folio of the Mirror Dragon. Eona suspects Lord Ido and realises he has masterminded his own plan, killing all other Dragoneyes and apprentices in a bid for more power. In his library she meets an almost insane Dillon who finds both the red folio and another black folio, detailing how it is possible to create a 'String of Pearls', with 2 Dragoneyes harnessing the power of the normal 12. She puts the pieces together and is horrified to find that Ido wishes for the two of them to be the only two left alive. However, Dillon takes off with the black folio as Eona saves Ryko from the pain a dragon-powered hallucination. Prince Kygo flees and his baby brother, the Emperor's only other heir, is killed by Sethon. In desperation the wounded Dela, limping Eona and injured Ryko try to escape but Ido orders his men to find them. Dela continues decoding the red folio, which is written in Women's Script, for Eona's dragon's name. As the warfare escalates and all seems to be lost in this final confrontation, Dela screams out that the dragon's name is her name; Eona. She summons her dragon, the Queen of the Heavens, and they are united at last, with Eona's crippled leg healing in the process. Together the Dragon and the Dragoneye force compassion upon Ido and the trio make their escape to the river.
25593867	/m/09rwxpc	Volga Se Ganga	Rahul Sankrityayan	1944		 Volga Se Ganga is about the history of Indo–European people who were later known as the Aryans. The 20 stories are woven over a time span of 8000 years and a distance of about 10,000&nbsp;km. This is a very good attempt at freeing our brains of the clutches of space and time. The first story Nisha is about cavemen living in Siberia about 6000 BC. The society or its precursor at that time was matriarchal and so the story is named after the leader of the family 'Nisha'. Although all the 20 stories are independent and equally enjoyable in their own right, the sequence in which they are arranged nevertheless serves a very important purpose. It is an indispensable aid to anyone who has been baffled by discontinuities in the evolution of societies and their cultures. Here one can find a gradual transformation from a matriarchal society (the first two stories) to a patriarchal one (the rest), a gradual change from freedom to slavery, from acceptance of slavery to its loathing and the likes. If we are to believe Sankrityayan then an apprehension for technological advancement is nothing new. People were wary of the newly better armament which was fast replacing the older stone equipment (Fourth story – Puruhoot (Tajikistan 2500BC.)). The same story tells us how an arms race was started during that period and how southerners amassed great wealth at the expense of the northerners. The sixth story Angira (Taxila 1800 BC) is about a man who wants to save the Aryan race from losing itself to other races by teaching about their culture (precursor to Vedic Rishis). The eighth story (Pravahan (700 BC. Panchal, U.P.). is about the upper class manipulating religion for their own vested interests and conspiring to keep people in dark for at least 2000 years). One can see how easily and frequently the Indians, the mid easterners and the Greeks mingled with each other in the times of Chanakya and Alexander by reading the tenth story Nagdatt about a philosopher classmate of Chanakya who travels to Greece and learns how Athens fell to Macedonia. The eleventh story (Prabha, 50 AD) is about the famous (also the first Indian) dramatist Ashwaghosh, who adopted the Greek art of drama into Indian culture in a very beautiful and authentic way, and his inspiration. Baba Noordeen (1300), the 15th story is about the rise of Sufism. The seventeenth story Rekha Bhagat (1800 is about the barbarous rule of the East India company and the anarchy it brought to India. The last story (Sumer, 1942) is about a man who goes on to fight the Japanese because he wants Soviet Russia to triumph, for this nation (i.e., the Communist Party) is the only hope left for humanity.
25595254	/m/09rwzjj	Search For Senna	K. A. Applegate	1999-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 David Levin, the narrator of the book, is the new kid in his school. He gets in a fight with Christopher Hitchcock after being seen going out with his girlfriend, Senna Wales. Jalil, a fellow student, and Senna's half-sister, April O'Brien, appear in the scene, which marks the point where four of the main characters first get together. The next day, early in the morning all four are mysteriously drawn to Senna, who is sitting next to a lake. Suddenly, without a warning all five of them are sucked into a different world which is called Everworld.
25601367	/m/09v9wj_	The Squire of Low Degree				 It was a squyer of lowe degréThat loved the kings doughter of Hungré. After seven years of undeclared love the squire opens his heart to the princess. She replies that she loves him, but that as a mere squire he will have to prove himself by fighting his way to Jerusalem and laying his sword on the Holy Sepulchre. Only this, she believes, will be enough to convince her father that they should marry. Their conversation is overheard by the king&#39;s steward, who steals off to the king to report it, and adds the malicious lie that the squire has made an attempt on the princess&#39;s virtue. The king has a good opinion of the squire and is reluctant to believe this, but tells the steward to watch the princess&#39;s room closely to see whether the squire will visit her. The squire now goes to the king to ask his leave to go abroad adventuring. On being given this permission the squire sets out, but turns aside from his way to visit the princess&#39;s chamber and make his farewells. There, finding the steward and a numerous body of men-at-arms lying in wait for him, he asks the princess to let him in. Anone he sayde: "Your dore undo!Undo," he sayde, "nowe, fayre lady!I am beset with many a spy.Lady as whyte as whales bone,There are thyrty agaynst me one." But she, as a virtuous unmarried lady, turns him from her door and tells him to win her in marriage. Now the steward and his men approach the chamber to take the squire prisoner. Though he resists to such good effect that the steward is killed, the squire is finally taken prisoner by the steward&#39;s men. These men mutilate the dead steward&#39;s face, dress him in the squire&#39;s clothes, and leave him at the princess&#39;s door hoping she will mistake him for the squire. The princess is taken in by this trick, embalms the body of the dead steward and keeps it in a tomb by her bed. Meanwhile the squire is taken to the king, who imprisons him. Finally, finding that his daughter is inconsolable, the king releases the squire and allows him to go abroad. Anone the squyer passed the se.In Tuskayne and in Lumbardy,There he dyd great chyvalry.In Portyngale nor yet in Spayne,There myght no man stand hym agayne;And where that ever that knyght gan fare,The worshyp with hym away he bare.And thus he travayled seven yereIn many a land bothe farre and nere,Tyll on a day he thought hym thoUnto the sepulture for to go.And there he made his offerynge soone,Right as the kinges doughter bad him don. Having done all this he returns to Hungary. Here the princess, still lamenting her supposedly dead lover, has decided to retire from the world: And, squyer, for the love of thee,Fy on this worldes vanyté!Farewell golde pure and fyne;Farewell velvet and satyne;Farewell castelles and maners also;Farewell huntynge and hawkynge to;Farewell revell, myrthe, and play;Farewell pleasure and garmentes gay;Farewell perle and precyous stone;Farewell my juielles everychone;Farewell mantell and scarlet reed;Farewell crowne unto my heed;Farewell hawkes, and farewell hounde;Farewell markes and many a pounde;Farewell huntynge at the hare;Farewell harte and hynde for evermare.Nowe wyll I take the mantell and the rynge,And become an ancresse in my lyvynge.And yet I am a mayden for thee. Her father now belatedly tells her that she has been mourning the steward, and that the squire has returned from Jerusalem. He gives the lovers his blessing, and they marry.
25602527	/m/09v1sql	Girl	Blake Nelson	1994	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Andrea Marr begins high school as an ordinary suburban teen. When her friend Cybil meets a mysterious and charismatic musician downtown, both girls begin a journey through the Pacific Northwest indie-rock music scene of the 1990s.
25609742	/m/06_x3np	The Last Wizard	Tony Shillitoe	1995	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Essentially a 'coming of age' teenage novel, The Last Wizard follows the efforts of Tam, daughter of the village Head, to establish her own place in the world while unravelling the dark secrets of her village culture.
25612007	/m/09v2pkp	Cedric the Forester	Bernard Marshall	1921	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Narrated by Sir Dickon Mountjoy, a twelfth-century Norman nobleman, the novel describes his lifelong friendship with Cedric of Pelham Wood, a Saxon yeoman. Cedric the forester saves Sir Dickon's life and is made his squire. The two men become friends and have many adventures. Cedric eventually becomes the best crossbowman in England, and is knighted. Set in the time of King Richard the Lionhearted, Cedric plays a pivotal role in the signing of the Magna Carta.
25612146	/m/09v8l8f	The Old Tobacco Shop: A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure	William Bowen	1921	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Five-year old Freddie meets the owner of a nearby tobacco shop, Mr. Toby Littleback; his old-maid aunt, Aunt Amanda; and Mr. Punch, a hunchbacked man who sits outside the shop holding cigars. Toby warns young Freddie never to touch the jar shaped like a Chinese man's head because it is filled with magic tobacco. Freddie can't resist, and after smoking the tobacco he finds he and his friends on The Sieve, a leaky ship on the Spanish Main. They are first captured by pirates, then escape with the pirate treasure. Later they meet a Persian rug merchant who gives each of them their heart's desire. In the end Freddie falls ill, and goes into a coma. When he awakens he finds himself at home, recovered from the tobacco-induced dream.
25613523	/m/09v0zcp	Queer Person	Ralph Hubbard	1930	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When a lost four-year-old deaf-mute wanders into a Pikuni camp he is shunned by them as marked by evil spirits. They give him the name "Queer Person". An old medicine woman takes him in and raises him. She predicts greatness for him and ensures he is worthy of it. During his test of bravery as an adolescent, he rescues the chief's son. He wins the heart of the chief's daughter and eventually becomes a leader of the tribe.
25613596	/m/0bhjrjp	Calico Bush	Rachel Field	1931	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Calico Bush is set on the Maine coast in the pioneer era, and tells the story of Marguerite, a young French orphan who becomes an indentured servant on a farm.
25613616	/m/09v399k	Jane's Island	Marjorie Allee	1931	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Ellen, a 17-year-old college freshman spends the summer in Wood's Hole with 12-year-old Jane, the daughter of a marine biologist. They go on picnics and fishing expeditions while learning a lot about nature.
25613671	/m/09v3690	Swords of Steel	Elsie Singmaster	1933	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In 1859, 12-year-old John Deane lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with his family. He is friends with Nicholas, a black servant, with whom he is training a colt. He is devastated when Nicholas is kidnapped by slave catchers and sent to the South to be sold. He learns that his father is a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and he visits Harper's Ferry where he witnesses John Brown's raid. When the war reaches Pennsylvania, his house is seized by the Confederates, and he is locked in the cellar. However, he is helped by the troop's cook, his old friend Nicholas. Later he joins the Union Army and sees the final events of the war.
25614011	/m/09v2xhq	The Singing Tree	Kate Seredy	1939	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It is 1914, and two years have passed since the events of The Good Master. Jansci Nagy, now called the "Young Master", is becoming a fine horseman and his father, Kate's Uncle Marton, has given him his own herd. Kate's father has moved from Budapest to the nearby village to teach school, and even wild Kate is growing up and taking on responsibilities on the farm, taking charge of the chickens and helping her Aunt with the sewing and ironing. As wonderful as things are, change is coming. Kate loves the idea of growing up until she learns it means she will have to stop riding her beloved horse. Spoiled Lily is coming to spend the summer with the Nagy's. And trouble is brewing in Hungar]. For almost two hundred years it has had an alliance with Austria, and it's men have served three years in the army under Austrian command. But the old loyalties are becoming strained, and resentments build between Austrian, Magyar and Slav. Coming home from a traditional Hungarian wedding the tired Nagy's hear that Francis Ferdinand has been assassinated. Soon all the men between twenty-two and thirty are ordered to report for duty, and the little town has its first war casualty, young Rabbi Joseph Mandelbaum. As Uncle Marton explains "War is like a stampede, Jansci. A small thing can start it and suddenly the very earth is shaking with fury and people turn into wild things, crushing everything beautiful and sweet, destroying homes, lives, blindly in their mad rush from nowhere to nowhere." Everything changes in Hungary during the war, and on the farm. Kate's father is a prisoner in Russia, Lily's is away fighting, and even Uncle Marton goes off to war, leaving Jansci in charge. Every night the family gathers in the kitchen to read and reread the news from their loved ones. Only a few old men and children are left to help with the farm work, so Jansci requisitions six Russian prisoners of war to help. Fortunately, "Uncle" Moses Mandelbaum speaks Russian, and Jansci leans on him for help, as do all the other villagers left behind. Soon the Russians are at home on the farm, growing fat from Mother's cooking, caring for the sheep, horses, and each other. Then news stops coming from Uncle Marton. As months go by without word, they stay busy with work try to pretend they aren't worried. When a letter comes from Auntie's parents, Jansci, Kate and Lily travel for two days to get them and take them to the farm. A chance stop at a hospital on the way home has the girls visiting the patients, including one amnesiac suffering from shell shock. He turns out to be Uncle Marton, who is sent home to recover. Fifteen-year-old Jansci can relax and enjoy himself now that his father is home again, and they all desperately hope he war will be over before he has to go back. Finally the doctors decide even brave Uncle Martin's mind can only take so much horror, and they tell the family they will not be sending him back to the fighting. News comes to the farm that England and France have blockaded Germany, and German children are starving. The Hungarian government asks people to volunteer to take as many children as they can in, feed them, and care for them until the war ends. The Nagy's take six. The fourth Christmas of the war there are twenty people in house, Hungarian, German and Russian, eating, exchanging presents and telling stories. That spring Uncle Marton tells them the about the singing tree -- an apple tree the men spotted one morning when all around them was barren and dead. It sang because it was alive with birds, all kinds of birds, that had sheltered in it during the night. "Perhaps they... were merely passing time until it would be safe to travel" he told them, but the tree would stay, "she, mother of all, she would remain the same." Finally, in fall of 1918, the war ends and men began returning home. "Uncle" Moses only living son comes home to be a shop keeper like his father, the Russians prisoners and German children go home, Kate's father is coming back to the farm and everyone hopes the world has learned how to live at peace at last.
25615248	/m/09v8g_p	Figure Away	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Cape Cod's resident detective Asey Mayo is asked to take a hand with respect to some mysterious disturbances that threaten the success of Billingsgate's "Old Home Week", a local festival mounted to stave off the small town's bankruptcy. The week of homespun celebrations is soon marred by the murder of an antiques dealer and there is no shortage of suspects, both local and "come-from-awayers"; someone has been sabotaging the festival and occasionally taking the place of one of the mannequins on the lawn of the murdered antiques dealer. Asey Mayo finally tracks down the identity of the murderer and learns who's been moving the "figure away".
25625951	/m/06hm_sq	Blizzard Pass	David "Zeb" Cook			 Blizzard Pass is a solo adventure for a thief level 1–3. The thief must cross Blizzard Pass, and then penetrate a cavern system within Blizzard Pass to free the other adventurers from a prison. The module also contains a short adventure for a party of characters level 2–3, dealing with the exploration of the Pass.
25627489	/m/09v6vy_	Amityville: The Evil Escapes		1988-06		 When the Lutzes fled 112 Ocean Ave they left all their personal belonings behind. To get rid of the extra items a yard sale is held at the house. All the items are at bargain prices and too good to pass up. Little do the buyers know...they are getting more than they bargained for.
25628443	/m/09v6c65	The Cape Cod Mystery	Phoebe Atwood Taylor		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Dale Sanborn has made a lot of enemies in his career as a muckraking author, philanderer and occasional blackmailer. When he vacations at a cabin in Cape Cod, any of his many visitors—an old girl friend, his fiancee, an outraged husband, a long-lost brother and a few more—the night he died could have killed him, and all of them wanted to. When a respectable Boston matron is involved in the crime, local character Asey Mayo takes a hand and brings the case to a successful, if unexpected, conclusion.
25640080	/m/09v8sz8	Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison	Lois Lenski	1941	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mary "Molly" Jemison lives with her family on a Pennsylvania farm, until one morning she is taken captive by Indians who raid her home, separate her from her family, and take her and two other captives to the French Fort Duquesne. There she is bought by two Seneca Indian sisters: Shining Star, who is kind and beautiful, and Squirrel Woman, who is stern and cross. They adopt her as their Indian sister to replace their brother who died in Pennsylvania. They call her "Corn Tassel" because her soft yellow hair reminds them of corn in full tassel. There, she learns to be an Indian women, to bear her pain silently, to speak Seneca, to work for food, and learns the place of an Indian woman. She befriends a young hunter, Little Turtle, and wise old Grandfather Shagbark, who are both kind to him and only want her to be happy. At the end of the book she has the choice to go home with an English captain and get all the training she would have had as a white girl or to stay living as an Indian. She chooses to stay with them, earning the name "Little woman of great courage."
25640132	/m/05qg_31	Fog Magic	Julia Sauer	1943	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The fantasy story centers on eleven-year-old Greta Addington. One child in every generation of Addingtons is able to experience the special magic of Blue Cove, Nova Scotia. In fair weather, ruined buildings are all Greta sees, but when the fog rolls in she can travel back in time to visit the village and its inhabitants. While there she has a friend to play with, and the people refer to her as coming "from over the mountain". Greta is especially eager to go there on her twelfth birthday, but she has to wait till night for it to become foggy. That night in Blue Cove her friends give her a kitten, and Greta leaves realizing she will never be able to return. The setting is based on the real life town of Little River, Nova Scotia and the former village of White's Cove where Sauer spent many summers.
25640258	/m/09v151h	Justin Morgan Had a Horse	Marguerite Henry	1945	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The schoolmaster, Justin Morgan, takes two colts as payment for an old debt. The younger of the two grows into a sturdy, though small, riding horse which served as the foundation of the Morgan breed of horse. John Smith, formerly of NBC's Laramie, played the part of Mr. Ames.
25642973	/m/09v3y59	Send Him Victorious				 A moderate Conservative government in the United Kingdom is preparing to use force to overthrow the white minority government of Rhodesia. There are widespread extreme right-wing protests in Britain against this policy. Agitators in the Grenadier Guards incite a mutiny, in which the hated Regimental Sergeant Major is killed. An armed gang breaks into Chelsea Barracks to release the agitators, including by mistake Guardsman Steele, who has been wrongly accused of murdering the RSM. Steele plays along with his captors as they prepare to turn a demonstration in Oxford into an ugly riot. He manages to telephone his mother with a garbled description of the conspirators, before he is found with a fractured skull. Veteran journalist Jack Kemble links his mention of a scarred Frenchman with someone seen meeting the mutinous guardsmen. The Cabinet, led by Prime Minister Patrick Harvey, resolve to proceed with the use of force against Rhodesia. Secretary of State for Defence Critten and Tory grandee Lord Thorganby resign in protest. The King, who is on holiday in Italy, feels he should return to support the Government. His aircraft is found to have been sabotaged, but a businessman, Dennis Ralston, offers him his private jet. The jet explodes in mid-flight. In the crisis, the youthful Prince, the heir to the throne, is given what purports to be a statement which the King intended to broadcast to the nation. Behind the scenes, Sir James Courthope, the late King's private secretary, tells Lord Thorganby that the King intended to sack Harvey and invite Thorganby to form a government, which would cancel the action against Rhodesia. When the Prince reads the script, it is well-received, but Harvey refuses to believe that the King wrote it. Thorganby starts to form a government but Alan Selkirk, his Principal Private Secretary, realises that Courthope reported the King's death to the Prince before news of the explosion reached anybody. He writes a letter to Thorganby with this information and his resignation, but he has been overheard by Courthope. Courthope alerts the plotters behind the Guards' mutiny, who murder Selkirk. In Rome, Kemble, who has been sacked for pursuing the story on the Guards against orders, is taking a holiday, though unable to stop chasing stories. He realises that there is a connection between Ralston and the South African apartheid government. Avoiding an attempt by the scarred Frenchman, Poidatz, to kill him, he breaks open Ralston's sealed trunk in the British embassy in Rome. He expects to find blueprints of a missile Ralston is illegally supplying to South Africa; instead, he finds the King, drugged and unconscious. Alan Selkirk's murderers were seen leaving his flat, and are arrested trying to leave the country. Thorganby confronts Critten and Courthope at 10 Downing Street with the documents taken from them, including Selkirk's letter. When the news that the King is alive is telephoned to No. 10, Courthope commits suicide by leaping from a window, and Critten must be restrained. Harvey is reinstated as Prime Minister and launches the operation against Rhodesia in the nick of time. The attempted Coup d'état is determined to have been launched by Ralston, to preserve his business empire, and Critten, who had strong racist views. Courthope, a closet homosexual, was blackmailed into participating. Ralston had kept the King alive should the plot fail and a bargaining chip be required.
25655806	/m/09v1_ln	Born Blue	Han Nolan	2001	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This story is about the life of Janie, who later renames herself 'Leshaya'. The book starts with Janie recalling a memory at toddler age, where she was drowning because of her mother's neglect to Janie's personal safety. Linda, Janie's mother, is a heroin addict, and because of the neglect that nearly led to Janie drowning, Janie was placed in foster care. Janie lived in a strict foster home for roughly 4 years with her foster brother Harmon, who soon gets adopted by Mr. and Mrs. James, leaving Janie alone until she is kidnapped by Linda, who then trades Janie to her dealer, Mitch, for heroin. Janie lives for years with "Mama Shelly" and "Daddy Mitch" but then, while at a shopping trip she meets her former foster brother Harmon. She then moves in with Mr. and Mrs. James when her former foster parents get arrested for drug possession. Life with Mr. and Mrs. James was hard, because of her bad childhood she never could live with a good "normal" family. Instead Janie goes with a local jazz band and falls in love with the band's 18-year-old songwriter, Jaz. Under the influence of beer and cocaine, Leshaya (Janie) loses her virginity to an unknown man at the party, and gets impregnated. She soon after finds herself living with a woman named Joy Victoria, who fostered Janie during her pregnancy. 9 months later, 13-year-old Leshaya gave birth to a baby girl who she names Etta Harmony James, after one of "The Ladies" that she listened to as a small child. She convinces herself and everyone else that Harmon is Etta's father, due to wanting to have had sex with him (So much so that she had left her panties in his bed before running off with Jaz), and smuggles Etta back to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to give her to Harmon, who is bewildered at how he could be the father. Harmon, in the end, takes Etta so that she could grow up like a normal child. She then lives with Paul, who is also a musician. She lives with Paul on good terms until she breaks a major rule that Paul had set for her, no drugs. And after he (Paul) found a dead man, Jed, in his bed from an overdose. (Jed was who Lashaya was with at the time). She is then forced to move out from Paul's place. She soon ends up at Mama Linda's beach house, who is dying of AIDS. Leshaya, seeing her mother in this state, stays with her for her final days, and while with her, looks at herself, and comes to peace with the past. The book ends when Leshaya travels back to Tuscaloosa to re-unite with Etta, but after seeing Etta living happily in a normal family life, Leshaya instead, leaves Etta with Harmon. Through this decision, Leshaya finds a new sense of personal identity, and sets out to meet her own future.
25657606	/m/09v7wp5	Let the Great World Spin	Colum McCann	2009-06-23	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot of the book revolves around two central events. The first, laid out clearly in the book's opening pages, is the sensational real-life feat of the Twin Towers tightrope walk of Philippe Petit 110 stories up, performed in 1974. This lays the groundwork for the author's description of the human ability to find meaning, even in the greatest of tragedies, for which the Twin Towers serve as a sort of an allegory. The second central event, which is only revealed halfway through the book, is the fictional courtroom trial of a New York City prostitute. This serves as a sort of point of balance, bringing the book back down to its more earthly, and therefore more real basic story lines.
25668343	/m/09v43tj	Impact	Douglas Preston	2010-01-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Wyman Ford returns to investigate a mysterious source of gemstones and instead uncovers evidence of an unusual impact crater. Weaving seemingly separate stories of Wyman Ford's engagement by the government to investigate a meteorite's crater in Cambodia, a Mars Mission scientist's investigation into unusual gamma ray activity on that planet, and a waitress's adventurous trek into the Maine offshore islands to locate a meteor strike that others assumed hit the ocean, the author resolves the fast-moving plots steadily throughout the book, focusing the separate paths to a single conclusion that impacts the future of the entire planet. The book was reviewed on All Things Considered in February 2010.
25670955	/m/09v752x	Ballroom of the Skies	John D. MacDonald	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story involves Earth sometime after World War III, with Brazil, Iran, and India as the prevailing superpowers. The plot reveals the reasons behind humanity's history of perpetual war and strife, which is that leaders of an intergalactic empire are always chosen from among humans but must first be tested by extreme hardship.
25675158	/m/09v1pwl	Poor Little Bitch Girl	Jackie Collins		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Three twenty-something women, one hot rich guy, two mega movie stars, and a devastating murder: Poor Little Bitch Girl has it all. Denver Jones is a hotshot twenty-something attorney working in L.A. Carolyn Henderson is personal assistant to a powerful and very married Senator in Washington with whom she is having an affair. And Annabelle Maestro—daughter of two movie stars—has carved out a career for herself in New York as the madame of choice for discerning famous men. The three of them went to high school together in Beverly Hills—and although Denver and Carolyn have kept in touch, Annabelle is out on her own with her cocaine addicted boyfriend, Frankie. Then there is Bobby Santangelo Stanislopolous, the Kennedyesque son of Lucky Santangelo and deceased Greek shipping billionaire, Dimitri Stanislopolous. Bobby owns Mood, the hottest club in New York. Back in the day he went to high school with Denver, Carolyn and Annabelle. And he connected with all three of them. Frankie is his best friend. When Annabelle’s beautiful movie star mother is found shot to death in the bedroom of her Beverly Hills mansion, the five of them find themselves thrown together . . . and secrets from the past have a way of coming back to haunt everyone. . . .
25677926	/m/09v3f99	Araminta Station	Jack Vance			 The novel centres on Glawen Clattuc, an intelligent, capable young man and a member of the Conservancy at Araminta Station. Although his status index number is rather high, Glawen hopes for Agency status. Glawen joins Bureau B, the department responsible for enforcing the laws of the Charter and quickly becomes embroiled in a plot to allow the Yips to take over Deucas (to the benefit—it is suspected—of several traitors at Araminta Station). The novel also describes Glawen's romance with the beautiful Sessily Veder and later with Wayness Tamm, daughter of the Conservator (that is, the leader of the Conservancy). Unfortunately, Sessily is kidnapped and brutally murdered and Glawen attempts to bring her murderers to justice. Her abduction may be linked to the above-mentioned plot. Meanwhile, Wayness has discovered a terrible secret which may destroy the Conservancy. She decides to return alone to Earth, where the original Charter is located, to see if her suspicions are justified. As part of his Bureau B activities, Glawen is ordered by Brodwyn Wook to join the Bold Lions (a boisterous drinking club for devil-may-care youths) and travel to Yipton with them on an annual jaunt. Glawen is to use the Bold Lions as cover to spy on the Yips and he is accompanied in this task by Kirdy Wook. Glawen and Kirdy discover that the Yips are secretly preparing flyers (flying vehicles) to further their plans to infiltrate Deucas. However, Kirdy is caught, held prisoner and tortured by the Yips. Only the greatest threats from Brodwyn Wook secure Kirdy's release and recovers in hospital. Although Kirdy recovers physically, his mind is severely affected and he nurtures a hatred for Glawen. Disconsolately, Glawen travels to a small island for a holiday. To his horror, he discovers that "parties" are being held on this island in which rich off-worlders are allowed to have sex with underage Yip girls who are then killed (profits of course going to Titus Pompo). Glawen reports back to Bureau B and an outraged Bodwyn Wook orders the arrest and severe punishment of all concerned. However, Bodwyn is not satisfied and feels that the organisers of these "parties" should be punished also. He sends Glawen on an off-world mission to discover the identity of the organisers and, to Glawen's horror, orders that Kirdy must accompany him. The deranged Kirdy quickly betrays Glawen who is imprisoned by a group of female religious fanatics who attempt to use him as a sex slave. It turns out these "nuns" were clients of the organising group and paid for the "parties" as part of their macabre religious ceremony/reproduction strategy. With the aid of the IPCC Glawen is finally able to escape and returns to Cadwal where he is confronted by Kirdy, who is finally identified as the murderer of Sessily Veder. Kirdy attempts to kill Glawen on a beach but loses the fight and drowns. Returning home, Glawen discovers that his father, Scharde, has been kidnapped.
25682826	/m/09v4vmf	Behemoth	Scott Westerfeld	2010-10-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 Behemoth continues an alternate history story begun in Leviathan. It is 1914, and the Darwinist countries of Britain, France, and Russia are on the brink of world war with the Clanker countries of Germany and Austria-Hungary. War has been declared, although the Ottoman Empire has not yet entered. The Darwinists use technology based on genetically manipulated animals, while the Clankers use machinery.
25689479	/m/025_81h	Spook Country	William Gibson	2007-08-02	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The first strand of the novel follows Hollis Henry, a former member of the early 1990s cult band The Curfew and a freelance journalist. She is hired by advertising mogul Hubertus Bigend to write a story for his nascent magazine Node (described as a European Wired) about the use of locative technology in the art world. Helped by curator Odile Richard she investigates Los Angeles artist Alberto Corrales, who recreates virtually the deaths of celebrities such as River Phoenix. Corrales leads her to Bobby Chombo, an expert in geospatial technologies who handles Corrales' technical requirements. Chombo's background is troubleshooting navigation systems for the United States military. He is reclusive and paranoid, refusing to sleep in the same GPS grid square on consecutive nights, and only consents to talk to Hollis due to his admiration for The Curfew. Tito is part of a Chinese Cuban family of freelance "illegal facilitators", as Brown describes them – forgers, smugglers, and associated support personnel based in New York City – and is assigned by his uncles to hand over a series of iPods to a mysterious old man. Tito is adept in a form of systema that encompasses tradecraft, a variant of free running, and the Santería religion. It is alluded that the old man may have connections to American intelligence circles and Tito hopes he can explain the mysterious death of his father. When the old man calls in a favour, his family dispatches Tito on a dangerous new assignment. Tracking Tito's family is a man known as Brown, a brusque and obstinate lead covert operative for a shadowy organization of unclear connection to the U.S. government. Of neoconservative orientation, Brown appears to have a background in law enforcement, but little training in tradecraft. Brown and his team attempt to track the activities of the old man and Tito with the help of Brown's captive Milgrim, whom he has translate the volapuk-encoded Russian used by Tito's family to communicate. Milgrim is addicted to anti-anxiety drugs, and is kept docile and compliant by Brown, who controls his supply of Rize. Brown believes that Tito and the old man are in possession of information that would, if revealed, undermine public confidence in the U.S.'s participation in the Iraq War. In his attempts to capture them and their data, however, Brown is instead fed disinformation through the old man's intricate schemes. The three strands of the novel converge on a shipping container of unspecified cargo that is being transported via a circuitous route to an unknown destination. In Vancouver, the old man's team, with Hollis in tow, irradiate the shipping container, which is revealed to contain millions of U.S. dollars diverted from Iraq reconstruction funds.
25691773	/m/09v7x36	Miracle's Boys	Jacqueline Woodson			 At twenty-two Ty'ree, the eldest of three brothers, is now caring for his younger siblings. Lafayette, twelve, is still grieving and blames himself for not being able to save his mother, who died from an insulin shock two years earlier; and Charlie, fifteen, has just returned from Rahway Home for Boys where he has been imprisoned for the last three years after being convicted of armed robbery. Ty'ree and Lafayette have built a stable, if quiet, relationship and are comforted by predictable daily routines. Charlie introduces an element of chaos and hostility that neither of his brothers is able to relate to. In response they begin talking to each other in a way they hadn't been able to previously. They fear for Charlie and want to help him overcome his anger and grief. In attempting to help Charlie, they end up working through their grief as well. The story is told almost exclusively through dialogue with little action actually taking place.
25702570	/m/09v85x9	Night Passage	Robert B. Parker	1997	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After being fired from his job as an LA homicide detective for being drunk on the job, Jesse Stone is hired as chief of police for the small town of Paradise, Massachusetts. Stone, who already has a penchant for drinking, really begins to hit the bottle after he discovers his wife, actress Jenn Stone, having an affair with her agent. They divorce, and after his drinking leads to his termination from the LAPD he decides to get as far away from his now ex-wife as possible. Despite showing up to the interview intoxicated, he is hired for the job in Paradise. He later learns that this is because the corrupt Board of Selectman chair, Hasty Hathaway, is looking for a lush that they can push around. They get more than they bargain for in Stone. The novel begins with Stone’s cross country road trip to Paradise during which the disintegration of his marriage is detailed through flashbacks. Shortly after arriving in Paradise, he meets Jo Jo Genest while responding to a domestic dispute. Genest is a huge body builder, who assists local gangsters in a money laundering operation and also provides muscle for Hathaway. During the confrontation, Stone kicks Genest in the groin. Soon after, Genest proceeds to taunt Stone by vandalizing a police car and murdering the station cat as well as writing the word "slut" on both. Along with being the Board of Selectman chair, Hathaway is also a wealthy bank owner and leader of "The Freedom’s Horsemen", a local militia group. It is Hathaway who orchestrates the payoff and termination of the previous police chief, Tom Carson, after Carson learns of the money laundering operation. Carson then moves out west. Hathaway later becomes concerned that Carson will talk and dispatches corrupt police officer Lou Burke to kill Carson. Hathaway also orders Jo Jo Genest to murder his mistress, Tammy Portugal, after she demands he leave his wife for her. However, Genest can’t help but leave his calling card by writing the word "slut" on Tammy’s corpse to further taunt Jesse. Jesse begins to investigate Tom Carson’s murder, and discovers that Lou Burke had traveled out west at the time of the homicide. He responds by suspending Burke while he continues to investigate. Fearing that Jesse is learning too much, Hathaway orders Genest to kill him, but Genest convinces Hathaway to let him kill Burke instead. Hathaway agrees, and Genest throws Burke off a cliff in an attempt to make it look like suicide. While all these events are taking place, Genest organizes a weapons deal between Hathaway’s militia and gay Boston mob boss Gino Fish. When Fish rips off Hathaway, he responds by blaming Genest and demands that he get his money back. Genest doesn’t like this at all, and responds by sending nude Polaroids of Hathaway’s wife (and town slut), Cissy, to her priest, town selectmen and others. When the priest calls Chief Stone about the photo, Stone confronts Cissy about it. Cissy admits to having an affair with Genest, among others, and confirms that he took the photos. She also reveals that Genest confessed murdering Tammy Portugal to her. Stone then arrests Genest. Later that evening, Cissy tells her husband what she confessed to Chief Stone and Hathaway panics. He organizes the militia and convinces them to storm the police station, kill Chief Stone and free Genest, whom he intends to kill also. During the standoff, Chief Stone refuses to release Genest and the militia retreat when local and state police arrive. Hathaway is then arrested. The novel also details Jesse’s relationship with local DA, Abby Taylor. They begin a sexual relationship, but she becomes frustrated with him and breaks it off by the end of the novel. His relationship with her and his Scotch consumption are basically attempts to forget Jenn. However, Jenn does not make this easy as they talk regularly on the phone. Jenn becomes fearful for Jesse’s life as the events in Paradise unfold and she realizes she still loves him. The novel ends with Jesse coming home to find Jenn in his apartment.
25708816	/m/09v7pnb	Iorich	Steven Brust		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Aliera has been arrested for practicing Elder Sorcery. The Empire was previously aware of her involvement with this ancient magic, so, naturally, confusion arises over the timing of, and true motivation for, her arrest. Aliera seems unwilling to defend herself, and neither Morrolan or Sethra step in to help her situation. Vlad's curiosity (and respect for his friend) lead him to initiate an investigation into the matter and engagement of an advocate to defend Aliera (despite her objections). Along the way Vlad finds out that the entire affair is all to do with a plot between the Orca, Jhereg and Left hand of the Jhereg.
25714542	/m/09v1y28	Brooklyn	Colm Tóibín	2009-04-29	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Eilis Lacey is a young woman who is unable to find work in 1950s Ireland. Her older sister Rose organizes a meeting with a Catholic priest Father Flood on a visit from New York City, who tells Eilis of the wonderful opportunities awaiting her in New York with excellent employment prospects. Because of this she emigrates to Brooklyn, New York and takes up a job in a department store while undertaking night classes in bookkeeping. Her initial experiences working in a boring job and living in a repressive boardinghouse, run by the strict Mrs Madge Kehoe, make her doubt her initial decision. Letters from Rose, her mother and her brother brought about severe homesickness but soon she begins to settle into a routine. Eilis meets and falls in love with a young Italian plumber called Tony at the local Friday night dances. This leads to her first sexual encounter and some social consequences as they are overheard by Mrs Kehoe. Eilis qualifies easily from her night school course. Her relationship evolves further and Tony proposes marriage and brings Eilis to meet his family. One day while Eilis is working she receives unwelcome news from Father Flood informing her that her sister Rose has died in her sleep from a pre-existing heart condition. She has to return to Ireland to mourn, and she secretly marries Tony before she leaves. In Ireland she falls back into the town society easily. She goes to the beach with Nancy, George and their friend Jim Farrell, who is interested in her. Eilis is forced to spend time with Jim and eventually starts a brief relationship with him. He is a local pub owner, to whom she had been attracted to before emigrating to America. Eilis's mother is desperate for her to settle back in Ireland and marry Jim, as Eilis has not confided in her or her friends about her marriage. Eilis procrastinates about a return to her new life by extending her stay. She saves Tony's letters unopened thinking at times that she no longer loves him. Eventually a local busybody, Miss Kelly, tells Eilis she knows her secret because Madge Kehoe is her cousin and somehow the story is out in New York. This is the turning point for Eilis and she immediately books her return passage, telling her mother the whole truth and posting a farewell note to Jim as she leaves town by taxi for the docks.
25715244	/m/09v8m3_	Trouble in Paradise	Robert B. Parker	1998	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 In Parker's second Jesse Stone novel we find Chief Stone settled into his new life after the events that marked his arrival in Night Passage. Jesse’s ex-wife, Jenn, has also relocated to Massachusetts in nearby Boston. There she finds work, and minor celebrity status, as the weather girl for the Channel 3 news. Although Jesse and Jenn are seeing each other again, Jenn refuses to commit solely to him, and they both continue see other people. Jenn is seeing the lead news anchor, while Jesse juggles relationships with her, local real estate agent Marcy Campbell, and Abby Taylor. Throughout the novel Jesse’s sexual prowess is the subject of office wisecracking, which he doesn’t mind at all. The main plot of the novel concerns ex-con Jimmy Macklin. After being released from prison, Macklin hatches a plot to rob the entire community of Stiles Island. Stiles Island is accessible from Paradise by a bridge, and one boat port. Entrance to the Island is guarded by private security ensuring safety for its wealthy residents and island bank. Macklin puts together a crew with his partner Wilson “Crow” Cromartie, an American Indian. The rest of the crew consists of a demolitions expert, a boatman to pilot their nautical escape, and one other to cut the telephone lines and provide muscle. To fund their criminal enterprise, Macklin and Crow commit several violent crimes. Macklin rips off a local poker game and murders the man running it in the process. Crow murders two Chinese drug dealers and steals a large amount of poor quality cocaine. He then sells the cocaine to other drug dealers. Macklin, and his girlfriend, Faye, using the aliases Mr. and Mrs. Harry Smith, use Marcy Campbell to gain access to the island by posing as prospective home buyers. They also set up a meeting with Chief Stone to inquire about local crime. Macklin uses the meeting as a time to size up Chief Stone. However the meeting ends up working against him as Jesse finds him suspicious and begins to investigate him. He discovers that Harry Smith is really ex-con Jimmy Macklin, and begins staking out his apartment. During the Stakeout he runs the plates of their van and discovers it belongs to Crow. A phone call to a friend and fellow police officer in Arizona where the van is registered confirms that Crow is a dangerous criminal, and Jesse is warned not to confront him alone. The final third of the novel details the Stiles Island heist. Macklin and his crew drive onto the island and storm Marcy Campbell’s office which they intend to use as headquarters during the operation. They then murder the security guards and place one of their own at the bridge which they previously wired with explosives. Macklin and Crow begin going door to door stealing safe deposit box keys for the island bank from island residents and then locking them in their bathrooms. When a police cruiser tries to cross onto the island on patrol, they blow the bridge before it reaches the other side. Chief Stone is immediately notified, and they attempt to take a boat to the island, but before they reach the dock the criminals blow that too. With no way to the island, the Paradise police are forced to wait for the state police to arrive with a helicopter and SWAT team. Not satisfied to wait around, Stone gets a local man to take him as close to the island as he can in his boat, and then swims the rest of the way. Meanwhile, Macklin and crew finish ripping off the bank safe deposit boxes and head to the island’s restaurant with six female hostages, including Marcy. There they wait for high tide when their boat can get closer to the island. While they are waiting Crow murders two of their accomplices to increase their share of the loot. After the tide comes in, they make the hostages wade out to the boat carrying the loot. Crow climbs aboard the boat first, but before Macklin can even get in the water Stone confronts him at gunpoint. Macklin yells for Crow, but Crow and the boatman leave him and the hostages behind with Crow declaring that he doesn’t hide behind women. Macklin draws his weapon and Stone shoots and kills him. Police later find the boat washed up on shore with the boatman murdered and no sign of Crow or the loot.
25718988	/m/09v3fpn	Bed of Roses	Nora Roberts	2009	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 After the events of the first book, Vision in White, where we saw photographer Mackensie Elliot fall in love, it is now up to florist Emmaline "Emma" Grant to find her perfect soulmate. Her career is getting more successful by the minute and her love life seems to be thriving. Men swarm around her, captivated by her bubbly personality and great looks, but finding "Mr. Right Guy" is never easy, especially when the last place she's looking is right under her nose. And that is exactly where architect Jack Cooke is: he has been very close to all the women of Vows for a long time, and he is one of Delaney's best friends. They have both started admitting that their feelings for each other may have developed in something more than just friendship. And when their passion starts to grow, kiss after kiss, they are only left to trust in their history and their hearts.
25725815	/m/09v7_dd	The Ebony Idol				 The novel takes place in the fictional town of Minton in New England, which is inhabited entirely by white people, and coloured people are almost unknown among the townfolk. The local pastor, the Reverend Mr. Cary, converts to the cause of abolitionism, and arranges for a fugitive slave named Caesar to take up residence in the town, to act as an "ebony idol" for the respect and sympathy of the people of Minton. Cary's social experiment, however, has disastrous consequences for the town. The presence of Caesar splits Minton between pro- and anti-slavery factions, and Cary himself is questioned regarding his motives for keeping Caesar at all. Practically overnight, Minton changes from a quiet paradise into a violent slum. In time, however, Cary is visited by a slaveholder from the south, and under pressure from the townsfolk, Cary agrees for Caesar to leave Minton to work on the plantations of the south, thus restoring Minton to its original, idyllic condition.
25725901	/m/09v9m4j	En Iniya Iyanthira				 The plot opens in the year 2021.India is ruled by a dictator Jeeva. In his rule, population is kept under control, old people are allowed to live only up to particular age and are killed when they cross the limit, each and every one should have names with two letters only alloted by Government, every Citizen of the country must strictly adhere to the rule of Jeeva and admire,adore him, everywhere and anywhere lies Robots, people are identified only with their social security numbers and all the details are fed and controlled by Master Computer at Capital City. On a New Year eve, Nila, a homemaker lady is very delighted for having Government permission letter to have a boy baby from Population Control Board. She intimates the news to her husband Sibi. While Government, allots a home space of Nila's residence for a man Ravi and his pet Jeano. Jeano is a Robotic pet which could speak. As per government rule, home space should not be alloted for more than three people. So Nila's husband leaves to verify about Ravi's allotment but not returns back to home. Nila, to find him, uses his social security number but wonders to get an answer that there is no existence of such a person. She tries to find him but in vain. What happened to Sibi? What is the role of Ravi in Sibi's disappearance? How Nila finds her husband and a shocking truth about Jeeva and his dictatorship with the help of Jeano? The rest of story moves with the answers to these questions.
25727652	/m/09v7ll9	Meendum Jeano				 Jeano change body Ravi and Mano have made a holographic Image called Jeeva and ruled the country without public knowledge. but they made a protest against Jeeva with public and took over Jeeva's dictatorship. since Nila is beautiful among all women, they made her as queen of the new kingdom. but Nila is queen for name sake., Ravi and Mano were controlling the entire government. Jeano, the robo pet for Nila helped her to find her husband and revealed her many truths about current situation. with self learning mechanism, it learns many things from various authors in a variety of book collection and kept it in its knowledge base. since its interfering in Ravi and Mano's secret government, they have banned all robopets in the country. but still Jeano found Nila and tried to help her.
25737080	/m/09v9m7n	The Whizbanger That Emmental Built				 The Whizbanger That Emmental Built tells the story of Emmental Baker, a bright but shy girl. Emmental's mother has recently died and her father, an infamous writer and recluse Niall Baker, has relocated the family to the imaginary town of Dropsham in the hopes of curing his writer's block. Emme struggles to fit in her new surroundings, persecuted by her teacher Mrs. Hanlin and bullied by class brute Rory Blunt. With her father despondent and detached, Emme finds friendship with her neighbor, bizarre inventor Chaida Manning. As Emme's friendship with inventor Chaida Manning grows, she learns to accept her creativity and individualism, gaining self-confidence.
25746234	/m/09v6ln_	My Cleaner	Maggie Gee	2005		 The story is told from the viewpoint of Vanessa Henman, an English writer, and Mary Tendo Ugandan graduate of Makerere University. Vanessa's 22-year-old son Justin refuses to get out of bed with depression. Justin asks for Mary who looked after him as a child so Vanessa writes to her. Mary returns to London to help Justin, but this time not as a cleaner...
25751538	/m/09v19sd	The Burning Land	Bernard Cornwell	2009	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The year is 892, when the second major campaign of Alfred the Great against the invading Danes began in earnest. The protagonist is Uhtred of Bebbanburg. A Saxon by birth, Uhtred was raised by Danes and finds their ways more congenial than those of his own people. Nevertheless, he has served Alfred loyally (more or less) as soldier, envoy and military governor for more than a decade, and is now the preeminent warlord of Wessex, Alfred's kingdom. Alfred refers to him as "my dux bellorum, my lord of battles." Alfred urges him to swear to serve Alfred’s son and presumed heir, Edward, in the same way. "Scour the enemy from England," Alfred says, "and make my son safe on his God-given throne." Uhtred is unwilling to make that commitment, however. He has long wanted to return to his family's stronghold at Bebbanburg in Northumbria and to deal with his uncle, Aelfric, who stole the family properties and titles from him when his father died. He wants his obligation to Alfred and Wessex to end when Alfred, now seriously ill, passes away. Uhtred is military governor of Lundene (London), sharing power with Bishop Erkenwald, whom he dislikes but respects. At Alfred's behest, Uhtred delivers a message to the Danish Jarl (earl) Haesten, whose fleet threatens Wessex, that Alfred will pay a large ransom for Haesten to leave. Alfred cannot attack Haesten, because another Dane, Jarl Harald Bloodhair, has attacked at Cent (Kent). Haesten and Alfred reach an accord, and Haesten leaves hostages and accepts missionaires. Haesten even undergoes baptism. However, Uhtred knows that the hostages are fake and that if Harald defeats Alfred, Haesten will attack Wessex. While traveling with a small force to meet Alfred (who is now free to lead an army against Harald), Uhtred captures Skade, Harald's woman. Skade is a formidable fighter in her own right, and leads one of Harald's war parties. She and her party are captured while raiding a Mercian village. However, Harald approaches Uhtred leading a line of Saxon captive women, and threatens to kill all of them if Skade is not returned to him. After he butchers one woman in front of her child, Uhtred releases Skade to him. Skade intones an ominous curse against Uhtred as she and Harald make their escape. At a meeting with Alfred and his advisors, Uhtred urges the king to adopt a plan to lure Harald to Farnham by sending a modest force there, and then attack Harald from the rear with most of Alfred's troops when he takes the bait. The plan works brilliantly. Uhtred and his men defeat Harald's forces and again take Skade prisoner. Harald is severely wounded, but escapes to Torneie Island (Thorney Island). There, with a few followers, he is able to use the island’s natural defenses and a palisade he builds to repel later attempts to defeat him. However, he is trapped there. While celebrating the Mercian/Saxon victory at Farnham, Uhtred is devastated by news that his beloved wife, Gisela, has died in childbirth, along with the child she bore. When Uhtred and Skade return to Lundene, Alfred's advisor, Bishop Asser (whose dislike of Uhtred long predates this story) uses the mad brother Godwin to denounce Gisela's name, ranting that Gisela was the devil's whore, and has come back from the dead as Skade. Uhtred flies into a rage and kills Godwin, though he says that he only meant to silence him. Uhtred retreats to his house, where Uhtred’s old friend and mentor, Father Beocca, tells him that Alfred has ordered Uhtred to pay a huge fine and swear an oath to Alfred's son Edward the Aethling. Alfred holds Uhtred's children as hostage to his terms, and places them in the custody of Aethelflaed, Alfred's daughter and wife of Aethelred, the ealdorman of Mercia. Furious, Uhtred reneges on his oath to Alfred and sails, with Skade, to Dunholm in Northumbria, stronghold of his old friend Ragnar, a Danish leader. Uhtred trusts Aethelflaed to protect his children. Eager to use his newfound freedom and encouraged by Skade, Uhtred goes Viking. He sails to Frisia to loot, kill and plunder Skirnir, Skade's husband, and on the journey, he and Skade become lovers. After he defeats and kills Skirnir, however, he is disappointed when Skirnir's treasure horde fails to meet his expectations. When Skade demands half of the horde as her share, Uhtred denies it to her. From that point on Skade becomes hostile to Uhtred. Sailing back to Ragnar's fortress, Uhtred winters there. During that winter, Brida, Uhtred's former lover who is now Ragnar's wife, convinces Ragnar to attack Wessex alongside the other Northumbrian Jarls, Cnut and Sigrid. During the meeting, Haesten arrives and declares that he will attack Mercia. Haesten and Skade become infatuated with each other, and when Haesten leaves, Skade goes with him. Uhtred is caught in a conflict of loyalties, between the Danes with whom he was raised, and his oaths to Alfred and Aethelflaed. He also fears for his children's safety, as they are in Mercia, in Aethelflaed's custody. His indecision is broken when his friend, the Welshman Father Pyrlig arrives. Pyrlig reminds Uhtred that he has given his oath to serve Aethelflaed. (This occurred in Sword Song.) Uhtred is reluctant at first, until Father Pyrlig tells him that 'oaths made in love cannot be broken'. Uhtred goes to serve Aethelflaed. He first has to rescue her from Lord Aldhem. Aethelred, Aethelflaed's husband, wishes to divorce her, to break free of Alfred's influence over Mercia. He directs Aldhem to have sex with Aethelflaed, either by seduction, or failing that, by force. Either act would make her an adulterer, allowing Aethelred to divorce her. Uhtred kills Aldhem, liberates Aethelflaed, and reunites with his children. He and Aethelflaed then go to Aethelred's council, surprising him before the assembled Mercian lords. Warning of Jarl Haesten's advance, Aethelflaed tries to win the Mercian lords to her side. She and Uhtred then wait at Lunden for support. However, because Aethelred holds their purse-strings, none of the lords come, except for Lord Elfwold. During this wait, Uhtred and Aethelflaed become lovers. Uhtred also learns that Alfred had advised Aethelflaed to use Uhtred's oath to her to bring him back. Eventually, Edward Aetheling arrives, along with Alfred's retainer and Uhtred's friend Steapa, and an army of twelve hundred of Alfred's best house troops. They also bear a message that Uhtred is to give his oath to Edward. Uhtred promptly refuses. Thus reinforced, Uhtred marches ahead to Haesten's two forts at Baemfleot (Benfleet), although Haesten is not there. Uhtred encounters and attacks a larger Danish force and is surrounded. He nearly loses the battle and his life, but is saved and the battle won by the timely arrival of Steapa and the rest of Alfred's troops. They proceed to capture the first of the forts. Uhtred makes preparations for the next battle and begins teaching Edward how to lead from the front. Uhtred assaults the fort and scales the ditch, using sails with ropes sown into them to provide sure footing on the slippery ditch. He tries to use ladders to get up the wall, but the first assault fails. His second assault ultimately succeeds after Father Pyrlig throws specially prepared beehives onto the walls. The bees distract the defenders so that Uhtred's force can scale the walls and capture the fort. In the hall Uhtred finds Skade and a horde of gold. Harald Bloodhair, crippled and vengeful over Skade's betrayal with Haesten, suddenly appears, embraces Skade, and kills her at the same time. He then asks Uhtred to kill him. Uhtred does, then meets with Edward who says that he doesn't need Uhtred's oath as long as his sister has it. Uhtred and Aethelflaed then sail away from Baemfleot on the Thames.
25752074	/m/09v9mf8	Love, A Rather Bad Idea			{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is about Samar Pratap, a quirky, ambitious and popular student at IIT Delhi. He and his band of friends&nbsp;– Skimpy, Jiya and Pranav&nbsp;– together live an upbeat life on campus. While Jiya is the college heart-throb, Pranav is the sports head with a righteous outlook to things and Skimpy, son of rich NRI parents, has a charmed existence full of creative plans to woo his dream girl. Their interaction with each other and other members of the IIT campus brings out many interesting, poignant and downright hilarious moments. In due course of time the inevitable institute politics enters their lives as Samar is picked as the frontrunner for the top job on campus. The ensuing dilemmas threaten to break up their friendship and tosses up some difficult choices for Samar and his friends. The book is Anirban Mukherjee’s first novel and is largely based on his experiences during his stay at IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta.
25753998	/m/09v1mbp	Le Voyage d'Hiver	Amélie Nothomb	2009	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In spite of Zoïle's attempts to get a rip of the annoying presence of the autistic writer Aliénor Malèze in Astrolabe's life, her manager and protector, so that he can his love for this agent, his love failure turns into an air terrorist act by hijacking a Roissy aeroplane with a bottle shard, planning smashing the plane against the Eiffel Tower. The title refers to Franz Schubert's lied Winterreise: in the novel, Zoïle thinks about this song cycle to forget about his fear during the terrorist act.
25757841	/m/09v30xr	Flight into Camden				 This moving story is recounted by Margaret, the daughter of a Yorshire miner, who falls in love with a married teacher and goes to live with him in a room in Camden Town, London. Many critics have observed and almost lawrentian fidelity in the descriptions of their love-making and the intricacies of their emotional responses to one another. But in the end family ties prove too strong for an ambiguous relationship which begins to disclose a chasm of emptiness and bitterness.
25763892	/m/09v16jf	Metal Fatigue	Sean Williams	1996-05-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the aftermath of a nuclear war, the former USA has become a disaster area. Determined to maintain a functioning modern city, the citizens of Kennedy have walled themselves off from the rest of the country. Forty years after the end of the war, Kennedy is in a critical state, with technologies failing and repairs increasingly inadequate. Kennedy is invited to join the emergent Re-United States of America (RUSA). But some people in Kennedy oppose re-assimilation, and there is a wave of politically motivated crime. As the deadline for reunification approaches, Phil Roads, assigned to investigate the assassinations and data thefts, faces increasing threat not only from the opposing forces, but from his own secret past.
25767559	/m/09v64xv	Death in Paradise	Robert B. Parker	2001	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The third Jesse Stone novel finds Chief Stone investigating the death of a teenage girl after her body washes up on shore. While searching for clues at the [crime scene], Suit finds a class ring that ends up belonging to a senior at the high school. Jesse questions him and discovers that he gave his class ring to fifteen year old girl called Eleanor “Billie” Bishop. Chief Stone then questions the school principal, Dr. Lilly Summers, who informs Jesse that Billie was the “town pump.” The case becomes odd when Jesse questions Billie’s parents and they deny that she is even their daughter. He confirms that she is indeed their daughter through her two sisters. They also inform Jesse that Billie ran away because her parents did not approve of her behavior, particularly her promiscuity. Jesse later finds that Billie had been staying at a shelter run by a Sister Mary John. Although he finds that Billie is no longer there, the nun gives Jesse the contact number that Billie left. It turns out to be the number of Gino Fish’s cover business. Later Sister Mary gives Jesse another number that two separate girls had given her. The number turns out to belong to Gino Fish’s associate and probable lover, Alan Garner. Jesse begins following Garner and catches him setting up men with underage prostitutes. Jesse questions Garner about it, and he agrees to talk under Stone’s promise not to make him testify. Garner then admits that he has been pimping underage prostitutes since long before knowing Gino. Jesse interviews Norman Shaw, a wealthy local citizen and famous author, who drinks heavily throughout. He passes out at the table. Later, Jesse questions one of Shaw’s many ex-wives who tells him that she had a private detective follow him while they were married. She had suspected him of infidelities, and the detective confirms this, informing her that he is seeing underage prostitutes almost nightly. Although, she never sees that photos, she uses the information to get a large divorce settlement. Next, Jesse sees her detective who gives him the incriminating photos which depict graphic sexual acts between Shaw and underage girls. Jesse takes the photos to Shaw’s current wife who is disgusted and hands over Shaw’s gun which Jesse easily confirms as the murder weapon. With this evidence in hand, Jesse forces Alan Garner to make a statement and then leaves him to be dealt with by Gino. Stone has Suit stake out the hotel that Shaw meets girls at, and when Shaw arrives Stone and Suit break in and catch Shaw in the act with a fifteen year old girl. During questioning, Shaw admits to killing Billie after she began threatening to turn him in to the police. When Jesse informs Billie’s parents that he has solved the case, that he knows Billie is their daughter, and that it is indeed her body that was found their responses couldn’t be more different. The father seems to be overcome and leaves the room, while Billie’s domineering mother seems not to care at all.
25769189	/m/03wfq3n	Going Bovine	Libba Bray	2009	{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Cameron Smith is a high school slacker from Texas who is on “a slow but uncontrollable skid to nowhere” living a somewhat aimless life. His father is a college physics professor; his mother is a community college English teacher. Cameron’s apparent social exclusion is emphasized when the author introduces his sister, Jenna, who is described as perfect. One of the first scenes in the novel is of Cam having what he thinks is a marijuana-induced hallucination of flames during his English class. This public hallucination gets Cameron sent to multiple drug counselors, all while his hallucinations continue. Cameron’s life starts to spiral out of control when he is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob variant BSE (also known as mad cow disease), probably contracted from his minimum-wage job at the fast food joint Buddha Burger. While Cam is hospitalized, the character Dulcie is introduced as a hallucination-induced vision. She is described to have been sent to give Cam a mission to save the world from the character unknown to Cam as Wizard of Reckoning. Dulcie has pink hair, wears boots, and spray paints her wings; she tells him that he can possibly save his life, but only by first finding Dr. X, a time traveling physicist. Cameron starts thinking about his journey and how he can succeed and get the most out of it. Unconvinced at first by Dulcie’s suggestion, Cameron changes his mind when he is attacked by fire giants and a mysterious Wizard of Reckoning—a masked figure wearing a silver space suit who is intent on killing him. He is given a Disney World wristband by Dulcie that is explained to be able to keep the disease from advancing any further into Cam’s brain. In the journey that follows, the “hallucenogenic mix of elements in the adventure” are all revealed to “have roots in his ‘real’ life” . Cameron sneaks out of the hospital with his roommate and high school classmate, Gonzo, a video game playing dwarf with an overprotective mother on a quest that takes them from Texas to New Orleans and into Florida, all the while pursued by the Wizard of Reckoning and his fire giants. Throughout the next section of the story, “guided by random signs” , Cam and Gonzo take a bus to New Orleans, where Mardi Gras is happening. While they stay in New Orleans, Cam goes to a party with two strangers who are explained to be natives of the city. At this party, Cam meets a garden gnome who is explained to actually be a Norse god named Balder, who was trapped in garden gnome form before the plot of the novel started by the god Loki, the Norse trickster who is not mentioned or explained about any more in the novel. Balder joins the two boys in their road trip. After catching another bus from New Orleans heading towards Disney World, where Dulcie explained that Dr. X could be found, the three characters are stranded in between towns when the bus leaves them behind. After the diner they stop at is attacked by fire giants revealed to be working with the Wizard, they purchase a car and drive the rest of the way to Florida, not risking public transportation because after the diner blew up, they were listed as nationally wanted terrorists. On the way, they pick up three high school senior hitchhikers on their way to the YA! Party House, explained to be the headquarters of a very popular TV show of the same name. Once they get to the Party House, it is explained that the three boys stole Balder in order to sell him on one of the station’s game shows. Cameron and Gonzo, after being on shows of their own which they win using obscure knowledge gleaned from Cam’s “real” life, sneak into the dressing room of the shows host to steal Balder back. Once the three protagonists are reunited, they continue on to the beach for an afternoon on Balder’s urging, humoring his explanation that his Norse ship is waiting for his once he gets to the shore to take him back to Valhalla. While they are at the beach, men explained to be operatives from United Globes Wholesales, a snow globe company, attack them, trapping Dulcie in a snow globe and killing Balder, who was thought up until this point to be invincible. To get Dulcie back, Cam and Gonzo follow the company’s truck to Disney World. Once there, they walk from gift shop to gift shop, looking for where Dulcie’s snow globe could have been dropped off. Eventually, Cam and Gonzo are separated when Cam follows one of the employees into a ride in Tomorrowland. The small door he goes through is revealed to lead to Dr. X’s lab, where the newly revealed character tells Cam that the “snow globe gun” the employees of UGW used on Dulcie is his secret of life, and his “cure” to Cam’s illness.. Cam refuses that fate, and then the Wizard appears, reminding Cameron and the reader that Cam’s “clock is ticking” . The wizard is described as looking exactly like Cameron, and chases him through various doors in a long hallway, where Cam runs through scenes exactly like his life when he was younger. After the Wizard catches up to Cam, the protagonist defeats him by blowing on a trumpet given to him by a jazz musician in New Orleans. Cam then wakes up in the hospital, to the scene of a nurse turning off his various life support machines and his parents and sister crying in the background, revealing that the whole plot was a hallucination induced by the mad cow disease eating away at his brain.
25769799	/m/09v8b1l	The Star-Crowned Kings			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book is about the adventures of accidental protagonist Race Worden, a peasant living on the agricultural world of Mavia. His story is set in humanity's post-apocalyptic future where the human race has been split into two castes/species; Starlings and normal Humans. The Starlings, human mentalists who had developed powerful telekinetic powers that allow humankind to travel & settle the stars. Normal humans are under repressive thumb of the Starling's authority. Only a small portion of human population consisted of these gifted mentalists called Starlings. A considerable amount of technology has been lost, in many cases some worlds are reduced to mix of Steam and elementary electronics. Race Worden is an oddity, where he goes from his simple life to the dangers of developing Starling powers. Because of his ordinary human origins, he has become a renegade. Ignorant of the rules of Starlings, he lives on the run trying unite his family and taken them where they can be free.
25777622	/m/09v6lz4	Alice in Verse: The Lost Rhymes of Wonderland		2010-01-11	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 What distinguishes this variation on Lewis Carroll's classic from others is that the story is told entirely in rhyming verse. It begins the same as Carroll's original, with a languid Alice perking up "When first she spies the clock of clocks/Within the rabbit's paw". After following the time-obsessed creature Down the Rabbit-Hole Again, she discovers The Bottle & the Biscuit Box in the "hall of many doors," and after drinking and shrinking and eating and growing (and shrinking again), she is "swept away upon a pool of tears." The first real departure from the original text comes in the 3rd verse, where, after being instructed by the Caterpillar in proper Wonderland speech (The Caterpillar's Lesson on Rhetoric & Rhyme), she is given the chance to impress the imperious insect with her oratory skills in The Mariner's Tale, a dark poem more akin to How Doth the Little Crocodile than the You Are Old, Father William poem she quoted for the Caterpillar in Carroll's original book. The Caterpillar gives his earnest (if somewhat slanted) critique of her recital in the 5th verse (The Subjective Review) before taking flight on mechanical wings (as depicted in the accompanying illustration). The 5th verse finds Alice in familiar company once again with The Cook, the Pig, the Cat & His Duchess, as the Cheshire Cat tells her the tale of the conflict between the Duchess and the Cook, offering more insight than previously available. The most pivotal departure from Carroll's original text comes in the 7th verse, The Tea Party Resumes, where it is first hinted at (by a sleep-talking Dormouse) that the Knave of Hearts may not in fact be responsible for the theft of the Queen's tarts. Through rapid wordplay and cunning juxtaposition, both the Mad Hatter and March Hare attempt to muddy the facts and confuse Alice — though, the astute reader will glean much from the Dormouse's revelation on the matter of the Queen's missing tarts. The 8th verse, offers a brief respite from the main action with A Slight Detour Through the Looking-Glass, which serves not only as a catchall recap of Carroll's follow up book but also as an introduction to the subsequent three verses: Dee & Dum (the 9th verse) and The Battle (the 11th verse) which function as a wraparound for the 10th verse, The Walrus & the Carpenter Head Back (the epic sequel to Carroll's masterpiece The Walrus and the Carpenter), in which the tables are turned on titular characters "who once dined on the shore." The 12th verse, In the Garden of Hearts, returns Alice to Wonderland, "where the trial (of the Knave of Hearts) is about to begin!" In the 13th verse (The Trial Begins) the King of Hearts presides over the court just as he did in Chapters 11 & 12 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with the Queen at his side, and the White Rabbit in the role of the court reporter, reading the now famous single stanza verse the Queen of Hearts (a second stanza has been added that only further accentuates the absurdity of the charge against the accused). The major departure from Carroll's original here is that instead of appearing as jittery witnesses, the Mad Hatter and March Hare are cast as Counsel for the Defense and Prosecutor, respectively. After the charge is read, the Hare addresses the court with an opening statement that more or less vindicates the accused, before turning his accusing eye upon the court itself for failing to serve tea with the evidence (the tarts). The King concurs and calls for a brief recess, during which the bulk of the evidence is consumed by all present. The trial resumes in the 14th verse with The Hatter's Defence, in which the Hatter presents an alternately flattering and damning portrait of the accused. In the 15th verse (The Hare's Rebuttal & the Hatter's Rebuke) the jury is making ready to deliberate when the Hare suddenly chimes in again with a counter argument that is more damning to himself and opposing counsel than it is to the accused, and only after a decisive rebuke from the Hatter does the Hare retract his "erroneous rebuttal", at which point the King allows there is "time for yet one final pleading." In the 16th verse The Knave of Hearts Repents with a haunting poetic plea directed specifically at the Queen of Hearts, who offers her own poetic response in the 17th verse The Queen's Sentence. The 18th Verse, The Royal Flush, pandemonium breaks out, much the same as it did in Carroll's original, with Alice challenging the court, while the Hatter and Hare try to trap the Dormouse who has run amok, and the jury takes flight. As the Queen demands "Off with his whiskers! Off with his head!", a voice calls to Alice from just outside of her dream. Alice wakes suddenly in the 19th and final verse (Waking), with the events of the previous 18 verses recurring to her in reverse order, like memory folding back over itself, until the final line of the final stanza affirms the sentiment that the rhyming poem is both valid and "well worth defending."
25779595	/m/09v2v_z	Rice				 The story is based during the flood days in 1930s in China, when people immigrated from the countryside to the urban areas in search of work. This is also a story about Five Dragons, a poor but haughty country boy, chancing his fortune in the city and the humiliation he faces as soon as he reaches the city. He is a typical man hungry for wealth but with an insatiable thirst for pleasure, especially sex. His master has two daughters, "Cloud Weave" and "Cloud Silk". Cloud Weave is very much like Five Dragons, and shares his sexual appetite. She is a mistress to a local mafia. Five Dragons marries her and inherits the property of his master: his rice emporium and his whole business. But men tire easily of their playthings, particularly in this wayward family. Fidelity is an unrecognised term for them. This story also shows how infidelity passes from one generation to another in this family.
25780159	/m/09v90n6	Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery	James Howe	1979		 We are first introduced to the Monroes, including the boys, Pete and Toby, as they return home from the movies on a dark and stormy night. Harold, the dog, notices that they return with a small bundle. The bundle turns out to be a rabbit they found at the theater, with a note tied around his neck written in an ancient Carpathian dialect. The rabbit has two tiny fangs and a black pattern on his back that looks like a cape. After some discussion the family decides to adopt him, and since they found him at the movie Dracula they decide to name him Bunnicula. Shortly after adopting Bunnicula, the family notices vegetables mysteriously turning white. Chester, the cat, notices that in each of the vegetables there are two tiny holes. After reading a book on vampires, Chester becomes convinced that Bunnicula is a vampire. He notes that Bunnicula sleeps all day, appears to be able to get out of his cage on his own, and has tiny fangs, which Chester believes he uses to suck vegetables dry. Chester then convinces Harold to help him prove this by catching Bunnicula in the act. He strews himself, and Bunnicula's cage with garlic. This succeeds only in causing Mrs. Monroe to give him a bath. Later, after reading about killing vampires with a stake through the heart, Chester tries to punch a (meat) steak through the sleeping rabbit's heart. Finally, he tries to drown the rabbit by tossing his water dish on him. This behavior results in Chester being locked outside. As the story progresses Harold refuses to cooperate in Chester's antics. With Chester no longer speaking to him, he begins to take a liking to Bunnicula. After a few days he notices that Bunnicula is beginning to look ill. He stays up late one night and discovers that Chester is putting on garlic and blocking Bunnicula from feeding, essentially starving the poor rabbit. Harold decides to act, and that evening before Chester awakes he takes Bunnicula out of his cage and places him in the family's dinner salad. But before the rabbit can feast Chester chases him off, and lands in the salad himself. At this point the family decides to take Chester to the vet to address his strange behavior. They also decide to take Bunnicula to the vet as they notice he seems ill. At the vet Chester is prescribed cat therapy. Bunnicula is put on a vegetable, liquid diet. He takes to this so well, that the family decides to keep him on it permanently, at which point the mysterious white vegetables stop turning up. However, the Monroes attribute the strange white vegetables to a vegetable blight at their supermarket, and change stores. The novel ends with the Monroes remaining blissfully unaware of Bunnicula's strange feeding habits, and the danger Chester believes them to be in.
25781718	/m/09v316g	The Postcard Killers	James Patterson	2010-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A young American couple is murdered while vacationing in Europe. The young woman’s father Jacob Kanon, a New York City police investigator travels to Europe to hunt down the murderer. Other young couples in France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have since then been killed and the evidence points in the same direction. Kanon joins up with Scandinavian journalist Dessie Larsson to find the murderer. Kanon and Larsson must work against time since every murder is preceded by a postcard to a regional daily.
25782398	/m/09v1r68	The Death of a Pope				 The story begins in London where a Basque ex-priest named Juan Uriarte is on trial, accused of attempting to purchase chemicals and plotting a terrorist attack. The trial is covered by an English reporter named Kate Ramsay. Uriarte's Catholic charitable outreach service is also suspected of being a front for radicals; however, Uriarte manages to avoid prosecution by claiming his intention was to eliminate the camels of a Muslim faction in Sudan. Not convinced, Ramsay becomes determined to undercover the truth and she travels with him to Uganda to see his charity's work first hand. In due course, she becomes attracted to Uriarte and offers to assist him with his plans. This works well for Uriarte, as he recruits her help, resulting in trips to Cairo and Rome. Ramsay is unaware of the actual purpose of these trips, but is sympathetic to Uriarte's convictions and she smuggles an illegal item into Rome, which she believes is a Coptic relic. In the meantime, the story reveals an international conspiracy that is developing and is aimed at the Vatican. With the death of Pope John Paul II and the 2005 Papal conclave that elected Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI as a backdrop, a plot unfolds to destroy "the longest continuous government in the world — the Papacy". It becomes apparent that the real purpose behind Uriarte's actions was to murder the Conservative faction of the Church and open a path for more Liberal-minded clergy to take control of the Church. Uriarte's plot is unknowingly foiled by Ramsay's uncle, a conservative priest from England.
25783483	/m/09v6tfp	Mass Effect: Retribution	Drew Karpyshyn		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Mass Effect: Retribution follows soon after the events of Mass Effect 2 . The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human paramilitary organization Cerberus, is attempting to learn more about the Reapers, an advanced race of sentient machines that periodically purges the galaxy of all technologically advanced organic civilizations. Having obtained Reaper technology, the Illusive Man decides to implant a human with it to learn more about the Reapers. Paul Grayson, a major character in Mass Effect: Ascension and former Cerberus operative, is kidnapped to become the Illusive Man's test subject. Also, as said on the back cover of the book under the synopsis, David Anderson (one of the protagonists of Mass Effect Revelation and a supporting character in the first Mass Effect game) is again a main character, along with Kahlee Sanders from the 1st and 2nd books.
25787488	/m/09v2k2k	Lucky Everyday				 Lucky Boyce the protagonist is a Chartered accountant who moves to New York when her wealthy and charming husband divorces her and squashes her successful entrepreneurial career. Fortunately, old friends welcome her to New York where her life breathes promise and she rediscovers happiness. Determined, and trying to do something that makes a difference, she volunteers to teach yoga to prison inmates. And just when self-esteem and even the possibility of love start to surface, she gets framed for drug-dealing and money laundering. Duplicity and betrayal lead Lucky on the path of spiritual commitment. She is forced to face her fears and she finds her inner strength through the practice of Yoga.
25795048	/m/09v4phs	Vintage Season		1946-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 The story is set in an unnamed American city at about the time of publication. There are several mentions of how beautiful the weather is. Oliver Wilson is renting an old mansion to three vacationers for the month of May. He wants to get rid of them so he can sell the house to someone who has offered him three times its value, provided the buyer can move in during May. His fiancée, Sue, insists that he arrange for them to leave, so that he can sell the house, giving them enough money for their impending marriage. The tenants are a man, Omerie Sancisco, and two women, Klia and Kleph Sancisco. They fascinate Oliver with the perfection of their appearance and manners, their strange connoisseur's attitude to everything, and their secretiveness about their origin and about their insistence on that house at that time. Oliver's half-hearted attempts to evict them founder when he becomes attracted to Kleph. The mystery deepens with remarks she lets slip, with the unspectacular but advanced technology of things she has in her room—including a recorded "symphonia" that engages all the senses with imagery of historical disasters—and with the appearance of the would-be buyers, a couple from the same country, who plant a "subsonic" in the house intended to drive the residents out. Hearing Kleph sing "Come hider, love, to me" from the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Oliver realizes that she and her friends are time travelers from the future. He traps Kleph into admitting they are visiting the most perfect seasons in history, such as a fall in the late 14th century in Canterbury. At the end of May, more time travelers visit the house. A meteorite lands nearby, destroying buildings and starting fires—the "spectacle" that the time travelers wanted to end their visit with. Oliver's house survives, as the visitors had already known it would. The time travelers leave for the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, except Cenbe, the genius who composed the symphonia Oliver had experienced. In conversation with Oliver, Cenbe admits that the time travelers could prevent the disasters they savor but do not do so because changing history would keep their culture from coming to be. Oliver goes to his room, feeling ill. In a short scene set in the future, the final version of Cenbe's symphonia is performed, including a powerful image of what is apparently Oliver's face in the "emotional crisis" induced by his conversation with Cenbe. Oliver writes down a warning about the time travelers, which he hopes will change history. However, he dies of a new plague, and the house and the unread message are destroyed in a futile effort at quarantine.
25801162	/m/09v9b7p	Shattered Peace	Erin Hunter		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ravenpaw explains his life and on the farm, saying that he liked it there, as well as the battle with BloodClan and the Twolegs. Then, Ravenpaw and his friend Barley run down a hill and play; such as Ravenpaw doing the hunters' crouch and starts to teach it to Barley, Ravenpaw starting to chew on some grass and instructs Barley to do so also, saying that it's juicy. The next morning, Barley wakes Ravenpaw up and shows him that it is snowing. When Ravenpaw goes onto the roof to take a drink of water, his tongue gets stuck and he doesn't want Barley to see him. He brings back a mouse and Barley says Ravenpaw's talking funny, however Ravenpaw denies it. They then start to cleaning the barn and Barley asks if Ravenpaw misses the clans. Ravenpaw tells him that clan life wasn't for him and that the barn suits him much better. Later, when they are going to sleep, they hear a scratching noise near the door. Ravenpaw and Barley look outside and see a group of cats standing there, whose names they find out to be, are; Willie, Minty, Snapper, Tess and Pounce. They plead to come in and Willie says that his mate is about to have kits. Ravenpaw welcomes them kindly, and feeds them. Soon, the kits are born, and they are named; Snowflake, Icicle, Cloudy and Sniff. Ravenpaw and Barley seem to be very fond of them. They continue to be their "servants" and Barley doesn't seem to enjoy it, but Ravenpaw is used to it, since he used to belong to a Clan. Later, Ravenpaw and Willie are standing on the wood below the roof of the barn when Ravenpaw explains that they can't hunt the chickens in the coop. Willie only nods and says he won't hunt them. One day, Barley catches Snapper teaching the kits death blows, but Barley says nothing to them and tells Ravenpaw when they're on the top of the barn. Ravenpaw only says it is nonsense and they need to protect those precious kits. Then, Barley overhears Willie and Snapper talking about having their own territory but doesn't say a word about it. When the group of cats are ready to leave, Ravenpaw was very sad and is reluctant to let them leave, but Barley was relieved. He then cleans the barn while Ravenpaw is sleeping. Later, Ravenpaw and Barley discuss the cats, Ravenpaw accuses Barley of treating the cats like they were intruders. Barley tells him that since his background was with the Clan, it made a difference. He also questions Ravenpaw's belonging in the barn which shocks and offends Ravenpaw. It also makes him think that maybe he does belong in the clans. When Ravenpaw falls asleep, Barley wakes him up and escapes when the farm catches on fire. They escape but Ravenpaw tells Barley they need to save the dogs. They dig up the metal stick holding the dog's down and run off before the dogs attack them. The two cats decide they need to get out of the fire so they run through the window into th twoleg nest. They think it is some kind of nightmare though they know the twolegs are happy there they never want to go there again. Ravenpaw and Barley sleep outside of the barn. On a hunting expedition the next day, Barley finds a dead rabbit thet neither Ravenpaw nor Barley killed. When they go to the barn, they find Willie, Tess, Pounce and Snapper on the wood below the roof. Ravenpaw greets them warmly. Then, the three cats attack the chickens. Ravenpaw and Barley try to stop them but it was too late and the other cats had escaped. The farmer accuses Ravenpaw and Barley for trying to steal the chickens and kicks them out. They meet Willie and the cats again and find out they were Bloodclan trying to remake the lost "clan". The cats start to fight. Then, under a bush, Minty and her kits are terrified and Minty breaks up the fight and promises that Ravenpaw and Barley have learned their lesson. That night, they sleep in the rain and Ravenpaw apologizes to Barley about not listening to him, and Barley replies saying that it's okay. The next morning, Ravenpaw sees Highstones from the distance and they decide to go there. They go into it and Ravenpaw speaks to StarClan. Bluestar, Whitestorm and Spottedleaf come and welcome him warmly. Ravenpaw is surprised that they remembered him after he left the Clans. They say that they've seen his and Barley's troubles and tells him to go to Firestar and ask for help. Ravenpaw says that he turned his back to the Clans and he doesn't deserve their loyalty anymore. Bluestar's reply is, "Maybe not, but you still have their friendship." Whitestorm, Bluestar, and Spottedleaf each take turns telling him good luck. When Ravenpaw wakes up, he wakes Barley up immediately telling him they need help from ThunderClan.
25804414	/m/09v13nq	Little Bird of Heaven	Joyce Carol Oates		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Zoe Kruller, a wife and mother who sells her body to provide for her family, is found brutally murdered. The Sparta police target two primary suspects: her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Eddy Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father is guilty. By the novel's end, the fated lovers, meeting again as adults, are at last ready to exorcise the ghosts of the past and come to terms with their legacy of guilt, misplaced love, and redemptive yearning.
25809649	/m/09v1rkh	The Native Star	M.K. Hobson		{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Native Star is set in America in 1876, and follows the adventures of Emily Edwards, town witch of the tiny Sierra Nevada settlement of Lost Pine. Her business is suffering from the rise of mail-order patent magicks, and her only chance at avoiding the penury that is at her doorstep is to use a love spell to bewitch the town’s richest lumberman into marrying her. When the love spell goes terribly wrong, Emily is forced to accept the aid of Dreadnought Stanton&mdash;a pompous and scholarly Warlock from New York — to set things right. Together, they travel from the seedy underbelly of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, across the United States by transcontinental railroad and biomechanical flying machine, to the highest halls of American magical power only to find that love spells (and love) are more dangerous than either of them ever could have imagined.
25812499	/m/09v6xtb	Good in Bed	Jennifer Weiner		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Candace (Cannie) Shapiro is a smart, sarcastic, and successful entertainment journalist living in Philadelphia. Although she has a small group of close friends, including her best friend Samantha, overbearing but caring mother, and her rat terrier, Nifkin, she has a day to day struggle with her weight, a recent breakup with her a boyfriend of three years, and the relationship issues left on her when her father left her as a child. One day, she reads a magazine article written by her ex-boyfriend, Bruce, telling his opinions on "loving a larger woman", simply naming the woman as "C.". Outraged and humiliated, Cannie approaches Bruce hoping to get some answers, but only makes things worse when she loses her temper and causes him to say it's over between them for good. However, a few weeks later when Cannie learns that Bruce's father had died, she attends the funeral to give her condolences and maybe make things better between her and Bruce. Things don't go exactly as planned, but Cannie and Bruce end up having sex. Cannie thinks this may be the start of them getting back together, but is hurt when Bruce says they should no longer see each other, as he is seeing someone else. Trying to forget about Bruce, Cannie decides to fix up her life a little bit by attending a weight-loss program, make her job a little more pleasurable, and try and get the screenplay she wrote into the hands of a Hollywood producer. While in New York for an interview with celebrity Maxi Rider, she becomes close friends with Maxi. Cannie decides to give her the screenplay. Later at her weight-loss program, Cannie meets with the program's doctor, Dr. K, to discuss her role in the program. Dr. K, however, breaks the news to her that she is not allowed to participate in the program. Cannie is crushed at first, until Dr. K tells her she is not allowed to participate because she is pregnant. Cannie considers the news and realizes Bruce had gotten her pregnant the day of his father's funeral. She debates abortion and whether she should tell Bruce or not. She ultimately decides to keep the baby and writes a note to Bruce telling him she was pregnant and if he wants a part in his child's life, they should talk. Bruce never responds to the letter and Cannie decides she will become a mother alone. A few months go by and Cannie, knowing she's going to be a mother, is a little happier with her life. She is on good terms with all her friends including Maxi, her mother, even Dr. K (whom she now knows as Peter), who are all supportive of her choice to be a single mother. Things get even better when Maxi tells Cannie she read her screenplay and some producers in Hollywood want to produce it, but she must fly to Hollywood and help with the movie. Cannie agrees and packs her bags for Hollywood. In Hollywood, Cannie is living the dream staying with Maxi in her L.A. house, attending exclusive parties, and even talking to her celebrity crush. She even considers moving from Philadelphia, but decides against the idea. After a few weeks in California, Cannie returns home. After getting off her flight, Cannie walks through the airport and spots Bruce and whom she assumes is Bruce's new girlfriend. She briefly talks to Bruce and is rude to his girlfriend. After walking away, she goes to the bathroom but is followed by Bruce's girlfriend. They get into a bit of an argument and Cannie slips on some water and falls, hitting her pregnant belly on the side of the sink. Cannie wakes up in the hospital confused, until her friends tell her that she's okay, but will never be able to have children again. Her new daughter, Joy, was forced to be born prematurely but would be okay as long as she stayed in the hospital for a few more weeks. Cannie soon falls into a deep depression after the incident and slowly pushes her friends and family away. She starts taking long walks through the city and starts eating very little, causing her to lose weight. During one walk through the city, she becomes lost, but finds herself at Peter's office. Peter, aware of her mental state, takes her to his place, lets her shower, and cooks her a warm meal. Cannie realizes how she's been acting, and Peter tells her how much he cares for her. When Joy is brought home from the hospital, Cannie decides to move into her mother's home but starts becoming more like herself everyday. Peter and Cannie start dating, and Cannie seems at peace with her life again. She moves back into her apartment, and Peter tells her he wants to move in with her. As one last change in her life, Cannie decides to go to the magazine Bruce worked for and introduce herself as "C.", and is immediately offered a job as writing the "Loving a Larger Woman" column.
25814733	/m/09v9vk6	Tokyo Fiancée	Amélie Nothomb	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An autobiographical novel, Tokyo Fiancée deals with a romance Amélie had with a young Japanese man in Tokyo, she was tutoring him in French language when she was 21 years old. The novel is partially concurrent with Nothomb's earlier novel, Fear and Trembling.
25816753	/m/09v4hbk	Of Course I Love You ..! Till I Find Someone Better		2008	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Of Course I Love You is set in Delhi, 2006–2008, and revolves around nightclubs, colleges, relationships and friendships. Debashish "Deb" Roy is a college student who has dated and bedded many girls. He is happy until he forms a relationship with a female named Avantika. Deb's life becomes great as his relationship with Avantika deepens. But one day, Avantika is forced to listen to her spiritual "Guru" to leave Deb, ultimately dumping him. Deb is kicked out of his college placements and gets a job in a government office where his father used to work. He befriends the office genius Amit, who is inexperienced with girls, and waits for his life to improve and for Avantika to return to him. he even helps Amit to confess his love to Astha And at last Avantika does return and say that she is ready to face whatever comes for them (Deb and avantika) and will take responsibility of Deb.
25818047	/m/09v9ffb	Keepers of the House	Lisa St Aubin de Terán	1982		 The story concerns Lydia an Englishwoman who has married Diego, the second to last survivor of the Beltrán family. They return to La Bebella, a dilapidated mansion on a neglected estate upon which years of drought and disease have taken their toll. Only Benito, her husband's retainer, remains and when her husband becomes depressed and a virtual recluse, Lydia has to take on the management of the estate with its sparse avocado and sugar cane crops. Benito recounts to her the history of the family and its gradual decline and it is this history and the characters concerned which forms the bulk of the narrative.
25820023	/m/09v873j	The Adventures of Philip	William Makepeace Thackeray		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Philip Firmin, son of Dr. Brand Firmin and of Lord Ringwood's wealthy niece, has been left a fortune at the death of his mother. He discovers that his father is being blackmailed by Tufton Hunt, a clergyman who once performed a sham marriage ceremony between Brandon and Caroline Gann (as related in A Shabby Genteel Story). Hunt now claims that the marriage was in fact valid, and urges Caroline to assert her rights and disinherit Philip by proving him illegitimate. Caroline, who is now working as a nurse and in this capacity has brought Philip through a serious illness, refuses to do this. Dr Firmin loses Philip's money and his own through unwise speculation and flees to America, and Philip's fiancée Agnes Twysden renounces him in favour of a wealthier rival. Philip now meets General Baynes, one of the trustees of his lost fortune, and falls in love with the General's daughter Charlotte. He marries her, in the teeth of her mother's opposition, and struggles to support her by becoming a journalist. His troubles are ended when the lost will of his great-uncle, Lord Ringwood, is discovered, and he is found to be the heir to the old man's riches.
25822529	/m/09v4lpc	Horns	Joe Hill	2010-02-16	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/0134b1": "Contemporary fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel consists of fifty chapters, with ten each divided into five larger sections, named as follows: 26-year-old Ignatius "Ig" Perrish wakes up one morning after a drunken night (in the woods containing an old foundry, near where his girlfriend's corpse was discovered) to find that he has sprouted bony, sensitive horns from his temples. Ig is the second son of a renowned musician and the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, Terry Perrish. Within his hometown of Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig had position and security, but the rape and murder of his girlfriend, Merrin Williams, changed all that. Though he was neither charged nor tried (nor had committed the crime), Ig is largely considered guilty in public opinion. As Ig leaves the apartment he shares with his friend with benefits, Glenna Nicholson, he notices that she is strangely honest with him about her desire to binge, her feelings about his unwanted presence, and the fact that she performed oral sex on a mutual high school friend of theirs, Lee Tourneau, the previous night. As Ig goes to a medical clinic to deal with the growth of his horns, he discovers that people have a sudden compulsion to blatantly express their ugliest and most animalistic urges, desires, and opinions to him, and that no one (neither those whom he already knows nor those he meets for the first time) seems surprised to see the horns. Moreover, when he makes skin-to-skin contact with individuals, he immediately learns their identities and some of their darkest secrets. They forget about their conversations with him as soon as they're over, as well as forgetting about the horns. He also realizes that he can make people give in to the ugly urges they have&mdash;in fact, the horns pulse in a pleasurable fashion when he does so&mdash;but he cannot make them do things they do not already want to do. He experiences these revelations with the doctor he talks to, two previously acquainted police officers, his church's priest and a nun, and others he encounters. Going home, he discovers that his parents and grandmother detest him and believe him to be Merrin's killer; he then meets his brother, Terry, who seems to be the only sympathetic member of the Perrish family. Terry, however, under the influence of the horns' power, confesses that he knows who killed Merrin: Ig's childhood best friend, Lee Tourneau. Ig, in an episode of diabolic passion, releases the brake on his grandmother's wheelchair, and she goes rushing down a slope at a precarious speed. The high school past of Ig and Terry Perrish, Merrin Williams, and Lee Tourneau is explored, with the cherry as a common motif, referring to Merrin's red hair, the loss of virginity, and the characters' involvement with cherry bombs. Ig agrees to a bet: if he rides a shopping cart naked down a perilous trail in the woods by the Knowles River, he will receive a cherry bomb. Although he breaks his nose and briefly loses consciousness when he crashes into the river, Ig survives, believing that Lee Tourneau pulled him out of the water and resuscitated him. Ig and Lee immediately become friends, though Ig is pestered by the uncomfortable feeling of owing Lee a debt. In church, Ig becomes infatuated with a red-headed girl who has been flirtatiously reflecting light off her cross necklace into his eyes. When the necklace breaks and, unnoticed by her, falls down, Ig collects it and decides to impress her by fixing it. But when Lee expresses an interest in her and shows him how to fix the necklace, Ig lets him have it instead. Later, Ig trades his cherry bomb with Lee in order to get back the cross. With this, Ig greets Merrin and the two soon become de facto girlfriend and boyfriend. Lee detonates the cherry bomb and damages his eye, which becomes milky and has impaired vision, though his other eye is unimpaired. Lee is also revealed to be a juvenile delinquent, having stolen and sold various items, perhaps as a way of venting his seemingly groundless hatred of his mother. Ig feels not only that he may be responsible for Lee's accident, but that Merrin should not go to the hospital with him to visit Lee, because Ig thinks it would be tantamount to gloating in Lee's face (having won the girl over Lee). The night of Merrin's murder is partially revealed; specifically, the drunken argument between her and Ig in a restaurant (the last time they see each other). Merrin explains that Ig, who is about to go to England for six months for his job, should openly pursue other women while there, in order to gain some more romantic experience (Merrin being his only romance ever). Ig is infuriated, thinking (correctly) that she wishes to permanently end their relationship and suspecting she may have been cheating on him. He drives away from the restaurant, leaving her in the rain. Later, at the airport, he is about to board the plane when he is suddenly surrounded by police officers. Meanwhile, in the present day, Ig goes to the congressman's office where Lee works and tells Lee he knows that Lee killed Merrin, but for some reason, he is unable to manipulate Lee with the horns. He also cannot attack Lee because of the congressman's security team, which includes Eric Hannity, another high school acquaintance. Ig drives back to the woods and the foundry and notices that snakes have started congregating around him. He listens to voice mails left by his friends and family on his cell phone and realizes that they think he is missing, having apparently not remembered just seeing him while under the mysterious influence of his horns. He drives back to his and Glenna's apartment where he is attacked by Eric, just narrowly escaping. Returning to his parents' home, Ig touches a sleeping Terry's wrist and suddenly sees, from Terry's perspective, the events of the night of Merrin's murder: Terry is riding in Lee's car when they pick up Merrin, but is drunk and high and passes out while the actual murder takes place; later, Lee convinces Terry to keep quiet and five months later, a guilt-ridden Terry unsuccessfully attempts suicide. Although Terry begins to wake up, Ig discovers another power of his&mdash;he can perfectly mimic other voices&mdash; and convinces Terry that he is their mother, in the dark room, before departing. Ig returns to the foundry where he finds an affinity with fire (and wine) and delivers a speech to the snakes. He asserts that the devil and women have always caused fear in God, with women being the more powerful because they, like God, have the power of creation. He argues that when Merrin decided to break away from him to pursue her own ends, God detested her and refused to come to her aid while she was being raped and murdered, all because He feared a "woman's power to choose who and how to love, to redefine love as she sees fit." God is a failed character too detested by his own creations to appreciate them. Ig concludes that only the devil loves humans for what they are, despite some of their negative characteristics. The following morning at the foundry, Ig is abruptly asssaulted by Lee, and the contact with him enlightens Ig as to just how Lee murdered Merrin. Ig finds that Lee is wearing Merrin's cross and tears it off him, leaving Lee exposed to the horns' influence. Lee viciously beats Ig and tosses him in Ig's AMC Gremlin, douses the car with gasoline, and lights it on fire. Ig is able to release the parking brake, and the car, ablaze, rolls down into the river, in imitation of Ig's journey in the shopping cart years earlier. The fire, though reddening Ig's skin, has somehow completely restored him to physical health, healing the damage from his fight with Lee. There is another flashback with Merrin, regarding the time she and Ig visited a mysterious treehouse in the woods filled with religious paraphernalia. The two have sex and then pray when suddenly someone startles them by banging on the door in the floor of the treehouse. They quickly dress as the pounding continues, but when they open the door, no one is there. They are never able to relocate the tree house and begin to believe they both imagined it, dubbing it the "Treehouse of the Mind." Lee Tourneau's adult life (as a close associate of a Christian conservative congressman) and his sexual pursuit of Merrin is explored. His mother acquired dementia and became weak and confused. Lee uses this as an opportunity to torture her, while pretending to be a loving, caring son whenever anyone visits. Ultimately she dies, and he uses her death as an excuse to become close to Merrin. He consistently finds more meaning than is intended from Merrin's gestures and choice of words, believing her to be sexually interested in him and, knowing that Ig will soon be leaving for Britain, eager to begin an affair with him. In reality she means no such thing. Lee also remembers an experience from his childhood in which he attempted to feed and befriend a stray cat, only to be swatted at, causing him to fall from a fence and hit his head; he is impaled in the head by a spike and receives serious brain damage; he undergoes a hallucination in which he perceives things as God would, and murders the cat. When he returns, his mother perceives nothing wrong, but it appears that from this point in time, his personality is changed and he has psychopathic thoughts. The section concludes with Lee's realization that Merrin never wanted a relationship with him, and his decision to rape and kill her. Ig is fully healed by the flames, but his clothes have burned off. Naked, he finds an old skirt and black overcoat to wear in the woods. He scoops up Merrin's cross and sees Dale Williams, Merrin's father, among a small crowd that has formed near the burnt car. Dale, against his will, gives Ig a ride to the Williams house, and the two discuss their conflicts and the death of Regan Williams, Merrin's older sister, from breast cancer, long before Ig and Merrin ever met. Ig has a strange impulse to go the Williams' attic, seemingly having visions of the Treehouse of the Mind and its similar trap door. In the attic, Ig finds a group of papers written in Morse code and a mammogram that reveals that Merrin too had breast cancer. Ig deciphers the Morse code to read a note written to him by Merrin, who describes her feelings about knowing she will die from breast cancer; she encourages him to find another romantic partner, though she loves him; she says she believes in the gospel of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, quoting from The Rolling Stones song "You Can't Always Get What You Want." It turns out she had decided she didn't want chemo, but she knew if she stayed with Ig, he would find out she had cancer and for love of him, she'd have chemo anyway. So she decided to break up with him and die on her own, to save him pain. Ig reunties with Glenna, whom he convinces to lead a more fulfilling life, and when she accidentally leaves her cell phone, Ig uses it to call Lee and, mimicking Glenna's voice, persuades him to drive to the foundry, where Ig hopes to ambush and kill him. Terry unexpectedly arrives at the foundry, confessing that he has quit his TV job, though Ig begs that he flee. Lee's car arrives, and both Lee and Eric exit the vehicle, armed with guns and aware of Ig's trap, having talked to the real Glenna. Ig and Eric struggle for a time before Lee shoots and kills Eric, hoping that it will look as though Ig and Eric killed each other, without Lee's involvement. Lee then gorily beats Ig with the empty shotgun until Terry reappears, blasting his trumpet into Lee's ear. With this distraction, Ig finally slams his horns into Lee's body. He then telepathically convinces a snake to slide down Lee's throat, finishing him off. As Terry goes to use Glenna's phone to call emergency services, he is bitten by a venomous snake that Ig had placed there to attack Lee. Desperately, the gruesomely injured Ig crawls over to a gasoline canister, hoping that he can light himself on fire quick enough to restore his diabolic flesh and get Terry to a hospital. As he prepares to self-immolate, Ig begins to remember in hazy flashback his activities of the night he was drunk the morning before he awoke to discover the horns: in his inebriated state, he miraculously came across the elusive Treehouse of the Mind and while knocking on the trap door, discovered that he was the one the younger versions of himself and Merrin had heard knocking on the door all along. The night before he grew horns, he climbed into it and set in on fire. The treehouse had rules written on a piece of parchment: "TAKE WHAT YOU WANT WHILE YOU'RE HERE/GET WHAT YOU NEED WHEN YOU LEAVE." He needed to kill the person who murdered Merrin, he felt, and began to feel a tingling near his temples (implying that this desire would later cause him to become devil-like). Back in the present time, Ig is restored to health by the flames and tells Terry that he needs to lie about what has happened here; Eric and Lee are both dead, and Terry needs to believe that Ig died too. Ig then goes to the cherry tree that once held the Treehouse of the Mind to find that a line of fire has reached it from the foundry. The treehouse itself has reappeared beyond the flames and Ig climbs up into the burning tree, enters the treehouse, and finds a wedding party within and Merrin awaiting him. Sometime later, Terry is recuperating from his snakebite, believing (thanks to the influence of Ig's horns) that Eric and Lee killed Ig by burning him in his car, and that the two then tortured Terry with a venomous snake, before they killed one another. Although the detective doubts that this story is true, Terry is the only living witness. Terry goes to the woods to have some peace of mind and is joined by Glenna. When she leaves to begin packing for her move to New York City, Terry believes he can hear the faint sound of a trumpet, and decides it is time for him to leave too. The inner front and back cover of the book has a repeating message written in morse code. It reads, "Pleased to meet you; hope you guess my name," which are lyrics from the Rolling Stones song, "Sympathy for the Devil." It refers to the novel's themes that the devil is more of an anti-hero than a villain.
25823033	/m/09v3544	Lilies In December	Agustus Montrose	1856-09-08	{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The setting of Lilies In December is the recovering western Irish village of Glen Arnen after the Potato Famine of the 1840s and early 1850s. Two young women, both named Lily have lost much of their family to the potato famine. One, Lily O'Malley has lost her mother and two brothers and is forced to survive in the hands of her abusive, drunkard father James O'Malley. The other, Lily McIntyre lost both parents and lives with her kind aunt Jane McIntyre who works under James O'Malley at the only inn in the village. The two Lilies find comfort in each other's company and become best friends. Throughout the story they meet many sexual encounters with young men from the village. Midway through the book, one such encounter leads to the pregnancy of Lily O'Malley and murder of the future father. In his rage, James also murders Jane McIntyre which results in Lily McIntyre's resentment of the O'Malleys. In her retaliation against them, she burns down their inn and kills several innocent people in the process. This leads to the estrangement of the two Lilies even more so and Lily O'Malley even attempts to stab McIntyre. James O'Malley's crimes are found out and he is sent to the gallows. Now, both in complete misery and all alone, the two Lilies decide to forget the past and reunite as friends in December 1854. Right as they begin to become extremely close, Lily McIntyre dies of hypothermia and Lily O'Malley, with nothing left to live for, commits suicide.
25832142	/m/09v42b4	Keeping It Real	Justina Robson	2006-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Agent Lila Black is a cyborg operative for Earth Security, six years after the quantum bomb fractured reality and allowed elves, fairies, demons and other magical creatures access to the Earth. Agent Black is assigned to protect the first Elven rock star, Zal, whose decision to live amongst humans and 'go native' has been met with considerable animosity amongst his own people. Black has to protect Zal from death or capture whilst uncovering secrets that threaten the relationships between the realms. cs:Zachovej klid fr:Bienvenue en Otopia
25834050	/m/06kydtg	Quagmire!	TSR, Inc.			 In the beginning of this adventure, the player characters set off in search of the city of Quagmire. The characters must travel through a monster-infested swamp to get to the city, which is being slowly swallowed into the sea. Quagmire is a whelk-shaped "spiral city", built by a dead race in the Serpent Peninsula. The module includes a description of the city.
25839458	/m/09v1bq2	Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter	Seth Grahame-Smith	2010-03	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0246p": "Comic fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0crjhv8": "Mashup", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel"}	 The epistolary-style book is written as a biography of Abraham Lincoln, based on "secret diaries" kept by the 16th President of the United States and given to the author by a vampire named Henry Sturges. When Lincoln is only eleven years old, he learns from his father, Thomas that vampires are, in fact, real. Thomas explains to his son that a vampire killed Abraham's grandfather (also named Abraham Lincoln) in 1786. Young Abraham is also shocked to learn that his beloved mother, Nancy succumbed not to milk sickness but rather to being given a "fool's dose" of vampire blood, the result of Thomas's failure to repay a debt. Lincoln vows in his diary to kill as many vampires as he can. A year later he lures the vampire responsible for his mother's death to the family farm and manages to kill it with a homemade stake. In 1825, Lincoln gets word of a possible vampire attack along the Ohio River and investigates, but this time he is no match for the vampire and is nearly killed. He is saved at the last moment by the intervention of the vampire Henry Sturges. Henry nurses Lincoln back to health and explains some of the nature of vampirism, emphasizing that some vampires are good and others are evil. Lincoln spends the summer with Henry sharpening his senses. Henry sends Lincoln the names and addresses of evil vampires; Abraham dutifully tracks them down and kills them. As a young adult, Lincoln and a friend travel down the Mississippi River to New Orleans on a flatboat to sell a number of goods. Here Lincoln's life is changed forever after he witnesses a slave auction. Lincoln follows a slave buyer and his new slaves back to their plantation and discovers to his horror that the buyer is a vampire - the slaves are to be used not for labor but for food. Lincoln writes in his journal his belief that vampires will continue to exist in America as long as they can easily buy their victims in this manner - to end slavery is to end the scourge of vampires. Lincoln becomes an Abolitionist. Lincoln returns to his home in New Salem and begins his business and political careers by day, continuing to track down the vampires in Henry's letters at night. His life is once again tinged by tragedy when his fiancee Ann Rutledge is attacked and murdered by her ex-fiance John McNamar, now a vampire living in New York City. With Henry's help, Lincoln catches McNamar and kills him, but he decides to give up vampire hunting and instead concentrate on his daytime pursuits. Lincoln marries Mary Todd, begins to raise a family, starts a law firm, and is elected to a term in the U.S. House of Representatives. While in Washington, Lincoln meets his old friend Edgar Allan Poe, who also knows the truth about vampires. Poe tells Lincoln that the vampires are being chased out of their ancestral homes in Europe (in part because of a public outcry over the bloody atrocities of Elizabeth Báthory) and are flocking to America because of the slave trade. Poe warns that if the vampires are left unchecked they will eventually seek to enslave all Americans, white and black. Lincoln leaves Washington in 1849 and declines to seek re-election; Poe is found murdered that same year in Baltimore, the victim of a vampire attack. In 1857, Henry summons Lincoln to New York City. Here Lincoln and fellow vampire slayer William Seward are told that the vampires in the South intend to start a civil war so that they can conquer the north and enslave all humans of America. Lincoln runs for the U.S. Senate and debates Stephen A. Douglas in what became known as the Lincoln–Douglas debates. Although Lincoln loses to Douglas (an ally of the Southern vampires), he gains a great deal of publicity and respect, which allows him to capture the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States and then the office itself. Lincoln's 1860 presidential election triggers the secession of the southern states and the start of the American Civil War. Early battles, such as the First Battle of Bull Run go poorly for the Union troops after they are attacked by Confederate vampires. Lincoln decides that the best way to defeat the vampires is to eliminate their food source and starve them out — to that end, he announces the Emancipation Proclamation and encourages the slaves to fight back against slave owners and vampires alike. This begins to turn the tide of the war. However, the war takes a personal toll on Lincoln. A vampire assassin sneaks onto the White House lawn and kills Lincoln's son, Willy. Henry appears at the White House and offers to turn Willy into a vampire so that he will "live" again, but Lincoln is unwilling to allow it. Enraged, he banishes Henry and all other vampires from the White House and refuses to speak to any of them ever again. The Civil War ends with the South's defeat. Lincoln receives reports that the vampires in the South are fleeing to Asia and South America in the wake of the slave system's collapse. Happy for the first time in many years, he attends a play at Ford's Theater, only to be assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth. Booth expects the vampires to rally around Lincoln's death, but instead finds himself shunned and hiding in a Virginia barn as Union troops arrive to arrest him. Henry arrives and confronts Booth inside the burning barn; it is implied that Henry is the one who kills Booth. Lincoln's death is mourned by the nation. His body is brought by a funeral train back to Springfield, Illinois, where Henry stands guard. A century later, during Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial, both Lincoln and Henry attend and Lincoln writes about spending the previous night at the White House. Henry has used his powers to turn Lincoln into a vampire, believing that "some men are just too interesting to die".
25842601	/m/09v45kv	The 10,000 Year Explosion	Henry Harpending	2009		 The book's main thesis is that human civilisation greatly accelerated increases in the rates of evolution. The authors begin their discussion by quoting the conventional wisdom: :Something must have happened to weaken the selective pressure drastically. We cannot escape the conclusion that man’s evolution towards manness suddenly came to a halt. --Ernst Mayr, 1963. :There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain --Stephen J. Gould, 2000. This had become the established viewpoint - when modern humans appeared, evolution was essentially over. The received wisdom is based on the doctrine that human minds are the same, everywhere: Bastian's Psychic Unity of Mankind. Unfortunately, the authors continue, this is no more than wishful thinking. Were it true, human bodies would also be the same worldwide, which clearly they are not. Finns cannot be mistaken for Zulus, nor Zulus for Finns. Not only are there strong reasons to believe that significant human evolution is theoretically possible, or even likely; it is completely obvious that it has taken place, assert the authors, since people look different from one another. The first four of the book’s seven chapters serve as a preamble to the final three. First, Cochran and Harpending present evidence for recent, accelerated human evolution after the invention of agriculture. In itself, this argument represents a paradigm shift, albeit one that now has clear data to back it up. tie the advent of agriculture — and the selection pressures resulting from the new diets, new modes of habitation, new animal neighbors, and new modes of living that agriculture made possible — to this accelerating evolution. Wolpoff writes that Cochran and Harpending continue to refute conventional wisdom in their discussion of the Neandertals. For natural selection to have a chance, they argue, there need to be favourable mutations, or favourable combinations of existing alleles such as genes for blue eyes or pale skin. Cochran and Harpending concentrate on the Neolithic farming revolution as the beginning of major population expansions that provided enough mutations to accelerate genetic change. Infectious diseases were another consequence of the early urban populations and soon became a new source of selection pressures. The origins of many recently adapted genes have now been traced to this period, creating effects such as regional differences in skin colour and skeletal gracility. Adaptations may have sacrificed muscle strength for higher intelligence and less aggressive human behaviours. By 5000 years ago, the authors estimate that adaptive alleles were coming into existence at a rate about 100 times faster than during the Pleistocene. This is the ‘‘explosion’’ of the book’s title. Research cited by Cochran and Harpending provides evidence of genetic mixing between modern humans and an ancient Homo lineage such as the Neanderthals. It supports the idea that modern humans could have benefited by acquiring adaptive alleles evolved by our Neanderthal relatives - in this case, microcephalin, an adaptive allele associated with brain development. Microcephalin (MCPH1) regulates brain size, and has evolved under strong positive selection in the human evolutionary lineage. One genetic variant of Microcephalin, which arose about 37,000 years ago, increased its frequency in modern humans too rapidly to be compatible with neutral genetic drift. As anatomically modern humans emerged from Africa and spread across the globe, the "indigenous" Homo populations they encountered had already inhabited their respective regions for long periods of time and might have been better adapted to the local environments than the colonizers. It follows that modern humans, although probably superior in their own way, could have benefited from adaptive alleles gained by interbreeding with the populations they replaced, as appears to be the case for the brain size-determining gene microcephalin. Farming, which, the authors note, produces 10 to 100 times more calories per acre than foraging, carried this trend further. Over the period from 10,000 BC to AD 1, the world population increased about a hundredfold - estimates range from 40 to 170 times. An accelerated rate of evolution is a direct result of the larger human population. More people will have more mutations, thereby increasing opportunity for evolutionary change under natural selection. The spread of rapidly expanding populations eventually outpaced the spread of favourable mutations under selection in those populations, so for the first time in human history favourable mutations could not fully disperse throughout the human species. In addition, of course, selection pressures changed once farming was adopted, favouring distinctive adaptations in different geographic areas. Farming, rather than just reduced sunlight, may have helped trigger pale skin in Europeans. In a 2007 study, almost all Africans and East Asians have one allele of the SLC24A5 gene, whereas 98% of the Europeans studied had the other. These data suggest that a selective sweep occurred as recently as 5,300 to 6,000 years ago, replacing darker skins with light skins at astonishing speed. It implies that Europeans had been dark-skinned for tens of thousands of years. Several decades ago, Stanford's Cavalli-Sforza had argued that European hunter-gatherers, herders and fishers could have survived from the vitamin D content of their diet, alone. Only when farming took hold did Europeans - replacing meat and fish with grain - need to absorb more sunlight to produce the vitamin in their skin. Other writers, including Darwin, Miller, and Dawkins, have proposed that skin colour changes were driven by sexual selection. Cochran and Harpending reject the sexual selection idea when used to imply that race is no more than skin deep ("perhaps little more than a fad"), pointing out that experts can easily determine race from skeletal evidence alone. About halfway through the book, Cochran and Harpending pause to consider two different ways of looking at the information found in gene variants. Researchers commonly see them merely as markers of human migration, ignoring their functions. The authors support such research, but argue for a more complete understanding of the geographic distributions of genes. Where the usual geographical analysis treats the distribution of genes as an effect of history, in the authors' view, the genes themselves are a major cause: Two variants in the same gene do not necessarily have the same effect, and their relative, selective benefits will  control the spread of genes through populations in both space and time. From that platform the authors discuss ideas that range from the possible origins of the Arthurian legend in Britain to the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Others have attempted this, for example in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. But, according to Kelleher, Cochran and Harpending go one better than Diamond. Where he was content with environmental determinism, opposing the roles of human biology and population differences, Cochran and Harpending embrace them both. Their discussions of gene flow becomes the core of an argument for biology as central to history, and the backdrop for the book’s two major hypotheses. The first seeks to resolve a longstanding debate in historical linguistics by making a case for the Kurgan hypothesis on the origins of the Indo-European language group. The Kurgan theory holds that Indo-European speakers came from lands between the Black and Caspian seas before spreading their language by conquest. The authors suggest that dairy farming and a complementary adaptation - the ability to digest lactose in adulthood - lie behind their conquests. With a walking food source, the milk-drinking warriors defeated their plant-growing neighbours. Drinking milk, from cows, horses, or camels, is a behavior shared by many of history’s greatest conquering peoples, whether Kurgans, Scythians, Arabs, or Mongols. Without continuing evolution, the ability to digest milk could never have arisen. In fact, it has done so several times, in different ways, in various places, and it has helped shape human history. Kelleher comments that the authors’ argument makes it difficult to imagine the language in which their book would have been written, were it not for the ability to digest milk. The second major argument, which takes up the final chapter, sets out to explain why Ashkenazi Jews have a mean IQ so much higher than that of the population in general. This argument had been published previously in an earlier paper that attracted wide media coverage, generating extensive criticism and praise. This final chapter prior to the book's conclusion has been described as a consistent, thorough, biological history — or perhaps, better, a consistent biological hypothesis of a specific history, and a falsifiable one to boot.
25843962	/m/09v56dz	Zoobreak	Gordon Korman		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Savannah has lost her pet monkey named Cleopatra. Griffin and his friend Ben are trying to help her get it back, but they have no such luck until they take a field trip to a zoo boat that has made a stop in Long Island. Savannah makes a scene when she sees the zoo's newest attraction, "Eleanor", whom she believes is her monkey, Cleo. Griffin and Ben believe her after they see just how nasty the zoo keeper, Mr. Nastase really is. Griffin and Ben must gather the team of the strength, animal smarts, acting skills, the team leader, height, computer skills, and climbing. They do not realize the zoo is heavily guarded by a seemingly mean security guard named Klaus. Soon, they find out all the animals are pets stolen by Nastase, and Klaus knows nothing about it. So, now they must free all the animals from Nastase's cruel hands and get Cleo back. But the plan fails and they must not only free the entire zoo, but keep the animals hidden until they find a "better" zoo to stash the animals, and also stop Nastase from stealing all the animals from both zoos!
25850948	/m/09v3t1b	Emmanuelle		1967	{"/m/02js9": "Erotica"}	 Emmanuelle, the 19-year-old wife of a French engineer, is flying out to join her husband in Bangkok. While on the plane, she has anonymous sexual encounters with two men, the first time she has cheated on her husband since they were married. She arrives in Bangkok and becomes part of a hedonistic community of western expats. She makes two new friends - Ariane de Saynes, a 30 year-old French countess, and Marie-Anne, a younger girl. Both friendships have a strong homoerotic flavor. Emmanuelle and Marie-Anne begin a series of sexual games in which they take it in turns to masturbate while the other watches. Meanwhile, Ariane makes a series of attempts to seduce Emmanuelle, culminating in a sexual encounter between the two women on a squash court which verges on rape. Afterwards Ariane tries to persuade Emmanuelle to return home with her. Emmanuelle rejects her advances, but immediately regrets doing so. At a tea party hosted by Marie-Anne's mother, Emmanuelle meets Bee, the sister of a naval attaché at the American Embassy. Emmanuelle is immediately attracted to the slender, red-headed Bee, and when the two women meet later by chance on the streets of Bangkok she takes the opportunity to invite Bee home with her. Emmanuelle seduces her and the two women make love, first in the shower and then in Emmanuelle's bed. Afterwards Emmanuelle professes her love for Bee, who is taken aback, having never been with another woman before. They agree to meet again, but Bee does not come and Emmanuelle realizes she has no way of contacting her. She is heartbroken and is comforted by her husband. Marie-Anne, meanwhile, believes that Emmanuelle needs to be cured of her need to associate sex with love. She offers to introduce Emmanuelle to a friend, Mario, an Italian nobleman, who can do this. The two meet for the first time at an embassy cocktail party and Emmanuelle agrees to join him for dinner the following night. Emmanuelle thinks that Mario will become her lover, but Ariane dismisses this idea, telling Emmanuelle that Mario is gay. The following evening, Emmanuelle and Mario have dinner at Mario's house, joined by an Englishman called Quentin. Over dinner, Mario expounds his philosophy of eroticism, which is that true freedom comes only when eroticism is divorced from love. He offers to take Emmanuelle on a trip that will demonstrate this. The three plunge into the back streets of Bangkok. They visit an opium den and then a temple, where Emmanuelle makes two votive offerings; first by masturbating Mario and then by performing oral sex on a boy. Later, having parted company with Quentin, the two return to Mario's house in a rickshaw pulled by a Thai driver (or sam-lo). During the ride, Emmanuelle demonstrates her new-found freedom by removing her top and then fellating Mario in public. They arrive back at Mario's house and he tells her that he is going to take her 'through' the body of the sam-lo. The three make love, the sam-lo penetrating Emmanuelle while Mario penetrates the sam-lo. As the three reach orgasm together, Emmanuelle screams out "I'm in love! I'm in love!"
25868322	/m/09v84kv	Stone Cold	Robert B. Parker	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 A couple of middle-aged thrill killers, Brianna and Anthony Lincoln, are independently wealthy from a patent Anthony obtained for an optical scanner he invented while practicing medicine. The couple move to Paradise and begin picking random people and murdering them by simultaneously shooting them in the heart with .22 caliber pistols. They then make love while watching videos of the murders. Kenneth Eisley is the first victim; Jesse does not discover his identity until after some investigation, and finds his dog. The Lincolns then stalk and kill a woman in a supermarket, and Jesse has the license plate numbers collected from all cars present at the scene. Next the Lincolns murder a man behind a church as he walks home from the train station. Two teenage boys stumble on the body while skateboarding and notice a red 1995 Saab. With the help of the state police, Jesse finds all people who have both registered .22s and a red 1995 Saab, and checks if there was a red Saab at the supermarket. This leads Jesse to the Lincolns. Jesse briefly interviews the Lincolns, who seem very interested in the murders. He takes their .22 rifle for testing, but it has never been fired. However, he leaves convinced they are the killers. The murderers then stalk Abby Taylor. Although Abby is considering marrying another man, she still has feelings for Jesse. After spending an evening with Jesse and making love to him, she returns home and is murdered by the Lincolns. They begin stalking and taking photos of Jesse, who learns of this while tailing them one night when they stop at his condo to take photos. Flirting with getting caught, and hoping to prove how smart they are —and how dumb the police are— the Lincolns invite Jesse to lunch. They probe him about the murders, but he reveals little. Later, a note is delivered to the police station telling Jesse to come to Paradise Mall at 7pm to learn about the murders. Believing they intend to murder him, Jesse stations officers at the mall and goes wearing a bullet-proof vest. As he approaches the elevator in the food court he is confronted by the Lincolns as they exit it, and they both shoot him in the chest and re-enter the elevator. Jesse bounds up the escalator, but the elevator descends again. When they exit, they have changed clothes. Officer Anthony D’Angelo thinks he recognizes the woman and stops her; she turns and shoots him in the head, killing him instantly. They escape in a rented Volvo. Feeling guilty for D’Angelo’s murder, which he believes could have been prevented had he involved the state police, Jesse trudges on with the case. He took it personally after Abby’s murder, and wanted to catch the killers without the state police. They obtain a search warrant for the Lincolns' rented penthouse condo and find pictures of the victims on their computer, and the abandoned Saab. Jesse’s ex-wife Jenn wonders how they got to the mall without their car, which leads Jesse to check car rentals and match them with names of people who patented optical scanners. One was rented on the day of the murder to Arlington Larmont: Anthony Lincoln was an alias. Jesse discovers that the car was dropped off in Toronto, and the state police find the couple registered at a Toronto hotel, where they are picked up by local police. Jesse drives up to confront the couple, who play dumb. Jesse responds by kneeing Arlington in the groin. When his wife jumps up to defend her husband, Jesse slaps her, then leaves.
25878113	/m/09v9c4v	The Atlantis Revelation			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The events of Novel Two leave the Alignment exposed & removed from the US Government, an ancient Celestial Globe in the hands of the Pentagon, a Terrestrial one in the hands of the Vatican, Conrad still searching for links to Atlantis & Serena the new leader of a Catholic sect with ties to the remaining Alignment leaders in Europe. When Conrad discovers the remains of a German sub containing a powerful Atlantean weapon that uses water as fuel for an explosion, he is headed off by Alignment member & Russian Petrol Tycoon, Roman "Midas" Midasovitch. This lures Conrad into another conflict with the Alignment that draws him deeper into the Alignment than ever before. Meanwhile, Serena Seghetti tries to enter the Alignment's ranks in order to gain their trust & expose their remaining leaders to the world- all she has to do is deliver both globes to the Castle of the Grand Master in time for the Summit Meeting, where the Alignment will convene in secret for the first time in centuries- but Conrad's reappearance screws up her plans, as well as his when he sacrifices his own life to keep her safe & uncover the Alignment's plans for Armagheddon. The Novel leaves off with both Conrad & Serena presumable dead after failing to stop a controlled explosion beneath Jeruselem that was meant to start a holy war, yet it is revealed that both have survived & wish to continue their lives in secret- together, away from the Alignment, the Government & the church that held them captive for so long.
25884426	/m/05qg0my	100 Cupboards	N. D. Wilson	2007	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Henry P. York moves to Henry, Kansas to live with his Uncle Frank, Aunt Dotty, and cousins Penelope, Henrietta, and Anastasia after his parents are abducted while bike trekking in South America. On his first night there, Henry sneaks out of his attic bedroom to go to the bathroom. Instead, he discovers that the door is closed and the light is on. He waits and sees a short man emerge from the bathroom and enter Grandfather's bedroom, a room that has been locked since Grandfather died two years previously. Another night, the plaster from Henry's attic wall starts coming off, revealing two master lock dials to a hundred little locked cupboards. When they are home alone, Henry and Henrietta discover a key in one of the cupboards they have managed to open, which unlocks the door into Grandfather's bedroom. There they find a journal which has a map of the cupboards. One morning Henrietta mysteriously disappears, and Henry discovers a journal entry which tells him how the cupboards work. He crawls through a cupboard in Grandfather's room to find Henrietta. After several strange adventures he finds her in the ballroom of a palace in a ruined city, but they are unable to return until the master locks of the cupboards are set back to their location, and they hide in a dark cupboard. They witness a group of people with wolves called "Witch-Dogs" kill a party, but they escape. Meanwhile, Uncle Frank attempts to find the two of them while Aunt Dotty tells Penelope and Anastasia that Frank came through the cupboards long ago, and it was their great-grandfather who invented the cupboards and made them work. But Frank is too late when a Witch and her cat emerge from the Endor cupboard and stab Frank. The witch is Nimiane, and she has been strengthened by Henry's blood. Aunt Dotty, Penelope, and Anastasia run up to see what's going on, and Aunt Dotty falls into a similar state as Frank. Henry and Henrietta emerge from the cupboard and struggle with the witch, but it is Zeke, a boy who was just dropping by to see if Henry was ready to play baseball, who knocks her out with a swing of his baseball bat. The children push her through the cupboard into an unnamed place, and Dotty and Frank are rushed to the hospital where they are healed. Henrietta discovers a creature that looks like a small flying rhino in one of the cupboards. This creature, called a raggant, was the one banging against his cupboard, causing it to break through the plaster at the beginning of the book. Uncle Frank tells Henry that he came from one of the cupboards as a child, and the raggant has been sent by someone to find him. Meanwhile Nimiane has recovered and is plotting in one of the places beyond the cupboards. The book ends when Henry receives another threatening letter from the post office box.
25886645	/m/040_32	OtherSpace		2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins with Xander and Jacob hunting gruskers, strange plant-eating creatures. Later, Jacob reveals that he wants to go to Teiresias in hopes of meeting the other escaped Seers. Delaney sells her eyes to buy his passage aboard the Odessa, commanded by Captain Bennet. Jacob becomes acquainted with the crew, but is wary of Folgrin, a businessman with strange eyes who seems suspicious. Aboard the ship, they go into Otherspace, a place encountered by entering a wormhole, and Jacob discovers that he is able to move during Otherspace, while others are rendered immobile. When the ship crashes on Maker's Drift, a dark, neglected planet surrounded in superstition, only Bennet, Folgrin, and Jacob survive. After Jacob meets a strange couple, he and Bennet buy passage aboard a passenger liner to Teiresias, a strange planet where one half of the planet receives sunlight and the other is dark, cold, and barren. At Teiresias, Jacob eventually meets Avery, another Blinder who received vision. Jacob is taken to a base on the dark side of Teiresias where he meets the other Blinders who received sight and escaped.
25888393	/m/09v3_nn	Swords Against Death	Fritz Leiber	1970	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. The pieces in Swords Against Death follow the duo as they shake the dust of Lankhmar from their feet in the wake of the deaths their of their first loves, only to find their resolution never to return pointless ("The Circle Curse"). There follow a miscellaneous series of adventures from their wanderings, including a quest for treasure in a dwelling with unique defenses ("The Jewels in the Forest"), a return bout with the Thieves' Guild they hold responsible for their ladies' deaths ("Thieves' House"), an ensorcelled journey to a far-away land ("The Bleak Shore"), an encounter with a beast-haunted stranger ("The Howling Tower"), a dangerous visit to the Nehwonian equivalent of Atlantis ("The Sunken Land"), a conflict with a murderous priesthood ("The Seven Black Priests"), a magical plague afflicting Lankhmar ("Claws from the Night"), a final parting with their deceased loves in the Shadowland ("The Price of Pain-Ease"), and an investigation of a mysterious shop that is other than it seems ""Bazaar of the Bizarre").
25888414	/m/09v2l69	Swords in the Mist	Fritz Leiber	1968	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In Swords in the Mist the duo confronts the mystically concentrated hate of the citizens of Lankhmar ("The Cloud of Hate"), go their separate ways during a period of hard times, the Mouser becoming an enforcement thug and Fafhrd an acolyte of a newly introduced religion ("Lean Times in Lankhmar"), recuperate after their reconciliation with a sea voyage ("Their Mistress, the Sea"), invade the boudoir of an absent sea deity ("While the Sea-King's Away"), traverse a passage to another world ("The Wrong Branch"), and there undertake a bizarre quest to the Castle Mist ("Adept's Gambit").
25888432	/m/09v8skf	Swords Against Wizardry	Fritz Leiber	1968	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In Swords Against Wizardry the duo consults a witch in regard to an upcoming adventure ("In the Witch's Tent"), ascends Stardock, the Nehwonian Everest, in search of treasure ("Stardock"), are revealed, as they are gypped of their gains afterwards, not to be the best thieves in Lankhmar, as they so smugly deem themselves ("The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar"), and take service with two opposing claimants to the sorcerous throne of the ancient city of Quarmall ("The Lords of Quarmall").
25888501	/m/09v49mm	The Swords of Lankhmar	Fritz Leiber	1968	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In The Swords of Lankhmar the duo is hired by the city of Lankhmar to protect its grain fleets, which have fallen prey to a mysterious threat. A sea serpent ridden by an explorer from another world is encountered, but the true foes prove to be legions of intelligent rats. Returning to Lankhmar, the protagonists find the whole city under siege by the rats. The Mouser, magically shrunken to rat size, spies out their plans, but the rats' victory appears certain until the intervention of the Gods of Lankhmar and the rats' own ancient enemies.
25888541	/m/09v7rrg	Swords and Ice Magic	Fritz Leiber	1977	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In Swords and Ice Magic the duo face a series of challenges from Death of greater or lesser subtlety ("The Sadness of the Executioner," "Beauty and the Beasts," "Trapped in the Shadowland" and "The Bait"), the pique of deities they formerly worshiped whose names they now rarely even take in vain ("Under the Thumbs of the Gods"), a voyage to the strange equatorial ocean of Nehwon ("Trapped in the Sea of Stars"), and recruitment to succor Nehwon's Iceland, the legendary Rime Isle, menaced by Sea Mingols and a pair of refugee gods ("The Frost Monstreme," "Rime Isle").
25888565	/m/09v53n4	The Knight and Knave of Swords	Fritz Leiber	1988	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In The Knight and Knave of Swords the duo has settled permanently on Rime Isle with their new wives, their bands of followers taking on the role of peaceful traders. The first two stories concentrate on this settling-in process, while the final two deal with various magical curses and afflictions suffered by the protagonists.
25898384	/m/0b6kcky	Crystal	Walter Dean Myers	1987		 Crystal Brown has always been told that she is beautiful. She lives with her mother, Mrs. Brown, who is also beautiful, and her loving, but strict father. They live in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Crystal is at first elated when she lands a modeling contract with a fashion agency, because she likes to model and can possibly be famous. As the novel continues, Crystal realizes that the modeling business is not all it is cut out to be. Her friendship with her best friend, Pat, is suffering, her grades are slipping, and on top of all of that, Crystal feels her self-respect is at risk. She especially feels this way when her photographer, Jerry Goodwin, wants her to pose nude. Crystal starts to feel that the modeling business is just all about how she looks and not who she is. Soon, Crystal realizes she wants to quit. Her agent, Loretta, however, insists Crystal star in a movie that will ultimately boost her fame. Crystal refuses and after doing that and the death of a fellow model named Rowena, but later on Rowena try to kill herself. She cut herself and end up lying in the hospital. but then she gave up to live, so she died in the hospital, that makes Crystal quits. The novel ends by a man coming up to Crystal, who is shopping with Pat, giving her his card, and saying, "...Edward Abruzzi, Photographer...I think you could get into modeling...”
25901656	/m/09s5xn2	The Windup Girl	Paolo Bacigalupi	2009-09	{"/m/03t3dt": "Biopunk", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Anderson Lake is an economic hitman and the AgriGen Representative in Thailand. He owns a kink-spring factory trying to mass produce a revolutionary new model that will store gigajoules of energy. The factory is a cover for his real mission: discovering the location of the Thai seedbank. He leaves the running of the factory to his Chinese manager, Hock Seng, a refugee from the Malaysian purge of the ethnic Chinese. A businessman in his former life, he is plotting to regain his former glory even as he lives from day to day. He waits patiently for an opportunity to steal the kink-spring designs kept in Anderson's safe, and embezzles copiously. Emiko is a Japanese-designed windup girl (a humanoid GM organism, used as a slave, and programmed to seek a master and obey him; windups call themselves "New People") abandoned by her Japanese master. As such, she is illegal in Thailand. Raleigh, a sex club owner, gives her some measure of safety by bribing the police to let her live, but at the price of forcing her to work in his club, where she is routinely abused and sexually humiliated. Among other genetic modifications, Emiko has a genetically altered pore structure, which makes her skin extremely smooth but prone to overheating—a life-threatening problem in the hot climate of Thailand. One of her customers tells her of the secret seedbank and a mysterious man named Gibbons. Anderson gleans this information from her and, in return, tells her about a refuge in the north of Thailand where people of Emiko's kind live together. This becomes fixated in her mind, and from then on she sets her mind on paying off Raleigh and escaping to this refuge. Anderson's factory is destroyed by a rogue megodont (a GM elephant used to run the power train). Also destroyed are algae baths, which are critical to the manufacturing process, and whose spares are costly and must be smuggled into Thailand via dirigible. Anderson orders Hock Seng to fix up the factory as soon as possible, threatening him with the loss of his job if he doesn't do so. Hock Seng's job is made difficult by the fact that he has failed to bribe the customs officials, as he had embezzled the bribe money. Knowing that his time has come, he makes a money-for-plans deal with the Dung Lord, a gangster. Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, an upright and courageous captain of the white shirts (the armed, enforcement wing of the Environment Ministry), intercepts the dirigible containing, among other things, Anderson's much needed spare tanks, and destroys the contraband. This raises the hackles of the white, foreign trading community in Thailand and they pressure Akkarat to make Jaidee back off. To 'persuade' Jaidee, known as the Tiger of Bangkok for his muay thai skills and courage, and an icon among the white shirts, they kidnap his wife. Jaidee submits and makes a public apology. False charges are made against him and he is condemned to monkhood for 9 years. Unknown to Jaidee, his wife has already been murdered. A triumphant Anderson and his main collaborator, Richard Carlyle, negotiate with Akkarat for access to the seedbank and lowering of the trade barriers. Akkarat refuses, saying there are limits to his greed. Jaidee, determined to track his wife's murderers, escapes from the monastery and infiltrates the Trade Ministry. He is caught, killed, and his mutilated body is deposited in front of the Environment Ministry. As the white shirts revere him as a hero, they declare him a martyr, and rise up against the Trade Ministry. General Pracha appoints Lieutenant Kanya, Jaidee's protégé, as the new Captain and unleashes a reign of terror on Bangkok. Meanwhile, Mai, a child labourer in Anderson's factory, has discovered that her fellow workers are falling to a new plague that had previously made the algae tanks malfunction. She reports this to Hock Seng, who arranges to have the bodies disposed of surreptitiously. As the white shirts take control of Bangkok, he steals all of Anderson's petty cash, takes Mai with him and tries to escape. Meanwhile, through a chance encounter Anderson saved Emiko's life, and becomes infatuated with her. Anderson discovers Hock Seng's flight and goes into hiding with Richard Carlyle. Kanya, who is Akkarat's mole, discovers the new plague and sets about trying to contain it. (We learn that years earlier Kanya had been rescued as a young girl by Akkarat when her own home village was destroyed in the course of containing a genehacked plague.) She reluctantly seeks help from Gibbons, who is revealed to be a renegade AgriGen scientist. Gibbons is a brilliant geneticist and the last hope for the Thai defense against the plagues. He easily identifies the new plague and gives clues to Kanya. Anderson and Carlyle meet with Akkarat and the Somdet Chaopraya, who is the regent to the young Thai Queen and the most powerful person in all of Thailand. Anderson offers to supply a new strain of GM rice and a private army to repel the white shirts in exchange for access to the seedbank and lowering of the trade barriers. He also introduces the Somdet Chaopraya to Emiko. When the Somdet Chaopraya's acts prove too humiliating, Emiko snaps and kills the Somdet Chaopraya, Raleigh and eight other men. Then she seeks refuge with Anderson. Because she has killed such a powerful man and all of his bodyguards, Akkarat assumes Emiko to be a military windup and accuses General Pracha of assassinating the Somdet Chaopraya. He also proceeds to arrest Anderson and Carlyle as suspects in the assassination conspiracy. Emiko escapes in the nick of time. Kanya traces the origin of one of the plague victims to a village near Bangkok, and from information she gets there is able to identify Anderson's kink-spring factory as a possible source. She sterilizes the village with lye. Hock Seng fails to steal the kink-spring designs, so he decides to capture Emiko for ransom. He takes Mai with him. Kanya is informed of the suspected assassination plot by her handler. Recognizing the harm the incident could cause, she visits the Japanese company that designed Emiko, learns of the true facts, and tries to explain it to Akkarat. But Akkarat has already decided to blame General Pracha for the assassination as a pretext for regime change and mobilizes his reserves to destroy Pracha and the white shirts. The capital is plunged into civil war. Anderson is released and discovers that he may have contracted the new plague. Hock Seng encounters Emiko in Anderson's apartment and holds her at gunpoint. Anderson and Carlyle arrive at the same time. They make a deal: Hock Seng would be patronized by AgriGen and Emiko would remain with Anderson. Eventually, Pracha and most of the top Environment Ministry men are killed. Akkarat, now all-powerful, appoints his spy Kanya as the chief of the Environment Ministry. He also opens up Thailand to the world, and grants AgriGen access to the seedbank. Kanya, who acts subdued at first, reneges and executes the AgriGen team in the seedbank. She then proceeds to move the seedbank to a safer place with the help of the monks. With the hidden arsenal in the seedbank, she orchestrates an uprising and coup d'état. She destroys the levees, flooding Bangkok. Bangkok's people and the capital relocate to the site of Ayutthaya, a previous Thai capital. There is now a new Tiger, a grim, unsmiling woman (Kanya), and it is implied that the Child Queen now reigns without a regent. Hock Seng is let free by Kanya to leave Bangkok with Mai to start a new life, although we never learn if they manage to escape the doomed city. Akkarat becomes a monk to atone for his failure of protecting the capital. The plague slowly kills Anderson as Emiko nurses him through the agony. She is alone in the flooded city when Gibbons arrives with his androgynous (kathoey or "ladyboy") companion. He promises Emiko that he will use her DNA to engineer a new race of fertile New People, thus fulfilling her dream of living with her own kind.
25903661	/m/0b6d81w	Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World	Timothy Brook			 Brook argues that globalization, which is often taken to be a modern (i.e. late-20th/21st-century) phenomenon, actually had its roots in the 17th century; and he states that it was his intention to surprise his readers with this information, that "people and goods and ideas were moving around the world in ways that their ancestors had no idea was possible." The growth in trade and exploration was facilitated in part by advances in navigation and in shipbuilding technology and also, according to the author, was driven along when European nations such as "England, the Netherlands and France started to fight their way into the trade." By studying and analyzing the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, beginning with his landscape View of Delft, and examining the scant documents detailing his life, the author builds up a picture of the world in which Vermeer lived; and from this he finds evidence of socioeconomic phenomena and globalization. In the case of the port in Delft in the Netherlands, for example, he finds evidence of the Dutch East India Company's operations. This is often said to be the world's first multinational corporation, which competing traders were forced to join; it had quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, negotiate treaties, coin money, and establish colonies, and played a powerful and prominent role in trade between the Dutch and Asia, including China. The painting entitled Officer and Laughing Girl, which is shown on the front cover of the book and to which the title alludes, speaks to Brook of the interest people had in the world, which is reflected in the maps of the world frequently seen on walls in paintings, showing a patriotic pride which went along with the emergence of the Netherlands from Spanish occupation, and the painting is also used to examine trade between Europe and North America. The huge felt hat itself, Brook says, is made of beaver under-fur and the origin of that would be via French traders operating in North America. This being before the discovery of the Northwest Passage, the French had been commissioned to find a route to China, and the beaver fur simply helped them "cover their costs." From here, the narrative goes on to talk of other commodities which were available in abundance and traded in the Americas, such as sugar, tobacco, copper, wood in the 18th century, slaves from Africa, and the metallic artefacts and guns which were given in exchange. In the painting Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, there is a large Chinese porcelain bowl in the foreground (standing on a Turkish carpet), and Brook uses this to introduce the subject of trade with China. Chinese porcelain was just becoming more widely available and featured in many paintings. The porcelain grew very popular in households in Vermeer's time as its price came down and it became affordable to less wealthy families. In sharp contrast to the necessary outward-looking gaze of countries in Europe, the stereotypical view of China was that it had "an adequate resource base for most of its needs, an advanced technology and was not having to look outside of itself for things that it needed." However, Brook maintains that the Chinese did venture out of their country to trade during lengthy periods when they were not prohibited from doing so (due to perceived threats to Chinese authority or to Chinese people), and that the Chinese simply wanted to control the terms of their trade. They did not want traders setting up colonies in their sovereign territory. According to Brook, the Chinese not going out exploring the world did put them at a technological and linguistic disadvantage as they had a very limited world view and lacked experience of the increasingly cosmopolitan world outside their borders. This wasn't so much of a problem in Vermeer's time but was to become more of an issue as Europe's imperial empires grew in the 18th century and 19th centuries. In the book, the author uses the metaphor of Indra's net: Writing in The Spectator, Sarah Burton explains that Brook uses this metaphor, and its interconnectedness, "to help understand the multiplicity of causes and effects producing the way we are and the way we were." She adds: "In the same way, the journeys through Brook's picture-portals intersect with each other, at the same time shedding light on each other.
25909448	/m/0b6jqt5	The Sound of Thunder	Wilbur A. Smith	1981		 Sean and his son Dirk finally leave the wilderness and discover that a war is brewing between the English and the Boers. He meets and falls in love with a woman called Ruth and they conceive a daughter during a thunderstorm. Ruth runs away to return to her husband who is a soldier in the Boer War. Later, Sean wins many victories in the war and befriends Saul, Ruth's husband. The commander of the Boers is none other than Sean's old brother-in-law, Jan Paulus Leroux. They fight but decide to leave each other alone. Saul is killed in battle and Sean, although feeling unnecessarily guilty, finds Ruth and marries her. Sean's daughter, named Storm, grows to be pretty and bright but Sean's first-born, Dirk has become evil with jealousy for his father's attention. The book ends with Sean's brother Garrick forgiving him and Dirk running away, promising to ruin the Courtneys. it:La voce del tuono
25911202	/m/0b6k5yw	Swords Against the Shadowland	Robin Wayne Bailey	1998	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In Swords Against the Shadowland the two return to Lankhmar, the city in which they met and in which their first loves, Ivrian and Vlanna, met their deaths. There, haunted by their lovers' ghosts, they combat a sorcerous plague cast on the city by the wizard Malygris.
25913197	/m/0b6nt5f	Let My Babies Go! A Passover Story		1998	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Let My Babies Go! features the Rugrats—Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, his twin sister Lil, and Angelica—as they are trapped in an attic with Tommy's grandfather Boris. Boris explains to them the story of Passover to pass the time; as he does so, the Rugrats imagine that they are the character's featured within the story. Tommy is portrayed as Moses, as he rebels against the Pharaoh of Egypt (Angelica). Through casting various plagues upon Egypt, Moses is able to free the Hebrews and they flee across the Red Sea.
25913453	/m/0b6mwgf	Bones of the Dragon	Margaret Weis	2009-01-06	{"/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 The book begins with the land of Vindrassi suffering from a great drought that has left the land parched and game scarce. Skylan Ivorson, the son of Norgaard, the Chief of the Torgun Tribe is leading a small hunting party to try to find some food. The group includes Skylan's best friend and confidant Garn, and the brothers Bjorn and Erdmun. Skylan is a young cocky man who takes his status very seriously, as well as his faith in the Gods of Vindrassi, especially the Chief of the Gods, Torval. Garn is almost the exact opposite of Skylan, thin, quick, thinks before he acts and is logical during struggles. As the two friends are preparing to return to their village empty handed, they run into a wild boar. After Garn distracts the boar, Skylan is able to kill it but not before suffering a huge gash in his thigh. With the help of the brothers, Bjorn and Edmund, the group of warriors are able to drag the dead boar back to their village, Luda. At Luda the hunting party is met by some other warriors and Skylan's pregnant stepmother, Sonja, who upon hearing about Skylan's injuries brought him some salve. The celebration of Skylan's successful hunt is short-lived, however, as news that three Ogre ships have arrived at the village harbor. Skylan is alarmed by this news and believes he may be the reason the ships are there. Months before the book started, Skylan led a hunting party on the dragonship Venjekar to try to raid other villages for supplies and treasures. During these raids the Venjekar ran into a party of Ogre ships, forcing them to retreat without any plunder back to Luda. Now it appears that the Ogres have followed the Venjekar and Skylan back home. Skylan, always eager for a fight, is ready to charge into the village to fight off the ogres, but level-headed Garn points out that he does not hear or see any signs of fighting; the ogres must be here to talk. Garn convinces Skylan to calmly lead the rest of the warriors back into the village and see first what the situation is with the Ogres. Skylan and Garn walk into the village's Chief's Hall where they find Skylan's father Norgaard, an Ogre Shaman, three Ogre Godlords, as well as Treia the Bone Priestess of the Torgun Clan and her sister, Aylaen. Skylan, still eager for a fight, demands to know why the Ogres have come to their village. The Ogre shaman calmly replies that the Gods of the Torgun Tribe are dead, killed by the Gods of Raj. Now the Ogres would like for the Torgun village to surrender their women and riches to them. Skylan of course did not believe the Ogres and demanded that Treia summon their gods to prove they were still alive. As a Bone Priestess Treia is the chosen female of the village who has the abilities to summon the dragon that protects the Torgun clan via the remains of the dragon's bones as well as speak to the gods. Throughout the whole meeting Treia has been silent and when Skylar brought forth this challenge, she stood up and simply stated that she will go to the Shrine of Vindrash, the Dragon Goddess, for advice and confirmation she is still alive. The Ogre Godlords agree to this with confidence, giving Treia one night for her gods to appear.
25917587	/m/0b6hqds	The Palace of Illusions: A Novel				 : Relevant to today’s war-torn world, The Palace of Illusions takes us back to the time of the Indian epic The Mahabharat—a time that is half-history, half-myth, and wholly magical. Through her narrator Panchaali, the wife of the legendary five Pandavas brothers, Divakaruni gives us a rare feminist interpretation of an epic story. : The novel traces Panchaali’s life, beginning with her magical birth in fire as the daughter of a king before following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been cheated out of their father’s kingdom. Panchaali is swept into their quest to reclaim their birthright, remaining at the brothers’ sides through years of exile and a terrible civil war. Meanwhile, we never lose sight of her stratagems to take over control of her household from her mother-in-law, her complicated friendship with the enigmatic Krishna, or her secret attraction to the mysterious man who is her husband’s most dangerous enemy. Panchaali is a fiery female voice in a world of warriors, gods, and ever-manipulating hands of fate.Love can touch the human heart at any moment of time it happens to some and all.Draupadi was even made of flesh and bones with a human heart which experienced this feeling for Arjuna. Mere a toy in the ruthless handS of fate she had to accept four husbands and perform her duties dutifully.A tale of vision,submission, patience,sacrifice,pleasure, sorrows and punishment,the novel is a journey of a woman...someway or other which is a journey of each and every woman of modern times.It is a reflection of feminine beauty, glory and strength.
25919030	/m/0b6j8mk	The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs	William Morris	1876		 The poem opens with the marriage of king Volsung's daughter Signy to Siggeir, king of the Goths. The bridal feast is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger, the god Odin in disguise, who drives a sword into a tree-trunk. Though everyone tries to draw the sword, Volsung's son Sigmund is the only man who can do it. The disappointed Siggeir takes his new wife home, inviting Volsung to visit him. When Volsung does so he is killed by Siggeir, and his sons are taken prisoner. While in captivity they are all killed by a wolf, apart from Sigmund who escapes into the forest. Signy sends Sigmund her two sons to help him in avenging their family, but Sigmund only accepts Sinfjotli, the hardier of the two. Sigmund and Sinfjotli kill Siggeir and burn down his hall, then return to their ancestral home, the hall of the Volsungs. Sigmund marries Borghild, while Sinfjotli goes abroad with Borghild's brother, quarrels with him, and kills him. On his return Sinfjotli is poisoned by Borghild, and she is turned out by Sigmund, who instead marries Hiordis. Sigmund is killed in battle, and the pregnant Hiordis is taken to live in the hall of King Elf in Denmark. There she gives birth to Sigurd. Sigurd is raised by Regin, a cunning old man, and when he grows to manhood he asks for a horse from king Elf. Elf bids him choose the one he likes best, and Sigurd takes the best horse, and names it Grani. Sigurd is now urged by Regin to attack Fafnir, a dragon who guards a hoard of gold. This treasure is a curse to all who possess it. Fafnir, Regin says, was originally a human being; indeed, the dragon was Regin's brother and thus the gold rightfully belongs to Regin. He tries and fails to forge an adequate sword for Sigurd, but Sigurd produces the shattered fragments of Odin's sword, which he has inherited from Sigmund, and from these fragments Regin forges a mighty sword, named "the Wrath" by Sigurd. Sigurd makes his way to Fafnir's lair, kills him, drinks his blood, and roasts and eats his heart. This gives him the power to understand the voices of birds and to read the hearts of men. He now understands that Regin intends to kill him, and so he kills Regin and takes Fafnir's treasure for himself. On his journey homeward Sigurd comes across an unearthly blaze on the slopes of Hindfell. He rides straight into it and comes unharmed to the heart of the fire, where he finds a beautiful sleeping woman clad in armour. He wakes her, and she tells him that she is Brynhild, a handmaiden of Odin whom he has left here as a punishment for disobedience. They pledge themselves to each other, Sigurd places a ring from Fafnir's hoard on her finger, and he leaves. The scene changes to the court of Giuki, the Niblung king. Giuki's daughter Gudrun has a dream in which she encounters a beautiful but ominous falcon and takes it to her breast. Anxious to learn the meaning of the dream she rides to visit Brynhild, who tells her that she will marry a king, but that her life will be darkened by war and death. Gudrun returns home. Sigurd revisits Brynhild and they again declare their love for each other. He then rides to the Niblung court, where he joins them in making war on the Southland, winning great glory for himself. The witch Grimhild, Gudrun's mother, gives Sigurd a potion that makes him fall in love with Gudrun. Completely under her spell, he marries her and sets out to win Brynhild for Gudrun's brother Gunnar. Visiting Brynhild again, this time magically disguised as Gunnar, and again penetrating the fire that surrounds her, he reminds her that she is promised to whoever can overcome the supernatural fire, and so deceives her into reluctantly vowing to marry Gunnar. Brynhild goes to the Niblung land and carries out her promise. She is distraught at this tragic outcome, and doubly so when Gudrun spitefully tells her of the trick by which Sigurd deceived her into an unwanted wedding. Brynhild now urges Gunnar and his brothers Hogni and Guttorm to kill Sigurd. Guttorm murders Sigurd as he lies in bed, but the dying Sigurd throws his sword and kills Guttorm as he leaves. Brynhild, filled with remorse, commits suicide so that she and Sigurd can be burned on a single funeral pyre. The widowed Gudrun now marries Brynhild's brother, king Atli, but as the years pass by her memories of Sigurd do not fade, and she longs for vengeance. She reminds Atli of Fafnir's hoard and urges him to win it for himself. Atli invites the surviving Niblung brothers to a feast, and when they arrive he threatens them with death if they do not give him the treasure. Gunnar and Hogni defy him to do his worst, and a battle breaks out in Atli's hall. The Niblung brothers are overwhelmed by superior force, tied up and killed. Atli holds a victory-feast, at the end of which he and all his court lie sleeping drunkenly in the hall. Gudrun, having lost everyone she loves, burns down the hall, kills Atli with a sword-thrust, and throws herself from a cliff to her death.
25919213	/m/0b6nb3q	Death by a Thousand Cuts	Timothy Brook	2008-03-15		 Death by a Thousand Cuts investigates the use of slow slicing or lingchi, a form of torture and capital punishment practised in mid- and late-Imperial China from the tenth century until its abolition in 1905. Lingchi involved repeatedly slicing the convict's flesh beyond the point of death. By the time of the final imperial dynasty, the punishment could be meted out for an offence as simple as striking a teacher. The authors argue that this was more than a physical punishment, as the victim was sedated with opium and killed early in the process, but about denying the victim "somatic integrity" and denying them any hope of a life after death which, the authors argue, caused them to feel shame.
25924335	/m/0b6d_mf	The Other Face of Janus	Louise Katz	2001	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Edwina Nearly finds life difficult to handle. She is happy when she enters the painting of The Garden of Earthly Delights and meets Janus. But everything goes wrong when Janus decides to visit her world and gets out of the painting. There he becomes a monster, and it is Edwina's responsibility to lure him back into the Garden.
25934360	/m/0b6h_p4	The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg	Rodman Philbrick	2009	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel is narrated by Homer Pierce Figg, an orphan from Maine. Homer is trying to find and take back his older brother Harold, who was sworn into the Union army by a ruse. Upon his quest, he meets slave catchers, a traveling medicine show, a hot air balloonist and others — until he finally gets himself to Gettysburg. Even through a hail of gunfire, he survives and finds Harold.
25936566	/m/0b6mdsz	The Other Hand	Chris Cleave	2008-08-07	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Using alternating first-person perspectives, the novel tells the stories of Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee, and Sarah O'Rourke (née Summers), a magazine editor from Surrey. After spending two years detained in a British immigration detention centre, Little Bee is illegally released after a fellow refugee performs sexual favours for a detention officer. She travels to the home of Sarah and her husband Andrew, whom she met two years previously on a beach in the Niger Delta. Sarah is initially unaware of Little Bee's presence, until Andrew, haunted by guilt of their shared past, commits suicide. Little Bee reveals herself to Sarah on the day of Andrew's funeral, and helps her to care for her four-year-old son Charlie. Through a mutual reflection on their past, it is revealed that Sarah and Andrew were on holiday at the time of their meeting with Little Bee. The trip was an attempt to salvage their marriage after Andrew discovered Sarah had been unfaithful to him, embarking on an affair with Home Office employee Lawrence Osborn. While walking on the beach one morning, they were approached by a then 14-year-old Little Bee, and her older sister Nkiruka. The girls were being pursued by soldiers who had burned down their village and intended for there to be no witnesses left alive. The soldiers arrived and murdered a guard from the O'Rourkes' hotel, but offered to spare the lives of the girls if Andrew would amputate his own middle finger with a machete. Afraid, and believing the soldiers would murder the girls anyway, Andrew refused, but Sarah complied in his place. The soldiers took both girls away, leaving the couple in doubt as to whether the soldiers would leave one girl alive in response, as they promised. Little Bee explains that although Nkiruka was gang raped, murdered, and cannibalised by the soldiers, she was allowed to escape, and stowed away in the cargo hold of a ship bound for England. Sarah allows Little Bee to stay with her, intent on helping her become a legal British citizen. Lawrence, who is still involved with Sarah, disapproves of her actions and contemplates turning Little Bee in to the police. When he informs Little Bee that he is considering this, she responds that allowing her to stay would be what is best for Sarah, so if Lawrence turns her in, Little Bee will get revenge by telling his wife Linda about his affair. The two reach an uneasy truce. After spending several days together, Sarah, Lawrence, Little Bee and Charlie take a trip to the park. Charlie goes missing, and Little Bee calls the police while Sarah searches for him. Although he is quickly found, the police become suspicious of Little Bee, and discover that she is in the country illegally. Little Bee is detained and quickly deported back to Nigeria, where she believes she will be killed. Lawrence uses his Home Office connections to track Little Bee's deportation details, and Sarah and Charlie are able to accompany her back home. Sarah believes that Little Bee will be safe as long as she is present, and together they begin collecting stories for a book Andrew had begun, and which Sarah intends to finish on his behalf, about the atrocities committed in the Nigerian oil conflict. During a trip to the same beach where they first encountered one another, soldiers arrive to take Little Bee away. Despite being captured, Little Bee is not dispirited, and instead is ultimately hopeful at the sight of Charlie playing happily with a group of Nigerian children.
25938098	/m/0b6h_pv	Greylands	Isobelle Carmody	1997-09-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jack and his sister Ellen are suffering in the aftermath of their mother's death, which has caused their father to withdraw into himself. There is some unsolved mystery which Jack tries to explore. To him, the mystery has something to do with the "greylands", a world on the other side of his mirror. Much of the action takes place in these greylands, where Jack meets a strange girl and discovers that his soul is at risk. The adventure is described from Jack's point of view, and within the context of the novel may be a true account of his experiences or a story he is inventing.
25940561	/m/0b6nr9t	The Power of Half	Kevin Salwen	2010-02		 The teen-age Hannah had a desire to do something to fix the world’s wrongs, and make a difference. To do that, she had to convince her family—her father Kevin (a magazine start-up founder and former Wall Street Journal journalist and editor), her mother Joan (a former management consultant partner at Accenture, who had turned to teaching English), and her younger brother Joseph. The book details why and how the Salwen family sold their home in 2006. The home was a luxurious, 6,500-square-foot (600-square-meter), 1912 historic dream-house in Ansley Park, in suburban Atlanta, Georgia. It had Corinthian columns, five bedrooms, eight fireplaces, four ornate bathrooms, and a private elevator to Hannah's bedroom. The family down-graded, by replacing their home with a house that was half as expensive, and less than half the size. The Salwens donated the other half of the proceeds of the sale of their original home ($850,000) to a charity. They chose The Hunger Project, a charity that works to lessen the hunger of 30,000 rural villagers in over 30 villages in Ghana, and help the villagers move from poverty to self-reliance. The book describes the egalitarian, one-person-one-vote, consensus-driven process that the parents and their two children used–over a period of time–to reach the decision to give away half the value of their home, and how they chose the charity from a number of non-profit organizations that they considered. Before they embarked on the project, though the family members dined together they were otherwise each busy with their own activities, and drifting apart. The New York Times Book Review described the book by saying it details how the family "became happier with less—and urges others to do likewise." Kevin Salwen admitted: "We know that selling a house is goofy, and we recognize that most people can't do it." Asked if he was suggesting that other people follow suit, he answered: "We never encourage anybody to sell their house. That was just the thing that we had more than enough of. For others it may be time, or lattes, or iTunes downloads, or clothes in their closet. But everyone has more than enough of something.” He also clarified: We want our kids to be idealistic, but we also say, ‘Let’s not go too nuts here'. We’re not Mother Teresa. We’re not taking a vow of poverty, or giving away half of everything we own. We gave away half of one thing, which happened to be our house. Everybody can give away half of one thing, and put it to use. You’ll do a little bit of good for the world–and amazing things for your relationships.
25946315	/m/0b6mn7f	The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China	Timothy Brook	1998-05-18		 The book is organized chronologically, with four sections named after seasons: Winter (1368–1450), Spring (1450–1550), Summer (1550–1644) and Fall (1642–1644).
25954388	/m/0b6hs6b	Bagthorpes Unlimited				 The book begins with a burglary at Unicorn House, the dwelling of the Bagthorpe family. This burglary causes Grandma to decide that she needs to have her family around her, so she organizes a family reunion. When their very talented, fastidious, and religious cousins come to visit, all the Bagthorpes go on quests to obtain immortality, hoping to best their talented relatives. Meanwhile, Daisy has the wrong idea about suitable presents for Grandma.
25966126	/m/0b6m5sn	The Big Book	Bill W.		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book consists of over 400 pages. Bill's Story and Dr. Bob's Nightmare and the personal experiences of some alcoholics are detailed as well as the series of solutions which evolved to become the twelve-step program. How to use the twelve steps is explained using examples and anecdotes. Some chapters target a specific audience. One chapter is devoted to agnostics, while another is named "To Wives" (the first AA members were only men), and still another is for employers. The second part of the book (whose content varies from edition to edition) is a collection of personal stories, in which alcoholics tell their stories of addiction and recovery. Frequently mentioned sections are: * the "Twelve Steps" at the beginning of Chapter 5 "How It Works" * the "Twelve Traditions" in the Appendix * the "Ninth Step Promises" in Chapter 6 "Into Action" preceding the 10th Step. The main goal of the book, according to many reports, is to make it possible for the reader to find a power greater than himself to solve his problem. The writers indicate that an alcoholic "of our type" can under no circumstances become a moderate drinker: only abstinence can lead to recovery. By way of anecdotal evidence, the example is provided of a man who, after 25 years sobriety, began to drink moderately and within two months landed in hospital. The reasoning is: once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. In the book it is written that it is impossible to quit drinking by oneself. A new attitude or set of values also would not help. Whosoever is an alcoholic must admit that they cannot help themselves alone. Only a "higher power" can help. An example of a man named Fred is given, who had no control over his drinking, but finally leads an "infinitely more satisfying life" than before thanks to the previously unexplained spiritual principles of AA. In the introduction to the Big Book, William Duncan Silkworth, M.D., a specialist in the treatment of alcoholism, endorses the AA program after treating Bill W, the founder of AA, and other apparently hopeless alcoholics who then regained their health by joining the AA fellowship. "For most cases," Silkworth claimed, "there is no other solution" than a spiritual solution. Today "many doctors and psychiatrists" confirm the effects of AA.
25973624	/m/0b6lm8n	Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China	Timothy Brook	1994-02		 Praying for Power is divided into three main sections: In Part 1, "The Culture of Buddhism", Brook reviews the development of religious philosophy and politics and the new familiarity with, and openness toward, Buddhism, in what was a Confusianism-dominated society. In Part 2, "Monastic Patronage'", the author investigates the contributions of the new elite class of gentry, made in the form of "land donations; money and materials for building and renovation; exercise of social and political influence to forward and protect monastic interests; and 'literary patronage,' the composition of admiring poems and essays or the compilation and printing of an institutional history to elevate the prestige of a given monastery." In Part 3, "Patronage in Context", the author examines in detail patronage by the gentry in three distinct counties: one poor, "where Buddhist institutions were not well developed"; a second rich, where they flourished; and a third "in peculiar circumstances that allow Brook to highlight the ambiguous position of the county magistrate vis-à-vis monastic patronage."
25977403	/m/0b6kl3f	Singing the Dogstar Blues	Alison Goodman	1998-08-28	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Joss gets partnered with an alien, Mavkel, who has somehow survived the usually fatal loss of his linked partner Kelmav. She gradually realises that she is expected to link with him, as she is the most open of all the students. They travel back in time to find out why and discover it was because the time-travelling Mavkel accidentally contaminated her as a pre-implantation embryo.
25977935	/m/0b6l4fm	The China Doll				 After the events described in Run, Spy, Run, Carter is recuperating at home in New York from another assignment (Operation Ice Pick), when he is assigned to be the personal bodyguard for Nikita Khrushchev during the Soviet Premier’s attendance at the opening session of the United Nations (dating the story to late September 1963). Carter foils two separate assassination attempts on Khrushchev. AXE and its Soviet counterpart (known here as SIN) believe the assassinations are linked to communist Chinese efforts to destabilize relations between the USSR and USA. Carter is sent to Japan to infiltrate a Chinese communist spy ring. He is assisted by a top Russian spy (Comrade Guren). They learn that a Chinese crime syndicate called CLAW, operating from the safety of the Forbidden City in Peking, is behind the destabilization plot. Their mission is to assassinate CLAW’s leader, known only as the Mandarin. Carter and Comrade (disguised as guardsmen of the Forbidden City named Lo Mei Teng and Hong Tu Lee, respectively) leave Japan by boat and arrive in China near Shanghai. They intend to walk to Peking. By chance en route they meet Yasunara (who is Chinese despite her apparently Japanese name), the chief concubine of the Mandarin. After saving her party from an airplane attack, they escort Yasunara by car back to the Forbidden City. Yasunara sees through the disguise and Carter and Comrade are drugged, captured and imprisoned by the Mandarin in an underground labyrinth beneath the Forbidden City. Carter and Comrade are to die by being eaten alive by huge turtles. Using a small concealed knife (Hugo Junior), Carter and Comrade escape, killing the Mandarin and feeding his body to the turtles. Yasunara is knocked out and taken hostage as Carter and Comrade wend their way through the underground maze to an exit near the river. The Mandarin’s second-in-command, Chou Chang, is lying in wait near the exit with armed guards. Prepared to die in the face of overwhelming odds Carter and Comrade make a final stand. Bluffing, they start to strangle Yasunara to trick Chou Chang into revealing his location in the dimly lit underground cavern. When Chou Chang reveals himself he is wounded by a thrown knife. In the confusion that follows, Carter uses a small poison gas bomb (cousin of Pierre) to overcome the remaining guards and escape. Yasunara stabs and kills Comrade but is herself choked to death by Comrade as he dies. Carter escapes the Forbidden City dons the clothing of a guard and makes his way down to the river, where he is rescued by Julia Baron (Carter's assistant in Run, Spy, Run) and two American agents in a waiting launch who take him to safety.
25981474	/m/0b6dwxp	Cockroach		2008		 A man that is an immigrant from the Middle East, moves to the slums of Montreal, where he learns that he is stuck in poverty. When he tries to take his own life, a "man in a speedo" saves him. He is then sentenced to therapy, where he explains his horrid childhood and how he believes that he is a cockroach. He is also in love with a girl, Shohreh, and is friends/enemies with a man named Reza. He gets a job at a Restaurant, and can't help but stare at his boss' daughter. He also steals from every rich man and poor woman. Throughout the book the man starts to slowly change, for better and worse.
25982344	/m/0b6hsd7	Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement	Timothy Brook			 Quelling the People investigates the conflict between the Chinese democracy movement in Beijing, China and the communist-ruled Chinese state's People's Liberation Army. The democracy movement began during the Beijing Spring in 1978 and the conflict culminated in a mass confrontation between the citizens of Beijing and the People's Liberation Army at Tiananmen Square in June 1989. The immediate conflict at Tiananmen Square was brought to an end by the People's Liberation Army which used force, causing the death of hundreds of the protesters. The massacre was followed by a "media silence" and the suppression of the democracy movement. In the book, which centres around a "detailed reconstruction of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 3 and 4, 1989," From the book's back cover "blurb". the author examines the confusion of, and mistakes made by, the Chinese authorities, as well as the role of the "Tank Man", the student who famously stood his ground in front of a column of four approaching army tanks.
25988676	/m/0b6gj3n	Isle of Fire				 Declan Ross, accepting the British offer of pardons to pirates who would turn from their illegal trade, is now attempting to convince other pirates to do the same. Meanwhile, rumors have arisen that Bartholomew Thorne, formerly thought to have been killed in a flood, is alive and plotting. Cat, who has been staying with a group of monks for a time, has been offered the task of commanding a ship full of fighting monks on a mission to hunt down the elusive Merchant. He accepts, and with Ross's permission, takes Anne on as quartermaster. While Ross combs the sea for news of Thorne, Cat and Anne discover the Merchant's underwater lair. Eventually they are separated from their comrades and, in the ensuing battle with the Merchant himself, Anne escapes the lair while Cat is captured. Anne is picked up by the Robert Bruce and Cat, trapped in a cell on the Merchant's ship, is faced with a choice: become the evil man's apprentice or die. The Merchant arranges a meeting with Thorne himself and offers to return Cat to his father for a price. Bartholomew, however, hatefully refuses. Meanwhile, Lady Dolphin, Commodore Blake, and their young friend Hopper sail to an island where Thorne was reportedly last seen. There the two adults are captured by the Raukar, Viking descendants who are under Thorne's leadership. Hopper is able to rescue Blake but Lady Dolphin remains prisoner. While in Bartholomew's captivity, he and she discover that Dolphin is Thorne's daughter, the child of Heather, the wife he lost in a fire. This news confounds the terrible pirate, who, while not fond of Dolphin, now can not seem stay away from her. With a Viking army Thorne sails to London and bombs it with a destructive and mysterious weapon of the Raukar: fire rain. With vengeful satisfaction Bartholomew wipes out and cripples the British Navy and watches the British city in burning confusion. He then sails off to personally destroy the monastery Cat formerly stayed at. Ross and Anne sail to defend the monastery as soon as they learn of Thorne's terrible work. There before the monks' home they confront Bartholomew in a sea battle, which further intensifies with the arrival of the Merchant's ship and a hurricane. In the ensuing fight, Cat boldly escapes the Merchant's ship, that same vessel is sunk soon sunk, Hopper and some of Ross's crewmen rescue Dolphin, and several Raukar ships are destroyed in the hurricane. In a final confrontation on the Ross's ship, Declan, Cat and Stede together kill Thorne. The battered Robert Bruce and its crew ride out the rest of the hurricane in its eye, and then return in triumph to the monastery. As the story ends, London is struggling to recover and rebuild itself and Cat comes to Declan with A question.
25992211	/m/0b6lhh3	High Profile	Robert B. Parker	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the discovery of a body hanging from a tree in the park. It doesn’t take long to figure out that this is no suicide, as the person had been shot several times before the hanging. After a little investigation the body is discovered to be that of libertarian national talk radio and television personality Walter Weeks. Weeks was an influential man, and personal friend to the governor of Massachusetts, so when the media finds out, Jesse Stone finds himself hounded by the governor, the media, and leading a very high profile case. Stone begins his investigation by interviewing Weeks’s ex-wives, manager, widow Laurie Weeks, and bodyguard Conrad Lutz. Before long another twist is added to the crime when the body of Weeks’s pregnant mistress turns up in the dumpster of a local restaurant. The medical examination soon discovers that this second victim was shot by the same gun, probably around the same time. As part of his investigation, Stone has Suitcase Simpson check to see if Weeks has any criminal convictions. The only one that turns up is an incident in Baltimore in 1987 where Weeks is found having sex in his car with a young woman. This seems unimportant at first, until Jesse discovers that the arresting officer was Weeks’s bodyguard, Lutz. When questioned, Lutz confirms that he had busted Weeks while working as a Baltimore police officer, but that later he and Weeks struck up a friendship which ended in Lutz becoming his bodyguard. The plot thickens when further investigation determines that Laurie Weeks was formerly Lutz's wife. He also learns that Weeks had planned on divorcing Laurie and leaving his fortune to his new mistress and unborn child. After discovering this, Chief Stone and Suitcase Simpson head up to New York to stake out the widow’s apartment. While there they see Lutz visiting her apartment during the day. They also witness Weeks’s research assistant Alan Hendricks spending the night. This is interesting to Jesse because Alan was a frequent guest host, and the one writing most of the show's material by the end of Weeks’s life. With Hendricks the heir apparent to Weeks’s media empire and expected to continue Weeks’s shows, it now appears to Jesse that Laurie is trying to secure herself a new sugar daddy. With the assistance of an NYPD officer, Chief Stone interrogates Laurie in her apartment and records the interview. She confirms that she was once married to Lutz. Stone asks her if Lutz could have held onto resentment concerning this and led him to kill Weeks. She seems to ponder it and then confesses that she believes Lutz could be the killer. Back in Paradise, Jesse confronts Lutz with the tape of his ex-wife’s accusation and Lutz leaves the station without a word. Lutz confesses everything over a glass of Jack Daniels to Jesse that evening in his apartment. He tells Jesse how after he busted Weeks, his wife convinced him to blackmail Weeks into giving him a job as his body guard. Later Weeks, a serial womanizer, took a liking to Laurie. Once again, Laurie convinced Lutz it would be for the best if they divorced and she married Weeks. Once she got his money, they could get back together and be rich. However, when she found out that he was going to divorce her and leave her with nothing she convinced Lutz to kill him. So Lutz took Weeks and his mistress for a walk through of their new home on Stiles Island, near Paradise. While there he shoots and kills them both on the beach. He then drags the bodies to the house and stores them in the refrigerator for several days. Finally he hangs Weeks on the tree in the park, and dumps the mistress in the restaurant dumpster. He does this to confuse the police and also to mess up their calculation of the time of death. He was counting on a dumb small town sheriff not knowing what to do, but he got Jesse Stone. He then tells Jesse he is going to leave and will shoot Jesse if he tries to stop him. He pulls his gun on Jesse and Jesse shoots him dead, essentially committing suicide by cop. It was Jesse’s revelation that Laurie was now sleeping with Alan Hendricks and her taped accusation that leads him to do this.
25993310	/m/0b6h6vf	The American Senator	Anthony Trollope		{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 The novel is largely set in and near the town of Dillsborough, in the fictional Rufford County. The two principal subplots center on the courtship behavior of two young women. The heroine, Mary Masters, is the daughter of an attorney, and has been raised as a gentlewoman. Her stepmother is from a lower social order; believing it best for Mary, she pressures her strongly to accept a proposal from Lawrence Twentyman, a prosperous young yeoman farmer with aspirations to gentility. While Mary respects Twentyman for his excellent qualities, she feels that she cannot love him as a wife should a husband. She admires Reginald Morton, whose cousin is the squire of Bragton and thus one of the two major landowners of Rufford County. Reginald admires Mary as well; but for most of the novel, each is ignorant of the other's feelings: Mary, as a gentlewoman, cannot take the initiative in such a matter; and Reginald, misinformed that Mary loves another, is unwilling to make an offer and have it rejected. The anti-heroine of the novel is Arabella Trefoil. Her father is cousin to the Duke of Mayfair; her mother was a banker's daughter. Her parents are unofficially separated, and living in straitened circumstances. Arabella and her mother, Lady Augustus Trefoil, have no fixed abode; they wander from place to place, visiting people who cannot refuse them without creating social awkwardness. At Lady Augustus's direction, Arabella has spent many years struggling to secure a rich husband who will give her and her mother high social standing, an assured income, and a house of their own. She has lately become provisionally engaged to John Morton, the squire of Bragton and a rising figure in the Foreign Office. He would be an adequate but not outstanding husband by her standards; and when the opportunity presents itself, she attempts to entrap the wealthy and titled young Lord Rufford, concealing these attempts from Morton so that she can accept his proposal should they fail. John Morton falls ill and dies. Arabella, who is not altogether wicked, visits him at his deathbed despite the fact that this will assist Lord Rufford in escaping her toils. After Morton's death, she accepts an offer of marriage from Mounser Green, a Foreign Office clerk who is taking Morton's place as ambassador-designate to Patagonia. Like Morton, Green is not a brilliant match for her, but an acceptable one. John Morton's death makes Reginald Morton the squire of Bragton; at this point, when Mary Masters fears that he has moved too far above her in status, he confesses his love to her. A proposal ensues and is eagerly accepted. The American senator of the title is Elias Gotobed, who sits in the U.S. Senate for the fictional state of Mikewa. The guest of John Morton, Senator Gotobed is trying to learn about England and the English. Through his often-tactless remarks in conversation, through his letters to a friend in America, and through a lecture in London titled "The Irrationality of Englishmen", he comments on British justice and government, the Church of England, the custom of primogeniture, and other aspects of English life.
25995519	/m/0b6lvz7	The Chinese State in Ming Society	Timothy Brook	2004-12-17		 The Chinese State in Ming Society is set in the Ming Dynasty, an era in which there was much "commercial expansion and cultural innovation". The book is an "account of events and issues that engaged the members of local elites in Ming society and of the interface between these elites and the state," and the impact of the state on ordinary people in areas such as education, justice, the military and taxation. The book consists of a reworking of eight "heavily illustrated" essays which Brook has written and published separately over the years, and is divided into four main sections (parts I to IV) with two of these essays to each part of the book. The parts are named "Space", "Fields", "Books" and "Monasteries", each of which "represent important areas of intersection between the Ming state and society." Brook argues that the model of despotic government fails to account for the complex interactions between individuals, groups, communities, society and state in this period. Instead he proposes that by 1500 the Chinese had a remarkably developed system of governance, surpassing that of the European monarchs of the time, and that the developments were not the result of the isolated actions of the state, but rather of a complex interface and interaction, including local representatives of the state such as magistrates and local networks of the elite class of gentry. According to Ellen Soulliere in her review, Brook argues that "society had the [enduring] ability to constrain, limit and sometimes redirect the authority of the state, without challenging its most basic claim to be the source of all legitimate authority."
25996850	/m/0b6nbnt	Tancred	Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield			 Tancred, Lord Montacute, the novel's idealistic young hero, seems destined to live the life of any conventional member of the British ruling class. Dissatisfied with his life in fashionable London circles, he instead leaves his parents and retraces the steps of his Crusader ancestors to the Holy Land, hoping there to "penetrate the great Asian mystery" and understand the roots of Christianity. He meets the beautiful Eva, daughter of a Jewish financier, and becomes involved in the political machinations of her foster-brother, the brilliant Fakredeen, a Lebanese emir. At Fakredeen's instigation Tancred is kidnapped and held captive, but is nevertheless allowed to visit Mount Sinai. Here he has a vision of an angel who tells him he must be the prophet of "the sublime and solacing doctrine of theocratic equality", a concept which Disraeli leaves somewhat hazy. Tancred falls ill, and is released at the instigation of Eva, who nurses him back to health. She teaches him about the glories of Mediterranean civilization and the debt that Christianity owes to Judaism. Tancred, in love with Eva and utterly convinced that she is right, proposes marriage, but the romance is broken off when his parents appear to reclaim their son and take him back to England.
25998113	/m/0b6hv66	Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China	Timothy Brook			 Following the attack on the Chinese city of Shanghai by the Japanese forces in August 1937, just before the outbreak of World War II, and during the subsequent occupation of the Yangtze River Delta in China by Japan, despite the violence of the assault, many of the Chinese elite came forward to collaborate with the occupying forces, mirroring collaboration with the Nazis in the occupied countries of Europe. Brook analyzes both Chinese and Japanese archives in order to build up a picture of the collaboration, which extended from Shanghi to Nanjing. He argues that "collaboration proved to be politically unstable and morally awkward for both sides, provoking tensions that undercut the authority of the occupation state and undermined Japan's long-term prospects for occupying China."
26008169	/m/0b6g_4d	The Lost Fleet: Victorious	John G. Hemry	2010-04-27	{"/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Having returned his fleet to Alliance space, Jack "Black Jack" Geary is brought before the Alliance senate, and is nearly arrested as it is assumed that he is returning as a conquering hero, planning to usurp control of the Alliance as a dictator. Rather than, Capt. Geary briefs the Alliance Senate on the entire journey of the fleet, as well as the alien race that was strongly implied to exist, including the fact that the aliens have established system killing devices, in the form of every hypernet gate in existence, in Alliance and Syndic territory. A captured Syndic CEO, commanding the Syndic reserve flotilla, confirms the existence of the alien race, and that they've been responsible for the total destruction of every human they've encountered, and have begun to encroach aggressively into Syndic territory. Faced with two possible wars, the Senate elects to finally finish the Syndic war, using sword point diplomacy if necessary. Geary is promoted to Admiral of the Fleet, and charged to attack the Syndic homeworld and force a cease fire. After fighting back to the Syndic system where he began his journey, he nearly stumbles into an ambush. The Syndic Executive Council, planning to use the Syndic homeworld hypernet gate to destroy Geary's fleet, and with it, nearly sixty billion Syndic citizens, is instead deposed, and after destroying a large portion of the Syndic Home Fleet, a cease fire is drawn up. Immediately afterward, a Syndic system bordering the area of space occupied by the aliens claims an evacuation ultimatum has been issued by the aliens. The aliens are dubbed the Enigma race because despite a century of contact, not a single thing is known about the alien race: ships, resources, or the aliens themselves. Geary, realizing that the aliens taking the system would effectively condemn half of the system population to probable death, as well as allow the aliens control of an important strategic location, elects to intervene. Arriving in system, the alien armada arrives, apparently outnumbering Black Jack's fleet by 3 to 1. After realizing that the aliens had used extensive computer manipulation on the Alliance, Geary orders another computer scrub, finding that the Fleet actually outnumbers the aliens 2 to 1. Engaging them in combat after a total failure of diplomacy results in the near total destruction of the alien fleet, who scuttle every wounded ship before fleeing, leaving no possible evidence of the Enigma race. Returning to Alliance space, Admiral Geary abdicates his Admiralty, awards himself a month of leave, and races after Captain Desjani, who was returning home, unwilling to explore a relationship with Geary. After catching her, he quickly proposes to be married, citing that it was the only option to allow them to remain together. Desjani accepts, and the two plan their wedding aboard the civilian transport Desjani conveniently booked for two, and to honeymoon on her homeworld.
26008710	/m/0b6lhl_	The Calligrapher	Ed Docx	2003		 Narrated by Jasper Jackson, an accomplished calligrapher and serial seducer living off Warwick Avenue, London; it tells how his seemingly perfect life unravels when his most recent infidelity is discovered and his girlfriend Lucy leaves him. Jasper though is soon captivated by a new neighbour, Madeleine whilst he is commissioned to transcribe the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne for a wealthy American businessman. The book describes his growing love and commitment to Madeleine, illuminated by observations from the sonnets he is transcribing. But will his relationship with Madeleine last?
26009537	/m/0b6dsmc	Bite Me: A Love Story	Christopher Moore		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}	 Following immediately after You Suck, Bite Me follows Abby Normal as a wave of vampirism strikes San Francisco and she tries to protect her friends, including Jody and Tommy, from the investigations of the police and the vengeance of the vampire who originally turned Jody.
26010083	/m/0b6hv89	There Will Be Time	Poul Anderson	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jack Havig, born in the American midwest in 1933, has a genetic mutation that allows him to travel effortlessly through time. He learns that an apocalypse will arrive around the turn of the 21st century, due to over-pollution and nuclear warfare. Farther still in the future, a New Zealand/Micronesian culture known as "the Maurai Federation" will come to dominate the world and impose their vision of a less industrialized, more ecologically balanced world. Jack reasons that there must be other people with the same ability to travel through time; to find them, he visits Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion, walking through the street singing the Greek mass. He is identified by agents of a time-traveling organization, the "Eyrie," who take him to their headquarters in the far future. At first Jack joins their group, but eventually he rebels against the group's leader, a 19th-century racist whose goal is to stop the Maurai ascendancy. To defeat him, Jack must return to the 20th century, where he locates an independent group of time-travelers, eventually returning to the future to overthrow the Eyrie. Much of the story takes place in times past, including an interlude in the Byzantine empire, where Jack saves the life of a Byzantine girl during the carnage of the Fourth Crusade and falls in love with her.
26012555	/m/0b6n3cq	Curse of the Spider King				 Elves ruled over the land of Allyra for hundreds of years until, in a great battle, the capitol, Berinfell, was overtaken by an army of Drefids, Gwar, Warspiders, and Wisps under the command of the Spider King. Now as he rules the land, the remnant of the elven race lives, hidden, in a network of subterranean passages called the Underground. In that battle, the seven heirs to the thrones of Berinfell were captured as babies and taken to the realm of the humans, known as Earth. Disguised among the millions of people on Earth, these Elf Lords have no clue of their identity until, around their thirteenth birthdays, some strange events start happening. Some are stalked by mysterious, creepy strangers, and others receive odd books from teachers, librarians, or bookstore owners. Eventually, the people, who had given the Elves the books, reveal to the Seven Lords their true identity, and the fact that they are being hunted by villainous creatures. These assassins, once held back by an old curse, are now free to kill the Seven. This they intend to do in order to keep the teenagers from returning to Allyra and rallying the Elves against their oppressor, the Spider King. Autumn and Johnny are attacked in their house by a pack of Drefids, Jett and his family are assaulted by Cragons, and a Wisp of Jimmy's neighbor comes to the boy's school and attempts to quietly kill Miss Finney. Kat and Anna are pursued in a vicious car chase by Drefids, and Kiri Lee is later almost assassinated by Wisps of her parents in her own home. Tommy, Mrs. Galdarro and Mr. Charlie are forced to fight off another group of Drefids in an abandoned asylum while attempting to find a portal to Allyra. In the final scene, all the Elven Lords and their escorts (except Autumn, Johnny, and Nelly) have assembled for a concert in Scotland before entering the nearby portal. In the middle of the performance, attended by humans and disguised elves alike, a massive army of Gwar, Drefids, Cragons, and Wisps attack. In the midst of the chaos, Johnny, Autumn and Nelly arrive. They join the desperate rush of fighting elves attempting to reach the portal. When they arrive, it is rapidly shrinking. Unbeknownst to everyone else, at the rear of the group Mr. Wallace is killed and replaced by a Wisp. As the final few elves are diving into the portal, the Wisp kills Mr. Charlie and enters Allyra just before the doorway is completely closed. Once in the elven world, the returning group of warriors are met by Grimwarden and a team of elves, who assist the Lords and their guardians into the Underground. Mr. Wallace's Wisp accompanies them, a spy among their number.
26013918	/m/06l3zlb	Secret Book Club	Ann M. Martin			 It's summer time in Camden Falls and Flora, Ruby, Olivia and Nikki are planning what to do. But Flora, Ruby, Olivia, and Nikki don't understand it. An element of mystery is instantly added when someone - they don't know who - is leaving books on their doorstep. Each comes with a mysterious message, asking them to read the book and do something new. Before they know it, the four friends have a secret girls-only book club - and are finding out new things about themselves and one another. There are some very interesting ties between the books they're reading and the things they're facing over the summer. The girls don't need to read Nancy Drew to track down the answer, because Flora and Ruby's legal guardian and grandmother tell them and Olivia and Nikki when she and the literary benefactor think it's time to. The girls find it annoying that their parents know who the 'mystery book sender' is, but won't tell them. But they have a wonderful time reading some pleasingly wonderful books like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, etc. So Min, the girls, and the book sender travel to Sands Point as a reward.
26019085	/m/0b6g_52	Bedlam	Ally Kennen	2009-01-05	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 When Lexi Juby arrives in the boring village where her mother lives, she thinks that she will die there from boredom. But soon more happens than she'd like. While searching for her mother's missing dog, the 16-year-old got lost in the wood. Suddenly a huge wild dog with foaming at the mouth was standing in front of her, the purest tremendously! And it bites her. Despair, Lexi runs away, and reaches a half-ruined, weird building. She breaks through the rotten floor and lands in a fetid broth. Beside of her, a rat cadaver was floating. The young exhausted girl won't be able to survive in the ice cold water very long... *Unfinished Plot
26019242	/m/0b6h31p	Sparks	Ally Kennen	2010-04-04		 When Carla's Grandfather dies, she's very sad. But then, she finds a secret letter by her Grandpa and decides to give him the end he had always wanted, a Viking-funeral, in which he would be put on a burning boat heading to the sea. Carla and her siblings start a crazy and dangerous race against the time to do the impossible.
26024104	/m/0b6ky2n	Choritrohin				 The novel is set in Bengali society of the early 1900s. The story has four main women characters–two major, Savitri and Kiranmayi, and two minor, Surbala and Sarojini. The former two are accused of being charitraheen (characterless). It is most interesting that all four characters are totally different. Savitri is born a Brahmin, but poverty has forced her to become a servant, doing tasks appropriate only for a 'lower caste'. She is, and remains, pure of character, and devoted to the man she loves–Satish. Surbala is Upendranath's wife. She is young, pure in character and pious to the point of blind faith in religious texts. Sarojini is educated in the Western style, and is forward-thinking, but hampered by familial circumstances and a forceful mother. She marries Satish in the end. Finally, Kiranmayi is the most striking character of the novel. Young and extremely beautiful, she is also very intelligent and argumentative. Her emotions and desires have, however, always been repressed by a husband more intent on teaching her than on conjugal matters, and by a nagging mother-in-law. She surprises and impresses all the three main men in the novel–Satish, Upendra and Diwakar–but her life is ultimately reduced to shambles by these unthinking men. The three men play very important roles in the lives of the four women, but most of the time, their actions are detrimental to the women. They are orthodox, unthinking, and not in control of their emotions. Satish brings about Savitri's downfall and acts strangely with Sarojini till the end, when he brings about a final reunion of sorts on Upendra's deathbed. Upendra helps Kiranmayi initially, but thinks the worst of her relationship with Diwakar, and actually causes Kiranmayi's compulsive elopement with Diwakar. Diwakar is weak-kneed and immature. An orphan, he is delighted by Kiranmayi treating him as her brother, and eventually shirks education. He acts totally irresponsibly after his elopement with Kiranmayi. There is a redemption of all the women in the end, Savitri being considered a devi, Kiranmayi's compulsions understood somewhat and her ill-treatment regretted implicitly, Sarojini getting to marry Satish, and Surbala dying a natural death. But one feels that this redemption has come too late. Wrong done to the women cannot be righted just like that, even if the women themselves feel so. The depiction of orthodox Hindu society in conflict with Western thoughts brought in by British rule is good.
26024315	/m/0b6kthz	Wonders of a Godless World	Andrew McGahan	2009-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 "Set on an unnamed island in the near present, it is told from the perspective of a simple young woman, an orphan, mute, reared in a mental hospital and an orderly there, who forms a bond with a mysterious coma patient, a man with telepathic powers who claims to be immortal..." Throughout the book the reader can never be sure that the mute orphan narrator is a reliable narrator. The possibility that her telepathic bond with the patient is in fact a figment of her imagination is always left open. So rather than science fiction, the book could instead be read as an insight into delusion.
26027402	/m/0b6kpyv	Emperor Shaka the Great		1979		 The epic follows the life narrative of Shaka the Great and is narrated from a third person perspective. The book begins with the apparently legitimate love affair of Nandi with Shaka's father Senzangakhona. However, Senzangakhona mistreats Nandi, and drives her from the Zulu kingdom. She flees the kingdom and spends many years travelling amongst kingdoms friendly to her own tribe. While abroad she gives birth to Shaka and raises him. They finally settle in the kingdom where Shaka grows, quickly showing himself as having a sharp mind and military prowess. He quickly gains command of his own regiment, which he retrains in a new fighting system. Instead of fighting with throwing spears from afar, which was the traditional method of warfare, Shaka suggested that a large shield and a short stabbing spear should be used. His strategy relies on a quick approach to the enemy under the shield so that they could stab the enemy before the enemy could throw many spears. He earns a reputation as both a fighter and warrior. When Senzangakhona dies, Shaka, with pardon of the King whose kingdom he has lived in, leads a military force into Zululand. Soldiers and the populace flock to this great warrior and Shaka ascends to the throne usurping his more legitimate brothers. With his ascension to the throne Shaka radically reorganizes the military system. With this new organization and the tactics he perfected with the short spear, Shaka begins expanding into neighbouring regions, suppressing Kings and bandit armies and assimilating these peoples into the Zulu nation. Soon, the first white people come in contact with the Zulu's led by a man named King. Though Shaka does not totally trust these people, he allows them to settle in a small part of his land so that he can learn about their ways. He also sends an Uncle as a mission to King George of England. Meanwhile Shaka's mother, Nandi, dies and Shaka declares a national year of mourning. As the nation mourns, the economy begins to fall apart. Finally Shaka is persuaded to allow everyone to replant the fields and have children. Gradually, Shaka's brothers and Aunts become frustrated with his rule and plot to overthrow him. One of Shaka's most trusted advisers agrees to help them, and they kill Shaka while he is holding court.
26030103	/m/0cm9kly	Secret Army	Robert Muchamore		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Back in England, CHERUB campus has been established and Marc, PT, Paul and Rosie are in the first of two teams of six recruits currently being trained. Luc and Joel two new characters and the other two members of Group A. However, Henderson is warned that unless the first group of recruits pass a difficult training course, the programme will be shut down for good. While Group A learn to parachute and undertake a mission on British soil, Henderson must win the support of his commanding officers, while placating his unstable wife Joan.
26030216	/m/0b6j22d	Henderson's Boys: The Escape	Robert Muchamore		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Big textBig textBig textBig text In France, 1940, Hitler's Nazi armies are invading and forcing civilians to flee. Meanwhile, German agents are tracking two British children, Paul and Rosie Clarke. Charles Henderson, a British spy, finds himself trying to reach them before the Germans can. However, he finds himself enlisting the help of Marc Kilgour, a French orphan, in order to save the pair. He soon realises that children will be essential recruits if the British are to win the war. Meanwhile, Paul and Rosie find a six-year old called Hugo, who is later accidentally killed
26035816	/m/0b6l10l	Finnikin of the Rock	Melina Marchetta	2008-09-29	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It was the best of times. The kingdom was safe, wealth was abundant, and the people were happy. At the age of nine, Finnikin sees this all torn away. The royal family is murdered. The forest people are slaughtered. Finnikin's father is thrown into jail on accounts of treason, while his beloved wife is executed. Angered by the carnage, Seranonna of the Forest People proclaims a dark curse, trapping the people of Lumatere inside. All that remains are a pair of bloody little handprints on the kingdom's door, presumably those of Bathalzar, the lost prince. Ten years pass... Finnikin of the Rock and his guardian, Sir Topher, have not been home to their beloved Lumatere for ten years. Not since the dark days when the royal family was murdered and the kingdom put under a terrible curse. But then Finnikin is summoned to meet Evanjalin, a young woman with an incredible claim: the heir to the throne of Lumatere, Prince Balthazar, is alive. Evanjalin is determined to return home and she is the only one who can lead them to the heir. As they journey together, Finnikin is affected by her arrogance...and her hope. He begins to believe he will see his childhood friend, Prince Balthazar, again. And that their cursed people will be able to enter Lumatere and be reunited with those trapped inside. He even believes he will find his imprisoned father. But Evanjalin is not what she seems. And the truth will test not only Finnikan's faith in her... but also in himself.
26038254	/m/0ds1212	The Joys of Motherhood	Buchi Emecheta	1979		 Nwokocha Agbadi is a proud, handsome and wealthy local chief. Although he has many wives he finds a woman named Ona more attractive. Ona (a priceless jewel) is the name he has given her. Ona is the daughter of a chief. When she was young, her father took her everywhere he went, saying she was his ornament, and Nwokocha Agbadi would say jokingly, "Why don't you wear her aroung your neck like an Ona?" (a priceless jewel). It never occurred to him that he would be one of the men to ask her when she grew up. During one rainy season chief Agbadi and his friends have gone elephant hunting and having come too near the heavy creature he is thrown with a mighty tusk into a nearby sugar-cane bush and is pinned to the floor. He aims his spear at the belly of the mighty animal and kills it but not until it has wounded him badly. Agbadi passes out and it seems to all he has died. He wakes up after several days to find Ona beside him. During this period, he has sex with her, and after eighteen days he finds out that his eldest wife Agunwa was very ill and died later. It is thought that perhaps she became ill as a result of seeing her husband pass out. The funeral festivities continue through the day. When it is time to put Agunwa in her grave, everything she will need in afterlife having been placed in her coffin, her personal slave is called. According to custom, a good slave is supposed to jump into the grave willingly to accompany her mistress but this young and beautiful slave begs for her life, much to the annoyance of the men. The hapless slave is pushed into the shallow grave but struggles out, appealing to her owner Agbadi, whose eldest son cries angrily: “So my mother does not deserve a decent burial?” So saying, he gives her a sharp blow with the head of the cutlass. Another relative gives her a final blow to the head and she falls into the grave, silenced forever. The burial is completed. Ona becomes pregnant and delivers a girl child, named Nnu Ego (20 bags of cowries). The baby is born with a mark on her head resembling that made by the cutlass used on the head of the slave woman. Ona gives birth to another son but she dies in premature labour and her son also dies a week afterwards. Nnu Ego becomes a woman but is barren. After several months with no sign of fruitfulness, she consults several herbalists and is told that the slave woman who is her Chi (goddess) will not give her a child. Her husband Amatokwu takes another wife who before long conceives. Nnu Ego returns her father’s house. She is married to new husband whom she does not like but prays that if she can have a child with him, she will love him. She does give birth to a baby boy, whom she later finds dead. Shocked, she is on the verge of jumping into the river when a villager draws her back and comforts her. She subsequently gives birth to four children. Her husband, a laundryman for a white man, is drafted into the army during wartime, but on her own Nnu Ego ensures all her children have a good life, sending two abroad to study. After she dies a lonely death, her children all come home and are sorry they were in a position to give her a better life. She is given the greatest burial in their town. When all her children are unable to have offspring the Oracle reveals that this is because Nnu Ego is angry with them. Stories say that she is a wicked woman even in death. Still, they agree that she has given all to her children and that this is the joy of being a mother.
26039921	/m/0b6m66m	Big Girl	Danielle Steel	2010-02-23	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Big Girl starts out with a couple, Jim and Christine, who get married at an early age. From the beginning, their morals are dubious. Jim really wants them to have a baby boy- Christine also wants a boy, but only because her husband does. They try but end up having a girl . Born to a narcisistic father who is obsessed with looks and money, and a food- and- fitness obsessed house- wife who plays Bridge, and who seems to exist to agree with her husband, both parents are disappointed in their baby girl from the moment she is born. They name her Victoria, for Queen Victoria- not because, as Victoria believed as a child, she was a Queen in her fathers eyes, but because the picture Victoria saw of her namesake depicted a 'fat and ugly old woman, who resembled one of the dogs she posed with.' As she grows older, Victoria resembles not her dark eyed, dark haired parents, but is referred to as a 'genetic throwback' to Jims great- grandmother, known for her overweight, matronly figure, fair looks and 'large nose'. Constantly bullied by her parents about her weight, everything changes for Victoria at seven years old when her mother has another baby- another girl they name Grace, whom Victoria calls 'Gracie'. Despite the obvious favouritism and constant remarks of praise and adoration her younger sister receives, Victoria shows no jealousy and is obsessed with doing everything for her sister the moment she is born. As the girls grow up and Victoria and Gracie get older, their love for each other is stronger than ever, despite the constant remarks their parents make about Victoria's weight, her chosen career as a teacher and lack of a husband or boyfriend. Victoria moves to New York and gets a job at a prestigious school, though her parents still criticize her. There she gains few friends, but they are good friends, and she tries a few tentivite relationsships, all of which fail and which she blames on her being 'too fat, too clever and unloveable', parrotting her parents' beliefs. She sees a psychiatrist, and works through some of her problems but always returns to eating when upset. When Victoria finds out her sister, who is barely as old as her parents were when they married, is engaged to a rich, controlling fiance, Victoria begins to worry her younger sister will turn into her parents... Again a girl. Big Girl is a book explaining the life of Victoria and her relationships with both her parents and younger sister.
26056724	/m/0b6g5s4	The Ordeal of Richard Feverel	George Meredith	1859		 Sir Austin Feverel's wife deserts him to run away with a poet, leaving her husband to bring up their boy Richard. Believing schools to be corrupt, Sir Austin, a scientific humanist, educates the boy at home with a plan of his own devising known as "the System". This involves strict authoritarian supervision of every aspect of the boy's life, and in particular the prevention of any meeting between Richard and girls of his own age. Richard nevertheless meets and falls in love with Lucy Desborough, the niece of a neighboring farmer. Sir Austin finds out and, disapproving of her humble birth, forbids them to meet again, but they secretly marry. Sir Austin now tries to retrieve the situation by sending Richard to London. Here, however, Sir Austin's friend Lord Mountfalcon successfully sets a courtesan to seduce Richard, hoping that this will leave Lucy open to seduction by himself. Ashamed of his own conduct, Richard flees abroad where he at length hears that Lucy has given birth to a baby and has been reconciled to Sir Austin. He returns to England and, hearing about Lord Mountfalcon's villainy, challenges him to a duel. But this goes badly: Richard is seriously wounded. Lucy is so overcome by this turn of events that she loses her mind and dies.
26058462	/m/0c1w_zw	Tree of Freedom	Rebecca Caudill	1949	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The novel tells the story of the Venable family, Jonathan, Bertha, and their five children, who in 1780 walk from North Carolina to Kentucky to homestead on 400 acres. There they build a cabin, plant crops, and raise livestock; 13-year-old Stephanie grows an apple tree which she calls her "tree of freedom". They are dismayed to discover that there is a rival claim to their land made by a British sympathizer. As the war comes closer, Indian raids increase, Stephanie's older brother Noel becomes a courier for the Governor of Virginia, and Jonathan joins an expedition against the Indians with George Rogers Clark.
26058486	/m/0b6g5sh	The Blue Cat of Castle Town	Catherine Cate Coblentz	1949	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the early 1830s, in a small town in Vermont, a blue kitten is born. Every kitten must find a hearth, but a blue kitten has the hardest time of all, for he must learn the river's song and then teach it to the keeper of that hearth. His mother is troubled, but notices he has three black hairs on his tail and hopes she can help him evade this quest. She teaches him not to listen to the river, but eventually he cannot help but hear the river talking to him. Irritated, his mother sends him off to learn the river's song and seek his fortune. The river teaches him the history of the town and gives him much useful advice, only some of which he remembers. He first meets a barn cat, whom he ignores, and a girl who slams the door in his face. He reaches the village green, where he admires his own reflection in a well and falls in, only to be rescued by the pewterer Ebenezer Southmayd. Southmayd is old and has given up making his most beautiful work to turn out cheap, shiny trade items. Singing the river's song, the kitten inspires Ebenezer to make one beautiful, perfect teapot according to the old formula. Alas, the pewterer drops dead when it is finished, and the blue kitten must find a new hearth. Next he meets a weaver, John Gilroy, who is doing business with two women. They have brought him linen to be woven, from flax they grew and bleached and spun themselves, and though he is contracted to make salt-and-pepper cloth for Arunah Hyde of the Mansion House, he accepts the job, inspired in part by the river's song. The kitten thinks Gilroy will learn his song, but Hyde shows up, angry and in a hurry, and Gilroy returns to the more profitable work and turns the kitten outside. As his stagecoach is tearing off in a hurry, Hyde scoops up the kitten and carries him off to the Mansion House. There, Hyde is constantly shouting at people to hurry up, make more money, do things faster -- but he also plies the blue kitten with rich cream and delicious salmon, until he grows into a blue cat. Singing the river's song to Hyde, he finds that Hyde has his own song, a dark song of progress and industry and power -- and a plan to decorate the Mansion House's front window with a lovely stuffed blue cat. Fattened up on delicious food, the blue cat barely escapes. Hyde makes one last snatch for him and pulls the three black hairs out of his tail. The last bowl of cream must have had some poison in it, for the blue cat falls ill and is rescued by the very barn cat he ignored on his first visit. She is a motherly soul and a good mouser, sharing her bowl of milk and her daily catch with him, even after the birth of two yellow kittens. The blue cat recovers physically over the course of the winter, but he has forgotten his song. Come spring, he sets forth, promising to come back and repay the barn cat and the girl Zeruah, who seems sad and lonely when she brings the cats their milk. He finds the town possessed by Arunah's song, and he searches high and low for the one he has lost. Creeping into the church, he meets the carpenter Thomas Royal Dake, who has it in mind to build a truly beautiful pulpit, but has been told by the building committee to do it more cheaply. He brings the blue cat home to his wife Sally, and talks with her about the financial sacrifices they will have to make if he goes ahead with a more expensive pulpit. Dake, it turns out, knows the river's song, and the cat relearns it from him. Sally agrees that he should build the pulpit of which he dreams, even though it will be difficult for the young family. The blue cat does not immediately resume his quest, but remains with Dake through the building of the pulpit in white pine and cherry. Then he returns to Zeruah Guernsey, the sad girl on the farm, and to his friend the barn cat, who is very proud of her kittens. Zeruah is lonely and sad, and believes she is ugly. She rebuffs the blue cat at first, then allows him into the house. She listens to the river's song, but makes no move to sing it for some time. Gradually, she begins thinking and talking to the cat. She visits the church and sees Dake's altar, and passes the shop where Southmayd's last teapot still sits in the window. Finally she begins to put aside her sadness and begins work on an embroidered carpet. Into the carpet she puts flowers from the woods and from her dead mother's garden, her father's favorite white rooster, everything of her world. As she begins to create the carpet, she also tends her house and her garden, and sets a rug by the bare hearth for the blue cat. She embroiders the blue cat into the carpet, and he realizes what he must do to thank his friend the barn cat. One by one, he brings her kittens into the house for Zeruah to add to the carpet. Zeruah's carpet becomes a legend in the town, and many people stop by to see it in progress. The blue cat sings to them, and gradually Arunah Hyde's song loses its power as the townspeople rediscover the importance of making things with their hands, creating "beauty and peace and content."
26059703	/m/0b6fd4f	The Year We Seized the Day				 What started as a travel log becomes an adventure of tragedy, triumph and fierce loyalty, as two very different writers with differing beliefs confront their pasts, their faiths and each other in an 800&nbsp;km (500&nbsp;mi) journey on foot along the Camino de Santiago, in pursuit of their own brand of redemption. Laced with raw humor, heartache and lashings of local vino, Best and Bowles combine candor and courage to capture the essence of modern day pilgrimage.
26060723	/m/0b6hssr	Spirit Messenger				 It is AD 1300. A group of Anasazi villagers are tending crops, while Indian women grind corn, children play and dogs bark, under the warm summer sun in a verdant valley of the American Southwest. Suddenly, a dazzling daystar appears in the sky above them, momentarily outshining the brilliant Southwestern sun. A highly evolved time traveler from a distant world visits Earth via a time transport. He is a prophetic messenger who views us and our world as an outside observer. He has come to bestow a gift upon mankind that will change the way we view ourselves and our place in the world. But the messenger also brings us a warning, one that tells mankind to choose correctly or suffer the same fate of another world just like our own, his planet of origin. Because of their superstitions the Indians receive him as a spirit messenger and a deity from the "Heavens of Fire." Dwelling with them for a time, he learns their language and tells them about the star system where he originated. He also teaches them to use his gateway to other worlds, and he leaves behind a token of his friendship, an unusual gold coin he gives to the tribe's Holy Man for safekeeping, promising his future return. A major time shift occurs in a historical flash forward to present day, Arizona, Navajo Indian Reservation. The time-traveler, Daniel, returns in the same place, bearing a gift he hopes will benefit mankind. The Anasazi have long since disappeared into the shadows of antiquity. Walking along Navajo Highway 160, that cuts a swath through the of primordial red rock, mesas, buttes and expansive desert landscape, the time-traveler meets a rugged, fiercely independent Navajo truck driver who offers him a ride. Daniel saves the Indian's life through the use of his unique powers, when the Indian is nearly trampled by the herd of cattle he is delivering to a stockyard in Flagstaff, Arizona. But in seeking out those on whom he will bestow his gift, Daniel becomes ensnared in a bizarre double homicide as the primary suspect. The Navajo truck driver, Zachary Thomas, knows the stranger is innocent. He was with him at the ancient Anasazi ruins the night the murders took place. He is also indebted to the enigmatic stranger for saving his life. He is willing to do anything to protect him, even if it means helping him hide from the authorities. In doing so, Zachary becomes a suspected accomplice to the murders, and he feels he must prove his innocence and the stranger's as well. But his efforts only unearth a greater, unholy conspiracy to cover up illegal activity by the Reservation's chief power broker, the Tribal Council Chairman himself, Jack McCloud. The intrigue reaches a precipice of ultimate danger and no return when Daniel asks the Navajo to bring a female archeologist to the ruins where he is hiding, hoping Tracy Baldwin and a male astronomer friend, Michael Severson can assist him in his mission to deliver his gift before he is discovered by the forces determined to seek him out and destroy him. However, Zachary Thomas has had a past romantic encounter with the seductively intelligent Anglo woman, Tracy Baldwin, and he reluctantly involves her, reigniting their affair in spite of her long-standing relationship with the young, contrastingly intellectual astronomer, Michael Severson, who is perplexed by a side of the young woman he has never seen before and doesn't understand, but is helplessly attracted to. An epic manhunt ensues on the reservation with the local authorities seeking out the suspected murderer and inadvertently discovering one of their own, the flamboyant Tribal Council Chairman, Jack McCloud is involved. In order to cover up the crime and avert possible political fallout, the police detective in charge of the investigation, Lemuel Red Feather, who is an old friend and political ally, vows to protect the chairman's good name at any cost, even if it means terminating the stranger before he can be exonerated. Zachary Thomas, the two scientists and an old Navajo crystal gazer, White Horse—an old family friend of the young Navajo—who is in possession of the original gold coin, protected and mysteriously handed down through generations by the Anasazi Holy Man, come to the aid of the one they now call The-One-of-Many-Faces, in an attempt to help him escape. But they have only succeeded in buying time for the time-traveler to deliver his message and his benevolent gift. The forces determined to eradicate him, before he can complete his mission and dramatically alter the course of human history, are growing stronger. The struggle between good and evil, man and nature, and human nature, brings all these forces to bear in a magnificently written story, an epic tale of truth and something higher than ourselves. It reveals our sense of aloneness and vulnerability within a staggeringly boundless universe, and our innate need to believe in a greater power.
26065296	/m/0b6dzdb	The Real Global Warming Disaster		2009-10-17	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book consists of three parts and an epilogue. Drawing from Fred Singer and Dennis Avery's Unstoppable Global Warming, Booker presents a graph showing changes in temperature and carbon dioxide concentration over the last 11,000 years. In his analysis, rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the 1970s led scientists such as Paul Ehrlich to postulate that the earth, as a result of the greenhouse effect, may have been heating up or cooling down, either of which could have potentially disastrous consequences. Figures such as the environmental activist Maurice Strong and scientist Bert Bolin are then introduced, who would, according to Booker, "play a crucial role in what lay ahead" in influencing governmental policy and helping form the scientific basis for global warming. Booker contends that 1988 was a key year in which the IPCC was set up and James Hansen appeared at the Senate Committee of Natural Resources in Washington, where he stated that he was "99 percent certain" that man's contribution to the greenhouse effect was the cause of global warming. According to Booker, "on all sides 'global warming' became the cause of the moment" after Hansen's appearance. He then describes how: * in 1990, the IPCC published its first assessment report which made projections of future temperature rises; * at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit "politicians from 154 countries queued up to sign a 'UN Framework Convention on Climate Change'" that would "commit all the signatory governments to a voluntary reduction of greenhouse gas emissions"; * the second IPCC report (SAR) in 1995 found that the "body of statistical evidence now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate". Booker writes that the SAR was criticised by Frederick Seitz, who alleged that "more than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report—the key chapter setting out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over climate—were changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining this question had accepted the supposedly final text". Part one ends with an account of the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the setting of new targets for reduced emissions. Booker begins part two by asserting that the medieval warm period "contradicted the idea that late twentieth century temperatures had suddenly shot up to a level never known before in history", and that this problem was dealt with by a 1999 graph depicting temperatures "suddenly shooting up in the twentieth century to a level that was quite unprecedented. Familiar features such as the Medieval Warm Period and the little ice age simply vanished". Booker writes that the graph became the "supreme iconic image for all those engaged in the battle to save the world from global warming". He then states that the IPCC's methods, and in particular the draft summary of its next report, came in for serious criticism from scientists such as Richard Lindzen. Booker then examines Davis Guggenheim's Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth and the subsequent questioning of many of its assertions, including retreating glaciers, drowning polar bears, use of the "hockey stick" graph, the melting of the ice caps and snows of Kilimanjaro and rising sea levels. Booker begins part three by quoting the statement of the then British Environment Secretary that the IPCC's fourth assessment report was "another nail in the coffin of the climate change deniers". Booker contrasts this assertion with what he sees as evidence emerging to the contrary: that the earth had in fact begun to cool, possibly as a result of solar variation, and that may thus not be the only driver of climate change. However, the results of research into this theory by the scientists Knud Lassen, Eigil Friis-Christensen and Henrik Svensmark were dismissed by Bert Bolin as "scientifically extremely naïve and irresponsible". Booker then alleges that a "consensus" and "counter-consensus" had begun to form, and gives details of a 2007 report by the US Senator James Inhofe that claimed to list 400 scientists "now prepared to express their dissent, sometimes in the strongest terms, from the IPCC's 'consensus' view of global warming". Booker then quotes the June 2007 International Energy Agency announcement that the cost of halving emissions by 2050 (the US and UK governments were intending 80% cuts) would be US$ 45 trillion—equivalent to "two thirds of the world's entire current annual economic output". Booker sums up the book's contents in a long epilogue, which quotes Theseus in A Midsummer's Night Dream: In the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear Booker contends that in this quote Shakespeare is identifying that &#34;when we are not presented with enough information for our minds to resolve something into certainty, they may be teased into exaggerating it into something quite different from what it really is&#34;.
26076998	/m/0b6ns6j	The Language of Bees	Laurie R. King		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Russell and Holmes return to their home in Sussex, England, in 1924 after seven months abroad in India, Japan and California. The novel features a domestic mystery as a hive on Holmes’s farm has been repeatedly swarming and a colony of bees is found to have disappeared. Action shifts, however, with the reappearance of Damian Adler, a talented young painter and emotionally disturbed veteran of World War I, first introduced in the second book in the series. Adler is Holmes' estranged son, born to Irene Adler in about 1895. The distraught Adler seeks the couple's help in locating his missing wife Yolanda and their daughter Estelle. Russell and Holmes separate during the investigation and Russell searches out Damian's questionable past. The search involves the British practitioners of a religious cult called The Children of Lights with roots in Shanghai, China, and features locations ranging from Bohemian London to the wilds of Scotland. Russell experiences a harrowing trip by aeroplane. A series of bodies appears, some dead by suicide and others ritually sacrificed. While the climax of the novel, in an ancient circle of standing stones on Orkney Island, brings some plot resolution, the story continues in The God of the Hive (2010).
26080371	/m/0b6gv71	Miracle in Seville	James A. Michener	1995	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story draws on religious themes, interweaving gypsy traditions, belief in the intervening power of The Virgin Mary, and the hope of God's forgiveness and redemption, into the Spanish tradition of bullfighting. The action occurs during Holy Week in Spain, and Michener competently captures the religious processions. He provides meticulous detail of bull fights (although some reviewers have taken umbrage at supposedly erroneous details in his narrative). The tale involves a Gypsy matador (Lazaro Lopez), his sister (Magdalena López) who reads fortunes, a cross-eyed Virgin Mary (La Bizca), the American writer (Shenstone), the Spanish bull breeder (Don Cayetano Mota) who is struggling to revive his once-famed herd, and of course the many bulls in Mota's herd. Despite his initial skepticism, the American is drawn into Mota's efforts, which involve fervent prayers to The Virgin and Herculean acts undertaken during Holy Week to prove his devotion and piety. He knows that his prayers will eventually be rewarded, and this knowledge allows him to live with the often-humiliating performance of his bulls in the arena vis-a-vis the arrogant Gómez. We learn that Lazaro Lopez is also being aided by a powerful female, his sister, who may have the ability to curse the bulls that her brother must face. She is determined that her brother must prevail.
26080742	/m/0b6g_ly	Rise of the Dibor				 Luik is the young son of Lair, one of the minor kings of Dionia, a world where no sin, pain, or problems exist. At least, that's how it has been for centuries. When this story begins, strange occurrences are starting to befall Dionia. Malice, jealousy, greed and physical injury are beginning to mar this perfect world. The wise kings know that this is the work of Morgui, traitorous former servant of Dionia's ultimate ruler, the Most High. In response to this growing evil, war measures are taken, the chief of which is the selection of the sons of Dionia's kings to train as elite warriors. While Luik, along with the other Kings' sons, is brought by Gorn, a powerful man with experience from a past war, to island of Kirstell, his childhood friends are also experiencing changes in their lives. His talented princess friend Anorra is learning, under a separate trainer, how to physically as well as mentally fight against the coming evils. Another of his old comrades, Hadrian, is trying to cope with the loss of his father, who seems to have reverted to Morgui and has disappeared from Dionia. Lastly, young Fane is now being trained by Li-Saide, dwarf servant of one of Dionia's kings, learning to hear messages in the water and wind and being trained in wisdom. On Kirstell, a place mainly free from the spreading effects of evil, Gorn trains the eighteen boys for four years into men, warriors, the Dibor. When they are at last ready to defend their people, Gorn brings the fighters back to the heart of Dionia, its capitol, Adriel Palace. On the route they experience a skirmish in the city of Jahdan. The Dibor fight and overcome a massive army of Dairne-Reih, also known as Dairneags, demons working for Morgui. At Adriel itself, Luik and a portion of the Dibor engage in a devastating battle against the demons, while the rest, headed by Gorn, attempt to find Morgui himself. King Ragnar, the leader of Dionia's human kings, is assassinated, both Luik's father and another king perish in the battle, nearly all Dionia's soldiers present are killed, and Luik himself is badly wounded. Fane and Li-Saide, who had attended King Ragnar in his last hours - during which he named "his son" heir, much to the disbelief and curiosity of Fane, who thought the king had none - take King Ragnar's body through a secret passage and down an underwater tunnel to a secret place. While this is going on, Gorn and about half of the Dibor find Morgui's second in command, Velon. The younger warriors first break the arch from which the Dairne-Reih have been entering Dionia and then kill as many of the demons as they can. Meanwhile, Gorn kills Velon after a furious battle and the Dibor escape with their teacher back towards Adriel. As the story ends Luik, semi-conscious, is being borne on a stretcher by the straggling line of soldier and Dibor survivors headed for Mt. Dakka, the last standing greatest stronghold against Morgui.
26082682	/m/0b6lts6	The Moon in the Cloud	Rosemary Harris	1968	{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When the Lord God decides to send a flood, he instructs Noah to build an Ark and save his family and the animals. Noah gives his reprobate son Ham the responsibility of collecting two cats from Kemi, the Black Land (Egypt) and two lions, but Ham passes the task to his neighbour Reuben by promising to persuade Noah to let Reuben and his wife on the Ark. Reuben travels to Kemi with his camel Anak, his cat Cefalu and his dog Benoni. In the desert they are captured by the High Priest of Sekhmet, who is impressed by Cefalu's sacred heritage. He houses the cat in the Temple of Sekhmet in Kemi's capital Men-nofer, where Cefalu falls in love with the resident temple cat Meluseth. Reuben is presented as a slave to the music-loving King, who becomes his friend. However, he despairs of returning home until a 'supernatural' display arranged by the High Priest of Ptah backfires. Panic and rioting in the streets give Reuben a chance to escape and rescue his animals. On the way back, Cefalu persuades the lion Aryeh to come to the Ark. They meet Thamar who has camped in the desert to escape the attentions of Ham, and has meanwhile rescued a lost lion cub. They return home only to encounter treachery from Ham. However, a providential accident secures them a place of safety just as the rain begins to fall.
26083458	/m/0b6fhq2	Marjorie's Quest	Jeanie Gould			 The book takes place in the second part of the 1850s and is a story of a young orphan girl; Marjorie, who on the way to the next orphanage meets a nice and concerned Judge Gray. He keeps the girl for a while at his place, where she befriends with his teenage son; Reggie. Unfortunately, Marjorie finally gets to the orphanage, but eventually does not stay there long, since a wealthy family adopts her. The family has just lost their own little girl and has a teenage son, who becomes highly jealous of his new sister. His unpleasant behaviour results in Marjorie's accident and consequently, missing. The girl loses her memory and an old begger finds her and looks after her. She turns out to have her own business in it, though. When the girl recovers, she is taken for beg by the begger because people more willingly give money to children. One day, the couple meets a young woman who takes Marjorie from the begger and adopts her. Six years later, Marjorie goes to a Southern farm, where she is a teacher for two little children. There, she meets a young soldier ...
26093171	/m/0b6kk1n	The Devil's Wind		1972		 Nana Saheb was the adopted son of Bajirao II, the last Maratha Peshwa, and heir to his position as "prime minister" of the Maratha lands. He is raised in an immensely wealthy family and educated as a Brahmin and a prince, although his father's power had been taken away by the British. On his father's death the British do not recognize his title, but allow him to continue in his comfortable exile in the town of Bithoor. An urbane and sophisticated man, Nana Saheb is sympathetic to the British, several of whom are his close friends, but cannot accept their right to rule and exploit India. When the mutiny breaks out in May 1857, Nana Sahib finds himself forced to accept a position of leadership. After a long and ultimately futile struggle in which both sides commit many atrocities, Nana Sahib flees to Nepal where he receives a grudging sanctuary, taking with him an English woman he has rescued and with whom he has fallen in love. Many years later, he revisits India and then travels on to safety in Istanbul, the place where he sets down his memoirs.
26109841	/m/0b6nfcw	Salvation on Sand Mountain	Dennis Covington	1995	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book begins with Covington's first visit to a Church of God with Signs Following, located in an old gas station. It is here that he meets many of the longtime members of the church, and comes to find that the following has decreased in numbers due to the conviction of Glenn Summerford. In this first service, no snakes are taken out, but Covington does notice some peculiar things about the church such as the electric guitar and long prayer session. The next time he goes to worship here though, snakes are taken out, where one member of the congregation is described as "putting his face up to the snake's face". As the book progresses, more back story is given on the church, such as how Summerford attempted to kill his wife via snake bite and make it look like suicide, and how the church split over the issue of where the funding for the church should go. Eventually, Covington goes to a church service on the titular Sand Mountain.
26111760	/m/0b6d1xf	Pish Posh				 Ultra snobby, Clara Frankofile has everything an 11-year-old could want. She's fabulously wealthy, she lives alone in a penthouse apartment with its own roller coaster and bumper cars... and all of New York City is afraid of her! Each night at the fashionable Pish Posh restaurant, she watches glittery movie actresses, princesses, and celebrities and decides who is important enough to stay...and who she will kick to the sidewalk in disgrace. But Clara's tidy little world is suddenly turned upside down when she discovers that a most peculiar mystery is happening in the restaurant, right under her upturned nose. With the help up whip-smart 12-year-old jewel thief, Clara embarks on a wildly dangerous mission through the streets of New York to solve a 200-year-old secret.
26121428	/m/0b6hmrt	The Reversal	Michael Connelly	2010-10-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Mickey Haller, who has become increasingly frustrated in his role as a defense lawyer, agrees to undertake the prosecution role on behalf of the city of Los Angeles, in the retrial of a convicted killer that had been granted as a result of new DNA evidence. His one condition before accepting the task is that he is permitted to choose his own team; he chooses his ex-wife Maggie McPherson as his co-prosecutor, and his half-brother Harry Bosch as his investigator from the LAPD. The prosecution case rests largely on the testimony of Sarah Gleason, the elder sister of the victim, Melissa Landy. The body of 12-year-old Melissa was discovered in 1986, discarded in a dumpster, only a few hours after she was reported missing. Unknown to the killer, her sister Sarah had been hiding in the garden and had witnessed her abduction. On the day of the murder, she identified Jason Jessup, a truck driver, as the man who snatched Melissa from the garden. DNA evidence subsequently showed that semen stains on the dress Melissa was wearing came not from Jessup, but from the girls' stepfather. However, the evidence against Jessup includes strands of Melissa's hair, found in the seat of his truck. Jessup's defense counsel, "clever" Clive Royce, mounts a media campaign in his client's favour, and it becomes clear that their main motivation is in obtaining a compensation payout from the state. Haller's response is to allow bail and have Jessup tailed by the police in the hope that he will return to his old ways and provide additional support for the prosecution case. Jessup is soon seen visiting various mountain trails in the Mulholland area, and on one occasion parks his car outside Bosch's house at night. Bosch and Haller, both concerned for their own teenage daughters, develop a theory that Jessup was a serial killer but are unable to investigate fully for fear of blowing the police's cover. Legal procedures require that the jury is kept ignorant of Jessup's history. Testimony given in the original trial, where the witness is no longer available because of death or infirmity, has to be read out by Harry Bosch. After Sarah Gleason admits that the dress Melissa was wearing was hers and that her stepfather was raping her, which accounted for the semen stains, the defense focuses on presenting the stepfather as the real killer and Jessup as the victim of the family's lies. The focus is to undermine Sarah's testimony, because of her a history of drug use and prostitution in the years since her sister's murder, though she has now been rehabilitated. Bosch traces Sarah's former lover, Eddie Roman, and finds that he has remained a drug addict living off a prostitute's earnings but has disappeared, presumably to testify falsely against Sarah. Locating Roman's current prostitute Sonia Reyes, Bosch persuades her to enter the courtroom at a crucial moment in Roman's testimony, which causes Roman to alter his testimony, effectively destroying the defense case. While anticipating a plea bargain offer from the defense team during a lunch break, Bosch and Haller instead learn that Jessup entered Royce's offices with a gun and killed Royce, two of his legal team and a policeman who followed him. Jessup is now at large, but the police surround and kill him at a hideout under the Santa Monica pier that had been discovered by Bosch as a result of the police surveillance activities. Jessup's death ends the search for Melissa Landy's killer, but leaves the prosecution team with a host of unanswered legal and moral questions.
26130296	/m/0b6nnpy	Le Chasseur Zéro	Pascale Roze	1996-08-22		 Le Chasseur Zéro is set in the Pacific theater of World War II, and is about a Japanese kamikaze who, in April 1945, manages to sink an American Aircraft carrier off of the island of Okinawa while flying a Mitsubishi A6M. The plot shifts to three months later, when a girl named Laura receives news of her father's death aboard the same carrier. In France, Laura's mother and her grandparents begin to grow apart, and no one will explain to Laura the circumstances of her father's death. She begins to repeatedly hear the screaming sound of the diving Zero in her head and nothing can make the noise stop. The memory of her father's death begins to upset her studies and her relationships.
26133046	/m/06mp_f7	Pastime	Robert B. Parker	1991	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Spenser's semi-adopted son, Paul Giacomin, visits Spenser in Boston asking for his help. He can't locate his mother, who has apparently left on an extended trip without telling him. While Paul's mother is somewhat lacking in motherly skills, he doesn't believe she would voluntarily leave her home for such an extended period without contacting him. Though Paul can't pay Spenser, he takes the case anyway as a favor to Paul. Spenser takes Paul along in his sleuthing, introducing him as his "prentice", though Paul has no real intention of becoming a detective: he just wants to find his mother.
26137677	/m/0b6jnlp	The Last Centurion	John Ringo	2008-08-05	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Bandit Six, the protagonist, discusses his adventures following a withdrawal from the Middle East by US Forces in a time of chaos and disease. He commands a Stryker company that is left behind in Iran to guard a U.S. military equipment depot after a worldwide outbreak of mutated bird flu. He and his company repeat the journey of the Ten Thousand to return home, where he assists in agricultural recovery efforts and leads a military operation to regain control of a major US city.
26138396	/m/0b6nzb5	Eye of the Storm	John Ringo	2009-07-07	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 Michael O'Neal, now a general in charge of removing the Posleen from conquered planets must face new challenges, both from his superiors, and a new group of races intending Galactic conquest. To face the threat, he must come to terms with betrayal and his family.
26139136	/m/0b6md85	The Grand Gennaro				 The story circulates around the main character, Gennaro Accuci, and how he leaves his family behind in Italy in order to make riches in America. He takes over the business of an old friend by force, and soon rises to power and becomes an influential member of early Italian-American society in New York. After seven years of cheating on his wife, he finally calls for his family to come over to the new country. His oldest, rebellious son, is caught trying to rape a neighbor, and subsequently is forced to marry her by Gennaro, who often beats his son for being lazy. They children soon have an annulment, and the neighbor goes to a Protestant asylum where she is Americanized. She returns to her family, her parents move to the country, the oldest son (Domenico) is killed in the Spanish-American War, and Gennaro's wife dies of sadness. Gennaro then marries Carmela who is now much older, although his youngest son also has feelings for her. However, in the recession of 1907, an old enemy of Gennaro's shows up and kills him (Gennaro stole his business from him when first coming to the country in the 1880s).
26142616	/m/0b6gnxf	Zofloya				 Victoria de Loredani is the beautiful, spoiled daughter of the Marchese di Loredani and his wife, Laurina. Victoria, her brother Leonardo, and her parents reside in a palazzo in Venice, Italy. They live in happiness until the Marchese's friend, Count Ardolph, visits from Germany. Ardolph takes pleasure in destroying the reputations of pure women, and breaking up happy marriages. Ardolph quickly sets his sights on Laurina di Loredani. Laurina's vanity makes her highly susceptible to the Ardolph's advances, and he succeeds in seducing her away from the husband she claims to love. They disappear from Venice together, which sets off a cascade of increasingly tragic events. After Laurina elopes, Leonardo disappears from Venice without explanation, leaving only Victoria and her father in the palazzo. One year later, the Marchese encounters Ardolph in the streets of Venice. They duel, and Ardolph fatally stabs the Marchese. The wound puts the Marchese on his deathbed. Laurina comes to check on him after Ardolph tells her about the duel. The Marchese’s dying wish is for Laurina to find Leonardo and reclaim her children and flee from Venice. He wants there to be forgiveness between his children and their mother. Victoria falls into Ardolph and Laurina's custody, and soon after meets Il Conte Berenza, a noble but naive Venetian man. Berenza quickly falls in love with Victoria and wants to move away with her. Laurina and Ardolph do not approve of Berenza, so Ardolph sends Berenza away by forging a letter in Victoria's handwriting and takes Victoria away to stay with family.They claim that they are all visiting Laurina’s cousin Signora di Modena, but instead leave Victoria there as a prisoner under the Signora’s tyrannical rule. Victoria finally escapes Signora’s household with the help of her servant Catau, and disguises herself as a peasant when she travels back to Venice. Upon arrival in Venice, she meets Berenza again. Victoria curses her Mother in front of Berenza. Therefore, Berenza becomes wary of her character and swears that he will never marry her, but just remain her friend and keep her as a mistress. Victoria and Berenza begin living together and Berenza discloses information about his former mistress Megalena and her jealous ways. One night, an assassin enters the home of Victoria and Berenza. He attempts to stab Berenza in his sleep, but Victoria awakens and defends her lover by taking the dagger in her arm instead. The man flees, and Berenza awakens deeply shaken by the occurrence. He is completely impressed by Victoria’s action and no longer questions the passion of her love for him. Victoria decides not to tell Berenza that she has noticed, that her long-lost brother, Leonardo was the assassin. The narrator then switches to the point of view of Leonardo. It begins with his escape after his mother abandons him. Leonardo first stumbles upon the Zappi family. Signor and Signora Zappi take Leonardo in. Leonardo falls in love with their daughter Amamia, but Signora Zappi falls in love with Leonardo. Signora Zappi professes her love for Leonardo, but he claims he could never love her. Consequently, she tears her clothes and creates a disheveled manner in order to fake the appearance of rape. She tells her husband that Leornado has raped her. Leonardo does not defend himself, but instead decides to leave their household, even though he is heartbroken. He curses his mother for all his troubles. Next, Leonardo comes upon an old woman mourning the death of her son. He offers to help her around her house in place of her son, and she takes him in. Unfortunately, shortly after the old woman (Nina) passes away, and Leonardo is forced to move again. He finally decides it is time for him to move back to Venice. On his trip home he catches the eye of the fatal Megalena Strozzi. She quickly convinces him to love her as his mistress and controls his every move. She informs him of the death of his father, and tells him to stay with her instead. One day Megelena comes across her former lover Berenza with his new lover (Victoria). Megelena is deeply affected by his new relationship and comes home to Leonardo in a rage. She tells him in order to prove his love to her, he must kill Berenza. Leonardo hesitates, but ultimately knows he must follow her commands. He comes back after stabbing his own sister instead of Berenza, and tells Megalena what happened. They realize that he left the Stiletto (dagger) there, and that Megalenas name is engraved on it. They are forced to leave civilization, due to their fear of being discovered. The narrator now switches back to the perspective of Victoria. Berenza was deeply moved by the loving action of Victoria and decides it is time for them to be married. Five years later, Berenza’s brother Henriquez comes to visit and stay with Berenza and Victoria. Victoria quickly realizes she has feelings for Henriquez, but is saddened to discover that his heart lies with Lilla. Victoria feels that she must do anything to prevent the marriage of Lilla and Henriquez, even at the destruction of lives and hearts, much in the manner of her mother. Victoria’s evil hopes of Lilla’s destruction take over her thoughts throughout the day and night. She begins dreaming about how she will destroy Lilla and be with Henriquez. During her dreams, a familiar face begins to surface. She sees Henriquez’s servant Zofloya, as her aid in the destruction of Lilla. During the day, she is intrigued by the handsome figure of the Moor Zofloya, and notices him catching her eye. Zofloya disappears shortly after, apparently having been killed, but strangely returns to Berenza and Victoria’s household later. When he returns he approaches Victoria and tells her to meet him in the garden. When they meet, Victoria eventually confesses her desires about Henriquez, and Zofloya claims he can help her fulfill any desire that she seeks. She is hesitant about taking his help, but ultimately her desires take over her body and mind. Zofloya shares his ideas about the use of poison and the two begin to plan the slow destruction of Berenza. Victoria is impatient with Berenza’s death and questions the methods of Zofloya. To prove his power, he takes the life of Signora de Lilla with poisoned lemonade that instantly kills her. After two more weeks of impatiently waiting for Berenza to die, Victoria gives him his final ration of poison, and Berenza dies; the cause appears to be a heart attack. The death of Berenza sparks suspicion in the mind of Henriquez. He begins to despise Victoria. In a desperate panic, Victoria confesses her love to Henriquez and becomes beside herself with emotion. He is harsh and cruel to her, but then realizes that she was the wife of his brother, and he should contain his hatred for her. Victoria decides the only way to win his love, is to eliminate Lilla. Zofloya and Victoria capture Lilla and tie her up in a cave. Henriquez is deeply upset when he discovers his lover is missing. Victoria decides to confess her love again, while Lilla is missing, but Henriquez still refuses to reciprocate her emotion. Victoria runs to Zofloya, upset that he hasn’t helped her attain her desires, he tells her she can have Henriquez if she appears to be Lilla. He gives her a poison to administer to Henriquez, which will make the first woman he sees when he awakens, the woman of his dreams (Lilla). Zofloya fails to mention that the allusion will only last until Henriquez falls asleep again. Victoria gets her wish of having Henriquez look at her, and hold her with love for a day, while she appears to be Lilla. When they awake in bed together the next morning, Henriquez realizes that he had been wronged, and was with Victoria all night. He kills himself in response, by jumping on a sword in his room. Victoria is upset with Zofloya for lying to her, and her passion she decides to stab Lilla repeatedly and shove her off the edge of a cliff. Victoria realizes she is in the power of Zofloya, and he seduces her with his words, she thinks they are in love, and trusts Zofloya to take care of her. He leads her to the banditti, led by the chief Leonardo (her brother). Zofloya and Victoria live among savages, and Zofloya shows his possessive evil side when he exclaims “ thou wilt be mine, to all eternity” (244) Zofloya begins showing a different side to himself, including an ability to read Victoria’s thoughts. One night, the banditti, bring a woman and man into their savage home. The woman and man turn out to be Laurina and Ardolph. Leonardo stabs Ardolph and proclaims that he has finally had his vengeance. Laurina is frightened by Leonardo's actions and, as a gasp escapes her lips, Leonardo turns back his attention to her. Her demands to know which of the banditti have harmed her and caused the bruises and cuts she suffer from, but they tell him that it was Ardolph who had been beating her and it was her cries that had called their attention. At her deathbed, Laurina begs her children for their forgiveness. Victoria refuses, but Leonardo readily forgives her. Leonardo scorns Victoria for her being so harsh on their mother and not forgiving her. All the characters and their connecting stories come together in this final scene, and their unfortunate pasts surface. Leonardo and Megalena kill themselves, and Victoria is filled with guilt for all her past actions. She turns to Zofloya to tell him about her guilt, and instead of comforting her, he unmasks himself, thus revealing his hideous nature inside and out. He declares that he is Satan, and had tempted and used Victoria repeatedly. Victoria then gets annihilated by the Devil. Dacre ends the story with a short paragraph, commenting on the novel. She claims that her story is more than a romance. She comments on the nature of humans, their passions and weakness, and “either the love of evil is born with us, or we must attribute them to the suggestions of infernal influence.”
26147104	/m/0b6j4jp	Saiwai Qixia Zhuan	Liang Yusheng	1984-01	{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The story is set in the early Qing Dynasty during the reign of the Shunzhi Emperor. The ethnic minority tribes in northwestern China are under attack by Qing forces that are attempting to force them into submission. Yang Yuncong helps the tribal people resist the invaders and becomes a revered hero in the region. However Yang is betrayed and attacked by his junior Chu Zhaonan, who has defected to the Qing side. They encounter a sandstorm while fighting. Yang is injured and loses consciousness, but is saved by Nalan Minghui, the daughter of a Qing general called Nalan Xiuji. She nurses him back to health and helps him escape from danger. After leaving Nalan Minghui, Yang Yuncong meets "Flying Red Sash" Hamaya, a legendary heroine in the northwest. Hamaya's lover, the singer Yabulu, had betrayed their tribe and caused the death of her father. Hamaya seeks vengeance on Yabulu, captures him and brings him back to her tribe for punishment. Along the way, they are ambushed by Chu Zhaonan and Qing soldiers. Yang and Hamaya defeat and capture Chu, but Yang releases Chu on account of their past senior-junior relationship. Back in Hamaya's tribe, her fellow tribesmen find Yabulu guilty and want him dead. Hamaya suppresses her sorrow, and personally kills Yabulu to deliver justice. With Yang Yuncong's help, Hamaya emerges as champion in a martial arts contest and is elected to be the new chief of her tribe. By then, Hamaya has secretly developed romantic feelings for Yang. Yang Yuncong continues to help Hamaya and her people fight the Qing army. During this time, he meets Nalan Minghui again and they fall in love with each other. However, Yang and Nalan are not fated to be together, because they stand on opposing sides. Besides, Nalan's parents have agreed to marry her to the Manchu prince Dodo. In grief, Nalan decides to consummate her romance with Yang, and eventually becomes pregnant with Yang's child. On the other hand, Hamaya is also in love with Yang Yuncong, and she has revealed her feelings to him, but he rejects her. Hamaya is heartbroken and her hair turns white overnight, just like her teacher, the "White Haired Demoness" Lian Nichang. Without Hamaya to lead them, the tribal people suffer a crushing defeat by Qing forces. In the meantime, Yang Yuncong leaves northwestern China after learning that Nalan Minghui and Prince Dodo's wedding is going to take place in Hangzhou soon. His eventual fate is revealed in Qijian Xia Tianshan.
26148260	/m/0b6g0r0	The Path of Perfection		2002	{"/m/02rx5hc": "Treatise"}	 The book presents the essence of Ostad Elahi’s philosophy. Bahram Elahi sets forth the major aspects of a system of thought which aims at bringing out the conditions of man’s process toward perfection by dealing with subjects such as the specificity of human beings, the consequences of our actions, etc. As mentioned in the Preface, this work has been conceived as a concise and practical handbook. The principles stated and the resulting concepts are developed and analysed more thoroughly by the author in other books.
26150005	/m/0b6p034	Blue Screen	Robert B. Parker	2006	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The novel begins when Sunny Randall is approached by Buddy Bolen to provide protection for his number one client, Erin Flint. Ms. Flint is the star of the Woman Warrior movie series and future star of Bolen’s major league baseball team. Ms. Flint initially hates the idea of Sunny following her around but begrudgingly agrees to the arrangement at Buddy’s behest. Bolen’s fears seem to have been well founded when Erin’s assistant, Misty, is murdered. Because of Misty’s striking resemblance to her, Erin is convinced the killer was after her. Sunny meets Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone at the scene of the crime; however Buddy and Erin lack confidence in the Paradise police, and ask Sunny to solve the crime. Sunny travels to L.A. where she meets her friend Tony Gault, a Hollywood agent with whom she has a casual sexual relationship. He puts her in touch with a sports writer who is convinced that Erin Flint’s addition to Buddy Bolen’s baseball team is a publicity stunt. It is his opinion that the baseball team was a bad buy on Bolen’s part because they have no market or fan base. Neither does he believe that Erin will be able to compete with the male players in the major league. He does think, however, that the publicity will generate enough interest in the team to allow Bolen to dump his bad investment. He proves to be right later when Erin faces a major league pitcher and cannot hit one ball. Next, Sunny contacts Chief Stone back in Paradise who puts her in contact with his old boss, LAPD police Captain Cronjager. After some investigation with the LAPD, Sunny discovers that Erin Flint is actually Ethel Boverini, and Misty Tyler was her sister Edith. She also discovers that Erin is still married to L.A. pimp Gerard Basgall. Sunny and an LAPD detective go to question Basgall who admits to still being married to Erin and still loving her. He also admits to visiting her regularly, and that his last visit was around the time Misty was murdered. Sunny flies back to Paradise, where she reveals this information to Chief Stone. Stone then confronts Erin with the information who breaks down, but later calms down and admits that she was one of Basgall’s prostitutes, as well as his wife. She and her sister began working for him after their mother died. Further investigation, and another trip to L.A. with Chief Stone this time, reveals more information. It turns out that Buddy Bolen was looking for financing for his first Woman Warrior movie. Meanwhile, Boston mobster Moon Monaghan had a lot of cash that he was looking to invest quietly. L.A. film financier Arlo Delany puts the two together. He also sweetens the deal by getting Buddy Bolen a sister combo of prostitutes to be at his beck and call. The girls also occasionally have sex with Moon Monaghan although Moon denies it when questioned. The girls turn out to be Erin Flint and Misty Tyler. Later, Buddy decides to star Erin in his Woman Warrior movie. The movie turns out to be a big hit; however Buddy has Arlo cook the books to make it look like it made no money in order to stiff Moon Monaghan. Moon gets wind of this and has Arlo killed as a warning to Buddy of what will happen if he doesn’t get his money back. Misty gets scared and threatens to go to the police. Erin calls Gerard to come out and talk some sense into her. They get into an argument and during the struggle he accidentally breaks Misty’s neck and kills her. Chief Stone and Sunny confront Erin and Gerard about this. Gerard claims that he killed Misty, while Erin claims that she killed her. Touched by the fact that the two try to protect the each other by taking the blame, Chief Stone decides they have suffered enough and lets them go on the condition that they promise not to avenge her.
26152670	/m/05qgw3z	Slow Chocolate Autopsy	Iain Sinclair		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book is in twelve parts, each one featuring Norton (nine of which are in the form of stories and three as a mixture of illustrations and photo-strips). His adventures include participating in the death of Christopher Marlowe, the Ripper murders, as well as more recent events that have shaped London.
26157385	/m/0b6j__f	My Dead Body	Charlie Huston	2009-10-13	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/0134b1": "Contemporary fantasy", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 My Dead Body brings the story arc of the preceding four books of the Joe Pitt series to a close, as the rival vampyre factions of Manhattan Island face off.
26160348	/m/0b6ftqk	The Day of the Troll				 Siblings Karl and Katy are in an old, scary forest - Karl winding his sister up. We learn that Katy is a former "medical type", and that the two are involved in experiments - experiments that are being ruined by something. They find a geo-sensor, a stubby plastic pole, which Katy examines. It's gone offline, even though Katy checked it two hours previously. We learn the two grew up in cities, and joined a project that involved them coming to this country, unlived-in for fifty years. Karl finds an old bridge which Katy recognises. On the bank is a line of smooth earth, as though something was dragged along the ground, all the way to the bridge. Karl insists on taking a look. Katy finds that she has her own torch. She follows her brother, standing in the dried-up river. The bridge is an old railway one crossing the former river. She spots a shape under an arch, assuming it to be Karl - and then realises it's not. She runs away, colliding with someone, who grabs her. He introduces himself as the Doctor. As the sun comes up, the Doctor examines the soil. It's not a desert, but it's so dry - he assumes a drought at first, but then it starts to rain. Katy moans, having done nothing but stare all night. The Doctor examines her practical clothing, and the logo on her cap which reads "The Grange". He takes the cap and puts it on. The Doctor leads Katy away, seeing the land divided into fields, sensors in each one. He recognises it as England. We learn that Karl is an entrepreneur, funding the Grange project to work in the abandoned southern Britain to grow crops and conduct agricultural experiments. Petra Lancaster is visited by Dr Timothy Hill, a botanist who works for the project. Petra reveals their campaign for money has not as successful as necessary. They see the Doctor approach, and Petra storms out. The Doctor introduces himself, and they turn their attention to Katy - who's in a state of shock. The Doctor uses the psychic paper to convince Petra to let him lead an investigation, although she remains suspicious. The base of operations is a former country house. Katy is taken to the infirmary and examined - confirming she's in shock. Charlie Bannon, the bullish Grange mechanic, arrives with news - Karl and Katy's 4x4 is missing. We also meet Vanessa, a posh biology student. Katy speaks suddenly - she's terrified, and mentions something under the bridge. Petra watches Food Minister Hamilton Bryant on her monitor, talking from Madrid - assuring her not to worry about Karl and Katy. He threatens her not to let the world know about this by sending anyone to help them - he has a financial interest in the Grange succeeding. Petra asks about the Doctor - Bryant is clueless, but suggests she take advantage of the extra help. Charlie and the Doctor drive a 4x4 towards the bridge. The Doctor asks for details on the Grange. Charlie explains that humans used a process dubbed Global Cooling, refreezing glaciers. The ground left behind was poisonous, and food became incredibly value, leading to violence. Karl Baring started work on growing new crops, but so far, hasn't succeeded - running out of money, depending on charity. They arrive at the bridge as Charlie explains that no-one cares about the project anymore - and without Karl, they don't stand a chance. The Doctor runs for the bank and starts to investigate. Charlie follows with a shotgun. The Doctor points out the mud is undisturbed - no signs of a struggle. Someone's covered the tracks. He questions why anyone would wait until the middle of the night to kidnap Karl Baring. The Doctor dashes off. Charlie notices something caught in the ivy on the bridge. When the Doctor returns, he finds Charlie's shotgun abandoned. He's still searching for Charlie two hours later, when Petra and Vanessa arrive. Hamilton Bryant once again turns down Petra's request for help. In the common room, Petra reveals that no-one has moved in or out of Britain since a supply drop six weeks previously. Petra reveals that no help is coming. Campbell, South African overseer of the field operatives, points out Karl and Charlie only went missing after the Doctor turned up. Others, including red-haired native volunteer Sanders, disagree. However, Petra suggests it could be one of their own number. The Doctor points something out - roots on the floor, vegetable matter walked through the Grange. Tim doesn't recognise it as their own, and the Doctor tells him to analyse it. At night, the Doctor visits Katy, ignoring Petra's protests. He wants to know what she saw. Vanessa's present, taking care of her. Katy's being kept in the former Baring family nursery. All she'll say is "not under the bridge". Sanders contacts Petra to tell her the relay link's down - they can't contact Madrid. Either they were shut off in Madrid, or the local relays have been sabotaged. Recognising Katy's fear as childhood fear, the Doctor guesses whatever's here has been here all along, and that it's something from a childhood story. Vanessa spots a book called "Not Under the Bridge", which the Doctor takes and reads. He then leaves immediately. Meanwhile, Tim examines the plant matter. The Doctor arrives, and Tim explains the plant's genotype has been altered. The Doctor suspected it's been reprogrammed to move around the house - to use plants as a vehicle. The Doctor leaves as Tim discovers something else that's strange about the sample. The Doctor gathers everyone to the common room, with a screen set up for Katy. The Doctor proceeds to tell the story of Not Under the Bridge. In the story, a troll lives under the bridge, looking like it's made of twigs and rope. In years where not much corn grew, the troll woke up and found a maiden to eat. The Doctor claims a troll really does live under the bridge. Behind the Doctor, something is crawling into the room - a beast made of twigs, the size of a baby. It crawls along the ceiling. Campbell tries to jab it down with a broom handle, but the creature grabs it and starts to move down. Campbell throws it away, and it lands in Vanessa's hair. The Doctor grabs the creature, pulling it away. He places it on the table as it disintegrates into roots and berries. Petra sees something on the computer screen - something in Katy's room. The monitor goes dead as the Doctor realises the small beast was a distraction. Petra instructs everyone to lock up the windows and doors. She heads upstairs, meeting the Doctor, who’s listening outside Katy's room. He opens the door. A small man is bent over Katy's bed, covered in roots. The Doctor closes the door again, and they hear the creature hammering the door. From the room, the creature room asks them to "come under the bridge". They hear the creature escape through the window, and enter the room. The Doctor climbs over the edge of the balcony, jumping his way down, and running after the beast. Petra looks down, and sees the creature running towards the gate, carrying something like a blanket. She realises Katy's been taken. We learn that the creature escaped through the gate. The Doctor follows slowly, knowing the destination. On route, he trips over Katy Baring in a bedspread. She seems happy - she believes Karl came for her. A 4x4 approaches them from the Grange - Petra, Campbell and Sanders. Sanders is told to carry Katy back to the Grange, and the Doctor joins Petra and Campbell to head for the bridge. Near the bank, they stop and get out to walk. At the dry riverbed, Petra sees something moving in the darkness. Campbell raises a shotgun, and fires into the darkness - but it isn't the troll. Suddenly, Campbell is grabbed by the troll. The Doctor manages to grab it, and recognises its face - it's Karl Baring. They struggle, the Doctor is knocked down, and the troll attacks. Petra fights the troll off with a branch, releasing the Doctor. He tries to grab the creature with a parka, but underfoot, the ground forms tentacles which attempt to drag them under. Petra helps the Doctor trap the troll with her own coat, and the limbs disintegrate. They spot a helicopter overhead, which lands nearby. Lieutenant Chavez of the Eurozone Reaction Team, a neat young man, exits - the people at the Grange had sent him after Petra. They head back in the helicopter, taking the troll with them. Hamilton Bryant is on board. He intends to burn out the area - the helicopter fires napalm and explosives into the forest. In the common room, the Doctor and Chavez unwrap the troll. The Doctor attaches it to a robotic medical unit. Hamilton clashes with the Doctor, so Petra leads him out of the room. Tim recognises the troll as Karl. The following morning, the troll seems uncomfortable in the light. The Doctor tries talking to the troll - he knows it's being animated by some life force. He asks what Karl Baring would call that life force, and the troll replies, "Spheriosis" - that which feeds from beneath. We learn the Spheriosis landed long ago, and fed with their roots until there were no nutrients left. They had to change, to absorb oxygen and nitrogen. The troll passes out from the effort of speaking. Hamilton Bryant is with Petra in her office. She realises it was him who shut off the relay links - and Bryant reveals he has no intention of leaving without Karl Baring. The Doctor gathers everyone again. He reveals that the Spheriosis landed billions of years ago, growing enormous over eons, closer to the surface. The Doctor suggests they all leave, but Bryant refuses. Petra asks about Charlie and Campbell - and the Doctor explains they've been eaten by the Spheriosis. The troll sits up, passing through the straps which were keeping it trapped as though made of mud. It once again asks everyone to "come under the bridge", and dies, crumbling in front of them. This time, Hamilton Bryant gathers everyone. He wants Petra and Katy on a helicopter in fifteen minutes, and orders the Doctor's arrest. He instructs Tim to perform an autopsy on the troll. Everyone else is instructed to stay behind in the Grange. Chavez locks the Doctor in a dark cellar. Upstairs, Bryant's lackey Stephenson sedates Katy, ready to be taken to the bridge. Two troopers bring Tim Hill into the room - Sanders intends to walk to the coast, taking an emergency flare. Petra stands up to Bryant, telling him not to take Katy. He orders Chavez to shoot her. After a face-off, Petra stands down, and Bryant tells Chavez to put his gun away. The Doctor realises that the Spheriosis is under the house – it’s enormous. Above, he hears the helicopter being boarded. Airborne in the helicopter, Katy wakes up. Bryant tells her they’re going to see Karl. Petra insists that Karl’s dead, his body being used by something. Nonetheless, the helicopter reaches the scorched riverbank. Explosives have damaged the soil, but the bridge is still intact. They leave the helicopter, and spot a flare in the distance – Sanders, proving that the Spheriosis reaches far away. Katy starts approaching the bridge, calling for Karl. Suddenly, Petra breaks away, and runs for Katy. Chavez shoots her, and she falls down the bank. In the cellar, the Doctor hears the Spheriosis under the ground again. He jumps for the stairs, and a trunk of roots breaks through the ground into the cellar. The Doctor calls for help, attracting the trunk’s attention. It shoots at the Doctor, just as the door is unlocked. The Doctor escapes, and the door is closed by Vanessa. The Doctor blocks the door with a stack of chairs, and they run. Vanessa explains she heard sounds coming from the lab, and the Doctor guesses it had been Tim. They reach the lab, and enter. Tim is nowhere to be seen – only the remains of the troll on the table. They hear something on the floor, and find Tim entwined in roots, being pulled down a hole. The Doctor knows it’s too late. More roots crash through the ground. The Doctor realises that Karl Baring is still within the creature somehow. Later, the Doctor takes a car from the Grange. He explains to Vanessa that the troll was warning Katy away. Karl had enough influence to save her, but not to save her if she came under the bridge. He tells Vanessa to take a car to the coast and organise for Britain to be left alone, letting the Spheriosis starve. Katy runs to Petra, who’s still alive. Men gather at the top of the bank – Petra tells Katy to run. Bryant instructs Chavez to have Katy taken under the bridge before they evacuate. Corporal Stamper and Doctor Stephenson are sent to get her. Chavez follows Bryant down the bank. Katy is led over the bridge. Bryant slaps her, thinking there’s nothing under the bridge, and that Katy’s trying to trick him. As they move, Stamper stops, looking at the ground. Long, thin white arms burst from the ground, pulling Stamper underground without a trace. Stephenson runs, but is swarmed by roots, which pull him into the ground. Chavez shoves Bryant out of the way and escapes, leaving Bryant to the creatures. Bryant shoots at them with his pistol – and realises Katy is being left alone. He grabs her, while up ahead, Chavez shoots himself having been grabbed by the creatures. A car arrives on the scene, driven by the Doctor. Bryant and Katy climb aboard, and they drive away as a single gigantic tentacle bursts from the ground. He asks about Petra, and Katy tells him she was shot by Bryant’s crew. Behind them, the tentacle has stopped chasing them. It grows – as tall as a block of flats, and beyond. The Doctor realises Karl’s forcing the Spheriosis to waste its energy, to save Katy. The three of them exit the car. The ground is shaking, but the Doctor knows the power struggle is evenly balanced. A creature breaks through the ground – the troll. Behind them, Bryant takes the car and drives away. Around them, more arms break through the ground – more trolls. The Doctor guesses the way to keep Karl fighting is to put Katy in maximum danger – to take her under the bridge. Bryant speeds away, avoiding the creatures. He drives for the bank, but crashes, activating the airbag and stalling the engine. A troll attacks the car as Bryant tries to get it going again – and then a second troll, followed by a whole pack of them. Roots break into the car, spreading and growing. They fill the car as the trolls watch. Under the bridge, the Doctor sees the roots approaching, and tells Katy to talk to Karl. She tries, and attracts the attention of a troll. She continues to shout for her brother, causing the troll to double up in pain. The Doctor hauls the troll under the bridge, and throws it at Katy. She recognises Karl as he sighs, and the entire creature disintegrates – including the tentacles outside. The Doctor digs his way out of the ground, pulling Katy back after him. She tells her Karl managed to kill the creature. Metres from the bridge, they spot a half-buried Petra – still alive. Katy attends to her. The transport helicopter arrives a moment later – Petra will be saved. The Doctor announces he’s leaving. The farm will flourish now without the Spheriosis draining its nutrients. Katy and Petra will be fine.
26162972	/m/0bzvn4	Seedfolks	Paul Fleischman	1997	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Kim, a nine year old Vietnamese girl, decides to plant six Lima bean seeds in a vacant lot in remembrance of her dead father, a farmer, and she also has two sisters. She visits every day to see the progress. She plants the beans in the hope that the spirit of her father will watch and recognize her as his daughter. Ana, a very old woman who is Romanian sees Kim bury something, and quickly assumes Kim is doing something illegal. Ana digs up the seeds in the vacant lot. Upon discovery of the Lima seeds, she feels sorry and replants them. Wendell, a man in the community, is told by Ana that Kim planted the seeds, and they are dying since Kim planted the seeds in the wrong season, so he decides to watch over them while he creates a small garden of his own in the space. Gonzalo, a Guatemalan teenager, and his uncle, Tio Juan, also add to the garden. Tio Juan was a farmer in Guatemala and finally finds a place he feels comfortable in the garden. Juan helps others with their gardens, but no one can understand him because he doesn't even speak English. Sam is a 78 year old man who is nice to everyone, and started a contest to solve the problem of water reaching the gardens. If adults can't do it, let children try! Leona also sees the progress of the garden but dislikes all the garbage. She complains to the government and wins. Curtis plants tomatoes to win the heart of a former girlfriend, Lateesha. Curtis planted it outside the fence and becomes very protective of the garden after some of his tomatoes are stolen. So he enlists Royce, a teenager who is homeless. Sae Young owned a drycleaning shop until she was brutally beaten during a robbery. Soon she becomes fearful of people. She would never go out of her house and would have everything delivered. When she goes to the garden, she begins to feel safer around people. Nora is a nurse who takes care of a man in a wheelchair, Mr. Myles, and as they walk by the garden, Mr. Myles gets excited and Nora helps him to join in planting something. Maricela is a pregnant sixteen year old who wishes her baby would die.Then she starts to realize that the miracle of life is not so bad. Amir is an Indian immigrant and owns a fabric store. He decides to plant eggplant and carrots in the garden. In the garden he meets up with someone who had insulted him in his store, and they become friends. He also assists in the arrest of a robber, along with two other men. Florence loves the garden, but she can not participate because of arthritis in her wrists. She watches the garden change, and becomes upset when nobody is there for the fall and winter. She fears that nobody will come back the following year, but the story comes full circle when she sees Kim planting Lima beans in early spring again.
26170677	/m/0b6g0vh	Mockingjay	Suzanne Collins	2010-08-24	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 After her rescue by the rebels of District 13, Katniss is convinced to become "the Mockingjay": a symbol of the rebellion against the ruling Capitol. As part of the agreement, she demands that the leader of District 13, President Coin, grant immunity to all of the Quarter Quell participants , including Peeta, and that Katniss reserves the right to kill President Snow, the unquestioned leader of Panem. Much to her displeasure, Katniss is kept away from the battles and works to create propaganda for the rebels. Katniss is unable to cope with the guilt as she watches a mentally ill Peeta on television, where he is forced to provide propaganda against her and the rebels for the Capitol. Finally, District 13 leaders decide to rescue Peeta, realizing that Katniss's guilt is impeding her role as "the Mockingjay." After the rescue, it is discovered that Peeta has been brainwashed into believing Katniss is the enemy, and he attempts to strangle her during their reunion. Peeta's brainwashing deeply effects and disturbs Katniss, but he gradually improves after much treatment and therapy, including cake decorating. His childhood friend, Delly Cartwright, helps with his recovery by recounting happy events from their past. Soon, Peeta recovers fully enough to train. Katniss and her propaganda unit are sent off on a mission to the Capitol, and President Coin later sends Peeta with them in replacement of another soldier, although his many scarred memories fuel his rage. The rebels, including Katniss, gain control of the districts and begin an assault on the Capitol. A propaganda filming in a "safe" Capitol neighborhood goes wrong, and Katniss and her team flee further into the city with the intent of finding and killing President Snow. Many members of Katniss's team are killed through intense urban warfare, including Hunger Games victor Finnick Odair. Eventually, Katniss presses on alone towards Snow's mansion, which has supposedly been opened to shelter Capitol children, but is actually intended to trap the kids and use them as human shields for President Snow. As she reaches the mansion, a hover plane with Capitol markings drops supply parachutes to the children which then explode, killing many of children. A rebel medical team, including Katniss's sister Prim, attempt to provide care to the wounded children as the rest of the parachutes explode killing Prim and many others. After watching her younger sister die, Katniss is even more determined to get her revenge on President Snow. After the rebels' victory, it is decided to punish the Gamemakers, by holding a Hunger Games with children from the Capitol. While recovering from the same explosion that killed her sister, Katniss accidentally encounters President Snow who is under house arrest. Snow tells that her that he did not order the assault that killed Prim, saying he would have escaped if he had access to a hover plane. When Katniss expresses her doubts about his innocence, Snow reminds her that they had agreed not to lie to each other following the 74th Annual Hunger Games. Katniss recalls that the bombing resembles a trap originally developed by Gale Hawthorne; Gale denies his involvement but Katniss cannot help holding him responsible. At Snow's execution, Katniss thinks back to her conversation with him, and realizes someone high up would have to give permission for Prim to be on the front lines despite her young age. Making it look like the Capitol killed Prim would push Katniss's loyalty to Coin and would also drive a wedge between the Capitol and President Snow. When she is given the opportunity to assassinate Snow, Katniss raises her bow and shoots Coin instead, killing her. A riot ensues and Snow is found dead. Katniss then tries to commit suicide, but Peeta stops her. Katniss is acquitted due to her apparent insanity and sent home to District 12, along with others who are attempting to rebuild. Peeta returns months later, having largely recovered from his brainwashing. Katniss falls back in love with Peeta, recognizing she needs his hope, and strength, in contrast to Gale who has the same fire she already finds in herself. Together with Haymitch they write a book filled with the stories of previous tributes of the Hunger Games and those who died in the war to preserve their memory. In the epilogue, twenty years later Katniss and Peeta are married and have two children. The Hunger Games are over, but Katniss dreads the day her children learn about their parents' involvement in both the Games and the war. When she feels distressed, Katniss plays a comforting but repetitive "game," reminding herself of every good thing that she has ever seen someone do. The series ends with Katniss claiming that "there are much worse games to play."
26170722	/m/0b6f6_5	All Alone	Claire Huchet Bishop	1953	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Marcel Mabout is a "ten-year-old man", sent by his father with their three cows to summer pasture in the French mountains. While he is being trusted with the "family fortune" for the first time, Marcel is even more entrusted with the family creed, which also permeates his village, "Mind your own business". It is a village of friendless strangers, not neighbours. In the mountains, Marcel faces the cold, fear, and loneliness he was not prepared for. But when he hears the yodels of Pierre Pascal, a slightly older cowherd boy in the mountains, and their yodeling consoles each other. Then Pierre's cows wander over to Marcel's mountain, and he is faced with a crisis of conscience that pits his antisocial upbringing with his inner sense of righteousness. Deciding to take the risk of returning Pierre's cows, Marcel sets off a chain of events that leads to a revolution in the village.
26170829	/m/06nfz68	Hurry Home Candy	Meindert DeJong	1953	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Hurry Home, Candy tells the story of a young dog named Candy, chronicling his life through several traumatic and joyful events. Told from the dog's perspective, the reader experiences Candy's separation from his mother and being brought to a cold kitchen floor with the ever-present threat of being hit with a broom. Later in the story, Candy becomes a beloved pet to two small children, only to later become separated from them. His quest to survive and be re-united with his new family constitutes the rest of the narrative.
26180939	/m/0b77sxz	Zero History	William Gibson			 Hollis Henry and Milgrim find themselves in London working for Hubertus Bigend, unaware that their lives previously crossed in Spook Country. One of Bigend's current interests is fashion, particularly the intersection between streetwear, workwear and military clothing. He asks Henry and Milgrim to investigate a secret brand, named Gabriel Hounds after the English legend. At the same time, he becomes aware that a coup is being plotted within his company, Blue Ant. During the course of the novel, Milgrim is threatened by others in what is implied to be a corporate espionage plot suborned by rogue members of the United States military. A parallel subplot tracks Hollis as she tracks down Garreth, the mysterious daredevil featured in Spook Country, and the Gabriel Hounds designer, implied but not expressly stated to be Cayce Pollard.
26186137	/m/0b753gk	Furnace: Lockdown	Alexander Gordon Smith			 Alex Sawyer is a young teenage boy who world gets flipped upside down, after he and his friend Toby are trying to rob a house. They are ambushed by large, silver eyed men in black suits. These men shoot Toby, then frame Alex for the murder. Alex is sentenced to life imprisonment in Furnace Penitentiary, a juvenile prison buried a mile underground. On his way there, Alex meets Zee and Monty, who were also framed for murder. Furnace is quickly shown to be no ordinary prison. The silver eyed men, called blacksuits, that framed Alex are guards, assisted by skinless dogs during "Blood Watches". During blood watches, prisoners are ordered back to their cells and wheezers, creatures with gas masks stitched to their faces, come to take prisoners. Prisoners taken during blood watches never come back. When Alex first comes, his cellmate, Donovan, teaches him how to survive. The prison is ruled by a gang called the Skulls, who abuse the other prisoners mercilessly. Alex finds a passage leading to an underground river, but with no holes large enough to let him through. He, Donovan, and Zee hatch a plan to put gas from the kitchen in rubber gloves, and, when enough are collected, blow and exit in the rock. Monty is taken from his cell during a blood watch, and later the guards bring out a beast sharing Monty's birthmark which they allow to kill his cellmate, who had beaten Monty. The leader of the Skulls is killed by a new prisoner, Gary Owens, who quickly reveals himself to be a psychopath without regard for human life. When Alex is almost killed by the Skulls,Donovan frantically tells Gary of their plan to escape the Furnace. Gary allows him to survive on the condition that he escapes with them. Donovan is then taken during a blood watch, putting their plans of escape in jeopardy. They try to escape before their plans are discovered. They find that Monty has become a blacksuit, but he is not fully brainwashed and allows them to continue. They blow the gas they have been collecting and jump into the underground river. The story continues in the next book in the series.
26190179	/m/0b74wf9	World of Warcraft: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King	Christie Golden	2009-04-21	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book is set over an extensive period, and has many duplicate scenes from other works, including Tides of Darkness, Beyond the Dark Portal, Day of the Dragon, Reign of Chaos, The Frozen Throne and Wrath of the Lich King. However, while the scenes themselves remain the same, they are experienced from alternate viewpoints. The story starts off with Arthas at the age of nine, as early as the period between the First and Second Wars, with Anduin Lothar and Varian Wrynn first arriving in Capital City bearing news of the fall of Stormwind. Arthas and Varian play together, though while Varian was trained to fight since childhood, Arthas was shielded from such teachings by his father. However, with Muradin Bronzebeard coming across Arthas fighting imaginary orcs while Alliance forces battle against the Horde on Draenor, Muradin volunteers to train him. Later, Arthas is caught up in Daval Prestor's attempt to marry Calia Menethil. The love triangle between Arthas, Jaina Proudmoore and Kael'thas Sunstrider is developed through the plot, Arthas and Jaina partaking in the festivities of Noblegarden, the Midsummer Fire Festival, Hallow's End and the Feast of Winter Veil together. Later, as Arthas starts taking on the responsibilities of a prince, he visits Durnholde Keep, seeing Thrall fight other adversaries in the gladiator arena. Quel'Thalas is visited and high elven culture depicted. Eventually, he is inducted as a Knight of the Silver Hand in the Cathedral of Light. Eventually, the Third War begins. The story covers Arthas and Jaina meeting Kel'Thuzad, Arthas calling Uther a traitor and dismissing him and the Knights of the Silver Hand from service for their refusal to aid in the Culling of Stratholme. In time, Arthas' search for vengeance leads him to Frostmourne, the (apparent) demise of Mal'Ganis and the moments leading to and after the murder of King Terenas. The storyline continues beyond this point, to Jaina and Aegwynn in Theramore. Numerous scenes from Wrath of the Lich King are included along with cameos of tuskarr and taunka.
26195805	/m/0g85pk	Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Re-Turn of Tippy Tinkletrousers	Dav Pilkey	2008-12-30	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story continues where the previous book left off, with George and Harold running away from Tippy Tinkletrousers. As they are running away, the book explains something called 'The Banana Cream Pie Paradox', meaning that going back to the past and changing something will remain its changed way in the present. Meanwhile, the story switches to what will happen if Tippy Tinkletrousers did not appear, making George, Harold and Mr.Krupp to jail. Meanwhile, at the Piqua State Penitentiary, Tippy (who is also a prisoner from the fourth book) is tasked to build a statue of Warden Gordon Bordon Shmorden who is chief jailer of the prison, Tippy does the task but instead builds "a giant robot suit". On the day Tippy presents his robot suit to Gordon Shmorden, he reveals his work and climbs on to the suit and freezes everyone in his way (the same suit used at the very end of the eighth book). Tippy then grabs Mr.Krupp and forces him to get George and Harold. Tippy soon finds George and Harold and puts Mr. Krupp down, wanting information of Captain Underpants. George and Harold snap their fingers which makes Mr. Krupp turn into Captain Underpants. Captain Underpants gets chased, while Tippy is unsuccessfully trying to freeze him, soon he accidentally freezes his robotic legs and as a last resort, time travels from five years ago. The story switches to George and Harold as kindergartens who have a hard school life due to the fact that Kipper (a school bully and Mr. Krupp's nephew) bullies them along with his friends. George and Harold find a way to stop Kipper (which include the created ghost of 'Wedgie Magee') and soon scares Kipper and his gang. Kipper and his gang are very scared, that they run out of school right when Tippy arrives from his time traveling journey. Which makes Kipper and his gang even more scared until they become mental. This makes the police accuse Mr. Krupp, causing him to lose his job. Tippy then time travels back to the present time, thinking that kids five years from the past were weird. However, as Mr. Krupp was hypnotized when George and Harold were in the 4th grade, a universe is created where Captain Underpants never existed. Tippy arrives to a present destroyed and overrun by giant evil zombie nerds. At the end, Tippy gets squashed by two zombie nerds who are really George and Harold. What remains left of Tippy is a red squishy stain.In the last chapter the words say the adventures we know and love never actually happened, and then states there will be no more Captain Underpants stories (except book 10, coming January 15, 2013). The Adventures Of Dog Man The comic begins with a police guy whose partner is a special trained police dog named Greg. They are professionals on catching criminals. One day, he and Greg spotted a bomb, but it was too late to defuse it. Then they got transported to the Hospital via Ambulance. The doctor announces that Greg's body is dying and the Cop's head is dying too. Then the nurse had a great idea: that he will cut off Greg's head and sow it on the Cop's body. The doctor accepted the idea and they held a big operation. It was successful and everyone called him "Dog Man." Dog man is the best of all cops because he sniff criminals with his nose, hear crimes with his ears, and punch criminals with his fist. But he had one mortal fear: vacuum cleaners. Petey, the world's most evilest cat, saw Dog Man's weakness so he invented the evil vacuum robot. The robot stole all the money from the bank and Dog Man came to stop it but the vacuum was chasing him. The robot chased Dog Man until he reached to the corner. Dog Man knew it was death time for him until the plug for the robot got unplugged. Dog Man then destroyed the robot and followed the cord. The cord lead to Petey's hideout and arrested him. Then Dog Man celebrated the victory by drinking some none alcoholic wine. The Curse Of Wedgie Magee The comic starts with this kindergartner named Wedgie Magee who always got picked on by the bunch of bullies. The bullies also gave him wedgies and stole his money. One day, he couldn't take it anymore so he went to see a Gypsy Lady. Wedgie said that he gets wedgies all the time and she said that he is going to give him a special Potion that will help him. She was supposed to give him the Anti-Wedgie Potion, but when she forgot her glasses, she gives him a Voo-Doo Ghost Potion instead. She gave Wedgie the instruction that when the bullies come by to give him a wedgie, he has to pour the potion onto his pants. The next day the bullies came by to gave him a wedgie, and he poured it onto his pants. The pants disappeared and it became a ghost. Nobody was scared and they are laughing in hysterics. Then he died of embarrassment. On that very night when Wedgie Magee died, his pants came back for revenge. He ate the first bully on his way home from school, ate up the second bully while he was eating dinner, and ate up the third bully when he was in bed. After that, his pants are laid to rest, but he will be back to people who are mean to Kindergartners. At the back of the comic book, there is a bonus section page explaining to the reader or Kipper and his friends the ways he could get cursed and how to undo it. Here are the reasons: # You start acting all weird and stuff. # You want to play with Dolls, Dresses, and Bracelets. # You get ectoplasm and spiders on your stuff. # Awesome food like pizza tastes all hot and burns your mouth and stuff. # Your armpits get all burned and stuff. The only way to undo this curse is must undo all the bad stuff you did and never pick on anybody.
26199163	/m/0b77_c1	The Adventures of Harry Richmond	George Meredith		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}	 Richmond Roy, or Roy Richmond, is the ne'er-do-well son of an actress and an unnamed member of the royal family. He has taken up the trade of singing teacher, and in this capacity is employed by Squire Beltham, one of whose two daughters he seduces and elopes with. Having given birth to Harry Richmond the daughter dies. Squire Beltham and his other daughter, Dorothy, obtain custody of Harry after a prolonged struggle with Roy. Harry runs away from school and ends up in Germany, where he happens upon his father, now living at the courts of various German princes, with intervals in debtors' prisons. Harry falls in love with Princess Ottilia, but he is once more returned to the care of his grandfather, who promises to make Harry heir to his fortune of £20,000 a year if he will marry local girl Janet Ilchester. Harry will have none of this, and goes back to the Continent to pursue his princess, only to find that she has married a German prince. Since Janet is now engaged to an English marquess, and Squire Beltham has left his grandson a measly £3000, Harry seems to have got the worst of both worlds. Happily, Janet has second thoughts about the marquess and marries Harry instead. The story ends with a disastrous fire, in which Roy dies while trying to save Dorothy Beltham's life.
26201317	/m/0b76sbx	Signal		2009	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Owen is a lonely and bored kid who just moved to the Finger Lakes of upstate New York with his father who is a workaholic. His mother recently died, and he is trying to find something to do with his summer since he does not live in a neighborhood like he used to when he lived in Buffalo. One day, while he is running up and down a seven mile trail that he found with his Pointer, Josie. His mother used to talk to him about life on other planets, which he wonders about often. When he gets by the creek, he finds a piece of cloth with blood on it. He follows a trail of footsteps, dirt, and blood to an abandoned house where he meets a girl named Campion, (named after a flower) with very shiny green eyes who claims she is from another planet. Cam explains her parents landed and she got left behind by mistake. She explains the blood from a wound she got because of a hubcap that was thrown at her by Ray, the boyfriend of Bobbie, the woman who found her. She explains that Ray and Bobbi are pursuing her because she escaped from a hotel room they kept her in. Cam says she likes Tootsie Rolls, and agrees life on Earth really has its points. Owen kindly brings her food, water, and supplies. Owen tries to keep Cam a secret from his father, and from the "Dog People", a friendly family who has over 19 pets whom they walk down the trail daily. (The Dog People, Ernie and Charlene, explain that they wanted kids, but they never got them. So, they had to adopt dogs and cats.) Cam then says she needs him to make a "signal" in a wheat field to signal her parents so they can pick her up. Cam tells Owen that he needs to hide her for exactly four days, which is when a full moon comes, and they search during full moons. But, since they have become good friends, Cam asks Owen to come with her, and leave his boring life for her planet. Cam and Owen camp out in a tent and talk about her home planet. Cam explains her planet was once ravaged with war, and they have evolved into smarter beings. She then explains they "like dogs" and says Josie can come. Owen starts talking to his father and gets excited when he leaves a note saying he will come home early so they can talk again. However, his dad is working on a big audit, and does not make it. Towards ten o'clock, Owen cries himself to sleep. Angry, Owen gets up early the next morning and plows the signal into a wheat field with a board. Owen tells Cam he will be coming with her to her planet. They anxiously wait for the ship to arrive until Ray shows up and attacks them. While Ray is injuring Owen, Cam knocks him unconscious with the board they used to plow the field. Cam frantically shouts to the sky when she sees lights. However, it is a police helicopter searching for Owen. They give themselves up, and Cam reveals she was really Bobbi's daughter, but she ran away and imagined being from another planet. When Owen believed her, she felt it might be possible. In the end, Cam moves in with Ernie and Charlene, and Owen begins to talk to his dad. They say they are going on a hike through the Adirondack Mountains. The final sentence has Owen say: "Cam said life on Earth has its points. And I think she is right."
26208023	/m/0b7624n	Devil's Brood	Sharon Penman	2008	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Devil's Brood continues the story of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine that began in When Christ and His Saints Slept and continued in Time and Chance. Devil's Brood opens with the conflict between Henry II, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their four sons, which escalates into a decade of warfare and rebellion pitting the sons against the father and the brothers against each other while the mother spends the period imprisoned by her husband. The novel opens in 1172 when Henry and Eleanor have been married for decades and have four grown sons: Hal, Richard, Geoffrey and John. During the final 18 years of Henry's life conflict builds with Eleanor, beginning with her desire to choose her successor for Aquitaine. Henry has her imprisoned, first in France and then in England, while he goes to war against France. The four sons each want to rule a piece of territory and war breaks out among the sons as they plot with their mother and enter into a rebellion against Henry, in the process aligning themselves with King Louis VII of France—England's enemy. The consequences of Henry's sons' rebellion weakens the Angevin empire. At the end, Henry dies with only his household knights at his bedside.
26208152	/m/0b73mfw	Time and Chance	Sharon Penman	2002		 Time and Chance is about King Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the rift between Henry II and Thomas Becket. Time and Chance is the sequel to Penman's When Christ and His Saints Slept and spans a 15 year period from 1156 to 1171. Penman brings alive for the reader the period as King Henry II becomes increasingly estranged from his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (although Eleanor and Henry have eight children during the eight years), and from his close friend and advisor Thomas Becket. King Henry II's decision to elevate Becket to the Archbishop of Canterbury is a fulcrum for discord between Henry and Eleanor. Moreover, Becket must reconcile duty to his sovereign and duty to his God which ultimately leads to his death and martyrdom and stains King Henry II's reign.
26208445	/m/0b75z9j	Penguin Lost	Andrey Kurkov			 The novel follows the life of a writer, Viktor Alekseyevich Zolotaryov, in a struggling post-Soviet society. Fleeing from the mafia to Antarctica, Viktor passes some time in a polar research station, before returning to Kiev with a new identity. Back in Ukraine and needing a job, he starts work on the election campaign for a Mafia boss. In return he is given information as to the whereabouts of Misha, his pet penguin, which is said to be in a zoo in Chechnya. Thus begins another journey, this time across the former Soviet Union, in pursuit of his beloved pet.
26212501	/m/0b778f2	Evernight	Claudia Gray	2008-05-27	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Bianca Olivier is a new student to Evernight Academy, a Gothic boarding school with "perfect" but predatory students. She knows she does not belong but she cannot escape because her parents are now teachers at the school. Bianca believes the best of her parents and trusts them about everything even when her brain tells her not to. As school progresses, Bianca befriends Lucas, Raquel, a loner like her, and Vic, Lucas's roommate. She develops enemies, like Courtney and Erich, who are what Bianca calls "The Evernight Type". At a party, she befriends a handsome, popular, but friendly guy, Balthazar More. Balthazar asks her to the Autumn Ball. There, she, Lucas and Balthazar get into an argument, and Balthazar leaves them alone. Outside, under the gazebo, she and Lucas kiss for the first time. Bianca gives in to temptation, bites Lucas and drinks his blood. After she realizes what she did, she screams for help. Upon hearing, Courtney comes out and says "Well, it's about time you became a vampire like the rest of us." When Lucas awakens he is unable to remember the event. Lucas and Bianca declare their love for each other. Lucas eventually discovers Bianca is a vampire, but she is a child of two vampires and he accepts this. After they have been officially dating for weeks, Bianca mentions that one of Lucas's ancestors went to Evernight, but no humans have ever been accepted to the school before, except a Black Cross member (a group of elite vampire hunters). Her parents and Balthazar realize this and attack, but Lucas holds his own against two vampires and they chase him off campus. Bianca runs off with him, and even though he has been raised to hate all vampires, he still loves Bianca. They meet up with the rest of his team, and the Black Cross think that she is a stolen baby, hiding the truth she is a vampire. Bianca's parents turn up and take her back home because they do not understand. She reluctantly goes with them. A few days later she receives a letter through Vic from Lucas telling her that he will always love her and they will meet again.
26215460	/m/0b753q8	The War I Always Wanted	Brandon Friedman		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Spanning the course of three years, Friedman tells his story through a combination of present action and flashbacks. In all, he covers events in Afghanistan (including his experience in Operation Anaconda in March 2002), the 2003 invasion of Iraq and his time in Baghdad, the beginning of the insurgency in northern Iraq during the latter half of 2003, and his re-adjustment upon returning home in 2004.
26215558	/m/0b73_pc	Double Identity	Margaret Haddix			 Bethany Cole is living a normal life until her parents, Walter and Hillary, load her into their car at midnight and drive her hours away from their home. They reach Sanderfield, Illinois, where Bethany is introduced to her aunt Myrlie Wilkers, whom Bethany had never met before. When Bethany's dad talks to Myrlie, Bethany overhears her father say "She doesn't know anything about Elizabeth." Bethany realizes that her parents are abandoning her without an explanation, but she begrudgingly settles in. Myrlie shows Bethany the way to a room for her grandchildren that has never been used. Myrlie then takes Bethany back downstairs, where she correctly guesses all of Bethany's favorite foods. The next day, Bethany tells Myrlie that she is a swimmer, so Myrlie takes her to the YMCA to swim. While they are there, one of Myrlie's friends notices Bethany and mentions that she thought Bethany was Elizabeth. This is enough to spark Bethany's interest in Elizabeth.Bethany really wants to know about Elizabeth. When she and Myrlie come back to the house, Bethany retreats upstairs to change into her clothes. When she comes back downstairs, she overhears Myrlie on the phone asking for permission from Walter to allow her to tell Bethany who Elizabeth was. When Bethany storms into the kitchen and confronts her, Myrlie says that she promised Walter that she would not tell, although she very much wants to. The next day, Walter calls early in the morning. When Bethany asks who Elizabeth was, he asks her to put Myrlie on the phone. When Myrlie finishes talking with Walter, she tells Bethany that Elizabeth was her sister who died in a tragic car crash. Hillary was driving the car and felt responsible for the crash. Joss, Myrlie's daughter and formerly Elizabeth's best friend, comes to talk to Bethany. At first, Joss mistakes Bethany for Elizabeth, noting their extreme resemblance. After a long talk about Elizabeth, they watch old videos of Joss and Elizabeth as children. When Bethany sees Elizabeth, she realizes that they are identical, except for a small scar under Elizabeths left eye. When the three of them play cards, Joss accidentally calls Bethany "Elizabeth". The next day, Myrlie receives a package with four forged birth certificates from different states and ten thousand dollars cash. A note accompanying it explains Walter and Hillary's reasons for leaving Bethany with Myrlie. Soon after, Hillary calls, asking for Elizabeth. Bethany grabs the phone and tries to reassure her mother while Joss attempts to trace the call. Hillary tells Bethany, thinking she is the dead Elizabeth, that if they save some of her cells, they can make a clone of her, so Bethany realizes that she is Elizabeth's clone, which is why she likes all the same things and looks exactly like her. Her parents even raised her in a similar environment with the same toys to try to replicate their first daughter. Over the next few days, Bethany encounters a mysterious man. First, he offers to give her a ride home after she trips and falls, injuring herself. Bethany is panicked that he knows her name, but Joss comes to find her. Later, the same mysterious man, this time identified as "Dalton," comes to Myrlie's house on Halloween and asks for Walter. A strange car also drives by the house several times. A few days later, Joss, Myrlie, and Bethany later go to the County Fair, where they see Bethany's parents. Wondering at their presence, they soon become aware that Dalton is at the fair too. It is revealed that Dalton Van Dyne gave Bethany's father money to create a clone of him self because he felt a clone would be the only person who would love him. Instead of creating that clone, Walter created a clone of Elizabeth, believing that while Van Dyne would have another chance, Elizabeth wouldn't have one. When Bethany realizes this, she tells him, but the entire town hears it as well. In the epilogue, Bethany is thirteen and living in Sanderfield. She explains to the reader that her parents made four embryos cloned from Elizabeth and implanted three of them into three surrogates and one into Hillary. The babies of the surrogates died very soon after birth, but Bethany, her mother's baby, survived. The book ends with the family planting a ginkgo in honor of Bethany next to the trees that were planted for Elizabeth and Joss, then they eat pie.
26223946	/m/0b76wf5	The Heat of the Day	Elizabeth Bowen	1948	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel opens with an encounter between Louie Lewis, a London factory worker seeking self-identity, and Harrison at an outdoor concert at Regent's Park. After Harrison rudely leaves Louie he goes to visit Stella in her rented flat. He tells her of his suspicions that her lover, Robert Kelway, is a spy, while proposing that she leaves Robert to become his lover. While she is coping with the possibilities, her son, Roderick, visits her on leave from his army training. In her conversation with her son and the memories of her divorce from his father, Stella begins to doubt if she (or anyone) can ever really know anyone else. Roderick, meanwhile, is ruminating on Mount Morris, the house he has just inherited from an Irish cousin, Francis Morris. The narration goes on to recount Cousin Francis's visit to his wife, Cousin Nettie, at Wisteria Lodge, a special care house for the elderly and the insane/mad. He is using this visit as an excuse to leave neutral Ireland and reach Britain in order to offer his services to the Allied effort. He dies just before the reunion with his wife. At Francis's lawyer's request, Stella attends the funeral, and is told that her son will inherit the estate, even though Roderick and Francis have never met. Here, Harrison, who is unknown to anyone at the funeral, and Stella meet for the first time. Harrison insists on accompanying her on the train back to London. The narration then recounts Stella and Robert's first meeting two years ago and their subsequent romance. Back in the narrative present, Stella shows an interest in meeting Robert's family and so they go to Robert's family house, Holme Dene. At Holme Dene, Stella meets Robert's authoritarian mother, his managerial sister, Ernestine, and their wards, Robert's other sister's two children. His mother reluctantly allows Robert to show Stella his room, in which is a collection of photographs of Robert throughout his life. Robert tells Stella about his troubled relationship with his emasculated father. That evening they return to London. Harrison and Stella meet again. Harrison points out to her that in visiting his family, Stella is accepting the possibility that Robert is a spy. Harrison reiterates his insinuations that she should leave Robert and start a new relationship with Harrison. Stella does not accept his offer to stay the night. The narration jumps back to Louie. Louie has made friends with Connie, an air warden. Connie and Louie are both newspaper fanatics; Connie is suspicious of everything she reads, while Louie believes everything she reads. Returning to the main plot, Stella leaves for Ireland to visit Mount Morris and take care of affairs for Roderick. While there, she decides to confront Robert with Harrison's accusations. Robert and Ernestine pick her up in a car at the train station. After dropping Ernestine off, Stella finally asks Robert directly if he is a spy. Robert is angry that she could entertain such an idea, and is hurt that she has been harboring such thoughts for two months. Then he proposes marriage. She says no, after which they discuss their relationship and Harrison. Roderick, who feels guilty inheriting Mount Morris without Cousin Nettie's permission, goes to visit her at Wisteria Lodge. In the course of their conversation, it becomes obvious that Cousin Nettie is not really mad, as she is pretending to be. Her feigned insanity is her excuse to never return to Mount Morris, which she hates. Nettie reveals the true story of Roderick's parents' divorce. Everyone assumed Stella was the guilty adulteress, but in fact Victor (Roderick's father) left her for a nurse. Roderick is stunned by the revelation and calls his mother to ask her about it as soon as he can. Stella receives Roderick's call during one of Harrison's visits just before they leave for dinner. It prompts Stella to share her history with Harrison, which she hasn't done for many other people. At dinner, Harrison confirms that Robert fulfilled his predictions about exactly how Robert would change his behavior if Stella ever revealed that he was being watched. Louie happens to be at the restaurant and makes up an excuse to talk with them. In coded language in front of Louie Stella offers herself sexually to Harrison in exchange for Robert's safety. Harrison rejects the offer, and Stella and Louie leave the restaurant together. Louie is attracted to Stella, and tries to describe her to Connie. Robert goes to Holme Dene because the family has received an offer to buy the house. Mrs. Kelway and Ernestine refuse to make a decision without him, but clearly he has no real influence. He is tense throughout the scene. He returns to Stella in London and confesses that he is indeed a spy for the Germans. Robert tries to justify his actions and expounds on his fascist politics. Robert accuses Harrison of interfering in their relationship, which eventually leads to his confession. Although Stella still loves him, their relationship is marred. They know Harrison is waiting outside. Robert insists on leaving via the roof. A couple days later Stella goes to visit Roderick and reveals that Robert is dead. Back in London, she gives a report to the coroner's office in which she comes out looking like a femme fatale and Robert's treachery is hidden. Louie reads the report in the papers and (mistakenly) believes her first impression of Stella was wrong. The narrative gives a sweeping overview of the next few years of the war. Harrison visits Stella again years later during another bombing. He tells her that his first name is Robert. Their resolution of their relationship is left ambiguous. Louie gets pregnant in the course of her extramarital affairs. Connie takes care of her, and Tom dies in combat without ever knowing. Louie leaves London to give birth to her son, Thomas Victor. She retires with him to her hometown, Seale-on-Sea, with the intent to raise him as if he were her heroic husband's child.
26224103	/m/0b7618c	Fascism In Its Epoch				 The book, which was translated into English in 1965 as The Three Faces Of Fascism, argues that fascism arose as a form of resistance to and a reaction against modernity. Nolte's basic hypothesis and methodology were deeply rooted in the German "philosophy of history" tradition, a form of intellectual history which seeks to discover the "metapolitical dimension" of history. The "metapolitical dimension" is considered to be the history of grand ideas functioning as profound spiritual powers, which infuse all levels of society with their force. In Nolte's opinion, only those with training in philosophy can discover the "metapolitical dimension", and those who use normal historical methods miss this dimension of time. Using the methods of phenomenology, Nolte subjected German Nazism, Italian Fascism, and the French Action Française movements to a comparative analysis. Nolte's conclusion was that fascism was the great anti-movement: it was anti-liberal, anti-communist, anti-capitalist, and anti-bourgeois. In Nolte’s view, fascism was the rejection of everything the modern world had to offer and was an essentially negative phenomenon. In a Hegelian dialectic, Nolte argued that the Action Française was the thesis, Italian Fascism was the antithesis, and German National Socialism the synthesis of the two earlier fascist movements. Nolte argued that fascism functioned at three levels: in the world of politics as a form of opposition to Marxism, at the sociological level in opposition to bourgeois values, and in the "metapolitical" world as "resistance to transcendence" ("transcendence" in German can be translated as the "spirit of modernity"). Nolte defined the relationship between fascism and Marxism as: Fascism is anti-Marxism which seeks to destroy the enemy by the evolvement of a radically opposed and yet related ideology and by the use of almost identical and yet typically modified methods, always, however within the unyielding framework of national self-assertion and autonomy. Nolte defined &#34;transcendence&#34; as a &#34;metapolitical&#34; force comprising two types of change. The first type, &#34;practical transcendence&#34;, manifesting in material progress, technological change, political equality, and social advancement, comprises the process by which humanity liberates itself from traditional, hierarchical societies in favour of societies where all men and women are equal. The second type is &#34;theoretical transcendence&#34;, the striving to go beyond what exists in the world towards a new future, eliminating traditional fetters imposed on the human mind by poverty, backwardness, ignorance, and class. Nolte himself defined &#34;theoretical transcendence&#34; as: Theoretical transcendence may be taken to mean the reaching out of the mind beyond what exists and what can exist toward an absolute whole; in a broader sense this may be applied to all that goes beyond, that releases man from the confines of the everyday world, and which, as an "awareness of the horizon", makes it possible for him to experience the world as a whole. Nolte cited the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961 as an example of “practical transcendence”, of how humanity was pressing forward in its technological development and rapidly acquiring powers traditionally thought to be only the providence of the gods.Drawing upon the work of Max Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx, Nolte argued that the progress of both types of &#34;transcendence&#34; generates fear as the older world is swept aside by a new world, and that these fears led to fascism. Nolte wrote that: The most central of Maurras's ideas have been seen to penetrate to this level. By "monotheism" and "anti-nature" he did not imply a political process: he related these terms to the tradition of Western philosophy and religion, and left no doubt that for him they were not only adjuncts of Rousseau's notion of liberty, but also of the Christian Gospels and Parmenides' concept of being. It is equally obvious that he regarded the unity of world economics, technology, science and emancipation merely as another and more recent form of "anti-nature". It was not difficult to find a place for Hitler ideas as a cruder and more recent expression of this schema. Maurras' and Hitler's real enemy was seen to be "freedom towards the infinite" which, intrinsic in the individual and a reality in evolution, threatens to destroy the familiar and beloved. From all this it begins to be apparent what is meant by "transcendence". In regard to the Holocaust, Nolte contended that because Adolf Hitler identified Jews with modernity, the basic thrust of Nazi policies towards Jews had always aimed at genocide: &#34;Auschwitz was contained in the principles of Nazi racist theory like the seed in the fruit&#34;. Nolte believed that, for Hitler, Jews represented &#34;the historical process itself&#34;. Nolte argues that Hitler was &#34;logically consistent&#34; in seeking genocide of the Jews because Hitler detested modernity and identified Jews with the things that he most hated in the world. According to Nolte, &#34;In Hitler&#39;s extermination of the Jews, it was not a case of criminals committing criminal deeds, but of a uniquely monstrous action in which principles ran riot in a frenzy of self-destruction&#34;. Nolte&#39;s theories about Nazi anti-Semitism as a rejection of modernity inspired the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka to argue that National Socialism was an attack on &#34;the very roots of Western civilisation, its basic values and moral foundations&#34;.
26225546	/m/0b76mzs	Stone's Fall	Iain Pears		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 An aging BBC reporter approaching retirement in 1953, Matthew Braddock is on a farewell tour, visiting the old Paris bureau. Chancing upon a familiar name in the obituary notices, he decides to attend the funeral of an acquaintance he has not seen for many years. After the service, he is approached by a stranger who introduces himself as the deceased woman's solicitor. He surprises Braddock with the information that the firm has been holding a package for many years, addressed to him, with instructions to deliver it only after this woman's death. Later, on his trip back to London, Braddock reminisces about those days of his youth in 1909 when he met the beautiful and mysterious Elizabeth. Equally mysterious was the death (and life) of her husband, Baron Ravenscliff, born John William Stone. Later, Braddock opens the long-delayed package to find a pair of extraordinary manuscripts. These two documents, written accounts of events occurring in 1890 and 1867 respectively, follow Braddock's recollections to form the three-part structure of the historical-mystery novel Stone's Fall. Many historical-fiction novels place their fictional characters in a believable historical setting (e.g. Pears' own The Portrait), but few attempt to include actual persons and events that can be researched and verified (or not) by the curious reader. As in Pears' earlier novel An Instance of the Fingerpost, the reader is challenged to learn more about the history underlying the fiction. This is especially true in the middle (1890) section, where the fictional Henry Cort becomes involved with historical events that later came to be known as "The Panic of 1890". The next article section, Historical references, lists existing and/or historical persons, places and events mentioned in quotations from Stone's Fall, with citations or internal links to other Wikipedia articles. Page numbers are from the hardcover edition. The final section, Historical liberties, includes a listing of inconsistencies found between historical facts and the same "facts" as presented in Stone's Fall (liberties rather than errors: it is, after all, a novel).
26228747	/m/0b772p2	Santa Olivia	Jacqueline Carey	2009-05-29	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set in a future dystopia United States, the town of Santa Olivia is effectively a desert war zone where people have no rights and legally no longer exist, with the town's name even being changed simply to "Outpost No. 12". The main character is that of Loup Garron, a daughter of a genetically modified father who was bred by the US military as a weapon and has since escaped to Outpost. He becomes engaged with Loup's mother, a resident of Outpost, but is forced to leave before his daughter is born. Loup grows up to become a boxer in Outpost in order to try to escape and eventually find her father.
26230428	/m/0b753vj	Hellblazer: Pandemonium				 The graphic novel is a self contained story, venturing into political ground that Jamie Delano is well known for. The story starts with a scene in Iraq, where a small town was bombed. The U.S. Army manages to detain a man said to be responsible. While being interrogated, the man unleashes a supernatural power that kills the soldiers and destroys the camp. In London, chance encounter with a young Muslim girl on the tube leads a curious Constantine to the British Museum. The museum is bombed, but Constantine and the girl manage to escape. However upon reaching home, Constantine was framed for his involvement in the bombing and is captured. As a result, John Constantine is forced by MI6 to visit Iraq and investigate a supernatural entity that has been plaguing the war torn place. While in Iraq, the Muslim girl shows up again, introducing herself as Assera Al-Aswari and is an agent of MI6. The two later drive into an army camp to discuss the events. Constantine deduces that the place they were at was an ancient city, containing an ancient Sumerian temple. Aseera later explains that the place is named Kutha. In the cover of night, John uses magic to sneak out and investigate more. He later finds out that the city is actually a den of demons, before he is detained by Aseera for sneaking out. The next day, John and Aseera later visits the mysterious detainee who has been plaguing the army. John discovers that the man isn't human, but is a djinn. He later traps it inside a bottle, before the camp they were at was attacked by insurgents. John, Aseera, and the djinn escapes, but is soon stranded in the road. While waiting, John explains to Aseera that the detainee is actually a djinn, and that Kutha is actually a city that once worshiped a god named Nergal, who is also John's longtime adversary. The two was soon kidnapped by insurgents, and was handed over to Nergal. Nergal welcomes John to Hell, where he explains his involvement in the war. Nergal was actually collecting the souls of those who died, and traps them in Hell to power himself up, using djinns as his workers. John later challenges Nergal for the souls in a game of poker. Nergal and his confidants agreed, but in turn if John looses he will be "cleaning [Nergal]'s ass with his tongue". John cheats his way to victory, and Nergal is forced to free the souls with John and Aseera. With his mission completed John returns to London for his end of the bargain. In the MI6 headquarters, he releases the djinn and intimidates the MI6 officials to free Aseera in Iraq and give her a new life with luxury, while John's gain will be doubled. The officials later agrees. Upon hearing this, John walks out, happy that he straighten everything out.
26233629	/m/0b75lr4	Kolaiyuthir Kalam				 Ganesh and Vasanth visit a town for legal purpose involving settling down property inheritance issue. They meet a man KumaraVyasan, guardian of an innocent, amateur girl heir named Leena. According to the will the property cannot be divided, sold and it can be inherited only by the direct heirs at their eighteen years of age while close relatives are supposed to be guardians. While discussing, Ganesh and Vasanth are told that the legal heir girl has committed a murder by becoming a blood sucking vampire and he has concealed the victim's body by burying it two years ago. They were also told that there is a belief at the town that, a spirit which occurs once in two years will kill people. Ganesh not willing to accept that fact, searches for a valid explanation. He along with Vasanth visits the farm at night where they see an illusion in grey color resembling the girl Leena and some voices pointing to some names. Also many mysterious things happen at the farm house which terrorise both of them. Ganesh wanted to believe that there is no ghost but circumstanaces make him to slowly believe while Vasanth started to believe the fact of Spirit. KumaraVyasan was sure that Leena commits murders by the influence of spirit. Ganesh doubts Kumaravyasan that the incident are tricks mastered by him to eliminate Leena with motivations that he can be the heir if in case Leena dies without having children. Many murders occur during the course of investigation where Kumaravyasan is also one among victim.Circumstances point Leena to be killer but her innocence confuses Ganesh. Meanwhile all assumptions of science are collapsed and Ganesh starts to believe that the real explanation of all the incidents is the Spirit. What happens then? Does the spirit kills by taking revenge? Is spirit real or an illusion? Subsequent part of the story moves with the answers to these questions.
26236089	/m/0bdy3rv	Blackout	Connie Willis	2010	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 It's the year 2060, and the history students at Oxford University are a hair's breadth away from revolting. Mr. Dunworthy keeps changing their assignments at the last minute. Michael Davies, who had prepared for a first-hand look at the events of Pearl Harbor, abruptly finds himself instead being sent to witness the response to the Battle of Dunkirk. The constant changes mean that the wardrobe department can't assemble the proper wardrobe for Polly Churchill, who plans to work as a shopgirl during the Blitz if she can avoid running into Mr. Dunworthy before her jump time. Merope Ward, embedded in the staff of an English country manor overseeing the child refugees from London, finds herself utterly unable to find the support she needs to complete her first assignment in the past. Dunworthy himself is nowhere to be found, having set off for a meeting with another academic who theorizes that continued time travel has pushed the laws that govern it safely to the breaking point. When they make it to World War II England, all initially seems fairly well. Merope excels at her assignment despite the devilish evacuated street urchins Binnie and Alf. Polly manages to secure employment at a local shop. Michael lands in generally the right place, albeit a few days late and a couple dozen miles to the south. All Clear begins where Blackout left off, with Michael Davies (as Mike Davis), Polly Churchill (as Polly Sebastian), and Merope Ward (as Eileen O'Reilly) trapped in 1940 Britain during the Blitz. Just as in Blackout, the novel switches between multiple people and times. As the novel opens, Polly Churchill, who is posing as Polly Sebastian, a shop assistant, realizes that she has a deadline. She had already visited Oxford and London in 1943. Since she was able to do that, and she now believes she is trapped in 1940, she must either have returned to the future by 1943, or died. She is convinced that she will in fact die. Meanwhile two other time travelers, Merope Ward (posing as Eileen O'Reilly) and Michael Davies (posing as an American journalist, Mike Davis) have found Polly after discovering that their drops are also unable to return them to the future. Mike originally went to Dover to observe the Dunkirk evacuation, but became an unwilling participant. Eileen began observing the evacuation of children from London to the countryside in 1939. Now together, the three believe that their own actions, particularly in Mike's case, may have changed the future so that there is no time travel, and that possibly it involves Germany winning the war. Knowing something has gone wrong which prevents them from returning to 2060 Oxford, the three time travelers attempt to determine an escape plan, but none of their efforts are successful. Gerald Phipps, who was supposed to be at Bletchley Park studying Ultra, never came through to his assignment. Due to a misunderstanding, they only realize that another Oxford historian, John Bartholomew, is also in their place and time less than a day before he will leave. Frantically they try to get to him, but the three are separated and repeatedly delayed, not helped by the fact that this is the night of December 29, 1940, some of the worst raids of the war. They are unable to find Bartholomew before he returns to 2054 Oxford. When Mike and Eileen figure out that Polly has a deadline in June 1943 – meaning that if she isn’t out by then she’ll die, since she’s already visited that time – their search for a way out becomes even more desperate. Their frustration turns into tragedy when Mike is killed during a raid. Eileen refuses to accept his death, but upon realizing Alf and Binnie’s mother has been dead for months, volunteers to raise the orphans, giving her life meaning. In 2060 Oxford Mr. Dunworthy sends himself on a rescue mission to retrieve Polly in September 1940. However, when he arrives at St Paul’s Cathedral he is unable to determine the date before the raids start. (St. Paul's, and especially one of the paintings in the Cathedral, The Light of the World, are viewed several times by most of the important characters in the book. They are either inspired or depressed by their current view of the painting.) When he realizes it is December 1940, he becomes hopeless and distraught. Polly stumbles across him in the cathedral a few weeks later. He explains that slippage isn’t a result of the time continuum trying to prevent historians from changing the past as was previously thought, but is a response to changes they’d already caused. The continuum around World War II is in such disarray that it has sealed itself off to time travel, and will engage in ‘corrections’ – likely the death of the historians and those they have influenced. Their worst fears – that they have been able to influence the past and cause discrepancies – have been realized, possibly to the point the war will be lost. However, all hope is not lost. Mike faked his own death and in 1944 is engaged in Operation Fortitude, a misinformation campaign. He is able to plant notices in newspapers hinting where Polly and Eileen are located in the hopes that someone in 2060 Oxford will find the notices and be able to rescue the girls. Another potential rescuer is Colin Templer, an overeager teenager from 2060 Oxford with a crush on Polly. He goes back to 1944 and finds Mike, right after he has been hit by a bomb and helped by a clueless 1944 Polly. Mike explains that Polly and Eileen are together and falls unconscious as Colin brings him back to 2060 Oxford. Colin also goes to the 1970s for research and 1995 to try to find someone who knew Polly. To his surprise, he meets an elderly Binnie, who tells him Eileen died in 1987. Binnie also revealed that she has learned all about time travel and has been looking for him through the years to tell him where and when he can rescue the stranded historians. Equipped with this knowledge, Colin is able to return to 1941 to rescue Polly and Mr. Dunworthy. Polly’s worries about leading to the deaths of those around her by interfering do not prevent her from saving the life of Sir Godfrey in a bombing. She finally realizes what is going on as she lies recovering in the hospital; the historians have caused small things to happen which ultimately led to winning the war. She concludes that they’re stuck in World War II not to be killed by the continuum, but because there are things they need to do so that the war is won and history is as it should be. In April 1941, an older Colin comes through at St. Paul's and finds the historians. Polly and Mr. Dunworthy leave with Colin to return to 2060 Oxford, but Eileen stays behind. She reasons that she must remain in the past so she can tell Colin in the future where to find them, and she refuses to abandon Alf and Binnie. Colin tells them that Mike had faked his own death, but died from his 1944 injuries. Finally Polly, Mr. Dunworthy, and Colin return to the St. Paul's drop and Oxford. Eileen, Alf, and Binnie stay behind to live their lives in the past. Binnie meets Colin in 1995, and gives him information that helps him plan his rescue. While waiting for the drop to open for her to return to Oxford, Polly also realizes that there is a resemblance between the grown-up Colin and Eileen, implying that she becomes his ancestor. Eileen also seemed to see this, since she called Colin "dear boy" and said "I will always be with you" before they left. Thus Eileen had another reason to remain behind in 1941.
26239048	/m/0b73sbh	Abner & Me	Dan Gutman	2005	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book opens up to Joe "Stosh" Stoshack's Social Studies teacher informing him about his D in that class. Later that day, Joe has a baseball game, and is about to be the winning run when the 3rd baseman, Joe's enemy Bobby Fuller, holds him back by grabbing his belt, causing him to be out in a play at the plate.
26245866	/m/0b74vsq	The Unfinished Revolution	Michael Dertouzos	2001		 In the foreword to the paperback edition, written by Tim Berners-Lee shortly after Michael Dertouzos's death, he succinctly summarizes the objectives of the book by stating the three areas he believes computers still need improvement in: "helping us to communicate better with each other, by helping with the actual processing of data, and by being less of a pain in the process." More specifically, the book breaks this down into five buckets that need special attention and improvement: #Natural Interaction #Automation #Individualized Information Access #Collaboration #Customization Dertouzos argues that since humans are not born with keyboard and mouse inputs to interact with the world why should we be expected to interact with computers in such a fashion. Instead he states that computers should engage us through our existing five senses and goes on to mostly focus on examples for vision and hearing. His primary focus for providing input to computer systems lies in proposals within the speech recognition area but he also emphasizes the need to simplify software interface systems, while warning against reducing them down to an unreasonably small number of options (such as a car only being able to accelerate or turn right). In the area of speech recognition, he seems to accurately predict the model for systems that are the more successful and accurate implementations. Guided and limited sub-sets of buckets allow the systems to narrow down the possible responses and significantly reduce errors in interpretation. For example, automated traffic inquiry systems now commonly used first ask where the caller is, then what type of travel or road system they are inquiring about, before giving the option to name the roadway or public transportation system. While the Natural Interaction discussion does not go specifically into touch, the Apple iPod wheel interface is a prime example of a more human centric input system for a product that previously presented serious user interaction challenges. Prior digital music players generally required the user to hold an up or down button and wait as the screen scrolled through perhaps hundreds of artists or thousands of songs. The iPod wheel scroll system used a capacitive touch and acceleration implementation that was so pleasing some even described it as a somewhat addictive motion for the thumb.
26248648	/m/0b75hsk	The Art Lesson				 The Art Lesson is semi-autobiographical, following the character of Tommy, an enthusiastic painter and drawer. He makes pictures for his relatives and draws on the sidewalk, on bedsheets, and even on walls. For his birthday he gets a box of 64 crayons. But his new first-grade teacher rejects them, and makes him draw the same thing as everybody else in his class, with a few school crayons and on a single sheet of paper. He makes a bargain with the school Art Teacher: one page for the drawing that the rest of his class is making, with school crayons, and the second for his own crayons and his own art.
26264645	/m/0b77n2z	Closer	Roderick Gordon	2010-05-03	{"/m/07fwvc": "Subterranean fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Part 1: Revelations The story picks up following the events of Freefall. In the world with its own sun in the centre of the Earth, the Rebecca twins had dived into a pool in order to escape an explosion set off by Will and Elliott, and eventually are able to survive by breathing air they find trapped in the roof of some underground workings. Chester and Martha return Topsoil, where Chester is inevitably very eager to contact his parents, but Martha won't permit this. She dotes obsessively on the boy, seeing him as a substitute for her dead son. This frightens Chester, who begins to make a plan to run away from her, but in the event doesn't dare put this into practice. Meanwhile, back in the centre of the planet, the Rebeccas come across a modern metropolis, with helicopters and other vehicles, including cars resembling Volkswagens. The point of interest flips back to Chester, when they are walking through the night. Suddenly, Martha grabs him, and Chester panics, going as far as to hit her. When he demands an explanation, she claims she was shielding him from a Bright. Under the surface, Rebecca Two sees a Limiter flare, and then signals back by blowing up a gas tank. The Rebeccas then continue to march toward the city. The story returns to Chester, who wakes up, finding Martha, who just killed a bird. He and Martha eat the bird. The Rebeccas find the city, and realise it is well maintained and populated. They frighten a small amount of people, and that results in the arrival of the local army. The people of the city are from a expeditionary force that arrived during World War II. The Limiter forces arrive shortly, and a short staredown occurs, and after a Limiter medic begins to operate on the wounded Rebecca. The other Rebecca and the Limiter General begin to talk about their identity. During the second World War, the Styx were allies of the Third Reich. The officer of the squad informs the other two that they are "New Germanians". The officer takes Rebecca and the Limiter General to meet the Chancellor of New Germania. Back Topsoil, Chester's food that Martha is feeding him makes him sick. They enter a small cottage that is unattended. They discover that it is well kept, and has various foods. Chester eats some cold beans, and takes a shower. He then returns to the kitchen, after getting some new clothes. He begins to call his parents, when he is hit in the back of the head and knocked out. The story shifts to Drake, who wakes up in a room he does not recognize. He heads to a window, and realises that he is still Topsoil. He is then greeted by his savior, a retired Limiter named Edward James Green, who believes that the Styx are taking unnecessary measures with their goal of reclaiming Topsoil. He also reveals himself to be Elliott's father. They then discuss various aspects of the Limiter, who is coined "Eddie" by Drake. After finishing, they head for a keypad-locked cellar. The story then flips to Will, Dr. Burrows, and Elliott. They discover a group of skulls, which prove that there are native inhabitants. Dr. Burrows also claims to have seen a Stuka. Elliott prepared some early warning systems in case of Limiters or other people. She also prepares a hidaway for them to run to in case of danger, and shows Will the ancient passage the Rebeccas used to enter the inner world, also finding evidence that Limiters have been there recently. Meanwhile, Eddie and Drake enter the cellar, and Drake discovers an area akin to a briefing room. He discovers various Styx elements, including a Dark Light and the device used to incapacitate him in the Commons. Eddie then leaves Drake, giving him keys to the warehouse and the apartment. Back underground, Will and Elliott find free time together, but are soon interrupted by Dr. Burrows, who is investigating the pyramid area, against precaution by Will and Elliott. Back Topsoil, Chester is held hostage by Martha, and is fed a mystery meat. Drake and Eddie eventually find him, but he is revolted when he finds he was eating meat from dead mailmen, whom Martha killed. Back in the Colony, Mrs. Burrows is kept alive by the Second Officer, but her presence in the house begins to make his family very unpopular. She slowly regains motor control of her body, but her sight has been badly impaired and she compensates this by utilising an olfactory super-sense that she finds that she has developed. The family begins to consider ways of killing her. Back Topsoil, Chester meets Eddie, and wants to return to his parents. The Prime Minister, meanwhile, is Dark Lit. The Rebeccas also convince the Chancellor of New Germania to let them use the helicopters to search for Will, Dr. Burrows and Elliott. Part 2: Contact The Rebeccas find that Tom Cox is still alive, and with them. The Chancellor then assigns Colonel Bismarck to assist them. They board helicopters, and head for the pyramids. They find Will and Dr. Burrows, and capture them. Elliott watches the scene from high in one of the giant trees of the jungle, and before Cox manages to slice off Will's fingers at the behest of the Rebeccas, she shoots and kills him. The Rebeccas are angered by this, and the shoot Dr. Burrows as retaliation. They then demand that Elliott surrenders and hands over the Dominion virus, as they found the broken phial containing the vaccine. Elliott comes up with a plan, and approaches with a suicide bomber kit. She then forces the Rebeccas to let them go, in exchange for the virus. They agree, and the exchange is carried out just as Will and Elliott are leaving on a helicopter with Colonel Bismarck. Meanwhile, Eddie informs Drake that the Styx obtain their viruses from "Plague Snails" that live in the eternal city. Chester's attempt to contact his parents goes horribly wrong as the Styx have brainwashed them to not recognize him and to call one of their agents if he appears. Part 3: Restitution Colonel Bismark cannot land Will and Elliott at their supply cache in the jungle due to one of the inner world's frequent storms, and lands them as close to the location as possible. Once landed, Will confronts Elliott, asking her why she gave the Styx the virus. She tells him that she has the vaccine that she drank it before breaking the phiall. Meanwhile, Chester and Drake deprogram Chester's parents, who've been brainwashed by the Styx. Eddie and Drake also inspect a portal into the underworld, in preparation for an underground operation. Also, the Rebecca Twins and their Limiters take the New Germanians assigned to support them prisoner as part of their plan to take over New Germania. As they brainwash the captives, it becomes evident that one of the Rebecca twins is infatuated with the New Germanian officer that they first met when they arrived at the city. Will and Elliott retrieve their weapons and supplies and start making their way through the ancient passage to the fallout shelter. In the Colony, the Old Styx tells the Second Officer that he should be prepared for the Styx to take Mrs. Burrows to the Scientists to be examined to see how she resisted the Styx's Dark Light battery for so long. Part 4 : On The Offensive Drake and Eddie leave the warehouse to place pesticides that will annihilate the plague snails in the Eternal City, leaving Chester behind to watch movies. Meanwhile, the Second Officer's family rejoices when the supposedly comatose Mrs. Burrows is taken to have her brain examined by the Scientists. Colly, the family's Hunter that Mrs. Burrows befriended, hisses at them, and they cannot understand why she is upset.Will and Elliot make their way to the fallout shelter, but are stranded there because Chester and Martha took the only intact boat. At the warehouse, Chester calls his dad to tell him that their part in Drake's plan is ready, but he finds that his Mother has disappeared. He tells him that the plan has not changed, and the last place he wants to be is at the hotel if Emily Rawls has indeed fallen under the power of the Styx. Drake and Eddie place the charges and detonate them, releasing a cloud of pesticide that will destroy the plaque snails. Chester and Jeff Rawls make their way to the portal, and Jeff goes to the warehouse after Chester has found the portal and begun to unpack the equipment Drake had him to bring with him: two bergens, some firearms, and a noddy suit. After fighting their way through a Styx patrol, Drake attacks Eddie, knocking him unconscious. He did this partly because while Eddie was working for the Styx, he tortured and killed a close friend of Drake's, and then lied about the incident to Drake; but mostly because Eddie would not consent to what Drake and Chester were about to do next. Meanwhile, the Rebecca Twins finish their takeover of New Germania. Drake and Chester make their way through the Labyrinth, and attack the South Cavern's air supply, piping in nerve gas (which was in one of the Bergens that Chester brought down into the underworld) to incapacitate as many colonists as possible, so they will not interfere in the next part of the mission. Meanwhile, the Second Officer and Colly go to the Laboratories to make a last visit to Mrs. Burrows. Drake and Chester arrive at the Laboratories, tranquilizing any colonists the nerve gas didn't incapacitate and plant explosives (which were in the other bergen) in the North Block, which specializes in weapons and biological warfare research. Drake and Chester search the building for any Topsoilers being captive in there. Chester finds the Second Officer and fights with him, as Chester believes the Second Officer was complicit in Chester's torture, and the Second Officer has a grudge against Will and his friends because Will knocked him unconscious during the unsuccessful attempt to rescue Chester from the Hold. Mrs. Burrows stops pretending to be unconscious to break up the fight, but Eddie (now recovered) locks them in the operating theater. Eddie then paralyses Drake with the Dark Light training Eddie gave him while Drake was a prisoner of the Styx. Eddie tells Drake, who is still conscious, only unable to move, that his manipulations have been indirectly responsible for most of the plotlines in the series, and that he had misjudged how events would play out. He tells Drake that he wants Drake and his friends to win so he can take control of the Styx. He then knocks Drake unconscious and leaves. The Second Officer, Chester, and Mrs. Burrows unsuccessfully try to open the door until Mrs. Burrows tells Colly to wake up Drake so he can open the door. This succeeds, and they escape the North Block only moments before it explodes. The Second Officer leaves the group, and Mrs. Burrows, Chester, Drake, and Colly head for the surface. They head to Eddie's warehouse to find that he has flown the coop, leaving behind only an unconscious Jeff Rawls. Part 5 : Reunion Drake rescues Will, Bartleby and Elliott from the fallout shelter, and takes them to the rest of the group are camping with a Gypsy band. They then leave for a safe house. Meanwhile, the Rebecca Twins return to the Colony, presenting the Old Styx the Dominion Virus, their suspiscions that Will or Elliott drank the vaccine, and the New Germainian Army. The safe house is revealed to be a country estate owned by Drake's father, Parry. Mrs. Rawls, in Highfield, is not under the influence of the Styx as it initially appeared, but is only pretending to be darklit so she can spy on the Styx for Drake. Eddie appears, foiling an attempt to make her place a bomb for the Styx, and takes her away from Highfield. Drake returns from town one morning with two things: a skateboard for Chester and a book based on Dr. Burrows's journal for Will. Will is devastated when he learns that the book, The Highfield Mole, is not a serious academic work but a novel to amuse children. In the epilogue, a news report about the closure of the three hospitals to which Drake provided samples of Elliott's blood is interrupted by a bulletin about a Styx attack on the Royal Mint, and that the police (who, along with the rest of the government, are being manipulated by the Styx) believe the mastermind behind the plot is Drake. Errata *In Freefall, the Rebecca Twin with the broken teeth was referred to as "Rebecca Two"; in Closer, she was "Rebecca One."
26266206	/m/0b73yht	The Lion Vrie				 Luik slowly heals in the security of Mount Dakka, a stronghold where the remaining forces of good are attempting to gather. Luik, once healthy, sets out on a mission to find Anorra, whom no one has seen for a time. He finds her in the ruins of Adriel, almost entirely crazy as she fights off crows from her father's corpse. With his friend Luik returns to Mount Dakka, where Anorra's mind soon returns to normal. After a winter has come and gone in the mountain stronghold, Luik receives a mysterious message asking him to come to the secret dwarf city of Ot. He sets out with Anorra and, after many difficulties, locates the place and is greeted by Li-Saide and the missing portion of the Dibor, all alive and well. A day or two later, a hasty council is held to determine Dionia's new king from among the Dibor. Luik is unanimously selected, and to his double shock, Li-Saide reveals that Luik is not the son of the late King Lair at all; rather he is that of former King Ragnar. His lineage had been disguised to protect him from Morgui's attention, which would have been drawn because of a prophecy concerning Luik. Li-Sade also tells Luik of another much older, much more important prophecy; that the Most High will allow his Son to die in order to redeem the people of the alternate world Earth, and possibly those of Dionia as well, from their fallen state. When exactly this will happen, Li-Saide is not sure, but it seems that it will be soon. Linked with this prophecy is another disturbing one that Luik also will likely die. Reunited with the Dibor, Luik returns to Mt. Dakka and there receives a hero's welcome. He crowns new kings over all the territories of Dionia; King Brax of Tontha, King Jrio of Trennesol, Cage of Jahdan, Fyfler of Somahgaurd, and Gorn of Bensotha. Setting out on yet another journey, the Dibor, Kings, and Anorra travel to the city of Narin to look for survivors. Instead they find a horrible carnage, women and children slaughtered. In the midst of the terrible grief there is a spot of life; Anorra's two sisters are found mad yet alive. With these two the group returns to Dakka. Luik has been accepted, along with the other Dibor and many other valiant knights in Mt. Dakka, into the Order of the Lion, the Lion Vries. Among them is Ragnar, who was resurrected by the Most High and remains for now in hiding in a secret chamber beneath Dakka. At this unlikely time, Hadrian returns, haggard and different from when Luik last saw him. Fane seems mistrusting of their old friend, and Luik is torn between both his friends. After a slightly heated quarrel between the High King and Fane, the latter disappears from Mr. Dakka. In response to messages from some of the old cities calling for help, Dakka's armies divide into contingents. Luik's group travels for days towards the islands of Somahguard and are rapidly weakened by poisoned water. Devoid of the precious substance for days, they nearly fall into a trap of Morgui's to fall under his power. After many perils and after at last finding clean water, Luik and his army arrive at Somahguard and in enter into a fierce battle against an army of "the taken", fallen men who no longer serve the Most High. In the fight first Gyinan and then Najrion fall. The latter is the first of the Dibor to die. The remaining men engage in a furious boat race against the taken to the safe haven of Kirstell. As Luik and his men land upon the shores of Kirstell and unload their wounded, the taken who had been following behind for days come within arrow range, draw their bows, and fire a barrage of missiles at the helpless warriors. Meanwhile, at the besieged Mt. Dakka, Anorra is picking off demons and taken from a distance when she hears, via a special tool of the Lion Vrie, that Luik is dead. In sickened, mad rage she leaps onto the ramparts and fires with crazed accuracy at the enemy until, having been singled out by the enemy commander as a target, a catapult shatters the wall beneath Anorra. Broken-boned and half-dead, demons surround her.
26275381	/m/0b75rfl	La Maternelle	Léon Frapié	1904		 Rose, a young Parisian woman with full academic training is on the eve of marrying. Suddenly her father fails; she loses her dowry, and her fiance disappears. She tries to get work, but soon finds out that her diplomas are more of a hindrance than a help. They inspire only diffidence in administrative circles. Officials always declare her too good for the position. Starvation threatens, and finally she sets to work deliberately trying to appear unintelligent and rude enough to be hired. Thus she succeeds in securing a position as "femme de service" in the "Maternelle" of the working-class quarter of Menilmontant. A "Maternelle" is a district school for children from two to six years, preparatory to the Primary school. To ease her transition to this new environment and ward off thoughts of despair she decides to keep a diary of her daily experiences. This diary shows her to be an extremely kind-hearted woman and at the same time a keen observer. Rose has the lowest tasks in the school: she dusts, sweeps the rooms, lights the fire early in the morning, and she takes care of the children physically, all day round. Although the directress and the two subordinate teachers are her superiors, Rose is the one that comes in closest contact with the children. Rose is the one to whom they go to naturally all the time, as they would to a mother; she washes them when their nose is bleeding, in her arms they find consolation when roughly handled by a schoolmate; in her skirt they hide to find protection against angry and threatening parents. The pupils belong to the working poor, and many of them are so neglected and so miserable in their homes that the school is a better place for them to be. And the school to them is Rose. The children include "mouse," the gentle five-year-old little mother with her brother, her "chickling;" Richard, who cannot imagine that there might exist anything like disinterested kindness and he conceives of every relation between two human beings as a bargain; Adam, the strong and noisy leader of the older boys and a great boaster, the girls who admire him because they are afraid of him. The cat Mistigris, who eats little birds and thereby stirs up the wrath of the children.
26279560	/m/0b77y26	Little Hands Clapping	Dan Rhodes	2010-02-04		 The novel centres around a bizarre German museum dedicated to suicide; Herr Schmidt, its grim grey curator; and the respectable Doctor Ernst Frölicher and his shocking secret. Various characters are appear with short lifestories including the Luciano Pavarotti-obsessed founder of the museum and her Pavarotti-lookalike husband, Hulda the cleaner who believes she is doomed to Hell, and Madalena the suicidal Portuguese student.
26292679	/m/0b74sbb	Xiagu Danxin	Liang Yusheng		{"/m/08322": "Wuxia"}	 The story follows the adventures of Jin Zhuliu, son of Jin Shiyi and Gu Zhihua, the protagonists of Yunhai Yugong Yuan. At the age of 20, Jin Zhuliu leaves the island he was raised on, and travels to the Chinese mainland alone in search of adventure. He roams the jianghu as a wandering swordsman, by upholding justice and helping the poor. At that time, China is in the late Ming Dynasty and the Han Chinese face the threat of invaders from Manchuria in the north. Jin Zhuliu performs a series of heroic acts that propel him to fame overnight. Jin Zhuliu meets Shi Hongying, the younger sister of Shi Baidu, the evil leader of the Six Harmonies Sect, and falls in love with her. At the same time, he also meets Li Nanxing, the nephew of Li Shengnan, and becomes sworn brothers with him. Meanwhile, Shi Baidu pledges allegiance to the Manchu aristocrat Safuding and aims to help Safuding in conquering Ming China. Jin Zhuliu, Li Nanxing and other righteous pugilists combine forces to disrupt Safuding's birthday party and rob him of several precious gifts. Shi Baidu intends to marry his sister to the Manchu general Meng Xiong, but actually he wants to use her to lure Li Nanxing into a trap and kill Li. Li Nanxing is wounded in a battle and is saved by Gongsun Hong of the Red Tassel Society. Li Nanxing strikes up a romantic relationship with Gongsun Hong's daughter, Gongsun Yan, later. Shi Baidu is dissatisfied and tries to coerce his sister to marry Meng Xiong but Jin Zhuliu, Li Nanxing and other pugilists disrupt the wedding and seize control of Meng Xiong's city. Shi Baidu is defeated and dies in humiliation. Shi Hongying succeeds her brother as leader of the Six Harmonies Society and they join a volunteer army, formed by pugilists who have sworn to defend Ming China from the Manchus. At one point, Li Nanxing falls off a cliff and is presumed to be dead. During his absence, some jianghu lowlifes reestablish the evil Heaven Demons' Cult once more and commit evil in his name. Jin Zhuliu is surprised to hear that his sworn brother is still alive and has become a villain. He investigates the case and meets Li Nanxing, who has survived, by coincidence, and they defeat the villains together, clearing Li's name. Jin Zhuliu, Li Nanxing and the righteous pugilists combine forces to foil the Manchus' plot to trick some tribal peoples from Qinghai to attack China. The story ends on a happy note for the protagonists, who receive their blessings from the wulin, as Jin Zhuliu is happily married to Shi Hongying while Li Nanxing is married to Gongsun Yan.
26298694	/m/03cmlh8	Danny Dunn and the Heat Ray	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Danny finds and uses a heat ray which Professor Bullfinch has created for the government.
26298759	/m/0b759xq	Spare Change	Robert B. Parker	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel begins with the notorious Spare Change serial killer resurfacing after 20 years. Sunny’s father, Phil Randall, worked this case years ago, and enlists Sunny’s help investigating the new string of murders. The killer’s MO is to shoot the person in the head, and leave three coins at the scene of the crime, hence the name Spare Change. Spare Change sent numerous letters to Phil during the original crime spree, but then the killings abruptly stopped, until now. The reemergence of the killer after such a long time causes the Randall’s to suspect a copy-cat killer. After the first killing, Phil Randall decides to detain everyone at the scene of the next killing. They take down all of their information, and later bring them to the station and question them one by one; their hope being that the killer would have hung around the crime scene to watch. The interviews are tedious, but when Bob Johnson walks into the room he immediately becomes a suspect. Everything cries out that he is the killer, from the way he speaks, to the way he calls Sunny’s father Phil, just like in the killer’s correspondence. It doesn’t take long before Sunny is convinced he is the killer. Sunny begins seeing Bob Johnson in hopes of discovering some sort of evidence to allow them to arrest him. Meanwhile, the investigation continues. From a photo of his she tracks down his old college girlfriend. She informs Sunny that she dated Bob in college, had sex with him once, he was bad at it, and then she broke up with him and married someone else. While investigating at Bob’s alma mater, she also discovers that his father was a professor there and had a fatal heart attack in his office. However, despite the official cause of death, the former secretary insists she saw blood when she discovered the body. Sunny follows up by interviewing the police officer at the scene who reluctantly confirms that it was in fact a suicide. The college president had insisted on reporting it as a heart attack to prevent a scandal the school couldn’t afford. Later Sunny breaks into Bob’s apartment and while searching his address book, finds the name Chico Zarilla. This name leads them to an apartment and the first thing they see in the apartment is a life-size picture of Robert Johnson Sr. and a young Bob Johnson. They also find a .38 revolver and bullets that match the killer’s gun. Sunny insists on having one final meeting with Bob so she can confront him with what they know and try to get a confession out of him. She fears he will just play with them after he is arrested and they will never get any answers. The police agree to this and she arranges the meeting at Spike’s restaurant. The restaurant is packed with undercover police when she confronts him with what she knows. She asks him about his father, but he refuses to speak about it. He then draws his gun, puts it to Sunny’s head, and begins calling for Phil. After finding pictures of herself in Bob’s scrap books and feeling the sexual tension between them, Sunny thought Bob was obsessed with her, but it turns out he was obsessed with her father all along. During the stand-off, Bob is so intent on Phil that he doesn’t notice Sunny draw her weapon. She shoots him in the wrist and pulls away. The other police officers then shoot and kill him. The next day Sunny receives a package from Bob containing a videotape. The video is of Bob explaining everything. He explains that when he was fourteen he walked in on his father dressed as a Mexican gunfighter. Robert Sr. then confides in his son that most of the time he is Professor Robert Johnson, but that sometimes he is Chico Zarilla, and Chico is a killer. He confesses to his son that Chico is the Spare Change killer. Later when his mother discovers this, his father commits suicide. When Bob reaches the age that his father was when he died he decides to take up his mantle. His parents are dead; the only woman he ever loved is with another man, so he feels that Chico Zarilla is all he has left. And like before, Chico wants to kill.
26298783	/m/03cml6b	Danny Dunn on a Desert Island	Raymond Abrashkin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Danny, his friend Joe Pearson, Professor Bulfinch and Doctor Grimes are flying a small, private jet over the Pacific Ocean. The plane is forced to crash land on an uncharted desert island. Armed only with the items in their pockets, the four must create a living environment and come up with a plan to be rescued.
26309096	/m/0b76g2b	Shiki				 The story takes place in a particularly hot summer in the nineties, in a small quiet Japanese village called Sotoba. A series of mysterious deaths begin to spread in the village, at the same time when a strange family moves into the long abandoned Kanemasa mansion. Toshio Ozaki, dean of the only hospital in Sotoba, initially suspects an epidemic. But as investigations continue and the deaths begin to pile up, he becomes convinced that they are the work of the undead plaguing the village. A young man named Natsuno Yuuki, who hates living in the village, begins to be pursued and surrounded by death.
26321496	/m/0bbxys6	Fire	Kristin Cashore	2009	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When a mysterious archer wounds Fire, she accompanies Archer to a fort nearby, partly to request assistance from the army and partly to meet the lovely and accepting Queen Roen. Once there, she meets the two heirs to the throne: King Nashdell and Brigan, the exalted, not to mention young commander of his brother's military. The two brothers take to her completely differently. Nash falls immediately in lust with Fire, while Brigan hates her on sight. Mostly for her beauty and power, she also reminds him of her dead father, the man that twisted the dead King Nax's mind and drove the kingdom to ruin. Fire, used to being hated and desired, avoids them. When the army is in danger and many lives are at stake, Fire risks herself and saves many, earning her status among the soldiers. After returning to the North Brigan arrives, inviting her on Nash's orders to come to King's City to help squash the unknown trespassers who have been plaguing the royal family. Fire agrees, and begins to make the long road to the capital, along the way coming to an uncomfortable but desired truce with Brigan. Once there, she finds herself overwhelmed with the gorgeous city, and likewise the city is awed by her. And frightened. Nash, unable to control himself, succumbs to his passion and frequently throws himself at Fire, much to her dismay. While turning him down coldly, rumors spark of their hidden affair. Fire also meets the two illegitimate twins of King Nax, Clara and Garan, the two gifted spymasters of the Dells. They convince her after a time to begin questioning those involved in the resistance, but she has limits. Thoughts of her father continue to torture her, so she resists forcing the truth out of people, only using her presence to intoxicate the prisoners into honesty. While doing this unwanted but necessary duty, she comes across Hanna, a young girl who is skilled at picking fights with large groups of kids twice her size. Hanna is revealed to be Brigan's daughter by a stable girl and the third heir to the throne. The two quickly become friends, and Fire becomes increasingly closer to Brigan. After some time in King's City, Archer arrives, ruining the peace Fire has found with his furious jealousy. She halts their relationship, causing Archer to become involved with several women in the city. This results in two pregnancies by two women: one by Clara and one by Fire's guard, Mila. Fire is furious, but also jealous. Not because of their relationships with her ex-lover, but because of their upcoming children. Fire, despite her intense desire for some of her own, decides the best thing she can do as a monster is to make sure none other exist. She takes a drug Clara suggested that will prevent her from ever having children, much to her sorrow. When an upcoming gala between the three factions arrive, Fire is planned to play a major role as an assassin of the enemies leaders. Archer is extremely against it and the two clash, which eventually leads to him blurting out in spite the secret Fire wished never to be said: that she killed her own father. While Fire loved Cansrel, she also recognized his evil heart and twisted mind. She takes it upon herself to murder him and make it look like suicide, knowing she's the only one who can stop him. Fire is ashamed when this secret is revealed for many to hear, and she flees, eventually meeting the mother of her mother she never knew she had. Archer arrives soon after, disgusted by himself. He confesses he needs escape and time to think, so he goes in search of a young boy that has bothered Fire immensely. With his red eye, casual cruelty, and a voice that hurts her but entrances everyone else, she links him to the strange and thoughtless men that have been bothering her and the royal family with increased frequency. No one gives her much heed except Archer, who sees it as his responsibility after he wronged Fire. He leaves with her forgiveness and love. Soon after the gala arrives, and with Fire's help two leaders of the rebels are killed and much information is found. Primarily about a joint attack set by both rebel groups on King's City. Brigan had enough time to arrange his forces in response, and in the mayhem of the gala Fire is kidnapped. She is captured, drugged, and continuously shot on the mysterious boy's orders, who is revealed at one point to be a young Leck, the main antagonist in "Graceling". He confides that he wants to rule the Dells with Fire as his partner and equal. She refuses and escapes, only to find Archer's body. In rage she burns down Leck's estate, killing his mind slaves in the process. Alone and without supplies or heat she wanders, eventually meeting Leck. They struggle, and Leck tells her of a land across the mountains that hold many people like him, his home country which is the stage for "Graceling". In their struggle he falls into a crack in the mountain, and Fire prays he is finally dead. She wanders aimlessly afterward, caring little for her own life, and is saved by a horse, then rescued by villagers. She falls unconscious and reawakens among friends. Her hands are frost bitten and she has lost two fingers, and she despairs because she believes she will never play the fiddle again. She is transported back to King's City, and she remembers the name of the archer who killed Archer, a criminal named Jod. She recalls that he was indeed Archer's sire, having raped Brocker's wife on orders from King Nax. Fire arrives at a Fort Flood which is under attack, and meets Brigan. The two confess they are in love with each other, but Fire refuses to give into her feelings because she doesn't want to love him if he's "only going to die." He leaves for battle once more, and Fire is rocked with agony and worry for his safety. After living in relative seclusion while trying to process Archer's death and the loss of her fingers, Fire is brought to life again thanks to Garan. He convinces her to begin working in the hospitals relieving people of their pain and helping doctors with minor tasks. She comes to meet Nash, who she also wants to disconnect from because of his status as a soldier. He informs her that she is being silly, because death will come to all for many different reasons, not just war. She and Nash talk, coming to terms with the love they feel, even for their fathers. Fire meets Roen and Brocker who confide in her that Brigan is not really Nax's son but Brocker's, Roen and him having an affair that led to his banishment and the abuse he suffered on Nax's account. Fire, after fighting with this, comes to accept it. She meets Brigan at Fort Flood and the two reconcile, making love and coming to terms with all that they've lost and gained. Soon after, the rebels request a meeting under the pretense of peace. During they ask for Fire to be given to them, and after being refused Nash is shot. He lives and Brigan's army conquers, returning the Dells to relative peace. Fire returns to King's City hailed as a hero, much to her embarrassment. A ceremony to mourn Archer is held at Brocker's estate, and many return there to grieve his passing including Clara and Mila with their newborn babies, Aran and Liv, respectively. Mila tells Fire she has begun a relationship with Nash, and Fire is pleased, though she is uncommonly happy due to Archer's two babies. At Archer's ceremony she mourns both him and her father who she misses, but she also forgives herself for his murder. She plays a song on her fiddle that she has fought so hard to once again play. With one tune she lets out her sadness for those she cares about, dead and living.
26326144	/m/0bbz40d	Stranger in Paradise	Robert B. Parker	2008	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Stranger in Paradise, Wilson "Crow" Cromartie from Trouble in Paradise returns to the quiet town. On arrival he meets with Jesse Stone to let him know he’s in town looking for someone. Unfortunately Jesse cannot arrest him because the statute of limitations has run out for the Stiles Island robbery Crow was involved in ten years earlier that cost residents over $20 million in cash. And since Jesse has no evidence linking him to any of the murders, he has no choice but to let Crow go about his business. It turns out Crow is looking for a 14 year old girl named Amber Francisco. Amber is the daughter of Florida mob boss Louis Francisco, who employs Crow to find his daughter. Crow starts by searching her credit card record. He discovers that a flat screen television was purchased on the card. At the store where it was purchased, Crow poses as Amber’s father complaining that the television was never delivered. The clerk assures him that it was and gives him the address that it was delivered to. There he encounters the Horn Street gang, a group of young Latino gangbangers. He asks for the whereabouts of the girl, but when a gangbanger named Puerco tries to get tough, Crow shoots and kills him. The gang leader, Esteban, then gives up her location. At their home, Crow confronts Amber, and her mother Fiona. Fiona is a drunk, and when Amber gets disrespectful with Crow he slaps her across the face. Crow then calls Francisco in Florida to let him know that he has located the girl. Francisco orders Crow to murder Fiona and bring his daughter back to Florida. Crow, for some mysterious reason, refuses. Instead he calls Chief Stone and relates the story to him, even admitting the murder of Puerco, claiming self defense. Later when Amber’s boyfriend, the gangbanger Esteban, discovers who she is he contacts Francisco in Florida and accepts the contract on Fiona. Amber assists in the murder of her mother, luring her out back of their apartment. However, when she later discovers that Esteban also agreed to bring her back to her father in Florida, she runs away. Desperate to stay away from her creepy father, she calls Crow. Crow takes the girl to Chief Stone. Jesse puts her up in his condo, and has Jenn come over to help with her. Molly and Suit watch her during the day while Jenn and Jesse are working. Meanwhile, Francisco sends four mobsters up to Paradise to kill Crow. Crow discovers them immediately and starts picking them off one at a time. The police find a hotel key on the second victim, which leads them to one of the mobsters. When the police threaten to frame him for firing on the police when he was arrested, which would give him his third felony and a life sentence, he agrees to inform on his employer. From him they discover that Francisco has given the contract on Crow’s life to the Horn Street gang. They also discover that Francisco is on his way up to personally see that Crow is killed and to retrieve his daughter. Jesse and Crow then formulate a plan to catch the killers in the act. Amber calls Crow and asks her to meet him on the middle of a bridge. Jesse and Crow immediately know this is the setup. With the police standing by, Crow goes to the bridge. They have a Hollywood dummy with him dressed to look like Amber. The Horn Street gangbangers drive by and open fire on Crow who dives over the sea wall and disappears. Francisco and his men then open fire on the Horn Street gang. Immediately the police surround them, but before they are arrested one of the Florida mobsters named Romero walks up to Esteban and shoots him dead. Francisco then discovers that the dummy is not his daughter, and is hauled off to jail. After his release, he turns up dead in Florida along with two of his body guards. Although the police suspect Crow, he is nowhere to be found. Jesse suspects correctly that Crow is just in it for the excitement. Still rich from his Stiles Island caper ten years earlier, he involves himself in this situation simply to alleviate his boredom, and for sex. During his stay he beds Marcy Campbell, the hostage he protected ten years earlier, and Jesse’s right-hand woman Molly Crane while her husband and kids are away. Crow sees himself as an Apache warrior playing cowboys and Indians. And although Jesse feels some confliction about working with Crow, as he discusses with Dix, he wants to help Amber. He ends up getting some money for her from her father before he is murdered and then puts her up with Daisy Dyke and her wife. She seems unconcerned with her parents murders, and the novel ends with her having dinner with Jesse and Jenn.
26327923	/m/0bbwc6t	Song for the Basilisk	Patricia A. McKillip	1998-09-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The sole survivor of a massacre, Caladrius, nicknamed Rook, has been living with the bards of Luly since the day he was rescued from the smoldering remains of his home. Despite falling in love and having a son, Caladrius is unable to make peace with his memories, and so ventures into the world to discover how his family was destroyed - and why. He learns his true name: he is Raven Tourmalyne from the house of Griffin, which was crushed by Arioso Pellior, the patriarch of the house of Basilisk and tyrant of the city of Berylon. In Berylon, Caladrius, who takes the name of Griffin, enters Pellior's house as a music teacher for Pellior's decidedly un-musical daughter. As Griffin tutors Damiet Pellior for an upcoming opera, the city's musicians hatch their own plots. Armed with his picochet, a single-stringed instrument played by peasants, and a small bone pipe, Griffin challenges the Basilisk and exacts his revenge. But his revenge is not complete. Arioso Pellior is stricken, but not dead. Pellior names his other daughter, Luna, a powerful magician who has been his apprentice all her life, as his heir. Unexpectedly, Luna declares that thirty-seven years of torturing Tourmalyne House are enough. Hearing this, her father dies of anger. Luna begins to help Caladrius restore Tourmalyne House.
26333084	/m/0cnxy8c	Bug Jack Barron	Norman Spinrad		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The "Bug Jack Barron" show begins Wednesday evening with an on-air call from Rufus W. Johnson, who claims that the Foundation for Human Immortality refused to accept his assets as payment for a Freezer contract. Rufus accuses the Foundation of being a racist organization, unwilling to offer Freezer contracts to an African-Americans even if they have the $500,000 required payment. Jack Barron is appalled to hear this and makes several live calls using his studio Vidphone to hear all sides of Mr. Johnson's claim. He first calls Benedict Howards, but is told that he is unavailable. Jack is transferred to John Yarborough, Public Relations Director for the Foundation. Barron quickly dismisses Yarborough's counter-claims, and then calls the Governor of Mississippi, Lukas Greene. The Governor feels the Foundation is not only racist, but destined to abuse rights of one kind or another if they succeed in getting their Freezer Utility Bill through Congress. Should the bill pass, the Foundation would gain monopoly status. To stop this injustice, Greene supports a Public Freezer system, open to all Americans. Hoping not to anger the FCC (influenced by Benedict Howards and his supporters in Congress), Barron calls Senator Theodore Hennering, a supporter of Benedict Howards and his Freezer Utility bill. However, even though Barron gives the Senator ample chance to defend the Foundation and the Utility bill, the Senator appears nervous and does a very poor job convincing Barron and his audience that the Foundation is not a racist organization. The following day, Howards visits Jack in his office. They exchange casual threats to destroy each other, after which Howards requests Jack's support for his Freezer Utility bill in congress. Jack is insulted by this and refuses, but Howards continues by offering Jack a free Freezer Contract and immortal life. Though tempted, Jack refuses the bribe. Howards gives Jack more time to think about it, and leaves Jack to consider the offer. Howards later meets with his head of Personnel Research, to see if they can find information of any incidents in Jack Barron's that can be used to either coerce him to cooperate, or to discredit him publically. From that meeting, Howards deduces that Jack and Sara (his ex-wife) are still in love. He believes he can exploit that relationship to his benefit. Shortly afterwards, Howards calls Sara to his office, where he offers her a free Freezer contract, if she can get Jack to agree to the bribe. Sara is appalled by this. As part of the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), she despises Benedict Howards, but suddenly considers that it might work in her favor. Her plan is to tell Jack that Howards coerced her into service. That fact would infuriate Jack enough to destroy Howards, and allow them to rekindle their relationship. Back together, Sara dreams about being frozen together with Jack, and being revived together after an immortality treatment has been discovered. Upon waking up the next morning, Jack Barron receives a call from the Governor of California, Gregory Morris. To Jack's utter surprise, Morris suggests that Jack consider running as the next President of the United States. By having Jack as a candidate, Morris hopes to unify the SJC and the Republican party on a single political platform. He feels this is the only way to win against the Democratic party, even though he personally finds Jack and the SJC repulsive. Jack turns down the offer, in a derogatory manner. Even though Jack and Morris trade insults, Morris tells Jack to consider the offer. After the call, Jack immediately contacts his friend Lukas, and "blips" to him (that is, transmits to him as a digitally compressed file) a recording of his conversation with Morris. To Jack’s horror, Lukas actually likes the idea because he too sees the goal envisioned by Morris, and thinks Jack will be more than just a figurehead President. Jack then gets a call from Sara. She begs him to forgive her. He is shocked to hear this at first, but soon agrees to visit her, leaving his current girlfriend (who had been with him all night) in tears. Once he arrives at Sara’s apartment in the East Village, the two argue about why they broke up. But they soon reconcile, and Sara enthusiastically draws Jack into love-making. Together again, they return to his penthouse apartment, where Jack hopes to impress her. To some degree, Sara is an idealist (still like the girl she was in college) and is not impressed with the wealth that Jack has amassed as a celebrity. However, her plan to be reunited for eternity with Jack makes her tolerate the situation. They make love a second time. During his next show, Jack interviews Ms. Dolores Pulaski, a woman distraught because her father is dying of terminal cancer. She begs Jack to get her father into a Freezer so that he'll have a chance to be cured some day, and possibly receive an immortality treatment as well. Jack immediately makes an on-air call Benedict Howards, who ends up appearing insensitive during the ensuing conversation. During the commercial break, Howards is furious, but concedes to Jack’s previous demands, as long as Jack allows him to save face. They agree to discuss things later in private. The next day, Howards visits Jack's office and demands that Jack support the Utility Freezer Bill in exchange for a Freezer contract. But Jack doesn’t trust Howards, and gets him to admit that his foundation has already discovered an immortality treatment. Howards then agrees to give the same treatment to Jack and Sara, but Jack thinks Howards is still hiding something. He asks to know more about the treatment, but Howards refuses. In the end, Jack won’t sign, but Howards says he'll give Jack another twenty-four hours to reconsider. While Jack is on his way home, Sara receives a call from Howards. He reminds her that she must convince Jack to sign. This angers Sara, and makes her feel guilty about keeping secrets. When Jack returns home, she admits about being coerced, but asks to be forgiven. With a mutual confession of love, Jack and Sara commit themselves to ruining Howards together. The next day, Howards visits Jack again with new contracts for both Jack and Sara to sign. The new contracts not only guarantee being frozen, but also the treatment immortality. Howards gloats to himself about finally trapping Jack and Sara. Jack cannot see any drawback in the contract, and he and Sara agree to sign. Howards then desperately attempts to get Jack and Sara to receive their treatment immediately, but Jack puts him off, saying he prefers to wait for some time, although Sara cannot understand why they should wait. Early the next morning, Jack receives a call from Madge Hennering, the wife of the Senator who supported Howards. Senator Hennering had died since his last conversation with Jack, and his widow, very distraught, tells Jack that her husband had a bitter fight with Howards just prior to his death. She is convinced that her husband found out something terrible about the Foundation, and was killed by Howards to stop him from telling anyone. She begs Jack to help, but he refuses to believe her story. On the next broadcast of “Bug Jack Barron”, a man named Henry George Franklin calls in and complains that he sold his young daughter to some wealthy men for $500,000. Even though the men promised to provide his daughter with a better life, Henry claims he was duped, and wants Jack to help him get his daughter back. Jack finds Mr. Franklin’s plea contemptible, and quickly cuts him off. After the show, Jack feels that that episode wasn’t very good, but changes his mind after a call soon arrives from Howards. Howards is furious that Franklin was on the show, and threateningly tells Jack to abandon the story altogether. Jack can’t understand how Henry George Franklin can be a threat to Howards, and angrily tells Howards to back off. Intrigued by Howards' reaction, Jack flies to Evers, Mississippi, hoping to meet Franklin and speak with him. Jack was hoping to go alone and keep a low profile, but his plans are ruined by Lukas Greene, who stages a political rally at the airport as a prelude to Jack’s presidential run. Jack is upset, but leaves the airport with Lukas by limo, where Jack accuses Greene of selling out. Greene doesn’t listen, and says again that Jack is a good man, and can help the country by running for President. Unwilling to meet Franklin at the Governor’s mansion, Jack goes to see him in a restaurant located in a low-income neighborhood. Franklin is happy to see Jack, but Jack finds Franklin just as contemptible in person. Still, there is a mystery about the whole incident, and Barron agrees to help somehow. They start by walking to the Governor’s mansion, when a sniper kills Franklin. The sniper attempts to shoot Jack as well, be escapes unharmed due to the help of the local police. Jack tells the police he doesn’t know who tried to kill him, but quickly deduces that Benedict Howards must have been behind the shooting. With that assumption, Jack realizes that the Foundation must also be responsible for buying Franklin’s daughter. Jack later confirms his suspicion by using computer records to search for other children who are now missing. Upon his return home, Jack shares all his suspicions with Sara. They both assume Howards is responsible for the deaths of Hennering and Franklin. In addition, Jack believes the Foundation is buying young black children for some reason. To get to the bottom of the mystery, Jack unveils a plan. He and Sara will receive their immortality treatment, and make Howards think he really has them trapped. Then when Howards admits to all his crimes, Jack will use a concealed very small portable telephone to record the confession. Sara agrees, and is impressed by Jack risk-taking attitude. The two celebrate by having oral sex.
26338374	/m/0bmdxch	Boxing For Cuba				 The book begins with Vidal detailing his early childhood. Vidal discusses the turbulent marriage of his parents as well as the political turmoil when Castro overthrew Batista. He details his close relationship with his two brothers, Roberto and Juan Antonio, and the family’s relatively comfortable life in Camaguey in the 1950s. In the early sections of the book Vidal also takes the reader through the early life of his parents and the beginnings of a turbulent marriage, detailing his mother’s depression and destructive behavior as well as his father’s excessive desire for success. Vidal remembers the first days of Castro’s regime: watching Castro ride through the streets of a nearby town on a tank and being lifted by his parents to touch Castro’s hand. After those early days though, Vidal recounts how his life drastically changed. He narrates how soon people began to live in fear of Castro’s army and his spies, some of whom where neighbors or close friends of the Vidal’s. In September 1961, Marta and Roberto took their three boys to Havana, Cuba, in order to send their sons to the United States for safety. The Vidal boys left communist Cuba on September 29, 1961 with other Cuban children seeking exile through Operation Pedro Pan. Upon arrival in Miami, the Vidal boys expected to be picked up by family members who had already escaped Cuba and were living in Miami, but when no one arrived the three were taken to a temporary housing camp. Eventually the boys were moved to Sacred Heart Orphanage in Pueblo, Colorado. En route to Colorado the boys met Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General at the time. In the span of two years, 10-year old Vidal had met two of the most influential men of the time. Vidal’s life at Sacred Heart Orphanage was plagued with fear of the harsh treatment of its caretaker and older boys, as well as the challenges of learning English and adjusting to the oddities of American culture. In their three years at Sacred Heart, the Vidal boys seemed to completely shed their Cuban heritage and become “real” Americans, even adopting the very American names “Bill,” “John,” and “Bob.” Not knowing when, if at all, their parents would ever escape Cuba to retrieve them, the boys adjusted as best they could to their new life in Pueblo. On April 11, 1964 the Vidal family was reunited after Marta and Roberto emigrated to Mexico and eventually the United States. The family relocated to Littleton, Colorado and then later moved into the city of Denver. Though free from the oppression and fear of Castro’s regime, the Vidal family faced innumerable challenges in their new lives in America. The family struggled financially and they were often the victims of hate and discrimination. Moreover, Marta and Roberto's marriage had greatly deteriorated adding to their erratic behavior. Vidal recounts his adolescence as an extremely turbulent time. Despite domestic hardship the Vidal family was successful – each member of the family took classes at the University of Colorado at Denver. After receiving his degree in engineering Bill went on to work for the Colorado Department of Transportation. He married his high school sweetheart, Christine, and together they had a boy and adopted two girls. Though he flourished professionally Vidal continued to struggle with his relationship with his parents and eventually in his marriage as well. Eventually Bill and Christine divorced. Years later Vidal remarried Gabriela, a Chilean immigrant also working for CDOT. Vidal credits Gabriela with inspiring him to reconnect with his family and his heritage. It is she who encourages him to return to Cuba in 2001 to try to face and understand his past. The book ends with Vidal returning to his childhood home to try to make sense of his life, and how very different it would be if he had not left as a 10-year old boy.
26339818	/m/0bbxvnk	Virtual World	Chris Westwood	1996	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Silicon Sphere is the new game with everything: dazzling super-real graphics, atmospheric sounds... but it also has a secret. Those who play it, like games freak Jack North, become so absorbed that it is as if they are hidden inside the game. Stranger still, elements from Silicon Sphere are starting to reproduce themselves in the real world. Jack thinks he is imagining it until other players start to disappear. By the time he realizes that this is no game, it is too late to make his way back.
26342598	/m/04hwsb	The Autobiography of Malcolm X	Malcolm X	1965	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The Autobiography of Malcolm&nbsp;X is an account of the life of human rights activist Malcolm&nbsp;X, born Malcolm Little (1925–1965). It begins during his mother's pregnancy and describes his childhood in Michigan, the death of his father under questionable circumstances, and his mother's deteriorating mental health that resulted in her commitment to a psychiatric hospital. Little's young adulthood in Boston and New York City is covered, as is his involvement in organized crime that led to his arrest and subsequent eight- to ten-year prison sentence, of which he served six-and-a-half years (1946–1952). The book addresses his ministry with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam (1952–1963) and his emergence as the organization's national spokesman. It then documents his subsequent disillusionment with and departure from the Nation of Islam in March 1964, his conversion to orthodox Sunni Islam, his pilgrimage to Mecca, and his travels in Africa. After Malcolm&nbsp;X was assassinated in New York's Audubon Ballroom in February 1965, the book's coauthor, journalist Alex Haley, summarizes the last days of Malcolm&nbsp;X's life, and describes in detail their working agreement, including Haley's personal views on his subject, in the Autobiography's epilogue.
26346398	/m/06jmzvg	Becoming Julia	Chris Westwood		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Maggie resembles Julia, a girl who disappeared, so the police ask Maggie to play Julia in a television reconstruction of the day she went missing.
26352349	/m/0bbzjmt	Feathered Dinosaurs of China				 The book tells a day in the life of most fauna of Early Cretaceous Liaoning in China, 124 million BC. *Unidentified Salamanders (mentioned at the beginning) *Callobatrachus *Unidentified Dragonflies *Jinzhousaurus *Unidentified Beetles (seen being kicked up by the Jinzhousaurus herd members) *Eomaia *Sinornithosaurus *Eosipterus *Dendrorhynchoides *Unidentified Striped Fish (seen dead and being squabbled over by the 2 Pterosaurs) *Confuciusornis *Caudipteryx *Manchurosuchus *Manchurochelys *Unidentified Freshwater Clams (seen on the lake bottom) *Unidentified Snails (mentioned in the lake description) *Unidentified Worms (listed in the Dragonfly nymph prey list) *Unidentified Freshwater Crustaceans (listed in the Dragonfly nymph prey list) *Unidentified Mayfly (nymph) *Unidentified Predatory Fish (seen in the distance, hidden under some Water Lilies) *Protosephurus *Lycoptera *Hyphalosaurus *Unidentified Cicadas (seen on page 20) *Beipiaosaurus *Sinosauropteryx *Unidentified Lizards *Unidentified Striped Moth (mentioned on page 23) *Microraptor *Psittacosaurus (dead) *Protopteryx *Protarchaeopteryx
26355216	/m/0bbyh4l	Giant Dinosaurs of the Jurassic				 The book tells a day in the life of most Fauna of Late Jurassic Morrison Formation in Colorado, USA, 150 million BC. *Unidentified Frogs (seen in the beginning) *Unidentified Large Turtles *Comodactylus *Unidentified Small Fish (mentioned on page 6) *Goniopholis *Othnielia *Ornitholestes *Camarasaurus *Unidentified Docodont (possibly Docodon) *Unidentified Carrion Insect (mentioned on page 8) *Stegosaurus *Camptosaurus *Brachiosaurus *Ceratosaurus *Dryosaurus *Fruitachampsa *Apatosaurus *Mesadactylus *Unidentified Biting Insects (mentioned on page 20) *Allosaurus *Mymoorapelta *Barosaurus *Diplodocus
26357336	/m/0bbx9w8	The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics	Martin Luther		{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ opens with a two part exposition of the Christian faith as applied to the Lord's Supper. First, one must consider the object of faith, "what one should believe". Then, one may consider how one may make use of this object, which in this case refers to how one should use the sacrament. A large portion of this opening section is devoted to logical refutations of logical arguments built up by Zwingli and those who agreed with him. These rational arguments are not intended to persuade his opponents, who in Luther's view do not accept God's Word and therefore may believe as they please apart from the church, but instead to help the "reasonable souls" who are still willing to "concern themselves" with God's Word. What one must believe is explained by "the clear text and the plain words of Christ" in the Words of Institution. Whoever does not believe these words has fallen into a mind trick devised by the devil and has a perspective distorted by "colored glass". The word "is" means "is" in the literal way that one uses for common speaking at the dinner table. Christ distributes his body and blood in the sacrament in a way similar to how he distributes himself across the entire world. To those who claim that there must be a location for Christ's body to be present under the bread, Luther responds that the soul is also illocal, yet is still really present throughout the body. Lest anyone think that the real presence is too great a miracle to be present in all the churches all the time, Luther cites the sprouting of seeds and the power of words to persuade as common, great, proliferating miracles. When objectors cite the incompatibility of non-living objects with Christ, Luther reminds them that the presence of Christ in the hearts of faithful is an even a greater miracle. Against the lack of an entry site for Christ's body to enter the bread, Luther notes that the Christ entered into the Virgin Mary solely through the power of the Word, without any noticeable physical entry. Luther noticed an inherent danger in his appeal to Christ's ubiquity to assert his real presence. If Christ is in all things, then perhaps he can be found in all things, similar to pantheism. Luther prevents pantheism from joining the discussion table by limiting the search for Christ to what God's Word alone has authorized. Any searching for Christ apart from the Word is idolatry. This second of the three sermons is less controversial than the first. In it, Luther rejects the papal use of the sacraments as good works that humans could perform to merit salvation or as a means of raising money. Although he rejects the symbolical interpretation of the Lord's Supper, he advocates that the sacrament be conducted along with general preaching and proclamation in the lives of ordinary Christians. In this way, Christians would be blessed so that "their number may increase". Part of this proclamation consisted in resistance to the demands of the Pope. By rejecting the Pope's command's regarding the sacrament, they bore witness to the Gospel, showing that the believer, in Christ, was "free from death, devil, and hell…a son of God, a lord of heaven and earth". The Lord's Supper is a possession of ordinary Christians that gives the great comfort to those individually given the assurance of salvation. Through the sacrament Christians may "strengthen [their] faith and make [their] consciences secure". But this building up in the faith was not an end in itself. Instead, it in turn led to the proclamation of the Gospel by all the Christians edified through it. Faith and love, states Luther, are the two principles of Christian doctrine. Justification through faith is taught by the Word. In God's Word, it is easy to see Christ's work on the cross, which was a single payment for sin that lasts for all eternity. In contrast to this faith in Christ, which is formed at once from the word, the second principle of Christian doctrine can be learned for an entire lifetime without completely mastering it. This second principle is love, or sanctification in the narrow sense. From Christ's sacrifice proclaimed in the Lord's Supper, Christians learn the ultimate expression of love. Another aspect of this second principle is the proclamation of communion within the church. Both the individual grains and the individual grapes lose their identity to become one in the products of bread and wine. They mystically reflect the gathering together of Christians as one in the church. Indeed, this application is so rich in meaning that, along with faith, love, and patience, it provides so much for a Christian to strive for that there is no need to indulge in obscure studies to prove academic greatness. Love is greater than knowledge and is above petty academic competition. Instead of lending superiority to a select few, this sacrament teaches a lesson that can be learned during one's entire live without ever finishing it. Luther distinguishes between three kinds of confession in this last of the three sermons that make up this book. The first is confession before God, the second is confession before one's neighbor, and the third is private confession with one's priest. Before the Reformation, the devil confused people about confession by making it a burden and a requirement instead of a gift and opportunity. The purpose of these distinctions is to do away with the confusion that existed when confession was placed as a burden upon the people. Confession is useful in drawing attention to the social responsibilities Christians have toward their fellow brothers in need. Private confession is not to be eliminated, because it retained its value through the giving of individual comfort to troubled souls and the providing of an opportunity for spiritual growth. Confession afforded an opportunity both to teach otherwise ignorant laypeople the right path to follow and for them to seek advice when they desired it. However, it was not obligatory for those who already confessed their sins before God and were reconciled with their neighbor. Private confession, instead of being instituted by God as a requirement in the Bible, was only historically derived from the other two forms of confession. These two forms of confession alone sufficed as a means for the forgiveness of sins without private confession.
26360636	/m/0bbxtq7	Real Murders	Charlaine Harris	1990-12-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Local crime buffs meet monthly in the small town of Lawrenceton, Georgia to analyze famous murder cases, and in Real Murders they get all too close a look as one of their members is bludgeoned in exactly the same manner as the crime to be discussed that night. Aurora "Roe" Teagarden, the 4'11" librarian, is not only a member of the club, a suspect in the murder but also a potential victim as other murders follow - each mimicking a famous crime. Roe must work quickly to discover which of her fellow sleuths is the killer. Could it be the police detective whose sudden romantic interest in Roe leaves her skin tingling, the new mystery writer in town who says he's bored with just writing or one of the other 12 members of the Real Murders Club?
26367592	/m/0bbvg2v	A Change of Climate	Hilary Mantel		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A Change of Climate is set in Norfolk in 1980, and concerns Ralph and Anna Eldred, parents of four children, whose family life threatens to disintegrate in the course of one summer, when memories which they have repressed fiercely for twenty years resurface to disrupt the purposive and peaceful lives they have tried to lead since a catastrophic event overtook them early in their married life. The action of the novel moves back to the late 1950s, when they worked for a missionary society in a dangerous and crowded South African township, and then follows the couple to Bechuanaland, where in the loneliness of a remote mission station an unspeakable loss occurs. The novel is about the possibility or impossibility of forgiveness, the clash of ideals and brutality, and the need to acknowledge that lives are broken before they can begin to be mended.
26368791	/m/0bbyrk_	Letters from the Inside	John Marsden	1991	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is told in the form of letters exchanged between fifteen-year-old girls, Mandy and Tracey. They begin writing after Tracey places an ad in fictional magazine GDY. The two girls share information about their lives from school, to family, to relationships. Mandy reveals that her brother is abusive and violent, information which Tracey tries to ignore. It appears to Mandy that Tracey's life is perfect, as she has a wonderful boyfriend, rich and caring parents, and she is close to her siblings. However, inconsistencies start appearing in Tracey's letters, and when Mandy questions her on them, Tracey stops writing. Mandy refuses to give up, and finally Tracey replies with the information that she is in fact in a juvenile detention center, and will be there for a long time. Tracey expects Mandy to no longer want to write to her, but Mandy continues to do so. Their relationship becomes even deeper now that they are completely honest with each other. Mandy, however, occasionally frustrates Tracey with her naivete as Tracey claims she is not as "nice" as Mandy claims, and becomes angry when Mandy makes a joke about tunneling into her cell and staying with her. Throughout their letter writing, Tracey seems to get in touch with her "softer" side, which includes writing an essay about her Nanna. She wins an award for the story, and asks Mandy to celebrate for her. Towards the end of the book, Tracey finally confesses the truth about her family and gives her reason for not wanting to hear about Mandy's brother. Mandy never replies to the letter and never writes again. Tracey continuously writes, getting increasingly worried, especially when her letters are sent back to her with "Return To Sender" on them, not in Mandy's hand writing.
26373459	/m/0bbvyy5	Metro 2033	Dmitry Glukhovsky	2002	{"/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction"}	 The protagonist of the novel is a young 20-year old man named Artyom who was born before the nuclear holocaust that occurred in 2013. When he was a baby he was saved from a horde of carnivorous rats by Sukhoi, a military officer. The rats killed Artyom's mother and most of the survivors with her. He has since been raised by Sukhoi, his adoptive father who is one of the authorities of VDNKh, one of the many shelter stations in the russian metro. He grew up and become one of the security guards in the VDNKh. In late 2033, Artyom is completing his shift with his fellow colleagues. When his shift ends he meets a mysterious man who calls himself Hunter. Hunter asks him to tell Sukhoi that he was looking for him. The three gather together and discuss the situation at VDNKh. While Hunter believes that they should keep fighting these threats, Sukhoi has obviously lost all hope, and for good reason. While Hunter is leaving he asks Artyom for a word outside. He blackmails Artyom by managing to make him spill out his secret of Artyom's lone expedition into the Botanical Gardens, as a child. Hunter makes him promise to travel to Polis in case he does not return, as Hunter is going on an expedition to stop the dark ones who have been attacking the station. After escorting a caravan to a member of the VDNKh Commonwealth, Artyom meets Bourbon. In exchange for a large number of cartridges, Artyom promises to help Bourbon through several tunnels but the journey comes to a tragic end, when Bourbon seemingly slips into insanity, and dies. Luckily for Artyom, a mysterious stranger arrives; Khan who helps him retrieve Bourbon's equipment. Artyom discovers that Bourbon actually planned on killing and looting him. After this, both plan a route to Polis. They decide to gather force to travel through a strange tunnel and fend off the monsters inside. Both reach Kitai-Gorod station where they split after it is attacked by the Fourth Reich. While fleeing the station, Artyom comes across an old man and helps him, who in turn helps him get to his next destination, Kuznetsky Most where he runs into the Reich again and is apprehended for murdering a station guard. As he is about to be executed, he is rescued by the Revolutionaries. Artyom is eventually dropped off at Paveletskaya, and befriends a man named Mark who bets against the station chief in a rat race to win visas to travel through Hanseatic League that occupied Koltsevaya Line. If they lose, which they do, they will shovel manure for a year on the Paveletskaya-Koltsevaya but Artyom eventually escapes and travels through an unfinished tunnel. There he meets a Brother Timothy who takes him to the Watchtower which seems to be a monastery of sorts and offers Artyom shelter. Artyom eventually tires of the fundamentalist teachings about God, escapes the station and continues his journey. He then goes to Serpukhovskaya and briefly checks his direction. Arriving at Polyanka he overhears a discussion about Metro-2, a mysterious subway system meant to connect major government buildings in the case of disaster. He talks with the people there and gets inspired by their thoughtful speech. He finally arrives at Polis. He is welcomed by the guard's commander, and informs the man that he has a message for Melnik and to wait a day. During this time, he meets a young man and local 'Brahmin', Daniel who is well informed of Polis affairs, and even has information on Artyom's next destination, the Library. Brahmins are the important scientists who were especially protected by the government from the nuclear holocaust and given many supplies and advanced weaponry to survive. Next day Melnik meets Artyom, who informs him there is a council meeting that day, to discuss the situation outside of Polis. During the meeting Artyom explains the situation at VDNKh to them. At first they decline to help, but later a sect of the council offers him help and tells him to go the Great Library with Melnik, Daniel and another person. They want him to receive a very old and extremely powerful book. After getting there, things soon go to hell as creatures called Librarians attack them. Melnik and his partner stay behind while Artyom and Daniel progress farther into the library. Daniel is killed and Artyom returns to Melnik with one thing; a map to a location named D-6 who tells him to go to Smolenskaya via the surface alone, since his partner has been wounded. Artyom somehow makes his way to the station despite all the odds. There he is rescued by Melnik from monsters. Artyom and Melnik make a plan to help VDNKh, by going to D-6 and launching pre-war missiles to the Dark Ones lair. They begin their journey by traveling to Kievskaya. Here Melnik inquires about a certain Tretyak and goes on a patrol with the security commander, Anton. They discuss several things, namely the disappearances of the station's residents, and the conditions of the adjacent station, Park Pobedy but there is no way in or out of the station. They return to the station and meet Treytak. As Artyom has no passport, Melnik and Tretyak venture to Mayakovskaya to look for an entrance to D-6. After one night, Artyom receives a message from Melnik telling him that Tretyak had been killed and that he would be back to the station in a day. Oleg, Anton's child, disappears. Artyom finds the child's music-maker outside a previously unseen entrance, and the duo take it to what seems to be Park Pobedy. They are both knocked unconscious by Savage Cannibals of the Great Worm cult and taken hostage. There, the cannibals are about to feast on the duo and Oleg but are rescued by Melnik and a team of stalkers. They then begin their journey to D-6 via Metro-2 with the duo, Oleg and two Savage Cannibals who are taken hostages. The team eventually finds an entrance to Metro-2. They travel through the metro and pass under the Kremlin, whose metro-station contains a mutated bio-weapon, (a remnant of the war) that hypnotizes humans and consumes them. Oleg and two stalkers are killed by it. The group throws a flamethrower gas canister towards it and shoots it, which injures the monster and forces it to retreat, allowing the party to escape. Melnik then decides that Ulman, another stalker, and Artyom need to find a high point to direct the missiles while Melnik and the remaining stalkers will find the missile control room. Artyom and Ulman will give them coordinates to fire the missiles at the dark ones from Ostankino Tower. On the way there, they stop at VDNKh which is not doing well because since Artyom left half the people are gone, and sometimes the dark ones break through the guard posts and make their way to the living quarters. Once they make their way to the top of the Ostankino Tower they transmit the coordinates. At that very moment, Artyom has a vision from the dark ones who tell him that they just wanted to cooperate with humans and the killing was just an attempt to communicate with them. But when Artyom regains self-control, the Botanical Gardens are already destroyed by the missiles. Realising that the Dark Ones were killed in vain, Artyom tears his mask in agony for what he has done and heads back home.
26379697	/m/0bbwscv	The House of Seven Colors				 Count von Count and other Muppets are returning from a country drive in the Countmobile. But, in classic suspense/horror movie fashion, the bridge is out, so the group has to spend the night at a spooky old house. A giant monster butler escorts each character to a room, decorated entirely in one of the seven colors of the rainbow. No one is especially gruntled by their accommodations: Cookie Monster longs for a green cookie to go well with his green room, while the Count von Count does not like his red room (not one little bit of it), Ernie is not too thrilled with his purple room, Oscar the Grouch finds himself trapped in a bright pink room, filled with flowers and hearts, while Bert longs for a beige room over an orange one, Betty Lou is blinded by yellow, and even Grover finds himself depressed by his matching blue room. The group rapidly depart the next morning, happy to leave the weird house and return. The Sesame Street residents are unaware that the House of Seven Colors is in fact a tourist attraction, frequented by vast car and busloads of monsters who feel right at home in rooms that match their fur.
26387182	/m/0bbzz63	On Parole				 Shiro Kikutani, a teacher, is sent to prison for the murder of his unfaithful wife, the stabbing of her lover, as well as an act of arson carried out against the man's family home which resulted in the death of his mother. While incarcerated, he works in the prison's print shop, behaves well, and generally keeps to himself. After a span of fifteen years, he is granted parole and moves into a halfway house. His parole officer, Kiyoura, takes some basic steps to reintroduce Kikutani into society; Kikutani is unaccustomed to his newfound freedom, and has difficulty doing basic things such as going to the bathroom without asking permission or walking normally without marching in the way that he and his fellow prisoners were required to do. Kiyoura finds Kikutani a position working at a chicken farm, and tells him that he must soon find an apartment of his own and leave the halfway-house. Because the chicken farm where he will work is far away from the halfway house in the city, Kikutani is encouraged to find an apartment close to his workplace. Kikutani is hesitant to move too far away from the city and his parole officer because he feels a certain degree of security being close to the halfway house, so he instead finds an apartment that is close by even though this will necessitate a long daily commute to work. Kikutani settles into his new life, and is content to go about his unremarkable daily routine. In particular, he is pleased at having little or no contact with other people apart from his monthly visit to his parole officer. One day, by chance, Kikutani passes a woman in the street who closely resembles his wife. This encounter leads Kikutani to travel back to the scene of his crime, his old home town of Sakura, late at night so as not to be noticed. He brings some incense with him to burn at the grave of the old woman who died in the fire, but when he arrives at the cemetery, he realizes that he feels no remorse for his crimes, and simply leaves. He does not tell his newly assigned parole officer, Takebayashi, of his trip and nothing more comes of the matter. Kikutani forms one, rather distant, friendship with one of his co-workers at the chicken farm, and he also receives a letter from someone who has recognized him as an ex-prisoner, and confesses that he too is a former convict. The two begin a correspondence, but when they decide to meet, the other man loses his nerve and the relationship is abruptly broken off. During one of Kikutani's subsequent parole meetings, Takebayashi, rather surprisingly, raises the prospect of marriage, and explains that he and his wife know an older woman who they have told about his past and nonetheless is willing to meet him and consider getting married. Kikutani is surprised at the suggestion and mulls over the idea, but is not particularly open to getting remarried. But after Takebayashi dies Kikutani reconsiders because he feels that this is what others want of him. He marries the woman, Toyoko, and the two briefly settle into a contented relationship in Kikutani's apartment. Apparently, however, though Toyoko was told of Kikutan's past, she was not told that he would be on parole for the rest of his life. This realization troubles her, and she begins pushing Kikutani to start openly showing grief for his crimes in the hopes of being granted a pardon. One day, Kikutani returns home to find that Toyoko had set up two small altars to his victims. He becomes enraged, loses control of himself, and flings Toyoko down the stairs and kills her. In the final scene, Kikutani helplessly walks back to the halfway house, prepared to confess to Kiyoura what he has done.
26388977	/m/0dq696	The Roar	Emma Clayton	2008	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story follows twins Mika and Ellie who live in England. Mika and Ellie live with their parents in the poverty stricken area behind The Wall on the first level in a fold out apartment located in Barford North. Ellie has been kidnapped and is being held by the leader of the Youth Development Foundation, Mal Gorman. Although everyone says that Ellie is dead, Mika refuses to believe that she is. Even a year after Ellie's "death", Mika still believes his sister is alive. His parents seek help from an old lady named Helen who always seems to know more than she says. In the beginning of the book, Ellie is flying a Pod Fighter, along with a Capuchin monkey named Puck that Mal Gorman gave to her. They are flying over the Atlantic Ocean, and she flies toward her home, Barford North. There, Mal's forces try to kill her. Soon, her Pod Fighter is shot down, and she is forced into flood-waters. Mal Gorman captures her, and in her anger she nearly kills him with her mutant powers. She was outnumbered, captured, and taken to the Lab to be examined with Puck, for they were both clearly underestimated. Back home, Mika does not believe Ellie is dead. He still grieves at her absence. He sleeps in her bed, and does not move. Eventually, his parents send him to school. At his school, he meets a new person - a boy named Kobi who came from the shadows. During the day, a nurse comes from the Youth Development Foundation. She tells all the children that they will have to drink a product called "Fit Mix". Mika refuses to drink it because of the fact that she reminded him of a "tellyhead", and is punished with a 100 credit fine and a week long suspension. During his suspension, he has strange dreams. Once, he has a dream of a dog he calls Awen, who reappears in his conscious states and acts as his guide in the book. His nightmares consist of people with televisions for heads who he calls the "Telly Heads". When his suspension is finished, all the kids seem to be obsessed with a new arcade game called Pod Fighter. Helen told him that she now has to leave so she said "if you play pod fighter you will most probably find your sister Ellie". Soon, he learns that there will be a competition with prizes of a new companion, which is a futuristic cell-phone like device that has an artificial intelligence that emulates the personality of a human, a hover car, and a new house in the Golden Turrets in London. The Golden Turrets are a set of large fancy towers that are painted gold and made up of enclosed apartments for the very wealthiest people in London. At school, the kids take "Fit Camp". While taking the camp, the instructor pushes them to the limit. He makes them exercise when they are out of breath, and they do unimaginable exercises until their feet bleed. But none of them know that they are being prepared for something else. Later, Mika makes his way up the Pod Fighter chart and moves to the second round after winning the first round of a Pod Fighter competition, with his faithful gunner, Audrey, a new girl with Borg eyes. Audrey also seems to be a love interest for Mika. Mika, Audrey and one hundred other kids are selected to do further training at a fake island. They are taken to the fake resort that resembles the Caribbean Islands. While their parents relax, they are given numerous physical challenges. They give the children a new challenge with harpoons; shooting Borg fish. Mika is accidentally hit but is quickly healed. Before he moves on to the next round they do strange experiments on him and teach him to move things with his mind. In his first test, he is paired up with a boy named Ruben, his arch-enemy. They both lift up a red ball with their mind, and accidentally set it on fire. While the room is being cleared out, they nearly kill each other. After some of the special children with slight mutations (including Mika and Audrey) are given extreme tests, like meeting Borg wolves, while in a cage to see how the Borg wolves will react to them, he is taken to a military base in Scotland called Cape Wrath. There he has more tests done to him. After staying for a while, they have a dinner where they announce the winners. He meets Mal Gorman, who to Mika resembles one of the Telly Heads from his dream, and the rest of the Youth Development board. Mika is announced the winner. Mr Gorman tells Mika he can have his sister. He needs to know he can trust him so he tells Mika he has to stay in his apartment and come back to Cape Wrath the next day. When Mika goes to his new home in the Golden Turrets, there is an uproar: the government has taken all the children from The Shadows for a war no one knows about. Mika and Audrey escape to get away from the horde of people in a pod fighter. They go over the wall and see that there is a forest with animals and people. They are outraged and fly back to the military to find Mal and ask him why he has been lied to. Mal tells him that 30 years ago the plague was faked by a group of people who wanted the world for themselves. Mal was trying to make an army of children to fight off the people in the southern hemispheric. And he says that he overworked the children in fit camp to prepare them for war. After he lets Mika see Ellie for the first time in a year, and they finally embrace each other. After meeting with Ellie, they fly a Pod Fighter back towards Barford North, hoping to tell their family of the good news.
26389272	/m/0bbvj77	A Beautiful Blue Death	Charles Finch	2007-06-26	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The novel, set in 1865 London, follows Charles Lenox as he seeks to solve a murder. Lenox is an independently wealthy gentleman who enjoys solving crimes as a hobby, though he generally prefers to pass the cold winter days in his library with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. He is drawn into a new case when his lifelong friend Lady Jane Grey makes a special request for his help. Prudence Smith, Grey's former housemaid, is dead in an apparent suicide. But Lenox immediately suspects foul play: murder by a rare and deadly poison. Smith lived and worked in the patrician house of George Barnard, a place full of suspects. While Smith played with more than a few hearts, the motive behind her death proves elusive. When another body turns up during the season's most fashionable ball, Lenox must untangle the web of loyalties and animosities surrounding Barnard’s mansion. Lenox receives help with the task both from his faithful valet, Graham, and his friend, Dr. Thomas McConnell. Throughout the story, Lenox’s efforts are intermittently enabled or hampered by Scotland Yard Inspector James Exeter, who requires Lenox’s help with the case but wants always to appear in total control. The subplots of the novel focus on Lenox's evolving personal relationship with Grey and McConnell's strained marriage to Lady Victoria "Toto" Phillips, all recurring characters in Finch's books.
26391349	/m/0bbvkbq	Tara of the Twilight	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tara, a foundling, has been raised as the ward of Chanthu the sorcerer to be a War Maid, a member of an order of virgin swordswomen. At sixteen she is sent on a quest into the Twilight, a dim, dangerous and mysterious realm full of violence and magic, to discover the mystery of her origins. Her friend and protector Khaldur, a highly intelligent lion-like carnivore, accompanies her. Unfortunately for Tara (the goddess of her order being quite strict on the virginity requirement), the Twilight proves to be a hotbed of decadence and perversion. Her quest devolves a series of captivities and escapes, in which she is in turn separated from and reunited with her feline guardian. She is successively enslaved by lecherous inhabitants of the city of Paltossa, the Northern Barbarians, the sorceresses of the Witch Wood, and the sorcerer Sarkon and his three Womanthing minions. During the course of her adventures she picks up additional companions, including the bisexual girl Evalla, the Lion Warrior Thund, and the teenage boy Zorak, all of whom provide opportunities for sex play between adventures. Throughout all, she somehow manages to maintain a technical virginity, primarily because her various antagonists seem too depraved to consider ordinary intercourse, while her male companions are either too honorable, too inhibited, or too distracted by Evalla. The novel ends with the quest unfinished and the mysteries of Tara's heritage and destiny unresolved, with the travelers flying onward to new adventures in their magical air-gondola.
26399508	/m/0bbwfrb	Dominant Species	Michael E. Marks	2009-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The protagonist is Major Dan Ridgeway, the leader of a USMC Rapid Assault Team, or RAT squad. Ridgeway carries a heavy personal burden from a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" decision that won him official acclaim early in his military career. Ridgeway's squad is deployed to a distant planet where workers at a lucrative and strategically critical mining operation have seceded and aligned with an opposing government. The key to reclaiming the facility intact lies in a surgical strike against a deep-underground reactor that powers the ground-based defense systems. Employing an unorthodox means of infiltrating the outer defenses, the RAT squad's powered armor allows them to carve a straight line to the reactor and affix explosives to its hull. Their egress is impeded by stiff resistance and as time runs out, Ridgeway opts for a last-ditch means of survival in the face of the reactor's imminent detonation. The avenue of escape leaves the Marines stranded in an even deeper series of frozen caverns below the reactor level. Searching for a means of escape and a safe environment to deal with injuries, they discover two things: that one member of the opposing military force, a lowly truck driver, has inadvertently fallen along with the Marines, and of far greater impact that an immense starship pitched on her side kilometers below the planet's surface. Despite the immediately obvious mystery, Ridgeway maintains a firm "not our job to solve mysteries" focus and views the ship only as a means to address his team's survival. Viewing the driver as a potential source of information, they bring him along and enter the ship to grapple with extracting the means to repair, refit and escape. After considerable effort and several life-threatening encounters created entirely by the hazardous environment, the Marines restore limited power within the ship and in so doing begin to unravel pieces of her history and a remarkable technology that saves the life of the driver, Jenner, and Darcy, a member of Ridgeway's team. But it quickly becomes obvious that more than just the power has re-awakened on the ship. While pursuing a means of reaching the surface, the Marines are with increasing frequency and intensity engaged in ways that stress them to the breaking point. Discovering evidence of what appears to be a horrific atrocity against the ship's original crew, the weight of Ridgeway's longstanding internal burden and the need to save his team come into alignment on a path that cuts directly through the alien species. What remains is a series of blistering firefights, personal sacrifices and displays of both loyalty and frailty that lead to the book's ultimate conclusion. The book challenges traditional definitions of humanity and the way we perceive one another.
26405253	/m/0bbxh1t	Hate That Cat	Sharon Creech	2008	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 This is the second book about Jack, the first being Love That Dog. Jack is being terrorized by a black cat and he writes poetry about how much he dislikes the cat. The story follows him through learning to like both cats and poetry.
26420356	/m/0bbvb2k	The Pitcher Shower	Donald Harington	2005		 Landon "Hoppy" Boyd shows two Western movies (made in 1937) in a small town. After he leaves, he finds that a teenager named Carl has stowed away in his truck. Hoppy takes a liking to Carl and breaks his usual rule of returning stowaways to their homes. Carl is a helpful partner on the trip and in the next town (and a skilled barber), despite his habit of wandering at night in the woods, where he converses with fairies. He proves to be a seventeen-year-old girl, Sharline Whitlow. In the following town, Hoppy and Sharline meet Emmett Binns, an itinerant evangelist who had once tried to molest Sharline. Sharline and Hoppy begin a sexual relationship. Despite tension with Binns, Hoppy treats him to some moonshine whiskey and shows Binns his pornographic movie, and later that night Binns is arrested for assaulting an underage girl. In the next town, Hoppy finds that his movies are missing. He blames Binns and starts a search with the cooperation of his handsome and charming friend Arlis Faught. Hoppy buys the only movie he can: the 1935 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The film fascinates Arlis and Sharline. The next day Hoppy happens to see Arlis and Sharline having sex in the woods. Later, while Arlis and Sharline are together, Arlis's frustrated girlfriend Helen Milsap visits Hoppy. They share moonshine that Hoppy got from a "puckish" man named Goodfeller. They fall for each other but are interrupted during fellatio by Arlis and Sharline. As the projector's sound is broken, that night the four show A Midsummer Night's Dream reading the parts themselves. Having recognized the parallels to their situation, Hoppy plays Lysander (and Bottom), Arlis plays Demetrius, Sharline plays Hermia, and Helen plays Helena, in addition to other roles for each. The fairies Sharline sees now appear to the four "voice actors" and the audience. At midnight, after the movie, they hear that Binns has been sighted. Hoppy chases his car but cannot find him. The next day Arlis and Helen leave for California. Hoppy and Sharline find Binns's car in a ravine. Sharline climbs down to it; Binns is not in it, and she recovers the missing films and a good deal of money. An epilogue describes what happens to the characters during the next few decades, with reference to Harington's previous and planned novels (referred to as "movies"). Hoppy and Sharline buy a movie theater and Sharline opens a barbershop; their son (possibly Arlis's) grows up in both places.
26431454	/m/0bbxs1n	Perchance to Dream	Robert B. Parker		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Set a few years after the events of The Big Sleep, the new novel begins with long passages of text lifted from the original to set the scene, establish the characters, and remind readers of the events of the first book. The story is set in motion by the death of family patriarch General Sternwood. Marlowe is called to the Sternwood mansion in the hills of Los Angeles by Norris, the butler. He finds older daughter Vivian still in residence and still dating gangster Eddie Mars but her younger sister Carmen, still tormented by the events of the original story, has been sent off to live at Resthaven, a luxurious psychiatric rehabilitation facility. When Carmen disappears from the rest home, Norris hires Marlowe to find her.
26434031	/m/0bbzp99	The Mars Project	Wernher von Braun	1952		 The Mars Project is a technical specification for a manned mission to Mars that von Braun wrote in 1948. The expected launch date was 1965. He envisioned an "enormous scientific expedition" involving a fleet of ten spacecraft with 70 crew members that would spend 443 days on the surface of Mars before returning to Earth. The spacecraft, seven passenger ships and three cargo ships, would be assembled in Earth orbit using materials supplied by reusable space shuttles. The fleet would use a nitric acid/hydrazine propellant that, although corrosive and toxic, could be stored without refrigeration during the three-year round-trip to Mars. He calculated the size and weight of each ship, and how much fuel they would require for the round trip (5,320,000 metric tons). Hohmann trajectories would be used to move from Earth- to Mars-orbit, and von Braun computed each rocket burn necessary to effect the required manoeuvres. Once in Mars orbit, the crew would use telescopes to find a suitable site for their base camp near the equator. A manned winged craft would detach itself from one of the orbiting ships and glide down to one of Mars' poles and use skis to land on the ice. The crew would then travel 6,500&nbsp;km overland using crawlers to the identified base camp site and build a landing strip. The rest of the ground crew would descend from orbit to the landing strip in wheeled gliders. A skeleton crew would remain behind in the orbiting ships. The gliders would also serve as ascent craft to return the crew to the mother ships at the end of the ground mission. Von Braun based his Mars Project on the large Antarctic expeditions of the day. For example, Operation Highjump (1946–1947) was a United States Navy program that included 4,700 men, 13 ships and 23 aircraft. At the time, Antarctic explorers were cut off from the rest of the world and the necessary skills had to be on hand to deal with any problem that arose. Von Braun expected the Martian explorers to face similar problems and included a large multi-disciplined crew in his mission, and multiple ships and landers for redundancy to reduce risk to personnel.
26446808	/m/0bbzd4c	Women of the apocalypse		2009-09-29	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Four archangels discuss how a simple assignment went so terribly wrong. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are coming and so the Archangels found the perfect champions to save the world: fighters, warriors, and soldiers. These chosen champions must drink a shooter that will imbue them with divine powers to battle the Four Horsemen. A mistake is made when four random women drink the divine concoction. Alexandra Carlton, Julia Wolfe, Emily Keller and Dinah Medrano must all take up the mantles of champions. Alexandra Carlton, a waitress at a sports bar, inadvertently becomes the champion destined to take on the First Horseman of the Apocalypse by drinking a shooter given to her as a tip. Shortly thereafter, she meets the Archangel Raphael, who has been charged with preparing Alexandra for her quest. The story focuses on Alexandra's attempts to learn “the ways of the Horseman” in order to stop him, as increasingly erotic visions of that Horseman and Raphael's apparent reluctance to give her any useful information thwart her. A refugee lawyer, Dinah Medrano, is approached by the Archangel Michael to be a champion to defend the Earth from the Apocalypse, specifically the Horseman of War. At first, Dinah is resistant to the presented challenge because she is convinced that Michael is not sane. However, when she realizes she has been gifted with powers to manipulate water and heal people, Dinah accepts Archangel Michael’s challenge in order to save her sister, Fatima, who is suffering from cancer. The story focuses on Dinah’s attempts to cease the progress of the Horseman of War, despite the complications that arise when she discovers the Horseman of War is a former angel. After missing a day of work because of a severe hangover, Emily Keller returns to find an elderly man assigned as a trainee to the concrete truck she drives for her father’s company. Arthur Capella is the name adopted by Urial, the Archangel of Music, who is tasked with persuading Emily that she is the champion who must confront and defeat the Apocalyptic Horseman, Famine. Emily, a modern young woman, living in a world of online social networking, is not easily persuaded, until she finds out that her good friend Donald, not only is the Horseman Famine, he is also responsible for killing both her mother and her mentor, Twinkie. Famine, in this story, seeks to destroy the populations of the developed world by a devious kind of starvation caused by the dwindling nutrition in refined and convenience food. Julia Wolfe is a particle scientist involved in a secret fusion project located two miles beneath the surface. The project, dubbed Eden by the members of the scientific team, is working on achieving positive fusion, a goal that could spell the end of the world's energy problems. As the project nears completion, Julia finds her personal life unraveling. From troubling dreams to dissatisfaction with her marriage, she begins question her place within Eden and wonders if she needs to leave. However, when the fusion reactor malfunctions throwing Eden into darkness and chaos, Julia realizes they are not alone in the deep. It is up to Julia to protect them against the horsemen Death. More than their lives hang in the balance. If she fails, Death will escape from Eden and wash over the surface world.
26449806	/m/0bbv66c	La Croix du Sanguine Rouge			{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 It's about a young French girl named Anne, in Germany during the start of World War II. She is courted by a young man in the Nazi Youth, named Daniel, opposed to the actions of Germany. As the war intensifies, she becomes unable to leave the country, and is presumed by her family to be dead. Near the end of the war, the couple is able to flee to France, Anne under the guise of a German nurse. Upon arrival, she is shocked to find that her father and older brother were killed, and her mother and younger brother are missing in the French countryside. She never finds them again. The story ends with the marriage of Anne and Daniel, and the book is found to be a narrative by Anne to her children, after Daniel's death.
26451329	/m/0bbyhz_	The Better Man				 Mukundan, retired from government service, returns to the village of Kaikurussi where he was born. He is upset, viewing his life as a failure. He meets "One-screw-loose-Bhasi", a local eccentric, a housepainter and an inverter of an odd system of alternative medicine. He helps Mukundan transform himself. Then Power House Ramakrishnan, a locally important man, decides to build a Community hall, and selects Bhasi's land. He threatens to destroy Bhasi's business if he refuses to sell the land. Mukundan intends to save Bhasi's land but is flattered into accepting membership on the project committee. Then Mukundan's father dies, and he undergoes a deeper transformation.
26459240	/m/0bbvw1s	The Emperor's Code	Gordon Korman	2010-04-06	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 After an argument with his sister in Beijing's Forbidden City, Dan Cahill is kidnapped by Ian and Natalie Kabra. He is dumped in Jonah Wizard's lollipop factory where Jonah treats him nicely and gives out his own suite, taking him to a concert, and letting him fly first class. Meanwhile, Amy Cahill and Nellie are searching for him, and head to Alistair Oh to get help in finding Dan. Alistair translates a Chinese newspaper saying that Jonah is going to the Great Wall of China. However, Jonah cancels his flight to the Great Wall, knowing that Amy and Nellie are going there; he then goes to a Wushu City, where Dan takes Wushu lessons. Later, while Dan explores a tunnel he finds lab equipment from Gideon Cahill's lab and a picture of Madeleine Cahill that belonged to the notorious Anne Bonny. The Wizards get a mysterious message that gives coordinates saying to go to a specific spot at the Terra Cotta Warrior's resting place. Meanwhile, Amy and Nellie look for Dan at the Great Wall and find a secret door. Nellie picks the lock and they come into a room. After Amy's Feng Shui style organizing, a light shines in showing Mt. Everest. While they were searching the Great Wall, Jonah and Dan checked out the Warriors. Jonah meant to send Dan in alone in case it was a trap, and it was. They were put in jail. Jonah's Dad gets them out and Jonah decides to quit the hunt. Cora Wizard, his mother, is disgusted and slaps Jonah telling Dan that they have discovered his branch is Janus. Dan tells them he is a Madrigal and leaves the shocked Wizards. After he leaves, he sees the Holts climbing Mt. Everest on television. Grace had stored an advanced helicopter, the A-Star, in rural China and told Amy and Dan about it knowing they would need it in the future eventually. Dan, knowing the location of the A-Star, travels to it. When Amy and Nellie get the A-Star ready, Dan meets up with them. Dan and Amy head up to Mt. Everest in the A-Star where they found a serum embedded in Mt. Everest. They lose the serum when Ian falls off the edge of a cliff. He hangs on to the edge and Amy saves him letting the serum plunge miles below, with Amy knowing that they already had another form of the clue with them- the piece of silk. Amy then explains that the serum was silk in its liquid form. After Amy finds the inscription indicating it was Anne Bonny's, they then head to the Caribbean to search for their next clue that Anne Bonny may have left there. The secret message throughout the book was "Madrigals are behind everything. They lay out the path, the others will walk. The end is coming." This code is circled throughout the book. The code on the cover, the message of animal codes on the emperor's crown, reads "Tenzing knew too." The crown also has the words "Because it's there", which is one of the quotes by a person in the book.
26461001	/m/08ycz95	The Cruelest Month	Louise Penny	2008	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel, set in the small Canadian town of Three Pines, takes place around the Easter season. A group of friends visits a haunted house, hoping to rid it of the evil spirits that have haunted it, and the village, for decades. One of them ends up dead, apparently of fright. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team from the Sûreté du Québec investigate the old house and the villagers of Three Pines.
26461664	/m/0bbzl1g	The Beginnings – Malayalam		2007-01	{"/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 The semi-autobiographical story is set in a small rural town in Kerala, India. When the story begins, the author is preparing to start his journey from Kollam to join a newly created Engineering college, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology, Kottayam. The author takes us through his experience in the new college, which had no facilities whatsoever, and then goes on to talk about the social and political climate in Kerala during that time. Soon, he introduces us to a girl with whom he later falls in love. The story then takes us through the girl's experience where she is a witness to the murder of a nun - a case very similar to the infamous Sister Abhaya murder case that rocked the state during the same time period as the story's timeline.
26465740	/m/0bbwz1q	Freddy Plays Football			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 When Mrs. Bean’s long lost brother, Aaron Doty, appears, he and his storytelling are warmly received. Soon the animals realize the stories of his accomplishments are lies, and Freddy begins to wonder if he is who he claims. Since taking his share of Mrs. Bean’s inheritance would force the Beans to sell the farm, Freddy urgently investigates. Evidence mounts, including a conversation overheard between Doty and the Bean animals’ old enemy Mr. Garble. The animals hold a rally, determining that Doty is a fake. Mrs. Bean however is unconvinced. By chance Freddy is drawn into a high school football game. He cannot pass or catch, but his offensive rushing is unstoppable. With the agreement that he attend high school classes, Freddy joins the team. Since it is not possible for Freddy to attend school regularly, his cousin Weedly doubles for him, causing them both to be “half-educated”. Freddy’s first game is a success. Mrs. Bean decides to pay Doty $5000, which she is forced to borrow. Freddy convinces the bank to give the money to him, and promptly disappears with it. The Beans are furious, and the sheriff has no option but to search for Freddy and arrest him. Freddy narrowly escapes being shot by Mr. Garble — but the sheriff has thoughtfully loaded Garble's gun with blanks. At first the money is hidden in the forest, but when Freddy is jailed it winds up being baked in a pie made accidentally of plaster of paris. Finally the animals trick Doty into revealing his real name, and he leaves the farm. Out on bail, Freddy continues playing football. Old Whibley the Owl defends Freddy in court, pointing out that neither of the key witnesses has reliable vision, and therefore could not positively identify Freddy as the thief. The judge lets Freddy off with a warning. Freddy is in good form for the important football game with a neighboring rival town, who have brought their own animals to match Freddy. The Centerboro team adds more animals, ultimately winning.
26467887	/m/07dlq	The Running Man	Stephen King		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The story's protagonist, Ben Richards, is a citizen of Co-Op City (not to be confused with the real Co-Op City), a suburb of the fictional Harding, which is located somewhere in the Midwest, west of Detroit in the year 2025. The world's economy is in a shambles, and America has become a totalitarian dystopia. Richards is unable to find work, having been blacklisted from his trade, and he needs money to get medicine for his gravely ill daughter Cathy. His wife Sheila has resorted to prostitution to bring in money for the family. In desperation, Richards turns to the Games Network, a government-operated television station that runs violent game shows. After rigorous physical and mental testing, Richards is selected to appear on The Running Man, the Games Network's most popular, lucrative, and dangerous program. Richards meets with Network producer Dan Killian and Running Man host Bobby Thompson. The men proceed to discuss Richards' contract for appearing on the show, as well as the challenges he is expected to face when the game starts. The contestant is declared an enemy of the state and released with a 12-hour head start before the Hunters, an elite team of Games Network-employed hitmen, are sent out to kill him. The contestant earns $100 per hour that he stays alive and avoids capture, an additional $100 for each law enforcement officer or Hunter he kills, and one billion "New Dollars" if he survives for 30 days. Viewers can receive cash rewards for informing the Games Network of the runner's whereabouts. The record time for survival is eight days and five hours — a mark that Richards eventually surpasses. The runner is given $4,800 and a pocket video camera before he leaves the studio. He can travel anywhere in the world, and each day he must videotape two messages and mail them back to the studio for broadcasting. If he neglects to send the messages, he will be held in default of his Games contract and will lose the prize money, but will continue to be hunted indefinitely. As the game begins, Richards obtains a disguise and false identification records, traveling first to New York City and then Boston. In Boston, he is tracked down by the Hunters and only manages to escape by setting off an explosion in the basement of a YMCA building that kills five police officers. He narrowly escapes through a sewer pipe and emerges in the city's impoverished ghetto, where he takes shelter with gang member Bradley Throckmorton and his family. Richards learns from Bradley that the air is severely polluted and that the poor are kept down as a permanent underclass. Bradley also says that the Games Network exists only as a propaganda machine to pacify and distract the public. Richards tries to incorporate this information into his video messages, but finds that the Network dubs over his voice with obscenities and threats during the broadcast. Bradley smuggles Richards past a government checkpoint to Manchester, New Hampshire, where he disguises himself as a half-blind priest. In addition, Bradley provides Richards with re-mailing labels so that the Network will not be able to track him by the postmark on his videotapes. Richards spends a few days in Manchester, but he dreams that Bradley has betrayed him after being tortured. He travels to a safe house owned by a friend of Bradley in Portland, Maine, but he is reported by the owner's mother. As the police and the Hunters close in on the safe house, Richards is wounded, but he manages to escape. The next morning, after arranging to mail his videotapes, Richards carjacks a woman named Amelia Williams, holds her hostage, and makes his way to an airport in Derry, Maine, passing through the towns of Rockland, Camden, and Winterport along the way. Richards has a standoff at the airport and manages to bluff his way past Evan McCone, the lead Hunter, onto a plane by pretending he is carrying "Black Irish" a form of plastic explosives of almost nuclear explosive force. Richards takes both Amelia and McCone as prisoners. He has the plane fly low over populated areas to avoid being shot down by a surface-to-air missile. However, he is confronted by Killian on a video call, who states that he knows Richards does not have any explosives, as the plane's security system would have detected if he did. To Richards' surprise, Killian offers him the job of lead Hunter. Richards is hesitant to take the offer, worried that his family will become a target. Killian then informs him that Sheila and Cathy were brutally murdered over ten days earlier, even before Richards first appeared on the show. He gives Richards some time to make his decision. Richards falls asleep and dreams of his murdered family and a gruesome crime scene. With nothing left to lose, he calls Killian back and accepts the offer. He overpowers the flight crew and kills McCone, who mortally wounds him. After allowing Amelia to parachute to safety, Richards uses his last strength to override the plane's autopilot and fly the plane toward the skyscraper housing the Games Network. The book ends with the plane crashing into the tower, resulting in the deaths of Richards and Killian. The novel comes to a close with the description, "...and it rained fire twenty blocks away."
26471766	/m/0bh9hhr	Fox at the Front	Michael Dobson		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The story picks up on December 27, 1944, just minutes after the climax to Fox on the Rhine, where Field Marshal Erwin Rommel has introduced himself to George Patton and offers to surrender Army Group B to him. Both generals agree that the threat of the Soviet Union was greater than all German forces under Heinrich Himmler, who has considered him a traitor. Rommel instructs Hasso von Manteuffel's Fifth Panzer Army and Heinz Guderian at the Sixth Panzer Army to surrender their units at the first Allied unit they encounter. However, given the large concentration of Waffen-SS forces in the Sixth, Himmler orders Jochen Peiper to take over the unit at its headquarters in Namur and counterattack against the Allies, even it meant killing Guderian in the process. After a US infantry force sent to accept Guderian's surrender is ambushed, Peiper marshals a small kampfgruppe from the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler to attack Rommel's Dinant headquarters, but is forced to withdraw because of the heavy US and German resistance. He also collects wounded German forces along the way during the trip back to the Rhine. Patton's liberation of Bastogne and the cooperation of Rommel's forces allows Third Army to race to the Rhine faster than the rest of the Allied forces by early January 1945, capturing a bridge in Koblenz to try cutting off as many SS units as they can. Some SS forces, including Peiper, make it across the Rhine. After he arrives in Berlin, Himmler puts Peiper in charge of the Das Reich division. Rommel is also facing tension on the German side, as he is being eyed to head the government-in-exile of the so-called German Democratic Republic (GDR), but decides to stay firm and command the Wehrmacht survivors from Army Group B, who have been called the German Republican Army (GRA). Having crossed the Rhine, the GRA and Third Army keeps pushing deep into the interior. All the while, Himmler orders Field Marshal Model to randomly reassign all Wehrmacht officers to prevent any conspiracies to defect, especially after US forces coordinate with General Karl Student in overseeing the surrender of Army Group H in Frankfurt. Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, the Soviet Union resumes its assault across Poland as Stalin assigns political officer Alexis Krigoff to keep tabs on the attack. The zampolit also reports to the NKVD about generals who are too cautious in their attacks. Das Reich and the Sixth Panzer Army are sent to the Eastwall (a copycat of the Westwall) to help in the defense of the front. On February 18, a reconnaissance team from the US 19th Armored Division ambushes a train going out of Ettersburg. Upon derailing the train, the group discovers thousands of corpses and few survivors whom they provide medical assistance. Rommel is alerted and goes down to Ettersburg to see it personally. He discovers that the train came from the Buchenwald concentration camp and organizes an assault under the cover of a snowstorm with German troops in the lead. The camp is liberated and the prisoners are taken care of by Allied medical units. Rommel is horrified at the depths the Nazi party have reached in Germany's name, nearly killing some camp guards in anger. Although he leads the way in the cleanup, the Allied and GDR leadership convinces Rommel to let the proper medical authorities handle the workload at Buchenwald and concentrate on capturing Berlin ahead of the Soviets, who have stumbled upon the Auschwitz camp as well. On March 13, while Sixth Panzer Army tries to blunt the Soviet advance, the Allies execute Operation Eclipse - an airborne drop and ground assault on Berlin, where Sepp Dietrich surrenders all German forces in the city. A US commando raid also captures Himmler as he tries to escape to Czechoslovakia in a convoy. Enraged at having been beaten to Berlin, Stalin orders Zhukov to encircle the capital by sending his forces to the Elbe and cut off Third Army and the GRA from the rest of the Allied forces still in the west. Zhukov also uses the opportunity to heavily cripple the GRA forces in the northern outskirts while the encirclement continues. The Allied troops in the city are ordered not to attack the Soviets lest they become provoked to unleash their firepower on Berlin. Peiper, who was cut off during the Das Reichs retreat from Kustrin, is captured and sent to a reeducation camp in Siberia. Over the next few months, the Allies carry out a massive airlift operation into Berlin, providing reinforcements and supplies while evacuating civilians. The Soviets also use the period to bring more ground forces into the blockade. The uneasy calm is broken on July 1 when a US transport crashing on the Soviet lines after a major dogfight is interpreted on the ground as an Allied attack. The Soviets attack at all points throughout the blockade with the main thrust directed against the 19th Armored Division at Potsdam. However, Zhukov discovers that Krigoff was behind the assumption, having convinced the commander of the 2nd Guards Tank Army to press the attack, with the intent of capturing Gatow and Tempelhof airports. While the attack bogs down short of the airports because of Allied airstrikes, Patton believes that the next Soviet attack will break through the US lines. The determined Soviet assault forces the Manhattan Project to bring the atomic bomb that was supposed to be used for the Trinity test for deployment in Berlin. On the morning of July 8, General Groves oversees the drop of the Fat Man bomb aboard the Enola Gay with the Soviet artillery and armored concentration in Potsdam as the target. Although doubts persisted about whether the bomb will work, the explosion erases them altogether as it obliterates Potsdam, where Zhukov and Marshal Konev's headquarters is located. The shock value from the event also forces the other Soviet attacks to stop. In the aftermath of the bombing, Stalin agrees to withdraw all Red Army forces to the Polish side of the Oder River, but leaves behind a small force on the German side to fortify the area. British spy Kim Philby, who spent the past few months digging for information on the atomic bomb, is killed by British Intelligence as he attempts to alert the Soviets that the Berlin bomb was the only working copy (having been tricked by a fake stockpile several days before). Krigoff, who was sent to Lubyanka prison after the siege, narrates his part of the story to Stalin before he is killed in his cell. The United Nations also convenes a war crimes tribunal to try all Nazis, but Himmler himself would not make it to the courtroom, as the US soldiers who discovered Buchenwald leave him to die in a camp with Jews and other inmates. Other subplots in Fox at the Front include the struggle of a B-24 Liberator crewmember who crashed in Fox on the Rhine and his stay in Buchenwald alongside Rommel's personal driver, a teenage Volksgrenadier soldier who is later fielded into the Hitlerjugend and Das Reich divisions, and the exploits of Fox on the Rhine character Gunther von Reinhardt as he negotiates for a peaceful solution with Himmler. Like in the previous novel, the fictional history book War's Final Fury by Professor Jared Gruenwald provides further insights into the events of the novel.
26473982	/m/0bbvsyk	Have a Little Faith				 Albom (Mitchel David "Mitch" Albom) writes in the introduction to this book that the idea for it began with the request by Albert L. Lewis, his childhood rabbi, to write and deliver the eulogy when the time came for the rabbi's funeral. Albom agreed, contingent on an agreement that he could begin a series of interviews and conversations, in order to get to know Lewis as a man, not just as a rabbi. Albom writes that his conversations with Lewis -- whom he refers to as the Reb, an affectionate term drawn from the Yiddish word for rabbi -- eventually led to an increased interest on Albom's part in the power and meaning of faith in a larger sense. In his hometown of Detroit, he forged a link with Pastor Henry Covington, an African-American Protestant minister at the I Am My Brother's Keeper Church. Covington, a past drug-addict, dealer, and ex-convict, was ministering to the needs of his down-and-out parishioners, in an urban church serving a largely homeless congregation, in a church so poor that the roof leaked when it rained. The book alternates between his conversations with Lewis, and excerpts from some of his sermons; and Life of Henry, the title of the sections describing his conversations with Covington, and stories about him. From his relationships with these two very different men of faith, Albom writes about the difference faith can make in the world. As Albom writes: This is a story about believing in something and the two very different men who taught me how. It took a long time to write. It took me to churches and synagogues, to the suburbs and the city, to the "us" versus "them" that divides faith around the world. And finally, it took me home, to a sanctuary filled with people, to a casket made of pine,to a pulpit that was empty."In the beginning, there was a question. It became a last request. "Will you do my eulogy?" And, as is often the case with faith, I thought I was being asked a favor, when in fact I was being given one." Albom has told interviewers that he believes that the reason Lewis originally asked him to deliver the eulogy may actually have been a way to draw him back to the roots of his own faith, and &#34;back to God a little bit.&#34; Albom included a number of Lewis&#39;s many stories, which were used as mini-sermons for his congregation, in the book. One example is this story, delivered in 1981: A soldier's little girl, whose father was being moved to a distant post, was sitting at the airport among her family's meager belongings. The girl was sleepy. She leaned against the packs and duffel bags. A lady came by, stopped, and patted her on the head. "Poor child," she said. "You haven't got a home." The child looked up in surprise. "But we do have a home," she said. "We just don't have a house to put it in." The book, both about individuals with faith and faith itself, concludes with the eulogy that Albom delivered at Lewis&#39;s funeral, on February 12, 2008. It included the words: I didn't want to eulogize you. I was afraid. I felt a congregant could never eulogize his leader. But I realize now that thousands of congregants will eulogize you today, in their car rides home, over the dinner table. A eulogy is no more than a summation of memories, and we will never forget you, because we cannot forget you, because we will miss you every day. To imagine a world without you in it is to imagine a world with a little less God in it, and yet , because God is not a diminishing resource, I cannot believe that. In addition to the eulogy, the book describes the fact that funeral attendees were surprised to hear a seven minute taped message from Lewis, which he specifically prepared to be played at the funeral. In it, he delivers his final teaching to his congregation, touching on questions about God and immortality; expressing his gratitude to friends and family for the privilege of knowing them; and ending with the words, Shalom Haverim -- Goodbye, Friends.
26474567	/m/0bbtygd	The Right to Write	Julia Cameron	1999-12-27	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 "The Right to Write" is a followup bestseller after Cameron's international bestseller entitled The Artist's Way. "The Right to Write" begins with an introduction and has 43 individual sections along with initiation tools at the end of each chapter. There are also suggested readings by the author listed after the final section. The author uses her own experiences and examples as details for the writing process while using metaphor and other figures of speech. The main focus of "The Right to Write" stated in the introduction is "to heal writers who are broken, initiate writers who are afraid, and entice writers who are standing at river's edge, wanting to put a toe in." Also stated in the introduction is the phrase, "This book is less than a "how to" book than a "why" book.
26485289	/m/0bbw776	Le miroir de Cassandre	Bernard Werber	2009		 ;"Il sera une fois" (There will be) Cassandra Katzenberg has the ability to see into the future, but cannot remember anything before the bomb attack in Egypt which killed both her parents. After running away from the school of the Hirondelles, she finds refuge in "Redemption", a village improvised by 4 refugees in a dump yard. ;"Il est une fois" (There is) ;"Il était une fois" (There has been) fr:Le Miroir de Cassandre ko:카산드라의 거울
26488472	/m/0bh7nqb	The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants			{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/08322": "Wuxia", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 In ancient China's Northern Song Dynasty, Bao Zheng rises from humble beginnings to high office at the imperial court, gathering around him a group of Robin Hood-type men to fight crime and corruption. Using their exceptional fighting talents, the seven heroes and five gallants rescue maidens in distress, succor the old and weak, kill evildoers, and bring corrupt officials before Justice Bao. When the Prince of Xiangyang plots rebellion, the brave men set out to foil his plans.
26490749	/m/0bhcl28	Rosapenna				 The focus in Rosapenna is the conflict in Northern Ireland, which "Jo Vendt" is covering as a journalist. Other central characters in the novel are the English soldier "Sammy Jenkins", who has a background as a poor boy from Whitechapel, and the poor IRA girl "Brigid Doherty". The novel is set in 1973. "Vendt" has been instructed to cover the conflict from a pro British point of view, and is prepared to satisfy the editor in this respect, and to write about James Joyce and Brendan Behan from the cultural side. He eventually gets in contact with IRA people in Ardoyne, an Irish Nationalist district of North Belfast, and move in with a family in the ghetto The Bone. From then on he is on a collision course with his newspaper editor. He becomes disgusted with the misrepresented reports delivered by the journalist corps, and tries to understand the underlying reasons for the conflict in Northern Ireland.
26496405	/m/0bh79pv	Checkmate in Rio				 The story takes place in January 1964. After the events described in "The China Doll", six AXE agents based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have been found mutilated and murdered in a short space of time. Nick Carter (undercover as shady millionaire businessman Robert Milbank) accompanied by fellow agent Rosalind Adler (posing as Milbank’s mistress, Rosita Montez) are sent to investigate. Carter (as Milbank) uses his apparent wealth and influence to enter the higher social circles in Rio de Janeiro and quickly meets socialite Carla Langley – wife of one of the missing agents. Next, posing as American journalist, Michael Nolan, Carter interviews the wife of Joao de Santos, a local investigative reporter, and another of the missing agents. Meanwhile, Agent Adler investigates the background of missing agent Carlos Brenha, assistant curator at a local museum. As a result of their probing, a seedy nightclub quickly becomes the focus of attention. In the club’s basement, Carter discovers a cache of illegal weapons imported from China. Carter is knocked out and imprisoned in the club basement. The ringleader is revealed to be Carla Langley who is working for communist China to import illegal arms and execute minor spies in the hope that a special agent (i.e. Carter) would be sent to investigate and whom they intend to torture and kill to extract valuable information. Carter is tied to a rack and beaten but manages to escape. Rosalind Adler arrives in the nick of time and overpowers the guards with a non-lethal gas bomb (nicknamed Pepito). Carter executes the club owner and second-in-command (Luis Silveiro) and is about to do the same to Carla Langley when he discovers the gas bomb has rendered her an insane, gibbering wreck. He leaves her screaming in the night.
26506193	/m/0bh7dcc	Hearts Aflame	Johanna Lindsey	1987		 *Time/era of story - Vikings/Norse era *Abusive: - treated like a slave *Difficult/unusual lover? Yes *Captor, in love with Yes *If one lover chases another... - she chases after him - they alternate *Who's in charge? - he is *Abusive lover? Yes
26513557	/m/0bh8yvx	Ishmael and the Return of the Dugongs	Michael Gerard Bauer	2007	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel continues on from the end of Don't Call Me Ishmael. It is about a fifteen-year-old boy named Ishmael and his friends/debating team- James, Ignatius, Orazio and Bill. Ishmael tries to hook-up with a girl named Kelly Faulkner, at the same time as keeping away from the school bully, Barry Bagsley. Along with that, Ishmael's father's band, "The Dugongs" tries to reform.
26516192	/m/0bhc4n4	Quarry	Ally Kennen	2011-02	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Scrappy, a 15-year-old boy, lives in a breaker's yard next to the motorway and is being sent crazy anonymous dares. Once he gets caught up in them, he finds he can't stop, no matter how much he wants to, and the last challenges send him to the very edge.
26516956	/m/06nn__j	Sufferings in Africa: The Incredible True Story of a Shipwreck, Enslavement, and Survival on the Sahara	James Riley	1817	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Upon landing in the ship's leaky boat, Riley and his crew began to make repairs to return to the ship, rather than face a desert rescue. The repairs were incomplete when a native armed with a spear arrived, and helped himself to their meager supplies. After filling up his arms with what he could carry off he left and returned with two others also carrying spears. Riley stayed back to distract the Arabs and give his men a chance to escape in the loaded and unfinished boat. They made it, but without Riley, who offered his captors money in exchange for his life. With their agreement, crew member Antonio Michele swam to shore to pay them. At which point Riley ran out into the water to join his men. After Riley was safe in the boat all he could do was watch while an Arab stabbed Michele in the stomach and dragged his body away, which caused Riley tremendous feelings of guilt. As the ship, still aground, was unusable, unable to reach what are now the islands of Cape Verde, the crew decided to sail to the South while hoping for rescue, which did not come. After nine days, out of food and water, they returned to the shore at an isolated beach 200 miles further South, with the realization that they would probably be killed just as quickly as Michele. They reached the shore, which was surrounded by high cliffs. Riley told his men to begin digging for water. He climbed to the top of the cliffs, and found himself staring at the edge of a vast expanse of flat desert. His crew joined him, and together they started to walk inland hoping for rescue by a friendly tribe. But soon they were without hope, enduring 120 degree heat during the day, and freezing temperatures at night. Out of food and water, Riley resolved that they should either accept death, or offer themselves as slaves to the first tribe they encounter, which is exactly what happened. A large gathering of men and camels appeared on the horizon, and the crew approached them. The tribe started to fight among themselves, to determine who would become the slave-owners. The crew became separated when they were taken as slaves by different groups, which then went their own ways. Riley recounts in his memoirs the terrifying days spent in their servitude. After a while, he learned some of the language, and was able to communicate in a rudimentary way. One day during his captivity some Arabs arrived seeking a trade with his master. Riley asked two of them, Seti Hamet and his brother, if they would buy him and his fellow shipmates and bring them to the closest city which was Mogador (now Essaouira), hundreds of miles away to the North. Seti Hamet was moved by Riley's desire to save his friends and agreed to buy them if Riley would pay him cash and a gun when they arrived at the city. Riley promised that he had a friend there who would pay him upon their safe arrival, which was totally untrue, for Riley knew nobody. Hamet promised to slit his throat if he was lying. When the time came for Riley to write the note, he was terrified. How could he write a note to a perfect stranger, begging him for several hundred dollars? He had no choice. In the note he explained who he was and described his situation. Traveling through the desert caused all to suffer - master and slave alike. There was little food for the already starving American men, and little water for everyone. Amazingly, they traveled the distance to the city - several hundred miles, constantly in fear of marauding hunter tribes. They were especially in fear of a father-in-law of one of the brothers, who was out to settle a dispute. Eventually they arrived at the outskirts, and Hamet took the note into town, which was addressed to the town's consul. He met a young man in the city, who, it turns out, worked as an assistant to a British merchant who also acted as a kind of consul and agent. Hamet told this man about his "friend" and gave him the note. This consul, William Willshire, was impressed by the sincerity of the note, agreed to pay. They rode out in a group to meet the men as they waited outside the city and Willshire greeted Riley with hugs and tears. Riley sent his remaining men home to America, but stayed behind for just a few days. Seti Hamet, his former master, promised that he would return to the desert to look for the missing crew members. Riley went back to America, and was reunited with his wife and their five children in Connecticut. Two of the missing men were later returned to the States, and Riley heard of two Arabs who were stoned to death out in the desert by marauders. He was convinced that they were his former masters, trying to keep their word.
26518872	/m/0bh8b23	Solar	Ian McEwan		{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 Michael Beard is an eminent, Nobel Prize winning physicist whose own life is chaotic and complicated. The novel takes the reader chronologically through three significant periods in Beard's life: 2000, 2005 and 2009, interspersed with some recollections of his student days in Oxford. Beard heads a fictional research centre in the British town of Reading but has little faith in the project and sits primarily as a political mascot. He is unfaithful to his fifth wife, Patrice, just as he was to his previous four wives. Instead of recriminations and threats of leaving, Patrice embarks upon an affair with their builder. Beard decides he has found the perfect wife just as he is losing her, and falls into a deep depression. To counter this, he agrees on a trip to the Arctic, in order to research climate change. He turns out to be the only scientist on an expedition dominated by artists. On his return home Beard learns that his wife has also been having an affair with his junior colleague Tom Aldous. During a tense encounter with Beard, Aldous dies in a freak accident, and Beard inherits his secret research into techniques for artificial photosynthesis. Beard frames Patrice's builder boyfriend Tarpin, who is jailed for Aldous's death. Despite a history of humiliating media coverage, Beard manages to build a reputation as a champion of solar energy, in the process passing Aldous's research off as his own. He has been fired from his job in Reading, but is working on plans for an artificial photosynthesis plant. Beard continues to put on weight and his gastronomic indulgence is described in regular detail. He has a doting girlfriend Melissa who is desperate for a child. Time is running out for her, and so, taking matters into her own hands, she becomes pregnant. Beard is now fatter, and sixty-two years old. He is not in the best of health, and is worried about a suspicious-looking lesion on his wrist. His solar power plant is in the final stages of construction in Lordsburg, New Mexico, where he has acquired another girlfriend, Darlene, a waitress. Darlene wants to marry him, but he has a very comfortable set-up with Melissa and his three year old daughter, Catriona. All his problems culminate on the eve of the opening ceremony for his solar power plant. Tarpin is out of jail and turns up looking for work, Melissa flies to New Mexico with his daughter to try and win him over from Darlene, a patent lawyer arrives with proof that he stole his ideas from the now-dead Aldous, his doctor confirms the lesion on his hand is cancerous, his business partner abandons him to multi-million dollar debts, and then he learns that somebody (presumably Tarpin) has sabotaged his power plant by smashing the solar panels. In the final scene Beard gets an "unfamiliar, swelling sensation" in his heart which he interprets as love for his daughter, but may well be the onset of a heart attack.
26531192	/m/0bh9qr6	Palos of the Dog Star Pack	John Ulrich Giesy	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set on the planet Palos, the novel concerns Jason Croft, a wealthy American who has learned the art of astral projection from a Hindu teacher. Croft feels an unusual calling to Sirius, the Dog Star, and projects his consciousness there, eventually finding his way to the major planet of the solar system, Palos. Once there, Croft finds human life, and floats among them observing their lives. He falls in love at first sight with the princess Naia, and determines to win her love. He eventually finds a host body in the form of the "spiritually sick" Jasor of Nodhur. Within Jasor's body, Croft sets out to win the love of the princess, by introducing technological improvements to the rulers of her kingdom, Tamarizia. Because of the knowledge gained by astrally spying upon key figures and places on Palos, the people view him as an "angel" of sorts, sent by their deity Zitu. Croft uses this misunderstanding to explain his knowledge of advanced technology.
26532648	/m/0bhccc9	Freddy and the Perilous Adventure			{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In a poetic mood, Freddy suggests ducks Alice and Emma repeat the feat of the first animals to fly in a balloon. But Mr. Golcher, a balloon owner who is in town, feels that Freddy giving a speech from the balloon would attract more customers. The balloon is released, but over the Bean farm they discover they cannot come down. By the time they float west over Syracuse, New York everyone is enjoying ride. During the cold night the wind changes direction. They are lost and out of food. A friendly eagle discovers them, takes a message to the Beans, and returns with a picnic basket. As the next night passes they ride along with a thunderstorm. In the morning the balloon is low enough for the grapnel dangling over the edge to catch on a house. It is home to villains from the first book, who recognize Freddy, and narrowly miss capturing the balloon. The animals learn, however, that they are wanted by the police. Freddy decided to leave the balloon, even if it means a dangerous jump. After landing, the pig disguises himself, but is soon found by his friend the sheriff. Pretending he does not recognize him, the sheriff updates Freddy, who dangerously decides to return to the Bean farm, which is staked out by police. At the farm Golcher threatens Mr. Bean, who agrees to pay $200 for what Golcher has lost so far. Freddy calculates how long this will take to repay: :”’If it takes two years to get seven dollars,’ he said to Mrs. Wiggins, ‘how long would it take to get two hundred?’ :’Seven hundred years,’ said Mrs. Wiggins. :Freddy didn’t think that was right….but Mrs. Wiggins stuck to seven hundred. ‘It’s only common sense,’ she said. ‘If you get seven dollars in two years, then in seven hundred you get two hundred.’” (p. 114) Freddy hides at the circus of his friend Mr. Boomschmidt, who agrees to let elephants tow the balloon to the circus to be returned to Golcher. In the meantime, back at the balloon, the ducks Alice and Emma have discovered their long lost Uncle Wesley, who is making a living selling shoddy goods to forest animals. Disillusioned, they nonetheless ask him to return to the Bean farm. Although his balloon is returned, Golcher proves quarrelsome, refusing to return Mr. Bean’s money. Freddy and the animals agree to do a free show for Golcher, but afterward, Golcher still is not satisfied. Freddy and Golcher decide to resolve their differences in a fight ring, and Golcher makes a remark about eating pork that Freddy finds “in rather bad taste”. Freddy is losing a fair fight, until his spider friends bite Golcher. Golcher is ready to admit his defeat, but Freddy stops him. :”’Do you like being honest?” he asked. :’Not exactly,’ said Freddy truthfully. :’Then why do you do it when you don’t have to?’ :’I don’t know. I suppose maybe because Mr. Bean thinks I’m honest. I sort of want him to be right.’ (p. 220) Golcher decides to be honest for once himself, and returns Mr. Bean’s money.
26533452	/m/0bh73vc	State of War	Ninotchka Rosca	1988	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Hansen, Banyaga, and Villaverde went to an island known as the Island of K in the Philippines to participate in a festival. Villaverde got in touch with radicals planning to activate explosives during the festival in order to assassinate The Commander, a name used as an indirect reference to Ferdinand Marcos. The assassination attempt that would end Marcos’s presidency and dictatorship failed.
26533595	/m/0bhbcyl	Will Grayson, Will Grayson	David Levithan		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel follows two boys who both go by the name Will Grayson. The first Will, whose name is always correctly capitalized, is described as trying to live his life without being noticed. This is complicated by the fact that his best friend, Tiny Cooper, described as "the world's largest person who is really, really gay" and "the world's gayest person who is really, really large", is not the type to go around unnoticed. Tiny is also, throughout the novel, trying to create an autobiographical musical, which further draws attention to himself and everyone around him. The other will grayson, whose name is never capitalized, goes through his life without anything good to hold onto besides an online friendship with someone who goes by the name Isaac. Intent on meeting up with Isaac, will grayson sets up an encounter one night in Chicago but eventually finds out that Isaac was invented by a girl named Maura. What ensues brings both characters together and changes both of their lives forever in ways they could never have guessed or imagined.
26537971	/m/0bh6rgr	The Monster in the Box	Ruth Rendell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Wexford has long suspected Eric Targo of being a serial killer. Decades later, he finally admits this to DI Mike Burden, his longtime colleague and friend. In an apparently unrelated matter, DS Hannah Goldsmith and Burden's second wife Jenny both approach Wexford with concerns about Tamima, one of Jenny Burden's students. As a young detective constable he investigated the murder of Elsie Carroll. Wexford suspects that while her husband purported to be a whist club, he was actually with his mistress when his wife was killed. George Carroll was acquitted of his wife's murder on a technicality, but was still shunned by Kingsmarkham residents; Wexford believes him innocent. In the weeks of and following the investigation into Elsie Carroll's death, Targo, a scarf covering his prominent birthmark, walks his dog past the young Wexford's rooming house to taunt him, or so it appears to Wexford. By the 1970s Targo has become a prosperous, businessman, several times married and divorced, living in the north of England. Targo reappears in Kingsmarkam. Wexford suspects that Targo has murdered the autistic son of a Myringham widow who wishes her son dead so she can marry her longtime partner. In the book's present Targo reappears again, still with his dogs, without the naevus, but with a private menagerie.
26540117	/m/0bh7cn8	The Summer of the Danes	Edith Pargeter	1991	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Brother Cadfael is a monk of Shrewsbury Abbey, where he tends the herb gardens and compounds medicines after enjoying many adventures in his early life. In the spring of 1144, he is pleasantly surprised to be asked to go on a journey into his native North Wales as interpreter to Brother Mark, his former assistant, who is now a deacon to Roger de Clinton, the Bishop of Coventry. Mark is taking gifts and greetings from Bishop de Clinton to Gilbert, the newly-enthroned Bishop of St Asaph, and to Meurig, the Welsh Bishop of Bangor. The situation in North Wales is complicated for several reasons. Bishop Gilbert is a doctrinaire Norman, rather than a Welshman, and he is mistrusted by many Welshmen, not least Owain Gwynedd, the ruler of Gwynedd. Within Gwynedd, Owain has recently dispossessed and exiled his brother Cadwaladr ap Gruffydd for his part in the murder of Anarawd ap Gruffydd, the ruler of Deheubarth in west Wales. At St. Asaph, Cadfael and Mark find Owain Gwynedd's household encamped near the Bishop's dwellings, where they are attended by Canon Meirion and his daughter Heledd. As a married (albeit widowed) priest, Meirion is in disfavour following the reassertion of clerical celibacy, and is under pressure to put away his daughter before he can expect promotion under Gilbert. Rather than be sent to a nunnery in England, Heledd has accepted Owain Gwynedd's suggestion of an arranged marriage to Ieuan ab Ifor, one of his tenants on Anglesey, but she resents her father for putting his career ahead of his daughter. At the feast, while Roger de Clinton's letter to Gilbert is read out, Cadfael talks to Cuhelyn, who lost his left hand defending Anarawd from Cadwaladr's assassins. A man named Bledri ap Rhys is admitted to the hall and makes a plea to Owain for Cadwaladr's lands to be restored, clearly with Bishop Gilbert's encouragement. Bledri's manner is haughty and Owain temporises, saying that Bledri's petition will be considered later at Owain's own court at Aber, near Bangor. After most people have gone to bed, Bledri flirts briefly with Heledd, and mocks Canon Meirion when he intervenes. The next day, Cadfael and Mark accompany Owain's retinue as they journey westwards. Heledd and Meirion go with them. Cadfael reveals to Mark the details of his childhood in Trefriw, among a villein community such as those they are passing, and the restlessness and curiosity which caused him to leave the community and wander the world for several years before he settled at Shrewsbury Abbey. When they arrive at Aber, Bledri is greeted warily by Gwion, the only Welsh noble who has not repudiated his former allegiance to the exiled Cadwaladr, and who remains confined to the court. After the evening meal, Cadfael and Mark go to the chapel to observe Compline. Cadfael sees first Bledri then Gwion leave the chapel as he and Mark enter. At midnight, a messenger arrives from Caernarfon and arouses the court with the news that a Danish fleet from the Kingdom of Dublin has been sighted west of Abermenai and that Cadwaladr is with them, having enlisted their aid in restoring him to his lands. As Owain Gwynedd dispatches couriers to muster levies, Bledri and a good horse and its saddle are found to be missing. Although it is assumed that Bledri has fled to join the Danes, Cadfael wonders how he could have left the enclosed court undetected and asks Gwion to show him Bledri's quarters. They find that Bledri has been murdered, apparently woken from his sleep by the murderer. A kitchen servant claims that he saw Cuhelyn openly leave Bledri's quarters late at night. Cuhelyn admits that he recognised Bledri as one of Prince Anarawd's murderers and intended to challenge him to mortal combat, but he found Bledri asleep and put off the matter to morning. The horse is not found and further enquiry reveals that Heledd is absent. Meirion is concerned for his daughter who is astray in a countryside threatened by Viking raiders. Mark and Cadfael continue their journey to Bangor to deliver Roger de Clinton's gift to Bishop Meurig. Although Meurig greets them warmly, he too is distracted by the news of the raiders. Mark suggests that he and Cadfael spend a couple of days searching for Heledd. They find that she had gone to the dwelling of Nonna, a solitary holy woman, but found it empty as Nonna had gone to Bangor for safety. They also see a Danish vessel in the Menai Straits and realise that some raiders must be nearby. They split up. Cadfael hears Heledd's horse neigh and finds her hiding place, but so too do the raiders, who seize them. The raiders' leader introduces himself as Turcaill. They take Cadfael, Heledd and some plundered food aboard the ship and row to Abermenai, where the main force of Danes are encamped. Mark sees this from a safe place, and reports it to Owain. Heledd tells Cadfael that she left Owain's court at Aber merely to refill a jug from a well, but found a horse saddled and tethered outside the enclosure and seized the chance to flee an unwelcome marriage. Overnight, Owain Gwynedd brings an army to within a mile of the Danes' encampment. Brother Mark is sent as envoy to Otir, the Danes' leader, and Cadwaladr, to say that Owain is prepared to meet with Cadwaladr and discuss their differences. Otir demands a hostage for Cadwaladr's safe return, and Mark offers himself. Cadwaladr goes to Owain, who coldly tells him that he may be restored to his lands only when the Danes have departed. Cadwaladr rides back to within hail of the Danish camp and imperiously tells the Danes to begone, as he and Owain have settled their differences. Furious at the falsehood, Owain himself rides into the Danish camp for a parley. He tells Otir that Cadwaladr's word is worthless, and that he himself will not pay Cadwaladr's promised fee for Otir's aid. He does offer to ransom Mark, Cadfael and Heledd, but Otir insists that Cadwaladr must pay the price for their release also. That night, Turcaill rows his ship close to Owain's camp. He and some of his men sneak inside and carry off Cadwaladr, without being detected. Some time later, Cuhelyn finds Gwion gagged and bound in Cadwaladr's tent and Cadwaladr missing. When Gwion is brought before Owain, he says that he took the body of Bledri ap Rhys to Ceredigion to be buried, but then broke his parole by gathering about a hundred of Cadwaladr's former adherents, assuming that Owain and Cadwaladr had settled their differences in the face of the Danes. Owain contemptuously dismisses him as another whose word is of no value. Wandering the camp, Gwion meets Ieuan ap Ifor, who is wondering how to recover Heledd, his betrothed, and they begin plotting a raid against the Danes. In the Danish camp, Cadwaladr agrees to pay two thousand marks for his release. Brother Mark carries the message, with Cadwaladr's seal as proof, to Owain. Owain in turn despatches Gwion, together with his own son Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd, to collect the ransom in silver and cattle from Rhodri Fychan, Cadwaladr's former bailiff, at Llanbadarn. Three days elapse while Cadwaladr's ransom is collected and the silver is delivered. Gwion tries to gather his men to thwart the payment of the rest of the ransom, but the able Hywel forestalls him by driving three hundred of Cadwaladr's cattle to Abermenai before Gwion is ready. At night, Ieuan ab Ifor's men launch an attack on a weak corner of the Danish camp. In the confusion, he seizes Heledd and drags her away as the Welsh retreat. Cadfael treats the half dozen Welsh and Danish wounded. The Danes bring their ships close inshore and line the beach, intending to sail off as soon as the full ransom for Cadwaladr is paid. As the cattle are being driven aboard, Gwion leads Cadwaladr's supporters in a last-minute attack. Owain Gwynedd personally intervenes to stop the fighting. In the last few moments before the Danes and Welsh draw apart, Otir mortally wounds Gwion. Gwion confesses to Cadfael and Owain that he murdered Bledri ap Rhys. Having charged Bledri with delivering messages to Cadwaladr and tethered the horse outside the palace at Aber for Bledri to ride to Abermenai, Gwion went to Bledri's quarters to find him in bed, clearly waiting on events before deciding whether to support or betray Cadwaladr. He struck him down and stabbed him as he lay stunned. Otir has already declared that Brother Cadfael is freed without ransom for his aid to the wounded. Heledd goes to the beach to watch the Danes leave. Turcaill's boat emerges from behind a headland, and Heledd willingly goes aboard with Turcaill. Cadfael considers that the outcome is as satisfactory as it could be. The Danes return to Dublin with their payment gained with little effort, Owain has prevented them raiding the coasts at no cost to himself, Cadwaladr is humbled and may be restored to some of his lands, Canon Meirion is free of his daughter and even Ieuan ab Ifor is spared a marriage to a resentful wife. Those who have committed murder have themselves met violent ends. In spite of the bewildering series of events, Mark and Cadfael are able to return a few days beyond the ten they promised Abbot Radulfus. Cadfael confesses to his friend Hugh Beringar, Sheriff of Shropshire, that he is always eager to wander for a while, but that he is content to be returning home, to Shrewsbury Abbey.
26560208	/m/0bh8mxz	On My Walk	Kari-Lynn Winters	2009	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Mothers and toddlers take a stroll through Vancouver streets and parks, hearing the sounds of animals around them, and find themselves caught in a summer rainstorm.
26560709	/m/0bhb_y3	Where the Rivers Flow North				 Set in the late 1920s, its main characters Noel Lord and Bangor, a couple that live together in the wilderness of Vermont living off the land and using the trees in their numerous acreage as a way to make their money. A major company comes through and tries their best to take Noel's land from him through money and then finally trying to kill him in the end. In his books Mosher gives much detail of the wildlife as well as the culture of the times.
26561684	/m/0bh7x2x	A Fatal Grace	Louise Penny	2007-05-15	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Inspector Gamache investigates after CC de Poitiers, a sadistic socialite, is fatally electrocuted at a Christmas curling competition in the small Québécois town of Three Pines. CC, who had a “spiritual guidance” business based on eliminating emotion, was hated by seemingly everyone, including her husband, lover, and daughter. The crime links to a vagrant’s recent murder as well as to the pasts of several other villagers.
26562335	/m/02qvppl	Dark Princess				 The plot follows a character named Matthew Towns, a college student in his junior year at the University of Manhattan studying to be an obstetrician. Early on in the novel, Towns is told that not only is he barred from pursuing his career aspirations; he is not allowed to finish his academic studies. His status as a black American does enough to disqualify him from transcendence into the public world of medicine and from gaining access to caring for white female patients. Towns is devastated until he makes the acquaintance of Princess Kautilya of Bwodpur, India, a beautiful black woman who reassures Towns of the importance of the history of black people in the world and the importance of their presence and impact of their beauty worldwide. The Princess takes him from his dreary world revolving around a stark color line between races and walks him through a vibrant world of prominent world leaders of color as well as those with negative impacts on the progress of blacks in America – evident by Du Bois’ illustration of Marcus Garvey through his character Perigua. Their relationship is culminated when they bear a child who by birthright is the Maharajah of Bwodpur, a direct connection to royalty which Matthew Towns had never dreamed achievable for a black American man.
26577010	/m/0bhc132	The Mouthpiece of Zitu	John Ulrich Giesy	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The second novel in the Jason Croft series finds Jason once again relating his adventures on the world of Palos to Dr. George Murray via astral projection. Croft awakens to find that the high priest Zud has declared him the "Mouthpiece of Zitu", complicating matters with his engagement to Naia. Croft once again relies on using astral projection and his knowledge of earth technology to strengthen the nation of Tamarizia and once more win the heart of the princess.
26577166	/m/0bhbg1m	Jason, Son of Jason	John Ulrich Giesy		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The third and final novel in the Jason Croft series once more brings Jason into contact with Dr. George Murray on Earth. This time, Jason brings Dr. Murray along via astral projection to Palos. Naia is suffering complications with her pregnancy, and Jason enlists the good doctor to help. After the birth, the child and mother are kidnapped by the Zollarians, and Croft once again uses his knowledge of earth technology to overcome the challenges he faces.
26577390	/m/0bh75g6	The Rage Against God	Peter Hitchens			 In Chapter 1 Hitchens describes abandoning religion in his youth, and promoting "cruel revolutionary rubbish" as a Trotskyist activist. He claims his generation had become intellectually aloof from religion, rebellious and disillusioned and in Chapter 2 explores further reasons for this disillusion, including the Suez Crisis and the Profumo Affair. In Chapter 3, Hitchens recounts how he embraced scientific inquiry and adopted liberal positions on issues such as marriage, abortion, homosexuality, and patriotism. Chapter 4 is a lament for the "noble austerity" of his childhood in Britain. Chapter 5 explores what Hitchens views as the pseudo-religion surrounding Churchill and World War II heroes – a "great cult of noble, patriotic death" whose only equivalent, he claims, was in the Soviet Union. Hitchens then asserts that, "The Christian Church has been powerfully damaged by letting itself be confused with love of country and the making of great wars". In Chapter 6 Hitchens recalls being a foreign correspondent in the Soviet Union and a trip to Mogadishu, and how these experiences convinced him that, "his own civilisation was infinitely precious and utterly vulnerable". In Chapter 7 Hitchens charts his return to Christianity, and makes particular reference to the experience of seeing the Rogier van der Weyden painting The Last Judgement: In Chapter 9, Hitchens contends that the claim that religion is a source of conflict is a "cruel factual misunderstanding", and that a number of conflicts, including The Troubles and the Arab–Israeli conflict, were not motivated by religion but tribal in nature and disputes over territory. Chapter 10 discusses whether morality can be determined without the concept of God. Hitchens asserts that atheists "have a fundamental inability to concede that to be effectively absolute, a moral code needs to be beyond human power to alter". He also describes as flawed his brother's assertion in God is Not Great that "the order to love thy neighbour 'as thyself' is too extreme and too strenuous to be obeyed". Hitchens ends the chapter by stating, "in all my experience in life, I have seldom seen a more powerful argument for the fallen nature of man, and his inability to achieve perfection, than those countries in which man sets himself up to replace God with the State". Hitchens begins Chapter 11 by asserting, "those who reject God's absolute authority, preferring their own, are far more ready to persecute than Christians have been ... Each revolutionary generation reliably repeats the savagery". He cites as examples the French revolutionary terror; the Bolshevik revolution; the Holodomor and the Soviet famine of 1932–33; the barbarity surrounding Joseph Stalin's five year plans, repeated in the Great Leap Forward in China; atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge; and human rights abuses in Cuba under Fidel Castro. Hitchens then quotes a number of prominent communist thinkers' pronouncements on morality, including George Lukacs stating, "Communist ethics make it the highest duty to accept the necessity of acting wickedly. This is the greatest sacrifice the revolution asks from us", and Leon Trotsky's claiming that "morality, more than any other form of ideology, has a class character". Hitchens writes "the biggest fake miracle staged in human history was the claim that the Soviet Union was a new civilisation of equality, peace, love, truth, science and progress. Everyone knows that it was a prison, a slum, a return to primitive barbarism, a kingdom of lies where scientists and doctors feared offending the secret police, and that its elite were corrupt and lived in secret luxury". He then cites Walter Duranty's denying the existence of the great Ukrainian famine, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb's acceptance that the 1937 Moscow show trials were "genuine criminal prosecutions". and then examines some consequences of this, including intolerance of religion, terror, and the persecution of priests and bishops at the Solovetsky concentration camp. Hitchens asserts that in the Soviet Union "the regime's institutional loathing for the teaching of religion, and its desire to eradicate it, survived every doctrinal detour and swerve". In the final chapter, Hitchens analyses a number of his brother's arguments, and contends that "the coincidence in instinct, taste, and thought between my brother and the Bolsheviks and their sympathisers is striking and undeniable". He then records how his brother nominated the "apostle of revolutionary terror" praised Trotsky for his "moral courage"; and declared that one of Lenin's great achievements was "to create a secular Russia". Hitchens speculates that his brother remains sympathetic towards Bolshevism and is still hostile towards the things it extirpated, including monarchy, tradition, and faith. He ends the chapter by claiming a form of militant secularism is becoming established in Britain, and that "The Rage Against God is loose". In the epilogue, Hitchens describes how after a 2008 debate with Christopher Hitchens "the longest quarrel of my life seemed to be unexpectedly over" and that he held no hope of converting his brother, who had "bricked himself up high in his atheist tower, with slits instead of windows from which to shoot arrows at the faithful".
26578648	/m/0bh9vwr	Night and Day	Robert B. Parker	2009	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Night and Day begins with the investigation of a middle school principal accused of molestation. Several girls accuse Principal Betsy Ingersoll of making them pull their dresses up so she can see their panties. The principal claims that she did this to ensure they were wearing proper attire for the school dance. She also claims that her job is not only to ensure they get a proper education, but that they also grow into proper ladies and do not become sluts. She sends several girls home for wearing slutty panties. Although there is no crime to charge her with, Jesse determines to make trouble for her until he can find something to charge her with as he is convinced the girls’ civil rights were violated. He begins interviewing the principal along with her high powered attorney husband, as well as the girls. Later one of the girls comes to see Jesse at his office. She tells him that her parents are swingers, and often host parties for that purpose at their home. She and her little brother hate it and she asks Jesse if he can help. With swinging not illegal, Jesse finds his hands tied, but decides to investigate anyway. He has Suit talk to two of the women, one of whom he knew in high school, to get more information on the swingers club. Suit discovers that the girl’s mother is not into it, but only does it because her husband wants to. Jesse has Spike threaten her husband about the swinging, and she later leaves him. The main plot of the novel involves the investigation of the Night Hawk. The Night Hawk starts as a peeping tom, and the Paradise police get several calls about him. Later the Night Hawk escalates his voyeuristic attacks by breaking into homes while women are home alone, forcing them to undress at gunpoint, and then taking nude photos of them. He then begins writing Jesse detailing his exploits, and includes the nude photos. He writes that he cannot stop himself; he must discover these women’s “secret.” He also writes that he does not know what he will do next and fears that he will escalate further. Jesse begins to combine his investigation of the swingers with his investigation of the Night Hawk. Since the Night Hawk never touches anyone, he questions the swingers to find out if there is anyone in their club that only likes to watch and never touch. The women in the club all identify Seth Ralston. Ralston is a professor of English at a nearby university. He is married to a young grad student who is working on her doctorate. Jesse discovers that Ralston's wife used to teach a Wednesday night class, which corresponds with all the peeping tom reports. He also discovers that the peeping tom reports stopped at the same time that Ralston’s wife quit her teaching job to begin doing her doctoral work full time. Jesse questions Ralston’s wife about the swinging to see if she will inadvertently reveal something about her husband that will confirm he is the Night Hawk, and even hints to her that her husband may be the Night Hawk. She responds by belittling Jesse for being a dumb cop, and singling them out for their lifestyle. Meanwhile Jesse continues to pressure Betsy Ingersoll, who then reports that she is a victim of the Night Hawk. Soon after Jesse receives a nude photo of Betsy, however he and Molly become convinced that she is posing in the photo and suspect the attack was staged. The local media request an interview concerning the attack, and Jesse uncharacteristically agrees. He gives details of the attack and later receives a letter from the Night Hawk who demands that he never attacked Betsy Ingersoll. Jesse believes that the Night Hawk is telling the truth, as he has never denied an attack before, but always been honest about his attacks. Jesse confronts Betsy with this and she admits that she staged the attack. She says that she did it to get some attention from her husband, but that he did not even care. She was acting out because her husband cheats on her constantly with young women, which also explains her obsession with teenage girls not growing up to be sluts. Jesse agrees not to charge her with any crimes if she agrees to see Sunny Randall’s shrink, Dr. Silverman (the long-term love interest of another Parker character Spenser), which she does. A few days later Seth Ralston’s wife comes to Jesse to report that her husband is missing. They begin searching for him, and soon after Jesse receives another letter from the Night Hawk blasting him for speaking with his wife, and ruining his life. He writes that he is going to leave town, but only after he discovers one more woman’s secret, as he calls it, and warns that this woman will be someone close to Jesse. Jesse thinks that he is trying to hint that the woman will be Betsy Ingersoll, but Jesse believes he is actually targeting Molly. They set a police unit in front of Betsy’s house as a decoy, but then stake out Molly’s house. Molly waits at home with a gun strapped to her thigh, and a wire so Jesse can hear her. The Night Hawk breaks in on her and forces her to begin stripping at gun point. Suit and Jesse then break in to arrest him. Surprised that they figured out he was after Molly, he raises his gun to shoot her, but Molly, Suit, and Jesse all shoot and kill Seth Ralston, putting an end to the Night Hawk. Suit is left with a moral dilemma that it was his shot that killed Ralston, but since all three fired, Jesse is able to disfuse the situation by convincing Suit that it could have been any one of the three.
26582126	/m/0bhcbs5	Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag		1986	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Julio, a poor fisherman, goes to Manila to search for his betrothed named Ligaya. Sometime before Julio's trip, Ligaya had left with a lady named Mrs. Cruz in order to study and work in the city. Now in Manila, Julio becomes a victim to some of the city's scums. Julio experiences abuses while working in a construction site. He eventually loses his job and desperately looks for a decent place where he can sleep. Slowly, Julio develops a cynical demeanor as he gradually loses hope of ever finding Ligaya. All this is put on hold, however, when Julio finally reunites Ligaya, and learns from her that she is a victim of white slavery. Julio and Ligaya plan to escape.
26585175	/m/0bh7n8_	Divided Heaven				 Rita and Manfred are an East German couple who live in Halle. Manfred left East Germany and Rita finds him in West Berlin. The short visit to the Western world convinces Rita to return to East Germany, a few days before the Berlin Wall is built.
26592248	/m/0b9zl3q	Split Image	Robert B. Parker	2010	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel begins with Chief Stone investigating the murder of a man Suit finds crammed into the trunk of an abandoned car. The man turns out to be Petrov Ognowski, a tough guy for local mob boss Reggie Galen. Jesse then goes to the Galen residence to interview him. While there he meets Galen’s beautiful and submissive wife, Rebecca Bangston. Envious of the life that Galen has with his wife, Jesse tailspins into a drinking binge, wondering why his wife couldn’t have been like that. Despite his increased drinking, he continues to investigate and discovers that Galen’s neighbor is another mob boss named Knocko Moynihan and is married to Rebecca’s twin sister, Roberta Bangston. Soon after the first murder, Knocko Moynihan is found murdered. Jesse begins to suspect the wives, leading Jesse and Suit to the Bangston’s hometown. There they discover that their mother is a widow, and that their father was involved in criminal activities with the girl’s husbands, who had met in prison twenty years earlier. While investigating they also discover the girls promiscuous past. Apparently they made a game of having sex with men and seeing if he could tell which one was which throughout. This activity got them the nickname “The Bang Bang Twins.” Jesse wonders if they have continued this behavior. During an interview with the twins later, they strip naked and try to seduce Jesse with their sex game, confirming his suspicions. He resists. Meanwhile, the father and widow of Ognowski come to Chief Stone demanding that he solve the murder. Jesse assures them he will do his best, however, the widow takes it upon herself to start sleeping with one of Galen’s bodyguards. The bodyguard admits that he killed both her husband and Knocko. The wives had been having sex with Petrov, and when Knocko found out about it he had the bodyguard kill Petrov. Later the twins decided they wanted Knocko killed, so they came to Reggie with a story about Knocko abusing Roberta. Furious that Knocko abused his wife’s sister, he has the same bodyguard kill Knocko. Jesse confronts the bodyguard with this information in his office along with Ognowski’s large mobster father, and presents him with two options. One, he can roll over on Reggie Galen, or two, he can leave and take his chances with the elder Ognowski. He chooses the former. Galen is arrested for the murders, and even though the wives were behind the whole thing, Jesse has nothing to charge them with. He leaves them to Ognowski.
26601848	/m/0bh9r1r	Richard Bolitho, Midshipman	Douglas Reeman	1975		 The book opens with Richard Bolitho arriving at an inn frequented by Midshipmen in Portsmouth. There he meets another midshipman Martyn Dancer. They are retrieved by a lieutenant from the Gorgon. The ship sails towards West Africa, where they encounter an empty Merchantman, the City of Athens. Dancer and Bolitho are sent aboard the ship, and discover that the ship has been pillaged and the crew killed. The officers soon deduce that the ship was raided by Pirates and Captain Conway announces that the Admiralty had dispatched them to investigate the disappearance of ships in the region. In company with the captured City of Athens, the Gorgon approaches a coastal fort surrounded by treacherous reefs and shoals. Upon approaching the fort, they see that two ships are in the nearby harbour, however the fort opens fire and destroys the City of Athens. The Gorgon withdraws and returns during the dark of the night to cut out the ship. Dancer and Bolitho are sent on the mission, commanded by the 4th lieutenant, Mr. Tregorren, who holds a grudge and mistreats Bolitho over Bolitho's prestigious heritage. They succeed at taking the ship, and also capture a Slave Dhow in the escape with the help of the Gorgon. The ships, under the guise at being members of the pilot fleet raid the castle from which the pirates had been using as a base.
26606644	/m/0bh9v0z	Light and Darkness				 In the novel, protagonist O-Nobu suspects her husband, Tsuda, of loving another woman and tries to find the truth. Tsuda, who cannot forget his past lover, goes to a hospital for a minor operation. O-Nobu visits her and husband’s relatives in order to get some extra financial support since the couple are extravagant. Kobayashi, who is an unemployed former friend, visits and threatens Tsuda that if he does not treat him in a good manner, he will reveal Tsuda’s past to O-Nobu. He also visits O-Nobu but nothing happens. After Kobayashi leaves, Tsuda’s sister comes to visit him and tries to make him realize how he should act towards his parents as a son. After that, Mrs. Yoshikawa, the wife of Tsuda’s boss and a meddler, visits him and also trying to make him change his attitudes. She sends him away to a onsen where Tsuda finally meets his former lover, Kiyoko. She is now married to another man. ja:明暗
26616176	/m/0bh96zb	Shadrach in the Furnace	Robert Silverberg	1976	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story begins on 14 May 2012 as Dr. Shadrach Mordecai, personal physician of the dictator Genghis II Mao IV, awakens. He checks the health of the dictator through a series of implants within his body that link to the general health of his client, allowing him to receive any information on the health of the dictator through codings of various twitches in his own body. Through a series of security checks, he enters into his office to prepare for a kidney transplant for his master. As he passes Surveillance Vector One, the eye on the world which gives committee members the ability to view all events happening on Earth, he meets Mangu, the prince of the world and viceroy of the committee, a charming man who earns the admiration of all his subjects. Mangu is concerned about the surgery, but Shadrach Mordecai assures the prince that Genghis Mao has grown used to surgeries. Here, Shadrach also reveals to the reader that Mangu was chosen as the subject for Project Avatar, where Genghis Mao will continue to reign in the body of his own son. He also feels sorry for Mangu, since he was tricked by his father into believing that he would inherit the throne. Once in his office, he contacts Nicholas Warhaftig, surgeon of the dictator. Warhaftig orders Shadrach to bring Genghis Mao to the Surgery by 0900. Soon, Genghis Mao himself contacts Shadrach to ask how his health is that day. As Shadrach tells the dictator of his health state, he also informs the dictator of the incoming surgery and its timing. Genghis Mao requests for Shadrach to enter his room and prepare him for the surgery at 0900. We also learn from this conversation that the surgery would give the dictator the fourth liver he is having. Afterwards, Shadrach looks up the leaders of the projects Talos, Phoenix and Avatar, for it is his responsibility as personal physician to the Khan to keep checks on the progress of such projects. First, he contacts Katya Lindman of Project Talos. She reports to Shadrach their progress in coding Genghis Mao's eyelid mannerisms and as Shadrach asks her to continue working on coding his mental processes, she has an apprehensive look but agrees. Next, he contacts Irayne Sarafrazi of Project Phoenix. She talks of her problems with brain cell deterioration and becomes worried as Shadrach presses for her to make further progress in the subject. Lastly, he contacts Nikki Crowfoot of Project Avatar, who is also Shadrach's lover. After she recounts her progress, she arranges a meeting with Shadrach for 0230. Shadrach reveals to the reader his belief that Project Avatar is far superior to the other two, since Project Talos could only create an automated Genghis Mao which could never live up to the ability of the original while Project Phoenix would constantly be confronted with the problem of brain cell regeneration. Afterwards, he leaves to take Genghis Mao to the Surgery. As Warhaftig and his team operate on the dictator, Shadrach, due to his implants, acts as a "computer" for the team, informing them of the health status of the dictator throughout the entire surgical process. During the operation, Shadrach also comments on the calmness and tranquility of the dictator and how he has grown accustomed to constant organ transplants. After the surgery, he prepares to leave with Crowfoot to Karakorum, the playground of the world's ruling class. As they enter Karakorum, Nikki Crowfoot muses about how Shadrach and Genghis Mao are like one entity and compares them to the sculptor and his sculptor, how the actions and health situation of Genghis Mao affect the actions of Shadrach. Nikki Crowfoot decides they ought to go to the transtemporallism tent, where supposedly religious rites are carried out using chemicals to transport a client into a dream-like state where he may witness famous scenes, usually related to Christianity. Shadrach is transported to the scene of the Cotopaxi eruption, where he helplessly watches the civilians die all around him. When he wakes up and leaves the tent, he sees many government members, who greet him. Among them is Roger Buckmaster, who claims that he has gained enlightenment from the transtemporallist experience. Buckmaster first recounts his dream of the Last Supper and the subsequent betrayal at Gethsemane, and how it taught him to hate evil. Then, he begins insulting Shadrach and blaming him for keeping Genghis Mao alive. Both Shadrach and Buckmaster have a lengthy moral argument, but soon Nikki Crowfoot leaves the tent and they leave the area, with Buckmaster shouting curses to Shadrach. Shadrach and Nikki book a room and sleep together, after which they encounter Bela Horthy and Donna Lambile, two members of the government. Mangu is giving a speech about the worldwide distribution of Rondevic's Andtidote against organ rot, to which Bela Horthy yells curses that Genghis Mao constantly lies about healing the world from the organ rot disease, despite the desperate urgings of Lambile. The next day, Shadrach awakes feeling tremendous vigorous twitches from the implants and immediately rushes to meet the Khan. There, he sees many government members surrounding the dictator. He learns from Ionigylakis, the Vice President, that Mangu was assassinated. He soon realises that the twitches were due to the shock from Genghis Mao when he received the news. He also learns that Bela Horthy was the one who witnesses Mangu falling from his window before he informed the Khan. Genghis Mao gives Avogadro, the security chief, orders for subsequent arrests and sentences against suspected individuals in order to invoke fear into the population. In Committee Vector One, Shadrach has a brief conversation with Avogadro, who states that no one, not even Bela Horthy, saw any assassins throw Mangu out of the window, thus many government members believe it was merely suicide, but Genghis Mao remains convinced that Mangu was killed. Shadrach then asks Bela Horthy about the exact recount he gave to Genghis Mao. At first, Horthy is apprehensive but soon replies that he merely stated that Mangu had died and nothing else. Shadrach also learns from Horthy that Buckmaster has become a prime suspect in the assassinatio case due to his words of folly at Karakorum the previous night. Shadrach asks Horthy about his own words at Karakorum, but Horthy insists that he was not at Karakorum at all. Meanwhile, the committee members are in chaos as General Gonchigdorge struggles anxiously to find possible suspects and Surveillance Vector One. As the general calls for Frank Ficifolia, Ficifolia reveals to Shadrach his opinion that the committee members have gone mad and that Mangu had probably committed suicide. Shadrach returns to his room, where he sees Nikki Crowfoot. He recounts to her the incidents that occurred and Crowfoot is immediately shocked since her project is affected by the death of the chosen subject. As she listens to the subsequent events, she comments that Bela Horthy probably intended for Genghis Mao to feel great shock due to his testimony and perish. Shadrach returns to his office where he receives a call from Katya Lindman, who requests that he review her progress on Project Talos. She shows the robot of Genghis Mao and all its actions and becomes angry when Shadrach does not seem impressed. As she continues to show Shadrach all her equipment, Shadrach begins to suspect that she has feelings for him. Later on, he receives a call from Avogadro to participate in his interrogation of Buckmaster. During the interrogation, Buckmaster constantly defends himself, saying that he was drugged from the transtemporallism. Avogadro is shocked that Shadrach also attempts to defend Buckmaster, but more passively. However, in the end, Buckmaster is arrested on the basis of a faulty "I'll destroy him" while he was arguing with Shadrach at Karakorum. Shadrach then argues with Avogadro, saying that it was justified to arrest a man he knew was innocent. However, Avogadro is apathetic to the plight of Buckmaster and even uses Shadrach's words at Karakorum against him that "guilt is a luxury we cannot afford". They both assume that he is being sent to the Organ Farms, where his organs would be used to support the dictator. The next day, Shadrach visits Genghis Mao, who speaks deliriously and even offers to make Shadrach pope in Rome. Shadrach infers that Genghis Mao has gone mad over the death of Mangu. That night, he goes to Karakorum with Katya Lindman, where they try dream-death, an experience where one is placed in a dream-like state and imagines death and the subsequent afterlife. Shadrach travels the afterlife realm with Katya in his dreams, and after enjoying themselves, to enters into a tranquil state before awaking. Katya reveals that she was having a different dream from him, one which was not as light-hearted as his. Then, they return home to rest, where Katya randomly and suddenly warns Shadrach to be careful. Nikki Crowfoot grows increasingly distant from him, and Shadrach is unable to discover why. He visits Genghis Mao and informs the dictator of an aneurysm he detected in the dictator's abdominal aorta. The news annoys Genghis Mao, since he is preparing a colossal funeral for Mangu which he refuses to delay. Shadrach has lunch with Katya, who reveals to him that, on the night before Mangu's death, she informed him that he was chosen as the Avatar subject. Katya tells Shadrach that she did so only out of sympathy for Mangu, but Shadrach suspects that she wanted to kill the Avatar subject so that her project could supersede Nikki's and hopefully destroy her relationship with Shadrach so she could have him too. However, he soon realises that his suspicions contradict Katya's decision to reveal this information to him. Shadrach hopes to visit Nikki and after learning that she had fallen ill, makes the decision to visit her in her room. There, he pretends to examine her but subsequently asks about her project, to which she responds angrily, ranting about the setbacks in her work. As Shadrach leaves, he also reveals to Nikki that a member of Project Talos informed Mangu that he had been chosen as the Avatar subject, but he disguises it as a rumour. However, Nikki believes it and instantly suspects Katya Lindman to be the culprit. Later, Shadrach confesses to Katya what he had revealed to Nikki. Katya is disturbed at first, but soon informs Shadrach that he had been chosen as the next Avatar subject. Shadrach soon realises that that had to be the reason Nikki had chosen to distance herself from him. Katya advises Shadrach to make a plan of escape and also tells him not to trust Nikki anymore, since she must have agreed to continue her work despite the fact that he was chosen. The day of the aorta transplant arrives. During the surgeries, Shadrach thinks to himself that if he killed Genghis Mao on the operating table, Project Avatar would be finished. He muses about plans such as jostling Warhaftig's elbow or feeding them misleading information, but resolves not to. In his office, Shadrach begins thinking about Genghis Mao's possible origins and begins crafting fake diary entries from the perspective of Genghis Mao in his mind. Soon, he decides to confront Nikki Crowfoot about him being the Avatar subject. Nikki is shocked and somewhat remorseful, but she defends herself, saying there was nothing she could do. Shadrach is distraught, but lets the matter rest. He resorts to carpentry to cope with the stress. On one of his adventures to the carpentry chapel, he meets Frank Ficifolia, who offers Shadrach the chance to escape from Ulan Bator and remain hidden. Ficifolia also reveals that members of the government helped to conceal Buckmaster, who is still alive, and offers to do the same for Shadrach. However, Shadrach is unsure and asks for time to think. Then, he is approached by Bela Horthy, who advises Shadrach to take the offer and flee from Ulan Bator, but Shadrach continues to refuse. He makes a visit to the Project Avatar laboratory to meet Nikki Crowfoot. After a tour of the laboratory, Nikki takes him to her office. She advises Shadrach to flee from Ulan Bator, even at the expense of her work. However, Shadrach still wants more time to think, to which Nikki responds that she loves him still. Soon, Shadrach decides to go on a vacation so that he would think better overseas. He informs Genghis Mao about his decision, who is slightly disappointed but agrees. Shadrach first goes to Nairobi, where he meets Bhishma Das, a merchant. Bhishma Das constantly asks him questions about the organ rot disease and the Roncevic's Antidote. As they continue their conversation, Shadrach begins speaking of utopian ideals that, after many years, the world will rebuild itself. Although he is unsure of this prophecy, under the encouragement of Bhishma Das, he becomes convinced that that will eventually happen. This gives him encouragement to deal with the problem of Project Avatar. He then leaves for Jerusalem, where he meets Meshach Yakov at the Wailing Wall. Shadrach is distressed about the widespread oragn rot and poverty amongst the people, including children, and he prays. Meshach takes Shadrach to his house, where he and his family chat with Shadrach about politics. He then goes to Istanbul, Rome and San Franscisco. In each place, he is constantly distressed by the suffering of the people but also begins to suspect that the Citpols, policemen of the Genghis Mao regime, are spying on him. At San Franscisco, he meets an old friend, Jim Ehrenreich, who is struck with organ rot and requests that Shadrach steal some of Rondevic's Antidote for him. However, Shadrach refuses, saying that the antidote only immunises and cannot cure. At first, Ehrenreich is angry but after a while, he accepts his fate. At Peking, Shadrach begins to feel strange twitches in his implants and after a series of checks begins to suspect clogging of cerebrospinal fluid. He rushes to the airport, hoping to get a quick flight back to Ulan Bator. At the airport, he meets Avogadro, who informs Shadrach of the multiple headaches suffered by Genghis Mao and that he requested for Shadrach's return to the capital. Shadrach returns to the capital and visits Genghis Mao, informing his master of the problem and suggests that it be cured by brain surgery: more specifically, to implant valved tubes to his skull to drain the excess fluid. Afterwards, Shadrach arranges a meeting with Frank Ficifolia, requesting to meet Buckmaster. Although Ficifolia is annoyed that Shadrach chose to return when he could have escaped the capital, Shadrach reassures him that he has a plan. Ficifolia agrees to arrange the meeting. Shadrach is taken to the transtemporallists in Karakorum, where Buckmaster has hidden himself as an ascetic, entering multiple dreams to witness the life of Jesus. Shadrach requests for Buckmaster to create a device that will allow him to control the valve that will be implanted into Genghis Mao, and after much persuasion, Buckmaster agrees. In Ulan Bator, he arranges a meeting with Katya Lindman. Both of them talk about the funeral of Mangu, which he missed while he was on holiday. He also informs her about his cure for the headaches of Genghis Mao, and despite the warnings of Katya, Shadrach states that he has a plan to save himself. Soon, Genghis Mao is operated on and the valved tubes transplanted. He then meets Nikki Crowfoot, who informs him of her progress in Project Avatar. She adds that she hopes her project will not be chosen, but Shadrach tells her not to worry about him but to focus on her work instead. To rest, he leaves again for Karakorum unaccompanied and visits the dream-death tent, where he enters the afterlife and heals numerous people in the dream. He is hailed as their Saviour but is soon interrupted by the scene of Katya informing him that he was chosen as the Avatar subject. Shocked, he awakens and returns to Ulaanbaatar. Already implanted with the device to control the valved tubes, Shadrach visits Genghis Mao and informs him of how he is able to control the tubes using the device implanted in his hand and whenever he clenches his fist, the tubes will reverse, quickly killing the dictator. Instead of begging or becoming angry, Genghis Mao is pleased and informs Shadrach that he was never going to become the Avatar subject in the first place. He also admires Shadrach's shrewdness in dealing with the situation. Shadrach demands to become a committee member in charge of public health to oversee the production and worldwide distribution of Roncevic's Antidote. Genghis Mao agrees and, confused about the dictator's reactions, Shadrach leaves the room to admire the outside world.
26621095	/m/0bhc92w	The Wild Things				 The story begins with Max going to his friend's house. His friend is not there, and Max only manages to find his friend's over-protective Mom, who attempts to walk him home. Max thinks she's crazy, and rides away quickly on his bike to the entrance of the woods. This shows the reader a bit of Max's problems. Later, Max builds a snow fort in his backyard complete with a flag and shelves containing snowballs. When Claire, Max's sister, and her friends go outside while the boys in the group chew tobacco, Max begins a great snowball fight. After throwing a few, he runs back into his snow fort, thinking he is safe. This is not true, and the boys find it easily because of his flag. One of the boys jumps on the fort causing it to collapse and suffocate Max. Max comes up crying, and his sister Claire does nothing to help him. Max is now filled with rage. Max goes upstairs to Claire's room and commences in dumping water all over it, breaking a few of her belongings as well. Later, his mom comes home from work to find Max hiding in his bed, feeling bad about what he's done. He then reluctantly shows her what he did to Claire's room. Exasperated but really too tired to be angry with him, they clean up the mess together.
26639413	/m/0bhc28n	Listening for Lions	Gloria Whelan	2005	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Rachel Sheridan is the only child of British missionaries working among the Kikuyu and Maasai tribes of British East Africa (present-day Kenya). They work on a hospital in addition to church-work and teaching. Life goes haywire as influenza strikes when Rachel is 13, in 1919. The sickness is the cause of many deaths, and soon after her own mother dies, the dreaded Pritchards, planters in the area come with their daughter Valerie, who looks very much like Rachel. Valerie dies within hours, and later Rachel's father. Left an orphan, she is lured to the Pritchards' home and forced to impersonate their daughter, who was going to visit her dying grandfather in England, being told it would "save his life". Rachel considers telling people of the Pritchards' lies on the ship, but she soon arrives in England and begins to develop a close relationship with her "grandfather", who, like her, is very fond of birds. Just as things begin to get better, the Pritchards unveil their new plot, to take the grandfather's property when he dies. In scorn of his son, the Grandfather sends them away, but his trusty solicitor, Mr. Grumbloch, gives Rachel his address and tells her to come in an emergency. Rachel comes within the day, and he returns her to her grandfather, telling him the truth, which they have already suspected. There is an epilogue at the end of the novel, in which Rachel becomes his adopted daughter and attends school, later returning to her parent's hospital as a doctor.
26641052	/m/0bhb3zw	Hourglass	Claudia Gray	2010-03-15	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Bianca, Lucas and Raquel are now living in the New York Black Cross cell. Raquel and the rest of Lucas's Black Cross cell are currently unaware Bianca is a vampire. Mrs. Bethany later stages a break in to the Black Cross cell wanting to take Bianca back to her parents. Several members of Black Cross are killed including Lucas's stepfather Eduardo whose neck is broken by Mrs. Bethany. In the attack Balthazar is captured and tied up by Black Cross who begin to torture him to find out why Mrs. Bethany attacked Black Cross. Bianca and Lucas begin orchestrating Balthazar's escape and succeed without getting caught. After the break in by Mrs. Bethany, Bianca needs to feed so they go to a hospital to get blood for Bianca from the blood bank. They are interrupted by Raquel and Dana who realise that Bianca is a vampire as she is feeding. They both promise not to tell anyone but Bianca is woken in the night after someone told the Black Cross cell about Bianca's vampirism. She is tied up and burnt with holy water, and Lucas. who is also splashed, burns due to him feeding Bianca. Dana helps them escape and gives them some money but tells Black Cross they escaped. After Lucas realises there is a dangerous vampire in the city they are staying in he decides to hunt it. Lucas finds the rogue vampire but after following him to a hotel room realises that Charity, Balthazar's sister, is staying close by with her clan who the rogue vampire belongs to. He escapes and later he and Bianca tell Balthazar that Charity is near by. Bianca and Lucas begin to run out of money and go to their friend Vic for help. He allows them to stay in the basement. On Bianca's birthday Lucas takes her to the planetarium where they are attacked by wraiths. They both escape and later get jobs. While staying in Vic's house Bianca becomes increasingly weak and ill. Bianca realises that she must kill a human and become a full vampire otherwise she will die. Lucas offers to allow Bianca to kill him but she refuses as he would not agree to rise with her. She later dies and becomes a wraith. She is met by a wraith named Maxine who tells her that she is powerful due to her born status as a wraith. She is told she can form a body by holding objects she has bonded to in her life including her broche and her coral bracelet which were both made of once living material. Bianca appears to Lucas telling him about her becoming a wraith. Lucas with Ranulf and Vic who have returned from holiday agree to assist Balthazar in killing Charity. Vic waits outside after they track her down to a rundown cinema where they fight and kill several members of her clan. While Bianca is solid she is injured by Charity who throws a shard of iron at her which is weakening to wraiths, causing her to loses her solidity. Charity, Bianca and Lucas are alone and as Bianca is powerless she pins down Lucas before draining his blood killing him. Charity leaves and Balthazar and Ranulf arrive who tell Bianca of Lucas's fate. He will become a vampire.
26653054	/m/0bh6w1s	Moonlight Mile	Dennis Lehane	2010-11	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Amanda McCready was four years old when she vanished from a Boston neighborhood in 1997. Desperate pleas for help from the child’s aunt led savvy, tough-nosed investigators Kenzie and Gennaro to take on the case. The pair risked everything to find the young girl — only to orchestrate her return to a neglectful mother and a broken home. Now Amanda is 16 — and gone again. A stellar student, brilliant but aloof, she seemed destined to escape her upbringing. Amanda’s aunt is once again knocking at Patrick Kenzie’s door, fearing the worst for the little girl who has blossomed into a striking, bright young woman who hasn’t been seen in two weeks. Haunted by the past, Kenzie and Gennaro revisit the case that troubled them the most, following a 12-year trail of secrets and lies down the darkest alleys of Boston’s gritty, blue-collar streets. Assuring themselves that this time will be different, they vow to make good on their promise to find Amanda and see that she is safe. But their determination to do the right thing holds dark implications Kenzie and Gennaro aren’t prepared for ... consequences that could cost them not only Amanda’s life, but their own. Since "Prayers for Rain" Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro have married and had a child.
26664352	/m/0bmbm7r	Twilight: The Graphic Novel				 The plot describes Bella Swan's move from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks, Washington to live with her father, Charlie, while her mother, Renée, travels with her new husband, Phil Dwyer, a minor league baseball player. Bella attracts much attention at her new school and is quickly befriended by several students. Much to her dismay, several boys compete for shy Bella's attention. She is immediately struck by the extreme beauty of the Cullens, who appear pale and different. When Bella is seated next to Edward Cullen in class on her first day of school, Edward seems utterly repulsed by her. He disappears for a few days, but warms up to Bella upon his return; their newfound relationship reaches a climax when Bella is nearly run over by a classmate's van in the school parking lot. Seemingly defying the laws of physics, Edward saves her life when he instantaneously appears next to her and stops the van with his bare hands. Bella becomes determined to find out how Edward saved her life, and constantly pesters him with questions. After a family friend, Jacob Black, tells her the local tribal legends, Bella concludes that Edward and his family are vampires who drink animal blood rather than human. Edward confesses that he initially avoided Bella because the scent of her blood was too desirable to him. However, he admits his true nature and when this doesn't scare away Bella, they begin a relationship. They begin questioning each other about their lives, and Edward decides to show Bella why he and his family can't be in the sun. They go hiking for a day, where Edward tries once more to show just how dangerous he really is, but it turns out that neither can stay away, culminating in a kiss. This first part of the novelization ends with Edward taking Bella home. Part 2 begins when Edward Cullen takes Bella Swan home from visiting his family at their house. All of the Cullens are very welcoming to Bella except for Rosalie, who is concerned that the relationship between Edward and Bella may end badly, implicating the entire family and forcing them to move again. However, Edward is very careful not to lose control when he is around Bella, and their relationship continues to grow. The relationship is disturbed when another vampire coven arrives in Forks. James, a tracker vampire who is intrigued by the Cullens' relationship with a human, wants to hunt Bella for sport. The Cullens attempt to distract the tracker by splitting up Bella and Edward, and Bella is sent to hide in a hotel in Phoenix. There, she receives a phone call from James, who claims to be holding her mother captive. When Bella surrenders herself, James attacks her. Before James can kill her, Edward, along with the other Cullens, rescues her and defeats James. Once they realize that James has bitten Bella's hand, Edward successfully sucks the poison from her bloodstream and prevents her from becoming a vampire, after which she is brought to a hospital. Upon returning to Forks, Bella and Edward attend their school prom and Bella expresses her desire to become a vampire, but Edward refuses.
26674455	/m/0bmjw95	Hush, Hush			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The book starts off with the protagonist, Nora Grey, who is a sophomore living in Coldwater, Maine, a very unpopular city. She sits with her best friend, Vee, in biology class, but when the seating plan is changed by her coach, she finds herself next to Patch Cipriano, a mysterious senior who has already failed the class twice. At first, Nora finds Patch intolerable and unsettling, as Patch is able to draw her in but also repel her with his behavior. In the library, Patch glances at Nora, making her suspect that he is stalking her. Later, Vee and Nora meet two guys named Elliot and Jules, and the four go to Delpic Amusement Park. Vee is desperately trying to set Nora and Elliot up as he is clearly attracted to Nora. Patch is later found by Vee and Elliot seems jealous but Nora assures all of them that there is nothing going on between her and Patch. She goes and says hello but he tries to persuade her into riding the Archangel with him. Since she is afraid of heights, she doesn't accept. However, desperate for answers, she makes up an excuse and wanders off to find Patch. Nora bumps into Patch again and she goes on the Archangel with him. After the ride, Nora tells Patch that she flew out of the ride when she went on it before. He ignores her and calms her down. Puzzled, Nora can't find Vee or her car anywhere. So Patch offers to take Nora home, but she is reluctant to do so. In her house, the two make tacos and Patch almost kisses her but is interrupted by her mobile ringing. At 2am, an angry Vee is demanding to know where Nora has gone. Vee later finds out that Nora and Patch kissed, a fact which Nora denies. In a turn of events, Nora becomes more connected with Patch, starting to change her mind about him. In this time she meets Patch's friend called Rixon in the pool hall. After time passes, Nora is so eager to find out about Elliot's past because he was involved in a murder case. In the evening, she meets a bag lady, asking for directions and pays by giving her coat to the bag lady. It starts to rain and Nora soon discovers a dead body; it is the bag lady. Scared for her life, Nora calls Patch for a lift home. While in the phone box, Patch lifts Nora to his Jeep. The car breaks down halfway and they stop at a shabby motel. In the motel room, she acknowledges his muscled body and touches the scars on his back. She falls into his memory about 8 months before she'd even met Patch. After being pulled out the memory, Patch forces her to the bed, demanding to know what Nora has seen. Gutted and frustrated, Nora asks Patch if he wanted to kill her, and he nods. Patch starts to kiss Nora when she is trying to escape. He then admits that he was going to kill her but he didn't go through with it. Her quest for answers lands her in several dangerous situations, finally leading to the stunning revelation that Patch, which is told in the memory, is in fact an angel who fell from Heaven, and who meant to kill her, explaining why he was in her school to begin with. Patch had found a way to become human through a text in the Book of Enoch. By killing Nora, he succeeds in killing his Nephilim vassal, Chauncey Langeais, making Patch a human. Dabria, Patch's fallen angel ex-girlfriend, wants Patch to save Nora's life, thus turning him into a guardian angel so that they can be together again. Patch insists on becoming human, following his original plan. But this plan goes nowhere because he falls in love with Nora. In a turn of events, Jules - a mutual friend of Nora's - is revealed to be Chauncey who wants revenge on Patch for tricking him into swearing an oath that will allow Patch to take over his body during the Hebrew month of Cheshvan. After leaving the motel, at her house Nora is confronted by Dabria, informing Nora that Patch wants to kill her so he can become human. Dabria plans to kill Nora herself so Patch is unable to. Nora isn't convinced that Patch still wants to kill her but loves her instead. Thoroughly denying that Patch doesn't love Nora, she begins to burn down the farmhouse. Nora is saved by Patch and he tells her to drive to Delphic, then he kisses Nora and seeks to find Dabria. Nora plans to meet Vee at the theatre but Patch arrives and ushers Nora in the girls' bathroom. Annoyed, she is still not sure on whether Patch will kill her or not. He admits to Nora that he couldn't go through with using Nora as a sacrifice. He also says that if he hadn't fallen, he wouldn't have met Nora. Convinced, she passionately kisses Patch, wrapping her legs around him but they are interrupted by Vee calling, saying that she wants Nora to come play hide-and-seek with Elliot and Jules. Then the call is taken over by Elliot, hinting threats at Nora that Vee won't be alive if Nora doesn't play. Patch then forces Nora to stay in the car, so he goes off and went to search for Vee. Elliot calls Nora again, threatening her more, she then disobeys Patch by going and looking for Vee. Nora ends up with Jules, explaining that he was Chauncey, and he did all those attacks towards Nora. Furthermore, Jules explains how he is getting revenge on Patch for making him swear an oath (which he did in the prologue) by killing Nora because he found Patch is in love with Nora. She then stabs him and runs for her life. Jules corners her, and she notices Patch behind him. Failing to distract Jules, he swings Nora around and holds a gun to her head in front of Patch. Intimidating Jules, Patch possesses Nora's body, fighting Jules. Patch then peels out of her and while unconscious, Nora then runs up the ladder in the school gym and comes face to face with Jules. Aiming the gun at her, Nora tells him that Jules will die if she takes her own life and Patch will become human. Having fallen in love with Nora, Patch chooses to save her rather than accepting the sacrifice to become human. By saving her, he becomes her guardian angel, but also effectively kills Chauncey, who had no soul to reanimate his dead body. At the farmhouse, Nora asks him why he didn't accept the sacrifice, he answers that he'd rather be a guardian angel. In the novel, he says, "What good is a body if I can't have you?" The last chapter ends with Patch and Nora sharing a passionate kiss.
26681503	/m/0bmcg0m	Darkness, Take My Hand	Dennis Lehane	1996	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 From the back of the paperback: When Detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro agree to protect the son of a prominent psychiatrist they soon find bodies are piling up around them. What's more, all the clues point to an unlikely suspect - a serial killer who has been in prison for twenty years, so he can't be killing again, can he? As the duo try to find out what kind of human being could perform such horrifying acts of mutilation, torture and dismemberment, they discover that the killer's motive is disturbingly rooted in their own past. In a series of heart-stopping climaxes that grow ever more bloody, ever more terrifying, the two detectives work frantically to capture the killer before they become victims themselves. es:Abrázame, oscuridad fr:Ténèbres, prenez-moi la main sv:Mörker, ta min hand
26683273	/m/0bmf1tp	The Art of Racing in the Rain	Garth Stein	2009-06-09	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel follows the story of Denny Swift, a race car driver living in Seattle, and his dog Enzo, who believes in the Mongolian legend that a dog who is prepared will be reincarnated in his next life as a human. Enzo sets out to prepare, with The Seattle Times calling his journey "a struggle to hone his humanness, to make sense of the good, the bad and the unthinkable." Enzo spends his days watching and learning from television, gleaning what he can about his owner's greatest passion, race car driving &mdash; and relating it to life. Enzo eventually plays a key role in Denny's child-custody battle with his in-laws, and distills his observations of the human condition in the mantra "that which you manifest is before you."
26684695	/m/0bmbqrp	The Child Thief	Gerald Brom			 The novel follows several different characters in their adventures through Avalon. First following Nick from the slow charming attraction to the golden eyed boy, to the horrifying walk through the mist, pass the barghest and the flesh eaters, and into the safety of Deviltree, the story only begins to unravel. Brom makes liberal use of Celtic and Scottish mythology as, in a parallel storyline, he describes Peter's history from birth to Lord of Deviltree. Peter spends his time searching for new children to take back to Avalon. Always searching in the poorest of the poor neighborhoods, Peter only takes those children that are abused, forgotten, or, his personal favorite, runaways. He befriends these children before taking them - the mist would never allow him to take a child without the child's consent. I go willingly, the last words ever spoken by the children before leaving for the mist and Avalon. Many children die in the mist. Many more die fighting for their lives in Avalon, and Peter must go out seeking more... more blood for Deviltree. Avalon is an enchanted isle in its final death throes. Peter's Clan of human children is the final force between the Flesh Eaters and The Lady. The Lady's magic keeps Avalon alive and the mist up to keep out unwanted humans while, unfortunately, keeping the Flesh Eaters in. The Lady is trapped within the heart of Avalon, kept a prisoner in her own land by her nephew and Avalon's heir apparent, Lord Ulfger. The Flesh Eaters arrived on Avalon when the first refugees left the British Isles in search of a new home free of religious persecution. When they arrived, they were greeted by a glorious delegation of horned beasts, elves, satyrs, and faeries looking to secure peace among the newcomers. At the sight of monsters and devils, the humans fled back into their gates and a war begun. Termed the Flesh Eaters for eating any of the living things they killed, including the magical creatures, the humans holed up in their sanctuary and hid from the evil outside. Likewise, the magical creatures hid in their wood from the horrors coming out of the pilgrims' stronghold. The Lady released the mist so that no others might enter. Yet, thus, none were allowed to leave. The magic of Avalon twisted the grown humans into black scaly monsters and they became stuck in the war against The Lady - to kill her and release the mist so they might leave this island. The children at Deviltree are also affected by the magic of Avalon. However, being children, they were not twisted into malicious scaly creatures. Instead they grew strong, fast, and amazingly powerful. They were honed into warriors, fighting alongside Peter to save Avalon and The Lady and rid the land of the flesh eaters. The story reaches its climax with all of the forces meeting in a final unexpected clash that will shake the order of things in both worlds forever.
26698495	/m/0bmc4zy	Play Dead	Harlan Coben	1990-06	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 No sooner had supermodel Laura Ayers and Celtics star David Baskin said "I do" than tragedy struck. While honeymooning on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, David went out for a swim-and never returned. Now widowed and grieving, Laura's search for the truth will draw her into a web of lies and deception. pl:Mistyfikacja (powieść Harlana Cobena) th:แกล้ง (ฮาร์ลาน โคเบน)
26698580	/m/0bmk9t9	Miracle Cure	Harlan Coben		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The plot concerns a clinic that treats people with AIDS. Just as the scientists working there are on the brink of a breakthrough the create a cure for the disease, one of them dies. Initially it looks like suicide but after a journalist investigates, she finds that it is murder, and there is a killer targeting the patients of the clinic as well. pl:Klinika śmierci
26698703	/m/0bmbv7m	Gone for Good	Harlan Coben	2002-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Will's ex-girlfriend has been killed and his brother Ken, has disappeared. He was the prime suspect in the girl's murder. Will also has the demands of his job as a worker with the homeless of the New York City. When he finds out that his brother is alive after all and his current girlfriend disappears as well, Will is arrested by the FBI as the prime suspect to the murder of the girl. Will is at breaking point. Only his friend Squares and Will's determination to get justice, and find out what he needs to ensure that justice is served, keep him going during further mystery and danger. Will and Ken had some famous but bad people go to school with them, the gangster McGuane and the assassin known as Ghost, and the roots of the jeopardy Will finds himself in are in his school years. de:Kein Lebenszeichen he:הנעלמים pl:Bez pożegnania (Harlan Coben) pt:Gone for Good (livro)
26708863	/m/0bmc6tc	Symposium	Muriel Spark	1990		 It is the story of a dinner party and the events leading up to it involving the lives of the five couples attending: * Hurley Reed (an American painter) and Chris Donovan (a rich Australian widow), the party hosts * Lord and Lady Suzy, who have recently been burgled * Ernst and Ella Untzinger, an EU commissioner and his wife, a teacher * Margaret and William Damien, newlyweds just returned from a honeymoon in Venice * Annabel Treece and Roland Sykes, a TV producer and genealogist, cousins The story includes many flashbacks into the lives of the guests including a convent of Marxist nuns, a burglary ring preying on the guests, a mad Scottish uncle and several unexplained deaths. The dinner party itself ends with the murder of the mother of one of the guests...
26709981	/m/0bmch_6	Toby Alone	Timothée de Fombelle	2009	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A 13-year boy named Toby Lolness, who is just one and a half millimeters tall, lives in a civilization nestled in an oak tree. On his seventh birthday, his father, a scientist named Sim, creates a black box that causes one of his toys to move around by harnessing the power of sap. However, when Sim refuses to tell people how he did it, he and his family are banished to the Lower Branches, where Toby meets his best friend Elisha Lee. When Toby is thirteen, his parents are arrested by the evil corporant tyrant Joe Mitch, who has a pathological obsession with hole-digging, and thrown into a prison on a mistletoe ball called Tumble. He desperately wants to learn how to use the sap for his biggest project, the Big Crater, a massive hole in the middle of the tree, and Toby finds himself on the run from his own people. He struggles to survive alone. He is betrayed by his old friend Leo Blue. Another friend, Nils Amen, betrays him as well, but redeems himself by pretending to be Toby, throwing the searchers off. Toby passes through the Big Crater, where his father's enemy, W. C. Rolok, finds him. He attempts to make him swallow a sap ball, which the weevils will rip his stomach open to reach. Toby spits the ball down Rolok's throat, takes his clothes, and gives him a whip to fight off the weevils. On the way out, he meets up with Mano Asseldor, who used to live on a farm in the Lower Branches, and the two escape together. Once they reach the Lower Branches, Mano is reunited with his parents and siblings, but he is forced to hide in a space behind the fireplace. Toby tries to get help from a miller and his wife, the Olmechs. They contact Joe Mitch's soldiers, but Toby manages to escape anyway. The Olmechs are thrown into prison for lying. Finally, Toby reaches the area where Elisha and her mother Isha live. He hides in a cave, and Elisha brings him food every day. When winter comes, Toby is snowed in for several months. He barely survives off Elisha's food and some mildew. In the spring, he and Elisha create an elaborate plan to rescue Toby s parents from prison. The night of the planned escape, Toby is trapped in a wax cast, pretending to be the jailor Gus Alzan's injured daughter Berenice. Elisha was supposed to break in and rescue him and his parents, but she was unable to get into the prison, causing Toby to think she'd betrayed him. He escapes when a fire weakens the cast. He releases all the water in the cistern, extinguishing the fire. On the way to find his parents, another prisoner tells him they've already been executed, and that Elisha crushed his hand with her foot. Not believing him, Toby goes to his parents' cell, only to find the Olmechs. Their son, Lex, is trying to rescue them. Toby gives Lex the key to his parents' chains and walks to the end of a mistletoe branch, planning to jump off. However, he hears a bird squawking, and decides to burrow into one of the berries and get eaten. He is carried away by the bird and loses consciousness. When he wakes up, he finds himself alive in the grass. He is taken in by a young boy named Moon Boy and his older sister Ilaya, who rename him Little Tree. Two years later, Pol Colleen, a neighbor from the Low Branches, visits the grass and tells Toby he was adopted when he was a few days old, that his adoptive parents are still alive, and that Elisha, whose mother was once a grass woman, is now being held prisoner by Leo Blue, who has become a ruthless dictator and wants to marry her. Toby decides to go back to the Tree.
26722202	/m/0bmh2h6	Toby and the Secrets of the Tree				 Toby's adventures continue as he heads back to the tree to save his parents, Elisha (who is held captive by Leo Blue) and all the Grass People who are being held captive by the evil Joe Mitch, who is digging a hole to the center of the tree, determined to get the secret knowledge of how the tree lives from Toby's father. Meanwhile Toby meets up with another one of his old friends, Nils Amen, who is the leader of a band of woodcutters and is also helping to hide some fugitives in a secret forest in the tree. Nils pretends to side with Leo Blue, in order to give Elisha the message that Toby has returned.
26728770	/m/0bm9mjn	Dictation: A Quartet	Cynthia Ozick	2008	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Dictation Approximately 15,000 Words. This story is about the secretaries of Henry James and Joseph Conrad. The two women have a brief lesbian affair, and hatch a scheme to switch a paragraph form each of their bosses new works. Actors Approximately 8,000 words, originally published in The New Yorker, and later in “Cynthia Ozick Collected Stories.” This story is about a post-middle-aged Jewish actor with an Irish-sounding stage name who has just landed the role of King Lear in an off-Broadway play written by the daughter of a famous Yiddish actor. At Fumicaro Approximately 11,000 words, originally published in The New Yorker and later in “Cynthia Ozick Collected Stories.” This story is about an American from New York who goes to Fumicaro, Italy for a conference on Catholicism. He meets a young, Italian chambermaid who is pregnant out of wedlock and decides to marry her and take her back home to America. The story takes place in the 1930s after Benito Mussolini has taken over. The characters in the story portray an eerie ambivalence to the idea of fascism. What Happened to the Baby Approximately 10,000 words, published in The Atlantic and “Cynthia Ozick Collected Stories.” This story is about an elderly man who is in the middle of a life long ambition to create a new universal language called “GNU”, and his niece Vivian who has been charged by her mother to take care of him after his wife divorced him.
26738229	/m/0bmf7kn	Kings of the Water				 It is the story of thirty-five-year-old Michiel (Michael) Steyn who returns to the family farm in South Africa for his mother's funeral. This is Steyn's first return to South Africa in fifteen years after leaving in 1987 to escape from a scandal he was involved in while he was an officer in the South African navy. Steyn is from both Afrikaans and English extraction and is now a US citizen. He lives with his partner Kamil Cassis (who is half Palestinian, half Jewish) on the boundary of San Francisco's Castro district. The book engages specifically South African questions of racism, guilt, responsibility and the tentativeness of forgiveness but the novel's ending asks for an international reading, in particular through its foreshadowing of US foreign and domestic policy in the era of George W Bush. Kings of the Water also offers a glimpse at an older version of a marginal character from Embrace as well as allusion to the extended fishing scene from The Smell of Apples, in this way seeming to insist that all three these novels be read and understood in relation to one another.
26745658	/m/0bm9t1y	Walking Shadow	Robert B. Parker	1994	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 The story follows Boston-based PI Spenser as he tries to solve the on-stage murder of an actor in the run-down town of Port City. While investigating the crime, he runs afoul of the local Chinese mob and uncovers a web of infidelity, organized crime, and psychologically unstable actors.
26748989	/m/0bmgy65	Self Help	Ed Docx	2007		 "Alone in her native St. Petersburg, Maria Glover sends an urgent summons to London and New York. Her son and daughter arrive too late to see her". Their mother's death marks the beginning of the twins search for the truth about her...
26752518	/m/0bmk65w	Walk of the Spirits	Richie Tankersley Cusick	2008-04		 Miranda Barnes "realizes that life as she knew it is officially over" when she sees the town of St. Yvette, Louisiana. She starts hearing whispers, sees shadows, and hears voices. Her school mates can tell that something is wrong with her. She realized that she has the same "special gift" that her grandfather had to communicate with the spirits, and that she needs to help them.
26754017	/m/0bm8kw2	Storm Warning	Linda Sue Park	2010-05-25	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 As they were leaving China, Amy and Dan get a call from the Holts telling them that they knew where they were going. So Dan and Amy assume Nellie Gomez, their au pair, told the Holts. On the plane, Dan and Amy get Nellie to give them some information. It turns out it wasn't Beatrice who hired her, Grace did. Nellie also tells them that she works for Mr. McIntyre, but does not tell them that she really works for The Man In Black. As events in the Caribbean take place, Amy and Dan watch as the clue hunt kills a non-Cahill named Lester. Angry, Amy and Dan decide to face Aunt Beatrice, but Nellie kidnaps them, and takes them to Moore Town to meet The Man In Black. They are then forced to solve a puzzle box that Amy and Dan had found in the museum that Lester had worked at. After solving Anne Bonny's puzzle box, getting the Madrigal clue of Mace, and the knowledge that they should go to England, Dan and Amy learn that The Man In Black, who followed them in the first few books in the series, is Fiske Cahill, Grace's brother. He ran away as a kid, and that's why Amy and Dan never heard of him. He tells them Madeleine Cahill's story: Gideon Cahill was trying to find the cure for the plague, and he did, but Gideon didn't know that the cure, which was a serum, altered the user's DNA, giving the users greater abilities in every area of human endeavor. Gideon gave each of his four children a part of the master serum. Soon afterwards, Gideon dies in a fire. The children blamed each other, and separated to start their individual branch.Luke started the Lucians; his sister, Katherine, started the Ekaterina; her brother Thomas started the Tomas; and his sister, Jane, started the Janus. But no one else knew that Gideon's wife, Olivia, was pregnant when Gideon died and her family was separated. Pregnant with Madeleine Cahill, founder of the Madrigals, Olivia raised Madeleine to believe nothing was more important than family. So that is the Madrigals' goal - to reunite the family members. Fiske Cahill also tells them that the Lucians framed Arthur and Hope Cahill for murder in South Africa. Hired by Grace, Nellie was spying for Fiske, so the branch would know about Amy and Dan in order to grant them a Madrigal status. Before leaving, Fiske reveals this to Amy and Dan. For the first time ever, the Madrigals give active status to someone not born in the bloodline: Nellie Gomez. Amy and Dan also become members, revealed in the end of book 7, The Viper's Nest. Amy and Dan are then given seven of the other Madrigal clues and head to England to search for the next clue. Page Number Code is "He didn't tell them everything."
26765356	/m/0bmkhj4	The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner	Stephenie Meyer		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story begins with Bree and Diego hunting for human blood in Seattle, Washington. Bree has been a vampire for three months, and Diego has been one for eleven months. Together they kill and drink a pimp and two prostitutes. Bree and Diego talk about "her" (Victoria) and ask why she is turning so many people into vampires. Diego thinks something is coming, and that "she" is using them as protection. They hide in a cave and discuss their human lives, and how Riley came to offer them a second life as a vampire. Together they decide that Riley is using them as pawns for protection, and that he might be lying to them. They also discover that sunlight does not kill a vampire, but makes their skin sparkle. They become friends and decide to form a "club," spending the day "playing ninja," looking for Riley and the other vampires they live with. They find that Riley had relocated everyone to a log cabin and Diego gets into a fight with Raoul, an arrogant newborn, but another newborn, "Freaky Fred," uses his repelling power to stop Raoul from killing them. That night Bree and Diego stalk Riley, suspicious that he is meeting with "her." They eavesdrop on Riley's conversation with Victoria. Eventually the Volturi show up, threatening to punish Victoria for amassing a vampire army but willing to give her army a chance to destroy the Cullens. The Volturi say that if Victoria does not attack within five days, they will kill her. Bree returns to the log cabin and resolves to run away, while Diego stays behind to talk to Riley. Riley returns to the cabin alone and tells his vampire army that there are older vampires in Seattle (the Cullens) who want to kill them, and if they want to survive, they will have to work together and learn how to fight. Riley tells Bree that Diego is doing surveillance work with "her" and will return to join them in the fight. After three nights of training, Bree and the vampires hunt a ferry boat to drink the passengers' blood and regain their strength for the battle against the elder vampires. Riley then tells everyone that the vampires they will be fighting have yellow eyes and keep a human (Bella) as a pet, giving them Bella's scent to hunt. They head off to fight the Cullens. Fred decides to run away to Vancouver before the battle, and Riley retreats, telling Bree that Diego has already started fighting with the group. Bree arrives at the battle to find the newborn vampires being killed by the Cullens, and thinks that Diego is already dead because she cannot see or smell him anywhere. She deduces that Victoria and Riley killed Diego for being disobedient the night he went missing. Bree surrenders to the Cullens. They debate whether or not to kill her and decide to restrain her until the Volturi arrive. Bree has trouble resisting the urge to drink Bella's blood. The Volturi show up and Jane tortures Bree into telling everything about the newborns. She explains that Riley lied to her and everyone else, and if they did not do as they were told they would be killed. She uses her thoughts to tell Edward that the Volturi had allowed the army to attack the Cullens. The Volturi decide to kill Bree, and Edward warns Bella to shut her eyes. Bree mistakenly thinks that Edward is referring to herself. Bree closes her eyes and is instantly killed.
26765861	/m/0bmg5tt	The Slave	Isaac Bashevis Singer	1962	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Jacob, the hero of the book, was a resident of Josefov, a Jewish town in Poland. After the Khmelnytsky massacres, in which his wife and three children were murdered by Cossacks, Jacob was sold as a slave to pagan peasant farmers. Throughout his several years of slavery, he struggled to maintain his Judaism by observing as many Jewish rituals as possible and by maintaining high ethical standards for himself. While in captivity, Jacob fell in love with his master's daughter, Wanda. While Jewish law and custom forbids Jews from even touching a woman a man is not married to and also forbids Jews from cohabiting with gentiles, Jacob's love for Wanda was too powerful to overcome and they engage in sexual intercourse. Later, Jews from Josefov came to ransom him by paying off Wanda's father and he returned Josefov. While in Josefov, Jacob dreamed of Wanda. In the dream, Wanda was pregnant and asked Jacob why he abandoned her and left the child in her womb to be raised by pagans. Jacob decided to return to the pagan village, take Wanda as a wife, and help her to convert to Judaism. Jacob and Wanda reached another town, Pilitz, where Jacob made his living as a teacher. In Pilitz, Wanda became known as Sarah and Jacob instructed to be pretend that she was deaf and mute so as not to reveal her origin as a gentile. Sarah thirsted for knowledge and at night, Jacob taught her Jewish beliefs, myths, and practices. She suffered in silence as the women in the town gossiped about her right in front of her, as they thought that since she was deaf, she would not hear them. Her secret was finally discovered when she screamed loudly during the birth of her and Jacob's son. Sarah died during the difficult birth, and was given a "donkey's burial" outside of the Jewish cemetery. Jacob called his baby son Benjamin (he likens himself to the biblical Jacob whose wife, Rachel, died in the childbirth of the biblical Benjamin); he traveled to the Land of Israel with the infant. Benjamin grew up to become a lecturer in a yeshiva in Jerusalem. 20&nbsp;years later, Jacob returned to Pilitz and discovered that the town grew and that the cemetery had grown so much that the place where Sarah was buried was now within the bounds of the cemetery. The place where Sarah was buried was not prominently marked and unknown to the Jews of Pilitz. Jacob was weak and died during the visit to Pilitz. By coincidence (or perhaps, by a miracle), as a grave was being dug for Jacob, the bones of Sarah were found. The town decided to bury them together, side by side.
26769197	/m/0bm8t5k	Taken by Force		2007-08-07		 Taken by Force explores the patterns of rapes committed by US servicemen during the Second World War between the years of 1942 and 1945, as well as the reaction of the American army in response to the crimes. The book draws upon court records, newspaper articles and trial transcripts, covering the 14,000 rapes that Lilly estimated, using a formula created by Leon Radzinowicz, occurred in Britain, France and Germany at the hands of US soldiers. Chapter 2 covers "explanations for sexual violence during war", which includes discussion about rape being used as a "tool of genocide", as a "inherent feature of military culture", and as a "means of revenge." Chapters 3, 4, and 5 consecutively act as "analyses of rape and rape prosecutions" in the countries of England, France, and Germany and how the number of rapes in each country differ because of views American soldiers held toward the civilian population in each country.
26769799	/m/0bmd9gc	A Scattered Life				 From the publisher: Free-spirit Skyla Plinka has found the love and stability she always wanted in her reliable husband Thomas. Settling into her new family and roles as wife and mother, life in rural Wisconsin is satisfying, but can’t seem to quell Skyla’s growing sense of restlessness. Her only reprieve is her growing friendship with neighbor Roxanne, who has five kids (and counting) and a life in constant disarray – but also a life filled with laughter and love. Much to the dismay of her intrusive mother-in-law, Audrey, Skyla takes a part-time job at the local bookstore and slowly begins to rediscover her voice, independence and confidence. Throughout one pivotal year in the life of Skyla, Audrey and Roxanne, all three very different women will learn what it means to love unconditionally. With the storytelling ingenuity of Anne Tyler, the writing talent of Jodi Picoult, and the subtlty of Alice Munro, McQuestion offers a satisfying debut that proves she is a gifted portraitist, a natural storyteller and an author to watch.
26775658	/m/0bmdq6m	Children of the River	Linda Crew	1991		 Sundara's childhood includes a boy named Chamroeun described as charming and a smart boy. Chamroeun and Sundara's parents joke that they will one day be married. Sundara shortly falls in love with Chamroeun, but Chamroeun goes to fight in the war as a soldier right before Sundara leaves to her uncle and aunt's house. When Sundara is at her aunt and uncle's house she flees from Cambodia with her aunt, Soka, her grandma, and her uncle, Naro, to escape a communist threat. Her aunt Soka just had a baby, right as they had to leave. While on the small, very cramped ship, Sundara is put in charge of the infant, as Soka is drifting in and out of awareness. The baby is extremely malnourished, and Sundara, eager to save her cousin, asks a mother for her breast milk to help the baby get better. The mother states, "I would, but... Oh, this is all so terrible. I'm not getting enough to drink myself. Soon I'm afraid I won't have milk for my own.". She then goes to a helper and asks for some extra milk, or supplies. He gives her a hard time, but eventually gives her some powdered milk, and some sugar water in a bottle. The baby soon dies shortly after, devastating Sundara. Sundara eventually makes it to America. She seems to understand American ways, but not the reasons behind them. To Sundara's dismay, a teacher, Mrs. Cathcart, reads her poem assignment aloud to the class. It is about her having to leave Cambodia, and all the people dying there. Sundara, along with Soka, work for Mr. Bonner Sundara also works Mr. Bonner's fruit stand at the market. There she meets Jonathan, a boy her age, who attends the same school and seems very sweet to Sundara. He compliments Sundara many times. Sundara also cannot help herself from admiring him. Soon he befriends her, asking to interview her about her life in Cambodia. Sundara is shy about her family history; She has trouble opening up to him. Sundara and Jonathan soon fall for each other. Sundara's aunt has trouble accepting her crush. In fact, as soon as Soka knows of it, she makes Sundara promise that she will not talk to Jonathan anymore. She reluctantly agrees. Despite her promise, Sundara sneaks away to see Jonathan. Sundara soon finds out Chamroeun has been killed shortly after by a hoe while eating a potato peel. As Sundara starts to adapt to American ways, she learns that her new friend Jonathan is popular at school. Jonathan's girlfriend, Cathy Gates, says nobody really seems to understand Jonathan but Cathy. According to Cathy, "Jonathan and I have been going together since the ninth grade. We have something very special between us." As Sundara and Jonathan's relationship builds, they start eating lunch together, and he then asks her to the movie. Sundara realizes she is becoming more American after being told, "You know, you ought to watch how much you become American.". Sundara and her friend Moni have dinner. They end up reminded, that in their society back home all marriages are arranged. On top of Sundara having this problem, news is spreading through the school about her and Jonathan. Cathy soon finds out about their [friendship, and she is not happy. Cathy stands up for herself and decides to face Sundara; Sundara does not seem to want to face Cathy. Sundara has trouble understanding Jonathan's relationship with Cathy. She finds herself confused about a lot of things, such as girls showering together after gym class. It is clear that Sundara has feelings for Jonathan, but cannot show him. Later, one night after a football game, her cousin Ravy gets home to tell Sundara that Jonathan was hurt while playing. Sundara becomes worried and goes to see him. In the hospital, Jonathan explains to Sundara how he dislikes Cathy's attention. He wishes that she had not sent him balloons. "I knew it," he says. "Cathy. I wish she wouldn't do stuff like this." He also admits to Sundara that he loves her. Sundara is not able to get her mind off Jonathan. She is also told that Jonathan is quitting the football team, due to what Sundara has told him about Cambodia. Cathy is upset and knows something is going on between Jonathan and Sundara. She realizes Jonathon likes Sundara. Everything changes when Jonathan's father goes on a mission trip, solely because Jonathon yelled at his dad for not following through on going to help. Jonathan is ashamed that he yelled at his father, and wishes he hadn't. Jonathan gives Sundara a "goodbye kiss". It seems to get harder to see each other after that. When Moni, her friend from Cambodia takes a trip with her to collect bottles, Sundara notices a broken doll. There, she collapses into hysterics, Moni drags her home and takes her inside. After Grandmother claims the baby girl`s spirit has taken over Sundara, the women all pray for a release on Sundara. Soka confesses her feelings about Sundara, which makes Sundara understand how Soka feels about her.
26775913	/m/0bmcry4	Maza of the Moon	Otis Adelbert Kline	1930	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Ted Dustin, an American inventor, seeks to win a prize of one million dollars by being the first person to touch the moon with an object launched from Earth. He devises a huge gun, which fires upon the surface of the moon. Shortly thereafter, the moon fires back, and war breaks out between the planet and its satellite. Using a videophone he invented, Ted hails communication with the moon. A beautiful woman and her guards first reply, but their transmission is cut off by warlike yellow aliens. Ted eventually heads to the moon in a spacecraft of his own design, and meets the titular character, who turns out to be the beautiful woman from the transmission, as well as a princess of one of the two groups that inhabit the moon.
26775985	/m/0bmgwfg	The Copper Elephant	Adam Rapp	1999	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Whensday Bluehouse is an orphan who was rescued from a life working in the Pitts by coffin maker Tick Burrowman. Burrowman is attempting to make a profit by selling Whensday to a woman from Toptown, a part of the world that is unaffected by acid rain and life on The Shelf. Whensday is unsure of the security of this exchange, and sneaks away one night. Burrowman may have actually grown fond of Whensday, and it is unclear if he is interested in giving her away after all. While Whensday is on the run, she stumbles upon a large, mentally handicapped teenager named Honeycut Greenhouse, obviously another orphan. He was separated from his brother, much as Whensday was, and it is obvious that Honeycut doesn’t have the faculties to take care of himself. Whensday decides to befriend Honeycut, and he rescues her during a vicious rape by Second Staff Brown, a minor officer in the military. Honeycut kills Brown, and a manhunt begins, ending with Honeycut’s capture. Whensday flees and hides in the only place she knows, Tick Burrowman’s home. Upon her arrival, she finds him dead, and a former friend, Joe Painter, seriously ill. They cobble together a flotilla of “body boxes” and attempt to paddle up the river, away from the Shelf and the head for Toptown. But Joe Painter dies on the trip, and the current carries Whensday back to the shelf. She is rescued by a secret clan of women, hiding from the Syndicate, and she stays with them.
26777529	/m/0bmfcmj	The Cruise of the Breadwinner	H. E. Bates	1946	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The story takes place on board the Breadwinner, an old battered fishing boat, contributing to the war effort by carrying out a routine patrol of a particular stretch of coast in the English Channel. The main character, a young boy called Snowy, has volunteered to help and spends much of his time dreaming about the pair of binoculars that the boat's skipper, Mr Gregson, has promised him. The third and final member of the crew is Jimmy, a young engineer with a wife and three children. The story's events, which take place in a single day, begin simply enough. They travel south until Snowy hears a dogfight further out to sea. They head towards the sound and soon hear whistling. Upon arriving at the source of the distress signal, they find a young English RAF pilot who has been shot down but is not injured. The pilot informs them that he's hit a German plane and believes it to have crashed somewhere to the west. He requests that they attempt to find the German pilot and, after a brief search, they succeed. Despite Jimmy's protestations that they should not be helping the enemy, they help the German aboard and Snowy is sent to make the pilots some tea. Whilst he is below deck, another Luftwaffe plane flies at the boat, shooting and charging at the deck. Snowy returns to find the attack has killed Jimmy and severely injured the two pilots. Gregson has also been hit but is not seriously wounded. It starts to rain and Gregson and Snowy help the pilots below deck. Whilst trying to get the engine going, they realise that bullets have penetrated the tank and much of the boat's fuel has been lost. Whilst Gregson goes on deck to hoist the sails, Snowy discovers that the German pilot has left his binoculars unattended. He takes them and finds himself hoping the German will die so that he will be able to keep them. As the story draws to an end, the Breadwinner is racing to get back to shore whilst the pilots are still alive.
26786039	/m/0bmbt3s	The Body of Christopher Creed				 Torey Adams, the narrator, moves to a new town and begins his senior year at Rothborne, a boarding school. As he starts thinking about how his year will be, he remembers how strange his junior year was, in particular, his former classmate Christopher Creed, who disappeared without a trace, except an email to the principal. Torey, with friends, reads the email from Chris. It hints at the possibility of either suicide or running away. The email mentions Torey and one of his friends, among other classmates, as guys who have "everything". This makes Torey more concerned about Creed's disappearance and what has become of him. At school, Torey begins to feel alienated from his friends Alex, Ryan, Renee, and girlfriend Leandra when they joke about Chris's disappearance and seem to take it lightly. The character Ali McDermott is introduced when she talks to Torey about Creed and asks him to come over that night, as she wants to show him something. At Ali's house, Torey discovers that her home life is awful. He also meets Ali's boyfriend, Bo Richardson. Bo is a "boon" (a somewhat derogatory term in the community that refers to a group of students at their school who come from poorer homes and are avoided by the others, including Torey and his friends) who had injured Chris previously. After introductions the three begin to talk about Chris. Ali's window has a clear view into Chris's bedroom, and she describes seeing Chris hide a diary in a picture frame on the wall, the only place safe from his mother's prying eyes. Ali expresses her suspicions that Mrs. Creed had something to do with her son's disappearance, and the group becomes convinced that the evidence they need will be found in the diary. Torey comes up with a plan: he will go to a nearby payphone and call the Creeds, demanding that they come meet him and bring money in exchange for information about Chris. Meanwhile, Bo will break in and take the diary. The plan backfires, and all three are brought to police headquarters. Torey's mother, a lawyer, intervenes, saving them from prosecution for the time being. However, Bo confesses to the phone call despite his innocence. Ali and her younger brother, Greg, spend the night at the Adams' house upon Bo's insistence. At the Adams' home Torey's mother hands Ali a notebook that Bo claimed was Ali's. It is actually Chris's diary, that reveals he had a girlfriend named Isabella. Inside the diary Chris wrote that he was afraid that his mother would “kill” him. The diary claims that Isabella is a shy, quiet girl who had a romantic and intimate relationship with Chris over the summer and together they discover from Isabella's Aunt, a psychic, that one of them would die in the woods. At school the next day, Torey becomes further distanced from his friends. Renee and Ryan question them about Bo Richardson. He successfully avoids his friends but leaves home sick during the school day. Ali comes to his house after school and tells Torey that Bo has been arrested. Leandra calls Torey and when Ali picks up the phone she accuses him of sleeping with Ali. Torey and Ali go to meet Bo, but run into several of Torey's friends, resulting in an altercation, whereupon Bo reveals to Ryan and Renee that their father, chief of police, had cheated on their mother with Mrs. McDermott. Later, Torey finds Isabella in the telephone book, calls her, and leaves a message saying that Torey is looking for Chris and wants any information she has. After making the call Torey falls asleep, forgetting the call. Torey ignores his old friends and now ex-girlfriend at lunch; he and Ali sit with some "boons" instead. During lunch, the police, and Mrs. Creed, burst in to take Bo for questioning. Ali and Torey protest; both confess to the phone call, but the adults don't believe them and assume they are simply covering for Bo. In the principal's office, Torey attempts to explain to Mrs. Creed that Chris was socially awkward, but she still believes her son had "a very good life" and could not have wanted to kill himself or run away. A few days later when Torey returns home from school he finds a message from Isabella on his answering machine telling him to "come over anytime" to talk about Chris. Ali and Torey then take a trip to Isabella's house and find out that she did not have a relationship with him but did have sex with him. Ali and Torey discover that Chris faked the whole relationship and wrote down the false information in his diary. Isabella also has Torey and Ali meet her psychic, Aunt Vera who proceeds to warn Torey that when he is alone he "will find him. In the woods." Upon returning to the Adams' home, Ali and Torey decide to go to the woods to see if they can find Chris's body. They don't find him. When Torey gets home, he receives a call from his friend Alex, asking him to meet up. When they meet behind Torey's house, Alex indirectly accuses Torey of being an accessory to Chris Creed's alleged murder. When they finish arguing with each other, Torey ventures into the dark woods alone. When Torey turns to return home, he sees an Indian Spirit, a memory from his childhood. Torey follows it, and ends up in an old Indian burial ground. He breaks his leg when a boulder falls on it, forcing him to crawl into a grave. He sees neatly wrapped bodies, but spots a human body that isn't like the others. When he gets closer, he immediately thinks it is Chris, though it's really Bob Haines. Suddenly, air rushes through the space where Torey had crawled in, and the corpse starts peeling apart. Torey is traumatized and sent a mental hospital to recover. Since he can't stand the Steepleton gossip, he finished his junior year of high school at home. Torey realizes through the course of the story that truth changes with each person's perspective. Torey ends his narration of the novel by stating that Chris's body was never found, but he does show some hope, through letters from people he thought could be Chris in disguise
26787601	/m/0bmhjz0	Damage				 In this section it sets up the mood for the whole book. In chapter one it sets the mood that Austin is a depressed person and is somewhat suicidal. It also introduces Austin and his two best friends Dobie and Curtis. In chapter 2 it shows Austin and his friends are football players. The chapter also gives more details about how they are. In chapter 3 it introduces Austins mom and Becky. Also it expresses how Austin feels about going to school, also how he is used to the routine he does every year to go to school. Chapter 3 show's Austin and his friends favorite spot which is Dairy Queen, also Austin and Heathers meet. In chapter 4 they talk about Heather and how Austin would end up with her, and how his friends feel about her. This chapter also sets the mood for Austin and Heather and how their first date happens. In chapter 5 they talk about Austin's first away game, and how it plays out. Chapters 6-9: In this section they go to a lot of places. In chapter 6 they go to a movie and dinner together, Austin and Heather. They go to Heather's house and he meets her mother. Then Austin goes home to his family. In chapter 7 they go to church on Sunday. Austin is there thinking about Heather and ask God to forgive me. In chapter 8 he is at home in his bed dreaming about him and Heather. Then he goes to school and have practice. After practice they are in locker room talking. Austin takes Curtis home them takes Heather home because she was waiting for him after practice on the truck. In chapter 9 his at home and Curtis comes over. In chapter 10 Austin talks about how he used to be the one to give Dobie rides home after his practices, but since he started to date Heather, Curtis takes Dobie home. It also talks about what him and Heather do after practice which is they go to the spot which happens to be Dairy Queen, and how they get their usual. They (Austin and Heather) have a conversation about what happened between Curits and Kat. Austin waits for Heather to brush her hair before going off, he said "This waiting for hair to be brushed - is the price of dating Heather". They sit in the car just hanging out for a while. Heather think Austin is mad at her when he really is not and she gives him oral sex to please him also in hopes that he will not be mad no more. Then two weeks later they have sex. In chapter 11 Austin plays in his sixth game, and Curtis ended messing up. Curtis gets bothered by this and he does not speak for a while. They are gonna go out that night and they invite Austin, but he's going to be to busy with Heather. In chapter 12 Curtis happens to be in the middle of Bull-in-a-Ring since he messed up the game in chapter 11. After Bull-in-a-Ring Austin does not know if he should help his best friend up or do as the couch said and go get ready to do sprints...He goes to do sprints. In chapter 13 Austin sits in Heathers room and watch's her get dressed. They just talk about the usual stuff. Heather ask's Austin to pass her a clip when he goes to find it he opened the wrong drawer and she gets mad, Austin stared at the note, it was from her father. Austin tell's her its okay to talk about her father to him, but she does not seem to want to open up. Soon Austin has to leave. In chapter 14 Austin and Heather get into a little argument, and then when they make up they go off to Dariy Queen. After that Austin wants to "please her" but she takes it the wrong way and goes off on him, and tells him all these mean things that make him depressed. In chapter 15 it talks about his ride home; lonely. When he arrives he goes all suicidel in the bathroom and is thinking about cutting himself, but Becky his little sister comes to the door with the phone, and it happens to be Heather on the line. She wants to talk so she ask's him to go over. He drives back over to her house. Chapters 16-19: In this section still going places. In chapter 16 Austin is at Heather's house and they are talking about what happened the other night. They talk about their pass and Heather cry's from her pass. In chapter 17 he was just leaving Heather's house they were holding each other and talking at 3 in the morning. At the game they won. Goes home and cannot sleep its Sunday and its 4:30 but her do not have to get up til 8. In chapter 18 his at school and has football practice again.Takes Dobie home then Heather. Austin went to Heather house and she told him it was over with them. In chapter 19 he is at home in his truck thinking. Then he goes to Curtis house and talk about him and Heather.
26788150	/m/0bm8l4w	Harare North				 The story is set in London. The nameless narrator of the story is a former militia who got caught up in the in-fighting between the Zimbabwean police and the Green Bombers, the notorious militia, and has to flee Zimbabwe when he is charged with murder. He seeks political asylum in the UK but is planning to make the equivalent of US$5,000 in London and fly back as he is sure that with that kind of money he can buy his way out of the criminal justice process. His struggle to raise the money sees him resorting to the low-paid jobs in the underbelly of London, but he also takes advantage of Shingi, his friend and squat-mate and blackmails his cousin’s wife when he discovers that she’s having an affair. The struggle intensifies as the narrator realises that he has to get back to Zimbabwe as soon as possible for a ceremonial ritual for his deceased mother. His mother’s grave, in a rural village, may soon be destroyed the Zimbabwean government which is evicting the villagers to roll in mining operations since valuable minerals have been discovered there. With events becoming increasingly fractious, the story comes to its denouement towards the end when the narrator’s mind begins to unravel and, simultaneously, he and Shingi become a single entity.
26788299	/m/0bmh15v	The Monstrumologist	Rick Yancey	2009	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Folio one The Monstrumologist begins when Erasmus Gray pulls his horse and cart up to Dr. Warthrop's house in the middle of the night. He reveals the body of a young woman and an Anthropophagi, "one wrapped around the other in an obscene embrace." The girl has "half her face" missing, and her throat is torn out. Dr. Warthrop dissects both the girl and the monster, and finds an Anthropophagi fetus in the dead girl's womb. Warthrop explains to Will Henry, who is taking notes on the procedure, that Anthropophagi require a host to grow their young in. They poison the baby and continue examining the bodies. Dr. Warthrop theorizes that because Anthropophagi are indigenous to Africa and have never been seen in the Americas before, there could only be one or two more in the area at most. The next night, Warthrop, Gray, and Will Henry go to the cemetery to return the girl's body to her grave. While Gray and Will Henry re-dig the grave, Warthrop tries to discover how the Anthropophagi accessed her body in the first place. They are all interrupted when Gray's horse is spooked by something in the surrounding woods. Suddenly, an Anthropophagus bursts up from under the dirt in the hole Will Henry and Gray were digging. It seizes Gray by the legs and starts dragging him down. Will Henry grabs Gray's wrists and tries to pull him back, but is not nearly as strong as the monster, and starts being pulled in himself. He tries to release Gray, but Gray hangs on to him and refuses to let go. Dr. Warthrop shoots Gray and pulls Will Henry back, while Gray's body is pulled all the way into the hole. Warthrop and Will Henry run for their lives as more Anthropophagi "poured out of Eliza's grave, dozens of them, scores, sprinting with arms outstretched and mouths agape, their colorless skin radiant in the starlight, as if every tomb and sepulchre had vomited forth their foul contents." They jump on the back of Gray's horse and ride off, narrowly evading the approaching swarm. Back at Warthrop's house, he and Will Henry begin searching through old newspapers for suspicious deaths over the past thirty years. Warthrop marks possible Anthropophagi attacks on a map, and from it estimates that there are around twenty five or thirty Anthropophagi in the area. The map also shows that the Anthropophagi have been steadily making their way from the coast to New Jerusalem (where Warthrop lives) over the last couple of decades. Warthrop then composes a letter to John Kearns asking him to come and use his "inestimable services" to help with the infestation, dictating with "a hint of distaste." Will Henry finds a key among the old papers as well, and puts it in his pocket to show to Warthrop later. Will Henry also realizes that he has lost his hat, the last object in his possession from his home before his parents died. Warthrop and Will Henry leave that night for Dedham, where they find the Motley Hill Sanatorium. Warthrop knocks, and after a long wait, a "withered woman in black", Mrs. Bratton, answers. At first she refuses to let them in, until Warthrop mentions he's the son of Dr. Alistair Warthrop, at which point Mrs. Bratton slams the door and goes to get Dr. Starr. Starr lets them in and, after discussing Warthrop's father for a while, reveals that Warthrop's father had a keen interest in one of Starr's patients, Captain Varner. Warthrop asks to see Varner. Starr "cast an eye toward the parlor door" and stalls for several minutes, until finally Warthrop bribes him and Starr calls for Mrs. Bratton to take them to Varner. Bratton leads Warthrop and Will Henry upstairs. As they pass doors, they hear patients crying and calling out, and (in one case) laughing frantically. They're also surrounded by the smell of "unwashed flesh, old urine, and human feces." Varner is lying on a bed under multiple layers of sheets. Warthrop then tries to get Varner to speak, but without any success at first, as Varner stairs up mindlessly at the ceiling. It's not until the name Warthrop is mentioned that he really responds. He was paid a large amount of money to pick up three Anthropophagi, an adult of each gender and a cub, and sail them back to the New World. Varner and his crew were instructed to lock up the Anthropophagi in the bottom of the ship and throw down a cow, goat or chimpanzee to them every couple of weeks. However, the Anthropophagi refused to eat them. The crew makes a sport of tormenting them, particularly the first mate. Drunk one day, the first mate takes a piece of cow meat and swings down a rope in the top of the Anthropophagi's holding area below deck to give it to them. The female Anthropophagi grabs him and eats him. Captain Varner posts guards to ensure nothing like it happens again, but one day a huge storm hit the ship and the crew can see almost nothing. The Anthropophagi climb through the porthole and up the side of the ship onto the deck, where they proceed to slaughter the crew When only Varner is left, he runs for the lifeboats, stabbing one of the female Anthropophagi's eyes on the way out. When he returns home, he is sent to the sanatorium. Warthrop pulls back Varner's bedding to reveal that Varner's flesh is being eaten away by maggots, thus the flies. Warthrop diagnoses that whatever infection Varner has already spread to his bones: Varner will live no more than a day. Warthrop spends the night at Varner's bedside until Varner dies the next morning. It is understood by the reader that his death is the direct result of neglect from Starr and Bratton. He then confronts Mrs. Bratton, informing her that he is going to inform the police that they are mistreating their patients. "She responded stiffly, 'I've no idea what you mean, Dr. Warthrop." "'Regrettably that very well might be so,' acknowledged the doctor icily. 'And all the more appalling if it is! To view your shameful neglect as altogether fitting and humane is beyond deplorable - it is inhuman. You may inform your master that I am not finished here. I am not finished, but Motley Hill is." Folio Two Early the next morning, Constable Morgan knocks on the door asking for Warthrop. He tells Warthrop that something has happened "totally outside the range of my experience." On the carriage ride to the crime scene, Warthrop questions Morgan. Warthrop discovers that "the crime" was reported "shortly after dawn" Only one person survived (Malachi). Morgan explains he called on Warthrop because "no human being is capable of so foul a crime." They arrive at the town rectory. (224) Five have been found dead; the rector, his wife, and three of their children. Various chunks of them have been torn off, and blood and carnage are everywhere. Warthrop estimates it to be the work of at least eight to ten Anthropophagi. Morgan observes that the odds of these monsters appearing in the town where "the country's - if not the worlds - preeminent expert in these matters resides" by chance are very small. Warthrop, Morgan and Will Henry go to the sanctuary, where Malachi is waiting. He is visibly disturbed. "His full lips moved soundlessly, as he stared, like some Eastern mystic, at a space beyond our mortal sphere, looking without but seeing within." Malachi does not respond much to anyone except Will Henry, after discovering Will Henry's family is also dead, and that Will Henry ran from the scene. Malachi asks, "Do you think God will forgive us, Will Henry?" Malachi explains what happened before he ran. The Anthorpophagi came through the windows of the house while they slept. One of his sisters came to hide in his room with him. They listened to their families screams and the sounds of the monsters tearing them and the house apart. Malachi breaks open his bedroom window so he and his sister can escape. The Anthropophagi hear the sound of breaking glass, and his sister faints. Malachi jumped through the window and rode to Morgan. Warthrop and Will Henry return home. Morgan arrives shortly. He brings Malachi and his assistant with him. (253) He tells the doctor he has been at the cemetery, and that he found Will Henry's hat. Morgan deduces that Warthrop knew the Anthropophagi were there, which Warthrop confirms. Malachi blames Warthrop for his family's death. He whispers, "he took everything from me, Will!" Will Henry convinces him to let go of the gun by answering "and you would take everything from me." Will Henry takes Malachi to one of the spare bedrooms and puts him to bed, sitting with him for awhile. Someone starts banging on the front door, and Warthrop calls for Will Henry to answer. Kearns arrives, "looking for the house of a very dear friend of mine." Warthrop comes in, and "froze upon seeing the tall Englishman in the entryway." Kearns, upon seeing Warthrop, says "'My dear Pellinore,' purred Kearns warmly, brushing past me to seize the doctors hand. He pumped it vigorously." When Will Henry returns with tea, the three men are looking at Warthrop's map where he plotted the various Anthropophagi attacks. Kearns suggests Warthrop's father paid to have the Anthropophagi shipped over, and Warthrop slaps him. As the night goes on, Kearns continues to tease Warthrop about his relationship with his father. Folio Three The next day, Warthrop, Kearns, Will Henry, Malachi, Morgan, and six of Morgan's men meet to prepare a trap for the Anthropophagi. Kearns is in a notably good mood. When Morgan asks Warthrop why Kearns is so cheerful at the prospect of slaughtering or possibly being slaughtered, Warthrop explains "it's the joy of a man perfectly suited for his work." Kearns directs the men in setting up the 'slaughter ring in the cemetery.' Morgan becomes steadily more and more disgusted with Kearns. When Kearns states that "there is no morality save the morality of the moment," Morgan retorts "I begin to see why you delight in hunting them. You've so much in common." Once the men have finished setting up the 'slaughter ring,' Kearns pulls out the bait he brought with them: a woman's motionless body, "reposed as a corpse." Morgan protests that using the woman's body is immoral. Kearns justifies that "it's a woman of the streets, Morgan. A common tramp with which the gutters of Baltimore are choked to overflowing." As evening comes, everyone gets into position in the trees around the slaughter ring, guns and grenades in hand. Smiling, Kearns comments "the bloody hour has come." Kearns has the woman's body chained in the middle of the slaughter ring. He goes over to her, bending over her in such a way that no one can see what he's doing. Suddenly she starts kicking and screaming, and the other men realize she is alive. Morgan curses Kearns, but thinks there's no time to help the woman as the Anthropophagi start to come up from underground. Kearns shoot the first one to injure, not to kill, in the hopes that it's suffering will draw out the rest. The woman is still screaming on the ground. Warthrop runs out to her, ignoring the injured Anthropophagi, carries the woman under the trees and starts binding up her wounds. At the sound of more Anthropophagi quickly approaching, Warthrop returns to the trees to shoot, leaving Will Henry and Malachi to tend to the woman. As the adults in the trees deal with the largest faction of Anthropophagi, a juvenile comes upon Will Henry and Malachi. Malachi shoots it, but not in an area that does lasting damage. Malachi doesn't have time to reload, so he jams the butt of the gun into the Anthropophagi's mouth. Will Henry pulls out Warthrop's revolver, but the Anthropophagi smacks it out of his hand and grabs him. (328) Will Henry pulls out a knife from his belt. He stabs each of the Anthropophagi's eyes, and then its brain, killing it. The battle ends shortly. Warthrop has Morgan's assistant take the wounded woman to a doctor. Upon examining the Anthropophagi bodies, they cannot find the leader, who they expect to recognize by her missing eye (as she was stabbed by Varner earlier on). Surmising she is still underground with her young, they decide they must go into the Anthropophagi warren and look for her in order to ensure that all of the monsters are killed. Kearns suggests that the "front door" of the Anthropophagi's underground home must be in the Warthrop mausoleum, in keeping with his theory that Warthrop's father had them brought over in the first place. Inside it, Kearns finds a hidden clock, "hands frozen at twelve." Warthrop, finally accepting that Kearn's theory must be true, suggests they try moving the hand to three o'clock because the witching hour was important to his father. They do so, and a hidden door opens. They find a locked trapdoor. Will Henry remembers the key he found earlier (still in his pocket), and tries it out: The trapdoor opens. They lower themselves into what appears to be the main pit where the Anthropophagi live and eat; the floor is covered in bones. They search the tunnels leading away from it until Kearns and Warthrop discover a small tunnel that only Will Henry can get through. He finds another juvenile Anthropophagi, sleeping. One of its forearms is missing, and it appears to be in considerable pain. Wanting to put it out of its misery, Will Henry comes up close to it to shoot it. The Anthropophagi suddenly jerks awake and grabs Will Henry. In the struggle, Will Henry's arm is bitten. Will Henry eventually manages to kill it with a large stone found on the ground. Will Henry wanders around in the tunnels until Kearns finds him. Will Henry explains what happened to him, and Kearns then instructs him to take the 'bandage' (Will's shirt, which he has wrapped around his arm) off of his bite wound, because "we don't want to risk an infection." Kearns then instructs Will Henry to follow the path Kearns has marked, which Kearns says will take Will Henry back to Warthrop. Will Henry continues, until he smells Anthropophagi ahead and stops. Kearns appears behind him and asks him why he stopped; Will Henry explains that this can't be the way back. "'I had hoped to avoid it,' was his cryptic response. 'The smell of blood should have drawn her out; I'm at a loss, frankly ,why she didn't come... I am so sorry, Mr. Henry, but there really is no choice. It is the morality of the moment.' And with those parting words John Kearns shoved me as hard as he could." Warthrop comes running over to Will Henry, who explains what Kearns did. When Kearns tries to justify his actions, Warthrop threatens to shoot him. Suddenly, the floor bursts from under them as the leader pushes up and grabs Malachi. Malachi tells Will Henry to grab a grenade from Kearn's bag; Will Henry tosses it at Malachi and the matriarch, and they are both buried in dirt, mud and rock. The matriarch rises out of the dust, leaping towards Will Henry, who knows he only has one shot left in his gun. He aims for her brain and shoots: she dies. In the final chapter, we learn that Warthrop, Kearns and Will Henry visit Starr afterward; Kearns kills him, then disappears. Six months later, Warthrop and Will Henry find a newspaper headline: Ripper Strikes Again/Whitechapel Killer Claims Fourth Victim. Finally, Warthrop gives Will Henry a new hat: after holding his old hat in one hand and his new one in the other, Will Henry tosses his old hat in the fire.
26788406	/m/0bmhlvr	Little Black Girl Lost 2				 The second book of the Little Black Girl Lost series reveals all the damaging secrets of the first book. Johnnie Wise, the main character, has a lot on her mind and trouble in her path. Every day Johnnie deals with the fact that she's rich by prostitution, is a high school dropout, has no parents, and is only 16. In the last year, before the second book began, Johnnie went from a church-going good girl, to a prostituting liar. Johnnie's troubles all started off on Christmas Eve, when her mother sold her virginity to a white man named Earl Shamus. Earl was a regular customer of her mother, Marguerite Wise, also a prostitute. Marguerite is later killed by the KKK leader, Richard Goode, who was also a regular customer. Johnnie wants justice for the death of her mother, and seeks the help of Napoleon Bentley. Bentley is a white Spaniard, who owns one of the hottest clubs on the black side of New Orleans. In exchange for sleeping with him, the married Napoleon grants Johnnie justice, while betraying his own morals. Lucas Matthews, Johnnie's boyfriend and Napoleon's employee, has an affair with Marla Bentley, Napoleon's wife. Lucas' inability to keep away from Marla's lust puts his life on the line. Bubbles, Napoleon's bodyguard and right hand man, constantly warns Johnnie and Lucas that the things they are doing are wrong and dangerous, but these warnings are meaningless to the naive teenagers. After Johnnie quits prostituting, she gets a job as a maid for the Beauregards. Though Johnnie doesn't have to work, she wants to get to know the white side of her family. Ethel Beauregard, Johnnie's boss, is unaware that Johnnie is her blood relative. On her first day she meets Katherine, the cook, who believes that she is queen of the house, and that the Beauregards praise her. Her thoughts of her high status are soon crushed when Johnnie sits at the table for breakfast with the Beauregards, and then feeds her sickly grandfather, Nathaniel. As Johnnie's life progresses and she tries to find the answers to all her questions, Lucas' trouble starts to unravel. One day Lucas is ordered by Napoleon to take Marla to Shreveport, Louisiana to pick out a new car. He doesn't want to go for the fact that he know he will fall into Marla's trap once again. As they make a pit stop, Lucas meets Preston, who pitches the idea that he should start selling marijuana for some fast money. When Lucas returned home, he went to Johnnie's house so they could fix their relationship. He also told Johnnie of his idea to start selling marijuana. Johnnie opposed at first, because Bubbles had warned him of these fast money ideas, but soon changed her mind and helped him carve a safe, secret plan. As Lucas and Johnnie progress, Napoleon's and Bubble's old enemies return. Vinnie Milano and John Stefano, some ten years ago, wanted to have Napoleon killed in prison, but his attempts failed. The black side of New Orleans was supposed to be Vinnie's, but Sam gave it to Napoleon instead, and Vinnie hated that. So once John heard that there was a race riot over the killing of Richard Goode he asked Sam for permission to terminate Napoleon. When Sam said no Stefano told Salvatore Porcella, his bodyguard, to take a trip to Chicago to pay Vinnie a visit, and get him to do their dirty work. When he returned to New Orleans his life was shortly ended before he could tell Stefano what happened, and that Connie Giovanni knew of their plans. Napoleon still yearned for Johnnie and would stop at nothing to get her, but first he knew that Lucas had to die. So he sent Bubbles to find Lucas' enemy, Billy Logan. It was now Thanksgiving and, Lucas was on the run for selling marijuana. Johnnie's life was going good until she got that call. Now that Lucas was in jail looking at 15&nbsp;years, Johnnie was desperate for help so she went to Napoleon. Everything was going down hill for Johnnie, her stock broker stole all her money, Lucas is in jail, and now she could possibly be pregnant. She believes that Napoleon is trustworthy, but he planned all this. Sadie tries to help, but doesn't know how, so she just listens and helps educate Johnnie's young mind on the harsh ways of people. Johnnie can't even begin to think of how to handle all this. "Will God help?" She asks herself, Johnnie Wise's young life was going so great, but she now realizes she can't trust everyone and how cold the world really is.
26793308	/m/0bmj2yq	In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu				 Dreaming of freedom from a life of brute servitude, hard labor, and debt to a tyrannical landlord, Papa Santuzzu and his wife, Adriana, push their beloved children to immigrate to La Merica, the Land of Opportunity. In his "wild and giddy imagination," Papa Santuzzu ardently believes in the ease of attaining the American Dream, the promise of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all, and rests assured that his children will thrive in this great nation of abundance. Following the painful, yet exuberant, process of the Santuzzu children's displacement from their homeland and relocation in Papa Santuzzu's conceived lush "faraway garden," Ardizzone's novel re-imagines the meaning of such a journey, where every obvious gain entails some unforeseen sacrifice. A loving tribute to Sicilian American culture, In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu resounds with the traditional folklore and songs of Sicily, implanting within our hearts a vibrant and compassionate perspective of the struggles, joys, and proliferation of diasporic communities in modern America. In their earnest exodus to America, the Santuzzu children arduously clear away the weeds and briars in what seems a vast and rugged wilderness, managing to cultivate their own unknown, yet nonetheless beautiful, version of their Papa's paradisiacal vision—building, at last, a home-away-from home.
26793447	/m/0bmdy5k	Heart of the Order				 The main character, Danny "Kiss of the Wolf" Bacigalupo, a baseball player from Chicago's North Side with "blood on his bat." In an open letter to his son, Danny recaps his life and explains how an accidental death, guilt, Catholicism, amnesia, a good glove, a good level swing, and the love of a fat woman with beautiful eyes can shape a life. Profoundly influenced by the accidental death of a neighborhood kid during a ball game (one of Danny's line drives struck him in the Adam's apple), Danny "suffers" the schizophrenic presence of the dead boy throughout high school, the minor leagues, and major league baseball. Bacigalupo's story begins with a flippant, jocular tone; however, it quickly hits a comfortable, engaging stride, describing the thrills, agonies, and occasional epiphanies of growing up Catholic, Italian, poor, and naturally athletic.
26793737	/m/0bmkfvf	In the Name of the Father				 A novel deeply in the American grain that tells the story of the funny and painful transit to manhood accomplished (and endured) by Tonto Schwartz. It's the story of an emotional search for a lost parent and for a way of living. While young Tonto moves forward through successive rites of passage the psychological direction of the novel is backward in time as he struggles to understand the father he never knew. Set on Chicago's tough North Side, In the Name of the Father is a lean and elegant portrait of an American youth, a book about Chicago, Catholic education, first friends, and first loves. Its hero is a young man gifted with passion who fights his way through the grim realities of his life to a remarkable resolution.
26797733	/m/0bm8rmb	Settlers in Canada				 The story is centered around a reasonably well off family (the Campbells) who lose their estate and decide to emigrate to Canada. It begins after they have inherited the family estates, and have settled down there. Their eldest son is has gone to college and the second son is in the navy. One day a claimant to the estate appears. His claim proves to be true and the Campbells must give up the estate. Mr. Campbell had given up his business to take over the estate and with the legal costs as well they have very little money left. They just have enough to journey to Canada, and take up a settlement near Lake Ontario. The family is united in their troubles and they pull together to make their farm a success, in the process, dealing with the weather, hostile Indians and forest fires. Eventually a letter arrives to say that the relative who had taken the estate, has died, and it is now theirs once again. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell travel home and the rest of the family go their separate ways.
26797749	/m/0bmbt5j	Glitz	Elmore Leonard	1985		 Psycho mama's boy Teddy Magyk has a serious jones for the Miami cop who put him away for raping a senior citizen—but he wants to hit Vincent Mora where it really hurts before killing him. So when a beautiful Puerto Rican hooker takes a swan dive from an Atlantic City high-rise and Vincent naturally shows up to investigate the questionable death of his "special friend," Teddy figures he's got his prey just where he wants him. But the A.C. dazzle is blinding the Magic Man to a couple of very hard truths: Vincent Mora doesn't forgive and forget ... and he doesn't die easy.
26801416	/m/0bmc_2_	The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole				 The Createst Man In Cedar Hole is a novel about small-town life, growing up, and, above all, what it takes to be great. Cedar Hole is a mossy, dank town where only the grass seems to possess ambition. Trapped for generations by their lack of initiative, imagination, and optimism, the contentious locals feel bonded only by their distrust of the outside world. The pallor of lackluster Cedar Hole is only magnified by its neighboring community, Palmdale, a comparatively upper crust, gentrified community where the houses are as superior to those of Cedar Hole as the people who live within them. Into this gloomy world are born two boys, Robert J. Cutler and Francis "Spud" Pinkham. Yet their tie to Cedar Hole is their only commonality as they couldn't be more different. Like Cedar Hole, Francis lacks confidence, vitality or distinction while Robert is a preternaturally wise, courteous boy who effortlessly earns the admiration of those around him. Forced for much of his life to exist in the dark, deeply etched shadow of Robert's accomplishments, Francis struggles against everyone's expectations (including his own) to find his own niche of success and happiness.
26801502	/m/0bm920z	Inventing the AIDS Virus	Peter Duesberg	1996	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Duesberg's principal assertions are that: * AIDS is not an infectious disease. * HIV as the cause of AIDS fails Koch's postulates. * HIV is a passenger virus unrelated to AIDS. * The symptoms of AIDS are caused by the drugs used to treat the condition; recreational drug use; malnutrition; and unsanitary living conditions. * American public health and science agencies stifle creativity and suppress the true causes of AIDS. The book's central premise, that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, has been completely rejected by the scientific community as a form of AIDS denialism, since HIV has been isolated and shown to be the cause of AIDS.
26811101	/m/0bmbrgs	The Gods Return				 Prologue In Palomir, the priest of Franca, Salmson, calls forth the Worm, a giant worm that spews a black ash cloud from its mouth that melts the flesh off of whomever it touches, through the use of blood sacrifices. Using a hair of the Lady he restrains it and gives it into the keeping of Archas, a pirate. Salmson tells him that he must always possess the talisman, or the Worm will devour all the world as it did to its own. Upon summoning the worm, they see through to the worms home world, it is barren, lifeless, and completely covered in a grey ash. The Main Events Following the events of The Mirror of Worlds Garric, Sharina, Cashel and Ilna have been reunited on Pandah, the new capital of the continent. When they begin receiving reports of rat armies moving forth from Palomir under the influence of its Emperor and the forbidden gods (Franca in particular), they are forced to separate to save the kingdom. Garric and Tenoctris take the army to Haft where they have reports that an army of Rat men are advancing. Garric leaves control of the city in the hands of Sharina as his regent. Upon arriving in Haft Garric is met by his father Reise, who urges him to return to Barca's Hamlet and visit his mother. The Army moves to Barca's Hamlet and Garric visits his mother, assuring her that despite the lack of blood relationship she is still the only mother he has ever known. We next find Garric on the march, his troops run into a foraging party of the rat men, Garric rides out to meet them with a squadron of cavalry and a regiment of infantry. In the course of the brief battle Garric discovers that the scent of the Rat men causes horses to either run in fear, or attack in a fit of rage. Garric is almost killed in the course of the battle but is saved by a platoon of infantrymen. Garric orders the recovery of some of the bodies and brings one to Tenoctris, who upon examining the corpse discovers how they are made. She informs Garric that the rats are created by stealing the souls of the dead, and putting them in the bodies of rats. She also informs him that they must venture into a different plane of existence to find Lord Munn and ask him to close the Ivory Gate, through which the souls of the dead are being stolen. Guided by a boatman, they come to a temple and awaken Lord Munn, who then closes the Ivory Gate, halting the creation of further rat legions. Returning to their own world, Garric and Tenoctris battle the legions of the Emperor and defeat them. Cashel travels with Liane and Rasile to Dariada. There they hope to stop the Worm, which now approaches the city to destroy it. They take counsel from the Tree Oracle and journey to awaken the hero Gorand, who had defeated the Worm once before and then was driven from Dariada by its people. Coming to a different world, they defeat the Lord and then pass through a gate where they defeat a pair of wizards and awake Gorand. While he is reluctant to return, he follows them out. In Dariada, he possesses the Tree Oracle, and destroys the worm. In the midst of the fighting, Cashel becomes the Shepherd, the last of the Gods to return. Ilna goes south at the request of former Admiral Zettin where she searches for one of his relatives. There she is taken by a wizard who convinces her to steal a box that belonged to the wizards deceased husband. They go down to his grave and there Ilna opens the box, meeting Usun. She travels on and comes to a new land where she meets King Perus, Princess Perrine and Prince Perrin slaves to a great ape who wants to be King and God of all. Ilna defeats the ape with her weaving and battles Hili, the Queen of Hell. Upon killing Hili, Ilna becomes the Sister, the second of the returned gods. Sharina remains on Pandah as regent where she is confronted by a new religion worshiping Lord scorpion. A mysterious figure Black enters Sharina's dreams and tells her that she is to be the high priestess of this new religion. Scorpions now run loose through the city, working as spies. Sharina befriends Burne, a speaking rat, who acts as her personal scorpion catcher. Brune is instrumental in capturing one of the new priests of the scorpion cult, a former priest of the Shepherd. When the priest is questioned he reveals that Black always appears in his dreams, and tells him where to preach, confirming for Sharina that she was not merely having a bad dream. As Black's plot is unveiled, Sharina besieges the former Temple of the Shepherd where Black has made a fortress. She defeats a large scorpion with the help of the army and then duels Black alone. Upon his doom she becomes the Lady, the first of the returned gods. Epilogue King Garric and his wife Liane supervise the erection of a new temple devoted to the three gods. They carve statues for Sharina, the Lady; Cashel, the Shepherd; and Ilna, the Sister. With the help of the Gods, Garric says, they will rule.
26818587	/m/0bmhcw_	The Dive From Clausen's Pier				 The story begins with a group of close friends from small town Madison, Wisconsin head to Clausen’s Pier to celebrate Memorial Day. Carrie Bell has been thinking, for a long time, of how her longtime relationship with fiancé Mike Mayer is wilting away. As everyone has noticed her withdrawal from Mike, Mike decides to win back her attention by taking a daring dive off of the pier into the shallow waters below. As a result of this dive, he breaks his neck and becomes paralyzed. While all of the friends do their best to help him adapt to the situation, Carrie finds herself under too much pressure to stay in the situation, and impulsively moves to New York. In New York, Carrie attempts to come to terms with who she is as a person. She faces the guilt of leaving behind her life and paraplegic fiancé. She finds herself in love with a new man, Killroy, who helps her find herself. Carrie, being exposed to the fast-paced and electric city life, finds her release in fashion. However, the guilt becomes too much for Carrie and she is drawn back to the Midwest. She finds that the bonds are still strong and that while New York was an escape for her, her life is truly in Madison. She returns to her hometown and makes strong efforts to rebuild her relationships not only with Mike, but with her friends, family, and herself.
26826990	/m/02vpjdz	Whitethorn Woods	Maeve Binchy	2006	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is told through the stories of numerous people who are somehow connected to a town in Ireland by the name of Rossmore. The town faces a major dilemma as news surfaces that a new highway is being built through the area, which could threaten to disrupt the peaceful and undisturbed life that the town has enjoyed so far. fi:Valkeiden kukkien lehto
26827117	/m/0bmj6b4	24 for 3	Charles Boyle	2007		 A woman whose life is split between her lover (a loss adjuster) and husband worries about the whereabouts of her teenage son and wonders about the rules of cricket. Her husband draws elaborate diagrams of field positions, in contrast her lover prefers mystery. As the woman becomes more intrigued by the game she draws parallels between the characters in her life and the strategies of the game...
26828366	/m/0bmcqjy	Midshipman Bolitho and the Avenger				 Bolitho and Dancer are given leave from the Gorgon after its return to Plymouth for a refit. They decide to spend this holiday at the Bolitho estate. However, soon after they arrive a taxman is killed. Because they are the only agents of the King locally, they must investigate the body and suspect that he was killed by either smugglers or wreckers. Soon after, Hugh Bolitho arrives, charged with finding and capturing whoever committed the crime, and Bolitho and Dancer are ordered temporarily under his command. With the midshipman aboard, they hunt the wreckers. They capture a vessel smuggling guns, and learn that they are connected to the shipwreckers. Trying to set a trap, they send the guns in a small convey under the command of Dancer. The convey runs into an ambush in which Dancer is captured. The smugglers release Dancer who recognizes the voice of their leader, as a local member of the landed gentry. He attempts to flee to France in a private yacht, however a lucky suggestion by Bolitho allows Hugh to catch the yacht in flight, which the Avenger captures with little resistance.
26829005	/m/0bmc2k0	The Big Honey Hunt	Stan and Jan Berenstain			 At the beginning of the book, around the Berenstain Bears' table, Mama Bear announces that they are out of honey and tells Papa Bear to go get some more. He agrees and takes their son, Small Bear, along with him. However, he ignores Mama Bear's advice to go to the store to buy the honey and tries to collect wild honey instead. To that end, he and Small Bear follow around a bee as it flies from tree to tree. At each tree, Papa Bear declares that he is sure there is honey inside of it, but instead variously encounters an owl, a porcupine, and a family of skunks. When they do finally find a tree full of honey, it is protected by a swarm of bees. The bees chase them down to the river, where the bears jump in to avoid them. After the bees leave and the bears exit the water, Papa Bear gives up and decides to buy the honey from the store, as Mama Bear originally suggested.
26832475	/m/0bmf_0t	The Twelfth Card	Jeffery Deaver	2005-06-07	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The story starts out in a museum where Geneva Settle, a high-school student in Harlem, is researching information for a paper about her ancestor, Charles Singleton. While she is looking at an old newspaper, Thompson Boyd, an unfeeling, professional killer, attempts to murder her. As his attempts continue, each time he leaves behind a clue which either helps or misleads Lincoln Rhyme. Amelia Sachs, Fred Dellray, Mel Cooper, and Lon Sellitto help Lincoln to solve why Boyd is after Settle. Rhyme believes initially that Geneva was the witness to a planned terrorist attack. It is eventually revealed that Boyd was hired to kill her because of her ancestor's secret. Singleton’s secret was that he owned fifteen acres of prime land in Manhattan in the 1800s. Rhyme had discovered through the investigation of the crime that Geneva's ancestor was falsely accused of murder and had his land stolen. The person who bought the land ended up creating a huge company in the modern time. As the land was not legally sold, all of Singleton's relatives were legally entitled to compensation over the course of 200 years. The chase to catch Boyd and all of his accomplices continue throughout a two day period. Throughout the story, there are also some other smaller story lines and this crime eventually leads to the solutions of other crimes. Some of the people in the novel are not who they appear to be. One of Boyd's accomplices pretends to be the guidance counselor at Settle’s high school. Also, a common vandal and criminal turns out to be Settle’s dad.
26837361	/m/0bmch36	Beauty	Raphael Selbourne	2009	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Set in Wolverhampton, England, Beauty relays the tribulations of ten days in the life of Beauty Begum, a nineteen-year-old Muslim Bengali woman who has survived a substantial degree of physical and emotional harm from her family. As a consequence of the fact that the novel is told using an oscillating narrator, the reader has the benefit of 'hearing' the thoughts of the main characters. At the beginning of the novel, Beauty is again living with her family after having returned from Bangladesh, where she was supposed to be the wife of a mullah more than twice her age, an arranged marriage that has not worked out due to Beauty's opposition. Having preserved her virginity, and having been pronounced dumb and insane by her family, she now realizes that she is again being singled out to marry someone for whom she does not care. The first few chapters provide an account of her unhappy life, having to provide meals for the rest of the family according to precise specifications, being verbally and physically abused by family members and only being allowed out of the home to attend English classes. Her one act of rebellion – her leaving home before it is too late – causes her first encounter with the world of "white people." She meets Mark Aston, a young ex-con who is trying hard to stay on the right path as well as Peter Hemmings, his middle-class neighbour. Peter has been unable to commit himself to his relationship with Kate Morgan, a career woman whose sophisticated feminist demands have alienated her from him. Beauty also meets a group of elderly residents of an old people's home where she finds work. Although she is appalled at many aspects of white people's lives, Beauty realizes that she can also benefit from her interactions with them. Mark's attempts at teaching the illiterate young woman to read as well as Peter's lecturing her on Western thought, in particular atheism and Darwinism, help her gain some practical knowledge and skills but also reconsider her own prejudices and strengthen her own faith. At the same time, Beauty is exposed to the bureaucracy of the welfare state and the futility of its endeavours to help those in need. Somewhat empowered, Beauty, who has successfully fought off all timid advances by both Mark and Peter, has to choose between her family duty and her own freedom.
26837659	/m/0bmjfyt	Skulduggery Pleasant: Mortal Coil	Derek Landy	2012-09-02	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Solomon Wreath is ordered by the senior necromancers to use a Sensitive to confirm if Valkyrie is the Death Bringer, the person that brings down the wall between life and death. Since the only Sensitive powerful enough, Finbar Wrong, is a friend of Valkyrie, they order Wreath to use a remnant on him to force him to comply. However, when he does so, the remnant can only see Darquesse, making Wreath think Valkyrie will be the one to defeat her. The vision makes the remnant believe Darquesse is a messiah for the remnants, and attempts to possess Wreath. When this fails, it travels to the Midnight Hotel, possesses Shudder, and frees its fellow remnants. Having killed Marr, Tesseract returns to Roarhaven to collect payment from the Torment, but is double-crossed and nearly killed, making him go on a hunt for revenge. He manages to kill one of the conspirators easily, but after he kills the second the sanctuary is attacked by remnants and he is possessed. Valkyrie spends Christmas with her family, learning that her cousins Crystal and Carol have become more friendly as their other relatives make fun of them. However, she is told that she must leave to seal her true name, and is taken to Doctor Nye, an androdgynous doctor who's woorkshop is filled with body parts, seals her true name but then attempts to experiment on her. Since she is technically dead within the workshop, she struggles to think clearly enough to escape, but succeeds in using necromancy to force Doctor Nye to let her go. She explains to Skulduggery that she is Darquesse and has sealed her name, and the pair track down Scapegrace and take him to Grouse in the hope of preventing his body from decaying further. While the remnants begin possessing people Solomon Wreath goes back to Finbar Wrong to check up on and discovers that he has been partially mentally disturbed by the remnant, when he goes to leave however he is possessed. Valkyrie introduces Fletcher to her parents and they go dancing together, but everyone in the club is possessed by remnants and the pair only narrowly escape. They run into Crystal and Carol, and Valkyrie is forced to explain to them that magic is real in order to persuade them to leave. After several close calls while the remnants take over, searching for Darquesse, the sorcerers regroup at the Hibernian, and arrange a plan to activate the giant Soul Catcher at MacGillycuddy's Reeks to recapture the remnants. In the meantime, Grouse is unleashing a harmless virus which makes people act as though they are possessed, as a cover for the remnants' escape. To complete the plan, Valkyrie reveals Gordon's Echo Stone to help the group with his knowledge on the matter, which Skulduggery claims he suspected all along. The group split up to find the key to the Soul Catcher, motivating Tanith and Ghastly to confess they have feelings for each other. However, while the key is recovered successfully, the plan comes to a halt when Fletcher is possessed. Valkyrie is rescued from her boyfriend by Billy-Ray Sanguine, who has been hired to bring down the remnants, and who asks after Tanith, hinting he has a crush on her. Valkyrie discovers that Clarabelle has been possessed and murdered Kenspeckle, and is later attacked by Fletcher. She is saved by Caelan before escaping with Skulduggery, Ghastly, Tanith, China and Billy-Ray. The group drive to the Soul Catcher, and Skulduggery reveals to Valkyrie that he suspects that one of their group is possessed. This suspicion is proven correct when China turns on the group, launching a surprise attack on Ghastly, incapacitating Skulduggery, and attacking Tanith using symbols. She orders a Remnant to possess Ghastly instead of Tanith, and kidnaps Valkyrie. However, before she escapes, Sanguine steals the key for the Soul Catcher from her. While the group find the Soul Catcher, Valkyrie is possessed by a remnant in an effort to spur their messiah's coming, bringing out Darquesse. However, Darquesse is not the remnant in control - instead, it is a part of Valkyrie which hates everything. It overpowers the remnant possessing Valkyrie, and sets about killing all bystanders with pleasure, with no regard for whose side they are on. Skulduggery arrives after a few minutes and explains that Darquesse is what Valkyrie will become if she refuses to fight back against the apathy, bitterness and hopelessness, and she finally destroys the struggling remnant in her body, which returns her to normal. He then holds Valkyrie hostage (threatening to kill her) to force the remnants to release their bodies, which allows the Soul Catcher to retrieve them. However, the one possessing Tesseract escapes and possesses Tanith. Valkyrie and Tanith fight, but Valkyrie is unable to get her to the Soul Catcher in time: the possessed Tanith escapes. As the sorcery community recovers from several deaths, a new Council is chosen, with Ravel as Grand Mage, and Ghastly and Madam Mist as Elders - Madam Mist being a close friend of the Torment, who insists she is accepted before allowing the use of the Sanctuary. Ghastly wasn't keen on taking the job, but was keen on finding a cure for Tanith. Skulduggery tells Valkyrie that there is no cure for removing a remnant after it has taken over someone for more than 4 days. Fletcher takes Valkyrie to Australia to apologize for his actions while possessed, and she tells him that she loves him, but she finds herself unwillingly interested is Caelan. Tanith arrives at Valkyrie's house, after the four day period before a Remnant fuses itself to a host, and explains that she does not plan to attack Valkyrie, but rather to lead her subtly towards her "destiny" as Darquesse; Tanith leaves with Sanguine, her new boyfriend. Skulduggery attempts to arrest Tesseract after Tesseract kills the Torment, but during the chase Tesseract is mortally-wounded by a man claiming to be Lord Vile, who says to Skulduggery that he has returned and is building up his strength, and that he plans to kill Valkyrie, who he thinks may be the Death Bringer, and all of the Necromancers. Before he dies, Tesseract recalls that Skulduggery never fought Vile, and asks if Vile's necromancy reanimated him, but Skulduggery does not answer. Tesseract asks Skulduggery to bring him outside as a dead man's last request and he dies looking out at the sunrise.
26839511	/m/0c020xz	The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet	David Mitchell	2010-05-13	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The novel begins in the summer of 1799 at the Dutch East Indies Company trading post Dejima in the harbor of Nagasaki and tells the story of a Dutch trader's love for a Japanese midwife who is, however, spirited away into a sinister mountain temple cult.
26839587	/m/0bm94cc	The Nader Report on the Federal Trade Commission	Edward F. Cox	1970		 It is important to note that this report is based on the FTC as it was in the 1960s. During this time, the FTC was under scrutiny for major weaknesses. One year after the Nader Report was published, the ABA Commission to Study the FTC also issued a report criticizing the FTC, exploring whether or not the FTC should be abolished. The main arguments of the Nader Report were: * The FTC is ineffective. * The FTC is passive about its duties, is not proactive about discovering violations, delays actions to an unreasonable extent, and has ineffective enforcement practices. * The FTC should prioritize problems that have a high area of impact (e.g., many potential victims, particularly vulnerable victims, extraordinary cost to the victims). * The FTC needs to improve detection of such problems, particularly through direct grassroots involvement and active investigation. * The FTC needs to resolve the fundamental process and power issues that prevent it from taking action in a timely manner. * The FTC should not be a "friend" to business; it needs to be feared, and it needs to provide strong disincentives to businesses for committing violations. * The FTC should not be able to hide behind secrecy and powerful political and business relationships.
26842819	/m/0bmj518	Into the Gauntlet	Margaret Haddix	2010-08-31	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Into the Gauntlet begins as Amy and Dan Cahill enter a London hotel tired and with no lead whatsoever. They receive another lead, but this is stolen by Isabel Kabra via a pet monkey, who leaves them a coin with a fancy script K on it. However, Dan, who has already memorized it, rewrites it. Amy looks all over the Internet to find out what it means, and she is about to shout out when Nellie realizes that the Kabra coin is a bug. She destroys it, along with three other bugs from each of the other three branches. Amy then tells them that the clue leads to William Shakespeare, so they go to a performance of Romeo and Juliet in The Globe Theatre. Once there, they confront the Starlings, who are back in the clue hunt after being sent to the hospital in an explosion back in The Maze of Bones, and steal their lead, but they are trapped by Jonah Wizard, who was forced back into the clue hunt by Cora Wizard, the Holts, Alistair Oh, and the Kabras. Hamilton Holt steals the piece of paper with the lead, but Dan rips off the top and bottom, and he and Amy run away while everyone else is fighting over the rest of the lead. Their section of the lead says: "For this great man we sing was b here". The rest of the word that goes with the letter "b" was torn off, so they assume that it was supposed to be "born". At Shakespeare's birthplace, Amy and Dan realize that the word was supposed to be "buried" and are the last to arrive at Shakespeare's grave site besides Isabel Kabra, Eisenhower Holt, and Cora Wizard. However, they are surprised to find that no one is fighting with each other and are instead making unsuccessful exchanges of clues and information. The teams eventually leave the Cahills in the grave site with video cameras, but they are aware of this and communicate by writing on a sheet of paper while pretending to draw a picture of Shakespeare. They then go outside to Shakespeare's grave, and Dan does a rubbing of it. However, just as Dan finds a secret line that does not show on the tombstone, the other teams arrive. Dan pretends to mess up and tears the paper apart, careful to rub just the first four lines when someone from each team asks for a rubbing. Once everyone leaves, he makes a rubbing for them but includes the last four lines, in which Shakespeare asks them to dig up his grave. Inside Shakespeare's grave, Amy and Dan find a metal pole with the words, "Madrigal Stronghold * Cahill Ancestral Home" encircling it. They also find a ribbon with seemingly random letters on it but are forced to unravel it as the other teams appear and chase them. Meanwhile, Sinead Starling steals a digitized version of the ribbon from the grave's guardian while everyone else plants a homing device on Amy and Dan, who have recreated the ribbon out of the bottom of Amy's old t-shirt and wrapped it around the metal pole to find the coordinates to the house of the original Cahills- a house on an island off the coast of Ireland. The other teams follow them there, but they are forced to work together as they make their way through the gauntlet, a series of doors with questions about the clue hunt. However, every door except the last is opened, and when they reach the vial that supposedly has the master serum, they find that Isabel Kabra beat them to it. She reveals that the serum is fake and forces them to give her all their clues to save the people they love. However, when Isabel is about to drink it, Ned Starling bursts into the room, and she turns towards him, about to shoot him with her gun. Everyone unites and charges her, knocking the gun and the serum out of her hands. But then only Amy and Dan are holding her down while everyone else chases after the serum, and she reaches the gun, knocking Dan in the stomach with it. She is about to shoot him when Amy, out of options, grabs the vial with the serum and slams it down on Isabel's head. It shatters, destroying the serum, but everyone gives Amy and Dan their clues because they were the only ones that held down Isabel while they all chased after the serum. After finding their way out of the gauntlet, the teams separate on amiable terms, and Amy and Dan stay behind with Fiske Cahill and Mr. McIntyre, who give them a letter from Grace. They then reveal that the entire Clue Hunt was just a preparation for the battle with another family. Amy and Dan are left in the legal custody of both their Great-Uncle Fiske and Nellie, but the letter makes it clear that their adventures aren't over yet. The pictures under the page are secret code that means 'The Cahills aren't the only ones looking for the clue. The Vesper is rising.'
26846306	/m/0bmbjqm	An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President	Randall Robinson			 Robinson begins by mention of the date and time of February 29, 2004 4:30 a.m., stating, "The real events of the story are very unlike those described to the general public." He knows that the conventional accounting of Aristide's removal from office is quite different than the entire history he is about to tell. The date of December 9, 1492 is described as the most fateful of days… Then, there were an estimated 8 million native Taínos living on the island of Hispaniola. "Within 20 years, there were fewer than 28,000." "Thirty years on, by 1542, only 200 Taínos remained." Many chapters are also entitled with a date. November 17, 1803 is a good example. This date represents a date that Robinson describes as significant because, "It may have been the most stunning victory won for the black world in a thousand years. There has been nothing quite like it, before or since." Here he is describing the defeat of slavery, in Haiti, by the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture. The ramification of these dates in Haitian history is monumental, per Robinson. "As a direct result of what the Haitian revolutionaries did to free themselves, France lost two thirds of its world trade income." Furthermore, the Haitian revolutionaries had a global perspective on fighting slavery. They worked with Simón Bolívar in an effort to fight slavery in South America. And they also "rolled out an unconditional welcome mat to anyone who escaped European colonialism in Africa or fled bondage from a slave plantation anywhere in the Americas, North, South, or Central." Meanwhile, in the United States Thomas Jefferson said, "If this combustion can be introduced among us under any veil whatever, we have to fear it." Jefferson was fearful that the Haitian revolt might spread to slaves in America. Robinson quotes Garry Wills…"From that moment, Jefferson and the Republicans showed nothing but hostility to the new nation of Haiti." Haiti had been "the most profitable slave colony in the world" and "slaves were routinely worked to death, starved to death, or beaten to death.". "Of the 465,000 black slaves living in Haiti when the revolt began, 150,000 would die during the 12 and a half years of fighting for their freedom." Frederick Douglass is quoted as stating that the Haitian harbor of Mole St. Nicolas is of such strategic importance that, "It commands the windward passage which is the shipping lane between Haiti and Cuba." "The nation that can get it and hold it will be the master of the land and sea in its neighborhood." So for the next two hundred years, Haiti would be faced with the active hostility from the world's most powerful community of nations." The hostilities came in the form of "military invasions, economic embargoes, gunboat blockades, reparations demands, trade barriers, diplomatic quarantines, subsidized armed subversions." When the French departed from Haiti, they demanded reparations from Haiti of roughly $21 billion (in 2004 dollars). Robinson states that there were a number of important precedents in the Caribbean that shed light on the U.S. position towards Haiti. They included sending U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century to force the Dominican Republic to give Washington the power to collect customs revenues for the U.S. at the Dominican Republic's main shipping ports. This led to the U.S. invading the Dominican Republic in 1915 and occupying the country until the end of 1924. In 1937, the Dominican Republic, under the U.S. sponsored dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, massacred 35,000 Haitians. The American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull stated that, "Trujillo is one of the greatest men in Central America and in most of South America." In 1951 the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala. This occurred, according to Robinson, because the elected president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán raised the minimum wage to $1.08/day and he attempted moderate land reforms for the benefit of the Guatemalan people. In response to this, the U.S. accused the Guzman government of being under the influence of communism. Robinson states that the Guzman government had no communists in their fairly elected government and that the real reason for the U.S. aggression in the area was to protect the interest of the American owned corporation, the United Fruit Company, (now called Chiquita Brands). Furthermore, Robinson says that the U.S. supported the Haitian dictators François Duvalier, and Jean-Claude Duvalier, Henri Namphy, Leslie Manigat, and Prosper Avril. François Duvalier killed an estimated 50,000 Haitians. He ruled from 1957 to 1971. Jean-Claude Duvalier took control after his father died in 1971 and continued the brutal dictatorship until February 1986. Military rulers overthrew Aristide, not just once, but twice, once in 1991 and again in 2004. Both elections of Aristide were lawful democratic elections. "There were no charges of malfeasance, either adjudicated, or formally lodged against him." The elections also included the election of 7,500 other official government positions. Robinson describes Aristide as "a democratic president who'd been elected twice by the largest margins on record for free elections in the Americas." In 1991, shortly after Aristide was elected, he was overthrown by General Raul Cedras, Colonel Roger Biambi, and Police Chief Michel François. In 1994 those dictators were forced from power and democracy was restored. Cedras had been trained by the U.S. at the School of the Americas. Later, Michel François was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for shipping large quantities of cocaine. In 1991, the former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark formed the Investigative Commission on Haiti. The Commission reported, "200 soldiers of the U.S. Special Forces arrived in the Dominican Republic with the authorization of Dominican Republic President Hipolito Mejia, as part of the military operation to train anti-democracy Haitian rebels." Robinson states, "Thus they were prepared to scuttle a democracy, a constitution, an elected parliament, a functioning national government, to drive one man, Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of office, out of Haiti, indeed out of the Western Hemisphere." He continues to say, "To this wholly illegal and anti-democratic purpose, several forces cleaved as one. The armed rebels, the United States of America, France, Canada, the Dominican Republic, and a new association of Haitian opposition splinter groups forged, funded, and counseled, by the International Republican Institute, and the Convergence Democratique, all worked towards the overthrow of the populist Aristide. Convergence Democratique would later morph into a subversive right wing organ known as Group 184 " Haitian anti-democratic rebel leaders included Guy Phillipe, Louis-Jodel Chamblain, Ernst Ravix, and Paul Arcelin. "U.S. military officials have confirmed that 20,000 M16 rifles were given to the Dominican Republic shortly after Aristide normalized diplomatic relations with Cuba on February 6, 1996." In November 2000, Aristide was re-elected for a second term with 90% of the vote. Aristide increased the number of schools, and hospitals, and he worked for the treatment and prevention of Aids. He raised Haiti's minimum wage in 2003 from $1/day to $2/day." He also established one standard birth certificate by eliminating the previous two-tiered race and class birth certificates." In 2002 another anti-Aristide insurrection was led by Guy Phillipe, a former police precinct captain who had been trained by the CIA ." Bertrand had proclaimed that France owed Haiti $21 billion (valued in current dollars) for the money France extorted from Haiti following its successful slave rebellion, and when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped and removed from office in 2004, still 1% of the population owned 50% of the country's wealth." Robinson states, "Where the poor were concerned, the United States invariably opposed the efforts of the poor's own governments, whenever and wherever those governments tried in any serious or structured way to ameliorate the poverty of their own people. If there has ever been a circumstance in which the Americans did not take the side of the rich in efforts to quash even modest reforms to help the poor, I do not know of it." In early February 2004, the anti-Aristide rebels launched their attack by "torching fire stations, and jails…and murdering rural police officers" Per Robinson, on February 29, 2004, Aristide was kidnapped and driven out of office. Robinson states that the United States had always supported the wealthiest Haitian families such as the Mevs, the Bigios, the Apaids, the Boulos, the Nadals. Senator Christopher Dodd confirmed this when he said, "We had interests and ties with some of the very strong financial interests in the country and Aristide was threatening them." On January 1, 2004, Haiti celebrated its 200th birthday and 500,000 Haitians celebrated the fact that they now had a democratically elected government. On Saturday February 7, 2004, 1,000,000 Haitian people demonstrated in support of Aristide. They were demanding that he be allowed to finish his five-year term. They knew that his governance was being threatened. The United States, however, favored the International Republican Institute (IRI) which is a U.S. non-profit organization that builds mechanisms to support "democracy" overseas. Per Robinson, despite their claims, the IRI funded right wing wealthy opponents to the Aristide government and thereby supported the opposite of democracy. Furthermore, Stanley Lucas was the senior program officer for the IRI and he had significant Duvalier affiliations. The Bush administration through an Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere, Roger Noriega, fully supported the I.R.I. Jesse Helms, the Republican chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Aristide "insane, dictatorial, tyrannical, corrupt and a psychopath." Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, blamed Aristide for "spreading violence." Jamaican Prime Minister, P.J. Patterson, threatened to "impose sanctions on Aristide." The American television networks portrayed Aristide's departure in 2004 as if it were a voluntary departure. Randall Robinson spoke with Aristide on March 1, 2004 to learn then that Aristide had been transported to the Central African Republic against his will. Robinson was told by Aristide that Aristide had been forcibly removed from office in a coup. Per Robinson, the Haitian rebels who had removed Aristide from office, "had been trained by United States Special Forces." They were trained "in the Dominican villages of Neiba, San Cristóbal, San Isidrio, Hatillo, and Haina." Robinson states that the Armed Forces of Haiti (the Haitian Armed Forces under the Duvalier regimes), and the Front For the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH, a paramilitary death squad that fought against democracy) massacred some 5,000 Haitians between 1991 and 1994. Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a Duvalier death squad leader, was accused of war crimes committed in 1987, 1991, 1993 and 1994 including the murder of Antoine Izmery, a pro-democracy advocate. Guy Phillipe received Central Intelligence Agency training in Ecuador. He ordered paramilitary to kill Aristide supporters. Per Robinson, the opposition to democracy was "an amalgam of killers, drug runners, embezzlers, kleptocrats and sadists and included the wealthy and the elites of Haitian society." Per Robinson, the United States provided the rebels with M16s, grenades, grenade launchers, M50s. Emmanuel Constant was another player in opposition to Aristide, and along with Phillipe and Chamblain, they slaughtered thousands of innocent pro-democracy civilians. After the abduction of Aristide, George W. Bush called Jacques Chirac to thank him for French cooperation in the removal of Aristide. Robinson continues, "Condoleezza Rice had directly threatened Jamaica for offering asylum to Aristide" "The United States wanted Aristide not only out of Haiti but out of the Caribbean. Senator Christopher Dodd cited U.S. Department of Defense documents that indicated that the US did, in fact, supply 20,000 M16s to the Dominican Republic prior to the deposition of Aristide. "American officials had armed and directed the thugs, organized an un-elected and un-electable opposition, and choked the Haitian economy into dysfunctional penury." The Central African Republic President at the time was François Bozizé. The Central African Republic is French controlled. The French Defense Minister stated that the Aristides were being guarded by French soldiers in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. Robinson and Maxine Waters (member of the U.S. Congress) then obtained an offer of asylum signed by P.J. Patterson, the prime minister of Jamaica. They attempted to get François Bozizé, the president of the Central African Republic, to accept it. CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN all turned down Robinson's request to join him to report on the events surrounding the removal of Aristide from office. Robinson, however, did get Amy Goodman (an independent news reporter for Democracy Now), Sharon Hay-Webster (a member of the Jamaican parliament), Peter Eisner (a deputy foreign editor at the Washington Post), Sidney Williams (a former U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas), Ira Kurzban (one of the best known lawyers in America for Immigration and Employment Law) to join him in Bangui. Robinson states, "American decision makers only feign concern about world poverty. And they sustain the lament only so long as the pretense and its addictive but useless, solutions are profitable, directly or indirectly, to American private interests." "The force, the power plant, is money, the relentless campaign to capture it, and the God-invoked armed ruthlessness to keep it." Robinson and his entourage succeeded in getting Bozizé to release Aristide and Aristide's wife to the entourage and they took the couple to Jamaica. ." The U.S. then installed Gerard Latortue as interim president. When Latortue rescinded the Haitian demand for restitution from France, Florida House Republicans Mark Foley and Eugene Clay Shaw, Jr. introduced a house resolution commending Latortue for his great service to Haiti." Robinson states that, between the day of the abduction and the election, in 2006, of René Préval, at least 4000 Haitians had been killed by the interim government." Finally, Robinson concludes by saying "as long as one member nation of the global family of nations is free to behave toward a fellow member nation with lethal impunity—to bully, to menace, to invade, to destabilize politically or economically, to reduce to tumult—no country, so threatened, can hope to enjoy the social and political contentment that ought inherently to attend democratic practices."
26858082	/m/0bmclvv	The Head of the House of Coombe	Frances Hodgson Burnett		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lord Coombe is considered to be the best-dressed man in London. He is also a man whose public reputation, despite his formidable intellect and observant eye, is one of unmitigated wickedness. During one of his social forays, he meets a selfish young woman named 'Feather' with the face of an angel. Fascinated by her, he slowly drifts into her circle. When her husband dies unexpectedly, leaving her alone and desolate in London, he ends up taking her under his wing. Feather has a daughter named Robin, of whom she takes little notice. She treats Robin with shocking neglect and once Coombe takes over responsibility for the household's finances, Feather readily abandons poor Robin to the less-than-kindly ministrations of her nurse. In fact, Robin doesn't even know Feather is her mother for her first six years, calling her 'The Lady Downstairs'. Robin also hates Coombe, having heard a conversation that blamed him for the loss of her first friend. This was a little boy named Donal who was in fact Coombe's heir. Donal's mother disapproves both of Coombe and Feather and when she discovers that her son has been playing with Robin, she whisks him away, leaving Robin heartbroken. However, Coombe does not return this dislike and in fact makes a point of serving as her guardian, albeit without Robin's knowledge. As Robin grows, he builds her a set of rooms, engages a loving nurse for her, and eventually secures a reputable governess for her. While her mother continues to behave with the selfish freedom of a wanton child. As Robin grows, she becomes a lovely and intelligent though innocent, girl. Feather's circle includes some unsavory characters, one of whom, a German nobleman, tries to make Robin into his plaything. This caricature of Imperial German stereotypes uses Robin's desire to support herself to trap her in a house of ill repute. His plan fails mainly through the actions of Coombe, but the after-effects leave Robin crushed. One of Coombe's few true confidants is a dowager Duchess - a woman of both great intellect and great understanding who has recently lost her long-time lady companion. After Robin's experiences with the German, Coombe suggests Robin as a suitable replacement. The Duchess is the one person who knows the secret of Coombe's determination to watch over Robin and why he is willing to tolerate the activities of her mother. This secret is finally communicated to the reader as well during one of Coombe's talks with the Duchess. The Duchess does indeed take in Robin and befriends her. Robin is introduced to the Duchess' children and their friends and finally sponsors a small dance for Robin. At the dance, Robin meets Donal again as Coombe and the Duchess learn that an Austrian Archduke has just been assassinated in Serbia.
26859770	/m/0bmb2xm	A Captain's Duty			{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 A mariner of 30 years' experience when his ship was taken, Phillips utilized all security precautions to keep his crew safe and hidden, leaving him as the only possible hostage. This led to an ordeal of several days in a lifeboat in the hands of pirates, who Phillips portrays as alternately conciliatory, vicious, and unfocused. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy assembled a large task force, and tensions steadily rose, as did Phillips’ fear for his life. The book details Phillips' attempted escape and eventual rescue by U.S. Navy SEALs, and portrays Phillips' wife Andrea as loyal and strong-willed.
26875383	/m/0bmc11c	Freaky Green Eyes	Joyce Carol Oates	2003	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The novel opens with Franky explaining how "Freaky" came into her life. It was the week before her 14th birthday and she went to a college party near the Puget Sound in Washington with some friends from her high school. While there, she met Cameron (a college freshman at the University of South Carolina), who encouraged Franky to drink and tried to rape her. A strong swimmer, Franky used her legs to kick Cameron hard enough to get him off of her. Afterward, Cameron looked at her and said, "You should see your eyes! Freaky green eyes!" Franky, now 15, lives in Yarrow Heights (a suburb of Seattle) with her father, Reid Pierson, her mother Krista Pierson, her younger sister Samantha and her half brother Todd. A sports reporter, Reid had a big contract go through with a TV network and wants to celebrate with his family. Krista, however, goes to an arts and crafts convention in Santa Barbara, California instead, which angers Reid. When Krista returns home, Franky starts to notice the tension between her parents, especially after overhearing them fight. She hears her mom say she does not want to go Reid's work gatherings because she feels like she doesn't fit in with his crowd. In turn, Reid gets mad that Krista isn't fulfilling her role as a wife. Krista starts wearing scarves around her neck and long shirts to cover her wrists and arms, and Franky notices, thinking her mother is hiding bruises. Yet she cannot muster up the courage to ask her about it. Instead, she starts feeling resentful toward her mother, thinking all the fighting was Krista's fault for provoking Reid. Younger sister Samantha worries that Krista and Reid will divorce but both say that won't happen, "now or ever." Slowly, Krista moves out of the house and into a small cabin in Skagit Harbor. She starts by taking her art supplies, then clothes and her dog, Rabbit. Whenever Reid would be home, Krista would live in her cabin. When he'd Reid leave to cover sporting events, she would come back home to be with her children. Samantha would call Krista and beg her to come pick them up so they could all spend time together, but Krista would always say no, saying it was their father's decision. Reid, however, would say the opposite. Samantha's frustration angered Reid and he'd twist her arm to make her quiet, giving her welts. For the Fourth of July, Franky and Samantha go with their father to Cape Flattery to stay with one of his friends. While there, Franky learns that Reid's friend's sons steal animals from a wildlife refuge and put them in cages to make their own zoo. In the middle of the night, Franky releases all the animals. When confronted about it the next morning, she confesses but says she's not sorry. Enraged, Reid grabs Franky and shakes her very hard, stopping only after his friend pulls him away. Later that month, Reid finally lets the girls go down to Skagit Harbor to visit their mother. Franky vaguely remembers the cabin from her childhood, recognizing the fake rooster she had thought was real as a kid. Krista shows them around the property, including a small burrow hidden underneath a rock, but the reunion is cut short when Reid arrives, yelling at Franky and Samantha to pack up and get in his car. When they get in, Reid tells them Krista is having an affair and they should never forgive her for it. After that, Krista tries to call and talk to her daughters, but Reid tells the new housekeeper to forbid it. Twyla, Franky's best friend, tells Franky that Krista calls her to talk about Franky and see how she is. Twyla tells Franky that Krista said, "Don't forget Mr. Rooster!" One night, Franky phones Krista and angrily tells her she never wants to see her again. The next day, she regrets what she said and tries to find her mother's number but can't find it. She had no idea the conversation the night before would be their last. Krista (and her friend Mero Okawa) disappear. The police interview Franky about where Reid had been that night, but Franky says Reid took medication for a headache and slept the entire night. During the interview, she expresses her anger at her mother, only referring to her as "Krista Connor," not "mom." As a result of media attention on the case, Franky and her family move Reid's defense lawyer's house on Vashon Island. While there, the defense lawyer coaches Samantha and Franky, telling them that if Reid would have left in the middle of the night, they would have heard him leave. During this time, "Freaky" tries to convince Franky that something is not right. Franky searches the Internet and discovers that police investigators found "non-human" blood in the cabin, which she concludes belonged to the dog. One night, Franky dreams about her mother's cabin, and in the dream, the fake rooster is crowing. The next morning, Franky skips school and heads towards Skagit Harbor to visit her mother's cabin. She walks over toward the barn and looks into the secret burrow, where she finds her mother's journal, which Krista had kept throughout her separation with Reid. In the journal, Krista writes about how Reid beat and her threatened to kill her. After reading the journal, Franky realizes what her father has done. She also recalls waking up the night her mother disappeared, hearing Reid coming into the house through a door they never use. Franky calls her Aunt Vicky to pick her up and they go to the police station. In a second interview, Franky tells the police the truth, not what she has been coached to say by her father or the defense lawyer. Reid is convicted and sentenced to 50 years-to-life without parole for the deaths of Krista and Mero, whose bodies were found dumped at Deception Pass. Franky and Samantha, in the custody of their aunt, move to New Mexico. * Francesca "Franky" Pierson - The 15-year-old narrator and protagonist that keeps a journal to reflect on the time before her mother went missing. * Krista Pierson - Franky and Samantha's mother and also Todd's stepmother. Her maiden name is Connor (which the name she used to sign her artwork). She had been a TV announcer before marrying Reid. * Reid Pierson - Franky, Samantha, and Todd's abusive father. He had been a famous professional football player before becoming a sportscaster for CBS. * Samantha Pierson - Franky's 10-year-old sister. * Todd Pierson - Franky and Samantha's 20-year-old stepbrother who followed in his father's footsteps and plays college football. * Rabbit - Krista's Jack Russell terrier dog. * Mero Okawa - Krista's gay friend in Skagit Harbor. Reid thought he was Krista's lover. * Bonnie Lynn Byers - Reid's first wife and Todd's mother. She was killed in a boating accident. Reid was the only witness. Her case was reopened after Krista's case was concluded.
26895518	/m/0bmcclk	The Book of Khalid	Amin al-Rihani	1911	{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The novel, which is intensely autobiographical as Rihani himself immigrated as a child, tells the story of two boys, named Khalid and Shakib, from Baalbek in Lebanon (at the time, the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire) who migrate together to the United States, coming by ship through Ellis Island and enduring the classic "Via Dolorosa" of an immigrant. They move into a wet cellar in the Little Syria community of Lower Manhattan near Battery Park and begin to peddle counterfeit Holy Land trinkets and religious items throughout the city, a typical Arab endeavor in America. While Shakid, although himself a poet, is focused and accumulates savings through peddling, Khalid becomes distracted and turns away from commercial activity toward frantically consuming Western literature and participating in the New York City intellectual and bohemian scene. At one point, he burns his peddling box, decrying the dishonesty of their sales. After exhaustion from reckless "bohemian" pursuits, Khalid shifts towards party politics when he is offered the position of a functionary and ward for the Arab community in the machine politics of the city. However, Khalid insists on moral purity in his political work, causing conflict with his "Boss." As a result, he is jailed for a brief time of ten days (Shakid helps secure his release) under the charge of misapplying public funds. The two decide to return to Lebanon before long, and Khalid then shifts back to intense peddling for a time, paying off his accumulated debts and earning funds for return passage. Describing the result of their return, Christoph Schumann has stated that "the subsequent course of events mirrors the progress of his American experience: spiritual retreat, political activism, and persecution." Khalid soon engages in a series of actions that anger Maronite clerics in his home city. He refuses to attend church services and spreads pamphlets and ideas seen as heretical. Moreover, he presses his wish to marry Najma, a young cousin, but Church leaders refuse to grant consent. As result of the growing conflict, Khalid is excommunicated, Najma is forced to marry another, and Khalid moves to the mountain forests and starts to live as a hermit. During this period of exile, he contemplates nature and integrates lessons learned in America with his views on the cultural and political dilemmas of the Arab world. He evolves into a self-identified "voice" for the Arabs, and chooses to return to spread his views on liberation from the Ottoman empire and on the importance of religious unity and scientific progress. Khalid travels to different cities engaging in political and spiritual speech, periodically writing letters to Shakib. During his travels, Khalid meets an American Baha'i woman named Mrs. Gotfry with whom he discursively engages on questions of love and religion. He travels to Damascus where he speaks in the Great Mosque about his views of the West and of religious tradition, producing a riot and prompting the Ottoman authorities to pursue his arrest. He flees with Mrs. Gotfry to Baalbek, where he meets Shakib and learns that Najma, along with her young son, is abandoned and now ill. All together (Khalid, Mrs. Gotfry, Najma, her son, and Shakib), they flee to the Egyptian desert to escape the Ottoman authorities. After an idyllic period in the desert of several months, Mrs. Gotfry and Shakib leave. Najma's son, Najid, dies suddenly of an unexpected illness, and Najma relapses and follows him in death in her grief. Khalid disappears and does not contact Shakib; his whereabouts are unknown.
26895596	/m/0cmd73q	The Seventh Scroll	Wilbur A. Smith	2008	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 This book is set in the present day and follows the exploits of adventurer Nicholas Quenton-Harper and his love interest, the beautiful Dr. Royan Al Simma as they try and uncover the tomb of Tanus as described in River God. Wilbur Smith makes references to himself in the book, parodying the conventions of violence and sex often seen in his work. Duraid Al Simma and his wife Royan decipher the seventh scroll, which Taita had placed in the tomb of Lostris. Unfortunately, before they could proceed further, they are attacked and their work is stolen. Duraid is brutally murdered, but Royan manages to escape into the night, for help. She narrowly escapes death for the second time. Royan heads to England and there convinces an old friend of Duraid, Nicholas, of the existence of the fabulous treasure that is in the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose. During her stay in England she narrowly escapes death for the third time as she and her mother drive back home. Struck with confusion, fear and insecurity, she entrust herself into Nicholas's companionship. Together they travel to Ethiopia following clues laid out by Taita. As the pair journey along together, they grow fond of each other's company, with heart-felt love and romance. They find the location of the tomb, but are then attacked by the Pegasus group, which was also behind earlier attempts on Royan's life. Once again Royan and Nicholas's work are stolen. It is revealed that the Pegasus group is owned by Herr von Schiller, a ruthless German collector. With the help of his right hand man Jake Helm, Colonel Nogo, and Duraid's former assistants under his command, he acquires a strong force that are willing to go to extreme lengths for his sake. Colonel Nogo was put in charge of keeping Royan and Nicholas out of their way and Duraid's assistant was in charge of exploiting the works Nicholas and Royan discovered, while Jake Helm provided them with Pegasus's facilities. Meanwhile, with the help of an old friend of Nicholas, Mek Nimmur (leader of a notorious force of Christian gangs, 'Shuftas'), Nicholas and Royan sneak back into Ethiopia for the second time, but this time illegally and with equipment to search for the treasure. Accompanying them is an old fisherman who has knowledge of building dams. He is employed under Nicholas's demand, to help in their quest. With spies of Herr Von Schiller's gloating around Nicholas and Royans's premises, the question of how Nicholas and Royan manage to find the tomb and escape from von Schiller forms the rest of the novel.
26899255	/m/0bmdhm4	Rapture of the Deep		2009-09-16	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel begins minutes after the final confrontation with Jacky's Head Agent Jardineaux that was just about to kill her at the end of the last novel (My Bonny Light Horseman.) Her schooner, 'Nancy B. Alsop', comes to receive Jacky from Paris. Once aboard, her butler Master John Higgins cleans her up and Jacky tells him of her duty as a nightclub dancer and spy for the British. She also tells of Jean-Paul, who she had a relationship with along the course of events. When reunited with Jaimy who's done recovering from an attack on sea, the two decide to get married when at home in Britain. When in London, she reunites with friends Mairead, Judy, little Joannie and her grandfather Pastor Alsop (her late mother's father.) Jacky dines with Jaimy's family, despite the strained relationship with Mother Fletcher. She manages to charm Jaimy's father and brother, but his mother still hates him. On the day of the wedding, Mairead, Judy, and Joannie help get Jacky ready for the wedding but soon, there's a massive interruption. And it's none other than British Intelligence; the ones who assigned Jacky's first previous mission as a spy. Mairead and Judy fight the British back but Jacky is taken along with Jaimy. Jacky reunites with Mr. Peel and Lord Grenville. When Jacky acts up, Lord Grenville reminds her of past relationships with Spanish pirate, Flaco Jimenez, Captain Lord Richard Allen, and Jean-Paul de Valdon just to inform Jaimy of her cheating ways that he's already been subjected to back outside of New Orleans. Soon when they come to terms that Jacky was about to embark on another mission, the two officials inform Jacky of the assignment at hand. Back in 1733, the ship 'Santa Magdalena' sunk due to a dangerous typhoon and on the ship was millions upon millions of gold in coins. Britain wants to retrieve that gold to help the economy and Jacky is promised a percentage of that gold and a possible pardon from the King himself, despite her crimes of piracy. Luckily for Jacky, Jaimy is allowed to be with her on the mission but they will be on separate ships. Both ships are Jacky's: the 'Dolphin' and 'Nancy B. Alsop.' On the 'Dolphin', the ship will be commandeered by none other than Captain Hannibal Hudson while Jacky is to be captain of the 'Nancy B.' Jaimy is stationed on the Dolphin along with Lieutenant Flashby. Despite the fact that Flashby will be in on this mission, Jacky will have aboard her crew Davy and Tink from the Dread Brotherhood of the 'Dolphin.' Also on board her schooner is Higgins, little Joannie Nichols and Daniel Prescott. Jacky is also reunited with Dr. Sebastian who is "the leader of scientific expedition." But as of right now, Jacky don't know of anyone else who is to be helping on the expedition with the exception of her very own John Thomas and Smasher McGee. What Jacky is assigned to do is sail to the Florida Keys to where the 'Santa Magdalena' is located under the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean. When allowed to leave, Jacky and Jaimy are aware of their positions on separate boats. Another regulation is that there's to be no sexual intercourse between the two of them; the British have no use for a pregnant agent. They depart on their two separate ships and sail for Boston. In Spanish waters, Jacky is required to take up a disguise as an American sponge diver called Jacqueline Bouvier. The Spanish are conflicting with the British so Jacky and her crew must maintain an American cover when in the Caribbean. Jacky prepares to revisit the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls and wears her outrageous red wig and mantilla for the occasion. When there, she reunites with Annie who is married Davy and all her old Lawson Peabody friends and have dinner. She sees her friend and biographer, Amy Trevelyne, who has recently taken a liking for Ezra Pickering. Jacky reunites with Captain Hudson and Jaimy; Among the others aboard for the journey are Flashby and Mr. Bennett. Hudson show Jacky a contraption called the diving bell which will aid Jacky underwater whilst swimming for sponges and scavenging the 'Santa Magdalena for the gold supply. And the one designing the bell is none other than Professor Tilden himself; he's the scientific expert aboard the 'Dolphin' just as Dr. Sebastian is, aboard the 'Nancy B. Alsop.' Before setting sail for the Keys, Jacky tells Captain Hudson to be on the lookout for any ship-jumpers that might get on board for information and turn it in to the opposing forces such as the Spanish. Jacky and Jaimy enjoy time together but must depart for a couple of weeks. While docked in Charleston, Jacky, Davy, and Tink, enjoy time together and visit a couple of taverns where she performs her songs on pennywhistle and violin The next day, Jacky and the group run along a slave trade being done. Black people are being auctioned to the highest bid while being laughed by a racist crowd. Jacky is deeply angered by this kind of trade going on but bids for a rotund, old slave woman named Jemimah. Despite being laughed at by the local Colonel Ashley Tarleton for wanting an old Negro woman as a slave, she takes Jemimah to the 'Nancy B.' Despite the lukewarm reception Jacky gets from her crew, Jemimah is taken in as the ship's cook and mother figure to Joannie and Daniel. Jacky then talks to Jemimah personally to let her know she is freed as a slave and when they get to Havana, she has the option to walk away with the pay she gets from Faber Shipping or stay as a permanent member of the ship. Jemimah says she will decide on that later. Soon Jacky is prepping on her swimming skills and gets Davy to drop his drawers and take a swim after an occasional Sunday lesson. With the crew laughing at him for his fear of swimming; they get Joannie to do it too, much to her dismay. When they get to the Keys, Jacky starts swimming immediately; her first dive is a dangerous one though. She has a run-in with what Dr. Sebastian knows as a moray eel. Despite Dr. Sebastian's interest in the creature, Jacky remains terrified after being put back on board. Jacky decapitated the eel and gave the carcass to Dr. Sebastian. Studying the coordinates of the 'Santa Magdalena's' resting place from Carlos Maria Santana Juarez's journals from 1733, Jacky decides to explore the nearby island. She notices how there's a large amount of mangroves in the area and takes Dr. Sebastian, Joannie, and Daniel along for the trip. When there, Jacky puts a red sash around a mangrove bush to indicate what island it be. Jemimah told the kids to collect oysters and fresh water. The water's too salty as desired so they go back with no water. Dr. Sebastian notice fiddler crabs on the island and soon, the group are ambushed by alligators. It turns out the island is one big alligator pit and while they luckily escape. They have to save little Joannie from one of the gators which breaks a couple of her ribs and gives her head a hard knock. Once aboard, they tend to her immediately and think she's not going to make it. But Joannie does in the end, and stays in Jacky's bed for a week or so with Daniel constantly at her side. Jemimah soon exposes Jacky to the chickens Higgins brought aboard while in port. Jacky makes note of a fiercely territorial banty rooster that she may have use for someday. Soon, Jacky is ready to dive down and find the 'Santa Magdalena'; the entire crew disagrees with her all except Dr. Sebastian that tells her that it's he that specifically 'instructs' her to do it. Jacky dives into the water and within minutes, she finds the sunken ship. After such success, the moment is ruined by the sight of a Spanish man-of-war. The boats is called the San Cristobal and it is massive in size and in ammunition. The officer in charge demands who the fleet is and what's their purpose in Spanish waters. Unconvinced, the men scrounge the 'Nancy B.' and find no evidence to prove the crew are fakes. In the mean time, Jacky is hiding out in the waters and soon come up. She meets the cold-tempered yet dashing lieutenant and gets water on his shiny black boots. The Spaniard forces Jacky to shine his shoes for her mistake and the 'San Cristobal' sets sail towards Havana. So do Jacky and the 'Nancy B.'; taking in the views as heading into dock. She notices Morro Castle and the heavy fortification since the assault on the city by the British. In dock, the lieutenant from the 'San Cristobal' introduces himself as Juan Carlos Cisneros y Siquieros. The man takes an extreme disliking towards Jacky and Jacky has mutual feelings. In dock, Jemimah decides to explore the town and see if she likes it enough to make her own roots. Jacky, Davy, and Tink explore the town; immersing in some cockfighting matches (where Jacky trains her own banty rooster El Gringo), performing at the Cafe Americano, among other activities. Soon Jemimah comes back to be a part of the crew but with richer, more tasteful clothes from the money she received working for Faber Shipping. Daniel and Joannie are happy to have their Aunt Jemimah back, obviously. One night at the Cafe Americano, Jacky runs into old flame Flaco Jimenez and is introduced to Flaco's new first mate, El Feo. Jacky is threatened by the presence of El Feo instantly. It's a nice reunion but soon Flaco tells Jacky that he knows why she's down here in the Caribbean, looking for treasure. Turns out, that Captain Hudson let a "ship-jumper" on board the 'Dolphin' and he gathered information for the Spanish and is off in the world somewhere. This angers Jacky; and by this time Higgins and the crew comes to pick Jacky up and carry her back to the 'Nancy B.' Spending days preparing for the cockfighting matches and immersing herself in Jemimah's Brother Rabbit and Brother Fox tales, Jaimy and the 'Dolphin' crew soon meets back up with Jacky. She gives them an update on her progress and spends the night with Jaimy in her cabin. The next morning on board, Jacky gets ready for her first descent using the diving bell; Tink makes Jacky some swim fins and she gets used to the diving bell's design. At first she uses the mechanism for getting some creatures for the Doctor then she ventures down to the 'Santa Magdalena.' In the meantime, Flaco Jimenez and his ship is hanging around the vicinity of the wreckage, uneasing the crew deeply. Jacky gets underwater towards the ship with a grappling hook and uses it to pry the golden crucifix from the mainmast but still gets no access to the lower spaces of the ship. Taking a break from scavenging, Jacky returns back to business and eventually finds the ship's vault, using the hook to unhinge the door off the vault, Jacky finds the gold supply of the ship. In the process of getting the bell and the gold up into the ship, Jacky contracts nitrogen narcosis, a condition similar to alcohol intoxication that leads from high amounts of nitrogen that gets in the bloodstream. Jacky don't feel anything but when the pain from the Rapture of the Deep starts to kick in, she begins convulsing and shrieking until they get her back into the water to ease the condition. Jaimy, even though he is nervous about being in the bell under water, takes her down where they make-out. Dr. Sebastian is angry with Jacky for getting in the condition but he takes it out on Professor Tilden who didn't tell her of the Rapture of the Deep because "she was just a girl" and probably wouldn't "understand the science." Dr. Sebastian assures Tilden she is not a stupid girl and has Jacky ushered to bed. The next day Jacky starts putting the gold in baskets underwater when her own greed (a little Mary Faber talking in her head) tells her to put fan coral in the baskets and keep the gold for herself where she can use the gold to buy another ship like her precious 'Emerald'. Jacky does it, sneaking the gold into her undersea safehold for Faber Shipping Worldwide. Soon, Jacky encounters Flaco and his ship "El Diablo Rojo" and while they talk, Flaco's first mate El Feo plot a mutiny in secret. They hold the "Nancy B." and its crew at gunpoint but soon a fight among the two opposing ships commences. El Feo and his new ship, the "Red Devil" sail off in retreat, leaving Flaco with to side with Jacky. Back in town, Jacky continues with the cockfighting matches and nights at the Cafe Americano. Lieutenant Cisneros corners Jacky in the club and nearly provokes a fight but Ric, the owner of the cafe, points out the bar's etiquette rules and orders the lieutenant to leave. Cisneros does but vows that it's not over between the two of them. As for Jaimy and the rest of the 'Dolphin', they end up in Kingston perfectly fine. They are invited to the Officers' Club where it is there, Jaimy runs into Captain Richard Allen. Jaimy instantly remembers Allen from the time he caught Allen and Jacky skinnydipping in the Mississippi River. Allen also remembers Jaimy and they have an awkward conversation. Things get even more awkward when Allen runs into Flashby. After another cockfighting match, Jacky tells Joannie to go collect the winnings of the match. But she does not return and Jacky soon figures out she's missing. The crew goes all over Havana looking for the girl to little success. They hear that a white man took Joannie. While on the open sea, Jacky runs into El Feo and his crew. They are taken aboard and it's found out that El Feo himself kidnapped Joannie. Jacky also find out that Flashby's been working undercover for El Feo the entire mission, something of a "double agent." El Feo demands to be shown where the gold is at and Jacky's doesn't fess until Joannie and Daniel are threatened with their lives. Jacky lies to El Feo, saying it's all on the nearby island (the island full of mangroves and alligator pits.) El Feo has Flashby and his crew sail to the island and look for it while the rest stay aboard the 'Red Devil.' El Feo then takes Jacky to his living quarters where it's there, that he attempts to rape Jacky. Daniel and Joannie intervene; releasing El Gringo on El Feo- stunning him. Then Jemimah takes her huge frying pan that she bought in town and knocks him out cold. Jacky's crew is then able to upheave the 'Red Devil' and throw El Feo's body into the water to be with the remnants of the 'Santa Magdalena.' Finally the 'San Cristobal' comes into view, attacking both ships. But the 'Dolphin' comes to aid Jacky and the crew just in the nick of time. Jacky reunites with both Jaimy and Captain Allen and fights off the Spanish warship. Cisneros then comes aboard for Jacky personally, vowing to kill her. Fearlessly, just as he is about to, Jacky whips out her pistol and shoots him. With the battle soon over, Flaco regains his old ship and gives back the ship its original name. He kisses Jacky and thanks her for the help, leaving the battlefield. Jaimy then soon embarks to be an officer in command on the newly-named 'Saint Christopher.' Flaco soon comes back for his share of the gold and the gold is split evenly between the crew. The Spanish sailor leaves for the southern horizon and Jacky makes her way back to Boston where her crew splits up. Jemimah has federal agents search the nation for her kids that were also victims of slavery; Jim Tanner reunites with Clementine; Davy reunites with Annie; Smasher and John go off on their own journey; El Gringo retires to Dovecote; and Joannie goes back to the Lawson Peabody, much to her dismay. Jacky returns to stay with Amy Trevelyne and Ezra Pickering and keeps her current crew: Higgins, Davy, Tink, Daniel, and herself. Jacky tells Ezra that she plans on buying a ship with the gold that she hid away.
26910241	/m/0bm9fn_	Belthandros and Chrysantza				 Belthandros, a Roman (Byzantine) prince and youngest son of king Rhodophilos, quarrels with his father and leaves his home to seek his fortune. After wandering in the hostile lands of Anatolia and dealing with Turkish bandits, he reaches Tarsus in Armenian Cilicia. There he sees a fiery star in the depths of a river (a metaphor for love) and follows it to the north. In this way he finds a castle built of precious gems, which belongs to King Eros (, Erotokastron), and is full of various miracles and magnificent statues and automatons. Belthandros leaves his escorts outside and enters the castle alone. There he sees an inscription that tells of his predestined love between him and Chrysantza, the daughter of the king of Great Antioch. He is then summoned by the lord of the castle, Eros, who announces to him a beauty contest at which Belthandros must give a wand to the most beautiful among forty princesses. The contest takes place and Belthandros gives the wand to the most beautiful princess, whereupon all that surrounds him suddenly disappears "like a dream", leaving him alone in the castle. At this point he resolves to go out and seek the princess. After a short journey he arrives in Antioch where he meets the king of the city, is accepted as his liegeman, and soon becomes an intimate of the royal household. There he meets his daughter Chrysantza, whom he recognizes as the princess he chose at the Castle of Eros. Although Chrysantza has never seen him before, she too recognizes him, and the two fall in love. Two years and two months however pass before their first love meeting, which takes place secretly at night in the royal garden. The meeting ends suddenly when a jealous courtier discovers them and Belthandros is put in jail. In order to save her lover's life, Chrysantza convinces her faithful chambermaid, Phaidrokaza, to take the blame by declaring that the prince had visited her instead. The king believes the story and a forced marriage between Belthandros and Phaidrokaza takes place. The following days the couple continues to meet secretly, but soon the situation becomes unsatisfactory, and they decide to flee, together with the chambermaid and two retainers. On the way, they cross a flooded river, where Phaidrokaza and the two retainers are drowned, while the two lovers are separated and thrown up on the far bank. Chrysantza comes upon the corpse of one of the retainers, made unrecognizable from the river. Thinking it is Belthandros, she is about to fall on the dead man's sword, when Belthandros himself appears to forestall her. The lovers reach the seacoast where they find a ship sent by king Rhodophilos in search for his son. The romance ends with their return to Constantinople, where a wedding ceremony is performed and Belthandros is proclaimed heir to his father's kingdom.
26916427	/m/0bm9x3_	A Carne	Julio Cézar Ribeiro Vaugham			 Lenita is a young, inexperienced 22-year-old woman who, recently orphaned, goes to live with an old farmer who raised her father. In the farmer's house, she meets his son, Manuel, a divorced man. They soon start a forbidden love relationship.
26920509	/m/0bs7gpp	The Beacon	Susan Hill	2008-10-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The four Prime children grow up in a bleak North Country farmhouse called 'The Beacon'; Colin and Berenice marry locally, May, the central character of the novel went to University in London but returns within a year. Only quiet, watchful Frank escapes to become a journalist on Fleet Street. But then he publishes a successful novel about his childhood which throws the family into turmoil...
26931618	/m/0bmdsv3	Library Lion		2006-07-25		 What should the librarian do when a lion shows up for story hour? Well, as long as he follows the rules, he is welcome. Each day he shows up early to help the librarian with licking stamps, dusting books, and doing anything else she needs. Everything is wonderful until the librarian falls. What's the lion to do? He knows that he is not allowed to roar, but Miss Merriweather needs help. For her, the lion breaks the rule and lets out his loudest roar. After helping his friend, he sadly leaves knowing that he has broken the library's rules.
26934171	/m/0bmd1rz	The Dead Republic	Roddy Doyle			 An aging Henry Smart is attempting to cement his reputation. John Ford plans a movie based on Henry's life, but Henry eventually realizes the film that Ford has planned will reduce his story to sentiment. Henry plans to kill Ford, but his callousness has faded, and he drifts into the Dublin suburbs, where he meets a respectable widow who may possibly be his long-disappeared wife. Henry ages in obscurity until the 1970s, when he is caught up in the 1974 Dublin car bombings and the Provisional IRA uses a distorted version of Henry's story as a public relations ploy.
26941852	/m/0bmhdg7	Chunhyangjeon				 MongRyong who always studies hard, goes out to get some fresh air. He sees ChunHyang on a swing and it's love at first sight. He orders his servant, BangJa to ask ChunHyang to come to him but she refuses. MongRyong goes to talk to ChunHyang's mother, Walmae, to ask permission to marry ChunHyang; Walmae gives her permission and the two young people marry that day. MongRyong's father, a government official, has to move to another region, Seoul so MongRyong has to leave ChunHyang to follow his father. After he leaves, a new lord comes to ChunHyang's village. The new lord is greedy and selfish- he always wastes his time at partying with courtesans. ChunHyang, renowned for her beauty, is forced to come to his party. Although ChunHyang is not a courtesan the lord treats her like one because her mother is a courtesan. So he compels her to sleep with him, but ChunHyang keeps refusing because she is married. The lord gets angry and imprisons her. He decides to punish her on his birthday. MongRyong wins first place in a state examination and he becomes a secret royal inspector, or AmHengUhSa, who investigates and prosecutes corrupt government officials as an undercover emissary of the king. Under disguise, he comes to ChunHyang's village and finds out what have happened to ChunHyang and the misbehavior of the lord. He must conceal his real identity so he acts like an insane person and wears mendicant clothes. Despite his mendicancy, ChunHyang still loves him and asks her mother to take good care of him. At the lord's birthday celebration, MongRyong comes in and makes a satirical poem about the misbehavior of the lord, but the lord does not understand the poem. MongRyong discloses his real position and punishes the lord. At first, ChunHyang cannot recognize MongRyong and he tests her faith by asking her to spend a night with him. ChunHyang, who still cannot recognize him, refuses him as well. However, she recognizes him soon and they live happily ever after.
26945153	/m/0bmfmq2	Journey Beyond Tomorrow				 The book's introduction is written by a fictional editor and compiler working at a future time after 3000 AD, narrating the adventures of Joenes, a semi-legendary figure of the 21st Century whose philosophy has permeated the world until a few years before the time of writing. From the introduction, the reader learns that this future civilization is dominated by Polynesians; that some great cataclysm overtook the world during Joenes' lifetime; that only fragmentary information of that time has survived, mostly by oral tradition carried on by story-tellers on various Pacific islands, being compiled and written down after a thousand years; and that the people of that future find it difficult to understand our time - and while knowing that it possessed some technological achievements they don't have, they don't feel envious nor are they eager to re-discover these secrets. The bulk of the book consists of Joenes' adventures themselves. Born of parents of U.S. origin, Joenes has always lived on the tiny Pacific island of Manituatua. At 25 he loses his job and decides to visit the United States. Following his arrival there, he undergoes a series of surreal experiences, through which Sheckley describes with extreme sarcasm a society full of absurd extremes. Just arrived Joenes gets to know Lum, who would become his lifelong companion and friend, tries Peyote, argues with the police and is mistaken for a Communist. Investigated by a commission of inquiry he is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, but his sentence is immediately remitted by some kind of an electronic oracle. He is co-opted as a professor in a university engaged in manifestly insane experiments and is later recruited by the government to work at the Octagon (which replaced The Pentagon). He is then sent to the Soviet Union on a secret mission, but on his return the plane is mistaken for an enemy aircraft and attacked, sparking World War III. Only some Pacific islands survive, where Joenes moves with his friend Lum.
26949368	/m/0bmgbhd	The Strange Case of Origami Yoda	Tom Angleberger	2010	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The plot of OY3, as quoted by Amazon.com, "With Dwight attending Tippett Academy this semester, the kids of McQuarrie Middle School are on their own—no Origami Yoda to give advice and help them navigate the treacherous waters of middle school. Then Sara gets a gift she says is from Dwight—a paper fortune-teller in the form of Chewbacca. It’s a Fortune Wookiee, and it seems to give advice that’s just as good as Yoda’s—even if, in the hands of the girls, it seems too preoccupied with romance. In the meantime, Dwight is fitting in a little too well at Tippett. Has the unimaginable happened? Has Dwight become normal? It’s up to his old friends at McQuarrie to remind their kooky friend that it’s in his weirdness that his greatness lies." The timeframe of the book is revealed to be a few days after Darth Paper Strikes Back, an it takes place in both schools, McQuarrie Middle School, and Tippett Academy. Also, the origami guest stars who appear in the book are listed below: * Han Foldo- Chewbacca's human partner, Han Solo, finally gets into origami with Chewie in the new book! * Wicket- Either just a normal Ewok, or Wicket the Ewok, will be an Origami guest star in book 3
26952493	/m/0bs2yxx	Deogratias				 The story takes place before, during, and after the genocide in Rwanda; told through parallel storylines. It is divided between the present day and Deogratias' flashbacks, denoted by black borders for the former and blank borders for the latter. It follows Deogratias, a Hutu teenager who has been unstable ever since his two Tutsi friends died in the genocide. The story begins after the genocide. Deogratias is at a bar and meets some old friends. Deogratias has flashbacks to his life before the genocide. He remembers the crush he had on the two girls and how he tried to spend time with them. In the flashbacks, Deogratias wasn't always a good person. We meet other people in the story. The two tribes in the country didn't get along. Deogratias was a bit caught in the middle of the feud. His life after the genocide seems very bad. In day three of Deogratias returns to the town looking for urwagwa (banana beer) because he is turning into a dog again, but doesn't. Because he talks to Julius about killing the Tutsis, then he begins to think of how the father and brother Philip left and the others stayed and hid.
26953328	/m/0bryq_5	The Wonderful Visit	H. G. Wells		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Wonderful Visit tells how an angel spends a little more than a week in southern England. He is at first mistaken for a bird because of his dazzling polychromatic plumage, for he is "neither the Angel of religious feeling nor the Angel of popular belief," but rather "the Angel of Italian art." As a result, he is hunted and shot in the wing by an amateur ornithologist, the Rev. K. Hilyer, the vicar of Siddermoton, and then taken in and cared for at the vicarage. The creature comes from "the Land of Dreams" (also the angel's term for our world), and while "charmingly affable," is "quite ignorant of the most elementary facts of civilisation." During his brief visit he grows increasingly dismayed by what he learns about the world in general and about life in Victorian England in particular. As he grows increasingly critical of local mores, he is eventually denounced as "a Socalist." The vicar, his host, meanwhile comes under attack by fellow clerics, neighbors, and even servants for harboring a disreputable character (no one but the vicar believes he comes from another world, and people take to calling him "Mr. Angel"). The angel's one talent is his divine violin-playing, but he is discredited at a reception that Lady Hammergallow agrees to host when it is discovered that he cannot read music and confides to a sympathetic listener that he has taken an interest in the vicar's serving girl, Delia. Instead of healing, his wings begin to atrophy. The local physician, Dr. Crump, threatens to have him put in a prison or a madhouse. After the angel destroys some barbed wire on a local baronet's property, Sir John Gotch gives the vicar one week to send him away before he begins proceedings against him. The Rev. Mr. Hilyer is regretfully planning how he will take the angel to London and try to establish him there when two catastrophes abort the plan. First, the angel, who "had been breathing the poisonous air of this Struggle for Existence of ours for more than a week," beats Sir John Gotch with Gotch's own whip in a fury after the local landowner insolently orders him off his land. Distraught to think (mistakenly) that he has killed a man, he returns to the village to find the vicar's house in flames. Delia, the serving girl, has entered the burning building in an attempt to rescue the angel's violin: this extraordinary act comes as a revelation to the angel. "Then in a flash he saw it all, saw this grim little world of battle and cruelty, transfigured in a splendour that outshone the Angelic Land, suffused suddenly and insupportably glorious with the wonderful light of Love and Self-Sacrifice." The angel attempts to rescue Delia, someone seems to see "two figures with wings" flash up and vanish among the flames, and a strange music that "began and ended like the opening and shutting of a door" suggests that the angel has gone back to where he came from, accompanied by Delia. An epilogue reveals that "there is nothing beneath" the two white crosses in Siddermorton cemetery that bear the names of Thomas Angel and Delia Hardy, and that the vicar, who never recovered his aplomb after the angel's departure, died within a year of the fire.
26953625	/m/0bs5x5v	Tao: On the Road and on the Run in Outlaw China				 As people protest asking for Democracy in the cities of China and all foreigners are faced with suspicion, an adventuresome Japanese student named Aya Goda travels to the interior of China. There she meets and falls in love with Cao. After his work is banned, the police chase them across much of China and Tibet, until the Japanese embassy finally helps them escape China.
26960716	/m/0bs84ny	Ash			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Ash is a teenage girl whose loving father has died, leaving her alone with her cruel and violent stepmother. Ash's sole source of comfort is reading fairy tales by the dying light of the fire in her room each night. Ash dreams that, one day, fairies might find her and spirit her away to their world where all her wishes will come true. One night, the mysterious and sinister fairy prince Sidhean finds Ash and begins to prepare her to enter fairyland. But shortly thereafter, Ash meets Kaisa—a noblewoman and the King's Huntress. Ash and Kaisa not only form an immediate and deep friendship, but Ash begins to fall in love with the beautiful, strong woman. Ash's feelings seem be reciprocated but Sidhean returns to claim what he says is rightfully his due, and a battle for Ash's body and soul will push Ash to the brink.
26968520	/m/0bs1zrv	The Dark Abode	Dr.Sarojini Sahoo	2008	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins with questioning the mere physicality of the man-woman relationship but then transports the reader into the higher planes of platonic love. The central character of the novel is Kuki, a Hindu woman from India who falls (and then rises) in love with a Muslim artist from Pakistan . The unusualness of the socio-cultural background of these two characters is delicately portrayed by Sahoo in a sensitive and convincing manner. Readers become familiar with the two sets of roles that Kuki plays; that of a lover and that of a wife. Sahoo subtly balances these two roles and at the same time, highlights the superiority of a wife in a pragmatic world. But the novel is not merely a love story. Though love is a part of the novel, it deals with a much broader topic: the providence of a woman in India. At the same time, it also portrays a story of how a perverted man, over time, becomes a perfect man. It also delves into the relationship between the ‘state’ and the ‘individual’ and comes to the conclusion that ‘the state’ represents the moods and wishes of a ruler and hence, ‘the state’ actually becomes a form of ‘an individual.’ Additionally, it takes a broader look at terrorism and state-sponsored anarchism.
26974075	/m/0bs4k05	The Custom of the Army	Diana Gabaldon	2010	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In 1759, the morning after a duel in which the other participant is killed, Lord John Grey is presented with a series of letters accusing him of murder, a demand for satisfaction for compromising the honor of the lady over whom the duel was fought, a plea from the lady herself to do 'something', a promotion to Lt. Colonel as a result of events that occurred in Brotherhood of the Blade, and a summons to represent a companion officer who is being court martialled in Canada. Considering the latter to be the least of the evils he has been presented with before breakfast, Grey departs for North America. In Louisbourg, he joins General Wolfe's forces during their three month siege of Quebec, but the General is currently not available. During his stay Lord John discovers his cousin by marriage, Malcolm Stubbs, in questionable living arrangements, with an illegitimate child; however, he is unable to confront Capt. Stubbs who is currently on a scouting mission. Meanwhile, his friend and former lover Charlie is under house arrest and in failing health, awaiting the court martial that has not yet been scheduled due to the ongoing siege of Quebec. Grey passes the time he must wait on a fishing trip with Manoke, an Indian guide. Upon his return in September, Grey finds both Wolfe and Stubbs have both returned as well. Grey violently objects to Stubbs dishonorable behavior, and briefly considers, but refrains from, killing him. Wolfe invites Grey, an artillery officer with experience with Highlanders, to participate in the daring night-time landing of cannon along the St. Lawrence River, through French sentries, and up the steep cliffs. After scaling the cliffs with the cannon crews, Grey is with the 78th Fraser Highlanders during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham which takes place hours later. Capt. Stubbs is critically injured in the battle, and Grey with the assistance of an other officer carries him back to the medics, which saves his life, but not his leg. After the battle, Stubbs is shipped back to England on disability and Grey returns to find both his friend Charlie and the mother of Stubbs' illegitimate son dead of smallpox. The infant's grandmother sells the child to Grey. He takes the baby to a Catholic orphanage, leaving him with an annual stipend and naming him 'John Cinnamon'.
26978743	/m/0bs1j5_	Italian Shoes	Henning Mankell	2006		 Set around the year 2004, the novel focusses on Fredrik Welin, once a successful orthopaedic surgeon forced to retire early from his profession career. He has retreated to a tiny, remote island in the Stockholm archipelago which he has inherited from his grandparents and is now the sole inhabitant. The island is normally surrounded for at least half the year by thick sea ice which adds to the sense of solitude. Fredrik lives a reclusive and somewhat austere lifestyle in a run-down house, enjoying few luxuries. Welin's only companions are his aged cat and dog. The postman, Jansson is the one regular visitor to the island. Despite this Welin has never become particularly sociable with Jensson. In fact he displays little sympathy for the postman’s frequent requests to be treated for his medical concerns and has privately diagnosed Jensson as suffering from mild hypochondria. One cold winter's day Welin spies a figure out on the ice, struggling to make their way on foot towards his island. This unanticipated encounter leads to a surprising revelation and a journey not only across Sweden, but also back to his childhood and early adult life. The unfolding events force him to confront painful memories from his past, from which his isolation on the island has enabled him to remain largely immune until now. Fredrik also seeks to address the regrets he has about the unfortunate incident which led to his enforced retirement Key themes of the novel concern the dilemmas faced by those experiencing aging and death, both at first hand and through others close to them; the impact of poverty and destitution on an individual's life chances; and vulnerability, courage and forgiveness in intimate relationships.
26980032	/m/0bs3nn0	Star Island	Carl Hiaasen	2010-07-27		 Ann DeLusia, the "stunt double" for habitually intoxicated and drug-addicted pop star "Cherry Pye", is mistakenly kidnapped by an obsessed paparazzo. Now, the star's entourage must find a way to rescue Ann, and do it without revealing her identity to the star herself, or the world at large. The novel also features the re-appearance of Hiaasen's recurring character, ex-Florida governor Clinton "Skink" Tyree.
26981879	/m/0bs0d7f	Monk Dawson	Piers Paul Read	1969	{"/m/07s9rl0": "Drama"}	 It tells the story of Edward Dawson through the words of his friend Robert Winterman. It begins with their school days at Kirkham, a Roman Catholic boarding school run by Benedictine monks. Edward vows to devote his life to helping people and comes to believe that entering the priesthood to be the best way to fulfil this ambition and stays on at Kirkham, becoming Father John. The Second Vatican Council called by Pope John XXIII has considerable impact on Dawson, who was caught up in reformist zeal; which led to his leaving the monastery and moving into the secular clergy. He works at Westminster Cathedral but finds his faith challenged by the pressures of the world around him and he eventually loses his faith and gives up his vocation. Instead with the help of his friend Robert becomes a journalist, editing the Beaconsfield Gazette, and having left the Church finds himself without friends. But the enigmatic ex-monk finds solace in recently widowed Jenny, one of the women he helped as a priest, and moves in with her...
26984886	/m/0bs65zf	Spells		2010-05-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Six months after discovering that she is a faerie scion and saving the gateway to Avalon, Laurel is summoned to her faerie home to hone her skills as a Fall Faerie. She expects to be able to return to normal life after her classes have ended, but she quickly realizes that danger is still coming. She must also choose between her two worlds - and the two guys in them. Spells begins six months after Laurel's close encounter with death due to Barnes the troll. She steps out of her car, ready to go to the Academy of Avalon to train as a Fall faerie and is greeted by Tamani. Her supposed summer vacation isn't all that fun because she has to work hard honing her skills as a Fall faerie in order to be prepared to defend herself against situations like the one that happened six months ago. She gets a little time off every now and then, much to her relief, when Tam comes to visit and take her on a tour of Avalon. As summer ends, so does Laurel's trip back to her roots. On her return she is greeted by some pleasant, and some not so pleasant, changes. School starts and she gets back to her normal life as a human. Then comes fall, when Laurel's flower blooms again. This time, with her family knowing everything, it's much easier to deal with. However, in the last days she is attacked again but is saved by a woman called Klea whose sole mission in life is to hunt down supernatural beings, particularly trolls. She then goes to the land to tell Tamani everything that happened and is warned to be careful. For some time, things cool down and in the meanwhile she receives an invitation to attend the Samhain festival in order to welcome the New Year - and a note from Tam which says he'll escort her. She sneaks out without telling either David or her family about her visit to Avalon and has fun watching all the dramas and shows put up by the Summer faeries for entertainment. At the end of the festival Tam kisses Laurel and tells her that he’s tired of waiting, after which they have an argument. Later, Shar announces that David has come, at which time Tam asks her to tell him the truth: does she love him or not? Laurel says that she doesn't and asks him to go away. At that moment, he pulls her in and kisses her - with David staring at them. Laurel and David have an argument after which David says he needs some alone time. That very night she receives a note from Barnes. She goes to David and tells him that Barnes has Chelsea as his hostage. They both go to save her; on their way to the lighthouse they stop at Laurel's mom's store to get some ingredients for ‘monastuolo serum,’ something that will help them defend themselves from the trolls. Once there, Laurel uses the serum against the trolls. All of the trolls except Barnes are affected by it; she then points a gun at him and demands for some answers. However, during this little chat Barnes tricks her and makes her the target once again. At this moment Klea enters and kills Barnes. It is revealed that Chelsea had her suspicions all along that Laurel was a faerie. Laurel apologizes to David and tells him that she loves him; he forgives her, but she also tells him that she'll be going to visit Tamani the next day to tell him that she cannot handle juggling two worlds any more, and that she will not come to visit him. Things also get cleared up between Laurel and her mom. The next day when she visits the land, instead of Tam it is Shar who receives her and tells her that Tamani no longer guards that post. He went away because Laurel told him to. He also tells her that he didn't hate her, just the way she treated Tamani, and tells her about the depth of his love for her. Laurel then tells Shar that what she had come to tell Tam: that she won't be visiting him again, and can't handle two worlds, which Shar praises. He asks her about the cause of her getting blisters. At first she doesn't tell, but eventually gives in when realizing the grave danger she is putting Avalon in by hiding what had happened. When she leaves, it is revealed that Tamani had been there and was hiding from her so that he could get the real details about what happened. The book ends with Shar and Tam talking about Tam's new assignment. The assignment is not revealed, but it said to be something that Tamani would like to do.
26989051	/m/0bs70xy	Sky of Stone				 In Sky of Stone, Hickam has gone off to college at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. His mother, who is living separated from her husband in Myrtle Beach, contacts him and asks him to return home to Coalwood to help his father. He arrives to find his father, the mine superintendent, is being investigated by the coal company because of a fatal mining accident. After wrecking the family car the young Hickam needs to pay for the repairs, and he takes a job in the coal mine for the summer in a program set up by the United Mine Workers of America for college students. His father, who although he wanted to see his son grow up to be a mining engineer is fervently anti-union, and his mother, who swore her sons would never work in a coal mine, are both against this. He defies the wishes of his parents to take the job. His father in response cuts off his college funds. A female mining engineer (Rita) is in town, as is the standard practice of the parent company sending new engineers to gain experience working in the mine. Due to superstition ingrained in local custom, she is not allowed in the mine unlike the male engineers. She vows to be the first woman in the mine, and tries to get young Hickam to sneak her in one night. They are caught and this fails. Meanwhile, she unveils a plan to replace all the track inside the mine. Two teams will work from opposite ends of the mine replacing track, one from Coalwood and the other from Caretta (the two mines adjoin). Homer Hickam, Jr. is one of three people working on the Coalwood team, which is led by a devout Pentecostal Christian (Johnny Basso). The work becomes a race and a contest between the two teams, with the other miners placing bets on whether Coalwood or Caretta will win. As the race goes on over the summer, so does the investigation of Hickam Sr. As the investigation unfolds, more mysteries are revealed, including the identity of a disabled worker still secretly on the coal mine's payroll, and the fate of the Hickam family's pet fox 'Parkyacarcass'. In the end, Hickam Sr. is cleared, the Hickam family is reunited, and Rita is allowed in the mine, but the Coalwood team loses the contest by a hair.
26989741	/m/0bs800w	After Ever After	Jordan Sonnenblick	2010-02-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jeffrey is a teen in remission. Even though the cancer should be far behind him, Jeffrey still worries that it will return. He has got normal teen stuff to deal with, too - friends, parents, girls, school. Normally, he would ask his older brother, Steven, for advice. But Steven, always the trusty, responsible one, is finally rebelling and has taken off to Africa to join a drumming circle and "find himself." Jeffrey feels abandoned. Meanwhile, his best friend, Tad, is hatching some kind of secretive, crazy plan involving eight-grade graduation. And Lindsey Abraham, a way hot girl who is new to the school, thinks Jeffrey is cute . . . which totally freaks him out. There is a lot about life that cancer has prepared Jeffrey for, but there is a lot that is brand-new. Now it is time for him to learn not only how to fight for himself but to stick up for the people he loves. However, at the end, he has to prepare to let go some of his memory and accept the meaning of death.
26993968	/m/0bs0gp9	The Assisi Underground		1978		 In the Italian town of Assisi during World War II, 300 Jews were sheltered and protected by a peasant turned priest, Father Rufino Niccacci. He dressed many of them as monks and nuns, taught them Catholic ritual, and hid them in the monasteries. Others lived in parishioner's homes and, with fake identity cards, found jobs and blended into the community. The town's printing press, which during the day printed posters and greeting cards, at night clandestinely printed false documents that were sent by courier to Jews all over Italy. Not a single refugee was captured in Assisi. No one who participated in the rescue operation ever betrayed it. The operation was unwittingly aided by the German Commandant of the city, Colonel Valentin Müller, a Catholic, who had been persuaded by Father Rufino that he had been sent to the town not only by the German High Command, but also by God, with the mission of protecting the Christian holy places and monasteries. Müller appealed to Marshal Kesselring to declare Assisi an open city. When the Allies began approaching the city, one of the Jewish refugees, whose German was so excellent that he had gotten a job with the Wehrmacht, forged a letter from Kesselring declaring Assisi an open city. The colonel never suspected it to be a forgery and immediately ordered all German troops to leave town, thus saving Assisi from destruction.
26994909	/m/0bs87hg	November				 In the first part of the novella, the narrator is a schoolboy, and the narrative consists of his meditations on life, as well as his longing for sexual awakening and the beginning of his adult life. He perceives himself as a voyeur, witnessing couples, sumptuous dining rooms, professionals at work and scenes of family life. In the second part, the young author loses his virginity with Marie, a worldly- wise courtesan who recounts her personal story of erotic experience. Initially, she was a virginal sixteen year old until she was unwillingly married to an elderly suitor who wanted a younger mistress. In return for her acquiescence, though, she has acquired sexual freedom and experience. However, as the reader later learns, she subsequently becomes a tabula rasa, providing her body for the enjoyment of men, but not her individuality or personality. In the concluding section of the novella, the adolescent narrator tries to revisit Marie, but the courtesan and her brothel of residence have vanished. The narrator takes up study toward a legal career, but has already eschewed marriage or professional life. Eventually, he dies.
27004006	/m/0bryx6b	Darkness Descends			{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A beautiful high school senior is brutally beaten, raped and left for dead. Track star Chris Walker was spotted by one of the assailants as he witnessed the assault. While Chris grapples with his innermost thoughts on what to do, the city's mayor is kidnapped, launching Chris into action where he comes to grips with who he is and what he stands for.
27006066	/m/0bs63qf	Dragon Boy	Dick King-Smith	1993		 Montague Bunsen-Burner is a dragon who is put on a 'no-humans' diet by his wife Albertina. Out on a flight later that day, Montague discovers a young boy, John, who was recently orphaned. Montague decides to take the boy home with him. John proves his worth as a member of the family with his knowledge of various forest herbs that enhance the flavour of several foods. John proves his value to the family further when Albertina lays her latest clutch of eggs. Deducing that Montague and Albertina are ignorant of the need to incubate eggs, John manages to smuggle an egg away from Albertina's latest clutch and place it in a 'nest' made of reeds, inspired by a lizard nest he saw when he was younger, that will keep it warm until it hatches. While returning from hiding the egg, John is nearly attacked by a wolf, and later a bear, but Montague manages to save him and kill both animals, the bearskin being kept for John to sleep under in winter. Noting that the wolf is milky, John deduces that she has cubs, setting out to find her family. Although three of the cubs are dead when he finds her den, John takes in the fourth cub (a coal-black male), naming him 'Bart' and training him as a pet. After John and Bart have kept an eye on the egg in its makeshift 'nest' for the next six weeks, it finally hatches, revealing a young female dragon who names herself 'Lucky', much to the joy of her parents. From this point onwards, John is regularly described as the Bunsen-Burner's adopted son and Lucky's 'little brother'. Although John attracts some quizzical gazes when an elderly dragon Examiner comes to test Lucky's flying abilities, no definite questions are asked. While the dragons take a holiday at the beach where Montague and Albertina stayed after their wedding, shortly after Lucky's first birthday, John and Bart are confronted by wolves, being cornered in the cave before they are forced to attack. However, Lucky senses that her brother is in danger and returns to save him, although the subsequent damage to John's clothes forces them to travel to a nearby village to steal replacement clothes for him. During their time away, the Bunsen-Burners are briefly attacked by a group of ambitious knights, but the dragons easily drive them away without any casualties (Albertina resolutely informing Montague that their relationship with John means that they must never eat human flesh again after everything he has come to mean to them). As Lucky grows older, the comparative rarity of dragons in the present compared to their old courting days prompt Montague and Albertina to try to search for a potential husband for her in an arranged marriage, but their search fails; Albertina is harshly turned away by the head of a family of Welsh dragons, and while Montague discovers a pleasant family- the Charmouths-, they have nothing but daughters. Fortunately, while visiting the holiday beach in a bad mood about her parents' attempt to plan her life for her, Lucky discovers a boy dragon called Gerald Fire-Drake, who left his home in Scotland after an argument with his father, the two forming a deep attachment that blossoms into romance. During this time, John has a brief encounter with an outlaw who threatens to kill him, but Bart senses his master's peril and hurries to save him, Bart's attack- followed closely by the arrival of Albertina- prompting the outlaw to flee while leaving John his weapons. After an engagement of a couple of years due to Gerald and Lucky's youth, their wedding takes place near the lake where Lucky hatched, attended by the Fire-Drakes, Albertina's cousins, Montague's brother and his wife, the Examiner who gave Lucky her test, and the Charmouths (Montague reasoning that they are a pleasant family and Gerald's brothers might be interested). The ceremony completed after John gives a speech in his role as best man, Gerald and Lucky fly off for their honeymoon, leaving John to reflect on the joys of his life as a dragon boy.
27007433	/m/05njzn	They're a Weird Mob	John O'Grady			 Giovanni 'Nino' Culotta is an Italian immigrant, who comes to Australia as a journalist, employed by an Italian publishing house, to write articles about Australians and their way of life for those Italians that might want to emigrate to Australia. In order to learn about real Australians, Nino takes a job as a brickie's labourer with a man named Joe Kennedy. The comedy of the novel revolves around his attempts to understand English as it was spoken in Australia by the working classes in the 1950s and 1960s. Nino had previously only learned 'good' English from a textbook. The novel is a social commentary on Australian society of the period; specifically male, working class society. Women mostly feature as cameos in the story with the exception of Kay (whose surname is not revealed in the novel), who becomes Nino's wife. In the novel, Nino meets Kay in a cafe in Manly and their introduction is effected by Nino trying to teach Kay that she cannot eat spaghetti using a spoon. The final message of the novel is that immigrants to Australia should count themselves fortunate and should make efforts to assimilate into Australian society, including learning to speak Australian English. However, there is also a satirical undercurrent aimed at Australian society as a country of migrants.
27015141	/m/0br_wq0	Prajapati				 The novel opens with Sukhen, the protagonist, trying to capture a butterfly. Sukhen goes over to his lover’s house early in the morning. Even as he tries to catch a butterfly, he is simultaneously taking with his lover and analysing his own life as he recollects the past. Sukhen had been brought up in a family where he had found no love or affection. His mother died leaving behind her husband and three sons- Keshob, Purnendu, Sukhendu. Both of his elder brothers are politicians and according to Sukhen mere opportunists. The brothers used people for their own benefit and cheat them without remorse. He remembers his mother as an extremely flirtatious woman. Sukhen’s father is also devoid of any moral depth and realisation. He was a mean money minded man. Sukhen had grown up with in these circumstances. He become venturous and had no respect for elders and women. The neighbours especially the rich ones feared him. Mr. Chopra, manager of neighbouring industry and Mr. Mittir, the labour advisor, always flattered Sukhen out of fear. Sukhen remembers Jina, the daughter of Mr. Mittir who had been seduced by her kaku (uncle), Mr. Chatterjee, a colleague of her father. Sukhen also had seduced Jina. Sukhen had become addicted to women and alcohol at a very early age, soon after having entered college. Subsequently he got attracted to a girl named Shikha. Sukhen fell in love with Shikha when he was taking in a hunger strike conducted on the demand to rehabilitate a teacher of his college who had recently been fired by the college authority and to stop the rising of a multi-storeyed building close to the college gate. Unlike Sukhen, Shikha hailed from a poor family. Her father is a drunkard and numb to the affairs of the family. Shikha’s two brothers were subordinates of Sukhen’s two elder brothers in the respective political parties of the latter. Her only sister, Bela was married but stayed at her father’s house and flirted with several men. However the presence of Shikha in Sukhen’s life offered some respite to his careless and perplexed life. This relationship somehow helped to revive the latent sense of humanity in Sukhen. Sukhen hates hipocrisy. He hated those politicians who cheated and oppressed people for their own ulterior need and those teachers who used his students as a political weapon for personal benefits as well as the owners and governing body members of industries who squeeze the labourers; also the parents who were indifferent to their children, the lechers who abused children for sexual satisfaction. He also disliked the heinous attack of American soldiers on prostitutes. The atrocities around him agonised and traumatized him. He sometimes suffers from a subtle pain down to his shoulder and channelised his energy into anger to numb and forget the pain. He pees under his father’s table, rumples his brothers’ rooms, calls out to servants and so on to divert his attention. Yet, the otherwise brash Sukhen, respected Shulada, an old servant of their house. Keshob, the elder brother of Sukhen, is a powerful political leader. The brother allegedly illegally traded in baby foods and railway spare parts. Keshob has several relations with married women and young girls who were members in his own party. Purnendu, the immediate elder brother is also a political leader and an employee in a governmental office. His political party apparently worked for the poor section of the country and fought for justice but ironically, he is the who copulates with their maid servant’s daughter. Both of his brothers want him to join their party! Sukhen refuses to join either of them and severely criticises their agendas. He ends up being the enemy of both the groups. As we proceed through the novel, we see Suhken breaking off one wing of the butterfly and though Shikha tries to revive it, the fly eventually dies. After having chatted with Shikha for some time, he leaves for home. But instead going home, he moves around on the roads on his bike and sees Nirapodobabu (নিরাপদবাবু), a primary school master watching Ramesh (রমেশ), a worker of Purnendu’s party, delivering a lecture. He wonders about the peaceful life of Nirapadababu and dreams of having a wife like Nirapadababu's. He plans of marrying Shikha and living peacefully like Nirapadababu. He also enjoys the company of the superintendent of police of the local police station, N’Kori Haldar (ন’কড়ি হালদার), and Bimol (বিমল) a devoted worker of Purnendu’s party. As he thinks of living a simple life with Shikha as his wife, he stops by to meet Mr. Chopra and get himself a job. But Chopra refuses him as he known that Suhken is a hooligan and the local mischief. Perturbed, Suhken wonders who are the simple and good boys? (সাধারন বাঙ্গালি ছেলে কারা?) Sukhen then goes in search of Shutka(শুটকা), a friend of his. He ends up finding Shibe (শিবে), another friend of him in Doyalda’s (দয়ালদা) tea stall. Suddenly he feels that strange pain close to his shoulder. To suppress that pain he has alcohol almost voraciously and goes to Shibe's house and there he meets Manjori (মঞ্জরী) and falls asleep. In the evening, he woke up and found Shutka close to him. He goes to Shikha’s house again as he had promised to go there in the evening. At last, he comes back home at night and takes a bath and sleeps without having food. The next day there is a strike. He goes out in the evening and fells in midst of two processions. He gets severely injured in a bomb explosion and is admitted in a hospital. One of his arms had been blown off and he finally succumbs to the injury.
27019821	/m/0glphpp	Ashling	Isobelle Carmody	1995-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The powerful Misfit Elspeth is sent to Sutrium, the seat of the ruling totalitarian Council, to seal and alliance between the secret community at Obernewtyn and the rebel forces. Yet her journey takes her far beyond the borders of the Land, across the sea into the heart of the mysterious desert region, Sador. There she seeks help to destroy the weaponmachines but before her dark quest can begin, she must learn the truth of her dream: why the Beforetimers destroyed their world...
27022415	/m/0bs7dnj	February Shadows	Elisabeth Reichart	1989	{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story begins with Hilde, an elderly woman, awaking in the middle of the night to the sound of her telephone ringing. Upon answering she discovers that her husband, Anton, who was staying at a nursing facility for a severe illness, has died. His death triggers feelings of loneliness and abandonment along with painful memories of the death of her older brother, Hannes, who died during World War II, sending Hilde into a state of panic and despair. Each day Hilde visits Anton's grave mentally talking to him as if he is still alive. One evening, as she is returning home, Hilde discovers that a black cat seems to be following her. The cat causes her to remember two distinct experiences from her past. The first is a memory from when she was a small child and had attempted to hide a stray cat in her bedroom. Her family was very poor and could not afford a pet, but she saved her table scraps for it anyway. One day as she was coming home, her father met her drunk in the doorway. After telling her he had snapped the cat's neck, he beat her harshly with a fly swatter. This first memory seeped into the second: her daughter, Erika, begging to keep a stray cat she had found. Anton had granted her wish, but the cat ruined the neighbors' gardens and Hilde was forced to drown it in the river. The following day, Mr. Funk, a friend of her late husband, appears at her door and pressures Hilde to join the Retiree's Union. She joins because Anton had been a member of the Austrian Socialist Party and he would have approved of her socializing with other members. Hilde assures Mr. Funk that she will attend the next evening social. Mr. Funk's visit forces another memory to resurface. She remembers her daughter asking what party Anton had belonged to during the period of National Socialism; Hilde recalled him being part of the Hitler Youth. The reader also discovers that Hilde's brother, Hannes, was killed by the Nazi Party. Erika's insolence upsets Hilde greatly. Soon after, Erika calls her mother, stating that she will be coming to visit. Erika also grieves her father's death. Hilde becomes impatient with Erika, hinting at the contradictory nature of their relationship. Hilde wants to be with her daughter, yet she feels as if her daughter is a total stranger. Erika acts boldly and actively pursues her career as a writer. Hilde believes the only reason Erika wishes to come home is to get information for her book, which is true. Hilde is angry at her daughter for forcing her to relive her past experiences; her childhood was full of poverty, loneliness, and shame. Anton had been her way out of the past, and she only wants to move forward. Hilde attends the Retiree's Union social pretending to be happy. She watches the dancers on the dance floor and mourns the absence of her husband. The dancers trigger another memory from her childhood: she sees her father kicking her mother on the dance floor and she runs out to help. Soon, both Hilde and her mother are being beaten on the ground, her father will not let them comfort each other. The only person she can to turn to is her brother, Hannes, who comforts her. The memory is too painful for Hilde and she leaves the social immediately. Erika arrives the next day and announces that they will take a trip to the village so she can obtain more information for her book. (The reader must assume that the village is in the Mühlviertel.) Hilde does not wish to go, yet does not want to be excluded. As they enter the village, Hilde recalls working hard in the fields to harvest the crop left behind by farmers to have enough food for their large family. She remembers the hunger pains and how her father could not find work. She remembers Fritzi, a member of her apartment-style household, bringing eggs and bacon on Sundays from the farmers and how she had felt proud carrying the basket into the kitchen. She had wanted her mother to be more proud of her than she was of her older and prettier sister, Monika. Hilde sees the lifeless and leafless pear tree in the village. She refers to it as the "February Tree", the tree on which Hannes was hanged. She remembers a Nazi in a black uniform telling her at school that her brother was dead. She remembers running through the snow and losing one wooden shoe in an attempt to save him. She remembers discovering he truly was dead and lying in the snow, hoping for her own death. Hilde and Erika visit her old house and she recalls beatings; they then visit the pond where she is reminded of the many loads of laundry she was forced to wash with her mother. She begrudged the freedom of her brothers who were not forced to do work, her oldest sister, Renate, who lived with their grandparents, and her delicate sister, Monika, who was never asked to manage hard labor. They walk down the lane to the old school lined with apple trees; she recalls the rough feeling of cobblestones on her sore feet and the bitter taste of the small apples. She evades a certain barn on the lane and avoids looking out into the distance towards the area which was once the site of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Upon returning to their hotel, room Hilde reflects on her daughter. Her inner thoughts display envy toward Erika's privilege of being educated and her ability to choose her career. Hilde reveals that she had always wanted to be a nurse, however her dreams of a nursing career were shattered the day her village was bombed during air raids. She had watched her brother Stephen die as she was swallowed by mounds of earth. The raid had made her weak and incapable of dealing with trauma later in her life. During their stay in the Mühlviertel, Erika is able to extract information about the fateful day in February that Hilde had been pushing from her memory for many years. Hilde relays that in the middle of the night she and her siblings were awakened by the sound of sirens. Her parents and the other tenants of her home were forced to stand for a roll call in which Pesendorfer, the Nazi authority in their house, told the tenants that many Russian convicts had escaped from the nearby concentration camp. He explained that it was their duty to Germany to find and kill each one of these convicts. Hilde, being a young girl, is told to stay at the house. However, she is worried about protecting her brother Hannes, who, like her other brothers, is forced to search for prisoners, and sneaks away to find him. In her search for her brother, Hilde comes across the barn near her schoolhouse. She enters it, only to find Pesendorfer, her neighbor Mrs. Emmerich, and her brother Walter all violently killing prisoners. She runs home and finds Hannes, who informs her that he has hidden a prisoner in his wardrobe and that she must remain silent about it. The next morning the villagers attend church to commemorate Candlemas. The hunters seek purification and are urged by their pastor to side with Germany and continue the search for the prisoners. At this insistence Hilde finds herself telling Hannes' secret to her mother. The story is vague about how this information is relayed to Pesendorfer, but, he finds and kills the prisoner, then takes Hannes away to beat him for his misconduct. Hilde recalls cleaning the blood from her brother's face after the beating. The following day, she finds that Hannes has been hanged for his actions. Her guilt in the causation of two deaths is evident through her narration. Back in the present, Erika is stunned by the horrific story and deeply regrets forcing her mother to relive the event. The novel closes with the image of the mother and daughter driving away from the Mühlviertel, with Hilde at the wheel and her foot on the gas pedal.
27032224	/m/0bry7jk	Eagle in the Sky				 A 14 year old David Morgan, handsome and academically gifted heir to a South African business empire and fortune, learns to fly with Barney Venter, a gruff but experienced ex-airline pilot. He realises that David is 'bird' - blessed with a natural flying ability. David learns quickly and soon gains his pilot's licence. After school, he opts to join the South African Air Force instead of going to university and business school. He impresses his Commanding Officer, the crusty Colonel Rastus Naude, who is disappointed when David decides not to accept a longer service contract and instead tries to seek out what he's meant to do. He travels widely in Europe. In Spain, he meets Debra Mordechai, an attractive young Israeli writer and university lecturer, who's traveling with her brother Joe and his fiancee Hannah. Debra rebuffs David's advances and they part on bitter terms. David is drawn to Jerusalem to find her, and meets 'The Brig', her father, General Mordechai, a plain-spoken pilot in the IDF and a senior staff officer. Learning that David has much experience on flying Mirage jets, he satisfies himself of David's skills and then offers him a commission in the IDF. He accepts and is granted Israeli citizenship. He is plunged into Israel's struggle for survival. David's memories of his own (Jewish) mother and his growing passion for Debra make his involvement with this new country's cause inescapable. He and Debra set up house together. But at Joe and Hannah's wedding, a terrorist attack kills Hannah and Debra is left blind. In her grief, she rebuffs David, who only finds solace in the skies. He and Joe get into a dogfight with Russian-trained Syrian fighters. Joe's plane is shot down and David, low on fuel and on the wrong side of the border, is forced to ditch. His jet catches fire and he is badly burned. A year later, after much plastic surgery and no longer the handsome man he was, David is forced to resign his commission on pain of a court-martial. He is now an outcast, as he had brought Israel to the brink of open war. He desperately seeks out Debra, and she is now willing to accept him back, not knowing what he now looks like. They marry, despite the misgivings and anger of 'The Brig' and they travel to the now virtually derelict game lodge that David's late father owned in the South African bush. Remembering all the poaching and 'sport' killing that had happened there in his youth, he seeks out game warden Conrad Berg and offers the whole estate as a national park to serve as a haven for animals fleeing poachers. David falls foul of a particularly ruthless poacher and in the ensuing violence, Debra is badly injured. Pregnant, she loses the baby. But the injury has affected her brain and she can now sense some colours. They travel to Cape Town to consult a top ophthalmic surgeon, who decides to operate. The procedure is successful and Debra's sight is restored. But she can now see how David really looks and in her panic, she rebuffs him. David is badly hurt and seeks consolation in the only place he feels safe - the sky. He plans to commit suicide by flying until his fuel runs out, but Debra's father, who is visiting and has friends in Air Traffic Control, establishes radio contact with him and convinces him to return to Debra.
27032983	/m/0bs23q9	The Improvisatore	Hans Christian Andersen	1835		 In this fictionalized autobiography, the hero Antonio does not arrive as a tourist but grows up in Italy, thus able to show not just the sunny side of life but also some of its shadows. In its structure, the novel reflects Andersen's own life and his travels through Italy. The descriptions of the Italian towns and regions are particularly captivating, expressed in the author's colourful language. Like Andersen himself, Antonio comes from a poor background but fights his way through various crises and amorous relationships until he is finally successful. The last improvisation involves a fishing boat accident in which many lose their lives. But finally Antonio becomes the happy husband of the beautiful young Lara as well as a landowner in Calabria.
27043894	/m/0bs05h2	A New Athens	Hugh Hood	1977	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Narrator Matt Goderich, now approaching middle age, has become an art historian. As the novel opens, he is wandering along the back roads of eastern Ontario, contemplating the flora, the history of trains in the region, and decades past. He relates his time as a young student, beginning in 1948, where he is a rare Catholic at the overwhelmingly Protestant Victoria University in the University of Toronto. After a fleeting first romance he meets his future wife Edie, who disappoints her family by converting to Catholicism to marry him. The young couple spends time in her hometown of Stoverville (a fictionalized version of Brockville), where her parents have a boathouse on the Saint Lawrence River. Her father is a well-known politician, and her mother is a brilliant but undiscovered painter. The 'new Athens' of the title is a reference to the town of Athens, Ontario.
27044398	/m/0bs411y	Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball		1990		 In the book, Will discusses how each of the four subjects highlighted play, or in the case of La Russa, manage the game of baseball. It also discusses the history of the game, such as how Candy Cummings invented the curveball pitch in 1867. There are also statistics mentioned, as well as anecdotes. Will also inserts personal opinion, such as when he discusses his belief that baseball needs to have more walks and fewer strikeouts, and that Baltimore is the best baseball town.
27050117	/m/0bwmc3d	Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War	Karl Marlantes		{"/m/098tmk": "War novel"}	 The book is set in Vietnam in 1969 and draws from the experiences of Marlantes, who commanded a Marine rifle platoon. The novel presents an unflinching look at the hardships endured by the Marines who waged the war on behalf of America. It concerns the exploits of second lieutenant Waino Mellas, a recent college graduate, and his compatriots in Bravo Company, most of whom are teenagers. "Matterhorn" is the code name for a fire-support base located between Laos and the DMZ. At the beginning of the novel, the Marines build the base, but later they are ordered to abandon it. The latter portions of the novel detail the struggles of Bravo Company to retake the base, which fell into enemy hands after it was abandoned.
27051697	/m/0bs5ydg	The Blind Barber	John Dickson Carr		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 When the ocean liner Queen Victoria arrives in Southampton harbor from New York City, mystery writer Henry Morgan disembarks hastily and calls on Dr. Fell to unfold a remarkable story of mayhem and mystery. It begins with Curtis Warren, an amateur cinematographer who also happens to be the nephew of what Morgan describes as “a Great Personage in the present American Government […] not far from F.D. himself”. One afternoon during the Queen Victoria’s voyage, Morgan and his friends Peggy Glenn and Capt. Thomassen Valvick (Ret.) are summoned to Warren’s cabin, where they find its occupant nursing a wounded cranium and thoughts of vengeance. It seems that Warren inadvertently brought some reels of film on board showing his uncle, near the end of a long dinner party, making an extremely impolite speech about his fellows among the world’s mighty, and that someone has just broken into Warren’s cabin, hit him over the head, and stolen enough of this film to cause unheard-of scandal. The four of them soon learn that a notorious and dangerous criminal (the “Blind Barber” of the title) is believed to be on board the ship. Concluding that this is the person who stole Warren’s film, they hatch a plan to lure the thief into coming back for the rest of the loot so they can catch him or her in the act. Instead, they end up inadvertently attacking the captain of the Queen Victoria and stealing, then losing, a valuable emerald elephant – to say nothing of the dying woman they find in one of the cabins, who proceeds to apparently vanish into thin air. In attempting to unravel these complications, our heroes succeed only in creating a great many more; by the end of the voyage, Warren has been confined to the brig, the emerald elephant has inexplicably reappeared and disappeared several more times, a high-tech bug-powder gun has gone berserk, and a drunken puppeteer has started throwing the passengers’ personal goods overboard, among other events. As Morgan relates all this, Fell, greatly amused, makes notes of sixteen clues that he labels with enigmatic phrases (“The Clue of Terse Style”, for instance). In the end, he interrupts the story to answer the doorbell; when he returns, he is carrying a brown-paper parcel that turns out, in due time, to contain the stolen film. Dr. Fell explains complacently that he’s already identified the Blind Barber to the Queen Victoria’s captain; the last two chapter show him explaining his deductions, both to Morgan and to the Barber himself. This novel is generally felt to be the most humorous of Dr. Fell's adventures, somewhat echoing the farcical later adventures of Carr's Sir Henry Merrivale.
27062506	/m/0bs50m1	Treasures of the Snow		1950		 Annette Burnier lived with her father, elderly grandmother and young brother Dani in a small village, Rossinière, in the Swiss mountains. When she was eight years old her mother died just after Dani was born, and since the family was too poor to afford a nanny, Annette took the responsibility upon herself, arranging with the schoolmaster to study at home under her grandmother's guidance. When Dani was old enough for her to return to school, she did well and often gained top marks. On Dani's fifth Christmas, he put his slipper outside in the snow, hoping that Father Christmas would bring him a present. In the morning, to everyone's astonishment, a tiny white kitten had snuggled into the slipper. Dani called him Klaus and the two became inseparable. Further up the mountain in the next chalet, Annette's classmate Lucien Morel lived with his elder sister Marie and their widowed mother. Lucien found schoolwork difficult and was frustrated that he was often bottom of the class. He also resented having to help around the home and farm with all the tasks that his father would have done, and his mother and sister criticised his laziness. Conflict flared one day when Lucien was sledging down to school and accidentally collided with Annette's sledge, throwing her into a ditch full of snow. Out of resentment at her success in school, he didn't stop to help her, but sped off to school. When she arrived late, cold, wet and grazed, with torn wet books, she had to explain what had happened. Lucien was caned by the schoolmaster, and ostracised by the rest of the class. When on his way home he vented his frustration by kicking over a snowman Dani was building, Annette ran out and slapped his face and shouted angrily at him. Lucien's increasing loneliness and festering hurt was directed at Annette and he looked for opportunities for revenge. So when he saw Dani in the meadow picking flowers for Annette's birthday, he grabbed the flowers and trampled on them. Then afraid Dani would get him into trouble, he picked up Klaus and held him out over a deep ravine, threatening (but not intending) to drop the kitten unless Dani promised not to tell. Klaus, however, scratched Lucien, and he let go. Dani rushed across and fell over the cliff into the ravine. Lucien was terrified and griefstricken, convinced that Dani was dead, and went home but couldn't face his family so hid in the barn. When the worried families found Lucien, he confessed what had happened. Dani's father used a rope to climb down the ravine and found Dani was still alive at the bottom, but with a broken leg. Dani's leg healed badly, shorter than the other leg, leaving him permanently unable to walk without crutches. The whole village knew what Lucien had done, and he became even more of an outcast, very lonely and unhappy. Working hard around the home and farm helped him stop brooding for a while, and his mother praised him for this, and his sister was kinder to him. But his real solace was to climb to the woods and spend time alone, carving little figures out of wood. He found he had a real talent for this. It was here that he made friends with an old man who lived alone in a tiny chalet high above the village, whose only income came from selling his own woodcarvings. He taught Lucien, and let him use his woodcarving tools. He also confided in Lucien his life story. As a young man he had been happily married with two young sons and a good job in a bank, but then got into bad company and became addicted to alcohol and gambling. Eventually to pay the family's debts he stole from the bank and finished up in prison. His wife died, but his sons were adopted by their grandparents and were very successful. When he came out of prison, he did not want his sons' futures jeopardised by being associated with a criminal, so let them assume he was dead. He had lived alone on the mountain for many years and saved a lot of money from the beautiful woodcarvings he sold, and his great hope was that he might be able to use the money to help someone in need. Lucien was constantly burdened by the guilt of what he had done to Dani, but Annette's hatred towards him made it impossible to do anything for the little boy. He did carve a Noah's Ark full of little animals for Dani, but Annette simply threw it on the woodpile. Lucien also decided to enter one of his carvings for the hand-craft competition at school, but shortly before the competition Annette secretly smashed the carved horse out of spite, and won the competition herself. Neither Annette nor Lucien could find peace of mind or happiness. Then one night Annette went out for a walk alone, slipped on ice and sprained her ankle very badly. Unable to walk, she was in danger of freezing to death. She struggled to the nearest chalet but the people were away. Then to her relief someone came skiing down the path; it was Lucien, on his way home from visiting his old friend. She called for help, and he gave her his cloak, went home to get the sledge. When he returned, Annette confessed to him about breaking his carved horse, but instead of being angry Lucien forgave her and felt relieved that he was not the only person to have done hurtful things out of spite. He took her on the sledge to her chalet, where he was invited in. Later Annette confessed to the schoolmaster, and they agreed that he should present her prize to Lucien. The enmity was over, but Lucien still felt troubled with guilt about Dani's disability and pain. One evening Lucien's sister, who commuted by train to work in a hotel in the nearest town, came home with a generous tip from a famous orthopaedic surgeon, Monsieur Givet, who was staying at the hotel. Lucien asked excitedly whether he could make Dani better, but was told the doctor was leaving the hotel for home early the next morning, and anyway his fees would be far too expensive. Nevertheless, Lucien crept out of the house that night in a blizzard and went to talk with his friend the old man, telling him about Monsieur Givet and that he might be able to cure Dani. The old man gave Lucien a sock full of banknotes to pay for the treatment, but made him promise not to tell the doctor anything about him. "Just tell him that it is the payment of a debt," he said. Then Lucien attempted to climb and ski to the town, which involved crossing a high mountain pass. Despite the atrocious weather he reached the hotel about 5&nbsp;am. Monsieur Givet went with Lucien to visit Dani, and offered to treat him in his hospital. But before he left the village, he asked Lucien's sister where the old man lived that Lucien knew, and went to visit. He recognised the old man as his father, told him how much he had missed him, and invited him to come home. Dani went with Annette to stay in the hospital. His fractured leg was re-broken and set properly, and Dani returned home able to walk and run like any little boy.
27066456	/m/0bs6jvx	Dead or Alive	Grant Blackwood	2010-12-07		 When John Clark and Domingo "Ding" Chavez are forcibly retired from both the CIA and Rainbow, they join Jack Ryan, Jr. at "The Campus", a privately-run intelligence organization carrying 100 blank Presidential Pardons (signed by Jack Ryan, Sr. before he left office) for any actions they may choose to take based on the information they collect. John and Ding take the responsibility to train Jack Jr. for field work while they try to crack a plot by a group of Islamic extremists to assemble and detonate a nuclear device in a nuclear waste storage facility in order to poison the water table for the western United States. Meanwhile, Jack Ryan, Sr. decides that he's had enough of the way his successor, President Ed Kealty, is running the country, and subsequently announce his candidacy for President of the United States.
27072898	/m/0bs786w	The Tatami Galaxy				 The story of The Tatami Galaxy follows an unnamed third year university student in Kyoto, Japan and what he views as his wasted time in a particular club (also called "circle") at his university. He meets Ozu, another student, whose encouragement sets him on a mission of dubious morality. He contemplates his affection for a second year engineering student, Akashi, and makes promises to her, usually of and within a romantic subtext. The culmination of his dubious missions often conflict with his interest in her in some way. The story is one of a number that draw on the author's experience in Kyoto University. ; : :An unnamed college student in Kyoto who is recollecting his past two years of college life. He entered college dreaming of the "rosy campus life" that must surely be his. He wants to meet the raven-haired girl of his dreams, which is why he joins a new social circle in each episode. He is quite shy, and easily manipulated by the other characters. Even though he is the central character, he seems to be the most powerless and normal person in the roster. ; : :The appearance of Ozu in each episode causes the protagonist considerable distress. The protagonist always expresses how ugly Ozu is on his first appearance, which is often followed by Ozu telling him that he's quite cruel. Ozu seems to be a misfit as well, yet he's often the one manipulating the other characters against the protagonist. He also seems to care for the protagonist, and rescues him on certain occasions from sticky situations. Because he often eats unbalanced meals, he looks very pale and spooky as if he is a yōkai, especially to the protagonist, and is occasionally depicted as such. ; : :A freshman student who is commonly (but not always) the center of the protagonist's affections. She acts rationally and even coldly towards most people, but often shows hints of affection or at least helpfulness to the protagonist. Her fear of moths also contrasts with her normally calm demeanor. She often appears in the same club that the protagonist joins, she is a student of the engineering department and a member of Birdman circle. ; : :Originally introduced as a deity of matrimony in the first episode, but he is actually an eighth year student living in the same dorm as the protagonist. He always wears a yukata and has a wise, distant, nonchalant air about him. He is more commonly referred to simply as Master Higuchi or The Master (Shishō). He often aids the protagonist most directly, though the protagonist may not see it that way. ; : :An eighth year student who leads the Film Circle Misogi. Regardless of his bad GPA, he is a handsome man and adored by members of his circle but he harbors a secret fetish for breasts, and keeps a love-doll (Kaori). He often takes an antagonistic role relative to the protagonist, and Ozu often assists Jōgasaki in some way, usually a way detrimental to the protagonist's progress, in spite of the fact that Ozu is helping the protagonist at the same time. ; : :A dental hygienist who is close to Higuchi and Jōgasaki. She likes getting inebriated, at which point she drastically loses her sense of judgment and flirts with whomever is around. Aware of this, she is cautious about choosing who she goes drinking with. She serves as a formal love interest for the protagonist in episodes 6–8. ; : :The love-doll owned by Jōgasaki. In episodes 6–8, the protagonist develops affections for her after being given the opportunity to keep her in his room. She seems to speak to him but it is unclear whether the speaking is truly hers or whether it is simply the thoughts of the protagonist projected through her. ; : :A shady sub-leader of the Film Circle Misogi. He acts as a yesman of Jōgasaki in the circle but he leads the Secret Society Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant on backstage. ; :An elegant girl the protagonist is in a correspondence with. She has the appearance (in his daydreams) of the raven haired maiden he's always dreamed of. In episodes 6–8, she writes an ultimatum to him asking to meet or end their correspondence. The letters are revealed to be originally written by Ozu as a prank, and later by Akashi, who takes them more seriously. ; : :An old woman who appears in every episode, almost always along Kiyamachi Street, and tells the protagonist (often but not always at his behest) to seize the opportunities before him (or a variation thereof). She increases the price for her services by ¥1000 in each subsequent episode. ; : :The owner of the neko ramen shop the protagonist favors. He is mostly silent, occasionally putting in a short, new insight into the protagonist's current conversations or problems. He occasionally takes on a more active role in the protagonist's adventures, always on a helpful note. He appears to have some ties to Higuchi. ; : :A character representing the protagonist's sexual drive. He is shown as a cowboy. He constantly bickers against the protagonist, his only goal to receive sexual pleasure. He appears in episodes 6–8 and 10.
27075953	/m/0br_zmj	Chinese Cinderella: The Mystery of the Song Dynasty Painting				 The story starts off with Chinese Cinderella being pursued by a mysterious woman wearing black. CC falls and ends up in a hospital recovering from a nasty fall. There she sees a famous Chinese painting called 'Along The River AT Qing Ming'. Chinese Cinderella is suffering from sudden and random bouts of unconsciousness she is haunted by vivid dreams that seem very strange yet somehow very familiar. A tale and adventure emrges of friendship, wealth, poverty, eunuchs and an emperor who loved art. Chinese Cinderella recalls a life eight hundred years ago during the Song Dynasty. After a fall, CC is whisked away to a hospital. As she drifts in and out of consciousness, she is haunted by vivid dreams that seem strange—yet somehow familiar. Thus begins CC’s emotional journey back to a privileged life lived eight hundred years ago during the Song dynasty. CC was the daughter of a wealthy and influential man, but she finds herself drawn to a poor orphan boy with a startling ability to capture the beauty of the natural world. As the relationship between these two young people deepens, the transforming power of art and romantic love comes into conflict with the immovable rules of Chinese society.
27079548	/m/0bs3zv_	The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver	Thornton Burgess	1917		 Paddy moves into the Green Forest, and Sammy Jay starts to complain he is cutting down the trees, but Sammy falls into the water and learns that this did not work out very well. After that Old Man Coyote finds out Paddy is in the Green Forest, and starts to hunt for him, though for three days Paddy outsmarts him. But one day he almost catches Paddy and he would have were it not for Sammy Jay telling Paddy to get into the water. After that Paddy and Sammy become best friends.
27084761	/m/0bs4tfq	Radiant Shadows	Melissa Marr	2010-04-24	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The prologue of Radiant Shadows shows Devlin, the high court's Assassin, agreeing to shelter a spectral girl name Rae in faerie without his queen's knowledge. It then skips forward about a century, to show the high queen, Sorcha, ordering Devlin to kill a baby halfling, the child of the Gabriel, along with a warning that it should "never enter faerie". The novel then cuts to the present day, to Ani, the halfling whose life Devlin spared, as she tries to fit in with the other hounds, but cannot, due to her father's protectiveness and her mortal blood. Devlin, meanwhile, has been told by Sorcha to stay in the mortal world to keep an eye on her son, Seth. Devlin and Ani meet at the crows nest, where she drains his energy and he leaves with a taste of her blood. Ani is different from other hounds, due to her ability to feed on both emotions and touch, and mortal and faery. Irial, the former dark king, has been performing tests to identify what about her is different and introduce it to his court to strengthen them. This also, however, draws the attention of Devlin and Sorcha's other sister, Bananach, the essence of war. She tells Ani that she has to kill Seth and Niall, or give Bananach her blood. Ani can do neither, and is soon found by an unclaimed steed. Ani, Devlin and the steed -which Ani names Barry, short for Barracuda- leave the state to get away from Bananach. In faerie, meanwhile, Rae, who is a dreamwalker, enters Sorcha's dream and gives her a way to watch Seth in the mortal world. Unfortunately, she becomes obsessed with this, and without her rulership faerie starts to dissolve. Bananach pays a visit, and starts killing members of the high court. Scared, Rae contacts Devlin through a dream and informs him of this turn of events. Devlin and Ani return to huntsdale only to find that Bananach has killed Ani's sister Tish. Ani demands that they should then kill Bananach, "breath for breath", but Devlin informs her that neither of the twins can be killed without killing all of faerie. Bananach later goes to stab Ani, but Irial throws himself in front of her, taking the wound that would be hers. The knife dissolves inside him, poisoning him, and Bananach says that he will not last the fortnight. Irial tells his successor and love interest, Niall, that he "wishes he hadn't been king when they met", referring to Niall's backstory as revealed in Ink Exchange, then Ani, Devlin, Rabbit and Seth leave for faerie. Devlin was injured in the fight, and Ani allows him to drink her blood, healing him and binding them together. With Seth returned to faerie, Sorcha awakens, and together Devlin, Ani and Rae form the shadow court to balance the high court. (This, however, leaves the dark court out of balance, this will presumably be remedied in the final book, Darkest Mercy.) They also seal the veil between the mortal and faerie worlds so that one cannot return to the mortal world without both the High and Shadow court's help. it:Radiant Shadows
27087703	/m/0bs6y2b	The Inverted World	Christopher Priest	1974		 The opening and third sections of the book are narrated in first-person by the protagonist, Helward Mann; the middle part is in third-person. Helward lives in a city called "Earth", a giant structure that is slowly winched along on a set of tracks forever northward. The pulling of the city has been going on long before Helward was born - and although he is puzzled by the need to keep the city constantly moving and its need to reach "the optimum", he nevertheless joins one of the Guilds - the elite that ensure the constant motion and survival of the city. All the inhabitants of the city Earth believe that they are lost a long way from planet Earth, and that one day they will be found and rescued but until then they must go on surviving in the little microcosm they have constructed of planet Earth. The populace of city Earth grow up in crèches and reach adulthood rarely seeing outside its walls. A small exercise area with large walls and a view of the sky above is as much as they see of outside. Even after reaching adulthood, the vast majority never see beyond the confines of the city. A few of the inhabitants - chosen males - are offered positions with the Guildsmen. These are the only inhabitants of the city given access to the outside world, and it is these alone that know the secret of the city. Beyond the walls the true nature of the city is revealed, and the great lengths that must be achieved for its continued survival. Constructed on top of great wheels, the city is slowly winched along railway tracks, moving forever northward. The tracks are constantly reused; as the city moves past one section that part is ripped up, carried to the front of the city and relaid once more. Once the tracks reach a suitable length, giant wheel-pulleys are moved into position and slowly, smoothly - so that no resident of the city realises - the city is dragged along to its new location, and track laying can once again begin in earnest. It is the responsibility of the guildsmen to ensure the movement and survival of the city. Come river, ravine, valley or mountain, the city must never stop its relentless movement, as there had been severe detrimental effects the more the city lagged behind in the 'past'. As directed by Destaine, who was one of the first residents of the city, the best way to achieve the city being near the 'optimum' is to have a selection of guilds, each responsible for specific jobs. The guilds originally consisted of four: Track Guild, Traction Guild, Future Guild and Bridge-Builders Guild. An additional two were added later on: Barter Guild and Militia Guild. The Track Guild is responsible for the laying and removing of the tracks; the Traction Guild are responsible for the pulling of the city; the Future Guild map out the land ahead of the city to determine the best route for the city; the Bridge-Builders are responsible for ensuring the city can navigate safely across ravines or rivers. As the city moves through its environment it passes by villages and it is the job of the Barter Guild to employ labour to help the Track Guild and to 'invite' surrogate mothers from poor local native clans, since women in the city tend to bear mostly male offspring. Occasionally some of these villages can be aggressive and it is the Militia Guild's job to protect the city from them. It turns out that the inhabitants of the city have never left Earth, but that the city was planned hundreds of years ago as a means to exploit a theretofore unknown, localized energy source in preparation for a severe, global energy crisis which caused society to tumble back into poverty and anarchy. Since the 'optimum' powering the generators of the city moves some meters every day, it was necessary to set the city on tracks to follow it. Over the centuries the city Earth was towed from inner China to the coast of Portugal while the knowledge of the city's origin was gradually lost. The generator powering the city changes the world for the city dwellers, turning sun and Earth into rotating pseudospheres, with the rims rotating at a speed faster than light. Time varies, going slower in the spikes - the 'future' - and speeding up rimwards - the dangerous 'past'. The effect also affected metabolism and DNA of the city dwellers to the point of physical dependence to stay near the 'optimum'. The Atlantic ocean, at first thought to be a very large river, is an obstacle no guild is prepared for. The book ends with an unknown future for city Earth, already replete with revolt, shortages and doubt.
27089327	/m/0br_0py	Directive 51	John Barnes	2010	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The title is a reference to Directive 51, the Presidential Directive which claims power to execute procedures for continuity of the federal government in the event of a "catastrophic emergency". In the near future, a variety of groups with diverse aims, but an overlapping desire to end modern technological society (the "Big System") create a nanotech plague ("Daybreak") which both destroys petroleum-based fuels, rubber and plastics and eats away any metal conductors carrying electricity. An open question in the book is whether these groups, and their shared motivations, are coordinated by some conscious actor, or whether they are an emergent property / meme that attained a critical mass. The Daybreak plague strikes, and world governments are helpless to deal with it. Industrial civilization rapidly breaks down, and tens of millions die in the US alone (the global death toll measures in the billions). There is a presidential succession crisis. Just as society in the US seems to start stabilizing, preemplaced pure fusion weapons detonate, destroying Washington DC and Chicago. This is followed by additional pure fusion weapon strikes, which are determined to be weapons that are being created on the moon by nanotech replicators. A shadowy neofeudalist group (the "Castle movement") led by a reactionary billionaire may be inadvertent saviors of society ... or may have some deeper involvement in things.
27089331	/m/0bs0wyk	Cybele's Secret	Juliet Marillier	2007-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Cybele's Secret (pronounced Ke-beh-leh)is the sequel to Wildwood Dancing. It is narrated by Paula, the fourth sister of five and a scholar. She accompanies her father on a business trip to Istanbul to try and find a statue of the goddess Cybele. Paula's father thinks it appropriate to hire a bodyguard for Paula as the streets in the city a dangerous place for a young, foreign woman. As Paula is about to make a decision on which man she will hire, another, named Stoyan, shows up. He admits to having left his previous boss alone and exposed, which proved fatal for the boss, but Paula hires him anyway. After a while, they go to a dinner, where Paula meets an influential lady who runs a women's only library and steam room. She invites Paula to come along one day, which Paula gladly accepts, being excited about the prospects of so many books. She begins to research Cybele, to see if it would give her a clue as to where the statue was.She knows that time is running out to find the statue; one of her father's colleagues is already murdered because of it and there are rumours of a religious cult of Cybele's followers somewhere in Istanbul. Paula finds some old records with delicate pictures around the edge, on which appear strange words that only she can see. She soon realises that the faerie folk have given her a task, as they did her older sister Jena several years ago, but does not know what it is, only having a few words from the witch Dragutsa to go off; 'You must help an old friend of mine.' Paula ropes her Stoyan into helping with the quest, and also begins to teach him how to read and write. To find the statue, Paula must join with a daring and dangerous pirate named Duarte, who has promised a friend that he would return one day to the island where they have found out that the statue is kept. Paula finds herself drawn to him as she also is to Stoyan. They set out for the island on the pirate's ship to find the statue. Paula's father does not know about this. On the island they find many perils, including the influential lady who owns the library that Paula has been using, and who turns out to be the leader of the religious cult. She admits to wanting the statue for herself and followers, and is willing to kill to get it. Paula, Stoyan and Duarte have to journey through a cave and pass certain test such as helping Tati, (Paula's sister who goes to live with Sorrow in the Faerie realm with Sorrow at the end of Wildwood Dancing), get across a perilous path to join them, without speaking to or touching her. They achieve this through Stoyan's amazing control of dogs. Then they must choose a gift each. Paula chooses a tapestry of five girls sewn to look like her and her sisters. The influential lady chooses the statue, which Paula, Duarte and Stoyan did not realise was an option. Another task is that Paula must collect three tiny creatures which sit on her arms and head. After the many tasks, they come out of the cave into another place on the island. The cave begins to collapse, shaking and dropping stones, with their opponents still inside. Faced with the choice of saving herself or dying with her guard, the cult's leader chooses to die with the guard she took such good care of the whole time. The statue is placed back where it should belong, with the villagers who live on the island and who are the true worshippers of Cybele. The adventurers return to Istanbul, upon which Paula eventually realises that yes, she is in love with Stoyan. They decide to get married back at Paula's home, which is a welcome event to everyone, including Stela, who exclaims that maybe since Tati and Jena have had their tasks, and Iulia is married, it will be her turn to go back to the Faerie realm, and she will be able to see Ildephonsus and all her other little friends again.
27091503	/m/0br_9zy	Little Darlings	Jacqueline Wilson		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Destiny Williams wakes up on her eleventh birthday and receives a black outfit from her mum. Her biological father is the rock star Danny Kilman and her mum got them tickets to a movie premier in the hopes of Destiny meeting her real dad. Sunset Kilman, who lives with her rock star dad Danny Kilman, ex-model mum Suzy Kilman and two cuter and younger siblings with ridiculous names, attends the movie premier with her family. She's criticized by her mother Suzy, who she believes hates her. The movie has Danny in as a cameo appearance. It turns out they made fun of him on the movie, but Danny pretends it doesn't bother him and laughs it off. But as they walk out he becomes angry that they made a fool of him. Sunset sees Destiny and her mum in the crowd and tries to get her dad to look at them, only to be scolded by Suzy. Destiny and her mum Kate don't have train tickets home or any money to pay for transport. Destiny tries asking some people they pass as her mother isn't talking as Danny didn't recognize her. Destiny and Kate get a lift back from a nice lady eventually, but Kate asks her to drop them off at Robin Hill which is where Danny and his family live. Sunset wakes up the next day and finds Destiny who has climbed over the fence into her garden. The two start talking about how Destiny is the daughter of Danny as well. Suzy comes out and yells at Sunset for letting them in and threatens to call the police. Destiny and Kate are thrown out and Suzy hits Sunset around the face. Destiny and her mum eventually find their way back home to the maisonette house they live in, in the Bilfield estate. Destiny gets ready for school at Bilfield Primary where she is in year 6. Her teacher Mr Roberts announces they're doing a talent show called 'Bilfield's got Talent' The boys wants to do street dance acts and divide into two groups the Flatboys and the Speedos. (the Flatboys and Speedos are two gangs on the estate that hate each other and are always fighting). Apart from Raymond who does proper ballet and two other boys who want to mess about doing mikey take ballet. And Fareed who wants to do magic tricks. Hannah becomes his assistant. One group of girls decide to do a play, and two other groups are formed wanting to dance and sing at the same time. Which leaves Angel who wants to do a pole dance, which Mr Roberts forbids. Angel makes fun of Destiny, saying she has no talent. Destiny then says she'll sing the Danny Kilman song 'Destiny' which she was named after. Sunset finds Destiny and Kate's fan page on the official Danny Kilman fan site. She finds out Destiny's address and writes her a letter and send her a leather jacket. Sunset then tries again to talk to her dad and convince him that Destiny really is his daughter. He gets angry and tells Sunset to leave it. Destiny and her classmates all gather to rehearse their acts for the talent show. everyone is very badly rehearsed, except Destiny because when she sings everyone is stunned. Mr Roberts decides to put her on last. Destiny gets home with a rush of excitement. She finds the package Sunset had sent her and opens it up to find the jacket, which fits her perfectly. She has to wait until her mum's horrible friend Louella has gone so she can tell her mum about it and show her the letter from Sunset. Sunset's little sister Sweetie has a birthday party and receives wondrous gifts, including a doll as big as herself and a sweetshop. However, Danny has invited the niece of a girl who Suzy hates, which causes Danny and Suzy to start fighting. Danny walks out on them along with the girl who Sunset nicknames Big Mouth. Destiny prepares for the first talent show in front of the school with a student panel. Everybody gets really high scores (except a couple who are chanted of the stage with 'off, off, off!') and Destiny is given the second to last place. She goes home and cries to her mum about it, saying they don't like her just because she's the new girl and she isn't in either of the Flatboys or Speedos gangs. Danny turns up and takes the kids away with him and Big Mouth, despite Suzy's protests. They go to a grand hotel and get room service Destiny arrives at her school later in the evening for the talent show with teachers on the panel. She's greeted by Jack, a boy in her class who she begins to like when he compliments her on her singing. He comforts her backstage before she goes on. After Destiny's sung, she's given the highest score meaning she's won the competition. Jack jumps onstage and gives her a hug in front of everyone. The next day she takes her mum Kate to the doctors as throughout the book she's been worrying about her losing so much weight. Kate faints in the doctors and is taken for blood tests, but everything turns out to be fine with her. Sunset has to look after Sweetie and Ace as their mum Suzy gets more and more depressed. Danny's manager Rose-May comes to the door with Danny and says that Sweetie has a chance to be on TV on a new show called little darlings about famous celebrities and their children. Sweetie sings for her and Rose-May thinks she's perfect. The producer for the show comes along the next day and Sweetie gets ready to sing for her. Sweetie's tooth falls out just as she's about to sing and she bursts into tears. The producer Debs thinks she's too young for the show and asks if Sunset can sing. She says no, but makes them stay as she rushes to get the tape of Destiny singing at the talent show. They all watch it and Debs says they could reunite Danny and his long lost daughter on the show. Destiny wakes up and sings Destiny to herself, happy about her mum being alright. Her mum Kate rushes back into the house after she's left for work saying a Mercedes car is parked outside for her. She rings Debs as the driver gives them a letter. Destiny sings to Debs down the phone to prove it's her and Debs explains about the little darlings show and how she'll get to meet her dad Danny. Destiny and her mum are driven away, but Destiny stops and asks if she can make a quick stop. She goes to Jack's flat and says goodbye to him before she goes and it becomes obvious he has a crush on her. Destiny and Kate ride of to Robin Hill where they're greeted by Debs and Destiny meets her dad Danny with a big hug whilst she's being filmed. Destiny meets Sunset in person and the book ends with them smiling at each other as they hold hands, best friends turned sisters.
27095056	/m/0bs64jb	The Island Beneath the Sea	Isabel Allende	2009	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The story opens on the island of Saint-Domingue (current day Haiti) in the late 18th century. Zarite (known as Tete) is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. As a young girl Tete is purchased by Violette, a mixed race courtesan, on behalf of Toulouse Valmorain, a Frenchman who has inherited his father's sugar plantation. Valmorain has big dreams of financial success and is somewhat ambivalent towards slavery. He views it as a means to an end, as he does most things. Upon Valmorain's marriage, Tete becomes his wife's personal slave. Valmorain's wife is fragile, beautiful, and slowly succumbs to madness. As Valmorain's wife goes mad, Valmorain forces Tete, now a teenager, into sexual servitude, which produces several illegitimate children. Spanning four decades, the narrative leaps between the social upheavals from the distant French Revolution to the Haitian slave rebellion in all its brutality and chaos, to a New Orleans fomenting with cultural change.
27100881	/m/0cc825l	Dragon Haven	Robin Hobb		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book opens where the previous book left off and we continue to follow the dragons, the keepers and the barge Tarman as they continue their trek up the river.
27109640	/m/0bs8xkz	The Desert Spear			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel continues the story of mankind's battle against demons known as "corelings", which rise from the planet's core each night to feast upon humans. The Desert Spear is book two of the Demon quintet. The Deliverer has returned, but who is he? Arlen Bales, formerly of the small hamlet of Tibbet's Brook, learned harsh lessons about life as he grew up in a world where hungry demons stalk the night and humanity is trapped by its own fear. He chose a different path; chose to fight inherited apathy and the corelings, and eventually he became the Painted Man, a reluctant saviour. But the figure emerging from the desert, calling himself the Deliverer, is not Arlen. He is a friend and betrayer, and though he carries the spear from the Deliverer's tomb, he also heads a vast army intent on a holy war against the demon plague and anyone else who stands in his way.
27111976	/m/0bs816p	Monster Man – 1994				 The story is set in Western Australia. Melanie Spencer is just trying to stop males from controlling her life when a man (Levine) who thinks she looks like his deceased sister abducts her. This man has an alter-ego named Monster. Monster is the one who is blamed on all of the bad things that have happened so Levine does not feel guilty. Levine has also kidnapped a little girl (Christine Webster) who also looked like his sister Claudia. Levine takes these two girl on a trip to his old school where he was bullied and burns it down. He then tries to hide with them down at a beach, but kills a man and his dog to cover his tracks. The two girls then run away. Whilst everyone thinks that Levine is dead, he then comes back for revenge and tries to kill Melanie whilst she is in hospital recovering from the injuries sustained whilst being a prisoner of him.
27114568	/m/0bs2dl6	\\"Uncle Tom's Cabin\\" Contrasted with Buckingham Hall, the Planter's Home			{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel follows Eugene Buckingham, the only son of a South Carolina planter, as he crosses paths with Julia Tennyson, a Scottish American journalist who has written a number of pamphlets under various pseudonyms. What begins as mutual friendship eventually evolves into love, despite the anxieties of the opposing fathers. Col. Buckingham - Eugene's father and a (fictional) descendant of the Duke of Buckingham - contests the partnership on the grounds that Julia has written pamphlets degrading all planters as vicious sadists, even though he is not. Likewise Dr. Tennyson - Julia's father and a Scotsman - objects because he supports the view of all planters as violent and cruel. The Tennysons eventually make their way to South Carolina from New York, and after several philosophical discussions regarding American slavery, Eugene and Julia are allowed to marry. The story ends as the newlyweds embark on a ship to England for their honeymoon.
27120001	/m/0bs2y33	Assassin's Creed: Renaissance		2009-11-20	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 This is a story about a young man, Ezio Auditore, seeking revenge for the killing of his family. On his mission for vengeance he finds out truths about his father and his father's history. Guided by assassins, his skill as an assassin is honed until finally he is one of them. Ezio becomes involved in a war between the Assassin Order and the Knights Templar, who both seek an ancient Vault in Italy which contains super-advanced technology that can alter human minds. Set entirely in 15th century Italy, the plot features non-fictional characters such as Rodrigo Borgia, who is here portrayed as the antagonist. Unlike the game Assassin's Creed II, it does not span over a vast period of time (the game's plot also takes place as late as 2012) and takes its own liberties for the sake of creativity. There is no mention of the modern day events of the Assassin's Creed universe, including Desmond Miles looking back on his ancestor's memories. Some of the book, including Ezio's long-running relationship with Christina, were left out of the novel and were instead included as playable repressed memories in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.
27123800	/m/0gjdvx6	Cryoburn	Lois McMaster Bujold	2010-10-19	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Cryoburn takes place six or seven years after Diplomatic Immunity. Miles is 39&nbsp;years old. He is sent by Emperor Gregor to the planet Kibou-daini ("New&nbsp;Hope") to investigate White Chrysanthemum Cryonics Corporation. WhiteChrys, a major "cryocorp", to which sick or dying people go to be frozen in hopes of one day being revived and cured, is opening a subsidiary on Komarr, arousing suspicions. The narrative follows three points of view: those of Miles, his Armsman Roic, and Jin Sato, a local Kibou-daini boy. At a conference, an attempt is made to kidnap Miles and the other attendees. Miles avoids capture because an allergic reaction to the drug used on him causes him to go extremely hyperactive, and escapes into the below-ground Cryocombs, where the frozen are stored. Roic is caught along with Raven, a cryo-revival specialist from the Durona Group who assisted in reviving Miles after his death on Jackson's Whole (detailed in Mirror Dance). When Miles finds his way back to the surface, he encounters Jin, an eleven-year-old boy living with his chickens and other pets in a disused building. Jin introduces him to a society of outcasts living in abandoned facilities. This helps Miles piece together what is really going on.
27134307	/m/0bwfvqt	Outside Over There	Maurice Sendak	1981	{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A young girl named Ida harbors feelings of jealousy and resentment towards her baby sister, for whom she is largely responsible while their father is away. When her sister is kidnapped through the nursery window by mysterious robed fey, who leave an ice baby in her sister's place. Ida resolves to rescue her, embarking on a fantastic adventure. Initially, Ida is easily distracted from her goal, nearly passing her sister as she becomes absorbed in the magic of the quest. Ultimately, she succeeds in rescuing her baby sister and returning home, now fully committed to the care of her sister until their father returns home.
27134585	/m/0bwhmf7	The Faraway Lurs		1963		 The story takes place in Denmark during the Bronze Age. The main character is an 18 year-old girl named Heather, and she is a member of the tribe called the Forest People that lives in a village called Oakwood. They worship a sacred tree and a spring. At the beginning of the story Heather is gathering honey from a beehive high in a tree. She is being helped by her slave Buzz, who is able to hum ("buzz") in a special way that keeps the bees from stinging. Buzz had been captured by Heather's father Goodshade from a different tribe called the Sun People, who are called this because they worship the sun and are known for making bronze tools and weapons. Although Buzz was originally one the Sun People, she is now afraid of them because they had tried to sacrifice her. While Heather is high in the tree, Buzz stops humming, allowing the bees to sting Heather. Heather asks Buzz why she stopped humming, and she replies that she can hear a sound. Heather looks in the direction of the sound, and sees the Sun People in the distance driving their cattle toward a nearby lake. The Sun People also make a bronze musical instrument called the lurs. The faraway sound that the girls hear is the lurs. Heather is curious about the Sun People, however she knows that in the past the Sun People have attacked the Forest People, so she runs back home to tell what she has seen. She meets Blue Wing, her presumed future husband, and they both go to Heather's father Goodshade, the village chief, but he is not worried about the Sun People. Later, Buzz tells Heather and Blue Wing that Goodshade had already known about the Sun People before they told him, and that he had sent messengers to warn other villages. The next day, Heather realizes that in her excitement about seeing the Sun People she had left her honey up in the tree, and she goes back to the tree to get it. When Heather comes down from the tree, she sees a handsome young stranger standing near the tree. His name is Wolf Stone, and he is one of the Sun People. Heather is wary but intrigued by the young man. She asks him whether the Sun People plan to attack the Forest People to rob them. He says they will if they want, but does not sound as if he is serious. Heather returns to her village, but does not tell anyone about her meeting with Wolf Stone. She has trouble forgetting about him. In the evening she is sitting on a mound near the village, and Wolf Stone sneaks up to her to talk. He tells her that he has come to warn the Forest People to take all their animals and hide in the forest for several days. She asks him why, and he explains that the chief Great Elk, who is his father, wants to build a ship from the wood of the tree of power, which he knows grows in Oakwood. He believes that a ship built from the wood of this tree can never be sunk. Wolf Stone tells Heather that if the Forest People hide, he will lead the Sun People away from the Forest People's sacred tree. Heather asks him how he knows about the sacred tree, but he makes evasive Įanswers. As he is leaving, Heather asks Wolf Stone why he came to tell her this, and he tells her that she is unlike any girl he has ever known. Heather returns to her village to warn everyone. She tells her mother that Wolf Stone had told her to have everyone hide in the forest from the Sun People. However, she does not tell anyone about their plan to cut down the sacred tree to build a ship. Heather's mother consults the sacred tree, which tells her that Wolf Stone could never deceive his father, and asks who will protect the tree from the Sun People if all the Forest People hide in the forest. Heather asks Buzz to go to the village herbalist Swampwife to get medicine to soothe the bee stings, but Buzz refuses. Buzz then tells Heather that the Swampwife has treasures including bronze bracelets, which she could only have gotten from the Sun People. This prompts Heather to wonder whether it might have been the Swampwife who told the Sun People about the sacred tree. But Goodshade tells Heather that he thinks it was not the Swampwife, but rather she herself (Heather), and that she had accidentally told Wolf Stone. Goodshade decides not to have the Forest People hide in the forest, but to have the sacred tree guarded by archers. Later, Heather goes to see Blue Wing, who tells her that he has asked Goodshade for her hand. She confesses to him that she loves Wolf Stone instead of him. Littleman, who is one of the oldest of the Forest People, allows himself to be captured by the Sun People in order to spy on them. He learns that they do not have bows and arrows, only swords, and confirms that they are interested in the tree. They release him and try to follow him home to find the tree, but he is too clever and they unable to follow him. In the camp of the Sun People, Eagle is anxious to build a ship. The chief Great Elk, Eagle, and the Sun Priest Troll Tamer argue about whether the ship must be built from the tree of power or merely from any tree. They also discuss whether the tree of power should be destroyed if it is not used. We learn that it really was Swampwife who told the Sun People about the tree of power, and that that night she has promised to lead two other priests Longfire and Knife to the tree. Many of the Sun People want to kill Troll Tamer, but they believe in a curse that if Troll Tamer dies, so will chief Great Elk. Some of the Sun People want to kill Troll Tamer even if it means that Great Elk will die. Wolf Stone had promised Heather to lead the Sun People away from the Forest People's sacred tree, but now he realizes that he cannot lie to his father Great Elk, who tells him his plan to take the sacred tree without a fight. Wolf Stone decides to warn Heather again. Meanwhile, Heather discovers that the village dogs have been fed a poison rabbit to kill them. She knows that the Swampwife had the ability to do this, and suspects her of doing it to keep the dogs quiet at night, when an attack might occur. Heather and Buzz go to confront the Swampwife with their suspicions. When they get there, they find that the two priests Longfire and Knife have come to see the Swampwife, who had promised to lead them to the sacred tree. The Swampwife tricks Knife into drowning by walking into the swamp, where he sinks because of the armor he is wearing. The Swampwife laughs, and Buzz makes her special humming noise, which paralyzes the Swampwife, causing her to drown as well. The other priest Longfire catches Buzz and Heather, and is ready to kill them when Stone Wolf arrives. Stone Wolf stops Longfire from killing them and sends him back to the Sun People. After Longfire has left, Stone Wolf tells Heather that the Forest People must guard the wrong tree to deceive the Sun People about which tree is the sacred tree. She asks him to meet with her father to convince him. They go to him and Stone Wolf tells him his plan, but Goodshade does not believe it will work. Stone Wolf warns Goodshade that if Great Elk failed to win the tree of power, then the Sun Priest Troll Tamer would burn down the forest. Then Stone Wolf leaves and returns to the Sun People. The next day, the Forest People ask the sacred tree what they should do, and it tells them to be brave and to find their greatest treasure and give it to their god. As the people ponder what this might mean, Heather and Buzz are talking and Buzz tells Heather that she wants Stone Wolf to kill his father. Heather disagrees, but Buzz says that someone must do this. That night Elfstream, one of the oldest chieftains, says that he thinks the tree is calling on them to sacrifice one of their own lives to the tree. Goodshade says that never before has a god asked for this, and that time will tell what their greatest treasure is. That night, Eagle sneaks to the Oakwood and finds where Buzz is sleeping. He convinces her to help him kill Great Elk to keep him from burning down the forest. Eagle does not want this, because he wants to build a ship. He asks Buzz to bring him poison, a stone axe, and a few bows and arrows, and she agrees. Blue Wing sees Buzz delivering these items to Eagle, and confronts Eagle. Blue Wing says that Eagle has no right to these things and that Eagle cannot even shoot a bow. Eagle tells Blue Wing that one arrow could defeat Great Elk, suggesting that Blue Wing could do this himself. Blue Wing wonders why Eagle wants to kill the chief of his own people, and Eagle tells him that it is because Great Elk wants to burn the forest, while Eagle only wants a tree, and he does not want the tree of power, but another tree. Eagle tells Blue Wing that once Great Elk is dead, Troll Tamer would die because of the curse, and Wolf Stone would become the chief of the Sun People, and that he would not burn down the forest. Blue Wing says that he does not think that Wolf Stone is so timid, and Eagle says that in that case Wolf Stone would be killed, too. Blue Wing wants to save the forest, and is also excited about the possibility of killing Wolf Stone, whom Heather loves, since he (Blue Wing) wants to marry Heather himself. So he goes with Eagle to the Sun People. Goodshade and Littleman see them leave together, and Buzz, who overheard their conversation, tells Goodshade and Littleman that Eagle and Blue Wing are planning to kill Wolf Stone. Littleman suggests that Buzz run to the camp of the Sun People to warn them. Wolf Stone goes to his father chief Great Elk and tells him of his love for Heather. He declares that he does not want the ship or to fight the Forest People or burn down their forest. Great Elk is receptive to his son's wishes, and says that he does not believe in the curse that he will die if Troll Tamer does. He decides to have Troll Tamer killed. Wolf Stone and several other sons of Great Elk begin planning how to do this, but know that Troll Tamer is powerful and has many spies among the slaves, and may already know of their plans. Troll Tamer announces that the lurs will be played and then there will be games that evening, and that this is part of his plan to take the tree of power. He says that the Forest People will hear the lurs and will come to watch the games. While they are watching the games, the Sun People can take the tree. Eagle says that Blue Wing, the best archer of the Forest People, has been taken hostage and that they will trade him for the tree. Great Elk astonishes Eagle by announcing that he no longer wants the tree or even to build a ship. As Great Elk dismisses Eagle, Troll Tamer announces that the tree of power will be burned. Great Elk also rejects this plan, and asks to see Blue Wing's bow and arrows, and tells Blue Wing to teach them how to use a bow. He says that after the games Blue Wing will be allowed to return to the Forest People. While Blue Wing is giving his archery demonstration, Buzz comes to Wolf Stone to warn him that Blue Wing intends to kill him. The next game involves Blue Wing trying to hit the Doves (girl warriors) with arrows as they ride in circles around him on horses. He is worried about hurting them, but they are so skilled that he does not hit even one of them, as hard as he tries. Every arrow he shoots misses. After the game ends, the Sun People discover that one of the stray arrows has killed Troll Tamer. When other sun priests come to Great Elk to tell him, Great Elk takes a drink from his cup and falls over dead: he has been poisoned. Eagle, who is nearby, picks up the cup that held the poison and takes it. Buzz is still at the camp of the Sun People, and now realizes that Great Elk must have been poisoned by the poison that she had given to Eagle. Now that Great Elk is dead, Wolf Stone is the chief of the Sun People. Wolf Stone gives Buzz a bronze sun-disk and tells her to take it to Heather and tell her that he will come for her after he has buried his father. He then orders that Blue Wing be tied up to prevent him from killing him. Buzz does go to Heather and takes the sun-disk to Heather, who begins to wear it, although the other Forest People disapprove. Then Heather discovers that the spring has dried up. She becomes afraid that everyone will want her to give her sun-disk to the spring as an offering, to make it flow again. After Great Elk and Troll Tamer are buried, Wolf Stone tells his brothers and the priests of the changes that he will make, now that he is chief. While they are talking, Blue Wing frees himself from his fetters and finds his bow and an arrow. He manages to shoot an arrow at Wolf Stone before he is killed by Wolf Stone's warriors. Later, a messenger arrives at Oakwood with the news that Blue Wing has been killed because he killed Wolf Stone. Heather is stunned. She gives the sun-disk to her parents to be used as a sacrifice to the spring, and goes to bed as it begins to rain. The next day, the spring has still not started flowing again, despite the rain. The Sun People organize a ritual sacrifice to their god. At the last minute Heather realizes that the intended sacrifice is she herself. She is given a poison to drink, and she willingly drinks it.
27140960	/m/0gj9d36	The White Queen	Philippa Gregory			 The story follows Elizabeth's life from her first meeting with Edward, through to his death and its aftermath. The mystery of the Princes in the Tower forms part of the action, with the novel questioning whether King Richard III had reason to have the boys killed. In the novel, young Prince Richard is not sent to the tower; Queen Elizabeth instead substitutes a page boy for the prince, who escapes and lives under an assumed name. The novel ends in 1485, just prior to the Battle of Bosworth.
27142770	/m/0bwgh6p	Necroscope	Brian Lumley	1986	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Harry is an English youth in school, and strange things occur as he grows up, such as a sudden increased intellect in mathematics, and the ability to fight beyond his experience after a teacher is killed. Eventually he marries his childhood sweetheart, Brenda, who slowly realizes there is more to her now-successful writer husband: that he can speak to the dead, whose collective consciences remain behind, at the location of dying. These dead can talk only to Harry at first, but eventually, they can "deadspeak" to each other. Coinciding with Harry's evolving abilities, Boris Dragonasi is contacted by a long-chained vampire, Thibor Ferenczy. Boris gains the ability to become a necromancer, who can forcefully extract secrets from the dead by playing with their remains and even eating them. Harry goes to visit his stepfather, who he knows killed his mother by drowning her in a river, and lives in a house at that river. Harry, realizing his stepfather is a Russian spy who plans to kill him for his talents, sabotages his stepfather, but both crash through the ice and fall into the frozen river. As he tries to get out, Harry discovers a new ability of the dead when his mother's corpse drags his stepfather down into the cold river, drowning him also. Eventually, Harry is contacted by E-Branch, who deal with ESPionage using psychic investigators and spies, while Boris is hired by the U.S.S.R. equivalent, the Opposition. Boris tracks down rumors of vampires, finding a World War 2 veteran who killed one, Faethor Ferenczy, along with a Russian Mongul, Max Batu, whose talent is to kill someone just by looking into their eyes. Eventually, Thibor manipulates Dragonasi and reveals that he is in a symbiotic relationship with a vampire, and they can reproduce but once per lifetime. He gives his offspring to Boris, who later betrays and kills Thibor with Batu, and in turn kills Batu so he can gain the secrets of using the "Evil Eye". Meanwhile, the head of E-Branch, who was killed by Boris, requests Harry's help in defeating the necromancer. Harry uses his ability to talk to the mathematician Mobius, who teaches him to travel time (and later space) by using the "Mobius Continuum". Harry uses "doors" to leap to places, and goes (teleports) to Russia where Boris is now the head of Russia's ESPionage unit, having killed the former leader. Using an army of walking undead, he eventually finds Boris, who tries to use his newly-acquired "evil eye" to kill Harry. However, one of Harry's undead followers interposes himself between the two, and Dragosani is killed because, as Max Batu had told him earlier, "one cannot curse the dead, for the dead cannot die twice". Unfortunately, Harry himself dies in the conflict from gunshot wounds, but his mind also lives on like his dead friends; and his body survives long enough to draw Dragosani back into the Mobius Continuum and trap him in a recurring time loop for all eternity.
27142852	/m/0bwkr8x	Necroscope II: Wamphyri	Brian Lumley	1988	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The spirit of Harry Keogh now resides in his son, Harry Jr. When his infant son sleeps, Harry can roam the Continuum and speak to the dead, but is gradually losing his control as the son "reels" his father's spirit back in. Roaming in his spare time, Harry discovers that Thibor had infected a pregnant woman with a small part of his flesh, which results in a lesser breed of vampire, albeit a still formidable one. This youth, Yulian Bodescu, retains many vampire abilities: hypnotism, increased lust, bodily transformation, regeneration, and creating thralls (lesser vampires that are infected with a shed body part of the master vampire). Harry eventually contacts Faethor Ferenczy, a master manipulator (as all vampires are), who was not ready to die but was forced to when he was pinned beneath an unmovable column. When Faethor died, a small worm like (leech) creature left his body, which was also killed. Talking to Faethor, Harry discovers that the creature is the "true" vampire and source of the Wamphyri power, longevity, and when the two beings are merged, they are Wamphyri. Faethor tells Harry about Thibor, who was a mighty warrior centuries prior, and how he infected Thibor with his sole wamphyric egg. Thibor was to watch over Faethor's castle and servants while gone, but after disobeying him, Faethor had him chained underneath the earth (leading to the events of the prior book). Yulian is creating thralls out of his family, and Thibor uses telepathy to tell him that Harry Jr. is a great enemy. Yulian sets out to kill the infant, and Harry informs E-Branch that Thibor has a piece of dead skin left behind, which could be used to further Yulian's mutation. E-Branch teams up with the current Russian head to destroy Thibor's remains and a "finger mutation" left behind in Castle Ferenczy. After destroying the remains of Thibor, Alec Kyle is captured by rogue Russian agents believing him to be a spy. With the assistance of Zek Foener they mindwipe him and steal his knowledge of British E-Branch and Harry Keogh. Afterwards Zek Foener learns she has been tricked and vows never to use her talents for the Russians again. As Yulian prepares to murder Harry Jr, the infant, using powers he learned form his fathers mind slips through the Mobius Continuum, to E-Branch HQ with Brenda while the dead rise to slaughter Yulian Bodescu. Before he goes Harry Jr. releases his fathers consciousness, which is drawn to inhabit the now mindless body of Alec Kyle. Enraged at what the Russians have done to Alec Kyle, Harry destroys the Russian HQ once more. It is unclear at the end of the Novel whether Yulian would have developed into "FULL" Wamphyri, however such seems likely as he had been able to shapeshift extensively among other talents that lesser vampires seldom possess to any great extent.
27142920	/m/0bwmk_5	Necroscope III: The Source	Brian Lumley	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The series starts to explore the origins of the Wamphyri manifestation on Earth. Years after Harry's son left, Harry has left E-Branch and has spent years searching the world for them. The new head of E-Branch, Darcy Clarke, recruits him in a case of a British spy (Micheal Jazz Simmons) who similarly disappeared, while investigating a Russian base. On investigation Harry discovers the Base is the result of a "blowback" from a high powered photon beam into an atomic pile which powered it and has created a "Grey" hole in space time, a oneway passage to another world which the Russians have been sending people through, and which monsters have emerged from. Traveling through a parallel grey hole in Romania Harry enters the source world of the Vampires, a world known as Starside/Sunside, wherein Vampire overlords prey on gypsy inhabitants, and wherein his now adult son (his son having used time travel as well as interdimensional to avoid Harry) is infected as a Vampire/Werewolf and besieged by the world's Vampire Masters as he seeks desperately to protect both himself and the world's people without losing what remains of his own humanity in the process. Harry and Harry Jr use the sun to destroy the Vampire lords. In the process Harry Jr is horribly wounded by the sun. Harry Sr. spends time with the only vampire Lord that was not banished to the Icelands, Lady Karen. She is struggling with her remaining humanity. Harry cages her in a room in her castle after destroying or freeing all her servants. After starving her for many days he is able to lure out her Vamipre leech and kills it. The Lady Karen commits suicide, because she has known what it's like to be Wamphyri. The book leaves off with Harry Jr. becoming aware of Harry Sr. watching him with his mind blocked off from his powers.
27143105	/m/04t1vnv	Necroscope IV: Deadspeak	Brian Lumley	1990	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Several years after his return to earth Harry Sr. is troubled by nightmares of resurgent Vampires. These nightmares are messages from the dead who he is unable to communicate with when awake due to the actions of Harry Jr. Separately E-Branch is investigating drug smuggling in the Mediterranean when two of its agents are assaulted. One is vampirized and the other rendered insane. Harry Sr's new girlfriend, Sandra, herself secretly a member of E-Branch plays a pivotal role in bringing Harry into the mix. She had been assigned to watch him and if possible restore his powers and reports to the head of E-Branch on his status. Unknown to everyone the E-branch head is a sleeper agent for the Russian E-Branch/KGB community. Afraid that Harry may be recovering his old powers, or perhaps developing new ones, the Russians choose to eliminate him. The plot fails due to the intervention of the dead, and in the process Sandras status as an agent is revealed, as is the fact that Ken and Trevor are in trouble, and that the dead want Harry in the Mediterranean. Together Harry, Sandra, and Darcy, go out to check on the situation. During the course of the investigation they learn that the drug smuggler is a resurrected Janos Ferenczy, using the alias Jianni Lazarides. Sandra and Ken Layard are kidnapped and vampirized, and Janos uses his telepathy to force Trevor Jordan to kill himself. Despite being virtually powerless Harry moves to engage Janos on his home ground in Romania, but not before spending the night (what would later be revealed to be a very fateful night) in the ruins of Faethers house in Ploesti. When he awoke the next morning Harry discovered he was surrounded by odd black mushrooms that exploded at the slightest touch releasing their spores into the air which he breathed. Overnight Faether had restored his Deadspeak, and had untangled most of Harry's mental troubles. However not being a mathematician he was unable to restore the command of numbers and access to the Mobius Continuum. With his deadspeak restored Harry sought out and again spoke to Mobius himself, who recruited other mathematicians to help with the problem as Harry approached Janos lair slowly. Harry began showing signs of developing telepathy and possibly other powers in his own right. A fact he initially put down to his mind compensating for the long lack of his other abilities. During the final confrontation against Janos and his vampire thralls a group of Thracians raised from their ashes by Janos to help him instead took Harry's side and assisted him. This along with the timely restoration of his teleportation abilities through the Mobius Continuum allowed Harry to defeat Janos. The book closes shortly after Harry and the last Thracian stake and behead the vampirized Sandra.
27143170	/m/04t1vgl	Necroscope V: Deadspawn	Brian Lumley	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Harry Keogh discovers that he is being transformed into a member of the Wamphyri by the spores of the mushrooms he inhaled at the ruins of Faethors house in Ploesti. Additionally he experiments with Janos Ferenczy's "resurrection" necromancy to restore some people - notably Trevor Jordan and Penny Sanderson - to life. E branch begins to suspect Harry may have been infected, but Darcy calls Harry in anyway on a serial killer case. Resolved to do one last favor for humanity, both the living and the dead, Harry hunts down and deals with the necromancer/serial killer/rapist Johnny Found. Shortly after this Harry and Penny, who slept with him while he was literally asleep and thus infected herself, are driven from England by E branch, who cannot risk Harry being allowed to live as a vampire. Eventually Harry and Penny flee for starside, but in the process Penny is killed. Arriving back in the Vampire world Harry finds Lady Karen alive, after he had thought her dead from an attempted cure. The two out of loneliness become lovers for a time. But the vampire lord Shaithis, banished after battle with Harry and Harry Jr to the icelands is returning at the head of a small but vicious army, along side his ancestor from time immemorial, the most feared Wamphyri of all time, Shaitan himself. Unfortunately Harry Jr, has now mostly devolved into a wolf similar to the one who transmitted its egg to him. Gone are most of his powers, leaving his father and Karen to face Shaitan and Shaithis almost alone. Harry and Karen are, after a brief battle, crucified at the gate. However in a last act Karen commits suicide to take Shaithis with her and Harry and Harry Jr, combine their powers one last time to send a plea for help to earth which results in the dead in the Russian complex sending a nuclear armed exorcet through the gate, destroying Harry, Harry Jr, and Shaithis in a nuclear explosion.
27143285	/m/0bwkmpb	The Last Aerie	Brian Lumley	1993	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Sixteen years in the past on Earth Ben Trask along with other members of British E-Branch awake to a nightmare and feel compelled to go to their HQ in London, where they find each other waiting. Once there they use their combined ESP powers to project a hologram of the nightmare into view. They see a body of a man all burned and blackened by fire spinning in the darkness, suddenly he explodes and disappears into golden shards of light, one of the shards seems to come right out of the image and fly out of the room. They realize they have witnessed the death of Harry Keogh in the vampire world. (Necroscope: Deadspawn) Back in the present on Earth, Nathan is trapped, stuck inside the entrance of the wormhole gate in Perchorsk in Russia. Unsure if Nathan is human or Wamphyri The commander of Perchorsk, Turkur Tzonov, a telepath, contacts British E-Branch for help. Ben Trask and Ian Goodly agree to go to Perchork as advisors. Once at Perchork, Ben's talent immediately tells him Nathan is human. Nathan is moved to a cell in the complex where Turkur begins interrogation, but Nathan stays quiet, only using his telepathy to talk to Ben. He realizes that the British knew his father (having learned this from reading Turkur's mind), and wants to know more so he accepts their help. Another Russian telepath Siggi Dam feels sorry for Nathan and allows him to escape. He flees into the mountains where he is finally intercepted by a British special forces helicopter and taken to England. Once there he is told about his father and speaks to some of Harry's dead friends. E-Branch also tell him of the Möbius continuum and how Harry could teleport. Eager to learn this ability as he already has the numbers in him, Nathan starts to learn mathematics from a tutor but soon surpasses him. He then starts taking lessons from members of the dead, in particular Harry's own teacher a dead British headmaster. E-branch also shares with Nathan the location of the second gate in Romania which he can use to go home, but Nathan must wait until the river there is at its lowest to get to the entrance, so he spends many months with the British learning about the world and his father. While Nathan and Zek Foener are on a trip to visit the grave of her husband Jazz Simmons, they are attacked by Turkur's men (still trying to recapture Nathan). Having nowhere to run they are forced to swim in the ocean. Meanwhile in England Ian and David Chung know something is happening and turn on a computer in Harry's room in the E-branch Headquarters. A golden dart flies out of it and disappears. It finds Nathan who is still hiding in the ocean and in danger, and strikes him. By this blow he instantaneously learns Harry's knowledge of the Möbius mathematics and how to transport. He teleports both himself and Zek straight back to the E-Branch office though the Continuum. While all this has been happening on Earth, back in the vampire world Nestor has ascended as the Wamphyri Lord Nestor Lichloathe, and has discovered the dread power of Necromancy. He is also inflicted with leprosy from crashing his flyer into the leper village. The Wamphyri of Turgosheim have also been busy as well, been making flyers and fighting beasts to follow Lady Wratha's group across to the west in order to wage war against them.
27143468	/m/0bwg3ng	Tim Thompson in the Jungle	Frank Buck		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Tim Thompson, a young boy, stows away aboard Frank Buck's ship at Singapore that he might accompany Buck, his hero, on a jungle expedition. The story of their adventures is told by Ferrin Fraser, based on Buck's own experiences, except for the introduction of certain characters, notably a villain, Rawson, who is lying in wait at Ceylon. At the climax, Tim Thompson, awestruck, watches as Buck descends into a pit and takes a man-eating tiger by the tail. The book has sixteen full-page illustrations grouped at the end.
27143483	/m/0bwj6bg	Blood Brothers	Brian Lumley	1992	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 It is revealed that after the Battle in the Garden (Necroscope 3, The Source) while recovering from the ravaging of his mind by his son The Dweller, Harry Keogh fathered two sons unknowingly with a Szgany woman Nana Kiklu, in starside/sunside. This books covers in some part the boys growing up among the Szgany of Lardis Lidesci. With the vampires destroyed (Necroscope 5, Deadspawn) by Harry Keogh and Lady Karen with the help the wolf The Dweller the Szgany have stopped travelling and settled into towns. The boys grow up with their mother in the Lidesci town named Settlement with their friends and especially a girl named Misha and Lardis' son Jason. The boys suffer from dreams and sometimes nightmares of people whispering in their graves and they also talk to three wild wolves who for reasons unknown to them call the boys their uncles. We also learn of a long forgotten part of the world to the far east of the known Starside/Sunside. Discovered a long time ago by an exiled Wamphyri Lords Turgo Zolte and now home to around 40 Wamphyri Lord and Ladies and similar Szgany tribes al under the command of the Lord Vormulac Unsleep. But whereas the Szgany of old Starside fight back against the Wamphyri, the Szgany in Turgosheim have become worn down and supplicant. Settling in towns and allowing the many Wamphyri to visit and take as they want, using a tithe system where they are forced to choose or find a certain number of "volunteers" to be taken and used by the Wamphyri. Aggravated and tired of the Turgosheim life and aware that the land in the west is free of vampires a group of six Wamphyri under the command of the Lady Wratha The Risen flee Turgosheim for the west. As they grow older Nathan and Nestors once close relatationship deteriorates due in part because of their affections for Misha. While they are fighting over the Szgany girl their unprepared village is attacked by the Wamphyri led by Wratha. After the attack Nathan journeys away from Settlement, believing his mother, brother and Misha have been taken by the Wamphyri he ends up alone, weary and destitute and ready to die in the desert. His deadspeak thoughts are answered by a dead elder of the underground desert dwellers the telepathic Thyre. Wanting to help Nathan the dead Thyre Rogei guides him to a resting place of their ancients where he is found by the guards there. Nestor, also injured in the attack on the village ends up in the hills, his memory damaged due to a head injury and believing he is a Wampnyri Lord. Nestor witnessing a duel between two Wamphyri Lords, Vasagi the suck and Wran KIllglance, rivals and part of Wrathas group out of Turgosheim. His intervention in the form of a crossbow bolt fired into Vasagi allows the Killglance Brother to win. He is then "rewarded" by Wran for his help with Vasagi's egg and he becomes Wamphyri. Nathan, previously shunned by the dead of the Szgany, is immediately taken in by the Thyre and becomes famous among them, communicating with their dead and making many friends. Nathan becomes a conduit for the dead Thyre to talk to and teach the living Thyre, reuniting lost loved ones and telling them of new contraptions and inventions they have designed while dead. Learning to use his telepathy while traveling east with the Thyre across their many towns and underground outposts Nathan eventually ends up in Turgosheim. In Turgosheim Nathan finds a supplicant Szgany tribe and is put into the tithe where he is taken to the manse of the Wampnyri Lord Maglore The Mage. Intrigued by Nathans intelligence, colours and demeanour Maglore does not vampirise him, instead choosing to keep him around as a companion or "pet". Nathan spends many months in Maglore's manse learning about Turgosheim and he also meets another untouched human, the female Szgany girl Orlea. All the time keeping his powers and mentalism hidden from the Wamphyri Lord Nathan eventually 'escapes' on a flyer and goes back to western sunside and the Szgany Lidesci. Where he is reunited with his mother and marries Misha. Upon Nathan's return Nestor senses him and is enraged to find him back. Believing in his broken mind that Nathan is an "old enemy" Nestor attacks Nathan and Misha along with his lieutenant Zahar, injured in the brisk skirmish Nestors flyer crashes near a leper colony but not before Nathan is thrown through the Perchorsk gate by Zahar on Nestors orders.
27145056	/m/0bwlnvt	Lemonade Mouth			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Five teenagers meet after all ending up in detention for different reasons. While in detention, they all play and sing along together with a jingle on the radio. They decide to form a band after discussing it. At first, they have trouble agreeing on music, but soon learn to work together and get along. The group decides to play at the Halloween Bash, but many students who are fans of Mudslide Crush, another band at the school, do not want the group to do the Bash. Ray, a member of Mudslide Crush and the school bully, harasses Olivia because of her band. Mo, Charlie and Stella get involved to defend Olivia and Stella spits a mouthful of lemonade into Ray's face. Ray calls Stella "lemonade mouth" and thus, the group takes "Lemonade Mouth" as their band name. Before the Bash, the lemonade machine that inspired the band is taken away as part of an agreement with a sports drink company that is sponsoring the school's new gym. This angers the band, and they decide to fight the decision. At the Bash, many of the students are surprised at Lemonade Mouth's music when they take the stage because the band uses instruments like trumpets and ukuleles. The bandmates develop friendships and bonds with each other when they arrive at Olivia's house to console her after her cat dies. They gradually open up to one another about their problems: Stella thinks she's stupid and has problems with her parents, Wen's father will be marrying his much-younger 26-year-old girlfriend, Mo, an immigrant from India, feels that she doesn't belong, and Charlie's twin brother died at birth. Olivia reveals that her mother and father had sex when they were in high school, and Olivia's mother, who never loved or wanted her, left Olivia's father, Ted, to raise his daughter by himself until he was convicted of armed robbery and manslaughter. In the meantime, Charlie falls in love with Mo. With new trust and friendship, the band becomes successful, getting on the radio and performing at a restaurant. However, things go downhill when Stella's ukulele breaks, Wen injures his lip, Charlie burns his hand, Olivia loses her voice, and Mo gets sick. All of this happens just before an annual live battle of the bands. Though the band does not do well in the competition due to their recent problems, their fans support them nevertheless, singing along to their songs to lift their spirits. Afterwards, Charlie and Mo share a kiss and the two begin dating. Stella makes amends with her parents and finds out she has a learning disability. Wen and Olivia become attracted to each other after Wen gifts Olivia a new kitten.
27153595	/m/0bwhfpq	Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia				 Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia continues the adventures Alcatraz Smedry and his unusual family and friends who are members of the Free Kingdoms and fighting to protect the world from the cult of Evil Librarians. Alcatraz has finally made it to Nalhalla, location of the Smedry family's home and Crystallia, the kingdom of the Crystin Knights. Alcatraz and his group must work fast to prevent the librarian takeover of the kingdom of Mokia (another of the free kingdoms) and their infiltration of spies into the ranks of the Knights of Crystallia.
27160300	/m/0bwh1x8	Safari for Spies				 The story takes place in March 1964. The newly independent west African country of the Republic of Nyanga is on the verge of civil war. The country is closely allied to the USSR. The USSR embassy in Nyanga has been bombed and its foreign nationals are being harassed on the streets. The USSR blames the USA for orchestrating the bombing and harassment despite the fact that the US embassy itself has been bombed. Nick Carter is sent to Nyanga posing as a special US ambassador to investigate the true source of the destabilization efforts against Nyanga and its allies. Carter gets to work with the assistance of Liz Ashton, Second Secretary at the US Embassy. Immediately upon arrival he is shadowed by the mysterious Laszlo. The destabilization efforts continue as Julian Makombe, the President of Nyanga, is shot and badly wounded. The chief of police immediately makes a series of arrests and discovers that some of the suspects are drug addicts from Dakar, in neighboring Senegal. Carter travels to Dakar and investigates the Hop Club a sleazy nightclub that supplies heroin and discovers it is a front for Chinese agents. At the recommendation of Rufus Makombe, the President's brother, Carter also visits the Kilimanjaro nightclub in Dakar and has a liaison with the club's singer, Mirella. She lures Carter to a remote house in the countryside where an attempt is made on his life. Mirella falls into a spear-filled pit and is killed instead. Carter escapes and returns to Nyanga to find that Liz Ashton has been kidnapped. Carter, reinforced by the Nyanga police and army, discover her location and arrive just in time to save her. Rufus Makombe, supported by communist Chinese aid, has planned the assassination of his brother, the overthrow of the government, and the establishment of a communist Chinese foothold in Africa. Carter defeats Rufus in hand-to-hand combat and Rufus's supporters are arrested. Finally, Ten Wong, the Chinese paymaster of the entire operation is tracked down to Casablanca, Morocco. Carter breaks into Wong's fortified house and is nearly killed by triffid-like plants that guard the compound. Ten Wong is lured outside and killed by his own plants.
27166055	/m/0bwgg3y	Spider's Voice	Gloria Skurzynski	1999-03-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Aran a young mute boy is about to give up hope of ever escaping his cruel and impoverished childhood with his guardians. He is sold as common trash and his life seems to fall into an ever growing misery. But then the charismatic scholar named Abelard hires him after rescuing him from captivity. Abelard is in need of a servant who will not speak of his affair with his student Eloise. Because he cannot speak his name, Aran had been nicknamed Spider. Spider accompanies the couple around France as they flee problems brought on by their forbidden passion. During one period in Brittany, Eloise teaches Spider to read, and he is able to use this skill and his talent for spinning wool to become the thread linking the two people he worships most. Abelard and Eloise are forced to temporarily separate while Eloise is pregnant with his child. Spider returns to his old home for a while where he finally learns how to speak. When he returns he sees how Abelard's child has grown. When he goes to visit Abelard, Abelard is so caught up in his own concerns he does not even notice Spider can now speak. Spider is devastated that his idol has been drained of the kind and giving should he once had and he slowly begins to hold Eloise as a new idol.
27168695	/m/0bwlj7t	Straight Up	Joseph J. Romm	2010		 The title of the book's introduction, "Why I blog", is a play on the title of George Orwell's essay, "Why I Write". Romm states, "I joined the new media because the old media have failed us. They have utterly failed to force us to face unpleasant facts. From this starting point, Romm posits that global warming is a bipartisan issue. He writes, "Averting catastrophic global warming requires completely overturning the status quo, changing every aspect of how we use energy – and doing so in under four decades. Failure to do so means humanity's self-destruction." The book collects, reprints and updates postings from his blog, ClimateProgress.org, as the main part of his content, adding introductions and some new analysis. In his first chapter, Romm argues that the media perpetuates the status quo through laziness and a misunderstanding of how to present a "balanced" story. For example, he believes that the media did a bad job of assessing the outcome of the Copenhagen summit in December 2009. Romm comments that global warming is a science story, but that the traditional news media, which has scaled back on specialized reporting, has given the story to political reporters who don't understand, and have not time to research, the scientific consensus. He next presents research concerning the science of climate change, as explained by what Romm calls "uncharacteristically blunt scientists". In the third chapter, Straight Up presents proposed solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through the use of clean energy technologies and other currently available technologies. For example it describes what Romm believes are the advantages of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, generation of energy through wind and solar power, including concentrated solar power using mirrors to concentrate the sun's energy. He writes that "A 20 percent reduction in global emissions might be possible in a quarter century with net economic benefits". "Our plan", says Romm, must be "Deployment, deployment, deployment, R&D, deployment, deployment, deployment." The next chapter discusses peak oil. The next chapters move into the politics of global warming and what Romm sees as a "right-wing disinformation machine" that confuses and misleads the public, by, for example, fostering what Romm calls "Anti-Scientific Syndrome". The book says, "the economic cost of action is low, whereas the cost of inaction is incalculably greater – what exactly is the 'price' of 5 feet of sea level rise in 2100 … and losing all of the inland glaciers that provide a significant fraction of water to a billion people? Or the price of losing half the world's species? ... the bottom line is that the economic cost of action is low, whereas the cost of inaction is incalculably greater". Romm calculates that deployment of existing technologies on the massive scale that can save the climate can be accomplished at the cost of 0.12 percent of global GDP per year. Romm advocates citizen action to pressure Washington and industry to act quickly and decisively to reduce greenhouse emissions. Otherwise, he argues, we will fall behind in the race to commercialize profitable technologies. "China has a excellent track record of achieving gains in energy efficiency and has begun to ramp up its efficiency efforts and aggressively expand its carbon-free electricity targets (recently committing, for instance, to triple its wind goal to 100,000 MW by 2020). ... will the United States be a global leader in creating jobs and exports in clean energy technologies or will we be importing them from Europe, Japan, and the likely clean energy leader in our absence, China"? In the last chapter, Romm posits that progressives are "lousy" at educating the public, and he offers ways in which he thinks they can be more effective at messaging. In his conclusion at the end of the book, Romm argues that the global economy is a sort of ponzi scheme, in which our failure to prevent the worst effects of climate change now could eventually cause the world economy to fall apart just like a ponzi scheme.
27171930	/m/0bwl1my	Echoes of Life: What Fossil Molecules Reveal about Earth History		2008		 Echoes of Life chronicles the history of the discipline of organic geochemistry. In early experiments, Alfred E. Treibs identified organic molecules, which he extracted from various samples, as chemically altered chlorophyll. He explained the chlorophyll as having come from plants that died millions of years ago. Since Treibs' discovery, hundreds of biomarkers (a term coined 25 years after Treibs' discovery) have been identified. Chapter one, entitled Molecular Informants: A Changing Perspective of Organic Chemistry, gives a brief overview on the history of organic chemistry and explores the possibilities inherent in the science. It also describes how the authors first became interested in the subject and the work they have done within the field. Chapter two entitled Looking to the Rocks: Molecular Clues to the Origin of Life looks at the findings of Sir Robert Robinson and Melvin Calvin discovery's of organic compounds in petrol and the conversion of CO2 to organic molecules during photosynthesis. Early experiments had shown that organic compounds can form spontaneously under conditions similar to the pre-biotic era of earth. These findings led to speculation on the possible discovery on the origins of life. The chapter ends with the authors saying as a precursor to the next chapter Chapter three entitled From the Moon to Mars: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life. A Carbonaceous Meteorite which was found in Hungary in 1857, which was examined by Friedrich Wöhler was found to have organic compounds which he believed were Extraterrestrial in origin. The book moves on to Marcellin Berthelot who in 1864 claimed to have found "petroleum-like hydrocarbons" in a meteorite found near Orgueil. Louis Pasteur also ran experiments on this meteor and concluded it was sterile and not capable of generating life. The discovery of the Murchison meteorite also led to the finding of 70 amino acids most of which are not native to earth's biosphere. The authors look into the work done on samples brought back from the Apollo program missions. Geoffrey Eglinton one of the authors had been given a sample and although he knew there had never been life on the moon they had hoped to find organic compounds. None were found within those samples, which led to disappointment. These findings led the authors to speculate on the possibility of answering the question of whether there has ever been life on Mars and if future missions will bring back viable samples for testing.
27175397	/m/0bwkbb2	The Executioner				 The title of the novel creates expectations about a cruel murderer, but Stefan Gashtev is a funny little person who has been trying to become popular all his life. He grows up in a circus, works as a clown, studies to become a fakir, then a pilot, unexpectedly goes to prison where he gets to be the executioner. Finally he flies into Outer Space and gets back to Earth after 20 years more obscure than ever. His misadventures are so terrifying that the best-selling author Stephen-Larry King (who has a creative block) decides to use them, but he dies a poor, preposterous death. Only the "non-fictional" story of his prototype remains.
27177274	/m/0bwlrjs	Intimate Exchanges	Alan Ayckbourn			 The play begins in the garden of Celia and Toby Teasdale. After an unusually harsh winter, it is perhaps the first sunny day of the year. Inside the house, Celia and her "help", Sylvie Bell are busily spring cleaning. Celia emerges to fetch a step ladder from the garden shed but spies a packet of cigarettes on the table. Celia can either: #Have a sneaky cigarette — Go to "A Gardener Calls" #Carry on with the spring cleaning — Go to "A Visit from a Friend" Celia sits down and lights her cigarette. Five seconds later the doorbell rings and Celia calls to Sylvie to answer it. It is Lionel Hepplewick, caretaker and groundsman of the local school where Toby is headmaster. Lionel has come to do some personal gardening for Celia. Celia's marriage to Toby is failing and Lionel drops several unsubtle hints that he would be available, including a promise to come round on weekends to make sure her crazy paving is "properly laid". However, Lionel has already promised to take Sylvie out on a date and she wants him to commit to her. Lionel can either: #Turn Sylvie down — Go to "A Gardener in Love" #Go out with Sylvie — Go to "The Self-Improving Woman" Celia resists temptation and carries on into the shed. Five seconds later the doorbell goes, but Celia does not hear it. Instead, as she leaves the shed she is greeted by Miles Coombes coming over the fields round the back of the house. Miles is the Chairman of the Board of Governors at the school where Toby is headmaster. Toby's behaviour and ability to perform his job have deteriorated to the point where the school is losing pupils. The other members of the Board want to sack Toby. Miles has come to ask Celia for reassurances that Toby will change and that she will stand by him. Celia can not imagine Toby ever changing and announces that she is about to leave him. Miles can either: #Try to salvage things by suggesting a dinner party — Go to "Dinner on the Patio" #Forget Celia and stand by Toby on his own — Go to "Confessions in a Garden Shed" Five days later, Lionel is clearing out the Teasdale's shed. When Toby heads off to a school meeting, Lionel and Celia take the chance to get to know each other better. Lionel reveals that he is a master baker and Celia suggests that they start a business together. Toby returns from his meeting and apologises to Celia for the verbal abuse he gives her, promising to change and suggesting they take an exciting and fun holiday together. Celia can either: #Reject the apology and start a bakery with Lionel — Go to "Affairs in a Tent" #Stick with Toby and back out of her plans with Lionel — Go to "Events on a Hotel Terrace" It is the morning after Sylvie and Lionel's big date. Lionel is now clearing out the Teasdale's shed while Sylvie is tidying up their kitchen. Celia has dressed up for a coffee morning and her outfit makes an impression on Lionel. He tells Sylvie to put more effort into her appearance and to stop accepting second best in her life. Sylvie persuades Toby to give her tuition and Celia gives her some of her old clothes. Lionel is impressed by the transformation and tells Sylvie he'd like to sleep with her again. Sylvie can either: #Carry on improving herself for Lionel — Go to "A Garden Fête" #Dump Lionel with the rest of the trash — Go to "A Pageant" Five days later, Miles drops in on Celia as she is finishing preparations for their al fresco dinner. Toby has apparently gone for cigarettes at the pub and Rowena has been delayed at a "meeting" with the school PE teacher. While waiting, Celia and Miles have a few drinks and bemoan their other halves. As Celia starts to fret about dinner, Miles reveals that Toby has disappeared to give Miles a chance to salvage Celia's and Toby's marriage on Toby's behalf. Celia refuses to listen and she and Miles enjoy a private dinner together, culminating with Miles announcing his long-term love for Celia. Celia can either: #Start an affair with Miles — Go to A Cricket Match #Tell Miles to go home and sort out his own marriage — Go to A Game of Golf Five days later, Rowena and Miles are taking a walk when it begins to rain. They seek shelter in the Teasdale's shed and have a rare opportunity to talk to one another. Rowena admits to sleeping with most of the squash club and recommends that Miles have an affair as well to rediscover his long-lost sense of adventure. Miles takes the suggestion badly so she locks him in the shed. Sylvie, still busy cleaning up the Teasdales' house, lets Miles out and needles him for gossip. He tells her about Rowena and she agrees that he should have an affair. Miles asks Sylvie to go with him on a walk round the whole British coastline. Sylvie can either: #Say no — Go to A One Man Protest #Say yes — Go to Love in the Mist Five weeks later, Celia and Lionel are catering for the VIP tea tent at the school sports day, except that Lionel is late and Celia is stressed. Lionel finally arrives with the bread he has baked for the sandwiches, which proves to be inedible. To add to the pressure, the tomatoes and cucumber for the sandwiches get dropped on the running track and trampled. With everything going wrong, Celia descends into madness, starting an imaginary tea party. She attacks Miles Coombes who is forced to wrap her up in a tablecloth before going for help. Miles can either: #Fetch Toby — Go to A Funeral (1) #Fetch Lionel — Go to A New Woman Five weeks later, Celia and Toby are taking their first holiday together in years, but it is not the holiday Toby promised; they are recuperating in a dead-end seaside resort after Toby has suffered a suspected heart tremor. Lionel, meanwhile, has refused to take no for an answer from Celia, has followed her to the hotel and is working as a waiter. Lionel's brings out a succession of cream teas so he can talk with Celia, and Celia is forced to eat them to avoid creating a scene. Nevertheless, she is ready to give up on her husband and asks Lionel what plans he has for their future, only to learn that he is a hopeless incompetent. Utterly depressed, she descends into tears and hiccups. Toby returns from a walk and Celia recounts the whole sad affair. Toby can either: #Start a fight with Lionel — Go to A Funeral (2) #Ignore Lionel — Go to A Service of Thanksgiving Five weeks later, Sylvie is helping out with the village fête. She is putting herself in a set of stocks, ready to be pelted with wet sponges. Lionel, meanwhile, has been fired from his job as school caretaker after blowing up the school boiler and Sylvie is having second thoughts about their relationship. Lionel tells Sylvie that she needs to settle down and stop wasting her time on the private tuition she is having with Toby. When she tells Toby she is packing the lessons in, he begs her not to waste her brain, pelting her in frustration. Sylvie can either: #Marry Lionel and start a family — Go to A Christening #Strike out on her own — Go to Return of the Prodigal Five weeks later, Sylvie is still receiving tuition from Toby and Toby is producing the school pageant; an open-air production recounting Boudicca's fight against the Roman forces. It is the day before the performance and Lionel still has not finished building the stage, while the woman playing Boudicca has just broken her wrist. Celia has been asked by the play's author to take on the role of Boudicca and comes to rehearse only to find that Toby has already given the part to Sylvie. This is the last straw for Celia who is getting jealous of the time that Sylvie and Toby spend together, and is unimpressed by Toby's consequential good mood. She gets into a fight with Sylvie, knocks over Lionel's stage and ends up with a bloody nose. Sylvie professes her love for Toby. Toby can either: #Run off with Sylvie — Go to A Harvest Festival #Stay with Celia — Go to A Wedding (1) Five weeks later, Miles and Rowena are attending the "teachers versus pupils" cricket match. Rowena is in high spirits that Miles had the guts to start an affair and goes off to speak with some young estate agents. Celia takes the chance to speak with Miles. Although both of them are glad to be getting away from their respective other halves, neither of them is having much fun and Celia asks if Miles wants to end the affair. Miles goes in to bat and is called out for LBW by Toby, who is umpiring the match. The two of them get into a fight over the decision and Miles gives Toby a bloody nose. Celia takes Toby off to hospital leaving Miles with Rowena. Miles can either: #Send Rowena away and continue the affair with Celia — Go to A Sentimental Journey #End the affair and go for a walk with Rowena — Go to A 50th Celebration Five weeks later, Miles and Toby are spending a great deal of time together. This appears to suit Toby, who is much improved and almost sober, but Celia is getting jealous. Toby and Rowena bump into each other and Rowena asks if Miles is ever going to come home. Toby suggests that Miles does not wish to come home because of Rowena's affairs. Rowena replies that she wouldn't need to have affairs if Miles spent more time in bed with her. Rowena accosts Miles in a bunker and tries to seduce him. Miles can either: #Reignite his relationship with Rowena — Go to Easter Greetings #Reject Rowena's advances — Go to A Triumph of Friendship Miles, devastated by Sylvie's rejection, has locked himself in the Teasdales' shed for the past five weeks. Celia and Sylvie have both been caring for him and Toby is fed up. On Toby's instructions, Lionel lights a fire and prepares to smoke Miles out of the shed. Lionel is interrupted by Rowena and decides to make a pass at her. She talks him out of his trousers and then throws them on the fire as a demonstration of marital fidelity for Miles. Miles can either: #Leave Rowena — Go to A Midnight Mass #Move back in with Rowena — Go to A School Celebrates Five weeks later, Miles and Sylvie are walking along a coastal road. Miles is thrilled, but Sylvie is struggling and complaining that her feet hurt. She had been hoping the trip would involve a bit of romance, a bit of champagne and a private bathroom. Instead, she is getting dirty looks from the B&B staff. The two them get lost in a sudden fog and Miles is terrorised by a passing sheep so they take shelter in a nearby builders' shed. Sylvie is soon fed up and decides to make for home. Miles stays behind until Rowena suddenly emerges through the fog. She has come with news that Sylvie's mother has fallen ill. Miles can either: #Go home with Rowena — Go to A Wedding (2) #Carry on walking alone — Go to A Simple Ceremony Five years later, Toby is still caring for Celia after her mental breakdown. Lionel, meanwhile, has moved on from baking and has made a success for himself in the fast-food business. Five years later, Celia has recovered from her breakdown with Lionel's support, has left Toby and is now running a gourmet freeze-dried convenience food business. Lionel has been relegated to chauffeur duties but remains totally devoted to Celia. It is five years later and Toby has driven himself to an early grave, never having learned to control his temper. Celia is looking forward to the chance to live her own life and is approached by Lionel who has plans to become a vicar. He asks Celia if that is good enough for her, but she turns him down again. Lionel promises to keep trying. Five years later, Toby's verbal abuse of Celia is worse than ever and she finally makes up her mind to leave him. At that moment, Lionel returns to the village for the first time in five years having started a successful taxi business. Lionel drops a bombshell that he is now married and Celia berates herself for missing a chance at happiness. Five years later, Sylvie and Lionel are married and already have several children whom Sylvie has named after various literary figure. Sylvie has asked Toby to be godfather to their latest, Anne Charlotte Emily Branwell, and Toby promises that her education will begin where Sylvie's left off. Five years later, Toby is preparing to give an interview to a women's magazine about his school. The journalist turns out to be Sylvie who is doing well for herself and remains happily un-married. Five years later, Toby and Sylvie return to the village so that Sylvie can visit her family. Toby is uncomfortable and his constant fear that Sylvie is going to leave him is putting a strain on their relationship. Sylvie bumps into Lionel who is now running an import business and asks her out to dinner. She says she might drop him a line one day. Five years later, Lionel and Sylvie are getting married and Sylvie and Toby remain friends. Toby and Celia's relationship has improved and she finally confides in him that she hated their wedding. Instead of being upset, Toby is overjoyed that they have found something in common. Five years later, Miles and Celia are still together but are unable to find happiness. Rowena and Toby, on the other hand, are each doing very well on their own. Five years later, Toby's health is deteriorating and Celia is struggling to look after him. Miles approaches her but she rejects his advances.. Miles and Rowena return to the village after five years living in Australia. Toby has died from a heart attack, having returned to his old drinking regimen after Miles left. Five years later, Toby and Miles have both left their wives and are sharing a house together. Rowena took the opportunity to move to India while Celia has returned to her old career and offers Miles advice on handling Toby's continuing drinking problem. Miles returns to the village for the first time in five years to see Rowena and their children. Rowena is still cavorting with half the men in the village and nobody acts very excited to see him. Five years later, Miles' boring nature is getting the better of Rowena. She is desperately struggling to keep a sense of fun in her life to the point of madness but is nevertheless now loyal to her husband. Five years later, Sylvie has resigned herself to a life of marriage to Lionel and starting a family. In memory of one of her many dreams of a different life that failed to become reality, she asks Miles to give her away at the wedding. During his solo walk round the country, Miles fell off a cliff and died. Five years later, Rowena arranges for a shed to be dedicated to his memory. Sylvie, now married to Lionel, sits in the shed from time to time, lost in her thoughts.
27179125	/m/0bwjypd	The Tragedy of Today's Gays	Larry Kramer			 Kramer begins by explaining how this was the most difficult speech he had ever written and introduces a refrain repeated throughout the speech, "I love being gay. I love gay people. I think we're better than other people. I really do. I think we're smarter and more talented and better friends. I do, I do, I do, I totally do." He then states that George W. Bush was re-elected based on the trope of "moral values," which served as a synecdoche for gay men and lesbians, leading Kramer to exclaim, "Please note that a huge population of the United States hates us." Rather than offer up answers, Kramer directs the audience to find truth for themselves, stating, "We're living in pigshit and its up to each one of us to figure out how to get out of it." He addresses the topic of AIDS, one of the main foci of Kramer's lifework, and warns, "WE HAVE LOST THE WAR AGAINST AIDS." He explains that drugs which treat the symptoms of HIV or AIDS are no cure, and that their ameliorative effects will not last forever. He urges gay men and lesbians to remember those who fought for the rights of People With AIDS and for gay rights, in general, for "we cannot move forward without accepting and understanding our past." Quoting the research of journalist Bill Moyers, Kramer places the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights within the structure of socioeconomic inequality in the United States, and states that those most privileged in the United States are dedicated not only to destroying the rights and lives of the poor, racial minorities, and non-Christians, but of gay men and lesbians as well. He reveals that in 1971, future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell created a plan to "take back America for the survival of the free enterprise system. Not democracy. Free enterprise." As part of the Powell Manifesto, conservatives in America created foundations to transform one of the most liberal nations in the world into a "classist, racist, homophobic, imperial army of pirates." AIDS worked in favor of this cabal, for "Their wildest dreams then started to come true. The faggots were disappearing and they were doing it to themselves," leading Kramer to conclude, "[I]ntentionality is the only word to describe the genocidal treatment millions of bodies have been drowning in." Kramer concludes by calling gay men and lesbians to action, and states that new treatments for HIV and AIDS make action more urgent, not less: "You who have been given a new lease on life, the very gift of life itself, piss it away." The answer for such destructive ambivalence is a united front that recognizes the negatives, as well as the positives, of gay life.
27190576	/m/0bwl0mc	Too Close to Home	Linwood Barclay	2008-09-30		 When the Cutter family's next-door-neighbours, the Langleys, are gunned down in their house one hot July night, the Cutters' world is turned upside down. Could the killers have gone to the wrong house? At first the idea seems crazy, but gradually we discover that each of the Cutter family has a secret they'd rather keep buried.
27191336	/m/0bwm99s	The Scarecrows	Robert Westall	1981	{"/m/048945": "Ghost story", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The story is a third-person narrative, but the point of view is entirely that of Simon Wood - his thoughts, feelings and memories, the things he sees and experiences, conversations he has, conversations he overhears. The novel opens at Simon's boarding school in the south of England, where the poisonous atmosphere of bullying and denigration has nurtured Simon's "devils", as he describes his blind rages. He first sees Joe Moreton there, when the man has given Simon's mother a lift to an event at the school. Simon loathes him at first sight and regards him as a "yob", unimpressed by his fame as an artist. At an art gallery the boy overhears a conversation making clear that Joe and his mother are dating, which enrages Simon. When mother tells him she intends to marry Joe, he vainly begs her not to, and then refuses to attend the wedding. But he must finally join his mother, his sister, and Joe at their new home in Cheshire. There both his mother's happiness and his sister's adoration of Joe incense him, for he regards them as betraying his father's memory. A neighboring unused water mill, separated from the house by a turnip field, provides a refuge, but it harbours a sinister secret. During the war, the miller was murdered by his wife and her lover. By his own attitude and actions, Simon becomes increasingly isolated. When he is driven to call on his father's spirit for support, it appears that the call is intercepted by the spirits at the mill, which manifest as scarecrows and imperceptibly advance across the turnip field to threaten the family. Simon's friend Tris la Chard comes to stay, and helps Simon to face up to reality and defeat the spirits.
27193923	/m/0bwkjk8	Jan's story			{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In Jan’s Story, Jan Petersen is introduced as an amazing, lively, and vivacious woman whose love for her husband, Barry, led her around the world and back again. Jan’s laughter and passion for adventure made her perfect for CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen, whose job took them from postings in San Francisco to Tokyo to Moscow to London and then again to Japan and China. In 2005 Jan was diagnosed with Early-onset Alzheimer's disease, and Barry was suddenly forced into a world of caregiving for which virtually no one is prepared. At only 55 years of age, Jan’s life began to slowly deteriorate, and while medications slowed the disease, they could not conquer it. After years in a profession where bearing witness to tragedy was an everyday occurrence, Alzheimer’s proved the one hurdle cruel enough to bring Barry to his knees. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia were no match to watching his precious Jan fade away. Barry and Jan fought the disease with all they had, but no amount of strength could assuage their anguish. Jan’s behavioral unpredictability, Barry’s determination to control the uncontrollable, paired with the aching and inevitable knowledge that Jan needed to go into an assisted living facility ultimately proved detrimental to both Barry’s physical and mental health. For Barry, then living in Asia, this meant locating a facility for Jan in the United States and moving her half a world away from him. Barry would soon find that in his attempts to do what was best for Jan, he would face both approval and condemnation. There existed those who fervently disagreed with his decisions and those who applauded his strength and offered their own doses of hope and advice. There were fellow caregivers who gave their support and who were able to warn Barry of the changes and challenges that still lay ahead. When the worsening of Jan’s memory caused her to lose Barry, he faced an unenviable dilemma: surrender or survive. In his never ending battle to protect, honor, and cherish his darling Jan, Barry shares his journey in Jan’s Story.
27203216	/m/0bwgtzw	The Carnal Prayer Mat	Li Yu		{"/m/02js9": "Erotica"}	 The novel's protagonist, Weiyang Sheng (未央生; literally: "The Unrealised One" or "The Unfinished One"), visits a Buddhist temple. He meets a monk, who notes that the young man exhibits wisdom, but also lust. Weiyang Sheng says that the monk's purpose in life is to sit on a zafu (or prayer mat) and meditate, while his desire, however, is to marry a beautiful woman and enjoy sitting on a "carnal prayer mat" (肉蒲團). The title of the novel comes from this line said by Weiyang Sheng. Weiyang Sheng is an egoistic young scholar who often boasts of his aspiration to marry the most beautiful woman in the world. He seeks neither fame nor glory, and prefers to indulge in women and sex. A monk called Budai Heshang (布袋和尚; Monk with a Cloth Sack) once urged him to give up on his philandering ways and follow the path of Buddhism, while his father-in-law Taoist Tiefei (鐵扉道人) also attempted to persuade him to be more decent, but Weiyang Sheng ignored both of them. Once, on a trip to the capital city, Weiyang Sheng encounters a bandit called Sai Kunlun (賽崑崙) and becomes sworn brothers with him. Sai Kunlun introduces Weiyang Sheng to a Taoist magician called Tianji Zhenren (天際真人), who embeds a dog's kidney into Weiyang Sheng's penis, causing it to be enlarged and become more "powerful". With the help of Sai Kunlun, Weiyang Sheng gets involved in illicit sexual relationships with many married women. They include: Yanfang (艷芳), wife of Quan Laoshi (權老實); Xiangyun (香雲), wife of Xuanyuanzi (軒軒子); Ruizhu (瑞珠), wife of Woyun Sheng (臥雲生); Ruiyu (瑞玉), wife of Yiyun Sheng (倚雲生). When Quan Laoshi learns of his wife's relationship with Weiyang Sheng, he is furious and is determined to take revenge. He disguises himself and infiltrates Weiyang Sheng's household, and has an affair with Weiyang Sheng's wife Yuxiang (玉香), causing Yuxiang to become pregnant. Quan elopes with Yuxiang and later sells her to a brothel to be a prostitute. Later, he realises that he has committed a grave sin and decides to show penitence by becoming a monk, studying under Budai Heshang. Meanwhile, in the brothel, Yuxiang is trained in a special technique - writing calligraphy by clutching a brush with her genitals. Later, she meets Xuanyuanzi, Woyun Sheng and Yiyun Sheng, and has sex with each of them. When Weiyang Sheng visits the brothel, Yuxiang recognises her husband and she commits suicide in shame. Weiyang Sheng is given a good beating, which makes him finally come to his senses. He decides to follow in Quan Laoshi's footsteps and become a monk under Budai Heshang.
27223810	/m/0bwg441	Damned	Chuck Palahniuk			 The novel opens with Madison "Maddy" Spencer waking in Hell, unsure of the details surrounding her death (she believes she has died of a marijuana overdose). Maddy quickly gets to know her nearby cellmates. The group (loosely modeled on the character traits in "The Breakfast Club," i.e., a rocker, a nerd, a beauty and a jock) take Maddy on a tour of Hell. In Hell, Madison works as a telemarketer, calling the living during mealtimes and asking them to answer inane survey questions. Throughout the novel, we see Madison's interactions with the living as well as the dead as she tries to piece together the events surrounding her death, and figure out how best to cope with the idea of spending the rest of eternity in Hell.
27226391	/m/0bwj6tj	Lankar of Callisto	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Throughout the series, author Lin Carter has portrayed himself as the recipient and editor of the manuscripts of protagonist Jonathan Dark (Jandar), teleported from the Jovian moon Callisto (moon) (or Thanator, as its inhabitants call it) to the ruined Cambodian city of Arangkhôr. In this volume he finally travels to Cambodia, hoping to learn what became of Jandar after the conclusion of the last volume of his memoirs, Mind Wizards of Callisto. Once in Arangkhôr Carter accidentally falls into the well-like teleportation device himself, and is duly transported to the jungle moon as Jandar had been. A literal babe in the woods, he is hardly cut out to become an interplanetary hero; indeed, he spends much of his sojourn on Thanator mooning over its extraordinary sights like a tourist, likening them to wonders of which he has read or seen portrayed in various works of fantastic literature and art. Fortunately, Carter is soon taken in hand by an Othode, a forest creature with the personality of a faithful dog, which becomes his companion and protector against the local perils. It defends him against a Vastodon and later saves him from an immense spiderweb. Carter acquires another companion in the native boy Tarin, who had also been trapped in the web, and an abbreviated native-style name, "Lankar," which Tarin finds easier to pronounce. They subsequently encounter warriors from Shondakar, the kingdom of Jandar's love interest Princess Darloona, and join the expedition against the hidden city of Kuur, lair of the evil Mind Wizards who hold the hero captive. Carter's Othode even manages to uncover the secret entry to the city, but Carter himself is caught and imprisoned with Jandar. All comes out well, as they are rescued by Tarin and in a climatic battle the Mind Wizards are almost all killed. (One is later revealed to have escaped, to permit sequel possibilities.) At the end of the story Carter manages to catch the return beam to Earth, content to resume his role as redactor, rather than participant, in Jandar's adventures.
27232642	/m/0bwlzx8	Renegade of Callisto	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the final adventure set on the Jovian moon Callisto, or Thanator, three comrades of series hero Jandar are lost in a damaged airship. Jungle boy Taran, Yathoon warrior Koja and their pet othode Fido, drift away from the city of Shondakar into the plains ruled by the insectoid Yathoon hordes. Taken captive by one of the hordes, they meet fellow prisoner Xara, princess of Ganatol, waylaid on her way to Shondakar to secure an alliance against the mercantile Perushtar city-states. Koja and Borak, another Yathoon prisoner, escape and find sanctuary with Koja's own horde, while Taran and Xara are saved by another airship sent by Jandar to locate the missing protagonists. Xara falls in love with Vandar, the ship's captain. Unfortunately, rescued and rescuers are quickly retaken by the Yathoon and carried away to Sargol, the hidden capital of all the insectoid hordes. Koja, who has reassumed the leadership he once held over his own horde, is there as well. He challenges the Yathoon emperor to a duel for the right to rule the combined hordes. The contest takes the form of a game of Darza (Thanatorian chess), utilizing as pieces live players who must fight to the death. Taran, Xara and Valkar become some of Koja's "pieces." The game is interrupted by Fido and other othodes, and Koja and the emperor end up fighting singly. Koja is triumphant, becoming the new emperor of the hordes, and his human companions are saved. Jandar shows up in the denouement to help celebrate and take the protagonists home to Shondakar.
27236923	/m/0bwh5y6	Thin Air	Robert B. Parker	1995	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Belson returns home one night to find his young wife, Lisa, missing, with no clue as to her whereabouts. He suspected that she may have left him, but circumstances seem to indicate she was kidnapped. Shortly after confiding in Spenser, Belson is shot returning home one night. Since he is unable to search for her himself as he is hospitalized, Spenser undertakes the search himself. The investigation leads him to the impoverished town of Proctor where he has to undercover details of Lisa's life previous to meeting Belson to discover where she might be now.
27240951	/m/0bwmmqp	Ylana of Callisto	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The storyline begins during events covered in the previous volume in the series, Lankar of Callisto, in which most of the evil Mind Wizards threatening the Jovian moon of Callisto, or Thanator, were wiped out in the climactic battle. One last survivor of the villainous band seizes as hostages Ylana the jungle girl and her lover Tomar, and flees to take refuge with the Cave People, a tribe dominated by his race. Together with Ylana's father, lately deposed as chief of the tribe, the two captives escape and head for the territory of the rival River People, pursued by a hunting party. Ylana is kidnapped by a River faction intent on fomenting war between the tribes, but the eventual conflict is limited to young malcontents from both, strengthening the power of the traditional authorities. The threat of the Mind Wizard is ended when he is devoured by a plesiosaur, and all ends happily for Ylana and Tomar.
27241517	/m/0c3ym6z	Time Travelers Never Die				 After his father Michael Shelborne mysteriously disappears, Adrian "Shel" Shelborne receives a package from his father with instructions to follow if something were to happen to him. Inside the package there are four devices that the note instructs him to destroy. After toying with the device a little, Shel discovers that the devices have the ability to take you anywhere at any point in time. After figuring this concept out, Shel decides to go back in time to the last time he talked to his father on the phone and find out why he disappeared. After finding his father in the past, his father explains to him the dangers of time travel. Shel's father explains that the devices can be used to go to events in time and become a part of them, but to interfere with the events could lead to fatal consequences. After taking this into consideration Shel's father decides to go back in time and return to the present to avoid causing a paradox in time. When his father still doesn't return, Shel enlists the help of his best friend Dave Dryden to help him find his father in time. They eventually find his father's tomb stone stating that he died in 1637. Going back to the year 1604, Shel finds his father to be a very old man. Shel's father explains to him that when he went back in time, the device got damaged when he was teleported on to a sheet of thin ice rather than dry land. He also explains that he can not leave because Shel and Dave have seen his grave site, and taking him out of that time line would cause a dangerous paradox. After finding Shel's father, Dave and Shel return to their base time period. They spend the next few months time traveling to the many events of the time line. However, tragedy strikes when a lightning bolt strikes Shel's apartment, burning the place to the ground. After a brief investigation and autopsy, it is determined that the burnt body found at the apartment is Shel. After the funeral, Shel appears before Dave to explain to him that the body in the grave is not his body, but the body of his future self. Feeling that his fate is sealed in the event of what happened that night, Shel runs away to live his life out in the timeline. Dave not wanting to let his friend live in fear of his own fate, enlists the help of Shel's fiancee Helen. Together they are able to fake the death of Shel by stealing a body from the scene of an auto accident and placing it in the apartment on the night of the fire. After eliminating the possibility of a deadly paradox, Dave and Helen set off to find where Shel ran off to. When they find him, they discover that a few years have passed since they last saw him. Knowing that they can never return to his life that has already ended, Shel and Helen live out their married life as time travelers.
27257273	/m/0bwh4z3	Mind Wizards of Callisto	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 A force of four airships bearing Jonathan Dark (Jandar) and his allies explores the unknown far side of the Jovian moon of Callisto (or Thanator), to seek and destroy Kuur, the secret stronghold of the evil Mind Wizards. The fleet is attacked by a flock of flying creatures called Zarkoons, and Jandar and the cabin boy Tomar are captured. Flown to the Zarkoons' lair, they meet another captive, the jungle girl Ylana, with whom they manage to escape. A flier piloted by Jandar's allies Lukor and Koja spots and retrieves them, but damaged by the pursuing Zarkoons it subsequently crash lands. The five find themselves in the Cor Az, forest home of the Cave People, Ylana's tribe, where all but Ylana are again imprisoned, the Cave People being under the thumb of the enemy. With Ylana's assistance they escape once more, only to be retaken and held for the Mind Wizards. Their ultimate fate is a mystery. An airship from the fleet later finds the memoir Jandar composed in captivity and returns with it to the civilized hemisphere of Thanator, whence it is afterwards teleported to Earth to become the basis of the present volume. The other three ships continue the quest for Kuur, but nothing has been heard from them as of the time of the last notation on the manuscript. With this cliffhanger the novel ends.
27257770	/m/0bwk_z5	Truman	David McCullough	1992-06-15	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book provides a biography of Harry Truman in chronological fashion from his birth, to his rise to Senator, to Vice President, to President, and to his activities after his presidency until death. The book explores many of the major decisions that Truman made as president including his decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his meetings and confrontation with Joseph Stalin during the end of World War II, the decision to create the Marshall Plan, the decision to send troops to the Korea War, the decision to recognize the state of Israel, and the decision to desegregate the United States armed forces.
27261769	/m/0bwl6s0	Pollard				 The novel concerns Anne, a teenager who leaves her chaotic home life and finds sanctuary in the nearby woods where she makes a new life for herself, foraging and hunting for food and building a house...
27278020	/m/0bwljvn	Search for the Doctor	Dave Martin			 The year is 2056, and the Doctor is trapped in toroidal stasis by arch enemy Omega. But help is at hand from the Doctor's old friends Drax and K9 - and you! Now open the covers and join the Doctor in an adventure through Time and Space ... *This story takes place in the mid-21st Century and at the time it was published it was assumed that it featured the K-9 model that was featured in K-9 and Company and The Five Doctors. However, the events of the 2006 episode School Reunion, in which that version of K-9 was destroyed, suggest that the version of K-9 encountered by the Doctor is actually K-9 Mark IV and the model featured in The Sarah Jane Adventures although as far as the Sixth Doctor is concerned, it's the same one he gave Sarah Jane initially. *Drax returns who was first featured in The Armageddon Factor. *The story marks as the latest in chronology in which Omega appears.
27278334	/m/0bwkzx8	Crisis in Space	Michael Holt			 Garth Hadeez, overlord of the grim and gruesome Golons, has released a black hole into the solar system. His plan is to annihilate Earth. Only the Doctor - and you - can save it! Now open the covers and join the Doctor in an adventure through Time and Space ... *The story marks the return of Turlough in the latest chronology. The book states he's already with the Doctor and Peri meaning in a not told yet adventure Turlough joins the two.
27282556	/m/04t1h6_	The Creature in the Teacher	Christopher Pike		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Adam, Sally, Watch and the gang can't wait for the first day of school. Though, their new science teacher, Mr. Snakol, is very weird. Later in the day, everyone starts to think that he's an alien. Soon Sally goes missing and their suspicious grow. When the gang goes deeper into school grounds, they find out Mr. Snakol is an alien! Now the kids MUST find a way to stop him. What can a few kids do to get their friend back and save the world in time?
27290112	/m/0by1qv4	The Chess Master	Zhong Acheng			 The story takes place in China during the Down to the Countryside Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The unnamed narrator and the chess master Wang Yisheng are two young intellectuals among many who are sent to a remote farm in the mountains to work. During the train ride to the mountains, Wang Yisheng and his friend talk about how he learned to play Chinese chess, and how he evolved his current strategy. Wang Yisheng tells his friend that his family was very poor, and his mother did not want him to be such a chess maniac, since chess could not earn money. However, Wang Yisheng was very devoted to chess. One day, while gathering garbage to sell, Wang Yisheng meets an old man who is a chess master. Using the principles of Daoism, the old man teaches Wang everything he knows about chess. Wang Yisheng also tells his friend about how his mother always disapproved of his chess habit, but before she died, she painstakingly made him a chess set out of discarded toothbrush handles, because she knew how much he loved chess. The two friends then debark the train and head their separate ways to different farms in the countryside. A couple months later, Wang Yisheng takes a vacation and visits his friend in the mountains. One of the narrator's friends at the farm, Legballs, happens to be a good chess player. Legballs is very impressed with Wang's ability, and the two become good friends. After a while of working at the farm, there is a local festival with a chess tournament. The narrator, Legballs, and their friends all take a vacation to attend the festival. Wang Yisheng arrives too late to enter the official chess tournament, but he challenges the winners to an unofficial match after the tournament is over. Word spreads of his challenge, and many people decide to challenge him. He ends up playing 9 people at once without any chess boards in front of him (effectively playing blind), and he beats most of them easily. He eventually defeats the winner of the official tournament, an old man. zh:棋王 (阿城小说)
27290652	/m/0bxzm25	The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow	Thea Astley	1996	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is based on a violent event that took place on Palm Island, Queensland (called Doebin in the novel) in 1930, in which the white Superintendent of the settlement, Robert Curry (Brodie in the novel), ran amok, setting fire to buildings and killing his own children in the process. He was eventually shot dead by one of the indigenous inhabitants, Peter Prior (Manny Cooktown in the novel), under orders from the white deputy Superintendent. Astley focuses most of the novel on various white characters who were present on the Island at the time, but intersperses their experiences with briefer passages spoken by the Aboriginal man, Manny Cooktown. The novel spans a long time period, from 1918 when the settlement was established to 1957 when Aboriginal workers went on a strike, but most of the action takes place after 1930.
27294353	/m/0by05_w	Tiger Moon			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Sold to be the eighth wife of a rich and cruel merchant, Safia, also called Raka, tries to escape her fate by telling stories of Farhad the thief, his companion Nitish, the white tiger, and their travels across India to retrieve a famous jewel that will save a kidnapped princess from becoming the bride of a demon king.
27295701	/m/0by1slv	A Quiet Belief In Angels	Roger Jon Ellory	2007-08-22	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 A Quiet Belief In Angels is written from the perspective of Joseph Vaughan, growing up in a rural community in early 1940s Georgia. Early in the novel, Joseph's father passes away from a fever, and Joseph likens a white feather on his pillow to his father's angel. Afterwards, a serial killer begins committing a spree of murders, abducting and brutally killing young girls. Joseph and his friends form a group known as "the Guardians" devoting themselves to protecting the town's girls from any further harm. The townsfolk begin to suspect a German farmer named Gunther Kruger, mainly due to rising tensions because of the Second World War, and burn down his family home, killing his youngest daughter, whom Joseph had sworn to protect when the killings began. The Kruger family leave town, and the townsfolk seem satisfied the killings will leave with them.
27296505	/m/04t47pp	The Lilac Bus	Maeve Binchy		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 It is about a group of seven people from the West of Ireland village of Rathdoon, who all live in Dublin and return home every weekend on the Lilac Bus.
27297846	/m/0bxzlbw	Mushroom in the Sand		2009-11-23	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dr. Rostam (Ross) Shaheen, 53, is a world-renowned Iranian-American physicist holding a senior position at the Berkley Lab with extensive expertise in nuclear weapons research and design. His wife of 25 years, Oksana Pugachov, happens to be the only daughter of a high-ranking government official of the Russian Federation. Dr. Shaheen is lured to Iran by the Iranian secret service, MOIS, agents. Amir Meshkin, the head of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, brings Ross to the subterranean plant at Natanz to force him to provide the "missing link" for the project. To ensure Ross' cooperation, MOIS goes to extreme lengths and will stop at nothing to get what they need. With the CIA, Mossad and the Russians all in play, Ross is forced into a dangerous game of chess with deadly, and potentially catastrophic, consequences.
27309488	/m/0by1k_k	Monsieur Beaucaire	Booth Tarkington			 The setting is Bath during the eighteenth century. Before the action of the novel begins, Beau Nash, an historical figure who served as Master of Ceremonies of Bath, has ordered M. Beaucaire out of the public rooms because of his low status. A barber to a French noble, Beaucaire has since that incident established a reputation for honesty while gambling with English notables in private. In the opening scene of the novel, he catches the Duke of Winterset cheating and threatens to expose the Duke, whose honesty is already the subject of gossip. Beaucaire insists Winterset take him to a ball and introduce him as the Duc de Chateaurien to Lady Mary Carlisle, “the Beauty of Bath." Beaucaire as Chateaurien wins the lady’s affection and the admiration of Bath society. In the days that follow Beaucaire twice emerges successfully from duels with men who pretend to insult him on their own behalf but are in fact acting on behalf of Winterset. Beaucaire and several British gentlemen accompany Lady Carlisle en route from a party. Beaucaire and Lady Carlisle engage in amorous conversation. Highwaymen attack Beaucaire shouting “barber!” and the others leave him to defend himself. He does so successfully for a time, then is overwhelmed, only to be rescued at last by his servants who were travelling some distance behind. Lady Carlisle denounces those who failed to come to Beaucaire’s defense. Winterset then emerges from the shadows and, over Lady Carlisle’s objections and with Beaucaire’s indulgence, tells the story of Beaucaire’s true background as a lackey and an imposter, adding some fabrications to explain his own behavior in introducing Beacaire/Chateaurien to Bath society. Beaucaire mocks his words as a mixture of truth and invention. Questioned by the others, he asserts he has never been a barber but admits that he did arrive in England in the role of barber to the French Ambassador and is named Beaucaire. One of the English, Molyneux, the only one to demonstrate some sympathy for Beaucaire, notes that his swordsmanship was that of a gentleman. Winterset warns Beaucaire not to appear in public in Bath again. Lady Carlisle, aghast, refuses to look at Beaucaire and orders her carriage to depart. That even Lady Carlisle and Winterset are the center of attention in Bath as Nash and fashionable society anticipate the arrival of the French Ambassador and the Comte de Beaujolais, a French prince. The movement of the crowd impels Lady Carlisle to step aside into a small chamber where she finds Beaucaire and Molyneux gambling. Attempts at explanation fail, Lady Carlisle insists that Molyneuz escort her from the room, and Beaucaire is left alone in tears. After more confrontations, Beaucaire reveals himself as a French prince, hiding from his cousin, King Louis XV of France, who is angry at him for failing to submit to an arranged marriage. The Ambassador has come to Bath to escort him home now that his royal cousin has relented. In the course of recounting his adventures, Beaucaire calls Winterset "that coward, that card-cheat." Lady Carlisle asks his forgiveness and he gives it lightly. He announces his intention to return to France and marry the woman the king had chosen for him.
27310225	/m/0by17j_	Max and the Cats		1981		 Max is forced to leave Nazi Germany after he and his friend, Harald, have an affair with Frida, whose husband denounces them to the secret police for inappropriate behaviour. He flees the country on the Germania, a ship bound for Santos, Brazil, with zoo animals in the hold and very few passengers, but the captain is involved in an insurance scam, and the ship is deliberately sunk. Max finds a dinghy on board with some provisions, and manages to lower it into the sea. The next day the sun is beating down on him, and he fears for his life without cover. He reaches out for a large closed box that has fallen from the ship next to him, hoping he can use it for shelter, but when he opens the padlock, something jumps out of the box and into the dinghy, knocking him unconscious. When he opens his eyes, "[t]he howl that he let out resounded in the air." Sitting on the bench in front of him is a jaguar. Max and the jaguar are stranded on the dinghy together for days, with only some basic provisions stored in the dinghy for emergencies. Max decides to start fishing to make sure the jaguar is not hungry, and briefly wonders whether he could train him. A shark approaches at one point, but the jaguar bats it away, saving them both; Max is so grateful that he hugs the animal, then pulls himself away in horror. At the very moment Max decides he cannot stand being alone with the jaguar anymore&mdash;after watching him tear a seagull apart&mdash;the jaguar appears to have a similar thought, and they both lunge at each other, colliding in midair. Max loses consciousness, and when he opens his eyes finds he has been rescued by a Brazilian ship. He asks about the jaguar, but the sailors assume he is delirious.
27314715	/m/0bmbm52	Angel: A Maximum Ride Novel	James Patterson	2011-02-14	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 It has been a week since the love of Max's life, Fang, has left the flock. Max is suffering from mild depression at her mother's house. She reveals that Dylan is becoming more wise to her, and learning to fight from her, as they have an early physical disagreement. Dylan finds her in a tree, and kisses her, prompting the fight. Back inside, the Flock is hanging low, until Angel (who Max says has been "sweet" to her since Fang left) notifies everyone that Jeb and Dr. Gunther-Hagen are coming. Max is informed that she is to be the leader of the new generation of mutants, the Gen 77 kids (The Flock was generation 54,and the Erasers were generation 17), who have powers similar to the Flock's, as well as being heatproof, seeing thermal images, and more. Dr. Gunther-Hagen, despite warnings from Jeb, says that Max needs to breed soon, and that he has prepared a home in Germany where she and Dylan will be able to. Dr. Gunther-Hagen says that emerging civilizations are better with a line of leaders in a family, as in a king and queen; otherwise there will be a struggle for power. Dr. Gunther-Hagan continues his case until Dr. Martinez puts the conversation out of the question because she thinks that Max is too young. Fang, meanwhile, is busy forming his own flock, which is dubbed "Fang's Gang." The first member, Ratchet, is a teenage boy who has enhanced senses, and must wear sunglasses and sound-blocking headphones. He had been kicked out recently by his mother, and had joined a gang before Fang recruited him. The second member, Star, is "rail thin" with blond hair and "cold blue eyes." In the first encounter with Star, it is learned that she almost wrecks a restaurant after finding out they didn't serve hamburgers, due to her massive appetite, easily exceeding that of Max or Fang. She has the power of super speed and is believed to be cross bred with a mouse or a hummingbird. She and Ratchet don't see eye to eye, which is proven when Star threatens to "cut him off at the knees without a blink." She spent ten years in a Catholic school. Another new character, Kate, is Star's friend from school, although they are total opposites. She has thick, glossy black hair that "won't stay behind her ears, supermodel cheek bones, and an easy smile." She seems to be the peacemaker between Ratchet and Star. Kate has enhanced strength which is helpful throughout the book. Ratchet lusts for Kate. Another member is Max II, who now calls herself Maya. Fang is overwhelmed by his feelings when he first speaks to Maya and feelings for Max seem to manifest in his relationship with Maya. She also seems to have feelings for Fang, shown by when she tells him that he is "great" and tells him that " I love it when you talk all sciency." Holden Squibb (aka. Starfish) is the last member of "Fang's Gang." He is about 15, but looks like a 10 year old and can heal at an accelerated pace and regenerate various limbs like a starfish. Fang chose teenagers for his "flock", in hopes that he wouldn't have to worry about them. Fang discovers that being a leader (what Max does) is harder than he thought it would be because of all the talking he would have to do to solve problems and motivate his members etc. Dr. Martinez convinces the flock (mainly Max) that they should visit the Gen-77 kids. They all take a plane to see the kids, but Max decides to fly herself. On the way the plane runs into a trap. Transparent floating balloons connected to the ground with razor wire, hit the plane and rip its wings off. As the plane spirals out of control the flock takes action. Max's mom, Jeb, and Dr. Hans can't fly so they try to carry them. Iggy and Nudge get caught in the wire and begin to free fall, Max catches her mother, but Jeb is falling. Gazzy tries to catch him, but is too weak to support the weight, Jeb tells Gazzy "the human race will have to die, to save the planet...just as I will have to die to save you." Jeb lets go. Before he plummets to his death Dylan catches him. Angel, and Gazzy then help stabilize Iggy and Nudge. Everyone lands relatively safe. In the confusion Dr. Hans disappears. Dylan and Max go to look for his body, but do not find him. They stop by a school on the way and snipers shoot at them. Max thinks that they are "whitecoats" but Dylan saw (with his super vision) that they were kids without eyes. They then camp out in a part of a cave where Dylan tells Max about the constellations. Max begins to get more comfortable with Dylan and eventually falls asleep beside him, with his arm around her shoulder. She notices how well her body fits in with his and calls it a "perfect fit" Angel finds Max and Dylan and they go back to the Gen 77 headquarters where the three of them encounter the "kids without eyes" again. After a brief fight, Max, Dylan, and Angel get a closer look at the children. In reality, they have eyes all around the middle of their head, giving them 360 degree vision, hence the aim. The Gen-77 kids then tell Max and the others that they are more advanced and that they need to "kill the humans" to make the world better. They then proceed to attack the group again. Max, Dylan, and Angel are able to get away but while they are flying, they notice a familiar face. They land and find Mike, the computer guy, under the hypnotic spell of the Doomsday group. When they get home, Ella and Iggy are under the spell also. Dylan, Max, Angel, Iggy, and Ella go to a rally at Ella's school, where Iggy begins a chant of "kill the humans!" The gang takes Iggy back home, leaving Ella behind. They are able to revert him back to normal with a cold shower and some mind control by Angel. They find out from Nudge, Gazzy, and Total that Jeb and Dr. Martinez have disappeared without a trace. They all reluctantly come to the conclusion that they are involved with the Doomsday Group. They make a pact with each other to never again trust a grown-up. The group finds Ella at a campfire, singing a song about saving the earth. They are able to capture her and change her back to normal, but they quickly lose her again. She leaves a note saying that she was meant to have wings. In California, Fang's gang is not getting along so well. Maya and Fang have a conversation in which Fang notices some minor differences between the two. Maya is softer than Max, easier to talk to. She is also more vulnerable, emotionally. Fang is about to kiss her when the rest of his gang attacks the two with Cheez Whiz. Soon Fang surprises Max by calling her, saying that he needs her to meet him in San Diego. Fang isn't very happy because Max would rather throw Dylan in his face and Max is mad because Fang would rather throw Maya in Max's face. Fang is "mad" at Dylan because he is "Max's perfect other half". The reason that he wants them to meet is because he has found a convention where it is said that the Doomsday Group will be. Coincidentally, Max and the flock have also been looking at this group for the past little while. Both groups meet at the hotel where "Fang's Gang" is staying. They start of with all of them having a meal, but soon Fang and Max are throwing Dylan and Maya in each others' faces. This ends with them flying out and talking about how they felt. After this event they all headed to the Convention looking for the group. The group finds out that the Doomsday Group is indeed at the Convention, and they listen in to one of their speeches. The group decides to fly to Paris on a private jet, where Fang and Max get in another fight. Angel calms everyone down, and they proceed talking about their plans. They land in Paris and find out the Doomsday Group is planning to release toxins and detonate "enough C4 to leave a crater the size of Texas" to kill the population of Paris during a firework display. Angel and Gazzy try to stop them by infiltrating the headquarters, but end up getting captured and strapped to the bombs. Max, Fang, and Dylan go to rescue them, while the rest try to warn the people to flee. All of a sudden, everything explodes around them. Everyone seems to be okay, but Angel is missing. After searching for hours, Angel is presumed dead and the flocks part ways. At the epilogue, Angel is said to be captured by what is assumed the Doomsday Group who wants to use her powers. They are presumably treating her wounds, and tell her that they will take good care of her.
27316125	/m/088mcd4	A Pack of Lies	Geraldine McCaughrean	1988	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The narrative follows the age-old pattern of separate stories embedded within a primary story, as in the Panchatantra, the Arabian Nights and the Canterbury Tales. Each of the stories is linked to a different piece of furniture in an antique shop, and the question arises as to whether the stories are pure invention ("a pack of lies") or could perhaps be true - and what their being "true" would mean about the narrator. A young man with the unlikely name of MCC Berkshire ("from Reading") follows Ailsa home from the library and talks himself into an unpaid job in her mother's run-down antique shop - all he asks is somewhere to sleep and books to read. He has a wonderful way of assessing the customers and suiting the provenance he gives the furniture to their interests. Moreover, he seems to adapt himself - his accent, his manner, his personal history - to the story being told, which also seems to be inspired by the book he has just been reading. When chided by Mrs Povey for telling lies, he responds: "'Not lies, madam.... Fiction. That's the thing to give 'em. That's the thing everyone wants. Fiction, madam! " Ailsa and Mrs Povey, while grateful to MCC for his help and enjoying his company, often have doubts about him, while Uncle Clive, on a brief visit, is positively hostile. After the Poveys' financial problems are suddenly solved, literally from the pages of a book, the scene is set for MCC's departure. In the final chapter Ailsa realizes the shocking truth, while the reader realizes that Ailsa's reality is another of MCC's tales.
27317123	/m/0bx_17m	The Anti-Politics Machine				 This book is a critique of the concept of "development" in general, viewed through the lens of failed attempts, specifically the Thaba-Tseka Development Project in Lesotho from 1975-1984. He writes about the countless "development agencies" that have their hand in the so-called "Third world" but points out the consistent failure of these agencies to bring about any sort of economic stability. This is what Ferguson calls the "development discourse fantasy," which arises from backward logic.
27317242	/m/0by04kf	The True Deceiver	Tove Jansson			 "Snow has been falling on the village all winter long. It covers windows and piles up in front of doors. The sun rises late and sets early, and even during the day there is little to do but trade tales. This year everybody’s talking about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives with her simpleminded brother and a dog she refuses to name. She has no use for the white lies that smooth social intercourse, and she can see straight to the core of any problem. Anna, an elderly children’s book illustrator, appears to be Katri’s opposite: a respected member of the village, if an aloof one. Anna lives in a large empty house, venturing out in the spring to paint exquisitely detailed forest scenes. But Anna has something Katri wants, and to get it Katri will take control of Anna’s life and livelihood. By the time spring arrives, the two women are caught in a conflict of ideals that threatens to strip them of their most cherished illusions."
27317874	/m/0bx__10	Mad Empress of Callisto	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jonathan Dark (Jandar) is now well settled in to his new life as husband of Princess Darloona of Shondakar on the Jovian moon of Callisto (or Thanator). While out hunting with some companions they are kidnapped in a balloon by a force from the rival city of Tharkol. Their capture is part of a plot by Zamorra, empress of Tharkol, who under the mental influence of her advisor, the Mind Wizard Ang Chan is making an attempt to conquer all of Thanator. Sprung from her dungeon by the thief Glypto, they turn the tables by kidnapping Zamorra and escaping in the balloon. Unfortunately, their craft is later attacked and brought down by a Ghastosar (a Thantorian flying creature resembling a pterodactyl), and the group falls into the hands of the insect-like Yathoon nomads. Once again Glypto is the key to their escape. Striking out for Shondakar on foot, they encounter a caravan from the Soroba, only to find it a front for a military expedition from that city. They are rescued from the Sorobans by an airship, which they assume to be from Shondakar -- but it is a Tharkolian ship, another unit in Zamorra's new airfleet! The empress having gradually proven to be a decent sort during the party's adventures, Darloona tries to talk her out of her mad scheme. Discovering she has been controlled by Ang Chan, Zamorra is persuaded, and the upshot is a new alliance against the Mind Wizards made up of Tharkol, Shondakar and Soroba (ably represented by Glypto, now revealed to have been a Soroban spy).
27319308	/m/0bxzyyb	Apollo 23	Justin Richards			 The Doctor and Amy arrive at a shopping centre much to The Doctor's disappointment. When arriving they discover that a spaceman has appeared out of thin air. They both decide to materialize to the moon which they successfully do and find the secret Base Diana. Investigating, they learn of a plot by the evil Talerians to take over the Earth by possessing human bodies. The Doctor ends up trapped on Earth and working with secret government officials, manages to return to the moon on Apollo 23, there having secretly been Apollos 18 through 22 before a link was established between Earth and the Moon that allowed instantaneous travel before sabotage caused it to break down, causing the spaceman to appear. On the moon, Amy is captured and possessed and lures the Doctor into a trap, but he manages to escape with the help of Major Calisle who managed to secretly remain unpossesed due to a power failure caused by Amy attempting to stop sabotage. With Calisle's help, the Doctor finds a back-up copy of Amy's personality and restores her to normal and later manages to do the same using the fire suppression system to everyone but the alien leader, Jackson, who had kept his back-up with him. Restoring everyone's minds through their back-ups also erases the alien minds possessing them. Jackson manages to summon an invasion force of actual Talerians and reveals that the real Jackson's experiments had allowed him (the alien possessing him) to transfer himself to Jackson in the first place and start the invasion. The Talerians are revealed to be balloon-like aliens that are extremely fragile and are dying out. They want human bodies to survive. The Doctor restores the real Jackson by secretly giving him his back-up in his tea and he sacrifices himself to destroy the Talerians by shooting out a window, causing a depressurization that kills the Talerian invaders due to their fragility, and also kills him.
27319533	/m/0by09bp	Outcast	Michelle Paver	2007	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 We find out at the start of the novel that in the previous book the Soul Eaters marked Torak with the Soul Eater symbol. This is discovered and Torak is set to be cast out from the clans, unless his own clan, the Wolf Clan, decides he is innocent. When the Wolf Clan arrives, the Leader says that his mother announced him 'Clanless'. This has never happened before, but as Torak has no clan to decide his innocence, he becomes an outcast. He leaves the clans with Wolf. Renn repeatedly tries to help him, but Torak won't let her as if anyone sees Torak they are supposed to kill him. Torak attempts to cut out the Soul Eater mark from his chest and, thinking it has worked, he goes back to the Raven Camp and watches them. Saeunn, the Raven Clan's mage, says that there is a Soul Eater among them, so Torak flees, knowing that he is the Soul Eater of which she speaks. While in hiding, he suffers from a kind of madness called soul sickness, and attackes Wolf with fire. Meanwhile, Renn and Bale meet up and decide to find Torak and prove his innocence, even though in doing so they are breaking clan law. Renn sends help to Torak in the form of two ravens (named Rip and Rek by Torak). While Torak is recovering his reason, Seshru the Viper Mage, a Soul Eater, uses her powers to draw him to her so as to control him (he is a Spirit Walker and therefore controlling him would supply her with even greater power). Seshru is revealed to be Renn's mother. Meanwhile, Renn realizes that a giant flood is coming and encourages Torak to spread the word and therefore prove his innocence. Torak therefore tells Fin-Kedinn, and the clans flee. Torak gets into a fight with a boy from the Boar Clan, but then climbs up a tree to escape the coming flood. The Boar Clan boy hears the water coming and tries to climb the tree too, but he cannot reach the first branch so Torak jumps down to help him. Torak then finds he cannot climb back up the tree, and he and Wolf are swept away by the water. When he wakes up, all the clans are there, and when Seshru appears Torak shows the clans that destroying him will not help them in their struggle against the Soul Eaters, and they accept him back. Bale uses Renn's bow to kill Seshru, and she dies with the fire opal in hand and thus both die as one. fr:Le Banni (Chroniques des temps obscurs)
27323676	/m/0bx_pmt	The Ninth Avatar		2010		 The following description is from the publisher's website: For Starka, an outcast priestess accused of incest, life is simple until a nightmare prophecy of the ascension of the Avatar of Darkness forces her to return to a world of intrigue and treachery. Pushed unwillingly into an epic journey with a priest who despises her, Starka finds allies in a mysterious warrior bent on protecting her, the last surviving members of two feuding nations, and a rebel wizard seeking revenge for his fallen comrades. Faced with the sweeping onslaught of the Carrion Army led by Zion and his three murderous generals, time is running out. With each battle, the ranks of the carrion swell with freshly killed recruits. New terrors are constructed from the heights of the Great Watchtower. Ancient enemies must band together, Starka must survive the assassins within her own order, and prophecy must somehow be stopped. The price of failure is absolute destruction. The Ninth Avatar is coming.
27328415	/m/0bx_7p4	Goggle-Eyes	Anne Fine	1989-03-23	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is told in the first person, by Kitty Killen. It is set in Scotland in the 1980s, when anti-nuclear protests were prominent in the news. When Helen runs out of the classroom in distress, Mrs Lupey sends Kitty after her, despite the two not being particular friends. Kitty soon realizes that Helen dislikes the man her mother is going to marry, so she tells her the story of how she first loathed Gerald, her mother's boyfriend, and how she gradually got used to him, despite his anti-CND views. "Goggle-Eyes"' is the nickname Kitty gives Gerald, because of the way he stares ("goggles") at Kitty's mother. The story is told in a cloakroom cupboard during one morning, with occasional interruptions from Liz and Mrs Lupey.
27330689	/m/0bxzbqc	Sky Pirates of Callisto	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jonathan Dark (Jandar), earthman mysteriously transported to the Jovian moon of Callisto (or Thanator), has in concert with the native Ku Thad succeeded in freeing the city of Shondakar from the occupying Black Legion and the opportunistic Zandaharian Sky Pirates. The only fly in the ointment is that Shondakar's rightful ruler, the princess Darloona, has been abducted by the fleeing Prince Thuton of Zandahar. To free her Jandar adopts the wild plan of taking one of the Sky Pirates' own captured airships to raid the enemy city. A Zandaharian prisoner brought along to help operate the craft treacherously scuttles the scheme by throwing Jandar overboard and sabotaging the airship. Plopped into the Corund Laj, Thanator's greater sea, Jandar finds himself close enough to land to swim to safety, only to be enslaved by the mercantile Perushtar who rule its waves. Ironically, this results in him reaching his destination after all, as he is sold to the Zandaharians as gladitorial fodder. He has his hands full simultaneously surviving as a gladiator, hiding his identity as the Sky Pirates' arch enemy, and stirring up a revolt among his fellow slaves. As the revolution ignites and he if found out, his allies' airship, now repaired, swoops in to administer the coup de grace. Zandahar is destroyed and the menace of the Sky Pirates ended by the explosion of the pocket of "lifting gas" over which the city is built and on which its air power is based. Best of all, Jandar at last finds favor with the rescued Darloona, whose relationship with him amid the perils and reverses of the previous books has been decidedly rocky.
27339056	/m/0bxz2k2	The 9th Judgment	Maxine Paetro	2010-04-26	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 SFPD sergeant Lindsay Boxer and her squad are tracking down a man who approaches young mothers in shopping center parking garages and kills them and their infant children. This happens several times and causes widespread panic. The man then makes contact and demands a $2 million ransom in exchange for stopping the killing. He strikes at such random places and times that, despite Boxer's protests, the police decide to pay the ransom. Boxer is selected to deliver the ransom and has the man guide her via cellphone. After forcing Boxer to strip to her panties to prove she is not wearing a wire, the man has her drive throughout San Francisco. The trek culminates on the Golden Gate Bridge where Boxer drops the suitcase with the ransom in it to a boat waiting below. The Coast Guard is able to apprehend the man in the boat, who turns out to be uninvolved in the killings—he had been told his picking up the suitcase was for a movie. Upset at having not gotten his ransom, the man kills another mother and child. While at that crime scene, however, he was noticed by the owner of a store on Fisherman's Wharf. The owner recognized him as having bought a prepaid cellphone from his store earlier and gives Boxer and her team the surveillance tape from his store. From the tape, Boxer and her team identify the man and begin tracking him down. Before they can find him, however, the man strikes again. However, the woman he chose was armed with a 22 caliber pistol—carried in response to the general panic caused by the shootings. She shoots the man and he dies just as Boxer and her team arrive. In the plot's secondary case, a notorious female cat burglar dubbed 'Hello Kitty' breaks into the home of an aging movie star and his wife whilst they are eating dinner, the latter of whom happened to be law school classmates with Boxer's friend Yuki Castellano. The star and his wife come upstairs unexpectedly and the burglar is forced to wait in the closet until they fall asleep before she can escape. She waits, but in the process of escaping, knocks over a table. The movie star pulls out a gun and searches for the intruder before coming up with the idea of shooting and killing his wife in the hope that he can blame it on the burglar, who escapes unnoticed before the killing occurs. Through their investigation, Boxer and her team discover that the star had a girlfriend and wanted out of his marriage and that murder was cheaper than divorce. When confronted with the evidence, the star falsely claims that he shot his wife in self defense after she attempted to shoot him. It is also revealed that the cat burglar is actually a school teacher in an unhappy marriage. She is also in love with a female colleague and is only burglarizing in order to get enough money so that she and the colleague can escape to another country and start a new life together. At the end, it is revealed that the female colleague the burglar has fallen in love with is also unhappily married—to the man who was killing mothers and children whom Boxer was tracking.
27340801	/m/0bxz9v1	King Matt the First	Janusz Korczak	1923	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Matt is a child prince who is catapulted to the throne by the sudden death of his father. At the beginning of his reign, Matt enacts several bold reforms aimed at improving life for the people of his kingdom, especially the children, but in spite of his best intentions reality gets in the way producing many unintended consequences from silly to sinister. Matt tries to read and answer all his mail by himself and finds that the volume is too much and he needs to rely on secretaries. He is exasperated with his ministers and has them arrested, but soon realizes that he does not know enough to govern by himself, and is forced to release the ministers and institute constitutional monarchy. When a war breaks out, Matt cannot accept being shut up in his palace, but slips away and joins up, pretending to be a peasant boy - and narrowly avoids becoming a POW. He takes the offer of a friendly journalist to publish for him a "royal paper" -and finds much later that he gets carefully edited news and that the journalist is covering up the gross corruption of the young king's best friend. Matt tries to organize the children of the entire world to hold processions and demand their rights - and ends up antagonizing other kings. He falls in love with a black African princess and outrages racist opinion (by modern standards, however, Korczak's depiction of blacks is itself not completely free of stereotypes which were current at the time of writing). Finally, he is overthrown by the invasion of three foreign armies and exiled to a desert island.
27342400	/m/0bxz2ll	Black Legion of Callisto	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Jonathan Dark (Jandar), earthman mysteriously transported to the Jovian moon of Callisto (or Thanator), has succeeded in rescuing Princess Darloona of Shondakar from the Sky Pirates of Zandahar, only to see her fall into the hands of the Black Legion, the mercenary force that had previously occupied her native city and driven her and her followers into exile. Journeying to Shondakar, Jandar improbably finds himself in the Legion's good graces after saving the son of its leader, the very man that leader intends to have Darloona wed in order to cement his control of the city. Having essentially been given a free hand to spy on the enemy, Jandar scouts out the city's defenses and weaknesses, particularly its underground tunnel system. He disrupts the wedding as Darloona's Ku Thad people infiltrate Shondakar through the tunnels and take the occupiers by surprise. Jandar kills the mastermind behind the princess's misfortunes, the supposed priest Oola, who is secretly one of the Mind Wizards conspiring to take over all of Thanator. But during the battle the Sky Pirates invade, and while the Ku Thad are ultimately victorious over both foes, Prince Thuton of Zandahar escapes, carrying Darloona back to the captivity from which Jandar sprung her in the previous volume. Back to square one...
27342482	/m/0by09hl	Power Hungry	Robert Bryce	2010-04-27		 As in his earlier book Gusher of Lies (which was about the idea of energy independence), Bryce argues that the United States needs to continue to use large amounts of fossil fuels including imported oil. However he does contemplate ways in which reliance on fossil fuels might be reduced: * Energy efficiency: Bryce claims that the United States' record in improving energy efficiency puts it in the top three of the developed countries, but addicted to prosperity. * The use of nuclear power Bryce argues that some renewable sources, such as wind farms, are not truly green and that carbon capture and storage will not work and will prove to be an expensive mistake.
27343984	/m/0by1c09	The School for Atheists	Arno Schmidt	1972	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is presented as an experimental drama, making extensive use of Schmidt's playful language and typography. The story is set in 2014 and it concerns a summit of world leaders. The summit is held at the home of William T. Kolderup in [Tellingstedt]. A nested narrative in this story is that of the adventures of Kolderup and the mother of Isis, the American Secretary of State. In Kolderup's story, the ship that carries him and the mother of Isis is wrecked, testing the atheistic beliefs of the stranded characters. de:Die Schule der Atheisten
27351745	/m/0by03bg	The Owl Tree				 While their Mum is in the hospital and expecting a baby, Joe and his sister Minna are taken to their Granny Diamond's house, as no one else is able to take care of them at this time, because their parents are in the hospital. After showing Joe his room, Granny Diamond tells him about an owl tree outside the house which grows in her neighbour Mr Rock's lawn. She tells him how she had once seen an owl perched on one of the branches of the tree one night and it had cheered her up, which is why she calls it the owl tree. Then one day Joe finds out that Mr Rock is going to cut down the tree soon. After that, Joe tries to find a way to save the tree, as its cutting down could affect his Granny Diamond greatly if it happened. Joe thinks that it is time for him to meet the owl in the owl tree.
27352990	/m/0bxyygh	The September Society	Charles Finch	2008-08-05	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 A student at Lincoln College at the University of Oxford goes missing. His mother engages Charles Lenox to solve the mystery of his disappearance. Lenox, himself a graduate of Oxford, revisits his alma mater to piece together the clues in this kidnapping case which, upon the discovery of a body, becomes a murder investigation. Eventually the trail leads Lenox back to London and the headquarters of a mysterious society. Lenox’s evolving friendship and potential romance with Lady Jane is a central subplot. Additionally, the book introduces Lord John Dallington, a young wastrel aristocrat, as Lenox’s apprentice.
27355387	/m/0by14m6	Ice		2009-10-06		 When Cassie Dasent was a little girl, her grandmother would tell her of what became to her mother: she was taken by a polar bear king to be the daughter of the North Wind, who expected the girl to become the bear's wife when she grows up. But one day, the North Wind's daughter meets Cassie's father and falls in love with him. When the polar bear king comes to get the woman, she refuses him but comes up with a bargain for him: if she has a daughter, the daughter will be his wife. He agrees and allows his would-be wife to marry the man she loves. The North Wind, furious at his adopted daughter, seeks her out, and when he finds her, she had given birth to a daughter (Cassie). Cassie's mother begs for her father to take her and leave her husband and child alone, and the North Wind blew her far away, where she was captured by trolls. Years later, Cassie is eighteen, and she has accepted the story as a nice way of saying her mother had died. She lives at the Eastern Beaufort Research Center in Alaska with her father and fellow researchers Owen, Scott, Liam, Jeremy, and pilot Max. While out on the ice, Cassie spots a large polar bear, but when she plans on tranquilizing and tagging him, he vanishes into the ice. Upon telling her father Laszlo of this, he decides that she must go to live with her grandmother in Fairbanks. It turns out the story about her mother was true after all. Determined to find the bear and prove the story isn't real, Cassie plans to go out after him, only to find that the bear had found her. He tells her to marry him in exchange for the release of her mother, who is alive. Cassie reluctantly agrees. The polar bear (who is referred to as "Bear") takes Cassie to his elaborate ice castle, where the latter learns that he is a "munaqsri," a transporter of souls. He is currently the only munaqsri for the polar bears, and tells Cassie that there must be more of their kind for everything to be in balance. That night, while Cassie is in bed, she is confronted by what she thinks is an intruder who tells her that he is Bear and adds that it is their wedding night. She chases him out, and upon finding out from Bear that the intruder was truly him, she finds out that they are to have children together. Though she initially plans on leaving, Cassie decides to stay, knowing that her father lied to her about her mother dying. Weeks later, the polar bear birth season arrives, and Cassie is left alone in the castle as Bear sets out with souls for the cubs. After a while Cassie grows bored and Bear allows her to visit her home again. Upon returning home, Cassie finally meets her mother Gail (short for Abigail), who is traumatized after all those years with the trolls. After spending only a few days there, Cassie returns to Bear with information on bear den sites she received from Owen. Also, she takes with her more gear than before, including birth control pills, which she uses on their wedding night. Despite this, Cassie winds up pregnant, realizing that Bear "magicked" her into becoming this (he referred to her use of the pills as a "chemical imbalance.") Feeling betrayed, Cassie waits until evening before turning on her flashlight and seeing his face. She discovers him in his human form, as a man with dark skin and white hair. Bear wakes up and sees what she is doing. He ends up having to be sent to marry the princess of the trolls; it was part of the bargain to release Cassie's mother (Cassie must also not see his face whatsoever). He leaves Cassie alone. Cassie is determined to go out after him, despite her pregnancy.
27359354	/m/0bx_0sn	Jandar of Callisto	Lin Carter		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is told in the first person by the hero, Jonathan Dark, who is represented to be its author. Carter, the actual author, claims to have merely edited the manuscript, which, like subsequent works in the series, supposedly found its way to him from the ruins of the ancient city of Arangkhôr in Cambodia. Dark, a helicopter pilot transporting medical supplies in Southeast Asia, is forced down in the jungles of Cambodia, where he discovers Arangkhôr. There he slides into a well made of a mysteriously slippery substance, which proves to be a device of unknown provenance that teleports him to another world. The world in question is eventually determined to be the Jovian moon of Callisto, which beneath a projected illusion of airless desolation turns out to have a breathable atmosphere, an alien biology, and human inhabitants (presumably descended from victims of the well during the period before Arangkhôr was abandoned). Callisto is known to its inhabitants as Thanator. After nearly falling victim to a Yathib, one of the local predators, Dark is saved by a nomadic tribe of Yathoon, a race of intelligent insectoids. Rescue proves a mixed blessing, as he is also enslaved. While with them he learns Thanator's language, which is shared by Yathoon and human alike, and his captors learn his name, more or less. "Jandar" is the closest they can render "Jon Dark," and he remains Jandar through the rest of the series. Escaping, he encounters one of the latter, a beautiful woman in peril. For Jandar, it's love at first sight; she takes a bit longer to warm to him -- three whole books, actually. She is the princess Darloona, who has been exiled from her native city-state of Shondakar by the conquering Black Legion. His attempts to aid her are not very effective, and they fall into the hands of another tribe of Yathoon. They are delivered from this second captivity by the appearance of an airship commanded by Thuton, prince of the city-state of Zanadar. The Zanadarians are "Sky Pirates" -- raiders who use the aerial technology they alone possess to abstract the possessions of others, in this instance Jandar and Darloona from the Yathoon. Thuton proves well-disposed to his fellow royal, but less so toward Jandar, who jealously goads him into a fight. As the prince is a master of the sword and the earthman has never picked up that particular skill, the outcome is predictable -- and humiliating. The upshot is that Dark is once again a slave, this time in Zanadar. In the Sky Pirates' city he manages to escape again, learns to fence, and raises his fellow slaves in a rebellion against their oppressors. In a bid to rescue Darloona, he takes on Thuton a second time. Fortunately, his comrades, who have taken over one of the Zanadarians' airships, are able to extract both him and the princess before he can be killed. Fleeing the city, they restore Darloona to her people, the Ku Thad, who have been living in the jungles of the Grand Kumala since their exile from Shondakar. The celebration is short-lived, however, as the princess is shortly afterward carried off by a raiding party from the Black Legion.
27360462	/m/0bxzt41	The Life You Can Save	Peter Singer		{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Singer argues that it is obvious that we, as individuals, ought to save a child from drowning unless we are risking something as valuable as the child's life. He then contends that as many as 27,000 children die every day (about 18 per minute) from poverty that could be easily and cheaply helped by existing charities (see also List of preventable causes of death). Singer asks the reader to imagine just how much they could give up, starting with bottled water, before their only possessions would be of a value anywhere near that of a human life. He then asks whether (without giving up everything one owns) the reader would give up that daily bottled water if one found a charity where most of one's donation got to those in need. Singer says that having a right to spend money any way one wants does not change the way one ought to spend it. He also notes that other people may each be indifferent to the life they can save, that doesn't make a difference about whether specific people ought to act. This is the origin of the title of his book: even if other people do nothing to help those in need, individuals should still do as much as they can. Addressing readers directly, therefore, he challenges them what they will do about "the life you can save". To try and uncover why citizens of richer nations do not donate as much as they could, if they give at all, Singer mentions psychological theories including cognitive dissonance, diffusion of responsibility and evolutionary history of our ancestors. For instance, cognitive dissonance theory predicts that humans are rationalizing creatures, making it difficult to change their minds on topics that cause any anxiety unless they are highly motivated to bear it during long contemplation. The author contends that humans are highly capable of establishing a society where giving is the norm (for instance, Bill Gates's "Giving Pledge"). Singer hopes that a culture of giving would allow individuals to fully admit to themselves how selfish certain individuals have become with their money. For example, he contrasts individuals like Paul Farmer (a physician whose sacrifices Singer describes) with billionaire Paul Allen, who spent $200 million to build "The Octopus", a 413 foot personal yacht that requires a crew of sixty. Philosopher Thomas Nagel says that nobody, not even Singer, will act according to Singer's ideal of giving up all possessions that are less valuable than a human life. Nagel says that our unwillingness to do sacrifice may not be entirely an issue of motivation. Nagel says we can make moral objections, although he calls Singer's principle "plausible". Singer asks, "the question does not seem to be 'do you care about others more than yourself' but rather 'do you care about others a little?'" Singer attempts to debunk the idea that all charities are inefficient or corrupt. He endorses GiveWell as a way to identify the best charities. Singer describes some common causes of death and suffering in poor countries along with the costs of their solutions. Barnes and Noble reviewer George Scialabba writes that "Some of the most affecting pages in The Life You Can Save describe the low-tech, low-cost programs that have restored sight to a million people blinded by cataracts and have rescued many thousands of women and children from lives blighted by cleft palates or obstetric fistulas". The author also mentions that $50 nets can protect children from catching malaria from mosquitos during the night. Singer emphasizes that there are many costs involved with putting these solutions into practice. He refers to charity estimates that roughly $1000 can save a human life). The author argues against the idea that the earth's limited resources are an argument against donating; Singer contends that education and development actually lead to lower birth rates and decrease the risks of overpopulation and that affluent nations consume much more food than they need by feeding it to animals and eating the animals. Singer states, "the only looming 'danger' is mass vegetarianism". Singer settles on a standard of at least 1% of net income (although he goes into more detail about how this percentage might increase as one's income increases). He justifies his decision by saying that, although we ought to give much more (as he claims to have proven), it is not practical to demand much more, and trying to do so may turn people off from giving anything at all. Singer emphasizes the importance of being practical when it comes to getting as much money as possible to the poor, even if that means holding people to lower standards as a means of changing their habits. Christian Barry and Gerhard Overland (both from the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics) described the widespread acceptance for the notion that "the lives of all people everywhere are of equal fundamental worth when viewed impartially". They then wonder, during the book review in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, why "the affluent do so little, and demand so little of their governments, while remaining confident that they are morally decent people who generally fulfil their duties to others?". The authors discuss other practical ways to fight poverty. According to the author, there are several steps that one can take to become a part of the solution to world poverty. Singer first recommends visiting the book's website, www.TheLifeYouCanSave.com, for resources, but also to consider taking a pledge to meet his (presumably low) standards of giving. This pledge, Singer argues, increases the odds that you will give. Singer next argues that one should use those provided resources, including www.givewell.net, to effectively decide which organization(s) to donate to. The author then says that one can use their last tax return to determine how much Singer's standard (1% of net income) suggests that you give. Singer next suggests deciding how much to donate, contending that even donating less money than his "standard" is undebatably still a good thing to do. Finally the author says that one should donate. Singer further suggests taking steps to foster a culture of giving. He recommends using all available social networks to let others know that they, like you, can be a small part of the solution. This is to be done carefully, staying positive and completely avoiding the emotion of guilt (since cognitive dissonance is already quite high in discussions of charity). He also argues that one should suggest, to their employing institution, that they set up pay scheme in which employees can explicitly opt-out of giving 1% of their pre-tax income to charity. Writing a letter to one's local representative (to let them know you want your country's foreign aid directed to the world's poorest people only) is recommended by Singer. Singer maintains that the last, important step of donating is to feel good about making a difference. He argues that too much guilt may result in inaction, dooming the poor.
27360780	/m/0bx_0s_	Gears of War: Anvil Gate	Karen Traviss	2010-08-31	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Gears of War: Anvil Gate follows two storylines: one begins shortly after the events of Jacinto's Remnant, and the other flashes back to 32 years earlier, seventeen years before E-Day. The book opens on Vectes with Bernie setting out to hunt Stranded with the aid of a dog named Mac. At the same time, Chairman Prescott welcomes the Gorasini refugees to Vectes, although many Pendulum War veterans living in the native population are not very welcoming. Hoffman receives word that the Gorasini frigate, which Captain Michaelson had been looking forward to adding to the COG Navy, has apparently run aground in the middle of the ocean with all hands lost. At this point the tensions between the Gorasini and COG are made clear: Delta Squad aboard a King Raven is told to leave the search for the frigate to the Gorasini alone. Bernie and Anya patrol in a Packhorse and move to ambush a group of Stranded, but their vehicle hits a trap and is disabled. Bernie, joined by Marcus and Baird, continues the hunt on foot. Mac leads them to a cave, which they enter and explore; they soon find a large Stranded cache of explosives. The Gears exit the cave after marking the explosives for engineers and eventually find the Stranded with orders to take them alive for Gorasoni Commander Trescu to interrogate. Mac badly mauls one, a second is hit by fellow Gear Sam Bryne's motorbike, and the third- the first one's son- is captured by Dom and Cole. Dom, Baird and Sam are called aboard the patrol boat Amirale Enka. While they escort the COG fishing fleet, one of the trawlers, the Levanto, suddenly explodes, suggesting that either there is something under the sea, or that the Stranded are much more powerful than the COG had thought. Trescu begins his interrogation of the Stranded prisoners, shooting one and then threatening the father to make the boy cooperate. Aided by the son, the COG forces begin a sweep of the island. This is one of the factors which causes a near riot between the Gorasini, the Stranded population, and the Old Jacinto citizens, which is only averted by one of Dizzy's only angry outbursts against the Jacinto citizens for identifying him- and treating him accordingly- as Stranded. Delta Squad goes out on another fishing expedition, but one of the trawlers catches a Lambent creature which mutates at a very rapid pace. It explodes, taking down the trawler; the COG finally has an explanation for all the recently lost vessels. Another unidentified small ship, the Steady Eddie, begins drifting towards Vectes later that night; investigating forces find a kind of "tree" on board. Baird discovers that the "tree" is incredibly resilient to damage. With this new knowledge, the COG goes out to search for the missing Gorasini frigate again with the submarine Clement, but at the area, there is no sign of any underwater obstacle that the frigate could have grounded on. Just as they actually find the wreckage, though, the sea around them fills with Lambent creatures. Clement surfaces, but a pair of Lambent stalks appear close by and start spewing polyps onto the Clement's hull. Baird fights them off from on top of the Clement before being extracted by a King Raven with the rest of Delta, minus Cole, aboard; the Clement submerges again. The COG realized that the stalks appear to be headed for Emerald Spar, the Gorasoni oil platform. The COG quickly reinforces the platform's badly undersized crew, many of which have brought their families with them. The humans prepare to defend the platform's exterior against the Lambent, but instead a stalk burrows through the bottom of the platform, bypassing the defenses. A large firefight quickly begins throughout the platform as the humans struggle to repel the polyps, but the combined weapons fire and explosions of the polyps eventually sets off a fire in the platform. With more Lambent still coming, the humans are forced to evacuate the platform, leaving them bereft of an imulsion supply. As they leave, the platform explodes due to the fire and stored fuel. Hoffman and Trescu convince Chairman Prescott of the need to fortify Vectes against the inevitable Lambent incursion. A Stranded armada of small craft is spotted en route, ostensibly to evacuate their friends and families from the doomed island; however, they end up joining the COG, not for any moral purpose, but simply because banding together is the only way for humans to survive at all. Before the Lambent attack begins, the COG submarines near New Jacinto detect a large contact underwater; from the tentacles and the size, they conclude that it is a Leviathan. At Pelruan, Bernie, Sam and Anya find a Leviathan moving inshore; instead of fighting stalks, the Leviathan- now clearly Lambent- drops off hundreds of polyps. A King Raven moves in to assist the local Gears and civilians fighting them off, but the Leviathan uses a tentacle to fling polyps at it, taking it down. The distance between the two incidents forces the COG to conclude that there are multiple Leviathans operating; a total of three. As the Gears, Gorasini and Stranded struggle to repel their disgorged polyps, the COG searches for a way to destroy the Leviathans themselves. A King Raven crew manages to kill one by expending all of its ammunition into its head. The remaining two are lured into respective traps; the first is killed by the COG submarines with torpedoes, while the second is lured to the surface where Baird manages to kill it with the Hammer of Dawn. However, Baird is forced to fire the Hammer very close to shore badly damaging the base. The Stranded also decide to abandon Vectes and leave the COG to be destroyed by the Lambent, ending the Stranded Insurgency. Hoffman has convinced Prescott that, for his own safety, Prescott must leave New Jacinto and move further inland. After Prescott leaves, Hoffman's distrust of the Chairman forces him to raid his office, discovering data disks which do not match any known COG encryption. Not knowing how to access the disks, he gives them to Baird to uncover. Baird tells him that, not only does it match no current COG encryption codes, but it does not match any codes at all, suggesting that the Chairman had had technology built for himself. Baird promises to access the disks someday. Bernie discovers that her dog, Mac, has disappeared once the Lambent invasion started. Delta finds him ten days later during a routine patrol aboard a King Raven. Mac bears numerous recent burns, indicating that the polyps are still on Vectes; the King Raven soon discovers a large grouping of stalks in the middle of the island. As the Raven crew calls Control for backup, they fly closer to the stalks. Baird closes the novel by wondering what the blisters on the stalks are for, and deciding that he was about to find out "the hard way." The newlywed Lieutenant Victor Hoffman is posted to the COG garrison of Anvil Gate, a fort protecting a mountain pass leading from the neutral country Vasgar into the especially imulsion-rich COG province of Kashkur. At the same time, Captain Adam Fenix bids farewell to his wife and four-year old Marcus as he leaves for the Kashkur front. Vasgar's president faces a vote of no-confidence and is forced to step down; UIR troops, ostensibly to maintain order in Vasgar, invade the country, providing them with a backdoor to Kashkur. Bai Tak, a Pesanga herder, is severely affected by a drought and is forced to join the COG army in order to ensure a steady money supply for his wife, Harua. After weeks of inactivity, the COG CO at Anvil Gate is killed by a UIR RPG; at the same time, Anvil Gate's land connection to the rest of the COG is severed by UIR saboteurs who collapse the cliffs around the pass. The COG and UIR artillery trade a few shells; the small engagement turns into a minor COG victory as the Indie shells are incapable of damaging Anvil Gate's fortifications. Anvil Gate's water supply is also sabotaged by the UIR. Hoffman, now in charge, calls for Pesang reinforcements and gets Bai Tak's squad, which immediately begins clearing the local hilly country of UIR mortars and snipers. Fenix and his subordinate, Lieutenant Helena Stroud, are forced to fight an urban battle for Shavad. They are plagued by the efforts of UIR snipers and saboteurs in their rear. In particular, an art museum seems to have either an artillery observer or sniper in it; Fenix reluctantly calls in artillery to demolish the building. He is horrified by the act of destruction against the artworks inside, as well as all the deaths of his men. Lieutenant Stroud clears the museum of the sniper before the COG is forced to withdraw after losing a key bridge to the UIR. Fenix vows to never allow wanton destruction like this happen again by preventing wars in the first place, accepting a previous offer in weapons research. With supplies becoming increasingly scarce, barely supplemented by Pesang hunters, Hoffman is forced to ration Anvil Gate's water and food among the local citizens. One of them is caught with a secret hoard of stolen COG rations and Hoffman is forced to execute him. With disease also becoming an issue, and with resupply from the air choked off due to UIR anti-aircraft fire, Hoffman comes up with a desperate plan. He feigns surrender, accepting the UIR's offer to allow the citizens to leave provided that the Gears evacuate along with them. Hoffman allows a few hundred UIR infantrymen into Anvegad before his men trap and incinerate them. With the UIR besiegers seriously weakened, the COG manages at last to reopen the air route to Anvil Gate, lifting the siege. In the aftermath, Fenix accepts the offer and is promoted to Major, while Stroud and Hoffman are both promoted to Captain. Hoffman also receives the Sovereign's Medal for his defense of Anvil Gate.
27361318	/m/0cc5x2m	The Castle in the Attic	Elizabeth Winthrop	1985-08		 William is given a realistic model of a castle by the housekeeper, Mrs. Philips, who tells him that it has been in her family for many many years and that its silver knight is said to be under a spell. The silver knight, Sir Simon, comes to life and tells William stories about olden times and an evil wizard who is ruling his kingdom. Desperate to stop Mrs. Philips from going away, William has Sir Simon shrink her with a magic token he stole from the wizard, Alastor. However, William and Sir Simon lack the ability to return Mrs. Philips to her true size as the half of the token that can do so is with Alastor, and Mrs. Philips falls into a depression. Learning of a legend that states that when there is a lady, a knight, and a squire, a quest can be undertaken to stop Alastor, William decides to become a squire to undo his mistake. As he will be shrunk willingly, he will return to his world at the exact moment he left, but Mrs. Philips will lose all the time she spent in the castle until William enters. William has Sir Simon shrink him and he enters the castle to join his two friends. Mrs. Philips and Sir Simon spend a week training him before Sir Simon and William leave, exiting the castle in Sir Simon's time. While traveling through a magical forest, Sir Simon is tempted by the apparition of his old horse Moonlight, leaves the path and disappears, after having warned William that doing just that will cause one to get lost forever. William manages to make it through the forest on his own and encounters an old man at an apple tree. After getting a specific apple for him, the old man reverts into a young man and reveals he was under a spell. In gratitude for William's actions, the man, Dick, reveals how to defeat the dragon guarding Alastor's castle. William defeats the dragon and uses the pretext of a fool seeking work to enter the castle, with the guards hiding the secret that he defeated the dragon to enter. Alastor accepts him as his fool and reveals to William's horror that he has defeated Sir Simon again and turned him to lead, keeping him in a gallery with his other victims. However, he also turned to lead Dick's son, a young boy named Tolliver William, and thus believes he has defeated the threat from the legend, not knowing it's really William. William learns from Sir Simon's old nurse, Calendar, that he needs to get Alastor's necklace with his tokens on it and defeat his mirror that reflects what's inside of you. When Alastor shows up, William knocks him down, gets the necklace, and faces his own fears in the mirror. He then turns it on Alastor, who cowers from it. Calendar uses the lead token to turn Alastor into lead and send him away, defeating him and breaking all of his spells but the last. William is hailed as a hero and the new ruler of the kingdom, but he instead revives Sir Simon and the rest of the lead victims so Sir Simon can regain his rightful place as ruler. William returns to the castle in the attic with the other half of the token and he and Mrs. Philips return to their right sizes. She leaves, taking with her the token and Alastor who was sent to the castle, planning to drop both into the ocean.
27364078	/m/0by1qhs	The Immortals of Meluha	Amish Tripathi		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Meluha is a near perfect empire, created many centuries earlier by Lord Ram, one of the greatest monarchs that ever lived. However, the once proud empire and its Suryavanshi rulers face severe perils as its primary river, the revered Saraswati, is slowly drying to extinction. They also face devastating terrorist attacks from the east, the land of the Chandravanshis who have joined forces with the Nagas, a cursed race with physical deformities. The present king of Meluha, Daksha, sends his emissaries to North India in Tibet, to invite the tribes that live there to Meluha. One of those invited are the Gunas, whose chief Shiva is a brave warrior and protector. Shiva accepts the proposal and moves to Meluha with his tribe. They reach the city of Srinagar and are received there by Ayurvati, the Chief of Medicine of the Meluhans. Shiva and his tribe are impressed with the Meluhan way of life. On their first night of stay at Srinagar, the Gunas wake up amid high fever and sweating. The Meluhans, under Ayurvati's orders, carry on the healing process. However, Ayurvati finds out that Shiva is the only one devoid of these symptoms and that his throat has turned blue. The Meluhans announce Shiva as the Neelkanth, their fabled saviour. Shiva is then taken to Devagiri, the capital city of Meluha, where he meets King Daksha. While staying there, Shiva and his comrades, Nandi and Veer Bhadra, encounter a mysterious woman, who though very beautiful, has a look of penance on her face. They later come to know that she is Princess Sati, the daughter of Daksha and is a Vikarma, an untouchable in this life due to sins of her past births. Shiva tries to court her, but she rejects his advances. Ultimately Shiva wins her heart and they decide to get married, even though the Vikarma rule prohibits them from doing so. Enraged by the so-called obsolete law, Shiva declares himself as the Neelkanth and swears to dissolve the Vikarma law. Daksha allows Sati to get married to Shiva, amid much joy and happiness. During his stay in Devagiri, Shiva comes to know of the treacherous wars that the Chandravanshis are carrying on the Meluhans. He also meets Bŗahaspati, the Chief Inventor of the Meluhans. Brahaspati invites Shiva and the royal family on an expedition to Mount Mandar, where the legendary Somras is manufactured using the waters of the Saraswati river. Shiva learns that the potion which made his throat turn blue was actually undiluted Somras, which can be lethal when taken in its pure form. However, Shiva was unaffected, which was the first sign that he was the Neelkanth. He also learns that Somras was the reason why the Meluhans lived for so many years. Brahaspati and Shiva develop a close friendship and the royal family returns to Devagiri. One morning, the whole of Meluha wakes up to loud noises coming from Mount Mandar. Shiva and his troops reach the hill to find out that a large part of Mandar has been blasted off and many of the inventors killed. There is no sign of Brahaspati, but Shiva finds the insignia of the Nagas, confirming their involvement in the treacherous wars of the Chandravanshis. Enraged by this, Shiva declares war on the Chandravanshis. With consultation from the Devagiri Chief Minister Kanakhla and the Head of Meluhan Army, Parvateshwar, Shiva advances towards Dharmakhet, the border area of Swadweep, the land of the Chandravanshis. A fierce battle is fought between the Meluhans and the Swadweepans in which the Meluhans prevail. The Chandravanshi king is captured and brought in front of Daksha. He becomes enraged upon seeing the Neelkanth and is taken away. The Chandravanshi princess, Anandmayi, tells them that they too have a similar legend that the Neelkanth will come forward to save their land by launching an assault against the 'evil' Suryavanshis. Hearing this, Shiva is dumbfounded and utterly distressed. With Sati he visits the famous Ram temple of Ayodhya, the capital of Swadweep. There he meets the priest from whom he comes to know about the karma, his fate, and his choices in life, which will guide him. As Shiva comes out of the temple, he notices Sati standing out of the temple waiting for him and the naga(who attacked them in Meru) standing near a tree. The book ends with Shiva charging to save Sati.
27366623	/m/0by1dp8	The White Hart	Nancy Springer	1979-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It comes to pass that the stranger reveals himself to be Bevan of Eubaricon, the son of an ancient High King of Isle and Celwony, the goddess of the moon. His appearance offers both hope and threat to Cuin and Ellid, and the mortals they represent. The lands would benefit from a High King who would keep the regional lordlings from warring with each other, but at the same time, Bevan’s presence stirs Pel, an ancient evil who begins preying upon the mortals to raise an army of undead using the Coradel Orre. Ellid falls in love with Bevan and turns away from her engagement to Cuin. Cuin, in turn, finds himself apprenticed to Bevan after Bevan saves him from the Priests of Pel. Bevan decides it is his destiny to return the Coradel Orre to the Gods, so they can refresh their immortality and goes in search of it. On their quest, Cuin discovers he is heir to an ancient kingdom older than Pryce Dacaerin’s holdings. To complete their quest, Cuin must first win a magical sword from those who guard the kingdom, and then Bevan, Cuin, and Dacaerin work together to gather the lords of Isle together to wage war on Pel and his undead army. Bevan and Cuin together win a great victory, but lose the Coradel Orre, marking the end of immortal gods in the world of men. Bevan is crowned High King and marries Ellid. Cuin is absent from the ceremony on a diplomatic journey, but his escort betrays and nearly kills him. Bevan rides to his rescue before the marriage is complete, and in the process triggers a prophecy which makes him unwilling to continue to dwell in the world of men any longer. Ellid and Cuin accompany Bevan as he makes his preparations to leave Isle and they discover they have loved each other all along. Bevan entrusts Ellid to Cuin as he leaves, and hopes for them that in time they will wed. He tells them that he will never return to Isle, but prophecies about future kings and protectors of the land.
27371742	/m/0bxz4mc	Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years	Fred Singer	2006-10-28		 Over sixteen chapters the authors present their view of the natural cycles in the earth's climate and argue that the current warming period is not caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The book begins with the earth's climate time-line, starting from the formation of the earth 4.5 billion years ago, and leading up to the Modern Warm Period. The book ends with a chapter entitled "The ultimate failure of The Kyoto Protocol", which predicts that the Protocol will be unsuccessful in curtailing emissions. It covers the localised plummeting emissions associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and what the book says is Russia's excess amount of Carbon Credits which, the book argues, will be purchased by European nations to offset their rising emissions.
27372709	/m/0bxzc05	Kingdom Keepers III: Disney in Shadow	Ridley Pearson	2010-04-06		 In Kingdom Keepers III: Disney In Shadow, the Overtakers’ leaders Maleficent and Chernabog have captured the D.H.I.s’ advisor, Wayne. The teens have reason to believe that the Overtakers have headed to Epcot, so they re-program themselves to automatically cross-over into Epcot instead of the Magic Kingdom when they go to sleep. There, they find that they aren’t the only ones who have free rein in the park—it’s being constantly patrolled by worker bee Overtakers such as the snake from Honey, I Shrunk the Audience and the car dummies from Test Track, throwing a wrench into the D.H.I.s’ already-complicated mission. To add another layer of complexity to the situation, the subtitle Disney In Shadow refers to areas where the D.H.I. teens aren’t programmed to be visible, which sometimes gives them an edge over the Overtakers but occasionally works to their disadvantage.
27374233	/m/0c0223j	Carrie Pilby				 Carrie Pilby's eponymous main character is a 19-year-old genius who graduated from Harvard College early and has no idea how to fit in, date, or talk to other people after college. She believes the majority of people in her hometown, New York City, to be sex-obsessed, immoral, and hypocrites. She felt the same way about students who did dangerous things in college, like drinking to excess and having sex, and as a result felt very isolated, although she confesses that she reluctantly lost her virginity to a professor there. Her therapist in New York gives her a five-point plan to test her very black-and-white beliefs, including going on dates and attending parties. She meets a cast of characters who challenge her beliefs, and she even becomes attracted to a man who espouses views she despises. Ultimately, the main character faces the universal coming-of-age decisions about which tradeoffs, if any, are acceptable to make in order to fit into society.
27377438	/m/0c02qpd	The Doctor In War	Woods Hutchinson			 Hutchinson emphasizes the importance that doctors played in the war. One of the major things they have contributed is the decrease in deaths due to disease. In the American Civil War the ratio was five deaths to disease for every one in battle, however during 'The Great War' the ratio was changed to ten deaths in battle for every one to disease. Hutchinson believes that three major points contribute to this protection against infectious disease: inoculations and sanitary measures; surgical skill and hospital organization increasing recovery rate; and the better food provided to soldiers.
27378413	/m/0bxznbs	Finch	Jeff VanderMeer	2009-11	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 At the time of Finch, Ambergris is ruled by the gray caps, a non-human, "spore-based" species. Their "Rising" followed a destructive civil war between rival human factions. The title character, reluctant detective John Finch, is tasked with investigating a double-murder, one victim a human and the second a gray cap.
27378946	/m/0bxzykf	The Incredible Origins of the Onyx Sun	Christopher Mahoney	2009		 The book follows the adventures of 11-year-old Zack Goodspeed, a "normal kid" who slowly unlocks a series of secret inventions created by his not-so-normal grandfather, Fyodor. Professor Fyodor Confucius Goodspeed has invented a source of unlimited power, called the Onyx Sun, hidden in the fairly innocuous shape of a , by 5-foot-wide, by 5-foot-long black cube. No sooner does Zack discover the Onyx Sun, than his grandfather disappears into the woods behind his house. Enlisting the aid of his next door neighbor, a rebellious orphan named Angelina "Max" Maximillian, Zack plunges into the woods in search of the Professor. Soon, the two discover a secret passage into an underground cavern where the Onyx Sun is being fitted into a massive spaceship called the Onyx Pioneer. They also quickly learn that the ship is bound for the Moon with intentions of colonizing humanity's first permanent settlement. Zack and Max stowaway on the ship just before it takes off. Hiding out in the ships labyrinthine air ducts, the two overhear an officer of the crew, named Dr. Ian Machvel, planning to steal the Onyx Sun. Zack and Max make Professor Goodspeed aware of their presence, but too late. Machvel and his insurgents attack the Power Tower, the Onyx Sun's lair, and succeed in stealing it. The entire crew is thrown into jeopardy as all life support systems rely on the Onyx Sun. They have no choice but to begin colonization efforts in the mad hope they can finish their self-sustaining base before either life support runs out, or Machvel returns to wipe out the few remaining survivors. Zack and Max meanwhile, fall in league Sanjay Soon, the intellectually gifted 10-year-old son of the officer who takes over Machvel's vacated post on the Engineering Team. Sanjay introduces Zack and Max to the many inventions Professor Goodspeed has concocted to aid in the colonization of the Moon. Onyx Airstriders are four-seat jets, almost like miniature versions of the Onyx Pioneer. Dozers whip around the lunar surface prepping the Aitken Crater where they have landed for the building of their permanent base. Most impressive of all are Mech Leviathans, towering behemoth robots, each powered by a miniature version of the Onyx Sun. These lumbering giants serve as the main construction bots of the base. Zack shows an early aptitude for piloting Mechs in the Mech simulator, and gets his chance to drive a real one when the trio stumble upon Machvel spies attempting to sabotage the early base construction. Professor Goodspeed is thankful Zack and his friends have saved them once again but is also irate they took such risks to do so. He confines them to the Academy, the educational institution for the ships children where Zack is introduced to Memo Files, bursts of cerebrally uploaded content that teach Zack a year's worth of a subject in seconds. Soon however, Zack, Max, and Sanjay discover a new plot by Machvel spies to destroy the Onyx Pioneer. Foiling these usurpers with whatever means they can, the trio is soon caught off guard and Zack is captured. He wakes an hour later in a dark pyramid on the other side of the Moon. Dr. Machvel appears and reveals his ultimate plan: a specially built rocket emerges from a silo in the Moon's surface. Embedded in the rocket is the pilfered Onyx Sun. Machvel explains how he has harnessed the unlimited power of the black cube to create a weapon that will wipe out all human life on Earth, while leaving most of the infrastructure intact so he and his minions may repopulate the species with their own kind. Zack struggles to free himself, but in vain. Just as Machvel launches the rocket however a Mech thunders overhead in chase. It is Angelina with Commander Chase, the primary executive officer under Professor Goodspeed. They race toward the rocket and reach it just in time. They split it in two, destroying the rocket and freeing the Onyx Sun. Their race past the pyramid has cracked the glass and Machvel and his forces abandon the base. A group of Airstryders shoot into the silo vacated by the rocket and soon a small force from the Onyx Pioneer, led by Professor Goodspeed, find and save Zack. Some time later, the crew is assembled in Professor Goodspeed's quarters to inaugurate the opening of their permanent colony, the Citadel Spire. Max reveals that, as an orphan, she doesn't have anything to go home for. She elects to stay under the watchful tutelage of Commander Chase. Zack, however must return home. He loads into the Onyx Pioneer with his grandfather and the two travel home. The Professor drops him in a baseball field by his house, where some bullies who usually bother Zack witness the Onyx Pioneer and run away screaming. Zack returns to his house. His parents are thankful he is home, but refuse to believe his story when he tells them truthfully where he has been. They send him to his room. Later, his mother comes up and concludes that although she doesn't believe his tall tale, that she would rather see him grow up a wild dreamer than to grow up without an imagination. Zack wishes her goodnight, climbs under his covers, and falls asleep watching the silvery silhouette of the Moon rising on the horizon.
27379337	/m/0bx_t1k	The Sensitive Man	Poul Anderson	1953-11		 Michael Tighe of the Psychotechnic Institute has been kidnapped by Thomas Bancroft, a politician with ties to an authoritarian movement called the Actionists. Tighe's adopted son, Simon Delgatty, sets out to find him, but is himself captured by Bancroft and taken to his base on an island off the coast of Mexico. In the course of raising Delgatty, Tighe has trained him to exert conscious control over what are normally subconscious and autonomic brain functions. This allows Delgatty to speed up or slow down his metabolism at will, and also allows him to tell what other people are thinking by listening to them subvocalize their thoughts. Delgatty escapes from Bancroft's control, and forms an uneasy partnership with Elena Casimir, an undercover FBI agent who has infiltrated Bancroft's organization. Together, Delgatty and Casimir free Tighe and take Bancroft prisoner, then return to the United States. Bancroft will be imprisoned for kidnapping, but the leader of the Actionists, Bertrand Meade, is still free to continue his secret war against the Psychotechnic Institute.
27381057	/m/0by13z5	Fasting, Feasting	Anita Desai	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Uma is a spinster who lives with her overbearing parents. They confine her at home, smothering her aspirations of independence. Her sister Aruna, by contrast, brings off a good marriage, whereas her younger brother Arun is sent to study in the USA.
27383159	/m/0cm90nz	Why We Disagree About Climate Change		2009-04-30		 Why We Disagree About Climate Change is an exploration on how the idea of climate change has taken such a dominant position in modern politics and why it is so contested. In the book, the author looks at the differing views from various disciplines, including natural science, economics, ethics, social psychology and politics, to try to explain why people disagree about climate change. Rather than being a problem to be solved, the book argues that climate change is an idea which reveals different individual and collective beliefs, values and attitudes about ways of living in the world.
27387713	/m/0by1h96	The Twelve Kingdoms: The Vast Spread of the Seas	Fuyumi Ono	1994-06	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 When only an eggfruit, the kirin of the En Kingdom, Rokuta, was transported to Japan for his own protection. But he was abandoned soon after birth by his surrogate parents, left to fend for himself in the mountains. It just so happened that at the same time, a young boy in the En Kingdom named Koya was also abandoned by his own parents, after which he was raised by demon beasts. Their similar circumstances aren't the only thing to bind these two boys, though. Twenty years after their abandonment, their destinies intersect, with potentially disastrous consequences for the En Kingdom.
27388123	/m/0bx_t43	The Rogue	Trudi Canavan	2011	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Rogue continues from the events of the Ambassadors Mission. The Ambassadors Mission ended with Lorkin being confined to the Sanctuary (The Traitors' mountainous hidden city), and been given the job of assisting healing the inhabitants as the Sachakan magic users don't know healing magic, though Lorkin is doing this willingly. Ambassador to Sachaka Dannyl is no longer looking for Lorkin and has resumed his duties as Ambassador while awaiting for a new assistant. Sonea has exposed a rogue magician from Igra, with help from Cery and Regin. Though through reading the rogue's mind they have discovered that the Thief Skellin is also a magic user though he is unaware of Black Magic, this Thief is also responsible for the murders that have been plaguing the Thieves and the man directly responsible for importing and selling the drug Roet that is an attempt to gain a measure of control of citizens of Imardin from all the classes, low, high and magician. Living among the Sachakan rebels, Lorkin does his best to learn about them and their unique magic. But the Traitors are reluctant to trade their knowledge for the Healing they so desperately want, and while he assumes they fear revealing their existence to the world, there are hints they have bigger plans. Sonea searches for the rogue, knowing that Cery cannot avoid assassination forever, but the rogue's influence over the city's underworld is far greater than she feared. His only weakness is the loss of his mother, now locked away in the Lookout. In Sachaka, Dannyl has lost the respect of the Sachakan elite for letting Lorkin join the Traitors. The Ashaki's attention has shifted, instead, to the new Elyne Ambassador, a man Dannyl knows all too well. And in the University, two female novices are about to remind the Guild that sometimes their greatest enemy is found within.
27396913	/m/0c01yb_	Ghost Story	Jim Butcher	2011-07-26	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Following the end of Changes, Harry finds himself on a set of train tracks, where he is saved by Carmichael. Taken to a police station, Harry encounters Captain Murphy, Karrin’s father, who tells him he must return to Earth and solve his murder, else those he loves will come to harm, or he can stay and work in Murphy’s department. Electing to return, Harry travels to Mortimer Lindquist's house, which is under siege by wraiths, spirits who have given into despair and rage, led by a powerful spirit, who is aided by Evil Bob, the remnant of Bob that Harry ordered him to excise that contained Kemmler’s knowledge and teachings. Led by Sir Stuart, the mass of spirits that protect Mort’s home drive the attackers away. Reluctantly, Mort agrees to help Harry, and travels to Murphy’s home. After being put through a battery of tests, Molly, now a powerful illusionist and extremely disturbed, arrives and finally confirms Harry’s identity, breaking down in tears. Murphy explains that after Harry destroyed the entire Red Court, the power vacuum it left allowed a group called the Fomor to rise to power. Murphy’s house is then attacked, and Mort flees home. Harry follows the attackers and finds they’re a group of teenagers who live in fear and under the protection of a practitioner named Aristedes, who protects them from the creatures in Chicago that have flocked to the city in Harry’s absence. Harry contacts one of them who’s sensitive to spirits, a youth named Fitz, and convinces him to meet Harry later. Harry returns to Mort to find his home destroyed and Mort abducted. Stuart passes on the last of his memories to Dresden to use as a weapon and becomes a mindless specter like the other spirits guarding Mort’s home. At his grave, Harry exchanges the story of his duel with Justin DuMorne and He Who Walks Behind with his godmother, the Leanansidhe, in exchange for the answer to 3 questions, learning he was murdered by a male he is acquainted with. Harry tracks down Molly and finds that she operates under the pseudonym the Ragged Lady and is now under the tutelage of the Leanansidhe, who uses brutal training methods to teach. Molly is now an adept spellcaster and Harry watches as she drives off a group of Fomor, although he intervenes to aid his former apprentice. Enlisting Molly’s aid, Harry tracks down Mortimer, and finds him trapped by the Corpsetaker, who is torturing Mort with Evil Bob’s help to take his body. During this, Father Forthill, who elected to help the teenagers in Aristedes' thrall, goes to reason with the practitioner and is captured. Daniel Carpenter and Butters try to rescue him and nearly succeed but are overpowered. Harry convinces the sensitive Fitz to confront Aristedes, and wrests control of the group from him, calling for aid for Forthill and Butters. Harry enlists the Alphas, Karrin, Butters, and Molly to assault Corpsetakers hideout, along with the army of spirits from Mort’s home. Harry storms the hideout through the Nevernever, confronting Evil Bob, who overpowers Harry and nearly destroys him before being caught and held by Bob. Harry breaks into the hideout and confronts Corpsetaker, driving her away. However, while pursuing her he discovers Corpsetaker had taken Mort in order to have him summon the homicidal spirits from his home to her hideout. Seeing the army of spirits Harry summoned, Mort is dismayed. The Corpsetaker consumes the spirits, greatly increasing her power. With Harry's friends in a sleep spell, the Corpsetaker entered Butters which leads to Molly assaulting the spirit and casting her own spell which lets the Corpsetaker enter her, Dresden acts quickly grabbing the Corpsetakers ankle and enters Molly as well, leaving Butters's physical body lying on the ground and his Shade standing in disbelief and utter shock. Inside Molly’s mind, Molly uses a memory to aid in her defense after being gradually overpowered, spawning a memory from when Harry had a broken back lying in the Church, she confronts Harry with her feelings for him, as she will get to watch her entire family die of old age, and Harry is the only one whom she can feasibly love. The memory assaults Harry. During Changes, realizing he must become the Winter Knight to save his daughter, and that Mab would then turn him into a monster, Harry contacted Kincaid and asked him to kill Dresden after the assault in South America, and then had Molly remove the memory. Realizing he ordered his own murder, Uriel appears, congratulating Dresden, explaining that, in a moment of despair, a fallen angel whispering seven words "and it was all your fault, Harry" into Dresden's ear. His direct influence allowed Uriel to take active action as well, allowing Harry to return, although he is shocked to learn Captain Murphy lied to Dresden about his loved ones coming to harm. Uriel offers Dresden a choice to work for him or move on to What Comes Next. Dresden asks to see how his loved ones fare, to make an informed choice. Mort, taking control of the wraith swarm in Corpsetaker’s lair in her absence, comes upon Molly, who holds Corpsetaker in place, and the tortured souls Corpsetaker once held in thrall devour her spirit ending the battle. Mort not being able to find Harry standing around the aftermath finds Murphy who is crushed by confirmation of his death, but Mort surprises Harry by being genuinely comforting and wishing he had been bright enough to have known this side of Mort while he was alive, giving Murphy one last look, turns and walks to Uriel and asks to see his brother. Thomas, who Harry had not thought of since becoming a Spirit realizes how he couldn't have thought of Thomas without remembering the truth and shame of his own murder. Destroyed and bitter over Harry’s death, is elated when he realizes Justine has devised a method by which she and Thomas can be intimate once more. Before asking Uriel to show his next loved one, Uriel understands and takes Harry to see his daughter Maggie, who has been adopted by the Carpenters, who love her dearly, with the protection of Mouse, whom Harry embraces one last time. Happy that Michael is under the protection of a squad of angels, realizes those he loves are safe as they can be, Harry elects to move on. He then awakens on Demonreach, under the care of Queen Mab, who saved Harry the moment he fell into the darkness of the lake, her own domain, and the island, which kept him alive. Distrusting of Harry, Mab informs Harry that she knew he would have tried to create a plan to end the contract of becoming the Winter Knight, and that it had backfired; she is simultaneously angry and approving about this, saying that his defiance and ingenuity are the traits she sought him out for. Annoyed at Uriel's influence, tells Harry to prepare himself for her to turn him into her creature, and Uriel uses his opportunity to balance out the actions of the fallen angel who corrupted his free will by whispering seven words to Harry "Lies, Mab cannot change who you are". Harry tells Mab he won’t be her creature, enraging her, but tells her he will be her devoted Knight, the greatest she has ever had, but that he shall do it his way, else Mab can turn him into another mindless, and worthless, thug. Mab, still enraged but also ecstatic, tells Harry to prepare himself, and pulls them into the Winter Court.
27404794	/m/0c02_f9	The Interpreter	Suki Kim	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Suzy Park is a young, attractive, and achingly alone Korean American woman who works as a court interpreter for the New York City court system. She has had two rocky relationships with married men, worked a series of unsatisfying jobs, and cut ties with her family before her parents were shot dead in an unsolved double murder. The life she has chosen as an interpreter is a reflection of Suzy's searching for her own identity and trying to bridge the two cultures to both of which she feels a detachment. During one court case she discovers that her parents were not murdered by random violence, as the police had indicated, but instead had been shot by political enemies. The discovery provides the glint of a new lead for Park, and the novel tracks her investigation into what really happened, which ultimately reveals the mystery of her parents' homicide.
27408552	/m/0c00ghv	City Primeval	Elmore Leonard	1980		 The original novel takes place in Detroit and tells the story of a seriously crazed 'Oklahoma Wildman' Clement Mansell who knows how easy it is to get away with murder - thanks to some nifty courtroom moves by his beautiful, tough-as-nails lawyer Carolyn Wilder. But now the killer's senseless execution of a crooked Motown judge has inflamed the ire of homicide Detective Raymond Cruz. A good cop who believes in old-fashioned justice. While Mansell tries to extort money from the 'Albanian' Skender Lulgjaraj, Cruz isn't about to let Mansell slip through the legal system's gaping holes a second time. Even if that means maneuvering the psycho into a wild Midwest showdown that only one of them is going to be walking away from...
27409707	/m/0b_znd2	The Merman's Children	Poul Anderson		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Set at the end of the medieval era, The Merman's Children details the end of the last bastion of the kingdom of the Merfolk, one of the Faery peoples being displaced by the advancing tide of Christianity. The city of the Liri king (the Merman of the title) lies beneath the waves off the shores of Denmark, peacefully coexisting with the landbound humans until exorcised by a zealous priest and his churchbells. The majority of the Merfolk are destroyed or scatter, unable to withstand the onslaught, leaving only the king's halfling offspring by a human lover. The story follows them and their various fates as they seek a place to call their own, in locales as varied as the dying Norse colonies in Greenland and the coastlands of Dalmatia.
27412627	/m/0c034hp	Beer in the Snooker Club	Waguih Ghali	1964	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Behind the bar at Jameel's in Cairo hang two mugs engraved with the names of Ram and Font. During their years together in London, they drank many a pint of Bass from these mugs. But there is no Bass in Nasser's Egypt – so Ram and Font have to make do with a heady mixture of beer, vodka and whisky. Yearning for Bass, they long to be far from a revolution that neither serves the people nor allows their rich aunts to live the life of leisure they are accustomed to. Stranded between two cultures, Ram and Font must choose between dangerous political opposition and reluctant acquiescence.
27413081	/m/0c00lj2	So This Is How It Ends	Tui T. Sutherland		{"/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book begins introducing a man named Bill Nichols. He is currently investigating a mysterious house fire whom a little girl by the name of Kali survived. Out of the havoc that was reaped, it seems highly suspicious that out of all of the destruction a little girl survived. He believes it as luck and dismisses any suspician, leaving the fate of Kali unknown. Then down in Chile a boy by the birth name of Catequil and the nickname of Tigre. sits in class. The clouds roll in as he sits there bored. The clouds take control and the boy jumps from class to run outside and enjoy the storm. He loses consciousness and faints. Meanwhile an egyption tomb is broken into by someone who is obviously a child- and stolen from there an ancient artifact said to be god like. Amon (the child who stole it)escapes, knowing this artifact will help him. Then finally the story shifts to Gus. Gus is just getting home from a night out with his girlfriend Lisa, and another couple. As his 3 friends drop Gus off, the conversation shifts into one about a very famous pop singer by the name of Venus. The other couple discusses her concerts and of how the teenage pop star-Venus seems to just enchant you. AFter Gus tells them he has never heard her music, the other couple lends him a copy of Venus's album. Gus gets out of the car, waves his friends bye and procceeds to walk inside his house. He goes to play the cd when the door rings, and his brother's girlfriend comes in and announces that Gus's parents along with his brother-Andrew have been in a horrible car wreck. Venus's most disliked song-discussing the end of the world. The book forwards to December 21, 2012. All of the kids previously mentioned are all around the age of 16. Kali is stuck trying to balance a job she hates but needs to support her family, along with still fulfilling her school requirements. As a result she is portrayed as a very angry teenager. Tigre has grown up with a very controlling, rude girlfriend, named Vicky, whom upon finding out that she's cheating on him, Vicky says he's too weak, crushing Tigre's confidence. And Amon who is still in Egypt, aware of the days significance. And the story then shifts to Gus. It turns out that Gus is now living in Los Angelos, with his older brother Andrew. Andrew had survived the wreck, but his parents had died. Both still coping with the death of their parents were now living with each other, and Andrew was working in a theatre business. Well on December 21 Andrew was preparing the set for the now 16 year old sedutive pop sensation-Venus, whom Gus is a fan of. After realizing how much work was needed to set up for Venus's arrival, Andrew requests Gus's helping, telling Gus to stay clear of the pop star as she is a bit of a diva. As both arrive at the theater Gus and Andrew are separated due to the jobs that were necessary. Gus finishes his job and leaves the room when he hears a crash. Upon returning to the room he finds an extremely attractive, tom-boyish girl who looked less perfect to Venus-whom he assumed to be some sort of relative. However she was in fact Venus, and when Gus returns the two begin to bond. Venus genuinely happy that she was able to spend time with someone who wasn't obsessed with worshipping her, and Gus very happy now that he was with a girl-since Lisa had dumped him. However when the girls true identity-Venus is identified, Gus reacts the way expected-reverence. Venus's bodyguard escorts her away, and Andrew soon scolded Gus for "bothering" Venus. Later, a faulty prop nearly kills Venus, and thanks to Gus she was saved. Then an earthquake began, and the two teenagers fled from the theatre building, hoping that everyone else made it out alive. The two teens ran into the night feeling the shift. Kali feels the quake, and experiences the shift. Tigre slept when the shift hit him, And Amon was ready and awake. When the shift completed Amon stood up, ready for what was to come.
27420047	/m/0b__btm	Lies of Silence	Brian Moore	1990-08-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot revolves around the protagonist, Michael Dillon, and his wife, Moira Dillon, who are held hostage in their house by terrorists that are members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The men force Dillon, an apolitical hotel manager, to drive his bomb-laden car to the hotel he manages in order to kill a leading Protestant reverend, members of the Orange Order, and militant Protestants, all of whom are attending the same function. However, various aspects of female psychology are also present throughout the novel, including Dillon's extramarital affair with Canadian writer Andrea and Moira's mental breakdown following the revelation of his infidelity.
27421073	/m/0c00xcy	The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip	George Saunders	2000-08-15		 The village of Frip, consisting of three shacks by the sea, relies entirely on the production and sale of goat's milk. The gappers, an unintelligent lifeform shaped like a spiky fish, crawl up from the sea and sit on the backs of the goats. The gappers are so excited about the goats that they emit a loud, high-pitched noise that never ceases. The families must pluck the gappers from the goats' backs and throw them back into the sea.
27421401	/m/0ddfp7r	Slave of the Huns				 It is set around the time of Attila the Hun, and part of it is based on the Byzantine diplomat Priscus' account of his visit to Attila's court. The narrator and hero of the novel is a young Byzantine freedman of Priscus nicknamed Zeta who travels with him to Attila. He falls in love with Emmo, the daughter of a Hunnish nobleman (a "princess lointaine" figure). He commits himself to slavery among the Huns in the hope of eventually marrying her, to some extent going native among them. It includes dramatic accounts of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains between the Huns and the Romans, and the funeral of Attila.
27423833	/m/0c00llw	Don't Look Behind You	Lois Duncan	1990-08-01		 Because of April's father's work in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a hitman in a black Camaro is after her family so they have to be put under the Federal Witness Protection Program. April and her family have to try to elude the killer with little success when she drives out to try and live with her grandmother again.
27425089	/m/0c02dm2	Ralph the Heir	Anthony Trollope			 The title character is Ralph Newton, the nephew of Squire Gregory Newton of Newton Priory. The Squire has never married; he has an illegitimate son, also named Ralph Newton, whom he loves dearly. However, the estate is entailed, and after his death will go to his nephew Ralph; he cannot leave it to his natural son. Ralph the heir is a spendthrift, and has run himself deep into debt. There are two ways in which he can extricate himself: by raising money on his future interest in the Newton estate, or by marrying Polly Neefit, the daughter of a wealthy breeches-maker who is one of his major creditors. Neither choice is a good one for him: the first might lead to the estate's being seized by his creditors upon the old squire's death; the second would mean allying himself to a family of a much lower social class, thus putting his own social standing at risk. The Squire, anxious to obtain full possession of the estate so that he can pass it to his son, offers to buy the heir's reversion. Ralph vacillates, hesitatingly proposes to and is rejected twice by Polly Neefit, and eventually accepts his uncle's offer. However, before the transaction can be completed, the Squire is killed in a hunting accident and his nephew comes into full possession of the property and its large income. Now safe from his creditors, the new Squire is nevertheless harassed by Polly Neefit's father, who threatens him with legal action and embarrassing publicity if he does not continue seeking his daughter's hand. The matter is eventually resolved by Polly, who accepts the oft-repeated proposals of Ontario Moggs, son of a prosperous bootmaker, and induces her father to consent to the marriage despite his preference for the Squire. In the meantime, Ralph the Squire has proposed to and been rejected by Mary Bonner, the beautiful niece and ward of Sir Thomas Bertram; soon after this, she accepts an offer of marriage from the illegitimate Ralph. The novel also describes a Parliamentary election in the fictional borough of Percycross, in which Sir Thomas, a Conservative, and Moggs, a Radical, are two of the four candidates for the two available seats. Both are eager that the election be conducted fairly and honestly. The other two candidates, one a Conservative and one a Liberal, are the incumbents; they see nothing wrong with the buying and selling of votes that has been traditional at Percycross. Sir Thomas and his fellow Conservative win the election, but it is annulled on petition, and the borough is disfranchised by Parliament because of its pervasive corruption.
27429690	/m/0c007st	The Dragon's Familiar		2008-11		 The novel tells the story of Cory Avalon, an orphan who is lured through an enchanted gateway disguised as a mirror, and ends up in the magical world of Abydonne. Cory meets Prince Taliesin of Caer Dathyl and is adopted by his father King Llewellyn, who makes Cory the apprentice of the royal wizard, Math the Ancient. Early in his apprenticeship, Cory casts a spell to summon and bond with a familiar, and a young golden dragon named Benythonne answers Cory's incantation. The resulting bond grants Cory enormous strength and the ability to fly, as well as amplifying his raw magical power. Math suspects Cory may be the long-prophecised archwizard who will free humanity from the demon threat, and sends Cory to learn from Vainamoinen, another wizard. After several months, the Cory learns that Vainamoinen is his natural grandfather, and Abydonne was the world of his father's birth. Harkening to the ancient prophecy, Cory acknowledges his duty as the prince of wizards, and he sets out to free the captive humans from the demons and destroy their mountain stronghold of Abyolldd. along the way, the young wizard is joined by a group of Math's apprentices, and together they set out for the dark mountain. Cory frees the slaves and has Benythonne and the other apprentices lead the slaves to safety, while Cory battles Asmodeus the Demon Lord alone. During the magical combat, one of Cory's mystic bolts strikes the mirror gateway to Earth, shattering it. The resulting shockwaves bring down the entire mountain, and Cory escapes with his life by teleporting away to his dragon, safely outside Abyolldd.
27436021	/m/0b__3wm	The Bay of Noon				 A young Englishwoman, Jenny, is working in Naples some years after World War II. Alone in the ruined city, she follows up a letter of introduction from an acquaintance, through which she meets Gioconda, a beautiful and gifted writer, and her lover Gianni, a noted Roman film director. Meanwhile at work she meets Justin, a Scotsman whose inscrutability Jenny finds mysteriously attractive. As Jenny becomes increasingly drawn in to the lives of the three, she discovers that the past is not easily forgotten.
27441591	/m/0c02xsd	The God of the Hive	Laurie R. King		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are each on the trail, seeking to expose a ruthless villain and ensure the safety of Holmes' artist son, Damian Adler, and Adler's half-Chinese daughter, three year old Estelle. The search involves the British practitioners of a religious cult called The Children of Lights with roots in Shanghai, China. The plot picks up in the summer of 1924 near an ancient circle of standing stones on Orkney Island, shortly after religious fanatic Thomas Brothers, who seeks to unleash psychic energies through human sacrifice, shot Holmes's artist son, Damian Adler. Holmes's search for medical help to save his son's life takes him to Holland, while Mary travels through Britain in an effort to keep Estelle safe from Brothers and his allies. Brothers' shadowy connections have led to a conspiracy deeply entrenched in the highest echelons of government. Mycroft Holmes finds himself questioned and under suspicion and the family members are actively pursued by Scotland Yard. In the process a modern-day Robin Goodfellow emerges to lend aid to Mary and her kin.
27441866	/m/0b_zlkx	Superman: Earth One	J. Michael Straczynski	2010-10-27		 Clark Kent arrives on a train in Metropolis, and rents a room at a hotel. The next morning he tries out several jobs: pro footballer, Major League baseball player, and positions in a scientific research company, and in financial services and media industries. Clark realizes he can do anything as each company wants to hire him. He calls his mother and tells her what has happened, to which she replies that she would be happy with his choice of occupation. His last job stop is at the Daily Planet newspaper, where he meets Perry White, James "Jim" Olsen, and Lois Lane. However, upon hearing that the Daily Planet and the wider newspaper industry are in decline, Clark decides not to apply for the job, dumps his application, and flies into space. He thinks upon his history, and how his adoptive parents, Martha and Jonathan Kent, told him how they found him while hiking through woodland. The Kents saw a spaceship fly past them and crash, creating a sonic boom in its wake. They checked the wreckage for survivors, found a baby boy, and left with the infant and a small fragment of the wreckage. Some time later, the Kents decided to keep the child. Shortly after this, the US government and military arrive at the crash site. The Kents kept a small fragment of debris from the ship and learned of its, and the child's, extraterrestrial origins. Back in the narrative present, Clark talks to his late father's grave and says he feels incapable of being a superhero as he has already conformed to human society. Instead, he decides to begin a career and hopes that his father would accept that. The next day, and twenty years after it crashed, Major Sandra Lee, a soldier working at a US Military base on advanced technology, revisits the crashed spaceship, which has regenerated its damaged and lost parts. The scientists working there have found symbols inside the atomic structure of the ship. Clark discovers his apartment is on fire, and quickly enters the building to recover the fragment of spacecraft and a red and blue outfit his mother made for him from the cloth he was wrapped in as an infant. Alone, Clark checks the fragment with his enhanced vision when he is hit with energy, becomes unconscious, and falls from the sky. The fragment talks and connects itself back to the ship in order to download more information. Just then, an invading alien force arrives and attacks Earth's major cities. The military quickly mobilizes, but the alien attack ships defeat Earth's fighter jets. Jim and Lois are almost killed because Jim wants to take photographs of the invasion. Clark, still unconscious, is given information he could not previously remember: the last moments of his homeworld, the planet Krypton. Clark, born as Kal-El, is the son of Jor-El and Lara, who waited until the last minute to dispatch him so that the shockwaves would hide his escape. The alien armada leader, Tyrell, reveals himself to the Earth but does not reveal his identity and purpose. He issues an ultimatum: the Earth will be destroyed, and millions will die if someone Tyrell has been looking for does not surrender to him. Major Lee and the scientists agree that the person for whom Tyrell is looking was in the crashed ship. Clark tries to attack the aliens without revealing himself, but Jim's photographs show a human-shaped red and blue blur. Clark goes for help at the research company that was about to employ him, but he finds that it is corrupt. Tyrell notices Jim taking pictures and almost kills him until Clark, who can no longer stand by and watch, destroys a robot. Tyrell is now aware of Clark's presence on Earth and prepares to increase the ferocity of his attack. Clark looks at his outfit, remembers wondering why there was no mask and his mother asking whether he wants to hide for the rest of his life, and his adoptive father coining the name "Superman". Clark decides to wear the outfit and reveals himself to the world as Superman. Superman lands and starts destroying the alien robots and ships, and Tyrell reveals himself. He proves to be Superman's physical match, and says that Krypton's destruction was no accident but was an assassination. Tyrell originates from the planet Dheron. Krypton and Dheron were bitter enemies that fought several wars, which ended when a Dheronian war machine, designed to destroy Krypton's core, was provided by an unknown alien race. Although Krypton was destroyed, a scientist's son escaped, and a mission with which Tyrell had been charged―to find and kill the child―was considered a failure. Tyrell proceeds to activate several war machines to destroy Earth, and hits Superman with a red solar energy beam that pins him down. Tyrell explains the nature of their powers and leaves to make final preparations. Because Superman is the cause of the invasion, no one in Metropolis wants to help. Lois and Jim get Superman out of the energy beam using a truck and Superman regains his strength and stands up. He and Tyrell fight again; this time Superman gains the upper hand by burning Tyrell with his heat vision. Superman's ship becomes fully regenerated, takes off to find him, and knocks Tyrell from behind. Tyrell tells Superman that his own spacecraft is almost as impervious as Kryptonian metal, from which Superman's ship is made. Superman enters Tyrell's weakened spacecraft and destroys it from the inside. Tyrell tries to stop him but is defeated, and he warns Superman that others like him will come to finish the job. Superman jumps off Tyrell's ship. The invasion is over, and Superman smiles and flies away. At a government base, Major Lee wonders who Superman is and what he wants, and whether his presence means more trouble for Earth. The general puts her in charge of researching Superman and his origin, and tells Lee to locate him. After his ordeal, Clark walks home. The boss of the research company finds him and offers him a job, which Clark declines. A Dheronian battleship crash-lands in an indoor football field. Clark purchases some new clothing and formulates a "Clark Kent disguise". He returns to the Daily Planet, which is more enthusiastic and successful because its coverage of the invasion and Superman was superior to that of rival news media. Perry does not know what to call the new superhero until Clark suggests the name "Superman". Clark is hired because of an interview he claims he conducted with Superman, and he bonds with his new colleagues. Public opinion of Superman is mixed: some like him and see him as a hero; others do not trust him because he was the cause of the invasion. In the Arctic, Superman has hidden his ship in a secret cave, and its sentience activates and tells him his mission: to survive, use his powers well and wisely, and to avenge the murder of his homeworld. At the close of the story, Lois and Jim are on the Daily Planet rooftop discussing how Superman has changed the world. Jim photographs Superman again.
27446671	/m/0b__msf	Night of the Humans	David Llewellyn			 The Doctor and Amy are caught in the middle of a war between humans and Sittuns on the junkyard planet of the Gyre, and when the Doctor disappears, Amy teams up with a mysterious space traveller to rescue him, little knowing the dangers she has put herself in.
27458984	/m/0c00mvc	The Lancashire Witches	William Harrison Ainsworth	1848	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Ainsworth based his story largely on the official account of the Lancashire witch trials written by the clerk to the court, Thomas Potts, first published in 1613 under the title The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster. Potts himself makes an appearance in the novel, as a "scheming and self-serving lawyer". Book one is set against the backdrop of the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising by northern Catholics against the English Reformation instituted by King Henry VIII.
27472888	/m/0h35m	The Fellowship of the Ring	J. R. R. Tolkien	1954-07-24	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Prologue is meant partly to help people who have not read The Hobbit to understand the events of that book. It also contains other background information to set the stage for the novel. The first chapter in the book begins in a light vein, following the tone of The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins celebrates his 111th (or eleventy-first, as it is called in Hobbiton) birthday on the same day, September 22, that his relative and adopted heir Frodo Baggins celebrates his coming of age at 33. At the birthday party, Bilbo departs from the Shire, the land of the Hobbits, for what he calls a permanent holiday. He leaves Frodo his remaining belongings, including his home, Bag End, and (after some persuasion by the wizard Gandalf) the Ring he had found on his adventures (which he used to make himself invisible). Gandalf leaves on his own business, warning Frodo to keep the Ring secret. Over the next 17 years Gandalf periodically pays short visits to Bag End. One spring night, he arrives to warn Frodo about the truth of Bilbo's ring; it is the One Ring of Sauron the Dark Lord. Sauron forged it to subdue and rule Middle-earth, but in the War of the Last Alliance, he was defeated by Gil-galad the Elven King and Elendil, High King of Arnor and Gondor, though they themselves perished in the deed. Isildur, Elendil's son, cut the Ring from Sauron's finger. Sauron was thus overthrown, but the Ring itself was not destroyed as Isildur kept it for himself. Isildur was slain soon afterwards in the Battle of the Gladden Fields, and the Ring was lost in Great River Anduin. Thousands of years later, it was found by the hobbit Déagol; but Déagol was thereupon murdered by his friend Sméagol, who coveted the Ring for himself. Sméagol subsequently possessed the Ring for centuries, and under its influence he became the creature named Gollum. The Ring was found by Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit, and Bilbo leaves it to Frodo. Sauron has risen again and returned to his stronghold in Mordor, and is exerting all his power to find the Ring. Gandalf details the evil powers of the Ring and its ability to influence the bearer and those near him if it is worn for too long a time. Gandalf warns Frodo that the Ring is no longer safe in the Shire; he has learned through his investigations that Gollum had gone to Mordor, where he was captured and tortured until he revealed to Sauron that a hobbit named Baggins from the Shire possesses the Ring. Gandalf hopes Frodo can reach the elf-haven Rivendell, where he believes Frodo and the Ring will be safe from Sauron, and where its fate can be decided. Samwise Gamgee, Frodo's gardener and friend, is discovered listening in on the conversation. Out of loyalty to his master, Sam agrees to accompany Frodo on his journey. Over the summer Frodo makes plans to leave his home at Bag End, under the pretence that he is moving to a remote region near the Shire to retire. Helping with the plans are Frodo's friends Sam, Peregrin Took (Pippin for short), Meriadoc Brandybuck (Merry), and Fredegar Bolger (Fatty), though Frodo does not tell them of the Ring or of his intention to leave the Shire. At midsummer, Gandalf leaves on pressing business, but promises to return before Frodo leaves. Frodo's birthday and departure date approach, but Gandalf does not appear; so Frodo decides to leave without him. Black Riders pursue Frodo's party; these turn out to be Nazgûl or Ringwraiths, "the most terrible servants of the Dark Lord", who are searching for "Baggins" and the Ring. With help of some Elves and Farmer Maggot, they reach Crickhollow beyond the eastern border of the Shire. There Merry, Pippin, Sam, and Fatty reveal that they know of the Ring and of Frodo's plan to leave the Shire. Sam, Merry, and Pippin decide to accompany Frodo, while Fatty stays behind as a decoy. In hopes of eluding the Nazgûl, the hobbits travel through the Old Forest and Barrow-downs, and with the assistance of Tom Bombadil are able to reach the village of Bree, where they meet the ranger Aragorn, a friend of Gandalf who becomes their guide to Rivendell. At the hill of Weathertop, five of the Nazgûl attack the travellers, and the chief of the Nazgûl stabs Frodo with a cursed blade before Aragorn drives the Nazgûl off. Part of the knife remains within the wound, causing Frodo to become increasingly ill as they travel to Rivendell; Aragorn warns them that, unless treated immediately, Frodo will become a wraith himself. As the travellers near their destination, they meet Glorfindel, an elf-lord from Rivendell, who helps them reach the River Bruinen near Rivendell. But the Nazgûl, all nine now gathered together, ambush the party at the Ford of Bruinen. Glorfindel's horse outruns the pursuers and carries Frodo across the Ford. As the Nazgûl attempt to follow, a giant wave commanded by Elrond, the lord of Rivendell, bears down on the Nazgûl. The Nazgûl are swept away by the river, as Frodo finally collapses unconscious on the riverbank. Book II opens in Rivendell at the house of Elrond. Frodo is healed by Elrond and discovers that Bilbo has been residing there. Elrond convenes the Council of Elrond, attended by Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo and many others. Gandalf explains that he had gone to Isengard, where the wizard Saruman, the chief of all wizards in Middle-earth, dwells, to seek help and counsel. However, Saruman had turned against them, desiring the Ring for himself. Saruman imprisoned Gandalf in his tower, Orthanc, rightly suspecting that Gandalf knew where the Ring was. Gandalf, however, did not yield and managed to escape from Orthanc. He learns that Saruman is not yet in Sauron's service, and is mustering his own force of Orcs. In the Council of Elrond, a plan is hatched to cast the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom in Mordor, which will destroy the Ring and end Sauron's power for good. Frodo offers to undertake this dangerous quest, and is thus chosen to be the Ring-bearer, and sets forth from Rivendell with eight companions: two Men, Aragorn and Boromir, son of the Steward of Gondor; Legolas, Prince of the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood; Gandalf; Gimli the Dwarf; and Frodo's three Hobbit companions. These Nine Walkers (called the Fellowship of the Ring) are chosen to represent all the free races of Middle-earth and as a balance to the Nazgûl. They are also accompanied by Bill the Pony, whom Aragorn and the Hobbits acquired in Bree as a pack horse. The Fellowship's attempt to cross the Misty Mountains is foiled by heavy snow, and they are forced to take a path under the mountains, the mines of Moria, an ancient dwarf kingdom, now full of Orcs and other evil creatures. During the battle that ensues, Gandalf battles a Balrog of Morgoth, and both fall into an abyss. The remaining eight members of the Fellowship escape from Moria and head toward the elf-haven of Lothlórien, where they are given gifts from the rulers Celeborn and Galadriel that in many cases prove useful later during the Quest. As Frodo tries to decide the future course of the Fellowship, Boromir tries to take the Ring for himself; Frodo ends up putting on the Ring to escape from Boromir. While the rest of the Fellowship scatter to hunt for Frodo, Frodo decides that the Fellowship has to be broken, and that he must depart secretly for Mordor. Sam insists on coming along, however, and they set off together to Mordor. The Fellowship is thus broken.
27484634	/m/0b_zpwk	Of Love and Evil	Anne Rice	2010-11-30		 Toby O’Dare, former government assassin, is summoned by the angel Malchiah to fifteenth-century Rome—the city of Michelangelo and Raphael, of Leo X and the Holy Inquisition—to solve a terrible crime of poisoning and to uncover the secrets of an earthbound restless spirit, a diabolical dybbuk. Toby is plunged into this rich age as a lutist sent to charm and calm this troublesome spirit. In the fullness of the high Italian Renaissance, Toby soon discovers himself in the midst of dark plots and counterplots, surrounded by a still darker and more dangerous threat as the veil of ecclesiastical terror closes in around him. And as he once again embarks on a powerful journey of atonement, he is reconnected with his own past, with matters light and dark, fierce and tender, with the promise of salvation and with a deeper and richer vision of love.
27494190	/m/0c00s2q	Go		2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sugihara who was a zainichi chosenjin began studying at a Japanese high-school. Since his father was an ex-pro boxer, Sugihara knew how to fight other Japanese boys who challenges him to a fight because of his nationality. He became friends with a boy whose father is a yakuza and Sugihara's friend invited him to a party where Sugihara meets a girl who would only let him know of her family name: Sakurai. Sugihara never tells Sakurai of his ancestry for he is afraid of her possibility of having racist feelings. One day when one of Sugihara's Korean friends were killed by another Japanese high-school student, Sugihara brought together all his courage to tell Sakurai of his Korean heritage...
27518176	/m/0c039_0	Last Sacrifice	Richelle Mead	2010-12-07	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The novel begins with Rose in her prison cell contemplating the charges brought against her and occasionally using the bond to slip into Lissa's mind to view goings-on at Court. During Queen Tatiana’s funeral, statues outside the church suddenly blow up, causing chaos, and acting as a distraction for the guardians. Rose is soon broken out of prison by Mikhail, Eddie, Adrian, Abe, and Dimitri. Dimitri takes Rose out of Court and they drive for hours until they reach Sydney, who is also aiding in the escape. They continue traveling until reaching West Virginia, where Rose discovers she is to be kept in a motel until her friends back at Court can clear her name. However, she insists on leaving and helping out, but after Dimitri halts her escape, Rose convinces him and Sydney to look for Lissa’s half-sibling. For safety, Sydney takes them to the Keepers, a strange group of Moroi, dhampirs, and humans. Later, they find out the sole person who holds the information needed to find Lissa’s sibling: Sonya Karp, who was once teacher at St. Vladimir's but is now a Strigoi. The Dashkov brothers invade Rose’s dreams and they later meet up with her at Sonya's house in Kentucky, where Robert changes her back into a Moroi by staking her with a silver stake infused with spirit. After recovering from the initial shock of being restored, Sonya leads them to Jillian Mastrano’s house in Michigan, who is revealed to be the illegitimate child of Eric Dragomir. Not long after they arrive, Guardians raid the Mastrano house, forcing them to scatter and flee again and creating the opportunity for Victor and Robert to kidnap Jill. Using her spirit abilities, Sonya is able to locate where the brothers are hiding Jill and relays the information onto Rose. Upon questioning, Sonya also reveals to Rose that her and Dimitri’s auras shine extraordinarily bright when they are around each other, which shows they are in love. This further confuses Rose about Dimitri's true feelings for her. Back at Court, Lissa, Christian and Adrian try looking for Tatiana's murderer, and discover unsettling information about the Queen, her lover Ambrose and Adrian's own mother, Daniella. While at Court, Lissa is in the running for Queen, despite being ineligible as the result of being without a quorum. The process involves taking a series of tests to prove she is worthy of the throne, and after she passes, there is a huge debate among the Moroi about whether she can actually be queen. Rose, Dimitri, and Sonya quickly find Victor and Robert and fight them to get Jill back. Rose battles with Victor, and in a spirit- induced rage, she inadvertently kills him. She becomes distraught as the group heads to a hotel to recover. In one of the rooms, Dimitri attempts to comfort her and tells her not to blame herself. He admits he loves her and regrets losing her, but refuses to take another man’s girlfriend. Rose tells him she only belongs to herself, and she chooses Dimitri. The two embrace and have sex again, and Rose makes the decision to break up with Adrian when she sees him in person and not in one of his spirit dreams. She tells Dimitri after they make love that in order for them to have a relationship, he must first forgive himself for the guilt he carries over his time as a Strigoi. That evening, the four leave to meet up with Mikhail near Court; Adrian comes along and witnesses a kiss between Dimitri and Rose. More pressing matters are at hand as they head back to Court, Mikhail and Rose having just gotten information from Sydney and the Alchemists confirming who the killer is. Back at Court and in front of the Council and assembled Moroi, Rose presents Jill as part of the Dragomir bloodline, arguing that this enables Lissa to become Queen. Then she reveals to everyone that Tasha is the one who killed the queen, as she hated Tatiana's policies about dhampirs and Moroi. Rose also silently notices that Tasha has longed for Dimitri the entire time, which is why Tasha framed Rose for the murder. As guardians attempt to take in Tasha, she grabs a gun and holds Mia hostage. Lissa hurries forward in an attempt to compel her to stop, but Tasha makes a rash decision, shooting at Lissa. Rose jumps in front of Lissa and takes the bullet in her chest. Her final glimpse is of Lissa and Dimitri standing over her as she blacks out. A few days later, she awakens in a palace room with Dimitri by her side. He joyfully tells her that they have both received full pardons and their guardian statuses again—she is one of Lissa’s guardians and he is Christian’s guardian. Both are finally able to be open about their relationship. When Lissa visits Rose, she realizes they are no longer bonded. They speculate that because Rose was at the brink of death and healed herself without the help of spirit, the bond was negated. Lissa also won the royal election, thanks to Jill being part of the Dragomir bloodline and making her eligible for the throne. Adrian visits Rose and confronts her on why their relationship failed; Adrian blames it on Rose's constant yearning for Dimitri but Rose tells him it’s both that and the fact that they are so different and he depends on her too much, saying that she is his anchor to life. Rose spends the remainder of her convalescence healing and being with Dimitri. The series ends with Lissa’s coronation. As she is crowned the new queen, Lissa shares a humorous look with Rose in the crowd. Rose, embracing Dimitri and feeling happier than ever with his love and Lissa's triumph, tells him she thinks that the future will be good.
27522327	/m/0c03f4v	Split Images	Elmore Leonard	1981		 The novel begins in Detroit and tells the story of Robbie Daniels, a multimillionaire who guns down a Haitian refugee that broke into his Palm Beach mansion, calling it "practice". Walter Kouza, a 21-year veteran of the Detroit Police Department, sees this case as his one chance to quit being a cop and go to work for a big shot. The only one who can stop him is Lieutenant Bryan Hurd, whose unique method of investigation is supported by his good-looking lover and journalist Angela Nolan. The two follow Daniels and Kouza when they travel Florida to find their next victim: a diplomat and drug dealer.
27523812	/m/0c03kb3	Third Year at Malory Towers				 Darrell is on the way to Malory Towers once again. On the way they pick up a new girl called Zerelda, who is from the USA. Once they arrive, they see the Bad One, Gwen, making a Fond Farewell with her mother and governess. Suddenly Gwen sees Zerelda and immediately loses her heart to her. The ever-so malicous Alicia notices it and points it out to Darrell. It is then revealed that not only is Zerelda in North Tower but in the Fourth Form. A few days later, the final new girl arrives: Bill Robinson. Bill is short for Wilhelmina, who in turn has truckloads of horses and 7 brothers. She arrives with the brothers and her horse. The brothers and their horses leave leaving Bill to take her horse, Thunder, to the stables. A few weeks later, Zerelda is so remarkably stupid that she is put down in the third form. The next surprise is that Darrell is a reserve for one of the Malory Towers Lacrosse teams. Next up on the event roster is Zerelda gets a tremendous scolding from Ms Hibbert. And all is well until....... After Zerelda gets a misunderstood scolding from Miss Hibbert, a few weeks later the biggie happens: Thunder (Bill's horse) suffers from colic while Darrell and Bill work all night in the rain to stop him lying down and Ms Peters rides for miles in the pouring rain to get the vet and accidentally save the life of the to-be Conceited Opera Singer Mavis Allyson who loses her voice as a consequence). Then everything is right again and the end of term looms.
27524804	/m/05qfgw6	It’s a Battlefield	Graham Greene	1934	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Drover, a bus driver, stabs a man who is about to attack his wife. Unfortunately for him, the man is a policeman and Drover is a Communist, so he is sentenced to hang. The novel explores the intersecting lives of those close to Drover in the days before the hanging. His Communist colleagues want him to die because this will gain support for the party; his wife and brother begin an affair. There is no hero. With few exceptions, the characters are deliberately limned as, in one critic's view, "mediocre, bleak, uninspiring and at times perverted and stupid". Some of the characters seem only half complete. The resulting interplay of selfish, driven characters creates what Greene called "a panoramic novel of London". In this panorama, the traditional detective story is (sometimes using postmodern techniques) turned on its head.; the hidden villains, according to one critic, are class and capitalism.
27525614	/m/0c0299g	If Israel Lost the War	Edward Klein		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 The book's point of divergence is the assumption that it is the Arab air forces which on June 5, 1967 launch a surprise attack and destroy the Israeli Air Force, rather than the other way around as it happened in actual history. Afterwards the Arab armies launch a lighting ground attack and - in an exact mirror image of the actual Six Day War - conquer the entire territory of Israel by June 10, 1967. The US, embroiled in the Vietnam War, takes no action to save Israel, nor does any other country (except for a valiant but futile sending of some planes from the Netherlands). The book is written in a semi-documentary way, with multiple and constantly shifting points of view characters, detailed maps and numerous fictional quotations from the international media. The three writers had the openly proclaimed aim of helping Israel's case in international public opinion, and justifying its act in having been in actual history the one to attack first. This aim is evident in the book's numerous depictions of atrocities committed by the victorious Arab armies, including detailed depictions of the mass rape of Israeli women, the public execution of Moshe Dayan by the Egyptian occupiers of Tel Aviv and the appointment of Nazi war criminals to run the Arab occupiers' secret police. As depicted in the book, the Palestinians get no benefit from the Arab victory and are as a far away as ever from having a state of their own, with Israeli territory being partitioned between Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Nor are the Palestinian refugees allowed to return to their pre-1948 homes despite these being under Arab rule. The book ends in a relatively upbeat tone, with Yigal Alon - who had commanded the Palmach militia under British Mandate rule - holding a clandestine meeting in Syrian-occupied Tiberias, laying plans for an extensive guerrilla campaign. There is thus the implication that Israel might eventually regain independence, though it would be after a long and harsh struggle.
27532176	/m/0c031c1	The Sporting Club				 The Sporting Club chronicles the friendship and rivalry of Vernor Stanton, an unstable patrician iconoclast, and the protagonist, Stanton's lifelong friend, James Quinn. Throughout the course of the novel, Stanton enlists Quinn on a series of misadventures and wild episodes, the aim of which is to ultimately destabilize the Centennial Club, a summer sporting resort for upper-class Michigan families, of which both men are members.
27532639	/m/0c01q12	Gorgeous East	Robert Girardi	2009	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 John Smith, an out of work actor, after toxic relationships in Istanbul, and Paris, joins the French Foreign Legion.
27532695	/m/0c029b4	City of Fallen Angels	Cassandra Clare	2011-04-05	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book follows Simon's difficult transition into vampirism, but equally shows us more about Jace and Clary's relationship. Simon receives an offer from a vampire named Camille Belcourt who claims to have been usurped by Raphael. She says that if Simon joins her side as the Daylighter, then he will finally earn his place in vampire society. After his meeting with Camille, he returns home worried about what his mother will think as she has been suspicious since he went to Idris (City of Glass) and did not return for a few days. Although Magnus erased memories of his absence, she has been sub-consciously suspicious about everything from his whereabouts to his friends as opposed to before when she was less strict. As Simon tries to adjust to life as a vampire, with the Mark of Cain, he is attacked numerous times and each time the Mark's curse works and the attackers are killed (including the time when on his way home in which two strange looking hooded muggers try to overtake him and one of them quickly meets his graphic and bloody demise through on biblical proportions because of the mark of Cain which disturbs Simon whereas the other muggers flee in terror). Meanwhile, Jace has been having dreams in which he murders Clary by stabbing her or choking her which previously has led to stress between the two of them since he has stopped talking to her and has become closed off from her; worrying Clary. Clary's mother, Jocelyn, is having difficulty adjusting to Jace as Clary's boyfriend when he reminds her so much of Valentine. Clary and her mother also discover that someone is trying to make more children like Jonathan, which again Jocelyn has trouble coming to terms with. At one of Simon's band's gigs, Simon runs off stage ill (mostly due to his lack of blood consumption). Maureen, the band's only fan, follows Simon and asks for his picture. Halfway through taking it, Simon bites her and drinks her blood, interrupted just in time by Jordan, the band's new member. The day after, they receive a message saying someone was holding Simon's girlfriend hostage, and he should go to save her. Calling up Clary, Isabelle and Maia, Simon determines it's a joke, only to find it was actually Maureen, who would always claim to be Simon's girlfriend at gigs being known for having a crush on him, who had been kidnapped and killed when Simon did not show up to save her. Jace and Clary have an intimate moment in one of the spare rooms in the Institute where Clary is healing from the scars she had gotten when fighting a Hydra demon at the Church of Talto. He kisses her passionately (on places other than her lips) and just when they are on the brink of having sex where Clary is in her bra and underwear and Jace is only in his jeans, his belt buckle undone, Jace injures Clary with a knife. Disturbed by his recent nightmares, Jace pours out all his nightmares and the reason he is avoiding Clary. Clary then offers to help Jace by taking him to the Silent City. There, the Silent Brothers tell them that the nightmares Jace is having is due to his vulnerability to demonic influence; which occurred after Jace was resurrected after he died when being stabbed by Valentine (Jace and Clary have confessed to what happened that night when the angel was raised). Afterwards, Jace agrees to stay in one of the cells of the Silent City for one night in order for the Silent Brothers to help him by looking inside Jace's mind. Clary wants to stay with Jace, but the Silent Brothers say that she will be a distraction. Jace tells Clary that he will get better for her and Clary promises to see him, after which Jace says that maybe he'll be healed by then. Clary and Jace say their goodbyes and Clary leaves for the night. In his cell, Jace has a dream that he is back is in Idris while realizing it's still a dream. Max appears to him in a dream and Max persuades him that the dreams are telling him that he is actually hurting Clary and that his father (not Valentine) is worried about him. He cuts his arms after Max convinces him that he will destroy the rotten part. With his blood, Max, who is actually the demon Lilith, draws a rune on his chest which allows him to be under Lilith's influence. Jocelyn and Luke (now engaged after Luke finally confessed to her how he feels about her in the epilogue of City of Glass and are preparing for their upcoming wedding) attend an engagement party organized by Luke's werewolf pack, in which Simon disappears. Clary also disappears after being kidnapped by Jace to which no one else knows about yet. He has lied to Clary about leaving the Silent Brothers early (though he doesn't lie about how he wants to be bound to her as the possession has not affected his feelings for her). Jace tells Clary about a rune that binds them to one another forever and Clary accepts and hands him her stele. He begins to draw a rune, but Clary finds out too late that this is not the rune he told her about as she begins to fall unconscious with Jace catching her and carrying her away. Simon is led away from the party by Maureen, now a vampire, and is taken to Lilith, who has been alive since the beginning of time, who turned up at one of Simon's bands gigs and introduced herself as a promoter called Satrina (one of 17 names given to Lilith). She explains that she needs him to resurrect Sebastian from the dead. When he tells her he cannot bring the dead back to life, she tells him that he has had that power since he became a Daylighter. In order to persuade him to resurrect Jonathan, she possesses Jace, through his dreams (a matter of a protective ritual performed when a Shadowhunter is born; when Jace died in Idris and was resurrected by the Angel, this ritual was undone, leaving Jace vulnerable to possession) and orders him to kidnap Clary. Jace brings Clary to Lilith and she orders him to kill her if Simon does not resurrect Sebastian. Simon reluctantly bites him and drains some of his blood; being poisoned in the process due to Sebastian's demon blood. Isabelle, Alec, Maia, and Jordan follow Simon using a business card they found in his wallet in order to find him. When they get to the building, they check every floor until they find him. However, instead of finding Simon, they find the place that Lilith used as her nursery, with all the children dead. Everyone of them had clawed hands and black eyes, like the one Clary and her mom saw at the hospital. The babies were the outcome of Lilith trying to make half-demon children like Sebastian. While going through the room, Isabelle notices a being in the corner and attacks it, but it turns out to be a mother of one of the babies who then tells them the story of what was happening. Meanwhile, Clary tricks Jace by saying how she does not wish to watch and he embraces her (as the possession has not affected his feelings for her, including his concern for her well-being, as seen when he later asks if she is cold). She then grabs Jace's knife and cuts the rune that Lilith is using to possess him on his chest, learning from Luke earlier in the novel that if a rune is disfigured in any way it will lose all its power, causing Jace to be freed from Lilith's control. Jace tells Clary to run away, and believes that she did, but then Lilith reveals that Clary had stayed and starts torturing her with a whip. The third time that she goes to hit Clary, Simon kills Lilith by throwing himself in between Lilith and Clary, of having the Mark of Cain. This makes Lilith's murderous actions come back onto her sevenfold. The Clave appears at the scene, and Isabelle tells them the story of what happened downstairs while Jace is waiting for them upstairs. Jace and Clary share an intimate moment up on the roof, Jace ashamed of his actions despite literally having no control over himself, and Clary telling him that she loves no matter what happens and the two share a kiss. She then goes down to the lobby to meet her mother and Luke while Simon, Maia, Alec, Magnus and Isabelle are also down there, promising to come back in five minutes. It concludes with Jace's rune healing, hearing Sebastian's voice in his head, and with Sebastian/Jonathan now in control of Jace, Jace is forced to finish the awakening ritual on Sebastian, who is now wholly and fully alive.
27537387	/m/0c0241b	The Hunted	Elmore Leonard	1977		 Al Rosen stuck his neck out to help the Detroit government put some goons in prison, only it didn't go according to plan. He is living in Israel off the checks sent his way by the company he helped found. The checks are brought to him by the untrusty sleazy lawyer Mel Bandy. Rosen spends his days hanging out in hotel lobbies, getting sun, and just simply staying out of sight. But one fateful night there's a hotel fire that draws the attention of the media and Rosen gets photographed and wound up getting his face in the Detroit Free Press. Now Rosen's enemies know where he is and they immediately descend on the Holy Land for the purpose of killing him. Sgt. David Davis is about to finish his tour with the marines. The big problem is that he has no idea what to do with himself once he is out. Now Rosen is on the run in Israel with three killers and a sleazy lawyer on his tail and a U.S. Marine for company. Can this Vietnam vet U.S. Marine keep Rosen safe.....
27543562	/m/0c02llh	Life and Death of a Spanish Town	Elliot Paul			 The book is set in and around the small town of Santa Eulària des Riu, on Ibiza, where Paul had lived since 1931. In the first part of the book Elliot Paul describes the town and many of the characters who live and work there. He details their family lives, their hopes, their aspirations, and their politics. He provides details of the people at work and at play, and describes how he becomes part of the community of the town. Paul also writes of other ex-patriates who have made their homes in and around the town. Part two starts with Paul and his family returning to Ibiza, after some time away. The narrative is set in 1936 in the week leading up to the outbreak of hostilities on Ibiza during the Spanish Civil Warand describes the events that eventually lead to Paul, his family and other refugees from the violence, fleeing the island. It tells the story of civil disobedience, collaboration and the violence that split a once-happy community, although the narrative finishes before the tragic turn of events reaches its conclusion. The postscript, written by Paul, dated 14 June 1937, details events following his departure from Ibiza and describes his hopes and fears for his friends on the island and a way of life that he thought would change for ever.
27548536	/m/0b_z_8x	The Quants		2010		 The introduction to The Quants describes the real life, annual, high stakes poker match between Wall Street's hedge fund managers and compares their trading styles to their poker strategies. It focuses on, among other things, the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis and how it helped trigger a sudden and massive unwind of complex, highly leveraged quantitative strategies. The book also delves into critical short-comings of many quantitative strategies, such as their tendency to lead to crowded trades and their underestimation of the likelihood of chaotic, volatile moves in the markets. The book also delves into the background of the various vanguards of quantitative analysis. It tells the history of Beat the Market & Beat the Dealer author Ed Thorp; Peter Muller from Morgan Stanley's hedge fund; Ken Griffin from Chicago's Citadel LLC; James Simons from Renaissance Technologies; Clifford S. Asness and Aaron Brown from AQR Capital Management; and Boaz Weinstein from Deutsche Bank.
27550197	/m/0b___x9	Ghostopolis				 The story revolves around two main characters: Garth Hale, a young teenage boy, and Frank Gallows, a middle-aged agent of the Supernatural Immigration Task Force, a government partition dedicated to locating ghosts amiss in the physical world and transporting them back to the afterlife (here known as the title Ghostopolis). Garth is suffering from an unidentified "incurable disease." It is mentioned that the relationship between Garth's mother and deceased grandfather was strained, Garth's mother referring to him as a "drunk." Frank uses devices known as "plasmacuffs" to apprehend wayward ghosts. On a routine call to remove a Nightmare (a skeletal horse of the afterlife), Frank accidentally ports Garth to Ghostopolis along with the spectre. In Ghostopolis, Garth unintentionally tames and befriends the Nightmare, nicknaming him "Skinny" due to the horse's incorporeal appearance. Before long, the hostile nature of Ghostopolis is revealed by local fauna that attacks Garth and Skinny. Narrowly escaping an attack by several Velociraptor skeletons, Garth determines that his best course of action is to venture into the main city. Meanwhile, Frank is fired from his position on the Task Force for his grievous mistake and instead enlists his ghost ex-fiancée, Claire Voyant, to assist him in traveling to Ghostopolis and retrieving Garth. Dazed and confused by the netherworld around him, Garth eventually happens upon his own grandfather, Cecil. Cecil is younger than Garth in appearance. As explained by Cecil, "There's no physics-based time here in the afterlife... we get put back to our internal age. It gives us a chance to take care of unfinished business." It is mentioned that an argument about earrings was the source of friction between Cecil and Garth's mother, though he now looks down on it as petty. As Garth's time in Ghostopolis extends, and the closer Cecil comes to reconciling for his transgressions against his daughter (Garth's mother), the "older" Cecil becomes. Along the way to the city, Cecil explains to Garth the origins of Ghostopolis itself. Now, however, a malevolent character named Vaugner currently rules over Ghostopolis and its inhabitants. Cecil insists that Garth's best bet for getting back home is to find Joe. It becomes clear, however, that Vaugner and his henchmen wish to capture Garth due to his anomalous status in Ghostopolis. Garth has also displayed numerous supernatural powers when in the realm of the afterlife, piquing Vaugner's interest. In the city center of Ghostopolis, Vaugner addresses the masses alongside the lords of Ghostopolis's various divisions. The Specter King from the South, The Will-o-the-Wisp Queen, the Mummy Pharaoh, the Duke of Goblin, the Bone King, the Zombie Lord, and the King of Boogeymen all hold territory and command citizens in Ghostopolis, although ultimately under Vaugner's reign. When Garth and Cecil arrive at the city center, Cecil recounts the tale of how Vaugner came to be ruler of Ghostopolis. In the city, Frank and Claire meet up with Garth and Cecil. When they are ambushed by Vaugner's henchmen, Cecil is accidentally sent back to the physical world mid-skirmish, simultaneously expending Frank and Claire's ride back home. The remaining trio is secured by the Bone King, whom, as it turns out, is in league with Joe himself. Unbeknownst to Vaugner, Joe is trafficking people from the corrupt Ghostopolis to a more perfect afterlife through a crack in the very wall of Ghostopolis. Garth attempts to leave through the crack, but is told by Joe that it will take Garth "home, but not to Earth." Having exhausted what they thought to be their last option, Garth, Frank, and Claire are escorted by the Bone King to the Firefly power plant, Ghostopolis's main source of energy, in hopes of recharging the set of plasmacuffs that initially transported Garth and Skinny to Ghostopolis. Recharging them would provide enough power to reverse the effect and send the trio back to Earth. Vaugner ambushes the group and the Firefly is destroyed, yet again extinguishing hopes of returning to Earth. Suddenly, a Supernatural Immigration Task Force extraction team from Earth appears and attempts to collect Garth. Vaugner returns, apparently unharmed, and sends the team's ship back to Earth without Frank, Garth, and Claire. Frank's boss is also left stranded in Ghostopolis. It is revealed that Vaugner (now known as Dean Vaugner) survived the explosion due to the fact that he is in fact human, accidentally ported to Ghostopolis by Frank's boss, much in the same manner as was Garth by Frank. The situation becomes Vaugner's vengeance scheme, and he and Garth soon break into combat. In the midst of battle, Frank is killed assisting Garth in Vaugner's defeat. After Vaugner's overthrow, Claire is unanimously elected Lord of the Afterlife. Frank appears, having died and passed to Ghostopolis, and rekindles his relationship with Claire. In the midst of the celebration, Garth meets his anachronistically aged son -- this is attributed to the numerous time inconsistencies in the realm of Ghostopolis. This also implies (and is also explicitly stated by Garth's son) that Garth's "incurable disease" is, in fact, curable at some point in the near Earthly future. Garth's son informs him that all he must do to return to Earth is imagine that he can do so. Returning home with Frank's stranded boss in tote, Garth is reunited with his mother. The graphic novel ends with Cecil, now an aged ghost in the physical realm, flying into the nighttime sky, having apparently made peace with his daughter.
27550660	/m/0b__bht	Sugar and Spice	Lauren Katherine Conrad	2010-10-05		 Lauren Conrad's second L.A. Candy book opens with the red carpet premiere of season two of the red-hot reality show starring Jane Roberts. But everything isn't as hunky dory as Jane's smiles make it look for the photographers. After Madison's nasty betrayal of her last season, Jane has decided that sticking by her true friends is key. Not dating is equally as important, because boys lead to trouble with a capital T. Of course, when a couple of boys who Jane has history with show up, she conveniently forgets all about her big plans. At the same time, her best friend Scarlett is having boy troubles of her own, namely with her very jealous boyfriend, Liam.
27565408	/m/0c41f2h	The Borrowers Afield	Mary Norton	1955	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 While looking at a cottage with her friend Mrs. May, Kate discovers that the present tenant, Tom Goodenough, knew Arrietty Clock, a tiny "Borrower" that Mrs. May's brother claimed to have met. He tells her what happened to Arrietty and her parents after they were driven from their original home in an old, English house. Homeless, they are forced to live outside. When they discover that the relatives they had hoped to stay with are nowhere to be found, they take up residence in an old boot. Arrietty meets a mysterious, wild Borrower named Spiller who assists them by bringing them meat and saves Arrietty's life from a dog. Although nearly everything outside - cows, moths, field mice, cold weather - is a life-threatening danger for the tiny Borrowers, they learn how to survive in the wild. One night the boot's owner, a gypsy named Mild Eye, discovers his lost property and brings them back to his caravan. With the help of the human boy Tom Goodenough, Spiller rescues them and leads them on to the their next home, the cottage that Tom lives in. There the Clocks find their long-lost relatives and Arrietty finds a friend in Tom.
27570567	/m/0c414b8	Pictures from the Water Trade	John David Morley	1985	{"/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Told from the perspective of an authorial alias called ‘Boon’ (‘Bun-san’ to the Japanese), the book describes a series of initiations into Japanese language, family relations, love rites, shodo and the mizu-shobai itself — the ‘water trade’ — a seedy night-world of cabarets, bars and brothels.
27572635	/m/0c3_ssy	The Savage Coast				 This scenario involves wilderness adventures along the Orcs Head Peninsula on the Savage Coast. In the safe, seaside town of Slagovich, the player characters set anchor and stay at the inn, where they hear stories of Orcs Head Peninsula. Lost cities full of hidden treasures, terrible beasts and cannibals roaming the coast, gold ore piling up at the mouths of rivers, and a secretive religious sect. What would motivate the adventurers to enter the uncharted jungles of the Savage Coast—curiosity, a desire to help others, or simple greed?
27581449	/m/0c3vmrj	Pappa polis			{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 This book is about an 11-year-old boy called Julian whose father is police. The latter is shot by a bike gang, but survives. But the criminals are going free and the fear remains. As Julian begins to investigate on his own he meets a boy from the bike gang and they become friends... sv:Pappa polis
27582187	/m/0c422k5	Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day	Robert Muchamore		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 After failing to escape France, Paul and Rosie reunite with Marc and Henderson. With the help of PT Bivott, an American boy in trouble with the law, they help British bombers target ports in France that will be used to invade Britain in Operation Sealion.
27590115	/m/0c414hm	In the Labyrinth	John David Morley		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Based on months of taped conversation with its real-life protagonist, In the Labyrinth is the fictionalized memoir of Hungarian-born, German businessman Josef Pallehner who, due to bureaucratic inertia and his own guilty conscience, gets lost for six years in a maze of eastern Czechoslovakian prisons in the wake of the Second World War.
27590498	/m/0c3v51v	The Case of Thomas N.	John David Morley	1987	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 “Found by a police officer on a bench by the river” in an unnamed European city, a 16 year-old amnesiac boy is given the name ‘Thomas N.’ by state officials (‘N.’ being a bureaucratic abbreviation of ‘Name Unknown’), before being diagosed as suffering from a “fear of anything that objectively demonstrated his existence”. Explicitly referencing the mysterious 19th century case of Kaspar Hauser, the novel follows Thomas N.'s progress from psychiatric clinic to orphanage to an ostensibly normal existence living in a boarding-house and working in a nearby hotel. But soon he is embroiled in the investigation of an especially vicious and brutal murder, charged with a crime of which he has no memory of committing.
27591884	/m/0c3wdmt	The Feast of Fools	John David Morley	1994	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 On the day of her wedding to the artist Brum, Stephanie elopes with the undertaker Max at the autumn equinox. Thus begins an epic novel encompassing astrology, astronomy, antiquarian glossaries, mortuary science, fencing guilds, love, sex and Commedia Dell’Arte, spanning the dream-lives of a community of modern day characters during the medieval carnival season of Fasching.
27592357	/m/0c420rv	The Anatomy Lesson	John David Morley	1995	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 In Amsterdam, the streetwise, drug-addled, Dutch-American teenager Kiddo lives in the shadow of his hero-worshipped older brother, Morton, a brilliant science student who, having completed his physics and engineering Ph.D., is to take up a fellowship at M.I.T.. But, after Morton’s premature death from a virulent strain of cancer, Kiddo begins to uncover a shadow-side to his brother’s existence, even as he wrestles with the anguished question of Morton’s dying wish: that he attend the autopsy in which his own brother’s corpse will be dissected.
27592792	/m/0c3wvx2	Destiny, or The Attraction of Affinities	John David Morley	1996	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Following in his father Magnus's footsteps, Jason Gould travels to Germany in 1961 but, unlike Magnus, Jason never returns to England, remaining to witness the construction of the Berlin Wall and the division of the country, meanwhile falling in love with the daughter of a woman whom his own father had once hoped to marry. Conceived alongside the unification of Germany in 1990, the novel confronts haunting questions about the collective guilt of the Holocaust, the oppressive ideological constraints of life in the GDR and the radical terrorism of the Red Army Faction. The narrative explicitly evokes Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas and Caspar David Friedrich’s Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, while tracing the evolution of a cultural identity inescapably overshadowed by a political history of perennial trauma.
27593160	/m/0c3v35q	Jonah Hex: No Way Back				 After collecting a bounty, Jonah Hex takes up in a saloon for the night while acquiring the services of prostitutes. Two lawmen arrive at the saloon and give a prostitute a wanted poster to deliver to Hex showing that his mother, Virginia "Ginny" Dazzleby, is wanted for murder. In a flashback, it revealed that Hex has not seen his mother since childhood when she ran off and left Hex with his abusive father. Two days later, Hex's horse is shot out from under him by two bandits and he briefly lies on the ground playing dead before shooting both bandits. Against Hex's initial wishes, the bandits' dog, which Hex calls Dag, decides to accompany Hex. Hex arrives at saloon to inquire about his mother and shoots a man who pesters him about his gunsmanship. The bartender directs Hex to the tent town located behind the town proper, where Hex encounters three men stealing diseased blankets to trade to Indians who settled on land they purchased. When the men try to rob Hex, he shoots one in the arm and dodges gunfire from the other two so that they shoot each other. A small boy who overheard Hex questioning the men about his mother steps forward saying she was kidnapped by a group of Mexicans heading south. While on their trail in Arizona, Hex comes across a Navajo village razed by the Mexicans so they could pass off the Navajo scalps as Apache and sell them. Hex catches up with the Mexicans in a saloon and kills them all. He finds his mother upstairs dying of tuberculosis. Hex's mother mistakes him for the devil come to claim her soul. Before dying, Hex's mother reveals that the Mexicans that captured her were working for El Papagayo and that she had another son by Dazzleby named Joshua. A woman at the bar named Edna reveals that Hex's mother was taken as bait for Hex. Hex travels to Heaven's Gate, Colorado to deliver his mother's corpse to his half-brother and is informed upon arrival that Joshua is both the preacher and sheriff of the town and that the town has no saloon or whorehouse. Hex initially wants to leave right after delivering the body, but Joshua convinces him to stay for the funeral and to give up his guns while in town. Meanwhile, El Papagayo shows up at the saloon where Hex killed his men. He ties up and severely beats the bartender, his daughter and Edna and shoots Edna after she bites his hand. He then reveals that Hex's father destroyed his village when he was a child and he swore revenge on Hex's family. Back in Heaven's Gate, Joshua tries to make peace with the differences between him and his half-brother, but Hex makes good on his promise to ride out after the funeral. However, shortly after leaving town, Hex spies El Papagayo with around fifty men riding towards the town. Hex returns to town and suggests that they run, but the townspeople decide to say and fight. The next day El Papagayo men ride into town and find Hex's dog. El Papagayo orders one of his men to shoot it to prove his aim. They find the town otherwise deserted. The men arrive at the hot spring outside Heaven's Gate and find the women of the town bathing in it. One of them claims that the town is populated only by women. When El Papagayo's men jump into the water, the townsmen spring out of the water armed with various weapons. The townsmen win the initial skirmish, but Papagayo is not among the dead. Papagayo mows down some men with a Gatling gun and promises to spare the town if they turn Hex over. The townsmen over power Hex and attempt to hand him over, but when Papagayo hears Joshua refer to Hex as his brother, he shoots him, only hitting his arm. Hex breaks free, and Papagayo shoots him in the shoulder before Hex knocks the gun out of his hand. Papagayo reveals a knife hidden in his pants leg and stabs Hex through the arm. The fight continues until Hex pinned Papagayo and slits his throat with the knife still in his arm. Seeing their leader dead, El Papgayo's men retreat. The story cuts to months later when Hex leaves Heaven's Gate after staying with his brother to heal. On his way out, Hex stops by his mother's grave, with Dag buried next to her, and tells her he doesn't blame her for leaving.
27594746	/m/0c419th	Journey to the End of the Whale	John David Morley	2005	{"/m/04z2hx": "Travel literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Swiss orphan, insurance agent and amateur marine biologist Daniel Serraz free-floats with life’s currents until a traumatic midlife episode sends him on a journey of discovery to the remote east Indonesian island of Lefó. There, he will uncover the secret of his origins, but not before risking everything hunting with the islanders, the last torchbearers of an ancient tradition by which whales are bested by men in teak boats, harpooned by hand on the open sea.
27595223	/m/0c40bdm	Passage	John David Morley	2007	{"/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Abducted by conquistadors in the year 1500, the merchant’s ward Pablito (alias White Water Bird, alias Paul Zarraté, alias Paul Straight, alias “the World’s Greatest Living Wonder”) passes through five books and five ages of man, as he travels from the primordial forests of the Amazon to the Incan empire of Tahuantin-Suyu, to the slave-plantations of colonial Pernambuco, via antebellum New Orleans, to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, before witnessing the birth of Hollywood and the explosion of an atomic bomb.
27595653	/m/0c41ptb	The Book of Opposites	John David Morley	2007	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Beginning with a Mercedes 600 plunging off the Glienicker Bridge between the former borders of East and West, The Book of Opposites is a tale of love, death, precognition, paradox, yoga and quantum mechanics.
27595775	/m/0c3w91t	Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang	Chelsea Handler	2010-03	{"/m/01ng1k": "Creative nonfiction"}	 The book consists of humorous essays written by Chelsea about her various life experiences. The essays are often blatantly vulgar, much like the ones in Handler's previous two published books. The vulgarity of the stories have in some cases become a point of controversy among parts of the public, however, her fans argue that her straight-forwardness and brutal honesty contribute to the book's appeal.
27599410	/m/0c3y51p	East of the Mountains	David Guterson	1999		 Dr. Ben Givens is a 73 year old retired Cardiothoracic surgeon and a widower, recently diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Still haunted by his experiences as a soldier in the war, and in mourning for Rachel, his late wife of some 50 years, Dr. Givens's current life consists primarily of his family (a daughter and grandson), and occasional hunting trips. Although he hunted as a boy with his father and brother, he abandoned it after the war, only taking it up again upon Rachel's death (he still uses his Father's old Winchester rifle). Aware that he is nearing the end of his life, he decides to set off from his home in Seattle for one last hunting trip, along with his two Brittany hunting dogs, Tristan and Rex, heading east across the mountains of Washington State back towards the orchard areas where he was born. His family does not, however, know of his cancer, and his intention during the trip is to commit suicide, shooting himself with his Father's gun, staging it to look like an unfortunate accident which occurred whilst he was climbing over a fence; thus saving both himself and his family from the pain of a long, drawn-out death from cancer. En route, however, Dr. Givens accidentally crashes his car, and although his only real injury is a swollen black eye, he is left without his planned mode of transportation. Deciding to continue with his trip, he is forced to make his way east by alternative means. Through a combination of hitchhiking, a long walk through the desert, a lift bought from a lorry driver, a Greyhound bus, and a rental car, he finally approaches his destination; but will the combined effect of the people he has met, the experiences he has undergone, the gains he has made, and the losses he has sustained during this journey be enough to make him reject his climactic plan?
27599741	/m/0c3_kxx	Richard: A Novel	Ben Myers			 Richard comprises two narratives. One is from Richey's first-person point-of-view, beginning with his departure from his London Hotel on 1 February 1995, and covering his thoughts, movements and encounters from this point onwards. The second narrative strand is a second-person point-of-view, running through Richey's childhood, school, university, career with the Manic Street Preachers, and physical/emotional breakdown. This second narrative strand eventually reaches the point at which the first narrative strand began, converging both narratives.
27601102	/m/0c3y6p9	Boneshaker	Cherie Priest	2009	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Early in the American Civil War, rumors of gold in the Klondike have brought would-be prospectors to North America's Pacific Northwest. Anxious Russian investors commission American inventor Leviticus Blue to create a machine which can mine through the ice of Russian-owned Alaska. Blue's "Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine" (or "Boneshaker" for short, named after boneshaker bicycles of the era), instead destroys several blocks of downtown Seattle and releases a subterranean vein of "blight gas" that kills anyone who breaths it and turns some of the corpses into rotters (non-supernatural zombies). A wall is erected to contain the gas within the affected part of the city. Leviticus Blue is nowhere to be found. Sixteen years later, Leviticus's wife and son, Briar and Zeke (Ezekiel) Wilkes, live in the impoverished outskirts of the former metropolis. Life is difficult, but Briar manages to support herself and Zeke by working a physically demanding blue collar job. However, one day, Zeke enters the toxic city in search of evidence proving his father is innocent of the intentional destruction. Briar intends on following, but the drainage hole collapses in an earthquake. She then hitches a ride over the wall by a captain of an airship, the unnaturally tall Captain Cly. Meanwhile Zeke meets Rudy, a man who claims to be a highly decorated lieutenant. Rudy tells Zeke that he can lead him to his parent's former house. The pair of them encounter an Native American woman who lightly wounds Rudy, but they manage to elude her. Briar is attacked by rotters, which causes her to flee to the roof of a building, where she is rescued by Jeremiah Swakhammer and his Doozy Dazer. He takes her to a bar named in honor of her deceased father to meet people including the barkeeper, Lucy O'Gunning. Once again, rotters attack the bar, forcing the occupants to retreat. It is later revealed that a man named Minnericht caused the rotter attack. Lucy takes Briar to see Minnericht, believed by some to be Leviticus Blue. Briar, however, doubts this. Unbeknownst to her, Minnericht has taken Zeke hostage. A battle breaks out between Minnericht's men and Swakhammer, Lucy, and the Indian princess. This battle attracts the rotters, complicating Briar's efforts to reunite with her son and exit the dangerous area of Seattle. Swakhammer is found unconscious and in critical condition by Briar. She tries to make Minnericht help him, leading to a heated argument in which Briar renounces that he is Leviticus, and mocks him. Unbeknownst to Minnericht, the Indian Princess is behind him, and while Briar distracts him she comes, slits his throat, and kills him. Everyone reunites and escapes to the surface. Eventually Briar leads Zeke to her and Leviticus' old home and tells Zeke that she killed Leviticus Blue years ago, as he tried to escape Seattle with his Boneshaker. Briar shows her son Blue's mummified body, still inside Boneshaker. Zeke claims he doesn't hold any grudge against his mother for killing her husband, and they embrace, before leaving to loot what is left of the former Blue residence.
27603139	/m/09xjkb	Barn Burner				 In 1933 while running from a bad situation at home and suspected of having set fire to a barn, 14-year-old Ross finds haven with a destitute but loving family which helps him make an important decision. After a family disagreement, Ross Cooper leaves home with only a knapsack and the clothes on his back. He hopes to find work, but job prospects in the 1930s are dim, especially for someone as young and inexperienced as Ross. His troubles worsen after he is spotted fleeing a burning barn in a Ohio town where a number of barns have gone up in flames. Though a kind but destitute family takes Ross in, he yearns to hit the road again, especially when another barn is set afire and he falls under suspicion. But stronger than his wish to leave is his hope to discover the true identity of the barn burner and clear his name. This moving and fast-paced story captures the spirit of determination and hope boys like Ross needed to survive during the Great Depression.
27608409	/m/0c3z3m3	I Am Not a Serial Killer	Dan Wells			 The book follows 15-year-old John Wayne Cleaver, a diagnosed sociopath who lives above a morgue owned by his mother. He fears that he is "fated" to become a serial killer due to being plagued by constant homicidal urges, and so lives by a set of rules designed to keep his violent impulses in check. His careful regime of self-denial is threatened when he becomes ensnared in a serial killer case in which he senses a connection with the killer.`
27608681	/m/0c40j2l	The Bronze Horseman	Paullina Simons		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book begins on 22 June 1941, the day Russia enters the Second World War after Operation Barbarossa. Tatiana Metanova, nearly seventeen, meets the handsome and mysterious Red Army officer Alexander Belov. The relationship between Tatiana and Alexander develops against the backdrop of the Siege of Leningrad and in the face of many difficulties.
27615438	/m/0c3zg4m	Death Cloud	Andy Lane	2010-06-04	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Sherlock Holmes is sent to live with his unknown aunt and uncle in Holmes Manor in Hampshire over his school holidays when his father is unexpectedly sent overseas with the British Army. He cannot go home as his mother is unwell, and cannot go to London as his older brother Mycroft is busy working for the government. Wandering around the estate and the surrounding countryside he soon befriends a boy his own age named Matty Arnatt (who has witnessed an unusual death involving a cloud of death). After a few days of holidays Sherlock discovers that his brother Mycroft has hired him an unusual American tutor named Amyus Crowe. During their first lesson together Sherlock finds a dead body on the Holmes' estate and witnesses the same death cloud surrounding the body that Matty had previously seen. He detects a yellow powdery substance around the body and takes a sample of it. With Matty's help he tracks down a warehouse which has links to one of the deceased, and almost dies in the warehouse when the villains set it alight. Holmes escapes the building, and determines that he must travel to Guildford and locate an expert in exotic diseases who might help identify the yellow substance. He, therefore, sets out with Matty on his barge to Guildford, and although they are attacked along the way by the villains, they nevertheless make it to his destination and discovers that the yellow substance is bee pollen. On returning home he visits his tutor's home, where he meets Crowe's daughter Virginia. A few days later Sherlock is lured to a fair, where he is forced to participate in a boxing match, from which he is kidnapped and interrogated by the unseen Baron Maupertuis until he is rescued by Matty, and the pair go to his tutor's home. Knowing that the Baron has left his headquarters, Sherlock, Matty, Crowe and Virginia determine to follow and locate the Baron. They discover that the Baron is shipping a weapon from a London wharf, and after a series of chases, Sherlock and Virginia are kidnapped to France by the Baron, and further interrogated. The pair escape and meet up with Crowe and Matty and set out to stop the Baron from trying to destroy the British Army.
27618727	/m/0c3xl04	Alice Next Door			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story revolves around an Irish twelve-year-old girl called Megan Sheehan, whose best friend, Alice O'Rourke, has just moved away from Limerick to Dublin with her younger brother Jamie and her domineering mother. Megan enters sixth class on her own and finds it hard to cope with no friends. Although Megan can e-mail Alice and call her every Saturday, she has difficulties dealing with her exasperating mother and arch-enemy Melissa on her own. Megan is humiliated when her stingy, non-consumerist mother Sheila Sheehan orders her to petition for a park to be kept. To make up for this, Sheila takes Megan to Dublin for five and a half hours, where she can spend the day with Alice. At the end of this day, Alice tells Megan she has a plan to move herself back to Limerick, and promises to tell Megan the next time she sees her. Once the Hallowe'en holidays come around, Alice travels down to Limerick for three days to stay with her father, Megan's next-door neighbour. Here Alice reveals her plan. She will stay in Megan's house for the whole week without any parents knowing - Alice's father thinking she is in Dublin, Alice's mother thinking she is with Mr O'Rourke. Alice stays in Megan's bedroom the whole week, telling her mother that she is too sick to come home on the train. Megan manages to stash food away for her, like Pot Noodles, but over the week Alice gets more and more irritated and Megan realises how hard it is for her to have divorced parents. Alice's mother comes down to Limerick when she discovers her daughter is not at Mr O'Rourke's house. She enters the Sheehan home with her ex-husband, find Alice and takes her back to Dublin. Megan is extremely upset. In the end they make it work. Alice comes down for the holidays and they still stay best friends forever.
27621401	/m/0c3_96c	The L-Shaped Room	Lynne Reid Banks		{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The L-Shaped Room is set in the late 1950s and follows a young woman, Jane Graham, who arrives alone at a run-down boarding house in London after being turned out of her comfortable middle class home by her shocked father after telling him she is pregnant. The L-Shaped room is the dingy room at the top of the boarding house that Jane retreats to, to wallow in her miseries. Jane narrates the story as we follow her through her pregnancy and her encounters with the other residents of the boarding house, all misfits and outsiders. Jane got pregnant through a bungled sexual encounter losing her virginity to her ex-boyfriend. Her decision to live by herself and have the baby causes her to be seen as little better than the prostitutes who live in the basement of the boarding house.
27639548	/m/0c3wrz4	People Like Us		2007-08-30	{"/m/06bvp": "Religion"}	 The text highlights the egocentricism and the "endless misunderstanding and mutual, cross civilisational ignorance" that - according to the author - pervade contemporary Islam-related attitudes and discourse. In the process it discusses issues such as the hijab, jihad, fundamentalism, radicalism, and secularism.
27642068	/m/0c3zj93	Blood Oath		2010-05-18	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 "Blood Oath" opens with an Army Ranger task force in Kosovo, conducting surveillance on a group of Serbians as night falls. The Rangers watch as a mysterious figure attempts to bargain with the Serbs, trading a bag of cash for a mysterious case with US Army markings. However the deal goes bad and the Serbs attack the figure. As the fight progresses, one of the soldiers sees the fight between the figure and a Serb up close, and realizes what he is seeing: a werewolf and a vampire, in a fight to the death. Twenty hours later, Griff is escorting Zach Barrows to the Smithsonian Institution. There, Zach meets the mysterious figure: Nathaniel Cade, a vampire bound by a blood oath to serve the President of the United States. Agent Griff is retiring, and brings in Zach to take over after Zach is found fooling around with the president's daughter. Through various flash-backs, we find out about Cade's past: as a young man, he served on a whale hunting vessel in 1867. His ship was attacked by a vampire, killing all on board but leaving Cade, who turned to a vampire himself. He was captured and sentenced to death, but spared by President Andrew Johnson, who in turn had him bound by voodoo to the Office of the President. As Zach begins his first day, he and Cade are dispatched to the Port of Baltimore. ICE agents have found a shipping container holding a horrible discovery: various body parts, all hanging on hooks in a grim meat locker. After interrogating the driver, Cade tells Zach that they are on their way to find Johann Konrad Dippel, the real-life Dr. Frankenstein. Konrad is an alchemist from Germany, and is currently over 350 years old, due to having discovered the Elixir of Life. His Elixir can bring dead tissue to life, and make it so strong just one of his creations killed dozens of people before being stopped. Konrad had been arrested in Nigeria by Cade in 1970; however, Konrad performs a service to the United States in 1981 and as a result is set free, as long as he does not practice his evil medicine again. Cade and Zach confront Konrad, who denies any involvement with the dead body parts. However, after Cade and Zach leave, Konrad moves to a secret lab and proceeds to demonstrate that he has not given up his diabolical work at all. Cade leaves Zach to tail Konrad while he finds an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to attend. At the A.A. meetings, Cade is able to draw strength from the humans, as they all struggle with desire for the drink, even if they have different thirsts. As Cade leaves, he is stopped by Tania, a female vampire he failed to help in the past. While neither will admit it, their shared history gives them both the closest thing to feelings for each other that vampires can feel. As Zach is tailing Konrad, he is followed by a mysterious black car. With Cade's assistance, they ambush the black car and find Helen Holt, a former CIA agent who now works for a dark organization referred to as Shadow Company. The Shadow Company began during the Cold War, and has since delved into darkness so deep that the conspiracy theories about President John F. Kennedy and Roswell are nothing compared to the truth of what they truly do. As Cade and Zach dig deeper and deeper into the truth behind the body parts and their connection to Konrad, they find back-stabbing and double-crosses waiting for them at every turn, with their search finally ending in a terrifying showdown with the Other Side that takes place in the heart of the nation's capital.
27646672	/m/0c3vw83	Gusher of Lies	Robert Bryce	2008-03-04		 In 2008 the USA imported 60 per cent of its oil. Bryce argues that, given the size of its energy needs, the USA needs to continue importing oil. He also favors increasing domestic production of oil and gas. He acknowledges that energy independence has appeal as a slogan, but says that the reality is energy interdependence. As in his later book Power Hungry he makes a case that renewable sources such as wind power and solar energy cannot meet the United States' (growing) energy requirements. Bryce dismisses ethanol fuel as having a cost that far outweighs the benefits. However, he believes that as world prices rise in the longer term, it will be economic to move to non-fossil sources.
27651659	/m/0c40944	Chords of Strength: A Memoir of Soul, Song, and the Power of Perseverance		2010-06-01	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 The memoir starts with Archuleta describing his childhood in Florida with his family and eventually moving to Utah. He introduced his readers to his family members, including how his mother, Lupe, was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and enjoyed dancing and singing with her sisters when she was younger. Archuleta reveals that music has been a huge influence in his family for generations and that his father, Jeff, is a jazz trumpet player and that he has been a musical influence on him because he taught him the concepts of improvisation. Archuleta also described the impact the musical Les Misérables had on him and also the influence of the first season of American Idol. He described his experiences in the Utah Talent Show, Jenny Jones' Show, and Star Search, for which he won the title of Junior Vocal Champion. The vocal cord paralysis Archuleta suffered at a young age was described in detail, including how he felt and what the experience has done for him and taught him. He then continues to describe his decisions and various events leading up to his audition and participation on the seventh season of American Idol. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Archuleta writes about how his faith encouraged him, influenced him, kept him grounded and helped him stay optimistic throughout his challenges. Archuleta showed love for his fans by writing how much he appreciates their support and provided his top 3 fan encounters. Inspiring others to also follow their dreams and make a difference, Archuleta concludes his memoir with "And remember, even when you can't sing, you can always plant a tree".
27658768	/m/0c3w9lh	Worth Dying For	Lee Child	2010	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 On his way to Virginia to meet Susan, the CO of the 110th MP from 61 Hours, Jack Reacher stops at the Apollo Inn, a fading motel in rural Nebraska. In the motel's bar he overhears a drunken doctor refuse to treat a woman's nosebleed which won't stop. The woman, Eleanor Duncan, is married to Seth Duncan, the scion of the Duncan clan, which holds that part of Nebraska in its iron grip, keeping the population in docile silence. Reacher suspects domestic abuse, and coerces the doctor into doing the right thing. Reacher's altruism sees him become embroiled in the Duncans' family business, and the unsolved disappearance of Margaret Coe, a child from twenty-five years earlier.
27677285	/m/0c418ps	The Salt Eaters	Toni Cade Bambara	1980		 The novel opens on Minnie Ransom, the "fabled healer of the district", performing a healing on Velma Henry who has attempted suicide by slitting her wrists and sticking her head into a gas oven. Velma, a community activist who has worked in various leftist movements, has suffered a nervous breakdown due to the increasing factionalism in the activist community of Claybourne as well as her failing marriage to Obie, another activist, and the pressures of her job as a computer programmer at Transchemical, a chemical plant in the neighboring town. Minnie, an unmarried eccentric, calls on her spiritual guide, a "haint" she called Old Wife, to guide her through the healing as she feels Velma is resisting her efforts. (Old Wife was the elderly woman who helped Minnie deal with the emotional breakdown she experienced after she ran away from the bible college that her well-to-do parents sent her to and headed to New York City.) Many chapters of the book feature long internal dialogues between Minnie and Old Wife, with the two of them having spirited debates about the "loas" that Old Wife refuses to acknowledge. The healing, which is conducted in the infirmary that Velma helped to establish to serve the community is witnessed by several visitors, most of whom have some sort of connection to Velma. The entirety of the novel's action revolves around the healing, with the planning of the upcoming Spring Festival serving as backdrop. The point-of-view of the novel shifts numerous times between characters. "At once spiritual, apocalyptic, mysterious, cacophonic, and destabilizing, The Salt Eaters offers a unifying epiphany of creation and community."
27681729	/m/02q__mg	The New Confessions	William Boyd	1987	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel's protagonist, John James Todd, experiences a lonely childhood growing up with a father who is distant and cold towards him and a brother, Thompson Todd, who dislikes him intensely. His only solace is Oonagh, his nanny, who, although illiterate, has a tough, sharp mind and acts as a kind of surrogate mother. His father, Innes McNeil Todd, is a senior consultant at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and University Professor. John James's school years pass uneventfully until he decides to run away to visit his mother's sister, Faye, living in the south of England - a woman for whom he has developed a schoolboy crush as a consequence of their correspondence following her husband's death. During his stay, John James exposes himself whilst they are having a picnic whilst punting in Oxford and his aunt slaps him. Feeling disgraced, he decides to enlist in the army and ends up on the Western Front. Todd's war starts of fairly peacefully because he is stationed at Nieuport-les-Bains in Belgium at the extreme end of the Front. His regiment - the 13th (Public School) service battalion of the Duke of Clarence's Own South Oxfordshire Light Infantry is made up of public schoolboys, none of whom Todd particularly likes apart from Leo Druce. Todd takes part in the attack and his company is almost entirely wiped out, with over fifty percent casualties. On August 22, 1917 Todd is involved in a second attack - one of the Bantams tries to kill him (after a previous run in) but mistakenly kills Todd's Lieutenant. Todd is finally relieved from his own personal nightmare by Donald Verulam, a friend of his father's, who enlists him into the WOCC (War Office Cinema Committee). As a WOCC cameraman, John James spends his time filming subjects that are worthy of propaganda value and is delighted when his first four reels of film of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry are shown to the KOYLI colonel and his officers in their battalion reserve billets. Whilst filming other regiments, Todd decides to make his own film of the true horrors of fighting but this is rejected by the censors for being unpatriotic and he is almost returned to the front line (unlike his rival, Harold Faithfull, who is much lauded for his artificially-shot 50 minute film, The Battle of Messines. Todd ends up imprisoned in solitary confinement in Weilberg, Germany and sinks into a profound depression until he befriends a German guard, Karl-Heinz, who, in return for kisses, smuggles him torn out pages of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Les Confessions. Finishing it over a seven-week period, he weeps because he is so profoundly affected. Eventually, his story is confirmed and he is transferred to an officers' camp in Mainz for five months until the war's end. The story moves forward to July, 1922 and Todd is now working for Superb-Imperial Films in Islington, London. Todd starts filming in and around Edinburgh, joined by his old friend Leo Druce as producer, whom he meets again at an old regimental reunion and who is down on his luck. The film is a commercial success but his employer goes bankrupt. However, Todd receives a postcard from Karl-Heinz saying that he is making lots of films and plays in Berlin. He joins him, only to find that Karl-Heinz is just a bit-part extra, so he becomes the doorman at The Hotel Windsor and moves in with Karl-Heinz. Karl-Heinz starts to enjoy more success whilst Todd remains in a rut, and one day presents Todd with a copy of Rousseau's Julie which the latter hates but turns into a film script. Liking it, Karl-Heinz introduces Todd to Duric Lodokian and his son, Aram - the Armenian owners of Realismus films - and they offer him a contract. Todd's propects are now looking up and he is joined by Sonia and Vincent, their son, at his apartment at 129b on Rudolf Platz. All goes well until Todd encounters Doon Bogan, an American film star, who Karl-Heinz suggests play the lead role of Julie. After their first meeting, Todd knows he is in love with Doon. However, whilst living with Sonia and his increasing family, he is able to keep his emotions in check. However, after one particularly successful scene while filming Julie, John James makes his feelings known to her only to receive a knee in his groin. John James bemoans his position to Karl-Heinz and he is only restored when he decides to make a film version of The Confessions. Now he is happier living at home and becomes very attached to his second son, Hereford, who is an engaging affectionate baby. He also rents a small wooden villa and has an affair with a German actress, Monika Alt. Doric Lodokian dies but extracts a promise from his son that Realismus will undertake the three films, each three hours long, of The Confessions. The Confessions: Part I starts to be filmed and requires a vast machine to set it in motion. Doon and John James finally make love and, on their return to Berlin, they carry on the affair intermittently until they are discovered by Sonia's private detective. Sonia announces she is divorcing him and returning to London with the children. Doon is offered a role by her ex-husband Mavrocordato in a new film. Todd's film is at last completed but Aram arrives (now calling himself Eddie Simmonette) and thinks they are too late owing to the introduction of sound. Doon announces she is moving to Paris - disliking Germany because of its increasing Nazification - and Realismus films comes close to bankruptcy as a result of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. The Confessions: Part I is shown in the enormous Gloria-Plast cinema on the Kurfurstendamm, accompanied by a 60-man orchestra - but the great auditorium is half empty for the gala and closes after a week. Eddie manages to scrape up enough money for The Confessions: Part 2 and filming starts at Neuchatel in January, 1934. However, it is beset by misfortunes and Eddie finally arrives to say that the studios have been shut down and all his property impounded after his being declared a 'non-Alien'. He has a cold, comfortless meeting with Sonia and the children in a large house near Parsons Green, and is forced to pay support by Mr Devize, her solicitor. Todd returns to Edinburgh and has to go through the ritual of being caught in flagrante committing adultery so Sonia can divorce him. Todd is taken on by Courtney Young, the owner of Court Films, and is joined there once more by Leo Druce as his producer. Young is persuaded to finance The Confessions and pays Todd to work on the script of Part II, but is then asked by his boss to direct a film about King Alfred. Following a meeting with Druce, he decides to turn it down, only to find out the next day that Druce has been made its director and they have a furious falling out. John James is sacked by Court Films and, with nowhere else to go, returns to Scotland. After failing to raise finance for The Confessions: Part II, he relocates to Los Angeles but his position worsens when he becomes stuck without a visa in Tijuana, Mexico. Luckily, he meets a local newspaper proprietor and becomes a photographer for the Tijuana, Tecate, Rumorosa and Mexicali Clarions. Between 1940 and 1943 Todd's fortunes look up. He is reunited with Eddie Simmonette in LA and he directs eleven westerns, all under one hour long. He also re-encounters Mavrocordato, only to learn that Doon left him in France to return to the United States. He asks Ramon to try and track down her whereabouts and learns that she is living in Montezuma, Arizona. After finishing his film, The Equaliser, he visits her, only to find an older, more cynical chain-smoking Doon who is completely different to the young woman he knew twenty years earlier. Determined to take a role in the war, he is sent by Ramon as a war correspondent to follow General Patch's 7th Army invasion of France's southern coastline. John James returns to Berlin to look for Karl-Heinz and eventually manages to be re-united with Eugen P. Eugen who eventually tracks down Karl-Heinz in a half-demolished church, suffering from stomach disorders. After flying to LA, they start filming Father of Liberty for Lone Star Films. However, everything changes when Eddie asks to meet him secretly and they discuss the Hollywood Ten and John James' listing in Red Connections as a communist. Taking advice from Eddie's lawyer, he appears before the Brayfield subcommittee of HUAC and pleads the Fifth Amendment. From this point on, he is laid off by Eddie and blacklisted by all the major studios. Eventually, he is named in executive session by Monika Alt and Ernest Cooper as a member of the revolutionary communist cell in Berlin in the Twenties. John James gives a confident performance in front of the cameras and Doon perjures herself in order to save his skin. From their detailed knowledge, Todd knows he has been set up and, speaking to one of his students, a Japanese businessman, he hires a Japanese private dick to find out who - it turns out to be Monroe Smee, a nobody whom Todd met when he first came to the U.S.A. and who he inadvertently offended by criticising his tacky scripts. Todd, after following Smee to the Red Connections office in West Hollywood, decides to confront his persecutor at his home but is thrown out of the house. Finally, fear of the Red Threat wains and Todd once more takes up film directing. Karl-Heinz suffers from ill-health and is found dead in the Hotel Cythera where he has always lived. Retiring to the convict shack at Big Sur which he and KH rented whilst filming, Todd decides to have his private detective, O'Hara, get Smee of his back after he sees him observing him swimming. O'Hara misunderstands his instructions and kills Smee to order for a one thousand dollar fee and, together, they dump the body over the edge off the cliff by the ocean. The novel finally comes to a close with John James finishing his reminisences at the Villa Luxe, a house he has been renting on a Mediterranean island for the past nine years from Eddie, after fleeing the US owing to his fear of being connected with Smee's death.
27689188	/m/0bv98tp	The Double Comfort Safari Club	Alexander McCall Smith	2010	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are called to a safari lodge in Botswana's Okavango Delta to carry out a delicate mission on behalf of a former guest. The Okavango makes Precious appreciate once again the beauty of her homeland: it is a paradise of teeming wildlife, majestic grasslands and sparkling water. However, it is also home to rival safari operators, fearsome crocodiles and disgruntled hippopotamuses. What's more, Mma Makutsi still has not set a date for her wedding to Phuti Radiphuti and is feeling rather tetchy herself, not least because of Phuti's possessive aunt. But Precious knows that with a little patience, just as the wide river will gently make its way round any obstacle, so will everything work out for the best in the end ...
27694972	/m/0c3w0pg	Purity in Death	Nora Roberts	2002-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Lt. Eve Dallas and her assistant, Delia Peabody, are called in by Officer Troy Trueheart after he has shot and killed a suspect named Louie Cogburn. The man, a known but unconvicted, normally low-profile dealer in "illegals" (illegal drugs) to children, had suddenly turned homicidally insane and killed a neighbor in his apartment building; he was attacking the neighbor's wife when Trueheart enters the scene. Trueheart is forced to stun Cogburn when he attacks the officer; however, despite Trueheart's weapon being locked on a normal stun setting, Cogburn dies instantly. On examining the scene, Eve finds the attacker's computer bears a message on its screen: "Absolute Purity Achieved." She sends the computer to NYPSD's Electronics Detection Division for examination. The attacker's autopsy, meanwhile, shows an unusual extreme swelling of the brain tissue, enough to induce irreversible dementia and violence. Some time later, the EDD investigator working on Cogburn's computer turns violently enraged, injures Ian McNab, and then dies of the same intense brain swelling while holding Captain Feeney hostage. The next day, another body is found, that of Chadwick Fitzhugh, an unconvicted pedophile, with the same swelling and evidence of the same uncontrollable violence, and with the same message on his computer terminal. Following this, a text message is sent to reporter Nadine Furst from a group calling themselves the "Purity Seekers," claiming responsibility for the deaths of Cogburn and Fitzhugh, and promising more "executions" of criminals that the law has not been able to touch, by means of a unique computer virus. It becomes Eve's job, with the help of Roarke and her team, to stop the Purity Seekers before more are killed by them, as well as more deaths of uninvolved individuals.
27705264	/m/0c3yzwc	The Highest Tide				 Miles O'Malley is a 13-year-old boy from Skookumchuck Bay in southern Washington in love with his 18-year-old babysitter, Angie Stegner, daughter of the local judge and his neighbor. His parents are unhappy and want a divorce, which has consequences for Miles. The only person who believes in Miles is the local professor, who cares a lot for the boy and is intrigued by his knowledge of Puget Sound. Miles also enjoys visiting his neighbor Florence, an old woman with advanced Parkinson's disease who was once a professional psychic. Although she informs Miles of a very high tide coming in that September, all of her previous 'readings' were wrong, so the correctness of this is called into doubt. After Miles discovers a very rare sea animal, a Giant Squid, washed up on the shore, he is struck by fame, which he has trouble handling. Every headline in the local newspapers includes his name, people want to meet him, and he is overwhelmed by the thought of the whole situation, as he was just doing what he loved. His parents, who never thought much of their son or the ocean, are embarrassed by all the publicity, feeling like they do not really know Miles. A series of strange events tie the story together and odd things are happening in the Puget Sound. This is a summer that will change Miles forever.
27709202	/m/0c3y5t9	Requiem	Robyn Young	2008	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Requiem, like Brethren and Crusade before it, follows Will Campbell, a Templar involved in a secret order known as the Anima Templi. After the fall of Acre, Will returns to Europe to find out that his order agreed to help King Edward I to conquer Will's homeland, Scotland. Will decides to leave the Templars and fight together with his people against English invaders. But after his return to Paris he must face an even bigger danger, a plot that will lead to the end of the Knights Templar.
27712654	/m/0cnz32j	The Pilgrim of Hate	Edith Pargeter	1984	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 In June 1141, the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul prepares to celebrate the anniversary of the arrival of St. Winifred's casket at Shrewsbury Abbey. The monks will carry the reliquary from the small chapel at St. Giles to its altar in Abbey church. Brother Cadfael recalls the decision he made in Wales, when he alone removed Winifred's actual remains from the casket, returned them to her Welsh soil and replaced them with those of a monk who died on their mission to seek these holy bones. He shares this tale with Hugh, relieving a burden. The saint has continued to work miracles in her home in Wales, but none in Shrewsbury. Is the saint displeased with Cadfael? Abbot Radulfus returns from the legatine council in early June after 8 weeks away. Henry, Bishop of Winchester called the council as an attempt to end The Anarchy, a civil war between the forces of King Stephen, the lawfully anointed king and Bishop Henry's brother, and Empress Maud, the lawful heiress of her late father King Henry I. He is held in prison in Bristol, while she seeks the approval of London for her coronation. This dispute has the nobility and clerics of England at each others' throats; it comes to a head in Winchester on day three of the council when Stephen's wife Queen Matilda sends a message to the bishop, requesting Henry to seek release of his brother the King, enraging Henry who had turned to the Empress. Later that evening, the Queen's messenger is ambushed in a Winchester alley by supporters of the Empress. Rainald Bossard, a knight supporting the Empress, intervenes to save the messenger and is murdered for his noble efforts. The attackers slip away. Abbot Radulfus feels Bossard's death very deeply, asking the monks to pray for his soul. Pilgrims arrive in large numbers. Arriving after three weeks of walking is a middle-aged widow, Dame Alice Weaver, with a crippled teen named Rhun and his beautiful sister, Melangell. Aunt Alice has brought her nephew to pray to St. Winifred for relief from the pain caused by his clubfoot; Rhun wants his sister to find a happier life than caring for him. He accepts Cadfael's help of powerful massages, but refuses any sleep aid. Two taciturn young men arrived with them. Ciaran, who suffers from a 'fell disease', is under vow to hobble barefoot to Aberdaron in Wales to die in peace, hampered by a great iron cross around his neck and protected by a bishop's ring. His inseparable friend Matthew has vowed to see Ciaran through to the end of his penitential journey. These two groups travelled together nearing the Abbey, Matthew giving aid to Rhun on occasion, and showing an attraction to Melangell. Cadfael notices a third party of pilgrims, four merchants who do not quite suit their trades. Their suspicious actions and a tip from Brother Adam lead him to warn Beringar that they may be thieves. While Beringar sets a net to catch the thieves working the fair, he meets Olivier de Bretagne and his companions, messengers from the Bishop's conference. Proceeding to Hugh's house in town, Olivier makes his request that the Sheriff accept Empress Maud as queen, which request Beringar politely turns down. Olivier tells Hugh that while in Shrewsbury he will search for Bossard's adopted son, Luc Meverel, who is missing following his lord's murder in April. Olivier mentions he may find the monk he met at Bromfield, who was kind to his liege lord's wards. Hugh is pleased to meet by name this man with whom he had worked to save the Hugonin children. Beringar's net caught one of the thieves, and recovered the ring stolen from Ciaran. The ring was on the hand of a local goldsmith, Daniel Aurifaber, who bought it from one of the suspicious tradesmen as a side deal in a crooked dice game. Near dawn on the day of the procession, Melangell sees Ciaran who tells her that he is leaving Shrewsbury for Wales now that his "safe-passage" ring is returned to him. Melangell promises to keep his secrets. Ciaran leaves. After Mass is over at the Abbey church and St. Winifred's reliquary is in place on her altar, pilgrims line up to make their requests of the saint. Prior Robert presides. Rhun approaches on his crutches, but says he can kneel. Rhun drops his crutches; as he puts his foot to the ground and climbs the stairs to the altar, the congregation can see his leg fill out and his foot untwist. He prays in an atmosphere of complete silence; when he steps back, his foot whole and fully functional, the church is filled with shouts of praise for the saint who has performed such a miracle. At the midday meal, Matthew notices that Ciaran is missing. Melangell tries to stop Matthew pursuing Ciaran, saying Ciaran wants them to be together. He reacts with unusual rage, shoving Melangell down. Moments later he leaves the Abbey, hot on Ciaran's trail. After the meal shared with the Abbot, Olivier and Hugh seek out Cadfael from Winifred's altar, for aid in finding Luc. The presence of Olivier is Cadfael's own miracle; his saint is pleased. The description of Luc—that of a dark-haired, dark-eyed, well-bred, taciturn young man—applies to Ciaran and Matthew, who arrived together but could have met en route. The Abbott requests them to appear before him, to learn they are both gone. When Matthew left, he claimed his dagger and left a generous gift of money. On this news, Olivier leaves quickly to search for them, promising to return that evening, with Hugh as his immediate guide. Left with Cadfael, Abbot Radulfus asks if Rhun's recovery could be feigned. Cadfael replies that the boy is thoroughly honest and that his defect could not have been repaired by any doctor. Radulfus, reassured of this miracle, asks Cadfael to bring Rhun to him. They return to the Abbott with the scrip left behind by Matthew or Ciaran. Rhun states his wish to stay where the saint called him. The saddened Melangell tells Cadfael that the two young men left separately, heading out over the fields instead of along the north road. The Abbott opens the scrip, finding a book with Luc Meverel's name in it. Now is the time for quick action. Sending word to Hugh Beringar, Cadfael goes on horseback to follow the two young men on the overland route. At the edge of twilight, he hears Ciaran and Matthew in a clearing around a great beech tree some miles west of Shrewsbury. Then he hears Matthew fighting off the three felons. The felons wait for darkness to finish the fight. Cadfael, unarmed, approaches on foot, bellowing as if he is part of a large party in pursuit. He forcefully knocks down Simeon Poer. That loud cry leads Hugh and his men to light up the scene and nab the three attackers. Olivier heard it, too, and appears on scene, telling Cadfael to look round, he has won his field. In the brawl, Simeon pulled the cross off Ciaran's neck. Looking up to Matthew, Ciaran says 'I am forfeit, now take me.' Cadfael agrees gently. Matthew glares at Cadfael, looks back contemptuously at Ciaran and throws down his dagger. In a daze, he walks away with Olivier close behind. Ciaran, a man from Danish Dublin in the service of Bishop Henry, tells how he stabbed Bossard, wrongly believing that his master would condone the impulsive crime. Henry banished Ciaran from England, telling him that he must make his entire journey to Dublin barefoot while wearing a heavy iron cross. If anyone finds him wearing shoes or without the cross before Dublin, his life is forfeit. Luc Meverel overhears these words, as he followed the attacker back to the Bishop's house unseen. Luc appoints himself enforcer of this vow. Luc accompanies Ciaran under the name "Matthew", motivated by grief turned to hate and vengeance. At the crucial moment, Luc's grief softened away from vengeance. Bishop Henry would not sanction murder, rather forced Ciaran away. Hugh allows Ciaran to walk away, taking up his issues with God on his own. Olivier returns with Luc/Matthew to Shrewsbury, where Luc once again pays court to Melangell. Matthew begins life anew with confession to the Abbott, and marriage to Melangell. Rhun stays at the Abbey as a novice, while their aunt prepares to return home alone. Cadfael and Olivier talk in the herbarium, where Olivier reports he and Ermina Hugonin had married this past Christmas, as Cadfael had hoped. Arriving suddenly, Hugh has the latest news from London: the Empress Maud has lost London and retreated to the southwest. The weight of the failure rests on the Empress's shoulders, her weakness being her inability to praise her allies or ever forget a past slight, but the pressure of the Queen's army in Kent helps to change minds in London.,,, Olivier must follow his own liege lord to Oxford, leaving Shrewsbury before he wanted. Hugh and Olivier are friends but on opposite sides of this civil war, and both close to Cadfael, who will be ever neutral in these politics. Watching Olivier leave, Hugh says that he resembles Cadfael in some ways; the monk replies, no, he looks completely like his mother. "I always meant to tell you, some day," he said tranquilly, "what he does not know, and never will from me. He is my son."
27715209	/m/0cc5s6k	Promises in Death	Nora Roberts		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 On being called in to investigate a dead body, NYPSD homicide detectives Eve Dallas and Delia Peabody discover that the woman is a fellow officer, Detective Amaryllis Coltraine, who worked out of another precinct. To add to the emotion of the case, Coltraine was the lover of Li Morris, the Chief Medical Examiner and a good friend of Eve and Peabody. Coltraine was shot with her own police stunner; it also appears that she may have known her killer. Meanwhile, Eve's contact from Internal Affairs Bureau Donald Webster clues her on the victim's connection with Alex Ricker Max Ricker's son back in Atlanta, Georgia, from where the victim requested a transfer to New York following a fallout. Initial evidence suggests that the kill may have been ordered by Alex Ricker. The suspect's reactions, however, as well as Roarke's impressions from a private discussion they have, tend to steer the blame away from him. Eve is beginning to sense that the killer may have been one of the detectives Coltraine worked with at her precinct. A humorous minor subplot revolves around Eve's performing another duty of friendship she has never tackled before: hosting a wedding shower for Louise Dimatto, who is marrying former "licensed companion" Charles Monroe. In the middle of the shower, Eve gets a call from dispatch informing her of the death of Rod Sandy, Alex's Personal Assistant. After she gets back, Eve requests Charlotte Mira and Cher Reo to sit in for a debrief and ends up explaining the case to all her friends which leads Mavis to point out the killer who was the victim's partner at her precinct. Further digging reveals the killer to be the illegitimate daughter of Max Ricker,who set her up to extract his revenge on Eve and Roarke for putting him in a cage.
27717189	/m/0c01020	The Overton Window	Glenn Beck	2010-06-15	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is based on the Overton window concept in political theory, in which at any given moment there is a range of policies related to any particular issue that are considered politically acceptable ("in the window"), and other policies that politicians seeking to gain or hold public office do not feel they can recommend without being considered too far outside the mainstream ("outside the window"). Moving the window would make previously radical ideas seem reasonable. Beck has referred to the book as "faction" – fiction based on facts. The plot revolves around a man named Noah Gardner, a public relations executive who has no interest in politics. He changes his mind when he meets a woman, Molly Ross, who is "consumed by the knowledge that the America we know is about to be lost forever," an idea Gardner dismisses as a conspiracy theory. After America comes under attack, however, he works to expose the conspirators behind the attack.
27720678	/m/0cc4yfs	Abercrombie Station	Jack Vance	1952-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jean Parlier, a beautiful but deadly teenager, is hired by a mysterious man to seduce and marry the supposedly terminally ill heir to Abercrombie Station for the fee of one million dollars. Abercrombie Station orbits the Earth and exists as a pleasure resort that caters to the whims of the obese. In space, freed from the demands of gravity, rich, corpulent people frolic in decadent excess. Within the mini-society of the station, obesity becomes the ultimate standard for beauty. The heir to Abercrombie Station, Earl, is sour and churlish, and Jean, working as a servant, makes a direct play for him, which only raises his ire. Forced to engage in subterfuge, Jean breaks into his private apartments and discovers that Earl has amassed a veritable zoo of malignant creatures from across the galaxy held in suspended animation. Earl engages in unwholesome activities with these aliens and Jean realizes she cannot follow through with her plan to marry him. Back on Earth, she renegotiates with the mysterious man who hired her and discovers he is actually Lionel, the missing heir to the station who is living in exile. He is normal sized, and has gone to Earth to find a fat woman willing to love him. Jean and Lionel return to the station, force Earl to expose his zoo where he has also entrapped his older brother Hugo, who was presumed dead. Earl is revealed to be a murderer who conspired to rob his family of their rightful heir. In his anger, he unleashes all his animals, killing himself and almost everyone except Jean, Lionel, and a witness. Jean had created a contract with Lionel, using Abercrombie Station as collateral, guaranteeing herself a two million dollar payoff. At the end of the story, she doesn't know what to do with her sudden wealth.
27721834	/m/0cc8x17	The Wolf-Sisters	Susan Price	2001-01-18	{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy"}	 Kenelm begins his tale by telling of the hardships and misery he suffered during his time at the monastery, and of how he was gifted to the Christians by King Guthlac, his uncle, aged ten. The young Kenelm resents Guthlac and longs to be back at court, to enjoy the bright colours, good food, excellent storytelling and beautiful women there. He hates the life of boring prayers, bad food and degrading menial chores as a monk, and despite years of being taught the Christian ways, he still believes fervently in his own Norse gods, and in his ancestor Woden. He prays to Woden desperately to be allowed to return there without disgracing himself or his family, as he cannot leave the monastery without doing so. As he finishes his prayer, a monk summons him to the dining hall, where he notices a trio of house-carls, kept warriors, that serve his uncle King Guthlac. Under the direction of his Abbot, he bathes and changes, and visits his Abbess, who informs him that it has been requested that he leave the monastery to do his uncle's business. Kenelm, overjoyed, realises that his ancestor Woden has granted his prayers. Despite the Abbess's disapproval, she allows him a month's leave, and makes him promise to pray three times a day. Kenelm agrees, but privately swears to himself that he will pray to Woden. He then leaves with the house-carls, who tell him about the deadly plague that has swept through the court, laying low almost everybody, including the king and queen. Fortunately, the monastery is so excluded that Kenelm has never heard of the plague they are talking about, and is fit and healthy. Upon arriving at the court, Old Egwin tells him of the murderous Foreigners that are invading the country, and that nobody is strong enough to stand against them. He commands Kenelm to go to find help, revealing that the only creatures capable of helping him are the Wood Women, powerful spirits related to Woden and the Norse gods that are famed for singing to men and leading them until they are lost in the woods. Kenelm journeys into the woods and breaks a twig, as instructed by Egwin. At this, three young, beautiful, naked women emerge from the trees, dark-haired and with big dark eyes, blood-red lips and sharp white teeth. Kenelm, though very afraid, begs them in Egwin's name to drive off the Foreigners, and they, after some persuasion, agree, because they knew Old Egwin when he was a young man.
27722629	/m/0c3zwbt	The Passage	Justin Cronin	2010-06-08	{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0kz5r": "New York Times Best Seller list", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05mpfk": "Epic Science Fiction and Fantasy", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The novel is broken into 11 parts of varying lengths. The story itself is broken into two sections: The first and shorter section covers the origins of the virus and its outbreak, while the second is set 93 years after the infections, primarily following a colony of survivors living in California. Several narrative devices are used, including email, journal entries, newspaper reports, and other documents. Occasional use is made of reference material from 1,000 years after the outbreak, coming from "The Journal of Sara Fisher", sourced from a future "University of New South Wales, Indo-Australian Republic". The U.S. government is conducting a top secret experiment referred to as "Project Noah," which involves acquiring and transporting death row inmates to a secret military compound in Colorado for the purposes of modifying them into super-soldiers for the U.S. Army. These genetic experiments originate from patient zero Fanning - one of two surviving members of an expedition investigating a Bolivian bat-carried virus. The virus, while eventually causing hemorrhagic fever and death in initial subjects, is being refined to accentuate its other properties - boosting of the immune system, enhanced strength and agility. The FBI agents responsible for recruiting the prisoners are ordered to collect 6 year old Amy Bellafonte from a convent, and, although conflicted, deliver her to Dr. Lear, the head of the project. At Noah she is exposed to a refined version of the serum administered to "The Twelve"—the original inmates. Lear theorizes that as Amy's immune system has not had chance to mature it will form a symbiosis with the virus and live with her sympathetically, instead of the violent forms it has taken with the other twelve. Of the inmates, the first and last recruited are depicted as being different from the others: Babcock, the original test subject, is stronger and appears to have developed psychic abilities, occasionally influencing his guards and cleaners; and Carter is in fact innocent, but was convicted of first-degree murder nonetheless. Zero (AKA Fanning) and the other twelve inmates mentally take control of their guards and escape their quarantine cells, rapidly killing all who stand in their way. Amy is rescued by Brad Wolgast (the FBI agent who brought her to Noah) and Sister Lacey (a nun who was looking after Amy when she was recruited). Lacey is taken by Carter, as Wolgast and Amy escape to a mountain retreat where they live for several months, occasionally picking up news of the contagion spread throughout America. The rest of the world's fate is not stated, but it is mentioned that most of Europe has imposed quarantine over travel. Despite living reasonably comfortably in the mountain site, Wolgast eventually succumbs to radiation sickness when a nuclear device is detonated relatively nearby - he assumes that the government is attempting to sterilize infected areas of the country - and Amy is left to fend for herself. The novel shifts forward in time approximately 93 years (with occasional reference retrospectively 1,000 years in the future), and the narrative is taken up around a self-sufficient and isolationist colony established by the military (specifically FEMA) not long after the initial outbreak. The colony is in slow decline, although only one character (a technician called Michael) seems to recognize this; he is trying to establish clandestine contact with the outside world to obtain spares for their failing equipment - specifically their batteries which power the high-wattage lights which protect the colony from the virals, who in traditional vampiric style are highly light-sensitive. During a nighttime attack, Amy arrives at the gates of the camp, having previously met Peter Jaxon (one of the colony's senior figures) during a foraging expedition. Amy's arrival also results in a break-in from the virals leading to the death of "Teacher" - the person responsible for the upbringing of all the children under eight in the colony. Amy now appears to be a fifteen year old girl, and upon her arrival is grievously wounded by a crossbow, but her own recuperative powers soon heal her and within days she is as healthy as she was before being injured. Amy's arrival, her healing abilities, Teacher's death and inner-colony friction (caused by Babcock's mental influence over several Colony figures) force several of the colony dwellers to abscond with Amy and seek out another military site in Colorado - from where Michael has been receiving faint radio signals. Amy demonstrates a psychic bond with the virals, and manages to keep the group of travelers relatively safe during their journey. They come across another settlement established in a Las Vegas prison, known as the Haven, which, while initially welcoming, is in fact Babcock's lair. The Haven "feeds" Babcock blood sacrifices in exchange for being left alone by the horde of virals at his disposal, referred to as "The Many" (as opposed to The Twelve). During a botched attempt to kill Babcock during one of the blood sacrifice rituals, sympathizers at the Haven enable the group to escape via railroad, and they meet up with a Texan military group, who assist them in finding the Colorado outpost. Once at the outpost, they discover that it is the same compound where the outbreak started, and still serves as home to Sister Lacey. Lacey, like Amy, was treated by Lear with a modified form of the serum, providing her with longer life and a psychic bond with not only Amy and the virals, but Babcock as well. It is decided to lure Babcock into the outpost - Amy and Lacey confirm that he is headed towards them in any case - where they will detonate a nuclear device originally designed to sterilize the compound, but never used. The group theorize that the virals are like a hive mind and once Babcock is dead his hold over the virals created exponentially by him will cease and they will no longer be a threat. While waiting for Babcock to arrive, the group is attacked, resulting in Alicia ("Lish") becoming infected, and treated by Sara the medic with modified serum. Lacey hands over files on The Twelve, revealing their hometowns, to which she suggests The Twelve will have returned. Upon Babcock's arrival, Lacey lures him to a chamber where she detonates the bomb, destroying herself, Babcock, and much of the outpost. The attacking virals all collapse and die again, in most cases leaving behind nothing but dust, proving the hive theory correct. Lish adapts to the virus in a similar manner to Amy and Lacey before her, yet with differences - she has limited psychic abilities, but has the strength and endurance of a viral. Greer, one of the Texan soldiers traveling with them, comments that she would be a formidable soldier - suggesting that Lish has become the first true "super soldier" that the government was trying to develop 93 years ago. Part of the group - primarily Amy, Peter, and Lish - return to the First Colony only to find it deserted, with no sign of what happened or where the colonists may have gone. There are two bodies, a victim of a suicide and that of Auntie, who seemingly died of old age. They decide to hunt down the remaining Twelve using Lear's files to determine their locations, and Lish as their primary weapon. That night Amy meets the infected Wolgast, outside the Colony. The other group stays with the Texan Expeditionary force, and their remaining story is related through parts of Sara's diary - her last entry is at Roswell Base, and among comments about her own pregnancy she states that she can hear gunshots, and is going to investigate. This entry is presented as part of the future reference material, and is stated to have come from the site of "The Roswell Massacre". The novel ends ambiguously for all surviving characters.
27732586	/m/0cc7zdx	The Gilt Kid	James Curtis	1936		 The protagonist of the novel is Kennedy, a 25-year-old spiv. Due to his blond hair he is known as "The Gilt Kid" from which the novel gets its title. The novel picks up as Kennedy has recently been released from prison having served a sentence for burglary. With no real plans to go straight and with Marxist sympathies he re-engages with the underworld of Soho and its associated culture. On his travels through London he observes and comments on the rituals of the destitute, prostitutes and criminals. Eventually "The Gilt Kid" finds himself involved in a robbery that doesn't go to plan. Fearing the inevitability that he will return to prison he struggles with the judicial system and attempts to ensure his freedom.
27743312	/m/0cc9z32	Zen Ties	Jon J. Muth	2008-02-01		 Stillwater the panda and his three human friends, Karl, Addy and Michael are back in a new adventure. This time, Michael is faced with the daunting challenge of an upcoming spelling bee. The story also introduces Miss Whitaker, an elderly neighbor whose cantankerous nature frightens the children. Stillwater uses his quiet wisdom and insight to see past her bad temper to the lonely woman within. Stillwater also receives a visit from his young nephew Koo, who speaks in Haiku.
27746209	/m/0cc66k9	The Council of Dads	Bruce Feiler			 When author Bruce Feiler discovered he had cancer he was worried about his daughters growing up without him by their sides to advise them. He decided to create a "Council of Dads", and wrote a letter which he then read to six of his friends asking them to be father figures to his children.
27748506	/m/0cc7770	The Twin	Gerbrand Bakker	2006		 The novel follows the plight of Helmer, who resides on a Dutch farm with his father. His twin dies accidentally and Helmer encounters his girlfriend.
27762377	/m/0cc9qb1	Battles of the Clans	Erin Hunter	2010-06-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Just like previous Field Editions, Battles of the Clans has no real plot but consists of multiple short stories told by cats from the Clans (including SkyClan). Battles of the Clans starts with Ashfoot bringing two kittypets, the readers, into Onestar's den. He welcomes them and brings them to each Clan to find out their special battle tactics. After visiting ThunderClan, ShadowClan, RiverClan, and WindClan, a SkyClan ancestor visits the readers while they are sleeping and tells them their special battle tactic. Tawnypelt then tells the readers of the lake territories and battles. Tigerstar subsequently appears and tells of the forest territories and battles. After this, there is a Gathering, at which the readers hear stories of past battles. Onestar then says goodbye, and the book concludes.
27762773	/m/0dgqb6z	Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World	Margaret Thatcher	2003-03-25		 Looking at the lessons learnt during the Cold War Lady Thatcher writes of the United States being the only remaining superpower, and the responsibilities which come with that burden. She also writes about the dangers inherent in the Balkans given the instability of the region and the rise of Islamic Extremism.
27768941	/m/0cc6jmr	Commander-1				 An up and coming Chinese Communist apparatchik named Li devises a plan with the aid of a prominent nuclear scientist and a PLA general to produce a nuclear weapon, which they will plant outside US bases of strategic importance and detonate so that it appears that the USSR has committed to the first strike of a nuclear war. The United States and the Soviet Union both deploy their nuclear arsenals, wiping each other out and destroying the Pentagon and killing the US President. Meanwhile the only submarine left in the US fleet which has been on an expedition conducting an experiment on social isolation under the Polar Icecap comes back to port after receiving news of the nuclear holocaust. The commander drops the survivors off at a deserted Pacific island that will be passed over by the fallout. The survivors soon discover that the island is really a massive bunker for just such an eventuality. Two of the survivors kill themselves after they conceive a child which they believe to be mutated due to the presence of the mutated baby produced by one of the island's local apes. The submarine then heads to a surviving US naval base where they find the military holding out against civilian survivors led by an ex-congressman. The submarine commander, James Geragty, turns the civilians into mindless drones using drugs from the medical supplies at the base, and takes them on board his submarine to the Pacific island, the only place in the world not affected by fallout. There Geragty sets himself up as the new President of the USA - Commander One - and sets his slaves to work building his new paradise, which the original experiment subjects reject as totalitarian. After he declares that he will attempt to destroy any Soviet survivors that he may eventually find, he sets the original experiment candidates loose on a rubber dinghy, claiming that he will let them go to another island. As they float away on the ocean Geragty has them machine-gunned in the water, destroying all dissent in his new society.
27796919	/m/0bwm2lq	The Lost Hero	Rick Riordan	2010-10-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 As the book opens, Jason awakens on a school bus, unable to remember who or where he is, or anything about his past. He is sitting next to Piper McLean and Leo Valdez, who call him by name and say they are his girlfriend and best friend respectively. All three are part of a class field trip to the Grand Canyon, and after they arrive, a classmate Dylan turns into a Venti (Storm Spirit) and attacks the trio and their trip leader, Coach Gleeson Hedge. In the ensuing fight, Jason surprises everyone, including himself, when one of his coins turns into a sword which he uses to battle the storm spirits. Coach Hedge, who reveals himself to be a satyr during the fight, is taken captive by a fleeing spirit. After the battle, a flying chariot arrives to rescue the trio, but one of the people in it, Annabeth, is upset when she discovers that her missing boyfriend, Percy Jackson, is not there as she expected. Annabeth, seeking Percy, was told in a vision from the goddess Hera to look there for the "guy with one shoe", but this turns out to be Jason, who had a shoe destroyed during the fight. Jason, Piper,and Leo are told that they are demigods and are taken back to Camp Half-Blood where they meet other greek demigod children like themselves. There, Leo is revealed as a son of Hephaestus, Piper as a daughter of Aphrodite and Jason as a son of Zeus, though Hera tells him he is her champion. Jason later discovers that he is the full brother of Zeus's demigod daughter Thalia Grace, who is a Hunter of Artemis. Shortly after they arrive, the three are given a quest to rescue Hera, who has been captured, and they set off. They soon discover that their enemies are working under orders from Gaea to overthrow the gods. During their quest, they encounter Thalia and the Hunters, who have been looking for Percy. Thalia and Jason reunite for the first since Jason was captured at the age of two. On the way to Aeolus's castle, Jason, Leo and Piper become separated from Thalia, who promises to meet them at the Wolf House, the last place Thalia had seen Jason before this meeting. After being nearly apprehended by Aeolus, who is under Gaea's orders, the trio manage to escape thanks to Mellie, Aeolus`s former assistant, and end up in San Francisco, thanks to the result of a dream Piper had with Aphrodite. After landing in San Francisco, the trio rush to Mt.Diablo to fight the giant Enceladus, who has kidnapped Piper's father. They manage to kill the giant and save Piper's father, after which they rush to the Wolf House to free Hera. Although the heroes and the Hunters save Hera, the king of the giants, Porphyrion, rises fully and disappears into a hole in the Earth. Jason's memory then starts returning, and he remembers that he is a hero from a Roman counterpart to Camp Half-Blood somewhere near San Francisco, and is the son of Jupiter, Zeus's Roman aspect. He realizes that Hera, also known as Juno, has switched him with Percy Jackson, who will be at the Roman camp with no memory of his life, in the hopes that the two camps would ultimately work together to fight the giants and defeat the goddess Gaea.
27811716	/m/0cc8j6z	Dead Heat				 Based on the character Hitch created by Dave Dorman, Dead Heat tells the tale of a research facility in the Australian desert after an accident occurs; mutated DNA causes the mindless dead to rise up as zombies. As the undead population begins to outnumber the living, one zombie among them – Hitch – retains memories of his living existence and feels emotion. This sends him on a road trip to discover why he is seemingly the only zombie of this nature. His travels take him to Texas, where a psychotic man fashioning himself after Hitler hopes to enslave the world's remaining living people; to Michigan, where a band of survivalists try to destroy him; and finally to the Desert Southwest, where an otherworldly creature has begun creating grotesque undead hybrids out of various body parts.
27825150	/m/0cc9hql	Fraulein Spy				 The story is set in May 1964. Nick Carter is on the trail of Judas – the master spy first encountered in Run, Spy, Run. Posing as an investigative journalist for a West German tabloid newspaper, Carter tracks Judas to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he is living among the expatriate German community under the alias Hugo Bronson. Carter meets an informant at his home who reveals that Bronson is actually Martin Bormann, one of Adolf Hitler's closest aides and who was thought to have escaped from Germany at the end of World War II. Before he can reveal Bormann's current whereabouts the informant is shot dead by a sniper. Carter takes documents from the informant's safe that identify two missing German scientists as former Nazis. Carter traces Bronson to a house in West Berlin where he discovers a plot to kidnap five renowned German scientists living overseas. AXE suspects that the terrorist organization known as CLAW, supported by communist China, is behind an operation to kidnap the scientists and transport them to China. Four of the scientists are missing; the fifth, Dr Mark Gerber – a naturalized American – has been persuaded by his attractive secretary (Elena Darby) to join her on a round-the-world trip. AXE sends two agents to trail Gerber on his trip while Carter meets up with them in Cairo, Egypt. AXE discovers that Gerber's secretary is a communist spy luring Gerber to a location where he can be kidnapped more easily. On the Bombay to New Delhi leg of the world tour Julia Baron (Carter's assistant in Run, Spy, Run and The China Doll) joins the group. One of the missing scientists is also on the flight against his will accompanied by a minder. The elderly scientist tries to leave the group during a sightseeing trip aided by Carter but dies of heart failure in the attempt. He manages to inform Carter that Bormann was behind the plan to assemble the team of scientists on behalf of China. En route to the Taj Mahal the plane is hijacked by terrorists posing as passengers and diverted to a military base in China. Gerber is separated from the rest of the passengers and taken to a secret underground laboratory. There he meets Bronson and the team of missing German scientists who are expected to help build an atomic bomb for the Chinese. Carter organizes a revolt by the passengers. They overcome the guards and steal their weapons. Carter and Elena enter the secret laboratory searching for Gerber. They find him and the other missing scientists restrained in a chamber while the military base commandant (Yi) is torturing Julie Baron to force the scientists to cooperate. Carter kills the commandant in unarmed combat and frees the scientists. Elena is caught and tied up. Carter places a time bomb in the missile silo and breaks out with the passengers – several of whom are killed or injured in the attempt. Carter recognizes Bronson as Judas. Judas escapes unharmed as the passengers board their hijacked plane and escape as Carter's bomb explodes destroying the secret base.
27827081	/m/0cc5jp_	Final Theory			{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The narrative begins with the brutal attack on the aged theoretical physicist Hans Walther Kleinman by Simon. Simon was acting on the orders of the mysterious Henry Cobb to extract information on the Einheitliche Feldtheorie - the unified theory that Einstein worked during his last years. Dr.Kleinman was one of the four close students of Einstein and one of the secret keepers of the great theory. David Swift, a former student of Kleinman, and a professor of History of Science at Columbia University was summoned to the hospital where Kleinman was undergoing intensive care after his attack. Just before succumbing, he pulls David close and wheezes two words in German: "Einheitliche Feldtheorie" and tells him a sequence of numbers. Soon, Swift is intimidated by Lucille Parker, a sixtyish FBI Agent who is also after the theory. Simon attacks the garage where the FBI held David, and David escapes. Meanwhile, FBI takes Karen, David's ex-wife and his son Jonah into custody. David on the other hand, succeeds in boarding a train headed for Princeton. He decides to meet an old friend of his, Monique Reynolds a string theorist at Princeton University. Monique at first is skeptical about his story. David soon comes to know of the deaths of two close students of Einstein, Jacques Bouchet of the University of Paris and Alastair MacDonald, who was under treatment for mental disorder. The sequence of numbers that Kleinman gave David, pointed to the location of The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where another close student of Einstein, Amil Gupta worked. They decided to tell him the news, and head to Pittsburgh. Simon and the FBI succeeds in following them to CMU. At CMU they meet Gupta. Gupta's late wife was a Holocaust Survivor whom Einstein had helped to bring to Princeton after World War II. His only daughter is a drug addict and he lives with his autistic grandson, Michael who is obsessed with playing Warfighter - a program used for combat training. Knowing that FBI has been following them, David, Monique, Gupta and Michael, escapes in a H1lander. They head for a hunting cabin in West Virginia, where Kleinman spent some time a few years ago with Gupta and Michael. On the way Simon chases them, and narrowly avoids an accident. Meanwhile Karen and Jonah are released by the FBI. Lucille Parker discovering David's escape, sends Agent Brock (who also works for Henry Cobb) and an assistant to the cabin. On the computer in the cabin, David's group finds references to Gupta's daughter's residence in Columbus, Georgia. They are soon intimidated by Brock and his assistant. In the commotion that follows, Brock's partner dies and Brock and Gupta get seriously wounded. David, Monique and Michael escapes from the cabin on Gupta's suggestion. Meanwhile, seeing that the FBI is getting nowhere with the case, the Delta Force is asked to take over. Simon soon arrives and takes the weak Gupta and Brock. He takes Gupta to a local doctor and saves his life, where Gupta tells him that he is Henry Cobb. Meanwhile David's company is rescued by a group of hunters who gives them shelter. They soon head toward Columbus. They meet Gupta's daughter, Elizabeth Gupta - a drug addict who works as a prostitute. She is agitated on the mention of her fathers name and tells them that Kleinman (who was her godfather) hated him. She also tells them that Kleinman worked for a while in the VCS (Virtual Combat Simulation) office in Fort Benning. David decides to go to Fort Benning thinking that Kleinman hid the theory in one of the computers there. Meanwhile, the FBI arrives in Columbus and Lucille Parker succeeds in tracing them to Fort Benning. David's party arrives at Fort Benning and gets access to VCS Office. David with the help of a VR goggles starts playing Warfighter, hoping to find the theory in one of the levels. Meanwhile, Gupta also enters Warfighter remotely and tries to get hold of the theory. David attempts to sabotage Gupta's plan and in the process, erases Warfighter and the theory. But Kleinman had built an escape hatch for the file which saved the data on a flash drive. They escape with the flash drive into the mountains nearby. During this time, Brock succeeds in abducting Karen and Jonah. David and Monique starts reading the contents of the flash drive. Einstein had used differential topology to describe the unified field equation in the theory. He had found out that all particles are geons and had successfully predicted the mass of all fundamental particles, which was one of the hallmarks of a theory of everything. Einstein had built his unified theory around the Holographic Principle. He had worked out the exact equations for the universe (as a brane), how it evolved and explained how everything got started. If our brane was twisted enough one could sent particle's from one point in the universe to another. The returning particles can trigger a violent warping of the local spacetime, leading to release of huge amounts of energy which can be used as a weapon. Einstein had worked out equations for all this. This was the reason why he never published this theory. David then realized why Simon and the FBI were after him. They destroy the flash drive, in an attempt to destroy the theory. But Kleinman had made Michael memorize the whole theory. David realized that the numbers that Kleinman whispered to him pointed to Michael and not to Gupta. The FBI soon arrives and they escape. Monique is soon caught by Gupta and Simon. David is also intimidated by Gupta using his son and ex-wife as hostages. He along with two of his former students, had devised a plan to send particles like in the theory. But he still needed the field equations in the theory. For making the particle beam, they had decided to use the Tevatron in Fermilab. They soon reach Fermilab and takes over the Tevatron control room. Meanwhile, Brock is left with David, Monique, Karen and Jonah. In a fight between David and Brock, Brock falls into burning mineral oil and dies. Although Gupta's interests were purely academic, Simon wanted to revenge the murder of his wife and children by the US troops and decides to use the technology against the country. He locks Gupta in a room and proceeds to take control of the experiment. David, meanwhile was devising a plan to shut down the Tevatron. He succeeds in shutting down the Tevatron by smashing the beam pipe and in the process kills Simon. Meanwhile, Gupta becomes hysterical and kills people near him with an Uzi. The FBI agents soon kill Gupta. Michael is left to the custody of Monique who gets engaged to David.
27832029	/m/0cc9tgn	Hingede öö	Karl Ristikivi	1953		 The novel comprises three parts, "Surnud mehe maja" (The House of a Dead Man), a briefer interlude entitled "Kiri proua Agnes Rohumaale" (Letter to Mrs Agnes Rohumaa) and "Seitse tunnistajat" (The Seven Witnesses). The novel is a first-person narrative. In the first part, a nameless protagonist enters something resembling a concert hall in Stockholm a little before midnight on New Year's Eve and finds himself in a labyrinth of salons and staircases, meeting people from whom he feels alienated. The second part is written as a reply by the author to a letter sent by a fictional reader, Mrs Agnes Rohumaa. Apparently Mrs Rohumaa has expressed her dissatisfaction with the novel after reading the first part and the author feels obliged to reply and justify his writing. The last part describes a trial in which seven witnesses are called to give evidence, each for one of the seven deadly sins. The last witness is the protagonist.
27854352	/m/0cc683z	Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street		1974	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Children and Television has four sections, "A Proposal", "Planning", "Broadcasting" and "Lessons from Sesame Street". The book also has a preface and an epilogue, written by Lesser, a foreword written by Joan Ganz Cooney, and an introduction by Lloyd Morrisett. Scattered throughout the book are cartoons drawn by children's author Maurice Sendak, who attended the 1968 seminars. Lesser begins his book by describing the origin of Sesame Street and his part in it. He had been studying child development and how its concepts could be used to teach children; since 1961, he studied children's reaction to television and whether or not the medium could be used to teach them. In 1966, he was approached by Cooney and Morrisett to assist them in creating the new show's educational objectives and research goals, and he agreed despite his misgivings about the effectiveness of television as a teaching tool. Sesame Street's audience included any child in the country who wished to watch it, but Lesser reports that the producers' original purpose was to reach the poor children of America. As Lesser stated, "If the series did not work for poor children, the entire project would fail". Lesser is critical of the American public school system, and blames its failure to educate children on the lack of defined goals. When he wrote Television and Children, most American children received no preschool education. The first two chapters of the book detail the reasons for the "experiment" of creating an educational television program like Sesame Street, especially in regards to its audience. "Grownups never seem to understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them". Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince. Gerald Lesser used this quote to begin the second section of Children and Television. He introduced many of his sections and chapters with pertinent quotes. Lesser opens the section on &#34;Planning&#34; by relating how many of the cast and crew were recruited: executive producer David Connell, producer Sam Gibbon, head writer Jon Stone, producer and writer Matt Robinson, Jim Henson, composer Joe Raposo, and actors Loretta Long, Bob McGrath, and Will Lee. Lesser also recounts the process of hiring head researcher Edward L. Palmer and those involved with community outreach. The producers of the new show spent eighteen months planning, something that was unprecedented in children&#39;s television. Lesser extensively describes the series of curriculum seminars that took place at Harvard University and in New York City in the summer of 1968. These chapters outline the philosophy behind Sesame Street. The show&#39;s creators made assumptions about teaching and held the unconventional view that learning can be unintentional and enjoyable. Finally, they decided that although Sesame Street was set in an urban setting, they would avoid depicting more negativity than what was already present in the child&#39;s environment. As Lesser states, &#34;With all its raucousness and slapstick humor, Sesame Street became a sweet show, and its staff maintains that there is nothing wrong in that&#34;. The researchers developed a &#34;Writer&#39;s Notebook&#34; for the show&#39;s writers and producers to serve as a bridge between curriculum goals and script development. Lesser connects the show&#39;s production techniques—including the use of music, humor (especially slapstick humor), and animation—with educational goals. Lesser emphasizes the importance of characters, both human and Muppet, to sustain children&#39;s attention. According to Lesser, Sesame Street combines four elements to sustain attention: Muppets, the cast of live adults and children on the set, animation, and live-action film. According to Lesser, children&#39;s reactions to educational television was ignored; this marked the first time that they were studied to evaluate and improve the show&#39;s content and efficacy. Lesser reports that approximately 10-15 percent of the CTW&#39;s initial two-year budget of $8 million was spent on research. He relates the priorities for pre-production research, which he called &#34;summative evaluation&#34;. Using outside research groups like the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Workshop wanted to ascertain if watching the show made any difference. They were particularly interested in comparing the show&#39;s effect on children from different socio-economic groups, and if viewing conditions affected its effectiveness. As Lesser states, &#34;This became the first time in television&#39;s 25-year history that child-watching was systematically applied over a sustained period to the design of a televised series for children&#34;. Lesser describes the new methods researcher Edward Palmer created to study the effects Sesame Street had on its young viewers, mostly notably the &#34;distractor&#34;, a slide projector placed next to a television set and adjusted to change slides every eight seconds. The researchers recorded when children in their study moved their attention away from the television to the projector, and the data collected were analyzed. Segments were removed based upon the information gathered. &#34;This was the first time in television&#39;s history that the children themselves would be listened to with care as a television series for them was designed and broadcast&#34;, Lesser states. Lesser begins the section on &#34;Broadcasting&#34; relating the origin of the show&#39;s name. As he puts it, &#34;...We were forced to select the name we all liked the least&#34;. Lesser reports that the show&#39;s premiere on November 10, 1969 was met with a large amount of acclaim and good reviews, but there were some negative reviews and criticism. These he recounts and addresses in great detail in the chapter entitled &#34;Criticism&#34;. He includes the criticism of approximately thirty groups and individuals, demonstrating the essence and range of the critics&#39; arguments. Lesser describes the research about the long-term effect of Sesame Street. He reports that the show was watched by three to four million viewers by the middle of its first season, and breaks down the viewership into categories. According to Lesser, ratings remained consistently high. Lesser also describes the testing used by ETS, which found positive differences after the first three weeks of the show&#39;s first season. They found that the children who watched the most learned the most. The final section of Lesser&#39;s book, &#34;Lessons from Sesame Street&#34;, summarizes what the creators and researchers were attempting to do. As Lesser states, &#34;Here is Sesame Street's main lesson: It deliberately uses television to teach without hiding its educational intentions and yet it attracts a large and devoted audience of young children from all parts of the country&#34;.
27857501	/m/0cc6z10	The Devil's Breath	David Gilman	2008	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Max Gordon, the main character in this book, is a teenager attending a boarding school in Dartmoor. His mother was an environmental campaigner along with his ex-SAS father before she died mysteriously. At the start of The Devil's Breath, word comes that his father is missing. Max then decides to take matters into his own hands and travels alone to Namibia, where he meets up with an English-speaking Namibian teenage girl, and a Bushman boy who believes Max has supernatural powers. Max then finds out that now his life is joined to the Namibians and he must combine with them so he can save his father and the environment from Shaka Chang, a ruthless businessman. tr:The Devil's Breath
27860223	/m/0cc7hk4	Night and the City	Gerald Kersh	1938		 The protagonist of the novel is Harry Fabian, a morally reprehensible spiv determined to become the top wrestling promoter in London. During the course of the novel Fabian is embroiled in various unscrupulous money-making ventures. All those around him are treated as a means to an end without exception. However, while his acts of pimping, blackmail and deception are successful, the proceeds of crime soon slip from his hands. Eventually his world starts to come down around him. On one side the police are closing in; on the other those he has swindled come calling. Desperate and at rock bottom Harry will try anything to ensure he comes out on top.
27860571	/m/0cc5m6g	They Drive by Night	James Curtis	1938		 The main protagonist of the novel is Shorty Mathews, a petty criminal just released from Pentonville Prison. Now free he goes to visit his girlfriend in Camden only to discover her dead having been strangled. Realising he will be the prime suspect he flees the scene and attempts to evade the law by travelling with lorry drivers across the UK. The title, They Drive By Night, is a reference to the long distance logistical community who work, predominately, at night. The antagonist Hoover is the real killer. He goes by the alter-ego of Lone-Wolf as he trawls the West End of London for more destitute female victims. His motivation to kill is part social cleansing, part mental degeneration. Alongside both accounts is the police investigation into the murders. Their enquiries proceed, with varying degrees of success, punctuated by corruption and brutality. Needing to wrap up the case there is little choice but to set a trap. Whoever is caught will face the hangman.
27866702	/m/07c4l	The Silmarillion	J. R. R. Tolkien	1977	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The first section of The Silmarillion, Ainulindalë ("The Music of the Ainur"), takes the form of a primary creation narrative. Eru ("The One"), also called Ilúvatar ("Father of All"), first created the Ainur, a group of eternal spirits or demiurges, called "the offspring of his thought". Ilúvatar brought the Ainur together and showed them a theme, from which he bade them make a great music. Melkor &mdash; whom Ilúvatar had given the "greatest power and knowledge" of all the Ainur &mdash; broke from the harmony of the music to develop his own song. Some Ainur joined him, while others continued to follow Ilúvatar, causing discord in the music. This happened thrice, with Eru Ilúvatar successfully overpowering his rebellious subordinate with a new theme each time. Ilúvatar then stopped the music and showed them a vision of Arda and its peoples. The vision disappeared after a while, and Ilúvatar offered the Ainur a chance to enter into Arda and govern over the new world. Many Ainur descended, taking physical form and becoming bound to that world. The greater Ainur became known as Valar, while the lesser Ainur were called Maiar. The Valar attempted to prepare the world for the coming inhabitants (Elves and Men), while Melkor, who wanted Arda for himself, repeatedly destroyed their work; this went on for thousands of years until, through waves of destruction and creation, the world took shape. Valaquenta ("Account of the Valar") describes Melkor and each of the 14 Valar in detail, as well as a few of the Maiar. It also reveals how Melkor seduced many Maiar &mdash; including Sauron and the Balrogs &mdash; into his service. Quenta Silmarillion ("The History of the Silmarils"), which makes up the bulk of the book, is a series of interconnected tales set in the First Age that make up the tragic saga of the three jewels, the Silmarils. The Valar had attempted to fashion the world for Elves and Men, but Melkor continually destroyed their handiwork. After he destroyed the two lights that illuminated the world, the Valar removed to Aman, a continent to the west of Middle-earth, where they established their home called Valinor, illuminated by Two Trees, and left Middle-earth to darkness and Melkor. When stars began to shine and the Elves awoke, the Valar fought Melkor to keep the Elves safe, defeated and captured Melkor and then invited the Elves to live in Aman. Many Elves travelled to Aman, while others refused and still others stopped along the way, including the Elves who later became the Sindar, ruled by the Elf King Thingol and Melian, a Maia. Of the three tribes that set out, all of the Vanyar and Noldor, and many of the Teleri reached Aman. In Aman, Fëanor, son of Finwë, King of the Noldor, created the Silmarils, jewels which glowed with the light of the Two Trees. Melkor, released after feigning repentance, destroyed the Two Trees with the help of Ungoliant, killed Finwë, stole the Silmarils, and fled to Middle-earth, where he attacked the Elvish kingdom of Doriath. He was defeated in the first of five battles of Beleriand, however, and barricaded himself in his northern fortress of Angband. Fëanor and his sons swore an oath of vengeance against Melkor – and against anyone who withheld the Silmarils from them, even the Valar. Fëanor persuaded most of the Noldor to pursue Melkor, whom Fëanor renamed as Morgoth, into Middle-earth. Fëanor's sons seized ships from the Teleri, attacking and killing many of them, and left the other Noldor to make the voyage by foot. Upon arriving in Middle-earth, the Noldor under Fëanor attacked Melkor and defeated his host, though Fëanor was slain by Balrogs. After a period of peace, Melkor attacked the Noldor but was again defeated and besieged. Nearly 400 years later, he broke the siege and drove the Noldor back. After the destruction of the Trees and the theft of the Silmaril, the Valar had created moon and sun, thereby also causing the awakening of Men, some of which later arrive in Beleriand and allied themselves to the Elves. Beren, a man who had survived the latest battle, wandered to Doriath, where he fell in love with the elf Lúthien, the king's daughter. The king sought to prevent their marriage by imposing what he believed an impossible task: retrieving one of the Silmarils from Melkor. But together, Beren and Lúthien embarked on this quest. Sauron, a powerful servant of Melkor, imprisoned them along the way; but they escaped, crept into Melkor's fortress, and stole a Silmaril from Melkor's crown. Having achieved the task, the first union of man and elf was formed, though Beren was soon mortally wounded and Lúthien also died of grief. The Noldor, seeing that a mortal and an elf-woman could infiltrate Angband, perceived that Melkor was not invincible. They attacked again with a great army of Elves, Dwarves and Men. But they were deceived by Melkor, who had secretly darkened the hearts of many of the men. Thus it was that the Elvish host were utterly defeated, due in part to the treachery of some Men. However, many Men remained loyal to the Elves and were honoured thereafter. None received more honour than the brothers Húrin and Huor. Melkor captured Húrin, and cursed him to watch the downfall of his kin. Húrin's son, Túrin Turambar, was sent to Doriath, leaving his mother and unborn sister behind in his father's kingdom (which had been overrun by the enemy). Túrin achieved many great deeds of valor, the greatest being the defeat of the dragon Glaurung. Despite his heroism, however, Túrin was plagued by the curse of Melkor, which led him unwittingly to murder his friend Beleg and to marry and impregnate his sister Nienor, whom he had never met before, and who had lost her memory through Glaurung's enchantment. Before their child was born, the bewitchment was lifted as the dragon lay dying. Nienor, realizing what grew within her, took her own life. Upon learning the truth, Túrin threw himself on his sword. Huor's son, Tuor, became involved in the fate of the hidden Noldorin kingdom of Gondolin. He married the elf Idril, daughter of Turgon, Lord of Gondolin (the second union between Elves and Men). When Gondolin fell, betrayed from within by Maeglin, Tuor saved many of its inhabitants from destruction. All of the Elvish kingdoms in Beleriand eventually fell, and the refugees fled to a haven by the sea created by Tuor. The son of Tuor and Idril, Eärendil the Half-elven, was betrothed to Elwing, herself descended from Beren and Lúthien. Elwing brought Eärendil the Silmaril of Beren and Lúthien, and using its light Eärendil travelled across the sea to Aman to seek help from the Valar. The Valar obliged; they attacked and defeated Melkor, completely destroying his fortress Angband and sinking most of Beleriand; and they expelled Melkor from Arda. This ended the First Age of Middle-earth. Eärendil and Elwing had two children: Elrond and Elros. As descendants of immortal elves and mortal men, they were given the choice of which lineage to belong to: Elrond chose to belong to the Elves, his brother to Men. Elros became the first king of Númenor. Akallabêth ("The Downfallen") comprises about 30 pages, and recounts the rise and fall of the island kingdom of Númenor, inhabited by the Dúnedain. After the defeat of Melkor, the Valar gave the island to the three loyal houses of Men who had aided the Elves in the war against him. Through the favor with the Valar, the Dúnedain were granted wisdom and power and life more enduring than any other of mortal race had possessed, making them comparable to the High-Elves of Aman. Indeed, the isle of Númenor lay closer to Aman than to Middle-earth. But their power lay in their bliss and their acceptance of mortality. The fall of Númenor came about in large measure through the influence of the corrupted Maia Sauron (formerly a chief servant of Melkor), who arose during the Second Age and tried to conquer Middle-earth. The Númenóreans moved against Sauron, who saw that he could not defeat them with force and allowed himself to be taken as a prisoner to Númenor. There he quickly enthralled the king, Ar-Pharazôn, urging him to seek out the immortality that the Valar had apparently denied him, thus nurturing the seeds of envy that the Númenóreans had begun to hold against the Elves of the West and the Valar. So it was that all the knowledge and power of Númenor was turned towards seeking an avoidance of death; but this only weakened them and sped the gradual waning of the lifespans to something more similar to that of other Men. Sauron urged them to wage war against the Valar themselves to win immortality, and to worship his old master Melkor, whom he said could grant them their wish. Ar-Pharazôn created the mightiest army and fleet Númenor had seen, and sailed against Aman. The Valar and Elves of Aman, stricken with grief over their betrayal, called on Ilúvatar for help. When Ar-Pharazôn landed, Ilúvatar destroyed his fleet and drowned Númenor itself as punishment for the rebellion against the rightful rule of the Valar. Ilúvatar created a great wave, such as had never before been seen, which utterly destroyed and submerged the isle of Númenor, killing all but those Dúnedain who had already sailed east, and changing the shape of all the lands of Middle-earth. Sauron's physical manifestation was also destroyed in the ruin of Númenor, but as a Maia his spirit returned to Middle-earth, now robbed of the fair form he once had. Some Númenóreans who had remained loyal to the Valar were spared and were washed up on the shores of Middle-earth, where they founded the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor. Among these survivors were Elendil their leader, and his two sons Isildur and Anárion who had also saved a seedling from Númenor´s white tree, the ancestor of that of Gondor. They founded the Númenórean Kingdoms in Exile: Arnor in the north and Gondor in the south. Elendil reigned as High-king of both kingdoms, but committed the rule of Gondor jointly to Isildur and Anárion. The power of the kingdoms in exile was greatly diminished from that of Númenor, "yet very great it seemed to the wild men of Middle-earth". At the end, it is mentioned that that the sunken Númenor came to be called "Atalantë", a name not used when it existed. This led many readers to the conclusion that Númenor is Atlantis; this direct link was, however, denied by Tolkien himself, who asserted that it's a natural word following the constructs of Quenya. The concluding section of the book, comprising about 20 pages, describes the events that take place in Middle-earth during the Second and Third Ages. In the Second Age, Sauron emerged as the main power in Middle-earth, and the Rings of Power were forged by Elves led by Celebrimbor. Sauron secretly forged his own ring to control the others, which led to war between the peoples of Middle-earth and Sauron, culminating in the War of the Last Alliance, in which Elves and the remaining Númenóreans united to defeat Sauron, bringing the Second Age to an end. The Third Age began with the passing of the One Ring to Isildur, who was ambushed at the Gladden Fields shortly after and lost the ring in the River Anduin. This section also gives a brief overview of the events leading up to and taking place in The Lord of the Rings, including the waning of Gondor, the re-emergence of Sauron, the White Council, Saruman's treachery, and Sauron's final destruction along with the One Ring.
27878472	/m/0cnxs8s	Welcome to Obamaland	James Delingpole	2009-01-26		 Writing for publication in the United States, Delingpole compares the differences between the United States and Great Britain, taking the view that the latter country is a failed socialist experiment. The book was published in the month that Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, Delingpole having anticipated that Obama would win.
27886250	/m/0ch1q8b	Pronto	Elmore Leonard	1993		 Harry Arno, an over the hill Miami bookmaker quietly lives the good life with his girlfriend, Joyce Patton. Harry skimmed for years from his corpulent mob boss, Jimmy 'Cap' Capotorto and managed to salt away nearly a cool million in a Swiss bank account toward his retirement. Harry wants to retire and move to Rapallo, Italy, dreaming of living an idyllic existence with Joyce in a villa by the sea. In Rapallo he once briefly talked to the poet, Ezra Pound when Harry was in the army and Pound was incarcerated. Now the Justice Department wants Jimmy Cap so they set up Harry to give information about Cap's activities by putting out the word about his skimming activities. The Justice Department figures that Jimmy Cap will try to have Harry killed, which will force Harry to ask for witness protection and turn evidence against Jimmy Cap. Jimmy sends Harry a message in the form of low-life hit man Earl Crowe but Harry is faster with a gun. Harry skips his bond and the baby sitting U. S. Marshal and former Marine Raylan Givens for the second time, the first ending when Harry gave Raylan the slip in an Atlanta airport. Harry makes a nostalgic dash for Rapallo. Holed up in a picaresque Italian resort Harry is soon pursued by his ex-stripper girlfriend Joyce. Raylan follows because he seeks to redeem his previous failure to bring Harry in - for him this is a matter of honor. In addition, ‘the Zip’, another mob affiliate, wants to take over Harry's action, so he tells Cap that he'll take out Harry in Italy. If Harry ends up dead, the Zip gets to take over the bookie operation, which is going to mean a lot more money. The Zip who shows his macho stuff back in his homeland and endlessly humiliates ‘Stronzo’ Nicky Testa demonstrates his penchant for violence with a cold bloodied murder. Consequently, Harry has so many people following him that the small village of Rapallo becomes inundated with U. S. mobsters and federal agents. To the aid of Harry comes Robert Gee, a former French foreign legionnaire who helps him defend the villa against all the trigger-happy mobsters. During all of these events, the sixty-six year old Harry starts drinking seriously again which causes the situation to deteriorate even faster. Harry is in real danger of losing his life, as are several of the other players…
27887715	/m/0ch4f0_	Mannan Magal	Sandilyan		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The plot is about Karikalan who set his journey to find his identity was goes to vengi kingdom & meets Niranchana devi accidentally where on finding the political clutches around her & her first younger brother Rajaraja Narendra by her step-maternal uncle Jayasimha II for her second younger brother Vishnuvarshan. Where Jayasimha II wanted to make Vengi throne to his nephew Vishnuvarshan, makes Rajaraja Narendra very weak politically & physically. Karikalan decides to work for her to save. On his journey to save Niranchana DDevi & to get his own identity he was put into positions to manage & tackle by-the-times most dangerous & intillegent men like Brammaraayar, Jayasimha II, Araiyan Rajarajan.
27910639	/m/0ch2t4p	According to Mark	Penelope Lively	1984		 Mark Lamming, a biographer, leads a quiet life in London with his wife Diana, who works at a gallery. In order to gain information about the dead writer and essayist Gilbert Strong who he is going to write a book about, Mark visits Strong's granddaughter, Carry. She runs a garden centre at Dean Close, a mansion Strong used to live in. Mark regularly stays at Dean Close for several days, and in the course of this falls in love with Carry. After some time he comes up with the idea to visit Hermione, Carry's mother who lives in France, so as to ask her some questions about the relationship between her and her father, Gilbert Strong. He asks Carry to join him – partly because he needs her to speak to her mother and partly because he wants to spend time with her. Hesitantly Carry agrees, and together they leave for France – Diana, Marks wife, plans to join them later. The trip to France turns into a fiasco. During their journey, Mark and Carry have sex at several hotels. When they arrive at Hermione's place, Carry becomes extremely reclusive because of the way Hermione, her mother, is treating her. Diana, who in the meantime has arrived there too, is shocked by the state the house is in, and Mark finds that, after all, Hermione is not the right person to get information from for his book. They leave Hermione's place and plan to visit several French cities and villages. As Carry feels extremely uncomfortable while travelling with Mark and Diana, she simply leaves them without saying a word while they are in a supermarket. She travels to Paris where she gets to know Nick, an Englishman. Back to England Carry tells Mark the she has fallen in love with Nick. Mark and Carry sort out their problems and Mark leaves for Porlock, a village in the north of England where he hopes to find out more about Gilbert Strong's life. He moves in with a Major whose aunt Irene was associated with Strong years ago. To Mark's delight, the Major produces a bunch of letters that Strong wrote to Irene. These letters solve the mystery of Strong's life that Mark has been intent to find out about ever since he started working on the biography: Strong had been deeply in love with Irene, who died a short time after their first encounter. Strong had never really got over this heavy loss. These findings enable Mark to understand what made Strong tick and why he had never in his further life been able to develop any happy long-term relationship with women. Having found out about this, Mark feels that he has all the information he needs to finish his book about Strong. He leaves Porlock and heads for London where he visits Carry for what seems to be the last time. In the last chapter of the book, Mark is at a broadcast station where a radio transmission about Gilbert Strong is being produced.
27910683	/m/0ch2byq	Passing On				 The book starts with a funeral. The atmosphere is not, as one would assume, oppressive, but rather buoyant. When the coffin is carried to the graveyard, Helen remarks that her mother is still, even after her death, making her presence felt. As her mother had had a row with the priest when choosing the grave years ago, he keeps casting Helen and her brother distrustful looks throughout the funeral. From the very beginning of the book it is clear that Dorothy Glovers must have been a nasty woman. A woman who did not treat her children with love and affection, but ruled them and deprived them of life’s pleasures. Only Louise, her youngest daughter, had had the strength to escape from her dominant influence. When the ceremony of burying is held at the grave and the priest is giving his sermon, Helen thinks: „Eternal life is an appalling idea, especially in mother’s case.“ Slowly but steadily, Helen and Edward get used to their mother’s absence and they start to slightly change their lives. Helen feels much freer than before her mother's death and falls in love with Giles Carnaby, their lawyer. She becomes more confident and starts to perceive life differently. Nevertheless, Dorothy, Helen's and Edward's mother still, even after her death, makes her presence felt. At one point, Helen finds love-letters that a former boyfriend of hers had written to her in one of her mother's old cloaks. Her mother had never given these letters to her and therefore had caused the separation of Helen and her boyfriend. Helen is upset, but has to come to terms with it – she cannot confront her mother anymore. Edwards is a biology teacher. His mother’s does not change much about his life - he remains as reclusive as he had been before his mother's death. He spends most of his leisure time in the wood that is part of the estate he and Helen live at. There he tends plants and watches birds. In the course of the book he turns out to be homosexual. Helen helps Howard through what seems to be a life crisis. By doing so she feels strong. Helen and Edward live modestly. They only buy what they absolutely need; their lifestyle is rather old-fashioned. This is in complete contrast to the life their sister Luise and her husband Tom lead, who every once in a while drop in at Helen and Howard's place. Luise and Tom live an urban life in London, their problems are those typical of people that live in big cities: lack of time and psycho-somatic illnesses. Helen and Howard, by contrast, lead a calm, monotonous and rather rural life. Throughout the book it seems as though Helen and Giles Carnaby, the lawyer, will end up in a happy relationship. This does not happen, as in one of the last chapters Gilbert tells Helen that he does not want to see her anymore.
27918488	/m/095cn_g	Lords of France: The Bankers Who Broke the World	Liaquat Ahamed	2009	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book discusses the personal histories of the four heads of the Central Banks of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany and their efforts to steer the world economy from the period during the First World War until the Great Depression. The book also discusses at length the career of the British economist John Maynard Keynes who criticized many of the policies of the heads of the Central Banks during this time.
27922600	/m/0ch1454	After America	John Birmingham		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 Four years after an energy event damages America for a year the populace still does not understand what is going on. The President is almost slain; seemingly by organized looter gangs. Soon, a new threat arises out of the Middle East. After America is the first sequel to Without Warning.
27925395	/m/0ch2_kb	Witz	Joshua Cohen	2010-05	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In Witz, Joshua Cohen calls all religious Jews "Affiliated". After the sabbath meal a week before Christmas, Benjamin is born to Israel and Hanna Israelien in Joysey, the first son after 12 girls. This winter is particularly hard and in fact persists year round. Benjamin is born full grown (by a method explored by Flann O'Brien in At Swim-Two-Birds), with a beard and glasses. His foreskin continually sheds itself and grows back. Already too big for his father's shirts, he takes to his mother's maternity robes. On Christmas Eve, all of the Affiliated die except first-born sons. The Israelien's maid, Wanda, drives Benjamin down to Florida to live with his grandfather, Isaac, who is Unaffiliated. Meanwhile, a cabal of government operatives are quarantining all of the first-borns on Ellis Island, now called "The Garden" (incorporated), capitalized with the property of the dead. A week later, they come for Benjamin. Isaac dies from a heart attack. Benjamin escapes at a rest stop but is eventually caught and taken to The Garden, where they have moved the entire Israelien house, complete with Sabbath guest still on one of the toilets. The Garden markets Benjamin as the messiah, complete with travelling road show and merchandising. A team of unaffiliated women are trained to act as his mother and sisters and see to his needs. Then the first-borns start dying, and by Passover Benjamin is the only one remaining. It is arranged that he marry the President's daughter in Las Vegas, but Benjamin escapes again, to wander the country in his mother's robe. Back in New York, his "sisters" catch up with him, and during cunnilingus with "Hanna", his tongue gets stuck and is torn off when the sisters try to separate them. The scandal destroys The Garden, and Benjamin is shunned by all (he and the operators of The Garden are Disaffiliated). Without real Jews around to complicate things, America, and soon, the world, has become Affiliated. The President becomes chief of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. Those who refuse to Affiliate are sent to their "homeland", Polandland, where they are kept in ghettos, experimented upon, worked and starved to death, killed. Benjamin finds his way there, too, visiting the towns of his mother's and his father's ancestors. In his wanderings, he sprouts the horns of a cow and ultimately he turns into a woman. The Affiliated, however, revive the cult of his tongue, now displayed as a relic. And Wanda, now Affiliated, with a son of her own, remembers the visitor who came down the chimney to sit with Benjamin every night for the week after his birth: Isaiah? dressed as Santa Claus. 25 years later, we hear from a 108-year-old Jewish man who was in Auschwitz ... He has listed the punch line of a joke, who needs the setup any more, for every year that he has lived. Because what should you do only laugh.
27929731	/m/0ch5jvb	First Light	Rebecca Stead	2007	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 First Light follows the adventure of two protagonists, Peter, who lives with his mother and father in New York but is in Greenland for his father's research, and Thea, who lives in an underground colony in Greenland called Gracehope. Gracehope was formed hundreds of years ago by a group called the Settlers who used to live in England. They possessed unusual abilities, such as extremely good vision and hearing, leading them to be called 'eye adepts' and 'ear adepts', respectively. These powers were seen as sorcery, prompting Grace, the leader of the Settlers, to bring the Settlers under the ice in Greenland where they could live in peace. While walking around her house, Thea finds a map in her room of Gracehope. The map shows a tunnel leading onto the surface. Thea and her cousin Mattias find the tunnel and meet Peter who helps them back to Gracehope. Reaching Gracehope, Peter realizes that several talismans of the people are in the shape of mitochondrial DNA, which his mom is studying. After waking up from a headache, Peter finds his mom next to his bed. She explains that she used to live in Gracehope, but was banished with her sister, after her sister ventured above the surface and contracted an illness that could not be cured. She also explains that her research of mitochondrial DNA relates to the ability of mutations to benefit the human body, which could cause their extremely good vision and hearing. In the end, she warns Peter that global warming is causing Gracehope to slowly melt away. The entire colony must learn the dangers they face and escape. One obstacle lies in their way: Rowen, Thea and Peter's grandmother who banished Peter's mom and did nothing to help Thea's mom when she was on her deathbed from an illness when she ventured aboveground. Rowen is the head of the Council in Gracehope and is strictly against going aboveground. To convince the rest of the colony, Peter and Thea plan to use a piece of mythology, that a dog with four white paws would be born when it was time to leave. Such a dog had been born several days ago but has yet to open his eyes. Thea decides to proceed without using the dog and tries to convince the colony at a reenactment of the Settler's escape to Greenland with several allies who know of Rowen's actions. Just as Thea and her allies are about to lose the argument, Peter arrives with the dog, whose eyes are open. That, coupled with the fact that Peter is an eye adept, the first in a hundred years, convinces the colony to listen to Thea instead of Rowen. The novel ends eight months later as the people of Gracehope are slowly educated on global warming and the dangers of staying in their colony.
27931190	/m/0ch2d5z	The Bent Sword				 In Medieval England, a daydreaming peasant named Steffin wants to pursue his imaginary quest, but he feels trapped by society. When an eccentric storyteller insists that Steffin's quest is real, Steffin is forced to take his destiny into his own hands and seek out his arch nemesis, the dark Lord of Boredom. Through a reckless chain of Don-Quixote-like adventures, colorful friends catch Steffin's dream, and the powers that oppose them begin to unveil themselves. But when reality kicks in and his friends have had enough, will Steffin be able to pull them back together and complete their quest, or will Lord Bore succeed in quelling the greatest of all adventures?
27932573	/m/0ch2b32	Snuff			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Commander Sam Vimes is forced by his wife, Lady Sybil, to take a vacation with their son, Young Sam, at her family's mansion Crundells. After a short time of enjoying his vacation, he discovers that the rural community has a dark past with the resident goblins, humanoid lifeforms that live in caves nearby. Vimes finds out that the son of Lord Rust has been enslaving goblins to force them to work on his tobacco plantations in Howondaland, allowing him to manufacture cigars cheaply that are then smuggled to Ankh-Morpork. After teaming up with the local constable, a young man called Upshot, Vimes manages to arrest those responsible for the crime. In the end, thanks to his wife's organizational skills and powers of persuasion, goblins are recognized as citizens by all major nations and rulers. While Rust's son flees abroad, Vetinari considers having him removed.
27933317	/m/0ch1ld8	The Burning Wire	Jeffery Deaver	2010-06	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The sabotage of a substation of the prominent electrical energy distributor Algonquin Consolidated Power and Light Company in Queens, New York, causing a deadly arc flash leads to an investigation managed by esteemed criminalist Lincoln Rhyme and his team of investigators. The initial primary suspect, Ray Galt, a disillusioned troubleman who is an employee of Algonquin Consolidated, is believed to blame Algonquin and society's reliance on electricity as the reason he developed leukemia due to radiation from working close to power lines. Signals intelligence (SIGINT) suggests that Galt is backed by a previously unknown eco-terror group named 'Justice For'. The collected intelligence fails to specify further details of the terrorist cell, other than the name 'Rahman'. A series of demand letters are sent after the first attack, ordering Algonquin to reduce its electrical distribution, or further acts of violence involving electricity would be executed. Rhyme must also deal with a parallel investigation into a recurring antagonist in the series: the criminal known as Richard Logan, who is nicknamed 'The Watchmaker'. A joint operation is conducted between Rhyme's office and the Mexican Federal Police after Logan is located in Mexico.
27934619	/m/0ch40pl	The Confession of Brother Haluin	Edith Pargeter	1988	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Heavy snows in mid-December 1142 followed by days of frost in much of England change the politics of the realm and lead Brother Cadfael far from home. In Oxford Castle, Empress Maud has been besieged for months by King Stephen and his forces. Once the roads are again passable, Sheriff Hugh Beringar gets the disappointing news that the Empress took advantage of the snow and frozen rivers for a miraculous escape, right under the noses of King Stephen's army. Rumor has it she and several allies dressed in white, were let down by a rope, walked over the frozen river through Stephen's lines, walked to Abingdon, where they got horses to ride to Wallingford Castle. She is then safe with her brother Robert of Gloucester and her major supporter Brian FitzCount. Oxford Castle surrendered, the men allowed to march home. Cadfael and Hugh wonder, what would the King do if he held the Empress? He would not keep her in chains, as she had done to him the year before. She will not surrender, nor give up her claim on the crown that Stephen wears. Robert of Gloucester returned from Normandy with the eldest son of the Empress with her second husband Geoffrey of Anjou, a boy of nine years named Henry Plantagenet. Her husband did not come to her aid. Perhaps the presence of her son will strengthen her claim for the throne in the eyes of the people. For the moment, the long running battle between these two contenders has begun anew, each with a talent of "conjuring defeat out of victory". King Stephen joined his brother Henry, Bishop of Winchester, and calls his sheriffs to meet him there for the Christmas feast. At Shrewsbury Abbey, the heavy snow fall caused severe damage to the slate tile roof of the guest hall, pouring water on some unhappy guests. The repairs must begin while the frosty days continue, with each monk taking a share in the labor under the guidance of their master builder Brother Conradin. Cadfael took his turn. Brother Haluin puts in his stint, but overreaches while knocking a pile of snow, falling down 40 feet along with many broken slate tiles, the ladders and scaffolds. His feet and ankles are seriously injured by the slates in the fall; his prospects for survival are grim. Taken to the abbey's infirmary, he makes confession in the presence of Abbot Radulfus and Brother Cadfael. Haluin speaks names he has not pronounced in 18 years. At the age of eighteen, he fell in love with a wealthy young woman named Bertrade de Clary. Despite his own good background and their mutual love, Bertrade's mother Adelais forbade his suit. The heartbroken Haluin entered the monastery, only to be visited there soon after by Adelais asking for herbs that would end Bertrade's pregnancy. He stole the necessary drugs from Cadfael's herbarium and gave them to Adelais, who later informed him that Bertrade and the unborn child died from the herbs he had sent, while she told others her daughter died of fever to hide the shame. He begs Cadfael to forgive him for the theft and for putting his herbs to such a use, and asks the abbot to forgive his sins and to grant him absolution. They both comply, while Haluin is much relieved by his confession. But Haluin lives. His injuries are severe and some are permanent - he will never walk without crutches and specially made shoes. Cadfael asks Hugh Beringar if the wife of de Clary yet lived. She lives at Hales, while her son, another sworn to King Stephen, resides in Staffordshire. If Haluin recovers apace, his vow of pilgrimage to seek forgiveness of the mother will be raised, no matter how ill-advised it is in his new state of health. Haluin's recuperation is slow, difficult, disciplined, and steady. In early March he asks in Chapter to be allowed to make his pilgrimage. He had done no penance to earn his absolution, and his vow burns in him: a pilgrimage to Bertrade's mother and to Bertrade's tomb at Hales, east of Shrewsbury. The abbot accedes to his pleading. Haluin may go, but only if he takes Brother Cadfael with him for assistance and safety. Haluin agrees, conceding his need for aid. On the fourth day of March, they proceed by foot to Hales, a three-day journey. They meet with Adelais, who expresses shock over Haluin's injuries and offers the forgiveness Haluin begs. They discover that Bertrade is not buried at the church. The local priest tells them that the de Clary family tomb is at Elford in Staffordshire, for deaths since Bertrade's grandfather. Haluin insists they continue this journey despite Cadfael's concern over his fitness to complete the pilgrimage by foot, now twice as long. Their trip to Elford (via Watling Street and Lichfield) takes the better part of a week. On the second night out, in the hour before dawn, Cadfael takes a short walk. He sees two horsemen passing, each with a woman riding postillion behind him. He recognizes one of the women as Adelais and the other as her maid. Cadfael lays out the rest of their route to include a night at Lichfield, just a few miles from Elford, to assure a good night's rest for Haluin before his all-night vigil. Haluin and Cadfael arrive at Elford to find Adelais in the church, kneeling before the tomb, as if she is their shadow. Adelais offers them meals and shelter in her dower house, keeping them from the rest of the de Clary household. After a restful day, Haluin returns to the church to spend the cold night on his knees in vigil and meditation, alongside Cadfael at the de Clary tomb. Haluin completed the main part of his vow. At sunrise, a curious Roscelin arrives at the church timely to assist Cadfael in bringing Haluin to his feet. He and Cadfael accompany the spent Haluin back to the de Clary manor. As Haluin takes his rest, Cadfael speaks with Roscelin, who tells them he was sent away by his father to serve Audemar, their friend and overlord. Lothair, bringing food, sends the young man away. Adelais offers them horses for the return journey, which spurs Haluin to leave at the moment and on foot as vowed, though it is but a few hours to sunset. A sudden snowstorm forces them to seek shelter at the manor of Vivers. The lord of the manor, Cenred, welcomes them to his home. He notes that they are far from home, with no Benedictine abbeys nearby, save the new one building at Farewell for nuns. Next morning, he asks whether either of the monks is an ordained priest. Heluin is. Will he officiate at the wedding of his much younger half-sister, Helisende, to a nobleman on the morrow? Cenred finds the chance arrival of the monks to be a good sign for this marriage. The haste is because his own son, who was raised with Helisende, has fallen in love with the girl; as such a relationship is prohibited, Cenred wants his sister to marry soon. It is a serious decision for Haluin, who has never performed any rites as a priest, but he agrees. Cadfael meets Helisende in the kennels as he walks about the manor. He asks her if she agrees to this marriage freely. She says yes, if any adult decision is truly free. Cadfael is struck by how familiar she seems though he cannot recall where he has seen her like before. Edgytha serves Haluin and Cadfael their midday meal. She tells them the story of Helisende being the daughter of her late master with his second, much younger wife, adding that the wife has gone into the convent at Polesworth since he died about eight years ago. Her daughter was left to Lady Emma and Edgytha's care, a girl with three loving mothers. Jean de Perronet, charming and very happy, arrives. Cenred invites Cadfael and Haluin to take supper in the hall with the family. They agree, and Haluin is seated next to the couple, the first time he sees Helisende. Cadfael explains to Cenred that they met his son when they stayed at Elford. As the meal ends, Lady Emma reports that Edgytha is gone, for four hours. She told a servant she would be back quickly, with a cat to put among the pigeons. The phrase meant nothing to the servant girl, but much to the parents, Helisende, and to Cadfael. Cenred organizes a party to search out of doors. About half the way to the manor at Elford, using the shortest path, Edgytha's body is found, knife wound to her chest and nothing stolen, clearly murdered. Cenred sends word ahead to Elford with this news, both to notify Audemar who acts as sheriff and to ask if anyone spoke with her. Cadfael sees there is snow beneath her body, not atop it, suggesting she was on her way home. The light snow had fallen early in the four hours. They carried her body back to Vivers. The entire household gathers in the hall, save one: Helisende, noticed only by Cadfael. Jean de Perronet asks if there is a link between his presence and this death. Cenred prays no. Roscelin arrives home, angry at what his father has done behind his back. Roscelin did not see Edgytha at Elford; he thought she had not reached the place. Who did she visit? Father and son argue. Roscelin meets Jean de Perronet, the prospective husband who has read between the lines. Roscelin wants assurance that Helisende was not forced to this marriage, planned secretly until this moment of revelation. Cenred asks his wife to get Helisende, but Helisende cannot be found. Her horse is gone from the stables. Audemar and his men arrive; he takes over the situation, a man of decision and action. With no bride there can be no marriage in this house. Cadfael and Haluin plan to depart in the morning. Haluin sees how small his own problems are, in contrast of the world outside him, a change setting him on the path to a true vocation. Cadfael is "unregenerate", wanting to see this story to its end, but with no justification, no special knowledge as to who or what would have been the cat among the pigeons. They say farewell to Cenred and to Roscelin, as the men wait for word to start the search. They leave to the west on a new path, that bypasses Lichfield, not the same route as their approach to Elford. Few people live in this area, where the locals had long fought the Normans. As evening nears, a man tells them they are quite near the new Benedictine house at Farewell planned by Bishop Roger de Clinton. They head there. After a night's rest at the convent, Haluin recognizes Bertrade, the girl he loved and thought he had killed, now a woman, and she recognizes him. She followed Haluin to the cloister, even taking the founder's name. She is Sister Benedicta, sent from Polesworth to help this new place. Cadfael realizes why Helisende looked familiar to him; her profile was like her mother but her face showed her father's looks. Haluin had much to absorb, strong feelings to experience. Cadfael wants to know what drove the mother to create such pain and trouble for so many years. Cadfael negotiates a meeting between Brother Haluin and Sister Benedicta with Mother Patrice, learning that she has already informed the family that Helisende is safe. Brother Haluin and Sister Benedicta are granted an hour's private meeting. Cadfael rides to Elford to meet with Adelais. Cadfael challenges her with what she had done to Haluin years ago. Then what she did to her own daughter: Adelais married Bertrade off to Cenred’s father Edric while Bertrade was with child by another man. What did she hold against Haluin, a handsome man who others would see as a good match for her daughter? Adelais confesses that she begged the herbs from Haluin then lied about her daughter’s death to Haluin to torment him. She admits that her anger rose because Haluin had fallen in love with her daughter and not her, he unaware of her feelings. If she could not have Haluin, then no woman could. And Edgytha, part of Adelais's household back then, knew the truth of Helisende. Edgytha ran to Adelais that night, who refused leave for the truth to be told. Adelais claims all the guilt, including sending her grooms away, who most likely were the murderers on their own initiative. The truth must out that Helisende has no Vivers blood in her; it is already coming out at Farewell. She will tell it with him as witness. They ride to Vivers manor, where all are gathered – Audemar de Clary, the Vivers and de Perronet. Adelais tells them that Helisende is not blood kin to Roscelin as she had brought her daughter Bertrade pregnant, to be married to Cenred's father. She admits she did all these foul deeds of deception long ago. They realize Edgytha knew as well. She tells them that Betrade, Helisende and the father are at Farewell. The father was a clerk in her household, a year older than her daughter. How did they come to meet now? Cadfael attests to this meeting, telling Haluin's tale in so doing. This stunning news is hard for the Vivers family to accept, a shock to Audemare, a challenge to de Perronet. Helisende is still loved by the Vivers, kin or not. Adelais has lands to leave her granddaughter. Roscelin is joyous. Jean de Perronet will continue his suit. Audemar claims her as his niece, and as overlord places his niece with Cenred once she is ready to leave Farewell. He tells his mother to ride back with him and Roscelin, as Cadfael rides back to Farewell. Audemar is sadly disappointed in his mother's actions years ago, and her actions the day Edgytha visited her. He banishes his mother to Hales, ordering her never to return to his manor at Elford or any other of his manors. Haluin shares his joy of meeting Bertrade and Helisende afterward with Cadfael. Haluin is growing stronger in walking with crutches, and is completely satisfied with his present blessings, this season of his love. He has no angry words for Adelais. He looks forward only. The two Benedictine brothers walk home to Shrewsbury in completion of the vow, the truth in place of falsehood having changed so much.
27941562	/m/0dd96y3	Earth	Jon Stewart			 Written in the past tense, the book's stated purpose is to serve as a Baedeker for an alien civilization that discovers Earth after humanity has died out, most likely by its own hands. As such, Earth (The Book) attempts to chronicle the history of the planet and the human race from the beginning to the present day, and also tries to explain human concepts and emotions such as "love" and "work" for its alien readers. The book follows a similar format to America (The Book), being written in the style of a textbook and featuring many images, including visual gags. One controversial visual gag in America was a Photoshopped image of the United States Supreme Court justices at the time of the book's publishing nude; a similar gag appeared in Earth which was an illustration of human anatomy that featured a nude man, one half of the man depicting Larry King.
27955738	/m/0ch1vnw	Borderlands	Peter Carter		{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 “Borderlands”, is a 1991 novel by British author, Peter Carter. The western oriented novel tells the story of young, and somewhat naïve, Ben Curtis, an orphan who lost both his mother and his brother at an early age. The story spans across several decades of the late 1880s and early 1900’s, as Ben learns the harsh brutal lessons of the Texas and the rise and fall of famous Kansas boomtowns like Abilene and Dodge City. The overall plot of the novel was broken into four sections, all of which tell crucial life changing events in Ben’s life. Throughout the novel, Ben is plagued by sudden, abrupt changes in his lifestyle, and even more sudden deaths as the wild west quickly changes into modern society of the 20th century. The novel begins in Texas, in the year 1871, in the fictional, rural, area of Clement County. Beauregard (Bo) Curtis, and his younger brother Benjamin (Ben), and their widowed mother are struggling to keep their farm afloat in the tough economic times of the late 1800’s. But during the summer of 1870, their mother dies, leaving the two brothers are left to take care of the family farm alone. Bo and Ben hope to receive help from their estranged sister Flo, but to dismay they discover Flo is now married, and has turned her back on their family, leaving them to suffer in poverty alone. However the brothers are soon discover that their poor mother owed money to the local preacher, Tyler, and are soon evicted, left to fend for themselves on the harsh prairie. Completely broke, and now without a home, the two brothers set out for the town of Lookout in hope of getting jobs, working on Sam Clark’s cattle drive. However when they arrive in Lookout, they discover that they missed the Cattle Drive by three days. However the town marshal soon informs them that they can catch Joe Dutton’s cattle drive if they hurry. Bo and Ben quickly ride out onto the Texas range, hoping to catch up to Dutton, so they can join the cattle drive. The two are reluctantly hired by Dutton, and are then equipped with shot guns, spurs, thick leather boots, cowboy hats, and belts. During the cattle drive, the two brothers bond with the other cowhands, and their African American cook. Throughout the drive, Ben begins to gain respect for black Americans, and stops referring to them as just “niggers”, but instead by the cook’s real name, Tom Arnold. The cattle drive slowly makes it way across the desert plains, crossing over the entire state Texas, through snow and rain, and sand storms. Soon, after half a year, the cattle drive arrives in the town of boom town Abilene, Kansas, on June 13, 1871. They men are soon paid, and set out for town in hopes of having some fun. But to Ben’s horror, Bo is soon shot in the back by a man named Dutch Kessel over a crooked card game. After Bo’s funeral, the cattle drive soon sets out for the next town in order to complete the run. However, Ben - heartbroken over the death of the last of his family - decides to stay in Abilene, so that he can avenge Bo’s death - by killing Dutch Kessel. Ben Curtis begins to contemplate how he would get his revenge on his brother’s murderer, how he would gun him down. Whether to challenge him to a gun fight, or simply shoot him in the back like he did with Bo. But to Ben’s dismay, Dutch Kessel fled town the night before after he murdered Bo. Ben considers hunting Kessel down, and challenging him to a gunfight, but the town marshal, Wild Bill Hickok warns Ben to stay out of trouble and not to try to take the law into his own hands, or else he would shoot him on the spot. Ben reluctantly obeys Hickok, intimidated by the tough, hardened, marshal, and gets a job at the local store as a shopkeeper. Ben finds his new job degrading, a job fit for women. Making matters worse, his boss, Jacob Besser, and his daughter Goblinka, are foreign immigrants, causing Ben to further disrespect them. Ben begins to look back on his life, wondering where it all went wrong. However, Ben soon grows used to his new life quiet in Abilene, his thoughts about Dutch Kessel fading more and more each day. After nearly two years working in Abilene, Ben forgets about his vow to avenge Bo, and befriends his neighbor, and chess partner Henry, an immigrant from Germany. Ben suspects that Henry is a communist, and an arsonist, but doesn’t ask him, worried about jeopardizing their friendship. But Ben’s life is disrupted yet again, when Marshall Hickok informs Ben that Dutch Kessel has been shot dead, in St. Louis, Missouri. Ben soon discovers that he is now a local celebrity, even though he had nothing to do with Kessel’s death. Finally free from his vow to avenge Bo, Ben gets a whole new leash on life, a newfound sense of freedom, and multiple future job opportunities. Ben eventually decides to go into business with Besser, selling cowboy hats to town people. With his newfound fame on his side, Ben’s hat business quickly lifts off the ground, and he begins to wonder about a future as being a businessman, like Besser. But the town of Abilene quickly begins to change, the town’s outlook beginning to change more and more as people continued to town. Abilene was quickly becoming a ghost town. To make matters worse, Henry announces to Ben that he’s going to go live with his sister in New York City, and confirms Ben’s thoughts about his communism. However, Ben soon discovers that he doesn’t care, and says good-bye to his only friend in town. Ben visits Bo’s grave one last time and pays his respects. His last few ties to Abilene now gone, Ben boards a train, and leaves town, departing for the currently growing town of Dodge City, Kansas, to set up a fur business with Jacob Besser’s brother, Brusik. Ben Curtis arrives in the famous town of Dodge City, Kansas, and discovers that the town is nothing like the rumors said it would be. Instead of a boom town, Ben finds a town just barely getting started, and is run rampant with crime. Worried about his own safety, Ben considers going back to Abilene, but changes his mind finally meets Brusik Besser, his new business partner. Ben soon opens a successful fur selling business, and soon get used to the wild life of Dodge City. But shortly after starting his business, Ben is almost robbed a pair of bandits, but manages to chase them away. After the close encounter, they decide to hire bodyguards to watch over the guards, but are shocked to discover the men they hire are nothing more than thugs for hires. Still, faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to be the victim or the fighter, Ben and Brusik decide to keep the men under hire. Ben soon becomes wealthy as his business grows more successful, and keeps a hidden supply of money underneath the floorboards of his office. But when the stock market crashes in the year 1873, Ben is forced into bankruptcy. To Ben’s horror and anger, he is forced to leave his store (and the money that he had hid underneath it), when it is bought by a man named Tom Stokes. Broke and homeless yet again - like all those years ago when he was only a 13 year old boy in Clement County, only this time without his older brother Bo to guide him - Ben Curtis quickly hits rock bottom. But when Ben’s life seems to be unraveling before his eyes, another opportunity suddenly appears. Ben soon get a job working with his new boss, Sam Dawson and his co-worker Abel, skinning buffalo for their hides and then selling their furs to make a stable living. Ben is miserable in his new job, going from riches to rags again so quickly, but he manages to survive on the Texas prairie. After a few months, despite the rumors of him being wanted by the Pinkerton family of bounty hunters for owing money to the bank, Ben eagerly returns to Dodge city in hopes of retrieving the money that he hid underneath his store’s floorboards. But Ben is shocked to find that it’s gone, the money way taken shortly after he left, but not by Tom Stokes. Angry, bitter, and confused, Ben returns to his demeaning job as a skinner with Sam. But to Ben’s delight, Sam soon tells him of a plan to move to the state of California, and retire together. But when the group stops just outside the California border, between the Rocky Mountains and the sunny beaches of California, to Ben’s horror, they discover Dutch Kessel is still alive. The story of Dutch Kessel’s demise back in St. Louis was just a rumor, and in fact, Dutch Kessel was camping nearby, in the next camp. Kessel learns of Ben’s location from a bunch of local cowhands, and tracks him down. Determined to get to Ben, Kessel shoots Sam, killing him in cold blood. Ben manages to escape Kessel on horseback, but quickly realizes that he has no way to defend himself from Kessel’s wrath. Kessel then chases Ben across the plains, and into a winter snowstorm. After hours of running, Kessel eventually corners Ben, and reveals that he had been haunted by the memory of Ben for years, worried that Ben would someday return to kill him. Ben tries to reason with Kessel, but Kessel ignores him, and withdraws his shot gun. But just as Ben is about die, Kessel is stabbed and skewered to death by a native American war party. In the aftermath of his traumatic night, Ben eventually gives up on his dream to move to California. Now that Sam had died, it has lost all it’s meaning. With all his friends and family now dead, the now adult Ben decides to live with Henry (The man he met in Abilene) in New York. Ben spends the rest of his life in New York, the last surviving cowboy from the wild, (and rapidly changing) western frontier.
27977725	/m/0ch15dd	The Day After Tomorrow			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Paul Osborn sees the man who has murdered his father years before while walking through Paris. When he sees the murderer again his memories take over. After a detective found out about Henri Kanarack, Osborn plans to kill him. McVey comes to Paris in order to meet some experts on the case of a couple decapitations, where the bodies and heads were found deep-frozen. A few days later Osborn tries to kill Kanarack, but when he's nearly dead a third person enters the scene. He shoots Kanarack and the last information Osborn could get from Kanarack was that he was murdering Osborn's father for hire of Erwin Scholl. Osborn tells McVey about Scholl. Out of McVey's researches arises that Osborn's father invented a scalpel that can be used at degrees of absolute zero and that in the same year he was killed a few other inventors were killed, whose inventions were all about surgery at extremely high or low temperatures and all vanished. Because of that McVey and his investigation team have a suspicion that Scholl and his people might belong to an organization that's working on surgery making it possible to combine deep-frozen body parts and to thaw it so the person is alive. Time passes, and McVey finds out about Elton Lybarger and a ceremony that should be held in Berlin. During this in the main hall of the building Elton Lybarger is giving the speech. Suddenly all doors close and all people inside the main hall are gassed with cyanide gas. Right after the cyanide attack the building is set to fire and Osborn nearly perishes. After Osborn followed Von Holden, the only remaining organization member, to Switzerland and is nearly killed McVey gives Osborn a VCR tape, on which Osborn finds a whole confession of Elton Lybarger's physician. He confesses having experienced the surgery on Lybarger, because they were searching for a person, whose attributes and fingerprints were as much as the same as Adolf Hitler's, and having helped the organization, who was trying to build a new third Reich, to raise Lybarger's two “nephews”, the perfect Aryans, who were raised with him since they were young. According to Salettl one of them should be the new leader after having undergone an operation. Osborn can't remember exactly what happened in Switzerland, but then the scene replays in his mind. He sees how Van holden falls into a crevasse and how he opens the package Von Holden had been carrying with him all the time, and it's the deep-frozen head of Adolf Hitler.
27979753	/m/0ch1ntl	The Red Pyramid	Rick Riordan	2010	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The book is written as a recording made by the Kane siblings, Carter and Sadie. The story begins when Carter Kane and his father, Julius Kane, go to London to visit Sadie, Carter's sister who lives separately from them. Julius takes them to the British Museum to "study" the Rosetta Stone. But he actually has deeper motives and tries to summon Osiris, the Egyptian god of the Underworld by using the stone as an anchor. It goes wrong when all the other four major gods are brought out and Set, the Egyptian god of storms and chaos, imprisons Julius (he is now a host of Osiris) in a coffin. Carter and Sadie were taken to Brooklyn by their uncle, Amos. He goes to find Set, leaving the two near-stranger siblings alone with a baboon called Khufu. In the library of the Brooklyn mansion, they begin to discover signs that they are descended from famous pharaohs. Julius' side of the family was descended from Narmer while their dead mother, Ruby, had a family originated from Ramesses the Great. The term is blood of the pharaohs. When Sadie and Carter reach New York they talk about how in Egypt people lived on the East side of the river because the sun rose in the east and they buried their dead in the west. Sadie asks why can't they live in Manhattan. Amos replies that there are other gods and they should stay separate. This is a link between this book and the Percy Jackson Series. Just then, the mansion is attacked by serpent leopards,also known as serpopards. Sadie's cat, Muffin, turns out be the cat goddess Bast. She makes quick work of the serpopards but the three are forced to run when the carriers tails them. They go into Manhattan, which Amos had earlier said had other non-Egyptian gods. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bast attempts to have them go in the Duat – a magical realm right underneath the mortal realm. But the goddess of scorpions, Serqet, fights Bast and supposedly overpowers her. In the museum, Carter and Sadie find Zia Rashid. She is the scribe of the First Nome, the main nome of the House of Life, that had magicians trying to protect people and fight gods. Carter develops a massive crush on Zia in the book. Zia combats Serqet and bans her from her host by using the Seven Ribbons of Hathor spell. Zia takes the two to the First Nome, where Chief Lector Iskandar – the House of Life leader – and Desjardins – the second-in-command – brought up the assumption that they were both hosts of gods. Sadie and Iskander have a talk and the old Chief Lector tells her about the hosts. They were mortals who the gods inhabited so they could leave the Duat and be in the mortal realm. The next day, the two siblings begin their training. Zia teaches them the concept of casting hieroglyphs to use magic. Carter surprises Sadie and Zia by summoning a combat avatar – it is a magic and Bast used it to fight Serqet – of Horus, the falcon war god. But their training is disrupted when a magician informs Zia that Iskander is dead and Desjardins is next in line for the throne. Sadie creates a portal and they escape to Paris because Desjardins would want to kill them because they are hosts, but not before bringing sphinxes with them. Bast, who is still fine, takes care of them and all of them infiltrate Desjardins' house so they could take a book to fight Set. At Washington, D.C they are chased by the Set animal, who Carter named Leroy. Carter stays back at the airport to fight it and manages to wound it with his combat avatar. He throws Leroy in his Duat locker-a short opening to the Duat-and manages to catch the airplane to Memphis, Tennessee, where the wisdom god Thoth is. When they finish Thoth's test, they learn that they were supposed to have a Feather of Truth from the Underworld/Land of the Dead. And they also needed Set's true name, which contained the person's identity and life. Because of Sadie's attraction to Anubis-god of funerals-he gives the Feather of Truth to her. They then continue from New Orleans to Texas, where Carter fights Sobek but is hopelessly outmatched and outclassed even with the combat avatar. Amos saves them but Bast and Sobek are expelled to the Duat. They go to New Mexico, as Zia wanted Carter there and the earth god Geb told Sadie to. It turns out that Desjardins had known this and a fight occurs. Thanks to Zia's plan, they defeat Sekhmet, the lion goddess of battle, and drive onwards to Arizona. They spot the Red Pyramid, which is Set's main host. When they arrive, Amos collapses and Set reveals he was hosting Amos as well, all along. Carter merges completely with Horus becomes the eye of the war god. He puts up a good fight but Set's strength grows when dawn approaches and the desert glows. Sadie learns from a dying Zia that Set's secret name is Evil Day. She combines with Isis, the magic goddess inside her, and transports Carter and Sadie along with herself to Washington, D.C. Sadie banishes Set to the Duat, reading the book and using the Feather of Truth along with his secret name. Just then, Set's servant appears. He is the host of Apophis, the Serpent of Chaos itself. Even though Carter kills the servant, it is Sadie who rubs the picture of the snake in the sky. They come back for Zia, who turns out to be a shabti-a ceramic doll-and urges Carter to find the real Zia Rashid. They return to Brooklyn House and rebuild the place with magic. Amos leaves for the First Nome to be healed from being possessed by Set. Carter and Sadie are paid a visit by Osiris, who was bonded with their father. They even see the ghost of their mother who was accompanying Julius. The god of the dead gives them his djed amulet to attract other things. The siblings give up Horus and Isis, who vanish away into the Duat but not before preserving a quarter of their power in the amulets Julius had given them a long time ago. Carter and Sadie store the amulets in Carter's Duat locker and put the djed amulet with it. Once kids began to come, they would teach them divine magic or the path of the gods, which involved channeling a god's power. In the end, Carter and Sadie find their father. Julius decides that he would like to stay with his wife; Carter and Sadie now live with their uncle Amos. * Ruby Kane: is Carter and Sadie's mom who died at Cleoptras Needle trying to seal away the chaos snake Apophis. * Carter Kane: He is fourteen and was a host of Horus. Since he was 8, when his mom died, he traveled with his father, Julius Kane. He is Sadie's older brother. When he is with his sister (Sadie Kane) his magic power grows in strength. * Sadie Kane: She is twelve and was a host of Isis. She loves gum and has lived with her grandparents since the age of six. Most suspect Sadie to be a diviner. When she is with her brother (Carter Kane) her magic grows in strength. * Julius Kane: An Egyptian magician who is a host of Osiris. He is Carter and Sadie Kane's father. His wife, Ruby Kane, died trying to seal away the chaos snake Apophis in Cleopatra's Needle.He is also an Egyptologist. * Amos Kane: An Egyptian magician who became a partial host of Set. He is Julius Kane's brother, and a former protector of the Kane children. The children find out that he has been Set's host. * Zia Rashid: An Egyptian magician who is a host of Nephthys. . * Bast: The Egyptian goddess of cats. She becomes the Kane children's protector after Sadie calls for her to defend and help the children * Set: The Egyptian god of chaos and evil, who is the main antagonist of book one. His ultimate plot is to, by his birthday, bring about destruction by means of constructing the Red Pyramid, for which the book is named. Both Amos Kane and Bast dislike and avoid Manhattan because it has "other gods". This is a reference to Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels, which identifies Manhattan and the Empire State Building as the modern home of the Graeco-Roman Olympian gods.
27981560	/m/0ch1rwn	Portrait in Death	Nora Roberts	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Lt. Eve Dallas is celebrating the shortly-to-start vacation of Summerset, Roarke's majordomo, when he trips over the cat and falls down the stairs, breaking his leg. As Eve and Roarke are giving him first aid, Eve is tipped by Nadine Furst to a location that turns out to contain a dead body stuffed into a recycle bin. Nadine was sent a set of candid images of the victim, a young, pretty woman, and a final image of her dead body, clearly posed in a formal portrait setting. Also included: a note indicating plainly that the woman is the first victim, with more to follow. Eve assembles her usual team, including Roarke, to track down the killer before he can strike again. However, while taking some time to tend to affairs at Dochas, the shelter that he funds as a charitable project, Roarke meets with a new employee, a social worker, who informs him that she used to live in Dublin at the same time that he was a baby, and that she had given shelter to Roarke and his mother—a different woman than the abusive person that he grew up calling his mother. Roarke's researches show that the social worker is probably correct,and that his father Patrick Roarke killed his mother when she tried to leave him. Roarke is upset over this turn of events and is reluctant to share his feelings with anyone. Eventually, Eve gets him to talk to her desiring to help him through the nightmare of pain. The next day, Roarke hurries off to Ireland to find explanations from the surviving associates of his late, criminal father while Eve is busy investigating the second victim. He learns about his mother's surviving twin sister Sinead and visits her in Ireland where Eve joins him. Together they head back to New York where Eve is called to report to the crime scene of the third victim, who is the sister of Crack, one of Eve's acquaintances. Eve traces the evidence found in the van to kidnap the victims and finally determines that Gerald Stevenson, a sociopath who is affected by his mother's death is the perpetrator. She assigns Detective Baxter and Officer Trueheart to survail the pub the killer frequents. They believe Stevenson is not going to show up and decide to call it a day when Trueheart is kidnapped. The story ends with Eve and the team capturing Stevenson a.k.a. Steve Audrey and rescuing Trueheart. Eve rejoices when she learns that Summerset is finally gone on vacation.
27985847	/m/0ch3z36	Angel Blood				 There are four disabled children in a sort of asylum called Bin Linnie Lodge (The Bin to the nurses,or Bin Linnie to the locals of the village) with unique disabilities. They are all given the letter G (standing for Gemini) followed by a number 1-4. However they were given unique names by a nurse they loved, Mrs. Murdoe, Based on their disability. A boy with two layers of skin rather than the usual 7 is named X-Ray, a girl with miniature wings on her back is called Chicken Angel, a boy with weak pulmonaries is called Cough Cough and another girl with no eyes is called Lights Out, or Lolo. As they are kept away from society, they have different names for usual things. The book opens with one of the children's most hated nurses, Tin Lid, taking away Lolo’s “Pippi” (From context, it is a doll but it seems to also mean child). When Lolo resists, Tin Lid calls in the “Leapords” (Security) to “Trank” (Sedate) her. It is revealed that Tin Lid works for a man called Doctor Dearly, who runs the Bin. The children hate him because Dearly made Mrs Murdoe “go takeaway” (In this instance, it means he sacked her, but it in others, it means dying). Mrs Murdoe then became a spirit guide for the children, along with a law-abiding moose’s head called Moose (As he doesn’t move for them, the children refer to being tired as “moosed” or “moosed out”) and a fast cat called Jack. It’s also revealed that there were other children once, but eventually, they all died and went to the “Sky Boat” (Heaven). Their death was forbade by warts appearing over their bodies (“lumpies”) At one point, a child with two heads is mentioned, but not exposited on. All of the children live their lives in near-identical ways, watching a TV movie called the Natural World, (A running plot point is a leopard attacking a group of monkeys), and looking out of a window, (which isn’t allowed, so they have to hide it) named The Weather Eye. Meanwhile, in the city outside the Bin, a young man named Nail meets a girl called Natalie while trying to steal from her shop. They strike up a relationship, because of each others hatred of society. They do jobs to and from the Bin. Cough Cough is getting weaker, and eventually, slowly goes blind. He has warning against Dearly, saying he is trying to kill them all. He reveals that he has given each of them a syringe and is keeping several pills. The others do not believe him until Dearly takes away books and TV, saying it is bad for their eyes. Dearly exposits to X-Ray that he plans to take one of his eyes and transplant it to CC. However, this is postponed due to X-Ray regurgitating on Dearly. When X-Ray tells CC about this, he explains that he has stashed away four syringes and enough pills to kill all of the nurses, he tells them to escape. Eventually, CC dies during an operation on his eye. X-Ray eventually finds out that CC poisoned himself with some pills and when he explains his theory to Chicken Angel, she tells him that they helped him. Angry, he forgets to hide the Weather Eye, and when Tin Lid sees, she also discovers a diary that CA has been writing in, a coloured pencil to write with, a book and a clock that Lolo calls “Maiden China” (She mishears CC saying what’s written on it earlier on, Made in China). As Tin Lid is about to “trank” Lolo, X-Ray, stabs Tin Lid with her syringe and runs away with CA and Lolo. Meanwhile, Nail and Natalie visit the Bin, Nat finds the children and stows them away in the back of their van. Nat later tells Nail, and listens to the children’s tales of horror inside the Bin. After convincing Nail to take the children to the ocean (where they think they will find the “Sky Boat”) they set out, with Nail still worried that they will be arrested for abduction, paedophilia and possibly murder if they do not cure Lolo’s case of the “lumpies”. On the way, they find Mrs Murdoe’s son, a chief ranger, and X-Ray and CA both get the lumpies. The book ends with them reaching the ocean, and holding hands, waiting for death.
27993143	/m/0ch3ng2	Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia	Joseph D. Pistone		{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 Pistone becomes an FBI agent after spending a few years working for Naval Intelligence. He first goes undercover to infiltrate a theft ring. The operation pays off when the FBI arrests one of the largest and most profitable theft rings in history. After the success of the operation, the FBI and Pistone consider going undercover and infiltrating truck hijacking gangs and the Mafia. After months of preparation, the FBI erases Pistone's personal history and he goes undercover as Donald Brasco, an expert jewel thief from Miami, Florida. Hanging out at known crime spots, such as bars and social clubs, he eventually befriends a bartender and joins a crime gang. He moves on to Jilly Greca's crew, who are associates in the Colombo crime family. The crew are involved in truck hijacking and selling stolen merchandise. Brasco meets Anthony Mirra and the two begin hanging out. Mirra is a soldier in the Bonanno crime family and is a lot better connected, respected and feared than Greca's crew. Brasco decides it would be a better choice for the operation to go with Mirra, so he starts hanging out more with Mirra and less with Greca. Through Mirra, Brasco meets another Bonanno soldier called Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero. When Mirra is sent back to prison, Brasco and Lefty become close friends. Brasco gains the reputation of a being a trustworthy, good earner. He is responsible for several lucrative business ventures, including the Kings Court Bottle Club in Florida, which begins a good relationship with the Bonannos and Santo Trafficante. The Bonannos, particularly captain Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano, are happy with Brasco's work and are prepared to sponsor him for membership into the mafia. All the while Brasco is struggling in his personal life because he does not see his real family often, spending months without seeing his wife and three daughters. A family dispute breaks out over who "owns" Donnie Brasco. Mirra claims he owns him since he brought him in, Lefty says he owns him because he was the first to put a claim on him, and Sonny Black as the captain says Brasco belongs to him. After six years undercover, the operation becomes increasingly dangerous. Three powerful captains are murdered; gunned down by fellow Bonanno family members. The FBI want to pull the plug on the operation due to the danger of Brasco getting killed. Pistone wants to stay at least until he gets "made", in order to prove that the mafia is not invincible. A date is set when Brasco is ordered to come out of the operation. There are six weeks left until Brasco is revealed to be an FBI agent. To become a made man, Brasco is ordered to kill Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato, although Bruno has fled New York. FBI agents eventually reveal to Sonny Black that their associate is actually an agent. Although Sonny Black and others consider it hard to believe that Brasco is an agent, he informs his superiors. The men responsible for bringing Brasco into the family are ordered to be murdered. Sonny Black and Mirra are murdered, while Lefty escapes death when he is arrested before he arrives at a meeting. Pistone's work is not complete yet as he has to testify at trials all over America. Operation Donnie Brasco leads to more than 200 indictments and over 100 convictions of mafia members.
27996362	/m/0ch0wrh	Everything Matters!	Ron Currie Jr.	2009	{"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Junior Thibodeau is born with the exact details of the end of the world by a comet and grows up with a troubled childhood, surrounded by his quiet but powerful ex-Marine father, his secretly-alcoholic and withdrawn mother, and his drug addict and later baseball-savant brother Rodney, as well as the constant presence of the voice that has stuck with him since birth. As he grows older, he questions the importance of concepts such as love in the face of the inevitable apocalypse and battles various addictions. He falls in love with a classmate named Amy and they begin a relationship, but she leaves him after he informs her of the voices in his head. Later in life, Junior becomes an avid smoker and alcoholic while his brother becomes a major baseball star. Junior and a co-worker later conspire to destroy a social security building. Junior backs out, but the friend blows up the building after giving the occupants a chance to evacuate. Junior is arrested and sent to a Bulgarian gulag. There he meets Sawyer, a government agents who reveals that the major world governments know a massive comet is approaching Earth. Sawyer offers Junior a job, which Junior accepts in exchange for his parents' financial future to be secured. Later Junior hears his father has terminal lung cancer. Working constantly for a week and almost dying, Junior develops a cure for his father and has it sent to him. Junior's father recovers, but later dies after hitting a car while asleep at the wheel. After leaving her boyfriend, Amy decides to travel to Junior's father's funeral. Mid-flight she disables the plane's smoke detector so she can indulge herself with a cigarette. A federal agent discovers what she did and arrests Amy. He reveals he's not going to arrest her and they engage in conversation. It turns out to be a ruse, and the agents locks Amy in an interrogation room. He recounts how she told him she had a relationship with a student at Stanford. The agent tells her how this student later renounced his US citizenship and became a member of the Hezbollah. Believing Amy is a part of a terrorist organization, he tortures her and cuts a pinkie off. Junior arrives and has the agent killed. He and Amy reconcile, but they decide not to leave before the comet hits. Later, Amy changes her mind and goes to sign up for Emigration, but she and many others who plan to sign up are killed by a suicide bomber. At this point, the voices in Junior's head reveal that he can pick another version of himself from another universe and take that self's place. Junior essentially goes back in time to the point where he told Amy of the voices. Instead of telling her, he instead instigates sex. Onwards in life, Junior marries Amy and develops a revolutionary irrigation system for use in third-world countries. Junior and Amy later conceive a child named Ruby. While he is very happy, Junior decides not to try to save his father this time. His father dies a painful death from lung cancer. When the comet arrives, Junior and Amy consider killing their daughter to spare her, but decide against it. Junior and his entire family flock to his bedroom and sit there as the comet hits Earth.
27999418	/m/0ch2bjj	Lady Anna	Anthony Trollope			 Lady Anna is set during the 1830s, at about the time of the First Reform Act of 1832. The title character is the daughter of the late Earl Lovel. Her mother married the Earl out of ambition rather than love, and despite his evil reputation. Soon after their marriage, he told her that he had a living wife, which made their union invalid and their unborn daughter illegitimate. He then sailed to Italy without her and did not return to England for twenty years. During those two decades, Lady Lovel struggled to prove the validity of her marriage, and consequently her right to her title and her daughter's legitimacy. She enjoyed neither the sympathy of the public nor the support of her family during this time; her only friend and supporter was Thomas Thwaite, a Radical tailor of Keswick, who gave her and her daughter shelter and financed her legal battles. Early in the novel, Lord Lovel returns to England and dies intestate. His earldom, and a small estate in Cumberland, pass to a distant cousin, young Frederick Lovel. However, the bulk of his large fortune is personal property, and thus not attached to the title. If his marriage to Lady Lovel was valid, it will go to her and to their daughter; otherwise, it will go to the young Earl. The Earl's lawyers, headed by the Solicitor General, come to believe that their case against Lady Lovel is weak and their claim probably false. They accordingly propose a compromise: that the Earl marry Lady Anna, thus reuniting the title and the assets held by the late Earl. The plan is enthusiastically supported by Lady Lovel, as fulfilling all of her ambitions for herself and her daughter. The young Earl is favorably impressed by Lady Anna's appearance and character. However, in her twenty years as an outcast, Lady Anna has come to love Thomas Thwaite's son Daniel, and the two have become secretly engaged. When the engagement is known, Lady Lovel and others strive to break it. Lady Anna will not yield to persuasion or to mistreatment; Daniel Thwaite rejects arguments and bribes to end the relationship. Lady Anna is approaching her twenty-first birthday, after which she will be free to marry without her mother's consent. In desperation, Lady Lovel secures a pistol and attempts to murder Thwaite. She wounds but does not kill him; Thwaite refuses to name her to the police; and the attempt puts an effective end to her attempts to keep the two apart. With Thwaite's consent, Lady Anna makes half of her fortune over to the young Earl. She marries Thwaite with the public approval of the Lovel family, though Lady Lovel refuses to attend the ceremony. The two then emigrate to Australia, where they expect that his low birth and her title will no longer be a burden to them.
28008977	/m/0ch2rtm	The Feather Men	Ranulph Fiennes	1991-10-17		 The book tells the story of four British Army soldiers, including two members of the Special Air Service, who are assassinated by a hit squad known as "The Clinic". The murders are carried out over a 17-year period, on the orders of a Dubai sheikh whose three sons were killed by British forces in Oman during a battle with Communist guerrillas. Fiennes claimed that he himself was targeted by the group, but was saved by a group of vigilantes calling themselves the "Feather Men".
28009597	/m/0ch5q99	The Second Trip	Robert Silverberg	1972	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Paul Macy, freshly released from therapy, is walking the streets of New York City when he encounters a woman who addresses him as Nat, the serial rapist whose body Paul now inhabits. The woman, Lisa, realizes her mistake, but the encounter has a strange effect on Paul, and he finds himself hallucinating memories from Nat Hamlin's life. At first, Paul does his best to ignore his past, and begin anew as a holovision newscaster. But slowly, his condition worsens. More visions strike him when he comes into contact with Lisa and sculptures made by Hamlin, who was a celebrated artist before committing the series of rapes that led to erasure of his personality. Paul attempts to discuss his problem with Dr. Gomez at the Rehab Center. However, Gomez (using EEG scans) is convinced that Paul's problem is not real, and is instead just a cry for attention. While at work, Lisa sends Paul messages, urging him to rekindle their relationship. Against his better judgment, Paul agrees to have dinner with Lisa at a People's Restaurant. While they eat, Nat Hamlin is found hiding within Paul's mind, and later becomes a lucid voice demanding control of his old body and memories. The two begin fighting for control of the body, and Lisa's affection. When his condition worsens, Paul tries to visit the Rehab center again, only to find that Hamlin can now cause him physical pain by stopping his heart. Under the threat of pain and possible death, Paul must now work alone with Lisa to eradicate Hamlin. Lisa also has problems of her own. She is destitute and psychologically scarred by her love affair with Hamlin before he was caught and convicted. She has limited ESP, and can read Paul's mind to some degree. Seeing that there really are two personalities within Paul, she feels pity and decides to help get rid of Hamlin permanently. Having become lovers, Lisa and Paul visit a Museum to see the Antigone 21, a lifelike psychosculpture of Lisa. While looking in awe at the sculpture, Paul allows Nat Hamlin to surface. The two argue (within Paul's head) about which personality has more right to exist. Nat declares that Paul is a fictitious construct, and does not deserve to live having been made up by the doctors at the Rehab Center. Paul counters by using the logic of the court, which found Nat guilty and deserving of his punishment. The two can not agree. Hamlin quietly goes away, while Paul gains newfound confidence to control and hopefully destroy Hamlin. Over the next few days, Paul and Nat spar mentally. However, Paul discovers a growing desire to know more about his past. Specifically, he wants the memories of the body he now inhabits. This desire becomes a bargaining chip for Nat, who offers to share his memories if Paul will allow him to control the body from time to time. A bargain is agreed upon, but Lisa comes home and uses ESP to force Nat into hiding. Dr. Gomez shows up at work and attempts to help Paul, but there is no easy way to do that since Paul fears being killed if he visits the Rehab Center. Gomez agrees to have Paul watched, because he is potentially a threat to society, and the first proof that Rehab deconstruction is not 100% effective. Until a solution can be found, Gomez warns Paul to stay away from Lisa. Both he and Paul agree that her ESP is responsible for Nat's return. Gomez also agrees to help Lisa, after Paul urges him to cure her as well. Ignoring Gomez, Paul continues his relation with Lisa, only to find her missing one day. While searching Lisa's old apartment building, Paul gets mugged. After the altercation, he wakes up and realizes that Nat has taken over. Once Nat is in control, he (Nat) immediately returns to his old art dealer, Mr. Gargan, and agrees to have Nat's work sold under Paul's name. Their old contract is legally not binding since Nat was destroyed by Rehab. Meanwhile, Paul capitalizes on his access to Hamlin's memories by harassing Hamlin in turn, dredging up the details of the numerous rapes he committed and ridiculing the idea that Hamlin's artistic talent redeems his past brutality. With Nat still in control, they visit Nat's old home. Though the mansion has new owners, Nat is allowed to see his old art studio only to find that he has lost his artistic talent. Angry, Nat leaves after getting his x-wife's home address. They (Nat and Paul) drive to see Hamlin's ex-wife. Though she is afraid of him, she allows Hamlin into her home. Hamlin's stream of nostalgic reminiscences quickly turns sexual and predatory, culminating in an attempted rape that allows Paul to regain control of his body. Paul apologizes and returns to his apartment in New York, only to find that Lisa is gone. Paul finds Lisa in a community hostel just above the People's Restaurant where they first shared a meal. Lisa lays naked in bed, somewhat catatonic. While trying to convince Lisa to return home with him, Paul merges his identity with Nat. They fight for control of the body (inside Paul's head). Nat is finally vanquished when Lisa appears, and uses her ESP abilities to strike Nat down with mental lightning.
28015190	/m/0ch0xw4	A Clan in Need	Erin Hunter		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story starts out with Ravenpaw waking up in the Moonstone Cave. Barley is asleep, dreaming. When he wakes up with a shriek, Ravenpaw wonders what is wrong. Barley tells his friend that he was dreaming of how, when he lived in BloodClan, he had three littermates. After leaving their mother to fend for themselves, Barley and his sister, Violet, continued living together. It is against BloodClan rules for families to stay together, so when they were caught, they were brought before Scourge. As a punishment, Violet was attacked and nearly killed by her and Barley's brothers, Jumper and Hoot, who had renamed themselves Ice and Snake. After Barley is finished, Ravenpaw tells him that ThunderClan will help them. And with that they set off. But, as they are crossing WindClan territory, they encounter a patrol of warriors. At first, the patrol thinks that Barley and Ravenpaw have kidnapped Crowkit, a young gray tom that can't seem to keep out of trouble. When the patrol's leader, Mudclaw, sees that it's Ravenpaw and Barley, he tells the patrol that these cats are friends. Ravenpaw promises to help look for Crowkit and the patrol leaves. Ravenpaw suggests that they travel to ThunderClan through Fourtrees, that way Barley can see what it's like when there isn't a fight going on there. As they pass by the Great Rock, they find Crowkit struggling to climb to the top. Suddenly, there is a screech from nearby. Mudclaw's patrol has crossed the ThunderClan border to accuse Dustpelt's patrol of stealing Crowkit. A fight is narrowly avoided when Ravenpaw and Barley appear with the kit. Their mission accomplished, the WindClan patrol leaves with Crowkit. Reluctantly, Dustpelt agrees to take Barley and Ravenpaw to Firestar. When they reach the ThunderClan Camp, they are greeted by several cats including Brightheart. As they pass by the Nursery, they meet Sandstorm and her daughters, Squirrelkit and Leafkit. As Ravenpaw congratulates Sandstorm about the kits, Firestar appears. He is curious to know what's bought Barley and Ravenpaw to the Clan. They tell him everything, and Firestar tells them he will help. But first they must rest. As they are resting, somebody calls for Cinderpelt. Ravenpaw goes to Firestar to find out what's wrong. He learns that BloodClan cats have been attacking patrols. Firestar must help ThunderClan before he can send anyone to save the farm. The next morning, Ravenpaw and Barley go on a hunting patrol with Graystripe and Cloudtail. As they return, they are attacked by BloodClan cats. There is a short fight, during which one of the BloodClan cats, Snipe, seems to recognise Barley. When another ThunderClan patrol arrives, the BloodClan cats flee. The prey was ruined in the fight. When they return to camp, Barley hints to Ravenpaw that he might have known Snipe before. Shortly afterwards, Firestar and Graystripe ask Barley for help in finding BloodClan's home in the Twolegplace. He might remember. Barley takes offense and runs off into the forest. Ravenpaw goes to him and tells him that he must tell Firestar anything he knows. ThunderClan is starving. The next morning, Rainpaw and Sorrelpaw leave to go hunting. As Ravenpaw tries to think of ways to coax information out of Barley, Rainpaw runs back into camp. He says that they were attacked by BloodClan and that Sorrelpaw is hurt. They find her and they bring her back to camp. Barley sees that what happened to him and Violet is happening to other cats. With that thought in mind, he goes to Firestar to tell everything he knows. Barley tells Firestar about Snipe and that he really doesn't know much more. Ravenpaw suggests that Violet might know more. After all, she still lives in Twolegplace. The next day, Ravenpaw and Barley leave to find her. When they do, she tells them that BloodClan may be getting organized again. Violet leads them to a friend of hers, Mitzi. Mitzi's son, Fritz, was kidnapped by BloodClan one moon before. She followed the cats when they took him and learned where their home was. She gladly takes them there. Violet, Barley, and Ravenpaw return to ThunderClan to tell Firestar where the BloodClan cats live. He gathers a battle patrol and tells them to show no mercy during the fight to come. The patrol slips out of camp and heads to the place that Mitzi showed them. When they arrive, they find all of BloodClan assembled before Ice and Snake. Violet and Barley's brothers are the new leaders of BloodClan and suddenly, surprisingly, Violet walks forward to them. She calls to them, telling them that their names are Jumper and Hoot and that she is their sister. Seeming to have forgotten about their kin, Ice and Snake are ready to let BloodClan slaughter her when Barley leaps up too. Upon sight of their brother, they are reminded of that day, seasons ago, when they tried to kill their sister. Now, they want to try again. That's when Firestar gives the order to attack. BloodClan and ThunderClan become a single, fighting mass. And then, suddenly, the battle is over. Ice and Snake start walking over to them when suddenly Barley and Violet pounce, catching their brothers by surprise. Seeing that they are about to be beaten, they plead for mercy. Barley says that they've been attacking cats and stealing prey, so now they must pay. Ice and Snake try to wriggle out of punishment by claiming that they never did anything. It was the rest of BloodClan. With that, BloodClan turns on them and they drive their leaders away. Only one cat stays behind. It is Fritz, Mitzi's son. He, Barley and Violet leave to go back to Violet's housefolk and Fritz's housefolk. Firestar promises Ravenpaw that when his clan has rested, he will lead a patrol to drive Willie and his group of rogues from the farm.
28039954	/m/0cm85d8	Succubus on Top	Richelle Mead	2008	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 This is from the book jacket. "Georgina Kincaid’s job sucks. Literally. Love hurts, and no one knows it better than Georgina Kincaid. If she so much as kisses her new boyfriend, she’ll drain his life force. Georgina is a succubus—a demon who draws her power from other men’s pleasure. Admittedly, the shapeshifting and immortality perks are terrific, and yes, Georgina did choose to join the ranks of hell centuries ago. But it seems completely unfair that a she-demon whose purpose is seduction can’t get hot and heavy with the one mortal who knows and accepts her for who she is. It’s not just her personal life that’s in chaos. Doug, Georgina’s co-worker at a local bookstore, has been exhibiting bizarre behaviour, and Georgina suspects that something far more demonic than double espressos is at work. She could use help finding out, but Bastien, an irresistibly charming incubus and her best immortal friend, is preoccupied in the suburbs with corrupting an ultra-conservative talk radio star—and giving Georgina some highly distracting come-hither vibes. Georgina is going to have to work solo on this one—and fast because soon, Doug’s life won’t be the only one on the line…"
28043467	/m/0cmf0mg	Eyes of the Shadow				 * Plot: One by one, six men who are about to share in a glittering fortune after Harvey Duncan dies are being brutally murdered. However, the millionaire left his only relative, Bruce, a clue to the wealth: a hidden message. * Shadow Disguises: himself, unnamed thug, Pedro a Mexican thug and Lamont Cranston. * Shadow Agents: Harry Vincent, Burbank and Claude Fellows.
28044047	/m/0cmd046	The Shadow Laughs				 * Shadow Disguises: himself, Lamont Cranston, Red Manicks and unnamed police officer. * Shadow Agents: Harry Vincent, Claude Fellows, Burbank * Plot: In Philadelphia, Frank Jarnow uncovers a plan that involves the wealthy Henry Windsor and his brother Blair. Frank attempts to warn Henry but is shot by an unknown hitman, with Henry being framed for the crime. Then, when a detective gets too close to the mystery killer, he shares Jarnow's fate and is murdered.
28044737	/m/0cmdf4p	Nowhere Man		2010-07-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel incorporates mystery, murder, high finance, corporate deals, the financial crisis, new technologies, love, sex, motorcycle and cab chases, and conspiracy.
28044791	/m/04yg0x	The Mad Ship	Robin Hobb	1998-11-19	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Picking up after the adventures in Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship sees Althea Vestrit returning home on the Liveship Ophelia to find that the ship Vivacia has disappeared along with her crew.
28046018	/m/0cmcvnr	The Amazing Vacation			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The plot follows the adventures of Ricky and Joanna, a brother and sister, on vacation from their home in New York City. They have gone to stay with their Uncle Hubert, Aunt Cordelia, and Cousin Emmeline in the rural town of Trimble Valley, while their parents are travelling "on business" in Paris. They are met at the train station by the housekeeper, maid, cook, and witch named Mrs Breadloaf. The children are driven to an old Victorian house where the family lives. Uncle Hubert is described as a not very good Magician, Aunt Cordelia is a gardener, and Cousin Emmeline is "not all here." The children explore the house and find a magical window in the study. The window has a stained glass border and shows scenes from another world: "The Country Without A Name." It appears that some members of the family have traveled to that country, and have lost parts of themselves there, accounting for their strange behavior. Emmeline has lost a turquoise stone from a necklace, which explains why she is "not all here." With the help of Mrs. Breadloaf, the children open the window and go to the country. Ricky takes his scout knife, and Joanna her knitting bag, which they are told not to give away. They soon meet "a fretful porpentine" who becomes Ricky's "familiar." Against warnings, the children separate, with Joanna going to the isthmus of Baba O' Rhum with Queen Matildagarde VII, and Ricky going to the mountains with Frederico the Porpentine. Joanna spends time on the island with the companions of the Queen: Yarrow, Tansy, Pansy, and Goldenrod. She avoids several attempts by the Queen to steal her knitting bag. Finally she escapes and meets Ali the Boa Constrictor who guides her to the neighboring island Baba. On the way she meets the magician Gordon Johnson. Meanwhile, Ricky has met the Indian Chief Matinkatunk. They travel together until their horses, and Ricky's knife, are stolen by Tim Tumbleweed, who is really Yarrow in disguise. Ricky and the Chief are taken prisoner by King Willexander's henchmen and he is imprisoned in the Castle of the Upper Lowlands. Ricky is finally released when he agrees to accept a false knife from Yarrow. Joanna has been brought to the Castle, after leaving the island of Baba and rescuing Frederico from the Island Rhum. Joanna gives away her knitting, but not the knitting bag, to Princess Citronella in exchange for a turquoise which she thinks is the one lost by her cousin Emmeline. Joanna and Ricky finally get to Triple Peak, the home of the Magicians Congress, and a ghost town. They are reunited with Mrs Breadloaf, and travel to the battlefield of the impending war between the King and Queen. Both children parachute from a Dragon Jet and rescue friends and recover lost objects. The War is settled with the help of the Old Magician and the President, and Prince Culebra Ali is transformed from a snake back into a man. In the final scenes, Joanna and Ricky return to the magic window and climb back into their Uncle's house where they are reunited with all their relatives, and their parents.
28056386	/m/0cmbmqr	Warlock	Wilbur A. Smith	2001	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Warlock is a sequel to River God that details the later life of Taita 40 years on from the death of Lostris. Taita is no longer a slave but a powerful warlock with great fame throughout Egypt and the surrounding nations, and has become the most influential man in Egypt through his close connection to the Pharaoh Tamose. The story begins with Pharaoh Tamose, accompanied by his most trusted companion, Lord Naja, marching towards the Hyksos main camp and planning a surprise attack from the rear. Lord Naja, however, has deviously tricked Pharaoh, for he is of Hyksos blood, and kills Pharaoh Tamose. However no one sees this tragedy, and Naja convinces the army of Pharaoh that he has been slain by the Hyksos and orders the army to retreat back to Thebes. When Naja arrives at Thebes, he cunningly sways the council members to appoint him as Regent, successfully obtaining power of the Upper Kingdom. Meanwhile, Taita takes a 14-year-old Nefer Memnon, Tamose's only surviving son from the Yellow Flower plague, into the desert wilderness to hone his mind and skills and to capture his godbird in order to prove his divine favor. Just after Nefer was born, years prior to these events, during his life in the desert as a hermit, Taita was visited in a dream by the former Queen Lostris, and returned to Thebes to be appointed as Nefer Seti's tutor, who is now next in line for the throne. Taita and Nefer fail to capture the godbird on two occasions, with their last incident revealing dire omens about Tamose's death and a dire threat to Nefer's life in the form of Tamose's unknown murderer. The two try to flee towards the Red Sea to escape the threat, but are found by Egyptian scouts sent by Naja, and return to Thebes. During the return, Nefer is crowned as Pharaoh Nefer Seti but is not of majority age nor ordained by the gods (either by capturing the godbird falcon or passing the trial of the Red Road), and hence must be placed under the protection and care of his Regent, Lord Naja. As the story develops, Taita's talents are spotted by Naja and he is appointed as his personal advisor. Naja then reveals to Taita that he is no longer to be Nefer's tutor and is separated from him indefinitely. Taita is aware of Naja's cruel intentions and the truth behind Pharaoh's death, however he does not reveal this to Naja, and instead uses his influence of him to gain some small control. Nefer's two sisters, Heseret and Merykara are force-wedded to Naja and become his wives, placing him next in line, after Nefer, through marriage. After complications arise, Naja confides in Taita for advice on how to restore peace between the two kingdoms. Taits suggests a treaty, and is sent to King Apepi, the Hyksos leader, to require that he attends a meeting between the two leaders. After a long debate which lasts many days, a treaty is agreed and both leaders sign it, restoring peace throughout the land. However, Apepi is killed not long after and Trok, who was Apepi's general, and is also Naja's cousin and co-conspirator, takes the role of Pharaoh of the Lower Kingdom. All of Apepi's children die as well, except Princess Mintaka, whom Apepi betrothed to Nefer Seti to reinforce the peace treaty. The two False Pharaohs join forces and begin an expedition to conquer more land and extend their kingdom. The co-Pharaohs' plans result in a sudden rise in military activity and levees of taxes, as well as harsher treatment of those who did not readily show their support of them, cause growing dissent and rebellion. Taita, using his vast knowledge and cunning, rescues Mintaka from Trok and reunites her with Nefer Seti, with whom she has fallen in love. The three, with loyal followers such as Nefer's childhood friend Meren Cambyses and a few others, begin to build up their own army in Gallalla over the next years, after Taita has a well constructed in the dead city. During these years Nefer's leadership and capability begins to flourish, and his fledgling forces complete successful missions against the false pharaohs. Nefer rescues his youngest sister, Merykara, who immediately falls in love with Meren. However Heseret has fallen in love with Naja, whom she was forced to marry, and is convinced he is the one true ruler of Egypt. When Naja and Trok are both slain in battles against Nefer's forces, by his efforts and that of his companions, Heseret becomes delusional and kills her sister when she is captured along with Mintaka. She escapes into the desert, determined to search for her dead husband, but is caught by Nefer and punished for killing their sister. Nefer hands her over to Meren and he kills her as justice for killing Merykara, to whom he was betrothed. The story ends with Nefer taking his rightful place at the throne of Egypt, with Queen Mintaka at his side, and with Taita and Meren leaving Egypt on a pilgrimage journey.
28056788	/m/0cm8g22	The Quest	Wilbur A. Smith	2007		 Egypt is struck by a series of terrible plagues that cripple the kingdom, and then the ultimate disaster follows. The Nile fails. The waters that nourish and sustain the land dry up. Something catastrophic is taking place in the distant and totally unexplored depths of Africa, from where the mighty river springs. In desperation the Pharaoh sends for Taita, the only man who might be able to win through to the source of the Nile and discover the cause of all their woes. In this final adventure of Taita, the beloved Magus is now 156 years old but through his powerful magic, has managed to live longer than most people (with the exception of a few other magicians). He is sent to investigate the blockage at the source of the Nile and defeat a seeminly immortal witch named Eos. During his journey, he gains new abilities as a Magus and can even detect the aura of living beings and discern their personalities. Travelling with a small army which includes his friend Meren, Taita finds a little girl living as a savage amongst a tribe of cannibals. He rescues her and over the months that follow, trains her to be decent and takes her under his wing. He names the girl Fenn and it is revealed that she is the reincarnation of Lostris, Taita's mistress who died at the end of River God. The group survives many hazards and eventually comes across a paradise-like city called Jarri. The original natives there are descended from a rebel group of Egyptians who are mentioned in River God. They rule the seemingly peaceful community by using fear, especially on the newcomers. It is discovered that they are under the spell of Eos who plans to ravage Egypt and then take it as her own Kingdom. Local doctors eventually manage to regenerate Taita's castrated penis and he becomes a whole man once more. However, this was planned by Eos whose speciality is to absorb the power, youth and knowledge from her victims through sex. Taita knows this all along and uses his new "weapon" to defeat Eos. He then locates the Font (The Fountain of Youth) and becomes young again. The rebel Jarrians ally themselves to Taita and they flee back to Egypt, but not before the Red Stones are cast down and the Nile flows again. On the journey home, Fenn begins to have recurring nightmares about Taita remaining forever young while she succumbs to old age and dies. Taita therefore decides to leave Egypt with Fenn and search for the Font (which can relocate itself) in order for Fenn to become immortal also. In a heartfelt climax, Taita bids farewell to his companion Meren, and the Pharaoh Nefer Seti and the word is spread that The Magus had fallen in battle. Egypt mourns his loss, and Taita uses the distraction to leave with Fenn.
28072320	/m/0cmd88y	The Wild Soccer Bunch			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 In the English translation of the Wild Soccer Bunch stories, the events take place in a small neighborhood in Chicago. The team is made up of a cast of colorful characters, each of them bonded by their passion for soccer. The team plays their beloved game according to five unbreakable rules: "1. Be Wild! 2. Everything’s cool, as long as you’re wild! 3. Never, ever give up! 4. One for all and all for one! 5. Once Wild, always wild!" The logo of the Wild Soccer Bunch is inspired by the original logo created by Masannek's children for their own soccer team.
28072423	/m/0cmctrt	Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity	S.E. Cupp			 Cupp argues that what she characterizes as the liberal media is not only unreliable, irresponsible, and partisan, but they are also guilty of inciting a "revolution" that will destabilize and dilute Christian America. She also claims that The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and Newsweek among others "mock, subvert, pervert, corrupt, debase, and extinguish" the Judeo-Christian ethic and back believers into a dark, irrelevant, morally void corner of American society. In her book Cupp wrote, according to Newsweek, that: *Secularist media have attempted to portray religious expression as a marginal "subculture." They overreacted to presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s 2007 Christmas commercial by concentrating on a "strategically placed" cross formed by bookshelves in the unfocused background. *Major media outlets did not cover President Barack Obama’s failure to acknowledge the National Day of Prayer. *Newsweek’s review of the bestselling dispensationalist Christian fiction series, Left Behind, said, "Sociologists tell us that the United States is experiencing a religious revival, but if the bestseller lists are any guide, the revival looks more like a collective leaving of the senses." *Film reviews of the Christian-themed Chronicles of Narnia were lukewarm despite it being a box office hit. Reviews for The Golden Compass, which attacks religion in general and the Christian faith in particular, were positive although the movie did not do well at the box office. *Cupp also wrote that the press downplays what she calls Obama’s discomfort with religious America, and barely wrote about his covering up of religious imagery in the backdrop when he gave a speech at Georgetown University.
28076959	/m/0cmdmf5	Pilcrow	Adam Mars-Jones			 The book is in the form of a memoir by an adult John Cromer telling the story of his childhood and adolescence in the 50's and early 60's. He develops Still's disease at an early age and is confined to bed under a misdiagnosis of rheumatic fever. When the nature of his disease is finally realised he is transferred to the Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital in Taplow, Berkshire under the care of Dr. Barbara Ansell but by then he has very little movement left in his joints. Later he moves to a special school in Farley Castle where he is reliant on the 'able-bodied' to help him move around, and realises that he is homosexual.
28080649	/m/0cm8ts5	The Vice Society	James McCreet			 Ex-detective George Williamson receives a letter advising him that the death of his wife seven years previously was not suicide (as the inquest had suggested). Rather, it was murder and the solution to that crime is allegedly the same as another crime currently being investigated by Williamson’s rival (and ex-boss) Inspector Albert Newsome. As the two investigators race to solve the strange case of a man who fell out of a window in Holywell Street, it becomes clear that the criminals behind both deaths are more powerful and dangerous than anyone could have expected. The key to all investigations proves to be a single name; “Persephone”.
28080684	/m/0cmdr49	A Gypsy Good Time	Gustav Hasford	1992	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Vietnam veteran and Private Investigator Dowdy Lewis, Jr. struggles with alcoholism, his time in the Vietnam War, and his own rapid aging. He meets Yvonna Lablaine, an attractive red-headed outcast from a prominent Hollywood family, and falls in love. One day, however, after a brief but passionate romance, Lewis finds Lablaine dying at his door, murdered. He then embarks on a quest involving drug dealers, mobsters and Hollywood moguls in order to find the truth about what happened and to take revenge on the culprits.
28081414	/m/0cmbv2n	Bullet	Laurell K. Hamilton		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Anita Blake is back in St. Louis and trying to live a normal life-as normal as possible for someone who is a legal vampire executioner and a U.S. Marshal. There are lovers, friends and their children, school programs to attend. In the midst of all the ordinary happiness a vampire from Anita's past reaches out. She was supposed to be dead, killed in an explosion, but the Mother of All Darkness is the first vampire, their dark creator. It's hard to kill a god. This dark goddess has reached out to her here in St. Louis, home of everyone Anita loves most. The Mother of All Darkness has decided she has to act now or never, to control Anita, and all the vampires in America. The Mother of All Darkness believes that the triumvirate created by master vampire Jean-Claude with Anita and the werewolf Richard Zeeman has enough power for her to regain a body and to immigrate to the New World. But the body she wants to possess is already taken. Anita is about to learn a whole new meaning to sharing her body, one that has nothing to do with the bedroom. And if the Mother of All Darkness can't succeed in taking over Anita's body for herself, she means to see that no one else has the use of it, ever again. Even Belle Morte, not always a friend to Anita, has sent word: "Run if you can..."
28082052	/m/0cmbgsl	The Naama War	Charles R. Saunders	2009	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Warfare on a cataclysmic scale is convulsing the continent of Nyumbani from north to south. Soldiers fall. Cities burn. Blood reddens the sea. Sorcery sears the land. Deities gather in opposite dimensions, poised to unleash unimaginable cosmic power on a land already battered by the Cushites of the North and the Naamans of the South. In the midst of this massive struggle, Imaro, warrior of the Ilyassai, wages a personal war against his nemesis, the sorcerer Bohu of Naama. This individual vendetta mirrors the larger clash between the forces of good and evil – a confrontation that threatens to tear Nyumbani apart. The destiny for which Imaro has been honed like a living weapon now lies directly before him. Imaro vs. Bohu. Cush vs. Naama. War. Magic. Blood. Fire. The losers in this wide ranging battle for the fate of a continent face oblivion. But the winners will not emerge unscathed.
28082222	/m/0cmcpl8	Dossouye	Charles R. Saunders	2008	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dossouye is a fix-up novel created from the short stories "Agbewe's Sword", "Gimmile's Songs", "Shiminege’s Mask", "Marwe’s Forest", and "Obenga’s Drum", the last previously unpublished. Dossouye herself is a woman warrior inspired by the real-life female warriors of the West African Kingdom of Dahomey. Her first stories appeared in Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Amazons! and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress, two anthologies designed to increase the number and recognition of female heroes in sword and sorcery fiction. Orphaned at a young age, Dossouye becomes a soldier in the women’s army of the kingdom of Abomey. In a war against the rival kingdom of Abanti, Dossouye saves her people from certain destruction; but a cruel twist of fate compels her to go into exile. Mounted on her might war-bull, Gbo, Dossouye enters the vast rainforest beyond the borders of her homeland, seeking a place to call her own. The forest is where Dossouye will either find a new purpose in life... or find her life cut short by the many menaces she encounters.
28083700	/m/0cmbvys	Young Hitler				 The book is divided into two sections: in the first part, a narrative retells the formative years of the young Adolf Hitler between 1907 and 1918, when he lived as a starving artist on the streets and in the asylums of Vienna, and then joined World War I as a volunteer on the Western Front. When the war ends, Hitler comes into contact with members of the Thule Society in Munich, an association of occultists who had launched a political party, the German Workers Party (DAP).The narrative ends in 1920 when Hitler takes over the DAP and turns it into the Nazi Party (NSDAP). In an interview with The Guardian, author Claus Hant explained that the events after 1920 are exhaustively documented in the numerous Hitler biographies. But what the biographies do not investigate is the time before then, when Hitler was transformed from inconsequential artist and drifter to towering political leader. Hant says that he has centered Young Hitler deliberately around this momentous transformation. According to Hant, this decisive turning point in Hitler’s life can only be explained satisfactory now that recent research has unearthed certain previously unknown data and facts. The second part of the book is purely non-fiction. It contains detailed appendices with many little-known facts about Hitler. Most importantly, the appendices substantiate Hant’s thesis which casts a surprising new light on the reasons behind Hitler’s rise to power.
28083773	/m/0cmdr50	Mobsmen on the Spot				 # Shadow Disguises: himself and Lamont Cranston. # Shadow Agents: Cliff Marsland, Clyde Burke, Burbank # Plot: Warehouse owners are approached by an "Association" and offered 'protection'.
28083837	/m/0cm86mg	Hands in the Dark				 * Shadow Disguises: himself, George Clarendon * Shadow Agents: Harry Vincent, Clyde Burke, Burbank * Plot: Bob Galvin returns from South Africa to the home of his rich uncle, Theodore. But treacherous associates of Theodore Galvin abduct Bob and replace him with an impostor. The real Bob is held prisoner while the fake meets with Galvin's friends in an effort to uncover the secret of the message of strange red characters that will lead them to Theodore's hidden fortune.
28086601	/m/0cmf1tj	Undead and Unfinished	MaryJanice Davidson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Satan, wants her daughter Laura (Betsy's half-sister), who is the antichrist, to visit Hell so she could understand her heritage. But Satan says Laura would need Betsy to accompany her so that Laura can get to know Betsy better. Betsy agrees, but only under the condition that Satan fix things so that Betsy can read the Book of the Dead for more than just a few minutes. Reading it for more than a few minutes at a time drives a person insane. Betsy and Laura visit Hell, which results in a time-travelling journey that reveals the history of Betsy's husband, Sinclair, and that has some serious consequences.
28090709	/m/0cm89_l	Why I Am a Separatist		1961		 The book opens with an 8-page foreword in which the author invites all "free men" able to rid themselves of their preconceived ideas to read the essay he has to offer, while warning them that they must not hope to find in its pages all the answers to their questions, nor a political programme, nor an accomplished literary work. The essay only pretends to treat of "permanent elements" on the basis of four postulates: * The French Canadians form a nation. * The French-Canadian nation is a nation like any other. * The State of Quebec is the national State of French Canadians. * To progress, French Canadians must be masters in their own house. The author discards not only the question of a hypothetical pro-independence political programme, but also that of the "modalities of power", all the while reassuring his readers by declaring himself personally favourable to the birth of a democratic republic. The substance of the essay consists of 21 short notebooks (cahiers) grouped into six sections. The first section contains six notebooks, the second five notebooks, the third four, the fourth three, the fifth two, and finally the sixth only one. Section 1, entitled The Six Dimensions of Separatism, treats of the consequences, for French Canadians, of constituting a minority inside the Canadian federation, through the 1) historical, 2) political, 3) economic, 4) cultural, 5) social and 6) psychological dimensions of their collective life. Chaput believes that the greatest evils caused by the confederation of 1867 are to have distorted, in the minds of French Canadians, the sense of their own borders, and to have made them a minority people. The Canadian nation, a purely political and artificial construction founded, claims the author, on the force of arms and submission, is being erected on the negation of French-Canadian identity. Despite the dark tableau he renders of the position of the French-Canadian people at all levels, the author believes in their capacity to regenerate and calls upon them to choose the highest degree of collective liberty to which they are entitled. In the conclusion of this first section, Chaput invites French Canadians to learn from the unbreakable will of the Jewish people, who, after centuries of exile, were finally reborn on the land of their ancestors, where they have been building the State of Israel since 1948. He suggests that the first task in the liberation of the French Canadians should be to rid themselves of the symbols of docility and castration that represent, to his eyes, the little curly Saint John the Baptist and his sheep who are paraded every June 24, on the National Day of French Canadians. Section 2, The Five Solutions to Our Problem, presents 1) total assimilation, 2) lucid integration, 3) provincial autonomy, 4) true confederation, and 5) the independence of Quebec as the five ways most commonly put forward to solve the existential problem of the French-Canadian nation. The author explains why according to him the first four solutions are less preferable than the fifth. Assimilation or anglicization, a clear path laid out since the Union of 1840, is proposed to French Canadians on a regular basis writes Chaput. The logic of assimilation is implacable, and those who advocate it among French Canadians share with the indépendantistes having had enough of being "second-class citizens" and being "used as innocent victims in the entertainment of an illusion, that of a bilingual Canada". The assimilationists want French Canadians to put and end to their "diminished national life" by letting themselves be won by the appeal of an all-English life, by letting themselves be vanquished by the arms used in the assimilation of peoples: "interests, thought currents, trends, psychological climates". On their side, the militants of independence claim to wish to end the diminished national life of French Canadians, the bilingualism forced upon them by their dependence on English, not by becoming fully English, but by becoming fully French. Lucid integration is proposed by the supporters of the centralization of powers in Ottawa, for whom Quebec only is, and could only ever be, a province like any other. For them, French Canadians must conquer administrative positions of importance in the federal government. In doing so, French Canadians would gain the maximum from the system in place, and, with their hands on the levers of control, would be able to give themselves a place in the federation. Chaput cannot approve this option because according to him it is founded on two fundamental errors. First, the population of Canada is not homogeneous: the demographic disequilibrium between the English element and the French element is too great for integration to succeed. Second, Quebec is not a province like any other: it is also the national State of French Canadians. Provincial autonomy is the solution put forward by a whole legion of "great defenders of the French-Canadian nations" who have fought against the encroachments of the federal government in the jurisdictions of provinces in general and of Quebec in particular. For Chaput, the Quebec autonomist was depicted in the 17th century by Jean de La Fontaine in the fable The Wolf and the Lamb. Like the lamb, the autonomist is theoretically and morally right on all points, but the practical reason of the wolf still wins because the wolf is stronger than the lamb. Chaput forgives autonomists for their too great virtue, but reproaches them for not "following their own reasoning to the end, which can only mean independence". Rendered insufficient by the reality of centralization to the profit of Ottawa, he suggests to autonomists that they trade their quest for provincial autonomy inside the federation for the achievement of a greater autonomy outside of it. The true confederation is the political ideal which many Quebec autonomists have dreamed of. For the author, there is no doubt that this ideal would be an enormous progress compared to the political status quo. However, when looking up his Quillet encyclopédique at the word confédération, he reads that all confederations tend to transform into federations, and that a federation differs from a confederation in that the member states dispose of a reduced interior sovereignty and lose their exterior sovereignty. In addition to the danger of a potential slip from the state of confederation to that of federation, Chaput does not believe that true confederation would be easier to achieve than independence, because it would require convincing Anglo-Canadians to trade their position of strength over Franco-Canadians for one of absolute equality with them. They would lose a part of their freedom of action in political matters to the profit of a population numerically inferior to their own. For French Canadians, the author believes, true confederation would be a psychological catastrophe. Only independence can free the French Canadian man from the inferiority complex which paralyses his will and undermine his action. The independence of Quebec is the solution that follows "from a mere mathematical observation on democracy: the majority wins over the minority." Militants of independence, Chaput at their head, assert that French Canadians are destined to "subjection and mediocrity" for as long as they form a linguistic and cultural minority undergoing the consequences of the political will of a majority foreign to them. In the pages of Section 3, The Four Questions Relative to Independence, the author answers the questions of the 1) legitimacy, 2) viability, 3) desirability and 4) feasibility of the independence of Quebec. Is the independence of Quebec legitimate? It is legitimate, believes Chaput, first because the French Canadians form a nation. The French-Canadian nation has institutions of its own, a territory it possesses by virtue of section 109 of the British North America Act and which it has occupied for over four centuries; it speaks a common language and demonstrates a will to live as a collectivity (vouloir-vivre collectif) which persists after two centuries of British and Anglo-Canadian domination. The French-Canadian people can legitimately choose political independence by virtue of article 1, paragraph 2 of the United Nations Charter, signed by Canada under the government of prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and never repudiated afterwards. Is the independence of Quebec viable? It is not only viable, it is necessary to the economic liberation of French Canadians, the author claims. For Quebec's economy to pass into the hands of Quebecers, they must be able to legislate in matters of currency, banking, taxation, import and export, air, sea and ground transportation, all jurisdictions of the federal State in Canada. As for the resources Quebec would possess after independence, Chaput believes that no serious person could possibly doubt they would allow a people of five to six million to live and prosper. Is the independence of Quebec desirable? To acquire independence, to obtain international personality, is the "normal" solution adopted by dozens of peoples who have jointed the United Nations since its foundation in 1945. More than simply normal, independence is, according to Chaput, desirable for the same reasons that the Canadian federation, which makes French Canadians a minority, is not desirable. Historically, the independence of Quebec consists in bringing the French-Canadian people to the realization of their destiny, to complete Quebec's transformation from colony to sovereign nation, in the same way numerous former colonies already did. Politically, it is desirable that French Canadians cease to be a perpetual minority and also profit from the advantages of a national government democratically elected. Economically, the independence of Quebec is desirable because it would give to French Canadians mastery over the political means without which, Chaput believes, the achievement of economic independence would "remain a sweet dream". Culturally, independence is desirable because it would then be possible for French Canadians to live in a society that is as unilingual as English-Canadian society is. Socially, independence can only favour the improvement of the condition of life of the people in Quebec, because the liberties enjoyed in the other dimensions of collective life (political, economic, cultural) would make it possible to apply global solutions to the different problems of society. Psychologically, independence would be desirable because according to the author "the problems of French Canada have become psychological problems". For a man as for a people, independence is a state of mind, claims Chaput, and this state of mind would alone wash away half the symptoms of the evil eating out the French-Canadian collectivity. Is the independence of Quebec feasible? Chaput believes the international political climate to be very favourable to the accession of Quebec to independence. Chaput believes that since the cause of Quebec is legitimate, the only thing missing is the will of the people expressed by way of election or referendum in order to meet the conditions of the international community for the recognition of States. It is unthinkable, according to the author, that Ottawa or Washington would repudiate their signing of the United Nations Charter only to counter the entry of Quebec in the community of independent national States. In Section 4, The Three Major Objections to Independence, Chaput discusses 1) of the faith of French minorities, 2) the presumed isolation of Quebec after independence, and 3) the political immaturity of French Canadians, which constitute the objections most often raised against the independence of Quebec. French-speaking minorities, principally of Quebec and Acadian origins, dispersed in the nine English provinces of Canada, often constitute a cause of division and misunderstanding in discussions on the political status of Quebec. Contrary to what is often asserted on the question, Chaput believes that the independence of Quebec would change the situation of French-Canadian minorities for the better, not only in English Canada, but also in the United States and everywhere else in the world. Once sovereign, Quebec, like all other independent States, would be in a position to give itself a policy aiming to protect and support its nationals settled outside its borders. Quebec would be isolated from the rest of the world by separation, those who are not favourable to it often argue. Chaput disagrees. Far from being isolated by its accession to independence, Quebec would then entertain diplomatic relations, equal to equal, with all other countries. The political independence of nations does not mean autarky, it is not the opposite of internationalism, it is the first condition of any and all internationalism. Without the political liberty of nations, Chaput claims, the construction of large supranational political ensembles is not an enterprise of internationalism, but one of imperialism. The political immaturity of French Canadians, evoked by detractors of Quebec nationalism in general and separatism in particular, tend to refer specifically to the era of Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis, in power during 15 years, from 1944 to 1959. Chaput says he stands together with Cité libres editorial team when they wish for French Canadians to assume responsibility over themselves, and agrees in principle with Pierre Trudeau when he writes that it is more urgent to rehabilitate democracy, attack the ideologies of the clerical-bourgeois elite, denounce the indolence of French Canadians, than to search for the culprits among the English. However, he believes the particular definition Trudeau gives to the word nationalism to be a source of confusion. It is a hasty generalization to reject all nationalisms because a political thought claiming to be nationalist (without truly being so believes Chaput) has produced bad fruits. According to him, to reason in this way amounts to "fighting the Church because of the Inquisition, life because of disease, the rule because of the exception." To complete the liberation programme of Cité libre, one not only needs for a social liberation inside Quebec, but also for the exterior liberation of Quebec, which political separation would bring. Chaput sees there two liberations that are "complementary and indispensably tied to one another". Section 5, entitled The Two Options of the French-Canadian Nation, reduces the options available to French Canadians to those of either 1) remaining a minority inside a vast country or 2) becoming a majority inside a smaller country. The sixth and final section, The Sole Reason for Our Cause, asserts that the battle for the independence of Quebec is fought above all in the name of human dignity. More than a question of logic and solid arguments, independence is a question of character. Chaput expresses his conviction that the French-Canadian nation possesses the character and sense of dignity of which free nations are made.
28091054	/m/0cmbkn8	A Pele do Ogro	Miguel M. Abrahão	1996	{"/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 The story told by the novel A Pele do Ogro occurs in the cities of London, Rome, Moscow, Paris and Berlin, and as a basis for the plot, the story of 19th century Europe. The novel is divided into three parts and an epilogue. The first, located between 1848 and 1882, shows the first years of the existence of André Duroseille, desires, fears, love life and his obsession with immortality, beauty and youth. Early in the novel, André meets Claire, a poor girl from Lyon, and falls in love with her. But the intense passion between the two, will be the target of the wrath of the mysterious Pierre Labatut, who lost a family member Duroseille and was determined not to lose another. In the midst of an alleged attack of madness, Pierre puts the fire in the hut in which they live, killed his wife and stepdaughter, Claire, and disappears into the flames. André, accused of murder, he is immediately trapped in the chain of Lyon. In prison, he meets Gaston, who first told him of the existence of the mysterious Lydia, known as Romana: "Lydia, female liberation! Lydia, my dear! Lydia, his wife immortal! I will glorify and pray for you ... Take me to the promised happiness. (...) Lydia is the master! The Ser ...! The woman who gives pleasure! Lydia, the woman who is a person without being! She has been with us since the dawn of humanity and will exist until the whole sky suffer the final break. Even taking the form of Lydia, a Roman she's all woman, and it is not ...! So it is a goddess"! Leaving prison, arguing that Lydia can give you immortality, the young Duroseille, stubbornly, now married with a son, went to Italy. In his travels across the European continent, André established friendly relations with historical figures like Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Queen Victoria and others, who talk about Lydia and their wealth, power, beauty and youth . However, life does not smile for Duroseille: he finds his brother Henry, who has been missing for years, who hates him and is mortally ill and loses his wife and young son in the middle of an arson. But Lydia dominates his thoughts ... The second part of the novel takes place between 1882 and 1894. During this period, André has finally met Lydia. In the first meeting, she said: (...) You're the only man I've been searching for centuries ... But I had to wait until you have 35 years! My Antinous, my love (...)! A strong and passionate relationship between the two soon begin to suffer the stigma of suspicion. Lydia, after telling his origin, saying he was born in ancient Rome at the time of Emperor Hadrian, reveals that he was the reincarnation of Antinous, his only love! – And invites him to participate in the Palio of Siena, where a new tragedy lies ahead: the couple will be present at the suicide of Stefano, a young athlete who kills himself for love has the Lydia: If we do not the energy of these young people before, – a power that will allow us a long life and eternal youth – young people suffer a lot. Lydia finally reveals the secret of the magic of the ancient Celts, and in the forests of Edinburgh, André became an immortal. However, to keep him, he will remove the energy of someone who loves him deeply, which claimed the life of a young Italian couple. Andre feels the weight of guilt and is believed responsible for all the ills afflicting Europe in the late nineteenth century. And he is responsible! One by one of his closest friends will suffer the process of perjury and exile because of him. The third part, between 1894 and 1900, shows André and Lydia involved in lawsuits and scandals that shook Europe in the late 19th century. At this stage, the protagonist of the story, becomes a witness to the suffering of his best friends: Oscar Wilde is demoralized and imprisoned for the crime of sodomy, Alfred Dreyfus was convicted and exiled to Devil's Island, the writer Emile Zola died in suspicious circumstances and France, his homeland!, is ruled by corrupt politicians. "Emile Zola murdered? But by whom? Lydia?" In the home, André is in conflict with the stepdaughter, Paolo, mainly because of Lydia and political beliefs. "Either you are separated from Lydia, or I do not ever want to see you"! – Paolo reproached him with great fury. With the death of his stepson, daughter and grand-son, André – convinced that Lidia was responsible for all the inequities – decides to destroy the only way possible to stop loving him. For him, there was no doubt in these cases: Lydia, the selfish Romana, wanted her for himself and for this reason, it has eliminated all those he truly loved. The epilogue behind surprising revelation.
28092731	/m/0cm8mjd	A Escola	Miguel M. Abrahão			 The book has as background the 30s, during the dictatorship of the Vargas government. Master Bolivar Bueno, involved with dangerous ideas for the season, has a strong influence and emotional control over their traditional primary school students from Wolfgang Schubert, while dividing her love life with the teachers of the school, ideologically and being chased by the director, the Rev. Otto Faukner, and his assistant, miss Catarina. In 2005, the play was adapted by its author to the format of the novel, released in 2007. In this new format, the author expands historical themes, importants for the knowledge of Brazilian History of the 30s: Revolution to São Paulo in 1932, fascism and communism in Brazil, ruled by Getúlio Vargas.
28098730	/m/0cmcvzs	Harry the Dirty Dog		1956	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The family dog, Harry, disenchanted with taking baths, buries the bathtub scrubber and runs away from home. Harry gets dirty and returns home only to find his family does not recognize him. He attempts to get his family to realize it's him only succeed when he brings back the brush he buried.
28108371	/m/0cmdvd3	House Rules	Jodi Picoult	2010-03-02	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot is conveyed from the points of view of the main characters in the novel. Jacob Hunt is eighteen years old and has Asperger's syndrome, which is a form of high-functioning autism. He lives with his mother and brother, Emma and Theo Hunt, and lives by a structured schedule, feeling comfortable only when all of his daily activities are planned. Any lack of structure or unexpected events cause him to feel anxious. He is obsessed with forensic analysis; the hobby consumes his life. The novel opens with Jacob setting up a crime scene (in which he is the victim) for his mother to solve. Jacob's need to engage in such activities, as well as his obsession with detail, often frustrates his mother and infuriates his brother Theo. When Jess Ogilvy, Jacob's social skills counselor, is killed, Jacob soon becomes a suspect. After arresting and releasing the first suspect, Mark Maguire, Detective Rich Matson asks Emma if he may talk to Jacob. After Jacob admits that he moved Jess's dead body, Jacob is arrested and charged with murder. The case goes to trial. In court, the prosecutor, Helen Sharp, raises the issues that all of Jacob's symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome are almost identical to the characteristics of those who are guilty. Also, the prosecution argues that most of the evidence proves that Jacob is the murderer (e.g. Jacob's fingerprints on the scene of the crime, an unlabeled crime scene evaluation identical to Jess's found in his notebook, and her backpack he retrieved from her home). At the end of the trial, Jacob testifies that he found Jess, dead in her bathroom and lying in a pool of her own blood. He admits to cleaning her, dressing her and placing her outside, then cleaning the original scene up and creating a new one that will lead investigators in a different direction. This is because he realized that, while an accident, Jess's death was the fault of his brother, Theo, after he was in the house and saw Jess naked. Jess slipped while getting out of the shower, and Theo fled the scene. In the end, Jess's death was in fact an accident.
28108732	/m/0cmczkz	Rock & Roll Jihad: A Muslim Rock Star's Revolution		2010-01-12	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book begins with a quote from Melissa Etheridge, saying: "The story you are about to read is the story of a light-bringer....Salman Ahmad inspires me to reach always for the greatest heights and never to fear....Know that his story is a part of our history." The book tells a life story of Pakistan-born Salman Ahmad, who pioneered &#34;Sufi rock&#34; by marrying his teenage love of Led Zeppelin&#39;s sinuously behemoth riffs to the ecstatic vocal acrobatics of the millennia-old qawwali style of singing common to Pakistan, fronts Junoon (&#34;passion&#34;), the most revered rock band in all of South Asia for the past two decades. Facing down angry mullahs and oppressive dictators who wanted all music to be banned from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Salman Ahmad rocketed to the top of the music charts, bringing Westernstyle rock and pop to Pakistani teenagers for the first time. His band Junoon became the &#39;U2 of Asia&#39;, a sufi rock group that broke boundaries and sold a record number of albums. But Ahmad&#39;s story began in New York, where he spend his high school years rocking out in Tappan, New York. That dream seemed destined to die when his family returned to Pakistan and Ahmad was forced to follow the strictures of a newly religious. After finishing medical school he devotes his life to peace, love, and power chords as the first true Muslim rock star. &#34;Mine was a sort of Sex Pistols situation in reverse,&#34; he writes. &#34;I wanted to unite and heal the divisions in the Third World,&#34; not &#34;punch conservative British nationalism and the First World Order in the gut.&#34; It didn&#39;t hurt that the process included random encounters with Mick Jagger, Bono, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who later named Ahmad UNAIDS Goodwill ambassador. Today, Ahmad continues to play music and is also a UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador, traveling the world as a spokesperson and using the lessons he learned as a musical pioneer to help heal the wounds between East and West; lessons he shares in this illuminating memoir.
28112055	/m/0cm84q3	The Heart of a Warrior	Erin Hunter		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the previous book "A Clan in Need", Ravenpaw and Barley go and ask Firestar, leader of ThunderClan for help to drive out the rogues that drove Ravenpaw and Barley away from the farm. After gathering up a patrol of cats willing to help, they attack and succeed in driving the rogues away. Firestar then promises to help Barley and Ravenpaw back to their home. The Heart of a Warrior will follow Firestar, Ravenpaw and Barley in their adventure back. The story continues where Ravenpaw and Barley are still in ThunderClan. They prepare to go back to the barn and with the help of Firestar and a warrior patrol; they are ready to reclaim the barn back. Ravenpaw and Barley wanted to leave quietly without anyone noticing, but Squirrelkit makes enough noise to get attention of the whole Clan; thus making everyone knowing that Ravenpaw and Barley are leaving. They do their farewells and depart from ThunderClan with a warrior patrol. They go in the barn finding the place all wrecked. Firestar then makes a plan to ambush the rogues in their sleep. When they carry out their plan, they are given away when the chickens are startled and make a lot of racket and noise. During the battle in the barn, the farmer goes in and makes everyone retreat. It turns out that some of the "rogues" were part of BloodClan. Firestar later then comes up with another plan, claiming that it will work. Most of the plan works out so far when they drive out the rogues out of the barn, but as the battle continues outside, it transpires that the rogues had reinforcements. They were about to lose against the rogues until the dogs got loose and attack the rogues. They finally drive out the rogues with the help of the dogs (whom Ravenpaw and Barley once saved from the fire), leaving only Barley's brothers left; Hoot and Jumper. They were about to be killed, but Barley says not to. Firestar and the warrior patrol then depart with Ravenpaw and Barley and they return to ThunderClan. Ravenpaw and Barley let Hoot and Jumper stay in the barn. While Barley goes out on a walk, Ravenpaw shows Hoot and Jumper around the farm. Ravenpaw notices that Hoot and Jumper don't even care and they don't do anything. As the three return to the barn, Ravenpaw takes a nap. when he wakes up by Barley, he finds the barn wrecked. Hoot and Jumper claim that they were trying to hunt for mice. One night Barley and his brothers go out for a walk. When they return, Hoot and Jumper order Ravenpaw to do everything for them. The next day, they still are ordering Ravenpaw around. Ravenpaw wonders why Barley isn't doing anything about it. Later in the day, Barley gets angry at Hoot and Jumper saying that he doesn't like how they are treating his friend and claims that loyalty is everything, not blood. Ravenpaw sees this but doesn't help Barley, knowing that he can handle it on his own. Hoot and Jumper later leave the barn for good. Ravenpaw and Barley finally have their home, together, and as their own.
28114181	/m/0cm80bx	SkyClan's Destiny	Erin Hunter		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The prologue begins with the ancient SkyClan that were attacked by the rats. After another battle with the rats and the death of two of their warriors, Spiderstar, the leader, decides to have the Clan disband. Some cats decide to become house cats at the nearby town while others stay in the gorge. In present day SkyClan it has been six moons (months) since Firestar went to the gorge and reformed SkyClan. The new SkyClan has added new loners, rogues and former kittypets to the Clan. There are also kittypets that help the Clan in the day, but return to their Twolegs at night. They are called daylight warriors. Leafstar invited them into the Clan to help patrol and hunt for the Clan. However, it is clear that not everyone respects the daylight warriors. Many cats such as Sharpclaw call them "kitty warriors" feeling they are not loyal to the Clan by leaving at night. The daylight warriors are Billystorm, Ebonyclaw, Frecklepaw, Snookpaw, Harveymoon and Macgyver. Leafstar tries to keep the tensions low between the daylight warriors and regular warriors, but many regular warriors still make fun of the daylight warriors behind their backs. One day, Leafstar receives a dream from Spottedleaf, an old medicine cat of ThunderClan that helped SkyClan when Firestar first formed the Clan. She sees cats and they say, "This is the leaf-bare of my Clan. Greenleaf will come, but it will bring even greater storms than these. SkyClan will need deeper roots if it is to survive." The next day, Leafstar visits the Clan's medicine cat Echosong and they realize they each had the same dream. Later, Stick, Cora, Coal and Shorty, the four cats Firestar met on his quest arrive at the gorge. They stay with the Clan and learn battle moves, hunting techniques. In exchange, Stick teaches the Clan how to destroy a rat family that lives in a dump in the Clan's territory. After defeating the rats the four loners begin to lead patrols despite the fact that Sharpclaw still does not let the daylight warriors lead patrol and they have been around longer. One day, Leafstar follows a group of SkyClan's cats visiting the nearby town. There she realizes that the loners came to recruit help to defeat a group of cats that steal prey in their town. In the end, Leafstar agrees to help though states that she will not kill anyone. The battle is fierce and ends in SkyClan's victory, but Stick's daughter Red is killed protecting her mate who Stick tried to kill since he thinks that Red's mate threatened her to join them. Stick becomes even more infuriated when Leafstar calls off her warriors from killing anyone, a policy he disproves of. Returning to her Clan, Leafstar sets up rules for visiting cats in order to prevent any future conflicts. She makes it so that visiting cats must help hunt everyday, and the Clan shall not teach any fighting moves until they have spent a moon in the Clan and that SkyClan is "a proud, independent Clan with a code and honor of our own." Throughout the book it becomes apparent the Billystorm and Leafstar have feelings for each other especially when at the end she talks about how even if she does have kits she has an excellent deputy and medicine cat.
28116222	/m/0cm9m5m	Never Look Away				 It starts with a trip to a local amusement park. David Harwood is hoping a carefree day at Five Mountains will help dispel his wife Jan's recent depression, black moods that have led to frightening thoughts of suicide. Instead, a day of fun with their four-year-old son Ethan turns into a nightmare. When Jan disappears from the park, David's worst fears seem to have come true. But when he goes to the police to report her missing, terrified that she's planning to take her own life, the facts start to indicate something very different. The park's records show that only two tickets were purchased, David and Ethan's, and CCTV shows no evidence that Jan ever entered the park at all. Suddenly David's story starts to look suspicious - suspicious enough for the police to wonder if she's already dead, murdered by her husband. To prove his innocence and keep his son from being taken away from him, David digs deep into the past and comes face to face with a terrible childhood tragedy. After finding her birth certificate he visits her estranged parents, Horace and Gretchen Richler, who tell David that their daughter Jan was killed as a five year old in a tragic car accident. Jan's story is slowly revealed as the narratives switch between her and David's perspective. It is revealed that Jan was the false identity taken by Constance Harwood, who was accidentally responsible for the death of the real Jan. After Jan's death, she moved away and left her family who blamed her, getting involved in crime with Dwayne Osterhaus. However when Dwayne got a six-year jail sentence she went into hiding to keep away from the many victims and enemies she has gained over the years. Her marriage to David was intended to keep her identity hidden from Oscar Fine, whose hand she cut off in a diamond heist several years earlier. However, Oscar sees her face on the news and tracks down Jan and Dwayne, killing Dwayne. Jan realises that Ethan's life could be in danger and travels back to Promise Falls, her and David's hometown. While this is happening, David is shaping up as the lead suspect and is being threatened by Elmost Sebastian, the head of a for-profit prison company who David was determined to defame in the newspaper. When Ethan goes missing, David presumes Sebastian responsible. But Oscar returns to the Harwood household at the same time as Jan and David finally understands the truth behind his wife, realising how little he knew. Jan is shot and David is nearly killed too but in her dying moments Jan kills Oscar. David is called by Gretchen Richler, who explains that after realising Jan was actually Constance, kidnapped Ethan in revenge but realised the error of her ways. David and Ethan are reunited.
28123503	/m/0cm8ggw	The Skin I'm In	Sharon Flake	2000		 Bullying at school can be a terrible experience, and yet sometimes it can be quite hard to see the reason for the bullying. Why, for instance, would a black boy tease a black girl about being black? "John-John McIntyre is the smallest seventh grader in the world. Even fifth graders can see over his head. Sometimes I have a hard time believing he and me are both thirteen. He's my color, but since second grade he's been teasing me about being too black." At first, there doesn't seem to be a reason why John-John might be teasing Maleeka. Perhaps he's jealous because Maleeka is tall and, even if she doesn't quite realise it yet, she's rather gorgeous too. And perhaps he's also jealous of her relationship with Caleb: "He stared at me half the year. I thought he saw what everybody else saw. Skinny, poor, black Maleeka. But Caleb saw something different. He said I was pretty. Said he liked my eyes and sweet cocoa brown skin. He wrote me poems and letters. He put spearmint gum inside. Walked me to class. Gave me a ring. I ain't told Momma." So when John-John ruined it for Maleeka and Caleb, Maleeka was left with no-one on her side. Maybe it wasn't a very clever move, but Maleeka teamed up with Charlese and her gang, out of self-protection. That didn't improve things much, but it was better than nothing. Until Charlese decided to see how far she could push Maleeka, too ... Maleeka is in a difficult situation and there doesn't seem to be anyone she can turn to. She makes some pretty bad mistakes before she finally realises that the new English teacher, the outspoken Miss Saunders, really is on her side.
28131626	/m/0cmcbzp	L'Épreuve	Pierre de Marivaux	1740	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Lucidor, a wealthy Parisian, is in love with Angélique, a young and innocent country bourgeois. After falling ill and watching Angélique cry for him, he is convinced that she loves him as well, but he is unsure of the motives behind this love. He thus decides to put Angélique through an ordeal to test whether he is loved for his money or for himself. In the name of friendship, Lucidor offers a rich friend to be married to Angélique to see whether she would reject him for love. In fact, this rich friend is none other than Lucidor’s valet, who is dressed up in rich man’s gear only for this trick.
28131631	/m/0cmd6rl	La Fausse Suivante	Pierre de Marivaux		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 A young woman, described as "the Parisian maiden", is due to marry Lelio without having ever met him. She decides to introduce herself to him as a Knight and become his friend. Lelio confides in the Knight his troubled situation. He is promised to a Countess he seduced, in addition to the young Parisian maiden. He would choose to marry the richest of the two, that is the heroine, if he had not already signed a contract with the Countess, which would make him lose a large sum of money if he broke his engagement to her. Lelio thus challenges the Knight to seduce the Countess, so that he could marry the Parisian maiden without paying the sum. The plan seems to work at first, the Countess falls for the Knight and forgets Lelio. But information of the Knight's real sexual identity leaks among the servants, and even if she refuses to disclose her name, the Parisian maiden has to admit her sex. She disguises herself as a servant and manages to get hold of the contract. At the end of the play, she tears it in the presence of Lelio and the Countess, and both are disappointed by her deception. The young Parisian maiden finally discloses her identity, and justifies her actions by asserting her independence.
28131674	/m/0cmb_l7	Le Préjugé vaincu	Pierre de Marivaux	1747	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Angélique knew very well that she loved Dorante, but she didn't want to. Being the daughter of a marquis she didn't want to marry someone middle class however rich and well brought up he may be. She shared her feelings, not to her father, who looked upon this marriage with pleasure, but to Lisette her chambermaid, who, although speaking the dialect of her village, and the daughter of a simple tax lawyer was not less determined to not marry down. Dorante, as a test, said he had a partner to suggest to Angélique: a well educated young man, rich, esteemed in all aspects, but middle class. Angélique refused. When Dorante told her that he spoke of himself, Angélique was somewhat disconcerted, but persistent. The Marquis then offered his youngest daughter to Dorante. Angélique called for Dorante; she didn't want him to see her sister, she didn't want him to leave. At first Dorante looked at her astonished then tenderly. Angélique looked at him. He fell to her feet, she made him get up: pride had given up against love.
28138267	/m/0cm8y2b	Sticky Beak	Morris Gleitzman		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Sticky Beak picks up from where Blabber Mouth ends. Rowena's father is now married to her teacher, and at a function she throws a plate of custard and jelly into a fan, splattering it over everyone. As she tries to avoid the consequences, she rescues an abused cockatoo from the neighbourhood bully, Darryn Peck.
28159435	/m/05qg0w4	The Ruby Dice	Catherine Asaro		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Throughout the novel, the peace is contested and then established between the Skolians and the Traders. Imperator Kelric Skolia is reunited with his children, Rohka Miesa Varz Skolia (daughter of Kelricson Valdoria and Savina Miesa) and Jimorla Haka (son of Kelricson Valdoria and Rashiva Haka), and his wife Ixpar Carn. Imperator Kelric Skolia finds out about Emperor Jaibriol III's parentage during a meeting on Earth. He also discovers that Jaibriol III became a Key and a member of the Triad (the kind of Key is unspecified, whether it is Web Key, like his grandfather Eldrinson Althor Valdoria before him, or something else). Kelric and Jaibriol decide to meet on Earth in person. Kelric suspects that Jai might be a psion, but he cannot be certain unless he sees him in person. Their last meeting happened almost ten years ago at the Lock that was captured by the Traders, when Kelric took on the title of the Imperator, becoming Military Key (see Ascendant Sun). An attempt on Kelric's life occurs, killing all of his and Jai's bodyguards. While they are stranded in the Appalachian Mountains, Kelric teaches Jai Quis, the dice game that Kelric learned on Coba during his eighteen years of living there, by linking their minds. The two leaders also sign a peace treaty that would change the fates of their empires forever. After returning to the Skolians, the Imperator is thrown into jail since the Assembly contests his loyalty to the Imperialite because of his secret meeting with the Eubean Emperor. However, both the Traders and the Skolians ratify the treaty, making peace possible. In the novel, it is never revealed who attempted the assassinations on Kelric's life. The novel links to Catch the Lightning through the treaty, but apparently it did not work as intended, because even during the events of Catch the Lighning, both Skolia and Eubean Concord are still on shaky grounds. Quis refers to a dice game learned by Kelric on the planet Coba. This dice strategy game can be played with a physical set of dice that are made from hand-crafted jewels; or it can be played mentally. It originates on a planet called Coba, a former colony of the Ruby Empire that became isolated during the empire's collapses and remains so even during the time of the novels. All members of Coban society learn to play Quis, but only a few excel at it. The Quis dice can be used for a variety of purposes, including as a game, to tell stories, to exchange information, and even to gamble. But its most important use is its influence on politics, as the dice are used to compete politically, and also can convey politically important information. There are competing city-states that have isolated top Quis players, who study the art of playing Quis as their fulltime occupation.
28160839	/m/0cm8y8h	Keeper		2010	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After unintentionally ruining a blue moon day by messing up her guardian's crab gumbo and breaking her favorite wooden bowl, causing a friend's ukelele to break, as well as wrecking the plants of her elderly neighbor, Keeper decides to make everything right. Taking with her seven wooden figurines of different mermaids, her dog BD, and a charm she had since she was a girl, Keeper sets out to find her mother, Meggie Marie, who has not been seen in seven years.
28163284	/m/0cm82wp	Times Without Number	John Brunner		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 In 1988, Don Miguel Navarro is a "Licentiate in Ordinary" of the Society of Time. As a Licentiate, Don Miguel's primary duty is to ensure the preservation of history, lest an alteration undo the empire. While at a party held by the Marquesa di Jorque, his hostess shows off a gold Aztec mask she had recently received as a gift. Recognizing it instantly as contraband, Don Miguel launches an investigation that eventually leads to the unmasking and arrest of Don Arcimboldo Ruiz, a prominent nobleman (and a cunning and skillful villain) engaged in the illegal acquisition of goods from the past. Don Miguel is then entrusted with returning it to the exact spot in the past from which it was taken, in time for it to be used in the Aztec bloody rites of mass human sacrifice - with which he is duty bound not to interfere but which leave him shaken. Because of his success, Don Miguel is honored and marked as a coming man. Some time later, while attending a New Year's Eve ball at the palace of the Prince of New Castile, a prince of the blood and the Commander of the Society of Time, Don Miguel meets Lady Kristina, the daughter of the Swedish ambassador. At her prompting, the two leave the party to explore the city of Londres for themselves. While walking down one of the city's streets, however, they encounter an unusually dressed woman who is assaulted by men who intend to rape her, but turns out be more than able to take care of herself, proceeding to immobilize a number of her assailants before Don Miguel is able to knock her unconscious (the reader can easily recognize that she is adept at some kind of martial art, but in Don Miguel's world these are unknown in the West). Taking the woman to the Society's headquarters, he attempts to return to the prince's palace in search of Father Ramón, the society's master theoretician, but is stopped by a panicked mob clogging the streets. There he learns of the burning of the palace and the deaths of all of the assembled dignitaries at the hands of dozens of female warriors (transported, it turns out, from an alternate timeline in which a Mongol King rules all of Asia and Europe and which senior members of the Society of Time secretly contacted). After encountering Father Ramón, the two return to Society Headquarters, where they use a special cross-temporal Mass to contact an earlier version of Father Ramón and prevent the massacre from taking place. However, though seeming to end well, the episode leaves Don Miguel with a mounting feeling of anxiety, having found out that his superiors engage in dangerous experiments and realizing by what a thin thread the entire reality he knows hangs. Needing a vacation, Don Miguel travels to California, a backwater rarely visited by Europeans. While relaxing at a hacienda near a local mine, his host, a Native American engineer named Two Dogs, shows him a steel bit from a rock drill discovered in a recently started mine. (In this timeline, there had been no California Gold Rush and gold mining is a governmental monopoly.) Fearing a violation of the treaty between the Empire and the Confederacy of the East regulating time travel, Don Miguel alerts the Society, which launches a full-scale investigation. When Father Ramón arrives on the scene, however, he insists that no violation has taken place, even though a scouting expedition confirms that there is indeed a group from the 20th Century mining the land in the past. Traveling to the site, Don Miguel and Father Ramón converse with the leader of the group and convince him to end the operation; Father Ramón is clearly determined to defuse the tension and avoid at virtually any price an escalation in the two great powers' relations. The reason for that becomes clear upon their return: Don Miguel finds out that the "discovery" had in fact been planted by Two Dogs, who is spearheading a conspiracy of anti-Mohawk native Americans seeking to bring down the Empire, and who manipulate the Eastern Confederacy and make use of it but have their own far-reaching agenda. In the ensuing melee, Two Dogs escapes and Father Ramón is killed. It is assumed that, having failed in his carefully crafted plot, Two Dogs would seek to travel into the past and deal the Empire's past a grieveous blow. Determined to preserve their history, the Society sends Don Miguel and dozens of other Licentiates into the past to prevent Two Dogs from disrupting the pivotal event of the Armada, but while undercover in 1588 Cadiz Don Miguel discovers to his horror that Two Dogs has already succeeded; Parma's second-in-command, the military genius Earl of Barton, no longer exists - having evidently been assassinated by two Dogs while still an obscure young adventurer - and Parma himself is no longer the commander of the fleet. Urgently rushing back to the present, Don Miguel hopes to still sound a last minute warning - but is overtaken by the forwardly proceeding wave of changing reality (a highly painful experience) and arrives not in New Madrid but its analogue, New York City, emerging in Central Park to the amazement of passers-by. From this Don Miguel realizes that people of the changed timeline have no knowledge of time-travel, which would have given them a clear explanation for a man appearing out of thin air, and that he is the only person in this timeline who knows the secret of time travel. Reflecting upon this he concludes that timelines where time travels exists eventually collapse on themselves, when somebody changes the reality leading to the invention of time-travel itself. He decides to accept developments as God's will and to begin a new life as "the most lonely of all exiles" in the world where he now finds himself, keeping time travel a secret and never disclosing his knowledge of how to build a working time machine. And meanwhile, Two Dogs' ruthless act against the Empire turns out to have boomeranged against Two Dogs' own people, creating a timeline where Native Americans fared much worse than in the one he destroyed.
28163797	/m/0cmcvc5	Empire of Lies	Andrew Klavan		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The book is a thriller in which the protagonist Jason Harrow, a politically conservative Christian, believes that he has discovered an Islamist terrorist plot but that it being concealed by left-wing and politically-correct media.
28188066	/m/0cnymyy	Moribito II: Guardian of Darkness	Nahoko Uehashi		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It has been a year since Balsa protected the egg of the Water Spirit from Rarunga. Balsa is traveling through caves in the Misty Blue Mountains on her way home to Kanbal. In the caves she smells a lantern and discovers the siblings Gina and Kassa defending themselves from a strange creature that Balsa drives off. It leaves behind a rare stone that is extremely valuable, luisha. Balsa sends the pair on their way. Despite attempting to cover up the event, Kassa and Gina are forced to tell the truth to the clan chief Kaguro, and his brother Yuguro a national hero and leader of the King's Spears, the elite generals of Kanbal. Yuguro sends soldiers to capture Balsa with orders to kill her on the way back. Balsa is staying with her aunt Yuka where she learns that King Rogsam blamed Jiguro for the death of his brother, King Nuguru and Jiguro is a national disgrace. Yuguro became a hero because he claimed to have killed Jiguro. Balsa knows this is a lie—they never fought each other. While staying with Yuka, Balsa is captured and poisoned. She escapes and saves a strange creature from harm. In return, the creature brings help for Balsa in the form of the herder people and their chief, Toto. As Balsa heals, the Giving Ceremony is about to begin. Kanbal is a poor land. Once every ten years, the Mountain King throws open the door to his realm. The King of Kanbal and the King's Spears descended into the mountain. They battle each other and the strongest becomes the Dancer. The Dancer faces the strongest hyohlu warrior of the Mountain King to gain the luisha Kanbal needs to survive. Further details of the ceremony have been lost. The Giving Ceremony has been delayed many years and Kanbal is in danger of starvation. King Radalle and Yuguro are planning to use the ritual to conquer the Mountain King and take all the luisha. Toto of the Herder People tells Balsa that such an act would end in failure and ensure Kanbal's destruction and she must stop it. They recruit Kassa to their side and visit Chief Laloog of the Yonsa, the only one still alive who knows the truth of the Giving Ceremony. Balsa convinces him to break his vow of silence and Laloog drafts a letter revealing the truth of the Ceremony and begging the king to abandon the plan. The Giving Ceremony begins and Yuguro defeats the others to become the Dancer. Balsa and Kassa emerge from hiding to read Laloog's letter and beg the king to abandon the plan as the hyohlu arrive. Yuguro convinces the king to ignore them and Balsa defeats him as the truth of the Ceremony is revealed: The hyohlu are the guardians spirits of the previous ceremony's human participants. The room is plunged into darkness and the strongest hyohlu appears: Jiguro Musa. Jiguro is about to kill Yuguro when Balsa challenges her foster father to battle. She completes the ceremony as the Dancer, the truth of the luisha is revealed, and Kanbal is saved. Afterward Balsa leaves Kanbal to return to Tanda. When Balsa dies, will her spirit return to Kanbal as a Guardian of the Darkness?
28195554	/m/0cnx3gk	Canaima				 The Orinoco jungle is the main character and at the same time the reason behind all of the other characters' actions. The struggle against nature and yearning for riches, dominion and power are the main themes in the novel. Canaima represents a bitter struggle against caudillism. Its author depicts the jungle from an ideological standpoint, which translates into his characters' development. Marcos Vargas, returns to Ciudad Bolívar after his studies in Trinidad, finally settling by the waters of Yuruari river.
28199024	/m/0cnx70s	Rooftops of Tehran				 In a middle-class neighborhood of Iran’s sprawling capital city, 17-year-old Pasha Shahed spends the summer of 1973 on his rooftop with his best friend Ahmed, dreaming about future and wrestling with a crushing secret: his love for his beautiful neighbor, Zari, who has been betrothed since birth to Pasha's friend and mentor, Doctor, a university student and political activist on the SAVAK hunt list. Despite Pasha’s guilt the long, hot summer days transform the couple's tentative relationship into a rich emotional bond. But the bliss of their perfect, stolen summer is abruptly shattered in a single night when Pasha unwittingly guides the Shah’s secret police to Doctor's hiding place. The violent consequences awaken Pasha and his friends to the reality of life under the rule of a powerful despot, leading Zari to make a shocking choice from which Pasha may never recover.
28202228	/m/0cmbh9n	A Happy Healthy You				 In A Happy, Healthy You five professional women – a clinical nutritionist and internist, an oncologist, a psychologist, an exercise physiologist, and an attorney and certified life coach – collectively have authored a new book that offers a definitive guide to help empower women during the aging process, combat disease and improve overall health and well-being. Written in five parts, each of the authors shares her knowledge and experience in helping women embrace hope, spiritual guidance and the promise of rewarding relationships in every stage of life.
28202298	/m/0cp0xvp	Natacha		1998		 Natasha has a mother who invents tales of monsters, a friend, Pati, who is "The Pearl Girl" and a dog, Rafles, a little destroyer. Natacha is a girl who never tires of asking questions. Her curiosity, which is shared by her friend Pati, drives her parents and other adults to despair. Sometimes they have to count to ten to calm down. In this book Natacha helps to cook by making a chocolate cake, but in place of the main ingredient she use mud. During a film she asks her mother so many questions that she cannot follow the plot. In other chapters she makes a poem but needs her mother's help with spelling, her mother tells her stories about monsters of the night and her dog "Rafles" meets various disasters.
28206406	/m/0cp1pj0	A Killing Frost	R. D. Wingfield	2008	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The long-suffering Superintendent Mullet has enlisted the help of a new D.C.I, Skinner, to rid the Denton Police of Inspector Frost once-and-for-all. The pair see him as a hindrance to the Police Service, which is struggling to adapt to the modern era of Policing. Inspector Frost is his usual uncouth self; derogatory towards women and with a slightly perverse sense of humour, but through this we can see that in a way, they are right: Frost has no place in the modern Police Service and he knows it all-too-well. Meanwhile, Inspector Frost has to contend with missing children, severed body parts, rape cases and a man claiming to have killed his wife (even though she reports in as alive and living outside Denton). Every time Frost takes on a case, another seems to pop-up, and he begins to feel the strain. Things take an alarming turn for the worse as his nemesis discovers that Frost has been forging pay-slips for some time (a crime for which D.I Frost could very easily be fired), Frost is cornered in an abandoned butcher's shop by a knife-wielding man and the whole situation is brought to an explosive end in an armed stand-off at a remote farmhouse.
28207892	/m/0cnwzr3	The God Machine				 After the death of his girlfriend, Sith, Guy Salvatore can no longer make sense of his own world. He has hallucinations of monsters that besiege him with requests and threaten his life wherever he goes. He is completely unsure if these manifestations are real or are born in his mind. As the line between reality and insanity is blurred Guy comes across a man who calls himself Satan and claims holds the answers to all of Guy’s worries. Satan restores Guy's hope promising Sith is still alive, but the two Gods that oversee existence let her be ripped from her world by unknown forces. She is now drifting through dimensional planes known as “Dream Worlds.” Satan pleads Guy to use his power to leave his world’s plane, search for Sith, and seek retribution from the Gods that caused the ordeal. The chapter takes place in the present day in the town of Salem. Things start off with our main character, Guy, waking up and going to school after seeing a massive "hallucination" come out of his bathroom mirror and ask for floss. At school he is only reminded of the lose of his girlfriend and leaves. After a night of more strange creatures, he struggles to sleep and finally does so only to meet with a woman calling herself "sickness" in his dream. She turns into a hideous creature, kissing Guy and holding him in her clutches. Guy wakes up started and upset. We are then taken to the entrance of Heaven, the domain of the character Good God. Her character comes in hoping to get back into her office in, but has lost her key to the door to Heaven. She calls for the aid of her friend and fellow god Evil God, second in command to Good God and ruler of hell. Together they go look for the key in the last place she was, a graveyard in Guys town. At the same time this is happening, Guy has gone to the graveyard and is mourning the lose of his girlfriend. When the God's show up, he is able to see them, which shouldn't be possible for normal human beings. Upon seeing Good God, Guy locks eyes with her, but the gods disappear. Guy grows more frustrated with the series of events taking place around him, and as he expresses his anger, a man claiming to be Satan appears suddenly. He claims Guy's girlfriend is alive and that he can still find her in another dimension. Initially Guy shrugs the man off as one of his hallucinations, but as his hallucinations become more vivid and physically threatening,he begins to question our perception of reality and his own sanity. The second chapter opens in an area called "The Door Nexus" which is described as being between you, the devil and the deep blue sea". Good God and Evil God come through a door, Evil God yelling about the Fact that guy saw them. Good God says they can simply look Guy up, and go into the Limbo dimension. There they run into Limbo God, third in command and keeper of Limbo, who goes with them to go eat before looking up Guy. Meanwhile Guy is in math class, where Mortia, the girlfriend of Andrew who is Guys best friend, is hitting on guy. He yells at her drawing the attention of the teacher, but begins to see horrific things in class while his teacher is talking to him. His teacher is able to snap him out of this situation by yelling at him to go to the principals office. In the real of Heaven, the gods are investigating Guy Salvatore and why such strange events keep taking place around him. They find nothing abnormal about him, but his ability to see the God says otherwise, leaving the Gods feeling apprehensive about Guy.
28210983	/m/0cnxnyx	No Strings Attached				 The sleuthing friends travel to Paris (where several previous cases have also developed). George has organized some tennis matches there, and Nancy and Bess tag along in hopes of enjoying the sightseeing. The rooming house where they stay is owned by Mimi Louseau, a 37-year-old puppeteer and museum proprietor. When they learn about a secret treasure, which will be the cause of thefts, burglaries and damage to the museum, it is up to Nancy to solve the riddle before somebody else does.
28216363	/m/0cp1plj	Shadow of the Dragon: Kira		2008-04-03		 Kira is a girl whose life is governed by the first law: all girls must marry at age 13. When the Lord Dorcon and the king's men come to arrest her family, Kira and her younger sister Elspeth run away. Led by a fox named Onnie, they take shelter on Rogue's mountain, home to Ferarchie, the most ferocious dragon in the land. They rescue one of Ferarchie’s baby sons, and name it Jinx. Then they escape the mountain and find Paradon, a wizard. At this time Kira's brother Dane and his best friend Shanks-Spar are being trained to become dragon knights and go to war. However when Kira's father attacks Lord Dorcan and is killed Dane is imprisoned in his place. With help from Shanks Dane escapes and the two boys, along with their dragons Harmony and Rexor go to Paradon's castle and join the rest of Dane's family. They take shelter in his castle, until Lord Dorcon finds them. Then Paradon casts a spell to send them away from danger. At the end of the book he realises something horrible and says "What have I done?!"
28223887	/m/0cnyxmc	Skoggangsmand				 The story is set in rural Norway. The main character is a wild tempered young boy "Hans Trefothaugen", who gets involved in fights and a stabbing, and ends up as an outlaw living in the forests. While enjoying the independent way of life in the wilderness, he is also desperately longing for the woman "Ingrid Ødden", whom he knew from their childhood, and who later has married. After various conflicts with the village people Hans eventually ends up being caught and brought to prison. The legend about the Hedal Church is embedded in the story. During the Black Death, in the middle of the 14th century, the valley Hedal was depopulated, and the valley became a wilderness. A hunter, an outlaw living and hiding in the forest, one day shot an arrow after a capercaillie, but missed and instead struck the church bell, after which the hunter discovered the old church. Entering the church, there was bear at the altar, and the hunter shot and skinned the bear. The hunter subsequently settled at a deserted farm south of the church. The gathering Hedalsmessa, held at Michaelmas, is a central event in the novel.
28244296	/m/0cnzmjq	Back Story	Robert B. Parker	2003	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel begins with Spenser receiving a large payment for a case he worked for Rita Fiore. Due to this, Spenser decides to work a case pro bono for an aspiring young actress named Daryl Gordon who is trying to find out who murdered her mother, Emily Gordon. She tells Spenser that her mother came to Boston from California to stay with her sister, and was then murdered by The Dread Scott Brigade; a revolutionary, anti-establishment movement in the 1970s, during a Boston bank robbery in 1974. Despite the case being decades cold, and her only payment being six Krispy Kreme donuts, Spenser likes the challenge and decides to take the case. He starts by getting the case files, and speaking to the original investigators. None remember anything significant, but Spenser soon realizes that an FBI report on the case is missing. So he questions the FBI about this missing file, and they claim no such report was ever written. Soon after two FBI agents accost Spenser in his home and tell him to leave the case alone. Soon after that a couple of goons working for mob boss Sonny Karnofsky threaten Spenser and also tell him to stop investigating the cold case. The FBI and the mob not wanting Spenser to investigate the case only serve to pique his interest. He wonders what it is they are trying to hide and questions Sonny directly, who then orders his henchmen to kill Spenser. Spenser decides to speak with Emily’s sister, despite protests from Daryl. Emily’s chain-smoking sister informs Spenser that Emily had not come to see her, but that she was actually involved with the Dread Scott Brigade. She tells them that they were both hippies, and highly involved in revolutionary movements during their college days in the 1970s. They would meet with prison inmates under the guise of trying to educate them, but really they were fanning their militant flames. She also tells Spenser that Emily had split from Daryl’s father, and had followed a boyfriend of hers to Boston; a black revolutionary that called himself Shaka. Spenser and Hawk then fly to California to speak with Daryl’s father. Her father turns out to be a burnt-out old hippy who confirms Emily’s sister’s story. He also gives Spenser the names of some of Emily’s friends; another black revolutionary that called himself Coyote, and a girl named Bunny. Back in Boston, Spenser discovers that Emily Gordon attended Taft University, and decides to visit the school. There he discovers that Emily was good friends with a woman named Bonnie Karnofsky otherwise known as Bunny. While leaving the University he realizes he is being followed. He and Hawk split up and lead the followers into a trap and kill them in a shootout. Convinced the hitmen were Karnofsky’s goons, Spenser becomes even more interested in the case, especially with the connection between Karnofsky and Emily now known. He decides to head into Paradise to stake out Karnofsky’s home in hopes of following Bonnie. The local police chief there, Jesse Stone, notices Spenser and Hawk staking out the Karnofsky place and questions them about it. After checking them out with Healy, Jesse brings them coffee and they tell him about the investigation. Stone tells them that Bonnie doesn’t live there, but will have his people look into her. Later, Stone’s people inform Spenser that Bonnie often visits to sunbathe on her father’s property. Later Spenser meets with Daryl to tell her what he has discovered. She gets upset and tells him to stop investigating. After speaking with Susan, Spenser realizes that Daryl thought she had an ideal childhood that was interrupted only by her mother’s murder. She hated growing up with her father, and only wanted Spenser to confirm her mother’s saintliness and that she would have had the perfect upbringing had she not been killed. She wanted to have a picture perfect story for her memoir as she became more famous as an actress. Despite her taking him off the case, Spenser decides to continue the investigation. He then discovers that the Karnofsky’s have been paying Daryl’s father $2,000 a month for the last 28 years. He and Hawk fly out to California again, and this time Daryl’s father tells him that Daryl is actually Bonnie and Abner Fancy’s (a.k.a. Shaka) child. Bonnie had the child with Shaka, but she did not want her so she gave her to Emily who raised her for six years. After Emily was murdered they sent Daryl back to the man she knew as her father and paid him to raise her and keep his mouth shut about her true parentage. Sonny Karnofsky did this because he was humiliated that his daughter had a child with a black man. Sonny also later discovers that the man that called himself Coyote was an FBI informant, which is why the FBI buried the case. They did not want their informant in The Dread Scott Brigade revealed. Spenser goes back to Boston with this information. Once again he is trailed by gunmen, and after leading them to a stadium where Susan and he often work out, kills them in another shootout. He decides he must finish the case so he can protect himself and Susan. He then visits Jesse Stone, and after telling him the latest information, tells him he plans to kidnap Bonnie Karnofsky from her father’s house the next time she visits. Stone agrees to not get involved, and even takes Spenser out on a boat to show him the spot where Bonnie sunbathes. Later, Spenser and Hawk stake out the place and discover that she always swims out to a raft to cool down after lying in the sun a while. They wait for her to swim out again and when she does they pull up in a speed boat and kidnap her. They take her back to Susan’s place and there Bonnie confesses to being Daryl’s mother and killing Emily. She killed Emily during the robbery because she was jealous of her. She had given up her child to be with Shaka. And then Shaka left her for the woman she had given the child to. Later Shaka killed their bank robbery accomplice, Rob, as he was the only one that knew Bonnie killed Emily. Sonny Karnofsky then killed Shaka because he didn’t want his daughter with a black man. He then arranged for her to marry a man named Ziggy. Spenser calls Sonny and has him meet him at Susan’s house. He tells Sonny what he knows, but agrees to not take the information to the police if Sonny will agree to back off of him and Susan. Sonny agrees, and he and Bonnie leave.
28246359	/m/0cnxrhw	Forsaken House	Richard Baker		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Araevin Teshurr is an elven mage who spends time with a company of human and dwarven adventurers. Upon returning to the elves' secluded home of Evermeet, he becomes embroiled in a deadly attack perpetrated by a group of outcast demon-elves, freed from their 5,000-year imprisonment and seeking revenge. While searching for a trio of mysterious magical stones, Araevin must convince the elves to end their isolation from the rest of Faerun, and band together with the other races to prevent the demon army from overrunning the world.
28259023	/m/0cp1d3q	The Adventures of Slim and Howdy		2008-05-12	{"/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Based on characters created by Kix Brooks (as the alter egos of country superstars, Brooks and Dunn), The Adventures of Slim and Howdy is a comic crime novel that chronicles the exploits of a couple of gifted but undiscovered guitar pickin', honky tonk entertainin', country singers. It starts with a chance meeting on a used car lot in Beaumont, Texas. Slim and Howdy agree to partner up and ride together. But before they can even get out of town, they incur the undying wrath of Brushfire Boone Tate and a guy named Black Tony. A few days later they arrive in the Texas border town of Del Rio to play at the Lost and Found, a honky-tonk run by their old friend, the widow Jodie Lee. Along the way Slim and Howdy get caught up in a rigged poker game, encounter a snake handler with a do-it-yourself amputation kit, and have a run-in with Los Zetas, the deadly Mexican organized crime gang. Before it's over, Jodie Lee gets kidnapped, suspects come crawling out of the cacti, and Slim and Howdy have to save the day.
28269157	/m/0cny1c9	The Silver Ship and the Sea	Brenda Cooper		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 In The Silver Ship and the Sea, there are six altered children: Chelo Lee, her brother Joseph, Kayleen, Bryan, Alicia, and Liam. Fremont had a single town, Artistos, where most of the people lived. There were also two bands of "Roamers": the east band and the west band. These travel around studying plants and animals. Chelo and Joseph lived with Artistos' leaders while Kayleen and Bryan lived with other families in the town. Liam went to the West Band, while Alicia was sent with the East Band. The book starts with Chelo narrating, telling how her brother Joseph, and her friend Kayleen, could hold "data streams" and could fix data networks. Joseph, especially, could use the data networks to sense people and predators in remote places, and see events such as crashing meteors. Chelo and Joseph's adoptive parents were out hunting with others when they were killed by an earthquake. The earthquake also caused much damage to Artistos. After this experience, Joseph was weak and shaken, and unable to do what he used to. Soon the East and West bands met in Artistos. Liam was treated better than anyone else, but Alicia had been accused of murder by Ruth, the East Band's leader. Judgment was reserved, and while Liam left with his adoptive father (and band's leader) Akashi, Alicia stayed. Bryan, who possessed enormous strength, was kept in Artistos. Tom and Paloma (2 people in Artistos sympathetic to the altered) took Joseph, Chelo, Kayleen and Alicia out of Artistos in an attempt to heal Joseph. Jenna, an altered adult who was left on Fremont, showed the four children around the battle headquarters of the altered. Joseph was completely healed with a help of "reading thread", and much more powerful than before. Jenna revealed to them their genemods (what they were altered to specialize in). Liam and Akashi soon joined them. They learned that Bryan had been severely hurt in a fight at Artistos, and was locked up. Joseph (who had learned that he could fly a ship) along with Jenna, Alicia, and Bryan (who was returned after Alicia threatened the people of Artistos with altered weaponry) left on the silver spaceship the New Making, while Chelo, Liam and Kayleen stayed behind. Chelo joined Liam in the West Band, and Kayleen remained with Paloma in Artistos.
28270460	/m/0cp1654	Fall of Giants	Ken Follett	2010-09-28	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel begins with the thirteen-year-old Billy Williams, nicknamed Billy Twice, going to work his first day in the coal mine underneath the fictional Welsh town of Aberowen in 1911. Three years later, the main story begins. Earl Teddy "Fitz" Fitzherbert, who maintains a country estate in Aberowen, and licenses the land on which the coal mine is built, hosts a party for many powerful people around the world. His guests include: * Maud Fitzherbert, Fitz's sister, who is far more liberal than her conservative brother. * Walter von Ulrich, a German nobleman and a former schoolmate of Fitz's. He and Maud begin at the party to act on the mutual attraction they have felt for years. * Graf (Count) Robert von Ulrich, Walter's Austrian homosexual cousin. * Gus Dewar, a highly-educated American who is also a close adviser to President Woodrow Wilson. * Bea Fitzherbert, Fitz's wife, a Russian Princess. * King George V, King of the British Empire. *Mary of Teck, wife of King George V. Major characters introduced after the party include Grigori and Lev Peshkov, two Russian orphans who work in a locomotive factory, and have personal reasons to hold a grudge against Princess Bea and the rest of the Russian royal family. Grigori and Lev's father was executed by Bea's aristocratic family for alleged improper grazing of cattle on Bea's family's land. The overall theme of the novel revolves around common people trying, and many times succeeding, in throwing off the yokes so often placed on them by a society (largely focused on Britain and Russia) dominated by the landed aristocracy. The characters and their extended families find their fortunes changing for the better and for the worse due to both their interactions with each other and the effects of the First World War.
28271374	/m/0cp1pyr	World of Warcraft: Beyond the Dark Portal	Christie Golden	2008-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Two years following the defeat of the Horde and destruction of the Dark Portal from Draenor to Azeroth, a small dimensional rift remains linking the two worlds. The orc shaman Ner'Zhul is approached by orc champions resurrected as undead death-knights, with a plan to re-open the Portal and catch the Alliance unaware. Using the skull of the traitorous Gul'Dan, the remaining Horde forces distract the Alliance while stealing powerful artifacts to return to Draenor and open new rifts to other worlds. The paladin Turalyon joins forces with the elven ranger Alleria, the powerful mage Khadgar, and the dwarven griffon-rider Kurdran to head off the diabolical plans, but their mission is further complicated by the deadly Black Dragonflight's collusion with the Horde.
28273751	/m/0cp014t	How German Is It				 The Hargenaus were once a noble and revered family. Now the two remaining brothers, the writer Ulrich and the architect Helmut, must console their private pasts with that of their history as a whole. They are getting spied upon, bombs go off in buildings designed by Helmut, and through all this, the reality of what really went on during WWII is slowly uncovered.
28277132	/m/0cnw_4x	Madonna: An Intimate Biography	J. Randy Taraborrelli	2001-04	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The book opens with Madonna's birth, her early years in Michigan, and her 1977 move to New York City where she was involved with modern dance, two pop groups, composing, and releasing her 1983 debut album, Madonna. Her rise to superstardom as a pop icon is chronicled and her cutting edge music videos, albums, first concert tour, film roles, and marriage and divorce to Sean Penn are examined. The book investigates her controversial religious imagery and her erotic productions, Erotica, Sex, and Body of Evidence. The book describes a mellowing in her appearance and provocativeness, and, among other things, the release of her next several albums, her Golden Globe Award-winning musical film portrayal of Eva Peron, and her high-grossing Drowned World Tour. The births of her elder daughter and son are chronicled and her marriage to Guy Ritchie.
28287573	/m/0cnxqj2	Farthest Reach	Richard Baker		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 On the heels of her failed assault of Evereska, the demonelf Sarya Dlardrageth retreats in order to regroup. She summons a powerful Outer Planes denizen named Malkizid to her aid, who advises her to make the remaining elven army come to her by inhabiting the site of their most costly defeat - the legendary ruins of Myth Drannor. With the elven army weary, Araevin and the elven leaders must convince the defenders to rally and defeat the demonelf menace forever.
28288087	/m/0cn_qq1	Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality			{"/m/022444": "Polemic"}	 Dalrymple begins the chapter by citing several examples to illustrate how sentimentality is increasing as a cultural phenomenon in the United Kingdom. He then analyses falling education standards in the country, and links these trends to "powerful intellectual currents" that "feed into the great Sargasso Sea of modern sentimentality about children", and asserts that in this regard the ideas of the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and the psychologist Steven Pinker have been particularly influential. He then examines a newspaper article which advocates reform of the British prison system. Dalrymple states that the article aroused an emotion "whose effect, if not its intention, was to convince the person experiencing it that he was a person of superior sensibility and compassion", and that such emotionality "often attaches to the question of crime and punishment in contemporary Britain". Dalrymple also maintains that it is "the sheerest sentimentality to see drug addicts as the victims of an illness" and that, "sentimentality is now a mass phenomenon almost beyond criticism or even comment". Dalrymple advances that the kind of sentimentality that he wishes to draw attention to is "an excess of emotion that is false, mawkish, and over-valued by comparison with reason" and which is performed "in full public view". Dalrymple contends that "Sentimentality is the expression of emotion without judgment. Perhaps it is worse than that: it is the expression of emotion without an acknowledgement that judgment should enter into how we should react to what we see and hear. It is the manifestation of a desire for the abrogation of an existential condition of human life, namely the need to always and never unendingly to exercise judgment. Sentimentality is therefore childish and reductive of our humanity". In this chapter he also takes issue with a number of assertions made by the philosopher Robert C. Solomon, including that sentimentality does not manipulate emotions, cause false emotions to be shown, or distort perception and interfere with rational thought. Dalrymple criticises the introduction by Harriet Harman of the Family Impact Statement. Dalrymple writes that such statements "are not permitted to influence the outcome of a case. They are made only after a jury has made its verdict". As a result, kitsch displays of emotion are encouraged in court, of no practical benefit. Dalrymple analyses the media attention and reaction to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and how certain media interpreted a perceived lack of emotion on the part of the girl’s parents as evidence of guilt. Dalrymple writes that the "demand that emotion should be shown in public, or be assumed not to exist and therefore indicate a guilty mind, is now not an uncommon one", and cites two similar cases involving Joanne Lees and Lindy Chamberlain. Dalrymple then analyses the outcry from the public and the media to the lack of emotion shown by the Queen after the death of Princess Diana, and contends that "the tabloid newspapers carried out what can only be called a campaign of bullying against the sovereign" and that those gathered outside Buckingham Palace were "bullying rather than expressing any genuine grief". He concludes by asserting that the sentimentality shown by both the media and the public “was inherently dishonest in a way that parallels the dishonesty that lies behind much sentimentality itself". Dalrymple analyses the poet Sylvia Plath, whom he describes as the "patron saint of self-dramatization", and interprets Margaret Drabble's descriptions of Plath as a "willing casualty" and "supremely vulnerable" to mean "virtues of a high order". He asserts that before Plath, self-pity "was regarded as a vice, even a disgusting one, that precluded sympathy", and that "the appropriation of the suffering of others to boost the scale and significance of one's own suffering is now a commonplace." and whose stories reveal perfectly "the dialectic between sentimentality and brutality". Dalrymple ends the chapter by analysing victimhood in the criminal justice system and concludes, "For the sentimentalist, of course, there is no such thing as a criminal, only an environment that has let him down". Dalrymple asserts that across the globe chronic poverty has decreased in the past twenty-five years, but mainly in China and India. As a result, "Africa is an exception and therefore is the current focus of sentimentality about poverty". In this context he examines Gordon Brown's desire as prime minister to ensure that every child in Africa receive a primary education. Dalrymple questions whether there is a link between improving educational standards and increasing economic growth in the continent, and cites the experience of Tanzania under Julius Nyerere, Equatorial Guinea under Macias Nguema, and Sierra Leone's fate after a "long history of historical effort and achievement" as evidence that this may not be so, and argues that Africa's priority is access to markets. which is "preposterous—psychologically, theoretically, and practically". In the book's Conclusion, Dalrymple contends that "in field after field, sentimentality has triumphed", and this has had a number of harmful consequences, including the lives of millions of children being blighted by overindulgence and neglect; the destruction of educational standards; and brutality wherever policies suggested by sentimentality have been advocated.
28303004	/m/0cnx586	Skeleton Creek				 The plot of the novel centers around the dredge, an abandoned gold dredge in the town, Skeleton Creek. The dredge is haunted by the ghost of Old Joe Bush. Two youths in the town, Ryan McCray and Sarah Fincher, investigate the dredge and its ghost. A video series also goes along with the novel, which show trips to the dredge and ghost sightings. The books has three sequels, Ghost in the Machine, The Crossbones, and The Raven.
28310852	/m/0c1cj3	Crown of Shadows	Celia S. Friedman	1995-10-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In Crown of Shadows, Damien and Tarrant return to the west and Jaggonath, where they agree to work together long enough to kill Calesta. Damien discovers that the Patriarch of the Church, who is firmly against sorcery, is actually an Adept himself. Tarrant further strains relations with the Unnamed by revealing this fact to the Patriarch, and is dragged off to Hell for his pains. Damien convinces another Iezu, Karril, to lead him through Tarrant's personal Hell to the Unnamed, where he bargains for the Adept's life. The Unnamed agrees, on the condition that its contract with Tarrant will be broken in thirty-one days. If the Hunter has not found another way to sustain his immortal life by then, he will die. The Patriarch, already displeased at Damien's saving Tarrant for the first time in the Rakhlands, comes extremely close to casting him out of the priesthood. In the end, however, it is Damien who chooses to no longer be a priest, because his faith has been questioned too much by the Hunter, by himself, even by the Patriarch. Gerald Tarrant, on the other hand, has found a way to destroy an Iezu: feed it with the opposite emotion it normally thrives on. Karril, who lives off Pleasure, can also accept Pain, but Apathy will destroy him. Calesta, who embodies sadism, can only be destroyed by Altruism- the ultimate sacrifice, which Tarrant, amazingly, is willing to pay. The pair make their way to Mount Shaitan, a Volcano exuding an amazing amount of earth fae. Tarrant forcefully binds Calesta by showing the depth of his sadism, then sacrificing himself, despite his belief he could still have lived forever, killing Calesta by exposing him to pure altruism. By this point, however, the Iezu's mother has been introduced. She created her children by taking emotions from human beings- in Karril's father's case, pleasure, in Calesta's, sadism. She takes away Gerald Tarrant's Hunter, the part of him that lives off pain and fear, creating the Iezu Forrest Hunte. In the process, she shocks him back to life- human life. The Neocount of Merentha has been given a second chance. However, all is not well back in the forest. In the second book, readers learned that Tarrant had not killed all of his children when he made the sacrifice to the Unnamed- he let his eldest son live. Now, after many generations, Andrys Tarrant has joined with the Patriarch in a campaign of vengeance. Gerald and Damien return to the Forest secretly, but are accosted by Andrys in the library, where they are trying to rescue the Hunter's Iezu notes from the destruction. Knowing he is about to die again, Gerald sends Damien from the room. Andrys emerges outside minutes later with the Hunter's severed head. Gerald Tarrant's original sacrifice, however, has changed the nature of the fae, so now any human willing to work it must also be willing to die. The Patriarch sacrifices himself, in a moving semi-final chapter, to ensure this effect will be permanent. Damien Vryce is left wondering what to do with the rest of his life, mourning the loss of Tarrant when he is approached by an arrogant youth who suggests that if Tarrant had been willing to sacrifice his identity, so he could never reclaim his former life, he could have created the illusion of his death and survived.
28314866	/m/0cp18qr	Only the Good Spy Young	Ally Carter	2010		 : For earlier events, see: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover. The story starts with student Cammie (Cameron Morgan), still enrolled at Gallagher Academy, already in London with Bex and her parents. Cammie now has strict security surrounding her because the Circle of Cavan, a terrorist group, is after her. While at an ice skating rink, she talks briefly with Zach, and he asks her if she has seen Joe Solomon. After Zach leaves, the lights go out, and Cammie is grabbed by Mr. Solomon, who tells her to run. They end up on the Tower Bridge, where Bex's parents reveal that Mr. Solomon was the threat. She demands answers but he only makes her promise to "follow the pigeons" before jumping off the bridge and escaping. She is interrogated two hours later by an MI6 agent (who is later revealed to be Edward Townsend) and is released. While in a "safe house" with Bex's family, her Aunt Abby comes to visit. Cammie is appalled and upset that her mother did not come to comfort her. After she and Bex eavesdrop on part of the conversation between the Baxters and Aunt Abby, they confront the adults. They learn that Joe Solomon has been a member of the Circle of Cavan since he was sixteen. The girls return to the Gallagher Academy, but things have changed. All of the secret passageways (except one leading to the kitchen) have been blocked. Security is much higher than before. When the girls reach their room, the MI6 agent from London (Townsend) was there. At dinner, Professor Buckingham announces that Agent Townsend would be the new CoveOps teacher. They quickly figure out that Agent Townsend is not interested in teaching at the school, but requested the job to help him find out more about Joe Solomon. They drugged him with an experiment Liz developed and interrogated him, and they found out that Mr. Solomon killed Cammie's father. Cammie's mother returned to the school shortly afterward. The roommates decided to try to find out what Mr. Solomon meant by saying "follow the pigeons". They find out there is an old carrier pigeon room, and they go there where they find a message telling Cammie to go to the gazebo. They decide to send Macey instead and discover Zach is the one that sent the message. He asks to see Cammie, and she goes down to see him. He tells her to go the Sublevels and that there is a journal there that will help them understand everything. He also reveals that Mr. Solomon was the one who rigged the alarms in the sublevels so no one could go down. While the girls try to figure out how to get down to the Sublevels, Cammie is having trouble trusting Zach, despite all they had been through. Agent Townsend takes them on a "field trip" to an amusement park, and he gives all the girls assignments. Bex is reluctant to leave Cammie, but Cammie argues that her mother would not have let her come unless it was safe. Cammie proceeds to tail an employee for her assignment. While following him into a building, she finds a rugged, tired-looking Joe Solomon. She yells at him and tells him he got her father killed, to which he wearily replies, "I know." Agents show up and Cammie discovers that it was a plot to capture Joe Solomon. She runs to a hill and finds Zach there. She asks him why Mr. Solomon would walk right into a trap, and he tells her that Mr. Solomon would do anything to keep her safe. He kissed her forehead and ran off. Three weeks later, the girls are ready to get the journal. They work their way through Sublevel Two, with some difficulty, but finally get to the place the book is supposed to be. While Liz is hoisted up to get the book, Cammie and the other roommates become aware that there is someone else trying to break in. They assume it is Agent Townsend (we later learn it was Rachel Morgan), and get out as soon as possible. The book was written in code but the girls find the key. It turns out that the journal belonged to Cammie's father, Matthew Morgan. The journal explains how Matthew Morgan and Joe Solomon tried to bring down the Circle of Cavan. Operative Morgan went missing on the way to Greece. Solomon blames himself because that was supposed to be his mission, and felt it should have been him. A couple nights later Zach sneaks into Cammie's room and wakes her up. They take a walk and she asks him why the Circle would break Joe Solomon out of a CIA prison if he was working against them. Zach responds saying, "They weren't doing him a favor". Cammie demands more answers, but Zach will not give her any. Her furious roommates show up and try to get answers from him, too. Cammie suggests a plan to go get the other notebook, the one that Joe Solomon wrote, from Blackthorne. Then, Cammie's mother arrives, and she says she will help them. While in the car, Zach tries to talk to Cammie, but she ignores him. They pull over the van, and we learn that Bex's parents and Aunt Abby are there to protect Cammie. From there, the girls and Zach walk to Blackthorne.Cammie finds out that it was her mother who had tried to get the journal. They had heard her. After going through its various defenses, they learn Blackthorne's cover: it's a school for juvenile delinquents. Macey, Bex, and Liz go shut down the defenses and keep an eye on security, leaving Zach and Cammie alone to complete the mission. Zach asks Cammie to stay, wanting her to be safe, but she responds by kissing him and asks where they are going. "The Tombs," is his reply. Zach and Cammie go out to the woods and find the entrance to "The Tombs". The make their way through a complicated maze and Zach reveals that Blackthorne is a school for assassins. They finally find the place where Joe Solomon's journal is hidden and retrieve it. As they are about to leave, they hear people coming and hide. They see several members of the Circle of Cavan, including the woman who tried to abduct Cammie from the roof in Boston last summer, and Joe Solomon. The explosives on the walls show that Mr. Solomon brought the members here to kill them and himself in the process. A man finds Cammie and Zach and brings them to the woman. We learn that she is Zach's mom, and Cammie is horrified. After a quick fight Zach manages to get a gun and take aim at the explosives. Cammie says "NO!" but cannot stop Zach, so she begins to run. She thought she had made it out but ran into Zach's mother, and we learn that she was a Gallagher Girl. She tries to convince Cammie to come to her by telling her that her father is still alive. Instead, Cammie jumps off the side of the cliff to get away, thinking that both Zach and Mr. Solomon are dead. They find her and take her back to the school's infirmary. After having her explain what happened, Agent Townsend takes her to a man who is bandaged from head to toe. We know it is Mr. Solomon, but according to Agent Townsend, Mr. Solomon is "dead". He hands her Mr. Solomon's journal and walks away. Cammie is later talking with her mom and we learn that Zach will stay the rest of the semester at the Gallagher Academy and that Mr. Solomon might not make it. Cammie gives Zach the journal before being ambushed by her distressed roommates. Cammie decides she will not be able to go to her grandparents' ranch this summer because it is too dangerous. One day Cammie and Zach talk, and Zach asks her to run away with him. She kisses him and says she cannot, to which he replies "I know". Soon after, it is revealed that she is in fact going to run away alone, promising she will have answers when she gets back.
28318441	/m/0cp1q76	Dragonheart	Todd McCaffrey	2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Pern is still trying to recover from a deadly plague that devastated the holders and craftsmen, not even 15 turns (years) before. Although the dragonsriders and weyrfolk were spared from the devastation of that plague, they are about to be tested with a deadly illness that afflicts the dragons. Fiona of Fort Weyr, the only surviving child of Lord Holder Bemin of Fort Hold, is thrust into this situation when she accidentally impresses Gold Talenth. As first fire-lizards, and then dragons, fall prey the this mysterious illness, Fiona and all of Pern must face the possibility of no dragons being left to fight thread as it begins to fall once more. The number of casualties mount as both the illness and thread take dragons and their riders. In an attempt to save the Weyrs, Fiona and a mysterious rider, lead the injured and weyrlings back in time. The question now is, will that be enough to help?
28323095	/m/0fq0crs	The Dragonslayer's Apprentice			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel is written primarily about a girl called Jackie, later revealed to be formally named Jacqueline, who has convinced a man known only in the book as "the Dragonslayer" to allow her to be his apprentice and to work with her along with his taciturn assistant, Ron. At the beginning, the Dragonslayer repeatedly thinks he should not have accepted her as his apprentice, believing himself mad to have taken on not only a woman, but a teenage girl, but as the story progresses, he becomes more comfortable with her and sees she really is not bad at the job of a Dragonslayer. The Dragonslayer, after he had already accepted Jackie as his apprentice, learns from Jackie that she is the daughter of a noble family who ran away because she was far too bored doing lady-like things all day. He believes most of her story, but right away thinks that she is actually from a royal family, a princess; he also manages to confirm and let Jackie know he knows, without outright asking or saying such. Near the end of the novel, the Dragonslayer and Ron are quickly told by the country's palace's chamberlain that Jackie is indeed a princess. She is allowed to receive her Dragonslayer's cape from her father, the king, and he expresses his pride and that of the kingdom in her for becoming the first female dragonslayer ever. In this book, dragons do not breathe fire, but do give off a black vapor that people usually think is smoke. The author also alludes in passing to the idea that advanced people are should be more perceptive and need to say less to communicate more, as Ron does.
28323109	/m/0cnz_pm	I'll Be There	Iris Rainer Dart	1991-05-01		 (from the paragraph on the back of the paperback) Cee Cee is back in this sequel which picks up where the original novel Beaches left off. CC now faces the ups and downs of being a mother with Nina now living with her, CC's Career is going well especially after she runs across her first pianist that helped her launch her career way back when. Intentionally drawn to mirror the Barry Manilow-Bette Midler partnership of the early 70's in real life, Harold becomes very close to both Nina and CC. But with TWO show business people around all the time, Nina finds herself giving in to drugs and alcohol from the turmoil of life in the cast-off limelight. Somehow the two get through the trials of a new relationship, but not all is peaches and cream for the pair. Will this be a Happily Ever After? Find out in this second wonderful novel by Iris Rainer Dart.
28341381	/m/0cp0n9v	The Dead of the Night	John Marsden		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 In the wake of losing Corrie and Kevin, and not knowing how either of them are faring in enemy territory, the group's morale deteriorates. Homer suggests the group attempt to track down Corrie and Kevin. They release a smoke bomb into the hospital and investigate during the evacuation. They discover that Corrie is comatose and that Kevin was beaten when he arrived. Fresh from the discovery of what had happened to their friends, the group agrees to make an attack on the convoys on the highway to Cobbler's Bay. While preparing their ambush, the group is surprised by a small patrol. Homer kills one soldier and injures another with a sawn-off shotgun at close quarters before going into shock. A third, and final, soldier panics and flees into the bush away from the highway leaving their pack and rifle behind. Ellie takes charge of the situation, kills the wounded soldier and makes the decision to continue on with the attack. The attack succeeds and the group return to Hell. They decide that their next course of action should be to investigate the other paths in and out of Hell to determine where they lead. Chris, however, decides not to go and to stay behind instead. Their exploration leads them to a group of free Australians called "Harvey's Heroes" led by former school principle and army reservist Major Harvey. He refuses to allow any portion of the group to return to Hell to find Chris. Although Harvey brags about having made several enemy attacks, these attacks are revealed to be low-risk acts. The group is invited to spectate as Harvey's Heroes destroy an abandoned tank, but they are led into an enemy ambush and have to flee from the scene. Fi is chased by an enemy soldier. Homer and Ellie ambush and incapacitate the man as he prepares to rape Fi but cannot bring themselves to kill him when they discover that he is a teenager like themselves. Lee arrives and stabs the soldier. When they return to Hell to find Chris absent and then head into Wirrawee. The group take refuge in Robyn's music teacher's house, where Ellie and Lee consummate their relationship for the first time. They move on to a church, where they keep watch over some of the early colonists. Here they discover that Major Harvey, presumed dead in the ambush, is now working directly with the enemy. Reeling from this discovery, they arrange to blow up several of the houses. The attack is successful, but on their way back to Hell they see an overturned vehicle near a dam; further investigation reveals that Chris had overturned the car and died weeks ago. The book ends where it begins, with the group depressed and with low morale. The story continues in The Third Day, the Frost.
28348586	/m/0crjgrg	RAW				 The book RAW is the story of Brett Dalton's experience at The Farm, a detention/rehab centre, after being caught breaking into a liquor store at night and stealing alcohol, cigarettes and cash. When he gets to The Farm after an awful, hot, dehydrated trip in the back of a paddy wagon, he is determined not to cooperate or enjoy himself. This does not work in his favour. On meeting most of the inmates Brett makes enemies. He has confrontations with both of the “main guys” in the detention centre, Josh and Tyson. On the first night he decides he's going to run away. He sneaks out at night and plans on hitch-hiking to civilisation but the first car that picks him up is Sam. After being on the run, and realising how hard his plan is he decides on going back to The Farm. Then he tries skipping class, (which is compulsory). When he doesn't succeed he starts arguing with the teacher and gets sent out of class, which is just what he wants. He nicks off to behind the wood work shed to have a smoke, and spots a girl carrying supplies from a truck into the kitchen, he is stunned by her beauty. Eventually he meets this girl, Caitlyn and later they become more than friends. Brett meets up with his ex-girlfriend who has a new boyfriend, who tries selling drugs to Frog, (Brett's room mate) and this causes them, and Josh to cover for each other. When Brett gets up the courage to ask Caitlyn out this come in handy, as the guys covered for him when he snuck out with her, that and the fact that they would but punished to. But things go downhill after he pushes his relationship with Caitlyn too far. She breaks up with him. This makes him angry so he meets up with Rebecca and they steal alcohol and get drunk. This led to Brett drink driving and crashing Sam's ute. This led to Sam and Brett constantly fighting and Sam ends up sending Brett the magistrate. When Brett realises that he only has five days left in town he wants to 'make things right' with Caitlyn. This doesn't go well and leaves Brett more heart-broken and angry. Before he leaves town, Brett is forced to go the big Ride (a cattle drive). On the Ride Josh and Brett get paired and learn more about each other. Brett learns the real reason that Josh is at The Farm, he was raped. Brett is later re-arrested by the millicents for his newest crimes, the novel ends with Sam telling Brett that one can only change their own life. Brett now considers Sam to be an old friend of his.
28349899	/m/0crgfzg	The Whisperer	Fiona McIntosh	2009	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Whisperer is a fantasy novel. The story is told in third person. It follows the adventures of Griff, a thirteen-year-old boy who works in the circus,and Lute, Crown Prince of Drestonia. Griff can eavesdrop on other people's thoughts. When the circus master discovers Griff's amazing ability, he forces the young boy to appear in his show. Griff knows what he is doing is wrong and escapes from the circus with Tess, a fellow performer, and her magical creatures. Meanwhile Prince Lute's uncle Janko is scheming to overthrow his brother and become the next king. Lute is forced to flee, and seek help from a bitter dwarf and an angry pirate. One day, Griff hears a mysterious voice crying out for help in his mind. He calls the voice the Whisperer. With the help of his friends, magical and human, Griff realises that the Whisperer, whoever he is, is in great peril, and that it is up to him to save the mysterious voice.
28351016	/m/0crg17s	The Day of the Sardine	Sid Chaplin			 The principal character of the novel is Arthur Haggerston, an intelligent but rebellious teenager who lives with his mother, Peg, and her lover, Harry Parker, a former seaman who works in a sardine-canning factory. Arthur leaves school without qualifications and takes up various menial jobs before using the influence of his Uncle George to obtain work installing sewage pipes for the local council. He conducts an affair with Stella, a married woman with a seafaring husband, and develops a friendship with another teenager, Nosey (or Stanley) Carron. After several altercations with a gang led by Mick Kelly, Arthur and Nosey form their own gang, while Nosey begins a relationship with Kelly's sister, Teresa. The violence between the two gangs escalates, which makes Arthur uneasy. After a fight between the gangs, Arthur is pursued by the police and hides in a church hall where a service is being conducted. He makes the acquaintance of the Pastor, Mr Johnson, and of Johnson's daughter, Dorothy. In a spirit of reconciliation, Arthur attends an open-air brass band concert with Harry and Peg, but Peg spots Arthur's estranged father playing with a military band. Arthur 's father is confronted, and confesses to bigamy, but agrees to a divorce, even if it means that he will face prison. Nosey claims that Kelly has beaten Teresa, and persuades Arthur to help him exact revenge. In the ensuing fight, Arthur severely injures Kelly, and later hears that Kelly's father has alerted the police. Afterwards, Nosey and Arthur decide to spy on Nosey's brother Crab, who has been conducting an affair with Mildred, the daughter of Charlie Nettlefold, a local scrap-dealer. They witness Crab leaving the scrapyard, and discover that Crab has shot the couple. After rumours of Arthur's involvement in Kelly's beating spread, he is fired from his job, after which he traps the foreman, Sproggett, and Uncle George in a large pipe, forcing them to dig their way out. Believing that the police will be searching for him in connection with the shooting, Arthur flees, and sends a night sleeping rough in the countryside. He returns to Newcastle and visits Stella, who tells him that she will be moving with her husband to another part of the country. He returns home, to find that Kelly's father did not contact the police, and that Crab Carron has been arrested for the shooting, in which Mildred died but Charlie survived to testify against Crab. Distraught by Crab's arrest, Nosey tells Arthur that he seduced Dorothy after telling her about Arthur's relationship with Stella. Some time after Crab's execution, Arthur discovers that Nosey has converted to Christianity and has begun preaching for Pastor Johnson's church. Arthur accepts Harry's marriage to Peg, and accepts a job at the sardine-canning factory.
28351130	/m/0crhhbc	Eternity Road	Jack McDevitt		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In a post-Apocalypse America where almost everyone was killed by a plague over 1700 years prior, little is known about the ancient "Roadmaker" civilization that is said to have built the devastated ruins of enormous cities, and the magnificent roads that still cover the landscape. In the valley of the Mississippi River, a number of towns have united again, trade and science have begun anew. When a copy of Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is discovered in the estate of the sole survivor of an earlier expedition to the north, a young woman named Chaka Milana, whose brother died in the previous expedition almost a decade ago, decides to gather a band of explorers and try to find Haven, a legendary stronghold where the knowledge of mankind is said to have been collected and kept safe for future generations. A long voyage ensues, taking the group, amongst other places, to the ruins of the ancient city of Chicago. After losing several members of their team and travelling by an extraordinary means of transport that still functions after hundreds of years, the team eventually finds Haven and salvages some of the knowledge stored there before the facility is struck by a disaster that they themselves cause.
28353779	/m/0czbry2	The Intangibles of Leadership		2010		 The Intangibles of Leadership uncovers patterns in the attributes that truly distinguish those who succeed at the top. After more than a decade of senior executive assessments, CEO interviews, and proprietary research, Davis found that extraordinary leaders possess certain characteristics that fall between the lines of existing leadership models, yet are fundamental to executive success. Davis explains each of these qualities, the people who exemplify them, how to detect them in others, and how to develop the subtle characteristics that will enable leaders to stand out from the pack. The book has been highly reviewed and was named as a "Top Business Book of 2010 by Library Journal". The Ten Intangibles outlined in the book are: # Wisdom # Will # Executive Maturity # Integrity # Social Judgment # Presence # Self-Insight # Self-Efficacy # Fortitude # Fallibility According to the author, the book is a practical atlas of the characteristics that most define extraordinary leaders and their underlying psychological mechanisms. It was designed as a mirror to help executives think about how they approach leadership and gain insights that can enable them to grow and develop.
28360733	/m/0crcxsr	Piano Lessons	Anna Goldsworthy	2010-10-12	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Goldsworthy was nine years old when she met Eleanora Sivan, a charismatic Russian émigré and world-class pianist who became her piano teacher. Piano Lessons documents what Mrs. Sivan brought to Goldsworthy’s lessons: a love of music, a respect for life, a generous spirit, and the courage to embrace a musical life. Piano Lessons takes the reader on a journey into the heart and meaning of music.
28360749	/m/0crf7xk	Rondo			{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The story opens with Josef Divonne arriving in Rondo, on the shores of the Dead Delta of the Danube, having flown in from Lower Europe. Josef believes he is driven by ideology but, in fact, it is the mystery of his mother egg (he was a free born child) and his hero father's (Uwe) record in the Purifications of Africa and the Italies which is really behind his uncertainty. Leaving the chateau outside 2me Lyon at the start of High Thermidor, he joins up with a bunch of dissidents - the Lovers of Rondo - in the 'free state' of Rondo. Overwhelmed by all he sees, Josef goes native. After a short while, he decides to become a citizen of Rondo, embracing his personal god, Zinze, following the Sublime Path and obeying all the instructions of his mentor, Adnan. He divorces his wife by electric mail. Despite melancholy flashbacks to his childhood, during the Second Sida Cycle, he decides his future lies in Rondo. But all is not as it seems. After an illegal visit to the Circus with Nor Nor, an Asian he despises, he is confronted, in his cups, by a restaurant owner who whispers to him in Lower European 'S'gibt rien aqui!'. Slowly, Josef comes to realise that he is not in a 'free state' but in a prison colony for dissidents. Waking on the night he is due to fly out of Rondo, he finds he has been left behind and that Nor Nor, his only true confidante, has been killed in a mysterious fall from a balcony. He also finds that someone has been stealing days from him, here and there, for many years. Josef is left in Rondo, as nothing more than the catamite of the great Adnan, leader of the first crossing to Rondo. He has a much coveted dragonfly in a glass case by his bed. But he has nothing. There is no home now. He will wear out his days in the realisation that to embrace the Stanislavsky method, in Rondo, is his only salvation.
28375078	/m/0crdpky	Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter	A.E. Moorat	2009-10-15	{"/m/0crjhv8": "Mashup", "/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Victoria becomes Queen after the death of William IV. She is soon thrown into a fight she did not expect: the war on demons.
28381337	/m/0crjdnr	A Journey	Anthony Blair	2010-09-01	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 A Journey covers Blair's time as leader of the Labour Party and then British Prime Minister following his party's victory at the 1997 general election. His tenure as Labour leader begins in 1994 following the death of his predecessor, John Smith, an event Blair claims to have had a premonition about a month before Smith died. Blair believes he will succeed Smith as Labour leader rather than Gordon Brown, who is a strong contender for the job. He likens them both to "a couple who loved each other, arguing over whose career should come first." To him, Brown is a "strange guy". with "zero" emotional intelligence. Having been elected as leader Blair moves the Labour Party to the political centre ground, repackaging it as "New Labour", and goes on to win the 1997 general election. At his first meeting with Elizabeth II following his election as Prime Minister Blair recalls the Queen telling him, "You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born." Within a few months his government must deal with the aftermath of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and following the Princess's funeral, Elizabeth&nbsp;II tells Blair that lessons must be learned from the way things have been handled. Social occasions with the Queen are also recalled, including a gathering at Balmoral Castle where Prince Philip is described manning the barbecue while Elizabeth&nbsp;II dons a pair of rubber gloves to wash up afterwards. From the outset Blair's government plays a significant role in the Northern Ireland peace process, during which Blair admits to using "a certain amount of creative ambiguity" to secure an agreement, claiming the process would not have succeeded otherwise. He says that he stretched the truth "on occasions past breaking point" in the run-up to the 2007 power-sharing deal which enabled the return of devolved legislative powers from Westminster to the Northern Ireland Executive. Both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin are praised for the part they played in the peace process. One of the themes that dominates the latter part of Blair's time in office is his decision to join U.S. President George W. Bush in committing troops to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the aftermath of which he describes as a "nightmare", but that he believes to have been necessary because Saddam Hussein "had not abandoned the strategy of WMD [weapons of mass destruction], merely made a tactical decision to put it into abeyance". He would make the same decision again with regard to Iran, warning that if that country develops nuclear weapons it will change the balance of power of the Middle East, to the region's detriment. Blair believes some problems in Iraq still require a "resolution" and will fester if left unattended. Of the war dead he says, "I feel desperately sorry for them, sorry for the lives cut short, sorry for the families whose bereavement is made worse by the controversy over why their loved ones died, sorry for the utterly unfair selection that the loss should be theirs." A year on from the invasion he hopes Bush will win a second term as U.S. President: "I had come to like and admire George," he writes. In 2003, Blair promises his Chancellor, Gordon Brown that he will resign before the next general election, but later changes his mind. Brown subsequently attempts to blackmail him, threatened to call for a Labour Party inquiry into the 2005 cash for honours affair during an argument over pension policy. Brown succeeds Blair as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister in 2007. But while Blair praises Brown as a good Chancellor and a committed public servant, he believes his decision to abandon the New Labour policies of the Blair years leads to the party's 2010 election defeat. However, Brown is right to restructure British banks and introduce an economic stimulus after the financial crisis. The book closes with a final chapter offering a critique of Labour Party policy, and discusses its future. Blair warns Brown's successor that if Labour is to remain electable they should continue with the policies of New Labour and not return to the left-wing policies of the 1980s: "I won three elections. Up to then, Labour had never even won two successive full terms. The longest Labour government had lasted six years. This lasted 13. It could have gone on longer, had it not abandoned New Labour."
28381381	/m/0crhxdx	Hordubal	Karel Čapek		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Juraj Hordubal returns home to Carpathian Ruthenia after eight years of hard work in America. He is looking forward to seeing his devoted wife Polana and daughter Hafia. Everything is greatly idealised in his eyes as he expects everyone to welcome him warmly. However, the reality is different, he is accepted very coldly but hopes that things will get better soon and everyone will get used to his presence. He believes that Polana was a faithful wife during the time he was abroad. Unfortunately, he later discovers that she had an affair with the farm keeper Stepan Manya who was helping her with managing the farm. The relationship between Hordubal and Manya becomes very tense and eventually, Manya is forced to leave the farm. That, however doesn't influence Manya's love affair with Polana. They still keep meeting despite the fact, that Hordubal knows about that. Manya and Polana decide to get rid of Hordubal in order to begin a new life together. They are also motivated to do it as Hordubal's savings are big enough to ensure a convenient life for a long time. Hodrubal is killed by Manya in the middle of the night. The ending of the book describes the investigation of the criminal act. All the evidence lead to Manya. He is sentenced to life. Polana is found guilty of planning the murder and is sentenced to 12 years in prison in spite of being pregnant. In the end, Polana's sinning is considered much more severe as she misused her husband's kindness and devotion and was unfaithful. The highly religious society detests her for her sins.
28382276	/m/0crg4m_	The Rose in Splendour: a Story of the Wars of Lancaster and York	Leslie Barringer	1953	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel is set in England over a period of eighteen months in the years 1460-61. It tells the tale of a young boy's early life, leaving his family’s farm first to an apprenticeship in York and later getting caught up in the bloody and decisive victory for the Yorkists at the Battle of Towton (29 March (Palm Sunday) 1461).
28400976	/m/0dgnf6y	Sex at Dawn		2010-06-29		 The authors argue that human beings evolved in egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands in which sexual interaction was a shared resource, much like food, child care, group defense, and so on. In this, they agree to a degree with the work of Lewis H. Morgan who proposed in the 19th century that pre-agricultural humans lived in "primal hordes" in which property and paternity was communal. They think that much of evolutionary psychology has been conducted with a bias regarding human sexuality. The authors believe that the public and many researchers are guilty of the "Flintstonization" of hunter-gatherer society; that is to say projecting modern assumptions and beliefs onto earlier societies. Thus they think that there has been a bias to assuming that our species is primarily monogamous despite what they believe to be evidence to the contrary. They argue for example, that our sexual dimorphism, testicle size, female copulatory vocalization, appetite for sexual novelty, various cultural practices, and hidden female ovulation, among other factors strongly suggest a non-monogamous, non-polygynous history. The authors argue that mate selection was not the subject of much intragroup competition among pre-agricultural humans, as sex was neither scarce nor commodified; rather sperm competition was a more important paternity factor than sexual selection. This behaviour survives among certain existent hunter-forager groups that believe in partible paternity. The authors do not take an explicit position in the book regarding the morality of monogamy or alternative sexual behaviour in modern society, but argue that people should be made aware of our behavioral history.
28411923	/m/0crgpln	If I Stay	Gayle Forman	2009	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Mia is a gifted cellist. When she is taken to the ICU, she has flashbacks of her life in each chapter that is somehow connected to the current situation. When Mia's boyfriend, Adam, comes to the ICU, he comes into her room after multiple tries and help from Mia's family friend, Willow, he touches her cheeck and clutches her hand. She tries with all of her might to clutch back. The book endes with her claiming that for the first time today, she can really hear and feel him. The last words of the book are Adam asking 'Mia?'
28417327	/m/0crj67d	Blood Feud	Rosemary Sutcliff	1976	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is told in the first-person by Jestyn the Englishman as he recounts his life and how he ended up in Constantinople. After being orphaned, he is captured by Viking raiders and sold into slavery in Dublin. His owner Thormond frees him for good service, and Jestyn joins the crew of Thormond's ship when they leave Dublin to return to Denmark. Upon return, Thormond finds his father killed by childhood friends, and swears the blood feud after which the novel is named. Jestyn and Thormond swear blood brotherhood and set off to pursue the killers. The journey takes them across the Baltic, up the Dvina and down the Dnieper to Kiev, where they enlist in the service of Khan Vladimir who has agreed to fight for Basil II in return for the hand in marriage of Basil's sister Anna. The fighting is resolved, and both Thormond and Jestyn join the newly formed Varangian Guard. The feud is ultimately resolved, but with many twists and turns, and Jestyn finally settles to live in Constantinople. The theme of the novel revolves around Jestyn's struggle to find belonging, as he is caught between conflicting values, conflicting cultures, and conflicting religions. The historical background depicts the Christianization of Kievan Rus', and Jestyn's mixed feelings as he carries an original Christian value system of his youth alongside the commitment of blood feud and blood brotherhood of Norse paganism.
28421364	/m/0crhpx4	Phule's Company	Robert Asprin	1990-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book begins as Willard Phule, a multimillionaire, is court-martialed by the Space Legion for ordering the strafing of a treaty signing ceremony. For his punishment, he is given command of an Omega Company full of misfits on Haskin's Planet, a mining settlement on the edge of settled space. He quickly goes to his duty station and leverages his personal money and a knack for managing people to get the company to come together as a unit. His antics attract the attention of the local and interplanetary press, but create a very cohesive unit of the Legionnaires. When a contract for an honorary duty is awarded to the Regular Army on Haskin's Planet, Phule convinces the governor to leave the contract up for competition between the Space Legionnaires and the Regular Army. The Army sends some of their most elite troops to take part in the competition, and through an impressive show of cooperation and teamwork, Phule's company ties the regular troops. In the final episode of the book, Phule's company encounters lizard-like alien explorers from the Zenobian Empire. Quickly reverting to his business instincts, Phule negotiates a business deal to sell swampland to the creatures in exchange for new technologies. This again enrages some of his superiors, but because of a show of support from the Legionnaires for their commander and a complete conviction of his own innocence, Phule evades court-martial again.
28435548	/m/0crcd12	This Charming Man		2008-03-27		 The main characters are: Paddy de Courcy, a charismatic politician; Lola Daly, a stylist; Grace Gildee, a journalist; Marnie Hunter, Grace's alcoholic sister; and Alicia Thornton, Paddy's fiancée. The story is told predominantly from the viewpoints of the first three, although there are occasional sections from Alicia's point of view. Lola, Paddy's girlfriend, is heartbroken when she hears of his engagement and moves to County Clare to get away from him. Marnie, who was Paddy's college girlfriend and still has feelings for him, is an alcoholic and eventually loses her job, husband and children; her sister Grace attempts to help Marnie, get an interview with Lola, and hide her relationship with Paddy from her partner Damien. Over the course of the book it is revealed that all three women - plus various other ex-girlfriends of Paddy's - have been abused by him.
28448798	/m/0crj7g0	Warlock	Oakley Hall			 In the frontier boomtown of Warlock, residents attempt to keep the peace. After violence escalates, a committee determines to take a course of action against criminal cowboys and cattle rustlers. A Texas gunslinger named Clay Blaisedell is hired and, although things go smoothly at first, the morality of life in the legal no-man's-land becomes ever more ambiguous.
28461587	/m/0crcfch	Stone Spring	Stephen Baxter	2010-06-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The focus of much of the novel is the community of Extelur. Extelur begins as a typical stone-age civilisation, remarkable only for its flint, which is prized throughout most of Northland. It is nominally ruled by a figure known as the "Giver", but as the Kirike, the current Giver, is missing, leadership falls to Zesi, his eldest daughter. Every year, Extelur and its neighbours, the brutish "Pretani" (located in modern-day England), hold a ceremony known as the Giving on Extelur soil. Representing the Pretani leader are brothers Gall and Shade, who share the house with Zesi and her 14-year-old sister Ana. Gall, the eldest brother, has been promised Zesi as a bride by his father, but Zesi instead sleeps with the younger brother Shade, enraging Gall. To make matters worse, Gall inadvertently kills a member of the neighbouring "Snailhead" tribe during a communal hunt. Tensions come to a head during the giving, whereupon the Pretani leader (or "Root") arrives and demands that Shade and Gall resolve their dispute by a fight to the death, in which Gall is killed. Kirike also returns to Extelur, along with outsiders Ice Dreamer (rescued by Kirike during his travels) and Novu (a slave who killed his master and escaped, with a particular skill for making bricks). Kirike resumes leadership of Extelur, much to Zesi's resentment. Zesi ultimately decides to leave with the Pretani to challenge them in a hunting contest on their own territory. Meanwhile, back in Extelur, rising sea levels result in a tsunami, known to the locals as the "Great Sea". Most of Extelur is destroyed, and many of its inhabitants are wiped out, including Kirike. With Zesi absent, Ana becomes the de facto leader of Extelur. During the Tsunami, Ana witnessed seabed formations resembling Extelur's religious symbols, and, believing them to hold spiritual significance, ultimately resolves to build a dyke to hold back the sea and enable the formations to be reached once again. Novu, who has the most experience, obsessively oversees the construction of the dyke, and Ana adopts increasingly Draconian measures to ensure construction continues. When Zesi returns to Extelur, she violently opposes Ana's work. She breaks one of the giant pools which holds water that is meant to flow back into the sea and kills a Snailhead child. This ultimately results in her being exiled and her child taken from her. Vowing revenge on Ana, Zesi ultimately returns to Pretani territory, where she convinces Shade (now the Root of the Pretani) to help her destroy Extelur. Together, they plan to offer slave labour to Extelur, with the intention of organising a slave uprising and then attacking Extelur in the chaos. Before this can be done, however, Ana uncovers the plan and frees the slaves herself. The Pretani attack is beaten back, and Zesi is killed during the fight. The novel ends some years later, where construction of the dykes is finally complete, and the undersea formations Ana sought to uncover have finally been reached.
28486403	/m/0crc1hm	The Long Loud Silence	Wilson Tucker	1952	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Gary, an army corporal, wakes up in a hotel room in Illinois following a drunken binge. He discovers that the town is deserted except for a handful of corpses and comes to the realization that the country has been subjected to an attack. He discovers one other survivor, a girl of 19. They take a car and, after filling it with supplies, drive toward Chicago, which they find to be in flames. They drive west, only to discover that almost all bridges over the Mississippi have been disabled; the one remaining bridge is guarded by army troops on the western side, who shoot anyone attempting to cross over. The girl abandons him; as he travels further, Gary learns that the nuclear attack was combined with bacteriological warfare which infected the entire population with pneumonic plague. Only those rare individuals with natural resistance have survived, but since they are carriers of the disease, the entire eastern third of the country has been quarantined. Gary is nevertheless determined to cross over. He joins up with a former school teacher, Jay Oliver; they make camp in the hills outside an intact bridge in Kentucky, waiting for the army to allow people across. A woman joins them, trading sex for food. After realizing that the quarantine is permanent, the three decide to go to Florida for the winter where they find a fisherman's cabin on the Gulf coast. After a few months the woman becomes pregnant and expresses her preference for Oliver; Gary decides to leave. The following winter he finds himself near the Canadian border. He awakes one night in an abandoned car and sees a young girl running toward him, pursued by men with guns. Gary shoots the men and saves the girl, who tells him that the men have killed her brother. She leads Gary back to the scene of the murder; he discovers that the body has been partially dismembered and concludes that the men were cannibals. He takes the girl to her home, a farmhouse where both mother and father are still alive. Out of gratitude, the father offers to provide lodging if Gary will guard the farm. Gary agrees and spends the winter there. The following spring he sets off toward Washington DC, hoping to find remnants of the government. While passing through Ohio he chances upon a convoy of army trucks under attack. He joins the attack and saves the convoy. The commanding officer thanks him, but makes it clear that he can not join them; they have come from the west, with orders to deliver gold from Fort Knox, and have not been exposed to the virus. Gary offers to fix a tire, but does so in such a way that it slowly loses air; he catches up with the convoy and through a combination of stealth and boldness, kills most of the men and takes one of the trucks. He drives to the bridge on the Mississippi where the men had been planning to cross over. Masquerading as one of them, he is allowed to cross. From there he escapes into the country side; he is labeled an "enemy agent" and a man hunt is initiated but he evades capture. However, everyone he comes in close contact with succumbs to the plague. He finally realizes that he has no future in the west and returns over the river, to survive for a number of years until he encounters the girl he had met in Illinois.
28486881	/m/0crcm3j	An Octopus Followed Me Home			{"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book tells of a young girl who takes a green octopus home. When the girl asks her father if she can keep the octopus in the tub, he tells her about all the other animals he let her keep and all the sacrifices he made. The saddened girl returns the octopus back to the ocean, but becomes happy again when a gray brachiosaurus follows her home.
28490303	/m/0crdqbh	Saigon				 The story is set in August–September 1964. Claire La Farge, widow of a French intelligence officer, lives in a large rice and tea plantation in North Vietnam. One night she receives a coded message in the form of a knotted belt (quipu) from a former associate of her husband. She sends her trusted servant, Saito, to Saigon to place an advert in the personal column of the Times of Vietnam hoping to contact former colleagues of her husband who can decode the message. Raoul Dupre, a former French intelligence officer and businessman in Saigon, reads the ad and makes contact. Agent Nick Carter, in Saigon posing as a WHO medical observer, answers the ad on a hunch and learns of Dupre's involvement. Dupre's daughter, Antoinette (Toni), has become a heroin addict under the influence of Lin Tong – a Chinese communist spy interested in finding out the truth about her father. Hawk orders Carter to help Raoul Dupre contact Claire La Farge to retrieve the coded message. Antoinette tells Carter that Lin Tong is pressing her to spy on her father and that she has revealed to Lin Tong what she has overheard of the coded message and the American agent who would be coming to help. Lin Tong follows Antoinette and Carter to a secluded rendezvous where he accidentally shoots and kills her. Carter and Lin Tong race each other to North Vietnam. Carter heads for the La Farge plantation accompanied by Saito while Lin Tong contacts his communist guerilla allies to be on the lookout for a western agent. Lin Tong arrives at the La Farge plantation first with a small group of North Vietnamese soldiers. He starts to interrogate and torture Claire La Farge concerning the location of the coded message. Carter and Saito arrive shortly afterwards. They assemble the plantation workers still loyal to Claire La Farge and overpower the North Vietnamese soldiers. Lin Tong is captured and Claire La Farge is released. Raoul Dupre arrives by helicopter to take Carter and Lin Tong back to Saigon. The quipu belt is decoded as a list of Chinese communist spies living and working in South Vietnam. Raoul Dupre takes charge of eliminating the spies, while Carter returns home.
28492213	/m/0crcpmb	Aruba: The Tragic Untold Story of Natalee Holloway and Corruption in Paradise		2006-04-11		 The book covers Holloway's ongoing effort to locate his daughter Natalee, who disappeared during a high school graduation trip to Aruba in 2005. He details his experience following leads in crack houses and personally searching landfills. He alleges corruption among the Aruba Police Force, recalling that they asked him how much money he had upon arrival on the island. Holloway accused suspect Joran van der Sloot of repeatedly lying and believes that he is "guilty of something."
28496471	/m/0crcm46	The Month of the Falling Leaves	Bruce Marshall	1963	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A philosophy professor is mistaken for a spy.
28502106	/m/0crcb0c	A veinte años, Luz				 Upon giving birth to a son, John, a tiny doubt in Luz's mind takes root and soon grows into an obsession, and thus begins Luz's quest for her past: was she indeed, as she had always believed, the daughter and grand-daughter of a family loyal to the dictatorship in Argentina, or was she in fact one of the country's missing children, one of the desaparecidos whose whereabouts were in many cases never discovered. Luz (whose name means "light" in Spanish) seeks her true identity with great courage, bringing to light the darkest corners of the society in which she has been raised, and of which, until now, considered herself a participant. Her search will lead to the discovery of a country divided by a brutal, criminal regime, which caused its own citizens to vanish, hiding them and, worst of all, forgetting them. Luz, on her road to the truth, shines a light in the shadows covering the horrors in this poignant novel that recounts beautifully, from an opposing viewpoint, a tale from Argentina's recent past: the story of the grandchildren of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo).
28502190	/m/0crhbhx	El grito				 It's a short novel that takes place at the end of 2001 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the middle of the economic meltdown that brought the country to the brink of social disintegration. The story follows four characters whose lives are slowly intertwined, and whose fates and problems, although different, are characteristic of the social and economic problems of the time. The helplessness, loneliness, and broken families are the rivers that Florencia Abbate helps us to navigate in this novel that examine a historical period in Argentina that is seldom explored.
28502655	/m/0crfvdk	Billy the Kid				 The book is set during World War II. It is about a boy called Billy who grew up with his hobby, football, and wanted to play for the Chelsea football team. Then his mother gave birth to his brother, Joe, who later in the story joined the army at the beginning of the Second World War. Soon afterwards, his parents receive a message that Joe has died. This happened at Dunkirk on the French coast when the Germans advanced, routing the British army. Winston Churchill urged the sending of as many boats possible of all sizes for the evacuation. 250,000 were rescued; the rest were killed (there was approximately 300,000 allies). The family were depressed to hear the disappointing news. Billy later decides to join the army, fight for his country, and then succeed in the war. He survives to become a player for Chelsea Football Club and then into old age. BBM pin - 2878235A
28542806	/m/0czbd2j	This Alien Shore				 The plot of this book is based in a far-future where interstellar flight caused mutations in the race as a whole. Some were minute differences, some to the point of grotesque. This eventually leads to the cessation of interstellar flight, stranding a majority of the population from their culture and supplies that were rooted on the Earth. This causes worlds to reinvent themselves and some to come out stronger. Eventually, one planet discovers a method of interstellar travel that does not cause the adverse effects. They create a company called the Outspace Guild. Due to the mutations, the Guild is the only one that can use this method of travel, and this quickly becomes a monopoly. Throughout this time, computers have advanced to a point that they are necessary for all facets of life. It is introduced early in the book that each person is entitled to a computer installed at birth. Unfortunately, it is impossible to reinstall different computers due to the complexity of the nervous system and how it so intricately ties into your body. In this future, it is extremely important to make sure that the hardware installed is some of the best. The government in this future have guaranteed that all persons shall be entitled to hardware, but the rich will tend to make sure to upgrade this for their children to guarantee them a better lifestyle. The computers that are integrated into the body can help to regulate bodily functions, such as a regular release of adrenaline at a scheduled time, as well as set up tasks and reminders for the mind. Viruses have become more dangerous as the computer can control your base functions and thus makes you vulnerable to attack on a much different level.
28551496	/m/0czc3fc	Phule's Paradise	Robert Asprin	1992-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book begins when Phule and his "Omega Mob" receive orders to report to the space station Lorelei, a resort space station home of many casinos. The "Omega Mob" is contracted to defend the Fat Chance Casino from take over by organized Crime. Phule splits 50 of the troops from the company, giving them permission to operate under cover in order to gain intelligence on the crime syndicate. He supplements the lost legionnaires with actors and trains the whole unit, actors and legionnaires, in Casino security. Upon their arrival they learn that the Crime boss, Maxine, has partial ownership in the Casino and plans to bankrupt the Casino in order to gain a controlling interest. With this intelligence, Phule is able to thwart all of the schemes developed by Maxine thanks to his prior knowledge. In retaliation, Maxine's thugs attack two of the actors. However, upon noticing the thug's leader's possession of the company's distinctive wrist communicators, Chocolate Harry, the company's supply sergeant, retrieves the communicators and beats up the leader. Frustrated with all the failed actions, Maxine results to her backup plan: kidnap Phule and ransom him. The resourceful Omega mob foils the kidnapping, rescuing Phule and forcing Maxine to hand over her share of the Casino to the company.
28559500	/m/0czdmpc	Fox Hunt	James Clancy Phelan	2006-08	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 Lachlan Fox is a former Royal Australian Navy Special Forces Clearance Diver who is living on Christmas Island after being Dishonorably discharged after a mission gone wrong in East Timor. When Fox and best friend, former Navy pilot Alister Gammaldi, discover an unusual capsual whilst diving off Christmas Island little do they know they have discovered something that could result in the outbreak of World War 3.
28559833	/m/0cz8q9g	Patriot Act	James Clancy Phelan	2007-08	{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 Lachlan Fox, former Royal Australian Navy Special Forces Clearance Diver, now investigative journalist for GSR (Global Syndicate Reporters) grows suspicious when several high-profile businessmen and politicians are murdered in Europe. A coup is being planned by the United States biggest European rival, France. Echelon is under attack as the United States rushes to avoid an armed conflict between France and the United States. Meanwhile, Fox's life is threatened by French DGSE agents who wish to assassinate Fox and girlfriend Kate.
28569463	/m/0czdv09	Daniel X: Demons and Druids	James Patterson	2010-07-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Daniel X's hunt to eliminate each and every intergalactic criminal on Earth is always relentless, but this time, it's getting personal. Number Three on the List of Alien Outlaws takes the form of raging, soul-possessing fire. And fire transports Daniel back to the most traumatic event of his life-the death of his parents. In the face of his "kryptonite", Daniel struggles with his extraordinary powers like never before, and more than ever is at stake: his best friends are in grave peril. The only way to save them is to travel back-through a hole in time-to the demon's arrival during the Dark Ages. In the Dark Ages, he also meets a new friend.
28579397	/m/0cz9_ht	De zaak Natalee Holloway			{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 In the introduction to the book, Van der Sloot states, "I see this book as my opportunity to be open and honest about everything that happened, for anyone who wants to read it." The book presents Van der Sloot's account of the night Holloway disappeared and the media frenzy which followed. Details of his encounter with Holloway at the Carlos'n Charlie's nightclub in Oranjestad, Aruba is covered in explicit detail. He admits to lying in the past and apologizes for his actions, stating that he "found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time, and took a wrong decision." However, he insists that he did not break the law and is not a murderer.
28599406	/m/0cz8gt1	The Black Prism	Brent Weeks	2010-08-25	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book is set in a world where colour is the foundation for all magic. Sixteen years after a war that rocked the world, the Prism receives a note from a lady named Lina, first telling him of the existence of and then telling him to come and get his now 15 year old son, a bastard child that had been conceived while he was betrothed to Karris White Oak, a member of the most elite bodyguard force, the Blackguard. The White sends Karris to Garriston, Tyrea's capital, to spy on its Satrap's army. She gives Karris a note informing her of Gavin's unfaithfulness, instructing her to not read it until after leaving the Chromeria (the center of magical learning). She sends Gavin to kill a color wight somewhere else, attempting to keep the two separated until well after Karris learned the news. However, Gavin chooses to bring Karris to Garriston himself before she can read the note, using a mode of transportation no one else even believes possible: magically-aided flight across the ocean. This allows them to enter Tyrea in hours, rather than the month or so expected otherwise. As they draw closer, Karris sees smoke, and directs them to the former town of Rekton, which has been burned to the ground. They are just in time to save a teenager from being executed, killing several of the Satrap's personal bodyguard in the process, at which point the Prism is confronted by the irate Satrap himself, self-styled King Garadul. He ordered the town to be wiped out as an example, due to their refusal to put up and pay levies. King Garadul plans to continue the march of his armies to Garriston. Due to Tyrea's role during the war, Tyreans are treated less respectfully, have no color representative on the council and have had their capital under a rotating occupation from the other Satrapies. Thus, Garadul considers himself king, not Satrap, and Garriston part of his land he intends to reclaim. The child is revealed to be none other than Gavin's bastard child, Kip. There follows some debate, which results in Kip and the Prism being allowed to leave together, though not without the exchange of several death threats. Before this occurs, however, the king takes a box from Kip which he claims was stolen from him. The box contains a white dagger given to Kip by his dying mother, who—through curses and abuse—made him promise to kill the man responsible. Away from all this, Karris reads the note given to her by the White, and is angered by Gavin's betrayal, his lies about it when breaking their engagement, and the White's attempts to manipulate her into forgiving him. Because of this, she ultimately refuses Gavin's offer of assistance the rest of the way to Garriston, opting to explore Rekton while Gavin brings Kip back to the Chromeria. She meets Corvan Danavis, Kip's tutor and a former general of Dazen Guile's army. She is eventually captured by king Garadul, while Corvan continues to Garriston. While Kip is entered into the Chromeria, shadowed by the Blackguard commander Ironfist, the Prism kills the color wight the White referred to. Before dying, the wight tells the Prism that Dazen should have won the war. Paranoid, Gavin returns quickly to the Chromeria to check on his brother, whom he has secretly imprisoned in a cell in which nothing but blue luxin can be drafted. It is then revealed that the Prism is in fact Dazen, having stolen his older brother Gavin's identity after the final battle of the war. When Dazen became Gavin after the war, he chose to break off Gavin's previous betrothal to Karis despite his own feelings, truthfully denying any affairs. Pressured by the White to teach a class of superviolets, the prism meets Aliviana Liv Danavis, Corvan's daughter and the only other person in the Chromeria from Rekton. Her tuition is paid by a sponsor from the Ruthgari Satrap, the sister of the current governor of Garriston. Her sponsor repeatedly blackmails her into spying on the Prism for Ruthgar, though her words and the lengths of cruelty she is willing to pursue to keep her hold suggest it is more a personal vendetta than any specific order. Knowing none of this, the Prism gives Liv official recognition of her bichrome nature (her second color was deemed too expensive to invest in by her contract-holder), in exchange for her teaching Kip the basics of drafting. While Kip and Liv catch up, the Prism meets with his father, Andross Guile, to speak about Tyrea. When he mentions the box Garadul took from Kip, Andross immediately asks if it is "the white luxin," a supposedly mythical substance. His brother Gavin was aware of it as well, and Andross—not knowing Dazen isn't Gavin—assumes he knows what it is. Gavin can't ask, lest his disguise be discovered. Andross Guile orders his son to defeat Garadul's armies, but at all costs retrieve the dagger. Kip, Liv, the Prism and Ironfist leave for Tyrea to defend Garriston from Garadul's armies. Corvan reaches Garriston at about this time, and agrees to be Dazen's general again. Despite their friendship in reality, they must both pretend to hate and distrust each other deeply. Liv questions her father about it, but he refuses to tell her the truth. She assumes the Prism is blackmailing him with her life, and silently vows to make him pay. Liv and Kip run away to free Karris from Garadul's captivity. Ironfist leaves a few hours later, to see to their survival. Liv infiltrates successfully, while Kip is recognized and captured, though not before drafting sub-red for the first time. Karris, meanwhile, is taken to meet Lord Omnichrome, a color wight who heads Garadul's drafters. She recognizes him as her brother Koios, thought killed by Dazen in overzealous self-defense before the war. Ironfist helps Karris and Kip escape, and they both go after Garadul directly. Kip sees Lord Omnichrome give Zymun (a red drafter Kip knows from Rekton's burning) his mother's rosewood case, but Kip decides to help Karris. Playing on her disgust with the Prism and Chromeria, Omnichrome persuades Liv to join his cause in return for aiding Kip and Karris. Omnichrome intends for Garadul to die, so Corvan and Dazen try to save him. They are unsuccessful; Kip kills him in a rage before he can be stopped. Kip, Karris and Corvan retreat to the docks, along with the Prism. Kip saves Ironfist's life before chasing the ship that's already left the dock. As Kip runs across the water, he sees Zymun attempting to stab the Prism from behind with the white luxin dagger, and tackles him off the ship. He retrieves the box and leaves Zymun for the sharks before escaping with the Prism's ship. The Prism gives Kip the case, thinking the dagger lost. In it, Kip finds a note from his mother, telling him to kill the man who raped her, and that she loves him. Kip discovers that one of the clear diamond-like stones on the dagger's handle is now a sapphire-colored stone. At about this time, Gavin escapes from his blue luxin prison after nearly killing himself, only to find himself in an identical green luxin prison. The book ends as Dazen discovers that he can no longer draft blue.
28604443	/m/0cz7_vv	Nine Coaches Waiting	Mary Stewart	1958	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Linda Martin lands in Paris on a cold, gray, and rainy day. She is on her way to her new post as a governess to the young Count Philippe de Valmy. Having lost both his parents in a tragic accident, the nine-year-old boy lives with his aunt and uncle in the vast and ornate Château Valmy in the French countryside. Léon de Valmy, Philippe's uncle, runs the estate on behalf of his underage nephew until he comes of age and arranged for a proper English governess for his charge. When Linda arrives at the imposing manor, she is at once enchanted by its beauty and history, but is also immediately struck by the sense of menace and doom surrounding the land and its inhabitants. Léon is a charismatic force of nature and quite charming and, when Linda meets his reckless and rakishly handsome son Raoul, she understands a bit more about the de Valmy heritage and what makes this family tick. As she becomes closer to Philippe and Raoul, Linda draws ever nearer to putting her finger on the source of the threat. But the layers of danger and darkness run deeper than any of them guessed and she may not be able to trust those she wants to, no matter how innocent or attractive they may seem. Soon it is up to the shy young governess to beat the clock in order to save Philippe's life as well as her own.
28605249	/m/0cz81tl	When the Enemy Is Tired				 Colonel Anthony Russell, an officer in the Australian army, is captured on a mission in China along with his squad of seven men. As the Chinese are excitied of the possibilities of Russell defecting and broadcasting Communist propaganda, they assign Major Lim, a Chinese propaganda officer with a bitterness towards westerners - it is revealed later on that his parents were killed by a British Soldier. Lim forces Russell to write his life story, in order to find out information that he will use in his efforts to brainwash him. In order to convince Russell he is serious, Lim drugs him into a sedated state which makes Russell believe that he is witnessing the execution of his men. After it becomes clear that Russell will not broadcast, and prompting by the Australian Government, Russell is sent back to Australia. As he leaves he plane he is intercepted by Government officials and placed under arrest on suspicion of being a Communist spy. It is revealed that while he was a prisoner in China, he was subconsciously taught Russian; as a result of this, further suspicion falls on him. The book ends with the officials telling Russell to write his life story.
28623936	/m/0cz8gtr	Amis and Amiloun			{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance"}	 The poem's plot revolves around two sworn friends, Amis and Amiloun, who are born to different parents in different parts of a kingdom but serve the same duke. Amis falls in love with a beautiful girl, Belisaunt, who seduces him, but the duke's steward betrays him to the duke. Since Amis cannot swear to have not had relations with the girl, Amiloun takes his place in the trial by battle which ensues and kills the steward, even though an angel had told him that he would be struck with leprosy--after all, Amis was guilty. Amis and Belisaunt get married and he succeeds the duke but Amiloun, now a leper, is driven out of the land by his wife. As he begs for a living with his nephew Owain, later dubbed Amoraunt, he returns to Amis's castle and is recognized by a golden cup he had gotten from Amis while they were young. Amiloun is tended to for a year, after which angels appears to both in their dreams, saying that the blood of Amis's children will cure Amiloun's leprocy. Amis indeed performs the act, and Amiloun is cured. The children are miraculously found intact.
28624193	/m/0czdd77	Wings of the Falcon	Barbara Mertz	1977	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Set during Italian Risorgimento of 1860, Francesca Fairbourn arrives in Italy after she becomes an orphan to live with her mother's family. Her aristocratic Italian mother and English father had eloped which resulted in her getting deisowned by her family. Francesca's mother died during her birth which left Franseca's father to raise her all alone. When she left school at 18 she lost her father and was in desperate situation until her dashing young cousin Andrea del Tarconti rescues her and sends her to Italy to the aristocratic home of Tarconti Castle. Once there Francesca finds herself intertwined in web of political intrigue as a local disguised hero named Il Falcone is helping peasants fight against tyrant rulers. Francesca realizes that the 'Il Falcone' is closer to her family than she thinks.
28630602	/m/0cz9j5b	Enchanted Glass	Diana Wynne Jones	2010	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Enchanted Glass is set in the imaginary town of Melstone, England. Near the town of Melstone is Melstone House, an old place which Andrew Hope has inherited from his grandfather. With Melstone House comes a "field-of-care" which is a region of magical responsibility. Unfortunately, Andrew does not quite grasp the full implications of this, causing many of the problems in the story. Shortly after Andrew takes possession of Melstone House, Aidan Cain appears on his doorstep, asking for help. His recently deceased grandmother had told him that the owner of Melstone House could help him, if he ever needed it. Aidan is being pursued by an unknown force, which turns out to be the fairy king Oberon, who thinks he is his son. Together, Andrew and Aidan must unravel the mystery of Melstone House, and gain control of their magic.
28639356	/m/0czbkl6	Delivering Happiness			{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is divided into three sections: Profits; Profits and Passion; and Profits, Passion, and Purpose. It is written in narrative form and includes short 1-2 page entries from Hsieh's friends and employees. In the first section, Hsieh details his entrepreneurial adventures from when he was young until he was in college. These include his attempt to start an earthworm breeding business at the age of 9, a mail order button business in middle school, and a grille at Harvard University. After college, Hsieh founded LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft for $265 million two years later. He founded Venture Frogs, an investment fund, of which Zappos was one of the investments. The second section, Profits and Passion, details Hsieh's involvement with Zappos, beginning with joining the company full-time as CEO in 2000. The third section, Profits, Passion, and Purpose, covers Zappos sale to Amazon, as well as lessons Hsieh learned in public relations and public speaking.
28640612	/m/0cz99ws	A Strange Discovery	Charles Romyn Dake	1899	{"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story is set in 1877, forty-nine years after the events in Arthur Gordon Pym, and thirty-nine years after the publication of that book. The narrator is an Englishman traveling in the United States to settle business interests in Southern Illinois. During his stay in Bellevue, Illinois (corresponding to the actual Belleville), he makes acquaintance with two local doctors, an older man, Dr. George F. Castleton, and the younger Dr. Bainbridge. Dr. Castleton is an eccentric local character given to extravagant opinions, and the narrator mentions that he was later the Prohibition Party candidate for Governor of Illinois. During a discussion of Poe's works and Arthur Gordon Pym, Dr. Castleton reveals that Peters is a patient of his. Much of the first section is given to the narrator's observations on American society and to discussions between him, Castleton, and Bainbridge on topics ranging from poetry and literature (and Poe in particular), to U.S. and European politics, to Christianity and agnosticism, to medical science. Bainbridge describes his earlier discovery, at the Astor Library in New York, of a book written in 1594 and published in 1728, of a narrative purporting to tell the story of a sailor on Sir Francis Drake's voyage of circumnavigation. According to this book, Drake's ship was driven by a storm for two weeks, until, deep in the Antarctic, he arrived at a city which the author describes as comparable to Venice, but more beautiful than any European city of that time. Dr. Bainbridge visits Peters each day and elicits the story of his adventures with Pym a half-century earlier. Each night he visits the narrator in his hotel and relates, in episodic form, what he has learned from Peters. The narrator, in turn, passes on the essential points to Dr. Castleton as well as to Arthur, the hotel factotum. After leaving the island of Tsalal, Peters and Pym voyage south through a curtain of fog into the area near the South Pole, which is warmed by volcanic activity. Passing a white marble figure at the entrance to a harbor, they arrive in the city of Hili-li at 89°S latitude. Hili-li Island is one of over 200 islands in a great inland sea, surrounded by a ring-shaped continent. The continent consists of volcanic mountains and ice, making it impassable except for a 300-mile-wide gap, through which had come Francis Drake, Pym and his shipmates on the Jane Guy, and the occasional other castaway from the outside world. The Hili-lites are a white race, descendants from a shipload of ancient Romans who left Rome and the Mediterranean fleeing from the barbarian invasions of the 4th century. Hili-li's population of 100,000 to 200,000 inhabitants are ruled by a Duke. There is also a reclusive, mystic old sage, Masusaelili, who claims to be a survivor of the original voyage from Rome. Peters and Pym are treated hospitably, and Pym eventually falls in love with the Duke's niece, Lilima. The romantic interlude is interrupted when Lilima is abducted by her ex-lover Ahpilus. Ahpilus is one of a group of exiles who have been banished to the volcanic island at the pole for various offenses, mainly for engaging in forbidden sports or other physically dangerous activities. Ahpilus has gone mad as a result of his exile and unrequited love. Peters, Pym, and the Duke's son Diregus lead a rescue expedition and catch up with Ahpilus on the slopes of the 8-mile-high "Mount Olympus", below the crater lake near its summit. Ahpilus threatens to throw himself and Lilima to their deaths in a gorge, but Peters, in a feat of astounding physical prowess, leaps across the gorge and incapacitates Ahpilus by breaking his back. Returning to Hili-li, Pym and Lilima marry, but their happiness is short-lived. A rare meteorological event brings a period of intense cold and snow to Hili-li. Despite valiant efforts led by Pym, Peters, Diregus, and the returned Olympian exiles to fend off the cold, many of the Hili-lites succumb. Among these is Lilima. The grief-stricken Pym is allowed to depart, along with Peters. They leave in December 1829, are picked up by a large schooner, and are deposited in Montevideo, Uruguay in February 1830. There Pym and Peters part company.
28643181	/m/0czb3_m	Vesper	Jeff Sampson		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Vesper follows the character of Emily Webb, a geeky girl that's more likely to stay at home and watch old horror films than go to parties. Unbeknownst to her, she's been sneaking out to go to parties and thrill seek when Emily thought she was asleep. She first takes notice of her nocturnal activities when one of her classmates that shares her name has been found murdered. Despite her attempts to prevent herself from going out, Emily's other self keeps going out and getting wilder with each passing night. This other Emily is not only wilder, but stronger and faster than her normal self. As Emily tries to figure out what's going on with her, she discovers that she's not the only person that's changing as well.
28649363	/m/0czb88h	Cognitive Surplus	Clay Shirky		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book's central theme is that people are now learning how to use more constructively the free time afforded to them since the 1940s for creative acts rather than consumptive ones, particularly with the advent of online tools that allow new forms of collaboration. It goes on to catalog the means and motives behind these new forms of cultural production, as well as key examples. While Shirky acknowledges that the activities that we use our cognitive surplus for may be frivolous (such as creating LOLcats), the trend as a whole is leading to valuable and influential new forms of human expression. He also asserts that even the most inane forms of creation and sharing are preferable to the hundreds of billions of hours spent consuming television shows in countries such as the United States.
28650714	/m/0czd_lh	O Chifrudo	Miguel M. Abrahão		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 O Chifrudo is a comedy that requires actors with great experience and versatility. This text gave opportunity to the author, Miguel M. Abrahão, to reassess, on his way, one of the most common themes and best known in world literature: the love triangle. The story is not focused on the content melodramatic as one would predict. First and foremost is an acid criticism of consumerism. Dayse, the woman is presented to the public as consumer object, just as Hermes, her husband, her lover, Dondoco, or even the two neighboring, whose profiles are comically different. With surprise ending and original, the piece always captivated audiences in the country and gave great opportunities to actors in search of roles that allow for true theatrical performance and not the easy laughter and obvious humor of modern.
28664926	/m/0czd2z1	The Miseducation of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly	Paul Howard			 The novel in its original version is strikingly similar to American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, from the many prolonged descriptions of the clothes worn by the characters to specific scenes such as Ross dispensing advice on the right shoe to wear with chinos, which is taken almost word-for-word from a similar passage in Ellis's work. Much of this content was removed in the revised edition as the comedic aspect of the series came to the fore.
28667164	/m/0czch5x	The Devil's Company	David Liss	2009-07-07	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 This third memoir installment begins in November of 1722, eight months after the 1722 General Election that provided the historical setting for A Spectacle of Corruption. This time, Weaver finds himself involved in puzzling and dangerous events surrounding the all-powerful East India Company. Victimized, along with family and friends, by an elaborate extortion scheme, Weaver is forced to spy and steal for the enigmatic Jerome Cobb. Under Cobb's direction, Weaver infiltrates the Company and attempts to learn its secrets before the upcoming meeting of the board of directors (called the Court of Proprietors). Trouble is, Cobb won't (or can't) say exactly what he's looking for, or why. As is typical in this genre, the truth is not revealed until the final pages. Along the way, Weaver meets a colorful assortment of characters, including a betel-nut chewing Company director, an obsessive-compulsive clerk, a bi-sexual bigamist inventor, the London silk-weavers' guild master and several varieties of international spy.
28671849	/m/0czczk3	Querelles de famille	Georges Duhamel		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Georges Duhamel, the narrator, in a caustic and purposefully ultra-conversative tone, criticises the technological progress of the close of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century, and the beginnings of consumer society. Its omnipresent and haunting sounds, in particular that of the phonograph, drive him to promote the creation of a national park of silence. The "grime" which, according to him, surrounds the cities, due essentially to what he calls the "société du fer blanc" (the tinplate society), is an annoyance to him. Inventors, who continue to create superficial objects, are called on to no longer submit new patents. The Church seems to Duhamel to be the next target of technological progress, and he fears the introduction of the phonograph into religious establishments for the purpose of playing chants and sacred music, and even, ultimately, replacing the sermons of the priest. Man in this society of uncontrolled technological progress loses his bearings, hungers for the latest invention and ends up hyponchondriac on its behalf, waiting feverishly for its smallest malfunction and bringing it in at the slightest sign of failure. Through several characters who become slaves to their appliances, moving from the electric pump to the car or the "téhésef", Duhamel vehemently attacks interwar French society using a backward-looking tone. Ultimately, he submits two measures to the President of the Republic, which according to him, would counter the consumerist trend in the population. In one, he proposes the creation of a Ministry of Advertising, charged with verifying the validity of corporate slogans in order to scientifically validate the "measurable and non-measurable" assertions which these corporations use to sell their products. In the other, he asks for the creation of a Ministry of Noise, charged with legislating schedules for the use of musical appliances and radios on beaches, with studying the impact of noise on health, with proposing industrial procedures for the neutralization of noise, and finally, his dream, with creating a national park of silence.
28684181	/m/0cz9c5n	The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives				 In the luxurious neighborhood of Hunting Hills, Ohio, Marti Dench realizes her husband is never around and suspects her husband is having an affair. At the same time, John Harding comes back from Prague with a new wife that is far from the normal size two socialites of Hunting Hill. The instant Marti hears John, a long time friend, is newly married, she experiences jealousy and believes that John is the real love of her life. She then sets out to seduce John and begin an affair with him. John's new (and second) wife, Clare Stark, has difficulty settling into life at Hunting Hills. Once a hot-shot journalist, Claire is now forced to be a stay-at-home wife as her new husband has a bad history with the only newspaper in town, and Claire has a romantic history with the chief editor of that paper. The other wives aren't so welcoming, and John's mother disapproves of Claire. Claire befriends Marti, who goes out of her way to invite Claire to their exclusive book club and throws a party in Claire and John's honour, but only as a ploy to get John into bed. Claire, none the wiser, continues to try and make friends with the other Hunting Hills wives. At Claire's first book club meeting, one of the wives, Karen Goss, calls for help from the police station. As everyone except Claire has been drinking, Claire drives down with Marti and Boots, John's ex-wife, to help her out. At the police station, confesses that she is confused about her sexuality, a result of her husband forcing her to commit sexual acts with other women. In an intimate rendezvous with her husband's secretary in Edgewater Park, Karen became the victim of a hate crime against homosexuals and was taken down to the police station to give a statement. She begs Claire to pull strings with Eric Schmaltz, the editor of the Cleveland Citizen newspaper, so that her name does not appear in the papers as she does not want to humiliate her family. Claire agrees to help Karen, but in a meeting with Eric, she is blackmailed into writing up an interview with a Hunting Hill wife who was convicted of manslaughter. Knowing how much her husband hates the idea of writing for the Cleveland Citizen, Claire devises a plan to get back at Eric for the blackmailing. Meanwhile, Jim Denton, Marti's husband, is caught in a compromising situation with Lisa, Marti's best friend, whom Jim is having an affair with. Having taken 4 Viagra pills, Jim's erection refuses to die down and he misses his meeting with an important client at the last minute. The client, Marguerite, is insulted at being stood up and withdraws all her money from the investment company Jim works at. It is revealed that Jim had been forging account statements to all his friends who invested with him, and with Marguerite's money gone, they are all essentially broke. At the party that Marti is throwing for them, Claire gets roped into a boring conversation with Karen's husband, while Marti gets John alone in the library. Marti throws herself at John, who feels something for her, but refuses her advances and leaves. Jim Denton arrives at the party, and Marti instantly forgets her rejection as she welcomes back her AWOL husband. While talking to Jim, Karen's husband makes an inappropriate comment about Karen's sexuality, causing her to run off and leave Hunting Hills. Jim's fraud is found out by his boss and his friends and he runs off, assuming the identity of an old fraternity brother. He divorces Marti over the phone, causing her to have a total breakdown. Marti calls John over to her house to comfort her, which he does. Claire get home in a celebratory mood after dropping off the article that she wrote, which had no relevance to the subject Eric wanted (pissing off Eric as he planned to put it on the front page). She calls Boots to ask for a cooking tip, who lets it drop that John is over at Marti's house and that they're having an affair. Devastated, Claire falls asleep on the couch. When she wakes up, John is standing over her holding the newspaper. He angrily asks her why her name is on an article about Karen Goss, and Claire accuses him of cheating. They fight and John storms out. Claire later bumps into Marti, who tells her that although she wanted to seduce John that night, he completely rejected her and all he did was talk about how great Claire was. Claire and Marti soon bond over her loss (husband and money), and they set off to find Jim. Seeing how hurt Claire is from the fight she had with John, Marti calls Eric and offers him an exclusive on her husband's fraud if he apologizes to Claire and John for deliberately placing Claire's name on an article she didn't have anything to do with. While Eric apologizes, Claire steps outside, only to be taken hostage by Jim, who's desperate to get the cops off his back. They wrestle, Jim's gun goes off, but luckily Claire is unharmed. All ends well as John and Claire make up, Jim gets sent to jail, and Marti gets an early inheritance from her dad.
28688132	/m/0czb12d	Amelia Bedelia	Peggy Parish			 The silly Amelia Bedelia is hired as a maid for the wealthy Rogers family. Despite meaning well, Amelia cannot seem to do anything right. Mrs. Rogers gives her a list of chores to complete while the family goes out for the day. After choosing to make a lemon meringue pie to be nice, Amelia proceeds to take all the chores literally: she "dresses the chicken" in tiny clothes, "drawing the drapes" on a piece of notebook paper and "puts out the lights" by hanging them on the clothesline. When the Rogers return home, Mrs. Rogers is bewildered that none of the chores are done. On the verge of firing Amelia, she has a bite of Amelia's pie shoved in her mouth, and finds it so delicious she forgives Amelia and decides to keep her--but vows to write more explicit instructions in the future.
28688869	/m/0cz9d6z	The Grand Design	Leonard Mlodinow	2010-09-07	{"/m/01p4b_": "Popular science"}	 The book examines the history of scientific knowledge about the universe. It starts with the Ionian Greeks, who claimed that nature works by laws, and not by the will of the gods. It later presents the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, who advocated the concept that the Earth is not located in the center of the universe. The authors then describe the theory of quantum mechanics using, as an example, the probable movement of an electron around a room. The presentation has been described as easy to understand by some reviewers, but also as sometimes "impenetrable," by others. The central claim of the book is that the theory of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity together help us understand how universes could have formed out of nothing. The author writes: The authors explain, in a manner consistent with M-theory, that as the Earth is only one of several planets in our solar system, and as our Milky Way galaxy is only one of many galaxies, the same may apply to our universe itself: that is, our universe may be one of a huge number of universes. The book concludes with the statement that only some universes of the multiple universes (or multiverse) support life forms. We, of course, are located in one of those universes. The laws of nature that are required for life forms to exist appear in some universes by pure chance, Hawking and Mlodinow explain (see Anthropic Principle).
28700143	/m/0cz94_6	Poil de carotte	Jules Renard	1894	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 The story of "Poil de carotte" is that of an unloved redheaded child, the victim of a cruel family. François Lepic, nicknamed Poil de carotte, grows up with a mother who hates him and a father who is indifferent to him. The reader follows the journey of this young boy, the relationships with his parents, with the world around him and with nature. Poil de carotte uses cunning to battle the daily humiliations he experiences and to stand up to the adult world. So, tragedy notwithstanding, the reader enjoys delightful, amusing, comical, and moving adventures.
28701424	/m/0cz9lv9	Pichilemu Blues		1993	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The "Pichilemu Blues" story is situated in Pichilemu during the summer of 1973. The main characters are a group of teenagers that are discovering a world abounded with hippies, sexual revolutions, ideological transformations, own language (Chilean Spanish) and anxiety to change the world.
28702156	/m/0czf5lv	O Dinheiro	Miguel M. Abrahão		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 O Dinheiro,play written in 1976 - and revised by the author in other opportunities - is the best-known work of dramaturgy by Miguel M. Abrahão. Combining farce, comedy and elements of detective stories, the play tells the life of a family, imprisoned for twelve years in an isolated mansion, to receive the estate of the deceased uncle Josafá Paranhos I and where all members are subordinate to a testament unconventional. Each character presents an interesting pathological deviation, all linked to the habit of collecting something (syringes, boards, men, spiders), or fixed ideas (such as ET or famous characters in American films). At the end of these twelve years, advocates of Josafá, require that hosts in the mansion, a young man intern: Alexandre Pousa. And, coincidentally with his arrival, apparently accidental deaths begin to occur at the mansion, leaving the question in the air: murders or fatalities?
28710780	/m/0cz8k9y	Purge	Sofi Oksanen	2010-04	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The plot begins in 1992 with an elderly woman, Aliide Truu, who lives in a remote portion of Estonia. The woman had isolated herself from the surrounding society and watches the youth of her nation, including her daughter, leaving the countryside for the more urban regions and Finland. One day while looking out the kitchen window, she discovers Zara, the granddaughter of her sister Ingel. Zara had been forced to partake in the sex trade by the Russian Mafia but escaped them. The only guide she had to help her find help, was a photograph from her grandmother with Aliide's name on it. The story then continues with a series of flashbacks which develops the relationship of Aliide and her sister, which hinged upon their competition for the love of Hans Pekk during World War II. The story ends as Aliide begins to reconcile herself with her jealousy of her sister and Zara's redemption from her disenchantment with the world caused by her sexual subjugation. The plot of Purge focuses on two main females, both of whom reviewers have commented on as complex and are integral to understanding the themes of the book. The novel begins with Aliide Truu, an elderly woman who has survived many of the horrors of the Soviet occupation of Estonia. The Aliide who the reader first meets has alienated herself from the local people, though strongly self-reliant. Though cloaked in a rough exterior, she represents a woman who has weathered considerable hardship. She has hardly anything in the way of motherly instinct, especially in regards to the other main character, Zara. Zara is the grandniece of Aliide and at the beginning of the book she is subjected to sex trafficking by the Russian mafia. Her interaction with her great-aunt eventually forces Aliide to reconstruct and confront the history of her past. Ultimately, Aliide is responsible for delivering Zara from the torments caused by the sexual violence persecuted against her.
28713396	/m/0cz87kn	Red Inferno: 1945	Robert Conroy	2010-02-23	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 Red Inferno: 1945 is a speculative fictional novel that depicts what could have happened if the Soviet Union had attempted to take all of Germany towards the end of World War II, and attacked American forces in the process, thus beginning World War III. The novel follows various historical figures and fictional characters as they battle the new enemy and deal with now defeated Germany, Japanese forces in the Pacific, and the newly created atomic bomb. The novel mostly centers around the survival of the entrapped American soldiers and German civilians in the besieged cities of Germany, the stories of Allied operations behind enemy lines to sabotage the Soviet forces, the intelligence divisions involved in deciphering Stalin's motives, and America's efforts to both hold off the Russians and defeat Japan in the Pacific simultaneously. The novel first introduces with what actual historical events happened in our timeline and then tells of the point of divergence of historical events before it tells its story; that in April 1945, the Allied forces in Europe under the command of Dwight Eisenhower halted all further advance into Nazi Germany at the Elbe River, all the while the Soviet Army battles whats left of the German forces on its way to Berlin. However in this timeline, instead of halting the Allied advance into Germany, the then-new US president Harry S. Truman authorizes the US Army to continue across the Elbe and head for Berlin to bring a quick end to the war, and thus guarantee the western nations' share of the to-be divided German capitol with their forces in the city. However, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, despite the agreed terms of dividing Berlin and Germany amongst his mutual allies, wants to take Berlin for himself on the grounds that the Soviet Union best deserved to conquer its arch-enemy's capitol after the unparalleled brutality of the Eastern front. He even goes as far as to order the Soviet Army to attack any American forces on sight should they ever get near Berlin in order to intimidate the west into leaving Berlin to Russia. Eventually, the lead divisions of the US Army just 60 miles from Berlin encounter Soviet Armour and, as ordered, they open fire on the Americans and began to drive the US forces back across the Elbe. Word of the exchange between the American advance to Berlin and the Soviet forces reaches Moscow and Washington D.C., and it was confirmed that the US had crossed the agreed occupation boundaries. Stalin believes that both he and the US had voided the Yalta agreements and now technically meant that the United States and Soviet Union are de facto enemies. Combined with his paranoia of that the west wants to take Russia's chance of revenge on Germany from him and refuses to allow it, and with the invalidated post-war divide and already ensuing hostilities, he decides to conquer and occupy Germany and then all of Europe while Russia still has the chance, thus starting another World War. Eisenhower and the US Army gets pushed back across the Elbe while losing thousands of troops and a whole US armored division, along with fleeing German civilians and POWs are cut off from the main force and holed up in Potsdam, which the Soviets lay siege to throughout the duration of the war. Over the course of a few months from late April to August, the Soviet Army wages a war of attrition as their overwhelming numbers slowly force the Allies west across of Germany to the Weser, while the Soviets also try to divide the Allies by spreading communist influence to surrounding nations hoping to spark revolutions within the allied nations to hinder the Americans' efforts to hold the Soviets east of the Rhine. Part of the efforts to start in-fighting do work with Churchill's loss of position as Prime Minister to Clement Attlee and the Labour Party in the UK when the people of England violently protest that they are too tired to stay in the ensuing conflict; France and Italy are also plunged into the brink of civil war among their governments and their communist sympathizers, but the unrest is put down when the sympathizers are unwilling to kill their own countrymen, in fear of betrayal. The plans to hinder the American war effort eventually do back-fire on the Soviets as Switzerland and Finland cease their neutrality and allow Allied armies to cross their borders to the front lines, thus ensuring a continuous flow of troops and supplies to the Allied forces. The US Air Force also conducts long-range strategic bombing sorties into the Soviet Union with the introduction of the B-29 Superfortress from the Pacific campaign (diverted from its initial targets at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Kure and Yokosuka naval districts, which left them relatively intact), and target Soviet fuel and oil production, starving the Soviet Army of any means to conduct further offenses. Things also take a drastic turn when the remaining forces and government of former Nazi Germany sign an armistice with the Allies and agree to fight along side them against the Russians. Eventually the Russians cross the Weser but instead head for the Rhine, they turn north towards Dortmund, where it stores all of the American forces' weapons and supplies for the front line. It becomes apparent that if the Russians do capture it, they will have all the weapons needed to defeat the Allies in Europe (since the Russians have more men to fight then they do with weapons to arm them). But the massive storage depot of Dortmund is a ruse masterminded by Eisenhower to lure the bulk of the Soviet Army into one place in order to have it wiped out by the atomic bomb. The bomb is dropped and explodes over the Soviet Army's central divisions command center on the west side of the Weser to Dortmund on August 6, 1945, killing almost half a million Soviet soldiers instantly, including Georgy Zhukov and Vasily Chuikov. After another bomb dropped on Soviet forces in southern Germany, the Soviets are too demoralized to continue their advance and retreat in fear of more American nuclear attacks. With the war virtually lost and Stalin seen as their destroyer rather than savior, a coup erupts in the Soviet government as Stalin is ousted from and executed as a new politiburo seizes control and signs an armistice with the allies, withdrawing all their forces from Europe. With the Soviet Union's conquest of Europe stopped and after the surrender of Japan (with only the bombing of Hiroshima and not Nagasaki) World War II and III were finally over. The novel ends in the early winter of 1946, with communism collapsing and the Soviet republics breaking away from Russia to form their own sovereign nations parallel to the Commonwealth of Independent States today. China suffers from a civil war as a new communist government seizes power, and America becomes the world's sole nuclear superpower. All of Europe and Asia is in ruin as the exhausted troops, politicians, prisoners, and civilians alike of all nations involved in the conflict return home at last and begin to rebuild their world as they look forward to an uncertain but hopeful future.
28720332	/m/0cz9z0q	Golf in the Kingdom	Michael Murphy	1971-10-01		 While on layover on his way to an ashram in India, Michael Murphy decides to play a round of golf at Burningbush, a famous local golf course. There he meets the mysterious and charismatic golf pro Shivas Irons who over a 24 hour period teaches him about golf and spirituality.
28723539	/m/0czbpfs	This Above All	Eric Knight	1941	{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Spending leave together on the South Coast during the Battle of Britain and the beginning of the blitz, Clive and Prudence have an affair. Having survived Dunkirk, but having a crisis of conscience over what the war is being fought for and disgusted at the incompetence of the ruling elite, Clive decides not to return to the Army and to go absent without leave.
28724064	/m/0cz9rq3	A Casa	Miguel M. Abrahão		{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 A Casa, tells a simple story, but its great strength lies in the description passionate and accomplice of the characters. The theme of the play revolves around a seemingly bitter and cynical idea: a woman should become a prostitute, to sustain itself without effort. Josinalda, a lady of strict principles, maintains in his house with his meager salary, Liduina, your sister, Fredegund, your niece, and Creuzilene, your neighbor . Life is peaceful and marked by seemingly commons issues until, unexpectedly, a bandit enters the residence of distinguished ladies, making them hostages. The play then becomes a police comedy, and thus a fascinating intellectual game of cat and mouse, where not everything looks, like really is.
28738140	/m/0czcjll	The End Of My Addiction		2009	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Olivier Ameisen is a French Doctor practising in New York. He has a private Cardiology practice, a varied social life, and work that he loves doing. He is a gifted pianist with a loving girlfriend. There is no reason for him to drink to excess and no history of drinking in his family, but nonetheless he becomes an alcoholic. The book starts with an embarrassing blackout episode and being treated in an emergency room by one of his ex-students. Ameisen attempts many different ways to stop drinking. He attends hundreds of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, takes medication, goes to various expensive rehabs, and seeks the guidance of educated friends. For fear of harming patients, he quits practising and closes his business. Nothing that he tries works and he continues to relapse, regardless of the consequences. He starts to drink so much he is no longer aware if it night or day, and regularly ends up needing medical treatment for injuries sustained while drinking. He is eventually committed to hospital as a result of an intervention, and faces the loss of his New York medical licence, along with financial ruin caused by expensive stays in rehab and unemployment. Losing everything in New York, he returns home to France to live with his elderly mother. He keeps drinking and is committed to hospital again by his family. Olivier's mother dies and he begins to feel there is no chance of controlling his drinking. His girlfriend sends him an article about Baclofen. He begins experimenting with taking the drug, and finds this drug removes all his cravings for alcohol. The second part of the book details his attempts to get his findings fully researched and published, and ends with a call for more research. Despite his achievements, Ameisen relates how he has been plagued by feeling of insecurity and anxiety, and suffered panic attacks throughout his life.
28751700	/m/0czbdy_	Westwind	Ian Rankin	1990	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The Zephyr computer system monitors the progress of the United Kingdom's only spy satellite. When this system briefly goes offline, the book's main characters Hepton and Dreyfuss (the sole survivor of a space shuttle crash) have the only key to the enigma that must be solved if both men are to stay alive.
28755850	/m/0ddc4d4	Room	Emma Donoghue	2010	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel begins on the fifth birthday of Jack, who lives with his Ma in Room, a small enclosed space containing a small kitchen, a bathtub, a wardrobe, a bed and a TV set. Since it is all he has ever known, Jack likes living in Room and believes that it constitutes the real world, while everything he sees on TV is completely separate and not real. Jack and his Ma are "looked after" by Old Nick (so called for his satanic traits). He visits Room on most nights (via a door secured with an electric combination lock) to bring food and to go to bed with Ma while Jack sleeps in the wardrobe. Ma tries her best to keep Jack healthy via both physical and mental exercises, keeping a healthy diet, limiting TV watching time, and strict body and oral hygiene. She herself suffers from severe toothaches and has to take painkillers regularly. A week after Jack's birthday, Ma learns that Old Nick has been unemployed for six months. Combined with an incident in which Jack startles Old Nick during the night, causing him to behave violently towards Ma and cut the power in Room for several days, this prompts her to decide that maintaining the status quo is too dangerous. She tells Jack that much of what he sees on TV is part of the real world outside Room, which Jack finds conceptually hard to believe. Ma recalls how she was abducted from college at the age of 19, had another child before Jack (a baby girl), who died at birth because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, and how Old Nick broke Ma's wrist during an unsuccessful escape attempt. She decides that she and Jack have to escape as soon as possible, and that the only workable plan is to simulate Jack's death, that night she demands that Old Nick take Jack to a hospital, because he is "sick", Old Nick refuses, afraid that the boy will inform the authorities about Room, so he leaves, the next night, Ma wraps Jack in their rug, and she convinces Old Nick to dispose of the wrapped body in a remote location, and on the way there have Jack escape and alert the authorities. The plan is executed and works out okay. Jack jumps off the truck a few blocks away from "Room", but Old Nick hears him and chases him up the street, Jack runs to a man named Ajeet,and his dog Raja bites Jack on the finger, Then old Nick catches up to Jack and grabs him by the waist, Ajeet is afraid for Jack so he pretends to call the police, Old Nick releases Jack and runs to his truck and drives away. Then Ajeet really calls the police. The officers quickly realize the seriousness of the case and, despite communication problems, Jack manages to give them enough information to locate Room and free Ma. The two were taken to a mental hospital, where they get medical care and Ma is reunited with her family, not entirely without conflicts. It is revealed that since Ma's abduction, her parents are now divorced, and her older brother is married with a three year-old daughter. Old Nick is found and faces several charges of abduction, rape, and child-endangerment that will likely lead to twenty-five years to life in jail. Jack however, has problems coping with the suddenly much larger world and wants to return to Room. Meanwhile, the case has attracted much attention from the public and the mass media, making it even harder for Jack and his mother to start leading a normal life. After a television interview that ends badly, Ma suffers a mental breakdown and Jack lives with his grandmother for some days. During this time Jack becomes even more confused by his surroundings, including his new extended family. Being separated from Ma is hard on Jack, but he slowly starts to adjust to the many changes in his life. Eventually, Ma and Jack move into an Independent Living residence. Jack gets his own room, and comes to accept the drastic changes in young life. At Jack's request, they go on a last visit to Room where Jack says goodbye to the items that used to make up his world, ending the book on a happy note.
28758062	/m/0ddfp9z	The Daydreamer	Ian McEwan			 The book comprises seven interlinked stories about a young boy, Peter Fortune, whose daydreams place him into various fantastic situations: he discovers a cream that makes people vanish; transforms into a cat, a baby, a doll, and, in the last story, an adult. He is 10 years old at the start of the novel and 12 at the end.
28759407	/m/0ddhlcb	The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age	Simon Schama		{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 In his attempt to make a systematic overview of the Dutch Golden Age culture, Schama cites an eclectic list of period source materials from all over the world, including emblem books, period histories and novels, cookbooks, scientific discoveries, bankruptcy files, religious works, and period art including prints, paintings, sculpture, architecture and stained glass windows. He revisits Dutch Golden Age morals, from how they brought up their children, to how they mourned their dead. His conclusion is that through the continuous battle against the waters of the North Sea, the Dutch spirit can be summed up in the motto of Zeeland, scene of many floods from dike breaches, Luctor et Emergo, or I struggle and emerge. The book is easy to read and is more a group of separate essays than a cohesive unit, making it a good candidate for reading in short installments or as a quick reference for various aspects of the subject.
28771603	/m/0dd99mw	The House of Arden	E. Nesbit	1908	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Two impoverished children, Edred and Elfrida Arden, inherit the decrepit Arden Castle and search for the lost family fortune that will allow them to rebuild it. With the assistance of the magical Mouldiwarp, they travel back in time to earlier periods of English history, searching for clues.
28773934	/m/0ddhd1f	Love and Glory				 The protagonist tells of his days at an eastern college in the United States, where he falls in love with a girl but is unable to win her. He leaves school to become a writer, but drink and his frank comments lose him his day jobs before he can become a real writer. He spirals down, moving west, while drinking and taking ever-lower jobs. Along the way, he gets sent to Korea during the Korean War. Finally, he hits bottom, but with a mis-interpreted line from The Great Gatsby, his enduring love for his unrequited love, and the good luck of getting a job from someone, he is able to turn himself around. All the time, the one thing he has been able to hold onto is his collection of unsent letters to his love. After he has regained health and direction, he returns to the east to be near his love and to work his way to being a writer. He re-enters school and winds up getting his doctorate in English at the same time she does. Through his years of finishing his bachelor's, and getting his graduate degrees, he gets closer to her, eventually becoming more than a friend, and convincing her that she should divorce her successful husband, who is the head of the English Department, to marry the protagonist.
28789481	/m/0ddf_qm	The Stranger Next Door	Amélie Nothomb		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 There is a boy named Alex and his brother Clifford. Their family has to move away because a family member did something bad. They have to change everything to Birth sertificates to Social security numbers. Clifford is going to be a bad student in middle school.
28789487	/m/0ddg8t4	Cosmétique de l'ennemi	Amélie Nothomb		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "Without wanting to, I have committed the perfect crime: nobody saw me coming, except for the victim. The proof, I am still free." The whole story takes place at an airport's hall: Jérôme Angust, a man on a business trip, waits for a delayed flight. He meets another "cosmetic" man, Textor Texel, who becomes his executioner and keeps harassing him till the end, in a dialogue worthy of Hygiène de l'assassin.
28795979	/m/0ddgbfm	As Comadres	Miguel M. Abrahão	1978	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Beth Beast, feminist leader, reversing the prevailing values and seeking to take over and lead women around the country to assume a dominant position and autocratic before men, resolves to promote a congress in his home in order to educate the girls of the true status of women in society. The problem occurs when Amelia, submissive neighbor, decides to participate in discussions and carries with her husband Almeida, a typical macho incorrigible.
28798311	/m/0dddcwg	Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail	Jack L. Chalker	1983	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 He wakes up on the prison ship and realizes that "he" is a copy. He is in the body of a 13 year old boy named Tarin Bul, a boy who had killed the man who killed his father. The boy had his mind wiped and the Agent's mind placed in it. The ship is taking him to Medusa, the farthest out of the Diamond worlds, and the coldest. At the newcomer orientation, he learns that technology works just fine on Medusa, and due to the Warden powers, all people infected can adapt to the extreme cold automatically. It is not revealed to him that the adaptive ability is quite comprehensive, and with proper sensitization to the Wardens, one could become almost any life form. It is a totalitarian society, one headed by Talant Ypsir, who has helped perfect a system of complete surveillance of nearly all parts of the cities of the planets, overseen by The Monitor Service, who are the both the police and secret police. Given his age, he is hampered in his drive for social mobility, as it will be some years before he is old enough for any real job. He is paired with a girl and assigned a communal apartment unit. He achieves some degree of progress when The Monitor Service calls him in and it is proposed that he be an informer. TMS plans to give him a promotion that will put him in the position of being recruited by an underground group of revolutionaries who wish to overthrow the system, and who may be in league with other such groups on other Diamond worlds. "Tarin" agrees to do this, though his sympathies already lie with the revolutionaries, and he still intends to complete his mission of assassinating the Lord of Medusa. He is recruited, and quickly demonstrates to the cabal that he is a far better recruit than they had thought, given his genetically enhanced background and social training as an administrator and assassin. He then embarks on playing both sides, with the unwitting aid of the Major in TMS who recruited him who gives his girlfriend a mindprinter program that allows her to support Tarin no matter which side he is on. The revolutionists are eventually caught, and the Major is implied to have been arrested for perhaps not being loyal, and thus Tarin and his girlfriend must escape the city into the wild. They do so, accompanied by three other women, one who dies during the escape. Tarin and three remaining women find themselves alone in the frozen tundra, where they discover that their bodies have adapted quite well. Tarin speculates that if they can find "the Wild Ones", the people who left when the controls became to oppressive, they might have a pool of shape-shifting revolutionaries to draw upon so that he can still complete his mission. The Wild Ones eventually find them, and take them to a semi-religious meeting place of these nomads where they are introduced to the elders. These people have control of their Wardens and can shape-shift, and advise Tarin to go to a specific point on Medusa where people can directly detect the Warden consciousness. After a long trek with a group of pilgrims, Tarin manages to do so, and senses what feels like an enormous computer that notes him, but is unconcerned with him. It explains to him why there seems to be a form of planet worship on each of the Warden worlds. On the way back, creatures he believes to be the aliens kill off most of the group, and capture his girlfriend. Tarin sees that the aliens give the captured people to The Monitor Service, who take them to a city in a shuttle. Tarin shifts into a bird to fly after them. Reaching the city, he takes what he believes to be a brief nap, due to the exhausting flight. He awakes and using his shape shifting abilities tries to track his girlfriend down. He is caught, though, as he had actually slept a full day. He is taken up to a space station to await being mindwiped and transformed into a "Goodtime Girl", a sex slave for the amusement of the powerful. Once there, Tarin learns that Talant Ypsir knows he's a Confederacy Assassin, and plans to change Tarin into a special Goodtime Girl who is unusually sexy and developed, but whose mind will be that of a low-IQ sex slave programmed to submit to all of Talant's desires, and to protect him from any danger. The programmer who is to wipe Tarin's mind is not a loyal support of Talant's, though, and inserts a sub-program such that if Tarin, to be renamed "Ass", sees Talant Ypsir and his two immediate subordinates and successors at the same time, that "she" will go into overdrive and kill them all. At this point the story must shift to the Agent in the picket ship, who calls himself "Mr. Carroll", a Lewis Carroll reference as one of the planets of the Warden system is named "Momrath" with a moon named "Boojum" from Carroll's poem "The Hunting of the Snark". This is because the organic transmitter in Tarin Bul's head has been removed during his transformation. The Agent, Mr. Carroll, believes he now has enough information to know what the alien motives are, and what the Confederacy's likely response is to be. He submits his report to the Confederacy, in which he states his belief that the aliens, called the Altavar, are using the Warden worlds as incubators for their next generation of young, and that any threat to those worlds from the Confederacy would be viewed as genocide. He next arranges a meeting of the Four Lords, the Confederacy representatives and the Altavar, for purposes of working out a peaceable solution. The Confederacy offers to cede control of the Warden Diamond to the aliens, and to not approach the system at all. The Altavar surprise the Confederacy by rejecting this. The Altavar cite the Confederacy's - and humanity's - long standing history of only honoring treaties until they feel safe enough to destroy the other party. To this the Confederacy cannot deny, as it is to obviously true. The Altavar reluctantly offer a counter-proposal, one in which the Confederacy cease all its activities in space, and put every spaceship humanity has under the direct control of the Altavar for the next three centuries. This is rejected out of hand, and the Altavar are told that unless they accept the Confederacy's proposal, that one of the Warden worlds - Medusa - will be destroyed. This does not go over well with Talant Ypsir, who realizes that he will no longer be a Lord. A week is given to evacuate the planet's population to Charon. When the time runs out and the Confederacy attacks, a surprising thing happens. The planet, in the process of being destroyed, seems to shimmer, and a globe of an energy-like substance emerges and rushes at the fleet, destroying it. It turns out that there was a second alien race involved: the Coldah, who are planet-sized beings who enjoy merging with a planet and changing it into a human-habitable one for reasons known only to them. The Warden Organism is just a tool of theirs to do so. The Altavar were accidentally destroyed by the Coldah long ago, and after fighting it for centuries, gave up and became its assistants. The book closes with the knowledge that the Confederacy will now be collapsing due to the reprisals of the Altavar, but holds out hope when it is revealed that the humans on the Warden worlds have a symbiosis and rapport with the Coldah that the Altavar had never achieved. It is speculated that a future humanity may have all the powers of those on the Warden worlds, the ability to create and destroy by force of mind, adapt to anything, and swap bodies at will. The three copied agents are shown as being directed to the different points on their planets that will allow them to gain the most control over their Warden powers. And in the final scene, Mr. Carroll arranges a meeting with Talant Ypsir and Talant's two subordinates. When he tells "Ass" (his copy turned into a sexy female bodyguard) the names of the three, the subprogram psych command kicks in, and "she" kills all three of them. In the end then, even Tarin fulfilled his mission.
28804044	/m/0ddc4s5	Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife	Sam Savage		{"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Firmin, is a rat and the runt son of an alcoholic mother living in 1960s Boston, has been forced to survive on the pages of novels from the bookstore in which he dwells. At first everything holds the same taste, but in time Firmin begins to notice subtle changes between books, and eventually he learns to read.
28806378	/m/0dd9ssk	Out of the Dark	David Weber	2010-09-28	{"/m/0l13q": "Alien invasion"}	 The Galactic Hegemony, an alliance of assorted alien races, sent a research and survey group to Earth (designated as "KU-197-20") for assessment. The ship arrived in Earth's orbit in the 15th century, during the Hundred Years' War. The survey group observed the Battle of Agincourt between the English and French, and were horrified of humanity's feriocity and cruelty - being that war and violence rarely happened among the Hegemony. By the 2010s, the Hegemony has reviewed the survey on Earth and is instantly repulsed. Seeing as humans are similar to a recent species reluctantly admitted to their alliance, the carnivorous, wolf-like Shongairi, the pacifist Hegemony decides to send the Shongairi to see humanity's submission or extinction before humanity will reach the same level as the Shongairi, seeing that as the "lesser of two evils", rather than a second Shongair Empire. The Shongairi see value in the human race as slave soldiers and decide to conquer Earth and make humans their subjects. Once their expedition reaches Earth, they are surprised at humanity's advancement in only six hundred years, at six times the galactic norm. Fleet Commander Thikair orders his fleet to continue the conquest by hacking into human military computer systems and laying a series of Kinetic strikes on nearly every military installation, naval fleet, and major city on the planet with Kinetic Energy Weapons, wiping out half of the human population. Expecting that this attack has crippled the humans, the Shongairi land their forces, concentrating on Europe and North America. The expect humans to surrender immediately, since the Shongairi and other alien races have a natural "submission mechanism". However, the surviving remnants of humanity begin a massive guerrilla war against the Shongairi, who have never before fought an advanced race. For every successful human attack, the Shongairi retaliate with an orbital strike on the attackers or any nearby survivors to inflict submission. The conflict lasts over two months, during which nearly half the expedition's landing forces are killed, leading Shongairi xenoanthropologist Shairez discovers the reason the humans do not submit: they lacked the "submission mechanism", and their mindset (such as morality and altruism) evolved differently from any other known Hegemony species. Attempting to subjugate them would be the height of folly, as humanity - completely unable to forgive the Shongairi for what they had done to Earth - would undoubtedly feign surrender and subsequently betray them. As a result, Thikair decides to carry out the Hegemony's order to exterminate the humans by developing a targeted bioweapon specifically designed to wipe out all humans. Efforts of creating the bioweapon involve capturing humans and transporting them to "Ground Base Seven", located west of the Black Sea, and "Ground Base Two" in North Carolina, where the weapon is to be released. Yet, in the following weeks, several bases in Europe and North America are wiped out by unknown attackers who leave no sign except for their handiwork. Eventually, nearly every Shongairi base on Earth is destroyed, forcing Thikair to get his remaining forces off the planet and proceeding to outright destroy Earth from orbit. However, their dreadnoughts are immediately hijacked following the evacuation and destroy the rest of the fleet. Thikair is confronted by the hijackers, the same enemy that attacked the bases: vampires. The Shongairi commander is brought before their leader, Mircea Basarab, who is actually the immortal Vlad the Impaler, whom humans remember as Dracula. He and his kind have been hibernating and kept hidden before the Shongairi's arrival forced them to "protect" the people of Earth by creating more vampires and build an army to eliminate the Shongairi. With Shongairi ships now in the possession of humans and vampires, in a way the aliens' arrival has allowed humanity and their new allies to become exactly what the Hegemony had feared. The hijacked dreadnoughts are sent to each of the Shongairi worlds to destroy their Empire. Thikair is slain by one of the vampires, Stephen Buchevsky, whose human family was killed by the initial bombardment. Humanity now possesses Shongairi and Hegemony technology from the Shongairi industrial ships, and is fully united under the newly established Terran Empire, becoming a mighty adversary to the Hegemony.
28809465	/m/0dd9ptl	Embassytown	China Miéville	2011-05-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Embassytown takes place mostly in the title city, on the planet Arieka. Embassytown exists on the very edge of the "Manchmal" (from the German for "sometimes"), which is suspected to be the third iteration of the known universe, and which, given its distance from everything else, is only accessible by sailing through the "Immer" (from the German for "always"), a permanent universe with differing concepts of time and space. Avice Benner Cho is an "Immerser", a traveller on the Immer, who has returned to her childhood home from her adventures in the "Out". Arieka is a planet on which humans and "exots", a term for exotic extra-terrestrials, co-exist with the indigenous, enigmatic Ariekei — otherwise known as the Hosts. Few people can speak the language of the Hosts (which is referred to only as Language) as it requires the orator to speak two words at once; those who can are genetically-engineered linguist twins known as Ambassadors, bred solely for this purpose. The Ambassadors speak with two mouths and one mind and as such can be understood by the Ariekei, who do not recognise any other form of speech, allowing for trade in their valuable technology. Embassytown is a colony of a nation called Bremen; and these trade goods, along with Embassytown's unique position at the edge of the universe, mean that it is a colony of vital importance to them. The relationship between humans and Ariekei has proceeded in relative tranquillity for many years, however when a new Ambassador arrives, named , who has not been genetically engineered to speak Language, yet can still manage to, everything changes. The speech of the new, Bremen-engineered, Ambassador intoxicates the Hosts and results in the entire Ariekei population becoming addicted to the Ambassador's speech regardless of what is said, to the extent that they cannot live without it. * Avice Benner Cho — Embassytown native and Immerser, husband to Scile and lover of CalVin. * Scile — non-native linguist and husband to Avice; believes that Language should remain as it is regardless of the consequences. * (or CalVin) — Ambassador of high standing, lover of Avice Benner Cho. * (or MagDa) — head Ambassador. * (or EzRa) — new, Bremen engineered, Ambassador consisting of two non-identical people. Also known as the "God Drug". * Bren — ex-Ambassador still living in Embassytown and advisor to Avice, one half of the "cleaved" Ambassador BrenDan. * Ehrsul — an "autom" (from automaton), best friend of Avice. * Wyatt — Bremen's contact on Embassytown. * Hasser — a human "simile" used by the Ariekei as part of Language. Killer of . * (or Beehive) — the most successful Ariekei liar ever. Is murdered by Hasser during the Festival of Lies. * Spanish Dancer — an Ariekei with markings reminiscent of a Spanish dancer who is interested in the similes and a follower of . * YlSib (formerly ) — ex-Ambassador living in the Host city; Bren's contact.
28813637	/m/0dddrjl	Hygiene and the Assassin	Amélie Nothomb	1992	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The famous novelist Prétextat Tach is stricken by "Elzenveiverplatz syndrome" (an imaginary syndrome invented by the author), a cancer of the cartilage, and has only two more months to live. Almost immediately, many journalists rush to interview Tach for a scoop. However, after the first few interviews, the reader realizes that Tach is an obese and obnoxious misanthrope of the worst kind: acerbic, intolerant, a provocateur and a misogynist, who cannot tolerate any questions about his private life and has the audacity to turn the interviews into a cesspool of disgust for his interviewers. Thus, all the interviews fall short, until a relatively unknown journalist becomes the latest victim of the novelist. Unlike all the other journalists before, however, this journalist is a woman, so that the interview quickly takes the form of a confrontation between the journalist and the Nobel literature prize laureate. In a locked room full of mysteries, she will challenge the odious misogyny of Tach and, as the questions and answers wear on, confront Tach with the demons of his former life.
28814472	/m/0ddbjd9	Art and Crime				 Art crime has received relatively little scholarly attention. And yet it involves a multi-billion dollar legitimate industry, with a conservatively-estimated $6 billion annual criminal profit. (US Department of Justice website) Information and scholarly analysis of art crime is critical to the wide variety of fields involved in the art trade and art preservation, from museums to academia, from auction houses to galleries, from insurance to art law, from policing to security. Since the Second World War, art crime has evolved from a relatively innocuous crime, into the third highest-grossing annual criminal trade worldwide, run primarily by organized crime syndicates, and therefore funding their other enterprises, from the drug and arms trades to terrorism. It is no longer merely the art that is at stake. The book is an interdisciplinary essay collection on the study of art crime, and its effect on all aspects of the art world. Essayists discuss art crime subcategories, including vandalism, iconoclasm, forgery, fraud, peace-time theft, war looting, archaeological looting, smuggling, submarine looting, and ransom. The contributors conclude their analyses with specific practical suggestions to implement in the future.
28824609	/m/0dddmg2	Sun Horse, Moon Horse	Rosemary Sutcliff	1977	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story revolves around Lubrin Dhu, a younger son of the chieftain, who takes after the Little Dark People who predated the Celtic settlers of the Iceni tribe; and whose name "Dhu" is related to Gaelic "Dubh", reflecting his darker appearance. Much is made of cultural differences between the reigning Celts, who are associated with fair hair and skin, and the original Chthonic Little Dark People, who are associated with darker complexions and a closeness with the earth. This cultural contrast again comes to fore when the Iceni, being associated with the moon, are subjugated by the Attribates, who are associated with the Sun. Lubrin Dhu's upbringing allows the reader to witness the culture of his people, from a somewhat "outside" point of view, as he is considered different to his people, on account of his darker color, reserved personality, and attraction to art. His people are matrilineal, with leadership going to the husband of Lubrin's sister. His father's status as chieftain derives from being married to the "woman of the tribe", and is intertwined with his duty to lay down his life for the tribe if needed, a duty which later descends to Lubrin Dhu. After their tribe is vanquished by the Attribates and their Strong Place occupied, Lubrin Dhu finds himself nominal leader of the survivors, his father and older brothers having been killed in battle. He strikes a bargain with the conquering chieftain, who will free Lubrin's people after completion of a monumental horse carved from the hillside. This figure becomes the Uffington White Horse. The novel's title reflects how the horse connects both the Solar attributes of the Attribates and the Lunar attributes of the Iceni, being considered an invocation to Epona. Lubrin Dhu ultimately voluntarily sacrifices himself for the consecration of the horse, fulfilling his duty as a chieftain's son, and offering a depiction of possible Celtic blood sacrifice. The theme of the novel revolves around conflicting cultures, and the duties assumed and performed by individuals within those cultures. The duties of a king are shown in many of her novels, including Sword at Sunset and The Mark of the Horse Lord, and have been credited as being influenced by James Frazer's The Golden Bough.
28826019	/m/0ddh91q	The Dark Volume	Gordon Dahlquist	2007	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The novel follows the ongoing adventures of the three protagonists of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters and is set in what appears to be an alternative Victorian past in a series of alternative Baltic or Teutonic states. The story began as a sequel to Dahlquist's earlier, complex fantasy novel, but eventually develops into a much larger work.
28826248	/m/0ddbcwl	The Book of Proper Names	Amélie Nothomb	2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In a vaguely surreal story, an extraordinary little girl is born from strange circumstances - her mother murdered her father, gave birth in prison, and then hanged herself. Plectrude, as the girl is unfortunately named by her mother, is adopted by her aunt and lives a fairy-like existence until she enrolled into the Paris Opera Ballet School, a rigorous institution portrayed as a "scalpel to slice away the last flesh of childhood." fr:Robert des noms propres nl:Robert des noms propres
28826251	/m/0ddch74	Loving Sabotage	Amélie Nothomb	1993	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Based on the author's experiences as the daughter of diplomats stationed in Beijing from 1972 to 1975, Loving Sabotage follows the seven-year old narrator living in communist China along with the numerous unsupervised children of various nationalities spend their time fashioning an elaborate and ruthless game of war, designating the East German contingent as the enemy. Among these children is the indifferent Elena, who the narrator quickly becomes completely infatuated with and goes to great lengths to win her adoration. fr:Le Sabotage amoureux it:Sabotaggio d'amore nl:Le Sabotage amoureux ro:Sabotaj din iubire
28826710	/m/0dd9b2y	A Man Could Stand Up --	Ford Madox Ford	1926		 A Man Could Stand Up — is the climax of the series, though it is volume 3. It opens on Armistice Day, in Valentine Wannop’s school, and the three chapters which make up the first Part are punctuated by fireworks exploding and the celebrations taking place in the surrounding streets. Valentine is on the telephone, having been called away from her duties as a physical instructress. It is around 11 a.m., and the excessive background noise means she cannot hear who it is on the phone. It eventually transpires that Edith Ethel Duchemin (now Lady Macmaster) is informing her that Christopher Tietjens is in London once more and in need of help. It is a tortuous conversation. Edith Ethel is malicious, and has managed to link Valentine’s name compromisingly with Tietjens’ in an earlier part of her conversation – which she had with her headmistress. By the end of this call, and the other conversation in Part I (between Valentine and the Head) we have been reminded of significant events from Some Do Not . . ., as well as of the characters of those involved. Valentine has also reflected on her place in what is now the after-war world, and decided that if he still wants her she will attach herself, for good or ill, to Christopher, whom she loves. Part II shifts time and place dramatically, returning us to the front on a morning in April, 1918. Tietjens is enjoying a brief period of calm, and a conversation with his sergeant, but soon, the noises of war begin. The bombardments which take place in this novel are perhaps less bloody and desperate than in No More Parades, though Tietjens does remember at one point the terrible death of O9 Morgan. Up to and even including the final explosive scene, with one notable exception, Tietjens’ emotional and psychological responses under fire are also subject to a greater sense of an evolving character. Ford, against the background of high tension, is carefully setting out the ways in which his hero will change. From the start of Part II the process is in train which culminates in Tietjens’ own declaration as to his place in the post-war world: he will retreat from his professional and personal encumbrances in order to live with Valentine and sell antiques to make a living. Part III of A Man Could Stand Up — begins as Valentine comes to Gray’s Inn in order to meet Christopher. Mrs Wannop, Valentine’s mother, and wife of Christopher’s father’s oldest friend, finds out, and seeks to prevent them becoming lovers. She telephones them, appealing to them both in different, highly manipulative, ways. While she talks to Tietjens, Valentine begins to learn about his war experiences as men from his unit arrive, honouring their promises to look him up; Tietjens, meanwhile, has confessed something of his continuing psychological and emotional terrors to Mrs Wannop. The drunken celebration and dance which ensues contains within it all the tensions of the inter-relationships between the men, as well as their combined experiences. Valentine finds herself thinking of Sylvia Tietjens more than once. The energy of the dance is compelling, and, a microcosm of Armistice Day, it draws volume 3 of Parade's End to a close.
28828819	/m/0dddztw	Conan the Great	Leonard Carpenter		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After a victorious war against the invading armies of Nemedia and Ophir, King Conan of Aquilonia rescues from the battlefield the dwarf Delvyn, jester to the enemy kings. Delvyn, however, is not the fool he appears, but the secret driving force behind the invasion. The ambitious devotee of an evil demon, he seeks a king powerful enough to spread its worship throughout the world. In the wake of his former patrons' failure to conquer Aquilonia, he believes his new employer both strong enough to unite the Hyborian nations and pliant enough to establish his universal cult. Skillfully insinuating himself into the king's confidence, the scheming jester plays on Conan's concerns over the resurgent strength of the kingdom of Koth under its new ruler, the mysterious, amoral and ruthless Prince Armiro. In a contest for empry, Aquilonia extends its conquests to the east while Koth drives west, crushing the realms between them as they approach their inevitable clash. The king is estranged from former friends and supporters and dependant on his new hanger-on as Delvyn feeds Conan's vainglory. Only the revelation that Armiro is his own son by his former lover, Queen Yasmala of Khoraja, stops Conan at the brink and spurs him to shake the jester's baleful influence.
28832041	/m/0dd9dw7	Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer	John Grisham	2010	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Strattenburg's biggest criminal trial in a while drew a lot of attention, and the township largely suspected the defendant was guilty. He was charged with murdering his wife, but the lack of direct evidence created a problem for the prosecutor. Indeed, it seemed almost the perfect murder. Things were going so well for Pete Duffy, the defendant, that he was almost confident of acquittal. The protagonist is the last chance for the prosecution to salvage their case and get the conviction. Theodore Boone grew up an only child with two lawyers as parents. The husband and wife team make up the firm of Boone & Boone and have raised Theodore, who is extremely law sexyy and good with people, and who knows most of the legal sector in the town. He is on speaking-terms with the criminal judge and has a reputation amongst his classmates for solving day-to-day legal problems, like rescuing a dog from the pound via Animal Court
28832101	/m/0ddbf6n	The Very Bad Book	Andy Griffiths	2010-08-31	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Much like its predecessor, The Bad Book, which turned standard children's fairy tales and nursery rhymes on their head by rewriting them as the "bad" version, this book contains a number of tales that are "very bad". The characters are very bad, the illustrations are very bad, and the poems and jokes are all very bad, all with the aim of delighting the children (and their parents) who will read this book. There are 51 stories, poems, jokes, etc. in all.
28834025	/m/0ddbry6	How the Hangman Lost His Heart				 Alice Towneley's beloved uncle, Colonel Frank Towneley, has just been executed by Dan Skinslicer for supporting Prince Bonnie Charlie during the Second Jacobite Rebellion. After the drawing and quartering, Dan expresses his sympathy towards Alice and remarks that Frank was the first condemned to have his eyes wide open during his execution.
28841622	/m/0dd9g8b	The House on Falling Star Hill				 The novel's protagonist is Tim, a boy, who befriends a girl (Sarre) from another world. The two travel to a fantastic kingdom where an evil duke is plotting malevolence and where huge birds, used as transport, are menaced by disease spores. With the help of a group of roving merchants and minstrels, and a warrior, the children save the kingdom.
28849010	/m/07w_kl	Memoirs of an Invisible Man		1987	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nicholas Halloway is a 34-year-old Manhattan securities analyst who writes a narrative memoir (presumably this book) of his life starting on the day of an accident which renders him invisible. He recounts his involvement in a romantic affair with Anne Epstein, a woman who has taken interest in his aptitude for business and is a reporter for the Times. He escorts her to MicroMagnetics where scientists are holding a press conference for research on the magnetic containment of a nuclear process. While there, Nick sees a group of Marxist student protesters who demonstrate nuclear catastrophe by attempting to explode a cat. To get everyone away from the MicroMagnetics presentation, they cut off power to the laboratory where nuclear equipment is operating. The control computers lose function and in a flash of eerie light, everything in a fifty-foot radius becomes invisible, including Nick. Nick later wakes up in astonishment concluding that his limbs were blown off, that he became a ghost, and finally that he became invisible. Military personnel quickly set up fences and camps around the site and they soon discover Nick's presence. They lose his trust by bringing a net and he overhears that they plan to give him to scientists and enlist him for military espionage, while disregarding his personal liberty for national security. He decides to loot miscellaneous invisible items, shoot the leg and waist of a captor, and set fire to the building in the process of escaping. He goes back to his apartment and discovers that food becomes invisible after being digested over a long time. He can remain invisible for the rest of his life and must surmount obstacles of invisibility that wouldn't affect a visible person, for instance, driving, working, sheltering, etc. While avoiding government agents, he arranges a fake paper identity and authorizes funds to make himself a millionaire while ending up in the care of Alice Monroe, a red-blonde woman in her late twenties.
28857861	/m/0dd8x4s	The Color of Crime		1998		 The Color of Crime provides an overview of race, crime, and law, beginning with a discussion of slavery. Russell-Brown writes that crime and young black men have become synonymous in the American mind, giving rise to the "criminalblackman" stereotype. The book popularised the term "racial hoax", which Russell-Brown defines as occurring when someone fabricates a crime and blames it on another person because of their race or when an actual crime has been committed and the perpetrator falsely blames someone because of their race. It gives the cases of Susan Smith, Jesse Anderson, and Charles Stuart as examples of racial hoaxes. She proposes six principles to achieve fairness in the criminal justice system: # Criminal penalties apply to everyone, regardless of the race of the offender. # Criminal penalties apply to everyone, regardless of the race of the victim. # The race of the offender is not relevant in determining whether his actions constitute a crime. The offender's actions would have been considered criminal, even if he were another race. # The race of the victim is not relevant in determining whether the offender's action constitutes a crime. # The offender's racial pedigree (e.g., "degree of Blackness") is not used to determine punishment. # There are checks and balances that mitigate against racial bias within the legal system.
28860707	/m/0ddcx_c	Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London	Keith Mansfield	2008-07-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Set in the early 21st century, the book opens with Johnny Mackintosh living in a children's home (Ben Halader House) located in the fictional Castle Dudbury New Town in the county of Essex, United Kingdom. He has written a SETI-style program for the children's home's computers and, at the beginning of the book, an alien signal is detected. As the book develops Johnny Mackintosh is abducted by aliens and travels to the centre of the Galaxy, before returning to Earth, but in the distant past. He witnesses the extinction of the dinosaurs and the destruction of Atlantis, before returning to the present day and discovering the truth about his parents. The Spirit of London of the title is the name of the spaceship acquired by Johnny Mackintosh during the course of the book. From the outside it appears identical to the skyscraper situated at 30 St Mary Axe in London, known as 'the Gherkin'.
28877539	/m/0ddcdtc	The Cobra	Frederick Forsyth	2010	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Paul Deveraux, who previously appeared in the Forsyth novel Avenger, is tasked by the U.S. president to end the international cocaine trade. He recruits lawyer Cal Dexter, the main character in Avenger, to help him with this task. Together they set up a joint Anglo-American task force operating from 2 converted grain carriers to intercept cocaine shipments, destroy the ships and to detain the crews on a remote island. Both teams have access to a UAV that provides them with target information and other intelligence. Dexter also recruits a Blackburn Buccaneer pilot to shoot down the cartel's cocaine-carrying airplanes. When the actions of both task forces and the pilot lead to major international cocaine shortages, Deveraux starts a misinformation campaign aimed at turning the international drug cartels against each other. Since this leads to out-of-hand gang wars with innocent bystanders getting killed, Deveraux is eventually asked by the White House to stop all operations. Dissatisfied by the White House decision, Deveraux cuts a deal with a drug lord promising him the cocaine captured by the task forces. He tells Dexter the location of the captured cocaine and tells him to destroy it. However, it turns out to be fake and Cal Dexter finds out about this and has the Buccaneer pilot destroy the cocaine-carrying ship before it reaches its destination. In the epilogue, Deveraux's assassinated body is discovered. He has been shot for not keeping his promise with Don Diego Esteban and for messing with him.
28881885	/m/0dd9t93	Zendegi	Greg Egan		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Martin Seymour is an Australian news correspondent in Iran covering the 2012 Iranian parliamentary elections. The elections turn out to be a sham as many of the opposition candidates are banned, but Martin remains in Iran to cover the post election protests. Unrest escalates and the authorities are forced to hold free elections. Nasim Golestani is an Iranian computer scientist living in exile in the United States following the execution of her father by VEVAK, the Iranian secret police. She works at MIT on the Human Connectome Project (HCP), which is attempting to produce a neural map of the human brain. She develops computer software that simulates Zebra Finch song production by using thousands of finch brain scans. But when Congress turns down funding for the project, Nasim returns to Iran to help rebuild her country. The story moves to a democratized Iran in 2027. Martin lives in Tehran with Mahnoosh, an Iranian political activist he married, and their six-year-old son, Javeed. Nasim heads a company in Tehran that has developed Zendegi-ye Behtar, an online multi-player virtual reality (VR) gaming platform. Zendegi uses cloud computing to run its operations across several countries. But Zendegi has to compete with several other VR providers, and Nasim looks for something new to add to Zendegi to give it an edge. Nasim learns that HCP finally took off in the US and has published its first draft brain map based on thousands of brain scans of human organ donors. She discovers that her contributions were not used by the project – HCP's goals were aimed at helping neurologists diagnose pathologies, whereas her goal was to simulate the brain. Nasim decides to continue what she had started on HCP using the project's publically available brain scans. Her goal is to improve the realism of Zendegi's proxies, computer-generated people that flesh-out the VR's landscape. She takes this a step further and starts taking MRI brain scans of living people. Nasim's first breakthrough comes with Virtual Azimi, a proxy she creates by scanning Ashkan Azimi, Iran's national football team captain, to record his motor skills while he replays games in his head. Virtual Azimi enables football fans to play games with Azimi's proxy, and it is a huge success, boosting Zendegi's popularity. Javeed loves Zendegi and Martin often takes him to local gaming booths where together they participate in role-playing games. One day Mahnoosh is killed in a car accident, and Martin has to raise Javeed on his own. Then Martin discovers he has terminal cancer, and concerned that Javeed will grow up without a father, he contacts Nasim and asks her to create a Virtual Martin that Javeed can communicate with in Zendegi. Nasim conducts MRI scans on Martin while prompting him with images and memories. But Zendegi comes under fire from religious fanatics. Iranian clerics denounce Virtual Azimi as "an afront to God and human dignity". It is also criticized by the Cis-Humanist League (CHL), a human rights group who object to enslaved proxies, saying that "it's unethical to create conscious software that lacks the ability to control its own destiny". Nasim continues developing Virtual Martin in secret. While she knows that Virtual Azimi has no consciousnesses, she's not sure what Martin's proxy is turning into. Meanwhile Martin's health is deteriorating and she sets up a VR session for him to evaluate the current state of his proxy. Martin enters Zendegi using Javeed's avatar, making Virtual Martin think he is taking to his son, but the proxy overreacts to Javeed's (Martin's) behaviour and this upsets Martin. After Martin dies, Nasim has second thoughts about what she is doing. The Virtual Martin she has created from fragments of Martin's brain is far from human. She releases that CHL are right: to upload a complete person into VR to achieve immortality is a noble goal, but "to squeeze some abridged, mutilated person through the first available aperture [i]s not". :"If you want to make it human, make it whole." — Zendegis closing statement.
28902732	/m/0ddgzzs	The Crucible of Time	John Brunner			 The novel deals with the efforts of an alien species to escape their homeworld, whose system is passing through a cloud of interstellar debris, resulting in a high rate of in-falling matter. The species' unique biology and their biological technology complicate matters.
28911950	/m/063k9tw	Soulless	Gail Carriger	2009-09-30	{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/03p5xs": "Comedy of manners", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Soulless is set in an alternate history version of Victorian England where werewolves and vampires are accepted as functioning members of society. Alexia Tarabotti is a woman with several critical problems: she is still searching for a husband, her late Italian father complicates her social standing in a rigid class system, and she has no soul. The fact that she is "soulless" leaves her unaffected by the powers of supernatural beings which only further complicates her life when she accidentally kills a vampire that had attacked her. Queen Victoria sends an investigator, Lord Maccon, who is himself a werewolf. As disappearances in the vampire population of London's high society increase, Alexia becomes the prime suspect. She must solve the mystery, all while maintaining proper decorum and a delicate social balance.
28912721	/m/063k9vb	Changeless	Gail Carriger	2010-03	{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Changeless is set in an alternate history version of Victorian England where werewolves and vampires are accepted as functioning members of society. Alexia Tarabotti still has no soul but she does now have a husband. Now known as Lady Maccon, Alexia finds her werewolf husband in distress. His sudden disappearance entangles her with a regiment of supernatural soldiers, a group of exorcised ghosts, and Queen Victoria herself. Alexia uses her sharp tongue, keen mind, and her trusty parasol in her effort to solve the problems put before her and to locate Lord Maccon. Her search takes her to Scotland and a werewolf pack where the fact that she is "soulless", and thus unaffected by the powers of supernatural beings, can make all the difference. *2010, USA, Orbit Books ISBN 0-316-07414-4, Pub date 1 April 2010, Paperback *2010, UK, Orbit Books ISBN 1-84149-974-9, Pub date 2 September 2010, Paperback *2011, Germany, Blanvalet ISBN 978-3-442-37650-6, Pub date 18 July 2011, Paperback (in German as Brennende Finsternis ("Burning Darkness") translated by Anita Nirschl) The author's official website also lists a French language edition by Orbit France/Calmann Levy, a Spanish language edition to be released by Versátil, plus an Italian language edition by Baldini & Castoldi, all with "unknown" upcoming publication dates. In November 2010, the author announced that Proszynski will publish the novel in Poland and Hayakawa will publish it in Japan, neither with announced publication dates. The original US cover for the novel was designed by Lauren Panepinto, Creative Director for Orbit Books and Yen Press. The model portraying heroine Alexia Tarabotti on the US cover is actress Donna Ricci. The original photograph of Ricci for this cover was taken by Derek Caballero.
28915734	/m/0dgsmpk	Monastery Among the Temple Trees			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is about Rahula, a Buddhist monk. Novels depict how Rev. Rahula exists in today's tumultuous society. While he gets free from all the worldly desires, he manages to make free the others who have highly involved with them. Eventually people who went against Rev. Rahula become more mature minded and mentally advanced individuals.
28916471	/m/0dgrr_s	In an Antique Land				 The book contains two narratives. The first, an anthropological narrative, revolves around two visits made by Ghosh to two villages in the Nile Delta, while he was writing his doctoral dissertation (1980–81) and again a few years later (1988). In the second narrative, presented parallel to the first one in the book, Ghosh constructs a fictionalized history of a 12th century Jewish merchant, Abraham Ben Yiju, and his slaves Ashu and Bomma, using documents from the Cairo Geniza.
28924652	/m/0dgq1_q	Blameless	Gail Carriger	2010-09-01	{"/m/035qb4": "Historical fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Blending steampunk with urban fantasy, Blameless is set in an alternate history version of Victorian England where vampires and werewolves are welcomed as members of society, often in the upper class. Alexia Tarabotti, the Lady Maccon, leaves her werewolf husband Lord Maccon and moves back in with her family, only to find herself at the center of a scandal when it is discovered that she is pregnant: werewolves are not considered capable of fathering children, and therefore she must be an adulterer. She is dismissed from the Shadow Council by Queen Victoria and her social support structures disintegrate. Meanwhile, the vampire community of London has turned against her. While her estranged husband increasingly turns to drinking to ease his pain, Alexia leaves England for Italy, the birthplace of her late father, to seek out the Templars for answers. Because she is "soulless", and so unaffected by the abilities of supernatural beings, her journey to the truth is more complicated than even she can imagine. *2010, USA, Orbit Books ISBN 0-316-07415-2, Pub date 1 September 2010, Paperback *2010, UK, Orbit Books ISBN 1-84149-973-0, Pub date 2 September 2010, Paperback *2011, Germany, Blanvalet ISBN 978-3-442-37651-3, Pub date 19 September 2011, Paperback (in German as Entflammte Nacht ("Ignited Night") translated by Anita Nirschl) The author's official website also lists an Italian language edition by Baldini & Castoldi, plus a Spanish language edition to be released by Versátil. Each of these translated editions are listed with "unknown" upcoming publication dates. In November 2010, the author announced that Proszynski will publish the novel in Poland but with no announced publication date. The original US cover for the novel was designed by Lauren Panepinto, Creative Director for Orbit Books and Yen Press. The model portraying heroine Alexia Tarabotti on the US and UK covers is actress Donna Ricci. The original photograph of Ricci for this cover was taken by Tiny Dragon Productions.
28925261	/m/0dgrwzj	Heartless	Gail Carriger	2011-06-28	{"/m/06www": "Steampunk", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Blending steampunk with urban fantasy, Heartless is set in an alternate history version of Victorian England where vampires and werewolves are welcomed as members of society, often in the upper class. The protagonist of the novel is Alexia Tarabotti, the Lady Maccon, who is "soulless", and thus unaffected by the powers of supernatural beings. The author has stated in interviews that while Changeless and Blameless, the second and third books in the series, were closely linked, Heartless will be more independent, in the manner of Soulless, the series' first entry. *2011, USA, Orbit Books ISBN 0-316-12719-1, Pub date 28 June 2011, Paperback *2011, UK, Orbit Books ISBN 0-356-50009-8, Pub date 7 July 2011, Paperback On September 22, 2010, the author reported that the manuscript was "99% complete" and that the final draft of the novel was due to the publisher on November 1, 2010. Publisher Orbit Books released the book's cover on February 1, 2011, and a revised version in late March 2011. As with the first three novels in the series, this cover was designed by Lauren Panepinto and the model on the cover is Donna Ricci. The original photographs of Ricci for this cover were taken by Pixie Vision Productions. While the author's official website also lists German, Italian, Spanish, and other translated editions of the first three novels in the series to be released in the near future, no publication dates have yet been announced for any non-English language editions of Heartless.
28928563	/m/0dgrw_6	Through the Valley	Robert Henriques	1950		 In the first scene, set around a major hunt, Miss May one of the servants at the park, is seduced by Frank the footman. Subsequently they marry. Frank becomes a taxi driver, and his gradual rise in the world mirrors the decline of the estate. That same night the three boys go clambering over the roof of Neapcaster Park. David falls, and it appears to be Ralph's fault. The friction between David and Ralph runs through the novel. Another major character is Alex, a distant relative. She grows up abroad and only comes into the story in the second part. She marries Ralph but loves Geoff and in the end they are united.
28939531	/m/0dgrn_7	Outcast	Rosemary Sutcliff	1955	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is about a boy named Beric, who is raised amongst the Dumnonii. After coming of age, his status within their culture comes under pressure, shown in a conflict between the acceptance of the village Bard and the condemnation on religious grounds by the village Druid. After a bad harvest is linked to his presence, the superstitious views of the Druid win-out, and Beric is exiled from the tribe. He journeys to Isca Dumnoniorum, where he falls afoul of a Greek slave trader, who tricks Beric and takes him as a slave. He us ultimately purchased by Publius Pio, a Roman Magistrate, and becomes part of Pio's patrician household on the Viminal Hill. Beric antagonizes Glaucus, son of Publius Pio, embarrassing Glaucus at a dinner celebrating Pio's election to the office of Aedile. This scene is witnessed by Centurion Justinius, and results in Beric being condemned to work in the salt mines, a certain slow and painful death. Beric makes his escape from Pio's household, hiding in a disused temple of Sylvan Pan, and making his way north on the Via Flaminia, hoping to walk back to Britain. He is caught in the Roman countryside, condemned as a bandit, and sentenced to live out his life as a galley slave. He works in the Rhenus Fleet, stationed in Colonia Agrippina, living many years on the galley 'Alcestis'. His galley is eventually sent to Britain, surviving a great storm, during which Beric is thrown overboard for dead. Beric washes ashore for the second time in his life, this time to be rescued by the Roman British household of the centurion Justinius, who had returned to his duty station after his leave in Rome. Beric now joins in the work on the Rhee Wall of Romney Marsh, where the Romans led by Justinius are working reclaim land from the sea. The progress of the Rhee Wall and the lives of the workers are threatened by a great storm, during which Beric bonds with his new comrades, and after which he concludes that he has finally found a place and a people where he belongs. Like in many Sutcliff novels, the theme of Outcast revolves around Beric's struggle to find belonging as he is caught in various degrees of acceptance and descrimination by the various societies through which he travels. Also like in many Sutcliff novels, Outcast strongly features the celtic native hound, with Beric's progress being paralleled by renouncing his native dog in the beginning of the novel, later adopting a mixed-breed dog near the Roman camp by the Rhee wall, and ultimately having his break-through moment of feeling accepted when the second dog drops her newborn pup on his feet. Richard Kennedy's cover art is in color, while the illustrations within the novel are black and white charcoal drawings.
28940217	/m/0dgqx10	Fifty Years a Hunter and Trapper	Eldred Nathaniel Woodcock		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 One of Harding's Pleasure & Profit Books. A collection of real life outdoor stories based on the experiences of the author, Eldred Nathaniel Woodcock. Writing from memory, Mr. Woodcock tells of incidents that happened during the fifty years (1855–1905) he spent camping, hunting, trapping and fishing in the wilderness of Northern Pennsylvania and several other states. Most of E. N. Woodcock's stories feature an interesting partner (who he sometimes refers to as "Pard"), and other local people who lived in the Potter County, Pennsylvania area. Many of the wild places where he made his camps are now State Parks and Forests. E. N. Woodcock tells his stories in plain language, about deer and bear hunting; trapping bear, wild cat, fox, marten, mink and muskrat; run-ins with porcupines and skunks; mishaps that happened to himself and his partners; and the everyday occurrences of camp life. He gives his opinion of state game laws and bounties, and his views on the need for conservation. The book also includes practical information on building cabins, camp fires and cooking, staying warm, finding bee hives, trap sets, building deadfalls, using baits, skinning, stretching and drying fur, tracking game, and types of guns and ammunition.
28946552	/m/0dgqzw_	Urban Reader				 Almost everybody will give a unique explanation of what urban means to him or her. The first book centers around the terminology and perception of the word urban and dismisses established definitions. Instead of researching urbanity in cities and towns, the makers set out to find the real people that furnish urbanity - arguing that rural people portray urbanity at its best and that the countryside might reflect urban lifestyle clearer than any metropolis. In conclusion, the first issue remarks that ironically the word urban has fallen victim to urban myths, leading to the title Urban – The Biggest Urban Myth
28952123	/m/0dgntn1	The Toff on the Farm	John Creasey	1958		 Monty Morne, an old friend of Richard Rollison, tries to persuade The Toff to buy a farm from some friends of his, brother and sister Alan and Gillian Selby. But on arriving at Selby Farm, they discover that Alan Selby has been kidnapped and Gillian has been made offers for the farm that are much more than it is worth. Rollison is drawn into the mystery when one of the bidders and his accomplice are found murdered, with the other bidder, William 'Tex' Brandt, suspected of the crimes. The Toff has to discover the secret of Selby Farm and why rival bidders are seemingly prepared to kill for it, despite the presence of a sitting tenant who refuses to leave.
28959603	/m/0dgr2tf	The Cambridge Quintet		1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book describes a fictitious dinner party hosted by C.P. Snow at a Cambridge University college in 1949. During the dinner party Snow and his guests discuss the limits of machines trying to simulate human thinking. Snow's guests are Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger, J.B.S. Haldane and Alan Turing.
28960647	/m/0dgpf28	The Sleeping Beauty	Mercedes Lackey		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Lily, who is half fae, is the godmother to the Kingdom of Eltaria, which is quite wealthy due to the number of mines it has. However, this means that the surrounding kingdoms wish to take it over, and so Eltaria is either at war or preparing for it much of the time. Therefore, that makes overseeing the kingdom a full-time job for Godmother Lily. However, she has mastered the ability to travel via mirrors to make things easier, which Godmother Aleksia was desirous was find out in the previous book, The Snow Queen After Queen Celeste dies, Lily takes on the appearance of an evil sorceress,with the name 'Sable', and marries King Thurman, in name only, so that he won't be trapped into marrying a real evil sorceress and Princess Rosamund won't have a real wicked stepmother. However, this doesn't stop the Tradition from focusing on Eltaria, particularly on Rosa, who ends up with two Traditional paths tangled up and directed at her, that of the Beauty Asleep and Snowskin (Snow White). While her outer appearance is that of a Sleeping Beauty, she ends up being attacked by the Huntsman and in her escape, is captured by seven dwarves. However, unlike the ones in the Traditional tale, these dwarves are renegade ones, who shackle a chain about her ankle and turn her into their virtual slave. Godmother Lily, through the help of her mirror servant Jimson, locates Rosa, and donning the disguise of an old bee-woman named Maggie, goes to help the Princess. Since there is no way to remove the chain from Rosa short of cutting her foot off or having the dwarves do it, Lily reveals herself and gives Rosa a potion that will simulate death. Meanwhile, Prince Siegfried of the Kingdom of Drachenthal, which really isn't a proper kingdom and is composed of warrior clans with gods that often sire children with mortals, arrives in Eltaria, with his companion, a Wise Bird. He is a Hero, but unlike most from his land, he is intelligent and listens to the good advice of the Bird. He is also trying to avoid his Doom, since it involves waking up a sleeping shieldwoman demigoddess(who also happens to be his aunt) in the middle of a ring of fire, and eventually leading to him getting stabbed in the back and other wretched things happening. Seigfried comes across Rosa just as Godmother Lily is in the middle of doing the spell that will wake her, and plans to wake Rosa, hoping that it will be enough to satisfy the Tradition without actually fulfilling all aspects of his fated path. At the same time, another prince, Leopold of Falkenreid, who was kicked out by his father for being too popular and therefore overshadowing his older brother and Heir, also comes along and spots Rosa. The two princes get into a minor fight over who will kiss Rosa awake, in which time Lily manages to complete the spell right before Leopold wins and tries to kiss Rosa. Understandably, Godmother Lily is quite angry with the two princes, for they could have ruined everything, but lets them come to the palace with her and Rosa, since they could be useful to have around. Once Rosa has recovered from her ordeal, she starts Godmother training, partly so that it won't be so boring having to be confined with her 'stepmother' all the time. Unfortunately, King Thurmand dies shortly after, leaving "Queen Sable" to be Regent until Rosa turns of age at twenty-one and can actually rule. This means that their enemies will descend on Eltaria, intent on taking over, unless measures can be taken to prevent it. Godmother Lily, however, comes with a plan, and it is this: for one hundred princes to come and take part in trials to see which one of them will win the hand of the princess. Adventurers are also allowed to take part, however, they are not housed at the castle like the princes. Seigfried and Leopold, naturally, decide to stay and take part in the trials, and they strike a bargain to help each other through the trials until the last task. The first trial consists of a race on horseback, in full armor, with a break in the middle to herd three sheep into a pen (either doing it yourself, with or without magic, or hiring a shepherd) and line up a dozen eggs without breaking them. Seigfried, who has tasted dragon's blood and so understands the speech of animals, finds out that sheep love clover and bean plants, and so gathers some for him and Leopold to use to herd the sheep, while Leopold buys them each a small dustpan and a wooden spoon to deal the eggs. The second test involves each prince being given a gold item that is cursed (minor curses, not serious ones), and getting rid of the curses by adding the item to the hoard of the dragon that guards a mountain pass, in any way possible, without harming him. Seigfried is cursed by having amphibians appear to fall from his mouth every time he speaks, while Leopold ends up with a curse that turns him to one of those morose poet-princes, who desire only to wear black, stay up at night, and write (usually bad) poetry and songs. Those two curses amuse the dragon immensely, which convince him to take the cursed items from them. The third trial involves the thirty-one remaining princes answering a series of riddles, with none of them getting the same riddles. Meanwhile, another prince named Desmond has also been doing quite well at the trials, and has managed to attract the attention of Rosa, up until the time they eventually kiss and she finds out that there is no spark between them. Seigfried gives the princess self-defense lessons as a gift, and Leopold gives her a necklace made of unicorn hair, freely given to Seigfried by a unicorn named Luna. By this point, Rosa and Seigfried have fallen in love. The final trial is announced, in which the remaining ten princes have to come up with a way to protect Eltaria for the present and future, and marriage is not a solution. The prince with the best answer will be declared the winner and receive Rosa's hand in marriage. The Huntsman turns out to be working for Desmond, and two kidnap Rosa when they catch her eavesdropping on them, invoking the Tradition by locking her in a tower with thorns surrounding it. However, the animals that Seigfried rescued and helped alert him to the situation, and help him and Leopold to find and rescue the princess. The Bird gets permanently turned into a Firebird, without the ability to turn into a human, to her delight, in order to help, and Luna also turns up and proves that she can help the rescue party as well. Luna drives the thorns away, while the Firebird burns it, and the ensuing ring of fire helps satisfy the Traditional Path that Seigfried is fated for without bringing the Doom. After a fight, Desmond is killed, the Huntsman and Jimson end up switching places, so that the former is trapped in the mirror world and the latter becomes human, Rosa is rescued, and both Leopold and Luna are mortally wounded. However, as unicorn blood, freely given, can heal just about any wound, Luna does one final act, allowing the blood from her wound to heal Leopold. Seigfried, who had thought up of a solution to the final test just before Rosa being kidnapped, wins her hand in marriage. Once everything is finalized, the solution is revealed to be that of good dragons to guard the borders. "Queen Sable" steps down and proclaims Rosa and Seigfried to be Queen and King of Eltaria, after which she returns to her godmother's castle with Jimson, whom she had realized she had fallen in love with and vice versa. In return for what Leopold has done, he is sent to wake the sleeping Shieldmaiden (Brunnhilde), with the two falling in love, marrying, and deciding the spend their life traveling and having adventures. The book ends up Brunnhilde telling off the god her father for setting things up so that Seigfried was supposed to have a horrible destiny and not being happy with how things turned out after all, setting off with Leopold on their adventure, and Rosa and Seigfried bidding them good-bye and then going off to 'produce an heir' before they have to appear at their coronation celebration.
28960717	/m/0dgq__y	Crookedstar's Promise	Erin Hunter		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the prologue, the RiverClan camp is flooded. Duskwater, an elder, is washed away. Rainflower's kits are coming. Because the water was getting higher, she climbs up an oak tree to give birth. Brambleberry delivers her kits, and Rainflower names one Stormkit, after the storm they were born in, and the other Oakkit, after the tree that offered her protection from the water while she gave birth. The book follows Crookedstar, first known as Stormkit. Stormkit was chased by the ThunderClan medicine cat, Goosefeather, at the Sunningrocks, where he breaks his jaw. His mother, Rainflower, feels no sympathy for Stormkit and asks the RiverClan leader, Hailstar, to rename Stormkit to Crookedkit, and Crookedkit is left distraught by this. Crookedkit is curious of what his destiny will be, and he attempts to travel to the Moonstone. However, he gets lost and ends up at a barn instead, where he stays for a while. Mapleshade, an evil ThunderClan she-cat, talks to Crookedkit in a dream, and asks him to make a promise to be loyal to RiverClan above all other things. Crookedkit did not understand what he was promising when he made his pledge. Throughout the novel, Crookedkit, who becomes Crookedpaw and then Crookedjaw, begins to realize what "sacrifices" he has to make because of what he promised Mapleshade. He tells her he doesn't need her help, but she says she is only doing this for his good. She sends an omen, making Crookedjaw deputy. Then she kills Hailstar, making Crookedjaw leader of RiverClan. She meets him when he receives his nine lives, with the words "We did it!" Crookedstar tells her to get out of his way; he regrets making the promise. But Mapleshade says she will follow him wherever he goes.Brambleberry says that Mapleshade wasn't responsible for all the death in his family and clan. Finally, when Mapleshade "kills" Willowbreeze, Crookedstar's mate, Crookedstar demands to know from Mapleshade why she is doing this to him. Mapleshade tells him her story, and promises to keep haunting him until his dying day. Finally, when Mapleshade "takes" Silverstream's life, she visits Crookedstar to tell him his "punishment" was over and that she was "avenged".
28968882	/m/0dgsmzf	Facial Justice			{"/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 After a devastating nuclear war, the surviving people of earth have been forced to live in underground caverns, ruled by harsh dictatorships. In Britain an unseen leader inspires a large section of the populace to escape the caverns and forms a new dictatorship above ground. This new society is based on a collective sense of guilt at the events of the nuclear war. All subjects are named after famous murderers from history, and are obliged to wear sackcloth so as not to provoke envy with their appearance. The Dictator is never seen, but his voice is broadcast to his subjects regularly, instructing them on the laws and morals of his society. His rule is enforced by Inspectors, who have the power to fine people for minor infringements or report them to the higher ministries for further punishment. A young woman named Jael 97, who has been reported to the Ministry of Facial Justice for being "facially over privileged" and causing discontent among other women, approaches the Equalisation (Faces) Centre to have a synthetic "Beta" face fitted so that she will blend in with the community. At the urging of a friend, however, she decides to put this off. Her resultant guilt, along with subsequent events—her forbidden delight at the idea of "height" during an excursion to the ruined tower of Ely Cathedral; her injury in a planned motor-coach accident during her return from the excursion; her rescue by the Inspector Michael, with whom she falls in love; and her involuntary "Betafication" at the hospital to which she is taken—provokes her rebellious spirit, and she forms a resistance group whose aim is to undermine the regime and show it up as ridiculous. She also writes articles in magazines and papers, in which she deliberately stretches the rules of society to ridiculous proportions—suggesting, for instance, that spelling and grammatical errors in writing should not be criticised, as this can lead to envy and bitterness between people. From the doctor who Betafied her (and who desires her), Jael manages to find out that he has also treated the Dictator and that the Dictator's chest bears a heart-shaped birthmark. In her desire to find and kill the Dictator, she writes an article urging that anyone should be able to challenge another person on the street to bare their chest and prove they have no birthmarks. This is, she claims, to ensure that everyone is as alike as possible. The idea proves divisive amongst the public and begins to cause a great deal of public disorder. Rioting breaks out on the streets, and in the absence of any advice from the Dictator, the public turn on him and denounce him. The Dictator finally responds by announcing that he can see that the public no longer appreciate his leadership and protection and, therefore, he will be leaving. The country descends into chaos after the Dictator's departure. Further rioting ensues, and food supplies are exhausted as the means of production are abandoned or destroyed. The remaining government officials realise they will have to ask the underground dictatorships for food supplies. The leaders of the underground society agree to help, but demand that in return six people be sent to them, presumably to be executed. Jael, out of a sense of guilt at her role in the collapse of society, decides to volunteer to be one of the people sent underground. On the night before she intends to so offer herself, she remains awake to savour her last few hours above ground. Then, amidst sounds of a rainstorm outside, there is a knock at her door, which she opens to reveal an old lady who had been kind to her when she was hospitalised, clearly weak with hunger and soaked from heavy rain. Jael lets her into her home and offers her some clothes to change into. To Jael's astonishment, she finds that the lady bears the Dictator's birthmark and is, in fact, the Dictator. Clearly on the verge of death, the lady reveals that Michael (who has also arrived on the scene) has acted as her "voice" in the Dictator's announcements. She also begs Jael to take on the role of Dictator and restore order and hope to the people. The novel ends with Jael, seemingly having accepted the offer from the Dictator, starting to address the public, through Michael's voice, for the first time.
28970666	/m/0dgq46z	Bayou St. John		2010	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Set in 1825, Bayou St. John is a novel about two fugitives with a master/slave relationship who escape to start new lives in New Orleans. After a series of adventures and complications, they finally become free of their pursuers. The center of the story takes place at the hotel now owned by one of the fugitives, Jacques, a young French aristocrat who was once known as Count Mathieu. In France, the count won a duel with pistols to the death and fled to America to make a new start. Lucas, a young slave sold to a plantation owner, ends up killing the overseer. He attempts to escape from the dock in Charleston, where he encounters Jacques, who claims the young slave as his own, names him Pierre, and together they board a ship to New Orleans. More interesting characters enter the scene ... a beautiful woman named Yvette Osborne and her brother Henry.
28975354	/m/0dgpwmh	Clear Light of Day				 The book is split into four sections covering the Das family from the children’s perspective in this order: adulthood, adolescence, childhood, and the time perspective returns to adulthood. The book centers on the Das family, who have grown apart with adulthood. It starts with Tara, the wife of Bakul, India’s ambassador to America, greeting her sister Bimla (Bim), who is a history teacher living in Old Delhi as well as their autistic brother Baba's caretaker. Their conversation eventually comes to Raja, their brother who lives in Hyderabad. Bim doesn’t want to go to the wedding of Raja’s daughter, showing Tara an old letter from when Raja became her landlord, unintentionally insulting her after the death of his father in law. In part two the setting switches to partition era India, when the characters are adolescents in what is now Bim’s house. Raja is severely ill with tuberculosis and is left to Bim’s ministrations. Aunt Mira (Mira masi), their supposed caretaker after the death of the children’s often absent parents, becomes alcoholic and dies of alcoholism. Earlier Raja's fascination with Urdu attracts the attention of the family's Muslim landlord, Hyder Ali, whom Raja Idolizes. When he heals, Raja follows Hyder Ali to Hyderabad. Tara escapes from the situation through marriage to Bakul. Bim is then left to provide for Baba alone, in the midst of the partition and the death of Gandhi. In part three Bim, Raja and Tara are depicted in pre-partition India awaiting the birth of their brother Baba. Aunt Mira, widowed by her husband and mistreated by her in-laws, is brought in to help with Baba, who is autistic, and to raise the children. Raja is fascinated with poetry. He shares a close bond with Bim, the head girl at school, although they often exclude Tara. Tara wants to be a mother although this fact brings ridicule from Raja and Bim, who want to be a hero and a heroine, respectively. The final section returns to modern India and showcases Tara confronting Bim over the Raja's daughter's wedding and Bim's broken relationship with Raja. This climaxes when Bim explodes at Baba. After her anger fades she comes to the conclusion that the love of family is irreplaceable and can cover all wrongs. After Tara leaves she decides to go to her neighbors the Misras for a concert and she then decides that she will go to the wedding.
28980134	/m/0dgnr1z	Rinascimento privato				 The book is divided into seven parts, interspersed with twelve letters by Robert de la Pole. The narrative is constructed as a long flashback that takes place in 1533, when the almost sixty Isabella is writing her memoirs in the so-called Clocks' Room, in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantova. Apart from some reference to the present or the distant past, the narrative takes place mostly in chronological order, from the year 1500 to 1533, precisely the date when Isabella comes out of that scene, ending the main events of his life (she then died in 1539).
28982057	/m/0dgnxsj	Surface Detail	Iain Banks	2010-10-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The events of Surface Detail take place around 2970 AD, according to Banks himself. The events occur six to eight hundred years after the "Chel Debacle", depicted in the earlier novel Look to Windward which is set a hundred years after the events in Use of Weapons. Each chapter of the book covers one or more of the six main protagonists—Lededje Y'breq, a chattel slave; Joiler Veppers, an industrialist and playboy; Gyorni Vatueil, a soldier; Prin and Chay, Pavulean academics; and Yime Nsokyi, a Quietus agent. Some of the plot occurs in various simulated environments. As the book begins, a simulated war game—the "War in Heaven"—has been running for several decades. The simulated war is to determine whether to allow or to disallow cultures in the galaxy from running Hells, simulated afterlives in which the mind-states of the dead are tortured. The Culture, fiercely anti-Hell, has opted to stay out of the war while accepting the outcome as binding. Vatueil is a soldier who has fought up the ranks of the war game to a position where he can determine policy, and he is instrumental in the decisions first to cheat—attempting to hack the Hells directly as well as attacking various pro-Hell side simulations—and then to take the simulated war into the real world. He is also revealed to be the character Zakalwe from another of Banks' Culture novels, Use of Weapons (or at least someone with the same last name). Prin and Chay belong to a species, the Pavuleans, which runs a Hell. While still alive, they enter the Pavulean Hell on a mission to reveal the existence and details of this Hell to the general population. Prin succeeds in getting out, but has to leave Chay behind, where she is subsequently tortured, restored to some semblance of sanity, and finally given an involuntary role in the pantheon of the afterlife. Prin, meanwhile, testifies to the Pavulean public of his experiences in Hell and attempts to convince them that it should be abolished. Veppers is a businessman and industrialist: the richest individual in his society, the multi-planet Sichultian Enablement. On the planet Sichult, Y'breq—an indentured slave owned by Veppers and a frequent victim of rape—is murdered by him as she attempts to escape. She is unexpectedly reincarnated aboard a Culture ship, having been secretly implanted with a neural lace some ten years previously by a visiting Culture ship super-AI known as a Mind. She immediately wants to return to her homeworld, to find and kill Veppers. The book hinges on Veppers' involvement in the War in Heaven. He initially appears to be a bit-player, but his involvement is gradually revealed to be more and more critical. The final revelation is that he has made some of his fortune by providing the hardware to run the Hells of various species; over a century he has accumulated about 70% of all the Hells. The hardware is located on his country estate on the planet Sichult. He sets up a secret deal to have the Hells destroyed in an attack which is to be blamed upon the Culture. His motivation is that such an attack will release him from his contracts to run the Hells, which would have become worthless if the anti-Hell side won, but which he cannot wriggle out of in any other way. Y'breq travels back to Sichult on the Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, an advanced Culture warship. In hot pursuit is Yime Nsokyi, a Culture agent tasked with preventing Y'breq from killing Veppers. As they and their ships arrive, things come to a head. The Culture agents conspire to arrange that the attack on Veppers' estate successfully destroys the Hells, while simultaneously appearing to attempt to stop the attack. They also conspire to ensure that Veppers' secret deal is revealed. Veppers himself is at the estate's mansion during the attack, where Y'breq finds him for the final, personal, showdown.
28993522	/m/083g2w	Rowan and the Travellers			{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book picks up where the first one, Rowan of Rin (novel), ended. Rowan and the Travelers tells the story about how the tribe of the Travelers mysteriously showed up in the town of Rin. After their even more mysterious departure, a sleeping sickness appears, the Travelers is immediately mistaken, and Rowan and a couple other heroes and people of Rin, takes a trip over the sea to seek and find the answer. A terrible trip to the horrific Pit of Unrin. Here they find out that the sickness originally descends from a dangerous kind of fruit called Mountain-berries brought down from the Mountain next to Rin. Its juice lulls people drinking it, into a deep and heavy sleep. It turns out that the berries are the smaller and infantile form of big trees growing beneath the Mountain itself. After Rowan gets the sickness, causing others to dislike him, he was prevented to destroy the Mountain-berries, and in that way saving his hometown, and then the same would happen to the town as with the Valley of Gold, a large and beautiful settlement overrun and flowing with the berries, destroyed by their older adult forms. Rowan must save the town with the help of a potion made of slip-daisy roots.
29003364	/m/0dgqhch	Angel Island	Inez Haynes Irwin		{"/m/02_w8": "Feminist science fiction"}	 Five men are shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific Ocean while en route from America to the Orient. They are the only survivors, and their chances of being rescued are remote as a storm had driven their ship into uncharted waters before smashing it against rocks. The island is 20 miles long by 7 miles wide, and densely wooded with a freshwater lake in the center. After coming to terms with their predicament, the men begin collecting what they can from washed-up wreckage from the ship: food, clothes, tools and materials. They start building a camp near the beach and bemoan the fact that they are stuck on an island without women. But as the weeks pass, they begin the relish the absence of women and call the island an "Eveless Eden". Then one day the men start seeing what look like huge birds flying high in the sky, but when the "birds" come closer they realise that they are five beautiful winged-women. Suddenly the men are interested in women again and change the island's name to "Angel Island". Over time the women gradually come closer and start following the men around, who quickly fall in love with the women and name them Julia (their leader), Lulu, Chiquita, Clara and Peachy. But the men become frustrated by the women's aloofness and how easily they frighten, and decide to capture them, saying that they need pampering and protection. Once caught the men subdue the frightened women and cut off their wings. The women, who cannot walk on their small, delicate feet, are now completely helpless. The men quickly win their hearts by showering them with gifts and attention, and teach them English. The men and women pair off and four of them marry; Julia resists this temptation. With the women now domesticated, the men start paying less attention to them and spend long periods inland building a new camp near the lake. The women, who cannot fly, nor walk any distance, are stuck in the camp near the beach. With plenty of time on their hands, the women reminisce on how it was when they could fly. Back home, the five women, led by Julia, had rebelled when their people decided to migrate south, and flew north instead. They found Angel Island, deserted and inviting. Then the men came and the women were fascinated by these wingless creatures. They followed them, teased them, and then made the mistake of falling in love with them, resulting in their capture. The women long to fly again, but the men keep their wings clipped. Soon each of the women bears a child, four wingless boys, and a winged-girl, Angela. As Angela grows up she starts flying and the women are delighted. The men, however, are not so happy and announce that when Angela is older they will cut her wings. The women have accepted their own fate, but decide to put aside their "appealing helplessness" and stand up for Angela. While the men are working at the new camp each day, the women teach themselves how to walk. When their feet are strong enough, they trek to the new camp one day, unannounced and much to the surprise of the men. Julia presents the men with an ultimatum, let Angela keep her wings, or we will leave the island with the children. The men laugh and remind them that they cannot fly. But the women, with wing stumps that have grown since their last clipping, take off and fly (not very gracefully) over the lake. The men, horrified at the prospect of losing their women, beg them to return and promise not to cut Angela's wings. Things change on Angel Island, and the men have a new respect for the women. Not only do they honor their promise about Angela's wings, they stop clipping the women's wings. Julia decides to marry and her final triumph comes years later on her death bed when she gives birth to a son with wings.
29004140	/m/0dgndsv	Where Keynes Went Wrong: And Why World Governments Keep Creating Inflation, Bubbles, and Busts				 This 384 page book for both general reader and economist questions the validity of John Maynard Keynes’s assumptions. Lewis argues that The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is based almost exclusively on Keynes’s intuition rather than on demonstrated logic or solid evidence. Lewis begins by demystifying Keynes by giving his elaboration of Keynes's writings in General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money and other works. Using claims from the Austrian School of economics and citing historical evidence, Lewis then argues that government policies based on Keynes’s prescriptions have actually made things worse, not better. Lewis presents alternatives to Keynesian intervention and urges a change in current global policy to foster economic recovery.
29005641	/m/0dgpndr	The Keynes Solution: The Path to Global Economic Prosperity		2009		 Davidson seeks to explain how Keynesian economics policies can lead the way out of the Financial crisis of 2007–2010. Davidson explains how the crisis was created, gives an explanation of Keynesian policies, and then offers advice on how to reform the current international trade and monetary systems to conform to Keynes’s ideas. In his appendix, he offers his view that “true” Keynesian theory was never taught in American universities and therefore has not been applied to Economy of the United States.
29015120	/m/0dgp5pr	Greybeard			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Set decades after the Earth's population has been sterilised as a result of nuclear bomb tests conducted in Earth's orbit, the book shows a world emptying of humans, with only an ageing, childless population left.
29015614	/m/0dgqqfn	Fable: The Balverine Order	Peter David		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is told from the point of view of a king of an unknown country who listens to an unnamed story-teller in the Fable universe. The central story involves the characters Thomas Kirkman, a wealthy son of a textile merchant whose mother's death puts him on his quest to find a balverine, and his manservant, James Skelton, a child in a large poor family. The two friends brave the wilds in search of a balverine that killed Thomas' brother, Stephen. The plot of the story takes place between Fable II and Fable III.
29022842	/m/0dgpvz_	The Scorch Trials	James Dashner	2010-10-12	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 The book picks up immediately where The Maze Runner left off, in the middle of the night with Thomas struggling to sleep. After having a brief telepathic exchange with Teresa, Thomas eventually falls asleep and cannot get Teresa's calling attention. He wakes up suddenly to find victims of the Flare - severely mutated people called "Cranks" outside their barred windows, a hot sun beating down on the desert-like expanse outside. Thomas and the rest of the Gladers decide to investigate, finding the dead bodies of their rescuers hanging from the ceiling. They enter Teresa's room, which is empty, except for a boy that emerges out of the bathroom. Aris explains he is from Group B - fully girls except for him - and he can also talk telepathically. His telepathy partner, a girl named Rachel was killed in a similar manner as Chuck in the first book. Outside of the room is a plaque that says "Teresa Agnes. Group A, Subject A1. The Betrayer." An alarm, similar to the one on the Glade, goes off, and the room door locks until the alarm stops. Thomas opens the door to find no dead bodies. Even the plaque is changed to "Aris Jones, Group B, Subject B1. The Partner." They are stuck in the house for days without food, until food mysteriously arrives in the common room and a man dubbed the Rat Man is sitting behind a desk behind a sheet of invisible glass. He tells them they are to make their way travel through the Scorch, a burned out section of the land. And as an incentive, they've all been infected the Flare and will receive a cure when they reach their destination. Shortly after he leaves, the Gladers discover tattoos on the back of their necks. Newt's says he's "The Glue". Minho's says "The Leader". Thomas's says 'To be killed by Group B". The Gladers enter a Flat Trans and wander through darkness for about an hour, when they hear strange whispers. Two boys get killed by molten steel balls that cover a persons head then decapitate them and roll away. Winston gets attacked too, but Thomas saves him. They enter the Scorch eventually come to a building, where they heard screaming from a long way away. Teresa exits the building. Thomas senses a trap and approaches her. Teresa is crying, still telling him to get away from her. She kisses him and tells him to tell the Gladers to get as far away from her as possible. Thomas and the Gladers hike towards a city to stock back up on supplies, along the way, he has another "memory dream" where Teresa and Thomas practice talking telepathically. A storm soon hits, killing off seven boys, including Winston. They stay inside a building when a Crank named Jorge welcomes them into the Crank House. Minho insults him and Jorge kicks him twice in a place where he was burnt from getting struck by lightning. Minho attacks Jorge and all the Cranks from upstairs come down. Fortunately, Thomas negotiates a deal with Jorge, keeping the Gladers from getting killed. Thomas meets Brenda, who becomes very forward when he first meets her. They go downstairs and eat, when the roof collapses, separating Thomas and Brenda from the others. The two of them walk through the Underneath and fight some Cranks. Eventually, they make it onto the surface and sleep in a cab. Thomas wakes up from a nightmare and goes back to sleep. He has another dream memory where he and Teresa are listening in on a conversation between WICKED employees. Thomas wakes up again and sees words printed on a brick saying "Thomas, you're the real leader." They leave the car and are forced into a club by a few strangers. They dance to the music and are offered drinks that, of course, they're made to take too, making them feel dizzy. Brenda tries to kiss Thomas, but he says "You're not...her." and "You could never be her." They wake up in a dark room with the 3 strangers who took them to the club. They are about to kill them when Minho and the other Gladers save them. While fleeing the strangers, a man that Thomas calls "Blondie" shoots Thomas in the left shoulder with a rusty bullet, giving him an infection. After the Gladers fail to heal Thomas, WICKED goes down and gets him in a machine called a Berg. While being healed, he overhears one the worker's conversations in which a woman stated that he wasn't supposed to get shot. He's taken back to where he came from and he explains everything to the Gladers. Later, Thomas hears Teresa's voice in his head, warning him that something terrible will happen, leaving him hurt and scared. And he had to trust her no matter what. She pauses and says that he won't hear from her for a while until they're back together. Newt and Thomas talk about how WICKED only made an exception for him and no one else. They see Teresa and Group B walking towards Group A with weapons. She hits Thomas multiple times with the butt of her spear for various reasons and take him back to their base, getting dragged across the ground for hours. Thomas is fed once they get there and falls asleep, having another memory dream. The next morning the girls decided not to kill him. Thomas and the girls get about 7 miles away from the "safe haven", when Teresa motions for Thomas to follow her. Aris appears and holds a knife to Thomas's back and leads him into a cave. Thomas sees a glowing green door, which he thinks could mean that there is radioactive substance inside. Teresa reveals that she and Aris had a thing before and during the Maze and Scorch Trials, and had also manipulated Thomas to escape the Maze. They led him through the door, and into a gas chamber, but Thomas puts up one last fight, attacking Aris and Teresa, but fails. He gets dragged into the gas chamber and the gas released. Thomas passes out, feeling betrayed and sick from the gas, and has another dream memory about being sent into the Swipe, then into the Maze. Thomas wakes up and the gas chamber's door opens. Teresa apologizes, but Thomas still feels betrayed and cannot trust her. They run to catch up with the other group, as they only have a few hours until they must be at the safe haven. Teresa explains along the way that her telepathy with Thomas was "cut off" when WICKED came into her room and told her to tell Aris that they had to get Thomas to the point that he feels totally betrayed by them, and if they did anything against WICKED, Thomas dies. They kiss near a valley, but Thomas feels nothing. The ground makes it to a flag saying "THE SAFE HAVEN", and monsters with growths similar to light bulbs covering their body appear. Fortunately, only three people die during the fight. The Berg comes back and picks up the Gladers. A guard on it gets angry for them taking Jorge and Brenda with them, forcing Thomas to choose who to kill. He chooses Brenda, thinking it's a test, but he's wrong. He manages to keep both. They're fed and bathed and all fall asleep. Thomas has one more dream where Brenda speaks to him telepathically, saying things are about to get bad. He wakes up in a padded, white room. Teresa is telepathically speaking to him, saying the Flare was rooted too deeply in him, and they took him away. Thomas tells Teresa to go away. Teresa tells him WICKED is good and leaves. The epilogue is a WICKED memorandum from a woman expressing her thoughts on the Trials, saying that there was an unexpected turn of events but the Trials went well all the same.
29049663	/m/0dgsbwn	By Nightfall	Michael Cunningham	2010-10		 Peter and his wife, Rebecca--who edits a mid-level art magazine--have settled into a comfortable life in Manhattan's art world, but their staid existence is disrupted by the arrival of Rebecca's much younger brother, Ethan--known as Mizzy, short for "The Mistake." Family golden child Mizzy is a recovering drug addict whose current whim has landed him in New York where he wants to pursue a career in "the arts." Watching Mizzy--whose resemblance to a younger Rebecca unnerves Peter--coast through life without responsibilities makes Peter question his own choices and wonder if it's more than Mizzy's freedom that he covets.
29055790	/m/017f2w	The Corrections	Jonathan Franzen	2001	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Corrections focuses on the Lamberts, a traditional and somewhat repressed Midwestern family, whose children have fled to the east coast to start new lives free from the influence of their parents. The novel moves back and forth in time throughout the late twentieth century, depicting the personal growth and mistakes of each family member in detail. The book climaxes around the time of the technology driven economic boom of the late nineties as the troubled family's problems begin to boil to the surface. Alfred Lambert is a railroad engineer and the stern patriarch of the Lambert family, based in the fictional town of St. Jude. After his children grow up and move to the east coast, Alfred retires, but soon begins to suffer from Parkinson's disease, causing his organized and repressed personality to fracture. Alfred's loyal wife Enid has long suffered from his tyrannical behavior, but his increasing dementia makes her life still harder. She is also tortured by the questionable life choices of her three children and their abandonment of midwestern Protestant values. As the economic boom of the late nineties goes into full swing, the family's massive problems become impossible to ignore. Gary, the eldest Lambert son, is a successful but seemingly depressed and alcoholic banker in Philadelphia who suspects his life is carefully controlled by his manipulative wife and children. Chip, the middle child, is a Marxist academic whose disastrous affair with a student loses him a tenure-track job and lands him in the employ of a Lithuanian crime boss defrauding American investors. Denise, the youngest of the family, is a successful chef in Philadelphia, but loses her job after interlocking romances with both her boss and his wife. The separate plot-lines converge on Christmas morning back in St. Jude, when Enid and her children are forced to confront Alfred's accelerating physical and mental decline.
29061830	/m/0dgqfy4	Philippa Fisher and the Dream-Maker's Daughter	Liz Kessler	2009-05-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Philippa Fisher is feeling lonely. She misses her fairy godsister, Daisy. But while on vacation with her parents, she befriends a local girl named Robyn. Though she is excited to have a friend again, Philippa cannot help but feel there is something strange about Robyn and her father. Meanwhile, Daisy, who is hard at work on a new mission, misses Philippa as well, so she decides to break the rules and to visit her friend. Though the girls are happy to be reunited, things soon begin to go horribly wrong with Daisy's assignment. And when all three girls find themselves in danger, Philippa must work quickly to save her friends and herself.
29068932	/m/0dlmxnn	Mink Trapping	Arthur Robert Harding		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 One of Harding's Pleasure & Profit Books. A collection of mink trapping instructions and tips from the author and other trappers in the United States and Canada, including photographs and illustrations. The book gives information on where and how to set for mink, including land, water, blind sets, baits and scent to use, methods in Northern and Southern states, size and care of skins.
29072318	/m/0dlkfcv	Anatomy of an Epidemic		2010		 Whitaker begins by showing that the antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants were discovered as side effects during research for antihistamines (specifically promethazine), gram negative antibiotics (specifically mephenesin) and the anti-tuberculosis agents isoniazid and iproniazid respectively. The psychiatric mechanisms of action of these drugs were not known at the time and these were initially called major tranquilizers (now typical antipsychotics) due to their induction of "euphoric quietiude"; minor tranquilizers (now benzodiazepines) and psychic energizers (now antidepressants) due to patients "dancing in the wards." These compounds were developed during a period of growth for the pharmaceutical industry bolstered by the 1951 Durham-Humphrey Amendment, giving physicians monopolistic prescribing rights thus aligning the interests of physicians and pharmaceutical companies. This also followed the industry's development of "magic bullets" that treat people with, for example, diabetes, which provided an analogy to sell the idea of these drugs to the public. It was not until many years later, after the mechanisms of these drugs were determined, that the serotonergic hypothesis of depression and dopaminergic hypothesis of schizophrenia were developed to fall in line with the drug's mechanisms. According to Whitaker's analysis of the primary literature lower levels of serotonin and higher levels of dopmine "have proved to be true in patients WITH prior exposure to antidepressants or antipsychotics (ie as homeostatic mechanisms) but NOT in patients without prior exposure." Another means by which he undermines the magic bullet theory is that he shows that the historical notion that the "invention of the antipsychotic Thorazine" having emptied the asylums is a myth. His case begins by showing that during the late 1940s and 1950s ~75% of cases admitted for first episode schizophrenia recovered to the community by approximately 3 years (Thorazine was not released until 1955). He then notes that the arrival of Thorazine did not improve discharge rates in the 1950s for people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia. In fact, based on the only large scale first episode schizophrenia study of this era, 88% of those who were not treated were discharged within eighteen months compared to 74% of neuroleptic treated. This is additionally evidenced by the fact that when Thorazine was introduced in 1955 there were 267 thousand schizophrenia patients in state and county mental hospitals, and eight years later, there were 253 thousand, thus indicating that the advent of neuroleptics barely budged the number of hospitalized patients. What he argues actually cleared the asylums was the beginning of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. These programs provided federal subsidies for nursing home care but no such subsidy for care in state mental hospitals, and so the states, seeking to save money, naturally began shipping their chronic patients to nursing homes. Whitaker favors psychiatric medications but believes that they must be used in a "selective, cautious manner. It should be understood that they’re not fixing any chemical imbalances. And honestly, they should be used on a short-term basis." Whitaker traces the effects of what looks like an iatrogenic epidemic: the drugs that patients receive can perturb their normal brain function. Whitaker suggests that the "wonder drug" glow around the second generation psychotropics has long since disappeared. He views the "hyping" of the top-selling atypical antipsychotics as "one of the more embarrassing episodes in psychiatry's history, as one government study after another failed to find that they were any better than the first-generation anti-psychotics." One of Whitaker's solutions is the style of care documented by professor Jaakko Seikkula at Keropudas Hospital in Tornio in Lapland where drugs are given to patients only on a limited basis, with good outcomes. According to Whitaker, the district has the lowest per capita spending on mental health of all health districts in Finland. He also advocates that those with depression engage in exercise. Exercise for depression is so successful that in the UK the doctor may write a prescription for exercise. In fact, studies have shown that exercise produces a "substantial improvement" within six weeks, that its effect size is "large," and that 70% of all depressed patients respond to an exercise program. "These success rates are quite remarkable," German investigators wrote in 2008. Whitaker sees that children are vulnerable to being prescribed a lifetime of drugs. As the author says, a psychiatrist and parents may give a child a "cocktail" to force him or her to behave. Then when this child grows up to eighteen, Whitaker says he or she becomes a disabled adult.
29081661	/m/0dln53s	The Lost Boy				 The novella tells the story of an Asheville, North Carolina family that suffers the loss of Grover, the 12-year-old son, who dies of typhoid fever during an extended family visit to the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. The story is composed of four parts. Part 1, written in third person, presents Grover's perception of a childhood epiphany experienced months before the family moves from North Carolina to St. Louis. Cheated and accused of stealing by a candy-store owner, the boy seeks out his father, who returns with him to the store and extracts retribution, leaving the boy with a restored sense of self but a deeper understanding of life's darker side. In Part 2, some 30 years after the boy's death, the still-grieving mother reflects on her "best" son and recounts the high excitement of the train trip to the Fair and the son's amazing maturity. Throughout her narrative, the mother exemplifies life's irreparable wounding. In Part 3, also 30 years later, the older sister tells of an adventure at the Fair when she and the boy, youngsters in a strange place, sneak into downtown St. Louis and eat in a cheap restaurant. Upon their return home, the boy becomes ill with the onset of typhoid fever. In the sister's story we confront not only her long-sustained grief and guilt, but her vision of the incomprehensibility of life: "How is it," she asks, "that nothing turns out the way we thought it would be." In Part 4, Eugene, the younger brother who has in the 30 intervening years become a famous writer, narrates his return to the house in St. Louis where the family had lived and the boy had died. Eugene hopes to recapture and recreate in fiction the essence of the boy, a hope not fulfilled, as the title of the story suggests. Instead, the writer-brother comes to see the limits of time and memory in recapturing the past, which marks a significant epiphany for him and a redirection of his work as writer.
29090244	/m/0dlng52	Sang Pemimpi		2006-07	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In The Dreamer, it is about life in the days of high school. The three main characters are Ikal, Arai and Jimbron. Ikal is the alter-ego of Andrea Hirata while Arai is a distant relative of an orphan called "Simpai Keramat" as he is the last family member who is still alive and eventually became the foster brother of Ikal. Jimbron is an orphan who is obsessed with horses and stutter when he's enthusiastic about something or when he is nervous. All three are intertwined in the story of friendship from childhood until they go to school in SMA Negeri Manggar (SMA means 'Sekolah Menengah Atas', equal to high school in English. The school’s name basically means The State High School of Manggar.), the first high school in the eastern Belitung. Attended school in the mornings and worked as a worker in the early morning fishing port, from their addiction of erotic movies in theaters and finally discovered by their religious teacher, the love story of Jimbron and Arai, Jimbron's farewell with Ikal and Arai who will study in Jakarta that makes them to separate but will still meet each other in France. Independently living separately from their parents with the background of poor economic conditions but with a big goal that if viewed from the background of their lives, is simply a dream.
29102497	/m/0dlk671	Framed	Gordon Korman		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The story takes place in Cedarville, while 'The Man with the Plan' Griffin Bing is having a hard time adjusting to his school's new atmosphere, which is more like a strict boot camp than a middle school. His new football fanatic Principal, Dr. Egan, does not like Griffin, due to his past. To make matters worse, somebody has stolen the priceless Superbowl ring that was in the school's showcase, with Griffin's retainer that he recently lost left in its place. For once, the Man with the plan DOESN'T have a Plan. Things only go from bad to worse when Griffin is accused of stealing it by Egan, and Griffin is sent to a state school for juvenile delinquents. Griffin realizes he has been framed by somebody and calculates a list of suspects: * Dr. Egan, (dubbed Dr. Evil) the principal who hates Griffin and could gain the ring as a football collectors item, as he loves the sport. * Celia White, A nosy reporter who is digging up dirt on Griffin. She often twists his words, and she will do anything to make him look guilty, possibly to gain a promotion. * Darren Vader, A burly boy who annoys Griffin. He could steal the ring after finding Griffin's retainer in order to gain profit. His motive for framing Griffin would be to distract the police from him. * Tony Bartholomew, A boy who claims he is the rightful owner of the ring. Griffin tries to get the suspects through a metal detector at the courthouse after sending them an anonymous e-mail stating that a buyer was interested in purchasing a valuable possession that "recently" came to them. Griffin unfortunately discovers that Dr. Egan is the only suspect left. Logan, Griffin's friend and amateur actor, agrees to get to know Egan's daughter so he can search the house and find the ring, getting him off the hook. The plan fails when they discover Egan does not have the ring. Griffin is tried and placed under house arrest, where his friends meet him via video chat and formulate a final plan to clear their friend's name. Savannah, the animal lover of the group, finds that a type of mouse that is attracted to shiny objects may have found Griffin's lost retainer and swapped it out with the ring. Melissa, the computer whiz, hacks into Griffin's house arrest system that allows him to leave the house without the alarm coming off while his parents are out. At the school during its play, Hail Caesar!, Griffin leads Egan to the mouse's nest and clears his name. He is then raced home and resets his house arrest anklet as his parents arrive. Egan, who got Griffin home in time, clears up matters and apologizes to Griffin, saying that he was wrong to judge him. Also, Celia White shows up in an attempt to get a story on him. Before she can twist the words, however, Egan makes her stop and makes sure she won't be doing it again. After this, Griffin asks the court if it will take a truly good-hearted friend out of the state school, so he can have a chance at life. They accept and it is implied that life will be better for Griffin and his friends.
29104470	/m/0dlksl0	Vegan Virgin Valentine		2004	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story follows Mara Valentine, a high school senior in Brockport, New York headed to Yale University, whose life is turned upside down when her sixteen-year-old niece Vivienne, who goes only by her first initial V, comes to live with Mara and her parents. V’s mother, Mara’s older sister, is a free-spirit who spends her life traveling from place to place, finding new jobs and boyfriends along the way; she is the complete opposite of Mara who has spent her life working hard to succeed in school to please her parents.
29120533	/m/0dsdj09	The Lacuna	Barbara Kingsolver	2009		 The novel tells the story of Harrison William Shepherd beginning with his childhood in Mexico during the 1930s. His parents are separated so he lives back and forth between the United States with his father and Mexico with his mother. During his time in Mexico he works as a plaster mixer for the mural artist Diego Rivera then as a cook for both him and his artist wife Frida Kahlo, with whom Shepherd develops a lifelong friendship. While living with and working for them, he also begins working as a secretary for Leon Trotsky who is hiding there, exiled by Stalin. Later in life, living in Asheville, North Carolina, Shepherd becomes a novelist and is subsequently investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He instructs his secretary, Violet Brown, to burn his papers and returns to Mexico. However, she saves his diaries and letters and it is these papers that form the bulk of the novel. There are gaps, or lacunae, in the story, hence the title.
29121910	/m/0bhbhdj	This Isn't What It Looks Like	Pseudonymous Bosch	2010		 The story starts off with Cass awakening somewhere unknown to her, in an unknown time (she later finds she is in fact in the Middle Ages), not knowing who she is, where she came from, or what she is doing. She sees a young boy stuck in a tree, and tries to rescue him, only to hear him repeatedly shouting the word "Goat!", evidently frightened. He runs down the road to his father, but neither of them even look at the girl. Confused, the girl walks up to a puddle, only to see that she has no reflection, realizing that she must be invisible, and that the boy was shouting "Ghost," not "Goat."
29124040	/m/0dlmkts	Pandemia	Johnathan Rand	2006-07	{"/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The main content of the book describes the disease that would later cause a global catastrophe: H5N1, the bird flu. In parts of southeastern Asia, the bird flu is a deadly epidemic that is feared by many. The bird flu has already spread to parts of Africa and most of Europe, because of today's transportation methods. Pandemia illustrates the possibility that bird flu will possibly mutate and spread to the rest of the world, creating a global pandemic in a matter of weeks. This causes a global state of emergency, and eventually causes the collapse of society and many economies across the world. The book's full plot features a group of teens in Saline, Michigan that must try and escape the city and head to the countryside where they can hopefully stay alive long enough in their uncle's cabin to be rescued. But in doing so, the teens must use whatever weapons they can find to defend themselves against looters, insane killers, and contagious, potentially dangerous infected. In a world gone mad, can the group find the necessities: food, water and shelter to survive?
29128834	/m/0dlmw57	Cargo of Eagles	Margery Allingham	1968	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Saltey in Essex, the "Back Door to London", has a long history of smuggling, and holds a secret that leads to murder. Albert Campion sends his young American associate Mortimer Kelsey to mingle with the locals to try to solve the mystery. The evidence points to a robbery from a yacht done years before by a dangerous criminal named Teague and his associates.
29131320	/m/0dlll57	The Moral Landscape	Sam Harris		{"/m/06ms6": "Sociology"}	 Sam Harris's case starts with two premises: "(1) some people have better lives than others, and (2) these differences are related, in some lawful and not entirely arbitrary way, to states of the human brain and to states of the world". The idea is that a person is simply describing material facts (many about their brain) when they describe possible "better" and "worse" lives for themselves. Granting this, Harris says we must conclude that there are facts about which courses of action will allow one to pursue a better life. Harris attests to the importance of admitting that such facts exist, because he says this logic applies to groups of individuals as well. He suggests that there are better and worse ways for whole societies to pursue better lives. Just like at the scale of the individual, there may be multiple different paths and "peaks" to flourishing for societies - and many more ways to fail. Harris then makes a pragmatic case that science could usefully define "morality" according to such facts (about people's wellbeing). Often his arguments point out the way that problems with this scientific definition of morality seem to be problems shared by all science, or reason and words in general. Harris also spends some time describing how science might engage nuances and challenges of identifying the best ways for individuals, and groups of individuals, to improve their lives. Many of these issues are covered below. Although Harris's book discusses the challenges that a science of morality must face, he also mentions that his scientific argument is indeed philosophical. Furthermore, he says that this is the case for almost all scientific investigation. He mentions that modern science amounts to careful practice of accepted first philosophical principles like empiricism and physicalism. He also suggests that science has already very much settled on values in answering the question "what should I believe, and why should I believe it?". Harris says it should not be surprising that normative ethical sciences are, or would be, similarly founded on bedrock assumptions (Basic norms). Harris says: The way he thinks science might engage moral issues draws on various philosophical positions like ethical realism (there are facts worth calling 'moral facts'), and ethical naturalism (these facts relate to the physical world). Harris says a science of morality may resemble Utilitarianism, but that the science is, importantly, more open-ended because it involves an evolving definition of well-being. Rather than committing to Reductive materialism, then, Harris recognizes the arguments of revisionists that psychological definitions themselves are contingent on research and discoveries. Harris adds that any science of morality must consider everything from emotions and thoughts to the actual actions and their consequences. To Harris, moral propositions, and explicit values in general, are concerned with the flourishing of conscious creatures in a society. He argues that "Social morality exists to sustain cooperative social relationships, and morality can be objectively evaluated by that standard." Harris sees some philosophers' talk of strictly private morality as akin to unproductive discussion of some private, personal physics. Harris also discusses how interchangeability of perspective might emerge as an important part of moral reasoning. He alludes to an 'unpleasant surprise principle', where someone realizes they have been supporting an ineffective moral norm (e.g. reported cases of Jew-hunting Nazis discovering that they themselves were of Jewish descent). Harris identifies three projects for science as it relates to morality: (1) explaining why humans do what they do in the name of "morality" (e.g. traditional evolutionary psychology), (2) determining which patterns of thought and behaviour humans actually should follow (i.e. the science of morality), and (3) generally persuading humans to change their ways. Harris says that the first project is focused only on describing what is, whereas projects (2) and (3) are focused on what should and could be, respectively. Harris's point is that this second, prescriptive project should be the focus of a science of morality. He mentions, however, that we should not fear an "Orwellian future" with scientists at every door - vital progress in the science of morality could be shared in much the same way as advances in medicine. Harris says it is important to delineate project (1) from project (2), or else we risk committing a moralistic fallacy. He also highlights the importance of distinguishing between project (2) (asking what is right) from project (3) (trying to change behaviour). He says we must realize that the nuances of human motivation is a challenge in itself; humans often fail to do what they "ought" to do to even be successfully selfish - there is every reason to believe that discovering what is best for society would not change every member's habits overnight. Harris does not imagine that people, even scientists, have always made the right moral decisions—indeed it is precisely his argument that many of them are wrong about moral facts. This is due to the many real challenges of good science in general, including human cognitive limitations and biases (e.g. loss aversion can sway human decisions on important issues like medicine). He mentions the research of Paul Slovic and others to describe just a few of these established mental heuristics that might keep us from reasoning properly. Although he mentions that training might temper the influence of these biases, Harris worries about research showing that incompetence and ignorance in a domain leads to confidence (the Dunning–Kruger effect). Harris explains that debates and disagreement is a part of the scientific method, and that one side can certainly be wrong. He also explains that all the debates still available to science illustrates how much work could still be done, and how much conversation must continue. The book is full of issues that Harris thinks are far from being empirically, morally grey areas. That is, besides saying that 'reasonable' thinking about moral issues amounts to scientific thinking. For instance, he references one poll that found that 36 percent of British Muslims think apostates should be put to death for their unbelief, and he says that these individuals are "morally confused". He also suggests it is obvious that loneliness, helplessness, and poverty are "bad", but that these are by no means as far as positive psychology has taken, and will take us. In one section, called The illusion of free will, Harris argues that there is a wealth of evidence in psychology (e.g. the illusion of introspection) or specifically related to the neuroscience of free will that suggests that metaphysically free will does not exist. This, he thinks, is intuitive; "trains of thought...convey the apparent reality of choices, freely made. But from a deeper perspective...thoughts simply arise (what else could they do?)". He adds "The illusion of free will is itself an illusion". The implications of free will's non-existence may be a working determinism, and Harris warns us not to confuse this with fatalism. One implication of a determined will, Harris says, is that it becomes unreasonable to punish people out of retribution—only behaviour modification and the deterrence of others still seem to be potentially valid reasons to punish. This, especially because behaviour modification is a sort of cure for the evil behaviours; Harris provides a thought experiment: Harris acknowledges a hierarchy of moral consideration (e.g. humans are more important than bacteria or mice). He says it follows that there could, in principle, be a species compared to which we are relatively unimportant (although he doubts such a species exists). Harris supports the development of lie-detection technology and believes it would be, on the whole, beneficial for humanity. He also supports the formation of an explicit global civilization because of the potential for stability under a world government. Consistent with Harris's definition of morality, he says we must ask whether religion increases human flourishing today (regardless of whether it increased it in the distant past). He argues that religions may largely be practiced because they fit well with human cognitive tendencies (e.g. animism). In Harris's view, religion and religious dogma is an impediment to reason, and he discusses the views of Francis Collins as one example. Harris criticizes the tactics of secularists like Chris Mooney, who argue that science is not fundamentally (and certainly not superficially) in conflict with religion. Harris sees this as a very serious disagreement, that patronizingly attempts to pacify more devout theists. Harris claims that societies can move away from deep dependence on religion just as it has witchcraft, which he says was once just as deeply ingrained.
29143431	/m/0dlnchb	Living Dead Girl				 When "Alice" (parenthesized since that is not her real name) was ten years old, she went on a field trip with her class to an aquarium. While she was there, she got into a fight with her friends because she wouldn't share the lip gloss that she had received from her parents on her birthday. Due to this fight, her friends wander off, leaving her alone. She then loses her class and is approached by a man. He says that her class has gone to see a movie and that he will take her there. He gives her a hat and tells her to tuck her hair into it, and then leads her out of the zoo. He tells her that the lady at the front thought she was his son. He laughs, and then abducts the young girl. This book takes place five years after "Alice's" abduction. She is now 15, and is still living with Ray, her abductor. They now portray father and daughter, though they have no connections to anyone in the outside world. During this time, he has deprived her of food, hoping that this will keep her frozen in her childlike body, has tried to dress her in childlike clothing, and has raped her daily since the day he kidnapped her.She now refers to herself as the "Living Dead Girl." She is numb on the inside and is looking forward to the day when Ray will finally kill her like he did with the "Other Alice." The "Other Alice" is the girl that he had abducted before our present-day Alice. He had kept her until she was fifteen and had outgrown her childlike body. He then killed her and dumped her body, where it was later found, but he had never been suspected with her abduction or murder. It is implied that the First Alice tried to commit suicide with a razor while taking a shower alone (this is the reason the second Alice is not allowed to take showers by herself.) Alice now hopes for death, rather than for escape. Since the day he had taken her, he had threatened that if she ever ran from him, or made one false move, he would kill her parents. She has been brainwashed with his fear and says "I could run, but he would find me. He would take me back to 623 Daisy Lane and make everyone who lives there pay. He would make everyone there pay even if he didn't find me. I belong to him. I'm his little girl. All I have to do is be good" (p.&nbsp;34). So she "stays in line" even though she is left at their apartment alone all day while he is at work, and even goes to get waxes done by herself. So she sees no hope in ever returning to her home, and now wishes for death. However, Ray has other plans in mind. He tells Alice he wants her to find him "A New Alice." At first, Alice hopes that if she does, he will then free her, or at least finally take her life, but instead Ray tells her that she will train the new Alice to his liking. So Alice takes trips down to the park where Ray had taken her once before and watches the young girls that play there. She writes down in a little notebook the different girls, what they do, and what they look like. She returns to Ray and he asks her to tell him all about these little girls. On one of her trips there, she meets Lucy, a young girl who likes to swing. After Lucy tells Alice that she doesn't like her, Alice decides in anger that Lucy will be the one to replace her. Alice then meets Lucy's older brother, Jake, a troubled teenager who "pops pills." Alice returns to his car and performs a sexual act to try to get some information from him about Lucy. She finds out a little information about the girls hobbies and schedule. Before she leaves, she also meets a police officer who has a feeling that Alice is in trouble. However, Alice knows that Police only cause her trouble with Ray, so she refuses to call for help. When Ray accuses Alice of lying to him about the Lucy's where abouts Alice becomes confused as Jake told her that she would be at swimming. In the end, after being punished for Lucy not being at the park, Alice returns later at six at night and finds Lucy standing in the park. She tries to tell her to run, but Ray appears and grasps Lucy by the arm. Alice collects her remaining life in her hollow body and shouts for Lucy to run. Ray gets so angry he tries to strangle and tear the flesh out of Alice, but is shot twice by Jake. Alice says with the final words of the book being "I Am Free".
29146417	/m/0b760y1	Jihad and Genocide				 According to Michael Berenbaum writing in The Forward, the book explores the question, do Islamic leaders mean what they say when they call for genocide of the Jews? According to Berenbaum, Rubenstein "offers compelling evidence that significant and prominent Muslim thinkers mean what they say and say what they mean when they speak of world peace only following Islamic world conquest." Rubenstein concluded: "Muslim ire has been aroused. At least among Islamists. It will not be calmed until the shame and the disgrace of Muslim defeats from the Battle of Lepanto (1571) to the Israeli War of Independence (1948) and the Six-Day War (1967) have been erased. If we take the Islamists at their word, nothing less than genocide would suffice."
29154764	/m/0dlmk6b	L'Inondation	Émile Zola		{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 On a beautiful May day, the Garonne floods, washing away all the bridges; ruining nearly two thousand houses; drowning hundreds; and leaving twenty thousand starving to death. The novella describes the immediate impact this flood has on one household.
29156530	/m/0dln674	Robert Parker: Les Sept Pêchés capiteux				 The central character is based on the influential American wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr. whose personal tastes and "Parker point system" is frequently blamed for the effect of "Parkerization", or homogenisation of wine across the world, in particular due to his influence on the Bordeaux wine market as his recommendation or disapproval of a wine may result in significant financial consequence with a Parker top score valued by some at potentially £5 million. The story describes his ascent to preeminent wine personality, along with the oenologist Michel Rolland who is often described to travel the world making wines in the style that pleases Parker. Also portrayed are Bordeaux winemakers Jean-Luc Thunevin and Alain Raynaud and American wine merchant Jeffrey Davies. In the plot, Parker, termed "the oracle of Maryland" arrives in Saint-Émilion in the year 2017 on his 70th birthday, is blindfolded and taken to a cellar where he stands trial before seven men in hooded purple capes for having committed seven heady sins. Parker is given three wines to blind taste which he judges to be "old marmalades". These are revealed to be a 2000 Pavie, a 2005 Valandraud and a 1995 Le Pin, wines Parker has assigned top marks.
29161024	/m/0dljy57	Gauntlgrym	Robert Anthony Salvatore			 Gauntlgrym begins in the year 1409, DR in the dwarven complex of Mithral Hall. King Bruenor Battlehammer, with Drizzt Do'Urden, sits on his throne and mourns over the loss of his friend Regis and his adoptive daughter Catti-brie nearly 24 years before. Both Companions of the Hall were lost to the deadly effects of the Spellplague. Wulfgar has returned to Icewind Dale and has decided to remain in those most dangerous of lands. In a conversation with his dear friend Drizzt, Bruenor laments over all that has happened since those terrible events. The signing of the Treaty of Garumn's Gorge has brought a lasting peace to the Silver Marches. Obould II has inherited the Kingdom of Many-Arrows from his father Obould I, though he is not nearly as clever or as powerful as his father. Above all, King Bruenor regrets never completing his quest to find the legendary home of the Delzoun dwarves, Gauntlgrym. Meanwhile Nanfoodle, the gnome inventor famous for his Moment of Elminister - a purposeful explosion that sent gas swarming to the surface during a vicious battle 40 years earlier - and Jessa Dribble-Obould, an orc, hatch a plan to poison Bruenor. Nanfoodle poisons the king’s ale. Thibbledorf Pwent the battlerager notices something amiss about Nanfoodle's behavior but cannot quite place it. Bruenor drinks the ale and shortly after the entire population of Mithral Hall goes into mourning at the abrupt death of their king. Banak Brawnanvil is named Eleventh King of Mithral Hall. Pwent, distraught over the death of Bruenor, seeks out Nanfoodle and Jessa for answers in the hills outside of Mithral Hall. Upon finding the traitorous pair, he attempts to attack them for answers. During the fight, Drizzt, as well as a very-much alive Bruenor arrives; the latter demands of Pwent what he is doing here instead of at Banak's side. The ever-loyal Pwent replies that his life and his duty lie with his beloved king. It is then revealed that Bruenor faked his death with the help of Nanfoodle and Jessa in order to continue his quest for Gauntlgrym while leaving Mithral Hall in Banak's good hands. Drizzt, Bruenor, Jessa, Nanfoodle, Pwent, Guenhwyvar, and Andahar then leave on their secret quest. (Andahar is a magical unicorn that can be summoned much like Guenhwyvar, Athrogate's demon boar, or Jarlaxle's nightmare. Andahar was a gift to Drizzt from the ruling council of Silverymoon for his work with both blade and diplomacy during the Third Orc War.) 42 years later in the year 1451 DR the elf warrior Dahlia Sin'felle is engaged in a conversation with her vampire lover, Korvin Dor'crae. Dahlia has been charged by the Red Wizard of Thay lich Zulkir Szass Tam to go to create a Dread Ring. This is an enchanted area that produces countless undead minions. She is charged to go to Luskan in order to investigate possibilities. There are several flashbacks of Dahlia as a child and the cruelties she suffered at the hands of Netherese barbarians and demons. She was raped by the barbarians and impregnated by the tiefling Herzgo Alegni and forced to bear his demon offspring which she killed soon after it was born while she was still a child herself. Dahlia is an exceptionally talented warrior and uses the break staff weapon, Kozah's Needle. This is an eight-foot-long staff that can be broken into four two-foot sections attached by a chain. The break staff can be configured in many ways. It also allows the owner to summon lightning during battle. She also wears diamond studs as a tribute to her lovers. Eight are in her left ear to signify lovers she has murdered and one in her right ear for those who have so far escaped that fate. Before leaving on her mission, she kills her former lover Themerelis, a powerful ranger wielding a greatsword. This angers her rival Sylora Salm as she was also Themerelis' lover. Meanwhile Drizzt, Bruenor, and Pwent have continued to search for Gauntlgrym with no success. Nanfoodle and Jessa stay with them for many years, but eventually die of old age. While searching for the lost kingdom in Ten-Towns and Icewind Dale, they investigate rumors of a sanctuary inhabited by a beautiful witch and a halfling caretaker. While visiting Clan Battlehammer, Bruenor (traveling under the alias Bonnego) decides to continue his search for more information to the location of Gauntlgrym. Pwent, having reached an age where he is not as agile and mobile as he once was, reluctantly decides to stay in Icewind Dale when Drizzt and Bruenor take their leave. Herzgo Alegni is in the city of Neverwinter working with the Netherese and opposing the Ashmadai. Upset that the city lord will not rename a bridge after him, he recalls his chief assassin Barrabus the Gray from his home in Memnon. Barrabus is described as a dark-haired, dark-eyed, slight but muscular man. Although it is never mentioned, he bears a striking resemblance to Drizzt's former arch-rival Artemis Entreri. Barrabus is armed with a main-gauche and a magic knife. The knife can hold and deliver poison with deadly accuracy. He then instructs Barrrabus to convince the lord of the city to change the bridge's name. When Barrabus shows disdain towards Herzgo, the assassin is punished by means of a magical tuning fork on the sword that Herzgo carries. The sword is called Claw and has a blood-red blade. The magic attack causes Barrabus much pain. Barrabus is successful in getting the name of the bridge changed. Dahlia and Dor'crae arrive in Luskan and enter the Illusk (undead section of Luskan). While there, they meet the unstable lich Valindra Shadowmantle. She informs them that the magical disturbances Dahlia has been sent to investigate come from Gauntlgrym. Dor'crae is sent to investigate and returns with news of Gauntlgrym's location. Dahlia realizes that she will need a Delzoun dwarf to access the dwarf kingdom and seeks out Athrogate and his drow friend Jarlaxle and convinces them to accompany her. Herzgo is at odds with the Red Wizards and the Ashmadai, and when he learns of their agents in Luskan he tells Barrabus to go investigate. Dahlia, Dor'crae, Athrogate, Jarlaxle, and Valindra all head towards Gauntlgrym using the underground tunnels. They find the place and are able to enter because of Athrogate's heritage as a Delzoun. They encounter dwarf ghosts while there. Their goal is the Forge of Gauntlgrym at the center of the city, reputed to have crafted the finest items in its day. Dor'crae uses a magical device that allows Sylora Salm to follow them from afar. The party is attacked along the way by dire corbies. While engaged with the bird men, Sylora arrives with some henchmen and proceeds to attack the party as well. Athrogate is forced to the forge and, under the hypnotic powers of Dor'crae and Sylora, is coerced into believing that the Gauntlgrym ghosts want him to throw the lever that will activate the forge. When this happens a fire primordial (ancient being of almost godlike power) is released. Dor'crae, Valindra, and Sylora make their escape. Jarlaxle, Athrogate, and Dahlia also make their way back to Luskan. Sylora then seeks out Dahlia and commands her to follow her and serve her under threat of death and Szass Tam's displeasure. Barrabus plans to leave Neverwinter for Luskan. Drizzt and Bruenor still travel the country nearby. At this moment the primordial that has been released causes a volcanic explosion. Venting its rage against living beings, it targets Neverwinter and destroys the town. Barrabas is barely able to survive. Eleven years later in 1462 DR the Dread Ring has been completed thanks to the death and destruction caused by the primordial's rage. New types of undead stalk the land. The war between the Thayans, the Ashmadai, and the Netherese escalates. Dahlia is forced to serve Sylora and Barrabus hunts the Ashmadai with great success under orders from Herzgo. Dahlia and Barrabus fight each other in the woods to a standstill. Dahlia’s unorthodox weapon grants her an advantage over Barrabus’ two-handed style, yet it should be noted that Barrabus, even though at a disadvantage, is the one who forces Dahlia to go on the defensive multiple times and outright flee at one point as Barrabus increases the tempo of the combat, suggesting that Barrabus is actually the more skilled of the two combatants. Dahlia takes to the trees for cover as Barrabus pursues but Barrabus uses Dahlia's own trick against her as he takes to the trees as well causing Dahlia to completely lose track of him. Further combat between the two is forgone as Dahlia discovers and joins ranks with an Ashmadai patrol group. Jarlaxle and Athrogate continue to reside in Luskan, still seeking a way to avenge themselves for the events that occurred in Gauntlgrym 11 years before. The ghost dwarves of Gauntlgrym, wanting to reseal the primordial, spread out across the land searching for Delzoun dwarves to help. Eventually they arrive in Icewind Dale and cryptically inform the dwarves of their plight. They also inform Bruenor of the situation. He and Drizzt then take it upon themselves to seal the primordial. Jarlaxle meanwhile returns to Menzoberranzan to seek the help of his brother Gromph in sealing away the primordial. Jarlaxle learns that he will need a dwarf king in addition to other magical devices. Dahlia also searches for a way to get back to Gauntlgrym and to seal off the primordial, hoping this will lead to her freedom from Sylora. Finding the way blocked (the tunnels have collapsed), Dahlia seeks out Jarlaxle. Bruenor, deciding where to go next, is robbed of his maps in the woods by a drow elf. Drizzt, correctly deducing who is behind this, leads Bruenor to Luskan in search of Jarlaxle. Dahlia finds Jarlaxle and accepts a magic ring from him. Bruenor and Drizzt arrive at the Cutlass in Luskan. There they are attacked by Ashmadai led by Dahlia. Jarlaxle and Athrogate enter the fight. The four of them beat back the attackers and Dahlia appears to be captured by Jarlaxle's 'wand of goo'. Instead, Dahlia uses the ring to fake her death. Jarlaxle, Athrogate, Dahlia, Bruenor, and Drizzt decide to travel to Gauntlgrym together in an attempt to stop the primordial and hopefully destroy the Dread Ring in the process. The five proceed to Gauntlygrym overland in search of a cave that will lead them down. They are attacked by a group of Ashmadai near the cave. This battle is observed by Dor'crae and Sylora who follow them. Barrabus also witnesses the fight and upon seeing Drizzt is overcome by emotion and retreats without having been seen by anyone. The five enter Gauntlgrym whereupon Bruenor sits upon the dwarf king's throne and is enchanted with divine power and knowledge from the ancient dwarves. The primordial has attracted many minions from the Elemental Plane of Fire to fight off intruders, powerful salamanders and even a small red dragon. Sylora and Dor'crae enter along with a host of Ashmadai. Valindra uses a magical scepter given to her by Sylora to summon Beealtimatuche, a pit fiend from the Nine Hells. Meanwhile, in order to contain the primordial, the five companions must strategically place 10 bowls that summon water elementals in various places throughout the city. Fighting through waves of salamanders, the five companions begin to set the elemental bowls into the proper alcoves. During the fighting, dwarves from Icewind Dale and Mirabar (who have also been visited by dwarf ghosts) arrive in another part of Gauntlgrym in order to help seal the primordial. The companions are only able to place nine of the ten summoning bowls as one alcove had been destroyed earlier. They then head to the Forge Of Gauntlgrym. In a trance, Bruenor places his axe and shield into the forge and removes them, to find that they are magically enhanced. The shield now provides real potions of heroism to the companions. The Ashmadai, led by the pit fiend, who just killed the red dragon, then enter the forge room. The pit fiend engages the five and manages to kill the consummate survivor Jarlaxle in one blow. While Drizzt and Dahlia hold off the Ashmadai and several legion devils, Athrogate and Bruenor move deeper into the city to seal the primordial, but are intercepted by Beealtimatuche. Athrogate attempts to fight the devil, but is only able to wound the devil before he slapped aside. God-blessed Bruenor engages Beealtimatuche in a titanic battle, but even with his new powers, the devil seizes the upper hand. Thibbledorf Pwent - left behind in Icewind Dale - reappears and goes after Bruenor to protect him. Dahlia and Drizzt gain the upper hand until Valindra arrives. The lich is driven away by Jarlaxle who was not killed but saved by the same ring that allowed Dahlia to fake her own death. Drizzt, Jarlaxle, and Dahlia then go after Bruenor. Bruenor is aided by Pwent, who is nearly killed by the pit fiend. Finally, the grievously-injured King Bruenor cleaves the devil's head in half and throws him in the heart of the primordial. Pwent helps the mortally wounded Bruenor toward the lever. Dahlia enters just in time to see Dor'crae (who has followed them in) tear out Pwent's throat. Dahlia then attacks and drives the vampire off with a wooden spike from her magic ring. Bruenor, with his last ounce of strength manages to pull the lever and. Attempting to escape, Dor'crae is caught in a waterfall created when the lever was pulled, and explodes into black flakes, seemingly destroyed. The primordial is sealed. The Dread Ring is broken. Drizzt manages get to Bruenor and hold him in tender embrace and with his last breath nodded to Drizzt with a look of comfort died in an embrace of friendship. Jarlaxle manages to help Athrogate escape. Bruenor is buried in Gauntlgrym along with Pwent. Dahlia moves the last earring to her left ear, symbolizing the vampire's death. She plans to face Sylora who not only avoided the battle, but was the principal advisor to the plan. Drizzt, with growing feelings toward her, decides to accompany her. In the epilogue, Bruenor wakes up in the forest of the goddess Mielikki. He is met by his dear friend Regis and adoptive son Wulfgar. Regis remarks that Bruenor is indeed dead, and when he motions behind the dwarf king, he turns to see his adopted daughter, Catti-brie, dancing in the woods. The crusty dwarf, who so often hides his feelings from even those closest to him, sinks to his knees and cries.
29162821	/m/0dljjsq	Our Kind of Traitor	John le Carré	2010-09-16		 On a tennis holiday in Antigua, British university lecturer Peregrine "Perry" Makepiece and his lawyer girlfriend Gail Perkins meet mysterious Russian business oligarch Dmitri "Dima" Vladimirovich Krasnov and his family. Dima, who describes himself as "the world's number one money launderer," deliberately sought contact with Perry hoping that he is a British spy or knows one. This is because Dima wants Perry to pass on information about his criminal activities to British intelligence, in exchange for protection for himself and his family. Dima fears for his life because "The Prince", the new leader of his criminal brotherhood, had a good friend of Dima and his wife murdered. The Prince now wants Dima to come to Bern to sign over control of the money-laundering operations to him. Back in the UK, Perry reaches out to a colleague with contacts in the British intelligence community and hands over Dima's notes. Since these implicate a high-ranking decisionmaker in the UK, British intelligence decides to put government fixer Hector Meredith in charge of a secret semi-official investigation. Hector recruits disgraced intelligence officer Luke Weaver to handle the investigation. Luke, eager to redeem himself, makes all the necessary arrangements. Dima insists that Perry and Gail be present during his first contact with British intelligence in Paris during the 2009 Roland Garros final, so the couple travel to Paris where they again meet with Dima and his family. After Dima signs the papers handing over his assets to a representative of "The Prince", he meets with Luke and is extracted, along with his family, to a safe house in the Swiss Alps. They wait here until British intelligence insists that only Dima travel to the UK; his family will be allowed to join him later if his information proves correct. Dima reluctantly agrees and travels with Luke to catch the charter plane that is supposed to bring them to the UK, only to be killed as the plane explodes after take-off.
29163155	/m/0dljz4d	Bodyguard of Lies	Anthony Cave Brown	1975		 The book narrates Allied deception strategy on the Western Front for the years of 1943 and 1944. It particularly focuses on the strategic Operation Bodyguard and the events leading up the invasion of Normandy. In late 1942, Allied high command in London became aware of the successful deception work Dudley Clarke was achieving in north Africa. As a result they established the London Controlling Section; with a department broad powers, under colonel John Bevan, to plan deception strategy in Europe. Bodyguard of Lies follows Bevan's work in creating a deception plan to cover the Allied invasion of Normandy. Brown discusses the fictional First US Army Group, a unit of Operation Bodyguard under General George Patton, referring to it as "the greatest charade in history".
29163545	/m/0dllvg9	The God Engines	John Scalzi	2009	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place in a universe where space travel is accomplished by chaining intelligent, human-like creatures called gods to a spacecraft and torturing them to drive the ship. The people are ruled by an organization called the Bishopry Militant, who worship a powerful being. Captain Ean Tephe is completely faithful to the Bishopry, but his faith comes under test when he is assigned a secret mission which his ship's god seems to have a keen interest in.
29169225	/m/0dljmk4	A Point of Law	John Maddox Roberts		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Senator Decius Metellus has returned from his military expedition to Cyprus, having concluded a successful campaign against local pirates and gathered enough booty to pay off his outstanding debts and finance his campaign for praetor. He is campaigning in the Forum when a young aristocrat loudly denounces him for alleged fraud and theft while in office on Cyprus, and boldly threatening to prosecute him for said acts. A minor scuffle breaks out, before the young man is dragged away. Later, the young man is found gruesomely murdered, and suspicion falls on Decius. To his consternation, his family inform him that, although the charges are unlikely to stick, they can nevertheless delay his election for at least a year. Decius, thinking hard, realizes that the young man may have been a virtual nobody, but could recite a pedigree that would virtually guarantee him popular support - claiming descent from Scipio Africanus and the Gracchi, among others. This means that the young man was likely the figurehead of a conspiracy. The exact aim of the conspiracy is unclear, but Decius reasons that someone must be aiming at reducing the Caecilia Metelli's voting bloc in the Senate (as Decius concedes, he himself is not that important). Decius consults Sallustius, who gives him a small lecture about the Republic's political landscape: for generations, the great aristocratic families of Rome have been slowly shrinking, more dependent on adoption to sustain their numbers, and gradually losing their hold on the highest offices of state which they consider to be their birthright. Now, with Caesar's power, wealth, and popularity growing on a daily basis, these aristocrats are being pushed to increasingly desperate lengths. Sallust confides that he was a guest at several dinner parties at which schemes were discussed to seize control of the State; the young man was to have been the figurehead, and popular support was supposed to have been further mobilized by proposing a mass cancellation of debts. Of course, Sallust dismissed the scheme as hare-brained.
29174111	/m/0dlngcr	El delantero centro fue asesinado al atardecer	Manuel Vázquez Montalbán	1989	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The private detective Pepe Carvalho is enquiring about a list of death threats arriving after that FC Barcelona purchases the football star Jack Mortimer. de:Der Schuss aus dem Hinterhalt it:Il centravanti è stato assassinato verso sera
29179339	/m/0dlnqh3	The Son of Neptune	Rick Riordan	2011-10-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Son of Neptune begins with the amnesiac Percy Jackson being chased by the two remaining Gorgon sisters, who want to kill him to avenge the death of their sister Medusa. Percy, who has no memories of his past life except of his girlfriend, Annabeth Chase, manages to outdistance them and stumbles upon Juno, disguised as an old lady, who gives him two options: to carry her to the Caldecott Tunnel, into the Roman Camp and across the Little Tiber river—though she warns him that by crossing through the river he'll lose his Achilles-like invulnerability—or to retreat to the safety of the sea and live a long, happy life. Percy chooses to carry Juno in hopes of seeing Annabeth again. At the Caldecott Tunnel he meets two other demigods: Hazel Levesque and Frank Zhang. When they cross the river, Percy sees Frank get caught by the pursuing Gorgons and controls the river to destroy them. Juno then reveals herself to the people there, who are inhabitants of Camp Jupiter, the Roman camp for demigods. Percy is accepted by the camp's praetor, a girl named Reyna, and is made part of the Fifth Cohort when Hazel sponsors him. He and Hazel and Frank then prepare for the night's war games. During the games, the trio is responsible for the cohort's victory, and after the games Mars appears. He claims Frank as his son and sends Percy, Hazel, and Frank on a quest to free Thanatos, the god of Death, who is imprisoned in Alaska. On the quest, they bump into an old man named Phineas, who is all-knowing and all-seeing. He tells them that he will reveal the location of Thanatos if they capture a harpy named Ella and bring her to him. Before capturing Ella, they learn that she can memorize anything she reads and decide to gamble with Phineas instead. Phineas and Percy will each drink a vial of Gorgon blood, one of which kills while the other heals. Phineas ends up dying and the trio discover the location in Phineas's pocket: Hubbard Glacier in Alaska. On the way to Alaska, Hazel reveals that she was actually supposed to be dead but was rescued from the Fields of Asphodel by Nico di Angelo and that seventy years prior to the story she was originally started to wake up the giant Alcyoneus but stopped him from rising the day he was due to escape. At that point, Frank reveals to Hazel that his life depends on a piece of firewood that he always keeps. When it burns out, he dies. When they finally reach the glacier, they find the Roman Camp's eagle standard and most importantly, Thanatos in chains. His chains cannot be broken unless melted by the "fire of life", a.k.a Frank's firewood, so Frank starts melting the chains as Hazel attacks Alcyoneus, while Percy attacks Alcyoneus's ghost legion. Frank manages to free Thanatos with just a bit of his firewood left. Frank then goes to help Hazel and learns how to use his family power, which is shape shifting into any animal. He attacks Alcyoneus and dazes him, while Percy slams his sword at the edge of the iceberg where he was fighting, collapsing the iceberg and drowning the ghost legion. Frank and Hazel then drag Alcyoneus across the border into Canada, where Hazel kills him. Frank and Hazel meet back up with Percy in Alaska and then the trio rush back to Camp Jupiter, where, with the help of Tyson, Mrs. O'Leary, and the Roman Legion they fend off the Giant Polybotes's army. After seeing the eagle standard, the legion regains their hope and fights with renewed energy. Percy then challenges the giant Polybotes (born to oppose Poseidon) to a duel, as the rest of the camp fights the rest of the monsters. Percy calls to Terminus to help him defeat the giant, as giants can only be defeated by both a god and demigod. Percy eventually beats Polybotes after a battle using the head of Terminus' statue as a weapon. After the battle the legion names Percy as praetor, one of the two leaders of the Roman camp. Nearing the end, the groups of Greek camp demigods inform Percy of their arrival through a video scroll. He persuades the senate to trust him and let them in without a fight since the future of the world depends on both groups. Percy then resolves to introduce Hazel and Frank to his other family.
29195509	/m/0gg8g_1	Conjure Wife	Fritz Leiber		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Tansy Saylor is the wife of an up-and-coming young sociology professor at a small, conservative American college. She is also a witch. Her husband, Norman, discovers this one day while rummaging through her dressing table: he finds vials of graveyard dirt, packets of hair and fingernail clippings from their acquaintances, and other evidence of her witchcraft. He confronts Tansy, and manages to convince her that her faith in magic is a result of superstition and neurosis. Tansy burns her charms; and Norman's luck immediately goes sour. He realizes that he had been protected, up til now, by Tansy's charms, and that as a result of his meddling, they are both now powerless to counteract the spells and charms of the other witches all around them.
29203170	/m/0dln32f	The Emperor of Nihon-Ja				 Horace is missing. Months have passed since he was sent on a military mission to the court of the Emperor of Nihon-Ja with his friend and former wardmate George but he has failed to return. Evanlyn is worried, and in company with Will, Selethen, Halt, and Alyss, she sets out to discover what has become of their old friend. They find that Horace has become embroiled in Nihon-Jan politics. The arrogant Senshi sect, a class which believes that they are a superior race, has rebelled against the rightful Emperor Shigeru and Horace has chosen to stay and lend support to the deposed ruler. Their only hope is to find to the fabled Ran-Koshi which they believe is a fortress with impossibly high wall. With only 50 Senshi and around 200 untrained Kikori, they must fight hundreds of trained Senshi warriors. Now he, Selethen, and Will must trainmen willing to face the highly trained Senshi warriors, while Alyss and Evanlyn must overcome their longstanding rivalry to seek aid from a mysterious group of mountain dwellers, called the Hasanu. In the end, Horace and Evanlyn become engaged, as do Will and Alyss.
29204858	/m/0g5rjcn	The Dragon's Apprentice	James A. Owen	2010-10	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The novel opens in 1943, seven years after the end of the previous book, The Shadow Dragons. It has been seven years since either of the three Caretakers has been in the Archipelago of Dreams and the Summer Country is embroiled in World War II. The Caretakers return and are faced with an issue: the Keep of Time has finally disintegrated and as a result, time has unravelled. Rose has a strange visitor in the night instructing her to find Samaranth's apprentice, ask the dragon a riddle and save the Archipelago from the Echthroi, the primordial shadows. The Caretakers are trapped in the Archipelago because of the final destruction of the Keep of Time, and when John, Jack and Charles return to the Summer Country in 1943, the Nameless Isles are ripped apart from the Archipelago and Tamerlane House, along with all of its inhabitants, are transported to 1945 and are now attached to Oxford. The Caretakers Emeritis meet a distraught John and Jack and learn that Charles died two weeks earlier. John, Jack, Fred, the Tin Man (Roger Bacon), Laura Glue, Richard Burton, Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle and the mysterious End of Time, a friend of Burton's, travel to Avalon and the Archipelago but discover that it is in ruins and that two thousand years have passed in the Archipelago of Dreams. At Paralon, they meet a little boy named Coal, the last of Arthur's descendents, and the group of animals protecting him. From Aven, the daughter of H.G. Wells, they learn of what has happened over the last two thousand years. As the dark star Rao approaches, they go through a door from the Keep of Time; the same one that was given to Madoc. They find themselves in Dickensian London. With no Caretakers in London at the time, the Caretakers and company are alone in London with a cohort of animals and a six-year-old boy from the future. However, they meet a young man named Edmund McGee after he stole the 'Geographica' from them. He leads them to his master, Benjamin Franklin. By persuading Mordred, or Madoc, to continue his apprenticeship to Samaranth and become a dragon himself, and by using Edmund McGee's prodigious skill in cartography and chronology to navigate their way through time, the Caretakers begin the process of fixing Time.
29209200	/m/0dlnw4f	Help! I'm Trapped in my Teacher's Body		1993	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jake Sherman is sitting in his sixth grade science class with his friends Josh Hopka and Andy Kent. The class is taught by the boring teacher Mr. Dirksen, who does nothing but lecture the students, and never does anything fun. As he lectures them, Jake and his friends load spitball shooters and shoot them at Mr. Dirksen. Andy and Josh manage to hide their shooters, but Jake is caught by Mr. Dirksen. After class, Mr. Dirksen talks with Jake. He informs him that he is not going to be given detention, since Mr. Dirksen does not believe it will do any good. He says instead that Jake will, as punishment, carry a heavy box home for him. After school, Mr. Dirksen and Jake walk home to Mr. Dirksen's house. As they reach it, a storm begins to come in. Mr. Dirksen shows Jake an invention that he is building in his garage. He calls it the Dirksen Intelligence Transfer System, and hopes that it will one day gain the ability to transfer intelligence from one being to another, thus eliminating the need for education or training. As he finishes explaining his invention, a bolt of lightning strikes the house, knocking Jake and Mr. Dirksen unconscious. Jake wakes up and notices things are very different. He suddenly has an aching back and things look fuzzy. He looks across the garage to see himself looking back at him. The truth suddenly hits him: Mr. Dirksen's machine has caused Jake and his teacher to swap bodies. Mr. Dirksen (in Jake's body) informs Jake that he refuses to leave his student's body, and heads home to Jake's house. Jake (in Mr. Dirksen's body) follows, but is only thrown out of his house when his father does not recognize him and threatens to call the police. The following day, Jake takes over teaching his science class. He suddenly realize that, being in Mr. Dirksen's body, he can make the class fun. During the lesson, he teaches the students how to build bombs, much to their excitement. While trapped in his teacher's body, Jake attempts to make life miserable for Mr. Dirksen in hopes that he will agree to switch back, but to no avail. Eventually, "Mr. Dirksen's" lessons to his science class prove so exciting that the impressed Principal Blanco praises him for them and declares him a model teacher. To celebrate this, Jake's other teacher, Mrs. Rogers, takes him out to breakfast, where she begins to fall in love with Jake in Mr. Dirksen's body and proposes marriage to him. She invites him to have a romantic dinner at her house where he can discuss the matter. Jake eventually is able to convince his sister Jessica of his predicament and gets her to help him. None of her efforts to make the intruder miserable, however, prove effective. Mr. Dirksen, however, learns of a fact that makes him decide to switch back: that if he is Jake, he will have to spend the weekend in a cabin with Andy and Josh. Jake, Mr. Dirksen, and Jessica head to Mr. Dirksen's home. Mr. Dirksen points out that if there is no bolt of lightning to strike his home, there is no hope of the machine working. Jake attempts to fly a kite up to the power line and run the rope down to the machine, but the kite crashes. Jake then gets the idea to use a baseball instead. He and his sister are not able to do it, so he leaves it up to Mr. Dirksen. Mr. Dirksen makes Jake promise that if he switches back, Jake will be a model student. Jake agrees, so Mr. Dirksen throws the ball. It succeeds in wrapping around the line. The trio hurry to the garage and attach the line to the machine. Soon, another lightning bolt strikes the house, knocking Jake and his teacher unconscious. When they wake, they are back in their bodies. Mr. Dirksen agrees to make his classes more exciting from then on and heads to his dinner date with Mrs. Rogers. In an epilogue, Jake talks with Mrs. Rogers, who reveals she and Mr. Dirksen are engaged.
29220616	/m/0dllczw	Small g: a Summer Idyll				 The novel concerns the messy personal lives of a group of gay and lesbian patrons of a Zurich bar-cafe known locally as the "Small g". The main character, Rickie Markwelder, an HIV-positive artist, struggles to keep his life together after the murder of his lover, Peter, a crime for which he eventually becomes a suspect. Worsening his dilemma are a spate of rumours circling around the bar concerning his relationship with a teenaged boy (for whom Rickie harbors an unrequited affection), which damage his standing with his friends and family.
29228070	/m/0dlks6k	Mourning Ruby	Helen Dunmore			 Prologue The story opens with Rebecca and Ruby walking along the coast road from St Just to Zennor in Cornwall. This is during the time of a visit to Cornwall with Adam to visit his relative’s grave. Part One – Shoebox Story Rebecca recounts the discovery of herself as a foundling by Lucia, after she is abandoned by her young mother outside an Italian restaurant. This is at a time when she is working for Mr Damiano, a mysterious ex-circus owner who has set up a chain of boutique hotels that Rebecca helps to manage. On a flight back to England, one of the plane’s engines fails and it is forced to return to New York. It is whilst standing on the tarmac that Rebecca decides to hand in her notice, having lost all zest for her work. Rebecca’s story goes back to the time when she was sharing a flat with Joe, an intellectual who is writing a book about Nadezhda Alliluyeva, the thirty one year old wife of Stalin who committed suicide in 1932. He befriends Adam through a shared interest in chess and he and Rebecca fall in love and then marry. Joe decides to move to Moscow to further his research and lives with Olya, and Rebecca and Adam decide to visit him with Ruby. He tells them about Joseph Stalin’s character and the wave of fear that gripped Russia during his dictatorship. On their return to England, they decide to visit Adam’s grandmother’s grave at Barnoon Cemetery in Cornwall and Rebecca is happy that Ruby will have ancestors that she herself can never have. It is on their return to London on a warm August evening that tragedy strikes when Ruby is run down by a motorist. Rebecca cannot reconcile herself to her daughter’s loss and the intensity of her grief leads to their eventual separation. It is at this time that Rebecca’s shattered life is restored through her work for Mr Damiano, who tells her his life story as the son of poor trapeze artists. Joe, meanwhile, is working on his second novel – about the time of Stalin’s retreat to his dacha when Hitler invaded Russia. After talking to an Afghan war veteran, he decides to abandon the task and goes to Vancouver Island to write a novel. Rebecca leaves London and, on a visit to St Ives, starts working as a waitress in a local cafe. Here, she is visited by Joe who gives her a copy of his story. Part Two – Boomdiara This part is a narrative of Joe’s novel which describes the life of Florence, who works in Madame Blanche’s brothel to support her young daughter, Claire. It is here that she meets Will, a World War One air force pilot, with whom she falls in love. Joe writes to Rebecca that Florence’s character is based in part on her own. Part Three – Flight In this part the stories of Rebecca and Adam and Florence and Will become intertwined. Adam visits Rebecca in her boarding house and they become reunited and return to Ruby who is buried in the same grave as her great grandmother. Will’s plane is shot up in a fire fight with a German Albatros and he has to cut his engine to prevent his plane going down as a flamer.
29232760	/m/0dllyfd	De brief voor de Koning				 In the night before his accolade and ascension to knighthood, which is traditionally spent as a nocturnal vigil in a small chapel, 16-year-old squire Tiuri, son of a famous knight in the realm of King Dagonaut, receives a desperate plea for help from a stranger knocking at the chapel door. Unable to refuse a call for help, he breaks the tradition and goes outside, where the stranger, an old man, hands him a sealed letter and begs him to deliver it to a knight clad in black armor and a white shield residing in a nearby forest inn. Tiuri agrees to deliver it, bt upon arriving at the inn, he learns to his dismay that the kight he seeks has in the meantime been challenged by another black knight, this time with a red shield. Tracing the path the knights have taken into the forest, Tiuri finds the knight with the white shield dying, mortally wounded in a cowardly ambush. When the knight learns of Tiuri's possession of the letter, he charges him with delivering it to the neighbouring realm of the west, ruled by the wise King Unauwen, and to seek out a hermit named Menaures living in the mountains separating the two kingdoms, who would show him a secret way through the mountains. Bound by his sense of honor, Tiuri accepts the task and the ring the knight gives him in order to stress the importance of his mission, and remains with the knight until he dies. Soon, however, Tiuri finds himself hunted by riders clad in red, the henchmen of the knight with the red shield, and is forced to flee for his life. In order to speed his progress, he claims the steed of the knight with the white shield, a formidable night-black destrier who accepts him as his new rider. He also finds himself chased by a quartett of knights in grey, who are eager to kill him for unknown reasons, and temporarily loses his horse to a band of robbers, but finds help with the childish but amicable forest-dweller Marius and the monks of a nearby monastery. He eventually makes his way to a castle named Mistrinaut, where he is found and imprisoned for execution by the Grey Knights, who (as it turns out later) were close friends of the knight with the white shield and believe Tiuri to be his murderer. However, Sigirdiwarth Rafox, the lord of Mistrinaut, and his daughter Lavinia supply Tiuri with weapons to save his life, and in the end Tiuri convinces the knights of his innocence and befriends them, especially their leader, Ristridin of the South, a famous wandering knight from Dagonaut's realm.´ From Ristridin, Tiuri finally learns the name of the knight - Edwinem of Foresterra, a famous hero from Unauwen's realm - and of his steed Ardanwen; the stranger who sent Tiuri on his quest turns out to be Edwinem's squire, Vokia. As it is gradually revealed, the murder of Edwinem and the letter Tiuri carries are pivotal elements in a festering conflict between the realm of Unauwen and the realm of Evillan, a kingdom south of Dagonaut's domain. The ruler of Evillan is the younger of Unauwen's twin sons, who is torn by jealousy toward his elder brother and, seeking dominion over his father's realm, has conquered Evillan to support his own ends. Lately, there are rumors about the Lord of Evillan intending to reconcile with his brother; Edwinem was part of the delegation sent to negotiate the peace terms between the two realms. Hoever, the delegation has since gone missing, except for Edwinem, and his disguise as one of the black knights of Evillan indicates that nothing good will be forthcoming from Evillan's side. Under the company of the Grey Knights, Tiuri survives an ambush attempt by the Red Riders and some hire thugs, and safely reaches the base of the mountains, where he parts company with the knights. As he makes his way to Menaures' abode, he is met by a man called Jaro, wo claims to be a pilgrim seeking the hermit's advice, and short while later Tiuri ends up saving Jaro from a fatal fall into a ravine. Tiuri and Jaro later encounter Menaures and Piak, a young mountain boy whose services as a guide is offered by Menaures after he has learned of Tiuri's quest. Shortly after their departure, Jaro reveals himself to be one of the Red Riders sent to kill him, but since Tiuri has saved his life, Jaro finds himself unable to do him any harm. Before he departs, he warns Tiuri of another Red Rider, a vile and cunning individual named Slupor, who will be waiting for him in Unauwen's realm. Piak, who has overheard the conversation, pledges himself to Tiuri and his errand, and in the days that they spend crossing the mountains, the two become fast friends. The two boys arrive safely in the realm of Unauwen, but even there the spies and agents of Evillan are everpresent. In the city of Dangria, the mayor, an agent and sympathizer to Evillan, attempts to imprison the boys under false pretenses, but a diversion by Piak allows Tiuri to hide long enough to memorize the contents of the letter and destroy it. While attempting to free Piak, Tiuri receives help from the disgruntled citizens who have long been displeased with the despotic mayor, although only few ever suspected him being an agent of Evillan. Piak is liberated and the mayor's true allegiance exposed, but not daring to be delayed on their errand, Tiuri and Piak run away before the newly elected provisory town council can question them. Their next obstacle meets them at the Rainbow River in the form of a castle serving as a customs station. Without money to pay the toll, Tiuri and Piak decide to cross the river by stealth, but end up shipwrecked and captured. When Tirui is brought before Sir Ardian, the local Lord of Customs, he attempts to bargain for his and Piak's release by offering Edwinem's ring as a deposit. Upon recognizing the ring, and after learning about Edwinem's demise and that Tiuri carries an important message for the king, Sir Ardian promptly provides the two boys with an escort to the capital. Slupor manages to draw away the Custom guards and awaits Tiuri and Piak at the very gates of the capital, but his last-ditch attempt at Tiuri's life is foiled, and Slupor is arrested. Now able to fulfill their quest, Tiuri and Piak deliver the message the letter contained to King Unauwen. It is later revealed that the letter was a warning about the Lord of Evillan's treacherous plans which formed the core of his reconciliation attempt, since he has planned to murder his brother once the realm of Unauwen was lulled into a sense of peace and security, thereby making him the only claimant to the throne. With a heavy heart, Unauwen calls the knights of his realm to arms to prepare for war and rewards Tiuri and Piak for their valiant service to his kingdom. Soon after, Tiuri and Piak depart for Dagonaut's realm, following the very path they have taken for their outward journey. After arriving at Menaures' abode, Piak, who feels torn between his friendship with Tiuri and his home in the mountains, parts company with Tiuri, who continues his return journey alone. On his way, he meets again with most of his friends and allies, including Ristridin who invites him to his castle in the coming spring once he has completed an errand for King Dagonaut to explore the Wild Wood, a wild and desolate forest area lining the realm's southern border. After an uneventful journey, Tiuri returns to the capital of Dagonaut's realm, where he is welcomed back by the king and his family. To Tiuri's immense surprise, and quite against his expectations to the contrary, he subsequently finds himself made a full knight; even though having broken the rules of tradition, Tiuri has proven that he already is a true knight due to his sense of honor, his dedication and compassion in accepting Edwinem's quest as his own. Tiuri's joy is completed when the very next day Piak arrives at the capital, having changed his mind and decided to join Tiuri as his friend and squire. The story is continued in Geheimen van het Wilde Woud (Secret of the Wild Wood).
29262636	/m/0ds3b7m	The Eyes of My Princess				 The story begins when Jose Carlos, a shy fifteen-year-old, realizes he has fallen in love for the first time with the new girl in his class. After school, a strange man arrives with Carlos's classmate, Mario, and lures him into his car. The man is a porn producer, and he tries to convince Carlos to get his classmate Ariadne to make porn with them. Finally Carlos escapes with the help of Ariadne, who is a friend of the new girl. Carlos tells his parents to go to the police, but they are unable to locate the man, who abducted Mario. One day he decides to talk with the new girl, Sheccid (her real name is Justiniana Deghemteri, but Carlos changes it for the name of an Arab princess). He confesses his love, but things go wrong when Ariadne recognizes him and tells Sheccid he is related to the pervert who tried to abduct her. Carlos does not give up and, moved by the love he feels, he overcomes the fears he has. At first he begins writing, like his grandparent, realizing he is good at it. His new journal is filled with all his thoughts and poems that he writes for Sheccid. As time goes by, Carlos realizes he is changing. First he begins giving speeches that impress his teachers and classmates, specially the class leader, Beatriz. Of course the speeches also impress Sheccid, who is good at giving speeches too. Ariadne realizes he is a good guy and he is not a pervert, so she begins a friendship with Carlos. They become good friends and Ariadne realizes he is in love with her friend. Suddenly a new boy who goes to the same school begins to get along with Sheccid. After some time he becomes her boyfriend. Carlos dislikes the new boy, because he knows that the guy is not truly in love with Sheccid. The new guy is bigger, stronger and more popular; however, Carlos is not afraid. One day the new guy punches Sheccid and Carlos stands up for her. Sheccid likes the actions of Carlos but her boyfriend organizes a big fight between Carlos's friends and his own friends. Almost all his classmates help Carlos; however, the other guys are gang members, carrying blades and chains to the fight. The fight is unfair, but with the help of teachers, the police arrive to calm the brawl. After that, Sheccid decides to break up with her boyfriend. Everything seems to be fine until Sheccid begins to skip school. At first Carlos does not give this much importance; however, she continues to miss class. He decides to face the problem and talks with her; she says he should just forget about her, and then she kisses him. (The following part was divided and published as “El sectreto de Sheccid”, Sheccid’s secret). Desperate, Carlos asks Ariadne for help. She agrees, and then he learns that her family is going to move to another the city, apparently because the mother is ill and the father is having an affair. Before the brawl, he gave her his journal but Sheccid does not say anything else and asks him to forget her. He falls into depression because Sheccid has left him, and does not seem to feel the same way Carlos feels for her. Ariadne tells him to go to her house, to see the "real" Sheccid. After the brawl, he goes to Sheccid's house where he discovers that Sheccid has a brain tumor, and the family is leaving the city to get her special medical attention, the day after she gets out of the hospital from a very dangerous and risky surgery: the father will leave with Sheccid first, followed later by Sheccid's mom and brother. The day of the surgery, he calls Ariadne (who knows everything), only to learn that Sheccid died from complications. Ariadne gives him a letter that Sheccid left for him. In the letter, she explains him that she loved him until the last day of her life. She tells him that there were two options for her: to die during surgery, or survive and then leave to receive attention in another city. Either way, they could not be together. She confesses him she had turned him down so he would not get hurt, whatever the outcome. He then writes in his journal a poem for Sheccid, telling that she will always be a part of him, and he will always remember her the way he knew her. This is the end of Carlos's first love, but not the end of the story. Carlos wrote "Sheccid's Secret" as a means to overcome the events that really happened. After Ariadne tells him to go see Sheccid at her house, he walks into a party. There, he sees Sheccid's mom sitting in a chair in a catatonic state. He gets introduced to Sheccid's father, who is at the party with another woman; the rumors about the problems in Sheccid's family were true. When he sees Sheccid, she is drinking, smoking and in a drug induced state, doing a dance for some men. He then faces the painful truth: he loved Justiniana because he thought of her as the embodiment of Sheccid, his ideal of the perfect woman. But Justiniana was not Sheccid. Facing this fact, he leaves the party. Heartbroken, and about to go insane, he locks himself up in his room and writes a different ending to his story; in his journal he kills Sheccid to free not only the love he felt for her, but to free himself from the pain he felt when he realized he was in love with an illusion. It is at this point that we find out that Mario, the classmate abducted by the pervert, was found alive in a car accident. The book ends with Carlos realizing that, by the love he felt, he changed for good; love made him a stronger, better person, and by keeping the innocence of his lost love, he could remain like that. In the book the main character calls the new girl in his class "Sheccid". The name Sheccid comes from a story told by his grandfather. In the story a young man is sent to prison unfairly; in the jail the man began to fill his heart and mind with despair and revenge. Then Sheccid, the king's daughter, appears and her beauty and kindness make the young man regain a good-hearted nature. Finally the princess helps him escape from jail; however, the young man never told her about his feelings and the princess married another man. The moral of the story is that true love makes people grow in every way of their lives.
29268830	/m/0ds9sns	Bør Børson	Johan Falkberget	1920	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "Bør Børson Olderstad" is a farmer's son from the fictional valley Olderdalen. Dreaming about money, wealth and a position at the board of the local savings bank, he has changed his last name to Børson, and started a local grocery store. The name Børson is a paraphrase of the Norwegian word , from , in . Via various burlesque episodes he eventually ends up as a millionaire. The story ends with a wedding between Bør and Josefine Torsøien, a girl from a nearby farm. The novel is set in the boom period during World War I. Norway did not participate in the war, but the country's merchant fleet carried goods at increasing freight rates. The sea transport was a risky business that cost the lives of 2,000 Norwegian seamen, while a volatile stock market could multiply investments over short periods of time.
29269203	/m/0ds6rrv	Cop this Lot				 Giovanni 'Nino' Culotta is an Italian immigrant, who came to Australia as a journalist, but became a brickie's labourer. Now, several years later, he is a builder, and married to Kay, with a daughter Maria and son Nino junior. Nino decides to travel back to Italy to see his parents, and takes not only Kay, but his mates Joe and Dennis, who have never left Sydney. They travel by aeroplane and cargo ship and buy a cheap car in Germany to drive to Italy. They arrive at the Cullota family villa, and Nino's father, a crusty patriach, is only concerned that Nino and Kay have not been 'properly' married by an Italian priest. By the time they return to Sydney, Joe and Dennis, despite their working-class 'Ocker' background, have acquired a veneer of European sophistication, preferring wine to beer and unwilling even to get drunk.
29271476	/m/0ds30df	The Coming of the Terraphiles	Michael Moorcock		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In order to avert the impending collapse of the Multiverse from the mysterious "dark tides" that have begun to appear, the Doctor and Amy join the Terraphiles, a group of humans in the far future obsessed with recreating Earth's distant past and reenacting medieval Earth sports (or rather, unknowingly comic misinterpretations of the same). The Doctor and his new friends compete in a Grand Tournament in the Miggea star system, which lies on the border of parallel realities. The prize of the contest is an ancient artefact called the Arrow of Law, sought also by the Doctor's old foe Captain Cornelius and his crew of space pirates.
29271653	/m/0dm2b3z	Mary Ann in Autumn	Armistead Maupin	2010-11-02	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mary Ann Singleton Carruthers flees her luxurious life in Darien, Connecticut and for San Francisco, seeking solace from old friend Michael Tolliver. Reeling from both ill health and her husband's infidelity, she asks Michael if she can stay in his guest cottage while she recuperates. Meanwhile, other former Barbary Lane residents show up in the novel: Mary Ann's adoptive daughter Shawna is seriously dating for the first time; Anna Madrigal has mostly recovered from the stroke she had in Michael Tolliver Lives; Michael's assistant, Jake Greenleaf, wrestles with his attraction to a closeted Mormon missionary who is involved in the movement to "cure" homosexuals; and Jake, a pre-op female-to-male transsexual, despairs of ever saving enough money to pay for surgery. Ironically, his dream of having a hysterectomy is the same nightmare that Mary Ann is facing. As the novel progresses, Dede and D'Orothea show up to help Mary Ann with her recuperation, Shawna befriends a homeless junkie prostitute, Jake makes a startling discovery, and a threat from the past comes back to haunt the former Barbary Lane residents.
29313438	/m/065w9c	Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The Capture	Kathryn Lasky	2003-06	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The Capture is about a young barn owl named Soren, who lives in the Forest Kindom of Tyto with his father and mother, Noctus and Marella, respectively, and older brother Kludd. One day, chick is hatched, and Soren's mother, Marella, names her Eglantine. Mrs. Plithiver, the nest-maid for the family, a blind snake, helps care for her. While Soren's parents are on a hunting trip, Kludd pushes Soren out of the nest. Soren gets snatched by a patrol unit from St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls. Grimble. Another owl is holding a tiny Elf Owl named Gylfie. Soon, Soren and Gylfie reach St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls. In this "orphanage", owls are "numbered" and forced to do a "sleeping march" where they march at night in the moonlight. Soren is number 12-1, and Gylfie is numbered 25-2. Hortense, a Spotted Owl, is number 12-8. Owls have to calls themselves and other owls by their numbers. The sleeping position is tipping your beak up and putting your head slightly back, while continuously repeating their own name. Gylfie tells Soren if an owl sleeps in this position under full shine (full moon) they forget their own personality and everything is the wrong side up. This is called moonblinking. Another rule is then revealed: no asking questions. Soren accidentally asks a question in the pelletorium and, as a punishment, his down gets plucked. He wakes up finding the pit guardian, Auntie Finny, standing above him. Later, forced to sleep under full shine again, Soren finds out that they are getting moon blinked by repeating their own names, which when a word is repeated continuessly, it starts to sound like a noise, not a word anymore. Gylfie then gets an idea: march in place under the rock ridge and say your number, not your real name. On the second day of doing this, an owl finds out and they are "moon scalded", or kept in full shine of the moon. Soren realizes that saying the Ga'Hoolian legends, or Tales of Yore, helps him clear his mind. Soren and Gylfie start telling legends, until the moon goes down. As they come out, they pretend to be perfectly moon blinked. Later, Gylfie sees Hortense trying to dislodge an owl's egg from the nest with bald eagles flying nearby. Gylfie and Soren confront Hortense, and find out she is not moonblinked, like them. Skench, Spoorn, Jatt, Jutt, and Auntie find Hortense trying to save the eggs. Hortense appears' to have died after being pushed off the high point of her nest in the hatchery. Grimble, who appears to be on Soren and Gylfies' side, teaches them how to fly, and they fly away, right at the moment when Skench comes in and kills Grimble. Gylfie and Soren meet Twilight, a Great Gray Owl. They agree to find the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, where a noble group of owls is found. They also agree to try to find their families, but are most unsuccessful. At the Desert Kingdom of Kuneer, they find a Burrowing Owl named Digger, who agreed to go the quest. At the Forest Kingdom of Tyto, Mrs. Plithiver was discovered and says she wants to come and go the quest,also. Mrs. P rests on Soren's shoulders, who is flying. Also, in the Desert Kingdom of Kuneer, they meet Hortense's eagles, Streak and Zan. Here, traveling to the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, the book ends off, and the book The Journey starts. The film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole is based on this book, along with The Journey and The Rescue
29329712	/m/0drzbh3	Don't Forget the Bacon!	Pat Hutchins	1976	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The story is about a little boy who leaves his home with his dog to shop for food items for his mother, and attempts to remember the list of things she wanted him to buy. The original request from his mother is for "six farm eggs, a cake for tea, a pound of pears, and don't forget the bacon." Along with the dog, he is accompanied on his trip by a butterfly. In order to avoid forgetting items, the boy recites his mother's list to himself. Throughout his trip to the store, the boy sees items along the way that play tricks with his memory, and items on his list one-by-one become substituted with other goods &ndash; "six farm eggs" initially becomes "six fat legs", then "six clothes pegs". By the end of his trip, the boy has forgotten the initial items requested, and supplants them in his mind with "six clothes pegs, a rake for leaves, a pile of chairs, and don't forget the bacon." A merchant in a junk shop assists the boy in compiling this odd list. While travelling back to his home, he remembers the original items and corrects his mistakes. However, he still forgets to acquire bacon. The final panel depicts the child carrying a basket and a coin purse, taking his dog attached to a leash, en route, probably to purchase the bacon.
29332703	/m/0g9wgn8	Deadfalls and Snares	Arthur Robert Harding		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 One of Harding's Pleasure & Profit Books. Deadfalls and Snares, first published in 1907, is an instructional book for trappers on the art of building deadfalls from logs, boards and rocks, and making snares and toss poles, for catching all types of furbearers, such as skunk, opossum, raccoon, mink, marten and bear, and coop traps for catching wild turkey and quail. The author states that thousands of trappers around the world use deadfalls, snares and other homemade traps, but among American trappers there are many thousand who know little or nothing about them. The book contains 50 line drawings of differently constructed deadfalls made of logs, boards or stones, coop or pen style traps, trigger designs, and snare sets. There are also chapters on skinning, stretching, handling and grading fur pelts, plus a listing of Newhouse steel traps, available in the early 1900s. The building, baiting and setting instructions are written by various American and Canadian trappers who are named only by their country or state of residence.
29338793	/m/0ds81d0	Hässelby				 In Harstad's novel, Albert is 42 years old and still lives with his father in the same apartment. When his father suddenly dies, Albert sees it as an opportunity to finally create the life for himself that he longed for all these years he was taking care of his father. A large part of the novel is made up of a flashback to 1985-86 when Albert traveled around Europe with his friend Viktor, and by coincidence ends up in Hong Kong and later Paris, where he meets a girl and almost decides to stay for good, before ending up returning to his father in Hässelby. The novel starts as a traditional novel exploring themes such as the relationship between father and son, growing up in suburbia, friendship and politics, but throughout the novel the tone gradually gets darker and darker as more surreal elements are introduced. The novel ends as a nightmarish tale where Albert discovers that someone have been following him for over twenty years, all over the world, and that the world is coming to an end.
29344469	/m/0drzq2p	The Savage Girl		2001-09-18	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 To Middle City, a fictional American metropolis built around a volcano, burnt-out art student Ursula Van Urden arrives to care for her younger sister Ivy, a fashion model who has recently suffered a much-publicized schizophrenic meltdown. Ursula soon begins working for Ivy’s former boyfriend, Chas Lacouture, owner of the trendspotting firm Tomorrow, Ltd. She is trained as a trendspotter by both Chas and her coworker, Javier Delreal. A manic optimist, Javier takes her on rollerblading and party-crashing expeditions, predicting a new megatrend he calls the "Light Age," a "renaissance of self-creation," which he believes will coincide with the defeat of irony. By contrast, Chas, a cynical ex-philosophy professor, takes her to skulk in supermarkets and spy on customers, and introduces her to the concept of "paradessence," (Shakar’s invention), the "broken soul" at the center of every product, consisting of two opposing desires that it will promise to satisfy simultaneously: "‘The paradessence of coffee is stimulation and relaxation. Every successful ad campaign for coffee will promise both of those mutually exclusive states." As Ivy, still arguably insane, resumes her modeling activities, Ursula’s own trendspotting work comes to focus on a homeless girl who lives in a city park, makes her own clothing, and hunts pigeons for food. This eponymous “savage girl” forms the basis of a marketing campaign for a new product, "Diet Water," and serves as a harbinger, for Chas and Javier alike, of the new age to come. This age, of "postirony" (another of Shakar’s terms) is not so much unironic as darkly schizophrenic. The story builds to revelations both comic and tragic.
29359342	/m/0ds3_62	The Flash: Stop Motion		2004-02-24		 The books opens with the Justice League, consisting of The Flash, Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner), arriving in Eurasia to protect it from falling fireballs. While fending off the fireballs, The Flash has difficulty focusing on the objects and causes him a headache. Superman flies past The Flash and destroys the fireball before Wally can get to it. Superman then resolves Wally to directing the Justice League towards stray fireballs, as Wally cannot fly. This causes Wally to feel left out and underappreciated. After the fireballs are destroyed the 5 team members regroup and consider the attack. Martian Manhunter had happened to capture a fragment of one of the fireballs and continued to juggle it, stating that if one held on to it too long without movement they became seriously ill. The Flash takes the fragment and attempts to get a closer look at it. While peering into it he believes he sees a figure and hears two words: Iris. Allen. When asked about what he saw, Wally refrains from divulging too much information, deciding not to inform them of the figure's allusion to his Aunt. Plastic Man radios in from Justice League Watchtower informing the team that all fireballs had been destroyed but they were unable to get a read on what exactly they were. Batman then informs Wally that there have been 6 murders in Keystone City that seem to have occurred at the same time. Wally parts with his teammates, relieved to not have the focus, regarding his interaction with the fragment, on him anymore. Wally arrives at the Keystone City Police Department to meet with Detectives Fred Chyre and Jared Morillo. The detectives state that there had been another murder discovered and the three head to the new murder site. While Chyre and Morillo drive, Wally cases out the other 6 crime scenes. Wally discovers that all 7 victims had the tops of their heads blown out. The general consensus is that the crimes could have been committed by a speedster, as they all occurred at the same time and details of the wounds indicated quick movement. Wally recalls his Aunt listing some of his extended family and compares the names to the list of victims. Wally requests to have all the victim's blood tested by Star Labs. Wally heads home to have dinner with Linda and discusses wanting to get back in touch with his Aunt Iris. Linda goes to bed and Wally places a call to Iris, getting her voicemail. Wally searches the phonebook for one of his cousin's (on his father's side) name. He calls the man and while on the phone hears the man attacked and the line go dead. Wally runs to the man's house and discovers the top of his head missing, matching the other victims. While he is there he senses another presence then suddenly feels as if his head is about to implode. Wally begins vibrating his molecules to match the unique vibration of the other being. Wally attempts to attack the being but is outmatched in speed. Wally lands a few hits against the being but finds he is being attacked mentally by it. Martain Manhunter senses this and attempts to propel the being out of Wally's mind. Wally blacks out and wakes to Martain Manhunter, in his John Jones persona, questioning him about the events. Wally reluctantly admits that he was bested in speed and relays the information to Chyre and Morillo. Chyre, Morillo and Linda are concerned about Wally leaving the crime scene before the police could arrive to question him as it places him as a prime suspect. Wally and the detectives visit Star Labs where it is confirmed that all victims of the attacks had a Metagene written into their DNA. When questioned about a potential link between the killings and Wally's own superspeed, Star Labs scientists admits to tampering with the ability to endow someone with superspeed. Upon further probing, it is discovered that Dr. Jonas Upchurch is potentially responsible for the creation of the thing suspected of the recent murders. The Flash and Superman are at the Justice League Watchtower playing a game called Catch the Bacon. Despite being faster than Superman, the recent events distract him and Superman wins their "game." Martian Manhunter and Superman begin to suspect that the fireball event and the recent murders in Keystone City are related. The Flash requests to continue working the Keystone murders on his own, understanding that the rest of the Justice League would be useless against the being who he had encountered. Just before submitting to have his mind read by Martian Manhunter in order to discover more about the anomalies, Plastic Man interrupts with a call from Detective Morillo stating that they had found Upchurch. The Flash penetrates the building that the Doctor is holed up in. As The Flash enters he finds that the building is booby trapped for a speedster. The Flash successfully takes down the guards and apprehends Upchurch. After interrogating Upchurch (ongoing).
29362596	/m/0ds702r	Conan the Hunter	Sean A. Moore		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After facing a sewer monster, Conan is enlisted against a demon sorceress's conspiracy to restore the fortunes of her ancient race. In their struggle against Valtresca and Azora, the Cimmerian and his allies Salvorus, Kailash the hillman and the young priest Madesus encounter numerous traps and divine intervention in an adventure culminating in a ruined temple with legions of gargoyles and the resurrection of the horrific villain Skauraul.
29362773	/m/0drwzlq	Lady in Waiting	Rosemary Sutcliff		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story is primarily about the life and exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh, albeit with the bulk of the narration revolving around the impact of his life on Elizabeth Throckmorton, who is referred to as 'Bess.' It begins with Raleigh's (this is the spelling used in the novel) childhood in Budleigh, and quickly shows his close relationship with half-brother Humphrey Gilbert. Glibert is attributed as sharing and inspiring Raleigh's lifelong passion of wanting explore the New World, beginning with a plan to seek the fabled Northwest Passage. Much of the rest of Raleigh's life is explained as being primarily motivated by this passion. Bess is brought into the novel when Raleigh is seeking favor at Queen Elizabeth's court at the Palace of Westminster. She is 12 years of age, and Raleigh makes a strong impression on her during a chance meeting in a garden. He is whistling the tune of Greensleeves, which is used throughout the novel, and shares his frustration of being stymied in his goals of exploration. Bess grows up at court in proximity to Mary Sidney, eventually becoming a Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen. She is immersed in court culture, early on being connected with Philip Sidney, Robert Devereux, and Robin Cecil. They are all shown as children growing up in the shadows of their elders, Lord Essex and Lord Burghley, respectively; and the court intrigues of the times. The two 'Robins' are connected with Raleigh in what is described as a Triumvirate, around which both her life and the fate of England are shown as revolving. The first half of the novel takes place during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, charting the ups and downs of Raleigh's career from the 1590s onward; including his position as Captain of the Queen's Guard, his fall from favor after a clandestine marriage to Bess, their life at Durham House and Sherborne, his return to favor and involvement with the capture of Cadiz, the rise of Robin Cecil to become Secretary of State, the fall and execution of Robin Devereux, Raleigh's exploration of what is now Guyana, and attempt to promote the legend of El Dorado as motivation to gain further favor for future explorations. The second half of the novel takes place during the reign of King James, showing his decline under the machinations of Robin Cecil, 13 year imprisonment in the Tower of London after being impugned of involvement in the Main Plot by way of Lord Cobham, eventual restoration and resumption of exploration of the Orinoco, the death of his son Walter while on the exploration, Raleigh's downfall after the failure of the exploration, and eventual execution. Bess's life is shown as revolving around 'waiting' for Raleigh to 'remember her,' and being faithful to support him despite his overarching drive for exploration. Her anxieties are explored in depth, and their relationship is portrayed as being very strong, even in the face of extremity. Raleigh's life is shown as a complex tapestry of events that only make sense in the light of his lifelong dream of exploration. His execution is shown as the passing of the 'last of Elizabeth's Round Table,' with a sense of nostalgia for the adventurers in service to Queen Elizabeth and the Golden Age which she created.
29364168	/m/0drwzmr	A Full and True Account of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender	John Davidson	1895	{"/m/02js9": "Erotica"}	 The story begins with two gentlemen dining in a restaurant in the Strand, carefully keeping track of their finances as they order each item. It's revealed that the two men met recently, as they were staying in the same hotel; they both have been fleeing from something (later revealed to be their respective brides) and using aliases in London—in fact they chose the identical alias of J. Smith at the hotel, which facilitated their meeting. They finish their dinner early, not having enough cash to continue ordering at the restaurant they had chosen; on their way to a cheaper establishment, the younger of the two men declares his new religion of Evolution, and asks the other fellow to become his disciple. The man agrees. The young man gives himself the new name of The Earl de l'Avenir, which is immediately corrupted into Earl Lavender; he then christens the older man as Lord New Broom, which is shortened down to Lord Brumm. Earl Lavender explains that his mission is to find the fittest of all women and to mate with her. The rest of the book finds Earl Lavender leading the way through London, assuring Lord Brumm that Evolution will care for them. They eat at multiple restaurants despite having no money, and luck always causes someone else to be at hand who is willing to pay for them. One mysterious Veiled Lady who pays their bill leads them, afterwards, to an underground city where they are all flogged with knotted cords as part of a strange religious ritual, and then given beds for the night. Earl Lavender perceives that the Veiled Lady may be the fittest of women that he's been looking for, but he is kicked out of the underground city for declaring his passion for her (as these floggings are intended to be completely non-sexual) and Lord Brumm is soon ejected likewise; they are warned that they may return to the underground city in the future but that if there is any more misbehaving, they will be stripped and sent forth into the London streets during broad daylight. Meanwhile, Maud Emblem and Mrs. Scamler—the wife and the fiancée of Lavender and Brumm respectively—have both discovered each other hunting for their gentlemen and have teamed up after realizing the men are together. Mrs. Emblem describes how her husband ran away on their wedding night, while Mrs. Scamler tells the comical tale of how she went to great lengths to win the love of Brumm only to have him run away the morning they were to be wed. Eventually the ladies find Lavender and Brumm in a barn surrounded by an angry mob led by a murderous waiter, a Scotsman in full regalia, and the corpse of an orangutan which Lavender had declared to be The Missing Link. The men direct the women back to the underground city, where all of the characters are flogged. Earl Lavender manages to break another rule, but the Veiled Lady and the overseer of this underworld make arrangements to spare him the usual punishment, and instead give him a stern talking-to. Lavender is convinced to abandon his religion of Evolution and his goal of finding the fittest woman in the world. The book ends with the two couples presumably returning home.
29389156	/m/0dr_9gq	Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness	Tilly Bagshawe		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Grace Brookstein lived a luxurious lifestyle despite the economic free fall in the US. Then suddenly her billionaire husband Lenny mysteriously disappeares in a tragic sailing accident. Along with Lenny's disappearance, Lenny's hedge fund, the Quorum, that has a $75 billion investment is also missing and everyone believes that Grace stole the money. She was convicted and imprisoned. Grace believed that she is framed. Now alone and no one to turn to, she is determined to find out who is framing her and is desperate for revenge.
29394505	/m/0ds9lqk	With the Lightnings	David Drake	1998	{"/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 During a war between a Republic of Cinnabar and the Alliance of Free Stars, a coup d'état takes place on a neutral planet of Kostroma, with both factions becoming involved. Two Cinnabarian protagonists - a navy lieutenant and emigre librarian - find themselves in the center of the unfolding events.
29397906	/m/0ds7h1k	Cikáni				 The scenery of the novel is inspired by Kokořín Castle and its surroundings. The castle is under the rule of Earl Valdermar. Two gypsies come to an inn under the castle. Neither is an ethnic gypsy, but they accepted the lifestyle of nomads. The older one was originally a Venetian gondolier, Giacomo, who is traveling to find the kidnapper of his girlfriend Angelina. The young one is a waif adopted as his son. In the inn they meet Lea, an old Jewish owner's daughter, who falls in love with the young gypsy. She is slightly mad. The old Jew tells a story of a former owner of the inn who was a woman named Angelina, with a son. She has disappeared, no one knows where. The gypsies spend the night in the woods where they encounter a very mad lady (repeating just one sentence: "It was not me but him"). She then confesses to the young gypsy, who is jealous because of Lea, that she brought her to the Earl to be raped. A character of Bárta Flákoň appears who tells lies about his own life, but gossips truly about others. He reveals to the gypsies that Earl Valdemar kidnapped Angelina in Italy and brought her to his castle, so the old gypsy comes to the castle and kills Valdemar. The gypsies are arrested then, but a letter left by Valdemar reveals that the young gypsy is the Earl's bastard and heir. The old gypsy is executed. Lea committed suicide; her father dies of sorrow. The only character who is left alone in despair is the young "gypsy" now called "young Valdemar", who does not accept his father's property and continues the life of a free gypsy. "My father! – father seduced my mother – no, he killed my mother – through my mother – no, he through my mother seduced my lover – seduced my father's lover – my mother – and my father killed – my father."
29399038	/m/0ds8k0x	Waylander lll – The Hero in the Shade				 Waylander is a rich lord, living in a distant land, away from his problems in Drenan. At the same time, an ancient evil is trying to penetrate our world by a magical portal. Legendary cursed creatures are back to conquer the world that once belonged to them, in blood and terror. Only a handful of heroes remain, with a mysterious man leading them: a man with his hands covered with blood, who killed for money. A man known, in the Drenaï world, as an assassin. To vanquish evil, a riddle must be solved, and Waylander must kill a man who cannot be killed.
29400331	/m/0ds3_jx	Double Dutch				 Delia is an eighth grader in Cincinnati, Ohio. She competes on a team in the Double Dutch world championships with her friends Yolanda, Charlene, and her friend Randy is the waterboy. During school they are told they might have to pass a standardized test in order to be on the team, which is ghastly news for Delia because she can’t read. Randy is also having difficulties. His dad is a truck driver, so Randy is often left home alone to care for himself. Randy’s dad has been gone for weeks, and still hasn’t called. Soon Randy has to sell the VCR and other appliances to pay the rent and buy food. Later Randy tells the coach and goes to stay with his family for awhile. Everyone is trying to avoid the Tolliver twins, because of the rumors surrounding them. It is said in the book that they kill puppies for fun, and terrorize their mother. During the story two tornadoes hit the school while it's in session. Yolanda goes to the bathroom shortly before they hit, and remains missing for a while after. Also right before the tornadoes hit the Tolliver twins run out of the classroom. They later rescue Yolanda and we find out they are not only scared of storms, but they both like Yolanda. After this they become friends. After an exciting competition, Delia sees a paper with a picture of Randy’s dad on it, but because she can’t read, she doesn’t tell Randy because she thinks he knows. Randy, however, sees it while cleaning up and finds out that Delia saw it too. They fight for a bit, and Randy tells Delia his secret. She feels guilty for not telling him, so she tells Randy that she can’t read and runs out of the gym. Later she goes to dinner with her mother, and reveals to her secret to her as well. Also, we find out that Randy's dad was robbed while on his route and was just recently discovered.
29402907	/m/0gmgkns	Cetaganda	Lois McMaster Bujold	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Miles and Ivan are sent to the home world of the Cetagandan Empire to represent Barrayar at the Imperial funeral of the dowager Empress, mother of the current Emperor. They soon become entangled in an internal Cetagandan plot which leads to murder. Miles forms an unusual alliance with Rian Degtiar, the "Handmaiden of the Star Crèche", who is charged with the duties of Empress until the new one is chosen. Miles solves the complex mystery and prevents the Cetagandan Empire from fragmenting into nine dangerously expansionist-minded parts. Then, much to his chagrin, he is publicly awarded the "Order of Merit", the highest Cetagandan award, by the Emperor himself. He also picks up clues to a Cetagandan genetic experiment, which becomes the object of much skulduggery in Ethan of Athos.
29403448	/m/0dscv4v	The Dwarves				 Tungdil Bolofar, a young blacksmith, is the only dwarf in Ionandar, one of Girdlegard's five enchanted realms. These realms, rich in magical energy forcefields, are ruled by magi while other lands are ruled by the kings and queens of Girdlegard. His "foster father", the venerable magi Lot-Ionan, sends him on an errand to return some artifacts to one of his former pupils and then travel to the secondling dwarf kingdom. Along the way he meets Boindil and Boendal, two secondling twins, who lead him to Ogre's Death, a fortress in their kingdom. They slaughter orcs and avoid Nudin, a magus who has fallen under the spell of The Perished Land (the evil spirit of Girdlegard). Nudin betrays the magi, kills them and corrupts the forcefields so that he alone can use them.The Perished Land attempted and succeeded in infiltrating Girdlegard and defeating the dwarves' fifthling kingdom eleven hundred cycles ago. Whoever dies on the Perished Land is raised as a revenant in service of the Perished Land's spirit though if the reverents spirit is strong enough it can resist the perished land. Tungdil owns the books that explain the only way to defeat Nudin: forge a magical axe called Keenfire that needs to have a steel blade a hilt made of the extinct tree known as the sidguredaisy, and runes engraved with a combination of all the known metals. They decapitate Nudin, but he survives thanks to the dark power of the spirit of the perished land possessing him. They meet Andokai, the last surviving maga, and her bodyguard Djerun. Tungdil is also involved in a plot to delegitimize Gandogar's claim to the throne, who has been convinced by his evil advisor Blisipur who is secretly a thirdling (an evil race of dwarves who throughout history have tried to end the lives of all other dwarves) that the elves betrayed the fifthlings and want to create a war with them while they're weak from the constant battles with the perished land. Tundgil and Gandogar then set out to forge Keenfire for the fifth challenge that was taken out by chance by Blisipur in the draw. cs:Trpaslíci (kniha) it:Le cinque stirpi de:Die Zwerge
29405243	/m/0ds6h9k	The Female Quixote				 Arabella, the heroine of the novel, was brought up by her widowed father in a remote English castle, where she reads many French romance novels, and imagining them to be historically accurate, expects her life to be equally adventurous and romantic. When her father dies, he declared that she would lose part of her estate if she did not marry her cousin Glanville. After imagining wild fantasies for herself in the country, she visits Bath and London. Glanville is concerned at her mistaken ideas, but continues to love her, while Sir George Bellmour, his friend, attempts to court her in the same chivalric language and high-flown style as in the novels. When she throws herself into Thames in an attempt to flee from horsemen whom she mistakes to be "ravishers" in an imitation of Clélie, she becomes weak and ill. This action might have been inspired by the French satire The Mock-Clielia, in which the heroine "rode at full speed towards the great Canal which she took for the Tyber, and whereinto she threw her self, that she might swim over in imitation of Clelia whom she believed her self to be. The Doctor reasons with her and makes her come to an understanding of the clash of mundane reality and literary illusion, at which she finally accepts Glanville's hand and marries him. In the novel, Arabella often speaks lengthily in defense and about the novels and their heroines.
29406130	/m/0ds0hpp	Dunk				 Chad Turner, is a 15 year old boy, who lives on the Jersey Shore. He is now on summer vacation, and will soon start 11th grade. While on the boardwalk,he sees a bozo in a dunk tank, who makes fun of people like an animal, and taunts them when they fail to hit the target. This inspires Chad to realize his dream job: to become a Bozo. Chad lives in a two story house, but the 2nd floor is rented part of the house. Chad's mother had rented out the 2nd floor to make money, and buy more houses, but then failed. Chad's father had left, and Chad hates to talk about him, because of his problems, and the fact that he didn't want Chad. Because Chad's mother had worked since the age of 13, and "wasted her life", she doesn't want Chad to work. But Chad thinks he needs a part time job to make some money. As Chad makes his second trip down the boardwalk, he runs into Anthony, a local bad boy, who has appeared to have stolen sunglasses from a local souvenir store on the boardwalk. Anthony is caught by the store owner, but escapes, leaving the owner to think Chad is the thief. As Chad is encountered by two cops, Costas and Mannetti, he realizes that there is a witness, a man in black on a bench. But the man does not say anything about Chad's innocence, and, despite the fact that the cops let Chad go, he gets mad at the man. On the way home, Chad sees the man from the bench following him, but when he gets home, he realizes that the man on the bench, is his new tenant. During Chad's beginning of his summer tradition: walking down the boardwalk with his best friend Jason, and spend money on the way home, Chad and Jason see the Bozo's performance, when suddenly Chad realizes that the Bozo, was the man on the bench. The next morning, Chad is introduced to his new tenant, the Bozo, Malcolm Vale, who will be teaching at a college. Chad yells at Malcolm for not helping him out in his police encounter, but Malcolm just mimics him, and does some impressions. When Jason arrives, Malcolm offers them a job to help him move his stuff into his apartment, for $10 each, and before Chad can reject, Jason agrees to help. Later, at the boardwalk, Chad asks Bob, the barker, the one who runs the dunk tank, for a job, and gets one, but Bob does not tell chad what job he just gave him, as Chad believes he just got a Bozo job. Chad also realizes he broke his promise to his mom about not working. Chad goes back to the house with Jason to help Malcolm. While carrying boxes, Chad realizes that Jason, is heating up, and while on the stairs, Jason collapses, and nearly falls. Chad finishes the job, and Jason goes home to rest. Later, Chad goes back to the tank to get to work. But Chad gets more than he bargains for when he finds that his "Bozo job", is actually picking up balls that the players throw. Chad gets banged, bruised, embarrassed, and his back gets a cramp from bending over too much. Chad works for hours, but at quitting time, gets his paycheck, and finds that he had been paid $30. Despite the fact that the payment might be good,he does not know if he would go back to work at the tank, but the next day, at the beach, he sees Stinger Dalton, a baseball pro, who had graduated, and is on a scholarship, visiting his friends. Chad, who is good friends with him, asks him to come to the dunk tank, and it seems that Stinger might come. This makes Chad want to go to the dunk tank to work. What Chad has really done is set Malcolm up. Stinger and his friends go to the tank in bright colored clothing while Chad tells Malcolm to get them as marks. Stinger and his Friends, who are pro pitchers, dunk Malcolm constantly for 2 hours straight. After closing time, Chad walks home and is confronted by an angry Malcolm. Malcolm tells Chad to stay away from him and the Bozo job and then goes up to the second floor of Chad's house. The next day Chad goes down to the boardwalk with Jason. While passing by a game he sees the girl whom he met last summer and has been thinking about her all year. The girl's name is Gwen O'Sullivan. While they are chatting Jason is acting strangely and soon enough the police come by to arrest Chad and Jason, thinking they're on drugs. While Jason is taken to the hospital after collapsing again, Chad is taken to a station cell where he meets an old robber named Saul. They have a slight conversation until Chad is released. Malcolm, who the police think is Chad's father, has come to the station to pick up Chad. Chad found out that Jason had been in intensive Care and goes to visit him. While he is there he tries to make Jason laugh but his parents interrupt trying to ask Chad what drugs they were on. Chad, not knowing what to say, ran out of the hospital. Chad visits Jason again still trying to make him laugh. Jason's parents seem to be blaming Jason's illness on Chad. Jason's dad is stressed out with his work and is hesitant when Chad offers to help. Reluctantly, he gives in and Chad asked his friends, Mike, Corey, and Ellie, to help out too. After sometime, Chad works up the nerve to go and talk to Gwen again. He thought that she wouldn't talk to him anymore after the police incident but he proved himself wrong. Once again Chad goes to visit Jason, but this time Jason's mother tells Chad that he is a bad influence to Jason. He leaves again but promises to visit again when his mother cools off. Chad goes to the boardwalk again to talk to Gwen. He finds out she has a break at 5 o'clock and is about to ask her out when Anthony appears. He and Gwen already have plans for the night, dashing Chad's hope. Chad returns home in a state near depression. His friends come and tell him to get up but he refuses to listen. Finally, Malcolm comes and asks Chad if he wants a turn to be a Bozo. Chad refuses and tells him to get out while still laying on the couch. Malcolm, enraged at Chad's reaction, flips the couch over with Chad still in it saying that Chad makes him sick. A fight breaks out between them. After pinning Chad to the floor, Malcolm tells him, "I had a wife. I had a son. They're dead. Dead. Gone. So don't tell me about your troubles." He helps Chad up and asks Chad if he wants a turn at being a Bozo again. Chad is annoyed that Malcolm 'barges in, slaps me around, wrecks the place, and wants to know if we can be pals.' However mad Chad is, he realizes that Malcolm has brought him back to reality. Malcolm lends Chad a lot of books and videos from which he formed his Bozo jokes. Chad brings some of the movies Malcolm lent him to the hospital to visit Jason. As they are watching one, Jason begins to laugh hard which turns into a fit of coughing. His mother comes rushing in yelling at Chad to get out. Chad returns home and returns some of the books Malcolm gave him. Chad also apologizes for kneeing Malcolm, while Malcolm apologizes for slapping Chad. Malcolm tells Chad to try being the Bozo from their porch and the people passing by a the marks. Chad refuses at first saying that he doesn't want to make enemies but Malcolm says to talk quietly. Chad loses all his "marks" and says that he sucks. Malcolm says he doesn't suck but that he still has much to learn. Chad visits Jason again bringing one of the books. Chad reads out the lines that are funny to Jason. They watched 2 movies and Chad left the 3rd one there in case Jason wanted to watch it. He leaves before noon to escape Jason's mother. Chad goes to the dunk tank again for his job. Malcolm tells him to watch carefully and try to imagine what he would say if he were the Bozo. Afterwards Chad and Malcolm are walking to Salvatore's, the pizza place when Chad asks about Malcolm's past. Malcolm answer after a few moments saying he was in a car crash. They both drop the subject. Chad goes once again to visit his best friend in the hospital. He brings more movies with him but this time forgets to watch the clock. Jason is in the middle of a coughing fit when his mother bursts in and screams a Chad to get out. When Chad goes to work the next night, Malcolm and his friend Doc are driving him to see a Bozo named Jordy Ketchum. He is even better than Malcolm, hooking three marks at a time. Malcolm and Chad once again practice by making Bozo remarks at passing people quietly. They head back to the house and Malcolm gives Chad a book and a video. Both are about how laughter can heal an illness. The next time he goes to the hospital, he makes Jason promise he will read the book Malcolm just gave him. Chad heads down to the boardwalk to talk to Gwen, who he hasn't seen for a while. She tells him that Anthony is taking her to a party tonight on Abbot Drive. Chad begins to panic and tries to tell Anthony not to take her there. Chad and Malcolm worked their shifts at the tank. Malcolm as a Bozo, Chad as the ball fetcher. They finally knocked off at eleven o'clock. Malcolm makes a phone call before walking home with Chad. On their way, Malcolm tells chad about his deceased wife and son. Finding police at his house, Chad runs inside thinking that his mom is in trouble. Instead, he is being framed for supplying the party Anthony is at with beer. Chad denies it and proves his innocence and Malcolm backs him up this time. The truth of Chad working spills out when the cops find his money and his mother talks with him after they leave. Chad asks Malcolm to come with him to visit Jason. He refuses at first but gives in when Chad asks again. They go there and make Jason laugh a couple times. They came back another day but Jason's mom caught them. Malcolm talked her into letting them cheer up Jason telling her about the healing powers of laughter. Gradually she became less angry at Chad. Malcolm gives Chad some water-proof greasepaint and tells him that he has a tryout tomorrow.Chad goes and find Corey, in shorts and extra nerdy glasses, Mike, in his goofy Hawaiian shirt, and Ellie, with a T-shirt saying 'I Love to Polka'. Chad does well until he sees Gwen pass by. He calls her red head first and she doesn't turn. Then he calls her by her real name and she realizes its Chad. Chad asked her about the party while he was still in the tank and she tells him she never went. Malcolm comes over and tells Chad to let him take over. Chad does so telling Gwen to wait while he takes off his makeup. Jason heals from his sickness over the summer. Gwen and Chad begin to go out. Malcolm asks to try out his teaching techniques on Chad before he leaves to teach. Chad agrees. The book closes with Chad telling the reader that anything is possible, and states he might become a teacher of "Dunkology", and that "Stranger Things have Happen".
29407093	/m/0ds13k8	The Midnight Charter	David Whitley	2009	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel starts with Mark in a delirious, dream-like state due to the fact that he suffers from a deadly fever. He has been sold by his father to Dr Theophilus in the hope that he will treat Mark. While he is being treated, he meets Lily, a servant to the doctor's grandfather, Count Stelli, the city's greatest astrologer. She helps him adjust to his newfound life. Mark is soon cured of the terrible fever, and will soon leave Count Stelli's tower, with Dr Theophilus and become his assistant. But Mark does not want to go, and brokers a deal with Lily; he will stay and serve the Count and she will leave the horrid tower and learn about medicine with the doctor. While Lily and Dr Theo struggle to survive, Mark is taught how to be an astrologer by the Count. Soon, with the aid of Mr Snutworth, Mark plans to overthrow the old Count and become the greatest astrologer himself. In the meantime, Lily comes up with a shocking idea; provide free accommodation, medical care and food to debtors and those in need of it. Both she, Dr Theo and two others start an almshouse. Mark manages to successfully overthrow the Count, and soon becomes a powerful astrologer himself, living in high society. On numerous occasions, Lily asks Mark for his support of the almshouse, but he declines, stating that he and his reputation would be at stake. With the aid of Mr Snutworth, Mark soon becomes the most powerful person in all of Agora, bar the director. Both Mark and Lily are being watched by the Director, and while Mark is pondering marrying Cherubina, he orders Snutworth to betray Mark and take his power. Snutworth has known what he must do all along, and Mark soon falls from power and becomes a debtor. He is put in prison pending investigation. Snutworth replaces Mark as astrologer. While in prison, Lily is summoned to the Director of Receipts. The Director tells her about the Midnight Charter that was made by the founders of Agora, and gives her a choice; be banished from Agora, and take Mark with her, or . She decides to leave Agora, and before Mark knows what is happening, he and Lily are dumped outside the city walls, with no way back in. Mark is furious with Lily, as he had only newly discovered that his father was a prison warden, and he wanted to spend more time with him.
29422388	/m/0fq1h33	Osterlandet		2007	{"/m/05wkw": "Photography"}	 In 2003, a box was discovered in Sweden that contained a journal, letters, and old glass-plate negatives which belonged to Algot Sättersröm. They told a story dating back to 1903, when Algot left Sweden to live in Egypt and Jerusalem. The material was discovered by photographer Mattias Sättersröm, Algot's great-grandson. After reading the journal, letters and printing from the glass-plates Mattias decided to follow in Algot's footsteps. He enlisted the help of friend and photographer, Mark Smith to collaborate on the project and landed in Alexandria one hundred years to the day after Algot arrived.
29437202	/m/0ds82gd	The Gifts of the Body	Rebecca Brown	1994		 The book is divided into ten short stories, the titles associated with "gifts" which are various functions of the body, both physical and emotional. These gifts are (in order of the stories) sweat, wholeness, tears, skin, hunger, mobility, death, speech, sight, hope, and mourning. Each of these "gifts" are experienced by the caregiver. The caregiver deals with various patients who have AIDS, showing the different relationships that they share, whether they be good or bad. The patients themselves are different from one another in terms of age, financial situation, attitude towards the illness, etc., showing the reader that this disease can/does affect all types of people.
29445722	/m/0ds9ysq	Luka and the Fire of Life		2010-11-16		 The book opens with Luka and his father Rashid Khalifa walking home from Luka’s school in the fictional city of Kahani in the land of Alifbay. They pass the Great Rings of Fire circus, where upon seeing the pitiful state of the animals Luka yells, “May your animals stop obeying your commands and your rings of fire eat up your stupid tent.” (Rushdie 6) Luka’s curse works, as later that very day the animals revolt and the rings of fire consume the tents. Also the same day Dog and Bear, a bear and a dog respectively, two animals from the circus, arrive and become Luka’s faithful pets, “so fierce in his defense that nobody would ever have dreamed of bullying him when they were nearby,” (Rushdie 4) However, one month afterwards Rashid Khalifa falls asleep and doesn’t wake up. After several days, Luka receives a letter via vultures from Aag revealing that he cursed Rashid. Then, thinking that Rashid is awake Luka rushes outside with Dog and Bear and enters the World of Magic. Upon realizing that the Rashid he saw isn’t his father, but is a phantom-like creature that calls itself Nobodaddy, Luka learns about Dog and Bear’s pasts. Bear is Barak of the it-Barak, one of the immortal dog-men of old turned into a dog by a Chinese curse; and Dog was the monarch of a northern land turned into animals by an ogre who was jealous of their dancing abilities. Now with Nobodaddy to help them, the quartet now journey onwards towards the Fire of Life, but not before Nobodaddy reveals that once someone like him comes into being, someone has to die. Upon arriving at the River of Time, which they must follow in order to find the Fire, they are attacked by the Old Man of the River, who kills Luka. After being revived Luka realizes that this world is like a video game, with lives and levels. Luka eventually bests him in a game of riddles by playing the Riddle of the Sphinx, “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?” (Rushdie 55), the one riddle is father did not know the answer to. Thus, the Old Man has to Perminate (permanent termination) himself. They find a boat but are soon capsized by the Eddyfish. They then enlist the help of the Elephant ducks, “a pair of absurd creatures with duck-like bodies and large elephant heads,” (Rushdie 66) who take them upriver. While traveling up river the group stops at the Respectorate of I, an oppressive city run by easily insulted rats who demand eternal respect. After getting ready to leave after lunch, Luka accidentally insults the Respectorate’s national song. But before the rats can do anything the Otters of Ott attack, led by the Insultana of Ott, “a green-eyed girl wearing a green and gold cloak, her fiery red hair streaming in the wind, nor more than sixteen or seventeen years old.” (Rushdie 78) Luka correctly guesses her name as Soraya, and helps her defeat the rats with itching powder. Afterwards, Soraya joins them on their quest. Her flying carpet helps them pass through the Mists of Time and the Great Stagnation. Soraya sends the carpet extremely high above the Inescapable Whirlpool and El Tiempo to escape them, “perhaps forty miles below them already.” (Rushdie 106) The elephant birds help through the Trillion and One Forking Paths, where the true River of Time splits into thousands upon thousands of fakes. Afterwards, they are temporarily detained by the Great Rings of Fire, the impassable defense of the Fire. However, Dog and Bear reveal it to be both a fake illusion and the handiwork of Captain Aag. As soon as Bear and Dog disable the illusion Aag shows up along with Nuthog, a magical changer in the form of a dragon. While Aag gloats Nobodaddy tells Luka, “His original name was Menetius, and he was once the Titan of Rage.” (Rushdie 123) Right as Aag orders Nuthog to destroy Luka and company, Soraya arrives, having freed Nuthog’s three sisters, who were imprisoned in ice by the Aalim. With her sisters now freed, Nuthog betrays Aag and incinerates him. With the changers now with them, the group passes through the land of the ex-gods. After meeting up with Coyote, one of the original Fire thieves, the Fire Alarm goes off, alerting the gods that someone is going to try and steal the Fire. Instead of running, Luka and the group head towards the danger. After making it past the guards, by using Nuthog’s sister’s one time transformation into Slippy, the Horse King, they wait for Coyote to begin the diversion. Coyote begins the diversion while Luka goes behind the Mountain of Knowledge, “with the Lake of Wisdom lapping at its shores, its water clear, pure, and transparent in the pale, silvery light of the Dawn of Days,” (Rushdie 160) to find the Abysm of Time. Luka then enters the Left-Handed version of the Magic World, where he is soon captured. Then, the gods arrive and Luka makes a speech to them whereas the World begins to fall apart. The gods, inspired by Luka’s speech, allow him to take the Fire. Soraya arrives, and the group begin the journey back towards the entrance. With the world now ending and Nobodaddy nowhere to be found, the group is flying as fast as they can towards the dying Rashid. They are now joined by Prometheus, the original Fire Thief and brother of Aag. After barely escaping El Tiempo, “the Carpet being sixty-one miles above the Earth’s surface,” (Rushdie 193) they enter the Mists of Time when Prometheus dissipates them. They are then captured in the cloud fortress of Baddal-Garh, now under the control of the Aalim and Nobodaddy, who has betrayed Luka in order to complete his task of killing Rashid Khalifa. Prometheus grows to his full height and hurls Nobodaddy into outer space. Then, the Aalim finally show themselves whereas they begin speaking, causing everyone but Luka, Dog, Bear, and Prometheus to collapse in pain. Luka then curses the Aalim, and then as if one cue, the gods revolt, destroying the fortress. Luka and the group speed towards the entrance, the gods defending them from the deadly Rain Cats, the Aalim’s final card. Luka makes it home and gives the Fire to Rashid, “the color returned to his face; after which a glow of health spread across his cheeks, almost as if he were blushing with embarrassment.” (Rushdie 212) Then, a deformed Nobodaddy arrives, whereas Bear sacrifices his immortality to destroy the phantom once and for all. Then, the Khalifa’s enjoy a wonderful, happy dinner, with Soraya now having to “put up with the stories of the Magical World from her husband and both her sons.” (Rushdie 217) Soraya then puts the Fire of Life away somewhere, where hopefully it will return to the World of Magic.
29449367	/m/0h3m4k3	People's Republic	Robert Muchamore		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 People's Republic begins with us being introduced to Ryan Sharma. Ryan has just completed some punishment laps and finds out that he is being wanted for a mission. Also, we learn about Fu Ning, a Chinese girl living in a Dandong boarding school and wanting to escape. The book then rotates between the two characters lives, eventually showing Ryan going to the USA to infiltrate the Aramov clan through Ethan Kitsell. Ning ends up escaping China and going on the run with her stepmum Ingrid as she is wanted for questioning over her husband Chaoxiang's involvement in sending illegal immigrants across countries. Ingrid and Ning eventually try to flee China to Britain and end up in Kyrgyzstan. Unfortunately, Ingrid is tortured and is being tried to hand over bank account details so they can go to Britain. In the end, the deal doesn't work, leaving Ning on her own and trying to get to Britain by herself. Meanwhile, Ryan becomes Ethan's only friend after his mum and his best friend died, leaving him as his only support after saving his life again. Ryan also saved Ethan's life when he was hit by a car this helped the part of the plot to bond with him. However, just as they were bonding, a bomb was placed at the bottom of Ethan's house leaving him and everyone else at a motel. Ethan is then taken into care by a lawyer of his called Lombardi and is about to be taken back to Kyrgyzstan. This leaves Ryan to be sent back to CHERUB campus after hitting his mission controller's head, Dr D. Ryan, after being taken back to CHERUB is punished with 400 hours of recycling duty but still has a friendship with Ethan. Ning,after being smuggled into Britain is forced to labour making sandwiches and having no way of getting out despite having no money owned to the gangsters there and not wanting to work there. The book concludes with her escaping the warehouse where she was labouring and almost being deported back to China. But, just before the plane leaves, Amy manages to meet up with her and gets her to join CHERUB as she has a boxing champion streak required for the phesique of cherub and she is also very smart required to the mental training as well as the point where she has no parents, afterall Ingrid has died being tortured and her dad is being questioned, so she is a perefect cherub candidate. As Ryan is involved with her story, he gives her a tour around campus and introduces her to everyone there. The book finishes off with Ryan being allowed to get back into touch with Ethan.
29450648	/m/0ds04l2	Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place	Terry Tempest Williams			 Terry Tempest Williams, the author, who narrates the book, will be referred to as "Terry" in the synopsis. Terry Tempest Williams opens up the book by talking about nature. The Great Salt Lake, the burrowing owl refuge, climate change, everything. She begins the story with a distinct focus on nature. She has an unparalleled connection with nature. She feels a close personal tie to the Great Salt Lake, with the animals in the Salt desert area, but most specifically with the burrowing owls. This connection goes back to her days as a child, bird watching with her grandmother and spending carefree days on bus tours, or just simply at the refuge. Williams goes on to explain how every woman in her family, blood related and not, have all been afflicted with breast cancer. The women have had very serious cases, almost always requiring a mastectomy. And while the cancer only manifests itself in the women, it affects the entire family. This book focuses on Terry's mother, Diane’s, cancer relapses, and she is faced with a bout of ovarian cancer. At first, she almost refuses any treatment, citing that she would rather live her life naturally, rather than deal with the pain and suffering of chemotherapy and radiation treatment which are not guaranteed to cure her. However, after some deliberation, she agrees to go through with eleven month chemotherapy. Meanwhile, the Great Salt Lake is getting increasingly uncontrollable, so the government comes up with five separate options of how to keep the lake in check. Diane’s treatment appeared to have gone well, and the doctor happily informs them that all seems well. However, he was wrong, and there was some cancer which appeared to remain. This would require an extra six weeks of radiation treatment. The levels of the lake continue to rise, and a new character named Tamra Crocker is introduced to the story. Tamra is a cancer patient that Diane exchanges letters with as they deal with the physical and emotional effects of their cancer diagnoses and treatments. Terry discusses the importance of communicating through letters. During this exchange of letters, Terry and Brooke are in walking the salt flats in Nevada, while her parents are in Switzerland. Later, when the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake is frozen, Terry takes her mother to the Bird Refuge for the first time, which was a very new experience for her. Later, Tamra sends a letter of thanks towards Diane while explaining her own adversities she faced battling her brain tumor. Tamra passes away, and Terry is therefore forced to seriously think about how much time she and her mother have together. Terry discusses the meaning of lists in her life and creates a comparison between her everyday life and bird watching. Terry had to go to the hospital and have a small cyst removed from her right breast, which forces her to question if she will follow on her mother’s path of cancer. She explains how seeing her mothers and grandmothers experiences with cancer affect her. Tempest then discusses the United Order (a community that Brigham Young created). There are particular aspects of this community relating to economic and governmental choices that are difference from most. This ideal society incorporates personal choice of specialty and a cooperative, Mormon lifestyle. Terry and Diane continue to exchange Mormon stories during their time at the Refuge. Terry, Diane and Mimi had their astrology done and they discussed their charts during a picnic by the Great Salt Lake. Amidst the sun, they discuss their relationship with birds and Tempest creates a metaphor of identity. On page 119 Terry asks “How do you find refuge in change?” Terry and Diane encounter so much change amidst Diane’s sickness and the changing lake levels, with Mimi’s answer as: “You just go with it.” So far in the readings there has been change after change, and we see the characters yearning for refuges amidst these changes. Later, Terry and her mother attend Tamra’s funeral and when they return the atmosphere along the Great Salt Lake is very different because of the snowstorm. Later, they all celebrate Thanksgiving in a log cabin in the woods in Utah. Invited by Terry’s Aunt and Uncle Rich and Ruth, the large family has their first holiday together after Diane’s cancer treatment. Terry is fighting with her mother’s cancer. The Bird Refuge is also continuing to flood and the government is trying to find a way to pump the flooding water so it doesn’t destroy and take over more of the land then it already has. Terry’s mother, in the beginning, is coping well with cancer and is even starting to believe that cancer is her solitude and her refuge. But as her results start to get worse, so does the flooding of the Bird Refuge. Is nature directly related and dependent on an outside factor? On page 161, Terry’s mother successful returns to surgery. Terry and the rest of the family begin to shows evidence of hope that she will survive this disease. Terry’s mother then states, “Just let me live so I can die.. to keep hoping for life in the midst of letting go is robbing me of the moment I am in now.” Christmastime signifies the last time the Williams’ family will all be together for a reason they would have under normal circumstances. At New Year’s, the family discusses funeral arrangements and the family passes a sleepless night. Terry continues to try to lift her mother’s spirits, dressing in bright, gregarious outfits each day to give her something to think about other than her ever-weakening spirit. The tension in the house grows as Dr. Smith shows them how to give Diane morphine, and her father snaps. He yells at Terry, telling her he doesn’t want to “deal with” his wife anymore: Terry can go home and leave the house that has become a hospital, but he can’t. Terry asks her mother if she and her husband should have a child, and she says that raising a child is the most beautiful part of life. Terry, on the other hand, doesn’t want to lose her solitude and remains ambivalent. She resolves to follow her feelings, a common theme of the book. Terry’s father comes home one day to a swarm of cars in the driveway, and he is infuriated once again. His emotions are the most evident, as he is not afraid to let loose. He shouts and tells everyone—mostly close relatives—to leave, even as Diane’s morphine pump beeps to signal an emergency. They untangle the tubes and Diane is fine, but this was the last experience we see of the family with their mother alive. As the mortician tries to prepares Diane’s body for the funeral, Terry has to remove the makeup from her mother’s face repeatedly. This is important because it signifies Terry’s love of what is pure and natural, not what others feel like they can do to improve it. Terry goes for a walk in the woods with her husband, and falls, leaving a gash on her forehead. She considers it being marked by the desert, and sees it as a growing process, or a transformation, similar to ancient cultures participating in scarification rituals to denote change. Perhaps this could be a point in Terry’s life where things begin to change for her. Alas, we soon hear that her aunt, Mimi, has been diagnosed with cancer by the same Dr. Smith in the same hospital. Mimi takes the stance that she won’t fight the cancer, having learned from Diane, she will just go with it. Meanwhile, the Utah government is busy doing the opposite: instead of letting the Great Salt Lake rise on its own, they have “succeeded” in harnessing the lake through an intricate pumping plan costing a billion dollars. Visiting Oregon, Terry comes upon many of the birds that were displaced by the projects around the Great Salt Lake. Wetlands like the one in Oregon are refuges for these birds, just like the Great Salt Lake and her mother had been Terry’s refuges. The flood is over, and the Bird Refuge is clear for the first time in seven years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grants $23 million to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge so that it may be properly restored. Brooke and Terry go out in a canoe on the Half-Moon Bay. While riding in the canoe, Terry is reminded of a trip she took to Mexico during the Spanish holiday, El Día de los Muertos, also known as “Day of the Dead.” While on this trip, Terry meets a man in the village of Tepoztlán. This man asks Terry what she wants from her dead. He then directs her to a small adobe with a turquoise door and says that if she is meant to find the door, she will. Terry finds the turquoise door and once she enters as well as white pews, and an alter with thirteen candles. Here, there are people praying out loud with a woman who is kneeling at the altar. These people are most likely locals of the area, and they have come to the adobe in honor of the Spanish holiday, El Día de los Muertos. While here, these people are able to experience a sort of spiritual connection with their dead. Terry states that she was also able to experience this spiritual connection. Afterwards, Terry ventures out into the streets of the village and experiences the village’s festivities for El Día de los Muertos. Here, Terry meets a woman who tells her of her dead family members. Terry continues to discuss her family’s history of cancer and how as a group of people, it is traditionally uncommon for Mormons. In this section, Terry shares a recurring dream with her father. In her dream, she sees a flash of light in the desert. She learns from her father that when she was young, she witnessed a test bomb explosion. This knowledge allows Terry to then contemplate the medical histories of people who live in the area. She discusses many people who suffered from different types of cancer and died years later. Williams writes, “It was at this moment that I realized the deceit I had been living under.” Terry goes on to discuss how the government did not do anything to put an end to the bomb testing when all the while, the government was aware of the potential deadly effects that the bombs could have on humans. In the Mormon religion, Terry was taught as a child by her mother to not ask questions that would “rock the boat.” Now, Terry feels that abiding by the traditions and rules of her Mormon religion is no longer possible. Williams writes, “Tolerating blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives.” Terry now knows that she must question everything despite what her religion’s values may encourage or what those around her believe. Terry tells of another dream that she has. In this dream, women from all over the world are gathered in the desert speaking of change and dancing around a bonfire. The women are gathered here because they are mothers who are marching to claim the desert in honor of their children. In the dream, the women are soon apprehended by soldiers who arrest them. Terry diverts from this dream to tell that she has crossed the Nevada Test Site line and was arrested along with a small group of people. She calls her own actions, “an act of civil disobedience.” She states that this act was in honor of the women who have suffered from the deadly effects of the test site. The novel concludes with Terry and fellow arrested women left alone in the desert. Instead of feeling stranded, Terry states that she as well as the other women are at home in this nature.
29459325	/m/0drxn91	The Gates of Thorbardin			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The major plotline of The Gates of Thorbardin is that there once existed a hidden entrance to the Dwarven realm of Thorbardin. During the War of the Lance, this gate could be used as an entrance by the forces of Takhisis to destroy the Dwarven kingdom. The major character in this novel is a Dwarf by the name of Chane Feldstone. Chane comes to the knowledge of the secret entrance to Thorbardin through a dream. Chane doesn't know of his heritage, but he learns that he is a direct decedent of Grallen of Thorbardin who died fighting the mage Fistandantilus years before. Chane learns that his ancestor Grallen was attempting to seal the hidden entrance to Thorbardin using a powerful artifact known as Spellbinder which was once used in conjunction with another Gemstone named by the Dwarves Pathfinder to contain the magic of the Graygem of Gargath. The main character picks up a number of other characters such as Wingover, Chestal Thicketsway, Bobbin, and Jillian Firestoke in his travels. Among other notable events, Chane comes across the original location of the Graygem in Waykeep Valley and encounters the Irda. He also encounters the remains of the Hill Dwarves and Mountain Dwarves encased ice since the Dwarfgate Wars. Chane also finds the Helm of Grallen in the remains of rubble which were blown away from the tower of Zhaman. A Secondary plotline revolve around the renegade mage Caliban who was hunted down and killed years before by members of the three orders of magic. Caliban pulled his own heart out during the encounter and his shriveled heart remained as a power artifact used by the major antagonist in the story Kolanda Darkmoor. Caliban through Kolanda seeks the death of the three mages that hunted him down and killed him years before. Glenshadow the Wanderer, who wears the Red robes of Neutrality was the one one of the three mages to survive the encounter with Caliban. Caliban and Glenshadow encounter each other near the end of the novel. At the end of the novel Chane with the help of his traveling companions is able to discover the location of the hidden entrance, which is near Sky's End Peak near Northgate, by using the gem Pathfinder and the Helm of Grallen. Chane places Spellbinder inside the hidden entrance and the entrance is sealed from the outside as the result of a terrible magic storm. All the major benefactors in the story survive, the hidden entrance is sealed against magic (through Spellbinder which is now buried) and the Helm of Grallen passes into the realm of Thorbardin.
29462305	/m/0dry3zp	Perfect: A Novel		2004-09-16	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Isabelle Lee is a 13 year old girl whose world got turned upside down after the death of her father. Isabelle’s life seemed somewhat perfect before her father’s death. That soon changed along with her mother’s behavior, her developing a new habit of binge eating, and her relationship with little sister April. Her mother went from being a full time English professor to a part time English professor, who spent the rest of that time in bed complaining of being tired. Her mom was suffering with depression due to her husband’s death. Not only did Isabelle’s mom have trouble coping with the death; Isabelle was also having trouble dealing with the death of her father. She dealt with the death by eating away her emotions and then throwing them up, better known as binge eating. This new habit was discovered by her little sister April, referred to as Ape Face, and then she reported this finding to her mother. This is the part of the book where Isabelle is forced to go to group pyscotherapy because her mother is making her in hopes that she will stop this horrible habit.At first Isabelle is completely against talking to strangers about her problems coping with her father’s death; during group Isabelle realizes the most popular, pretty, rich, smart, and nice girl in school; Ashley Barnum faces the same problems she does. They soon become friends and eat huge amounts of food before throwing up together at sleepovers. Isabelle begins to hang out with the "cool" kids at school, leaving her old friends behind. One night at a sleepover when Ashley is getting food for the two Isabelle finds footnotes for the current book they're reading in English class, realizes Ashley cheats to get good grades and appear smart. Isabelle begins to see the shrink who is in charge of group alone once a week and tells her about her and Ashley's relationship- while disguising Ashley with the code name "Penelope". One day Ashley doesn't come to school and despite them being annoyed with her for leaving them, Isabelle sits with her old friends. That night Ashley spends the night at Isabelle's house for the first time and reveals her parents are getting divorced, the reason she wasn't at school that day. Ashley and Isabelle begin to binge again but Isabelle stops and decides not to throw up with her friend this time. Isabelle soon realizes that group has helped her not only cope with her father’s death but make friends with one of the most popular girls at school. Isabelle realizes towards the end that the once strangers in group are just people like her, who are suffering with an eating disorder because they simply cannot cope. By the end of the book, Isabelle has gone 35 hours and counting without throwing up, has become friends with Ashley Barnum (aka the popular girl), and has gotten her mother back in her life.
29464624	/m/0ds7zsk	The Confession	John Grisham	2010		 In 1998, Travis Boyette abducted and raped Nicole "Nikki" Yarber, a teenage girl and high school student in Slone, Texas and buried her body in Joplin, Missouri some 6 hours from Slone. He watches unfazed as the police arrest and convict Donté Drumm, a black high school football player with no connection with the crime. Despite his innocence, Drumm is convicted and sentenced to death. He has been on death row for nine years when the story takes place. While Drumm serves his prison sentence, lawyer Robbert "Robbie" Flak fights his case while Black Americans protest his false conviction, creating a law and order situation. Meanwhile, Boyette had fled to Kansas and had lived there ever since. He had been suffering with brain tumor for the past nine years and his health had deteriorated. In 2007, with Drumm's execution only a week away, reflecting on his miserable life, he decides to do what is right; confess. He meets a priest Reverend Keith Schroeder who takes him to Slone. Despite his confession to the public, the execution proceeds on and Drumm is executed by lethal injection. Boyette then reveals the resting place of Nikki and DNA samples show signs of rape and assault on her body.
29469346	/m/0dr_p01	Reckless	Cornelia Funke	2010	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Reckless opens with twelve-year-old Jacob Reckless entering his missing father's study and discovering a strange mirror. Finding a note containing cryptic instructions, Jacob presses his hand against the glass to obscure his face. When he removes his hand, he finds himself standing in front of an identical mirror in an abandoned tower. This world is referred to by Jacob as the Mirrorworld. The Mirrorworld is similar to this world, but has not progressed as far technologically, and magic still runs rampant. Twelve years after Jacob finds his way through the mirror, Jacob's brother Will finally follows Jacob into the Mirrorworld. Soon after Will arrives, he is attacked and scratched by a Goyl, a humanoid race with stone skin. As a result of the attack, Will's skin begins turning to stone. This curse that turns human skin to stone was created by the Dark Fairy, the Goyl King's lover. Jacob knows that the stone will soon invade his entire body, and Will will become one of the Goyl. Jacob has already lost both of his parents and cannot bear to lose his brother so he rides off in search of a cure. His old friend and mentor, Chanute, tells him that the berries that grow in the garden of child-eating witch may cure Will of the curse of the stone skin. Will sneaks back through the mirror to say goodbye to his girlfriend Clara over the phone. Clara races to Will's house, only to discover the secret of the mirror herself. With time running out, Jacob, Will, Clara and Jacob's vixen friend, Fox, journey to the witch's house, which lies deserted. When they arrive, they realize that they're being pursued by The Tailor, a creature that gets its name from how it tailors its clothing from the skin of its victims. Jacob and Fox fight The Tailor, with Will and Clara inside the gates, which The Tailor cannot enter, but Jacob is wounded on the shoulder during the fight. Will takes the berries, and they sleep. In the morning, Will's condition has not changed; the berries did not work. In another attempt to save his brother, Jacob decides to return to the Red Fairy, whom he had been enamored with for over a year, in the hope that he can convince her to help break the curse. Jacob assumes the Red Fairy will be able to break the curse because she is the Dark Fairy's sister. Meanwhile, a Hentzau, the Goyl King's right hand, leads a group of Goyl soldiers to find Will, whose skin is turning to jade. The jade Goyl is legendary among their people as the ultimate protector for their King, Kami'en. The party rides to the Dwarf city Terpevas to enlist the help of Valiant, a dwarf who knows the secret location of the Valley of the Fairies. Jacob forces Valiant to join them at gunpoint. The Goyl patrol ambushes the group before they are able to enter the Valley of the Fairies. Access to the Valley is secret, but with the help of Valiant, they are able to pass through the field of blood-thirsty unicorns. Jacob then rows to the Fairies' Island while the rest of the party wait on the shore of the lake. It doesn't take Jacob long to convince Miranda, the Red Fairy, to tell Jacob how to cure Will. Miranda tells Jacob that the curse will only be lifted when the Dark Fairy is destroyed, and tells him the means to accomplish this task. The journey to the Dark Fairy will take more time than Will has left, so she also tells Jacob how to put Will into a deep sleep, which effectively pauses the spread of the stone. As soon as Jacob returns, he leads them to the roses which Will must smell to send him to sleep. Like sleeping beauty, Will falls asleep when he is pricked. The Goyl Soldiers were told how to cross the unicorn boundary by Valiant, ambush them and shoot Jacob. They overpower the group and take the sleeping Will captive, and leave Clara and Fox to bury Jacob. Valiant, who has developed a soft spot for Clara, stays behind, and digs a grave for Jacob. While he does this, the moths of the Red Fairy flock to Jacob's body, and the Red Fairy brings him back from the dead. Now on their mission to rescue Will, they travel cross country to the mountains underneath which the Goyl have built their capital city. Valiant agrees to help Jacob recover Will in return for a tree that produces golden sap. Valiant leads them to an unguarded entrance to the Goyl city. While in the mountains, Jacob and Clara accidentally drink from a stream of Lark's Water, which ignites passion between them. Fox finds Clara and Jacob kissing and becomes extremely jealous. Jacob and Valiant decide to leave Clara and Fox behind. Valiant manages to smuggle Jacob into the Goyl city, by pretending Jacob is a slave. Inside the city, Valiant asks merchants and traders if they know of the Jade Goyl's whereabouts. One merchant claims he is being held in the floating Palace, high above the main city. Numerous small high bridges pass the Palace, and Jacob decides that it will be easiest to enter the Palace from the bridges, climbing up the Palace walls and into a window. Valiant advises against this, but Jacob ignores him. Jacob uses waneslime to turn himself invisible and a Rapunzel hair to scale the building. While Jacob is climbing the Palace Walls, he is ambushed by two snakes. He is captured, and questioned on the whereabouts of Clara and Fox. He is then tortured with scorpions, and passes into a deep sleep. When he wakes up, he finds himself in a cell next to a still sleeping Will, waiting to be woken by a kiss from his true love. Jacob realizes he has given away Clara's location under torture when the Dark Fairy arrives with Clara and Fox, who have been found and captured. Clara is sent into Will's cell to wake him from his sleep. Jacob wants to kill the Dark Fairy, but he needs contact to her, and she is too far away. Clara kisses Will, and he wakes. His is now completely Goyl, with no trace remaining of Will. Will leaves his cell, so that he can protect the Goyl King Kami'en, and Clara is jailed in the cell next to Jacob, and Fox is locked up on the floor above them. When the Dark Fairy and her guard are gone, Valiant appears and rescues them all. They leave the city with the biplane which Jacob realizes his father built; Jacob now knows for certain that his father did disappear inside the Mirrorworld. On their way back to the tower where the Mirror stands, Jacob decides he will not give up on Will. He tells Clara, Fox and Valiant that he is going to the Empire's capital city Vena for some business, and he catches a train, leaving them to return to the tower on their own. Jacob understands that going to Vena is his last chance to kill the Dark Fairy and undo the curse she put upon Will. Kamie'en is going to marry the Empress' daughter in order to make peace between the humans and the Goyl. This ceremony will take place in Vena. Once in the capital city, he sneaks into the Palace to spy on the Dark Fairy, who he finds in the same room as Will and Kami'en. Kami'en leaves, and Jacob, in a secret passage, bumps into an "official" Empire spy. Jacob knocks him unconscious, but the Dark Fairy and Will hear him, and Will breaks down the wall, and begins to fight with Jacob. Before any real damage is done, the fight is interrupted and Jacob is given an audience with the Empress, Therese of Austry. Jacob tells her that he must kill the Dark Fairy because of his brother and needs her help. She denies to help him in public, although later sends one of her officials to tell Jacob that the Dark Fairy takes a walk thorough the Palace Gardens every evening, and offers to give him access. That evening, Jacob ambushes the Dark Fairy. He touches her and says her true name, which turns her into a tree. She then promises that she will turn Will back into his human form, if Jacob allows him to protect the King during the wedding to the Empress' daughter. Jacob steals a golden ball (from the Frog Prince (story)) from the Palace, which will trap anyone who catches it inside until it is polished. He plans to use this ball to trap Will, so that he could be returned to his human form. Jacob attends the wedding, as do Clara, Valiant and Fox. The Empress, knowing that the Dark Fairy has been destroyed by Jacob, has ordered an attack on the Goyl King and his people during the ceremony. The Cathedral turns into a bloodbath, and many of the humans die. Just as the Dark Fairy seemed to know, Will successfully defends Kami'en. Jacob realizes he has played into the Empress' hands and led the Goyl to a slaughter without the Dark Fairy, so he shouts her name to release her from the tree. The Black Moths of the Dark Fairy fill the Cathedral, poisoning hundreds of humans. Jacob tries to protect Clara from the moths by using the tricks the Red Fairy taught him. Eventually the Goyl win the battle, and the Dark Fairy turns all the blood on the clothes of those alive into roses. The wedding ceremony continues, and after the marriage all those still alive parade outside, secretly being taken hostage, through the people who have no idea of the slaughter that just occurred. After the wedding, Jacob meets with the Dark Fairy, who tells him that she will return Will to his human form under the condition that Jacob take him very far away, because if she sees him again, she will kill him. Jacob manages to catch Will in the golden ball and the Dark Fairy returns him to his human form while still trapped. Jacob asks the Dark Fairy the price for returning Will to his true form, and the Dark Fairy replies that he has already paid it. He learns that anyone who says the Dark Fairy's true name will have only a year to live. Jacob then returns to the tower with Clara, Fox and Valiant. When they arrive at the tower, Jacob tells Clara to polish the golden ball until she sees her reflection. As she does this, Will is released, completely human again, and he embraces Clara. Jacob then tells them that they must leave the Mirrorworld, and so Will and Clara pass through the mirror once again. Fox, knowing there must have been a price for it, asks Jacob what it was, but Jacob doesn't tell her. He realizes that in the Mirrorworld, there is always a cure, and he sets off to find it.
29470900	/m/0ds7rpg	Changes: a Love Story	Ama Ata Aidoo	1993		 Esi Sekyi approaches Linga HideAways Travel Agency in order to finalize travel arrangements – a task Esi has taken on in the absence of her company’s regular secretary. She meets Ali Kondey, the charming owner of the travel agency who assures her that his agency will take care of everything. Esi leaves in her beat-up car and Ali praises Allah for the gift of his woman. Sometime later, Esi’s husband Oko forces her to have sex with him, which she regards as the last straw in their already-deteriorating marriage. Esi then goes to work and tries to pull herself together while searching her native tongue – presumably an African dialect – for a word to describe what just has just happened. She concludes that although her native language has no word for it, in English it might be called “marital rape.” Esi’s best friend, Opokuya, is then introduced, her character standing in fierce contrast to Esi’s. Although their marriage is generally happy, Opokuya and her husband, Kubi, frequently argue about who will have the family car for the day. On this particular occasion, Kubi wins and they agree that he will pick Opokuya up at the Hotel Twentieth Century after work. Esi runs into Opokuya in the lobby of that hotel and the two quickly begin a conversation about Esi’s decision to leave her husband. The story recounts Ali’s friendship and eventual marriage to his college friend Fusena. As they had children, motherhood consumed Fusena’s life, forcing her to stop working and temporarily stifling her desire for higher education. Esi and Ali’s relationship develops as they become lovers. As Esi finds herself becoming more dependent on Ali’s affection, she is disappointed when he fails to visit her for two weeks. When Ali finally reappears, he proposes to Esi, offering her a ring to show that she is “occupied territory.” The marriage negotiations begin as Ali travels to the village where Esi’s family lives in order to discuss the marriage. However, his request is denied due to his failure to bring a proper relative to the negotiations. It becomes clear that both Ali’s and Esi’s families are reluctant to agree to such a union, especially when some of the polygamy traditions have already been breached. Both families eventually agree and Ali and Esi are married in a simple ceremony. On New Year’s Eve, Ali visits Esi before going home and while Ali is there, Oko drives up to Esi’s house with their daughter, Ogyaanowa, in tow. The two men fight and Esi bolts, taking Ogyaanowa to Opokuya’s house. Esi recounts the events to Opokuya and Kubi, who drives over to Esi's to check on her house, only to find that both men have disappeared. Ali and Esi go on a holiday to Ali’s home village, Bamako and they spend their time there like tourists. After they return, Ali becomes more distant, spending more time with his attractive new secretary. Esi spends Christmas alone, taking sleeping pills to reign in her deep sense of abandonment. On New Year’s Day, Ali finally reappears, offering her a new car as a bribe. He then immediately leaves. Esi shows off her new car to Opokuya and offers Opokuya her old car. Ali continues to give Esi bribes as substitutes for his presence. After three years, Esi finally breaks down and tells Ali that their relationship has deteriorated. Opokuya finally picks up her car from Esi's house and leaves. Later, Kubi shows up, supposedly searching for his wife. He begins to kiss Esi and Esi considers sleeping with him but decides that she could betray Opokuya like that. Esi and Ali never divorce, remaining friends and sometimes lovers.
29471298	/m/0dsdp4k	Wild Romance				 It was a chance meeting on a steamboat in 1852 between a young woman of nineteen named Theresa Longworth and a soldier in his thirties Charles Yelverton, heir to the title of Viscount Avonmore. After a five-year clandestine romance hidden from the public eye, the affair blossomed until they finally got married in secret in Edinburgh. The following summer they remarried in Dublin again in secret but in the presence of a priest. This was at the request of Theresa who was a Roman Catholic while Charles Yelverton had been brought up a Protestant. The validity of the marriage was later questioned in court.
29477660	/m/0ds4g2d	Duties Beyond Borders		1981-06		 ===The Use of Forc he Promotion of Human Right roblems of Distributive Justic n Ethics of World Order===
29485442	/m/0g5rs65	Casablanca	Edgar Brau	2003-08	{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}	 Casablanca begins when the narrator, who is driving his car to Mar del Plata seaside resort, is caught by a big storm. While looking for some shelter he comes across a place similar to Rick's Café Américain. He gets out of the car and, almost blinded by the rain, hurries to the entrance door. Just then somebody starts playing "As Time Goes By" on a piano at the back of the room. The player is identical to Sam, but much older; he is wearing the same suit jacket that is shown in the film, but worn out now. In one of the corners, an old man in dark glasses, who looks like Humphrey Bogart, is dozing at a table. When the song is over, the black man starts to tell the narrator the story of the place and of the people who lived there. It all started, he says, in the early fifties, when the owner of those lands, a rich man very similar Sidney Greenstreet —the actor who interpreted señor Ferrari— decides to build a replica of Rick's café to reproduce in it the main scenes of the movie. With this purpose he sends agents around the country and abroad, to look for people whose physical appearance is identical to the characters. He keeps for himself the role of Señor Ferrari. When the cast is ready, they rehearse for some months; their voices and accents must sound like the English spoken in the original version. To imitate the black-and-white movie, everything in the place is in lighter or darker shades of grey. When the café is opened, success is enormous. The people who visit it have the feeling they are “inside” the famous movie. Señor Ferrari's dream (“Ferrari” is the name given to the ranch owner in the story) Señor Ferrari's dream of turning the movie Casablanca into reality has come true. Some years of splendor follow, but an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease and an unexpected flood affect Señor Ferrari's property, and he goes bankrupt. He speaks with President Perón to get a license to play for real money at the roulette wheel and the poker tables (up to that moment people pretended that they were gambling). President Perón —who had visited the place some months before and had an affair with Ilsa (Ferrari's lover) — agrees to it. The café manages to survive, although far from its past magnificence. Then a military coup overthrows Perón, and the casino is closed. It is a hard blow for Ferrari, who commits suicide. In his will, he states that the café will remain the property of his employees, provided that they never shut it down or put it up for sale. In the following weeks, they try to do their best to make ends meet, but after a while some of them give up and desert the place. In a few months, the only ones who remain are Rick, Ilsa, Sam, Renault, and Ugarte. To make a living they decide to perform isolated scenes, which are shown to the few tourists who happen to go by. Time passes, and not only the place deteriorates but the health of its dwellers as well. The moment the narrator arrives, Sam can offer nothing but an account of what happened in that fantastic Casablanca, and introduce Rick and Ilsa, who are much older now (Rick is blind; Ilsa makes a brief appearance, dressed as Ingrid Bergman in one of the scenes of the movie). In a vase placed near the exit door, visitors leave a few coins. Meanwhile, the storm has subsided. Sam plays As time goes by once again, to say goodbye now. The narrator gets into his car and, with the feeling that he has witnessed a sequel to the movie that Hollywood never made, leaves the place.
29505045	/m/0ds9zh_	Red Leech	Andy Lane	2010-11-05	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 A few months following the events of Death Cloud, Sherlock Holmes is pleased when Mycroft comes to visit him at Holmes Manor in Hampshire, but Mycroft's visit has a serious purpose, he has come to let Amyus Crowe know that British Intelligence suspect that John Wilkes Booth has come to England under the alias to John St. Helen. Without any encouragement from Mycroft or Amyus, Sherlock sets off to Godalming where Booth is suspected of hiding out, enlisting Matty Arnatt's help along the way. Sherlock enters the grounds of the house in Golaming that he suspects Booth is staying in, there he is kidnapped from a brief period of time by a man whose face is scarred by fire on one side, this man may be Booth and is being aided and guarded by three fellow conspirators. Sherlock escapes with Matty's help and immediately returns to Holmes Manor and lets Mycroft and Amyus know what happened. They are somewhat disappointed that Sherlock has let the conspirators know that they are under investigation. The next morning, the Holmes brothers visit Amyus who concludes that the conspirators will have taken flight and will be heading to America, so he needs to follow them. When they discover that the conspirators have kidnapped Matty, Amyus, Sherlock and Virginia chase them on horseback, but are unsuccessful in rescuing Matty. Given the new turn of events, it is decided that Sherlock will accompany Amyus and Virginia to America as he is the only one who knows what all the conspirators look like. Once they reach America, Sherlock locates where Matty is being held and he and Virginia follow the conspirators (and Matty) on board a train. The conspirators find Sherlock and Virginia, and after a perilous fight on the roof of the train, Sherlock is captured and the train is diverted to the headquarters of the organizer of the conspiracy, Duke Balthassar. In conversation with Balthassar, it becomes clear that the conspirators plan to invade Canada and have it become the Confederate stronghold—a plan which Sherlock is determined to foil.
29512922	/m/0h68xnl	Hunger's Rogues			{"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Hunger's Rogues takes up the author's story about one year after his escape from forced labor in the Russian mines, recounted in Donbas. The book opens in 1948 with Sandulescu approaching Transit Camp Buchholz, a camp for displaced persons, or "DPs", awaiting permission to emigrate overseas, then located outside of Hanover, Germany, near the village of Buchholz. The author describes camp and camp life, then unfolds his involvement, through friendships made in camp, with the thriving black market primarily based in the train stations of cities throughout Germany and the countries formerly occupied by the Nazi regime. After passing initial emigrant screening, Sandulescu fails the medical exam due to elevated blood pressure and is forced to remain in camp for an extended period until he can be re-tested. As he bides his time until the next opportunity for a medical exam, the excitement of trading on the black market continues to draw him in. Sandulescu recounts black market trades and affairs that include selling pork from a clandestine farmhouse slaughter, a trip to Belgium disguised as a US soldier to buy 150 pounds of coffee, and a trip in the company of a Red Army officer from the Balkans to Paris to buy and peddle cigarettes. He gives market prices for black market goods, primarily food, and the exchange rate in terms of packs of cigarettes, as American cigarettes were the most widely accepted currency at the time. The book includes vivid word pictures of the lives of ordinary civilians in the aftermath of the war, with rationing and shortages leading many to trade on the black market to eat well or just to survive. The book ends with Sandulescu describing his clearance to emigrate and his boarding a ship to Canada. In an epilogue, the author describes returning to Germany in 1954 as a US citizen and soldier. Obtaining leave from his unit, he travels to the small village where he had buried, six years earlier, fourteen golden goblets looted from a Bavarian castle. On arriving at the location, which was a heavily wooded area at the time, Sandulescu finds an apartment building erected on the spot. Not willing to risk calling attention to his involvement in the six year old theft, Sandulescu inquires only as to how long the building had been standing. He learns from a passerby that the apartment building had been constructed three years previously. Fearing to ask further questions about any artifacts uncovered during construction, Sandulescu returns to his army unit having never learned the fate of "his" treasure.
29526872	/m/0dsblmj	La Carte et le territoire	Michel Houellebecq	2010-09-04		 The novel tells the story of the life and art of Jed Martin, a fictional French artist who becomes famous by photographing Michelin maps and painting scenes about professional activities. His father is slowly entering old age. Jed falls for a beautiful Russian executive from Michelin but is unable to hang onto this relationship. He becomes extraordinarily successful and therefore suddenly rich. He meets Michel Houellebecq in Ireland in order to ask him to write the text for the catalog of one of his exhibits, and offers to paint the writer's portrait. A few months later Houellebecq is brutally murdered and Jed Martin gets involved in the case.
29527668	/m/0cc7rtv	City of Thieves	David Benioff	2008	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The story as introduced is the recollections of a contemporary Russian Jewish émigré living in Florida. Seventeen year old Lev Beniov lives alone in an apartment in Leningrad (which the narrator refers to as "Piter", the nickname residents use for their city) as his poet father was recently abducted by the NKVD secret police and his mother and sister have fled the besieged city. Lev is arrested for looting the body of an ejected Luftwaffe pilot. Sent to prison, he meets Kolya Vlasov, a young soldier arrested for deserting his unit. Though just three years older than Lev, Kolya is more cultured and refined than Lev. Lev and Kolya are brought to an NKVD colonel Grechko who barters with them: if they are able to obtain a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter's upcoming wedding, the two will be given their freedom. If they are unable to find the eggs, a luxury in the starving city, both will lose their lives. During Lev and Kolya's journey for the eggs, they come across an assorted cast of characters, including cannibals and a group of Soviet partisans. Eventually, Lev and Kolya allow themselves to be taken prisoner by the Germans. To gain the coveted dozen eggs, Lev must beat a sadistic German officer in a game of chess. Kolya and Vika (a female survivor of the partisan group) kill the officer and his guards before escaping, and Lev loses half a finger in the fight. Vika leaves them to find another partisan group and they return to "Piter". As they approach the city, Kolya is shot by a Soviet sniper. He is taken to hospital but bleeds to death anyway, while Lev discovers that the colonel had three dozen eggs airlifted in. At the end of the novel Lev is in his apartment when Vika, who had promised to track him down, turns up. She says she does not cook, suggesting they marry, as at the start Lev's grandson says his grandmother would never cook.
29536387	/m/0ds1w2h	The Fall of the Pagoda	Eileen Chang	2010	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Fall of the Pagoda tells a narrative story about the childhood life of a girl, Lute, born in a noble family which is in a process of moral and financial decline. As a young girl, her mother followed her aunt to go abroad,and her father was addicted to opium, leaving her and her little brother to live with their servants, aunt Tong, aunt He, aunt Qin, etc. Her father presided over their family. But he did not work due to a negative attitude to life and the addiction to opium. Lute's mother, Lu, a woman in the vanguard of female self-reliance, decided to divorce with her father, the patriarch who was adrift in post-Qing China. Maybe due to her special family background, the little girl was different in some significant way from others of the same age. Her psychological age is much older than actual age. Lute's sickly brother, Hill, as a boy, was the important child in this family because he would be the successor of his father, Yuxi. The young boy was cosseted, over-supervised and beaten so that he was weak and morose. Lute was often ignored and had more freedom to do what she wanted. She was given to those of no consequence. Lute grew up around servants, the sprawling, extended family existed in a sea of gossip, scandal, jealousy and fear. They were bound together by their need for money, and the terror of destitution. They lived on the family's ever-diminishing wealth and tarnished prestige, pretending loyalty while pursuing their own survival and pleasure. Through young Lute's child clear eyes, those adults sometimes were hypocritical; even her parents were relentlessly selfish.
29551796	/m/0dsbh00	Dead Space: Martyr	Brian Evenson	2010-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel delves into the origins of Church of Unitology, Michael Altman, Necromorphs and the mysterious Black Marker in the Dead Space universe. The story revolves around geophysicist Michael Altman as he investigates the source of a mysterious signal and uncovers a strange alien artifact. The narrative then goes on to focus on how Altman's actions led to his own unwilling "martyrdom," the origin of the Red Marker, and the subsequent birth of the Church of Unitology.
29564231	/m/0dr_yvj	Life	James Fox	2010-10-26	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Life is a memoir covering Keith Richards's life, starting with his childhood in Dartford, Kent, through to his success with the Rolling Stones and his current life in Connecticut. His interest in music was triggered by his mother, Doris, who played records by Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine and Louis Armstrong, and his maternal grandfather, Augustus Theodore Dupree, a former big band player, who encouraged him to take up the guitar. In his teens he met up with Mick Jagger, who he had known in primary school, and discovered that they both shared a love of blues music. In the early 1960s Richards moved into a London flat, shared with Jagger and Brian Jones. Together with Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart and Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones were founded in 1962, playing gigs at Ealing Jazz Club and the Crawdaddy Club. The book chronicles Richards's career with the Stones since 1962, following their rise from playing small club gigs to stadium concerts, Richards's drug habits, his arrests and convictions. His relationships with a number of women, including Anita Pallenberg, Marianne Faithfull, Ronnie Spector and Patti Hansen, whom he married in 1983, are covered in detail. The often difficult partnership between Richards and Jagger is referred to throughout the work and coverage of this has caused much media interest. Throughout the work, much attention is given to Richards' love of music, his style of playing and chord construction. His non-Stones projects, such as the X-Pensive Winos and recording with the Wingless Angels in Jamaica, as well as collaborations with Chuck Berry and Gram Parsons amongst others are covered in some detail.
29565749	/m/0czwhg	Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The Journey	Kathryn Lasky	2003-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 On their way towards the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, "The Band" (Soren, Gylfie, Twilight and Digger) and Mrs. Plithiver are mobbed by crows. The Band managed to fend off the crows but at the cost of Digger being injured. After landing in a tree for shelter, a neighbouring family of Masked Owls came to visit. Before leaving, the female Masked Owl became skeptical when she heard that "The Band" was on the way to find the Guardians of Gahoole. Later after their departure from the spruce tree, they stayed in a sycamore with a couple of Sooty Owls named Sweetums and Swatums who supported The Band in their quest to find Ga'Hoole. In the Beaks, a barren and desolate area, "The Band" ventured into a dark cave where they were attacked by a bobcat. Together, "The Band" managed to kill the bobcat and upon further investigation they found a dying Barred Owl. When they asked if St.Aggie's had attacked him, his last words were, "Oh! You only wish!" After hearing this disturbing news, The Band continued on their quest. However, their progress would be dangerously hindered because of the Mirror Lakes. Their gleaming surfaces hypnotized The Band and made them content to stay and put off their quest. Eventually Mrs. Plithiver recognized the danger and stirred The Band into remembrance of their quest. When they left, they were blown off course straight into the Ice Narrows in the Northern Kingdoms where they were taken in by a family of puffins: the oddest creatures "The Band" had ever seen. Despite all difficulties, "The Band" were escorted to the Island of Hoole by the Snowy Owl monarchs of the tree, Boron and Barran. Upon their arrival to the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, a stuck-up Spotted Owl named Otulissa escorted "The Band" to their new hollow. They learned from her that they could not just go into a battle but that skills must be learned by becoming members of chaws: specialized groups of owls that dedicate themselves to a certain skill. Despite finding Ga'Hoole, "The Band" sought a meeting with the parliament because they felt that their knowledge of St. Aggie's would be valuable to the Guardians. However, Boron informed "The Band" that they needed to wait a bit longer and that nobility wasn't garnered instantly but through unwavering resolution and stalwartness. He also informed them that their journey had not ended when they arrived at the tree but it had only just begun and that they would begin their training the next day. During the day, Soren found Twilight thinking about leaving the Guardians because "The Band" would be broken up because they would be separated into chaws. Soren reassured Twilight that no matter what happened that they would always be a band. Upon hearing these words, Twilight decided to stay. As time passed, "The Band" learned many skills and became more accustomed to life at the tree. However, Soren was still haunted by the thought of his sister Eglantine and her well-being. Eventually, The Band were placed into their respective chaws; Soren was placed into the colliering and weather chaws. This was a disaster for Soren because of the Whiskered Screech Owl Ezylryb's intimidating missing talon and because he was double chawed with Otulissa whose talkative attitude proved to be hard to bear. However, the blacksmith of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, Bubo (a Great Horned Owl) was confident that Soren would be all that he could be because Ezylryb had recognized Soren's potential. Later, "The Band" discovered that the roots under the parliament chamber were prone to transmitting any sound created in the chamber. This allowed them to discover that the Guardians were addressing the topic concerning the dead Barred Owl. They found out that he was a slipgizzle: an owl spy that worked for the Guardians. Eventually Soren's fears and problems began to subside. Ezylryb proved to be much more than every owl in his weather chaw ever thought him to be. Soren was even able to help Mrs. Plithiver get a spot in the harp guild with Madame Plonke, the tree's beloved snowy owl singer. Soren also managed to catch a burning coal in his beak and earned Ezylryb's rare approval. Owlets of the Tyto species were found dropped all over babbling nonsense about owl purity. Digger and Twilight, who were part of the search and rescue chaw, found Eglantine who was one of the owlets dropped in the event that came to be known as the Great Downing. Soren was shocked when he was shown Eglantine but disappointed that she wasn't her true self. Eventually, Trader Mags came to trade goods at the Great Ga'Hoole Tree and Eglantine went into a panic when shown a piece of isinglass. This panic, however, proved to be effective because Eglantine broke out of her strange condition and became normal once again. For now, Soren felt content but only to an extent since Ezylryb, the ryb Soren had come to truly cherish, had not yet returned from his investigations of the Great Downing.
29573989	/m/0ds4qxz	Sunset Park	Paul Auster	2010-11-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set during the American financial recession in 2008, the college dropout Miles Heller, who has been running from his past for seven years, is forced to leave his new girlfriend in Florida and return home to New York. There he unites with his old friend Bing who lives together with 2 women in an abandoned home in the Sunset Park neighborhood in Brooklyn. Through several situations of coincidence and self-discovery, it is a story about how to reconnect with a world once left behind, and how to rejoin the human race after self-inflicted exile.
29585753	/m/0fphkcc	Last Rumba in Havana				 The book chronicles the life of an architecture student turned prostitute. It portrays the reality of the notorious Cuban prostitutes who cater only to foreigners. The author delivers fragments of this life through a long monologue, starting with tales of sordid and violent episodes of childhood in the Havana neighborhood of Jesus Maria. With a nihilistic vision of Cuban society, he pursues his character's story both in the poor neighborhoods and those of high-ranking Cuban luxury hotels as well as prisons. It is a journey through the lost paradise that never officially existed. The dialogue is broken occasionally by insertions of short stories, poems, imaginary telephone conversations, proverbs and other resources, giving it a lyrical quality.
29586754	/m/0fpgw4q	The Clockwork Three	Matthew J. Kirby		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Giuseppe, a boy who has to collect money for his padrone, one day finds a green violin from a shipwreck. The beautiful sound the violin makes possesses people into loving it and may just earn him enough money for his secret stash to eventually buy a ticket to his native country, Italy. Meanwhile, Frederick works on his automaton which hopefully will promote him out of apprenticeship, and a girl named Hannah works as a maid where she hears of hidden riches in the hotel where she works. Shortly after, she becomes the personal assistant of a strange guest, Madame Pomeroy. Two weeks later, Giuseppe then saves Frederick from being bullied, and the two become friends. Madame Pomeroy asks Frederick to construct an automaton for her, and Frederick and Hannah meet. Stephano discovered Giuseppe's secrets and tries to capture him, but Giuseppe escapes and hides out in a park. Hannah discovers that a man named Mister Stroop supposedly left the treasure in the suites at the top of the hotel. She later sees a map that hints it may near a pond in the park. She runs to look for it when she desperately needs money for her sick father's medicine. There she meets Giuseppe, and the two look for the treasure but it is not there, though she receives some herbal medicine from a woman who worked as a gardener in the hotel. Hannah's father draws for her where the treasure is hidden in the hotel, having worked for Stroops hotel in the past. The next day the three children all meet for the first time and Frederick shows the other two his automaton. The three agree to help each other out with their problems. Giuseppe mentions that he saw a clockwork head— Frederick's only missing piece— in a museum. The three sneak into the museum so Frederick can inspect the head, but they are interrupted by guards and forced to flee. Frederick escapes with the "borrowed" head, which was made by Albertus Magnus. Hannah also accidentally took a small piece of clay belonging to a golem, which she inserts into the clockwork man's chest. This, coupled with the Magnus head, gives him near-human intelligence. Hannah discovers that Mister Stroup's treasure is actually his will, witnessed by the hotel's owner, Mister Twine. She and Frederick talk to him, but Hannah refuses to take the money because it would cause the park to be destroyed. Mister Twine promotes her to the chief of maids, and gives her quite a bit of money for new dresses, a portion of which she gives to Giuseppe for his ticket. A law was passed that the padrones no longer had legal control over their buskers. Enraged, Stephano tries to kill Giuseppe, but they are saved by Madame Pomeroy, who lets Giuseppe travel with her to play his green violin for kings and queens. Frederick eventually makes journeyman, and Hannah's father's health improves.
29594259	/m/0fpg6s5	The Prague Cemetery	Umberto Eco	2010-10	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Paris, March 1897: Captain Simone Simonini—adventurer, forger, secret agent—is called upon to investigate assassination and political intrigue which affects Europe's future.
29610017	/m/0fpgp2x	Hide My Eyes	Margery Allingham	1958	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 An old country bus parks in London's Theatreland on a rainy night, and a murder ensues. Superintendent Charles Luke has his theories but it is not until he calls in Albert Campion for advice that they begin to come together. How do the museum of curios and the giant scrapyard in the East End link with the smooth Lagonda driver with his well-arranged alibis ?
29614652	/m/0fph60q	Gold By The Inch		1998		 The novel is split into three sections. The narrator is in Thailand visiting his younger brother, Luk, who works there as an architect. Thailand is the birthplace of the narrator’s mother. He ‘falls in love’ with Thong, a Thai prostitute, during his visit. The book tracks the narrator’s relationship with Thong. This relationship at first seems to be somewhat mutual but soon is clearly shown to be driven by money as Thong accepts every monetary gift doled out by the narrator. Thong eventually events the narrator to live with him and his family instead of spending on expensive hotel rooms every night and it becomes evident that Thong is actually from a relatively wealthy family. The narrator now leaves Thailand to visit family in Malaysia (Penang), the country in which his father was born. In this section, more information concerning the narrator’s childhood and family is revealed. For instance, the narrator’s father had a terrible relationship with his family in Malaysia as well as his own son and wife, whom he later left for an American woman. In this section, stories from the narrator’s past are revealed and we learn that the narrator only began this journey because at home he just recently witnessed his father’s death and the end of his relationship with boyfriend, Jim. His father had been living in Honolulu with wife and was near to death when the narrator decided it was okay to visit him. The narrator dated Jim in New York and the two’s relationship was based on Jim’s economic power and the narrator’s aesthetic value. The relationship ended over Jim’s inability to quit using drugs. Back in Malaysia, the narrator tours the city with his auntie. The narrator also neglects to tell the Luk, his mother, or his father’s family in Malaysia that Ba, the narrator’s father, has died. While in Malaysia, the narrator also devotedly thinks about Thong, whom he very much misses and completely ends his relationship with Jim by first reporting him to the authorities as a drug smuggler and then sending him a postcard that reads, ‘Keep everything’ (89). The narrator also spends some time trying to get a photograph of his grandmother whose death is surrounded by numerous stories. Post a conversation with his grandmother’s spirit, the narrator finally decides his trip is completed and he is ready to return to Thong in Thailand. The narrator makes a point of not contacting Thong right away until he sees him one night past weekend walk into the same bar the narrator is at with three friends. Thong’s commitment to the narrator is suspect. The narrator moves into Thong’s house but he sleeps separately from Thong on an entirely different floor. In general, Thong becomes more and more distant and less and less affectionate. As jealousy takes over the narrator, he spirals into a stronger and stronger drug addiction. At some point, the narrator and Thong bump into each other at a bar and through the translation of another friend, Thong breaks up with the narrator. Eventually, the narrator moves out of Thong’s house. Luk and friends try to help the narrator recover from his breakup. In the end, the narrator realizes that in the end, he is just an American doing things in Thailand he would be unable to do back home. Though he tries to play this off as something that makes him invincible, in the end the narrator seems to realize that his trip is done, and he needs to return home though where home is the book does not specify.
29614892	/m/0fpjx3y	Fever of the Bone				 The story centers on the investigation of the murders of several teenagers who, at first, can only be connected by their use of the fictional social networking site RigMarole. Along the way, Carol has to deal with the pressures placed on her by new Chief Constable James Blake, which include an attempt to lower the costs of the investigation by using in-house profiling help instead of going to Dr. Hill. Tony, meanwhile, is dealing with a personal loss that forces him to re-examine several long-held beliefs.
29628743	/m/0fpjx8k	Un destino ridicolo		1996	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set between Sardinia and the city of Genoa. The Sardinian shepherd Salvatore, after a detention in prison, comes to Genoa in search of a better life. In the old town he meets a prostitute, Veretta, and falls in love with her. The main plot is weaved with the histories of the pimp Carlo, the French criminal Barnard, the young singer-songwriter Fabrizio and his fan Alessandro, the beauty Maritza and Salvatore's cousin, Annino. The character of Maritza is a novelization of Bocca di Rosa, main character of a song of De André. Two other characters (Fabrizio and Alessandro) are the authors themselves.
29636571	/m/0fpjxxj	The Lost Thing	Shaun Tan	2000		 Set in the near future, in dystopian Melbourne, Australia, The Lost Thing is a story about a boy who enjoys collecting bottle tops for his bottle top collection. One day, while collecting bottle tops near a beach, he discovers a strange creature, that seems to be a combination of an industrial boiler, a crab, and an octopus. This creature is referred to as "The Lost Thing" by the narrator. The boy realizes the creature is lost and out of place. He attempts to find its owner but is not able to, due to the indifference of everyone else. As he is looking for the creature's owner, he is met by a creature who gives him a business card with a weird sign on it. After searching much of the city for the sign, the boy is able to find the sign and follows it to a utopian land for lost things, where he returns the creature,and continues on with his life - although he was unable to say whether the creature really belonged there.
29653783	/m/0fpglg_	The Sentimentalists				 The novel's protagonist is an unnamed young woman seeking to better understand her relationship with her father by investigating his experience in the Vietnam War.
29660069	/m/0fpk6fw	The Dead	Charlie Higson		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Dead begins a year before the events in The Enemy and two weeks after a worldwide sickness has infected all adults, turning them into zombies. Two fourteen-year-old boys called Jack and Ed are trapped with a group of other schoolboys in the Rowhurst boarding school, in a remote village, a few miles from London. After escaping from an adult siege of their school, Jack and Ed rescue the French teacher's daughter, Frederique, and attempt to contact several boys inside a church. Alarmed that there is no reply from inside the church, they break in and find that the boys hiding inside are unconscious from carbon monoxide poisoning. They manage to revive them. Matthew, a boy who has possibly suffered brain damage from the carbon monoxide, believes himself to be the messenger of the Lamb of God and believes that he must go to St Paul's Cathedral in London. The group splits, with Matt and his "acolytes", including Jack, who wishes to visit his family's house, attempting to go to London, and the rest deciding go deeper into the countryside. The group heading for the countryside are attacked by older, infected teenagers shortly after parting from the rest. They are saved by the timely arrival of a motor coach driven by an adult named Greg Thorne. He is a butcher who claims that he is immune to the disease. With his young son Liam, Greg has acquired a bus and is collecting children to transport them all to London. Himself and Liam to visit Arsenal Stadium, revealed to be an adult nest in The Enemy. Several other children are on the bus. Greg turns the bus around to find Jack, Matthew, and the Lamb of God believers, who are all still journeying towards London. Greg explains that, before the epidemic, he was staying with a farmer and his family, but he had had to kill a father and the older children, and indirectly remarks that he had to kill a crazy child because of the loss of his family and is seen to be eating dried meat. The bus halts for the night. Liam realizes that Greg has become infected and can no longer protect him, whom Greg strangles in his sleep. The next morning, Greg is inexplicably wearing Liam's glasses. Jack and Ed confront Greg about Liam's death. The bus is assaulted by several adults, and the group escapes from the bus and make it to the Imperial War Museum in south London. The kids clash with the leader of the museum group, Jordan, who refuses to let them stay in the museum, but he compromises and lets them stay as long as they collect food for themselves. A group sets off, and they explore until they find a Tesco truck with a partially decomposed corpse inside. Whilst they are attempting to get the truck to run, Frederique comes under attack by several adults. They fight off the adults and are surprised to find that she is unharmed. The group manage to drive the truck back to the museum while Jack, Ed, and another boy, Bam, set off to find Jack's home, where he has been planning to go since the beginning of the infection. Meanwhile, Matt's religion has gained believers in the museum. They rename the religion Agnus Dei, Latin for "Lamb of God". Matt foretells that the Lamb will look like a boy and will have a shadow that is another boy, who must be sacrificed. The new religion attempts to make a banner, but the maker misspells Agnus Dei Angus Day Meanwhile, Frederique attacks Froggie, biting into his arm. She reveals that she is sixteen years old and has been infected the entire time, with her diseases taking longer to infect her. She is locked in a storeroom by several of the kids. Jack, Ed, and Bam make their way to the Oval Cricket Ground. Outside the cricket ground are ambulances, army trucks, and skips filled with dead bodies. The boys explore, finding and keeping several weapons. The entire stadium is full of diseased corpses that were going to be burned, but the soldiers were themselves infected or killed before they had a chance. The boys are then pursued by adults through the stadium. Jack has a sub-machine gun he found from a dead soldier and, whilst trying to fend off an adult, he shoots a propane tank, causing it to explode and causing an avalanche of bodies. Jack and Bam are buried underneath the bodies and debris. Bam mistakes Jack for an adult and shoots him with a shotgun. Jack is badly wounded but able to stand. Ed finds them, and the three boys leave, continuing their search for Jack's house. They continue towards Jack's home but are ambushed by adults in the street. The three boys manage to kill all the attacking adults, but Greg appears, now fully infected, and kills Bam with a meat cleaver. He then slashes Jack's chest open and cuts the side of Ed's face from forehead to chin. Greg is about to finish off Ed, but Greg flees when Ed mentions Liam. Ed drags a dying Jack to his home and tries to heal his friend's wounds. However, Jack is beyond repair, and Ed takes Jack to his bedroom and spends the night with him. In the morning, Jack has died from his wounds. Ed cremates his friend's body and leaves, headed back to the museum. Soon Ed is ambushed again by adults. He is rescued by David King, Pod, and their group. They all travel to the museum. David warns Ed that a fire, caused by the fire at the Oval is spreading northward, towards the museum and that they should move. At the museum, Ed confronts the infected Frederique, who attempts to attack him. She escaped from captivity by gnawing through her own thumb to get out of the handcuffs. He defeats her and manages to banish her to the streets rather than killing her. He holds council with David and Jordan, and they decide to move to North London. Jordan decides to stay in the museum with several others. Ed and David lead their kids in the Tesco truck and attempt to cross north across the River Thames, fleeing the rapidly spreading fire. Every other kid in South London is also trying to cross the river, and they all struggle to do so due to a commotion between kids further up the bridge. But a huge wave of adults come up behind the kids from the south, and Ed and several other fighters hang back to fend off the infected to protect the other kids. Frederique reappears and attacks Aleisha, injuring her, and Ed shoots Frederique with a pistol. Ed is helped by another boy named Kyle, and, although the fighters initially seem to be overwhelmed, they are rescued by Jordan and his crew, who had been forced to abandon the museum by adults and the fire. They realize that they must flee, but the way back to the bridge is blocked by a horde of adults. The kids manage to take control of a sightseeing cruise boat moored in the river. They pilot it downstream towards the Tower of London, but Matt hijacks the boat in an attempt to reach St Paul's. He accidentally crashes the boat into the bridge, and it splits in half, causing a number of kids to drown, including Aleisha. Matt and the survivors of his acolytes are last seen disappearing under a bridge, standing on the top of half of the ruined boat. Jordan, Ed, Kyle, and the survivors find lifeboats and make it to the river's north bank. They make their way to the Tower of London and enter it by climbing the drainpipes. Inside they find a group of about thirty kids already inhabiting the castle. Frustrated at the leadership of the current leader, Jordan takes control, with Ed as his right-hand man. Of the original group from the bus, only Ed and Courtney remain. The others are either dead, missing, or still with the Tesco truck. Greg finds himself in Trafalgar Square, where he has lost his shirt. He puts on a St George t-shirt from a souvenir stand and decides to get revenge on those who he holds responsible for Liam's death. It is also revealed that he intends to raise an army of adults, setting him up as the 'Saint George' adult of The Enemy One year later, Ed, Kyle, and Jordan are guarding the Tower of London. Small Sam and The Kid arrive. The Tower group are shocked to see that Sam and The Kid resemble the Lamb and the Goat as portrayed on the Angus Dei banner.
29666591	/m/0fph_wz	Nights of Rain and Stars	Maeve Binchy			 In a small town in Greece, a group of people witness a boating accident and subsequently become tangled in each other's lives. Thomas is a Californian university professor escaping from the tense relationship between him and his remarried ex-wife, and their son, who he adores. Elsa, the beautiful German blonde, resigned from her successful television job to escape her ex-boyfriend, who she still loves. Irish Fiona couldn't stand her family and friends' resentful attitudes towards her boyfriend, Shane, so they went to peaceful Greece. David, a kind English man, doesn't want to take over his father's business like his family wants and expects, and instead decides to travel. These strangers meet in a tavern in peaceful Aghia Anna underneath the stars, and soon they are the closest of friends. Vonni, a native who too escaped her family many years ago, becomes involved in all their lives and together they form bonds and discover things about each other and themselves that they never could have anticipated. *2004, Ireland/UK/Australia, Orion ISBN 0-7528-5166-7, Pub date 25 August 2004, Hardback *2004, USA, Dutton ISBN 0-525-94754-X, Pub date 21 September 2004, Hardback *2005, USA, Dutton ISBN 0-451-21446-3, Pub date 28 June 2005, Paperback *2005, Ireland/UK/Australia, Orion ISBN 978-0-7528-6536-2, Pub date 29 June 2005, Paperback
29674225	/m/0fpjrf_	Frozen in Time	Ali Sparkes	2009-01-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ben and Rachel Corder are staying in their house with their dreary old uncle when the TV satellite breaks and the TV explodes. Unable to do anything to amuse themselves, Ben and Rachel start digging in the garden and find themselves opening a hatch. They drop themselves into it and find themselves in what looks like an old-fashioned underground house, where they find a what looks like a torpedo and are shocked to see two dead bodies in it. Rachel accidentally presses a button and suddenly the hatch opens and the bodies come to life. Rachel faints and Ben starts talking gibberish in his shock. The two people that had before seemed dead introduced themselves as Freddy and Polly Emerson and asked why they were in their fathers' vault. When Rachel and Ben explained, they first refused to believe it, but then believed when Rachel and Ben took them into their house. Freddy and Polly revealed they had been put into cryonic suspension - their father had stopped their hearts and was able to make them start again. Freddy and Polly had been put to sleep in 1956 and woke up in 2009. They couldn't understand why their father had deserted them. In time, Rachel and Ben introduce them to 2009, and Freddy and Polly are frequently shocked. They get sent to school (under the name Robertson, in case there's anyone old enough on the school staff to remember) and try to research what happened to their father. A cheerful librarian gives them documents. One day, Rachel reads an email sent to her by her uncle which reads: "Get out of the house now!!! You are in danger!" Ben and Freddy, who had been escaping bullies who constantly taunt them partly because of Ben's stutter and partly because of Freddy and Polly's posh accents and their peculiar habbits, come back to see Rachel and Polly being drugged and thrown into the boot of the car. Ben knocks a man out with a camera and runs to the librarian, who had been behind it all. She had suspected Freddy and Polly's real identity and wanted to learn how to work cryonic suspension. Ben is also drugged and thrown into the car. The car drives away and Rachel wakes up to see Polly being taken out of the car to be boarded onto a helicopter. She finds a torch, picks the lock of the boot with a hairgrip and sprays antiseptic into the librarians' eyes. They then get taken to a place where all the people who were working to find Freddy and Polly's father have been working on helping them to escape and Freddy and Polly are reunited with their Father, who built another cryonic suspension machine and froze himself inside it so that he would not grow old and die without his children. The story ends with Freddy and Polly trying to teach their father about 2009 life.
29684568	/m/0fp_f4h	Daughter of Darkness				 A young woman named Willamina "Willie" Connolly is the daughter of a prosperous New York couple, editor Matt Connolly and his wife Willamina, an Irish concert pianist. Willie is a child prodigy with an extremely high IQ. Her parents believe her to be a happy, contented child, but this is a carefully contrived mask. Her primary motivation is independence; she detests anyone making decisions for her, especially based on her age or appearance. Her very name, Willamina Junior, made her feel like a bad carbon copy, until she discovered Gertrude Stein's The World Is Round and began to call herself Willie. She has made a thorough study of anthropology and is an accomplished practitioner of witchcraft and sympathetic magic. Her doll collection is actually an array of poppets which she uses to curse those who displease her. This backfires on her when one of her spells leads to her mother's death. Willie's remorse and her wish to see her father happy again develops over the years into incestuous desire, although Willie herself does not realize it.
29691203	/m/0fq1_vs	Tristan and Iseult	Rosemary Sutcliff			 Tristan is depicted as a prince of Lothian, whose king Rivalin married the sister of Mark of Cornwall, making Tristan the nephew King Mark. Tristan's mother is shown as dying in his childbirth, and his name as being from the latin root word trista http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trista, reflecting the sadness of Rivalin at the loss of his wife. He journeys to the Kingdom of Cornwall in effort to prove himself, and enters the service of King Mark without revealing his identity. After defeating the Irish champion Morholt, Tristan's identity is revealed, and his position as Champion of Cornwall solidified. Having been wounded by the poisoned blade of Morholt, Tristan wastes away, eventually being set adrift in a boat by his own choice. He lands on the shores of Ireland, and his healed by the skills of Iseult of Ireland, although without actually meeting her. Upon returning to Cornwall, he is involved in a move to have King Mark marry. Tristan is sent on a quest to find a bride for the king, and winds up once again in Ireland. Tristan defeats a dragon, is once again healed by Iseult, and though given her hand in marriage as reward, promises to bring her back to Cornwall as bride for his Uncle. These events are shown in light of bringing peace to an ongoing war between the two kingdoms. Tristan and Iseult are stranded on a distant shore for a few days, delaying their return to Cornwall, and cementing their own love for each other, despite the commitments of circumstances. Sutcliff herself states that she intentionally left out the love potion as something 'artificial' . Upon returning to Cornwall, Iseult is wedded to King Mark, and they both seek to behave honorably by maintaining a distance between themselves. They eventually end up having a clandestine relationship, and are caught by King Mark. After various conflicts, Tristan is banished from Cornwall, and travels to Brittany, entering the service of King Hoel of Brittany. Tristan befriends Hoel's son Kahedin, and is married to Hoel's daughter, Iseult of the White Hands. The relationship is never consummated, with Tristan pining away for Iseult of Ireland. Kahedin is killed by the husband of his own original love, after a successful visit aided by Tristan. Tristan is once again sorely wounded, and sends for Iseult of Ireland to come and heal him. The returning ship is to furl white sails if it returns with her, and black sails if not, much like the story of Theseus returning to his father. Iseult of the White Hands lies to Tristan out of jealousy, saying that the sails are black, and he dies. Iseult of Ireland finds him dead, and dies by his side. They are buried together back in Cornwall, with a hazel tree growing from his heart and a honeysuckle from hers, intertwining above their graves. Similar to many of her novels, Sutcliff depicts these ancient and legendary stories in a realistic fashion. She also focuses on the themes of individuals bound by obligation, also using the visual balance between the dark haired Tristan and the blonde haired Iseult.
29695563	/m/0fq1kdb	King of Kilba	Percy F. Westerman	1926	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Kenneth Kilsyth, a young clerk in a London counting house, and a most reluctant employee, wins £1000 in a football pool (nearly £200,000 at present-day prices calculated as average earnings, or over £43,000 calculated as retail price index). Inviting his sole friend and fellow clerk, Gerald Hayes, to join him, he embarks on a journey of adventure. Some time later, they find themselves the sole passengers on a merchant ship, the S.S. Mumtaz, steaming from Vancouver to Honolulu, but all the officers and most of the sailors are quickly wiped out by a mysterious disease, leaving the two passengers the only people alive. Bridges, the quartermaster of the crew, survives long enough to help dispose of the bodies overboard and shows the lads how to rig a sail on to the wallowing freighter. Under the influence of the North-East trade winds and the North Equatorial current, the Mumtaz eventually drifts over a coral reef and lodges on the leeward side. The boys are near an island, and arming themselves with guns from the captain’s cabin, they land on the island. At dawn, atop a small hill, they are confronted by an army of 'savages'. But the natives attack on stilts (the ground is taboo to them) and the boys are able to defend themselves. The attack is suddenly called off by an elderly white man who speaks broken English. He reveals that he was shipwrecked many years before and has become 'King' of the island, called Kilba. This is in accordance with a local prophecy that a white man will always rule the people. From him, they learn that tribal warfare between the two islands of Kilba and Neka has existed for many generations. They take part in some battles, and eventually the old king dies. Kilsyth is forced to accept the title, with 'Haya', as Hayes in now known, as his 'brother'. They conduct the continuing war against the neighbouring island. They attempt to introduce the islanders to football and cricket. Cricket proves so attractive that the natives relax their vigilance. The Nekas invade and carry off Hayes as a captive. He is lowered into an abyss as a sacrifice to an enormous crab, known as 'Bonga Te Akka' (The great mill wheel) The crab, with a shell six feet across and claws over eight feet long, is about to devour its prey when Kilsyth and an army of Kilbans arrive to rescue him. But the tables are turned and Kilsyth is himself sacrificed to the crab. His small gun is useless, but he manages to light a fire, which deflects and then burns the crab to death. The Nekans attempt to kill Kilsyth anyway, but are thwarted when the two heroes are rescued by a party of New Zealanders prospecting for ambergris. In fact, one of the island's sheltered bays contains vast stores of this valuable material. The two men promise to reveal the location of the cache, in return for equal partnerships in the firm of Wilcox and Co in Auckland, who are sponsoring the search. They fly away in the explorer's aeroplane, thus fulfilling another island prophecy that the King will be taken away by a 'great bird' when his work is done.
29696619	/m/07qz61	Babylon Revisited	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1931-02-21		 The story is set in the year after the crash of the 1929, just after what Fitzgerald called the "Jazz Age". Brief flashbacks take place in the Jazz age itself. Much of it is based on the author's own experiences.
29719897	/m/04mzykx	Richard Yates	Tao Lin	2010-09-07	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning (unrelated to their child star namesakes) are friends who initially met over the internet and converse with each other regularly through Gmail chat. Haley is a 22-year-old author in Manhattan, and Dakota is a 16-year-old high school student in a nearby suburb in New Jersey.
29734549	/m/0fq2gyx	The Still Point		2010-02-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book's two central characters are Edward Mackley, an Arctic explorer who went missing during an expedition at the turn of the 20th Century, and his great-grand-niece Julia, who lives a hundred years later. On a hot summer's day Julia begins sorting through the belongings she has inherited from her uncle, while trying to ignore the cracks which are appearing in her marriage. However, as the day wears on she makes a discovery that forces her to re-evaluate her long-held image of her uncle, her husband Simon faces a choice that will decide the future of their relationship.
29737744	/m/0fq2r8y	The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz	Jules Verne		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Railway engineer Henri Vidal was invited by his younger brother Marc to pay him a visit in the (fictional) city of Ragz, Hungary. Marc was engaged to Myra Roderich, the daughter of highly praised Dr. Roderich. Before leaving Paris, he learned that a man named Wilhelm Storitz had proposed to Myra, but he was refused. Henri describes his journey, made on land and on the Danube River on the barge Dorothée, also noting monuments and cities he sees on the way. At his arrival in Ragz he received a warm welcome from Myra's family. One day, Dr. Roderich told Henri and Haralan (Myra's brother) that Wilhelm Storitz had come to request to propose again to Myra. When he is again refused, he threatened the family. Before the marriage, a contract must be signed by the town governor as an old tradition from Ragz. A party was organized for the event, which was disrupted by a mysterious voice that sang the German Hate Song. To make matters worse, the contract was found torn to pieces and the bride's wreath lifted itself and hovered mysteriously in the air, ensuing panic among the people at the party. After reporting the events to the chief of the Ragz police, Heinrich Stepark, he suspected that the culprit must be Wilhelm Storitz, as he was the only person who profoundly disrespected the Roderichs. Wilhelm's house was searched but, beside Myra's bride wreath and a mysterious yellow fluid in a blue vial, no significant evidence was found. A few days later, after getting the permission from the governor, Myra Roderich and Marc Vidal were ready to be wed the next day at the Ragz cathedral. On June the 1st, seconds before being wed, the same voice mentioned above cursed the couple. Myra lost consciousness and was given special care. By now the entire population of the town suspected Wilhelm Storitz to be the culprit. As a consequence, the mob burned his house down, despite the efforts made by police agents. Later, while on a walk, Henri and Stepark overheard a conversation between Wilhelm and his servant Hermann, both in a state of invisibility, as they had been throughout the novel's plot. Stepark attempted to capture Wilhelm but failed. When they returned, they found Myra missing. The next day, using the information gathered from the conversation, Haralan fought with an invisible Wilhelm and defeated him. As he bled, Wilhelm became visible. Hermann wasn't there but he was found dead later in the same garden where he died of a heart failure and regained his visibility. Back home they miraculously found Myra, who hadn't left her bed at all - she was just invisible. As Wilhelm had died, and the antidote had been destroyed, Myra was to remain invisible forever.
29753131	/m/0fq28z2	An Imaginative Approach to Teaching				 This book contains three main chapters. Each of these chapters focuses on a particular stage of cognitive development and the set of cognitive tools that people use at these stages. The stages are linked to the development of oral language, literacy and theoretical thinking. The first chapter describes the cognitive tools linked with oral language use. These include story form, metaphor, binary opposites, rhyme, rhythm and pattern, humor, mental imagery among others. These tools first become present in preliterate people, which generally happen to be children before the age of seven. The second chapter describes the cognitive tools that are added with the onset of literacy. These include a sense of reality, interest in extremes of experience, association with heroes, connecting knowledge with human meaning, narrative understanding among others. Egan states that these tools do not replace the previous toolkit, but are additions. The third chapter describes the cognitive tools that are added when students are nurtured toward theoretical thinking. The two previous toolkits are prerequisites to developing this toolkit. Some of the tools indicated here are a sense of abstract reality, a sense of agency, a grasp of general ideas and their anomalies, a search for authority and truth, and meta-narrative understanding. After each of these three chapters, a section referred to as a “half chapter” is included. These half chapters include suggested planning frameworks for the preceding cognitive toolkit and a series of example lessons or units.
29757446	/m/0b6nfb4	The Sly Old Cat	Beatrix Potter	1906	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A cat invites a rat to her tea party. She eats her bread and leaves only crumbs for the rat. She drinks her tea and leaves only drops of milk for the rat. The rat believes she will eat him for dessert and wishes he had not come. When the cat raises the milk jug to drink the last of the milk, the rat gives the jug a pat and it slips down over the cat's head. She bangs about the kitchen unable to free herself. The rat sips some tea, puts a muffin in a paper bag, and leaves. Later, he eats the muffin.
29758626	/m/0fq2z7t	Vapor	Amanda Filipacchi	1999	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Vapor is the story of Anna Graham, an aspiring actress who one night saves the life of a stranger being attacked in the subway. The stranger, Damon Wetly, an unconventional scientist, decides that he will repay Anna’s selfless act by making her dream of becoming a great actress come true. In a twisted reworking of the Pygmalion myth, Damon abducts Anna, imprisons her in a house filled with experimental clouds, and spends months putting her through a grueling training regimen which allows her acting skills to reach unprecedented heights and Anna to achieve her Hollywood ambitions.
29764790	/m/0fq2ht7	Auf der Höhe				 The central figure is a king whose self-confident individuality comes in conflict with his love of popular freedom. Anticipating the superman of later writers, he feels that his nature is cast in too large a mold to be confined by constitutional restraints or ethical conventions. In conflict with a majority of the elected representatives of the people over some ecclesiastical question, he dissolves the assembly in his impatience of any outer control. The same characteristics are manifesting themselves meantime in his domestic life. His queen is a gentle lady of domestic instincts. He loves her, yet he finds in the forceful, energetic Countess Irma, one of her ladies in waiting, a spirit so answering to his own that they join to transgress, he the bond of marriage, she of loyalty to her queen. Atonement comes first to Irma, who withdraws from the court into solitude, recognizing that one who would live a life of nature may not claim the protection of the social order. Thus the king is brought to realize that life for its full unfolding depends not only on following the law of nature or the law of custom, but in the co-ordination of them, when man of his own free will yields obedience to law. He dismisses his autocratic counsellors and bows to the will of his people. The stress of this psychic drama is relieved by scenes between the queen and Wallpurga, the little prince's peasant nurse, who passes, as does her husband, through a conflict parallel to that of Irma and the king, though both are saved from straying by their unsophisticated respect for the folkways. The contrast between court and peasant life is a primary interest in On the Heights.
29769648	/m/0fq2nwb	The Cannibal	John Hawkes			 The novel is divided in three parts. The first and the last are set in 1945, in an imaginary small German town ravaged by the war, Spitzen-on-the-Dein. The second part takes place during the First World War, from 1914 (the title of this part of the novel) to 1918. It is difficult to outline the plot of the novel because when the narrative shifts from 1945 to 1914 we are not clearly told what is the relation of the characters in that part of the novel with those of the first and last part; the only continuity is the presence in all three parts of Madame Snow. Stella Snow is a young and promising night club singer, daughter of a German general, in 1914; she is the owner of a boarding house in the destitute Spitzen-on-the-Dein of 1945. However, the story, told in a surrealistic or anti-realistic fashion, may be summarized by saying that the two parts of the novel set in 1945 depict the material and moral wasteland created by Nazism and W.W.II; the first part can be said to show the roots of those horrors in the years of earlier German imperialism and the humiliating defeat of 1918. While the first and last part are told by a first-person narrator, Zizendorf, who masterminds a crackpot plot to kill the American overseer of the occupied German town, Leevey, and start a rebellion of the defeated Germans against the Allied invaders, the central part is a third-person narrative where fragments of the past are told, describing episodes which involve the owner of a tavern, Herman, and his son Ernst (who marries Stella), and a mysterious Englishman called Cromwell, who seems to have sided with the Germans against England but might also be a spy.
29772821	/m/0fq1q2q	The Popularity Papers		2010		 Two fifth-grade friends, Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang, want to learn how to be popular before entering middle school. The book is their journal, documenting their misadventures to become more popular, as well as their family and school life.
29783610	/m/0fp_tsx	The Rice Sprout Song	Eileen Chang	1955	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel tells the story of a peasant family and their struggle for basic sustenance while the government does little to help, and in fact, demands more goods from the peasants as they cope with the harsh weather and a food shortage. The book begins with the wedding of Gold Flower T'an, the sister of Gold Root T'an. In this part of the book, Chang shares with the reader Chinese family traditions and the bonds between family members. For example, a bride would be escorted by her family to the groom's house in a carriage where there would later be a wedding banquet hosted by the groom's family. For now, Gold Root T'an is living with his daughter, Beckon while his wife is working in the city to provide for her family.
29828921	/m/0fp__q3	The Elf on the Shelf				 Every day from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, each family's scout elf watches over the children and then at night, once everyone goes to bed, the elf flies back to the North Pole to report back to Santa about what activities, good and bad, took place throughout the day. Before the family wakes up each morning, the scout elf flies back from the North Pole and hides. By hiding in a new spot each morning around the house, the scout elf and the family play an on-going game of hide and seek. The Elf on the Shelf explains that elves get their magic by being named. In the back of each book, families have an opportunity to write their elf's name and the date that they adopted it. Once the elf is named, the scout elf receives its special Christmas magic which allows it to fly to and from the North Pole. However, the magic might go if touched, so the rule for The Elf on the Shelf states: "There's only one rule that you have to follow so I will come back and be here tomorrow: Please do not touch me. My magic might go, and Santa won't hear all I've seen or I know." Although families aren't supposed to touch their scout elf, they can talk to it and tell it all their Christmas wishes so it can report back to Santa accurately.
29872977	/m/0fqp8k6	How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe	Charles Yu	2010	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel centers around Charles Yu, a time machine mechanic. He lives in his TM-31 time machine with his non-existent dog, Ed, and the time machine's depressed computer, TAMMY. Yu travels through Minor Universe 31 fixing time machines of people who try to fix the past. He visits Linus Skywalker who tried to kill his father, Luke Skywalker because his father's fame overshadowed Linus's life. Yu also visits a girl who traveled to be with her grandmother as she died. Yu explains to her that because she wasn't present when it happened, she cannot stay. Yu is called in by his boss, Phil, to have his time machine serviced. He walks around in the city while his TM-31 is being repaired and visits his mother who is in a time loop in which she continually replays an hour of her life. He watches a holographic version of himself and his mother interact as she serves dinner. The next day Yu rushes back to his time machine, sees his future self exit his machine, and shoots his future self. As his future self is dying, the future self gives Yu a book and says that the book is the key. By shooting himself, Yu has entered a loop in which he must eventually travel back in time, hand his past self the book, and get shot. Yu quickly takes off in his time machine and begins to rewrite the book by reading from the book he was handed. He eventually asks himself what would happen if he skipped forward, and so he jumps to the end of the book. He wakes up in a Buddhist temple and sees "The Woman My Mother Should Have Been" as well as his father's shoes. He exits the temple and finds himself in a shuttle. Yu finds himself back in his TM-31 and floats through memories that he sees play out before him. He explains how he and his father invented the time machine and brought it to the director of research at the Institute of Conceptual Technology. Yu's father explained the concepts but was unable to get his machine to work. Back in the TM-31, Yu finds a key in the book he is writing that leads him to discover a diorama with a clock that points to a time. TAMMY and Yu realize that this is a clue to where they can find Yu's father, but also realize that they are headed back to the hanger so Yu's past self can shoot him. Yu realizes as he flies in that he loves TAMMY and she loves him. He steps out of his time machine and gets shot, but lives as it was just a shot to his stomach. In the appendix, Yu talks about visiting the place and time displayed by the diorama. He finds his father, trapped because his time machine broke down. Yu makes amends with his father and then travels to the present. He reunites his dad with his mom, then sets off to find "The Woman You Never Married". He continues to write his novel, but suggests he "keep stalling, see how long you can keep expanding the infinitely expandable moment".
29873254	/m/0fqpzr9	Our Nig	Harriet E. Wilson		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Our Nig opens up with the story of Mag Smith. In the past, Mag was seduced and left with a child out of wedlock. After the child dies, Mag moves away to a place where no one knows her. In this new town, she meets a black man named Jim who falls for Mag. She resists him at first but she soon realizes that her efforts are futile. Jim and Mag eventually marry and they have two children: Frado and a son. Later on, Jim grows ill, and dies. Mag is once again left by herself, only this time she has two children to care for. Mag marries Seth, one of Jim’s business partners, and he takes the family under his wing. Eventually Mag and Seth realize that they cannot care for both of the children and he suggests they send Frado to live with the Bellmonts. Mag refuses at first, but reluctantly agrees with Seth and the decision is made to send Frado to live with them. Frado is then dropped off at the house under the guise that Mag will be back to pick her up later in the day. After a few days, the Bellmonts along with Frado come to the realization that Mag never intended on returning. We receive a description of Mr. Bellmont that he is kind and humane, however Mrs. Bellmont on the other hand is the complete opposite. The Bellmonts also have four children, two boys and two girls. The family decides whether or not to keep Frado and if they do, where she should sleep. Frado is sent to live in a separate part of the house that she will soon outgrow. The following day Mrs. Bellmont calls for Frado early in the morning and puts her to work washing dishes, preparing food, etc. Mr. Bellmont is humble towards Frado. Jack is accepting Frado since her skin complexion is not very dark. Mary is against Frado's presence and wants her to go the County House instead. Mrs. Bellmont is not happy with Frado's existence in the house but manages to find ways to make her useful by serving as a perfect work girl. Frado lives in a new room unfinished chamber over the kitchen. A year passed and Frado accepted that she is part of the Bellmont family. Jack buys Frado a dog named Fido, who becomes her friend and eases her loneliness. Later on, Frado is allowed to attend school with Mary. One afternoon on their way home, Mary tries to force Frado into the water but falls into it instead. Later that day, Mary runs home to tell her mother that Frado pushed her into the stream. Frado receives a good whipping from Mrs. Bellmont and Jack futilely tries to defend Frado. Nig runs away and Mr. Bellmont, Jack and James search for her. She asks James that if God made him, Aunt Abby, and Mrs. Bellmont white, then she dislikes God for making her black. The first day of spring a letter arrives from James about his declining health. Jack comes to visit the family. Mrs. Bellmont beat Frado senseless and mentioned if she ever exposes her to James she would “cut her tongue out”. By November James' health starts to deteriorate further. Mary leaves home to nurse her brother, Jake. James requests Frado to stay by his bed side until further notice. Mrs. Bellmont discovers Frado reading the bible. Mrs. Bellmont speaks to her husband about Frado going to the evening meetings. In the following spring, James passes away. After James’ death, Frado once again conflicts with her unfitness to be in Heaven, and seeks Aunt Abbey’s aid. Aunt Abbey teaches Frado about God and the Bible, invites her to a church meeting, and encourages her to believe in Him and seek the passage of Heaven. When Mr. Bellmont grows concerned for Frado’s health from her beatings, Frado one day takes his advice. Before Mrs. Bellmont would strike her down with a stick for taking too long to bring firewood, Frado threatens to stop working for her if she did. Mrs. Bellmont unexpectedly relents. From there after, she whips her less frequently. News arrives that Mary dies from illness. Frado considers escaping, but realizes the lack of choices in which to take. She decides to wait until her contract was over at the age of eighteen. Overtime, Jane leaves the house, and Jack moves back in, introducing his family to his wife, whom Mrs. Bellmont verbally abused due to the fact that she was poor. When Frado turns eighteen, she is arranged to make clothes for the Moores family. Due to her ailing health, she slowly becomes unable to work. She moves to a shelter where two elderly women take care of her for two years. For a while, she is nursed again by Mrs. Moore, but after her husband leaves, Frado is forced again to find work. She eventually is employed by a poor woman in Massachusetts who instructs her on making bonnets. Though growing feebler and declining in health, Frado makes substantial wages.Despite three years of failing health,a few years later Frado moves to Singleton where she marries a fugitive slave named Samuel whose back wasn't as bruised as hers. He constantly leaves her to go "lecture". These lectures left Frado home for weeks at a time with little money. Once again Frado is left to depend on her self especially during the birth of her child. During Samuel's absence Frado becomes sick one last time leaving she and her child to find shelter in the home of a poor woman where she later recovers. Over time in New Orleans her husband becomes sick with yellow fever which leaves her to depend on herself permanently. Now that Frado is on her own she has to find work by traveling through the different towns of Massachusetts. She goes through a few hardships but later in the book we see a busy Frado preparing her merchandise for costumers. In the end, Mr. and Mrs. Bellmont, Aunt Abbey, Jack and his wife have all died. Jane and Henry, Susan and her child are all old. No one remembers Frado. The last line of the book ends with "but she will never cease to track them till beyond mortal vision". Even though everyone may have forgotten about Frado, she still remembers them.
29873865	/m/0fqmdbl	Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist		1982	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Victor Jakob, a Physics professor in a small German university, reflects on his life as a physicist, recalling major discoveries and ideas of recent decades and his interactions with prominent physicists whose ideas challenge the classical physics worldview. Meanwhile the tide of World War I is turning against Germany. As he meditates on the changing world, Jakob hikes to a mountain overlooking his university, where he becomes trapped in a muddy ditch, while gunfire rings out below. In an apparently hopeless situation, he takes out his revolver and "open[s] his mouth." (Some reviewers characterize his apparent death as an accident, while others interpret it as suicide, a parallel to that of Ludwig Boltzmann; John Maddox considered it open to interpretation whether Jakob succeeds in killing himself.)
29878640	/m/0fqrgbh	White Shark				 A quiet Long Island fishing community is suddenly struck with terror when an amphibious beast created by a mad Nazi scientist is unleashed on the town. Dr. Simon Chase, a struggling man who leaves his wife and child to finish school at a Marine Biology science institute sees his son, Max for the first time in twelve years. A crew tracking a pregnant Great White (ironically named "Jaws") spot a porpoise with a claw gash in its tail and see massive kills of sea life; when they then observe the same claw marks on Jaws herself, Chase knows that there must be something big out there to attack a great white. Dr. Amanda Macy, who studies whales using sea lions with strapped-on video cameras, allows herself to actually see the creature firsthand. Macy's camera gets a shot of a clawed hand attacking a fish. After additional horrific and bloody encounters at sea, the beast comes ashore, endangering the entire town. Now it's up to Chase to try and stop the creature before it kills off the entire town, and eventually move on...
29879002	/m/0fqny6k	Bones to Ashes	Kathy Reichs	2007	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Bones to Ashes follows a forensic anthropologist who had just moved to Montreal. While in Montreal she hears about a box of bones that could be her old friend Evangeline who disappeared along with her sister. While Temp is working on her regular cases and the case with the bones she believes is her friend. As on and off lover and co-work of hers Andy Ryan is involved in a case with three dead girls, Temp decides to get involved in as well. While working on this case Temp’s husband decides to divorce her for a woman 20 years younger than he is. There are then many events that leads to uncovering child pornography. At the end one girl was killed by her father who committed suicide not long after. Another girl is still alive who is going by a fake name to hide her dark past and the third girl was never identified.
29879034	/m/0fqt35k	Devil Bones	Kathy Reichs		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Animal and human remains are found in a house under renovation in Charlotte, North Carolina. Signs of satanism and devil worship are also found which lead to a witch hunt by the panicked citizens.
29879178	/m/0fqqrwp	The Obama Identity				 Prior to Obama's election, the protagonist, a CIA agent named Theodore J. Higginbothem III, or "Higgy" uncovers a vast conspiracy surrounding Barack Obama. After Obama is elected, the protagonist attempts suicide, but is unsuccessful; afterwards, he goes to work for the president.
29889744	/m/0fqmzw9	Mistborn: The Alloy of Law	Brandon Sanderson	2011-11-08	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tor has given a short synopsis of the novel, which is as follows: #
29898075	/m/0fqptl7	The Haunting	Joan Lowery Nixon	1998-08-10	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 As the story opens, Lia, 15, is at her great-grandmother Sarah's bedside. Delirious, the old woman begins to speak of Graymoss Plantation, the Louisiana family estate left unoccupied for decades because of a "terrible, fearful evil." After the woman's death, Lia discovers that the house has been willed to her mother, who plans to move the family in and adopt a group of hard-to-place children. Lia is against this idea and vows to prove to her mother that the house is truly haunted. She learns that the ghostly occurrences are well documented and that several locals oppose the family taking up residence at Graymoss. Could one of these people be staging the hauntings? Lia has a change of heart, however, after she meets the children her parents want to care for and resolves to take on the ghosts herself. Aided by a collection of Edgar Allan Poe's stories, she eventually succeeds in driving the spirits away. The ghosts are reminiscent of those in Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of Hill House, whispering through the walls and sending books flying through the air. The novel ends somewhat abruptly, and a potentially interesting romantic relationship fizzles out completely, but this is still a page-turner that will satisfy mystery and ghost story fans.
29902318	/m/0fqpl66	Call Me Elizabeth: Wife, Mother, Escort		2006		 When full-time legal secretary Dawn Annandale notices an advertisement in a magazine which states that attractive girls can earn up to £300 per night by engaging in escort work, her curiosity is piqued. At first, she thinks that the work would be in dissonance to her own life which consists of having six children between the ages of two and twelve, having a nice home in Kent and a husband, Paul. The struggle to maintain a privileged middle class existence led to Dawn's realisation that herself and her husband 'were very probably guilty of trying to live a champagne lifestyle on an orange juice budget.' The author's account of her subsequent actions attempt to explain to the reader that she was motivated by her fervent desire to give to her children a happy and stable beginning in life. From the start of Dawn's marriage, Paul leaves the running of the house and the sorting of finances to Dawn. He assures Dawn that he is happy for her to do what she thinks is best for the family. When she enrols her first child at a private primary school, she feels that this sets a precedent for her other children to be educated up to the same standards. Financial matters are further complicated by the additional costs of after-school clubs, school uniforms and music lessons. Her impecunious situation prompts her to make an appointment with Jimmy, a man in charge of the escort operation. Jimmy comments that Dawn is very different from his other girls. This adds to Dawn's anxiety because she worries that she will not experience financial success. When Jimmy asks her the reasons as to why she is seeking to pursue this form of work, Dawn replies honestly that she is motivated by the fact that she has 'six kids to feed and educate and a mountain of debts to pay.' When Dawn sees her first client, she introduces herself as Elizabeth. Although she is overwhelmed by trepidation, uncertaintly and anxiety during her experience, her fears soon dissipate when she visits subsequent clients. Many of the men she sees are exceptionally protective of her in that they give Dawn/ Elizabeth advice on the best means by which to conduct herself so that she can decrease the chances of finding herself in a dangerous situation. She is also struck by how many of her clients are lonely men who feel ignored by their wives. many of her clients request her on multiple occasions because of her ability to engage in intellectual conversations. When it dawns upon the author how lucrative her newfound position is, she leaves her job as a legal secretary and works as a full-time escort. She joins a new agency and becomes acquainted with Trish runs the switchboard. Elizabeth becomes more adept in her role and her confidence increases. When she rings a local radio station which asks listeners to provide an account of what they are doing late at night, Elizabeth reveals the activities in which she has been engaged. She is happy and pleased at the amount of public support she receives. Her comfort level becomes challenged when one of her male friends discovers the double life that she has been leading.
29903073	/m/0fqqyt1	Grandville				 The book begins with a chase in the streets of Paris, also known as Grandville, in which British diplomat Raymond Leigh-Otter (an otter) escapes from a group of assassins. The action then cuts to Leigh-Otter's house, in which he is found shot dead and the local police are inspecting the body. Detective Inspector Archie LeBrock of Scotland Yard, a large, heavily built badger, arrives with his assistant, Detective Roderick Ratzi (a rat), and deduces that Leigh-Otter was in fact murdered, after LeBrock notices that Leigh-Otter is holding the gun in his right paw when in fact he is left-handed. Thus, they go to Paris in order to investigate. After LeBrock and Ratzi check into their hotel, they learn that Leigh-Otter often met up with a female guest, Coco (a very attractive cat), the dresser for music hall star Sarah Blairow (a badger). After further investigation they learn that others have also committed suicide, including Coco. As LeBrock goes to meet Sarah, he finds that some assassins have come to kill her. LeBrock gets rid of them and learns that they are working for an organisation called "The Knights of Lyon". LeBrock tells Sarah to go into hiding while he and Ratzi try to solve the case. While LeBrock attempts to find more information by interviewing the British ambassador, Honourable Citizen Turtell (a tortoise), Ratzi learns the Knights of Lyon are a medieval religious cult possibly connected to the Knights Templar. They visit the Robida Tower ground zero site, which had been bombed by British anarchists, causing tension between Britain and France. Two assassins approach LeBrock, who makes his way to a Turkish bath. LeBrock stops them and learns that the assassins do not know who they are working for, knowing them only as "The Knights". LeBrock kills them. Ratzi investigates another of the suicides, that of Professor Tope (a mole), pioneer of automaton engineering. After talking to his son, they learn he had an assistant called Snowy Milou (white Wire Fox Terrier). After searching Tope's old lab, LeBrock receives a telephone call from Sarah asking him to visit, because she is worried about her safety. She seduces LeBrock after he arrives and the two make love. The next day, LeBrock learns that Milou has become an opium addict and drug dealer. Ratzi uncovers a photograph which features Tope and several other public figures: Jean-Marie Lapin (a rabbit), a far-right nationalist politician and now Prime Minister who came to power following the bombing of Robida Tower, promising a "War on Terror"; Madame Krupp (a wombat), an arms manufacturer and newspaper owner; the Archbishop of Paris (a chimpanzee); Reinhardt (a rhinoceros) the Minister for War; and Hyen (a hyena), Chief of Police and Secret Service. LeBrock believes they are the Knights of Lyon and goes to investigate the Archbishop. LeBrock meets up with Milou and learns from him the whereabouts of the Archbishop. LeBrock and Ratzi capture the Archbishop, tie him to a chair and threaten to kill him by setting fire to him. LeBrock deduces that the attack on Robida Tower was organised by the Archbishop and the other Knights (with the help of Tope), who used the British anarchists as scapegoats. Under pressure, the Archbishop tells them that they did it because they believed they could protect French society from decadency and atheism by uniting them against a common enemy. An attempt to unite the people by having a war in French Indo-China had failed, so the Knights began to spread stories of a British super-bomb aimed at Paris. Their final plan is to launch a skyship from Krupp's estate and fly it into the Paris Opera House, where thousands will be watching the Trans-Empire Song Contest. Afterwards, LeBrock sets the Archbishop on fire, killing him. Outside, LeBrock tells Ratzi that he believes that Leigh-Otter was not a diplomat, but a member of the British Secret Service trying to stop the Knights' plan. As LeBrock and Ratzi arrive back at the hotel, they receive a message from Sarah saying that she is in danger. The two arrive at her hideout to find she is being held captive by the assassins. During a shoot-out, Sarah is killed and Ratzi badly injured. The following morning, LeBrock asks a human bellboy at the hotel to collect some things for him - things he will use to make bombs. LeBrock makes his way to the Krupp estate, where the Knights are preparing for the attack on the Opera House. LeBrock sets off his bombs and shoots Krupp, Hyen, Lapin and Reinhardt. Krupp's dying words, to LeBrock, are that the Knights were loyal to the Emperor. He realises that they are not "The Knights of Lyons", but "The Knights of The Lion", the lion being Emperor Napoleon XII, the head of state. LeBrock is hit over the head with a chair by Reinhardt, who was not dead but only injured. Reinhardt makes his way to the skyship and prepares to leave. LeBrock follows him and grabs hold of the skyship as it takes off. Not seeing LeBrock, Reinhardt sets the skyship's course and prepares to jump out. As he opens the door, LeBrock jumps in. Reinhardt charges at him, but falls out of the door. As he falls, LeBrock shoots him dead. LeBrock then changes the skyship's course, crashing it into Napoleon's palace. The next day the public learns the truth about the Knights and the attack on Robida Tower, with some wondering if a revolution might happen following the news. LeBrock meets up again with Ratzi in hospital.
29914982	/m/0fqpdy1	The Warlock: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel	Michael Scott		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the end of The Necromancer, twins Sophie and Josh Newman were separated. Sophie left with the now very weak protagonist Nicholas Flamel, his wife, Perenelle Flamel and Niten, an immortal Japanese swordsman; while Josh exited with the main antagonist Dr. John Dee and his accomplice Virginia Dare. Mars Ultor, the Avenger, sees Sophie, accompanied by Niten, seeking a way to reclaim her brother. Nicholas Flamel is unable to help her in the search as he lapsed into unconsciousness after the battle against Dr. Dee, Virginia Dare and the Archon, Coatlicue. Perenelle and Prometheus escape from Hades, Prometheus's long drawn-out punishment shadowrealm, which crumbles into nothing, because Prometheus uses most of his aura to feed the crystal skull. Meanwhile, in the Catacombs underneath Paris the previously imprisoned and very powerful Elder, Mars Ultor has a conversation with his wife, the Witch of Endor, and the Egyptian Elders: Isis and Osiris. The witch has come there to free him while Isis and Osiris are hunting down Dr. John Dee. In San Francisco, Niten leads Sophie to Tsagaglalal, She Who Watches, who is in reality Sophie's Aunt Agnes. Perenelle, Nicholas, and Prometheus join them shortly. Nicholas is set to die within the day and Perenelle two days later, but the mysterious Hook-Handed Man told Perenelle long ago that she could give her husband one more day of life in exchange for one of her own. Through a ritual that requires Tsagaglalal and Sophie's auras, Perenelle is able to keep Nicholas alive for another day as well as awaken him from his coma. In Danu Talis, Scathach, Saint Germain, Palamedes, Shakespeare, and Joan of Arc are captured and sent to a volcano prison. Marethyu is captured and taken to the ruler of Danu Talis, Aten. Aten is facing betrayal from his brother, Anubis and mother Bastet. He fears the destruction of Danu Talis but also reaches an epiphany that if Danu Talis is not brought down, future civilizations will never be created. He asks the Hook-Handed Man for advice. Marethyu advises that Aten become an oath breaker, or a warlock, and turn the city over to Marethyu. He agrees but Anubis arrives to arrest Aten. Aten allows himself to be captured to let Marethyu escape in a crystal vimana (flying saucer). In the present, Odin, Hel, Black Hawk, and Mars Ultor arrive at Tsagaglalal's home to seek her wisdom. Tsagaglalal then gives everyone emerald tablets that Abraham the Mage (who was her husband) wrote personally for them. Mars, Hel, and Odin then go to Alcatraz to kill Dee. Nicholas, Perenelle, Niten, and Prometheus go to the Embarcadero to stop The Lotan, a seven-headed sea monster released by Dee with the help of the Elder, Nereus. Sophie spends time with Tsagaglalal who teaches her the Magic of Earth. To her surprise, however, Sophie is taught that all magic is one; there is no true division, it is just pure imagination. Tsagagalal takes Sophie to reunite with Josh on Alcatraz. While spending time together on Alcatraz, Machiavelli bonds with Billy the Kid and they decide to break the oaths made to their Elder masters, becoming warlocks. This angers Dee, who nearly allows the Sphinx to kill Billy, but he is stopped by Dare, who knows Billy from years past. Under the influence of Dee and the sword Clarent, Josh helps Dee release the wild and dangerous beasts being kept in the prison as a part of Dee's newest and most desperate scheme--he not only wants to destroy the Elders and rebuild the Earth, but also claim the other shadowrealms and Danu Talis. Sophie reaches Alcatraz by leygate through her jade tablet and refuses to leave Josh.
29930801	/m/0fqptqv	Fear	F. Paul Wilson			 JJ, who works at a restaurant managed by Florian, meets with a group of kids hanging out at the parking lot of the restaurant. The kids tell him that in order to join their club, called "The Killers," he has to kill someone. A few days later, JJ meets with them again and proclaims that he killed Florian. He later proceeds in shooting someone in that group with blanks, Bony, who falls down at impact, leaving JJ to believe that he killed Bony. After Bony gets up and informs him that the act was just a joke; that the rest of the group was in on it and it was JJ's initiation to the club, Julie, who works with JJ at the restaurant, approaches them and informs them that someone shot and killed Florian. On Halloween night a young, cocky man tries to seduce a seemingly shy, young girl. In the end his intentions change and they both are not who they seem. Phil Boreidae and his family move to Lectus, where they hear about the disappearances that occur when Lectus gets too overcrowded from a girl named Etchenia. Soon, the population begins to rise and one day, they hear that everyone at the north end of Lectus has been wiped out and about a strange light that had appeared in the sky. An astronomer, Schroeder Peterson, suggests they were being visited by God. That night, a force pulls Phil's sister, bothers and mother in the air, leaving him, his father and several others left on Lectus. His father volunteers to go to the mysterious light, and disappears after going towards it. Hannah and her family move to Entrails, Michigan, where their next door neighbor, Rebecca Perfect, offers Hannah a babysitting job for the night. During the babysitting job, Hannah notices the kids acting strangely, and after hearing someone call her name, she goes to investigate. This crying leads Hannah to a tiny room behind a mirror, where she finds the source of the crying: a baby monitor with a video screen. After finding the cage that the baby had been located in, she topples into the cage and is trapped inside with a doll that looks like her. In the end, the littlest Perfect appears outside of the cage with a key. Dax's younger brother, Jon, is afraid of the dark and that the shadow people will come and get him if the lights are out. So one night Dax lets Jon lay in the dark terrified and is about the find out that the shadow children are real, very real. The ring is poison the ring is stolen. ===Jeepers Peeper iney Powe he Night Hunte uitio agge ay Gun===
29946616	/m/0fqnn6g	An Ice Cold Grave				 Harper and her step-brother, Tolliver Lang, show up in Doravilla, North Carolina, to help locate missing, yet presumed dead, boys. The boys have been labeled as runaways by the former sheriff, yet some in town believe different. Harper meets the new sheriff and one of the grandparents of one of the missing boys, who drives her all over trying to locate any signs of the missing. Near a vacant, unused property Harper locates not just the six missing boys but actually eight in total. Using her 'ability', Harper sees the last few moments of the young men's lives, learning they were raped, beaten and left to die. Soon the town becomes flooded with the media and other law enforcement agencies. As Harper and Tolliver prepare to leave she is attacked and hurt, forcing the duo to remain in town until she can heal. Slowly secrets become revealed and the killer is known.
29949038	/m/0fqqp59	The China Governess	Margery Allingham	1963	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Timothy Kinnit is trying to elope with Julia, but the question of his origins as a wartime refugee baby stand between them and their future. What does the "Turk Sreet Mile", once the wickedest street in London but now redeveloped after wartime bombing, have to do with the mystery ? Can Albert Campion and the recently-widowed Chief Inspector Charles Luke find the answer and discover who wants it kept a secret ?
29955882	/m/0fqp4nw	The Dark Flight Down				 Five days after New Year's Eve and Valerian's death, Boy and Willow have been separated by Kepler, who needs Boy further, and is determined not to let Willow get in his way. The two set off for the funeral of Korp, the director of Valerian's old theatre. To Kepler's chagrin, Willow is also there, having snuck out from the previous job that Kepler got for her at a local orphanage. The theatre violinist, Georg, insists on dragging Boy and Kepler off to a local tavern. Willow follows, and, despite Kepler's attempts to leave, he is dragged into a game of Snapdragon, which he finds he is not very good at. Meanwhile, Boy and Willow, finally reunited, discuss the possibility of abandoning Kepler and eloping together. Discovering Kepler is unconscious after drinking too much absinthe, Boy decides to return him home, and is offered help by Wilfred, the strongman. Before leaving, Boy and Willow make plans to meet at the St. Valentine's fountain, and share their first kiss. The next day, Boy seeks out the mysterious Book that Valerian had sought, and Kepler had taken, in the hope he will find out whether or not Valerian really was his father, and what is real name is. However, a hungover Kepler arrives and orders Boy to return to Valerian's house to collect the Camera, which Valerian had spent money having built in order to determine when Fate was coming. At the house, Boy finds the Camera, but before he can retrieve it, he is apprehended by some members of the City Watch, who suspect him of looting. Boy is dragged off to the Palace, where the ancient Emperor Frederick lives. At the St. Valentine Fountain, Willow grows angry at Boy's no-show, and storms off to Kepler's to confront him. There, she discovers that Boy has not returned, and they set off to look for him at the Yellow House. Upon arrival, they find signs of a struggle, and find the Camera, which Kepler had sent Boy to find. Knowing where Boy is, Kepler insists on rescuing Boy alone. Willow, however, heads to the Palace and tries to find a way in. Unable to, she runs into Kepler, who decides to help. At the Imperial Palace Court, Boy is presented to the Emperor Frederick by his shaven-headed servant, Maxim. Frederick, an elderly and hypochondriac who is obsessed with his health, living an extravagant lifestyle and finding immortality, is uninterested in the findings and orders Boy be thrown into the river. Before the City Watchmen can do so, however, Maxim intervenes and instead has Boy dragged down to the castle dungeon. Boy soon picks the lock of his cell and tries to get out, but is unable to. In his wait, he is troubled by dreams of a dark flight of stairs, leading to where he believes the Phantom, a savage murdering creature from the previous book, is kept. Eventually, a blinded jailer brings him some food, and is carrying a second one for another prisoner, whom Boy is unable to see. Maxim questions Boy about the Book, believing Valerian had it. When Boy is unable to answer, Maxim grows frustrated and leaves. It emerges that Maxim is seeking the Book because Frederick, determined not to die, as he has no heir to the throne, and is the last in line for his family, is attempting to find a way to become immortal, and is relying on astrologers, alchemists and necromancers to help him, and if a person does not impress him, he has them killed. Maxim hopes that the Book will provide the answer. Boy further investigates the dungeon and, further away from his cell, he meets an elderly man, who lives in a guilded, well-furnished cell within the dungeon. The man, whose memory has left him, introduces himself as Bedrich, and reveals that he is Frederick's former doctor. He is now meant to take care of the Phantom, which resides within the Palace. The next time a meal is brought, Bedrich is brought with it. He is told he may be released. Sensing an opportunity to get help, he asks Bedrich to send a message to Willow, telling her to steal the Book (from Kepler, though this is not verbally mentioned) and return. Bedrich starts to tell Boy that he knows about this "Book," and upstairs, Frederick questions Maxim about Boy. Having forgotten he had ordered Boy's death, he demands that Boy be cleaned up and brought to him. Back downstairs, Bedrich reveals that the Book is not only full of knowledge, but also very dangerous. It was brought to Frederick by the Beebe family (the grave of Gad Beebe having been the one Boy and Valerian had attempted to retrieve in the previous book). Before he can go on, two guard arrive and take boy away, leaving Bedrich in the cell, and it is revealed that their interaction was actually being spied on. Boy is taken to some luxurious quarters, where he is given a bath, some food and clothing and a bed by another blinded servant. The next morning, he is interrogated again by Maxim, who seems to know exactly what has been said, and about Willow. Boy realises he was spying on the meeting, and feels awful at having betrayed Willow's name. He is taken down to the Court, where Frederick is holding a meeting of applicants for a Royal Position. Boy immediately impresses Frederick when he exposes a secret that an alchemist is using to try to prove his alchemy, leading to the man's death. The next demonstrators turn out to be Kepler and Willow, who introduce themselves as Arbronsius and Mina. They show Frederick the apparatus that Boy had been sent to collect. The demonstration of the trick is enough to win them Frederick's favour, and he appoints them to Royal positions. That night, Boy manages to work out where Willow and Kepler are staying, and, after escaping from his room, goes out to find Willow. As he is crossing the snowy courtyard, he runs right into The Phantom, which is even scarier than he had expected. The next day, Maxim storms into his room, angry, because Willow was not at the orphanage. He eventually explains to Boy that he hopes the Book will provide the answer to immortality. Boy scoffs at this idea, mentioning that "How's he going to know any different unless he dies." Maxim has an idea, and drags Boy down to the Court. There, Boy manages to talk to Willow and Kepler. Maxim lies to Frederick and says that he does have the Book, and Frederick decides he does not wish to see it, as it might evoke bad memories, and believes Maxim. Boy arranges to meet with Willow that midnight. That night, as Maxim is planning his next move, Boy meets up with Willow in the throne room. Boy discovers that Kepler was indeed lying about Valerian being his father, as the mention of the woman Valerian had loved, Helene, was enough to persuade Valerian that Boy was his son. He discovers that Kepler has the book with him, and refuses to leave until he reads it. The two make a plan to try to retrieve the book before Frederick becomes immortal, and share a brief kiss before departing. The next day, Maxim calls a meeting of the Court, planning to use Frederick's immortality to advance his own power. To his dismay, Boy, whom the Emperor has drawn a favourable eye towards, is made to attend. Maxim goes through an elaborate ceremony, and gets the Emperor to drink a potion behind some screens. Frederick falls asleep for a few minutes, before waking, believing himself to be immortal. Boy realises, however, that it is a trick. Before the guards can kill the astrologers, Boy immediately steps forward and shouts that it is a trick, mentioning the very fact that Frederick cannot conclusively prove he is immortal unless he dies, as he himself had said. Frederick chooses to listen to Boy and demands the Book. Trapped, Maxim confesses that he was lying and, after many years of being pushed around, finally explodes at the Emperor, who orders that he be killed. Before the guards can get him, Maxim escapes through a secret door, and Frederick orders the guards to search for him. Boy and Willow take advantage of the confusion to try to flee from Kepler. Willow escapes, but Boy is caught by Kepler. At that moment, Maxim returns - with The Phantom on a chain. He reveals that Frederick does have a son - that fifteen years before, one of Maxim's consorts, Sophia Beebe, fell into a relationship with the Emperor. The son that she produced was, in fact, The Phantom, who is, technically his heir. Frederick orders his guards on Maxim, but the Phantom escapes, as does Boy. Boy escapes to Willow's quarters, where he finds her reading the Book. Boy demands to know what she has read, so he can finally know his name and his history. Willow, however, begs him not to read it, saying that it is not in his interests to, but he insists on knowing. Before doing so, Willow finally tells Boy that she loves him. She then informs Boy that his father is none other than the Emperor Frederick. She reveals that Sophia Beebe, The Phantom's mother, had given birth to two sons - Boy was the second one, while the Phantom is, in fact, his disfigured brother. When Frederick had locked away the disfigured one, Sophia had fled with Boy, her healthy child, faking his death. In response, Frederick stripped the Beebes of their favour and titles, all the while searching for Sophia. After proclaiming that he loves Willow back, Boy confesses that he does not care about his finding. Willow reveals that Kepler knows his secret, and Boy realises that Kepler had wanted Boy to curry favour from the Emperor by revealing his healthy son, and heir to the throne. Boy does not want to be heir, however. At that moment, The Phantom arrives at the balcony, but does not attack them. Instead, it approaches Boy, and the two share some brotherly affection. Suddenly, Kepler arrives and attacks The Phantom. The two fight, and fall over the balcony to their deaths. With both The Phantom and Kepler dead, Boy and Willow prepare to leave. Boy, however, throws the book into a fire. It is eventually ablaze, and burns, taking its evil and magic with it. The two leave the Palace, by jumping off the Palace walls. They spend the night at Kepler's. The next morning, Boy and Willow take the now-deceased Kepler's money, clothing, blankets and valuables. They plan to leave the City and, as two young lovers, set up their own future. Before leaving, though, Willow makes one final revelation - that "Boy" was, in fact, Boy's real name, as it was what Sophia had actually called him while the two were on the run. In a final scene, the Emperor Frederick, now suffering completely from dementia, calls for Maxim, whom he has had locked in the very cell that he imprisoned the Phantom in.
29958740	/m/0fqm0sr	Alive In The Killing Fields	Nawuth Keat	2009		 --Nawuth Keat is the fifth of eight children in a Cambodian village known as Salatrave. His father is a prosperous rice farmer, owning both a motorcycle and tractor. This wealth places Nawuth and his family in particular danger from the Khmer Rouge. After the dictator Pol Pot overruns the government with the aid of the Khmer Rouge, Nawuth's life is completely transformed. Without warning Salatrave is attacked and Nawuth's mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and uncle are massacred. Nawuth himself is shot three times. Nawuth survives his attack and is sent by his father to live in the town of Battambang with his older sister, Chantha. Nawuth's father remains in Salatrave. Eventually the Khmer Rouge invade Battambang and Nawuth is forced to flee with his brothers (Hackly, Bunna, and Chanty); Chantha; and Chantha's fiance (Van Lan). They return to the ruins of Salatrave, where Chantha and Van Lan are soon married. Nawuth's father flees to the jungle to escape certain death while, Nawuth and the rest of the family are forced into labor by the Khmer Rouge. Food is scarce and they suffer from malnutrition. The family is further separated when Bunna is forced to join a chalat, a team of teenagers forced to build dams and huts. Nawuth eventually escapes from the labor camp and joins his father in the jungle, where he stays for many months. Nawuth later rejoins Van Lan, only to find nothing has changed for the better. There is less food and the murders have gotten worse. At this time Nawuth witnesses an old man's murder and realizes how truly evil the Khmer Rouge are. After some time back, food is too scarce to survive on. During that year, more people died from starvation than from bullets. Then one morning, Van Lan left to visit his parents. During this time, Nawuth stole some rice from neighboring farms. He also stole squash and made traps for fish. Nawuth and his brothers suffer from starvation and their bellies become bloated. Due to this, he and his brother, Chanty, head again into the neighboring farms to steal more rice, and they are caught. The Khmer Rouge let them go. Due to lack of food, Nawuth gets infected. Most people had died from this infection, so Van Lan takes him to a doctor, and the doctor saves his life by giving Nawuth an enema. Afterwards, Nawuth is told to guard a large building filled with corn. Monkeys steal the corn, and Nawuth is yelled at by the soldier that assigned him the task. He survives and once again guards the corn. Using traps his father taught him how to make, he catches a few monkeys that try to steal the corn, and eats them. Afterwards, he takes some of the corn and hides in the jungle; and he is caught, but his life is spared. The weeks that followed were harsh: people blamed stolen food products on him, but the guards did not believe them. A while later, his father was killed. Some time passed before the world gave any help. The Vietnamese started to attack the Khmer Rouge and a war started. The Vietnamese began to attack the cities. Chantha gave birth to a baby named Vibol during this time. Nawuth is caught in the cross-fire shortly after. It was a small skirmish, but many people were injured. They did not get away though: the Khmer Rouge made them march further inland, away from the Vietnamese-protected zones. A few weeks later, they left the Khmer Rouge area for the city. About thirty people left with them at night. They ate what they could. When they finally got to the cities, they met up with Van Lan's family. When there, Nawuth met a child named Ang. They became best friends. The Vietnamese were "an improvement" over the Khmer Rouge, but they were still ruthless. Along in the city, Nawuth got his palm read, and it turned out to be an accurate statement. During this time, Van Lan had a talk with Nawuth about leaving. The Vietnamese have taken what the Khmer Rouge have not destroyed. A few days later they say goodbye and leave. They walked more than they had ever. The Vietnamese did not want the world to know that they were not saviors, so they classified the wanderers as enemies. They had to drink from a pond with dead bodies in it, and the Khmer Rouge changed their names to Angka, or "The Organization of Saviors". Finally, they slipped across the border to sneak into a Thai refugee camp, where life was almost as bad: it was run by the United Nations. They got one chicken every two weeks and a bag of rice a month. Some of the Thai refugee camps would deport thousands of refugees back into Cambodia. The Cambodians shot the old and the weak, and the people in the front were killed by landmines. The United Nations got involved. Chantha gave a woman one hundred dollars worth of gold, and Nawuth split up with his family and friends. The woman took him in, only to treat him like trash. The family that Nawuth is staying with has a sponsor in Paris, who is willing to pay for the airplane trip. Nawuth is supposed to meet Van Lan and the rest of his family in Paris. Nawuth and his "family" leave to go to another camp. There, they got a chicken a week, but Nawuth would steal religious offerings given to Buddhist monks anyway. A few weeks later, his "mom" tells him they aren't going to Paris after all: their sponsor had been unable to buy the tickets, but instead, there would be a chance they would be able to go to the United States. They had a sponsor in the United States, but they had to wait an entire year to go. When they were allowed to leave, they got medical exminations, but the doctor missread the bullet wound on Nawuth's arm as an infection and pronounced Nawuth to be sick. They had to stay. The family shunned Nawuth. Over the following months, the doctor was convinced that the scars on Nawuth were not infections, he signed the papers for qualificaton. They were moved to another camp. This camp was more crowded than the others. They spent two weeks there, and then they got sponsored and were told "in two days, you leave to the United States". There, the bus that took him was larger than any bus he had ever seen, and the actual airport was the same, the largest building he had ever seen. They landed in San Francisco, after 18 years of suffering, Nawuth was free. AfterWord Shortly after, Nawuth left to Portland, Oregon. This is where he would split up with the family. This was because he was forced to work, while the other kids got to play. He got a job, being paid $3.17 an hour, and a monthly welfare check of $300, which he gave to his "mom". When he found out that Van Lan, Chantha, Vibol, and Bunna lived in a refugee camp in Indonesia, he asked "mom" for ten dollars. She refused. He left to go live with his great aunt who lived not to far away from Portland. He later married his high school sweetheart, Rany Prak, who was also a Cambodian immigrant. They had three children: Brian, Anthony and Stephanie. Van Lan, Chantha, Vibol, and Bunna all live in Lyons, France. Ang also made it to France. Hackly lives with Nawuth, and Nawuth's oldest sister Chanya, and works in a military hospital in Pursat.
29966940	/m/0fqm7dh	The Odd Women		1893		 The novel begins with the Madden sisters and their childhood friend in Clevedon. After various travails, the adult Alice and Virginia Madden move to London and renew their friendship with Rhoda, an unmarried bluestocking. She is living with the also unmarried Mary Barfoot, and together they run an establishment teaching secretarial skills to young middle-class women remaindered in the marriage equation. Monica Madden, the youngest and prettiest sister, is living-in above a shop in London. She is, in modern parlance, "stalked" by a middle-aged bachelor Edmund Widdowson, and he eventually brow-beats her into marriage. His ardent love turns into jealous obsession suffocating Monica's life. Meanwhile Mary Barfoot's rakish cousin Everard decides to court Rhoda initially as a challenge to her avowed dislike of love and marriage, but he later falls in love with her for her intellectual independence, which he finds preferable to the average uneducated woman's inanity. Despite being virulently anti-marriage, she decides to indulge him with a view to turning down any marriage proposal to show her solidarity with her "odd women". Ironically, she in turn falls for him. Married Monica meets Bevis, a young, middle-class man who pursues her and represents for her the romantic ideal from popular novels. Crucially, Bevis lives in the same building as Everard Barfoot. Monica, determined to elope with Bevis, goes there. Unbeknownst to her, her husband has hired a detective to follow her. She hears someone follow her up the stairs and, to appear innocent, she knocks on Barfoot's door. This is reported back to Widdowson, and he feels his suspicion has been justified and informs Mary Barfoot of her cousin's blackguardly ways. Rhoda, on the other hand, is on a holiday in Northumberland, and Everard goes to see her there. He woos her and at first suggests they enter a free-union (i.e. live together out of wedlock), which would appear to be consistent with her principles. However, she gives him a conventional "womanly" response and agrees to be with him only in a legal union; Barfoot, somewhat disappointed in her surprising conventionality, proposes marriage, which she accepts. She then receives a letter from Mary telling of Everard's supposed affair with Monica. Rhoda then breaks off the engagement, after Everard proudly refuses to give an explanation but insists he is innocent. After Widdowson confronts Monica over her infidelity, she leaves him but lives at his expense and even moves, together with her sisters, to his rented house in Clevedon. Virginia has become an alcoholic (her way of dealing with being an 'odd woman'). Monica is pregnant by her husband, but her pride will not let her reunite with him. To salve her conscience, she visits Rhoda and shows her a love letter from Beavis and also exonerates Everard over the alleged affair. Then, months after they last saw each other, Everard visits Rhoda, asks her if she still believes him to be guilty, and repeats his offer of marriage. Even though Rhoda assures him that she believes him innocent, she refuses his proposal, intimating that in his professions of love he was "not quite serious," but was partially testing her principles. It is too late for them to reunite. Barfoot soon gets married to a conventionally educated young woman. Monica gives birth to a girl, then dies soon after. The novel ends with Rhoda holding the baby, crying and murmuring, "Poor little child!"
29991403	/m/0fqns35	The Sword and the Circle	Rosemary Sutcliff			 The novel is broken into thirteen chapters, with the first five being the development of King Arthur's background, while the remaining are nearly stand-alone stories covering the exploits of different knights. He is shown as the son of Uther Pendragon, begot upon Lady Igraine with the assistance of Merlin. Merlin did not feature in Sutcliff's previous Arthurian stories of Sword at Sunset, but is shown here as being the driving force behind the ascension of King Arthur and his court. Merlin is depicted as being descended from the Lordly Ones, or the 'Little Dark People', as Sutcliff commonly refers to the possible original inhabitants of Great Britain. He orchestrates Arthur's upbringing under Sir Ector, alongside his foster brother Sir Kay. Arthur's identity as ruler of Britain is revealed when he pulls the Sword from the Stone, but he later receives Excalibur, a different sword, from the Lady in the Lake. The rest of the novel's chapters cover many of the other classic Arthurian characters and tales, including: the origins of Lancelot of the Lake, as well as his encounters with Elaine;Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight; Tristan and Iseult, in a retelling nearly identical to Sutcliff's earlier novel of the same name, albeit a much shorter version; Geraint and Enid; Gawain and the Loathly Lady; and finally the arrival of Percival at Arthur's court, which is connected by Merlin's previous prophecies to presage the beginning of the Round Table's downfall. The book stops here, to be continued in The Light Beyond the Forest and The Road to Camlann.
29992648	/m/0fqr441	Starfinder				 Young Moth had grown up in Calio, the mountain city -and he considered himself lucky to live in this very special place. For in Calio a man could be a Skyknight, one of the elite pilots who flew the fragile, beautiful, newfangled flying machines called dragonflies. Any man who dreamed of flying belonged in only one place, Calio, the city on the edge of the world. And young Moth, who had worked at the aerodrome since he was ten, wanted to fly more than anything. To the north of Calio stretched the Reach, looking like a sea of fog that never ended. There were numerous tall tales about the lands beyond the Reach, and Moth heard the oddest of them regularly now that he was living with Leroux. When Moth was ten, and first taken in by Leroux, he had been especially fascinated by Leroux's stories of the Skylords, but at the grown-up age of thirteen, Moth was becoming increasingly skeptical about the existence of these mysterious, powerful, and frightening beings from beyond the Reach. But Moth's life was about to change in ways he could not even imagine, and soon the land of the Skylords would become more real and more threatening than the most outlandish tales Leroux could have spun. For soon Moth would have a key to another world -the world beyond the Reach...
29995317	/m/0fqrf78	Deeper	Jeff Long		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In a prologue, veteran underground guide Ike Crockett abandons his wife Alexandra von Schade and unborn child to return to the subterranean world, driven by feelings and whispers he cannot understand. He does not plan on returning to the surface. At the same time, an unscrupulous video documentary producer named Clemens is leading a film crew and its support team into the abandoned Hadal metropolis discovered by the ill-fated Helios expedition three years earlier. The film crew is wiped out by an unseen force, with Clemens the sole survivor. The main narrative resumes a few years later. While tensions between the United States and China increase on the surface, sub-planetary exploration and colonization is booming, ratcheting up potentials for international conflicts. The subterranean world is though to be safe, having been "sanitized" by the viral bioweapon deployed during the first novel's Helios expedition. On Halloween night, scores of children are suddenly abducted by the long-thought-extinct Hadals, who brutally kill any adults attempting to intervene. The Hadals take the children back underground with them, leaving the United States in a panic. Due to the tensions with the Chinese, the U.S. government decides against mobilizing the military to perform a sweep of the sub-planetary Pacific region in search of the kidnapped children and the apparently-not-extinct Hadals. Ali von Schade is approached by Rebecca, a tall and statuesque young woman whose husband was killed and whose daughter, Samantha, was kidnapped by Hadals. Due to Ali's previous experience with Hadals and the sub-planet, Rebecca wishes to enlist her help in searching for her daughter. When Ali declines and warns against searching, Rebecca eventually creates an army of volunteers and mercenaries to rescue the kidnapped children. Some of these volunteers are the same people who angrily attack Ali's research institution, believing her to be more sympathetic to the Hadals than to her own people. Clemens, who escaped Hadal captivity and is wracked with brutally inflicted scars and deformities, is present at the attack on Ali, and becomes a supporter of Rebecca and her goal of entering the sub-planet. Rebecca's army enters the sub-planet, aided surreptitiously by the U.S. government and overtly by a mercenary leader named Hunter, and begins traveling toward the Hadal metropolis discovered by the Helios expedition a decade earlier. She encounters an AWOL Navy SEAL sniper named Beckwith, who had deserted the military after he and his colleagues had mistakenly murdered a group of Chinese settlers after believing them to be the children-snatching Hadals. Rebecca, Hunter, Clemens, and Beckwith descend through the interior of the planetary crust toward the metropolis. They discover the remains of all the male children, who were apparently killed by the Hadals after being unsuitable captives. Ali and a colleague, Gregorio, enter the sub-planet themselves on a similar quest. Meanwhile, as both Rebecca's army and Ali and Gregorio separately descend in search of the kidnapped children, Ike Crockett has been conversing with an ominous "Angel," who appears to be a superhuman being as old as Earth itself. Ike appears to be a captive of this being, who explains that he himself is the prisoner and wishes Ike to "free" him. The Angel reveals that he has directed both human and Hadal evolution. Gregorio dies in a climbing incident, leaving Ali by herself. Rebecca's army, having shrunk considerably due to desertions, eventually discovers a second Hadal metropolis, this one decorated with statues and emblems of oxen and Minotaurs. Ali is discovered by the Angel, who takes her to his lair. There, she watches in shock as he removes his "disciple," who is revealed to be Ike, her husband, from a walled-in room and forcibly gives him an amphetamine-like drink. Ike rushes off, having been given instructions by the Angel to bring him the kidnapped children. Rebecca's army discovers a complex of pyramids across a river from the city and, led by Clemens, enters it across a large bridge while Hunter's mercenaries and Rebecca herself remain behind. The volunteer army, now down to less than ninety men, discover troves of treasure and begin looting. Suddenly, they are ambushed by Hadals and effectively massacred - only three make it back to the city. Rebecca, Hunter, the mercenaries, and the three volunteer survivors use a building on the city's side of the bridge to fortify themselves and a siege begins, pitting the remaining humans against an unknown number of Hadals. The siege ends in a bloody battle after over a week of Hadal biowarfare, which includes using darts poisoned with the rabies virus and a Hadal who infects himself with Ebola before allowing himself to be killed by a mercenary sniper; soon to be cooked and eaten by the starving humans. Clemens, thought dead in the massacre of the volunteer army, returns and tells them that he has been dealing with the Hadals, who will release the children if the mercenaries surrender to certain torture and death. Hunter refuses and believes Clemens to be in league with the Hadals. Before he can be killed, the zip-tied Clemens is freed by Rebecca, and he promises to return with Samantha. Samantha is brought forth by three Hadals, who use her as a human shield. A battle ensues, and Samantha is killed. As Ali replaces Ike as the Angel's captive "disciple," Ike enters the pyramid complex. It has been revealed that the kidnapped children are the design of the Angel, but the Angel's plans have been co-opted by Clemens, who was once a "trainee" of the Angel. Ike kills many surviving Hadals and has been told to bring the children and the disobedient Clemens to the Angel. Clemens, however, proves to be a formidable adversary and bests Ike in hand-to-hand combat, inadvertently aided by the sniper Beckwith, who remained undetected by the Hadals and mistook Ike for a bad guy and assumed Clemens was a good guy, shooting Ike's hand. Clemens has the remaining girls and a traumatized and mentally unstable Rebecca (unable to cope with the loss of her daughter Samantha) with him, and tells the girls that he, Clemens, is their rescuer and that Ike is the one who mutilated him. As he tortures and prepares to kill Ike, Clemens is paralyzed by Rebecca, who uses a poison-tipped barb given to Ike by the Angel. Beckwith arrives and, realizing his mistake, helps rescue Ike, the delusional Rebecca, and the girls. They head toward the surface, suffering from illness and fatigue. Ali remains with the Angel, knowing that as long as she is his willing captive and "disciple" he will not find a way to "free" himself. The girls are brought to the surface and their parents celebrate in massive function thrown by the United States government. In the final pages, it is ambiguous as to whether or not a nuclear war between the United States and China has erupted.
29998181	/m/0fqp_gw	Memoirs of a Magdalen	Hugh Kelly	1767-03-31		 The rakish Sir Robert Harold is engaged to be married to Louisa Mildmay. While staying at her parents' house before the marriage Sir Robert seduces Louisa. Then, deciding she is too amorous to make a good wife, he breaks off the marriage. After fighting a duel with Louisa's brother, Colonel Mildmay, Sir Robert flees to the Continent. The disgraces Louisa is sent to London by her parents, where she is kidnapped by another rake Sir Harry Hastings. She eventually manages to escape and takes shelter in the London Magdelan House for reformed prostitutes. After hearing of Lousia's fate, Sir Robert returns from Europe and fights Hastings in a duel, badly wounding him. Filled with remorse he then again offers to marry Louisa, and they settle down happily together.
30004942	/m/0fqn_c9	Pharmakon				 The novel Pharmakon is divided into three parts within the book. The first part of the novel, titled “Book 1”, takes place in the 1950s and centers around Will Friedrich; a middle aged, nontenured professor of psychology at Yale University. Though extremely smart and known around campus for his ability to take a set of data and “calculate the standard deviation in his head”, Will is having a hard time figuring out an idea to climb the social ladder into the upper circles of the Yale elite. This all changes when will overhears Dr. Bunny Winton about an exotic plant called “gai kan dong” or, “The Way Home.” She describes how this plant has been used by a native tribe in New Guinea to calm people after traumatic events. Friedrich sees this plant as a possibility of creating an anti-depressant, and after a bit of research, tracks down Dr. Winton to see if she is willing to become his partner in experimenting with “The Way Home.” She agrees and they begin testing on the same plants used by the New Guinea tribe. After isolating the active ingredient in the plant, Winton and Friedrich test the drug on rats and experience positive results. Excited that this plant may actually provide a breakthrough in anti-depressant drugs, they decide to move forward and test “The Way Home” on human subjects. This is where Casper Gedsic is introduced into the story. Casper Gedsic is originally described as a “bearded with pimples and peach fuzz, too shy to look a person in the eye.” We learn as the novel continues that he has contemplated suicide at least once before, and is a “highly functional obsessive compulsive with schizophrenic tendencies.” Casper decides to sign up for the drug trial for “The Way Home” an almost immediately begins to see a change on his perception of life. Things that once obsessively bothered Casper he is easily able to brush off, and instead of worrying about the world he starts to become confident with who he is. Casper’s new found confidence enables him to clean up his appearance and become friends with Whitney Bouchard, an extremely rich, Yale football player. Casper documents his relationship with Whitney through his sessions with Friedrich, which occur weekly to help document the drug’s effects on the users. Although the drug initially just allows Casper to block out his insecurities, over time he becomes cocky and eager to social climb. During one of his sessions with Friedrich, he recalls his accounts of how he acts as though he comes from money in order to gain favor with Whitney’s friends. In another session, he speaks of how he had stole Whitney’s girlfriend, but it is okay because “everybody at the yacht club” does it. Friedrich takes note of Casper’s seemly complete disregard for Whitney’s feelings, but does not look into the matter any further. These sessions with Casper continue until the end of the drug trial. After the drug trial concludes, Friedrich and Dr. Winton are both excited due to the positive results of the trial. Once home, Friedrich received a call from an intoxicated Whitney, talking about how Casper had changed ever since he stopped taking his medication and how he had created a list of everybody he blamed for his current state of despair, with Friedrich and Dr. Winton being at the top. Casper appears at Friedrich’s house while Will was outside with his wife and children. With a gun at his side, Casper begins to approach the unknowing Friedrich, but then for some unknown reason changes his mind and turns to leave. Friedrich spotted Casper as he is walking away with the gun and informs the police that Dr. Winton may be in danger. The police arrive at Winton’s home to see that Bunny Winton had been shot dead and her husband had been beaten in paralysis. The police immediately rush back to Friedrich’s house to protect him and his family in case Casper came back. As Friedrich was talking to the police and everybody was speculating why Casper may have left them alone at first, Will’s youngest son, Jack, disappeared. After much searching, they found his lifeless body next to a fallen birdbath in the garden outside. The next part of the novel, entitled “Book II”, begins approximately seven years after the conclusion of the first part. Will Friedrich has moved his family away from the New England area into New Jersey in an attempt to start over away from the Casper incident. Will quit his job at Yale and took a teaching job at Rutgers which, while less prestigious, made him a full professor at double his previous salary. Casper, being caught by the police, was able to convince a jury he was mentally unstable and was sentenced to a lengthy term in the Connecticut State Hospital for the criminally insane. Though Casper was locked away, the Friendrich’s wanted to disassociate themselves from him as much as they could, so when the baby Zach was born 2 years after Dr. Winton’s murder, the family kept everything from the past a secret. The rest of the story is told from the Zach’s perspective. It wasn’t until Zach was four and a half years old when he first heard that he had a brother named Jack who died before he was born. It was then he realized that his family had many secrets, though he didn’t find out anything about Casper until the age of seven. When Zach was seven, he was ashamed of the fact that he didn’t know how to swim. Will tried every psychological method to get through to Zach that he would be okay, but Zach said he was terrified of “losing touch with the bottom”. One day Zach was left home under the care of his irresponsible older sister, and went outside alone to set up a lemonade stand. While he was attempting to make a profit, a man drove up and got out of his car and started talking to him. It came up that Zach was afraid to swim, and the man persuaded Zach to get in his car under the premise that he would teach him. The man took Zach to a remote lake and allowed Zach to ‘fall’ into the water. Zach was struggling and thought he was going to drown, but as he started having too much difficultly the man saved him and brought him home, dropping him off at the side of the road before speeding off. The reader then learns that this mysterious man was Casper Gedsic, who had recently escaped from the mental hospital with plans on extracting revenge on Will Friendrich. After all these years, Casper was convinced that it was Friedrich’s fault that he felt depressed again once he stopped taking “The Way Home”. When Zach gets dropped off at his house, his parents are frantically searching for him with help from the police. They soon are able to realize that it was Casper who had taken Zach “swimming”, but they are dumbfounded on why he would let Zach live. After about a week of searching by the police, they are finally able to track down Casper once again and place him in a higher security mental hospital, which he never escapes from for the remainder of his life. Though Zach was relatively safe, this event traumatized him for the rest of his life. The fact that a notorious murderer with a grudge for his family was the same man who taught him how to swim haunted Zach, especially because he became fond of Casper before he found out he was a known murderer. The novel then skips ahead a few years to when Zach and his brother, Willy, are attending the same private high school and the family has moved into the mansion with all the money their father was now making. At school, Zach is having an issue escaping Willy’s shadow due mainly to the fact that Willy is athletic and popular while Zach is a bit introverted and anti-social. All of this changes when Zach breaks down to a girl he likes and begins to tell her all about Casper. The word that Zach came face to face with a murderer spreads around school quickly, and increases Zach’s popularity tremendously. He starts to be bombarded with requests by people to tell them about “the boogieman” that has haunted the Friendrichs his entire life. Zach is torn because he has no resentment towards Casper, while the rest of his family still views Casper Gedsic as the devil. This divide between his world view and his parents' world view cause him to begin to rebel. He soon gets into drugs, which came fairly easily because many other popular students were also using illegal substances. He does all of this without his father’s knowledge, and though he wants to admit to his parents his drug problem at times, he never lets them into his world. He goes through high school this way, and eventually gets into Yale largely due to his essay “Growing Up With Casper”, which his father is appalled by. Part 3 of the novel, entitled “Book 3”, begins 21 years after Zach received his acceptance letter. He his lying on the floor of his sister's guest house going through cocaine withdrawal trying to figure out where life went wrong. The reader learns that Zach dropped out of Yale and moved to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter. It is there that he started his affair with cocaine, but after many years of addiction he is attempting to get clean. He hasn’t talked to a majority of his family for years, especially his parents. He decides he wants to try to contact them now that he is clean, but his attempt goes horribly awry when his father sees him and recoils, thinking that Zach is just there to rob them. This enrages Zach and he storms off and goes to live with an old friend in the city, never speaking to his parents again. A few more years pass and Zach still hasn’t talked to his family. The novel then puts the focus back on Will Freidrich. He and his wife Nora are still happily married, living in their mansion by themselves now that all their kids have grown up. Will reflects on where everything went wrong for his children, because none of their lives turned out how they had hoped they would. He recalls his own childhood, and begins thinking that if he was in his thirties knowing what he knows now, he would be able to make a real difference in the world. “Old man thoughts”, he describes them, but Will is now an old man. The book ends with Will lying in bed at night contemplating on these introspective thoughts, trying to cry because he knows from psychology the therapeutic values of tears, but he is unable to. After all the anti-depressants he had helped make during his lifetime, he wonders if there is any way somebody can prescribe tears.
30012820	/m/026hjn7	Abduction	Robin Cook	2000	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A team of researchers in a remote region of the Atlantic become trapped inside an ancient undersea volcano when their submersible is inexplicably drawn in. They discover a technologically advanced world of genetically engineered, physically near-perfect humans living comfortably in an enclosed city within the Mohorovičić discontinuity. The researchers are told that their Moho-dwelling cousins evolved many millions of years prior to current humans and became very technologically advanced. Millions of years ago, these "first generation" humans discovered that Earth was about to be bombarded with hordes of meteors, effectively sterilizing the surface of the planet. Unable to find a suitable extrasolar planet to move to in time, the first generation humans decided to instead move into the Mohorovičić discontinuity, shielding themselves from extinction. The Moho-dwellers watched over the centuries as the second-generation humans evolved and developed, and reveal that they abducted these researchers to determine if the researchers had been searching for them. The researchers reveal that nobody on the surface has ever thought there were civilizations living under the Earth's crust, and that they were doing geologic exploration and research instead. Fearing for their own safety and the discovery of their civilization, the Moho-dwellers feel they cannot allow their abductees to return to the surface. The research team manages to recover its submersible and mounts an attempt to return to the surface. However, at the last moment they encounter a large Moho craft and emerge to the ocean's surface in the late 18th century. The group abruptly discovers that the craft was actually some sort of advanced Moho time machine and/or spacecraft that sent them 200 years into the past to prevent them from alerting the surface world to the presence of the Moho-dwellers.
30012858	/m/0fqt2ff	The High Deeds of Finn MacCool	Rosemary Sutcliff			 The story begins with the explanation of Cormac mac Art's formation of the Fianna as a defense force for Ireland, which was originally led by Finn's father, Cumhal. Cumhal is killed by Goll mac Morna, who takes over leadership of the Fianna, and Cumhal's wife Muirne flees to give birth to Finn. The boy grows up strong in the manner of his father, studies under the poet Finn Eces, accidentally tasting the Salmon of Knowledge and thereby gaining magical powers, and ultimately regaining leadership of the Fianna by defeating the Fairy that haunts the Court of Tara, Aillén mac Midgna. Goll swears loyalty to him, and Finn rules the Fianna successfully thereafter. Similar to Sutcliff's Arthurian Novel The Sword and the Circle, most of the chapters in this novel are nearly stand-alone tales, covering many of the stories and characters associated with the Fenian Cycle. Some of these include: Finn's courtship of Sadhbh and the birth of Oisín; the tales of Diarmuid and Grainne; Niamh of the Golden Hair; the Giolla Dacker; multiple encounters with the Fair Folk; and ultimately ending with Cath Gabhra and the downfall of the Fianna.
30013876	/m/0fqmbj2	Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede	Bradley Denton		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Oliver Vale was conceived on February 3, 1959, the day that Buddy Holly died. Exactly thirty years later, Buddy Holly appears on every television set in the world, on every channel. Holly states that he is being held on Ganymede, and that Oliver Vale is to be contacted for assistance. He then begins performing. As a result, Vale finds himself being pursued by agents of the Federal Communications Commission, by angry television-watchers, and by still more mysterious forces.
30015464	/m/0fqsbhw	Creepy Creatures	Scott Morse		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Grady Tucker and his family move into a house next to Fever Swamp. Grady finds and convinces his parents to let him keep a large wolf-like stray dog for a pet which he names Wolf. But when something has broken into the deer pen in Grady's yard and killed one of the animals, his dad decides that the stray had to be taken to the pound. Grady helps the dog flee before his dad can capture it. That night, Grady hears the howling again and explores Fever Swamp to get to the bottom of things. He encounters Will Blake, one of his friends, who is slowly turning into a werewolf under the full moon. The newly changed werewolf bites Grady, but the assault is cut short when Wolf attacks and kills Will. On the night of the next full moon, Grady transforms into a werewolf and joins Wolf in hunting. Youngsters Mark and Jodie are brother and sister. While visiting their grandparents, Curtis and Miriam, the children notice strange movements at night: the scarecrows are moving, and their grandparents are acting differently. Jodie concludes that Sticks, the groundskeeper Stanley's son, made the scarecrows move. Jodie dresses Mark up as a scarecrow for revenge on Sticks. However, after a scarecrow tries to hurt Jodie, Sticks explains to her that Stanley brought the scarecrows to life last time he visited the farm. Curtis and Miriam had been trying to keep Stanley happy so that he will keep the scarecrows asleep. After scaring Stanley with the scarecrow costume, the scarecrows begin walking towards them. Sticks uses torches to burn all the scarecrows, and they all fall to the ground. The next afternoon, Jodie notices a stuffed bear move a little. Ana and Luis Garcia decide to join their father on a trip to Alaska to try to locate a snow creature known as the Abominable Snowman. There, they eventually see the Snowman frozen in ice. Their father decides to take him back to Pasadena, California, where they live. Before doing so, Luis sneaks some snowballs in the trunk in which the Snowman would be taken home. After showing their neighbor Lauren Sax the Snowman, Ana throws a snowball from the trunk at her, but it misses and hits the tree. This causes the snow to expand and covers their yard in snow. Lauren grabs some of the snow and throws it at Ana, and she becomes covered in ice. After the heat from the furnace and oven does not defrost her, Luis gets the Snowman to break out of the ice. The Snowman defrosts her and escapes.
30020699	/m/0fqmw6s	The Quantum Thief	Hannu Rajaniemi	2010	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is set in a post-human future solar system. Jean le Flambeur is a legendary thief who has been imprisoned in a Dilemma Prison, a virtual jail of the Sobornost created by the Archons, themselves the creation of the Engineer-of-Souls. During an unsuccessful encounter with the All-Defector, he is sprung from his prison in the Neptunian Trojan belt by Mieli, a warrior from the Oort cloud, and taken to her ship, Perhonen. There, he finds out that his freedom comes at a price: he must return to his old criminal ways to steal something for Mieli's employer, the pellegrini. First, however, he has to retrieve his previous memories, which he had meticulously hidden in the Oubliette, one of the Moving Cities of Mars. In the Oubliette, Isidore Beautrelet is unraveling a gogol piracy case, brought to his attention by his tzaddik mentor, The Gentleman. Isidore is an architecture student and only ten Martian years old, but he has accumulated a reputation as a sharp detective. This case, however, exposes him to unwanted fame, which is extremely gauche in polite Oubliette society, where even people who share a flat remain discreetly behind a cloud of gevulot to avoid the faux pas of violating each other's privacy. Notoriety, however, brought him to the attention of a new client, the millenniaire Christian Unruh. Unruh is about to host a party to commemorate his early entry into Quiet, but a note has appeared under impossible circumstances in his mansion, which Unruh asks Isidore to investigate. The note announces an unlikely gate-crasher to the party: Jean le Flambeur.
30023420	/m/0fqnlgf	Get Into Bed With Google	Jon Smith			 The book provides 52 practical solutions to Search Engine Optimisation problems faced by many small to medium sized websites. From creating basic Metatags to help categorise pages through to more advanced keyword density ratios. The book outlines techniques which can be employed at the back-end or within the site’s code as well as front-end or editorial techniques to help improve visibility within the search engines. The book includes references to many paid and free tools available on the web to assist readers as well as short case studies. The updated second edition contains new material relating to social networks and Google Analytics to assist readers with utilising and benefiting from these tools in relation to Search Engine Optimisation.
30024889	/m/0fqsbmp	The Bloke's Guide To Pregnancy	Jon Smith			 This book takes a 'warts and all' sensible yet humorous look at the many stages of pregnancy. It explores the changes, physical and emotional, that any man can expect to see in his partner and in their relationship over the coming months. Becoming pregnant involved two people. The rearing of a child will involve two people; there is every reason that your partner's pregnancy should also involve the two of you, together. For any man that has been put off reading pregnancy books because he doesn't feel he was the intended audience or that something about the tone of these books was alien to him, yet he still has questions that need answers; then The Blokes' Guide to: Pregnancy is the book he's been looking for. As a father himself, Jon Smith realized, when his partner Lisa became pregnant that there was nothing out there that he could relate to. The Bloke's Guide to Pregnancy is the result. Jon takes a comical yet informed look at the ups and downs of life as a father to be. Guaranteed to educate you while making you laugh out loud!
30025274	/m/0fqlthz	Masterpiece	Elise Broach	2008	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Masterpiece is a middle-grade mystery about stolen art, miniature worlds, and the surprising friendship between a talented beetle, Marvin, and a lonely eleven-year-old boy named James. When James receives a pen-and-ink set for his birthday, Marvin discovers that he can create tiny, intricately detailed scenes by dipping his front legs in the cap of ink and drawing on paper. James is mistakenly credited with Marvin's amazing pictures, and soon beetle and boy are swept up in an adventure at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that involves masterpieces, forgeries, and a stolen pen-and-ink drawing by the great Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, which Marvin and James are determined to recover. With echoes of The Cricket in Times Square, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and Charlotte's Web, this novel explores friendship, sacrifice, and moral dilemmas in the context of a high-stakes art heist.
30025466	/m/0fqqncx	The Next Queen of Heaven	Gregory Maguire			 Thebes, upstate New York, 1999, the run up to the end of the year: the Scales family must deal with a matriarch driven half mad by a blow to the head by a statue of the Virgin Mary, while gay choirmaster Jeremy must find a practise space for his band, which may draw him into a collision course with the local nuns.
30027601	/m/0g58tr2	The Demon's Covenant	Sarah Rees Brennan	2009-05-14	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Mae has learned that her brother, Jamie, has magic powers. Gerald, the leader of the Obsidian Circle, is trying to persuade Jamie to join the magicians that tried to kill Mae and Jamie before. Mae tries to get Nick and Alan to rescue Jamie, but they themselves are in trouble. Nick has a new power that makes every magician in England want him dead. Mae knows she cannot trust anyone so she makes her own plan to save everyone.
30036423	/m/0g5637g	Intervention	Robin Cook			 Jack Stapleton is a New York City medical examiner whose infant son, JJ, has neuroblastoma. To take his mind off of his son's medical troubles, Stapleton becomes embroiled in a case about the unexplained death of a healthy young woman who had been seeing a chiropractor for alternative medical treatments. Two of Jack's college friends, one an archaeologist and one a Catholic bishop, become similarly embroiled in a case in Egypt, where recent discoveries suggest scientific/medical explanation for Biblical miracles. Also, new information is found that questions the veracity of information in the Christian Bible. Using 21st century medical technology, Jack and his friends discover that a Palestinian woman, Jamilla Mohammod, may be a direct descendant of Mary. Towards the end of the novel, Jack Stapleton's archaeologist friend Shawn and his wife are killed and Stapleton's bishop friend James blames himself for their death. Curious and perhaps desperate, Stapleton and his wife bring JJ to Israel, where he is held by Jamilla. Later, when examined in a hospital in Jerusalem, JJ's neuroblastoma has vanished.
30044080	/m/040vl37	Barrayar	Lois McMaster Bujold	1991	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As Barrayar begins, Aral and Cordelia Vorkosigan are expecting their first child. When the crafty old emperor dies, Aral takes over as regent. A plot to assassinate Aral and Cordelia with poison gas fails, but the antidote, while effective, is also a powerful teratogen that poses a grave threat to the bone development of his unborn son. In a desperate attempt to save the fetus, Cordelia has it transferred to a uterine replicator&mdash;an artificial womb&mdash;to undergo an experimental recalcification treatment that may partially combat the otherwise-fatal bone damage. When Count Vidal Vordarian attempts a coup, five-year-old Emperor Gregor is rescued by his loyal security chief, Captain Negri, and reunited with the Vorkosigans. Cordelia, Gregor, and various retainers escape into the hills and hide amongst the rural population while Aral and his father organize the resistance. After Cordelia rejoins Aral, they learn that the replicator containing Miles has been captured. Without proper maintenance, the fetus will succumb within six days, but Aral refuses to attempt a rescue when there are far greater concerns. However, Cordelia convinces her personal bodyguard, Ludmilla Droushnakovi, and one of Aral's officers, Clement Koudelka, to help her rescue Gregor's mother, Princess Kareen, and the replicator containing Miles. Once in the palace, Cordelia and her party are caught. They overpower their captors, but Princess Kareen is killed by Vordarian's bodyguards. They execute Vordarian and escape with the replicator, and the coup falls apart without its leader. Cordelia is put in charge of Prince Gregor's early education, with far-reaching consequences for Barrayar. Because of his exposure to the teratogen, Miles Naismith Vorkosigan is born with extremely fragile bones that break easily, and his growth is stunted. On Barrayar, babies with birth defects are common, due to the hostile environment and to lingering radiation from the war between Barrayar and Cetaganda. With life difficult and resources limited, such babies were traditionally killed, though this practice is illegal by the time of Miles' birth. Still, so-called "muties" are reviled and shunned, and Miles, though genetically sound, must deal with prejudice throughout his life, starting with his own grandfather, Piotr.
30048410	/m/0g56tgk	Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood		2010-11-25	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 'I will journey to the black heart of a corrupt Empire to root out my foes. But Rome wasn't built in a day and it won't be restored by a lone assassin. I am Ezio Auditore da Firenze. This is my brotherhood.' Rome, once mighty, lies in ruins. The city swarms with suffering and degradation, her citizens living in the shadow of the ruthless Borgia family. Only one man can free the people from the Borgia tyranny - Ezio Auditore, the Master Assassin. Ezio's quest will test him to his limits. Cesare Borgia, a man more villainous and dangerous than his father the Pope, will not rest until he has conquered Italy. And in such treacherous times, conspiracy is everywhere, even within the ranks of the brotherhood itself...
30049306	/m/0g54v9n	The Hollow Needle	Maurice Leblanc	1909	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Arsène Lupin is opposed this time by Isidore Beautrelet, a young but gifted amateur detective, who is still in high school but who is poised to give Arsène Lupin a big headache. In the Arsène Lupin universe, the Hollow Needle is the second secret of Marie Antoinette and Alessandro Cagliostro, the hidden fortune of the kings of France, as revealed to Arsène Lupin by Josephine Balsamo in the novel The Countess Of Cagliostro (1924). The Mystery of the Hollow Needle hides a secret that the Kings of France have been handing down since the time of Julius Caesar... and now Arsène Lupin has mastered it. The legendary needle contains the most fabulous treasure ever imagined, a collection of queens' dowries, pearls, rubies, sapphires and diamonds... the fortune of the kings of France. When Isidore Beautrelet discovers the Château de l'Aiguille in the department of Creuse, he thinks that he has found the solution to the riddle ("l'Aiguille Creuse" being French for "The Hollow Needle", and also the French title of the novel). However, he did not realize that the château was built by Louis XIV, the king of France, to put people off the track of a needle in Normandy, near the town of Le Havre, where Arsène Lupin, known also under the name of Louis Valméras, has hidden himself.
30051028	/m/0g576gw	High School Heroes				 On Christine Carpenter’s first day of her sophomore year at Thomas Jefferson High School she makes a startling discovery. She can hear peoples’ thoughts. After convincing herself she’s not going crazy, Chris must learn to control her amazing mind-reading ability. Using her power she quickly realizes her crush, the captain of the football team, is also blessed with a special ability. She is soon sucked into a world she never thought possible when two more of her classmates, and a teacher, turn out to have powers as well. What are they meant to do with their special gifts that can either help, or harm others? Christine soon finds out when a monster, lurking in the depths of her school, threatens to murder the student population. When it becomes apparent that the creature is someone she knows, she must decide whether to try and save him, or destroy the beast. It is a difficult choice, but one that ultimately takes her from being an ordinary high school student to being a hero. With this, Christine learns that being a hero doesn't mean having superpowers, it is ultimately the decisions she makes that are the distinguishing factors.
30052313	/m/0g58tv6	Bloodlines	Richelle Mead	2011-08-23	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 After helping rogue Dhampir Rose Hathaway evade justice, Sydney Sage's situation with the Alchemists is shaky at best. Her career is jeopardized, to the point where she may have to undergo re-education. Woken in the middle of the night, Sydney is given a last chance: to pose as the older sister of Jill Dragomir (illegitimate sister of the Queen Vasilisa) at a boarding school in Palm Springs, California. Jill is being hidden away from dissident Moroi who want to kill her to end the queen's rule, and a recent attack on Jill at the court has convinced several higher-ups that hiding her in a sunny location is the best way to keep her safe - and keep the queen on the throne. Jill is accompanied by Eddie Castile, a Dhampir who, like Sydney, is still in serious trouble from helping Rose. Tagging along is Adrian Ivashkov, a royal and spirit-user who is taking a break from life at the vampire court. Sydney thrusts herself into the job to prevent her younger sister Zoe from being pulled into the Alchemist world (as well as to keep Zoe away from Keith, the Alchemist in charge of the Palm Springs area, who has a history with Sydney's family). Keith is insistent that Zoe take the mission, but Sydney succeeds in convincing the other Alchemists that she is better prepared. However, her sister takes Sydney's words as an affront, believing she is capable of joining the Alchemists, and leaves Sydney on a sour note. Adrian, Eddie, and Sydney accompany Jill to the private school, posing as her siblings. Adrian is stationed in the house of a local Moroi, Clarence Donahue, an older vampire who lives with his college-age son Lee. Clarence is obsessed with 'vampire-hunters', claiming that they killed his niece, Tamara. The students at the school become infatuated with Sydney's Alchemist tattoo, asking her what "powers" it gave her and where she got it, making her curious. During a history class, she meets the teacher's aide, Trey, who is on the football team. All his teammates (excluding him) have been getting tattoos at a place called Nevermore to enhance their sports performance. Sydney gathers information about the 'rare' metallic tattoos and understands why students are so interested in hers. Tattoos called "steel", made using silver, grant enhanced strength and speed, and bronze-colored "celestial" tattoos imbue a feeling of euphoria. Because the tattoos wear off quickly (lasting from several days to a couple of weeks), they have to be continuously touched-up and lead to addictions. Sydney makes the connection that those tattoos and the gold tattoos used by Alchemists were made using the same procedure (but with different effects, as Sydney's restrains her from telling humans of vampires). Jill catches the attention of a senior named Micah, worrying Sydney. Sydney asks Eddie and Adrian to help persuade Micah and Jill to avoid a relationship, but becomes infuriated when Eddie disagrees. Talking to Lee, Sydney and Adrian 'set' Jill up with him - but despite her interest in Lee, Jill is upset with Sydney interfering in her love life. The group goes mini-golfing, and Sydney is freaked out when Jill (a water-user) uses magic on a waterfall. Sydney is awoken in the middle of the night by Jill asking her to go find Adrian, claiming he's stuck at an apartment with two Moroi women in Long Beach, unable to get home. After Sydney wonders how Jill was able to sense Adrian's moods and actions, Jill admits the truth - she has become bonded to Adrian. During the attack on the vampire court, Jill had actually been killed, and only Adrian's spirit magic had saved her. Sydney, angered now that she knows the extent to which Adrian's actions have caused trouble for Jill (Adrian's hangover on Jill's first day at school had transferred across the bond, and she has had several nightmares caused by his nighttime excursions), goes to Long Beach to find him. Arriving at the apartment, Sydney berates Adrian, whose only excuse is that being at Clarence's house alone is driving him crazy. As they prepare to leave the apartment, the women receive a phone call that a Moroi friend of theirs has been killed - and the attack is identical to the story Clarence told about the death of his niece. Because Sydney already knows all the languages the school offers, she is excused from her last class period and spends the time helping out a teacher. The teacher is writing a book, and Sydney offers to help with notes, typing, and coffee runs. Her first task to is to read and summarize an old Latin book about magic. While later visiting Adrian, Sydney finds herself near Nevermore, and she breaks in while Adrian distracts the tattoo artist. She discovers vials of vampire blood and metallic residues, along with a clear liquid she's unable to place. Sydney offers to help Adrian find a job, so that he can move out of Clarence's house, but is infuriated when he intentionally fails several interviews. Sydney returns to school to find that Jill has disappeared. Eventually, Sydney and Eddie realize that she has left campus to go on a second date with Lee. Sydney berates Jill and Eddie for not taking the mission seriously, pointing out that she's spending a great deal of her time looking after all of the Moroi while trying to stay in the Alchemists' good graces. Unfortunately, Keith has been making several negative reports about Sydney's performance, and her father calls that evening to let her know that she is being recalled, and Zoe is being rushed into training - Keith has succeeded in convincing other Alchemists that Sydney is too friendly with the Moroi and Dhampirs to properly serve the Alchemists. Unable to find a job that suits him, Adrian asks Sydney to help him instead get into a local college, hoping that he will be able to find a place to live with the help of financial aid. In return for connecting Sydney with an acquaintance at the college's admissions office, Sydney's teacher asks her to make a charm from the Latin book - a small amulet that would burst into flame when a certain phrase was chanted. When the teacher refuses the amulet (only wanting to know whether the procedure was possible to follow) Sydney keeps it in her purse. Sydney revisits Nevermore and the receptionist reveals that another Alchemist has been providing the supplies for the special tattoos. Adrian calls her over to Clarence's house and shows Sydney a needle mark on his neck. Sydney realizes that Keith has been siphoning blood and saliva from Clarence and selling it to Nevermore. Sydney asks Adrian to break into Keith's apartment to look for proof, while she confronts Keith at a local diner. Sydney reveals her true reason for being repulsed by Keith - while he stayed with her family as an Alchemist trainee, Keith raped Sydney's older sister. Keith races back to his apartment, tailed by Sydney, but Alchemists have already arrived, having been summoned by Adrian. Keith is taken into Alchemist custody. The group goes to a fashion show that Jill is modeling in, but Adrian and Sydney bicker - Adrian has enrolled at college too late to receive financial aid, but Sydney paid for his art classes herself. Sydney mentions that she is heading to Keith's place, and is ambushed by Lee when she gets there. He reveals that it was he who has been killing girls, including his cousin Tamara, because he was trying to "reawaken" himself back into a Strigoi. Five years before the events of the book, Lee (then a Strigoi) was restored by an unknown spirit-user, and he has been obsessed with converting himself back to a Strigoi. Adrian comes to Keith's apartment to apologize to Sydney, just as Lee cuts her arm with a knife. Lee handcuffs Adrian and ties Sydney's hands together while explaining that he intended to "awaken" Jill as well (claming he loves her and wants the two of them to be together forever). Lee tries to drink Sydney's blood, but finds it disgusting. Left with no other choices, he calls two Strigoi women and tells them that in exchange for "reawakening" him, they could have his hostages. Sydney unties herself and almost escapes with Adrian when the Strigoi arrive. One of the Strigoi tries to "reawaken" Lee, but unintentionally kills him instead when his body refuses to accept Strigoi blood. They turn on Sydney, only to have the same reaction to Sydney's blood as Lee had, before moving on to Adrian. As her last hope, Sydney throws the seemingly-useless amulet at one of the Strigoi, and is astonished when she catches fire. Eddie bursts through the door and defeats the Strigoi. Jill sees Lee's dead body on the recliner and is horrified and traumatized. Sydney meets with a senior Alchemist for a debriefing. Both are very interested in the knowledge of Lee's predicament, which suggested that any Strigoi who are "restored" will be unable to be "reawakened" to Strigoi. The Alchemists hope to research the phenomenon to find a way to protect Strigoi from "awakening" any others. With Keith's departure, the Alchemists have promoted Sydney to take charge of the Palm Springs area and offer her Keith's old apartment, as well as a new roommate for Jill - a Dhampir closer to Jill's age. Knowing Adrian's wishes, she instead asks that Adrian be given the apartment in exchange for his assistance in the research into spirit users and Strigoi. Sydney instead requests her own dorm room on campus, allowing her to continue to watch Jill. Back at school, Sydney confronts her teacher about the amulet, and the teacher confesses she had known about vampires all along. as well as Alchemists. She believes that Sydney has an innate magical ability, and it was that ability that gave the amulet its power. As the book ends, Abe Mazur, Rose's father, arrives with Jill's new roommate - a Dhampir named Angeline who Sydney met while on the run with Rose the previous year. Adrian realizes that Abe has been keeping a close eye on Palm Springs because of Nevermore - and that Abe himself is likely trafficking vampire blood as well. Abe, in turn, reveals to Adrian that the reason Sydney had been forced to obey his commands was that Sydney had contracted him for an attack on Keith that left him with a glass eye - retribution for Keith's rape of her sister. The book closes with the arrival of two other former Strigoi who had been restored: Sonya Karp, who is also a spirit user, and Adrian's former rival for Rose's affections, Dimitri Belikov.
30069705	/m/0g55q28	Purple Jesus				 The novel focuses around three characters: Purvis Driggers, a 24-year old unemployed man, Martha Umphlett, a divorced young woman made to live with the family she once escaped, and Brother Andrew, a monk devoted more to nature than God. Their stories intertwine through a series of events related to a murder, a love triangle, and the sightings of a legendary woodland figure known as the Hairy Man.
30084048	/m/0g576nj	Sabotaged	Margaret Haddix	2010-08-24	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The book starts where the last left off. Jonah, Katherine, and Andrea are going to be sent back in time to Andrea's time. JB is going to give them a briefing, but his projectionist, Sam, says to brief them after they get there. He does, however, manages to tell them that Andrea is Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the colonies. When they arrive, the Elucidator is gone. Andrea blames Jonah, but Jonah figures out that Andrea was the one who lost it. Deliberately. Andrea begins to tell them why. She says that the night before they left to the 1600s, a man came to her and said that if she did what he said, and plugged in the numbers he gave her, she would be able to do the one thing she always wanted to do, save her parents. Her parents had died in June one year before. Katherine explains that she could not go back to that time and relive it, which is the paradox of doubles. They go through a series of events including saving John White, Andrea's grandfather. They also save Antonio and Brendan, two boys who were to make great artwork. They have tracers which they mix with, implying that they are time travelers. Eventually, a man who calls himself Second gives them food and later on, a jar of paint for John White. Jonah gets furious with Second's "gifts" and says that they all should try to do the opposite of whatever they are going do because it must've been what Second would have wanted. Later on, Jonah follows the tracer boys and finds a canoe and they all follow the tracer boys. In the middle of paddling, Jonah is hit by two boys named Brendan and Antonio in mid-air and falls into the water. He is rescued and sleeps throughout the day. When he wakes up, he finds himself on an island with Andrea, Katherine, John White, Dare, and Brendan and Antonio. Katherine then explains that Second came to Brendan's and Antonio's rooms and sent them here and that they are the real versions of the tracer boys. The boys learn to fish and set up a campfire by being with their tracers and on the next day they head to Croatoan Island. When they arrive, they find that there are dead skeletons everywhere and the reason why nobody went to Croatoan Island is because the tracer boys think that the "evil spirits" of the dead haunt them because of their killings. The tracer boys wake up the tracer version of John White and show him the island. Then the tracer boys say that they hear the sounds of the evil spirit so they head back to the canoe, but Dare runs off into the woods and Jonah chases Dare into the woods and finds Virginia Dare's tracer. He calls Andrea to mix with her tracer, but then while Andrea is within her tracer, she says that Virginia Dare won't come out of the woods until the tracer boys leave. Andrea becomes furious, and suddenly the tracer is inside Andrea. Now Andrea, Brendan, and Antonio get to control what happens. They wake up John White and Virginia Dare meets her grandfather. A man comes up behind Jonah and Katherine and says that what just happened is a second chance in history. The man says he calls himself Second because he gives people second chances. He reveals that his real name was Sam Chase, causing Jonah to figure out that Second/Sam was JB's projectionist. Second/Sam explains that he sent them to Roanoke Island to rescue John White and bring him to Virginia Dare, when actually they were supposed to go the moment where Virginia Dare buries the bones to honor the people of Croatoan Island. Then it actually means that Second/Sam really didn't "Sabotage" their mission, he just wanted them to rescue John White and bring him to his granddaughter which in original time, he was not supposed to. Then JB makes an appearance doing the same thing that Brendan and Antonio did to Jonah, landing on Second/Sam and says that Second/Sam is a traitor for jeopardizing the kids, John White and Dare's life. He fires Second/Sam and explains to Jonah that when Brendan and Antonio landed on him in the canoe, it was called a Time Smack and makes the person fall asleep. Second/Sam then gives Andrea his Elucidator and presses a button, but then he falls asleep. A TV screen shows up in the woods with a pre-recorded video. Second/Sam says that he has released the ripple to go on forward. JB screams and gives the kids his Elucidator and sends them into Time Travel. Second's voice comes up on his Elucidator that Andrea is holding and says that they have to hold on to Andrea and press the glowing button to return to 1600. All the kids agree to go back to 1600 but Andrea says that Jonah can't come because she says she wants to protect him. Andrea, Brendan and Antonio make their way back to 1600 while Jonah and Katherine are floating through time travel with JB's Elucidator. Second's voice comes up on the Elucidator and says that he and Katherine will have to beat the ripple to 1611. Jonah and Katherine start doing flips from a force that pushes them which is actually the ripple passing them. Second says that if the ripple passed them an even number of times, they will beat the ripple, and if they flipped an odd number, they are starting behind. It seemed then they beat the ripple, but JB's voice comes on the Elucidator and says that Jonah and Katherine must save 1611 if they want to save JB, Andrea, Brendan and Antonio and Dare from 1600 and return to the twenty-first century. Jonah and Katherine take the chance and land in 1611. When they are traveling through time Jonah finds a piece of paper with John White, Andrea, and Brendan that was drawn by Antonio. Katherine and Jonah get ready to try to save 1611.
30089390	/m/0g5b3w5	Gilded Latten Bones	Glen Cook		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 ==Characters in "Gilded Latten Bones"== *Garrett *The Dead Man *Dean *Pular Singe *Saucerhead Tharpe *Morley Dotes *Belinda Contague *Playmate *John Stretch *General Westman Block *Deal Relway *Winger *Tinnie Tate *Max Weider * Alyx Weider * Strafa Algarda (Windwalker Furious Tide of Light) *Kip Prose * Pilsuds Vilchik (aka Jon Salvation)
30100917	/m/0g58kt_	Second Skin	John Hawkes			 The story is told by a 1st-person narrator, a fifty-nine-year-old ex-naval lieutenant whose name is Edward, though other characters usually call him Skipper or Papa Cue Ball (due to his baldness). Though the tone of the novel strives to be comic and optimistic, the narrator's life is beset by a series of tragic events: his father (a mortician), his wife, and his daughter Cassandra commit suicide; his son-in-law Fernandez is killed after he has left Cassandra to live with his gay lover; Skipper is beaten up and perhaps raped during a mutiny on board of U.S.S. Starfish, the ship he commands in W.W.II; he is harassed by a small clan of shady fishermen on the "black island" in north-Atlantic where he settles after leaving the US Navy. The narrator eventually finds shelter in a tropical island with his black mess boy, Sonny, and his lover Catalina Kate, though it is not clear if the scenes on the island, where Skipper works as an artificial inseminator, are real or simply imagined. The novel is told in a non-linear fashion through a series of flashbacks. It is then at first difficult for the reader to understand the reasons of some weird episodes, such as the one which takes place in the second chapter, when Skipper, goaded by Cassandra, has the name of his son-in-law Fernandez tattoed on his chest in green ink. We subsequently discover that Fernandez has left Cassandra because their marriage was no more than a masquerade, devised to hide Skipper's incestuous relation to his daughter (which may also explain his wife Gertrude's suicide).
30105910	/m/0g573_z	Smile	Raina Telgemeier		{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 After a severe trip and fall accident, Raina (author) has a nearly five-year experience with dental surgery and orthodontics. This occurs at the same time as the onset of puberty, peer relationships in middle school, and bullying.
30112310	/m/0g57t6t	The Reckoning				 Molly is a freelance photographer and journalist who has just been offered an assignment by the New York Times: travel to Cambodia to cover a U.S. military search for the body of an American pilot who went down thirty years ago during the Vietnam War. She meets up with the search team and encounters two civilians. One is Duncan O'Brian, a kindly academic and archaeologist who is interested in restoring ancient Khmer temples. The other is John Kleat, the brother of an MIA Vietnam veteran who has dedicated his life to finding the remains of missing American soldiers in Vietnam and Cambodia. There is also a mysterious blond Caucasian man, thin and bedraggled, who is seen from a distance but never approaches the team. After weeks of work the remains of the pilot, or any U.S. servicemen, have still not been discovered. A typhoon is approaching and the search is to be cancelled. At the last moment, Molly randomly begins taking shots with her digital camera, including a shot down a large sinkhole. When she reviews the photo it turns out that the bottom of the sinkhole contains human bones. A search by a Marine lowered on a rope reveals evidence of an American pilot, as well as a Khmer Rouge mass grave. The U.S. military is contacted and agrees to extend the search by a week, but for essential personnel only - meaning that Molly, Duncan, and Kleat are expelled from the dig. In a Phnom Penh restaurant, Kleat fumes angrily that Molly got them kicked off the dig by taking pictures of human remains, something she had been told not to do by the U.S. military. Hours before all three civilians are to depart to returm to their respective homes, the mysterious blond man from the dig site approaches, revealing that he has found dog tags of several MIA servicemen, all of the Eleventh Cavalry armor. He reveals that his name is Luke and he speaks with a West Texas accent, and the trio place his age at about twenty. He gives them two hours to decide whether or not to join him - if they agree he will lead them to the resting places of these missing soldiers. Molly, Duncan, and Kleat agree. They quickly recruit the services of Samnang, an elderly Cambodian who speaks fluent English and once studied in the West, and three brothers who operate an expedition-outfitting business of sorts. With the last of their funds, the three civilians purchase an "expedition package" that includes the assistance of the three brothers, an aging UN Land Cruiser, a French colonial-era Mercedes truck, and boxes of U.S. military supplies siphoned from similar remains-hunting expeditions. It is night-time and the two-vehicle convoy drives north, into the wilds. After hours of driving the group stops at the edge of the mountainous rain forest, unsure of where to go. Molly spots tread marks of an armored personnel carrier - the heavy vehicle having driven through clay that was then baked in the summer sun, turning rock-hard and resisting the elements for three decades. Knowing that the APCs went into the rain forest and up the mountainside, the group continues in that direction. They soon find an undiscovered ancient Khmer city of massive size, and Luke disappears. The group makes camp, amazed at their find and deciding that remains of the missing group of Eleventh Cavalry soldiers must be inside. As everyone begins to explore the city, they discover both amazing and troubling things. The ancient city, while remaining unpillaged and unvandalized over hundreds of years, is a labyrinth that has been further confused by the overgrown jungle. Quickly, signs of the missing soldiers are discovered, and appear strange: The soldiers, of which there are nine listed as missing, had tried to turn parts of the city into a crude fortress, stringing concertina wire. One morning, during an argument, the group looks up to discover one of the soldiers' two APCs some sixty feet up in a grove of enormous trees - the forest having grown that much in thirty years. Molly, a veteran rock-climber, climbs up to the armored vehicle and attaches a rope. She discovers a terra-cotta head, having been taken from one of the many statues in the city, mounted to the vehicle's exhaust port as a trophy. The group begins descending into argument, dissension, and anger as the days pass. Duncan and Molly want to explore the city and catalog its sites, later to release the findings to the academic world for further exploration. Kleat is only interested in the remains of the soldiers, and is willing to allow the three Cambodian brothers to loot and pillage to keep them satisfied. Samnang sides with Molly and Duncan, but is hated by the three brothers, and is disdained by Kleat, because there is evidence that he was once a member of the Khmer Rouge government. The three brothers, armed with assault rifles, begin growing more aggressive and hostile over time. Molly tricked Kleat into giving her his Glock pistol to prevent him from provoking a slaughter, and hid it away. Finally, the remains of the Eleventh Cav soldiers are found. Some are found in the top room of a large tower. The room was once a shrine to Buddha, with an open roof to serve as an observatory. The soldiers had turned the room into a defensible bunker and had created a large S.O.S. signal on the floor of the room, hoping that aircraft would pass overhead and see it. The room shows evidence of a massive firefight, but no non-American ammunition is found - there is no sign of an enemy. That night Molly is awakened to the sound of gunfire - the three brothers are intoxicated and angry. In the morning it is revealed that they think Samnang had stolen and smashed their loot from the city. Molly and Duncan talk to Kleat, who reveals that he had come upon the brothers beating Samnang with their rifles. Unable to kill Samnang in front of Kleat, the brothers let him go, only to pursue him later. The brothers are also agitated because the jungle, growing faster than ever because of the rains from the approaching typhoon, has encroached on the two vehicles, miring them overnight. Calmly, Duncan placates them, helping them free the Land Cruiser. Deciding to leave that evening, the group breaks into teams: Two brothers will try to free the Mercedes truck from the mud. Another brother, the most Americanized of the trio, will go with Duncan to search for loot to replace that which Samnang had smashed. Molly and Kleat will do the same. Molly makes a grisly discovery - Samnang's artificial leg being gnawed on by gibbons, and then finds another Eleventh Cav body in a bamboo grove - a suicide by self-inflicted gunshot. She calls for the others, and they help her extract the corpse's helmet, remaining scalp and hair, and three teeth. They return to the vehicles, but the Cambodian brother who was with the trio has gotten separated from them. As they wait, Kleat seizes the opportunity and jumps into the Land Cruiser, driving off. The vehicle runs over several land mines, obliterating it. The two brothers, angrily chasing their Land Cruiser, also find themselves in the mine field, and both die. Molly, having run out into the mine field as well, discovers the second APC at the bottom of a bomb-crater lake. Duncan slowly rescues her, using a stick to feel cautiously for mines. Deciding that the mysterious Luke has placed the mines to keep them from leaving the city the way they entered it, Molly and Duncan decide to escape through the city, leaving out the other side of it. In case Luke is watching from a distance, Molly and Duncan begin removing supplies from the hopelessly-mired truck, giving the impression that they are going to stay through the typhoon. That night Molly, trying to be helpful, opens Duncan's briefcase to find some items that she can rescue (the duo had agreed to leave everything behind in order to travel faster). She discovers that Duncan was the mysterious troublemaker and thief from the U.S. military search site. The briefcase is also filled with other mysterious items, including ID cards, tags, and photographs. When she confronts him he seems genuinely confused. Suddenly, Luke arrives, and he and Duncan converse cryptically. Luke is now missing three teeth, and Molly realizes, to her horror, the identity of the soldier in the bamboo grove. She uses Kleat's Glock to shoot Luke who, in death, reveals himself to be the missing Cambodian brother. Molly fears that, in a malaria-induced hallucination, she had imagined seeing Luke and had killed an innocent man. She and Duncan flee through the city, growing weaker from minor injuries sustained the day before in the mine field explosions. Duncan's face becomes injured by what appears to be a gunshot, and Molly tries to help him. They find a sheltered room to rest, and when Molly awakes she finds that Duncan is gone. Searching for him, she discovers the cloth used to bind his jaw on the ground - free of blood. Two more soldiers' bodies are later found. One is a suicide by hanging, while the other man had been a sniper who had completely enclosed himself in a nest of razor wire to prevent anything from getting to him...or to prevent him from going anywhere. Duncan's trail leads to the top room of the tower they group had discovered previously; the observatory room with the remains of the Eleventh Cav men. In the room Molly discovers, under a pile of debris, the body of the soldiers' commander: a young man with a wedding band. To her shock, she discovers that his name is Duncan O'Brian. In his belongings Molly finds a photograph of her mother, who had committed suicide when Molly was a baby. She realizes that Duncan O'Brian, an Army soldier, was her father, and that his death in the war drove her young mother to kill herself. Later, still in the room, she discovers that Duncan O'Brian had been killed by a soldier named John Kleat in retaliation for getting them lost and trapped in the city. The panicked soldiers, trying to hide the death of their commander, had buried their commander under tons of explosive-induced rubble and exiled the killer, Pvt. John Kleat. Molly, unable to see in the dark, is approached by a presence who talks to her. He has a bag full of jade eyes, which had been seen in the skulls of all the intact American soldiers' remains. Horrified, Molly realizes that this mysterious person intends to remove her eyes and replace them with jade. She loses consciousness. When she awakes she is being rescued by members of the U.S. military team from the original dig - Samnang had somehow made it back to civilization and told them about her. It is not revealed if her eyes had indeed been replaced with jade.
30146199	/m/0g58_n6	Chuang Tse and the first emperor	Anna Russo	2010	{"/m/070wm": "Spirituality"}	 2222 years ago. Contravening any historical fact, Zhen Li, King of Qin, having unified the six states in which the kingdom was divided into, undertook the title of Qin Shi Huangdi, or rather the first august emperor, reviving with him the very beginning of time. To delete any historical fact that would have illegitimated his power and following his trusted Minister Shi Lu’s recommendations, had ordered that any text so far written be destroyed and to obtain the largest possible number of hard labor prisoners for the construction of the Great Wall, the terracotta army, and his threehundredandsixty-five room palace, extended sentences which would have punished not only the responsible but its entire family, as well. It was because of a book and the extension of the penalties that Chuang Tse’s family was deported. Chuang Tse was saved thanks to his foresighted mother who had not registered him at birth, making him unknown to the civil service. Eleven years had past from that day. Chuang Tse had grown up as did his longing for revenge. In the meantime, the first emperor had attained an immeasurable power and proved to be a cruel and despotic tyrant. He had thousands of enemies which he had to watch from and despite all the propitiatory rites, the stars had predicted for him a terrible defeat and a reign of only eleven years. Yet the emperor was not aware that the time of that most terrible enemy had arrived. That morning, like every morning, Chuang Tse set out for the banks of the river with his yellow canoe. He had been warned not to sail towards the sea, but Chuang was anxious to experiment the Emperor’s latest invention: a compass. The emperor had assured him that the use of that instrument would have always helped him find the right direction, but for the moment Chuang had not yet understood its mechanism. Distracted and near the sea by now, he had not noticed the arrival of a storm. Carried away, the boy lost his grip and sank under the waves. Down below he distinguished the presence of a wall that was not visible from the surface. He had no time to investigate: the violent waves hurled him against the wall. Trapped in some sort of channel, convinced he was dead and now within the tunnel that connects the world of the living with that of the dead, he was still certain of this state when he re-emerged in the middle of a bright colored garden of a mysterious palace unknown to anyone. Chang Tse was determined to become the first to discover this secret place. But the palace was not an easy place to explore, besides being rather disquieting: the four sides of the garden were decorated with the figures of mythological animals accompanying one to the afterworld, yet the magnificence of the place did not bring one to presume of a burial chamber. It was then and while he was hidden behind the bushes, that Chuang Tse saw him for the first time. He was flying… or rather, it was the impression he gave. He suddenly appeared from the far end of the immense room and moved as if its feet never touched the ground. He did not make any noise, not even the smallest murmur. Without doubt must have been of noble birth judging from the palace and the garments he was wearing; even if, ever since Ying Zheng became first emperor, in fear of rebellion, forced all aristocrats to move into the capital city and that palace was just way too far from there. He was absorbed in his thoughts when he glanced at the face of the small being. He there realized that he was just a child and that he could have been almost his same age. His skin was as white as alabaster and his mouth seemed a rose-colored line placed on his face in form of a smile. The nose was perfect and his eyes… were closed. Suddenly, the mysterious child disappeared and Chuang decided he was no longer eager to do any further investigation: the place was beginning to haunt him. He returned to the same spot from which he had entered, but the grating from which he had gotten by was now closed and too heavy to be raised by a child. Chuang was trapped, but he did not lose faith: he would have found the way out elsewhere. Forced to enter the palace, he finally made acquaintance with the small boy and discovered, thanks to a hidden tablet, that the boy was the Emperor’s secret son. The boy was blind from birth, but the Emperor could not reveal to the people that he had generated a son of the darkness and, being of divine descent, nor take his life. He therefore put to death all those who knew about his existence and confined the boy in the secret palace in the middle of a forest. Considering his nature, Chuang Tse would have gravely yearned to return to the first Emperor’s progeny, all the evil that the Emperor had inflicted on his family, but realized that the child was just another victim, just like they all were, if not the one that paid the highest price, being so close to the first Emperor: he had been deprived of his life, even if in a more subtle manner, having his existence been denied. In the world of obscurity in which the child lived in, the alternated silence of water pelting, sounds and animal calls was all he knew. Yet, despite all this, when he spoke of his father he proudly exclaimed,”My father is the most powerful man on earth. And even the most righteous, the strongest and most valorous…” then he stopped, remained in silence for a moment and puzzled, concluded:”But I do not know him! “ And while these words still hovered over their heads in the middle of the room and the child remained motionless in his sorrow, Chuang Tse made his first decision as an adult and behaved as the best of men: it was the first time he had heard someone speak worthily of the first emperor and it was also the first time he had no intention in contradicting those words. After a long silence, the child looked up to Chuang and in a boldly manner said:”My father cannot come to see me because he is very busy! He created the greatest empire on earth. My father created the world! This is what the scribes say!”; then unexpectedly he stopped, and confused and almost imploring, as if to gather all the courage on earth to speak, asked Chuang; “Please, you who know many things, tell me… how is the world that my father created?” It was then that Chuang unconsciously accomplished his destiny. As first thing, he gave his new friend a name. He called him Qi, that, according to his knowledge, had no meaning: energy that generated all changes; that was the essence of Qi’s world; as second thing, decided to fill up that emptiness with the description of the world not as his father had actually created it, but to not disappoint the boy, like it would have one day been, and to start off nicely, began from the description of what Qi knew best: his palace. He illustrated a marvelous world without war or oppression, without pain or sickness, in which time flowed slowly. And thus Chuang depicted a world that was the exact opposite of the world that Qi’s father had actually created but at the same time, had told no lie: to not dishearten his friend, he described the future. Qi did not live alone in the palace; three servants looked after him and one of them was arriving. Obviously, nobody was aware of Chuang’s presence and if they would have founded him, it would have meant the end; meanwhile the scribe was getting closer: one further step and he would have seen them. Frightened, Chuang looked around himself, but there was nowhere to hide. He looked at Qi’s face that had turned pale in the meantime and it was then that he came up with an idea. Chuang quickly hid himself under Qi’s immense yellow mantle and spontaneously began to whisper some suggestions to Qi that he systematically repeated, making the scribe think that the child had gained his sight. Happily, the scribe brought back the news to the other servants who rushed, while Qi and Chuang were forced to continue in their deception; but by now Qi had understood how things worked in this world and how men behaved; to Chuang’s surprise, Qi knew exactly what was happening around him despite his blindness. All that was left to do was to tell the Emperor. Despite all the defensive and preventive measures, the first Emperor had been poisoned by someone of whom he had never suspected of: himself. So now he waited. The scribe arrived and shouted:”Your son can see! We are not sure how long he has begun to see, even if we cannot say he actually sees with his eyes, but he sees much better and much farther ahead than all of us!”; The emperor, then, threw himself on the chair: he was happy, he was proud and was finally free to leave now; his sovereignty was over. His only order was to inform Qi’s mother. Qi’s mother had sought refuge in a mansion not far from the court and bred silkworms. At the good news, the Empress smiled and said something that she had never said before and for that same reason pronounced it with particular pride, ”May my son reign in all the lands beyond the sea, that have never appeared on any book or on any map and never shall be and neither he nor his kingdom be mentioned, until I say so! For the rest, may all those who are working on punishment make return to their homes. Their faults have been amnestied”. That same day the servant returned to the capital city, rather shocked by the Empress’s commands, which had gone far beyond her simple role as Emperor’s wife. But having lost much time during his trip, which had brought him far away from his world, the servant could have not known what the Empress already knew thanks to her dreams, her butterflies and to her servant’s faster horses: soon after speaking with the scribe, the Emperor passed away. Shortly after that unusual conversation, a joyful moment had finally arrived in the life of the august and, thus, had not left any final messages. The court, unprepared for the event, had not announced the death to the community and hid the remains of the great Emperor in a box with salted fish on its return to the capital city, while plotting deceitful and swindling schemes in search for its successor. The only thing that remained to do was to carry out the Empress’s command, that finally saw the return of many people to their homes, including Chuang Tse’s family, although little Qi, who was now called by this name, was furtively taken away from the secret palace and nor his name or his kingdom was ever mentioned again. By orders of his mother, he was entrusted with unknown islands off the coast of the Chinese sea, which never appeared on any map and which nobody ever spoke of. On these lands, Qi reigned wisely, creating that world, which he now clearly saw, and that little Chuang Tse, finally at home, had told him about. The scribe, instead, returned to the Empress, took one end of that wonderful thread and brought it all over to the other side of the world, discovering people and countries, which were neither so frightening nor so different than his, and opened a wonderful road today still entitled: the silk route. The world of Qi, as Chuang Tse had described to him and that the first emperor failed to create, still exists today. Some are certain that it is an island between the three mountains in the middle of the sea, Pongnae-san, Yôngju-san and Pangjang-san, home of the gods; others call it Peng Lai (Paradise), but wherever it may be and however it is called, Qi continues to reign over it, man continues to dream and all we have to do is to search for it… at the bottom of our hearts. it:Chuang Tse e il primo imperatore
30148229	/m/0g59pjc	Luv Ya Bunches	Lauren Myracle	2009-10-01	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Yasaman, Violet, Katie-Rose and Camilla, each of whom are named after flowers, are girls entering fifth grade. Luv Ya Bunches is the name the four girls decide to call Yasaman's social network at the end of the book.
30149875	/m/0g5b450	Exodus	Steve White	2006-12-26	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Advanced aliens depart their homeworld in order to flee their stars impending nova. Decades after the Terran Civil War the aliens arrive and attempt to colonize an inhabited human world. They are not able to recognize the intelligence of the planet's inhabitants, because they do not recognize human forms of communication as communication. The miscommunication leads to warfare, where these new aliens throw themselves at their opponents with suicidal fury. The old "anti Bug" alliance partners join together to fight off this new threat.
30151589	/m/0g54ck7	Hit and Run	Lurlene McDaniel	2007	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Laurie Stark is very excited when popular, athletic Quentin Palmer (Quin for short) asks her out on a date. While they are on their date, Analise Bower is babysitting. After her job has ended, she doesn't feel like asking for a ride. She knows the roads and feels safer on her bike. While riding back home in Quin's mother's SUV, Laurie falls asleep and is awakened by a crash. Quin assures her that it was only a deer he mistakenly hit, though he isn't so sure himself. Seeing that the crash had damaged some property, Quin covers the scene and drives away. Sometime after the accident, Analise's talented boyfriend Jeremy receives a call from her parents concerning Analise's location. For a few days, Jeremy and Mr. and Mrs. Bower try to locate Analise. They are unsuccessful and hand the case over to the police. One morning, the police announce that they found Analise injured. Because of the attempt to cover the accident, the case is therefore called a hit and run. In the hospital, the doctors say that Analise has gone in Coma because of a serious head injury. Meanwhile at school, when the principal announces Analise's accident, Laurie is very shocked to hear that the accidents location is somewhat near the place Quin mistakenly hit a "deer". Her friend Judie, suggests that she use the information for her own benefit by blackmailing Quin to become her boyfriend. Laurie hesitates but does what Judie says to. Afraid that the incident might ruin his future as an athlete, Quin accepts and pretends to be Laurie's boyfriend. A few days later, Jeremy receives a call from Mrs. Bower informing him that Analise is dead. Guilty of her actions, Laurie emails Analise's friend Amy the evidence that is needed to prove that the SUV Quin was driving was the one which hit Analise. In Analise's point of view she floats out of her body and outside the building. She passes a boy crying in his room and a girl sitting at her computer, not recognizing either, on her way to the light (To show that she is crossing over). At the end of the book, Jeremy is the one who creates Analise's coffin with his beautiful wood carving skills. Action is taken against Mr. Palmer and his son. The story is finished with Jeremy saying: "Goodbye, my angel".
30159329	/m/0g5qwtx	Everlost	Neal Shusterman	2006	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Allie and Nick both die in a car crash. They're supposed to go towards that light at the end of the tunnel, but they bump into each other and get knocked into a mysterious world between life and death called Everlost. The world is filled with terror, and unexpected twists for the souls that reside there. Both Nick and Allie want their lives back, so they start exploring this new world, hoping to find a way back to their normal lives. There is a catch, however: If they stand still in the living world for too long, they will sink into Earth. The longer they stay in Everlost, the more they forget about themselves in the real world. In the beginning of the book, they are saved by a boy named Lief, who tells them that they are called "Afterlights", who cannot walk where the living walk. They are somewhat like ghosts. He warns them of a dreaded and evil monster, McGill, before they make their way to New York City. There, they meet a Mary Hightower, the "mother" of Afterlights who keeps many Afterlights safe, and author of hundreds of books on living in Everlost. She lives with the children under her care in the destroyed World Trade Center. This is because things that are much beloved in the world can cross into Everlost if they are destroyed. They settle down, but Allie is not content with the way things are, so she sets out to see if she has special powers. Allie notices other Afterlights at the Twin Towers keep repeating and doing the same exact thing everyday. Lief gets stuck playing the Pac-Man arcade game non-stop and she has to pry him from the game to drag him along with her. They meet The Haunter in a factory that crossed over to Everlost. Allie gets Lief and Nick captured by The Haunter and it is shown that Allie can pick up living things and also possess or 'skinjack' as it is called in the book. In her adventures, she learns how to use her own powers. These adventures tell Nick his purpose while revealing the secret plan of Mary Hightower and the real identity of the McGill, Mikey McGill, Mary(really Megan) Hightower's younger brother. Mary, also known by others as the Sky Witch, has been lying to the children, stealing the coins they invariably have in their possession, which will allow them to leave Everlost, a metaphor for the coins given to pay Charon. Nick has also received the nickname "Chocolate Ogre" because of how he has a chocolate stain on his face, and Mary spreads rumors about how he sends Afterlights away by luring them in with the smell of chocolate. Allie outsmarts the McGill, who is unmasked by his sister. Allie, traveling home, is later saved by Mikey, who takes her the rest of the way home.
30167141	/m/0g547dh	Daniel	Henning Mankell		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in 1874. Hans Bengler is an entomologist from Skåne, Sweden who is studying at Lund University and decides to go on an expedition on his own to the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa to find insects new to science and thereby to make a name for himself. After a long and arduous journey by sea to Cape Town and then in the desert he arrives at a trading post run by an expatiate Swede which Bengler decides to make the base for his explorations. Whilst at the trading post he comes across a small boy, called Molo, who was the sole survivor of his extended family all of whom had been brutally killed by men on horseback with spears and rifles, some who were white and some who were black. He is taken to the trading post where he was put in a cage to be bartered in exchange for provisions. Bengler decides to rescue the boy adopting him as his son. Not knowing his name Bengler decides to call him Daniel. Bengler sets himself the challenge, as he sees it, of civilising the young savage boy. The two of them journey back to Sweden. Daniel initially seeks to escape but over time grows to accept Bengler as his new father who begins to learn to speak Swedish and adopt some basic European customs, though still recalling the aspects of his African culture and beliefs he had been taught. On board ship and on arrival in Stockholm Daniel is treated with curiosity and disdain and experiences some racial abuse. Bengler decides to gain notoriety and earn a living by displaying and giving lectures on his exhibits, stored in glass jars. However, noticing the great interest the public had displayed in Daniel he decides to include him as a surprise exhibit in his lectures. After a serious incident father and son are forced to flee hiding their tracks to avoid being pursued. Bengler hands Daniel over to an elderly farmer and his wife in Småland to look after as he decides to disappear, promising to return in time. Daniel finds he is not welcomed into the deeply religious close-knit rural community. He becomes more and more homesick and has increasingly disturbing dreams about his mother and other family members. He befriends a young girl called Sanna whose unusual behaviour has resulted in her being ostracised by local people and is abused by her adopted father. After making one unsuccessfully attempt to make his way home, subsequently, Daniel and Sanna set off together to find a ship to take them both to Africa. Their adventure ends with the two friends arguing and returning home with events spiralling out of control with a sequence of disastrous consequences.
30171079	/m/0g53jjw	Dark Tower			{"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"}	 Dark Tower is an adventure which describes a dungeon contested over by followers of Set and Mitra and the surrounding lands. The module describes a village and four challenging dungeon levels in detail.
30172765	/m/0g596j5	A la juventud filipina	José Rizal	1879	{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 In the poem Rizal praises the benefits that Spain had bestowed upon the Philippines. Rizal had frequently depicted the renowned Spanish explorers, generals and kings in the most patriotic manner. He had pictured Education (brought to the Philippines by Spain) as "the breath of life instilling charming virtue". He had written of one of his Spanish teachers as having brought "the light of the eternal splendor". In this poem, however, it is the Filipino Youth who are the protagonists, whose "prodigious genius" making use of that education to build the future, was the "Bella esperanza de la Patria Mia!" (beautiful hope of the motherland). Spain, with "Pious and wise hand" offered a "crown's resplendent band, offers to the sons of this Indian land."
30184055	/m/0g5853g	Guantanamo: My Journey		2010-10-16		 The book details Hicks' life to 2010, providing not only vivid details of his imprisonment in Cuba, but provides details for all of Hicks' life. The first half of the book catalogues the events leading up to his arrest in 2001, starting with his early childhood. The second half of the book accounts for Hicks' time in captivity, his trial, and return to Australia.
30190058	/m/0g567z6	Codex	Lev Grossman	2004	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The novel is about young banker Edward Wozny, who is sent by his firm to organize a mysterious client's library of rare books. He discovers the client may own a unique fourteenth-century codex, long thought to be a hoax by medieval scholars. As he becomes involved in the mystery of the codex, he also becomes addicted to a strange computer game that seems to have parallels to his real life.
30196697	/m/0g54csv	Orion in the Dying Time	Ben Bova		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The plot starts from where it stopped in Vengeance of Orion. Orion awakes in a temple after been transported to the Neolithic era by the Creators. He then sees Anya whom he had been looking for throughout the previous novel in the series. As they leave the temple together, he spies a statue of Set initially taking it to be a man wearing a totem mask. They enter a garden and as Orion tries to take a fruit, Anya stops him warning him of Set who owns the garden. She then tells him of their mission which is to assess the situation and then come back for more equipment. As they walk on they encounter a group of slaves been guarded by a dinosaur. Orion with the help of Anya, then saves the baby from been killed and eaten by the dinosaur. The slaves been cowed warn of the retribution from their masters. Orion then decides to take them along till they get to the forest. Upon arrival in the forest, Anya tries to contact the rest of the Creators only to discover that her access has been blocked by Set thus trapping them in that era without any help. They however, try to settle down in the area and look for game to kill so as to survive. Anya, then encourages Orion to try to initiate contact maybe he would be successful. This serves as a beacon for Set now locates them and promises to send them punishment for killing his creature. They then move deep inside the forest where, they hide and encounter another group of humans, who already live there, led by Kraal. Orion then suggests the merging of the two groups under Kraal's leadership which he reluctantly agrees to. However, that same night, Set sends huge gigantic snakes which attack them and kill quite a number of them. This almost weakens Kraal's resolve to unite his people to stand against Set. Orion however, convinces him and together with Anya, they try to unite the tribes to stand against Set. Their work is unfortunately undone by Reeva, one of the slaves whose baby Orion saved from the dinosaur and now Kraal's wife, sells Anya and Orion out to Set. They are both captured and taken to Set's fortress. Set tries to torture them in order to find out about a particular time nexus. They succeed in escaping but are unable to fight their way out. They then jump into Set's time warp device and try to use it to escape. They find out that the time warp is too strong to be over ridden and find themselves in the Cretaceous. They try to discover what Set's plan is for that era. They are eventually captured and Set deals with Anya who with her fellow Creators abandon both the earth and Orion to Set's devilish plans in order to save their skin. However, Set plans to send Orion to a time before the Creators became aware of him to murder, them all. He almost succeeds but Orion manages to break free of his control and he allows himself to be used by the creators to destroy Sheol the sun of Set's home planet Shaydan. This sets of a cataclysm wherein the debris of Shaydan then pelts the earth with meteors which wipe out the dinosaurs leaving only mammals. However, Set survives and is hiding on earth in the Neolithic. Orion also awakes back in the Neolithic and is intent upon revenge. He goes back into the Dark Ages and brings along the army of Subotai, general of Ogotai's Mongolian army. He then goes to Set's fortress himself to confront him. He succeeds in throwing Set's fortress into chaos. However, Set proves too strong for him until he is helped by the Creators coming out of their hiding place. Set is then thrown into a time stasis where he is left to roast forever in the flames of hell.
30207241	/m/0g55t5k	The Outsiders of Uskoken Castle				 The book recounts the children's adventures as they live by the rules of their community and come into conflict with the city's residents. It begins by introducing some of the children. Branko's father is a traveling fiddler, so Branko used to live with his mother, who worked in a tobacco plant. But she has died, leaving Branko homeless. He finds a fish on the ground at the market, picks it up and is arrested for theft. Zora frees him through the window of the prison and takes him to the castle, which the band has made their home. After passing a test of his courage, Branko is accepted into the band of outlaws along with Nicola, Pavle and Duro. The city residents persecute the children, who play pranks on them in retaliation. In one episode the band steals a chicken from the old fisherman Gorian, who is honest, poor and works hard. Branko and Zora feel sorry for him and try to repay him with chickens stolen from the wealthy Karaman. Gorian catches them and insists that they return the stolen chickens. The children promise to help Gorian by working for him when he is short handed. They help him in his conflicts with a large fishery.
30209152	/m/0g54ncb	At Close Quarters	Eugenio Fuentes	2009	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The unexpected death of a highly disciplined and successful army member of Camp San Marcial is officially explained as suicide. Major Olmedo had always followed the letter of the law and never questioned orders through the army hierarchy. He only broke the law in one respect and that was to carry an unauthorized pistol, since his name had appeared on a terrorist organization's hit-list. Major Olmedo had recently completed a report which was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence in Madrid. In it, he recommended the closure of Camp San Marcial as an efficiency measure. This highlighted the growing cleavage between his own generation and style of troop which were dedicated to peace-keeping and winning wars with technology; vis-a-vis the older, Francoists, who still believed in numbers and yearned for a reinstatement of the recently abolished compulsory military service. When he gets shot there is an internal inquiry which results in a verdict of suicide. Marina, the Major's daughter, is not satisfied with this outcome and hires a private detective, Ricardo Cupido. Cupido sets about investigating the "crime" scene with rigour and a professional manner. The scene itself simply is the pistol and a note in hurried handwriting saying two words, Forgive me scrawled on one of the Major's business cards. Cupido questions each of the suspects and mulls over this problem even where Marina gives up on learning the truth because of the strain it is putting on her and dismisses him. Cupido does get to the bottom of the mystery.
30213703	/m/0g58t80	No Land! No House! No Vote!		2011-03-01	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book follows hundreds of shackdwellers in the township of Delft in Cape Town. In early 2007, they were moved into houses they had been waiting for since the end of Apartheid but soon were told that the move had been illegal and they were removed from their new homes. In protest, they occupied Symphony Way, a main road opposite the housing project. It soon blossomed into a settlement of hundreds of shacks inhabited by organised protesting families. It became known as Symphony Way and was the home ground of the Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign, whose membership vowed to stay on the road until the government gave them permanent housing. The community was eventually evicted after almost two years occupying Symphony Way. They were moved to the infamous Blikkiesdorp temporary relocation area where they are still struggling for land and housing. The stories are real-life accounts of the struggle of the pavement dwellers.
30220626	/m/0g58mrr	Slights	Kaaron Warren			 Slights is a first-person narrative by a troubled woman, Stevie, who lost her father when she was nine, and her mother when she was 18. Her father, a police officer, was killed during a mysterious shooting incident on the job, and her mother died when Stevie crashed their car while driving recklessly. The accident left Stevie badly injured and she had a near-death experience in which she found herself in a dark room filled with angry people threatening her. Usually nothing frightened Stevie, but that room terrified her, and she was relieved when she was revived in hospital. From an early age Stevie was anti-social and soon earned herself a bad reputation. After her mother's death she had the house to herself and began digging in the backyard, an activity her father had often indulged in. She stopped cleaning the house, and herself, and berated and abused most people she encountered. Her indifference to herself and others led to a suicide attempt when she was 21. She returned to that dark room filled with angry people clawing and tearing at her, and she was very grateful when someone found her unconscious and took her to hospital. While the room frightened her, she was intrigued by it and realised that the people in it were those she had slighted at some point in her life. She wanted to find out what other people's rooms were like and took a job at a local hospice to be close to people near death, but was frustrated when she could not get the information she wanted. Then she resorted to picking up strangers and bringing them home. She would get them drunk or drug them, and start killing them, but revive them as they lost consciousness so she could interrogate them. She never got much out of them and they all died. She buried the bodies in the backyard amongst her father's secrets. Stevie's backyard excavations had uncovered toys and trinkets from her childhood, but also objects she had never seen before, and bones. Indifferent to life and her fascination with death led to several more suicide attempts and trips to her dark room. Each time Stevie was discovered and revived. But when she was 35 she hung herself and no one found her in time to save her. She had learnt that her father had been under investigation for the deaths of several people, and with the reported disappearances of those she had murdered, it was only a matter of time before the police arrived at her house. For a very long time she lay in her dark room and endured the biting and scratching of those she had slighted. Then suddenly her tormentors were finished with her and left the room, and after a while Stevie heard her mother and father's voices and she began to rise along a "golden path".
30227467	/m/0g542pr	Ummachu	Uroob	1954		 The novel begins with a depiction of the playful childhood of a naughty threesome - Ummachu, Mayan and Beeran. Ummachu, the charming daughter of Athar Ali, finds herself drawn to the strong and sturdy Mayan. But, ironically enough, she becomes Beeran's bride, much to her dislike. Ummachu confesses later: "What can I do, a hapless girl?" The novel covers two generations and signifies the dawn of the third. It also tracks the feud-ridden family tales, which are narrated by `historian' Ahammadunni. The focus is on `Ummachu.' The other protagonists who gain prominence are her close associates - Mayan, Beeran and Chappunni Nair. Assertive and impulsive, Chinnammu is said to be modelled on Ummachu; the mould may be the same, but each pursues a different path of her own.
30228561	/m/0g58fb1	The Empathic Civilization	Jeremy Rifkin			 The Empathic Civilization is divided into three parts with an introductory chapter that summarizes the contents and arguments of the book. The first part consists of four chapters and analyses empathy from the perspective of psychology, biology, and philosophy. Rifkin provides a history of empathy in psychology, including how it relates to the works of Freudian psychology, Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, Heinz Kohut, and Donald Winnicott, leading to John Bowlby and Attachment Theory. As psychological theory has evolved, empathy has played a larger and larger role, especially in the emotional and intellectual development of children. In terms of biology, Rifkin connects the biological function of mirror neurons with the capacity for empathy. Philosophically, Rifkin explores empathy-altruism, the faith versus reason debate, and truth versus reality debate. Rifkin argues in favour of relationalism, that the meaning of existence is to enter into relationships. From the lens of empathy, he deconstructs the concepts of truth, freedom, democracy, equality, mortality. The second part consists of five chapters and focuses on the rise, development, and fall of civilizations. Rifkin connects the qualitative changes in energy regimes and communication techniques with changes in how people understand and organize reality. Hunter-gatherer societies were all oral cultures and thus only existed in geographically-limited small groups and identified themselves symbiotically in terms of that group. Spiritually, these societies believed in local gods who were only known to others through oral tales. The development of writing, as well as hydraulics and irrigation, allowed agricultural societies to better organize themselves so that a larger geographic area and a larger population could be controlled. Hydraulic power was labour intensive, requiring large populations of subservient people. With scripts, there was a shift from a mythological consciousness to a theological consciousness; individuals thought of themselves less in terms of a small, local group and more with a monotheistic religion which included a personal relationship with a god. Decentralization followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, as each town operated a water or wind mill and the printing press distributed literature, empowering more people. Autobiographies started to be written, more people married for love rather than other arrangements, and the concept of privacy, democracy, and market capitalism was more prevalent. People began to organize themselves more into nation-states. Steam and fossil fuels became the dominant energy regime and electronic communications, like telegraphs, radios, telephones, and television, became the dominant means of communication. With vastly more interaction with other people and cultures, there was more emphasis on studying people and psychology. Personal investments, social exploration, and creativity became highly valued. The third part consists of the remaining five chapters. Rifkin extrapolates the changes in energy regimes to predict a shift in production towards renewable sources like wind and solar power under distributed (i.e. personal) management. Rifkin also extrapolates the changes in communication to predict a proliferation of wireless, mobile personal communication that allows people to be constantly connected to others regardless of distance, language, or other barriers. This will evolve people's sense of empathy to create a biosphere-wide consciousness and a mode of production he calls distributed capitalism. Rifkin believes this new system will allow people to solve more complex issues, such as climate change and pathogenic pandemics, focus more on quality of life (rather than materialistic) issues, and value collaboration over competition.
30229174	/m/0g546c7	Beyond the Crash	Gordon Brown	2010-12		 The book is divided into four parts and a total of eleven chapters. There is also a Prologue, an Introduction and a Conclusion. The Prologue relates how Brown decided to go ahead with his ground breaking recapitalisation plan for British banks during a transatlantic plane flight on September 26, 2008. The introduction takes the story in the prologue two weeks forward to October 8, the day when the bank recapitalisation plan was announced. Brown describes how the crises evolved to become much wider than a banking crises - it became what he calls the first crises of globalisation, which if not overcome will threaten a decade or more of low growth, with millions left jobless and millions more in poverty. Brown recalls that in the last years of the 20th century, Europe and America had between them a majority share of the world's production, exports and investment. While after 2000 Europe and American had a minority share in all those areas, while still retaining a large majority of the world's consumption, financed by borrowing from the rest of the world. Brown states that this recently developed situation has become unsustainable. He says it's essential for emerging economic giants like China to further boost their consumption if global growth is to be optimised and the crises is to be fully overcome. The introduction also discusses the need for morality to inform the conduct of market participants. Part 1 has only one chapter, which tracks the UK government's response to the crises starting from the Sept 2007 bank run on Northern Rock and ending on Oct 13th 2008 after Brown's bank recapitalisation plan had been announced. In contrast to the global focus found in the rest of the book, the focus here is largely on Britain, with some attention to cooperation and dialogue with the US and Europe, especially to Brown's work in persuading them of the need to recapitalise their own banks. There is a brief mention of Brown's push to gain consensus for a G20 "heads of state" summit. Chapter 2 is about the 1997 Asian crisis. Brown relates lessons from the earlier crisis, such as how the successful response by the Hong Kong authorities to the double play speculative attack showed that well executed government intervention can sometimes prevail over hostile markets. He diagnoses that the international community's inadequate response to the 1997 crisis is one of the reasons for the current crises, as it prompted emerging nations to focus excessively on building up foreign reserves, thus contributing to global imbalances. Chapter 3 is about the current crisis, especially its relation to the banking sector. Brown asserts that the problems in banking sector was excessive and poorly understood risk taking, coupled with inadequate capital. Chapter 4 is about the 2009 G-20 London Summit and the back room diplomacy that was necessary to achieve consensus for the coordinated action unveiled at that meeting. Brown discusses the role of his team in setting the stage to ensure a successful outcome. He also acknowledges the important contributions made by various other international leaders including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, U.S. President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Chapter 5 is a forward looking review of the challenges to be faced after 2010 in delivery global growth and reducing worldwide unemployment. Brown says that all nations and regions will need to act concertedly if Global trade imbalances are to be reduced and the crisis is to be fully overcome. He notes that further policies to boost domestic demand in countries with current account surpluses like China will be essential but not sufficient - regions like Africa need to be helped so they can become new engines of global growth - and the US and Europe need to ensure their deficit reduction plans are combined with growth friendly policies. Brown discusses an International Monetary Fund report, which suggested that effective global cooperation in the years leading up to 2014 could reduce global unemployment by as much as 50 million and help lift an additional 90 million people out of poverty. Chapter 6 contains analysis on the United States. Brown sketches the specific challenges facing the US including their high level of net debt and on-going current account deficit. He says America also has exceptional qualities which can help them overcome their problems if marshalled wisely. Brown concludes the US economy needs to become more export orientated and that the government needs to ensure adequate levels of investment, which are unlikely to be delivered by the private sector alone. Chapter 7 is about the opportunity available to China. Brown advises that with increased switching from policies favouring exports to those aimed at boosting domestic demand, China can contribute to reducing global imbalances, while at the same time sustaining her own high growth and further reducing domestic poverty. Brown acknowledge that China has now been moving in this direction for several years, but says that further progress will help both China and the wider world. Chapter 8 covers India, the rest of Asia, Russia and Latin America. Brown praises India as a country that has achieved high growth without worsening global imbalances, which she had done by not running either a large current account surplus or deficit. He notes however that internally India's growth has been uneven and that further policies aimed at reducing poverty and inequality in the lagging regions will be important for achieving sustained growth. Chapter 9 focuses on Europe and the specific challenges relating to the Eurozone currency union. Brown says it's important for deficit reduction plans to be combined with growth friendly policy and that greater fiscal co-operation and flexibility will be needed to keep the Eurozone together. Chapter 10 is about Africa, which Brown says was much harder hit by the crises than was Asia or Latin America. Brown says the continent has enormous potential and can become a new engine of growth for the whole world. He advises that help from G20 countries will be needed, both to boost investment in infrastructure and to make sure African countries have access to the markets of developed nations to help boost trade. Chapter 11 sums up Brown's thoughts on the need for coordinated global action to reduce unemployment and poverty while boosting growth. He says that different regions are called on to act in different ways, but if nations work collaboratively it will help them better achieve both their individual domestic goals and to boost global growth as a whole. Part 4 contains just a Conclusion and an Appendix. The Appendix relates a speech Brown made back in 1998, in the aftermath of the Asian financial crises, discussing the need for enhanced global cooperation on economic issues. The Conclusion reiterates Browns themes. Brown recaps on the need for the decision making of market participants to be informed by ethical concerns and not purely by the profit motive. Brown also stresses the need for global cooperation to achieve poverty reduction, a fair distribution of resources and lower unemployment - goals which Brown says reflects the values held by the world citizens.
30232881	/m/0g5b1nc	The Second Mrs. Giaconda	E. L. Konigsburg	1975	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A prologue opens by asking, "Why did Leonardo da Vinci choose to paint the portrait of the second wife of an unimportant Florentine merchant when dukes and duchesses ... were begging for a portrait by his hand?"Mrs. Giaconda, p. 3. It introduces Salai by five quotations from Leonardo's notebooks and his will. Early narrative chapters establish those two characters and their relationship. The son of a poor shoemaker, Salai is a cutpurse caught in the act by the master, whose grasp and visage he mistakes for the hand and face of God. Leonardo takes him as an apprentice, at no fee, and practically as a servant. Salai remains a scoundrel who moves from petty theft to selling his master's sketches, and later to selling his audiences. Princess Beatrice comes to Milan and marries Il Moro, the duke, who had hoped to marry her beautiful older sister Isabella d'Este. He continues to wait on his beautiful mistress Cecilia Gallerani, the subject of a Da Vinci portrait that is already famous. "She's small and dark and perfectly plain", Salai says when he first sees Beatrice; when they meet by accident, she is "trying to get the sun to make me blond and beautiful".The Second Mrs. Giaconda, pp. 38, 51. They discover a shared taste for mischief. To Leonardo she laments, "Could I but gain my husband's love, I know that I could disguise this plain brown wrapping." He asks what she has "to give him that Cecilia has not" and she volunteers her "sense of fun".Mrs. Giaconda, pp. 60–61. Salai and even Leonardo often visit Beatrice and she becomes the toast of Milan —assisted by the visits. They come to consider her "our duchess" but she does win her husband's love. Isabella visits and envies her sister for "the intellectuals, the gifted, the skilled craftsmen; the very elements who were drawn naturally to Beatrice."Mrs. Giaconda, p.80 Beatrice grows into a political role and becomes a collector of clothing, jewels, etc., and no longer a companion to Salai. She does confide disappointment in the massive Leonardo's horse, conveys insight regarding the master's talent, and admonishes Salai to take some responsibility for that. To achieve great art, Leonardo needs "something wild, something irresponsible in his work", and Salai must help. The merchant Giaconda and his wife appear only in the last of nineteen chapters, visiting the studio during the master's absence. Beatrice has approved Leonardo's The Last Supper and died in childbirth. Milan has been conquered by the French and Leonardo has moved to Mantua. Duchess Isabella of Mantua (sister of Beatrice) has been frustrated for years seeking her portrait by Leonardo, which delights Salai. "Sooner or later she would come to realize that here was one prize that was just out of reach of her jeweled pink fingers."Mrs. Giaconda, p. 133. Spurred by Beatrice and Isabella, the irresponsible Salai determines to persuade Leonardo to paint Lisa.Mrs. Giaconda, pp. 136–138.
30234770	/m/0g566n_	Witch and Wizard: The Gift	James Patterson	2010-11-04	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Whit is walking in a New Order city when he sees that Wisty is to be executed in the Courtyard of Justice. He races to save her, only to find that she has already been killed, once again being fooled by The One when he sees she's still alive after she sets herself on fire (which, for Wisteria Allgood, is a good thing). Wisty reveals that The One killed Margo, an important Freelander. Whit and Wisty escape the New Order and head through a portal. They come out in a different part of the City of Progress. Whit sees Celia on a billboard, who tells him to turn himself in to the New Order, that everything he's done is wrong. As Celia fades away, we see that Whit feels strongly that Celia was really up on the board, and that she would never tell him to turn himself in. The One executes a soldier for failure to kill Wisty. Wisty and Whit return to Garfunkel's, to big surprise, and dismay when the Freelanders learn that Margo is dead. After several tears are shed, Wisty convinces the kids that they shouldn't be beating themselves up about Margo's death, that she wouldn't want them to. The Freelanders accept this and continue on. Whit and Wisty are assigned to a quest at a New Order jail as Stephen and Sydney Harmon, a very powerful witch and wizard. They manage to make it in and out of the place, but don't rescue the kids. After Whit and Wisty return, Whit shares with Janine, the Shaman of the group, a poem that he wrote about Celia, and Wisty destroys the romantic moment, telling Janine that Whit got the poem from their eighth grade English class. That night, they visit a Resistance concert, where Wisty learns of her gift in music. She describes being up on stage as a type of euphoria, a high. Whit sees a fake New Order "rock group" who call themselves "the Nopes". He then sympathizes his feelings about writing a six-page poem about Wisty's death. Wisty meets the Bionics, a popular New Order group, and their drummer, Eric, whom she finds very attractive. After almost getting caught by the New Order and using magic to get away, Eric and Wisty spend the night kissing and being together. Wisty wakes up in the morning to find her drumstick gone, much to her dismay, and she learns that Eric took it. Wisty, very angry, texts Eric, and eventually arranges a meeting at the City of Progress diner. But first she visits Mrs. Highsmith, the witch from the last book that almost got her arrested. After the visit, Wisty goes up to the diner, only to learn from Eric that he took the drumstick because he was working for the New Order. Wisty and Whit are taken in to a New Order school. The One continually tries to steal Wisty's Gift (which we learn is actually dominion over the element fire). After some help from Byron Swain, the kids get trapped in a frigid room for what looks like their final hours, but Whit and Wisty turn themselves into fish and escape the school. They return to Garfunkel's, and, taking some kids with them, go down to the abandoned war shelter. Garfunkel's, and the kids who were too scared to go with them, is then destroyed as the kids look on in horror and heartbreak. Whit decides they should go to Mrs. Highsmith's home again. He kisses Janine with very confused thoughts, obviously torn between Janine and Celia, and then returns to Mrs. Highsmith's home with Wisty. The witch gives them a message from their parents that also says that they should turn themselves in, that they should just give up in their quest. The One then appears, infuriating Wisty, who screams at Mrs. Highsmith that "she told him they were there". With horror, Mrs. Highsmith tells the kids that The One has "mastered air, earth, and water", the other three elements, and we learn that the reason why he needed Wisty's Gift is because he wanted to control all four of the elements. Wisty and Whit learn that that they can conjure things up with their imagination, and that is the center of their magic. Wisty says that The One's power is almost godlike. Wisty and Whit eventually surrender to The One. In the epilogue, Wisty and Whit's parents are executed, to Wisty and Whit's horror. Celia appears and freezes time so that Wisty can escape. The book ends with "to be continued", as did the last, with us unknowing of Whit's whereabouts, where Whit's going, or what Wisty has to do.
30239225	/m/0g596vg	The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans		2010-09		 In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a lampshade, purported to be made from the skin of a Jewish Holocaust victim, turned up in a sidewalk rummage sale in New Orleans. Purchased for $35 by Skip Henderson, the lampshade was sent to his friend Mark Jacobson, a writer living in New York. Jacobson embarked on a quest to discover the origin of the lampshade. Genetic testing showed that it was indeed made from human skin. However, because of the condition of the tanned skin, there was no way to determine the ethnic origin of the person whose skin was used, or if it was indeed a relic of the Holocaust. Over the course of the next few years Jacobson attempted to track down the origin of and examine the meaning of the lampshade, how it ended up in New Orleans, and to decide what to ultimately do with the gruesome object. Both the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, declined to take possession of the lampshade, saying that the concentration camp lampshades made of human skin were probably a "myth." Over the course of his investigation, Jacobson examines the history of the Buchenwald concentration camp, where such objects were reputed to have been made, as well as the racial and post-Katrina history of New Orleans, the world of Holocaust deniers, the black market trafficking in such goods, and the mythology surrounding objects made from human skin.
30246981	/m/0g5882l	White Sister				 During a routine day, Det. III Shane Scully accidentally strikes John Bodine, a homeless schizophrenic African America man with his car. After getting him medical attention and trying to offload the man without a lawsuit, Scully is called to a homicide where he finds a cop and former Crip gangbanger in his wife Alexa's car, and Alexa missing. A series of leads eventually finds Scully interrogating Lou "Luna" Maluga, a psychotic sociopath, and his estranged wife Stacy, the titular "White Sister," both big names in the rap music industry. After being repeatedly ordered to cease investigation and threatened with criminal charges or dismissals, Scully is given an out if he returns his wife's personal computer, only to find a series of romantic emails between his wife and the "Dark Angel," the same police officer found shot in Alexa's car with Alexa's weapon. Later, his son will point out that the majority of the text are veiled references to several rap slang terms and groups, making the messages coded transmissions from the undercover officer. During this time, he receives a phone call from Alexa where she confess to the murder and apparently commits suicide, leaving her in critical condition. Following Stacy Maluga, Scully is eventually lead to Derek Slater, another rap artist whom Stacy is attempting to turn against her husband by exercising an escape clause in his contract, and Bust-A-Cap, a well dressed, well educated, eloquent gentleman outside of his rap artist persona. Scully plays several tapes showing that Maluga is setting up Derek and planning to murder both him and Bust-A-Cap, which he appreciates but does not seem perturbed by, having been targeted with violence before. During this, Alexa undergoes surgery and slides into a coma, and is presumed guilty by the media forces arrayed against her. After learning that the "Dark Angel" really is an undercover officer on long term assignment, he begs that the department attempt to dissuade the media from continuing to slander his wife, and is flatly refused. After preventing there murder at Bust-a-Cap's latest concert performance, Scully eventually winds up in Vegas, and is captured along with Derek and Bust-A-Cap, and led out into the desert to be executed. Once there, Scully notices there are three dug graves, which is unusual as only Derek and Bust-A-Cap were targeted for murder and Scully was not expected to be in Las Vegas, let alone captured. As they stand around the graves, Scully idly asks Lou Maluga when he is planning on marrying his mistress and divorcing his wife. Extremely confused by the question, Lou Maluga allows Scully, over Stacy's shrieked objections, that Stacy can't allow Lou to divorce her, as the court costs and division of property would ruin the rap label she's struggled to maintain despite her husbands repeated violent episodes and husband's bungled business practices. After pointing out the number of graves, and explaining how the third one was originally meant for Lou, a violent shootout occurs. Lou Maluga and a few of his bodyguards are killed. Stacy, after confronting Scully and explaining how this doesn't affect her plans, is shot by her bodyguard "Insane Wayne," an undercover California Sheriff's officer. After collecting all the survivors, several quickly confess that they hijacked Alexa and her car, picked up the undercover officer, and executed him with Alexa's weapon, before forcing her to confess to his murder and shooting her in the head. Wayne, having been brought into the Maluga family by the "Dark Angel" was in danger by his relationship, and so no info had been allowed out that might've cleared his wife. Scully, enraged by the LAPD for throwing his wife under the bus, agrees to not sue for character defamation and slander in exchange for not being charged or punished for his violations. Alexa, still in a persistent vegetative coma, is scheduled to be taken off life support despite Scully's strong objections. But when he attends the hospice where she is kept, he finds her body gone. Finding a fire alarm going off in the basement, Scully heads down there to find John Bodine, whom Scully had befriended after a fashion, performing an African tribal dance around Alexa's body. Believing her to have died after being taken off life support, Scully and the doctors are shocked when she spontaneously revives, and slowly begins to recuperate.
30253685	/m/0gjbx2z	The Man in the Moone	Francis Godwin	1638	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book begins with a prologue in which Gonsales explains how a voyage to the Moon is no more fantastic than a voyage to America was considered earlier. The account proper contains a number of travel narratives, starting in Spain and ending in China. Godwin proposes that the earth is magnetic, and that only an initial push is necessary to escape its magnetic attraction. The energy necessary for this push is provided by a species of bird called gansas, specifically trained for the purpose. Galileo Galilei's 1610 publication Sidereus Nuncius had a great influence on Godwin's astronomical theories, but unlike Galileo, and like Kepler, Godwin proposes that the dark spots on the Moon are seas, one of many similarities between The Man in the Moone and Kepler's Somnium. Once on the Moon, Gonsales finds it inhabited by tall Christian people who live a happy and carefree life in a kind of pastoral paradise.
30257484	/m/0g58th_	The Mind Readers	Margery Allingham	1965	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Canon Avril is looking forward to hosting Albert Campion and his wife Lady Amanda for half-term, with their nephew Edward, and his cousin Sam. But strange things are happening at the electronics establishment on a remote island on the east coast where Sam's father works, and when the boys arrive at Liverpool Street Station an attempt is made to kidnap them. Then Edward goes missing, and Campion and DS Charles Luke find themselves caught up in a mystery, unexpectedly helped by a certain Thomas T. Knapp.....
30260682	/m/0g5b1xx	The Legend of Sun Knight				 The story takes place in a world somewhat reminiscent of Medieval period Europe. In this world, there are many Gods that get their power from the people that worship them. However, the Gods are forbidden from directly tampering with the human world. The more powerful Gods, in this case, the God of Light, grant certain humans some of their power in order to act out their will. The God of Light has twelve Knights to do so, led by the Sun Knight. With his enchanting blue eyes, shining golden hair and dazzling smile, he is the epitome of perfection—the perfect representative of justice and compassion. But in truth, the Sun Knight's true self is a cynical, sarcastic man who would rather be anything else than the overbearing Sun Knight who has to speak of the Light God in all his waking hours.
30266018	/m/0g59md3	The Deadly Dungeon	Ron Roy	1998	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The trio heads up to Wallis Wallace's castle in Maine where they begin to hear strange noises in the night. While Wallis Wallace says that it is the ghost of a famous movie star who lived there years back, Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose believe otherwise and are determined to find out the truth.
30270803	/m/0g53hjl	Overwinter	David Wellington	2010-09-14		 The novel picks up shortly after the end of Frostbite following werewolves Cheyenne “Chey” Clark and Montgomery “Monty” Powell as they travel toward the Arctic Circle in search of a cure for the curse of lycanthropy that has afflicted them both. Along the way they are joined by Dzo, the personification of the Inuit muskrat spirit, and Lucie, the French werewolf who gave Monty the curse of lycanthropy. They are pursued by Varkanin, a Russian hunter who has blue skin from silver poisoning that renders him nearly-immune to werewolf attacks, who is in the employ of the Canadian government that wants the werewolves killed so they can sign an oil development agreement with a foreign energy company. The search for the cure to the werewolves' condition is complicated by Chey's gradual loss of her human identity to her increasingly wolf-like nature.
30273470	/m/0g53qqq	Sapphique	Catherine Fisher		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 It is the sequel to “Incarceron.” The setting is in two places, a place of peace and less starvation which is all fake and governed by protocol in which they call “The Realm” and the other place is a prison called “Incarceron” which is microscopic in size but once inside it is a huge world and the prison itself is alive that looks at its prisoners through millions of red glowing eyes that dot everywhere. There is no technology in the realm because of protocol and Finn who escaped the prison believes the realm is just as bad as Incarceron. The story starts off with Attia who helped Finn escape but wasn’t able to escape herself. She goes to a magic show pretending to be an average bystander because she is the magician’s helper. His name is Rix and he is known as the Dark Enchanter. She tags along with him for a while and they go to a few places then she turns on him, leaving him to die but he comes back with a vengeance later on. She steals his glove which is Sapphique’s glove (a man who was the only one to escape from the prison, Finn did too as previously mentioned). She hatches a ride with Keiro, Finn’s oath brother, and they fight a twelve headed monster together. They are then summoned by Incarceron to go to a certain location, that has its humanoid body, and along the way they go to a nursery that gets them in contact with Finn. The prison wants to escape itself to see the stars, if it does this, it will leave millions of prisoners left to die. Meanwhile, Finn is told by Claudia that he is the long lost prince Giles but he has a hard time remembering. He has visions that depict this but he has a hard time putting it all together. To make matters worse, somebody else claims that they are Giles. There are some trials and testimonies between the two and we learn later that somebody else has taught this fake Giles, all of Finn’s old unrecoverable memory. The council decides that the pretender is actually Giles so they decide that Finn is going to be executed for lying (which he didn’t lie). He has a little battle with the pretender nearly killing him but he aims for his arm. Finn and Claudia run away to the wardnery, the portal to the prison and they do all in their power to hold off the Queen’s huge advancing army. Jared is Claudia’s mentor and he meets them there nearly getting killed by a plot from the Queen. Jared knows more about the portal then them and he starts working on it. Meanwhile, Keiro reaches the humanoid statue after becoming Rix’s apprentice. Keiro said the magic line that Rix wanted to hear that tells Rix who his apprentice is. If it wasn’t for Keiro, Attia would be dead because Rix's revenge would’ve killed her. Keiro decides to not give the prison the glove and puts it on himself. He trades places with Claudia. He is put in the place where Claudia was in the realm and she was put in his place in Incarceron. Incarceron recognizes her because Claudia was a baby when the Warden took her from the prison and wanted her to become queen. Now outside, Keiro gets the nice clothes he always wanted as well as the food but he realizes he is in the middle of a battle. They capture the Queen’s son and she holds fire. Some of the Queen’s soldiers get in by following a Steel Wolf (the warden’s protectors) and there is a little standoff but Finn’s team manages to pull through. The realm is fake, as previously mentioned, and all of its power is lost revealing its ugliness. It was all an illusion. Jared puts on the glove and we realize that he was Sapphique. He decides to keep the portal open so there is a constant connection between the Realm and Incarceron. Attia steps out of the prison for the first time and she is awed by the stars. Finn makes a pledge to put an end to protocol and to fix up both the prison and the realm. Sapphique (Jared) decides to do most of the tidying up for the prison. The story has several mini climaxes. The mini climaxes are surprising questions or conflicts that are raised and then another character’s viewpoint is seen. Finn was the main character and the bad guy was the prison. The conflict from the last book; “Incarceron” is solved when everybody gets a chance to escape.
30279175	/m/0g539_4	Jack Adrift: Fourth Grade Without a Clue				 We meet the Henry family as they are driving from their small western Pennsylvania town to their new lives in Cape Hatteras. On the way, Jack accidentally starts an argument between his two parents because his father will tell lies just to win people over, while his mother will be honest no matter what. When they get to Cape Hatteras, a guard stops them because the island is covered with water. Jack's father lies their way onto the island. Everyone in the family is disappointed with their new home, which is a trailer half submerged in the water. Jack meets a new friend, Julian, who likes to stutter and play air guitar. Jack lies to Julian and tells him that he is from New York City and that his father is an admiral. After that, Jack realizes that he is more like his dad. Jack develops a crush on his new teacher, Miss Noelle. Miss Noelle learns about his crush when she keeps Jack after school for not writing a report about his dreams. Miss Noelle tells him that some of the best friendships start with a crush. Meanwhile, the principal of First Flight Elementary, Mrs. Nivlash, asks to see Jack. She tells him her plan to allow gum chewing at the school. However, if someone sticks just one piece of gum, the privilege will be revoked. Mrs. Nivlash appoints Jack to become the school's "respect detective" - someone to report if gum is being stuck to things. Jack hates his new duty as a respect detective, so he just tells Mrs. Nivlash all the good things kids have been doing, prompting her to stop being suspicious. Jack's father is feeling depressed, so the Henry family decides to throw him a big birthday party. Jack gets him a lucky Buddha statuette, which his father begins to believe in after it brings him a streak of good luck. One day, however, Jack's father accidentally casts the Buddha into the ocean, prompting him to realize that all along, he just got lucky.
30282609	/m/0g57b03	Fire and Sword	Simon Scarrow	2009	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book covers the time period between December 1804 and April 1809. At the start of the novel, Napoleon has recently been crowned Emperor of France, while Arthur has returned from his successful campaigns in India. The plot of the novel revolves around Napoleon's wars in central Europe, and plans for the invasion of England, foiled by the Battle of Trafalgar. Running parallel to this story, Arthur Wesley is making a name for himself in the armies of Britain, commanding a unit of the army sent to deprive Napoleon of the Danish navy, and in the first expeditionary force sent to liberate Portugal from French rule. At the end of the novel, Napoleon's position is becoming more tenuous, with plots being hatched against him, while Arthur has begun to inflict the first defeats on the armies of Napoleon in the Iberian Peninsula.
30290563	/m/0g5ppx5	How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming	Michael E. Brown	2010	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 The memoir is a non-fiction account of the events surrounding the eventual demotion of Pluto from full-planetary status. It chronicles the discovery of Eris, a dwarf planet even larger than Pluto, located within the Kuiper belt, beyond Neptune's orbit. The replaying of events include the adversarial challenging of long-held scientific beliefs between some of the world's leading astronomers, and the eventual 2006 International Astronomical Union's vote to demote Pluto from the nine planets of the Solar System.
30291999	/m/0g5t4qk	Vengeance of Orion	Ben Bova		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Orion continues on his adventures and finds himself a thetes on board a Greek ship headed to the city of Troy and makes friends with a talkative old man called Poletes. The Golden One then appears to him revealing himself as Apollo the Greek god and that his plans are for the Trojans to be victorious in that era so as to create a Euro-Asian Empire. Little by little he remembers he was meant to be on a mission to the stars when his ship exploded. He ends up blaming the Golden One for the destruction of the ship. He then decides to thwart whatever plans Apollo might have for the era and ends up saving the Greek camp from being overrun by the Trojans on a counter attack. His courageous acts earn the attention of Odysseus who then adopts him as a member of his household. As a favor Orion requests that Poletes becomes his servant thereby elevating the man's station. Odysseus' first duty for Orion is to accompany him with Ajax and Nestor to Achilles' tent to persuade him to return into the fray. Achilles had earlier withdrawn from the battle because Agamemnon had taken from Bris whom he captured. Achilles however insists on only re-entering battle when High King Agamemnon apologizes to him. Seeing this is an impossibility, Odysseus and his team withdraw and he then asks Orion to go as a herald to the Trojans with an offer of peace. Orion, sensing this will enable the Trojans to win changes the demand to the previous insulting demands brought by earlier heralds. This offer is of course rejected and while there he notices a weak point in the walls of Troy via the Western section built by men. The Trojans then send Orion back to the Greek camp with their refusal and a warning that the Hatti are coming to their defense. This news upsets the Greeks who had earlier been assured by the Hattis of their intention not to interfere in the Trojan War. Orion is then sent to the Hattis with a copy of the agreement with the Hattis only to discover that the mighty empire of the Hattis had disintegrated and the soldiers were nothing more than bandits. He then encounters a band of Hatti soldiers led by Lukka who agree to follow him back to his camp. Upon return he discovers Achilles' partner Patrocles is dead and this has prompted Achilles to enter the battle again. He faces off with Hector and defeats him cutting off his head. However, Achilles is wounded by a stray arrow piercing his heel. He later commits suicide. Lukka and his group then help in building a ramp over then Western section of the wall and by this the Greeks enter into Troy and raze the city to the ground, thus defeating Apollo's plans. While the spoils are being shared the High King takes half of all the goods which leads to dissatisfaction. Poletes uses this to make fun of him but Agamemnon decides to blind him. This upsets Orion and he decides to leave, taking Helen with him who decided against going back to Sparta because of the barbaric way of life there. She suggests going to Egypt where she believes she would be treated civilly. On their way he meets Apollo who instructs him to assist the Israelites in their toppling of Jericho's wall before arriving in Egypt. On arrival, he is involved in palace intrigues again as Pharaoh's Chief priest has been poisoning him and usurping his power. Also, Menelaus has arrived in Egypt having been told by Nekoptah that his wife is in Egypt. Nekoptah tries to set up Orion to be killed in addition to killing his twin brother, Hetepamon. He is however, able to turn the tables against Nekoptah with the help of the crown prince and Hetepamon. He also assists the other Creators to capture Apollo who has actually gone mad and was trying to kill the others so as to be the only one and be worshiped as god. Nekoptah still tries one last time to set Orion up with Menelaus but he loses and is killed when he kidnapped Helen. However, Orion is stabbed through the heart with a spear by Nekoptah, who then dies. Orion wakes up later in the Neolithic and sees Anya, who then wakes up after he kisses her. The novel then ends with an epilogue which is the beginning of the succeeding book.
30294262	/m/0g5r15p	The Fields of Death	Simon Scarrow	2010-06-24	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book covers the time period between April 1809, and 1815, the climax of the conflict at the battle of Waterloo. At the start of the novel, Napoleon is facing increasing pressure as his marshals are repeatedly defeated by Arthur Wellesley, leading the allied armies of Britain and Spain. The plot of the novel revolves around Napoleon's wars in central Europe, and failed invasion of Russia, as his armies rapidly lose men and their reputation for invincibility. Running parallel to this story, Arthur Wesley is leading the allied forces to victory in the Peninsula War, before invading Southern France. The novel ends with Napoleon and Wellington finally meeting in battle, at Waterloo.
30297100	/m/0g5r_4j	Schilder-boeck	Carel van Mander			 The book begins with a book on the "foundations" of the painter's art. This introductory book has fourteen chapters on art theory listing such subjects as landscapes, animals, drapery, and arrangements of subjects. The following books are set up as lists of biographies or "explanations". Van Mander split his book into six basic parts that have separate title pages and are indexed. Because the pages are numbered only on the right-hand page, the indexes have an addendum to the page number to indicate the front (recto) or back (verso) of the "folio" to be able to locate text more efficiently. Looking up painters remains difficult because the indexes use first names rather than last names, since the last names in use by the painters themselves were not consistent in all regions where the painters were active. Many painters were better known by their nicknames than their given names. For this reason, the spelling of the names used in the text do not always match the names in the indexes. * Foundations (Den Grondt der Edel vry Schilder-const: Waer in haer ghestalt, aerdt ende wesen, de leer-lustighe Jeught in verscheyden Deelen in Rijm-dicht wort voor ghedraghen.) * Lives of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman painters (Het Leven Der oude Antijcke doorluchtighe Schilders, soo wel Egyptenaren, Griecken als Romeynen) * Lives of modern Italian painters (Het Leven Der Moderne, oft dees-tijtsche doorluchtighe Italiaensche Schilders.) * Lives of great Dutch and German painters (Het Leven der Doorluchtighe Nederlandtsche, en Hooghduytsche Schilders.) * Explanation of Ovid's Metamorphosis (Wtlegghingh op den Metamorphosis Pub. Ouidij Nasonis.) * Explanation of Figures (Uvtbeeldinge der Figueren) The biographies in the book are similar in style and format to Giorgio Vasari's book. Karel van Mander digresses only rarely from the format; starting per painter with an overview of the childhood years and a list of teachers, followed by some career information and concluding with a list of notable works. The second edition includes a biography of van Mander himself that Miedema believes was written by his brother, who may have been with him on his deathbed.
30303269	/m/0g5s2f2	Maigret and the Dosser		1963		 Maigret investigates the circumstances when a homeless tramp is recovered from the Seine, after being attacked and badly wounded. The tramp proves to be a former doctor, known to fellow tramps as 'The Doc', who abandoned his family twenty years previously to work in Gabon, but returned to Paris to live rough, mainly under various bridges. Thanks to Madame Maigret's sister, who lives in Mulhouse, Maigret learns more of the family background. His wife, estranged but not divorced, is persuaded to visit him in hospital, but displays no affection or interest in a reconciliation. The tramp, identified as François Keller, was rescued by Jef van Houtte, a Belgian barge owner, and whilst in hospital, refuses to talk. But Maigret suspects that Keller knows his attacker and is keeping quiet for a good reason. He also believes that the Belgian is not telling him the whole story. Under intense interrogation, van Houtte eventually confesses that many years ago he was responsible for the death by drowning of his father-in-law and that Keller was a witness. But Keller still won't say anything, and Maigret is forced to release the Belgian for lack of evidence. Keller returns to his life on the streets.
30303286	/m/0g5ps09	Decoding Reality		2010		 The book explains the world as being made up of information. The Universe and its workings are the ebb and flow of information. We are all transient patterns of information, passing on the recipe for our basic forms to future generations using a four-letter digital code called DNA. In this engaging and mind-stretching account, Vlatko Vedral considers some of the deepest questions about the Universe and considers the implications of interpreting it in terms of information. He explains the nature of information, the idea of entropy, and the roots of this thinking in thermodynamics. He describes the bizarre effects of quantum behaviour - effects such as 'entanglement', which Einstein called 'spooky action at a distance' and explores cutting edge work on the harnessing quantum effects in hyperfast quantum computers, and how recent evidence suggests that the weirdness of the quantum world, once thought limited to the tiniest scales, may reach into the macro world. Vedral finishes by considering the answer to the ultimate question: where did all of the information in the Universe come from? The answers he considers are exhilarating, drawing upon the work of distinguished physicist John Wheeler and his concept of “it from bit”. The ideas challenge our concept of the nature of particles, of time, of determinism, and of reality itself.
30314483	/m/0g5qwzx	The Carbon Diaries: 2015		2009-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The book chronicles a year of the life of Laura, a sixteen year old student in London, as England imposes carbon rationing in the wake of weather-related disasters. The stresses of rationing and extreme weather tear at the social fabric of Europe and England, while Laura's family is torn apart as her father loses his job and her selfish older sister refuses to adapt. Laura just wants to live a normal life, attract the attention of the fetching and accomplished boy next door, and practice with her friends in her garage band.
30315642	/m/0g5q47x	Starfall	Stephen Baxter			 In the year 4771 colonized planets around nearby stars plan to win their freedom from Earth. Since they are only capable of sublight space flight their rebellion is fifty years in the making. They launch several waves of GUTships and a computer virus against earth. It is discovered that Empress Shira, who has ruled Earth and its colonies for nearly a thousand years is a refugee from the future, a member of the religious group known as The Friends of Wigner, who is attempting to guide Earth into her future using a dangerous mathematical modeling device, the "logic pool". In 4820 the starborn's rebellion succeeds and Shira is forced to shut down the logic pool before using a transdimensional transport system to escape. The device also inadvertently alerts an alien race called the Squeem to the presence of humans.
30315838	/m/0g5sgdx	Curious George Gets a Medal	H. A. Rey	1957	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 George makes a mess with ink and a fountain pen and tries to wash it away with the garden hose, but the room fills with water and he hurries to a nearby farm to get a portable pump. He is chased by the farmer but eludes him by entering a museum. He makes another mess with a dinosaur display but Professor Wiseman wants him to go up in a space ship and then bail out. George agrees and is given a tiny space suit. At the critical moment, it is uncertain whether George will jump or not, but he does and the experiment is a success. George is carried to Earth by a parachute and is awarded a medal.
30316001	/m/0g5sdwm	No Boats on Bannermere	Geoffrey Trease	1949	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 William Melbury and his younger sister Susan (Sue) live with their mother in the south of England, in furnished rooms. His mother inherits a cottage from her second cousin; but only if she lives in it for five years. Cousin Fay disliked week-enders and wanted Beckfoot Cottage to be lived in. So they move from the south of England to the cottage in Bannermere, Upper Bannerdale. William and Susan transfer to schools at Winthwaite five miles away, a boy’s grammar school and a county secondary school. Bill befriends Tim Darren and Sue befriends Penelope (Penny) Morchard at their respective schools. Bill finds that Cousin Fay also owns a rowboat and they row to the island of Brant Holm in the lake. But the owner of Bannermere Hall stops his tenant the farmer Mr Tyler leasing them the boathouse by the lake. Sir Alfred Askew only bought the property last year when he retired from India, but is determined to play the local squire, complete with monocle. They suspect Sir Alfred of something, go into his woods, and find that he has uncovered an ancient buried skeleton on the lakeside. There are actually five skeletons, possibly from the 9th century during the period of Viking raids, and Sir Alfred has not notified the police of the find. An inquest is held. Later when Bill sees an aerial photo of the lake, he sees shading indicating a burial on the island in the lake. They investigate, and uncover a buried skeleton, but are interrupted by Sir Alfred and his friend Matson an antique-dealer. There are also some silver dishes and flagons, probably the monastery treasure mentioned in an old chronicle of St Coloumbs Abbey in Yorkshire. At the inquest they are deemed treasure trove, as the skeleton was Christian and buried facing east with hands crossed on the breast (as proved by Tim’s photo). As finders the four get three hundred pounds reward each. Sir Alfred claimed it could have been a heathen burial by Norsemen with the items buried publicly; as at Sutton Hoo the items would not be treasure trove but would belong to the landowner. Matson would have sold them for a high price in America.
30324028	/m/0g5r5q0	Battle Hymn of China				 It was written at a time when the Kuomintang and Chinese Communists were in a United Front against the Japanese invasion, and before the Japanese attack on the USA at Pearl Harbour. Agnes Smedley had spent many years in China, and spent much of it with the various armies, both regular and guerrilla. Like Edgar Snow, she met the future leaders of Communist China when they were living in rural isolation. She also witnessed the Xian Incident and gives her own account of it in this book, along with her view of He Long, Chu Teh (Zhu De) and Mao. She takes her own very distinct view of Mao: :What I now remember of Mao Tze-tung was the following months of precious friendship; they both confirmed and contradicted his inscrutability. The sinister quality I had first felt so strongly in him proved to be spiritual isolation. As Chu Teh was loved, Mao Tze-tung was respected. The few who came to know him best had affection for him, but his spirit dwelt within itself, isolating him... :In him was none of the humility of Chu. Despite that feminine quality in him, he was as stubborn as a mule, and a steel rod of pride and determination ran through his nature. I had the impression that he would wait and watch for years, but eventually have his way. (Book IV, Chapter 3, p. 122 of the Victor Gollancz edition.) She also spent a lot time with the rank-and-file and with non-Communist Chinese, living at the same level as ordinary Chinese and using basic First Aid skills to help in hospitals where both supplies and trained staff were short. Though the book describes a war, it is mostly about how various individuals react to the war, mostly Chinese but also foreigners. She gives a poignant account of how she wanted to adopt a Chinese boy who had served as her orderly, and to secure a good education for him. But the boy felt it was his duty to stay with the army. She takes an individual and non-ideological view, noting merit where she sees it, including among captured Japanese who had turned against the war. She also notes and praises a community of nuns that was living at the same level as poor Chinese. She takes a polite view of Chiang Kai-Shek and praises the work of Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong May-ling). Although the book was published in 1943, it ends with the events of 1941. A Japanese attack on the European powers and the USA is correctly foreseen. She frequently notes how the Japanese were using war materials supplied by the USA. The book was highly influential at the time. It is not currently in print, but was re-issued in 1984 under the title China Correspondent. It is frequently cited as a source in biographies of Mao.
30324778	/m/0g5r_x3	Antispin	Richard Bronson		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Eight-hundred Chinese soldiers are found dead on the Chinese-Pakistan border. No wounds, no clues, no signs of battle. An American doctor working in Venezuela discovers an entire village dead without apparent cause. Concerned about a new weapon system of mass destruction, the American Secretary of State turns to Nobel Laureate physicist, Noah Schwartz. Autopsies are forwarded to the Centers for Disease Control and then to Schwartz. Tapping his world-renowned contacts, Schwartz finds a theory that was to be released at a famous scientific conference but then inexplicably withdrawn. One of the two referees is dead while the other directs a secret research laboratory in Algeria. Other powers learn of the laboratory and move against it. As China and Pakistan edge towards war, Noah Schwartz races to grasp the secret technology and avert nuclear disaster.
30325490	/m/0g5pvtj	Wynter Chelsea				 Wynter Chelsea introduces two families that have been fighting supernatural beings for generations. Depicted as The Wynter Chelsea Legacy, they are the greatest human threat to the evil that walks the earth. Amanda Chelsea belongs to the new generation of fighters and is consequently the only female to ever be born in the legacy. She is shielded from the battles at a young age, therefore growing up with little knowledge of the outside forces that her family faces. The new generation of Wynters and Chelseas acquired gifts at the age of ten. Jack Chelsea has the ability to conjure items out of thin air; Dustin Wynter has the ability of telepathy; Trevor Wynter has the ability of precognition; and Amanda Chelsea has the ability to feel other people's emotions. Amanda's empathic gift has been the source of much turmoil in her life, but her curiosity and need to be in the legacy is the true catalyst. After Amanda rebelliously shoots a supernatural force, her parents mysteriously go missing. The four young adults set out on a journey in an Oldsmobile 442 desperately searching for their parents. Along the way Amanda uncovers secrets that have been buried in her family since she was born. And they all face the danger that their parents may have been taken by the one supernatural being that no Wynter or Chelsea could ever destroy - The Marathaca.
30334254	/m/0glr4v4	Turning Thirty	Mike Gayle	2000	{"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"}	 Unlike most people Matt Beckford is actually looking forward to turning thirty. After struggling through most of his twenties he thinks his career, finances and love life are finally sorted. But when he splits up with his girlfriend, he realises that life has different plans for him. Unable to cope with his future falling apart Matt temporarily moves back to his parents. During his enforced exodus only his old school mates can keep him sane. Friends he hasn't seen since he was nineteen. Back together after a decade apart. But things will never be the same for any of them because when you’re turning thirty nothing’s as simple as it used to be.
30339271	/m/0g5s9jk	Fire: From A Journal of Love	Anaïs Nin	1995	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/02gsv": "Personal journal"}	 She continues her marriage with Hugh Parker Guiler and her literary and sexual relationship with Henry Miller. Both these follow her to New York and win her back from Otto Rank. She returns to Paris and eventually gives up practicing psychoanalysis. She feels over dependent on Henry and continues to take love where she finds it. She begins a very passionate affair with the wildly romantic but irresponsible Peruvian, Gonzalo Moré.
30339416	/m/05cd1sr	Grass	Sheri S. Tepper	1989	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Chief protagonist Marjorie Westriding-Yrarier juggles family issues and her conflicting religious beliefs as her family is sent to the little-understood world of Grass to seek a cure for the mysterious alien plague afflicting all of mankind. The first stage of this search will be to befriend the human aristocracy of the planet who have seemingly become obsessed with a localised variant of fox hunting using the planet’s native fauna in place of the horses, hounds, and foxes found on Earth.
30353263	/m/0g5rgmr	The Mousehole Cat		1991		 One very stormy winter, none of the fishermen of the village of Mousehole () in Cornwall have been able to leave the harbour for a long while and the village is near starvation. Tom Bawcock and his loyal black and white cat, Mowzer, decide to brave the storms and set sail to catch some fish. When the boat hits the storm, it is represented by a giant "Storm-Cat", which allows Mowzer to eventually save the day by soothing the storm with her purring. This purring becomes a song and while the Storm-Cat is resting Tom is able to haul in his catch and return to harbour. When they arrive back at the village, the entire catch is baked into a "Star-Gazy" pie, on which the villagers feast.
30354964	/m/0g5rmj5	The Apocalypse Troll	David Weber	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story opens in the 25th Century, when a small force of human warships encounter a larger group of Kanga ships 'forty light-months from anywhere in particular'. The Kanga are a violently xenophobic alien race who have tried and failed to wipe out humanity in a war they are losing, which has lasted over 400 years. It becomes apparent that the Kanga force is a final desperate attempt to defeat the humans by using an untried time travel theory to go back in time many thousands of years and wipe out humanity before it became a threat. They will have to stopped by any means! They were partially successful and both humans and kangas arrived in the outer solar system in early 21st century. A final battle results in a single human space fighter chasing a kanga tender and its escort of fighters to the outer atmosphere of Earth. Only the accidental involvement of a task force of the US Navy prevented the death of humanity. The human fighter crashed into the ocean and one enemy fighter survived. The badly injured human pilot survives her crash landing and is rescued by a passing yacht. The yacht is crewed singlehanded by a US Navy SEAL on his retirement cruise (Captain Dick Aston). The very young looking pilot is in a coma and has a hole right through her. The wound starts to heal before Dick’s eyes and he spends the next 4 days feeding her while she remains in a healing trance. When she wakes she informs Dick she is Colonel Ludmilla Leonovna of the Terran Marines and no she isn’t a Russian. Ludmilla tells the story of the war and her arrival in 2007. Her healing is caused by a symbiote which came from a mutated bio-weapon of the Kanga, it helps its host in many ways. She also tells Dick that the enemy fighter is ‘crewed’ by a Troll. A Troll is psychopathic cyborg with a human brain created by the Kanga as warriors. Trolls hate both humanity and kangas and love to kill cruelly. Trolls also have a limited telepathic ability to read and influence about 30% of minds. Ludmilla is convinced the Troll will try to enslave or destroy humanity! The next ten chapters deal with letting the world know about the troll without the troll knowing they know! Plans to destroy the troll are made while waiting for the troll to reveal itself. An impossible theft of Plutonium in the US concentrates plans there. Eventually the troll reveals itself by inculcating racial hatreds in a circular area of the southern US. A final battle with the troll and its minions takes place in the mountains of North Carolina. Ludmilla destroys the troll at great risk to herself. However in the process Dick is struck with a lethal weapon, and in desperation Ludmilla injects him with a sample of her own blood which while almost certainly lethal (as the bio-weapon is to more than 99% of the human race) hardly matters now. Sometime later Dick revives and finds himself growing younger with his own symbiote in place, as he recovers the President visits and confirms that the Trolls ship was captured intact and he outlines plans to reverse engineer it and create a world government ensuring that this time the Kanga's won't get anywhere near Earth, and humanity will be spared five centuries of war. The President allows the two to slip away into hiding listed as dead in battle, and a few months later the couple are on their new yacht in the Pacific as they await a flash in the night sky, the silent monument to a crew who died centuries from home to save an Earth not their own.
30358303	/m/0g5pz91	Now I Know	Aidan Chambers	1987	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Nik, a seventeen-year-old boy, is inspired to study the relationship of Christianity to contemporary life when he is chosen to play Jesus Christ in a film project. Tom is investigating a the mystery of a body found hanging from a scrapyard crane. Julie is in hospital, bandaged from head to foot.
30363390	/m/0g5s85b	Player One	Douglas Coupland	2010-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is divided into five chapters. Each chapter is divided into five parts, each describing events from the perspective of one of the five main characters: Karen, Rick, Luke, Rachel, and Player One. The first chapter "Hour One: Cue the Flaming Zeppelin" has Karen arriving at the Toronto airport on a flight from Winnipeg to meet a man she met online. She sits on a stool at the airport hotel bar in which Rick is the bartender, Rachel is at a computer terminal, and Luke is sitting at a table drinking scotch. Rachel is there with the expectation to meet a man who can father her child and approaches Luke. Karen's date goes badly as she finds the man too assertive physically and too distant intellectually. A self-help guru, Leslie Freemont, enters with his assistant Tara to welcome Rick into his empowerment program; Leslie gives a speech to the group, takes Rick's money, and leaves. Meanwhile, oil prices rapidly increase and explosions start to occur outside. With the power unreliable, Karen, Rick, Luke, and Rachel run to Rick's vehicle to listen to the radio. Karen's date, Warren, is killed by a sniper as he runs to the group who quickly return to the bar lounge where they barricade themselves in. In "Hour Three: God's little Dumpsters" Karen's daughter tells them, over the phone, of rioting and general chaos that is occurring. Rick and Luke crawl through the ventilation shafts to the roof to overpower the sniper but fail and retreat to the lounge. As chemical fall-out starts to land on the airport the sniper seeks shelter in the lounge and is taken prisoner by the other characters. In "Hour Four: Hello, My Name Is: Monster" Rick and Rachel have sex, the sniper explains his motivations, and a teenager suffering from chemical burns seeks their help. In the final chapter "Hour Five: The View From Inside Daffy Duck's Hole" Karen and Luke tend to the teenager’s wounds. Rachel discovers that the sniper is actually Leslie Freemont's son, and upon stating this, the sniper panics, manages to get his gun back and shoots Rachel. The final part of the final chapter is told from the combined point-of-view of Rachel and Player One, who exist in what is labeled as Eternity, and provide an epilogue revealing the fates of the characters. ; Karen : A divorced mother of one daughter, and a receptionist at a psychiatrist office, who travels from Winnipeg to Toronto to meet Warren whom she met in an online forum. ; Rick : A divorced father of one son, and a recovering alcoholic, who works as a bartender at the Toronto Airport Camelot Hotel. He has been saving money to enroll in an empowerment program operated by Leslie Freemont. ; Luke : A pastor of a church in Nipissing, Ontario who lost his faith in religion, stole $20,000 from the church and fled to Toronto. ; Rachel : A young woman who operates a business that breeds lab mice and lives with psychological conditions on the Autism spectrum. Among her psychological conditions is prosopagnosia, as well as an inability to understand humour, metaphors, irony, or social cues. She wants to become pregnant to prove to her parents that she can lead what they consider a normal life. ; Player One : A disembodied voice who watches the events and comments on the character's past, present, and future actions and circumstances. ; Warren : The man who Karen is scheduled to meet at the hotel bar. ; Leslie Freemont : A self-help guru who operates the Power Dynamics Seminar System. He arrives with his assistant Tara to accept Rick into the program. ; Bertis : A religious fanatic, the son of Leslie Freemont, and the sniper on the bar's roof. ; Max : A teenager who tries to covertly take photos of Karen during their flight. He stumbles upon the group as he flees the chemical fall-out.
30363990	/m/0g5p_0h	Sapphira and the Slave Girl	Willa Cather	1940-12-07	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Except for the epilogue, the book takes place entirely in 1856. Sapphira is an unhappy middle-aged woman, crippled by dropsy, who came to marriage late and married beneath her station. Her husband, Henry, a miller, lives an entirely separate life, residing at his mill and visiting the estate house only for occasional meals. Sapphira is comfortable with slavery; Henry is not. Having overheard a conversation between two of her slaves, Sapphira develops a paranoid fear that Henry is having an affair with an attractive young mulatto girl named Nancy. Sapphira responds by mistreating Nancy. Eventually Sapphira invites a dissolute nephew to the estate, who threatens to rape Nancy on several occasions. With the help of the Colbert's daughter, Rachel Colbert Blake, and two abolitionist neighbors, Nancy is helped to make connections with the Underground Railroad and taken to Canada. The epilogue takes place 25 years later. Nancy, now in her 40s, returns to Virginia to visit her mother, and Mrs. Blake. The narrator (Cather) is revealed to be a child who has heard stories of Nancy's escape all of her life.
30406425	/m/0g5t1q8	Titan				 The ten thousand civilians of the space habitat Goddard have now finally begun their lives in the Saturn system, after an exhausting two-year journey that almost plunged the infant colony into an authoritative regime. As the probe "Titan Alpha" lands on the moon's surface, a number of strange electrical problems begin happening aboard the space habitat.
30407675	/m/0g5r8lj	Balance of Power				 When a famous Federation scientist dies, his son puts his inventions up for sale to the highest bidder—whether Federation, Klingon, Romulan or Cardassian. Among the items at auction are medical devices, engineering advances—and a photon pulse canon capable of punching through a starship's shields with a single shot. Meanwhile, at the Academy, Wesley Crusher comes to the aid of his best friend—and finds himself kidnapped by outlaw Ferengi bent on controlling the universe through commerce. When they also set their sights on the photon canon, Captain Picard must find a way to save the Starship Enterprise and the Federation from the deadliest weapon ever known—with every race in the galaxy aligned against him.
30408866	/m/0g5snsj	Moon Over Manifest	Clare Vanderpool	2010-10-12	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Moon Over Manifest tells the stories of two independent youths who find themselves living—almost by accident—in the small Kansas town of Manifest in two different eras. The two parallel storylines overlap extensively, and both discuss themes of belonging and of feeling an outsider in a community of outsiders. The primary story, a first-person account of Abilene Tucker's adventures living with an old friend of her father's in Manifest in 1936, revolves around a chance encounter with Miss Sadie, Manifest's mysterious Hungarian diviner. Spending the summer working off a debt to Miss Sadie, Abilene finds herself pulled into the story of a boy, known only as Jinx, who train-hops his way to Manifest in 1917 and assimilates into a community divided along cleavages of ethnic origin and economic class. Miss Sadie's unpredictable recounting of Jinx's story coincides with Abilene's discovery of a box of letters and mementos which play conspicuous roles in Jinx's adventures. Abilene, along with her new friends Ruthanne and Lettie, sets out on an extensive mission to unmask a spy (known by the codename "The Rattler") mentioned in one of the letters, Abilene all the while hoping that their search will uncover clues about the enigmatic character of her father and Abilene's perceived abandonment. When the present-day spy mission and Miss Sadie's narrative begin to overlap, Abilene uncovers truths about Manifest that change not only her conception of the town and its people, but of her familial history and, ultimately, her own desires for independence and security. The second storyline, Miss Sadie's third-person recounting of Jinx's arrival in Manifest in 1917, is supplemented by newspaper clippings and letters from the era found by Abilene. Jinx arrives in Manifest in October 1917 and immediately befriends young local Ned Gillen, adopted son of the Manifest hardware store owner of ambiguous ethnic origin. As their relationship develops, Ned helps Jinx feel welcome in Manifest while Jinx helps Ned learn the skills the former has garnered from a life on the road. Once Ned goes off to war, however, Jinx's relationship with the citizens of Manifest changes forever, as he is forced to prove his worth as an outsider without the assistance of an inside friend. This storyline focuses heavily on the role of immigration in mining towns such as Manifest; as the story progresses, Jinx finds himself helping the miners regain their dignity and escape the clutches of the avaricious mine-owners. Historical events mentioned in the book include Prohibition, coal mining, orphan trains, World War One, Spanish Influenza, and immigration.
30427958	/m/0g5qtmb	Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It	Gary Taubes	2010-12		 Analyzing anthropological evidence and modern scientific literature, Taubes contends that the common “calories in, calories out” model of why we get fat is incorrect. Instead, Taubes promotes a low-carbohydrate diet, arguing that the consumption of carbohydrates drives the body to release insulin, which in turn can lead to insulin resistance (and diabetes) over time. Taubes also asserts that the consumption of carbohydrates leads the body to store excess energy in fat cells, but that reducing dietary intake of carbohydrates results in the body entering ketosis. In this state, the body breaks down fat (triglycerides) in order to fuel the brain. Although Taubes points out his beliefs regarding consumption of carbohydrates, he clarifies that “this is not a diet book, because it’s not a diet we’re discussing.”
30428029	/m/0g9w_8l	Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother		2011		 An article published under the headline “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in the Wall Street Journal on January 8, 2011, contained excerpts from her book, in which Chua describes her efforts to give her children what she describes as a traditional, strict “Chinese” upbringing. This piece was controversial. Many readers missed the irony and self-deprecating humor in the title and the piece itself and instead believed that Chua was advocating the “superiority” of a particular, very strict, ethnically defined approach to parenting. In fact Chua has stated that the book was not a "how-to" manual but a self-mocking memoir. In any case, Chua defines “Chinese mother” loosely to include parents of other ethnicities who practice traditional, strict child-rearing, while also acknowledging that “Western parents come in all varieties,” and not all ethnically Chinese parents practice strict child-rearing. Chua also reported that in one study of 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, the vast majority 'said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job."' Chua contrasts them with the view she labels “Western”that a child’s self-esteem is paramount. In one extreme example, Chua mentioned that she had called one of her children “garbage,” a translation of a term her own father called her on occasion in her family’s native Hokkien dialect. Particularly controversial was the ‘Little White Donkey’ anecdote, where Chua described how she got her unwilling younger daughter to learn a very difficult piano piece. In Chua’s words, “… I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have ‘The Little White Donkey’ perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, ‘I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?’ I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.” They then “work[ed] right through dinner” without letting her daughter “get up, not for water, not even for bathroom breaks.” The anecdote concludes by describing how her daughter was “beaming” after she finally mastered the piece and “wanted to play [it] over and over.” Chua uses the term "Tiger Mother" to mean a mother who is a strict disciplinarian. This use of the term appears to be fairly recent. In his novel South Wind published in 1917, Norman Douglas uses the phrase to mean a mother who will do anythingincluding committing murderto protect her child.
30442087	/m/0g5rm33	This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn	Aidan Chambers	2005	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Teenager Cordelia Kenn writes a pillow book for her unborn daughter, speaking of her friendships, romantic experiences, poetry, her special relationship with her teacher Julie, a boy named Will, trees and how her daughter came to be. The pillow book was inspired from Sei Shonagon's pillow book during the Heian Culture in Japan, from which she also gets her inspiration for poetry from Poetry Immortal Izumi Shikibu. Throughout the book's 800 pages Cordelia's teenage years and her character are written and made important to you.
30449279	/m/0g5rk0m	Succubus Heat	Richelle Mead	2009-06-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Georgina Kincaid has been a bad, bad succubus... which should be a good thing. But lately, thanks to her foul mood over breaking up with bestselling writer Seth Mortensen, she’s been so wicked that Seattle’s über-demon Jerome, decides to “outsource” Georgina to a rival—and have her spy for him in the process. Being exiled to the frozen north—okay, Vancouver—and leaving Seth in the cozy clutches of his new girlfriend is unpleasant enough. Then Jerome is kidnapped, and all immortals under his control mysteriously lose their powers. One bright spot: with her life-sucking ability gone, there’s nothing to keep Georgina from getting down and dirty with Seth—nothing apart from his girlfriend that is. Now, as the supernatural population starts turning on itself, a newly mortal Georgina must rescue her boss and figure out who’s been playing them—or all hell will break loose...
30458203	/m/0g5q6ys	In Chancery	John Galsworthy		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concentrates on the marital failures of Soames Forsyte and to a lesser extent that of his sister Winifred Dartie and on the building antipathy between Soames and his cousin Young Jolyon Forsyte who develops a friendship with Soames' estranged wife Irene. This friendship eventually leads to an affair and Irene's divorce from Soames.
30461839	/m/0g9xk32	Eleven Blue Men		1953		 A man collapses in a Manhattan street and is taken to a doctor; he has abdominal cramping, retching, confusion and an alarming bluish hue to the skin. The doctor is understandably confused, and at first diagnoses carbon monoxide poisoning, which is known to cause cyanosis (a blue colour to the extremities due to oxygen deprivation). The hospital prepares for a mass poisoning due to a gas leak or other possible cause; they are right. Another ten men turn up at the hospital with the same symptoms, making the eponymous eleven blue men. At this point, it becomes an epidemic and the Department of Health is called in to investigate. The two investigators recognise the case as similar as an extremely rare poisoning. Only ten recorded outbreaks have happened, and up until then the largest number of people affected in each one was four. This had become the worst incidence in history. By the time they reach the hospital, one man has already died. The others have begun to recover, but the Department of Health is determined to find the underlying cause. They quickly rule out gas poisoning – they don't have one of the main symptoms, and it took too long to present. Instead, after questioning the men, they discover that the men all got sick soon after eating the same food in the same place: oatmeal in a cafeteria. This suggests food poisoning, but of an incredibly rare type that the doctors have never seen before. The men do not have the main symptoms of food poisoning: diarrhoea and vomiting. Also, the incubation period is too short for the most common bacterial poisonings. They also suspect recreational drugs, but the men deny this, saying that they drink quite heavily but nothing else. This brings them back to the oatmeal. Did it have something in it that could cause this reaction? The other possibilities are a chemical contaminant. The men are given a blood test and the doctors also visit the cafeteria where they had eaten shortly before becoming ill. They meet someone from the Bureau of Food and Drugs, who finds multiple violations of the health code in the cafeteria – it is infested with vermin and has open sewage lines, amongst other things. They ask the cook how he made the oatmeal that morning and he explains how he uses dry cereal, water and a handful of salt. The cereal is a generic brand and the water is municipal; these are ruled out as sources of the poison, as more people would be sick if this were the case. That leaves the salt. On the same shelf as the can of salt is another can full of white grains. The doctors ask the chef what this is; he responds that this is saltpetre, used to preserve meats. Its main component is sodium nitrate. The chef also mentions that once, he accidentally refilled the salt can with saltpetre, before realising his mistake and replacing the saltpetre with the real salt. After testing the saltpetre, they find that instead of sodium nitrate, the can contains sodium nitrite. This minor difference is almost unnoticeable, as they both look and taste just like table salt. Both are used to preserve meat, but the levels present in food are closely monitored. However, sodium nitrite is extremely toxic. The can of salt in the kitchen still contained some grains of the sodium nitrite when the chef refilled it with salt. This in itself was not enough to poison the men, otherwise many other men would have gotten sick that day. The men must have received a second dose from somewhere. The doctors realise that some people like to put salt on their oatmeal. The extra sodium nitrite in the salt in a table salt cellar could provide this. They test the salt cellars and find one that contains enough to poison the men. If all the men had used this salt cellar, this could be the cause of their poisoning. Unfortunately, the men have all left the hospital by the time the doctors get back to confirm their hypothesis. It is left uncertain how they got poisoned, but they also mention that they may all have used a lot of salt because heavy drinkers have a low blood salt concentration.
30462815	/m/0g5symv	Praetorian	Simon Scarrow	2011-11-10	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The book starts with Macro and Cato spending their days at an inn in Rome awaiting further orders from the emperor's secretary, Narcissus. Narcissus finally arrives and orders the duo to go undercover in the Praetorian guard to uncover a plot to assassinate the emperor. Macro and Cato then join the Praetorian guard under different names and try to uncover the plot. During their operation they face their old foe, Vittelius. They succeed in saving the emperor on more than one occasion. In the climax it's hinted that they will go back to Britain to help in the invasion there.
30466544	/m/0g5srn9	The Search for WondLa	Tony DiTerlizzi	2010-09-21		 Eva Nine has reached the age of 12 living her whole life in an underground Sanctuary. She has been raised by a robot named "Muthr" (Multi-Utility Task Helper Robot 06), and knows only of the outside world through holograms and a small piece of cardboard inscribed with the fragmented words "Wond" and "La." When the facility is attacked by a large creature named Besteel, she is forced to leave Muthr behind and flee her home. Upon seeing the outside world for the first time she remarks that it is nothing like the holographic simulations she'd been brought up on, encountering many dangerous and alien species of plants and animals that her Omnipod device fails to identify. After another encounter with Besteel and meeting an alien named Rovender Kitt and a large behemoth Otto (identified as a giant water bear by the Omnipod), Eva reunites with Muthr in her (now demolished) home and convinces the Sanctuary computer to allow the robot to escort her to the next underground Sanctuary. When they find it abandoned they convince Rovender to lead them to the royal city of Solas. The group has several more encounters with Besteel and other aliens, in which Eva is nearly embalmed for display at the royal museum. While in the museum she learns that the life forms of this planet (called "Orbona" by its natives) arrived long ago on a dead world that they "reawakened" for their own use. She also discovers many ancient human artifacts and learns of a ruined human civilization beyond a dangerous desert. Eva, Muthr, Rovender, and Otto cross the desert to discover the remains of an ancient human city buried under the sands. Besteel soon arrives and attacks, severely damaging Muthr. Eva then uses her Omnipod to attract several deadly Sand Snipers that kill Besteel and drag him beneath the sand. Muthr, unable to be repaired, dies shortly afterwards, and when the remaining characters tunnel into one of the buried buildings they discover that it was once the New York Public Library, meaning Orbona was once Earth. The still-functioning library computer identifies the cardboard "WondLa" as the cover of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," by L. Frank Baum, and that her own planet died, and was awakened. This is how it became Orbona. In the epilogue, a human boy named Hailey swoops down from the sky in an airship named the Bijou and informs Eva that he is there to take her home.
30467266	/m/0g5qtsq	The Winner Stands Alone	Paulo Coelho		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book loosely tells the story of several individuals: Igor, a Russian millionaire, Hamid, a Middle Eastern fashion magnate, American actress Gabriela, eager to land a leading role, ambitious criminal detective Savoy, hoping to resolve the case of his life, and Jasmine, a woman on the brink of a successful modeling career. Set at the Cannes Film Festival, the tale narrates the epic drama and tension between the characters in a 24 hour period. Igor, a man of extraordinary intelligence, has promised himself to destroy worlds to get his beloved wife Ewa, who left him for a successful designer, Hamid.
30468411	/m/0g5sy0d	Alice Lorraine	R. D. Blackmore			- ~Plot outline description
30469806	/m/0g9tb2p	.hack//Epitaph of Twilight			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Lara Hoerwick, a fan of the famous online poem Epitaph of Twilight by Emma Wielant, while visiting her uncle Harald Hoerwick starts playing a game on the computer while he is away when suddenly she finds herself in the world of the Epitaph of Twilight as one of the main characters Saya. Lara is excited at first but soon after realizes that she's stuck in the game. Meanwhile the world in the game is about to destroyed by a Cursed Wave. With the world collapsing on itself her only hope is to find the Twilight Dragon and complete the story.
30472026	/m/0g9yqpm	24 Hours				 A physician and his family are targeted by a psychopathic con man who has planned the perfect kidnapping.
30474192	/m/0g9wwdr	The 4-Hour Body	Timothy Ferriss	2010-12-14		 Ferriss describes The 4-Hour Body as "unlike any diet or fitness book...It's more like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book for the human body, full of ridiculous stories, practical philosophies, and larger-than-life characters." The book covers over 50 topics, including rapid fat loss, increasing strength, boosting endurance and polyphasic sleep. Ferriss has acknowledged using steroids, specifically: "using a number of low-dose therapies, including testosterone cypionate," under medical supervision following shoulder surgery, as well as using "stacks" consisting of testosterone enanthate, Sustanon 250, HGH, Deca-Durabolin, Cytomel, and other unnamed ingredients while training. "The slow carb diet II" as detailed in the book can be summarized as the elimination of starches and anything sweet (including fruit and all artificial sweeteners) and a strong preference for lean protein, legumes and vegetables. Ferriss says that he drinks a glass of red wine daily, and has a weekly "cheat day" where he gorges on candy, fried foods, sweet drinks, and all the other forbidden foods so that the body does not go into starvation mode, as also recommended in the Body for Life diet. Although the weekly cheat day may cause a temporary weight gain due mainly to water weight, it actually results in greater weight loss over time. The 4-Hour Body recommends just 2 or 3 gym workouts per week.
30497349	/m/0g9tyd4	Frog and Toad Together				 Best friends Frog and Toad are always together. This book has five stories about flowers, cookies, bravery, dreams, and, most of all, friendship. *A List *The Garden *Cookies *Dragons and Giants *The Dream
30510037	/m/0g9yn1_	Hungry Hearts	Anzia Yezierska	1920	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 *Wings Shenah Peshah a young lonely janitress living a painfully secluded life in poverty. She is given hope when she meets a young sociologist who moves into her building to study the people he writes about and falls in love with him. *Hunger A sequel to 'Wings', Peshah gets a job at a shirtwaist factory where one of the workers falls in love with her. *The Lost "Beautifulness A mother dances on the edge of self-destruction when she paints her kitchen white for her son returning home from the military but has her rent raised by her cruel landlord as a response. *The Free Vacation House A woman being crushed by motherhood is offered a stay at a free vacation house but finds the strict humiliating living conditions worse than her life in poverty. *The Miracle A Jewish girl travels to America to find love but finds hardship and loneliness. *Where Lovers Dream Poverty separates a happy couple forever, marking their lives as lifestyles separate them. *Soap and Water A student is denied her diploma because of her unsightly appearance due to her grueling life going to school and supporting herself in grinding poverty, making her rebel against the divisions of class. *"The Fat of the Land" A mother goes from poverty to wealth, expecting happiness but only finding a cruel Catch 22. *My Own People A young writer finds inspiration and purpose in the suffering of her brethren. *How I Found America
30510324	/m/0g9tygl	Storm Dragon				 Gaven d'Lyrandar, his mind broken by the ancient Prophecy of the Dragons, has been rotting in Dreadhold for over twenty years. He is broken out by a band of adventurers loyal to Haldren, his only companion in his time at the terrible prison, but he begins to get the feeling that he is just a tool. A dragon named Vaskar has hired them to help him fulfill a prophecy and become the Storm Dragon. In exchange, he promises to grant Haldren the throne of a reunited Galifar. Gaven escapes and continues to run from the Sentinel Marshals, but along the way he discovers that he has the power of the Storm Dragon. Just as Haldren is gathering an army to stage a battle and fulfill another part of the prophecy, thus signaling "The sundering of the Soul Reaver's gates", Gaven begins heading towards the Soul Reaver, where he faces Vaskar and defeats him in battle, creating a spear from the Eye of Siberys (a dragonshard). Ultimately, Gaven faces the Soul Reaver in battle and destroys it by destroying the Heart of Khyber (another dragonshard).
30510694	/m/0g9v1qv	Carte Blanche	Jeffery Deaver	2011-05-26	{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 Set in mid-2011, the story takes place over the course of a week. James Bond is a former Royal Naval Reserve officer who has recently joined the Overseas Development Group - a covert operational unit of British security under the control of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office tasked "to identify and eliminate threats to the country by extraordinary means." Bond is employed within the 00 Section of the Operations Branch. He starts his assignment on the outskirts of Novi Sad in Serbia where an Irish sapper-turned-enforcer named Niall Dunne is planning to derail a train carrying three hundred kilograms of methyl isocyanate, dumping it into the Danube. Bond is able to prevent the catastrophe by derailing the train himself at a much safer place along the line. He is unable to detain Dunne, who kills Bond's Serbian contacts in the course of his escape. Using what little intelligence Bond was able to gather from the operation in Serbia, the ODG is able to establish a connection to Green Way International, a waste disposal consortium contracted to demolish an army base in March. Because Bond is not authorised to act on British soil, he is forced to work with a domestic security agent named Percy Osborne-Smith. The two men clash over the interpretation of the intelligence, prompting Bond to manipulate Osborne-Smith into pursuing a lead Bond knows to be false, and allowing him to investigate the March army base on his own. While exploring the base hospital, he is sealed inside by Niall Dunne, who intends to kill him by bringing the hospital down in a controlled demolition. Bond escapes by improvising an explosive device. Bond turns his attention to Green Way International, led by the enigmatic Severan Hydt. The Dutch-born Hydt is a "rag-and-bone man", who made his fortune in the disposal of waste. He has an intense fascination with death, which is strongly implied to be a sexual fetish. The Overseas Development Group authorise Bond to investigate Hydt when intelligence surfaces suggesting he is also known as 'Noah' and a key player in the derailment in Serbia, which is believed to be a prelude to a much bigger attack that will affect British interests. Bond gets wind of a second attack, to occur later in the week, killing up to one hundred people. He tracks Hydt to Dubai and, with the help of CIA officer Felix Leiter, eavesdrops on a conversation with one of Hydt's senior researchers. Concerned that the attack is imminent, Bond attempts to anticipate Hydt's next move and is on the verge of evacuating a crowded museum when he realises that Hydt is there for an exhibit of the bodies of ninety tribal nomads who were killed a millennium ago. Aborting his planned evacuation, Bond returns to Hydt's facility to find that Leiter has been attacked by an unknown assailant and a local CIA asset has been murdered. Hydt leaves Dubai for Cape Town, with Bond following closely. Once inside South Africa, he meets Bheka Jordaan, a local police operative. Bond is able to get close to Hydt by posing as a Durban-based mercenary, and fuels Hydt's fixation with death by promising him access to mass graves across the African continent. Hydt is taken by Bond's proposal of exhuming the bodies and recycling them into consumer products such as building materials, and gradually welcomes him into his inner circle. Bond attends a fundraiser for the International Organisation Against Hunger with Hydt, where he meets Felicity Willing, the charity's spokesperson. After helping Willing deliver the left-over food from the fundraiser to a distribution centre, the two begin a relationship. Using his cover, Bond is able to infiltrate Hydt's operations in South Africa. His relationship with Bheka Jordaan sours, particularly when he encounters the assailant who attacked Felix Leiter in Dubai: the brother of one of his contacts who was killed in Serbia. As the deadline for the attack - known as Gehenna (derived from the Hebrew word for Hell) - approaches, the Overseas Development Group is ordered to pull Bond out of South Africa and send him to Afghanistan as Whitehall believes the attack will happen there as they can see no connection between Hydt and Gehenna. M is not convinced and manages to keep Bond in South Africa, but the future of the agency depends on his being correct in suspecting Hydt. On the day of the Gehenna attacks, Bond deduces that the target is somewhere in York, but his report is ignored by Osborne-Smith, who believes it is aimed at a security conference in London. Bond manages to access Hydt's research and development facility, where he uncovers plans for a weapon developed by Serbia known as "the Cutter", which fires razor-sharp shards of titanium at hypervelocity. Hydt has been using his operations to steal sensitive information, from which he has acquired the blueprints to the Cutter. Bond realised that the derailment in Serbia was a false flag operation: its intention was not to drop methyl isocyanate into the Danube, but to allow Niall Dunne the opportunity to steal scrap metal from the train for use in the prototype Cutter. Hydt was employed by an American pharmaceutical corporation to detonate a Cutter at a university in York, killing a cancer researcher on the verge of a breakthrough that would bankrupt the pharmaceutical corporation. Misinformation fed to a Hungarian newspaper would suggest the attack was aimed at a fellow lecturer who was a vocal opponent of the Serbian government. With the help of Hydt's personal assistant, Bond is able to stop the attack. Hydt is arrested, but Dunne escapes and shoots his employer at long range. Bond is uncomfortable with the conclusion, feeling that there are too many loose ends at hand. Research shows that the ODG had been misled, and their intelligence misinterpreted; Severan Hydt was never known as Noah. Rather, it is an acronym for the National Organisation Against Hunger, which recently expanded to provide food aid on an international scale. Niall Dunne is an associate of Felicity Willing, whose organisation has expanded to the point where she directly controls one-third of all food aid arriving in Africa. She intends to use this power to strategically distribute food throughout east Africa, giving the Sudanese government a pretext to go to war with rebels and prevent Southern Sudan from seceding. Bond lures Willing into a trap at an abandoned inn where she confesses the plot. Niall Dunne re-appears, attacking the party before Bond and Bheka Jordaan shoot and kill him. Willing is taken to a black site after MI6 spread stories suggesting she was embezzling from her own charity. A subplot throughout the novel involves Bond's investigations into a KGB operation code-named "Steel Cartridge". Bond believes that his father was a spy for the United Kingdom during the Cold War, and that he was killed by Russian agents. Further evidence suggests that Steel Cartridge was a clean-up operation, with the Russians assassinating their own agents that had infiltrated Western intelligence organisations. The suggestion that his father was a traitor does not sit well with Bond, until he unearths further evidence that shows the Russians carried out a Steel Cartridge assassination on a Western spy-hunter who was dangerously close to identifying Soviet moles - his mother, Monique Delacroix Bond.
30527861	/m/0gfgkgf	The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 As the novel opens, Flavia Sabina de Luce schemes revenge against her 2 older sisters, Ophelia (17) and Daphne (13) who have locked her inside a closet in Buckshaw, the family's country manor home located in the English village of Bishop's Lacey. Flavia may have braces, glasses, and pigtails like a typical 11-year-old girl, but she is also a brilliant amateur chemist with a specialty in poisons and a fully equipped, personal laboratory on the top floor of her home. With her scientific notebook at-the-ready, she steals her oldest sister's lipstick, adds poison ivy extract, and then waits, eagerly anticipating changes in Ophelia's complexion. Flavia is especially jealous of her oldest sister because at 17, she is the only one of the 3 girls with memories of their mother, Harriet, a free spirit who disappeared on a mountaineering adventure in Tibet 10 years earlier and is presumed dead. Harriet's disappearance devastated their father, Colonel Haviland "Jacko" de Luce, a philatelist and former amateur illusionist who spends most of his time poring over his stamp collection. The family shares their home with loyal retainer Arthur Wellesley Dogger, who once saved Colonel de Luce's life during the war and now works as Buckshaw's gardener, suffering frequent bouts of memory loss and hallucinations due to posttraumatic stress disorder from his time as a prisoner of war. Mysterious events begin to occur when Mrs. Mullet, Buckshaw's housekeeper and cook, discovers a dead jack snipe on the porch with a Penny Black stamp pierced through its beak. Then, Flavia and Dogger overhear a heated argument between Colonel de Luce and a red-headed stranger who shortly turns up dead in the family cucumber patch. When Colonel de Luce is arrested for the crime, Flavia takes to her bicycle, Gladys, and begins an investigation in the village of Bishop's Lacey, interviewing suspects, gathering clues, and compiling research at the library, always staying ahead of Inspector Hewitt and the police department. As she single-handedly solves the crime, she uncovers the truth behind a 20-year old apparent suicide at Colonel de Luce's alma mater, Greyminster. Both the suicide victim, housemaster and Latin scholar Grenville Twining, and the red-headed stranger in the cucumber patch, Horace "Bony" Bonepenny, uttered "Vale" as a last word. The trail connecting their deaths also includes political intrigue, rare Ulster Avenger stamps, sleight of hand, theft, blackmail, and murder.
30544250	/m/0g9v60x	Everwild	Neal Shusterman	2010	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Everwild continues the stories of Allie and Nick as they pursue separate goals. Allie sets off with Mikey, who was once the terrifying monster the McGill in the book Everlost, to find her parents in hopes that she might put her spirit to rest, while Nick finds himself in a race against time to save the Afterlights from endless entrapment in Everlost by the Sky Witch, Mary Hightower. Traveling in the memory of the Hindenburgh, Mary is spreading her propaganda and attracting Afterlights to her cause at a frightening speed. Meanwhile, together with Mikey, the once teriffying monster McGill, Allie the Outcast travels home to look for her parents. Along the way, Allie is tempted by the seductive thrill of skinjacking the living, until she discovers the shocking truth about skinjackers. Skinjackers are not necessarily dead or alive. Allie's body lies in a comatose state waiting for her soul to rejoin it. By the end of the book, The Ripper, Allie, and Nick join forces to defeat the evil Mary Hightower and foil her plan to kill all the world's children in order to bring them into Everlost. The Ripper ends up using her abilities to push Mary into an opening that takes her into the real world. On her way thorugh Mary manages to grab on to her and pull her in with her.
30548959	/m/0g9x_6d	O: A Presidential Novel	Mark Salter	2011-01-25		 The story begins a few months after January 2011 as the campaign for the 2012 election for president begins to heat up. The book is tightly focused on the campaign itself, centering around a small cast of about eight characters, the primary ones being Cal Regan the new campaign manager, and the fictional character "O" the president of the United States (Barack Obama). According to an early review by The Washington Post, the book "clearly illustrates, season by season, just how effectively presidential campaigners plan, draft and articulate the political discourse that the press pretends it controls." When the president is attacked by his opponent, for example, his campaign staffers point out that the press can be distracted if the president merely buys a second dog.
30578608	/m/0g9vpyg	The Last Voyage				 The Doctor lands the TARDIS on a space cruiser on its maiden voyage.
30583090	/m/0g9x9q6	Charlie Johnson in the Flames	Michael Ignatieff	2003-10	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 American reporter Charlie Johnson and his Polish cameraman Jacek investigate violence taking place in Kosovo. While in Serb-occupied territory, where there has been significant guerilla fighting, they hide in a house belonging to a Muslim family. They witness a Serb patrol unit destroy a house and light a fleeing woman on fire. A horrified Charlie attempts to assist the woman but she dies at an American field hospital. The event haunts Charlie, even after he returns to his family in England. In an attempt to understand how someone could justify such actions, Charlie tracks down the officer responsible to ask him why he did what he did.
30584827	/m/0g9tsdf	Sacred Country	Rose Tremain	1992	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 "At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: she isn't Mary, she's a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world".
30595983	/m/0g9yq2q	Edelweiss				 Kazushi, Appo, Pierre and Daigo are four average high school students. They are bored of their life and want to find a girl that can be their girlfriend, but no girls accept them. One day they hear about a exchange program to an all-girls school on a deserted island and they have no doubts on going there. Once they arrive, they discover the school's secret: it teaches the secrets of alchemy and how to handle them. Later, they meet the girls and have to help them, as each one has a problem that can't be solved by them.
30598454	/m/0g9_h0v	Theory of War	Joan Brady			 It tells the story of Jonathan Carrick, sold into white slavery as a child in post-Civil War America and is based on the life of Joan Brady's own grandfather who himself was sold to a midwestern tobacco farmer for fifteen dollars. Cruelly treated by his master Alvah Stokes, it is Alvah's son George who becomes the object of a hatred that endures half a century. forced to submit, but never submissive, Jonathan's escape into a new life as a railroadman, then as an itinerant preacher, opens up a new world for him. But within him lies the need for revenge - a war against George, in fact - that must be safisfied Joan Brady explains &#34;Theory of War is an attempt to understand what my grandfather might have felt about what he&#39;d gone through, and what we - his descendents - still have to cope with because of it.
30610009	/m/0g9tfp4	Outerbridge Reach				 Stone's incisive, haunting novel follows the story of a copywriter who enters an around-the-world solo boat race.
30610971	/m/0g9wx6q	Riotous Assembly	Tom Sharpe			 Kommondant van Heerden, Piemburg's the chief of police, is called out to deal with a strange murder case involving the eccentric British spinster, Miss Hazlestone. It appears that Miss Hazlestone has obliterated her cook with a quadruple-barreled elephant gun. As the cook was black, Heerden is initially willing to brush the incident under the carpet, until Miss Hazlestone reveals that she and the cook were former lovers. Heerden, a man with extremely racist sensibilities, is terrified of such information getting out, so he resorts to placing Miss Hazlestone under house arrest, calling in all the reinforcements he can to quarantine the area. Unfortunately, he has not accounted for his subordinate, the lethally incompetent Konstabel Els, nor the elephant gun Els has just collected from the crime scene.
30620075	/m/0g9t_qv	Escape from Memory	Margaret Haddix	2003		 Kira Landon is a fifteen-year-old girl whose life has been completely normal until her friends talk her into being hypnotized. She finds herself revealing things about a past that she never knew, remembering her mother carrying her through war-torn cobblestone streets while speaking a foreign language. Kira's best friend Lynne pushes her to investigate, but before they can find out anything, Mrs. Landon disappears. That evening, a strange woman shows up at Kira's house, saying that she is her "Aunt Memory". "Aunt Memory" takes Kira to Crythe, a land where people are trained from childhood to remember everything that ever happens to them. Kira soon discovers that not only is her mother a prisoner in Crythe, but that many people are not who they claim to be. Mrs. Landon is actually Kira's real Aunt Memory, and the woman who had called herself "Aunt Memory" is actually Rona Cummins, an old enemy of Kira's parents who tries to obtain her parent's secrets. As Rona keeps raising the stakes, Kira must find a way to save Lynne, Mrs. Landon, and herself, as well as her parents' memories.
30636003	/m/0g9v6fk	Skippy Dies	Paul Murray	2010-02-04	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Skippy Dies follows the lives of a group of students and faculty members at the fictional Seabrook College, a Catholic boarding school in Dublin. The title character, Daniel "Skippy" Juster, dies during a donut eating contest in the novel's opening scene. The rest of the novel explores the events leading up to Skippy's death, as well as the aftermath within the Seabrook community.
30640868	/m/0g9yvdp	Sweeping Up Glass		2009-04-29	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Olivia Harker is a child unloved by her mother, Ida, who is mentally ill. However, her father, Tate, raises her and loves her a great deal while her mother is in a sanatorium. Tate also manages to run a grocery store and is a self taught veterinarian. Ida is released from the sanitorium and returns home to her family. She immediately makes it clear to Olivia that she is a disappointment to her. Ida frequently abuses Olivia. Olivia's only source of friendship is the colored community within her town. She learns many things from them, including words of wisdom. Olivia has a child, Pauline, out of wedlock. Olivia and her father get into a horrible car accident that kills James Arnold. The accident leaves her terribly disfigured, though temporarily. Ida tells her that her father was killed in the crash. Despite these events, she gets married eventually. However, it is not to Pauline's father, who is unknown. Olivia's husband, Saul, builds a tarpaper shack for Ida. She has a relatively happy life despite her mother's constant madness and disapproval of her for 12 years before her husband dies. Pauline follows her mother's example by having a child, William, out of wedlock. When William is a baby, Pauline leaves to become a star in Hollywood. Olivia grows closer to William over the years to the point that he is her sole source of joy. Her ultimate priority is to keep him safe. In 1938, Olivia reminisces about the grocery store store and her father's work as a veterinarian. She recalls how people paid with provisions because of the harsh economic times. The segregation present within the community also stands out for her. She realizes that's it takes place even in her grocery store. There are separate days for whites and coloreds. One day, Pauline returns to take Wiliam. She wants to turn him into a child star so that he can support her. Olivia does not let Pauline take away William upon hearing her reasons. Olivia owns a hill in which the only silver-faced wolves in Kentucky exist . People normally hunted hunted on her land for food, which Olivia unsderstood and respected. Out of nowhere, somebody starts killing the wolves for sport, while chopping off their right ears. Olivia eventually figures out that Alton Phelps is doing this. He thinks that Olivia knows a great secret about him and his friends because her father discovered it many years ago. However, this secret is unknown to her. Alton Phelps even goes so far as to threaten Olivia and William. Olivia begins to investigate this secret and discovers that Alton and his friends are Cott'ners. They are described them as the rejects of the KKK. The Cott'ners have been killing off the younger generations of coloreds in the town for years. In the process of discovering this secret, Olivia discovers that her father is still alive and in prison for killing James Arnold. She discovers this around the time that the Cott'ners are hunting her down as well as her friends. Olivia goes to visit him in prison, while calling the Federal Marshall in the process. She then goes home and discovers some old books of her father's that details where the victims of the Cott'ners are buried. Eventually, the Federal Marshall comes and saves them. Tate is released from prison in exchange for testifying against the Cott'ners.
30657546	/m/0g9z8bg	Forbidden				 Forbidden takes place four-hundred eighty years after an unknown brush with extinction. Perfect order reigns, and the world is at peace. No more disease or famine. But then one day a man discovers the truth: every single soul on earth is actually dead. The human heart has been stripped of all that makes it human. Now only he is alive and only he has the knowledge that can once again awaken humanity. But the way is treacherous and the cost is staggering. For, indeed, in that day life itself is . . . forbidden.
30660449	/m/0g9vyp3	Lurulu	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 ==Reference
30660664	/m/0g9wyk9	Night Lamp	Jack Vance		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 When the Faths, a childless academic couple, save young Jaro from a near-fatal beating, they discover he suffers from not just physical wounds, but also the crippling memory of his mother's death, which must be erased. Adopted by them, he grows up an outsider in a world of constant striving for social status, his only goal to become a spaceman and discover the truth of his missing memories. His journey takes him to Fader, a planet closed to the rest of the galaxy, whose inhabitants long ago engineered slave races to support their aristocratic lifestyle. Though Fader's Golden Age has long passed, and they now live in fear of many of their creations, they still maintain a fierce pride. Together with his father, Jaro must find a way to bring justice for his mother.
30664387	/m/0g9vby_	Interlok	Abdullah Hussain	1971	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The story in the novel was set in Penang in the early 1900s during the colonisation of Britain over Malaya. The story is told from the point of view of three main characters, namely, Seman, Chin Huat and Maniam. The title of the book derived its name from the English word "interlock" which corresponds with the interlocking of the lives of the three main characters of the novel in the final chapter.
30664549	/m/0g9vnxc	Viaţa ca o pradă	Marin Preda	1977	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel describes the childhood and adolescence of Marin, the narrator, especially his times at school. Marin finishes near the top at the primary school in his native village. He then tries to enroll at a school in Campu-Lung, but is rejected because of an eye problem. He goes with his father to Mirosi, where he meets a dishonest librarian who demands 1,000 lei to enroll him in a school, but recommends an unsuitable school. Instead, the teenager is enrolled in a school in Blaj, where he studies for two years. Because of the war, he is transferred from there to a school in Bucharest. Marin's father refuses to pay his school fees there, but he manages to get admitted. He only remains at the school for a year, however, as it is demolished by an earthquake. Marin remains in Bucharest where his brother Nila works as a guard in a building. There is no money for him to go to school, so he looks for a job to earn money to pay for exams at a private school. He finds a job with the railroad, but it does not last long. When he comes back he learns that his brother has joined the army and let his room to him. Marin takes a job with a newspaper and then with a printer, eventually earning enough to rent a better room. With a group of friends he wants to publish his first book of short stories and then take several months' vacation in Sinaia, where he hopes to write a novel. He has no inspiration, but after becoming editor of Viaţa Românească, he takes a long vacation and returns to Sinaia, where he writes Moromeţii.
30669061	/m/0gh8zvn	Life in the Fat Lane				 The novels main character is Lara Ardeche. According to Lara, her family life is perfect because her parents are youthful, beautiful, and involve themselves in every aspect of her and her brother's life. She is elected homecoming queen for her high school, following in her mother's footsteps, and she is her father's "princess". Each morning is a daily routine of waking up in a glamorous home, eating a healthy but delicious home-cooked meal, and working out in her home gym given to the family by their wealthy grandpa. Her best friend Molly is the complete opposite. She is overweight, her family life is a wreck, her nickname is "the Mouth", and has a sarcastic sense of humor. After being elected homecoming queen, Lara notices a rapid weight change. Each week she gains over ten pounds. No matter how much she works out, diets, or even starves herself there is no way around the weight gain. Her thin and perfect mother begs Lara to do anything she can to keep the weight off and her father eventually stops calling her "princess". Every one of Lara's so-called friends abandons her, except for Molly and Lara's boyfriend Jett. Within months, Lara gains 100 pounds. After seeking over fifty medical doctors, she is diagnosed with the rare and incurable disease "Axell-Crowne" syndrome, a severe metabolic disorder. Her relationship with Jett begins to deteriorate, along with her entire family's relationship. Lara's dad announces that he is having an affair. In order to try to hold up the last strings of the family, the family moves to Michigan from Nashville to begin a new start, but Lara is having an even harder time at this high school. People refer to the once 100 pound girl as the "obese girl" and nobody believes that she truly has a rare but severe disease. Lara begins taking piano classes in her new home to occupy her boredom and is introduced to a new group of friends. Once enrolled in the piano classes, she meets some of the most genuine people who do not use looks as a mean of creating friendships. She spends time with a boy who is blind who appreciates Lara for her true self. Lara begins accepting herself and believing in who she is. She has different perceptions on what relationships need to have in order to sustain. The weight is slowly coming off, but Lara finally realizes a thin body is not the key to happiness.
30672997	/m/0g9szfr	The Big Question		2007		 Contestants compete for the chance to answer a final question which if they answer it correctly will take all their problems away by making them one of the richest people in the world. Downside though is that if they get the question wrong, they are executed in prime time.
30674714	/m/0g9vdlr	Beautiful Assassin		2010-03-30		 The novel centers on Lieutenant Tat'yana Levchenko, who decides to decides to join the Soviet Army as a sniper after her husband, Nikolai Grigorovich (who is known as Koyla by "those few friends he had") goes missing in action and her daughter, Masha, is killed by Germans in their hometown of Kiev, Ukraine. After Masha's death, Tat'yana desires to become a soldier and boards a train filled with recruits. As she and the recruits change into military gear and uniforms on the train, while some make lewd comments at her, Tat'yana is one of the first to acknowledge that she can fire a gun when asked by a political officer. After killing a cow in a farmer's field, the officer smiles and tells her to "Do the same with the Germans." (page 248) During the Siege of Sevastopol, Tat'yana becomes a Soviet hero when she kills a confirmed 300 Germans, including one called the "King of Death." After being wounded in action (which requires a hysterectomy), Tat'yana is evacuated from the front and while recovering from her injuries is presented with the Gold Star medal, is honored a Hero of the Soviet Union, and receives many letters thank her for her service and bravery. Tat'yana's fame grows to the point that Elanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States, hears of her actions and invites her to America. While in America, Tat'yana becomes friends with Mrs. Roosevelt, along with her interpreter Captain Jack Taylor (real name Charles Pierce), and becomes an unwilling pawn in the efforts of her handler Vasilyev, who wants Tat'yana to get close to the first lady in the hopes of uncovering President Franklin Roosevelt's war intentions. Forced to question the motives of her handler and even her translator and must make the decision of whether to remain in the United States or return to the Soviet Union, then she mysteriously disappears. In the book's epilogue, many decades after her disappearance, an elderly Tat'yana is tracked down by a journalist who revealed her story of her wanting to marry Captain Taylor (who died in a plane crash before the end of the war), learning from him about a Soviet spy network in the United States, a letter from Mrs. Roosevelt after President Roosevelt's death, a photo of Tat'yana and her family, and the log she recorded her kills in. The novel ends with the journalist, whose name is Elizabeth, revealing that she and her husband adopted a Russian girl named Raisa, who Tat'yana remembered rescuing from the Germans in the sewers of Sevastopol during her time as a sniper, but had no knowledge of what happened to her after the war.
30680313	/m/0g9w7z_	Chemmeen	Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai	1956	{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Chembankunju's only aim in life is to own a boat and a net. He finally succeeds in buying both with the help of Pareekutty, a young Muslim trader, on condition that the fish hauled by the boat will be sold to him. Chembankunju s pretty daughter Karuthamma and Pareekutty love each other. Karuthamma s mother, Chakki, knows about it and reminds her daughter about the life they lead within the boundaries of strict social tradition. Karuthamma sacrifices her love for Pareekutty and marries Palani, an orphan discovered by Chembankunju in the course of one of his fishing expeditions. Following the marriage, Karuthamma accompanies her husband to his village, despite her mother s sudden illness and her father s requests to stay. In his fury, Chembankunju disowns her. On acquiring a boat and a net and subsequently adding one more, Chembankunju becomes more greedy and heartless. With his dishonesty, he drives Pareekutty to bankruptcy. After the death of his wife, Chembankunju marries Pappikunju, the widow of the man from whom he had bought his first boat. Panchami, Chembankunju s younger daughter, leaves home to join Karuthama, on arrival of her step mother. Meanwhile, Karuthamma has endeavoured to be a good wife and mother. But scandal about her old love for Pareekutty spreads in the village. Palani s friends ostracize him and refuse to take him fishing with them. By a stroke of fate, Karuthamma and Pareekutty meet one night and their old love is awakened... Palani, at sea alone and baiting a shark, is caught in a huge whirlpool and is swallowed by the sea. Next morning, Karuthamma and Parekutty, are also found dead hand in hand, washed ashore. At a distance, there lies a baited dead shark.
30681431	/m/0g9wgg4	Moshidora	Natsumi Iwasaki			 The story follows Minami Kawashima who, as a favor to her childhood friend, Yuki Miyata, takes over as manager for the Hodokubo High School Baseball team when she is hospitalized with an illness. With no previous experience managing a team, Minami ends up picking up a copy of Peter Drucker's business management book, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, and starts to manage the baseball team like one would manage a business, with the goal of reaching the nationals.
30688502	/m/0g9t9xw	The Rising	James Doohan		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Rising begins in media res during a conflict between two groups, the Commonwealth and an extremist religious group the Mission Of Life Lived In Ecclesia (commonly referred to as "Mollies") and the Mollies' allies, an alien species known as the Fibians. The basis of the conflict is that the Mollies settled an otherwise worthless sector of the galaxy, later discovered to naturally have extremely rich sources of easily obtainable antihydrogen, an energy particle that is required for the high technology space travel and civilization, and difficult to manufacture artificially. Commander Peter Raeder, formerly a pilot, has been assigned as Chief Engineer on the new fast carrier ship CSF Invincible, a smaller carrier type the Commonwealth hopes to use to preserve their dwindling stockpile of antihydrogen for as long as possible. Shortly after launch, Raeder becomes aware that there is a Mollie sleeper agent aboard performing acts of sabotage to prevent the success of the fast carrier design. After several missions and assorted acts of sabotage, Raeder successfully IDs the sleeper, and manages to prevent the final sabotage, which would have destroyed the entire ship. A sub-plot involving piloting of a Speed, the in-universe space superiority fighter, is that a pilot requires two flesh-and-blood hands to properly interface with the fighter for battle (Raeder had lost a hand prior to the events of The Rising, and though outfitted with a high-tech prosthetic otherwise indistinguishable from a real hand, cannot make the link, the prosthetic's sensory devices being unable to match the delicacy and precision required for interface). Toward the end of the book, Raeder's engineering staff successfully create an interface device that will work even for Raeder, on the basis that injuries such as Raeder's are becoming more common in the conflict, and losing an experienced pilot for such an injury drastically reduces the Commonwealth's pilot pool.
30688512	/m/0g9vp1n	The Privateer	S. M. Stirling		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Fresh from the events of The Rising Commander Peter Raeder is called to a board of inquiry for certain questionable actions during the first missions of the Invincible. When the board seems to be about to send Raeder to a desk job on Earth, a special ops Marine group catches Raeder's interest. In exchange for running a high-risk high-reward undercover assignment, the Marine General will make sure that Raeder regains his position on the Invincible. With little other choice if he wishes to remain in space service, Raeder agrees. Going undercover with other Commonwealth military personnel as a pirate group, Raeder's assignment is to uncover an antihydrogen smuggling ring and gather vital intelligence on the Mollies and their Fibian allies. After successfully completing the assignment, Raeder is re-assigned to the Invincible, though he will have to wait with the rest of the crew as during his assignment the fast carrier was heavily damaged and will require extensive repairs.
30688520	/m/0g9wypy	The Independent Command	James Doohan		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the final novel of the Flight Engineer series, the crew of the Invincible find themselves in a distant, as yet unexplored by humans, section of the galaxy. There, they find the origin of the Fibian allies who have aided the Mollies so well in their war with the Commonwealth. While they work to unravel the mystery of the Fibians, the Commonwealth is near to running out of antihydrogen completely. Successfully gaining the Fibians as an allied species (themselves divided along a sort of grouping by color, only one color of which actually having allied itself with the Mollies) the Invincible returns to human space just as an otherwise final battle has been fought. The Mollie fleet is completely demolished, but their Fibian allies, despite taking losses of their own, still has roughly a three to one advantage over the Commonwealth. However, with the majority of the Fibian groups allying themselves with the Commonwealth, the Mollies' Fibian allies are quickly overwhelmed and the Commonwealth emerges victorious.
30692209	/m/0g9y170	Durgaastamana				 After Kasturi Rangappa Nayaka II dies in 1754 without an heir, 12-year old Madakari Nayaka, son of Bharamappa Nayaka of Jaanakalludurga (a small fort town close to Chitradurga), is named his successor and ascends to the throne. The young king is trained in the art of kingship by KaLLi Narasappayya, the able prime minister of Chitradurga, and Obavvanaagati, mother of Kasturi Rangappa Nayaka II, and soon blossoms into a capable administrator and fearless warrior. His brother, Parashurama Nayaka, meanwhile is trained in the art of prime ministership by Narasappayya. Madakari Nayaka soon faces challenges from neighbouring enemies of Chitradurga such as Rayadurga and HarapanahaLLi, whose rulers have long eyed this fort and try to take advantage of Madakari's youth and relative ineperience and defeat him in battle. However, young Madakari is up to the challenge and leads his forces successfully against the would-be usurpers. Soon, he establishes himself as a kind ruler of his subjects and iron-fisted vanquisher of his enemies. He weds Bangaravva (daughter of the Nayaka of Jarimale) and Padma, while also maintaining a concubinal relationship with a young woman named KaDoori and her sister Nagavva. Meanwhile, Hyder Ali begins extending the empire of Mysore all across South India. He has faced off with the English and the Mughals and only the Marathas are like a thorn in his flesh. He asks for Madakari Nayaka's friendship and assistance in defeating the Marathas. In turn, the Marathas, under Madhava Rao I, also ask for Madakari's help in their campaign against Hyder. Madakari, who leads a pack of BeDa warriors famed for their bravery and ferocity, agrees to help the Marathas (despite being prodded in Hyder's direction by prime minister Narasappayya) and, using his trained warriors, crushes the rulers of several forts in battle, the most famous being the battle of Nijagalhttp://www.sandeepweb.com/2008/10/29/the-battle-of-nijagal. He hands over these forts to the Marathas in exchange for their friendship and money. With time, however, the Marathas become disunited and their internal strife leads to Hyder Ali gaining an upper hand once again. Madakari then begins helping Hyder in several campaigns against the Marathas (this time heeding Narasappayya's advice). It seems that the Chitradurga-Mysore friendship is genuine and strong. Soon, however, the representatives of Hyder Ali in Chitradurga are discovered (by Madakari's brother, Parashurama Nayaka, an apprentice to Narasappayya) to be spying and collecting confidential information about the fort, its strengths and weaknesses, the army, the weapons in the Durga arsenal and other sensitive areas. The spies are punished and Narasappayya, shocked over his failure to nab these culprits, takes responsibility for it and resigns. He leaves for a pilgrimage with his wife as Parashurama Nayaka takes over as prime minister of Chitradurga. Relations between Chitradurga and Mysore slowly begin showing signs of strain. The rest of the novel is about the inexorable progress of the two kingdoms towards an epic confrontation.
30695205	/m/0g9z_t4	Nearer the Moon: From A Journal of Love	Anaïs Nin	1996	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/02gsv": "Personal journal"}	 Anaïs Nin continues her open marriage with Hugh Parker Guiler and her affairs with Henry Miller and Gonzalo Moré, under the shadow of the Spanish Revolution and the approach of World War II. She helps Gonzalo with his Communist and anti-Fascist activities, even though she believes more in literature and personal contact than in politics as a means of progress. Henry's work is already succeeding, and Anaïs's is starting to be published (of course, this will be interrupted by the war).
30699742	/m/0g9tzkh	Casper the Commuting Cat		2010-08-05	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Casper the Commuting Cat is the story of an adventurous cat, Casper, that the author, Susan Finden had adopted from a rescue centre in 2002. She describes how Casper liked to wander from her house and was not afraid of people or traffic. Casper used to walk into office blocks and doctors' consulting rooms and find a chair to sleep on. Then he started queuing with people at a bus stop across the road from his house and boarding buses that took his fancy. He would curl up on a seat and go to sleep, and when the bus had completed its 11 mile round-trip to the city centre and returned to his bus stop, the driver would let him off. Casper's commuting habits made him a celebrity and Finden describes the world-wide media attention that she and Casper received. In January 2010 Casper died after being struck by a speeding taxi while crossing the road outside his house. Finden tells how she coped with her loss and the renewed media attention that followed. In addition to covering Casper's exploits, Finden includes in the book a brief story of her own life, and discusses the other cats she had adopted from rescue centres. Also present are several light-hearted chapters "written" by Casper from "the other side" in which he gives advice to other cats on how to handle humans, catch a bus, and deal with the media.
30700848	/m/0g9v6sv	Millroy the Magician	Paul Theroux			 The book concerns lonely teenager Jilly Farina and her relationship with Millroy. He is performing and calls her out of the audience and tells her he will train her to be his assistant. Millroy leaves the travelling fair and together with Jilly embarks on a mission to transform the food habits of America; converting them to Bible-based vegetarianism and promising his followers that they will live to be 200. His evangelical fervour is backed up by miraculous tricks but attracts growing opposition. He goes on to create a top-rating television show and chain of 'Day One' diners staffed by young volunteers. But Jilly is becomes increasingly uncomfortable in her role as his muse and confidante...
30701582	/m/0g9svkb	What Technology Wants	Kevin Kelly	2010	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In his young adulthood Kevin Kelly spent many years traveling remote parts of the developing world, an experience which helped inform his perspective on what he has coined the technium. The opening chapter of What Technology Wants entitled My Question chronicles this period in Kelly's life and gives the reader a sense of how Kelly went from being a nomadic traveler with few possessions to a co-founder of Wired.. Kelly focuses on human-technology relations and argues for the existence of technology as the emerging seventh kingdom of life on earth. What Technology Wants offers the anthropomorphic conception that technology is one giant force — the technium — which Kelly describes as "...a word to designate the greater, global, massively interconnected system of technology vibrating around us".
30712763	/m/0gfjm4n	The Mystery of a Hansom Cab	Fergus Hume	1886	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab takes place in Melbourne, Australia, and involves an investigation into a homicide where the deceased was discovered in the evening inside of a hansom cab. The city of Melbourne is itself a significant factor in the plot and setting, and is described by the author: "Over all the great city hung a cloud of smoke like a pall." Throughout the novel the influential and secretive Frettlby family is a key element, and it is revealed later in the book that they have an illegitimate daughter living on the streets. The name of the killer himself is not as much of a significant revelation in the story, as is the role of the Frettlby family and their secret. The class divide between the wealthy and less fortunate of the city of Melbourne is juxtaposed throughout the plot. The protagonist in the novel is a law enforcement official named Detective Gorby, who is given the task of solving the murder.
30712802	/m/0gfhg28	Corpsing				 Conrad is a television producer who, whilst having lunch with his ex-girlfriend Lily, witnesses her murder and is shot himself by an anonymous assailant. The rest of the novel centres around Conrad's attempts to uncover the identity of Lily's killer and to discover the reasons for her murder.
30727100	/m/0gfd6n1	The Displaced Person	Flannery O'Connor	1955		 The story takes place on a farm in Georgia, just after World War II in the 1940s. The owner of the farm, Mrs. McIntyre, contacts a Catholic priest to find her a "displaced person" to work as a farm hand. The priest finds a Polish refugee named Mr. Guizac who relocates with his family to the farm. Because the displaced person is quite industrious, the Shortlys, a family of white farm hands, feel threatened and try to manipulate Mrs. McIntyre into firing Guizac, but Mrs. McIntyre decides to fire Shortly instead because of his perceived laziness. After the Shortlys leave, Mrs. McIntre misses Mrs. Shortly but finds out she died of a stroke on the day that they left, so she invites Mr. Shortly back instead. When she finds out that Guizac is asking his teenage niece to come to America by marrying one of the African American farm hands, she is appalled and when she eventually goes to fire him, a tractor rolls over his body.
30734135	/m/0gfdkz9	Dandelion Fire	N. D. Wilson	2009-05-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Despite the restriction the Willises had put on them for opening any more cupboards, which lies on the attic wall, Henry's and Henrietta's curiosity got the best of them. Unfortunately, when Henrietta was searching for the skeleton key, of which she was hiding from her little sibling, Anastasia, Henry was struck by a bolt of lightning and lost consciousness. Luckily, even though Henry was struck blind after the incident, he was uninjured with nothing but a scar on the palm of his hand. Henrietta was sceptical, and thought that Henry was faking his blindness. But, again, she was actually unsure of herself. Henry was immediately rushed to a hospital, but his symptoms weren't as severe as a victim getting struck by an authentic lightning bolt. On the other hand, faithful Richard assured them that Henry will never have failed his courage and exaggerate, unless if he wasn't acting and was injured. After the bumpy ride home, Henry was left alone to rest in his room. When Henry woke up, his skin felt all flaky, and the burn in his jaw, caused by the blood of Nimiane, singed his cranium. He then started to devise a plan involving Richard, instead of Henrietta, to travel with him through the cupboards in a search for his birth parents. While he was explaining his plan to Richard, Henrietta, secretly, listened in on their conversation. She couldn't feel but betrayed that her own cousin would not let her go with him. She decided to get back at Henry by grabbing Richard as he makes his way through the landing the next time he comes. Unfortunately, both of their brainstorming fails as Henry and Richard was abducted by Darius, an evil wizard. Impatiently, Henrietta waited for Richard until she was determined to go through the door from her grandfather's room to the secret realm herself. There, she was kidnapped by two short, but extremely strong men, and was taken to Magdalene, queen to the FitzFaeren. She wanted Henrietta to retrieve the three stolen items from her deceased grandfather, or if she refuses, Henrietta will be held as a prisoner as long as the objects used to thwart the evil Nimiane are regained. Henrietta absconded the queen's grasp by flinging herself out of a window. Cold and hungry, Henrietta followed a stream to Eli FitzFaeren's house. Henry was to be bearing Darius's mark, so that Darius and Henry can be branded by the same symbol, before Henry's christening, a ceremony in which the naming of the child occurs. What was unexpected in Darius's scheme was that the surgeon who was supposed to stigmatize them together felt pity for Henry, so he let Henry escape by drugging himself. When Darius entered the room, he was outraged by the boy's breakaway, when Henry was actually still in the room, only concealed by the door. Darius supposed that Henry had retreated back to Kansas, through the dimension he was from. Therefore, Darius used Richard as a ransom to the Willises for Henry. Meanwhile, Henry tried to slide through the pipe of the building, just in case if Darius was still in the premises from within. On the last flight of pipes, Henry fell, flying through the air, unable to cling onto anything sturdy. When he regained consciousness, he was on a bed in a draped room and sitting in front of him are a kind couple who rescued him from the incident. After, Henry was nurtured back to health, he went to the post office to go back through a cupboard and return to Kansas. But, when he arrived, nobody was there, and there was a note from Frank explaining what had happened when Darius had made an appearance and started torturing them. Meanwhile, Darius was called by the queen
30734195	/m/0gff6yd	The Chestnut King	N. D. Wilson	2010-03-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with Henry and Zeke playing baseball, a favorite pastime of theirs, outside the Willis barn. While playing two police officers encounter them; since Henry should be a missing person, he attempts to escape. In the confusion Henry escapes to Hylfing, his home city in his family home where he encounters Henrietta to find that Mordecai, his father, is gone but Caleb, Mordecai's older twin brother, Henry's uncle is there. The next morning Henry meets his older brother James, who is home from the capital city of the Empire which Hylfing belongs in, Dumarre. Mordecai and Franklin Fat-Faerie arrive, Frank tells them that he is about to be de-faerened, similar to an execution, for helping Henry break a spell. During this, Grandmother Anastasia gives the following information: Henry York Maccabee, Ten fingers will find you. Two are tapping at the gate. Following, Henry has a dream of his Uncle frank being assassinated by a man who would be identified as Coradin, as well he has a vision of Nimiane. After he has the dream, Richard comes and explains his feelings for Una, to Henry's great amusement. After Richard departs, Mordecai comes and speaks to Henry about his scar, given to him by Nimiane. The following day, Henry is awoken by Henrietta to find out that an Imperial Liaison captured Frank, Hyacinth, and Monmouth. After that Henry and Fat Frank cause trouble with some imperial troopers, following, Henry has his first encounter with Coradin. Meanwhile, Frank, Hyacinth, and Monmouth, are in the Lord Mayor's office, Roderick has an argument with Frank and James, who is a worker on the Imperial Galley. Roderick orders his troopers to take them to the galley. In Endor, Nimiane senses that Moedecai is there.
30738463	/m/0gfg1nc	Bring Home the Revolution	Jonathan Freedland	1998	{"/m/05qt0": "Politics", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Freedland takes a meandering tour through the stubbornly varied states and regions of the United States of America meeting people of all racial and cultural persuasions and of all religious and political beliefs in his effort to build an accurate picture of modern American society and the ways in which these people can and often do affect the way politics is carried out in their country, both locally and nationally. From these encounters Freedland learns the values of a republican government and how these values can be brought back across the Atlantic to Britain and benefit the very people who first created many elements of this republican ideology.
30740142	/m/0gfc_34	Six Records of a Floating Life				 In the Wedded Bliss, the author mainly puts the focus on his wife Chen Yun as showing his sorrow to beauty. Chen Yun’s is not so beautiful, but she pursues beauty by nature. She takes painting and embroidering as a necessity to composing poem and regards the simple life as the ideal situation. Shen Fu treats her like a close friend who can share with his hobbies and feelings, but the idea is not recognized by the orthodox society, which only remains as the author’s yearning for beauty. The Little Pleasures of Life gives a vivid description of the leisure time activities of Shen Fu: his joys of his childhood, his adult life cultivating flowers, and the experiences of composing poems with other scholars. He tends to be close to nature in childhood and takes delight in nature. While in the adulthood, he has very little time to focus on nature, and is often chained to worldly possessions. Many of the episodes are involved with discussions of aesthetic experiences, which are really worthy of careful thinking. In Sorrow, Shen Fu points out that most of his life frustrations are out of his uprightness and his commitment to words. Though this chapter opens with the author’s own sorrow, actually its large content deals with the bumpy life of Chen Yun which is also due her characters. The content is full of the author’s endless love for his wife and resentment to the unfaire fate. The Joys of Travel not only portrays beautiful scenic spots the author had visited but also records anecdotes, local customs and historical allusions. Different from others, the author holds the belif that the gaining of experience counts rather than having a rough view and following what others said.
30745488	/m/0gffhy7	A Momentary Taste of Being	James Tiptree, Jr	1975		 Taking place in a world where the excessive human population (confirmed to be at least 20 billion, and speculated to be at or approaching 30 billion) necessitates an interstellar search for a habitable planet, the story centers on the experiences of Dr. Aaron Kaye, resident psychiatrist of Centaur, the second relativistic starship sent by the United Nations for this endeavor. The ship's crew—composed of more than 60 men and women from varying countries, each specializing in (often overlapping) scientific fields, chosen also on social and sexual bases—has discovered a planet potentially capable of supporting human life. A team consisting primarily of the ship's Chinese population had been sent to investigate the promising world, and Lory Kaye, Aaron's younger sister, a biologist, is the only crew member to return from that mission. Upon her return, Lieutenant Tighe, a member of the ship's EVA crew came into contact with samples brought back by Lory and was subsequently incapacitated. As the story begins, several crew members are in quarantine, including Aaron, Lory and Tighe, as a trial is underway to determine the nature of Tighe's malady, the truth of what happened on the planet and why Lory is the only returning member. Lory insists that the planet is a paradise, and that the Chinese decided to start a colony rather than return to the ship. Given that someone would need to return to spread the discovery and decision, it was logical that she, as a non-Chinese, be the one to do so. She also claims that the sample she brought back is completely harmless and that Tighe's condition must be the result of a previous impairment; it is later revealed to the reader that Tighe had been involved in an accident three years before, during which an oxygen tank had nearly beheaded him, leaving a lasting dent at his parietal arch, validating her assessment. Though relentlessly interrogated by safety officer Francis Xavier Foy, Aaron trusts his sister's account, seeing nothing physically indicating dishonesty neither by observation nor in the monitoring instruments. Yellaston, the ship's commander, attempts to maintain civility within Foy's inquiry, reprimanding him when the questions become too abrasive or repetitive, and allowing Lory the time she needs to respond. Ironically, it is when Lory finally gives an answer which seems to placate Foy that Aaron becomes suspicious of her story: throughout their lives, Lory has shown indignation whenever the vulgarities of human existence were concerned. Wherever she encountered violence, jealousy, dishonesty, etc., she would decry these incidents and those perpetrating the acts as inhuman. Yet, she lets slip that there had been a quarrel amongst the Chinese, and that in deference to their culture, she had agreed to delete the record so as not to dishonor their lapse of solidarity. Convinced that this explains every question, Foy agrees that Lory can be released, and that the alien specimen, reportedly a fungus of some sort, can be safely examined. Despite his uncertainty, Aaron's release from quarantine distracts him with the quotidian as well as the unusual. During the period of Tighe's sedation and quarantine, multiple crew members have reported to seeing him wandering the ship, somewhat transparent, but recognizable. While investigating these sightings, and dealing with his own increasing nightmares, as well as reawakened sexual feelings toward his sister (with whom he had been sexually involved during their teens), he also must contend with the growing disharmony among the crew, the promise of a new land reviving old xenophobic and nationalist tendencies. Discovering that he is in competition with Coby (who always seems in the know), a fellow medical professional, for the crew's trust, and Bustamente, the imposingly large, black chief of communications, for his girlfriend (Bustamente having placed her third in his list of potential mates once the crew disembarks), Aaron's anxiety grows. To his relief, Aaron learns that Yellaston, also, is not totally convinced by Lory's story, and that the commander wishes to take every precaution when examining the alien specimen, as well as to wait before sending the green light back to Earth. However, during the examination, a strange attraction draws the more and more crew members to the luminescent alien sample, until only Aaron and Lory are left. It is at this point that Lory tells Aaron that she returned with the specimen after seeing that contact with it reduced the Chinese crew members into perfect humans -— beings devoid of the basest urges and instincts which drive the species to self destruction. Selflessly resisting its overwhelming pull, she returned with it so that she and her brother might share their union with the pure light. In actuality, however, contact with the specimen leaves each exposed crew member markedly changed, in a seeming state of emotional detachment and confusion. Having succeeded in her mission to expose the rest of the crew, Lory, too, finally gives in to the fatal attraction to the alien; Aaron is also irresistibly drawn but before he can reach the creature in the lander, another crew member leaves with the vessel. Aaron is left the only one not altered, unable to satisfy his urge to go to the light. The changed humans retain something of their old selves, as occurred with Tighe, and it is through the ramblings of Coby that Aaron determines what the alien specimen must actually have been, and what that makes human beings. The story ends with an increasingly intoxicated Aaron Kaye recording his musings on the appearance and disappearance of ghostly apparitions of the other crew members (explaining the Tighe sightings), the dwindling crew population, the repercussions of his theory and his desperation regarding both his choice to resist the lure and the ultimate insignificance of the entire human race.
30747419	/m/0gfghs_	Fontamara	Ignazio Silone	1933		 One night, three people from Fontamara - a mother, father and son - tell an exiled writer about various things which had happened in their village. The writer decides to turn these into a book. The mother, father and son therefore become the narrators, though the majority of the book is narrated by the father. Cav. Pelino arrives in the village and tricks the cafoni to sign a petition which would deviate the watercourse away from Fontamara and therefore away from the fields in which they work. The Fontamaresi are initially reluctant but they do sign the blank pieces of paper he gives them. He places another sheet on the top of the pile which says The undersigned, in support of the above, supply their signatures spontaneously, voluntarily and with enthusiasm for cav. Pelino ( p.&nbsp;37). On their way to the fields the men see workers deviating the watercourse. A boy delivers the news to the village and the women go to the regional capital city in order to protest. They don’t realize that under the new regime the sindaco (mayor) is now the podestà and are taken to the house of the Impresario (a wealthy businessman) where, after much deliberation and fruitless trips elsewhere to find him, they are once again deceived, because Don Circonstanza and the Impresario persuade them to accept a three-quarter/three-quarter split of the water. The Impresario has also taken the tratturo (flat land owned by the community which is used for migration of sheep). Berardo Viola wanted to emigrate to America but cannot due to new emigration laws. He had sold his land to don Circonstanza to fund his trip but now has no land, known as il cafone senza terra (the peasant without land) and is unemployed and, because of his pride, feels unfit to marry Elvira – a Madonna-like character whom he loves. ( p.&nbsp;102). Cav. Pelino informs the government that the Fontamaresi not cooperating (through ignorance) with the new Fascist regime and Innocenzo la Legge comes to impose a curfew, which will severely inhibit their work, and forbid talk of politics in public places. Berardo makes a speech against Innocenzo who is humiliated and who then spends the night with Marietta. The cafoni are summoned to a meeting in Avezzano to discuss the matter of Fucino (an extremely fertile area of land), and are yet again deceived when instead of having a discussion, the land is taken from them and given to the rich ( p.&nbsp;130). Some of them miss the truck home and meet a man who takes them to a tavern and offers to help them with their uprising and bring them weapons but, whilst he is gone, the Solito Sconosciuto approaches them to warn them they are being set up. Back at Fontamara, trucks of Fascist soldiers arrive and gang rape the women of Fontamara whilst the men are working in the fields. When the men return the Fascists question them, asking Long Live who? but the Fontamaresi don't know what answer they are supposed to give. The attackers see Elvira at the bell tower, mistake her for the Madonna and flee. Berardo and Giuva find Elvira and Matala at the top of the bell tower. Berardo picks Elvira up in his arms, takes her home and spends the night with her. In the morning he is even more determined to marry her, and Giuva thinks the only way Berardo could earn enough money to buy some land is buy getting a job in town. The Impresario buys the cafoni's wheat whilst it is still green for 120 lire a hundredweight, knowing that the prices are about to be increased under a new law to 170 lire and therefore makes a substantial profit which should have gone to the Fontamaresi. He also introduces wage reductions which reduce wages to 40% and 25% for land-betterment work. Don Circonstanza tricks them again, telling them that the water will be returned not after 50 years but after 10 lustri (5-year periods) ( p.&nbsp;181-2), as the ‘’cafoni’’ don’t know what a lustro is. The younger people of Fontamara want Berardo to rebel with them but he refuses. Teofilo, one of Berardo's young followers, hangs himself from the bell rope at the belltower. Berardo and the younger narrator go to Rome, looking for work. They enlist the help of lawyer Don Achille Pazienza, a guest at the Locanda del Buon Ladrone (The Good Thief's Inn) ( p.200) who also tries to exploit them. Whilst they are in Rome they find out through a telegram that Elvira has died. They meet the Solito Sconosciuto once more and go to a café where they are set up by the police and arrested for having clandestine papers against the Fascist regime. Both the young narrator and Berardo are tortured in prison and Berardo sacrifices himself, pretending he is the Solito Sconosciuto in order for the rebellion to continue and so that people hear about what has happened in Fontamara. The Solito Sconosciuto publishes an article Long Live Berardo Viola which tells the story of Fontamara and he passes on printing equipment (the duplicating machine) to the ‘’Fontamaresi’’ so they can start their own local anti-Fascist newspaper, which they call Che fare? (What are we to do?) (see Lenin's work What Is To Be Done? or in Italian Che Fare?). The three narrators go to visit the wife's family in San Giuseppe to celebrate the son's release and distribute papers there. On their way home they hear gunshots, and a passerby informs them there's a war at Fontamara. Almost everyone has died those who could, fled. Those who could, escaped. They then cross the border with the help of the Solito Sconosciuto.
30750639	/m/0gfdh1x	A Gate at the Stairs	Lorrie Moore	2009	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel’s main character is Tassie Keltjin. At age 20, Keltjin is attending a major university identified only as the “Athens of the Midwest.” When the novel opens, she is looking for a job as a nanny. With no real childcare experience, she finds that the only mother willing to hire her is Sarah Brink. The hitch is that Sarah does not yet actually have a child. This doesn’t stop her from hiring Keltjin anyway. Soon Tassie finds herself embroiled in the Brink family's attempts to adopt a bi-racial child who eventually goes by the name “Emmie.” Now a college student and a nanny, Tassie starts a relationship with a man named Reynaldo whom she met in one of her classes. Reynaldo tells her that he is Brazilian. She thinks it's odd that when he purports to use Portuguese, he actually speaks Spanish. Later, Reynaldo ends the affair, informing her that he is suspected of terrorist activities and must disappear. In saying goodbye, Reynaldo tells her he is not actually Brazilian. When she asks where he is from, he answers "Hoboken, New Jersey." Though Reynaldo denies being part of a cell he says that "It is not the jihad that is the wrong thing. It is the wrong things that are the wrong things" and then he quotes Muhammed. The Brink family's adoption proceedings go awry when it is discovered that the Brinks lost their biological child many years earlier in a bizarre highway accident. It emerges that Edward punished his son for insubordinate behavior by making him get out of the car at a highway rest stop. The boy then walked onto the highway where he was killed by an oncoming vehicle. Tassie mourns the loss of Emmie who is taken back into foster care. Within a few weeks, she is also mourning the death of her brother Robert. Having failed to succeed academically and be accepted to a good, four-year college, Robert enlists in the United States Army and attends boot camp at Fort Bliss. He is killed in Afghanistan almost immediately after boot camp. Tassie blames herself for his death when she discovers, amidst her email, an unread note from him asking for her advice on whether to join the army. The Keltjins are further devastated when the army issues multiple and conflicting accounts of how Robert died. Tassie spends a few chapters of the novel recuperating from life’s slings and arrows at her parents’ small farm, but she returns to college the next year. The novel closes on a telephone call in which Sara Brink’s husband Edward tells Tassie that he and his wife have split up. He then invites Tassie to have dinner with him. Tassie addresses the reader directly, saying she declined to meet him even for a cup of coffee and the novel ends on the words, “I learned that much in college.” There are multiple theories about the meaning of the book’s title. Michael Gorra writes that it refers to the child safety gates that people put at the top of staircases to keep children from toppling down the stairs. Michiko Kakutani, on the other hand, believes the book’s title refers to a song Tassie wrote which includes the lyric “I’d climb up that staircase/past lions and bears,/but it’s locked/at the foot of the stairs.” However, there is also a gate at the front of the Brink house that takes on symbolic significance as Tassie first approaches the house. The gate is slightly off its hinges, and Tassie notes mentally “it should have communicated itself as something else: someone’s ill-disguised decrepitude, items not cared for properly but fixed repeatedly in a make-do fashion, needful things having gotten away from their caregiver.”
30757387	/m/0gfhgcy	Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance	Marion Chesney	2004	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 In Paris on holiday Agatha is relieved of her wallet in what she calls the Paris Incident, and the attitude of the Paris Police nudges her into setting up her own detective agency. She finds an office in Mircester. Her new neighbour in what was James Lacey’s cottage, Emma Comfrey, applies for the job of secretary in the office, and, uncharactistically assertive, gets it. She has retired from the Ministry of Defence, where she has survived a Superglue investigation when she sabotages a popular colleagues’ computer. It turns out she is unbalanced and devious, with a vindictive nature when slighted. She gets a crush on Sir Charles Fraith, so aims to kill Agatha when Charles goes off with Agatha instead. The agency’s first case is a missing cat, and the second is to guard a divorcée’s daughter, Cassandra, who has received a death threat. It turns out that her ex-husband Jeremy Laggat-Brown has supplied bomb timers to terrorists including the Provos, and is in love with Felicity Felliet who wants to recover her ancestral home which Mrs Laggat-Brown now has. Jeremy’s real target is his ex-wife. He engages a Provisional IRA hitman Johnny Mulligan to kill Agatha. The jealous Emma Comfort poisons Agatha’s coffee with rat poison, which kills Mulligan who is waiting in her home to shoot her. Later Agatha is nearly gassed by Felicity. Finally after Emma is certified she escapes and goes to Agatha’s cottage, but is shot by Felicity Felliet who also wants to shoot Agatha (but has not met her). Agatha falls in love with Sir Charles Fraith again, and with the chief suspect, Jeremy Laggat-Brown. But she finds out that Harrison Peterson’s death is murder not suicide, and disproves Jeremy Laggat-Brown’s alibi - he has hired a drunken dropout to impersonate him in Paris. Inspector Fother of the Special Branch says he is .... damned if the papers are going to know that some dotty female from a provincial detective agency cracked a case that the Special Branch could not.
30757898	/m/0gffw_6	Conan the Valiant	Roland J. Green		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Conan the Valiant is set in Turan where a 22 year old Conan is recovering from his victory over the Cult of Doom (found in Robert Jordan's Conan the Unconquered). Not surprisingly, Conan finds himself involved in court intrigue and joins forces with a sword maiden Raihna and her employer the sorcerer Illyana in an effort to both keep out of Mughra Khan's dungeon and stop the growing menace of the magic user Eremius. Using one of the Jewels of Kurag—the other is held by Illyana—Eremius has command over a growing army of the Transformed, one-time humans who are turned into reptilian demons, and is looking to conquer large parts of Turan. The combination of local villagers, Conan's sword, and Illyana's magic destroy Eremius and the twin Jewels.
30758555	/m/0gfhbpt	The Sun, the Genome and the Internet	Freeman Dyson	1999	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science"}	 Professor Dyson suggests that three rapidly advancing technologies, Solar Energy, Genetic Engineering and World-Wide Communication together have the potential to create a more equal distribution of the world's wealth. Amongst other things he proposes that solar power in the Third World could connect even the most remote areas to all of the information on the internet, potentially ending the cultural isolation of the poorest countries. Likewise, breakthroughs in genetics could lead to more efficient crops, thereby engendering the renewed vitality of traditional village life, currently devalued by the global market.
30767858	/m/0gffyz4	Chanakya's Chant	Ashwin Sanghi	2010	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The year 340 BC. A hunted, haunted Brahmin youth vows revenge for the gruesome murder of his beloved father. Cold, calculating, cruel and armed with complete absence of accepted morals, he becomes the most powerful political strategist in Bharat and succeeds in uniting a ragged country against the invasion of the army of that demigod, Alexander the great. Pitting the weak edges of both forces against each other, he pulls off a wicked and astonishing victory and succeeds in installing Chandragupta on the throne of the mighty Mauryan empire. History knows him as the brilliant strategist Chanakya. Satisfied-and a little bored-by his success as a kingmaker through the simple summoning of his gifted mind, he recedes into the shadows to write Arthashastra, the science of wealth. But history, which exults in repeating itself, revives Chanakya two and a half millennium later, in the form of Gangasagar Mishra, a Brahmin teacher in a small town of India who becomes a puppteer to a host of ambitious individuals-including a certain slum child who grows up to be a beautiful and a powerful woman. Modern India happens to be just as riven as ancient bharat by class hatred, corruption and divisive politics and this happens to be Gangasagar's feasting ground. Can this wily pandit, who preys on greed, venality and sexual deviance-bring about another miracle of a united India. Will the Chanakya Chant work again?
30769405	/m/0gffw4n	The Last Dragonslayer	Jasper Fforde		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with 15-year-old Jennifer Strange, who is filling in for the missing manager of Kazam, an employment agency for magicians. There are prophecies that the last dragon will soon die, meaning that the dragon's territory is up for grabs. Trying to find the truth of the matter, she finds the official Dragonslayer and is pushed into becoming his apprentice. And from there it gets worse.
30774504	/m/0gff0p7	Patient Zero: A Joe Ledger Novel				 The story follows a Baltimore detective who is recruited into the Department of Military Sciences (DMS) and has to fight terrorists and flesh-eating zombies created by a pathogen called "Sword of the Faithful". Sword of the Faithful is a parasite that infects the brain with Prion protein. DMS is very short-handed because "Bravo" team and "Charlie" Team were wiped out in an outbreak at a hospital, and the protagonist, Joe Ledger, is installed as the head of the new "Echo" Team. Meanwhile, a Middle East terrorist group led by El Mujahid is developing new, faster-acting strains of the disease. The funding for the new strains is coming from a pharmaceutical company called Gen2000.
30774799	/m/0gk_h4d	Rosie Winter - Winter in June			{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Rosie Winter and best friend Jane pack their bags and head for San Francisco to catch a boat to the South Pacific. While waiting in line for the boat they find out that a woman has been found murdered and floating in the bay. This delays their boarding on the ship and allows Rosie time to think about the girl and what might have caused the woman to meet her untimely fate in the water. Rosie does not know that Irena Zinn, the body in the water, would be so closely related to her coming new friends and her trip. Once aboard a once luxurious cruise ship, now turned navy vassal for the war effort, Rosie and Jane meet the rest of their tour mates and the A Class star who will be their USO den mother. Cast of characters ends up being a bitter comedian named Violet and a shy singer named Kay. The A Class star is none other than Hollywood’s own Gilda DeVane. Rosie and James main mission for going to the pacific, is not to entertain the troops, although that is plus. They are going to see if they can see about Jack and his mysterious disappearance after the mysterious capsizing of his navy vessel on a mission. When they, finally, hit the Islands they start performing in the shows and hoping from Island to Island. The search for answer as to what happened to Jack takes some time to develop but an old voice lends Rosie some new information. Peaches aka Paul Ascot whom Rosie meet Prior at the Stage Door Canteen in New York City had been providing Rosie with information and shows up on the island with Billy, Jane’s new squeeze. Rosie finds out that Jack is dead chased into the water by military police. However, this might not be her final word on Jackand his disaprancJ. Through adventure and mishap Rosie unravels the mystery of what happened to jack, as well as, the mystery of Irena Zinn and how she ended up floating in The Bay of San Francisco.
30777995	/m/0gfhx3c	Memory	Lois McMaster Bujold	1996	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 During a routine combat mission, Miles suffers an epileptic-like seizure, a lingering side effect of his recent death and cryo-revival. During the fit, his plasma arc is activated and he accidentally severs the legs of the courier he was sent to rescue. Terrified of the possible consequences if he lets his condition reach the ears of Simon Illyan, he falsifies the mission report to cover it up. However, Illyan has spies in place among his crew, Miles is caught out in his lies, and he is forced to resign from ImpSec. He is plunged into a state of deep depression. Meanwhile, Emperor Gregor, after years of refusing to marry any of the tall, slim, eligible Barrayaran ladies paraded in front of him by Alys Vorpatril, unexpectedly falls in love with a short, voluptuous Komarran, Laisa Toscane, a wealthy heiress and member of a Komarran economic delegation. Unfortunately, she was already in the sights of Duv Galeni, now an ImpSec commodore and friend of Miles. Being from Komarr brings Galeni under suspicion during later events. When Illyan suffers a sudden, crippling mental impairment, Miles suspects it is not natural. His attempts to investigate are blocked by ImpSec's acting chief, so he asks Gregor to assign an Imperial Auditor (a top-level troubleshooter with practically unlimited authority and answerable only to the Emperor). Gregor unexpectedly makes Miles himself a temporary Auditor. After Miles unravels the devious crime in remarkably quick time, his appointment is made permanent. Duv Galeni is cleared, becoming ImpSec's new Head of Komarran Affairs, and he discovers love in the form of Delia Koudelka.
30778144	/m/040_5d2	A Civil Campaign	Lois McMaster Bujold	1999	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 An Imperial wedding is afoot, and love is in the air; Gregor and Laisa are finally to be married. Lady Alys Vorpatril, Ivan's mother, is put in charge of all the arrangements. Miles tackles the task of wooing Ekaterin in his typically deranged fashion: he does everything he can to avoid letting her know that he might just like her, fearful that her previous experience has put her off marriage for life. To let him see her frequently, and knowing of her ambition to become a gardener, he hires her to design a garden for Vorkosigan House. His brother Mark also has relationship problems: he is in love with the warm, empathetic Kareen Koudelka, but her parents disapprove of him, and while this did not seem to bother her on Beta Colony, the sexual mores of Barrayar are much stricter, and she feels that she has to keep their relationship a secret from her family and live chastely while under their roof. A significant subplot involves Mark's profit-inspired theft from a laboratory on Escobar of an engineered insect called the "butter bug," capable of converting waste vegetation into nutritious, edible ... bug vomit. Everything goes horribly wrong when Miles hosts a dinner party. Butter bugs and "bug butter" plague both aesthetics and digestion. A still-recovering Simon Illyan inadvertently blurts out Miles' not-so-secret (except to the intended target) courting of Ekaterin. She walks out after he panics and asks her to marry him. Meanwhile, Kareen's parents forbid her to have anything to do with Mark after they find out that he took her to the Orb of Unearthly Delights, a notorious Betan pleasure palace. The debacle has wider consequences. Two seats on the Council of Counts are up for grabs, one because the incumbent died, the other because the current Count Vorbretten has been found to be part Cetagandan, dating back to the days of the occupation. The seat (and Countship) of the late Pierre Vorrutyer is being contested by a distant cousin, Richars, and the previous Count's sister, Donna, who has undergone gender reassignment surgery on Beta Colony, becoming a fully functional man, Lord Dono, in order to better qualify as a potential Count. As his father's Deputy, Miles is courted by both sides. Richars makes an ill-advised attempt to use Tien's suspicious death as leverage. For security reasons, Miles is unable to defend himself with regard to the Komarran incident. Lord Dono, who as Donna taught Ivan Vorpatril "everything he knew", uses Ivan to recruit his own support among the counts, gaining Miles's vote after Richars's blunder. When Ekaterin finds out about the rumors, she is forced to consult Miles. Miles offers to take the blame, to spare Ekaterin and her son, but she refuses to let him. Somewhat reconciled, they set out to solve their problems, defeat their enemies and ascertain her true feelings. Mark's and Kareen's problems are solved after Miles advises Mark to utilize a most effective weapon: their mother Cordelia. She soon has Kareen's parents cowed and amenable. Miles's troubles culminate in a tumultuous Council session where dirty tricks abound. This results in defeat for the enemy and the very public betrothal of Miles and Ekaterin. The Imperial wedding goes off with only a minor hitch. At the Imperial wedding reception, Miles meets an old, respected acquaintance, ghem-General Dag Benin, who subtly lets him know that the Cetagandans are aware that he and Admiral Naismith are one and the same. Like its predecessor, this novel tells its story from the viewpoints of both Miles and Ekaterin, on occasion smoothly switching from one to the other during a given scene. There are also the viewpoints of Mark, Kareen Koudelka, and even Ivan Vorpatril, whose interior life has not been described at all before this.
30781122	/m/0gfg8kn	Sea Lord	Bernard Cornwell			 John Rossendale is the current Earl of Stowey. After the death of Johnny's father (some time before the book begins), the family had to sell almost everything, to pay the death duties on the estate. Johnny's mother's only goal being to hold on to the family seat, at Stowey Manor. Johnny having grown up with boats and not wanting to be involved in family affairs, left to sail the world with his best friend Charlie. Four years before our story beings, Johnny and Charlie, had got as far as Australia before bad news demanded their return to England. So after selling their boat they flew home. Johnny's elder brother, unable to cope with the stress from constantly fighting creditors in an attempt to hold on to the family home, had committed suicide. John had inherited the Earldom of Stowey, with all its troubles. Johnny, the irresponsible younger brother, returned home only to fall right in the middle of the storm. His mother had decided the only option was to sell their last remaining significant asset, a painting of Sunflowers by Van Gogh. Only before the sale can be completed, the painting is stolen. Johnny, under the weight of circumstantial evidence, is assumed to be the thief, only the police decide they cannot prove it. Johnny decided to do what he does best and go back to sea, to run away from it all. The story begins with Johnny, recalled to England again to attend his mother's deathbed. The threads of the story twist between the flawed hero Johnny; his twin sister, who has never forgiven her brother for arriving ten minutes before her, and who wants nothing but to regain the respect and position due her family; Georgina, his youngest, mentally retarded sister, whom he adores; Jennifer the gorgeous stepdaughter of a very rich art collector who will pay anything to get Van Gogh's Sunflowers on his wall and Charlie, Johnny's oldest and dearest friend.
30781462	/m/0gfjd23	Lord of Souls	Gregory Keyes	2011-09-17	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Like its predecessor The Infernal City, the novel Lord of Souls takes places about 40 years after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles, and some 160 years prior to the events of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Annaig is again promoted after introducing new ideas and dishes into Umbriel's court, and eventually tricks a rival kitchen into confirming she recreated their secret ingredient, also condemning Slyr, her assistant, to death after Slyr repeatedly tries to poison and murder her. Her mood further darkens after Mere-Glim is caught and killed while attempting to lead the skraws in another raid. Sul and Attrebus, captured by Malacath, escape and resume the search for Umbra, and are led to a fort where the current wielder of Umbra has been buried alive after the sword drove him immediately insane.
30810053	/m/0gfjh2m	Le lieutenant de Kouta		1979	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lieutenant Siriman Keita has returned from a long service in the French Colonial Army (during which he was awarded the Croix de guerre) to Kouta, a market village near his smaller home village of Kouroula. In Kouta, he at first plots to ascend to the canton chiefdom while avoiding his envious older brother, Faganda. However, his plans are scrapped when he humiliates himself in a horse-riding accident before the village, and he withdraws to his fortress-like "square house." After a time, he adopts a fatherless boy who he had once punished for stealing, and marries Awa, a Senegalese woman of questionable reputation. Disaster strikes the lieutenant again, however, when the French commandant incites him to lead a punitive expedition against the pro-independence village of Woudi. When the expedition fails, the lieutenant is stripped and humiliated before the people of Kouta and, after the commandant denies his own involvement, is sent to jail in the country's capital for disturbing the peace. He returns to find Awa pregnant by a young pro-independence activist, but having changed during his incarceration, the lieutenant forgives her betrayal and adopts the coming child as his own. He reconciles with the imam of the local mosque, formerly a bitter enemy, and eventually becomes the village muezzin, only to die mysteriously following an injection by his envious brother. The imam does him the honor of burying him in the mosque, while the French administrators, concerned by the example of his conversion, hastily and posthumously award him the Legion of Honour.
30819547	/m/0gfds3l	The Lad and the Lion	Edgar Rice Burroughs		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When the king of a small European country is murdered by conspirators, his young grandson and heir Prince Michael is spirited away by a faithful retainer, carrying out the orders of the dead king, who had wind of what might be afoot. The diverging fates of Michael and his former country then unfold in parallel, in alternating chapters. The ship the prince is put aboard is wrecked in a storm and he is injured and swept overboard. Climbing aboard an empty lifeboat, he is rescued by an mad, epileptic old man piloting a tramp steamer. Also aboard is a caged lion. The old man beats the prince and tortures the lion, keeping them prisoner on the craft for years. Michael, his memory gone, makes friends with the lion, which ultimate breaks free and kills their tormentor. The steamer, now adrift, eventually strikes shore on the coast of northern Africa. The lad and the lion live and hunt together in the wild at the margin of the jungle and desert. Eventually they encounter a band of Arabs, whose flocks they prey on. They rescue Nakhla, daughter of the Arabs' chieftain Sheik Ali-Es-Hadji, from marauders and return her to the band. Afterward she meets with Michael secretly, dissuading him from raiding her people and gradually teaching him how to speak and dress as an Arab, shoot, and ride a horse. As he cannot even remember his own name, she dubs him Aziz. The lion, meanwhile, has taken up with a lioness, giving Michael two lion friends. Eventually the Arab warrior Ben Saada, who desires Nakhla, discovers her meetings with Michael and informs her father. The two proceed to separate the pair, the sheik by forbidding Nakhla to visit him, and Ben Saada by lying to Michael that she has married another and is no longer interested in him. Afterward Michael encounters two Arabs who have abducted another girl, Marie, daughter of a French officer. He saves her and returns her to the French camp while his lions dispatch her captors. There, as the guest of her father Colonel Joseph Vivier, he learns French and tells his story to his new friends. His past prior to his sojourn on the steamer is still a blank to him. Later, visiting the Arab camp in their company, he meets Nakhla again, but she, seeing him with Marie, will have nothing to do with him. This hardly frees him to court Marie, however. Back with the French he learns that both the colonel and the wife of another officer, who has taken Marie under her wing, disapprove of their friendship. Hurt, he returns to the wild, determined to confront Nakhla; Marie, in parting, has told him she observed the Arab girl was not married, and reveals that Aziz, the name she had given him, means "beloved." Followed by his lions, Michael confronts the sheik and demands to see Nakhla. Refused, he claims to be the brother of el adrea (the lion) and threatens to resume predation on the herds. The sheik then discovers she is missing, kidnapped by Ben Saada, whose hand she has refused. An emissary from Ben Saada arrives, offering to negotiate; the sheik refuses, and swears vengeance should any harm come to his daughter. Michael trails the messenger back to Ben Saada. Meanwhile Nakhla has escaped, only to be captured in turn by the Arab marauders of Sidi-El-Seghir, who decide to sell her into slavery. Michael now follows her new captors and attempts to free her, only to be taken in turn. His lions prowl about the camp as Nakhla tends the injured Michael's wounds. Then the marauders are attacked by the French. In the confusion, Sidi-El-Seghir rides off with the captives, only to be set upon by the two lions. Michael kills the bandit. He compares note with Nakhla, and Ben Saada's lies are revealed. The couple reconciles, and the sheik afterward agrees to the match. The lions depart when Michael passes out from his wounds, thinking him dead. When he revives he finds his memory restored, but decides to stay with Nakhla rather than attempt to recover his heritage. The murdered king's brother Prince Otto, one of the conspirators, succeeds him, but he and his spoiled son Prince Ferdinand are disliked by the people. His accomplice Sarnya has been rewarded by promotion to chief of staff as General Count Sarnya. Three new conspirators, Andresy, Bulvik and Carlyn, emerge in opposition. Bulvik attempts to assassinate Sarnya but fails, and is fatally shot in turn. Prince Ferdinand becomes enamored of Hilda de Groot, the pretty daughter of the head gardener, but makes an enemy in her brother Hans. Years pass. Andresy and Carlyn plot against the king, while Hans plots against Ferdinand. He reveals the prince's infatuation to King Otto, opening a rift in the royal family. An exile, Count Maximilian Lomsk, who wishes to return and is ambitious for Sarnya's position, is encouraged by Andresy to communicate Ferdinand. Through their machinations Carlyn is reinstated as a lieutenant in the army, which he hopes to parlay into a position of captain of the guard from which he can strike at the king and prince. King Otto attempts to shore up the realm's faltering finances and counter Ferdinand's continuing liaison with Hilda by betrothing him to the wealthy Maria, princess of a neighboring country. Ferdinand resists at first, but eventually marries her. They quickly come to hate each other. The conspirators' plan proceeds. Carlyn, who has achieved his post close to the king, accompanies him to inspect a cavalry regiment. William Wesl, a patsy of the conspirators, is sent to the palace with a letter. As he approaches King Otto and Captain Carlyn the latter shoots the king with a gun stolen from Hans and throws it at the feet of Wesl. Doubly implicated as the assassin by the letter he unwitting bears, Wesl is arrested and executed. Ferdinand, now king, continues to alienate the people. He sacks Sarnya, placing Maximilian Lomsk in his position, and makes Hilda lady in waiting to Queen Maria. The queen, offended, returns to her own country, but by threatening to take her money with her forestalls Ferdinand from divorcing her to marry Hilda. Ferdinand plans war against Maria's country, while Andresy plots a coup against the monarchy together with six army officers. Andresy's intention is to set up a republic with himself as head and the now-aggrieved General Count Sarnya as head of the army. Meanwhile, Wesl's wife, realizing her husband was set up by Captain Carlyn, feigns falling in love with the captain. All comes to a head on the date set for the coup. The six officers assassinate Ferdinand and Hilda. Hans, hearing of his sister's death, commits suicide. Wesl's wife murders Captain Carlyn. At the end of the novel the two plot threads touch briefly. Aziz, formerly Prince Michael, is still living in Africa and now happily wed to Nakhla. He reads that Count Sarnya has seized power in his former country and made himself dictator. He cables the new ruler as follows: "Congratulations! You have my sympathy — Michael."
30819843	/m/0gfhx92	The Three Musketeers in Africa				 Csülök, Senki Alfonz and Tuskó Hopkins the three legionaries live at the fortress of Oasis Rakhmar. Legionary Tuskó Hopkins serves by the name of Herman Torze because of a stolen uniform and data. He receives a letter from a young lady named Yvonne Barre addressed to Torze. She is in search for her brother, Francis Barre. The three legionaries find out that Francis is at the worst discipline camp, Igori. They want to help Yvonne, so each of the three commit some transgression to be punished by marching to Igori. There they face a big surprise as the discipline camp resembles to a resort centre. There they meet Yvonne, the dying Francis Barre and their father General Duron. Duron tries to unveil the fraud in a letter. The three legionaries and Yvonne escape from the camp carrying the letter to Marquis De Surenne. Finally the plot is unveiled and Senki Alfonz marries Yvonne.
30821476	/m/0gfg6xc	Super Sad True Love Story	Gary Shteyngart	2010-07-27	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The son of a Russian immigrant, protagonist Leonard (Lenny) Abramov, a middle-aged, middle class, and otherwise unremarkable man whose mentality is still in the past century, falls madly in love with Eunice Park, a young Korean-American struggling with materialism and the pressures of her traditional Korean family. The chapters alternate between profuse diary entries from the old fashioned Lenny and Eunice's biting e-mail correspondence on her "GlobalTeens" account. In the background of what appears to be a love story that oscillates between superficiality and despair, a grim political situation unravels. America is on the brink of economic collapse, threatened by their Chinese creditors. In the meantime, the totalitarian Bipartisan government's main mission is to encourage and promote consumerism while eliminating political dissidents. In the midst of all this, in a world where anyone's sexuality can be rated at the touch of the screen, where the privileged can live forever but the unfortunate die too soon, there is still value to being a real human being.
30825556	/m/051wk86	Sabotage at Sea	Franklin W. Dixon			 This drama, mystery, war film is set during the Second World War. Cargo ship Captain Tracey (David Hutcheson) has discovered that enemy agents have tampered with his ship. The film follows the desperate search for the saboteur.
30834790	/m/0gfgr4f	The Raven in the Foregate	Edith Pargeter	1986	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 December 1141 starts out with mild weather in Shrewsbury. Abbot Radulfus is called to Westminster for a second legatine council in one year. Henry, Bishop of Winchester turned his allegiance back to his own brother King Stephen, now released from imprisonment by the contender for the crown, his cousin Empress Maud in trade for her strongest supporter, Robert of Gloucester. As he called all the bishops and major clerics to announce the support of the church, and himself, for the Empress, he now calls them back to reinstate allegiance to the crowned King. Supporters of the Empress in areas strong for the King must now make themselves scarce or come to terms with the change. Shortly before, Father Adam of the Holy Cross parish church, in the Foregate, died after long years of service. Abbott Radulfus has the task of finding a replacement. On his return on 10 December, he brings a learned priest recommended by Henry of Winchester at the council. Father Ailnoth comes with a housekeeper, and her unskilled nephew Benet, seeking work near her. The monks agree to Ailnoth, previously clerk to Bishop Henry. They also agree to try Benet on approval. Hugh Beringar, Sheriff of Shropshire on the death of the appointed sheriff, is called to meet with the King, at his Christmas feast at Canterbury. King Stephen is now free to consider if the young man he appointed as Deputy three years earlier is the one he will choose formally as Sheriff in the King's name. Benet is assigned to help Cadfael with the heavy garden work needed before the first frost. The two get along well as Benet works hard and well. As the days pass, Cadfael notices that the young man presents one face to him, and a different one to the rest of the Abbey. In just eight days Father Ailnoth alienates or directly offends almost everyone in the Holy Cross parish. He refuses confession, absolution, and then communion to Eluned, a local girl who kills herself in despair at the rejection. He treats the children with the rod, especially when he is teaching them to read. He refused to baptize an infant born too sick to live above an hour, then refused the infant burial in blessed ground because it was not baptized. In the market, he accuses the local baker of short-weighting his loaves of bread. On the land, he pays no heed to property lines until he oversteps and is challenged. The provost of the town meets with Abbott Radulfus to share the complaints. The Abbot talks with the priest, who does not understand the change in his role, from bishop's clerk to someone with the 'cure of souls.' He does not see and will not see that the rites of daily prayers are not always more important than the baptism of an infant whose parents know will not survive, and justifies his hard-hearted decision on the letter of the rules. His treatment of the infant and the young woman rankle all, not just their own families. On Christmas Eve, Brother Cadfael walks out for a visit with Aline Beringar and his godson Giles; en route, he sees Ralph Giffard walking away from town. On returning to the Abbey, Cadfael sees Father Ailnoth walking out, staff in hand, in the first frost of the winter, so focussed he does not reply to a friendly greeting. Both Benet and Sanan appear for the Christmas Eve services (matins) at the Abbey, while her stepfather attended at Saint Chad, the parish church serving his town house. At this their second meeting, Benet and Sanan slip out separately to Cadfael's workshop for a warm, uninterrupted chat. The next morning, Christmas day, the housekeeper reports Ailnoth missing all night. She hoped he had gone to the all night celebration of the Nativity in the Abbey, but he had not. A search by the locals led by Cadfael finds his body in the mill pond, hit on the back of the head and drowned. Hugh's deputy initiates the investigation, expecting no co-operation because everyone disliked him for specific and often personal reasons. The Abbot is carrying a burden in this investigation, as he had judged this man a good vicar for the parish of Holy Cross. Two days after Christmas, Hugh returns from the meeting with King Stephen, who has formally accepted Beringar as his Sheriff in Shropshire. King Stephen is starting with fresh energy, and some desire for revenge on the supporters of Empress Maud. Hugh is given two names to hunt in Shropshire, two squires of FitzAlan in Normandy. One is Torold Blund, who Hugh knows has already left, rejoined his wife Godith. The other is Ninian Bachiler, a single man. Hugh has little interest in revenge, so does the minimum, which is to announce the names of men being sought by the King. A couple of days later, Ralph Giffard comes forward with his information on Ninian, forcing Hugh to mount a larger investigation. Giffard's action forced another action. Cadfael had confronted Benet with his true name, Ninian, ending that charade between the two of them. Ninian explained his plans now his original mission was of no use, and told his joy at learning Torold was safe home. He explained that the plan bringing him to Shrewsbury was set in motion by his resourceful childhood nursemaid, Diota Hammet, whom he had sought when the tide turned away from Maud in the south. He seeks now to escape through Wales to reach Gloucester, where the Empress's forces are gathered. On the day Giffard comes forward, Sanan meets Ninian at Cadfael's workshop, to explain the need for him to hide now, not be taken by the Sheriff. Cadfael, returning from tending the sick outside the Abbey, hears their discussion. He steps away before his presence was known, so they can go to the hiding place pronto. Cadfael did not hear that hiding place, so need not worry about lying to Hugh, who appeared at the Abbey before Cadfael went to his own little workshop. Thus Cadfael appears as astonished as the other brothers when told that simpleton Benet was in fact the young squire Ninian, who has fled with no trace. The coincidence of the suspected murder of Father Ailnoth and the disappearance of Ninian has raised Ninian's name as the murderer. Ralph Giffard told Father Ailnoth of the true identity of Benet, and the meeting place and time. Giffard sent neither yes nor no in reply to the message he got from Ninian, all of which Giffard reports to Hugh Beringar. The purpose of the righteous Ailnoth marching past Cadfael before Compline is now clear: to confront the boy for having used Ailnoth to travel north, being at the meeting place in Giffard's stead. Did they meet? Did others arrive before or after Ninian, resulting in the death of the hated priest? Hugh considers all the possibilities. In his rounds among the locals needing medical help, Cadfael is sent to the grandmother left tending the infant orphaned by her mother's death after rejection by the vicar Father Ailnoth. He is pleased to learn the thriving baby was named Winifred, for their local saint. Diota had been injured the night the priest disappeared. Cadfael treated her wounds, and checked on her days later, when Sanan Bernière was visiting. Walking out together, she tells him she plans to help Ninian escape and will escape with him. Cadfael ponders items that were not found with Ailnoth's body, but ought to have been with it. Ailnoth wore a small cap over his tonsure that cold night, not wearing his cowl, and he walked with a hard staff. This staff was brought to mind from a trip to the mill where he encountered Ninian, who hoped to find it as well. Ninian will not leave the area until his name is cleared of the murder charge, and Diota is safely set up; only then he will ride out with his love, Sanan, to be married in Gloucester. Cadfael set out to find these items. The cap was found by boys playing at the unfrozen river early Christmas morning, and then taken by Cadfael in trade for some apples. He found the staff near where the body was found. The ebony staff, with its stag's horn handle and band of silver, holds long, greying hairs in it, suggesting only one person. Cadfael again visits Mistress Hammet, pressing her for the full story of Christmas Eve. The priest's reaction to learning of the true identity of Ninian was to find sin in both his housekeeper and the boy. She tells how she followed the priest on his way to meet Ninian, begging him not to do harm to the boy. She clung to him, begging for mercy; Ailnoth's response was to beat her with his staff, leaving the wounds Cadfael had tended. This terrified and dazed her, so she let go of him, and made her way home. She did not see anyone else on her return, and left the priest alive. A thaw comes at the end of December, so Cynric can dig the grave for Ailnoth. Hugh has learned that the baker Jordan Achard was seen out early Christmas morning, and his wife will attest her husband was not with her, but with one of his "fancy girls." Hugh proposes to announce this after the funeral as a way to get the guilty person talking, a scheme Cadfael terms devious — why is he friends with such as Hugh? Hugh says, like calling to like. A week after Ailnoth was found dead, Father Abbot gives the eulogy at his funeral, both in penance and to assure only truth is told. It is mainly the men of the parish who gather for this funeral, in addition to the housekeeper Diota come with Sanan. Ninian came out of hiding, in fear his nurse will be taken at the Sheriff's announcement. As the baker loudly protests his innocence of murder and guilt of adultery, Ninian is mistaken for a servant boy by Ralph Giffard, asked to hold his horse. Ninian plays his role again, in a humorous turn. The verger Cynric steadily fills the grave, and proves to be the one witness who knows how Ailnoth came to his end. He speaks at the request of Abbot Radulfus, and the Sheriff, only because someone is being charged with this death. In Cynric's view, the man of violence died by violence, a judgment but no murder. Cynric witnessed the scene between Ailnoth and Diota from the place where the unforgiven young girl had killed herself. After Ailnoth beat her, Diota had grabbed the end of the staff, then he pulled it back as she let go and ran away. The priest reeled backwards hitting a dead willow then into the pond. Cynric walked close enough to see the man's face, his identity. Cynric walked away that evening, assured this happened at the very pond where the girl died for a reason, the will of God. Cadfael considered Cynric set all in foregate and town free of suspicion. Abbot Radulfus accepted Cynric's story, as did the Sheriff. Cadfael's evidence confirmed the story. Cynric finished the burial. Only Brother Jerome was upset at this ending. In his busy-ness afterward, he sees Ninian holding the horse, thinks he recognizes him. Then he sees Ralph come to claim his horse, pay a silver penny to the diligent peasant who then followed him away. Brother Jerome was disappointed he was not bringing in a malefactor, yet relieved he was not caught in an embarrassing error – Giffard's own groom! Sanan had watched it all, thinking how Ninian will laugh when she tells him the whole story.
30834797	/m/0gfgyzy	The Hermit of Eyton Forest	Edith Pargeter	1987	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The story opens on 18 October 1142 with the news that Richard Ludel, lord of Eaton manor, has died of his wounds taken at the battle of Lincoln in February 1141. A servant carries the news to Sheriff Hugh Beringar, who has charge of the manor lands for King Stephen. Hugh shares the news with Abbot Radulfus, who is guardian of the son. Brother Paul informs young Richard, 10 years old, that he is orphaned, and lord of Eaton manor. Richard has been educated at the Abbey since age 5 when his mother died. It is suspected that his father made the charter with the Abbot to keep his son away from his grandmother, Dame Dionisia Ludel. She does not believe in such education for a lord. Her goal is to marry the boy to Hiltrude, daughter of Fulke Astley, who will inherit the estates on either side of Eaton manor: Wroxeter and Leighton. That he is too young, their ages 12 years apart, have no bearing on her decision, aimed at increasing family lands and her own power. Her request that Abbot Radulfus send the boy back to her is refused. While the boy is educated, the steward John of Longwood will continue to run the estates well. Hugh Beringar has power from his role as King Stephen's man, overlord in the King's absence. He decides it is best that the boy's inheritance be assured. The former overlord of the estate, William Fitz Alan fled to France, as a supporter of the Empress Maud when King Stephen took Shrewsbury and Fitz Alan's estates. Fitz Alan is rumoured back in England, no need to stir up old loyalties. Two strangers enter the area in October, the holy hermit Cuthred and his helper boy. The hermit is given a disused hermit's chapel with adjacent room by Dame Dionisia for his residence. The helper sets to making a garden, as the local folks rapidly accept the hermit in their midst. He and his helper were present at the funeral of Richard's father, when three brothers of the Abbey escorted the son, returning him in time for Vespers. Otherwise, Cuthred never leaves his small residence, his doors always open. The rest of the story takes place over a few days in November 1142. Eilmund, forester for the Abbey, reports unusual damage in the Eyton Forest. The river bed was undermined, deer and sheep from Eaton manor damaged young plants, including new ash trees. Neither Eilmund nor John of Longwood can find how the animals escaped. This forest is owned by the Abbey. The hermit's boy reports to the Abbot at Chapter two day's later Cuthred's view of the odd events in Eyton forest: they are happening in punishment for the young Lord Richard not being allowed back home to live at his manor. The helper introduces himself as Hyacinth. He is a young man with reddish brown hair, the colour of copper beeches. Leaving the Abbey, Hyacinth is approached by Richard, who wants a friend to tell him the true news about his own lands. They form a pact as friends. En route to the hermitage, Hyacinth hears a man in pain in Eyton Forest. He immediately helps by rolling a fallen willow tree off Eilmund. He finds local men to carry Eilmund to his own assart, where his daughter Annet is doing her chores. As Eilmund is carried on a litter, Hyacinth runs ahead to warn the daughter of what she will see. Seeing her father's state, she asks Hyacinth to go back to the Abbey, asking for Brother Cadfael to set her father's broken leg. Radulfus sends Brother Cadfael on horseback to tend their forester, Hyacinth keeping pace on foot. Before Cadfael left for the forest, Hugh Beringar shared the latest news in the conflict between King Stephen and the Empress Maud. She is held under siege in Oxford Castle. Her best ally, Robert of Gloucester is back from France, at Wareham, hoping to lure King Stephen from the siege. The Empress sent a messenger from Oxford Castle to Brian Fitzcount, Lord of Wallingford, her strongest ally after Robert. The messenger's horse was found, with empty saddlebags, but no sign of the messenger Renaud Bourchier—thought brave by Cadfael to venture out of a siege to deliver jewels to Wallingford where money was needed to pay the men. Returning to the Abbey from Eilmund's, Cadfael meets its newest guests, Drogo Bosiet and his groom Warin, of Northamptonshire. Warin tells Cadfael that his lord is hunting a man, a villein named Brand, who had fled after attacking the steward. Drogo's son is also hunting; the two plan to meet at the Abbey. Drogo seeks the help of the Abbey at the next day's Chapter meeting. Abbot Radulfus is not well inclined to this man's goal, so recommends him to contact the sheriff for aid in his pursuit, after a precisely true response that no one of that description stayed in the Abbey. After Vespers, Brother Jerome, ever righteous, meets privately with Drogo to tell him that the hermit's helper bears some resemblance to the villein Brand. Jerome's meeting is not as private as he hopes, as young Richard overhears their conversation and the threat to his friend Hyacinth. Richard immediately rides his pony to warn Hyacinth before Drogo can set out for the hermitage in search of him. Richard finds Hyacinth with Annet in the Eyton Forest. Hyacinth appreciates the warning. In the twilight, Richard heads back to the Abbey while Hyacinth avoids the hermitage. That same day, Brother Cadfael rides to check his patient. He waits to leave Eilmund until Annet returns from her evening duties, rather longer than usual. Riding on a moonlit night, Cadfael encounters Drogo's horse with no rider, then the body of Drogo Bosiet, killed by a knife in his back. Cadfael takes the horse with him to the Abbey, informs the sheriff by notes, and the Abbot in person before Matins. In the light of morning, Hugh Baringar and Cadfael inspect the corpse and the scene. It is clear that Drogo was stabbed in the back as he walked his horse on the forest path in a densely wooded section en route to the Abbey. No knife is found. Only the roll tied to the saddle had been stolen, using the knife. A fine ring on Drogo's hand remains, suggesting thievery was not the motive for the murder. They ride back to consult the Abbot, as Cadfael tells Hugh what he knows about Drogo and the villein he sought, moved by a "vigorous hate". The Abbot gathered two useful facts to aid the investigation. Brother Jerome reports his conversation with Drogo Bosiet, revealing Bosiet's likely destination, and why he rode without his groom. The groom was sent to town to seek a fine leather worker, the trade at which the villein excelled. Hugh visits the hermit, with Cadfael. Cuthred confirms that the Abbey's guest had visited him the day before. Hugh and Cadfael carefully observe the interior of the hermitage, Cuthred's cell. Cuthred says Hyacinth has not been at the hut since the day before when he sent him on an errand, but is now suspicious of him, alarmed at this murder. Cuthred tells how he met Hyacinth, a beggar at the gates of the Cluniac priory in Northampton, in the end days of September. The mysteries are set for solving: one murder, one missing helper, and the damage in the Eyton Forest. Hugh Beringar sets up a manhunt for Hyacinth, though unconvinced of his guilt. Upon second return to the Abbey in one day, Cadfael learns of another mystery, the whereabouts of young Richard. He has not been seen in the Abbey since the day before at Vespers. It is clear to Cadfael that Richard overheard Jerome's conversation, then vanishes from the Abbey. Cadfael fears for the boy, whose grandmother is not above taking him from the forest. Hugh Beringar and his men search for both the school boy Richard and the suspected murderer Hyacinth. A new guest arrives at the Abbey as the brothers search the Abbey unsuccessfully for Richard. Rafe of Coventry, of the Earl of Warwick, is a falconer. Cadfael is stabling his horse at the same time as Rafe, so they talk briefly. Rafe notices the horse whose owner lies in the mortuary chapel, then looks at the face of the dead man, a stranger to him. In the next two days, all the mysteries are resolved. In Hugh's manhunt, he returns to Cuthred the next day seeking the boy Richard. He has not been there. Most think that Hyacinth has run to Wales, where Hugh's writ does not run. Hugh suspects that Dame Dionisia is hiding her grandson, but does not uncover him in the search, not at Eaton manor, nor at Wroxeter, the closer of Astley's two manors. Cadfael brings crutches to Eilmund, fast healing. He waited out of sight on first leaving, to follow Annet as she meets the much-sought Hyacinth. Annet, Eilmund and Hyacinth bring Cadfael in on their secrets. Annet loves Hyacinth and her father knows all about it. Eilmund likes and is grateful to Hyacinth for saving him in the forest, so hides him during the manhunt. Hyacinth confesses that Dame Dionisia set him to the task of making trouble for the Abbey until Richard was returned to her. Though Hyacinth did not push the willow tree onto Eilmund, he feels responsible for that, which does not shake Eilmund's views. Cadfael is unhappy that he cannot tell Hugh what he knows, as these three cannot trust the Sheriff as Cadfael does. Hyacinth was with Annet at the time of the murder. Innocence is not sufficient; he is not safe until the manhunt is stopped. Hyacinth describes his bad treatment at Drogo's hands, even as he became so skilled at fine leather work. Bosiet distrained Hyacinth's father's lands shortly before he died, leaving the orphan Hyacinth more bound to the lord for survival. Hyacinth ran because he beat up the steward when he chanced on him raping a local girl. Hyacinth knew that Bosiet valued the steward over the girl, and would savour the chance to bear down harder on him. Next day, Drogo's son Aymer arrives at the Abbey with his groom, learning of his father's murder. Harsh like his father, he is not much saddened. His focus is on finding the villein, his property. Cadfael is eager for Aymer to give up his greedy chase, take his father home for proper burial. Then Cadfael can resolve the conflict of the two promises he made, informing Hugh of what is known by those living in Eyton forest. Cadfael encounters Rafe putting coins in the alms box. One is a coin struck with the image of the Empress. Rafe admits to coming from Oxford. Cadfael asks, are you come to find the murderer of Bourchier? Rafe says no, but I wish it were that. Hyacinth seeks Richard in the evening when the manhunt is in abeyance. Reasoning that the greatest threat to Richard was his grandmother, he seeks the manor of the intended bride, Leighton, the one further out and last to be searched. Hearing a young woman travelling with her father on horseback in the darkness, he knows he is right. He finds Richard locked in a room, but cannot free him, only speak through a shutter. Instead, they hatch a plan for him to agree to the marriage ceremony, at which the hermit Cuthred will act as the priest. Hyacinth whispers a secret to Richard that persuades him to follow the plan that evening. The morning after the marriage ceremony, Richard talks with Hiltrude. She tells him how she wants to marry someone else, a second son whose hope of land is only a promise. Richard has no interest in marriage at all, at age 10. Gaining respect for Hiltrude, he shares the secret that led him to agree to the ceremony. She is delighted. The two make a plan so Richard can escape on his pony for a daring ride to the Abbey. Richard begins his ride in daylight, after dinner (the midday meal). All goes well until a groom notices the grazing pony missing. He notifies Astley, who is aware of the missing Richard hours before their plan anticipated. He wants the boy to sign some papers, so is angry and in immediate pursuit. Astley chases after Richard, knowing he will head for the Abbey. They arrive dramatically in the Abbey courtyard, Richard first on his pony followed less than five yards by Astley on his large grey, both animals overworked and almost foaming. Richard falls off the pony and grabs the Abbot's legs, making clear where he wants to be. The courtyard was full, as Vespers had just ended. The lord Astley and Abbot Radulfus face off. Astley says, I want my son in law. The Abbot coolly, forcefully, and without insult, takes control of the conversation with Astley, also asking Richard questions. Richard's honour is tested, as he will answer the Abbot truthfully, yet cannot implicate anyone who helped him in good faith. He does his best, relying on the Abbot's holding the same code of honour. The questions allow Richard no opening to reveal the main reason he did stand up in the marriage ceremony; in frustration, he shouts that Cuthred is not a priest, in front of a rapt audience. Rafe, among the crowd, hears this and slips away. Brother Paul steps up to take Richard, as the Abbot puts off all other issues with the boy to another time. There is one way to learn if Richard is right about the hermit, ask the hermit to tell if he is also a priest. Abbot Radulfus plans a meeting with Cuthred after Prime the next morning, inviting Sir Fulke Astley to join him. Hugh Beringar enters the scene now, seeing the confrontation of the two men, and defiant yet frightened Richard. Just returned from Leighton, on a wild goose chase searching for Richard, he is not kindly inclined to Astley. The topic of charges for kidnapping is now raised, muting Astley after his voluble and honest surprise at Richard's charge against the hermit. Aymer Bosiet has not yet left the Abbey, still a threat to Hyacinth. Next morning, all meet at the unexpectedly silent hermitage. The Abbot enters first, into the small room, calling for Cuthred to no avail. Hugh passes him into the chapel, to see Cuthred lying dead at the foot of the altar, his own knife near his hand. How to make sense of this scene, everything orderly except the sprawled body? A casket (small box) is broken open and empty. Hugh and Cadfael quietly notice the absence of the breviary. Some blood shows on the tip of Cuthred's knife, and two places are noted on his clothing where a knife had been wiped clean of blood, by one who takes care of his weapons. Dame Dionisia arrives. She is struck by the sight of the dead man, realising how death can come at any moment, even to her, with all her sins upon her. Brother Cadfael looks once more in the chapel, inspecting for blood spots. Some were on new wood, at his height. Cadfael rides to the Abbey with the group carrying the hermit's body. Aymer Bosiet is leaving with his father's casket. Aymer looks at the corpse of the hermit, and recognizes the face. He and his father had met this man at Thame, one night at the end of September. He was dressed differently, hair cut in the Norman style, a man who wore weapons. They played dice and chess with him. Thus is explained the murder of Drogo, by circumstance at least. The hermit could not risk discovery by a chance acquaintance. Cadfael asks Aymer, what kind of horse was he riding back then? No horse, very odd. Aymer and group leave the Abbey. Time to bring Hyacinth out in view, Cadfael decides, to resolve the questions of the hermit being a priest or not and Hyacinth's role in the recent events. First, he and Hugh speak in the herbarium. Cadfael tells him that Hyacinth can add to this. They want to pursue the why of these deaths, with no risk to Hyacinth. They prepare to ride to Eilmund's cottage. Hugh calls off the manhunt. They meet Rafe in the stable, who tells Cadfael he leaves the next day. Cadfael says, you may need my services, he drew blood. Come to me before you leave. At Eilmund's cottage, Hyacinth tells what he knows of Cuthred, after hearing that he was both a murderer and now dead. When they met, Cuthred was not dressed as a priest. Hyacinth stole a habit for him at the priory, so he could transform himself. Cuthred told Dame Dionisia he was a priest and she believed him, but Hyacinth knew he was not. Hugh tells Hyacinth the hunt is called off, he is free to seek work in the town. What name does he choose? Annet says, Hyacinth. In a year and a day, he will come to ask for Annet as his wife. Hugh and Cadfael ride through the forest and talk. One realisation is that the Bosiets, father and son, spent two full months on the hunt for their villein, riding far from home, and stopped only a few days after the father is slain for a chance meeting with the hermit, before he became a hermit. Rafe seeks Cadfael to treat his long knife wound. Tells him his full name is Rafe de Genville, vassal and friend to Brian FitzCount, loyal to the Empress. Rafe is heading to Brian to restore to him what is his. It had been a fair fight between him and the hermit. Both used daggers, as the hermit had no sword. Rafe found what he sought in the reliquary, and in the breviary. A personal letter was hidden in a pocket of the breviary, already read by the dead man—seal broken. Rafe asks, was this sin? In his day, Cadfael would have done the same. Rafe's wound is treated, he says farewell. Hugh and Cadfael talk in the herbarium again, reviewing. Cadfael says, I let him go. He? asks Hugh. Rafe de Genville, the man who killed Cuthred/Bourchier in a fair fight, for good reason. Cadfael did not ask how Rafe found clues that brought him to Shrewsbury. Cadfael knew one clue, when Richard yelled that the hermit was no priest. Rafe sought a cheat, found him in the hermitage. Cadfael "drew a bow at a very long venture" asking if Rafe sought the murderer of the missing messenger. Horse with no man, man with no horse, Cadfael had linked these together. Hugh recoils realizing the full horror of the crime that Renaud Bourchier first committed, fouler than murder. Deliberate dishonor is what Bourchier pursued when he left as the trusted messenger who coldly and practically made his new opportunities for the future. That letter from the Empress might have been blackmail, if the Empress's husband in Normandy sought divorce—these are the calculations Bourchier was making. Hugh is persuaded Rafe acted rightly. All the mysteries are solved, the treason revenged, the innocent preserved, the lovers united, honour upheld.
30841087	/m/0fq13zc	I Am Number Four	Pittacus Lore	2010-08-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 This follows the story of John Smith, a 15-year-old alien from the planet Lorien, and Henri, his guardian Cêpan, as they run from the Mogadorians, another alien race that is hunting John and eight other teenage Lorics residing on the planet Earth. These nine teens are members of the Garde, a group of Loric people gifted with special powers called "Legacies." Cêpans, who are also Loric, do not acquire Legacies and most often become protectors and mentors for young members of the Garde. The teenagers are protected by a spell or charm that only allows them to be killed in numeric order. The first three have been killed, and John is Number 4. The book opens with the death of Number Three. Number Four is introduced under the alias Daniel Jones as he leaves Florida. Four has three circular scars which begin on his right outer leg, just above his ankle, and move upward along his outer calf. Each signifies the deaths of Numbers One, Two, and Three, and burn with blue fire when they appear. These scars are present on all the Lorien teenagers, and with each death, another scar appears. Henri, Four's Cêpan (guardian), tells him they are going to Paradise, Ohio. Henri produces a new identity for Four, giving him the name "John Smith." Tired of running, John says that he wants to begin to make a life for himself. Henri reminds him why they run, and the conversation ends. John begins to attend the local high school where he meets the beautiful Sarah Hart, a junior. He also meets her ex-boyfriend Mark James, who immediately begins to pick on John. John stands up to him, the first time he has ever stood up to anybody. During astronomy class, John's hands begin to hurt and glow. When John is back at his house, he realizes that his first legacy has arrived. After the Mogadorians' devastating attack on Lorien, the Nine are the only surviving Lorics with legacies — and each of the Nine is gifted with a different set of legacies (though they all have telekinetic powers). Henri tells John that his first legacy is Lumen, the ability to produce light from his hands, accompanied by a developing resistance to fire. Henri uses an oblong milky white stone to help John spread his resistance to fire and heat throughout his body. During this process John sees a vision of his last moments on Lorien when the Mogadorians attacked, while Henri narrates. Henri and John have a special Loric chest that can only be opened by both of them together. (However, if Henri dies, John will be able to open it by himself.) Using artifacts from the chest Henri shows John a model of the galaxies where he can see how Lorien looked before the Mogadorians destroyed it and how it looks now, desolate and barren. The chest also contains a healing stone that heals all wounds inflicted on the body, but with conditions: the healing process is twice as painful as the injury itself, and the wound must have been inflicted with intent to harm. The stone must be used soon after the injury occurs. Also in the chest are several small pebble-like rocks, Lorien salt, that can be placed under the tongue for a burst of strength and relief from pain. The effects of the salt are rapidly diminished by the use of legacies. With the arrival of John's legacies, Henri begins to train him. John eventually learns to turn his lights on and off at will. John also makes his first real friend, Sam Goode, who believes that extraterrestrials have visited Earth. John also grows closer to Sarah. At a town Halloween party John, Sarah, Sam, and Sarah's friend Emily are ambushed by Mark and some of his football teammates. Already tired of Mark's constant bullying, John is enraged when the Mark and his friends run into the woods with Sarah. John chases the boys and confronts Mark and his friends, easily defeating all of them and freeing Sarah. Sam witnesses much of the ordeal and becomes wary of John, avoiding him for some time. When John goes to Sam's house to talk to him, he threatens John with a gun, but John convinces him he's not an alien so he leaves with a magazine on alien conspiracies. John is invited to a dinner at Sarah's house. Henri has gone to Athens, Ohio because he discovers an alien conspiracy magazine and goes to find out how they had gained information on Mogadorians and hasn't called John yet like he promised. So John calls Sam for help. Sams drives John to Athens, where they find Henri ambushed and captured inside the publisher's house. John's telekinesis legacy appears, and he uses it to save both Henri and Sam and escape the house as several Mogadorian scouts arrive. Henri tells Sam their whole story, and after seeing John use his telekinesis Sam accepts them for who they are. John's training intensifies until he is able to perform complex telekinetic feats with his clothes lit on fire. At a party at Mark's house, a fire starts, trapping Sarah on the second floor. John rushes in and saves her, revealing who and what he really is to her in the process. She still confesses her love for him, and John says he loves her too. He then proceeds to tells her everything about himself. At school the next day, John fears that he will have to leave, as people had seen him jump out of the window and reported it. Fortunately, the paper has no reference to his involvement in the fire. All seems to be going well when a fax arrives for John at the school saying "Are you Number Four?" John leaps through a window and rushes home to find Mark, who has realized the truth. He argues with Henri about why he did what he did, saying he wanted a normal life. He then frantically returns to the school to find Sarah when he realizes that the Mogadorians are on their way. John finds Sarah, but they encounter a Mogadorian scout, one of several who have closed in on the school. John kills it, but their escape route is blocked by two more Mogadorians until Henri and Mark arrive and kill the scouts. The four are then joined by a girl about John's age and John's dog, Bernie Kosar. The girl identifies herself as Number Six. John realizes that since he and Six have met, the charm protecting them from being killed out of order has now broken. Six replies that the war has begun and that they must fight. While the five companions make their way out of the school, John tells Mark and Sarah to go back and hide, as it isn't their fight. They do, and in the battle that ensues John confronts his first soldier, whom he kills. John is wounded severely and is rescued by Henri as well as Sam, who realized what was happening and has come to help. John discovers his third legacy, the ability to communicate with animals. He realizes that (his supposed pet dog) Bernie Kosar is a chimaera (a shapeshifting creature), and he convinces one of the Mogadorians' beasts to turn on its masters. In the chaos Henri is hit by a Mogadorian's energy blast and dies in John's arms. Before he passes away, he says, "Coming here, to Paradise, it wasn't by chance." Waking up in a hotel room, John tells Sarah that he has to leave. Sarah accepts this and tells him she will wait for him. John replies in a similar fashion, saying his heart will always belong to her. Afterward, Henri's body is cremated. Sam agrees to go with John and Six as they prepare to leave in search of the other four Loric children. The novel ends with John telling Sarah he loves her and will come back and then he's leaving with Six, Sam and Bernie.
30846243	/m/0gfg6zw	Force ennemie				 The main character is a poet who mysteriously wakes up in a rubber room, locked away in a lunatic asylum, apparently at the request of a relative due to alcoholism or perhaps jealousy. He then becomes possessed by an "Alien Force" from another planet, Kmôhoûn, whose crazy voice is constantly screaming in his head. He then falls in love with a female inmate, Irene, but she leaves and so he follows her to the ends of the earth, while the Alien Force cohabits his body.
30853970	/m/0g9x7hf	The Boy in the Oak		2010	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 A boy who lived in a house with a garden did not appreciate nature; he trampled on flowers and carved his initials into trees. The fairies that lived in the forest decided to stop him from destroying everything by trapping him inside the large oak tree in the garden. His parent searched and searched, but eventually gave up on finding him and moved away. After several years, a new family moved into the house. They spoke of cutting down the oak tree, which angered the fairies. They choose to try to steal the little girl, but the boy forces her back through the portal between the fairy and human worlds. This kindness allows the boy to break the spell that trapped him.
30857810	/m/0gk_ncw	Scorpia Rising	Anthony Horowitz		{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 This novel starts with Zeljan Kurst, leader of Scorpia, being asked by Yannis Ariston Xenopolos, a Greek billionaire with cancer, to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. He is promised €40 million, half in advance. MI6 has found out about the visit and try to capture him due to a mole who was given a change of identity in exchange, but Scorpia agents in the museum disguised as visitors help Kurst to escape. He assigns the mission to new Scorpia member, Abdul-Aziz Al-Rahim, known as Razim, who suggests blackmail, attempting to almost ruin the British reputation with the rest of the world. Razim is studying the issue of pain, with the aim to come up with a measurable unit of pain, naming it after himself, by torturing all kinds of members of society, with a teenager being the top of his wish list, as he explains when torturing a French agent. The plan requires Scorpia to build up a file, codenamed Horseman, on the subject of Alex being used as a spy by the British government for a disgraceful act, and killed, threatening to expose it, hence ruining the British reputation, unless the Elgin Marbles are returned to Greece In a secret prison in Gibraltar for people who are against Britain, Scorpia manages to free Julius Grief, one of Hugo Grief's clones from Point Blanc who is also Alex's look-alike. Julius is hellbent on revenge over Alex for what he did in Point Blanc. They hide a gun in the library for Julius along with instructions, enabling him to get out of the gates by taking his pyschiatrist hostage. His death is faked with a remote-controlled car, a duplicate of the one he was driving which contains a dummy in the front, being sent over a cliff which is released from a barn soon after he drives into it. Scorpia also decides that the best way to start the ball rolling would be for a body leading MI6 to Cairo, where the main action will happen, to be found, and Kurst decides this is another Scorpia board member Levi Kroll, who opposed the plan initially, and is shot in the neck by a sniper. In Britain, MI6 scientists find Kroll, who was found floating in the River Thames, to suspect an attack at the Cairo International College of Arts and Education in Cairo, Egypt, where many wealthy children are sent. At school, Alex is attacked by a sniper who wounds his friend Tom Harris in the arm with his second shot. Alex follows the sniper and is able to send the helicopter and the sniper who is escaping in crashing into the Thames. This gives Alan Blunt a chance to send Alex on a mission to Cairo to investigate the new head of security Erik Gunter, believing he might have somethings to do with Scorpia. Unlike in most other missions, Alex's friend and guardian Jack Starbright demands to come along to keep an eye on him, as well as Derek Smithers being sent from MI6 to co-ordinate the mission. The action ultimately leads Alex to a floating market, the House of Gold, where Gunter has shot a weapons dealer after he sells him a gun, whose body Alex finds. The market is blown up whilst he is on it. He is then kidnapped by a mysterious group, who take him to a room where he is waterboarded for information. However, this is quickly stopped by Joe Byrne, revealing that the mysterious group are the CIA, who have recognized Alex as an MI6 spy and believe he is there as an assassin. Byrne explains to his guards that he has worked with Alex and is no threat. Then Bryne explains that they are in Cairo to protect the American Secretary of State, who is planning to make an anti-British speech in order to draw international attention to herself, and the CIA have been called to provide security. Scorpia then begins to target Smithers, who is found to have booby trapped his entire house in Cairo, from itching powder to a doormat which leads to the Cairo sewers. Alex then finds out what Smithers' last gadget is - a fat suit which he has been wearing since the moment Alex met him - and discovers that Smithers is really a skinny Irishman in his late thirties. He says they should split up, and leaves. Alex gets home, but finds Jack has been kidnapped and a note is ordering him to get to a certain location, or she will die. Both Alex and Jack are taken to Razim's fort in the Sahara Desert, where Alex is taken to be Razim's next subject. However, for the plan to work out, they cannot physically cause him pain or mark his body in any way. So Razim instead decides to use the opportunity to subject him to emotional pain. To do this, he strips Alex down to his boxers, ties him up, and attaches several emotion-recording devices to him. Razim pretends to allow Jack to escape from her cell by making sure one of the bars is weak enough to be removed with a knife Jack has stolen, knock out a guard and drive off in an old Land Rover. Unbeknownst to her, the Land Rover has 30 kilograms of explosives connected to it and, with Alex watching live on a screen, Julius detonates the bomb, killing her instantly. Alex's grief is too much for him to handle and he blacks out. Alex was then taken to Cairo, where he is told what will face him by Gunter &ndash; when the American Secretary of State decries the United Kingdom and gives her anti-British speech, Julius (posing as Alex) will assassinate her, and in the clamor that follows, Alex's body will be found nearby.This dives coherent explanation, that Alex killed her. Days later, Scorpia will begin their blackmail, threatening to expose their file on MI6's use of a schoolboy as an assassin unless the Elgin Marbles are returned. As a last request, Alex asks for a cigarette, and as Gunter opens the packet, an irate scorpion inside the packet, hidden previously by Alex, stings him. This immobilizes Gunter enough for Alex to steal his gun and break his nose, killing him from the trauma. Alex then rushes inside, just at the time when Julius was sneaking away in order to go to his hidden sniper rifle and kill the Secretary of State. However, Alex distracts Julius just in the nick of time, so a shot is fired, alerting everyone to the presence of a sniper, but no one is killed. This organises the frenzy required, but Julius slips away into the crowd, leaving Alex to need to give chase or lose him again. Julius steals a gun from a policeman. Alex chases Julius through the streets of Cairo, culminating in a grassy verge by the side of a road, where Julius is hit by a car. He claims that Alex wouldn't dare kill him, but as Alex turns away, Julius goes for his gun and shot, but Alex shot before him. Although this is not the first time Alex has ever shot someone, it feels to him as if he is killing a part of himself because Julius looked like him. He then meets up with the CIA, who are forming a joint taskforce with the Egyptians in order to take out Razim in the desert. However, they need Alex to come with them to be able to properly locate him, and so as to avoid suspicion when landing. They torture the pilot in order out the code word (Selket) so they won't get shot down while approaching the fort, which works out, and Alex poses as Julius when arriving. However, Razim sees through this, and a shootout begins, eventually ending on the bridge between the two halves of the fort, where Razim falls off when it splits, and falls into the salt pile below where he is slowly crushed to death. After this incident, the remaining Scorpia members are arrested including Kurst. Back in England, Blunt is retiring and will leave his job to Mrs. Jones. Before Blunt says goodbye, Mrs. Jones reveals that she knows Blunt hired the sniper to fire at Alex's school, which means that he also is responsible for Jack's death. Alex is adopted by Edward Pleasure, Sabina Pleasure's father, who is confident Alex will get better with his family.
30858664	/m/07jyr4	We Have Always Lived in the Castle	Shirley Jackson		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel, narrated in the first-person by 18-year-old Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, tells the story of the Blackwood family. Merricat, her elder sister Constance, and their ailing uncle Julian live in a large house on large grounds, in isolation from the nearby village. Constance has not left their home in six years, going no farther than her large garden. Uncle Julian, confined to a wheelchair, obsessively writes and re-writes notes for his memoirs, while Constance cares for him. Through Uncle Julian's ramblings the events of the past are revealed, including what has happened to the remainder of the Blackwood family: six years ago both the Blackwood parents, an aunt (Julian's wife), and a younger brother were murdered &mdash; poisoned with arsenic, mixed into the family sugar and sprinkled onto blackberries at dinner. Julian, though poisoned, survived; Constance, who did not put sugar on her berries, was arrested for and eventually acquitted of the crime. Merricat was not at dinner, having been sent to bed without dinner as punishment. The people of the village believe that Constance has gotten away with murder and the family is ostracized. The three remaining Blackwoods have grown accustomed to their isolation and lead a quiet, happy existence. Merricat is the family's sole contact with the outside world, walking into the village twice a week and carrying home groceries and library books, where she is faced directly with the hostility of the villagers and often followed by groups of children, who taunt her. Merricat is protective of her sister and is a practitioner of sympathetic magic. She feels that a dangerous change is approaching; her response is to reassure herself of the various magical safeguards she has placed around their home, including a book nailed to a tree. After discovering that the book has fallen down, Merricat becomes convinced that danger is imminent. Before she can warn Constance, their estranged cousin, Charles, appears for a visit. Charles quickly befriends Constance, insinuating himself into her confidence. Charles is aware of Merricat's hostility and is increasingly rude to her and impatient of Julian's weaknesses. He makes many references to the money the sisters keep locked in their father's safe, and is gradually wooing Constance, who begins to respond to his advances. Merricat perceives Charles as a threat, calling him a demon and a ghost, and tries various magical and otherwise disruptive means to drive him from the house. Uncle Julian is increasingly disgusted by Charles, and Constance is increasingly caught between the warring parties. One night before dinner Constance sends Merricat upstairs to wash her hands, and Merricat, in her anger against Charles, pushes Charles' still-smoldering pipe into a wastebasket filled with newspapers. The pipe sets fire to the family home. The villagers arrive to put out the fire, but once it's out, in a wave of long-repressed hatred for the Blackwoods, they begin throwing rocks at the windows, smashing them and surging into the house to destroy whatever they can, all the while chanting their children's taunting rhyme. Merricat and Constance, driven outdoors, are encircled by some of the villagers who seem on the verge of attacking them, en masse. Merricat and Constance flee for safety into the woods. In the course of the fire, Julian dies of what is implied to be a heart attack, and Charles attempts to take the family safe. While Merricat and Constance shelter for the night under a tree Merricat has made into a hideaway, Constance confesses for the first time that she always knew Merricat poisoned the family. Merricat readily admits to the deed, saying that she put the poison in the sugar bowl because she knew Constance would not take sugar. Upon returning to their ruined home, Constance and Merricat proceed to salvage what is left of their belongings, close off those rooms too damaged to use, and start their lives anew in the little space left to them. The house, now without a roof, resembles a castle "turreted and open to the sky." The villagers, awakening at last to a sense of guilt, begin to leave food on their doorstep. Charles returns once to try to renew his acquaintance with Constance, but she now knows his real purpose is greed and ignores him. The two sisters choose to remain alone and unseen by the rest of the world.
30860483	/m/07_20v	Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers	Rob Grant	1989-11-02	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The book begins in 2180. Commercialism is still rife, and most of Earth's natural resources have been depleted. Most of the solid planets and moons in the solar system have been colonised. Having ended up in a supply port on Saturn's orbiting moon Mimas after celebrating his 25th birthday by binge drinking on a Monopoly Pub Crawl in London, Dave Lister is trying to earn enough money for a shuttle ticket home by stealing taxis and picking up fares while sleeping in a bus station locker. However, since Lister ends up either losing the money by getting mugged or spending the money getting drunk, its obvious he won't be getting home any time soon. One night, Lister picks up a Space Corps officer calling himself 'Christopher Todhunter' (who is obviously wearing a fake moustache) asking to be taken to a plasti-droid brothel, only for the droid to malfunction and nearly rip off his private parts. However this gives Lister inspiration, and he quickly signs up with the Jupiter Mining Corporation intending to get himself signed to a ship and going AWOL once it reaches Earth. Despite his lack of qualifications and the admissions officer deciding he had an attitude problem (due to telling him that he wanted to sign up to "explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations and to boldly go where no man has gone before"), Lister is quickly assigned to Red Dwarf, a mining ship as the lowest ranking crew member. On the trip he meets the drunken Petersen who informs Lister that Red Dwarf will indeed be returning to Earth... after a four-and-a-half year round trip much to Lister's dismay. When aboard Lister is told he is a technician on Z-Shift, whose duties are those that the service droids are considered too good for, and is introduced to his supervisor and roommate Arnold Rimmer who Lister recognises as the Space Corps officer with the fake moustache from the plasti-droid brothel incident. Unfortunately Rimmer is also highly neurotic and pretentious causing he and Lister to develop a mutual dislike of the other. Five months later, Lister has settled into the dull, monotonous routine of life aboard Red Dwarf when he finds himself falling in love with senior officer Kristine Kochanski. The two embark on a passionate five-week love affair before Kochanski dumps him and returns to her boyfriend whose name Lister can't remember. Meanwhile Rimmer has been spending his time constantly trying and failing to pass the Astro-Navigation exam despite his best cheating efforts as well as using the ship's stasis units (which freeze time for the person inside) to constantly de-age himself. Lister, who has had enough of life on Red Dwarf since being dumped, realises that the stasis units could be his key to an instant arrival back on Earth. After studying the ship's regulations, he finds that smuggling an unquarantined animal aboard the ship is the least serious offence which carries a statutory sentence of time in stasis. On his next planet leave he brings a pregnant cat back to Red Dwarf (after having her fully inoculated to ensure she won't actually present a danger to the ship) and ensures that he gets caught with her. After being hauled before the captain (an American woman with the unfortunate surname of Kirk), Lister lies and tells her that the cat was ill when he found her and refuses to reveal where he has hidden her. As a result, Lister gets his wish and is sentenced to stasis for the rest of the trip. He enters the unit fully expected to exit and find himself back home. Upon learning of Lister's sentence, Rimmer is furious that his nemesis is going to have all this time in stasis not getting older and prepares to work on an immediate appeal. He never gets the chance, as one of the ship's nuclear reactors fails and lets loose a wave that kills everyone except Lister. Just before he dies, Rimmer (who was literally a few seconds away from the safety of the stasis booth where he planned to spend the evening) finds himself thinking of gazpacho soup. In the hold, Lister's cat and her kittens are safe from the radiation too. Upon release from stasis, the ship's super-computer Holly explains that he piloted Red Dwarf out of the Solar System to prevent radiation contamination. Holly could not release Lister until the radiation had reached a safe background level. However, because the leaked Cadmium II had such a long half-life, Lister was kept in stasis for three million years. During this time, Holly has gone a little computer senile. Lister is then told that not only is he all alone on the ship and millions of years away from Earth but he is also likely the last human left alive. Lister promptly falls apart, walking around the ship naked and nearly drinking himself to death before he collapses. Lister wakes up in the medical unit to find Rimmer, who has been selected by Holly as the person most likely to keep Lister sane, and is now generated by the ship's computer as a hologram. Having collected himself, Lister instructs Holly to chart a course for Earth. Meanwhile, the crew discovers another life on board, an intelligent humanoid who comes to be known simply as The Cat, a member of a race of cats evolved from Lister's cat Frankenstein and her kittens after having survived the radiation blast deep in the ship's enormous cargo hold. Due to three million years of constant acceleration, Red Dwarf breaks the light barrier, complicating things aboard as the crew begin to experience 'future echoes,' brief glimpses of events that have yet to happen. Lister is worried when Rimmer tells him that one of the echoes shows him being blown up when attempting to fix the ship's navicomp and tries everything to avoid it, but eventually accepts his fate when the device fails and he has to fix it. However, the repair operation succeeds and an aged Lister appears as part of a future echo informing his younger self that it was his grandson he saw blown apart. Lister also learns that at some point in the future he will have twin sons. Eventually the ship slows and Holly succeeds in turning around and heading for earth. En route the Red Dwarf crew retrieves the Nova 5, a ship which had been on a mission to advertise a popular soft drink when its mechanoid service robot, Kryten, caused it to crash by trying to wash the computer. After looking after the survivors of the crash for many, many years (the fact they were long dead not withstanding), Kryten shuts down when he realises the truth and Lister has to work hard to get him reactivated. Eventually he does, and learns that the Nova 5 had a duality drive that could get him back to Earth within months. With that Lister, Kryten and an unwilling-to-work Cat use the mining equipment aboard Red Dwarf to procure the fuel they need. Despite the Cat only putting in minutes of work each day and Kryten only helping by constantly serving tea and sandwiches, eventually Lister gets what he needs. Meanwhile, Rimmer has found a hologram generator aboard the Nova 5 meaning that another hologram can be created aboard Red Dwarf. After finding all the Nova 5 crew discs corrupted beyond repair, Rimmer suddenly gets an idea... who better as a companion for him than himself. Another Rimmer is created and at first the two get along great with the two moving in together and keeping each other motivated while supervising the repair of the Nova 5. However, the two begin to get on each other's nerves by trying to one-up each other and the original Rimmer despairs when he finds himself forced to exercise by his counterpart and only being allowed minutes of sleep a night. Things come to a head, and the two demand that Lister switch one of them off. Lister chooses the original, but asks about Rimmer's obsession with gazpacho soup. Rimmer tells his most painful memory: at a formal dinner with the captain, he complained that his soup was cold, unaware that the Spanish dish is traditionally served cold. Lister assures Rimmer that anyone could have made that mistake, then admits that the duplicate Rimmer has already been turned off (having lied to hear the gazpacho soup story). He promises never to mention the conversation again (but can't resist a little joke at the end). The crew soon repair the Nova 5 and return to Earth, using the duality drive, as heroes. Lister starts living in a replica of Bedford Falls from It's a Wonderful Life with a descendant of Kochanski who looks and acts exactly like her and is even called Kristine, Rimmer marries a supermodel and becomes a successful businessman (with his company developing a solidgram body for Rimmer and a time machine to allow him to socialise with the greatest figures in history) and the Cat lives in Denmark in a palace surrounded by a moat of milk. It gradually becomes clear, however, that they're each living out their own improbable fantasies, and Lister, Rimmer and The Cat must accept the fact that they've not returned to Earth, but are trapped within an addictive virtual reality called Better Than Life, a game which is killing them, but is incredibly difficult to escape from...
30861467	/m/07902h	The Autobiography of a Flea	Anonymity	1901		 The plot begins with Bella in church. As she leaves, Charlie pushes a note into her hand. She reads that it says he will be in their old meeting place at eight o' clock. She meets him in a garden. After some playful conversation, Charlie introduces her to her first sexual experience. Father Ambrose, who had been hiding in the shrubs, surprises them afterward, scolding both of them for their behaviour and threatening to reveal what they have been doing to their guardians. Bella pleads for mercy. Father Ambrose, appearing to relent, tells Bella to meet him in the sacristy at two o'clock the next day and Charlie to meet him at the same time the day after that. Ambrose instructs Bella into a way she may be absolved of her sins and blackmails her into sex with him, lest he tell her guardian what she was up to. Then Ambrose's colleagues, the Fr Superior & Fr Clement, catch them in the act, and they demand equal rights to Bella's favours. And so Bella is introduced to serving the Holy community in a special way. Despite his promises, Ambrose goes to see Bella's uncle, Monsieur Verbouc and tells of her lewd behaviour. This leads to her uncle, who has long entertained lustful thoughts of his niece, attempting to force himself on Bella. The narrator then intervenes, biting him to put a damper on his ardour. Next, Father Clement, looking for Bella's room, climbs into the window of Bella's aunt, the pious Madame Verbouc, who had mistaken him for her husband. M. Verbouc then bursts in and his wife realises she's actually been making love to the randy priest. Bella's friend, Julia Delmont, becomes Ambrose's next target. By now completely corrupted and happy to go along with whatever Ambrose suggests, Bella readily agrees to the Father's next scheme: She will offer herself to Monsieur Delmont, on condition that her face is covered. The trick is that it will not be Bella who lies there, but Delmont's own daughter. Father Ambrose seduces her and says he will come to her by night and make love to her, but she must hide her face. When the act is consummated, Bella appears and pretends that it was all a big mistake. But since Delmont has now potentially impregnated his daughter, the only way to be sure his incest cannot be discovered is to have all make love to her as well. In case she is pregnant, nobody can claim that her own father is the father.
30863098	/m/02v_v25	Mystery of the Whale Tattoo	Franklin W. Dixon	1968	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 This story is set in and around Bayport as well as briefly in Mystic Seaport. The boys are hired by a traveling carnival to spot pick-pockets. This ties in well with their other job where the boys try to help their detective father by tracking down the location of an informant trying to sell information about a valuable object that has gone missing. The main lead is that the person has called from a public telephone on the fair grounds. All of their eventual suspects are noted for having tattoos of a whale on them.Chet Morton also uses his new hobby, scrimshaw, to piece up members of the gang.
30863897	/m/07j430	The Sea Came In At Midnight	Steve Erickson	1999	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel starts at the end of 1999, when Kristin, a teenage drop-out, answers a sexual ad written by a man who calls himself the Occupant. Behind the poetic language of the ad, it is clear that the Occupant is looking for a sexual slave, yet Kristin accepts the pact and goes to live in his house in Los Angeles. The Occupant's job is unclear: he defines himself as an apocalyptologist, and is busy drawing a calendar on the walls of his bedroom, on which he maps all the irrational events following May 1968, which, according to him, define the end-of-the-century in which the novel is set. Their relationship evolves, until, after a climactic moment, the girl understands that she has replaced the Occupant's partner, who disappeared. After this crisis, the Occupant, whose real name is Carl, begins to tell his story. His story is set mostly in Paris, where he met Angie, who will become his partner. Next we hear the story of Angie, whose real name is Saki, the daughter of a Japanese physicist working for a US defense project. She has gone to New York to work as a lap dancer. Her involvement with pornographic films ultimately leads her to be hired by Mitch, who produces snuff films. Angie is saved by Louise, Mitch's wife, and after this event (which takes place immediately before Angie flies to Paris, where she will meet Carl) the novel tells the story of Louise and Mitch, then back to Carl. The stories ultimately reconnect in the ending of the novel.
30864314	/m/03n7vt	On the Genealogy of Morals	Friedrich Nietzsche	1887	{"/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"}	 Nietzsche's treatises outline his thoughts "on the origin of our moral prejudices", thoughts a long time in the making and already given brief and imperfect expression in his Human, All Too Human (1878). Nietzsche attributes the desire to publish his "hypotheses" on the origins of morality to reading his friend Paul Rée's book The Origin of the Moral Sensations (1877) and finding the "genealogical hypotheses" offered there unsatisfactory. Nietzsche has come to believe that "a critique of moral values" is in order, that "the value of these values themselves must be called into question". To this end he finds it necessary to provide an actual history of morality, rather than a hypothetical account in the style of Rée, whom Nietzsche refers to as an "English psychologist" (using the word "English" to designate a certain intellectual temperament rather than a nationality). In the "First Treatise" Nietzsche is concerned to show that the valuations "good/evil" and "good/bad" have distinct origins and that the two senses of "good" are, in their origins, radically opposed in meaning. The noble mode of valuation calls what it itself stands for "good", that is, everything which is powerful and life-asserting. In the "good/evil" distinction, which is the product of what he calls "slave morality", what is called "evil" equates to what aristocratic morality calls "good". This valuation develops out of the ressentiment of the weak in the face of the powerful, by whom they are oppressed and whom they envy. Nietzsche indicts the "English psychologists" for lacking historical sense. They seek to do moral genealogy by explaining altruism in terms of the utility of altruistic actions, which is subsequently forgotten as such actions become the norm. But the judgment "good", according to Nietzsche, originates not with the beneficiaries of altruistic actions. Rather, the good themselves (the powerful) coined the term "good". Further, Nietzsche contends that it is psychologically absurd to suggest that altruism derives from a utility which is forgotten: if it is useful, what is the incentive to forget it? Rather such a value-judgment gains currency by being increasingly burned into the consciousness. From the aristocratic mode of valuation another mode of valuation branches off which develops into its opposite: the priestly mode of valuation. Nietzsche suggests this process is encouraged through a confrontation between the priestly caste and the warrior caste. The priests, and all those who feel disenfranchised and powerless in a situation of subjugation and physical impotence (e.g., slavery), develop a deep and venomous hatred of the powerful. This is the origin of what Nietzsche calls the "slave revolt in morality", which, according to him, begins with Judaism (§7), for it is the bridge which led to the slave revolt of Christian morality by the alienated, oppressed masses of the Roman Empire (a dominant theme in The Antichrist, written the following year). Slave morality in feeling ressentiment does not seek redress for its grievances by taking revenge through action, as the noble would, but by setting up an imaginary revenge. It therefore needs enemies in order to sustain itself, unlike noble morality, which hardly takes enemies seriously and forgets about them instantly having dealt with them. The weak deceive themselves into thinking that the meek are blessed and will win everlasting life, thereby ultimately vanquishing the strong. They invent the term "evil" to apply to the strong, and that which proceeds from strength, which is precisely what is "good," according to the noble, aristocratic valuation. These latter call their inferiors "bad"—in the sense of "worthless" and "ill-born" (as in the Greek words κακος and δειλος)—not "evil." It is in the First Treatise that Nietzsche introduces one of his most controversial images, the "blond beast". Nietzsche had previously employed this metaphor of the "blond beast" to represent the lion, an image that is central to his philosophy and which makes its first appearance in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche expressly insists that it is a mistake to hold beasts of prey to be "evil," for their actions stem from their inherent strength, rather than any malicious intent. One should not blame them for their "thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs" (§13). Similarly, it is also a mistake to resent the strong for their actions, because, according to Nietzsche, there is no metaphysical subject. Only the weak need the illusion of the subject (or soul) to hold their actions together as a unity. But they have no right "to make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey." Nietzsche concludes the First Treatise by considering that the two opposing valuations "good/bad" and "good/evil" have been locked in a tremendous struggle for thousands of years, a struggle that originated with the war between Rome (good/bad) and Judea (good/evil). What began with Judea was the triumph of ressentiment; its hold was broken for a moment by the Renaissance, but reasserted by the Reformation (which, in Nietzsche's view, restored the church), and refreshed again by the French Revolution (in which the "ressentiment instincts of the rabble" triumphed). In the "Second Treatise" Nietzsche advances his thesis that the origin of the institution of punishment is in a straightforward (pre-moral) creditor/debtor relationship. Man relies on the apparatus of forgetfulness which has been bred into him in order not to become bogged down in the past. This forgetfulness is, according to Nietzsche, an active "faculty of repression", not a mere inertia or absentmindedness. Man needs to develop an active faculty to work in opposition to this in order that promises can be made that are necessary for exercising control over the future: this is memory. This control over the future allows a "morality of custom" to get off the ground. (Such a morality is to be sharply differentiated from Christian or other "ascetic" moralities.) The product of this morality, the autonomous individual, comes to see that he may inflict harm on those who break their promises to him. Punishment, then, is a transaction in which the injury to the autonomous individual is compensated for by the pain inflicted on the culprit. Such punishment is meted out without regard for moral considerations about the free will of the culprit, his accountability for his actions, and the like: it is simply an expression of anger. The creditor is compensated for the injury done by the pleasure he derives from the infliction of cruelty on the debtor. Hence the concept of guilt (Schuld) derives from the concept of debt (Schulden). Nietzsche develops the "major point of historical methodology" that one must not equate the origin of a thing and its utility. The origin of punishment, for example, is in a procedure that predates punishment. Punishment has not just one purpose, but a whole range of "meanings" which "finally crystallizes into a kind of unity that is difficult to dissolve, difficult to analyze and [...] completely and utterly undefinable" (§13). The process by which the succession of different meanings is imposed is driven by the "will to power"—the basic instinct for domination underlying all human action. Nietzsche lists eleven different uses (or "meanings") of punishment, and suggests that there are many more. One utility it does not possess, however, is that of awakening remorse. The psychology of prisoners shows that punishment "makes hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation" (§14). The real explanation of bad conscience is quite different. A form of social organization, i.e. a "state," is imposed by "some pack of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and lords." Such a race is able to do so even if those they subject to their power are vastly superior in numbers because these subjects are "still formless, still roaming about", while the conquerors are characterized by an "instinctive creating of forms, impressing of forms" (§17). Under such conditions the destructive, sadistic instincts of man, who is by nature a nomadic hunter, find themselves constricted and thwarted; they are therefore turned inward. Instead of roaming in the wilderness, man now turns himself into "an adventure, a place of torture.” Bad conscience is thus man's instinct for freedom (his "will to power") "driven back, suppressed, imprisoned within" (§17). Nietzsche accounts for the genesis of the concept "god" by considering what happens when a tribe becomes ever more powerful. In a tribe, the current generation always pays homage to its ancestors, offering sacrifices to them as a demonstration of gratitude to them. As the power of the tribe grows the need to offer thanks to the ancestors does not decline, but rather increases as it has ever more reason to pay homage to the ancestors and to fear them. At the maximum of fear, the ancestor is "necessarily transfigured into a god" (§19). Nietzsche ends the Treatise with a positive suggestion for a counter-movement to the "conscience-vivisection and cruelty to the animal-self" imposed by the bad conscience: this is to "wed to bad conscience the unnatural inclinations", i.e. to use the self-destructive tendency encapsulated in bad conscience to attack the symptoms of sickness themselves. It is much too early for the kind of free spirit—a Zarathustra-figure—who could bring this about to emerge, although he will come one day: he will emerge only in a time of emboldening conflict, not in the "decaying, self-doubting present" (§24). Nietzsche's purpose in the "Third Treatise" is "to bring to light, not what [the ascetic] ideal has done, but simply what it means; what it indicates; what lies hidden behind it, beneath it, in it; of what it is the provisional, indistinct expression, overlaid with question marks and misunderstandings" (§23). As Nietzsche tells us in the Preface, the Third Treatise is a commentary on the aphorism prefixed to it. Textual studies have shown that this aphorism consists of §1 of the Treatise (not the epigraph to the Treatise, which is a quotation from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra). This opening aphorism confronts us with the multiplicity of meanings that the ascetic ideal has for different groups: (a) artists, (b) philosophers, (c) women, (d) physiological casualties, (e) priests, and (f) saints. The ascetic ideal, we may thus surmise, means very little in itself, other than as a compensation for humanity's need to have some goal or other. As Nietzsche puts it, man "will rather will nothingness than not will". (a) For the artist, the ascetic ideal means "nothing or too many things". Nietzsche confines his attention to the composer Richard Wagner. Artists, he concludes, always require some ideology to prop themselves up. Wagner, we are told, relied on Schopenhauer to provide this underpinning; therefore we should look to philosophers if we are to get closer to finding out what the ascetic ideal means. (b) For the philosopher, it means a "sense and instinct for the most favorable conditions of higher spirituality," which he needs to satisfy his desire for independence. It was only in the guise of the ascetic priest that the philosopher was first able to make his appearance without attracting suspicion of his overweening will to power. As yet, every "true" philosopher has retained the trappings of the ascetic priest; his slogans have been "poverty, chastity, humility." (e) For the priest, it is the "'supreme' license for power." He sets himself up as the "saviour" of (d) the physiologically deformed, offering them a cure for their exhaustion and listlessness (which is in reality only a therapy which does not tackle the roots of their suffering). Nietzsche suggests a number of causes for widespread physiological inhibition: (i) the crossing of races; (ii) emigration of a race to an unsuitable environment (e.g. the Indians to India); (iii) the exhaustion of a race (e.g. Parisian pessimism from 1850); (iv) bad diet (e.g. vegetarianism); (v) diseases of various kinds, including malaria and syphilis (e.g. German depression after the Thirty Years' War) (§17). The ascetic priest has a range of strategies for anesthetizing the continuous, low-level pain of the weak. Four of these are innocent in the sense that they do the patient no further harm: (1) a general deadening of the feeling of life; (2) mechanical activity; (3) "small joys", especially love of one's neighbour; (4) the awakening of the communal feeling of power. He further has a number of strategies which are guilty in the sense that they have the effect of making the sick sicker (although the priest applies them with a good conscience); they work by inducing an "orgy of feeling" (Gefühls-Ausschweifung). He does this by "altering the direction of ressentiment," i.e. telling the weak to look for the causes of their unhappiness in themselves (in "sin"), not in others. Such training in repentance is responsible, according to Nietzsche, for phenomena such as the St Vitus' and St John's dancers of the Middle Ages, witch-hunt hysteria, somnambulism (of which there were eight epidemics between 1564 and 1605), and the delirium characterized by the widespread cry of evviva la morte! ("long live death!"). Given the extraordinary success of the ascetic ideal in imposing itself on our entire culture, what can we look to to oppose it? "Where is the counterpart to this closed system of will, goal, and interpretation?" (§23) Nietzsche considers as possible opponents of the ideal: (a) modern science; (b) modern historians; (c) "comedians of the ideal" (§27). (a) Science is in fact the "most recent and noblest form" of the ascetic ideal. It has no faith in itself, and acts only as a means of self-anesthetization for sufferers (scientists) who do not want to admit that they are such. In its apparent opposition to the ascetic ideal, it has succeeded merely in demolishing the ideal's "outworks, sheathing, play of masks, [...] its temporary solidification, lignification, dogmatization" (§25). By succeeding in dismantling the claims to the theological importance of man, it has merely come to substitute the self-contempt of man as the ideal of science. (b) Modern historians, in trying to hold up a mirror to ultimate reality, are not only ascetic but highly nihilistic. As deniers of teleology, their "last crowings" are "To what end?," "In vain!," "Nada!" (§26) (c) An even worse kind of historian is what Nietzsche calls the "contemplatives": self-satisfied armchair hedonists who have arrogated to themselves the praise of contemplation (Nietzsche gives the example of Ernest Renan). Europe is full of such "comedians of the Christian-moral ideal." In a sense, if anyone is inimical to the ideal it is they, because they at least "arouse mistrust" (§27). The will to truth that is bred by the ascetic ideal has in its turn led to the spread of a truthfulness the pursuit of which has brought the will to truth itself in peril. What is thus now required, Nietzsche concludes, is a critique of the value of truth itself (§24).
30864419	/m/07b91w	The Brooklyn Follies	Paul Auster	2005-12-27	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 60-year-old Nathan Glass returns to Brooklyn after his wife has left him. He is recovering from lung cancer and is looking for "a quiet place to die". In Brooklyn he meets his nephew, Tom, whom he has not seen in several years. Tom has seemingly given up on life and has resigned himself to a string of meaningless jobs as he waits for his life to change. They develop a close friendship, entertaining each other in their misery, as they both try to avoid taking part in life. When Lucy, Tom's young niece who initially refuses to speak, comes into their lives there is suddenly a bridge between their past and their future that offers both Tom and Nathan some form of redemption. The Brooklyn Follies contains the classic elements of a Paul Auster novel. The main character is a lonely man, who has suffered an unfortunate reversal. The narrative is based on sudden and randomly happening events and coincidences. "It is a book about survival" as Paul Auster says. The novel was published in Danish in May 2005, under the name Brooklyn Dårskab. It was published in English in November 2005. The Traditional Chinese version appeared in October 2006 with the title slightly altered as Mr. Nathan in Brooklyn.
30865565	/m/07htyf	The Virgin and the Gypsy	D. H. Lawrence	1930	{"/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The tale relates the story of two sisters, daughters of an Anglican vicar, who return from overseas to a drab, lifeless vicarage in the post-First World War East Midlands. Their mother has run off, a scandal that is not talked about by the family. Their new home is dominated by a blind and selfish grandmother along with her mean spirited, poisonous daughter. The two girls, Yvette and Lucille, risk being suffocated by the life they now lead at the Vicarage. They try their utmost every day to bring colour and fun into their lives. Out on a trip with some friends one Sunday afternoon, Yvette encounters a Gypsy and his family and this meeting reinforces her disenchantment with the oppressive domesticity of the vicarage. It also awakens in her a sexual curiosity she has not felt before, despite having admirers. She also befriends a married Jewish woman who has left her husband and is living with her paramour. When her father finds out about this friendship, he threatens her with "the asylum" and Yvette realizes that at his heart her father, too, is mean spirited and shallow. At the end of the novel, Yvette is rescued during a surprise flood that washes through the home and drowns the grandmother. The rescuer who breathes life and warmth back into the virginal Yvette is the free-spirited Gypsy, whose name is finally revealed in the last line of the novel.
30865855	/m/03y9kkt	Soul Catcher	Frank Herbert	1972		 Soul Catcher is about a Native American who kidnaps a young white boy, and their journey together. It is a story of vengeance and sacrifice. In the conflicted anti-hero, one may see many truths to the feelings harbored by those who were conquered.
30866961	/m/0gg8g_d	Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837	Linda Colley			 Britons begins with the period after the 1707 Act of Union, when the diverse peoples of the British isles developed a sense of “Britishness” based largely on their perceived differences from Europeans. A common commitment to Protestantism provided Britons with a unifying history and a constant enemy in Catholic France for over a century, reinforced by the growth of British trade and mercantilism. Colley contends that the Jacobite insurrection of 1745 against the Hanoverian government was unsuccessful because the twin forces of Protestantism and the financial interests of the merchant class motivated Britons to stand firmly against a Catholic Stuart uprising and the economic destabilization it would bring. British unity was shaken after the overwhelming success of the Seven Years' War, which left Britain with a huge foreign empire to rule, turning Britain into a military power and forcing her citizens to re-examine their definition of Britishness and empire. Losing the American Revolutionary War made the country more patriotic and set the ideas of monarchy, military, and empire at the center of British identity. George III was more attentive to the royal image than his predecessors and came to be loved by his people. Total war with Napoleonic France provided women an opportunity to carve out their own niche, however small, for themselves in the public sphere, working in support of the war effort and the royal family. Just as war transformed women's participation in public and political life, so too did it lead to increased political power for men because the government needed mass military participation during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. During the 1830s, the unity of the British nation was challenged by three reform crises: the expansion of the rights of Catholic citizens, the movement for parliamentary reform, and the abolition of slavery. These reform efforts gave a great number of Britons their first opportunities to engage directly in the political life of the nation; the majority of British subjects were still not citizens, however, but subjects, calling into question the degree to which Britain was a nation of Britons.' Britons closes by taking note of debates over British identity today, especially with regard to the European Union, and the influences that originally bonded Britons are now largely gone, leading to a resurgence of English, Scottish, and Welsh identity.
30867990	/m/0gfjp06	Pink	Gus Van Sant		{"/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction"}	 The story is set in Saquatch, Oregon, USA, and details the life of Spunky Davis, a middle-aged maker of infomercials who is trying to find his next assignment and finish the science-fiction screenplay that he hopes will bring him Hollywood glory. The science-fiction screenplay sections of the book were written by Lanny Quarles. Spunky meets Jack and Matt who are from another dimension called Pink. The book has a flip-book element and other drawings that were created by Van Sant himself.
30869162	/m/0gfhsjb	The Scheme for Full Employment	Magnus Mills	2003-03-03		 The scheme referred to in the title involves the driving of 'UniVans' from depot to depot picking up and unloading cargo - the cargo being replacement parts for UniVans. "Gloriously self-perpetuating, the scheme was designed to give an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s labor", "the envy of the world: the greatest undertaking ever conceived by man". The novel is a satire of labour relations and describes how the scheme is brought to the brink of disaster.
30871397	/m/06c_78	The Dogs of Riga	Henning Mankell		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 When a life raft with two dead bodies washes up on the Swedish shore, detective Kurt Wallander is led on a wild goose chase that leads him to Latvia. Much of this book is a commentary on the unstable political climates of former Soviet republics in the early 1990s, before these countries faced the period of economic boom, stability and prosperity which started in the 2000s, and was interrupted to a degree again in 2008.
30873159	/m/03lwnr	Wyrms	Orson Scott Card		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 King Oruc, fearing Patience or Peace could be a danger to his reign, keeps them under control by allowing only one of them to leave the castle at a time. However, this delicate hostage situation falls apart when Peace becomes ill. Before he dies, Peace cuts into his shoulder to retrieve a crystal globe hidden under his skin. "The scepter of the Heptarchs," he says. "Never let a gebling know you have it." Only moments after Peace dies, King Oruc sends an assassin after Patience. She easily dispatches him and leaves the castle, stopping to visit her father's preserved head in Slaves' Hall, where the heads of the wisest people are kept alive by headworms. Since the heads are coerced to speak only the truth, Patience forces her father to divulge his darkest secrets. Peace reveals that since Patience's birth, he had been fighting a powerful compulsion to bring her to Cranning, home of the geblings. The "Cranning Call," as it was known, drew the world's greatest thinkers and achievers to make a pilgrimage to Cranning, never to be seen or heard from again. Peace says the source of the Call is the Unwyrm, attempting to summon Patience to his lair. Outside the castle, Patience feels the Cranning Call and decides she will go to Cranning to challenge the Unwyrm. Even as the Cranning Call becomes stronger and more urgent, she chooses her own routes towards the city in defiance of the Unwyrm's power. Patience, joined by Angel and a massive river woman named Sken, eventually meets Ruin and Reck, twin brother and sister geblings who are together the king of the geblings. All their lives, Ruin and Reck had been repelled from Cranning by the Unwyrm, but the Cranning Call surrounding Patience cancels the repulsion and allows them to travel with her. Will, the silent but strong human who had lived as Reck's slave, joins their party. They stop by a house advertising simply ANSWERS. The owner, a dwelf named Heffiji, gives them a crash course in the strange genetics of Imakulata, in which every native plant or animal derives from a single originating species: a black segmented insect, or wyrm. Heffiji also explains that the scepter Patience had retrieved from her father's shoulder was the mindstone of the gebling king, stolen 300 generations ago by the Heptarch. Surgically implanted, it transfers the memories of the previous owners to the current host while absorbing new memories. Ruin - a skilled surgeon - agrees to insert the crystal into Patience's brain. Patience spends the next 40 days half-crazy, processing the memories of previous Heptarchs and the alien minds of gebling kings. She relives the moment when the Starship Captain, lured through lust to the surface, mates with the Wyrm in its lair beneath a glacier that would later become Cranwater. The Wyrm gave birth to the geblings, dwelfs and gaunts - and then finally to a giant wyrm-like child called Unwyrm. Finally, Patience understands the Cranning Call is summoning her to mate with the Unwyrm, so that he can impregnate her with Kristos, a superior human race. This improved species would outcompete humans as well as the dwelf, gebling, and gaunt variants produced by the first-generation mating between the Wyrm and the Starship Captain, eventually becoming the dominant form of life on Imakulata. Even as her lust for Unwyrm grows, Patience knows she must kill him or the world will be doomed. She explains it all to the rest of her companions, and they continue their journey to meet and hopefully kill Unwyrm before he is able to bring his dark plans to fruition. When it is all over Patience hopes to take her place as Heptarch and unite all of the planet's species together in peace.
30874097	/m/054ymy	We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story	Hudson Talbott		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 One day in the Cretaceous Period as a Tyrannosaurus is about to devour a smaller dino he captured, a flying saucer piloted by an alien named Vorb arrives. He recruits him and several other dinos he's found for a trial of a special "vitamin" he's developed, which, upon feeding it to the dinos, causes them to become sapient. Vorb takes them aboard his saucer and they travel to the present, dropping them off in New York City, which at that moment is celebrating the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The dinos pretend to be inflatable balloons to sneak along with the parade, but Rex mistakes one of the real dino balloons to be his friend Allosaurus. The ruse is broken as a result of him accidentally popping "Allosaurus" and the dinos flee as the crowd panics in sight of them. The police come to capture the dinos soon after, but the helpful curator of the American Museum of Natural History, Dr. Bleeb, takes the dinos in, and hides them from the cops by having them pretend to be life-size model dinosaurs. This satisfies the police, who leave to search for the dinosaurs elsewhere, and the curator lets them stay for the night. She reads them a bedtime story about a trilobite who wanted to walk on land, while the dinos watch out the window, unsure about their future. ru:Мы вернулись! История динозавра
30874726	/m/0fbtnz	R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH	Jane Leslie Conly	1990	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 When two children named Margaret and Artie are lost during a camping trip, they are found by the colony of rats, specifically one named Christopher. The children help the rat community with various tasks, and Artie and Christopher become very close friends. However, when winter comes, the rats cannot shelter the children and must send them back. The children try to keep the secret of Thorn Valley, but after pressure, Margaret ends up revealing it. The story ends with a party of adults traveling to Thorn Valley to discover the rats' colony only to discover an empty, apparently uninhabited plot of land with all traces of the colony removed. The whereabouts and fate of the rats of NIMH are left unstated, though Artie did find a gift from Christopher, a picture of an arrow, presumably pointing to the new location of the colony.
30875107	/m/04y01c	...And Call Me Conrad	Roger Zelazny	1965-10	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 After being devastated by a nuclear war, the Earth is a planet with a population of only 4 million, overrun by a variety of mutated lifeforms. Worse, much of the Earth is now owned by the Vegans, a race of blue-skinned aliens who see the planet as a tourist location. Conrad Nomikos, the first person narrator, is a man with a past that he'd rather not talk about, and he's been given a task that he'd rather refuse: to show an influential Vegan around the old ruins of Earth. But Conrad suddenly finds himself the reluctant protector of this alien visitor when attempts are made on the Vegan's life. Conrad knows that keeping the Vegan alive is important&mdash;but now he must find out why. Conrad now finds himself pitted against a group of Earth rebels that includes an old comrade-in-arms and an old lover, neither of whom can understand why he would want to protect one of Earth's subjugators. He is aided by another old friend and an old man who is actually one of his sons. It is eventually revealed that the Vegan he is escorting has been charged with the final disposition of the planet Earth. The Vegan in his turn is confounded by Conrad's actions. Ostensibly there as a tourist to see Earth's sights, he is horrified to find that Conrad is having the pyramids of Egypt torn down, more so when the immortal explains that the process is being filmed, and that the film will be run backwards to simulate the construction of the pyramids. Along the way it appears that Conrad's beloved wife is killed in a natural cataclysm. At the end, the rebels realize that Conrad has been fighting to protect the Earth in his own way. Through actions such as the deconstruction of the pyramids, Conrad makes the Vegans see that Earthlings would rather destroy the planet's riches than see them fall into the hands of others. In the final battle to protect the Vegan, Conrad's wife appears to deliver the decisive saving blow. The Vegan sees the mettle of which Conrad is made, and decides to leave the planet in the possession of the one being with the longevity, power and moral fiber to do well by it. Conrad finds himself the owner of Earth.
30876903	/m/03n0y_	A Raisin in the Sun	Lorraine Hansberry			 Walter and Ruth Younger and their son Travis, along with Walter's mother Lena (Mama) and sister Beneatha, live in poverty in a dilapidated two-bedroom apartment on Chicago's south side. Walter is barely making a living as a limousine driver. Though Ruth is content with their lot, Walter is not and desperately wishes to become wealthy, to which end he plans to invest in a liquor store in partnership with Willy, a street-smart acquaintance of Walter's whom we never meet. At the beginning of the play, Mama is waiting for an insurance check for ten thousand dollars. Walter has a sense of entitlement to the money, but Mama has religious objections to alcohol and Beneatha has to remind him it is Mama's call how to spend it. Eventually Mama puts some of the money down on a new house, choosing an all-white neighborhood over a black one for the practical reason that it happens to be much cheaper. Later she relents and gives the rest of the money to Walter to invest with the provision that he reserve $3,000 for Beneatha's education. Walter passes the money on to Willy's naive sidekick Bobo, who gives it to Willy, who absconds with it, depriving Walter and Beneatha of their dreams, though not the Youngers of their new home. Meanwhile, Karl Lindner, a white representative of the neighborhood they plan to move to, makes a generous offer to buy them out. He wishes to avoid neighborhood tensions over interracial population, which to the three women's horror Walter prepares to accept as a solution to their financial setback. Lena says that while money was something they try to work for, they should never take it if it was a person's way of telling them they weren't fit to walk the same earth as them. While all this is going on, Walter's character and direction in life are being defined for us by two different men: Beneatha's wealthy and educated boyfriend George Murchison, and Joseph Asagai, a Nigerian medical student at a Canadian university on a visit to America. Neither man is actively involved in the Youngers' financial ups and downs. George represents the "fully assimilated black man" who denies his African heritage with a "smarter than thou" attitude, which Beneatha finds disgusting, while dismissively mocking Walter's lack of money and education. Asagai patiently teaches Beneatha about her African heritage; he gives her thoughtfully useful gifts from Africa, while pointing out she is unwittingly assimilating herself into white ways. She straightens her hair, for example, which he characterizes as "mutilation." When Beneatha becomes distraught at the loss of the money, she is upbraided by Joseph for her materialism. She eventually accepts his point of view that things will get better with a lot of effort, along with his proposal of marriage and his invitation to move with him to Nigeria to practice medicine. Walter is oblivious to the stark contrast between George and Joseph: his pursuit of wealth can only be attained by liberating himself from Joseph's culture, to which he attributes his poverty, and rising to George's level, wherein he sees his salvation. To Walter, this is the American dream, which he pursues as fruitlessly as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, with the added handicap of being black in white America. But whereas Loman dies at the end of his story, Walter redeems himself and black pride at the end by changing his mind and not accepting the buyout offer, stating that they are proud of who they are and will try to be good neighbors. The play closes with the family leaving for their new but uncertain future.
30878178	/m/0gfd3qd	Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us	Daniel H. Pink	2009	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In his book Daniel Pink has made a 140-character summary of what the book is about, in the style of Twitter. :"Carrots & Sticks are so last Century. Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose." Another summary was done by RSAnimate, a ten minute video animation adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA.
30882727	/m/0gg8720	Zeluco				 The first quarter of the novel details Zeluco’s numerous initial wrongdoings in rapid succession. The novel opens with an incident that, according to the narrator, illustrates Zeluco’s violent temper and uncontrollable impulses. Irritated by his pet sparrow, the young Zeluco crushes it to death in his hand and ignores the remonstrances of his horrified tutor. Grown into a handsome, selfish, and cruel young man, Zeluco seduces and impregnates the niece of an important noblewoman. He then deserts the niece and spends two decadent years in Italy, draining his mother’s resources. Once his mother has given him the last of her money, Zeluco drops his pretence of affection, and she dies of disappointment at his anger and spite. Unconcerned about his mother’s death, Zeluco attempts to marry Rosolia, a young woman with a vast potential inheritance. Rosolia’s mother, convinced that Zeluco is only after her daughter’s money, pretends to be pregnant. Certain that Rosolia’s inheritance will be greatly reduced, Zeluco abandons her, travels to Spain, enlists as an officer in the military, and follows his regiment to Cuba. Zeluco mistreats his men in an attempt to gain a promotion, but after being chastised by his superior officer, he turns his attention to a wealthy widow. Though he offers the widow tender affections until she agrees to marry him, he treats her with cold indifference once she signs over her money and property to him, and she dies of grief. Newly interested in the wife of his rich Portuguese neighbor, Zeluco courts the wife secretly until she refuses to meet him for fear of discovery and confesses her flirtations to her husband. The Portuguese disguises himself and stabs Zeluco. After a difficult recuperation, Zeluco attempts to revenge himself upon the Portuguese by making the man think Zeluco to be the father of his newborn son. After this plot fails, Zeluco leaves Cuba for Naples. The remaining three-quarters of the novel is devoted to Zeluco’s interactions with a particular circle of aristocrats in Italian high society. Once established in Naples, Zeluco becomes interested in Laura Seidlits, the beautiful daughter of the widow Madame de Seidlits. Determined to meet Laura, he attempts to ingratiate himself with the nobleman Signora Sporza, Madame de Seidlits’ first cousin. Though she pretends to oblige him, Signora Sporza distrusts Zeluco and senses his cruel character. Laura also instinctively dislikes Zeluco and refuses his proposal of marriage. Infuriated by Laura’s disdain, Zeluco stages a false attempt of robbery, rape, and murder by having his valet attack Laura and Signora Sporza’s carriage. Despite Zeluco’s apparently heroic false rescue, Laura remains unmoved and unwavering in her decision not to marry Zeluco. Madame de Seidlits’ bank fails, however, and after learning of her mother’s financial distress and being pressured by Father Pedro, Laura agrees to marry Zeluco to preserve her mother’s happiness and wellbeing. As in the case of the rich widow, Zeluco treats Laura cruelly as soon as he achieves his goal and sates his appetites. Laura bears his ill treatment meekly, hides her misery, and presents a positive image of her married life. Signora Sporza, as well as Laura’s newly arrived half-brother Captain Seidlits and his friend Baron Carlostein, suspects the true state of affairs. Laura and Baron Carlostein begin to fall in love with one another, but Laura cuts the relationship short because she is unwilling to violate her marriage vows. Oblivious to Laura’s love for Carlostein, Zeluco erroneously believes Laura to be in love with a nameless Italian nobleman. Bored with Laura, Zeluco begins an affair with Nerina, a deceitful woman who pretends to be in love with men for financial gain. Nerina manipulates Zeluco through pretended fits of jealously and eventually convinces him that his and Laura’s newborn son is really the bastard child of Captain Seidlits. Giving in to his natural jealousy and furious impulses, Zeluco snatches his son from Laura’s lap and strangles the child. Laura immediately faints and remains out of her senses for a number of weeks. When Laura partially regains her senses, she sees a painting of the Massacre of the Innocents, screams, and falls into a feverish frenzy. When Baron Carlostein, Captain Seidlits, and Signora Sporza examine the picture, they realize that one of the soldiers strangling a child bears a strong resemblance to Zelcuo. Laura recovers from her fever with her senses intact and writes to Zeluco asking for a separation and promising she will tell no one about the murder. Captain Seidlits, however, labels the soldier in the picture with Zeluco’s name. Baron Carlostein provokes Zeluco into a duel to spare Captain Seidlits. The night before the duel is to take place, Zeluco goes to Nerina’s house unannounced and catches her with another lover, who stabs him in the stomach. On his deathbed, Zeluco repents of his amoral conduct and apologizes to Captain Seidlits. After arranging her affairs and giving monetary gifts to Zeluco’s relations, Laura agrees to marry Baron Carlostein and moves to Berlin with her family.
30883520	/m/0gg7t86	Never Mind the Balkans, Here's Romania		2008-05		 Based on the author’s personal experiences in urban and rural Romania over a fourteen-year period between 1994 and 2008, the book consists of a series of vignettes delineating various aspects of modern Romanian life. A narrator tells the stories in the first person, using the present tense, and is closely linked to the events and characters portrayed, often with unexpected results. He describes encounters with taxi drivers, the new rich, teenagers, notaries, lawyers, waiters, musicians, friends, families, association presidents, politicians, etc. Settings range from Bucharest to Transylvania, from the mountains to the coast. In two stories, the narrator meets or observes Romanians abroad. The tone throughout is wry but empathetic, with elements of bittersweet comedy, danger and, on one occasion, violence, when interests and ideals clash. Most of the stories contain an allegorical twist, inviting wider interpretation.
30890142	/m/0gg9mkv	The Meaning of It All	Richard Feynman	1998	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In the first lecture, "The Uncertainty of Science" Feynman explains the nature of science, that it is a "method for finding things out", and that it is "based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not". He says that uncertainty and doubt in science is a good thing, because it always keeps the door open for further investigation. The second lecture, "The Uncertainty of Values" deals with his views on the relationship between science, religion and politics. Feynman acknowledges science's limitations and says that it does not have the "value system" that religions have, but adds that it can be used to help in making decisions. He also stresses the importance of having the freedom to question and explore, and criticizes the (then) Soviet Union by saying that no government has the right to decide which scientific principles are correct and which are not. In the third lecture, "This Unscientific Age", the longest of the three, Feynman discusses his views on modern society and how unscientific it is. Using a number of anecdotes as examples, he covers a range of topics, including "faith healing, flying saucers, politics, psychic phenomena, TV commercials, and desert real estate".
30892578	/m/0gg7vh8	Another				 In 1972, a popular student named Misaki who was in class 3-3 of Yomiyama North Middle School suddenly died partway through the school year. Devastated by the unexpected loss, the students and teachers behaved like Misaki was still alive, leading to a strange presence on the graduation photo. In Spring 1998, a 15-year old boy named Kōichi Sakakibara transfers into Yomiyama's class 3-3, where he meets the peculiar Mei Misaki, who is seemingly ignored by her classmates. The class is soon caught up in an epidemic where students, or people related to class 3-3 students, are caught up in mysterious deaths. Learning these deaths have something to do with the mystery of 1972, it is up to Kōichi and Mei to discover the cause of these mysterious deaths and figure out how to put an end to it before it puts an end to them.
30900805	/m/0gg6mwd	The Gods Are Not To Blame	Ola Rotimi	1971	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/05qp9": "Play"}	 The book begins with an Ifa Priest's predictiction of a newborn son of King Adetusa and his Queen Ojuola that will grow up to "kill his own father and then marry his own mother!" The baby's feet are tied with a string of cowries... Now years later, the child Odewale is King and married to Ojuola. An old man Alaka, half clown, half philosopher, comes to tell Odewale that his "parents" have died. However, Alaka also lets slip that they were not Odewale's real parents. Shamed by the suggestion that he is illegitimate, Odewale brutally forces Alaka to reveal the truth: that Alaka found him in the bush and brought him to the neighbouring Ijekun chief to be fostered.
30907060	/m/0gg8n5_	Wildfire at Midnight				 Fashion model Gianetta Brooke goes on holiday to the island of Skye, only to find that her ex-husband, writer Nicholas Drury, is staying at the same hotel. After two murders take place locally, suspicion falls on the hotel guests. Gianetta, having become friendly with fellow-traveller Roderick Grant, eventually discovers that Grant is the murderer. She is saved from becoming his next victim and reunited with Nicholas.
30911595	/m/0ggb84l	The European Union as a Small Power: After the Post-Cold War			{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The EU is a response to and function of Europe’s unique historical experience. The past decade has shown that there is policy space for greater EU engagement in European security, although the EU has not been able to play all roles with the same degree of accomplishment. There are particular concerns over its security and defence dimension where attempts at pooling resources and forming a political consensus have failed to generate the results expected. These trends, combined with shifts in global power patterns, have been accompanied by a shift in EU strategic thinking whereby great-power ambitions have been scaled down and replaced by a tendency towards hedging vis-à-vis the leading powers. On an operational level the track record shows that the EU’s effectiveness is hampered by a ‘consensus– expectations gap’, owing primarily to the lack of an effective decision-making mechanism. The sum of these developments is that the EU will not be a great power, and is taking the place of one of the small powers in the emerging multipolar international order.(summarized on page 11).
30927727	/m/0gg986x	Faith				 Dicky Cruyer, who is now acting Director of Operations, sends Bernard and another agent into East Germany to meet with Verdi, a KGB defector who has promised to supply access to the KGB mainframe and wanted to see Bernard. Upon discovering a corpse at the meeting point they realise that they have been set up. After killing a Stasi agent and being sheltered by one of Fiona's networks they escape back to West Berlin. Dicky is desperate for the Verdi operation to succeed in order to secure Operations permanently and angle for the soon to be vacant Deputy Director General position. Fiona is now working for Dicky and backing the operation because VERDI has promised to bring information about the death of her sister Tessa during Fiona's escape from the East. Others high-up in the SIS are determined to block the operation. Bernard knows Verdi from the old days in Berlin, doesn't trust him and isn't sure about the operation but now he must work with his old friend Werner Volkman to find out what is really going on and bring Verdi safely to London. Along the way Bernard has to deal with the usual office politics, enemy agents, his fragile wife, his ex-mistress Gloria, Dicky's wife's seduction by a KGB operative and Tessa's husband's attempts to find out who was really responsible for her death and make them pay. Bret makes a surprise return to London to take the Deputy Director General position. He appoints Gloria as his assistant and promises a major clean out of London Central. Gloria tells Bernard she is worried that files about her father's and Bernard's connection with Fiona's mission are being illegally erased from top secret databases. Verdi tells Bernard the corpse at the meeting point was Timmermann, a freelance agent working for George and Fiona who was nosing around about Tessa and had to be eliminated, something Bret had tried to inform Bernard of via a cryptic message. Verdi is safely brought to London to finalise the deal where he hands over Tessa's post mortem report as promised. Verdi then spins a fanciful story to Bernard that the report is a fake and that Tessa is really still alive and being held captive in East Germany; something Bernard forces Werner to keep secret. Verdi is then killed by a sniper and everyone faces an official inquiry into the mission's failure.
30929390	/m/0gg4c8v	The Mystery of the Strange Bundle				 Mr, Fellows runs with a bundle in the night out of his room. What was in the bundle? Why did he run? The five find-outers and dog are on the track. Fatty, the leader of the five learns ventriloquism.
30932229	/m/0gg5w_q	The Family Arsenal	Paul Theroux	1976	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Family Arsenal follows a bitter former American Consul as he blunders into a terrorist commune in search of a cause; seemingly any cause so long as it offers some way of battling evil, which here takes the guise of a heavy handed government and a gun-running criminal. Shortly after Valentine Hood joins a terrorist cell operating from a nondescript house in a once pleasant street in Deptford, South London, he commits a senselessly quixotic killing. The repercussions from this unsanctioned act ripple far and wide, eventually endangering everything and everyone he has been fighting for. Gradually Hood insinuates himself into the confidences of the suspicious, down-trodden members of his new family as they plan and execute equally pointless atrocities around London, either alone or with the assistance of a bored society hostess, an up and coming actress and a man who may or may not allow access to the IRA.
30946755	/m/0gg50k5	Plain Kate			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Katerina "Kate" Svetlana is an orphan who lived in the small eastern European market town of Samilae. She was called "Plain Kate" because of her plain looks. Her mother died in childbirth and her father, a master woodcarver, took care of her until he died of a mysterious river sickness. She is thought to be a witch by some of the other townspeople, because of her brown and blue eyes. Kate is too young and too poor to join the woodcarving guild, and is forced to live out of her father's market stall, seeking out a living from her carvings. One day, a stranger comes to market. The stranger, Linay, offers Kate her heart's wish in exchange for her shadow. She initially refuses, but later agrees when rumours of witchcraft spread and she feels she must escape the town to survive. Linay provides her with basic necessities, and her wish to not be alone results in her pet cat Taggle gaining the power of speech. Kate joins a group of Roamers, nomads who travel from town to town selling goods. She meets Drina, a girl with no mother but a living father who tells Kate about an uncle who went mad once Drina's mother was burned as a witch. A few days later, Kate reveals to Drina that a witch took her shadow and that Taggle actually talks. Since Drina's mother was actually a witch, and Drina shares some of that power, Drina decides to help Kate. Drina repeats the one rule of magic: that for something to be granted, something must be given in return, but the spell backfires. Drina apologizes but says that they can still get help from someone who knew her mother in the markets of Toila. Throughout their journey, a mysterious fog creeps up the river, bringing sickness to the towns it touches. The people of the countryside are more fearful than ever, ready to pounce on any mysterious stranger or Roamer with accusations of witchcraft. Kate and Drina barely escape from an angry mob in Toila, and the Roamers start to believe that Kate is more trouble than she is worth. Worse, the river sickness has started to affect the Roamers as well. Some Roamers accuse Kate of being responsible. The discovery that Kate now has no shadow, and that Taggle can talk, seals Kate's fate. The Roamers lock her in an old bear cage, and prepare to burn her themselves. Kate manages to escape with Taggle, but is badly burnt. She runs to the river and dive in. Kate wakes up in a small boat, and discovers that Linay has saved her from drowning in the water. Her hands are bandaged and she is in clean clothes, and Linay reveals that he did not want Kate to drown. This was how his sister died, while running from an angry mob, and it is this that has transformed her into a Rusalka, a vampiric water creature that has been causing the river sickness. Kate realizes that Linay is Drina's uncle, and that the Rusalka is actually Drina's mother, Lenore. Linay promises to return Kate's shadow to her when they reach Lov, a big city downriver, but he needs her to exact his plan for revenge. He reveals that he has taken Kate's shadow so he could augment the power of the Rusalka and destroy the city of Lov, where Lenore died. He is leading his sister down the river and keeping her under control by offering her his blood, but he has no more blood to give. He asks Kate to offer some of her own blood. In spite of Taggle's advice not to agree to Linay's deal, Kate reluctantly starts to feed her blood to Lenore, every night. Soon, she discovers that her shadow is held in a box made of her stall's ruins. After an attempt to free her shadow fails, Kate decides that she cannot allow Linay to destroy Lov, and she flees Linay's boat, trying to beat him to the stone city. On the way, she meets Drina in the red vardo with Behjet. Behjet has fallen into the "death" sleep. Drina says that the ghost has taken other Roamers as well. Together, the two arrive at Lov. There, they see Linay being captured by the city guards. He is calling for himself to be burned. On the day of the burning, as Linay is to be burned at the stake, he calls Lenore, who comes. Combined with Kate's shadow, she begins to destroy Lov. Kate and Drina plead with Linay to stop, but he refuses. Taggle, remembering the rule of magic, gives back the gift of his speech by selflessly jumping onto Kate's knife, killing himself, and ending the Rusalka's attack on the city. The Rusalka transforms back into Lenore, in ghost form, who comforts the dying Linay, and her daughter Drina. Before she fades, crossing over completely into the afterlife, she grants Kate one last gift and uses her witchcraft to bring Taggle back to life, although without the ability to speak. She also gives Kate back her shadow. Those caught in the sleeping sickness, who are still alive, wake up at last. Kate, Taggle and Drina leave Lov and find Behjet awake. Later, when it is almost dark, Plain Kate finds Linay's green boat. Inside, she finds the box which held her shadow. Inside there is a sack full of gold and silver, and a note on which Linay had written: Kate. I hope you live. Before the book ends, Plain Kate picks up Taggle and says: "I did. We both did. And we'll keep on living."
30960484	/m/0ggb9hl	The Leopard	Jo Nesbø	2009	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Following the traumatic events of the previous novel, the world-weary detective Harry Hole has gone on a kind of self-imposed exile from Norway and disappeared. Because of a series of murders by a potential serial killer in Oslo leave the police baffled and call for Hole's special talents, a search is launched and he is eventually found by a new Crime Squad officer, Kaja Solness, in Hong Kong, where he has become addicted to opium. After failing to convince Harry to return to Norway by describing the identical murder of two women, Solness informs him that his father is seriously ill in the Rikshospitalet and will not live much longer. This convinces Harry to return to Norway with Solness. Harry returns to Crime Squad to find that it is in a political tussle with the National Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos). The power-hungry head of Kripos, Mikael Bellman, seeks to build his own power by gaining a monopoly on all murder investigations in Norway and is at odds with Harry's own supervisor. Much of the book's plot is concerned with this no-holds-barred power struggle, with rival detectives conducting surveillance on each other and resorting to constant intrigue, blackmail and the planting of spies and "moles" in the rival department. From the very moment of landing in Norway, Harry finds himself the target of Bellman's hostility - though the head of Kripos is not averse to obtaining the results of Harry's detection and taking credit for them. To begin with, Harry is reluctant to become involved in the murder investigation, but when a female Norwegian MP is murdered in a public park, he is drawn into the case. The third murder initially seems unrelated to the previous two. The previous victims had been found with 24 small incisions emanating from the mouth, but the actual cause of death was by drowning in their own blood from those wounds, whereas the MP was found having been hanged, though the fall had been considerable and she had been decapitated by the rope. Harry, Solness and one of Harry's former colleagues at Crime Squad start trying to find the killer - working under cover as officially the case had been given to Kripos. While working together, Harry and Kaja are increasingly drawn to each other. Like himself, Kaja turns out to be haunted by traumatic memories and ghosts of the past, and her past personal entanglements impact her professional life - which leads to a big confrontation between the two of them, and then to a reconciliation and a tempestuous love affair. In the investigation, they meanwhile discover that all three murdered women had been at the same ski lodge some time previously all on the same night. Harry deduces that the murders are part of the killer's attempts to cover up his (or her) trail. Suspicion initially falls on a man known to have been at the ski lodge at the time, but he is eliminated from the enquiry when he also is found murdered having been super glued to his bath and then slowly drowned, returning to the killer's previous style of murder. Forcing Bellman to include him in the Kripos team - though there is no love lost between the two of them - Harry finds another person who had been at the ski lodge at the time and who is now in Australia. She refuses to be bait for the killer, but Harry and Solness instigate a sting operation to draw out the killer. But this fails and almost costs them their lives when the killer outsamrts them, and instead of coming near the hut starts an avalanche which covers and very nearly kills them. Harry finally determines that the murderer is someone that he knows and who has become close to him, following a discussion with The Snowman from his previous case. He realises who he believes to be responsible and has him arrested. Unfortunately, Harry's instincts have proved wrong and the real killer is discovered to have fled to the Congo. Harry and Solness follow them and Harry is kidnapped by associates of the killer. He manages to escape, but Solness has been captured herself. Harry follows the clues given by one of the killer's associates and finally confronts and kills the murderer at the lip of a live volcano. Following the death of his father, Harry spots his former partner, Rakel, and her son, Oleg, at the funeral and manages to confirm that they are alive and happy away from Norway - having fled following the events of The Snowman murders. Though it is but a fleeting meeting, it re-confirms that Rakel is the one great love of Harry's life and that no other woman can truly replace her. Therefore, Kaja's deep love for Harry and her aspiration to build a life together with him is doomed to failure and heartbreak. The poignant farewell scene is reminiscent of the similar scene at the end of The Redeemer, where Harry cut off a budding affair with Martine, the Salvation Army woman with whom he got involved in that book. Harry himself returns to see The Snowman, who is gravely ill and who feels some remorse at what he had done. It is tacitly suggested that Harry helps The Snowman to commit suicide, which Harry feels is payment for having failed to follow his father's previous request for him to perform euthanasia. By the end of the novel, Harry has gotten many new traumatic memories and haunting "ghosts" - having been very near death several times, mutilating his own face to get free of the killer's fiendish trap, shooting an African mercenary who turned out to be a young boy... Moreover, he had twice saved Kaja's life by ruthlessly sacrificing somebody else - during the avalanche he had given priority to resuscitating her while another police officer suffocated to death, and at the final showdown in Africa he had shot down the murderer at an angle where the heavy bullet missed Kaja but killed in passing another woman who was held hostage. Though not facing any charges, Harry is well aware of what he did - and determined to go back to Hong Kong, for good this time.
30967529	/m/0gg4wgj	Mirat-ul-Uroos				 The story contrasts the lives of two Muslim sisters from Delhi, Akbari and Asghari. The first part of the book describes the life of Akbari, who is raised in privilege. She is depicted as lazy and poorly educated. When she moves to her husband's house after her marriage, she has a very difficult time and brings all manner of unhappiness upon herself by her poor judgment and behavior. The book's second part is centered on Asghari, who is modest, hardworking and educated well in a school. She despises idle chatter and is the beloved of all in her mohalla (neighborhood). When she is married, she too undergoes a difficult transition, but through her hard-work, winsome manners and good education is able to form solid bonds with her husband's family and the people of her new mohalla. The story goes through a number of twists and turns that describes the experiences of the two women at various stages in their lives.
30971642	/m/0gg7g9t	The Borrowers Avenged	Mary Norton			 The Borrowers Avenged details the events following the escape of the tiny Clock family from the attic of the scheming humans Mr. and Mrs. Platter and their search for a new home. After returning to the Little Fordham model village, the Clocks set out in Spiller's boat for their new home, the rectory of the local church. They make a night journey down the river, barely missing the Platters who are looking for them. When they arrive at the rectory they discover that their relatives Lupy, Hendreary and Timmus are living in the church next door. Arrietty also meets another borrower named Peagreen Overmantel who shows them a place to live under a window seat. The Clocks settle in comfortably and Arrietty is allowed to go outside and do all of the borrowing for the two borrower families. She discovers that her human friend Miss Menzies goes to the church to arrange flowers, but she is forbidden to speak to her. The Platters, having severely damaged the model village in their hunt for the borrowers, decide to use one of Homily's old aprons to help the local "finder" Lady Mullings locate the borrowers. Miss Menzies recognizes the apron and becomes suspicious. Meanwhile, the Platters spot Timmus in the church and break in after hours to catch him, but they accidentally ring the church bells and are caught by the humans in suspicious circumstances.
30974100	/m/0gg7sc2	The Rift				 Official summary: The story begins with Commander Pike, seen in the original pilot episode for Star Trek. It then features Captain Kirk and his crew from the future. Mr. Spock learns his favorite word, "fascinating" from the female first officer known only as Number One, deciding it wasn't too emotional and would be a good word to remember for the future.
30976827	/m/0gg975f	Dark Places	Gillian Flynn	2009	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Libby Day, the novel's narrator and protagonist, is the sole survivor of a massacre in Kinnakee, Kansas, a fictional rural town. After witnessing the murder of her sister and mothers in what appears to be a Satanic cult ritual, she escapes through a window and later testifies in court against her teenaged brother. Twenty-five years after the massacre, Libby meets with a group of amateur investigators who believe that her brother in innocent of the crime. With the group's support, she begins an investigation of the events of the massacre, tracking down other witnesses and possible suspects. Interspersed with the modern day investigation are flashbacks to the day of the massacre. These flashbacks are told from the points of view of Libby's mother, Patty, and her brother, respectively. These viewpoints paint a picture of a grim life of desperate poverty, marital abuse and abandonment that characterize life on the farm prior to the murder. <!--
30983492	/m/0ggbh19	My Best Friend's Girl				 Kamryn Matika is a thirty-two year old National Marketing Manager for a department store, who lives in Leeds. On her birthday she receives a card- not a birthday card- from her former best friend, Adele Brannon, which says that she is in hospital and she is dying. Kamryn is reluctant to see her. Two years previously, she discovered that her partner and her best friend conceived a child together three years earlier. Kamryn had vowed never to speak to them again. However, she visits London anyway but when at the hospital she discovers that Adele has terminal cancer and is going to die soon. She is shocked when Adele says that she want Kamryn to adopt her daughter Tegan. Kamryn thinks about it and reflects when she met Adele in university for a couple of hours before she goes to collect Tegan from Adele's Father and Step-mother, who we discover have abused and negected both Adele and Tegan. They let Tegan go as a) they would be glad to see the back of her b) Kamryn had threatened to phone the police. Tegan is somewhat quiet and is rather scared, but Kamryn reasures her everything will be ok. In the hotel room, Kamryn is shocked to see how much abuse Tegan had suffered at the hands of her grandparents. Kamryn decides to stick to a plan: bath, food, bed. This actually works in a bizarre way. A few days later Kamryn receives a knock on her door to say that Adele had died during the night. This shocks Kamryn and she trys to tell Teagn but she refuses to believe it. A few weeks later, Kamryn and Tegan move back up to Leeds. At first, there were issues such as they don't know what shampoo to get for Tegan. Kamryn is under suspicion as she is a black woman with a white child. Kamryn once forgets Tegan and leaves her at a play group while she is having dinner with her new boss, Luke. The next day, Luke comes round and Tegan asks him to come to the zoo with her and Kamryn. Kamryn and Luke become closer and then they become lovers. Just as they are settling in, Kamryn's former parther (and Tegan's father), Nate, comes back on the scene. Kamryn tells Nate about his daughter to which he is now becoming used to even helping with her sixth birthday party, which goes badly wrong when Tegan has an alergic reaction. In the hospital, Kamryn and Nate share a kiss which is seen by Luke resulting in a massive break-up between him and Kamryn. About eighteen months later, Luke meets up with Kamryn and Tegan in a cafe and seems to have forgiven Kamryn. Tegan is now Kamryn's adopted daughter and says that they are going to get a cat.
30991451	/m/0gg721v	Hope				 A severely wounded courier working for George Kosinski turns up at the flat in London where Bernard and Fiona are now living, since Tessa Kosinski left it to Fiona. George, who is now a tax exile living in Zurich, arrives to take the courier to a doctor and asks Bernard to keep it quiet because he doesn't want Inland Revenue to know he was in the country. Suspecting that a Stasi agent travelled to Zurich to meet with George, Bernard and Dicky Cruyer travel to Zurich to question George. George has put Tessa's engagement ring, given to him by the Stasi, in to be cleaned and then disappeared. Bernard and Dicky track him to his old family estate in Poland where his brother Stefan resides. Stefan says the George was murdered by Russian Army defectors and all that was recovered was a leg mauled by wild dogs, and he has a death certificate to prove it. A hand with George's signet ring is later shown to the British Embassy as further proof and sent to Dicky in London. The Stasi try to steal the hand back before it can be forensically analysed but Dicky chases and shoots the agent and recovers the hand. Bret Rensselaer and Gloria are implementing harsh budget cuts across the SIS. With the backing of Fiona and Dicky Bernard gets a permanent job as Frank Harrington's deputy in Berlin. There he must deal with one of Fiona's networks in East Germany being captured because the head man was a Stasi plant. A young agent Bernard has worked with is killed and delivered to Gloria's hotel room as retaliation for Bernard killing a Stasi agent in Faith. Bernard also learns that Fiona was in love with her KGB minder, a double agent called Kennedy, whom Bernard shot while rescuing Fiona. Fiona and children decide to spend Christmas in the Caribbean with her father. Bernard is sent back in to Poland to extract George. He discovers that George and Stefan have been working for Polish intelligence all the time they have been travelling in the West. George fled to Zurich to try to get out but the Stasi tracked him down. They told George that Timmerman had brokered a deal and if George returns to Poland and renounces his British Citizenship they will reunite him with Tessa, who is pregnant, and they can live happily ever after in Poland. Bernard convinces George that this is nonsense and Tessa is dead and that London will treat him well if he comes clean. George agrees to be smuggled to Sweden in light plane and after shooting George's tail they escape. Bernard hands George over to be shipped off to London for interrogation. Bernard and Gloria fly back to London for Christmas in the lear-jet Bret chartered as an air ambulance in case anyone was injured.
30996091	/m/0gh79c6	Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice	Frederic M. Halford	1889		 Whereas Floating Flies and How to Dress Them was about the dry fly, fly tying and to some extent the entomology of the chalk stream, Dry-Fly Fishing... was about fishing the dry fly. It was the consummate "how-to" manual for the dry-fly fisherman. It was not only about methodology, but also about the ethics and purism of the dry fly on English chalk streams. The volume begins by spelling out the various pieces of fishing and personal equipment the dry-fly angler should possess. The pros and cons of different rod styles are discussed, along with fly lines, reels and the various miscellany a fly angler should carry. Although Halford did not invent dry-fly fishing, before this volume, no one had laid out in such detail the equipment recommendations needed to be a successful dry-fly angler. Such were Halford's recommendations that they were routinely referenced by the fly-fishing trade: A short, but concise Chapter 2 discusses the distinction between a floating (dry) fly and a sunk fly, with emphasis on the superiority of the floating fly as characterized by this concluding statement: Chapters 3-5 go into great detail about how, when and where to cast the dry fly on the typical chalk stream. These chapters are heavily illustrated with casting techniques and comprise nearly 20% of the entire 1st edition. The bulk of the remaining chapters deal with the entomology of the chalk stream, fly selection and trout behaviour.
30998772	/m/0gg9xnd	Broken	Karin Slaughter	2010	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Broken begins with the murder of college student Allison Spooner. When the body is pulled from frigid Lake Grant, detective Lena Adams and her oft drunk boss, interim Chief of Police Frank Wallace, follow a trail that leads to the suicide of the prime suspect, Tommy Braham, in his jail cell. The suicide spurs the involvement of Dr. Sara Linton, back in town for Thanksgiving with her family. Still incredibly angry with Lena over her role in Sara's husband's death, and convinced Lena's callous and reckless behavior has led to the possibly innocent suspect's death, Sara calls in back-up from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Upon arriving in town, Agent Will Trent immediately meets with resistance from the Grant County Police Department. Despite the roadblocks, he unveils serious errors and deliberate cover-ups in the investigation, perpetrated mainly by Frank Wallace. Soon after, Allison's boyfriend Jason is brutally killed in his dorm room. This definitively points to a murderer still on the loose, clearing Tommy Braham of any lingering suspicion. After discovering a secret link between all three victims, Will and Sara must pull all the pieces together in time to track down the killer.
31008263	/m/0gg74q5	Heroes of Princeton		2010-08	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Accurately following the campaigns of the 17th Regiment of Foot in the American colonies, the company Snow enlists into finds itself at odds with their own ranks as much as those of the enemies, as the seven men enlist together each becomes at odds with their nemesis Sergeant Matthias Skinner who seems hell bent upon their destruction. The novel climaxes at the Battle of Princeton in January 1777 with the famous bayonet charge made by the 17th Regiment as Lt Colonel Charles Mawhoods British brigade is surrounded by General George Washington's army.
31009077	/m/0gg8cgt	Mayflower II				 The story begins on Pluto in the distant future. Its inhabitants, former collaborators of the Qax, humanity's erstwhile conquerors, are under attack from the new-formed Coalition, seeking revenge for humanity's enslavement. As such, the inhabitants send five generation ships out of the solar system in the hopes that they will be able to form colonies of their own that can survive the Coalition. Rusel, the protagonist, is admitted onto Mayflower II, one of the ships, at the last minute. Shortly after takeoff, it is revealed that the ship's intended destination is outside the galaxy, requiring a flight time of 50,000 subjective years, even with the effects of time dilation. The ship's captain selects a few individuals to receive medical treatment granting them immortality, allowing them to guide the ship through its millennia-long voyage. Over time, however, these individuals die through malfunctions or boredom, leaving Rusel as the only immortal on board, but he becomes increasingly dependent on life-support and gradually merges with the ship. Over time, the other inhabitants of the ship form several different societies, gradually becoming detached from their original humanity. Eventually, they form an almost unrecongisable tribal civilisation. Having forgotten that they are on a spaceship at all, they only maintain it through religious tradition. After 25,000 years have passed, the Mayflower is contacted by Pirius and Torec (protagonists of Exultant), former soldiers of the Coalition, which is revealed to have fallen. They offer to remove the inhabitants from the ship and care for them elsewhere. Rusel, now completely merged with the ship's systems, allows them to do so. Pirius and Torec then leave Rusel to continue into space without the burden of the crew, which he gladly accepts.
31009850	/m/0gg6qvv	Blue Remembered Earth	Alastair Reynolds	2012-01-19	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Blue Remembered Earth takes place in the 2160s, at a time when humanity has repaired Earth's climate and extensively colonised the solar system. An omnipresent surveillance system (known as the "Mechanism") ensures that violent crime is almost unheard-of, and genetic engineering has vastly extended human lifespans. China, India and the nations of Africa are now the world's leading technological powers, although they face competition from the United Aquatic Nations, a new underwater civilisation populated by water-breathing transhumans. Almost all humans possess neural computer interfaces known as "augs", which allow them to access online information, view augmented reality displays, translate speech in real-time and operate telepresence robots. Some individuals, wishing to escape the constant surveillance of Earth's Mechanism, live in a bohemian, ungoverned "Descrutinized Zone" on the dark side of the Moon. The story focuses on Geoffrey and Sunday Akinya, a brother and sister who are members of a powerful African corporate family. Following the death of their influential grandmother Eunice, the siblings begin investigating a series of cryptic messages that Eunice left across the solar system over the previous century.
31012715	/m/0gg59pw	Muriel a oranžová smrt	Miloš Macourek			 Muriel a oranžová smrt follows its characters on from where Muriel a andělé left them. The militaristic General Xeron, the main antagonist, has managed to escape justice. Both Muriel and Xeron are captured by a spy from the Orange Planet. Once at the Orange Planet, Muriel is imprisoned, but Xeron, true to character, unhesitatingly joins its autocratic ruling regime, and persuades its leader, the Central Brain, to invade Earth. After a brief, hopeless resistance, Earth is defeated; but Muriel's boyfriend Ró (a visitor from an alien planet of the distant future) contacts his compatriots and allies, and together, they drive the invaders back. Ró journeys to the Orange Planet, destroys its Central Brain, frees Muriel, and liberates the Planet's ordinary inhabitants, who have been unknowingly enslaved all the while.
31014664	/m/0gg9163	Lily Alone				 Lily is the eldest child in the Green family. She has two younger half-sisters and a younger half -brother. She often has to take care of them when their mother, Kate Green, goes out to the pub, newsagent or off-licence. Although Lily does not usually mind being shouldered with the responsibility, she sometimes resents it. When Lily's mother meets Gordon, her new boyfriend, at a local club, Kate is convinced that her life has improved and she feels as if Gordon and her [are] on a rollercoaster up to heaven.' Lily becomes cross with her mother for not coming home in a timely manner. That night, she takes care of her brother and sisters by drawing and watching Tracy Beaker. The next day, Kate takes her children on a frivolous shopping expedition and uses a credit card, which causes Lily to become very suspicious. She worries about where and how her mum obtained the card. Kate flies to Spain to be with Gordon. Lily is fearful and angry when her mother suggests that Mikey, Kate's ex-husband, look after the rest of the family while Kate travels to Spain. Kate tells Lily that she has yet to reveal to Gordon that she has children. She further annoys Lily when Kate reveals that she feels as if she deserves a holiday from living in a 'dump.' Kate leaves a voicemail message for Mikey to tell him that he must take care of the children while Kate is on holiday. Lily is afraid of Mikey. By the time Mikey returns Kate's call, Kate has already left for Spain. Mikey tells Lily that he is on his way to Glasgow and tells Lily to tell her mother not to go anywhere. Lily pretends that she has delivered the message. They survive by eating what is left in the fridge. Lily is able to prepare simple meals for her siblings because she has grown accustomed to caring for them. Lily is frightened and cross because she is the one who is in charge. She is fearful that people will find out about her situation and that she will be separated from her siblings. She manages by taking her brother and sisters to the park as well as by using her imagination to entertain the others. She also uses her brains to deal with adults who ask about the whereabouts of her mother, such as the couple the children encounter in the park. Mr Abbot, Lily's teacher, comes to the flat because he is concerned that the children have not attended school and that Lily failed to go on the trip to the art gallery. Lily tells her teacher that they have all been ill and that her mother is at the shops in order to purchase medicine. Lily is scared that Mr Abbot will return with social workers so she packs food, clothing and bedding. When they run away, all of the children are very scared and struggle to feed themselves. They fend for themselves by stealing food from a nearby canteen, until the owners tell them to stop. Lily also enters a home and takes several items of delicious food.Now there's another person on her back her flat neighbour who they call Mr Nosy. Things go even more wrong when Bliss falls out of a tree and breaks her leg while Lily sleeps. Lily realises that she needs adult intervention. She calls an ambulance and they take Bliss to the hospital. When the nurses get Bliss lying down, their Mum returns. The police charge Kate with child neglect. She is told that she needs to perform community service as her punishment. Lily goes to a children's home, split apart from her siblings Baxter and Pixie who were fostered, while Bliss stays in the hospital. The story ends by Lily drawing a picture of the Green family and writing at the bottom: "We're all going to be together very, very soon."
31038042	/m/0gg81v9	Pretty Little Things	Jilliane Hoffman			 13 year old Elaine Emerson, nicknamed Lainey, meets a boy on the internet while hiding behind a profile indicating her age as 16. She goes on a date with Zach, 17, nicknamed El Capitan, and never returns from the date. Special Agent Bobby Dees, head of the department's Crimes Against Children Squad, tries to find her.
31038143	/m/0gg7fgx	Below the Root	Zilpha Keatley Snyder		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Raamo D’ok, a 13-year old Kindar boy, learns that he has been Chosen due to his unusually strong Spirit-force abilities. He will be joining the ranks of the Ol-zhaan, Green-sky’s elite ruling class. The next day, Raamo returns to the temple as instructed where he meets the other Chosen, Genaa. Raamo beigns to receive penses from a shadowy figure who is glad to see his strong Spirit-powers, cryptically announcing that he has also chosen Raamo. During Ol-zhaan training, Raamo learns that Genaa's father is dead, captured by the Pash-shan, feared creatures that live trapped below the ground. He also receives news that his sister Pomma has been ill, possibly with a disease called “the wasting.” She has participated in healing ceremonies with Ol-zhaan D’ol Neric, to little avail. Raamo sees Neric walking one day and tries to talk to him, but receives a pense telling him to stay back, revealing it was D’ol Neric who had pensed him before. During the Ceremony of Elevation, D’ol Neric again penses Raamo, telling him to return to the great hall after dark. At their secret meeting, Neric tells Raamo that the Ol-zhaan are hiding secrets about their loss of Spirit-skills, the health of the roots that secure Green-sky, and the nature of the Pash-shan. He learned this by overhearing a meeting of a secret society within the Ol-zhaan, who call themselves the “Geets-kel.” On a clandestine trip to the forbidden forest floor they find a young, weeping, dark-skinned girl named Teera, apparently a kidnapped Kindar child. Raamo and Neric take the frightened Teera back up to the trees and hide her with Raamo’s family. Genaa discovers the existence of Teera and, in the interrogation that follows, learns that Teera is not a captured Kindar but in fact a Pash-shan herself. Teera tells Genaa that her father is alive and has been living among the Pash-shan. Returning to the forest floor, Genaa has a joyful reunion through the vines with her father, Hiro D’anhk, who was drugged and imprisioned below the root by members of the Geets-kel. Genaa, Raamo, and Neric commit themselves to exposing the Geets-kel and work toward freeing the Pash-shan and Genaa's father. Raamo has a nighttime meeting with the highest member of the Ol-zhaan, D’ol Falla. She leads Raamo to a hidden room containing history books and relics from a more violent Kindar past, including metal weapons. She tells Raamo that after colonizing their new planet, Kindar society was split into two factions. Eventually the first group imprisoned the second beneath the roots of the trees. She has come to the conclusion that the Spirit-powers in Green-sky are vanishing because of the separation of the Kindar population. Calling on Genaa and Neric to emerge from the shadows where they had been eavesdropping, D’ol Falla says she has been made aware of the group's activities by Geets-kel spies and that their purposes will soon be exposed. The four of them begin discussing plans for reuniting the Kinder and Pash-shan.
31038259	/m/0gg86lp	And All Between	Zilpha Keatley Snyder		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Eight year old Erdling Teera runs away from from home when the Coucil decides her pet will have to be killed for food. The Erdlings are in a "time of hunger" due to their increasing numbers. Wandering through the tunnels of Erd, she finds a wider-than-usual opening in the vines that entrap the Erdlings and accidentally tumbles through it, unable to get back inside. She calls out for help and soon is confronted by two strangers, Raamo and Neric. From the green-gold seals they wear, Teera recognizes them as Ol-zhaan. Taking her for a Kindar child who had been abducted by the Pash-shan, they convince her to return to the trees with promises of plentiful food and kind treatment. Teera is hidden with Raamo's family and plays Spirit-games with his younger sister, Pomma. Raamo's fellow Chosen, D'ol Genaa, discovers Teera. In the confrontation that follows, they learn that Teera is actually a Pash-shan, who are not monsters as the Kindar have been told, but people like themselves. The group returns to the forest floor and Genaa is reunited with her father, Hiro D’anhk, thought to have been killed by evil Pash-shan but actually living among the peaceful Erdlings after being imprisoned there by members of the Geets-kel, a secret society within the Ol-zhaan. The conspirators' activities have been observed by a member of the Geets-kel, who alerts D’ol Falla, the highest member of the Ol-zhaan. She summons Raamo to a nighttime meeting where they plan to reunite the Kindar and Pash-shan. Equipped with a map drawn by D'ol Falla, Genaa and Neric immediately set out to find a hole containing the secret metal hatch that grants entrance to the Erdling tunnels. After hearing of Falla's plans, D'ol Regle and his assistants storm into the D'ok household to seize Pomma and Teera. He then calls for a meeting of the Geets-kel to discuss the situation and formulate a plan to stop it. Finally, he retrieves an ancient weapon from D'ol Falla's house and then confronts her with a threat to harm the children if she and Raamo attempt to go forward with their plans. After walking a long distance, Neric and Genaa eventually reach mining car tracks and finally a dimly-lit cavern with a high ceiling and stalactites. There is a yell, and then dozens of Erdlings appear from behind the rocks, armed with metal tools. They are taken to the center of the Edrling world where they explain themselves and their plans to the Council, and then to the whole population in a large forum with debate by different Erdling factions. It is decided to send the Ol-zhaan back to the surface with Hiro in addition to Teera's parents who will serve as the Erdlings' representatives. High up in the trees, imprisoned in a secret room within D'ol Regle's quarters, Pomma and Teera pass their time with spirit-games, which they are getting increasingly good at. At one point their minds seem to work together, reminiscent of a long-lost ability called uniforce. Neric and Genaa return from underground, only to hear that their plans are known to D'ol Regle who barges in and escorts them all to a meeting of the Geets-kel. Presenting his prisoners to the Geets-kel with the weapon by his side, D'ol Regle argues that the Pash-shan and Kindar can not be reunited, or else their pure society will be destroyed. Not all the Geets-kel are convinced and they ask to hear from D'ol Falla, who says that their society has already been falling apart as evidenced by the loss of the spirit-skills and appearance of illness, which she blames on the separation of Kindar and Erdling. D'ol Falla appeals to Raamo to use his spirit-skills to summon an answer, but as he does Pomma and Teera lift their arms up and the weapon begins to float into the air. All the Ol-zhaan present stand in awe, realizing they are witnessing the long-lost uniforce.
31038341	/m/0gg60fv	Until the Celebration	Zilpha Keatley Snyder		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Now that the Geets-kel have decided to reveal their secrets and integrate Erdlings with Kindar, there is much concern over how to do it properly. A lifetime of beliefs will not be converted easily and there are numerous logistical issues to consider. The Ol-zhaan have different concerns, such as why they had been left out of the secrets and how their lofty place in society will be diminished. Some think it would be best to exile themselves into an uninhabited tree as D'ol Regle has done, while others are eager to help with D'ol Falla's agenda. Food starts being delivered to the Erdlings and their leaders begin talks of how to integrate with the Kindar. The initial plan is to not release Erdlings into the open air immediately, but they soon catch word of the way out and start building crude dwellings on the forest floor. The two societies begin to integrate with some difficulty. An Erdling group lead by Axon Befal has sworn vengeance against the Geets-kel for imprisoning the Erdlings and attacks an Ol-zhaan, violence unheard of in Kindar soceity. More bad news follows. D'ol Falla finds that the tool-of-violence is missing from its hiding place and Axon Befal sends a message that he has kidnapped Pomma and Teera and will kill them unless Orbora is turned over to his control. Then, just as a Council meeting is getting underway, in walks a servant in the Vine Palace with the weapon. She tells how she was instructed by D'ol Regle to steal the tool-of-violence, but then became disenchanted with him when she thought he had kidnapped the children. The Council decides the weapon must be destroyed as soon as possible by taking it down to the Erdling cavern and dropping it into the Bottomless Lake. Raamo leads the procession, carrying the tool-of-violence inside a metal urn. The urn is placed before an opening in the barrier around the Bottomless Lake, but all are afraid to touch the evil object. Raamo eventually steps forward and carries it to the edge of a precipice. He tries to drop the urn, but its power prevents him from doing so and he tumbles into the lake with it. After the initial shock has worn off, a young man lets out a cry and throws a weapon into the lake. He reveals that he was recruited by Axon Befal to kill Raamo, but was not able to do so when he saw the goodness in him. He reports that Befal does not have possession of the children or any more followers and that his message was simply a bluff. A celebration had been planned for the one year anniversary of the Rejoyning, but with Pomma and Teera still missing there doesn't seem to be anything to celebrate about. D'ol Falla is asked to speak, but is nearly lost for words. The first thing that comes to her mind is that the Kindar should celebrate indeed, for they have managed to free the Erdlings and largely come together as a united society. Suddenly, a figure glides down from above, bringing news that the children have been found. To the great relief of the crowd, they appear shortly thereafter. As Hiro gives one last speech to the people of Orbora, D'ol Falla finds the back room where the children are playing. Off to the side, two little boys raise their arms up as a marble urn lifts off the shelf and floats gently to the floor. Teera smiles at D'ol Falla, telling her they've been teaching the other children their "game."
31040842	/m/0gg6tds	Princess of the Midnight Ball		2009	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Princess Rose and her sisters Lily, Jonquil, Hyacinth, Violet, Daisy, Poppy, Iris, Lilac, Orchid, Pansy, and Petunia are trapped in a curse. Every third night, they have to dance at the Midnight Ball with the twelve sons of the King Under Stone, who lives in a realm below the earth. The curse prevents them from speaking of it, and every prince who attempts to learn their secret in hopes of marrying one of them and inheriting the crown ends up dead by the next full moon. Galen Werner is a soldier who is returning from the Westfalin-Analousia war. On his way to the city of Bruch to live with his mother's sister Liesel Orm, Galen meets an old woman. After he shares his food with her, the woman gives him white and black yarn and an invisibility cloak, saying that he would have to use them when "He" tries to get to the surface. When Galen meets Rose, she knows that he can try to break the curse, but will he succeed despite the complications they come across?
31045672	/m/0gg49hm	Daybreak Zero	John Barnes	2011	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the near future, a variety of groups with diverse aims, but an overlapping desire to end modern technological society (the "Big System") create a nanotech plague ("Daybreak") which both destroys rubber and plastics and eats away any metal conductors carrying electricity. An open question in the book is whether these groups, and their shared motivation, are coordinated by some conscious actor, or whether they are an emergent property / meme that attained a critical mass.
31048471	/m/0gh7hd_	Bones of Faerie				 The war between humanity and Faerie devastated both sides. Nothing has been seen or heard from Faerie since, but in the human world some magic remains embedded in nature. Corn resists being harvested; dandelions have thorns. Trees terrorize villagers, and the town where Liza lives is surrounded by a forest that seems alive and will kill anyone who goes near. But Liza believes her father can protect their town. He does so by electing himself town leader and laying down strict rules, the most important being that any trace of magic must be destroyed, no matter where it is found. Then Liza's sister is born with faerie magic, and Liza's father leaves the baby on a hillside to die. After her mother runs away into the forest, leaving Liza with her abusive father, Liza herself discovers she has the faerie ability to see—into the past, into the future—and she must flee. With a magic shadow following her and an unwanted companion, she will try to journey to the Faerie world.
31052476	/m/0gx19l_	Milk and Honey				 Decker finds a toddler with blood-soaked pajamas in the early morning hours while driving home from the yeshiva. He brings her in to the station to turn her over to child services and starts trying to locate the family she came from. His only clue is a number of bee stings. Pete also finds himself posting bail for an old Army buddy of his (Abel Atwater) who had been charged with rape and assault. Abel offers to do repair work on his barn while Pete is off locating the girl's family. In the meantime, Rina is flying in from New York City for a visit for some alone time and to discuss their upcoming marriage. While backtracking clues in the found toddler's case he finds the family home is the site of a quadruple murder and that her name is Katie Darcy. Decker has to slog through a lot of peripheral clues in the case, including a biker bar and a backwoods section of Los Angeles County. His partner Marge Dunn ends up dealing further with one of the potential parents of Katie whose own child was kidnapped in a custody case. She remembered the face and succeeded in putting a name to it. In a raid on the father's house she gets her skull cracked and is lucky to come out of it alive. Meanwhile, Rina and Abel have found an odd sort of relationship based on his and Decker's mutual past and Abel's bitterness over happenings during the war. He ends up frightening and offending her greatly though she does forgive him in the end. In finding the murderer of Katie's family and clearing Abel's name Decker finds an odd parallel in family circumstance.
31058184	/m/0gg9g1k	Pir-e-Kamil	Umaira Ahmed		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story's protagonist, Imama Hashim, belongs to an influential Ahmadiyya family living in Islamabad. She decides to convert to Sunni Islam after being influenced by her friends. She attends her senior shabiha's lectures in secrecy from her family and her roommates, Javeria and Rabia. While studying in a medical school in Lahore, she falls in love for her friend Zainab's elder brother doctor Jalal Ansar. But Imama's family tries to coerce her to marry her first cousin Asjad, which is unacceptable to her as she can not marry a non-Muslim. In the result, her parents respond by locking her up in the house and taking away her cell phone. Imama seeks help from Salar whom she is antagonistic with since she is a religious girl and Salar is not. He is a rich boy with an IQ level above 150. Imama wishes to marry Jalal, but Salar lies to her that Jalal has married someone else. Imama is saddened and asks Salar to marry her so that her family will not be able to force her. Salar helps her and marries but soon after loses contact with her. Imama finds a sanctuary under Sibt-e-Ali and his family. She changes her name and completes her studies and starts working in a pharmaceutical company in Lahore. She hates Salar because he refused to divorce her as he had promised. Salar later travels to New Haven for education, then he works for United Nations for some time before permanently settling in Lahore. Salar finally sees the errors of his ways and changes for good. Later, the scene shifts near to Kaaba, where Salar and Imama are sitting together worshipping God. Salar realizes that God has given him a blessed women to be his companion, and vows to protect her.
31058296	/m/0ggb2ch	11/22/63	Stephen King	2011-11-08	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jacob "Jake" Epping is a recently-divorced high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who tells the story in first-person narrative. Jake assigns his evening GED class with an essay titled "The Day That Changed My Life". One of the students, a learning-impaired janitor named Harry Dunning, writes about how his alcoholic father murdered his mother and siblings, and severely injured him, on Halloween night in 1958. Jake gives Harry an A+, and Harry earns his GED. Two years later, Al Templeton, proprietor of a local diner which Jake frequents, mysteriously summons Jake at the end of the school year. Jake is shocked to see that, in less than twenty-four hours since he saw him last, Al has apparently become deathly ill, and seems to have aged four years. Al shows Jake a time portal located in the back of his diner's pantry, which leads to September 9, 1958, at 11:58 a.m. Jake spends an hour in 1958, then returns to 2011 finding that it is only two minutes later. Al tells him that the portal always leads to that same moment in 1958, and that it is always exactly two minutes later on return to the present. The only person near the portal in 1958 is a drunken, disheveled man whom Al has dubbed the "Yellow Card Man", because of a yellow card stuck in his hat band. The Yellow Card Man seems to be the only other person who is aware of the time portal. Al has learned that it is possible to change history; however, an apparent "reset" on the next trip to 1958 nullifies the change, unless it is made again. After discovering he could change history, Al became obsessed with preventing the assassination of John F. Kennedy, assuming this would lead to a better world without the Vietnam War or the assassination of Martin Luther King. Al extensively researched the JFK assassination, and made a plan to spend five years in the past waiting for the opportunity to kill Lee Harvey Oswald during his attempted assassination of General Edwin Walker. However, the "obdurate" past seems to resist change, throwing up obstacles to prevent them from taking place; Al and Jake conclude this resistance is proportional to the historical effects of the changes. Al was forced to abort his plan in 1962 after developing terminal lung cancer due to his lifelong habit of cigarette smoking. He pleads with Jake to carry out his mission for him. Jake decides to use the attack on Harry's family as his test case. Al gives him a fake ID to create the alias "George Amberson", and a supply of 1958 cash he has collected. Jake finds the "Yellow Card Man's" card has mysteriously turned orange this time. Jake buys a car, and travels to Harry's hometown of Derry, buys a gun, finds Harry's father Frank Dunning, and tracks his movements. Stalked by the revenge-bent brother of Dunning's first wife, whom Dunning had also killed, Jake is not able to stop Dunning's attack, but manages to save everyone but Harry's older brother. After returning to 2011, Jake contacts Harry's sister and learns that Harry was killed in Vietnam. As Jake goes to meet with Al, he discovers Al has committed suicide by overdosing on his pain killers. Jake must now act quickly before Al's death is discovered, which will result in the demolition of the diner (and presumably the time portal.) Jake takes Al's notebook, which contains all of Al's research on Oswald, plus the outcomes of long-shot sporting events on which he can bet to keep himself financed, and enters the portal again. This time the "Yellow Card Man" has killed himself, and the card has turned black. Jake buys the same car and gun, and this time assassinates Dunning well before the attack on his family. He drives to Florida, where he gets a mail-order Bachelor's degree in English from an Oklahoma diploma mill, and spends the remainder of the school year substitute teaching. He then drives to Texas to wait for Oswald's return to the United States following his Marine Corps service and attempted defection to Russia. He settles in Jodie, a small town located near Dallas, where he is hired for a one-year probationary period as a full-time English teacher for Denholm Consolidated High School. He becomes popular with the students and faculty, and becomes romantically involved with the school's new librarian, Sadie Dunhill, who has run away from her mentally disturbed, abusive husband. Things start to sour for Jake when Sadie becomes suspicious of his use of anachronistic slang, and singing rock songs that have not been written yet. When he refuses to confide in her who he actually is, she angrily breaks off the relationship before traveling to Reno, Nevada over the summer vacation to divorce her husband. The school principal has also discovered "George Amberson's" mail-order diploma, and the holes in his background. By this time, Jake has decided not to renew his teaching contract and leave Jodie, so he can concentrate full-time on monitoring Oswald and keep Sadie out of danger. He rents an apartment across the street from Oswald's future Fort Worth residence, and monitors his activities with audio bugs and an shotgun microphone. Through the bugs, Jake witnesses Oswald's abuse of his Russian wife and his conflicts with his overbearing mother. Around this time, Jake reconnects with Sadie and reveals that he is from the future, proving his claims by correctly predicting the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis; he eventually reveals his full plan of preventing Kennedy's assassination. Sadie is reluctant to believe Jake at first, but her love for him leads her to support his efforts. Meanwhile, Jake becomes hesitant to kill Oswald when he sees his friend, George de Mohrenschildt, seemingly egg on the would-be assassin to kill Walker and Kennedy. Jake is unable to interfere in the Walker attempt when Sadie is disfigured by her psychotic ex-husband. Jake resolves, once he has completed his mission to save Kennedy, to take Sadie back to 2011, when her disfigurement can be corrected. While still estranged from Sadie, Jake himself is beaten by a bookie who lost money due to Jake's knowledge of future sporting outcomes. He spends three months recovering from the beating and resultant memory loss, during which Sadie decides to give him another chance. He regains his memory just in time for Kennedy's visit to Dallas on November 22, 1963. Jake and Sadie race for Dallas and are able to reach Oswald's sniper's nest at the Texas School Book Depository seconds before the fateful moment when Kennedy's motorcade drives past. Nevertheless, Jake successfully prevents Oswald from shooting Kennedy. In a rage, Oswald fires at Jake, but the shot misses him and mortally wounds Sadie. The noise of their confrontation draws the attention of the Secret Service and police, who fire through the window from the outside and kill Oswald. Sadie dies in Jake's arms as the authorities gain access to the Depository. Jake becomes a national hero, being personally thanked by President Kennedy and his wife. The FBI suggests that Jake disappear for a time until the situation dies down. Agonized over Sadie's death, Jake resolves to return to 2011 and back to 1958 in order to repeat his journey in order to save both Kennedy and Sadie. As he leaves Dallas, he learns that there has been a massive earthquake in California in which thousands have died. He suspects that it is related to his changing history. Returning to the portal, he finds that the Yellow Card Man has been replaced by a younger man whose card is green rather than yellow. He reveals himself to be a "guardian" who explains that many other portals exist in the universe. The portals, he explains, are temporary "bubbles" in time, which will eventually disappear as the physical environment in which they reside changes. The "Green Card Man" also explains that traveling through the portal does not erase the past, it merely creates another time thread. The larger the changes and the more threads created, the more unstable reality becomes. The green/yellow/black card is shown to be similar to a film badge dosimeter, measuring the guardian's mental degradation caused by his consciousness of the multiple time threads, explaining the demise of the Yellow Card Man. The Green Card Man can do no more than beg Jake to set things right again. When Jake returns to 2011 again, he discovers a lawless dystopia. He comes across a wheelchair-bound Harry Dunning, who explains the troubled history of the world since 1963. Since LBJ's presidency did not occur, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is never passed. George Wallace becomes president in 1968, leading to nuclear war. The historical disruption is exacerbated by an increase in earthquakes, which are expected to destroy the planet. When Jake returns to 1958, the Green Card Man advises him to go back to 2011 and see that the portal is closed. Jake struggles with his desire to return to Texas to bring Sadie back with him, but ultimately decides he cannot risk changing anything. He returns to a basically restored 2011. Al's diner is demolished. Learning that Sadie survived the confrontation with her ex-husband without his interference, he travels to Jodie and meets Sadie as an old woman. He learns she has lived a life marked by civic and charitable contributions, and he gets to dance with her one last time. Stephen King published an alternative ending on his official website on January 24, 2012, in which Sadie marries another man, subsequently having numerous children and grandchildren. This ending was changed to the ending the novel was published with at the suggestion of Joe Hill, King's son, a writer himself.
31058802	/m/0gg7rl1	The Porcupine	Julian Barnes	1992	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set in a post-communist fictional country, likely based on Bulgaria, the novel concerns the trial of Stoyo Petkanov, a character judged to be loosely based on Todor Zhivkov, the former communist leader of Bulgaria. As the newly appointed Prosecutor General attempts to ensnare the former dictator with his own totalitarian laws, Petkanov springs a few unwelcome surprises on the court by conducting a formidable defense. The Times described the book as 'Superbly humane in its moral concerns...an excellent novel'.
31059229	/m/0gg6l98	Captain from Castile	Samuel Shellabarger	1945	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Captain from Castile begins on the evening of June 28, 1518 when naïve 19-year-old Pedro de Vargas, the son of local war hero Don Francisco de Vargas, confesses a long list of minor sins to the local priest in Jaen, Spain. The next day, while attending church with his family, Pedro becomes infatuated with the local Marquis' daughter, Luisa de Carvajal. As Pedro and his family leave church they are met by Diego de Silva, who enlists the help of Pedro in the search for his escaped Indian slave, Coatl. Pedro immediately guesses Coatl's location and sets off alone to find and capture him, but instead is convinced to aid the badly mistreated slave—who claims he is a king among his own people—in his escape. Pedro then comes across and rescues the local tavern dancer, Catana Pérez, from being raped by several rough men and returns her to the Rosario tavern. There he stops for a drink and befriends Juan García, an adventurous merchant and wanted man, whose mother has been wrongfully taken by the Inquisition. Pedro agrees to deliver García's bribe for his mother's freedom to Father Ignacio de Lora, the head of the Jaen Inquisition, though he does not believe men of God can be bought. However, when Pedro delivers the money he is surprised to find that Father Ignacio accepts the bribe and agrees to free García's mother. The next night Pedro has a romantic rendezvous with Luisa de Carvajal and when returning home is stopped by Catana's brother Manuel, who informs him that the Inquisition has taken his family and is hunting him. Pedro flees to the Marquis de Carvajal for help, but finds no help from the cowardly nobleman and so flees to the Rosario tavern where Catana begins plans to help him escape Spain. However, Pedro is discovered and arrested there by the Inquisition. The next morning Pedro is taken back to Jaen, where he witnesses the auto-de-fé at which, despite the bribe, Ignacio de Lora sentences García's mother to death by burning and also sees Garcia (in disguise) manage to kill her before the sentence is carried out. Pedro soon learns that the family has been arrested because of accusations by Coatl's former master, Diego de Silva, who coveted the de Vargas property and whose men Pedro had beaten in defense of Catana's integrity. In an effort to get a confession from Don Francisco, the Inquisition tortures Pedro's sickly sister Mercedes and accidentally kills her. Afterwards Pedro and his family are rescued from their cells by García and Manuel Pérez. During the escape Pedro is confronted by de Silva, whom he disarms, stabs, and leaves for dead. Afterward the family makes their way through the Sierra de Lucena toward Almería guided by Hernán Soler, a cutthroat whom Catana sells herself to in payment for his help. However during their passage through the mountains, Pedro and García are separated from the others when they are attacked by the Inquisition's hunters. While Pedro's family escapes to Italy, Pedro and Garcia travel to Cadiz and from their join an expedition to Cuba, where they join the company of Hernán Cortez departing for Mexico. During their stay along the coast of Mexico, the Aztec king Montezuma sends Cortez a tribute of great gold ornaments and, because of his growing favour with Cortez, Pedro is entrusted with one of the guard shifts. However, during his watch, Pedro is called away to help calm down García, who is in a drunken madness. When Pedro returns to the gold, he finds a small pouch of emeralds has been stolen by way of a secret door. Pedro therefore sets out in search of the stolen stones and tracks them to a group of mutineers preparing a ship for escape back to Cuba. Pedro convinces one of them to repent and help him alert the army but during their escape Pedro is wounded in the head and leg by a crossbow. During Pedro's recovery he receives a promotion to captain (making him the eponymous Captain from Castile), learns of Cortez burning his ships to prevent mutiny, and is reunited with Catana Pérez, who arrives aboard another ship. Soon after the Spanish head inland towards Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire. Along the way Pedro and Catana fall deeply in love with each other. During their stay in Tenochtitlan, Cortez's company is joined by new group including both Father Ignacio de Lora and a still living Diego de Silva. The Spanish are treated like gods but eventually the Aztecs begin to rebel against the Spanish occupation and the Spanish are besieged within the city. During their desperate escape attempt Pedro, Catana, and García almost escape but are left to die by de Silva. While awaiting execution by the Aztecs, Pedro witnesses the death of Ignacio de Lora by burning and the miscarriage of his and Catana's first child. However, instead of being executed Pedro, Catana, and García are taken out into the jungle by the Aztecs and transferred to the custody of another tribe ruled by Coatl, the slave Pedro helped to save. After spending several months living among Coatl's people Pedro becomes eager to return to Cortez and Coatl, as a parting gift, shows Pedro a cave filled with gold treasures which Pedro barters with Cortez to split between themselves, their friends, and the King of Spain. Pedro therefore returns to Spain rich and world-wise with the King's share and acts as Cortez's ambassador. Upon his return he spurns the (as he now realizes) ambition-serving love of Luisa de Carvajal and is again confronted by Diego de Silva but this time turns the authorities against greedy nobleman and in the end kills de Silva in a fight. Thereafter the de Vargas family is pardoned and returns to Spain, where Pedro and Catana receive Don Francisco's blessing to be married. The story concludes with the old Don Francisco reflecting on the bright new age his son is entering into, where courage, honor, and love will blossom in the New World just as it had in the Old.
31059608	/m/0gg7v4_	To Die For	Linda Howard	2004-12-28		 Blair Mallory is the owner of a fitness center named Great Bods. She got the money to open the fitness club from the divorce of her first husband Jason Carson. Blair caught Jason kissing her underage sister Jenni at a family get-together. Blair knew he wanted to run for congressman so, for the ultimate revenge, she snapped a picture of the two kissing. Jason, knowing the picture would ruin him, paid her a bundle in the divorce. She begins to notice that one of her members, Nicole, has been copying everything she has done. She begins to wear her hair like Blair, dressing like Blair, and even buys the same style car as Blair. Blair isn't the only one who has a problem with Nicole: Almost all the women in the gym do not like Nicole, as she hogs the machines, is mean to other members, and openly flirts with the married men in the gym. After many complaints, Blair sits her down and tells her that her membership will not be renewed for another year. Nicole becomes furious and threatens to sue Blair. Blair is always the last one to leave the gym so as she is about to walk out the door to her car she notices Nicole waiting for her in the parking lot. Blair becomes scared and makes a run for the car with her phone ready to dial 911. She hears a gunshot and instinctively hits the ground, dropping her cellphone underneath the car so that Blair is unable to call for help. She tries to stay quiet so that Nicole won't realizes she didn't hit Blair but, after a while, she thinks maybe Nicole left and makes a run for the door to the gym. She makes into the gym safely where she goes to her office and dials 911. The police arrive and Blair tells the officers the story. They inform her that Nicole didn't kill her because Nicole was murdered. She then hears the voice of her ex-boyfriend, Wyatt Bloodsworth. He is a police lieutenant and came after hearing the case over the radio. Blair is immediately brought back to the memories of the three dates they went on two years ago. He begins to question Blair and lets her know she is no longer a suspect. Wyatt takes her home and, due to the stress, she decides she wants to go to the beach. She rents a condo and spends the day relaxing on the beach, eventually falling asleep. She wakes up to someone carrying her. Blair begins to freak out until she realizes that it is Wyatt. He carries her back to her condo. She is very frustrated when he tells her that he found her by looking at her credit card transactions. He then kisses her and all her feelings for him come rushing back. She agrees that they can start over and try their relationship again. The next day they head home and Wyatt takes her back to her car, still at the gym. As she is about to get in her car, she feels a piercing pain in her arm; she falls to the ground and sees another car driving away. She realizes she has been shot. Wyatt calls the station, reports the crime, and calls an ambulance. Blair is taken to the hospital where they tell her she is going to be okay: It was just a flesh wound. That night Blair goes to Wyatt's. They figure out that a man named Dwyane Bailey is the killer behind Nicole's murder. They bring him into the station for questioning. He admits to killing Nicole but not the attacks on Blair. The next day she is driving, approaching a traffic light, and when she tries to hit the brakes the pedal goes to the floor. Her brakes was cut, and she is going full-speed into the intersection. She goes to the hospital where they tell her she's going to be okay, just sore. Blair and Wyatt go back to his house where he gets a call that Dwayne's alibi checks out for the times of Blair's attacks. They rethink who could be the killer. The next day, she comes down stairs feeling better and Wyatt tosses her a small velvet box. He gets on one knee and asks him to marry her. She says yes. They begin to get ready because she is going to the precinct with Wyatt. She arrives and sits in his office for the day making a list of potential suspects. He comes rushing in saying that all the detectives have been called to a location but can't give any details. She is alone in Wyatt's office when she sees a familiar face: Jason's. He pulls out a gun and tells her to be quiet. Blair isn't that scared because she doesn't think he will able to go through with it. Jason tells her his new wife, Debra, was the one who shot at her in the parking lot. She came home and told him; he got worried that she would get caught and ruin his chance at being a congressmen. So he decided to kill her himself by cutting her brake line. Since that didn't work, he called in a fake report of the a crime being committed to get the police out of the station so he could kill Blair. Just then Debra walks in because she followed Jason here. She is convinced that they are having an affair until Blair tells her that Jason came here to kill her. Surprisingly, this shows Debra that Jason really loves her and becomes happy. Blair decides that this is the perfect time to get the gun from Jason, and she kicks it out of his hands. Just as Blair is doing so, the S.W.A.T team arrives, arresting Jason and Debra. Blair and Wyatt are really together for the first time.
31060260	/m/0ggb8wp	The Lightstone				 The immortal Morjin, the Lord of Lies, has reappeared in the world of Ea once again to conquer all the land for himself and create a world filled with maddess. To stand against Morjin, King Kiritan of Alonia invites the people of Ea to begin a quest for the Lightstone, a relic with unlimited powers in response to a prophecy that could lead to Morjin's doom. Valashu Elahad, seventh and youngest son of the king of Mesh, is one such knight that takes the pledge to search for the Lightstone, although he has reasons of his own. Valashu has the gift of empathy, a gift and a curse he inherited from his grandfather, which causes him problems along the path of the warrior, a family tradition. Hoping that the golden cup may cure him of his "affliction", Val sets off for Alonia, joined by his teacher, Juwain, and his best friend, Maram. Eventually his party grows to have seven significant individuals, each with their unique gifts and abilities to light the way on their journey throughout the continent for the Lightstone.
31061245	/m/0gg6k2f	Pym	Mat Johnson	2011-03-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Chris Jaynes is the only African-American professor of literature at a liberal Manhattan college. Refusing to limit his teaching to the African-American canon and serve on the college diversity committee, he is denied tenure. The quest is led by the protagonist's older cousin Captain Booker Jaynes, "the world's only civil rights activist turned deep-sea diver", who is planning on mining blocks of Antarctic ice to melt and sell as expensive bottled water. with a fondness for Little Debbie snack cakes, joins the team in the hope of finding landscape painter Thomas Karvel, "Master of Light" (a parody of Thomas Kinkade, "Painter of Light"), and in part, Pym is laid out as "a road story/bromance between Jaynes and his childhood pal." Other members of the expedition include water treatment engineers Jeffree and Carlton Damon Carter, a gay couple documenting the trip for their "Afro-adventure blog." Angela Latham, a lawyer and Jaynes's "much-pined-for" ex-girlfriend, brings along her new husband Nathaniel, treating the venture as a honeymoon. But instead of the black inhabitants described by Poe, Jaynes and his friends come across "a prehistoric world of giant white people, or 'Snow Honkies', who enslave them."
31066364	/m/0gg764j	The Piano Teacher				 The novel is set in 1950s' Hong Kong, still under British government. When 28-year-old, newly married Claire Pendleton moved to Hong Kong from England with her husband Martin, was hired by a wealthy Chinese family, Chen, to teach piano to their ten-year-old daughter, Locket. Claire soon began an affair with Will Truesdale, a 43 year old Englishman working as the Chen's driver, who has a tragic past with his former lover Trudy Liang, ten years ago. Trudy was born of a Chinese father and Portuguese mother; she and Will fell in love but were separated by World War II, when Trudy was forced to become the mistress of a Japanese General. Claire must unlock the secrets about Trudy's fate and the Chens.
31068518	/m/0gg9s0s	Rage of a Demon King	Raymond E. Feist	1997-04-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Emerald Queen's army is almost upon Midkemia and the army is staging. Erik Von Darkmoor is sergeant-major of the King's armies and Rupert is almost single-handedly financing the war. The Emerald Queen and her army are making for the Lifestone, a magical source of power capable of destroying worlds. Vast preparations are being made in Krondor, the anticipated point of invasion by the Emerald Queen's army, and all of Midkemia's allies - as well as some enemies - are being called upon to help. There are a lot of secrets revealed in Rage of a Demon King. Some of the more mysterious figures who have inhabited Feist's books are finally seen in a clearer light. The origins of Macros the Black and Miranda are revealed. Plus, Nakor's "secret", that there is no magic, is explained.
31068865	/m/0gg79zf	At the Gates of Darkness	Raymond E. Feist	2010-01-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The remnants of the Conclave of Shadows, led by Pug, struggle to defeat evil magician Belasco before the Demon horde arrives in Midkemia.
31072807	/m/0gh7j1f	A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana	Haven Kimmel		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel is her first memoir about her childhood growing up in the small Indiana town of Mooreland, IN near New Castle, Indiana. From her perspective as child, Kimmel describes her beginnings as a seriously ill, speechless, and bald baby who did not speak or grow hair until she was 2 years old. She earned her nickname from her father because she would "zip" around the house like a famous chimp on TV who could roller skate. In this memoir, Kimmel introduces the characters of her own family: Her mother who spends all her time on the couch reading; her father who is an obsessive camping packer, proclaimed non-church goer, and gambler; her older sister, Melinda who tolerates Zippy and convinces Zippy that she is adopted from gypsies; and her handsome, quiet, intense, and much older brother, Daniel, whom Zippy idolizes. She tells of her run ins with neighbors such as Doc who owns the grocery store and is married to Zippy's teacher; Edythe, the elderly woman who seems to have it in for Zippy; and the next door neighbor who wants to poison the family dogs. Zippy's friends from school include Julia, who lets Zippy do the talking for her; Dana who likes to fight with Zippy until Dana suddenly disappears never to be seen again; Polly who fascinates Zippy because her brother is a murderer; and Sissy who wants to save her soul. Her various animal adventures include rescuing her cat, PeeDink, from the bully Peter next door, saving a baby pig from the runt pile, and raising her pet chicken, Speckles (later a meal). Kimmel describes her exploits and humor from her own life as a young girl with an active imagination living in the slow-paced and familiarity of a small town in the Midwest.
31075114	/m/0gg8xnc	Anatomy of a Disappearance	Hisham Matar	2011-03-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book follows the story of Nuri, a teenager living in exile with his family in Cairo in Egypt, after the sudden death of his mother, he also loses his father Kamal Pasha el-Alfi who disappears in mysterious circumstances in Switzerland, and it becomes obvious that he was abducted by the regime of their country. The young Nuri tries to come to terms with the disappearance of his father while he is living in London in Britain.
31075336	/m/0gh8rz2	The Rescue				 Denise Holton, the 29-year-old heroine, is destitute and forced to live in her mother's old house in Edenton, N.C. She's also the single mother of a handicapped child, Kyle, a four-year-old with "auditory processing problems" that render him unable to express himself or to fully understand others. Though she doesn't suspect it, Denise is on a literal collision course with true love. After she smashes her car into a tree and wakes up to discover Kyle missing, she finds deliverance in the form of Taylor McAden, dashing firefighter and compulsive risk taker, who rescues Kyle, too. Since Taylor enjoys an instant, unprecedented rapport with Kyle, there is little standing in the way of burgeoning romance. Trouble comes, however, when Denise learns of Taylor's checkered romantic past. Taylor's inability to commit, it seems, is somehow tied to his compulsive heroism, of which numerous histrionic examples are described. Denise's quest to find the source of Taylor's emotional distance takes up the final third of the book. * Denise Holton has no family, both of her parents have died.She is alone and a single mother of a child with severe learning disabilities by a former one-night stand. She was a school teacher for many years but now she doesn’t teach anymore; she spends all her time trying to teach her son how to speak. She has a part-time job as a waitress and makes just enough money to get by. * Kyle Holton is the 4-year-old son of Denise Holton. Kyle has severe learning disabilities. * Brett Cosgrove is Denise’s former one-night stand, leading up to Kyle’s existence. He was engaged at the time and wants nothing to do with Kyle. * Taylor McAden—is a volunteer firefighter for the Edenton Fire Department, owns his own carpenter and contractor job. He was the person who found Denise’s son the night of her car wreck. Taylor has had problems in the past with commitment, but that all will change throughout the book. * Judy McAden is the mother of Taylor McAden; she came to the hospital to spend time with Denise while her son was out looking for Kyle. * Mitch Johnson is Taylor’s best friend and a volunteer firefighter for the Edenton Fire Department also. Mitch and his wife Melissa often provide Taylor with advice about his romantic life. Mitch and Melissa are the closest thing Taylor has to siblings, and Taylor is the godfather of the Johnson's oldest son.
31077337	/m/0gg73w_	Shards of a Broken Crown	Raymond E. Feist		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Thanks to an enemy general who has a change of heart now that the enemy leaders are gone, the reclamation of the western realm of the Kingdom is made easier - but not by much - with Kesh threatening Krondor and the Eastern Armies returning to the east. On top of that, a new evil is unleashed by the enemy, with the dead rising and fighting the Kingdom forces. Pug, Tomas, Nakor and Miranda must defeat the enemy magicians and their unnatural allies for the Kingdom to survive.
31078907	/m/0gg4byp	Mexican WhiteBoy				 Danny Lopez, a young teenager, is the main character of Mexican WhiteBoy. The first part of this book talks about him as a shy boy from San Diego. His school, Leucadia prep, has a majority of white children and he feels different from all of the other kids even though he has only a slightly darker skin tone. During this summer he went with his cousin Sofia. Danny’s uncle, Tommy, wanted to beat up someone but did not know who to beat up because Danny wouldn't tell him because he was afraid to. After his uncle left, then Danny got in a car with his friends and his other friends got on another car and they were going to Del Mar Fair. In Danny’s car somebody got out a bottle of alcohol and they were passing it around so everybody would get a sip. Danny had never had a drink in his life but Sofia influenced him to drink a little bit, so Danny did. At one point in the fair they went to go feed some goats celery and Danny remembered his dad. When Danny first sees Liberty, he feels something inside of him that cannot be described. Danny, and Sofi’s friends go to the theatre and Danny bought them popcorn. Danny sees Liberty in the line of the theatre where they were standing at. Danny, and Uno are in the mound, they go against Carmelo and JJ. Danny had a bad day because he couldn't pitch the ball straight at Uno’s hands. Danny overhears Sofie and his Uncle Tommy talking about his dad abusing his mom. Danny, and Uno go against Carmelo and JJ. This time Danny gives Carmelo three strikes, and Carmelo keeps saying do duble or nothing, and they keep on raising money, and Carmelo gets mad JJ grabes the hat with the money inside and tries running with it but Uno gets JJ from behind and punches him and all of JJ’s friend’s comes in and tackle Danny and Uno then this guy from Los Padres scout came and taclke all the kids that were punching Danny and Uno. Later both Danny and Uno runs to the bus stop. Danny gets a phone call from his mother from San Francisco, she tells him how beautiful San Francisco is but out of nowhere she starts crying. In the novel his mother tells him that she wants to be with the family again and be happy so she told him that she is going to pick him up in a few days. So Uno and Danny decide to have one last practice at Las Palmas, that evening Uno and Sofie was talking about there life and how would it change if this happened and looking to the future. She tells him “ Anyways this girl climbs up the ladder real slow right? But her parents let her do it all by herself. And the whole time she has this huge smile in her face. And when she gets to the top of the slide, she sits there for a sec, clapping her hands and laughing. Her parents hustle around to the bottom of the slide and she says ‘Here I come’ its like she was saying it to the world (212). Uno takes Danny to his old school and they found Kyle a future baseball player that had been scouted, Uno tells Kyle to put money on the line but Danny and Uno losses the bet. After getting into a fight with the other guys, Uno and Danny head home. At Sofia's house they talk about their future. As the story ends, Uno and Danny go to their favorite spot throw some rocks. Danny realizes that after all that he's been through he's glad to be where he is today.
31079139	/m/0gg5kpw	Love Sick		2005-09-22	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Love Sick follows the story of Ted, a former teenage alcoholic, as he spies on a girl, Erica, at their college for her father. After a drunk driving accident his senior year, Ted is left with a busted knee and no college scholarship. The novel opens with Ted, the protagonist, speaking at an AA meeting at his three month mark. He talks about how he had been drinking throughout his four years at high school, and talks about the accident that caused him to lose his scholarship. After his AA meeting, he goes home, where he meets Michael Eslem. Michael tells Ted that he was there to offer Ted a deal to get him back into his university. He could go to his dream college completely free, except he would have to spy on Erica at the college. With convincing, Ted agrees to the deal. Through a series of emails, it is agreed that Ted will be placed in the same dorm as Erica, making it as easy as possible to spy on her. On his first day, he briefly encounters Erica leaving the bathroom. Slowly, they get to know each other as they deal with their problems. Ted attends local AA meetings, and Erika talks with her therapist over Yahoo Chess. As the book progresses, Erica and Ted confess their feelings for one another, and they spend the night in Ted’s dorm room. Ted realizes he does not want to spy on Erica any longer, and so he calls Michael and quits. Following this, he takes some of his roommate’s alcohol, drinking until Erica wakes up and he tells her. Erica gets angry and leaves for the city, contacting Doctor Rudas and asking to go into rehab to deal with her problem of bulimia. Back at college, Ted realizes his mistake.
31080252	/m/0gg674k	Crescendo	Becca Fitzpatrick		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Nora Grey's life is right on track: she has a new boyfriend Patch, who was once a fallen Angel but is now her guardian angel. Their new relationship seems perfect and Nora devotes every waking moment to Patch. However, when Nora tells Patch that she loves him, he doesn't respond. Soon Patch isn't calling Nora and doesn't respond when she calls him. Nora is shocked to finds out from Marcie that Patch stood outside Marcie's house the night that Nora told Patch she loved him. That night Patch shows up at Nora's house. She asks him why he was outside Marcie's house, and he doesn't answer. Patch seems cold toward Nora, upsetting her even more. Patch informs her that since getting his wings back he has been put on a short leash; archangels will probably send him to Hell if he tells Nora he loves her. Nora, scared that she will lose Patch completely, decides to end their relationship. Nora begins talking to Scott Parnell, an old friend, and soon finds out that he has some dark secrets. While her mother insists that she stay away from Scott, Nora becomes obsessed with finding out Scott's secret. Nora believes that Scott could very well be Nephilim, and she convinces Vee Sky to come with her as she follows him. After Scott confronts her, he invites her to a pool hall with a reputation worse than that of Bo's Arcade, Patch's old haunt. While there, she runs into Patch, who insists that Nora isn't safe and that she needs to go home. Patch also confirms that Scott is a Nephil, and a member of a Nephilim Blood Society, an organization which works to break the hold fallen angels have on the Nephilim. Ultimately refusing to takes Patch's advice, she decides to make Patch jealous when she later spots him there with Marcie. Soon someone attempts to rob the pool hall. When Scott refuses to hand over his money, a fight breaks out and gunfire takes place. Pulling her out of the mayhem, Patch offers Nora his Jeep. When he refuses to leave Marcie behind, she refuses the Jeep and fires Patch as her guardian angel. While she is with Vee having lunch, Scott appears at a window luring Nora outside to come talk to him. Nora also receives a envelope containing a ring and a note telling her the 'Black Hand' killed her father. Scott invites her to a Battle of the Bands. Nora, still curious about the secrets that surround him, accepts. While waiting for Scott to find a parking space and waiting for Vee to arrive, Nora spots a figure that resembles her father, and follows him to an abandoned townhouse where he disappears. She hears his voice telling her to turn around that she is in danger, unwilling to turn away Nora calls out to the voice. The voice, responding to her changes, becomes colder. When Nora responds, a hand reaches out to her and soon she is being attacked. Once Nora is able to free herself she finds that no harm has been done to her. She realizes that the voice was not her father, and someone is trying to kill her. At the Battle of Bands, Vee and Marcie get into a heated argument. Then Marcie tackles Nora to the ground and punches her in the eye. Leaving Nora to fight back, she manages to clip Marcie in the jaw, winning her victory. Patch pulls Nora off Marcie, and pushes through the crowd, then doing the same with Marcie. Vee drives home with moody Nora and her black eye. That night Patch visits Nora in her dreams – the only way he can communicate with her without the archangels hearing them. Caught up in the heat of the moment they kiss and remove parts of their clothing, both urging desire for each other. Suddenly Nora's finger brushes against Patch’s back, taking her into the past. Only, this time, it’s a few hours back when Nora saw Marcie get into Patch’s car. She sees Marcie kiss Patch and is heartbroken when he doesn’t pull away. She is then brought back to her dream where she angrily confronts Patch, rips off the chain he gave her and demands for her ring back. Patch refuses and leaves. When Nora wakes up the next day she is forced to conclude that her dream was real as Patch’s chain is no longer around her neck. The next day, she heads off to the media center, where she passes out after receiving a drugged letter of apology that, at the time, she believed was from Patch for what happened during her dream the night before. She wakes up and runs when she hears someone. When she is pulled over and fined for speeding whilst trying to get away the police investigate the library to find no evidence of disturbance. Nora becomes concerned that it's the work of a fallen angel or Nephilim. Nora meets Scott at a party on the beach. While she is waiting, Scott, who is drunk says to the people at the party to drink free beer at his house. Nora drives drunk Scott to his apartment as he vomits everywhere. She takes him to his bedroom and hints sexual innuendos at her. Ignoring him, she goes and gets Scott water, then sees Patch. Their awkward/casual conversation makes Patch ask Nora to run away with him, to defy the archangels. Nora refuses and tells him she's delivering water for Scott. Patch tells her to be careful, but she brushes him off. Scott then kisses her, and she doesn't pull away because she wanted to get back at Patch. Then Scott removes his T-Shirt which causes Patch to burst in the room and throw Scott's shirt back at him. Scott gets rough, but Patch defeats him by punching him in the jaw. Nora and Vee go to Marcie's house party with the intent of snooping to see if they can find any evidence on Patch's and Marcie's "relationship." Nora gets locked out onto Marcie's roof trying to escape being caught. Patch finds Nora and is amused but tells her (telepathically) that he'd go rouge for her if she asked him to, so that they could have some time together because he's tired of "living halfway." Though tempted, Nora doesn't want to be the cause of Patch's downfall and rejects his offer. Vee decides to drag Nora to the beach with Rixon because she wants a tan. Nora agrees because she wants to seek information from Rixon about Patch and Marcie. Rixon says to Nora that Patch is the Black Hand (the person who killed Nora's father) and Nora is devastated. Rixon tells Nora that Marcie and Patch get on well, aiming to put Nora off. Nora asks Rixon for Patch's apartment address. He leaves early, with just Nora and Vee. While heading to the Neon, Vee notices a clamp on her car and they aren't able to remove it. They see Patch's Jeep, which gives Nora an alternative for the two to get home. Back at the farmhouse, Nora makes pasta, while she is taking it to the table, she is shocked to see Patch standing before her. She explains to him why she "borrowed" the Jeep. But he informs her that she owes him "tabs" from the favours he's done for Nora, but she refuses to repay them. As Patch turns more cocky and arrogant; Nora tells Patch that he deserves to go to hell after everything he's done. Nora decides to go back to Marcie's house to return the diary. But Marcie catches her with it and smugly admits that Nora's mum is having an affair with Marcie's dad, Hank. That's why Marcie was ruthless towards Nora for 11 years. Nora refuses to believe it, but it turns out that the affair was really happening. Patch visits Nora in her dreams to give some bad news: he is now Marcie's guardian angel. And worse, he has to prevent Hank from sacrificing Marcie. Patch softly says to Nora he is doing everything he can to keep her safe, but she must let him in her dreams. Nora doesn't, waking up. Nora, Vee and Rixon head to the amusement park, where Scott appears with a gun. Rixon leads Nora to an underground tunnel for her safety. Nora hears her dad’s voice in her head, telling her to touch Rixon’s scars. She complies and is whisked to the past, where she sees Rixon holding a gun at her dad, just like the prologue. She returns to the present and tries to escape from Rixon, realizing he is the real killer. Rixon pursues her, wanting to use her as a human sacrifice. He also tells her he planted the dynamite in "Patch's" apartment (which was actually a Nephilim safe house) that Rixon tricked Nora into thinking it was Patch's house because she wanted to snoop around for evidence of Patch and Marcie "relationship," planned to break-up Nora and Patch from the very beginning and dated Vee simply to get closer to Nora. She bumps into Scott, and informs him that he is an immortal Nephilim so he cannot die. Rixon shoots Scott more than once, leaving Nora to be his sacrifice but then Patch appears just when Nora was shot. After checking out of the hospital, Nora receives a voice mail from Scott. He tells her that he has bought her the car she has wanted and if she wants to do him a favor, she should delete the message so that the police cannot find him. Nora deletes the message, thankful for Scott. Nora finds Patch, who is happy to see her and tells her he sent Rixon to Hell. He takes her to Delphic, down to the underground shed and they embrace - caressing, kissing and nibbling at each other. Then Patch tells her he loves her. Just then, Hank Millar, Nora's real father, comes in and takes her away from Patch. The book ends when Hank Millar asks Nora if it was her that killed "his dear friend, Chauncey Langeais."
31080323	/m/0gg8bq4	Ask Me No Questions		2006	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nadira, the protagonist, and Aisha are sisters who are total opposites: Nadira is lazy, plump, and an average kid while Aisha is skinny, active, popular, and smart. The family are from Bangladesh and are illegal immigrants in the United States. They have been living for years in New York City on expired visas. With the changed atmosphere after the September 11th attacks, they try to move to Canada but are stopped at the border. Abba (their father) has been sent to INS Detention Center. Their mother, who they call Ma, has been put into a shelter until their father gets out of detention. The girls have to live with relatives in Queens, while waiting for the situation to be resolved.
31080331	/m/0gg9hpb	The Boys from St. Petri		1991		 Lars is trying to get into a club called the St. Petri group, which is against the Nazis and Adolf Hitler taking over Denmark, his home. He has to go through an initiation test and support the weight of the church’s chandelier without dropping it, in order to join. And meanwhile, Lars finds a German Luger (gun) which was stolen by a boy named Otto Hvidemann, who later joins the St.Petri group. After Lars succeeds entry into the group the boys plan their first true sabotage of the German headquarters. The fall is when the boys plan to steal some bombs from the German headquarters so they can later blow up the railroad tracks that will carry the German machinery for the war. But when they get there things go wrong. A phone started to ring and when they tried to stop it they tripped over one another and set off an alarm. The Germans then start to come investigate what all the noise is about so the boys have to run. Everything then happened very quickly; everyone started to run, then they sent the dogs to go and search for the intruders. In the midst of all the confusion Otto stole a rifle and sub-machine gun and helped Gunner and Luffy stuff Gunners backpack with bombs that were hidden in the German headquarters and brought it back for the club to use later on. When the German's attack dog was let loose it came running at Lars. He got scared and shot the dog in the head with the luger. When the gun fired it caused the Germans to think they were getting shot at opposed to the dog. They started to fire at them. So the boys had no other choice but to shoot back at them and when they did more Germans came running and by the end of night many Germans were shot. When they were about to leave, a young German boy who was unarmed was on the ground saying "don't kill me". The boys were going to but Lars told them that they could not or it would make them like the Germans. As they were leaving, Otto got shot in the arm. They took Otto to Dr. Halling for help but the man said no because he suspected what the boys had been up to and that they were the saboteurs all the other times. Gunnar then put the gun to his head and told him “I personally, have shot ten Germans tonight. So one more isn’t going to make much difference.” The doctor finally complied to the boys' requests and patched up Otto's arm, and as they were leaving Gunner said if you tell anyone, you are dead. All the boys got on their bike and rode to the brewery where they sat against the wall talking and listening to the sounds of the sirens from the German airfield that they had triggered hours before. Luffy’s words were already beginning to slur so even though they had only been there for a short time, they decided to congratulate one another and head home. The next day at school, all the boys who were there got called to line up at the front where German soldiers were standing and waiting. The young boy soldier who they had let live the previous day was also with the men and this made Lars and Gunner very nervous. The men started to walk the younger boy down the row of boys as he searched their faces on by one. Then the boy caught Lars' eye and gave him a knowing look as if they were on the same side. Lars fidgeted nervously as the men neared and soon he was standing in front of Lars but he passed him without a second glance. The young boy did the same to Gunner, Luff, and Soren, passing them, pretending that he had never seen the boys. Lars and Gunnar went to the church to fit new candles into the pews, when they saw Sevend (Suckerfish). Gunnar stood in front of Sevend and Sevend was drilling him with questions like “Are you a man of your country” and “Do you feel Danish”. The Nazi German does not intimidate Gunnar or his little Brother when he starts threatening them with bad intentions, and discretely telling them he knew what the boys were up to. The St. Petri Group were all afraid of the outcome of what they are about to do. All the boys planned to sneak away from the school play and run to the railroad tracks where a large train would arrive with a lot of important military machinery. The boys were set strategically around the railroad which they had set with a bomb to go off when the train with military machinery inside it was near. They had Axel positioned at the top of the hill with a bright flashlight to signal when the train came into view and the boys anxiously waited for this signal. Finally the boys saw the signal and were about to set off the bomb. Their cover was compromised and suddenly they were surrounded by German soldiers who immediately started shooting at them. Luffy was mortified and unable to run so Gunnar and Lars grabbed him and began to pull him away from the ruckus. Then Lars noticed that Otto was not with them and turned to see him running toward the train tracks to manually set off the bomb. Lars yelled to him to forget about it but Otto did not listen, he was insisting on setting off the bomb and ran faster for the tracks. Lars then saw Otto reach the tracks just as the train was about to reach the area that was set with bombs. Then there was a large explosion and the train fell off the tracks. The boys then all ran separate ways, Gunner went to the cafe in the woods, Axel went home, Otto ran towards the brick yard, and Lars ran to the school. When Lars arrived at the school he went to find Irene and tell her how he truly felt about her. When he found her they sat down on a bench and he told her that he loved her. Right as Lars told Irene he would never leave her Sevend walked into the room and called to Lars, pulling him away from Irean and telling him he was under arrest. Lars was placed into a cell and the next day united with the other group members as they were marched across the camp to a black armed car. Sevend walked over to them and Gunnar asked him how he knew it was them. Sevend replied that he had found Gunnar's pipe at one of the scenes of the crime, and assumed that they had done all the other things as well. Then Sevend walked away and the boys were forced into the car with other police men and as the doors were locked and the car began to move, driving them away from their home, Otto sounded a bell to signal that he had not been captured and that he was free and safe.
31081747	/m/0gg6sg4	Viking Warrior	Judson Roberts	2006		 At the beginning of the novel, the reader is introduced to Halfdan, who is cutting wood and squaring timber. Halfdan is a slave, despite being the son of an Irish princess, and a great chieftain. Derdriu (his mother) arrives to watch her son work and to look out at the bay near their estate. Not too soon, Gunhild arrives to send Derdriu back to her chores, for she is a slave, too. As soon as she has finished speaking, a longship enters the bay, carrying Hrorik, who has been in England raiding. The reader soon discovers that their raid has been met with failure, and many died or are wounded. Harald is unharmed, but Hrorik is on the verge of death. Quickly, Harald recounts the lengthy story of their raid, and how Hrorik was injured. Soon after, he, Sigrid, Derdriu, and Halfdan gather around Hrorik as he is dying. With one of his final breaths, he asks Derdriu to accompany him to Valhalla (the hall of warriors) which is an honor in the society described. To do this, she must die with him. She agrees, only if Halfdan is freed from enslavement, and is acknowledged as Hrorik’s son. Hrorik agrees, and soon he is dead. Hrorik and Derdriu are laid in the death ship, upon which dead warriors are sent off to Valhalla, and burned to ash. That night, Harald is made the chieftain of the estate, and Halfdan is officially freed, so he dines with the carls of the household, like a normal free man. He wakes up the following morning, hungover from the previous night's festivities, and Harald begins Hafldan’s training into becoming a warrior. He discovers quickly that Halfdan has a knack for fighting, and begins training with him day and night for months. The two of them go hunting one day, since Halfdan has a great talent with the bow, and Halfdan makes an amazing shot, showing off his skill. That night, Sigrid and Gunhild prepare a feast. Their feast is interrupted though. Toke arrives, after hearing of Hrorik’s death. Toke comes to claim his inheritance (he has received none) and the reader infers that Toke is a disturbed, a war-crazed man. The reader learns of Toke's backstory: it is this attitude of rage that led Hrorik to kick Toke out of the estate where he had been living. While Gunhild informs Toke that he received no inheritance, Harald reveals to Halfdan that Hrorik left him an estate called Limfjord, which Hrorik used to rule. Toke is furious that a former slave gets an estate while he himself gets nothing, and demands that they give him something in return. Harald denies Toke, but lets him stay for the night and enjoy in their feast. During the feast, a fight almost breaks out, but Harald quells it, and ejects Toke, like Hrorik had done long ago. Toke leaves the following morning, and soon Halfdan and Harald, among other carls, set out for Limfjord, the newly-inherited estate. While at Limfjord, Halfdan meets Abbot Aidan, who used to be one of his mother’s friends. Soon after arriving, a band of raiders attack their estate. They are trapped inside the longhouse and attempt to get the slaves, women, and children out. The leader of the raiders seems to heed this request, but as soon as they leave the house, he has them killed. Harald and Halfdan decide that they need to escape, so they hide in between two oxen and leave. Their escape doesn’t last long, however, because the raiders kill the oxen, and leave Halfdan, Harald, and the other carls exposed. In the following battle, Halfdan manages to escape without injury, at the cost of Harald’s death. Halfdan escapes to a forest, where he is being hunted by raiders. At this point he learns that the raiders were Toke and his crew. He manages to stay one step ahead of Toke’s men, and swears an oath to kill every man of Toke’s crew. He kills the two men following him, and heads to the town Hedeby where he begins his journey of revenge.
31082146	/m/0gg97y1	Fallout				 The novel is a memoir of the lives of three children of a meth-addicted mother, Kristina, and how her addiction affected their lives. They now live in different homes, with different parents, as well as different last names. Each of them has a different story, some more fortunate than others. Hunter knows about his sisters and new younger brothers, while Summer knows about her brothers and Autumn knows nothing. It starts with Hunter’s story; adopted and raised by his biological mom’s mother and stepfather, he was put in good hands. He refers to his adoptive parents as "Mom and Dad." He works at a radio station in Reno, Nevada, and makes decent money, but lives at home. His girlfriend, Nikki, supports him in everything he does. As Christmas approaches, he is living with Nikki and having relationship troubles. Hunter is doing drugs more frequently, and cheats on Nikki with a persistent radio groupie. All the while, Hunter is feeling like a piece of him is missing because of the lack of knowledge about his father. When he sees him, he knows, but his father is the date of his coworker, Montana. Hunter then gets drunk and calls Brendan (his father) out on his actions about how him raping Kristina produced Hunter. Once that situation is in the past, another problem occurs, as Hunter is approached by Nikki, who hears a voicemail left by Leah on Hunter’s phone about the cheating incident. He is kicked out of Nikki’s house and takes the guestroom in his parents' house because, thanks to Kristina, his two younger brothers, David and Donald, have moved in and taken his room. Shortly after Hunter has moved back in, he is notified that Kristina will be spending Christmas with them. Autumn’s story takes place at her grandfather’s house in Texas. She has been moved around from city to city in order to keep her father and mother away from her. Her OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and frequent panic attacks make her a loner at school, so her best friend is her Aunt Cora. Although she promises Autumn they will always be friends, she is wooed by her massage therapist professor and taken away from her. Autumn is happy for her aunt, but jealous that she has never been so giddy and in love before. She doesn’t stay jealous long; a new boy comes to her school and is immediately taken with her. She has a hard time opening up to him and even tells him her parents are dead. His name is Bryce and he ends up being Autumn’s first boyfriend, first kiss and first time. When her aunt announces her engagement, the happiness she gets from her new boyfriend fades and she feels alone. Desperate to make sure he stays with her, she has sex with him without protection. Realizing that being drunk makes everything easier to deal with, she begins drinking to make herself feel better. Her father's and grandmother’s interruption at Aunt Cora’s wedding only makes things worse, bringing her past to her present; then, Bryce finds out her parents aren’t dead. Devastated about the lying, Bryce leaves Autumn, and to make matters worse her drinking has gotten out of hand and she is almost raped by the groom’s cousin, Micah. The wedding ends when Autumn realizes how lonely she is and begins to wish she is pregnant, and her father finds her and tells her how she came to be. In the process, he convinces her to go to Reno for Christmas to see the mother she never knew. The California foster system took Summer away shortly after living with her father when they were abandoned by Kristina. She knows everyone in her family except for Autumn. Her father’s ex-girlfriends have molested and used her, causing her to be thrown in different homes with different problems. Her life is pretty stable in one home until one of the meth-using girls that also lives there molests one of the younger girls; it hits close to home and she is unable to control her anger. She gets in a fight with the meth girl and ends up getting sent to live back with her father and his girlfriend of the moment. The day after the fight, her boyfriend, Matt, saw her face and offered no sympathy, so she ran to his best friend, Kyle, who always showed interest. She ends up cheating on her boyfriend with Kyle by having sex with him. She knows that Kyle uses meth and other drugs but his loving nature has drawn her in. When he and Summer confront Matt about their newfound relationship, she sees the side of Kyle she never wanted to and realizes his addiction and anger may cause problems. The living conditions at her father’s house aren’t the best; the constant smoking irritates her asthma and as Thanksgiving approaches, she starts to miss Kristina. She calls her, but can’t remember why; she was blown away by her mother’s selfishness and when her father is drunk later that night, he reveals that Kristina only cares about herself. Her father being drunk proves to be a much worse situation than just spilling the truth; his drinking costs him a DUI and he loses Summer. She is sent to another home in Fresno. Leaving her boyfriend and life behind, she is unwilling to move far away. When she gets to her new home, she is immediately taken aback by her new foster father. His demeanor worries her and makes her wonder what secrets the other girls in the house might have. She knows from experience not to get close to the other girls in the house, but one of the girls tells Summer her secrets and becomes attached to her. During the few days Summer is there, she hides her cell phone and planned to meet Kyle. When she sneaks from under her foster sister’s watch long enough to escape, she ends up running away with Kyle for Christmas—he is so in love with her that he even attempts to stop using meth for her, which means suffering through withdrawal. She and Kyle save up money and live out of his car while they head to a ski lodge, where Kyle plans to work. The stories collide when Kyle and Summer get in a car accident and the closest place to them is Reno, Nevada. Summer ends up calling her grandfather to pick her up from the hospital the morning after the blizzard hit and the accident happened. Hunter is out picking up Kristina and his grandfather from the airport after spending the early morning making up with Nikki. He knows that things won't quite be merry and joyful Christmas morning with the whole family being together. Autumn and Trey show up before Summer gets there and when Trey sees Kristina, they are immediately drawn to each other and spend most of the day before dinner talking to each other. Summer tries to be sisterly to Autumn and Autumn doesn’t know what to make of all of it. When dinner starts, David asks when he’ll be going home and Kristina says she doesn’t know; Donald gets angry and tells her he never wants to go back—that he never wants to be with her again. Hunter is the first one to jump up when Kristina acts offended and he yells at her, telling her the only person responsible for what happened to her was her. Summer jumps in the argument too when Kristina begins to complain that she doesn’t have the resources to take care of her kids or give them a good life. The outcome of the argument is unknown, but Hunter, Autumn and Summer can all look at Kristina at the dinner table on Christmas morning and see themselves. The book ends with a newspaper article saying Marie Haskins has put her new book ‘Monster’, on indefinite hold while Kristina is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. At this point, Kristina has reunited with her husband, Trey, and with her resources, she is trying to make her life better so she can be the mother she has never been.
31083344	/m/0gg6byz	Lush: A Novel		2006-10-01		 Being thirteen is hard, but it gets harder when your father is a drunk. Samantha Gywnn feels exactly the same way. Because of her father's crazy acts, Samantha is on a quest to protect her four year old brother, Luke, from him. Her mother, a yoga "freak", thinks that she needs to go easy on the old man. Despite having three, trustworthy friends, Vanessa, Angie and Tracy, Sam hides the fact that her dad drinks. She feels that anyone who found out would loathe her. Sam used to have a good friend named Charlie Parker whom she had shared her secret with. But their friendship was broken when Samantha thought Charlie stole her bra and put it on show back in seventh grade. Samantha decides, to help her feel better, leave notes in the pages of a book to a stranger in the library, the only place where she can freely be herself. She assumes that the stranger is a girl in high school with the initials A.J.K and they continue to pass messages. While at the fountain in the library one day, Samantha is felt up by a high school boy named Drew Maddox. Drew sits at the jock table and stares at Samantha's chest whenever she walks by. After arriving home, Sam feels no urge to share this with her Nana, who is baking cookies. The next morning, Mr. Gwynn has an announcement. He had been promoted in his architect job to the Feingold Project. Samantha however, does not feel overjoyed. After breakfast, Nana, thinking that her job to make her son more steady again is done, leaves for her house. At school, an assembly is held. Intimate relationships or "Sex The Assembly" as Samantha and her friends call it. During lunch, Kyle Faulkner and Greg Vaughn tease Samantha by doing a fruit-as-boobs act. Right away, Vanessa, Angie and Tracy defend her. Saturday morning Mr. Gywnn decides to give yoga a shot, with his wife. Samantha, practically thinks it is a horrible idea. This time at school, the eighth-grade boys have developed a rating system. For most of it, number 1 is Molly Katz. Samantha is voted "Best Boobs". After eating lunch, she decides to tell her three friends about Drew. In the library, this time Drew kisses her on the lips. Because her mother isn't home and her father is "working" in his study, Samantha has to take care of Luke. Both are jumping on the couch, Luke with a glass of juice. In all the excitement, the two make a lot of noise causing Mr. Gywnn to come to them. Luke jumps too wildly and juice splashes all over the Feingold blueprints Mr. Gywnn spent time on. Angry, frustrated and out of control, Samantha watches her father smash a bottle on Luke's face. Luke has a fracture with stitches and bruises. Both of his eyes are dark red. Samantha's father is nowhere to be found, and nobody tries to reach him. Because of the incident, Charlie Parker's mother and father spend the next few days with the family until Luke gets better. While at her house, Charlie tries to get Samantha to understand that he was not the one who stole her bra. Samantha, of course, denies it. Drew asks Sam to a party at someone's house and she says yes. But to her friends, she also has to lie about not being able to come to their usual Saturday sleepover at Vanessa's house in order to go to it. At the party, Drew asks Samantha what she drinks. Not having to drink before, Samantha decides to drink anything but Jim Beam. After she is fully drunk, Sam wakes up in a room where she is surrounded by coats, her shirt taken off. In the middle of their "sex", Drew leaves after hearing that Samantha is only thirteen, basically a kid. Crying, Samantha walks out of the room - only to bump into Andy Shaver, the party host's brother. Andy persuades Samantha into looking at his room, where he pins her against the dresser and starts to forcefully mash with her. To make it worse, Kyle Faulkner and Danny Harmon (Angie's Crush) are there too, mashing with her. It continues until a friend of Marybeth (Angie's Sister) takes Samantha home. At home, Mrs. Gwynn doesn't ask Samantha about her night. Instead she tells her about how Mr. Gwynn didn't drink until the death of her father. Also about how after she got pregnant, they had to marry. This strikes Samantha in a totally wrong way. She thinks that her being born was a mistake but is quickly assured by her mother that that was not the situation at all. Finally after all that they have shared, A.J.K decides to meet Samantha in person. When they meet, Samantha is totally shocked because the stranger is not a girl, its a boy! The "creepy" library shelf cleaner boy named Alexander, though he prefers to be called Jesse. Jesse takes Samantha to her father's usual drinking bar. Approaching her father, Samantha slaps him across the face. In earth science, at school, Samantha also learns that Charlie did not steal her bra. It was actually a guy named Jacob Mann. While at their normal tree house place, Sam apologizes to her old friend and decides to tell him about the party she went to. The friendship between Samantha and her friends is falling apart. Now that they have learned where their friend really was and what she did. Angie, especially, is mad at Samantha. Sam, ashamed, tells Vanessa that she'll be at the sleepover on Saturday no matter what. Once at Vanessa's house, she cannot hold it any longer. Crying, Samantha spills every one of her secrets. Mr. Gywnn being an alcoholic. Luke's tragic incident. What really happened at the party. Thankfully, Vanessa, Angie and Tracy forgive her. Though Angie still has an edge to her voice. While having one of her normal midnight snacks it occurs to Samantha that she can smash all of the bottle her father hides around the house. Once she has done that, he will not be able to drink, for a while. After she has done that, Samantha sits and looks out the window where it is starting to snow. Maybe, she thinks, we'll build a snowman. Maybe mom will bring hot chocolate. Maybe dad will put Luke on his shoulders. Maybe, someone passing by will think that we are a normal family.
31085557	/m/0gg9s8d	Let It Snow		2008	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jubilee Dougal, just a typical teenager, finds herself forced to spend her Christmas Eve with her grandparents in Florida. Her parents were carted off to jail for being involved in a riot for a piece of the Flobie Santa Village, which is a series of small buildings made to resemble a holiday town. They were arrested for an argument that broke out at the store about who was in line first. While on the train ride to Florida, Jubilee meets Jeb, a heartbroken stranger Jeb tries so hard to contact his girl from back home but cannot find cell phone service. Jubilee also finds herself surrounded by a group of cheerleaders who seem to do nothing but annoy her, so she keeps her distance. Her train gets stuck in the snow and she wanders into a nearby Waffle House. While attempting to call her "perfect" boyfriend, Noah, Jubilee meets a guy about her age in a Target uniform named Stuart. She explains to him her situation and he asks her to come back to his place and spend Christmas with him and his family. Jubilee agrees and, with Stuart's help, manages to make her way through the snow to his home safely. Once inside, Stuart's mother Debbie makes Jubilee feel right at home with warm clothes and lots of delicious food. His mother tells Jubilee that she had not seen Stuart this happy ever since before he found his girlfriend cheating on him inside a Starbuck's bathroom. Jubilee tells Stuart all about Noah and how perfect she thinks he is. However, Stuart does not buy it. Jubilee realizes that Noah has yet to care about her and her misfortunes on Christmas Eve - of all nights. She then calls Noah and asks him how he couldn't even take time out of his family festivities to care about her, and when he doesn't respond, she breaks up with him. Stuart comes to comfort her and they kiss. Shocked, yet happy, Stuart runs out to help his neighbor shovel snow, and Jubilee sees this as her perfect chance to leave. She feels like it was wrong for her to kiss Stuart and all she wants to do is to get back to her train. As she wanders around, looking for the right direction back to the Waffle House, Stuart finds her. He tells her everything will be okay and not to let Noah walk all over her. As her phone rings, Stuart sees that it is Noah, and Jubilee tosses her phone into the snowy abyss. Stuart then leans in and kisses Jubilee again. He puts his arm around her shoulder and leads her back towards his home. Tobin, the Duke, and JP are all lounging around on the couch at Tobin's home watching a James Bond movie marathon while his parents are out of town. They also live in Gracetown, so they were hit with the same winter storm. The Duke (also known as Angie) is often not referred to as a girl for her boyish nature and the fact that she does not succumb to the same things such as a girly-girl would. Their friend Keun, a worker at Waffle House, calls and tells them that a bunch of cheerleaders have entered the store and are practicing handstands and splits inside the restaurant, having their own fun. To any male, this would be considered "heaven". He refers to this as a "cheertastic miracle", while the Duke thinks it is just a waste of time. Keun says that the cheerleaders are requesting to play the game of Twister, and Keun will not let them in unless they have the game for them to play. He only wants to make the cheerleaders like him and think he is taking charge like a man. Tobin and JP quickly get dressed and grab Twister from Tobin's closet. Tobin persuades the Duke that even though there are cheerleaders there, Waffle House has fantastic hashbrowns. He knows that the Duke loves the hashbrowns the Waffle House, so she grabs her shoes and they head out to the garage. Tobin's parents left their Honda Civic in the garage so the three hop in and attempt to drive through all of the ice and snow. Eventually, they manage to get to the highway. Once they gain speed and get close to the Waffle House, the Civic loses control and slams into a snow bank, losing one of the tires. The three then continue to hike through the cold and snow to get to the Waffle House, actually forgetting the Twister game. They realize they forgot the game in the car once they were halfway there and then had to turn around and retrieve it because of Keun's threat to not let them in to see the girls. With Twister in hand, Tobin, the Duke and JP make it to the Waffle House just in time. They meet the heartbroken Jeb and he asks them if they knew anyone by the name of Addie. The three say no, and he asks them that if they see her, to tell her that he was coming and that she would know what he meant. As the Duke gets her hashbrowns, Tobin attempts to talk to one of the cheerleaders. Obviously not interested, the cheerleader makes small-talk and then sits down avoiding any more conversation with him. Once Tobin returns to his seat, he realizes that the Duke is sitting outside on the sidewalk - clearly upset and sobbing. He sits beside her and asks what is wrong. She tells him that she hates that they do not refer to her as girly and she was actually jealous that he talked to the cheerleader in front of her because she assumed that he knew that she had feelings for him. Completely unaware of her feelings, Tobin tells her that he had a crush on her all along. They lean in for a kiss and kindle their new love. Addie and Jeb were in love from the moment they met, yet she attempted to change him into her own Prince Charming. Because of this, Jeb felt like he wasn't good enough for Addie and they argued. At a party, they separate and Addie finds her drunken self making out with a boy named Charlie - cheating on Jeb. She tells him, and she claims that it is over. Jeb gets on a train to visit his family in an Indian reservation. Before he had left, Addie sends Jeb an email apologizing for everything and asks him to meet her at Starbuck's, where she works, to talk everything out. Addie does not know that Jeb was leaving town. When he didn't respond or call, she knew he was really upset and that it was probably over for good. She went to Fantastic Sam's, a barber shop, and got all of her long, blonde hair cut off and colored it pink to show that she needed to change. On Jeb's way home, his train also got stuck in the snow - the same train that Jubilee found herself on. He attempted to call Addie on multiple occasions to tell her he loved her and was sorry, yet could never make it through. Addie calls her friends over to talk about things and they tell her that she always thinks of herself and can be self-absorbed at times. She disagrees and attempts to get them to change their minds by picking up a teacup pig from the pet store for her friend, Tegan, in the morning on her break at work. Once morning comes around, Addie gets caught up by an old woman at the counter at work and the woman tells her that she is a Christmas Angel and that we often forget to do things for others when we are wrapped up in ourselves. She then leaves, leaving Addie completely confused. Her other friend, Dorrie calls her to remind her to pick up the pig and Addie has completely forgotten. She runs to the pet store and realizes that the pig had already been adopted by a woman named Constantine. Furious, Addie steals the receipt and attempts to track down the mysterious woman and get Tegan's pig back. Once she finds the address, she realizes that Constantine is the "Christmas Angel" from Starbuck's and she adopted the pig just to teach Addie a lesson. Constantine gives Addie back the pig and heads back to work, only to find that there are more customers waiting to be served. She notices a boy she went to school with named Stuart at the counter. By his side stood his new girlfriend which is introduces as Jubilee. As they get served, two other teens walk in. Addie also recognizes them as Tobin and Angie (but people sometimes call her the Duke). Tobin reads her name tag and it reminds him that he had a message for her from Jeb. He tells her and her stomach drops. She realizes that Jeb did in fact get her message and that he was coming for her! At the same time, Addie's boss keeps asking why there is a pig in the store and that she needs to get it out as soon as possible. At the blink of an eye, Jeb walks in and embraces Addie. He tells her about the train and the cheerleaders and how he could not get service to call her. Tobin laughs because they were the same cheerleaders that they adventured out to see at the Waffle House. Jubilee hears of the cheerleaders, notices Jeb and sees how all of their lives have been intertwined. They were all brought back together with new loves and new senses of life.
31085704	/m/0gg8mz3	Amulet: The Stonekeeper				 The novel begins with a flashback 2 years prior to the current events of the book. It shows how Emily and Navin's father was killed in a car accident. In the present time, Emily and Navin are moving to a new house inherited from their mom's grandfather. But when a secret door in the basement leads to an alternate version of earth,they find out everything is not as it seemed.
31086801	/m/0gg6bzn	How to Eat a Small Country		2011-03-29	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 A professionally trained cook turned anxious stay-at-home mom, Amy Finley’s marriage was already in fragile shape when she sent in an audition tape for the third season of The Next Food Network Star. When she was cast on the show in 2007, her husband, who feared for their privacy and hated the idea of reality shows and what celebrity could do to their marriage, forbade her to participate, but Finley did anyway, hoping to jumpstart her career and self-esteem. But while she was filming the show in New York, her husband retaliated by threatening to divorce her. Finley was the last contestant eliminated from Season 3 before the two person finale and returned home defeated to put her marriage back in order, but was recalled into the competition when one of the finalists had to withdraw, and ultimately was voted the winner and starred in her own cooking show, The Gourmet Next Door. But she gave up the show when she realized her family was so shaky, the stress would probably cause her marriage to fail. To get away from a life that had gotten too complicated, they moved to France and took a road trip Finley had dreamed about since she was living in Paris, falling in love with her husband, and going to culinary school. They drive all over France, and while they are learning about and enjoying regional dishes, Finley tries to figure out how her marriage became so delicate, and how to make it, and herself, strong again.
31095130	/m/0gh7vnq	The Bushbabies		1965	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Jackie Rhodes is the daughter of a respected gamekeeper, known as "Trapper" Rhodes, in Kenya. She has lived there all of her life, so she is astounded and saddened when she learns from Tembo, her father's African servant, that her family will soon be abandoning the continent. Her biggest concern immediately becomes her pet bushbaby Kamau, which had been a Christmas gift from her father; she fears the creature is too young to fend for itself and will perish if left behind. During a family picnic, Trapper Rhodes comforts Jackie by assuring her that he'll obtain an official export permit that will allow her to take the bushbaby along. When the time comes for their departure, Jackie realizes that she has lost the export permit and grows very concerned. She learns from a steward that the ship's captain is not fond of animals, which makes matters worse. She realizes she cannot possibly hide Kamau as a stowaway or face export officials upon arrival. As her family sleeps, she abandons the ship hoping to set Kamau lose in the docks of Mombasa. Thoughts of the bushbaby's many natural predators immediately make Jackie have a change of heart and decide that Kamau must be returned to his natural habitat if he's to have a chance at survival. Jackie is horror-stricken when she realizes the ship has set sail leaving her and Kamau behind. She is comforted by the sound of a harmonica, realizing that it is being played by Tembo. She explains the situation to him and asks for his help. The African, moved by his loyalty to the Rhodes and a desire to be of service, unenthusiastically agrees to do so. The trio head by bus and foot towards the village of Vipingo. At her father's cottage Jackie and Tembo plan their next move while becoming increasingly acquainted with one another, which soothes the girl's fears. Meanwhile, Kamau encounters a praying mantis and Jackie observes the bushbaby's hunting abilities, growing less concerned about its ability to survive on its own. Unfortunately, the area is affected by a drought and an unexpected encounter with a rat snake foreshadows the dangers that they'll face in their journey. Jackie, who had hoped to be helped by Major Bob, a friend of the family, is astounded to learn that he's abandoned his home. When she approaches the Vipingo post office, she overhears the Hadj speaking to a gathering of villagers. He shows them the police's official order for the arrest of the black man who is believed to have kidnapped the white Rhodes girl. Horror-stricken, Jackie returns to Tembo and tells him that they must leave the place immediately. Back aboard the ship, Jackie's family discover her absence and request that the ship be turned around, a suggestion that coincides with Captain MacRae's plans to avoid a threatening sea storm brewing in the Indian Ocean. A prolongued drought is upsetting the many animals of the African savanahs as they follow the trails of the elephants in search of water. This complicates Tembo and Jackie's journey across the grasslands as they face dangerous creatures. The most dangerous encounter, however, is with an elephant poacher sent out to kill Tembo. Tembo manages to wrestle the man and send him running, but not before one of his poisoned arrowheads strikes Jackie's upper arm.
31099212	/m/0gh6l3b	The Nanny	Melissa Nathan	2003	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 When Jo Green takes a nannying job in London to escape her small-town routine, complicated family and perfect-on-paper boyfriend, Shaun, culture shock doesn't even begin to describe it... Dickand Vanessa Fitzgerald are the most compatible pair since Tom and Jerry, and their children - strong and determined Cassandra, humorously protective Zak, and sweet and shy Tallulah - are downright mystifying. Whilst also having Jo on a 24/7 scheduelle, chasing them around to their music or ballet lessons. Suddenly village life doesn't sound too bad. Then, just as Jo's getting the hang of their designer lifestyle, the Fitzgeralds acquire a new lodger and suddenly she's sharing her nanny flat with the distractingly good-looking but inexplicably temperamental Josh. So when Shaun turns up,things get even trickier...
31102420	/m/0gh8htr	Wintergirls	Laurie Halse Anderson	2009		 Lia and Cassie become best friends when she later moves in across the street from Lia in second grade. During the summer between fifth and sixth grades, Cassie develops bulimia in a quest to be thinner. By eighth grade, both Cassie and Lia share a goal of being the thinnest girls in their class. From then on, the two engage in a contest to see who can be the thinnest. Lia is hospitalized to treat her eating disorder during their junior year of high school. After her hospitalization, Lia becomes estranged from Cassie, who blames Lia for encouraging her own eating disorder. Nine months later (at the beginning of the novel), Cassie is found dead in a motel. The cause of death is unknown at first; an autopsy later reveals that she died from Boerhaave syndrome, a rupture of the esophagus caused by repeated vomiting. Lia learns the cause of death later, from her mother. Lia, getting a message from a motel employee named Elijah, who told her to come to the motel to meet him, goes to the scene of her friend's death. When she meets Elijah, he does not know who she is, so she gives him the name of her younger step-sister, Emma. At Cassie's wake, they meet again and finally, at the funeral, he learns Lia's real identity. During this time, Lia's weight drops from 101 pounds to 93 pounds, though she has rigged her family's bathroom scale so that her parents believe she weighs more. After her father gets back from his trip, and tells Lia she is moving in with her mother because she and he cannot get along, she goes into the bathroom and cuts deep into her skin, from her neck to just below her heart. Her step-mother Jennifer and step-sister Emma find her and take her to the hospital. After this incident, she is supposed to live with her mother, Dr. Chloe Marrigan. Dr. Marrigan feeds her and doesn't leave her side without having someone else watch her. Lia, who has been haunted throughout the book by Cassie's ghost, has a confrontation with "her" in her therapist's waiting room. She explains that to her therapist, Dr. Parker, who advises that she be committed to a psychiatric institution. Lia runs away to see Elijah and asks him to take her with him when he leaves for Mississippi, which he is planning to do the next day. Elijah agrees on the condition that Lia call her family first; Lia refuses, and Elijah tries to convince Lia that her family is trying to help her and that she should let them do so. They go to sleep, and in the morning Lia finds that he has left without her. Lia is near death and has one more conversation with Cassie's ghost, in which they talk about the good parts of being alive. Lia escapes death and goes to call her mother. The novel ends with Lia in the hospital, working toward recovery.
31106421	/m/0glspyk	Privies of Wales		2000	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The first half of the book presents a brief history of human sanitation disposal starting from the digging of small holes to the “earth closet”; the “privy pioneers” of the Minoans, Romans, and Normans; and information about cesspits. The second half examines multiple examples of Welsh privies, how they were constructed, and how they were used. Roberts also writes about industrial privies, public privies, and the restoration of old privies.
31110935	/m/0gh89c8	The Eternal Husband	Fyodor Dostoyevsky		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Alexei Ivanovich Velchaninov is a land owner who stays in Saint Petersburg for a trial about a piece of land. He receives a visit from Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky, an old acquaintance who recently became a widower. Velchaninov had an affair with Trusotsky's wife Natalia, and he realizes that he is the biological father of Liza, Trusotsky's eight year old daughter. Velchaninov, who doesn't want Liza to be raised by an alcoholic, brings Liza to a foster family. Liza dies there. Trusotsky now wants to marry Nadia, the fifteen year old daughter of civil servant Zakhlyobinin. She's the sixth daughter of eight. Trusotsky takes Velchaninov with him to visit his fiancee, and buys her a bracelet. Trusotsky is ridiculed by Zakhlyobinin's daughters and locked up during a game of hide-and-seek. Nadia gives the bracelet to Velchaninov, asking him to return it to Trusotsky and tell him she doesn't want to marry him. Nadia is secretly engaged to Alexander Lobov, a nineteen year old boy. Trusotsky spends the night in Velchaninov's room and tries to kill him with a razor knife. Velchaninov manages to defend himself, injuring his left hand. Sometime later, when Velchaninov has won his trial, the two meet again at a railway station. Trusotsky is remarried, but a young army officer is travelling with him and his wife. Trusotsky's new wife invites Velchaninov to visit them, but Trusotsky asks him to ignore this invitation.
31117152	/m/0gh6y3s	So Much Pretty				 So Much Pretty is about a young woman, Wendy White, who goes missing from her small town and is found murdered several months later. The novel then focuses on the investigation into her life, disappearance, and death by reporter Stacey Flynn.
31117271	/m/0gh7s75	Ring of Fire				 At a hotel in Rome, four children, Harvey from New York, Mistral from Paris, Sheng from Shanghai, and Elettra, the hotel owner's daughter, come together, apparently by chance, and realize that they were all born on the same day. They are destined to become involved in a mystery involving a briefcase which contains clues leading to ancient mystical artifacts, a mystery that will bring them all into peril.
31120928	/m/0gh70tb	Three Stations	Martin Cruz Smith		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The title refers to the three Moscow rail stations, Leningrad Station, Kazansky Station and Yaroslavl Station situated on Komsomolskaya Square, also often referred to as Three Stations Square. A teenage mother arrives at Three Stations, but her baby is stolen. The only person to help her is Zhenya, the young chess hustler who is a sometime ward of Arkady Renko, the police investigator. Meanwhile, Arkady tries to prove that the overdose death of a young prostitute in the station is nothing of the sort, and is suspended for his trouble. A billionaire casino owner with financial troubles offers to hire Arkady, but the latter can trust no-one. Thugs, dwarves, ballerinas, Central Asians and a gang of homeless tweens complicate matters still further.
31122658	/m/0gh8chv	The Snake's Skin				 The novel The Snake’s Skin is about entire universe, where the space is complete and united. The scene takes place at the entire planet: the West and the East; Russia, Europe and finally Robakidze’s motherland – Georgia. Here one may also find an imaginary world of American billionaire living in his villa at Mediterranean Sea along with various prominent artists. There is only one tense in the The Snake’s Skin – present, but it includes past and future as well. The main thing is reality, but myths and legends are part of this reality. The way of thinking is not only particularly human, but at the same time metaphysical and idealistic. The personages of the novel do not live in the particular time period, or represent persons with concrete nationality. The author describes generalized citizen of the world that gets transformed into a particular person or in other words, returns to his roots (actual father, motherland), oneself, and the God. This is an adventure of Archibald Mekeshi’s soul taking place throughout the centuries.
31124804	/m/0gh69n0	Hellhole	Kevin J. Anderson	2011-03-15	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Only the most desperate colonists dare to make a new home on Hellhole. Reeling from a recent asteroid impact, tortured with horrific storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and churning volcanic eruptions, the planet is a dumping ground for undesirables, misfits, and charlatans…but also a haven for dreamers and independent pioneers. Against all odds, an exiled general named Adolphus has turned Hellhole into a place of real opportunity for the desperate colonists who call the planet their home. While the colonists are hard at work developing the planet, General Adolphus secretly builds alliances with the leaders of the other Deep Zone worlds, forming a clandestine coalition against the tyrannical, fossilized government responsible for their exile. What no one knows is this: the planet Hellhole, though damaged and volatile, hides an amazing secret. Deep beneath its surface lies the remnants of an obliterated alien civilization and the buried memories of its unrecorded past that, when unearthed, could tear the galaxy apart.
31125628	/m/0gh7hm9	Whizzard!	Steve Barlow	2002	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Tym, a wizard's apprentice from the Dun Indewood suburb of Leafy Bottom, dreams of being a great magician. It is only when he encounters the mysterious Dreamwalker that he learns the secret of travelling at super-speed and becomes a Whizzard! When his newfound skill causes havoc and puts the beautiful Lady Zamarind into a coma, Tym must travel far across the Dark Forest to save her, and discover his true destiny.
31133840	/m/0gh8p4t	The Ring of Solomon	Jonathan Stroud		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story opens in Jerusalem with the djinni Bartimaeus who is currently in the service of one of King Solomon's 17 High Magicians. His master commands him to retrieve a magical artifact of sorts from the city of Eridu. Bartimaeus succeeds, and then manages to trick the magician into commanding him to use the artifact against him. It sends a spurt of water out at him and knocks him out of his protective circle. Bartimaeus subsequently devours the old man and with the magician's death is released and returns to the Other Place. King Solomon of Israel, upon learning of Bartimaeus's murder of Ezekiel (the hitherto unnamed old magician) is insulted that a mere djinni is the perpetrator. To make Bartimaeus pay for his actions he commands Khaba, an Egyptian and another of the 17 to summon Bartimaeus into his service and punish him. He also proposes to the queen of Sheba and is refused. The scene shifts to the Sheban capital of Marib where Balkis, the aforementioned queen, receives a message from a marid supposedly in Solomon's service: either pay a ransom of 40 sacks of frankincense or be destroyed, and gives her two weeks to pay. Balkis decides to send her loyal guard captain Asmira to Jerusalem to assassinate Solomon. Back in Jerusalem, after being summoned into Khaba's service, Bartimaeus is commissioned to perform multiple degrading jobs including grain counting, sewage treatment, and artichoke collecting. Another unpleasant element is that one of his fellow slaves is his old rival Faquarl. Khaba assembles the eight djinn under his command and informs them that they have been commissioned to build Solomon's Temple on the Temple Mount and that they are to build it without using any magic whatsoever. After Bartimaeus uses his trademark wit to infuriate Khaba, the magician unleashes his essence flail on the djinn and threatens to place them in his essence cages (devices similar to the Mournful Orb in The Amulet of Samarkand) should they displease him a second time. At first Khaba and his foliot Gezeri directly supervise the initial stages of construction but after a while they stop showing up at the building site and the attitudes of the djinn grows lax. They begin assuming nonhuman forms and start using magic to build the temple (both actions directly violate Solomon's edicts). Several days later Solomon makes an unexpected appearance on the building site. The other djinn manage to revert back to human form and disguise their use of magic but Bartimaeus is caught in the form of a pygmy hippopotamus in a skirt (a comic reference to one of Solomon's 700 wives, "the one from Moab"). The king interrogates Bartimaeus and the djinni reluctantly admits his guilt while covering for the other spirits. As Solomon prepares to use the Ring on Bartimaeus, the djinni resorts to a display of groveling in order to appease the king. Bartimaeus's pathetic display amuses Solomon, who agrees to spare the djinni's life and instead punishes him (and Khaba, whom Solomon blames for failing to keep his spirits in line) by sending them to hunt down the bandits. Several days later, out in the desert, Bartimaeus and Faquarl find and defeat the bandits and meets Asmira. Faquarl insists on eating her but Bartimaeus hopes she can intercede with Khaba on their behalf. Asmira is then escorted to Jerusalem by Khaba and manages to persuade him to reluctantly dismiss the two djinn. Faquarl gains his freedom but Bartimaeus is imprisoned in a small bottle for his earlier crimes by Khaba and his principle slave, the marid Ammet. Asmira tries to use her feminine wiles to convince Khaba to get her near Solomon and fails. Asmira frees Bartimaeus from the bottle and commands him to help her kill Solomon. The pair sneak through the palace gardens and scale the tower wall to Solomon's chamber almost completely through Bartimaeus' efforts. They encounter the king in his observatory and Asmira kills him with her dagger only to discover that it is an illusion set up to trap them. Bartimaeus escapes and Asmira is captured and taken before the true King Solomon. Meanwhile Bartimaeus encounters the trapped afrit Philocretes and learns the secret behind Solomon and the Ring. He then sneaks into the chamber where Solomon is interrogating Asmira and steals the Ring. Asmira claims the Ring only to discover that its energies inflict pain upon whoever touches it or uses it. Solomon then confesses to having never sent any ransom demand to Sheba which causes Asmira to doubt herself and her loyalty to Queen Balkis. In the end Asmira does not kill the king, choosing instead to take the Ring back to Sheba in spite of Solomon's warnings and Bartimaeus' demoralizing analysis of her motives. Suddenly Khaba arrives, subdues both girl and djinn and claims the Ring for himself. Khaba commands the Spirit of the Ring to destroy his rival magicians as well as Solomon's palace, but Asmira manages to grab her last throwing knife and slices off Khaba's finger, with the ring still on it, and commands Bartimaeus to throw it in the sea. Although weakened by his use of the Ring, Khaba attempts to destroy both Asmira and Solomon who manage to hold off Khaba's other servants for a brief time. Meanwhile Bartimeaus has fled the palace with Ammet in hot pursuit. The two eventually reach the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and, in an unexpected move, Bartimaeus puts the Ring on and commands the Spirit to seal Ammet inside a wine jar at the bottom of the sea for a few thousand years. Returning to Jerusalem Bartimaeus knocks out Khaba and returns the Ring to Asmira who gives it back to Solomon. The king imprisons Khaba and pardons both Asmira and Bartimaeus for their deeds. Solomon then summons Queen Balkis to Jerusalem and clears the misunderstanding. However, a spiteful Balkis disowns her loyal guard from her service. Solomon then offers Asmira the opportunity to work for him instead. In the aftermath of the attack Asmira willingly dismisses Bartimaeus, revealing her intention to turn down Solomon's offer in favour of choosing her own path in life and the two part ways on friendly terms.
31138608	/m/0gh6k0r	Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys	Francesca Lia Block	1993		 While the grown-ups are away making a movie, teenager Cherokee is left to cheer up her sort-of sister Witch Baby, who is deeply depressed. Cherokee makes her a pair of wings out of wire and feathers, and it cheers Witch Baby up due to an unexplained magical power. The two girls decided to start a band and enlist their two male friends, Raphael and Angel Juan. As their band becomes successful, the other members acquire magical items to wear. Raphael begins to wear goat pants, Angel Juan gets horns, and Cherokee gets hoof-like boots. However, these items begin to lead them down a path of drugs, sex, and jealousy and things begin to unravel. In the end, Cherokee, disturbed by the changes in her friends, makes off with the magical costumes, causing her friends to re-examine their choices and find their way back to their normal selves.
31139122	/m/0gh8kcz	Missing Angel Juan	Francesca Lia Block	1995		 The story begins with Witch Baby learning that Angel Juan is leaving to go to New York. He wants to go and discover who he is when he is not with Witch Baby. She is left broken-hearted and angry and falls into a depression before deciding to follow Angel Juan to New York. In New York, Witch Baby stays at the apartment of Weetzie Bat's deceased father, Charlie Bat. He appears to Witch Baby as a ghost and becomes her companion as she searches for Angel Juan. In the end, Witch Baby and Angel Juan are reunited, but Angel Juan tells her he needs to stay in New York a while longer and she has to return to Los Angeles. Witch Baby understands, because even though they cannot be together at present, they love each other and will be together again someday.
31139487	/m/0gh82mr	Caucasia	Danzy Senna	1998	{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The novel is about Birdie and Cole, multiracial sisters who become separated in life because of their differing appearances and the racial identities which people ascribe to them. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator Birdie is not classified by appearance. Her sister Cole is described as "cinnamon-skinned, curly haired",Senna, Danzy. Caucasia. [[Riverhead Books], New York (1998)]. traits associated with African Americans of mixed race. Senna hints that the girls' mother is European American (her belly is called a "pale balloon" on page 5 of the novel). Over time, race, as experienced by the girls in United States society, creates a rift between their lives. As young girls, Birdie and Cole speak an indistinguishable language of their creation which they call "Elemeno". The closeness between the two sisters suggests that appearance is not a defining characteristic of personality or behavior. Senna offers culture and atmosphere as having the most profound effect on a child's development. Birdie especially struggles to identify with and reconcile her multiracial identity. At the end of the novel, the two sisters are reunited in Berkeley. The two sisters are separated when their father decides to leave for Brazil in search of a more racially harmonious society and their mother flees their home in fear that she is in trouble with the FBI. Each parent takes the child that is closest to them in appearance, Cole leaving with her father and his new girlfriend and Birdie leaving with her mother. In order to avoid being caught, Birdie and her mother adopt false identities and Birdie is forced to change her name to Jesse Goldman and pass as a Jewish girl. Birdie and her mother remain on the lam for several years, but even as time passes Birdie is unable to fully adopt this new identity. She cannot forget her sister, her father, or her the race that she truly is. She hopes for the day when her family will be reunited and she can stop the facade. Near the end of the novel, after being separated from Cole and her father, Birdie runs away from her mother in order to find them. Her mom has forced her to pass as a Jewish girl for years. Cole, with her darker skin and thicker hair, has been passing as black with their father. Once Birdie comes to realize that she may never be reunited with them unless she takes it upon herself, she leaves her mother to find them. Before meeting with Cole again, she reunites with her father, whom she is angry with. She cannot understand why racial appearance has caused division in her family. Birdie says to her father, "I heard myself say, 'Fuck the canaries in the fucking coal mines. You left me. You left me with Mum, knowing she was going to disappear. Why did you only take Cole? Why didn't you take me? If race is so make-believe, why did I go with Mum? You gave me to Mum 'cause I looked white. You don't think that's real? Those are the facts." Senna, Danzy. Caucasia. [[Riverhead Books], New York (1998)]. (336) For so long, Birdie was made to believe that there was some logical reason behind the splitting of her family. In her immaturity, she was led to think that her passing as someone else and constant displacement were for a greater cause and that her family would eventually be reunited. Birdie’s inability to understand and lashing out against her parents in the end shows she has successfully come of age. After years of struggling to maintain some sense of who she was while having to cover it up in different ways based on her environment, she grew to recognize the ridiculousness of her circumstances. She no longer sees her parents for what she grew up envisioning them as. She is angry that something so shallow could have such deep repercussions for her and her family. She cannot make sense of her father's lack of effort in planning a return to her. An irony exists in her father’s working so hard at writing about race while working so little at forming a relationship with his mulatto daughter based on her racial appearance. Birdie comes to understand that there is nothing to understand about the actions of her mother and father. The way in which skin color has ruined her childhood and the fact that her parents allowed it to is too insensible for her to ever make sense of. Through this coming of age novel, Birdie grows to understand the ridiculousness in accepting appearance as a determining characteristic of performance.
31145325	/m/0gh6_q7	Goals in the Air	Michael Hardcastle	1972	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book tells the story of Kenny Rider a young striker who plays for fictitious Second Division team Marton Rangers. Kenny manages to break into the first team at the age of sixteen and attracts a lot of attention and some jealousy for his talent and goalscoring ability. Unfortunately, off the field Kenny has to contend with a range of problems including an apathetic girlfriend and an actively hostile father. Whilst many of Hardcastle's other books see their protagonists triumph over adversity, the end of this short novel sees Kenny continuing to struggle with the many pressures of top class football.
31145552	/m/0gh82nt	Soccer Comes First	Michael Hardcastle	1966	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The book begins with retired England striker Andy Blair who has recently moved to the town of Scorton watching the local team struggle in a Second Division match. After the game he is approached by club chairman Herbert Graydon who convinces him to come out of retirement and play for Rovers. As the story progresses Andy, whose performances begin to lift Rovers up the table, introduces his eighteen-year old son Bobbie into the team. Bobbie, despite playing well, becomes mixed up with some local match-fixers and experiences some difficulties in his relationship with his girlfriend Adrienne who he follows to Bristol on the eve of a big game to try to resolve their problems. Andy feels forced to take matters into his own hand and tackles the match-fixers himself before retrieving his son. At the novel's conclusion the Blairs are reunited and can finally concentrate on trying to ensure Rovers win promotion to the First Division.
31146081	/m/0gh7mht	Charity				 Bernard is still working for Frank Harrington in Berlin where he hardly ever gets to see his wife and children whom he hardly knows anymore. While crossing Poland Bernard is captured by Polish intelligence and is severely beaten for shooting their men while retrieving George Kosinski in Hope. Meanwhile George is being interrogated in London but he has revealed no useful information and is now threatening to destroy Bernard and Fiona's careers. Bernard is using his position in Berlin to investigate Tessa'a death which results in Silas Gaunt confessing to hiring Thurkettle to fake Fiona's death but he denies knowing anything about using Tessa and tells Bernard to back off. Bernard has had enough and contacts The Swede to organise to fly him, his children and hopefully Gloria out of the country to begin a new life. The Swede is drunk and erratic and tells Bernard that on the night of Tessa's death he was hired to fly Jay Prettyman from Berlin to London and was carrying a locked box that Prettyman would need. Prettyman never showed up but his ex-wife did and took the box. Bernard tracks down the dying Prettyman who confesses that he hired Thurkettle but found him dead at the meeting place and drove back to West Berlin and that his ex-wife is now demanding money for the return of the box. Prettyman says the operations was all a waste of time anyway because the ruse never fooled the KGB. Bernard finds Thurkettle's hastily buried body and a gun Werner was asked to give Prettyman at the meeting place. Werner steals the box from Prettyman's ex-wife and in retaliation she shoots and wounds Werner at his grand house warming party. The Swede is murdered by the Russians and Gloria tells Bernard that his plan to abduct his children was stupid and that they are best off where they are, in boarding school which provides them with much needed stability. Bernard realises there is no future for him and Gloria and that she is now seeing Bret. Bret holds an inquiry in to Tessa's murder and announces Silas was solely responsible and no longer has any connection to the Department. The Department ordered Dicky to bring Tessa to Berlin. Silas blackmailed Prettyman into hiring Thurkettle to kill Tessa and then killing him. The box was a bomb designed to blow up The Swede's plane removing the last loose ends. Bernard suspected this but said nothing hoping to flush out who else was in on the plan but is forced to step in when he discovers Bret has ordered Frank's assistant to break into the box. Bret tells Bernard that both he and the Department owe him and that he will do his best to try to get Bernard Frank's job, and a pension, when Frank retires. Bret tells Bernard he is being stupid and that Fiona really loves him and not her job. Bernard say he has asked Fiona to join him in Berlin and hopes that his children can go to school in Berlin just like he did.
31147154	/m/0gh7_3m	1001 Best Ways		2011-03		 The crowd-sourced collection of best ways to address common life challenges, such as saving money, raising children, relationship, health, creative ideas, etc. It was launched on February 1, 2011.
31151251	/m/0gh8420	Only Time Will Tell	Jeffrey Archer	2011-09		 The plot revolves around the main protagonist Harry Clifton, spanning the time between 1920 and the beginning of the Second World War. The novel is set in Bristol, England, from 1919 to 1940 and centers on Harry Clifton, a young boy destined to follow in the footsteps of his father and uncle and work on the docks until a new world is opened up to him. Harry has the gift of song, and when Miss Monday, the choir mistress, Mr. Holcombe, his elementary school teacher, and Old Jack Tar, a WWI hero and loner is changed forever. Harry’s mother, Maisie, works as a waitress and scrimps and saves to send her son to school and give him a better life. Maisie’s sacrifices and the secret of Harry’s parentage are the main focus of Only Time Will Tell. Harry has grown up thinking Arthur Clifton is his father and that he died in the war, but he begins to doubt that story when he does the math and realizes Arthur couldn’t possibly be his father if he died during the war. Maisie knows the truth about Harry’s parentage, and a few people know the truth about Arthur Clifton’s death, but no one tells Harry anything. While Harry is off at school befriending Giles Barrington, the son of the man who owns the shipping company where Harry’s father and uncle work and who knows what happened to Arthur Clifton, Maisie deals with countless personal tragedies and must make some tough decisions to continue Harry’s schooling. At the same time, it looks as though England may go to war with Germany, and Harry must consider what this means for his future.].
31154887	/m/0gh913n	The Tiger's Wife	Téa Obreht	2011-11-01		 The Tiger's Wife is set in an unnamed Balkan country, in the present and half a century ago, and features a young doctor's relationship with her grandfather and the stories he tells her, primarily about the 'deathless man' who meets him several times in different places and never changes, and a deaf-mute girl from his childhood village who befriends a tiger that has escaped from a zoo. It was largely written while she was at Cornell, and excerpted in The New Yorker in June 2009. Asked to summarize it by a university journalist, Obreht replied, "It’s a family saga that takes place in a fictionalized province of the Balkans. It’s about a female narrator and her relationship to her grandfather, who’s a doctor. It’s a saga about doctors and their relationships to death throughout all these wars in the Balkans."
31155094	/m/0gh89qy	Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves	Matthew Reilly		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 During a routine re-staffing of Dragon Island, an old Soviet weapons installation in the Arctic, a Russian Spetsnaz team comes under fire from an unknown enemy. Vasily Ivanov, a researcher assigned to Dragon, manages to send out a distress signal which is intercepted by an American listening station in Alaska before his plane is shot down. Dragon Island was once the cornerstone of Soviet weapons research, a place where cutting-edge weapons were designed by scientists with a blank cheque. It has been seized by an organisation calling themselves "the Army of Thieves", led by the enigmatic Lord of Anarchy. Self-proclaimed anarchists, the Army is made up of enforcers of the Pinochet regime, Sudanese Janjaweed militants, Islamic fundamentalists and narco-terrorists. They are planning to unleash Dragon Island's centrepiece, known as the Tesla weapon. Experiments with rocket fuel and samples of acids acquired from the atmosphere of Venus have created a compound that, when ignited, can set fire to the atmosphere. The Army of Thieves have taken control of the facility on Dragon Island and have activated the preliminary stages of the Tesla weapon. Still reeling from the events of Scarecrow, United States Marine Corps Captain Shane Schofield has been reassgined to an equipment-testing project in the Arctic, including "Bertie", a mutli-functional, independently-intelligent robot. Although cleared for active duty, Schofield is seen as a liability by the Corps, and has spent most of his time teaching new recruits. His situation is somewhat complicated by an outstanding bounty on his head; although members of the Majestic-12 conspiracy are dead, the French government has offered to pay the bounty as retaliation for the events of Ice Station and Scarecrow. Schofield is one of just two units close to Dragon Island; the other is a Navy SEAL team stationed on the USS Miami, a Los Angeles-class submarine. Ira Barker, the leader of this unit, warns Schofield to stay away from Dragon Island or else risk being caught in the crossfire. The SEAL insertion is a disaster, with every member of the team being killed off by the Army. With no other choice, Scofield makes for Dragon Island. Schofield and his unit locate the remains of Ivanov's downed plane, and manage to rescue him while the Army attack. However, they are interrupted by the arrival of a French submarine; the French government has sent an assassin known as Renard after Schofield. Realising the threat posed by the Army, Schofield saves Renard two members of the French commando team sent after him, Dubois and Huguenot, also known as "The Barbarian", or "Baba" and described as Mother's equal. Successfully infiltrating Dragon Island, Renard reveals herself to be Veronique Champion, cousin to Luc Champion (a French researcher killed in Ice Station). She agrees to help Schofield stop the Army, but pledges to kill him once the threat ends. They question Ivanov, who reveals that in order to fire the Tesla weapon, the Army needs to seed the atmosphere with the acid-rocket fuel mixture, before firing a battery of missiles armed with red uranium into the cloud. Schofield decides to target the red uranium and throw it into the Arctic Ocean. As Schofield and his team begin to fight their way through the installation, David Fairfax - his friend in the Defence Intelligence Agency - begins to research the Army and Dragon Island. He grows suspicious that an irregular army such as the Army of Thieves would be able to carry out a string of attacks against high-value targets to arm themselves, and his suspicions are confirmed when he finds a CIA operative named Marius Calderon was writing about Dragon Island before the Soviet Union actually built anything there. He confirms that the Lord of Anarchy is actually Calderon, the CIA's foremost expert on psychological operations and gifted with extraordinary foresight; Calderon predicted the rise of China as an economic superpower by 2010 as early as 1982. Fairfax realises that Calderon let the Soviet Union discover the plans to the Tesla weapon, and that the acid-rocket fuel mix will be distributed by the jetstream over China, India and Europe; once ignited, these regions will be decimated, but the United States will be relatively unaffected and able to preserve its position as the world's only economic superpower. Calderon succeeds in firing a missile armed with red uranium into the gas cloud, igniting it, but it is revealed that Ira Barker survived the SEAL team's assault and was able to shut down the gas diffusion process long enough to create a safe buffer, thereby limiting the ignition. However, Calderon still has several missiles at his disposal, and the larger gas cloud is well within their range. Schofield destroys the red uranium primers one by one, but most of team is captured before he can destroy the last two. He and his team are tortured by Calderon - Mother and Baba have their heads locked in wooden boxes with hungry rats - before Schofield is electrocuted and his signature sunglasses claimed as a prize by Calderon. He is revived by Bertie and finds Mother and Baba survived by biting the heads off the rats locked in with them. They then give chase to Calderon before he can either launch the final missile, or detonate a warhead on board a cargo plane. Calderon escapes by ejecting a stolen mini-submersible from his plane, but Schofield ejects the last missile from the plane before it can ignite the gas cloud. The subsequent explosion disables Calderon's submarine; he is found two weeks later by a Norwegian fishing trawler, having suffocated at the bottom of the ocean. With the threat posed by the Army finally over, the Russian government authorises a missile strike on Dragon Island. Schofield races back to the facility and gathers his unit in a nuclear bunker hidden under a laboratory. The missile destroys Dragon Island and kills the remnants of the Army. Schofield and his team are found alive and well several days later, having survived the blast. They are commended by the President for their actions, and the French government lift the bounty on Schofield's head for rescuing Veronique's team. Having finally come to terms with the death of Elizabeth Gant, Schofield starts a relationship with Veronique Champion - however, upon returning to the Marine barracks, he finds his sunglasses in his room, implying that Marius Calderon is alive.
31158318	/m/0gh6pw9	The Manxman	Hall Caine	1894		 Part I The novel concerns the love triangle between Kate Cregeen and the two good friends and cousins, the illegitimate, poorly educated but good-hearted Peter Quilliam, and the well-educated and cultured Philip Christian. Kate’s father rejects Pete’s request to marry his daughter, due to his low prospects, and so Pete sets off to Kimberly, South Africa, in order to earn his fortune. He leaves Philip in charge of looking after Kate in his absence. Part II As Kate matures into an adult woman and Philip rises to become the foremost young lawyer in the island, they begin to fall in love. This is first openly spoken of between them when they hear rumours that Pete has died in Africa. However, the course of their love is still not open as Philip has to choose between worldly success and the position as Deemster, or his love of the lower class Kate. Feeling this push them apart, Kate “is driven to an effort to hold on to the man whom life is tearing away from her by making a mistaken appeal to his love.” Part III Pete returns to the island with a fortune fit to have his marriage proposal accepted by Kate’s parents, while Kate is bed-ridden recovering from an illness brought about by Philip’s breaking with her in order to stay true to his promise to Pete. Remaining unaware of anything between Philip and Kate, Pete arranges for the wedding, which Kate goes through with in a confused daze. Part IV Kate gives birth to a daughter which she realises is Philip’s. This fact, along with the reason for Kate’s displeasure at the marriage, remains hidden to Pete, who proves himself to be a good and doting husband. When Kate informs Philip of the paternity of the baby girl, they arrange for her to live with him in secret. She leaves Pete’s house to go to Philip on the evening when Pete is at the head of the crowd honouring Philip on his return to Ramsey, having been made Deemster. Part V Heart-broken at the disappearance of Kate, Pete looks to keep her memory in honour by pretending that she has gone to Liverpool to stay with a fictional uncle. In order to maintain this lie against the gossip of the town, Pete multiplies his lies in beginning to fake a written correspondence between Kate and himself. As Philip watches his friend’s pathetic pretence, he feels the weight of his deceit, which causes him to take to drink and to pull away from Kate who has been secretly installed in his house. This situation continues until Kate leaves Philip so that he is relieved of his wretched situation. Part VI With Pete’s fortune used up, his deception with the letters is found out and Kate is universally thought of as a fallen woman by everyone but Pete. Meanwhile, the child falls sick, the news of which reaches Kate where she had fled, in London. She returns back to see the child where she again meets Pete before throwing herself into the harbour, attempting to end her shameful life. However, she is saved and immediately brought before the Deemster, Philip, to be tried. Philip realises who she is as he commits her to the prison in Castletown, and then faints. Whilst still in a swoon he is taken to Pete’s house, where Pete hears Philip’s feverish and unconscious confessions. However, instead of wreaking vengeance on Philip and Kate, Pete “realises that he alone is the person in the way, and therefore wipes himself out in order that the woman he loves may be happy.” So Pete determines to leave the island again, divorcing Kate before he goes and leaving Philip with the child and his best wishes. Philip then overcomes his final temptation, to take up the position of Governor, and confesses everything publically and so unburdes himself. The final scene sees him retrieving Kate from prison in order to start life afresh.
31158647	/m/0gh7h5b	Foundation				 This novel tells the story of Mags, an enslaved child working alongside other enslaved orphans in the bowels of a gemstone mine. The mine owner, Cole Peters, treats the children with casual brutality, an Mags, orphaned in his early childhood, has known no other life all the way up until the mysterious white horse stampedes into his life. This of course, is Dallen, his Companion, who assists Mags by bringing in another Herald to free him and the children. Their freedom comes on the heels of the arrest of Cole Peters, and Mags is flung into the fray of Haven as a Heraldic Trainee, with no notion of life outside of abject slavery. This, of course, left its scars, and Mags has both no idea of how to function in "normal" society, and no notion of why he so often winds up on the wrong end of trouble. His heavy accent and "stupidity" about such normal things leads to the King's Own taking him under his wing as a spy protégé, however, Mags lives in perpetual fear of the bad old days. This fear isn't unjustified, for it seems all of the Heralds are experiencing their own tumultuous changes, as they slowly abandon the old system of apprenticeships which Vanyel learned in, for one of a collegiate style such as what Herald Talia and Herald Elspeth experienced in the time of Arrows of the Queen. This switch is due to a sudden surge in the numbers of people Chosen, and the accompanying tremendous burdening of the Heraldic, Bardic, and Healer Collegium resources. The crowding is so intense, that Mags is forced to take a room in the Companion's stable. This, on top of his painful social ineptness, sets the stage for a confrontation between Mags and his detractors. Mags, who used to sleep in worse conditions, does not mind being out in the stables, and remains unaware of why so many others do. However, one Herald accuses him of bringing all manner of illicit goods into the room because of his lodging, and nearly attacks him before the Compainions intervene. Because of Mags's upbringing he has few friends so he literally does not understand many things most people in the Collegium find to be the utmost of importance, however with Dallen's help he finds two true friends, Lena, a Bardic Trainee, and Bear, a Healer Trainee. All while this is happening, Mags is trained by the Kings Own in the art of spying, and is assigned to keep an eye on two 'dignitaries' and their retinue of bodyguards and underlings who are visiting and causing trouble. He is also visiting the Guard Archives, in an attempt to find out how he ended up orphaned and enslaved in the first place. There is a suspicion that Mags' parents may have been bandits themselves, a prospect that leaves Mags troubled and desperate to find the actual Guard reports. There, he discovers that Bear has been kidnapped by the supposed dignitaries, and is being kept hostage with a mad man. The dignitaries have been digging through the guard archives, and there they attack Bear who was doing the same thing for personal reasons. Mags ends up rescuing Bear and dispatching the guards
31159822	/m/0gh7zn9	Ghost in the Machine				 Ghost in the Machine picks up where Skeleton Creek left off, with Ryan and Sarah trapped in the Dredge. They escape and return home, after finding out about the Crossbones, a secret society that protects the Dredge. Ryan learns that his father, Paul McCray, is one of the last ones alive. When Sarah and Ryan return home they attempt to find out as much as they can about the Crossbones. This includes, spying on Ryan's dad, interviews with Henry, Paul's best friend, and encounters with Old Joe Bush, the horrifying ghost of the Dredge. In the end, Ryan and Sarah discover that the Dredge is filled with millions of dollars worth of gold and that Henry is really insane and has been disguising himself as Old Joe Bush.
31160772	/m/0gh7qn8	Darkest Mercy	Melissa Marr	2011-02-22	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Keenan must choose between his queen Aislinn and his beloved Donia, while Aislinn is in love with Seth. However when the warmongering villain Bananach attacks they must unite, until at the end the love quadrilateral is resolved.
31167059	/m/0gh6zs1	Pierrot lunaire				 In a familiar dichotomy of the Symbolists, Pierrot lunaire occupies a divided space: a public realm, over which the sun presides, and a private realm, dominated by the moon. The waking, sunlit world, populated by Pierrot's Commedia dell'Arte companions, is marked by deformity, degeneracy, avarice, and lust. Its Crispins are "ugly", and its Columbine "arches her back", apparently in expectation of sexual pleasure (1: "Theater"). The meretriciously multicolored Harlequin—"shining like a solar spectrum" (11: "Harlequin")—is an "artificial serpent" whose "essential goal" is "falsehood and deceit" (8: "Harlequinade"). An old serving-woman connives in his scheming by accepting a bribe to procure Columbine's favors (11: "Harlequin"). These puppets live under a sky swarming with "sinister black butterflies" that "seek blood to drink", having "extinguished the sun's glory" with their wings (19: "Black Butterflies"). The sun itself is nearing the end of that glory: at its setting it seems like a Roman reveler, "full of disgust", who slits his wrists and empties his blood into "filthy sewers" (20: "Sunset"). It is a "great sun of despair" (33: "The Storks"). Pierrot is of the dreaming, moonlit world. His is an enchanted interior space, in which sequestered violins are caressed by moonbeams, thereby setting their souls, "full of silence and harmony", thrumming (32: "Lunar Violin"). He lives there as an aloof isolato, encountering in a "sparkling polar icicle" a "Pierrot in disguise" (9: "Polar Pierrot") and seeking, "all along the Lethe", not Columbine the fickle woman but her ethereal floral namesakes—"pale flowers of moonbeams/Like roses of light" (10: "To Columbine"). The moon is, aptly, a "pale washerwoman" (5: "Moon over the Wash-House") whose ablutions minister chiefly to the mind. For Pierrot has lost the happy enchantments of the past: the moribund pantomimic world seems "absurd and sweet, like a lie" (37: "Pantomime"), and the "soul" of its old comedies, to which he sometimes mentally propels himself, with an imaginary oar of moonlight (36: "Pierrot's Departure"), is "like a soft crystal sigh" bemoaning its own extinction (34: "Nostalgia"). Now, at the end of the century, Pierrot resides in a "sad mental desert" (34: "Nostalgia"). He is bored and splenetic: "His strange, mad gaiety/Has flown away, like a white bird" (15: "Spleen"). Too often the moon seems like a "nocturnal consumptive" tossing about on the "black pillow of the skies", deceiving the "carefree lover passing by" into mistaking for "graceful rays/[Its] white and melancholy blood" (21: "Sick Moon"). When he cannot find relief in her customary magic—in the "strange absinthe" of her beams, this "wine that we drink with our eyes" (16: "Moon-Drunk")—he takes pleasure in tormenting his enemies: he makes music by drawing a bow across Cassander's pot-belly (6: "Pierrot's Serenade"); he bores a hole in his skull as a bowl for his pipe (45: "Cruel Pierrot"). (Cassander is a target because he is an "academician" [37: "Pantomime"], a dry-as-dust guardian of the Law.) Madness seems to be lurking at Pierrot's elbow, as when he makes up his face with moonlight (3: "Pierrot-Dandy"), then spends an evening trying to brush a spot of it from his black jacket (38: "Moon-Brusher"). At his most despairing, he is visited by thoughts of his "last mistress"—the gallows (17: "The Song of the Gallows"), at the end of whose rope he dangles in "his white Moon robe" (18: "Suicide"). That the moon, indeed, seems to connive in his extinction is suggested by its sometime appearance as "a white saber/On a somber cushion of watered silk" that threatens to come whistling down on Pierrot's neck (24: "Decapitation"). His consolation is that the art in which he resides will have eternal life: "Beautiful verses are great crosses/On which red Poets bleed" (30: "The Crosses"). The old succor of religion is replaced by that of poetry, but at a cost—and with a difference. What is summoned to "the altar of [these] verses" is not the gentle Mary but the "Madonna of Hysteria", who holds out "to the incredulous universe/[Her] Son, with his limbs already green,/His flesh sagging and decayed" (28: "Evocation"). To the assembled faithful, Pierrot offers his heart: "Like a red and horrible Host/For the cruel Eucharist" (29: "Red Mass"). The new Lamb of God is a consumptive, his Word a confession of both self-sacrifice and impotence.
31170616	/m/0gh6zsd	Goal	Michael Hardcastle	1969	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story charts the rapid rise of talented teenage footballer Barry Dillon. At the start of the book his ambition is simply to make it into the school First XI and by the end he has become the youngest player ever to play for his local professional team, Scorton Rovers. Along the way he has to cope with sceptical parents, some nasty injuries and the jealousy of some of his peers, but his skill and determination, along with the unflinching support of his sister Jane, see him through. Goal is the first Hardcastle book about Scorton Rovers not to feature team captain Andy Blair who is injured when Barry makes his debut against Preston North End.
31170742	/m/0gh8ctl	United!	Michael Hardcastle	1973	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 United! follows youth football team Bank Vale United's attempts to improve their fortunes by buying a player from a rival team. Despite the fact that their team is amateur, United's impetuous striker Kevin Ripley believes there is no reason why they cannot pay for someone to come and join them. Kevin's team-mates Keith Nash and Gary Ansell, although sceptical, agree to the plan and the boys manage to raise the princely sum of £1 to purchase the talents of Nick Abel-Smith. Despite Nick's obvious ability he is an unsettling influence and the Bank Vale players have to make a tough choice between success and loyalty. In addition to the usual football action Hardcastle includes a section on another of his interests, Motocross.
31172045	/m/0gh6337	Unlikely Brothers	John Prendergast	2011-05-17		 John Prendergast, at twenty years old, decided to become a Big Brother to Michael Mattocks, a seven-year-old living in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Washington, DC. The book, co-authored by both, describes their different perspectives on their continuing relationship, shared over a period of more than 27 years.
31172333	/m/0gh7mq6	Dweller				 When Toby Floren was eight years old, he discovered a monster living in the woods behind his house. A ghastly, frightening creature with claws, fangs, and a taste for human flesh. As he ran out of the forest, screaming, Toby felt that he'd been lucky to escape with his life. Years later, Toby finds comfort with the creature. It's his own special secret-something that nobody else in the world knows about. Somebody to talk to. Somebody to confide in. Sure, Toby has concerns about his own sanity, but really, what boy wouldn't want to be best friends with a monster in the woods, especially if he's being tormented by bullies? The creature, who he names Owen, may be the answer to his problems... From Jeff Strand, the author of Pressure, comes the story of a macabre, decades-long friendship. A relationship that will last their entire lives, through times of happiness, tragedy, love, loss, madness, and complete darkness. Dweller. The lifetime story of a boy and his monster.
31180983	/m/0gh680q	Magic Seeds	V.S. Naipaul			 Magic Seeds is a sequel to Naipaul's 2001 novel Half a Life. Magic Seeds takes over where "Half a Life" left off – with Willie Somerset Chandran, a transplanted Indian, living with his sister Sarojini in Berlin. He was forced to come to Germany after a revolution in an unnamed African country (presumably Mozambique) forced him into exile. He had spent 18 years in Africa, and is ill at ease in the urban European setting. His sister arranges for him to return to India and become involved with communist guerrillas over there. He accepts this mission, but without any real sense of commitment to the rebels cause. He is quickly disillusioned with the guerrillas – their personal shortcomings and the ill-advised tactics of the movement – but remains involved with them partly out of inertia and partly out of fear that his former comrades might kill him. Eventually he gets captured and imprisoned, and finds life in prison preferable to a life on the run. He gets released from the prison when his English friend Roger arranges for an old collection of his short stories to be republished, which causes some embarrassment to the Indian government. Willie moves to London, and there he finds himself in an upper-middle class social set, and he slowly drifts into the life in the suburbs, with all its ironies and quiet sense of claustrophobia.
31184460	/m/0gh6vs8	The Need for Roots	Simone Weil			 The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 is subdivided into fourteen sections, each dealing with specific human needs, referred to as 'needs of the soul'. Part 2 is subdivided into three sections, dealing with the concept of uprootedness in relation to urban life, rural life and nationhood. Part 3 is undivided and discusses the possibilities for inspiring a nation. Only a small part of the book discusses the specific solutions that were of unique applicability to France in the 1940s, while most of the work discusses the general case and is of broad and lasting relevance. Part 1 begins with a discussion of obligations and rights. Weil asserts that obligations are more fundamental than rights, as a right is only meaningful insofar as others fulfil their obligation to respect it. A man alone in the universe, she says, would have obligations but no rights. Rights are therefore "subordinate and relative" to obligations. Weil says that those directing the French Revolution were mistaken in basing their ideas for a new society on the notion of rights rather than obligations, suggesting that a system based on obligations would have been better. Weil claims that while rights are subject to varying conditions, obligations are "eternal", "situated above this world" and "independent of conditions", applying to all human beings. The nature of the performance of obligations, however, may vary depending on circumstances. The most fundamental obligation to other human beings involves respecting the essential needs of others - the "needs of the soul". Weil backs up her ideas on the needs of the soul by mentioning that Christian, ancient Egyptian and other traditions have held similar views throughout history, particularly on the obligation to provide others with food. This, Weil says, should serve as a model for other needs of the soul. Weil also makes a distinction between physical needs (such as food, heating and medical attention) and non-physical needs that are concerned with the "moral side" of life. Both kinds are vital, and the deprivation of these needs causes one to fall into a state "more or less resembling death". Weil goes into some detail on collectives. She says that obligations are not binding to collectives, but to the individuals of which the collective is composed. Collectives should be respected, not for their own sake, but because they are 'food for mankind'. Collectives that are not 'food for mankind' - harmful or useless collectives - should be removed. The remainder of Part 1 is divided into sections discussing the essential needs of the soul, which Weil says correspond to basic bodily needs like the requirements for food, warmth and medicine. She says such needs can mostly be grouped into antithetical pairs, such as the needs for rest and activity, or for warmth and coolness, and that they are best satisfied when a balance is struck allowing both needs to be met in turn. In communities where all essential needs are satisfied there will be a "flowering of fraternity, joy, beauty and happiness". Order is introduced as a preeminent need. Weil defines order as an arrangement of society which minimises the situations one encounters where a choice has to be made between incompatible obligations. Liberty is described as the ability to make meaningful choices. It is recognized that societies must inevitably have rules for the common good which restrict freedom to a certain degree. Weil argues that these rules do not truly diminish one's liberty if they meet certain conditions; if their purpose is easily grasped and there aren't too many, then mature individuals of good will should not find the rules oppressive. This is illustrated by describing the habit of "not eating disgusting or dangerous things" as not being an infringement of liberty. The only people who would feel restricted by such rules are characterized as childlike. Obedience is defined as an essential need of the soul as long as it's the sort of obedience that arises from freely given consent to obey a given set of rules or the commands of a leader. Obedience motivated by a fear of penalties or a desire for reward is mere servility and of no value. The author writes that it's important that the social structure has a common goal, the essence of which can be grasped by all, so people can appreciate the purpose of the rules and orders. Weil says that everyone has a need to feel useful and even essential to others. They should ideally make at least some decisions and have opportunity to show initiative as well as carrying out work. She says the unemployed person is starved of this need. Weil advises that for people of a fairly strong character this need extends to a requirement to take a leadership role for at least part of their lives, and that a flourishing community life will provide sufficient opportunities for all to have their turn commanding others. Equality is an essential need when defined as a recognition that everyone is entitled to an equal amount of respect as a human being, regardless of any differences. Weil advises that an ideal society ought to involve a balance of equality and inequality. While there should be social mobility both up and down, if children have a truly equal chance for self-advancement based purely on their own abilities, everyone who ends up in a low grade job will be seen as being there due to their own shortcomings. Weil says an ideal social organisation would involve holding those who enjoy power and privilege to a higher standard of conduct than those who don't; in particular a crime from an employer and against employees should be punished much more severely than a crime from an employee against his or her employer. Weil writes of the importance of a system of hierarchy in which one feels devotion towards superiors, not as individuals, but as symbols. Hierarchism represents the order of the heavenly realm, and it helps one to fit into their moral place. Honour is the need for a special sort of respect over and above the respect automatically due to every human being. An individual's honour relates to how well their conduct measures up to certain criteria, which vary according to the social milieu inhabited by the individual. The need for honour is best satisfied when people are able to participate in a shared noble tradition. For a profession to satisfy this need, it should have an association able to "keep alive the memory of all the store of nobility, heroism, probity, generosity and genius spent in the exercise of that profession". Two sorts of necessary punishment are discussed. Disciplinary punishments help to reinforce an individual's good conscience, by providing external support in the battle against falling into vice. The second and most essential sort of punishment is the punitive. Weil considers that in a sense the committal of a crime puts the individual outside of the chain of obligations that form the good society, and that punishment is essential to re-integrate the individual into lawful society. Weil says it's essential for people to be free to express any opinion or idea. However she advises that very harmful views should not be expressed in the part of the media that is responsible for shaping public opinion. Security is described as freedom from fear and terror, except under brief and exceptional circumstances. She says that permanent fear causes a "semi-paralysis of the soul". Weil argues that risk, in the right amount, can be enough to protect one from a detrimental type of boredom and teach one how to appropriately deal with fear, but not be so much that one is overcome with fear. Weil writes that the soul suffers feelings of isolation if deprived of objects to call its own, which can serve as extensions of the body. She advises that where possible people should be able to own their own homes and the tools of their trade. The need for collective property is satisfied when people, from the richest to the poorest, feel a shared sense of ownership as well as enjoyment of public buildings, land and events. Weil asserts the need for truth is the most sacred of all needs. It is compromised when people don't have access to reliable and accurate sources of information. Because working people often lack the time to verify what they read in books and the mass media, writers who introduce avoidable errors should be held accountable. Propaganda should be banned and people who deliberately lie in the media should be liable to severe penalties.
31184601	/m/0gh8z9h	The Mark of the Horse Lord	Rosemary Sutcliff	1965	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story revolves around slave-gladiator Red Phaedrus, a red haired half Roman, half Celt. He receives his wooden-foil, i.e. his freedom after winning a fight-to-the-death in the Corstopitum arena. He is soon after approached by representatives of the Dal Riada, who ask him to impersonate their king in an effort to win back tribal leadership from a usurper queen. Phaedrus is persuaded, accepts the role of Midir, the original prince who's eyes were put-out by the queen, preventing him from ruling, and receives a signifying tattoo on his forehead, the eponymous Mark of the Horse Lord. The stage is then set for a struggle between King and Queen, between Dal Riada and Caledones, between the Sun God and the Great Mother; a theme used in many Sutcliff novels. Phaedrus spends time in a town on the Northern Wall, learning his role from the original prince Midir and the culture of the Celts. Several historical subjects are discussed, including Lollius Urbicus and the laying-waste of Valentia after subjugation, the Pax Romana and its effects, Calgacus's battles against General Agricola, and the viewpoints of Tacitus on all of this. A revolt ensues against the Queen, and the Dal Riada capital of Dun Monaidh is retaken, but the queen escapes to her kin amongst the Caledones. Phaedrus is crowned king in a ceremony where he places one foot on the carved footprint of previous kings. He lives among the Dal Riada, developing trust and understanding with some who recognize him for an impostor, most who do not. A war ensues between the Dal Riada and the Caledones, who are portrayed as Picts. The fighting occurs across the countryside around Cruachan (described as the Shield Boss of the World), as the Dal Riada struggle to defend their frontier. Other geographical features encountered include Loch Abha, Loch Fhiona, the Cluta, the Firth of the War Boats, and Glen Croe. The Dal Riada eventually win, the Caledones are dispersed, but the Queen flees and finds refuge in a Roman frontier fort. An attempt to assassinate the Queen is made with the help of the true Midir, in which both die, and Phaedrus is captured by the Romans. He is offered freedom at a great cost to the Dal Riada, referencing back to the discussions of Pax Romana and Roman treatment of the native tribes. Phaedrus instead opts to sacrifice himself for the survival of his adopted people, punctuating the concept of responsibility and the sacrificial king developed throughout the novel. The theme of the novel is built around an individual struggling to find identify and belonging, similar to Sutcliff novels such as Outcast and Dawn Wind, revolving around conflicting cultures, and the duties assumed and performed by individuals within those cultures. The duties of a king are shown in many of her novels, including Sword at Sunset and Sun Horse, Moon Horse, and have been credited as being influenced by James Frazer's The Golden Bough.
31189839	/m/0gj9bfs	Andamina Jeevitam				 ==Sources== te: అందమైన జీవితము
31190074	/m/0gjcfyl	The Cult	Max Simon Ehrlich		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Jeff was a loving son to Mr and Mrs Reed. But when he went to Ashtaroth, they lost him. He took a new name. He cursed his parents and spurned their love. Forever. for Jeff is now a member of The Cult. The Souls for Jesus, the brainchild of the Master, Buford Hodges, a tax-deductible, multi-million dollar industry feeding on the minds and bodies of the young and vulnerable. Only one man can redeem these lost souls. Only one man dares to take on the sinister forces of the Master. Only one man can help the Reeds. The man they call The Devil..
31194118	/m/0gjbqhk	The Sun Saboteurs	Damon Knight	1961	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the future, Earth has been devastated by war and disease and supports only a primitive agrarian society. Most Earthmen live elsewhere, as émigrés on planets that are populated by alien species. The author suggests that the human species is the only one plagued by "original sin", i.e. by an innate tendency to lie, cheat, kill; aliens have come to accept these traits without understanding them. The story takes place among a group of humans in the "Earth Quarter", a ghetto on the planet Palu that is populated by an insect-like alien race called the Niori. The story opens with a visit by a representative of a political group, the "Minority People's League", which endorses the return of humans to their ancestral planet and accommodation with the aliens. The envoy is attacked and murdered by a group of thugs who see all aliens as inferior to humans and who seek retribution for humans' second-class status. Their leader, Rack, commandeers a space ship and convinces a group from the Quarter to follow him as he establishes a new colony on an uninhabited planet. Instead, Rack puts them to work building "total-conversion bombs" and begins a campaign of using the bombs to destroy the suns of alien solar systems (hence the "sun saboteurs" of the title). Eventually Rack is stopped by a fleet of galactic (alien) ships, but he barely escapes and returns to Palu. The humans murder him, but are nevertheless forced by the Niori to leave. At the story's close, the humans are preparing to board a ship for Earth.
31196347	/m/0gjb4q5	The Belton Estate	Anthony Trollope			 Clara Amedroz is the only surviving child of the elderly squire of Belton Castle in Somersetshire. At twenty-five, she is old for an unmarried woman. Her father's income and savings have been dissipated to pay for the extravagances of her brother, who subsequently committed suicide. Since her father has no living sons, his estate, which is entailed, will pass upon his death to a distant cousin, Will Belton. Despite her poor prospects, she has two eligible suitors. Within four days of making her acquaintance, Will Belton proposes marriage to her. Belton is warm-hearted, kind, and generous, and these qualities make a strong impression on Clara. However, she believes herself in love with Captain Frederic Aylmer, although he has given no clear signs of feeling that way toward her. Aylmer is impeccable in his manners, smooth, urbane, well-read, and a member of Parliament; compared to him, Belton is awkward and unpolished. Clara rejects Belton's offer, urging him to regard her as a sister. Not long thereafter, Aylmer proposes to her, and she eagerly accepts. However, her happiness is short-lived. Her new fiancé proves shallow and cold, more concerned with his own comfort than with her happiness. Moreover, he expects her to subject herself to his domineering mother. Mr. Amedroz dies; and although Belton offers to allow Clara to remain at Belton Castle, she goes to live with the Aylmer family in Yorkshire. Lady Aylmer, who wants her son to marry money or a title, exerts herself to make Clara miserable there; and Captain Aylmer offers no support to his betrothed. For Clara, the final straw comes when Lady Aylmer demands that she sever her ties with a friend. Mrs. Askerton, Lady Aylmer has learned, left an abusive drunken husband in India and lived with Colonel Askerton for several years before the death of her husband freed her to marry him. Clara is duly appalled by her friend's past immorality, but cannot bring herself to cast off someone who has come to depend on her friendship. Pressed relentlessly on the subject by Lady Aylmer, she declares an end to her engagement and returns to Somersetshire, where she accepts the hospitality of the Askertons. Will Belton has never ceased to show his love for Clara, and she realizes that he is worthy of her love. However, she believes that it would be wrong to transfer her affection from one man to another. Only after Mrs. Askerton and Will's sister Mary Belton persuade her that it would be unjust to withhold her affection from Will can she bring herself to put aside her scruples and accept him. Marital bliss ensues.
31202176	/m/0gj8sct	Charlie Wilcox				 The book opens in Newfoundland in 1915. Charlie Wilcox's parents want him to go to college rather than become a seal hunter like his father; they believe that his club foot makes him unfit for an active life. To prove his courage and ability, fourteen-year-old Charlie decides to stow away on a sealing vessel; however, he finds himself instead on a troop ship bound for the war in Europe. Rather than return, he chooses to become a stretcher bearer at the front where he witnesses the horrors of trench warfare and the Battle of the Somme.
31204436	/m/0gjc08d	The Pregnant King				 The chronology of events as recorded in the Mahabharata has been manipulated and the story of Yuvanashva, replete with characters churned out of the author’s imagination, has been woven in. The protagonist, King Yuvanashva is the well liked ruler of Vallabhi, an obedient son,a devoted husband who aspires to be just towards all and uphold Dharma in his kingdom. From the onset of the story, the epic battle of Kurukshetra is imminent but the king’s mother, Shilavati, refuses to give her consent since he’s yet to sire an heir. Despite having three wives and several years of futile rituals the king has reached a point of desperation. So he seeks the help of the two eccentric sages, Yaja and Upayaja, who after an elaborate ritual create a potion meant for his barren queens but he ‘accidentally’ drinks it and ends up pregnant himself. The incident is hidden from everyone including the child except the wives, Shilavati and Asanga, the healer. After given birth to son, Mandhata, he successfully impregnates his second wife, Pulomi. The king who has lived his whole life by the code of Dharma now finds himself in a dilemma. “I am not sure that I am a man…I have created life outside me as men do. But I have also created life inside me, as women do. What does that make me? Will a body such as mine fetter or free me?” The irony of the whole story is that the king who is supposed to be the epitome of manhood and upholder of Dharma longs till his last breath to be called ‘mother’ just once by Mandhata. The novel also delves into the stories of other characters like Shilavati, the ambitious and sharp princess who cannot be king because she’s a woman. Widowed at a young age she becomes the regent but this disturbs the Brahmin elders because “they were not used to a leader who nursed a child while discussing matters of dharma”. (It’s notable that the unconventionality of Shilavati’s own life doesn’t make her any more tolerant of her son’s situation later on, which underlines the point that non-conformity/anti-tradition can take many forms, and these aren’t always kindred spirits.) It also tells the story of Somvat and Sumedha, two childhood friends who decide to get married despite being men. Sthunakarna, a yaksha, who forsakes his manhood to make Shikhandi a husband and then reclaims it to make Somvat a wife. Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives forced to masquerade as a eunuch after being castrated by a nymph. Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by Yaja and an enchantress by Upayaja. It’s also the story of the patron god of Vallabhi, Ileshwar Mahadev, who becomes God on full moon days and Goddess on new moon nights. Throughout the book, the author highlights the paradoxes and ambiguities of life. He also uses the shift in chronology to use episodes in the epic of Mahabharata as parallels or counterpoints for the Yuvanashva story. The characters in this book make chatty references to the lives of their more famous contemporaries in Hastinapur as mentioned in the Mahabhharata. The question of whether the impotent Pandu and the blind Dhritrashtra were fit to become king is set against similar dilemmas involving characters in Vallabhi. There’s some healthy irreverence on view: when a messenger arrives with the momentous news that the war is over, no one in the kingdom is particularly interested, being more concerned about internal matters. When the hero Arjuna makes what amounts to a guest appearance and is asked about a story Bhishma narrated to the Pandavas before he died, his reply is a curt, “I’m sorry but I remember no such story. He said so many things” – a neat dismissal of the ponderous Shanti Parva, Bhishma’s long deathbed discourse about a king’s duties. The story largely seems obsessed with marriage and child birth. There are multiple references to bulls, fields, soil and seeds as euphemisms for sex and conception, and to illuminate the vexing question of “ownership” that arises when a woman is made pregnant by someone other than her husband. And then there are those troublesome dead ancestors, the “pitrs”, waiting for the arrival of a child so they can be reborn in the land of the living. Taking the form of crows, they perch outside bedchambers, waiting for quick results, flapping their wings impatiently when foreplay goes on for too long. (“Does it not bother you that your son’s seed is weak?” one of them indelicately asks Shilavati.) The Pregnant King isn’t a consistently satisfying work – It keeps the reader interested for the larger part but at places it’s punctuated with staccato sentences (“That’s what they were. Vehicles of an idea. Two ideas. No. One idea, two expressions. Two halves of the same idea. Mutually interdependent”) that can annoy. The occasional forced attempt at informality, and some philosophical mumbo-jumbo towards the end (“Within you is your soul, Adi-natha as Shiva, silent, observant, still. Around you is matter, Adi-natha as Shakti, ever-changing, enchanting, enlightening, enriching, empowering”). Also, readers whose engagement with ancient texts runs along orthodox lines might not be too interested in a modern myth about the amorphous nature of the world and its laws. But in a sense, this book is meant for just such readers as the author hopes to make us realise that in the rush to deem situations Black or White, the vast expanse of grey needs to be acknowledged and dealt with as well. “The imperfection of the human condition and our stubborn refusal to make room for all those in between” is a cautionary tale for our own times. The result is a sporadically successful book that tells an engrossing, subversive story but meanders a little too much.
31204665	/m/0gjdq68	Half Broke Horses	Jeannette Walls		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Half Broke Horses is the story of Lily Casey Smith’s life. Author Jeannette Walls, the granddaughter of Lily Casey Smith, wrote the book from Lily’s point of view. Lily is portrayed as a strong, spirited, and resourceful woman, who overcomes poverty and tragedy with the positive attitude that “When God closes a window, he opens a door. But it’s up to you to find it.” As a child growing up on the frontier in Texas, Lily learns how to break horses. At the age of fifteen, she rides five hundred miles, alone, to get to her job as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. Later in life, Lily runs a vast cattle ranch in Arizona, along with her second husband and their two children. A woman of many talents, Lily earns extra money at various points in her life by playing poker, selling bootleg liquor, and riding in horse races. She also tries to fight injustice and prejudice wherever she finds it, which occasionally lands her in trouble. Half Broke Horses depicts the freedom of rural life, its joys and struggles, and celebrates the courage and spirit of its protagonist. Jeannette Walls says the book is “in the vein of an oral history, a retelling of stories handed down by my family through the years, and undertaken with the storyteller’s traditional liberties.”
31205153	/m/0gjf3gz	The Outlaws of Mars	Otis Adelbert Kline		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Jerry Morgan, a man with no future on Earth, is offered a new life on Mars. He starts out on the wrong foot, meeting a princess and killing the fearsome-looking Martian beast he takes to be menacing her, which actually turns out to be her pet. From there Morgan becomes entangled in the politics of the Byzantine Martian royal court, spurns the advances of a would-be lover, escapes his hosts and role as an expendable political pawn. Various adventures follow, with dazzling swordplay, feats of strength, and other trials, tribulations and treacheries. Kline's Mars has multiple parallel canals, surrounded by walls and terraces, and the construction of the canals by Martian machines is described. The story has a race-war element that may jar the modern reader.
31216990	/m/0gtvtgz	Mirror Dance	Lois McMaster Bujold	1994	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Clone Mark masquerades as Miles Vorkosigan (his progenitor) and dupes Miles' mercenary force, the Dendarii, into a mission to free clones held "prisoner" on Jackson's Whole, an anything-goes freebooters' planet where Mark was created and raised. When Miles finds out, he attempts to rescue his troops and his brother from the mess Mark has made, but is killed by a needle-grenade. He is frozen in a cryonic chamber on the spot, but the medic in charge becomes separated from the rest of the men while retreating under fire. The medic uses an automated shipping system to send the chamber to safety, but is killed before he can tell anyone its destination. The Dendarii take Mark to Miles' parents on Barrayar. Cordelia accepts him as another son and has him acknowledged legally as a member of the family. After a while, Mark concludes that Miles is still on Jackson's Whole, and decides to go there himself to look for him, since Barrayaran Imperial Security does not believe him. Cordelia helps by buying him a ship. Meanwhile, the frozen Miles has been resuscitated by the Duronas, a research group cloned from a medical genius, who are employed by Jackson's Whole magnate Baron Fell. His memory takes some time to return, and the doctors treating him do not know whether he is Mark, Miles or Admiral Naismith (Miles' cover identity with the Dendarii). Mark finds Miles, but is captured by Miles' old nemesis, Baron Ryoval, held prisoner, and tortured for five days. His personality fragments into four sub-personalities: Gorge the glutton, Grunt the sexual pervert, Howl the masochist, and Killer the assassin. Together, the first three protect the fragile Mark persona, while Killer bides his time. When Ryoval's assistant informs him that Mark seems to be enjoying the torture, a frustrated Ryoval decides to study his victim alone. Killer takes the opportunity to kill Ryoval, allowing Mark to escape. He sells Ryoval's secrets, accessible through a code ring, to Baron Fell for a large sum of money and permission for the Durona Group to emigrate. Miles' short death and revivification have serious repercussions for his health. Mark has his own problems, thanks to his strange upbringing, complicated by the torture. When he asks his mother for help, she sends him to Beta Colony for psychiatric treatment and therapy.
31219389	/m/0gj9g4m	Flame				 == Characters
31220750	/m/0gj8m_0	Welcome to Higby	Mark Dunn		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns the interconnected lives of the inhabitants of Higby, a fictional town in northern Mississippi, during the Labor Day weekend in 1993. Five separate stories lines are woven together featuring 25 main characters
31221547	/m/0gjdmj0	A for Anything	Damon Knight	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An anonymous inventor sends copies of the "Gismo" through the mail to hundreds of people. Civil society immediately collapses; as one news commentator says: "The big question today is: Have you got a Gismo? And believe me, nothing else matters." The story jumps to the year 2149: the society we know has been replaced by a society of wealthy minority supported by slavery. Access to Gismos is jealously guarded by a handful of strong men. The story is told through the eyes of Dick Jones, the son of the leader of Buckhill, a compound in the Poconos. Jones is coming of age and is about to be sent to Eagles, another, larger compound in the Rocky Mountains, for military training. Jones is initially presented as an unsympathetic character: spoiled, impulsive, hot-headed. In his final day at Buckhill, he picks a fight with a cousin, who challenges Dick to a duel; Dick kills him, and has to be ushered away in secret the following morning to avoid retribution. Jones arrives at Eagles, a fabulous city built into a mountain. Like Buckhill, Eagles is run as a slave society; but Jones is startled to realize that the Gismo is used to duplicate slaves, and that the most trusted slaves have been copied hundreds of times. Status among citizens is determined by social connections, and, for males, by skill at hand-to-hand combat. The author takes care to show us the seamy side of Eagles; for instance, the Boss relaxes by dropping slaves from the top of a tall tower and watching them plunge to their death via closed-circuit television. There are hints from Jones's father in Buckhill that the slaves are contemplating revolt. In Eagles, Jones is introduced to a secret society that debates the merits of the slave culture and that plans a revolution, with the collaboration of a disaffected member of the ruling family. Jones is enthralled by the arguments he hears. But before the revolution can be put into action, the slaves revolt, killing most of the free citizens in Eagles and Buckhill, including Jones's family. Jones is forced to choose between his allegiance to kin and his yearning for a better society.
31227024	/m/0gjc9n_	More Money Than God				 In each chapter, Mallaby takes a narrative focus on one individual or company that played an important role in the history of hedge funds. Mallaby then weaves in other people, ideas or companies related to the star of the chapter. The following are some of the major people, institutions and concepts on a per chapter basis. The first in each list is the central character of that chapter. *Ch 1 Big Daddy: A. W. Jones, Hedge fund *Ch 2 The Block Trader: Michael Steinhardt, Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co., Block trade, Monetary policy *Ch 3 Paul Samuelson's Secret: Commodities Corporation, Paul Samuelson, Bruce Kovner (Caxton Corporation), Trend trading, Automated trading system *Ch 4 The Alchemist: George Soros, Quantum Fund, Reflexivity, Jim Rogers *Ch 5 Top Cat: Julian Robertson, Tiger Management *Ch 6 Rock-and-Roll Cowboy: Paul Tudor Jones II *Ch 7 White Wednesday: Black Wednesday, Stanley Druckenmiller & George Sorros *Ch 8 Hurricane Greenspan: Shadow banking system, Bond market crisis of 1994, Stanley Druckenmiller & George Sorros *Ch 9 Soros vs Soros: 1997 Asian financial crisis, 1998 Russian financial crisis, Stanley Druckenmiller & George Sorros *Ch 10 The Enemy Is Us: Long-Term Capital Management, John Meriwether *Ch 11 The Dot-Com Double: Dot-com bubble, Tiger Management & Quantum Fund *Ch 12 The Yale Men: David Swensen, Tom Steyer, Event-driven investing *Ch 13 The Code Breakers: Renaissance Technologies, James Simons, David E. Shaw *Ch 14 Premonitions of a Crisis: Amaranth Advisors, Brian Hunter *Ch 15 Riding the Storm: John Paulson, Subprime mortgage crisis *Ch 16 "How Could They Do This": Financial crisis (2007–present)
31229545	/m/0gj8dhd	Empire State of Mind		2011-03-17	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 From the official blurb: :Empire State of Mind tells the story behind Jay-Z's rise to the top as told by the people who lived it with him- from classmates at Brooklyn's George Westinghouse High School; to the childhood friend who got him into the drug trade; to the DJ who convinced him to stop dealing and focus on music. This book explains just how Jay-Z propelled himself from the bleak streets of Brooklyn to the heights of the business world. Notable sources include hip-hop luminaries such as DJ Clark Kent, Questlove of The Roots, Damon Dash, Fred "Fab 5 Freddy” Brathwaite, MC Serch; NBA stars Jamal Crawford and Sebastian Telfair; and recording industry executives including Craig Kallman, CEO of Atlantic Records. Greenburg also reveals new information on Jay-Z’s various business dealings, such as: * The feature movie about Jay-Z and his first basketball team that was filmed by Fab 5 Freddy in 2003 but never released. * The Jay-Z branded Jeep that was scrapped just before going into production. * The real story behind his association with Armand de Brignac champagne. * The financial ramifications of his marriage to Beyoncé.
31230954	/m/0gvtfnr	Bird at the Buzzer			{"/m/01z02hx": "Sports"}	 The main subject of the book is the Big East Tournament championship game of 2001, although the book intersperses play by play coverage of the game with background information on the entire season, as well as commentary on the players, coaches and other aspects of the two programs. The game featured in the book was neither the first nor the last meeting of the two teams in the season. In January, UConn played Notre Dame at Notre Dame. The UConn team was undefeated, and ranked number one in the country at the start of the game. Notre Dame won the game 92–76, remained undefeated, and moved from third to the number one ranking at the next poll. Both teams would also meet in the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament, with Notre Dame prevailing and then going on to win the national championship. All of the meetings between the two teams that year were important games for each team, but the game in March had multiple story lines—a tournament championship at stake, a close game in which neither team lead by more than eight points at any time, a devastating injury to one of the games best players, and finally, a game that was decided by a single basket scored in the final moments, by one of the best players in the sport, Sue Bird.
31240119	/m/0gjbxhr	We Who Are About To...	Joanna Russ		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story takes the form of an audio diary kept by the unnamed protagonist. A group of people, with no technical skills and scant supplies, are stranded on a planet and debate how to survive. The men in the group are dedicated to colonizing and populating the planet, but the unnamed female protagonist, who does not believe that long term survival is possible, resists being made pregnant by them. Tensions escalate into violence, until finally she is forced to kill the other survivors in order to defend herself against rape. Left alone, she becomes increasingly philosophical, recounting her personal history in political agitation and attempting to chart the days and seasons even as she begins to hallucinate from hunger and loneliness. She experiences visions, first of the people she killed, and then of people from her past. Finally, weak from hunger, she resolves to kill herself.
31243767	/m/0gj90ck	The Traveler's Gift		2002-11-05		 Forty-six-year-old David Ponder feels like a total failure. Once a high-flying executive in a Fortune 500 company, he now works a part-time, minimum wage job and struggles to support his family. Then, an even greater crisis hits: his daughter becomes ill, and he can’t afford to get her the medical help she needs. When his car skids on an icy road, he wonders if he even cares to survive the crash. But a unique experience awaits David Ponder. He finds himself traveling back in time, meeting leaders and heroes at crucial moments in their lives—from Abraham Lincoln to Anne Frank. By the time his journey is over, he has received seven secrets for success—and a second chance. The Traveler's Gift offers a modern day parable of one man's choices—and the attitudes that make the difference between failure and success.
31244947	/m/0gj9wrs	Surviving your Serengeti		2011-03		 Swanepoel compares modern-day business and personal challenges with the life-and-death struggles of the millions of animals of Serengeti plains of East Africa whose 1,000 mile-long migration filled with hunger, thirst, predators and exhaustion is often considered one of the natural wonders of the world. The book matches a person's dominate instinctive skill with its corresponding Serengeti animal. According to the book the seven skills and animals include the "enduring wildebeest", the "strategic lion", the "enterprising crocodile", the "graceful giraffe", the "efficient cheetah", the "risk-taking mongoose" and the "communicating elephant".
31262192	/m/0gj8rmd	Sir Degrevant			{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance"}	 The plot of Sir Degrevant revolves around the titular character and his neighbor, an earl, whose daughter Myldore falls in love with Sir Degrevant. While there is a "perfunctory connection" with King Arthur and his court, the romance is devoid of the usual marvels associated with Arthurian literature. Sir Degrevant is the "perfect romance hero": intent on hunting and adventures, he is young, handsome, and strong; most importantly to the plot, he is not interested in the love of a woman. While he is on a crusade, his neighbor, an earl, does great damage to Degrevant's property and kills the foresters who oversee his deer park. Degrevant hurries back from Granada, repairs the fences and the other damage done, then addresses a letter to the earl seeking legal redress. When the earl refuses to make reparations, Degrevant avenges himself by attacking the earl's hunting troop and then his castle. During this latter engagement, the earl's daughter, Melydor, watches from the castle walls and Degrevant falls in love with her. Melydor initially rebuffs Degrevant's attempt to declare his love, but later grants it to him. Her father sets up a tournament to promote the chances of another suitor (the Duke of Gerle), but Degrevant defeats him thrice. The lovers meet secretly in her splendidly decorated bedroom (it contains paintings of saints and angels, and such details as glass from Westphalia and "curtain cords made of mermaids' hair won by Duke Betyse," a reference to a duke from a fourteenth-century chanson de geste Les Voeux du paon), but they remain chaste until marriage. Finally, the earl agrees to his daughter's engagement with Degrevant, convinced by his daughter and his wife's pleas and by Degrevant's obvious chivalry and strength. The couple have seven children and enjoy a happy and prosperous life together. When Melydor dies, Degrevant returns to the crusade and dies in the Holy Land.
31269069	/m/0ll2z4n	Gideon's Corpse	Lincoln Child			 The book begins immediately after the conclusion of Gideon's Sword. Eli Glinn does not seemed displeased by Gideon's previous actions, and recruits Gideon to help calm down a colleague of Gideons at Los Alamos, Reed Chalker, who has gone insane and has taken a family hostage. Chalker is spouting ravings that he has been irradiated by some conspiracy. In an event similar to the death of Gideon's father, Chalker is gunned down. During a search of his apartment, it is discovered that he is highly radioactive. It is determinedd that the cause of this was a botched attempt at assembling a uranium bomb. Chalker's hideout seems to have most of the tools necessary to create a nuclear bomb. It also has a map of DC, and a calender indicating the bomb will detonate in ten day's time. Glinn assigns Gideon to help track down the bomb, and Gideon works with an FBI Agent named Stone Fordyce. The pair of them go out west to Los Alamos, and try to check into Chalker's past. They interview Reed's ex-wife, now a member of a radical cult, His favorite novelist, Simon Blaine, and the members of Chalker's mosque. On their way to Chalker's writers workshop in California, the plane Fordyce is flying suffers a malfunction in both engines, forcing them to crashland. Fordyce comments how unlikely this is to happen by accident, and concludes it was the result of sabotage. Gideon is framed for being a terrorist- incriminating emails are placed on his work computer, and he is forced into hiding. His reluctant accomplice in this is Alida Blaine, Simon's daughter. Gideon eventually comes to the conclusion that Simon is in on the conspiracy. Fordyce, convinced the Bill Novak- the Los Alamos Security Director- is corrupt, assists Gideon in breaking into Simon's computer as the two of them drive to DC. They discover that Blaine's true plan is to steal a vial of smallpox, with most of the security busy searching for an imaginary bomb. Gideon manages to save the vial, but Fordyce dies in the process, and Alida is horribly distraught. Gideon then confirms that he has only a year to live, as Glinn mentioned in the first book.
31269750	/m/0gj8m6m	The Dressmaker of Khair Khana	Gayle Tzemach Lemmon	2011-03-15		 The story begins in 1996 on the day that Kamila graduates with her teaching certificate, and the day the Taliban first arrive in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan and home to the Sidiqi family. Inspired by the sharia law of Islam, it would become the doctrine of the Taliban to completely isolate women from society. Women were not permitted to work, attend school, or even leave the house without a male relative, or mahram. Kamila’s father and brothers do not escape persecution either, and are soon forced to flee the city. Unable to teach and desperate to support her family, Kamila masters the art of dressmaking and passes on the skills to her younger sisters. In order to find work for the budding business, Kamila frequently makes the dangerous trek to the market and meets with the owners of local dress shops. Soon the business is growing, and Kamila sees an opportunity to help other women in her community. With the help of her sisters, she opens a tailoring school in their home to teach women how to sew and to give them work once they completed their training. At a time of almost insurmountable poverty, she is able to employ nearly one hundred of her friends and neighbors, all the while escaping the scrutiny of the Taliban.
31287453	/m/0gjb7_s	Passage to Nirvana	Lee Carlson		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Passage to Nirvana begins with Carlson's accident, when he was hit by a car standing outside a car wash, striking his head violently on the pavement, fracturing his skull, lapsing into a light coma and sustaining a Traumatic Brain Injury, with bleeding on the brain and other damage. The story follows him through his brief hospitalization, then a year-long rehab in Florida, then his return to the North Fork of Long Island where he tries to rebuild his shattered life. His wife has left him and moved away with their children, his work life has evaporated, he has no home and has to start over again from scratch. During his year in Florida he also helps care for his mother, who is severely disabled from her own traumatic brain injury sustained when she fell down a flight of basement stairs. She is in a wheelchair, unable to walk, talk or feed herself. While he is in Florida, his mother eventually dies. Upon returning to Long Island, more misfortunes seem to pile on at every turn: his aunt dies of cancer, as does his brother-in-law, and he returns to Buffalo to help his sister and her children while his brother-in-law is in the hospital. While this may sound morbid and depressing, the bulk of the book is uplifting, a positive affirmation of life. Carlson concentrates on his Zen Buddhist studies and meditation as a way of helping him heal, working with the noted writer and Zen teacher Peter Matthiessen. Sections of the book take place in the Ocean Zendo, a Zen center run by Matthiessen, and much of the book is a meditation on the spiritual aspects of healing, acceptance and rebuilding a life. Eventually Carlson meets a beautiful, understanding woman who has been through difficulties of her own: a difficult divorce, raising two children as a single mother. They fall in love, and decide to buy a sailboat named "Nirvana" that they discover rotting in a boatyard in St. Martin. They renovate the boat, sail her back to the eastern end of Long Island, where they are joined by their four children and two dogs, working at creating a new family and a new life. Eventually they sail "Nirvana" to the Bahamas for a winter writing sabbatical, where most of the book was written. Trying to describe the "plot" is difficult, however, as the book is really a collection of short essays, some about events happening in real time, some about Traumatic Brain Injury, some reflections on various aspects of philosophy and Eastern thought, and some stories recalling the author's childhood. See the section "Unique Writing Style" below for more information.
31295492	/m/0gjb6__	Transformers: Exodus – The Official History of the War for Cybertron	Alexander C. Irvine	2010-06-22	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is set on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers. It has been several centuries since Cybertron's golden age of space exploration and planetary colonisation, and Cybertron's society has declined into a state of decadence. The planet's many Space Bridges have went offline due to years of neglect, and as a result Cybertron has lost contact with the other planets that the Transformers colonised during the golden age. When a new Transformer is born from the Well of All Sparks (which contains the AllSpark, the device that creates new Transformers), they are assigned to a caste and guild from which they may never deviate throughout their lives. Castes are separated into a hierarchy, with the highest castes relating to science, art and government, while the lower castes are given to manual labourers in factories and underground mines. Those in the lowest castes are not given individual names. In the industrial city of Kaon, gladiatorial combat grows in popularity among the lower castes. One of the gladiators, a labourer who completely opposes the caste system and calls himself "Megatronus" after one of the original thirteen Transformers, rises to power and becomes a local celebrity due to his skills in the gladiatorial pits. Megatronus' fans and followers shorten his name to "Megatron" in their chants, and the name sticks. In the city of Iacon, a clerk named Orion Pax, who works in Cybertron's Hall of Records and also dislikes the caste system, begins watching Megatron's political speeches and eventually contacts Megatron to discuss their similar political views. Megatron champions a free Cybertron, with each individual determining their own path in life, and Orion finds this highly appealing. Orion turns for guidance to his supervisor and mentor Alpha Trion, who encourages him to meet with Megatron in Kaon, cryptically stating that a great destiny awaits both Orion and Megatron. Taking Alpha Trion's advise, Orion travels to Kaon and meets Megatron in person, along with two of his followers, Shockwave and Soundwave. Orion and Megatron engage in intense but friendly debates over the nature of free will, and they find broad agreement in the need for a new form of Cybertronian government. However, Megatron favours confrontation and revolution, while Orion hopes to inspire the masses to change the system from within. As Megatron's political movement gains power, it also grows more violent. Terrorists professing allegiance to Megatron commit multiple bombings across Cybertron, one of these bombings destroys the "Six Lasers Over Cybertron" amusement park. Megatron repeatedly states in public speeches that he does not know the terrorists and did not orchestrate these attacks, and at one point Orion even vocally defends him. The terrorists then attack the Altihex Casino in the city of Altihex, where Sentinel Prime (the main political leader of Cybertron) is attending a show. When the bombings start, Sentinel relies on his three bodyguards, Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker, to escort him to safety. However, the three bodyguards are actually part of the plot as well, and they take Sentinel to Kaon and present him to Megatron. Starscream flirts with joining Megatron's forces, but seeing Sentinel as a potential bargaining chip he doesn't allow Megatron to kill him, and instead orders Skywarp and Thundercracker to take Sentinel to Trypticon Station, a scientific space station that orbits Cybertron. To prevent an all-out war, Alpha Trion helps Orion and Megatron secure an audience before the Cybertron High Council in order to plead their case. The Council members are hostile to any notion of change and view Megatron as nothing but a criminal. Megatron continues to disown the terrorist attacks being committed in his name but continues to appeal for the total removal of the caste system, including the Council itself. His words are supported by the lower castes in the council's audience, who have started calling themselves "Decepticons". By contrast, Orion makes a more noble appeal to the Council. He points out that earlier generations of Transformers would never have been able to repel the Quintessons (an alien race that tried to invade Cybertron centuries ago) if they had been constrained by such a caste system. He proclaims their fuller potential as a race if each individual were to be acknowledged as an autonomous robot, using the ancient term "Autobot" as an expression of that ideal. After his speech, the Council member Halogen agrees that the two radicals might have a point, and that Cybertronian society might have become too static for its own good. Recognizing the depth of the crisis that Cybertron faces, Halogen asserts that they need new visionary leadership to guide a social rebirth. The Council, impressed by Orion's morals, appoint Orion as the new leader of Cybertron, giving him a new name and title: Optimus Prime. However, Orion's sudden elevation destroys his friendship with Megatron, who is outraged and believes the situation to be a set-up. Megatron kills Halogen at once, but as the crowd marshals for war, Optimus Prime manages to convince Megatron not to commit further violence within the Council halls. The two sides retreat from the halls and the great war between Optimus Prime's Autobots and Megatron's Decepticons begins. The war is brutal and largely one-sided. The Autobots retain control of two cities, Iacon and Kalis, while the Decepticons take over everywhere else on the planet. Out of desperation, the Autobots launch the AllSpark into space to keep Megatron from gaining control of the source of Transformer life. Seeking a new advantage, Megatron orders Starscream to give him access to Trypticon Station's stockpile of Dark Energon, a power-enhancing substance that according to legend is the blood of the mythical being Unicron. The Decepticons consume the Dark Energon and become extremely powerful, gaining a combat edge and overwhelming the struggling Autobots. Megatron then seeks control of the Plasma Energy Chamber at Cybertron's core, planning to flood it with Dark Energon, which would permanently empower his own forces while poisoning Cybertron and starving the Autobots to death. But in order to activate the Chamber, he needs to acquire two code keys. One of these keys is stored within Sentinel Prime's chest, and Megatron acquires it by brutally murdering him. Before Megatron can fully activate the Plasma Energy Chamber though, the Autobots reactivate Omega Supreme, an enormous robot that transforms into both a rocket ship and a city, and once served as Cybertron's guardian. While transforming from a city to a rocket ship, Omega Supreme nearly crushes Megatron and the Decepticons, but they narrowly avoid getting killed by the giant. Omega Supreme takes off with the Plasma Energy Chamber and attempts to fly it to safety, but Starscream leads an aerial assault that manages to shoot him down, and after Megatron empowers himself with Dark Energon, he effortlessly defeats the Autobots and Omega Supreme's robot mode. He then floods the Plasma Energy Chamber with Dark Energon and sends it back into the core of Cybertron. As the Dark Energon flows throughout Cybertron, Optimus Prime ventures into the core to fix the Plasma Energy Chamber, accompanied by the Autobots Bumblebee and Jetfire. Once they find it, Bumblebee manages to extract the Chamber from the core, stopping the flow of Dark Energon, and Optimus receives a mental communication from the core itself, which is sentient. With the flow of Dark Energon stopped, the core will eventually be able to heal itself, but it will take centuries, and during that time the core will not be able to generate enough Energon to sustain the population it currently does. The Transformers will either have to abandon the planet until it heals, or risk starvation. To show him not to lose hope, the core bestows Optimus Prime with the Matrix of Leadership. Seeing that the planet will soon be uninhabitable, Optimus Prime orders a mass exodus of the Autobot army, but most of the ships are shot down by Trypticon Station. One Autobot ship, the Eight Track, is able to link up to Trypticon Station and force it to crash into Cybertron, but as it falls the station transforms into an enormous, reptilian monster and goes on a rampage. Alpha Trion grows ever more despairing for Cybertron, and he sets a radical plan into motion: the construction of the largest spaceship in Cybertronian history, the Ark, on which most of the Autobots may escape. Several Autobots, including Alpha Trion, Ultra Magnus, Jetfire and a newly-repaired Omega Supreme, volunteer to stay on Cybertron and protect what little territory the Autobots still hold. Despite Optimus's strong wishes, Alpha Trion refuses to leave Cybertron and declares the time has come for Optimus to make his own command decisions without his advise. As most of the Autobots flee to the Ark and it takes off into space, Megatron commands Trypticon to transform into an equally large spaceship, the Nemesis, in which Megatron and most of the Decepticons will give pursuit. Before they leave, Megatron appoints Shockwave as the dictator of Cybertron, ordering him to destroy all remaining Autobots by the time Megatron returns. With the Nemesis in hot pursuit, the Autobots fly the Ark to the last intact Space Bridge, but because no one alive knows how to use it, there is no guarantee taht the Space Bridge will work. But as the two giant spaceships get within range of the Space Bridge, it does indeed activate and teleports them to an uncharted part of space. With no Decepticons in sight, The Ark detects the energy signature of the AllSpark. Optimus Prime orders the Ark pilots to follow the signal, and their adventure in space begins.
31300452	/m/0gjd6qd	The Dwarf				 The Dwarf is a work of social criticism which focuses on the forced redevelopment of Hangbook-dong (행복동) in Seoul in the 1970s, and the human costs that accompanied it. The Dwarf revolves around a literal “little guy,” and his family and friends, and their changing economic and social relationships which are destroyed by Korean modernization. The book follows the dwarf’s stunted existence through nasty cityscapes. A short cast of characters cycles in and out of the stories in anachronistic order. The dwarf lives in the ironically named Felicity District in Eden Province. The District is chosen for redevelopment and the dwarf and his family are evicted. The dwarf eventually commits suicide in a factory smokestack while his family is sundered. Family members argue that society has misjudged the dwarf, by seeing his height and not his skills. This focus on literal measure is a subtle irony which references several aspects of modernization, including the necessities of measuring everything, regularizing the size of everything, and commodifying everything. At the time the novel was being written the Park government roamed the streets of Seoul, its fashion police literally measuring the hair-length of men and the skirt-length of women. In the factories, meanwhile, standardization, routinization and the tyranny of the time clock erased human differences between workers when not actually erasing humanity. This scarring and diminution is not merely physical, it is social and economic as well. The dwarf dies, his son becomes a murderer, and the dwarf’s daughter is reduced to semi-prostitution to steal back her family's right to a home. This last theft fails; when the daughter returns to her home there is no sign of it ever existing.
31301515	/m/0gjcvdj	Masters of Evolution	Damon Knight	1959	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the near future, the world is divided into two antagonistic groups: city dwellers and country dwellers, called "muckfeet". The muckfeet control most of the land area and have a much higher population. The mayor of New York convinces a popular actor, Alvah Gustad, to negotiate an agreement with the muckfeet: technology in exchange for their scarce metals. Alvah reluctantly agrees, and is given a chance to present his wares at a fair in the Midwest. No one is interested; an altercation ensues and Alvah realizes that he is stranded. He is taken in by a pretty young woman named B. J.; gradually he comes to accept and understand the muckfeet way of life, which includes novel uses of genetic engineering in place of machines. Alvah falls in love with B. J. and when the cities launch an attack on the muckfeet, Alvah is forced to reexamine his beliefs about the superiority of the city way of life. ]
31312585	/m/0gjc7b7	The Space Between Us	Thrity Umrigar	2006-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The Space Between Us takes place in present-day India and centers on two women: Serabai (Sera) Dubash, an upper-middle-class, Parsi widow, and her domestic servant of more than twenty years, Bhima. Now sixty-five years old, illiterate Bhima lives in the slums of Mumbai with her pregnant, unwed granddaughter, the seventeen-year-old Maya, whose college tuition is paid for by Sera. Through flashbacks, Bhima remembers her husband, who, after a work-related accident caused him to lose three fingers, became an alcoholic and abandoned her, taking their son Amit with him. She also remembers her daughter Pooja, who married, but died of AIDS together with her husband, leaving Maya an orphan at a young age. Since the sudden death of her physically abusive husband three years ago, Sera has cared for her disabled mother-in-law, who had insisted on isolating her from the family when Sera was menstruating. Sera also tends to her pregnant daughter Dinaz, and pays for Maya's abortion. A while later, Maya reluctantly tells Bhima that Dinaz's husband Viraf impregnated her and told her to keep it a secret so that she could continue her education and Bhima could keep her job. Angered, Bhima confronts Viraf, and he later accuses her of stealing from the cupboard. Sera dismisses her, unable to listen to Bhima's hints about Viraf's actions towards Maya. Bhima leaves, and recalling a balloon seller whom she had admired, buys worth of balloons and goes to the seaside. She resolves to deal with tomorrow.
31323234	/m/0gjbr7m	The Final Summit		2011-04-12		 This is mankind's last chance. Centuries of greed, pride, and hate have sent humanity hurtling toward disaster, and far from its original purpose. There is only one solution that can reset the compass and right the ship, and it consists of only two words. With time running out, it is up to David Ponder and a cast of history's best and brightest minds to uncover this solution before it is too late. The catch? They are allowed only five tries to discover the answer. Readers first encountered David Ponder in The Traveler's Gift. Now, in The Final Summit, Andrews combines a riveting narrative with astounding history in order to show us the one thing we must do when we don't know what to do. Many years have passed since David Ponder discovered the Seven Decisions during a divine journey through time. Now 74 years old, Ponder has lost the one thing that mattered to him most: his wife, Ellen. Gone are the days of raising their children together, getting away to their favorite vacation spot, Peter Island, and simply passing the time together. Despite his personal and professional success, Ponder now sits alone at the top of his 55-story high-rise contemplating the unthinkable, just as he did 28 years ago. However, just as things are looking their darkest, Ponder is informed through divine channels that he is needed now more than ever. Together, with the help of hundreds of his fellow Travelers, from Winston Churchill to George Washington Carver to Joan of Arc, he must work to discover the one solution that will save humanity. Time is running out, and the final summit of Travelers must work quickly to avoid dire consequences. The Final Summit explores the historically proven principles that have guided our greatest leaders for centuries, and how we might restore these principles in our own lives...before it's too late.
31324723	/m/0gjb_0j	The God of Animals			{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 Alice Winston, a twelve-year-old girl, struggles with her place in the world the summer after her sister runs away from home and marries a rodeo cowboy. Her mother—bedridden because of postpartum depression—hasn't left her bedroom since Alice was an infant, and her father is failing to keep their horse ranch running. In order to survive, Joe Winston begins boarding wealthy women's horses, dreaming of the day when his ranch will overflow with children taking show lessons. During the hottest summer in decades, a series of trials overcome the Winstons, teaching Alice how cruel life can be.
31338165	/m/0gh7yrm	Beautiful Darkness			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes are recovering from the fact that Lena's uncle, Macon Ravenwood, an Incubus, died during their battle against Lena's evil mother, Sarafine. The two fell in love when Lena came to the small, unchanging town of Gatlin in South Carolina. Lena is a Caster and unlike other caster families, hers shares a curse that was accidentally put on them by their ancestor, Genevieve Duchannes. Each member of Lena's family is claimed his/her sixteenth birthday, for either Light or Dark. Light vs. Dark being the Caster equivalent of good vs. evil. The night that her uncle had died, Lena's sixteenth birthday, one of Lena's eyes had turned Gold (The eye color of Dark Casters) while the other remained Green (The eye color of Light Casters), therefore leaving her in the middle of Dark and Light. Sometime after Macon's death, Ethan starts worrying about Lena, who has been acting strange ever since. Lena has stopped writing in the tattered old journal that she used to carry around with her. She has even almost stopped Kelting with Ethan and rather prefers to block him out. Ethan, on the other hand, is having strange visions that include Macon, Abraham Ravenwood and a girl named Jane, who Macon appears to be madly in love with. On the last day of school, after Lena has told Ethan that she and her family are leaving town, Ethan, Lena and Link (Ethan's best friend) are alone on a lake because of an incident that took place at the high school's parking lot. After kissing Ethan, Lena takes off into the forest and, after chasing her, Ethan witnesses her jump on to the back of a Harley and ride off with a stranger. In hope of finding her, Ethan and Link drive to Dar-ee Keen, Gatlin's greasy version of Dairy King. Instead, they meet up with Ridley, Lena's Dark Caster cousin, who always appeared barely dressed, with the power of persuasion. Ridley is with a guy who introduces himself as John Breed and claims to know Lena. Ethan realizes that John was the one Lena had run off with. At his job in the library, Ethan meets Olivia "Liv" Durand, who befriends him quickly. After giving Liv a tour of Gatlin, Ethan and Liv are eating at the Dar-ee Keen when Lena's car races by, obviously stating that she had seen Ethan and Liv together. During the town's annual County Fair, Ethan is shocked to see that Lena is wearing Ridley's type of clothing: black tank that has ridden up on her stomach, black skirt about five inches short, a streak of blue in her hair and black-rimmed eyes. During Ethan and Lena's conversation, Liv shows up. In response to this, Lena takes off, jealous and angry, causing a chain reaction of chaos as she went. Afterwards, during the pie contest sponsored by Southern Crusty, Ridley, John and Lena cause maggots, beetles and grubs to crawl of every pie except one, Amma Treadeau's. Amma is Ethan's housekeeper, a grandmotherly figure to him, taking care of him since his mother died. When Ethan and Link follow the three troublemakers, they see them enter the Tunnel of Love and disappear, not leaving a clue to where they went. Desperate to get some help, Ethan and Link go to the Lunae Libri, the Caster library, in hope of finding Marian, the Mortal librarian and Caster library Keeper. Once inside, Ethan hears a laugh, guiding him to a room in which he finds Liv. Liv explains to him that she is a keeper in training and knows quite a lot about the Caster world. Marian, on the other hand, suspects that Ethan may be a Wayward, a Mortal who helps Casters in finding the way to their fates, or the one who knows the way. It is also revealed to Ethan that his mother was a Keeper. Determined to find Lena, the three friends, Ethan, Link and Liv set out through the Caster tunnels underground. Eventually, they find their way into a Caster bar, where they find Ridley, John and Lena. Ethan is shocked to see Lena dancing with John, his hands on her hips. After Lena admits that she does not want to see Ethan there, Link, Liv and Ethan get out of there. Back in the tunnels, Ethan almost kisses Liv. In Gatlin, when Ethan goes to see Lena at her mansion, she reveals to him that she is going to run away before her family leaves and that she has put a Cast on him, one that will make sure he is unable to tell anyone. After, on All Souls Day Ethan realizes that the Jane from his visions was his mother, Lila Jane Evers and that she loved Macon, after Marian gives him the Arclight, a metaphysical prison for Incubuses. Though he is shattered, Marian confirms that Lila also loved Mitchell, Ethan's father. Some time after, Ethan and Liv have come to the conclusion that Sarafine is trying to pull the Seventeenth Moon out of time in order to get Lena to claim herself. With the help of Ridley (Who loses her powers after an encounter with Sarafine through the journey), Link and Lucille, Ethan's Great Aunt's cat, the one who keeps disappearing, they find The Great Barrier, the place Sarafine is leading Lena to, after sometime in the Caster Tunnels. Halfway between though, Ethan learned that Lena made a deal with the Book of Moons, a powerful Caster book, for Ethan's life after Sarafine killed him. It was Ethan's life for something, which unexpectedly turns out to be Macon's life. Now, Ethan understood why Lena had been acting strange and blaming herself for killing her uncle. Before the team is about to enter the Sea Cave where Sarafine is hiding, Ethan understands the purpose of the Arclight and, with the help of Liv, is able to bring back Macon from it. Once outside, Macon has Green Caster eyes, which confirms that he has switched from an Incubus to a Caster. He also explains how Lila Jane's ghost helped him once The Book of Moons took his life by capturing him inside the Arclight. In order to help the teenagers fight off the Incubuses and Dark Casters inside the Sea Cave, Leah Ravenwood, Macon's sister and a Succubus, goes with them. Inside the cave, John is holding Lena, who has no idea where she is or what she is doing. There are also a lot of Vexes, powerful demons of the underground, who are sent back once Amma, Arelia (Macon's Mother), Gramma (Lena's Grandmother) and Twyla (Macon's Aunt) arrive. Quickly, while the others are fighting, Ethan helps Lena revive. Lena claims herself to be both Dark and Light, killing off both Twyla, a Light Caster and Larkin, a Dark Caster (Also Lena's Cousin), because on her last birthday, Lena had learned that she were to turn Dark, then all the Light Casters in her family will die and if she turned Light, all the Dark Casters in her family will die. One night after, Link sneaks through Ethan's window and wakes him up. While the fighting was going on, Link was bitten by John, who is revealed to be a hybrid, half Caster, half Incubus. So now, after Lena confirms it, Link is turning into an Incubus.
31338396	/m/0gj91_s	All Alone in the Universe				 The book begins with Debbie and Maureen being best friends, and everything is going fine, but then Glenna Flaiber begins to join in on their friendship activities, and soon Debbie realizes that Maureen is ignoring her. Debbie decides that a three musketeer plan is not going to work out, so she tries everything in her power to fix her relationship with Maureen, but the book ends with a realistic bang. It does not work out. In the end, Maureen and Glenna are inseparable and Debbie is, so to speak, "all alone in the universe.
31342615	/m/0gkz7t7	All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes	Maya Angelou	1986	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes begins as Angelou's previous book, The Heart of a Woman, ends, with her depiction of a serious automobile accident involving her son Guy. After spending two years in Cairo, they come to Accra to enroll Guy in the University of Ghana, and the accident occurs three days after they arrive. After Guy's long convalescence, they remain in Ghana, Angelou for four years, from 1962 to 1965. Angelou describes Guy's recovery, including her deep depression. She is confronted by her friend Julian Mayfield, who introduces her to writer and actor Efua Sutherland, the Director of the National Theatre of Ghana. Sutherland becomes Angelou's "sister-friend" and allows her to cry out all her pain and bitterness. Angelou finds a job at the University of Ghana and "falls in love" with Ghana and with its people, who remind her of African-Americans she knew in Arkansas and California. As the parent of an adult, she experiences new freedoms, respects Guy's choices, and consciously stops making her son the center of her life. She creates new friendships with her roommates and native Africans, both male and female. She becomes part of a group of American expatriates whom she calls the "Revolutionist Returnees", people like Mayfield and his wife Ana Livia, who share her struggles. Angelou strengthens her ties with "Mother Africa" while traveling through eastern Ghanaian villages, and through her relationships with several Africans. She describes a few romantic prospects, one of which is with a man who proposes that she become his "second wife" and accept West African customs. She also becomes a supporter of Ghana president Kwame Nkrumah and close friends with tribal leader Nana Nketsia and poet Kwesi Brew. During one of her travels through West Africa, a woman identifies her as a member of the Bambara tribe based solely upon her appearance and behavior, which helps Angelou discover the similarities between her American traditions and those of her ancestors. Although Angelou is disillusioned with the nonviolent strategies of Martin Luther King, Jr., she and her friends commemorate his 1963 march on Washington by organizing a parallel demonstration in Ghana. The demonstration becomes a tribute to African-American W.E.B. Du Bois, who has died the previous evening. A few pages later, she allies herself with Malcolm X, who visits Ghana in 1964 to elicit the support of black world leaders. He encourages Angelou to return to America to help him coordinate his efforts, as she had done for King in The Heart of a Woman. While driving Malcolm X to the airport, he chastises her for her bitterness about Du Bois' wife Shirley Graham's lack of support for the civil rights movement. Angelou and her roommates reluctantly hire a village boy named Kojo to do housework for them. He reminds her of her brother Bailey, and he serves as a substitute for her son Guy. She is forced to accept a maternal role with Kojo, helping him with his schoolwork and welcoming the thanks of his family, who have rejected him. Traveling Shoes, like Angelou's previous autobiographies, is full of conflicts with Guy, especially surrounding his independence, his separation from his mother, and his choices. When she learns that he is dating a woman older than her, she reacts with anger and threatens to strike him, but he patronizes her, calls her his "little mother", and insists upon his autonomy from her. The African narrative in Traveling Shoes is interrupted by "a journey within a journey" when she decides to join a theatrical company in a revival of The Blacks, a play by French writer Jean Genet. As she had done in New York and described in her previous autobiography The Heart of a Woman, she plays the White Queen and tours Berlin and Venice with the company, which include Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, Lou Gossett, Jr. and Roscoe Lee Brown. While in Berlin, she accepts a breakfast invitation with a racist, wealthy German family. The book ends with Angelou's decision to return to America. At the airport, a group of her friends and associates, including Guy, are present to wish her farewell as she leaves Africa. She connects her departure from Africa with the forced slavery of her ancestors and her departure from Guy.
31342635	/m/0gk_wz7	A Song Flung Up to Heaven	Maya Angelou	2002	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 A Song Flung Up to Heaven, which takes place between 1965 and 1968, picks up where Angelou's previous book, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, ends, with Angelou's airplane trip from Accra, Ghana, where she has spent the previous four years, back to the United States. Her nineteen-year old son Guy has become an adult and is attending college in Ghana, and she is leaving a controlling relationship—her "romantic other", whom she described as "a powerful West African man who had swept into my life with the urgency of a Southern hurricane". She had also been invited to return to the US by Malcolm X, whom she had become friends with during his visit to Accra, to help her create the Organization of African Unity. She postpones meeting with Malcolm X for a month and visits her mother and brother in San Francisco. He is assassinated two days later. Devastated and grief-stricken, she moves to Hawaii to be near her brother and to resume her nightclub act. She realizes, after seeing Della Reese perform, that she lacks the desire, commitment, and talent be a singer, so she returns to her writing career, but this time in Los Angeles instead of in New York City like earlier in her life. To earn extra money, Angelou becomes a market researcher in Watts and gets to know the neighborhood and its people. She witnesses the 1965 Watts Riots, even though it could mean getting arrested, which to her disappointment, does not occur. At one point, Angelou's lover from Ghana, whom she calls "the African", arrives in Los Angeles to take her back to Accra, but Angelou enlists the aid of her mother and brother, and they come to her rescue once again, diverting the African first to Mexico and then back to Ghana. Guy, during a visit to his grandmother in San Francisco, gets into another car accident and his neck is broken again. His maturity is striking to his mother, and she leaves him in the care of his grandmother. Angelou returns to New York, where she dedicates herself to her writing and renews many of the friendships made there in the past. She also describes her personal and professional relationships with Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Beah Richards, and Frank Silvera. Martin Luther King, Jr. asks her travel around the country promoting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She agrees, but "postpones again", and he is assassinated on her 40th birthday. Again devastated, she isolates herself until invited to a dinner party also attended by her friend James Baldwin and cartoonist Jules Feiffer and his wife Judy. Judy Feiffer, inspired by her tales about her childhood, contacts editor Robert Loomis, who challenges Angelou to write her autobiography as literature. She accepts his challenge, and Song ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career", writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: "What are you looking at me for. I didn't come to stay".
31344976	/m/0gk_vfr	The Maintenance of Headway	Magnus Mills	2009	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book concerns bus-driving, Magnus Mills himself was once a bus-driver in London. The title refers to the concept (upheld by the inspectors) that "a fixed interval between buses on a regular service can be attained and adhered to". The novel concerns the tension between the officious inspectors and the drivers themselves who aim to arrive early.
31359632	/m/0gl0dnh	In Praise of the Stepmother	Mario Vargas Llosa	1988	{"/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Lucrecia and Rigoberto are an upper middle class married couple. On the outside, they look like an average Peruvian couple of their social class. However, they have a rich and open sexual relationship that enriches their life. Their openness with sexuality, however, turns dangerous when Lucrecia starts a relationship with her pre-teen stepson, Fonchito, which ultimately leads to the unraveling of the marriage.
31367525	/m/0gkxwq_	AstroTown				 The book depicts a future where humankind has left the Earth due to global warming, and they have decided to live in the International Space Station. There are 3.2 million residents in this future city in space, called AstroTown. The inhabitants decided to stay in the space station instead of colonizing other planets. We learn from the story that it would be easier to adapt to zero gravity than to send the entire city to a new planet. There is no mention of extraterrestrial life or super powers of any kind. At first, AstroTown is governed by a dictatorship, but the society stages a revolution to overthrow the dictator when a “normal human being,” cloned from the time when the humans lived on Earth, appears on the scene.
31371298	/m/0gl0fm2	The Naughtiest Girl Helps a Friend				 Elizabeth Allen of the first form at Whyteleafe School is staying at school for a camp in the grounds with her best friend Joan Townsend, who is in the second form. Elizabeth's enemy, Arabella Buckley is also staying at the camp. Elizabeth finds out that Joan is afraid of the dark.
31376710	/m/0gk_bhv	Den of Thieves	Julia Golding	2009-04-28		 In this third installment, Mr Sheridan, the theater owner decides that Drury Lane is in need of a refurbishing so he intends to close it down for a few years. Because of this, many of the servants and actors have to leave and find work elsewhere, including Cat. Her friend Pedro is going with the Signor, and Cat is too proud to ask anyone for help. Due to this she is left in the streets and falls prey to a book selling fraud. Later she is rescued by Frank and Mr Sheridan. Mr Sheridan decides to send her to Paris to work as a spy, as he thinks she's perfect for the job. So Cat travels to Paris under the pretence of a girl learning ballet, and hates it. She and Frank are soon tangled up in a revolt. They manage to escape, but the thieves have taken their money and clothes.
31377471	/m/0gl09g1	Cat O'Nine Tails		2009-09-29		 Since the events of Den of Thieves, Cat has been living with Frank and Lizzie. She is very happy with them, and then Frank's cousin Mr Dixon arrives. He is very nice to Cat and suggests that they all go a ball, even though Cat isn't nobility. Cat gets a beautiful dress, but the ball turns out to be a disaster. Frank is very awkward and doesn't ask her to dance. Then Billy forces a kiss on her which both Frank and Mr Dixon witness. Mortified, they return home with Cat ashamed and upset. Frank tells her off for unladylike behavior, but they soon make up and go riding. They soon get a letter that their friend Syd has not returned home, and worried, they decide to check the docks for any sign of him. They are looking for a boat when they are savagely attacked by a press gang, who throw Frank, Pedro and Cat on board the HMS Courageous and stab Mr Dixon in the stomach. On board Cat is forced to pretend do be a boy by a sailor named Maclean. He threatens Cat and makes her do a lot of chores. Meanwhile, Syd is also on board after being tricked by his manager. He is furious that his friends have also been captured, but there is nothing he can do. Then Cat asks him for a fight so the other sailors respect her more, but Syd refuses. However, he is pushed into it by the Captain and Cat taunts him desperate to be hit, and Syd finally punches her after she remarks that he's a rubbish kisser and Billy is better. Syd is really angry with himself for losing his temper but soon forgives himself after a heart-to-heart with Cat. Then Cat tries to run away when the ship docks but she is chased by Maclean. Cat is rescued by an Indian tribe and she befriends a girl called Kanawha. The Indian chief banishes Maclean and Cat settles in with the ship, but deep down she wants to return home. Cat soon discovers that Dixon had faked his own death to get Frank's wealth as he was broke. Enraged, Cat rides to Philadelphia, to a meeting discussing sending a search party out for her, There, she revels Dixon's treacherous deceit and he is disowned by Frank. Frank finally summons up enough courage to ask Cat to dance, and then Lizzie gives birth to her and Johnny's first child, who is Cat's god-daughter and who is named after her, Catherine Elizabeth Fitzroy.
31379700	/m/0gk_tp0	The Vault	Ruth Rendell		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Reg and Dora Wexford moved from Kingsmarkham to a renovated London Coachhouse owned by their daughter Sheila.
31380111	/m/0gkzhdq	Sing You Home	Jodi Picoult	2011-03-01		 Zoe and Max Baxter cannot have a child because of Max's family's genetic unbalance. They turn to in vitro, and create three healthy embryos, freezing them cryogenically. One is implanted and Zoe successfully becomes pregnant, but loses the baby in late pregnancy, at her baby shower, no less, much to her great sorrow. Zoe and Max soon divorce because Max does not want Zoe to pressure him into trying again for a child. Some time later, Zoe, a musical therapist, still has not recovered from the shock of the divorce, and Max has moved in with his brother, Reid, and his sister-in-law, Liddy. Reid and Liddy are both Christians, and are also trying to have children, and have had several miscarriages because of the Baxter family unbalance. Max originally is hostile to Reid, Liddy, and their pastor's efforts to convert him to their religion, but eventually warms up to the church and becomes a born-again Christian. Zoe meets Vanessa Shaw, who is openly lesbian, while floating at the bottom of a pool early in the morning. Vanessa thinks Zoe is drowning and tries to save her, but Zoe asserts that she was only floating at the bottom, looking at the lights from the bottom of the pool. Zoe and Vanessa become fast friends and eventually fall in love. Zoe, at first, is unwilling to admit to her relationship with Vanessa, but when Vanessa is angry that Zoe is ashamed of her, Zoe eventually admits to Max when she sees him at a grocery store that she and Vanessa are together. Max is shocked and disgusted, and confides in his pastor, Pastor Clive, his fears: that Zoe turned to lesbianism because he was not enough of a man to satisfy her. Zoe and Vanessa marry soon after the incident, and Zoe still wants to have a child. Vanessa suggests that she could carry one of Zoe's frozen embryos, and Zoe readily agrees. They learn that since the embryos are Max's children too, Max must agree for Zoe and Vanessa to try to use the children. Zoe asks Max if he will agree, and Max, confused and stricken, tells her he will think about it. Zoe and Vanessa, thinking that Max is surely going to agree, begin thinking of names and furnishing the baby's room. Meanwhile, Zoe is working with a rebellious teenage girl named Lucy, who is hostile and angry. Max consults Pastor Clive, who tells him that no child should be subjected to being raised in a lesbian household. He suggests that Max sue Vanessa and Zoe for the rights to raise the embryos, which he calls 'pre-born children', and that if Max wins, he should give the children to be raised by Reid and Liddy, who cannot have children of their own. Max agrees, and serves Vanessa and Zoe with papers, suing them for the right to raise the children. Vanessa and Zoe are angry and upset, Zoe being incredulous that Max would betray her like that. The two turn to a lawyer, Angela Moretti, who specializes in gay and lesbian cases, although she is not gay herself. In turn, Max and Pastor Clive enlist the help of Wade Preston, a Christian lawyer, and Ben Benjamin, another lawyer. Over the course of a month or two, the case shifts gears several times, with hostility present between Max, Zoe, Angela and Wade. Initially the judge seems to be in favor of Zoe's case, but then evidence is supplied that Lucy--who is, in fact, Pastor Clive's stepdaughter--was molested by Zoe, which is an untrue allegation. Nevertheless, Zoe cracks and agrees to give up and award the case to Max. Max eventually realizes that he is in love with Liddy, and that to sit by and watch the child be raised as Reid and Liddy's, with him playing the lesser role of uncle, would be unbearable. He agrees to give up the embryos and give them to Zoe and Vanessa to raise as their own; Zoe and Vanessa allow him to play the role of father. The epilogue is seen seven or so years later, through Samantha 'Sammy' Baxter's eyes. Sammy is six years old, has a dog named Ollie, and calls her mothers 'Mama Ness' and 'Mommy Zoe'. She knows that Vanessa is the tooth fairy, because she peeked, and often defends her two mothers against bullying remarks passed by her classmates. She reveals that Liddy and Max are together and are getting married shortly. She considers it normal, and even better, to have two mothers and a father, and knows that all three of her parents care about her equally. In the end she asserts that she is a very happy child, and is, really, the luckiest little girl in the world.
31382273	/m/0gkxqr7	Weathercraft				 After merging with a psychoactive plant known as Salvia divinorum, Whim proceeds to "distort and enslave Frank and his friends". After much suffering, Manhog sets out on a transformative journey, attaining enlightenment. Manhog then returns for a final encounter with Whim.
31388317	/m/0gkzbpk	Black Heart of Jamaica	Julia Golding	2008-02-04		 Cat and Pedro decide to earn a living as a duet of acting and playing the violin, as Cat feels uncomfortable at living with Frank, Lizzie and Johnny without working, and Pedro decides to go with her. Syd is very upset at the prospect of Cat going away from him again but puts up with it for Cat's sake. In Jamaica, Cat and Pedro are disgusted to learn that slavery is still common and both are frightened and horrified when they discover that Pedro's former owner, Mr Hawkins is in Jamaica. Mr Hawkins thinks that slavery is lawful and fair, and he still believes that Pedro belongs to him. He taunts Cat after her performance on stage and then finally kidnaps her. At his plantation Cat falls ill with malaria and while she is still delusional and sick Billy rescues her. He forces her to but a slave which Pedro is disgusted at, but he soon learns to forgive Cat. In the end Cat gets involved in a slave revolt but Pedro tells her to leave, while he will stay and help his fellow men gain their rights of freedom and equality. Cat is heartbroken to leave Pedro alone but she knows she must, so she and Billy leave together.
31388699	/m/0gk_8_7	The Dragonfly Pool	Eva Ibbotson	2008-09-04		 Tally Hamilton is the daughter of the town's beloved doctor. Tally loves her life; she is popular and gets along with everyone. So Tally is very upset when she is sent to a boarding school in England because of the war, but does so for the sake of her father. When Tally arrives at Delderton Hall she soon discovers that this school is certainly like no other: the dancing teacher encourages them to be seeds busting into light, and the enigmatic teacher biology Matteo takes them for study walks at four in the morning. Tally soon settles in and makes plenty of friends, she even organizes a trip for the Deldertonians to attend a dancing festival in Bergania. Meanwhile, Prince Karil of Bergania is a lonely boy who wants to be normal and have friends. He hates wearing stuffy suits and attending so many formal celebrations. One day Karil meets Tally at the Dragonfly Pool, his place of comfort and peace, and the two immediately become friends. But when Karil's father the King is assassinated, Karil is forced to flee with Tally and the Deldertonians to England. The Germans overtake Bergania as part of their plan, as they had arranged the King's assassination.
31390740	/m/0gky8hs	Exit Wounds	Rutu Modan	2007	{"/m/012h24": "Comics"}	 The book follows a search of a young woman, Numi, for her old lover, who disappeared just before a suicide bomb that left an unidentified body. Numi calls Koby, a cab-driver and the missing person's son, to help her in the search.
31396497	/m/0gkxww_	Talon of the Silver Hawk	Raymond E. Feist	2004-04-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Evil has come to a distant land high among the snow-capped mountains of Midkemia, as an exterminating army wearing the colors of the Duke of Olasko razes village after village, slaughtering men, women, and children without mercy. And when the carnage is done, only one survivor remains: a young boy named Kiele. A youth no longer, there is now but one road for him to travel: the path of vengeance. And he will not be alone. Under the tutelage of the rescuers who discovered him, Kiele will be molded into a sure and pitiless weapon. And he will accept the destiny that has been chosen for him . . . as Talon of the Silver Hawk. But the prey he so earnestly stalks is hunting him as well. And Talon must swear allegiance to a shadowy cause that already binds his mysterious benefactors - or his mission, his honor, and his life will be lost forever. fr:Serre du faucon argenté
31396551	/m/0gky98d	King of Foxes	Raymond E. Feist	2005-04-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 An exceptionally skilled swordsman, young Tal Hawkins was the only survivor of the massacre of his village - rescued, recruited, and trained by the mysterious order of magicians and spies, the Conclave of Shadows. Now one of the secret society's most valuable agents, he gains entrance into the court of Duke Olasko, the bloodthirsty and powerful despot whose armies put Tal's village to the sword, by posing as a nobleman from the distant Kingdom of the Isles. But the enemy is cunning and well protected - in league with the foul necromancer Leso Varen, dark master of death-magic - and to gain the Duke's trust and confidence, Tal Hawkins must first sell his soul. fr:Le Roi des renards
31400647	/m/0gkyymm	Lazarus Rising: A Personal and Political Autobiography			{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Lazarus Rising is a personal memoir and covers Howard's life from his early childhood years, aged about 10, through to his four terms as Prime Minister of Australia, and defeat at the 2007 federal election, also losing his seat of Bennelong. Published by Harper Collins and released in October 2010, the 711 page book drew significant controversy in his criticism of his longstanding deputy, Peter Costello, and both Nick Minchin and Jeff Kennett.
31407593	/m/0gk_myt	Sherlock Holmes and the Man from Hell		1997	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Philanthropist Lord Backwater is found dead on his property. The police surmise that Backwater came upon some poachers which led to his murder. Holmes discounts this solution and undertakes his own investigation which leads to a hidden history of Backwater's time spent in a prison settlement on Van Diemen's Land.
31409442	/m/0gkz84z	The Golden Sword	Janet Morris			 Estri, the Well-Keepress of Astria and High Couch of Silistra, the highest office in the land, has continued her quest to locate her god-like "Shaper" father to his home planet, Mi'ysten, where she is tested and shown to have inherited his powers. Following further training in the ability to manipulate time and probabilities with her mind, Estri is abruptly returned to Silistra after an absence of two local years. Many changes have taken place in the power vacuum her absence left and Estri must conquer her immediate captor, Chayin, Cahndor of the violent Parset desert tribes, in order to continue her quest to save the Silistran people who are dying out from infertility. The Parset tribes cultivate and grow the plants from which the costly longevity drugs sold throughout the Bipedal Federation are made. Renegade members of the Bipedal Federation offer proscribed hi-tech weapons to leaders of the warring tribes in exchange for exclusive access to the longevity drugs, assuring that tribe’s domination of the rest. Chayin rejects their offer, knowing it will end in the destruction of his people from greed and power. The BF keeps counting on at least one tribal leader's greed to eventually agree to accept their offer, allowing one tribe to conquer all others with off-world weapons. Estri and Chayin must find Sereth, former Slayer of Estri's home who aided her in beginning her quest and was made outcast afterward (because Estri disappeared under his protection). Estri, Chayin and Sereth must join in a triad, forging a bond created by their innate powers and intense love to assure the future of the planet. After they defeat Chayin's various tribal opponents, they conquer Estri's enemy of hundreds of years, her father's grandson, Raet, and hope they can have a respite from tribulation. However, Khys, the semi-mythical, usurper overlord of the planet, abducts the triad to his sacred city and binds Estri with a device that suppresses her powers and causes her to lose her memory. With Estri in his control, he elevates Chayin to be his puppet overlord of all the Parset, but leaves active Chayin’s own in-born powers that may drive him insane. Khys forces Sereth into the role of a “trusted” vassal who remembers everything about Estri, Chayin and their pasts. Helpless before his power, Chayin and Sereth cannot stop Khys from impregnating an unsuspecting Estri to take advantage of her "Shaper" genetics. Khys gloats, triumphant in assuring himself a powerful and gifted heir, while believing no being in the universe is powerful enough to deny him what he truly desires: return of the technology that nearly destroyed the planet and forced the population underground into "hides" until their world recovered enough from the devastation to support life again. For a time, he’s correct.
31409561	/m/0gk_f2j	Wind from the Abyss	Janet Morris	1978	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Wind From the Abyss picks up approximately two years after the battle for Well Astria during which two Bipedal Federation ships and crew were destroyed accidentally. Khys, the “dharen” or ruler of Silistra for thousands of years, has captured Estri, Sereth and Chayin, taking them to his exclusive city/keep at the Lake of Horns. Before being captured by Khys, Estri, Sereth, a former Slayer turned renegade, and Chayin, Cahndor of a Parset desert tribe, form a triad of sexuality and power as foretold in an ancient prophecy that threatens Khys’ rule of the planet. Immediately after the Well Astria battle, Estri, Chayin and Sereth are captured by Khys, tyrant ruler of Silistra (“the dharen”) and held hostage for over 2 years. He knows these three are key in maintaining control of the planet. He has Estri’s memories blocked so she will not attempt to wrest control from him; Estri’s journey to understand her “Shaper” heritage is interrupted. Estri regains her memory after Khys’ council fails to get information locked in her mind by her father. Khys and Estri are taken to a planet to meet Estrazi (Estri’s father) and Khystrai (Khys’ father) who tell Khys he must start over with this uninhabited planet because he has failed to govern Silistra well enough for the last 25,000 years. Estri is returned to Silistra alone and materializes in the midst of a battle between the Parset desert tribes and the privileged “Lakeborn” who live in the city of the dharen. She is reunited with Chayin and Sereth and they renew their bond to each other, although Estri fears she will hold them back with the “slave” mentality Khys forced on her. Khys returns by himself, insistent on dueling with Sereth, but is in such a depleted condition that Sereth kills him fairly easily, making Sereth the ruler of Silistra. Sereth leaves Carth, an associate of Khys and Estri’s teacher/brainwasher, to run the city but arrange it so the city cannot be rebuilt and returned to its former glory. They decide to move many of the “Lakeborn” to other parts of the planet to intermix blood lines and strengthen the Silistran gene pool. Estri, Chayin and Sereth finally admit to themselves they are the people spoken of in an ancient prophecy and they must play out the rest of their fate. They take ship to explore a continent Khys had kept off-limits for generations. Estri’s journey of self-awareness and the trio’s fulfillment of the “Seker’oth prophecy” (which means “Golden Sword”) conclude in The Carnelian Throne, the final book in the Silistra series.
31418093	/m/0gk_xgp	Curious George Learns the Alphabet	Margret Rey	1963	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Readers learn the alphabet along with George as the man in the yellow hat teaches the curious monkey how to read.
31419229	/m/0gkxrrs	Le Loup blanc	Paul Féval, père		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Nicolas Treml de La Tremlays is a pro-independence Breton lord. He decides to go and fight in duel with Philippe II, Duke of Orléans: if he wins Brittany will be free, but if he loses he will be sentenced for crime of lèse-majesté. Before he leaves Brittany, he makes an agreement with his cousin Hervé de Vaunoy so that his grandson Georges Treml will not be deprived of his possession. But Georges is just a five-year-old child and Nicolas is put in the Bastille with his servant Jude Leker. In Brittany Hervé tries to drown the boy but an albino peasant called Jean Blanc rescues him. Georges disappears however. Twenty years later in 1740 the Breton forest became the Wolves'den: they are poor peasants who want to take revenge of the lords who oppress them. Their leader is called the White Wolf. A young officer of the King, Captain Didier, is sent out to bring them to heel.
31423097	/m/0gk_r8b	Exile's Return	Raymond E. Feist	2006-04-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Kaspar, former Duke of Olasko, finds himself alone and without provisions on the continent of Novindus on the other side of the world after being removed from power by the Conclave of Shadows (in King of Foxes, the preceding novel). His desire for revenge must be put aside as he struggles to survive in a harsh unfamiliar land. He happens upon a farm, where his only choice is to work for food and shelter. As he is no longer under the magical influence of Leso Varen, the evil necromancer who had manipulated him while in Olasko, he begins to show compassion, and atone for his past deeds. Kaspar later joins a band of traders who have been cursed with transporting a mysterious magical suit of seemingly invulnerable animated armor, which will not allow them to leave it. Kaspar discovers the armor's origin, and is tasked with returning it across the vast ocean to the Conclave, once his enemies, now his only hope to help prevent the world's destruction. fr:Le Retour du banni
31425429	/m/0gkzw5g	The Case of the Cursed Clock				 ě=== Night Of The Haunted Hamburgers ===
31438273	/m/0gk_qkf	\\"V\\" Is for Vengeance	Sue Grafton	2011-11-21	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 For the fourth straight novel in the Kinsey Milhone series (dating back to "S" Is for Silence), the viewpoint alternates between Milhone and other characters, principally Nora Vogelsang and Lorenzo Dante. The opening chapter, however, is told from the perspective of a well-to-do young man, Phillip Lanahan, who borrows money from Dante, misses the payback date, and then loses it playing poker in Vegas. Dante and his brother Cappi show up, and Dante agrees to take Phillip's Porsche as satisfaction of the debt. However, after Dante sends Peter and Cappi up to look at the car, Cappi has thugs throw Phillip off the top of the parking garage to his death. In the main storyline, Milhone witnesses a woman shoplifting with a confederate inside Nordstrom's. She tells a nearby clerk, who alerts store security, and they capture and arrest the woman, named Audrey, before she can escape. While this is going on, Milhone follows her confederate and is almost run over by her in the parking garage. Right after her release from jail, Audrey apparently commits suicide. Shortly thereafter, Milhone runs into a former boyfriend in the police department, Cheney Phillips, who is out for the evening with a vice officer, Len Priddy (a friend of Milhone's first husband and a longtime enemy of hers), and his much-younger girlfriend, Abbey. Priddy mocks the theory that Audrey was part of a shoplifting ring, but Audrey's boyfriend hires Milhone to investigate that theory. Meanwhile, Dante realizes that the police are closing in on his operation. Audrey was head of his shoplifting operation, but Cappi murdered her upon her release from jail because he believed she was about to turn them in. Dante believes that Cappi has been giving information to Priddy to set up his brother, so that he can take over. Nora, who has been drifting apart from her husband for the last three years (which we later learn began with the death of her son from her first marriage, Peter), learns that her lawyer husband is having an affair with his secretary. She decides to sell her possessions so that she can have money to flee, but in trying to sell an expensive ring, she is referred to Dante, who is smitten with her and offers her more than fair value for the ring. Dante becomes fascinated by Nora and all that she represents. Kinsey, still investigating the death of Audrey, is slowly pulled into the world of shoplifting ring. After having a sudden flash of inspiration from an offhanded comment by her client, she returns to Nordstrom's to view the video footage. She notices a bumper sticker on the car that leads her to the accomplice. She discovers after trailing her for several days that she is the drop off person for the stolen goods into a fake charity's drop off box. The bags are picked up minutes later by a truck that takes them to Dante's warehouse for distribution to various second hand stores around Southern California. After sending Cheney a copy of her findings thus far, he tells her to back off. That could be endangering the life of a confidential informant. This, of course, causes her to do the exact opposite. She investigates further and slowly peels back the layers of the syndicate. He old friend Pinkey (the man who gave her a set of lock picks) comes by her office and asks her to hold on to some photos for him. Kinsey refuses. Later Lt. Priddy comes to the office looking for the photos and threatens Kinsey physically. She manages to track down Pinkey and find out what the photos are about. They are blackmail material that Priddy has been using to get information from Pinkey about Dante's operation. Pinkey leaves Kinsey's care and returns to his home, where Cappi is holding his wife hostage. Kinsey tracks Pinkey to his home and comes in on the scene. Cappi orders Kinsey to burn the photos and the negatives in the fireplace. Cappi leaves without harming anyone further, but an enraged Pinkey gets his shotgun from the closet and follows him out to the street and shoots at him. Pinkey is a bad shot and misses Cappi completely. Cappi fires off a couple of rounds that seem to miss everyone, and he flees the scene. When Kinsey and Pinkey go back into the house, they see that his wife has been shot. She is taken to the hospital. Kinsey tracks down Dante and goes to his office to have a conversation with him. Being the straight shooter that she is Kinsey lays into about honor and doing the right thing. Dante sets up an account at the hospital to take care of Pinkey's wife. He also puts his plan to leave the country into motion. After feeding bad information to his brother Cappi, whom he knows is talking to the authorities, Dante tries to convince Nora to join him. He confesses the it was because of him that her son was murdered but that it was done without his consent. He explains his motivation for loaning Phillip the money in the first place. He gives her the details of his trip and leaves hoping that she will join him. On the day that Dante had told Cappi the computer records are wiped Pinkey's wife dies from her gunshot wound. Kinsey who is going to Dante's warehouse to keep Pinkey from killing Cappi notices the federal authorities staging their raid. She goes to the warehouse to find Pinkey and encounters Dante again. After the raid begins, Pinkey is wounded in the leg by Cappi whom was eventually shot by an cop. Dante punches Kinsey in the face to keep her from getting between Cappi and Pinkey and getting shot herself then disappears into the maze of tunnels under the warehouse. He is picked up by his "real" secretary and makes it to the airport. Dante proves that he is not the monster everyone thinks he is by providing for those in his care. Just as his plane is taxiing away from the gate Nora arrives and departs with him Weeks later Dante's secretary comes to Kinsey's office to give her an envelope full of cash. To make up for Dante punching her in the face, and also payment for a job he wants her to do for him. Dante had recorded a conversation with Priddy that could further implicate him in trying to gain control of Dante's operations and put him in prison when Kinsey feels he belongs. Wary of contacting the proper authorities who might bury the information and never go after Priddy, Kinsey calls a reporter whom she knows is itching for a good story.
31440066	/m/0gkzb07	Implied Spaces				 The plot begins with a man named Aristide, adventuring in the world of Midgarth. Midgarth was created as a medieval fantasy world and has physical laws which prevent artificial electrical charges or chemical reactions which occur fast enough to create a gun. Through genetic engineering it has been populated with various fantasy races such as orcs and trolls. Aristide is the current nom de guerre of Pablo Monagas Perez, one of the most important figures in human society. Over a thousand years ago Perez had been part of the team which created artificial intelligence, thus launching humanity along its path to paradise. Accompanied by his cat Bitsy, who is really an avatar of the supercomputer Endora, he is now dedicated to studying the "implied spaces" of the human constructed pocket universes: the places which were created as the byproduct of desired features. While working in Midgarth, Aristide learns of a series of particularly successful bandits preying on a local trade route. They are apparently led by a band of mysterious priests and kidnap their victims, who are never seen again. Aristide and a group of travelers confront these bandits. During the confrontation, Aristide discovers that the priests who lead the bandits are able to create wormholes which transport their opponents to an unknown location. Worried by the advanced technology that these priests have, he takes some of their remains to his friend and former lover Daljit to be analyzed. When it is determined that the priests were in fact "pod people", illegal artificial lifeforms, they become worried that someone is engaged in a plot to bring down civilization. Aristide and Daljit conclude that the priests were abducting people in order to reprogram then to serve the priests unknown masters. Checking records they discover that there has been a rash of unsolved disappearances in the archipelago universe Hawaiki. Aristide travels there where he encounters agents of the conspiracy and narrowly misses being kidnapped, although he loses Bitsy in the process. Returning to his home universe Topaz he informs the authorities, including his friend the Prime Minister, who begin an investigation. They determine that whoever is behind this must have corrupted one of the supercomputers, a terrifying prospect to people whose entire civilization is built around those machines. It is eventually discovered that the rogue AI is Cortland, a surprising choice given that Cortland is one of the most eccentric AIs whose interests run mostly towards ontology. Before they can act on this information their opponent reveals himself. He calls himself Vindex and closes down access to the universes based on Cortland. At the same time he launches a viral zombie plague at Topaz. Aristide is forced to kill Daljit when she becomes infected with the virus and attacks him but she is soon resurrected and along with some others who perished in the plague dedicates herself to the war effort. Aristide also dedicates himself to the war effort, volunteering to lead part of the coordinated assault against Cortland. Before the assault happens, however, he realizes that Vindex has sabotaged the resurrection machinery. All the people killed in the zombie plague have been resurrected as loyal followers of Vindex, a kind of fifth column. Before he can report his discovery he is killed by Daljit and resurrected as a loyal follower of Vindex himself. However, before he can betray Topaz the problem is discovered by the authorities who incapacitate the victims and reverse Vindex's conditioning. Aristide goes on to lead an assault on Cortland and watches as all his men are killed. He alone survives and is brought face to face with Vindex. There, the villain reveals his identity. He is in fact Pablo Monagas Perez. His personality had been calved off centuries before to lead the human expedition to Epsilon Eridani. He relates to Aristide the story of how he and a version of Daljit had gone with millions of others to colonize Epsilon Eridani, creating a new world and a supercomputer orbiting the sun. Along this trip, Pablo and Daljit had fallen deeply in love and Daljit had become more and more interested in exploring the origins of the universe. In doing so she discovered that our universe is, in fact, an artificial construct, just like the pocket universes that humanity created but on a much larger scale. However, before she can fully explore the implications of this shocking discovery Epsilon Eridani undergoes a stellar expansion which is labeled by those in the Sol system as "The Big Belch". This expansion destroys the Epsilon Eridani's orbital supercomputer and fries the day side of the artificially constructed world orbiting it. Hundreds of millions die in the conflagration. Only those on the night side of the planet, such as Pablo, are able to survive and only by hiding in deep bunkers. Most of the survivors opt to head back to Sol, life around Epsilon Eridani no longer being possible, but their ship mysteriously vanishes along the way. Pablo remains to search for Daljit, who he hopes survived. She did not but he becomes obsessed with her work and with the idea of punishing the creators of this universe, whom he calls The Inept, for all the suffering of humanity. Returning to the Sol system, he contacts Cortland, whose interest in ontology allows Pablo to convince the computer to aid him. Pablo explains that he is not attempting to destroy human civilization, but rather to take it over so that everyone will work towards his goal: using a wormhole to travel back to the origins of the universe and punish its creators. Aristide derides Pablo's plan as madness and is able to escape with the help of Bitsy, who has been living with Pablo since she disappeared. Aristide returns to Topaz where he informs the leadership of Vindex's plans. Before they can pursue any other action the supercomputer Aloysius is destroyed by a mass driver which Vindex had created in the kuiper belt. As the other supercomputers adjust their orbits in order to stay out of the line of fire, the authorities desperately attempt to come up with a plan to defeat Vindex. One person comes up with the idea of creating their own mass drivers within pocket universes. These would have the advantage of being undetectable to Vindex until they were actually fired. Aristide then comes up with the idea of creating a massive pocket universe, dubbed an "overpocket" which will encompass the inner solar system, thus cutting Vindex off from his mass driver in the kuiper belt. With the overpocket deployed, the other supercomputers unleash their own mass drivers against Vindex and Cortland, destroying them. The book concludes with Aristide concluding that Vindex's idea of using a wormhole to travel to the beginning of time is a worthy one and that he might attempt to do it with willing allies.
31442141	/m/0gkzdbw	You Can Say You Knew Me When				 A thirty-something San Francisco gay radio journalist Jamie Garner reluctantly returns to his childhood home of Greenlawn, New Jersey, and discovers secrets from his dead father's sexual past, including photos with a friend actor Dean Foster ands entourage of Jack Kerouac all covered by a 40-year secrecy. Upon his return to San Francisco, Jamie though trying desperately to maintain a monogamous relationship with his venture-capitalist boyfriend Woody, falls into a series of promiscuous relations after a hurried sexual encounter with a man in the rest room of Newark airport. For all his faults, Jamie, a sympathetic, often frustrating character tries to make peace with his father's deep-seated prejudices toward his sexuality and come to terms with his father's mysterious long-ago alternative life.
31444572	/m/0gky2tp	Blackberry Wine	Joanne Harris		{"/m/0127jb": "Magic realism"}	 Writer Jay Mackintosh is suffering from writer's block. Having reached his artistic zenith with the award-winning 'Jackapple Joe', a novel published 10 years ago, he has failed to duplicate his earlier success, and now writes second-rate science-fiction novels under a pseudonym. He lives in in London with his ambitious girlfriend, Kerry, and teaches creative writing to vapid young students whilst living on his dwindling reputation. Jackapple Joe, Jay's only bestseller, was a nostalgic retelling of Jay's childhood summers in the Yorkshire town of Kirby Monckton. It is a coming-of-age story, describing how Jay was befriended, following his parents' divorce, by an eccentric old man called Joseph Cox, a gardener, poet and everyday magician, with whom he was to forge a unique relationship. Blackberry Wine acquaints readers with Joe through flashbacks as, now aged 37 and feeling increasingly unfullfilled, Jay revisits his childhood haunts and discovers a box of Joe's "Specials", bottles of home-made wine that may hold the key to Joe's unexplained disappearance. Under the influence of this magical home-brew, Jay finds himself behaving in a more and more erratic way. He buys a house he has never seen in the French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes and moves there, ostensibly to write, but in reality to escape from Kerry, the pressures of fame and the expectations of his public. The estate, Joe's bottles of homemade wine ("The Specials") and vivid memories of Joe that gradually become more than simply memories, inspire Jay to write again for the first time in a decade, and to rediscover what truly matters to him. He begins to write a new book about Lansquenet and its inhabitants, whilst secretly observing his neighbour, the reclusive Marise d'Api, whose land borders his own. This fiercely independent woman lives alone with her deaf daughter, and although she resists all Jay's attempts to get to know her, he becomes increasingly fascinated by her. After weeks of inspired writing, rewarding hard work in his gardens and revisiting the past through Joe's "Specials", Jay comes to feel that the life he is building for himself is more important than writing the great follow-up novel and that self-fulfillment is more alluring to him now than fame and notoriety. He finally gains Marise's confidence following a crisis at her farm, and learns the terrible secret that she has been so desperate to conceal. However, just as Jay is about to accept that he is falling in love with Marise, his ex-girlfriend Kerry arrives in Lansquenet, having gained access to Jay's whereabouts and the first pages of his new book. Determinided to 'redeem' him (and recognizing the book's potential) she prepares for a massive publicity stunt, revealing Jay's whereabouts to the press. This would re-launch Jay's flagging career; it would also mean that Lansquenet would suffer a damaging influx of tourists that might change the place forever. Jay is torn between his ambition and his growing realization that he has managed to recapture in Lansquenet the simplicity and magic of his life with Joe, and that he cannot bear to lose it a second time. To put a stop to Kerry's machinations, Jay burns the sole manuscript of his book and, finally at peace with himself, prepares to begin a new life with Marise.
31446451	/m/0gkz50s	Darkness Before Dawn	Sharon Draper	2001-02-01		 Book Review of Darkness before Dawn,book By: Sharon M. Draper by: anonymus Life after death is hard, and facing the world can be difficult, and in the way Sharon M Draper writes this book, Keisha, a high school senior, has experienced what most people think as “moving on”. Keisha’s ex-boyfriend, Andy, commits suicide after his best friend, Rob, dies in a car accident, leaving Keisha to wonder how life will be without them. She is desperate and sad, but then her senior year rolls around, bringing new opportunities and a fresh start. Her college student track coach, Jonathan, who also the principle’s son, falls in love with her and she quotes him as “really something” and “a lemon drop wrapped in licorice”. I don’t want to spoil the book so if you are interested, check it out yourself. The main character in this book is Keisha, who deals with her problems with the help of her friends, and opens her heart to the world. Her personality can be described as: positive, mature, and having a longing as to when she will finally be able to make her own decisions, away from the burden of her protective parents. There is also her many friends, who give her hope till the end . Her sweet and sassy best friend , Rhonda, Rhonda’s poetic boyfriend, Tyrone, past-Rob’s sister, Joyelle, Joyelle’s dancer best friend, Angel, Angel’s protective brother, Gerald, a new senior and Gerald’s girlfriend, Jalani, and lastly, the class clown, Leon. They all play a very strong role in helping Keisha get back on her feet, and walk stably, metaphorically speaking. Then there is Jonathan, the track coach and also the principle’s son, who messes up Keisha’s life in a way that creates forever scars that burn deep in her skin. He at first was appealing visually and emotionally, but in the end he became vain and conceited, following only in his own desires. If you like realistic fiction, romance, and life written out, then you will enjoy this book and read it over and over and over, as I did very pleasurably. However, if you are more into non-fiction and more informative things, you probably won’t appreciate this book, and will probably toss it away the moment you see it. But, in my own opinion, this book has turned out to be very amusing and was better than I thought it would be. links http://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Before-Dawn-Sharon-Draper/dp/0689851340 http://sharondraper.com/bookdetail.asp?id=10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness_Before_Dawn
31448171	/m/0glrqyk	The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate	Jacqueline Kelly		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 In the summer of 1899, Calpurnia Virginia Tate is about to turn twelve and worries about the adult responsibilities that loom on the horizon. She would much rather swim in the river near her family's pecan plantation just outside the tiny town of Fentress, Texas than learn to cook, knit, and play the piano. One day, noticing two different types of grasshoppers in the lawn around the house, Callie decides to find a copy of the infamous "Origin of the Species" by Mr. Charles Darwin. After a disastrous encounter with a lady librarian, Callie is forced to search for the illicit book elsewhere. Little does she know that there is a copy in her very own house in the personal library of her Granddaddy. An imposing and distant figure, Callie must work up her courage to ask him about her grasshopper conundrum and relay her own theory about why the grasshoppers around the house are two different sizes. Thus begins an easy sort of friendship between granddaughter and grandfather. Soon Callie is spending most of her time with Granddaddy, catching specimens of wildlife for his collection and learning about natural sciences at his side. When she is not tramping and trapping with Granddaddy, Callie finds herself sadly incapable at the skills her mother so desperately tries to teach her. She cannot cook anything other than soft-boiled eggs and cheese sandwiches. Her needlepoint is "straggly and pitiful." Her piano-playing, while adequate, is unexceptional. All of this is painfully obvious to poor Callie when she is compared to her best friend Lula. Lula is a perfect lady, excelling at all of the pursuits at which Callie fails so miserably. In fact, her proper ladylike demeanor has three of Callie's six brothers falling in love with her during the course of the summer. Callie fears that her free-roaming days may be at an end, though, when she receives a frightening Christmas gift: a book from her mother entitled "The Science of Housewifery." Throughout the novel, Callie must learn to balance her own independent and curious personality with the restrictions placed on a girl at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. As new inventions are presented in Callie's life, she adjusts and evolves, first with the wind machine her brother brings home, then with a marvelous new beverage called Coca-Cola. Ultimately, though, it is the introduction of the telephone in the small Texas town that symbolizes the changes ahead for Callie. As Granddaddy tells her, "The old century is dying, even as we watch. Remember this day.” As the book ends, the 20th century dawns, leaving the reader hopeful that it will bring with it new opportunities for the feisty young Calpurnia.
31448445	/m/0gk_rh8	Mind Switch	Damon Knight	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the year 2002, the Berlin Zoo acquires a new specimen: "Fritz", a biped from "Brecht's planet." Fritz is intelligent, and his keepers treat him with a mix of courtesy and disdain; he is kept in a display with another (presumably female) biped and the two are required to work for a living, transcribing tapes made by explorers to their planet. One day, Martin Naumchik, a human male, is visiting the zoo when his personality and that of the biped are interchanged. The switch is the unintended consequence of an experiment in time travel that takes place at another location. The remainder of the story follows the two characters as they come to terms with their new bodies and new feelings. Martin quickly becomes aware of the degradation of being a zoo animal, while Fritz is forced to cope with life in a confusing and threatening alien society. Martin tries, and fails, to convince his captors that he is imprisoned in the biped's body; the biped, in Martin's body, eventually comes into contact with Martin's colleagues and his lover, and manages to continue with Martin's life. The novel also deals wryly with the theme of sexual identity. Because Fritz is provided with inguinal glands resembling a human male's, he is presumed to be male. But it turns out that the organ has nothing to do with reproduction: Fritz is a female, and the smaller primate with whom he shares a cage is a male. To reproduce, the female aggressively bites off an egglike knob from the male's forehead containing the semen. Martin (in Fritz's body), and the reader, only learn this at the end of the novel, when he is overcome by passion and commits the act.
31449485	/m/0gkyr3t	Azemia	William Thomas Beckford	1797	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire"}	 Chapter 1- We learn that Azemia is the 45th daughter of Hamet-beig, who is the leader of a harem and does not know his daughter very well. She is very close with her grandmother, Birkabeba, though. We also find out that Azemia’s betrothed, Oglow, has sent for her to join him in Marseilles. She leaves immediately and is accompanied by Muzzled-Abib. On the third day of her journey, Azemia’s ship is attacked and Captain Wappingshot holds her and Muzzled-Abib prisoner. Chapter 2- Captain Wappingshot leaves Muzzled-Abib on Barbary Coast. Chapter 3- Charles Arnold, a ship hand, discovers Azemia and instantly falls in love with her and writes a poem. They arrive in England. Chapter 4- Charles attempts to convey his love to Azemia but she does not understand English so he uses his eyes and she understands. She loves him too because he is the only friendly face she has seen thus far. Mrs. Periwinkle and her daughter Miss Sally agree to take Azemia under their care. Chapter 5- The narrator (under the pretense that the narrator is a woman) digresses and muses how women can be good writers if the criteria is that they have to understand themselves if men are not even very good at that. The narrator then goes on to promise the reader not to write about slavery so as not to offend the slaves and also to show the proper respect for nobles. Chapter 6- Mrs. Periwinkle attempts to introduce Azemia to the Duke that employs her. However, the Duke takes sick with the gout and Azemia is forced to stay with Lady Belinda, one of the Duke’s close friends. Chapter 7- Wildcodger proposes to hang painting of food to make the hungry feel full and houses so the homeless will feel as though they have shelter. Chapter 8- Reverend Solomon Sheepend is introduced and Miss Ironside sets out to teach Azemia how to speak English. Chapter 9-A feud between Reverend Solomon who writes poetry in blank verse and Iphanissa who writes Italian sonnets is discussed. Chapter 10- Reverend Solomon has become very fond of Azemia and wishes to marry her. However, he learns that he must convert her to Christianity if this is to be possible. He writes a 3,996 line poem to show his love, it goes relatively unnoticed. Also, Miss Ironside becomes upset with Azemia for allegedly seducing her nephew, Reverend Solomon. Mrs. Blandford takes Azemia because she reminds Mrs. Blandford of her deceased daughter. Mrs. Blandford finishes teaching Azemia English. Story of Another Blue Beard: Mr. Grimshaw is the Esquire of a manor who is very cruel to his subordinates and especially wife. His current wife attempts to escape from his manor by the help of the ghost of deceased wife but her plan is thwarted and she is held captive. Mr. Grimshaw throws Mrs. Grimshaw in the dungeon for over a year sometimes going days with only bread and water. On a second attempt at escape, Mrs. Grimshaw meets an old family friend, Mr. Auberry, who had come to check on her well-being. Mr. Auberry learns of her misfortunes but cannot help her. Meanwhile, Mrs. Grimshaw learns that the ghost is Gertrude Grimshaw and that Mr. Grimshaw had killed her and her brother so they now walk the castle at midnight (the time of their deaths). Finally, Mrs. Grimshaw escapes with the help of the ghosts and Mr. Auberry who she then marries. Chapter 1- The main story line is resumed and the reader finds that Revered Solomon is in deep mourning because he loves Azemia and she is not in his possession. Chapter 2-Azemia is in the midst of a get together with Mr. Gallstone, Sir Baptist Bamboozle, Mrs. Albuzzi, and Dr. Prose. Mrs. Albuzzi mentions a servant of Azemia’s but Mrs. Albuzzi neglects to elaborate and it is never brought up again. Chapter 3-Due to the fact that Azemia is foreign, Mrs. Blandford’s social standing is elevated amongst her cultivated friends. Mrs. Blandford hosts a dinner party. Chapter 4-Azemia comments on the hypocrisy of the British women by saying that, with very few exceptions, they do “nothing but find fault in each other.” Chapter 5-Charles Arnold along with his servant, Bat, is travelling back to see Azemia after a year at sea. Chapter 6-Azemia enters a dark, black mausoleum. A bell tolls, a form appears and Azemia faints. It turns out to be Lord Scudabout who scared her on purpose. Chapter 7- Colonel and Lady Arsinoe Brusque host a dinner party where multiple distinguished guests talk about politics and poetry. Chapter 8-Azemia is put off by the antics and masks at a grand masquerade. Azemia is followed by a man who she finds very annoying. The man is revealed to be Mr. Perkly, a childhood friend of Charles Arnold. Chapter 9-Mrs. Blandford, Azemia, and Mr. Perkly are riding back home in Mr. Perkly’s carriages. They are stopped when the driver of Azemia and Mrs. Blandford’s cart is missing a lynchpin. They notice a small cabin and attempt to take rest there but discover that the inhabitants are stricken by extreme poverty and are dying of malnutrition. Mrs. Blandford is horrified by their predicament and hires a nurse and an apothecary to come to their aide. Mrs. Blandford and Mr. Perkly also have a heated discussion about moral and economic issues dealing with the poor, Mrs. Blandford finds Mr. Perkly’s views to be cold and moronic. Chapter 10- Mrs. Blandford leaves Azemia alone because she is called upon by an ailing friend in London. Mr. Perkly visits the house while she is away but is sent off by Azemia. Mrs. Blandford sends for Azemia to come to London but Azemia’s coach takes her through a dark forest and eventually back to the Duke’s manor and Miss Sally. It is then apparent that the Duke instructed Mr. Perkly to befriend Azemia and Mrs. Blandford so as to seize Azemia when the opportunity arose. Chapter 11-After a few weeks with Azemia under his care, the Duke falls madly in love with her. The Duke takes leave of his manor on business and leaves Azemia mostly unattended. She uses this opportunity to walk about the grounds late at night. While on one of her walks, Azemia is captured by three ruffians who are torturing rabbits. Chapter 12-Azemia is being led to a deserted cabin when they cross a road and a gun fight ensues between the lead ruffian and an oncoming traveler. Two of the captors flee the scene and the leader sustained a gunshot wound. The traveler is Charles Arnold, who has been shot in the arm. He takes Azemia to his uncle’s house and Bat removes the bullet from Charles Arnold’s arm. Chapter 13-Charles wants to marry Azemia but only has 200 pounds and a lieutenant’s salary to support them with. Both his uncle and Mrs. Blandford give them large sums of money so they can be wed.
31450946	/m/0gl089t	And There was Light				 The Atlantic Union College arguably has one of the richest histories of all college establishments in the United States of America. And There was Light provides a historic view of South Lancaster Academy, Lancaster Junior College and also the Atlantic Union College. The book begins by narrating the history of South Lancaster town before it housed this institution, said to be one of the oldest educational institutions of the Seventh Day Adventist which still remains as of April 2011. According to this book, by the time South Lancaster Academy was opened in 1882, Lancaster had no sectarian schools. Nevertheless, in most New England towns, including the town of Lancaster, several congregational churches had been founded. When South Lancaster Academy opened its doors to the community, it became the first Christian Institution who operated under a sectorial system in the North-East of America. The idea of the need of a high quality education with Christian values soon was conceived in the minds of the administrators of the Seventh-day Adventist New England Conference. Stephen Haskell was one of the most prominent Christian of his time and he worked hard to encourage quality education. After several meetings, the conferences of the Seventh-day Adventist church agreed to support the idea of establishing a preparatory school in the area. With the approbation of the school, Haskell proved to be a great publicist. On April 19, 1882 the school was opened with 19 founding scholars. The second part of the book documents the transition of the school, from the level of South Lancaster Academy to Atlantic Union College. By 1885-1886 the principal of the school Charles Ramsey announced that the school had been proud to increase its population to 117 new students, and by 1887-1888 the school's opening enrolment rose again to 150 new students. In one opening ceremony, Ramsey said that the school, as a class, was more mature in mind and character than ever before. During the following years, the number of students remained almost the same, averaging 150 to 168. Years later, the school had to deal with the consequences of the World War I, the number of students decreased even though the war did not have notoriety in the United States. By the end of the World War I, in 1917, a prison camp was established in South Lancaster and German soldiers were kept there; in contrary of the rest of the nation where anti-German sentiments arose, South Lancaster Academy students were friendly that some German soldiers tried to flirt young women that came to visit the new town attraction(prison). By 1918, the school changed its name from South Lancaster Academy to Lancaster Junior College. The book explains that this change was necessary due to the new academic programs offered by the school. In addition, new graduate students believed that the name "college" would give the school greater prestige. The school move forward throughout the years and on February 17, 1922, members of the Seventh-day adventist conference in the northeast of the nation, voted to change the name of the school to Atlantic Union College. The book ends making an epilogue of the college since 1928.
31454300	/m/0glsfl5	The Druid King				 The novel begins as Caesar searches for an excuse to use his Roman legions in Gaul in order to gain political capital in Rome. He makes a deal with Diviaxc of the Edui tribe, to allow the Romans to trade with the tribe and hurt another tribe attacking the Gauls. Caeser means to use the alliance and trade activities to provoke some sort of war with the Gauls and precipitate war between Rome and the Gauls. Meanwhile, Vercingetorix follows his father, who is the elected leader of the Arverni. and observes a gathering held by his father which seeks to bring together the Gallic tribes in order to oppose Roman expansion. His father attempts to become a king over all the tribes, but the other leaders resist and capture Vercingetorix's father and kill him. Vercingetorix barely escapes their pursuit with the help of the arch druid, Guttuatr. Guttuatr takes Vercingetorix under his wing, and trains him to become a druid. While training with the Druids he encounters the amazon warrior, Rhea, who teaches him how to fight and vows to always be his sister warrior upon her virginity. Caesar decides to invade Britain, offering the Gauls half of the pillage if they accompany him. However, unbeknownst to the Gallic allies, Caesar plans to send the Gauls ahead of him into battle in order for many of their warriors and leaders to be killed. While traveling north with his column of Roman infantry and his Gallic allies, Caesar encounters Vercingetorix who has left the druid training in order to reclaim his father's wealth amongst the Arverni. Vercingetorix is again elected their leader. Soon, Vercingetorix takes a military force to join Ceaser's invasion of Britain. At the camp, Vercingetorix is again reintroduced to his childhood love Marah, who has become enamoured with Caesar. Though Caesar attempts to bring Vercingetorix under his wing, Vercingetorix has a falling out with Caesar after the death of another Gallic leader. Vercingetorix becomes outlawed and Caesar leaves a portion of his army to subdue the Gallic forces which rebelled against him. This force effectively subdues Gaul before Caesar returns victorious from Britain and when Caesar returns, they have garrisoned all of the major Gallic cities. Vercingetorix resists, and eventually, through support of the high druid and political maneuvering, gains the support of the various Gallic factions. United, the next year they resist the Roman Army through a combination of scorched earth and Guerrilla tactics, overcoming the Roman superiority through discipline. However, Caesar realizing that the Gaul's could not resist a siege, and after months of maneuvering, forces Vercingetorix to move his army to Alesia where the superior siege technology of the Romans traps Vercingetorix in the city, and successfully resists the reinforcements of the all the tribes of Gaul.
31456818	/m/0gkxmpk	La Rue sans nom	Marcel Aymé	1930		 The story focus on a street in the Parisian banlieue where live Italian and French workers. Their neighborhood will soon be demolished and a mysterious character hides himself in this street. The main themes are xenophobia, poverty, the importance of alcohol, love, madness and ageing
31460768	/m/0gkyly5	Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor	Lisa Kleypas	2010		 Set in Friday Harbor, the novel opens with a prologue that features six-year-old Holly Nolan’s letter to Santa Claus, asking for a mother for Christmas. Following the death of Holly’s mother, Victoria Nolan, Holly is placed in the care of her uncle, Mark Nolan. Holly does not speak following her mother’s death, until she meets Maggie Conroy, a widow and the owner of a toy store, with whom Holly develops a connection. Mark, who learns of Holly’s Christmas wish, feels the need to find a mother for her. Despite being in a relationship, Mark is attracted to Maggie, while Maggie, despite her attraction to Mark, feels that she does not have enough to give to someone else since her husband’s death. The novel follows the developing relationship between Maggie and Mark, as well as their relationship with Holly, culminating on Christmas Eve.
31462253	/m/0gkxx6c	The Drop	Michael Connelly		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The book was later mentioned in a February 2011 interview, in which Connelly explained that Bosch will be "handling two cases at once, a cold case that turns hot, and the politically charged investigation into the death of a city councilman's son. The city councilman happens to be Harry's old nemesis, Irvin Irving".
31473008	/m/0gl0fbf	Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens	Brandon Sanderson		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Alcatraz and his companions head off to Mokia, one of the Free Kingdoms, to try and save it from a Librarian take over.
31483812	/m/0glnzt8	The Land of Painted Caves	Jean M. Auel		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In this three-part book, Ayla is 20 (in part 1), about 23 (in part 2) and 26 (in part 3) and is training to become a spiritual leader for the Zelandonii. Most of the first and second parts of the book involve Ayla's acolyte training to become Zelandoni. The third part of the book contains most of the action of the story and plot line. In the first part, Ayla is in a Summer Meeting, and she begins to learn what an acolyte does. Ayla and the First decide to start Ayla's Donier Tour, which is a tour of the sacred caves in the wider region. Jondalar, Jonayla, and their animals as well as many others decide to travel. The second part is mainly about the caves that they visit. In many of the Sacred caves the Ancients, the people before the Zelandonii, left drawings. During this time, Ayla meets many other Zelandoni, and one of them gives her a pouch of dried herbs smelling faintly of mint. Ayla also discovers that the Clan visit some of the sacred caves as well. In the third part of the book, Ayla is marking the passage of the sun and moon's phases as part of her training as an acolyte. One night she is distracted and decides to share Pleasures with Jondalar, starting a baby. However, most of her Cave leaves for the Summer Meeting, but Ayla stays behind until Midsummer so she can finish her observation of the celestial bodies. During this time she takes care of Marthona, her mother-in-law, as well as the others in her Cave. One night Ayla makes some mint tea, actually the dried herb mixture given to her in the second part of the book, and is Called. If an acolyte is Called, then she will be tested by the Zelandonia, and initiated into the Zelandonia if the Calling is true. Ayla puts down her drink and runs along a river into a cave, where she spends the next three days hallucinating. Wolf wakes her from her visions, and she finds herself in the dark cave. She allows Wolf to lead her out of the cave, but not before finding a bag hidden there by Madroman, an unskilled acolyte who faked his Calling, and who has had a deep-seated hatred of Jondalar since adolescence. Outside are people from her Cave who were worried about her absence, and it is discovered that Ayla miscarried. She spends the next few days recovering from her experience and helps deliver a friend's baby. After delivering the baby, Ayla travels to the Summer Meeting. Upon her arrival, she finds Jondalar sharing Pleasures with Marona (Marona being Jondalar's bitter ex-girlfriend whom he abandoned to go travelling in the second book, and who actively and spitefully caused Ayla much difficultly when she first arrived at Jondalar's home). This leaves a rift between Ayla and Jondalar. She turns Madroman's bag over to the Zelandonia, and he is rejected from their ranks for his attempted deception. Ayla is accepted into the Zelandonia and attempts to use a dangerous hallucinogenic root as part of her initiation - one that was greatly feared by her first mentor, Mamut. The rift with Jondalar is only healed when he manages to call her back from the death-like coma induced by the root. The spiritual knowledge Ayla's Calling brings to the community is that men are active in the conception of a baby during 'Pleasures', which leads to the start of recognized fatherhood and that men have purpose on earth equal to that of women, and subsequently leads to the need for monogamous relationships to reduce jealousy/possessiveness over sexual partners and for fathers to take responsibility for children, thus shaping this prehistoric culture further to match our current one.
31485389	/m/0glqyjd	The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society		2008		 The book is an epistolary novel, whose main character is a female newspaper columnist. She receives a letter from a Channel Island man who has acquired a book (Essays of Elia) which contains her name and (previous) London address on the flyleaf. He writes to her, asking for help in finding a biography of English essayist Charles Lamb, and mentions that he is a member of the Island's only book club. Intrigued both by the man's love of Mr Lamb, and by the intriguing name of the book club, she enters into a correspondence with the man, which leads to an ever-growing web of letters, then a visit to the island, which ends in a permanent residence there. As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact which the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
31486036	/m/0glrffw	Madonna	Andrew Morton	2001-11	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The book opens with Madonna's birth, her early years in Michigan, and her 1977 move to New York City where she was involved with modern dance, two pop groups, composing, and releasing her 1983 debut album, Madonna. Her rise to superstardom as a pop icon is chronicled and her cutting edge music videos, albums, first concert tour, film roles, and marriage and divorce to Sean Penn are examined. The book investigates her controversial religious imagery and her erotic productions, Erotica, Sex, and Body of Evidence. The book describes a mellowing in her appearance and provocativeness, and, among other things, the release of her next several albums, her Golden Globe Award-winning musical film portrayal of Eva Peron, and her high-grossing Drowned World Tour. The birth of her daughter and son are chronicled and her marriage to Guy Ritchie. Madonna includes detailed descriptions of her relationship with individuals including John F. Kennedy Jr. and Michael Jackson.
31489936	/m/0glt0fy	The Claverings	Anthony Trollope			 Harry Clavering is the only son of Reverend Henry Clavering, a well-to-do clergyman and the paternal uncle of the affluent baronet Sir Hugh Clavering. At the novel's beginning, Harry is jilted by his fiancée, the sister of Sir Hugh's wife, who proceeds to marry Lord Ongar, a wealthy but debauched earl. Harry's father urges him to make the church his profession; but Harry aspires to become a civil engineer, of the type of Robert Stephenson, Joseph Locke, and Thomas Brassey. To this end, he becomes a pupil at the firm of Beilby and Burton. A year and a half later, Harry has become engaged to Florence Burton, the daughter of one of his employers. He presses her for an early marriage; but although she loves him deeply, she refuses, insisting that they wait until he has an income adequate to support himself and a family. At this point, Lord Ongar dies, and his widow returns to England. Sir Hugh, her nearest male relative, is a hard and selfish man, and refuses to see her upon her arrival. This lends spurious credence to rumours about her conduct; and it forces her sister, Lady Clavering, to ask Harry to assist her when she returns. Harry fails to tell Lady Ongar of his engagement; and, in a moment of weakness, he embraces and kisses her. This puts him in a position where he must behave dishonourably toward one of the two women in his life: either he must break his engagement, or he must acknowledge that he has gravely insulted Lady Ongar. Although he loves Florence Burton and knows that she is the better woman, he is unwilling to subject Lady Ongar to further misery. Lady Ongar, because of her considerable wealth, is pursued by others. She is courted by Count Pateroff, one of her late husband's friends, and by Archie Clavering, Sir Hugh's younger brother. Count Pateroff's scheming sister Sophie Gourdeloup, the only woman who will see Lady Ongar because of the rumours about her conduct, wants her to remain single so that Mme. Gourdeloup can continue to exploit her. Mme. Gourdeloup sees to it that Lady Ongar learns about Harry's engagement. Meanwhile, Florence Burton learns that Harry has been seeing Lady Ongar regularly, and decides that she must release him if he does not truly love her. Through the good influence of his mother, Harry comes to realize that Florence Burton is the better woman and the less deserving of dishonorable treatment. To her letter offering to end their engagement, he responds with a reaffirmation of his love for her. He also writes to Lady Ongar, regretting his past conduct toward her and making it clear that he intends to remain true to his fiancée. Soon thereafter, Sir Hugh and Archie Clavering are both drowned when their yacht goes down off Heligoland. This makes Harry's father the new baronet and the possessor of Clavering Park, with Harry the heir apparent. This increase in wealth allows him to marry immediately and to give up engineering, a profession for which he almost certainly lacked sufficient self-discipline. Lady Ongar gives up much of her property to the family of the new earl, and retires into seclusion with her widowed sister.
31491240	/m/0glqxt7	Success				 Success tells the story of two foster brothers—Terence Service and Gregory Riding, narrating alternate sections—and their exchange of position during one calendar year as each slips towards, and away from, success.
31499129	/m/0glqjnn	The Maker of Universes		1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story follows Robert Wolff, a man disenchanted with his life and his marriage. One day, while looking at a new house, Wolff discovers a strange horn in the basement. Blowing the horn, Wolff is transported to a strange new world, the World of Tiers. Wolff finds himself initially in an edenic paradise known as Okeanos. This region is the first level of the planet, which contains a number of tiers like a wedding cake, separated by vast mountain ranges. The entire planet is ruled over by a cruel and mysterious lord named Jadawin, who created it. Okeanos consists of a beach, an ocean, and a small forest and is populated by nymph like humans who originated in and near ancient Greece. In this new world, Wolff regains his youth and vigor and falls in love with a local woman named Chryseis who lived in Troy at the time of the Trojan War. When Chryseis is kidnapped, Wolff follows after her, climbing to the next level of the world, Amerind, a plains region populated by Native Americans and centaurs. Along the way he is joined by the adventurer Kickaha, who had also come from Earth, where he was known as Paul Janus Finnegan, some time ago. The two continue their adventure as they ascend the various levels of the World of Tiers including the medieval Dracheland and the jungle Atlantis. When they finally make it to the palace of Jadawin they make a shocking discovery; Robert Wolff is Lord Jadawin, who lost his memory after being defeated by another lord, and ended up stranded on Earth. At the end, Wolff/Jadawin is reunited with Chryseis and restored to his rightful place as ruler of the World of Tiers, his experiences as a human on Earth having tempered his previous cruelty. fr:Le Faiseur d'univers it:Il fabbricante di universi
31499578	/m/0glsw20	Too Big to Fail	Andrew Ross Sorkin	2009		 The book provides an overview of the early stages of the financial crisis of 2007–2010 from the beginning of 2008 to the decision to create the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The book tells the story from the perspectives of the leaders of the major financial institutions and the main regulatory authorities.
31500509	/m/0glrx6j	Song of Scarabaeus	Sara Creasy	2010-04-27	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 *Edie Sha'nim is a cypherteck, and the best in the galaxy. It's what she's been trained to do: manipulate biocyph to terraform alien worlds, while the Crib - her employer - drains the Fringe populations dry. When a band of rovers kidnaps her, Edie can't decide if it's a blessing or a curse. Until they leash her to her new bodyguard, Finn - a serf whose past isn't clear to anyone. If she strays from his side, he dies; if she fails to cooperate, the rovers will kill them both. The deal worsens when Edie finds they're taking her to her one failure... a planet called Scarabaeus. The world itself has a few surprises in store for Edie.
31500630	/m/0glp6xj	Children of Scarabaeus	Sara Creasy	2011-03-29	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 *Barely escaping the clutches of Scarabaeus, Edie and Finn try to make it to the Fringe worlds. Liv Natesa recaptures them and puts Edie back to work on project Ardra, an accelerated terraforming plan that Edie can't see working on any scale. She's shocked to find Natesa's newest tool in her plot: children. When everything goes wrong, it seems the only way for everyone else to escape requires the ultimate sacrifice...
31501465	/m/0glrvhx	La Duchesse de Langeais				 General Armand de Montriveau, a war hero, is enamored of Duchess Antoinette de Langeais, a coquettish, married noblewoman who invites him to a ball but ultimately refuses his sexual advances and then disappears. Assisted by the powerful group known as The Thirteen, who ascribe to an occult form of freemasonry, General Montriveau finds the duchess in a Spanish monastery of Discalced Carmelites under the name of Sister Theresa. Dedicated to Franz Liszt, this portrait of a vain representative of the noble families of Faubourg Saint-Germain, was inspired by the Duchess of Castries with whom Balzac had a failed romance.
31503079	/m/0glsktx	Cluny Brown		1944-08		 The story follows the escapades of a plumber's niece, Cluny Brown, who is twenty years old in England in 1938. Cluny has high spirits and a constant desire for expansion of experience that leads the more staid members of her community to question whether she knows her place. As a consequence of one final London based excursion of discovery outside the bounds of what Cluny's mentors consider proper, she is sent off into good service with a charming country residence know as Friars Carmel to be a Tall Parlour Maid. The coincidental simultaneous arrivals of the young son and heir of the house, a mysterious Polish professor, and a beautiful socialite add complexity to this adventurous tale of a young woman following her dreams and finding her personal freedom in the tumultuous early 20th century.
31505316	/m/0glsv5z	The Beasts of Clawstone Castle				 Madlyn and Rollo live with their parents in a ground-floor flat in south London. Mrs Hamilton runs a theatre where the plays keep running out of money, and Mr Hamilton is a designer and helps people with their houses. Madlyn is very attractive and has many friends. She has fair hair, blue eyes and a deep laugh, and likes parties and sleepovers. Rollo is two years younger and likes animals and insects. He has an adopted skink at London Zoo called Stumpy. Madlyn is helpful to her brother and mother, who is usually frantic and forgets things like car keys. At the beginning of the summer term, Mr Hamilton receives a large offer from an American college (which the family needs) to spend two months in New York setting up a business course in design. The parents cannot take the children but decide to go to America, sending Madlyn and Rollo to stay with their Uncle George and Aunt Emily (sister and brother) at Clawstone Castle at the Scottish border. Madlyn is shocked at Clawstone's appearance. When she meets her Uncle and Aunt she is uncertain. Madlyn and Rollo see their rooms and go to bed. George and his sister Emily wake early on Saturdays for that is when his castle is open to the public. George's hair is sparse and he wears a mustard coloured tweed suit. Howard Percival, their cousin, is very shy, never comes out of his room and is frightened of anyone he has not known for the last twenty years. Mrs Grove comes in from the village to help. She disapproves of how George and Emily deal with Howard. Emily prepares the gift shop. She feels sad at the thought of the rival Trembellow gift shop, which is larger. George starts preparing his work in the castle. He also feels sad at the thought of the rival Trembellow dungeons. Mrs Grove's sister comes to start taking the tickets, bringing with her what the villagers have donated to help the castle. The day does not go well; by midday only ten people have arrived, and most of them get bored. The next day Madlyn and Rollo make friends with Mrs Grove and Madlyn takes to the museum. Rollo likes the dungeon. Then Madlyn meets Mrs Grove's son, Ned, and learns about Olive, the Trembellow's daughter. Madlyn and Rollo go to Mrs Grove's house to watch TV. When they get back Emily is preparing for Open Day again. Madlyn asks why the money is so important and Mrs Grove tells her it's for the cows. The next day Sir George takes Madlyn and Rollo to see his white cows. They are astonishing, and George buys Rollo a pair of binoculars. Madlyn, Rollo and Ned go see Howard, and understand that they need ghosts to make the castle better.
31508158	/m/0glpmdp	Scrivener's Moon	Philip Reeve		{"/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 In a future land once known as Britain, nomad tribes are preparing to fight a terrifying enemy - the first-ever mobile city. Before London can launch itself, young engineer Fever Crumb must journey to the wastelands of the North. She seeks the ancient birthplace of the Scriven mutants. Scrivener's Moon is the sequel to A Web of Air, the story set centuries before Mortal Engines.
31512660	/m/0glnnp7	What I Loved	Siri Hustvedt	2003		 What I Loved opens with a painting of a naked woman, with the artist's shadow across the canvas. The protagonist, art historian Leon Hertzberg (Leo), purchases the painting and some time afterwards befriends the artist, Bill Wechsler. Bill is, at this stage, an unknown artist, though as the novel progresses, so too does his career in the New York art scene. This is in part due to Leo’s writing, which brings Bill's work into the public eye. Bill is married to Lucille, a highly strung poet, and Leo is married to Erica, a literary academic. The two couples become close and move into the same apartment block. Erica and Lucille fall pregnant around the same time and have sons, Mathew and Mark. The first half of the novel explores their quiet, domestic lives, through the eyes of Leo. Lucille and Bill separate after he forms a relationship with Violet, the model who posed for the painting which opens the text. The opening of part Two of the novel is described by Robert Birnaum, in an interview with the author, as like a punch in the face and the pace of the novel accelerates after this point. Leo and Erica’s son, Mathew, dies suddenly. Grief-stricken, Leo eventually loses Erica, who moves away for distance as well as work. Leo forms a close relationship with Bill’s son Mark. Mark is, however, an insincere and somewhat amoral character, and a pattern is repeated between the two, of trust and betrayal, until Leo and the reader realise Mark is probably not capable of affection. Mark befriends performance and installation artist Teddy Giles, whose art is designed to shock, but seems empty and only designed to serve that one purpose. Bill eventually dies in his studio and Violet attempts to curtail her grief by cleaning manically. Leo becomes embroiled in a thriller-like plot attempting to track down Mark who has become lost in Teddy Giles's scene. Leo finally professes his love for Violet. She tells him he can have her for one night, but that she’s then moving away. He declines and returns to his apartment alone. A minor character throughout the novel, Lazlo Finkelman, moves amongst similar circles to Teddy Giles and Mark, but with very different intentions and values. At the close of the novel, an aging Leo finds comfort in playing with Lazlo’s young son.
31519234	/m/0glprwn	An American Demon: A Memoir		2011-05-01	{"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/0q9mp": "Tragicomedy", "/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The plot partially revolves around the author's life, but also delves into side topics such as religion and politics.
31520962	/m/0glsx4b	Carrion Comfort				 The premise of the novel is that a small number of humans are born with the Ability, which gives them the power to take control of others, mind and body. These psychic vampires vary in the strength of their gift, but most have been corrupted by it and are extremely dangerous. Not only do they use others as tools or sources of amusement, they quickly discover that they gain energy from the act, "feeding" from the emotions of those they control - and feeding most successfully when their victims are tormented or forced into acts of violence. Thus, many of the most violent and inexplicable human actions are actually signs of these mind vampires at work. Saul Laski, a former victim, is determined to track down the Nazi who used the Ability to torment him. In the course of his quest, he begins to uncover a series of deadly power struggles and intrigues that are rocking the secretive world of the mind vampires. es:Los vampiros de la mente fr:L'Échiquier du mal
31523740	/m/0glnyc_	Maisie Dobbs	Jacqueline Winspear	2003-07-01	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Maisie becomes a maid at the Belgravia Mansion of Lady Rowan Compton in 1910 at fourteen years old after her mother dies and she must help her father make ends meet. Soon after getting caught in Lady Compton's library fulfilling her joy of reading and learning, Maisie is introduced to Maurice Blanche, close friend of the Comptons, and becomes his pupil. Blanche, a discreet investigator, teaches Maisie as much as he can about psychology, science, and anything else Maisie is willing to learn. When Maisie becomes old enough she attends Girton College at Cambridge University, but threats of war soon intervene. World War I intensifies and the pressures of war can be felt in Maisie's England. Deciding that the war efforts are extremely important to her and her country, Maisie volunteers as a nurse at the front, where she meets a young man, with whom she falls in love. Part of the mystery surrounding Maisie is what happens to the young man. After the war, Maisie apprentices with Blanche in his investigative work. In 1929, after Blanche has retired, Maisie opens her own investigation business. Her first seemingly open-and-shut case involves her in a mystery surrounding something known as The Retreat, a suspicious home for veterans of the war. Maisie must act fast when she learns that Lady Compton's own son has signed over his fortune to The Retreat and has taken asylum there. With the help of Billy Beale, a caretaker at her office and veteran of the Great War himself, she is able to infiltrate The Retreat. As Maisie uncovers the mystery of The Retreat she is also confronted with her own ghosts from the war after ten years of holding the memories at bay.
31523874	/m/0glr573	Sign of the Moon	Erin Hunter		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ivypaw and Dovepaw get their warrior names of Ivypool and Dovewing. Icecloud falls through the shallow roof of a tunnel near where Hollyleaf was buried, and so Lionblaze and Jayfeather venture down the tunnel, only to find a tuft of fur in the spot Hollyleaf supposedly died in. This indicates that Hollyleaf may not be dead. Midway through the book, Jayfeather, Dovewing, Foxleap, and Squirrelflight visit the Tribe of Rushing Water when Jayfeather receives a dream from Rock, who insists he go to the mountains for a mysterious purpose. While there, Jayfeather is again sent into centuries before his own time, to convince the ancient Tribe ancestors to stay in the mountains, as they're weary and very close to returning to the lake (their previous home). Jayfeather (known as "Jay's Wing" in the ancient time he's visiting) succeeds in the mission Rock assigned him, and even completes the most important task of all: assigning the new Stoneteller of the Tribe in the ancient times, and in his own time. He appoints Half Moon as the Stoneteller of ancient times (who he has a brief relationship with, but as expected, it does not work out) and Crag Where Eagles Nest as the Stoneteller of modern times. While in his slight relationship with Half Moon, Jayfeather is tempted to never return to his own time and stay with her to become mates. This, obviously, does not succeed as their paths are very different, with destinies too great to put aside, as Rock puts it. Meanwhile, Ivypool struggles with the Dark Forest, haunted by its darkness and trying to find out answers: mainly, when the battle of the Dark Forest and StarClan will be. Lionblaze still pursues a relationship with Cinderheart, even though Cinderheart believes that Lionblaze is to good for her so Lionblaze has no success.
31527509	/m/0glrj49	The New Cool		2011		 The book begins with a prologue set at the 2009 FIRST Championship in Atlanta and describes the exciting environment there. It then switches back to the kickoff event in January 2009 and describes Dean Kamen and how he founded FIRST. Afterwards, it details the history of team 1717 and the program that it is a part of, the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy. Then the book describes how the 2009 team winds its way through a 6 week build season, enduring many struggles from mechanical failures to a bout of sickness. A chapter is dedicated to team 217, the Thunderchickens, who attempt to construct a robot with military style precision, and to team 395, 2TrainRobotics, whose students must deal with issues related to being in the poor inner city, as well as to team 67, Heroes of Tomorrow. After the build season, team 1717 competes in two regional competitions, Los Angeles and Sacramento. The team loses in the finals at Los Angeles, and wins in Sacramento after going undefeated. 1717 then competes in the FIRST Championship, where it loses to a heavily favored team in the division finals.
31536697	/m/0glpq4v	Honeymoon	Howard Roughan			 When several rich men die mysteriously and a young investment banker allegedly dies of a heart attack, John O'Hara, an FBI agent, believes it is the work of a ruthless murderer. The only witness is the beautiful but secretive widow of the investment banker. O'Hara believes he is making progress with the case, but he is not sure if it is due obsession or in the pursuit of justice.
31539009	/m/0glqrs_	The Red Queen	Isobelle Carmody		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As the long-foreseen Seeker, Elspeth Gordie must continue to walk the black road, still haunted by memories of her love, Rushton. Yet what awaits her at the end of the black road shakes even her, for the lost community of the Compound is not what it seems. As she struggles against her captors, she learns that her friends, and Rushton, have fallen into the hands of the deadly slavemasters of the Red Land. Moreover, every mistake and delay Elspeth faces in her quest sees the Destroyer closer to realising his goal of reawakening the weaponmachines Elspeth must destroy. Will all the Seeker has sacrificed be in vain?
31542262	/m/0gls19c	Banned for Life			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As a restless high school athlete in a small, unnamed town in North Carolina, Jason Maddox, the book's narrator, has a sexual encounter with his popular girlfriend’s alcoholic mother. Rumors of the encounter circulate at school, and Jason’s girlfriend, distraught when she learns of them, attempts suicide. Jason, himself previously popular, is shunned by his classmates, including the one who started the rumors. Jason confronts and savagely beats that classmate, and in the aftermath, he's arrested, expelled from school, and all but disowned by his conservative, mortified parents. Taking a job as a house painter, Jason moves into an apartment complex where he befriends his new neighbor, Bernard “Peewee” Mash, an intellectually precocious fifteen-year-old who, like Jason, is a local pariah. Peewee introduces Jason to art, literature, and, most importantly, punk rock. He and Jason are particularly enamored of the Los Angeles punk band Rule of Thumb, which is led by a Berkeley-educated poet, Jim Cassady, whom Jason and Peewee both revere. Learning that Rule of Thumb will be performing at New York City’s CBGB, Jason quits his job in order to drive himself and Peewee to New York. After the show, they speak to Jim Cassady, who advises them to start a band. They immediately make plans to move to Manhattan, where they live on the Lower East Side, center of the New York punk scene. There, Peewee becomes increasingly difficult, at odds with Jason musically and envious of Jason’s sexual prowess. Alternately given to tantrums and sullen silences, Peewee is ousted from the band that he co-founded. He and Jason pursue music separately until, recognizing how much they miss each other, they reconcile and start a new band. The new band has a growing reputation for its explosive, destructive shows, which result in injuries to person and property alike. Banned from most local venues, the band begins touring the U.S., and in the midst of what will prove to be its final tour, Peewee is killed in a car crash, with Jason narrowly surviving. Devastated by the loss of Peewee, Jason decides he’s finished with music, and, using money from an insurance settlement, he produces and directs a film that takes him to Los Angeles, where he falls in love with an aspiring actress who is herself seeking a new life after fleeing the civil wars in her native Yugoslavia. The actress, Irina, is married to a wealthy Englishman who is happily unaware of her affair with Jason and, possibly, others prior, though Irina denies any previous affairs to Jason. Their stormy romance is addictive to Jason, who begs Irina to leave her husband for him. She repeatedly, and emptily, assures him she will. At a party one night, Jason meets another former punk who tells him that Jim Cassady has recently been spotted, homeless and panhandling on the streets of Hollywood. This is the first sighting of Cassady, as far as Jason knows, since Rule of Thumb disbanded in the early 80s. Jason has always been mystified and intrigued by Cassady’s disappearance, and, on the Internet, he reads of other alleged Cassady sightings. Determined to find Cassady, Jason discovers that he’s now living in a bleak Los Angeles suburb with his elderly, controlling mother. He shares some of his recent songs and poems with Jason, who thinks they're deserving of a wide audience. Except for Cassady's music and the advice he gave Jason and Peewee at CBGB almost twenty years before, Jason might still be miserable in North Carolina, and he means to express his gratitude by helping Cassady gain a new following. But Cassady is resigned to obscurity, and he grudgingly submits to Jason’s efforts on his behalf. Perhaps out of spite, he causes a rupture in Jason’s relationship with Irina, and Jason promises to kill him for it, only to reaffirm, in the book's epilogue, how indebted he is to Cassady, who has again changed the course of his life.
31547419	/m/0glqtpr	Salah Asuhan	Abdul Muis		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story revolves around the Minangkabau Hanafi and his friend, the half-French half-Minangkabau Corrie du Busee. Although Hanafi is Minangkabau and a Muslim, he considers European culture to be superior and has many European friends. After graduating from high school in Solok, Hanafi admits his love to Corrie and kisses her. However, Corrie feels ashamed afterwards and eventually flees to Batavia (Jakarta), leaving a letter for Hanafi saying that they can never be together because he is pribumi. Hanafi is then married to his cousin Rapiah, much to his discontent. He begins taking out his anger on his family, especially Rapiah. After a few years, Hanafi's European friends have left him because of his treatment of his family, including his and Rapiah's baby son. His temperament becomes worse as a result. One day, he is bitten by a rabid dog. He is sent for treatment in Batavia. Upon arrival in Batavia, Hanafi meets Corrie again and they fall in love. They eventually marry and move in together. Hanafi finds employment with the Dutch colonial government, receives the same legal status as a European, and adopts the Christian name Chrisye. He does not think of his family in Solok, even though they are worried about him. Although their married life starts well, eventually Hanafi becomes abusive towards Corrie. Upon hearing that Corrie has befriended a disreputable woman and occasionally meets other men without him knowing, Hanafi loses his temper, accuses Corrie of infidelity and hits her. Corrie runs away from home and eventually starts working at an orphanage in Semarang. Hanafi's coworkers in Batavia ostracise him after hearing of his treatment of Corrie. After one tells him that he is seen to be acting poorly, Hanafi realizes that he was wrong and goes to Semarang to apologize to Corrie. However, upon arrival he finds her dying of cholera. Corrie forgives him, and dies. Hanafi then collapses from the stress. After being treated, Hanafi returns to his village to be with his family. Not long after his arrival, he commits suicide by drinking poison and apologizes to his family on his deathbed, embracing his Minangkabau and Muslim heritage. Rapiah states that she will not raise their son to be like the Europeans.
31550424	/m/0gmbm_8	The Lover's Dictionary	David Levithan	2011		 A nameless narrator tells the story of a relationship through dictionary entries. These short entries provide insight into the ups and downs of their romantic relationship, revealing the couple's problems with alcoholism and infidelity. The story does not unfold in chronological order; instead, it is arranged alphabetically by dictionary entries which give glimpses into the joys and struggles the characters face over the course of their relationship.
31553211	/m/0glq5m9	Tre kom tilbake				 Müller served in the No. 331 Squadron RAF, when he was shot down over the sea during a flight mission on 19 June 1942. He was captureed and brought a prisoner-of-war camp, Durchgangslager Frankfurt, and after interrogations eventually transferred to the camp Stammlager Luft III. As a prisoner in the camp, Müller participated in the escape plans, by helping with the ventilation of the tunnels dug by the prisoners. In 1943 the prisoners were moved to a new camp site, and shortly thereafter they secretly organized the digging of three new tunnels, called Tom, Dick and Harry. On 24 March 1944 a number of prisoners made their way out of the camp through the tunnel Harry. Along with fellow prisoner Per Bergsland from RAF 332 Squadron, Müller eventually managed to escape to Sweden, after travelling with train to Frankfurt, taking a connecting train to Küstrin, then another train to Stettin. During the travel they were camouflaged as Norwegian electricians working in Germany, equipped with false documents made by other prisoners, including travel orders to change their workplace from Frankfurt to Stettin. They finally reached Sweden by hiding on a ship. After about ten days in Stockholm they were transported to Scotland in two Mosquito aeroplanes (each Mosquito could only carry one passenger), and arrived in London on 8 April 1944. Only three of the seventy-six runaways from Stalag Luft III managed to escape to freedom, while the other 73 were caught after a giant man-hunt, and fifty men where executed by shooting as reprisal. numbers that have been corrected after later investigations.
31555240	/m/0glqnhq	Memoirs of a Dervish	Robert Graham Irwin	2011-04-14		 In the summer of 1964, the author left behind the popular culture of the "Swinging Sixties" in England, a time when many were journeying to the East in search of spiritual enlightenment. In the book, he contrasts that hippie subculture with the "bombs and guns and [Sufi] mysticism" which he encountered on his own travels in Algeria.
31556483	/m/0gls4dw	Upsurge	J. M. (John Mews) Harcourt		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book tells the stories of Theodora Luddon, a 20-year-old receptionist, Peter Groom, a member of the bourgeoisie who claims unemployment benefits, city magistrate James Riddle, working class man Colin Rumble who hangs himself after murdering his family, and Paul Kronen, the owner of a big drapery store. It is set in the 1930s, starts with Theodora fined two pounds by Riddle for indecent exposure at the beach and ends with Peter sentenced to a month in jail with hard labour after a riot in the city.
31561733	/m/0glqq8m	The Last of the Dying				 When the world finally collapses and begins to fade away, the only chance of survival is to create a new and better earth. With millions of people paying all they have to become one of the saved and make it to New Blue 1 (the new earth) everyone who cannot pay is simply left behind to die along with the planet. Silas is one of the forgotten, but when he is forced to surrender himself to a risky experiment, he finds that the fate of humanity is left in his hands. Unsure about his new abilities, and desperate to save the lives of those left behind, Silas does not know if he will discover a secret that could change the future.
31563044	/m/0glsr9s	Richard Carvel	Winston Churchill	1899	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Foreword The novel opens with a fictitious foreword, a brief note dated 1876, in which the purported editor of the memoirs, Daniel Clapsaddle Carvel, claims that they are just as his grandfather, Richard Carvel, wrote them, all the more realistic for their imperfections. Volume One The first volume concerns Richard Carvel's boyhood and schooldays. Orphaned at an early age, Richard is raised by his grandfather, Lionel Carvel of Carvel Hall, a wealthy loyalist respected by all sections of the community. Richard describes their way of life, his growing love for his neighbor, Dorothy Manners, and the hostility of his uncle, Grafton Carvel. Richard witnesses a demonstration against a tax collector in Annapolis as a result of the Stamp Act 1765 and grieves his grandfather by his adoption of revolutionary political views. Volume Two Mr Allen, Richard's new tutor, tricks him into deceiving his ailing grandfather. Richard is tormented by the coquettishness of Dorothy. At Richard's eighteenth birthday party, he learns that she is to go to England. Volume Three With the third volume, the main action of the novel begins. Through the scheming of Grafton Carvel and Mr Allen, Richard fights a duel with Lord Comyn. He is wounded, but becomes fast friends with the lord. His grandfather learns that his political opinions are unchanged but forgives him, partly through the intercession of Colonel Washington. After his recovery, Richard is attacked on the road and kidnapped. He is taken aboard a pirate ship, the Black Moll. There is a fight with a brigantine, in which the pirate ship sinks. Volume Four In the fourth volume, the protagonist continues to meet with sudden reversals of fortune. Richard is rescued and befriended by the captain of the brigantine, John Paul, who is sailing to Solway. In Scotland, John Paul is shunned, and vows to turn his back on his country. They take a post chaise to London, and in Windsor meet Horace Walpole. In London they are imprisoned in a sponging-house, from where they are rescued by Lord Comyn and Dorothy. Volume Five Volumes five and six are set in London, where the glamor and corruption of fashionable society forms a contrast with the plain and honest values of the emerging republic, embodied in the protagonist. Richard is introduced to London society, where Dorothy is an admired beauty. He makes friends with Charles James Fox and incurs the enmity of the Duke of Chartersea. Richard declares his love to Dorothy but is rejected. Volume Six Richard risks his life in a wager but survives against the odds. He visits the House of Commons, and hears Edmund Burke and Fox speak. At Vauxhall Gardens he is tricked into a duel with the Duke, while Lord Comyn is injured saving him from a second assailant. Later he hears that his grandfather has died, and that his uncle Grafton has inherited the estate, leaving him penniless. Volume Seven Richard returns to America, where he learns his grandfather had believed him dead. Rejecting Grafton's overtures, he accepts a place as Mr Swain's factor, and for the next few years faithfully tends the Swain estate, Gordon's Pride. In 1774, the discontent among the colonists begins to escalate. Volume Eight The final volume sees the dual, interlinked fruition of the two principal aspects of the novel: the political and the romantic. With the coming of war, Richard sets out to fight for his country. He meets John Paul, now calling himself John Paul Jones, and plans to join the nascent American navy. The early years of the war are represented by a summary by Daniel Clapsaddle Carvel, and Richard's narrative resumes at the start of the North Sea action between the Bonhomme Richard, captained by Jones, and the Serapis. Richard is severely wounded, and Jones arranges for him to be nursed by Dorothy. The end of the book sees Richard back in Maryland as master of Carvel Hall, married to his childhood sweetheart.
31567409	/m/0glsdd9	The November Criminals		2010-04-20	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The hero of the book is 18-year-old Addison Schacht, a high-school senior in Washington D.C. He is in the process of applying to the University of Chicago, where he plans to study classics. The book is his response to the essay question, "What are your best and worst qualities?". He explains he has only bad qualities, as illustrated by the events of his senior year. They include collecting offensive jokes; dealing drugs to his classmates; and insulting teachers, fellow students, and his girlfriend's mother. But his classmate Kevin Broadus is killed in a senseless shooting, and he begins to investigate the death.
31569233	/m/0gmbz01	Reckless	Andrew Gross			 Ty Hauck learns of the murder of a close personal friend April Glassman along with her husband Marc and their daughter. The murder was clearly meant to look like one of a recent string of home invasions, but very little about this murder parallels the other home invasions. The murder of Marc Glassman, a trader at a major brokerage, has an immediate and dramatic effect on world financial markets. Coincidentally, Glassman had gone out of his way to violate company policy, having dramatically over leveraged his positions. His murder brings down one of Wall Street's oldest and most respected brokerages. Hauck has started a new job with Talon, a security firm whose largest client is Reynolds Ried, “a Wall Street icon.” Merrill Simons, the ex-wife of Reynolds Rieds' CEO, hires Hauck to check up on her suspicions about her new love interest Dani Thibault. As Hauck investigates Thibault he begins to see clues that connect Thibault to the murder of Marc Glassman and the apparent suicide of James Donovan, another over extended trader from a different firm. In Washington, Treasury agent Naomi Blum watches millions of dollars in suspicious bank transfers. Her research leads her to follow the same trail as Hauck. Hauck and Blum team up to unravel evidence that all connects back to Dani Thibault. Their search takes them to Serbia and leads back to London to find Marty al-Bashir, the chief investment officer of the Royal Saudi Partnership. As witnesses are quickly silenced in a string of murders, the trail leads all the way back to the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington and Peter Simons, the CEO of Reynold's Reid.
31579188	/m/0gls_66	Ash: A Secret History			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ash is an orphan foundling who grew up as a camp follower with a group of mercenaries. As a child, she discovers the Voice, a mysterious voice which only she can hear and which gives tactical advice on how to solve combat situations. As a woman in 1477, she now runs her own company, peopled by soldiers from various lands of Europe and North Africa, including her best friend the Burgundian physician Florian. Her company is hired by John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, an exiled English nobleman, to undertake a mission to Italy for the Duke of Burgundy. When they arrive in Italy they discover the country under invasion from the forces of Carthage. This Carthage is not the civilization which clashed with Rome, but an empire established in North Africa by Visigoths. Due to a magical curse cast by a rabbi, the lands of Carthage are covered in perpetual darkness. Ash's troops flee from the invaders and Ash meets with the general of the Carthaginian forces, the mysterious Faris. During the meeting, Ash is shocked to learn that the Faris is a duplicate of her. The Faris also hears the Voice, and is using its advice to conquer Europe. As the conquest continues, darkness begins to settle over Europe. Ash herself is captured by the forces of the Faris and is sent to Carthage. There she learns the truth of her origins. Both she and the Faris are the result of a Carthaginian eugenics program designed to create a being capable of communicating with the "burnished head" a sort of mechanical military computer. The Faris was the successful result while Ash was a lesser result, intended to be destroyed but smuggled out of Carthage by a sympathetic servant. Before Ash can be killed, her men, led by Oxford, stage an assault on the city and free Ash from prison. As they leave, they pass by a set of pyramids. As they do, Ash feels a psychic presence similar to, but more powerful than, the Voice. She realizes that the pyramids are alive. They are sentient beings, artificial intelligences which they describe as "wild machines". They achieved sentience by accident and have watched mankind rise near them. Drawing their power from the sun it is they who have created the darkness above Carthage, absorbing the visible range of light to augment their powers. Working through the "burnished head" they instructed the forces of Carthage to create a being capable of communicating with the head across vast distances. They have also arranged the invasion of Europe to provide themselves with more power. Their aim is to channel that power through the Faris to create a "dark miracle": wiping out all human life. Ash and her men escape Carthage and retreat to Europe. There they find Western and Central Europe almost totally under Carthage's control. With darkness descended on the continent crops are failing and people are starving. The last holdout is the Duchy of Burgundy which is besieged by the Faris and her forces. Getting in to Burgundy, Ash discovers that the Duke of Burgundy possesses supernatural abilities which maintain reality against attempts to change it. The wild machines need to kill the Duke in order to complete their dark miracle. Unfortunately the Duke dies from an infection during the siege, but the Carthaginian forces, not realizing the Duke's true importance, allow the Burgundians to conduct a ceremonial hunt in order to choose a successor. The winner is Florian, who is revealed as both a member of the Burgundian royal family and as a transvestite woman. The new Duchess Floria takes her post, stabilizing reality, and Ash organizes an all out assault designed to kill the Faris before the wild machines can complete their dark miracle. The assault succeeds, but Ash learns that the wild machines have a backup plan. They intend to use her to complete their dark miracle and they explain why they need to. "Grace" is an ability that all humans possess to some degree. This allows them to warp reality in certain ways. For most people this is trivial and hard to use. Some extraordinary people can create major miracles, such as the one which dried up the once great river which flowed near the wild machines. The machines have run simulations that show that in a few hundred years "grace" will be so prevalent and powerful among humanity that reality itself will unravel under the constant changes being instituted. In order to save reality, they must destroy humanity. Ash tries to reason with them but they insist. As the forces of Carthage attack and attempt to kill Floria, Ash determines to kill herself before the wild machines can work their dark miracle. The wild machines fight her and reality begins to change.
31579451	/m/0glnv35	The Man who Broke into Auschwitz				 Avey relates his wartime service and how he came to be held prisoner in E715A, a camp for Allied Prisoners of War adjacent to Monowitz. He describes how he exchanged uniforms with a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz III in order to enter this camp to discover more about conditions there, with a view to reporting these to the authorities after the war. He also relates how he smuggled cigarettes to another Jewish inmate Ernst Lobethal, having obtained these from Lobethal’s sister in Britain. He was convinced that Ernst had died by early 1945, because he could not have survived the death marches when the camp was evacuated. He also said that after the war the authorities were not interested in his story and he kept silence for more than half a century. Eventually he did begin to disclose his story and it came to the attention of the BBC. Rob Broomby was able to trace Lobethal’s sister Susanne and her son had a copy of a video recording which her brother before his death had made for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education in which he describes how a British POW known as 'Ginger' smuggled the cigarettes to him and how these saved his life by enabling him to exchange them for food and to have new soles put on his boots which enabled him to survive the death march.
31580920	/m/0gls9wn	Keeping Secrets				 Flora, Ruby, Olivia and Nikki are expecting new neighbors to move into Row House number 2, formerly occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Willet. The girls are very much exited to hear that the Hamiltons, the new neighbors, have two children. One of them is Willow and the other is her younger brother, Cole. Willow seems to be a perfect person for the group of friends. But there is a big problem - Willow doesn't seem to want to be friends. But Flora thinks she has a secret and doesn't want to reveal it. This particular secret is obviously related to the erratic and senseless behavior of Mrs. Hamilton, Willow's mother. There are also other things going on in Camden Falls, the little town in Massachusetts. Nikki and a friend at the animal shelter are making a dog parade. Money collected on the parade goes for abandoned dogs. Meanwhile, there's a mystery at Aunt Allie's house. Ruby and Flora had found a closet full of baby's clothes at their aunt's abode. Since Allie hadn't yet married, let alone had a baby, the sisters grow suspicious. The next time, Ruby visits her aunt for a sleepover. She does her part snooping and finds a photograph with an attractive young man, but leaves it as Aunt Allie had caught Detective Ruby in the act. And Olivia also gets a boyfriend. Ruby and her friends Lacey and Hilary are going trick-or-treating. They can't decide what to wear! Flora, Min and Gigi had tailored costumes for the trio - the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. But then the three girls had changed their minds so often that they ended up wearing costumes as 'Still Life' which was Ruby's idea. Ruby, Lacey and Hilary made these costumes: a bunch of grapes, a banana and a pear. Even though they had very little confidence in these costumes, it turned out to be a big success.
31583521	/m/0glr2yn	Harbour	John Ajvide Lindqvist			 The story follows Anders whose young daughter goes missing one winter day. Several years later an alcoholic and divorced Anders returns to the island. The novel also follows Anders' stepfather on the island, the illusionist Simon, who is starting to notice that there is something strange with the island and the sea itself.
31589157	/m/0glpd26	Johnny Gone Down		2010	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nikhil Arya has fallen. Once, he was an Ivy League scholar with a promising future at NASA; now, at forty, he is broke, homeless, and minutes away from blowing his brains out in a diabolical modern day joust. It wasn’t meant to be this. An innocent vacation turned into an epic intercontinental journey that saw Nikhil become first a genocide survivor, then a Buddhist monk, a drug lord, a homeless accountant, a software mogul and a deadly game fighter. Now, twenty years later, Nikhil aka Johnny is tired of running. With the Columbian mafia on his trail and his abandoned wife and son ten thousand miles away, he prepares for his final act, aware that he will have lost even if he wins.
31589387	/m/0glr11g	Vampireology: The True History of the Fallen		2010-05-11	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book purports to have been written in 1900 by Archibald Brooks, the main "protector" (vampire slayer). Brooks was killed on the night of May 10, 1920, at his office in the British Museum. The next day, Joshua T. Kraik, a private investigator, went to see his friend, and, when he did, he looked around Brooks' office and found the book. He took a look in it to see that Brooks had planned for him to have it (there was a letter for him from Brooks on the inside front cover), so Joshua took it home with him. When he started reading the book, he found he was to be the next protector, so he read on, taking all information very seriously. He saw everything about the original three fallen ones and their bloodlines. Moloch, the destroyer, whose bloodline kills for no reason. Ba'al, the deceiver, whose bloodline will do anything for power. And Belial, the tortured, who's bloodline suffers remorse for what Belial did and will limit their appetites. Belials can also feel the emotions that a normal person could. He also added notes; things like how he is getting on, a little bit of personal life, drawings, bits of newspaper, his own information, and letters. On the 14th of May in 1920, he got a strange note/letter from Venetian Contessa (Countess) Magdalena D'Amigliani that said she and Brooks were friends and that the book was hers. Joshua didn't believe her so he wrote back (He sticks the drafts into the book). Saying that no one knew about her, and Joshua can not pass on the book yet, they keep in touch. A bit later in the book he finds a picture of her and is arranged to meet up with her as he falls in love. But when he is reading the book at his hotel he gets another letter, this one is simple and Joshua's note with it is, "I am in Paris, awaiting for the train to Venice, but my mind is in turmoil. This morning I received another message from Magdalena. It was a simple note, with a smaller painting of her in the dress of violet lace attached to it. It is the most terrifying thing I have ever received, for I know for certain now what she is. Truly, I think I have always known. In the same way, I believe I knew long ago that Brooks was much more than an eccentric academic. It is too late to turn back, but I am sure that I am not the first Protector to set out on an uncertain journey." Afterwards there s a hologram picture of her. If you look at it one way, she is wearing a locket smiling normally, but the other way she has no locket, her hair is messy, her eyes are red, and she has fangs. She is a Vampire! On the last page it has Brooks' final words and it tells Joshua to take take the locket of vampire hair(vampires can't kill humans with vampire hair for some reason) and destroy her with the sword of angels (Archangel Michael's sword that he used in fighting The three original Fallen Ones, Moloch, Ba'al and Belial. It is the only sword that can destroy the fallen ones). Brooks also reveals that a long time ago, he and Magdalena were engaged but one night, a vampire attacked them and Magdalena was turned. So Joshua says he will try but we never know for sure. At the end of the book, there is the sword of angels on the back cover, a newspaper clipping about the death of Joshua's friend, Maurice Folley (who may have been killed by Magdalena) and another newspaper clipping about the burning of Palazzo D'Amigliani, which is Magdalena's home, hinting that Joshua may have succeeded in killing Magdalena because it was said that the fire was intense enough to reduce a corpse to ashes.
31597923	/m/0gmh15r	Stones into Schools	Greg Mortenson	2009	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Stones into Schools picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in late 2003. Tracing the efforts of CAI to work in the northeast corner of Afghanistan, the book describes how the book's author and Sarfraz Khan worked to establish the first schools in the area. Mortenson and Khan's efforts were thwarted for a time when a devastating earthquake hit the Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan. CAI assisted with relief efforts in the region by setting up temporary tent schools and later build several earthquake-proof schools. After CAI's relief efforts were completed, the non-profit charity organization then opens schools in areas controlled by the Taliban and Mortenson assists the US military to formulate strategic plans in the region.
31603643	/m/0gmf9wg	Shaken				 In this novel, Judd Thompson Jr. and Lionel Washington find out from their friend, Sam Goldberg, that Nada Ameer, Judd's girlfriend, has been taken into custody at a Global Community jail. In an attempt to free her and her family, they run into a GC guard, and he shoots Nada. Before he can shoot again, he is killed by invisible horsemen that can release poisonous gases into the air. Judd is devastated by Nada's death. Sam's father, who was not a Christian, also dies from the Horsemen of Terror, the new plague from God. At the same time, Nicolae Carpathia, the Antichrist, travels to the Wailing Wall in Israel to kill the two witnesses, Eli and Moishe. When he has done the deed, the Christians are disgusted. Back in Illinois, the other kids of the Young Tribulation Force hurry to help other believers as the Global Community sets in motion a plan to trap believers. They all know that this is their most dangerous mission yet. Will they succeed? Along the way, they come face to face with the Horsemen of Terror, but are relieved that the poisonous gases they release do not affect Christians.
31605606	/m/0gmd8x7	Coffee: A Dark History		2005		 Although he is unable to determine exactly when and where coffee was first consumed, Wild believes that its effect as a stimulant was first discovered by Ethiopian farmers. He also describes its adoption by Sufi Islam and then Arab society in general. Wild describes the global supply chain of coffee in detail. He quotes an estimate by the World Bank that 500 million people are involved in the global coffee trade. He is particularly critical of Starbucks and Nestlé, viewing them as complicit in neocolonial oppression of African farmers. He advocates the purchase of Fair Trade coffee as a way to help Third World farmers. Wild also discusses the health effects of caffeine. He believes that excessive caffeine consumption poses a risk to human health. He also argues that the coffee industry has produced flawed information that distort the actual effects of caffeine.
31608317	/m/0gmcd66	High Society				 Cerebus arrives in the city-state of Iest, where he checks into the high-class Regency Hotel (whose design was based on the Chateau Laurier) and becomes embroiled in political machinations as the Chief Kitchen Supervisor to Lord Julius. Cerebus is kidnapped for ransom by Dirty Drew and Dirty Fleagle McGrew. Cerebus soon arranges with the kidnappers to split the ransom money, but when the time comes to pick up the ransom, Cerebus is betrayed by the brothers and knocked unconscious, and he enters a long dream sequence where he speaks once again with Suentius Po. When he comes to, Cerebus finds himself back at the Regency Hotel, where he is told that he is expected to pay back the ransom that was paid for his release. He discovers the Regency Elf in his room, who informs him that the brothers have been captured. He goes to talk with them at the prison, but finds out they never got the moneyall they got was a statue of a "duck". With the help of the Elf, Cerebus contrives to get the money to repay his ransom. At the moment that he seems to have schemed the money out of Holland M. Hadden, Hadden is assassinated by the Moon Roach (a new guise of the Roach; a parody of Moon Knight), who is under the control of Astoria. Cerebus is under the Inquisition's suspicion for Hadden's murder, and is only safe due to his diplomatic statusa situation which is complicated by the Moon Roach's assassination of two members of the Inquisition. Astoria takes Cerebus under her wing, telling him she will make him "embarrassingly wealthy". ... ===Election=== Lord Julius puts forward a goat to run against Cerebus as Prime Minister. Election night ends in a draw, with one vote uncounted. Cerebus sets out with Astoria and the Roach (this time in a caricature of Sergeant Preston of the Mounties to find Lord Storm'send in snowy Northbell to secure the last vote. After talking with Cerebus, Storm'send lights a beacon indicating who he has voted for, but refuses to tell Cerebus whom he has decided on. Cerebus, Astoria and the Roach head back through the snow, but eventually are stopped due to a bridge being out. They check into an inn located by the bridge, where they find out that Cerebus has won. (Cerebus #45-50)
31615563	/m/0gmd8yr	The Half-Made World	Felix Gilman	2010-10-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 The reader is introduced to the character of Dr. Lysvet 'Liv' Alverhuysen at the Koenigswald Academy, where she has taught for years. A letter has come for her dead husband, a plea to come west to the edge of the world and the House of Dolorous, a hospital who takes in all wounded, regardless of which side of the war they were injured on. She begins her difficult journey with the help of the school janitor, a brain damaged but extremely large man who wants nothing more than to protect her. John Creedmore is relaxing on a ferryboat, enjoying being out of the war, when his masters, the Gun, summon him to take on a new mission. He is to go to the House of Dolorous and retrieve (but not kill) an old man believe to have secrets of a great weapon from the First Folk, wild people who live in the hills, that can kill the Line engines, which are the alternate version of the Gun. Down the Line, Lowry is tasked with the same mission. He goes about it in the opposite way from Creedmore, as an army is essentially brought in to support him. Creedmore, having continued to ride through the death of several horses, reaching the town of Kloan and decides he needs a break, contrary to his master's wishes. They reluctantly concede and he wanders through the town looking for entertainment. Instead, soldiers of the Line recognize him and the town is turned into an all-out battleground as Creedmore escapes. Lowry and his support men flood the town hours afterward, but they are too late. Instead, they set up an outpost and prepare to wait until Creedmore attempts to leave with the General. Creedmore tricks his way into the House of Dolorous because his usual method of killing is impossible in the House, which is protected by a guardian who will kill anyone who kills. Liv arrives at the same time, after a difficult journey. She unwittingly picks the General as one of her two psychology subjects to study and attempt to cure, and when Creedmore springs his trap, distracting the guardian with the pain and suffering of all the patients at once, she is carried along with the General as they head west, the only place where they can escape the Line. The soldier of the Line follow, but the going is much rougher for them in the wild west, because they are dependent upon their technology which has not yet stretched this far. Afraid of any type of failure, Lowry presses on as his soldiers dwindle. Liv and the General are discovered by what is left of the Red Valley Republic, who had moved as far west as they could years ago with their General's defeat. They call their town New Design. Creedmore has gone off to try to slay a dragon-like creature for the thrill of the hunt. His masters' voices come and go now and he sometimes thinks disloyal thoughts about them, which they note upon their return. They threaten to harm him, but he laughs it off, knowing he is the only one they have out here with the General. Liv and the General are made welcome in the New Design, but Liv can't shake off how ill-prepared the town is, even as she warns them the Line is coming. The Line comes. The town fights, but falters until Creedmore decides to throw in his hand and save most of them. During the mop up, he takes the General and Liv follows. The six remaining men of the Line follow. Liv senses that Creedmore's masters will not allow him to act in his own accord, and when she gets her chance, she stabs him repeatedly with her knife, even as he heals. She causes enough damage that the Linesmen catch up to a broken Creedmore and are able to subdue him, and they blow up his Gun, which has tied him to his masters for so many years. Once the Gun is destroyed, Liv steps forward and kills the two remaining Linesmen. The General had been shot when Liv first attacked Creedmore, and he tells them his dying story of where he had been going to find the weapon. Creedmore is still tied up, but Liv cannot decide if she will free him or let him die for his crimes committed at whim of the Gun. She eventually frees him.
31616515	/m/0gmch7_	Melmoth				 After Jaka, Rick and Oscar's arrest (and Pud's death), Cerebus returns to the Lower City, where he uses a gold coin to buy room and board at Dino's for the rest of his life. There he sits near-comatose for most of the rest of the story, gripping Jaka's doll Missy. Oscar has become ill...
31624125	/m/0gmbsg0	Theodore Boone: The Abduction	John Grisham	2011-06-07		 Theodore Boone is perplexed when his best friend, April Finnemore, disappears from her bedroom in the middle of the night. No one, not even Theo—who knows April better than anyone—has any idea of what has happened. As fear ripples through his small hometown, the police continue to hit dead-ends. The police think it could be a distant cousin of April, Jack Leeper, who escaped from prison at the same time as April went missing. It is up to Theo to use his legal knowledge and investigative skills to chase down the truth and save April.
31625418	/m/0gmd2cr	Boom!				 Jimbo's big sister Becky has convinced him that is being sent to a school for mentally ill children. But when him and his best friend, Charlie, plant walkie talkies in the staff room to find out if this is true or not, they find out that two teachers, Mr. Kidd and Mrs. Pearce, speak a different language! They track their behavior and a man confronts them, telling them to leave them alone. He also says that if they don't they can do it the "hard way". He then melts a restaurant table with his finger and leaves. Jimbo and Charlie don't do as they are told and then, they kidnap Charlie. Jimbo and Becky then leave to save him which takes them on a mission across outer space; all the way to the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy! They then rescue Charlie and go back to their normal lives.
31627262	/m/0gmbhgr	Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught	John G. Hemry		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Admiral John "Black Jack" Geary returns from his honeymoon to take command of the Alliance fleet located at Varandal and meet with members of the Alliance Grand Council. He arrives just in time to prevent a military coup by the Fleet after Fleet Headquarters brings courts-martial charges against many of the commanding officers of the fleet. Following the meeting with members of the Grand Council, Geary is tasked with taking the newly created Alliance First Fleet to investigate the alien race, known as the "enigma race", located on the farside of Syndic space. While preparing for the mission Geary receives bizarre orders to transfer sailors with knowledge of hypernet gates and release control over some of his fast fleet auxiliaries. While Geary refuses to do either, he begins to question the true motives of the government and what they wish him to accomplish on his mission. The arrival of Victoria Rione brings new orders for Geary, requiring him to make a detour into Syndic territory to liberate some Alliance prisoners of war. Rione also informs Geary that the government still sees him and the fleet as a threat and wants both of them far away from Alliance space as possible. Geary orders the fleet into Syndic space, arriving in the Dunai star system where the POWs are being held. After the local Syndic CEO refuses to hand over the POWs without compensation, Geary orders the marines to liberate the POWs by force. The POWs turn out to all be VIPs, many in the mold of Captain Falco and some challenge Geary's right to command the First Fleet. One of them turns out to be Rione's presumed dead husband, which causes drama for Geary after he learns of his past relationship with Rione but they later get on good terms. Arriving at Midway, Geary begins to suspect that the local CEO is planning to declare independence from the Syndicate Worlds. He also gains from that CEO knowledge of how to prevent the alien race from remote detonating a hypernet gate, which causes Geary also to doubt the true reasons for why the Alliance government ordered him to carry out his mission into alien space. Arriving in enigma race territory, Geary fails to communicate meaningfully with the enigma race, but the aliens are unable to defeat the First Fleet in battle. The enigma race continues to prevent humanity from learning anything about them, going as far to blur out portions of their planets so ship sensors cannot view them. An asteroid is discovered in one alien system containing imprisoned humans inside. After managing to trick the aliens into their true intentions, the fleet manages to rescue the trapped humans before alien warships crash into the asteroid. Geary continues to explore the enigma race territory until the fleet jumps into another system and discovers a giant space station orbitting near the jump point. The stations fires hundreds giant missiles which are at first mistaken to be ships. After destroying all of the missiles the fleet discovers other such stations located at the jump points in the system, along with smaller, but still massive, warships orbiting the star. Rione concludes that the First Fleet has just discovered a second alien race.
31630693	/m/0gmf4xb	Hadhrat Ahmad				 The following points are explained by the author in this book, related to the life of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. *The early chapters of the book explain about his background and his early life including his birth, childhood and studies. *In the next part of the book, his professional life is explained. *The book next explains his services as a religious scholar including his famous book Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya. *The author then explains about Mirza claiming to be the Promised Messiah and Mahdi and the rest of his life.
31633229	/m/0gmh51t	De conscribendis epistolis				 Vives begins by telling “Señor Idiáquez” to always consider the rhetorical situation for the letter, primarily evaluating the relationship of the writer to the recipient. The reason is that, as Saint Ambrose told Sabinus, "In a letter the image of the living presence emits its glow between persons distant from each other, and conversation committed to writing unites those who are separated from each other." Thus, it is not a speech delivered by an orator in a crowded assembly. Rather, it is a conversation. Vives then gives a history lesson on the letter in an attempt to show that the best letter writers of antiquity understood this conversational aspect of the letter. Vives states that the exordium of the letter is both the hardest to write and the most important part of the letter. It will color the reader’s reaction throughout the body of the letter. It is important to tailor this section to the recipient: Vives also gives instructions on how to vary the letter’s style according to genre. He covers letters of petition, instruction, congratulations, consolation, incentive, and shared interests. “We may write on every subject,” says Vives, but he focuses his attention on the most popular epistolary genres. Following the pattern Vives sets out in his discussion of the exordium, the bulk of De conscribendis epistolis covers the components of the letter and considerations for composition such as diction and addresses on superscriptions. Throughout this how-to section of the treatise, Vives offers examples and templates, which are “suitable for our use” in the 1530s, as he puts it.
31634452	/m/0gmbvj3	1635: The Tangled Web	Virginia DeMarce	2009-12-01	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The main setting takes place in Fulda in 1633 and follows in four interlinking stories which ties together near the end of the novel. The New United States decided to accept the return of Johann Bernhard Schenk von Schweinsberg as the Abbot of Fulda, but the Abbot will have to give up the title of prince. Moreover, he will not be allowed to collect tithes. The N.U.S. is now the secular authority in Fulda and will collect the taxes. The Abbot surprises Wes Jenkins - the administrator of Fulda - in his attempts to persuade the monks to abide by the new rules of his order. The local monks have been difficult over abiding by these rules. Even the import of Saint Gall monks hasn't won them over to the Tridentine doctrines. Dissatisfied Catholic conspirators in Bonn decide to unsettle affairs in Fulda, in which they initially arrange to post scurrilous flyers all over the town and then hiring Irish mercenaries led by Walter Leslie into abducting the Abbot and several N.U.S. administrators. The story focus on Martin Wackernagel. As a private courier, Martin delivers correspondence and small packages on a route stretching from Grantville to Gelnhausen along the imperial road. He also makes side trips to Barracktown and other locations near his route. Martin visits his mother now and then during his travels, but he is reluctant to face her. She keeps asking when he will be married. Then he takes Liesel Bodamer to Frankfurt to see her brother and his mother learns that he is married. “MAIL STOP” and “HAPPY WANDERER” tell the story of Martin Wackernagel, a private courier with a regular route. Martin maintains three separate households complete with wife and children unknown to his mother or his other “wives”. The woman he hopes to make his fourth wife is niece to Clara Bachmeierin, who married Wes Jenkins in the first story. The story examines the actions of the Mainz Committee of Correspondence. Bernard Eberhard - Captain Duke of the Swedish Army - is sent to Fulda by General Brahe to observe the interplay between NUS administrators and Abbot von Schweinsberg. Bernhard takes his brothers and his fellow CoC members with him to Fulda. He and his brothers began working for Major Derek Utt. Later, Utt plans an operation against the Irish soldiers who had abducted the Abbot. He sends Sergeant Helmut Herke and a small band of soldiers to determine the whereabouts of the colonels.
31638303	/m/0gmcxb_	Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?	Lorrie Moore	1994	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel's main character and narrator is Benoite-Marie Carr (Berie). Berie, vacationing in Paris with her husband, Daniel, recalls her adolescence in Horsehearts, New York. During the summer of 1972, Berie worked with her friend, Silsby Chaussee (Sils), at Storyland, an amusement park where she sold tickets and Sils played Cinderella. The adult Berie, now a photographic curator at a local historical society, narrates the pitfalls of her marriage while searching for the close bond she shared with Sils during the summer at Storyland. In the past, Berie lived with her parents, brother Claude, and adopted sister LaRoue. Her parents hosted numerous guests, ranging from visiting academics to exchange students, that gave Berie "a tin ear for languages" and made it difficult for her to understand "foreignness, code, mood" (7). Berie and Sils made friends with their co-workers at Storyland and saved frogs from teenage boys until Sils began dating Mike, a local boy with a motorcycle. Mike dominated Sils's time, leaving Berie out and confused by the scarcity of her friend. When Sils became pregnant, Berie stole money from the Storyland register to pay for an abortion. In between recollections of Horsehearts, Berie details her troubles with Daniel. Recently, they fought and he pushed her down the stairs of their house, resulting in a broken arm. Daniel is distant from Berie, and she seeks companionship from friends like Marguerite, a Parisian artist, but is ultimately unable to recreate the closeness of her relationship with Sils. After Sils's abortion, Berie noticed her manager watching her at odd times. An accident on a ride in the park temporarily forestalled exposure, but she was eventually caught and fired. Baptized by Reverend Filo at a summer camp, she explored organized religion before finally getting her period late in adolescence. Sent to a boarding school, she achieved academic success and was astonished by her own physical development. Berie and Sils later met at a high school reunion but found that their relationship changed as they face middle age. Berie pays a last visit to LaRoue, who later commits suicide after being institutionalized for years, and the novel ends as Berie settles for comfortable distance from Daniel and her past.
31638722	/m/0gmcpvz	Jackals	Charles L. Grant		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Locals from a small town cruise the rural back roads in order to prey on solitary drivers.
31638786	/m/0gmdh6f	The Wind on the Moon	Eric Linklater	1944	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Major Palfrey is off to war. He warns his two daughters, Dinah and Dorinda, that while he is away they must behave themselves: "When there is wind on the moon, you must be very careful how you behave. Because if it is an ill wind and you behave badly, it will blow straight into your heart, and then you will behave badly for a long time to come." And so it proves: before long the girls are drinking a potion provided by the local witch and turning into kangaroos, getting stuck in the zoo, and staging an escape along with their new friends, a golden puma and a silver falcon. Their appetite for naughtiness and cleverness whetted, Dinah and Dorinda turn their attention to freeing their dancing master, Casimir Corvo, from jail. And then comes their greatest adventure: Count Hulagu Bloot, the tyrant of Bombardy – who loves torturing people and eating peppermint creams – has captured their father and imprisoned him in the dungeons of Bloot's castle. The two girls, together with their puma friend and their beloved dancing teacher, smuggle themselves from England to Bombardy in a room made of furniture hidden inside a huge removal van and stage a dramatic rescue.
31643740	/m/0gmf511	The Housing Boom and Bust	Thomas Sowell			 Sowell, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, explores political and economic causes of the American housing crisis. For example, he links the Community Reinvestment Act to decreased lending standards that resulted in an increase of subprime mortgages, as the law forced banks to set up quotas of lending to minorities. As a result, "lenders had to resort to 'innovative or flexible' standards." He also contrasts housing prices for modest middle-class homes in California and Texas and theorizes that California, with open space and various other zoning laws, had homes that were more expensive that those of similar size in Texas, which lacks such laws. Politically, Sowell targets the George W. Bush administration and Congress members of both major political parties for obstructing audits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and enabling banks to make highly risky housing loans. Regarding housing prices, Reason magazine summarized his stance: "the immense local variability in housing prices and failed loans reveals that the government mistook a set of local problems for a national one."
31645468	/m/0gmgh4n	Nama Mia!	Paul Howard	2011-10-06		 Ireland is in recession, but Ross's shredding company is successful. He becomes a "toy boy" for a wealthy older woman.
31648552	/m/0gmg9xf	Pretty Little Liars	Sara Shepard			 The story introduces an exclusive group of friends: Alison DiLaurentis, the perfect yet manipulative queen bee, Aria Montgomery, an independent girl who is considered to be the weirdo in Rosewood, Emily Fields, a swimmer who holds secret feelings for Alison, Hanna Marin, the overweight girl who strives to be thin and popular like Alison, and Spencer Hastings, an ambitious girl who is brave enough to stand up against Alison's manipulative ways. Alison mysteriously disappears during a sleepover with the girls before their 8th grade school year begins. The story then jumps 3 years after, where the girls are now separated. Aria returns to Rosewood from a 3 year trip to Iceland with her family and comes back much more sophisticated than before she left. She meets and kisses a guy in a local bar who is revealed to be her English teacher, Ezra Fitz. Emily befriends the new girl in town, Maya St. Germain,and soon develops romantic feelings for her. Hanna lost the weight and is the new popular girl in town alongside the former nerd, Mona Vanderwaal. However, she and Mona will sometimes shoplift. Hanna battles urges to turn back to bulimia, and struggles to mange the stress of keeping her Queen Bee status. Spencer continues to struggle against the rivalry with her and Melissa Hastings, her perfect older sister. Problems occur when she begins to feel attracted to Melissa's new boyfriend, Wren Kim, when he is introduced to the family. Throughout the story, the liars get messages threatening to reveal their sexual secrets and their present and past emotions for each other, including a terrifying incident the girls refer to as "The Jenna Thing". They automatically believe it is their missing friend, Alison, because she is the only one each of them confided to with their darkest secrets. However, they are shocked when the police find her corpse buried in the backyard of her former house. This could only mean that A is not Alison, but whoever else knew their secrets. The book ends with the liars receiving a text at Alison's funeral saying, "I'm still here, girls. And I know everything. -A"
31648776	/m/0gmbjl4	1636: The Saxon Uprising	Eric Flint	2011-03-29	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Emperor Gustav Adolphus, ruler of the new United States of Europe, has suffered a head trauma in battle, rendering him unable to rule. The Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna seizes this opportunity to try to reestablish the power of the nobility in the USE. He keeps the USE army occupied fighting against Poland and reinforcing Bohemia, leaving Swedish and Provincial forces as the only professional soldiers in the country. He uses this advantage to co-opt the ruling Crown Loyalist Party and bully its leader, Prime Minister Wilhelm Wettin, into co-operating with him. Other conservative leaders remain wary, such as the landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, which has the strongest provincial force; she chooses to keep neutral in the conflict. When Bavaria invades the Upper Palatinate the only soldiers available to meet them are the Thuringia-Franconia National Guard and one battalion of USE forces. Wettin, discovering that Bavaria invaded on the covert invitation of the Chancellor to ensure the defense forces cannot oppose his coup, confronts Oxenstierna, only to be arrested and removed from office. Meanwhile Swedish general Johan Banér lays siege to Dresden, the capital of Saxony, which is under the control of Oxenstierna's opponents. Ernst Wettin is the official Imperial Administrator, but Gretchen Richter and the Committees of Correspondence hold the real power there. They enter into an informal alliance with Saxon rebel forces in Vogtland in order to protect as many people as possible from Banér's butchery. Rebecca Stearns and the opposition Fourth of July Party coordinate with the CoC to act in a restrained manner and undermine the legitimacy of Axel Oxenstierna and the Crown Loyalists gathered in Berlin. Meanwhile, Princess Christina and Prince Ulric travel to the capital at Magdeburg, symbolically aligning themselves with Oxenstierna's opponents and further undermining the Swedish Chancellor. Mike Stearns, leader of the USE army in Bohemia, takes this opportunity to lead his Third Division into Saxony to break the siege of Dresden. He meets General Banér in battle during a snow storm in which his troops are more prepared to battle. Banér is killed, the Swedish forces routed, and the siege broken. Gustav Adolphus regains his wits soon after that and puts an end to Oxenstierna's bid for power. Wilhelm Wettin is released from custody and reinstated as Prime Minister, but with his Crown Loyalists discredited agrees to call early elections. Gustav Adolphus meets with Mike Stearns to negotiate an orderly transition of power, and the emperor commissions Stearns to take on the invading Bavarians.
31649068	/m/0gmc_zg	Flawless	Sara Shepard			 In continuation from the "Pretty Little Liars" series Hanna, Aria, Spencer, and Emily continue to receive text messages from an unknown person, "A", who threatens to expose them of their secrets. At first the girls think "A" is Alison because she is the only person who knew their secrets, but then they start to believe the person behind the threats is Toby, because some messages they receive refer to 'The Jenna Thing' and with Alison dead, he is the only other person who was a part of the incident, although everyone but Spencer is unaware of why he took the blame for what happened to Jenna. "A" sends Emily a text message hinting that "A" knows about Emily and Maya's romantic relationship. "A" leaves a note for Hanna that forces her to tell Riley and Naomi that she makes herself throw up, and that Sean was the one who broke up with her. Later on, she receives a text that tells her Sean is at Foxy ( with another girl. When she arrives, she finds Sean and Aria together. "A" continuously tells Aria to either 'get rid of the problem' or to tell her mom the truth about Byron, her father, that he is seeing another woman. Spencer's sister, Melissa, finds out Spencer has been secretly dating her ex-boyfriend, Wren, by someone who Spencer believes was "A". Towards the end of the book, Hanna finds out that it's impossible for Toby to be "A" because he is found dead behind Emily's house. Emily reads a note Toby left for her that tells the truth about 'The Jenna Thing', which previously Emily thought Toby was referring to Alison when she told him "I know what you did to her." Spencer tells the other girls the truth: Toby molested his stepsister and promised to keep a secret for Alison if she did the same for him. But thinking Emily knew the truth, he committed suicide as, mentioned in the note "he couldn't live with the mistake he has made." A's identity remains unknown and Emily receives another text message from "A" saying "It's not over until I say so. -A"
31649198	/m/0gmg7l0	Perfect	Sara Shepard			 Aria Montgomery tries to keep her father Byron's affair a secret from her mother and brother, while Hanna deals with her social downturn by resuming her bulimia. Emily Fields is in a secret romantic relationship with Maya. Spencer Hastings remembers pushing Ali back on a stone path after a heated argument, and fears that she is the one who killed her. After Aria ignores "A's" threats, "A" tells her father Byron's affair to Ella, who kicks Aria out of the house. "A" also reveals Emily and Maya's relationship publicly, and Emily's parents force her into a program to "cure" her apparent homosexuality. Aria is also cheating on her boyfriend, Sean, with her AP English teacher, Ezra; "A" sends pictures of them kissing to Aria's boyfriend, who calls the police. Hanna is humiliated at Mona's 17th birthday party, and later receives a text from "A". This time, the number is not a jumbled mess, and Hanna recognizes it: she knows who "A" is. She calls Spencer, Emily, and Aria to meet her at their special spot, the Rosewood school playground; before she can tell them what she knows, Hanna is hit by a SUV. The story ends with Spencer, Emily, and Aria receiving a text saying, "She knew too much -A".
31654722	/m/0gmf_3q	The Crystal Stopper				 During a burglary at the home of Deputy Daubrecq a crime is committed and two accomplices of Arsène Lupin were arrested by the police. One is guilty of the crime, the other innocent but both will be sentenced to death. Lupin seeks to deliver the victim of a miscarriage of justice, but struggles against Deputy Daubrecq's ruthless blackmailer, who has an incriminating document hidden in a crystal stopper. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1563 fr:Le Bouchon de cristal ja:水晶の栓 pl:Kryształowy korek
31659169	/m/0gmbhpc	The Law of Nations		1758	{"/m/05r79": "Political philosophy"}	 The Law of Nations deals largely with political philosophy and international relations, and has been said to have modernized the entire theory and practice of international law.
31662576	/m/0gmc71j	Verukal	Malayattoor Ramakrishnan	1966	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}	 Verukal tells the story of a family of Tamil speaking Iyers who settled in Kerala. Raghu is the protagonist of the story. The pivotal event on which the novel turns is the return of Raghu to his native village after a lapse of several years, to raise money to build a city mansion for himself by selling his ancestral home. He sets about this reluctantly, under pressure from his shrewish and domineering wife. In the village, as he meets his sisters and others among whom he grew up, a flood of memories overwhelms him, and he abruptly changes his mind about selling the property.
31662698	/m/0gmdm9k	The Imperial Cruise	James Bradley			 The book centers on the diplomatic mission of the SS Manchuria sent by President Theodore Roosevelt in the summer of 1905. On board was the largest diplomatic mission delegation in U.S. history, including some of the highest profile political figures of the time. They included Secretary of War (and future President) William Howard Taft; Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Roosevelt; her future husband, Congressman (and later Speaker of the House) Nicholas Longworth; along with 29 other members of the House and Senate, and their wives; and an array of additional high-ranking military and civilian officials. After his initial description and introduction of the SS Manchuria's voyage, the author explores brief excerpts of the history behind the period's American domestic and foreign policy, elaborating on its influence, motivation, and consequences, specifically in regard to American-Japanese, Sino-Japanese, and Russo-Japanese relations. More broadly, Bradley explores his contention relating to how deep-set WASP"White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" - In 1906, Roosevelt wrote: "The world would have halted had it not been for the Teutonic conquests of alien lands." - Bradley, James. The Imperial Cruise - p. 25. . biases and racially deterministic philosophies fueled and undergirded virtually all U.S. foreign and domestic policy-making in that era pertaining to U.S. relations with other nations and to populations of other racial, cultural or religious heritages. This included virtually all peoples of non-Teutonic Anglo-Saxon descent, and resulted, for example, in the slaughter of more than 250,000 Filipinos during the U.S. colonial take-over of the Philippines. It is Bradley's contention that the actions of one Roosevelt, and the diplomatic cruise in the summer of 1905, lit that fuse that would doom more than 100,000 U.S. military to die in the Pacific theater decades later under another Roosevelt in the 1940s. Through what Bradley describes as their "bumbling diplomacy", he describes how Teddy Roosevelt and his emissary Taft turned previously friendly Japanese sentiment, against the United States.
31667740	/m/0gmc9sr	The World Development Report 2011		2011-04		 As of April 2011 the report had been published in two versions: a 65 page overview and a 352 page full version. The full version includes a forward, an acknowledgments, a notes section, a glossary, the overview, and three main parts sub-divided into a total of nine chapters. The opening chapter reviews evidence suggesting that repeated cycles of civil conflict and criminal violence are a major factor retarding development in the countries and regions they afflict. The chapter highlights the devastating effect mass violence has on the over 1.5 billion living in countries severely affected by it. The WDR also summarises progress made in reducing war and battle deaths, showing how countries such as Ethiopia, Rwanda and Mozambique were able to make very rapid development progress once mass violence had been alleviated. Chapter two discusses the role played by external and internal stresses in triggering mass violence. A case is made arguing that a critical reason why some societies are more vulnerable than others to outbreaks of violence is the lack of quality institutions able to reconcile competing factions and peacefully address grievances held by sectors of the populations. The WDR argues that while elite pacts between rival leaders can deliver short term peace, violence generally soon reoccurs unless stability can be reinforced by impersonal institutions and good governance. This chapter introduces the WDR framework. Chapter four focuses on the ways previous efforts have successfully built trust as a prelude to intuitional transformation in countries such as Chile and Indonesia. Both case studies and previous academic work are used to show that while it is important to build "inclusive enough" coalitions for positive change, they need not be all inclusive especially at the early stages of the process. Signaling a clean break with the past is also emphasised as important, as is the early delivery of tangible results. The WDR shows that national leaders driving the process often enlist help from non state actors - from both the civil and international sector. Chapter 5 is about the institutional reforms which can deliver security, justice and jobs for citizens in conflict wracked countries. The WDR emphasises that it is often essential to avoid becoming stuck trying to implement "perfect" reforms; instead early efforts should focus on pragmatic "best fit" solutions. Two other dimensions considered are the pace and prioritisation of reforms. Case studies such as the reforms initiated in China by Deng Xiaoping are presented to support the case that a gradual pace, with progressive transformations taking place over a generation, is most likely to succeed. The WDR advises that early efforts should be prioritised towards reforms that deliver citizen security, justice and jobs. While it offers numerous specific practical suggestions, the report emphasises that the best choices for each individual country should be assessed on a case by case bases by the national reform leaders. The WDR argues that building confidence and transforming institutions should be a nationally led process, but that international support is also often needed. The report finds that though international support has sometimes been a key factor in successful reform efforts, as was the case in Colombia and Mozambique, it is often inadequate. This chapter shows that various international actors typically lack the capability to provide meaningful support on their own, but also are often pulled in different directions by their own domestic pressures. Excessive fear of risk taking often leads to initiatives that have a high but still uncertain chance of delivering highly beneficial returns being passed over in favour of much less effective efforts which are chosen for their minimal risk. These and other factors prevent international actors combining their efforts to best effect. Other issues identified with international support are at excessive emphasis on post-conflict support as opposed to prevention, and a lack of capability for supporting job creation. External threats aggravating violence in fragile states often include trafficking, outside political influences favouring particular groups within a country, as well as food or water insecurity and other economic shocks. This chapter reviews how regional and international actors can help countries address these stresses. The WDR emphasises that certain cross border threats are best dealt with at regional level, providing cases studies to show how this has been successfully accomplished. Chapter 8 is addressed to both government and civil society strategic decision makers within affected countries who are trying to reduce organised criminal and political violence. It draws together some of the concepts from earlier chapters and provides insights from successful transitions in countries including South Africa and Colombia. This chapter suggests new directions for international policy and institutions. The report notes how the trans national organisations set up after WWII achieved considerable success in reducing the number of wars, and that after the cold war ended new tools were developed which successfully reduced the number the of civil wars. But comparable tools are not yet in place for dealing with the 21st century forms of mass violence, where some countries have suffered more deaths from organised criminal violence than they did while being ravaged by a traditional war. The final chapter discusses how this shortfall in international capability can be rectified.
31672195	/m/0gmfyfy	A Taste of Blackberries	Doris Buchanan Smith	1973-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 As told from the point of view of the unnamed narrator, the story begins as he and his best friend Jamie go blackberry picking. We follow the boys as they take part in a series of exploits - some told in current narrative time, some revealed in poignant flashbacks - allowing the reader to witness their world and shared experience. When one of the boys tragically dies as a result of a rare allergic reaction to bee stings, the narrator struggles to cope with denial, grief, guilt, and loneliness, before coming to terms with his loss. The setting for the story is the author's childhood home, a Maryland suburb, near the author's birthplace, in Washington, D.C..
31685447	/m/0gmf2bh	The Roots of the Mountains	William Morris		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story is set in the Burgdales, a group of small Germanic settlements in the valleys at the foot of a mountain range, and the neighboring woodlands and pastures. The area is inhabited by the interdependent Dalemen, weavers, smiths, and traders, Woodlanders hunters and carpenters, and Shepherds, respectively. Their society is challenged by disruptions from the outside world in the form of the Sons of the Wolf, the descendants of the Wolfings from the previous novel, and the invading Huns or "Dusky Men." The Sons of the Wolf, driven from their original country to the Burgdales by the Huns, continue to resist the invaders as a frontier force guarding their new home. The somewhat troubled integration of the Sons of the Wolf into the society they are protecting is told in the story of five lovers representing both peoples, four of whom eventually marry. Morris projected a sequel to The Roots of the Mountains to be called The Story of Desiderius, which was never completed.
31693864	/m/0gmfzgr	The Thieves’ Labyrinth	James McCreet			 Following the second instalment of the series, The Vice Society, Inspector Albert Newsome of the Metropolitan Police’s Detective Force has been temporarily demoted to the Thames River Police for his insubordination. He can retain his old position only if he proves himself with good behaviour. Meanwhile, his old enemy George Williamson is working as a private detective at the theatres of London, where his job is to catch pickpockets. Both men are highly suspicious of a new face in London: Eldritch Batchem, who claims to be an investigator “By Royal Appointment”. When an outrageous theft is made from the city’s docks, a competition then begins to see who will be the first to solve the crime, with consequences that none of them could have expected.
31710168	/m/0gmh1xq	The Rithian Terror	Damon Knight	1965	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story takes place in the year 2521. The Earth is the dominant power in a Galactic empire, with a policy of ruthlessly conquering or undermining other alien races which it encounters. The latest are the Rithians, and after some years of clandestine harassment by Earth, the Rithians have managed to place a group of spies disguised as humans on the Earth. By the time the infiltration is discovered, only one of the Rithians remains. Thorne Spangler, a security officer, is given the task of locating the remaining Rithian. He enlists the help of a native of an "uncivilized" human planet on the fringes of the empire, which has good dealings with Rithians. A primary source of tension is the conflict between these two: the Earthman who rigidly follows protocols, and the outsider who is loyal to Earth but contemptuous of what he sees as an ossified and decadent civilization.
31718848	/m/0gmh5kd	The Gathering	Kelley Armstrong	2011-04-12	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy"}	 The setting for the Gathering is a small medical-research town called Salmon Creek on Vancouver Island. Salmon Creek was built by St. Cloud Corporation, the owners of the town and surrounding park. It was built for their employees. Maya, the main character, is the adopted daughter of the park ranger. The events actually start a year before with death of Maya's friend, Serena(who is a water paranormal) . She, Maya, and Serena's boyfriend, Daniel, were swimming in a lake. Serena, captain of Salmon Creek High swim team, drowned in the lake, and Maya is guiltridden for not being able to save her friend. A year later, Maya is getting ready to celebrate her sweet 16. She wants to tattoo her birthmark—a paw-print shape on her hip. She doesn't want it altered in any way, though; she just wants to make it more noticeable. However, she doesn't get it because the tattoo artist's aunt insults her by calling her a witch in Navajo. Later, she invites Rafe, a new bad-boy at school, to her birthday party at Daniel's house. At the party, the teens have a competition on Maya's new rock wall: if she can beat all the guys, they have to add more footholds, but if she loses to even one guy, she has to kiss him. After she defeats all the contestants, Rafe shows up. He challenges Maya individually, and beats her. He doesn't kiss her, though, promising to claim his prize without prying eyes. Maya and Rafe start going out. One day, when Maya was going over to his house for dinner with him and his childish older sister, Annie, she is attacked by someone looking for Rafe. She sees Annie transform from a cougar into herself. Rafe tells that skinwalkers are people with special abilities including being able to shift into mountain lions or bears and the ability to heal and communicate with other animals. He says that Rafe, Maya, and Annie are skinwalkers and that they carry theit animal traits with them even in human form. This explains Maya's enhanced hearing and night vision as well as her amazing skill of rehabilitating injured and sick animals. Maya makes the connection between her paw-shaped birthmark and the fact that she is skinwalker. Rafe confirms this idea, saying that paw-print birthmarks indicate skinwalkers and that her and Annie both have them. He also explains that skinwalkers had been extinct until an experiment to bring them back was enacted. He says that their birth mothers were seleccted to be part of this experiment because of their Native American DNA, but didn't realize they what was going on. Rafe thinks that Maya's biological mother learned the truth about the experiment, which would explain why she abandoned Maya when she was baby. Maya also learns she may have a twin brother from whom she was separated at birth. Rafe explains that skinwalkers can't control when they shift and points out the symptoms that occur in a skinwalker before they shift, Maya realizes that she is going through these symptoms and may shift soon. Maya dumps Rafe after thinking that he dated her only because of her being a skinwalker, however, Rafe truly does have romantic feelings for her. That same night, Annie disappeared while she was still in cougar form and her location is unknown by all characters. Rafe knows that Annie often runs off after she shifts, but is worried for her safety, especially when the forest catches fire. Maya, Daniel, and Rafe are in the forest during the fire, and start to run away when they see people. Daniel's asks Rafe and Maya to lay low because his special danger sense is tingling. They listen in on the people's conversation, and figure out that this group of people set the forest on fire in order to distract the town. The people would then break into the St. Clouds labs in order to steal the secrets housed there. The book ends after Maya, Daniel, Nicole, and an unconscious Rafe escape in a helicopter and report what they overheard to town officials.
31728706	/m/0gmbyzl	The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party	Alexander McCall Smith	2011		 Precious Ramotswe is taunted by a dream in which she is driving her old white van. Later, Ramotswe discovers that her van is running again, and sets out to retrieve it. Meanwhile, Charlie has gotten a girl pregnant with twin boys and feeling guilty, runs away. Ramotswe investigates a case of rural jealousy in which cattle are being injured. Violet Sephotho runs for Botswana Parliament which is Botswana's worst nightmare.
31730091	/m/0gmc4yt	Seryozha	Vera Panova			 Seryozha is the story of a young boy living in the rural Soviet Union in the mid 1950s. The novel describes Seryozha's experiences, and those of his family, friends and neighbors over the course of a summer. The most important event of the story is the marriage of Seryozha's mother to a Red Army veteran named Dmitry Korostelyev. Korostelyev becomes the new manager of the local collective farm and a strong role model for Seryozha. Throughout the novel Panova gives a relatively grim picture of life in the rural Soviet Union where both money and opportunity are scarce. The novel ends with Korostelyev being reassigned to a new collective farm in the remote Arkhangelsky District, and taking the family with him.
31735167	/m/0gtvc9j	The Comforters	Muriel Spark			 The central character is Caroline Rose, a novelist recently converted to Catholicism who on returning from a retreat starts hearing voices and the sound of a typewriter. The words she heard appearing to coincide exactly with her own thoughts. Meanwhile her boyfriend Lawrence has been staying with his grandmother in Sussex and discovers she is involved in smuggling...
31737323	/m/0gtxw76	The Dragons of Krynn				 The book is a compilation of 10 short stories from various authors taking place in the fictional world of Krynn: #"Seven Hymns of the Dragon" by Michael Williams. The tale is a narrative poem. #"The Final Touch" by Michael and Teri Williams. This is a tale written about the druidess L'Indasha who found an egg of a dragon. #"Night of Falling Stars" by Nancy Varian Berberick. #"Honor Is All" by Mickey Zucker Reichert. #"Easy Pickings" by Douglas Niles. #"A Dragon to the Core" by Roger E. Moore. #"Dragon Breath" by Nick O'Donohoe. #"Fool's Gold" by Jeff Grubb. #"Scourge of the Wicked Kendragon" by Janet Pack. #"And Baby Makes Three" by Amy Stout. #"The First Dragonarmy Bridging Company" by Don Perrin. #"The Middle of Nowhere" by Dan Harnden. #"Kaz and the Dragon's Children" by Richard A. Knaak. #"Into the Light" by Linda P. Baker. #"The Best" by Margaret Weis.This is a tale written in first person perspective by man who hire a couple of best adventures, everyone of them in his skill, to kill a dragon. #"The Hunt" by Kevin Stein.
31738453	/m/0gttc00	Wither				 Wither follows Wendy, a young college student living in the fictional town of Windale, Massachusetts. She attends local Danfield College, of which her father is the president, while indulging her interest in the magic and New Age. It's an idylic setting, but evil is slowly creeping into the town in the form of the ghost of Elizabeth Wither. Eight year old Abby MacNeil suffers from nightmares that eventually result in her discovering the burial site of three 17th century women that were tried and killed by the townspeople. Karen Glazer, a local professor, has vivid visions of her unborn child being attacked. Eventually they discover that Wither and her fellow witches are intent on possessing the bodies of Wendy, Abby, and Karen.
31738907	/m/0gtwwck	Wither			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 Wither describes a future where genetic engineering has cured humanity of all diseases and defects. People worldwide have foregone conceiving children naturally in favor of this new science. This generation of perfect humans, later dubbed "The First Generation", lived very long and prosperous lives. Unfortunately their children ended up plagued with a virus that killed all females by the age of 20 and all males by the age of 25. Their children's children suffered the same fate. Humanity now scrambles for a cure as society has broken down into large gaps between the rich and the poor. Gatherers hunt for young girls on the streets to sell them into labs for research, and the unwanted ones go into prostitution or are simply killed. In Manhattan, 16-year-old Rhine Ellery is captured by the Gatherers and sold to Linden Ashby at his estate in Florida. Rhine finds herself forced to marry Linden along with two other girls, Jenna and Cecily. They join Rose as Linden's new brides, but the ailing Rose is already 20 years of age and does not have long left to live. Life in the Ashby manor is very comfortable. Cecily embraces it while Rhine constantly thinks of ways to escape. She befriends her servant Gabriel and behaves like a good wife in front of Linden and his father, Housemaster Vaughn, in order to earn the title of "First Wife", which would grant her additional privileges to roam the mansion. Rhine sets that as a goal in order to plan her escape. By the novel's end, Rhine successfully escapes the mansion with Gabriel and begins a journey back to New York to find her twin brother, Rowan. A sequel, Fever, has been released.
31741283	/m/0gtv5kv	Breakfast with Buddha	Roland Merullo			 The entire story is narrated in first person by Otto Ringling. Otto is a 44-year old American who lives in a suburb of New York City and is a senior editor at a Manhattan publishing house which specializes in books on food. He has a wife named Jeannie, a daughter named Natasha and a son named Anthony. He also has a dog, Jasper. The story starts at a point when Otto's parents have been killed in a car crash in North Dakota. Otto wants to go to North Dakota to settle the estate, mainly for sentimental reasons. He therefore plans to drive from New York to North Dakota with his sister, Cecilia. Cecilia Ringling is a tarot and palm reader who lives in Paterson, New Jersey. She is fascinated by the spiritual and mystic aspects of life to such an extent that Otto looks down upon her and believes her to be "as flaky as a good spanakopita crust". When Otto reaches her place, he finds her with a spiritual guru named Volya Rinpoche. She declares her intent to let Rinpoche have her share so that he may build a meditation retreat there, and implores Otto to take Rinpoche instead of her, to their parents' North Dakota farmhouse. Otto agrees reluctantly. During the road trip, Otto is quite uncomfortable with Rinpoche, but still tries to make conversation with him. Once, while the two are conversing, Rinpoche advises him to "get off the fast road". Otto interprets this as philosophical or spiritual advice and decides not to heed it, but realizes what Rinpoche actually meant when they encounter heavy traffic on the highway due to a car crash. At first, the cause for the roadblock is not certain, and Otto goes through his habitual temper tantrums with himself. But he learns about the car crash later and feels sheepish. Amidst all this, Rinpoche remains cool and calm (as in the rest of the book). They stay in an inn in Lititz, Pennsylvania. During breakfast, Rinpoche puts some soil in Otto's glass which was filled with water. He compares the water to the mind and says that evil acts make the mind dirty. If the mind is given some time, the dirt settles down, just like in water. Otto has not warmed up to this stranger as yet and is in a bad mood when the two leave the inn. While driving, Otto starts seeing HERSHEY ATTRACTIONS signs. Being fascinated by American culture, he decides to take the monk to the Hershey's Chocolate Factory. Otto thinks that Rinpoche will be put off by the sights and sounds there and so, Otto has a "perverse urge" to show him what the American "reality" is. Rinpoche seems more excited that his photos from one of the rides were ready immediately, than on seeing all the candy in the stores. Otto buys him a bag of Hershey's Kisses. While dining in a restaurant in Bedford, Pennsylvania, Rinpoche hands him a letter from Cecilia. Cecilia requests Otto to take Rinpoche to Youngstown, Ohio, where he needs to give a talk. The talk is to take place on the same evening, and they are far away from Youngstown. Rinpoche also says that he forgot to tell Otto. Because of this, Otto gets annoyed with Cecilia and Rinpoche. During the talk, Otto asks Rinpoche, irreverently, why it is necessary to learn and try to improve if one is happy at the current situation. Rinpoche calmly suggests that Otto ponder over those questions himself and let him know the next morning. After the talk, Otto apologizes for his aggressive manner of questioning. Rinpoche assures him that his was the best question. That night, they stay in an inn in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Next morning, Otto tells Rinpoche that wanting to be accepted in society motivates people to do good instead of bad. Good people might also have a conscience. During this stay, Otto starts seeing Rinpoche in a different light. He says, "... and one layer of foolishness [of Rinpoche] had magically evaporated... But I was beginning, just beginning, to sense something beneath the act, some force, some disguised dignity..." While stopping for tea in Oberlin, Ohio, Otto buys a book written by Rinpoche, named The Greatest Pleasure without Rinpoche's knowledge. Later, when Otto asks Rinpoche which book of his he should read first, Rinpoche replies, "For an advanced soul like you, I think the best would be the one called The Greatest Pleasure". Otto and Rinpoche spend the night in an inn in South Bend, Indiana for another talk by Rinpoche. When the two dine in a Thai restaurant, Rinpoche notices a man sitting at a table close to theirs, who was wearing earphones and talking to his young daughter. Rinpoche fails to notice the ear buds and thinks the man is talking to himself or to his dinner. Rinpoche struggles to contain his mirth and eventually runs outside onto the sidewalk, doubled up with laughter. The duo learns that Rinpoche's talk has been postponed to the next morning, so they decide to go bowling. They get assigned to a bowling lane next to a boisterous group of men and women, who were all tattooed and who smoked and drank. While bowling, Rinpoche accidentally drops the ball in the group's direction. The group starts mocking Rinpoche. In return, Rinpoche places his hands on a man's shoulders and says some prayer. This has a calming effect on the surroundings. The groups stops cursing and play their game more quietly. While leaving, one of the men exclaims, "He's the real thing, man, ain't he?" Next morning, he gets confronted by a nun in the question-and-answer session during a talk. Rinpoche maintains his composure throughout this episode, even though the nun seems displeased by his answers. The nun's resistance reminds Otto of himself. The two of them attend a baseball game at Wrigley Field. During the game, amidst all the noise, Rinpoche falls asleep with a very peaceful expression, which captivates Otto. They then take a tour of Chicago.
31741791	/m/0gty64l	Pawprints of Katrina		2008-06	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book begins on September 11, 2005, at a freeway off-ramp used as a boat launch, with New York City Parks Enforcement (Search & Rescue Team) Department's Captain Scott Shields, known for the efforts of his search-and-rescue dog, Bear, at the World Trade Center on 9/11. An excerpt from that chapter describes the moment: "Before we set out on a boat to look for stranded pets, the captain asked us to take a moment to remember those lost on 9/11. There, standing amidst the rubble of Hurricane Katrina with the black water just a few feet from us, we bowed our heads, and not a sound was heard. No cars. No lawnmowers. No birds. No planes. No trains. No voices. Not even the couple of dogs rescued and then tied with leashes to the off-ramp railing, awaiting transport, uttered a sound. It was as if, at that brief but somber point in time, they, too, acknowledged the loss of life. It was a poignant moment, observing those lost in the largest terrorist attack on American soil while we were in the thick of rescuing animals in the wake of the biggest natural disaster in U.S. history. The Crescent City was devoid of life, except for those of us out rescuing that day and, of course, the animals left behind." The story included in the book about Red, a partially paralyzed pit-bull terrier, was covered by CNN's Anderson Cooper. A gray cat whose whose owner drove 10 hours to reunite with his cat and covered in the book was featured by NBC's "Dateline."
31743056	/m/0gtw14n	Le Médecin de campagne				 In 1829, commander Genestas arrives in a village in the Dauphiné, where he meets Dr Benassis, who has transformed this miserable settlement into a small but prosperous town in only ten years. The two men each have a secret which is only revealed at the end of the book.
31745121	/m/0gtv81v	When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order		2009-06	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 For over two hundred years we have lived in a western-made world, one where the very notion of being modern was synonymous with being western. The book argues that the twenty-first century will be different: with the rise of increasingly powerful non-Western countries, the west will no longer be dominant and there will be many ways of being modern. In this new era of ‘contested modernity’ the central player will be China. Martin Jacques argues that far from becoming a western-style society, China will remain highly distinctive. It is already having a far-reaching and much-discussed economic impact, but its political and cultural influence, which has hitherto been greatly neglected, will be at least as significant. Continental in size and mentality, and accounting for one fifth of humanity, China is not even a conventional nation-state but a ‘civilization-state’ whose imperatives, priorities and values are quite different. As it rapidly reassumes its traditional place at the centre of East Asia, the old tributary system will resurface in a modern form, contemporary ideas of racial hierarchy will be redrawn and China’s ages-old sense of superiority will reassert itself. China’s rise signals the end of the global dominance of the west and the emergence of a world which it will come to shape in a host of different ways and which will become increasingly disconcerting and unfamiliar to those who live in the west.
31749671	/m/0gtxkn5	O Senhor da Chuva	Andre Vianco			 Angels and demons are forbidden to interfere in the physical plane, limited only to advise humans. When several demons attack angel Thal, this has the body of a man violating the rule mentioned. Then begins the battle between the Angels and demons, where God and the Devil are mere spectators. pt:O Senhor da Chuva
31749925	/m/0gtwfrk	The Man From Saigon				 In 1967, during the Vietnam War, half-American and half-English war correspondent Susan Gifford finds herself falling in love with Marc Davies, her fellow correspondent who was married to another woman, and who made friends with Hoang Van Son, a photographer. The three agree to cover the war before finding themselves hostages of the Vietcong who suspected Son to be a spy. Susan struggles in her relationship with Marc while Son is put at risk.
31750608	/m/0gtvmly	Every Soul A Star				 13-year-old Ally lives at a campsite called The Moon Shadow where she is homeschooled by her parents along with her 10-year-old brother Kenny. Although they don't have phone reception and have barely seen any TV in their lives, Ally loves The Moonshadow and her dream is to find one of the Messier Objects. She then discovers that her family is going to move to the city and she will be put in public school. Meanwhile, 13-year-old Bree is the most popular girl in her school and proud of it. She wants to become a Prom Queen in high school and eventually be on the cover of Seventeen magazine before she's seventeen. Her nerdy family however, has other plans. She and her 10-year-old sister, Melanie are going to move to The Moon Shadow and take the place of Ally and her family as the caretakers of the campsite. Bree is appalled at the thought of moving and doesn't want to be homeschooled in the middle of nowhere,with no boys, no friends, and no chance of any model coming up to her and giving her a job offer. 13-year-old Jack only finds comfort in reading and drawing in his treehouse. His mom has been married four times and he has no friends, as well as being shy and slightly overweight. After failing science, he is faced with the choice of either attending summer school or going to The Moonshadow to watch an eclipse with his teacher. He chooses to go to The Moon Shadow. Eventually, all three children meet each other at The Moon Shadow and form a unlikely friendship. Bree and Ally plot to convince their parents to change their minds about the move, but they fail in their attempt. Jack is smitten with Ally even though Ally's long-time friend, Ryan believes that Ally is "just Ally" and that Bree is a hottie and "the drop-dead gorgeous one." Together, Jack, Bree, and Ally learn to accept how their lives are going to change and realize what is truly important in life. They witness the total eclipse and leave as changed people.
31757900	/m/0gmbs10	Dead Reckoning	Charlaine Harris		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Old friends and enemies are causing problems for Sookie Stackhouse. Sandra Pelt has a score to settle. Victor Madden, representative of the Vampire King Felipe de Castro, is challenging her lover Eric Northman's position and, in other ways, threatening her friend and employer Sam Merlotte. Great-uncle Dermot and cousin Claude are making themselves at home in Sookie's house in the aftermath of the separation with the faery world, and a visit from Amelia and Bob throws a new wrinkle into her relationship with Eric. Bill Compton admits his continuing love for Sookie, and proves to be a supportive friend. Meanwhile, Sookie is learning more about her grandmother Adele's relationship with her half-fairy grandfather Fintan. And Bubba's back.
31760595	/m/0gty814	Z213: Exit	Dimitris Lyacos		{"/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The work recounts, in what reads like a personal journal, in verse form or postmodern poetic prose, the wanderings of a man who escapes from a guarded building in a nightmarish version of a post-Armageddon ambient. The identity of the fugitive or that of his pursuers is never identified in the course of the journey, nor the reasons why he was kept in confinement in the first place. The environment seems to allude to a decadent futuristic state of a totalitarian kind. The journey is not delineated in realistic terms, but expressionistically, creating a feeling of imminent doom which can also be observed in the other two books of the Poena Damni trilogy. This mood is enhanced by the overriding waste-land setting, which could be (it is never explicit) the result of a war that has left the landscape in ruins. The general impression is reminiscent of a spiritual quest or an eschatological experience.
31762256	/m/0gtt2w4	2030	Albert Brooks		{"/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 The story follows a diverse cast of characters in the year 2030, by which time cancer has been cured, generational tension between the young and the old has escalated, and the "half-Jewish" president of the United States is hamstrung by massive federal debt, and challenged by a high-profile kidnapping of senior citizens, massive reconstruction of earthquake-devastated Los Angeles in partnership with China, and a constitutional amendment which could lead to a foreign-born president.
31762426	/m/0gtv37g	Tulasi Dalam				 Tulasi is a 10 year-old child of a rich man Sridhar and Sharada. Anita is her sister. Sridhar saves the daughter of his boss Robert. As a gratitude, he presents Rs. 10 lakhs in the name of Tulasi. If she dies before the age of 10 years, the money goes to Sri Krishna Saranalayam. She was witch-crafted by some enemies of her father for getting the money. Kadra has applied "Kashmora" on her, as a result she becomes serious sick. She is expected to be killed by its effects in 21 days time. The story is about the attempts by four persons (father and mother, Abrakadabra and Ismail) to save her from death.
31767798	/m/0gtthyp	Die Stadt hinter dem Strom				 The protagonist is the orientalist Dr. Robert Lindhoff, introduced to the reader just as Robert. He travels by railroad on a mission which is unclear to him to a foreign city, which appears as strange and incomprehensible. He meets people whom he believes to be dead, such as his father and his beloved Anna. Robert receives the order from an invisible authority of the city to write a "Chronik" (chronicle) of the city. Robert is called the Chronicler, and he explores the city, partly on his own, partly guided. The city is a megalopolis under a cloudless sky, full of catacombs, without music. Its people appear more and more strange and incomprehensible to him. The people resemble shadows and perform senseless, repetitive and destructive tasks. Two factories employ many of them, one producing building blocks from dust, one destroying building blocks to dust. Robert feels unable to write the chronicle. The authority who ordered it thanks him anyway for his work full of insight. Back in his home country, Robert travels restlessly, lecturing on the sense of life. In the end he travels to the city, as in the beginning.
31769766	/m/0gtt8dy	Badai Pasti Berlalu	Marga T	1974		 Siska, a young woman, was heartbroken after her fiancé broke off their engagement and married her friend. Unwilling to see his sister depressed, her brother Johnny introduced her to womanizing friend Leo. Leo manages to make Siska happy. However, unknown to Siska, Leo was only interested in her as part of a bet. After overhearing Leo discussing the bet with his friends, Siska runs away from Leo and is found by night club pianist Helmi. Helmi blackmails Siska into marrying him, threatening to tell her mother that her father is having an affair with a younger woman. Eventually becoming unable to stand Helmi's actions, Siska returns to Leo.
31770203	/m/0gtv9w7	Os Sete	Andre Vianco			 Brazilian guys found a caravel on the coast of Rio Grande do Sul and withdrew several objects of her, including a large and silver box. When the box is opened, seven vampires from Rio D'Ouro, Portugal, wake up and start to spread terror in Brazil. Andre Vianco presents "Winter", "Awake","Storm", "Wolf", "Mirror", "Gentle" and "Seventh", who have supernatural powers and eternal life. Superhuman strength and speed are going to make Brazil a cold hell. pt:Os Sete
31774778	/m/0gttx_c	Arundhati		1994		 Arundhatī is the eighth daughter of Ṛṣi Kardama and Devahūti, and is married to Vasiṣṭha, the eighth son of Brahmā. Brahmā assures the couple that they will have the Darśana (sight) of Rāma. The couple spends many years waiting for Rāma. Viśvaratha, the son of the king Gādhi, tries snatch celestial cow Kāmadhenu from Vasiṣṭha, but is unable to stand against the Brahmadaṇḍa of Vasiṣṭha. Viśvaratha undergoes penance and becomes the Ṛṣi Viśvāmitra. The revengeful Viśvāmitra curses all hundred sons of Arundhatī and Vasiṣṭha to die. The forgiveness of the couple gives rise to a son Śakti, whom Viśvāmitra gets killed by a demon. Arundhatī and Vasiṣṭha then head for Vānaprastha Āśrama, leaving their grandson Parāśara to look after their hermitage. Brahmā ordains them to re-enter Gārhasthya Āśrama, reassuring that they will have the Darśana of Rāma as a householder couple only. The couple starts living in an Āśrama near Ayodhyā. With the birth of Lord Rāma, a son named Suyajña is born to them. Lord Rāma and Suyajña study together in the Āśrama of Arundhatī and Vasiṣṭha. After the marriage of Sītā and Rāma in Mithilā, Arundhatī meets Sītā for the first time when the newly-wed couple arrives in Ayodhyā. Sītā and Rāma spend fourteen years in exile. When they return home, they have their first meal after the exile which is prepared by Arundhatī, and the epic ends thereafter.
31779566	/m/0gtt5p3	Bossypants	Tina Fey	2011-04-05	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Fey uses humorous anecdotes to tell her life story, including how she came to be on Saturday Night Live and how she created 30 Rock.
31784831	/m/0gtt99l	Withering Tights		2005-10-01		 Tallulah Casey, a lanky girl worried about her knees and underdeveloped cleavage, is off to stay at a drama performance workshop centre in Yorkshire, called Dother Hall.
31788925	/m/0gtxz1f	Tiassa	Steven Brust		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The book is presented in three parts, with a prelude, interludes, and an epilogue. All three larger sections and some of the smaller ones involve a silver statue of a tiassa, and the character of Khaavren, of the House of the Tiassa, but each tells a distinct story. The first section, "Tag", tells the story, in the typical Vlad Taltos as first person narrator style, of certain events early in his career as a high-ranking Jhereg. Vlad is contacted by the Viscount of Adrilhanka, who is a rogue and highwayman, to defeat a scheme by the Empire to track stolen money. The second section, "Whitecrest", is set much later, after Vlad is on the run from the Jhereg, and follows multiple characters, mainly the Countess of Whitecrest (Khaavren's wife and the Viscount's mother) and Cawti, Vlad's ex-wife. An impending Jenoine invasion is detected, but it may be a ruse to draw Vlad out. The third section, "Special Tasks" is the most recent chronologically, and is written in the voice of Paarfi, the fictional author of the Khaavren Romances. It mainly follows Khaavren himself as he investigates an attempt on Vlad's life.
31789220	/m/0gtvhf2	Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million				 Koba—the Russian Revolution-era nickname for Soviet leader Joseph Stalin—is a study of the depredations of a single communist regime. The "Twenty Million" of the title are Russian citizens lost to starvation, torture, gulags, and the purges and confessions of Stalin's Great Terror.
31790369	/m/0gty5kf	Zoo City	Lauren Beukes	2010		 Zoo City is set in an alternate version of the South African city of Johannesburg, in which people who have committed a crime are magically attached to an animal familiar &ndash; those who receive such punishment are said to be "animalled". The novel's chief protagonist, Zinzi December &ndash; who was "animalled" to a sloth after getting her brother killed &ndash; is a former journalist and recovering drug addict, and is attempting to repay the financial debt she owes her drug dealer by charging people for her special skill of finding lost objects, as well as making use of her writing abilities by drafting 419 fraud emails. The book's plot focuses on Zinzi's attempts to find the missing female member of a brother-and-sister pop duo for a music producer, in return for the money she needs to fully repay her dealer. Being animalled is described as an automatic consequence &ndash; not just in South Africa, but for all humans worldwide &ndash; of bearing a significant amount of guilt. The distinction between moral and legal culpability is unclear, as is the threshold which triggers animalling; however, being responsible for the death of another human is a definite trigger. Every animal gives its 'owner' a different psychic power; however, the owner must stay close to the animal at all times, or be subject to debilitating panic attacks, nausea, and other withdrawal symptoms. The animals are not limited by the normal lifespans of their species, but can die by violence; should the animal die, the owner will be torn to shreds by a mysterious dark cloud within minutes.
31790926	/m/0gtw9ny	The Lotus Eaters	Tatjana Soli	2010		 The novel tells the story of a love triangle between three people in Vietnam War 1967 to 1976 is love, obsession and betrayal Her soldier brother who was photographer was killed in Vietnam Helen Adams decided to followed her brother's footsteps despite her mother's protests. After she came to Vietnam Helen met her mentor Samuel Andre Darrow who is famous prize-winning photographer in the war and she begun feelings for him but smooted by Sam's Vietnamese assistant Lihn who was ex-soldier and playwright whose tragic past for losing his family by war which Helen and Lihn are closer and Sam become Lihn's love rival then Both Linh and Helen are struggled for two counties and trials they faced include Sam's death *Helen Adams: An American woman who dreams to become a photographer for Life Magazine. Her father and brother Michael were soldiers. Dropping out of college due Michael's death, Helen decided to go Vietnam and fell in love with Sam Darrow, however the relationship was tested by a love triangle and also Sam's problems and behavior. After Darrow's death, Helen marries his assistant, Lihn, and becomes his second wife. In the end, she reunited with Lihn in Cambodia and was nicknamed "Helen of Saigon" by Vietnamese people *Nguyen Pran Linh: Helen's husband and Ex-soldier, Linh was son of Hanoi professor who fled from North Vietnam and was forced as spy . Lihn's first wife, Mai, died while pregnant with the couple's first child. He was saved by Sam Darrow while in jail and became his assistant. SHortly after, he met Helen Adams, Sam's protégé and lover, in which he and Sam became rivals for her affection. After Sam's death, Helen becomes his second wife. He is an aspiring playwright and his real name is Tran Bau Lihn. *Samuel Andre Darrow : Nicknamed as Sam, he was Helen's mentor and a famous photographer of Hungarian heritage. His real name is Sam Koropec and he had left his country at 15. His father-in-law is head of the newspaper and he is married to Lily. He was beginning to fall in love with Helen, but was killing in a helicopter crash. Due to Sam's drinking, Helen and Lihn became closer. Sam knew that Lihn loved Helen. *Robert: A friend of Sam's who jokes about Helen being Sam's girlfriend and has feelings for Annick. *Annick : A woman who befriends Helen and dates Robert. She owns a store that Helen frequents. *Tran Bau Ca : Linh's older brother was killed along with his family. *Matt Tanner : A marine who tried raped Helen before she beat him. *Michael Adams: Helen's older brother who was killed as soldier and Micahel is animal lover who saved a puppy's life *Mai : Linh's first wife who died by war when she pregnant with their child *Captain Olsen: An American army officer *Jerry Nichols: USAID worker who had Vietnamese gilfriend *Maih: a widow of two children whom Ngan felling in love *Ngah: a young traveller and guide who falling in love with a widow *Tran Bin Thao: Lihn's brother who hide feelings for Lan from his brother and married then expected their first child together *Lan:Mai's sister who crushed on Lihn although he never return to her. she begged Helen to give her camera but she refused then she apologized Helen return from Vietnam. She married Thao and carrying their child going named Mai after her sister *Taon: Linh's brother in law and Mai and Lan's brother *Mr Bao : Linh's boss who actually sells drugs to foreigners *Gary: Helen's boss also for Sam *Lily Darrow: Sam's ex-wife who blames Helen for his death in Saigon *Charlotte Adams:Helen's and Micahel's mother her husband went Korean War and her son went to Vientnam War who met Lihn as her son-in-law in end of novel *Mrs Xuan: Lihn's neighbour who attended Lihn's and Helen's wedding
31792722	/m/0gtv0hh	Birth of a Killer	Darren Shan			 This book begins with a young Larten Crepsley and his cousin Vur Horston in the early 19th century. It tells the story of Larten and Vur working in a silk factory until tragedy strikes and Vur is murdered by their sadistic foreman Traz. This causes Larten to kill Traz in revenge and to then try and escape the pursuing group of people intent on his death. After a few hours on the run Larten seeks cover in a crypt in a graveyard. Whilst eating cobwebs to try to satisfy his hunger, he finds himself face to face with a real-life 500-year-old vampire by the name of Seba Nile. After convincing Larten that vampires are not monsters, he asks Larten to become his assistant and eventually a half- then full-vampire. Seba then leaves to hunt in order to eat and give Larten time to mull things over. Following the return of Seba, he and Larten go travelling around the world and eventually find themselves in an abandoned, run-down castle. With Larten as his assistant, Seba falls asleep safe in the knowledge that they will not be disturbed. Larten goes hunting for animals which he can drain of blood and cook for Seba and himself. Whilst preparing the food, he hears very faint footsteps behind him, knowing that it is not Seba but a vampire, he asks the unknown visitor 'will you be eating with us, sir?' he then turns round to find himself confronted with the 600-year-old Vampire Prince, Paris Skyle. As the book continues, the vampire council (A festival, and time for meetings, and story-telling, which comes round once every 12 years) comes round. Seba, who has not attended council for 24 years, after breaking his leg en-route to the previous council, feels the need to attend, and so organises for Larten to stay with his good friend, the Cirque Du Freak owner, Mr. Hibernius Tall. Whilst living with the Cirque Du Freak Larten makes new friends and finds himself doing jobs, as is the way of the Cirque Du Freak. After learning card tricks, escapology, and lockpicking from Merletta (one of the freaks, a magician) he is included in one of the shows and finds that he has a taste for this sort of thing. One morning, after a particularly sleepless night, Larten goes for a walk around the village close to the Cirque's current location. He finds himself in a group of people who are surrounding a young man (Larten's age) and 4 bodies (whose blood had been drained) on the floor. He finds out that the bodies are the Mother, Father and Siblings of the young man, who is named Wester Flack. Wester and Larten decide to go after the 'Monster'. They reach a ruined mansion, enter, and search the rooms, where, they come across the shape of a human covered by a blanket. Larten leaves a clear route for Wester, so he can have the first strike. Just as Wester moves towards the body, Larten realises that he will have to pull the blanket off the 'Monster' before striking, losing the element of surprise, He decides to pull the blanket back so Wester can immediately strike. Just as Larten goes to pull the blanket, it is tugged out of his grasp by the figure beneath, causing Larten to get knocked to the side, knocking Wester off balance in the process. The figure underneath jumps up and is revealed to be what looks like a human but with purple skin, and red hair, eyes, lips and fingernails. The creature is momentarily distracted by his foes. Larten and Wester use this opportunity to strike, Larten with his hands and Wester with a stake. The creature pulls the stake out of Wester's hand and settles into a defensive position. After a short fight the creature talks to Larten about what he is, a Vampaneze which is a blood cousin of the vampire. He tells Larten his name Murlough but does not ask for Larten's in return. After further discussion about the ways of the Vampaneze, Murlough leaves to find a new hiding place. Larten asks Wester if he would like to join the Cirque Du Freak, and possibly become an assistant to Seba. After 12 years, Seba, Larten and Wester (who are both full-blooded vampires now) are in Vampire Mountain at another Vampire Council about to take part in their first Festival of the Undead. The festival consists primarily of, games, drinking and dancing. During his first attempt at one of the games, Larten, who prides himself on his speed, is beaten 3 times in a row, and goes on to lose every game he takes part in. Larten takes this quite badly and ends up storming off, where, after a few hours he is found by Seba, who talks him back up to the mountain. After the Vampire Council, Larten and Wester decide that their ultimate destiny lies in becoming a Vampire General. Upon hearing this Seba begins testing the pair in ways that they consider deeply unfair, as the tests that are set are impossible to complete. After weeks of unfair testing, things get the better of Larten who ends up arguing with Seba. After this verbal outburst Larten and Wester leave Seba and go off on their own, in order to make the most of what their human lives could have been. Upon leaving Seba, Larten and Wester travel on their own until the meet up with the 'cubs', a group of Vampires who are also making the most of their lives in the way of a human. This particular group is led by a Vampire names Tanish Eul. Larten, Wester and the Cubs get involved in heavy drinking, gambling and human women. The book ends with Larten Crepsley, in a human inn, bumping into a man with a Heart-Shaped watch, dressed in a yellow suit. The mysterious man says to Larten 'I have been spying on Tanish Eul for some time now, but I think I will be keeping my eye on you from this point on, Master Crepsley. Is it coincidence that our paths crossed tonight? Or is it destiny?'
31792756	/m/0gvv8rb	Skulduggery Pleasant: Death Bringer	Derek Landy	2011-09-01	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In the start of the book, Cleric Craven "helps" Melancholia through her Surge by tattooing her with symbols of magic, and she becomes very powerful - but unstable. She is then given the title "Death Bringer". This shocks and relieves Skulduggery and Valkyrie, as this takes a burden off Valkyrie's shoulders. Skulduggery and Valkyrie interrogate Kenny Dunne, a journalist, under the murder of a psychic, Paul Lynch. Paul had been receiving visions of the latest apocalypse (The Passage). Kenny reveals that Paul spoke to an old woman in the countryside about his visions. Skulduggery and Valkyrie immediately go there only to find her dead. When Fletcher joins the pair, he spots the killer who places a wooden box on the ground and runs away. Skulduggery orders them to hide back in the old woman's cottage. It is then revealed that inside the box are the Jitter Girls, triplets who were both physically and mentally altered when something from a different dimension attempted to enter our world through them; reducing them to murderous flickering images of little girls. Fletcher teleports away to get help while Skulduggery and Valkyrie attempt to fend off the Jitter Girls. When they fail, Darquesse emerges from Valkyrie's subconsciousness and forces the Jitter Girls back in the box. Skulduggery manages to convince Darquesse to bring back Valkyrie. In the Necromancer Temple, Craven reveals Melancholia to Tenebrae, Wreath and Quiver, who then admit they must have missed something within her. Valkyrie and Skulduggery visit the Temple only to find the killer, who is revealed to be Bison Dragonclaw. They chase him until he uses another delaying tactic which comes in the form of hiring a Warlock. After battling and killing the Warlock, Skulduggery drives off to the Sanctuary while Valkyrie returns home, to see Caelan who loves her to no end, although Valkyrie tires herself out by constantly reminding him not to "let this get serious" and that she doesn't love him. Later, Melancholia is given a break, which she uses to attack Valkyrie and almost rip her into shreds. She is rushed to the medical ward in the Sanctuary, where she is treated by Doctor Nye. Skulduggery, angered that Valkyrie was hurt, orders an arrest warrant for Melancholia from The Elders (Ghastly Bespoke, Erskine Ravel, Madam Mist) who grant him an arrest warrant. Skulduggery and a group of sanctuary agents visit the Temple with the arrest warrant but the Necromancers refuse to give Melancholia to them. Meanwhile, China meets Jaron Gallow in the woods who tells her that he has switched sides and that he will help her assassinate her blackmailer and rival, Eliza Scorn and 12 other spies in the form of highly important and influential figures. Later, Skulduggery, Valkyrie and many other Sanctuary agents and Cleavers ready themselves to break into the Necromancer Temple. Before the Siege starts, Skulduggery and Valkyrie receive a call that Dragonclaw has been spotted at the airport. After interrogating him, they find out a group of Necromancers from London, who came here to fend off the siege, have just landed. Valkyrie manages to delay them and returns to find out a secret entrance into the Necromancer Temple. Valkyrie and Skulduggery stealthily breaches the Temple and disguise themselves as Necromancers. They mange to reach the door to the Antechamber but find it is locked. Skulduggery tells Valkyrie to stay at the door while he tries to unlock the door. Although Valkyrie obeys at first, she follows Wreath when she sees him. When he discovers her, Valkyrie asks him about the Passage. When she finds out that half the worlds population will need to die in order for the Passage to work, Wreath attacks her and knocks her unconscious. She wakes next to Skulduggery who also has been captured. Tenebrae walks in and reveals that Skulduggery was Lord Vile and that it was he who prevented Skulduggery dying and turning Skulduggery into a walking skeleton. Tenebrae walks away from the pain in Skulduggery's voice and the hurt in Valkyrie's but is soon angered when Craven is yet again late for their meeting. Not bothering to hide his contempt, he orders Craven to take him to Melancholia, who kills him and eventually killing half of the temples occupants, making her stronger. She faces off against Valkyrie and Skulduggery, easily overpowering them, but is terrified when Vile's armour attacks her. She manages to fend the armour off and disappears when the Sanctuary agents finally manage to breach the Temple. Valkyrie returns home to find out that her mother was mugged by a man named Moore who was later arrested. Fueled with rage, Valkyrie breaks into the police station and brutally beats him. After, the remaining necromancers take residence in the Willow Hill Retirement Home, where Craven is enjoying his position in power but is confronted and embarrassed by Wreath. Valkyrie breaks up with Fletcher in her rage and soon finds the twins near the beach who beg her to teach them magic. Valkyrie tries and fails to teach them but is seen by Fergus who is aware of the magic in the world and berates Valkyrie for trying to drag his daughters into the world of magic. Valkyrie promises not to teach them in the future and confronts Gordon about the matter, discovering that he is surprised Fergus is still aware of magic. Meanwhile, Fletcher has gone to Ghastly for advice about Valkyrie. Soon, Wreath attempts to kill Craven but his prevented from doing so when the White Cleaver intervenes. Wreath escapes to Valkyrie and Skulduggery, who at first is hostile to Wreath but grant him amnesty when he reveals the location of the necromancers. Valkyrie and Skulduggery and several others ambush the necromancers via Fletchers teleportation. It is then appeared that Melancholia was killed by a stray shadow but is then revealed that it was Melancholia's reflection. Later at Valkyries home, she is ambushed by Moore but manages to yet again severely injure Moore. Later that night, Valkyrie and Skulduggery attend the Requiem Ball at Gordon's house with 300 other powerful sorcerers. The Ball is interrupted when a group of gunmen attempt to rob them but they are easily dispatched by the sorcerers. Meanwhile a group of necromancers sneak into the ball with Melancholia, who kills all of the sorcerers but Valkyrie and Skulduggery manage to escape. They chase after the remaining necromancers (Melancholia and Craven) and attempt to stop them but another apparition of Vile appears but Melancholia quickly stops it. Skulduggery, after shooting Craven dead, and seeing no other way to stop Melancholia, turns into the real Lord Vile who defeats Melancholia easily. Valkyrie, who is unable to stop Vile, carries Melancholia and the pair runs through the network of caves underneath Gordon's house, trying to find an exit. Valkyrie is delayed when rock creatures attempt to bury her in the ground but she fights her way out and rescues Melancholia from Vile. The pair then finds the White Cleaver who sacrifices himself to delay Vile. The pair manages to find an exit and Valkyrie tells Melancholia to kill her so Darquesse can surface. She succeeds and Darquesse and Vile engage each other in the air and on the ground, eventually reaching a tie with the pair of them reverting back to their normal selves. After, the pair drive to China's library only to find her being beaten up by Eliza Scorn. Scorn then reveals to Skulduggery that China was the reason that his family was dead and Scorn then blows up China's library. China later tells Valkyrie and Skulduggery that they can leave her. Skulduggery drives off while Valkyrie confronts Caelan that she is breaking up with him. Angered, he overpowers Valkyrie and attempts to turn her into a vampire before Fletcher stops him. Valkyrie then throws Caelan into the sea, closing up Caelans throat and killing him. Valkyrie and Fletcher teleport to someplace while a shaken Kenny Dunne watches on, and plans to reveal the world of magic to mortals. Then she dies
31793876	/m/0gtxz2k	God's Fool	Maarten Maartens	1892	{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The novel is set in the fictitious Dutch town of Koopstad. The novel’s ‘hero’, Elias Lossell, becomes deaf and blind from an accident when he is nine years old. The people around him can communicate with him by writing letters with a finger on the palm of his hand. Although communication is possible, mentally he always remains a boy of nine. Thanks to a somewhat thoughtless testament Elias becomes the rightful owner of the firm of Volderdoes Zonen, tea-merchants. His half-brothers, the twins Hendrik and Hubert, manage the firm on his behalf. Elias lives in a house of his own at the outskirts of Koopstad, looked after by his old nurse Johanna, and occupies himself by growing flowers and helping the needy. Hendrik tries to save up as much money as he can to buy out Elias and take over the firm. His spendthrift wife Cornelia does not make it easy for him. While Hubert stays in China to look after the firm’s interests there, Hendrik starts speculating with Elias’s money at the instigation of his brother-in-law Thomas Alers. Hubert returns to Koopstad and gradually learns what his brother has done. He firmly disapproves. This leads to a quarrel between the twins in Elias’s house that escalates into murder. Hubert kills Hendrik. Elias understands what happened. In the last chapter he decides to take the blame of the murder on himself. So the novel has an open end.
31796077	/m/0gtt0fk	Ponni	Malayattoor Ramakrishnan	1967	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel portrays the life of the Adivasis of Attappadi, a region in Malabar, to the south of the Nilgiris and to the east of Kerala. Slash and burn cultivation practised by the Adivasis suddenly stopped by the Government forcing them to search for new jobs. The hero changes his hair style to suit the times. The courtship dance and traditional songs were depicted in a realistic way. Ponnis characters talked and sang a mixture of Tamil and Malayalam with a tinge of Kannada.
31800696	/m/0gttqy3	Spellbound	Jane Green	2003		 Alice is a formerly mousy and high-strung London girl who marries Joe, a wealthy business executive whom she had a crush on as a girl. It is revealed that Joe is a serial philanderer who, in spite of his best efforts, is unable to avoid chasing women. He married Alice because he viewed her as a compliant "project" he could craft into the perfect trophy wife. In this, he succeeded. As Alice intermittently suspects Joe is having affairs she becomes unhappy with her marriage, which is blessed with enormous wealth and prestige but has no warmth or passion. Joe becomes increasingly involved with a new business executive named Josie, and their relationship is discovered. Joe is forced by the company to relocate to its New York office or lose his job. Desperate, Joe convinces his wife of the merits of moving to the United States and she agrees to the move on the condition that they have a house in the country as well as their original apartment in New York City. After the move Alice becomes increasingly invigorated and secure with herself as she takes on the project of restoring an old country home to immaculate condition. Joe, a fastidious urbanite, dislikes being in the country and the couple begins growing apart from one another: Joe spends more and more time in the city alone, but Alice no longer misses him as much because she feels increasingly fulfilled with small-town life and her new friends. Alice's longtime best friend, Emily, visits her and brings along her boyfriend, Harry, whom Alice and Joe met back in England before the move. Emily reveals that she no longer thinks Harry is "the one" and is instead enamored with a man named Colin...who has a girlfriend. Alice is aghast that her friend would consider infidelity and advises her to give Harry a chance. As the lengthy visit continues and Emily and Harry share Alice and Joe's country home with them, Alice and Harry grow close. Eventually, on the night Joe is finally rejected by his latest extramarital pursuit and all four are at a local party, Alice and Harry kiss under the stars while intoxicated. Emily sees Alice and Harry kissing and renounces her friendship with Alice. She and Harry return to England the next day as planned, where they promptly end their relationship. Days later, Josie has moved to New York as well and contacts Joe, who immediately falls for her once more. They continue their extramarital relationship, but Alice quickly discovers it by checking Joe's e-mail accounts. Alice separates from Joe, who suffers a nervous breakdown in his New York apartment while Alice remains in their country home. In the end, Alice and Emily reconcile and Emily encourages Alice to start a relationship with Harry, whom she obviously fancies. She does so.
31818589	/m/0gts_lv	Timeless			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Michele Windsor is a normal teenager with two great best friends and a single mom who is like her best friend. For years now, she's been having this dream about looking in the mirror and seeing herself and a handsome young man holding hands, and around her neck is a key on a chain. After her mother dies in a car accident, Michele is sent to live with her previously estranged grandparents, who are Windsors of high society in New York that Michele's mother had distanced herself from when they didn't approve of Henry, the artist she was in love with. The pair ran away together, but Henry disappeared under mysterious circumstances and Michele's mother discovers she is pregnant. Instead of turning to her parents, she vows to raise her child herself, on her own means. Michele has the typical new kid reaction to her new school and life, and though she is immediately swept up into the higher class snob club because of her last name, she ends up shunning them and hanging out with Cassie and Aaron, the scholarship kids who are much more down to earth. Cassie, who lives next door to the Windsor mansion (in a house that used to be part of the Walker estate), eventually becomes her best friend, and covers for her when Michele starts taking mysterious and sudden trips into the past, thanks to the key from her dream that she finds in her mother’s old possessions. Being dashed back and forth between centuries, Michele appears to various members of her family who are long dead. They can see her, but no one else can, aside from one—the mysterious man from her dream, who is a Walker and engaged to her great great aunt Violet. She is drawn to him, and he to her. Michele learns his name is Philip Walker and despite their strange circumstances, they fall in love, causing Philip to break off his engagement with Violet and start a family feud between the two households that Michele had previously learned about from her history class. Michele’s visits to the past, at times prompted by old items from certain years and at times she is merely dragged, continue as she helps members of her family through difficult times and meets Philip for romantic moments. She learns Philip is a talented piano player and composer who would rather go to the New York school that will become Juilliard rather than Harvard Business School and take over the family business. She urges him to follow his heart, and together they write two songs that she pens the lyrics to.
31819223	/m/027cgm_	Move Under Ground	Nick Mamatas	2004-05-15	{"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 Jack Kerouac witnesses the rising of R'lyeh off the California coast. With Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs, Jack takes to the road, crossing America to save the world from a Lovecraftian cult.
31820187	/m/0gtt5xy	The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood	James Gleick	2011-03-01	{"/m/01p4b_": "Popular science"}	 Gleick begins with the tale of colonial European explorers and their fascination with African talking drums and their observed use to send complex and widely understood messages back and forth between villages far apart, and over even longer distances by relay. Gleick transitions from the information implications of such drum signaling to the impact of the arrival of long distance telegraph and then telephone communication to the commercial and social prospects of the industrial age west. Research to improve these technologies ultimately led to our understanding the essentially digital nature of information, quantized down to the unit of the bit (or qubit). Starting with the development of symbolic written language (and the eventual perceived need for a dictionary), Gleick examines the history of intellectual insights central to information theory, detailing the key figures responsible such as Claude Shannon, Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and John Archibald Wheeler. The author also delves into how digital information is now being understood in relation to physics and genetics. Following the circulation of Claude Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication and Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics many disciplines attempted to jump on the information theory bandwagon to varying success. Information theory concepts of data compression and error correction became especially important to the computer and electronics industries. Gleick finally discusses Wikipedia as an emerging internet based Library of Babel, investigating the implications of its expansive user generated content, including the ongoing struggle between inclusionists, deletionists, and vandals. Gleick uses the Jimmy Wales created article for the Cape Town butchery restaurant Mzoli's as a case study of this struggle. The flood of information humanity is now exposed to presents new challenges Gleick says, as we retain more of our information now than at any previous point in human history, it takes much more effort to delete or remove unwanted information than to accumulate it. This is the ultimate entropy cost of generating additional information and the answer to slay Maxwell's Demon.
31823848	/m/0gtxygq	Guys				 After being shown the truth about the universe and himself, Cerebus is given the opportunity to choose to be anywhere he wants. He chooses a bar. The tavern he is placed in is located by the Wall of T'si, with a host of Cerebus regulars, including Bear, Boobah and Mick & Keef; visits from the Margaret Thatcher caricature from Jaka's Story; and new characters, such as bartenders Richard George and Harrison Starkey (based on members of the Beatles), and caricatures of Norman Mailer and Igor from Marty Feldman's Young Frankenstein. Much of the story revolves around Cerebus' relation to Bear, who is seen as having achieved a certain level of manhood and contentment. Cerebus, in contrast, is selfish, childish and controlling. Cerebus is unable to connect with others, and gradually alienates those around him with his drunken, selfish behaviour.
31823935	/m/0gtwh3b	Going Home				 Going Home was divided into three sections. "Sudden Moves" and "Fall and the River" were collected in the Going Home "phonebook" collection, and "Form & Void" was collected as Form & Void. (Cerebus #232–239) Cerebus and Jaka are together and deeply in love. On their way to Cerebus' childhood home of Sand Hills Creek they stop at taverns along the way. Jaka's aristocratic status has afforded them protectionCirinists (including a caricature of Janet Reno) move along to the taverns ahead of the couple to ensure that they have a wonderful time wherever they go. They go shopping for Jaka's outfits each morning and move on by afternoon, never spending more than a day at any location. The come across pubs run by caricatures of personalities in the comics world such as Greg Hyland, Rick Veitch and Alan Moore. Jaka insists on seeing shopping and seeing the important sites along the way, and Cerebus gets worried as Sand Hills Creek lies on the other side of the Conniptin mountainsthey could get caught in the first snowfall and get snowed in. (Cerebus #240–250) Cerebus and Jaka take a riverboat ride, and onboard come across F. Stop Kennedy, a caricature of F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Cerebus #251–265) Cerebus and Jaka find a hunting lodge in which to spend the winter. They are surprised to find out that the famous writer Hamilton Earnestway (a parody of Ernest Hemingway) and his wife, Mary, are lodging there as well. Cerebus, a fan of Earnestway's, is unabashedly starstruck. Earnestway, however, is in his twilight years, and stricken with depression and writer's block. Cerebus is initially oblivious to Ham's state, but can't help noticing how down and quiet he has become. He is dominated by his boisterous wife. Her speech balloons dramatic, while his are shaky and small.
31824386	/m/0gty2tz	Young Sherlock Holmes: Black Ice	Andy Lane	2011-05-26	{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Mycroft Holmes invites Sherlock and his tutor, Amyus Crowe, to London for a visit. When they arrive at the Diogenes Club they find Mycroft holding a dagger over a dead body. The police arrive soon and arrest Mycroft, leaving Sherlock and Amyus to prove his innocence. They find some clues at the murder scene; a business card, a small bottle with a clear liquid in it, and a small wooden case. They determine that the business card is freshly printed and look for printers around London who might have created it. The pair split up and Sherlock locates the right printer which leads him to a bouncer in a local tavern. Sherlock tails the bouncer, but the bouncer manages to turn the tables on him, and chases Sherlock into the sewers inhabited by London's abandoned and feral children. Sherlock has to run for his life to escape them, and ends up at the London Necropolis Railway. Sherlock and Amyus meet up again and have dangerous encounter with a falcon in an animal museum. From there it becomes evident that events occurring in Russia may be linked to Mycroft's frame-up. Due to the mysterious disappearance of Mycroft's agent Robert Wormersley who was located in Moscow, Sherlock and Mycroft accompanied by Rufus Stone will have to go to Moscow. Sherlock, as a part of their disguise, joins a traveling theater troupe to Russia to uncover the truth. In Russia they find Wormesley's house in a state of chaos , it is then apparent that someone was searching for several objects. On their way back to the hotel, Sherlock is framed up for pick-pocketing. Sherlock then runs as the police is on his trail ,he soon finds himself in a dead end , and the only way to escape was via a manhole. While he descends, he can hear the people who set him state that the manhole led to a tributary of the Moscow river, the Neglinnaya, Sherlock then goes downstream in order to make it to the river. He is soon chased by the people who set him up. While navigating through the river he meets a pack of dogs that have adapted to survive in dark tunnels. Sherlock sees there larger than ordinary ears and speculates that their sense of hearing is greater than those of the normal dogs, Knowing this Sherlock does not make a noise, but due to the twitching of his finger the dogs get ready to pounce on him , at this moment Sherlock's pursuer has his hand over Sherlock's neck ,his hand is bitten by a dog and he loosens his grip allowing Sherlock to escape. Sherlock soon finds his way in the Moscow river and climbs on its banks , only to see Mycroft being arrested by Russia's secret police-the Third Section. He is then met by Robert Wormesley who was watching Mycroft's arrest and tells him that they both will have to plan the next move in order to save Mycroft's life. Both of them chat in a cafe , where Sherlock deduced that Mycroft was being taken to be framed for the murder of Count Shuvalov's murder and he will
31828851	/m/0gtxvxv	The Sweetheart of the Templar From the Valley of Rephaim	Gad Shimron	2009	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The novel's plot takes place in Jerusalem in the days of World War II and focuses on the love story of Tamar-Henrietta Landver, a Jewish girl from Vienna who managed to flee from the Nazis to the region of Palestine prior to the war, to Wolfgang Shvarte, a German Templar who was born in the region of Palestine and raised in the German Templar Colony in Jerusalem. The story begins in the present (1995) with the death of Tamar and then return back to the past, and describes Tamar and Wolfgang's meeting and how they eventually were separated due to heavy social pressure, months before the war began. Although Wolfgang returned to Germany before the outbreak of World War II, the plot thickens when the two meet by chance in 1942 in the region of Palestine as the Nazi military forces were approaching the region of Palestine and preparing an attack The Jewish communities in the region.
31843290	/m/0gty8nn	Illusions		2011-05-03	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Following the events of Spells, Laurel has been living a relatively normal life in Crescent City, California, dating her boyfriend David and hanging out with her best friend Chelsea. Though she did return to Avalon for training over the summer, she has not seen her usual guardian, Tamani, since sending him away. When he appears at Laurel's school posing as a transfer student from Scotland, she is both surprised and relieved. But Tamani is not the only new student at Del Norte High School, and Laurel soon discovers that Yuki, a Japanese exchange student, is also a faerie under the guardianship of Klea, a troll-hunter who has aided Laurel in the past. As Laurel works to discover what kind of faerie Yuki is, the love triangle involving Tamani, Laurel, and David is brought into the foreground of the series as the boys are forced to see one another every day. Laurel feels herself stretched thin as she pursues Yuki, mediates between the boys in her life, and attempts to help her friend Chelsea cope with a dissolving romantic relationship, and her worsening headaches soon lead to a fainting spell during a troll attack. Concerned for Laurel's safety, Tamani tracks the trolls back to a cabin hidden by what appears to be faerie magic more powerful than anything Yuki should be capable of. In re-examining what they know about Klea, Laurel and Tamani decide that she must also be a faerie, but they are uncertain how to prove it. When Tamani accompanies Yuki to a winter dance, his hands secrete pollen, which they only do when he is around a faerie in bloom. This reveals that Yuki is in fact the most powerful kind of faerie and has been concealing her nature from them all along. Feeling threatened, Tamani uses David and Chelsea to trap Yuki. They see the blossom on her back that is proof of her power and the book ends in a cliffhanger.
31845900	/m/0gtt3gf	City of Fire				 "In the sands of a great desert, a once-heroic paladin has turned to evil and enlisted an army of gnolls to help retrieve a powerful relic, reputed to be kept in the vaults of the city of Fire. If they find it, the world will never again be at peace." A blackguard serving Hextor burns the city of Kalpesh, searching for a magical artifact. Some of the best soldiers of the city, led by a man named Tahlain, manage to escape the city, going out into the desert, but only a half-orc named Krusk knows of the real reason that Tahlain has led his troops out of the city. The blackguard manages to catch up with the soldiers, killing Tahlain, but not before the Captain manages to pass the artifact, a key into the city of fire, onto Krusk. The half-orc flees and for days starves and dehydrates until he is captured by a group of villagers. A party of adventurers, returning from a raid on a group of orcs, manage to stop Krusk from being hanged, and he explains his mission to them. They go out into the desert, seeking to find the city of fire. However, they must first pass a series of challenges, while at the same time running from the gnolls. Eventually they manage to find their way into the city of fire, where they use the key to gain access. An azer, who guards the abandoned city, helps them prepare for the inevitable fight, and after the gnolls are defeated Krusk helps permanently seal the portal. A wizard named Naull who had been traveling with the party is nearly killed in the process, and the blackguard manages to capture her, teleporting her away to some unknown fate.
31849182	/m/0gtw2nx	Trusted Like the Fox			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The story is based in the World War II era, when Edwin Cushmann, political double crosser, changes his identity to David Ellis to escape the Allied Forces. He eventually meets a deaf girl named Grace Clark, who is trying hard to survive, whom he uses for protection, and both run to London, where Cushmann fractures his leg, and is left at the mercy of Grace, who cares for him like her own. Soon both come across a gentleman stranger by name Richard Crane, who shelters them in his house and does too many things for them, which leaves Grace highly impressed, even to the extent of believing that Crane is in love with her, but Cushmann highly suspicious. Meanwhile the police are after Cushmann, and a girl who is believed to be with him. The local inspector James gets suspicious about Cushmann being in London, and begins to investigate with his subordinate Rogers. The rest of the story is about what happens to the three main characters.
31857351	/m/0gty5zr	Winning in Emerging Markets		2010-04-28	{"/m/09s1f": "Business"}	 In Winning in Emerging Markets, Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu outline a practical framework for developing emerging market strategies; based not on broad categorical definitions like geography, but on a structural understanding of these markets. Their framework describes how “institutional voids” - the absence of intermediaries like market research firms and credit card systems to efficiently connect buyers and sellers - create obstacles for companies trying to operate in emerging markets. According to the book, understanding these voids and learning how to work with them in specific markets is the key to success. On the basis of over a decade of research and practical experience with foreign multinationals and domestics companies in emerging markets, Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu present a simple framework intended to help strategists and investors map the unique institutional contexts for individual emerging market. The book offers advice and practical toolkits on determining whether to: *Replicate or adapt an existing business model in a particular market *Collaborate with domestic partners or act independently *Navigate around that market’s voids, or actively try to fill them *Enter the market immediately or look for opportunities elsewhere *Stay in or exit the market if current strategies are not working
31858993	/m/0gtxtbs	Troll Blood	Katherine Langrish	2007-02-05	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 In contrast to the first two books in the trilogy, Troll Blood opens far from Viking Scandinavia, across the ocean in Vinland, where a young Native American boy, Kwimu, and his father Senumkwe, see two Viking ships in the bay and witness the massacre of one crew by the other. As the victors sail away, leaving the other longship scuttled and burning, Kwinu and his father find the sole survivor, a little boy called Ottar, whom they adopt. Back in Norway, Peer’s friend Hilde is impatient with life and longing for adventure, so when a Viking ship arrives at their village looking for crew, she and Peer set sail. They soon find plenty to occupy them. The sailors believe the ship is haunted by the ghost of a murdered man. The captain’s handsome young son Harald Silkenhair is a dangerous psychopath who becomes Peer’s deadly enemy. And the voyage is taking them far away to Vinland, where the dark forests are full of mysterious creatures, and where danger and treachery awaits.
31859710	/m/0gtv63v	Rule 34	Charles Stross	2011-07		 The novel is told in second-person singular but from three points of view: Edinburgh Police Inspector Kavanaugh who investigates spammers murdered in gruesome and inventive ways, and learns about similar cases in other parts of Europe; Anwar, a former identity thief who becomes Scottish honorary consul for a fictional Central Asian state; and "The Toymaker", an enforcer and organizer for the criminal "Operation". Their interactions and conflicts drive the story.
31867818	/m/0gvsr5_	The Square Circle				 Harvard 1980, a radical human rights activist group are seeking a way to put their group into the public eye. Member Kathy Lakas suggests they organise the rescue of Rudolf Hess, then being held for nearly 40 years since the end of the Second World War. Lakas, given the permission to employ a mercenary soldier to plan the rescue bid, hires Lebanese mercenary John Haddad. Haddad accepts the offer in part and travels to West Berlin, in the heart of East Germany, to conduct a reconnaissance into the feasibility of the operation. While in West Berlin, Haddad is kidnapped by a mysterious group of vicious Germans lead by an ill looking middle aged man. They already know who Haddad is and have guessed why he is in Berlin, but they torture him all the same and leave him for dead. Hospitalised from the beating, Haddad is visited by British Army Major Reed-Henry who questions him on his activities. He shows Haddad photographs of the men who attacked him, revealing the leader as Karl Stroebling, a KGB operative and terrorist group leader. Again Reed-Henry already suspects why Haddad is in Berlin, but leaves it at that. Next day Haddad is joined by Kathy who is shocked by his injuries. Still unsure whether to accept the contract, Haddad realises he needs someone to watch his back and allow him to work without the threat of Stroebling. So Haddad travels to Paris, where he locates an old comrade, Maroun, who has been contracted to assassinate a Palestinian military leader. Maroun agrees to join up with Haddad after he's completed his current job and protect Haddad in Berlin from Stroebling and his group. While in Paris Hadad meets Kathy's brother Michael, who's also a senior member of Kathy's group. Haddad returns to West Berlin to continue with his reconnaissance while Kathy returns to the States, back there she learns her fellow committee members want to pull the plug on the project. Kathy strongly objects to their plan and decides to fund the rescue with her brother personally by selling a valuable family heirloom. Back in West Berlin, Haddad is approached by an American Army Major, Tom Dade. Dade an old friend of the Lakas' is keen to help and suggests that Haddad seek out Reed-Henry for assistance in rescuing Hess.
31870172	/m/0gvtr90	Transformers: Dark of the Moon: The Junior Novel		2011-05	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 As the war raged on Cybertron, Optimus Prime witnessed a ship called the Ark, carrying supplies that could turn the tides in favour of the Autobots shot and left to drift in space by Starscream. It soon crashed on the Earth’s moon in the 1960s. On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 discovered the crashed alien ship on the moon. Which carried a secret cargo. In the present day, three years after the events of the second film, the Autobots have now become fully sanctioned members of the U.S. military and battling various human threats across the globe. Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Mirage and Wheeljack investigate a nuclear facility in the Middle East encountering humans with stolen Cybertronian tech. Meanwhile, Optimus Prime and Ratchet oversee the destruction of the decommissioned NEST facility in Diego Garcia. With their mission complete in the Middle East, Optimus commands the Autobots to head to Washington D.C, while he, Ratchet and Captain Lennox leave for Prypiat, Ukraine, following a lead on a recently uncovered object that seems Cybertronian in origin. In Washington D.C. a restless Sam, is now is living with his new girlfriend Carly Spencer, a secretary working for Dylan Gould, a CEO of a major investment company and a car enthusiast. Sam is prying for a new job but having saved the world twice, Sam doesn’t want a job that he knows won’t make a difference in life and complains how the government never bothered to give him a proper job. The pair also lives with decommissioned Autobots; Wheelie and Brains, whose services were turned down by the Autobots. Sam leaves for his job interview with his new boss, Bruce. Arriving in the uninhabitable city of Prypiat, Optimus Prime, Ratchet and Lennox investigate a dig site where construction workers (who wear special suits) have uncovered a mysterious object resembling a giant pillar. Suddenly, they are attacked by a huge Decepticon named Driller piloted by Shockwave. The Decepticons attempt to retrieve the pillar. Some of the construction workers are killed as Optimus orders Ratchet and the humans to retreat, while he battles the Decepticons. The Decepticons escape, leaving behind the pillar. An incredulous Optimus Prime recovers the pillar and realises that it is a part of the Ark, the long-thought lost Autobot ship. In Africa, a weakened Megatron, Starscream and Soundwave learn of the discovery of the pillar by the Autobots. Soundwave deploys Laserbeak to silence their human allies. At their base in Washington D.C, U.S Intelligence Director Charlotte Mearing reveals to the Autobots that the space race in 1969 was in response to the Ark crashing on the moon. An angered Optimus demands a mission to the moon with the Autobots on it. Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Ratchet wind up on the moon and discover and retrieve Sentinel Prime; Optimus Prime’s mentor and predecessor. They also recover five other pillars, and return to the Earth, unaware of three Decepticon stowaways named the Dreads (Crankcase, Hatchet and Crowbar). Later, at his new job, Sam encounters a co-worker who recognises him from the television broadcasts. The co-worker tries to reveal to Sam a Decepticon plot, revealing that he has been forced to work with the Decepticons to cover up something before being killed by Laserbeak, who attacks Sam. After being injured by Sam, Laserbeak retreats and reports back to Soundwave. Sam then heads to NEST operations in Washington D.C. where he is introduced to Director Mearing. Optimus revives Sentinel Prime using the Matrix of Leadership. Having retrieved five other pillars, Sentinel reveals that the pillars allow the user to open space bridges and teleport them anywhere. However, he reveals that a hundred of them have gone missing. Director Mearing then forces Sam away. Elsewhere, the three stowaway Decepticons adopt Earth vehicle forms and inform Megatron that they are ready to strike. Later, Sam, puzzled why Decepticons have been enlisting the help of humans, meets with Seymour Simmons, who has now become a millionaire after writing books about his experiences with Sector Seven. He also has a butler and assistant named Dutch. Soon Carly arrives who gets into an argument with Sam. After breaking up with Sam, Carly angrily leaves for a party hosted by Dylan. Following a lead, Sam and co arrive at Atlantic City, where they meet up with a former Russian cosmonaut living in the states. After a brief scuffle which Brains defuses, the cosmonaut reveals that the Soviet Union were the first to send cameras onto the moon. Footage revealed over a hundred pillars lying over the surface of the moon, however only five was recovered. Sam deduces that the Decepticons must have recovered the other pillars. However, he is puzzled as to why the Decepticons left Sentinel Prime unharmed. He believes that Sentinel Prime maybe the only one who knows how to use the pillars. He realises that the Decepticons left Sentinel Prime, so that the Autobots could recover him as Optimus is the only one who could revive him. Realising that it was a set-up, Sam warns Director Mearing about Sentinel Prime. The Autobots (Mirage, Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Ironhide and the Twins), Sam and co escort Sentinel Prime back to NEST operations. Along the way, the group is attacked by the Dreads. In the ensuing battle, Simmons is severely injured by a Dread, while Sentinel Prime escapes back to base. When Captain Lennox and Ironhide return to base Sentinel Prime betrays the Autobots, murdering Ironhide and the Twins. He reveals that he always was the key before battling and gravely injuring Optimus, and joining forces with Megatron. Sentinel Prime never believed that the Autobots would have won the war so he forced himself into an alliance with Megatron to end it. Starscream’s attack on the Ark was a ruse, and Sentinel was actually on his way to meet Megatron. Now with their plan set in motion, Megatron opens a Space Bridge and transports a multitude of Decepticons hidden on the moon to Earth, before going into hiding for the time being. Sentinel Prime speaks to the humans, revealing that he is the true leader of the Autobots, and his plans to mine Earth’s resources to rebuild Cybertron. He also demands the exile of the former rebel Autobots (Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Sideswipe, Mirage and Wheeljack) in order to avoid any conflict. If this agreement is not met, Sentinel Prime reveals he will destroy all human life with a battalion of Transformers. In Gould Estate, Sam arrives and makes up with Carly. Suddenly they are attacked by Laserbeak and Soundwave, disguised as Carly’s car. Dylan reveals that he is in league with the Decepticons. He reveals that he and his family have been working with the Decepticons all along, noting that his father helped the U.S. government cover up the moon crash landing. In exchange for Carly’s life, Dylan forces Sam to spy on the Autobots and inform the Decepticons about the Autobots plans for retribution. He also forcibly gives Sam a small Decepticon to monitor and record the Autobots plans. Later, Sam meets up with Director Mearing and Robert Epps, who reveal that the UN has exiled the Autobots. He asks Optimus if they are planning anything, subtly tipping him off. Optimus reveals that the Autobots intend to leave on a ship called The Xantium, built by a hidden sub-team of Autobots called The Wreckers. The Wreckers had been hidden from the public eye due to their abrasive personalities. Bumblebee remains on Earth, disguised as an old Datsun and helps Sam get rid of the Decepticon given to him by Dylan. The Autobots leave on The Xantium, but just as they do, their ship is shot down by Starscream and the Autobots are believed to be dead. Sam convinces Epps to help him find Dylan and rescue Carly. They realise that they are in Chicago, so Sam, Bumblebee, Epps and a few mercenaries in league with Epps head to Chicago. Planning to open the space bridge in the centre of Chicago, Megatron orders the Decepticons to lay waste to the city. Most of the population is evacuated though. Having secured the city of Chicago and following a meeting between Sentinel Prime and Megatron who are starting to have a friction, Dylan reveals to Carly Sentinel Prime’s plans to use Earth’s human population as slave labour but because humans will be unable to survive going through the space bridge, Sentinel intends to bring Earth and Cybertron together using the space bridge. Though this will destroy the Earth, the surviving human population will be used to rebuild Cybertron by mining the Earth’s resources. Whilst leaving Chicago with Carly, Dylan encounters Sam who attempts to free Carly only to be attacked by Laserbeak. Laserbeak is destroyed by a Decepticon tank piloted by Bumblebee, while Dylan escapes. Sam rescues Carly and just when Epps and company seem to think all hope is lost, the Autobots (Mirage, Wheeljack, Sideswipe, Ratchet and the Wreckers) return to the city, having never boarded the ship in the first place. Dylan informs Megatron about this; however Sentinel Prime reveals that he anticipated this move on Optimus’ part. As the Autobots prepare for battle, Shockwave arrives with the Driller. Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Ratchet, Mirage and Wheeljack battle him only to quickly realise that they are powerless against Shockwave. Carly reveals to Sam that if they can destroy the control pillar opening the space bridge, the whole space bridge will collapse, having learnt this of off Dylan. However, Epps reveals that they only have one shot left with the launcher and radios for backup. Eventually, the Autobots are overpowered by the Decepticon forces and captured. Soundwave kills Mirage, and just as he prepares to kill Bumblebee he is knocked aside by a Wheelie piloted Decepticon flagship who massacre a horde of Decepticons. The Autobots manage to escape, and Bumblebee kills Soundwave. Starscream is also killed by Sam. The group attempts to blow the control pillar from afar but that plan fails, and the building that they are in is tipped over by the Driller. Sentinel Prime also betrays Megatron and knocks him off the building, having no intention to work for him. The Autobot inventor, Wheeljack, outfits Optimus with a jetpack, before being killed by a group of Decepticon protoforms. Optimus arrives and massacres a horde of Decepticons, including the Driller before battling and killing Shockwave. He then uses Shockwave’s laser blaster to destroy the control pillar. The main piece of the pillar falls in front of Sam who attempts to retrieve it only to be confronted by Dylan. A fight ensues, in which Dylan is killed by the piece of the control pillar as it disintegrates him. The military also arrive. An angered Megatron is persuaded by Carly to destroy Sentinel Prime. Megatron and Optimus join forces and battle Sentinel Prime. While Megatron distracts Sentinel, Optimus gets hold of Sentinel’s rust cannon, and destroys Sentinel with his own weapon. Following the battle, Megatron and Optimus Prime make peace to end the war. Megatron and the remaining Decepticon forces return to Cybertron. Sam and Carly have rekindled, and Bumblebee produces a gasket ring and forces Sam into unwittingly proposing as the two share a kiss. Optimus Prime and the remaining Autobots remain on Earth; their new home.
31870231	/m/0gvv80y	Berge Meere und Giganten	Alfred Döblin		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel begins by recounting the time that has passed since the First World War: generations have come and gone, and technology continues to advance and spread from Europe and America over the rest of the world. Overpopulation has become a problem, and the leaders of industry have seized state power. Pacified by the improvement in material conditions, the masses of the cities raise no objection. At the same time that it sees radical technological innovations, Europe suffers declining birth rates and experiences waves of mass migration from Africa. In an effort to maintain their rule, the ruling Senates of Europe agree to restrict the public's access to science and technology. London is the leading power in the west, and "India-Japan-China" is the other world power. After years of state repression and surveillance, the masses have become soft and restless. A spirit of resistance against the machines arises, and the new generation of rulers shifts course. After the end of the twenty-fourth century, access to science and technology is opened up again and nationalism reemerges, alongside a quasi-religious devotion to the machines. Later, researchers led by a scientist named Meki invent synthetic food production, which leads to the abandonment of farms and the countryside, a new wave of urbanization, and the solidification of the Senates' political control. By the twenty-seventh century, freed from the need to support themselves the masses have again become fat, idle, and restless; it becomes increasingly difficult to even find enough people to run the synthetic food factories. A group of leaders incite nationalism and war to combat this tendency; the result is a catastrophic world war between Europe and Asia—the "Ural War"—involving advanced weapons that are able to channel the elements and that turn much of Russia into a wall of fire, and then into a flooded plain. After the war the states of Europe grow increasingly isolated from each other, and "every cityscape fought for its existence." The postwar climate sees a period of austerity and mistrust towards the machines. Returning from the horrors of the war, Marke becomes the Consul of Berlin and instates a reign of isolation and deurbanization. Advanced weapons are destroyed, people are driven out into the countryside to cultivate the land, and the giant energy accumulators are destroyed. Columns made to look like bulls are erected in city squares and at crossroads, and roar twice a day like a dying animal to remind people of the catastrophe of the Ural War. Marduk succeeds Marke as the Consul and continues the period of brutal authoritarian rule. Marduk's rule begins to be challenged by both his friends and his enemies. Groups of "deceivers" ("Täuscher") wage a protracted guerrilla war against him, seeking a rapprochement with science and technology. The resurgent London senate seeks to bring Marduk's excesses under control, and he in turn attempts to expand his realm to gain more cultivable land, attacking nearby city-states such as Hamburg and Hannover. Zimbo, from the Congo, becomes a rival of Marduk's. New elemental weapons are developed over the course of these struggles, which involve scenes of violence and torture. Zimbo's forces eventually manage to unseat Marduk, who then wages a guerrilla campaign of his own, destroying machines and factories wherever he can. He dies in action, and Zimbo becomes the third Consul of Berlin. As the fifth book begins, the setting shifts briefly to North America. Following the Ural War, the Japanese had led an Asian occupation of western North America. The local populations, inspired by Native American beliefs and mythologies, react by leaving the cities for the wilderness and destroying the food factories and cities, eventually driving out the Asian occupation. In America and then globally people begin leaving cities in favor of the wild. Shamanism and the belief in ghosts reemerge amongst the populace, as does an oral tradition of story-telling. The draining of the cities grows into a settler movement: egalitarian communities that live in nature, characterized by gender equality and sexual liberation. In response to the threat this movement poses to the ruling Senates, political leaders in London hatch a plan to colonize Greenland, thereby channeling both the drive for technological innovation and the drive to settle new land. To settle Greenland, it is necessary to melt its ice sheet; to do this, a massive expedition sets out for Iceland to harvest its volcanic energy. Led by Kylin, the expedition begins breaking open Iceland's volcanoes. Resistance by the local population is met with massacres. Once Iceland has been split open and turned into a lake of magma, the energy is stored in "tourmaline veils" ("Turmalinschleier"). The geography of Iceland is described in rich detail in this section, as is the cataclysmic destruction of the landscape. The scale of destruction proves traumatizing to many of the expedition members, who flee and have to be forcibly recaptured before the expedition can head to Greenland. As they sail for Greenland, strange things begin to happen to the ships bearing the tourmaline veils. Marine life and sea birds of all kinds are attracted towards them, and crew stationed aboard them for too long begin acting intoxicated and amorous. The plant and animal life attracted to the ships experiences rapid growth, so that before they reach Greenland the ships look more like mountains or meadows than ships. Strange sea creatures never before seen appear around the ships, and when the expedition is ready to deploy the tourmaline veils, they have to cut through the riot of organic growth that has totally filled the ships. Once the energy of the veils is unleashed on Greenland, it melts the ice quickly but also has unanticipated effects. Prehistoric bones and plant remains that were buried under the ice are reanimated, and fuse together into monstrous forms made up of plant, animal, and mineral parts. Greenland, free of its icy burden, rises up, ripping from north to south in the process and becoming two separate islands. As the chapter ends, the now enormous monsters brought to life by the volcanic energy are spilling away from Greenland towards Europe. As the wave of mutilation breaks over Europe, the force animating the monsters proves fatal: any contact with their bodies or blood provokes a frenzy of organic growth, so that animals of different species grow into each other and humans are strangled by their own growing organs. The populations remaining in the cities move underground. The ruling technocrats, led by Delvil Pember, begin to devise biological weapons to combat the monsters. Using the energy of the remaining tourmaline veils, they construct massive towers—the eponymous "Giants"—out of humans, animals, and plants, grotesque assemblages of organic life that, planted on mountains or in the sea, serve as defensive turrets. In a frenzied technological mania, some of the scientists turn themselves into giant monsters and wander around Europe, wreaking havoc and forgetting their original intent. A group of the original Iceland expedition led by Kylin returns to Europe, bearing the memory of the devastation they caused. The novel's final book begins with a group of settlers in southern France who call themselves the "Snakes" ("Die Schlangen"). Venaska, a beautiful woman from the south, becomes influential amongst the settlers and is revered as a kind of goddess of love. With the other "Snakes" she lives in nature, apart from the wrecked cities and their dwindling authoritarian rule. As the traumatized remnants of the Iceland expedition come into contact with the settlers, a new type of society comes into existence, marked by a reconciled relationship to nature and egalitarian social relations. To the north the giants, now including Delvil among them, still rage, but their violence slowly subsides. Within the large number of creatures that compose their bodies, they begin to lose their individual human consciousness and grow into the earth, becoming mountains and hills in England and Cornwall. As Delvil fights to retain his consciousness, Venaska arrives and reconciles him with his dissolution into nature. She too grows into the hills that mark the former giants. In the wake of the destruction of Europe's cities and the collapse of its governments, waves of refugees storm across the landscape accompanied by rage and cannibalism. The survivors of the Iceland expedition meet them head-on, dividing them into groups and leading them to settlements around the globe. As the novel ends, humanity has resettled and begun to cultivate the destroyed landscapes. The fertile land between the Belgian coast and the Loire is renamed Venaska.
31871586	/m/0gvry91	Torment	Lauren Kate	2010-09-28		 After the dramatic events of Fallen, Cam and Daniel make a truce to protect Luce from the Outcasts. Luce is hidden at Shoreline, a school where both human and Nephilim attend. Luce finds out more about her past lives with the help of two Nephilim friends: Shelby, Luce's roommate, and Miles, whose affection for Luce causes her to doubt her relationship with Daniel. Daniel will do anything to protect her, which includes forcing her to stay at Shoreline to keep Luce safe. Discovering some of her past lives, Luce realizes how their love hurt the thousands of families she once lived with. During her time in Shoreline, Luce's division between angels and demons becomes blurry when she discovers that Daniel and Cam are fighting side by side. At times, Daniel visits her to try and make her feel happier about her situation. She then finds out he had a fling with Shelby many years ago. At one time, when Daniel comes to visit her, he sees Miles kiss Luce on a window sill. She finds out that not only the Elders want her, but that the Outcasts - beings who are neither angels nor demons - want to capture her. Luce's parents have a Thanksgiving party, and when her parents go out the Outcasts arrive in Luce's backyard to fight the angels. Luce finds out that Miles has feelings for her, as he can replicate a person, but only if he loves them. Luce is stressed from the violence and decides to find out more about her past lives by jumping through one of the shadows, leaving her friends behind.
31879966	/m/0gvtbjs	Clockwork Angel	Cassandra Clare	2010	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 London, April 1878. Shadowhunters William Herondale and James Carstairs find the dead body of fourteen-year-old Emma Bayliss in an alley. They also find a dagger imprinted with two snakes each biting the other's tail, an ouroboros, probably the weapon with which she was murdered. Southampton, May. Tessa Gray arrives at the Southampton dock aboard the Main, expecting to find her brother Nathaniel waiting for her. Before, Tessa was living in New York with her Aunt Harriet, but her aunt had died recently and her brother asked her to come stay with him in London. At the port, Tessa finds the Dark Sisters, Mrs. Dark and Mrs. Black, instead of her brother, who have a letter from him saying that he could not meet her because of business, but that the sisters will bring her to him. Tessa goes with them. Six Weeks Later: Tessa has been held prisoner by the Sisters. They have been training her to Change (a process by which she takes on the appearance of someone else, living or dead, by holding something that belongs to them). This time Tessa becomes Emma Bayliss and relives her last few moments alive. The sisters are impressed and tell Tessa that they have been preparing her for an arranged marriage to a mysterious individual known as "the Magister." They expect the marriage to take place that day or the next. The sisters leave and Tessa tries to run away but is caught by the Sister's coachman. Tessa is tied to her bed, but she attempts to escape again by using the Change. Just as she escapes her bindings the door opens - It is William, who followed the trail from Emma's body to an organization called the Pandemonium Club and the Sister's house. Will and his friends proceed to help Tessa escape and when the Dark Sisters catch up a battle begins in which Mrs. Black is killed, and Tessa is knocked unconscious. Tessa awakens in the London Institute to find herself being examined by Brother Enoch, one of the Silent Brothers, who informs her that she is a shape-changer and a Downworlder. Tessa meets the inhabitants of the Institute. The next morning Jessamine takes Tessa shopping; Charlotte and Henry look for Tessa's brother; and Will and Jem inspect the Sister's house. They find a clockwork automaton wrapped in human flesh. A vampire named de Quincey is identified as the Magister and is said to have Tessa's brother, so Tessa and Will infiltrate one of de Quincey's parties. At his party de Quincey slowly drains a human victim; this is against the Accord, which allows the Shadowhunters to attack. Things go terribly wrong at the party when de Quincey's victim is revealed to be Tessa's brother Nathaniel. Tessa and the Shadowhunters kill the vampires at the party, save Nate and bring him to the Institute, but de Quincey escapes. Will bites him while fighting, and accidentally swallows some of the vampire blood. He and Tessa share a passionate moment when Will has to drink holy water because of his digesting vampire blood. The next day, Tessa and Jem go for a walk and are attacked by the Magister's clockwork army. They make it to the Institute, where the Shadowhunters are barely able to fight the army off, though Jem gets injured and passes out. While recovering, he admits to being addicted to a demon drug, which slowly drains him of life and weakens him. The following day, most of the Shadowhunters leave to kill de Quincy in his hideaway in Chelsea. Mortmain, the mundane who informed the Shadowhunters of de Quincey, comes back to the Institute to tell Will and Jem about the Dark sister who is trying to help the Magister with his army and her location. They rush off to kill her, leaving Nate, Jessamine and Tessa alone. Mortmain comes back with the clockwork army and reveals himself as the real Magister and Nate reveals himself as Mortmain's accomplice. While Thomas tries to fight the clockwork automatons off, Tessa, Sophie and later Jessamine escape to the Sanctuary, but Mortmain tricks them to open the door. Tessa agrees to marry Mortmain if he will leave everyone alone and not hurt anyone. Once the army has left the room Tessa stabs herself in the heart, leading to Mortmain's departure. Will rides back once he realizes he and Jem have been tricked, leaving Jem to ride the carriage with only one horse, slowing him down. When Will arrives at the Institute, he's just in time to witness Thomas' death and goes on to look for Tessa and the others. While Jem arrives, he runs straight into Nathaniel and his four clockwork automatons, two of them holding Jessamine and Sophie; one holding the Pyxis, a box that holds demon energies needed to revive the automatons. Nate orders the army to kill him - Jem can fight them off, but Nathaniel and the Pyxis can flee. During that, Will finds Tessa, who is really alive; she Changed quickly just before stabbing herself and the blood was from a gunshot victim she had Changed into before with the Sisters. Charlotte and Henry arrive as well, and ask Tessa to stay at the Institute and she happily accepts. Tessa wants to have a serious relationship with Will, but he suggests a strictly sexual relation and tells Tessa that she cannot have children (she is assumed to be a warlock) so it is impossible. Jem comforts her though she will not tell him exactly what Will did to upset her. Will seeks Magnus Bane's help, but it is not revealed for what reason.
31881079	/m/0gvsg06	My Laugh Comes Last			{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Larry Lucas is a small time worker, who is one day approached by a millionaire,Farell Brannigan, to assist him and start a new bank in town, which should be the safest in the world.Thrilled by the offer,Larry jumps for it, starts minting money and enters high class circles, only to come across a series of problems on the way,involving deception, hypocrisy, treachery, murder, blackmail.The rest of the story is about how and whether Larry is able to deal with and survive it all.
31885329	/m/0gvrmx0	Sétimo	Andre Vianco			 Seventh wakes up after sleeping for five hundred years. He realizes he is no longer in his homeland. To dominate Brazil and the world, he decides to form an army. His brothers, killed in "The Sevens", come back to help James to kill him. Will he survive? This huge bat will do great damage. Zombies, vampires and Brazilian Army are in war. The most bizarre spectacle of the Earth can not stop! pt:Sétimo (livro)
31886919	/m/0gvrflg	The Second Corps of Discovery: 1811 Journal of the Jackson and Clark Expeditionary Force		2011-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"}	 By 1811 the First Corps of Discovery under Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clark has been considered lost for 5 years. Any country that attempted to map the Pacific Coast by land or sea routes has completely failed. The United States of America has yet to press its claims for the Louisiana Purchase. President James Madison fears a British invasion, with the support of a unified Indian nation under Tecumseh, that would claim the Northwest Territories and cause a dissolution of the Union. Under these dire threats, a second Corps of Discovery is formed as a military expedition to reach the West Coast. Its primary goals are to learn what happened to Lewis and Clark and the first Corps members, and find the mythical "all-water route" across North America. However, there are several other secret missions and secondary objectives to the Expedition that are disclosed during the journey. Brigadier General George Rogers Clark, brother of Lieutenant William Clark and the original choice of President Thomas Jefferson, commands the new group. Supporting him are two other military men and Indian fighters, Colonel Andrew Jackson and Doctor William Henry Harrison. While primarily an army operation, Second Corps is required to do a great deal of scientific and diplomatic work. This explains the nature and skills of the members recruited for the journey, and the advanced prototype technology they use. The F. Scott Key Journal is heavily interlaced with Christian themes due his religious background. The continental crossing often resembles a detective story, as mysteries are unexpectedly revealed, based on conflicting rumors attributed to British and Spanish efforts of deception. These involve the belief that some unknown native civilization occupies areas of the Pacific Coast, perhaps Inca or Aztec tribes that escaped the Spanish Conquistadors and remained isolated to protect themselves against further invasions. Many of the historical characters in the story fulfill their actual destiny, but in an alternative environment. F. Scott Key was a part of the Expedition for a longer period of time, but his surviving account only covers his last year. This unbroken daily record details a complete story and is a major segment of the overall adventure. His manuscript was written originally in English, but translated into a foreign dialect. This additional premise supports ulterior plot elements.
31889797	/m/0gvrj0q	Cycles of Time	Roger Penrose			 Penrose examines implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and its inevitable march toward a maximum entropy state of the universe. Illustrating entropy in terms of information state phase space (with 1 dimension for every degree of freedom) where particles end up moving through ever larger grains of this phase space from smaller grains over time due to random motion. He disagrees with Stephen Hawking's back-track over whether information is destroyed when matter enters black holes. Such information loss would non-trivially lower total entropy in the universe as the black holes wither away due to Hawking radiation, resulting in a loss in phase space degrees of freedom. Penrose goes on further to state that over enormous scales of time (beyond 10100 years), distance ceases to be meaningful as all mass breaks down into extremely red-shifted photon energy, whereupon time has no influence, and the universe continues to expand without event \rightarrow \infty. This period from Big Bang to infinite expansion Penrose defines as an aeon. The smooth “hairless” infinite oblivion of the previous aeon becomes the low-entropy Big Bang state of the next aeon cycle. Conformal geometry preserves the angles but not the distances of the previous aeon, allowing the new aeon universe to appear quite small at its inception as its phase space starts anew. Penrose cites concentric rings found in the WMAP cosmic microwave background survey as preliminary evidence for his model, as he predicted black hole collisions from the previous aeon would leave such structures due to ripples of gravitational waves.
31891721	/m/0gvsmkg	Rachel Ray	Anthony Trollope			 Rachel Ray is the younger daughter of a lawyer's widow. She lives with her mother and her widowed sister, Dorothea Prime, in a cottage near Exeter in Devon. Mrs. Ray is amiable but weak, unable to make decisions on her own and ruled by her older daughter. Mrs. Prime is a strict and gloomy Evangelical, persuaded that all worldly joys are impediments to salvation. Rachel is courted by Luke Rowan, a young man from London who has inherited an interest in the profitable local brewery. Mrs. Prime suspects his morals and motives, and communicates these suspicions to her mother. Mrs. Ray consults her pastor, the Low Churchman Charles Comfort; and upon his vouching for Rowan, allows Rachel to accept his offer of marriage. Soon after this, Rowan falls into a dispute with the senior proprietor of the brewery, and returns to London to seek legal advice. Rumours circulate about his conduct in Devon; Comfort believes the rumours, and advises Mrs. Ray to end the engagement between Rachel and Rowan. Rachel obeys her mother's instructions to write Rowan and release him from the engagement. When he fails to respond, she grows increasingly depressed. Rowan returns to Devon, and the dispute over the brewery is settled to his satisfaction. This accomplished, he calls upon the Rays and assures Rachel that his love for her is still strong. She assents to his renewed proposals. Marital bliss ensues. A subplot involves the abortive courtship of Mrs. Prime by her pastor, Samuel Prong. Prong is a zealous but intolerant Evangelical. His religious beliefs are in agreement with hers, but the two have incompatible notions of marriage: Prong insists on a husband's authority over his wife, and in particular over the income from her first husband's estate; Mrs. Prime wants to retain control of her money, and is otherwise unwilling to submit to a husband's rule.
31894217	/m/0gvr870	Passion	Lauren Kate	2011-06-14		 This novel predominantly follows Luce, full name Lucinda Price. She is a 17 year old girl who is reincarnated over and over again for an indeterminate number of lifetimes. As she reaches her seventeenth year she meets her angel boyfriend, Daniel, in each life time and is engulfed by flames. This is usually the result of kissing Daniel, but not always. Luce dies as a result of her encounters with Daniel and is reincarnated to repeat the cycle. The lifetime focused on in the Fallen series is unusual. Luce has kissed the very hot Daniel and survived it. Also, Luce was not baptized in this timeline which makes her unclaimed by any religion. This is alleged to mean this time when Luce dies, it will be forever. She has also discovered that Daniel is a fallen angel and he is to be a deciding force in the final battle between good and evil. Luce wants to get rid of the curse and Daniel chases her through history. Little does Daniel know, the future could change differently not because of Luce, but because of a certain person who will try helping Luce travel into her different past lives. Daniel and his other fallen angel friends and nephilim friends will try to catch up with her and bring her back to the present. As Luce travels through time, she will realize not only how much Daniel loves her, and how much she misses to being in his arms, but she will also be in danger from the one who is trying to help her. This book will reveal the secrets and risks that the main characters had and will have in the future. Will they succeed in their mission? The book was released on June 14, 2011. * Lucinda 'Luce' Price After the events in Torment, she will try to travel to her different past lives to find out what are the secrets Daniel is hiding from her, and she will find a way to end the curse that both their love has. * Daniel Grigori Luce's fallen angel boyfriend. He will try to bring Luce back to the present, from the shadows. He will realize that he, himself, can do something to end their curse. He and Cam are brothers... * Cameron 'Cam' Briel Cam is also a fallen angel. He will try to help Daniel recover Luce from the shadows, but Daniel would always refuse help. His past will be revealed and the reason for his being "evil" will be known. Cam and Daniel are brothers. * Arriane Alter Arriane is another fallen angel, from Daniel's side. She will be one of the few who will try to get Luce back from the shadows. * Roland Sparks He is another fallen angel, from Cam's side. He will be able to speak to Luce in one of her past lives and know that she is from the future. * Mary Margaret 'Molly' Zane Fallen angel on Cam's side. Who has never gotten on with Luce since the beginning. * Gabrielle 'Gabbe' Givens Gabbe is a fallen angel on the side of Daniel. She tries her best to convince Daniel to side with Heaven. * Miles Fisher He is one of the Nephilim, and one of the first friends that Luce makes in Shoreline (in Torment). He proved how much he loves Luce in Torment. He will be helpful to Daniel in this book and he will soon be in good terms with him. * Shelby A Nephilim friend of Luce. She will be with Miles looking for Luce in the shadows. * Annabelle She was introduced briefly in Fallen, but will play some more minor roles in Passion. She is introduced to Luce as Arriane's older sister, with pink hair and calmer than Arriane. * Lucifer/Bill The first fallen angel. One of the reasons of the start of the Heaven War. He tricks Luce in the announcers appearing as a little gargoyle, Bill. He tries to make Luce kill herself. * Lyrica One of the remaining Elders. * Vivina One of the remaining Elders. * Fallen Angels According to the Bible, a fallen angel is an angel who, coveting a higher power, ends up delivering "the darkness and sin." The term "fallen angel" indicates that it is an angel who fell from heaven. The most famous is Fallen Angel Lucifer himself. The Fallen Angels are quite common in stories of conflict between good and evil. * Nephilim They are the children of fallen angels with mortals. * Outcast A particular rank of angels. Cam describes them as the worst kind of angel. They stood next to Satan during the "revolt", but did not step into the underworld with him. Once the battle ended, they tried to return to heaven, but it was too late. He also mentions that when they tried to go to hell, Satan cast out permanently, and left them blind. Nevertheless, the outcasts have a tremendous control of the other four senses. In "torment", they chased Luce because they think that if they captured her, they will get back to heaven. * Elders It is not explained very well what the elders are, but they want to see Luce dead more than anything. Miss Sophia is the eldest and most important member. * Scale Resident guide within the "Announcers" (also known as the "Shadows").
31909675	/m/0gvtjvl	The Vespertine		2011-03-07	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In the summer of 1889, Amelia van den Broek is sent by her brother to the city of Baltimore, much grander and different from her fishing village, to find a suitable match for marriage. Along with her cousin Zora, Amelia does all the normal things a young woman would do in the city—call on other ladies, have them to tea, gossip about the latest dance and all the fine gentlemen there. But once there, her eye catches a certain slant of light in the setting sun and she sees a glimpse of the future. She shares this talent with her cousin Zora, and soon the two girls are calling on and being called upon by the riches young ladies in the city, who each want to know their own fortune, seen through Amelia’s eyes. Amelia also has many run ins with the mysterious and romantic Nathaniel, who is not a suitable match for her, but whom she feels drawn to nevertheless. They continue to see one another in secret and she soon learns that he has a talent of his own—he can travel with the wind. Zora also falls in love, and when Amelia has a vision relating to his death, she eventually confesses it to her cousin, who waves off her fear. But when her vision comes to pass and he is killed, Amelia is shipped back home, believing that Nathaniel will come for her and take her away despite hearing word of his death. Interspersed throughout the novel are chapters of Amelia’s life after this summer, where she has been sent back to her brother and locked away, thought to be mad. Her brother’s wife is kind to her, but both find her difficult. She continues to call out for Nathaniel, who must be dead, because he will not come to her. Her brother’s wife eventually readies Amelia to leave due to her disruptions to their household, though not in a thoroughly unkind manner. Amelia steps out the door, ready to face the world on her own, only to find Nathaniel waiting for her, having been unable to get there sooner because his ability is hindered by water, and she had put the ocean between them. Together, the pair set off to a new life.
31915587	/m/0gvtlkp	Among the Truthers		2011		 Though he concedes that history provides evidence of actual conspiracies, Kay argues that farfetched and paranoid conspiracies are gaining adherents at an increasing rate in the United States. In the book, he charts a history of 20th century conspiracy theories including groups such as the John Birch Society. Though much of the book focuses on the 9/11 Truth movement Kay also discusses conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg Group, vaccination, and Reptilians. Kay attempts to define the factors that cause people to believe in conspiracies. He attributes some of the popularity of conspiracy theories to the influence of postmodern academic theories, such as deconstruction. He also blames what he sees as the liberal belief that "society is divided into victims and oppressors". In addition to political explanations, Kay also writes about psychological factors. He argues that many people prefer explanations for disasters which feature expansive conspiracies because it is more difficult to cope with the underlying incompetence or vulnerability at the root of such events. While writing the book, Kay interviewed several figures in the 9/11 Truth movement, such as Alex Jones and Michael Ruppert. Kay classifies promoters of conspiracy theories into different groups, including those he refers to as "cranks" and "firebrands". He defines a "crank" as a person who seek to expose conspiracies as an engrossing mission to fill their lives. He claims this type of person is usually drawn to conspiracy theories after a mid-life crisis.
31916630	/m/0gvs6p4	The King's General		1946	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/02w06c6": "Historical romance"}	 The novel is set at the time of the English Civil War. A middle-aged Honor Harris narrates the story of her youth, from the age of ten, when living with her brother Robin. The narrative begins when Kit, Honor's oldest brother, brings home his new bride, Gartred. After only three years, Kit dies of smallpox and Gartred moves away. At age eighteen, Honor meets Richard Grenvile, Gartred's brother. They fall in love and, despite a former arrangement for Honor to marry another, they decide to be married. Honor is injured and loses the use of her legs in a riding accident, when out with Richard and Gartred. Subsequently, Honor refuses to marry - or even see - Richard. By the time the Civil War breaks out, fifteen years have passed; Honor has grown in independence, and Richard has had three children, Joe, born illegitimately from an affair with a dairymaid, and Dick, from a failed marriage. Dick's sister lives in Holland and is not really part of the story. Following some nearby violence, Honor moves to Menabilly, the home of her sister and brother-in-law, where she again meets Richard, posted in Plymouth as a leader of the King's army in the west of England. During the war, Richard is wounded, and Honor tends to him in weakness. The Parliamentarians take Cornwall, and Richard flees the country. He is part of a Royalist rebellion, though, some years later. He is, however, betrayed: it is suggested that the betrayer is his son Dick. An escape plan is made to remove Richard and Dick safely from the Parliamentarians to Holland to be with Richard's daughter and Dick's sister, after the revolt fails. Rumours of their escape which are told to Honor suggest that only Richard is able to escape, which brings the reader back to the prompt for Du Maurier's tale - the skeleton discovered in the excavations of Menabilly.
31920755	/m/0gvv5xj	Like a Hole in the Head				 Ace marksman Jay Benson lives a retired life from the army with wife Lucy, trying to start a new life by starting a school for training on shooting. But unfortunately they are short of money for investment, when Augusto Savanto walks into their lives, promising Jay a huge sum of money in return for teaching his son, who is totally uninterested in shooting. He wants his son to be able to shoot like an expert shooter in just 9 days. Benson agrees but soon realizes he has entered a circle of revenge and murder involving mafias,in which he must participate,else it could affect both Lucy and him . The climax of the novel packs considerable emotional punch.
31925020	/m/0gvv14_	Time for Bed				 Gabriel Jacoby, young, unemployed, sleepless and untidy, lives in Kilburn with his flatmate Nick. Gabe’s life is blighted by two problems, his insomnia and his passion for Alice, the beautiful black wife of his brother Ben. The cast of comic characters includes Nick, his girlfriend Fran, a cat Jezebel, Ben and Gabe’s parents and grandmother Mutti, who lives in a Jewish old age-home, Liv Dashem House. Gabe’s mother spends her life talking about and collecting memorabilia of the Hindenburg, an airship designed by her own father, while their father spends his life swearing loudly at his wife at their home at 22 Salmon Street, Wembley Park. When Dina arrives from the States to visit her sister Alice, Gabe decides to ask her out. They go to see Queens Park Rangers play at home, but the old car breaks down on the way. Finding Alice’s Green Flag card in her pocket, Dina agrees to pretend to be her sister to get help, but Gabe does not have sufficient funds to get the car repaired. In spite of the disastrous afternoon, he manages to persuade Dina to come round for dinner. Unfortunately, when he lifts the lid off his tandoori quorn, a live frog which had been brought home by Jezebel jumps out. Dina is horrified but eventually falls into Gabe’s arms. The first time they make love, Gabe disposes of the condom by filling it with water and tying the top, and notices a leak. Later in the novel Dina discovers she is pregnant, and decides to return to the US for an abortion. In the last scene Gabe is on a plane to find her. The novel is enlivened by the escapades of the other characters. Nick becomes disturbed under the influence of cannabis but the drugs prescribed reduce him to a sleepy weight: Fran has an affair with Ben, who is drawn to Jewish life and has discovered that Fran is Jewish. Their mother eventually destroys the Hindenburg, the real one having crashed anyway. Jezebel brings home a dead rat, and Gabe spends a happy night playing with it, and then puts it away in a drawer and forgets it. Nick tells Alice that Gabe has been in love with him all along.
31929265	/m/0gw_v7q	Against All Enemies	Peter Telep	2011-06-14	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 CIA Special Activities Division Operation Officer Max Moore, whose physical looks resemble that of Richard Marcinko, is on a mission in Pakistan to retrieve a high-value target. When the mission goes awry and Moore's allies are killed, he is recalled to the United States to take part in a new effort against the Mexican drug cartels. Moore and his team attempt to infiltrate the cartels and play them off against each other but are met with varying degrees of success. Although they are able to bring down a major kingpin, they are unable to prevent several Muslim terrorists from entering the United States via a smuggling tunnel. The terrorists have brought a number of MANPADS surface-to-air missile launchers with them, which are used to target flights in several US cities. Although the attack is partially successful, Moore and associates are able to stop one of the terrorist teams. Moore is then deployed to Belize on a mission to capture the leader of the terrorist cell. After a boat chase, the leader is captured and sent to a black site for interrogation. The novel ends with Max, having overcome some of his personal demons, now relaxed and on a date with a fellow CIA officer.
31929751	/m/0gvtpz1	Straight Talking: A Novel				 Anastasia, or "Tasha," is a thirty-year-old English woman working as a television producer in London. She is perpetually single and has had few long-term relationships. She and her girlfriends regularly meet and commiserate over the troubles of modern dating. Tasha's insecurities in regards to men and dating stem from her longest relationship, with a man named Simon, that ended abruptly when Simon revealed that he had been unfaithful. In addition, it is revealed that Tasha's father had had multiple affairs during Tasha's youth, one of which she discovered herself. Tasha engages in brief affairs with men, concerned primarily with their physical attractiveness. One day she meets a handsome, dashing man named Andrew, but avoids being seduced by him. Days later Tasha is preparing to go to dinner with her best platonic male friend, Adam, whom she met years earlier as a mutual friend of Simon. Adam and Tasha are very close. Since Andrew is also a friend of Adam, Tasha invites Andrew to dinner with them. During the meal she is attracted to Andrew, much to the chagrin of Adam. Shortly thereafter Tasha is invited to dinner once more with Adam, who reveals his true feelings for her. Tasha is taken aback and does not know how to respond. She feels that, though she "loves" Adam, she is not "in love" with him. Immediately, she seeks the counsel of her girlfriends. The advice is, as always, mixed: Some support the idea that she should try to have a romantic relationship with Adam, who has always been trustworthy and a good friend, while others feel that there must be "passion" - something Adam lacks. Tasha tentatively begins a relationship with Adam, which quickly progresses. Eventually she invites him to move in with her, but soon begins questioning her decision. As Adam begins moving in, moving his things to her home carload by carload, Tasha is surprised at home by Andrew, who has arrived there to wait for Adam. Consumed by sudden lust, Tasha begins kissing Andrew, only to realize that Adam had returned and seen them. She hears his Saab racing off and Andrew departs in shame, both he and Tasha horrified at what they had done. The girlfriends again offer mixed advice, with some encouraging Tasha to seek Adam's forgiveness and others asserting that she must find a new suitor whom she is passionate about...like Andrew. After a brief hesitation Tasha decides to seduce Andrew and attempt a "passionate" relationship. She lures him to a hotel under the pretense of discussing her breakup with Adam and, after drinks at the hotel bar, guides him to her hotel room. At the last moment, however, she is unable to go through with the impending sex and, disgusted, Andrew leaves. Tasha immediately begins trying to reconcile with Adam, whom she now knows she loves and misses terribly. Eventually Adam agrees to attempt a reconciliation, and the book ends on an optimistic note as Tasha vows to win back his trust.
31933321	/m/0gvtsf7	Kappa				 A psychiatric patient has lost his way and arrives at the country of Kappa. He is treated as a special guest and talks with Kappas of many occupations. Geeru, a radical capitalist, states that the unemployed labourers of Kappas are killed and their flesh is provided for food. The patient is astonished but Geeru argues that because the Japanese women in the poorest class are obliged to survive by prostitution, the patient's opposition is sentimental. Kappa's national characteristics are materialism and nihilistic realism. The babies of Kappa control their destiny. While in the womb, the fetus can refuse life as a Kappa, and be aborted. The Maggu, the sceptical philosopher Kappa committed suicide and appears as a ghost through the person of Tokku, a poet. Maggu is concerned about his fame after his death, although he admires the writers and philosophers who has died by suicide such as Heinrich von Kleist and Otto Weininger. At last the patient is due to return to the real human world, but muses that Kappa was clean and superior to human society and becomes a misanthrope.
31944896	/m/0gvr79l	1635: The Eastern Front	Eric Flint	2010-10-05	{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, has with the aid of the time-displaced citizens of Grantville, West Virginia, tipped the balance in the Thirty Years' War and become emperor of much of Germany, now reorganized as the United States of Europe. Having at least temporarily knocked Austria and France, the main enemies of the new state, out of the war, he is free to turn his attention to the rebellious states of Brandenburg and Saxony and pursue his dream of conquering Poland. The former are duly reconquered and the latter invaded. West Virginian Mike Stearns, former prime minister of the USE, is now a major general in command of the army's third division of the USE army, acquits himself well in the campaign, but atrocities committed by some of his men leads him to establish the Hangman Regiment to police his own forces, under the command of new-minted Light Colonel Jeff Higgins. Meanwhile, on the home front, other sequences of events involve Mike's wife Rebecca Abrabanel and the Swedish royal family. French Huguenots attempt to assassinate Gustavus's daughter Princess Kristina and her betrothed Prince Ulrik in an attempt to provoke the wrath of the Swedes and Danes against Cardinal Richelieu and the government of their Catholic-ruled country. The prince and princess escape, though her mother, the queen Maria Eleonora, is murdered. Gustavus's eastern war is stalled in the battle of Lake Bledno, in which he gains a strategic victory but receives a life-threatening wound. His hitherto-loyal chancellor Axel Oxenstierna takes the opportunity to seize power in an attempt to reverse the democratizing influence of the West Virginians, endangering the USE at a critical juncture.
31948233	/m/0gvtf9s	Nínay				 The novel explores the life and love story of the female protagonist named Ninay, a heartbroken young woman who died of cholera. Her heartbreak was due to her separation from her lover Carlos Mabagsic. Ninay's misfortune became harder to bear because of the loss of her parents. A pasiam, the novena for the dead, was being said and offered for the lifeless Ninay. Framed with this melancholic atmosphere of nine-day prayer for the departed, the novel opens up a succession of narratives that present "variations of unrequited love". The first condemned relationship was between Ninay and her lover Carlos Mabagsic. When Ninay was still alive, Mabagsic was falsely accused of being the leader of a rebellion. Mabagsic's accuser was Federico Silveyro, an entrepreneur from Portugal. Mabagsic went abroad. Upon his return, Mabagsic found out that Ninay confined herself in a convent. Mabagsic became a victim of cholera and died. Ninay also died of cholera. The other victims of the wickedness of the Portuguese Federico Silveyro were the couple named Loleng and Berto. Silveyro was the cause of Loleng's death. Berto avenged Loleng's death by killing Silveyro.
31952160	/m/0gvsq26	Dreams of Joy	Lisa See		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Dreams of Joy is organized in four sections -- The Tiger Leaps, The Rabbit Dodges, The Dog Grins, and The Dragon Rises. Joy is the Tiger – romantic, artistic, rash, and impulsive. In this novel, unlike Shanghai Girls, Joy and Pearl are both narrators. Driven by anger at Pearl and May for lying to her about her identity and filled with guilt because of her role in Sam’s death, Joy hastily leaves Los Angeles Chinatown to find her biological father Z.G. and to join the new Chinese society. Finding her father rather quickly in Shanghai, Joy goes with him to a village collective where he is forced to teach art to the peasants. Joy throws herself enthusiastically into the life of the collective and into a hasty marriage with Tao, a peasant artist. Only through motherhood and terrible suffering is Joy able to find her true identity and to exorcise her inner demons. See has written about the difficulty she faced in developing Joy’s character: “At first, Joy was hard to write about because she’s so naïve and stubborn. She makes such terrible mistakes, which, as a mother and her writer, I found hard to watch . . . But what an experience it was to watch her go through all the terrible things she experiences and see her grow up to be a wonderful artist and courageous mother.” Z.G. is the Rabbit, frequently hopping away from danger. Although close to Mao himself, the Chairman can’t trust the artist because of his individualistic streak and Western influences. Z.G. has to go to the country as a form of punishment for his subversive tendencies. What brings Z.G. through in the end are his art, his growing love for Joy and his granddaughter Samantha, his friendship with Pearl, and his devotion to May. The Dog is Tao, the village artist who Joy marries. As Pearl sees it, the question is what kind of Dog will Tao turn out to be. “’A Dog can be violent . . . Is he the kind of Dog you can trust and love, or will he bite you’”. Unfortunately Joy’s passionate view of Tao as a good Dog turns out to be false. Tao is a poor husband, an indifferent father, and a young man devoted to seeking the main chance, no matter who he has to step over to reach his goals. Even surviving the most desperate of circumstances does not change Tao's character. Pearl is the Dragon. She is the second narrator of Dreams of Joy and the character See found easiest to write. “I was already so familiar with Pearl’s strengths and weaknesses from Shanghai Girls. Her words just flowed, because I’ve now lived with her every day for over four years. In Shanghai Girls Mama speaks frequently of Pearl's Dragon nature -- and does so even when she is dying: "'There was a typhoon the day you were born . . . It is said that a Dragon born in a storm will have a particularly tempestuous fate. You always believe you are right, and this makes you do things you shouldn't . . . You're a Dragon, and of all the signs only a Dragon can tame the fates. Only a Dragon can wear the horns of destiny, duty and power'". Mama's mother love in giving up her life for her daughters becomes the standard by which Pearl judges herself. If Dreams of Joy is the story of Joy's coming of age, it also describes Pearl's growth through love, courage, and self-sacrifice. She pursues Joy to a China she never knew, living in her old Shanghai home as just another boarder, earning a living by collecting papers, and trying desperately to reconnect with her daughter. If such a pursuit requires painful patience and hard work at a collective farm, so be it. Like her mother before her, Pearl is willing to give up everything to save Joy and her granddaughter Samantha from death. Despite such trials, Pearl endures to the end to find joy in her daughter and granddaughter, friendship in Z.G., a new love with Dun the professor, and reaffirmation of her enduring bond with May. Little wonder that Pearl is radiant at novel's end. As for May the Sheep, See keeps her offstage for almost the entire novel. She is constantly present, however, through her letters to Pearl and the money and gifts she sends to her sister and Joy. At home May endures much hardship -- especially in the context of the death of her husband Vern. Only when Vern dies does May understand the suffering Pearl experienced after Sam's death. She is also tormented by Pearl's refusal to tell her the state of her relationship with Z.G. Nevertheless, in the end May finds the love she has been seeking her entire life.
31956123	/m/0gvv1dl	The Fold		2008-04-01	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Joyce Park is a Korean adult who just finished her junior year of high school. On the last day of school she asked the boy she had a crush on to sign her yearbook, when he does so, he absent-mindedly addresses her by the name of a more academically inclined and ugly classmate. Determined to break out of her shell Joyce sets about a program of self-improvement along with the help of her best friend Gina. Hampered by her family, working in her family’s restaurant, and trying to stand out of her older sister’s shadow, she is given a chance to have plastic surgery, a gift from her aunt, who has just won the lottery. If Joyce undergoes blepharoplasty she will have more European-looking eyes with a prominent eyelid fold, making her stand out from other Korean immigrants, but she is afraid of any kind of pain, which causes a major problem.
31961967	/m/0gx13_t	The Great Lover			{"/m/027mvb9": "Biographical novel"}	 :Note on names: Throughout the novel Rupert Brooke is referred to as Brooke and Nell Golightly is referred to as Nell. That convention is maintained here. The prelude of the novel begins with a 1982 letter from the elderly daughter of Rupert Brooke by a Tahitian women to Nell Golightly, asking Nell to help the daughter better understand her father. Nell responds, including a narrative of the time spent by Brooke at The Orchard in Grantchester from 1909 until his retreat in Tahiti in 1914, which becomes the rest of the novel. Nell's story alternates between the perspectives of Nell Golightly, a seventeen-year-old girl, and the poet Rupert Brooke. The novel begins as Nell's father dies while tending to the family's bee hives. Because she is the oldest child and her mother is long dead, Nell Golightly decides finds a job as a maid at The Orchard, a boarding house and tea room outside of Cambridge which caters to the students at the University there. There she, along with several other young women, serves guests and cleans the facilities. She also helps a local beekeeper tend his hives. Soon after Nell begins working at The Orchard, Rupert Brooke becomes a resident. As he enjoys his summer working on papers for Cambridge societies and composing his poetry, Brooke leads a social life flirting with various women and enjoying the company of artists and other students. Brooke soon lusts for Nell, and his increased interest in her leads to unconventional encounters. They develop a friendship in which both Nell and Brooke hold secret admiration and love for the other, but are unable to express it because of social conventions. Brooke also desires to lose his virginity because he feels that being a virgin is disgraceful. Because he cannot convince Nell or any of several other women to succumb to his wooing, he loses it in a homosexual encounter with a boyhood friend, Denham Russell-Smith. After the encounter, Brooke returns home to comfort his mother at his father's death bed. After his father's death, though Brooke desires to return to the Orchard, Brooke is forced to stay at the school where his father worked as headmaster, retaining the post until the end of the school year. After a brief period, Brooke returns to The Orchard. Meanwhile, Nell's sister Betty becomes a maid at The Orchard and another of Nell's sisters has a still birth. Brooke continues to become closer to Nell, and they covertly go swimming together in Byron's pond, a local swimming hole named after the poet Lord Byron. Afterwards, Brooke departs on a tour advocating for workers' rights, which does not go very well. At the end of the tour, Brooke proposes to Noel Oliver, one of the wealthy girls whom Brooke had been courting during his stay at The Orchard. Upon his return to Grantchester, Brooke also finds himself expelled from The Orchard because of his wanton social life. Brooke then moves next door to another boarding house, the Old Vicarage. Brooke does not marry Noel, but rather spends a brief period in Munich where he tries to become intimate with a Belgian girl in order to lose his heterosexual virginity. This relationship also fails, and he returns to England confused about his sexuality. He and Nell continue to remain close until he goes on a vacation with his friends, where he again proposes to another of his friends. Brooke is refused resulting in a psychological breakdown and an extended absence from Grantchester while he is treated by a London doctor. After a few more months, Brooke returns to the Old Vicarage briefly before departing on a trip to Tahiti via Canada and the United States. The night before he leaves, Nell realises that she still loves Brooke and goes to Brooke's bed the night before he leaves. While in Tahiti, Brooke suffers an injury to one of his feet, and is nursed by the beautiful Taatama, a local woman. Then Brook and Taatama romance each other, eventually having sex and impregnating Taatama. After several months of exploring the island, Brooke decides to return home. Before his departure Brooke leave writes Nell a letter which contains a black pearl. Nell, now married to a local carter, receives the pearl and letter soon after she gives birth to a child by Brooke.
31965455	/m/0gvr2kn	The Steerswoman			{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with the Steerswoman Rowan investigating the origins of a number of beautiful blue crystals that have been found in random locations throughout the land, highly polished and cut, but simply sprinkled throughout as if by a giant throwing them toward the east. During her investigation at an inn, she meets Bel, an outspoken Outskirter who can turn a marvelous tale. After leaving the next day, Rowan is later attacked on the road by another former guest at the inn, and Bel comes to her rescue, easily hefting a sword and making quick work of the attacker. The two women agree to travel together for a ways, as Rowan can see the benefit of having Bel around, and the Outskirter wants to explore the area and could use a guide. However, Rowan makes Bel to agree to not use any knowledge she gleans from Rowan’s help to allow her tribe to attack the outlying villages, which Outskirters do on occasion when their goats cannot sustain them. The pair make their way back to Rowan’s Steerswoman Academy to check in, quickly becoming fast friends despite their differences. Bel’s blunt nature and Rowan’s honesty sometimes get them into pinches, but they’re always able to work their way out. As they’re preparing to leave by ship to make it to the Academy, the inn they’re staying at is attacked by dragons. The pair manage to escape the fire breathers and set sail with a particularly obnoxious man and his lad in tow. While on the boat, Rowan and Bel converse with some of the sailors about magic, and one of them shows them a box in the hold that has been magicked for the voyage. When Bel is close to it, she can feel a warning buzz and a touch sparks her hand away from it. Rowan feels nothing, which the sailor tells her is a side effect of her being a Steerswoman. They dare the young lad to touch it, and he is sparked as well. When they’ve nearly arrived, they find the body of the boy next to the chest. He’s tried to open it, and was killed by the protection spell. Rowan makes it to the Academy and fills her fellow Steerswomen in. They agree that she needs to continue to investigate, but in a different manner than before, as her current investigations are drawing notice and attempts on her life (the man from the inn, the dragons) and suggest she goes undercover. This is very much against Rowan’s truthful nature and she resists, but eventually agrees it is the best way. At this point, the story switches perspective to a young runaway named Will, who has a talent for making things explode, much in the way wizards do sometimes. He joins up a caravan headed away from his home and the reader eventually realizes two of his traveling companions are Rowan and Bel, traveling in disguise. Will becomes very attached to Bel and although the pair try to get rid of him as they leave the caravan to continue their investigation, he follows along to help out. Bel and Rowan come to the town they intent to investigate as a rumored source of the stones and find a shopkeeper who claims to design and sell the stones himself. With Will’s help, the pair discover this to be a false trail left for them, and quickly leave town, pretending to believe the story. However, they are stalked by a group of soldiers who have orders to capture them and bring them to a pair of wizards, Dhree and Shammer, a brother and sister who Rowan eventually learns are under the control of a wizard named Slado. She and Bel slip into the stronghold of the wizards disguised as guards until Rowan is captured. Rowan is surprised to discover that Dhree and Shammer are barely teenagers, and probably too young to actually be in control. She is able to converse with them by giving them information freely and not asking them any questions that they would refuse to answer, thereby earning them the ban. The siblings talk amongst themselves in her presence and she gleans valuable information from them for a time before they shut her up in a room to wait for Slado to arrive and take her. But Bel and Will spring her from her prison through the distraction of Will’s exploding magic. Back at the Academy, the Steerswomen put together the clues they have gathered and conclude that the blue stones are pieces of a fallen guidestar, brought down for some unknown reason by the wizards, who may have put them up there in the first place. Rowan plays the same information game she did with Dhree and Shammer with another wizard who isn’t exactly loyal to Slado and learns a lot. She also gets him to take Will on as an apprentice. Will promises to share information about wizard magic with the Steerswomen as long as he finds that there isn’t a good reason for the information to be kept secret.
31968632	/m/0gvtyg8	The Broken Kingdoms	N. K. Jemisin	2010-11-03	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 A decade after the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms comes the story of Oree Shoth, a young street artist who lives in the city of Sky, which has been unofficially renamed "Shadow" after the growth of the enormous World Tree. Oree is blind, but has the ability to see magic; she has inherited this sensitivity to magic from her father, who also taught her to conceal her gift, as it is considered heretical by the Order of Itempas. Oree seeks only to live as ordinary a life as possible, despite her unusual abilities and disability. Shadow is a city in which many "godlings" -- immortal, demigod children of the gods—live hidden among the mortal citizens, so Oree is not very surprised to find a downtrodden being who is apparently unconscious, yet glowing brightly to her magic-sight, in the trash-strewn alley behind her house. She takes in this apparently mute homeless man, whom she later whimsically dubs "Shiny", and lives with him without incident for several months. She has no inkling of his identity, suspecting only that he is a godling, though readers familiar with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms will quickly realize that he is Itempas, god of light and order. Itempas was disgraced and sentenced to humanity by his fellow gods at the end of the previous book. When one of the local godlings is murdered, Oree finds the body—and falls under suspicion when the Itempan Order seeks a scapegoat rather than the actual culprit. Shiny increases the danger to Oree when, in an apparent fit of pique, he manifests inhuman power and injures, then kills, several Orderkeepers. Madding, another godling denizen of the city and Oree's ex-lover, attempts to aid her. However, he and a number of other godlings, and Oree, are then captured by a heretical group of Itempans who call themselves the Order of the New Light. The New Lights, led by a renegade Arameri fullblood named Serymn and her scrivener husband, oppose the Order of Itempas, which has attempted to change mortal society and doctrine in response to the events of the previous novel, which are not widely known. Dateh reveals to Oree that she is a demon, a part-god mortal whose blood is toxic to gods; it is demon blood, which Dateh also bears, that has been used to kill godlings. The gods, led by Itempas, long ago attempted to hunt down and destroy all demons due to the threat they represented, but a few escaped. Oree is left with no choice but to seek allies from among the gods and the Arameri—although both groups would happily kill or use her for their own purposes—in order to defeat the New Lights before their actions can threaten the entire mortal realm.
31972907	/m/0gxz6b0	Ocean of Blood	Darren Shan			 The novel picks up a couple years later with Larten Crepsley and Wester who are part of a small group of cubs. But after a bad incident with a Vampaneze named Randel which resulted in the death of Zula in a duel, they leave the war pack and go in search of Seba Nile. Part two of the book starts out with Seba, Larten and Wester observing the American civil war. They meet up with Vancha March and soon realize that Seba wants them to meet up with Lady Evanna in hopes that one of them would be chosen by her as a mate, which could result in vampires becoming the dominant species. Evanna is amused with Larten and grants him permission to find her whenever he wants to. In part three of the book another council at Vampire Mountain is hosted and Larten does better in his duels than he did previously thus catching the eye of some generals and princes. He then begins his training to become a vampire general while Seba pursues his new job of Quartermaster and Wester becomes part of a Vampaneze hater group. Larten, a few month before finishing his training, falls out with the Vampires and seeks more of the world. At the beginning of part four in his travels he meets up with Vancha for a short while and soon goes to find Evanna again. He ends up disrespecting her while being drunk and ends up fleeing for his life with a large cut on his face. One of Evanna's assistants Malora tags along with Larten on the night he leaves. She helps him with the vampire he contracted after a visiting with Evanna. Larten later insists on traveling to Greenland in a ship and Malora does her best to collect blood and make sure he doesn't reveal his true self while on the ship. But inevitably he consumes blood from a woman with a baby on the boat and reveals himself as a vampire. Malora sacrifices herself to give him more time. Meanwhile he recovers and kills almost everyone on the boat once he see's Malora's corpse hanging by the neck. He keeps a single crew member and a couple of people to feed off of. But he is torn by his conscience since he could only find the baby and not the mother on the boat. He then discovers that one of the people he kept in the storeroom has killed and cannibalized the others claiming that Larten can't kill him now since he is a vampire like him. Larten then proceeds to jump off the boat with the baby and rows to shore in a small boat.
31979532	/m/0gvsghx	Live Wire	Harlan Coben	2011		 When former tennis star Suzze T and her rock star husband, Lex, encounter an anonymous Facebook post questioning the paternity of their unborn child, Lex runs off, and Suzze - at eight months pregnant - asks Myron to save her marriage, and perhaps her husband's life. But when he finds Lex, he also finds someone he wasn't looking for: his sister-in-law, Kitty, who along with Myron's brother abandoned the Bolitar family long ago. As Myron races to locate his missing brother while their father clings to life, he must face the lies that led to the estrangement - including the ones told by Myron himself. If we thought we knew Myron Bolitar.
31990862	/m/0gvs1gp	May Pagsinta'y Walang Puso		1921	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is composed of three parts. The first part tackles the budding relationship between Sela and Fidel. However, Fidel did not marry Sela. The second part narrated Sela’s suffering caused by Fidel's unfaithfulness. Sela found a new lover in Rufo. The last part shows how Sela was haunted by her past, a past that also became her source of happiness. Apart from Sela, Fidel, and Rufo, the other characters were Rafael and Marya.
31991593	/m/0gvvsm2	Sampagitang Walang Bango		1921	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set during the second decade of American occupation and colonization of the Philippines, Regalado invented in Sampagitang Walang Bango the characters Bandino, Nenita, Pakito, and Liling. Bandino was the playboy husband of Nenita. The alienated Nenita, weakened and rebelling against Bandino's indicencies, succumbed to an extramarital affair with Pakito, a lawyer. Pakito was a man engaged to be married to Liling, a modest and demure woman. After discovering Nenita's affair with Pakito, Bandino tried to commit suicide. Only Bandino's daughter was able to stop him from shooting himself. Bandino, with his daughter, left the Philippines. Nenita, already abandoned by her husband, was also left by Pakito to fend for herself.
31995972	/m/0gvrqxh	The Wake of the Lorelei Lee			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In the previous book, Rapture of the Deep, Jacky is forced by British Naval Intelligence to recover Spanish gold from the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. She used a diving bell to recover the gold, which she still has in her possession. Jacky kept some of this gold and bought a ship, the Lorelei Lee. The Lorelei Lee has four large cabins, 24 regular-sized cabins, and three levels of open hammock spaces. Jacky plans to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. Before the voyage to London, Jacky and her dear friend, Amy, travel to Amy's family farm, Dovecote. While on the farm Jacky sees her friend and Amy's brother Randall. She finds out that Randall has joined the United States Marine Corps and is going to sea. They attend a religious revival at the farm, where Jacky sees her old associates Mr. Fennel and Mr. Bean, who are stage performers. They are putting on the show with a girl that Jacky discovers to be Polly Von, a former member of Jacky's gang in Cheapside. When Jacky sails into London she is taken to Newgate Prison by her old enemies, Bliffil and Flashby. Jacky goes before the court and is sentenced to life at the penal colony in Australia. To make matters worse, the Lorelei Lee is confiscated and used to transport Jacky and 250 other female convicts, to become "breeders" to populate Australia. Jacky had decked out the Lorelei Lee to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean, so it was equipped for the voyage to Australia. The Lorelei has three levels of open hammock spaces and Jacky, knowing which level is best, claims the top level of hammocks for her and her new crew of girls. Four groups form on the ship, the Lizzies, the Judies, and the Tartans, named after their leaders, and Jacky's group, called the Newgaters Crew, which includes Mary Wade and Esther Abrahams. Captain Laughton tells the girls that after they reach Gibraltar the different hammock levels will be auctioned off. The other three crews, being prostitutes, plan on making their money that way. The Newgaters Crew, consisting of twelve girls, including Jacky, plan on doing the ship's laundry in an attempt to make money. Captain Laughton also tells the girls and the crew that they are welcome to mingle and get together. The Captain gets more money if, when they arrive in Australia, any girls are pregnant or have had a child, so they are welcome to it, and they will get a shilling in return. Meanwhile, the book switches to letters from Jaimy to Jacky. The letters do not reach Jacky, but it tells the reader what has happened to Jaimy. Jaimy has been convicted of defrauding the king and sentenced to seven years in the penal colony of Australia. Jaimy has been told by the prison guards that Jacky has not been hanged and has been sent to Australia. The father and brother confirm this and Jaimy is put on the ship to Australia. On the ship, Jaimy finds Ian McConnaughey and Arthur McBride, from Jacky's former ship the Emerald, as well as other members of the former crew. The Lorelei Lee arrives in Gibraltar. They ship is to be there for three days and the other crews go on with their profession to make money to be able to buy the good levels of hammocks. The next day, Jacky goes onto the dock in her swim suit. She invites people to throw coins into the water, which she will retrieve. She works the docks all day, though not making nearly as much as the other crews. Later Jacky sees that the ship is taking on a few more girls and that one of them is Mairead. Mairead has been sentenced to life in Australia as well. Mairead tells her of her arrest and the fact that she is pregnant. As Jacky continues to dive for coins she sees some old seamates from the ship Wolverine. She also sees Gully MacFarland, her old partner in Boston, who Jacky put upon a British Navy ship after he got drunk and hit her. He tells her he is now sober and she is the reason, which he is thankful for. After the Lorelei Lee leaves Gibraltar the Captain auctions off the hammock spaces to the four different crews. The three other crews outbid Jacky and her crew for the best hammock spaces. However, this was Jacky's plan all along. Jacky and her crew make the laundry room their home. Jacky, being the former owner of the Lorelei Lee, knows where the extra mattresses are, and with some help from the carpenter, they make bunk beds for the crew. As the ship sails on, the Captain begins to have dinner parties in his cabin, with the officers attending. Jacky is there too, being the entertainment. During these parties Major George Johnston, an officer, has been attending with a girl from Jacky's crew, Esther Abrahams. At one of the dinners they announce their engagement and the next day they are married. After the wedding the Captain pushes Higgins to take a girl for himself. Higgins takes this opportunity to protect himself as well as Jacky by taking her as his wife. The first mate Mr. Ruger has been coming on to Jacky and by marrying Higgins, she can somewhat ward off his advances. Jacky on the other hand, uses their marriage to tease Higgins to no end by asking him to carry her across the threshold of their cabin and calling him "Dear Husband John" and such. That night, as Jacky and Higgins jump on the bed and make noises to make their marriage look, if not sound, real, she jokingly slides her hands down his waist and asks him if he would want her to, being legally married and all. They both have a laugh over this and fall asleep. The ship then makes it to India. Jacky and Mairead go out to explore India with Higgins and Captain Laughton. Jacky and Mairead get separated from the others. A small boy named Ravi offers to be their tour guide. Ravi is part of the untouchable caste and is an orphan after his mother died. Ravi shows them around, exchanges their money. The girls are sticking out so Ravi uses their money to buy them Indian clothing. He shows them the different Indian gods, including the Goddess Kali and the God Ganesh. After the girls eat some Indian food they are able to ride an elephant. Riding the elephant, Jacky and Mairead go on to be part of a procession through town, where at the end, in the Governor's box, sit Captain Laughton and Higgins. Jacky decides to joke around. While on the elephant, Jacky stands in front of Mairead and puts her arms out, imitating the Goddess Kali. This outrages the Kali followers, and they chase Jacky and Mairead. They run, led by Ravi. He gets them to the ship so they will be safe. Jacky knows if Ravi is left behind the Kali followers will kill him for helping her, so she grabs him and puts Ravi on the ship. The Captain is outraged when the ship is asked to leave the port immediately. The book then switches to a letter from Jaimy to Jacky. The letter is not written down, but rather in his head. Jaimy and the others are on the ship Cerberus. Every day, the convicts are allowed on deck for some exercise and fresh air. Jaimy plans a riot. Ian and Arthur create a diversion by singing a song about some of the guards. The two guards, Corporal Vance and Sergeant Napper, are enraged and begin beating some of the convicts. This diversion allows Jaimy to grab a belaying pin from the deck and tuck it under his clothes. The weeks go by on the Lorelei Lee. One day a fight breaks out between two girls, Violetta Atkins and Jane Wheelden. They were fighting over a man. Jacky tries to break up the fight and ends up in the middle of it. Fighting is forbidden on the ship and is punishable by whipping. However, this time Mr. Ruger decides to punish the girls by rigging up the dunking stool, where the girls will be dunked into the sea for ten seconds. Jacky knows the other two girls would not be able to take the punishment and takes it for them, meaning she would be underwater for 30 seconds. As Jacky is dunked underwater she counts the seconds. She soon realizes that she is being kept longer than she should. Jacky soon passes out and wakes up on the deck. Higgins tells her that something was caught in the winch to reel up the rope. Higgins thinks it was a knitting needle. Mrs. Barnsley, Mrs. MacDonald, and Mrs. Berry are the leaders of the other crews, and don't like Jacky very much. However, they come to Higgins and tell them that even though they haven't gotten along with Jacky, they did not try to harm her. Just then Ravi comes in to inform Jacky of an arriving ship. All the women come on deck to see the ship Cerberus. While the Captains exchange news and try to trade passengers, Jacky spots her old Irish crew on the ship. Jacky continues to spot more of her old crew, including Mairead's husband, Ian. Mairead yells to Ian and the crew yells back. McBride, seeing Jacky yells, "Fletcher, it's your Jacky." The two girls are at the edge of the ship, and are being held back from jumping off. The Captain tells them they are inflicting punishment to rioting prisoners, and Jacky and Mairead, seeing that their Jaimy and Ian are being hurt, manage to jump on board the Cerberus to save/comfort their men. The guards force Jacky to watch as Jaimy is beaten, doing the same for Mairead and Ian. But afterwards as Jacky is kissing Jaimy (who is nearing unconsciousness), she slyly puts her shiv in his boot. The Captain throws the girls over and sails off. Back on the Lorelei Lee, the girls continue to travel, all while First Mate Ruger continues to eye Jacky and Mairead. One day, while partying on the deck the Captain, obviously drunk, yells for more everything and just dies, his last word being, "More." With Ruger as Captain, everyone stays below as much as possible. He drinks himself into a frenzy and brutally abuses anyone in his way. He continues to pursue Jacky and Mairead. All the gangs decide to form a truce with each other as well as the other ship officers to keep everyone safe from Ruger. Meanwhile the boys plan to hijack the Cerberus, sail to the nearest port, supply themselves, and sail to Australia to save their girls. Their opportunity arrives when the crew is drunk during the Captain's birthday and their escort ship is off to escort a more important ship. They manage to steal a club and considerable amount of rope and plot to start their take over the next night. When the guards walk by, McBride starts telling a rather nasty joke involving Jacky, himself, and Jaimy. Jaimy, pissed off, tells Arthur the two will settle scores later. The next night, Padric and Ian tease Weisling, their guard, about how he got beat up by Jacky on the Wolverine. They make up a song to an Irish drinking tune about his embarrassment, and soon the Weasel unlocks the door to beat them, but Duggan puts out the Weasel with their stolen belaying pin. They unchain themselves with the Weasel's keys and wait for the other two guards to come out. The other two guards walk by and young Daniel Connolly begs them for protection from his bigger and meaner cell mates. They guards decide to unlock him to have some fun with him themselves (they mean to rape him), when Jaimy and McBride kill both of them. The men steal the guards' uniforms, raid the ship's weaponry, and go out killing and injuring most of the other guards, throwing them overboard in a life raft. They gain full control of the ship and set sail for Batavia (Jakarta). Jaimy and McBride see this as a perfect time to settle their scores and get into a fight. Jaimy wins, claims captain and appoints his officers. Ian as first mate, Padric as second, and McBride as third. Meanwhile, Ruger finally decides that he has waited long enough and orders Jacky to his room. She refuses, telling him that she is married, and if he forces her, it will be rape. Ruger tells her he knows of her sham marriage and this time orders both Jacky and Mairead to his room. Mairead tells him to back away and that she has a baby. Jacky tries to save her by telling Ruger he can have her, and leave Mairead alone, but he does not. Ruger, angered, punches Mairead in her stomach, killing her baby. He goes back into his cabin while the other women help Mairead recover. Jacky, angered, shoots Ruger with an arrow, but misses as he ducks and runs away. To keep the officers from killing Jacky for attempted murder, most of the women barricade themselves below the ship, and only will let officers pass for supplies if they agree to keep to their terms of truce. Under deck, Jacky and Higgins make themselves a makeshift room for the two and discuss matters with Ravi and their monkey Josephine, who they picked up from India. Higgins tells her it is unlikely that Ruger will be convicted of anything, while she might be hanged for attempted murder. Jacky dimly sees that her only hope is if Jaimy helps her, which is unlikely. Just then, a ship has been spotted and Jacky runs up to see if it is Jaimy. The ship turns out to be a pirate's Chinese junk and attacks them by throwing phosphorus rockets at them from a long distance. Deciding that she must fight fire with fire, and that no one should hurt the ship she paid for, she takes a few of her own arrows, as well as some flaming pitch, and drops down in a life boat with Ravi to defend her Lorelei Lee. She manages to set fire to the junk's sails, which burn quickly as they are made of straw-like material. But, as she finishes off their sails, the Chinese shoot their arrows at her and manage to take her and Ravi captive. On board, a woman stops her execution, and her words are translated to Jacky by an Italian monk. The woman, whose name is Cheng Shih, is obviously the boss, asks the monk to record Jacky's entire life. The monk and Jacky talk and eventually she learns that Cheng Shih is the most dreaded pirate in these lands and commanded hundred of ships. The monk mocks her, as she was proud only a minute ago by having command of two ships in her days as a pirate. The monk, Brother Arcangelo Rossetti, tells Jacky that Cheng Shih is intrigued by her and wants to keep her. When meeting Cheng Shih in her cabin, she tells Jacky that she does not believe her story. Jacky, miffed at this, shows her how she can dive for coins. She takes all her clothes off and jumps into the water, quickly getting the coin, but staying down long enough to think her drowned. She swims around the ship, jumps on deck, surprising Cheng Shih. Impressed by Jacky's ability, the pirate takes Jacky under her wing, dressing her in all the latest Chinese fashions, and treating her as a pet. The book goes back to Jaimy who is stuck in the middle of the ocean and cannot go anywhere as the wind will not blow. He is fearful of Chinese pirates that scout out his ship daily. Later in Cheng Shih's cabin, Jacky learns of how she always keeps a Buddha statue near her to remind herself of a debt unpaid. It turns out while raiding the monastery there, Cheng Shih also tried to take their giant golden Buddha statue, but it sank under water. Seeing all the monks dive after it and drowning, she vowed to bring it back up. But no amount of tugging would do the job. She marked the water there and left, failing in her task. Hearing this, Jacky thinks of how her diving bell managed to help her pull up the bow of a sunken Spanish ship, and the next morning proposes to bring the statue back up, if she, Jaimy, and the passengers of the Lorelei Lee (as well as the ship) are all freed. Cheng Shih is angry and whips Jacky for even thinking of asking for freedom, but agrees to let everyone go except Jacky. To show Jacky that she is under the ownership and protection of her, Cheng Shih orders her assistant to tattoo on her neck a golden dragon, this being Shih's mark. They immediately change course and sail toward the Cerberus, their plan to take over the ship and sail to the Lorelei Lee. It is unknown to them that Jaimy has managed to take command of the vessel. They come closer to the unarmed ship, and are about to fire when Jacky sees that management has changed. She climbs aboard, stopping the slaughter, and tells Jaimy to throw down his sword. When he does, she tells him about her plan, and together the two ships sail toward the Lorelei Lee. While together, Jacky and Jaimy spend a lot of time with each other, much to the displeasure of Cheng Shih. One such occasion includes a very saucy time in a bathtub. There, Jaimy realizes that Jacky is a sort of slave to the pirate and is angered. He demands Jacky to sneak off with him, as he is afraid she will be used as a prostitute. Jacky comforts him, and quickly changes the subject and asks Jaimy what his plan is for the prisoners. He tells her that he will pose as the now-dead captain of the ship, collect the money for delivering the prisoners and sail back with her. She tells him that it is a great plan, but does not mention that she cannot leave. Jaimy asks about her marriage to Higgins, and Jacky starts to tell him it is a sham, but Jaimy stops her saying that he could never be jealous of their good friend Higgins. Jacky is sure he thinks she is no longer a maiden and wants to tell him that she is, but says nothing to make sure he would still love her any way she was. When they reach the Lorelei Lee, they board the ship and Ian kills Captain Ruger for killing his unborn son, and laying his hands on Mairead. Everyone has a happy reunion and they all sail towards the sunken Buddha. Higgins and Jacky have a talk about their marriage, and agree to get a divorce. Higgins can see that Jacky is anxious to be back with Jaimy, so the two get divorced in the quick Muslim way, since they are close to Muslim waters. The crew sets up the diving bell, and Jacky, donning her swimsuit, dives for the statue. She brings it up in no time and the Chinese fix it to its original place. But in the process Chi-Chi (Cheng Shih's assistant) falls into the water. Jacky saves him, making him her assistant. As they sail back, Jaimy and Jacky have to say goodbye. Jaimy is outraged and wants to fight the pirates, as he cannot believe that they are keeping his Jacky as a slave. Jacky tells him that she is treated well, like a pet, and he should not worry, as she will have lots of adventures around Asia, and that adventure was why she got on the Dolphin years ago. She tells him to go back to Australia, continue with his plan and to start a life elsewhere without her. Jacky begins to cry, and when Jaimy tries to hug her she tells him not to, as Shih is watching and will kill them both. Jaimy protests saying that he will fight them all for her freedom, but she tells him to leave. She asks Cheng Shih if she can kiss Jaimy one last time, but the pirate says no. Jacky's heart breaks at how she will never be able to feel Jaimy again and sobs into her hands. The monk quickly explains that Cheng Shih meant that she would not allow Jacky to stay, and that she wants Jacky to leave with her fiance as she would hate her Golden Child to feel so sad. Not wanting to wait as Cheng Shih might change her mind, the two run off the ship, quickly climb their ships and set sail to Australia. On route to Australia, Jacky and Jaimy are mostly on separate ships, and she makes no move to invite him over, telling him she is busy. In reality, she just wanted to distance herself from him, as she did not feel ready for sex. She had known that would be on Jaimy's mind, as Mairead and Ian had been "busy making another Irish baby" and McBride had given him a hard time about her easy ways. At Australia, Jaimy and Higgins act as the captains of the two ships, collect the money, leave the prisoners, and sail a good distance away to talk matters through. Jaimy and Jacky, now finally alone, begin talking. She tells him to sail to Singapore and spend every cent of his money to arm his ship. Jaimy is confused as he thought that this would be the perfect time for him and Jacky to make up for lost time in their relationship, but he goes, with only a few kisses from his fiance. She later has a talk with Higgins, just like the one on the Nancy B., but this time she agrees with Higgins, admitting that getting married and having children could wait until she was older and more successful. Higgins smiles quietly, and it is obvious he knew she would say this. A few days after the ships separate, the Dart (the Cerberus 's companion ship) returns from its different duty to find and sail with it back to England. The Captain climbs aboard the Lorelei and Jacky sees that it is Joseph Jared, one of the men she had a relationship with on the Wolverine, as since then. He tells her that he has finally met her after what seemed like forever. He technically has authority over her, as she is an escaped prisoner, and he wants her in bed. She says no politely and persists, but Jared pulls her onto the bed anyway. Just then the Cerberus pulls up, with Jaimy jumping aboard and Jacky smiles and asks Jared, "Now who exactly is the prisoner of whom?" The three captains discuss what to do with their illegal profits, the ships, and where to stay, as both Jacky and Jaimy are wanted. Jared insists that it is his duty to turn in Jacky and Jaimy (he is still angry from Jacky's refusal, and the fact that Jaimy is actually present this time to stop him from getting his way with Jacky), but seeing the others' expressions and their armed guards, he quickly agrees that he is open for discussion. Together, they agree to let the Dart sail with them to England, where the Cerberus and it will stay, and where Jaimy will go with his lawyer to plead his innocence in court. Jared, now a captain, will vouch for him with his influence. Jacky, along with the Irish crew and Higgins, would go to Boston, and continue with Faber Shipping, as all chances of her acquittal is lost. The three shake hands and are about to continue with the matter of the money, when Chi-Chi yells, warning them of a typhoon. The book ends with Jacky panicking about the fast approaching storm.
32000132	/m/0gvsdvm	The Oakdale Affair and The Rider	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1937-02		 See the articles on the separate works.
32010767	/m/0gwz4zd	The Widening Gyre				 Spenser has to protect the image of Ronni Alexander, Congressman Meade Alexander's wife. The Congressman, who is running for senator, is being blackmailed, but is interested only in making sure that his wife suffers no setbacks because of the videotape. Spenser's efforts take him to Washington, where he narrows down the suspects to Gerry Broz, the Boston mobster Joe Broz's son, who is running a sex and drug racket, in which Mrs. Alexander had gotten filmed. Joe Brox has Congressman Alexander's rival, Robert Browne in his pocket, and intends to make sure that he wins over Alexander. Spenser finds out that Joe has no idea of his son's racket in Washington and uses this as leverage in order to get the tapes suppressed, managing to get shot in the leg in the course of the story. This book shows the first sighs of some distance between Spenser and Susan Silverman. Susan has been in Washington pursuing a Ph. D in Clinical Psychology, and Spenser gets scared of the loneliness that he feels without her. He also feels that she is conforming to every form of establishment that he hates. Paul Giacomin also plays a big role in this novel. He is shown to be a highly thoughtful young man who is wise beyond his age. Paul points out many things to Spenser about himself and his unbending code of ethics, and helps Spenser reach some sort of a resolution about Susan.
32017367	/m/0gx2f73	Robopocalypse	Daniel H. Wilson	2011-06-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the near future, an increasingly robot-reliant society faces extinction after a computer scientist accidentally unleashes a sentient artificial intelligence named Archos. After failed attempts at making a non-homocidal artificial intelligence, the safeguards in a computer science lab are compromised. Archos, a supremely intelligent AI, becomes self-aware and immediately starts planning the decimation of human civilization in an attempt to preserve Earth's biodiversity. After infecting all penetrable networked electronic devices (cars, airplanes, elevators, robots, etc.) with a "precursor virus", Archos begins planning a systematic attack on the human race. Before a full blown attack on humanity commences, Archos launches probing attacks to analyze the technical feasibility of its strategies and to assess human response. The random attacks are designed to look like sporadic malfunctions of devices that humans depend on for their everyday routines--a domestic robot attacking innocents, planes intentionally set on a collision course, smarts cars driving out of control. Finally, at the Zero Hour, the entire automated world turns against humanity. Small bands of survivors find ways to circumvent the eradication and survive without modern technology. This is a story of those survivors in the months and days leading up to and following the cataclysm. A group of Native Americans (whose leader has a son that is a POV character) lead a group that fights back, their base being a reservation, culminating in an attack where some of the group turned into a robot/human hybrid with zombie-like behavior. In the end, a "freeborn" robot allied with a human squad, cuts off Archos's communication with its robotic hordes. Archos's base is infiltrated and the genocidal mastermind is destroyed by a stone age assault--bombardment with boulders--ending the war.
32020149	/m/0gwzb5r	The Oakdale Affair	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1974		 In the home of Jonas Prim, president of an Oakdale bank, a thief makes off with a servant's clothing and valuables belonging to Prim's daughter Abigail. Abigail is thought to be absent visiting Sam Benham, whom her parents want her to marry. Escaping, the thief later encounters a group of hobos and is taken for one of them, the Oskaloosa Kid. Two of the hobos attempt to murder the newcomer for the loot, who shoots at one and flees. Meanwhile, the Prims discover the theft and learn that Abigail never arrived at Benham's. The incidents are assumed to be connected to other crimes, the assault and robbery of John Baggs and the murder of Reginald Paynter, who had been seen with two men and a girl. The local paper speculates Abigail might have been involved with Paynter's murder. Mr. Prim hires a private eye. The thief encounters another vagrant, Bridge, and the two take refuge from a storm in the deserted Squibb house, site of an old murder. Nearby, a shot is heard from a passing car, from which a woman is thrown. The two take the unconscious woman into the house. There they discover a dead body and hear something in the cellar dragging a chain. They lock themselves in one of the rooms. The woman, reviving, reveals herself as the girl with Paynter. The other men in the car were Terry, the driver, and the Oskaloosa Kid. She says the Kid murdered Paynter and afterwards threw her from the car and shot at her when she wouldn't keep quiet. The two hobos pursuing the thief enter the house, find the body, encounter the thing in the cellar. Bridge lets them in the room to save them from the thing, at which the thief shoots. The thing retreats. Later, as the storm dies down, they again hear its approach, and a woman's shriek. When all is silent they emerge to find the dead man gone. The hobos threaten to turn the thief in for Paynter's murder unless they are given a share of the loot. Bridge, with the thief's gun, forces them to leave without it. Afterwards the thief goes to a nearby farmhouse of the Case family to buy food and brags to the Cases' son Willie about the exploits of the Oskaloosa Kid. After the thief's departure the Cases hear about the Baggs, Paynter and Prim mysteries from the local postman. A car containing Burton, a private detective, and two others pulls up to the Squibb house, and Bridge, the thief and the woman flee into the woods. Burton goes to the Case farm and questions the family, after which Willie disappears. The detective apprehends the hobos Bridge had driven from the Squibb house and gets their story, after which he arrests them as material witnesses. He himself vanishes for a few minutes, supposedly in search of a notebook he says he lost; actually he has found the loot from the Baggs robbery, implicating his captives in that crime. In the woods Bridge and his companions come across a cabin where Giova, a gypsy girl, is digging a grave. Willie also turns up. Bridge and Giova exchange stories. He tells her he tracked her and the thing from the Squibb place; the thing is now revealed as her pet bear Beppo. She tells him the body from the house which she is burying is that of her father, a villainous drunk who died of a fit. Bridge suggests they join forces. His group helps her bury the body, and she disguises them as gypsies. Meanwhile Willie, whom the thief has tried to bribe into silence, steals off and calls Burton. Burton, Jonas Prim and a posse join Willie and are led to the cabin while the two hobos in Burton's custody are sent to jail. Bridge's party is not found, but the gypsy's body is dug up. Willie testifies on the gypsy's death at the inquest. Later that night, by chance, he spies the fugitives hiding in an old mill and again goes to inform Burton. But the group of hobos of whom Burton's captives were members has also learned their whereabouts, and plots to murder Bridge and the thief for the latter's loot and return the girl, whom they take for Abigail, to Prim for the reward. The gang duly attack them, but chaos ensues when Beppo the bear comes to their defense. Burton's posse arrives and intervenes; the bear is killed and all the combatants taken captive. Bridge and the thief are jailed and endangered by a lynch mob. Burton questions the woman, now identified as Hettie Penning. She tells him how Paynter died at the hands of the Oskaloosa Kid, and that the thief is not the Kid. Her story is confirmed when it is learned that the real Kid has turned up, fatally injured from crashing the car, and has confessed to murdering Paynter and shooting Hettie. Burton and Prim go to the jail, where they find the mob about to lynch Bridge and the thief, who they believe have robbed and killed Abigail Prim, and Paynter as well. Bridge, who has deduced the truth about his companion, reveals that the "thief" is Abigail, and the possessions she "stole" are her own property. Burton and Prim intervene and free the prisoners, whose secrets are now revealed. Abigail had run away so she would not have to marry Sam Benham. Bridge too is a runaway, having abandoned his own wealthy family to ride the rails. Burton has long been searching for him on commission from his father. In the end all is resolved satisfactorily Hettie takes out Giova as her maid, and Bridge and Abigail realize they have fallen in love with each other, which they seal with a kiss. In light of what Burton has revealed about Bridge, the prospects for their romance appear bright.
32022253	/m/0gx1jfv	Natani			{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Natani alternates between the present and the past, a reflection of the protagonist’s life as he converses with a stranger. A love story between the protagonist, Fouad, and his first love, Zahra, it is romantic with hints of comedy and dramatic undertones simultaneously. The novel spans one night in a hotel lobby in Paris, France, and it is interlaced with flashbacks from Fouad's adolescence in Qom, Iran. A native of Iran, Fouad lives in London and is in Paris to meet his girlfriend. Prior to her arrival, he becomes transfixed by an elegant woman who enters the hotel lobby. Her appearance reminds him of Zahra, and what it felt like to fall in love. Fouad's girlfriend arrives, and they have dinner, and later, Fouad finds himself restless and unable to sleep. He returns to the lobby only to find the woman he saw earlier. He begins talking to her about his life growing up as the son of an ayatollah in the restrictive religious society of Iran. The narrative continues to alternate between their conversation and his flashbacks until the following morning. Fouad offers that one’s hometown is not where one lives, but where one "gives birth". This is how Paris and Qom, in Fouad’s mind, stand isolated on two opposite sides of the world.
32027500	/m/0gw_1v2	A Glorious Way to Die		1981	{"/m/050yl": "Military history", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In A Glorious Way to Die, Russell Spurr recounts the final mission of the . He describes the events that led to the decision by the Japanese at Combined Fleet headquarters to send Yamato, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, on a suicide mission to help defend Okinawa Island against the advancing Allied forces. Spurr tells the story of Yamatos last mission in a "dramatic narrative" from both the Japanese and the American point of view. Construction of the Yamato began in secrecy at the Kure naval base in 1937. She was completed soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but had already been rendered obsolete by the Japanese themselves after their successful carrier-based attacks at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere. Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, with nine 18.1-inch guns with a range of over 22 miles, became a "70,000-ton white elephant the Japanese did not quite know what to do with". In March 1945, after the Americans had invaded Okinawa and all but eliminated the Japanese Navy, a final Kamikaze mission called Operation Ten-Go (Operation Heaven One) was conceived to repulse the American advances. The plan was to send Yamato with eight support destroyers and a cruiser to Okinawa. Yamato would only be given enough fuel to reach Okinawa, and would have no air-cover as all available airplanes would be used for a series of Kamikaze attacks on US aircraft carriers. At Okinawa Yamato and her support craft would beach themselves and assist the island defenders. Without air-cover there was little chance of Yamato reaching her destination, but the Japanese high command were "perfectly prepared to sacrifice the remnants of [their] fleet to avoid the stigma of surrender". The Americans intercepted the Japanese fleet on April 7, 1945, 200 miles from Okinawa. Using 280 bombers and torpedo planes in three waves of attacks from nine aircraft carriers, the Americans sank Yamato and five of her support ships within three hours. After Yamato went down the Americans machine-gunned survivors in the water. Spurr explains the reason for their hatred of the Japanese: After the US planes left the area, the remaining Japanese support ships picked up what survivors they could from the water and returned to Kure. Of Yamatos total crew of 3359, only 269 survived. The Americans lost 12 men in their attack on the Japanese fleet.
32032353	/m/0gw_r5z	The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future	Dav Pilkey	2011-08-10	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 =Introduction= Professor Gaylord M. Sneedly, Melvin Sneedly's father, accused this book of having many scientific errors and said that cavemen did not co-exist with dinosaurs and to prove that he's right, he claimed that he was a recipient of The Most Brilliantest Science Guy of the Whole Wide World Award. However, creators George and Harold denied that and said they time-traveled and witnessed that cavemen did co-exist with dinosaurs. They said scientists do not really know everything and make guesses based on evidence they already discovered (Which actually is true, as every year, new discoveries are being made.) so they called this book "the first book based on science facts." =Plot= Their story begins with two cavekids named Ook Schadowski and Gluk Jones who live in Caveland, Ohio. The dictator of Caveland, Chief Goppernopper, hated those kids but forced Ook's sister Gak to marry him. Ook and Gluk became friends with a Tyrannosaurus rex Mog-Mog and her baby and they all ruined Goppernopper's wedding, making Gak happy. Angered by this, Goppernopper walks away with his guards until Goppernopper met his descendent, J.P. Goppernopper, who is the CEO of Goppernopper Enterprises from the year 2222. The two Goppernoppers worked together to steal natural resources from cavemen days through time portal since all natural resources will be used up by 2222. Ex-Chief Goppernopper goes back to the past and forced every cavemen living in Caveland to become slaves for the rest of their lives, making them official property of Goppernopper Enterprises. Becoming slaves, Ook, Gluk, and baby Mog-Mog were shoveling until the two Goppernoppers took the cavekids to 2222 to torture them, but baby Mog-Mog followed them to help them escape. Ook, Gluk, and baby Mog-Mog hid in Master Wong's School of Kung-Fu. There they trained and became good at kung-fu. Ook fell in love with Master Wong's daughter, Lan. Lan named baby Mog-Mog "Lily" after her favorite flower. Ook and Gluk grew up, training under Master Wong and no matter how good they were at kung-fu, Master Wong did not award them new belts as they constantly requested. In order to get new belts, the cavemen had to give the right answer to Master Wong's question: Who is the greatest man? When it was time for Ook and Gluk to save their village, they finally answered who the greatest man is: Nobody. It was a correct answer to Master Wong's question, so he finally awarded them black belts, telling them that titles and trophies have no value to the man who is at peace with himself and true greatness is anonymous, therefore the greatest man is nobody. Ook and Gluk realized that these belts have no value since they are at peace, but they took the belts anyway. Then Ook, Gluk, and Lily entered Goppernopper Enterprises, time-traveled back to cavemen days, and kung-fued the guards only to free the slaves. Then Ook's sister Gak fell in love with Gluk and called him hero. After that, Chief Goppernopper returned and ordered his Mechasaurs (A mechanical T. rex, a mechanical Triceratops, and a mechanical Pteranodon) to attack Ook, Gluk, and Lily. Then Lily and the cavemen spray-painted pictures of themselves on the buildings so the Mechasaurs will destroy anything that has the faces of Lily and the cavemen. They also spray-painted on Goppernopper Enterprises building so it will be destroyed, and spray-painted on the explosive tank, which also destroyed the Mechasaurs themselves. After Ook and Gluk's victory, J.P. Goppernopper sent them a letter, telling them that he captured Master Wong and Lan and that they will be killed if Ook and Gluk won't give up now. When Ook, Gluk, and Lily returned to 2229, they saw Master Wong and Lan tied up. The cavemen wondered how the Goppernoppers found them and the Goppernoppers said that since they realized that Ook and Gluk learned kung-fu, they searched for kung-fu schools in town and there was only one. As soon as the Goppernoppers were going to kill the Wongs, Ook and Gluk pleaded with the Goppernoppers to release the Wongs and said they will do anything. The Goppernoppers agreed and had Ook, Gluk, and Lily handcuffed and changed their minds about releasing the Wongs and vowed to kill them all. Ook and Gluk wondered how to get out of this and Master Wong told them to remember their training. Then Ook and Gluk remembered all of the teachings from Master Wong and finally they got an idea. When J.P. Goppernopper raised his ray gun to kill them, Ook and Gluk asked the Goppernoppers the question: Who is the greatest man? J.P. Goppernopper answered that he is the greatest man while Chief Goppernopper also answered the same thing. After that, the Goppernoppers disagreed with each other and argued about who the greatest man is and got into a fight. J.P. Goppernopper betrays and zaps Chief Goppernopper, killing him. Then J.P. Goppernopper started disappearing since he killed his ancient great-grandfather before he had children. The polluted world was being replaced with the world without Goppernoppers. Then Ook, Gluk, and Lily ran back to the disappearing time portal, but Ook soon returned because of his love for Lan. Lan said she will be his cavewife and they both entered the cavemen days. The time portal and J.P. Goppernopper and his world from 2222 disappear. Then Master Wong walked home where he says there is a part of the kids in him. Lily was finally re-united with her mother Mog-Mog. Ook, Gluk, Lan, Mog-Mog, and Lily returned happily to Caveland.
32042913	/m/0gx1t_g	Rage	Jackie Kessler	2011-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A teenage girl who cuts herself must take on the role of War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
32044293	/m/0gx0pkp	Seesaw	Deborah Moggach	1996-03-11	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hannah, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Morris and Val Price is kidnapped and a ransom of half a million pounds is demanded. The novel focuses on both the Price family and the kidnappers in the time leading up to the abduction; the relationships between Jon and Eva the two kidnappers, and Hannah; and what happens to all those concerned following her release.
32047634	/m/0gw_8vz	You Don't Know Me	David Klass	2001-03-28	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 John is a young fourteen year old boy. He lives with his mother and his mother's boyfriend who he calls the "Man Who is Not my Father". The man abuses John by assaulting him when nobody is around. He has a friend named Billy Beezer who is skinny but eats a lot which John thinks is impossible. Andy is "slow" and doesn't understand the phrases many teens use. John also has a crush on a girl named Gloria but he calls her Glory Hallelujah. Billy also has a crush on her. The book begins with Billy being arrested for stealing an egg roll from a Chinese store. John sees this as a chance to ask Gloria out which he does by sending her a note which she eats but explains to him it was so the teacher didn't see. She accepts and goes to a basketball game with him. Billy goes also and calls John a terrible friend. A riot occurs in the gym and John and Gloria escape. Gloria brings John home and "seduces" him until John escapes from her and her angry father but leaves clothes and money which he took from the "Man who is not my Father's" drawer. The man finds out and takes John to do some "business". John is forced to carry TVs into a truck. It is also learned that the man deals in transporting stolen TVs. The man also tells John that him and his mother are getting married. In school; Gloria humiliates John, Billy picks on him and he is in trouble for saying rude thought about a teacher out loud and making her cry. Soon John is asked to a dance by a girl named Violet or "Violent". He goes with her and Billy forgives John because he likes a new girl now and Violet stands up for John against Gloria and her new boyfriend. When John goes home, the "Man who is not my Father" is drunk and assaults John but this time he rebels. Him and the man fight. The man gets the better of the fight and beats John senseless. He is saved by his music teacher who had seen John's signs of abuse and came to check up on him. John wakes up in the hospital and his friends and mother are there. His mother wishes he told her before and that she loves him and that he is her flesh and blood. John feels that his mother really knows him and feels loved. He then attends the school's music concert where he cries at the end at a music piece he learned in class, because he finally figures out that its a love story.
32055636	/m/0gx0pmz	The House of Silk	Anthony Horowitz	2011-11-01	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The House of Silk begins with a brief, personal recounting of events by Watson, much like the Study in Scarlet by the original author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The reader is informed of the particulars regarding the first meeting of Watson and Holmes, including the circumstances of the Afghan War and a mention of the case that was "too shocking to be revealed until now." The client of The Flat Cap case is introduced as a man by the name of Edmund Carstairs, an art dealer whose paintings were destroyed by a gang of Irish robbers. After the murder of the man's own client, and a failure on the part of a hired detective, he turns to Sherlock Holmes who employs the aid of the Baker Street Irregulars, and upon locating the hotel wherein the supposed Keelan O'Donaghue (one of the leaders of the gang) is currently staying, one of the newest recruit of the Irregulars, a boy named Ross, is stationed to wait outside until Holmes, Watson, and Mr. Carstairs arrive. When the group finally arrives, Ross appears inexplicably horror-stricken and is later found brutally murdered by thugs of the House of Silk. It is revealed that Mrs. Carstairs is the true person responsible for The Flat Cap case, being the second leader of the Irish gang. When Holmes makes inroads with the House of Silk case, he is framed for murder and sent to prison. Meanwhile, Watson meets with Professor Moriarty, who provides him a key to free Holmes from prison, for fear that the detective will be assassinated. Professor Moriarty's motives are uncertain, except that he wishes Holmes to rid the world of the House of Silk. When Watson arrives at the prison, he discovers Holmes has escaped of his own accord, disguised as an aide to the prison doctor he once had as a client. Various leads draw them to a traveling carnival, where they are ambushed, albeit saved by Lestrade. The party (Holmes, Watson, Lestrade) makes their way to the "House of Silk", a club operated by a pastor and his wife who also govern a boy's orphanage and rent the boys to wealthy customers. The members are promptly rounded up by the Scotland Yard. Despite their arrests, however, the case does not come to trial, due to a royal family member having been purportedly involved.
32062199	/m/0gx1hm1	A Matter of Death and Life	Andrey Kurkov			 ==External link
32063086	/m/0gw_pbc	Pinaglahuan		1907	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Set during the early 20th century in the Philippines, Pinaglahuan narrates the story of the life of Luis Gatbuhay, the labor leader whose life was ruined by the mestizo class, represented by Rojalde. The first scene in Pinaglahuan depicted a meeting inside the Teatro Zorilla (Zorilla Theatre). The purpose of the gathering was about the call to free the Philippines from the American occupiers. Another scene depicted the confrontation between Gatbuhay and Don Nicanor while inside a carriage. Don Nicanor wanted to marry off Danding to Rojalde because the purpose of paying off his gambling debt. Luis lost his job because of Rojalde’s power and influence. In addition, Rojalde implicated Gatbuhay to a crime and was imprisoned for four years. Rojalde and Danding became husband and wife, but Danding gave birth to Gatbuhay’s child. At the ending scene of the novel, Gatbuhay was killed by a bomb explosion inside the prison.
32064847	/m/0gx0npy	Busabos ng Palad		1909	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The plot of the novel narrates the love story of the protagonists Celso and Rita. Celso left Rita and their province to study in Manila. Rita disappeared from her province. In the meantime, Celso became a writer and coincidentally saves a prostitute from her fate by paying off her debt. The prostitute was Rita, his girlfriend. For two years, Rita became a victim of prostitution. Despite Rita’s fate and reputation, Celso remained Rita’s lover. Celso and Rita decided to live together. Rita became ill. After Rita’s death, Celso became insane and was committed to an asylum.
32065914	/m/0gx116l	Liar	Justine Larbalestier	2009		 The protagonist of the novel, Micah Wilkins, is a seventeen-year-old biracial girl living in New York with her parents. When the novel opens, Micah's boyfriend Zachary, who's been missing, is found dead. The story is told in segments of past and present, moving between Micah's family history and how she met her boyfriend, and with the present as the investigation into Zach's death unfolds. The conceit of the story is that Micah is a compulsive liar. The novel is written as though Micah is writing the words, so she is aware of and refers to the audience in the text, whom she is telling the story to. In the opening she declares that she promises to tell the whole truth, but as the story continues she retracts or "corrects" statements she'd said before, claiming the new truth to be the real one.
32075973	/m/0gx0krq	Too Much Money	Dominick Dunne	2009		 Living in New York, Gus Bailey, a writer for Park Avenue, a monthly magazine, takes a last look as an insider into the affairs of the rich and famous. As a popular guest at parties people talk to him, but with his writings he has made enemies. Thus he is sued by former congressman Kyle Cramden for slander for falsely linking him to the murder of a female intern, he is facing the potential vengeance of Elias Renthal, a finacier about to be released from prison, and he is being investigated by Perla Zacharias, the third richest woman in the world, who has been unhappy about Gus' interest in the circumstances of the death of her banker-husband in a mysterious fire at his penthouse. Gus interacts with members of New York high society, among them Lil Altemus who at the age of 76 starts working as a real estate agent to improve her financial situation, Ruby Renthal, Elias' wife who prepares for her husband's return into society, and Addison Kent, the kleptomane "walker" of Perla Zacharias, and attends the funeral of its Grand Old Dame, the 105 year-old Adele Harcourt. Gus's life is coming to an end, too; he learns that he has cancer. Perla is aware that Gus is about to write a novel based on her life and determined to stop it. She links up with his enemies, seems to employ Mossad agents, places a rumor that he is a pedophile, and pressures his publisher to back out of the project. Through philanthropic lavishness she is trying to "buy" herself into the high strata of society. Refuting the ugly rumor Gus "comes out" about his former bisexuality, and claims to have been celibate for two decades. He settles the law suit, amends with the Renthals, and finds a new backer for his book to proceed with his final project.
32079302	/m/0gx2fkd	Roshan and Ashmi				 Roshan and Ashmi is the story of two young children living in a third world country. They forget to boil their water and get sick. Inside their stomachs a battle rages on between Sammy Sickness and his germ army and the white blood cells. Who will win?
32096841	/m/0gw_ngy	Pertemuan Jodoh	Abdul Muis	1932	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Ratna, a young student, inadvertently meets Suparta, a medical student, on a train. There, Suparta tries to find her a seat but fails because a Chinese-Indonesian couple are using the spare seats for their luggage. Upon arrival in Cimahi, Suparta escorts Ratna to her school. Pleased by Suparta's manners, Ratna and he agree to keep in contact via mail. A few months later, Suparta proposes to Ratna via post; Ratna accepts, and leaves for Sumedang to meet Suparta's bangsawan parents. However, Suparta's mother, Nyai Raden Tedja Ningrum, is unwilling to accept Ratna as her daughter-in-law because Ratna is not of bangsawan descent. Disappointed, Ratna decides to forget Suparta. Not long afterwards, her father's chalk business becomes bankrupt, and Ratna has to drop out of school and find a job as a salesclerk, then later at a lawyer's office and as a maid for a Dutch couple. However, one of the other maids, Jene, becomes jealous of her and tells the police that Ratna stole jewelry from her mistress. After being arrested, Ratna tries to escape but falls into a river, nearly drowning. She is brought to a hospital. She is treated by Suparta, who has already graduated from medical school and has been looking for Ratna. Hearing her plight, Suparta hires a lawyer for her and she is declared innocent; Jene's boyfriend, Amat, is shown to have stolen the jewelry. After being discharged from the hospital, Ratna is asked to go to rest at the Bidara Cina pavilion. There Suparta treats her and they grow closer. Once Ratna is fully healed, Suparta proposes to her again and they are married the same day.
32097675	/m/0gx2qqv	Afterlife	Claudia Gray	2011-03-03	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Lucas rises from the dead and assisted by Balthazar and Ranulf, Bianca manages to convince Lucas to return to Evernight to seek help for his bloodlust before it is too late and he is consumed by it. After his return Mrs. Bethany offers him shelter much to the annoyance of his fellow pupils. Bianca's parents are told that their daughter has died, for which they blame Lucas. While in the library Bianca is caught in a trap set by Mrs Bethany to trap wraiths. She is freed by intruding into Lucas's dreams. Lucas is set to go on a trip to the local town and Bianca is going to accompany him. Bianca while following Lucas until she can appear to him is trapped by Patrice using a mirror. He frees her but finds out everything about how she died and how Lucas became a vampire. At the Cafe Lucas is attacked by several Black Cross members including his mother who leave after the police are called and although no one is harmed Lucas is shaken up. Bianca and her father are reunited and he accepts her for what she is before helping Bianca tell her mother. Her parents also realize Mrs. Bethany is up to something so agree to help Bianca and her friends to search the school for the traps set by Mrs. Bethany and to free the wraiths on the night of the autumn ball. While the ball is taking place several human students are possessed by wraiths who are angry and confused as to what is happening at Evernight. Bianca goes to visit Christopher, a powerful wraith, and he tells her that she could be used as a bridge between the human world and the world that wraiths inhibit before they can reach heaven. She agrees to think about it before returning to the human world. She later witnesses Lucas being told by Mrs. Bethany about how vampires can be resurrected to human form although it involves the sacrifice of a wraith when the mixture of both supernaturals' blood happens. Lucas disagrees and leaves. Bianca is caught in a powerful trap when she goes to get her coral bracelet so that she can apparate fully and feels like she has been trapped for days before being released into a large room which was designed to contain and weaken wraiths. Mrs. Bethany reveals that she plans on killing Bianca to become human again but her plans are stopped when Lucas and her parents arrive. Bianca cannot escape from the room so possesses Skye who allows her to. Bianca helps the other wraiths to leave the human world by creating a light to which the wraiths float taking on a more human look, no longer the mutilated beings they previously were. She was willing to leave but Mrs. Bethany traps Maxine who had warned her parents. Bianca calls upon Christopher who has been revealed to be Mrs. Bethany's husband before he was murdered who switches place with Maxine and is destroyed as Mrs. Bethany's cottage collapses killing her too. A battle ensues with the vampires who planned to help murder Bianca and her fellow wraiths and friends. Lucas is gravely wounded but Bianca drinks his blood and he drinks hers. Their blood infuses and Lucas is resurrected to human life. The series finishes after Bianca reflects on the rest of her eternal life as a bridge between worlds for the wraiths.
32099534	/m/0gx2083	Sa Ngalan ng Diyos		1911	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the narrative, Jesuit priests used their religious authority and influence on Carmen to gain access to her wealth. Included in these plans and machinations was the destruction of the on-going relationship between Carmen and Mr. Roland. Mr. Roland is Carmen's boyfriend. The priests succeeded. Carmen breaks up with Mr. Roland to enter the convent run by the Jesuit order. Thus, Carmen's inheritance became property of the priests. There was a scene when Eladio Resurreccion, a former cohort of the Jesuit priests, tried to set the convent on fire. However, Resurreccion's act of vengeance did not succeed. Only a stable for horses was ruined by the fire.
32104187	/m/0gw_nk7	The House That Had Enough				 One day nearly everything in Anne's house, her bed, clothes, toothbrush, refrigerator, toys, even the house itself, all came to life and told her they felt she wasn't taking good care of them and left. Finally Anne, a young girl who appears to live by herself, convinces her house to talk her things into coming back on the promise that she take better care of them.
32105487	/m/0gx22d5	White Cat	Holly Black		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Cassel Sharpe comes from a family of workers who are part of one of the major crime families. He is the youngest son with a mother in prison for making millionaires fall in love with her, a dead father, and two older brothers who work for the nephew and current heir of one the biggest crime families in the area. Cassel's friend Lila was the daughter of the crime lord and other possible heir, but had been killed by Cassel when they were fourteen, though he can't remember why he did it. Cassel is the only one in his family not to have an ability. Now seventeen, Cassel finds himself sleepwalking up on the roof at his prep school, dreaming of a white cat and nearly dies getting back down. This gets him kicked out of school and the dorms until he can get a doctor's note saying it won't happen again, which he plans to get using a con, getting stationary and the doctor's signature from a nearby office. His simple plan to get back into school and turn life back to normal is complicated by his brothers, who keep acting strangely around him. Cassel overhears enough of their conversations to make him suspicious that he's being manipulated, and he goes to a fortune teller to get stone amulets to protect himself from memory alteration, which he cuts into his skin. Further investigation leads Cassel to discover that his brothers have been keeping a white cat just like the one from his dreams, but that it's free now and has been following him around. He rescues it from the pound, certain for some reason that it's Lila, and that he hadn't killed her like he thought, but been manipulated by a memory worker, though he doesn't know who. Shortly after, he discovers that one of the rocks under his skin has broken, and his second oldest brother is the memory worker. He also figures out that he is a worker after all, but his brothers have been keeping it from him to 'protect' him. Cassel is a transformation worker, and has been changing people into everyday objects as murder and body disposal for his brothers as contract killers, then forgetting about it afterward. With this discovery, Cassel changes the white cat back into Lila, and the two plan to reunite her with her father and allow her to take back her place as heir by revealing a plan Anton has of killing her father and running the family himself. It succeeds, and things go mostly back to normal for Cassel despite his new-found ability. Lila still originally hates him for what he did, but when he arrives home from school a week later, she is waiting for him, having forgiven him. They start to make out as Cassel has always dreamed, when they are interrupted by a phone call from his mother, who has gotten out of jail and wants to tell him of her surprise: that she met Lila in New York and used her ability to make her fall madly in love with Cassel. He demands she undo it, but his mother claims she cannot, and Cassel realizes that he was a mark himself, gullible enough to believe that Lila would forgive him and love him so easily.
32111076	/m/0gx1q5f	Always Hiding	Sophia Romero	1998	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The main protagonist in Romero's novel is Violetta Rosario "Viola" Dananay. Viola narrates her life in the Philippines and her eventual move to the United States. Viola was conceived before the marriage of her parents who belong to Manila's socialite class. Viola grew up in Manila during the regime of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. Her life was complicated by her quarrelsome parents. One of the main reasons for the disagreements between Viola's parents was her father's reputation as a womanizer and philanderer. Viola's father left the family to live with a pregnant mistress. Viola's mother, Ludy, left for the United States to escape the indiscretions of her husband, leaving Viola behind. Upon arrival in America, Viola's mother became an undocumented immigrant working as a maid in New York City. After the fall of the Marcoses, Viola's father was implicated in charges of corruption committed by the Marcos government. Viola's father decided to send Viola, already a teenager, to the United States to live with her mother. Viola obeyed her father but with a "secret agenda": to return to the Philippines together with her mother.
32112497	/m/0gx09bw	The Blood Book	Ted Dekker	2011	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Ba'al commissions General Mustul and alchemist Grushon to study and document a variety of mythical creatures from their world, including the fearsome Shataiki bats and their interesting counterparts, the Roush. Ba'al compiles their accounts into his journal, known as a blood book. He also includes stolen journal entries from his enemy Thomas Hunter and his master, the Shataiki queen Marsuuv. It contains sketches of various creatures and locations featured in Other Earth. A certain Blood Book, though not Ba'al's, as there were more than one, also plays a significant role in the plot of Immanuel's Veins, as the main character Toma Nicolescu uses the information contained within to defeat the villainous Vlad van Valerick. It appears that the concept of Ba'al's Blood Book was adapted after the release of Immanuel's Veins, as it contains both new and different content than what was mentioned in Immanuel's Veins, and is missing certain other details. A man whom Toma called Saint Thomas the Beast Hunter is implied to be the one who penned Toma's Blood Book. Ba'al's Blood Book was also mentioned briefly in Dekker's novel Green, as it was compiled only about a year before Green took place.
32122855	/m/0gwyzs8	Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing	Michael Ruhlman	2005	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/01kqty": "Cookbook"}	 The book covers the various methods of charcuterie, including the "brining, dry-curing, pickling, hot- and cold-smoking, sausage-making, confit, and the construction of pâtés" that also involves more than 140 recipes for various dishes that have been made with the described methods.
32124339	/m/0gx1td6	The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating		2004	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book features a number of recipes that, in total, utilize every part of the pig. In addition, it features a number of "techniques for brining, salting, pickling and preserving in fat", including explanations on how to "clear stock with egg whites and shells, how to bone out a trotter and how to bake bread using a tiny quantity of yeast for tastier results." The book also includes a few black and white photos that serve as decoration and example for the dishes and pieces of meat involved and discussed. A famous quote from the book, and personal slogan of Henderson that is often cited by newspapers and used by master chefs reads, "If you're going to kill the animal it seems only polite to use the whole thing."
32128936	/m/0gwznlm	Night Work	Thomas Glavinic	2006	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The novel, set in modern day Vienna, is a post-apocalyptic exploration around themes of solitude and existential philosophy. The plot concerns a central character, Jonas, who wakes up one day to discover that everyone else has vanished from the city, perhaps the world, without trace; he appears to be the only person left. As he attempts to discover what could possibly explain such a situation, the days pass and he begins to realise that he is performing strange activities when asleep. A struggle ensues as Jonas tries to control his unconscious actions while searching for other human life.
32131541	/m/0gwzkd_	River of Smoke	Amitav Ghosh	2011-06-18	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The promotional text refers to the storyline which can be summarized as follows: After the incidents on Ibis, which was caught in a storm and eventually ended up in Mauritius, but with a few passengers less, the story in this novel begins from where it left off. From the details of the changing lives and traditions of Indian migrants in Mauritius, the novel traces the fate of other characters from Ibis and describes the opium trade in China. The novel has a rich tapestry of characters from various cultural and geographical backgrounds whose common interest is trade with China. The plot is set in Fanqui town,a small strip of land used by foreigners to trade with local Chinese traders, a year before the first opium war.
32146397	/m/0gwyggw	Luha ng Babae		1913	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Luisa agreed to elope with Victor despite the objections of her parents. Afterwards, Victor’s real character was revealed to Luisa. Victor was an irresponsible man and husband. Victor was imprisoned for committing adultery. Victor suspected and accused Luisa of being a betrayer, thinking that she was having an extramarital affair with another man. Luisa denied the accusation. Luisa gave birth to Victor’s child. Victor died during a boat ride. Luisa died while in disconsolation and pain. While dying, Luisa left her child with her parents. Luisa asked forgiveness from her mother and father for her mistake.
32156731	/m/0gwzgc0	Feed	Seanan McGuire		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Feed is set several decades after the zombie apocalypse, referred to as the Rising. Two man-made viruses (a cure for cancer and a cure for the common cold) combined to form Kellis-Amberlee, a virus that quickly infects all mammalian life. Kellis-Amberlee is normally beneficial, but death causes the virus to 'go live' or 'amplify', converting any host mammal over into a zombie. Most humans reside in tightly controlled safe zones, with rigorous blood testing and decontamination protocols used to prevent the spread of live virus. After the inaction of traditional media during the Rising, blogs and other new media have taken over as the primary source of information and entertainment; bloggers are recognised as professional journalists, with individuals specialising and identifying as 'Newsies' (fact-based reporting), 'Irwins' (named after Steve Irwin, who seek to educate and entertain by going out and "poking things with sticks"), or 'Fictionals' (fictional content), among others. Feed occurs in 2040, and is written from the perspective of Georgia Mason, a Newsie blogger and head of the After the End Times website. Georgia, her brother Shaun (an Irwin), and their friend Georgette "Buffy" Meissonier (a Fictional and technology guru), are selected to cover the presidential campaign of Senator Peter Ryman, a moderate Republican. The campaign is mostly uneventful until Eakly, Oklahoma, where zombies attack the campaign convoy, killing several before security (assisted by Georgia and Shaun) can contain them; they later find that it was an orchestrated attack. The next stage of the campaign is the Republican National Convention, where Ryman faces off against religious, right-wing Governor David Tate and sex-over-substance Congresswoman Kristen Wagman. During the convention, Newsie and former print journalist Rick Cousins defects from Wagman's campaign to join After the End Times. Ryman is selected as the Republican candidate for the presidency, but as this is announced, Georgia learns that a zombie outbreak recurred at the senator's horse ranch, and his eldest daughter is dead. On investigation, Georgia and company find that the outbreak started with a horse injected with live virus. Ryman and the campaign relocates to Texas, where he joins his vice-presidential candidate: Tate. The bloggers must drive their vehicles and equipment overland. During the trip, the convoy is attacked by a sniper. Georgia, Shaun, and Rick survive, but the van carrying Buffy and Chuck (the campaign's tech chief) crashes; Chuck dies, zombiefies, and bites Buffy. Buffy reveals that she was leaking information to a group undermining Ryman's campaign; the attack occurred because she had stopped. After administering a coup de grâce, Georgia calls for rescue, but the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) team drugs them and takes them for testing. After being released, the team's work on the campaign is hampered as they dig at the underlying conspiracy, souring the bloggers' relationship with Ryman and Tate. They find evidence linking Tate to the attacks, along with hints of a broader conspiracy involving the CDC and other parties, but when Georgia confronts Ryman during an event in Sacramento, California, he sends them away. As they leave, the bloggers are attacked, and Georgia is shot with a tranquiliser dart containing live virus. Rick flees with a copy of the group's evidence (escaping just before a zombie outbreak is instigated), and Shaun helps Georgia expose the conspiracy through one last blog post before she begins amplifying, forcing Shaun to execute her. The novel's narration then changes to Shaun's perspective. He rallies Ryman's security detail to help contain the outbreak, then breaks into the convention centre to confront Ryman and Tate. Tate takes Ryman's wife hostage with a syringe of the zombie virus, claiming his actions were part of a plot using fear of the zombies to reshape America into a more faithful society. The governor then injects himself with the virus, and Shaun shoots him to prevent zombiefication.
32156846	/m/0gw_2qf	Ang Tala sa Panghulo		1913	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 In the story, Lucia – although married – falls in love with Luciano. Tintoy, because of jealousy, shot Luciano during a hunt. Berta, while gathering dampalit (a local plant used as an ingredient in pickling), heard the shots. Berta saves and nurses Luciano. Luciano becomes Lucia’s lover. Berta reunites with Mang Pedro. There was a happy ending for Berta and Luciano, but not for Lucia and Tintoy.
32159949	/m/0gy00f9	The Fly-fisher's Entomology		1836		 The Fly-fisher's Entomology is the archetype fly-fishing how-to book. Most fly-fishing historians credit Ronalds with setting a literature standard in 1836 that is still followed today. Describing methods, techniques and, most importantly, artificial flies, in a meaningful way for the angler and illustrating them in colour is a method of presentation that can be seen in most fly-fishing literature today. As the name implies, this book is mostly about the aquatic insects—mayflies, caddisflies and stoneflies—that trout and grayling feed on and their counterpart artificial imitations. Less than half the book (chapters I–III) is devoted to observations of trout, their behaviour, and the methods and techniques used to catch them. Most of this information, although enhanced by Ronalds' experiences and observations, was merely an enhancement of Charles Bowlker's Art of Angling (first published in 1774 but still in print in 1836). Ronalds did introduce some new ideas, however, in Chapter I. His experiments and observations led him to describe and illustrate the trout's Window of vision, a concept an understanding of which is still essential today. Vincent Marinaro, in his classic work In the Ring of the Rise (1976), credits Ronalds with discovering and documenting this window and includes a reproduction of plate II–Optical diagrams in his book. In the sub-chapter "Haunts", through discussion and illustration (plate I), Ronalds introduces the idea known today as reading the water to help the angler identify the most likely locations in the stream to find trout. The real meat of Ronalds' book was Chapter IV: Of a Selection of Insects, and Their Imitations, Used in Fly Fishing. Here, for the first time, the author discussed specific artificial fly imitations by name, associated with the corresponding natural insect. Organized by their month of appearance, Ronalds was the first author to begin the standardization of angler names for artificial flies. Prior to The Fly-fisher's Entomology, anglers had been given suggestions for artificial flies to be used on a particular river or at a particular time of the year, but those suggestions were never matched to specific natural insects the angler might encounter on the water. The following is a typical discussion:
32160677	/m/0gwzwcg	Carl Haffner's Love of the Draw	Thomas Glavinic	1998	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The novel is set mainly in Vienna in 1910. It presents a fictionalised account of a famous 1910 World Chess Championship match between Austrian grandmaster Carl Schlechter and the reigning German champion Emanuel Lasker. The eponymous Carl Haffner, closely based on Schlechter, is a withdrawn character with an eccentric preference for drawing games instead of winning. The narrative switches between the ten games of the 1910 World Championship and Haffner's psychological development in childhood and adolescence, showing how he used chess to overcome poverty.
32166470	/m/0gwyl10	Ipaghiganti Mo Ako...!		1914		 The novel begins months before the onset of the Filipino-American War. Because of the war, Pedring and Geli got separated from each other. Geli and her mother, together with other Filipinos in the affected provinces in Luzon, had to flee their homes and became displaced. Pedring and Geli meets again in Antipolo after five years. They were reunited under tragic circumstances. Geli was dying. Geli was also pregnant after becoming a victim of rape during the war. Geli’s rapist was a Katipunan member. Geli wants Pedring to become her avenger.
32167098	/m/0gx0znk	Half a Life	Darin Strauss	2010-09-15	{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Strauss, a novelist, recounts how his life was profoundly altered when a car he was driving struck and killed a fellow high school student.
32171009	/m/0gwz07m	Little Brown Bushrat		2002-06-21	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The protagonist is a little brown bushrat. All the animals in the bush have an exciting talent - the kangaroo can jump the highest, the emu can run the fastest and the duck-billed platypus is the best swimmer. But the little brown bushrat thinks he can't do anything . . . until he is given a chance to save the day.
32173453	/m/0gwz5t7	Zulu Hart	Saul David		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 George Hart is the bastard son of a pillar of the British military establishment and a half Irish, half Zulu actress. He is bullied at school for his dark looks, an experience which teaches him how to fight. When he is eighteen he learns that his mysterious father has promised him a vast inheritance if he can accede to a suitable rank in the British Army. He proceeds to the military academy, and is once more the source of animosity over the colour of his skin. Set up by a group of officers he is forced to leave the army, whereby he travels to South Africa. Conflict is brewing between the British authorities and the Zulus, and he is quickly enlisted to fight for the army under the command of Lord Chelmsford. Hart witnesses a massacre, and returns to London to be debriefed by the Duke of Cambridge himself.
32175766	/m/0gy06_y	Canal de la Reina		1985	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nyora Tentay (the term senyora is the Filipino word for the Spanish term señora, meaning "Mrs."; nyora is the abbreviated form of senyora) is the matriarch of the wealthy Marcial family, and is labelled the "queen of Canal de la Reina". She is a money lender who charges high interest rates. She has a son, Victor, who is married to Gracia; Victor and Gracia have a son, Gerry. Salvador and Caridad De los Angeles are husband and wife; their children are Leni and Junior. Gerry Marcial and Leni de los Angeles are lovers. Nyora Tentay buys a piece of land from the De los Angeles' former caretaker, Precioso or Osyong Santos. The land belongs to the De los Angeles family; Nyora uses bribery to assert her claim. A flood occurs at Canal de la Reina, which damages buildings and structures. Caridad finds documents belonging to Nyora Tentay, and returns them instead of using them against her. This gesture of goodwill causes Nyora to have a change of heart. Gerry Marcial and Leni de los Angeles marry.
32176086	/m/0gx_q_x	Princess of Glass		2010	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Three years after being freed from the curse of the King Under Stone, who had forced her and her eleven sisters to dance, Princess Poppy of Westfalin finds herself participating in an exchange program where princes and princesses spend time in other countries in Ionia, in the hopes of bringing the nations closer. Poppy finds herself going to her late mother's home country of Breton, where she stays with relatives. Since the curse, Poppy has sworn off dancing forever, and attends balls only to play cards. In Breton, Poppy soon befriends Prince Christian of the Danelaw. In the midst of their budding relationship, Christian and a hapless maid named Ellen quickly become the targets of the Corley, a dangerous and vindictive creature who will stop at nothing to make sure her revenge is completed.
32186073	/m/0gxyybb	Anino ng Kahapon		1907	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The setting of the novel was during the final years of Spanish colonialism. The main characters of the novel are Modesto Magsikap and Elisea Liwayway. Magsikap is a vigilante who kills two suitors of Liwayway, his girlfriend. Magsikap’s first crime was the killing of Sergeant Cruz, the first suitor of Liwayway. Magsikap was imprisoned for the homicide. A group of bandits invaded the town where Magsikap was imprisoned, including the jail where Magsikap was confined. Magsikap returned to his own hometown after learning about the death of his father. There Magsikap murders Lt. Rosca, the second suitor of Liwayway. Magsikap’s two brothers were put in jail. To escape his pursuers and the Spanish authorities, Magsikap flees to the United States. From the United States, Magsikap continued communicating with Liwayway through letters. After five years, Magsikap returns to the Philippines. After his trip, Modesto became convinced of the "benevolent presence" of the United States in the Philippines.
32195389	/m/0gy1r58	Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself	David Lipsky			 Lipsky, who received a National Magazine Award for writing about Wallace in 2009, here provides the transcript of, and commentary about, his time accompanying Wallace across the country just as Wallace was completing an extensive "book tour" promoting his novel Infinite Jest. The format captures almost every moment the two spent together – on planes and cars, across the country — during the specific time period when Wallace was becoming famous; the writers discuss literature, popular music and film, depression, the appeals and pitfalls of fame, dog ownership, and many other topics.
32196262	/m/0gx_fxr	Ang mga Anak Dalita		1911	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The characters of the novel include Ata, Teta, Pedro, and a factory owner. Ata is a poor woman. Teta is Ata’s daughter. Pedro is Ata’s lover. The factory owner in the novel is the “avaricious” and “lustful” boss of Ata. The factory owner tried to rape Ata, but she was able to escape. During a conflict with the laborers, Ata’s daughter Teta saves the factory owner from being killed by the factory workers. In the end, Teta turns out to be the daughter of the factory owner. The theme of the novel is similar to Mariano’s other novel Ang Tala sa Panghulo ("The Bright Star at Panghulo").
32197014	/m/0gx_lrd	Maganda pa ang Daigdig		1982	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is about Lino Rivera, a gardener, who lost faith in an "oppressive social system" in the Philippines. Lino was accused of committing robbery and homicide. Lino escapes from prison to live a life of a fugitive. He defended an “enlightened landlord” against the Hukbalahap of Central Luzon and against former guerillas who were active during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. Convinced by Colonel Roda, Padre Amando, among other "kindhearted people", Lino comes down from the mountain, turning his back from living the life of a fugitive.
32197297	/m/0gy0zm4	Daluyong		1986	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Daluyong begins where Francisco’s novel Maganda pa ang Daigdig ("The World Be Beautiful Still") ends. Lino Rivero, a former ranch worker, is given an opportunity to own a portion of land by the priest Padre Echevarria. Lino becomes an avatar who, through his efforts and good will, is able to free himself from the oppressive "tenant farmer" system. Apart from the "waves of changes" that might happen due to agrarian reform and because of the hope of the Filipino lower class for a good future, Daluyong tackled the "waves of forces" that prevents such changes and hopes from being realized.
32206537	/m/0gy026b	Waterloo Bridge	Robert E. Sherwood			 Unable to find work in London at the height of World War I, American chorus girl Myra Deauville resorts to prostitution to support herself. She meets her clients on Waterloo Bridge, the primary entry point into the city for soldiers on leave. During an air raid, she meets fellow American Roy Cronin, a member of the Canadian Army, and he joins Myra in her apartment. Describing herself simply as an unemployed chorus girl, Myra gains Roy's sympathy, and he offers to pay her overdue rent. After he departs, Myra returns to the streets. The following morning, Roy returns to visit her, and landlady Mrs. Hobley lets him into her apartment. There he meets Myra's friend and neighbor Kitty, who tells him Myra needs someone to love and protect her. Myra later berates Kitty for interfering and rejects her advice to marry Roy to ensure a better future for herself. Roy brings Myra to visit his mother Mary and sister Janet in their rural home, where he proposes to Myra, who later that night tells Mary the truth about herself. Mary is sympathetic but implores Myra not to marry Roy. The following morning, Myra slips aways and returns to London by train. Eventually Roy visits her and asks her to explain her abrupt departure. Because he is on the verge of returning to the battlefields in France, he begs Myra to marry him immediately. She agrees, but escapes from her apartment through a window while he waits for her in the hallway. Seeking the rent, Mrs. Hobley enters and, believing Myra has run off to avoid her financial obligation, reveals her true profession to Roy. Although shocked, Roy searches for Myra and eventually finds her on Waterloo Bridge, where he tells her he still loves and wants to marry her. The military police insist Roy join a truck of departing soldiers or be considered a deserter, and once he secures Myra's promises to marry him upon his return, he departs. The air raid sirens sound, and as Myra seeks shelter, she is killed by a bomb.
32217811	/m/0gx_96s	Angel Angel			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Irises, a typical suburban family in Connecticut, are thrown into disarray upon the discovery of the patriarch's extra-marital affair. With his absence in the marital home, his wife, Augusta, struggles to understand or come to terms with the betrayal and takes to her bed for weeks. Her two sons, Matthew and Henry, face their own demons and are little help to their mother. However the introduction of Henry's sassy live-in girlfriend forces the family out of their emotional downward spiral.
32220639	/m/0gx_gyn	The Sweetest Dream	Doris Lessing		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1960s' Hampstead, London, the large home of Julia Lennox is a gathering place for an assortment of young and old characters. Frances Lennox finds herself living with her mother-in-law, Julia after her husband Johnny, a communist leader has abandoned her and his two sons, Alex and Colin to continue an affair with a glamorous "comrade". The arrangement is difficult owing to the natures of both women, Frances is independent-minded and Julia betrays her German background and is more rigid. However both women are united in their disapproval of Johnny. Rather than working, Johnny's priorities are travelling and staying at hotels in communist countries and all the while continuing with his affairs. Frances later gives up her theater ambitions for a more lucrative position on a liberal newspaper. The Lennox household becomes filled with the classmates and dropout friends of her two sons now in secondary school. Frances acts as an earth-mother figure to the adolescents, offering a communal atmosphere so different to their strict family homes. Johnny maintains a presence in the household, occasionally appearing to the benefits of free meals and the captive audience that the estranged adolescents provide at the kitchen table. Communist member, Rose Trimble is also a regular addition until she turn gutter-press journalist and attacks Frances and Julia, branding them "imperialists". Other colourful characters that abound in the household include Johnny's anorexic daughter, two of Johnny's wives; political refugees as well as a newly-arrived young black boy Franklin, from Zimlia, Africa. Meanwhile Colin and Andrew make their transition into adulthood. Colin becomes a novelist and Andrew, a graduate of the London School of Economics, becomes an illustrious international finance figure, working with the corrupt African leaders and other Third World countries in order to help funnel money to their poverty-stricken nations. However Andrew is blind to the scale of the leaders' corruption and misuse of funding. Sylvia becomes a doctor, and finds herself at a mission in Zimlia where the locals live in dire poverty and are crippled by the spread of AIDS. The new black leader of Zimlia and his wife are immensely wealthy, and his ministers, as are his ministers such as the adult Franklin. These ministers continue to line their pockets as farms are expropriated from the nation's white farmers. Sylvia returns to England with two black boys when her hospital in Zimlia is shut down. The boys move into the Lennox home where Frances is now in her early seventies, and shares the home with Colin and his family. Eventually a now impoverished Johnny returns to the home, as communism is replaced by capitalism in the countries he once visited.
32221608	/m/0gy083y	The Stars in the Bright Sky	Alan Warner	2010	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The story starts at Gatwick Airport in London, where Manda, Chell, Kylah, Finn, Kay and Ava have met to go on a joint holiday. They have not yet agreed upon a destination, planning to do so at the airport before booking a low-cost last-minute deal. This plan is hindered when it becomes apparent that Manda has lost her passport, and much of the narrative takes place in the airport lounges and bars that the group are confined to for several days. The main themes explored through the characters' interactions are social class and friendship.
32229508	/m/0gy17qc	Labor Day	Joyce Maynard		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Henry, a man in his early 30s, recounts his thirteenth year. As Labor Day weekend approaches, 13-year-old Henry sees no reason why this weekend should be any different. He expects it to be as lonely as the rest of the summer, only watching television, playing with his pet hamster and fantasizing about his female classmates. Henry shares his life in New Hampshire with his wounded divorcee mother, Adele. Adele's agoraphobia means that the family survive on unedifying tinned foods and frozen meals. However, on the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, Henry persuades his mother to go on a shopping trip. It is there that they meet an unkempt man who is bleeding from his forehead and agree to his request for a ride in their car. This mysterious man, Frank, admits that he is a convicted murderer that has escaped prison. Despite his past, Frank makes the claim that the mother and son have "never been in better hands". Indeed, Frank teaches Henry how to throw a baseball, change a flat tire and to bake. Meanwhile Adele and Frank, long love-starved, become infatuated with each other, and Adele emerges from her depression.
32234931	/m/0gy1gc6	Van de koele meren des doods	Frederik Willem van Eeden	1900	{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The novel relates the story of Hedwig Marga de Fontayne, the scion of a wealthy family, whose sexual frustration manifests itself as a death drive. sexually frustrated, Hedwig marries but then runs off to England with a piano player. A child is born but dies quickly, and Hedwig goes to Paris, where she becomes a prostitute to support her morphine addiction. Destitute and descending into madness, she is admitted to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, to the psychiatric ward where a friendly nurse helps her beat her addiction. She returns to the Netherlands, and spends her last years with a family that formerly farmed on the family's lands.
32235660	/m/0gx__4n	Sementes no Gelo	Andre Vianco			 Several Brazilian couples have frozen embryos in a hospital. When these embryos become ghosts highly dangerous, Detective Tani, along with his ex-girlfriend, Lizete, see themselves threatened. This childrens are crazy by a mother, and will kill everyone who wants to stop them. pt:Sementes no Gelo
32238193	/m/0gy1psq	The Paperboy	Pete Dexter		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Hillary Van Wetter has been jailed for the murder of an unscrupulous local sheriff, Thurmond Call. Call had previously stomped Wetter's handcuffed cousin to death. Wetter is now on death row and awaiting execution. In prison Wetter receives correspondence from Charlotte Bless, a woman he has never met but who has fallen in love with him and is determined that he should be released and that they should marry. Bless provokes immense sexual tension in any situation, given her beauty and presence. Bless attempts to prove Wetter's innocence by enlisting the support of two investigative reporters from a Miami newspaper hungry for a salacious story: the ambitious Yardley Acheman and the naive, idealistic Ward James, who hails from the small town where Van Wetter is imprisoned and has mixed feelings about returning home. The evidence against Wetter is inconsistent and the writers are confident that if they can expose Wetter as a victim of redneck justice then their story will be a potential Pulitzer Prize winner. However, tricks of the journalist's trade are played, corners are cut, facts are fudged, small inconsistencies are ignored, and Yardley sleeps with Charlotte. With the newspapermen's support, Wetter is released from prison and the pair win the Pulitzer Prize. It soon becomes apparent that the writers misjudged Wetter. After marrying Charlotte, Wetter murders her. Consumed by guilt, Ward commits suicide.
32242339	/m/0gy12vw	As Cool As I Am	Fromm, Pete		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The protagonist and narrator is Lucy, a self-confessed tomboy that is considered one of the guys with her masculine haircut and attitude. She gets on well with her father but is frequently separated from him for months on end when he works in Canada. Her relationship with her mother is easy-going provided she keeps the house tidy. Her mother's lenience even allows her daughter to drive her car, even when she is too young to apply for a license. As Lucy turns 14, she becomes more in tune with her sexuality and her family dynamics. She develops a type of friends with benefits relationship with her best friend Kenny. She also ditches her toyboy image, embraces make-up and grows out her hair. She begins to realise that her parents marriage is not as solid as she had imagined. She realises that her father's extended stays abroad are not typical of other fathers. Furthermore she realises that her mother does not pine for her father as much as she does herself. In fact, her allegiance to her father is tested when she discovers her mother is enjoying a romance with a colleague. She pro-actively seeks sexual satisfaction after she is left with a void when Kenny has to move away. She also begins to realise that there is more to her father's extended stays in Canada than she had previously imagined.
32242809	/m/0gy0qg6	The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making	Catherynne M. Valente	2011-05	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An unseen narrator relates the story of September, a twelve-year-old girl from Omaha, Nebraska. September's father is a soldier at war in Europe and her mother works all day building airplane engines in a factory. One day a Green Wind visits her and she accepts his offer to take her to the great sea that borders Fairyland. September meets a gnome who gives her the ability to see Fairyland as it truly is before pushing her into that world. September's adventures continue in Fairyland, where she meets witches who give her the task of finding and returning their spoon, which was stolen by Fairyland's evil queen who calls herself the Marquess. She teams up with A-Through-L, a wyvern who believes his absent father to have been a library and thus considers himself a "Wyverary", a wyvern and library hybrid. When they find the Marquess, she hands over the witches' spoon in return for September's promise to retrieve a special sword from a casket in the Worsted Wood. September meets Saturday, a marid, and with A-Through-L they head for the Worsted Wood, where September finds the casket. The "sword" inside varies depending on the interests of the finder's mother, so September found not an actual sword, but a wrench because of her mother's work as a mechanic. As September escapes the Worsted Wood with the wrench, Saturday and A-Through-L are kidnapped and she sets about finding them. She must circumnavigate Fairyland in a ship of her own making to land at the Lonely Gaol, a jail at the bottom of the world. There, she learns the Marquess's full story and that she wants September to use the wrench to permanently separate Fairyland and the human world. September refuses and frees her friends from the Gaol. She uses Saturday's marid powers to wish everything well again, just before her time in Fairyland runs out—until the next spring, when she is bound by law to return.
32249586	/m/0gy1h55	Silence	Becca Fitzpatrick		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 When silence is all that's left, can the truth finally be heard? Nora can't remember the past five months of her life. After the initial shock of waking up in a cemetery and being told that she has been missing for twelve weeks-with no one knowing where she was or who she was with-she tries to get her life back on track. Go to school, hang out with her best friend Vee, and dodge her moms creepy new boyfriend. But there is a voice in the back of her head, an idea that she can almost reach out and touch. Visions of angel wings and unearthly creatures that have nothing to do with the life she knows. And the unshakeable feeling that a part of her is missing. Then Nora crosses paths with a sexy stranger, whom she feels a mesmerising connection to. He seems to hold all the answers...and her heart. Every minute she spends with him grows more and more intense until she realises she could be falling in love. Again. The noise between Patch and Nora is gone. They’ve overcome the secrets riddled in Patch’s dark past bridged two irreconcilable worlds faced heart wrenching tests of betrayal, loyalty and trust and all for a love that will transcend the boundary between heaven and earth. Armed with nothing but their absolute faith in one another, Patch and Nora enter a desperate fight to stop a villain who holds the power to shatter everything they’ve worked for and their love forever.
32262844	/m/0gy1w6j	The Fault in Our Stars	John Green	2012-01-10	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Narrator Hazel Grace Lancaster, a sixteen-year-old girl with terminal cancer, was pulled out of school at thirteen and rarely socializes with people her age. After being diagnosed with clinical depression, she joins a support group for children with cancer where she meets Augustus Waters, a seventeen-year-old boy in remission from osteosarcoma. Hazel introduces Augustus to her favorite novel, the fictional Peter Van Houten's An Imperial Affliction, about another girl with cancer who nevertheless lives a good life—until the novel ends mid-sentence. Hazel's attempts to contact Van Houten have always been futile, but Augustus—who also takes interest in the novel—contacts Van Houten via email. The author promises to answer any questions about the book if the two come to Amsterdam. Augustus uses a "Wish" he received because of his previous poor health to take Hazel and her mother to Amsterdam. Van Houten presents himself as a rude alcoholic. Hazel finds his comments and demeanor troubling, and leaves Van Houten's home, followed by his assistant, who quits out of anger. The group then visits Anne Frank's house, where Augustus and Hazel share a passionate kiss. They decide to go back to Augustus's hotel room, where they sleep together. Soon after this, Augustus reveals that he recently had a PET scan that found new tumors. In the remaining weeks of his life back in Indianapolis, Hazel sees Augustus slowly deteriorating, and begins to break down mentally- lashing out at her parents and avoiding friends. Augustus asks to have a funeral that he can watch, so approximately eight days before his death, Hazel and Isaac, a cancer patient in remission who had both of his eyes removed, share their eulogies with Augustus. When Augustus finally dies, Hazel has expected it for some time, but she is still crushed. At his funeral she does not give the eulogy she gave him previously, deciding that "funerals are for the living". To her bewilderment, she finds that Peter Van Houten has attended Augustus's funeral and, as he tries to reconcile with her, Hazel realizes that he wrote An Imperial Affliction because of his own experiences. She is revealed to be correct, and learns that he lost his daughter to cancer when she was eight years old. Hazel talks to Isaac, and he mentions that Augustus said he was writing something for Hazel, but Isaac did not know what it was. Hazel believes that it was the alternate ending Augustus had promised to write for An Imperial Affliction. She searches his room, her room, and any other place she believes it could be, before finally coming to the conclusion that the piece he wrote was not for her, but perhaps for Peter. She emails his assistant who promises to look for it, and subsequently Hazel learns through an email that the missing pages of Augustus's notebook were actually a eulogy he had written for her, and intended Peter to proofread. At the very end of the novel, Augustus's letter to Van Houten reads, "You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers." To this, Hazel replies, "I do, Augustus, I do."
32276082	/m/0gx_h7m	And the Land Lay Still	James Robertson	2010	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The novel’s narrative is shaped around the portfolio of the late photographer Angus Pendreich. His son Michael is involved in the establishment of a new exhibition of his renowned father’s work. The book focuses on the characters presented in these photographs, which span post-war Scotland across geographies and social classes from the homeless to senior politicians. Their disparate stories present a collage that highlights the highs and lows of modern Scottish society.
32290189	/m/0gxz_wk	Voyeurs & Savages		1998		 Meynard, during his research on Philippine-American relations, was able to produce historical documents – an assemblage of articles, letters, pamphlets, brochures, e-mails among others. Through these documents, Meynard Aguinaldo was able to "peep" through the lives of other people, whether Filipino or American. Armando Aguinaldo, in turn – in a scene from the novel – secretly watched his nephew Meynard Aguinaldo and the daughter of Cornelius James when the dating couple were copulating inside one of the suites of his beach resort. The ending of the novel presents a scene where Cornelius James and Rowena – the grandfather and the granddaughter – was holding a "storytelling session". The exchange of stories is the bridge that fills the gap between the two people's past and present.
32299854	/m/0gy1c8p	An Embarrassment of Riches		2000	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In 1994, to his homeland the Victorianas because of his father's death. Ong intends to uncover the identities of his father's murderers. In addition to this circumstance, Tantivo was also summoned to return to Victorianas by his old friend Jennifer "JaySy" Suarez. Suarez – a middle aged woman belonging to the 20 to 30 year-old generation - wants Tantivo to manage her presidential campaign, timed after the demise of General Azurin, the dictatorial leader of Victorianas. Suarez is a politician with Maoist inclinations. Suarez won but her political rule was brief. On one hand, Brother Mike Verano, a charismatic preacher and healer, leads the Victorianas Moral Restoration Army using violence for the cause of morality. Then, Alfonso Ong – a wealthy, shrewd and shady character – builds his alternative city of the future on an island off the coast of Victorianas. The novel ends with Tantivo leaving Victorianas – going back in exile – but with a renewed sense and sagacity after the altercations and travails he experienced in the island nation. During Tantivo's stay in the Victoriana's, he found out that Jennifer Suarez is his half sister, and that his real father is Alfonso Ong. Tantivo left the Victorianas with Jennifer Suarez, leaving their beloved nation in political, socio-economic, and religious turmoil.
32314278	/m/0gywhjk	Death by China		2011-05-15		 Navarro and Autry describe the cyberattacks on the United States emanating from China as the dawn of a 'new cold cyberwar'.
32341887	/m/0gyt6tv	Double Dexter	Jeff Lindsay		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The book begins with Dexter being observed in the act of dismembering a pedophile by an unknown witness who evades Dexter's attempt to apprehend them. Meanwhile, an undercover cop is found in the front seat of his car, every bone in his body broken. Dexter's sister, Deb, begs Dexter to help her solve the case. Dexter, at this point, is unable to help. There is a taco wrapper found near the body. Another police officer is found in front of a fountain near the water. He is also significantly pulverized. Rita, in the interim, has started drinking wine and is suspicious of Dexter heading out every night. He says he is running, when in actuality, he is searching for the person who witnessed his playtime. Dexter has also been contacted through a blog by the person who is watching him. The Shadow, as Dexter calls him, tells Dexter that he knows who he is, and he will be killed in a horrible fashion soon enough. Debra catches the cop-killer and arrests him. Later, Camilla Figg, who works with Dexter in Miami Metro and has a crush on Dexter, is murdered in a fashion similar to the police officers. This is the Shadow, trying to set up Dexter, which he admits to in his blog to Dexter. Dexter is the prime suspect, and Rita accuses him of sleeping with her. Dexter asks his brother Brian to intervene, and Brian, unbeknownst to him, kills the wrong man. Eventually, the Shadow follows Dexter to Key West, where he proceeds to kill another police officer and leave him in Dexter's suite. The Shadow takes Astor and Cody to an island to set a trap for Dexter. But Dexter gets to the island first and confronts the Shadow. The Shadow runs with Astor in his arms onto a boat and sets off with Dexter managing to barely get on the boat as well. A fight ensues and Astor and Dexter eventually subdue the Shadow, tossing him overboard where he is eaten by a shark. Deb meets Dexter back in Key West, and everything is set to order. fr:Double Dexter it:Doppio Dexter pt:Double Dexter
32347799	/m/0gysqwn	Pools of Darkness	Jim Ward		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The city of Phlan has vanished, and its citizens defend themselves from the minions of Bane. Adventurers Ren, Shal, and Tarl band together with the sorceress Evaine to stop them.
32348569	/m/0gyvy1x	Solstice Wood	Patricia A. McKillip	2006-02-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As a bookseller in California, Sylva Lynn has a comfortable life away from her family. But after receiving word that her grandfather has died, she reluctantly returns to New York for the funeral. When the old magic protecting their house from the fay fails, Sylva's cousin is kidnapped and replaced with a changeling. Like her relative the courageous Rois Melior, the hero of Winter Rose, it is only Sylva, who is part fairy herself, who is able to cross the border into the other realm to rescue him and return peace to their ancestral home
32351140	/m/0gyrm88	Harimau! Harimau!	Mochtar Lubis	1975	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Seven dammar collectors from Air Jernih village, Pak Haji, Sutan, Sanip, Talib, Buyung, and Pak Balam, venture into the forests of Sumatra, led by the dukun Wak Katok. However, upon departure Buyung realizes that he has forgotten to check his kancil trap and returns to Wak Katok's. Upon his arrival, he removes the kancil from the trap and goes to a nearby stream to have a drink. At the stream, he meets Wak Hitam's young wife Siti Rubiyah, who is crying. After comforting her and giving her the kancil, they have sex two times. It is Buyung's first time. Buyung later arrives at the camp in the evening, just before maghrib prayers. The following day, the dammar collectors go hunting and shoot a deer. After shooting it, they hear the roar of a tiger. Hurriedly they carve up the dear, then bring it to their next camp. That evening, while defecating, Pak Balam is attacked by a tiger. Although Wak Katok manages to frighten the tiger by firing his rifle, Pak Balam is seriously injured. He tells the others of prophetic dreams he had, and concludes that God is punishing them for their sins. Pak Balam then admits his sins, as well as some of Wak Katok's. Due to his sins being brought to light, Wak Katok begins worrying that the others have lost faith in him. To prevent that, Wak Katok divines that the tiger attacking them is not supernatural or sent by God, much to the other's relief. The next morning, they abandon some of their dammar and continue on their way back to Air Jernih, carrying Pak Balam. Around midday, Talib is attacked while urinating and severely wounded. Although they are able to frighten the tiger away, the dammar collectors are unable to stop Talib from succumbing to his wounds; he dies soon after admitting that he has sinned. Frightened by Talib's fate, Sanip confesses both his sins and Talib's. They establish camp and spend the night uneasily, worried that the tiger will attack. Due to Pak Balam's worsening condition, the next day the dammar collectors are unable to continue their journey. Instead, after burying Talib, Wak Katok, Buyung, and Sanip go to hunt the tiger. After following the tiger's tracks for most of the day, they realize that it has doubled back and is going to their camp. Meanwhile, at camp, Sutan snaps due to Pak Balam's continuous admonition to repent his sins and attempts to strangle him. After being stopped by Pak Haji, Sutan runs away into the forest, where he is attacked by the tiger and killed. Pak Balam also dies from his wounds and is promptly buried. The following morning the remaining dammar collectors leave to hunt the tiger, taking a path through a thicket. They walk for hours, and eventually Pak Haji realizes that they are lost. After Buyung saves his life from a tree viper, Pak Haji confides in him and they decide to watch Wak Katok more closely. Not long after, they confront Wak Katok, saying that he is only making them more lost. Wak Katok snaps, and threatens to shoot Buyung unless he confesses his sins. Buyung is unwilling, and Wak Katok prepares to shoot him. However, they are interrupted by the approach of the tiger. Wak Katok tries to shoot him, but his rifle misfires because the gunpowder had become wet. Using fire, Buyung and the others manage to frighten the tiger away. Sanip tells the others that he saw Wak Katok rape with Siti Rubiyah; Wak Katok counters that he paid her, and she would have sex with anyone willing to give her something. Wak Katok becomes more unstable and tells the others to go into the darkness, threatening to shoot them. Unwilling to face the tiger, Buyung, Pak Haji, and Sanip attempt to ambush Wak Katok. Although they succeed in stopping him and tying him up, Wak Katok shoots Pak Haji in the process. Before he dies, Pak Haji tells Buyung "before you kill the wild tiger, you must kill the tiger within yourself." The following morning Buyung and Sanip bury Pak Haji, then take the bound Wak Katok hunting for the tiger. Although Wak Katok threatens them, they refuse to release him and discard the talismans he gave them. Around midday they find the remains of Sutan, and bury them.
32355964	/m/0gyw11x	Jalan Tak Ada Ujung	Mochtar Lubis	1952	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Guru Isa, a school teacher, lives in constant fear. The Indonesian war for independence is raging, and before that the Japanese occupiers had created terror amongst the populace; his fear is so great that for years he has become unable to have an erection. However, due to his obligations as a school teacher he attends a youth's meeting, where they discuss the revolution. Unable to say no, he is asked to become a courier and deliver letters and weapons within Jakarta. Not long after, Guru Isa meets a young guerrilla named Hazil. Due to their mutual interest in music, the two become friends and Guru Isa begins to feel more relaxed. As they work together for the revolution, Guru Isa becomes uneasier. Not long after delivering weapons outside of Jakarta, Guru Isa falls ill with malaria. Hazil assists Guru Isa's wife, Fatimah, with his care. Eventually, Guru Isa is able to leave the house and teach again. However, during this period Fatimah, disappointed by Guru Isa's impotence, begins having an affair with Hazil. Guru Isa learns of this after finding Hazil's smoking pipe under a pillow in the bedroom and becomes furious, but is unable to confront Fatimah or Hazil. Instead, he distances himself further from everyone and becomes even less self-confident. A while later, Guru Isa and Hazil are tasked with throwing a grenade at a crowd of soldiers dispersing from a movie theatre. Although they succeed in their mission, not long afterwards Hazil is captured. Although Guru Isa initially intends to leave Jakarta, he decides to face the consequences for what he has done. After being captured by the Dutch forces and staying silent through torture, Guru Isa meets with Hazil in the prison and learns that he had confessed "after just a slap to the head". Overcoming his fear and regaining his self-confidence, Guru Isa is able to have an erection again.
32356570	/m/0gyrkbs	Senja di Jakarta	Mochtar Lubis		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Raden Kaslan, a member of the Indonesia Party, is told by the party leader Husin Limbara to raise funds for the next election. To do so, Kaslan creates fake companies to handle licensing the import of goods with his second wife Fatma, son Suryono and himself as directors. Through this fraud, they raise much money for themselves and the party. At his father's urging, Suryono quits his job at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and soon becomes rich. He also becomes very promiscuous, having sex with high-class prostitutes, married women, and his own stepmother. Meanwhile, honest government workers like Idrus are unable to compete. Idrus receives little compensation, and his materialistic wife Dahlia is having an affair with Suryono. The wong cilik, including prostitute Neneng, coachman Pak Ijo, and garbagemen Saimun and Itam live in hunger, ignored by the upper class. Despite the inequality, academics and cultural observers do nothing but discuss the social woes; they never take action. Eventually, opposition newspapers uncover the corruption and fake companies used by the Indonesia Party. This causes the president to disband the cabinet and some members of the Indonesia Party to join the opposition. Raden Kaslan is arrested, while Suryono and Fatma get into a car accident while trying to escape; Suryono dies of his wounds. Despite the fall of the Indonesia Party, the poor still suffer.
32362541	/m/0gys9jk	Homo sapiens	Stanisław Przybyszewski	1895		 The protagonist is a writer, Erik Falk, an émigré from Congress Poland, residing in bohemian Berlin of the early 1890s. The plot of the first novel, Uber Bord, revolves around his attempt to steal a fiancée of a friend. In the second novel, Unterwegs, Falk attempts to seduce a pious sixteen-year-old. In the last novel, Im Maelstrom, Falk has to balance his official family and a mistress, both with his children. He also becomes increasingly involved with radical socialist and anarchist circles.
32402415	/m/043zbmv	The Tower at Stony Wood	Patricia A. McKillip	2000	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 At the wedding of King Regis Aurum of Yves to Lady Gwynne, knight Cyan Dag of Gloinmere learns a terrible secret: his king is marrying an imposter, and the real Lady Gwynne is imprisoned within a tower in the magical land of Skye. As Cyan Dag begins his quest to free her, Thayne Ysse, the son of the defeated king of Ysse, sets of on his own search. To rebuild Ysse's army, Thayne searches for a tower of gold guarded by a dragon. In a third tower near the village of Stony Wood oblivious to her family's concern, Melanthos watches and embroiders a woman ensconced in her own tower. Cyan, Thayne, and Melanthos lives entangle and weave together, and it is only through helping each other that they are able to free themselves.
32403653	/m/0gytb9p	Desperate Characters	Paula Fox	1970	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Sophie and Otto Bentwood are a middle-aged, middle class, childless Brooklyn Heights couple trapped in a loveless marriage. He is an attorney, she a translator of books. Their existence is affected not only by their disintegrating relationship but by the threats of urban crime and vandalism that surround them everywhere they turn, leaving them feeling paranoid, scared, and desperately helpless. The film details their fragile emotional and psychological states as they interact with each other and their friends.
32404879	/m/0gyt654	Get Rich Click	Marc Ostrofsky	2011-04		 Get Rich Click! is a comprehensive source of information from one of the world's most successful Internet entrepreneurs. It differs from other "make money online" books by not offering a system or one specific path to riches. The author draws on his business background to explain the internet as a new medium for business. His research looked at the internet as a whole and attempts to distill the infinite internet business models into different internet industries. The book follows this research logically by devoting chapters to different internet industries (e-commerce, search, advertising, affiliate marketing, domain names, social media, and others). In addition to research, the book is interspersed with case studies from successful internet entrepreneurs in many of the aforementioned internet industries. In an effort to bridge the virtual and physical world, the majority of these case studies contain QR codes which take a reader to a video interview with the people featured in the case studies. Furthermore, each chapter contains Marc’s new ideas and thoughts on how to profit in any particular internet industry. Several themes are consistently presented through the book: "Learn More, Earn More"™ is seen throughout the book as a reference to the critical task of continuous learning in the internet’s ever changing landscape. "Know your strengths, hire your weaknesses" also appears throughout the book. In typical context it is urging the reader to focus on his/her core competencies while leveraging outsourced talents to handle the rest.
32422159	/m/0gyw4rj	A Beautiful Friendship	David Weber		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 In the early 37th century, the Harrington family moves from the planet Meyerdahl to the newly founded Star Kingdom of Manticore. Their eleven-year-old daughter, Stephanie, is unhappy with this change as their new home, the planet Sphinx, seems to have little to offer. However, she changes her mind when the hunt for an unknown force that keeps stealing celery from the colonists' greenhouses leads her to an encounter with a new sentient species: a treecat, a six-limbed arboreal mammal going (unknown to Stephanie) by the name of Climbs Quickly. The two young beings instantly share a telepathic connection that future generations will come to call "bonding". This empathic linking is involuntary and nearly instantaneous, like love at first sight. Soon, the two unlikely companions have to face off against a number of enemies, as the people of Sphinx begin to realize – sometimes unwillingly – that they will have to share their new home with another intelligent race that was here first. :Note: Another plot summary can be seen in the Teacher's Study Guide that Baen has produced.
32424024	/m/0gywc3c	Finn the Half-Great		2009		 The story takes place in Ireland and revolves around the story of Fionn mac Cumhaill, commonly known as Finn McCool in Irish folklore. It also includes elements from Norse, Japanese and English mythology.
32439747	/m/0gyrh0y	In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin	Erik Larson			 The book covers the career of the American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, particularly the years 1933 to 1937 when he and his family, including his daughter Martha, lived in Berlin. The Ambassador, who earned his Ph.D. in Leipzig 40 years earlier, was initially sympathetic to Germany's new Nazi government and believed reports of brutality and anti-semitism to be exaggerated. Martha, separated from her husband and in the process of divorce, became caught up in the glamor and excitement of Hitler's Germany and had a series of liaisons, possibly sexual, including among them Gestapo head Rudolf Diels and Soviet attache (and secret NKVD agent) Boris Vinogradov. She defended the regime to her sceptical friends. Within months of their arrival, the family became aware of the evils of the Nazi party. Dodd periodically protested against it. President Roosevelt was pleased with his performance while State Department officials found him undiplomatic and idiosyncratic. The title of the work is a loose translation of Tiergarten, a park in the center of Berlin.
32454643	/m/0gywqq6	Asylum	Patrick McGrath		{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"}	 A beautiful woman, Stella Raphael, lives an unimaginative family life: she runs the household and takes care of her son Charlie while her husband Max works as a deputy superintendent at a maximum security psychiatric hospital. This all changes when she becomes romantically involved with Edgar Stark, an artistic talented patient who restores the old Victorian conservatory. Edgar is committed for the violent murder of his wife but this does not influence Stella's feelings. Then Edgar escapes from the institution wearing Max's clothes and takes a hiding in a shabby building in London which he uses as an atelier. Stella's love for him grows stronger and while in London for "shopping" she manages to get back in contact with Edgar via his artist friend Nick. Her visits become more and more frequent and it starts to become suspicious so she decides to leave her family permanently. The asylum wants to keep this potentially scandalous situation out of the papers but informs the police. At first Stella enjoys the underground art life but Edgar starts to become violent and jealous as he sculpts a rather morbid bust of her head. He thinks she wants to go back to Max and fears being poisoned by her. So Stella, realizing the danger, finds shelter at Nick's place but she has to flee again as Edgar tries to locate her. As she feels her love again, she returns to Edgar's atelier where she gets arrested by the police who have lost track of Edgar. Stella reunites with her family. Max is fired from the asylum due to the affair, so they move to the Welsh countryside where Max can work for another mental hospital. She now has to gain the trust of her son and Max, but she doesn't make much of an effort as she is still in love with Edgar despite his disturbing behaviour. As the family gets more depressed Stella has simple sex with her neighbour to pass the time waiting for her lover to find her. Her hope for reunion with Edgar is strengthened when he is arrested by the police near their house. During a school trip with her son she fails to help him as he drowns in a swamp. She is found guilty of infanticide and institutionalised at the asylum where Max used to work. The asylum is now run by Peter Cleave, who wants to help her cure from her Medea complex their friendship to evolve into a marriage. She seems to agree, but Peter doesn't take into account that her love for Edgar - also in the hospital in solitary - still reigns. Stella commits suicide using the pills she didn't swallow as she can't be somebody else's lover. Peter keeps the head sculpture in black bronze of Stella that Edgar made in his desk's drawer.
32455859	/m/0gyvlbl	An Evening of Long Goodbyes	Paul Murray	2003-05-01	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 An Evening of Long Goodbyes is about a 24-year old wealthy layabout who prefers to watch Gene Tierney movies in his chaise longue, with a gimlet in hand, rather than go out and find a job. Charles Hythloday is a Trinity College dropout living with his sister, Christabel ("Bel"), in their parents' mansion, Amaurot (named after the capital city of More's Utopia). There are only two things that Charles loves more than the film actress, Gene Tierney; his home and his struggling actress sister. While Charles loves his childhood home, Bel notices it makes people become phony, and wants out of the mansion. Charles argues that his time is well spent building a folly in the back garden and perfecting sprezzatura, the art of acting like a gentleman while making it appear like one is doing nothing at all. Charles dreams of a return to a time when men wear top coats and women have white gloves. But the fantasy ends when the bills pile up and the bank threatens to repossess the house. Charles devises a plan to blow up the folly, fake his death, use the insurance money to save Amaurot and move to South America. His plans go awry when he finds out that his Bosnian maid, Mrs P, has her children living in the folly. The folly explodes and a large stone gargoyle falls on Charles's head, putting him into a coma for a few weeks. He dreams of living in Chile with W. B. Yeats, where they spend their time perfecting sprezzatura, drinking gimlets, wearing sombreros, and tending the vineyard. Eventually, Charles is forced to work in a Latvian factory. In his spare time, Charles pens a play entitled There's Bosnians in my Attic! A Tragedy in Five Acts. The Latvian factory suddenly upgrades, swindles its employees out of their wages, leaving Charlie and hundreds of immigrants jobless. In order to make some fast cash, Charles lays down all his winnings on the local underdog, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, who narrowly wins the race despite being severely injured in the process. Affected by the little dog's plight, Charles decides to give him to Bel to smooth their rift. Charles is shocked to learn that Bel is planning a trip to Chekhov's home town in Russia to study The Cherry Orchard, her favorite play. The next morning, however, Bel drives her car into a wall at full speed, smashing through the windshield and flying into the sea. The circumstances surrounding her death are strange and mysterious, and life for everyone in the house falls into disarray. Charles takes a night job, sweeping the floor of a factory. He has begun writing a novel describing his fall from wealth, and that he likes his new life, in a way. One night, he finds Bel's mobile phone and receives a mysterious call from her. She says that she might come back to him one day, and Charles ends his story walking out into his decayed Ireland, bleakly anticipating her return.
32455986	/m/0gyrlx9	The Painted Garden	Noel Streatfeild	1949		 Crabby Jane Winter is furious when her family plans to spend the winter in California, leaving her dog in London. However, her father really needs a holiday to get over his writer's block. In California, Jane meets a movie producer who realises that her disposition makes her perfect to play Mary in a film version of The Secret Garden. The novel shows the process of filmmaking from a child actor's perspective.
32467136	/m/0h1czz8	Vertical	Rex Pickett		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The continuing story of the characters from Sideways, Miles and Jack, and takes place seven years after the original novel. It is set in Oregon wine country. Miles, who has found success with a novel that has been turned into a movie, is invited to be master of ceremonies at the International Pinot Noir festival in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. He takes advantage of the opportunity to go on a road trip to drive his mother (who, after a stroke that put her in a wheelchair, was forced to move to an assisted-living home) to her sister in Wisconsin. Jack's life has gone to pots, his marriage has ended, and he joins the road trip, along with a Filipina caretaker (and the mother's dog).
32467246	/m/0h1dfng	The Bourne Dominion	Eric Van Lustbader	2011-07-19	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 :For a more detailed background of the main character, see Jason Bourne. Jason Bourne is searching for an elusive cadre of terrorists planning to destroy America's most strategic natural resources-and needs the help of his longtime friend, General Boris Karpov. Karpov, the newly appointed head of Russia's most feared spy agency, FSB-2, is one of the most determined, honorable, and justice-hungry men that Bourne knows. But Karpov has made a deal with the devil. In order to remain the head of FSB-2, he must hunt down and kill Bourne. Now, these two trusted friends are on a deadly collision course. From the Colombian highlands to Munich, Cadiz, and Damascus, the clock is counting down to a disaster that will cripple America's economic and military future. Only Bourne and Karpov have a chance to avert the catastrophe-but if they destroy each other first, that chance will be gone forever.
32534632	/m/0h1bx_6	On Canaan's Side	Sebastian Barry	2011-07-24		 The novel is narrated by the 89 year old Lily Bere, the sister of the character Willy Dunne from A Long Long Way and the daughter of the character Thomas Dunne from The Steward of Christendom, as she looks back on her life, having lived through the Irish War of Independence and escaped to Chicago with her boyfriend Tadg Bere.
32542547	/m/0h1fzch	Jamrach's Menagerie	Carol Birch	2011-06-14		 At the age of eight, Jaffy Brown encounters a tiger escaped from the menagerie of Charles Jamrach, wandering about London's East End. Taken up in the tiger's jaws, he is rescued by Jamrach himself, who then offers Jaffy a job. Jaffy loves working at the menagerie and becomes friends with another employee, Tim Linver. He falls in love with Tim's sister and the three of them grow up together on the streets of London. Several years later, when Jaffy is sixteen, he and Tim are dispatched by Jamrach to the Dutch East Indies, aboard a whaling ship. Under the charge of Jamrach's seasoned field agent, Dan Rymer, they have been sent to capture a "dragon" for the menagerie. The crew successfully capture the dragon, but on the return voyage it is set loose by Skip, one of the ship's mad crewmen, and after it bites a crew member they are forced to drive it overboard. Later the vessel is struck by a waterspout and sunk, leaving only a dozen men alive, stranded in the Pacific Ocean in two whaleboats. The two boats make for the coast of Chile, and as the crew gradually begin to die of starvation, thirst and exposure, they resort to cannibalism. Eventually only Jaffy, Tim, Skip and Dan are left alive, and they draw straws to see who will be killed and eaten. Tim draws the short straw, and Jaffy kills him, an act which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Eventually Skip also dies, and by the time Dan and Jaffy arrive in Chile they are half-dead with exhaustion and half-mad from grief and anguish. In the book's coda, Jaffy returns home, faces Tim's family, and goes through a long period of depression and ennui. He eventually returns to life as a sailor, and in his retirement constructs a bird menagerie of his own.
32551555	/m/0gw8w9b	Switched	Amanda Hocking	2010-07-05	{"/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The story begins with a prologue entitled "Eleven Years Ago", in which Wendy recounts her sixth birthday party. She expresses contempt at the gifts of fragile porcelain dolls she does not want. She throws a tantrum at seeing her mother has bought her a chocolate birthday cake, to which her mother asks what sort of child she is. Wendy's mother claims she is not her daughter, and attempts to take her life with the knife she had been using to cut the cake. In the modern day, we see Wendy as a troubled young woman who struggles in school and has forced her brother, Matt, and aunt, Maggie, to uproot their lives and move away when she is expelled from school yet again. She soliloquises that she has a power of persuasion and thus demonstrates on a threatening teacher. She approaches the mysterious and fellow new-student Finn Holmes after class and asks why he always stares blankly at her. Finn conforms her host mothers threats and says she has to come back to forening she refuses until 2 enemy tribe called vittra attack her, finn comes in and saves her taking her back to forening . There, Wendy meets her real mother, Elora, who informs her that she is actually the princess of the tribe, and is the highest rung of society. She meets Rhys and Rhiannon, both something the Trylle call "mänsklig". Whilst wandering the halls of the Palace, Wendy breaks into a locked room stocked with many undisplayed photos. She recognizes in one of them a sad Elora with a male baby, then realizes one contains herself, wearing a white gown and an injured leg, an horrified expression on her face. Finn discovers her and tells her that Elora's Trylle power consists of precognition that she can only utilise through painting. Finn tells her of the societal rules of the Trylle; whilst the Princess, Queens and Marksinna (nobles) are the highest, the Trackers and mänsklig are considered even lower than the peasantry. Finn reveals that Elora and his father had once had an affair, to which Wendy expresses disbelief that Elora could show an emotion other than anger. Finn begins to tutor her in the history and etiquette of the Trylle so that Wendy can properly handle her future role as Queen and not embarrass Elora. He warns Wendy that she cannot become involved with Rhys past a platonic level as it would "corrupt" the bloodline of the royalty, and the strong powers held by the royals would cease to exist. Finn reveals that the mänsklig are the children taken in place of the changelings, that live with the family who swap the children, and Rhys is the mänsklig left in Wendy's place. An introductory ball is scheduled to be held in Wendy's honour which Finn prepares her for. Elora tells Wendy that she will be choosing a more appropriate name for her Trylle life. Wendy says that she does not want to and will not, much to Elora's annoyance. Elora speaks with Finn and he resigns. Wendy finds him before he goes and the two share a kiss. Finn says that he cannot allow her to proceed. The next night at Wendy's ball, the Vittra attack, forcing the Trylle that possess helpful powers to retaliate. Jen, the member who had previously injured Wendy when trying to kidnap her, rounds on her. Rhys attempts to help her escape but is knocked unconscious. Finn returns, almost losing his life to aid the princess. Tove, a young Markis, uses psychokinesis to save Finn's life and successfully get rid of Jen. Elora and the Trylle inside the ballroom manage to quell the Vittra threat and the three return inside. Finn and Wendy reunite, until Elora informs Wendy that Finn has left, having been transferred once more. Wendy reacts angrily and uses her persuasive powers on Rhys to get him to drive her home to Matt and Maggie, his biological family.
32555100	/m/0h1d85x	The Marriage Plot	Jeffrey Eugenides	2011	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story concerns three college friends from Brown University—Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell—beginning in their senior year, 1982, and follows them during their first year post-graduation.
32559822	/m/0h1btxq	The Ice Princess	Camilla Läckberg	2003		 The droplets of H20 have turned to icy crystalline in her hair. Her lower torso is frozen solid, forever in the bathtub of ice-so begins The Ice Princess. Genius is suffering-the characters that we all take for granted did not come easy; In Camilla’s initial synopsis for her first novel, Detective Inspector Mellberg was described thus: “Particularly unpleasant and incompetent". Erica Falck has returned to her family home in Fjällbacka after her parents demise-she is sorting through the effects whilst trying to work on a biography of Selma Lagerlöf, a Swedish author-the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. This barely registers either in the plot or in Erica's cold-heart beyond an occasional tear - a walloping deus ex machina-but she continues nonetheless. Police tests show that the young woman’s demise occurred long before she was propped in the tub so that the liquid would freeze around her as the temperature dropped far below freezing inside her apartment( A Swedish domicile without central-heating would quickly lose heat in such a subzero climate (-29 max) being by the coast would lower the temperature even faster). In this particular fiction, exactly when the furnace became out-of-order is a timely hubris to the alleged suicide. At the prompting of Alex's parents Erica embarks on a writing project about their daughter but Erica's serious breakthrough comes when she meets a police officer who is also investigating the mystery; together the two uncover secrets that many in the town would prefer never came to light. Erica and Patrik’s fascination gives way to deep obsession—and their dalliance grows into uncontrollable magnetism. Erica visualizes a memoir about the beautiful but tragic Alex, one that will answer questions about their missing friendship.
32570419	/m/0h1htf9	The Russian Concubine		2007	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The story begins in 1917 when a five-year-old Lydia Ivanova Friis and her Russian mother Valentina Ivanova escape from Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution after her Danish father Jens Friis was arrested by the police, they are later reunited fleeing the Bolsheviks, where it is then believed that Jens was killed at their hands. Eleven years later in 1928, Junchow, China, Lydia is sixteen and works as a thief with the help of Mr Liu, a pawnbroker, to support her mother. During one of Lydia's escapades where she finds herself in trouble, she is saved by a Chinese teenager named Chang An Lo. An Lo is a freedom fighter and a Communist rebel. He eventually becomes romantically involved with Lydia after she saves his life when he defends her honour. They begin to face trouble when Lydia is kidnapped and tortured by a member of the Black Snakes, who happens to hold a grudge against Chang An Lo. She is later rescued by Alexei Serov, who happens to be her half-brother.
32579788	/m/0h1h9l9	The Beginning of Infinity	David Deutsch			 Deutsch views the enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process physically possible is able to be performed provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato's Academy in Golden age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change. The source of intelligence is more complicated than brute computational power, Deutsch conjectures, and he points to the lack of progress in Turing test AI programs in the six decades since the Turing test was first proposed. What matters for knowledge creation, Deutsch says, is creativity. New ideas that provide good explanations for phenomena require outside-the-box thinking as the unknown is not easily predicted from past experience. To test this Deutsch suggests an AI behavioural evolution program for robot locomotion should be fed random numbers to see if knowledge spontaneously arises without inadvertent contamination from a human programmer's creative input. If it did Deutsch would concede that intelligence is not as difficult a problem as he currently thinks it is. Deutsch sees quantum superpositions as evidence for his many worlds quantum multiverse, where everything physically possible occurs in an infinite branching of alternate histories. Deutsch argues that a great deal of fiction is close to a fact somewhere in the multiverse. Deutsch extols the usefulness of the concept of fungibility in quantum transactions, his universes and the particles they contain are fungible in their interactions across the multiverse structure. Deutsch explains that interference offers evidence for this multiverse phenomenon where alternate histories affect one another without allowing the passage of information, as they fungibly intertwine again shortly after experiencing alternate events. According to Deutsch, our perspective on any object we detect with our senses is just a single universe slice of a much larger quantum multiverse object. Deutsch speculates on the process of human-culture development from a genetic basis through to a memetic emergence. This emergence led to the creation of static societies where innovation occurs, but most of the time at a rate too slow for individuals to notice during their life times. It was only at the point where knowledge of how to purposefully create new knowledge through good explanations was acquired that the beginning of infinity took off during the enlightenment. His explanation for human creativity is that it evolved as a way to faithfully reproduce existing memes, as this would require creative intelligence to produce a refined rule set that would more faithfully reproduce the existing memes that happened to confer benefit (and all the other memes too). From this increased creative ability, the ability to create new memes emerged and humans thus became universal constructors and technological development accelerated. Deutsch criticizes Jared Diamond's resource luck theories as to why the West came to dominate the other continents outlined in his book Guns Germs & Steel. For Deutsch the sustained creation of knowledge could have arisen anywhere and lead to a beginning of infinity, it just happened to arise in Europe first. Deutsch extols the philosophical concept of optimism where although problems are inevitable, solutions will always exist provided the right knowledge is sought out and acquired.
32581076	/m/0h1bst6	The Power of Six	Pittacus Lore	2011-08-23	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The story is told by various members of the Garde: Number Four (John Smith), who is on the run with Sam, Six, and Bernie Kosar (aka Hadley, a Lorien Chimæra), and Number Seven (Marina), who's hiding at Santa Teresa, a convent in Spain. While John, Number Six and Sam try to stay ahead of the Mogadorians while searching for the other surviving Loric, Number Seven searches for news of John after his heroic battle at the school that came at the end of I Am Number Four. Marina is introduced in the story right from the start. She lives in a religious community for children in need. Along with her is Adelina and a few friends she has at the school in Santa Teresa, Spain. Marina greatly dislikes the school. After failing to adapt to life on Earth and blend in, Number Seven, Marina, and her Cêpan, Adelina, went to the Santa Teresa convent/orphanage and had been living there for 10 years. Adelina has given up hope of Lorien rising and has tried to adapt to life as a nun. She has hidden Seven's Chest and has all but ignored her. Annoyed by Adelina's attitude, Marina has been searching for the now legendary Number Four in order to unite the Garde, but so far, without any success. At the beginning of the book she is five months away from her eighteenth birthday, when she will be able to leave the orphanage. When a seven-year-old named Ella is brought in Marina instantly becomes good friends with her. Ella helps her find her Chest and Marina drugs Adelina to open it. When she does, they are tracked down by the Mogadorians and barely escape. Adelina finally acknowledges her wrongs and sacrifices herself to save Marina. Marina meets a man named Crayton who explains that Ella is Number Ten, and who is also an Aeternus, having the ability to change her age to that of an age she has already lived. They meet with Six and kill their pursuers. Héctor, a human who is friends with Marina and knows about Lorien, dies in the process. The group of Marina (Seven), Six, Ella, and Crayton resolve to find the other numbers so they can band together. John wakes up in the motel that he arrived in at the end of I Am Number Four with Six and Sam. They attempt to remain unnoticed (as Four is in the FBI Ten Most Wanted List) and replace their license plate with another driver's before driving through Tennessee. In Tennessee, they are pulled over by a policeman who asks them why they are driving with a license plate that belongs to another vehicle. The officer then realizes who they are, and calls in additional help. Six uses her legacy of controlling the elements to create gale force winds that allow them to escape. Four, Six, and Sam head to Florida, where they all begin training. Four speculates that Sam has a crush on Six. At first Sam denies it, but eventually admits that he does. Four knows he has a crush on Six too, but tries to push those feelings away because he wants to love Sarah. Six convinces Four to open his chest. While going through the items in the chest, Four shows Sam the Solar System item. Because Seven touches her transmitter (unaware of what it is), the Solar System morphs into Earth with Santa Teresa displayed by a red dot. Seven is heard screaming at Adelina. Four opens his letter from Henri in private, and learns that not only are the nine Garde members actually going to be the next nine elders, but that Sam may be correct about his father's alien abduction, and that his father was assigned to Four and Henri to teach them Earth's ways. Four shows Sam the letter and Sam begins to cry upon learning about his father's fate. Later that night, Four and Six are both suffering from sleep insomnia and decide to take a walk. Six uses her invisibility legacy to help them remain unseen. They almost share a kiss, but Four pulls away because he refuses to think he has feelings for anyone other than Sarah. When they return home, their house explodes after the Mogadorians learn their location because of Four opening his chest. Sam saves some items and hides in the pool, but a short battle with the Mogadorians ensues where the Mogadorians are defeated, but not before taking Four's chest. Sam, thinking that his father left something for them in Paradise, forces the group to return. They retrieve a stone tablet and some papers, but are unable to decipher their meaning. Four secretly meets up with Sarah. Upon their reunion, they hug and kiss. Sarah briefly checks her phone and John asks who she is texting so late at night. She tells him it's Emily, and they go back to their conversation. Sarah repeatedly tries to persuade Four to turn himself in, but he refuses each time. The FBI shows up and takes Four and Sam as prisoners. Six helps them escape, and Four realizes that Sarah was actually texting the police and not Emily. The group decides to split up after Four and Sam decide that they want to go retrieve Four's chest in West Virginia, Sam only because he hopes to find his father, while Six decides to go to Spain to rescue Seven. When Four and Sam drop Six off at the airport, she kisses Sam on the cheek to say goodbye which makes him blush. Four and Six share a passionate kiss on the lips to say goodbye. Four tells Six that Sam has a crush on her, to which she says that she has a crush on him too. Four, confused, tells her that she thought she liked him, to which she says that since Four loves her and Sarah, it's only fair that she can love Sam and Four. She gives them an address to which they are supposed to rendezvous in two weeks and she departs. Sam puts the address in his pocket, and they head off for West Virginia. Six arrives at Santa Teresa to assist in her battle with Seven, and helps her defeat the Mogadorians. She finds out that a second ship left after the one that carried the other Lorics to Earth, and carried another member of the Garde, Ella, or Number Ten. Six, Seven, Ten, and Crayton, Ten's substitute cêpan, head out to find other members of the Garde. Once at the end of the road in West Virginia, Sam and Four follow a map left by Six until they reach the Mogadorian cave. Four uses a Xlitharis to transfer Six's invisibility legacy to himself, although he will only have the legacy for one hour. Right when the legacy expires, they receive the chest along with another chest (that is later revealed to belong to Nine). Four uses fire to defeat many Mogadorians, and the main power goes out which allows Four and Sam to rescue Nine. Sam is determined to find his father, who he thinks is among the prisoners, and Four and Nine have no other choice but to leave him there after a force field separates them. Four realizes that the rendezvous point address is with Sam, but Nine tells him not to worry and that if the rendezvous is meant to occur, then it will. Four tells him to head north, and they begin driving.
32585537	/m/0h1h23l	Torn	Amanda Hocking	2010-11-12	{"/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The start of the book begins almost exactly where the end of Switched left off, with Wendy and Rhys running away from the palace in the Trylle's Förening. The two arrive at the home and Wendy attempts to explain to her "host brother" Matt that Rhys is his brother. He reacts with disbelief yet she tells him that she cannot tell him where she has been or Finn's part in it all.While in the midst of trying to understand what has happened, Matt finds a disliking towards Rhys. Later that night, Finn visits her and attempts to convince her to return to Förening with him. She refuses as another tracker, Duncan, shows up with the same goal. Wendy tells both that she will not return to Förening and they leave. Two Vittra members, Loki and Kyra, attack the house as Finn and Duncan leave and take the three to the Vittra palace to the King, in which Wendy is left badly injured by Kyra.While taken as prisoner by the Vittra, Wendy is severally injured and Matt asks a guard to bring in a doctor to heal her. There (after being healed by a female Vittra), Wendy practises her power of persuasion on Rhys with an unusual side effect. She is taken to the King named Oren who informs her that he is her father and the woman who healed her her step-mother, a result from a prior union with Elora in an attempt to unify the Trylle and the Vittra. Loki allows the three to escape with help from Tove, Duncan and Finn and they return to Förening. At Förening, Wendy begins classes with Tove, the skilled Markis who possesses grand powers of psychokinesis, to strengthen and control her own power. She is also assigned Duncan as a bodyguard. One night, Elora alerts everyone nearby to the appearance of a Vittra on their perimeter. It is revealed to be Loki, and Wendy insists on imprisoning him instead of executing him. Wendy's powers begin to grow stronger as does Matt's relationships with Rhys and young Marksinna Willa. Using her more-controlled powers, Wendy manages to get the location of Finn from Duncan and visits his family home where his mother raises Angora goats and his father is also a tracker. Finn shuns her on the grounds of the prejudice surrounding such a relationship. Wendy confronts her mother about what Oren told her in her stay at the Vittra palace, to which Elora tells Wendy of her past and the arranged marriage between Wendy's father and her. Elora says that her parents thought of it as a good idea, so she did it without question. She tells Wendy that she has arranged her marriage to Tove to which Wendy objects. Elora begins to bleed from her nose and collapses, later informing her that she is dying from her precognition painting. Wendy learns that the powers used by the trolls age and drain them. Wendy eventually accepts the proposal and the two become engaged. Wendy then finds that Loki has escaped now that Elora's hold on him has weakened and he asks her to escape both the Vittra and the Trylle with him, knowing she is not happy. Wendy does not accept and instead turns her time to learn the "dead language" of the Trylle so that she can better help the commune. Finn helps her with this until they experience a brief romantic interlude which Finn's father interrupts. Finn leaves, embarrassed and tells her that duty over love was the best choice for him. The book ends with Tove giving an engagement ring to Wendy and they enter their engagement party together.
32615037	/m/0h1hhnc	Gaffers' Row				 The story follows the fortunes of Rhys Morgan and his family from 1924 through the strikes and depression of the 1920s and 1930s and the hostilities of 1939 -1945. The lives of the villagers of Pentre Bach are dominated by the whims of the colliery manager who doubles as the chapel minister and contributes to the hardship of the community by abusing his position to pursue his sexual aspirations. Rhys Morgan is haunted by the death of his sister Moira who died when he was sixteen and because of his self reproach he refuses to discuss it. For the love of his wife Nerys he sets aside many of his idealistic principles, and tries to concentrate on doing the best for his family. Events set the Colliery Manager and Rhys Morgan on a collision course, and as World War II draws to a close the feud has repercussions for the whole Morgan family.
32617337	/m/0h5267n	The Texas-Israeli War: 1999	Howard Waldrop	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Sol Inglestein is the commander of a tank squadron of Israeli mercenaries fighting for the United States government, promised land for their efforts. Their tanks, Centurions, which Sol designed, are powered by nuclear reactors and armed with Gatling lasers. His squadron is ordered across the Red River into Texas to take part in an assault on the Dalworthington metro area; his mercenaries dance the horah as they wait to cross the river. Encountering only light resistance, they push towards Dallas. Sol leads the column in his tank, the Wrath of Jehovah. Master Sergeant William Brown, a Vietnam veteran commanding an armored car, is part of General Wilson's Union army simultaneously advancing on Dallas from Texarkana. Separated from his column's heavy armor when the Texans dynamite the dam holding back Lake Ray Hubbard, his contingent comes under heavy artillery fire as they near Dallas. With only his car remaining, Brown sights the source of the fire: a Texan heavy cruiser, the Judge Roy Bean, brought up a canal to Dallas. Meanwhile, Sol's tank squadron, alerted by Brown, ambushes and sinks the ship. Sol is then given a new assignment: he will lead a push into the heart of Texas to rescue President Clairewood. Guided by Major Mistra, a Texas National Guard officer who defected to the Union, Sol will lead a column masquerading as Texan mercenary armor. Sol's girlfriend, Myra Kalan, also a tank commander, will separately lead the remaining Centurions south. Splevins, the CIA agent conducting the briefing, warns them that President Mallow's agents may try to sabotage the mission. Shortly thereafter, a squad of soldiers attempts to assassinate Sol and Myra. Sol's brigade, along with Brown, departs for Fort Deaf Smith, a former prison near Crystal City where Clairewood is being held. En route they encounter a band of Indians with the Volkswagen logo painted on their chests. Mistra convinces the Texan units guarding Crystal City that they are Israeli mercenaries fighting on the Texan side, and they are ushered into the Fort to refuel and await new assignment. Myra's tanks follow a parallel route to Sol's. They are nearly struck by a tornado and are attacked by a Texan infantry patrol, who are dispatched by one of the tanks. They arrive in position in the hills above Fort Deaf Smith, but Myra is captured while scouting. Despite playing the innocent she is tortured by the Sons of the Alamo chief at the fort, Kiburn, but is rescued from this mistreatment by the Texan commanding officer, General Fowler. Meanwhile, General Wilson's Union forces have been advancing south towards Houston to draw the Texans away from Crystal City. Increased pressure from Cuban amphibious landings at Galveston and on Padre Island cause the Texan armored brigades to begin hurried preparations to leave Fort Deaf Smith. At this point, Sol's forces strike. Faking a chemical weapons alert, they destroy the few planes remaining to the Texan Air Force and break into the prison where Clairewood and Myra are being held. Kiburn is killed, and as they escape Fowler destroys one of their tanks but he is also killed. Mistra is shot during the escape. As they leave, the mercenaries destroy much of the remaining Texan armor. The column evades further Texan forces and makes its way to Albuquerque, from where Clairewood returns to Pittsburgh, the American capital, unannounced until Mallow encounters him in the President's office. Clairewood celebrates with Sol, Myra, and Brown over bottles of Coca-Cola, no longer manufactured in the United States but now imported from Israel.
32619437	/m/0h1fl01	Jamayah: Adventures on the Path of Return	T.L. Orcutt		{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 Set against the Aquarian optimism and affluence that dawned the new millennium in 1995 San Diego, Jamayah: Adventures on the Path of Return is a paranormal and mystical adventure marbleized with humor. Baby-boomer Bob Kramer arrives in mid-life crisis with a job loss and recent divorce. Jamayah, an unlikely cosmopolitan guru, mysteriously recruits Bob as an initiate on the Path of Return, a fusion of wisdom traditions tempered toward paranormal mastery and cosmic awareness. The progressively intense challenge is how Bob will reconcile his scientific skepticism in a paranormal and mystical adventure that embraces a strip bar, demands trusting synchronicity in the face of homeless humility, and a past life regression realizing the horrors of war. Three of the four initiations on which the story unfolds, in this first novel of The Path of Return Trilogy, focus on experiencing the optimal possibilities of human awareness: (1), mastering paranormal ability to explore an altogether different universe from the homogenized world view that is anchored in materialistic reality, (2), experiencing humility and trusting intuition and synchronicity, and (3), unattached observation of life in the moment. In the end, Bob returns to ordinary life, but feels detached, alone, and indifferent, a malaise Jamayah reframes as having passed a sacred rite of passage.
32626292	/m/0h1dfhx	The Two Pound Tram		2003-10		 The main story begins in 1937 when brothers Wilfred and Duncan Scrutton run away from their home at Ferring near Worthing on the Sussex coast and travel to London. Wilfred the narrator recounts how they had seen an advert in the Daily Mail which said 'Trams surplus to the requirements of the London Omnibus and Tramcar Company for sale at their depot at Acton, London for £2 each.' They pool their resources and travel to the depot where they are told that trams were indeed for sale but had to be collected and could not be delivered to Sussex. The only candidate was an old horse-drawn tram and they manage to secure a horse called Homer from a retired rag and bone man. Unfortunately the depot had no destination boards for Sussex but they had one for Canterbury for which they set off via the Old Kent Road accompanied by Homer's companion - a dog called Tiger. They gained fare-paying passengers at Harbledown and began a regular if slow service between there and Canterbury, and also acquire a conductor called Hattie. Rival companies eventually force them to move on due to the lack of a PSV operators license and they travel back to Worthing where they gain the support of the wealthy resident of Goring Hall who inspired by their determination funds the purchase and transport of an electric tram from Acton which they renovate and put into service in Worthing town centre. The second half of the novel concerns events during World War II, the brothers volunteering for both the LDV and ARP and Hattie for the VAD.
32632532	/m/05zk6y5	The Fourth Apprentice	Victoria Holmes	2009-11-24	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Fourth Apprentice takes place approximately six moons (months) after the end of Sunrise during greenleaf (summer). The book opens at the monthly full moon Gathering. The four warrior Clans are suffering due to a drought, which has been especially hard on RiverClan, whose main prey are fish. Leopardstar, leader of RiverClan, accuses the other Clans of stealing fish from the shrinking lake. She claims that RiverClan has whole ownership to the lake, and therefore, all that was in it, as her Clans' territory. The other Clans are outraged by this plan, but Firestar allows them to patrol in order to prevent a battle. Dovekit and Ivykit afterward become apprentices with Lionblaze as Dovepaw's mentor and Cinderheart as Ivypaw's. Dovepaw expresses some of her powers by noting how she sees and hears cats from all the way across the lake. Later, Dovepaw speaks of seeing brown animals up the river building a dam out when she was in the forest, but no other cat believes her. Lionblaze speaks to her, and realizing that she is the third cat of the prophecy, although Dovepaw does not take this fact well. Dovepaw's is revealed to be one of the Three and her special power is to see and hear things very far away, like clairvoyance. Dovepaw and Lionblaze tell Firestar that Dovepaw receives a dream from StarClan the animals called beavers are building a dam upstream that blocks the river. Dovepaw receives a dream from Yellowfang, ThunderClan’s old medicine cat, and is told a prophecy: After the sharp-eyed jay and the roaring lion, peace will come on dove's gentle wing. Lionblaze creates a plan to travel up the stream and find a way to unclog it and bring the water back, a journey that would include a patrol from each Clan, and Firestar agrees. All four Clans end up joining the journey, each sending two cats. Lionblaze and Dovepaw are chosen for the trip, and meet up with Toadfoot and Tigerheart of ShadowClan, Whitetail and Sedgewhisker of WindClan, and Rippletail and Petalfur of RiverClan. Ivypaw is immediately jealous and unhappy of that her sister is chosen to go on the journey, and becomes cranky back at the camp. The chosen cats set off on the journey, traveling up the quiet stream-bed until when they encounter a pen of rabbits that are owned by Twolegs, but before they can eat them, three kittypets named Seville, Jigsaw, and Snowdrop confront them. They leave the rabbits eventually, and soon travel up to the beaver's dam. The cats, after first finding the dam, meet a loner named Woody, who seems to refuse to help them, though later on gives in. They plan an attack on the beavers, but the beavers prove too strong, badly wounding the cats and killing Rippletail. Meanwhile, back in ThunderClan, Poppyfrost, heavy with Berrynose's kits, becomes worried that Berrynose does not love her, as he forces her to stay in the nursery, and disappears. Jayfeather follows her to the Moonpool, spotting Breezepelt following her too. Jayfeather attempts to comfort Poppyfrost, but is interrupted when Breezepelt shows himself again, attacking Jayfeather. Breezepelt declares that he will not stop and that the rule of killing a medicine cat no longer affects him. Another cat, unknown to Jayfeather (Brokenstar), aids Breezepelt in the attack, but Honeyfern comes to Jayfeather's rescue and chases them off. She tells Jayfeather that she is proud of Poppyfrost and Berrynose, and that Berrynose truly does love Poppyfrost, and he is only terrified of losing her. Yellowfang then appears and Jayfeather is told that the power of the Dark Forest is rising, and that there will be a war between StarClan and the Dark Forest. StarClan needs a power greater than they are: the three prophecy cats. At the dam, the patrol creates a plan try and get rid of the dam. However the plan needs more cats so Lionblaze and Dovepaw set out to find Seville, Jigsaw, and Snowdrop, the kittypets they met earlier. The kittypets agree and with their help, the dam is successfully unclogged and the Clan cats return to their Clans. Poppyfrost gives birth to her kits, and Jayfeather sees Tigerstar, Hawkfrost and Brokenstar watching over them as if they want to take the kits away. At the conclusion of the novel, Jayfeather tells Lionblaze about Breezepelt's attack towards him, and Lionblaze is shocked. Jayfeather also tells him about the tom that aided Breezepelt, and Lionblaze confesses meeting Tigerstar in his dreams in the past. They realize that Breezepelt must have been recruited by Tigerstar to help fight in the war between StarClan and the Dark Forest. Tigerheart, Lionblaze says, was also seen using a move Tigerstar had taught to him in his nightly visits, and so is also believed to be being trained.
32638286	/m/0h3rm8s	Mardock Scramble	Tow Ubukata	2003-05		 Taking place in a futuristic city called Kamina City, Rune Ballot is a young prostitute who was taken in by the notorious gambler Shell Septinous. One night, Shell abandons Rune and attempts to murder her in an explosion. However, she is rescued and transformed into a cyborg by Dr. Easter. An Artificial intelligence in the form of a Mouse accompanies her to adapt to her new life. Rune is trained to use the advanced technology fitted on her to defend herself against Shell's attempts to have her killed to stop her from testifying against him.
32674043	/m/0h3xh55	The Fat Years		2009		 The novel is set in the near future of 2013, where China has entered a "Golden Age of Ascendancy," while Western nations have stagnated after a second economic crisis in early 2011. Lao Chen, a Hong Kong expatriate and writer living in Beijing, finds himself enjoying the atmosphere of prosperity and contentment. Though suffering from writer's block, he makes a modest living off renting apartments and attends monthly film screenings held at a restaurant owned by his friend Jian Lin (and attended by an insomniac Politburo member named He Dongsheng). Lao gradually find himself pulled into events by his old friend Fang Caodi, who is frantically searching for the missing month of February 2011 (with official records and public memory jumping from January to March), and his former flame Wei Xihong (known as "Little Xi"), a former public security bureau lawyer who now acts as an Internet activist. Lao's feelings of contentment begin to vanish as he listens to Wei and Fang's partial recollections of February 2011 and discovers that any available literature about the Cultural Revolution and political issues of the 1980s (including the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989) are either highly sanitized or unavailable. Lao and Fang eventually follow Wei to the township of Warm Springs, where she is helping a house church negotiate with the local government. After Lao confesses his love to Wei, they return to Beijing. After another film screening at Jian's restaurant, Lao is inadvertently pulled into a kidnapping of He Dongsheng by Fang, Wei, and Zhang Dou (an aspiring guitarist who also recalls February 2011), who are determined to understand the meaning of the missing month. After Dongsheng and the others agree their situation means they will "live or die together" (with Dongsheng's disappearance automatically throwing suspicion onto Lao, but Dongsheng admitting his kidnapping would throw cause suspicion of revealing state secrets), they begin to discuss China's present situation. Dongsheng explains that, with growing challenges to the Communist Party's legitimacy and authority, the decision was made in the midst of the financial crisis to enact his "Action Plan for Ruling the Nation and Pacifying the World." For one week, all government services and forces were forbidden to intervene without express permission, with widespread upheaval and rumor mongering only ending with the reentry of the People's Liberation Army and armed police. The restoration of order and ensuing crackdown helped cement the necessity of the Communist Party in the public mind. Dongsheng further explains that the Chinese government was able to save their economy with intrusive measures such as the conversion of large percentages of national bank savings accounts to expiring vouchers; large-scale deregulation; strengthening property rights; crackdowns on corruption, counterfeit consumer goods, and "misinformation," and price controls (citing those by Walther Rathenau in World War I Germany and in World War II America). This is coupled with a foreign policy calling for a "Chinese Monroe Doctrine," with East Asia developing under Chinese direction; advocating non-interventionist economic cooperation and political stability in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia; and even signing a non-aggression pact with Japan. Backing up these challenges to American hegemony is a new "first use" nuclear weapons policy. Dongsheng even reveals that the general atmosphere of contentment is due to the controlled addition of the drug MDMA into the public's drinking water and bottled drinks and that the missing month of February 2011 is simply a case of social amnesia. After unsuccessfully arguing with Dongsheng over the benefits of liberal democracy, Fang, Zhang, Wei, and Lao release him and part ways in the early morning.
32683712	/m/0h3t7z_	Collateral Karma	T.L. Orcutt		{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 For ten years, Jamayah, a mysterious mystic from Argentina, has instructed Rickshaw Lubowski (formerly Bob Kramer in Jamayah: Adventures on the Path of Return), wisdom teachings oriented toward paranormal command and cosmic awareness. After completing three initiations along the Path of Return, Rickshaw feels as if he knows everything he needs to know. Collateral Karma opens after Rickshaw has ditched the Path of Return in search of more tangible things - like sex, drugs, occultism, and sorcery. He realizes his vulnerability after becoming the target of a curse cast by an evil leader of a ceremonial cult called The Alliance, a sorcery coterie of the Order of Aldabaoth, who practice ritual sex and black magick. Rickshaw’s descent into the world of sensation and desire has generated collateral karma that incurs freakish nightmares all too real, starting with the obsessively expected death of his new fiancé. Realizing his grave mistake for running around in the playground of the Devil and driven to desperation, Rickshaw attempts to reconnect with his teachings and powers to no avail. Spiritually lost and adrift in a world that spins him out of control, he can only hang on while everything around him begins to crumble. Seeking help wherever he can find it, he meets a blind fortuneteller who seems to know more about his destiny than anyone should and with whom he falls in love. Only when Rickshaw truly believes that he has lost touch with himself and reality does his mentor, Jamayah, appear. Together, they join forces to confront the evil intentions of Aleister, the leader of The Alliance. With the help of two Native American shamans, one a Navaho and the other a Chiricahua Apache, Jamayah and Rickshaw use all their powers to attempt to save not only Rickshaw’s life, but Jamayah’s as well. In the end, Jamayah requires Rickshaw to complete a fourth initiation. Now discovering that Raoul, Jamayah’s son, and Crystal Meadows, Carmela’s daughter, have been on the Path of Return and have already completed this initiation as well, in spite of his common sense, Rickshaw is compelled to undergo the initiation. Called cascading boulders in trance, this initiation is about completely trusting in the universe at the risk of physical death.
32685731	/m/0h3s9cc	The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True	Richard Dawkins			 Most chapters begin with quick retellings of historical creation myths that emerged as attempts to explain the origin of particular observed phenomena. These myths are chosen from all across the world including Babylonian, Judeochristian, Aztec, Maori, Ancient Egyptian, Aboriginal, Nordic, Hellenic, Chinese, Japanese, and other traditions. Chapter 9 includes contemporary alien abduction mythology and Chapter 4 omits mythology altogether as Dawkins says that really small phenomena were unknown to primitive peoples prior to the invention of advanced optical magnification equipment, any texts they believed to be divinely inspired having failed to mention such useful knowledge as beyond human experience at the time. Dawkins also revisits his childhood and recalls his initial thoughts on these various phenomena or those thoughts expressed by his young contemporaries. Dawkins gives his critique of many of the myths, such as when he points out that much myth involves some god's symbolic transgressive act performed just once, with Dawkins saying that such one-time acts would be inadequate to explain the mechanism as to why the phenomena continue to happen in unbroken cycles. In the opening chapter Dawkins explains that although mythic narratives and make-believe are fun parts of growing up, reality with its fundamental capacity for beauty is much more magical than anything impossible. The Fairy Godmother from Cinderella cannot magically turn a pumpkin into a carriage outside the bounds of fiction, the reason being that such objects as pumpkins and carriages in reality possess internal organization that is fundamentally complex. A large pumpkin randomly reassembled at the most minute level would be much more likely to result in a featureless pile of ash or sludge than a complex and intricately organized carriage. In the subsequent chapters Dawkins addresses topics that range from his most familiar territory, evolutionary biology and speciation, to physical phenomena such as atomic theory, optics, planetary motion, gravitation, stellar evolution, spectroscopy, and plate tectonics, as well as speculation on exobiology. Dawkins admits his understanding of quantum mechanics is foggy and so declines to delve very far into that topic. Dawkins declares that there was no first person, to make the point that in evolutionary biology the term species is used to demark differences in gene composition over often thousands of generations of separation rather than any one generation to the next. To illustrate this he uses the example of family photographs. If, hypothetically, there existed a complete set of photographs of all one's direct male ancestors arranged in order of birth date (or hatch date) from youngest to oldest stretching back millions of generations, from one generation to the next one would not perceive much difference between any two pictures—looking at a picture of one's grandfather or great-grandfather one is looking at a picture of a human—but if one looked at the picture 185 million generations back one would be looking at a picture of some kind of fish. Dawkins stresses this point by saying the offspring of any sexually reproducing life form is in almost all cases the same species as its parents, with the exception of unviable hybrids such as mules. The last two chapters cover a discussion on chaos and the human psychology behind so-called miracle claims such as the Our Lady of Fátima and Cottingley Fairies examples. Dawkins presents philosopher David Hume's argument that miracle claims should only be seriously accepted if it would be a bigger miracle that the claimant was either lying or mistaken. Dawkins continues, saying miracle claims written down in texts subsequently deemed sacred are not exempt from this standard.
32688427	/m/0h3ldsy	Azab dan Sengsara	Merari Siregar	1920		 Amiruddin, the son of a village leader in Sipirok, falls in love with his cousin Mariamin, the daughter of a formerly-rich family. Having been friends since childhood, Amiruddin and Mariamin promise to get engaged once Amiruddin has a job. In order to find a job, Amiruddin goes to Medan; upon finding a job, he sends a letter to his parents, Mariamin, and Mariamin's parents declaring that he wishes to marry her. Although Mariamin is thrilled and both mothers agree, Amiruddin's father Baginda Diatas disagrees with the proposal; Baginda Diatas wishes for his son to marry a woman from an equally rich and respected family. After taking his wife to a dukun (who, as previously arranged, says that Amiruddin will be met with disaster if he marries Mariamin), Baginda Diatas convinces her that Amiruddin should not marry Mariamin. They instead choose another, wealthier, girl from the Siregar marga to be Amiruddin's wife. Baginda Diatas escorts her to Medan to marry Amiruddin, much to Amiruddin's disappointment. Pressured by adat, Amiruddin marries her and tells Mariamin that he cannot be with her; Mariamin is heartbroken. A year later, Mariamin is engaged to Kasibun, a divorcé from Medan. After being brought to Medan, Mariamin discovers that Kasibun has a sexually transmitted disease and attempts to avoid his advances; her attempts are met by torture at Kasibun's hands. The torture becomes worse after Amiruddin visits one day, causing Kasibun to become jealous. Taking advice from Amiruddin, Mariamin reports Kasibun to the police and receives permission to divorce him. Returning to Sipirok, Mariamin dies alone.
32688947	/m/0276mtb	The War of the Worlds	H. G. Wells	1898	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"}	 After ten paragraphs of introductory remarks the narrative opens in an astronomical observatory at Ottershaw where explosions are seen on the surface of the planet Mars, creating much interest in the scientific community. Later a "meteor" lands on Horsell Common, southwest of London, near the narrator's home in Woking, Surrey. He is among the first to discover that the object is an artificial cylinder that opens, disgorging Martians who are "big" and "greyish" with "oil brown skin," "the size, perhaps, of a bear," with "two large dark-coloured eyes," and a lipless "V-shaped mouth surrounded by "Gorgon groups of tentacles." The narrator finds them "at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous." They briefly emerge, have difficulty in coping with the Earth's atmosphere, and rapidly retreat into the cylinder. A human deputation (which includes the astronomer Ogilvy) approaches the cylinder with a white flag, but the Martians incinerate them and others nearby with a heat-ray before beginning to assemble their machinery. The narrator takes his wife to safety in nearby Leatherhead, where she has relatives, and then returns to Woking. He discovers the Martians have assembled towering three-legged "fighting-machines" (Tripods), each armed with a heat-ray and a chemical weapon: the so-called "black smoke". These Tripods wipe out the army units positioned around the crater and attack surrounding communities, moving toward London. Fleeing the scene, the narrator meets a retreating artilleryman, who tells him that another cylinder has landed between Woking and Leatherhead, cutting the narrator off from his wife. The two try to escape via Byfleet, but are separated at the Shepperton to Weybridge Ferry during a Martian attack on Shepperton. One of the Martian fighting machines is brought down in the River Thames by British artillery as the narrator and countless others try to cross the river into Middlesex, while the Martians escape. Our hero is able to float down the Thames toward London in a boat, stopping at Walton. More cylinders are landing across Southern England, and a panicked flight of the population of London begins. This includes the narrator's brother, who flees to the Essex coast after Black Smoke is used to devastate London. The torpedo ram HMS Thunder Child destroys two tripods before being sunk by the Martians, though this allows the ship carrying the narrator's brother and his two female travelling companions to escape to the continent. Shortly after, all organised resistance has ceased, and the Martians roam the shattered landscape unhindered. Red weed, a Martian form of vegetation, spreads with extraordinary rapidity over the landscape wherever there is abundant water. At the beginning of Book Two, the narrator and a curate from Walton take refuge in a ruined building in Sheen. The house is nearly destroyed when another Martian cylinder lands nearby, trapping them in the house for almost two weeks. The curate, traumatised by the invasion, sees in the Martian creatures heralding the advent of the Apocalypse. The narrator's relations with the curate deteriorate, and he eventually knocks him unconscious to prevent his loud ranting, but not before he is heard by a Martian, who captures him with a prehensile tentacle and, the reader is led to believe, drains him of his blood; blood transfusion is the Martians' form of nourishment. The narrator escapes detection by hiding in the coal-cellar. The Martians eventually depart, and the narrator is able to head toward Central London. He once again encounters the artilleryman, who briefly persuades him to cooperate in a grandiose plan to rebuild civilization underground. But after a few hours the narrator perceives the lunacy of this plan and the overall laziness of his companion and abandons the artilleryman to his delusions. Heading into a deserted London, he is at the point of despair and offers his life to the aliens when he discovers that the invaders have died from microbial infections to which they had no immunity, since "there are no bacteria in Mars." The narrator realises with joy that the threat has been vanquished. The narrator suffers a brief breakdown of which he remembers nothing, is nursed back to health, and returns home to find his wife, whom he had given up for dead. The last chapter, entitled "Epilogue," reflects on the significance of the invasion and the "abiding sense of doubt and insecurity" that it has left in the narrator's mind.
32691672	/m/0h3mpsk	The Magician King	Lev Grossman	2011	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"}	 Bored with ruling the magical realm of Fillory with his co-rulers Eliot, Janet and Julia, the magician king Quentin looks for an adventure to give his life some meaning. He commissions a ship and travels with Julia, his distant and damaged former love interest, to the Outer Island to collect back taxes from the region. Once there, Quentin stumbles across a fairy tale regarding seven golden keys. The search for one of the keys on a nearby island accidentally sends Quentin and Julia back to Earth with seemingly no way to return to Fillory. The attempt to return becomes Quentin and Julia's new, unintended quest. On Earth, Quentin and Julia team up with Josh and his friend Poppy, who try to aid them in their return. Along the way, their journey grows more complicated as they discover an even deeper quest with dire implications for magic users everywhere, and the four magicians are drawn into Fillory to help in the fateful search for the golden keys. Julia's backstory unfolds in parallel to Quentin's current adventures. Starting with her failed entrance exam to Brakebills, the elite magical college Quentin attended, Julia founders in depression, desperately seeking anything that can bring magic back into her life. After years of painstaking research and working her way up the hierarchy of a secret society of hedge witches, Julia eventually attains enough magical skill to catch the eye of an elite group of genius-level magicians who practice magic outside the closed world of the magical colleges. The group becomes like a family to her and trains her further in the magical arts. Things go awry, however, when the group decides on a powerful summoning in an attempt to further their magical learning, and the subsequent events leave Julia transformed.
32710403	/m/0h3lk23	Sitti Nurbaya	Marah Roesli			 In Padang in the early 20th century Dutch East Indies, Samsulbahri and Sitti Nurbaya–children of rich noblemen Sutan Mahmud Syah and Baginda Sulaiman–are teenage neighbours, classmates, and childhood friends. They begin to fall in love, but they are only able to admit it after Samsu tells Nurbaya that he will be going to Batavia (Jakarta) to study. After spending the afternoon at a nearby hillside, Samsu and Nurbaya kiss on her front porch. When they are caught by Nurbaya's father and the neighbours, Samsu is chased out of Padang and goes to Batavia. Meanwhile, Datuk Meringgih, jealous of Sulaiman's wealth and worried about the business competition, plans to bankrupt him. Meringgih's men destroy Sulaiman's holdings, driving him to bankruptcy and forcing him to borrow money from Meringgih. When Meringgih tries to collect, Nurbaya offers to become his wife if he will forgive her father's debt; Datuk Meringgih accepts. Writing to Samsu, Nurbaya tells him that they can never be together. However, after surviving Meringgih's increasingly violent outbursts, she runs away to Batavia to be with Samsu. They fall in love again. Upon receiving a letter regarding her father's death, Nurbaya hurries back to Padang, where she dies after unwittingly eating a cake poisoned by Meringgih's men on his orders. Receiving news of her death by letter, Samsu seemingly commits suicide. Ten years later, Meringgih leads an uprising against the Dutch colonial government to protest a recent tax increase. During the uprising, Samsu (now a soldier for the Dutch) meets Meringgih and kills him, but is mortally wounded himself. After meeting with his father and asking for forgiveness, he dies and is buried next to Nurbaya.
32718518	/m/0h3p9bx	In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays	Bertrand Russell	1935		 The following is the summary provided by Bertrand Russell in the preface of the book: "This book contains essays on such aspects of social questions as tend to be ignored in the clash of politics. It emphasizes the dangers of too much organization in the realm of thought and too much strenuousness in action. It explains why I cannot agree with either Communism or Fascism, and wherein I dissent from what both have in common. It maintains that the importance of knowledge consists not only in its direct practical utility but also in the fact that it promotes a widely contemplative habit of mind; on this ground, utility is to be found in much of the knowledge that is nowadays labelled 'useless.' There is a discussion of the connection of architecture with various social questions, more particularly the welfare of young children and the position of women. "Passing further away from politics, the volume, after discussing the characteristics of Western civilization and the chances of the human race being vanquished by insects, concludes with a discussion of the nature of the soul. The general thesis which binds the essays together is that the world is suffering from intolerance and bigotry, and from the belief that vigorous action is admirable even when misguided; whereas what is needed in our very complex modern society is calm consideration, with readiness to call dogmas in question and freedom of mind to do justice to the most diverse points of view."
32733479	/m/0h3nxx5	Rumours of Rain			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Martin, the narrator, a rich South African businessman, recalls the events of a weekend which settled the future of his family farm: he wants to sell it although he has promised his father on his death-bed that he will never do so, and although his brother wants to take it over. So he visits the farm for a weekend to tell his mother she will be "evicted". For the trip, he calls off a meeting with his lover Bea, who leaves him for that because she wanted to tell him that she is pregnant. It is a long drive to the farm and he does not often go there. He takes his son Louis along to get closer to him. Since Louis has come back from the Angolan War of Independence, he is traumatized and silent. The imagined good talk between them makes matters worse, though - the father begins by asking his son casually about his "trip to Angola", and when Louis finally opens up and talks about the atrocities of the war, they end up arguing about politics. The farm is extremely drought-stricken, and Martin's mother has invited a water diviner to look for an underground stream. Martin thinks this is ridiculous. When he then visits the family graveyard for one last time, loses his glasses, so that from then on the egocentric man is in every sense of the word "blind” to the events happening around him. At night, a black worker murders his wife and is taken to prison, leaving a baby and older children behind. This is regarded by the whites as "typical” tribal behavior and helps Martin to underline his opinion that his mother should not run the farm on her own because it is too dangerous - although the real reason is that he will get a good price for the farm. The visit of a few neighbours, who are also farmers, shows that most people in the area are selling their land, which is regarded by those who stay on their family farms as treason. When Martin – still almost blind without his glasses – gets lost in the jungle on a short walk, almost not making it back to the farm where he was born and raised, it is obvious that he does not belong here. Father and son drive home. The farm will be sold and Martin's mother will live with their family although she and Martin's wife do not get along. Louis gets an ultimatum to find a job, after which he disappears and never comes back.
32734940	/m/0h3wl88	Imaginings of Sand			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Kristien, the narrator, is a white academic who goes back to South Africa to visit her grandmother after an attack by black youths on the old lady which leaves her tied to bed. Before she dies, she wishes to tell Kristien the story of their Afrikaner family, a task which grandmother and granddaughter find very important. Memories of Kristiens past in London show that her life has been aimless until now; she has been passive towards things that happen to her, simply fulfilling the need to be away from South Africa and her parents (who had, during their lifetime, supported apartheid). Giving up her self-imposed exile is, at first, a resignation to Kristien, but gradually she learns that the country of her birth is changing towards the better. The first democratic elections are close, and through meetings with black and white people and the stories her grandmother tells her about their family's origins, which show almost only the female side of events and go back to a black foremother, Kristien learns to see South Africa as her home country. In the night before the elections, Kristiens sister kills her children, her violent, racist husband and herself to escape a life she can no longer bear to live. In the same night, the grandmother dies from the aftermath of the attack. Nevertheless, Kristien is optimistic about her future in South Africa. The family farm goes to the family of the black domestic worker.
32742811	/m/0h3t63r	The Cutting Room	Louise Welsh	2002	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 The novel, set in Glasgow, revolves around the central character, Rilke, an auctioneer who has agreed to quickly process and sell an inventory of largely valuable contents belonging to a recently deceased old man in exchange for a considerable fee. While sorting through some of the possessions in an attic, he comes across a collection of violent and potentially snuff pornography that appears to document the death of a mysterious young woman. Starting with local pornography trade contacts, Rilke sets out to discover this woman's identity and uncover the story behind her appearance in the disturbing photographs.
32745465	/m/0h3px2w	Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job	Willo Davis Roberts	1985	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Babysitter Darcy Ann Stevens gets a summer job babysitting three children from the rich Foster family. But the second day that Darcy babysits, they are kidnapped and driven to an old house. No one knows where they are, and the kidnappers are demanding ransom from the Foster parents to let them go. Darcy and the children have to outwit the kidnappers to escape.
32763919	/m/0h3wzwf	Storm Born	Richelle Mead	2008-08-01	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Eugenie Markham is investigating her latest paranormal case, a shoe which her customer claims is possessed. Armed with a Glock, two athames and a wand, she fights with the creature inhabiting the shoe, a keres. During battle, the keres propositions Eugenie, also referring to her by her real name, rather than her alias Odile which she uses when dealing with paranormal creatures to protect her private life. Irritated by this, Eugenie is prompted to send the keres to the Underworld instead of her normal banishment to the Otherworld. Back in her car, her secretary Lara notifies her over the phone of Will Delaney who claims that his sister Jasmine was abducted by faeries (although Eugenie refers to them as "gentry") a year and a half ago. Eugenie agrees to take up the case, despite the dangers of a human crossing to the Otherworld. Returning to her flat, Eugenie relaxes in her private sauna and then settles down for the night with a favourite pastime; a jigsaw puzzle. She meets with Wil Delaney to discuss the abduction of his sister Jasmine, a frightened young adult with several irrational phobias. Believing that Jasmine may have been abducted by gentry because of the high fertility rate in human women, she travels to the park Wil believes Jasmine to have been kidnapped from. Eugenie senses a magical presence and Wil tells her that a sprite told him that his sister was being held by a king named Aeson. He also tells her that the sprite referred to her by her real name again, which irritates her further. Fearing a trap, Eugenie leaves undecided about whether to pursue the case. Eugenie visits her mother and her step-father Roland, who confirms the existence of Aeson but warns her not to travel to the Otherworld despite the safety of a young girl, which he justifies by stating that gentry kidnap human women all the time and "that's the way it is." Eugenie argues that she wishes to travel to the Otherworld to save Jasmine. She returns home, where her flatmate Tim is entertaining women, alleging his Native American heritage before leaving to a concert with them. After another puzzle, Eugenie decides to go to a bar in attempts to forget her decision over Jasmine and the Otherworld. Inside the bar, Eugenie begins flirting with a stranger named Kiyo(taka). He casually admits his attraction and desire towards her and that he is a veterinarian with five cats (four named after the riders of the apocalypse - the fifth named Mr. Whiskers) and two dogs. The two dance erotically and then head back to Kiyo's apartment. They sleep together twice, during which Kiyo scratches her on the back. They are woken in the middle of the night by a strange presence. Eugenie identifies it as an ice elemental from the Otherworld, but before she can attack, Kiyo does so instead. The ice elemental calls her by her real name and propositions her. Eugenie is able to reach her wand and banishes the ice elemental back to the Otherworld, leaving her and Kiyo to demand explanations from each other. He displays knowledge of the Otherworld and jumps off of the balcony when Eugenie threatens to banish him. Feeling betrayed by Kiyo, Eugenie orders room service under his name for vengeance and then returns home. She eventually decides to travel to the Otherworld to find Jasmine and investigate the strange actions of the creatures appearing in the human world, much to her mother's displeasure. Roland reassures her over the sexual soliciting of the creatures. Eugenie goes home and summons Volusian, her spirit servant who tells her that Aeson is king of the Alder Land and is too powerful for her to fight alone. He suggests that Eugenie ask help from Dorian, king of the Oak Land, but she rejects this idea because of her mistrust for all gentry. Instead, she summons two other spirits named Nandi and Finn, but they also believe an alliance with Dorian is the most practical. She refuses once more and decides to storm Aeson's castle to rescue Jasmine. Wil Delaney insists on accompanying her, Eugenie agrees believing it is his own fault if he is killed, taking Nandi, Finn and Volusian as well. They travel to a crossroad within the human world and travel to the Otherworld, finding themselves in the Rowan Land. After a confusing journey where Eugenie believes to have seen a fox watching her, they are attacked by horse-ridden guards, although the group fight they are outnumbered and captured. One of the guards, Rurik, identifies her as Eugenie Markham and he reveals himself as the ice elemental who attempted to rape her. She tells another guard, Shaya, that she demands to speak with King Dorian, and they reluctantly take the group to the castle. Eugenie and her group meet with King Dorian, who is unfazed by her demands and takes an immediate interest in her. He offers her hospitality and protection, inviting her to dinner but she refuses to eat. Eugenie notices how exhibitionist the gentry are, the dinner guests nervously challenge her and object to her casualness and lack of respect towards Dorian. However, the guests are intrigued when Eugenie brings up the topic of modern medicine, particularly fertility treatments and IVF. Dorian then escorts Eugenie to his bedroom to talk privately. Although she tries to inform him about Jasmine and Aeson, he tells her the story about the Storm King, a powerful warlord who ruled a vast area of the Otherworld. Dorian tells her that Storm King was killed by Roland Markham - Eugenie's step-father, and then agrees to send a spy to help her to infiltrate Aeson's castle. Curiously, Eugenie shows him the scratches given to her by Kiyo, and Dorian states that it is a means of tracking her. He then offers to fight by her side against Aeson if Eugenie agrees to sleep with him, but stating that she will eventually agree despite her current answer. Dorian introduces her to Gawyn, who travels with Eugenie and friends to Aeson's castle, but the guards are aware of her presence and capture her. Wil Delaney confesses to betraying Eugenie, giving her to Aeson in exchange for Jasmine. Aeson reveals his wish to "beget the heir" with Eugenie, and is surprised by her confusion to the reference. Aeson tells Eugenie that Storm King is her real father, and before he can take her away, a fox attacks him and transforms into Kiyo, although shocked Eugenie attempts to rescue Jasmine, but the girl attacks her and runs to help Aeson, who refers to Eugenie as "Storm Daughter" and suggests that she asks Roland who her real father is. Eugenie and her friends are forced to flee back to the human world. They awake in the human world, Eugenie tries to attack Wil, but instead dismisses him. She asks Finn what Kiyo is, and he replies that Kiyo is a half-kitsune. Volusian confirms Aeson's claim that Eugenie is the daughter of Storm King, who abducted her mother and impregnated her. In order to protect her, Roland killed Storm King when he attempted to take Eugenie away to the Otherworld. Volusian also tells Eugenie of a prophecy dictating that her first son will reconquer the human world, as was Storm King's vision, thus the reason for the propositions made by many of the Otherworld creatures. A few days later, Eugenie confronts Roland and her mother over the claims, they confirm it, telling her that Storm King lured her out to a crossroad to take her to the Otherworld, but she fought back. Roland then hypnotised her and repressed her memories. She goes to her car and sees Kiyo watching her in his fox form, angry at everybody's deceit, Eugenie leaves. In her private sauna, she recalls one of the suppressed memories about Storm King, waking up to a strange presence in her home. She is attacked by a Gray Man who attempts to rape her, but she escapes and defeats them, shortly after Kiyo storms into her home. She is angry at him for lying and believes that he slept with her to fulfill the prophecy, but retorts that they used contraception. He tells her that Maiwenn, the Willow Queen asked him to find her and mark her to make sure that the prophecy did not come true, as she is openly opposed to Storm King, unlike Dorian who openly supported him. Kiyo tells her that he will protect her from paranormal attacks, wishing to be friends if they cannot be lovers. After Kiyo leaves, she summons Volusian and he tells her to claim her heritage as the daughter of Storm King to intimidate those trying to attack her, and that King Dorian is helping to protect her, however they both suspect he has ulterior motives. Eugenie keeps contact with Kiyo, who watches over her as a fox. Her mother apologises to her and she forgives her, Eugenie asks her if she was ever happy with Storm King, but her mother tells her that she hated every second of her imprisonment, and that Eugenie inherited his violet eyes. Suddenly, the house is attacked by spirits who knock her mother unconscious and capture Eugenie. A mud elemental appears, threatening to kill her mother if she doesn't submit to him. Unexpectedly, the mud elemental and the spirits are killed by lightning which she unconsciously summons. Eugenie collapses, awakening to her mother, Kiyo and Queen Maiwenn - who is relieved that Eugenie has no desire to fulfill the prophecy. Wishing to control her magic, Eugenie travels to the Otherworld to ask Dorian to teach her. He tells her not to trust Maiwenn as she has no reason to keep her alive, whereas he wishes Storm King's heir to be born, and will protect her. He offers to teach her if she sleeps with him, she refuses and they agree to pretend to be lovers, Dorian kisses her and notes how she is tense around him. In the human world, Kiyo confronts Eugenie about the rumours and she explains the situation, he reveals that he and Maiwenn used to be a couple. They both travel to an astronomy group on a hill, afterwards they almost have sex in their parked car, but are attacked by a hybrid creature. Kiyo transforms into a giant fox rather than a smaller counterpart. Eugenie realises that the creature wishes to kill her instead, she defeats it but is injured and becomes annoyed when Kiyo doesn't immediately transform out of his fox form. She wakes up at home and Kiyo explains that being a "superfox" is harder to transform out of. Dorian travels to the human world to teach her magic. She fails to locate a bowl of water while blindfolded and bound with cords, causing it to rain instead. Dorian invites Eugenie to his Beltane ball, the day before she and Kiyo have sex in the shower, while sleeping Eugenie has a dream about Storm King, waking up flustered she proceeds to have sex with Kiyo without contraception. Eugenie attends the Beltane ball but is pestered by potential suitors, including Aeson who offers to swap her for Jasmine. He reveals to Eugenie that Maiwenn is pregnant with Kiyo's child, she breaks up with him out of anger. Meeting Dorian, she agrees to sleep with him to help rescue Jasmine, Dorian initially refuses out of belief that she is doing it to get revenge on Kiyo, but eventually agrees. However, he decides not to after realising that Eugenie doesn't want him and doesn't relax around him. Instead, they practice magical control and she is able to locate the water objects. The next day in the human world, they practice again but are attacked by water spirits who attempt to kill her, but Dorian is able to use his magic to defeat them. Suspicious, Eugenie travels to Maiwenn's castle to confront her, she warns her about threat's from Dorian's enemies. She visits Dorian and advances her magic abilities, they try to sleep together but Eugenie is still too uneasy. Late at night, she asks him to tie her up and they then sleep together, afterwards Dorian agrees to assist her in seizing Aeson's castle. Eugenie and Dorian's groups advance towards Aeson's castle, but they are suddenly ambushed. Aeson attacks her but Dorian steps in and is caught by Aeson's fire abilities. Cornering the attack group, Aeson is able to send Nandi to the Underworld, forcing Eugenie to call a surrender. Aeson continues to torture Dorian through burning, but Eugenie summons the water out of Aeson's body; blowing him up. Burnt and injured, Dorian tricks Eugenie into claiming the Alder Land as her own kingdom, transforming it into a replica of the Tucson desert. Jasmine appears and accuses Eugenie of stealing the land which was promised to her, and that she and Eugenie are half-sisters through the Storm King. Finn reveals that he allied with Jasmine, spread Eugenie's real name around and told Aeson of the coming attack. Furious, Eugenie banishes Finn to the Underworld. Jasmine summons water spirits and Eugenie works out that Jasmine sent the creatures to kill her instead of Maiwenn. Rurik, Shaya and the other guards fight against the spirits. Jasmine runs away as her group loses, but Kiyo is killed. Distraught, Eugenie travels to the Underworld to bring his spirit back to his body. Transfigured into a black swan, she flies through the Underworld, but she is attacked by the creatures she previously banished. Transformed back into her human form, she meets with her father, Storm King who tells her that Jasmine will willingly give birth to the heir even if Eugenie refuses. Aeson appears and tries to assault her, she submits and wakes up in a vision in which she is wearing Storm King's crown, overlooking an Otherworld army and holding a baby. Dorian appears at her side as her equal. The vision ends and she finds Kiyo, but is obstructed by the goddess Persephone. The goddess promises to give Kiyo's soul back if Eugenie will give up her love for him. Eugenie agrees, Kiyo's soul sent back to the Otherworld, at the last moment Persephone breaks the contract and sends her back as well. Back in the Otherworld, Eugenie confronts Dorian over forcing her to become queen of Aeson's kingdom. He tries to convince her to have an heir before Jasmine, and then tells Eugenie that he loves her as she loves Kiyo. She plans to ignore the land, he angrily tells her it is impossible and that the land is now the Thorn Land, and she the Thorn Queen. She returns home and patches up her relationship with Kiyo. Volusian appears and warns her about Dorian and Kiyo. The book ends when Eugenie drops a glass pitcher of water and is able to control both water and air, telling Tim that she wants to learn more.
32767606	/m/0h3m13l	The History of Orkney Literature		2010	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book is the first examination and exploration of literary works from, or otherwise focused on, the islands of Orkney in Scotland. The published works of key Orcadian poets and novelists such as George Mackay Brown and Edwin Muir are prominently assessed. Hall also evaluates the myriad influences on the development of literature in Orkney, exploring the role of the archipelago's Nordic roots and its historical reliance on fishing, farming and foreign trade.
32776358	/m/0h3q350	Stands a Shadow	Col Buchanan		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story picks up where the first book ended.Ash is in Q’os the capital of Lanstrada, the Mannian heartland. Staking out the Temple of Whispers perusing his personal vendetta to kill the Matriarch - Sasheen. The "Diplomat" Ché is also in Q'os.After the successful attack on the Rōshun he is beginning to question his own beliefs. Sasheen has made him her personal Diplomat and showing him the Head of Lucian which is kept alive by being immersed in a jar of Royal Milk also gave him his first taste of the Royal Milk which is a powerful narcotic. Ash attempts to assassinate Sasheen during a procession with a crossbow but doesn't go through with it as she's surrounded with glass, which ash suspects is strong enough that only explosives can break it. He follows her till she boards a ship and after much thought he follows her by diving into the water. Ché meets Guan,the priest on the flagship of the fleet heading towards Khos.Guan and his sister,Swan are part of Sasheen’s travelling entourage. Ash is hiding in the bilge of one of the ships staying alive by stealing food and water in the night not knowing where hes heading. Sasheen assigns Che a diplomatic task, to make an example of the lover of General Romano in retaliation to him slandering her son while intoxicated. The party reaches the island of Lagos,whose entire population was put to death on the orders of the Matriarch. While the General taking care of formalities as they near the harbor (Chir) Che goes to his room and strangles his lover(Topo) and deposits his body in the water heater not knowing hes still alive once he realizes topo is still alive & and is being boiled alive he leaves him there. An enraged General Romano insults Sasheen's dead son to her face. Her advisers convince her not to punish him (kill him). The ship ash is on sinks in a storm and he washes up on a beach.He drags himself to a fire he sees and manages to scare off a few sailors about to assault a group of women before he passes out. Curl a survivor of from the island of Lagos, who works as a prostitute in Bar-Khos enlists herself in the army as a medic. On the orders of general Creed of Khos all convicted prisoners and those deemed too unfit for duty are enlisted into the Army. One of them is Bull who was previously discharged from the army for assaulting his senior officer. He later became a pit-fighter. He was found drenched in the blood of Adrianos, a commander who led the last successful offensive against the Imperial Fourth Army. Ash agrees to become the bodyguard of Mistress Cheer and her group of women who are prostitutes following the army. Ash sneaks away in the night and makes his way to the Matriarch's tent which is heavily guarded. He makes his way to her tent by killing a sentry and stealing his clothes and almost reaches the enclosure. Inside Sasheen and her inner circle are having an orgy with narcotics and slaves in celebration of having landed with the army, Che is also present although he's not participating. The next morning soldiers looking for the person who killed the guard question ash but Mistress Cheer covers for him. He parts ways with her after refusing to answer her questions. Sasheen sends Alarum as her ambassador to general creed. He lays out the terms of surrender to creed with the threat that if he refuses every person of Khos will be killed and also offers him an ornate ceremonial dagger of mann whose purpose is to take once own life. Creed attacks the Mann army in the night at first they make good progress but are later halted taking heavy losses. In the confusion ash tries to reach Sasheen, che shoots Sasheen in the confusion and ash collapses after he almost reaches her. Che grabs ash and they escape. Sasheen is still alive but barely. The Khos army reaches the city of Tume,they plan for a retreat by destroying the bridge. Ash, Che and curl are also in the city. While ash is recovering che meets curl and they escape from the twins guan and swan who were sent to kill che as hes been labeled a traitor. Once it became clear that the Tume cannot be held creed and the soldiers abandon Tume, However there are still several people in the city itself including ash, che and curl. Sasheen has been poisoned by che's bullet. Only the Royal milk is helping her survive. General Romano who became aware of this is plotting his coup. Ash sees the banner of Sasheen and sets out to kill her, Che and curl escape the city by swimming through the lake. Che gives curl his waterlogged gun and turns back to hunt the twins who are hunting him and kills both of them. Curl whos waiting near the pickup point sees and picks up che whos injured. They both get on the airship but ash whos changes him mind about killing sasheen and returns misses getting on the airship and is stranded in Tume surrounded by the mann army. He escapes by diving into the lake but the mann soldiers are on the banks and looking for any who try to escape that way. Sasheen who's dying from the poison gives her final order to Archgeneral Sparus that Romano must not be allowed to be her successor and if necessary to kill him and soon succumbs to the poison. Sparus and Romano meet after her death and Sparus informs Romano of her last orders and that he intends to follow them. Romano tries to kill him with poison but fails and flees. Ash survives his escape attempt and reaches safety in the woods. Che lets slip to Curl that hes Mannian and curl turns him over to the Khos Specials. Bhan and Bull who were captured in the first battle and were tortured for information manage to escape with some other prisoners. Ash finds Reese and tells her of her son's(Nico) death. She assaults him in her grief and tells him to leave.Ash eventually makes his way to Bar-Khos and meeting with as old contact learns of the destruction of Sato. Ash wanders around till he reaches Bilge Town,he finds a bar and decides to drink himself out of his misery. He gets grunk and falls asleep outside while its reining from where a man named Meer picks him up and takes him to his home. Meer talks of the teaching of the great fool and tells ash he will talk about the The Isles of Sky if ash tells him about the land of Honshu. Later meer tells ash that he wishes to accompany Ash to seto to make an offer to the remaining Rōshun and in return he will help ash with his loss. In the Temple of Whispers, Kira Sasheen's mother speaks before the other lords and ladies to decide who Sasheen's successor will be and she reveals her plans to concur the land of Zanzahar within an year of the fall of the free ports. EPILOGUE Meer takes ash to Sato and the remains of the Monastery via an air ship. He finds several survivors of the Rōshun order. Coya makes the remaining Rōshun his offer to choose a side and if in doing so they are no longer Rōshun, he reminds them that all things change. Ash later confides with Kosh that Meer has offered him a way of bringing back Nico, a way found in the Isles of Sky.
32792047	/m/0h3xhzs	Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me		2011-05-10		 The book consists of humorous essays written by Handler's coworkers and family members about lies and pranks Handler has pulled on them.
32802608	/m/0h3shml	The Borrowers Afloat	Mary Norton	1959		 In this third of the Borrowers series, the Clock family begins living in the house of a human boy named Tom. The borrowers find that they will starve because Tom and his uncle are moving away. They need to leave but Tom's pet weasel or ferret is outside the door. Luckily, the animal still has the bell that Tom put on it, but they know they cannot outrun such a swift animal. Just when things are looking grim, Spiller returns via a secret passage: he has come through the drains underneath the house. Spiller says that he has not told the rest of the borrowers about the drains because they never asked. While deciding where to go, Spiller tells them that they might go to Little Fordham which is actually a replica village. The place has been a bit of a legend with all Borrowers: a whole village made for Borrower size residents with plenty of food from the visiting big people. Spiller lets them stay in one of his hide out places, a tea kettle, while he goes and investigates the matter for them. During the waiting period, the rain comes down and causes the kettle to be put adrift downstream. The Clocks decide that their best chances are to hope that Spiller will realize what has happened and find them. For the most part there aren't many frightening adventures, but they lose the kettle some time after it gets stuck in some trash. But while still on the river, Mild Eye, the gypsy who nearly caught them before, discovers them. The Clock family is trapped; none of them can swim.
32803482	/m/0h3lmtx	Other Electricities	Ander Monson	2005-05-01	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Other Electricities is based on experiences Monson had as a child growing up on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The novel focuses on the characters and their interactions with one another in a small town in Upper Michigan. Much of the book revolves around the central character "Yr Protagonist" and his interactions with his friends and family. The opening chapter describes a police officer alerting the family of Liz, Yr's girlfriend, being killed in a snowmobile crash in a frozen river, which is the basis of much of the novel. Some reviewers speculate that Yr Protagonist is a semi-autobiographical character.
32810454	/m/0h3xj28	Boyracers	Alan Bissett	2001	{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The narrative centres on 16 year-old Falkirk resident Alvin and his adventures with three slightly older friends. Alvin’s formative development is tracked in the context of the group’s activities, including boy-racing around the town in a car called Belinda and engaging in debates about film and music. He spends much of his time at school attempting to gain the attention of Tyra, his love interest, but is constantly hindered by Connor Livingston, an upper-middle class prefect who mocks Alvin and sneers at his social class, whilst also being interested in Tyra himself. As the most intellectually gifted of the group, Alvin struggles with the dilemma of choosing to continue his generally enjoyable local life or to leave his friends and the town behind and attend University.
32812504	/m/0h3qxms	The Origin of German Tragic Drama				 Instead of focusing on the more famous examples of baroque drama from around the world, such as Pedro Calderón de la Barca and William Shakespeare, Benjamin chose to write about the minor German dramatists of the 16th and 17th century: Martin Opitz, Andreas Gryphius, Johann Christian Hallmann, Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein, and August Adolf von Haugwitz. For him, these playwrights – who were seen as too crude, dogmatic, and violent by earlier critics to be considered true artists – best reflected the unique cultural and historical climate of their time. Benjamin singles out the theme of "sovereign violence" as the most important unifying feature of the German "trauerspiel" or "mourning play." In their obsessive focus on courtly intrigue and princely bloodlust, these playwrights break with the mythic tradition of classical tragedy and create a new aesthetic based on the tense interplay between Christian eschatology and human history. Foreshadowing his later interest in the concept of history, Benjamin concludes that, in these plays, history "loses the eschatological certainty of its redemptive conclusion, and becomes secularized into a mere natural setting for the profane struggle over political power."
32812616	/m/0h3r_k3	Machine Man	Max Barry	2011-08-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel first begins with Charles rummaging around looking for his phone. As he gets more and more frustrated being unable to find it, he decides to arrive at work. During an operation involving 'The Clamp', a giant steel plated holding device, Charles notices his phone in the background and -while not paying attention- crushes his leg with it.
32817583	/m/0h3vp17	The Giant Under The Snow	John Gordon	1968-10		 On a school field trip Jonk Winters, an independent-minded teenage girl, is attacked by a large black dog whilst exploring the nearby woods where she has found a mysterious and rather old buckle. She is rescued from the dog by a woman named Elizabeth Goodenough, who possesses magical powers. After she goes home, Jonk is stalked by the dog and its curious stone-faced master. Jonk's friend, Bill has read of a local legend that describes how a Green Man once strode across the countryside from Wiltshire to East Anglia. Believing the legend is the key to understanding Jonk's experience in the woods, Jonk, Bill and their rather sceptical friend Arf set out to solve the riddle of the Green Man. It soon becomes apparent that the stone-faced man is an ancient warlord who needs the golden buckle to regain his malevolent power. The buckle is the key to victory and the trio soon find themselves under attack from the minions of the warlord, the terrifying 'leather men', and are relentlessly followed by the black dog. However, cleverly guided by Elizabeth and aided by the gift of flight, Jonk and her friends determine to defeat the warlord and his sinister allies at any cost.
32822424	/m/0h3tp4c	Strange Son		2007	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 Portia Iversen's second son Dov, born in 1992, seemed normal as a baby. By the age of two, he reacted atypically to noises and also made odd noises himself. By the time he was three years old, he was unable to speak and was fascinated by objects. This led to a diagnosis of autism. At the age of eight, Dov was still uncommunicative. Portia heard about an autistic boy named Tito that lived in Bangalore, India with his mother, Soma Mukhopadhyay. Soma had taught her son how to communicate, write poetry, and explain how the poetry made him feel. This story inspired Portia to want to help her own son in the same manner. She invited Soma and Tito to California for a month in the hope that Soma could help her son become communicative. Soma's methods were unusual but she managed to help Dov start communicating with his parents.
32830636	/m/0h3x574	The Ship of Ishtar	A. Merritt	1924	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The archaeologist hero, Kenton, receives a mysterious ancient Babylonian artifact, which he discovers contains an incredibly detailed model of a ship. A dizzy spell casts Kenton onto the deck of the ship, which becomes a full-sized vessel sailing an eternal sea. At one end is Sharane the assistant priestess of Ishtar and her female minions, and at the other is Klaneth the assistant priest of Nergal and his male minions, representatives of two opposed deities. None of them can cross an invisible barrier at the midline of the ship, but Kenton can. His arrival destabilizes a situation that had been frozen for 6,000 years, and fantastic adventures ensue. The novel is not only a rousing fantasy adventure story, but a philosophical exploration of the relationship between material reality and the abstract concepts through which humans struggle to understand it. The reason the ship has been frozen in time is that Zarpanit the head priestess of Ishtar and Alusar the head priest of Nergal fell in love, and were in the midst of making love when their deities possessed them. This placed the hostile deities in an untenable position, especially as they represented cosmic forces that must be kept separate. The result was an imbalance between stability and instability in the universe, freezing the ship in time and rendering unstable its connection to the reality inhabited by the reader. In a study of fantasy and science fiction literature, William Sims Bainbridge (1986: 136) explained: "The author uses evocative language and intense images to convey a sense of the marvelous and mysterious. It is Kenton's fate to intervene in the frozen cosmic struggle between Ishtar and Nergal, to fall in love with Sharane, and to gain Klaneth as his mortal enemy. The book builds tension through the device of letting Kenton's tie to the ship periodically become so weak that he falls back, unwilling, to his New York home. Kenton's tenuous psychic connection to the ship represents the reader's involvement in the fantasy. At any moment the ship may fade from reality, and both Kenton and the reader will be imprisoned in the mundane world of the everyday."
32839328	/m/0h3xlc3	Heaven Is for Real	Todd Burpo	2010-11-02		 Todd Burpo, a Christian pastor, says that during the months after emergency surgery, Colton began describing events and people that seemed impossible for him to have seen or met. Examples include his miscarried sister, who no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born. Colton also made other extra-biblical claims that he had personally sat in Jesus' lap, while the angels sang songs to him, as, for example, that he saw the Virgin Mary standing beside Jesus in Heaven. Within three weeks of its November 2010 release, the book debuted at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list. By January 2011, there were 200,000 copies in print, and the book hit #1 on the New York Times list.
32840344	/m/0h3n7gl	O Terceiro Travesseiro			{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 O Terceiro Travesseiro covers the true story of a love triangle formed by three youths - two boys and a girl. Marcus is a teenager who finds himself hopelessly in love with Mr Renato, who soon ends up delivering also the passion, which is disturbed by the appearance of Beatrice in their lives (and relationship). The relationship intensifies and the three decide to share the same apartment, the same bed and even love. However, in the first day of this new life, Renato dies in a car accident and leaves Marcus in a fight like no other.
32844721	/m/0h3q_3f	The Vicar of Bullhampton	Anthony Trollope			 The Vicar of Bullhampton is set in a small town in Wiltshire. It develops three subplots, all connected with Frank Fenwick, the eponymous vicar. The first subplot involves the courtship of Mary Lowther, a childhood friend of the vicar's wife. Harry Gilmore, a Bullhampton squire and a friend of the Fenwicks, falls deeply in love with her. Mary recognizes that Gilmore is a good man, but she fears that she does not adore him as a woman should adore the man she marries. The Fenwicks and her guardian aunt all urge her to accept his proposal, telling her that the affection she does not now feel will come after marriage. In the face of this advice, she does not reject Gilmore outright, but asks for time to consider. Mary finds the love she seeks in her second cousin, Captain Walter Marrable. He falls in love with her, and she joyously accepts his offer of marriage. However, misfortune strikes in the form of Colonel Marrable, the Captain's father, who swindles his son out of the fortune left him by his late mother. The impoverished Captain fears that he will have to return to India with his regiment; he and Mary, each unwilling to inflict poverty on the other, end their engagement by mutual consent and with mutual regret. Mary, disspirited, yields to Gilmore's importunements, warning him that theirs must be a long engagement and that she will end it if Captain Marrable finds himself able to marry a woman without a fortune. This comes to pass: the death of the Captain's cousin, the heir to the family's baronetcy, makes him the likely eventual heir. The current Baronet accepts the Captain as his heir, buying out the Colonel's interest to prevent his squandering the family fortune. The two lovers are reunited, leaving Gilmore bitter and despondent. The second subplot involves the family of Bullhampton's miller, Jacob Brattle. His youngest son, Sam, is a hard worker at the mill; but has fallen in with bad companions, and is often absent from home. Sam's sister Carry is worse off yet: having yielded to a seducer, she has been disowned by her father, and is living a life of sin in an unknown location. When a Bullhampton farmer is murdered in the course of a burglary, suspicion falls on Sam Brattle and his associates. Fenwick believes in Sam's innocence, and acts as one of his bondsmen. Through Sam he discovers Carry's whereabouts, and resolves to rescue her if he can. He finds her a temporary home, but it becomes clear to him that the only permanent solution must involve bringing her back into the Brattle family, which means winning her father's forgiveness. Carry leaves the home that Fenwick has found her and wanders distraught. Eventually, she returns to the mill, half resolved to see her old home and then drown herself in the millstream. There she is greeted lovingly by her mother and sister. Her father reluctantly allows her to remain in the family home; eventually he too forgives her, although he can never forget the shame she has brought on the family. Carry remains with her family for the rest of her life, but although she has returned to decency, her past ensures that she will never find an honest husband. Sam is never charged with the murder, although one of his former associates is hanged for it. He continues to work at the mill, and eventually marries a Bullhampton girl. A third subplot centers on the relationship between Fenwick, Mr. Puddleham, the village's Methodist minister, and the Marquis of Trowbridge, Bullhampton's principal landowner. The marquis believes that Sam Brattle is guilty of the murder, and is angered by Fenwick's support for him. He spreads rumours about Fenwick's relations with Carry Brattle, and grants Puddleham permission to build a chapel on a piece of land neighbouring Fenwick's residence, where he hopes that the sight of it and the sound of its bell will annoy the vicar. Fenwick tries to reconcile himself to the existence of the chapel, but it subsequently comes to light that the land does not belong to the marquis, and is instead part of the parish's glebe. The embarrassed marquis pays to move the chapel to a new location, and through the intervention of his son, a suave Member of Parliament, he and Fenwick are reconciled.
32852303	/m/0dgphlm	The Glamour Chase				 An Archaeological dig in 1936 unearths relics of another time... and, as the The Doctor, Amy and Rory realise, another place. Another planet. But if Enola Porter, noted adventuress, has really found evidence of an alien civilisation, how come she isn't famous? Why has Rory never heard of her? Added to that, since Amy's been traveling with him for a while now, why does she now think The Doctor is from Mars? As the ancient spaceship re-activates, the Doctor discovers that nothing and no-one can be trusted. The things that seem most real could actually be literal fabrications - and very deadly indeed. Who can the Doctor believe when no one is what they seem? And how can he defeat an enemy who can bend matter itself at its will? For the Doctor, Amy and Rory - and all of humanity - the buried secrets of the past are very much a threat to the present.
32856399	/m/0h548vh	Cinder		2012-01-03	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"}	 Cinder is a cyborg living in New Beijing after World War IV, with her step-mother, Adri, and her two step sisters, Pearl and Peony. Cinder owns a booth in the market place, where she works as a mechanic with the family's android, Iko. While she is working, she meets Prince Kai, who asks her to fix his android, Nainsi. After Kai leaves, the market is evacuated because a baker, Chang Sacha, has been infected. Prince Kai's father, Emperor Rikan, is currently sick with letumosis, otherwise known as the Blue Fever, a plague that is terrorizing the Commonwealth. There have been no plague survivors. While in the junkyard, Cinder, Iko, and Peony, who are looking for a new mag belt for Adri's hover car, They discover an old fashioned car, which Cinder plans to take home and repair. At the same time, Peony contracts the plague, and is taken away. When Cinder returns home, Adri is in grief and infuriated, blaming Cinder for her daughter's imminent death, thinking that, even though Cinder doesn't have the plague, she must have passed it from Chang Sacha to Peony. She has Cinder taken to the palace against her will, so that Cinder will be used for letumosis research. Cinder puts up a fight, taking out two med-droids, but is tasered by a third droid, and is taken in unconscious. Dr. Erland, a researcher in the palace, draws her blood, and when Cinder awakes, opens up her control panel and scans her, revealing that she is 36.28% not human. The doctor injects her with tagged letumosis pathogens, and waits for them to take effect so he can give her an antidote. But after several minutes, Cinder's immune system kicks in, and the pathogens disappear. After drawing another blood sample, the doctor moves her to another lab, and comes to talk to her in person, instead of over an intercom like before. Cinder tries to attack him with a wrench hidden in her metal calf, but the doctor makes her feel tired and safe, and persuades her not to. Erland tells her that she is actually immune to the plague, and questions her about her childhood. Cinder tells him the truth - that she was told she was in a hover car crash that killed her parents when she was eleven, and was given a control panel, a metal hand, and a metal foot to replace her real limbs that she lost, and that she does not remember anything before her surgery. Cinder was taken to the Eastern Commonwealth, and Linh Garan, who soon died of the plague, became her guardian. Kai, discouraged at his father's condition, walks down to Dr. Erland's lab, but runs into Sybil Mira in the elevator. Sybil is the head thaumaturge to Queen Levana, who rules over a colony on the moon, and is on Earth to discuss an alliance between Luna and the Commonwealth. Kai discusses Princess Selene, Queen Levana's niece and the only heir to the Lunar Crown with Konn Torin after she leaves. Selene died in a fire when she was three, but there are many theories speculating that she is in hiding on Earth, since the only body parts found was her foot and a hand. Kai wants to find Selene and put her on the throne instead of Levana, but Torin tells him that Selene is dead, and to put the theories out of his mind. The doctor asks to do a small experiment on Cinder, and she agrees. Erland pinches the vertebrae above her shoulders, and does something, knocking her unconscious. Cinder wakes up to see Dr. Erland and Prince Kai over her. She is fine, and Kai helps her stand, asking what happened to her. Dr. Erland lies, and tells Kai that he was just adjusting her spine, and that the reason she is at the palace is that she is repairing a med-droid. Cinder exists the palace, promising to comm Kai when she had fixed Nainsi, and that she'd be back tomorrow to help Dr. Erland. She walks back to Adri's apartment, argues with Adri, and reunites with Iko. Cinder makes a plan to use the car she and Peony found to leave New Bejjing. And to also take Peony's ID chip and Iko's personality chip with her. During the night, Emperor Rikan dies. Minutes after his death, Kai receives a comm from Queen Levana who tells him that she herself will be coming down to the Common wealth to discuss and alliance with him, but finishes the message before Kai can protest. That morning, Cinder is awoken with a comm that informs her that Peony has entered the third stage of letumosis. Cinder goes to visit her in the letumosis quarantine to visit Peony, giving her a blanket and promising to find an antidote. On her way out of the quarantine, she encounters Chang Sacha, who makes promise to bring her son, Sunto, then dies. A med-droid wheeled up to Sacha's bed out took out a scalpel, and cut into Sacha's wrist. Cinder asks the droid what it is doing, and it answers that it is taking out Sacha's ID chip. At the palace, Cinder meets Kai in the halls and walks with him down to the lab. Kai tells her that the Lunar Queen is coming to Earth, and asks her to the annual ball. Shocked, Cinder declines. When Kai is gone, Cinder asks Dr. Erland about the med-droid who cut out Chang Sacha's ID chip. Dr. Erland then tells her about the practice of extracting ID chips from dead patients. He also tells Cinder about the illegal immigration of lunars to Earth. Cinder is told about why lunars fear mirrors. She then tells Dr. Erland about the Queens arrival.
32860050	/m/0hhqnmn	Before I Go to Sleep	S. J. Watson	2011-04	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The novel is a psychological thriller about a woman suffering from amnesia. She wakes every day with no knowledge of who she is and the novel follows her as she tries to reconstruct her memories from a journal she has been keeping. She learns that she has been seeing a doctor who is helping her to recover her memory, that her name is Christine Lucas, that she is 47 years old and married and has a son. As her journal grows it casts doubts on the truth behind this knowledge and sets her on a terrifying journey of discovery.
32861594	/m/0h3nwgn	Flowers in the Sand	Clive Algar	2011	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Trapped by tragic circumstances in a dusty Namaqualand mining town during the Anglo-Boer War, Emma Richardson must degrade herself in order to survive. Then the town is besieged by Boer fighters, led by their tortured commandant Manie Smit, and Emma is faced with a fateful choice. With her vision of the ephemeral desert flowers in her mind, she sets out alone on foot by night on a desperate mission to create a new future for herself.
32870694	/m/0h3mt1v	Maggie Goes on a Diet			{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The book is about Maggie, a 14 year old girl who goes from being obese to thin. At the beginning of the book Maggie is bullied for being obese and she eats lots of bread and cheese in order to feel good. As time goes on she learns that if she is fat she will be bullied and decides to take action by losing weight. After eating healthier food such as fruit and oatmeal, and exercising more, she loses weight, her bullies become friends and she becomes very popular. She starts playing sports and at the end of the book she becomes a star soccer player.
32890215	/m/0h3snqc	Letters from the Afterworld	T.L. Orcutt		{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy", "/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 The third novel in The Path of Return Trilogy, Letters from the Afterworld, begins with Rickshaw reminiscing about his wedding to Crystal Meadows a year before. Crystal is an almost blind fortuneteller, daughter of Carmela de Avila, and a former apprentice on the Path of Return. The event brought together the five members of the Posse, a renegade faction of Sigma Nu Mu at Berkeley. Following a reunion nostalgia that flushes out Rickshaw’s early family life and friends, Rickshaw attends an advertised seance sponsored by Paradigm Research Institute at Kirkwood Inn in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, conducted by a famous medium with a gift for automatic writing. At Kirkwood Inn, he meets new friends and during the seance receives a channeled letter for his friend Murdock. According to the afterworld letter, Murdock is on a soul recall list of people whose souls prematurely inhabited their selected bodies this time around on planet Earth. Besides Murdock, other friends of Rickshaw and Crystal have dreams of similar recall letters and incur near fatal illnesses and accidents to ensure they will comply with the letters’ intentionally vague instructioins. Rickshaw and Crystal try to get a hold of Jamayah who is on another sailing adventure in Cabo San Lucas. Jamayah seems reluctant to respond, but eventually gets word to Rickshaw to seek out Raoul - destination unknown. Eventually desperate, Rickshaw travels to Tijuana to find Raoul. Surprisingly, Juan (an acquaintance in Jamayah: Adventures on the Path of Return), finds Rickshaw and takes him to his brother’s (Carlos) mobile home at Rosarita Beach. Juan informs Rickshaw that Jamayah believes hybrid souls (souls who formerly incarnated on an alien planet), are exploiting humans for enzymatic blood transfusions. The hybrid souls’ former embodied lives limited their current metabolism, which translates to a shorter life span and more illnesses. The tradeoff is they have amazing psychic powers. Juan knows because he is a hybrid soul himself, once healed by Jamayah, who we discover was a restoration master (one who prepares souls for return) between embodied lives. Stakes are raised when Murdock and Rattlesnake Dan are kidnapped and a ten year old son of Crystal’s friend is murdered. Rickshaw, Jamayah, SBL, Weird Willie, Raoul, Juan, Apollo, and a modern day Billy the Kid mobilize the Cosmic Rangers and drive to Mexico to find Murdock and Rattlesnake Dan. After finding a torched police car and three dead policemen, they discover a sustainable society of thousands of hybrid souls living underground, and with a medical clinic for the enzymatic blood transfusions that will extend their longevity and restore the health of their soul-race. As becomes necessary, all of the hybrid souls are in instant communication with each another by telepathy. The Cosmic Rangers manipulate Wasabi Kuroda, spokesperson for the hybrid clan, to give them an underground tour to check the condition of Murdock and Dan. Once inside and entrapped behind vault doors, where they find their friends drugged for the transfusion, a war begins between the formidable hybrid forces armed to the hilt and the Cosmic Rangers. Fighting their way out with explosives and automatic weapons, the Cosmic Rangers escape above ground where the last bloody battle gives way to freedom and justice for all. The Cosmic Rangers return home to their various lifestyles. Jamayah goes on another fishing voyage. Five years pass and Rickshaw visits Naomi, the crone psychic. She informs him that Jamayah, Bamboo II, and the captain died when Zephyra, (the yacht), capsized in a storm. She also informs him that she has less than a year to live herself because of diabetes. In the end, Carmela visits Rickshaw and tells him that Jamayah visited her after his death with the information that Rickshaw is also a hybrid soul, but not to worry. Jamayah has taken care of all the karmic repercussions. Rickshaw and Crystal should live a healthy, long, and wonderful life.
32895260	/m/0h3p_d3	Freedom	William Safire	1987-08	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Freedom blends the narrative recounting of actual historical events with fictional events invented by the author. Freedom traces political and military developments over the period from May, 1861 to January 1, 1863, from the point of view of the Union. Military events in which Breckenridge participates are also shown from the Confederate "side of the hill". As Book One opens, Breckenridge is a member in good standing of the US Senate. His opposition to what he regards as Lincoln's usurpation of power leads him to make speeches that his political opponents construe as treasonous. When the Senate adjourns, his good friend John Forney warns him that "you will follow your doctrine into the Confederate army," and in the end this is what happens. Book Two deals with the plan to invade the South along the Tennessee River. Anna Ella Carroll is portrayed as the creator of the plan, a controversial position among historians. The novel shows Carroll striving both to make the plan a success and to receive credit for it, goals that are often in tension. Book Three shows Edwin M Stanton succeeding Simon Cameron as Secretary of War with the support of General McClellan, whom he secretly intends to depose. Stanton is portrayed as dedicated to the cause of Union victory and convinced that this end justifies any and all means. (Later in the book McClellan bitterly complains that Stanton is "the most unmitigated scoundrel I ever knew, heard of, or read of," and compares him unfavorably to Judas Iscariot.) Book Four is mainly concerned with military developments—execution of the Tennessee Plan and the Confederate response to it—leading up to, and including, the Battle of Shiloh. Its shows how by both sides come to accept the doctrine that the goal of war is the destruction of the enemy's forces; Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnson tells Breckenridge frankly, "We deal in death." Books Five and Eight cover McClellan's military campaigns and the efforts of his political opponents to remove him. He is portrayed as torn between his duty to do his utmost against the enemy and his desire to win the war in such a way as will induce the Southern states to return to the Union voluntarily, with slavery intact. Books Six and Seven focus on the struggle to define the role of abolition in the quest to put down the Confederate rebellion. Book Six shows the conflict that Lincoln's thoughts about emancipation create for Salmon P. Chase, who wants to receive credit for this step himself. Book Seven describes the enlistment of black regiments in New Orleans by Union General Benjamin Butler. Butler's thinking is summarized as "Dred Scott, denying blacks their essential humanity, would be a dead letter the moment a black man donned a blue uniform." Book Nine shows the final development of Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. In these sections of the book, Safire generally stays as close as possible to the historical record, in particular wherever contemporaneous records of what was said, such as diaries, letters and transcripts, are available. The main fictional threads of the novel are imagined romances between Breckenridge and Carroll, between John Hay and Kate Chase and, towards the novel's end, between Carroll and Salmon P. Chase. In each case the romance founders due to an improper political-moral decision made by one of the parties. In regard to the latter two pairings, Safire writes in the underbook, "All four surely had romantic attachments—but with other people. The purpose of making these two fictional connections is to provide a prism through which to examine their characters and a hatrack on which to hang other information, as well as to entertain the fact-laden reader and author."
32903764	/m/0h5356l	Ready Player One	Ernest Cline	2011-08-16	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The year is 2044 and the world is in near-ruins. The Great Recession has taken its toll on the world's economy, and resources are scarce. The Internet and gaming culture have evolved into a creation known as OASIS, a massive multiplayer online simulation game created by James Halliday and Ogden Morrow of Gregarious Simulation Systems (GSS), formerly known as Gregarious Games. Halliday, with no heirs or other living family, dies suddenly and leaves a video will to those in OASIS and a book that was dubbed Anorak's Almanac, which purports to be a volume written by James Halliday's avatar Anorak in OASIS. The video says that whoever can collect three keys (Copper, Jade, and Crystal) that are hidden throughout the universe of OASIS and pass through the matching gates will receive his fortune and controlling stake in GSS. This becomes known as the Hunt and people immediately begin the search for Halliday's Easter Egg. Those searching for the Egg are referred to as "gunters," a truncation of "egg hunters." Gunters devote an enormous amount of time to studying 1980s pop culture, the decade Halliday grew up in and was perpetually obsessed with, in the hope it will assist them with locating and solving the puzzles involved with the egg.
32928439	/m/0h3rdgq	The Last Space Viking	John F. Carr		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Last Space Viking by John F. Carr and Mike Robertson takes place a hundred years after Lucas Trask founded the League of Civilized Worlds. Many changes have occurred in the Old Federation and King Trask's plans for a new galaxy order are brought to a sudden halt when a new power emerges from the ashes of the Old Federation. Will King Rodrik the First of Tanith be able to salvage his grandfather's dream, or become a tool of the new Mardukan Empire? Space Vikings have been raiding and terrorizing the worlds of the Old Federation for hundreds of years. Great fortunes have been made and hundreds of planets conquered and despoiled. Unfortunately, the Sword-Worlds have gone into tehir own decline just as the League of Civilized Worlds is faced with its greatest defeat. Soon, the first real threat to Space Viking domination must be overcome and brought to heel. Will the disparate Space Vikings join together, or be sent packing back to the Sword-Worlds in defeat? Captain David Morland of Joyeuse might well be the last of the great Space Viking captains. He emerges at a time when the Old Federation is changing, and not for the better. All Morland wants is his own Space Viking base world to use as a place for organizing raids and trading parties into the thousands of worlds of the long-dead Federation. Generations of Space Viking marauders have taken their toll and plunder-worthy planets have declined as more and more of the Old Federation worlds have slipped into barbarism. But first, Morland has to find the right world and conquer it before he's discovered by a new power determined to end the Space Viking menace, one way or another!
32940107	/m/0h54pgb	Revolution is Not a Dinner Party			{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Revolution is Not a Dinner Party begins in the weeks before the Cultural Revolution in China. Ling Chang is a nine year old girl whose parents are doctors which are part of the upper class society in China. When Ling's father, Dr. Chang, had free time, he would teach Ling English and they would listen to American radio shows such as Voice of America. Dr. Chang's colleague from the United States, Dr. Smith, kept close contact with Dr. Chang in the time before the Cultural Revolution via mail. In the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a political officer, Comrade Li, moves into part of the Chang's apartment room and begins conducts his operations from there. With the presence of Comarade Li next door, the Changs were forced to speak about controversial topics in hushed voices and listen to the American radio underneath blankets as well as displaying a revolutionary mindset through putting up pictures of Chairman Mao Zedong and assisting Comrade Li. Shortly after the officer moved in, Ling's closest friend's (Niu) father was taken away and branded as an antirevolutionary. After this, Ling was fearful her father would be taken as well. Shortly thereafter, Niu's mother was taken away as well and Niu was forced to live with her. Shortly after moving in, Niu is sent away to labor on farms because he is in high school and was a member of the aristocracy, from there he tries to escape to Hong Kong. However, Niu is caught and forced to join a revolutionary gang. Meanwhile Ling is constantly being harassed at school by children of the working class who believe Ling is bourgeois; Ling's clothing and long hair are constantly used as a means to make her look bourgeois. Ling's family were marked as bourgeois sympathizers and her father was removed from surgery and was forced to work as a janitor at the hospital. One day, Ling and her father rescue an counter-revolutionary writer who was trying to commit suicide by drowning himself. Because the Ling and Dr. Chang rescued him, Niu and his gang, the Red Guard, came and arrested her father for being an antirevolutionary. Ling is forced to take care of herself during the night because her mother worked nights in the emergency room and her father was no longer there. She became old enough to take over shopping for her mother and began to haggle and barter for more and better goods than could be bought with the ration tickets. Then one day at school the teacher is thrown out and Gao, one of the young revolutionaries tries to cut her hair. Ling retaliates and him with her schoolbag and gets away unscathed. She then receives news that her father will be operating on Gao’s father at the hospital. As Ling attempts to sneak into the compound, the guards catch her and throw her into a room with mats that are infected with lice. Tired and unknowing that the mats are infected with lice, Ling sleeps on them and gets lice infested in her hair. The next morning, the gardener came into the room and let her go. When Ling got back to her apartment, her mother had to cut all of her hair. Six weeks later, Ling is publicly forced to apologize to Gao for beating him by walking about the town with a blackboard on her chest; Chairman Mao had died shortly before and Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, was arrested and accused of plotting to overthrow the government. When Ling arrived at the hospital during her forced march around town, Comrade Li, the officer living in her study, was arrested for being associated with Jiang Qing. Ling's father was shortly released thereafter and Ling, her mother, and Dr. Chang go home together after finally being reunited.
32956954	/m/0h51z2w	How Firm a Foundation	David Weber	2011-09	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 :The below text was copied from Safehold. Empress Sharleyen travels to Zebediah and then Corisande to stand over the trials of those accused of treason after the conspiracies of the last novel. Her firmness, fairness and judicious exercise of mercy continue to win over the hearts and minds of the newest subjects of the Empire of Charis, especially when she is undeterred after an attempted assassination that is thwarted by Merlin. For his part, Merlin has been experimenting with steam technology, and gets no response from the orbital platforms. In Charis, technological developments are still developing water power, using deep reservoirs to control the flow of water, and also by replacing water wheels with turbines. On the artillery front, the Charisians have developed angle guns that allow them to shoot over walls, and are working on more breach-loading devices. Merlin takes these advances a little further and has Owl construct him a pair of revolvers. Father Paityr Wylsynn has some doubts about all these developments until he is inducted into the secrets of the Brethren of Saint Zherneau. After this, he reveals to the inner circle that his family was trusted with a message from the archangels. The message says that the archangels themselves are sleeping under the temple, and will return after 1000 years (20 years in the future at this time). Merlin is uncertain whether it is the actual archangels, or perhaps PICA versions of them. As a precaution, he begins looking at ways he can continue his own awareness in case his own PICA form is lost. The situation in Siddarmark is becoming strained. Siddarkmark and Silkiah are continuing trade with Charis in spite of embargoes imposed by the Church of God Awaiting, and there are large Charisian expatriate communities in these areas. Grand Inquisitor Clyntahn stokes resentment of the Charisians in the Siddarmarkian population, finally inciting them to mob violence. His nemesis Anzhelique, now known as Aivah Pahrsahn, has secretly bought up thousands of rifled muskets and trained a militia to use them, which she calls on to protect the Charisian Quarter and to keep the government of Siddarmark from falling. Grand Inquisitor Zhaspyr Clyntahn convinces the other members of the Council of Four that the Charisians taken as Prisoners of War by Admiral Thirsk at a previous engagement. Thirsk is against this, but can do nothing to stop it, so the prisoners are all taken to the temple and put to the question, leading to outrage in Charis. Clyntahn also begins working differently inside of Charis, keeping his agents from contacting one another or attempting to recruit, which makes it impossible for Merlin's SNARCs to find them. They manage to steal some gunpowder and distribute it. By loading it onto wagons and driving them into major centers, they manage to kill thousands of people, and assassinate several targets. Earl Grey Harbour is killed, as well as Prince Nahrman of Emerald. Baron Green Mountain of Chisholm is badly injured. Princess Irys and Prince Daivyn of Corisande are in Delferahk under the protection of King Zhames, and the guardianship of their the Earl of Coris. Coris receives orders from Clyntahn to allow the assassination of prince Daivyn so that it can be blamed on Charisians, but he has no plans to comply. He contacts Earl Grey Harbour (before his death) and asks for asylum. The assassins arrive sooner than anticipated, but Irys and Daivyn manage to escape with the help of Merlin and Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk, Caleb's adopted son.
32962752	/m/0h56m_x	Absolutely American	David Lipsky		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book recounts four years in the lives of students at the United States Military Academy.
32966513	/m/0h5438q	Succubus Revealed	Richelle Mead	2011-08-30	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy"}	 After everyone finds out about Georgina's phase with Seth during his and Maddie's engagement, things degenerate at Georgina's workplace and she quits. In the opening of the sixth book she works as one of Santa's elves in a Mall when she suddenly gets a notice that she has been transferred to Las Vegas.
32968972	/m/0h55g7r	The Wizard and the Witch	Jean Ure	1991	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 It is “All Spells Night” and Jr. Wizard Ben Muzzy returns to his friends Joel and Gemma for a night of mischief. Nothing goes as planned, however, as he encounters a bumbling old witch named Grimwade, who can’t seem to cast spells correctly.
32969243	/m/0h5537g	A Manhã do Mundo	Pedro Guilherme-Moreira	2011	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 "09/11 2001. And if anyone who has seen everything could, suddenly, wake up in time to prevent the tragedy?". This is a presupposition which, on the cover, this novel presents. At the core, this is a story of five persons, Thea, Mark Millard, Alice and Solomon, who jumped from the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. It is also the story of Ayda, who calls them cowards, and of her husband. Now "imagine that on September 13, the Universe resets the day 11 for some of them." * Interview about the book by the author to Ana Daniela Ferreira on "À Volta dos Livros" in [[Antena 1 (Portugal)|Antena 1], on 22 June 2011] (Portuguese) * Video presentation of the book in [[Diário de Notícias] of 28 May 2011] (Portuguese) * Reference to the book on the television show "Autores" in [[TVI24] of June 24, 2011. Minute 42.](Portuguese) * Interview about the book A Manhã do Mundo by the author to Ana Daniela Ferreira on "À Volta dos Livros", at [[Antena 1 (Portugal)|Antena 1], on 22 June 2011.] (in Portuguese) * Interview about the book A Manhã do Mundo by the author to TV show "Câmara Clara", at [[RTP2], on 9 September 2011. From 3 min 27 s.] (in Portuguese) * Interview about the book A Manhã do Mundo by the author to Ana Rita Clara, on TV show "Mais Mulher", at [[SIC Mulher], on September 2011.] (in Portuguese)
32982043	/m/0h51y8r	Reamde	Neal Stephenson		{"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller"}	 Reamde begins by introducing two members of the Forthrast family who reconnect at an annual family reunion: Richard "Dodge" Forthrast, a middle-aged man who is the second of the three Forthrast sons (John, Richard, and Jake), and Zula Forthrast, John's adopted Eritrean daughter, Richard's niece. Richard is described as "notable enough to merit a contentious Wikipedia entry," having achieved fame and a net worth of nearly one billion dollars by founding a company that designed and operates an MMORPG called "T'Rain." T'Rain is a fantasy-themed virtual world with an extensive mythological backstory, incorporating an economic system intentionally geared towards meeting the needs of conventional players as well as gold farmers, who specialize in converting in-game currency to actual hard currency. Richard also owns a cat skiing resort in British Columbia, and his chequered past includes having been a marijuana smuggler. Richard decides to offer Zula a job at his company. Zula and her boyfriend, Peter, visit both the reunion and Richard's resort, located near the US–Canadian border where Richard used to run drugs. Desperate for money, Peter sells a database of stolen credit card numbers to a shady contact. The transaction resulted in a virus infecting the deal broker's laptop, which contains the only copy of the database. The virus, named "Reamde," affects T'Rain players by encrypting any seemingly valuable files and extorting in-game gold in exchange for a key to decrypt those files. As a consequence of the in-game payment method, chaos has already been building in the virtual world around the region holding the ransom drop points. Peter, Zula, and the middleman attempt to comply but take too long, and the middleman's ultimate client, the Russian mob, with the assistance of their own IT support, manage to find them in Seattle. After their predicament is explained, Ivanov, the gangster, notes the middleman has compromised too much of the criminal organization's activities, murders him in Peter's loft, and takes Peter and Zula hostage. Ivanov has been quietly siphoning common funds for risky profit schemes and is trying to save face before his associates punish him for his losses. With information Zula obtains from her employer, they travel to Xiamen, PRC to track down those behind Reamde and kill them. Upon arriving in China, Peter, Zula, Csongor, who is a Hungarian hacker offering the mafia IT support, and Sokolov, a former Spetsnaz security consultant hired by Ivanov, search the city for Reamde's perpetrators, eventually locating their apartment. The Russian security team prepares to raid the gold farming team, composed of young Chinese men, only to be misdirected by Zula into a random apartment, which coincidentally happens to house Islamic terrorists preparing to bomb an international conference soon to take place in the city. Ivanov murders Peter, and Abdallah Jones, a black Welshman who is the head of the cell and a highly wanted man by the UK's MI6, murders Ivanov following a highly destructive battle within the building. The gold farmers flee the building as a fire sets off the stored explosives and causes it to collapse. Jones proceeds to flee, kidnapping Zula as he goes. This crucial turning point in the plot also introduces Olivia, an MI6 agent who located and was gathering intelligence on the elusive Jones in anticipation of assassinating him. The story separates into four main threads at this juncture: Zula and Jones as they flee from the scene; Olivia and Sokolov as both attempt to extract themselves from their illegal presence in China; Csongor, Marlon, the lead author of the Reamde virus scam, and Yuxia, a local Hakka woman caught up by chance as the Russian's guide and driver, as they attempt to rescue Zula; and Richard as he continues to deal with the fallout of Reamde. Jones hijacks a taxi that takes him and Zula to a dock where some of Jones' network take them aboard a boat. Csongor comes close to killing Jones but fails, while Yuxia is taken captive for her part in the attempt. Jones' men sail to a poor port where he coerces Zula into helping hijack the private jet that first brought her and the Russians to China. The jet's pilots are pressed into service, flying everybody off-radar and into the snowy wilderness of Canada, where they are killed. Zula reveals her relation to Richard to keep herself alive, and Jones continues to drag her around as Canadian terrorist cells are called upon to join with him. Several civilians are murdered for their vehicles as more passably Western cell members are brought in for what will ultimately be a major attack on the Las Vegas Valley, once the US border can be crossed. They aim for Richard's resort and use Zula as leverage to gain his assistance crossing into Idaho. Csongor and Marlon buy a boat and try to chase after Jones and rescue Yuxia. They make their move on the terrorist trawler after Jones and Zula have left but manage to save Yuxia and kill all of the terrorists on board. They then have to learn how to sail, running out of gasoline, until they find themselves in the Philippines, making their way to a modern city where Marlon can begin to assemble his T'Rain crew to start picking up all of the Reamde extortion money and use it to assist the three of them as they try to figure out where to go next. Sokolov, hoping to kill Jones and save Zula, tracks down Olivia after their brief encounter in the immediate aftermath of the apartment battle, chancing across her spy equipment and wallet, and offers her assistance in getting out of China. Through Zula, Jones knows where to find Sokolov, but Sokolov kills those sent to kill him and, as they've found Olivia's address, goes back to find her and kill her attackers as well. He lets Jones know he's still alive and warns him not to harm Zula. He and Olivia swim to Taiwanese territory, where they become intimate before she locates a nearby handler. The handler's promises to get them both out in exchange for intelligence on Jones fail to materialize as a hit squad attempts to kill Sokolov as he departs. He escapes, though Olivia thinks he's been killed. Olivia is tasked with further Jones-related work, heading first to the Philippines to meet the last main character to be introduced, Seamus Costello, a CIA operative responsible for Jones-related work solely in the Philippines. They find it unlikely he is there, and Olivia heads for the US as a secondary hypothesis on where Jones has gone. Olivia meets Richard to dissuade him from going to China to look for his niece as she now knows everybody is long gone. Seamus remains in the Philippines, so when the T'Rain administrators pick up on Marlon's login to the game, he finds the trio in an internet cafe and helps bring the three of them, without homes and newly rich, to the US to gain new identities. Richard is also dealing with the virus and trying to integrate a player-originated schism deviating from hard-coded good and evil character assignments to color-based alignments, the brightly colored graphical character palettes against more neutral earth-toned colors, corresponding roughly to stark versus nuanced points of view. A major force behind the realignment originates in the writings of the two principal authors of T'Rain's narrative, one a Cambridge don who writes highly regarded fantasy, the other a pulp author who churns out volumes of poorly regarded fantasy. To provide more balance to the so-called War of Realignment, a new narrative is derived to incorporate Reamde and make sure some of the extorted money ends up in the hands of the numerically weaker earth-toned side. For various reasons, all of the characters begin to converge on the resort and its US-side counterpart where Richard's youngest brother Jake lives with a community of Christian isolationists and second amendment fanatics. The terrorists find a location near the resort to camp and inform Richard, who is directing Reamde triage alone at the resort, of their hostage, forcing him to lead them into the US while a small team detonates a suicide bomb near the border as a distraction. Seamus brings the three new Americans to Idaho on a hunch shared with Olivia, who has chanced upon Sokolov in the US and also brought him to Idaho. After being used as bait, Zula manages to escape from a skeleton crew that was readying to kill her, gathering supplies from the resort before heading out to rescue her uncle. US terrorist cells also converge on the Idaho property, and protagonists and terrorists end up battling one another in a terrific gunfight around Jake's home, demolishing it. In the end, Richard kills Jones. Richard's oldest brother John is killed during the firefight while others receive various levels of injury. Zula and Csongor, Olivia and Sokolov, and Seamus and Yuxia end up in relationships as the story closes at the next Forthrast family reunion.
33007839	/m/0h56b_p	The Third Reich	Roberto Bolaño	2010	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel concerns Udo Berger, a German war-game champion, who returns with his girlfriend Ingeborg to the small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. When one of his friends disappears Udo invites a mysterious local to play a game of Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, a classic wargame published by Avalon Hill.
33021128	/m/0h53ngg	The Golden Lily	Richelle Mead	2012-06-12	{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The book follows Sydney Sage, a young Alchemist that is forced to hide inside a ritzy boarding school in Palm Springs, California so that she can protect Jill Dragomir, a Moroi princess. There are those who want Jill dead by an assassin's hand in order to provoke a civil war within the Moroi court. The assignment provides Sydney a way to redeem herself from previous disgrace but her close proximity with Jill, Eddie, and Adrian cause her to question everything she thought she knew about herself, Alchemists, and the world in general. During all of this Sydney finds herself also questioning her relationship with Brayden, someone who is seemingly perfect for her in every way. Even as she cares for him, Sydney finds her attentions also being drawn to someone that she can never be allowed to be with. As secrets come to light and loyalties are given a trial by fire, Sydney has to find a way to make it through all of this with herself and all that she cares for intact.
33034753	/m/0h53lfh	The Art of Fielding	Chad Harbach	2011-09-07	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Henry Skrimshander begins the novel as a 17 year-old playing on his Legion baseball team in Lankton, South Dakota. Although physically short and not muscular, Henry has an unusual gift for fielding, and excels at the demanding position of shortstop. After playing a game against a team from Chicago, Westish College student Mike Schwartz sees Henry play and recruits him to attend Westish and improve the baseball team. By the time of his junior year, Henry is excelling as a player (especially on defense) and is drawing significant attention from Major League Baseball scouts. Westish College is a small liberal arts college located in northeastern Wisconsin on the shore of Lake Michigan. The school has a particular attachment to author Herman Melville, ever since a Westish student named Guert Affenlight discovered that Melville had visited Westish as part of a lecturing tour in the 1880s. The school re-branded itself around the Melville visit, erecting a statue of the author and renaming its sports teams as the Harpooners. After publishing a well-received book and spending many years as a professor at Harvard, Affenlight returns to his alma mater as president of the college. His estranged daughter Pella comes to live with him during Henry's junior year, after leaving her architect husband and life in San Francisco. Much of the novel focuses around members of the Westish baseball team, during their best season in the history of the college. As Henry approaches the NCAA record for most consecutive errorless games by a shortstop (held by his baseball hero, Aparicio Rodriguez), a throw of his goes awry and hits his roommate, right fielder Owen Dunne, who is sitting in the dugout at the time. Owen is hospitalized by the injury, an incident which shakes Henry's confidence deeply. His fielding quickly deteriorates to the point where he can no longer complete a simple throw to first base. Examples in the novel of Major League players with similar situations are Steve Blass, Chuck Knoblauch, and Rick Ankiel. Off the baseball field, the novel explores the relationships between several pairs of people. This includes romantic relationships between Mike Schwartz and Pella Affenlight, as well as one between Owen Dunne and Guert Affenlight. The mentor-student relationship between Schwartz and Henry also comes to the forefront, as each examines their hopes for the future and the extent to which it rests on their baseball ability.
33035701	/m/0h52l98	The Dark Wheel	Philip MacDonald	1948	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel centers on Cornelius Van Toller, a wealthy New Yorker, with Jekyll-and-Hyde character. His obsession with actress Kay Forrester sets the stage for a thrilling drama.
33038630	/m/0h52f6v	Sengsara Membawa Nikmat				 Kacak, the conceited nephew of a rich village leader in Padang, is jealous of Midun, the religious and popular son of a poor farmer; Kacak often attempts to goad Midun into fighting him. After Midun saves his wife from drowning, Kacak becomes enraged at the thought that Midun had touched his wife and attacks him. Midun fights back, quickly knocking Kacak out. As a result of his actions, Midun is forced to do tasks for the village leader under Kacak's supervision. Still enraged at Midun, Kacak hires an assassin to kill him. When the attempt fails, the assassin and Midun are arrested and sent to prison. While in prison, Midun is tortured until he earns a reputation for being a good fighter. He also meets Halimah, who lives with her stepfather, after returning her diamond necklace. After he is released from prison, Midun takes Halimah to find her father in Bogor. After living with them for two months, Midun attempts to go to Batavia to find work, together with Halimah. Along the way, he meets the Arab Indonesian Syekh Abdullah, who lends him money; after refusing to pay the high interest or letting Abudullah marry Halimah, Midun is arrested. After his release, he saves a Dutch youth being attacked in Pasar Baru. For saving the boy, Midun is granted a job at the police station by the boy's father, the hoofdcommissaris (head commissioner). He also marries Halimah. Midun is later stationed in Padang upon request to the commissioner, after hearing that his father had died. Kacak is arrested for embezzlement, and Midun lives happily ever after.
33056604	/m/0h54vhk	Hilarity Ensues	Tucker Max			 Hilarity Ensues opens with stories that Tucker experienced living and working in Cancun while still enrolled in as a full-time student at Duke Law School. The following stories are included in Hilarity Ensues: *"The Cancun Stories" *"Drugs Are Bad, Mmmkay?" *"Why Halloween Is Awesome" *"Fat Girls Cross Tucker, Hilarity Ensues" *"The Deadliest Vacation" *"Sexting With Tucker Max: Mean" *"The Fight Stories" *"Meet My Friend Hate" *"Tucker Ruins A Wine Tasting" *"The Ex-Girlfriend Threesome Fallout" *"In the Trunk" *"The (Almost Banned, Now Complete) Miss Vermont Story" *"Tucker Max: Knee Abuser" *"Sexting with Tucker Max: A/S/Location, Location, Location" *"The Law School Weddings and Bachelor Parties"
33059338	/m/0h55y60	The Night of Wishes	Michael Ende		{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The evil sorcerer Beelzebub Preposteror has contracted with His Excellency the Minister of Pitch Darkness to perform a certain number of evil deeds each year. This year, however, he did not meet the requirement, because the High Council of the Animals has sent the cat Maurizio as a spy, which forces Beelzebub to be more cautious. On New Year's Eve he joins forces with the evil witch Tyrannia Vampirella, who has the same problem due to the raven Jakob who is spying on her. Together they try to brew the eponymous Notion Potion that will grant them all wishes, in order to fulfill their part of the contract before midnight. If they succeeded to brew the potion they wouldn't even have to keep it secret from the animals, because due to the nature of the potion every wish they make will have the exact opposite effect - i.e. if they wish someone good health, he'll become sick instead. The plot starts on New Year's Eve at 5 pm and the chapters each represent one hour until midnight to illustrate the increasing time pressure that the characters are under. On the one hand, the sorcerers have to complete a five-meter-long recipe to brew the potion, while constantly getting in each other's way. On the other, the cat and the raven must find a way to stop their evil plan while tackling their own problems, namely the obesity of the cat and the chronic diseases of the raven. Nevertheless, they devise a plan to exploit a weakness of the potion: when the potion has not been fully drunk up before the first ring of the bell at midnight, the potion won't reverse the meaning of the wishes - as expected by the two sorcerers - but instead grants them as wished.
33065237	/m/0h54xl3	Dragon's Oath	Kristin Cast	2011-07-12	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Dragon sits by Jack's funeral pyre and reminisces about his first meeting with Anastasia. He pulls out a locket and opens it, but the wind lifts the last of her hair inside and carries it over to the pyre. This starts a spell Anastasia had laid on the locket, that conveys to Dragon her last wish, to temper his blade with mercy. The book goes back to his human days. The third son of a lord, Bryan is young, cocky and bold. His father disowns him when he becomes involved in a scandal with a neighbour's daughter and sends him to the Americas. At the docks he meets a Tracker, who claims him as a fledgling and takes him abord a ship with a sculpted dragon's head, which inspires Bryan in regards to his new name. At the Chicago House of Night, Anastasia, a 22-year-old newly adult vampyre, has been hired as the Spells and Rituals teacher. While talking with the local High Priestess, Pandeia, and her mate, Anastasia brings up the problem of some fledglings who had asked for a love spell for Bryan. Instead of refusing them, she asks permission to perform a drawing spell, to show the fledglings the truth about Bryan. She starts the spell on a night with a full moon. As she is also thinking of him at the time of the spell, she is shown a futuristic apparition of him, when he has fully Changed and is no longer a fledgling. Anastasia finds that she loves Bryan, and then he really appears as his nineteen-year-old self. Bryan, who is now Dragon, helps Anastasia finish her spell, and begins leaving her sun-flowers from that moment. An officer, Jesse Biddle, consults with a creature (it is revealed at that this is Rephaim, the Raven Mocker who is Stevie Rae's Consort) about who he should kill- Anastasia - so that Light doesn't defeat them. At the House of Night, Pandeia expresses concern regarding Biddle's harassment. Anastasia proposes she go and perform a peace spell. As a Warrior represents the opposite of the spell, they propose she take Bryan, who is still a fledgling, but already a Swordmaster. While she performs a circle near his place, Anastasia is attacked by Biddle and dragged inside after he chokes Bryan. Biddle fights and nearly kills Anastasia, and prepares to rape her, but she draws a circle of salt around her and creates a barrier. Dragon comes and kills Biddle, and prepares to also kill the creature, but Anastasia has a vision of him and tells him to temper his strength with mercy, and think about what he's doing. Dragon sets the creature free and pledges his Warrior's Oath to her. As a result he Changes into an adult vampyre. Back to the present, Nyx and Anastasia materialize in front of him and make a last attempt to make him move on but he refuses. In the end he rejects Nyx for refusing to return Anastasia to him.
33074309	/m/0h698m5	Fat Kid Rules the World	KL Going		{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Troy Billings, 6'1 and weighing 296 pounds, is standing on the edge of a subway platform contemplating suicide when a homeless former student from Troy's school, Curt McCrae, intervenes. Curt tells Troy that he saved his life, now he owes him a favor, so he insists that they start a band together with Troy playing drums. The only problem is that Troy can't play drums and hasn't since seventh grade. Together, Curt and Troy create the band Rage/Tectonic. Although unable to play drums, he goes right into practicing for an upcoming gig. In the process, Troy finds self-confidence and acceptance while realizing he is desperately trying to save Curt's life from drug addiction and abuse.
33075618	/m/0h66j72	Little Red Cap	Carol Ann Duffy	1999	{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 The poem Little Red Cap begins with "At childhood's end" informing its audience of the characters transition out of childhood. She is narrating the story, as she explains that once the wolf came to the edge of the woods her childhood ended. Little Red Cap examines the wolf, and found herself excited about his large ears, eyes, and teeth! The wolf is portrayed as an older character by the reference of alcohol used in his description"his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw". Little Red Cap, only 16 years old pursues the older wolf. That became the start of her transition to adulthood. Being younger than the wolf, he buys Little Red Cap her first drink. The reason: poetry. Little Red Cap was prepared for what was to come. She knew that the wolf would lead her into the woods. Little Red Cap was prepared to leave home, and go into the woods with the wolf. This was the beginning of the love story and relationship of Little Red Cap and the wolf. She discovered an abundance of books within the Wolf's lair. The two grew close as their relationship blossomed. After 10 years passed from when Little Red Cap wandered into the woods with the Wolf she left the woods without him, ending their relationship. When she met the wolf she was only a child, but after 10 years passed Little Red Cap left the woods as an adult. Duffy's Little Red Cap uses the same story line and characters as does the original Little Red Cap by Grimm, but portrays a completely different message. In the original fairy tale Little Red Cap is a "sweet little girl who is given a cap that she falls in love with. The young girl is sheltered by her mother, given specific instructions about her behavior and duties. She does not make the right decision when she decides to talk to the Big Bad Wolf, and tell him where she is going. In this fairy tale Little Red Cap is portrayed as a young foolish child. Duffy's version however, shows Little Red Cap transition out of her childhood. Here Duffy used the original story line, but changes the message. Instead of Little Red Cap being tricked by the wolf, she uses him as guidance. Little Red Cap falls in love with the wolf, and their venture into the woods represents her transition out of childhood.
33091526	/m/0h65110	Summer and the City				 Picking up where The Carrie Diaries left off, seventeen-year-old Carrie Bradshaw has left her hometown and treks to New York City. Set during the summer before her freshman year at Brown, Carrie learns to navigate her way through the Big Apple, takes a writing class at The New School, and even pursues a relationship with an older man. Joining her along the way, she meets Samantha Jones, a true Manhattan fashionistas who's determined on the path of fame and fortune, and the opinionated feminist Miranda Hobbes who is a freshman at NYU.
33105846	/m/0gttg43	Conan: Scourge of the Bloody Coast	Leonard Carpenter		{"/m/0dz8b": "Sword and sorcery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Conan, under his piratical alias of Amra, continues to develop a pirate empire in the Vilayet Sea. Operating from the rebuilt city of Djafur, located on one of the islands in the Aetolian chain, Conan plays King Yildiz's Turanian empire against the Hyrkanians. Joining forces with the necromancer Crotalis, Conan and his pirates participate in looting the lost city of Sarpedon. But Crotalis turns on the pirates, forcing Conan to run his ship ashore, where Conan is captured by Hyrkanians but later released after he proves his worth as a warrior. In return for his release, Conan agrees to support the Hyrkanians in their naval invasion of Turan. Crotalis also offers his services to the Hyrkanians, leading to another rogues' alliance with Conan. Using a magical wind summoned by the necromancer, the Hyrkanian fleet moves to attack the Turanians. After a lengthly naval battle leads to a stalemate, Crotalis re-animates the bodies of all the pirates' former victims, forcing Conan to battle the undead and Turanians. But before Crotalis claims final victory, he is burned alive; the battle leads both nations' navies in weakened states, and Conan's Red Brotherhood becomes the strongest fleet on the Vilayet.
33126545	/m/0h63n0v	The Litigators	John Grisham	2011-10-25		 Oscar Finley and Wally Figg are the bickering partners of a small twenty-plus-year-old law firm in the western part of the South side of Chicago that tries to appear successful although it is really a small-time operation. Generally, the firm focuses on simple divorces and DUI cases, with an occasional automobile accident that provides a boon to the firm. Oscar's character holds the firm together despite the childish junior partner Wally and his questionable ethics. The novel presents Finley & Figg as a law firm so far down the food chain that it advertises on bingo cards. The story depicts the changes that occur when a young formerly successful down-and-out attorney, David Zinc, relegates himself to working as an associate with Finley & Figg (F&F) and an enormous case avails itself. When her boyfriend failed to coerce the firm into service, she paid her divorce fees in kind and became Wally's love interest. He would break up with her much later when it was convenient for him to do so. As part of the routine, Rochelle checks the obituaries to see if any of their estate clients has passed away. One day, Chester Marino's name is listed and Wally makes his way to the proper funeral home. He meets Lyle Marino, the son whose interests F&F were supposed to represent against children from a second marriage. Lyle claims that his father was killed by Krayoxx, whetting Wally's tongue to the case. After finding a few former clients who had valid claims, the firm was able to generate publicity in the Chicago Tribune with a picture of their filing. This induced an avalanche of communications and led them to several additional claimants. At first, the case seems to be a simple opportunity to sign up patients who took the extremely popular cholesterol reduction drug, Krayoxx, which was the number one prescription for obese patients. Krayoxx is produced by Varrick Labs, a $25 billion/year pharmaceutical giant which is dealing with a preponderance of heart attacks by its customers. Wally notices a blossoming class action lawsuit in Florida against Varrick and realizes that if he can find some patients to sign as clients, he can earn a big payday on another firm's coattails. However, some complications make the story interesting. Although none of the three F&F lawyers had previously argued in United States federal court, that is where they find themselves pitted against Zinc's old firm with this case. In fact, David's expertise was in long-term bonds. Once the Finley & Figg claims become prominent, mass tort operators approach them about being part of a mass settlement. Wally flies to Las Vegas to meet with the other mass tort interests, most notably Jerry Alisandros. Varrick flew to Chicago to meet with Nadine Karros, a leading defense attorney. Karros works for Rogan Rothberg. Believing that they can get federal judge Harry Seawright to claim jurisdiction, Karros is chosen for her firms' ties to him and her expertise. The case was soon expedited on Seawright's docket with Finley & Figg's claim singled out of the tort claimants. Eventually, Karros takes action to have Finley & Figg's eight death cases separated. Eventually, Alisandros learns that tests of Krayoxx yield benign results. Oscar and his wife, Paula, are often at odds, and as a large settlement looms, he attempts to divorce her and cash out. After settlement talks break down with Varrick, Alisandros withdraws as co-counsel and Finley & Figg motions to withdraw their claims. Once at Finley & Figg, Zinc stumbles upon a lead poisoning brain damage case involving Burmese immigrants. He expends his own time and resources on their case. He also succeeds in representing immigrants in a labor law case. During the labor case, the employer attempted to have Finley & Figg burned down and the individual who attempted to do so stumbled upon Oscar at the office. Oscar shot him and added an unnecessary debilitating shot that shattered the person's leg. He was sued for excessive force. With Varrick having spent 18 million dollars defending himself and the mass tort bar having vociferously discredited Krayoxx in the mass media, Karros motioned for frivolous lawsuit sanctions pending a withdrawn motion. Additionally, actions were initiated for legal malpractice regarding Wally's letters that promised 2 million dollar settlement followed by motions to dismiss without notifying his clients. After realizing that they could be sued for defense costs and malpractice for withdrawing the case, Finley & Figg withdraw their motions and agree to a jury trial that they believe to be futile. The trial commenced as originally scheduled. During opening statements, Oscar suffered a myocardial infarction. Wally attempted to make light of the situation by proclaiming it an example of Krayoxx effects. Karros moved for mistrial and the motion was granted, leading to the need to seat a new jury. Wally stood in for Oscar as lead attorney while a new jury was seated and for the first day of testimony. The next day, the recovering alcoholic Figg was nowhere to be found although an empty pint bottle of Smirnoff Vodka was. After Wally was AWOL for a second day, David was pressed into service. Rueben Massey, Varrick CEO, instructed Karros not to motion for likely-successful summary judgment. Zinc declined to cross-examine the first handful of expert witnesses that Varrick called, Eventually, Zinc discredited the reputation Varrick's clinical trials during cross-examination of the final expert witness. Nonetheless, the jury rendered a very quick not guilty verdict. Zinc continued to pursue the lead poisoning product liability case. He settled the case for $6.5 million (including $1.5 million in legal fees). He attempted to become equal partners as Finley, Figg & Zinc. The partnership did not work out and was dissolved after twelve months. Zinc opened his own product liability practice, David E. Zinc, Attorney-at-Law. * Oscar Finley, Finley & Figg Senior Partner - A lazy, unhappily married, nearing retirement "fender-benders, slip-and-falls and quickie divorces veteran" and former police officer. * Wally Figg, Finley & Figg Junior Partner - A former DUI convictee and four-time divorcé who trolls funeral parlors and sickrooms for clients. * David Zinc, Finley & Figg Associate attorney - Prototypical Grisham young hot shot Harvard grad lawyer whose life is turned upside down. * Rochelle Gibson, Finley & Figg secretary - Former claimant against Finley & Figg who holds the firm together. * Nadine Karros, Defendant's leading litigator recruited by Varrick. * Harry Seawright, federal judge. * DeeAnna Nuxhall, repeat Finley & Figg divorce customer and eventual love interest of Wally's *Jerry Alisandros, mass tort operator who brings F&F into his firms fold. *Paula Finley, Oscar's wife *Rueben Massey, CEO Varrick.
33138871	/m/0h66xnk	When the Moon Forgot	Jimmy Liao	1999	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 The Moon Forgets tells the story of what happens when the moon falls from the sky, and is adopted by a little boy. The boy and the moon come to love each other, but the world misses its moon. The tides, weather, and astronauts are all affected by the loss of the moon.
33141119	/m/0h678dc	The Fear	Charlie Higson		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The Fear begins 5 days before Small Sam and The Kid, having escaped from the London Underground,arrive at the tower at the end of The Dead. A prologue introduces a new being named 'The Collector' who "collects" "toys". Throughout the chapter he refers to the captured children as his "toys" and laments their "breaking". He captures 2 children after a brief struggle, and adds them to his collection. However, The Collector mainly collects newspapers and other paraphernalia which results in his house turning into a land fill. The Collector lives in a 5-story house which is piled high with rubbish, but he mainly lives in his basement. The basement is basically a maze of his own excrement as well as bloodied flesh and more junk. The focus then shifts to the settlement in the {Tower of London}, where a scouting trip is in the process of being organised. The scouts are Dognut, Courtney, Olivia - who is going to find her brother Paul, Jessica - who just went as she broke up with her boyfriend, Finn - who is looking for friends, Al - who is looking for his sister Maria, Marco and Felix who were with DogNut at the Imperial War Museum. After a quick row upriver, they end up at the Houses of Parliament where they find a girl named Nicola and her group, who operate under similar conditions to the pre-apocalyptic government, with elections and various titles. She tells them none of their friends are here but lets them know about David King at Buckingham Palace. During the journey, the group is attacked by the 'gym bunnies', a group sickos who due to their good physical condition are harder to kill, corner DogNut's crew. About to go in for the kill, they are interrupted by a brutal group of mercenaries, known as "hunters", led by Ryan Aherne. They guide DogNut's crew to the Palace where Al is reunited with his sister. Later, the group realises that David isn't all that he seems; through Dognut's quiet inquiries, they discover that David is extremely paranoid and wishes to imprison their group. They head to the museum at night, without Al, who stays with his sister, and Jessica, who is too scared to continue. As it is night, the sickos are out in larger numbers and the gang gets chased to a house where they think kids are living in. Instead it turns out to be the Collector's lair. The group encounters the large monster and make a run for it. Without realising, Olivia gets left behind and gets killed by the Collector. They group later arrives at the Natural History Museum where they meet Brooke, Robbie (their Head of Security), Justin (the leader) and Paul (Olivia's brother). Paul asks for Olivia but is told by Courtney that she was killed by the Collector. Meanwhile, a boy ,referred to only as Shadowman, spies on the ramshackle settlement in St James's park, noting it's feudalistic nature and the possibility that John, the leader of the group, may be insane. Back at the museum, Paul, Olivia's brother, is hysterical after being told of Olivia's death - he is determined to kill the being known as the Collector. DogNut's group, Robbie, Jackson (a friend of Robbie), Ryan's hunters and a couple of others from the museum join with Paul to kill the Collector. The large group coax the Collector out of his lair onto the road, where they savagely kill him. Upon returning, Justin gives DogNut a tour of the place. He shows DogNut the experiments that they've been carrying out to investigate the disease and to find a cure - this included taking samples from 3 sickos that they've locked up in the Tesco lorry. He explains to DogNut of the large number of sickos residing in the basement of the museum where they obtain their test subjects from. They have found out so far that UV light (sunlight) rapidly increases the speed of the disease causing a sicko to die if exposed to too much sunlight. However, they also found that sickos could also build up resistance to the sunlight by exposing them to a fixed amount of sunlight each day until they were fully able to roam about in the day time. Afterwards, Paul has lost his mind and starts to threaten and blame everyone for Olivia's death. Brooke calms him down. DogNut decides to head back to the Tower first thing next morning but is persuaded by Justin to stay longer to write his and his group's story into a book in which Chris is writing in the library. At the Palace, David and Nicola meet secretly. David proposes that the 2 groups form an alliance - a step into helping with his plan of taking over London. Nicola is reluctant, but ends up creating a deal that involves removing the 'squatters' at St James Park as they pose a threat to her group at the House of Parliament. Until then, she won't officially agree to the alliance. David accepts and immediately asks for Jester to go and recruit children who can fight. Shadowman visits Jester in Buckingham Palace who convinces him to join on an expedition to recruit more children to join them at the Palace. The small group of Jester, Shadowman, Tom, Kate and Alfie begin walking up North until they encountered a group of sickos. They run away and end up at Kings Cross Station. The group fights off some sickos before Shadowman is hit accidentally by Jester, leaving him with a slight concussion. Jester, Alfie, Tom and Kate abandon Shadowman and are then split with Jester and Alfie together and Tom and Kate being together. Shadowman passes out when a group of sickos are upon him. Jester and Alfie find refuge in a building until a group of sickos finds them. In creating a plan of escape, Jester tricks Alfie and abandons him, escaping by himself. Alfie is killed by the sickos. Jester runs and discovers the Morrison's supermarket but is denied entry. He then finds the Waitrose supermarket where he is rescued by Arran's group (described in The Enemy). Shadowman wakes up and finds himself at the Emirates Stadium. He learns that the sicko, St. George, is much smarter than the rest of the sickos as he is creating an army in the stadium. Shadowman escapes the army of sickos when a fire lights up in the stands (most likely Small Sam escaping as told in The Enemy). He takes refuge in a nearby apartment building where he discovers boxes of weapons and food. He sees this as a sign to follow St. George's army, to learn about them before returning to London city. While watching their movement, he sees Tom, Kate and Callum (a boy from The Enemy) get killed by the army. Dozing off to sleep, he is suddenly woken up by sickos that found his hiding spot - including one of St. George's right-hand men (One-Armed Bandit). Shadowman manages to kill them all and plans to kill every single of St. George's right-hand men, including St. George himself and Jester for betraying him. All the while, DogNut, Courtney, Marco and Felix who are at the museum, are preparing to head back to the Tower. Finn decides to stay while Brooke joins the group. Robbie and Jackson join the group but are only escorting them part of the way. They set off to the Tower until they are ambushed by the 'gym bunnies'. Everyone is killed except for Jackson and Robbie who manage to escape the battle and Brooke who is saved by the Holloway crew (as described in The Enemy). She is taken to Buckingham Palace with the Holloway crew and is revealed that she is the quiet and heavily bandaged girl in the sick bay. Like in 'The Enemy', she tells Maxie and Blue about the museum and that David is a liar. Meanwhile, Paul, who is still crazed, secretly leaves the museum for Buckingham Palace. He meets with David and Jester who take advantage of his mental state, and tell him a fake story that everyone was plotting against him. This causes Paul to take revenge on everyone. David convinces him to return to the museum and release all the sickos who are in the basement. Paul agrees and returns to the museum. He kills a boy named Jamie who was on duty at the lower levels of the museum. Just before his death, Paul reveals to Jamie that he was bitten by one of the sickos in the lorry.
33158365	/m/0h669sc	Unfamiliar Fishes	Sarah Vowell	2011-03-22	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The book takes a humorous tone and examines the fulfillment of American imperialist manifest destiny at the end of the 19th Century as America annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and invaded Cuba, and the Philippines in 1898, in an attempt to become a global power. Vowell then tells the story of the culture clash that ensued following Christian missionaries who then moved in swiftly to try to convert the laid back native Hawaiians to the American way. The title comes from a reference of David Malo.
33159863	/m/0h67_ry	Moonwalking with Einstein	Joshua Foer	2011-03-03	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Foer describes his book as participatory journalism in the world of competitive memorization and attempts to delineate the capacity of the human mind. He sets out to investigate the underpinnings of those with enhanced memory, soon finding himself at the 2005 U.S. Memory Championship. He covers the scientific basis of memory creation and historical attitudes towards memory, including its negative reputation in the Western educational system, a perception which Foer is largely opposed to. He explores common mnemonic tools for improving memory: the techniques of Roman rhetoricians and the tannaim ("reciters") of Sri Lanka, the Major System and the PAO System for memorizing numbers and cards, and Mind Mapping, a note-taking technique developed by Tony Buzan. These methods are all a form of the method of loci, in which data is stored in a sequence of memorable images that are decomposable into their original form. He espouses deliberate practice as the path to expertise, and declares psychological barriers as the largest obstacles to improved human performance. The book describes the prodigious memory and 87-point IQ of Kim Peek, the inspiration for the 1988 movie Rain Man. Foer discusses how Daniel Tammet's index finger slides around on a table as he performs mental calculations in a documentary; mental multiplication experts and mnemonists that Foer speaks with imply that Tammet's claims, involving synesthetic morphing shapes and colors standing in for complex numerical feats, are questionable. World memory champion Ben Pridmore tells Foer that "[t]here are a lot of people in the world that can do those things." Foer notes that Tammet, competing under his previous legal name "Daniel Corney", won the gold medal at the World Memory Championships' "Names and Faces" event. Tammet had tested poorly in facial recognition under Simon Baron-Cohen's assessment of synesthetic abilities; Foer states that poor facial recognition ability is a suitable indicator of inborn "savant" status, as opposed to "savant-like tricks [developed] through methodical training". He also discovers self-promotional forum posts advertising "mind power and advanced memory skills" courses as well as psychic phone readings (the latter under the pseudonym "Daniel Andersson"). In a cached version of "danieltammet.com", Foer finds Tammet relating details omitted from his autobiography Born on a Blue Day: Foer interviews Tammet on several occasions over the course of several weeks, during which he confronts him with the forum posts. Foer also tests Tammet: After practicing traditional memory techniques for a year, Foer wins the 2006 US Memory Championship. He represents the US at the World Memory Championships in London, where he places 13th and fails to attain "grandmaster" status. He wins bronze in the "Names and Faces" event.
33170683	/m/0h632v4	The Habitation of the Blessed	Catherynne M. Valente		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel, a reimagining of the legend of Prester John, begins with the accidental discovery by a missionary monk, Brother Hiob of Luzerne, of a curious village containing a tree whose branches bear books instead of fruit. He plucks three of them, and within them finds three different perspectives on the life of Prester John in the magical land of Pentexore - one by the man himself, one by his Blemmye wife Hagia, and one by a Panotii woman named Imtithal, storyteller and nurse to the royal family. The narrative of the book shifts back and forth between the three texts, interspersed with the reflections of Brother Hiob as he struggles both to transcribe them before the book-fruits rot away and to contend with the vast differences between the stories he finds there and the idealized vision of the legendary king he had previously held.
33172833	/m/0h65bc7	Prince Serebrenni	Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Knyaz (Prince) Nikita Serebryanni is on his way to Moscow. In Medvedevka village his small armed unit of servants clashes with the oprichnik Khomyak’s gang. There and then the Prince learns that bloodshed and lawlessness here were inspired by Tsar Ioann's new policies, known as oprichnina. Another plotline involves Yelena Morozova, the wife of Medvedevka landlord whom the Prince helped out; she turns out to be his own loved one of the old times, who had to marry the old man in order to thwart another vile oprichnik, Vyazemsky, with his unwanted passes. Further on his way, Serebrenni helps out the outlaw named Persten (the latter would repay the Prince later by leading him out of Grozny’s jail) and encounters the terrible Tsar himself. Appalled by Godunov's cynicism (who suggests that the two should join forces in the anti-Grozny alliance) and torn apart between his righteous hatred towards the Tsar with his corrupt oprichnicks, and his own oath of allegiance, Serebrenni, all kinds of adventures behind, chooses to go to war, to fight for his country (not its amoral ruler), and die the death of a noble man.
33174323	/m/0h64hsg	Layar Terkembang	Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana			 Tuti and Maria, daughters of Raden Wiriatmadja, go to the fish market where they meet Yusuf, a medical student from Martapura, South Sumatra. After he escorts them home, he realizes that he has fallen for Maria. The following day, he meets the sisters while on his way to school and goes out on the town with them. He and Maria become closer and closer, while Tuti busies herself with reading and attending congresses on women's rights. A few months later, Yusuf returns early from his holidays to be with Maria; however, not long afterwards she falls ill and is diagnosed with malaria. Tuti begins feeling the need to be loved, remembering Supomo who had once proposed to her; after Supomo's younger brother comes to demand an answer, she says no. Maria's condition grows steadily worse and the doctors change their diagnosis to tuberculosis. As she lies dying in hospital, Tuti and Yusuf go to visit her cousins in Sindanglaya, where Tuti notes that one need not live in the city in order to be useful to one's country. Upon their return to Maria's bedside, Maria requests that they marry each other. After Tuti and Yusuf, who have been growing closer, agree, Maria dies.
33201796	/m/0h65n59	Saman	Ayu Utami			 Saman follows four sexually liberated female friends: Yasmin, a married Catholic lawyer from Medan; Cok, a Balinese lawyer with a high libido; Shakuntala, a bisexual Catholic Javanese dancer; and Laila, a Muslim Minangkabau journalist. The other protagonist is the titular Saman, a former Catholic priest turned human rights activist who becomes the target of sexual advances by Yasmin and Cok. The first chapter, beginning in Central Park, New York, describes Laila waiting for the married Sihar and planning to lose her virginity to him. Eventually Laila realises that Sihar is still in Jakarta with his wife, and feels depressed. The second chapter covers Saman's childhood—including his relationship with his mother, a woman drawn to the spiritual world—his entry into priesthood, and his attempt to protect a rubber tapping community from the attempt by a local plantation to acquire their land. After the attempt fails and the plantation's hired thugs raze the community to the ground and kills those who resist, Saman is captured and tortured. He eventually is broken out of his confinement by the surviving resistance members, becoming a fugitive and relinquishing his duty as a priest. He becomes a human rights advocate, assisted by Yasmin. The third chapter, written from the point of view of Shakuntala, tells how Yasmin, Cok, Shakuntala, and Laila met at high school and their escapades there, both sexual and academic. Shakuntala recounts a fantasy she had as a teenager about meeting a "foreign demon", embracing him and then having a debate on the different cultural aspects of sexuality. Towards the end of the chapter, Shakuntala notes that she is attracted to Laila and dislikes Sihar, but supports her friend's efforts as she cares for her. During the fourth chapter, Saman is spirited away to New York by Yasmin and Cok. Although both Cok and the married Yasmin make advances toward him, he initially declines. However, during the middle of the night he and Yasmin have sex, but Saman is distressed because he ejaculated quickly. The entirety of the last chapter consists of emails sent between Saman and Yasmin, discussing their insecurities, that become increasingly sexualised.
33208116	/m/0h690w8	Where were you last Pluterday?	Paul van Herck	1968	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 The theme in the book is Pluterday, an extra day in the week which can be withdrawn if one saves enough time (e.g. by taking a plane instead of a train). Only the rich can save enough time and thus Pluterday is in practice reserved for the "happy few", resulting in a class society. The existence of Pluterdays is kept secret to non-privileged people.
33222225	/m/098_ht	The Return of the Soldier	Rebecca West	1918	{"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}	 The novel begins as the narrator, Jenny, describes her cousin by marriage Kitty Baldry pining in the abandoned nursery where her dead first son would have been raised. Occupied with the domestic management of the Baldry estate just outside of London, the two are almost completely removed from the horrors of World War I. The only exception is that Kitty's husband, Chris Baldry, is a British soldier fighting in France. While Kitty laments in the nursery, Margaret Grey arrives at the estate wishing to bear news to the two women. When Jenny and Kitty meet her, they are surprised to find a drab middle-aged woman. And even more to their shock, the women tells them that the War Office sent Margaret notification of Chris's injury and return home, not Kitty and Jenny. Kitty dismisses Margaret from the estate trying to deny that she could have been the recipient of such information. Soon after, another cousin of Jenny notifies the two women that he in fact has visited Chris and he is obsessing over Margaret, whom he had had a summer fling with fifteen years before. Soon after, Chris returns shell-shocked to the estate thinking he is still twenty years old, but finding himself in a strange world which had aged fifteen years beyond his memory. Trying to understand what is real for Chris, Jenny asks Chris to explain what he is feeling to be true. Chris tells her the story of a romantic summer on Monkey Island, where Chris at the age of twenty falls in love with Margaret, the daughter of the innkeeper on the island. The summer ends with a rash departure by Chris caused by a fit of jealousy. After Chris tells this story, Jenny travels to London to bring Margaret back to Chris and help him understand the difference between his remembered past and reality. She arrives at Margaret's dilapidated row-house to find her disheveled and taking care of her husband. After some conversation, Jenny convinces Margaret to return with her to the estate in order to help Chris. Upon Margaret's return, Chris recognizes her and becomes excited. Margaret explains how fifteen years have passed between the Monkey Island summer and that Chris is now married to Kitty before returning to her home. Chris acknowledges this passage of time intellectually but cannot retrieve his memories and still pines for his love of Margaret. Margaret continues to visit and Kitty and Jenny despair about Chris's loss of memory. Jenny and Kitty decide to consult Dr Gilbert Anderson, a psychoanalyst. Dr. Anderson arrives during one of Margaret's visits. Dr. Anderson questions the women, and with the help of Margaret decides on a course of treatment: Margaret must confront Chris with proof of his dead child. Margaret retrieves toys and clothing with the child, and confronts Chris with the truth. Finally, Chris regains his memory, Margaret departs and Kitty rejoices in the Chris's return to a state fit to be a soldier.
33224741	/m/0h7mr4m	Marching Men	Sherwood Anderson	1917-09		 The novel begins with the fourteen-year-old Norman McGregor packaging a loaf of bread for his uncle, the "village wit", – who ironically nicknames him "Beaut" because of his off-putting appearance – in his mother Nance's Coal Creek bakery (bought with the savings of her late husband/Beaut's father "Cracked" McGregor). Not long after, frustrated by the local miners expecting bread on credit without first settling their debts, Beaut closes the bakery during a miner's strike. That evening, as the now-drunk miners move to ransack the bakery (and assault Beaut), he is saved by a troupe of soldiers marching in formation. After the episode, the bakery remains closed and Nance goes to work at the mining office while Beaut idles about. When Beaut is 18 years-old, his mother becomes too ill to work and the young man gets a job as a stableboy. One day, as a prank, his fellow stableboys get Beaut (a teetotaler up to that point) blind drunk with a "horrible mess" made just for that purpose. Having reached a breaking point, Beaut takes the rest of his father's savings and leaves Coal Creek for Chicago on the same evening. He arrives in the City just after the 1893 World's Fair. Despite a shortage of jobs, McGregor easily finds a warehouse job and settles into a routine of work during the day and night school/independent reading at night. One day, in a break from the ordinary, the usually unsocial McGregor gives in to the urging of his neighbor Frank Turner, a barber and amateur violin-maker, and goes to a dance. Despite his aloofness, McGregor meets Edith Carson, a frail, mousy, and somewhat homely milliner/shop owner, with whom he develops a platonic relationship. Book III begins with Beaut returning to Coal Creek for his mother's funeral. During the funeral procession, the miners who attend fall spontaneously into step and Beaut is once-again inspired by the power of marching men. Back in Chicago, Edith Carson, who had gained a modicum of wealth through her shrewd business dealings, loans McGregor the money necessary for him to quit working full-time and attend school to become a lawyer, his long-time ambition. Not long after McGregor is admitted to the bar, the son of a wealthy industrialist is found murdered. In order to quell newspaper speculation as to their involvement, the political bosses decide to redirect the media's attention by framing and demonizing small-time thief Andy Brown, an acquaintance of McGregor. From jail, Brown requests that McGregor act as his lawyer. Though McGregor refuses at first, he ends up with the job. After an unsuccessful solo investigation, McGregor turns to wealthy heiress-turned-settlement house-volunteer, Margaret Ormsby, for help. Margaret, a "new woman" who dresses fashionably, is self-assured in demeanor, and is capable of acting independently is bothered by McGregor's bluntness, but decides to aid him nevertheless. On a tip from Edith Carson, and with Ormsby's connections, McGregor is able to clear Andy Brown of any wrongdoing. In the interim, Margaret Ormsby and McGregor develop a romance. While McGregor is slowly building up his idea of marching men (his law practice on the backburner), he decides that he wants to marry Margaret Ormsby. As he is leaving a formal party at her family's mansion, McGregor asks Margaret to marry him, but gets nervous and flees before she can respond. A few weeks later, McGregor falls asleep at the house of Edith Carson and wakes up with her stroking his hair. Realizing that their relationship is more intimate then he had thought, he goes to Margaret and reveals his past experiences with women. Margaret hears McGregor's confession and declares that she will still marry him, but first, she must go talk to Edith. A few weeks later, when McGregor is in the neighborhood for a teamster's strike, he finds that Edith's shop had recently come under new ownership. Rushing to the train station, he finds Edith about to depart. Together, they go to the Ormsby house and in a confrontation Margaret cedes her claim over McGregor to Edith. As Edith and McGregor are leaving, Margaret's father, David, leader of a plow trust (nicknamed "Ormsby the Prince" by the City's oligarchs), extends a hand to McGregor. The two men shake, the narrator noting their polite antagonism towards each other. Soon, the marching men idea blooms with workers coming together and marching to and from work in the evenings. Becoming nervous over newspaper reports and rumors of the worker gatherings, several "men of affairs" discuss the matter. David Ormsby volunteers to dissuade to McGregor from further organizing but cannot communicate his point to the impassive McGregor. The marching men movement peaks during a demonstration on Labor Day, climaxing with a speech by McGregor. Riding in a carriage with her father at the fringe of the demonstration, Margaret Ormsby is overcome by McGregor's oration, but later professes her allegiance to her father. The book ends that same night with a solitary David Ormsby, a foil to the stereotype of the ruthless businessman, at his window overlooking the city, meditating on his life choices: "What if McGregor and his woman knew both roads? What if they, after looking deliberately along the road toward beauty and success in life, went, without regret, along the road to failure? What if McGregor and not myself knew the road to beauty?"
33230852	/m/03wdtvp	Marked	Kristin Cast	2007-05-01	{"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0134b1": "Contemporary fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Sixteen-year-old Zoey Redbird lives in a world where vampires have always existed. One day, during school, Zoey is marked by a Tracker to become a fledgling vampyre at the Tulsa House of Night, a boarding school where she will be trained to become an adult vampyre. She faints, only to find herself deserted by almost everyone and hurries home. Her mother, Linda Heffer, blames her for the Mark and, together with her ultra-religious husband (Zoey's stepfather/step-loser), she tries to keep Zoey at home, to be presented to the Elders of the People of Faith, an anti-vampyre group. As fledglings need to be constantly in the presence of an adult vampyre so that their bodies won't reject the Change, Zoey flees to her grandmother Sylvia, a Cherokee Wise Woman. On the way she passes out and has a vision with the vampyre goddess, Nyx, who announces to Zoey that she will be her "eyes and ears" at the House of Night. The goddess leaves Zoey with the words "Darkness does not always equate to evil, Light does not always bring good" which becomes a very frequent and important message throughout the series. Zoey wakes up at the school in the presence of her grandmother and the vampyre headmaster- her future mentor, Neferet. She finds out that her Mark is all filled in, unusually for fledglings, but follows her intuition and doesn't mention the vision to Neferet. As a fledgling vampyre, Zoey has the opportunity to change her name and does so, taking her grandmother's surname, Redbird, before parting with her. Aphrodite another fledgling then takes her to her room, where she meets Stevie Rae, her new roommate and future best friend. Through Stevie Rae, Zoey meets and befriends Damien, Erin, and Shaunee. She also meets the snobby, beautiful leader of the Dark Daughters and Sons, Aphrodite, a fledgling with the power to see the future. To humiliate Zoey she invites her to join the Dark Daughters, who are an elitist group. Her new friends counsel her to accept, so that they can get insight into Aphrodite's doings. During the ritual, Aphrodite feeds her fledgling blood and Zoey discovers a new craving, unusual for her age. Embarrassed, she flees- but finds Heath, her ex-boyfriend, and Kayla, her ex-best friend, who have come to the school in an attempt to bust Zoey out. A confrontation ensues and Zoey loses control. She bites Heath, creating an Imprint with him. Kayla freaks out and runs away; Zoey eventually persuades Heath to leave too. When they have gone, Zoey discovers that Erik Night, a handsome fifth former and Dark Son whom she met earlier, has seen the whole scene. He comforts her and escorts her back to the dorm. That night she is chosen by a cat, whom she names Nala. The following day, she meets Neferet, who explains to her that an Imprint is a link that takes place between a adult vampyre and his or her human Consort. As it is very unusual that Zoey could create an Imprint in her first month of being a vampyre, she places Zoey into a senior vampyre sociology course. Zoey discovers that she has affinities for the five elements of air, fire, earth, water, and spirit- something that has never happened before in vampyre history. Stevie Rae, Damien, Shaunee, and Erin each gain an affinity for one element as well. Zoey is (spitefully) invited back to the Dark Daughters and Sons' Samhain celebration, where they honor the spirits with some blood. Everything goes fine until a drunk Heath stumbles upon the scene and tries to bring Zoey back with him. Aphrodite accidentally summons evil spirits which try to take Heath’s fresh human blood. Zoey steps in; she and her friends use their newfound abilities to stop the spirits. Neferet, who happens to witness everything, takes Aphrodite's status as leader of the Dark Daughters and Sons and gives it to Zoey instead. As they go home, Aphrodite angrily informs Zoey that "it's not over yet- you don't understand."
33238503	/m/0h7p9fd	Goliath	Scott Westerfeld		{"/m/06www": "Steampunk"}	 As the airship Leviathan travels over Russia, Alek, Deryn, and Newkirk are in the middy's mess with perspicacious loris pet Bovril, talking about great circle routes. Alek mentions Deryn's father was an airman, but Newkirk says that the airman was Deryn's uncle. A two-headed messenger eagle from czar heads towards the bridge, interrupting their discussion. A message lizard sends Deryn to the bridge and Newkirk to the cargo deck. Alek goes with Deryn, and there Dr Barlow tells them to take the bird to the rookery and feed it. Deryn nearly confesses her secret to Alek, but then says she cannot, and claims a fencing lesson. Cout Volger tries to expose her gender unless she discloses the imperial message. Deryn convinces Volger to desist, so as not to shake the confidence of Alek, who admires her as a boy. The imperial message to pick up a cargo from a fighting bear, but the dried beef is overloaded by metal parts and tools, and drags Deryn and Newkirk down into the trees until Newkirk says tip to the side, and the crew dump clart (waste water) and other supplies. Dr Barlow orders Alek, with Klopp, Hoffman, and Bauer, to assemble the metal contraption and keep it secret. The loris shows them how it detects metal with Barlow's necklace. In Tunguska, Siberia, the area has been destroyed, trees are flattened and pointed in one direction, and many stripped corpses include an organic airship, smaller than theirs. By dropping the beef at a distance to distract giant starving bears, they rescue Nikola Tesla, his Russian soldiers and airship crew. Tesla's electrified fence had to be disconnected for the Leviathan to land, so he scares rogue bears with his electrified walking stick. Volger tells Alek to find Tesla's mission. First, he reads a newspaper article about "Dylan" and the Dauntless by Eddie Malone to himself, then to Bovril, who confirms his suspicion. Artemis Sharp had a surviving daughter named Deryn, and Bovril whispers "Mr. Deryn Sharp" into Alek's ear. At Dr Barlow's request, Alek and Deryn use Tesla's device to pinpoint the inventor's bedroom. Deryn sneaks in and discovers a metal lump hidden under Tesla's bed, and scrapes off a sample. Alek asks her, "Can I trust you, Deryn?" and knows that she is a girl when she does not comment about his using her real name. After she argues and leaves, Alek realises that Deryn didn't tell him because she is in love with him. For a few days, Alek and Deryn are not on speaking terms. Alek decides to support Tesla in his mission to end the war with his magnetic beam, the Goliath, but sadly misses Deryn; she is angry he dropped her just because she is a girl. Sent to Tokyo just to brandish the British flag, the Leviathan battles an Austrian ship and two German zeppelins in support of the Japanese. When one of the engines is shot, both Deryn and Alek arrive to help, and Alek admits he wants Deryn back. When Dr Barlow wants Deryn to get new clothes, Alek saves her from discovery being measured by offering himeself to the tailor's hands. In Tokyo, Tesla demonstrates the Goliath publicly at a conference in the Imperial Hotel, claiming the sky color will change in London. The Royalty confirms the visible colors and orders the ship to New York for Tesla. While crossing the Pacific Ocean in a storm, Alek hits his head protecting Deryn. To keep him awake after a concussion, Deryn kisses him. They promis not to keep secrets from each other, and for Alek to lie protecting her secret. Arriving at William Randolph Hearst's estate in California, Philip Francis films them. Reporter Eddie Malone is fleeing from Hearst's men, so Deryn helps him escape onboard. He suggests Francis may be a German spy because he changed his last name from German. They use Tesla's detector to find arms and film hidden in sugar barrels after dinner and a cliff-hanger episode of the film Perils of Pauline. The adventursome American female impresses Alek mightily to tell Deryn. Crossing Mexico, one engine stops suddenly. Pancho Villa's men offer to help them in exchange for the sugar. Deryn sends one message about suspicious walkers, then dons gliding wings to investigate. She semaphores C-A-M-E-R-A in time, but injures her arm and leg on landing. Alek gets Pancho Villa's physician, Dr. Azuela, to treat Deryn instead of ship's Dr. Busk, but Eddie Malone overhears Deryn's secret when Azuela tells Pancho Villa. Pancho Villa and Mr. Francis film the Leviathan as part of Hearst's movie deal with Pancho. Alek takes meals and helps Deryn keep her secret through her recovery, but Deryn fears punishment in New York when Eddie Malone publishes his article. Alek is planning to stay in New York and help Tesla promote Goliath, and he ask Deryn to stay in New York with him to help Tesla. Dr Barlow offers Deryn a job with the Zoological Society of London, but retracts her offer fearing scandal from deceived British government and Air Service. Alek saves Eddie Malone from falling off when a rocket hits the jitney that they are leaving on. Deryn, watching from the bridge, gets them to douse flames with waste clart water. Alek show Malone the Pope's endorsement to his claim to throne as emperor so the reporter will keep Deryn's secret. Dr Barlow shows Deryn the article with Alek's story, not her secret, and offers Deryn the job again. At the Serbian consulate, Lilit tells Deryn about a German water-walker coming to attack Goliath, so Dr Barlow convinces Captain Hobbes to keep watch. When Leviathan sees approaching bubbles underwater, they bomb the escorts, but must leave the largest to land to prove the attack and encourage the Americans to join the war, so she sends a warning by eagle to Alek. At his Tower, Tesla hosts a dinner before a demonstration that Goliath can change the color of the sky in Berlin, but under attack decides to fire for real, despite danger to Leviathan. Volger uses a smoke bomb for surprise, and Alek has to used the electrified cane of Tesla to kill the owner. The suppressed energy destroys the water-walker, so the U.S. enters the war on the Darwinist side when they see the wreckage. Dr Barlow receives a message that tells her that the sample Deryn stole from under Tesla's bed was from a meteorite, therefore Goliath did not cause Tugunska event. Alek receives a medal for going with Deryn to fix Tesla's wire on the spine. After the ceremony, Alek and barely-healed Deryn again climb the spine together. Alek tells her the truth about Tesla's death, declares his love by kissing her, and throws the Pope's scroll overboard. He rejects his past which he has already lost. When he admits to needing a job next, Deryn suggests joining her and Dr Barlow at the London Zoological Society. The last chapter is a newspaper article by Eddie Malone. Alek has accepted a position with the Zoological Society. Alek's only comment is the Habsburg motto "Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria, nube" or "Let others wage war. You, lucky Austria, shall marry." To read a bonus chapter that is not in Goliath click on the link: http://scottwesterfeld.com/blog/2011/12/bonus-goliath-chapter-and-art/ =References= pl:Goliat (powieść Scotta Westerfelda)
33247807	/m/03wdtr1	Betrayed	P. C. Cast	2007-10-02	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 At her first parent visitation, Zoey is reunited with her family for the first time in a month. She joyously welcomes her grandmother, but is saddened to notice the stiffness of her parents, which contrasts strongly with the loving and friendly behavior of Stevie Rae's mother. Neferet comes upon their meeting and is almost immediately engaged in a religious dispute by Zoey's stepfather. In the ensuing argument, Zoey's parents vow never to come to the House of Night again, and Neferet kicks them out. The same night, Zoey witnesses Aphrodite being verbally abused at by her parents and starts developing sympathy for her enemy. Later on, she chances upon Neferet scolding Aphrodite and is shocked by this new side of her mentor. That day, Neferet invites Zoey for a private dinner. Upon hearing that Zoey saw her and Aphrodite, she informs her that the latter's visions were no longer valid, as Nyx had withdrawn her gift, and advises Zoey to keep her distance. Later on, while watching TV, Zoey learns of the death of one of the high school football players whom she knew and goes on a walk to clear her head. She chances upon a crying Aphrodite who claims to have had another vision, that included Zoey's grandmother. She asks for a favor for her help and asks Zoey to take an oath. Unwilling to risk her grandmother's life, she accepts and learns that Aphrodite has seen her grandmother in a car, stuck on a collapsing local bridge, at a precise time. Zoey calls her grandmother to tell her to stay at home and then she and her friends make a call to the police about a bomb on the bridge, to keep other people away from it, around the time it was set to fall. Aphrodite's vision turns out to be true, making Zoey begin to doubt Neferet. When two of her ex-boyfriend's friends disappear and are found murdered, she begins to suspect Neferet has something to do with it, especially after witnessing her discussing the murders with "undead", supposedly deceased students in a dream. Meanwhile, Zoey must make decisions regarding her love life, as she is drawn to her ex-boyfriend Heath due to their Imprint, maintains a relationship with fledgling peer Erik Night and captures the interest of Poet Laureate and teacher Loren Blake. Zoey reorganizes the Dark Daughters, now that she is in charge of them, but Neferet takes credit for most of her new ideas at the first new Dark Daughters ritual. Shortly after the ritual, her best friend Stevie Rae rejects the Change and dies. As Zoey grieves over Stevie Rae, she learns that Heath too has disappeared, following the two other murders. Using her Imprint, a connection formed when vampyres consume a person's blood, she is able to locate him and takes off to retrieve him. She finds out that Heath is being held captive by "undead" fledglings. Using her elemental affinities, Zoey frees Heath, but also finds out that it was Neferet who changed the dying fledglings into the "undead" creatures- one of which is Stevie Rae. The fledglings had lost their humanity and reverted to an almost feral state. She runs away with Heath, vowing to return. At the school, Neferet attempts to erase Zoey's memory, but Zoey recovers her memory and starts hatching a plan to help her former best friend.
33257139	/m/0h7n8st	Le Dernier Homme	Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville	1805	{"/m/01rvlb": "Science fantasy", "/m/06qk2l": "Dying Earth subgenre"}	 The story is told by a spirit to a young man who comes upon its cave while traveling in Syria. The protagonist, Omegarus, is the son of the King of Europe and the last child born there in a far future in which the earth is becoming sterile and the human ability to reproduce is fading. He sees a vision of Syderia, the last fertile woman. She lives in Brazil, so he travels there in an airship. After various adventures there, including meeting Ormus, the Spirit of Earth, who urges them to begin a rebirth of the human race, the pair return to Europe. There they meet Adam, the first man, who has been condemned by God to watch all the damned among his descendants enter Hell, and who is now charged with persuading Omegarus and Syderia not to prolong the life of humanity, which God has determined must now end. He succeeds in having Omegarus leave Syderia, who then dies. Ormus, who cannot survive without humanity, despairs, and the world begins to end and the graves of all the dead to open.
33261635	/m/0h7l9_b	Conqueror	Stephen Baxter		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Begins in AD 607, ends in AD 1066 after the Battle of Hastings.
33261668	/m/0h7pf0n	Navigator	Stephen Baxter		{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Begins in AD 1070, ends in AD 1492 as Columbus sails westward.
33265410	/m/0h7qvct	The Affair	Ronald Millar			 A group of professors at Cambridge University try to hire an old colleague back even though they all don't like him, they all agree he was dismissed unfairly.
33268882	/m/0h3n341	Revolution 2020	Chetan Bhagat	2011	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Set in the holy city of Varanasi, Revolution 2020 is the story of three childhood friends - Gopal, Raghav and Aarti. Gopal and Raghav are childhood friends, whereas Aarti is Gopal's closest friend and love interest. Gopal is from a poor family, Raghav, a middle-class family, and Aarti's family is from a bureaucratic and political background. The three friends hold their own ambitions in life, with Gopal seeking financial wealth, Raghav wanting global political change and Aarti aspiring to work as an air hostess. After failing both the IIT-JEE (Indian Institution of Technology Joint Entrance Exam) and AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination) exams, Gopal is forced to move to Kota, the so called "capital of coaching classes" to undertake them again. However, Raghav scores very well in his exams and joins the IT-BHU as a way to fulfill his dream of bringing revolution to India as a journalist. In Kota Gopal is completely surprised when he learns that Aarti and Raghav have formed a romantic bond and consequently develops problematic habits, disrupting his life. Due to the emotional difficulties brought on by his friends' relationship, Gopal again fails to pass the AIEEE. Gopal's father cannot bear his son's repeated failure and eventually dies, leaving Gopal an orphan. Due to past debts totalling nearly 2 lakhs, Gopal makes a deal with a MLA, Shukla, to start an engineering college on his father's disputed land. Gopal becomes director of the new college(GangaTech university) and proceeds to learn about a corrupt educational system, the workings of which he eventually accepts. Meanwhile, Raghav finishes his engineering studies and becomes a trainee reporter for a popular newspaper, "Dainik". He begins publishing all of Shukla's wrongdoings like the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) scam worth 20 crore which gives a bad reputation to Gopal's college. Illegal re-zoning of land controversy cause some damage to GangaTech college. Shukla gets Raghav sacked but Raghav starts his own newsletter called Revolution 2020. He publishes an article about the Ganga Treatment Scam and proves that Shukla is a corrupt man. Shukla is forced to resign. Aarti develops a deeper friendship with Gopal and starts spending time with him as Raghav had no time for her. She acquires the job of a Guest Relationship Manager at the newly formed Ramada Hotel. Gopal invites Aarti there and reveals his love for her. Gopal finally succeeds in winning her over. He wants to go to Raghav's office to tell him that Aarti is no longer his and that he had become a more successful man in spite of being uneducated. However, before he actually meets Raghav, he meets a young boy Keshav who according to Gopal resembles him in his childhood. It is then that he realizes that he and Keshav were the same but the only difference between them was that he himself had given in to the corrupt system but Keshav still possessed his innocence. He realizes that Raghav is the better man and vows to make amends. So, on Gopal's birthday when Aarti comes to tell Gopal that she also loves him always, not Raghav , Gopal brings two prostitutes to make Aarti believe that the girls are with Gopal. Then Aarti leaves the house leaving the birthday gift for Gopal she brought - a scrapbook - and Gopal allows Raghav to get married to her. Then Gopal opens the scrapbook and sees that Aarti confesses her love for him there. A heartbroken Gopal thinks that in spite of the fact that he and Aarti love each other, Raghav's love and life will make Aarti more happy in life. In a deeper thought it is also been given that Gopal loved Aarti more but he had to let her go off for good. He was taking all the pain himself for Aarti and Raghav's better future, so that Raghav may bring in a revolution in this corrupted world. A famous quote from the novel is "Life is a bitch when the only woman you can think of belongs to someone else".
33278138	/m/0h7pwz3	The Mountain Is Young	Han Suyin		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Mountain Is Young is set in Nepal in 1956. The protagonist, Anne Ford, is a writer whose husband is a retired colonial civil servant. She travels to Khatmandu to teach English at the Girls Institute. In Khatmandu, she meets and falls in love with Unni Menon as part of a process of self-rediscovery.
33280874	/m/0h7n0gm	A Casa	Andre Vianco		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Some people who have harmed others in the past, receive an invitation to visit The house. There, they have a chance to make the things right with one condition: do not bring out those who have already gone.
33281760	/m/03wd9jt	Chosen	Kristin Cast	2008-03-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The book opens on December 24th, Zoey's birthday. The school's been shaken by drama teacher Patricia Nolan's death. She's been crucified and next to her there was a quote from the bible which leads Zoey to believe that the People of Faith are responsible and Neferet must strengthen school security. Set to clear out her romantic life, Zoey sneaks out of the House of Night, resolved to break up with Heath - without success. On the way back she meets Stevie Rae and, with Aphrodite, brings her to Aphrodite's parents' house, and keeps her there while trying to find a solution for her problem. Back at the House of Night, Zoey realizes that, as a leader of the Dark Daughters, she has to choose someone else to fill the position of Earth in her circle. Much to everyone else's displeasure, she chooses Aphrodite, when she manifests a new affinity for the Earth. Zoey also feels more and more estranged from Erik, because of the lies she tells to hide her relationship with Loren. During the night Erik finishes the Change, she loses her virginity to Loren and Imprints with him, breaking her previous one with Heath. Erik walks in on them and angrily breaks up with Zoey. She pulls herself together and leaves to gather her friends, planning to tell them about Stevie Rae, to cast a circle and heal her. On the way, Zoey chances upon Loren and Neferet and hears him confess that Neferet had made him seduce Zoey, for her to become alienated from her closest, and that he actually loves Neferet. Heartbroken, Zoey leaves to get Damien, the Twins and Aphrodite. She had planned to use the occasion to cure Stevie Rae and introduce her to her friends. Because of Loren's meddling, Stevie Rae arrives before Zoey has the chance to explain her to her friends and they feel betrayed, but agree to finish the ritual. When Zoey is about to invoke Earth, Stevie Rae attacks Aphrodite in a fit of jealousy and drinks from her and Changes into the first red adult vampyre. Aphrodite is terrified to discover that her own mark has disappeared and runs away through the secret exit with Stevie Rae after her, leaving Zoey alone with the rest of her friends. Zoey does her best to explain and she manages to get them to listen until Erik shows up and reveals her infidelity and her relationship with Loren. This shatters Damien and the Twins' last bit of faith in her. On the way back she is seized by a series of spasms, and founds out much later that they came from her Imprint with Loren breaking as he died. Acting from apparent grief at his loss, Neferet declares war on all humans. Zoey realizes that Neferet is lost to sense, pulls herself together and faces Neferet down after the Council.
33303850	/m/0h7lb6p	Awakened	Kristin Cast	2011-01-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 Zoey and Stark reassure their connection by having sex under the wishing tree and become connected. Zoey finds out that she wields the ancient magick of the fey and can bring back old fey that serve her elements, prompting Queen Sgiach to ask her to stay on Skye indefinitely and be her successor. Aphrodite and Darius leave Skye, but Zoey and Stark decide to stay a little longer while Stark recuperates. Zoey continuously senses Darkness on Skye, leading her to believe that she cannot hide from Darkness anymore. Neferet returns to the House of Night. In an attempt to draw Zoey back from Skye after Kalona's failed mission, Neferet kills Jack as a debt payment to Darkness. Finding out about Jack's death, Zoey realizes that no matter how good she feels on Skye, Tulsa is her home and she has responsibilities as a High Priestess and returns. Kalona finds out that he can enter Stark's mind because of the immortality he breathed into him. For the same reason, he realizes that the oath he swore to Neferet doesn't apply to him anymore as he hasn't been fully an immortal since his return. Neferet allows Zoey to light Jack's funeral pyre and during the ceremony, Neferet asks Zoey for forgiveness to regain everyone's trust. Zoey accepts the fake apology even though she sees through Neferet, but many other people think the apology is genuine. Neferet summons Darkness to drag Rephaim to the funeral and accuses him of being allied with Darkness and Stevie Rae for being allied with Rephaim, then orders the Sons of Erebus to kill both of them. Kalona interferes and faces the Sons of Erebus with Rephaim. The two fight, but Rephaim only defends himself rather than attacking the warriors. Stevie Rae asks her friends to cast a circle to stop the battle and save Rephaim. She asks Kalona for his son's freedom and he grants it and takes off. A white feather falls from him, symbolizing his good deed. The feather breaks Stevie Rae's concentration and Dragon Lankford lunges to kill Rephaim. Convinced by Stevie Rae's words, Zoey steps between them and stops Dragon, arguing that Rephaim is on the same side, having chosen the path of Light. Nyx appears then and forgives Rephaim, bespelling him to take human form at night and raven form during the day, to atone for killing Anastasia. She also talks to Damien and Dragon, to convince them to move on, then disappears. Rephaim goes to Dragon and offers his service to pay for the grief he had caused, but Dragon rejects him. When Zoey tries to calm Dragon, he lashes at her for her age. Because Neferet and Dragon do not accept him at the House of Night, Zoey, her friends, and the red fledglings leave to start a new House of Night on their own in the tunnels, with Zoey being the "vampyre queen", Stevie Rae being the High Priestess, Aphrodite being the Prophetess, Kramisha being the Poet Laureate, and all the red fledglings and Zoey's friends being the students. Towards the end of the book, Neferet cooperates with the white bull and intends on sacrificing Sylvia Redbird, but ends up killing Linda Heffer (who had recently left Zoey's stepfather due to his infidelity) to create a Vessel for her (someone who has to obey her completely) as a weapon to use against Zoey. Meanwhile, in the Otherworld, Heath is given the opportunity by Nyx, to be the lost soul in this Vessel and he chooses it over being reborn in the real world or remaining in the Otherworld; this way, he can help Zoey in the modern world. Meanwhile, Stark and Zoey are making out and preparing to have sex for their third time, but Stark becomes aggressive, which is unlike himself. He bites Zoey, but she is finally able to stop him (It is implied that it was Kalona, not Stark, in Stark's soul, who took over and got aggressive). When they go to sleep, Zoey has a dream where she learns of her mother's death and realizes that her mother really cared for her. The book ends with Zoey waking up with this new realization and beginning to cry and grieve for her mother's death, and Stark being there to comfort her.
33304926	/m/0h7l_t8	Destined	Kristin Cast	2011-10-25	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/072lff": "Paranormal romance"}	 The book is told from no less than 11 points of view, respectively Zoey, Stevie Rae, Rephaim, Kalona, Stark, Aurox, Neferet, Shaunee, Lenobia, Dragon, and Erik. In the prologue, Zoey is seen with Stark. She notices Darkness on him and commands Spirit to send the Darkness away. Zoey is unsure about the death of her mother. Meanwhile, Aurox kills a human person. The white bull comes and tells Aurox and Neferet that he can create chaos. Neferet plans to use Aurox to kill and the white bull and rule the world as the Goddess of Vampyres. Zoey and her friends return to school where she blindsides Neferet by initiating a Skype meeting with Duantia, the leader of the High Council. She gives her version of the events in Awakened and puts Neferet in the uncomfortable position of having to accept Rephaim at the House of Night. Next, she asks for a second House of Night under the Tulsa depot, but although Stevie Rae is accepted as the High Priestess of all the red fledglings by the Council, Duantia doesn't give a full answer regarding the request. In the garden, Rephaim is visited by three of his Raven Mocker brothers, sent to him by Kalona to use his supposed misery and consequent bitterness to spy for him and even turn to Darkness. They are stunned to see him in his human form. Their meeting is interrupted by Aurox who kills one of them and proceeds to attack Rephaim. He is stopped by Stevie Rae, but not before she, Rephaim and Zoey see him half-shift into a bull. Neferet appears and diffuses the conflict, calling Aurox her gift from the Goddess. Erik hears the commotion, but he falls under the Tracker compulsion before he can actually intervene. He finds Shaylin, a blind girl, and she makes him stumble over the traditional lines, so that when he finally marks her and she reveals a red Mark he blames himself. Shaylin recovers her eyesight and gains her first gift, the very rare True Sight, which allows a person to 'see' others in colors. Confused, Erik decides to take her to Stevie Rae. At the school, Zoey receives a visit from her grandmother, who confirms Linda's death and leaves for a seven-day period of mourning. Zoey runs off to mourn and Aurox finds her. He offers her a Kleenex, just like Heath used to. At the bus, Erik presents them with the girl. Neferet appears and Shaylin pretends to faint, later telling them she had the general color of dead fish eyes. The next day at school, Rephaim feels the call of his father and calls Zoey to stand witness to the meeting. Kalona appears on the wall and offers them a truce against Neferet, which Zoey reluctantly accepts. As the discussion takes place during her first class, with Neferet, she skips it altogether. When she returns to the school building for her second period she finds out that the Council has sent Thanatos, a vampyre Priestess with an affinity for Death, to report on the situation at the House of Night, much to Neferet's displeasure. As Thanatos too can see the threads of Darkness, Zoey finds her sympathetic and eventually reveals her concerns about Neferet and her mother's death. Thanatos offers to perform a reveal ritual at the place of Linda's death on the fifth day of mourning. Back at the depot, Zoey and her friends sit down to discuss the events. Rephaim finds unexpected support in Shaunee, who empathizes with him because of her father, but this leads to a break between the Twins, as Erin doesn't understand why Shaunee feels so strongly about this. Two more prophecies, one from Kramisha and one from Aphrodite, warn of Rephaim's death at the reveal ritual, probably at the hand of Dragon, so Thanatos asks him to remain at the House of Night, which he doesn't obey. While wondering in the tunnels, Shaunee spots Kalona, waiting for his son. Shaunee gives him her iPhone so that he can contact him until she can get him another phone. Neferet finds out about the reveal ritual and sends Aurox to intervene. During the ritual, he charges out in his bull form but is stopped by Dragon, who sacrifices himself to save Rephaim. The ritual continues anyway; Zoey and her grandmother discover the real circumstances of Linda's murder. Dragon's death is what closes up the ritual, but Rephaim is seriously injured as well. Kalona arrives on the scene - having been called by Stevie Rae - and he expresses regret, asking Nyx not to kill Rephaim for his own mistakes. The request is granted, Rephaim regains consciousness. Thanatos then proceeds to Dragon and guides him to the Otherworld. A gateway is opened and everybody can see him happily reunited with Anastasia. Thanatos decides to become the new High Priestess of the Tulsa House of Night. Much to everybody's surprise, Kalona pledges himself as Thanatos's Warrior. As they leave the scene, Zoey and her friends see a vision of Nyx, who reminds them that the fight will continue.
33314162	/m/0h7ntnt	Infinity Blade: Awakening	Brandon Sanderson	2011-10-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story picks up from the main ending of Infinity Blade. Siris, the final player character in Infinity Blade, returns to his hometown of Drem's Maw after killing the Deathless God King with his own sword, the Infinity Blade. The elders of Drem's Maw force Siris to leave because they fear the other Deathless will attack Drem's Maw to reclaim the Infinity Blade. Siris returns to Lantimor, where he had defeated the God King. While there Siris gains a partner of sorts in Isa, an assassin who is part freedom fighter and part self-serving mercenary. They learn that the God King has been resurrected and that the Infinity Blade can only permanently kill a Deathless once it has been completely activated. (In the game Siris completely activated the Infinity Blade after defeating the Ancestor.) They travel to the lands of Saydhi, another Deathless, to learn from her where the Worker of Secrets, the creator of the Infinity Blade, is imprisoned so they can return the Infinity Blade to him. Isa remains behind as Siris takes on the champions of Saydhi one by one. Afterward, Saydhi tells Siris where to go, but then attacks him. He kills her, but is captured by the resurrected God King, and the Infinity Blade is retaken by the God King. Isa kills Siris with a crossbow bolt so the God King cannot kill Siris permanently with the Infinity Blade. Siris then wakes up in a healing tank similar to one beneath the God King's castle, and learns he is a Deathless originally named Ausar. The warriors that had gone to fight the God King were revealed to be just countless resurrections of Ausar and the Ancestor, whose name is Archarin, is the son of one of the resurrections. Siris and Isa part ways after this realization, with Siris heading out to free the Worker of Secrets and find a way to defeat all of the Deathless permanently.
33314889	/m/0h7m5tg	The Night Circus	Erin Morgenstern	2011-09-13	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Night Circus is a phantasmagorical fairy tale set near an ahistorical Victorian London in a wandering magical circus that is open only from sunset to sunrise. Le Cirque des Rêves, the Circus of Dreams, features such wonders and "ethereal enigmas" as a blooming garden made all of ice, acrobats soaring without a net, and a vertical cloud maze where patrons who get lost simply step off and float gently to the floor. The circus has no set schedule, appearing without warning and leaving without notice; they travel in a train disguised as an ordinary coal transport. A network of devoted fans styling themselves "rêveurs" ("dreamers") develops around the circus; they identify to each other by adding a splash of red to garb that otherwise matches the characteristic black and white of the circus tents. The magical nature of the circus is occluded under the guise of legerdemain; the illusionist truly transforms her jacket into a raven and the fortune teller truly reads the uncertain future, and both are applauded for their ingenuity. The circus serves a darker purpose beyond entertainment and profit. The magicians Prospero the Enchanter and the enigmatic Mr. A.H— groom their young proteges, Celia and Marco, to proxy their rivalry with the exhibits as a stage. Prospero teaches his daughter to hone her innate talents by holding ever larger and more complex magical workings in her mind. Celia takes her position on the game board as the illusionist who makes true transformations, adding tents and maintaining wondrous aspects from the inside. Mr. A.H— trains his orphan ward with books in the ways of glyphs and sympathetic magic and illusory worlds that exist only in the mind of the beholder. Marco takes a position as majordomo to the producer of the circus; he works from the outside in, connected to the circus but not a part of it. The two beguile the circus goers and each other with nightly wonders, soon falling in love despite being magically bound to a deadly competition with rules neither understands; the magical courtship strains the fate laid out for them and endangers the circus that has touched the lives of so many and cannot survive without the talents of both players.
33316909	/m/0h7lqs_	Transformers: Exiles	Alexander C. Irvine	2011-10-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 After leaving Cybertron in the Ark, Optimus Prime and his Autobot crew visit the other planets their fellow Cybertronians have colonized - Velocitron and Junkion. The Autobots escape through the exploding Spacebridge towards another part of space, not aware that starscream followed in an attempt to spy on their plans.
33317254	/m/0h7nxv3	Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25	Richard Paul Evans	2011		 The story follows Michael Vey, a teenager diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome. Although Michael appears normal and has typical hobbies such as playing video games with his best friend Ostin, he secretly has the ability to pulse or surge electricity out of the palms of his hands. After school one day, Michael gets beat up by bullies Jack, Mitchell, and Wade as he is leaving, and a popular cheerleader named Taylor witnesses it. Out of self-defense, Michael touches the three bullies and they fall to the ground. The next day at school, Taylor confronts him about the occasion. After explaining himself, she confesses that she has the ability to "reboot" people and that she can also read minds when she touches someone. They later on discover that they were born in the same hospital near the same date, and a machine made by a company named Elgen was used during their births. The machine went under testing and out of the fifty-nine babies born in the time period only seventeen survived, including Taylor and Michael. Shortly after, both Michael and Taylor receive scholarships from the prestigious Elgen Academy, which claims that it only accepts 17 students every year. When Michael tells his mother about the scholarship, she immediately makes him leave the restaurant they are eating at. On their way to the car, a strange man attempts to rob them. When Michael shocks him, a different man wearing sunglasses, steps out along with two other teenagers. The man reveals himself to be Dr. Hatch. Michael then passes out after being hit by an unknown electrical pulse from one of the teenagers. When Michael wakes up, he is in a hospital and Ostin's mother tells him that his mom has been kidnapped. Meanwhile, Taylor has been taken captive to Elgen Academy in Pasadena, California, where she finds out that she has an identical twin. Taylor soon discovers the dark side of Dr. Hatch; he likes to use the teenagers' powers for his own benefit and pleasure. When given an order by Dr. Hatch, Taylor disobeys him and gets put on Floor D with three other kids. After getting a car ride to Pasadena, Michael unsuccessfully attempts to free Taylor. After being captured, Dr. Hatch tells Michael that Michael killed his own father, and he makes him choose between his own freedom and his friends. Taylor, Ostin, and the other rebels on Floor D escape their cell only to be caught again. Michael is then forced to shock Wade to prove his allegiance to Dr. Hatch. He refuses to shock him and so his mother is shocked and Michael is sent to Cell 25, the torture cell for those who don't "agree" with Dr. Hatch's methods. After 26 days, Michael is released from Cell 25 and is taken to the same room where he "failed" his first test by not shocking Wade. Hatch leaves Michael (who is very ill from his treatment in Cell 25) alongside Ostin, and Taylor, who are restrained in chairs. Ostin and Taylor are supposed to be killed by Zeus, but after Michael tricks Zeus into shocking him, he grows more powerful from Zeus's lightning and his able to pulse and knock him unconscious. He checks on Taylor who is okay, and then Ostin, but finds that his heart has stopped. After applying two shocks in a fashion similar to a defibrillator Ostin's heart starts up again. Taylor then goes into the mind of Zeus and searches his memories, to find that Hatch tricked him into believing that he killed his family while swimming in a pool at the age of 7. He then sides with Michael and the rest of the Electroclan and helps them break Ian, McKenna, and Abigail out of their cell, and using his powers, disables all the cameras they come across. A lengthy battle between the Electroclan and Dr. Hatch's loyalists occurs, Michael's group is able to take control of the control room and released the human captives (including Jack and Wade) who overpower the remaining guards that Michael and his group haven't already disabled, while Dr. Hatch escapes from Elgen Academy in a helicopter with most of the other electric children that are loyal to him (with the exception of Nichelle whom he leaves behind) to another location. After the battle, Taylor goes to call her parents, and after dialing three digits walks up to and kisses Michael. Afterward another electric child, Grace, who supposedly ran away from Hatch shows up wanting to join the "Electoclan". With the suspicion that she may be a plant, Taylor reads her mind and confirms that she is against Hatch. Grace also says that she was able to download all of the Elgen's computer files, before they were deleted, onto herself (her power being that she is able to upload and download data from computers like a flash drive). The book ending with Ostin proclaiming that "This is the rise of the Electoclan!".
33319091	/m/0h942v1	The Enchantress: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel	Michael Scott		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Enchantress picks up where its predecessor, The Warlock left off. Two of its central characters, the fifteen year old twins, Sophie and Josh Newman, have been re-united after being briefly separated. The twins, along with John Dee and Virginia Dare, go back in time to the Isle of Danu Talis, where Osiris and Isis are revealed to be Dee's masters and the twins' parents. Osiris removes Dee's immortality, but Dee does not immediately die (he is later found by Marethyu, who restores his health and sight). Virginia Dare chooses to side with Osiris and Isis. Meanwhile, the Flamels, Niten, and Prometheus discover that Mars, Hel, and Odin are not faring well and that Machiavelli and Billy the Kid have joined them. The Flamels decide to join them on Alcatraz, but Billy mistakenly throws the spears with the Words of Power at her (he also used them to kill the Sphinx earlier). The Morrigan throws herself in front of Perenelle and dies instead. Odin and Hel both die slaying an army of Anpu. After finding Aerop-Enap's cocoon, the Flamels and Machiavelli attempt to awake her while Billy and Black Hawk fight a Karkinos (giant crab). Billy is mortally wounded and Black Hawk is thrown into the water, presumably eaten by the Nereids. Machiavelli heals Billy and Aerop-Enap kills the Karkinos after Mars uses his aura to lead it away from the group, which causes him to spontaneously combust. Tsagaglalal returns herself to her youthful immortal state and it is discovered that she is one of the First People that were awakened by Prometheus. After putting on an ancient suit of ceramic armour, she goes to the Golden Gate Bridge to fend off an army of Spartoi (dragon teeth sewn in the ground and watered with blood that become reptilian soldiers) that were animated by Quetzalcoatl and the present Bastet. In the center of the bridge, Niten and Prometheus defeat quite a few of the Spartoi, but both are mortally wounded. After slaying the rest of the Spartoi, Tsagaglalal finds them, but only has enough of her aura left to heal Prometheus. The dismayed Elder convinces her to use his aura to heal Niten, asking her to tell him to marry Aoife, whom Niten loves. On Danu Talis, Scathach, Joan of Arc, Saint-Germain, Palamedes, Shakespeare, and the young Prometheus crash their vimana on the original Yggdrasill and meet Hekate and Mars (then Huitzilopochtli), who plan to lead the human inhabitants of Yggdrasill to liberate the incarcerated Aten. Anubis and the younger Bastet prepare to take over Danu Talis, but Isis and Osiris have other plans. Telling Sophie and Josh to don silver and gold suits of armour, they prepare to present the twins to the council of elders as the rightful rulers of Danu Talis. Marethyu finds Virginia Dare and presents her with an emerald tablet from Abraham the Mage, persuading Dare to side with the humani. Dare meets Dee in front of the prison, later telling him that she had only wanted a world so that she could make it completely free. She leads the humani against the Elders along with Dee, who dies when allowing her to draw energy off of his aura. Scathach, Joan, Saint Germain, Shakespeare, and Palamedes fight the final battle along with the twins. Osiris and Isis admit that Sophie and Josh aren't their children (Josh was found in a Neanderthal camp shortly after the Fall of Danu Talis, and Sophie was found in Russia in the ninth or tenth century 30,000 years after) and they transform into their true forms, revealing that they aren't Elders, but Earthlords. After defeating the pair, Sophie and Josh reach an agreement and Sophie leaves with the other warriors. Josh sits on the center of the Pyramid of the Sun and begins to read the Codex, discovering that Sophie, Joan, Scathach, Dare, and Aten lead the survivors onto the new Earth and assist them for several hundred years before returning to the present time. He then combines the Four Swords of Power (Clarent, Excalibur, Durendal, and Joyeuse) to create the fifth power--- Aether. The swords form a hook, revealing that Josh becomes Marethyu. He plunges his hook into the center of the Pyramid of the Sun, speaking aloud the last words he read in the Codex ("Today I become Death, the destroyer of worlds") and thereby destroying Danu Talis. On Alcatraz, Nicholas and Perenelle spend their last moments together. Marethyu tells Perenelle and the Alchemyst that he is Josh and takes them to Paris, where the Flamels die. In a letter to Sophie, Josh (Marethyu) reveals that he and the Flamels were present at Aoife and Niten's wedding, where Scathach was the bridesmaid.
33321947	/m/0h7q9kz	In the Plex	Steven Levy		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 *The World According to Google: Biography of a Search Engine *Googlenomics: Cracking the Code on Internet Profits *Don’t be Evil: How Google Built Its Culture *Google’s Cloud: Building Data Centers That Hold Everything Ever Written *Outside the Box: The Google Phone Company and the Google TV Company *GuGe: Google's Moral Dilemma in China *Google.gov: is What’s Good for Google, Good for Government --- or the Public? *Epilogue: Chasing Taillights
33345103	/m/0h7nk3r	Dragon's Time	Anne McCaffrey	2011-06	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The frame story of Dragon's Time is set during ten days of year 508 AL (years After Landing on Pern). Now it is summer, about six months after the start of the "Third Pass" of the Red Star and its attendant Threadfall. Much of the action takes place during a long episode of time travel led by Fiona of Fort Weyr, who is the Telgar Weyrwoman now (508 AL). The primary purpose of the expedition is to survive, and to mature or to convalesce, and thus to gain man- and dragonpower in the present crisis. In all this, Dragon's Time matches Todd's Dragonheart, two books back. The differences: It is now six months rather than a few weeks after the start of the Third Pass. The refuge is in the near past, but distant in space: the smaller and unknown Western Continent (as readers of the series know it), on the other side of Pern from the settled Northern Continent. There is a secondary purpose, or opportunity: both humans and dragons may reproduce (the childbearing of leading women is a theme). Fiona and the temporary Weyr she leads compose a smaller part of the story than in Dragonheart. She shares the lead, and often her queen dragon Talenth, with Lorana. Lorana was the protagonist of Dragonsblood, Todd McCaffrey's first solo effort, three books back, but ending early in this year 508. She is the expert time traveler, who led Fiona and others on the backward journey in Dragonheart, and risked the first forward journey at the end of Dragongirl. In this book she makes many short-duration trips, some of them distant in time. "You can't break time, but you can cheat it", and Lorana is the expert cheater.
33345519	/m/0h7mkpt	Dragongirl	Todd McCaffrey	2010-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Until nearly the end of Dragonheart, Fiona had been a very young Weyrwoman in the past, during a long episode of time travel. Essentially, she had led a large group of young dragons and young dragonriders with the primary purpose simply to survive and to mature in the relative safety of the past. That worked, and so they gained time, or adult man- and dragonpower, for the Pernese to handle the current crisis. Upon return from the past, Fiona is no longer Weyrwoman, but she has that experience, and the proven love and loyalty of many who had traveled with her. Early in Dragongirl, the entire force of centrally located Telgar Weyr is lost to a sudden disaster&nbsp;— all its mature dragons and dragonriders, about 300 pairs. That leaves only the support population, with almost no adult men, and some of the young, retired, or sick. Fiona's group of recent travelers is transferred to Telgar, among others, and she is Weyrwoman again. Following the plague that had decimated the dragons, and the loss of an entire Weyr, the remaining dragons are overstretched, and the limited numbers lead to even further casualties. The novel follows Fiona, now as Weyrwoman of Telgar, as the dragonriders come to realize that there are no longer enough dragons to protect the planet for the whole Pass.
33351584	/m/0h7mlvh	Postsingular	Rudy Rucker		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The novel is divided into four parts. Most of the events in the story take place in a future version of San Francisco. The first part begins on a New Year's Day, in which a young, 17-year-old Jeff Luty and his friend Carlos Tucay are about to light bottle rockets on Stinson Beach. The two boys, who are interested in the young but growing nanotechnology industry, dream about establishing Lu-Tuc Space Tech, and have inserted nanorobots into the rockets. After a passing dog had urinated on the rocket, the rockets are lit again. However, the rocket eventually misfires, and a launch lug is sent flying into Carlos' right eye, killing him. The first part fast forwards several years later, in which Jeff is the CEO of Nantel, the leading nanotechnology company in the world. One of the leading employees of the company is engineer Ond Lutter, who works on a project to create "nants". However, when Jeff, who is still distraught over Carlos' death, comes to blows with Ond over the creation of a virtual earth with the nants. The US government buys the nants, and the president, Dick Dibbs, announces that the earth will be eaten by the nants and converted into a virtual version of the Earth, or "vEarth". Ond and his family, however, do not agree. Ond builds an antenna to resist the advance of the nants until the house is the last of the holdouts to persist on physical earth. Ond's 9-year-old son Chu, however, is an autistic savant and is able to Jumping into the wall of nants that has grown in the Lutter house, Chu immediately jumps back out and the nants begin to retreat. By the next day, the nants have mostly reversed all their advances until they return to the moon and are shot out of existence by a Chinese satellite. After the reversal and destruction of the nants, Dibbs is arrested by the government and executed for his role in the "vEarth" conspiracy (classified as "treason"). Luty is now a wanted fugitive and goes into hiding; Lutter, who is rehired Nantel, now renamed as ExaExa Labs, however, is inspired by nanorobotics to create a new type of nanorobot, which becomes known as the "orphids". When he tells a gathering of his and Craigor's families in San Francisco Bay, however, Nektar becomes angry against Ond and argues against Ond over the nants, for fear of a repeat of the events. Ond seizes the jar and smashes the glass open, releasing the orphids to rapidly self-replicate. Within hours, the orphids, which are heavily connected to the Internet, spread to most of the West Coast, and Ond is wanted by the San Francisco Police Department. The orphids also provide displays for augmented reality, ridding society of the need for AR contact lenses (or "webeyes"), throat microphones and other AR utilities. The city has a hard time adapting to the orphids and the sensorally-immersive version of the Internet, or "orphidnet", presented by the orphids. The advanced properties of the orphidnet allow for opportunities not possible with prior computing technologies, such as advanced teleconferencing, tetepathy remote sex between physically-separated partners. However, this leaves little room for privacy, as the orphids barely allow for any living thing to be non-connected to the orphidnet, meaning that Ond is the subject of a mob which seeks to lynch him for "Orphid Night". Nektar separates from Ond and becomes intimate with a cook at a nearby restaurant, leaving Ond to take care of Chu; furthermore, Ond and Chu discover the existence of a higher-intelligence dimension which somewhat mirrors earth. One of the rulers of the so-called "Hibrane" version of San Francisco, Gladax, tries to remove the means of "Lobrane" access to the Hibrane in order to keep Lobraners out, going so far as to penetrate Chu's mind. The pursuit of Ond and Chu by both Gladax and the anti-nant/orphid mob ultimately send the two teleporting from the Merz Boat to the Hibrane version of San Francisco, where everything is slower and larger. Years later, San Francisco has become reliant upon the orphidnet, and the story focuses upon a group of teenage residents, known as "kiqqies", who are homeless but depend upon dumpster-diving and a particular portion of the orphidnet known as "the Big Pig". The Pig is seen as an addiction to those whose minds are clear, as it allows for its partakers to rapidly glean information for so long as one is accessing it. Jayjay, Thuy, Sonic and Kitty ===Part 4===
33355795	/m/0h7mwxr	The Mark of Athena	Rick Riordan	2012-10-02		 While getting ready to land at Camp Jupiter, Annabeth Chase prepares by making sure the various back-up plans are ready in case something goes wrong. While Leo Valdez was flying the Argo II, Annabeth tried to keep Gleeson Hedge from attacking the first thing he saw by convicing him watch reruns of mixed martial arts championships in his cabin. Jason Grace prepared by putting on a purple toga over his orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt and Piper McLean practiced her lines for when they landed. As Annabeth watched Jason, she wondered if this could all be a trap as she was still a bit untrusting of Jason as he seemed to be too perfect. She also was reminded of how much she missed Percy Jackson every time she looked at him. Annabeth also mentions feeling a mysterious chill, as if "an evil snowman had crept up behind her and was peering over her neck." Annabeth wished she could pray to her mother, but this would be impossible as Athena had appeared to her about a month ago, an encounter Annabeth described as very horrible. Athena also gave Annabeth the worst present of her life during this meeting. Soon, the horns from Camp Jupiter sounded below as the campers spotted the Argo II. Annabeth Chase is amazed at the size of Camp Jupiter, which is twice the size of Camp Half Blood, and recognizes the landmarks that Jason has told her about. She sees evidence of the Romans' recent battle, including the cracked dome of the Senate House. An explosion nearly knocks Annabeth overboard, and Terminus, the Roman god of boundaries, appears on the Argo II. He shrieks that he will not allow weapons inside the Pomerian Line, and grumbles at Jason for consorting with the enemies of Rome, referring to the Greek demigods. Piper tries to charmspeak Terminus, but he "slaps" her dagger out of her hand for her impertinence. Terminus announces that if he was at his full strength, he would have already blasted the "flying monstrosity" out of the sky, to which Leo takes offense to. Annabeth tries to regain control of the situation and calm everyone down by introducing herself to Terminus, but he finds Annabeth being the daughter of Athena, the Greek form of Minerva, to be "scandalous." However, before Annabeth can question Terminus on what he means, Jason interrupts and asks for permission to land inside the Pomerian Line. Annabeth spots Percy walking with Frank Zhang and Hazel Levesque as if they were best friends, and Annabeth knew she had to reach him, as she was so close. She also recognizes that he is now Praetor, as he is wearing a purple cape just like Jason's. Annabeth orders Leo to stop the ship, as she asks Terminus whether there is a rule against the ship hovering over New Rome, to which Terminus says there isn't. Annabeth then tells Terminus that they will keep the Argo II up in the air over New Rome and use a rope ladder to reach the forum. She also promised Terminus that all their weapons will stay on the ship, as long as the legion reinforcements will honor the same rules, which Terminus agrees to as he can't tolerate those that break the rules. Annabeth finally reunites with Percy and kisses him. She then judo-flips Percy against the ground and makes him swear that he'll never leave her again, to which Percy says yes, and, "I missed you, too." Later, Annabeth and Reyna walk and talk on a hill when the Argo II starts firing on them. They rush back to find that Percy, Jason, Piper, Frank and Hazel are all being attacked by angry Romans because the Argo II is firing on New Rome. As the Greek and Roman demigods are fighting each other, Percy, Annabeth, Frank, Leo, Piper, Hazel and Jason decide escape from the scene in Argo II. The Argo II is severely damaged and Jason suffers a head injury. Leo is confronted by Annabeth, Frank & Percy and he admits firing at the Romans. He however mentioned that he was forced to do so by an invisible force. Leo takes the ship to Great Salt Lake in Utah to find material required to repair the ship. Hazel and Leo then heads out to find Celestial Bronze needed for the repairs. Along the way, they find Nemesis surrounded by many fortune cookies, which she was opening to figure out the contents, before deciding to keep it in her basket or to toss it away. Nemesis gives Leo a cookie, which he kept in his tool belt, and Nemesis pointed out that someone is waiting for them before she leaves the scene. Hazel and Leo then finds Echo and Narcissus. The Celestial Bronze turns out to be a "mirror" which Narcissus is using to see his own reflection. After managing to trick Narcissus, Hazel and Leo escaped back to the ship with the help of Arion, Hazel's horse, and Echo, who remained behind to try to save Narcissus again, after having failed in her previous life time. Along the way, they stop in Kansas, owing to a vision Piper had in her dagger. They discover Bacchus, the Roman counterpart to Mr. D. It turns out to be a trap and Gaea forces Percy and Jason to fight each other. Their eyes turn into a gold hue, and with Percy on Blackjack and Jason on Tempest, both heroes attack each other. Piper manages to stop them from killing each other, as she realises that they are possessed by eidolons. With both Percy and Jason knocked out, Piper had Blackjack carry them back to the ship. It is then conferred that the 'chills' that Annabeth and Leo had earlier felt were due to the effects of eidolons. After a discussion, it is discovered that three eidolens are 'residing' in Percy, Jason and Leo. Piper manages to send the eidolons away. Before they leave, Piper makes them swear on the River Styx that they will never come back to the ship or inhabit any of its crew. The seven then headed to Atlanta. On the way there, Percy has a dream of the twins, Ephialtes and Otis. He realises that the giants had prepared traps for the demigods and the item they desired was actually a jar. Trapped in the jar is Nico di Angelo, who is surviving on Pomegranate seeds. These seeds were taken from Persephone's garden, and one per day, puts the user in a death trance. Nico was consuming almost no air, the reason why he can survive in the jar of poisonous fumes. This fulfils Ella's prophecy "Twins snuff out the angel's breath", the angel referring to Nico di Angelo, where Angelo is Italian for Angel. They have only 5 days to rescue him, and that is by July 1st, and also the day when Rome falls. Annabeth wakes Percy and takes him to her favorite part of the ship, so that he could finally be able to spend time with her after 8 months. She kisses him and tells him how much she missed him. Percy tells her about his dream about Ephialtes and Otis. She asks him to hold her for a while, and the warmth of Annabeth makes him fall asleep. He is found the next day by Frank, who tries not to look very awkward. Coach Hedge is infuriated, and Hazel looks scandalized and keeps fanning her face with her hand. Coach Hedge grounds Annabeth so, Percy, Frank and Coach Hedge then head out to search for Phorcys. As Keto and Coach Hedge went for a tour of the aquarium, both Percy and Frank are caught by Phorcys, who had earlier let slip the location of the map they were looking for. With the efforts of Coach Hedge who discovers them in an aquarium, the trio managed to escape. Their next stop is Charleston. Annabeth, who wishes good luck for Percy, who wants to gather the local Nereids' help, Piper and Hazel seeks out the apparition that Jason and Reyna had encountered years ago. The apparition turned out to be Aphrodite/Venus. The goddess claims that, while the other gods suffer crippiling headaches due to their Greek and Roman sides conflicting, she does not suffer this afflection, for love is the same be it Greek or Roman. After a 'tea party', Annabeth searches for the map as her friends battled against the Romans at Fort Sumpter. After a fearful encounter of spiders, which hinted further at the final destination of the trail that the Mark of Athena leads, Annabeth found the map. After escaping from the Romans, the ship sails through the Atlantic. During this time, Hazel decides to show Leo a vision from her past, in hopes to understand each other better. A scene from Hazel's school days were shown, where Sammy Valdez saved her from a bully and acquired a diamond from her. Despite Hazel's plea, Sammy decided to keep the diamond and promised her that he would never sell it. The scene changes quickly, causing Hazel to be in disbelief as it did not belong to any of her visions. It is, however, a scene where the timelines of Hazel, Leo and Sammy crossed. Sammy turned out to be Leo's great-grandfather. In the vision, as Sammy was cuddling a baby Leo, Sammy started to ramble what appeared to be nonsense. However, it was implied that Sammy could have been a demigod as well, for he had received a vision from Hera. The vision told Sammy that Hazel's trouble would not have been during his lifetime. As Leo was the first male heir to appear in generations, Sammy hoped that Leo would be his double, and he implored that if Leo was to meet Hazel, Leo would have to apologize to Hazel on his behalf. "Tell her hello for me," Sammy said to baby Leo. When Hazel died, though Sammy had thought that she had simply disappeared, Sammy sold the diamond. Sammy then believed that he was cursed, for he never saw Hazel again. As both Hazel and Leo awaken from their sharing, Hazel is crying, and Leo says, "Hello, Hazel Levesque," in a gravely voice. Then a monster attacks the ship. Frank is knocked overboard while Leo and Hazel fall into the ocean after being caught by the monster. They are then saved by Chiron's brothers, Aphros and Bythos who are actually Ichthyocentaurs; creatures with a humanoid upper body, the torso and legs of a horse and the tail of a fish. After they release the trio back to the ship, they send a force to deal with Phorcys and Keto in a bid to release all the marine creatures been held captive. The voyage continues to Rome, passing through the entrance to the Mediterranean, where they are tested by Hercules, who is now a god. Piper manages to cut of the remaining horn of Achelous, an old river god, and it turns into a cornucopia. Instead of handing the cornucopia to Hercules, as per Hercules's request/demand, they trick the god and escape. Along the way, they are boarded by pirates led by the son of Medusa. They manage to escape, and make an offering to Bacchus. Once in Rome, Annabeth and Percy have lunch together, and then Annabeth kisses Percy goodbye and leaves with Rhea Silvia, an escort, to continue following The Mark of Athena- part of a separate quest set by her mother. Percy, Piper and Jason are almost drowned by vengeful water nymphs, but survive, and manage to rescue Nico Di Angelo. While battling giant, Bacchus appears and aids them owing to the offering made to him. After retrieving the Athena Parthenos, the floor begins to crack. Annabeth begins to slide toward the pit and falls, but Percy catches her and comforts her. He congratulates her for finding the statue. However, Arachne uses a line of webbing, still attached to Annabeth's ankle, to pull her into the pit. Percy is only barely able to catch her, holding her with one hand, with the other hand on a ledge. Annabeth hears Arachne's voice in her mind, saying that if she is to go to Tartarus, so will Annabeth. Turning to Nico, Percy asks Nico to lead the others to the Doors of Death. Unable to hold on any longer, Percy promises Annabeth that he will never be separated from her again and releases his grip on the ledge. Holding hands, they fall into Tartarus. Back on the Argo II, the remaining six demigods agree to head to Greece to the House of Hades (The location of the Doors of Death in the mortal world) and shut them from this side, while Percy and Annabeth travel through Tartarus to reach the other side of the Doors there. Leo tells Festus to prepare the ship to set sail for their friends.
33382449	/m/0h97t80	Blanche on the Lam	Barbara Neely		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"}	 Blanche on the Lam opens in a court room with Blanche being accused of writing bad checks and being sentenced to thirty days in jail to teach her a lesson. She has a small panic attack at the thought of having to spend thirty days in a small jail cell and asks to use the rest room where she ends up fuming over what has become of her life in Farleigh, North Carolina since moving there from New York city. She gave up better pay for the safety of her children and ended being unable to cover the checks she wrote, being accused of writing more bad checks then she had, and being sentenced to time in jail because of it. There was a disturbance out in the hall and she took her chance to escape by slipping out of the restroom and making her way to the exit and out into the underground parking lot. She walked quickly out of the area and found herself in the neighborhood to a job she had gotten from the Ty-Dee Girls agency she had cancelled for that week. Luckily for her the agency had yet to send her replacement and the woman who came out of the house did not question her about her apparent lateness. She was then brought into the house, instructed to serve lunch, and then be ready to depart the house so they could head to the country. After lunch Blanche and the family of four drove out to the country house by the sea. That day she learned that one of the family members, Aunt Emmeline, was a drunk or at least that was what she assumed, and was a witness to her Will signing that would hand over the control of her nephew, Mumsfield‘s, money to his cousins, Grace and Everett. After the signing she learned from Nate, who worked for the family for many years, that something was not right with the Will signing situation. He would not explain his reasoning but she intended to find out, all while planning her move to New York, later Boston, to escape the Sheriff and the jail sentence she was running from. Later, after returning from running errands with Mumsfield, she found the Sheriff at the country house and thought she had been caught, but it turns out that Sheriff was there to see Everett. After she has calmed herself she wonders why the Sheriff was there if not for her, and is even more curious when she realizes how much time he is spending at the property. Nate refuses to tell her but Blanche is determined to find out. Aside from that mystery she is sure that Grace and Everett are trying to get hold or at least control of Mumsfield’s money because they had gone through all of Grace’s money. Listening to the news one morning on the radio she heard of the Sheriff’s suicide. She was happy that she would not have to worry about him anymore and that she would not have to leave for Boston, but it struck her after she remembered the conversation she had eavesdropped on just the evening before that the Sheriff would not have committed suicide. The man had just been saying that he did not want to leave the place he lived and worked in and had no plans give up his job as the Sheriff of the county. Not only had she heard that declaration, she had also heard Everett threaten the man right after it, and that night she had been woken up by a sound out of place for a country night and witnessed Everett rolling the limousine silently down the drive way. However, Blanche could not assume that she was living with a murderer based on what she head overheard and witnessed. In the same day Nate came and told her that he had seen someone wearing a pink jacket walking the short-cut route to the place where the Sheriff died. It was obvious he thought it was Everett. Later that day Everett confronted Blanche about the whereabouts of Nate, and the next day he ends being dead. Killed in a house fire during the night. Blanche finds clues here and there and eventually learns that the Aunt Emmeline she saw sign the will was an impostor and that the real woman had been killed. After going over the clues she had and looking at what evidence she had already uncovered and seeing Grace again, she realized that she had been suspecting the wrong person of murder all along. Who would have thought sweet, believable, weary, frightened Grace would have been a serial killer?
33383331	/m/0h7n27j	The Fatwa Girl		2011-09-25	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Amor vincit omnia -- love conquers all, but in a land which has been conquered from the Moguls to the British and now where the Taliban and fundamentalists strive for hegemony, a young man named Omar faces a battle in winning the hand of the girl he loves. They It is in this milieu that two lovers try to forge not only a relationship for themselves but a society where peace and sanity prevail, battling the forces of hatred and sectarianism that threaten to tear their worlds—and a nation—apart. At once a quirky exploration of a society on edge and a tender tale of shattered innocence, The Fatwa Girl, reveals a deep understanding of the human heart and its often mysterious attachments.
33391440	/m/0h97jcx	The Grounding of Group 6			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Doctor Simms, the headmaster of the Coldbrook Country School - to which the five wayward youths, all sixteen years old, have been dispatched – succinctly lays out the “plot” to Nat Rittenhouse, the school’s hired assassin: :"We take them off their hands, those lemons. Once and for all. Quick and neat and clean and utterly untraceable. We have those limestone faults quite near the school-these fissures on the surface of the planet. Some of them seem almost bottomless. Drop a lemon into one....we never hear it hit. We call that 'grounding', Mr. Rittenhouse. A natural and wholesome term, I hope you will agree. At Coldbrook, we are definitely....organic." But the twenty-two year old Nat, who agreed to take on the poisoning of the kids so he could pay off a gambling debt he owed to gangsters, bonds with the members of Group 6. He sees nothing much wrong with the kids, and soon becomes really fond of them. These are the five in Group 6: * Lean and lanky, bitter Coke, who has trouble keeping his shirttails in, has packed cigarettes and white rum in his backpack. * The more naïve, much shorter Sully hates his life in New York City and his mother’s dreadful “manfriend”. * Potty-mouthed and funny, Marigold is wise as well as cynical. She slept with one of her mother’s boyfriends. * Athletic, organized, popular Sarah is an over-achiever who was driven to cheat on an English paper. * And Ludi, who can see things and hear sounds that are not “there”, has ways and attitudes that just enrage her father. At first, Nat does not have the heart to let the kids in on the truth, but he finally breaks the news after they have pieced some clues together on their own. Nat also tells them that because he has not killed them he’s on the school’s hit list, too. From that point on, Nat and Group 6 are a team, living mostly in a cabin he built in the woods, a few miles from the school. Even as the kids begin to master survival skills, a hunt begins. Because it was the gangsters who provided Nat to the school, they are shamed by his failure to do the killing, so they send an employee to kill him. And two outrageous middle-aged members of the school’s faculty, a man and a woman, who are both crack shots, take their rifles into the woods, looking for Nat and the kids. Eventually, the headmaster recruits the entire student body to join in the search, because one of those odd faculty members has mysteriously “vanished”. With most of the school’s population combing the woods, the kids dare to enter the school to search for proofs of their parents’ dreadful (and criminal) “deal”. The climax of the book is there for you to read. Suffice it to say that in the course of their time together the kids make peace with the loss of their old families and gain an unbreakable appreciation of their new one. English Journal reviewer, Dick Abrahamson noted that it is the Plot and characters that drive the story and hold the reader's interest: "It is the plot that keeps the reader turning the pages of this book. Characterization is handled by having the individual teenagers react to each other. The reader watches the teenagers deal with the horror of finding out that their parents have paid to have them killed. We also watch as the individuals of Group 6 develop a sense of responsibility and a love for each other." Norma Fox Mazer, a YA author, said that "The author has taken a grotesque subject and made of it a story not only scary, but, praise be, funny. Reading the book, I laughed as often as I shivered and turned pages as fast as possible to find out that most basic and important of all things - what is going to happen."
33402286	/m/0h96cz_	Modelland	Tyra Banks	2011-09-13	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A young, awkward looking girl by the name of Tookie De La Crème is invited to attend the legendary Modelland for the chance to become an Intoxibella. Along the way she meets a plus-sized girl named Dylan, a 4'7" girl named Shiraz, and an albino girl named Piper. Together they form a strong bond as they face the trials and tribulations of Modelland.
33409691	/m/06w7s8g	Wake	Robert J. Sawyer	2009-04-07	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Wake is set in 2012. The principal character is Caitlin Decter, a 15 year-old girl who has been blind from birth. The Decter family have moved from Austin, Texas to Waterloo, Ontario after Caitlin's father, Malcolm, receives a job at the Perimeter Institute. Shortly after moving, Caitlin receives an email from Dr. Masayuki Kuroda, a scientist whose specialty is "signal processing related to V1." Dr. Kuroda believes that her blindness is caused by her retinas miscoding the visual information and offers to install a signal processing device behind her left eyeball, which he believes will unscramble the data and give her sight in that eye. The device sends the visual data to a miniature computer, dubbed an "eyePod", which reprocesses the signals and send them back to the implant in her eye. The correct visual data is then passed on to her optic nerve, theoretically granting her sight. In duplex mode it sends and receives the signals, and in simplex mode it only sends them. Caitlin and her mother, Barbara, fly to Tokyo for the procedure. Although her pupils now react to light, Caitlin is still unable to see. The Decter's return to Canada while Dr. Kuroda works on a software update for his device, hoping that will grant Caitlin vision. A bird-flu outbreak with a mortality rate of at least 90% has begun to spread through China at an epidemic rate. Dr. Quan Li, a senior member of the Communist Party, recommends the President order a culling of an estimated ten to eleven thousand people living in the infected area through the use of an airborne chemical agent. The President agrees and orders that the Changcheng Strategy, which cuts off all telephone, satellite, and wireless communication with the rest of the world, be enabled so that word of the culling does not spread beyond China's borders. Wong Wai-Jeng, a freedom blogger who is known online as Sinanthropus, attempts to circumvent Internet censorship in China along with many other hackers. Collectively they learn about the bird flu outbreak. Several days after the enacting of the Changcheng Strategy, the President of China is convinced by Zhang Bo, the Minister of Communications, to restore communications. The moment they are back up, Sinanthropus posts a blog, informing the world of the bird flu outbreak and the culling that occurred. He is tracked down by the police and, while attempting to flee, breaks his leg and is captured. The first software update Kuroda attempts is a partial success. Although Caitlin can still not see the outside world, it enables her to visualize the World Wide Web while the update downloads when the eyePod is in duplex mode. Dr. Kuroda speculates that the data being transmitted between the eyePod and his server in Tokyo is being interpreted by her optic nerve, allowing her to see this. He decides to travel to Waterloo to work with Caitlin on the implant more directly. In the interim, he suggests sending the retinal feed from her eyePod to his Tokyo server through Jagster, a fictional search engine, so that he can monitor how she reacts to different inputs. He dubs her ability to visualize the internet "websight". Caitlin notes that, along with websites and links, she can visualize a background in websight that looks like a chess board. Dr. Kuroda speculates that the background is made up of cellular automata, which Caitlin suggests is caused by corrupted packet loss. Several Zipf plots are run of the cellular automata, which has a negative one slope. The Decters, Dr. Kuroda, and Anna Bloom, a network cartographer, realize that means the cellular automata contain intelligent content, which Anna suggests is secret communications from the National Security Agency. They decide to keep investigating the cellular automata discretely. In San Diego, California, Shoshana Glick, an ape-language researcher and graduate student, works at the Marcuse Institute, a primate research centre. Hobo, a chimpanzee-bonobo hybrid, communicates by sign language. Doctor Harl Marcuse, the owner of the Institute, sets up a connection with the Miami Zoo. Hobo communicates with an orang-utan named Virgil in the first interspecies webcam call. The Marcuse Institute and Miami Zoo agree to announce the chat jointly, but the Miami Zoo leaks word of it to New Scientist, who go to the Georgia Zoo - Hobo's birthplace - for information on him. Georgia Zoo, fearing about the contamination between the captive chimpanzee and bonobo bloodlines, demand Hobo be returned to them so that he can be sterilized. Hobo paints a portrait of Shoshana, surprising everyone at the Institute as it had been believed that chimpanzees could only paint abstractly. Dr. Marcuse theorizes that the communication with Virgil had shown Hobo "how three-dimensional objects could be reduced to two dimensions." The Marcuse Institute decide to record Hobo painting a second time and then go public, believing that the outcry over sterilizing him would force the Georgia Zoo to back down from their plans. The Georgia Zoo issue a lawsuit, planning to castrate Hobo. Dr. Kuroda sets up a final software patch. While at school, Caitlin decides to take a break from her work and switches the eyePod to duplex mode so she can look through websight. It fails to load and, disappointed, she returns the eyePod to simplex mode. She sees several lines crossing her field of vision and is surprised when she realizes that they are the edge of a lab bench and that she can now see. Barbara picks Caitlin up from school and informs her about the patch. Malcolm runs Shannon entropy graphs on the cellular automata to gauge how complex the information in them is. He shows Caitlin how to run it, and they discover that the information has little complexity. Dr. Kuroda holds a press conference, announcing the success of his invention that has made Caitlin able to see. Caitlin receives an electric shock which crashes the eyePod. She reboots it in duplex mode and sees a mirrored representation of her face in websight. An intelligence has spontaneously emerged on the Web. Cleaved in two when the Changcheng Strategy was enacted, the restoration of communications by China causes the two halves to coalesce, and it gains in intelligence. The intelligence can view Caitlin's eyePod feed. It believes that her vision is an attempt to communicate with it and, when her eyePod was rebooted, it sent an image of Caitlin in an attempt to communicate back. As Caitlin begins to learn how to read letters, the intelligence believes it is a further attempt to communicate and learns with her. When she switches to duplex mode, it takes that act to be a reward for its learning progress. Caitlin believes it to be "visual noise" as a result of gaining sight. Dr. Kuroda looks at the information on his server, and Caitlin realizes that the information is her reading exercises being bounced back to her. She then runs another Shannon entropy scan, realising that the information in the cellular automata has increased in intelligence. Caitlin deduces that the information is trying to communicate with her and decides to help it. Dr. Kuroda feels it is now time to return to Japan and informs her that, as she can now see, he will remove the duplex setting from her eyePod. Caitlin convinces him to keep it as is so that she can continue to see websight. She runs another Shannon entropy plot and realizes that the intelligence has increased yet again. She continues with her teaching efforts, leading the intelligence to different websites so that it can continue learning. She runs the Shannon entropy a fourth and fifth time and finds that the intelligence is double that of human complexity. The intelligence contacts Caitlin via email and wishes her a happy birthday. It thanks her for helping it to learn and invites her to communicate with it through instant messenger. She asks it what she should call it, and the intelligence replies "Webmind". Webmind and Caitlin decide to go forwards together.
33415948	/m/0h94bxk	Sex and Religion		2009		 The book is a detailed guide to the ways in which faiths have sought to repress or celebrate as well as codify almost every kind of sexual relationship and act. It examines how various religions define sex, how they look at various forms of celibacy, masturbation, heterosexuality, homosexuality, interracial sex, sex between gods and humans and between gods, ritual sex, the religiously perceived consequence of sex, and how various faiths prioritize or downgrade various rules in connection with other rules. As practically all forms of sex, or lack of it, are at the same time both prohibited and condoned in some religious tradition, it is impossible to identify a natural connection between sex and religion, beyond that each and every religion insists on their view on sex being the eternal answer.
33416685	/m/0h98kgr	7×7 Tales of a Sevensleeper		1985		 Much to his brother's and parents' dismay, a boy's obsession over the habits of his favourite animals—squirrel-like creatures called "sevensleepers"—makes him pretend he is one of them. The number seven figures in his daily routines throughout the course of 49 stories: he becomes that age early on in the book, with as many presents to match; he goes to bed every night at seven o'clock; and he even eats or owns things in groups of seven. This trait even helps him follow the week more efficiently than months or years, which are both far longer.
33421521	/m/0h97y4z	Acacia: The Sacred Band	David Anthony Durham		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Acacia: The Sacred Band follows the Akaran siblings as they each deal with a different theater in the coming war with the Auldek, invaders from the Other Lands that are marching across the north pole and down into Acacia. Queen Corinn has worked an act of magic, resurrecting a character from an earlier book to aid her. The person she has brought back, however, doesn't wish to be molded to her needs. Mena Akaran has gone north with the small army sent out to have first contact with the invaders. The novel chronicles the brutal, Arctic campaign fought on the ice and in the skies above it. Dariel Akaran, still in the Other Lands (Ushen Brae) finds himself dealing with the turmoil of the Auldek's having abandoned their slaves, the Quota children that have been a feature of all three books. There are also a host of minor characters. Rialus Neptos is dragged along with the Auldek as they invade his homeland. Kelis returns to Acacia, having retrieved Aliver Akaran's daughter, Shen. Barad the Lesser continues to struggle with the spell Corinn has trapped him with. Also, there is another invasion to deal with. The Santoth sorcerers have found a way to break their long exile, to dire consequences. All of the major plot threads are resolved in this volume. This series is notable for the complexity of Durham's imagined world, one in which political, economic, mythological and morally ambiguous forces all influence the fates of the ethnically and culturally diverse population.
33429538	/m/0h94p6n	The Dead River	Jakov Xoxa		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story revolves around the romantic love between the two main characters, Vita and Adil, and the ill fates of three Albanian families which all meet in a little town called Trokth in Albania. The seemingly independent stories that revolve around the three families are well interwoven with the fates of the two lovers.
33435897	/m/0h97cmp	Neverwinter	Robert Anthony Salvatore	2011-10-04	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins shortly after the events occurring in Gauntlgrym. Drizzt and Dahlia are in the wilderness of the north planning on returning to Neverwinter. Dahlia explains to Drizzt that although the Dread Ring has been broken Sylora Salm will make it her priority to reestablish it by any means necessary. Deciding that their best course of action is to head to Luskan in order to regroup and learn what they may the two head towards the town aided by Drizzt's magical unicorn Andahar. It is revealed that the unicorn although magical in nature can be killed. It can also stay in the Realms for as long as needed with no time limit restraints. However, because it has more vulnerabilities than his other magical familiar, Guenhwyvar, Drizzt is much more cautious in his use of the Andahar. The pair soon encounter a caravan being chased by bandits. Drizzt immediately rushes to help. Dahlia however questions his motives. Drizzt assumes that the caravan is goodly in nature and Dahlia perhaps more world wise though much younger than Drizzt does not jump to the same conclusion. Drizzt speaks with the merchants who tell him that they are representatives of the High Captains of Luskan. Nearly 100 years ago the High Captains played a major role in the death of Drizzt's long time friend Captain Deudermont. Drizzt rushes off to engage the bandits while Dahlia needles him about how the world is not always black and white/ right or wrong (this is a major theme of the book as Dahlia continually questions Drizzt's morals). After defeating the first few bandits it is learned that they are starving farmers driven off of their lands by the High Capatins policies. They intened to rob the caravan in order to feed themselves and their families. Drizzt and Dahlia share a meal with the bandits and Drizzt begins to question his ethics in this dark time throughout the North. Sylora Salm stands with her new lieutenant and Ashmadai zealot Jestry Rallevin in front of the greatly weakened Dread Ring. Sulkir Szass Tam appears in the Ring and lets Sylora know that he is displeased with her efforts and is prepared to destroy her for her failure. Before he can act the insane lich Valindra Shadowmantle arrives. Although insane she has moments of clarity and cunning which she uses to convince Szass Tam to spare their lives. As a result Szass gives Sylora a wand that lets her channel the powers of the Dread Ring and commands her to conquer Neverwinter and complete the Dread Ring once again. Sylora sends Jestry to attend Valindra and to keep an eye on her, tempting him with the promise of making him her lover. Meanwhile Herzgo Alegni commands for Barrabus the Grey to be brought before him and explain why his orders to kill Sylora were not carried out. Barrabus explains that she was too well guarded and suggests that if he were given his dagger back (a gem encrusted life stealing dagger) that he might be able to accomplish the job. Drizzt and Dahlia reach the outskirts of Luskan. They take a detour to the farmlands so that Drizzt may learn of their condition. He finds a farmhouse occupied by a woman and her five children after her husband has left. He tries to give them money which Dhalia stops him from doing. They leave the farm with more of Drizzt's moral values being questioned. Sylora uses the power of the wand she acquired to raise a fortress in which to direct her campaign. Valindra reveals that she still possesses the soul of the vampire Korvin Dor'crae. She also seeks out a woman named Arunika who promises to help her with her insanity. Barrabus arrives in Neverwinter on behalf of the Shadovar and offers to help the town defend itself. At first skeptical Barrabus reminds them that the Shadovar use to protect the town before the primordial cataclysm and that he himself lived through it by hiding under the town bridge. Drizzt and Dahlia enter Luskan and shortly after Dahlia uses a magic item to alter her appearance. She did so after entering the town because she did not mind (wanted) some of the High Captains to know she was there. The two make their way to Jarlaxle's apartment to see if they can find word of him or Athrogate. They are presumed dead but Drizzt believes in Jarlaxle's ability to survive any situation. They are soon attacked by Ship Renthor seeking revenge against Dahlia for killing their High Captain. Things go badly for the two until they are rescued by Beniago of Ship Kurth. Drizzt notices Beniago has a jewel encrusted dagger that he swears he has seen before, but shakes it off and concludes that his mind is playing tricks on him. Sylora continues to gather her forces when Hadencourt a malebranche devil in the service of Szass arrives. Sylora assigns him the task of heading north and destroying Dahlia. Valindra gathers her forces in preparation of attacking Neverwinter. Before the attack Jestry and Sylora go to visit Valindra's friend Arunika who promises them her help. It is also revealed that she is a succubus. The attck on Neverwinter occurs and Barrabus takes to the field and begins to turn the battle. At the predetermined time Herzgo leads the Shadovar forces in and defeats the Ashmadai forces. But instead of Herzgo being held as the hero the townfolk cheer for Barrabus, who suggest the name of the bridge be renamed for him "The Walk of Barrabus". The Shadovar begin to reestablish their power in Neverwinter. Drizzt and Dahlia are offered alliance with Ship Kurth which they conditionally accept. Returning to Jaraxle's apartment Dahlia continues to questions Drizzt's morals. The conversation ends with the two of them becoming lovers and going to bed. Dahlia sneaks off and goes to rob Ship Kurth of some of their jewels. This is a setup and Dahlia soon finds herself in a fight against Beniago against his magic dagger (of life stealing) and in a room full of traps she doesn't know. She is injured and poisoned by one of these traps and is saved by Drizzt. She claims she had everything in hand but did not. They make their escape out of Luskan but Dahlia soon succumbs to the poison. Drizzt takes her to the farmhouse the two vistied earlier and begs the woman for help. She says she will call the local herb man but that they need a dose of the poison in order to make an antidote. Drizzt returns to Luskan and trades the antidote from Beniago for the promise to support him in future once he has taken the title of High Captain of Ship Kurth. Drizzt returns in time and is able to save Dahlia. The pair continue south where they are met by Hadencourt who poses as a friend. He soon attacks them and summons devils to help him. Drizzt and Dahlia begin a desperate battle in the woods. They are able to kill a few of the war devils minions but are forced to run. They think they have escaped but the spirit of Dor'crae is able to track them and tell the devil where they are. The battle finally ends when Drizzt summons Andahar and impales Hadencourt. As the demon is dying it promises to get revenge and Drizzt tells him to get in line behind Errtu. In Neverwinter Herzgo is vistied by Draygo Quick a powerful warlock of the Netherese and his master. Draygo wishes for Herzgo to finish his conquest of the region and leaves his disciple a teifling Effron the Twisted behind. Effron has one deformed arm and Herzgo and Effron openly despise each other. Valindra arrives in the cave of Arunika's master for their help. It is revealed that they are the Aboleth Sovereignty. The aboleth helps with Valindra's mental state and an alliance of convenience is formed between the Thayans and the Soveriegnty. Jestry is brought to the Aboleth and is transformed using umber hulk skin. The process is fatal and will eventually kill him within the year, but he is transformed into a mindless slave with the sole purpose of being Sylora's champion against Dahlia. Herzgo learns of Arunika who is also called the Forset Sentinel by the locals. He visits her and is able to discern her true nature, he then forms an alliance with her. Herzgo returns to Neverwinter and begins to punish Barrabus for his renaming of the bridge after himself. The Claw is a sword carried by Herzgo and attuned to the soul of Barrabus. It is revealed that Barrabus cannot die even if he tries to kill himself. The sword will either stop him or bring him back to life. He is a slave to the sword with no hope of freedom except to kill Herzgo and take the sword which he cannot do as long as Herzgo wields the sword. The Thayans attack and use their new allies' umber hulks to attack from below. Barrabus' attacks are largely ineffectual and Herzgo carries the day and earns the peoples admiration. Dahlia and Drizzt continue on towards Neverwinter. Drizzt begins to share his past and recount stories of the Companions Of The Hall. Soon they are attacked by Shadovar and Dahlia exhibits a brutality Drizzt has never seen in her before and does not understand. He is reminded that there is much he does not know about her. Barrabus and Effron are assigned to work together and to hunt down Ashmadai. They come across a group led by Jestry. Effron does little and lets Barrabus do most of the work and take most of the risk. Barrabus is mostly successful except against Jestry whose new armor proves to be more formidable than even his own weapons. After the battle Herzgo learns that Dahlia returns in the company of Drizzt. Effron also reveals that he knows Dahlia Sin'felle's real name- Dahlia Syn'dalay of the Snakebrook clan. This fills Herzgo with terrible anger as he knows who she is now. Barrabus offer to go kill Dahlia and Drizzt alone. Barrabus knows of Drizzt's prowess and believes if he can get him to fight Herzgo he can kill him. He devises a plan to capture Dahlia alive and force Drizzt to fight Herzgo. He ambushes Dahlia but is then immediately ambushed by Drizzt. Drizzt looks at him and recognizes the face of Artemis Entreri. He doesn't believe it but is soon convinced when Artemis reveals intimate knowledge of him that only he would know. Artemis proposes a truce between the three and suggests they go kill Sylora. Drizzt and Dahlia do not trust him. He explains to Drizzt he grew bored of him long ago and has no vendetta against him. To Dahlia he explains it is nothing personal and that killing Sylora will meet both of their goals. As a final act of trust Artemis attacks Drizzt and holds his poisoned knife under his throat and pulls it back without harming him, proving that he has no intention of hurting him. Both Drizzt and Entreri are both surprised at how happy they are to see each other alive, for different reasons though. The three head towards Sylora's camp. There they are engaged by many undead, Ashmadai, Valindra, Sylora, and Jestry. Eventually Dahlia and Entreri are able to defeat Jestry. Valindra still suffers from some mental unstability and spends the majority of the battle watching from afar. Sylora is eventually cornered in the Dread Ring. However, she has used the wand's power too much and drawn off too much of the Dread Ring's power and succumbs to combined attacks of Drizzt, Guenhwyvar, and Dahlia. In the aftermath of the battle Entreri tells them that he must return to Neverwinter as compelled to serve Herzgo. Dahlia upon hearing this name learns that her most hated foe is the leader of the Shadovar and declares she would have stayed by Sylora's side had she known. Entreri finds this useful but can't think of a way to exploit it. With Sylora dead Dahlia considered her business in the region finished until she learns of Herzgo whom she vows to kill. Sylora's life is preserved by the power of the Dread Ring but before she can do anything, Jestry returns as an undead under the control of Valindra and kills her. Effron and Herzgo contemplate Dahlia and share a mutual hatred of her, even greater than their hatred of each other.
33446756	/m/0h96r75	Anxious Nation		1999	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Walker's premise is that Australian culture did not develop in isolation from Asia; Australians, while often considering themselves to be living in an outpost of Britain, have always had a fascination with the nations to their near north. Walker argues that many of the perceptions that Australians had of Asia were negative and that the Chinese, in particular, were feared because of the size of their population and the proximity of their homeland to Australia. Australians worried that their society would be overrun by the Chinese and contaminated by their supposed vices; exotic diseases, industrial “sweating”, gambling, sexual deviation and opium abuse. Japan was also feared because of its apparent imperial ambitions and the strength of its military forces. Walker illustrates these fears by analysing the neglected literary genre of invasion narratives. These novels, of which William Lane's White or Yellow? is characteristic, were popular in the 1890s and 1900s and described the enslavement of white Australians by invading Asian armies. Further images of the Chinese as a cunning but cruel race appeared in the Fu Manchu novels and films of the 1920s and 30s. Walker argues that "Australia came to nationhood at a time when the growing power of the East was arousing increasing concern". Consequently, Anxious Nation places popular perceptions of Asia within the context of the political and cultural changes that led to the development of a distinctive Australian nationalism and the implementation of the White Australia policy. This inevitably leads to an analysis of Australian contributions to the philosophical and scientific theories, particularly Eugenics and Social Darwinism, that underlined concepts of race during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Within this setting a peculiarly Australian concern was whether white men could perform manual labour and prosper in the tropics. If they could not then the concept of a "White Australia" was doomed and the "Asianisation" of Australia was likely. Australian politicians and medical scientists spent significant time and resources in attempting to resolve this question. Crucially Walker shows that Australians were fascinated by the people and cultures of Asia. He argues that, while negative perceptions of Asia were common, they were not universally held nor uncontested. The currency of the Japonisme and Chinoiserie aesthetic movements and the warm welcome given to a Japanese Naval Squadron in 1906 show that at least some Australians were willing to consider the positive aspects of Asian culture. In particular, Walker shows that Prime Minister Alfred Deakin had a comprehensive knowledge and interest in Indian religions and philosophies. Walker also argues that, despite the isolationism implied by the White Australia policy, Australia developed trade, cultural and diplomatic ties with the emerging Asian nations during the period studied. Professor Walker is currently working on a follow-up volume which continues this work into the present day.
33449283	/m/09rv92n	The Dead-Tossed Waves			{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02psyd2": "Zombies in popular culture"}	 Gabry (Gabrielle) lives a quiet life in the town of Vista. She lives with her mother, Mary (the protagonist in Forest of Hands and Teeth), in a lighthouse isolated from the rest of town. Her best friend is Cira, and she is beginning to fall in love with Cira’s brother, Catcher. Cira pressures Gabry to sneak over the wall protecting them from the Mudo to an abandoned amusement park with other teens from Vista. Gabry is afraid that Mudo will get through the un-cared for wall surrounding the park, but she goes when Catcher asks her to. On the other side, she and Catcher go off by themselves to talk and Catcher kisses her. A Breaker Mudo attacks the group, and Catcher is infected while trying to protect her. He tells Gabry to run before the Militia comes and arrests them, and she escapes over the wall, leaving Cira and Catcher behind. The city decides to send Cira and the others who weren’t Infected to the Recruiters. Gabry visits Cira in jail and Cira asks her to sneak over the wall and make sure Catcher is okay. Later, Gabry asks her mother about her past and her father, and Mary accidentally slips and admits that she is not Gabry’s real mother. She found her in the Forest when she was very young. Gabry sails a small boat around the walls to the amusement park. She is attacked by Mudo and rescued by a stranger named Elias. Elias knows where Catcher is and leads her there. She promises to keep coming back until he turns, despite both boys saying that he is too dangerous. Elias sails back to the lighthouse with her to help her escape a Breaker. The next morning Mary says that after their conversation she has decided to go back to the Forest. Gabry refuses to go, but stays in the lighthouse and takes over Mary's duties, telling everyone Mary is sick. She finds Elias took the boat to prevent her from returning to Catcher, so she swims to the park. She can’t find Catcher but sees Soulers, a cult that worships Mudo. She realizes that Elias is one of them because he has a shaved head and white tunic like they do. She watches as they purposefully infect a little boy due to their belief that being Mudo is a chance at eternal life. Elias sees her and chases after her but she calls him a monster and runs away. When she swims back, Daniel is there. He is suspicious about Mary’s ‘sickness’ and about the knife Gabry carries, which she got from Elias and has Souler inscriptions on it. A storm comes the next few days, and the Militia hangs around the lighthouse to help her kill the extra Mudo washing ashore. Daniel follows her around and when they leave she goes to visit Cira for the last time. When she tries to sneak over the wall to Catcher, Daniel catches her. She stabs him to escape and leaves him, and later finds that he died from the stab wound. She eventually finds Catcher, expecting him to be Mudo. Surprisingly he is still human. Elias and Catcher tell her that he’s immune, which is rare to the point that Gabry didn’t think it was possible. Elias says that he’s not really a Souler, but he tags along with them because it’s the easiest way to travel from city to city, which he does because he’s looking for his sister, Annah. Catcher insists that they rescue Cira, so he releases harmless Souler Mudo in Vista. In the chaos, Elias and Gabry break out Cira and the others. Cira tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrists because she thought that Catcher was Mudo, and even though Gabry binds her wounds she is very weak. They make it to a gate and since Catcher is immune he scouts ahead and finds where the gates start up again. They make it safely to the paths, but the Recruiters build walls out to the gates so they don’t have to risk the Forest, which buys Gabry, Elias, Catcher and Cira time. The Recruiters are following because they figured out that Catcher is immune and know he would be a tremendous resource for the Recruiters because he could fight the Mudo with no danger to himself. Gabry uses clues from Mary to get them on the right path to Mary’s old village. On the way she gets closer to Elias and farther from Catcher (who still thinks he can infect her), and Cira develops a blood infection in her wrists. They make it to Mary’s old village, where they find Mary and Harry. Harry explains that he, Cassandra, and Jacob (Mary’s friends from The Forest of Hands and Teeth) went back to the village after Mary left them and helped to reclaim the village from the Mudo for the few survivors. Harry and Cass got married but had no children, and Jacob married a girl who died having twins. The twins were Abigail and Annah, and they grew up friends with Elias. When Elias was seven and the girls were five they explored outside the gates, and when Abigail fell and skinned her knee Elias got scared that he would get in trouble. He and Annah left Abigail behind, planning on returning later, but got lost. Abigail was found by Mary a few days later and was so weak and tramutized that she couldn’t even remember her name. Mary named her Gabrielle and took her to Vista, claiming her as her own. Annah and Elias ended up in the Dark City, where they pretended to be siblings and lived together until Elias had to join the Recruiters to get money. When he returned Annah was gone, and he was looking for her but found Gabry instead. Gabry is furious with Elias for not telling her but she forgives him. Cira asks Catcher to infect her since she is going to die anyway, but he refuses. Gabry is so upset when she hears this that she runs off to be alone, but Elias finds her and kisses her. She is upset because she thinks he only likes her because she is so similar to Annah. Meanwhile, Cira climbs the wall and tries to get infected, but Catcher chases after her and gets her inside the gates before she’s infected. The recruiters finally catch up, and when they break through the gates Mudo get through too. Cira lets herself get infected and when she turns she attacks a Recruiter, and Gabry watches him kill her. She, Elias, Mary, Catcher, and Harry get into the fences on the other side of the village and keep going. On the journey, Gabry gets more and more depressed because they don’t even have a destination and she is thinking that Mudo aren’t really any different than her. Her mother talks to her and convinces her to just accept life the way it is and keep living fully. Gabry and Elias talk and Gabry realizes that she’s still has feelings for Catcher even though he is much different now than he used to be, and isn’t right for her. Elias kisses her and they realize they love each other, and Gabry wants to start something new and good with him instead of hanging onto her depressing past. Soon after, while they are walking in the dark, there is a section of fence that collapsed down a hill. Elias doesn’t see it and falls over the side, getting stuck on a piece of fence just above where the Mudo can reach him. Catcher gets him up, but Elias’s leg is badly broken. The Recruiters are about to catch up, and Elias makes Gabry and Catcher leave so that they can’t capture Catcher or make him join the Recruiters by torturing Gabry. Gabry promises to wait for him in the Dark City so they can find each other again. Gabry and Catcher run away and climb a wall to get away. On the other side there is a big bridge covered with crashed cars and Mudo that goes over a valley filled with a hoard. Gabry knows she has to cross to escape, so she walks sideways along the tiny ledge on the outside of the bridge, holding onto the gate. There is a section that is almost all the way broken, and when the Recruiters follow, Catcher rolls cars to shift the weight of the bridge and eventually it crumbles so that the Recruiters can’t follow. Gabry and Catcher continue on, hoping to get to the Dark City.
33457879	/m/0h95x28	Matadana	S.L. Bhyrappa		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The novel starts in a village Rangapura near Tumkur in Karnataka. It uses the Tumkur dialect of Kannada language. Its about Doctor Shivappa, medical graduate from Mysore Medical College, who is keen to help society and his village people. Shivappa gains immense popularity among the people across the villages. The story revolves around the politically influential people who uses Shivappa in the upcoming election for their benefit. * Dr.Shivappa * RangaLakshmi (Shivappa's Love interest) * Ramalingappa Gowdru * S R Saadaravalli * Minister Naagaravalli/ Appaji * Prakasha Kumara Saadaravalli * Putta Tammaiah * Kallamma (Shivappa's Mother) * Puttakka (Shivappa's elder sister) * Sannaiah (Shivappa's brother-in-law)
33461326	/m/0h94hts	Kashmir Udaas Hai				 This book is autobiography of Mehmood Hashmi. It consists of incidents he witnessed in Kashmir during India Pakistan Partition of 1947.
33479051	/m/0h98dr8	The Bridge to Neverland	Ridley Pearson			 It all starts when the two find an old document in a secret compartment in their father's desk. Strangely enough, the document seems familiar to Sarah. After much thinking, she realizes she has seen a name on it from the Peter and the Starcatchers series. The document is much older than the books, and of course the books are just stories... Right? Wrong. Soon, the two Cooper children become entangled in an adventure straight out of the pages of the book!
33480776	/m/0h961_6	The Roving Party			{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 John Batman, ruthless, singleminded; four convicts, the youngest still only a stripling; Gould, a downtrodden farmhand; two free black trackers; and powerful, educated Black Bill, brought up from childhood as a white man. This is the roving party and their purpose is massacre. With promises of freedom, land grants and money, each is willing to risk his life for the prize. Passing over many miles of tortured country, the roving party searches for Aborigines, taking few prisoners and killing freely, Batman never abandoning the visceral intensity of his hunt. And all the while, Black Bill pursues his personal quarry, the much-feared warrior, Mannalargenna.
33488535	/m/0h93zly	Woman in the Mists	Farley Mowat	1987		 Dian Fossey worked in the United States in a children's hospital until she decided to become a field anthropologist in Africa. Mowat says this decision illustrates the strength of character that made her famous and that may also have led to her death. In 1960 she gained an interview with Louis Leakey, the famous anthropologist, who encouraged her to study the mountain gorillas of Central Africa at first hand. She accepted this advice against the wishes of her friends and family. At first, it seemed that she was following the path defined by Jane Goodall, and would become a successful scientist. However, she soon became passionately interested in the cause of preserving the mountain gorillas. An outspoken woman, she made no attempt to disguise her hatred and contempt for poachers and hunters. In December 1986 she was murdered in her African camp. Although the book does not delve into the subject in depth, Mowat speculates that a disgruntled poacher may have been hired to kill her by people opposed to her crusade to preserve the gorillas.
33516144	/m/0h972wj	The Heart of a Sunburned Land		2002	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Tara Killain is assaulted on the family estate in Ireland and runs off with gypsies. Through a twist of fate she finds out an aunt in outback Australia needs her help. When her ship sinks off the coast she becomes responsible for two orphans. They reach Tambora to find the property is almost bankrupt. With the help of the enigmatic local camel driving hero, Tara does all in her power to save the cattle station.
33516549	/m/0h95334	River of Fortune		2005	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Joe Callaghan is in trouble so his daughter Francesca, returns to the river port of Echuca, determined to help him. Three men vie for her attention, but it’s a lovable river captain who captures her heart. However, to save her father losing his paddle steamer, she becomes engaged to the unscrupulous Silas Hepburn. When Regina Radcliffe tries to stop her son pursuing Francesca, she discovers Francesca is the daughter she secretly gave birth to on the river bank and set afloat in a bath tub. Worse, Silas is the man she had a brief affair with, Francesca’s real father.
33522574	/m/0h96cqr	The Moth	Helena Maria Viramontes		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is a first-person narrative of a Latina granddaughter reminiscing about her relationship between her family, most especially her grandmother, when she was a teenaged girl. She speaks about the indifference she felt among her sisters because she was not “pretty or nice” and could not “do the girl things they could do”. She was constantly in trouble, saying she was “used to the whippings” and spent her time watching over her grandmother since her grandmother always watched over her. Throughout the story, the grandmother becomes more and more ill, while the narrator becomes more and more responsible. When the cancer finally kills the grandmother, the granddaughter continues to take care of her, undressing her and cleansing her in the tub, as she holds her and rocks her back and forth saying “there, there abuelita”. At this point the moths are released from the grandmother; the moths which the grandmother told the narrator “lay within the soul and slowly eat the spirit up.” The narrator cries and sobs in the tub with her grandmother until her sadness transformed into relief.
33527608	/m/0hgrh50	The Buddha in the Attic	Julie Otsuka			 There is no plot in the usual sense of specific individuals going through particular events. The novel is told in the first person plural, from the point of view of many girls and women, none of whom is individualized as a continuing character, but all of whom are vividly described in a sentence or two. The first chapter, "Come, Japanese!" describes a boatload of Japanese picture brides coming to California to marry men they have never met. The next chapter, "First Night", is about the consummation of their marriages with their new husbands, most of whom are nothing like the descriptions they had given. The third chapter, "Whites", describes the women's lives in their new country and their relationship with their American bosses and neighbors. Some of the women become migrant laborers living in rural shacks, some are domestic workers living in the servants' quarters of suburban homes, and some set up businesses and living quarters in the "Japantown", or "J-Town", area of big cities. "Babies" tells about giving birth and "Children" about raising American-born children, who want to speak only English and are ashamed of their immigrant parents, but are discriminated against by most of their classmates, neighbors and merchants. "Traitors" describes the effect of the Pearl Harbor attack and World War II on the families: the rumors and increasingly the reality of Japanese men being arrested without warning, the fear and eventually the reality of entire families being sent away to parts unknown. "Last Day" tells of the departure of the Japanese from their homes, jobs and schools. The final chapter, "A Disappearance," is told from the point of view of the white American families left behind, who at first miss their Japanese neighbors but gradually forget about them.
33531073	/m/0hgl115	You Have To Stop This	Pseudonymous Bosch	2011	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The story begins with a picture of The Oath of Terces. There is a quick preface concerning an ibis bird that stands for a moment, but then crosses the River Nile. Then the story moves to an event happening at more or less, the same moment. An innocent man is being executed moments after inscribing a fateful secret on a piece of papyrus in hieroglyphics. The story then moves forward in time with Cass and Max-Ernest heading to a garage sale Larry and Wayne are having. Cass tells Max-Ernest that she hid the Jester's trunk in a pit behind the firehouse. They lug it out, open it, and discover that it contains a blue ring with a picture of an ibis and a scrap of linen. She discovers that they contain hieroglyphics meaning either "because what Ibis" or "because what Thoth". In the next chapter, Cass and Max-Ernest are on a bus, with Yo-Yoji, discussing their field trip to the Egyptian section of the museum with classmates, Glob and Danielle who is known for his dreadlocks. They meet Danielle's father, Albert 3D (cause he has 3 degrees in different subjects) who shows them a handsome mummy who was executed for some strange reason. Cass reasons that it is the physician from hundreds of years ago, who was executed because of discovering The Secret. Cass, Yo Yoji and Max decide to hang back and examine the mummy. She notices that the blue ring that she found in the Jester's trunk matches an imprint on the mummy's finger. Principle Johnson startles Cass when she scolds them for not staying with the group. Cass's jacket gets caught on the finger and she accidentally breaks it off. Later, as punishment, Albert 3D (who is actually pretty cool about what happened) makes them sort some museum shards, or "sherds" as the scientific community calls them. While sorting, Cass convinces Yo Yoji and Max-Ernest to come with her to examine the mummy. When they do, they discover it is gone. Later, Albert3D meets with their parents and tells them that if the kids are hiding the mummy, they should give it to him. When the kids and their parents return home late, the kids virtually chat. They watch the surveillance video and notice a shadowy figure exit the museum before they do. They also notice that the man's leg has a piece of cloth trailing behind him and realize the figure IS the mummy. The story then moves to a luxurious hotel where Ms.Mauvais is talking to Amber, who has developed acne that horribly disfigures her face. She begs Ms. Mauvais to help her. The next day Cass and Max-Ernest meet Amber, who is a bit more prettier than usual. That night, they have a TERCES meeting with Luiciano as a special guest. He tells them that The Pharoah wants Cass's ring and will get it from her, in addition to the mummy's missing finger. The trio decides to steal the finger from the museum. Cass wears a dress and her hair long. Max-Ernest and Yo Yoji simply wear sunglasses and Yo wears a camera to pose as a tourist. The trio find the finger to already have been stolen and the monocle is found in its place. Suddenly, they hear voices and hide in a crate outside, that is eventually shipped to Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, the trio discover that The invisible Pharoah is posing as a magician and playing at a nearby theatre. Cass buys tickets to his show using some gold coins she saved from the Jester's trunk. She sells just one coin, and gets one tenth of its value, which is a sizable amount in cash. They spend the next two hours having fun. First, they get sundaes. Then the boys go to adventure land and record their own rap video after 18 rides on a zip line. Case goes to a nail salon and is pampered. While she is there she sees a hieroglyphic, from the papyrus in the trunk she could not translate, on the window. The spa worker says it means "running water". Then, Yo Yoji and Max-Ernest come meet her, and addresses her as "Your Royal Hotness". They go to the theater, and Cass is tricked into handing over the ring onstage. While trapped in The Pharoah's dressing room, Max-Ernest and Yo Yoji discover some time travel chocolate, from the chocolate plantation, which is in the closet and invisible. They also discover a golden cape. They reason that the mummy didn't really walk by itself out of the museum, but was carried out by The Pharoah who is invisible, so it looked like it was walking by itself. The duo runs onto the stage and throw the cape over The Pharoah so he is visible. They force feed him the chocolate so he is transported to another era for good and becomes someone else's problem. The Skelton sisters, who were also present at the show, leave with Ms. Mauvais. Then, Cass impulsively puts the ring on the mummy's finger. It comes to life and Cass remembers the hieroglyphics from the papyrus and pieces together what they said, using knowledge form her Egypt class and what the spa worker said. She realizes the key to the secret is a question: Why did the ibis cross the river? And she asks the mummy this question. The mummy then speaks The Secret: "TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE". The fact that The Secret that Terces society were protecting for years was a joke, is too much for Cass to handle, and for the first time in her life, she faints. When she wakes up, Max and Yo are crouched over her. After finding out she is okay, Max realizes that they need some means of escape. He charms the crowd, and runs out of the theater and meets a so-called cult that consists of people who claim to be the priests of Amun. They reveal themselves to be the members of Terces. Cass and Yo Yoji are already riding with them. When the trio return home, they are treated as heroes. Everyone they know, including Albert 3D and Danielle. Albert and Cass's mother seem to be hitting it off and getting closer. Even Ms. Johnson welcomes them and gives them the Tuning Fork. Later, Cass confides in Pietro about the secret, who explains that the real secret is "The Other Side". He also explains that his brother died that morning. When Cass goes into his trailer again, he has disappeared. The story then moves to graduation, where Max gives a speech, and makes everyone cry.The story ends, as the entire auditorium begins to clap and Amber, quietly exits the edge of the bleachers. No one (especially her parents) notice her get into a limousine with Ms. Mauvais and drive slowly into the sunset, in search of a never setting sun. The epilogue reveals Mr. Bosch to be Max-Ernest. He does not reveal what happens to Cass or Yo Yoji, or anyone else. He says that the Secret itself is a secret that opens up more secrets and warns the reader to not let anyone give away the ending.
33535477	/m/0hgq3wp	The Lady With the X-Ray Eyes		1934	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Mimi Trompeeva is a young woman who suffers from severe strabismus. She decides to treat her condition by visiting a "beautification institute" headed by Chezario Galfone, a brilliant surgeon capable of turning "even the most disgusting freak into an angel". He manages to cure her crossed eyes, but also gives her the ability to see through materials, including inside people's bodies. However, Mimi does not use her new gift for good - instead, she begins to seek the physically perfect male, without regard for intellect or talent. The story follows Mimi's evolution into a slave of her own looks and social environment - a hollow person whose feelings of love are a mere infatuation with the trends of the modern era.
33537040	/m/0hgl3g8	The Emperor of Portugallia	Selma Lagerlöf	1914		 The novel takes place in 1860 or 1870 in Lagerlöf's native Värmland and is about the tenant farmer Jan in Skrolycka and his daughter Glory Goldie Sunnycastle. He loves his daughter more than anything else, but after she moves to Stockholm at age 17 and becomes wealthy and well-known, she stops sending letters home. The father sinks into a dream world where he imagines she has become a noble empress of "Portugallia", and he thus also a great Emperor himself. His whole life is dominated by thoughts of her return, and what then will happen. In his role as Emperor residing in the poor countryside, he can challenge the area's social hierarchies: wearing his imperial regalia, he sits at the front of the church, takes place at the head table at parties and tries to socialize with local landlords.
33539886	/m/0hgp4b0	Judgment Day	James T. Farrell	1935		 This novel begins in 1931, a few years after the conclusion of The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan,. At the close of that novel, an intoxicated Studs had been beaten up by old rival Weary Reilly, and left on a snow-covered sidewalk overnight. Studs contracted pneumonia that night and has been in ill-health ever since. Several of Studs' old friends have already died, due to venereal diseases or excessive drinking, and Weary Reilly himself is in prison for rape. Studs is beginning to sense his own weakness and his own mortality, and continually makes vain promises to change his ways. Studs' young brother Martin, now known as "Husk," is very much like Studs himself was a decade earlier. He's a drinker and brawler who openly disrespects Studs, and even inflicts a severe beating on his older brother. Studs begins dating a sweet, innocent Catholic woman named Catherine Banahan. He seems to love her and even asks her to marry him, but remains obsessed by sexual thoughts, and looks constantly for chances to cheat on her. Studs is incapable of being true to her, but feels strong guilt about his lust and infidelity. The Great Depression is wreaking havoc on Chicago. Studs' father's painting business is failing and the family home may soon be repossessed by the bank. Studs' father hopes that Studs can provide the family with some financial support, not knowing that Studs has foolishly lost most of his savings after investing in a worthless stock, in yet another vain attempt at getting rich and becoming a big shot. Studs gets Catherine pregnant, and must desperately seek a job. After job hunting all over the city on a rainy day, Studs contracts pneumonia again, and dies after falling into a feverish coma.
33551345	/m/0hgq40r	Realize your potential			{"/m/012lzc": "Self-help"}	 Pekelis starts by defining talent and what is genius, and provides numerous examples. He continues by showing techniques how to achieve various skills like speed reading, becoming a polyglot or fast calculations. The book ends with ideas on organizing work and working better.
33558234	/m/0hgrsnr	Outlaw	Angus Donald	2009-07-10	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The plot centres around a character named Alan Dale, based on the historical Alan-a-Dale. When he's caught stealing by the Sheriff of Nottingham, Sir Ralph Murdac; the possible actual sheriff of the time, Alan flees into the company of Robin Hood, notorious and infamous outlaw.
33564907	/m/0hgn9ws	Mother of Storms	John Barnes	1994-07		 In the early 21st century, the earth suffers from a giant hurricane spawned by the release of clathrate compounds, as the result of a nuclear explosion. While the hurricane spawns hundreds of progeny, which by novel's end kill at least 1 billion people, two massively computer augmented human intelligences, both of whom witness their organic bodies die, race to corral a comet from beyond Pluto's orbit. They use the ice from the comet to reduce earth surface temperatures, and quell the mother of storms.
33565100	/m/0hhw586	Wonderstruck	Brian Selznick	2011-09-13	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Ben’s story starts in Gunflint Lake, Minnesota in June 1978. He was born deaf in one ear. Ben’s mom, Elaine, was the town librarian, but died in a car crash a few weeks before. He now lives with his aunt and uncle next to the house he grew up in. Ben has never known his dad, but feels a pull to find out who he was. Ben discovers a bookmark in his mother's book, Wonderstruck inscribed to his mother that ends with the words "Love, Danny." Ben thinks Danny must be his father and proceeds to call the number listed on the bookmark. As he is calling, a bolt of lightning hits his house, travels through the phone line and causes him to lose his remaining hearing. He wakes up in the hospital, unaware of where he is. A short time later, he decides to run away from the hospital and journey to New York City, eventually hiding out in the American Museum of Natural History. While at the museum, he meets Jamie, whose father works at the museum. Jamie takes him on tours of the back areas of the museum and helps him to hide in an unused storage room. Ben is still determined to track down his father, so he leaves the museum to locate the bookstore listed on the bookmark he found in his mother's book. Once there, he encounters Rose and they try to piece together how they might be connected. Rose’s story starts in Hoboken, New Jersey in October 1927. She is kept at home with visits from a tutor because she is deaf. Unhappy and lonely at home, she runs away to New York City to see her idol, actress Lillian Mayhew. In New York, Rose travels to the theater where Lillian Mayhew is performing. She sneaks in and is found by the actress herself, who we learn is actually Rose's mother. Mayhew is furious, despite Rose telling her that she came because she missed her. Mayhew threatens to send Rose back to her father, so Rose runs away again. This time she goes to the American Museum of Natural History. She is found there by her brother, Walter. He takes her back to his apartment and promises to speak to their parents. At this point, Rose's story skips forward 50 years, and we see her as an older woman entering a bookstore. It is there she meets Ben. It is then revealed that Rose is Ben's grandmother, and Danny was both Rose's son and Ben's father. Rose takes Ben to Queens and leads him into the Queens Museum of Art where she tells her story and explains how Danny met Ben's mother, Elaine, and how Ben's father died from a heart disease. The book ends with Ben, Rose and Jamie (who followed them to Queens) looking at the stars waiting for Rose's brother, Walter, to pick them up.
33573043	/m/0hglc8z	After the Fire, A Still Small Voice				 The story is set in Queensland on the East Coast of Australia and concerns two men from different generations, as described in the blurb on the back cover of the 2010 Vintage edition :- *Frank is trying to escape his troubled past by running away to his family’s beach shack. As he struggles to make friends with his neighbours and their precocious young daughter Sal, he discovers the community has fresh wounds of its own. A girl is missing, and when Sal too disappears, suspicion falls on Frank. *Decades earlier, Leon tries to hold together his family’s cake shop as their suburban life crumbles in the aftermath of the Korean War. When war breaks out again, Leon must go from sculpting sugar figurines to killing young men as a conscript in the Vietnam War.
33580925	/m/0hgmd01	Children of Paranoia		2011-09	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Since the age of eighteen, Joseph has been assassinating people on behalf of a cause that he believes in but doesn’t fully understand. The War is ageless, hidden in the shadows, governed by a rigid set of rules, and fought by two distinct sides — one good, one evil. The only unknown is which side is which. Soldiers in the War hide in plain sight, their deeds disguised as accidents or random acts of violence amidst an unsuspecting population ignorant of the brutality that is always inches away. Killing people is the only life Joseph has ever known, and he’s one of the best at it. But when a job goes wrong and he’s sent away to complete a punishingly dangerous assignment, Joseph meets a girl named Maria, and for the first time in his life his singleminded, bloody purpose fades away. Before Maria, Joseph’s only responsibility was dealing death to the anonymous targets fingered by his superiors. Now he must run from the people who have fought by his side to save what he loves most in this world.
33591582	/m/0hgmwjv	Holy Warrior	Angus Donald	2010-07-22	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 This novel continues the story of Alan Dale, based on the historical Alan-a-Dale; warrior and troubadour in Robin Hoods band of outlaws. The novel takes place during the Third Crusade, an attempt by European leaders to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin. In the novel Robin is forced to join Richard the Lionheart on his crusade and during which learns he is the target of an assassination attempt; Alan is tasked with discovering the origins of the attack.
33592705	/m/0hgn6lm	King's Man	Angus Donald	2011-07-21	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 This novel continues the story of Alan Dale, based on the historical Alan-a-Dale; warrior and troubadour in Robin Hood's band of outlaws. This novel centres round the capture and ransom of Richard the Lionheart; (loosely based on the actual events) and the subsequent effort to release him.
33616240	/m/0hgnvft	Darke	Angie Sage	2011-07	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 While Simon is being reunited with the Heaps, the witches of the dangerous Port Witch Coven try to kidnap Princess Jenna so they can rule over all other witch covens. Meanwhile, Marcia Overstrand and Alther banish Tertius Fume who is located in Dungeon Number One, but Overstrand accidentally banishes Alther as well. So Septimus, who is approaching his Darke Week, decides to rescue Alther from the Halls of Darkenesse for his Darke Week challenge. While this is happening Merrin Meredith, with his small army of Things, creates a Darke Domain which threatens to engulf The Castle and all its residents. Furthermore, to add to Septimus' troubles, Meredith engenders a ferocious Darke dragon.
33621986	/m/0hnbnbk	Wildwood	Colin Meloy	2011-08-30		 In Wildwoods backstory, Alexandra is exiled from South Wood for "criminal black magic" to the no man's land of Wildwood. In revenge, she plots to kill every living thing in The Wood. She strikes a deal with Prue's parents, who are desperate to have a child. Alexandra promises to use magic to help them conceive, but in return they must give her their second child. After Prue is born Alexandra spends the next ten years raising an army of coyotes. She then causes Prue's parents to conceive a second child, Mac. Her plan is to make a blood sacrifice of Mac to Wildwood's Ivy, a dangerous, supernaturally invasive plant. This will give her control over the Ivy, allowing her to choke all life in The Wood. When Mac is one year old, Alexandra sends crows to kidnap him. Prue is in a park with Mac when crows swoop in and carry the baby off. Prue goes after Mac, followed by her classmate Curtis. Prue does not want Curtis along, but before she can send him back, they are separated while fleeing from coyotes. Curtis is captured and taken to Alexandra, while Prue rides a mail truck to South Wood. There, Prue finds a Kafkaesque bureaucracy and dysfunctional government. Police state tactics and paranoia over foreign threats are used to keep the regime in power. Prue eventually meets the Crown Prince Owl Rex, of the Avian Principality, who reveals how Alexandra came to be exiled, and suggests Prue cross Wildwood and seek help from the Mystics of North Wood. Meanwhile, Alexandra is flattering Curtis with a fancy uniform and commissions him into the coyote army as an officer. In a battle against bandits Curtis destroys a howitzer by dumb luck, becoming a coyote war hero in the process. He then stumbles upon Mac in Alexandra's headquarters and she reveals her plan to sacrifice the baby. Alexandra offers to share the power with Curtis, but he refuses and is imprisoned with some captured bandits and treasonous coyotes. Prue flies to North Wood on the back of an eagle sent by Owl Rex, but is shot down by a coyote archer. She is found by Brendan, the Bandit King, who offers to help. However, they are captured in a coyote attack and Brendan is imprisoned with Curtis while Prue is taken to Alexandra. Alexandra promises her that she will find Mac, convincing Prue to leave The Wood. In prison, Curtis reveals Alexandra's plan and then leads an escape, gaining the trust of the coyote and bandit prisoners. Prue returns home, and learns of her parents' bargain with Alexandra. Realizing that she was tricked, she decides to return to rescue Mac. Back in the Impassible Wilderness, Prue travels to see the Mystics in charge of North Wood. Meanwhile, Curtis and the other escapees rejoin the bandits and set out to stop Alexandra. Prue alerts the North Wood Elder Mystic, Iphigenia, to the danger and the citizen militia gather farming implements and kitchen utensils for weapons and march south. Prue rides her bicycle ahead and convinces the bandits to join forces. Just as the sacrifice is about to occur the armies meet in an Ivy filled ruin. Brendan gives a speech to inspire his forces, christening the combined army the Wildwood Irregulars. A raging battle ensues, and the Wildwood Irregulars are near defeat. As Alexandra prepares to carry out the sacrifice, Iphigenia confronts her. Curtis and the remnants of the army make a final push, expecting to be cut down, when above them the sky is filled with an army of eagles from the Avians. The battle turns against the coyote army and Iphigenia uses her control of plants to make the tree boughs snatch Mac from Alexandra. Brendan shoots Alexandra with an arrow and the Ivy consumes her. The victorious Wildwood Irregulars regroup and press on to the gates of South Wood and demand that the corrupt government resign. As a new, peaceful order begins among the factions of The Wood Prue and Curtis part ways as new friends, she goes home and he remains behind to start a new life as a bandit.
33635027	/m/04t154l	The Luck of Ginger Coffey	Brian Moore	1960	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Luck of Ginger Coffey is about an Irishman named James Francis Coffey. He is called 'Ginger' because of his reddish hair and moustache. He is unfulfilled career-wise, no matter which job he takes on. After his release from the Army, he and his wife Veronica, together with their daughter Paulie, move to Montreal. In Canada, Coffey still has trouble finding work. Veronica gets very upset when she finds out that Ginger is still unemployed and has spent their ticket money home. However broke and empty-hearted they may be, they do have one friend to count on in Canada: Gerry Grosvenor, who helps Coffey get a job working as a proofreader at a newspaper. Coffey is unimpressed once again and continues to tell Veronica it will all get better, but Veronica has her own plans for improving her life in Canada. She leaves Coffey for Grosvenor and takes Paulie with her. She also takes all of Coffey's money and most of his belongings. Coffey gets a small place at the YMCA, and during his stay there he encounters a man who offers him a diaper delivery and pick-up job. Coffey finds this job even more repulsive than his current one but takes it anyway, with a plan in mind: To get back at Paulie and impress Veronica with his selflessness. Veronica is still unconvinced, but Paulie turns to her father's side and they get a flat of their own. Coffey is obsessed with Veronica and begins to get sick from lack of sleep and food and an excessive work schedule. He is also obsessed with being promoted to reporter so that Veronica will take him back, but unfortunately she only brings up the topic of divorce. After many drunk excursions, fist fights with Gerry, a run-in with the police and promotion battles, Veronica finally sees how hard Ginger is working and fighting for her, and at the moment when he finally decides to let her go she sees just how much he really loves her.
33643252	/m/0hgq4sl	The Half Brother	Lars Saabye Christensen	2001		 Vera Jebsen is raped in Fagerborg in Oslo, on liberation day 8 May 1945. She does not say a word during the entire pregnancy, not until she gives birth in a taxi. She names the child Fred. Arnold Nilsen from Røst in Lofoten, a circus artist and salesman, known as "The Wheel" after rolling spectacularly down a slope as a child, is allowed to move in with Jebsen's family, thanks to his self-confidence and his yellow Buick. Other than Vera and Fred, the family consists of Vera's mother, Boletta, and grandmother, known as The Old One; all in all four generations. Soon Vera has another child, whom they name Barnum Nilsen, after the master scam artist P. T. Barnum. Barnum is sharp but very short and therefore lacks confidence. He is impressed by Fred's rebellious attitude. He attends a dance class where he meets Peder and Vivian. After being sent out from the first lesson, the three meet and hang out every time their parents thing they are dancing. The three become close friends and stay by themselves for the most time. Vivian becomes a kind of girlfriend for both of the boys. Fred and Barnum share the same bedroom. They often have confidential talks at night. Fred tries to influence Bernum to become tougher and go his own way. He hates Arnold, the stepfather, and tells Barnum that he rather would have been Barnum's father. Once, The Old One received a letter from Wilhelm, her fiancé, who disappeared while hunting in the Arctic Ocean and Greenland. The letter means a lot for everybody in the family. Barnum often reads it to Fred, who is dyslexic. Fred begins to show more respect for Barnum and his ability to write down his dreams, and gives him a typewriter as a birthday gift. Fred's recognition means a lot to Barnum. Fred attempts at a career as a boxer. Barnum adopts a motto from his father: "The important is not what you see, but what you think you see". Barnum wins a writing competition in school which stimulates his desire to write. After coming in contact with the production of the film Hunger, based on Knut Hamsun's novel with the same title, Barnum decides to become a scriptwriter for film. Peder becomes his agent after returning from the United States. As a consequence of his grandmother's drinking habits, he develops an uncritical attitude to alcohol, which eventually leads to alcoholism.
33677939	/m/0hhpk5b	Insurrection			{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The novel is based around the Scottish Wars of Independence and in particular the actions of Robert the Bruce, set in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
33689244	/m/0hhqpzk	The Whale Road	Robert Low		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 Orm Rurikson joins the crew of a Viking longship, whilst still a child. The novel follows the "Oathsworn", the brotherhood who crew the boat, as they hunt for relics, including the secret burial horde of Attila the Hun, their journeys taking them through a treacherous maritime area known as "The Whale Road".
33689854	/m/0hhv00_	The Wolf Sea	Robert Low		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The story revolves around Orm Rurikson, a young man who joined the crew of a Viking band as a child in the previous novel and is now their reluctant leader. This novel centres around the band pursuing Starkad, a villain based on the historical figure of legend, in an effort to reclaim their magical sword "Rune Serpent", which Starkad has stolen.
33690158	/m/0hhrsxy	The White Raven	Robert Low		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The story revolves around Orm Rurikson, a young man who joined the crew of a Viking band as a child and is now their reluctant leader. This novel centres around the oathsworn band returning to their quest for Attila the Huns legendary lost hoard of silver. A number of their band have been kidnapped by Prince Vladimir and face impalement should Orm fail to bring them the treasure.
33690592	/m/0hhtm3q	The Prow Beast	Robert Low		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The story revolves around Orm Rurikson, a young man who joined the crew of a Viking band as a child and is now their reluctant leader. This novel centres around the oathsworn band attempting to protect the pregnant Queen Sigrith from the combined forces of their old enemy Sterki and Styrbjorn, nephew to King Eirik, who is seeking to claim the throne by ridding himself of the current heir, Sigrith's child.
33690976	/m/0hhw21v	The Lion Wakes	Robert Low	2011-04-14	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}	 The story revolves around the fictional character of Hal Sientcler of Herdmanston. Hal owns a minor holding in Lothian and the novel describes Hal's problems regarding the appointment of John Balliol by Edward I of England as the King of Scotland. The book follows the beginning of the story of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, culminating in the Battle of Falkirk, during the Wars of Scottish Independence.
33692270	/m/0hhqdwh	In Search of My Father		2010		 In 1944, Drexler and his family were taken by The Gestapo to a labor camp in Sereď. The family was separated a few months later when Drexler and his mother were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Drexler never saw his father, Eugen again. The family had evidence that Eugen died on May 3, 1945 in a death certificate, but knew no details. They soon immigrated to Australia. In the mid 1990s, Drexler was presenting his story to Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. It was during this recounting of events that Drexler realized he wanted to research and discover what happened to his father. His research took him throughout Europe, where he discovered that Eugen was killed in the Bay of Lübeck only a couple days before Germany surrendered.
33696757	/m/0hhrmbq	Bro		2008	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The protagonist is a young boy named Alexander growing up with a well off family in the Ukraine. Around 1918 when he turned 10 the Russian civil war forced him and his family to leave their home in hopes of trying to escape to Warsaw but they were hit by artillery fire and killed his father, brother, and uncle. The protagonist ends up living with an aunt in Moscow and attending college there. His aunt ends up being arrested at which point the protagonist abandons the apartment they were living in and has already dropped out of college. The protagonist decides to go on a expedition to find the Tungus meteorite which happened to strike earth the same day he was born. During this expedition the protagonist abandons the group and makes a spiritual connection with the meteorite which he describes as "Ice". The Ice tells the protagonist that he is a member of the brotherhood of the light, his name is Bro,and he must go out into the world and find the rest of 23,000 members.The brotherhood of the light created the universe but made one mistake which was earth. People and animals are disrupting the universe and the 23,000 want to come together to destroy the earth and restore order to the universe. The protagonist immediately sets out to accomplish this goal.
33699684	/m/0hhrc9j	The Cathedral Clergy	Nikolai Leskov			 Priest Savely Tuberozov, a spiritual leader of a small Russian Orthodox Christian community (sobor) in a provincial town of Stargorod, who firmly believes in his spiritual and social mission, but not in making compromises of any kind, comes into conflict with his church bosses and the local authorities. His seniors expect him to "eradicate raskol" (schism), and expect him to report to them on dissenters, he refuses to comply and criticizes instead the destruction of the old believers' church as barbarism. As the Governor comes to town, he comes up with a speech complaining of local masters exploiting peasants, making them work on Sundays and religious holidays; describes devastation local rural areas were being submerged into. The Governor doesn't want to listen, and protopope Tuberozov, reprimanded for such an audacity, gets demoted in rank. His mission ends after he summons the whole of the local authority figures to a moleben and makes a sermon which sounds more like a political speech, promising dires to leaders who treat their people in an inhuman way. Tuberozov gets fired, goes through numerous humiliations, falls ill and dies.
33701149	/m/0hhwdpx	The Death Cure	James Dashner	2011-10-11	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}	 After the events in the Scorch, Thomas is locked up for solitary confinement for 26 days. He is released and Assistant Director Janson(Rat Man) admits to him and the other Gladers (including ones from Group B) that there is no cure for the Flare and that they were lying to them about it. He then announces that some people, including Newt, are not immune to the Flare. Everybody else, though, is immune. He also warns them that many people in the outside world hate them because of their natural resistance to the Flare and that if they escape they will probably be in more danger. Janson then gives the Gladers a chance to get their memories back. Even though Minho, Newt, and Thomas say no to it, they are forced to. Luckily Brenda, who Thomas met in the Scorch, helps them escape. They discover the Gladers who wanted their memories escaped too. Before leaving, Newt gives Thomas a note that he can't read until "the time is right". Shortly after that, Thomas, Newt, and Minho help the other remaining Gladers - about half are missing - to escape onto a Berg, a massive VTOL aircraft. Jorge reveals himself to be a pilot, and that Teresa, Aris, Frypan, and the other Gladers who are not with Thomas have escaped on one of the 3 Bergs. Some guards break into the hangar, wielding Launchers (which fire electrical stun grenades) and pistols. Jorge manages to get all of them into the air, but both Thomas and Brenda are struck by Launcher grenades. They fly to Denver, where Teresa and the others have escaped to. They pretend to be people looking for a job when really they are there to see Hans, a former WICKED neurologist who has escaped. While they are on their trip, they meet up with Gally, a previous Glader who tried to kill Thomas, and now a member of the Right Arm, an underground organization dedicated to destroying WICKED. Hans performs an operation on Thomas, after a brawl with Thomas due to WICKED's attempt to control him, removing the implant in his brain that allows him to telepathically talk with Teresa and Aris and that lets WICKED monitor where he is. When the operation is completed, Brenda, Jorge, Minho, and Thomas go into a coffee shop to eat. When an infected man is discovered in the coffee shop, Thomas decides to stay and watch what is happening so he is kidnapped by the coffee shop guard. When he is about to get in his car, a flying law enforcement vehicle shoots the man down, and on the screen is Janson, who tells Thomas to come back to WICKED for Phase 3 of the Trials. When the group arrives back at their Berg, they discover that Newt is missing. They find a note from Newt which states that some people found him and took him to a Crank sanctuary, where Cranks live before they go crazy. Thomas attempts to persuade Newt to come back but is forced to leave at gunpoint (because Newt is holding a Launcher). The entire visit Newt claims that Thomas failed him. A riot breaks out and a massive Crank escape occurs, with Thomas, Brenda, Jorge, and the others narrowly getting away in the Berg. After the Berg lands back at the airport, Thomas reads the letter that Newt gave him while they were escaping from the WICKED complex. It says, "Kill me. If you've ever been my friend, kill me.". Thomas realizes that Newt forced them to leave because Thomas had not followed the letter's directions. Once they open the Berg's bay door, the group are captured by 3 bounty hunters who are wielding Launchers and pistols. Bags are put over their faces and they are driven to an unknown complex. There, the group overpower the guards, and at gunpoint, they tell that they work for the Right Arm. There, they also meet Teresa and the other subjects who were also captured by the same bounty hunters. Minho demands that they take Thomas and Brenda to their headquarters, where they want to speak to the leader of the Right Arm. A captive named Lawrence drives them there in a van. After a ride through a Crank-filled city, they reach the Right Arm headquarters. At the Right Arm's headquarters, they meet Vince, the leader of the Right Arm, and a friend of Gally, whom they also meet. The Right Arm and Thomas plot an infiltration plan to get the Right Arm into the WICKED base. They plan to plant a device in WICKED's headquarters, which is just outside Denver, which will disable their soldiers' weapons (pistols and Launchers), allowing the Right Arm, trained heavily in CQC with traditional weapons (knives, swords, etc.) to gain the upper hand. Thomas volunteers to plant the device because WICKED wants him back for Phase 3 of the Trials. They agree on the plan and Thomas, along with a strike team of 80 men, are driven toward the Berg hangar. At one point while driving, Thomas sees Newt. Lawrence is forced at gunpoint to stop the van as to let Thomas get out and shoot Newt in the head, fulfilling his friend's last wish. They continue on, and Thomas is dropped off a few miles away from the base. He hikes in and is greeted by Janson. Thomas plants the device immediately and has to wait for 1 hour for the device to finish working. During this time, Janson tells Thomas that he is the Final Candidate, and that WICKED needs to perform a fatal brain operation on him to finish the blueprint of the brain, ultimately leading to a vaccine and/or a cure for the Flare. Thomas tries to put off the operation for as long as possible but it is too late. While trying to buy time for himself, he discovers that Janson has contracted the Flare and that he is planning to do anything to complete the brain blueprint. Thomas is eventually saved by Chancellor Ava Paige, head of WICKED, who calls off the operation in favor of a different plan involving the Immunes to restart civilization after the Flare disappears. Chancellor Paige also gives Thomas a map to escape from the Maze to the place she wants him to go to via Flat Trans. Thomas discovers that the 500-600 Immunes that WICKED has gathered are being hidden inside the Maze. He plans on rescuing them when the Maze starts to collapse from the explosives that the Right Arm planted.They flee the maze, losing Immunes in the process due to falling debris. In the underground compound, where the Grievers were kept, Grievers come to life and start killing the Immunes, but Thomas and Teresa manage to put a stop to it, both narrowly escaping death. They make it to the maintenance room with the Flat Trans that Paige mapped out; where they meet the Flare-infected Janson and 6 other WICKED security guards. The Immunes manage to overpower the guards and Thomas strangles Janson. When the maintenance room starts to collapse, a large piece of stone from the ceiling is about to crush Thomas when Teresa tackles him and gets crushed instead. Thomas knows that Teresa cannot survive the massive internal organ damage and is forced to go through the Flat Trans before the whole WICKED complex is destroyed. The Immunes are transported to "paradise", somewhere unspecified. Only some of the original Gladers survived, such as Frypan, Minho, and Gally. While pondering the events that had occurred, Thomas talks to Brenda, and she tries comforting him by describing a bright future. The conversation ends with them hugging, and eventually kissing. In the final WICKED memorandum by Chancellor Paige, she reveals that WICKED released the Flare from a quarantine zone as an attempt to control world population after the sun flare catastrophe and that they have tried to right their wrong by trying to create a cure and a vaccine. She also tells how in a last attempt to save mankind, she transported several Immunes (the Gladers) to a safe area, where they can begin to rebuild mankind. It ends with the quote: "As we tried to instill in each of our subjects over and over, WICKED is good."
33702117	/m/0hhqh78	Between Shades of Gray	Ruta Sepetys	2012-04-03	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and filthy train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions. Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously-and at great risk-documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives.
33707005	/m/0hhvymh	The Queue	Vladimir Sorokin		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 A man is waiting in a seemingly endless line, but for what? The Queue begins with a cacophony of voices and the protagonist, Vadim, encountering a lady named Lena. As the day progresses the queue-goers realize that they have no choice but to come back the next day to finally receive their items. A woman comes along handing out numbers so that the next day there will be limited chaos. Vadim and Lena end up spending the night in the park on benches along with other members of the queue. And again the same process begins all over again; people sharing their speculations of what’s being sold, others trying to figure out the rate that the line is moving, and the occasional break from waiting in the queue to get food or drink—essentially waiting in other queues. After this ensues yet another roll-call emphasizing just how many people are waiting for unknown objects. Finally after two days of waiting it appears that the end of the line is in site, but suddenly it begins pouring and Vadim seeks shelter. He is taken into an apartment owned by a lady named Lyuda. After a simple meal and an intelligent discussion, the two of them make love and fall asleep. The next morning Lyuda reveals that she works at the store everyone is queued up for, and that his days of waiting were in vain.
33707752	/m/0hhq3x3	The End: Hitler's Germany 1944–45	Ian Kershaw	2011	{"/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The book begins with an example of the German refusal to surrender, and how this refusal by the Nazis to accept defeat would eventually lead to the deaths of millions. With American troops on the outskirts of Ansbach, the local commandant, Dr Ernst Meyer, an ardent Nazi, insisted on fighting to the end. A student, Robert Limpert, having seen the destruction wrought on Würzburg, took action in an attempt to prevent the same happening to his own town. He was seen in an act of sabotage by two members of the Hitler Youth who reported him to the police. He was arrested, and after a trial lasting a few minutes the commandant sentenced the young man to death by hanging. As the noose was placed around Limpert's neck he broke free but was recaptured quickly. No one in the crowd watching tried to help and some kicked and punched him. On the second attempt the rope broke, and on the third he was finally hanged. The commandant ordered the body to remain where it was "until it stinks" and shortly after he fled the town. American troops cut the body down four hours later when they entered the town. Chapter three covers the fall of East Prussia and the attack on Memel. The Soviet army launched their attack on 5 October. The German commandants did not order the evacuation of the civilian population until 7 October, which resulted in fully one-third of the population being captured. There were widespread reports of mass rape and murder by the advancing Red Army. A letter from a German officer, Colonel-General Georg-Hans Reinhardt to his wife is used to show one reason the Wehrmacht refused to surrender to the advancing Soviets. Having visited an area retaken and seen for himself the atrocities carried out he wrote "Hatred fills us since we have seen how the Bolsheviks have wrought havoc in an area we have retaken, south of Gumbinnen. There can be no other aim for us other than to hold out and protect our homeland." Chapter four begins with the thoughts of a German soldier who questions why they continue the fight when it is obvious all is lost. The Ardennes Offensive is looked into in detail. The German High Command hoped it would be a turning point in the war. The chapter also covers the lack of basic supplies such as steel and coal. Massive drops in production were caused by destruction of rolling stock in heavy bombing raids; canals and road networks were also targeted to disrupt the Nazi supply lines. In chapter five Kershaw touches on the loss of civilian life caused by the Soviet advance, such as the 7,000 who drowned with the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and also an estimated fifty-thousand people dead fleeing the Warthegau region.
33712071	/m/0hhqcv9	Queen Of The Falls	Chris Van Allsburg		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Queen of the Falls is about a 62 year old woman named Annie Edson Taylor who remembers getting closer and closer to Niagara Falls with her father entranced by the sight and sound of the water. Finally, as a 62 year old, she goes over the falls in a wooden barrel, seeking fortune and fame.
33735007	/m/0hhtm9z	Death of Kings	Bernard Cornwell		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Alfred the Great is said to be dying. Rivals for his succession are poised to tear the kingdom apart. The country that Alfred has worked for thirty years to build is likely to disintegrate. Uhtred, a Saxon born warrior, who has been raised by the Danes, wants more than anything else to go and fight to reclaim his stolen Northumbrian inheritance. But he knows that if he deserts the King's cause, Alfred's dream - and the very future of the English nation - will vanish imminently.
33736050	/m/0hhrpjr	Deerskin	Robin McKinley	1993-06-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/078lw_": "Fairytale fantasy"}	 Although Lissar is the daughter of the most beautiful queen and most handsome king in all the land, she is a lonely child whose only true companion is her dog, Ash. She is mostly ignored during her childhood due to the fact that her parents were the two most splendid people in all the seven kingdoms. Lissar's mother falls ill and starts to lose her beauty. This causes her to lose her will to live, because she wants to be remembered as the most beautiful person, and nothing less. She sends for artists from all the kingdoms, and eventually one is chosen to paint a portrait of her as she was before her illness. He works nonstop, as if driven, for a fortnight until the painting is completed and shown to the queen. After looking at the painting, she forces the king to swear that he will only remarry if he can find a bride more beautiful than she, and after he acquiesces, she dies. This seemingly impossible condition is not, however, insurmountable: as Lissar matures, she becomes not just very image of her mother, but more beautiful than her parents. The king becomes obsessed with his daughter, and insists that he will marry her. Lissar refuses him and locks herself in a room. Eventually the king finds a way into the room and rapes Lissar and almost kills Ash. Lissar and Ash escape from the king and find their way to a cabin in the mountains. Lissar, impregnated by her father the king, miscarries and nearly dies. Lissar is saved by a moon goddess, who gives her a white deerskin dress (referenced in the title) and alters both Lissar and Ash so that they are unrecognizable; Lissar's hair changes from black to white, and Ash grows a coat similar to that of a borzoi. As another gift the goddess gives Lissar time to heal and makes her forget what happened to her. Lissar travels to a different kingdom and offers to work for the king. The prince, Ossin, assigns her to raise a litter of puppies whose mother had died. The goddess's alterations, however, were more than physical. Lissar, now identified as Deerskin, discovers that she has supernatural powers, including the ability to find lost children and objects. She falls in love with Ossin and he with her, but, still burdened by her past, she flees when Ossin proposes to her at a ball and returns to the cabin in the mountains with Ash and the puppies. After spending the winter recovering, Deerskin feels compelled to return to Ossin's city, following an urgent call. As she nears the city, she hears about a wedding and assumes that it is Ossin's. She realizes to her horror that the king, her father, is going to marry Ossin's younger sister. Deerskin reveals her true identity as the bridegroom's daughter and calls her father to account for his actions, using the goddess's powers to punish him for his crimes. Confronting her father finally frees Lissar to accept Ossin's love. The story ends with Lissar tentatively coming back to Ossin's arms, offering to give their relationship a chance.
33742897	/m/01kv3b	M. Butterfly	David Henry Hwang			 The play was inspired by Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly. The first act introduces the main character, Rene Gallimard, who is a civil servant attached to the French embassy in China. He falls in love with a beautiful Chinese opera diva, Song Liling, who is actually a man masquerading as a woman. In traditional Beijing opera, females were banned from the stage; all female roles (dan) were played by males. Act two begins with Song coming to France and resuming his affair with Gallimard. They stay together for 20 years until the truth is revealed, and Gallimard is convicted of treason and imprisoned. Unable to face the fact that his "perfect woman" is actually a man, that has been posing as a woman for 20 years to be able to spy, he retreats deep within himself and his memories. The action of the play is depicted as his disordered, distorted recollection of the events surrounding their affair. The third act portrays Gallimard committing seppuku (also known as harakiri, ritual Japanese suicide through self-disembowelment) while Song watches and smokes a cigarette.
33745805	/m/0hht50g	Debt: The First 5000 Years		2011		 Graeber lays out the historical development of the idea of debt, starting from the first recorded debt systems that existed in the Sumer civilization around 3500 BC. In this early form of borrowing and lending, farmers would often become so mired in debt that their children would be forced into debt peonage, though they were periodically released by kings who canceled all debts and granted them amnesty under what later came to be known, in ancient Israel, as the Law of Jubilee. Throughout antiquity, the author identifies many different systems of credit and later monetary exchange, drawing from historical and also ethnographical records evidence for his argument that the traditional explanation for the origins of monetary economies from primitive bartering system, as laid out by Adam Smith, doesn't find empirical support. One feature first observed in this period, though - that of popular indebtedness leading to unrest, insurrections and revolts - will accompany the narrative of the whole book as it deals with the origins of the state, money, interest, taxation and slavery. The author supports that originally credit systems developed as means of account much before the advent of coinage around 600 BC, and can still be seen operating in non-monetary economies. The idea of barter, on the other hand, seems only to apply for limited exchanges between different societies that held no frequent contact and often were in a context of ritualized warfare, rendering its conceptualization among economists as a myth. As an alternative explanation for the creation of economic life, the author suggests that it originally related to social currencies, closely related to non-market quotidian interactions among a community and based on the "everyday communism" that is based on mutual expectations and responsibilities among individuals. This type of economy is, then, contrasted with the moral foundations of exchange, based on formal equality and reciprocity (but not necessarily leading to market relations) and hierarchy, based on clear inequalities that tend to crystallize in customs and castes. With the advent of the great Axial Age civilizations, the nexus between coinage and the calculability of economic values was concomitant with the disrupt of what Graeber calls "human economies," as found among the Iroquois, Celts, Inuit, Tiv, Nuer and the Malagasy people of Madagascar among other groups which, according to Graeber, held a radically different conception of debt and social relations, based on the radical incalculability of human life and the constant creation and recreation of social bonds through gifts, marriages and general sociability. The author postulates the growth of a "military-coinage-slave complex" around this time, through which mercenary armies looted cities and human beings were cut from their social context to work as slaves in Greece, Rome and elsewhere in the Eurasian continent. The extreme violence of the period marked by the rise of great empires in China, India and the Mediterranean was, in this way, connected with the advent of large scale slavery and the use of coins to pay soldiers, together with the obligation enforced by the State for its subjects to pay its taxes in currency. This was also the same time that the great religions spread out and the general questions of philosophical enquiry emerged on world history - many of those directly related, as in Plato's Republic, with the nature of debt and its relation to ethics. When the great empires in Rome and India collapsed, the resulting creation of a checkerboard of small kingdoms and republics saw the gradual decline in standing armies and cities, as well as the settlement of the lower classes through various hierarchical caste systems, the retreat of gold and silver to the temples and the abolition of slavery. Although hard currency was no longer used in everyday life, its use as a unit of account and credit continued in medieval Europe, against popular claims among economists that the Middle Ages somehow saw the economy "revert to barter". In fact, it was during the Middle Ages that more sophisticated financial institutions like promissory notes and paper money (in China, where the empire managed to survive the collapse observed elsewhere), letters of credit and cheques (in the Islamic world) developed and spread. According to Graeber, it was the Islamic "western" tradition of free market and commerce outside of governmental intervention that inspired the original formulation of Adam Smith, whose writing seems to repeat ipsis litteris the words of Persian scholars like Al-Tusi and Al-Ghazali. It took the emergence of the Atlantic slave trade and the massive amounts of gold and silver extracted from the Americas - most of which ended up in the far East, specially China - to see the reemergence of the bullion economy and large scale military violence. All of which, according to Graeber, directly inter-wined with the earlier expansion of the Italian mercantile city-states as centers of finance that defied the church ban on usury and led to the age of the great capitalist empires that endured and prospered for the next 500 years. As the new continent opened new possibilities for gain, it also created a new area for adventurous militarism backed by debts that required the economic exploitation of the Amerindian and, later, West African populations. As it did, cities again flourished in the European continent and capitalism advanced to encompass larger areas of the globe when European trade companies and military outposts disrupted local markets and pushed for colonial monopolies. This age would have come to an end with the abandonment of the gold standard by the U.S. government in 1971 and a return to credit money, opening up uncertainties and possibilities yet unclear as the dollar stands as the world currency largely based in its capacity to multiply itself through debts and deficits as long as the United States maintains its status as the world only military power and client states are eager to pay seignorage for its government bonds. By comparing the evolution of debt in our times to other historical eras and different societies, the author suggests that modern debt crises are not the inevitable product of history and may be changed.
33746461	/m/0hhw28v	The Accident Man	Tom Cain		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The novel proposes a fictional account for the events surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, based on some of the conspiracy theories in subsequent circulation. The central character, Samuel Carver, is an ex-marine, now assassin, who is tricked into committing the act. The story focuses on Carver's efforts to avoid his ex-employers' attempts on his life, whilst he tries to discover the origins of the "kill order", and bring those involved to justice.
33746945	/m/0hhptys	Half a Team	Michael Hardcastle		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book is the sixth in Hardcastle's series about a Junior football League and features recurring characters Nick Abel- Smith (United! 1973, Away from Home 1974) and Lester Rowan (Away from Home). The book follows the story of Abel-Smith and fellow young footballer Steve Sewell as they attempt to overcome the humiliation of being dropped from their respective teams ahead of a five-a-side tournament. Joining forces they create a new team, The Swifts, and, after overcoming a series of obstacles, including getting Steve from Manchester back to their home town without his parent's knowledge, enter the tournament and finally get the opportunity to take on their former teammates and prove their worth.
33750421	/m/0hhrh7g	At First Sight	Nicholas Sparks	2005-10-18	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Where At First Sight begins its story is after Jeremy’s proposal. The books setting begins in New York City as Lexie and Jeremy are preparing to move Jeremy to their future home, Boone Creek. Lexie is making Jeremy keep the baby a secret from his family and friends and the residents of Boone Creek until after the wedding, because she doesn’t want people to get the wrong impression of why he and Lexie have decided to get married after only a few weeks of knowing each other. The only people that know of the pregnancy are Jeremy’s long time best friend Alvin, and Lexie's grandmother, Dorris. When Jeremy and Lexie return to Boone Creek, Jeremy finds himself unable to find the inspiration to write any new columns for his magazine. This adds to the stress of buying a new house for his new family and having a child on the way. Dorris tries to help Jeremy with this problem by giving him her book. Dorris is the town psychic and has the specialty of predicting the sex of a newborn baby, and records it all in her book. Dorris suggests that Jeremy try to write about the journal for a new column. Rodney is a character featured in True Believer as a longtime friend of Lexie that has been after her for years until Jeremy came along. By the end of the previous novel he starts to be interested in he and Lexis other longtime friend, Rachel. By this book they are an established couple, who have been having problems in their relationship. Rachel feels as though Rodney is still not over Lexie, and would be with her if she weren’t marrying Jeremy. One day Jeremy finds Lexie sitting alone with Rodney talking and holding hands. He immediately feels this is suspicious but tries to tell himself that it was nothing and he was simply making it into something it wasn’t, even if Rodney had been after Lexie for years. Jeremy later confronts Lexie about what she had done that day, in which case she fails to mention anything about seeing Rodney that day. Jeremy receives an anonymous email saying only “how do you know the baby is yours?” This paired with his supposed inability to conceive leaves Jeremy with his mind racing, suspecting it may have been someone else’s, Rodney’s in particular, but once again reminding himself that Lexie wasn’t capable of such a thing and that nothing had ever become of her and Rodney, and he decides to not tell Lexie. Sometime later, Rachel runs off for a few days without telling anyone, leaving Rodney Dorris and Lexie all feeling worried. Lexie cancels her dinner plans with Jeremy and says she is going over to Dorris’ house to talk and comfort her, but when Jeremy checks up on her he finds her car at Rodney’s instead. Feeling angry that Lexie had once again lied went to her house and waited outside for her to get back. When she returns he confronts her about Rodney and Lexie explains that she went over to her grandmothers like she said and then decided to console Rodney. They have a heated argument and Jeremy goes back to the local motel where he had been staying. When he gets back, Jeremy receives a second anonymous email, this time saying “she hasn’t told you yet? It’s in Dorris’ book.” Moments later, Lexie shows up crying and the two end up working things out. Jeremy still does not tell Lexie about the emails, not yet knowing what to say or make of them. Jeremy searches for what the email might be referring to, and after numerous times going through and analyzing the book, he finds it; a prediction from 4 years earlier of a miscarriage with Lexies initials and the name of the father. Jeremy is angered that Lexie had never told him of this and feels she has lied to him for the third time. The two end up in an even more heated argument after closing on their new house, and this time when Jeremy leaves he’s heading back to New York City for his bachelor party. There he discovers the sender of the anonymous emails was his best friend, Alvin who doesn’t want the couple to get married after such a short period of time. Jeremy learns that when Rachel ran away, she had gone to New York City and visited Alvin, who she had met in the previous novel, and spilled the secret about Lexies’ previous miscarriage and the documentation of it in the journal, and that’s how Alvin knew of it. Jeremy is furious telling Alvin he never wants to hear from him again, and gets the next flight back to Boone creek. When Jeremy returns, he and Lexie have a long talk and both admit that they were both wrong, and Jeremy fills her in on the emails, Alvin, and Rachel. Everything is explained from then that the baby was in fact, despite the odds, definitely Jeremy’s’ and that there was nothing between Lexie and Rodney. Rachel avoids Lexie and Dorris for a short time until finally coming to Lexies house, apologizing and explaining how she accidentally told Alvin about the pregnancy and they make up. They have a wonderful wedding a short time later where Lexis deceased parents were married. When Jeremy and Lexie go to their ultrasound appointment, they learn that an amniotic band threatened their baby with possible deformities if it were to attach, or even its life. Jeremy and Lexie spend the last ten weeks of her pregnancy in fear and distress over the news. Lexie tells Jeremy that they can move to New York for Jeremy, in hopes of Jeremy finding inspiration to write again. Jeremy briefly thinks on this offer and quickly turns down her offer. Moments later, Jeremy finds inspiration to write his next column and his writing rut was over. Lexie wakes Jeremy up early in the morning to inform him that she was in labor. With this news Jeremy freaks out like any expecting father and was a mess for the whole experience. Lexie successfully delivers their daughter, Claire, named after Lexis deceased mother; however Lexie dies immediately after giving birth, leaving her grandmother Doris and Jeremy in anguish and Jeremy, a widowed parent.
33751676	/m/0hhvt7t	Walking Into the Night	Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson			 For twenty years Christian Benediktsson has led a quiet life as the butler to William Randolph Hearst, the greatest newspaper magnate in the world. His days are filled with the rituals of Hearst’s life and the demands of running a grand household. But in his most private thoughts and memories, he relives another life: once a husband and father in Iceland, he abandoned his family for an actress in New York, where his affair ended in death and financial ruin. Retreating from his previous existence, he ended up at Hearst’s castle in California. No one else knows the secret of the man he once was—husband, father, businessman, lover—and, ultimately, even he will choose to forget that this person ever existed.
33757131	/m/0hhqrmd	The Survivor	Tom Cain	2008-07-28	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The novel opens with Samuel Carver masquerading as a maintenance man. He sabotages the executive jet of wealthy Texan businessman Waylon McCabe. The sabotage fails and McCabe begins to suspect that he was the target of an assassination as opposed to a victim of a freak accident. The novel then jumps forward to continue the story of Cain's first novel, The Accident Man. Carver is recovering in a Swiss hospital and attempting to regain memories lost during the torture by that book's villain. The story centres around McCabe's attempt to obtain a lost Russian suitcase nuke in an effort to instigate a nuclear holocaust that would bring about the rapture; Carver aims to stop him.
33758124	/m/0hhv73t	Kapalkundala	Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay	1866	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Nabakumar, a young gentleman from Saptagram, got lost in a forest while returning from pilgrimage in Gangasagar. He met a Tantric sage who trapped him, intending to make him a sacrifice to goddess Kali; but was later freed secretly by Kapalkundala, the sage’s foster-daughter. She, at once, fall in love with Nabakumar and with the help of a village priest they got married on the next day. The priest urged Nabakumar to take Kapalkundala away from her wicked foster-father and also showed Nabakumar his way to Saptagram. Nabakumar returned home with his newly-wed wife Kapalkundala, now re-christened as Mrinmoyee. The sage, on the other hand, got annoyed at Kapalkundala’s betrayal and began to plot his revenge. In the meantime, Nabakumar met Padmabati, his first wife, who was converted to Islam by his father, making Nabakumar to desert her. Padmabati, now renamed as Motibibi, expressed her love for Nabakumar, but he refused her. Later the sage came to Saptagram and met Motibibi. The sage wanted to kill Kapalkundala, but Motibibi wanted to separate her from Nabkumar only. They made a plot to prove Kapalkundala unfaithful. Padmabati called Kapalkundala to meet her in a nearby forest and she, herself, came there in a man’s disguise. The sage showed Nabakumar that Kapalkundala came out at night to meet a ‘man whom she loves’. Then the sage made the angry Nabakumar bring Kapalkundala to the sacrificial ground where Kapalkundala revealed the truth to him. Nabakumar came to his senses and he asked Kapalkundala to come with him to his home, but she refused and jumped into the river. Nabakumar also jumped into the river to save her, but both of them were lost.
33766373	/m/0hhv2g8	Assassin	Tom Cain		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 This novel takes place twelve years after the previous Samuel Carver novel, The Survivor, with Carver having spent the intervening years as a security consultant. The plot of the novel centres around a copycat killer attempting to implicate Carver in the assassination of America's first black president.
33768893	/m/02ph2hb	Goshawk Squadron	Derek Robinson			 Goshawk Squadron follows a front-line squadron of British pilots late in the war. The commanding officer is Stanley Woolley, a cold, cruel and sour taskmaster, training the squadron with brutality. The years of war and slaughter had hardened Woolley into a humorless cynic. Woolley especially hates the delusions that replacements have about air combat being gallant and chivalrous. Woolley keeps no emotional attachments, even to his girlfriend Margery, a nurse in the Hospital Corps. The Germans launch their final massive offensive, which leads to a relentless bloodbath. The squadron gets decimated in the endless grind of combat. When Margery's field station gets bombed, she is erroneously reported dead. Realizing how much he did love her, this shatters Woolley, who is incredibly relieved when she appears unharmed. However, Woolley's unemotional focus is stripped away by this close call. Distracted by the thought of Margery and the life they could have together, Woolley is killed leading the next combat patrol.
33770111	/m/0hhpks_	Valentines	Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson			 The twelve stories in Valentines are linked by the months of the year. Each brisk story captures the most candid moments between spouses, family members, and lovers—moments when dangerous feelings surge to the surface and everything changes. A wife realizes her closest confidante is much more than that. A father tries to dress his new lover in the clothing of his late wife. A woman, watching her son and husband from afar, sees something she can never forget.
33770305	/m/0hht6d6	Restoration	Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson			 A sweeping story of love tested by the terrors and tragedies of war set in the gorgeous hills of Tuscany in the 1940s. Having grown up in an exclusive circle of British ex-pats in Florence in the 1920s, Alice shocks everyone when she marries Claudio, the son of a minor landowner, and moves to San Martino, a crumbling villa in Tuscany. Settling into their new paradise, husband and wife begin to build their future, restoring San Martino and giving birth to a son. But as time passes, Alice grows lonely, a restlessness that leads her into a heady social swirl of wartime Rome and a reckless affair that will have devastating consequences. While she spends time with her lover in Rome, Alice’s young son falls ill and dies, widening the emotional chasm between her and her husband—and leaving her vulnerable to the machinations of a nefarious art dealer who ensnares her in a dangerous and deadly scheme. Returning to San Martino, Alice yearns for forgiveness. But before she can begin to make amends, Claudio disappears, and the encroaching fighting threatens to destroy everything they have built. Caught between loyalists and resisters, cruel German forces and desperate Allied troops, Alice valiantly struggles to survive, hoping the life and love she lost can one day be restored.
33770810	/m/0hhr35k	Conqueror	Conn Iggulden	2011-09-23	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 A warrior who would rule a fifth of the world with strength and wisdom. A scholar who conquered an empire larger than those of Alexander or Caesar. A brother who betrayed his own to protect a nation. From a wise scholar to one of history's most powerful warriors, Conqueror tells the story of Kublai Khan - an extraordinary man who should be remembered alongside Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte as one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. It should have been a golden age, with an empire to dwarf the lands won by the mighty Genghis Khan. Instead, the vast Mongol nation is slowly losing ground, swallowed whole by their most ancient enemy. A new generation has arisen, yet the long shadow of the Great Khan still hangs over them all … Kublai dreams of an empire stretching from sea to sea. But to see it built, this scholar must first learn the art of war. He must take his nation’s warriors to the ends of the known world. And when he is weary, when he is wounded, he must face his own brothers in bloody civil war.
33775440	/m/0hhq1_g	An Answer from Limbo	Brian Moore	1962	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The central character in the book is Brendan Tierney, a young Irish writer living in New York with his American wife and their two children. Tierney is working on his first novel. For him to write full time, his wife must work; he invites his widowed mother over from Ireland to look after the children. Conflicts arise when the mother finds that her own lifestyle, values and sense of morality are at odds with what she sees in her son and daughter-in-law's home. Denis Sampson describes it as "a novel about marital dissatisfaction that develops into a moral fable because the dilemmas in which these characters find themselves mirror a society in spiritual and cultural crisis".
33778490	/m/0hhrjjj	Dictator	Tom Cain		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Ten years prior to this story, Carver was supposed to have assassinated Henderson Gushungo, an African dictator. The novel follows Carver's subsequent attempts to oust the dictator, and force a regime change. Amongst the locations used as settings are Switzerland, Malemba, Suffolk, England and Hong Kong.
33778980	/m/0hht6fr	A Rising Thunder	David Weber		{"/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}	 The book begins in March 1922 P.D. as tensions continue to escalate between the Star Empire of Manticore and the Solarian League after the battles of New Tuscany, Spindle, and the Yawata Strike. Manticore begins to enact Case Lacoön by recalling all of its merchant vessels from Solarian space, taking control of, and denying access to wormhole bridges and junctions to Solarian traffic. As the effects of Manticore's actions begin to reverberate throughout the League, Permanent Senior Undersecretary Innokentiy Kolokoltsov and his four fellow senior bureaucrats, known derisively as "the five Mandarins", start feeling the pressure from the transstellar corporations and criticisms from the media. While it is clear that Manticore is in a position to do the League economy tremendous harm, the Mandarins are not willing to pay the political and diplomatic price of taking responsibility for the actions of the League Navy. They continue to support Admiral Rajani Rajampet's planned invasion of the Manticoran Star System, despite the risk that a failure of the invasion will make them look even weaker and ineffectual than before. In the meantime, Captain Anton Zilwicki and Agent Victor Cachat arrive at Haven and present to President Eloise Pritchart their evidence of Mesan involvement in the assassinations that triggered the resumption of hostilities between Haven and Manticore. Upon hearing this and supporting information from their defector, Dr. Herlander Simões, about other new technologies and revelations before unknown about Mesa, she sets out on an unprecedented state visit to Manticore. The evidence is presented to a reluctant Empress Elizabeth, who is finally convinced that Haven is no longer the enemy and agrees, not only to negotiate a peace treaty, but to accept Pritchart's offer of military alliance against the upcoming League attack. Hearing about this visit and the intelligence Zilwicki and Cachat brought with them regarding Mesa's plans, the Beowulf government arrives for an unexpected visit of its own to join the new "Grand Alliance". Shortly afterwards, Protector Benjamin Mayhew arrives from Grayson to participate in the peace talks and the represent the other members of the Manticoran Alliance. Admiral Filareta arrives at the Manticoran System, with a massive fleet of 420 superdreadnoughts, and proceeds upon a course to Sphinx. The Grand Alliance Fleet, under Honor's overall command, executes its battle plan. Honor then contacts Filareta and attempts to dissuade him from continuing on his mission. Filareta refuses to back down despite Harrington's repeated warnings not to cross the system's hyper-limit and demands that she stand down her ships and surrender. The Solarian 11th Fleet crosses the hyper limit and Harrington springs her trap - Her own ships emerge out of stealth in front of 11th Fleet while Haven's forces drop out of hyperspace behind it. Harrington then contacts Filareta again and reveals the misdirection. Filareta realizes that his position is hopeless and orders a surrender, but to his shock, his ops officer suddenly launches all the 51,000 missile from their pods without orders. Harrington promptly opens fire in response. The total losses for the SLN in the Second Battle of Manticore are staggering, even for the SLN. Manticore's own losses are marginal. In Beowulf, an additional fleet sent to support 11th Fleet via the Wormhole terminus is forced to retreat when faced with the combined forces of the Beowulf System Defense Force and a Manticoran task force under the command of Admiral Alice Truman. Upon news of 11th Fleet's destruction, the five Mandarins find themselves forced to contend with the consequences of this debacle. Their failures to crush Manticore and reverse the effects of their actions have been a serious blow to the League's prestige. Yet any negotiated settlement with Manticore would be done from a position of weakness, so they decide they have no choice but to continue their current policies. They accuse Manticore of perfidy and Beowulf of treason for its discordance with League policy vis-à-vis Manticore. Their efforts to convince the public are successful and the Manticoran Embassy and the Beowulf Assembly Delegation Office are besieged by angry mobs who protest their actions. Admiral Rajampet, despite the failure of his strategy against Manticore, does not intend to become the Mandarins' scapegoat and prepares to release damaging information on all of them should they try to lay the blame of this failure upon him. But before his meeting with them, he suddenly commits suicide. Upon the death of Admiral Rajampet, his deputy, Admiral Winston Kingsford becomes the acting head of the SLN and is summoned to Kolokoltsov's office to brief him on the League's military options vis-à-vis Manticore. Kinsford, far more cautious and smarter than Rajampet, promptly informs Kolokoltsov of the unpalatable truth: Manticore's military advantage over the League is so overwhelming that any further confrontations between their respective capital ships will all be one-sided massacres. Even worse is the economic and political analysis presented to Kolokoltsov at that meeting. Ultimately, Kingsford presents Kolokoltsov with their only options: fighting a commerce-raiding war until they can match Manticore's military capability or sue for terms. Kolokoltsov convinces the other Mandarins that their best chance is to adopt Kingsford's recommendations, score some victories and only then attempt a negotiated settlement that would not be detrimental to the League's internal stability. They also maneuver to have the Beowulf System Government investigated for treason to divert attention away from their own failings. The maneuver backfires badly however, when the head of the Beowulf delegation to the Assembly declares, in response to the motion, that her government intends to invoke a never before used section of the League constitution which allows member systems to secede from the League, to be confirmed by a referendum of Beowulfan voters (which is certain to pass by a huge majority). The story concludes with indication of a planned SLN strike upon Beowulf, to prevent this eventuality.
33790619	/m/0hhp_ss	The Enchanted Wanderer	Nikolai Leskov			 The protagonist, Ivan Flyagin, a bogatyr-type of a character has been "promised to God" by his mother but refused to join the monastery as a young man, ignoring all the "signs", allegedly pointing him the way. The rest of his life he sees as a "punishment" for this, and after all becomes a monk, driven though not by spiritual motives, but rather by poverty and having nowhere else to go.
33790926	/m/0hhw4xq	Carver	Tom Cain		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 The central character, Samuel Carver, is an ex-assassin. The story focuses on an unknown group who are attempting to bring about a global financial crisis, after having caused the collapse of the Lehman Brothers financial institution, and Carver is hired to stop them.
33798243	/m/0hhqhwt	Murder by Family		2008	{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction", "/m/016chh": "Memoir"}	 Murder by Family chronicles Bart Whitaker's attempts to have a hitman murder his parents and sibling on 10 December 2003. The book also follows father Kent Whitaker's spiritual journey of healing afterwards and forgiveness for his son.
33803294	/m/0hhr7sc	Dinosaur Planet Survivors	Anne McCaffrey	1984	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Dinosaur Planet featured the survey of planet Ireta for its mineral wealth. Several mysteries unfolded whose resolution was interrupted by a Heavyworlder mutiny. After 43 years, survivors of the mutiny are wakened from cold sleep. Their emergency message has been decoded by a Thek who asks questions but not about the mutiny. They tell him about a buried beacon they found, and he immediately leaves without helping them. Forced to survive on their own, they discover that the mutineers have built a settlement and landing grid that could only be used to colonize a planet -- in this case, illegally. Several Thek arrive and seize control for their own reasons.
33808490	/m/0hhvy38	Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story		2001		 The book tracks Sandusky's life from his youth in Washington, Pennsylvania, his adoption of six children, at least one of whom he allegedly molested, and taking in six foster children, his years as a player and coach at Penn State, and his work with the Second Mile charitable organization. According to one review of the book, "Sandusky writes equally of his time in and out of football. Most of his time away from the game is devoted to his family and his charitable foundation, the Second Mile, which serves underprivileged children. Interesting anecdotes from all aspects of his life are neatly packaged with the help of Kip Richeal, a 1987 Penn State graduate and former equipment manager for the football team."
33813261	/m/0b6df5d	The King's Dragon	Una McCormack			 The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in the city-state of Geath, where it appears that everyone is happy and rich. However, they discover that there are secrets and creatures hidden, as well as a metal dragon that oozes gold. A Herald appears demanding the return of her treasure and a battle for possession of the treasure begins. The Doctor, Amy and Rory must save the people of the city before they are destroyed by the war.
33822428	/m/0hhssh5	Tangled Up in Blue				 The book has a foreword by Steve Richards, an introduction, five chapters and a conclusion. In the foreword Richards relates how his first actual meeting with Glasman shattered his initial assessment that Blue Labour was derivative and backward looking. Richards states that the importance of Blue Labour is partly shaped by Ed Miliband's recent rise to be party leader, after which he declared that the era of New Labour was over. According to Richards, Blue Labour is the most important source of fresh ideas to fill the resulting void. He also says that Glasman has the potential to be just the sort of compelling advocate needed to present new thinking if it is to gain acceptance by the political mainstream. Davis sets out her aim to reveal the untold story of Blue Labour's genesis and growth as an influential force within the Labour party. She quotes Ed Miliband talking about how one of the strengths of Blue Labour is its recognition of the importance of personal relationships both for a healthy society and even for a good economy. Davis touches on many of the themes which she expands later in the book: * the way Glasman was inspired to attempt to invigorate the Labour party by his dying mother and by contact with the "red Tory" Phillip Blond. * the story of Glasman's almost unique role as someone supporting the leadership campaigns of both Miliband brothers. * an outline of Blue Labour's agenda and intellectual development. Much of the introduction describes the three pillars of Blue Labour, which are: Pillar one: interests, institutions and ideas ; Pillar two: reciprocity, relationships and responsibility ; Pillar three: virtue, vocation and value. In the opening chapter, Davis discusses the factors that led Glasman to launch the Blue Labour initiative. The first was his mother, a lifelong Labour supporter who very much saw the Labour party as the champion of ordinary people's interests. Glasman was incensed that on the night she died, Labour's bailout of the banks was still playing out on the news. Glasman saw the bailout as a huge unnecessary transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. It was on the night of her death in January 2009, in conversation with his wife, that Glasman first came up with the label "Blue Labour". Another key influence in the development of Blue Labour was Phillip Blond, the so called "red Tory". When Blond first met Glasman it was the Tory who was much better known within Westminster. The two became friends and Blond was pleased to help raise Glasman's profile as the two had partially overlapping ideas. The success of Obama's 2008 election campaign had also helped to inspire Glasman, as it involved the sort of relationship-orientated, decentralised community mobilisation that he wished to promote. A fifth influence was Glasman's prior involvement with Citizens UK, an umbrella group dedicated to community organising. The second chapter discusses how Glasman came to form relationships with the senior leadership in the Labour party. Ed Miliband had found out about Glasman during his investigation of Citizens UK, which he had became interested in due to the group's efforts to address poverty with its Living wage campaign and other initiatives. The two met in the autumn of 2009 and became fast friends. Shortly after, Glasman also formed strong relationships with senior figures in David Miliband's camp, thanks to introductions by his friend, the journalist Allegra Stratton. Just three nights before the election, Glasman wrote a speech for Gordon Brown, who had decided to address Citizens UK. The speech was very well received, often considered his best of the campaign, demonstrating Glasman's talent. This chapter records Glasman's role as advisor to both the Miliband brothers during their 2010 campaign to be elected as the new leader of Labour. According to Davis, Glasman was almost unique among prominent Labour party members in helping the campaigns of both Ed and David but committing to neither. David Miliband entered into an informal alliance with Citizens UK - several members from the organisation helped his campaign. Glasman assisted Citizens UK to liaise with David's senior team. Despite this, Glasman also advised Ed Miliband. According to Davis, Glassman had a strong personal relationship only with Ed and not with his brother, though he did have close friendships with senior members of David's team. The book reveals that Glasman expected Ed to win as he thought the younger brother had a more appealing energy. The book does not reveal which brother Glasman personally voted for. The fourth chapter focuses on an important stage of Blue Labour's intellectual development which took place at seminars held at Oxford University between October 2010 and April 2011. Davis relates that the five key people leading the seminars were Glasman himself and four other academics who are all to various degrees also active as political strategists. These four are Jonathan Rutherford, Marc Stears, Stuart White and Lord Wood. Some two dozen senior Labour players attended the meetings. These included both Miliband brothers and the MP Jon Cruddas. It was at these seminars that the document often regarded as Blue Labour's manifesto was drafted: The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox. Davis discusses Glasman's personal contribution to the document: a paper where he traces the Labour tradition back to the participatory democracy of the ancient Greeks, going on to discuss how Labour was founded in the 19th century not by an intellectual elite but from grass roots community activism, in particular that which arose from the London Dock Strike of 1889. Chapter Five records Glasman's ascent to the House of Lords under the patronage of Ed Miliband, the consequent media attention, and the controversy he generated which came close to ending Blue Labour as a political force. After his elevation to the Lords, Glasman received considerable mainstream media attention and attracted the interest of several new party members, who would frequently meet at Westminster's Portcullis House. Blue Labour's high profile also attracted hostile attention; several feminist Labour party MPs fiercely attacked the movement as they saw Blue Labour as anti-woman. Even greater controversy was created by Glasman's repeated comments on the need to tighten up immigration, and his assertion that Labour ought to reach out to the EDL, a far right group who describe themselves as opponents of radical Islamism but who are described by critics as racist. The controversy peaked in July 2011, with several leading figures including Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford publicly dissociating themselves from Blue Labour. Following this, several media commentators announced that Blue Labour had effectively ended. Davis relates how Lord Glasman concedes he was politically naïve in making the comments about immigration. He thought he would never be cast as racist or sexist due to his life's work in helping immigrants, especially female immigrants, speak out, and in representing their interests through community organising. In the conclusion, Davis reviews the prospects for Blue Labour's continued influence on the mainstream Labour party. She concludes that Blue Labour probably does have a future, at least as a source of ideas if not as a brand. After the movement was pronounced dead by various journalists in summer 2011, Lord Glasman withdrew from the public eye, but remained committed to promoting Blue Labour, and continued to expand his network of interested contacts. There has been growing interest among Labour academics and strategists centred around London and Oxford. Davis says support for Blue Labour remains weak among the parliamentary party, naming only a handful of MPs who openly support Blue Labour, such as Hazel Blears, Tessa Jowel and Caroline Flint. The author also states that despite its aim to champion working class traditional values, Blue Labour has next to no grassroots support from regular people outside of Citizens UK. However, both Miliband brothers remain interested in Blue Labour and there are signs that the party leader is increasingly accepting and implementing its ideas. Ed Miliband told the author in a September 2011 interview that Blue Labour is an idea that is "ahead of its time".
33825369	/m/0hrcf6f	The Rise of Nine	Pittacus Lore	2012-08-21	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Marina and Six, along with Ella (a previously unknown tenth member of the Garde) and Crayton (her Cepan) are on a plane heading towards India, where they hope to find another member of the Garde; Number Eight. As soon as they land at the New Delhi airport they are picked up by men who worship Eight as they believe him to be the reincarnation of the God Vishnu (it is later revealed that he appeared to them in the form of Vishnu, thanks to his shape-shifting abilities). They plan to take them to the summit of a mountain in the Himalayas, which is where Eight has made his home. However, before they reach him, they are ambushed by soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Front, who want to kill Eight and all of those associated with him. After defeating their attackers and reach the mountain, Six, Seven and Ten have to face three of Vishnu's avatars, which are used as a way of testing whether they are really members of the Garde. Once Number Eight realises that they are Loric, he tells them his story; his Cepan Reynolds was killed by Mogodorians after being betrayed by the love of his life, a human named Lola. During this same attack, Eight's chest was taken by the Mogodorians. Eight has been living in the Himalayas since. They discover that one of Eight's legacies is the ability to teleport, which they plan to use to reach New Mexico, where they can easily make their way to Number Four. They travel farther up the mountain to a Loric cave that contains a large stone of Loralite, and acts as a "door" between several other locations that have a Loralite stone. In the cave they see paintings on the walls as they are a timeline of the events that have happened. (They see One's, Two's, and Three's deaths, Four's battle in the school and Number Five battling Mogs from a tree) They then come across a painting of a Loric with a sword through them although the face is ripped off. It is revealed this is Number Eight, who ripped off the face to try and avoid the fate. The Mogs then burst into the cave and kill Crayton, forcing the group to perform a hurried teleport together from the Himalayas. Six is teleported to a desert in New Mexico while Eight, Seven, and Ten end up in Somalia. Six is dehydrated due to desert heat but manages to make it to an abandoned town, where she is captured by FBI agents. After intense questioning she manages to break out and in the process comes across Sarah Hart, Four's girlfriend who supposedly turned him in to the FBI in the previous novel. To Six's horror, the false Sarah Hart forms into Setrakus Ra. She challenges Setrakus Ra to a one-on-one fight before being thrown into a cell with the real Sarah Hart. Meanwhile Four and Nine, along with Bernie Kosar; Four's shape-shifting Chimæra, are captured by the FBI, who are now working with the Mogs. Whilst in transit they escape easily, seriously wounding their captors in the process. Four asks one of the dying agents, Agent Walker, where Sam and Sarah are being held and is told that they are being held out west. Walker then seemingly dies. Once he helps Nine fight off the rest of the FBI, Four returns to the van they had been travelling in only to find that all the bodies are gone. The pair take a freight train to Chicago and argue about what to do next. They eventually decide to go to Nine's safe house, although Four is angered by how little Nine seems to care about Sam and Sarah. Nine reveals that his safe house is in the top floor of the John Hancock Center, including training rooms, weapon cabinets and city-wide surveillance systems. Nine shows off for experienced he is with all the rooms and, when the talk returns to Sam and the tablet the two found, that he has a piece of equipment that fits the tablet. When they use it they see a map of the Earth with several pulsing blue dots; two in Chicago, one in Jamaica and four in India. They realise that the tablet shows the locations of the other Garde and, seeing that there are seven dots instead of six, realised that there was a second ship that made it to Earth, carrying with it a tenth Garde member. They then see two green dots, one in New Mexico and the other in Egypt, and realize that these are their ships. As they watch the four dots in India suddenly reappear, with three off the coast of Somalia and one in New Mexico. The pair once again disagree about what to do next (with Four wanting to go to new Mexico to rescue the stranded Garde member and Nine wanting to go to Sam's house in Paradise, Ohio, to see what else they can find) and it becomes violent. The fight goes to the roof where, after a long battle, Nine holds Four over the edge and demands the he stop claiming to be Pittacus Lore (which he had told Nine during one of their arguments) and that they go to Paradise. Nine lets Four back onto the roof and storms off, threating to drop him next time. Later in the night, Four has a vision where he and Nine are told to go to New Mexico. After finding out that Nine had the same vision they travel together towards New Mexico. Four begins to grow fond of Nine when he witnesses him defending a pair of unarmed hitchhikers from their assailants and they begin to open up about their previous lives. In the meantime Seven, Eight, and Ten are able to teleport to Stonehenge and then onto New Mexico, after Ella contacts Six through telepathy (developing her first legacy) and learns her location. She even contacts Number Four who was on the way to New Mexico along with Number Nine. They eventually reunite after defeating the FBI who were attacking Four and Nine and enter the base where Setrakus Ra and Number Six are fighting. Setrakus Ra manages to use his power of removing a Garde member's legacy and overpowers Six but, instead of killing her, he uses a whip-like weapon to turn her into black rock. The group fight their way through the base and find Sarah, who belives that Four is Setrakus Ra trying to trick her. Once Four convinces her that it really is him they move on, also finding a badly injured Agent Walker. They tell Sarah to watch her, giving her a Mogadorian cannon to shoot Walker with if she tries to escape. In a large room they see a black statue on the roof, which Nine goes to inspect and find Six there, telling them that Setrakus Ra is dead and that the black mass is Mogadorian poison. Eight teleports to Six and embrases her, but is stabbed just as the painting in the Loric cave showed. The fake Six then transforms into Setrakus Ra, who removes all of their legacies. Nine fights Setrakus Ra whilst Bernie Kosar fight of Mogadorian soldiers. Four and Marina try to carry away Eight so that Marina's healing legacy can return and save him, but are also attacked by Mogs. After defeating them they carry on trying to pull Eight out of the battle Then, Nine is hit in multiple places by Setrakus Ra's whip weapon and begins to turn to stone, Bernie Kosar is almost overpowered by the Mogs and Four is shot. Just as it seems that they are doomed to lose the fight, Sarah and Ella appear and Ella throws a red dart at Setrakus Ra. He loses his power to remove their legacies, Bernie Kosar is able to get the upper hand and Six and Nine are able to begin to break out of their casings. But Setrakus Ra then hits Ella and Sarah with the whip and they both fall. Four, after being healed, rushes to them while Marina heals Eight. Nine re-engages Setrakus Ra and Eight and Six fight off the Mogs. A Mog then fires at Ella and Sarah and they begin to convulse, dying from the shot. Marina prepares herself for Ella's and Sarah's deaths but when it doesn't happen she notices Four using a newly found healing legacy on them. Sarah wakes and kisses Four. An explosion rips the ceiling apart and kills the remaining Mogs. All of the group find each other except Nine, who is nowhere to be found. They eventually find him stunned but alive, but Setrakus Ra has gone. They all greet each other properly and begin to work their way back to the outside world.
33852392	/m/0hn9ld6	Destiny Times Three	Fritz Leiber	1945	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Probabiltity Engine made differing timelines a reality: alternate universes real enough to exist side by side - and to be invaded... de:Schicksal mal drei fr:Alternatives
33852703	/m/0hn8y7h	The Stone Cutter		2005		 A more claustrophobic narrative landscape than before; the plot consists of a shift between the past and the present-day account of the murder investigation, but the link twixt the alternating narratives is not revealed until the end:-there are also multiple side stories which make for a somewhat cluttered plot. The roots of the theme lies in an earlier generation and can be attributed, at least in part, to the upbringing of offspring. In the present, Eric/ Patrik try to find a suitable parenting means; even the incompetent police chief becomes obliquely involved in raising an infant, albeit belatedly. Used in this novel skilfully is the utilization of a secondary story, delivered to us a couple of pages at a time, at long intervals; This sub-plot is perfectly timed, revealing the killer’s motive or insanity, at just the correct pace. In fact it's not at any one particular moment when you realise who the killer is – that’s the skill. The remote resort of Fjällbacka has seen its share of disaster, though perhaps none worse than that of the young child found in a fisherman′s net. The gruesome post-mortem shows that this is no case of accidental drowning. The death of Sara, an eight-year-old girl, is no less shocking for Patrik Hedström having just become a father. This is a child both he and his partner Erica knew well. It is his grim task to discover who could be behind the methodical murder. What he does not know is how this case will reach into the blackened heart of Fjällbacka and the town′s history, ripping apart its idyllic façade, perhaps permanently. An interesting aside is that the parents of the dead child live with the maternal grandmother, Lilian, an acerbic hag engaged in a never ending battle with her 'Neighbour from Hell' Kaj, who has built a new domicile next door to her profound chagrin; Kaj has a reclusive autistic son, Morgan, who spends many hours isolated in his room working on his computer; the finer of suspicion begins to point to him as the possible murderer, particularly as he had seen and spoken to the child on the fatal day they died. The plot is further complicated by the fact that Erica is a good friend of Sara's mother, Charlotte – bonded by both recently having had children. Another detective story with a plot twist that takes until the end to discern; enjoyable literature- not too demanding but intelligent; the only qualm is perhaps that most detective stories seem to have a protagonist detective - this doesn't which some might miss. This novel would be more satisfying if only the author planned a much nicer motive;If only the killer wasn't the person.
33858867	/m/0hndjdl	Rubber	Jeyamohan	1990		 The story traces the rise and fall of the Peruvattar family, rubber plantation owners based in the Kanyakumari Nanjil district in Tamil Nadu. The story begins in the present and moves back briefly to trace the early life of the family patriarch Ponnu Peruvattar. Ponnu begins life as a forest laborer and slowly grows to acquire the entire forest and converts it into a rubber plantation through hard work and ruthless means. Rubber, which is alien to the Nanjil land, provides wealth, power and social position to the Peruvattar dynasty, but also corrupts it from within. Ponnu's equally ruthless son Chelliah tries to expand the empire; Chelliah's wife Thirese exhibits all the trappings of the "nouveau riche" - Chelliah worships her despite her infidelity. The last two of Chelliah and Thirese's five children are still with the family - Francis, the grandfather's favourite, is a wastrel; Livy goes to college but lacks morals and compassion. The ailing patriarch Ponnu spends his last days contemplating whether his life was worth anything at all. Chelliah faces financial ruin as he dabbles in exports, and he desperately wants his father to die soon so that he could sell the family home and assets. Dependent on the spiteful family for even minor needs and consumed by guilt and self-pity, Ponnu Peruvattar begs his assistant Kunhi for poison. He is visited by his old friend, the simple and noble Kandan Kaani, a tribal that had roamed the forest land with him in his youth. The novel ends with the passing away of the patriarch and the salvation of family scion Francis.
33861076	/m/0hn9d08	Brothers in Arms	Lois McMaster Bujold	1989	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Shortly after the Dagoola IV escape detailed in the novella "Borders of Infinity", Miles and some of his Dendarii mercenaries arrive on Earth, fleeing Cetagandan retribution and desperate to repair the damage suffered by their ships. Miles visits the Barrayaran Embassy so the Dendarii can be paid for their last mission. There he finds his cousin Ivan Vorpatril working for the distinctly hostile Captain Duv Galeni, who turns out to be a Komarran related to one of the alleged victims of Miles' father. Miles is reassigned to the Embassy as Third Military Attaché, under Galeni's command. Further complicating matters, Miles discovers he has a clone, created and trained as an assassin by Komarran diehards determined to free their planet. The assassination plot is foiled. Miles allows his clone to escape; by Betan law, the clone is his brother, and Miles is well aware his formidable mother would be greatly displeased if he got rid of his troublesome new sibling. According to Barrayaran tradition, his brother would be named Mark Pierre Vorkosigan. In exchange for "Mark" helping Miles fool the Cetagandans, who are beginning to suspect that Naismith and Vorkosigan are the same person, the psychologically scarred Mark is let go with a considerable sum of money and the invitation to claim his Barrayaran heritage, if he wants to&mdash;or dares.
33868418	/m/0hn8frs	The Gallows Bird	Camilla Läckberg	2006		 Patrik (police officer) and Erica (writer) have reconnected, had a child and are moving headlong into matrimony. Problems sidelined when a chaotic alcohol-fuelled party ends with the death of an unpopular contestant on a reality TV show. A woman is found dead, apparently the victim of a car crash: the first in a spate of seemingly inexplicable accidents in Tanumshede. The car reeks of alcohol and the assumption is that it is a drink drive accident. It becomes clear there's a serial assassin in the vicinity. As cameras shadow the stars' every move, relations with the locals are strained to breaking point. A piece of evidence reveals that a pair of seemingly disparate homicides are linked, a pattern emerges of similar homicides spread over many years- in different regions of Sweden; slowly Patrick realises that these cases are more closely linked than he realises.Patrick also has his own ephemera to contend with: a wedding to arrange, and Erica′s sister Anna -- he′s experiencing stress.
33879257	/m/0hnc492	The Hidden Child	Camilla Läckberg	2011-06-20		 This is regarded as one of the more plot driven novels in the series-with more emphasis on the story. Erika wants to write a 'great-book' so Patrik goes on paternity leave to look after the baby whilst this occurs; then unexplained things start to happen: an elderly neighbour is found dead – not just that, but he has been dead for some time. What's more, this guy knew Erika's late mother. Erica consults a local historian of World War 2, however, shortly after her visit, he is brutally murdered and it becomes clear that the past is still very much a part of some people's lives. The plot focuses on the discovery of a child's blood spattered vest plus other memorabilia. Who would murder so cold-bloodedly to bury secrets so ancient? By way of a side-theme Melberg adopts a stray mutt finding that this leads to a meeting with another pooch owner who happens to be the mater of his new detective, Paul Morales; this provides a counterpoint to the increasingly sordid facts being unearthed in the search for the murderer.
33879786	/m/0hncchh	The Stories of Ibis			{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The Stories of Ibis begins with a wandering storyteller who encounters Ibis. He has the mindset that all robots are a threat to humanity and must be fought against for survival. He attacks the robot Ibis, not aware of who she is, as a result of his mindset. Ibis tells the storyteller that she is far more proficient in battle. During the battle the storyteller becomes injured and Ibis takes him to an android hospital to care for him. While he is recovering Ibis offers to tell him stories. While originally skeptical he agrees after Ibis makes it clear that the stories are not taboo. The space after each story is referred to as intermission and is a time for Ibis to comment on the story she just told. The story is about a group of friends who are writing a science fiction story over the internet. One of the group members kills someone in real life. The rest of the short story is about how the group fights to convince this man to not commit suicide, but to turn himself in. He resolves to turn himself in, being hopeful to the future because he knows he has friends who care about him. The ending words of the story are a commentary. While the story they were writing was not real, the emotions they were feeling were real. This is another story about human interactions over the internet. The device that allows people to enter virtual reality (VR) is MUGEN Net. Such devices are extremely expensive and most people need to go to a public server to use one. However the girl's parents in this story are wealthy enough to own one. This girl is shopping in VR when a boy meets her and asks her out for ice cream. All goes well and they plan for another. After some time of VR dating they agree to meet up in real life. Another story about human interactions over the internet. A short story about an artificial intelligence that grows over time with human interaction. The inspiration for this story was Ray Bradbury's I Sing the Body Electric (Bradbury). The mirror girl Shalice starts off with basic knowledge and by interacting with her owner develops. The owner grows up and marries a technician who incubates Shalice by teaching her in the virtual world at many thousand times faster than average life. When he is done, Strong Eye is created. Strong Eye is the fully developed and completely intelligent AI. A futuristic story about an artificial space station and people who go diving into a black hole. The space station cannot stop people but is sorry that they go to their deaths because none of them get past the event horizon. Then one girl comes who has the space ship, the training, and the research necessary to attempt to dive into the black hole. As she goes into the black hole the space station can no longer observe. She may have made it, she could have been destroyed. An anime flavored story about the intelligence of people being scanned onto a computer network. The AIs in the network fight crime and live repeating lives. At the end of each year they start anew, but different story lines. Thousands of 'extras' populate the network and are the ones subject to harm and deletion. The protagonist has a pen pal in real life who explains to her that the real world is under attack and that there are no respawns and no extras. The AI finds this so cruel that people would willingly kill each other when they can't come back. The stories leading up to this were all relatively short. This and the next took up over 100 pages each. This is a story about an android named Shion who works in a Japanese nursing facility. Shion comes with only extensive nursing training but lacks the knowledge of how to communicate with the residents. After months of training she informs her adviser that she believes all humans have dementia, which explains their irrational behavior. Near the end of the story one of the residents threatens suicide but Shion convinces him to step down and be rational. The culminating story of the entire novel. It is about Ibis herself. She starts off as a virtual reality fighting program and overtime develops intelligence. Her master gains enough funds to create her a body in the real world or level 0. There is significant hate against TAIs (True Artificial Intelligence) in the real world. Ibis and her friend Raven rebel against their masters to make a point. Human hatred was destroying them. After many years robots took prevalence and most humans realized they were not worthy to be the guardians of Earth and died in peace. The remaining population was stubborn and fought against the robots for centuries. The storyteller is a child of this generation, being raised in hatred and ignorance. The robots sought to take him captive, and teach him the truth so that he could go to the villages where people lived and teach them the truth. The whole point was they cared for the humans and wanted them to live in peace, rather than fighting for their survival.
33894874	/m/0hn85p2	The End of Liberalism	Theodore J. Lowi	1979	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 In this book Lowi proposes that classic liberalism and capitalism have died as a public philosophy and have been replaced by interest group liberalism. Lowi goes on to explore the flaws and consequences of interest group liberalism. Lowi argues that the government has grown too large due to Congress assuming power and delegating authority to administrative agencies rather than coming up with a solution to problems within congress. He suggests that American politics has become controlled by interest groups in which politicians associate. Lowi contends that, because of this, the United States has entered into what he calls “The Second Republic.” He then suggests that interest group liberalism needs to be replaced by a juridical democracy in order to restore the rule of law.
33901456	/m/0hnd812	Preincarnate			{"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 "Suppose you were murdered and then woke up 300 years earlier in someone else's body. Wouldn't you want to put yourself in suspended animation and be re-awoken in time to prevent yourself from being murdered in the first place? This is the extraordinary tale of an ordinary man in a race across Time."
33904029	/m/0hnf5hw	Wild About Harry			{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 In Paraguay an English Major, Harry Copeland-Smith is guarding a war criminal and in his best efforts to protect him becomes like his charge.
33904706	/m/0hndg5c	Charlie Peace		1991	{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Criminal Jack Peachey needs to find his own human narrative in the incredible stories Charlie Peace told him when he was a boy. He wants to imagine a Christ in his own image.
33906634	/m/0hn83hx	A Stranger in Mayfair		2010-11-09	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Charles Lenox, gentleman amateur detective, has recently married and has been elected to Parliament. Although Lenox plans to give up detection (due to the demands of his new vocation and to alleviate the concerns of his new wife), he is pulled into a case when a colleague in Parliament asks for help solving the murder of his footman.
33912418	/m/0hnc3g8	Durgeshnandini	Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay	1865	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The story is set in the backdrop of Pathan-Mughal conflicts that took place in south-western region of modern-day Indian state of Paschimbanga (West Bengal) during the reign of Akbar. Jagat Singh, a General of Mughal army and son of Raja Man Singh met Tilottama, daughter of Birendra Singha, a feudal lord of south-western Bengal in Mandaran (in modern-day Hooghly district, Paschimbanga) and they fell in love with each other. While they were preparing for a marriage ceremony, Katlu Khan, a rebel Pathan leader attacked Mandaran. Birendra Singha died in the battle and Jagat Singh was imprisoned along with Birendra’s widow Bimala and their daughter Tilottama. Katlu Khan’s daughter Ayesha saved Tilottama from her father’s lust, but Ayesha herself fell in love with Jagat Singh. Later, Bimala revenged her husband’s death by stabbing Katlu Khan. In the meantime, Man Singh signed a pact with the Pathans and they set Jagat Singh free. But Ayesha’s lover Osman challenged Jagat Singh in a duel which Jagat Singh won. Realising that Jagat Singh who was a Hindu prince would never marry a Muslim woman, Ayesha gave up hope for him, but she eventually helped Tilottama to get married to Jagat Singh.
33915255	/m/0hndhjy	Ceremony	Leslie Marmon Silko	1977		 Ceremony follows the troubles of Tayo, a half-white, half-Laguna man, as he struggles to cope with battle fatigue after surviving World War II and witnessing the death of his cousin Rocky during the Bataan Death March of 1942. After spending several months recovering from injuries sustained during his captivity at a VA Hospital in Los Angeles, California, Tayo returns home to his family's home at Laguna Pueblo. Tayo suffers from increasing mental instability and turns to alcoholism to escape his inner turmoil. Tayo eventually turns to traditional pueblo spirituality and ceremony as a source of healing.
33917214	/m/0hnc6l7	All Hell Let Loose	Max Hastings	2011-09-29		 All Hell Let Loose covers the entire span of World War II, following the military developments of the war but focusing on the reactions and experiences of different individuals (both uniformed and civilian). Reviews refer to the book as an "everyman's story" made up of accounts from those with lesser roles in the conflict; "ranging from ship's cooks to wireless operators, farmers and housewives to typists and black marketeers." The book addresses several "triumphalist" aspects of written war history by focusing on the "misery, heroism and endurance" of individual accounts. Hastings concludes that whilst the Nazis fought individual battles well, their overall war effort showed "stunning incompetence".
33918829	/m/0hnf6p_	The Future of Us	Jay Asher		{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Josh and Emma are about to discover themselves--fifteen years in the future. It's 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They've been best friends almost as long--at least, up until last November, when everything changed. Things have been awkward ever since then, but when Josh's family gets a free AOL CD-ROM in the mail, his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they're automatically logged onto Facebook . . . but Facebook hasn't been invented yet. Josh and Emma are looking at themselves fifteen years in the future. Their spouses, careers, homes, and status updates--it's all there. And every time they refresh their pages, their futures change. As they grapple with the ups and downs of their future, they're forced to confront what they're doing right--and wrong--in the present.
33925014	/m/0hn87rj	Ingenious Pain	Andrew Miller	1997-02-20	{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 James Dyer is born without the ability to feel pain or pleasure. Set in mid 18th century Russia, the novel follows Dyer as he attempts to come to terms with this disability whilst working as a sideshow freak, then as a surgeon, until his eventual consignment to the Bethlem institute.
33934406	/m/0hnbgn7	The Angel Maker's Wife	Camilla Läckberg	2011		 In April 1974 there is a disappearance of a family without a trace from the island Valö just outside Fjällbacka: an Easter buffet is in the dining room and a baby (Ebba) is missing. Ebba is eventually found; then when older visits again the ancients children colony where her father ran a boarding school with an iron rule. Two parallel stories, one past/one present, where the past explains the present. Ebba and her husband Martin have lost a son, and in an attempt to overcome the sadness they decide to open a bed and breakfast.
33944298	/m/0hn8wrb	Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts				 The book aims to tell the history of the first 25 years of LucasArts game development and publishing, from its beginning as Lucasfilm Games, to the 2008 releases such as Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. The book is also an art book, as it features concept art and unused art concepts from LucasArts games.
33964679	/m/0hnd_h9	Casanova	Andrew Miller		{"/m/0dq0q": "Prose"}	 Set in 1763, this novel centres round the historical figure of Giacomo Casanova and loosely follows his autobiographical Histoire de ma vie. The plot of the novel concerns Casanova falling for a woman and having, for the first time, to deal with rejection and the pain which it causes him.
33974772	/m/0hnby95	Oxygen	Andrew Miller		{"/m/0dq0q": "Prose"}	 Set in San Fernando Valley and Hungary in 1997, the story revolves around a late-stage cancer patient, Alice; her two markedly different sons, one a translator, the other a soap star; and a seemingly unconnected Hungarian playwright named László Lázár. The plot centres on the family's troubles and the sons coming to terms with the fact that their mother will likely not see another birthday.
33983368	/m/0hnddn1	Rabies	Borislav Pekić		{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}	 Set in early 1980s, during the height of Cold War, novel follows a series of parallel storylines. The situation on the Heathrow Airport is tense, due to the arrival of the Soviet delegation, led by the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Artamonov. Heathrow VIP loungue is where they and British Foreign Minister Sir Geoffrey Drummond, are to conclude the signing of the new Anglo-Soviet treaty with protocolar toasts. Whilst the tight security is being deployed by the head of the Aviation Security, Major Lawford, along with his colleagues: Colonels Donovan of the MI6 and Rasimov of the KGB, medical service, headed by Dr. Luke Komarovsky, gets informed that a nun from a convent near Lagos Nigeria, who was travelling on the Alitalia Boeing 747 en route to New York City via Heathrow, has gotten ill. Her symptoms are first diagnosed as those of hysteria caused by fear of flying, then to an epileptic seisure. Plane is given a priority landing. Dr. Komarowsky, who in past has been a scientist, was working, along with three other doctors, each of whom will make an appearance further in the book: Dr. John Hamilton, Dr. Matthew Laverick, and Dr. Coro Deveroux, in a team of the world renowned microbiologist, Dr. Frederick Lieberman. Their work, in a somewhat laboratory at Wolfenden House was and remains weiled in mystery, but their goal (four of them were called either the nucleus or evangelists of Messiah Lieberman) was the 'holy grail' of microbiology - creation, through genetical reorganisation, of general immunity to bacterial, viral and oncological diseases, which would, being based on the modifications of the very human DNA, thus also be hereditary. But the last batch of experiments, a vaccine based on a recombined Rabies virus, was done on humans who were exposed to the rabies virus in a quarantine in Britain. To be continued...
33985401	/m/0hn8b66	The Optimists	Andrew Miller	2005-03-21	{"/m/0dq0q": "Prose"}	 The novel focuses on a veteran photojournalist named Clement Glass, and his struggle to come to terms with the aftermath of a church massacre. Although these events take place in an undisclosed African location, there are close similarities to Rwanda and the genocide of 1994. The novel follows Glass as he travels from Africa to locations in Europe and North America, and tries to reconcile his memories, while dealing with a family crisis, eventually journeying to Brussels, where the perpetrator of the massacre may be in hiding.
33985996	/m/0hn9h_k	Bitter Blood	Jerry Bledsoe	1988	{"/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 In 1984, Susan Newsom (the niece and namesake of North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Susie Sharp) and Tom Lynch got divorced and many intense custody battles ensued over their two sons, John and Jim. Shortly after the divorce and power struggles, Susie Newsom became intimate with her first cousin, Fritz Klenner. Fritz Klenner was a gun worshipping “doctor” who had a long history of dishonesty. Fritz followed in the footsteps of his father, Frederick Robert Klenner, and started his own medical practice in Reidsville, North Carolina. However, Fritz was a fraud and deceived many people (including his father) because he did not actually attend college nor did he receive a license to practice medicine. In the summer of 1984, relatives of the former couple began to be murdered across the country. At first, Tom Lynch’s mother (Delores) and sister (Janie) were murdered in cold blood in Louisville, Kentucky. The two were killed at their home as they returned from a Sunday morning church service on July 22, 1984. The police originally had no leads and no suspects were under investigation after these two mysterious murders. Then on May 18, 1985, Susie Newsom’s father (Bob Newsom), mother (Florence), and grandmother (Hattie) were shot to death in their home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Before his murder, Bob Newsom had agreed to testify in favor of Tom Lynch at an upcoming custody hearing. Investigators now had a suspect. Because of this lead, police began to speculate that Susie played a role in the murder of her family. Soon after the death of her family, police began gathering information, heavily scrutinizing many aspects of Susie Newsom’s life. Police soon discovered that Susie was in a relationship with Fritz and both became prime suspects in the murders of Susie’s family and Tom’s family. By June 1985, investigators had gathered substantial evidence and were closing in on the arrests of Susie and Fritz. However, an unpredictable and shocking event happened instead. On June 3, police forces entered the apartment complex of Fritz Klenner in Greensboro, North Carolina. Authorities were ready to subdue him in the case of physical resistance, but they never got the chance. Fritz became outraged and fired multiple gunshots in the direction of the police, then fled the scene in an SUV with Susie and her two children, John and Jim. Fritz and the police became engaged in a low speed 15-minute police chase. When the SUV was stopped, Klenner opened fire with a machine gun, wounding three officers in the initial burst of fire. Before they could respond in kind, he detonated an explosive charge inside the van, killing himself and his three passengers. in all, nine people died in 1984 and 1985 due to the events recounted in Bitter Blood.
33997231	/m/0hr0vjz	Leaving the Atocha Station	Ben Lerner		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The first-person narrator of the novel, Adam Gordon, is an early 20s American poet participating in a prestigious fellowship in Madrid circa 2004. The stated goal of his fellowship is long narrative poem highlighting literature's role in the Spanish Civil War. Gordon, however, spends his time reading Tolstoy, smoking spliffs, and observing himself observing his surroundings. Leaving the Atocha Station can be read as a Künstlerroman. However, Lerner has said: The protagonist doesn't unequivocally undergo a dramatic transformation, for instance, but rather the question of "transformation" is left open, and people seem to have strong and distinct senses about whether the narrator has grown or remained the same, whether this is a sort of coming of age story or whether it charts a year in the life of a sociopath.
34016208	/m/0hrf9rs	Soldier of Sidon	Gene Wolfe	2006	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This book continues with the conceit of the earlier two books of having the tale arising from the translation of scrolls discovered in the present day, allegedly written in Latro's own hand. Latro suffered a head wound as a mercenary in the army of the Persian King Xerxes at the Battle of Plataea. As Tony Keen in his review states: Latro cannot recall events of more than a day, but on the other hand, he can see gods and demigods. In this book, the gods and demigods encountered by Latro and his companions, in their journey up the Nile in a search for a cure to his affliction, are Egyptian and African, rather than the Greek ones of the two earlier books.
34028894	/m/0hr28h0	The Cat's Table	Michael Ondaatje		{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The central character and narrator named Michael, an unaccompanied 11 year old boy, boards an ocean liner, the Oronsay, in Colombo enroute to England via the Suez canal and the Mediterranean. For meals on board Michael is sat at the "cat's table" (the one furthest from the Captain's table) with other boys Ramadhin and Cassius and other misfit characters. The book follows the adventures of Michael and these boys while they are aboard the Oronsay, and Michael's later perspective as an older man looking back on this boyhood voyage.
34030507	/m/0hr6q54	Earth Unaware	Aaron Johnston		{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 A clan of "free miners" living on the spaceship El Cavador is working an asteroid far out in the Kuiper Belt when they detect what appears to be an alien ship decelerating from near light speed as it approaches the solar system. Meanwhile, Lem Jukes, son and heir of the hard-driving founder of the largest mining corporation, is also in the remote region, far from the prying eyes of competitors, secretly testing a "glaser" (gravity laser) that promises to revolutionize mining. Back on Earth, Captain Wit O'Toole goes recruiting among the elite New Zealand Special Air Service for the even more select, multinational Mobile Operations Police (MOPS). In his haste to step up the glaser testing process, Jukes orders his ship to "bump" El Cavador from the asteroid the family is mining. During the violent collision, one of the crew of El Cavador is killed. In retaliation, El Cavador launches a "sniffer" probe to hack the corporate ship's network, planting a message for Lem Jukes and downloading confidential files pertaining to the glaser. Jukes, realizing that a scandal involving the death of a free miner and the loss of the confidential files will ruin him, sets out for Weigh Station Four, where he intends to plant a hacker to strip El Cavador's files. Having detected the alien ship using a sky-scanner called the Eye, El Cavador also identifies a smaller pod racing toward an Italian freemining ship with which they had recently docked and exchanged crew. With their laserline transmission equipment having been destroyed in the bump, El Cavador is helpless to warn the Italians as the pod destroys them. El Cavador hurries to attempt a rescue of any survivors, meeting with very limited success. As the bulk of the El Cavador crew works to rescue survivors trapped in a large intact section of the Italian ship, a three-man crew (including Victor) modifies and mans a "quickship," an automated vessel normally used to send processed metals to a Luna, and continues to search for survivors. When the pod diverts to attack El Cavador, the men on the quickship ram and disable the pod using mining equipment. During the attack, the crew of the pod emerge to battle the humans. Their physiology is revealed to be Formic (ant-like), and the Venezuelan men name them "hormigas." The crew of El Cavador realize the Formic ship is a formidable threat to Earth and make a plan to get a warning out. El Cavador will head to Weigh Station Four and use their laserline transmitter. As a backup, Victor volunteers to take a datacube with all the evidence the free miners have accumulated back to Luna aboard a quickship. The journey is perilous due to the realities of limited movement and prolonged zero gravity. Meanwhile, the Juke ship makes its way to Weigh Station Four only to come under attack from roughnecks who recognize the crew as corporates. Several of the attackers are killed by Chubs, a man seemingly junior to Lem Jukes but revealed as having been assigned by Ukko Jukes to protect him. The corporates are still able to leave behind a hacker who intends to strip El Cavador's files, but the whole ordeal ends up moot when the Formic ship destroys the station. El Cavador sends a short-range, broad radio call and is able to contact the Juke ship and a Chinese mining vessel, both of which pledge to attack the Formic ship. El Cavador sends its women and children aboard the Chinese vessel, which is too small to help in the attack. The plan of attack is to plant mining explosives along the hull of the alien ship, then execute a synchronized detonation to avoid contact with the Formic soldiers. Unfortunately, one of the explosives detonates early, drawing a response from the Formic crew, who at first engage the humans wearing space suits, but subsequently attack without any protection, demonstrating a fanatic loyalty to their leadership, hinting at the Hive Queen/Worker relationship demonstrated in other books set in the Enderverse. Chubs pulls Lem Jukes and his men away from the battle and moves the corporate ship away as the Formic ship focuses its weapons on El Cavador and destroys it. Victor arrives at Luna, only to be largely ignored and confined for his illegal arrival. But rumors begin to spread on Earth that an alien invasion is looming, prompting Wit O'Toole to prepare his MOPs for that (he thinks) hypothetical situation. Victor is eventually given a case-worker who believes his story and helps him transmit the evidence onto the Nets.
34031264	/m/0hrb8mj	The Mother/Child Papers	Alicia Ostriker		{"/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 The books begins with a lengthy prose section in which Ostriker recalls the events of her son, Gabriel’s, May 14, 1970 birth and relates it to political developments that occurred around that time, most notably the Kent State Shootings and the beginning of Operation Total Victory, the United States invasion of Cambodia. The three events are described in tandem, with each intertwined with the others. Ostriker then tells of the births of her two older daughters. One was delivered in a progressive Wisconsin hospital and another by midwife in England. Ostriker says that these two experiences shaped her expectation of what childbirth should be like: “a woman gives birth to a child, and the medical folk assist her.” Ostriker then speaks of the birth of her third child, Gabriel, at a southern California traditional hospital. Despite having reached an agreement with her doctor about what drugs she was to be given during the procedure, while in the early stages of labor Ostriker inadvertently consented to being injected with Demerol, a sedative, thinking it was a local analgesic. Under the effects of the Demerol, Ostriker then consented to receive a spinal anesthetic, which left her unable to feel anything from the waist down. Upon waking, Ostriker was furious about being deprived of the experience of natural childbirth and relates the invasion of her body by the medical professionals who delivered the child to the US invasion of Cambodia. The second section of the book is a series of related, untitled stream-of-consciousness poems alternating between the new mother and the child’s perspective. In these sections, Ostriker explores the intimate, even erotic, relationship between a mother and her infant child. She expresses the different emotions she experienced towards the child during this time, from blissful admiration and boundless optimism, to bitter resentment and a wish that the “leech” would “die”. There are also a number of short prose sections in which Ostriker relates the events of the Kent State shooting and the immediate aftermath of Gabriel’s birth. References to war and devastation pervade both accounts; as Ostriker muses on the beauty of her child, she suddenly thinks of “babies stabbed in their little bellies / and hoisted up to the sky on bayonets”. The section ends with two titled pieces: “Paragraphs,” a prose piece in which Ostriker examines the range of emotions new mothers feel towards their infants, ranging from almost divine love to murderous rage, and “Mother/Child: A Coda,” in which she dispenses advice about life and consciousness to her child, alerting him to its savage, brutal nature, as well as its potential for transcendent beauty. The third part of the book is the longest and is composed of a series of 16 titled prose and poetry pieces exploring life with the new child and its effects on the family. In “Letter to M.” the speaker discusses the erotic pleasure inherent in nursing a child and ponders why this is never discussed in any parenting material. The poem “Song of the Abandoned One” is written from the perspective of the infant’s jealous and angry older sibling, begging her parents to “Kill the baby”. Ostriker recounts an experience with her family listening to a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth on the radio in “Macbeth and the Kids In the Cabin at Chester.” In “Things to Remember of Eve,” Ostriker describes her daughter, Eve, at two different stages in her life, at ages 8 and 21. In “In the Autumn of My Thirty-Seventh Birthday,” Ostriker describes the sense of emptiness and depression she experienced dealing with family life, recounting also a discussion with a depressed friend, N., who refuses to take the antidepressants her psychiatrist prescribed her. In “Exile,” Ostriker considers the contrasting powers of love and violence, wondering when her son will grow to the point where “he will turn away” from his mother’s kisses “not to waste breath.” The poem’s post-script reads, “during the evacuation of Phnom Penh, 1975.” In the section’s titular prose piece, “The Spaces,” Ostriker recalls an ideal “windy, snowy January evening” at home with her children. Throughout the poem, there are a number of allusions to William Blake’s Songs of Innocence, as well as a repeated lamb motif. Ostriker’s perfect winter day with her children is contrasted with her husband’s discussion about entropy and the ultimate heat death of the universe. The next poem, “Propaganda Poem: Maybe For Some Young Mamas” is divided into three parts. In the first part, “The Visiting Poet,” Ostriker recounts an experience she once had giving a guest lecture to a class of feminist college students. She read the class a poem about pregnancy and was shocked when the class reacted with revulsion to the notion of motherhood. Ostriker tries to explain that motherhood is one of the most fulfilling and empowering experiences possible for a woman to experience and that the class has been thoroughly brainwashed against it through patriarchal messages. In part two, “Postscript to Propaganda,” Ostriker acknowledges that raising children is an incredibly difficult and demanding experience which wears a mother down, but she concludes the poem by asking the audience, “Come on, you daughters of bitches, do you want to live forever?” The poem’s last part, “What Actually,” indicts the “ideological lockstep” that Ostriker claims dictates women’s feelings on motherhood. She goes on to explain that she believes that certain women are born to be mothers, while others simply were not. She concludes by once more acknowledging that although raising children wears away at a person, so does anything enjoyable in life, and that those who refuse to do anything dangerous are “already dead.” In “The Leaf Pile,” Ostriker recounts the events of an October day when, upon catching her son trying to put something dirty in his mouth, she slapped him. The poem explores the workings of memory and how such events can be easily forgotten by the child but remain a vivid mark of shame for the parent. The next work is a prose piece titled “The Seven Samurai, The Dolly, and Mary Cassat.” Ostriker remembers an evening watching Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, trying to compare it to other masculine art works in an attempt to come to a better understanding of the male perspective. She is interrupted by her children coming to her asking for attention and assistance. She recalls a quote by W.B. Yeats about how one must choose between the perfection of one’s craft and one's life before going to help her daughter with her report on Mary Cassat. The next poem, “The Change” explores the relationship between animate and inanimate things how it parallels the distant relationship Ostriker’s daughter maintains with her as they drive to her horseback riding lessons. In “One, To Fly,” Ostriker examines the transformation of her son Gabriel as he grows up. In nursery school, he tells her that his three wishes are to be able to fly, to be able to talk to animals, and for there to be no more war. The poem’s last stanza reveals that at age 9, Gabriel has largely lost his pacifist nature due to bullying and social pressures and now fights children who bully him. “In the Dust,” the section’s penultimate poem, deals with the development of Ostriker’s daughter and examines the mother’s own role in helping mold her daughter into an acceptable woman in society’s eyes, even if that role has made the mother personally unhappy. In the last poem of the section, “His Speed and Strength,” Ostriker meditates on seeing her son at play, overtaking her on his bicycle, using his strength for a purely creative purpose. She also sees a group of black and white children playing together without any tension and thinks to herself that maybe “it is not necessary to make hate.” The book’s last section is composed of three poems, “One Marries,” “This Power,” and “Dream.” “One Marries” begins with a quote from Percy Shelley’s Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, “To fear himself, and love all human kind.” In this poem, Ostriker meditates upon the dynamics of marriage, comparing its necessity for balance to the crude, simple domination of Imperialism. In “This Power,” Ostriker considers the respect and attraction children feel towards their mothers, even in the most degrading and trying circumstances. “Dream,” the book’s last poem is very brief and describes“a woman / oliveskinned like an Indian / brownhaired like a European” “giving birth / comfortabl[y]” for days on end.
34033776	/m/0hrg1dv	Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine	Alfred Döblin		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 As the novel opens, Wadzek, owner of a factory that produces steam engines, is locked in a struggle with his more powerful rival Rommel, whose much larger concern manufactures turbines. He can be seen as representing a new type of entrepreneur, more technologically advanced and less scrupulous than Wadzek. Losing value, the stock of Wadzek's company is being bought up by Rommel; in desperation, Wadzek teams up with Schneemann, an engineer working at one of Rommel's factories, to thwart his company's takeover by Rommel. This effort includes the misguided theft of some of Rommel's business correspondence. Fearing legal retribution for this theft, Wadzek, accompanied by Schneemann, flees with his wife Pauline and daughter Herta to his house in Reinickendorf, where the two men fortify the house in delusional preparation for a siege that never comes. Financially and spiritually broken, Wadzek returns to Berlin and with Schneemann attempts to turn himself in at a police station, where they learn that no warrant has even been issued for their arrest. There follows a temporary reconciliation with his estranged family and the first attempts to begin a new career in education—Wadzek would instruct his students in a new, moralistic and humane approach to technology. However, after walking in on an erotically and exotically charged debauch held in his own parlor (the aftermath of an African-themed birthday party Pauline held with her two new friends from Reinickendorf), Wadzek suffers a further breakdown. The novel ends aboard a ship bound for America, Wadzek eloping with Gaby, an old acquaintance and erstwhile lover of Rommel's, to begin a new life.
34046609	/m/0hrcnqj	One Morning Like a Bird	Andrew Miller	2008	{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 Yuji Takano is a writer in 1940s Tokyo. The story focuses on Takano's exploration and discovery of "Western" culture, exemplified in the meetings of the "club" which he forms with his French-speaking friends. The novel examines the effects on Takano's life and relationships of the impending events of World War II, and the possibility of conscription.
34051514	/m/0hrh6_4	Islay			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The book has three sections, titled “Strings”, “Drums”, and “Cymbals”. These three sections document Lyson’s journey to make Islay a Deaf state. He comes across many problems along the way, and is ridiculed by some. Others accuse him of being a peddler and he is misunderstood by many. His wife, in the beginning of the novel is embarrassed by his dream and keeps Lyson behind lock and key when he is working on his project. She does not want her friends to know about what he is doing and does everything in her power to keep it a secret. In the first section, “Strings”, the book’s protagonist Lyson Sulla is in the beginning stages of his plans for a state by and for Deaf people. He is learning about the state Islay, and how it could work for what he is envisioning. He receives financial support from his in-laws so that he can move to Islay. Once there, he spends a week’s time looking over the state, seeing how it will work for him, and meeting with public officials. He is pleased with what he sees in Islay and believes that it will work for what he plans. He moves his wife, Mary out to Islay with him. Once they are moved into a large home, they throw a big party. The second section, “Drums” documents Lyson’s travels to recruit other Deaf people to move to Islay. He meets many Deaf people along the way and is able to convince many well-established Deaf people to move to Islay. He also has a few misunderstandings along the way when people misunderstand what his intentions and meanings are. In the last section, “Cymbals”, many Deaf people move their families to Islay and open businesses. Lyson still has troubles, as he is accused of real estate fraud. However, he gets out of this predicament. Those who moved to Islay register to vote, so as to help Lyson become Governor. The election is a rough experience for Lyson, but in the end he wins, becoming Governor of Islay.
34052275	/m/0hr1rjc	La inocencia castigada				 Don Diego, a womanizing knight, falls in love with the beautiful Doña Inés wife of Don Alonso. Her poor neighbor takes notice, and borrows a dress from the lady under the pretense of needing it to wear to a wedding. She then hires a prostitute who resembles Inés to pose as her in order to have sexual relations with Diego in exchange for gifts. When it comes time to return the dress, they end the arrangement. Diego approaches Inés to ask why she broke off their relationship, which confuses her greatly, until he mentions that she always wore the dress she is wearing at the moment when they were together. The dress is the one that she lent to the neighbor, so she realizes that he must have been tricked, and seeks help from the Mayor, who sees to it that the two women involved are punished. Diego, embarrassed but still in love with Inés, seeks help from a Moorish necromancer, who gives him a candle shaped like the object of his unrequited love. When he lights the candle, a demon will possess Inés, forcing her to come to his bedchamber and submit to him. He is warned not to extinguish the candle before she is back in her own bed or she will die. Diego begins to use the candle while Don Alonso is out of town on business. Inés is conscious of what is happening, but doesn't understand it and thinks she is having vivid nightmares. One night she is discovered walking in a trance through the street in only a shirt by the Mayor and her brother, Don Francisco. They follow her and discover what Diego has been up to. He warns them not to extinguish the candle until she is back in her own bed. She returns to her room and awakens, surrounded by strange men who work for the Mayor, and is distraught with fear and guilt when she learns what has been happening to her. Diego is later killed by Inés' brother and husband. Her brother, husband, and sister-in-law, convinced that Inés is guilty of adultery and has therefore brought dishonor upon the family, kidnap her and take her to Seville, where they hole her up inside a chimney in a place so small she is unable to stand or sit, but must crouch. They leave a tiny window to allow her to breathe and eat paltry meals, so they she will die very slowly. She is left here for six years, surrounded by trash and excrement, without light or the ability to lie down. She never gives up her faith in God and constantly prays for death or release, and is further tormented by her inability to celebrate the sacraments. Finally, a woman moves in next door into a room with sufficiently close proximity to the chimney to hear the lamentations of Inés. She asks who the woman is, and Inés tells her the story of how she came to be held captive. The next day the woman seeks help from the Mayor and Archbishop, who promptly go to the house of Alonso and Francisco and tear down the wall. Inés is now blind, having lost her sight due to never seeing light, her hair tangled and covered with lice, her body covered in open wounds infested with worms. The Archbishop sends the three evil relatives to prison, and they are later condemned to death by hanging. Inés is cured and restored to her former beauty, though she never regains her sight, and enters a convent, where she spends the rest of her days.
34053975	/m/0hr2cxt	Math Girls		2007-06-27		 At the start of his first year of high school, the narrator meets a new classmate, a girl named Miruka. Without introducing herself, she gives him the beginning to number sequences, to which he answers with their continuation. One year later, the narrator is handed a letter by another girl, a new student named Tetra. The letter she wrote is a request for the narrator to tutor her in math. He begins teaching her, making Miruka jealous. The narrator balances his friendship with Tetra and his romantic interest in Miruka until Miruka and Tetra become friends after Tetra demonstrates her dedication to learning mathematics.
34072748	/m/0hr4p88	Dr. America: The Lives of Thomas Dooley, 1927-1961			{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The book begins by pointing out that Dooley grew from an “undisciplined Irish American rake into a celebrity-saint” through his use of showbiz and his ability to market himself. Dooley’s use of showbiz became apparent when the Kingston Trio named one of their songs after him so as to make people increasingly aware of Dooley and his work. Fisher also presents the Kingston Trio’s song “Tom Dooley” as evidence for Dooley’s successful self-marketing while also pointing to Dr. America (Thanh Mo America), a term people in Laos used to glorify Dooley. Fisher does not fail to mention that Thomas Anthony Dooley III was the seventh-most well-known name in the world after Winston Churchill, Pope John XXIII, Albert Schweitzer, and a few other prominent figures. In addition, Fisher makes two claims regarding Dooley’s self-marketing ability: first, he claims that Dooley’s self-marketing resembled Albert Schweitzer’s ability to market himself. Second, Fisher proposes that Dooley’s self-marketing ability was strongly connected to Cold War politics “on a world stage.” The book then delves into Thomas A. Dooley III’s childhood and the personality of his early life. Fisher points out that classmates paradoxically describe Dooley as both “quiet and pleasant” and a “cocky showoff.” However, classmates commonly noted that Dooley “remained aloof from the conventional groupings that comprised the student body." According to Michael Harrington, Dooley’s classmate, they felt like soldiers of Christ guarding faith from the forces of the modern world. Harrington and Dooley were also claimed to have lived in a secure “ghetto,” protected from “British imperialists, Yankee bosses, and Protestant princes” by a Roman Catholic church that had been shielding them from modern culture for more than four hundred years. Fisher discusses how Dooley’s music career in his childhood made him seem like a nonconformist when Dooley played melodic ideas from contemporary pop tunes. Dooley is also portrayed as a mischievous child, teenager, and bachelor who became a homosexual in his adolescence while maintaining prodigious contact with the opposite sex. After briefly narrating Dooley’s shenanigans in college and his expulsion from medical school, Fisher points out that Dooley was assigned as a medical officer to a special operation called Passage to Freedom, a part of the Saigon Military Mission (led by Edward Lansdale) designed to propagandize the anti-communist movement in South Vietnam. According to Fisher, Dooley’s principal objective of his work was to make the military familiar with the diseases they would be up against should they occupy Vietnam. In the process, Dooley appeared as if he did extraordinary work, offering “medical triage to the refugees who are here in such large numbers." Fisher uses these facts to propose that although Dooley appeared as a selfless altruist, he was actually a political pawn shaping US-South Vietnam relations. Fisher then transitions into discussing how a shift in Dooley’s motivations for being in Vietnam helped shape his political role there. He claims that Dooley went to Vietnam at first because he detested French colonialism but that this motivation changed into one that wanted to overthrow the communist Viet Minh. He concludes that Dooley’s work for “preventive medicine” was a crucial component of CIA officer Edward Lansdale’s agenda to facilitate an anti-Communist regime under Jean Baptiste Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Lansdale was trying to find an American Catholic who was both anticommunist and able to connect with people across cultural barriers. Dooley had an opportunity here to assume this position by giving the Americans the impression that "a pluralist Vietnamese democracy" was emerging. Fisher then discusses how Dooley marketed himself, thereby earning celebrity status. Through Dooley’s connection with William J. Lederer, a public information officer for the Navy, Dooley had his military adventures in Vietnam published in his bestselling book Deliver Us from Evil. Chapters of this book were reprinted in Reader's Digest, a periodical Fisher claims to have been heavily monitored by the CIA at that time. Afterwards, he discusses how the Navy discharged Dooley due to homosexuality, and he delves into Dooley’s relationship with secular and Catholic journalists. Secular and Catholic journalists emphasized different aspects of Dooley’s work; secular journalists emphasized the fact that Dooley was a “so-what guy on the surface” who had profound individual initiative. Catholic journalists emphasized how Dooley’s refugee work resonated with Catholic spiritual values. Fisher follows this contrast by explaining that Tom Dooley then mobilized support from the International Rescue Committee for his Operation Laos, which Dooley began in the late 1950s. The author then discusses the Laos Operation in greater detail and how it deviated from the mainstream American anticommunist agenda of the 1950s. Fisher also presents Dooley as a medical missionary and analyzes Dooley’s attitude towards the people whom he helps. The partnerships between Operation Laos and Lansdale’s Operation Brotherhood are also discussed. Dooley is then described as a “Jungle Doctor of a New Age” and is contrasted with his contemporary Albert Schweitzer. Fisher discusses the relationship fostered between the two humanitarians and also introduces a key person who shaped how Dooley conducted his work. This person, Teresa Gallagher, was an earnest fan of Dooley who joined his efforts. Fisher discusses how Gallagher nicely resembled the ideal selfless maiden of Catholic theology because of her giving nature, as demonstrated by how she constructs a prayer for Dooley when Dooley becomes afflicted with melanoma. Fisher then writes about how media attention on Dooley’s Operation Laos and his recovery from melanoma created a story of hope that inspired Americans to continue pursuing humanitarianism. How American government agencies learned to sync their political endeavors with Dooley’s Operation Laos is also discussed. Dooley’s death, legacy, and impact on cold war politics are finally mentioned.
34086351	/m/0hrcpb1	No Way Out	Nikolai Leskov			 The novel tells the story of young and naïve European Socialist Vasily (Wilhelm) Rainer who comes to Russia to somehow apply his rootless, artificial ideas to the local reality. The action takes place in houses of state officials and merchants, in literary circles of Moscow and Saint Petersburgh, in editorial rooms, Polish revolutionaries’ headquarters. Among those surrounding Rainer are some honest people (like Liza Bakhareva, another character who’s been shown by Leskov with great sympathy), but in general the 'nyhilist' community is being portrayed in the novel as a bunch of amoral crooks for whom high ideals serve as mere means to their own ends; such characters (Arapov, Beloyartsev, Zavulonov, Krasin) the author treated with open disgust.
34115648	/m/0hq_w1y	Humsafar	Farhat Ishtiaq	2008	{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 The novel begins with the arrival of a bitter and angry Khirad Hussain at Ashar Hussain’s office. Khirad informs Ashar that her daughter Hareem is a patient of congenital heart disease and requires immediate open heart surgery. As Ashar is Hareem’s biological father and a rich businessman, it is Hareem’s legal right that he provides her with the care and money she needs, since she is unable to afford Hareem’s medical treatment (Khirad lives in relative poverty but still provides the best she can for her daughter, however her surgery is so expensive that it is out of her reach). Furthermore, Khirad also threatens Ashar that she could easily get a DNA test ordered from a court. Khirad leaves with Ashar all the legal documents (including her current address and phone number) on his desk. Her presence leaves Ashar in a daze, anger and complete shock, and he is so taken aback to see her standing in front of him that he does not realizes the weight of all the things she said and left with him. He leaves his office without touching or even looking at all the files and the picture of his daughter. It is revealed that Ashar has not seen Khirad in almost four and half years and for unknown reasons (which are revealed later in the novel) she left him heartbroken and filled with anger and he now has nothing but hate for her. Ashar reflects back on the unusual circumstances that lead them to getting married without each others consent, the development of their married life and the passionate love that they shared once a long time ago. The novel then switches to present where Khirad is eagerly waiting to hear back from Ashar. When he does not contact her for five days, Khirad concludes that he is cruel and vain and all her efforts to contact him are fruitless as they were 4 years ago. In the meantime, Ashar’s friends notice he is extremely distracted at work and at home his mother confronts him that he needs to stop living in the past and he needs to get over Khirad and all the hurt and pain she hurled at him. The next day Ashar goes to the hospital to visit a friend who had a heart attack. While walking towards the door, a toy falls at his feet and a little girl walks to get her toy. When Ashar picks up and hands the toy to her, she puts her hands on her face and exclaims “app papa hain; app photo walay papa hain!” (You are my dad; You are my dad from the picture!). Ashar is extremely confused and turns to look at the mother of the child who is walking towards him who is none other than Khirad. Khirad takes Hareem away towards the cardiologist’s office. Ashar at that moment weighs in the purpose of Khirad’s meeting with him. His anger and hate for Khirad grows even stronger because she kept his child away from him. He was unaware that she was pregnant and had a daughter. At that moment Ashar decides that he is going to take his daughter with him so Hareem can live with him in a better place, although he can’t separate her from her mother as she is too young and extremely sick. He will also provide her with the best treatment possible. Ashar and Khirad tolerate each other for their daughter's sake and start living together in a separate apartment that Ashar rented out for Hareem. The rest of the story continues to reveal what occurred between Ashar and Khirad, the misunderstandings which lead to them to be separated, the intensity of the relationship that they have with Hareem and if they can ever resolve their differences and understand each other better.
34121920	/m/0hq_6xd	Umr-e-Lahaasil Ka Haasil			{"/m/0dq0q": "Prose", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry"}	 Haider Qureshi's poetry is basically on the theme of love and affection but his some nazms are on different topics, as like on corrent issues of the globe, history and mythologies. Qureshi has also written heart touching Mahiyas, a form of the Urdu poetry. In prose, the second part of the book, Qureshi expresses his emotions, views and feelings. His work of prose and poetry is based on the universe, human being, God, soul and cultures. In his short stories, he speaks about the oil-driven wars imposed by western world and rich and poor. He has also written his impressions in his autobiography. Qureshi's literary work one can easily admire and praise. Qureshi has expressed and recalled, in many poems, articles and short stories, his memories of old days in Pakistan. He has also written his views about poets and writers like Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Dr Wazir Agha, Mirza Adeeb, Ghulam Jeelani Asghar and Azra Asghar.
34138115	/m/0hrfl2f	Spirit of the Wind	Chris Pierson		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 This novel is set after the Chaos War. In the east, on the Dairly Plans, the peace is shattered by the thread of the red dragon Malystryx. The kender Kronn-alin Thistleknot travels to Abasasinia with his older sister Catt, where they seek heroes to stop the dragon from destroying Kendermore. Riverwind and his daughter Brightdawn set out on a quest to save the kender from the dragon's wrath.
34138120	/m/0hqztgl	Dezra's Quest	Chris Pierson		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 Dark Wood is the home of Ansalon's centaur tribes, where they dwelt in peace, until strife began tearing them apart. A brave young warrior named Trephas sets out for Solace to seek aid from Caramon Majere and his daughter Dezra against a mad chieftain.
34148231	/m/0hrf_6r	Quest for Lost Heroes	David Gemmell	1990-04-12	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 The Drenai fortress of Dros Delnoch has fallen and blood hungry Nadir hordes sweep across the land, bringing desolation and despair. But, with the Nadir triumphant, slavers seize a young girl in the tiny realm of Gothir and a peasant boy sets off on a quest that will shake the world. To rescue her, Kiall must cross the savage steppes and journey through the Halls of Hell, facing ferocious beasts, deadly warriors and demons of the dark. But the boy is not alone. With him are the legendary heroes of Bel-Azar: Chareos the Blademaster, Beltzer the Axeman and the bowmen Finn and Maggrig. And one among them hides a secret that could free the world of Nadir domination. For he is the Nadir Bane, the hope of the Drenai. He is the Earl of Bronze.
34163657	/m/0hr8wmj	Burma Chronicles	Guy Delisle		{"/m/016chh": "Memoir", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"}	 The book recounts Guy Delisle's trip to the southeast Asian country that is officially recognized by the United Nations as Myanmar but that is referred to as Burma by countries that do not recognize the military junta that controls it. Delisle went with his infant son, Louis, and his wife, Nadège, an administrator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). At the beginning of the trip, the family must stay in an MSF guest house while they search for more permanent housing. Guy stays home and takes care of Louis while Nadège is frequently absent on MSF business. Guy takes Louis on frequent walks around the neighborhood in his stroller and interacts with local people.
34168603	/m/0hr6dv1	Swamplandia!	Karen Russell	2011-02-01	{"/m/0127jb": "Magic realism", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}	 The novel opens with the Bigtree family suffering tragedy and finding their way of life under threat. The family patriarch, Sawtooth Bigtree, has recently been confined to a floating nursing home with dementia and his daughter-in-law, Hilola Bigtree, has died of cancer, leaving behind a husband and three teenage children. Hilola, a champion alligator wrestler, was Swamplandia!'s star attraction. Meanwhile, a brand new amusement park, The World of Darkness, has opened nearby on the Florida mainland. The remaining Bigtrees struggle to cope with the changing situation. In light of plummeting attendance and mounting debts, The Chief, Hilola's husband, unveils a plan, which he calls "Carnival Darwinism", for improvements to Swamplandia such as the addition of saltwater crocodiles, but his son Kiwi is skeptical and suggests selling the park altogether. Kiwi and his siblings have been raised on Swamplandia, largely in isolation from the mainland. They have been homeschooled and educated largely through family legends, educational materials sent from a Florida state agency and books found on a derelict "library boat". Having grown up on Swamplandia! himself, the Chief is adamantly opposed to abandoning his family's unique heritage and lifestyle. The situation on Swamplandia! continues to deteriorate. The Chief's middle child, Osceola, becomes obsessed with ghosts and with occult knowledge she's gleaned from an old book, The Spiritist's Telegraph. Osceola begins to hold seances with her younger sister Ava and to communicate secretly with ghosts via a Ouija board. This begins the sisters' quest to contact their dead mother; however their efforts amount to little success. Osceola's loneliness and inability to talk with her mother drives her to talk to dead 'boyfriends'. Osceola sometimes disappears at night leading her sister to worry that she might be possessed by spirits. Meanwhile, Kiwi continues to clash with his father, and he eventually decides to leave the island in an attempt to save Swamplandia! on his own. He finds minimum-wage employment as a janitor at The World of Darkness, but his highfalutin language and his stated desires to attend Harvard don't endear him to his coworkers, who scrawl obscenities on his locker and call him Margaret Mead after finding a copy of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa in his possession. Kiwi eventually befriends his coworker Vijay, who helps him learn to adopt some of the normal teenage vernacular and mannerisms. Kiwi begins to attend night school and is promoted to lifeguard. When he rescues a teenage girl who appears to be drowning in the pool, Kiwi becomes a local hero and, as a result, The World of Darkness sends him to train as an airplane pilot. Kiwi's job will be to fly guests of The World of Darkness on tours of the Everglades and its ecological destruction. With no new tourists arriving at Swamplandia!, The Chief decides to shut the park down and to take a business trip of unspecified purpose and duration to the mainland, leaving Ava and Osceola alone on the island. One day, while clearing melaleuca plants - an invasive species that threatens native vegetation - on a remote part of the island, Ava and Osceola discover a decaying dredge boat offshore. The girls recover some artifacts and Osceola attempts to communicate with the dead crew using her Ouija board. Osceola eventually reveals what she has learned about the boat to Ava: In the 1930s a young man named Louis Thanksgiving ran away from the abuse of his adoptive family on a farm in the midwest. Louis found his way to the Everglades, where he found work with the Civilian Conservation Corps, dredging the swamp for the purpose of flood control. Despite the difficulty of the work and the primitive conditions in the Everglades, Louis finds that he enjoys his newfound sense of independence. When his assignment with the Conservation Corps ends, Louis signs up to work on a commercial dredging boat for local land developers, but an explosion in the boat's boiler kills him and the rest of the crew. Osceola confesses that she is in love with Louis' ghost and, when Osceola and the dredge disappear, Ava fears that she has run off with him. Now alone on Swamplandia!, Ava meets the Bird Man, a man of indeterminate age who lives in the swamp and makes a living by traveling between local properties and driving off bothersome birds. Ava hires the Bird Man to take her in his pole boat to find her sister. At first, Ava believes that the Bird Man has a mystic power to lead her into the underworld, and at his direction, she even lies to a park ranger, telling him that the Bird Man is her cousin and they are on a fishing trip. Ava and the Bird Man travel deeper into the remote wilderness, resting in a hut built by park rangers and an abandoned group of houses on stilts. Eventually, Ava becomes convinced that the Bird Man has no special powers and that he is taking advantage of her. When they encounter a group of drunken fishermen, Ava screams to get their attention, and the Bird Man silences her. Later, the Bird Man rapes the thirteen-year-old Ava. Ava flees the Bird Man but finds herself lost in the dense sawgrass marshes, without food or water and with no one but the Bird Man looking for her. Kiwi, meanwhile, discovers that his fiercely-independent father has been working secretly at a casino, possibly for many years. Kiwi continues his pilot training and, on his first flight, he notices a seemingly stranded woman in the remote swamp. The woman turns out to be his sister Osceola, wearing the remains of their mother's wedding dress. Osceola explains that she did elope with the ghost of Louis Thanksgiving, and that Louis directed her to attach an outboard motor to the derelict dredge and pilot it deep into the swamp, but that Louis left her at the altar. Ava is being chased by the Bird Man. She enters an alligator's cave to escape him. The alligator attacks Ava, but she uses the wrestling skills she learned from her mother to defeat the creature. Leaving the alligator's lair, Ava notices some men in the distance. They are park rangers who have been looking for her - the drunken fishermen heard her screaming and alerted the authorities. Ava, Osceola and Kiwi are reunited with their father. As the family plans for the future, they realize that they will have to abandon Swamplandia! and move to the mainland, where Ava and Osceola will attend high school.
34183501	/m/0hr3235	Ente Katha				 This book is about Aami (Kamala), starting from her childhood and her village. It also depicts her teenage love towards a neighbor of the same age. Aami moves to Kolkata with her parents as her father is employed there. She also explains her married life in Ente Katha.
34253283	/m/0hzqygb	The Good Muslim	Tahmima Anam		{"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The central characters of the novel is Maya and Sohail. While A Golden Age tells their story before and during the liberation war of Bangladesh, the Good Muslim tells their story a decade after the war. Separated during the war, Maya met her brother, Sohail a decade after the war. Meantime, Sohail became a charismatic religious leader whereas Maya was trying to peruse her revolutionary ideals. When Sohail decided to send his son to a madrasa, a conflict grew between brother and sister and the conflict leads the story to a devastating climax.
34256601	/m/0hzmm21	Blitzcat	Robert Westall	1989-01-01	{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Blitzcat is told through the point of view of a domestic cat as she travels across England during the Blitz in search of her owner, who is serving with the RAF. The story includes a detailed depiction of the bombing of Coventry.
34260936	/m/0hzp_h5	Death Comes to Pemberley	P. D. James	2011-12-06	{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0py65": "Historical whodunnit", "/m/0hfwv": "Pastiche", "/m/03g3w": "History"}	 The novel begins in October, 1803, six years after the events in Pride and Prejudice which resulted in the marriage of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Miss. Elizabeth Bennet. The Prologue and Book One introduce the main characters, summarize the histories of the Bennet and Darcy families, and introduce a murder. The remainder of the novel is about the mystery and its solution. The novel is a pastiche in the style of Jane Austen, as James acknowledges in her Author's Note. The book is divided into sections: Author's Note; Prologue; six Books; Epilogue. : Author's Note : Prologue : Book One: The Day Before the Ball : Book Two: The Body in the Woodland : Book Three: Police at Pemberley : Book Four: The Inquest : Book Five: The Trial : Book Six: Gracechurch Street : Epilogue
34262689	/m/0hzp1h4	Emma in Winter	Penelope Farmer		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 It is wintertime. Emma's older sister Charlotte leaves Aviary Hall to stay with a schoolfriend, and then to return to her second term at her London boarding school. Emma, along with her classmate Bobby Fumpkins, simultaneously begin a series of dreams of being able to fly again, as they were able to do in The Summer Birds. Bobby, being fat, is consistently teased by his classmates. Emma is also initial hostile towards Bobby, but realises that not only does Bobby appear in these dreams, but he is also having the same dreams. As the two oldest children in the school, Bobby and Emma are appointed head boy and head girl. In the dreams, they fly over their village and the South Downs, with the North Downs and the sea visible in the distance. They are observed and shadowed by an evil presence, initially appearing as a pair of eyes watching them. Strangely, the trees in their dreams consistently shrink downwards into the ground. Bobby realises that in their dreams, they are being dragged backwards in time. In successive dreams, they travel farther and farther back in time, visiting the Ice Age and seeing a mammoth, and a distant prehistoric time where they see a monstrous dinosaur. They speculate if they will eventually arrive at the beginning of the world, and if they will see the Garden of Eden. Eventually, in their final dream, Emma and Bobby are dragged back to the beginning of the world. They stand on a rocky shore facing the sea, and are confronted by the evil being, revealed as a grotesque, distorted form of their teacher, Miss Hallibutt. The being threatens to consume them by taking away their thoughts of reality. After transforming itself into replicas of Emma and Bobby themselves, its attempts are defeated by the two children being able to concentrate on reality and of their home and their school. The children are jerked out of the dream world and return to reality. As term draws to a close, the thaw comes, and the children at school react with great joy, with Emma realising that Charlotte will soon be return home after her second term at the boarding school. Bobby and Emma walk home, with the children knowing they will not return to the dream world. As Bobby runs up the laneway to his home, Emma calls out to him, "Pleasant dreams, Bob, pleasant dreams!"
34264413	/m/0hzqyjm	Supplement to the Journey to the West	Tong Yue	1640	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}	 During the battle with the Raksasha Lady Iron Fan, Monkey transforms into an insect and enters her stomach. He forces her to give him the magic fan that he needs to quell the heavenly fire of the Flaming Mountain blocking their path to India. However, it is while he is in her stomach that he becomes aroused with passion. This becomes a chink in Monkey’s emotional and spiritual armor as he is otherwise without weakness. It is months after the pilgrims bypass the mountain that he falls prey to the magic of the Qing Fish demon, an embodiment of desire. The demon uses its powers of illusion to trap him in a dream world so nothing will keep it from eating the Tang Priest. The story from this point reads disjointedly as the dream world does not adhere to the rules of the physical world. While on a mission to find food, Monkey comes upon a large city flying the banner “Great Tang’s New Son-of-Heaven, the Restoration Emperor, thirty-eighth successor of Taizong.” This strikes him as odd as it was Taizong who had originally sent them on their mission to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures in India. This either means that the pilgrims’ journey had taken hundreds of years, or the city is a fake. He flies to heaven in order to learn more about the Great Tang, but finds that the gates are locked because an imposter Monkey has stolen the Palace of Magic Mists. The situation becomes stranger when he returns to the city and learns that the king has sent someone to invite the Tang Priest to become a general of his military. But when Monkey tries to intercept the messenger, the person is nowhere to be found, and he instead comes upon mortal men flying on magic clouds picking at the foundations of heaven with spears and axes. From them he learns that Little Moon King (小月王), the ruler of the neighboring Kingdom of Great Compassion, has put up a great bronze wall and a fine mesh netting so as to block Monkey’s path to India. But because he feels sorry for the Tang Priest, the Little Moon King forced the men to dig a hole in the firmament of heaven so that Xuanzang could hop from the Daoist heaven to the Buddhist heaven to complete his mission. But in the process, the men accidentally caused the Palace of Magic Mists to fall through to earth (hence the reason why heaven blamed it on him). Monkey goes to the Emerald Green World, Little Moon King’s imperial city, in order to fetch his master, but is blocked from entering once inside the main gate. When he uses his great strength to bust open the wall, he falls inside of a magic tower full of mirrors that act as gateways to different points in history and other universes. Monkey travels to the “World of the Ancients” (the Qin Dynasty) by drilling through a bronze mirror. He disguises himself as Beautiful Lady Yu, concubine of King Xiang Yu of Chu, in order to retrieve a magic “Mountain-removing Bell” from the first Qin Emperor so that he can use it to clear the group’s path to India of any obstacles blocking their way. But Monkey later learns that the Jade Emperor had banished the emperor to the “World of Oblivion,” which lies beyond the “World of the Future.” Xiang Yu takes him to a village housing a set of Jade gates that lead to the World of the Future. Monkey leaps through and travels hundreds of years forward in time to the Song Dynasty. After resuming his normal form, some junior devils appear and tell him that King Yama has recently died of an illness and that Monkey must take his place as judge of the dead until a suitable replacement can be found. He ends up judging the fate of the recently deceased Prime Minister Qin Hui. Monkey puts Qin through a series of horrific tortures, after which a demon uses its magic breath to blow his broken body back into its proper form. He finally sends a demon to heaven to retrieve a powerful magic gourd that sucks anyone who speaks before it inside and melts them down into a bloody stew. He uses this for Qin's final punishment. Meanwhile, Monkey invites the ghost of Yue Fei to the underworld and takes him as his third master. He entertains Yue until Qin has been reduced to liquid and offers the general a cup of the Prime Minister's "blood wine." Yue, however, refuses on the grounds that drinking it would sully his soul. Monkey then does an experiment where he makes a junior devil drink of the wine. Sometime later, the devil, apparently under the evil influence of the blood wine, murders his personal religious teacher and escapes into the "gate of ghosts," presumably being reborn into another existence. Yue Fei then takes his leave to return to his heavenly abode. Monkey sends him off with a huge display of respect by making all of the millions of denizens of the underworld kowtow before him. After leaving the underworld, Monkey is able to return to the tower of mirrors with the help of the New Ancient, a man who had been trapped in the World of the Future for centuries. However, when he tries to leave the tower through a window, Monkey becomes entangled by red threads (a representation of desire). He becomes so worried that his very own spirit leaves his body and, under the guise of an old man, snaps the threads. He later discovers from a local Daoist immortal that the Qin Emperor has loaned the Mountain-removing Bell to the founder of the Han Dynasty, his former enemy. In addition, he learns that the Tang Priest has given up the journey to India, dismissed his other disciples Pigsy and Friar Sand, taken a wife, and accepted the position as a general of the imposter Great Tang military. Xuanzang begins to amass a huge army to fight the forces of desire led by King Paramita, one of Monkey’s five sons born to Lady Iron Fan. Monkey is eventually made a junior general and faces his son in battle. Confusion eventually sets in causing the clashing armies to attack both friend and foe. This shock causes Monkey to slowly stir from the dream. Somewhere between the dream world and the world of reality, he learns from the disembodied Master of the Void that he has been bewitched by the Qing Fish demon. Both Monkey and the Qing Fish have a connection because they were born at the same time from the same primordial energies at the beginning of time. The only difference is that Monkey’s positive Yang energy is offset by the demons far more powerful negative Yin energy. The demon is in effect the physical embodiment of Monkey’s desires. When he finally awakens, having dreamed the entire adventure in only a few seconds, he discovers that the demon has infiltrated the Tang Priest’s retinue by taking on the form of a young and beautiful Buddhist monk. Monkey instantly kills him with his iron cudgel, thereby killing his desire. He explains everything that had transpired, to which the Tang Priest commends him for his great effort.
34266483	/m/0hzq8f8	Mr. Monk in Trouble	Lee Goldberg		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The story opens with a diary excerpt from the early 1850s, narrated by a young woman named Abigail Guthrie, who lives with her farmer husband Hank in the middle of Kansas. Hearing about the discovery of gold out west in California, and hoping for a better life, they leave Kansas and migrate to California, ending up in the small mining camp of Trouble. As years go by, Abigail struggles to support Hank, who eventually becomes ill and dies of natural cases portaining to his "gold fever" (desire for gold). Struggling to find a job in the aftermath of her husband's death, she eventually is found and hired by Artemis Monk, one of the most important people in the town due to his job as an assayer (who examines rocks and tells miners what the worthiness of their mining operation is going to look like). However, as Abigail soon finds out, Artemis is also known for his worthy reputation of solving crimes. 150 years later, in 2008, the main story of Mr. Monk in Trouble opens on Halloween, which couldn't be worse for Adrian Monk. He hates trick-or-treaters, and considers it a form of extortion. Nonetheless, he gets a bit of a reprieve when a man named Clarence Lenihan shows up at his door. Monk exposes him as a killer on the fact that he is wearing a confession - blood spatter on his clothes. Captain Stottlemeyer arrives and arrests Lenihan. Two days later, Monk and Natalie Teeger are called to the police station, where Stottlemeyer informs them of a favor he would like them to do. It involves a retired SFPD beat cop named Manny Feikema, who retired a few years earlier and moved to the tiny old mining town of Trouble, in central California. He signed up as a security guard at their history museum a few months later, and worked that job until a few nights ago, when he was bludgeoned and killed while doing his rounds. It wouldn't be any of the SFPD's business, but the Trouble police chief has contacted Stottlemeyer to see if someone Manny put away has been released recently. Stottlemeyer has Monk and Natalie go out to Trouble to assist the chief, which he can't do because he is out of vacation days. Monk and Natalie make their way east towards Trouble, though they almost turn back when they drive through a big swarm of migrating butterflies that leave the windshield completely filthy. They introduce themselves to Harley Kelton, the local police chief and a former Boston cop, who takes them to the Gold Rush Museum, housed inside Trouble's old train station. Monk observes the scene, and learns that Manny Feikema had a routine - he had to walk the perimeter every hour and log in at sensors placed around to confirm that he wasn't sleeping at his desk. Kelton notes that the killer struck Manny over the head with a pick from a diorama and left at about 2:32 AM. Monk notes some interesting details: namely, why did the killer use the pick instead of using one of the closer weapons? And why does nothing appear to have been taken, more or less, even searched? Monk and Natalie take great interest in the museum's centerpiece: the actual steam locomotive from the "famous" Golden Rail Express train. According to the museum director, Ed Randisi, the locomotive was part of a train consist involved in a renowned holdup in 1963. It seems that the Golden Rail Express train was a private railroad built in the 19th century to run the wealthy barons from San Francisco and Sacramento up to their mining operations in Trouble. It was eventually made a public operation, and shortened to start in Sacramento. A high stakes poker game contrived by a developer proposing a housing tract in Trouble would mark the final run in 1963. During the game, the train was held up by three masked men, who robbed the gambling car in a brazen heist. One security guard was shot and killed and the conductor, Ralph DeRosso, fell off the train and died of his injuries. Two of the robbers, George Gilman and Jake Slocum, were eventually caught, but what happened the gold has always been a mystery. Several theories have come up since the robbery as to what happened. The most widely known theory is that the burlap bags containing the loot were thrown off the train. This theory has several holes in it: if the fall was bad enough that the conductor died, then the bags could have broken open and spilled their contents everywhere, yet the only things discovered during a search of the tracks were the discarded guns and masks used by the robbers. Interested in learning more about the train robbery, Monk and Natalie visit the office of Doris Thurlo, Trouble's historian. She has a momentary panic attack when Monk introduces himself, and for a moment appears to be having a panic attack when she refers to Natalie as "Abby". Monk and Natalie are both confused by Doris's unusual behavior, but she regains control of herself and admits that she mistook Adrian for Artemis Monk, Trouble's renowned assayer during the Gold Rush period and the diary excerpt in the prologue. In fact, Doris Thurlo's office is Artemis's old cabin, called the Box House because of its perfectly square shape. According to Doris, Artemis Monk was a very important figure in Trouble, responsible for sampling and testing rock samples brought in by miners and then telling them how good their claim was. He also helped their sheriff, Sheriff Wheeler, solve the most puzzling of the crimes that took place in the mining town. In regards to the train robbery, Monk and Natalie learn from Doris that Slocum and Gilman, the arrested robbers, were caught because they carried distinctive gold coins in their pockets and were caught carrying them when they got off. Gilman was the one who shot the guard, and interestingly, both of them claimed to have been hired by Ralph DeRosso to pull off the robbery. They also learn more about the other important players on the train that night - Gilman died in prison, but Slocum made parole in the early 1990s. The engineer, Leonard McElroy, and the boilerman, Clifford Adams, also didn't hear anything. The train, it turns out, was supposed to be discontinued after the run during which the heist happened, but as a result of the overnight fame from the robbery, the service continued for another twenty years until 1982. Though McElroy died of lung cancer six months before the service was discontinued, Adams worked until the very last day and now lives in an old mine shack outside of Trouble. The locomotive is the only remaining car of the train to have survived being scrapped. During the next part of the story, there are small breaks away from the modern story where Natalie reads from The Amazing Mr. Monk, a diary written by Artemis's assistant Abigail Guthrie (also the narrator of the prologue at the beginning of the book) about Artemis's exploits. All of the sub-stories are narrated from Abigail's point-of-view, much like the parent novel is narrated from Natalie's point-of-view. During their first night in Trouble, Natalie first reads a story called "The Case of Piss-Poor Gold," about an incident where Artemis proves a cowhand named Bud Lolly guilty of smashing in a miner's skull and stealing his gold simply from the splinters and tar on his clothing before even seeing the body. Later, after having dinner with Kelton, Natalie reads "The Case of the Snake in the Grass," where Artemis exposes a placer miner's scheme to salt his property and con the man he is selling his property to. The next day, Monk and Natalie visit Dorothy's Chuckwagon, the local diner, and talk to Crystal, Ralph DeRosso's daughter, about the Golden Rail Express robbery. She mentions that McElroy and Adams both gave portions of their paychecks to the DeRosso family, which would most likely not have happened if they knew that DeRosso was one of the robbers. While they are eating, they also encounter Bob Gorman, the local auto mechanic and now the museum's volunteering security guard, who has information about the Manny Feikema case - he tells them that a few days before the murder, a man driving a 1964 Thunderbird (unique because it was the type of model equipped with a swing-away steering column) stopped by his garage and asked him some questions about Manny, apparently wanting to see him. With some consulting from Kelton, Monk and Natalie locate and track down Clifford Adams at his old shack. He mentions that the train never stopped during the robbery because the robbers threatened to kill anyone who tried to stop the train before they reached Trouble. He also gives several theories about what happened to the gold, but they don't turn out to be useful at all. Thanks to a call to Stottlemeyer, they have managed to also track down Jake Slocum to a retirement home in Angels Camp. They interview him, and Slocum tells them his story in detail: Some time before the robbery, he and Gilman supported themselves by committing muggings and burglaries. While contemplating their next move at a bar in Placerville, they saw Ralph DeRosso and decided that they had an easy mark. As they were about to mug him, he suddenly turned around and recruited them into helping him carry out the robbery of the train. DeRosso took a napkin and drew out a sketch of the train, which was comprised (in order) of a locomotive, a boxcar, the gambling car, the dining car, and then two passenger cars. There were several twists: Slocum and Gilman only would know what they were supposed to do, so neither of them were sure whether DeRosso planned on double-crossing them or not. According to the plan, Slocum and Gilman were to meet on the platform outside the gambling car at a prearranged point (when the lights flickered for a few seconds; which would happen several times during the trip). At the arranged time, they were to put on their masks, and then burst into the gambling car, taking the guard by surprise. After overpowering him, they would load the money into burlap sacks brought in by a robber entering from the forward end of the car. This third man would then take the bags with him, Slocum and Gilman would then toss their stuff off the train, and then rejoin the party in the dining car, without ever being missed. This entire aforementioned plan was perfect in planning, but when it was actually executed, things didn't work out correctly: first, Gilman shot and killed the guard instead of disarming him, and DeRosso somehow fell from the moving train. During the interview, Kelton arrives and informs Monk and Natalie that he's found a person of interest from Gorman's tip, an enforcer Manny put away named Gator Dunsen, who is living at his place in Jackson. As they follow Kelton to Gator's house, Natalie tries running some other theories about the robbery, but Monk shoots them all down, since her theories don't explain where the secret compartment the gold was rumored to have been hidden in went. When they reach Gator's house, a shootout ensues between Gator and Kelton, who eventually kills him. Monk and Natalie are ejected from the scene by Detective Lydia Wilder of the state police, who also berates Kelton for pursuing Gator without contacting them. The evidence hinting that Gator is the killer is overwhelming - Gorman's statement from the restaurant, and photos recovered from Gator's house of the museum's diorama that suggest that Gator was casing the gallery. However, as Monk and Natalie return to Trouble, Monk points out several holes in the circumstances around Gator's death - for one thing, his car was squeaky clean, yet it would have gotten dirty going into or out of Trouble since you have to pass through the swarm of migrating butterflies. Also, if the diorama photos were ones he took while casing the museum for a hiding place, how come the pick used as the murder weapon is not present in any of them? Monk believes that someone planted those photos to lure them astray and suspects that Gorman is lying about them. When they do reach Trouble, they notice Clifford Adams leaving the museum in his pickup truck. Monk wonders what Adams might be up to. They also notice Gorman watching Adams with very keen interest. That night, Natalie reads from Abigail Guthrie's diary "The Case of the Cutthroat Trail," where Artemis solves a miner's murder just based on how the killer slit the guy's throat. The next morning, she gets a call that seems to be coming from Clifford Adams, who says "I want to live," like he is in danger. Monk and Natalie race out to Adams's compound, but they are too late: he is dead. As they are observing, Monk accidentally falls into an old mine shaft. Natalie ends up dislocating her shoulder and ripping some of her fingernails out when she is pulling him up. Once he's safely up, Monk confirms that Adams is dead by noting that vultures are now eating at him. He also believes that the killer called Natalie and was intending for them to fall into one of the abandoned mine shafts that are located all over the area. Monk is forced to drive the car back to the main road where they are able to get a signal to call for help. Natalie is taken to the hospital, and her arm is put into a sling after Kelton pops her shoulder back into place. While at the hospital, Natalie asks Monk to read a story from the diary. Monk reads "The Case of the Golden Rail Express," which shows that the Golden Rail Express train was held up many times before the famous robbery in the 1960s. The earlier robbery discussed is one where two local men from Trouble held up the train, killed three people and shot two others, and then made off with their money, which was later used in an attempt to salt their mine so they could con the businessman they were selling out to. Natalie spends much of the day in a stupor, finally coming around in the evening. She also finds that Monk has gone out, but he has apparently been making calls to Stottlemeyer, Lieutenant Disher, Doris Thurlo, and the voicemail for the museum. Desperate, she tracks down Kelton, and tries to see if he knows where Monk is. As they head towards the museum, Kelton confirms Monk's suspicion that Clifford Adams's killer tried to lure them onto the booby-trap field. He also notes that Adams was struck over the head at around midnight and the body was moved out on the rocks, the "bait". Natalie suspects Gorman of killing Manny Feikema and then somehow leading them astray, meaning he could be involved with Gator Dunsen's death. She also briefly wonders if Gorman killed Adams, but then realizes that at the distance from town to Adams' compound, Gorman would have to have missed one of his rounds driving out there and then back. When Natalie and Kelton enter the museum, they find Gorman looking inside the locomotive's furnace. Kelton draws a gun on him, and Monk comes out of the diorama, revealing that he has solved the robbery of the Golden Rail Express. Monk remembered Clifford Adams mentioning that he had been trying for years to find gold in his mining operation. He figured out what happened to the gold after reading the journal entry about the historic train holdup. It turns out that the Golden Rail Express loot has never left the train. Whether he knew it or not, Jake Slocum was right when he suspected that Ralph DeRosso was the robber who entered the gambling car from in front. Plus, from the beginning, Slocum and Gilman were always skeptical about DeRosso's ability to keep a promise about delivering them their shares of the money (which would have been made six months after the robbery if things went as planned). They were worried that DeRosso might suddenly withdraw their shares of the money. Indeed, Slocum and Gilman did not know that Leonard McElroy and Clifford Adams in the locomotive were also in on the job as well. After they loaded the money into DeRosso's burlap sacks, DeRosso delivered them to Adams and McElroy up in the locomotive. This makes sense - with his experience as both a conductor and as a brakeman, DeRosso was able to easily make his way along the roof of the train to the locomotive. He fell off the train after delivering the sacks to the crew. As for what happened to the gold, it was put into the locomotive's furnace. Monk notes that in the earlier robbery, the robbers hammered the gold into black flakes that they mixed with blasting powder in their salting scheme. In the 1960s robbery, Adams and McElroy tossed the money bags into the furnace of the locomotive. This turns out to be the reason why burlap sacks were used - they were easy to burn. Adams and McElroy tossed the sacks into the furnace, melting down the gold, and used it to line the furnace. The plan was for the furnace to be recovered after the locomotive was scrapped, but this never happened. The resulting fame of the train caused the service to continue for 20 more years. After the train was finally discontinued in 1982, another attempt was made at recovering the furnace, but the locomotive was snatched up by the museum and there was no way the furnace could be recovered and the gold extracted. Monk reveals that Gorman killed Manny Feikema for the job of night watchman and has been spending his nights digging the gold out of the furnace. However, he needed to have Kelton present to prove it. It turns out that Kelton is actually holding his gun on Natalie, not on Gorman. A few weeks before Manny was killed, Kelton read Abigail Guthrie's diary, including the story about the 19th century train robbery. Being a good detective when sober, he figured out what happened, and decided to try recovering the gold, but he knew Manny would not help him out. Kelton instead hired Gorman, who killed Manny for the job. It was because he was digging out the furnace that explain why his hands have received a layer of soot. Kelton is a murderer, however - he is responsible for killing Clifford Adams. Monk reveals that he made that leap from a pebble in a pothole on the road out to Adams' compound. It turns out that this pebble got lodged in Kelton's tire treads when he parked in Gator Dunsen's driveway, and got knocked loose when he passed over a medium pothole on his way out to the compound. Kelton admits that after Monk and Natalie talked to Adams, he must have also figured what was happening to his gold, and went back to the museum, where he had found that Gorman had started digging the gold out of the furnace. Kelton killed him to prevent him from doing anything dangerous. It wasn't hard for Kelton to kill Adams, because he had just killed Gator and tried framing him for Manny's murder. Gorman was responsible for helping Kelton kill and frame Gator. When Monk, Natalie, and Kelton arrived at the house, Gorman was already inside, and he had planted the photos of the diorama to make it look like Gator had cased the museum. Gorman forced Gator at gunpoint to drink himself into a stupor, then tied him up and duct-taped his mouth, and then shot up the front door. Once Monk and Natalie had taken cover and Kelton had entered the house, all of the shots from the shootout, minus the fatal shot that killed Gator (which had to come from Kelton's own gun for obvious reasons), were staged. Kelton spent the extra time staging the scene, removing the duct tape from Gator's mouth, and then covering Gorman's escape out the back door. Monk's leap to the assumption that Gator's mouth had been duct-taped came from the fact that his lips were chapped and bleeding. Kelton prepares to kill the two of them, but then Stottlemeyer, Disher and several police officers burst out of hiding and arrest Gorman and Kelton for their crimes. Natalie is unhappy that Monk used her as part of the trap to catch Kelton, but while at the Chuckwagon, Stottlemeyer admits to her that Monk cared more about catching Kelton than about her feelings. On their last day, they return Abby Guthrie's journal back to Doris Thurlo, who mentions that at some point, Artemis Monk might have married his assistant.
34268222	/m/0hzn516	Shuttlecock	Graham Swift			 The story concerns Prentis, senior clerk in the 'dead crimes' department of the police archives in London, who is becoming increasingly frustrated and confused by the work he is being given by his enigmatic boss Quinn; he discovers crucial files are missing and suspects they are being deliberately withheld by Quinn. At home, Prentis is alienated from his wife and children and is obsessed about uncovering the truth about the wartime exploits of his father, who was a spy (codenamed 'Shuttlecock') behind enemy lines. His father published his memoirs but is now the inmate of a mental hospital following a breakdown in which he lost the ability to speak. As the story unfolds, Prentis suspects there may be links between Quinn's behaviour and his father's breakdown.
34269647	/m/0hzs1m6	Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children	Ransom Riggs		{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 Jacob Portman, a 16 year old boy, goes to Wales to find out the truth of his grandfather's past after he was murdered by what Jacob thought was a make-believe creature. When he arrives, he meets Emma, a "strikingly pretty" girl who can control fire. She takes him to meet Miss Peregrine in a time loop set back in the 1940s. Jacob enjoys hanging out with the other peculiar children, such as Millard, who is invisible, and Bronwyn, who has incredible strength. Then Jacob is told some mysterious stories of strange killings in the pub he's staying at, and warns the peculiar children. When they tell Jacob he is the only one who can see the "hollows" or "hollowgasts", the monsters that killed Jacob's grandfather, Jacob knows he is the only hope they have for safety. Jacob and some of the peculiar children encounter a hollow which Jacob kills. Upon return to the Miss Peregrine's home, they find that Miss Peregrine has been kidnapped. The children rescue Miss Peregrine but she is in bird form and cannot change back to human form. At the end of the book, the peculiar children look for another time loop they can stay in because their current one has been destroyed.
34281485	/m/0hznw6l	You Can't Live Forever	Harold Q. Masur	1951	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 Joshua Wilde, a theatre producer, attempts to sue his former partner Nicholas Creel, alleging that Creel concealed a promising script until after the company’s split. Wilde alleged that Creel had hidden the script in order to be the play's sole producer, gaining a larger share of the profits. Scott Jordan, who represents Wilde in the suit, finds a dead body in Creel’s apartment. Creel returns to find Jordan alone in his apartment with the body, calls the police, and furiously accuses him of the apparent murder. Jordan protests that he was let in by a brunette, but that he did not know her name; she had disappeared before Creel had returned. Jordan is arrested and later released when accusers can produce no motive or evidence that Jordan ever met the deceased. Creel drops the charges of breaking and entering after his wife, Hildegard, testifies that Creel was having an affair with a small brunette meeting Jordan’s description, lending credibility to Jordan’s testimony that he was let in rather than forcing entry. The body in Creel’s apartment remained unexplained; Creel was naturally the first suspect, but a witness, Julian St George (Hildegard’s uncle), had brought him straight to his apartment from his office, where he had been all day, and his secretary was able to corroborate his alibi. Scott resumes his search for the author of the script in order to confirm the date of submission, thereby proving his client’s case that Creel had intentionally hidden it from his partner. Scott discovers that the real author died before the script was produced, yet an “author” continues to receive royalty checks, addressed to Willard Thorne, a fabricated name. Scott begins to suspect that Creel, impersonating the author, was receiving royalty checks as well as revenues from the produced play. Gladys, Creel’s former secretary who tells Scott the true identity of the author, is found strangled the day after he speaks with her, and Scott begins to fear for his own life. Scott and Lieutenant John Nola, a police detective, although unable to find a solid link between Creel and the murders acknowledge that the circumstances seem to indicate his guilt, and they decide to question him, hoping to back him into a corner. When they arrive, they find Creel dead, stabbed with a knife belonging to Hildegard; Hildegard said that the knife had been stolen the night before. The knife was an heirloom passed down to Hildegard from her uncle Julian. Scott notices that the hilt opens, revealing a hollow tube and remembers a photograph found in Creel’s apartment curled like a scroll to a roll the width of a pencil. The image is a wedding photograph of Julian and Eva St George, and Scott notices that the photo shows Julian to be definitely shorter than Eva, whereas the Julian he knows is very tall. Julian St George was receiving substantial annuity payments every month, and since his father had set up the policy for him long before he was married, upon Julian's death, the policy would be terminated, and his wife Eva would no longer receive anything. Scott, upon seeing the height discrepancy, realizes that the real Julian St George had died years ago, but to continue receiving the annuity, Eva had gotten an impersonator, someone who looked exactly like Julian except for the unfortunate difference in height. Creel had discovered the photograph concealed in his wife’s knife heirloom and was blackmailing the St Georges, extorting thousands of dollars and forcing them to receive checks as Willard Thorne in order to give him the money once the checks were cashed. In an effort to destroy the one piece of evidence remaining of the former Julian St George, the impersonator had stolen the knife. Wanting to remove the remaining witness to their scheme, he had killed Nicholas Creel. When Scott confronts the St Georges with his theory, the impersonator draws a gun, planning to kill Scott as well. Lieutenant Nola enters just in time to save Scott, starting a gunfight in which the impersonator is shot and killed.
34302229	/m/0hzs2ts	Child of a Dream	Valerio Massimo Manfredi		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story starts before the birth of Alexander at Pella, when her mother Queen Olympias dreams of a snake slithering inside her bed and thrusting its seed inside her; when she recounts her dream to the priests of the Oracle of Dodona, they tell her that her child shall be the offspring of Zeus and a man, just like his hero Achilles. During his childhood, Alexander and his friends Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Leonnatus, Lysimachus, Craterus, Perdiccas and Philotas, are firstly educated by Leonidas. He teaches them the values of courage and pride, but also magnanimity; this would prove very important to Alexander during his campaigns. When Alexander is 13 years old, his father decides to send him (and his friends with him) to Mieza, a nearby town, for him to be tutored by Aristotle. The great philosopher teaches Alexander and his friends all the latest notions of science, philosophy and literature. Leptine, a girl that Alexander himself had saved from slavery, also joins the boys in Mieza; she will also stay very close to Alexander until his death. When back into his hometown Pella, Alexander manages to tame a wild war horse at his first attempt. He calls his horse Bucephalus and he grows very fond of him. So much so that the two share an almost human friendship. Finally, Alexander is old enough to go to war with his father's army in Cheronea, where they are victorious. Alexander greatly admires his father and his military achievements. He is also very close to his sister, Cleopatra, and to his mother. However, when Philip marries Eurydice Alexander grows harsher towards his father but much closer to his mother, jealous and unhappy about the polygamy of Philip. Things go out of hand during the banquet of the wedding, when Alexander, after Attalus offends his mother Olympias, insults Attalus and his father and is obliged to leave the palace, taking refuge to his uncle's palace. Thanks to the help of Eumenes, the court secretary, he becomes reconciled with his father and comes back to the Royal Palace just in time for Cleopatra's marriage. However, Philip is murdered during the ceremony, which causes great sorrow to the young prince. The sorrow is then replaced by the anger towards the murderer and the desire to catch the responsible. He then decidedly steps up to the throne. Many people are not convinced by the new King Alexander, however, mostly due to its young age and lack of experience. Shortly after Alexander becomes king, Eurydice's children and Attalus are killed and Eurydice herself takes her own life shortly after due to the unbearable sorrow. Alexander immediately decides to undertake a campaign in Greece and Asia to affirm Macedonia's position amongst the Pan-Hellenic League and expand its frontiers, just like his father wished to do when alive. His expedition first leads them to Thessaly and his army, now featuring many of his boyhood friends but still a few veterans from Philip's army, records the first of a long sequence of victories.
34305380	/m/0hznfm8	Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out	Lee Goldberg		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 During a financial crisis, the San Francisco police department fires Adrian Monk as a consultant. Natalie Teeger learns that Monk invested his life savings with Bob Sebes, an investor who has just been arrested on charges of orchestrating a $100 million fraud. The key witness in the Sebes case is murdered, leaving Monk to consider him the prime suspect, except Sebes is under house arrest with constant guard and continuous media scrutiny.
34305516	/m/0hzqzpd	Mr. Monk on the Road	Lee Goldberg		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Adrian Monk is finally at peace after his wife's murder has been solved. He wants his agoraphobic brother, Ambrose, to feel the same way, so he adds sleeping pills to his brother's birthday cake. When Ambrose wakes up, he is in a motor home with Adrian determined to show him the outside world. The road trip is postponed several times when Adrian Monk is called upon to help with various murders.
34305577	/m/0hzrqh_	Mr. Monk on the Couch	Lee Goldberg		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 Adrian Monk has to solve a murder of three people: a struggling student, a security guard, and a beautiful woman. The only common element between these three people is a couch.
34305660	/m/0hzq108	Mr. Monk on Patrol	Lee Goldberg		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}	 The town of Summit, New Jersey is hit with a string of arrests, leading Randy Disher serving as the town's mayor. Disher hires Adrian Monk to serve as a temporary police officer for the town.
34310361	/m/0hzr9dd	The Sands of Ammon	Valerio Massimo Manfredi		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 After the victory in Thessaly which ended the first book of the trilogy, Child of a Dream, Alexander and his army march towards the East. The first step of the expedition is to free the Greek cities from the Persian domination in order to establish a strong and unite Pan-Hellenic League. Once that is achieved, the target is the Persian Empire itself and its immense Asian territory. During his military campaign the Macedonian army records numerous victories, including those against the city of Tyre, the Towers of Giza and the legendary Halicarnassus. And it is in the midst of this campaign that Alexander meets the only opponent he believes worthy of his utmost respect: Memnon of Rhodes, the commander of the Greek mercenaries of the Persian army. He struggles in the attempt to defeat Memnon fair and square on the field, but the two end up stalemating each other with strategic cunning. Alexander's friends then suggest to end the confrontation between the two men by ordering to poison the mercenary; Alexander is however disgusted by this outrageous idea as he reckons his opponent is worthy of being defeated with respect and the only way for that to be possible is for Alexander to beat him on the battle field. However, Alexander's friends do carry out the order without Alexander's approval or knowing and Memnon is poisoned within a few weeks. The mercenary's death represents an anti-climactic end to the fantastic strategic battle between the two. After Memnon's death, Alexander claims his former wife: the beautiful Barsine. The two grow close, which makes Leptine jealous of their relationship. After the Macedonian army finally defeats Darius, thank to a tactically perfect charge, Alexander becomes the sovereign of the greatest Empire ever existed. But the young king is certainly not satisfied: he heads towards Egypt and, after defeating the Tyrian naval force that was attempting to block his way into the country, he finally makes it to the land of the Pharaohs. Here, he is proclaimed Pharaoh and he founds the first of his cities: Alexandria. Finally, he crosses the Libyan desert and after a long and hard journey, he reaches the Oasis of Siwa, where the Oracle of Ammon lies. This tells him that he is not a mere human, but the son of Zeus himself.
34312124	/m/0hzr9f4	The Ends of the Earth	Valerio Massimo Manfredi		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 When the Oracle of Ammon tells Alexander that he is the son of Zeus, the young Macedonian king finds even more inner strength and will to conquer new lands and rule the biggest Empire ever known. His army then crosses the Tigris and the Euphrates to reach Babylon, which is then raged by the Macedonians. The palace of Persepolis, the most beautiful palace in the world, is burnt to ashes by Alexander himself. This marks the end of Darius III's Persian Empire and the beginning of Alexander's. The Macedonian King, Pharaoh of Egypt and Great King of Persia is now also nomined Great Leader by the Pan-Hellenic League and he aims for India and Arabia to expand his Empire even further. His army seems unstoppable and unbeatable, driven forward by a man that defies human capabilities. Yet, when he tries to make his dream of a great unite Empire between Macedonians and Persians reality, his army starts to doubt his ideals and to critique his way of adapting to Persian customs at court. As his companions slowly yet gradually wonder about their king's choices, Alexander's life gets a sorrowful turn. He loses his wife Barsine, his loved horse Bucephalus, his best friend Hephaestion and his tutor Leonidas in the most brutal of ways. Even his own life is now in danger, with some of his warriors planning to kill him twice. He has to execute the warriors who planned for his assassination as well as a friend of his that had heard of the plan but did not inform him. This torments him, but he knows he does not have choice. He finds refuge in the Iliad and other poems, where in the past he found sources of inspiration for battle tactics. He stops eating food and falls ill, and the only thing that gives him strength to go on and chase his immense dream is love. He meets and falls in love with Queen Roxane, who also gives the great gift of becoming father of a son. He is also named Alexander. He then tries to push forward towards India, as conquering it would mean that the whole of Asia would be in his hands, but his warriors' homesickness gets too much to bear. He then has to march backwards towards the now far Macedonia and, during this very last part of his journey, he falls ill again. His friends get really worried about his deteriorating conditions and it seems nothing can save the man whom pushed the boundaries of human capability. During the last few days of his life, unable to walk, he lets every one of his warriors walk into his tent and by its bed for a last farewell. And it also gives the opportunity to the sorrowful Macedonian soldiers to pay their tribute to their epic and heroic king.
34315125	/m/0hzmshk	Adujivitam		2008-08		 The book is divided into four parts (Prison, Desert, Esacape and Refuge). Najib Muhammad, the protagonist of the novel, is a young man from somewhere near Kayamkulam, Kerala state, recently married and dreams of a better job in any of the Persian Gulf states. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia however he got trapped. Najib Muhammad is taken away by a rich Arab animal farm supervisor from King Khalid International Airport and is being used a "slave" laborer and shepherd assigned to look after goats, sheep and camels for almost three and half years in the remote deserts of Saudi Arabia. He is forced to do back-breaking work, is kept half-hungry and is denied water to wash and suffers unimaginably. The farm's brutal supervisor keeps Najib in control with a gun and binoculars and frequently beats him with a belt. In a country where he does not know the language, places or people, he is far away from any human interaction. Najib steadily starts to identify himself with the goats. He considers himself one of them. His dreams, desires, revenge, hopes—he identifies all it with them. He talks to them, eats with them, sleeps with them and virtually lives the life of a goat. Still he keeps a ray of hope which will bring freedom and end to sufferings some unknown day. Finally one night with the help of Ibrahim Khadiri, a Somalian worker in the neighboring farm, Najib Muhammed and his friend Hakim escape from the horrible life to freedom. But, the trio fumbles across the desert for days, and young Hakim dies of thirst and fatigue. Finally, Ibrahim Qadiri and Najib manage to find their way to Al-Bathaa, Riyadh, where Najib gets himself arrested by the Regular Police in order to get deported to India. Najib spends several months in the Sumesi Prison before being put on a plane to India by the Saudi Arabian authorities.
34321559	/m/0hzm5kc	Spartan	Valerio Massimo Manfredi		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 Spartan is the enchanting story of two brothers born in the military city-state of Sparta. The elder brother, Brithos, was a Spartan paragon; the younger brother, Talos, was crippled and deformed at birth. Because of the cruel and strict laws in vigour at Sparta, babies that were deformed, crippled or had any health issues would not serve the city-state its purpose, which was to battle; therefore, these weaker children had to be sacrificed at Mount Taygetus. The young Talos however survives, rescued by a shepherd of the Helots, the people who served as slaves to the Spartans. This shepherd, who becomes Talos's adoptive father, raises Talos with love and recounts him the intriguing tale of Aristodemus, the last King of the Helots. The legend goes that he who wears his armour, shall be the one to free the Helots from slavery. However, the blood that runs in his veins is Spartan after all; Talos the Cripple is drawn back to his hometown and in the midst of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae. Here he faces the inhuman brutality and savagery of the Spartan soldiers and meets his brother for the first time since their separation when he crosses his brother's gaze whilst attempting to protect Antinea, the woman he loves. But destiny has got a better fate for them in store: as a war between the Persian Empire and the Greek city-states looms, the two brothers will find each other again and will fight shoulder to shoulder for the future of their country. Along the way, he discovers some thing of his [Spartan} life like his real name is Kleidemos. When his brother dies, he oversees the Helots, with the help of his friend Karas, helps the Helots have victory over his own race.
34328500	/m/0hzp1w0	The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery	Eric Foner		{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 The Fiery Trial chronicles how Lincoln's position on slavery changed during his life, as he witnessed slavery in his early life, growing up in Kentucky and Indiana. He occasionally dealt with issues of slavery in his law practice in Illinois. The book also discusses Lincoln's position on slavery in the context of his political career. Lincoln was a moderate, attempting to bridge the gap between the Radical Republicans and conservative Democrats, including those in the slave-holding states, who he hoped would choose preserving the Union over steadfastly defending slavery. However, Lincoln eventually abandoned his moderate stance on slavery when he determined that to win the American Civil War, he needed to act to end slavery.
34330358	/m/0hzn7gd	Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science	Michael Nielsen	2011-10		 The following is a list of major topics in the book's chapters. #Reinventing Discovery #Online Tools Make Us Smarter #:Kasparov versus the World, The Wisdom of Crowds, various online collaborative projects #Restructuring Expert Attention #:InnoCentive, collective intelligence, Paul Seabright's economic theory, online chat #Patterns of Online Collaboration #:History of Linux, Open Architecture Network, Wikipedia, MathWorks' computer programming contest #The Limits and the Potential of Collective Intelligence #:communication in small groups, particularly as studied by Stasser and Titus; praxis of science; a discussion of communication among scientists #All the World's Knowledge #:Don R. Swanson and Literature-based discovery, predicting influenza with Google searches, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Allen Institute for Brain Science, Ocean Observatories Initiative, Human Genome Project, Google Translate #Democratizing Science #:Galaxy Zoo, Foldit, citizen science, eBird, open access, arXiv, PLoS #The Challenge of Doing Science in the Open #:Complexity Zoo, academic publishing #The Open Science Imperative #:Open science, academic journal publishing reform, SPIRES :appendix - The problem solved by the Polymath Project
34341548	/m/0hzn_vx	In the Place of Fallen Leaves	Tim Pears			 It is set in the long, hot summer of 1984 in an isolated Devon village on the edge of Dartmoor where thirteen year old Alison is growing up, the youngest member of a farming family. The story covers scenes from Alison's own life as well as those of her neighbours, siblings, parents and grandparents.
34348361	/m/05qh5_s	The Shield Ring	Rosemary Sutcliff	1956	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 The story revolves around Frytha and Bjorn, a girl and a boy who have both been orphaned by the Norman conquest, and have sought refuge and been taken in by Jarl Buthar in his hidden Lakeland settlement by Buthar's Mere . The group is portrayed as Northmen settlers who have long established themselves in the area, and are resisting Norman advances into their country. They describe themselves as forming their shield ring up in the fells of Lakeland, as a form of Last Stand against the Norman invasion. The theme of this Shield Ring is developed throughout the story, an ultimately portrayed as an ethic of loyalty to one's group, even unto death. Bjorn is fostered to a Harp player, an old man who originally fought the Normans at Hastings, who refers to being part of that Shield Wall resisting William the Conqueror. The instrument becomes a key feature of the narrative, being a symbolic link to the indigenous Welsh and British peoples with whom the Norse of Lakeland have intermingled. Bjorn is seen as having the musical gift from his maternal Celtic forebears, and learns to play as he grows up. This links him back to the family of the emerald seal ring with the dolphin insignia, which he is given when he comes of age. Frytha is shown as being very close to Bjorn, as she adapts from her original Saxon upbringing to be part of the Norse settlement. The story develops with a paralleling to the epic of Beowulf, with Frytha making connections between events in their life and in the epic. The Northmen successfully fend off a series of Norman attempts to overrun Lakeland, but the story comes to its crux when Ranulf le Meschin leads the largest and seemingly final attack, coming down from Cockermouth. Bjorn is sent as a spy, under the guise of a traveling harper, to reconnoiter the enemy camp, and Frytha sneaks off to accompany him, referencing how even Beowulf had Wiglaf come to his aid when Beowulf faced his doom. They succeed in infiltrating the enemy camp, and gather much information, but are ultimately discovered when the emerald seal ring is recognized by a Norman knight who had previously had a life-and-death struggle with Bjorn. Bjorn is subjected to torture by fire, paralleling Beowulf's downfall to a firedrake, and successfully resists. The whole concept of the Shield Wall being a spirit of resistance and unity within the band is brought into direct focus during his ordeal. Bjorn and Frytha soon escape, and return to bring the needed news to their people. With this information, the Northmen mislead the Norman host into an annihilating ambush in Rannerdale. Although her own inimitable take on the story of Jarl Buthar's guerilla campaign and a final battle at Rannerdale between the Normans and the Anglo-Scandinavian Cumbrians led by the Jarl, Sutcliff's novel was clearly inspired by the dramatized history written by Lakeland historian Nicholas Size, called "The Secret Valley: The Real Romance of Unconquered Lakeland" (pub. 1930) Being the second novel written in the series of eight novels about the evolution of a British bloodline throughout the ages, it is the last in chronological order. It closes with the characters facing a world of change and persevering in their loyalty to their culture and to each other.
34352746	/m/0h_cznl	Turpentine Jake		2011-10	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 Turpentine Jake is an epic play about the turpentiners, African-American men who worked fourteen hours a day harvesting pine gum from the longleaf pines in the Florida Panhandle. This forgotten chapter of American history (1890-1960) illustrates the story of Blacks held under debt peonage, earning less than the cost of food and clothing provided by the company store. Co-authors Linda Bannister and James E. Hurd, Jr. based the drama on the true story of Hurd’s grandfather and oral histories gathered from surviving turpentine workers. The play follows Jake, a legendary storyteller and mentor to those in the camps, as he spins tales and songs that help his fellow workers assert some control over their oppressive environment. A drama with music and original folktales, the play has a total of twenty-one roles. Double casting can bring the number down to nine or ten actors, if preferred. The set and costumes can be abstract or minimalist, with mere suggestions of the pine forest and turpentine camps. Productions can be mounted relatively easily, but offer high impact and strong audience involvement, as well as address slavery issues more timely than ever, given rising worldwide human trafficking. The play’s premiere was staged in workshop at Loyola Marymount’s Del Rey Theatre and received two NAACP Theatre Award nominations. Constance Congdon, Playwright in Residence at Amherst College writes, “Turpentine Jake is a play full of mystery and song, with an epic story and indelible characters. I left the theater feeling thanks and hopeful about what theater can accomplish with wonderful material.” “While the historical setting of Turpentine Jake takes place more than fifty years ago, debt peonage is as much an issue in the present as it was in the past. Turpentine Jake is a play for our time,” says Elias Wondimu, publisher and editorial director, Marymount Institute Press and Tsehai Publishers.
34356369	/m/0h_cgkn	Of Wee Sweetie Mice and Men	Colin Bateman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 Protagonist Dan Starkey is tasked with writing a book about "Bobby Fat Boy McMaster", the current heavyweight champion of Ireland, in his upcoming championship fight with Mike Tyson on St. Patrick's Day. When McMaster's wife is kidnapped, Starkey must figure out who's behind it before the varied and numerous factions that McMaster has offended, in his short time in New York, catch up with them.
34358333	/m/0h_c4nk	Turbulent Priests	Colin Bateman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 The plot of this novel is based on Wrathlin Island, a small island north of mainland Ireland. Dan Starkey has been sent by Cardinal Daley, the Primate of All Ireland, to investigate reports that the Messiah has returned in the shape of a young girl, Christine, about to start school. Starkey has his wife Patricia and illegitimate child "Little Stevie" join him as he investigates the tiny dry community and meets considerable resistance from the defensive residents.
34360364	/m/0h_d2by	She Lover of Death	Boris Akunin		{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03g3w": "History"}	 A naive young woman, Masha Mironova, travels from provincial Russia to Moscow, where she changes her name to Columbine and joins the Lovers of Death, a small group of bohemian poets, each of them eagerly waiting their turn to die a romantic fin de siècle death by suicide. Once one member dies, their replacement is found by the leader of the group, the Doge. Another newcomer to the society appears to be a Japanese prince, although this turns out to be Erast Fandorin acting undercover. Fandorin is not the only person to have connected the suicides and the group: a newspaper reporter, Zhemailo, has also done so and he also dies a mysterious death. Fandorin uncovers that many of the suicides are murders, all committed by the Doge: in the process of his investigation Columbine also falls in love with Fandorin and becomes his mistress.
34368998	/m/0h_dkwn	Shooting Sean	Colin Bateman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 Dan Starkey is employed by legendary film star, Sean O'Toole, who is looking to escape his type cast action hero career and move into directing movies. Unfortunately, O'Toole is making a movie based on an infamous IRA member, nicknamed "The Colonel", and events soon lead to Starkey once again struggling to both protect his wife "Patricia" and illegitimate child "Little Stevie", while also keeping himself alive and writing.
34376789	/m/0h_98wm	Reality and Dreams	Muriel Spark	1996		 The story concerns Tom Richards a successful British film director and serial womanizer who has just fallen from a crane whilst shooting his latest film. During his lengthy recuperation he attempts to maintain control of the film, whilst the relationships in his extended family are tested as his daughter Marigold disappears...
34397231	/m/0h_f072	The Horse With My Name	Colin Bateman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 This novel follows Dan Starkey who is currently both unemployed and single. His estranged wife Patricia, after cancelling their counselling sessions with Relate, has entered into another relationship with someone called Clive and is currently living with him in the family home. Starkey receives a request from Mark Corkery, known as "The Horse Whisperer", to investigate racing entrepreneur Geordie McClean who is apparently not quite as clean as his name would suggest.
34397382	/m/0h_dc15	The Summer Birds	Penelope Farmer	1962	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}	 Charlotte and Emma Makepeace are children living with their grandfather, Elijah, in a country house in the South Downs in southern England. Named Aviary Hall, the house is decorated with stuffed birds and images of birds. On the way to their small English village school, they meet and befriend a mysterious boy who tells them that he is able to teach them to fly. Over the following days and weeks, the boy teaches Charlotte to fly, and then the other children at the school learn this ability. The boy remains invisible to the adults, with the exception of the schoolteacher, Miss Hallibutt, who herself, as a child, had wished that she could fly. The boy tells her that he is unable to teach her to fly: he can only teach children. The children spend an idyllic summer flying above their village and the downs. As summer draws to an end, the boy offers to take the children on a journey, and the children prepare to go with the boy. Charlotte realises that the boy is not telling them the whole truth, and forces the boy to admit the truth. The boy reveals that while he wants to take them back to his country where the can fly forever, and be children forever, without adult responsibilities, the cost of following him is that they will never be able to return to their homes and their loved ones. The children decide that this indeed is too high a price to pay, and all decline to travel with the boy, with the exception of one girl, who has neither parents, nor a happy life to return to. The children return to their homes and prepare to begin a new term at school.
34403717	/m/0h_fbc5	The Black Rose	Thomas B. Costain		{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 In 13th century England, Walter, the bastard of Gurnie, attends a lecture by Roger Bacon at medieval Oxford and is inspired to journey to the far-away semi-mythical land of Cathay. After participating in a student riot and a raid on a castle&nbsp;– both led by his friend Tristram&nbsp;– Walter decides to leave England in order to escape Norman justice, taking Tristram with him. Walter's inheritance, obtained from his lord father's death, gets them as far as Antioch, where they are compelled to enter the services of a powerful Greek merchant named Anthemius. Impressed by Walter's cleverness and Tristram's physicality, he finds a place for them on a gift-bearing caravan heading east to the court of Kublai Khan. On the way, one of the beautiful women&nbsp;– the sister of Anthemius, Maryam (the Black Rose) - being sent as a gift to the great Khan escapes custody. She finds her way to the two Englishmen, who decide to shelter her on condition she pretend to be a servant boy and quietly leave when near the next large city. The caravan soon meets up with its chief escort: Bayan of the Hundred Eyes and his Mongol horde. Having fallen in love with Walter, Maryam stays with the duo; all three risking the deadly consequences that would follow their being caught by the Mongol general. The journey east sees Walter curry the favor of Bayan through being a competent chess-player and Tristram demonstrate the power of the English longbow in front of an astonished horde. Unfortunately, a spiteful Mongolian learns of their secret, and Walter decides they all need to leave the army. While the rest flee south into China, Walter attempts a desperate measure to lead the army off course. Although initially successful, he is caught in the act. He is honest to Bayan&nbsp;– who considers him a friend - but punished. He spends weeks recovering from the ordeal, and comes out with little hope of ever seeing his friend and lover again. He returns to Bayan only to be given the task of convincing the Chinese to surrender, for the Mongol horde has reached their borders. Once in the Chinese capital, he desperately searches for his companions while encouraging Chinese nobility to pursue peace. Although he succeeds in the first&nbsp;– marrying Maryam in the process&nbsp;– the Empress refuses to surrender due to an old proverb, and thereby holding them indefinitely. Caged in the most luxurious of palaces, the young couple live in happiness while the threat of war approaches. Eventually, they are able to procure escape, but Maryam is mistakenly left behind. Fearing her dead, the two friends find their way back to England. Two years of ship-hopping see them arrive home, rich with presents from the Empress and knowledge of the wondrous inventions they encountered: paper-manufacturing, gunpowder, the telescope, and the compass. Walter returns to Gurnie to find his lord grandfather prosperous in his business pursuits. Proud of his grandson, the old man names him heir to Gurnie. Now a nobleman, Walter finds his fame gaining him audience with the young King Edward I and his Queen, Eleanor of Castile. He tells them of the truths of Roger Bacon and the adventures to Cathay. Meanwhile, the determined Maryam&nbsp;– now with a baby Walter&nbsp;– finds it incredibly difficult to travel with the knowledge of only two English words. Around India to Aden, Alexandria, Venice, and Marseilles, she finally reaches London to be reunited with her husband&nbsp;– the very joyous and surprised Walter.
34404324	/m/0h_bhgj	Big Nate: Strikes Again	Lincoln Peirce	2010-10-19	{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Nate and Teddy are standing looking at the bulletin board looking at baby pictures for the "Guess that Baby!" game. Teddy points out a picture saying it's the ugliest. Nate realizes it's his picture. Francis walks up saying it's easy to tell it's Nate because he is drooling and he is trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Nate finds a baby picture of Francis and makes fun of it by saying Francis looked like a sumo wrestler in the picture. Teddy refuses to show Nate and Francis his picture. Then Nate finds Jenny's picture. He says it is the best looking baby by far. Gina walks up asking is he sure it's Jenny. He says it is. She goes up and peels off the picture. Nate tells her not to because it's not hers but it ends up being hers. Everybody laughs at Nate. Nate, Teddy, and Francis walk to Social Studies, and because of the new seating chart, Nate has to sit next to Gina. Then matters get worse when Ms. Godfrey pulls two names for a pair who will work on a project together. Francis and Teddy work to together and Artur and Jenny work together, which annoys Nate. But then Nate finds out he has to work with Gina on a Ben Franklin project. After class, they walk to the gym to see the team captain chart, and Nate is thrilled when it says he is a fleeceball (indoor baseball) captain. Then Randy Betancourt and his gang shows up. Randy sees his name on the chart, and when he sees Nate's name, he says he thought captains had to be good at sports. Then Nate says you don't have to be good at sports to be a captain. To prove this, Nate leads Randy and his gang to his locker. When Nate opens it stuff piles out of it burying Randy and his crew. Nate says you have to be able to outthink your opponent to be a good captain. Afterwards everybody is talking about how Nate punked Randy. Nate is at the library because he got in trouble in science. After the bell Nate has to go back to science so Mr. Galvin so he can lecture Nate. Nate realizes he's late to picking teammembers. After he gets to the gym he finds out Coach Calhoun already chose his team. Although discouraged at first, he is extra satisfied that Gina is on his team because now she is under his control. When Nate gets home he is thinking of a name for the team. When he hears Spitsy barking like crazy he gets a name, the Physco Dogs. The next day, Nate and his friends are walking to school, when Chad shows up. He tells Nate that Randy's looking for him. He says it's payback time. Nate thinks the school safety policy will keep him safe until he sees that Coach John is on duty. Nate thinks that if he sees Randy bossing him around, Coach John will let it go. Then Nate decides to run into the building, but Randy chases him. Then Principal Nichols stops them. Nate tries to get out of the situation by telling him that he's going to the computer lab to work on his Ben Franklin project, but Randy says he is, too. Then Principal Nichols asks the couple a question about Ben Franklin. When Nate answers correctly, Principal Nichols lets Nate go to the computer lab while Randy goes back outside. The bell rings, and Nate goes through a few classes. In art, the class is making clay sculptures, and Nate makes a Phsyco Dog mascot, and when Francis guesses it is a walrus, an annoyed Nate tells him it's a Phsyco Dog. Then Francis reminds him that he needed to tell Coach the fleeceball name by homeroom. After the bell rings, Nate rushes to Coach's office. Coach says Gina chose the name. Nate looks at the fleeceball schedule, and is shocked to discover that his team is named the Kuddle Kittens. Even though Nate still conciders that the name of his fleeceball team is still Psycho Dogs though nobody else calls them the Psycho Dogs after they read the bulletin board. Nate trying to get revenge on Gina by "accidentally" spilling egg salad on her but accidentally trips and spills it on his crush Jenny though Coach doesn't give him detention Jenny gets so mad at Nate even shouting IDIOT! at him.
34409725	/m/0h_dc57	Driving Big Davie	Colin Bateman		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 Dan Starkey is invited to Florida by his old friend, "Big Davie", who has a spare honeymoon ticket after being dumped by his erstwhile fiancée. Starkey is back with his wife Patricia and feels he's gotten over the murder of his toddler son "Little Stevie" - however his wife disagrees and declares that an American road trip would do him good. When the opportunity to avenge Stevie's death presents itself, Starkey cannot refuse.
34447211	/m/0h_cr9r	The Millionaire's Wife		2012-03-27	{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime"}	 Twenty years after George Kogan's murder, in July 2010, his estranged wife Barbara admitted to hiring a hit man to have her husband gunned down. She was sentenced to 12 to 36 years in prison. The son of Holocaust survivors, 49-year-old George Kogan grew up in Puerto Rico before relocating to New York City, where he enjoyed success as an antiques and art dealer—until one morning in 1990 when George was approached on the street by an unidentified gunman and was killed in cold blood. Just before the shooting, George had been on the way to his girlfriends’s apartment. Mary-Louise Hawkins was 29 years old and had once worked as George’s publicist. But after they became lovers, George’s estranged wife, Barbara, was consumed with bitterness. As she and George hashed out a divorce, Barbara fueled her anger into greed—especially after a judge turned down her request for $5,000 a week in alimony. Barbara, who stood to collect $4.3 million in life insurance, was immediately suspected in George’s death. But it would take authorities nearly 20 years to uncover a link between her lawyer, Manuel Martinez, who was convicted of hiring a hitman to kill George. In 2008, Martinez was convicted in the murder of George, and in 2010, Barbara pleaded guilty to grand larceny, conspiracy to commit murder, and murder in the first degree.
34452243	/m/0h_9n1q	Stranger Will	Caleb J. Ross		{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}	 William Lowson spends his working life in the town of Brackenwood as a Human Remains Removal Specialist, cleaning stains left over after violent deaths. He spends his home life trying to convince his pregnant fiancée, Julie, that raising a child in a world so depraved is not only ignorant but egomaniacal as well. So far, however, Julie remains strict to her motherly desires and constantly assures William that his anxiety stems from simple cynicism. When not cleaning messes or preaching the world’s distress William sits atop a highway billboard and shoots down messenger pigeons as they attempt to deliver their cargo. Over the years William has amassed a sizable collection of their fallen messages, which he pins to a wall in his home. Throughout the novel William places and rearranges these messages according to similar themes in a subconscious attempt to organize the chaos around him. During one of these outings William meets Mrs. Rose, the messenger pigeon ring’s organizer and principal of Harold Straton Elementary. Conversation drifts toward William’s hesitancies with fatherhood, and considering Mrs. Rose’s part-time work at a local adoption agency she and William quickly become good friends. One night William gets an early morning call for a cleanup in the neighboring city of Alexandria. He and his co-worker, Philip, find at the location not only a human stain but also a woman in the basement, Shelia, barely alive, and as they find out later, the recipient of a very recent back alley abortion. Philip, always the romantic, quickly takes to this woman’s plight and rides with her to the hospital. William stays back to finish the original job. Philip pretends to be the woman’s brother in order to assume responsibility for her, but as is typical with Philip and his company he asks William and Julie for a few days’ help while he prepares his home for Shelia’s potentially lengthy stay. They accept. Shelia, due to a series of medical complications originating from the back alley abortion, screams all night. Julie cannot take the screaming so William agrees to ask for help. Mrs. Rose agrees to care for Shelia. A few days later Julie goes into labor. For William this event is the culminated failure of unsuccessful attempts to persuade Julie into somehow getting rid of the child. In his desperation he calls Mrs. Rose for help, though because Julie’s contractions are close he must leave for the hospital immediately. Due to the heavy rain William is run off the road and crashes the van. He blacks out. He wakes to Mrs. Rose burying his child. She reveals that her involvement with adoptions goes much further than the passive act of answering questions and guiding parents. She plays an active role in weeding out potentially “faulty” children, while motivating other children via her unique leadership styles at Harold Straton Elementary. One of these unique methods is hiring fake homeless people to sit outside the school playground in an attempt to draw the children near, and then using the interaction to teach children not to talk to strangers. Though growing apprehensive of Mrs. Rose’s methods William agrees to take part as a stranger knowing that he can argue little considering his involvement in the death of his child. The next day he plants himself at the Harold Straton playground, dressed in torn clothing and a fake beard. He meets Frank, one of the veteran strangers, and is invited to play cards with him and the rest of the strangers. William declines so that he can visit Julie at the hospital, whom he learns is comatose. The following night, however, he accepts Frank’s invitation and joins the strangers for horseshoes. He learns that the strangers are not as passive as he has been led to believe. They, like their mentor Mrs. Rose, actively participate in weeding out children, only their methods are truly disturbing. They manipulate the children anyway they can in order for Mrs. Rose to witness the devotion the children have toward her. One particular project has the children huge a tree covered in toxic phenyl. If they hug the tree, they pass; if they don’t, they fail. During his time sitting outside the playground William meets a child named Eugene, whom Frank says doesn’t have the potential to move forward in Mrs. Rose’s program. William grows close to Eugene, ultimately embracing the idea of fatherhood via his time with the boy. Once Mrs. Rose discovers this camaraderie she asks William to join her on an “adoption” meeting with an expecting couple. By this time, of course, William has learned that “adoption” means abortion, and that Mrs. Rose’s influence runs deep: even Shelia was one of her projects. Having learned of the beauty in fatherhood William spends this meeting with the expecting couple subtly undercutting Mrs. Rose’s attempts to sway this couple into “adoption.” By the end of the meeting, however, Mrs. Rose is successful. Julie returns from the hospital unaware of where her child has gone but insistent that she find it. She spends every moment digging holes, tearing down walls, destroying everything in search for her baby. William, having changed his mind about parenthood, watches this with absolute shame. At his most depressed state William is called, along with Philip, for a cleanup job at a home William recognizes as the Miller’s. Mrs. Rose has completed her task by taking their baby and William must now clean up the bloody mess left over. In the kitchen William finds a caged messenger pigeon with a note attached. Having learned that the messenger pigeon ring is Mrs. Rose’s way of organizing her “adoptions” William hesitates to read the note but does, discovering that it was Mrs. Rose who ran him off the road causing the wreck that killed his child. In an effort to end everything William kills Mrs. Rose and goes to the police about his missing child, but when they attempt to locate his child William finds that Mrs. Rose has moved it. The police reprimand William for the wasted time. William goes home understanding that he cannot control the world, but he can embrace his time with it.
34457593	/m/0h_cqj5	Arrhythmia			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The novel is set in a busy Montreal hospital in 1999. Joelle, a secretary at a hospital, worries that her marriage is failing as her husband Marc continuously shows signs of distraction. Marc, who also works at the hospital, becomes obsessed with Ketia, a 19-year-old nurse. They become dear friends and eventually develop feelings towards each other; they make love in Ketia's car. Ketia lies to her family about her liaison with Marc, knowing that they would not approve. During this Joelle's former abusive boyfriend Emile arrives at the hospital with cancer. Joelle's best friend Diane, who is a whiz at crossword puzzles, is dating and living with her Muslim boyfriend, Nazim. Diane does not realize that Nazim has never told his family in Morocco about her. Nazim soon receives a letter from his sister Ghada, saying that she is coming to see him in Canada. Soon after Marc reveals to Joelle that he will be moving out of their home. Joelle learns of his liaison with Ketia. Nazim also reveals to Diane that his sister is coming and he doesn't want to reveal the truth, so Diane goes to stay with Joelle to help her cope while Ghada comes to town. It is revealed that Ketia's affair with Marc resulted in her becoming pregnant. Ketia does not want to reveal this to Marc let alone anyone else, however she eventually reveals the truth to her younger sister Gabrielle. They both know that their mother would not approve of her pregnancy. Marc finds out about Ketia's pregnancy through rumors at the hospital, and tells Joelle the truth. Ketia continues to avoid Marc as she does not want him to find out the truth; little did she know that rumors had already done that for her. Ketia worries about what she will do, as her mother will not support her choices to keep the baby. This leads to Ketia getting an abortion. Marc attempts to find Ketia and tell her that he knows and fully supports her, however other nurses tell Marc that what he is doing is sexually harassing Ketia by continuously following her, during which they reveal that Ketia terminated her pregnancy. With Marc now knowing all of this information, he returns to Joelle and asks for a second chance, which she declines. Joelle reveals that she is filing for divorce. Diane moves back to her apartment with Nazim, who sent Ghada back home without ever mentioning a word of her.
34459940	/m/0h_ddfq	I Didn't Mean to be Kevin	Caleb J. Ross		{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Jackson Jacoby lives a life of abandonment. His father died when he was young. He and his mother suffered a falling-apart when Jackson was only ten. He lives alone in a studio apartment, uses the delivery truck he drives for his snack-vending job as his personal mode of transportation, and has just two friends: one of whom, Creg Deja, is a kindred without a mother or a father. Jackson’s hatred for his job is a common point of conversation between him and Creg. After a particularly heated discussion one afternoon in a Laundromat, Jackson retires to his apartment to browse classifieds ads in search of a new job, but instead comes across a plea, disguised as a want-ad for day laborers, from an abandoned mother begging for her runaway son to return home. Drunk and confused after a night out, Jackson dials the phone number unwittingly beginning a phone relationship with the mother. The next morning, feeling bad about misleading the mother, Jackson visits his other friend, his Uncle Marve. Jackson respects Uncle Marve more than he respects most people. He's a cryptic man, full of stories and hatred for Jackson’s mother (“The mother needs the kid, the kid needs the mother. Take out the ‘need’ from either pair and you’ve got either a woman who considers her son an obstacle, like in your case, or you’ve got a boy who is just floating around without roots.”). Via the morning’s discussion, Jackson’s hatred for his real mother is rekindled. He decides to continue his ruse with the fake mother despite moral hesitation. Creg spends his days at a Laundromat searching Spanish TV programs for his lost mother. She left him when he was a child, citing her desire to become a Spanish soap opera star. In return for his TV time, the owner of the laundry, Luisa, employs Creg to destroy surrounding Laundromats in order to obliterate competition. Jackson joins him on one of these errands which ends with police chasing them and only Jackson escaping. Afraid of the law and with no substantial reason to stay in Veranda, Jackson embarks on a journey to Delaware, home of the runaway’s mother. Along the way, he meets a variety of characters, and to them he repeats a certain story: that of his theft of a cauliflower ear from a B.W.P beef plant worker named Marion Garza. Jackson boils with pride by this story, from meeting the man years ago at a truck stop diner, all the way to the hows and whys of Jackson stealing the ear. He tells of a plan he made with a truck stop prostitute named Gina; that they were going to travel the county stealing abnormal body parts and selling them to tourist trap human parts museums. Very few of the strangers believe his stories. As he nears Delaware, he meets and befriends many people, two of whom, Bradley and Robert, especially interest him considering their similar situation: neither have a mother. Taken by Jackson’s story of his road trip to Delaware they join him and venture eastward. They arrive at the specified church where a will reading for the runaway’s grandfather is to take place, but they find only a room full of men, ages roughly eighteen to forty. The crowd waits hours for the will reading but after too long, the boys disperse, leaving only Robert, Bradley, and Jackson. Upset, they track the mother down, and discover that she had been planting the want-ad pleas in random newspapers throughout the country in hopes that her son might find one. Instead, she lured three motherless, hopeful boys. The ruse upsets everyone. The three of them—Jackson, Bradley, and Robert—part ways. Jackson returns to Veranda, stopping along the way at a tourist trap called Pen’s Maze, a snow labyrinth that melts during the spring. He steals an ear from the curator, hoping to feel vindicated by the proof of a real ear (after accepting that Marion Garza’s cauliflower ear was a fake). Instead, he feels nothing. Upon reentering Veranda Jackson passes on visiting the park in which Uncle Marve usually sat—it being full of cameras and news vans—and heads instead to Luisa’s Laundry to tell Creg of his journey. But he discovers that Creg, who is always at the laundry, is not there. After slight pleading, Luisa admits that Creg left for Mexico to find his mother. The TV, normally tuned to Spanish stations, instead broadcast the local news; a story of a local man found dead whom Jackson recognizes as Uncle Marve. Via a note found with the body police investigators discover hundreds of pounds of metal hidden in the park. Jackson remembers one of the many things Uncle Marve taught him: “Who am I without the war? Who is your Marion Garza without BWP? Who are you without Marion Garza? An old man, a sad Mexican, a lost little boy.” Validation, he learns, is something universally desired and universally needed.
34471214	/m/0h_bm26	Nine Inches	Colin Bateman	2011-10-13	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 The four-year-old son of Jack Caramac, a shock jock radio broadcaster and old friend of Dan Starkey, is kidnapped for one hour and returned unharmed. Starkey, now a self-styled "upmarket private eye", is hired to investigate the kidnapping and ascertain who might have been behind it – a significant task given the number of people offended by Caramac's illustration of the crime and corruption prevalent throughout Belfast. Starkey's investigations lead him to the Miller brothers, officially the Chiefs of Staff for the Ulster Volunteer Force, although viewed by Starkey as merely a group of Shankill Road thugs intent on pedalling drugs across Belfast. The Millers have been attempting to evict a widow named Jean Murray from her house and Starkey intervenes, hoping his knowledge of their drug operation would dissuade any repercussions. Starkey's interference leads to the Murray's house being burnt down with Jean still inside.
34477621	/m/0h_d4r_	Chowringhee	Mani Shankar Mukherjee	1962		 Sankar named his novel Chowringhee as the novel is set in Chowringhee, a neighborhood in Calcutta, in the mid-1950s. The narrator, Shankar, an ambitious young man who is previously a secretary of an English barrister, becomes unemployed as the Barrister dies all on a sudden and begins selling wastepaper baskets door to door. As he takes rest in a neighborhood park, reminiscing about his past and fearful of what awaits him in future, a friend of his passes by, who is shocked by Shankar's descent into poverty. He tells Shankar that he can find him a job at the Shahjahan Hotel, one of the city's oldest and most venerable hotels, as the hotel manager is one of his clients. Shankar is soon befriended by Sata Bose, the hotel's chief receptionist, and after a brief stint as a typist, Shankar becomes Bose's main assistant and close confidant. The manager, Marco Polo, likes him as well, and young Shankar is given more responsibilities by both men. The story of the novel spins around the guests, entertainers, and frequent visitors of the Shahjahan, but several members of the hotel staff get equal importance in Shankar's narrative. We learn about the seamy underside of the elite of Calcutta, whose greed, shady deals, and shameful behaviors are initially shocking to our naïve young man, but he soons become jaded and disgusted by them. The poverty of working and jobless Calcuttans is vividly portrayed, as those not in the upper echelon are only one stroke of bad luck away from living in the streets or in dilapidated hovels. Love is a central theme, amongst the guests and workers, with often tragic results.
34479695	/m/0j27vx_	The Life			{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Life traces the life story of Dennis Keith, now obese, mentally unwell and living in retirement village with his mother. A young would-be biographer arrives one day and begins to teases out his past. The story is told in different strands, one being reflections by Dennis (often in a variety of styles – first person, then third person) and also present day conversations with the biographer. Dennis is a poor gold coast kid who is mysteriously found and adopted by his mother "Mo" Keith. Dennis and his stepbrother Rod become obsessed with surfing at an earlier age. They prove to be talented and daring surfers and soon develop a reputation. They start entering competitions and eventually enter the nascent pro circuit all the while descending into heavy drug use. Dennis stumbles into an intermittent relationship with a singer Lisa Exmire. Lisa is found murdered and eventually charges are laid. Dennis drug use escalates and he drops out of the pro circuit. The novel concludes by revealing the truth about Dennis's family, the murder and biographer.
34483310	/m/0j27drs	The Wanderers	Richard Price		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 Richie Gennaro is the 17-year-old leader of the Wanderers, an Italo-American youth gang in the Bronx in 1962. His girlfriend is Denise Rizzo. Richie’s friends in the Wanderers are Joey Capra, Buddy Borsalino, Eugene Caputo and Perry LaGuardia. At the beginning of the book a broad range of events and characters describe the zeitgeist. In addition to the protagonists many characters appear only once. At first “gang-business” is on focus: rivalry with other gangs in the neighborhood who come from different cultural and/or ethnical backgrounds. This rivalry is determined by prejudice and machismo. But there is also competition in terms of sports such as football and bowling. And above all it’s about being cool and to have sex for the first time. But it’s a cumbersome road. Toward the end of the book the events focus more and more on the protagonists and their problems and challenges of growing up – every one in his own way. Eugene joins the marines after watching, without interfering, his girlfriend, Nina, being raped. Perry’s father had died several years ago. Now his mother dies and suddenly he is on his own. Living with his aunt in Trenton, New Jersey, becomes unbearable for him, so he decides to go to Boston and sail to sea. After the situation escalates Joey flees from his violent father and joins Perry. And Buddy impregnates his girlfriend, Despie, on their very first date and has to face the challenges of a 17-year-old husband and father. The serious side of life is catching up, the gang is falling apart and Richie is staying behind.
34485490	/m/0j272pg	Child of Fortune	Norman Spinrad			 The book is presented as an autobiographical tale, CHILD OF FORTUNE, A Historie of the Second Starfaring Age by Wendi Shasta Leonardo, and it includes an introduction written by the fictional narrator. Adolescents in the Second Starfaring Age are expected to embark on a journey of self-discovery called a wanderjahr, "the eternal journey from childhood to maturity through the wondrous and terrible chaos of the region between." The wanderers are known as "Children of Fortune", and their culture contains elements of the carnivalesque and 1960s flower Children. The waderjahr is typically a fairly long journey that only ends when the wanderer adopts her adult name (her freenom) and chooses her life's work. Some never complete this rite of passage, and remain Children of Fortune their whole lives. The novel is the story of Wendi Shasta Leonardo's wanderjahr. The story begins when Wendi, known by her childhood name Moussa, leaves her home planet, Glade, with only a return ticket home, a small amount of spending money, and a sex-enhancing ring. She travels to the planet-sized city of Edoku, where she quickly burns through all her money, and becomes a mendicant. She is adopted by a group of Children of Fortune known as the Gypsy Jokers. Moussa falls in love with the leader of the Gypsy Jokers, Pater Pan, who teaches her the art of ruespieling (story-telling) and gives her the name Sunshine. After the abrupt disappearance of Pater Pan, Sunshine leaves Edoku with a wealthy Child of Fortune named Guy Vlad Boca. They sample the hedonistic life of the Honored Passengers aboard the interstellar Void Ships and eventually arrive on the planet Belshazaar. On Belshazar, there is a large forest known as the Bloomenwald, which is the source of a plethora of naturally occurring psychedelic drugs. The trees use intoxicants to induce mammals to perform pollination duties, and many Children of Fortune are trapped by the forest ecosystem. Through her force of will, Sunshine is able to lead a group back to reality. This becomes the basis for her first original composition as a ruespieler, "The Pied Piper of the Bloomenwald". Sunshine's tale attracts the attention of an author who convinces her to go find Pater Pan, so that the story will have an ending. Sunshine finds Pater Pan addicted to the Charge, a kind of electronic drug. As he is dying, she experiences his entire life story in a kind of ecstatic vision. Sunshine ends her wanderjahr and adopts the freenom Wendi Shasta Leonardo.
34487989	/m/0j2690v	Dead End in Norvelt	Jack Gantos	2011-09-13		 Dead End takes place during the summer after the American schoolboy Jack Gantos fires his father's war trophy, a Japanese sniper rifle. As punishment he must stay in the house except as sent by his mother to help their elderly neighbor Miss Volker write obituaries and a history column for the town newspaper. Among other things, that work uncovers a murder mystery. Jack "learns snippets of American history that he has never been taught in school", some indirectly and some by Miss Volker's pointed explanations.
34497243	/m/0j24g8l	My French Whore	Gene Wilder			 Set towards the end of WWI, in 1918, it tells the story of a shy young railway employee and amateur actor from Milwaukee, named Paul Peachy. Having realised that his wife no longer loves him, Paul enlists as a private in the U.S. Army and boards ship for the trenches of France. Peachy finds temporary solace in friendship amid horrors of war, but is soon captured by the enemy Germans in No Man's Land. His only chance of survival is to impersonate one of the enemy's most famous spies (as a child of immigrants, he is a fluent German speaker). As the urbane and accomplished spy Harry Stroller, Peachy is feted as a hero by the German top brass and gains access to a previously unimagined world of sumptuous living. But his new role also reveals inner reserves of courage and ingenuity he never knew he possessed, as the mounting suspicions of his German hosts force Peachy into ever more outrageous deceptions. In this atmosphere of smoke and mirrors, Paul Peachy falls in love with Annie, a beautiful French courtesan, who seems to see through his artful disguise. The ending is a surprise of twists and clever plotting.
34507959	/m/0c3q812	The descendants	Kaui Hart Hemmings	2007		 Matthew King was once considered one of the most fortunate men in Hawaii. His missionary ancestors were financially and culturally progressive–one even married a Hawaiian princess, making Matt a royal descendant and one of the state’s largest landowners. Now his luck has changed. His two daughters are out of control: Ten-year-old Scottie is a smart-ass with a desperate need for attention, and seventeen-year-old Alex, a former model, is a recovering drug addict. Matt’s charismatic, thrill-seeking, high-maintenance wife, Joanie, lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident and will soon be taken off life support. The Kings can hardly picture life without her, but as they come to terms with this tragedy, their sadness is mixed with a sense of freedom that shames them–and spurs them into surprising actions. Before honoring Joanie’s living will, Matt must gather her friends and family to say their final goodbyes, a difficult situation made worse by the sudden discovery that there is one person who hasn’t been told: the man with whom Joanie had been having an affair, quite possibly the one man she ever truly loved. Forced to examine what he owes not only to the living but to the dead, Matt takes to the road with his daughters to find his wife’s lover, a memorable journey that leads to both painful revelations and unforeseen humor and growth.
34514620	/m/0j28pvw	Madonna: Like an Icon	Lucy O'Brien	2007-08-27	{"/m/017fp": "Biography"}	 The biography is divided into three parts. The first part is named Baptism and tells about Madonna's birth in Detroit, Michigan, her early childhood, her time in New York, and her dance degree. It also talks in detail about the release of her first three studio albums—Madonna, Like a Virgin and True Blue—her marriage to actor Sean Penn, and also her foray into films. The middle part, named as Confession, starts from the Like a Prayer era onwards where Madonna has become a global superstar. It continues up to the release of the erotic coffee table book called Sex, and the commercial disappointments that she faced. The third part is called Absolution, and starts with Madonna giving birth to her daughter Lourdes. It continues with the release of Ray of Light in 1998 and subsequent four studio albums, her worldwide concert tours, her marriage to Guy Ritchie and controversies surrounding her adoption from the African country, Malawi. It ends with the release of Madonna's 2008 album, Hard Candy, and the singer reaching the age of fifty.
34522298	/m/0crqkn	City of God	Paulo Lins	1997	{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 City of God is set in a city renowned for its natural beauty. The novel follows the lives of gangsters and petty criminals living in the Favela. The novel is set from the 1960s through to the 1980s. At the beginning the money made by the delinquents is essentially gained through hold-ups. As the years progress into the 70’s, cocaine begins to make a large appearance in the criminals lives, the focus now turns to drugs both dealing and consuming vast amounts. Due to the increase in drug lords money becomes guns and with guns come power and so evolves large conflicts over who has the ultimate control over drug dealing in the Favela, resulting in gang wars. The law does not apply throughout the novel the power is held by the criminals and drug lords who effectively govern the Favela. The police are interested in how well the gangs are doing for their own gain, due to the lack of government involvement and the low wages the police get paid, the police are easily corrupt.
34544176	/m/0j27lky	The Demigod Diaries	Rick Riordan	2012-08-14	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 The Demigod Diaries contains four new stories with character interviews, illustrations of Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Jason Grace, Piper McLean, Leo Valdez and a first ever seen picture of Thalia Grace (it also contains a picture of Hal who is a new character in the first story), puzzles, and a quiz. The four stories include: * Thalia's, Luke's, and Annabeth's adventures before the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series began * A first-person narrative from Percy's viewpoint as he and Annabeth complete a task given by Hermes regarding his staff which happens a month after the end of The Last Olympian and before Percy went missing in The Lost Hero * A story involving Jason, Leo, and Piper during their time spent at Camp Half-Blood between The Lost Hero and The Son of Neptune It also includes a short story by Riordan's son, Haley Riordan, revolving around one of the demigods who fought for Kronos during the Second Titan War and survived the battle in Manhattan.
34584043	/m/0j252r9	Belenggu	Armijn Pane			 The novel begins as Sukartono (Tono), a Dutch-trained doctor, and his wife Sumartini (Tini), residents of Batavia (modern day Jakarta), are suffering a marital breakdown. Tono is busy treating his patients, leaving no time for him to be with Tini. In response, Tini has become active in numerous social organisations and women's groups, leaving her little time to deal with household work. This further distances Tono from her, as he expects her to behave like a traditional wife and be waiting for him at home, with dinner ready, when he returns from work. One day, Tono receives a call from a Miss Eni, who asks him to treat her at a hotel. After Tono arrives at the hotel where Eni is staying, he discovers that she is actually his childhood friend Rohayah (Yah). Yah, who has had romantic feelings for Tono since childhood, begins seducing him, and after a while he accepts her advances. The two begin furtively meeting, often taking long walks at the port Tanjung Priok. When Tini goes to Surakarta to attend a women's congress, Tono decides to stay at Yah's house for a week. While at Yah's, Tono and Yah discuss their pasts. Tono reveals that after he graduated from elementary school in Bandung, where he studied with Yah, he attended medical school in Surabaya and married Tini for her beauty. Meanwhile, Yah was forced to marry an older man and move to Palembang. After deciding that life as a wife was not for her, she moved to Batavia and became a prostitute, before serving as a Dutchman's mistress for three years. Tono falls further in love with Yah, as he feels that she is more likely to be a proper wife for him; Yah, however, does not consider herself ready for marriage. Tono, a fan of traditional kroncong music, is asked to judge a singing competition at Gambir Market. While there, he discovers that Yah is also his favourite singer, who sings under the pseudonym Siti Hayati. At Gambir, he also meets with his old friend Hartono, a political activist with the political party Partindo, who enquires about Tini. On a later date, Hartono visits Tono's home and meets Tini. It is revealed that Tini was romantically involved with Hartono while the two of them were in university, where Tini surrendered her virginity to him; this action, unacceptable in traditional culture, made her disgusted with herself and unable to love. Hartono had made the situation worse by breaking off their relationship through a letter. When Hartono asks her to take him back, Tini refuses. Tini discovers that Tono has been having an affair, and is furious. She then goes to meet Yah. However, after a long talk she decides that Yah is better for Tono and tells the former prostitute to marry him; Tini then moves back to Surabaya, leaving Tono in Batavia. However, Yah feels that she would only ruin Tono's respected status as a doctor because of her history. She decides to move to New Caledonia, leaving a note for Tono as well as a record with a song recorded especially for him as a way of saying goodbye. On the way to New Caledonia, Yah pines for Tono and hears his voice calling from afar, giving a speech on the radio. Tono, now alone, dedicates himself to his work in an attempt to fill the void left in his heart.
34607458	/m/0j24ckm	Wisdom's Daughter	H. Rider Haggard		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}	 As Holly points out, the story is told from She’s perspective, and since She claims to have lived for over two thousand years, since Ancient Egypt, there is no way to compare her story with any other sources, or witnesses. She Who Must Be Obeyed says that she was Arabian, by birth; and, given the name Ayesha. Although, in the introduction, Sir H. Rider Haggard, links the name Ayesha to Mohammed's wives, and Arabic or Arabic names, (Arabic: عائشة‎, Āʾisha), stating that it should be pronounced "Ash/ -ha"; A·ye·sha/ äˈ(y)ēSHə/, is perhaps more common. She claims that her natural beauty and wisdom was so great, it caused wars between the princes, who wanted to marry her. She says that while this was at first a great source of pride among her Father’s people, they soon began to resent her, and spread vicious rumours that she was cursed. Ayesha leads her Father’s people into victory, and revels in the battle; but, the women envy her, and the men lust after her. So, she decides to go into hiding, with her tutor, an Egyptian priest; rather than be turned over to the approaching armies of Pharaoh. She tells about travelling through the ancient world, encountering all the major artists, who want her to model for them; as well as philosophers, and religions of the time, from Ancient Greece and fledgling Ancient Rome to Palestine and Jerusalem. Finally, they return to Egypt, where once again, her beauty and wisdom become a source of contention. She swears an oath of celibacy, to serve Isis the Goddess of the Spirit of Nature, and turn away from Aphrodite the Goddess of Love. But, soon a Greek soldier of fortune, Kallikrates, formerly employed by the Pharaoh comes to her, for sanctuary. He takes an oath to serve Isis; but, the Pharaoh’s daughter pursues him; and, seeing the way Ayesha looks at him, she determines to destroy her, as a rival. The Princess mocks Ayesha’s prophecies as mere parlor tricks. She goads her Father into giving Ayesha away, as a sex slave, to one of his allies. Repeatedly, Ayesha is in danger; but, even in the midst of fire and battle, Isis and her followers save her from ruin and rape. Ayesha’s fame grows so great, that she is called “Isis Come To Earth” and “Wisdom’s Daughter”. Finally, the King of Kings, of the Persian Empire, comes to see her. He laughs that anyone would be afraid of what must be an old hag, as Isis’s Priestess. He spits on Isis’s statues, and burns the old gods. However, again her beauty, which the King glimpses beneath her veil; betrays her; and, he determines to rape her, with the rest of the country. Isis saves her; and, they escape, to reunite with her old Captain, Kallikrates, and the Princess. Ayesha is inspired that Isis wants to rebuild her cult and usher in a new Golden Age, in the world, through herself. She is led to the hidden kingdom of Kor, in Africa, to begin. Once there, Ayesha meets her former tutor, who has been guarding The Flame of Eternal Life, which will make a person young and powerful, for as long as the world endures. He passes this one last mystery onto Ayesha, warning her of its temptation to her vanity. The Princess mocks Ayesha’s fading youth; and feeling ashamed, in front of Kallikrates, Ayesha determines to break her oaths, and make herself and him both immortal, to rule the world, like Gods, by stepping into The Flame. This way she feels she will be as "Isis Come To Earth", indeed. But, "Wisdom's Daughter" is Fortune's Fool, and falls by Love's Folly. Kallikrates is afraid when he sees Ayesha, in her preternatural beauty, after she has bathed in The Flame; and, dies. The others either flee in terror or are killed, overwhelmed by her beauty. Aphrodite laughs at her, and Isis. Now, Ayesha cannot die, or her will be opposed. She is as terrible, beautiful, and deadly as lightning. After Kallikrates' death, the Princess flees, urging Leo’s ancestors to revenge themselves on She, through the artifacts, she passes down, which Holly and Leo find, in the first book, She: A History of Adventure. Ayesha is doomed to wait, in Kor, for his return, through the centuries, becoming weary of the world. She has learned everything the world and Nature has to offer; but, still she must wait, for love and redemption.
34621656	/m/0j28_b0	The Twilight of Briareus	John Middleton Murry, Jr.	1974	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 Briareus Delta becomes a supernova only about 130 light-years from Earth. While admiring the aurora it produces, the comprehensive-school English teacher Calvin Johnson meets one of his students, Margaret Hardy. Dazed after a tornado caused by the supernova, Calvin and Margaret are mysteriously compelled into a joyless sex act. Calvin learns that Margaret and many other sixteen-year-old girls then slept around the clock and longer, with strange dreams. A few months later, it appears that no human pregnancies have started since the supernova. Calvin and others face the possibility of the extinction of humanity. Although most scientists are baffled, the retired zoology professor Angus McHarty speculates that some powerful entities have made use of the supernova to try to "take over" humanity, and conceptions are not occurring because at a deep level people prefer extinction to losing human identity. The people who slept, mostly girls, are becoming known as "Zeta mutants" after a new "zeta" rhythm observable in their brainwaves. Sometimes their minds "meld" together, and they can have visions, which seem to be precognitive. They tend to accept events as they come—"the pattern must fulfill itself." At least some of the girls among them feel compelled to have sex with Calvin, but he resists. Researchers are taking Zetas into custody because it appears that they can become pregnant, but Calvin escapes with help from the Zetas' sympathisers. It transpires that the Zeta research project produced no viable babies, and most of the subjects were killed or suffered mental damage. A remorseful world begins to treat the remaining Zetas well. Calvin proves to be a "diplodeviant", one of very few people whose zeta and alpha rhythms are in phase. McHarty suggests that the Zetas have largely joined the take-over by the "Briarians" and that the diplodeviants, who are less fatalistic than most Zetas, have the deciding vote in whether humanity as a whole will accept it. Calvin meets Margaret again and they become lovers. The children conceived just before the supernova, the "Twilight Generation", prove to be Zetas who share feelings and clairvoyant visions even more strongly than their elders. Most of them are brought to a centre in Geneva that is run along humanitarian lines. The supernova has disrupted the Gulf Stream and Britain's climate is becoming frigid, causing most of its inhabitants to leave. Calvin and Margaret move to Geneva for a few years. Calvin and Margaret have visions of a certain farm in England, which they feel they have to find. After an arduous trip to Lincolnshire (where the snow is not quite yet melting in June), they find the farm in the possession of a teen-aged orphan, Elizabeth, and her cousin, Tony. Elizabeth is perhaps the only Twilighter who is the child of a Zeta; Calvin reaches the conclusion that she is also the only female diplodeviant. Tony and Margaret fall in love, and then Calvin and Elizabeth do likewise. Elizabeth becomes pregnant. Spencer, a mystically and religiously inclined Zeta who had lived at the farm, returns to it. Calvin has increasingly explicit visions and then conversations with the "Briarians". He learns that he is called upon to choose between the old humanity with its struggles and the group consciousness and blissful life offered by the Briarians. Spencer compares Calvin's role to Christ's. Spencer's postscript tells how, as Elizabeth is in labour, feral dogs attach the farm. Calvin takes a shotgun to deal with them, and it fires, killing him. Spencer concludes that Calvin intentionally sacrificed his life, as he knew this action was the only one both old humanity and the Zetas and Briarians could accept. The baby is born. At this moment, Zetas become able to conceive, and the world's rebirth begins, guided by the spiritual powers of the new generation.
34666321	/m/0j26nc5	The Black Box	Michael Connelly		{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 "Bosch will tackle a 20-year-old cold case" which took place during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
34671340	/m/0j28pk5	Der Wehrwolf	Hermann Löns		{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 The Thirty Years' War is at its height and the peasantry suffers under countless marauders, which roam the lands. The main protagonist Harm Wulf, a peasant, already lost his family in the first years of war and becomes the defending Wulf (wehrender Wulf) by defending a hill fort and its surrounding carr, where some local peasants hide from the pillaging hordes. Harm Wulf gathers more and more allies until 121 men are in the Alliance of the Wehrwolf. When peace is finally restored is Harm Wulf an old and grim man.
34728872	/m/0j3d5qz	Suspicion	Friedrich Dürrenmatt			 Inspector Hans Bärlach, at the end of his career and suffering from cancer, is recovering from an operation. He witnesses how his friend and doctor Samuel Hungertobel turns pale and becomes nervous when looking at a photograph in a magazine he is reading. The person pictured is the German Dr Nehle who carried out horrific experiments on prisoners in the concentration camp Stutthof near Gdansk and is believed to have committed suicide in Chile in 1945. Hungertobel explains that his colleague Fritz Emmenberger, who was in Chile during the war, closely resembles Dr Nehle. Bärlach suspects that Nehle and Emmenberger either changed roles during their time in Chile or happen to be the same person. A close friend of Bärlach's is the Jew Gulliver who fell victim to Nehle's experiments in Stuffhof. Gulliver visits Bärlach and they talk through the night. In the morning, Bärlach is convinced that Dr Emmenberger, who is now leading a famous private clinic in Zurich, committed the crimes under the false name of Dr Nehle. He decides to sign himself into Emmenberger's clinic under the false name of Kramer in order to put the suspect under pressure. In the clinic, Bärlach can indeed identify Dr Emmenberger as the man who committed those terrible crimes. However, the cancer has weakened him and he loses all control, being consistently drugged under Emmenberger's supervision. All hospital staff proves to be blindly committed to Emmenberger whose plan it is to brutally murder Bärlach under the pretense of an operation. Bärlach is saved in the nick of time when Gulliver steps in, murders Emmenberger and leads Bärlach out of the dubious clinic to be reunited with his friend Hungertobel in Bern.
34748589	/m/0j3dk3d	Who Killed Zebedee?	Wilkie Collins		{"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"}	 "Who Killed Zebedee?," opens with a direct address to the readers by an otherwise unnamed narrator. On his deathbed, our narrator, a Roman Catholic, feels compelled to make a confession to the readers about his involvement in an unsolved murder case back when he was still a young police constable in London. The recounting of the death of Zebedee opens with a distraught young woman, Priscilla Thurlby, the cook at the Zebedee's boarding house, rushing into the police station with a blood-curdling scream. Priscilla informs the skeptical assembly that, "A young woman has murdered her husband in the night!" While the police initially believe the young woman to be intoxicated, they eventually visit the boarding house to find that a young, married man has been stabbed in the back with a knife. The police immediately begin an inspection of the scene of the crime. The lodgers of the boarding house are interviewed, all of whom prove to be eccentric, however, during the interviews, the young constable and his fellow officers become increasingly suspicious of Mr. Deluc, a smarmy cigar agent, who had made repeated amorous advances towards Mrs. Zebedee. Unfortunately, this suspicion is confounded by Mrs. Zebedee, who is positive she has killed her husband in her sleep. A sleepwalker, Mrs. Zebedee had read a story about a young woman who had murdered her husband in her sleep before falling asleep on the night her husband was murdered. The police suspect the real answer might hinge on the half-inscribed knife, "To John Zebedee-" still wedged in Zebedee's back, but a preliminary search reveals nothing. After several false leads, interest in the case wanes, until the police and the public abandon the case entirely. Finally, the young constable is the only one left with a vested interest. Over the course of the investigation, the constable falls in love with Priscilla Thurlby, and proposes marriage. Priscilla rejects him on the basis of their both being working class and unable to afford a marriage. The constable become convinced that if he can solve the case, they can have their marriage and so Priscilla acquiesces and invites him home to her village to meet her family. On the way to Priscilla's country home, the constable is detained by an incompetent railroad station attendant and ends up temporarily stranded in the town of Waterbank. As he waits for the next train, he notices a shopfront, James Wycomb, Cutler etc., and begins to wonder whether the London police have fully exhausted all cutlers in their investigation. The discovery the constable makes inside brings the case to its dramatic conclusion.
34759173	/m/0j3cgjl	Charon's Claw	Robert Anthony Salvatore			 The story begins in the year 1463 DR with a meeting of the Xoralarrin House of Menzoberranzan. Ravel is the second boy and spellspinner of the house. He is a former apprentice of Gromph. While studying with him he discovered the Skull Gem containing the soul of Arklem Greeth and learns of the recently rediscovered Gauntlgrym. House Xoralarrin has more mages than any other house in the city but chafes under the rule of House Baerne and the House Barrison Del' Armgo. At this meeting are Brach'Thal - a mage of diminished power since the Spellplauge and Ravel's older brother and father, Matron Mother Zeerith Xoralarrin, and Jaerth the house weapon master. Ravel proposes the plan to take Gauntlygrym as their own and establish a new drow city with them as the rulers. The plan is approved and Ravel is to lead the expedition along with Brach'Thal, Jaerth, Saribel (a young priestess), and Berellip (an older and more powerful priestess, and he is given a budget to hire mercenaries. Once out of the city the expedition force assembles. Nearly 100 mercenaries are composed mostly of houseless rogue drows, a drider named Yerrininae and his twenty warriors, and a host of goblin slaves. However, Tiago Baerne is among the drow mercenaries. Tiago is a lizard rider, a powerful warrior on his way to becoming house weapon master, and the grandson of Dantrag Baerne. Meanwhile in Menzoberranzan, Gromph has a conversation with Andzrel Baerne (the current weapon master of the house) that Ravel's expedition has not gone unnoticed and that it goes according to the wishes of Matron Mother Quenthal Baerne. Andzrel is upset that his second - Tiago, has been sent on the journey without his approval. After being dismissed by the wizard, Gromph reflects on one more making the journey to Gaunltgrym, Gol'fanin: a master drow blacksmith. Drizzt and Dahlia begin their journey back to Neverwinter. Drizzt wonders if Dahlia is manipulating him and is not altogether displeased by this idea, reminding himself there is much he does not know about her. Close by, Effron spies on them unnoticed and prepares the Shadovar mercenaries of Cavus Dun for an ambush on the two with the desired result being Drizzt's death and Dahlia's capture. The force consists of Jermander-leader and swordsman, Ratsis-spider tamer, Parbid and Afafrenfere- warrior monks and friends, Amber Gristle O' Maul (Ambergris)- dwarven priestess, Bol- a large tiefling warrior, Horrible- a silent female warrior, and Shifter- a powerful Shadovar mage. In Neverwinter Herzgo Alegni proclaims that Jelvus Grinch to be the head of the White Guard formed by the people of Neverwinter. And that he will lead the Black Guard composed of Shadovar. Jelvus and the citizens of Neverwinter want him gone now that the threat of Sylora Salm and the Thayans has been defeated. Herzgo declares himself the ruler of Neverwinter by threat of violence and Jelvus and the others reluctantly agree. Arunika, the succubus, and her partner Brother Anthus strive to find a way to weaken Herzgo's rule while waiting for the eventual return of the Aboleth Sovereignty. Arunika goes to the site of the Dread Ring to find the lich Valindra Shadowmatle and instead finds her imp familiar Invidoo and a zombie Sylora bent in half unable to walk. Invidoo wants his freedom from service and Arunika will grant it to him if he can find a replacement for himself who is familiar with Drizzt. Artemis Entreri comes to the outskirts of Neverwinter where Herzgo and more importantly Charon's Claw are. Faced with the reality of becoming the sword's slave once again Artemis turns around and heads back towards Drizzt and Dahlia, effectively choosing sides in the conflict to come. Effron's mercenary force ambushes Drizzt and Dahlia who are separated by the Shifter's magic. Parbid and Afafrenfere attack Drizzt; but Drizzt is able to kill Parbid with a shot from Taulmaril the Heartseeker. Dahlia is trapped by Ratsis's spiders and has to fight Bol and Horrible at a disadvantage. She is able to kill Bol which enrages Horrible to lethal frenzy. The Shifter is forced magically knock her over and Ambergris stealthily uses her magic to kill Horrible. In the confusion Ambergris knocks out Afafrenfere and carries him off. Fully ensnared Dahlia is defenseless until Artemis arrives killing one spider and Jermander. Guenhwyvar kills the other spider and both the Shifter and Ratsis flee. This battle has the result of Drizzt, Dahlia, and Artemis joining forces and traveling to Neverwinter together. It is also the beginning of a bond between Dahlia and Artemis because of the pain they have shared at the hands of Herzgo. It is a bond Drizzt doesn't understand or appreciate and it only deepens with time. Ravel and the expedition force continue on to Gauntlgrym encountering minor enemies along the way. However, a power struggle begins to develop between the priestesses, Ravel and his mages, and Tiago as to whom is in charge. Eventually they reach Gauntlgrym and defeat the dwarf ghosts guarding the city due in large part to the efforts of Ravel. Tiago then puts his support behind him, giving him the upper hand over his two priestess sisters. Amber Gristle arrives in Neverwinter. Aruinka plots for a way to increase Herzgo's power in the region until he has gained too much and draws the attention of the Waterdeep lords thereby clearing the way for the Aboleth Sovereignty to return. Herzgo asks Draygo Quick for more warriors but only receives a hundred. Herzgo confronts Effron about his attempt to capture Dahlia without his permission. Drizzt, Dahlia, and Entreri attempt to sneak into Neverwinter through the sewers. They are confronted by a pack of snakes and finally the mother snake. Which turns out to be a young Aboleth hiding in the sewers spying on Neverwinter. Dahlia and Entreri are both hypnotized but Drizzt is able to resist and eventually the three of them kill it and in the process free a half dozen other slaves. Ravel and the rest claim the forge of Gauntlygrym and begin the process of reactivating it. Brach'Thal though greatly diminished in power is instrumental in this as he is a master of controlling elementals. The force then begins the process of clearing out the rest of the city and activating the rest of the forges. Herzgo learns of the three companions in the sewers from Invidoo's imp replacement. Herzgo meets them on the bridge and uses Charon's Claw to immediately enslave Artemis once again who then turns on Drizzt. This leaves Herzgo free to battle Dahlia and Effron is free as well to fight all three. Drizzt manages to summon Guenhwyvar who then pursues Effron keeping him busy. Finally Drizzt who is fighting at a disadvantage against Artemis leaves himself wide open and challenges Artemis to ask himself, is he a slave of the sword or a free man? This enrages Artemis who uses his anger to resist the sword and moves in on Herzgo. Dahlia is losing her fight against Herzgo and leaps over the side of the bridge. Artemis tries to strike him but is stopped by Charon's Claw. Although he can resist the mental intrusion he can't overcome the physical pain it inflicts on him. Just as Herzgo is about to finish him off Dahlia returns in the form of a giant crow, thanks to her magical cloak, and pecks out one of Herzgo's eyes causing him to drop Charon's Claw. Realizing the battle is lost he tries to escape through a shadow gate but is tackled by Guenhwyvar and they both go through the gate. Jelvus Grinch and Arunika then lead a revolt against the Shadovar. Glorfathel a Cavus Dun mage goes to report the loss of this battle to Draygo Quick. Entreri and Dahlia join the revolt and begin to kill Shadovar. Effron flees for the Shadowfell. Drizzt retrieves Charon's Claw. He also tries to recall Guenhwyvar but can't. Entreri then asks Drizzt to destroy Charon's Claw which would kill him as well, only they don't know how. In the aftermath of the battle Ambergris heals their wounds and tells Drizzt that Arunika may know something of Guenhwyvar's status. Drizzt speaks with her and learns that the statue and Guenhwyvar are no longer connected. The three then decide to head to Gauntlgrym as the primordial there offers the best chance of destroying the sword. It is revaled that Herzgo didn't die and is now charged with the recovery of Charon's Claw by Draygo Quick and that a second failure will not be tolerated. On their way to Gauntlgrym they are attacked by Shadovar but are able to repel the attack. All the while Entreri's and Dahlia's bond continues to grow. This causes feelings of distrust, anger, and jealousy in Drizzt. Most of this is brought on by Charon's Claw attempting to fight back. After the attack Glorfathel orders Ambergris and Afafrenfere to follow them as their location would be worth a great deal to Herzgo. Upon entering Gauntlgrym the Shifter approaches Drizzt and offers to give back Guenhwyvar (who has been captured by Draygo Quick) in exchange for Charon's Claw. As tempting as it is Drizzt knows he could never make that deal. The drow force continues erecting defences and the Shadovar teleport in to the city to intercept the three companions. Ambergris and Afafrenfere also enter and pass the tombs of Bruenor and the throne of Gaunltgrym. Ambergris is very respectful and reverent to both. Soon the three companions and the Shadovar begin to fight. The sword continues to urge conflict between Drizzt and Artemis but Drizzt is able to overcome it and regain control. As the three try to gain entry both sides are ambushed by the drow. All three are hit by sleeping poison crossbow darts, but before they fall asleep Artemis yells out that they are agents of Bregen D'aerthe. Drizzt and Artemis are able to convince the drow that they are agents of Jarlaxle. The drow then retreat to the lower tunnels leaving the three of them behind in the upper levels. The drow also decide to leave the city for now as they were not prepared for conflict with the Nethrese but intend to return with a more powerful force. Brach'thal doing his best to help the primordial as it grants him power is given a lava elemental by the primordial to aid him. It is also revealed that Gol'fanin has been working on a sword and shield of great magical power for Tiago. But with the new threat will not have enough time to complete them. The drow retreat except for Brach'thal as the battle between primordial elementals, Shadovar, and the three companions intensifies. Herzgo prepares to meet the three companions and sends Ambergris, Afafrenfere, Glorfathel, and Effron to stop them from escaping. Ambergris then betrays them by throwing Glorfathel into the lava pit, and stunning Afafrenfere with magic, and attacking Effron. Meanwhile Dhalia and Entreri engage Herzgo's remaining forces, allowing Drizzt to slip by, confront and kill Brach'Thal, and get to the primordial pit. As the battle has become lost Herzgo tells Effron to retreat and is about to do so himself when Drizzt throws Charon's Claw into the pit. The sword reaches out to Herzgo and begs him to save it. This slight delay is all Dahlia needs to launch an attack with the power to kill Herzgo. Drizzt actually faked throwing the sword away in attempt to stall Herzgo. Dahlia continues to brutalize the dead body of Herzgo when Effron calls out to his father. He then screams at Dahlia that this is the second time she tried to kill him and that he will kill her, his mother. They then confront Ambergris about her being here, in Neverwinter, and the initial ambush in the forest which she admits to all. When asked about the stunned Afafrenfere she replies that he isn't so bad. With nothing left standing in their way, Drizzt throws Charon's Claw into the pit expecting to kill Artemis Entreri as well. The sword is destroyed but for some reason Artemis lives. In the Shadowfell, Effron with Draygo Quick's blessing begins to plot his revenge on Dahlia. Afafrenfere attempts to attack Drizzt but Ambergris stops him and then places a geas on him so that he cannot ever attack Drizzt. Tiago realizing that all the opposition has left Gauntlgrym and urges Gol'fanin to return to the forge and complete his work on the sword and shield he began. At the entrance to Gauntlygrym, Ambergris reveals that the geas was a fake but Afafrenfere will be no problem. Drizzt finds himself trusting and liking Ambergris. In the throne room Pwent returns to life as an undead vampire. Invidoo's replacement imp is revealed to be Druzil who is working for Errtu whose hundred years of banishment are almost over and is plotting his revenge on Drizzt. Back in the forge room Gol'fanin reveals to Tiago that the drow he thought was an agent of Bregen D'aerthe was actually Drizzt Do'Urden. And that the sword and shield he is forging will give him the power to become house weapon master but the head of Drizzt would make him a legend.
34760692	/m/0j3gcfn	Der Schimmelreiter	Theodor Storm	1888		 The novella tells the story of Hauke Haien, allegedly related to the author by a schoolmaster in a small town in Northern Frisia. Hauke is the son of a farmer and licensed surveyor, and does his best to learn his father's trade. He even learns Dutch so he can read a Dutch print of Euclid's work on mathematics and geometry. Over time, he becomes very familiar with the dykes along the local coast, and begins to wonder if it would not be better to make them flatter on the sea side so as to reduce their windage during floods. When local Deichgraf Tede Volkerts fires one of his hands, Hauke applies for the job and is accepted. He soon becomes a great help for Volkerts, which makes Ole Peters, the senior hand, dislike him. Tensions rise even more when Hauke begins to show interest in the Deichgraf's daughter, Elke. Hauke even proposes marriage, but she wants to wait. After the unexpected deaths of both Hauke's and Elke's fathers, the people of the village must chose a new Deichgraf. Hauke is actually already doing the work, but does not hold the necessary lands required for the position. However, Elke announces that they are engaged, and that he will soon hold her family's lands as well. With the traditionalists satisfied, Hauke becomes the new Deichgraf. However, the people soon start talking about his white horse, which they believe is a resurrected skeleton that used to be visible on a small island, but is now gone. Meanwhile, Hauke begins to implement the changes to the form of the dykes that he envisioned since childhood. However, during a storm surge several years later, the older dykes break and Hauke has to witness Elke and their daughter, Wienke, being swept away by the water. In agony, he drives his white horse into the sea, yelling, "Lord, take me, spare the others!" The novella ends with the schoolmaster recounting that after the flood, the mysterious horse skeleton was once again seen lying on the small island off the coast. Hauke Haien's dyke still stands, and has saved many lives in the hundred years since its creator's tragic demise. And the older ones in the village say that, on stormy nights, a ghostly rider on a white horse can sometimes be seen patrolling the dyke. * Hauke Haien, the main character, based on mathematician and astronomer Hans Momsen * Elke Haien (née Volkerts), the old dyke master's daughter, and Hauke's wife * Wienke Haien, Hauke and Elke's mentally challenged daughter * Tede Volkerts, Elke's father, and dyke master prior to Hauke * Ole Peters, the old dyke master's senior hand, and Hauke's rival * The Schoolmaster, a man from the town who tells the story to the author a hundred years later
34788521	/m/0j3d55w	The Last Girl	Stephan Collishaw		{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Steponas Daumantas, an elderly poet, walks the streets of Vilnius photographing young women with their babies. He becomes obsessed with one particular woman, Jolanta, and strikes up a friendship with her. Jolanta gives him a manuscript that her husband has written, and Daumantas promises to look at it and possibly show his publisher, but looses it when he gets drunk. As his friendship with the young woman deepens he can no longer hold back the memories that have been bubbling up for years. Svetlana is an ethnic Russian living in poverty in the back streets of Vilnius's Old Town. She does bits of washing for Daumantas and, when she encounters him drunk one night, saves a manuscript he leaves behind. Svetlana struggles to earn some money to send her son to England to work, while trying to survive with her brutal husband Ivan. She befriends a young prostitute, Ruta, and has memories of her own she does not wish to recall. Daumantas grows up in a small village close to Wilno and has early ambitions of being a poet. He falls in love with a local Jewish girl, Rachael. When Rachael rejects him he goes to university in Wilno. Some years later he sees Rachael again on the streets of Wilno with her Jewish husband. In 1939 the Communists invade Poland and hand back Wilno to the Lithuanians. Lithuanian thugs roam the streets; but that is nothing compared to what happens when the Germans invade. As the life is slowly choked from the Jewish population in the Vilna ghetto Rachael makes a desperate demand of Daumantas: take her child and save it.
34801976	/m/0j3d1rv	From This Wicked Patch of Dust	Sergio Troncoso	2011-09	{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}	 In the border shantytown of Ysleta, Texas, Mexican immigrants Pilar and Cuauhtemoc Martinez strive to teach their four children to forsake the drugs and gangs of their neighborhood. The family’s hardscrabble origins unite them to survive, but soon the children adapt to their new home, reject their traditional religion and culture, and struggle to remain together as a family. The novel spans four decades. As a young adult, daughter Julieta travels to Central America, becomes disenchanted with Catholicism, and converts to Islam. Youngest son Ismael, always the bookworm, is accepted to Harvard but feels out of place in the Northeast, where he meets and marries a Jewish woman. The other boys--Marcos and Francisco--toil in their father’s old apartment buildings, serving as cheap labor to fuel the family’s rise to the middle class. Over time, Francisco isolates himself in El Paso. Marcos eventually leaves to become a teacher, but then returns, struggling with a deep bitterness about his work and marriage. Through it all, Pilar clings to the idea of her family and tries to hold it together as her husband’s health begins to fail. This backdrop is shaken to its core by the historic events of 2001 in New York City, which send shockwaves through this newly American family. Bitter conflicts erupt between siblings, and the physical and cultural spaces between them threaten to tear them apart. Will their shared history and once-shared dreams be enough to hold together a family from Ysleta, this wicked patch of dust?
34822427	/m/0j3cmlh	The Democratic Paradox	Chantal Mouffe	2000		 The eponymous paradox of democracy that this collection of essays deals with is the internal conflict within modern democracy that is created by the union of two separate strands of political thought: the tradition of Classical Liberalism and the tradition of Democratic Theory, forming the institution of Liberal Democracy. Mouffe sees Radical Democracy as a means for continuing to sustain the balance between the values of liberalism and democracy. This balance is accomplished through the agonistic practice of valuing and sustaining dissent in the democratic process as a more important goal than consensus. This point is where Radical Democratic theory diverges from both Habermas and Rawls, as it contradicts Habermas's quest for rational consensus and Rawls's project for political liberalism. Mouffe describes the importance of the radical democratic alternative in a 2009 interview, saying that "The aim of a pluralist democracy is to provide the institutions that will allow them to take an agonistic form, in which opponents will treat each other not as enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries who will fight for the victory of their position while recognising the right of their opponents to fight for theirs. An agonistic democracy requires the availability of a choice between real alternatives."
34890405	/m/0bs0stb	Beautiful Creatures	Margaret Stohl	2009-12-01	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 Beautiful Creatures is set in fictional Gatlin, South Carolina. The novel is told by protagonist Ethan Wate, who lives with his writer father and housekeeper Amma who is “more like [Ethan’s] grandmother”. The story begins on the first day of Ethan’s sophomore year when he wakes up from a recurring dream he has been having about a girl he does not know. That morning he finds a “creepy—almost hypnotic”, song called "Sixteen Moons" on his iPod and also notices the smell of rosemary and lemon. At school Ethan find out there is a new girl this year, which is surprising because Gatlin “hadn’t had a new girl in school since the 3rd grade”; Macon Melchizedek Ravenwood is the town shut-in and is often compared in the novel to the character Boo Radley from To Kill A Mocking Bird. Ethan later hears Lena playing "Sixteen Moons" in band. When Ethan drives home he almost runs over Lena, who is standing on the road in the middle of the storm looking for someone to help with her broken down car. When Ethan notices she smells like lemon and rosemary he realized that Lena is the girl from his dreams. He soon learns that Lena is a Caster, a person who can use magic, and that on her sixteenth birthday she will be claimed for either Light or Dark. Ethan tries to find a way to save Lena from going Dark and solve the mystery of how he is connected to Lena. At the same time Lena is trying to handle the whole town turning against her: “we don’t take kind to strangers [in Gatlin].” Lena and Ethan discover that they are connected through years of Gatlin and Caster history.
34890908	/m/047ccdf	Beautiful Chaos	Gary Russell		{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}	 After returning home, more strange things are starting to occur in the small town of Gatlin. Horrific storms, sweltering heat, and hordes of locusts are tearing Gatlin apart as the couple attempts to make sense of the long term effects Lena's Claiming. Not even Lena's family is immune to the strange occurrences in town, as their powers begin to go haywire. Meanwhile Ethan is beginning to forget many things from his past and daily life and has began to dream again, but not of Lena.
34971264	/m/0j42t4h	Kaytek the Wizard	Janusz Korczak			 The book depicts a schoolboy who gains magic powers. At first, Kajtuś acts as a selfish child, using his power for mischief. Eventually, he becomes dissatisfied with himself, and leaves his home town, where he acquires a reputation as a troublemaker. On his travels, he meets Zosia, a girl who uses her magical power for good. Together, they fight an evil wizard, and Kaytek chooses the path of a good mage. The book contains some gaps, including one of the chapters, which were sections that were crossed out because they were too frightening to children.
35044216	/m/0j6431p	The Hydrogen Sonata	Iain Banks			 The Gzilt, a civilisation that almost joined the Culture 10,000 years before the novel, have decided to sublime, having had a referendum on the subject and voted in favour of it. Within the novel it is stated that several things happen once a civilisation has made such a decision: strange objects called Presences appear, Scavenger species (less technologically advanced species wishing to claim the departing species' technology) arrive, and if any other civilisation has kept anything quiet with regard to that civilisation it is custom to reveal it to the subliming civilisation before they depart – a setting of the record straight for advanced civilisations. One such species, called the Zidhren, have quite a large secret. They planted the Book of Truth, which the Gzilt revere – and it is implied that the religion made the Gzilt refuse to join the Culture in the past. However, the Zidhren themselves have long since sublimed as a species, meaning the remaining Zidhren – the Zidhren-Remnant – are left to deliver the message. However, when they try to do so the Gzilt warship that meets them decides to keep it quiet, by destroying the Zidhren-Remnanter ship. Meanwhile The Culture has sent ships to both wish the Gzilt well, as they have always been on good terms with the Gzilt, and to keep an eye on the scavenger species arriving. The Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath (called Mistake Not... for most of the book) – a ship whose name, classification and actions in the book suggest it is some sort of military berserker – has been assigned to meet the Liseiden, one such scavenger species, and notices the destruction of the Zidhren-Remnanter ship even though it is quite far away. Unfortunately for those who wish to keep the truth about the Book of Truth secret, the Gzilt warship had spyware implanted in it, which sent a message to the Gzilt 14th Regiment about the Book of Truth's truth. As a consequence of this, the 14th Regiment calls Lieutenant Commander Vyr Cossont out of reserve status. However, this spyware has been detected, and the Home Regiment of the Gzilt go to the Gzilt who effectively controls Gzilt civilisation, Banstegeyn, asking for permission to destroy the 14th Regiment, which he gives. It was also he who spearheaded the move for Gzilt civilisation to sublime, and does not want anything to stand in the way of the sublimation. Cossont is taken to the 14th Regiment's high command, and tasked with finding out if the Book of Truth really is a Zidhren plant. To do this, she must speak to the oldest Culture citizen still alive, one Ngaroe QiRia, who she has met before. Just before she can depart on this mission though the high command is attacked by the Home Regiment, Cossont narrowly escapes, and is picked up by the Mistake Not... Unfortunately, the same ship that destroyed the 14 Regiment's high command has also realised that Cossont has escaped, and pursues her. While she does make contact with Ngaroe Qiria, it turns out that he has wiped his mind of all memory of the Book of Truth, keeping one copy of the events coded into his eyes, which he has had amputated by an individual called Ximenyr who resides at an event called the Last Party, which has been going on for a number of years and will end when the Gzilt sublime. Cossont arrives at the Last Party and goes to where Ximenyr is staying, but the Colonel aboard the Gzilt warship following them takes a squad of robots (called Arbites by the Gzilt) with him and attacks the last party, causing many deaths. However Cossont still manages to recover the eyes, and the real truth about the Book of Truth is confirmed, but only to The Culture. After the Mistake Not... persuades the warship not to attack it, and to help the survivors of the Last Party, it confers with other Culture ships taking an interest in the Gzilt sublimation, and they decide to keep the truth about the Book of Truth secret. The time of the Gzilt sublimation then arrives, and most of the Gzilt sublime – some 99.99%. Cossont is one of the few that do not (for a sublimation to work, all of a species has to sublime within the same hour, and any biological trying to do so on its own will 'evaporate' into the realm of the sublime), and manages to finish what she was trying to do all along, which was play the eponymous Hydrogen Sonata, a challenging piece of atonal music.
35166850	/m/0j64xyy	Fifty Shades of Grey	E. L. James	2012-03-05		 Fifty Shades of Grey follows Anastasia "Ana" Steele, a 22-year-old college senior who lives with her best friend Katherine Kavanagh; Katherine writes for their college's student paper. Because of illness, Katherine persuades Ana to take her place and interview 27-year-old Christian Grey, an incredibly successful and wealthy young entrepreneur. Ana is instantly attracted to Christian, but also finds him intimidating. As a result she stumbles through the interview and leaves Christian's office believing that it went badly. Ana tries to console herself with the thought that the two of them will probably not meet each other again. However she is surprised when Christian appears at the hardware store where she works. While he purchases various items including cable ties and rope, Ana informs Christian that Katherine wants photographs to go along with her article about him. Christian leaves Ana with his phone number. Katherine urges Ana to call Christian and arrange a photo shoot with their photographer friend Jose Rodriquez. The next day Jose, Katherine, and Ana arrive at the hotel Christian is staying at, where the photo shoot takes place and Christian asks Ana out for coffee. The two talk over coffee and Christian asks Ana if she's dating anyone, specifically Jose. When Ana replies that she isn't dating anyone, Christian begins to ask her about her family. During the conversation Ana learns that Christian is also single, but is not "a hearts and flowers kind of guy". This intrigues Ana, especially after he pulls her out of the path of an oncoming cyclist. However, Ana believes that she is not attractive enough for Christian, much to the chagrin of her friend Katherine. After finishing her exams Ana receives a package from Christian containing first edition copies of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which stuns her. Later that night Ana goes out drinking with her friends and ends up drunk dialing Christian, who informs her that he will be coming to pick her up because of her inebriated state. Ana goes outside to get some fresh air, and Jose attempts to kiss her but is stopped by Christian's arrival. Ana later leaves with Christian, but not before she discovers that her friend Katherine has been flirting with Christian's brother Elliott. Later Ana wakes to find herself in Christian's hotel room, where he scolds her for not taking proper care of herself. Christian then reveals that he would like to have sex with her. He initially says that Ana will first have to fill out paperwork, but later goes back on this statement after making out with her in the elevator. Ana later goes on a date with Christian where he takes her in his helicopter to his apartment. Once there, Christian insists that she sign a non-disclosure agreement forbidding her to discuss anything that they do together, which Ana agrees to sign. He also mentions other paperwork, but first takes her to a room full of BDSM toys and gear. There Christian informs her that the second contract will be one of dominance and submission and that there will be no romantic relationship, only a sexual one. The contract even forbids Ana from touching Christian or making eye contact with him. At this point, Christian realizes that Ana is a virgin and agrees to take her virginity without making her sign the contract. The two then have sex. The following morning Ana and Christian once again have sex, and his mother, who arrives moments after their sexual encounter, is surprised by the meeting, having previously thought Christian was homosexual because she had never seen him with a woman. Christian later takes Ana out to eat, and he reveals to her that he lost his virginity at fifteen to one of his mother's friends and that his previous dominant/submissive relationships failed due to incompatibility. They plan to meet up again and Christian takes Ana home, where she discovers several job offers and admits to Katherine that she and Christian have had sex. Over the next few days Ana receives several packages from Christian. These include a laptop to enable the two of them to communicate, since she has never previously owned a computer, and a more detailed version of the dominant/submissive contract. She and Christian email each other, with Ana teasing him and refusing to honor parts of the contract, such as only eating foods from a specific list. Ana later meets up with Christian to discuss the contract, only to grow overwhelmed by the potential BDSM arrangement and the potential of having a sexual relationship with Christian that is not romantic in nature. Because of these feelings Ana runs away from Christian and does not see him again until her college graduation, where he is a guest speaker. During this time, Ana agrees to sign the dominant/submissive contract. Ana and Christian once again meet up together to further discuss the contract, and they go over Ana's hard and soft limits. Ana is spanked for the first time by Christian; the experience leaves her both enticed and slightly confused. This confusion is exacerbated by Christian's lavish gifts, and the fact that he brings her to meet his family. The two continue with the arrangement without Ana having yet signed the contract. After successfully landing a job with Seattle Independent Publishing, Ana further bristles under the restrictions of the non-disclosure agreement and the complex relationship with Christian. The tension between Ana and Christian eventually comes to a head after Ana asks Christian to punish her in order to show her how extreme a BDSM relationship with him could be. Christian fulfills Ana's request, beating her with a belt, only for Ana to realize that the two of them are incompatible. Devastated, Ana leaves Christian and returns to the apartment she shares with Katherine.
35232728	/m/0j7lvqz	The Family Corleone	Edward Falco	2012-05-08	{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}	 The novel, set in the Great Depression, tells the story of how Vito Corleone rose through the criminal underworld to become the most powerful Don in New York. Vito pushes Sonny to be a businessman, but Sonny &mdash; 17 years old, impatient and reckless &mdash; wants something else: to follow in his father's footsteps and become a part of the real family business. It also shows the upbringing of Luca Brasi and how Tom Hagen became the Corleones' consigliere.
35311147	/m/0czwqd	Guardians of Ga'Hoole Book 4: The Siege	Helen Dunmore	2004-05-01	{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}	 ==Receptio
35471510	/m/0j9q2rv	The Casual Vacancy	J. K. Rowling	2012-09-27	{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0q9mp": "Tragicomedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy"}	 The novel is split into seven parts, the first depicting the aftermath of the death of local Pagford Parish Councillor, Barry Fairbrother, who suffers an aneurysm in the car park of a local golf course. The inhabitants of the town share the news with their friends and relatives and chaos ensues. The problem arises in deciding whether local council estate "The Fields" (which includes methadone rehabilitation clinic, Bellchapel) should remain as part of Pagford, or instead join local city Yarvil. After the election date is announced, the children of those who are standing for election decide to make damaging posts on the Parish Council online forum. Andrew, son of Simon Price, is the first person to do so, operating under the name "The_Ghost_Of_Barry_Fairbrother" and informing everyone that his father had bought a stolen computer. Sukhvinder (who, like Andrew, learns about hacking in ICT class) follows, posting that her mother, Dr. Parminder Jawanda, was in love with Barry. Thirdly, Fats Wall posts, claiming his adoptive father Cubby (a Deputy Headteacher) molested a child. Finally, in a desperate attempt to relieve the guilt weighing on him for costing his father his job, Andrew confides in Simon and posts that Council leader, Howard Mollison, is having an affair with his business partner Maureen. Howard's son, Miles Mollison, is the winning candidate, much to the displeasure of his wife, Samantha, who confesses she no longer loves him, only to eventually reconcile. Another focus of the novel is the traumatic life of Krystal Weedon. Krystal lives in The Fields with her mother Terri who is a prostitute and heroin addict and brother Robbie. Social-worker Kay is determined for Terri to stop her drug-use and take responsibility for the care of Robbie, however, Terri relapses and her drug-dealer Obbo rapes Krystal. Spurred on to start a family elsewhere, Krystal has unprotected sex with Fats in an attempt to become pregnant. It is during one of these instances that Robbie runs away from the pair in a park, eventually falling and drowning in a river, despite Sukhvinder's attempt to save him. Krystal is so distraught she commits suicide by taking a heroin overdose, the novel culminating with her funeral.
35482946	/m/0bmg3gb	Infected	Scott Sigler			 The book follows several characters as they deal with an alien invasion on the microscopic level. The narration is primarily through the perspectives of Perry Dawson, an ex-football player with an anger problem, and Margaret Montoya, an epidemiologist with the CDC that is investigating a strange disease that turns seemingly normal people into murderers.
35587482	/m/0jk_hyr	Raboliot	Maurice Genevoix	1925		 The novel is set in the country-side around Lamotte-Beuvron and Brinon-sur-Sauldre, and deals with the relationship between landowners and poor people in the years after World War I.
35629454	/m/0jl1q_1	The Racketeer	John Grisham			 The book is about a federal judge's murder and an imprisoned lawyer who has inside knowledge on the details of the murder. Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of this country only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just become number five. Who is the Racketeer? And what does he have to do with the judge’s untimely demise? His name, for the moment, is Malcolm Bannister. Job status? Former attorney. Current residence? The Federal Prison Camp near Frostburg, Maryland. On paper, Malcolm’s situation isn’t looking too good these days, but he’s got an ace up his sleeve. He knows who killed Judge Fawcett, and he knows why. The judge’s body was found in his remote lakeside cabin. There was no forced entry, no struggle, just two dead bodies: Judge Fawcett and his young secretary. And one large, state-of-the-art, extremely secure safe, opened and emptied. What was in the safe? The FBI would love to know. And Malcolm Bannister would love to tell them. But everything has a price—especially information as explosive as the sequence of events that led to Judge Fawcett’s death. And the Racketeer wasn’t born yesterday . . . Nothing is as it seems and everything’s fair game in this wickedly clever new novel from John Grisham, the undisputed master of the legal thriller.
35654800	/m/05nlmwt	Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10	Patrick Robinson	2007-06-12	{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}	 At the beginning of the book, Marcus Luttrell describes his childhood and his training to prepare for the Navy SEALs with Billy Shelton. After joining the U.S. Navy and completing SEAL training, Luttrell describes his posting in Afghanistan, in the Hindu Kush mountains of the Kunar province. With him are the rest of SEAL Team 10, except Shane E. Patton, for whom Danny Dietz was substituted. Their mission, Operation Red Wings, was to stake outside a village and capture or kill a leading Taliban member thought to be allied with Osama Bin Laden. One night in June 2005, while hiding out, the team encountered three Afghanistan shepherds, including a boy. The team debated sparing or killing the three shepherds but after a vote, Luttrell had to make the decision. To uphold the Rules of engagement, Luttrell let the shepherds go. About an hour later, the four SEALs were surrounded by more than a hundred Taliban warriors. The two parties engaged, the odds drastically against the SEALs, all of which died saving Luttrell. The New York Times sums up the story: "Mr. Luttrell was the only one of four men on the mission to survive after a violent clash with dozens of Taliban fighters. Eight members of the SEALs and eight Army special operations soldiers who came by helicopter to rescue the original four were shot down, and all aboard were killed. Mr. Luttrell was then rescued by a group of Afghan Pashtun villagers who harbored him in their homes for several days, protecting him from the Taliban and ultimately helping him to safety." The theme of hospitality as understood by the Pashtun culture is a central theme to the plot and attempts to validate the release of the shepherds.
35706912	/m/0jt6csb	A Conspiracy of Friends	Alexander McCall Smith	2011-05-01	{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The story is set in a fictional housing unit in London nicknamed Corduroy Mansions, and details the lives of the inhabitants of the large Pimlico house and others. The main characters are Barbara Ragg, Basil Wickramsinghe, Berthea Snark, Caroline Jarvis, Dee Binder, Eddie French, Freddie de la Hay, Jenny Hedge, Jo Partlin, Marcia Light, Oedipus Snark, Terence Moongrove, and William French. The chapters for this book in The Telegraph ran from 13 September 2010 until 17 December 2010.
35719914	/m/0jt5sph	Bring Up the Bodies	Hilary Mantel	2012-05-08	{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"}	 Bring Up the Bodies begins where the previous novel finished. The King and Master Secretary Thomas Cromwell are the guests of the Seymour family at Wolf Hall. The King shares private moments with Jane Seymour, and begins to fall in love with her. His present queen, Anne Boleyn, has failed to give him a male heir and, as rumours of her infidelity spread, the King seeks a way to be rid of her, and marry the new object of his affections. Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell owe their current high status to each other. They become pitted against each other, as Cromwell seeks to find a legitimate excuse to expel her from the King's court. Cromwell, master politician, uses Anne's fall from grace as a chance to settle scores with old enemies.
35731962	/m/0jt39dm	Finale	Becca Fitzpatrick	2012-10-23		 The book follows Nora and Patch, a teenaged girl and an angel that have fallen in love with each other. As Patch is a fallen angel, their relationship is frowned upon by many and Nora's own heritage and destiny means that the two of them should be enemies. As the obstacles in their path seem to grow larger and more numerous, the two must find a way to be together and overcome the odds.
35802230	/m/0jt8896	De vierde man				 The novel is a frame narrative: a writer named Gerard recounts the events that happened years before to his friend, Ronald. The story is as follows. Gerard, after a speaking engagement in the town of V., in the southern Netherlands, has a brief affair with a woman named Christine, with whom he spends the night. After seeing a photograph of her boyfriend, Herman, he becomes infatuated with him. Later, he spends a weekend house-sitting for Christine (during this time he picks up a young man named Laurens and has sex with him in Christine's bed) and opens a little chest reminiscent of a coffin, with a key he recognizes from a dream he had earlier. The box contains documents proving that Christine is three times widowed, and another dream he had comes to mind, in which an old man sang a tune asking who would be the fourth man. He leaves the house in a panic; later he hears that Herman was horribly mutilated after an accident in Christine's car.
35916725	/m/0jwxcdy	Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure	James Patterson	2012-08-06	{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 The prologue is Angel's vision of Max's death.The book starts off with Max and her Flock preparing to go to school while they live in Oregon in a house Nino Pierpont gave them. Max is watching T.V. until it stops working. Iggy fixes it. The reporters are talking about a new group called the 99 Percenters who are quickly growing into a powerful group. They don't know what their purpose is. Dylan comes in and Max snaps at him telling him that they will be late. Dylan points out that Max is still in her pajamas. At school, a teacher tells Dylan to capture Fang so they can perform tests on him. Dylan refuses to do so. The teacher tell him that they will kill or hurt Max if he doesn't which scares Dylan. Meanwhile, Fang and his group go out and are attacked by Erasers. Fang thinks one of the Erasers is Ari (but turns out to be his clone). Fang, Holden, Ratchet and Maya fight while Kate and Star refuse to. They reveal they are on the Erasers' side. Ari wounds Maya and she dies in Fang's arms. Angel has a vision of this while she is in a lab. However, she thinks it is Max who died. When she hears Fang tell his group Maya is dead, she feels relieved. Then she feels guilty about it. She is operated on and realizes that Jeb and Dr. Martinez are working for the 99 Percenters. The whitecoats clip her wings and make her go blind. Afterwards, Fang leaves Ratchet and Holden. He hears the Voice in his head telling him to go to Max. He goes to an Internet cafe and searches 'Maximum Ride'. He finds out that Max is going to a private school called Newton in Oregon. His wing is injured so hitchhikes there. Two guys from the 99 Percenters push him off a cliff but he survives. Meanwhile, Max and Dylan are having a date in a treehouse that Dylan built. Their candlelit dinner is interrupted by Nudge, Iggy and Gazzy spying on them. Their Voices have told them to record everything so they have a video camera which they filmed Max and Dylan's kiss with. Max is angry so she kicks the table causing the candle to fall over. This sets fire to the tree and the treehouse. Once the Flock gets to safety she apologizes to Dylan saying that the treehouse was the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen. Dylan tells her that she's the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. An alarm goes off that night and the Flock see Fang coming. Max and him reconcile making Dylan very angry. Fang tells them about a comment on his blog saying that a kid knows where Angel is. They go to where he said Angel was. Earlier in the book, Angel describes how smoke filled the building and they left her clamped to the table. The rest of the Flock sees the fire. Once it dies down they go inside the building to search for Angel. They find the dead bodies of whitecoats in a circle suggesting they knew what was going to happen. They see Mark again who has some sort of disease and jumps out of the window onto the broken concrete and dies. They find Angel and go back to Oregon. Dylan watches Fang and Max kissing from miles away. He is angry and goes into the town causing destruction to store banners, electric wires etc. The Flock sees this on T.V. and Max goes out to find him. She can't find him. At night the alarms go off again. The Flock runs out thinking that it is Dylan. However, it is Jeb, Ari and a hundred other Erasers. Jeb tells them that Fang has to die as he has a gene which is the next link to immortality and scientists will try to hunt him down to get it. Max refuses to let that happen and knocks out Jeb. Dylan comes in and kills Ari which kills all the Erasers as they are connected. He then tries to kill Fang and almost succeeds until Max begs him not to. He then leaves. Dr.Martinez comes and explains that she was brainwashed by Jeb and Nino Pierpont will take all of them to a safe place in his jet. They bring Jeb along and leave him in the plane under guard when they get to the tropical island. All of them have their own treehouse (including Total and Akila who share one) which was designed to suit their personality. They also see other enhanced kids who live there. Dr.Martinez explains that a deadly disease called H8E has been released to kill all the humans. The bird-kids are immune to it and the others who are on the island are safe because precautions have been set up to prevent the disease from coming. If it did happen, there are underground caves that they can go into and live in until the disease dies out. Iggy and Ella see each other again and kiss. Fang and Max are kissing on top of a tree when Dylan comes down. They are both furious to see him. He says that he saw something large that he can't describe from above and everyone has to go down to the caves. Max and Fang refuse to believe him. He then says that he will tell everyone else to leave and then come back up there and if Max decides to stay and die he will do the same. Max sees the people going down into the caves. She sees her flock and tells them to stay. Only Angel hears her. She says they have to go. Max disagrees. Angel says that Max should listen to her because Max always listens to the Voice. She reveals that she is the Voice. Max says that she will go die with the humans. Fang tells Max that whatever the outcome, they'll face it together. Dylan tells Max that after he gets everyone to safety, he will come back to her, even if it means that he will die with her; he tells Max that the only way he wants his life to end is with her.. Angel is upset and flies away.Then the sky explodes making it very hot. Max thinks they are going to die but they don't. They then see a giant tsunami. Fang and Max say they love each other and they kiss multiple times and the water then swallows them. In the first epilogue, Max is talking to the reader. She says that she is the luckiest girl in the world because she died in the arms of the person she truly loved. She says that she knows the reader is wondering, like she is wondering whether she was supposed to save the world or was it a lie. She wonders whether her life was a metaphor for what we're all supposed to do with our lives, that we can't leave anything up to fate or chance or for someone else to clean up. Or whether it was a lesson that you have to seize the day and hold on to your loved ones. She hopes that in the end her life meant all of those things. She says she hears Fang calling her from far away and she doesn't know what's next but she's ready to see. She tells the reader to save their own world. In the second epilogue, Max is underwater but she thinks she is dead. She hears singing that sounds like 'strangled whales'. It feels good. She sighs with relief. She then realizes that she is breathing, alive and underwater. Dylan pulls her out. Fang and Angel are also there. The island has been broken into many smaller charred islands. Dylan and Fang go search for other entrances to the caves as the entrance the people used to get into is underwater. Angel enters Dr. Martinez's thoughts and says that they are monitoring satellite connection all over the world from inside the cave and whole countries may be covered in water, ash or flame. Max looks at the island while she is sitting with Angel. Half of it is underwater and the other half is covered in high cliffs. She says that she and the others were made for this. They were made to survive. Fang comes back and Max says she loves him. They fly off hand in hand. She tells the reader that this is the time of Maximum Ride.
35993963	/m/0jzxgsx	The Bourne Imperative	Robert Ludlum	2012-06-05	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"}	 :For a more detailed background of the main character, see Jason Bourne. The man Jason Bourne fishes out of the freezing sea is near death, half-drowned and bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound. He awakens with no memory of who he is or why he was shot-and Bourne is eerily reminded of his own amnesia. Then Bourne discovers that the Mossad agent named Rebeka is so determined to find this injured man that she has gone off the grid, cut her ties to her agency, and is now being stalked by Mossad's most feared killer. Do the answers to these mysteries lie back in southeast Lebanon, in a secret encampment to which Bourne and Rebeka escaped following a firefight weeks ago? The complex trail links to the mission given to Treadstone directors Peter Marks and Soraya Moore: find the semi-mythic terrorist assassin known as Nicodemo. In the course of Bourne's desperate, deadly search for a secret that will alter the future of the entire world, he will experience both triumph and loss, and his life will never be the same. Now everything turns on the amnesiac. Bourne must learn his identity and purpose before both he and Rebeka are killed. From Stockholm to Washington, D.C., from Mexico City to Beijing, the web of lies and betrayals extends into a worldwide conspiracy of monumental proportions.
36043883	/m/05h5ndx	Family				 The Family focuses on three brothers from the Gao family, Juexin, Juemin and Juehui, and their struggles with the oppressive autocracy of their feudalistic family. The idealistic, if rash Juehui, the youngest brother, is the main protagonist, and he is frequently contrasted with the weak eldest brother Juexin, who gives in to the demands from his grandfather and carries on living a life he does not want to live.
36126507	/m/0dh1sv	Heaven	V. C. Andrews	1985-10-15	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 Heaven Leigh Casteel is a fourteen year old girl living in poverty with her rather large and discontented family, in a shack in the hills of West Virginia. Her father, Luke, is still haunted by the memory of his first wife who died giving birth to Heaven and never speaks to Heaven. He is rarely home and his wife, Sarah, struggles to take care of Heaven and her half-siblings—Tom, Fanny (who is very pretty and somewhat promiscuous), and Keith and Jane. The Casteel family is looked down upon by the rest of the town, often referred to as "the hill scum". Despite their poverty, Heaven and Tom work hard at school, with Heaven hoping to become a school teacher when she is older. During this time, Heaven begins to develop a relationship with a local boy, Logan Stonewall. Meanwhile, Luke spends most of his time in a local brothel, where he eventually contracts syphilis, causing Sarah's next child to be born dead. Heaven's grandmother passes away the same day. The stillbirth is the last straw for Sarah, who had always hoped giving Luke a "dark-haired boy" like himself would finally make him love her. Sarah disappears, leaving a note which implies she has committed suicide. Luke is nowhere to be found, so the children are left to fend for themselves. Logan offers to help them, but Heaven is too proud to admit that they are struggling. Heaven misses a lot of school, since she now has to be mother to the family, take care of the shack and her frail, somewhat senile grandfather. Whenever things look bleak, Luke shows up with food to save the day, but his attempts to make money fail, and eventually, he comes up with a plan to sell his children for $500 apiece. Keith and Jane are first bought by a nice couple, but Heaven is devastated at what is happening. Shortly after, the local preacher is interested in buying Heaven but Luke persuades him that the younger sister, Fanny, is much more suitable for his household. Then a farmer comes for Tom, and Heaven can barely take it as Tom was her closest and best friend. Heaven's brothers and sisters are all sold before her, leaving her alone. It seems as though Luke may actually want to keep Heaven, as one night (thinking she is asleep), he comes to her and strokes her hair, muttering how soft and beautiful it is. Heaven feigns sleep, and is confused as to why he is finally showing an interest. Then she hears her grandfather interrupt Luke, asking what he is doing in an upset voice. Luke seems defensive and says Heaven is his, and he can do what he wants, but Luke's father tells him no, and that he needs to send Heaven away. Heaven does not understand or realize what Luke's intentions were, and feels everyone is rejecting her now. A few days later, Heaven is sold to a couple named Kitty and Cal Dennison. Kitty is controlling, obsessed with cleanliness, and though kind to Heaven at times, she often seems to hate Heaven and treat her like a maid. Kitty's husband Cal suffers from constantly being sexually teased and tormented by his wife. Kitty sometimes becomes violent and beats Heaven. Her cruelty is later revealed to be caused by the fact that Kitty once was in love with Luke and almost had his child. When Luke brought Heaven's mother back to town, she attempted a home abortion, which went badly wrong and meant that she lost her ability to have children. Because of this, Kitty sees Heaven both as a release for her anger towards Luke, and as the daughter she was never able to have, causing Kitty to be almost schizophrenic in her treatment of Heaven. Cal and Heaven develop a close relationship as a result of their suppression, but this ultimately leads to Cal pressuring Heaven to have sex with him. Heaven thinks this means that Cal loves her. She gives in, partly because she longs for affection and partly because she feels sorry for Cal over the way Kitty treats him. Although she is overcome with guilt and shame afterwards, the feeling of being needed by Cal is so important to her that she cannot say no to him. Kitty becomes sick (later revealed to be breast cancer) and the three go back to Kitty and Heaven's hometown of Winnerrow to seek aid from Kitty's family. After meeting Kitty's family, especially Kitty's mother, Heaven begins to understand Kitty's behaviour and she starts to pity her. While in her hometown, she is reunited with her siblings Tom (who she has missed terribly) and Fanny. Fanny seems happy with the preacher and his wife, but she is also distant to Heaven and seems to be avoiding her. Heaven tries to avoid Logan because she is afraid that he will somehow know what she has done with Cal just from looking at her but her attempts are thwarted after he catches up to her and begs her to see him. She gives in and agrees to meet him the next day early in the morning. However, when she goes back to Kitty's mother house, Cal is waiting for her and tries to kiss her. Heaven pushes him away but Kitty's younger sister, Maisie, sees him with his hand on Heaven's breast. Maisie quickly tells her family about what she saw, and it rapidly spreads through the town. The next day, after she finishes taking care of Kitty, Heaven goes to meet Logan and they spend the day together but Logan cannot keep what he heard to himself and confronts Heaven. Although she is actually the victim in the situation, Heaven feels so guilty about her part in the 'seduction' that she does not deny it. Too young to understand that this was not Heaven's fault, Logan feels betrayed and runs away from her. After she walks back into town, Heaven goes to the hospital to find Kitty awake and in a better mood. Kitty then tells Heaven that her father was there looking for her to apologize for everything and that he seemed like a different man. He also wanted to give her two choices: she can live with him and his new wife or try to find her mother's family and live with them, if they will accept her. Unable to forgive her father for the way he treated her and for selling his other children, Heaven decides to go and find her mother's family. Tom tells Heaven that he is going to live with Luke and his new wife, as the farmer Tom lives with is horrible to him and this is his chance for a better life. Cal takes Heaven to the airport so she can travel to her mother's family; once he gets her there, he hurries off. Tom shows up with Fanny, who reveals she is pregnant by the preacher and that is why she couldn't talk to or see Heaven—she has to stay hidden, and the preacher and his wife are going to pretend it is their baby. She hugs Heaven and tells her she loves her, then hurries back to her "home" with Tom before she is discovered missing. While Heaven is waiting for her plane, she reads in the newspaper that Kitty has died. She thinks of how Cal drove her all the way to the airport and didn't even mention Kitty's death or that they were now free to live together: he wants to start a new life and she is not part of his plans. Heaven is furious and hurt by his actions, thinking that after all he said about how much he loved her, he dumped her at the first opportunity, abandoning her just like Luke. All she can do now is hope she finds peace and love with her mother's family.
36126601	/m/0dh1vx	Dark Angel	V. C. Andrews	1986-11	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 After the events of Heaven (the first book in The Casteel Series), Heaven Casteel finds herself in the care and custody of her grandparents, the wealthy Tony and Jillian Tatterton, who live at Farthinggale Manor. Heaven dreams of a wonderful new life - of new friends, a good school, beautiful clothes and, most importantly, love. She wishes to make her family name respectable, find her brothers and sisters, and have a family once again. Conflict with her newfound grandparents soon arises, however. Her grandmother Jillian is vain and selfish, while her step-grandfather, Tony, veers from being dignified and generous to being controlling and domineering. The only person Heaven can talk to is Tony's brother, Troy, who suffers from depression. While Heaven is given everything she wants, fine clothes, a fine education and the support to go to college, she is still unhappy due to the stipulation that Tony has made: if Heaven sees her family again, Tony will stop all support to her. Heaven does not try to see Tom and Fanny, but she does continue to write them letters, and continues her efforts to find Jane and Keith. After a time, Troy and Heaven fall in love, become lovers, and plan to marry. Tony is thrilled, but Jillian is troubled. Heaven decides to see her family and lies to Tony about going to New York. Heaven arrives in Washington D.C. and finds Jane and Keith living happily with their adoptive parents—they are upset to see Heaven and tell her to go away, which breaks Heaven's heart. Fanny is living in a boarding home in Nashville, Tennessee and is poor and may be prostituting herself. Fanny reveals that she was forced to give her baby, named Darcy to Reverend Wayland Wise, the baby's father. To keep her quiet, Wayland and his wife gave her some money to leave town and to never return. Fanny reveals that she longs to have Darcy back and Darcy is all she can think about. Fanny threatens to tell Tony and Jillian that Luke was cruel and unfaithful to Leigh, and that Leigh lived in squalor and poverty with him, unless Heaven gets Darcy back for her. Tom, on the other hand, is living happily with Luke and Luke's young wife, Stacie, and helping at the circus now owned by Luke. Tom tells Heaven that Luke has turned his life around, and he and Stacy have a new baby boy named Drake. When Heaven arrives in West Virginia, she encounters her first love, Logan. Logan is still angry and hurt over the revelation of her sexual relationship with her adoptive father, Cal (from the previous book), but at the same time he seems to still care about her. Heaven pays a visit to Rev. Wise and attempts to buy Darcy Back for Fanny. Heaven realizes that she a lot more like Luke than she ever admitted. Rev. Wise tells Heaven that she knows that Darcy will be better off if Fanny is not in her life, and Heaven reluctantly agrees, and hurt and heartbroken, returns to the family cabin. A huge storm comes through, and Heaven becomes sick, with Logan nursing her back to health. It is a few weeks before she can return to Boston. Heaven returns to Boston to learn that that Troy is sick, partly due to thinking Heaven abandoned him. However, shortly after seeing him, she goes to Tony and they have a discussion where he tries to persuade Heaven to break her relationship with Troy (even going so far as to bribe her with money). Heaven refuses to leave Troy, which forces Tony to reveal his shameful past: He believes she is not Luke's daughter but his, as he raped her mother (though Tony says Leigh willingly continued the relationship after that). Heaven had lied to Tony when she first arrived about her age, saying she was a year younger than she actually was (not wanting them to know that Leigh married Luke the day she met him and got pregnant right away). But Tony realizes with the new date of Heaven's birth that Leigh must have been pregnant when she ran away. And if Tony is Heaven's father, then Troy is Heaven's uncle. Heaven still declares her love for Troy and intends to be with him, but Troy flees the Tatterton estate after Jillian reveals the truth to him. He leaves Heaven a note explaining this, and tells Heaven to confront Jillian about what really happened to Leigh. Once she does, Jillian loses her sanity. Despite the revelation of who her father is and the loss of Troy, Heaven remains with the Tattertons. Heaven attends college and graduates. Tony invites Keith and Jane to her graduation party, and they embrace her. They both explain that the sight of Heaven brought back the memories of their poor, difficult life in the Willes, and they were afraid she was coming to take them back there. Heaven is ecstatic to have them back in her life. After some traveling, when Heaven returns to Boston, she is told by a distraught Tony that Troy died as the result of a horse riding accident at the ocean while she was away. She moves to Winnerrow and lives in the newly renovated cabin of her youth. She becomes a respected teacher, and bleaches her black hair to resemble the silvery blond of her mother. When she receives an invitation to the circus owned by Luke Casteel, she decides that it is finally time to go see him. Wanting to have him realize his beloved Leigh is alive in her, she dresses in the dress Leigh was wearing when she first met Luke (given to her by her grandmother, Luke's mother, when she was young). But when Luke sees Heaven, she looks so much like her mother that he thinks she really is Leigh. He is completely distracted and a tiger he was guarding gets loose. Tom rushes in to save the animal trainer but Tom is mauled to death, and Luke is badly injured. Heaven is devastated by the death of Tom. She visits Luke in his hospital bed and tells him that she is sorry for everything that went wrong between them but flees before he can reply. Logan is there for her in the dark days after Tom's death and they become close again. Months after Tom's death, Heaven's grandfather dies. Luke lets Heaven know that she will always be welcome with his family. Heaven and Logan make plans to marry, but first Heaven feels they must go to Boston and see her real father Tony.
36126792	/m/044psh	Gates of Paradise	V. C. Andrews	1989-06	{"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}	 A novel about Annie Stonewall, the daughter of Heaven Casteel Tatterton Stonewall and Troy Tatterton (though no one knows Troy is Annie's father except Heaven). After being orphaned by an car crash that kills her mother and the man that she thought was her father, Tony Tatterton steps in and takes her to Farthinggale Manor to assist in her recovery. However, he does not keep Annie's best interests at heart since he cuts her ties to her family with the exception of Drake Casteel.
36240322	/m/0k29bkf	Shelter	Harlan Coben	2011-09-15		 After Mickey Bolitar moves in with his uncle, Myron Bolitar, his new girl friend disappears and he will stop at nothing to find her. The book begins with Mickey walking in front of his neighbours house. The women living there walks out and tells him that his father is alive. Mickey believes the lady is crazy because he was present at his fathers death.
36303946	/m/0k296wc	Fire Season	Jane Lindskold			 Stephanie Harrington and her treecat, Climbs Quickly, must help another treecat clan during the dangerous fire season on Stephanie's new home planet of Sphinx. She must also contend with those who wish to use the fire season to their advantage to destroy the treecats and free the planet for complete development.
36372465	/m/02vqwsp	The Third Lynx	Timothy Zahn	2007	{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}	 The story starts with former government agent, Frank Compton, meeting a young man who drops dead at his feet. Compton finds a ticket to a strange, interstellar train called the Quadrail. During Compton's ride on the Quadrail he falls asleep, and wakes up in the custody of the spiders, the operators of the Quadrail. The Spiders explain to Compton their worries of a weapon of mass destruction, which may be able to bypass their Quadrail security. Compton agrees to help, and is given a pass for the Quadrails and they assign him a traveling companion named Bayta, who has a strange talent for being telepathic in her communication to the Spiders. Frank Compton discovers the power behind the Quadrail system: an ancient civilization called the Chawyn. On the course of his travels on the Quadrail, he learns of the existence of the Modhri: the equally ancient enemy of the Chahwyn. The Modhri has its mind bent on controlling the galaxy.
36531274	/m/0kfwljn	The Birth of Plenty	William J. Bernstein			 The Birth of Plenty is an history of the world expressed in economic terms. Bernstein argues that in order to prosper, a country must possess four main attributes: property rights, the scientific method, capitalism and an effective communications infrastructure. After establishing these as the basic requirements for economic success, the book examines the historical progress of a number of countries both with and without these attributes. Bernstein further argues that the four attributes are a necessary precursor to democracy.
36534061	/m/072y44	Remote Control	Andy McNab	1997	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}	 The series follows the character of Nick Stone, an ex-military man who previously worked for the SAS, British Intelligence, and an American agency. Stone now works as a paid mercenary, willing to work in even the most difficult circumstances. The series has Stone dealing with assassination, political intrigue, as well as human rights, white slavery, and prostitution.
36551772	/m/0kg2qzj	Telegraph Avenue	Michael Chabon			 Set during the summer of 2004, the novel' main plotline concerns Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe. Archy is black, Nat is white and Jewish. The two have been the proprietors of Brokeland Records, a brick-and-mortar store located in North Oakland, on Telegraph Avenue, for twelve years. Their used vinyl business, never very strong, is threatened with extinction by ex-NFL superstar Gibson Goode's planned construction of his second Dogpile Thang megastore two blocks away. They feel betrayed because their local city councilman, Chandler Flowers, has suddenly switched sides, and now supports Dogpile. A major subplot concerns their wives Gwen Shanks (who is heavily pregnant with her first) and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, who are partners in Berkeley Birth Partners, a midwifery business. A home birth goes a little bit wrong, the mother is rushed to the hospital, and the attending physician, after taking care of the mother, insults Gwen in a racially tinged matter. She blows up, and the doctor has the hospital start procedures to drop Gwen and Aviva's hospital privileges. A third plotline concerns Luther Stallings, Archy's father. Luther had been an actor in a few blaxploitation films in the 70s, including the lead role in the two Strutter films. But personally he had never been part of Archy's life, and Archy wants nothing to do with him. Luther has been in and out of jail and on and off drugs since his acting career ended, has been clean for over a year, and he keeps himself fighting trim. He is involved with his former co-star Valetta Moore, who played Candygirl Clark. Her noted taglines "Do what you got to do" and "Stay fly" still resonate with characters in the novel. Luther had been best friends with Chandler in the old days. Their friendship came to a sudden end, after Luther abetted Chandler in the murder of a drug dealer. Luther is trying to exploit his knowledge in order to finance the making of the third Strutter film. A fourth plotline concerns Julius Jaffe, Nat and Aviva's 14-year old son, and his new best buddy, Titus Joyner, who has shown up from Texas after his grandmother died. Titus, it turns out, is Archy's long lost son. His arrival is pretty much the last straw in Gwen's strained relationship with Archy. Setting up a gig for a fundraiser for an obscure Illinois politician Barack Obama, running for U.S. Senate, Archy learns of the death of local music legend Cochise Jones&mdash;Archy's spiritual father&mdash;from his Hammond organ falling on him, and Archy fills in. Obama is very impressed with the performance, and tells Gwen he admires Archy's obvious dedication to doing what he loves, purple suit and all. Gwen takes those words to heart, and resolves to stand up for herself. The first stand she takes is to walk out on Archy. The funeral for Jones is held in the store. Plans are made, people get drunk, and the stage is set for the shaking up everyone's future.
36665207	/m/06j7t6	The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family	Matt Groening	1997-11-12		 {| class="wikitable" |- !Seasons covered !Book title |- |1–8 |The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family |- |9–10 |The Simpsons Forever!: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family ...Continued |- |11–12 |The Simpsons Beyond Forever!: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family ...Still Continued |- |13–14 |The Simpsons One Step Beyond Forever!: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family ...Continued Yet Again |- |1–20 |Simpsons World The Ultimate Episode Guide: Seasons 1-20 |}
36934824	/m/0m0p0hr	Under Wildwood	Colin Meloy	2012-09-25		 Prue McKeel, having rescued her brother from the Dowager Governess at the conclusion of the first novel, returns to her normal daily life of school and daydreaming. She finds her mind drifting back to Wildwood as she becomes increasingly bored with her studies. Meanwhile, dark events are transpiring in the Impassable Wilderness. A long, cold winter coupled with political discord fueled by an organization calling itself the "Bicycle Coup" have put Wildwood's residents on edge. Assassins are lurking in the forest's shadows, their intentions and motives unknown, while an industrial tyrant plots to exploit the natural resources of this magical world. With Wildwood once again under threat by dark forces, Prue returns to the Impassable Wilderness and teams up with her friend Curtis to bring unity to a land once again divided by conflict. This time though, they'll have to journey into the mysterious caverns and tunnels beneath the Impassable Wilderness.
37054020	/m/04f1nbs	Transfer of Power	Vince Flynn	2000-06-01	{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}	 The reader first meets Rapp while he is doing a covert operation in Iran and he discovers a possible terrorist attack planned for the nations capital to happen in the near future. Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., Anna Reilly is starting her first day as a White House correspondent for NBC. It also so happens to be the day where the terrorist, using the a secret entrance and take over the White House and hold it hostage. The president, who barley escaped the hostage situation remains trapped in the unfinished bomb shelter. With the vice president using this opportunity as commander in chief to glorify his political career being lenient towards the terrorist demands, Rapp must find a way to fight the terrorist from the inside of the White House. It is here where he saves Anna Reilly from being raped by one of the terrorist and their relationship, which will be seen throughout the later books begins. It comes time that several Navy SEAL's who sneak into the White House and eliminate the terrorist, save the hostages and the president. The leader of the terrorist group manages to escape the White House while detonating the strategically placed explosives. He is later found in South America only to be killed by Rapp.
37122323	/m/0n5236t	Decoded	Jay-Z	2010-11-16	{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}	 The book follows very rough chronological order, while switching from current stories to his story of growing up in the Marcy projects. The autobiographical portion focuses on not only his story of drug dealing, fights, and the beginnings in rap, but also his reflections on those times in his life and how they shaped who he is an artist and how artists were shaped by such experiences. Jay-Z explains the stresses of the rap industry and the celebrity life, while also trying to put it in perspective. He illustrates this point by explaining that when he and Puff Daddy were being charged with assault there were hundreds of cameras outside the courthouse of Puff Daddy’s trial and the courthouse where the perpetrator of the World Trade Center bombing was being tried was empty. Along with the narrative, there is also a substantial portion of the book dedicated to Jay-Z’s opinions and reflections, which are often illustrated with stories. Jay-Z expounds on his relationship with Barack Obama and his involvement in politics, as well as his thoughts on the Hurricane Katrina. Jay-Z reflects on his life and especially his beginnings. He explains that he still considers himself a hustler, despite being a corporate billionaire now as founder of Roc-A-Fella Records. He continues and describes the comparisons between drug dealing, rapping, and boxing and how his life in the streets has molded who he is and no matter how he lives now, he still acknowledges his roots. The book contains lyrics to thirty-six songs with some songs having only part of the song. Along with the lyrics, are annotations and footnotes that Jay-Z writes to explain the lyrics to the reader. The explanations range from just explaining what a “brick” is to in depth analysis and explanation of lines that underscore the points that Jay-Z makes in his writing.
37132319	/m/0n4bqb1	America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't	Stephen Colbert	2012-10-02		 Colbert addresses topics including Wall Street, campaign finance, energy policy, eating on the campaign trail, and the United States Constitution.
37159503	/m/073nkd	Poor Folk	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1846	{"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}	 Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova are second cousins twice-removed and live across from each other on the same street in terrible apartments. Devushkin's, for example, is merely a portioned-off section of the kitchen, and he lives with several other tenants, such as the Gorshkovs, whose son dies and who groans in agonizing hunger almost the entire story. Devushkin and Dobroselova exchange letters attesting to their terrible living conditions and the former frequently squanders his money on gifts for the latter. The reader progressively learns their history. Dobroselova originally lived in the country, but moved to St. Petersburg (which she hates) when her father lost his job. Her father was very violent after losing his job and her mother became severely depressed. Her father dies and they move in with Anna Fyodorovna, a landlady who was previously cruel to them but at least pretends to feel sympathy for their situation. Dobroselova is tutored by a poor student named Pokrovsky, whose drunken father occasionally visits. She eventually falls in love with Pokrovsky. She struggles to save a measly amount of money to purchase the complete works of Pushkin at the market for his birthday present, then allows his father to give the books to him instead, claiming that just knowing he received the books will be enough for her happiness. Pokrovsky falls ill soon after, and his dying wish is to see the sun and the world outside. Dobroselova obliges by opening the blinds to reveal grey clouds and dirty rain. In response Pokrovsky only shakes his head and then passes away. Dobroselova's mother dies shortly afterwards, and Dobroselova is left in the care of Anna for a time, but the abuse becomes too much and she goes to live with Fedora across the street. Devushkin works as a lowly copyist, frequently belittled and picked on by his work colleagues. His clothing is worn and dirty, and his living conditions are perhaps worse than Dobroselova's. He considers himself a rat in society. He and Dobroselova exchange letters (and occasional visits that are never detailed), and eventually they also begin to exchange books. Devushkin becomes offended when she sends him a copy of "The Overcoat", because he finds the main character is living a life similar to his own. Dobroselova considers moving to another part of the city where she can work as a governess. Just as he is out of money and risks being evicted, Devushkin has a stroke of luck: his boss takes pity on him and gives him 100 rubles to buy new clothes. Devushkin pays off his debts and sends some to Dobroselova. She sends him 25 rubles back because she does not need it. The future looks bright for both of them because he can now start to save money and it may be possible for them move in together. Devushkin finds himself liked by even the writer Ratazyayev, who was using him as a character in one of his stories because of his sad condition. Even the Gorshkovs come across money because the father’s case is won in court. With the generous settlement they seem to be destined to be perfectly happy, but the father dies, leaving his family in a shambles despite the money. Soon after this, Dobroselova announces that a Mr. Bykov, who had dealings with Anna Fyodorovna and Pokrovsky’s father, has proposed to her. She decides to leave with him, and the last few letters attest to her slowly becoming used to her new money. She has Devushkin find linen for her and begins to talk about various luxuries, leaving him alone in the end despite the fact that his lot was improving. The story ends with a final letter from him: a desperate plea for her to come back to him or at least write from her new life.